Time being what it is… I suspect that “dead” Shelley will eventually be the Sphinx?
Or perhaps more accurately, WOULD have been the Sphinx *again*. But with the CM being broken, the loop is gone and the only Shelley left is the Sphinx?
No, Our shelly was the first one there and stuck, and there time moved opposite of our time. So shellies from all the previous cycles started showing up. And the Shelly that just died was the Shelly from the first cycle. No more Shellies will show up. Thus no more reason for her to be there and she’d return home, I presume.
She’s already returned home. Shellynx is our Shelly. She just didn’t know it until now. The relic is giving her a vision of her last few moments in the forest.
She returned either the day she was hypnotized by the Lanthan doll, or her death on the vision quest.
And, yes, I woke up at 2:45 in the morning, local time, with that thought in my head.
And, like any addict had to come look and see if I could bend the facts to prove it.
Going back to bed now.
Aaaaaaaaaand I’m a bit miffed that she cannot remember what she was doing before she arrived in the place of the trees as a sphinx. The only possibility that groks with yesterday’s comments is if Shelly came in as the Sphinx at the same time as arriving as Shelly#1, which we witnessed. I’d then understand why she felt she could forget where it was that she came from, being stuck there for so many tens of thousands of years…
Thinking out loud, is more like it. It’s something a lot of lonely people do.
No social conventions ,no people looking at You in an odd way for having a discussion with oneself…..
I see that the hand in the foreground is part of Shelly #1’s body. She is indeed doing both, I think. And given she had ~1446 years between visits from each other iteration of Shelly, she’s prolly done this a LOT!
In Shakespeare’s day they called this kind of thing a “soliloquy”. 😛 Now everyone starts worrying about how many walls have been torn down whenever someone talks to themselves and seems to maybe look at the “camera” too directly.
I’m with Julie. And, besides, she’s talking to the smartest person around–what’s wrong with that? Is she supposed to be silent for centuries on end while waiting for someone to show up?
And even if she did, she’s still talking to herself!
No. She’s talking to herself metaphorically and literally. If put into a similar situation, I would probably do the same thing. No, I would be doing the same thing.
The corpse, obviously. But I’m wondering why she’s not talking to Conscience. Maybe after 80,000 years they’ve said all they have to say to one another. Maybe Creepy Little Girl and Shelly merged, or she didn’t make the trip, or she had only a normal human lifespan after all and died years ago, leaving a hole in Shelly’s head. More questions. Still no answers.
You get stuck for thousands of years doing nothing but waiting while watching a sword blade and a tree and see how much of any you remember. I am surprised she can still remember how to speak, let alone her previous life. Of course, as a sphinx she probably instantly picks up on any newcomers language (telepathy?) as a job perk, so that may not be a factor.
so when she returns to her body in the room with M bud and every one , shes gona be a sphink ,, hmm some one shold call phix cuz im certain there are rules sphinks have to follow and shelly might need help learning to morph back to human
Yeah. I meant maybe CG is the one doing the explaining, having ridden with Shelly through all the cycles…
I think that Last Shelly (the one we’ve been following all the way so far, the one who became the sphinx) is the only Shelly who has CG, since none of the others were misled by Nudge on thir vision quests, and didn’t die, and thus didn’t create her.
“Y’know, Shelly, usually I just sit back and watch when you do this stuff… but this is one of those times when I make your organs fail through gamma radiation exposure. Ready?”
She’ll remember when she goes back – someone mentioned Narnia in yesterday’s comments – at the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, remember, when they come back to their world from Narnia, they instantly change back from twenty-something kings and queens in regal garb to twentieth-century kids in everyday clothes…
Also, remember when Lena came back from Suzerain and changed back from the twenty-something queen to her eight-year-old self…
But the case of Suzerain was that Lena got sent into the game due to the improper angle of the hoe upon which she was trying to impale Roger’s noggin. Here, we have Shelly deliberately trying to provide help to someone else and ending up dead, only to return to her point of origin as a Sphinx.
Sorry, that is the only way my brain can accept the simultaneous cycles of the tree realm, until Sphellinx figures out where she was before she went there.
I’m looking forward to her clicking her heels while holding the relic…
Sure. But what i meant was, in both the Narnia case and Lena’s case, returning to their own world dropped them back to their “real” age … but with the memories all those years more-or-less intact.
(Which reminds me – can’t recall if i’ve said this before {but i’m sure Eschmenk could tell me},if Lena and Roger decide to return and live in the “Real World”, i pity any boyfriends Lena may have once she’s in her teens…)
OTOH, is the human brain really wired to store 81k years of memory? Nathan Brazil went into a sort of autopilot waiting for significant events, and it was only when he was back to Well World that he “woke up” and remembered what was significant there.
Possibly. I remember a case where a man was unable to forget. The moment he saw a dog, he immediately remembered every dog he’d ever seen, complete with smell, situation, clothing worn at the time etc.. His brain could hold all information, but the constant stream of associations for everything around him hampered his functioning severely.
Our brains are wired in such a way, that they “scrub” for redundant memories every now&then. That’s what keeps us sane and functioning.
New research seem to point towards a “holographical-associative” memory system, where the actual memories are cut-up and stored only partially, with an overarching system -think of check-bits- that can re-assemble most memories on the basis of a few loose data-fragments, which do not even have to be complete. Whole parts can be missing, yet out brains can re-assemble them in whole again. Our olfactory memory system is the most impressive in that aspect.
(Both my sisters are Psychologists with a neurology-degree..so..yeah, I got quite some lectures here&there)
Um, they weren’t aged more than a few days or months in Narnia, nowhere as much as becoming 20-something years old, definitely. However, they still would have been aged those few months that they don’t seem to be aged when they leave Narnia. One of the factors in Narnia is that kids are the only ones who really see Aslan, and they never lose their ability to see Aslan in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, so they never achieve adulthood. More reasonable would be to explain how Peter Pan manages to de-age when he goes to Neverland, while he’d probably be the same age if he left it.
You seriously must read the Narnia books. The Pevensie kids reigned over Narnia for twenty-something years before, while hunting a white stag, they stumbled upon the lamp-post and fell out of the wardrobe quite by accident. C.S. Lewis explains this as, “Time goes differently in Narnia…” in several of the books. Also, in “Prince Caspian”, Lucy alone can see Aslan until about halfway through the book, when he makes himself visible to everyone. Otherwise, usually everyone can see him. It gets rather disturbing in “Last Battle” though…
Not meaning to insult you, just…those are my favorite books ever…
I agree–but it’s only in the first (and last) books that people from our world spend more than a few months in Narnia. And it’s easy to miss or skim over the “tying up” at the end of the first book. But the point is there, nevertheless.
And, in reverse, even after spending twenty+ years in Narnia ruling, not even one day, perhaps not a minute, had passed in our world. Conservation of energy? For whatever reason, they seem to have returned in the same moment and state (except memory) as when they left.
Actually, the most relevant comparison to Narnia is that (like Lewis’ fantasy) Treeworld need not be at 1:1 ratio as to the passage of time. Shellinx may have been there less than 1450×56 years.
Or… maybe she’s been there a monstrously longer period of time. The demon-hunting sphinxes of South India?
The culture that calculated lengths of time longer than the existence of universe?
hmm
i always assumed voyage of the dawn treader took place for 10-11months.
not over a year as caspian said he would take a year to search but since they nearly ran out of supplies i would have said longer than 3 months.
Yeah, I suppose they must have; Eustace spent a fair amount of time writing his journal just before ticking off Rheep, and again being stuck as a dragon. And then if you count the ~2 months the ship was at sea before the kids fell into the picture…
Lesson: Never piss off anyone who knows how to put the pointy end of the sharp thing into you. 😉
1:i guess when she picks up the relic.
2:yes, looks like it, unless Creepy is an independent entity, which is unlikely. Of course all could come flowing back the
moment Shellynx (i like that..) touches the relic. I keep thinking that the relic is also able to record stuff, and play the appropriate recording for the appropriate person.
Good odds picking up the relic will take her back. From there it will be a merging of Shelly in the world and Shelly the sphinx Should be quite a shock and Shelly is going to freak out, or be very, very calm.
I would expect CG did not go with her. It was the conscious part of her mind that went, not her and CG.
What would be amusing is CG meeting up with Sphinx Shelly as an internal avatar. Now who’s the scariest girl in this head huh?
By the by. What if there isn’t a “merging? That would give some serious double-takes if the tree-world dissolves around dead-Shelly and Shellinx.
I can imagine that M and the club would not know wether to laugh or cry, if confronted with a dead- and a living -Shelly at the same time.
(oh, and will she have sexy large canines, like all girls that are deeply touched by the supernatural in WS seem to have? Would make it easier to discern Post-CM-Shelly from other iterations if Paul pulls a switcheroo again…)
The complications from not merging would be huge. The 50000+ years Shelly has been there would really degrade her memory details. She would be almost clueless and need massive help to re-integrate into the world again. I don’t think the ARC could take Shelly being in Therapy for he next 5 years or so. lol.
