So, some of what Tepoz told Monica wasn’t entirely true… or perhaps wasn’t “entirely complete and detailed” is more correct. He seems to have omitted some significant details… perhaps because they would have called for some long and complicated explanations involving things Monica wasn’t supposed to know yet?
I am not in any way shape or form comparing Paul to George Lucas, but this sounds like Tepoz may be guilty of Obi-wan Kenobi levels of “Jedi Truth” here.
Well, unless Euryale is the world’s most talented actress, she’s one of Monica’s biggest fans. I don’t know too many fans who wouldn’t gush every iota of the complete truth (as they knew it) to the object of their interest at the slightest provocation.
The others withheld facts that weren’t necessary at the time or would have caused confusion/harm if they were known without the proper lead-up. Euryale doesn’t seem to have that “protective” need that the others seem to feel regarding Monica.
Tepoz has a long history of dodging questions, misrepresenting the truth, and straight up lying. I don’t recommend believing anything Tepoz has said without independent confirmation.
Well, look at it from Tepoz’s view. EVERYTHING can and usually has whooped his butt at some point. Lying has just become a natural reflex to Tepoz.
At least we’ve seen it may not be entirely his fault he is that way. He’s expressed numerous times both shame and frustration at not just being able to flatout state the truth to Monica & company. We just don’t know if his pathological lying is his own choice or part of Mai’s “programming”, since he lacked a pre-golem personality like Mai & the GGG.
Tiny, physically vulnerable, no pre-existing identify, saddled with the job of trying to ride herd on three incredibly dangerous and unpredictable GGs, assigned the job of protecting Monica (“just keep her safe”) without being authorized to really bring her into the loop…
… yeah, it’s no wonder the little guy has a bad case of the blues.
What are the chances that some of those he ticked off were Immortal politicians? One of the things about immortality is the ability to REALLY hang on to grudges. Mon and the Golem Girls might be endangered by someone using them to strike at Tepoz – with a secret extragovernmental agency to keep track of all the pieces….
Tepoz seems to have been used to ordering humans around when Monica awoke him. They seemed to have tired of that, and knowing some secret of freezing him, caught him off-guard.
Heh. In the Honor Harrington books, Dave says that the Queen is know to not only hold and cherish a grudge until it dies of old age but to have it stuffed and mounted afterward…
First book: On Basilisk Station – intros Honor, sets up the basic background.
Second: Honor of the Queen – all hell busts loose.
I would also recommend the omnibus edition Empire from the Ashes – about the closest thing to “Doc” Smith’s best stuff (but a bit better written) you’re gonna find.
(Dave and i grew up in a house that (among other things) contained a complete set of first edition, signed and numbered set of “Doc”‘s books…)
Clearly, the best thing to do after pissing off the wrong people is to arrange things so that your new enemies piss off people who are even worse to have as an enemy. Then you can hide until the problem goes away on it’s own.
Seems like Tepoz used a tactic out of the Assassins handbook of low blows and dirty tricks and buried his best bolt hole in the camp of his enemies enemy. Only “they” got to him before he could join the girls after he hid them. And turned him into a paper weight till Monica discovered him.
I wish I’d given more attention to learning Russian when I got the chance to go to Russia back when I was 16. 🙁 I might have been able to be convincingly Russian too…but no luck now. I can barely remember the two sentences of Russian I learned. Sad times.
So now we know how there were survivors from Lanthis. I guess it was only a few who happened to be tinkering with an underwater habitat at the time. It seems they were the more knowledgeable few though. I guess they had the know how to turn the golems off.
When she says things went south, is she referring to the chimera destruction, or something else?
They knew how to turn Tepoz off at least. He had shut the girls down himself. But thus begins the 400 year time out until Monica frees him and then he frees the girls.
I would imagine quite a few Lathians fled the theocracy the priests set up when they seized control, among them the Immortals created when Calendar Machine was turned on. Which would probably include most of the scientists and politicians.
If the GGG were in the New World and working with Tepoz, this would have been post Chimera and Maya being blasted into the Demon Realm.
I find the info dumping interesting. Too much about this comic is hard to follow since the facts are given so spread out. This is a refreshing change of pace.
Now… let’s hope she’s giving accurate info and not lying like some other commenters are considering. That’d be even more confusing!
I’m not that patient a person, and I’ve just given up trying to suss out the storyline. I’d need a scorecard and a half-dozen Mai Tais to sort it all out. These days my participation in the comic is of the “ooh, pretty pictures” variety.
I think you’re right. All the endless speculation has always come to naught. Especially when Paul throws in yet something else from left field, like Daisy Mae here. You get down to “what’s the point?” Just check in once a day, or once a week and be done with it, like all the other comics.
Yamara the God and a couple of others have been very diligent in updating the Wiki. The more folks that do this, the easier it will be to follow this incredibly convoluted story. I think even an Arisian would need a good stiff drink after plumbing the depths of Paul’s mind…
Ah, but an Arisian’s visualization can only proceed from the facts known to the Arisian(s).
This then raises the question: Who is manipulating the Arisians, by feeding them false data?
After all, it’s the Arisians themselves who concluded that they were the First Ones, evolving alone in the early days of the Universe. What if they were wrong, and they were the puppets rather than the benign puppetmasters? Their visualizations of the Cosmic All could be entirely deceptive… just as our own speculations here have often come to naught.
