I think she’s been planning this long enough that she’s kept a loaded flintlock pistol around “just in case”. Caplock guns have been around since the 1830’s, so this has been awhile in the planning.
Nice detail on the gun firing Paul. Love the flash from the pan as the main charge goes off. The few times I’ve fired a flintlock, I’ve always had trouble holding steady for the split second it takes for the pan to ignite the main charge.
It also gave them that extra second to react between the time she pulled the trigger and the ball left the barrel. They might not have made it had she used a modern weapon.
OK not like we didn’t see that coming. She may be “cured”, but remember that one of the initial side effects of anti-depressants is the depressed person actually gets enough motivation to be able to kill themselves before they get over the depression.
I’m not entirely sure I agree with you–I interpret the look on her face in panel 2 as curiosity. But then I have been known, on the odd occasion, to be quite wrong.
Research has shown that discharging a muzzle-loading firearm in your mouth is hazardous. Those puppies are LOUD! At the very least you’re going to die deaf. And then you’ll spend the afterlife yelling *Pardon?*, and you won’t enjoy it at all.
That’s what I initially thought as well. The look on her face in the second panel looks more like an inquisitive look instead of joy that she can kill herself now.
I agree with inquisitive. Jin has live a long time immune to pains from bumps, bruises, bullets, etc. The pain she felt was a new sensation to her. SO she wanted to experiement with it. I believe that she did not think it would actually harm her. She just wanted to see what it felt like. She propbabaly has had it around a long time. She may even have tried to use it many times and it failed each time.
There’s a several year old issue of Superman where he has lost his powers and burns himself making dinner by trying to pick something straight off the stove without potholders. Lois turns to him and says “Clark–hot!”
Jin is probably still in the “high” of having come back and her brain hasn’t quite kicked back into gear.
I think it’s kinda both.
She’s like, “Hmm… I wonder if…” and in her head thinking, “Omigosh, it could really WORK this time!! EEEEE!! XD”
Yeah, after living as long as she has, going though all that suffering, and wishing you could die for most of that time… I’m not surprised she’s not the least bit solemn when it comes to an act like this.
She’s like, “Alright!! Let’s do this thing already!!”
You know, I think you have a point. After all, didn’t she tell Alan that she wanted to grow old and die. That’s something entirely different than suicidal…that’s just wanting to have an expiration date.
Yes but we had to wait for Friday of course for Paul to give us the customary weekend cliffhanger. Although a cliffhanger would have been ending it at the inset and leaving us hanging to see the rest of panel 2.
Yup. A rather intensive bit of therapy is needed to help her get over millennia of being guilt-ridden, but only kept going because she wanted to fix the damage the chimera had done.
It’s either guilt, or utter boredom, that she wants to ” get out “
I’m not entirely sure that Bud or May had thought about fixing the “I’m ready to die” part of Jin. They were only working on her crazy…erm…the not-suicidal part of her crazy.
Looks like she wants to test if she’s really mortal….. I wonder if she ever thought to just trying to get a paper cut instead… much less of a mess to clean up afterwards. 😛 🙂
yeah…. I missed that comic… but you have to admit attempted suicide by paper cut is a much less messy affair than by musket ball…. for one paper cuts don’t put a hole in ceiling…. 😛 🙂
Well, it might be more expensive, considering how much paper costs, and the fact you would most likely use up several reams. And it would take a long time.
I’m not certain, but I think Bud had her back to Jin. This lends creedence to the notion (as expressed by MistressPounce) that she was thrown/pushed by May. Note, May is also the one who called out. Bud’s arms are also just straight out, as if trying to break her fall, not on Jin somewhere as they would be were she trying to grab her gun away.
What the hqiz? What the flapping scrith? No, all is not well in Zion, children. Stay tuned for more brain-withering confusion, same time, same channel.
If the glyph is indeed “active”, then, in Jin’s case, it almost seems to be “active like toddler”. She, like a child, is full of child-like observations, questions and curiosity.. re: “what does this thing (gun) do/feel like?”
Well, without a way of monitoring Jin remotely, I hope May has a way of switching her poiting power off. No stopping her if she wants to place herself inside the Earth’s mantle, you know.
That’s the glyph Monica’s face light made when she was channeling Mayahuel, specifically. Jin actually called it May’s sign, so this may be more than just a programming change from altering a word.
It’s not a shotgun, that would be a flintlock pistol firing a very large ball ammunition. Usually on the order of 50 caliber. That would be 1/2 an inch in diameter. (I’m assuming it’s a flintlock as I can’t actually see the end of the lock mechanism.)
Well Jin is rich and has been around along time to collect arms from the ages she has lived through. Her penthouse is most likely a museum of weapons and armor.
I know suicide isn’t funny, but the odd-ball look of Jin, and that flintlock.. I dunno..it made me giggle… A blunderbuss, triggered with her toe would be the only thing topping this weirdness…
By the by..wow..Bud has good reflexes!
Aand, it may be that Jin is still determined to kill herself for failing to stop the chimera.
Trick is now to get someone in to convince her there are people around her that happen to like her very much, and they would be devastated, without heaping onto her already considerable sense of guilt.
Or just wipe that extra glyph. Seems to me that May is saying the key fixed her crazy but she provided new parameters (mentioned yesterday) by adding that extra glyph.
yep, you know how buggy new driver code gets just in today’s computers… now think of the bugs that a golem’s OS can develop, on a CPU that has enough processing power to run an A.I. program, plus all the “other” stuff it needs to simulate a real person, weapons systems, poiting, etc, etc. etc… AND, it’s one that hasn’t been hard rebooted in over 82650 years?
no, Jin wants to kill herself because she’s tired of living…
remember she’s the ONLY one, other than the new version of Shelly (and she doesn’t really count because she was also elsewhere the entire time), that has REALLY truly LIVED thru all 56 Calendar Machine resets + this loop, May was in the demon realm that time doesn’t affect, Phix is also “outside” of time, and she’s just gotten SOOO tired of the inanity of life, she just wants it to end…
the reason she looks “funny” is because she’s crossing her eyes to properly see the trigger mechanism, and the end of the barrel at the same time to ensure the correct aiming of said gun… it could be a CAP-lock pistol as well, they are basically the same construction, but the seal around where the primer cap is fitted isn’t very gas-tight, and would make a nice big flash like that as well; the difference being that in a flintlock the little pan where the gunpowder sits would indeed have been dumped to the floor the way she was holding it, practically up-side down, but the cap-lock version there is no external pan with gunpowder in it, and it is set off when the hammer hits a small primer cap very similar to today’s kiddie cap guns with the little red plastic thimbles for ammo, it sits on a nipple with a hole thru it into the main charge, but when fired, the seal isn’t very tight and a flash could be seen coming back out the tiny hole.