Shelly needs to come back with detailed current memories and of the stay in wonder what land.(Would that make Sphinx Shelly a Tinkerbell with an attitude?) The girls will have to help her overcome the shock, and it will be huge, to stay rational. Shelly really has to stay rational when she goes back.
I can see the TV move Jin and Shelly UXB!
its really cool and simple when you think it through the thing Monica saw when she grabed the relic was shelly the reason shelly didnt see anything at first is cuz she wasnt traped in it yet now our shelly has spent all 56 cycels traped in the forest watching herself die and slowly peice the relic togeather into what it is now.
the real question is who made the relic? is it from the future or the past?
It was suggested yesterday that we’re bootstrapping here. The relic is like the watch from “Somewhere in Time” – it has no point of origin. At least it seems that way at the moment.
Scoot over guys, I’ve still got dibs on Cushion 42.
Monica and Bud think the relic is a Lathian construct of unknown purpose. To find out what it did is why they let Shelly hold it, after Monica got warned off by the Banshee and Shelly didn’t. If it is from Lanthis, if it always gave access to the Sacred Grove, if someone or something set this whole thing up specifically targetting Shelly to cause all this: These are questions we don’t have the answers to. Yet.
It may be due to the unique properties of the Relic that when interacted with the broken CM it created the time loop. Shelly may have been the first person to initially touched the Relic. In fact that may have been the trigger of the time loop. Now that the CM is no longer working, the Relic is now back to normal operation. For some definition of normal. 🙂
There are right ways and wrong ways to ‘bootstrap’ (or as we called it ‘slipshank’) an item.
Assembling the parts in an alternate verse is certainly a causality-friendly way to go.
There is the small but critical issue of loss of mass, though. I think that’s the true root of the reset problem, why the CM was “broken”. More in another post when I have… time.
Soooo .. We’ll have to deal with an amnesiac Shelly then?
That’s going to complicate things somewhat, though it leaves space for some great “who are you?” -gags.
if Sphinx Shelly the first, and doesn’t remember where she came from. Dead Shelly is the last, and didn’t remember ever being at the tree.. maybe Sphinx Shelly will remember where she came from once she’s back on the other side?
Sphinx Shelly is Shelly from Time Loop 57,our loop. The dead from radiation Shelly is Shelly from Time Loop 2, because she knew about having to fix the CM. In Time Loop 1 nobody knew the CM was broken because it hadn’t looped back yet.
It seems that Sphinx-Shelly is actually Shelly57 who took her trip starting Here. SS has been in Treeland for 56 cycles, some 81,200 years (56 x 1450). After becoming stuck and discovering she couldn’t die, somewhere in the process she became a Sphinx.
As the years passed, a cycle completed in both Treeland and Realworld, and Shelly 56 appeared on her quest, eventually dying. Ditto for 55, 54, etc, until finally, just now, Shelly 01 appeared and completed the cycle. We were fooled by thinking that Shelly 57 had just appeared in front the the tree — it was Shelly 01. Shelly 57 was the Sphinx!
What remains is for her to pick up the Portal device and return to the 57 timeline where she left off. A few minutes for Monica and company, 80 Milennia for Shelly! Oh, and there’s that new hairdo she has to explain. And the wings. And everything else! 😉
According to yesterday’s strip, your math is off by one. The sphinx says “Where I was the last of fifty six…” Shelly must not have gotten there during one of the runs through the last 1450 years. If the last 1450 years have been repeated fifty six times, they must have happened fifty seven times, assuming Phix was speaking precisely.
Perhaps there is a 57th Shelly viewing all of this and that’s the one who is in Monica’s kitchen.
THERE WAS NO SHELLY01 at the Sacred Tree. No one knew the Calendar Machine was malfunctioning UNTIL AFTER THE FIRST LOOP so the last Shelly to die at the Sacred Tree was Shelly02. Shelly01 was oblivious, as were all who lived before the first Reset.
Yesterday, Paul apparently confirmed that is wrong, though. Kramegame said:
The Shelly that just died was the first Shelly to exist on Earth, so basically before the first reset of the calender machine and Jin’s first attempt at fixing it.
That would be your Shelly 00. Paul said, “A cookie for you, and all others that got that.” That seems to confirm it.
When the sphinx says “last of fifty six”, she can’t be using a zero offset. Fifty six can’t mean fifty seven.
I was suggesting Shelly 00 in response to the previous comment, which postulated her, more or less.
And
But i don’t think there were fifty-seven Shellys; i don’t think that that was the part Paul was confirming – just that sphinx is the last Shelly, and the one that we saw die is the first.
I can’t recall (and i can’t find) what Phix said precisely – whether there have been fifty-six cycles … or fifty-six previous cycles.
And there’d be no reason for the Very First Shelly to do anything … because nobody knew there was a problem until the CM reset at a point in time after this point in time. Until the CM reset the first time, there was no problem. The history of the world was just … history.
Human who somehow lives for long enough (usually mystical) becomes a sphinx.
Sphinxes are guardians.
Apotropaic are demon-hunters. Who kill humans to stop the demons.
Demons are an outgrowth of certain humans. (We know of 4 who have them). (Implication is that other humans may have them but not know them?)
So human makes demons. Human becomes sphinx. Sphinx hunts demons…
@Fairportfan: “I can’t recall (and i can’t find) what Phix said precisely – whether there have been fifty-six cycles … or fifty-six previous cycles.
*sigh* If you would have just looked a couple of comments higher, I provided the link. She said it was repeated 56 times, so it’s 57 times total. (The first repeat is the second time.)
No, the time resetting thing was always on 12/21/12, but even so up until that time they were always working on “fixing” the machine and not on “fixing” Jin. So, even though they have been through these dates 56 times before, this is the first time through for this scenario.
Paul answered “Correct”. Again, Paul confirmed that it’s 57 times.
Paul has never corrected anyone and said that there were only 55 failed attempts to fix the calendar; everyone has always talked about there being 56 failed attempts, then of course, 1 successful attempt (which was really to destroy it.)
Let’s not forget that the attempt to fix Jin first time around (last time to Shellynx) happened earlier than in all following (previous) cycles. Makes me wonder if Shelly01 pushed the whole “Let’s help Jin” thing…
“You’ve done this fifty-six time. I was the first.”
Are you saying that sphinx Shelly isn’t counting her own trip in that number?
And what Phix says (by my reading) indicates that there have been a total of fifty-six times through the loop, not that there have been fifty-seven.
“You’ve repeated the 1450 years … fifty-six times,” doesn’t mean “plus one for the original cycle”.
“Repeated the first 1450 years fifty-six times…” would be fifty-seven.
But, even if it does mean a total of fifty-six iterations, by sphinx/Shelly’s statement, only fifty-six have been here.
There seems to really be no reason (as has been pointed out before i said it) for the first iteration of Shelly to come here at all, if this is related directly to fixing/destroying the Calendar Machine.
OTOH, if this is a causally-unrelated chain of events – an attempt to fix Jin – then the Very First Shelly might have come here.
But there would still be only fifty-six.
During the first time through, no one could have known how many Shellys will eventually exist, so how could anyone have based decisions where to send Shelly on that number? Why would “Shelly 00″ be sent to the forest if there would eventually be 56 Shellys, but not if there would be 57 of them?
I nver said it would be because there would be fifty-seven; i meant that it doesn’t matter how many there were, the first would not have been sent. Because there would be no perceived need.
What i was getting at is that, per sphinx Shelly’s statement yesterday, Shelly has been there fifty-six times in total; thus, if there were fifty-seven Shellys in toto, there must be a reason one of them (“Shelly 00”) didn’t go.
That depends on how closely history was repeating itself. If it is close, one cycle to the next, then the incident with Stinky and the sub would still have happened and Bud would still have found the relic even in that first time period. The relic seems to be separate from the CM stuff. She would have explored the sub out of curiosity and been led to the relic by the bullets and dead crew. Shelly would still have picked up the thing and the rest would have happened anyway. The relic could still be in the very first time period since it esentially traveled back through time. That is, it appeared for the first time before it was constructed due to the retrograde order of things in tree land.
Also remember, Jin knew about the CM malfunction right after it occured. She may also, eventually, have known about what was going to happen as a result and tried to fix it on the very first reset. So it’s possible the CM struggle was going on even then, before the first CM reset.
I think it is the CM that out in this last cycle because afaik this was the first time in any cycle that they fixed the CM early. The upshot being that they have tried (and failed?) to fix Jin 57 times as well before the attempts to fix the CM.
even if no one knew about the calender machine being broken Jin was.
This whole thing started with Jin needing fixin’
Shelly came here to help Jin first time.
Least from my pov it is anyway.