I’ll hazard a guess here: Lorien is behind it all. He’s scammed and manipulated the Lanthians, Tepoz, the GG, the MIB, the Arisians, the Shadows, and us.
Evidence of this: we’ve seen him in the strip, hiding in plain sight. Remember the bokeh effect? That’s him. 😈
Man, this fevered speculating we do is fun! Be even more fun after I have my first cuppa coffee for the day.
The speculation used to be fun, but at least to me, there are so many balls in the air at once it’s become unmanagable. It’s ceased to be fun and become work just to try untangling all the knots. Paul has an annoying habit of just dropping something in the middle, like the recent Brandi exposition. Now Monica just goes about her business as if Brandi said nothing important. Then there is the whole thing with Shelly. Another momentous event just dropped. Same with Jin, but to a lesser extent. Now yet another new character when we still barely know the old ones or whats going on with them? It’s just not worth it anymore.
I think you’re mistaken, if you assume that plot threads such as Brandi’s confession or Shelly’s sphinx-nature or Jin’s transformation to mortality have been “dropped” or otherwise abandoned.
This strip’s plot-tapestry has a lot of threads in it. Those are some of them. This lead-in with Euryale is another.
I don’t think they’ve been dropped… I really doubt that Paul would have gone to all the work of setting them up, and then just discarded them. Rather, they’re now anchored on the loom, ready to be woven in with this one (and probably others). We don’t yet know what the final picture will be, but I anticipate that it will involve most or all of these elements.
Wapsi Square is not a strictly linear, “only one thing happening at a time” webcomic. There are plenty of webcomics out there which are, for those who prefer that linearity.
Me… I like the mystery and complexity, and I enjoy the speculation (even if my own speculations are wrong 80-90% of the time).
I’ve read quite a lot of fantastical (and science) fiction, in which the surprises seemed to be rather arbitrary, as though the author was just pulling things out of his hat. Wapsi hasn’t felt that way to me… although a lot of stuff seems to come from “out of left field” at first, it usually ends up having an underlying logic behind it, and (often) to have an established precedent in what we’d seen in earlier strips.
In the discworld series the Patricians trick to longevity was to quitely ensure that the people in power were subtley aware that life with him was better than life without.
Perhaps Tepoz is of the same school of thought
Oh I doubt she’s adjusting bones. 🙂 It’s probably the high-tech structural elements of her architecturally sound undergarments that need adjustment so they don’t chafe or poke at her. Bras will frequently do that even without a spine cracking hug from an immortal mythical being, so hers is probably in dire need of that adjustment.
Not to mention the fact that too much pressure on breasts hurts. That’s why most women don’t like mammograms.
She’s referred in the past (in conversation with Shelley) to the “underwire and girders” her bras require.
That last hug from Euryale looked as if it could have twisted the structural steel in a railroad bridge, let alone a bra! Monica may have to find a plumber and borrow his pipe-bender to get that bra back into a comfortable-to-wear condition.
Well, if we’re finding that out, I wonder if we’ll learn why the ‘enchantment’ that turned Tepoz to Stone also added the “Tepoz must repay the one who frees him once per calendar year or he’ll return to stone”.
I suspected he was just pulling her leg with that explanation, but we’ve never heard about it again. It gives him an excuse to get Monica drunk, though.
In comparing what Tepoz has said in the past, what Euryale is saying here, and what Brandi talked about during her recent “confession”, and trying to put together a timeline in my head… I think I’m back in Confusion Corner. Some things do not yet make sense to me.
In rough order:
– The Calendar Machine is created (long ago), helping stabilize Jin’s schizophrenia, and making May, Jin, and a bunch of bigwigs immortal.
– At a much later date, the girls are kidnapped by Lanthian priests (Brandi resisting, and then surrendering after accidentally killing an infant while defending herself), imprisoned, tortured and raped, burned alive, and their ashes and souls/spirits/memories used to construct the Chimera.
– The priests’ control over the Chimera breaks (thanks to Jin’s sacrifice), and the Chimera runs wild with rage and melts most of the Lanthian civilization into glass. Some Lanthians (working on an underwater habitat) survive… this apparently includes at least some of the immortals.
– Some of the Lanthian survivors manage to gain some control over the Chimera, and separate it into its three (golem) components. They’re still dangerous, and immortal, but can be controlled to some extent via Glyph.
– Tepoz is created, and at some point is placed in charge of the three (still dangerous) Golem Girls.
– At some point, Tepoz and the GGs take a leading role in creating the MIB “security force”.
– The Calendar Machine is activated into its time-looping mode. I’m not clear on whether this happens before the MIB were created (in which case the creation would have occurred in each time loop, slightly differently each time) or after (in which case the early part of the MIB would have occurred only once).
– At some point in here, Brandi makes some sort of pact – probably with a demon or demons, but I don’t think we know that for sure. This must have occurred after the Chimera was separated into the three golems, but whether it pre- or post-dated the creation of the MIB security team isn’t clear to me.
– In 1479 (in the most recent time loop, at least) Tepoz places the Girls back into golem-storage mode, and then is shut down himself (apparently by someone he had “crossed”, probably but not definitely one or more of the immortal politicians). Tepoz and the GGs were in stasis until the early 2000s, when Monica revived him and he (in 2005) revived the GGs.
(Have I bodgered anything in this timeline?)
