Great, now I’m confused… you guys are over thinking this….
OK as simple as possible:
The Shelly we watched grabbed the relic is Shelly 57. If Phix said they have done this 56 times before, that means that the calender machine repeated 56 times, and on the 57th was destroyed.
The Shelly that died is Shelly 1. Without the existence of the calender machine, she wouldn’t have existed, along with the other 56 Shellys.
From the current strip, we can confirm that Shelly 57 is the Sphinx. However she was also the first Shelly to exist in the TTF.
The relic could have origins on timeline 00, as a weapon, key for the chimera or CM. Timeline 00 is the timeline before the first CM loop. Shelly 1 came to the forest with a purpose. This means she thought the relic would help in some way, which means she was somewhat informed on what it could be used for, and was probably told by Jin.
Creepy Girl wouldn’t have any memory of the other cycles, and therefore couldn’t be Shelly’s Guide, because she is created and dies with each Shelly, as her conscience . a lot of you seem to forget that she dies when Shelly dies.
Shelly57, aged by milliennia and now a sphinx, will return to the Wapsiworld, if and when she touches the relic.
This doesn’t answer what the relic is used for, how Shelly turned into the Sphinx, nor who gave Shelly57 the information to lead the other Shellys to building the device.
That is to say, yes, the Relic is the differential gear of the Calendar Machine. It’s even (metaphorically) shaped like one, with one spoke longer than the rest.
“From the current strip, we can confirm that Shelly 57 is the Sphinx.”
We can? How? I don’t see it. Why couldn’t Shelly 56 have been the sphinx and Shelly 57 merely a viewer from Monica’s kitchen?
“Creepy Girl wouldn’t have any memory of the other cycles, and therefore couldn’t be Shelly’s Guide, because she is created and dies with each Shelly, as her conscience .”
That’s the wrong reason. CLG only existed once. She was created only when the final Shelly died momentarily during her vision quest. That event only happened once and only then because a previous Brandi arranged it with Nudge. (At the same exact time Tina’s and Monica’s demons caused the accident/suicide that involved Tina and Monica.) Jin wasn’t able to prevent what happened because she was caught off guard and suddenly had too many emergencies to handle simultaneously. She wouldn’t have been caught off guard like that twice since she retained at least some memory between resets.
We know that only 56 Shellys actually made it to the sacred forest, at least as far as sphinx Shelly knows. (As I keep repeating, she said “As I was the last of fifty six..” at the bottom of the previous page.) In your opinion, which of the 57 Shellys would be the extra Shelly not counted by the sphinx?
Why did you say this yesterday: “it would make sense that she [Sphinx Shelly] would only meet 55 other Shellys, since this would close the loose ends of duplicate Shellys and time could become linear again.” If all of the Shellys she met died, that would still leave one Shelly, in addition to the Sphinx, who lived. What happened to her?
If the extra Shelly is Shelly57 and is still in Monica’s kitchen, it all works out. The sphinx as Shelly56 might have returned to her own time and been reset out of existence like everyone else when the CM machine reset, or she might still be around somewhere if she moved to a place outside normal time, as Phix did.
hmm… ya got me. there are some holes in my theory. nobody is perfect.
Had i proofread my comment I probably would have changed this:
“Creepy Girl wouldn’t have any memory of the other cycles, and therefore couldn’t be Shelly’s Guide, because she is created and dies with each Shelly, as her conscience .”
to this:
“Creepy Girl wouldn’t have any memory of the other cycles, and therefore couldn’t be Shelly’s Guide, because she was created by and dies with Shelly, as her conscience .”
though it still wouldn’t be completely correct.
as for whether or not the 57th Shelly is the Sphinx or the Shelly in the kitchen, we’ll just have to wait and see where Paul goes with that.
I still believe that the relic will return Shellynx to the same place it came from, the first CM loop. There will be no reset because from the point of view of Shellynx, it has already been destroyed. Which means the story picks up with version 1 of everyone, Tina included, and with Jin fixed by virtue of Shelly undoing all the things that were done over the CM loops to pull her out of phase with normal time.
