Well, I think that’s because we all thought Tepoz was lost to the comic archives again (little guy has a habit of disappearing for months/years at a time). Glad to see him back, though it’s a shame he’s still going wig-less.
If he’s ditching the wig, why not the bulky necklace as well. That must be a pain to wear. For that matter, isn’t it time to dress for the times. All the other golems have, even their creator. Maybe Tepoz could tell people he had his entire body tattooed blue. There’s not that much body to tattoo, after all.
…and then he could just wear white pants and a white HAT! People would think he’s some kind of little person cashing in on the upcoming ‘smurfs’ movie!
Yeah, unlike other forgotten characters like Jacqui, Darin, Owen, and Lakshmi, we lack any ‘equivalent’ to Tepoz. Also, unlike those 4, who were all generally FOILs to develop either Monica or Shelly, Tepoz actually has had a large chunk of Wapsi time dedicated to developing himself as a character, and it’d be a shame to see him dropped.
That, and he’s by far the most interesting ‘male’ this comic has by far, not to mention the most entertaining.
I don’t think she planned it. I think Nudge took something she said and ran with it. No down the little guy helped her along. Maybe this was all a big assumption on nudges part helped along by someone else. Let’s see how it plays out.
I’d think there is some bigger contraption hidden in Ireland ,or some other legend-fille place, that’s to be found. I cannot believe the “jam it in the head” will be used twice.
So, there will be some more “questing” for the missing pieces of the giant, destructive (after all it’s Lantian, and they have, as already mentioned by some, a penchant for dangerous, uncontrollable technology) meccano-kit.
Buut..on to the rest of this week’s “explain-aton” Wonder what the next hat from the rabbit will be.
golems from the chimera have a hatched storage compartment as all three where identical when first separated and the “identity” was all that was refined/changed to differentiate the three.
Let alone the facts that Tepoz was
a: The fall guy ,and got the full brunt of M’s and Jin’s discontent
b:was kept partially in the dark himself too. Something that peed him off too.
He was, basically, the adoptive “Father” of the Golem-Girls, and only Brandi gave him some credit for it.
Adoptive father, as well as older brother (technically, since May made all 4 golems, and Tepoz predated the GGG), Jin’s crush (per Bud & Jin), & Monica’s counsel (she does tend to open herself to Tepoz over sensitive issues moreso than Shelly, Tina, Amanda, or the GGG). All of this generally against his will too (poor boy gets volunteered and forced to do most everything).
Probably not. I’m sure somehow rather than clothe Shelly now that a male (Tepoz) is present, they’ll just blame Tepoz for something until he leaves the room. Poor little guy.
What i’d like to see was just some casual “Guys, I’m getting cold, and this blanket isn’t the most stylish” with a little shiver from Shelly, and M, or even Tina(!) going “ooh Im sorry ,here You go, handing her a sweater.
Without all the innuendo.
Even better? Bud used the confusion to poit to Shelly’s home and gathered some clothes for her. After all, Bud has been tere several times before.
They’ve been a bit preoccupied…and if you think about it, not a whole lot of time has gone by in Wapsi-world with Shelly naked…it’s just been long for us because of how much fits into one update. 🙂
I wonder if it was Shelly 57 or another number that said that. And how Nudge gets the misheard ‘stake-sauce’ to mean what it does… nevermind, I have no idea how Nudge’s brain works.
Clothes. Get Shelly some clothes, even if she does look good in blanket Greek wear.
52 Card Pickup is a game that was developed in the US. The game requires a deck of standard playing cards. One player familiar with the rules and a new player to be initiated into the game. The first player throws all of the card into the air. And the second player must pick all of them up. Hence the name 52 Card Pickup.
Ah. So that’s the significance of “52-pickup” in Brandi’s story-arc. I thought it was just some bit of crazieness on her part.
Funny to see that -although our societies look alike on the surface, we can freely communicate and, generally, understand eachother- cultural differences can mistify each and everyone of us agan&again.
It’s interesting, and sometimes we learn new words too 😛
Yes, it is interesting, but then, nerdism transcends cultural differences. We all have seen and experienced many of the same iconic things. Of course, the fact we all speak pretty good English here doesn’t hurt either. Especially in America where we are laothe to bother learning other languages. On the other hand, just about anywhere in the world, you are less than 20 feet from someone who speaks at least some English, so we rarely have to.
Well, in America’s case it’s pretty logical that one, maybe two (spanish!) languages will do. America has technically been one entity for more than 200 years.
Compare that to Europe. The EU is only about 53 years old. I can imagine that after 200+ years there will be 1 language (my guess is English, since it’s already the language of choice internationally) too. We learn a lot of foreign languages purely out of neccesity. Think of this” If I drive south just 400km’s, the language is French, and I’ve crossed 2 countries already). If an Oregonian(???) drives south 400km’s he’ll be (depending on where he started) still in the same state …
The real negative of speaking/reading only one language, is a “flattening” of culture. You’ll miss-out on a lot of enrichment that the rest of the world has to offer in literature, oral history etc. You’ll always have to wait for translations, and translations are notorious for inaccuracies.
In Europe we have the luxury of being taught different languages form the 3rd grade (!) The age at which kids learn new things the easiest.
I always feel it as a bit unfair when certain Europeans point to Americans as being “culturally challenged”. They are judging from a comfortable position of stuff everybody already learned as kids, all the while immersed to their eyeballs in western history, everywhere they look. Ancient western-culture starts at our doorsteps. Heck, I have a little church nearby that has been built in the 12th century!!
The only caveat I have with (some!!) Americans, is their unwillingness to embrace the willingness to accept another viewpoint as equivalent to theirs. American “exeptionalism” is the only thing that gets Europeans really riled-up. The disdain, even hatred (again “some”) Americans exude towards the social-democratic, concensus-minded way we tend to solve things overhere, is also a point of irritation.
It leads to mudslinging that goes both ways. Shame.. We are more alike than different. Both sides have a habit of forgetting that. Me included.
Luckily, part of my family lives in California and part in Michigan. and they are quick to chastize me for assumptions about America, as I am quick to chastize them if they go on an anti-Europe-rant.
Aaaand. That closes the class “international relations for beginners” Homework and exerpts are available on “BlackBoard” (our universities’ site)
Then there’s the old saying: A person who can converse in two languages is bilingual. A person who can converse in three languages is trilingual. A person who can only converse in one language is an American.
@Jay-Em: Yeah, all us ignorant Americans do is spend blood and money to protect the elite Europeans from the consequences of their own folly. Yep- that’s pretty dumb of us.
Oh, and invent the Internet and cures for Polio and stuff.
if it helps i thought the ‘soccor’ was a hint of somesort and spent the first 10mins of my day trying to work out what it might mean.
soc. soccor. soccor mum. ancient aztec soccor.
yknow – that type of google search 😛
I guess this is more for Paul but… has anybody ever said definitively what the skin/hair color combo’s are on the various characters, esp. the non-human forms of people like Phix, and Nudge, etc…
Yayyyy!!!!! Little blue-guy’s back. Now the waiting is for Phix and Brandi, and the whole club can poit to a nice beach somewhere to have a BBQ and and a re-cap.
(If only to stop the spinning of the readers’ heads 😆 )
The plutonium core wasn’t in the artifact at that point, and the first nuclear submarine (much less nuclear-tipped torpedoes) weren’t out in the ocean until over ten years after the sub Bud blew up was launched.
Though watching Bud walk away from a whole sub full of kaboom (280 Kg of Hexanite times X, where X equals the number of torps still live enough to sympathetically detonate, equals enough boom to sink a carrier) gives an index of exactly how hard to damage the girls really are…
yes and no. While time was moving backwards in the TTF relative to our universe, it was still moving forward in it’s “space”. So really it was placed in the artifact 80,000 years in the future of the past, aka a few minutes ago.
Also to further my point, if time were moving backward, Shelly would have gotten younger, not older.
When Shelly 57 (our Shelly) picked up the artifact, she went to the other side, became a sphinx, and experienced 80K years backwards. Every 1450 or so years, Shellys 56 thru 1 appeared, and various things happened that we don’t rightly know about. However, the plutonium was in the tree somewhere along the way (although if it grew larger backwards, then it was a small tree probably when Shelly 56 came, and maybe was the one to put the plutonium into the tree, and it grew around it. At the beginning of this story line, we see shelly 57 as sphinx meeting with shelly 1 80K years ago, and the plutonium is put back into the relic, shelly 1 dies, and shelly 57 takes the relic and uses it to get back to where she started, just a split second later. Is that right?
The plutonium seems to have come from a universe that was crushed/rewound into nonexistence, which probably helps with it being an unlimited power source, and one that could keep Jin operating within spec.
More interestingly, the Relic itself was built with a warning program against anyone who would try to open it. This was back in Lanthis, and it was done with the presumption that it would persist longer than any one civilization would remember it.
The banshee “guard dog” seems to be a version of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. An active attack from a monster is much more effective at keeping people from touching your radioactive waste than a hectare of Forbidding Blocks…
You could be right, and it’s perfectly safe. On the other hand, considering the submarine housed a magical relic that altered the traits of plutonium, and then the submarine exploded, I’d be a little hesitant to bring Monica, Shelly, Amanda, Katherine, Tina, or anyone else squishy to the island before a golem checked it, considering the relic’s already killed at least 1 Shelly via simple exposure.
Seems several readers’ comments yesterday are still proving true. That’s a very ‘tame’ reaction for Shelly to have (especially without even a curse or eye-roll). I guess she really did mature, and it only took her 80,000 years to do so.
What’s also nice to see is that Nudge does this “physical contact”-thing that girls of a friends group tend to do when getting together. (holding on to Shelly’s leg)
It means to me that Nudge and Shelly became very good friends during Shelly’s banishment.
Funny thing about Nudge is, that she’s both naive and very smart. It was complete naivite to go to Tina’s as a human to try and “atone” for her pranks on the collective (fishies, singing “on top of spaghetti”…) and forgetting that Phix scared Tina almost into madness.