*goes back to confusion corner to consume more muffins*
Everyone arguing about it only being 56 cycles and not 57 didn’t pay enough attention to the comments Shinx-Shelley said yesterday.
“You’ve been here 56 times. I was the first here you know.”
So, YES she is NOT counting herself in with the other 56 iterations of herself that have come prior. If she had done that she’d have said:
“We’ve been here 56 times before. I was the first you know…”
So yes, there have been 57 cycles. And yes, the cycle didn’t have to come before they knew something was up, I think Jin knew something had gone wrong from the initial go-around when she stopped aging and her mom was sucked into demon land when the CM broke the first time.
Everyone arguing about it only being 56 cycles and not 57 didn’t pay enough attention to the comments Shinx-Shelley said yesterday
No, but that was you did. 😛
“You’ve been here 56 times. I was the first here you know.”
So, YES she is NOT counting herself in with the other 56 iterations of herself that have come prior. If she had done that she’d have said:
“We’ve been here 56 times before. I was the first you know…”
Since you copied and pasted that, I’ll do the same with my reply:
Not necessarily. If someone talks to themselves in the mirror, they would typically say “You need to stop doing that” or “I”, rather than “we.” Meeting herself is just an extension of that.
I agree that she might have said “we” to emphasize the distinction between versions, but she might have used singular case to emphasize the point they they were really the same person.
You should have read the entire page, rather than just reading the beginning. At the bottom she said
Where as I was the last of fifty six, you were the first.
There it is obvious. She clearly did count herself in the 56. That establishes what she must have meant at the top of the page, too.
I agree that there were probably 57 Shellys total, but only 56 of them seemed to have arrived in the Sacred Forest. Therefore, the final Shelly might simply be standing in Monica’s kitchen, viewing what happened through the icon, but not actually participating in it.
From the sphinx’s point of view the 57th cycle of the calendar machine has not finished yet (we are not in 2012 yet, when it would have been reset). She started her guardianship near the end of the 1st cycle (assuming she was Shelly) and has seen 56 cycles (resets of the calendar machine) since then.
as said elsewhere jin knew the CM was broken having watched mommy break it but it hadn’t done something to indicate the damage meant anything until the first reset so after the first reset 56 shellys set on fixing CM/helping jin
So you think the Shelly who departed from Monica’s house in the comic to which you linked became, somehow, the sphinx? And when she picks up the relic she will come back as Shelly, taking the place of the Shelly who “left” in that comic?
But it makes no sense! How can the sphinx be the 56th and last Shelly when there have been 57 Shellys? Shelly #57 was the one who was in Monica’s kitchen a few weeks ago. So are we to understand that the Shelly in the previous time loop was a sphinx? So what happened to her when the calendar reset?
As I see it, There haven’t been 57 Shellys, only 56. The problem is what Phix said is a bit ambiguous. Did she mean there have been 56 repeats of the first 1450 years for a total of 57 periods of 1450 years, or 56 repeats including the first 1450 years for a total of 56 periods. I go with the second since the sphinx kept sayimg 56.
Okay. I’m pretty sure that what we’ve been following is the end of the fifty-sixth loop.
Therefore there were a total of fifty-six iterations of Shelly.
OTOH, if there were fifty-seven Shellys, the very first (call her Shelly 00) would never have been sent to the Time Forest, because nobody knew that anything was wrong until the Calendar Machine reset the first time.
The first Shelly sent there would have then been Shelly 01, the one we saw die.
The sphinx, Shelly 56, was there, tracking backward in time, meeting each of her previous selves.
@Sowhyme: Well, KrameGame said yesterday, which Paul seemed to confirm: “Since the CM was fixed on the 57th try…” That must mean that there were the first 56 failed and that they must have tried on the first run through, so there would be 57 Shellys involved.
KrameGame also said, “She had to witness 55 other Shellys come to pass.” That’s vague. I don’t know if he meant that as other than the two we see (for for a total of 57 Shellys) or just other than the sphinx (for a total of 56). But only the 57 is consistent with the other things that were said. I also think that 56 failures have been mentioned often enough that Paul would have corrected us by now if we misinterpreted what Phix meant.
[b]@Fairportfan:[/b] Did you see the comments above where I quoted from Kramegame? Paul seemed to confirmed it.
Also, why would this logic depend on there being 57 instead of 56 Shellys:
OTOH, if there were fifty-seven Shellys, the very first (call her Shelly 00) would never have been sent to the Time Forest, because nobody knew that anything was wrong until the Calendar Machine reset the first time.
During the first time through, no one could have known how many Shellys will eventually exist, so how could anyone have based decisions where to send Shelly on that number? Why would “Shelly 00” be sent to the forest if there would eventually be 56 Shellys, but not if there would be 57 of them?
Just a thought, but in one of the GG’s books (Either Jin or Brandi’s) it was mentioned that Monica would have a close friend named either Shelly, Katherine, or something else. (Can’t remember the last name off of the top of my head.) With that said, could it be possible that one of the previous incarnations of Shelly died before reaching the point where she should have gone to the time forest? This would explain why there would be 57 total shellys, and yet only 56 ever made it to the forest.
And my vote is for the Shelly Prime being the sphinx, having evolved to that form after so many years of guarding the secrets of the time forest. This could be a destined way to show her the things she needs to know in order to complete her “mission”. Of course, this is probably just wild conjecture and will be proven wrong…lol.
No, you’re right, it makes no real difference in outcomes whether there were 56 or 57 Shellys. That’s a separate issue. Nor does it make any real difference in outcome if the first Shelly came from the first 1450 year period or the second.
yea my brain was doing that yesterday
im going with (today) there was and has been 56 shelly. 55 who had a reset. 56th fizzled the machine. 56 is the sphinx.
still think the artifact is a jin part and shelly went here because of jin breaking and not the machine but will wait to see what occurs.
@Arumoro:
What we witnessed was the death of the first Shelly (from long, long ago) and it happened now because the order is the reverse in tree land. On earth, the current Shelly just left, but she must have gone to the very beginning of the whole thing with tree land because she would have been the one who arrived first in tree land (from it’s POV). She who is first shall be last and she who is last shall be first.
Both events are happening now from earth’s POV. Current Shelly must have zoomed to the start of the whole thing and has sealed her fate of having to wait for tens of thousands of years as the first sphinx. This must be really disconcerting for current Shelly to say the least. The Shelly we saw die got off easy by comparison.
The person who was current Shelly just started her time of hell from her POV. Her friendship with Monica in the current time period is over. Everything she knew is gone. Effectively she is gone, condemed to an eon of waiting. Very sad really.
On the other side of the time coin, however, her time of waiting is about to come to an end. Which makes me wonder, however, when is it really over for the Shelly who just left? Does she have to go through (from her POV) the whole thing one last time yet, despite her self at the other end of the time span being freed?
Someone said that they were trying to remember the other possible names of Monica’s friend. Here is the link. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/doasisay/
Remember a Shelly by any other name would smell just as sweet.
You need to just reason this out to figure out how man Shellys. Beginning of time, we everntually have Shelly #1, CM resets for the first time. We now have Shelly #2 (CM reset#1). Next CM reset (#2) and we get a Shelly #3 (reset #2)…last CM reset (#56) and we eventually get Shelly #57 who was the last Shelly to touch the Relic and paradoxically became the first to enter the Tree-Realm.
To keep the numbers correct, the Shelly was see dying/dead has to be Shelly #2. The Shelly we see dying mentions “The Calendar” which indicates the gang knows about the CM. Shelly #1 and the gang shouldn’t have any knowledge of the CM.
Another question to comes to mind is what precisely happened when the CM got broken, and when did it’s get broken. Do the CM get broken on 12/12/12 and reset back to 1450 years? Or did it get broken 1450 years ago causing it to eventually reset time on 12/12/12? I think it much be the former. May tries to fix the CM in the modern era (on 12/12/12), it goes kablowey, May gets thrust into the Demon realm, time gets reset to 1450 years ago, and Jin is the only one to know that something is seriously wrong.
Y’know, I think this rtesolves the paradox for me. in fact, I’m starting to believe that though Shelly, AFTER the calendar machine is destroyed, enters HERE, the ver next day’s update, HERE, might actually represent a fast forward ofthe entire 56 cycles, i.e. the Shelly from “Easier said” remains in that realm for almost 81000 years, evolves into a sphinx, and we see her meeting the final Shelly in the “I know you” strip.
So to recap, Shelly takes the relic into the realm of the trees, nothing happens because time cycles travel in reverse there, so 1450 years later she meets herself for the first time (Shelly55), etc., all the way down to Shelly #1. So when she says she does not remember what she was worried or thinking about, I believe it was that she felt weird with her friends staring at her…
But here’s another kicker…when she goes back, will it not be on the first CM iteration, but now with no chance of reset, i.e. she’ll be returning to Monica #1, Bud #1, Brandi #1, And indeed Tina 1.0? Will Tina be alive when Shelly gets back???
i can already see what coming. Sphinx Shelly will exposition all week about going home. Friday will be Shell picking up the relic and clearing her mind to go home in the last panel.