at least this is infinitely more believable than Capt. Jack Sparrow’s single-shot pistol after he took at least 2 dips in the ocean with it and you NEVER see him reload it either. believe me, those things are NOT watertight!! YET IT STILL FIRES PERFECTLY!!! not to mention the reload time on cannons and guns back then, yet the movies show them as almost machine-gun-like in the rapidity of how quickly they can be fired again.
so give Paul some slack… it’s “artistic license” for the powder-flash to appear either way… 😉
Jin could have had one handcrafted by a modern gunsmith out of her pin money, left it loaded in a still undiscovered compartment in the Great Sphinx of Giza, and then summoned it into her hand.
have they discovered any compartments in the Sphinx? i know they discovered a tiny door at the top end of the “air vent” in the Queen’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid, but i don’t know about anything found at the Sphinx.
It looks to be a 19th-century flintlock to me–a caplock wouldn’t have the external spring visible to the observer’s left of the barrel in panel 2. That spring holds the pan cover in position over the priming pan so the primer charge won’t get wet or fall out. The frizzen (the piece of metal the flint scrapes against is attached to the hinged pan cover, and the flint scraping against the frizzen when the trigger is pulled swings the pan cover out of the way and lets the sparks hit the priming charge. A flintlock probably wouldn’t fire if held completely upside down, but would fire if more-or-less vertical (the powder doesn’t have time to fall out of the pan before it’s ignited by the sparks from the flint scraping against the frizzen). “Lock time” delay for a flintlock is typically anywhere from 1/20 to 1/4 second, although the standard safety procedure in case of a misfire is to keep the weapon pointed down-range for a minimum of 10 seconds before trying to reprime or otherwise deal with the misfire.
Fairportfan- I’ve heard that they actually did fire the weapons for some of the work. Remember special effects were in the very beginning of development. The man who played the indian/english halfbreed was a noted black powder marksman in the late 60’s I’ve been told.
Heck–by the 1870s or so (era of many Westerns), they apparently had 36-shot revolvers, judging by how often you saw someone reload in a major gunfight.
Well, at least one company made a twelve-shot 36-caliber revolver (more or less what we’d call a .38 today – the actual diameter of a “.38” round is .357–.358 inches (9.0678 mm); 9mm, .38 and .357 are the same diameter round, though they vary widely in bullet weight and power…
Wait a minute! Oh Paul…you got some ‘splaining to do.
If that was a flintlock, the powder would have fallen out of the pan when it was held vertical. And a percussion cap wouldn’t have a pan to cause that flash cloud when it fired. So which is it?
The best flintlocks were so fast and well made you *could* fire them upside down, and they didn’t have that annoying “Daniel Boone” hang-fire either.
I doubt Jin would settle for anything but the very best.
Here is a fairly good explination of how a flintlock pisto works in case anyone is interested. http://science.howstuffworks.com/flintlock2.htm
Looking at the drawing just before she fires the gun it looks like the pan and frizen are visable just in front of the lock.
I recognized the song right away. I learned to play it on the piano 35 years ago and would even occassionaly sing the lyrics. Most people thought I had made up the words when they heard them because they couldn’t believe that a song about suicide would be used for a theme song.
Interesting how much of the original “Golem”-Myth will appear. By adding or wiping a hebrew letter, Rabbi Loew destroyed his own creation changing the meaning of the spell that kept the golem alive from LIVE to DEATH.
Now is the time for bud to get Alan. He is the one of the only ones that might get her to accept her new ‘gift’. The others that might help her are Phix, Shelly and maybe Monica. Phix and Shelly have also been around thru-out the C.M. resets after all and can understand the insanity of seeing it happen so many times and feeling helpless from it.
Shelly might not be a good choice: “I died fifty-five friggin’ times and spent eighty thousand years in solitary to get that friggin’ widget, and you ABSOLUTELY ARE NOT gonna use it to check out early!”
Hrm. If I’m recalling correctly, it was after. I think it runs:
1) May has Jin.
2) May shows up in Lanthis (golem already).
3) Builds calendar machine. Everyone in room (including Jin) becomes immortal.
4?) Notices Jin goes a bit bonkers somehow because of said machine.
5) Attempts to shut down/destroy Calendar, ends up sucked into Demon realm.
6) Lanthian priests start capturing girls.
7) Jin wages one-girl war on priests, trying to sabotage project. Gets captured (lets self get captured?)
8) Jin kills self.
9) Formation of the Chimera, which promptly runs off and blasts Lanthis into cinders.
10) “Someone” teases girls apart, relocates surviving Lanthians (maybe same people? Different?) Tepoz is put in charge of girls.
11) Long time later, Tina is killed, Monica is almost killed, Shelly is almost killed…
A couple of things. She didn’t make the golems, the preists did from her recipie, so the results may vary somewhat from package illustration. Also, according to the dialog, it takes both the symbol and the key to do the job. The symbol to activate the correct “code” and the key to provide the energy to make it so.
Actually, the way it’s drawn, it is kind of cute. Also Paul impresses me yet again for providing another totally unexpected scene. It’s made all the more poignent, however, by the fact she tried it so soon after discovering her seeming mortality.
True, but worse still, she might be terribly injured and can’t die, just in great pain. In fact, I wonder what would have happened if she had shot herself? Would she have a big hole in her head, yet still alive and in agony? She has a life span now, but that doesn’t mean she can die of some other cause in the mean time. It may simply mean she has an expiry clock now. At the appointed time, she will just keel over and cease to exist.
Jimminy Chistmas Jin!! D8
… Where did that gun come from any way? Has she been toting it around all this time just waiting for a chance to kill herself? Or has she been shooting herself for years just for kicks when she gets bored? She was indestructible then, so it obviously wasn’t for self-defense and we all know she didn’t need a gun to kill someone.
Well anyway, crazy cliffhanger Paul. I agree with Jay-Em up above. Suicide isn’t funny, but the panel with Jin pointing the gun at herself it just so over the top and absurd, you kinda can’t help giggling.
Especially when you see it for the first time. The reaction is like, “WOAH!! Hold on Jin!!”
The universe should REWARD Jin for what she has done.
It has done so.
She now seems to be human (within rules) and has what she wants.
I don’t know if her relationship with Alan will survive. I don’t know if she won’t be run over by a bus tomorrow. All I know is that she has the chance happier than she has been for a while.
Her killing herself will not bring her that.