Yet ,she was smart enough to figure-out that Shelly needed to “die” in the forest, even though the message was somewhat garbled. She was smart enough to flummox Phix in the past to escape the library-duties..etc.
She’s a bit like a dog, a super smart, Mensa-type dog, yet very upfront emotionally, and apparently very loyal too.
She may be a prankster, but she’s completely without hatred or menace, and carrying a grudge is wholly alien to her.
Well, leave it to Paul to build us another intrigueing ,lovable, character.
And the “coq au vin”, calf-tongue in madeira-sauce. Beer and mustard cooked Flemish steak..
cake with rum/raisin filling..Hmmm… I think the clown car has deserved a little party.
OK. This comic explains a few things. Nudge was independent of the CM cycles. She know that Shelly was going to get stuck in the Sacred Forest for 80 millennia. Shellinx used code words to tell Nudge what to do. Why? Because Nudge was still still on the lamb from the Bibliotheki and Phix. Shelly was able to use her future knowledge.
Nudge may also have been the trans-temporal messaging service. Shellinx able to affects events in the past because she was travelling backwards in time in the Sacred Forest.
Hrm. That begs the question. How is Phix going react once she finds out that Shellinx knew where Nudge was all along during all of the CM resets? Nudge was right under Phix’s nose.
wonder if Shally got lost in a ‘normal’ forest.
I’ve never understood how Jin got there too late but perhaps..lil shelly was lead into the time forest and vanished of Jin’s radar. She then was released from the time forest when she ‘died’ allowing Jin to ‘save’ her.
Which would explain why Shellinx couldn’t leave. She couldn’t die in the time forest and maybe the flux capacitor – err – artifact was only a oneway trip unless it gets powered by something.
Jin was keeping an eye on both Monica and Shelly due to their important in fixing the CM. Jin was late in attending to Shelly lost in the forest because the accident with Monica, Tina 1.0 and the bus was happening at the same time. By the time that Jin has dealt with Monica, Shelly has been in hypoxia longer enough to pass the “death” threshold to create Conscience from her demons and become a doorway.
Yeah, responded to your other comment with the same idea before I saw this one. Duh me. I think I got confused by the initial ‘stake’ typo, so I didn’t get the 57 reference until Paul fixed it.
I just realized the “I” “me” was part of the misunderstanding too. Nudge took those words together as being “Shelly.”
I, “me,” stays lost=Shelly steak-sauce.
DOH!!!! I totally missed that. No that first panel makes total sense. So much for my code words theory from last night. So the question now is how did Shellinx tell Nudge to make her younger stays lost. Nudge didn’t jump into Tina until after the bus accident. So where was Nudge hiding out before Tina 2.0? And was it Shellinx that told Nudge to hide out in Tina after the vision quest?
Not to nitpick, but what is happening with Nudge’s left horn in Panel 3? I’m assuming its an oversight, but neither the top nor underside of the horn has the typical ‘striped line’ pattern of shading, both are pure white (a trait usually typical only with Nudge’s horn’s underside).
Granted, Nudge does represent trickery & chaos, so mandating that her horns obey any natural law is already a loosing battle…
Thanks. Had this avatar forever ago, when wapsi first switched from forum to Comments, but since I’ve been MIA for over a year, had to reset it.
– – – – –
And I don’t think we’ll be seeing Darin again any time soon. His bar has been replaced by Monica’s beach and the Cerebus Club, and his role as the group’s counsel has been replaced by Tina. Darin’s most likely a dropped character at this point, alongside the likes of Owen & Jacqui.
The only way I can see Darin getting a return cameo is either A) Monica being forced there now that her sand bar is on fire, B) Amanda still frequents Darin’s bar, so we get an Amanda-Darin conversation, or C) Darin’s one of the few people Katherine’s liked, so in one of her attempts to be outgoing she seeks out Darin’s bar again.
Though I doubt any of the 3 will happen. RIP Darin.
I don’t know about relying on Nudge. She almost killed Shelly by keeping her lost. Was that supposed to have happened? What would have happened if she kept her lost a while longer and Shelly died? The plan would have failed and no more cycles to try again. Looks like sheer luck played a large part in all this.
Thus far, there is no mention of creating CG as being a part of the plan either. Was her creation just an unexpected side effect?
Not to be picky, but she is Creepy Girl as Tina picked up the naming rights. At the very least, she always will be Creepy Girl or CG to me until one of the cast call her something else.
As far as we’ve been told, Brandi took care of that, so Shelly didn’t need to do anything. I think that Jin sensed that Shelly was dieing and found her. There wasn’t any way for Nudge to prevent that.
If so, that’s a significant retcon. We were told that “Brandi’s dabbling” was responsible for that. I’ve provided the link before.
Perhaps what you are saying is true. I certainly hope not, though! It would cause a lot of damage to the story, IMO. Bud and particularly Brandi would come across as less competent and fixing the calendar machine was much more matter of chance and less a matter of the character’s abilities than we were led to believe.
I really dislike retcons, particularly in a story like this. If the story is over, why retcon it? Why should we pay much attention to what is happening now, if we will get a different understanding in the future? That’s still true even if it’s just a matter of a character being wrong or lying.
Please provide the “Brandi’s dabbbling” link again – i suspect that “Brandi’s dabbling” refers to Monica/Tina in the DF that delayed Jin, rather than Shelly’s vision quest.
Two separate meddlers working (semi) independently – Brandi didn’t know about what Shelly was up to, sending Nudge to arrange Connie’s creation, but Shelly knew what Brandi was doing, and that by a little push she could make things work out “right” – i.e., the way that (from her standpoint) they already had.
Jin’s Doubt telling Monica about Brandi’s dabbling in making Monica and Shelly portholes.
However, people like you Tina, Shelly and serveral others are portholes. Brandi was the one who figured this out. And with her dabbling you and muscle butt are now doorways. …
You hurt Monica, according to Brandi’s book. Tina had been working with a past Brandi and was also in possession of the key. With no other way to get the key in M’s hands, Brandi worked with demons to get Tina and Monica in the same accident. Bonding both of you with Jin’s knowledge of the details.
@eschmenk – After looking at the links referring to Brandi’s dabbling, I’m inclined to think Fariportfan has a point about two dabblers being likely.
@Fairportfan – Cheers to you on thinking about it that way! I was getting stuck on the whole Brandi thing, too.
Besides, hasn’t Paul already told us that things said by characters in this comic may not be 100% truth (could be skewed based on POV, or could be a lie intentional or otherwise)? It’s very hard to remember that sometimes. 🙂
Besides, hasn’t Paul already told us that things said by characters in this comic may not be 100% truth (could be skewed based on POV, or could be a lie intentional or otherwise)?
That’s the “Unreliable Narrator” effect.
If you’ve seen The Usual Suspects, consider Verbal.
Jin’s Doubt telling Monica about Brandi’s dabbling in making Monica and Shelly portholes.
And why would we believe anything Jin’s Doubt told Monica, considering that she was trying to manpulate Monica?
While I’m at it, I’ll throw these in too:
/comic/underjinsnose/
/comic/imstillinhere/ through /comic/corporatescrewup/
/comic/visionquestatthirt/ through /comic/whatssospecial/
/comic/wellletyoutwoalone/ through /comic/areyoulost-2/
/comic/all-hell-broke-loose/ and /comic/viscerally-scares-me/
Looking through all that, it’s all so vague that it doesn’t necessarily contradict your theory, but OTOH it sure doesn’t feel consistent either. There are no mentions of any coyote despite numerous mentions of Tochtli and a rabbit in those pages and elsewhere. There is no mention of CG, but there are mentions of the dolls and the key.
Jin said that Shelly didn’t like what she found on the vision quest. Based on the way Jin said it, it sounded like that is what caused Shelly’s problems rather than being lost for too long. More specifically, it sounds like the problem was what Shelly’s real anima, which was also a rabbit, showed her. I’m not seeing anything so far that says that Nudge turned herself into a rabbit or that Nudge showed Shelly something that cause her problems. If Shelly thought that her anima was a rabbit only because that’s what Jin appeared as, it wouldn’t be coincidental, but Jin said that it was.
I think I’ve gotten too interested in the story. I need to remind myself that there isn’t that much point in trying to figure things out if we will keep finding out stuff later on.
Yeesh! I was still trying to reply to Fairportan’s 2:31 pm comment. I didn’t see any of the ones since then.
Julie:
Besides, hasn’t Paul already told us that things said by characters in this comic may not be 100% truth (could be skewed based on POV, or could be a lie intentional or otherwise)? It’s very hard to remember that sometimes. 🙂
Yes, he said something like that. I don’t have problems remembering it. I also remember that you keep trying to reminding me of it. 😛
My tendency is to try to figure out things based on the information we have available. If there doesn’t seem to be a reason to not trust something, I’ll trust it. If it turns out to be wrong later, I find it annoying. A little bit of it is OK. These, however are things that go back many years.
What are the chances that we will find out that the stuff about Nudge and Shelly won’t mean what it seems to mean now? How long will we have to wait to find out?
Fairportfan:
And why would we believe anything Jin’s Doubt told Monica, considering that she was trying to manpulate Monica?
She wasn’t trying to manipulate Monica. She was a gloating villain who thought that victory was already assured. A villain can’t properly gloat if they are lying. Secondly, the only alternative was to simply ignore the conversation, in which case there was no point in reading it in the first place. There wasn’t any thing else that you make out of it, except that it was exposition.
@eschmenk – Well you can cut the number of times I’ve reminded you about that Unreliable Narrator business in half since I do have trouble remembering that when I start getting confused…therefore half the times I’ve said anything, I was probably trying to remind me more than you. 😛
Retcon just means retroactive continuity. If you find out later that they were mistaken or lying, it’s still retroactive. Retcons don’t even have to contradict anything to still be retcons and not all retcons are bad.
The other thing is that there is a big difference between having characters who are just learning being wrong or having untrustworthy characters lying as compared to having characters who should know better being wrong or having apparently trustworthy characters lying when there apparently was no reason to do so. Context is important.