So, the puzzlements for me at this point:
(2) How is it that the Golem Girls… the dangerous and barely-controllable fragments of the very Beast that boiled 99.99% of the Lanthian civilization down into magma… were able to play a pivotal role in the creation of a Lanthian-derived “security force”?? How in the name of Kdapt were they (and Tepoz) able to get into a position of that much trust (and power!) with the Lanthian survivors?
(2) At what point did Brandi make her “pact”, with whom, and on what terms?
(3) Does the answer to question (2) also answer question (1)?
Tepoz was created before the chimera. He was one of May’s experiments in golem making, and predated her conversion into golemhood. And the Lanthian priests learned how to make golems only from having May trick them into making her into one.
I got the impression that Brandi made her pact before she was chimerized. Maybe even to end up in the chimera project. There was too much unsaid in her confessions.
@anonymous = right you are – thanks for the correction!
@Jabberwonky – I had thought so, at first… that Brandi’s pact was made shortly after she was kidnapped, and had influenced the chimera… but I now think that wasn’t the case.
The demon world noticed, I was under Tepoz’s care, I made a deal. To help.
This really sounds as if The Deal wasn’t struck until after the GGs were separated from the Chimera. Tepoz had told Monica that he “came along later”, long after the three girls were murdered, and had nothing to do with their murder. We know know that he existed prior to the creation of the Chimera, but (unless he was lying to Monica) he wasn’t involved with its creation or with the girls until later.
Other things that Brandi said (in that same panel I linked to above) imply that quite some time took place between her kidnapping, and the striking of the Deal. She went through a period of reaction to her kidnapping (becoming emotionally distant, seeing people as pieces on a chessboard), then decided “That’s not who I am” and tried to regain her former self… and that’s when she struck the Deal.
I don’t think that there was time or opportunity for all of that emotional “shifting”, while she was being hauled away on a Cart of Doom towards her torture and death.
I suppose it’s possible that the Deal was actually split in time… e.g. the demon(s) did something for Brandi prior to her death, and in return she was obligated to do something for them at a much later time after she was put in Tepoz’s care. That would be consistent with what we’ve seen, but so would “It all took place later” and the latter is a simpler explanation.
The Wapsi Wiki‘s timeline is actually too long and detailed for an easy overview, but I think you’re approximately correct. Tepoz predating the Chimera has already been mentioned. The Calendar Machine startup, Mayahuel entrapment, Chimera creation, and timeline reset start moment are all a bit confused for various reasons – but you seem to have the highlights.
A minor correction and answer: After the Chimera was defeated, it was separated into its three individual parts, but the girls’ minds and souls were mixed together and the result was three barely controllable monsters. How long that lasted is unclear, but eventually Tepoz managed to restore their individual personalities and forms just in time for Jin to go looking for her mom, watch Maya try to destroy the CM and get tossed into the Demon Realm as a result, and – since she was at Ground Zero for that – become the only one on Earth who would remember each reset. After that the GGG and Tepoz were sent to the New World, where they apparently set up their MiB organization while the Lanthians were busy trying to put the Old World back together…
yep!… don’t forget that the whole, entire civilizations of the Olmec, and the Mesa Verde tribes, were set up as a “witness protection program” to HIDE the GGG’s (and probably other stuff as well)… in fact I’ll take a W.A.G. here for some more Moxana Points, that Brandi and Bud were the ones behind that tremendous effort involved in doing so…. wouldn’t you call that being more in a “active role” as Euryale said in yesterday’s strip?
i’d say that the IP’s had/have factions just as we do right now. the faction that Kukulcan, and Tepoz belong to seems to be one where they know that the GG’s were NOT directly responsible because a) anybody who could say otherwise was vaporized, and b) they probably thought that that was what they were ORDERED to do anyway. the surviving Glyph Readers that separated them may or may not have known the truth… that the priests lost control, and that they too might not be able to control them as well. i’m mean they “knew” they were DANGEROUS, seeing as how once combined they laid waste to everything around them, but they probably didn’t know the REAL reason they lashed out like they did, all the torture, etc… so that whatever controls the Glyph Readers did manage to implant might not actually work because of faulty assumptions.
@eee – thanks – this does clarify things somewhat and makes the situation more reasonable.
I believe recall Tepoz told Monica that he’d inscribed the golems with glyphs, in order to make them more controllable by Glyph Readers, and he also said that they had been programmed (in particular, to suppress their memories of the Chimera and what it did). It’s reasonable that he did this as part of the same process in which he decohered their quantum entanglement 🙂 and gave them their individual identities back.
The Wiki timeline isn’t clear as to just when this occurred… the separation seems to have happened prior to 1350 BC (Bud interacting with Amonhotep IV) which was well before Mayahuel tried to take out the Calendar Machine circa 562 CE.
So, the MIB might have been set up either before, or after the Calendar Machine started looping history, as far as I can tell… lots of time in there during which it could have occurred.
In any case… those who decided to set up the security force (possibly Kukulcan and his faction) apparently decided to include the GGs when they did so, despite their history as part of the Chimera. They may have believed that the GGs were both “too powerful to waste”, and “adequately under control” (inscribed for control by Tepoz, somewhat amnesiac, and also intoxicated much/all of the time). They might have made very effective security “agents”, although perhaps not capable of acting as leaders.
I still have to wonder about what Tepoz was up to (given his tendency to lie, he might have been deceiving Kukulcan to some extent).