I suspect her suicide attempt is possibly because she is trying it before she ‘looses’ her human side again.
Those are good points. The universe only rewards survivors, however. If they make it to the top, it even rewards them with a glimpse of it’s inner workings. Not to mention their inner workings.
Yes, she may be in a “use it or lose it” mentality, taking advantage of her seeming mortality right away just to be sure.
If she were real, now would be the time to make her realize there is something she has never experienced first hand, despite being over 80K years old. Being a wife and mother(adoption) and growing old (maybe) with someone you love deeply. At the least, not having to go on for long after his death, assuming her new lifespan is less than 100 years.
Jin does look kinda cute being a bit cross-eyed looking down the gun barrel, and just for a second there i was wondering if its just a crazy moment of “monkey picks up shiny gun and looks down barrel”.
But as i dont think Jin would have a loaded gun at home .. even tho its a nice decorative display item .. she does get visits from mortals who could get hurt.
So im guessing the gun came from “internal storage” and the way she grips the gun .. cant really be mistaken as accidental im afraid.
Before I parsed the drawing I thought Jin was pulling something big out of her mouth – internal storage like Bud’s. Then of course I saw it was a gun and thought “uh-oh…”
Somehow I think there may be a few more bugs to work out. May is definitely mad scientist material – brilliant, but never considers any deeper than first order effects and consequences. Actually thinking something thru is totally alien to her.
This is a common and perfectly valid approach when tinkering. You fix the problem at hand first. If it turns out to have side effects, you go on to fix those.
That’s called the eiterative method of engineering. Keep making one change at a time until all the bugs are out, in systems that are mission-critical and that can be tested sufficiently and safely it is the preferred method of development.
Is there a specific grammar rule that decides whether an “A” or an “An” is used before a letter? As in, “an L” as opposed to “a L” or “a B” as opposed to “an B?”
“An orange” – the “A” migrated in that one. The original name of the fruit in English was “norange”, deriving from the Spanish “anaranjado” (or something like that).
So “a norange”.
Awkward to say, so the “n” jumped across the space…
I wondered because that could give a clue to the pronunciation of the eyeball looking Lanthian character. There seem to be so many exceptions and vagaries, however, even that clue is not reliable.
I also feel a bit stupid for not realizing that “A vs. An” was what I needed to google to find out for myself. Having a senior citizen moment when you’re still a freshman citizen is worrisome.
Well, if suffocating in the Pun Jar is to be my fate, I can’t claim it’s not a deserved one. Many of my friends, and most of my family would probably say it’s many years overdue. All I can do is accept it with quiet dignity and grace (as Dr. Frankenstein put it), and blame it all on Bill Scott and Jay Ward.
I will, however, insist on one thing. The music at the wake must include a recording of the Glasstown United church choir, singing that stirring hymn Gloria! An Asphyxis Day, Oh!.
DAVE- Beats head slowly against back of couch in confusion corner 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, turns and deposits 5 quarters into pun jar. Checks roledex for semi retired assassins, makes call.
Hello Eric have I got a sick sense of humor that needs killing here. Oh man your wife likes Dave’s humor? well dang! Ok, just wound him a little? No, dang! Thanks man.
Sits an cries, I tried.
We should note that “fix” is a very poor choice of words here – no reflection on Pablo, because it’s used this way all over the English-speaking world. We use “fix” to indicate “repair,” but in a purer sense, it means “to make static.” Think of fixative in pastel drawings; think of fixing a butterfly to a board with a pin; think of getting a fix on your location. The only way a living being – golem, human being, animal, whatever – can be fixed is to kill it. Jin seems intent on fixing herself, in a completely different way than May had in mind. For every suicide, the fix is two-fold – to repair everything that’s wrong with their lives, and to render themselves non-living, even if only unintentionally.
Here, I thought that Jin had discovered the great gift of mortality, that we are given limited time so we must appreciate the blessings we’re given all the more. Instead, it looks like long life – virtual immortality – has become an affliction, and one to be removed as soon as possible. Couldn’t be done before, but now that she’s “fixed,” oh boy, let the last act get underway.
We thank you for your well considered arguments concerning the usage of the term “fix.’ While we appreciate your views on the subject, we have, by nearly unanimous consent (there’s always one), decided to reject them on the grounds that such a narrow interpretation would seriously restrict our usage of the term “Phix” in future poorly considered puns.
Please do not consider this a failure on your part, but rather a collective raspberry on our part.
Sincerely;
Prunella Downspout, Chairperson
C. R. A. P. (Council for the Rationalization of Atrocious Puns)
Poor Jin. However, we should not be surprised that she attempted to do this. This comic, September 15, 2009 blissful shows why Jin would want to die. Another one is 2008-01-31-dealwiththiscrap. Finally the one that really made me sure Jin was serious :=( The real clincher is muzzle loaders have to be regularly unloaded and reloaded because the powder-charge gets damp. So she had to have reloaded that gun very recently. It is a flintlock in my estimation, because the side of the gun sticks out far enough to suggest a pan, a percussion-lock would not have a pan.
I like how Bud’s calves are drawn in this one. She does have racehorse legs! Suicide, though it solves the problems of the person who commits suicide, is hell on family and friends of the suicide. Jin was not thinking of her mother or her boyfriend and how it would devastate them.
Not really apropos of anything, old flintlocks were fairly often re-tooled with caplock mechanisms. Not all by any means, but it was a common upgrade at one time and it was cheaper than buying a new gun. There’s no reason Jin couldn’t have pretty much any gadget laying around.
The pan and the steel were usually replaced during the conversion from flintlock to percussion lock, not always, but commonly. An example of a conversion. I’m going to go with Occam’s razor and assume it is a flintlock and not a conversion until further evidence is forthcoming.
Methinks Mayahuel may not have been aware of just how much Jin has wanted to die, and just how long she’s been unable to die. Then again, perhaps not, since she didn’t bide her time until she was alone– two people with capability to stop her, right there.
In response to another comment I can’t seem to find, I wonder if Mayahuel COULD ‘wipe’ the new glyph. Would that interfere with underlying programming glyphs? Would the dip left do anything, positive or negative? Can’t exactly add more clay, even with slip. The girls have already been baked.
I have noticed that there are a number of problems with links to previous Wapsi Square strips:
1) Paul is very prolific – he has produced about WS 2500 strips since his first almost exactly 10 years ago.
2) Wapsi Square is very interesting, engaging and complex – there is so much going on that it is impossible to remember it all let alone the details.
3) It is impossible to go back and view just one – due to #2 it sometimes feels like reading it for the first time.