Besides, gotta cut Paul some slack here. He’s presenting his work as he goes. That’s tough, especially on long arcs. He doesn’t have the luxury of re-writes to make everything come out just so. He’s stuck with the past work and has to try to get new ideas to fit. Just call it “magic” and let it slide.
We know that Brandi conspired with Demons to make sure Tina and Monica were links via the accident. That was to ensure the key knife made it’s way into Brandi’s hands without Jin’s demons knowing it. Demons were certainly outside of the CM cycles. So perhaps it was demons who relayed the message? The message being delivered via a third part may explain why she got it wrong.
I had assumed that Brandi talked to the demons during the previous loop, perhaps through the calendar machine when she was left behind. Bud mentioned Brandi being left alone with the machine as if it were important somehow.
I’m not sure what you meant by this, though: “The message being delivered via a third part may explain why she got it wrong.” Is “she” Nudge and are you talking about the steak sauce thing? I get the impression that Nudge and Shelly bonded, so Shelly probably talked directly to Nudge in that case, but I’m not sure about anything anymore.
A message passed on my intermediate parties tends to change at every iteration. In high school, I participated on a type of extended education program. I forgot what it was about. But one of the demonstration was about communication. 12 students were selected to participate. 11 were led to a secluded area. The first person got a message whisperd to them. The 2 second student was brough to the stage. The first student whispered the message to the 2nd. The 2nd recited the message aloud. The 3rd student brought to the stage and the process repeated until me the last person. The message I recited aloud were vitually nothing like the original message. The lesson be is that messages will get rewords or misinterpreted from one person to another. The more intermediaries means the message will deviate more and more.
The above is what I was talking about. I’m assuming Shellinix didn’t tell Nudge directly what do. Shellinx did that though intermediates who are apart from the timeline of the universe aka Demons. Jin’s Doubt said that Brandi’s meddling lead to Monica and Shelly being turned into doorways. Assuming Doubt didn’t lie, that would mean that Brandi has a hand in Shelly’s getting lost. We know that Shellinx told Nudge to make sure Shelly stayed lost. Assuming Shellinux figured out Nudge needed to do the dirty deed. Shellinx, being trapped in the Sacred Forest, got the message to Nudge somehow. That somehow had to have been Brandi. And the method is Brandi’s deals with the Demons who are independent from time.
Wow..by the by, Shelly has used the 81000 years well, and became a manipulator of Brandi’s caliber.
Shelly is the typical example of a very intelligent person, but utterly impatient. Many very intelligent people have that “short-fuse” for boredom. It takes a very special person to be able to surpass a basic character trait, to become all that they are capable of.
Shelly’s involuntary “retraite” in the forest has matured her beyond imagination.
I guess M’s photographer-friend, Amanda, will be quite shocked, to say the least, because she”especially</i. didnýt like Shelly for her "immaturity".
Luckily we still have "Brat-demon" Shell for the insulting one-liners :lol;
“Wow..by the by, Shelly has used the 81000 years well, and became a manipulator of Brandi’s caliber.”
If Fairportfan is right, Brandi didn’t have to be a manipulator at all. If Shelly had to ensure that what happened actually happened, then why would we need any other manipulator? If Shelly told Nudge what to do during the future vision quest, why not assume that Shelly told Nudge to tell Brandi what to write in her book? Or maybe Shelly had Nudge forge the book. Why not assume that Shelly told Nudge to make sure that Tina got out of the morgue and brought the key with her? Why not assume that Shelly told Nudge to arrange the accident/suicide involving Monica and Tina?
If Shelly made sure her past actually happened, I don’t see why she would have just limited herself to the vision quest. It would have been just as important that she ensured that her mother died, because CG’s personality is a reflection of that. So do we assume that Shelly ensured that she couldn’t call an ambulance? Did Shelly ensure that her parents met each other?
The whole idea seems like a very slippery slope, IMO.
I’m not jumping on you. Mostly, I’m thinking out loud. Your comment just seemed to provide a nice place to do that. 😀
BTW, I hope you weren’t just talking about the tact that Shelly used today. That would be embarrassing!
Brandi didn’t have to be a manipulator at all. If Shelly had to ensure that what happened actually happened, then why would we need any other manipulator? If Shelly told Nudge what to do during the future vision quest, why not assume that Shelly told Nudge to tell Brandi what to write in her book? Or maybe Shelly had Nudge forge the book. Why not assume that Shelly told Nudge to make sure that Tina got out of the morgue and brought the key with her? Why not assume that Shelly told Nudge to arrange the accident/suicide involving Monica and Tina?
All quite possible – we have only the word of the characters that Brandi, in fact, did any of that, and, outside of Brandi herself, they’re all either Unreliable Narrators (Jin, for sure) or simply making assumptions.
For instance, the only “witnesses” who could say for sure that Brandi manipulated the Mexico City situation … don’t remember. (The Co-Operative)
Perhaps Shelly has been the master manipulator all along. Nothing that we have Word of God on that i can remember offhand actually contradicts the possibility.
I agree. sphinx Shelly has been around for all the 80K years on a continuous basis, just like Phix. Phix, however was more of an observer. Who is to say Shelly is not the great manipulator of much of what occured. She would be the only Shelly to know what ultimately happened to get rid of the CM. That’s more than Jin knew even. Bootstrapping indeed.
No, no, not just the way Shelly presented herself today. She seems to have reached that vaulted “restraint” that she admired so much in Bud.
To do some out-loud thinking for myself (wrong as I may be..) : Shelly has always exibited a very astute mind. It was her unrelenting volatility that constantly got in the way.
There is no need to assume there is only 1 genius-manipulator in a game this complex.
The thinkers of the crew have used the 50-something cycles to their best. They left each-other, and themselves clues.
I am thinking we are seeing the result of a very very grand-scale game, set-up by Jin, Brandy, Shelly ,and to some extent Mayahuel, in deep-co-operation.
Maybe Maya got on good footing with some demons in the Demon-Realm, and used them as messengers, i.e. made them available as messengers to Shellinx, Nudge and some others to help the earth-bound manipulators, and chime in on the bigger picture.
Not to say that Maya was the overseer. Feed-back from Shellinx, Brandi etc. could have been helpful to Maya as well. Say, in convincing her of the importance of teaching M the magic language.
The more I ponder it, the more it seems like a grand-co-operation with no sole leader, or manipulator. All cogs in a hugely complex machinery. It learned by doing ,and failing. The only ones able to message what went wrong, were those outside of time (Maya!) or those that kept diary’s (Brandi&Jin) Jin being something of a wild-card. I have yet to see a clear explanation why Jin <i<knew of- and lived through- all resets ( think about this for a moment: the re-sets. If she’s outside of time due to her madness, and thusly capable of remembering the mistakes, it’s no more than logic that “healing” Jin would have been disastrous in the former cycles.)
Hmm.. Glenn Gould’s Bach/English suites are good for my thinking… stuff starts to make sens for the first time in months. 🙂 I may be off by a light-year, but it’s all speculation anyways until Paul establishes canon.
Ah. That’s something that had not occured to me. The supposition that Jin remembered what happened before each reset is due to her “illness.” Her being out of sync with time.
Right. As I understand it, the time machine tried to reset everything back to the initial conditions, it couldn’t reset her correctly / completely because she isn’t fully in synch with the time that it controlled.
So does anyone else remember when Shelly told Bud what she wanted? http://wapsisquare.com/comic/more-like-you/ I bet after 80,000 years in the time forest she has developed at leas a little bit of that.
I prefer A1. Still, misunderstandings aside, I think it was still what Shelly had intended to happen anyway, so it wasn’t limbo due to miscommunication. Different route, same destination.
Does anybody else notice that Shelly’s “blanket” is now about the size of a short skirt? Is the forest still eating her clothes? Maybe an ongoing Shelly Nudity Initiative? (which I fully support!)
OK. You are probably talking about what starts here. I was thinking that was just temporary, particularly because of Monica’s reaction, but in looking at that series again, Tepoz may have meant for it to be permanent. I don’t remember if we saw him after that, except for the scene in the club’s bathroom. To me, that didn’t really count because he had been taking a bath and was wearing a shower cap. 😕
To me it sounds like Nudge is taking credit for Shelly going to the forest realm, which was a wilderness. She is talking about “helping you help yourself” and she literally did that there. Also that’s where she “got the battery”. I don’t know of any connection between the vision quest and either of those things. Perhaps if you count CG, that might amount to Shelly helping herself, but that’s strange.
Nudge led Shelly astray on her vision quest, under orders from Shelly-in-the-Wood-Between-the-Worlds. (“Little Comanche, I was told to.”)
(That’s where the bootstraps come in, since Shelly-in-the-Wood-Between-the-Worlds knew what had happened to her, and that she needed to arrange for it to happen, because if it didn’t happen, things would not work out with the Calendar Machine, not to mention that Shelly-in-the-Wood-Between-the-Worlds would have died when she first got there.)
This resulted in Shelly not being where she was supposed to be, resulting in Jin (as Tochtli) – who was a bit late, anyway, due to the tsimmis down in the DF – not finding her until after she was, at least technically, dead.
Another thing about that particular strip. Tina indicates Phix is an ancient being, like Nudge. This would mean Phix is not a human-sphinx hybrid like Shelly, as has been speculated. Still she (or someone) said they all are born as humans, which makes for yet another paradox. Unless, of course, the human race is much, much older than we suppose from it’s time on earth.
Be careful. The word ancient can be vague. Shelly talks about ancient humans here, but also makes it sound as if there were sphinxes to mate with humans in the first place. On May 17, Shelly sounded as if she were talking about all sphinxes being born as humans. Maybe the recessive gene was a human mutation in the first place, so maybe humans are more ancient than sphinxes.
Yes, it becomes a chicken and egg thing. We know from cannon the same demons have been around for uncounted ages before our universe even existed. Does that mean there were also sphinxes around in those other planes of existence (and/or other universes) before our current one? Or are the sphinxes a newer species, existing only since our universe came into being? The historical record (Paul’s imagination) is unclear on this point.