And speaking of Conscience, perhaps Shelly changing her personal demon into Conscience (aka Creepy Girl) has something to do with her transformation into a Sphinx.
as a sphinx child she had the power to manipulate her demons in ways mon never could such as crushing them together but she didn’t learn and unlock the full form and power till the forest where the CG was an effective defence being not a demon but not a mortal/human while shelly got her fur and wings.
Ooh I was just thinking about this earlier. If shelly did show back up, after thousands of years, she’d have forgotten sooo much. I’m torn between wanting her to remember everything and build her human life again, or to return to her body with only a vague memory of what happened during her time there (maybe with cool new Sphinxy powers).
Funny (and nice) to see how the sphinx morphs more&more into Shelly, as we know her.
The last frame is Shelly as we know her. Paul has sneakily and subtely adpted Shellynx’ proportions too.
Having now scrolled back through the comic a bit, I’d like to point out that Monica saw what she thought was Jin when she touched the artifact. If that was the Sphinx is also Shelly, then perhaps what is wrong with Jin is that she, too, is – or was – an iteration of Shellinx. Recall that she was disturbingly powerful even before she became a Leviathan.
Now wait. What actually happened to the Shelly who was holding the relic in Monica’s house? We thought she was transported to tree land, but that was Shelly01 from way back when. Is the latest Shelly still standing there at Monica’s holding the relic, never having gone anywhere, mentally or physically?
Whoever it is speaking to her said “do you want to know sphinxes come from? They’re born as humans.” Then it said “I was.” Indicating it is another sphinx talking.
I think we can assume she is going back to earth, but that does not mean she is going back as some form of Shelly. She may be a totally new character. We won’t know until we know what happened with the Shelly standing in Monica’s house. Hopefully we’ll know this week. Anyway, we got a new piece of information about sphinxes in general.
Looking at the first frame again, I’m not certain the sphinx shown is the one who laid down beside Shelly. That sphinx seems to just be rising in the second frame. So it seems to me the one sitting with it’s back to us is also sitting apart from the one by Shelly. It is the first frame one who spoke first, in response to what the one by Shelly said as she lay by her. The dialog boxes set apart are indicative of what the other sphinx is saying. I frame one, it is the one near Shelly, and in frame two it is the one with it’s back to us.
Please note that the hand that can be seen in the foreground of the last panel is the hand of dead Shelly. Shellinx is obviously talking to dead Shelly. What she hears is probably her friends calling to her, urging her to come back.
How many characters are taking part in this conversation?
It seems like at least three to me. First the sphinx talks. The next speech bubble with “I don’t remember what I was doing before coming here…” doesn’t point at the sphinx. Is that someone else continuing the thought? Then “Do you want to know…” sounds like a completely different person. It might have continued with “I was” and “Just as you were”, but not necessarily. Finally the sphinx talks again.
If they are all there still, does that also mean each has a relic as left by Shellys from different cycles? And does that mean, now that it’s all over, each can use their relic to go home as well? If so, where would home be for all the other sphinxes? Monica’s house may get very crowded very soon.
Maybe Phix is ad-libbing in the background. The lack of a background, no trees, no library etc. makes me also wonder. Is this just 1 sphinx thinking and talking, or .. or.. NO! She stated she was “the last” and could go home at last.
I am starting to think the emptiness of the stage conveys an inner dialogue, or a transformation of some kind, the dissolving of the time-tree-realm, now “it is done”.
And maybe, just maybe, The Biblioteki -which I believe has become sentient due to having “all books/knowledge” of ALL times (!) – has something to do with it, though that is admittedly a bit far-fetched.
*hits own head with ACME mallet for utter denseness*
Ah! I get it. The non-connected text-balloons are Shellinx “thought-talking” to Dead-Shelly. The connected text-balloons are just spoken out-loud. >.< Duh!..
Uhm. If Shelly is dead right now… and the Sphinx hasn’t moved into her physical body yet… in what state is her body right now?
Soulless, empty corpse ready to be taken over by deamons?
Or just plain dead on the floor?
That’s it. I give up. The last part of me concerned about this making sense is officially completely numb. Any attempt at resuscitation will only result in pushing stuff around and making sloshing noises.
That being said (and ignored by everyone here no doubt), I’m actually relieved. Now I can just follow the essence of the story without being bothered by the bureaucracy of continuity and pseudoscience. I’m sure Mr Taylor has this all laid out in his head and some day I’ll find it all fits together in an obvious way that enhances the story for me, but for now I’ll just enjoy floating in spooky confusion till I feel the ground beneath my feet.
no one has mentioned a major (to me) point in this comic
sphinx come from humans
that means phix was a human?
and that well…(some?) humans are either destined or condemmed to be the caretakers of their own demons?
i wonder if they have to die. this could be an afterlife for humans.
so with it being all written knowlege on earth – does that mean the library is the data-storage of God?
Yes, it implies that Phix was once a human woman – rather than a sphinx-kitten or egg or whatever. And that she won’t have a litter with Gregory, however their relationship progresses. This is interesting, but nothing we’ll get to this week. We can look forward to the tale of how Phix got her wings, though.
I am more of a Space-Opera guy. Time travel stories mostly irritate me, because they are quite often utterly predictable.
The only one i mildly enjoyed was “Soldier of another fortune” ,but that was more of a “parallel-times” story.
Dr Who is the only “time-travel” thing I actually enjoy, especially because he does away with all complex stuff by just calling it “Timey-Wimey”
I enjoy real research in time/space though.
I believe that Wapsisquare can stand on it’s own without trying to completely comprehend all complexities. The story “speaks” for itself.
Most Sci-Fi writers that deal with time travel, lose themself into too many projections and bogus theorizing. The better stories are enjoyable without understanding the timey-wimey-bits precisely.
But hey, that’s just my $0.02
I am severely math and logic-hampered, and I dismally flunked Logical-empiricism…Oddly enough I did exeedingly weel om metaphysics. Go figure.
Proof that Shelly-Sphinx is “our” Shelly is in the last panel of (I hope that worked). Where she said, “Damn. You told me that would work…” Hinting back to Tina and the coffee pot. My you are a tricky one Paul 🙂
no one has mentioned a major (to me) point in this comic
sphinx come from humans
that means phix was a human?
and that well…(some?) humans are either destined or condemmed to be the caretakers of their own demons?
i wonder if they have to die. this could be an afterlife for humans.
so with it being all written knowlege on earth – does that mean the library is the data-storage of God?
If one believes in “A God” yes. I guess so.
For the Atheists among us, the library is a semi-sentient “know-it-all” The biggest Data-warehouse ever, that spawned it’s own AI.
I pondered Phix the moment “SHellix was human” entered the fray.
I remember some egyptian, or babylonian queen, or princess, that got murdered by men because she was considered too smart for a woman ,and thusly too dangerous. Phix could be her. As a sphinx, she could have become rather vengeful towards men ,hence her skull-wall, and the ease by which she seemed to have killed -something she later became very ashamed of-
In her case “afterlife” is a discreet possibility.
This reminds me of the sci/fi short story when, uncountable years in the future mankind has built the ultimate galaxy-spanning quantum computer and asks it “Is there a God?” –
And after a couple of seconds, the computer replies “Now there is.”
I like that. It puts me in mind of one of the consequences of a far flung future man-made machine “god.” If it was a true god it would have onmipresence, not only of space, but of time. This means it would exist with us now, even though it has not yet, technically, been built.
Given enough time and enough intelligent species in the universe, it seems almost inevitable such a thing will be created by some group at some point to become retroactive to everyone throughout past time.
I don’t think the sphinxes are allowed to be that selective. The sphinx at the gates of Thebes, for example, not only killed the person trying to answer the riddle, but also anyone with him/her. Wife, kids, whoever. According to this story line, the sphinxes are dispatched by some entity to do their jobs. It’s not up to them to pick and choose who to kill or why; human or demon.
All this brings up the question of sphinxes original gender as humans. Are exclusively females chosen for the task? If so why? (no PMS jokes please) Or are males also chosen but transformed into female in appearance because that’s the sphinx norm? Would a male (originally) sphinx shape shift into a male to mingle with humans?
The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face and breast of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless. Those who cannot answer her riddle suffer a fate typical in such mythological stories, as they are gobbled up whole and eaten by this ravenous monster.
Unlike the Greek sphinx which was a woman, the Egyptian sphinx is typically shown as a man (an androsphinx). In addition, the Egyptian sphinx was viewed as benevolent in contrast to the malevolent Greek version and was thought of as a guardian often flanking the entrances to temples
Variation in delivery formats occurs too frequently. He’d post them on Wikipedia and link them in various blog posts, comic replies, and sidebar advertisements.