If I am dead wrong, please explain because I’ll never be able to unravel the twists my mind has been put through.
I haven’t even ruled out the possibility that this isn’t real. The backgrounds are less consistent than usual, which tends to give this a dream-like quality. (ATM, the sphinx looks like she’s in a desert, rather than a forest.) OTOH, the background art is often symbolic, including when events are really happening, so I don’t know.
If this is just a vision and Shelly returns unscathed with the artifact now fueled with plutonium, then what was the point of doing any character development for the Sphinx? Too much would be left on the table were that the case, IMHO…
I doubt it will all revert back to the very first loop, thus negativing almost any and all storyline, character development and future plot lines.
Yeah shes technically before the first timeline now (if shes traveling backwards in time) but that world would be too different from the one we’ve all been reading to really work.
I still think there are 2 sphinxes there. The conversation fragments “I was,” “Just as you were” does not sound like someone talking to themselves. It would be odd if Creepy Girl also turned into a sphinx. After all, she took human form when Shelly was human. Maybe she took sphinx form as Shelly became a sphinx.
^^That, and perhaps after 81000+ years of reflection and evolution, Shellynx no longer feels any connection with the her that was once Shelly and this is her way of keeping that separation…oddly, the first analogy that came to my mind was from Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon A Time In America”, Where Noodles refuses to refer to Max as anything but “Mr. Secretary” or “Mr. Bailey”.
I know not everyone will get that one…it is a difficult movie to watch beginning to end…
On reason for thinking that the sphinx might be the next-to-last Shelly is that something needed to remove the artifact from the Sacred Forest realm back to the real world in order for Bud to find it. It was evidently created in Lantis as probably a one-of-a-kind item long before the looping started. The first Shelly (last to arrive) removed it from the real world before the calendar machine reset. Apparently that removed it from the subsequent loops, so the other Shellys couldn’t bring it with them and couldn’t remove the blade.
Now that the first Shelly showed up, put the plutonium in and died, the sphinx thinks it can return now. If the artifact leaves with the sphinx, it would be available for Bud to find after the CM resets.
I don’t know how the other Shellys managed to arrive without using the artifact to get there but perhaps there was a way.
I think they are just ragging on a neighboring state. Iowa probably gets picked on because there isn’t much there. It’s probably mostly just be a tradition/meme that somehow developed at that bar/restaurant.
Shelly #57 takes the relic into the tree realm and is made to wait (metaphysically, to those who are sticklers about it) 81200 years to get back after Shelly#1 dies. So if she’s picking up the Ploutonium-containing relic to get back to earth, what happened to the relic that first took her there?
And a good question it is… There is a TON of story telling to be done. Like also telling us how each Shelly knew to bring different items and what to bring and when did they realize that the tree would hold the energy source they needed and if the feedback went directly to their own time then why not try and do it all in one shot and why not let the first one know to wear a radiation suit instead of a t-shirt? Its obvious that information was getting back to each Shelly but the first and the last, why?
Oh yeah… and We don’t know if Shelly/sphinx/57 got to the tree because she didnt! She was taken somewhere but we don’t know because we have not seen that story yet. The story of Shelly number 1 starts in the livng room and goes to this frame. The day before Shelly is wearing a Bathing suit and a backpack and the next days strip shows her wearing a t-shirt. This is the start of Shelly #1s story arc. We haven’t seen our Shelly Sphinx’s story yet.
Great, now I’m confused… you guys are over thinking this….
OK as simple as possible:
The Shelly we watched grabbed the relic is Shelly 57. If Phix said they have done this 56 times before, that means that the calender machine repeated 56 times, and on the 57th was destroyed.
The Shelly that died is Shelly 1. Without the existence of the calender machine, she wouldn’t have existed, along with the other 56 Shellys.
From the current strip, we can confirm that Shelly 57 is the Sphinx. However she was also the first Shelly to exist in the TTF.