Thanks to a couple of the above links I just spent way too many (but enjoyable), hours rereading about 3 years of WS. (And I STILL can’t remember it all!!!
Anyway, I ran across a few strips that may add some help (or fuel!) to the discussion about Jin wanting to grow old or to die now as well as instances of the “eye” symbol:
06-25-08: Grow Old – Tepoztecal quote
[There’s another one of Jin telling Alan that she wants to grow old and die but I can’t find it now.]
Oh, THAT’S not going to be a fun thing to have to constantly watch her for! 🙁
Actually, it’ll be fun for us.
Dear God. Jin meant it when she said she wanted to die.
Silly Jin. A hatchet to the head is what all the young juggalos are using these days.
God! I’ll be so glad when that stupid ad has run it’s course. It’s sooo annoying!
Firefox + AdBlock is your friend.
Oh, absolutely. I always use AdBlock.
Or Opera with a good Blocked Content list.
I think she’s been planning this long enough that she’s kept a loaded flintlock pistol around “just in case”. Caplock guns have been around since the 1830’s, so this has been awhile in the planning.
Nice detail on the gun firing Paul. Love the flash from the pan as the main charge goes off. The few times I’ve fired a flintlock, I’ve always had trouble holding steady for the split second it takes for the pan to ignite the main charge.
“FssBOOM”
It also gave them that extra second to react between the time she pulled the trigger and the ball left the barrel. They might not have made it had she used a modern weapon.
OK not like we didn’t see that coming. She may be “cured”, but remember that one of the initial side effects of anti-depressants is the depressed person actually gets enough motivation to be able to kill themselves before they get over the depression.
I’m not entirely sure I agree with you–I interpret the look on her face in panel 2 as curiosity. But then I have been known, on the odd occasion, to be quite wrong.
It sure looks like curiosity to me… albeit adorable curiosity.
“I wonder if this will kill me.”
Oh, right! The OTHER thing is my electric toothbrush….
LOL!
Research has shown that discharging a muzzle-loading firearm in your mouth is hazardous. Those puppies are LOUD! At the very least you’re going to die deaf. And then you’ll spend the afterlife yelling *Pardon?*, and you won’t enjoy it at all.
There used to be a blatantly non-PC joke about that sort of thing:
http://www.coolblondejokes.com/FunnyJokes/Suicide.shtml
No, May. She is not fixed. Not at all…
Then again, she might just be trying to perform a mortality test. She’s been unbreakable for so long, perhaps she does not recognize the danger…
That’s what I initially thought as well. The look on her face in the second panel looks more like an inquisitive look instead of joy that she can kill herself now.
I agree with inquisitive. Jin has live a long time immune to pains from bumps, bruises, bullets, etc. The pain she felt was a new sensation to her. SO she wanted to experiement with it. I believe that she did not think it would actually harm her. She just wanted to see what it felt like. She propbabaly has had it around a long time. She may even have tried to use it many times and it failed each time.
well…. If I was in her situation, I would just aim at my leg or chest…
what do you think??? or has Jin tried that previously??? 😛
Well, there was that time she ruined a perfectly good kitchen knife.
There’s a several year old issue of Superman where he has lost his powers and burns himself making dinner by trying to pick something straight off the stove without potholders. Lois turns to him and says “Clark–hot!”
Jin is probably still in the “high” of having come back and her brain hasn’t quite kicked back into gear.
yeah, my opinion likes that way. “Oh that hurt, Does that Mean I can die too?” Totally forgetting the fact that death is. well. Final.
Innocent chase of information gone horribly wrong. ^_^;. That’s Jin for you.
/agreed 🙂
I don’t know. The results of such a test are rather final. I think she’s just happily ending it all, hoping it will work and damn the consequences.
Yes, it is deliciously unclear…perfect for a Friday cliffhanger!
I think it’s kinda both.
She’s like, “Hmm… I wonder if…” and in her head thinking, “Omigosh, it could really WORK this time!! EEEEE!! XD”
Yeah, after living as long as she has, going though all that suffering, and wishing you could die for most of that time… I’m not surprised she’s not the least bit solemn when it comes to an act like this.
She’s like, “Alright!! Let’s do this thing already!!”
OTOH, maybe that’s just how she usually gets food out from between her teeth. Or she has another thing just like it that’s actually a Pez dispenser.
SoWhyMe: ROFL! one hell of a toothpick… 🙂
You know, I think you have a point. After all, didn’t she tell Alan that she wanted to grow old and die. That’s something entirely different than suicidal…that’s just wanting to have an expiration date.
OH! OH!
That is disturbing.
Poor Jin.
One feels that – just perhaps – Jin isn’t quite as “fixed” as May and Bud thought…
Yes but we had to wait for Friday of course for Paul to give us the customary weekend cliffhanger. Although a cliffhanger would have been ending it at the inset and leaving us hanging to see the rest of panel 2.
Yup. A rather intensive bit of therapy is needed to help her get over millennia of being guilt-ridden, but only kept going because she wanted to fix the damage the chimera had done.
It’s either guilt, or utter boredom, that she wants to ” get out “
but it is a bit extreme / stupid.. now if you were like her, you would (maybe?) survive it, BUT you would not be able to see the wound that easily.. 😛
At least shoot your head near the front, so you can see the massive wound in the mirror, in all it’s glory… 🙂 🙂
Those evil, nasty golems!
Jin finally gets to achieve her dream, realize her real goal in life, and they brutally take it away from her!!!
…
……
…what?
I’m not entirely sure that Bud or May had thought about fixing the “I’m ready to die” part of Jin. They were only working on her crazy…erm…the not-suicidal part of her crazy.
Looks like she wants to test if she’s really mortal….. I wonder if she ever thought to just trying to get a paper cut instead… much less of a mess to clean up afterwards. 😛 🙂
well she already knew she bleeds.
yeah…. I missed that comic… but you have to admit attempted suicide by paper cut is a much less messy affair than by musket ball…. for one paper cuts don’t put a hole in ceiling…. 😛 🙂
Well, it might be more expensive, considering how much paper costs, and the fact you would most likely use up several reams. And it would take a long time.
Two thoughts:
(A) Bud is fast.
(B) Get Alan in here, stat.
C) She still needs a glass of water.
….
And yeah, Bud is fast.
4.) Yay, Bud!
erm, make that “D.)”, but, well…. you get the idea.
Not only fast, but situationally aware. She was talking to Maya while still keeping tabs on what Jin was doing.