And, Brandi’s “deal” is also a wild-card of unknown nature.
i’m curious as to Tepoz’s dealings with Kuculcan. it seems that Euryale thinks Tepoz lied to the immortals about the true status of the GGG’s being “in storage”, but in reality were actively pursuing a ?career? in the MIB racket… but back when Tepoz was told to protect Monica, it seems that Kuculcan wasn’t spun at all over the deception… maybe after 400+ years K has mellowed out, and isn’t mad anymore.
i have an interesting thought: how come the various Time Keepers died, but the Immortal Politician(s) didn’t? (we only KNOW of Kukulcan, but there might be others not yet revealed in-comic) … i think i have the glimmer of a theory that goes something like this: May and other Time Keepers (TK’s) created the CM. during the unveiling ceremony with all the major TK’s and the major Immortal Politicians (IP’s) +Jin were present. POOF, they become immortal (but probably don’t KNOW yet until later when they notice they aren’t aging anymore) now, TK’s being science geeks could prolly care less about who’s in charge, just as long as they can continue their experiments, right?… however: the IP’s.. boy do they have a quandary… Who’s gonna assume the reins of power? so they get to fighting over it, they either recruit some of the TK’s and the other IP’s factions take them out, or maybe the mortal’s take them out because they thought that they were behind, or at least providing support for the various plots the IP’s were cooking up. either that or the leading IP’s “knew” that they had to play along and “die” every once in a while, so they WEREN’T killed by the mobs of mortals, but the TK’s were too unconcerned or even unKNOWing about the stresses that being immortal placed on their relations with the mortal mob, and they got killed off because of it.
it seems to me that the Matriarchy was overthrown by the Patriarchal theocracy that was possibly one of the plots of a particularly nasty IP… and it took May some time to figure out the Golemization process for her to have enough power in order to retrieve then to destroy CM, even though it would mess up Jin again (remember she was still an immortal young girl at that point) and if she was successful, well then, the IP that was in charge would suddenly lose his power base, and the Matriarchy could take back the power they lost, and May could continue with alternate means to fix Jin’s mental issues.
I would think that Bud and Brandi were in shutdown mode but Jin has always been autonomous to the system. Most likely an additive her mom put into her clay form or the calendar event that took May to the Demon Realm.
I also think that the ones setting up under the sea were most likely against the priesthood and their takeover, as well as the chimera’s creation, and were forming a breakaway republic of sorts to keep the memory and technology of Lanthis alive when the Priests finally would blow.
Yumpin’ Yimminee!… i literally *just* saw the title for today’s strip… “the wrong folks”… looks like we MIGHT be getting some more info as pertains to this comic: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/plans-in-place/
So, some of what Tepoz told Monica wasn’t entirely true… or perhaps wasn’t “entirely complete and detailed” is more correct. He seems to have omitted some significant details… perhaps because they would have called for some long and complicated explanations involving things Monica wasn’t supposed to know yet?
It seems the lot of them are big time liars. How do we know this newcomer is telling the truth now either?
I am not in any way shape or form comparing Paul to George Lucas, but this sounds like Tepoz may be guilty of Obi-wan Kenobi levels of “Jedi Truth” here.
Well, unless Euryale is the world’s most talented actress, she’s one of Monica’s biggest fans. I don’t know too many fans who wouldn’t gush every iota of the complete truth (as they knew it) to the object of their interest at the slightest provocation.
The others withheld facts that weren’t necessary at the time or would have caused confusion/harm if they were known without the proper lead-up. Euryale doesn’t seem to have that “protective” need that the others seem to feel regarding Monica.
Oh it was true what he told her..
From a certain point of view.
😉
Tepoz has a long history of dodging questions, misrepresenting the truth, and straight up lying. I don’t recommend believing anything Tepoz has said without independent confirmation.
Well, look at it from Tepoz’s view. EVERYTHING can and usually has whooped his butt at some point. Lying has just become a natural reflex to Tepoz.
At least we’ve seen it may not be entirely his fault he is that way. He’s expressed numerous times both shame and frustration at not just being able to flatout state the truth to Monica & company. We just don’t know if his pathological lying is his own choice or part of Mai’s “programming”, since he lacked a pre-golem personality like Mai & the GGG.
Tiny, physically vulnerable, no pre-existing identify, saddled with the job of trying to ride herd on three incredibly dangerous and unpredictable GGs, assigned the job of protecting Monica (“just keep her safe”) without being authorized to really bring her into the loop…
… yeah, it’s no wonder the little guy has a bad case of the blues.
You didn’t mention being the god of alcohol–a depressant.
He had a weasel personality 🙂
dunno about weasels personally but i know other animals have quite distinct personallities 😀
And now that thats out of the way, it seems the girls & Tepoz were ambushed and locked up, but not before setting up the MIB or their predecessors.
What are the chances that some of those he ticked off were Immortal politicians? One of the things about immortality is the ability to REALLY hang on to grudges. Mon and the Golem Girls might be endangered by someone using them to strike at Tepoz – with a secret extragovernmental agency to keep track of all the pieces….
Tepoz seems to have been used to ordering humans around when Monica awoke him. They seemed to have tired of that, and knowing some secret of freezing him, caught him off-guard.
The iPad autocorrects “Tepoz” as “Repos” btw.