Yes, it’s loony aliens and spaceship-conspiracy territory, but WS is fiction anyways, so, why not. Paul has quite often used the lore of “alternative history” as a story-telling tool. Annunaki and their dabbling in human-hybrids wouldn’t be to much of a stretch.
Nudge isn’t a demon. She’s a demi-god trickster like Loki or Coyote from Native American lore. Nudge can’t teleport on her own, nor was she adept at shape shifting until very recently.
I thought that was why Phix made her crap her non-existent pants, because Sphinxes were demon-hunters. And since she was able to cohabitate with Tina’s crew all those years, doesn’t that imply she’s a spiritual entity that can move around without a physical body?
Not necessarily. The demon realm is a physical place, which can be inhabited by physical beings and physical things. For example, Maya spent tens of thousands of years there and Bud went in to get her out. Also, they sent the CM there. So it’s quite possible for a being like Nudge to reside there and cohabitate with the demons.
Also recall that Nudge was ‘stuck’ inside of Tina for the last two or three decades (ever since the Monica & Tina 1.0’s accident) and wasn’t able to freely leave in any capacity (her last act, during Shelly’s vision quest, occurred before the accident).
I think that’s 2-fold… a) Nudge was hiding out from Phix because she knew that she was supposed to be the librarian and was hiding out in Tina, she thought that Phix found her. so she panicked… and B) Tina was freaked out because she instinctively knew that Phix was an Demon-Hunter Sphinx and that because the conglomeration was piloting the body of Tina without the actual person inside, she thought they were caught and was gonna get punished, so they panicked… AAAND we find out that the third option was chosen… Phix did nothing (relatively speaking of course compared to what she could have done)
What if she says that she’s a supernatural trickster? 😉
I think that one of the reasons that I didn’t like the argument between Nudge and Phix in the library was that it didn’t make sense to trust either character. Phix was contradicting things that she had said in the past, so obviously she wasn’t trustworthy anymore and Nudge was a trickster! It came across as if anything anyone was saying was just a bunch of garbage. 🙄
Nudge is a strange character all by herself. She seems very eager to please, which is inconsistent with being a trickster. If you assume something that fundamental may be a trick, then what can you trust? 😕
One interesting thing to note about supernatural tricksters is that they often have strict, but unconventional codes of honor. This has less to do with ethics, and more to do with maintaining the challenge, but they will always obey their own rules. For example, many tricksters refuse to lie. Anything they say will be literal truth. Of course, the key word here is literal. That kind of trickster is a master of exact words deception.
Gawd, Nudge is too cute all happy-puppy waggin her tail, and the way she’s clinging onto shelly’s leg as though begging for her acknowledgement/approval.. i just wanna give her a cookie.
and “well actually… . . . BUT THAT’s GOOD- it all worked out.” lmao.
Shelly I for one am glad that Nudge’s interpretation of “code” didn’t cost you an extra couple thousand years in the forest of backwards time trees.. <3
paul you continue to amuse and amaze me with your work.
but I’ll bet that’s exactly what happened: Shelly number 1 (or 2 or anybody but 57) said she wanted to “stay lost” which was mis-interpreted/mis-heard as “steak sauce”… and if it wasn’t supposed to be shelly 1, because she was the one telling Nudge, then the “code word “steak sauce” must have meant Heinz 57, (because A-1 was in the past already, and no other steak sauces have numbers that i know of!) therefore, Nudge being outside of the CM cycles waited until the 57th Shelly to implement the plan… and Shellinx waited a WHOLE LOTTA’ Years for nothing… this point could have been done on CM cycle 3 for all we know!
Tepoz!!
And Paul frikken does it to us again! I don’t think anyone guessed Tepoz was the chauffeur.
Well, I think that’s because we all thought Tepoz was lost to the comic archives again (little guy has a habit of disappearing for months/years at a time). Glad to see him back, though it’s a shame he’s still going wig-less.
Yes, he always has looked better to me with the headdress.
If he’s ditching the wig, why not the bulky necklace as well. That must be a pain to wear. For that matter, isn’t it time to dress for the times. All the other golems have, even their creator. Maybe Tepoz could tell people he had his entire body tattooed blue. There’s not that much body to tattoo, after all.
…and then he could just wear white pants and a white HAT! People would think he’s some kind of little person cashing in on the upcoming ‘smurfs’ movie!
@The Origami Guy I would be surprised if we didn’t get a Smurf reference. Tepoz is great for comedy relief.
no necklace?? na, cannot do without da bling… 🙂
I definitely thought we were never going to see him again. So glad he’s back!
/me nods.
Yeah, unlike other forgotten characters like Jacqui, Darin, Owen, and Lakshmi, we lack any ‘equivalent’ to Tepoz. Also, unlike those 4, who were all generally FOILs to develop either Monica or Shelly, Tepoz actually has had a large chunk of Wapsi time dedicated to developing himself as a character, and it’d be a shame to see him dropped.
That, and he’s by far the most interesting ‘male’ this comic has by far, not to mention the most entertaining.
Hooray! Tepoz returns! And yes, I liked the wig, too.
…looked better on the dog…
<3 tepoz <3
I think this is the result of a few comments that users and/or Paul made regarding Tepoz being absent so long and soccer-mom’s.
He’d just better be careful not to “drive” while under the influence. . . .
Tepoz! *everyone takes a shot*
TEPOZ!!
Wow, Paul sure is being nice lately. XD
TEPOZ! *squee* *hugs*
I was wondering if we’d ever see him again! And LOL, soccer mom…I wonder how long that’s really been going on? Nice to see him again…thanks, Paul! <3
YAY! The favorite blue god is back! 😁
ha shelly did plan it
and hey look tepoz is back
I don’t think she planned it. I think Nudge took something she said and ran with it. No down the little guy helped her along. Maybe this was all a big assumption on nudges part helped along by someone else. Let’s see how it plays out.
Shelly says that she told Nudge to make sure that she stayed lost in the wilderness. That’s pretty specific, i think.
It’s nice though that Nudge completely misunderstood her, but still managed to do the right thing. “Steak Sauce” = 57th–LOL!
lol nudge is wagging her tail
and i wonder how long nudge and tepoz have know each other
+1 Fairportfan. Shelly sent Nudge herself…
Well that answers the “poit” question.
And apparently Shelly was working with Nudge all along.
“soccor”?
Err…soccor? Not soccer? Glad to see Tepoz again.
I’m sure Paul will fix it.
he is normally quite quick
maybe its deliberate.
Fixed.
Not quite. Tepoz says it, too.
So now that they have the battery, what’s it for?
hint. It’s a battery that never runs down. The rest I’ll leave up to everyone imagination.
Well this comic tells you what it is for…..
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/plug-you-in/
Interesting point. Now where will they plug it in? To those who think that way, SHAME ON YOU!
We did that joke last week.
The calendar machine was more than a power source. There has to be more to it than just “plugging her back in”…
I’d think there is some bigger contraption hidden in Ireland ,or some other legend-fille place, that’s to be found. I cannot believe the “jam it in the head” will be used twice.
So, there will be some more “questing” for the missing pieces of the giant, destructive (after all it’s Lantian, and they have, as already mentioned by some, a penchant for dangerous, uncontrollable technology) meccano-kit.
Buut..on to the rest of this week’s “explain-aton” Wonder what the next hat from the rabbit will be.
golems from the chimera have a hatched storage compartment as all three where identical when first separated and the “identity” was all that was refined/changed to differentiate the three.
Tepoz is one lucky fellow … to be surrounded by such a great variety of women in one room … 🙂
Unless of course they all decide they want to pinch his little butt.
Assuming one, or more, doesn’t beat the snot out of him like they usually do.
This. Tepoz usually serves as the punching bag for Monica, Shelly, and the GGG (sometimes deservingly, sometimes not).
Random thought: We’ve yet to have a meeting between Tepoz and the newly-returned May. Considering their past, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet.
They may not have parted on the best of terms.
Let alone the facts that Tepoz was
a: The fall guy ,and got the full brunt of M’s and Jin’s discontent
b:was kept partially in the dark himself too. Something that peed him off too.
He was, basically, the adoptive “Father” of the Golem-Girls, and only Brandi gave him some credit for it.
Adoptive father, as well as older brother (technically, since May made all 4 golems, and Tepoz predated the GGG), Jin’s crush (per Bud & Jin), & Monica’s counsel (she does tend to open herself to Tepoz over sensitive issues moreso than Shelly, Tina, Amanda, or the GGG). All of this generally against his will too (poor boy gets volunteered and forced to do most everything).
Maya “oh .. you”
Tepoz “…MOMMY!!!!”
I know it’s just girls there, but is anyone ever going to get Shelly some clothes?
It’s been topless month at Wapsi. Just enjoy.
SoWhyMe: huh, no enjoyment here, on the ‘clean’ side of the screen!!!
others:
Tepoz says, hellloooo.. 🙂
shelly says, oh, um hello! 😮 red faced puts on shirt…. 😀
Probably not. I’m sure somehow rather than clothe Shelly now that a male (Tepoz) is present, they’ll just blame Tepoz for something until he leaves the room. Poor little guy.
Well, NOw that a guy has shown up I think soMeone will remember Shelly’s clothing “issue”, if Not “old” Shelly herself.
BUt It will be funnier if they don’t remember that until after they berate for being gone so long.
PBH
or for showing up at all “Oh god He’s Back”
What i’d like to see was just some casual “Guys, I’m getting cold, and this blanket isn’t the most stylish” with a little shiver from Shelly, and M, or even Tina(!) going “ooh Im sorry ,here You go, handing her a sweater.
Without all the innuendo.
Even better? Bud used the confusion to poit to Shelly’s home and gathered some clothes for her. After all, Bud has been tere several times before.
They’ve been a bit preoccupied…and if you think about it, not a whole lot of time has gone by in Wapsi-world with Shelly naked…it’s just been long for us because of how much fits into one update. 🙂
I wonder if it was Shelly 57 or another number that said that. And how Nudge gets the misheard ‘stake-sauce’ to mean what it does… nevermind, I have no idea how Nudge’s brain works.