She’s GOOD…
I’m not certain, but I think Bud had her back to Jin. This lends creedence to the notion (as expressed by MistressPounce) that she was thrown/pushed by May. Note, May is also the one who called out. Bud’s arms are also just straight out, as if trying to break her fall, not on Jin somewhere as they would be were she trying to grab her gun away.
Oh, that’s right, she wants to kill herself.
What the hqiz? What the flapping scrith? No, all is not well in Zion, children. Stay tuned for more brain-withering confusion, same time, same channel.
So what is the significance of the glyph she carved? Thoughts?
Given the context in which it has been used, I’m betting it’s Lanthian for “open” or “active”.
True. It was part of the unlock command to activate Shelly’s tattoo in the temple (Bud also activated it when it had turned invisible…see wiki page), and also part of the command Monica gave Bud in the cellar that got her talking about how they were originally made…
If the glyph is indeed “active”, then, in Jin’s case, it almost seems to be “active like toddler”. She, like a child, is full of child-like observations, questions and curiosity.. re: “what does this thing (gun) do/feel like?”
Start here, and keep going.
And… considering their psychic link, maybe someone should be checking on Monica too.
Or you could even start a few episodes earlier, if you really want the chills.
I don’t think we have to worry about Monica. The psychic link disappeared when Jin’s demons got punished. Paul mentioned it in the comments somewhere.
And there is a “key” inside Mon as well.
Well, without a way of monitoring Jin remotely, I hope May has a way of switching her poiting power off. No stopping her if she wants to place herself inside the Earth’s mantle, you know.
NOPE… AFAIK she has to have been there, actually seen it, to be able to poit there… 🙂
Or at least into any volcano she can see on Google Earth.
She probably knows of one already. I suspect she’s tried that at some time. She may have even inspected the inside of the sun.
yes, if you are that invulnerable, but after it warms you up, it gets a bit boring, seeing only bright convection currents…
and when you poit back incinerating anything near you for a while… unless it cancels ALL energy out, including motion..
It’s the one that Monica’s facelight makes…
Sunshine….
…on my shoullllders….. makes me happeeeeeee!
Two for bad punning.
And it’s rather obvious what it looks like: (0) = Power On button. 😉
Looks like an eyeball to me.
Oh, the things i could do with that.
But this is supposed to be PG…
^^@Fairportfan I know exactly what you are thinking and shame on you! 😛
That’s the glyph Monica’s face light made when she was channeling Mayahuel, specifically. Jin actually called it May’s sign, so this may be more than just a programming change from altering a word.
Ooh, good point 🙂
I seriously hope Jin doesn’t have any upstairs neighbors. And if she does, hopefully they aren’t home.
She lives in the penthouse of an up-scale apartment building in DT Minneapolis, if memory serves.
or it could be ‘occupiers’ in her head… she may be trying to flush them out!! :O
BTW, is that an 18th-century musket pistol she’s using? Where did THAT come from? So many questions, and only the weekend to speculate!
She probably bought it in person during that time period.
What the hell?! Someone just happened to have a sawn-off shotgun just lying around?! O_O
It’s not a shotgun, that would be a flintlock pistol firing a very large ball ammunition. Usually on the order of 50 caliber. That would be 1/2 an inch in diameter. (I’m assuming it’s a flintlock as I can’t actually see the end of the lock mechanism.)
Oh, my bad. So I should have been screaming “Someone just happened to have a flint-lock just lying around?!” instead 😉
Well Jin is rich and has been around along time to collect arms from the ages she has lived through. Her penthouse is most likely a museum of weapons and armor.
Whatever the gun, it would have been VERY bad 😉
Good thing that flintlocks are only good for one shot before having to reload the gun… imagine Jin having a Glock 18C with a 33 Round Clip o_O
I know suicide isn’t funny, but the odd-ball look of Jin, and that flintlock.. I dunno..it made me giggle… A blunderbuss, triggered with her toe would be the only thing topping this weirdness…
By the by..wow..Bud has good reflexes!
Aand, it may be that Jin is still determined to kill herself for failing to stop the chimera.
Trick is now to get someone in to convince her there are people around her that happen to like her very much, and they would be devastated, without heaping onto her already considerable sense of guilt.
Or just wipe that extra glyph. Seems to me that May is saying the key fixed her crazy but she provided new parameters (mentioned yesterday) by adding that extra glyph.
yep, you know how buggy new driver code gets just in today’s computers… now think of the bugs that a golem’s OS can develop, on a CPU that has enough processing power to run an A.I. program, plus all the “other” stuff it needs to simulate a real person, weapons systems, poiting, etc, etc. etc… AND, it’s one that hasn’t been hard rebooted in over 82650 years?
Yep, this entire scene is just a much more sophisticated version of this stuff. With teleporting indestructible robots, to boost the creepy up a lot.
…you REALLY don’t want to see a GolemOS BSOD.
no, Jin wants to kill herself because she’s tired of living…
remember she’s the ONLY one, other than the new version of Shelly (and she doesn’t really count because she was also elsewhere the entire time), that has REALLY truly LIVED thru all 56 Calendar Machine resets + this loop, May was in the demon realm that time doesn’t affect, Phix is also “outside” of time, and she’s just gotten SOOO tired of the inanity of life, she just wants it to end…
the reason she looks “funny” is because she’s crossing her eyes to properly see the trigger mechanism, and the end of the barrel at the same time to ensure the correct aiming of said gun… it could be a CAP-lock pistol as well, they are basically the same construction, but the seal around where the primer cap is fitted isn’t very gas-tight, and would make a nice big flash like that as well; the difference being that in a flintlock the little pan where the gunpowder sits would indeed have been dumped to the floor the way she was holding it, practically up-side down, but the cap-lock version there is no external pan with gunpowder in it, and it is set off when the hammer hits a small primer cap very similar to today’s kiddie cap guns with the little red plastic thimbles for ammo, it sits on a nipple with a hole thru it into the main charge, but when fired, the seal isn’t very tight and a flash could be seen coming back out the tiny hole.
at least this is infinitely more believable than Capt. Jack Sparrow’s single-shot pistol after he took at least 2 dips in the ocean with it and you NEVER see him reload it either. believe me, those things are NOT watertight!! YET IT STILL FIRES PERFECTLY!!! not to mention the reload time on cannons and guns back then, yet the movies show them as almost machine-gun-like in the rapidity of how quickly they can be fired again.
so give Paul some slack… it’s “artistic license” for the powder-flash to appear either way… 😉
He was able to shoot it because he was Captain Jack Sparrow 🙂
Jin could have had one handcrafted by a modern gunsmith out of her pin money, left it loaded in a still undiscovered compartment in the Great Sphinx of Giza, and then summoned it into her hand.