Heh. In the Honor Harrington books, Dave says that the Queen is know to not only hold and cherish a grudge until it dies of old age but to have it stuffed and mounted afterward…
Heh…sounds like I have a lot in common with her. I may need to read those books. 🙂
I recommend them highly, Julie. Great characters in complex situations, kicking butt and taking names (and paying the price for same).
Agreed! A good ol’ fashioned space opera!
First book: On Basilisk Station – intros Honor, sets up the basic background.
Second: Honor of the Queen – all hell busts loose.
I would also recommend the omnibus edition Empire from the Ashes – about the closest thing to “Doc” Smith’s best stuff (but a bit better written) you’re gonna find.
(Dave and i grew up in a house that (among other things) contained a complete set of first edition, signed and numbered set of “Doc”‘s books…)
Love that series. I might disagree on timing, but I think that everyone can agree that by Flag in Exile all hell has well and truly let out for lunch.
heh. if you know ‘ the x files’ you will know it is a LOT more complex than that!!:-)
Clearly, the best thing to do after pissing off the wrong people is to arrange things so that your new enemies piss off people who are even worse to have as an enemy. Then you can hide until the problem goes away on it’s own.
…find a deep, deep hole.
And watch.
And eat popcorn as you enjoy the fireworks. 🙂
Seems like Tepoz used a tactic out of the Assassins handbook of low blows and dirty tricks and buried his best bolt hole in the camp of his enemies enemy. Only “they” got to him before he could join the girls after he hid them. And turned him into a paper weight till Monica discovered him.
Paul talk about MIB in the comic…..
Starz starts airing MIB…..
COINCIDENCE?!?!?!!!
….Yeah, probably….
Is no such think as coincidence, comrade. Is effort to distract us from our goals. Have you looked under bed for spies?
Not all Bolsheviks dead!
They’re not?? 😯
Eeeep we are doomed I tells’ya, doomed!!
Luckily I just bought a russian officer’s fur-hat, so I can blend in when they take over..
Eeerrr… Nah, really because it suddenly became darn cold on my bike, this side of the pond
By the by. The rise and demise of the Bolsjewicks.. A sub-part of the original immortals? A split-off fraction?
When immortal, You’ll have plenty of time to ponder new ways of power-mongering.
It’s not “comrade” That’s movie- speak. It’s “tovarisch”
* skulks back to ” irritant knowitall-corner, next tobroom cupboard”*
H! Suddenly realise Fairportfan doinq’ grand good, yes, imprezzion of Russki …
Nastrovje! *raises bottle of state-sponsored Vodka*
Забавнo, Ychou American, Ychou funny people
😛
Huh? Da, Tovarisch!
Hmm. That was supposed to have a “< … i mean … >” in it.
Woops.. Meant ” fat Uncle”
Sorry for that… Although I have no doubt You could do a convincing Russian…
I wish I’d given more attention to learning Russian when I got the chance to go to Russia back when I was 16. 🙁 I might have been able to be convincingly Russian too…but no luck now. I can barely remember the two sentences of Russian I learned. Sad times.
It’s just Synchronicity and Serendipity up to their tricks. Be observant, and you can see when they pay attention to a situation.
Emer-gency. Effry body to get from stret.
😀
My internet is back. I have four months’ archives to read. :/
well, that’ll take you about 2 days to do… see ya then!
Unless, of course, he wants to eat and sleep.
So now we know how there were survivors from Lanthis. I guess it was only a few who happened to be tinkering with an underwater habitat at the time. It seems they were the more knowledgeable few though. I guess they had the know how to turn the golems off.
When she says things went south, is she referring to the chimera destruction, or something else?
They knew how to turn Tepoz off at least. He had shut the girls down himself. But thus begins the 400 year time out until Monica frees him and then he frees the girls.
I would imagine quite a few Lathians fled the theocracy the priests set up when they seized control, among them the Immortals created when Calendar Machine was turned on. Which would probably include most of the scientists and politicians.
If the GGG were in the New World and working with Tepoz, this would have been post Chimera and Maya being blasted into the Demon Realm.
She’s referring to moving from the Aztec’s, Central America, to the Mayan’s, further, well, south…
As refreshing as it is to be outright told things for once, I am starting to feel a bit… uncharitable… towards all the infodumping.
I find the info dumping interesting. Too much about this comic is hard to follow since the facts are given so spread out. This is a refreshing change of pace.
Now… let’s hope she’s giving accurate info and not lying like some other commenters are considering. That’d be even more confusing!
I’m not that patient a person, and I’ve just given up trying to suss out the storyline. I’d need a scorecard and a half-dozen Mai Tais to sort it all out. These days my participation in the comic is of the “ooh, pretty pictures” variety.
I think you’re right. All the endless speculation has always come to naught. Especially when Paul throws in yet something else from left field, like Daisy Mae here. You get down to “what’s the point?” Just check in once a day, or once a week and be done with it, like all the other comics.
Yamara the God and a couple of others have been very diligent in updating the Wiki. The more folks that do this, the easier it will be to follow this incredibly convoluted story. I think even an Arisian would need a good stiff drink after plumbing the depths of Paul’s mind…
But an Arisian wouldn’t need to plumb Paul’s mind, because his Visualisation of the Cosmic All would already include all the facts about the comic…
Ah, but an Arisian’s visualization can only proceed from the facts known to the Arisian(s).
This then raises the question: Who is manipulating the Arisians, by feeding them false data?