Clothes. Get Shelly some clothes, even if she does look good in blanket Greek wear.
“stake-sauce” – perhaps Paul meant “steak sauce”?
Heinz Steak Sauce.
57.
Oh, good pickup! 57, it is.
OOOOOH SHOOOOOT!!!! “57 pick-up” !!! BRANDI and her cards, first page of her diary!! 😯 😯 That is no coincidence.
Orr..am I seeing clues where there are none ❓ ❓
Sorry, with cards, it’s 52-Pickup.
But thanks for playing!
Oh..ohkay.. 🙁 I thought I remembered something..well..
Zo gewonnen, zo geronnen.
um, only 57 pickup is a Chevy.. :p
Oh right! not being a local, I had no idea what that meant.
52 Card Pickup is a game that was developed in the US. The game requires a deck of standard playing cards. One player familiar with the rules and a new player to be initiated into the game. The first player throws all of the card into the air. And the second player must pick all of them up. Hence the name 52 Card Pickup.
It’s a practical joke that you can play on an unsuspecting individual. Just like Brandi #2 did with all of her future selves.
I liked “Supplies!” better than “52 Pickup!”
Or an older brother introduces a younger brother to the game. Grrrr.
[still grumbling 55 years later]
Ah. So that’s the significance of “52-pickup” in Brandi’s story-arc. I thought it was just some bit of crazieness on her part.
Funny to see that -although our societies look alike on the surface, we can freely communicate and, generally, understand eachother- cultural differences can mistify each and everyone of us agan&again.
It’s interesting, and sometimes we learn new words too 😛
Yes, it is interesting, but then, nerdism transcends cultural differences. We all have seen and experienced many of the same iconic things. Of course, the fact we all speak pretty good English here doesn’t hurt either. Especially in America where we are laothe to bother learning other languages. On the other hand, just about anywhere in the world, you are less than 20 feet from someone who speaks at least some English, so we rarely have to.
Well, in America’s case it’s pretty logical that one, maybe two (spanish!) languages will do. America has technically been one entity for more than 200 years.
Compare that to Europe. The EU is only about 53 years old. I can imagine that after 200+ years there will be 1 language (my guess is English, since it’s already the language of choice internationally) too. We learn a lot of foreign languages purely out of neccesity. Think of this” If I drive south just 400km’s, the language is French, and I’ve crossed 2 countries already). If an Oregonian(???) drives south 400km’s he’ll be (depending on where he started) still in the same state …
The real negative of speaking/reading only one language, is a “flattening” of culture. You’ll miss-out on a lot of enrichment that the rest of the world has to offer in literature, oral history etc. You’ll always have to wait for translations, and translations are notorious for inaccuracies.
In Europe we have the luxury of being taught different languages form the 3rd grade (!) The age at which kids learn new things the easiest.
I always feel it as a bit unfair when certain Europeans point to Americans as being “culturally challenged”. They are judging from a comfortable position of stuff everybody already learned as kids, all the while immersed to their eyeballs in western history, everywhere they look. Ancient western-culture starts at our doorsteps. Heck, I have a little church nearby that has been built in the 12th century!!
The only caveat I have with (some!!) Americans, is their unwillingness to embrace the willingness to accept another viewpoint as equivalent to theirs. American “exeptionalism” is the only thing that gets Europeans really riled-up. The disdain, even hatred (again “some”) Americans exude towards the social-democratic, concensus-minded way we tend to solve things overhere, is also a point of irritation.
It leads to mudslinging that goes both ways. Shame.. We are more alike than different. Both sides have a habit of forgetting that. Me included.
Luckily, part of my family lives in California and part in Michigan. and they are quick to chastize me for assumptions about America, as I am quick to chastize them if they go on an anti-Europe-rant.
Aaaand. That closes the class “international relations for beginners” Homework and exerpts are available on “BlackBoard” (our universities’ site)
😆 😛
@Jay Em: Yes, we do call ourselves Oregonians. Got it in one 🙂
Then there’s the old saying: A person who can converse in two languages is bilingual. A person who can converse in three languages is trilingual. A person who can only converse in one language is an American.
@Jay-Em: Yeah, all us ignorant Americans do is spend blood and money to protect the elite Europeans from the consequences of their own folly. Yep- that’s pretty dumb of us.
Oh, and invent the Internet and cures for Polio and stuff.
Gee Dave, lighten up. We’re just having a bit of intercontinental fun between each other.
It may be stake sauce in order to make it a bit more cryptic.
Oh great, now I’ll come across like a noob typing “stake” everywhere. Teach me not to jump in so quickly.
Oh wait … I come across as a noob much of the time anyway. Ah, no harm done then.
*pats*
if it helps i thought the ‘soccor’ was a hint of somesort and spent the first 10mins of my day trying to work out what it might mean.
soc. soccor. soccor mum. ancient aztec soccor.
yknow – that type of google search 😛
Paula: put it into google, it will usually correct it for you.. 🙂
oh i did and it did but i assumed soccor was correct spelling so ignored the soccer references ^^
Yeah, meant to write “steak”, all fixed now. 🙂
Thanks for saying so. I would’ve come back wondering if I made the typo. ^^
Awww… all that “stake sauce” made me think of the beginning of episode 9 of True Blood… 🙂 (DISCLAIMER: it’s kinda bloody…)
np: Robag Wruhme – Sputnikkschokk#2 (The Lost Archive – 1998-2007)
Why is Monica starting to look more like Jin?
The evils of cutting one’s long hair short. (>^_^)>
Doesn’t look like Jin to me. The blonde hair and Monica’s rack are a unique combination.
Red hair, actually.
we need coloring!! Jabberwonky is quick on that, any chance of a ‘deal’ ??? pretty please? 🙂
It’s 11pm now, but I can do something with it early tomorrow…
Gurk! Gurk! Gurk! Gurk!
If it’s Monica’s hair color, use the link to go to an album of Monica’s I’ve coloured.
http://imageshack.us/g/703/20110505cincodemayodeco.png/
I guess this is more for Paul but… has anybody ever said definitively what the skin/hair color combo’s are on the various characters, esp. the non-human forms of people like Phix, and Nudge, etc…
Well, pending on the holiday poster, it’s either Brown or Red. Though this could easily just be Monica dying her hair.
Real red or dyed red?
I know many a brunette that go red… o.O
But not many a ‘natural’ red… especially latina.
She’s half Irish. That explains where the red hair comes from.
You’re right. I tend to forget that when long intervals between colored versions of the graphic pages occur.
I defaulted to blonde because Jin is obviously not.
Well, I guess that explains where Tepoz has been. Props to Fairportfan for a correct theory. Those can be rather hard to come by here.
Occam’s Razor.
Plus, i have a nasty devious mind myself.
Does that mean the simplest explanation is a nasty, devious one? >)
No, it means that prefer simple explanations that are nasty and devious are to be preferred.
Well, i mangled that. Never mind.
I wonder if Phix is ever going to show up to check on Shelly?
gratz on peeps who guessed it was shelly who got nudge to lead her into the woods 🙂
and love monicas expression
it just says ‘well screw this. im just gonna go with the flow and catch up in the end’
which is what alot of people are doing here really ^^
^^That.
*raises cup from the confusion-corner* “may the confusification commence!”
Barrista, I’d like a Choc Moca Confusion with a side of what next, please.
Same here, but I’ll have mine with a WTF depth charge and some squishy plot points marshmellows.
😆 😆 😛
And some Plot Twist Pretzels would be good, too, please. 😀
Yayyyy!!!!! Little blue-guy’s back. Now the waiting is for Phix and Brandi, and the whole club can poit to a nice beach somewhere to have a BBQ and and a re-cap.
(If only to stop the spinning of the readers’ heads 😆 )
They have to find a new beach first. The old one’s probably still smoldering.
And potentially highly irradiated.
…
Maybe Bud was just trying to steal Monica’s beach for herself…
Why radioactive?
The plutonium core wasn’t in the artifact at that point, and the first nuclear submarine (much less nuclear-tipped torpedoes) weren’t out in the ocean until over ten years after the sub Bud blew up was launched.
Though watching Bud walk away from a whole sub full of kaboom (280 Kg of Hexanite times X, where X equals the number of torps still live enough to sympathetically detonate, equals enough boom to sink a carrier) gives an index of exactly how hard to damage the girls really are…
Well that is the weird point about this. The Plutonium was placed into the relic 80,000 years ago, not just a few minutes ago.
yes and no. While time was moving backwards in the TTF relative to our universe, it was still moving forward in it’s “space”. So really it was placed in the artifact 80,000 years in the future of the past, aka a few minutes ago.
Also to further my point, if time were moving backward, Shelly would have gotten younger, not older.
Hmm. So, let me try to get this straight.
When Shelly 57 (our Shelly) picked up the artifact, she went to the other side, became a sphinx, and experienced 80K years backwards. Every 1450 or so years, Shellys 56 thru 1 appeared, and various things happened that we don’t rightly know about. However, the plutonium was in the tree somewhere along the way (although if it grew larger backwards, then it was a small tree probably when Shelly 56 came, and maybe was the one to put the plutonium into the tree, and it grew around it. At the beginning of this story line, we see shelly 57 as sphinx meeting with shelly 1 80K years ago, and the plutonium is put back into the relic, shelly 1 dies, and shelly 57 takes the relic and uses it to get back to where she started, just a split second later. Is that right?
The plutonium seems to have come from a universe that was crushed/rewound into nonexistence, which probably helps with it being an unlimited power source, and one that could keep Jin operating within spec.
More interestingly, the Relic itself was built with a warning program against anyone who would try to open it. This was back in Lanthis, and it was done with the presumption that it would persist longer than any one civilization would remember it.
The banshee “guard dog” seems to be a version of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. An active attack from a monster is much more effective at keeping people from touching your radioactive waste than a hectare of Forbidding Blocks…
This is why I said ‘potentially’.