So yeah, all kind of beside the point.
have they discovered any compartments in the Sphinx? i know they discovered a tiny door at the top end of the “air vent” in the Queen’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid, but i don’t know about anything found at the Sphinx.
It looks to be a 19th-century flintlock to me–a caplock wouldn’t have the external spring visible to the observer’s left of the barrel in panel 2. That spring holds the pan cover in position over the priming pan so the primer charge won’t get wet or fall out. The frizzen (the piece of metal the flint scrapes against is attached to the hinged pan cover, and the flint scraping against the frizzen when the trigger is pulled swings the pan cover out of the way and lets the sparks hit the priming charge. A flintlock probably wouldn’t fire if held completely upside down, but would fire if more-or-less vertical (the powder doesn’t have time to fall out of the pan before it’s ignited by the sparks from the flint scraping against the frizzen). “Lock time” delay for a flintlock is typically anywhere from 1/20 to 1/4 second, although the standard safety procedure in case of a misfire is to keep the weapon pointed down-range for a minimum of 10 seconds before trying to reprime or otherwise deal with the misfire.
I loved that they got it more-or-less right on the ld Fess Parker “Daniel Boone” show – pull trigger, “Poof!” from pan … then “Bang!”
umm – “the old”
Fairportfan- I’ve heard that they actually did fire the weapons for some of the work. Remember special effects were in the very beginning of development. The man who played the indian/english halfbreed was a noted black powder marksman in the late 60’s I’ve been told.
Heck–by the 1870s or so (era of many Westerns), they apparently had 36-shot revolvers, judging by how often you saw someone reload in a major gunfight.
Well, at least one company made a twelve-shot 36-caliber revolver (more or less what we’d call a .38 today – the actual diameter of a “.38” round is .357–.358 inches (9.0678 mm); 9mm, .38 and .357 are the same diameter round, though they vary widely in bullet weight and power…
Wait a minute! Oh Paul…you got some ‘splaining to do.
If that was a flintlock, the powder would have fallen out of the pan when it was held vertical. And a percussion cap wouldn’t have a pan to cause that flash cloud when it fired. So which is it?
The priming charge wouldn’t fall out till the flint hits the battery and lifts the frizzen.
Depending on how the pan is shaped and where the touch-hole is, the back of the pan might retain the powder.
Still a little unlikely.
i think it’s a cap-lock, reasons given above. see my above comment, i don’t want to repeat it here.
If it’s a caplock it’s a conversion, because the frizzen and pan are visible in the one panel, and the hammer is (mostly) visible in the last.
There’s no way a caplock would make that big a flash, nor would it be a fireball like that one.
Can I just say, that comment fits perfectly with your avatar. 😀
The best flintlocks were so fast and well made you *could* fire them upside down, and they didn’t have that annoying “Daniel Boone” hang-fire either.
I doubt Jin would settle for anything but the very best.
Here is a fairly good explination of how a flintlock pisto works in case anyone is interested. http://science.howstuffworks.com/flintlock2.htm
Looking at the drawing just before she fires the gun it looks like the pan and frizen are visable just in front of the lock.
Holy merciful mother of crap!
So now, Jin has proved that her bucket list included kicking the bucket.
They’ve got to put something else on that list.
Jin, Jin, Jin… there are so many more ways to experience (delightful) pain…
the game of life is hard to play. i’m gonna lose it anyway
the losing card i’ll someday lay so this is all i have to say:
that suicide is painless
it brings so many changes
and i can take or leave it if i please…
aren’t those the words to the theme song for M.A.S.H. ?
Why yes it is, at least for the exit theme of the film (a classic if there ever was one)
Yea the song was perfect for that film/series really.
Lovely sounding song until you realise what they are singing about and the creepyness sets in…
Heh. Lyric by a fourteen-year-old, Mike Altman (tune by Johnny Mandel).
Robert Altman got $70,000 for directing M*A*S*H.
His son made about a million in royalties on the song.
The mint from that show’s syndication royalties must be huge…
I recognized the song right away. I learned to play it on the piano 35 years ago and would even occassionaly sing the lyrics. Most people thought I had made up the words when they heard them because they couldn’t believe that a song about suicide would be used for a theme song.
Then there is Painless’ suicide attempt in the movie, which starts with a Last Supper tableau, and ends with Painless getting “cured.”
Black Pill.
“But, you’re throwing away your whole education”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gO7uemm6Yo
Interesting how much of the original “Golem”-Myth will appear. By adding or wiping a hebrew letter, Rabbi Loew destroyed his own creation changing the meaning of the spell that kept the golem alive from LIVE to DEATH.
Now is the time for bud to get Alan. He is the one of the only ones that might get her to accept her new ‘gift’. The others that might help her are Phix, Shelly and maybe Monica. Phix and Shelly have also been around thru-out the C.M. resets after all and can understand the insanity of seeing it happen so many times and feeling helpless from it.
Shelly might not be a good choice: “I died fifty-five friggin’ times and spent eighty thousand years in solitary to get that friggin’ widget, and you ABSOLUTELY ARE NOT gonna use it to check out early!”
Good point.
I dunno – that might make her a good choice.
I thought about that too. But Shelly is part Sphinx. maybe that helps her deal with long stretches of time with no company…
If you want to be accurate it is not the sphinx in her that got her though it, it was CG and Phix, and long stretches of forgetfulness.
Someone’s got a really bad case of “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore” methinks… :/
So does that mean to turn back into human May just needs to carve that glyph into Bud and Brandi?
Would make sence I spose. I mean May MADE the golems, would make sence for her glyph to be a ‘backdoor’ code which stops them.
Oh and a point aside.
Was May in the demon realm before they turned Jin into a Golem or was it after. I always assumed it was after….
Hrm. If I’m recalling correctly, it was after. I think it runs:
1) May has Jin.
2) May shows up in Lanthis (golem already).
3) Builds calendar machine. Everyone in room (including Jin) becomes immortal.
4?) Notices Jin goes a bit bonkers somehow because of said machine.
5) Attempts to shut down/destroy Calendar, ends up sucked into Demon realm.
6) Lanthian priests start capturing girls.
7) Jin wages one-girl war on priests, trying to sabotage project. Gets captured (lets self get captured?)
8) Jin kills self.
9) Formation of the Chimera, which promptly runs off and blasts Lanthis into cinders.
10) “Someone” teases girls apart, relocates surviving Lanthians (maybe same people? Different?) Tepoz is put in charge of girls.