After all, it’s the Arisians themselves who concluded that they were the First Ones, evolving alone in the early days of the Universe. What if they were wrong, and they were the puppets rather than the benign puppetmasters? Their visualizations of the Cosmic All could be entirely deceptive… just as our own speculations here have often come to naught.
I’ll hazard a guess here: Lorien is behind it all. He’s scammed and manipulated the Lanthians, Tepoz, the GG, the MIB, the Arisians, the Shadows, and us.
Evidence of this: we’ve seen him in the strip, hiding in plain sight. Remember the bokeh effect? That’s him. 😈
Man, this fevered speculating we do is fun! Be even more fun after I have my first cuppa coffee for the day.
But that assumes that the speculation isn’t an end in itself. Some weirdos just find it fun. (No aspersions on anyone here. . . .) 🙂
It’s the secretaries who really run the world.
The speculation used to be fun, but at least to me, there are so many balls in the air at once it’s become unmanagable. It’s ceased to be fun and become work just to try untangling all the knots. Paul has an annoying habit of just dropping something in the middle, like the recent Brandi exposition. Now Monica just goes about her business as if Brandi said nothing important. Then there is the whole thing with Shelly. Another momentous event just dropped. Same with Jin, but to a lesser extent. Now yet another new character when we still barely know the old ones or whats going on with them? It’s just not worth it anymore.
I think you’re mistaken, if you assume that plot threads such as Brandi’s confession or Shelly’s sphinx-nature or Jin’s transformation to mortality have been “dropped” or otherwise abandoned.
This strip’s plot-tapestry has a lot of threads in it. Those are some of them. This lead-in with Euryale is another.
I don’t think they’ve been dropped… I really doubt that Paul would have gone to all the work of setting them up, and then just discarded them. Rather, they’re now anchored on the loom, ready to be woven in with this one (and probably others). We don’t yet know what the final picture will be, but I anticipate that it will involve most or all of these elements.
Wapsi Square is not a strictly linear, “only one thing happening at a time” webcomic. There are plenty of webcomics out there which are, for those who prefer that linearity.
Me… I like the mystery and complexity, and I enjoy the speculation (even if my own speculations are wrong 80-90% of the time).
I’ve read quite a lot of fantastical (and science) fiction, in which the surprises seemed to be rather arbitrary, as though the author was just pulling things out of his hat. Wapsi hasn’t felt that way to me… although a lot of stuff seems to come from “out of left field” at first, it usually ends up having an underlying logic behind it, and (often) to have an established precedent in what we’d seen in earlier strips.
In the discworld series the Patricians trick to longevity was to quitely ensure that the people in power were subtley aware that life with him was better than life without.
Perhaps Tepoz is of the same school of thought
Looks like Monica will need another adjustment–if not spinal, at least of something.
I just didn’t know there were bones out there to adjust. . . .
Oh I doubt she’s adjusting bones. 🙂 It’s probably the high-tech structural elements of her architecturally sound undergarments that need adjustment so they don’t chafe or poke at her. Bras will frequently do that even without a spine cracking hug from an immortal mythical being, so hers is probably in dire need of that adjustment.
Not to mention the fact that too much pressure on breasts hurts. That’s why most women don’t like mammograms.
She’s referred in the past (in conversation with Shelley) to the “underwire and girders” her bras require.
That last hug from Euryale looked as if it could have twisted the structural steel in a railroad bridge, let alone a bra! Monica may have to find a plumber and borrow his pipe-bender to get that bra back into a comfortable-to-wear condition.
she must be using the *latest* bra tech, that is *soft* but strong…:)
at least her spine is ok, thanks to her ‘buffers’ !! 😀 😀
Dru: I must check for broken bones. Does this hurt when I squeeze it?
Geoff: Hey! There are no any bones there!
Dru: Patience … patience …
Am I the only one who’s much too amused by panel one if you assume Monica’s referring to her boobs when she says “the girls”?
Monica uses a powerful “underwire and girders” system to keep the girls locked away – and she needs it.
But it does need adjustment, stat–the girls are making a break for it!
Haha, love the stars. Yeah, she got squished hard.
OOOHHHHHHHHHHHH. Now I know what’s up: we’re finding out why Tepoz got “turned to stone”.
Well, they’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ ’long the street
They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to keep your seat
They’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ on the floor
They’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ to the door
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned
🙂
Thank you for that! I needed to have a good song stuck in my head this morning. 🙂
Taking your earworm out for a walk in the park this morning? 🙂
Well, if we’re finding that out, I wonder if we’ll learn why the ‘enchantment’ that turned Tepoz to Stone also added the “Tepoz must repay the one who frees him once per calendar year or he’ll return to stone”.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/09162002/
I suspected he was just pulling her leg with that explanation, but we’ve never heard about it again. It gives him an excuse to get Monica drunk, though.
Looks like “the Girls” need an alignment. Quick Monica call Kevin I’m sure he’d be glad to give you a…hand. *snerk*
Lets hope Monica didn’t lose a cup size there.
I think it’s gonna take both hands.
Both of his and hers you mean. 🙂 When dealing with that cup size, one breast is more than a handful. 😛
From two people to do it correctly – SNARF!!
snerk… favourite link.. 😀
wapsisquare.com/comic/braless-pirouettes
TheDoctor: no, thats soft tissue, it swells when bruised, so ADD a cup size.. and a lot of pain! 🙁
Tepoz pissin’ people off??
Unheard of….
.
.
NOT!