The relic could have origins on timeline 00, as a weapon, key for the chimera or CM. Timeline 00 is the timeline before the first CM loop. Shelly 1 came to the forest with a purpose. This means she thought the relic would help in some way, which means she was somewhat informed on what it could be used for, and was probably told by Jin.
Creepy Girl wouldn’t have any memory of the other cycles, and therefore couldn’t be Shelly’s Guide, because she is created and dies with each Shelly, as her conscience . a lot of you seem to forget that she dies when Shelly dies.
Shelly57, aged by milliennia and now a sphinx, will return to the Wapsiworld, if and when she touches the relic.
This doesn’t answer what the relic is used for, how Shelly turned into the Sphinx, nor who gave Shelly57 the information to lead the other Shellys to building the device.
I said it before and I believe that it is backed up by these two links. This is what the artifact/relic/sword hilt is for.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/plug-you-in/
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/done-here/
Miss Shelly Wahnee explains:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/techtalk/
That is to say, yes, the Relic is the differential gear of the Calendar Machine. It’s even (metaphorically) shaped like one, with one spoke longer than the rest.
The one problem with that reasoning is that the byproduct of a solar furnace would be helium, not plutonium.
“From the current strip, we can confirm that Shelly 57 is the Sphinx.”
We can? How? I don’t see it. Why couldn’t Shelly 56 have been the sphinx and Shelly 57 merely a viewer from Monica’s kitchen?
“Creepy Girl wouldn’t have any memory of the other cycles, and therefore couldn’t be Shelly’s Guide, because she is created and dies with each Shelly, as her conscience .”
That’s the wrong reason. CLG only existed once. She was created only when the final Shelly died momentarily during her vision quest. That event only happened once and only then because a previous Brandi arranged it with Nudge. (At the same exact time Tina’s and Monica’s demons caused the accident/suicide that involved Tina and Monica.) Jin wasn’t able to prevent what happened because she was caught off guard and suddenly had too many emergencies to handle simultaneously. She wouldn’t have been caught off guard like that twice since she retained at least some memory between resets.
We know that only 56 Shellys actually made it to the sacred forest, at least as far as sphinx Shelly knows. (As I keep repeating, she said “As I was the last of fifty six..” at the bottom of the previous page.) In your opinion, which of the 57 Shellys would be the extra Shelly not counted by the sphinx?
Why did you say this yesterday: “it would make sense that she [Sphinx Shelly] would only meet 55 other Shellys, since this would close the loose ends of duplicate Shellys and time could become linear again.” If all of the Shellys she met died, that would still leave one Shelly, in addition to the Sphinx, who lived. What happened to her?
If the extra Shelly is Shelly57 and is still in Monica’s kitchen, it all works out. The sphinx as Shelly56 might have returned to her own time and been reset out of existence like everyone else when the CM machine reset, or she might still be around somewhere if she moved to a place outside normal time, as Phix did.
hmm… ya got me. there are some holes in my theory. nobody is perfect.
Had i proofread my comment I probably would have changed this:
“Creepy Girl wouldn’t have any memory of the other cycles, and therefore couldn’t be Shelly’s Guide, because she is created and dies with each Shelly, as her conscience .”
to this:
“Creepy Girl wouldn’t have any memory of the other cycles, and therefore couldn’t be Shelly’s Guide, because she was created by and dies with Shelly, as her conscience .”
though it still wouldn’t be completely correct.
as for whether or not the 57th Shelly is the Sphinx or the Shelly in the kitchen, we’ll just have to wait and see where Paul goes with that.
Oh, well, I was hoping you could enlighten me with some great insight. After all, Paul gave you the cookie yesterday. 😀
Yes, I hope this will be cleared up.
I still believe that the relic will return Shellynx to the same place it came from, the first CM loop. There will be no reset because from the point of view of Shellynx, it has already been destroyed. Which means the story picks up with version 1 of everyone, Tina included, and with Jin fixed by virtue of Shelly undoing all the things that were done over the CM loops to pull her out of phase with normal time.