You could be right, and it’s perfectly safe. On the other hand, considering the submarine housed a magical relic that altered the traits of plutonium, and then the submarine exploded, I’d be a little hesitant to bring Monica, Shelly, Amanda, Katherine, Tina, or anyone else squishy to the island before a golem checked it, considering the relic’s already killed at least 1 Shelly via simple exposure.
Bud… already brought the Relic back, and swung it around amongst the Monica Squad.
I don’t think any of them were wearing radiation suits at the time.
I think the important point about the Relic is to Not Open It.
I thought the important point about the relic is stuck in a rock somewhere. 😛
So, if Shelly had to send cryptic messages to Nudge to get things to happen, who was she afraid of seeing the messages?
I wonder if it was cryptic, or just a case of Nudge mishearing what Shelly said. ‘Stays lost.’ ‘Steak sauce.’ And the 57 just made it worse.
Sauce + 57 = Heinz.
The codebreakers who cracked the German code machine in the 1940s ?
Seems several readers’ comments yesterday are still proving true. That’s a very ‘tame’ reaction for Shelly to have (especially without even a curse or eye-roll). I guess she really did mature, and it only took her 80,000 years to do so.
*sniff* They grow up so quickly.
Aaaaaand.Nudge is wagging her tail… dawwww.. 😛
Nice to see the doggie-wag from Nudge. The last time they were in a room together Shelly was ready to “ruff” her up.
What’s also nice to see is that Nudge does this “physical contact”-thing that girls of a friends group tend to do when getting together. (holding on to Shelly’s leg)
It means to me that Nudge and Shelly became very good friends during Shelly’s banishment.
Funny thing about Nudge is, that she’s both naive and very smart. It was complete naivite to go to Tina’s as a human to try and “atone” for her pranks on the collective (fishies, singing “on top of spaghetti”…) and forgetting that Phix scared Tina almost into madness.
Yet ,she was smart enough to figure-out that Shelly needed to “die” in the forest, even though the message was somewhat garbled. She was smart enough to flummox Phix in the past to escape the library-duties..etc.
She’s a bit like a dog, a super smart, Mensa-type dog, yet very upfront emotionally, and apparently very loyal too.
She may be a prankster, but she’s completely without hatred or menace, and carrying a grudge is wholly alien to her.
Well, leave it to Paul to build us another intrigueing ,lovable, character.
TEPOZ!!!! Let the celebratory booze flow!!!
And the “coq au vin”, calf-tongue in madeira-sauce. Beer and mustard cooked Flemish steak..
cake with rum/raisin filling..Hmmm… I think the clown car has deserved a little party.
And beer brats. You can’t have an Up Nort’ party without the beer brats. 😀
OK. This comic explains a few things. Nudge was independent of the CM cycles. She know that Shelly was going to get stuck in the Sacred Forest for 80 millennia. Shellinx used code words to tell Nudge what to do. Why? Because Nudge was still still on the lamb from the Bibliotheki and Phix. Shelly was able to use her future knowledge.
Nudge may also have been the trans-temporal messaging service. Shellinx able to affects events in the past because she was travelling backwards in time in the Sacred Forest.
Hrm. That begs the question. How is Phix going react once she finds out that Shellinx knew where Nudge was all along during all of the CM resets? Nudge was right under Phix’s nose.
I’m more of the line of thought that Tepoz was the messenger service. The little guy can poit whereas Nudge can’t.
from how i read it.
This was all planned ‘during’ Shellinx 80k year stay in the forest.
which is quite a mind bender if you think on it too much.
planned and done should i say
hmm
wonder if Shally got lost in a ‘normal’ forest.
I’ve never understood how Jin got there too late but perhaps..lil shelly was lead into the time forest and vanished of Jin’s radar. She then was released from the time forest when she ‘died’ allowing Jin to ‘save’ her.
Which would explain why Shellinx couldn’t leave. She couldn’t die in the time forest and maybe the flux capacitor – err – artifact was only a oneway trip unless it gets powered by something.
shallyshelly.
Jin was keeping an eye on both Monica and Shelly due to their important in fixing the CM. Jin was late in attending to Shelly lost in the forest because the accident with Monica, Tina 1.0 and the bus was happening at the same time. By the time that Jin has dealt with Monica, Shelly has been in hypoxia longer enough to pass the “death” threshold to create Conscience from her demons and become a doorway.
Bingo.
i always assumed she got to shelly first and not monica.
No, i think Jin has said tha the Monica/Tina situation delayed her and she didn’t get to Shelly until too late.
She thought.
I’m with monica on this one…we’ll be playing catch-up for a long time…can’t wait!
Ooooohhh! I seeee. Shelly never said Stake sauce. She said Stay’s lost and Nudge thought she said Stake Sauce. There was no coded message. Duh!
steak sauce
stays lost
how did she manage it???
maybe shelly has a strong accent?
Yeah, responded to your other comment with the same idea before I saw this one. Duh me. I think I got confused by the initial ‘stake’ typo, so I didn’t get the 57 reference until Paul fixed it.
I just realized the “I” “me” was part of the misunderstanding too. Nudge took those words together as being “Shelly.”
I, “me,” stays lost=Shelly steak-sauce.
DOH!!!! I totally missed that. No that first panel makes total sense. So much for my code words theory from last night. So the question now is how did Shellinx tell Nudge to make her younger stays lost. Nudge didn’t jump into Tina until after the bus accident. So where was Nudge hiding out before Tina 2.0? And was it Shellinx that told Nudge to hide out in Tina after the vision quest?
I ‘Tepoz’ he had to show up sooner or later and Shelly is very calm and mature, still I wouldn’t mind if I looked THAT Good at 80 K years old.
ah you be over 900 and you’re pretty fit 😉
Not to nitpick, but what is happening with Nudge’s left horn in Panel 3? I’m assuming its an oversight, but neither the top nor underside of the horn has the typical ‘striped line’ pattern of shading, both are pure white (a trait usually typical only with Nudge’s horn’s underside).
Granted, Nudge does represent trickery & chaos, so mandating that her horns obey any natural law is already a loosing battle…
And, it’s fixed now. Nice Daren avatar by the way. I wonder when we’ll see him again.
Thanks. Had this avatar forever ago, when wapsi first switched from forum to Comments, but since I’ve been MIA for over a year, had to reset it.
– – – – –
And I don’t think we’ll be seeing Darin again any time soon. His bar has been replaced by Monica’s beach and the Cerebus Club, and his role as the group’s counsel has been replaced by Tina. Darin’s most likely a dropped character at this point, alongside the likes of Owen & Jacqui.
The only way I can see Darin getting a return cameo is either A) Monica being forced there now that her sand bar is on fire, B) Amanda still frequents Darin’s bar, so we get an Amanda-Darin conversation, or C) Darin’s one of the few people Katherine’s liked, so in one of her attempts to be outgoing she seeks out Darin’s bar again.
Though I doubt any of the 3 will happen. RIP Darin.
He could do a small cameo when the Clown-Car is going to hunt for the rest of the “Jin-Fixit-all-gobbamathingy”
Someone has to watch Dietzel. And Dietzel felt quite at home in the bar. Easy-Peasy…
I don’t know about relying on Nudge. She almost killed Shelly by keeping her lost. Was that supposed to have happened? What would have happened if she kept her lost a while longer and Shelly died? The plan would have failed and no more cycles to try again. Looks like sheer luck played a large part in all this.
Thus far, there is no mention of creating CG as being a part of the plan either. Was her creation just an unexpected side effect?
I don’t have the comic handy, but i’m sure that Connie (back when she was Creepy Girl to us) told Shelly that she, indeed, did die.
Does anyone else remember that and has a link to that strip?
Not to be picky, but she is Creepy Girl as Tina picked up the naming rights. At the very least, she always will be Creepy Girl or CG to me until one of the cast call her something else.
Never mind – i went back through my files and i found it.
Here’s where CG tells Shelly that she actually died on her vision quest:
That is, Shelly didn’t know that she died.
And when do you think that all happened? Is this how a Shelly ended up guarding the tree, fifty-seven cycles ago?
No – it happened the same day that Monica and Tina 1.0 also died, when Monica (this Monica) was fourteen.
Had to be part of the plan – since Shelly already knew that it had happened and that she had to make sure that it did happen when it had.
As far as we’ve been told, Brandi took care of that, so Shelly didn’t need to do anything. I think that Jin sensed that Shelly was dieing and found her. There wasn’t any way for Nudge to prevent that.
Brandi had nothing to do with Shelly’s death on her vision quest – that was Shelly bootstrapping herself, working from the Wood Between the Worlds.
If so, that’s a significant retcon. We were told that “Brandi’s dabbling” was responsible for that. I’ve provided the link before.
Perhaps what you are saying is true. I certainly hope not, though! It would cause a lot of damage to the story, IMO. Bud and particularly Brandi would come across as less competent and fixing the calendar machine was much more matter of chance and less a matter of the character’s abilities than we were led to believe.
I really dislike retcons, particularly in a story like this. If the story is over, why retcon it? Why should we pay much attention to what is happening now, if we will get a different understanding in the future? That’s still true even if it’s just a matter of a character being wrong or lying.
Please provide the “Brandi’s dabbbling” link again – i suspect that “Brandi’s dabbling” refers to Monica/Tina in the DF that delayed Jin, rather than Shelly’s vision quest.
Two separate meddlers working (semi) independently – Brandi didn’t know about what Shelly was up to, sending Nudge to arrange Connie’s creation, but Shelly knew what Brandi was doing, and that by a little push she could make things work out “right” – i.e., the way that (from her standpoint) they already had.
Jin’s Doubt telling Monica about Brandi’s dabbling in making Monica and Shelly portholes.
And Brandi’s working with demons.
I hope I coded this right
@eschmenk – After looking at the links referring to Brandi’s dabbling, I’m inclined to think Fariportfan has a point about two dabblers being likely.
@Fairportfan – Cheers to you on thinking about it that way! I was getting stuck on the whole Brandi thing, too.