Suddenly thought of something rather funny: If Both Shellinx and Dead-Shelly would manifest in the current Wapsi-world, we would for the first time ever have an observable “Schrodinger’s cat” dual-existense.. A Shelly, both dead and alive at the same time, and for that matter NO solidifying of either observable reality, yet both realities at the same time solidifying
*looking at theoretical physicist, specialized in quantum physics going severely fetal* 😆
Yes, so technically one would observe a quadruple non-solidifying non-event.
Maybe the end-result would be a sort of stasis outside of time/space. Forever stuck in unresolved-ness.
Orrr..It would immediately spawn 4 distinctly different solidifying-events ,each creating it’s own new time-stream (if following the “Multiple universes theory” that is..)
I bet someone already thought-out a formula for that. Theoretical physicists are barmy like that… But, as I stated, I am seriously math-challenged, and wouldn’t understand one bit of it.
*snatches last muffin away from Paula*
You know? I have to go shopping now, and it’s Your fault that I have to buy me a couple of chocolate-muffins from our ungodly good local bakery.. }:( 😛
Quick note: Having repeated 56 times means there are 57 times it happened. If you repeat something once, it happened twice (the first time and the repeat). Take the number of repeats (56) and add the original pass-through. So, 57 Shellys in total. “Our” Shelly, the Shelly we know from past strips, the Shelly who is now a sphinx, is Shelly 57.
Shelly number 1 just died completing a task that was set in motion up in cycle 57 (or repeat 56). And I think her death is what stirred Jin to muck with the Calendar Machine. Jin may have something to say to Shelly when she gets back (like “She was my best friend, and YOU LET HER DIE!!”)
As phix said above Brandi has repeated the last year 56 times
this can mean that the year has been repeated 56 times and that they are in fact on 57th year
OR
it could mean that they have repeated it 55 times and this is the 56th repetition of the events.
@Paula, your second assumption is true I think. I’ve been assuming that the CM has reset 56 times from Phix’s command to Brandy. That means everything I’ve been theorizing about is wrong. IF the CM reset 56 times, it would mean that Shelly #2 (from CM cycle #2) would be the one we see dead. But from Paul’s confirmations, it’s Shelly #1 (the original) we see dead. So that means the CM reset only 55 times. And this is the 56th timeline that came into existence. The 56th time that Phix and Brandy has the conversation. And that means the Gang tried to fix the Calendar before the first reset.
I come for the comic. I stay for the community novel. I’m not dumb, but I just can’t follow the convolutions – I just have to follow my gut.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Shellysphinx will return to the girls as Shelly, not as a sphinx, and that her memory will slowly return to her (plus the memory of all the other cycles she has just lived through) in the same way Picard had to reconcile his second life in “The Inner Light.” (My second favorite episode, for what it’s worth.)
And for the record, that’s an intriguing view of a Sphinx from the back.
My vote is with you, Old Wolf. I kinda shut a lotta stuff off when we had the physics discussion and time shifting/loops.
Now Shelly definitely knows what NOT to do!
Whatever happens, it seems there will be a profound change in Shelly when she returns. The Shelly we knew will be history (no pun intended). I trust the fans will be prepared for it.
I didn’t see that graph appear yesterday or read the commentary about it, but I think it’s flawed. It says that Shelly 57 dies, Shelly 1 takes her place. I thought the whole point of all this is that the LAST Shelly – 56 or 57, whatever – NEVER dies. She is transported to the sacred forest and is effectively the first to arrive there because time runs backwards in that place. (A cycle later by her reckoning, second-last Shelly arrives and dies, followed by second runner-up Shelly, etc) OUR Shelly, the last one, lives in the sacred forest for 80 millennia, and develops into a sphinx. In OUR Shelly’s timeline, this strip (http://wapsisquare.com/comic/easier-said/) literally jumps forward in time 80 millennia as the Shelly 01 appears to complete OUR Shelly’s sentence as she is transported.
Once Shelly 01 dies, our Shelly, the last Shelly, who has been waiting outside of linear time for time to run backwards to the first cycle, can return to “earth”. Never once dying or taking anyone’s place.
Which begs the question… to which cycle on Earth CAN Sphinx-Shelly return? Time on Earth is in cycle #1… unless all the cycles exist simultaneously and she can choose, or unless it’s some sort of Narnia-esque time pocket as others have suggested, and she’ll appear not to have gone anywhere at all.
Haha, I’m with Team Paul-Should-Maybe-Jump-In-Here!
Let’s just say that the risk of her having flees in her hind-quarters-fur sortof completely kills-off any titillation I might possibly, remotely, in an off-moment could have felt, were I severely drunk and/or stoned.. 😆
Ok — let’s try it this way — Conisder there were Only 3 Loops.
– Due to whatever rules, the time paradox is resolved by having the Shelly who exits the loop after the Calendar Machine is destroyed (Shelly04) enters Treeland at the Start of the Treeland time line.
So, in Treeland time:
Start – Shelly04 arrives and becomes Sphinx.
Loop 01 – Shelly03 arrives after 1450 years, dies.
Loop 02 – Shelly02 arrives after 1450 years, dies.
Loop 03 – Shelly01 arrives after 1450 years, dies.
At this point in Realworld, the Calendar Machine is broken by Jin’s Mom & Co. Shelly00 encounters the Artifact for the First Time Ever and teleports to Treeland – dies. Shelly04 recognizes this and longs for home (the Current Episode).
So I stand corrected by Fairportfan for pointing out the need for a Shelly00, who originally entered the time line at the beginning of the first loop.
In programming,it’s easy to get confused over the differing conditions at the Start and End of a loop, much less a series of loops. In my example, there were only 3 loops, giving us a Before Loop Shelly and an After Loop Shelly, plus 3 In-The-Loop Shellys.
That’s 3 Loops, but 4 Shellys. The 3rd Loop Shelly exits the loop (CM Destroyed) and becomes Shelly04.
It was a good idea to simplify things that way, but I disagree or don’t understand your interpretation.
At this point in Realworld, the Calendar Machine is broken by Jin’s Mom & Co. Shelly00 encounters the Artifact for the First Time Ever and teleports to Treeland – dies.
No, Shelly00 would not have existed in the real world at around 550 AD to be able to do that. The first Shelly (Shelly01) would not have been born until the twentieth century, which would exist only within the time loops (and once more for the final pass) toward the end of the 1450 year period.
That’s 3 Loops, but 4 Shellys. The 3rd Loop Shelly exits the loop (CM Destroyed) and becomes Shelly04.
I agree that there would have been four Shellys, but I don’t understand why exiting a time loop would create an extra Shelly. Also, why are you saying that Shelly03 became Shelly04? There was a final Shelly that was born outside any loop. That would be Shelly04, according to your numbering system. She wasn’t ever caught in a loop thanks to the CM being destroyed before it could reset time.
-Realworld-
Jin/etc breaks Calendar Machine.
1450 years pass. Shelly00 goes to Treeland, dies.
Loop resets. (1 complete)
1450 years pass. Shelly01 goes to Treeland, dies.
Loop resets. (2 complete)
1450 years pass. Shelly02 goes to Treeland, dies.
Loop resets. (3 complete)
1450 years minus a few pass. Calendar Machine destroyed. Shelly03 goes to Treeland, becomes Sphinx (Shelly04)
-Treeland –
Shelly04/Sphinx wait 1450 years. Meets Shelly02, who dies.
1450 years pass. Meets Shelly01, who dies.
1450 years pass. Meets Shelly00, who dies. Loops Complete
Shelly04/Sphinx longs for home — Current episode.
The last Shelly went to Treeland and waited through all the loops encountering the other Shellys in reverse order. I made things confusing by distinguishing Sphinx Shelly from the Shelly that entered that loop.
Am I the only one who remembers the library talking to Phix and Nudge, telling them they are both librarians now? Maybe Sphinx-Shelly starts out talking to herself, and the forest(or possibly the library) talks to her. There does seem to be a deus-ex-machina voice in a few comics now.
Very few people catch the Lord of the Rings reference. It tends to be my online name just about everywhere, and now it is also the name of my rabbitry.
odd thought but what was jin doing in all the time loops you figure at some point shed put a mental postit note up “shelly + relic = Death” after the 10th 20th or 50th time
I think my recap above might be lost in the noise, so I want to repeat a question in a fresh thread, if y’all please…
The way the time flows in the place of the trees put the current time of the scene above, in earth terms, at iteration #1 of the Calendar Machine cycles. but the calendar machine is fixed, and I think Shellynx needs to get back to earth to make that a certainty (just in case).
Which means, she’ll be coming back on iteration #1, meeting Monica #1, Bud #1, Brandi #1, and hopefully a now-fixed Jin.