If I am dead wrong, please explain because I’ll never be able to unravel the twists my mind has been put through.
All within the realm of possibility….
I haven’t even ruled out the possibility that this isn’t real. The backgrounds are less consistent than usual, which tends to give this a dream-like quality. (ATM, the sphinx looks like she’s in a desert, rather than a forest.) OTOH, the background art is often symbolic, including when events are really happening, so I don’t know.
If this is just a vision and Shelly returns unscathed with the artifact now fueled with plutonium, then what was the point of doing any character development for the Sphinx? Too much would be left on the table were that the case, IMHO…
I doubt it will all revert back to the very first loop, thus negativing almost any and all storyline, character development and future plot lines.
Yeah shes technically before the first timeline now (if shes traveling backwards in time) but that world would be too different from the one we’ve all been reading to really work.
I still think there are 2 sphinxes there. The conversation fragments “I was,” “Just as you were” does not sound like someone talking to themselves. It would be odd if Creepy Girl also turned into a sphinx. After all, she took human form when Shelly was human. Maybe she took sphinx form as Shelly became a sphinx.
I think she’s talking to the Shelly corpse as if she was still alive.
^^That, and perhaps after 81000+ years of reflection and evolution, Shellynx no longer feels any connection with the her that was once Shelly and this is her way of keeping that separation…oddly, the first analogy that came to my mind was from Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon A Time In America”, Where Noodles refuses to refer to Max as anything but “Mr. Secretary” or “Mr. Bailey”.
I know not everyone will get that one…it is a difficult movie to watch beginning to end…
On reason for thinking that the sphinx might be the next-to-last Shelly is that something needed to remove the artifact from the Sacred Forest realm back to the real world in order for Bud to find it. It was evidently created in Lantis as probably a one-of-a-kind item long before the looping started. The first Shelly (last to arrive) removed it from the real world before the calendar machine reset. Apparently that removed it from the subsequent loops, so the other Shellys couldn’t bring it with them and couldn’t remove the blade.
Now that the first Shelly showed up, put the plutonium in and died, the sphinx thinks it can return now. If the artifact leaves with the sphinx, it would be available for Bud to find after the CM resets.
I don’t know how the other Shellys managed to arrive without using the artifact to get there but perhaps there was a way.
Paul, in your next print edition, could you include the comments? The story is so much less without them. Even when we’re all off track and loopy… 🙂
Face it — this is Geek Heaven right now!
Wait a minnit! This is Geek Heaven? I thought it was the Time Keeping Forest…I’m so confused…
.
fingers crossed, hope that worked
Well, it sure isn’t Iowa!
and again…
yknow
i still dont get that
whats it from?
I think it’s just from Minnesota. 😆
I think they are just ragging on a neighboring state. Iowa probably gets picked on because there isn’t much there. It’s probably mostly just be a tradition/meme that somehow developed at that bar/restaurant.
Another question.
Shelly #57 takes the relic into the tree realm and is made to wait (metaphysically, to those who are sticklers about it) 81200 years to get back after Shelly#1 dies. So if she’s picking up the Ploutonium-containing relic to get back to earth, what happened to the relic that first took her there?
And a good question it is… There is a TON of story telling to be done. Like also telling us how each Shelly knew to bring different items and what to bring and when did they realize that the tree would hold the energy source they needed and if the feedback went directly to their own time then why not try and do it all in one shot and why not let the first one know to wear a radiation suit instead of a t-shirt? Its obvious that information was getting back to each Shelly but the first and the last, why?
Oh yeah… and We don’t know if Shelly/sphinx/57 got to the tree because she didnt! She was taken somewhere but we don’t know because we have not seen that story yet. The story of Shelly number 1 starts in the livng room and goes to this frame. The day before Shelly is wearing a Bathing suit and a backpack and the next days strip shows her wearing a t-shirt. This is the start of Shelly #1s story arc. We haven’t seen our Shelly Sphinx’s story yet.
I can haz cookie???
Let’s do the time loop again!