Besides, hasn’t Paul already told us that things said by characters in this comic may not be 100% truth (could be skewed based on POV, or could be a lie intentional or otherwise)? It’s very hard to remember that sometimes. 🙂
That’s the “Unreliable Narrator” effect.
If you’ve seen The Usual Suspects, consider Verbal.
And why would we believe anything Jin’s Doubt told Monica, considering that she was trying to manpulate Monica?
There’s an Unreliable Narrator if ever i saw one.
Hmm. I guess it is vague enough that could be right.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/portholesanddoorwa/
While I’m at it, I’ll throw these in too:
/comic/underjinsnose/
/comic/imstillinhere/ through /comic/corporatescrewup/
/comic/visionquestatthirt/ through /comic/whatssospecial/
/comic/wellletyoutwoalone/ through /comic/areyoulost-2/
/comic/all-hell-broke-loose/ and /comic/viscerally-scares-me/
Looking through all that, it’s all so vague that it doesn’t necessarily contradict your theory, but OTOH it sure doesn’t feel consistent either. There are no mentions of any coyote despite numerous mentions of Tochtli and a rabbit in those pages and elsewhere. There is no mention of CG, but there are mentions of the dolls and the key.
Jin said that Shelly didn’t like what she found on the vision quest. Based on the way Jin said it, it sounded like that is what caused Shelly’s problems rather than being lost for too long. More specifically, it sounds like the problem was what Shelly’s real anima, which was also a rabbit, showed her. I’m not seeing anything so far that says that Nudge turned herself into a rabbit or that Nudge showed Shelly something that cause her problems. If Shelly thought that her anima was a rabbit only because that’s what Jin appeared as, it wouldn’t be coincidental, but Jin said that it was.
I think I’ve gotten too interested in the story. I need to remind myself that there isn’t that much point in trying to figure things out if we will keep finding out stuff later on.
Yeesh! I was still trying to reply to Fairportan’s 2:31 pm comment. I didn’t see any of the ones since then.
Julie:
Yes, he said something like that. I don’t have problems remembering it. I also remember that you keep trying to reminding me of it. 😛
My tendency is to try to figure out things based on the information we have available. If there doesn’t seem to be a reason to not trust something, I’ll trust it. If it turns out to be wrong later, I find it annoying. A little bit of it is OK. These, however are things that go back many years.
What are the chances that we will find out that the stuff about Nudge and Shelly won’t mean what it seems to mean now? How long will we have to wait to find out?
Fairportfan:
She wasn’t trying to manipulate Monica. She was a gloating villain who thought that victory was already assured. A villain can’t properly gloat if they are lying. Secondly, the only alternative was to simply ignore the conversation, in which case there was no point in reading it in the first place. There wasn’t any thing else that you make out of it, except that it was exposition.
eschmenk said:
Never said she did either.
What she did do is appear as Coyote and lead Shelly astray to make it harder for Jin to find her.
@eschmenk – Well you can cut the number of times I’ve reminded you about that Unreliable Narrator business in half since I do have trouble remembering that when I start getting confused…therefore half the times I’ve said anything, I was probably trying to remind me more than you. 😛
Remember eschmenk Paul said characters can be mistaken or lie. So, no recon.
Retcon just means retroactive continuity. If you find out later that they were mistaken or lying, it’s still retroactive. Retcons don’t even have to contradict anything to still be retcons and not all retcons are bad.
The other thing is that there is a big difference between having characters who are just learning being wrong or having untrustworthy characters lying as compared to having characters who should know better being wrong or having apparently trustworthy characters lying when there apparently was no reason to do so. Context is important.
Besides, gotta cut Paul some slack here. He’s presenting his work as he goes. That’s tough, especially on long arcs. He doesn’t have the luxury of re-writes to make everything come out just so. He’s stuck with the past work and has to try to get new ideas to fit. Just call it “magic” and let it slide.
@eschmenk – Ooo…didn’t realize that. 😀 Adding a new little tidbit to my knowledge bank!
We know that Brandi conspired with Demons to make sure Tina and Monica were links via the accident. That was to ensure the key knife made it’s way into Brandi’s hands without Jin’s demons knowing it. Demons were certainly outside of the CM cycles. So perhaps it was demons who relayed the message? The message being delivered via a third part may explain why she got it wrong.
I had assumed that Brandi talked to the demons during the previous loop, perhaps through the calendar machine when she was left behind. Bud mentioned Brandi being left alone with the machine as if it were important somehow.
I’m not sure what you meant by this, though: “The message being delivered via a third part may explain why she got it wrong.” Is “she” Nudge and are you talking about the steak sauce thing? I get the impression that Nudge and Shelly bonded, so Shelly probably talked directly to Nudge in that case, but I’m not sure about anything anymore.
A message passed on my intermediate parties tends to change at every iteration. In high school, I participated on a type of extended education program. I forgot what it was about. But one of the demonstration was about communication. 12 students were selected to participate. 11 were led to a secluded area. The first person got a message whisperd to them. The 2 second student was brough to the stage. The first student whispered the message to the 2nd. The 2nd recited the message aloud. The 3rd student brought to the stage and the process repeated until me the last person. The message I recited aloud were vitually nothing like the original message. The lesson be is that messages will get rewords or misinterpreted from one person to another. The more intermediaries means the message will deviate more and more.
The above is what I was talking about. I’m assuming Shellinix didn’t tell Nudge directly what do. Shellinx did that though intermediates who are apart from the timeline of the universe aka Demons. Jin’s Doubt said that Brandi’s meddling lead to Monica and Shelly being turned into doorways. Assuming Doubt didn’t lie, that would mean that Brandi has a hand in Shelly’s getting lost. We know that Shellinx told Nudge to make sure Shelly stayed lost. Assuming Shellinux figured out Nudge needed to do the dirty deed. Shellinx, being trapped in the Sacred Forest, got the message to Nudge somehow. That somehow had to have been Brandi. And the method is Brandi’s deals with the Demons who are independent from time.
Wow..by the by, Shelly has used the 81000 years well, and became a manipulator of Brandi’s caliber.
Shelly is the typical example of a very intelligent person, but utterly impatient. Many very intelligent people have that “short-fuse” for boredom. It takes a very special person to be able to surpass a basic character trait, to become all that they are capable of.
Shelly’s involuntary “retraite” in the forest has matured her beyond imagination.
I guess M’s photographer-friend, Amanda, will be quite shocked, to say the least, because she”especially</i. didnýt like Shelly for her "immaturity".
Luckily we still have "Brat-demon" Shell for the insulting one-liners :lol;
sHOOT!!! I broke the interwebs again..
*pats jay-em*
*snif* thnx…
/ comfort
There, there. You didn’t break it that badly. See? It’s all better now….or, you know, I could demonstrate breakage of interwebs…
cracks knuckles at interwebs & grins evilly 😀
“Wow..by the by, Shelly has used the 81000 years well, and became a manipulator of Brandi’s caliber.”
If Fairportfan is right, Brandi didn’t have to be a manipulator at all. If Shelly had to ensure that what happened actually happened, then why would we need any other manipulator? If Shelly told Nudge what to do during the future vision quest, why not assume that Shelly told Nudge to tell Brandi what to write in her book? Or maybe Shelly had Nudge forge the book. Why not assume that Shelly told Nudge to make sure that Tina got out of the morgue and brought the key with her? Why not assume that Shelly told Nudge to arrange the accident/suicide involving Monica and Tina?
If Shelly made sure her past actually happened, I don’t see why she would have just limited herself to the vision quest. It would have been just as important that she ensured that her mother died, because CG’s personality is a reflection of that. So do we assume that Shelly ensured that she couldn’t call an ambulance? Did Shelly ensure that her parents met each other?
The whole idea seems like a very slippery slope, IMO.
I’m not jumping on you. Mostly, I’m thinking out loud. Your comment just seemed to provide a nice place to do that. 😀
BTW, I hope you weren’t just talking about the tact that Shelly used today. That would be embarrassing!
All quite possible – we have only the word of the characters that Brandi, in fact, did any of that, and, outside of Brandi herself, they’re all either Unreliable Narrators (Jin, for sure) or simply making assumptions.
For instance, the only “witnesses” who could say for sure that Brandi manipulated the Mexico City situation … don’t remember. (The Co-Operative)
Perhaps Shelly has been the master manipulator all along. Nothing that we have Word of God on that i can remember offhand actually contradicts the possibility.
Wheels within wheels.
I agree. sphinx Shelly has been around for all the 80K years on a continuous basis, just like Phix. Phix, however was more of an observer. Who is to say Shelly is not the great manipulator of much of what occured. She would be the only Shelly to know what ultimately happened to get rid of the CM. That’s more than Jin knew even. Bootstrapping indeed.
No, no, not just the way Shelly presented herself today. She seems to have reached that vaulted “restraint” that she admired so much in Bud.
To do some out-loud thinking for myself (wrong as I may be..) : Shelly has always exibited a very astute mind. It was her unrelenting volatility that constantly got in the way.
There is no need to assume there is only 1 genius-manipulator in a game this complex.
The thinkers of the crew have used the 50-something cycles to their best. They left each-other, and themselves clues.
I am thinking we are seeing the result of a very very grand-scale game, set-up by Jin, Brandy, Shelly ,and to some extent Mayahuel, in deep-co-operation.
Maybe Maya got on good footing with some demons in the Demon-Realm, and used them as messengers, i.e. made them available as messengers to Shellinx, Nudge and some others to help the earth-bound manipulators, and chime in on the bigger picture.
Not to say that Maya was the overseer. Feed-back from Shellinx, Brandi etc. could have been helpful to Maya as well. Say, in convincing her of the importance of teaching M the magic language.
The more I ponder it, the more it seems like a grand-co-operation with no sole leader, or manipulator. All cogs in a hugely complex machinery. It learned by doing ,and failing. The only ones able to message what went wrong, were those outside of time (Maya!) or those that kept diary’s (Brandi&Jin) Jin being something of a wild-card. I have yet to see a clear explanation why Jin <i<knew of- and lived through- all resets ( think about this for a moment: the re-sets. If she’s outside of time due to her madness, and thusly capable of remembering the mistakes, it’s no more than logic that “healing” Jin would have been disastrous in the former cycles.)