11) Long time later, Tina is killed, Monica is almost killed, Shelly is almost killed…
A couple of things. She didn’t make the golems, the preists did from her recipie, so the results may vary somewhat from package illustration. Also, according to the dialog, it takes both the symbol and the key to do the job. The symbol to activate the correct “code” and the key to provide the energy to make it so.
Awwww, look at Jin with a gun in her mouth. Isn’t she cute!
Actually, the way it’s drawn, it is kind of cute. Also Paul impresses me yet again for providing another totally unexpected scene. It’s made all the more poignent, however, by the fact she tried it so soon after discovering her seeming mortality.
I just had a horrible thought: If Bud doesn’t cushion her fall — specifically stop her head from banging into anything hard, Jin could still die.
True, but worse still, she might be terribly injured and can’t die, just in great pain. In fact, I wonder what would have happened if she had shot herself? Would she have a big hole in her head, yet still alive and in agony? She has a life span now, but that doesn’t mean she can die of some other cause in the mean time. It may simply mean she has an expiry clock now. At the appointed time, she will just keel over and cease to exist.
True, she could die or be injured–but it seems like they have some good golem repair techs around who could bring her back up to snuff.
Heheheheh. Awesome.
(Don’t try this at home, kids.)
I gotta think, Maybe Bud’s quick action will leave Jin a bit bruised after this? Great cliffhanger.
Based on the angle of Bud’s body, I don’t think Bud jumpd. ^_^ I think May threw her.
More like used Bud as a Fast Ball special.
Good point, you just may be correct.
If you can dodge a gollum you can dodge a ball.
Just don’t be wearing a ring when Gollum gets thrown at you — especially a precious one…
And now Jin begins to act on all those dark thoughts in her head because now she can feel the effects were as before she couldn’t feel anything.
Gods help them if the demon Doubt should show up…
Doubt could be just what she needs right now.
No wonder she was so happy that she could hurt herself. “Hey! If I hurt, I can die!”
Poor Jin… I hope she can be healed of all the pain she’s been carrying around.
Yep, she’s still nuts. That’s a relief – a sane Jin just wouldn’t be the same.
Jimminy Chistmas Jin!! D8
… Where did that gun come from any way? Has she been toting it around all this time just waiting for a chance to kill herself? Or has she been shooting herself for years just for kicks when she gets bored? She was indestructible then, so it obviously wasn’t for self-defense and we all know she didn’t need a gun to kill someone.
Well anyway, crazy cliffhanger Paul. I agree with Jay-Em up above. Suicide isn’t funny, but the panel with Jin pointing the gun at herself it just so over the top and absurd, you kinda can’t help giggling.
Especially when you see it for the first time. The reaction is like, “WOAH!! Hold on Jin!!”
Just because Jin can be damaged doesn’t mean she is no longer immortal. After all she is still a golem and not human.
Sorry but the engineer in me always needs to point out the worst case scenario.
Ewwww. “Miracle Day” Category 3, anyone?
Toni Daytona and Anne Eiffel…nice!
Toni Daytona and Ann Eiffel in a catfight … extra nice!
Ann Eiffel with her blouse ripped half off and a black eye … maximal nice but not gonna happen.
Oh – both images from Greg Evans’s blog.
I meant “Category 1”
Although we don’t generally approve of suicide, how do we know that for Jin it isn’t the correct solution?
The universe should REWARD Jin for what she has done.
It has done so.
She now seems to be human (within rules) and has what she wants.
I don’t know if her relationship with Alan will survive. I don’t know if she won’t be run over by a bus tomorrow. All I know is that she has the chance happier than she has been for a while.
Her killing herself will not bring her that.
I suspect her suicide attempt is possibly because she is trying it before she ‘looses’ her human side again.
Those are good points. The universe only rewards survivors, however. If they make it to the top, it even rewards them with a glimpse of it’s inner workings. Not to mention their inner workings.
Yes, she may be in a “use it or lose it” mentality, taking advantage of her seeming mortality right away just to be sure.
If she were real, now would be the time to make her realize there is something she has never experienced first hand, despite being over 80K years old. Being a wife and mother(adoption) and growing old (maybe) with someone you love deeply. At the least, not having to go on for long after his death, assuming her new lifespan is less than 100 years.
Jin does look kinda cute being a bit cross-eyed looking down the gun barrel, and just for a second there i was wondering if its just a crazy moment of “monkey picks up shiny gun and looks down barrel”.
But as i dont think Jin would have a loaded gun at home .. even tho its a nice decorative display item .. she does get visits from mortals who could get hurt.
So im guessing the gun came from “internal storage” and the way she grips the gun .. cant really be mistaken as accidental im afraid.
Before I parsed the drawing I thought Jin was pulling something big out of her mouth – internal storage like Bud’s. Then of course I saw it was a gun and thought “uh-oh…”
Somehow I think there may be a few more bugs to work out. May is definitely mad scientist material – brilliant, but never considers any deeper than first order effects and consequences. Actually thinking something thru is totally alien to her.
This is a common and perfectly valid approach when tinkering. You fix the problem at hand first. If it turns out to have side effects, you go on to fix those.
Assuming, of course, that you and those around you have survived the unexpected side effects…
That’s called the eiterative method of engineering. Keep making one change at a time until all the bugs are out, in systems that are mission-critical and that can be tested sufficiently and safely it is the preferred method of development.
Is there a specific grammar rule that decides whether an “A” or an “An” is used before a letter? As in, “an L” as opposed to “a L” or “a B” as opposed to “an B?”
‘an’ in place of ‘a’ when the next word begins with a vowel, or sounds like it begins with a vowel.
A car. An automobile.
A grape. An orange.
A “Q”. An “L”.
“An orange” – the “A” migrated in that one. The original name of the fruit in English was “norange”, deriving from the Spanish “anaranjado” (or something like that).
So “a norange”.
Awkward to say, so the “n” jumped across the space…
Didn’t the same happen to the napple and nuncle? And the reverse to eke-names and ewts?
So that would imply that the glyph name has an initial vowel sound however it is pronounced.
This explains it pretty well.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/591/1/
I wondered because that could give a clue to the pronunciation of the eyeball looking Lanthian character. There seem to be so many exceptions and vagaries, however, even that clue is not reliable.
I also feel a bit stupid for not realizing that “A vs. An” was what I needed to google to find out for myself. Having a senior citizen moment when you’re still a freshman citizen is worrisome.
don’t worry! you’ll forget this moment soon enough!
Ah! So there IS a bright side!
And it will be followed by many more! Trust me!
Errr, ummm–what were we talking about again?
could this be…Jin’s first ‘blowjob’ as a human??? 😛
Boo! You need to double feed the pun jar, Got to Punjab now and do it!