Ask M for an honest answer about the times she wanted him to turn to stone again 😀
Hung him upside down with flypaper ribbon and stuck her fingers up his nostrils to turn his head to look at her properly…
In comparing what Tepoz has said in the past, what Euryale is saying here, and what Brandi talked about during her recent “confession”, and trying to put together a timeline in my head… I think I’m back in Confusion Corner. Some things do not yet make sense to me.
In rough order:
– The Calendar Machine is created (long ago), helping stabilize Jin’s schizophrenia, and making May, Jin, and a bunch of bigwigs immortal.
– At a much later date, the girls are kidnapped by Lanthian priests (Brandi resisting, and then surrendering after accidentally killing an infant while defending herself), imprisoned, tortured and raped, burned alive, and their ashes and souls/spirits/memories used to construct the Chimera.
– The priests’ control over the Chimera breaks (thanks to Jin’s sacrifice), and the Chimera runs wild with rage and melts most of the Lanthian civilization into glass. Some Lanthians (working on an underwater habitat) survive… this apparently includes at least some of the immortals.
– Some of the Lanthian survivors manage to gain some control over the Chimera, and separate it into its three (golem) components. They’re still dangerous, and immortal, but can be controlled to some extent via Glyph.
– Tepoz is created, and at some point is placed in charge of the three (still dangerous) Golem Girls.
– At some point, Tepoz and the GGs take a leading role in creating the MIB “security force”.
– The Calendar Machine is activated into its time-looping mode. I’m not clear on whether this happens before the MIB were created (in which case the creation would have occurred in each time loop, slightly differently each time) or after (in which case the early part of the MIB would have occurred only once).
– At some point in here, Brandi makes some sort of pact – probably with a demon or demons, but I don’t think we know that for sure. This must have occurred after the Chimera was separated into the three golems, but whether it pre- or post-dated the creation of the MIB security team isn’t clear to me.
– In 1479 (in the most recent time loop, at least) Tepoz places the Girls back into golem-storage mode, and then is shut down himself (apparently by someone he had “crossed”, probably but not definitely one or more of the immortal politicians). Tepoz and the GGs were in stasis until the early 2000s, when Monica revived him and he (in 2005) revived the GGs.
(Have I bodgered anything in this timeline?)
So, the puzzlements for me at this point:
(2) How is it that the Golem Girls… the dangerous and barely-controllable fragments of the very Beast that boiled 99.99% of the Lanthian civilization down into magma… were able to play a pivotal role in the creation of a Lanthian-derived “security force”?? How in the name of Kdapt were they (and Tepoz) able to get into a position of that much trust (and power!) with the Lanthian survivors?
(2) At what point did Brandi make her “pact”, with whom, and on what terms?
(3) Does the answer to question (2) also answer question (1)?
Tepoz was created before the chimera. He was one of May’s experiments in golem making, and predated her conversion into golemhood. And the Lanthian priests learned how to make golems only from having May trick them into making her into one.
I got the impression that Brandi made her pact before she was chimerized. Maybe even to end up in the chimera project. There was too much unsaid in her confessions.
Nice avatar!
@anonymous = right you are – thanks for the correction!
@Jabberwonky – I had thought so, at first… that Brandi’s pact was made shortly after she was kidnapped, and had influenced the chimera… but I now think that wasn’t the case.
In this strip she says
This really sounds as if The Deal wasn’t struck until after the GGs were separated from the Chimera. Tepoz had told Monica that he “came along later”, long after the three girls were murdered, and had nothing to do with their murder. We know know that he existed prior to the creation of the Chimera, but (unless he was lying to Monica) he wasn’t involved with its creation or with the girls until later.
Other things that Brandi said (in that same panel I linked to above) imply that quite some time took place between her kidnapping, and the striking of the Deal. She went through a period of reaction to her kidnapping (becoming emotionally distant, seeing people as pieces on a chessboard), then decided “That’s not who I am” and tried to regain her former self… and that’s when she struck the Deal.
I don’t think that there was time or opportunity for all of that emotional “shifting”, while she was being hauled away on a Cart of Doom towards her torture and death.
I suppose it’s possible that the Deal was actually split in time… e.g. the demon(s) did something for Brandi prior to her death, and in return she was obligated to do something for them at a much later time after she was put in Tepoz’s care. That would be consistent with what we’ve seen, but so would “It all took place later” and the latter is a simpler explanation.
The Wapsi Wiki‘s timeline is actually too long and detailed for an easy overview, but I think you’re approximately correct. Tepoz predating the Chimera has already been mentioned. The Calendar Machine startup, Mayahuel entrapment, Chimera creation, and timeline reset start moment are all a bit confused for various reasons – but you seem to have the highlights.