But what about Tina? Is she not still alive in iteration #1? This is a very intriguing possibility and I wanted to hear feedback from the group.
maybe it was only working backwards to undo stuff.
now it may work forwards again?
and after all this discussion im realising why we all have a bee in our bonnet about how many shellys.
cuz if there are 57 and only 56 entered then our 57th shelly is fine. possibly 56th was shellinx
but if there is only 56 and 56 entered then shellinx is still about and hopefully about to enter through the comic strip in real time OR calender yearn#1
Nope. Shelley will be talking to Monica, Bud, et al #57, just as when she left.
Shelly/Sphinx’s day 2 was our yesterday, her day three in the tree world was our day before yesterday, etc.
When she comes out she’ll be right back in the current reality, because Monica wasn’t taken back in time before she grabbed the relic when bud held it out to her. If physical time travel occurred when the relic was grasped then Monica would have experienced it and us along with her.
Ok, to help clear things up as a LOT of people seem to not be understanding this.
1. There were 57 total cycles in the “mystical forest” (MF for short).
2. The sphinx, who came from Shelley, is *our* Shelley (#57), the one we’ve been following since Wapsi #1.
3. The Shelley we just saw die was Shelley #1, the very first of her kind, who apparently came into the realm to help Jin.
4. No, the first CM repeat cycle wasn’t the first time they knew something was wrong because Jin had been unaging since it initially broke and she had seen her mom sucked into the demon realm before the cycle every started over.
5. Everyone arguing about it only being 56 cycles and not 57 didn’t pay enough attention to the comments Sphinx-Shelley said yesterday.
“You’ve been here 56 times. I was the first here you know.”
So, YES she is NOT counting herself in with the other 56 iterations of herself that have come prior. If she had done that she’d have said:
“We’ve been here 56 times before. I was the first here you know…”
So yes, there have been 57 cycles.
—————————————-
I do have a question… Why is everyone assuming that she’s there physically? It this is a metaphysical realm where time starts from today and goes backward all 81k years to the very first time Shelley popped in to visit, it could be entirely mental/spiritual and NOT physical.
With this in mind #57 Shelley, our girl, would not have to worry about physically being a Sphinx, although she could have been so in disguise the whole time and didn’t know it.
So rules to remember with this…
1. Time for us moves this way, with Shelley #57 being the last of her kind (and is the Sphinx in some alternate realm that we don’t know is really physical)…
————————–>>>>>>>
2. While in “Tree World” Shelley #57 experienced time this way:
<<<<<<<<—————————–
So although to her 81k years passed (mentally/emotionally/spiritually at least), in the "real world" where she/we just were, a mere moment could have passed and her not really have physically traveled anywhere at all.
Did Monica "physically" travel to the tree world when she grabbed the relic? Nope. She saw a vision, BUT SHE STAYED IN THIS REALITY. And had a fairly amusing expression on her face also.
With this in mind, why does everyone think that our Shelley #57, Sphinx-girl, and apparently the only one to do this after the CM was fixed, actually physically went to tree world?
Maybe Shellinx has already entered “Our Shelly”, more precisely the moment she died for real on her vision-quest.
Our Shelly=Shellinx since her true death on her vision-quest. There is no guarantee that both timestreams run at exactly the same pace I think it’s imperative to hold on to that thought.
Shellinx could have fulfilled what she was meant to do, the moment that dead-Shelly filled the oopart, and got back into the empty shell that was Shelly-on-vision-quest.
I think that even Jin was unaware of the switcheroo.
That’s the only way I can make out head or tails, and I am sticking to it.
The current “vision’ is indeed that, just a vision ,recorded on the oopart, to explain Shelly who she really had become.
The coming days we’ll see how close we were anyways.
Stuff like this is good for a mental work-out, but I am not going to do all that iteration-counting. That’s too much like school. 😛
Acausal anomalies are what led to Jin’s condition…I know it’s high-minded to think in synchronistic terms, but if we do not find a causal path starting with Shelly entering the tree realm after the CM is destroyed and ending with the current scene, I fear Jin will remain broken.
What you say actually make sense in the many worlds theory, where infinte simultaneous universes can overlap…but we are given that time has a certain directionality in the tree realm, and according to quantum theory, once information is gleaned from a quantum system, it must collapse into one of these many states, which will have its own causality laws that must be followed.
Buuut..It only collapses when observed by an external source/intelligence….
Time is “experienced” as directional, because the observer (shellinx) has a serial-mind. It doesn’t mean it is actually seial…. The whole problem of paradoxes in relation to Quantum-Theory, would be utterly easy to solve ,weren’t we “wired” to experience and understand events always in a “first this, than that-way”
I believe it was Einstein himself that remarked that our sense of serial-time was hampering our objectivity.
Exactly. Shelly is an external observer who uses the artifact to enter the tree realm, thus collapsing it into the state with the opposite sense of time. Of course, I am assuming she is phsically there, an assumption which is being challenged. I don’t think we’ll know for sure until she returns with the relic.
And if the artifact is self-protected, i.e. no gamma ray leaks, how will they know the plutonium is still in there?
“And if the artifact is self-protected, i.e. no gamma ray leaks, how will they know the plutonium is still in there?”
They will do science to it? It has a red blinking light? If Shelly returns with the memory of what happens, she would remember, but you are assuming she won’t?
@eshmenk–I thought it had a see-through bauble in the middle
^
{0}
V
And you could see the plutonium through the 0…
…granted there’s some problems with that theory.
So, YES she is NOT counting herself in with the other 56 iterations of herself that have come prior. If she had done that she’d have said:
“We’ve been here 56 times before. I was the first here you know…”
Not necessarily. If someone talks to themselves in the mirror, they would typically say “You need to stop doing that” or “I”, rather than “we.” Meeting herself is just an extension of that.
I agree that she might have said “we” to emphasize the distinction between versions, but she might have used singular case to emphasize the point they they were really the same person.
You should have read the entire page, rather than just reading the beginning. At the bottom she said
Where as I was the last of fifty six, you were the first.
There it is obvious. She clearly did count herself in the 56. That must be what she meant at the top, too.
I think it will, at the least, re-kindle the deep friendship they apparently had in former CM-loops.
Jin is in need of a true friend that understands at least partially what she has suffered.
She deserves it after all her machinations and self-sacrifice, all motivated through an unending love for those around her. She is about the least ego-centric of ALL actors in Wapsisquare. A saint-like being almost.
I agree about Jin. Perhaps an uber-saint since no existing saint has ever gone through but a small fraction of what Jin has to right the mess left by her mother.
This discussion has gotten insane, and totally mired in minutiae. For me, it’s time to stop and just watch the pretty flashing lights. At least until things solidify in coming strips when we have the luxury of hindsight.
And what about this scary little thought… Shelly has been through this 57 times? If the calender machine wasn’t taken out those previous 57 times then why do this task? Wouldn’t they be working frantically up to the final moment to fix the calender? So the girls “fix” the calender and then embark on this quest to help a POST calender machine “Fixing” Jin… Did they “Fix” the calender 57 other times as well and now we are entering a time when Jin goes mad because she knows that everything seems fixed (Mom is back, demon world back to normal et al.) but knows it isn’t? Is the completion of the artifact the key to really fixing the Calender???
The assumption has always been that they didn’t fix the CM in the earlier sequences because everything was reset. What if that isn’t what happened remember they didn’t fix the CM this time they destroyed the CM. This would mean that something is now different from the previous times. In all other renditions maybe they fixed the CM but Jin was being driven crazy. It could be that Shelly was coming here to help Jin and instead by accident or design resets the CM causing Jin to be driven crazy. The assumption has always been that they didn’t fix the CM because everything was reset.
Paradoxes being what they are Jin was being driven crazy because the CM was reset, the CM was reset because Jin was being driven crazy. So instead of fixing the machine you destroy it then you only need to go back and stop the original Shelly from resetting the CM the first time thus stopping the need for all subsequent Shelly’s from resetting the CM.
Paradoxes within paradoxes it is all so wonderfully confusing.
Shelly older, wiser and sphinxier. (Is that a word?)
She’s probably coming back to our timeframe. One would think she has a round trip ticket. I do have to say she needs a better travel agent.
For my 2 cents worth I think that one becomes a sphinx in addition to being human if Phix’s taste in recreation is any indication.
That might mean Shelly’s human memory has been preserved intact while her inhuman sphinx mentality kept her from going crackers in the sacred grove.
I think Shelly will be fine, but she’ll have to get the hang of changing forms at some point.
“You’ve done this fifty-six time. I was the first.”
Are you saying that sphinx Shelly isn’t counting her own trip in that number?
Assuming that was directed at me, no, of course, I’m not saying that. Why would you think I was saying that?
“You’ve repeated the 1450 years … fifty-six times,” doesn’t mean “plus one for the original cycle”.
“Repeated the first 1450 years fifty-six times…” would be fifty-seven.