Hmm.. Glenn Gould’s Bach/English suites are good for my thinking… stuff starts to make sens for the first time in months. 🙂 I may be off by a light-year, but it’s all speculation anyways until Paul establishes canon.
Ah. That’s something that had not occured to me. The supposition that Jin remembered what happened before each reset is due to her “illness.” Her being out of sync with time.
Right. As I understand it, the time machine tried to reset everything back to the initial conditions, it couldn’t reset her correctly / completely because she isn’t fully in synch with the time that it controlled.
So does anyone else remember when Shelly told Bud what she wanted? http://wapsisquare.com/comic/more-like-you/ I bet after 80,000 years in the time forest she has developed at leas a little bit of that.
Brandi (it it really was Brandi) = Bugs Bunny
Shelly = Daffy Duck
Daffy is just as smart as Bugs and can see equally well exactly how to manipulate things to his advantage.
But he rushes it.
I LOVE the little tail wag! It’s like my puppy when it brings a new toy to me to play with.
Hasn’t anyone here heard of A-1 steak sauce? Did Shelly just spend more than eighty thousand years in limbo because Nudge misunderstood her?
Heinz 57!
I prefer A1. Still, misunderstandings aside, I think it was still what Shelly had intended to happen anyway, so it wasn’t limbo due to miscommunication. Different route, same destination.
Actually, i prefer Kroger’s imitation of A1…
Hey, Nudge’s training in food service has saved the universe! Or at least it failed to destroy the universe.
i havent heard of either of them
57 to me means heinz baked beans..
Ohhhhh, THAT’S where he went off to.
Does anybody else notice that Shelly’s “blanket” is now about the size of a short skirt? Is the forest still eating her clothes? Maybe an ongoing Shelly Nudity Initiative? (which I fully support!)
Nudge just licked most that silly unnecessary blanket away.
Tepoz isn’t wearing his hat anymore?
Topez shucked the head wear years ago.
(Too lazy ATM to search the archives. Reminds self to get off his arse and order dead-tree versions.)
OK. You are probably talking about what starts here. I was thinking that was just temporary, particularly because of Monica’s reaction, but in looking at that series again, Tepoz may have meant for it to be permanent. I don’t remember if we saw him after that, except for the scene in the club’s bathroom. To me, that didn’t really count because he had been taking a bath and was wearing a shower cap. 😕
Yes, You should do that. Stuff makes more sense if it’s nicely bound and easy to flick through.
Paul could always let Dietzel walk in with Tepoz hat in his mouth…as a hint to Tepoz? Dietzel seemed to like it.
To me it sounds like Nudge is taking credit for Shelly going to the forest realm, which was a wilderness. She is talking about “helping you help yourself” and she literally did that there. Also that’s where she “got the battery”. I don’t know of any connection between the vision quest and either of those things. Perhaps if you count CG, that might amount to Shelly helping herself, but that’s strange.
Nudge led Shelly astray on her vision quest, under orders from Shelly-in-the-Wood-Between-the-Worlds. (“Little Comanche, I was told to.”)
(That’s where the bootstraps come in, since Shelly-in-the-Wood-Between-the-Worlds knew what had happened to her, and that she needed to arrange for it to happen, because if it didn’t happen, things would not work out with the Calendar Machine, not to mention that Shelly-in-the-Wood-Between-the-Worlds would have died when she first got there.)
This resulted in Shelly not being where she was supposed to be, resulting in Jin (as Tochtli) – who was a bit late, anyway, due to the tsimmis down in the DF – not finding her until after she was, at least technically, dead.
From this came Connie.
Here
At that point, Shelly has no idea of the Wood Between the Worlds – she’s referring to her vision quest.
Another thing about that particular strip. Tina indicates Phix is an ancient being, like Nudge. This would mean Phix is not a human-sphinx hybrid like Shelly, as has been speculated. Still she (or someone) said they all are born as humans, which makes for yet another paradox. Unless, of course, the human race is much, much older than we suppose from it’s time on earth.
Be careful. The word ancient can be vague. Shelly talks about ancient humans here, but also makes it sound as if there were sphinxes to mate with humans in the first place. On May 17, Shelly sounded as if she were talking about all sphinxes being born as humans. Maybe the recessive gene was a human mutation in the first place, so maybe humans are more ancient than sphinxes.
Yes, it becomes a chicken and egg thing. We know from cannon the same demons have been around for uncounted ages before our universe even existed. Does that mean there were also sphinxes around in those other planes of existence (and/or other universes) before our current one? Or are the sphinxes a newer species, existing only since our universe came into being? The historical record (Paul’s imagination) is unclear on this point.
Two words: Annunaki + Hybrid
Yes, it’s loony aliens and spaceship-conspiracy territory, but WS is fiction anyways, so, why not. Paul has quite often used the lore of “alternative history” as a story-telling tool. Annunaki and their dabbling in human-hybrids wouldn’t be to much of a stretch.
Ahh, the little liar is back.
SQUEEEE!!! TEPOZ!!! 😀
*clears throat* Yeah…I just did that…out loud…at work…thanks a lot Paul. 😛
Why would a demon need to poit in the first place? Don’t they just show up wherever they need/want to be?
Nudge isn’t a demon, she’s an ancient being like Phix and the original sphinxes.
Nudge isn’t a demon. She’s a demi-god trickster like Loki or Coyote from Native American lore. Nudge can’t teleport on her own, nor was she adept at shape shifting until very recently.
I thought that was why Phix made her crap her non-existent pants, because Sphinxes were demon-hunters. And since she was able to cohabitate with Tina’s crew all those years, doesn’t that imply she’s a spiritual entity that can move around without a physical body?
Not necessarily. The demon realm is a physical place, which can be inhabited by physical beings and physical things. For example, Maya spent tens of thousands of years there and Bud went in to get her out. Also, they sent the CM there. So it’s quite possible for a being like Nudge to reside there and cohabitate with the demons.
Also recall that Nudge was ‘stuck’ inside of Tina for the last two or three decades (ever since the Monica & Tina 1.0’s accident) and wasn’t able to freely leave in any capacity (her last act, during Shelly’s vision quest, occurred before the accident).
Not “stuck” par se, more like “hiding’.
I think that’s 2-fold… a) Nudge was hiding out from Phix because she knew that she was supposed to be the librarian and was hiding out in Tina, she thought that Phix found her. so she panicked… and B) Tina was freaked out because she instinctively knew that Phix was an Demon-Hunter Sphinx and that because the conglomeration was piloting the body of Tina without the actual person inside, she thought they were caught and was gonna get punished, so they panicked… AAAND we find out that the third option was chosen… Phix did nothing (relatively speaking of course compared to what she could have done)
Mind you, Nudge is a supernatural trickster. Anyone who trusts what Nudge says about her own nature deserves whatever they get. 🙂
She comes from Crete, she said?
What if she says that she’s a supernatural trickster? 😉
I think that one of the reasons that I didn’t like the argument between Nudge and Phix in the library was that it didn’t make sense to trust either character. Phix was contradicting things that she had said in the past, so obviously she wasn’t trustworthy anymore and Nudge was a trickster! It came across as if anything anyone was saying was just a bunch of garbage. 🙄
Nudge is a strange character all by herself. She seems very eager to please, which is inconsistent with being a trickster. If you assume something that fundamental may be a trick, then what can you trust? 😕
“Wait a minute. You lied to me…by telling me the truth?”
(Quoted from I can’t remember where, sorry)
One interesting thing to note about supernatural tricksters is that they often have strict, but unconventional codes of honor. This has less to do with ethics, and more to do with maintaining the challenge, but they will always obey their own rules. For example, many tricksters refuse to lie. Anything they say will be literal truth. Of course, the key word here is literal. That kind of trickster is a master of exact words deception.
Now that Tepoz is here, let the real party begin!
How did anyone not notice Tepoz was there? Is he Yachiru from Bleach?
Simple. He’s tiny, and he has enough of a sense of drama to not make his appearance known until the proper moment.
He’s half-nekkid. He was cold, so he hid in Nudge’s fur.. 😆
Gawd, Nudge is too cute all happy-puppy waggin her tail, and the way she’s clinging onto shelly’s leg as though begging for her acknowledgement/approval.. i just wanna give her a cookie.
and “well actually… . . . BUT THAT’s GOOD- it all worked out.” lmao.
Shelly I for one am glad that Nudge’s interpretation of “code” didn’t cost you an extra couple thousand years in the forest of backwards time trees.. <3
paul you continue to amuse and amaze me with your work.
but I’ll bet that’s exactly what happened: Shelly number 1 (or 2 or anybody but 57) said she wanted to “stay lost” which was mis-interpreted/mis-heard as “steak sauce”… and if it wasn’t supposed to be shelly 1, because she was the one telling Nudge, then the “code word “steak sauce” must have meant Heinz 57, (because A-1 was in the past already, and no other steak sauces have numbers that i know of!) therefore, Nudge being outside of the CM cycles waited until the 57th Shelly to implement the plan… and Shellinx waited a WHOLE LOTTA’ Years for nothing… this point could have been done on CM cycle 3 for all we know!
YES! We have Tepoz back!
Now all we need is that Tepoz wallpaper! 😉
I didn’t forget, just haven’t had time. 🙁
No pressure, when you have time. Thanks for the heads up. Least we finally have some good weather.
And thanks for bringing him back BTW!
Ya know, it could be Nudge is just joking with Shelly.
Someone must have made this joke already but here it is…
Heinz 57 is also ketchup. Or, you know, Catch Up. 🙂
Odd what seems funny when you’re tired, huh? We’ll chalk that one up to that and frustration due to lack of update fix.
Erm, yeah. And a nasty sunburn. Thanks. 😉
Can haz update plez?
Update iz a lie! Only piez real!
Tepoz is blue?!
He’s a friggen smurf?!
Yeah. I knew that.