A minor correction and answer: After the Chimera was defeated, it was separated into its three individual parts, but the girls’ minds and souls were mixed together and the result was three barely controllable monsters. How long that lasted is unclear, but eventually Tepoz managed to restore their individual personalities and forms just in time for Jin to go looking for her mom, watch Maya try to destroy the CM and get tossed into the Demon Realm as a result, and – since she was at Ground Zero for that – become the only one on Earth who would remember each reset. After that the GGG and Tepoz were sent to the New World, where they apparently set up their MiB organization while the Lanthians were busy trying to put the Old World back together…
yep!… don’t forget that the whole, entire civilizations of the Olmec, and the Mesa Verde tribes, were set up as a “witness protection program” to HIDE the GGG’s (and probably other stuff as well)… in fact I’ll take a W.A.G. here for some more Moxana Points, that Brandi and Bud were the ones behind that tremendous effort involved in doing so…. wouldn’t you call that being more in a “active role” as Euryale said in yesterday’s strip?
i’d say that the IP’s had/have factions just as we do right now. the faction that Kukulcan, and Tepoz belong to seems to be one where they know that the GG’s were NOT directly responsible because a) anybody who could say otherwise was vaporized, and b) they probably thought that that was what they were ORDERED to do anyway. the surviving Glyph Readers that separated them may or may not have known the truth… that the priests lost control, and that they too might not be able to control them as well. i’m mean they “knew” they were DANGEROUS, seeing as how once combined they laid waste to everything around them, but they probably didn’t know the REAL reason they lashed out like they did, all the torture, etc… so that whatever controls the Glyph Readers did manage to implant might not actually work because of faulty assumptions.
@eee – thanks – this does clarify things somewhat and makes the situation more reasonable.
I believe recall Tepoz told Monica that he’d inscribed the golems with glyphs, in order to make them more controllable by Glyph Readers, and he also said that they had been programmed (in particular, to suppress their memories of the Chimera and what it did). It’s reasonable that he did this as part of the same process in which he decohered their quantum entanglement 🙂 and gave them their individual identities back.
The Wiki timeline isn’t clear as to just when this occurred… the separation seems to have happened prior to 1350 BC (Bud interacting with Amonhotep IV) which was well before Mayahuel tried to take out the Calendar Machine circa 562 CE.
So, the MIB might have been set up either before, or after the Calendar Machine started looping history, as far as I can tell… lots of time in there during which it could have occurred.
In any case… those who decided to set up the security force (possibly Kukulcan and his faction) apparently decided to include the GGs when they did so, despite their history as part of the Chimera. They may have believed that the GGs were both “too powerful to waste”, and “adequately under control” (inscribed for control by Tepoz, somewhat amnesiac, and also intoxicated much/all of the time). They might have made very effective security “agents”, although perhaps not capable of acting as leaders.
I still have to wonder about what Tepoz was up to (given his tendency to lie, he might have been deceiving Kukulcan to some extent).
And, Brandi’s “deal” is also a wild-card of unknown nature.
The part that struck me was panel 1.. “the girls were locked away”… with her hands on what she has -in the past- referred to as “the girls”
i’m curious as to Tepoz’s dealings with Kuculcan. it seems that Euryale thinks Tepoz lied to the immortals about the true status of the GGG’s being “in storage”, but in reality were actively pursuing a ?career? in the MIB racket… but back when Tepoz was told to protect Monica, it seems that Kuculcan wasn’t spun at all over the deception… maybe after 400+ years K has mellowed out, and isn’t mad anymore.
i have an interesting thought: how come the various Time Keepers died, but the Immortal Politician(s) didn’t? (we only KNOW of Kukulcan, but there might be others not yet revealed in-comic) … i think i have the glimmer of a theory that goes something like this: May and other Time Keepers (TK’s) created the CM. during the unveiling ceremony with all the major TK’s and the major Immortal Politicians (IP’s) +Jin were present. POOF, they become immortal (but probably don’t KNOW yet until later when they notice they aren’t aging anymore) now, TK’s being science geeks could prolly care less about who’s in charge, just as long as they can continue their experiments, right?… however: the IP’s.. boy do they have a quandary… Who’s gonna assume the reins of power? so they get to fighting over it, they either recruit some of the TK’s and the other IP’s factions take them out, or maybe the mortal’s take them out because they thought that they were behind, or at least providing support for the various plots the IP’s were cooking up. either that or the leading IP’s “knew” that they had to play along and “die” every once in a while, so they WEREN’T killed by the mobs of mortals, but the TK’s were too unconcerned or even unKNOWing about the stresses that being immortal placed on their relations with the mortal mob, and they got killed off because of it.
it seems to me that the Matriarchy was overthrown by the Patriarchal theocracy that was possibly one of the plots of a particularly nasty IP… and it took May some time to figure out the Golemization process for her to have enough power in order to retrieve then to destroy CM, even though it would mess up Jin again (remember she was still an immortal young girl at that point) and if she was successful, well then, the IP that was in charge would suddenly lose his power base, and the Matriarchy could take back the power they lost, and May could continue with alternate means to fix Jin’s mental issues.
too bad it didn’t work that way.
Hi all. I’m back! I have a bunch of stuff to read to catch up, but I have to ask…
…has someone taken over my post as supreme breaker of da interwebz, or is the centering of comments now manditory?
😀
Mine aren’t centered–so it must just be you in your official capacity.
😉
I would think that Bud and Brandi were in shutdown mode but Jin has always been autonomous to the system. Most likely an additive her mom put into her clay form or the calendar event that took May to the Demon Realm.
I also think that the ones setting up under the sea were most likely against the priesthood and their takeover, as well as the chimera’s creation, and were forming a breakaway republic of sorts to keep the memory and technology of Lanthis alive when the Priests finally would blow.
Yumpin’ Yimminee!… i literally *just* saw the title for today’s strip… “the wrong folks”… looks like we MIGHT be getting some more info as pertains to this comic: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/plans-in-place/
… the calendar is destroyed, but the politicians are not golems like the girls, May, and Tepoz.
So… are they aging now, but might not know it?