I disagree. I think it’s 57 times total in both cases, and don’t know why you would think it was different. In any case, she said “last 1450 years”, so there is still an adjective before the number of years.
I nver said it would be because there would be fifty-seven; i meant that it doesn’t matter how many there were, the first would not have been sent. Because there would be no perceived need.
What? If have been arguing that there were 56 Shellys total and that 56 different Shellys arrived, so how could you not be arguing that the first of the 56 Shellys was sent? She had to be to be, otherwise only 55 Shellys could have arrived. If she would have been sent if there were 56 Shellys total (your assumption), she would have been sent if there were 57 Shellys total (my assumption).
I think there is an extra Shelly and it could be the one that we have been following. The sphinx Shelly could be the one from the last loop, rather than the final Shelly (which we know) who never got not in a loop because the calendar machine was destroyed before it reset.
Holy crap! I just realized something, this being our shelly makes more sense when you remember what dead shelly said. Remember, she said something about ‘Need’ and then ‘The Calendar’. At the time I was confused, cause, the calendar machines gone, and our shelly is the only shelly that knows that, so she wouldn’t say she needed it, that’s for sure. But the first shelly would, what she meant by needing it, was needing to stop it.
OK, we got it.
Shelly is dead. Long Live Sphinx Shelly!!
If she gets to keep the wings and tail, I’m all for it!
I’m thinking the long living has already gone down off-stage.
Time being what it is… I suspect that “dead” Shelley will eventually be the Sphinx?
Or perhaps more accurately, WOULD have been the Sphinx *again*. But with the CM being broken, the loop is gone and the only Shelley left is the Sphinx?
Dose that make Shelly the once and future sphinx?
Nice one!
No, Our shelly was the first one there and stuck, and there time moved opposite of our time. So shellies from all the previous cycles started showing up. And the Shelly that just died was the Shelly from the first cycle. No more Shellies will show up. Thus no more reason for her to be there and she’d return home, I presume.
She’s already returned home. Shellynx is our Shelly. She just didn’t know it until now. The relic is giving her a vision of her last few moments in the forest.
She returned either the day she was hypnotized by the Lanthan doll, or her death on the vision quest.
And, yes, I woke up at 2:45 in the morning, local time, with that thought in my head.
And, like any addict had to come look and see if I could bend the facts to prove it.
Going back to bed now.
Aaaaaaaaaand I’m a bit miffed that she cannot remember what she was doing before she arrived in the place of the trees as a sphinx. The only possibility that groks with yesterday’s comments is if Shelly came in as the Sphinx at the same time as arriving as Shelly#1, which we witnessed. I’d then understand why she felt she could forget where it was that she came from, being stuck there for so many tens of thousands of years…
BTW, is she still talking to Shelly #1’s corpse? Or is she breaking the 4th wall?
She’s both, but who cares? 😉
(apologies to txmystic, Kate Beaton, and the dead Curies)
Thinking out loud, is more like it. It’s something a lot of lonely people do.
No social conventions ,no people looking at You in an odd way for having a discussion with oneself…..
I see that the hand in the foreground is part of Shelly #1’s body. She is indeed doing both, I think. And given she had ~1446 years between visits from each other iteration of Shelly, she’s prolly done this a LOT!
In Shakespeare’s day they called this kind of thing a “soliloquy”. 😛 Now everyone starts worrying about how many walls have been torn down whenever someone talks to themselves and seems to maybe look at the “camera” too directly.
Soliloquy is Paul’s style. He seems to prefer it to thought balloons, though not exclusively.
This may not be a very large universe Shelly Sphinx is in. Or underpopulated: Maybe talking to herself is what she does, all the live long mahayuga.
On the other hand, maybe there’s someone there to hear her this time. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/knowing/
I’m with Julie. And, besides, she’s talking to the smartest person around–what’s wrong with that? Is she supposed to be silent for centuries on end while waiting for someone to show up?
And even if she did, she’s still talking to herself!
“…In Shakespeare’s day they called this kind of thing a “soliloquy”. ..”
Nowadays they call it “Bluetooth”.
No. She’s talking to herself metaphorically and literally. If put into a similar situation, I would probably do the same thing. No, I would be doing the same thing.
The corpse, obviously. But I’m wondering why she’s not talking to Conscience. Maybe after 80,000 years they’ve said all they have to say to one another. Maybe Creepy Little Girl and Shelly merged, or she didn’t make the trip, or she had only a normal human lifespan after all and died years ago, leaving a hole in Shelly’s head. More questions. Still no answers.
It has been 81,000 year, give or take…I have trouble remembering what I had for lunch yesterday…
You get stuck for thousands of years doing nothing but waiting while watching a sword blade and a tree and see how much of any you remember. I am surprised she can still remember how to speak, let alone her previous life. Of course, as a sphinx she probably instantly picks up on any newcomers language (telepathy?) as a job perk, so that may not be a factor.
“Mom, where do sphinxes come from?”
“Well, dear, when a paradoxical space/time incident loves a millennium of stewardship very much…”
It puts it’s Wibbly Wobbly into the Timey Wimey?
hsss
Love it.
Oh, Paul…you made me cry today. I love you, Paul Taylor. Please come to Wizard World Chicago.
so when she returns to her body in the room with M bud and every one , shes gona be a sphink ,, hmm some one shold call phix cuz im certain there are rules sphinks have to follow and shelly might need help learning to morph back to human
Maybe whoever’s explaining things to her can help her.
Maybe it’s Creepy Girl…
But CLG was created by Shelly, rather than being born as a human, AFAIK.
Yeah. I meant maybe CG is the one doing the explaining, having ridden with Shelly through all the cycles…
I think that Last Shelly (the one we’ve been following all the way so far, the one who became the sphinx) is the only Shelly who has CG, since none of the others were misled by Nudge on thir vision quests, and didn’t die, and thus didn’t create her.
Maybe it’s the remains of the tree like “stumpy” or somthin 🙂
Heh heh. Quite.
“Y’know, Shelly, usually I just sit back and watch when you do this stuff… but this is one of those times when I make your organs fail through gamma radiation exposure. Ready?”
“Um. Not really.”
“I can wait.”
She’ll remember when she goes back – someone mentioned Narnia in yesterday’s comments – at the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, remember, when they come back to their world from Narnia, they instantly change back from twenty-something kings and queens in regal garb to twentieth-century kids in everyday clothes…
Also, remember when Lena came back from Suzerain and changed back from the twenty-something queen to her eight-year-old self…
But the case of Suzerain was that Lena got sent into the game due to the improper angle of the hoe upon which she was trying to impale Roger’s noggin. Here, we have Shelly deliberately trying to provide help to someone else and ending up dead, only to return to her point of origin as a Sphinx.
Sorry, that is the only way my brain can accept the simultaneous cycles of the tree realm, until Sphellinx figures out where she was before she went there.
I’m looking forward to her clicking her heels while holding the relic…
or Sphellynx? Keep the Y from Shelly?
Both of them sound too much like some sort of computer operating system or subsystem.
I get the patent!
Be the first czat i ever saw that could click its heels…
ergh.
“cat”
I thought all cats were czars, or aspire to be. Which makes Czat perfectly appropriate.
Sure. But what i meant was, in both the Narnia case and Lena’s case, returning to their own world dropped them back to their “real” age … but with the memories all those years more-or-less intact.
(Which reminds me – can’t recall if i’ve said this before {but i’m sure Eschmenk could tell me},if Lena and Roger decide to return and live in the “Real World”, i pity any boyfriends Lena may have once she’s in her teens…)
OTOH, is the human brain really wired to store 81k years of memory? Nathan Brazil went into a sort of autopilot waiting for significant events, and it was only when he was back to Well World that he “woke up” and remembered what was significant there.
Possibly. I remember a case where a man was unable to forget. The moment he saw a dog, he immediately remembered every dog he’d ever seen, complete with smell, situation, clothing worn at the time etc.. His brain could hold all information, but the constant stream of associations for everything around him hampered his functioning severely.
Our brains are wired in such a way, that they “scrub” for redundant memories every now&then. That’s what keeps us sane and functioning.
New research seem to point towards a “holographical-associative” memory system, where the actual memories are cut-up and stored only partially, with an overarching system -think of check-bits- that can re-assemble most memories on the basis of a few loose data-fragments, which do not even have to be complete. Whole parts can be missing, yet out brains can re-assemble them in whole again. Our olfactory memory system is the most impressive in that aspect.
(Both my sisters are Psychologists with a neurology-degree..so..yeah, I got quite some lectures here&there)
oh wow.
that would be awsome and suck at the same time
was it only visual memory that worked on or other senses. (audio .. smell)
Um, they weren’t aged more than a few days or months in Narnia, nowhere as much as becoming 20-something years old, definitely. However, they still would have been aged those few months that they don’t seem to be aged when they leave Narnia. One of the factors in Narnia is that kids are the only ones who really see Aslan, and they never lose their ability to see Aslan in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, so they never achieve adulthood. More reasonable would be to explain how Peter Pan manages to de-age when he goes to Neverland, while he’d probably be the same age if he left it.