And, as usual, an interfering parent ruins it.
Spoken from…..experience?
Sadly, no.
D’oh!
Well, we can’t say Paul didn’t give us warning on this one.
Just after Jim rebooted, she complained about how cold it was.
We should have known, from that comment, that she had a flintlock handy.
She was telling us “Hey, it’s frizzen in here!” and was going to steel a moment to use it.
Do not bother to put something other than your whole self into the pun jar.
And screw the lid shut after you.
And no air holes.
-1, Paul needs all the readers he can get.
Well, if suffocating in the Pun Jar is to be my fate, I can’t claim it’s not a deserved one. Many of my friends, and most of my family would probably say it’s many years overdue. All I can do is accept it with quiet dignity and grace (as Dr. Frankenstein put it), and blame it all on Bill Scott and Jay Ward.
I will, however, insist on one thing. The music at the wake must include a recording of the Glasstown United church choir, singing that stirring hymn Gloria! An Asphyxis Day, Oh!.
DAVE- Beats head slowly against back of couch in confusion corner 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, turns and deposits 5 quarters into pun jar. Checks roledex for semi retired assassins, makes call.
Hello Eric have I got a sick sense of humor that needs killing here. Oh man your wife likes Dave’s humor? well dang! Ok, just wound him a little? No, dang! Thanks man.
Sits an cries, I tried.
🙂
+1
I love the implication that they were so busy arguing they didn’t notice Jin getting or prepping the gun.
Jin might have ‘poited’ the gun to her and set it up the same way, She did do the same thing to Monica before
Jin primed Monica and put her in her mouth?
No, that was Bud.
That was a long time ago and we don’t link to that anymore.
Wow, gonna be able to re-model the coffee shop just from this month’s pun-jar intake alone….
We should note that “fix” is a very poor choice of words here – no reflection on Pablo, because it’s used this way all over the English-speaking world. We use “fix” to indicate “repair,” but in a purer sense, it means “to make static.” Think of fixative in pastel drawings; think of fixing a butterfly to a board with a pin; think of getting a fix on your location. The only way a living being – golem, human being, animal, whatever – can be fixed is to kill it. Jin seems intent on fixing herself, in a completely different way than May had in mind. For every suicide, the fix is two-fold – to repair everything that’s wrong with their lives, and to render themselves non-living, even if only unintentionally.
Here, I thought that Jin had discovered the great gift of mortality, that we are given limited time so we must appreciate the blessings we’re given all the more. Instead, it looks like long life – virtual immortality – has become an affliction, and one to be removed as soon as possible. Couldn’t be done before, but now that she’s “fixed,” oh boy, let the last act get underway.
Dear Sir/Madam
We thank you for your well considered arguments concerning the usage of the term “fix.’ While we appreciate your views on the subject, we have, by nearly unanimous consent (there’s always one), decided to reject them on the grounds that such a narrow interpretation would seriously restrict our usage of the term “Phix” in future poorly considered puns.
Please do not consider this a failure on your part, but rather a collective raspberry on our part.
Sincerely;
Prunella Downspout, Chairperson
C. R. A. P. (Council for the Rationalization of Atrocious Puns)
SoWhyMe- Claps, and bows with deep respect. Now we need to Phix Jin again. Runs away.
Wellll… That’s one way to solve a sinus problem
Yes, now we see Jin actually get ‘BANGED’ in this comic! (tosses Visa card into pun jar) 😀
(In best Transylvanian accent) Yes, my friends; all puns need to succeed is for good sensible people to do nothing! MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
Poor Jin. However, we should not be surprised that she attempted to do this. This comic, September 15, 2009 blissful shows why Jin would want to die. Another one is 2008-01-31-dealwiththiscrap. Finally the one that really made me sure Jin was serious :=( The real clincher is muzzle loaders have to be regularly unloaded and reloaded because the powder-charge gets damp. So she had to have reloaded that gun very recently. It is a flintlock in my estimation, because the side of the gun sticks out far enough to suggest a pan, a percussion-lock would not have a pan.
I like how Bud’s calves are drawn in this one. She does have racehorse legs! Suicide, though it solves the problems of the person who commits suicide, is hell on family and friends of the suicide. Jin was not thinking of her mother or her boyfriend and how it would devastate them.
Not really apropos of anything, old flintlocks were fairly often re-tooled with caplock mechanisms. Not all by any means, but it was a common upgrade at one time and it was cheaper than buying a new gun. There’s no reason Jin couldn’t have pretty much any gadget laying around.
The pan and the steel were usually replaced during the conversion from flintlock to percussion lock, not always, but commonly. An example of a conversion. I’m going to go with Occam’s razor and assume it is a flintlock and not a conversion until further evidence is forthcoming.
Obligatory link to the Queen song Jin needs to listen to.
Methinks Mayahuel may not have been aware of just how much Jin has wanted to die, and just how long she’s been unable to die. Then again, perhaps not, since she didn’t bide her time until she was alone– two people with capability to stop her, right there.
In response to another comment I can’t seem to find, I wonder if Mayahuel COULD ‘wipe’ the new glyph. Would that interfere with underlying programming glyphs? Would the dip left do anything, positive or negative? Can’t exactly add more clay, even with slip. The girls have already been baked.
I have noticed that there are a number of problems with links to previous Wapsi Square strips:
1) Paul is very prolific – he has produced about WS 2500 strips since his first almost exactly 10 years ago.
2) Wapsi Square is very interesting, engaging and complex – there is so much going on that it is impossible to remember it all let alone the details.
3) It is impossible to go back and view just one – due to #2 it sometimes feels like reading it for the first time.
Thanks to a couple of the above links I just spent way too many (but enjoyable), hours rereading about 3 years of WS. (And I STILL can’t remember it all!!!
Anyway, I ran across a few strips that may add some help (or fuel!) to the discussion about Jin wanting to grow old or to die now as well as instances of the “eye” symbol:
06-25-08: Grow Old – Tepoztecal quote
[There’s another one of Jin telling Alan that she wants to grow old and die but I can’t find it now.]
01-31-08: Suicide – Demon observation
01-19-09: Suicide – Slit throat
01-28-09: Suicide – kitchen knife attempt
09-08-08: “Eye” symbol phrase – Unlock cloth
12-26-08: “Eye” symbol phrase – Poit to Egyptian warehouse
BTW – Someone mentioned a wiki. Link please!
Waspi Wiki:
http://wapsisquare.wikia.com/wiki/Wapsi_Square_Wiki
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/madetheconnection/
You made me read again too :/