You seriously must read the Narnia books. The Pevensie kids reigned over Narnia for twenty-something years before, while hunting a white stag, they stumbled upon the lamp-post and fell out of the wardrobe quite by accident. C.S. Lewis explains this as, “Time goes differently in Narnia…” in several of the books. Also, in “Prince Caspian”, Lucy alone can see Aslan until about halfway through the book, when he makes himself visible to everyone. Otherwise, usually everyone can see him. It gets rather disturbing in “Last Battle” though…
Not meaning to insult you, just…those are my favorite books ever…
They aged that way in the movie for that matter – and Queen Susan was played by the older sister of the girl who played Susan…
I’m so glad you stepped in here to correct this misconception/misremembering of Narnia. 🙂 Narnia fans FTW!!
I agree–but it’s only in the first (and last) books that people from our world spend more than a few months in Narnia. And it’s easy to miss or skim over the “tying up” at the end of the first book. But the point is there, nevertheless.
And, in reverse, even after spending twenty+ years in Narnia ruling, not even one day, perhaps not a minute, had passed in our world. Conservation of energy? For whatever reason, they seem to have returned in the same moment and state (except memory) as when they left.
Actually, the most relevant comparison to Narnia is that (like Lewis’ fantasy) Treeworld need not be at 1:1 ratio as to the passage of time. Shellinx may have been there less than 1450×56 years.
Or… maybe she’s been there a monstrously longer period of time. The demon-hunting sphinxes of South India?
The culture that calculated lengths of time longer than the existence of universe?
hmm
i always assumed voyage of the dawn treader took place for 10-11months.
not over a year as caspian said he would take a year to search but since they nearly ran out of supplies i would have said longer than 3 months.
Yeah, I suppose they must have; Eustace spent a fair amount of time writing his journal just before ticking off Rheep, and again being stuck as a dragon. And then if you count the ~2 months the ship was at sea before the kids fell into the picture…
Lesson: Never piss off anyone who knows how to put the pointy end of the sharp thing into you. 😉
True–but even if it’s 14 or 20 months, that’s still relatively few, compared to 20+ years = 240+ months.
For those of us who have forgotton, Suzelain and Lena are a Pibgorn story arc. ( I thought I’d save you a google)
It kind of creeps me out to know now that all the skulls in the background of the last panel of are all the Shellies that have died there. 🙁
This raises two questions.
1. When is she getting out?
2. Will she remember where she’s from when she wakes up? Or will she have amnesia?
So it’s three questions…
1:i guess when she picks up the relic.
2:yes, looks like it, unless Creepy is an independent entity, which is unlikely. Of course all could come flowing back the
moment Shellynx (i like that..) touches the relic. I keep thinking that the relic is also able to record stuff, and play the appropriate recording for the appropriate person.
Good odds picking up the relic will take her back. From there it will be a merging of Shelly in the world and Shelly the sphinx Should be quite a shock and Shelly is going to freak out, or be very, very calm.
I would expect CG did not go with her. It was the conscious part of her mind that went, not her and CG.
What would be amusing is CG meeting up with Sphinx Shelly as an internal avatar. Now who’s the scariest girl in this head huh?
If that’s the case, Tina is gonna have a fit… 😀
By the by. What if there isn’t a “merging? That would give some serious double-takes if the tree-world dissolves around dead-Shelly and Shellinx.
I can imagine that M and the club would not know wether to laugh or cry, if confronted with a dead- and a living -Shelly at the same time.
(oh, and will she have sexy large canines, like all girls that are deeply touched by the supernatural in WS seem to have? Would make it easier to discern Post-CM-Shelly from other iterations if Paul pulls a switcheroo again…)
The complications from not merging would be huge. The 50000+ years Shelly has been there would really degrade her memory details. She would be almost clueless and need massive help to re-integrate into the world again. I don’t think the ARC could take Shelly being in Therapy for he next 5 years or so. lol.
Shelly needs to come back with detailed current memories and of the stay in wonder what land.(Would that make Sphinx Shelly a Tinkerbell with an attitude?) The girls will have to help her overcome the shock, and it will be huge, to stay rational. Shelly really has to stay rational when she goes back.
I can see the TV move Jin and Shelly UXB!
For those who don’t know:
UXB – Unexploded Bombs
Shellinx. I like it. Hence forth Sphinx Shelly should be known as (to me) Shellinx.
go on
you know you want to do the monty python scene 😉
No. Have Jin and Shelly form a rock group. Fangs and Feathers…First they tear it up and then they burn it down!
I’d do it, but I’d be afraid of a kind of Spanish Inquisition…
KABLOINGNGGNSSSH (musical orchestral hit)
Nooo-body expects the spanish inquisition!
Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…. Our two weapons are fear and ..
Oh shoot…I did it now hmm? 😀
Ooooh! Now, Cardinal — the rack!
I think we all know the key line here is “I’ll come in again.”
Nobody expects . . . Oh, damn!
It amazes me how long it took for that setup to play out… 😀
I’ll just be sitting over here in confusion corner… probably all week.
Pass the salsa…
*asks Tina for some more corn-chips*
Errmmm…so I may have finished off the salsa last night. 🙂 Oh well! Tina will have to go shopping for more for all of us. 😀
and do NOT pick up the dice from the Jumanji game
Oh, don’t worry,i won’t. The risk of running into Mork is a bit too big for me. 😛
Nanu nanu!
or press the button on Zathura!!! 😀
its really cool and simple when you think it through the thing Monica saw when she grabed the relic was shelly the reason shelly didnt see anything at first is cuz she wasnt traped in it yet now our shelly has spent all 56 cycels traped in the forest watching herself die and slowly peice the relic togeather into what it is now.
the real question is who made the relic? is it from the future or the past?
I like you. You’re a very progressive thinker. Who cares about the whys and whats of this sphinx crap. What about the relic!?
Nobody made it. It’s just there.
Like the blue-green knife in the museum.
Or Diktor’s diary.
Or John Connor – whose existence is a pre-condition of his existence.
Or the narrator of “All You Zombies”, who is not only his own father but his own mother too.
Or the diagram of overlapping time loops that the protagonist of “The Technicolor Time Machine” hands himself when they meet in a hallway…
Or any number of other objects in time-travel stories that exist as closed loops with no apparent origin or end.
It was suggested yesterday that we’re bootstrapping here. The relic is like the watch from “Somewhere in Time” – it has no point of origin. At least it seems that way at the moment.
Scoot over guys, I’ve still got dibs on Cushion 42.
I think some dolphins got Cushion 42 sometime before the Vogons showed up…
But there seem to be an endless supply of identical ones in the closet on the bridge of the Heart of Gold, so you’re in luck!
Watch for mice.
Monica and Bud think the relic is a Lathian construct of unknown purpose. To find out what it did is why they let Shelly hold it, after Monica got warned off by the Banshee and Shelly didn’t. If it is from Lanthis, if it always gave access to the Sacred Grove, if someone or something set this whole thing up specifically targetting Shelly to cause all this: These are questions we don’t have the answers to. Yet.
It may be due to the unique properties of the Relic that when interacted with the broken CM it created the time loop. Shelly may have been the first person to initially touched the Relic. In fact that may have been the trigger of the time loop. Now that the CM is no longer working, the Relic is now back to normal operation. For some definition of normal. 🙂
There are right ways and wrong ways to ‘bootstrap’ (or as we called it ‘slipshank’) an item.
Assembling the parts in an alternate verse is certainly a causality-friendly way to go.
There is the small but critical issue of loss of mass, though. I think that’s the true root of the reset problem, why the CM was “broken”. More in another post when I have… time.
yea i think ill join y’all
with hot chocolate and a chocolate muffin.
mm muffin.
Ohhh….. Muffin Button!!!!!!
It’s getting a bit crowded here…
That’s because you’re trying to sit too close to the actual corner. 😛
Personally, I think we should have our own coffee shop sized area…like an annex to Tina’s shop. 🙂
I put an addition in in January, sometime around the Pie. It has big screen tvs and comfy sofas. Feel free to use it. 🙂
It creeps me out now to know that all the skulls in the background of the last panel of this comic are from all the Shellies that have died there. 🙁
last time someone mentioned that i went back to count them
can only see 13.
would have helped if you could see 55/56/57 😛
Soooo .. We’ll have to deal with an amnesiac Shelly then?
That’s going to complicate things somewhat, though it leaves space for some great “who are you?” -gags.
And don’t forget that this all started from dealing with a Jin that is bat-crap crazy.
What will her dad say?
What if her mom didn’t die in her cycle?
Questions Paul…. Too many.
if Sphinx Shelly the first, and doesn’t remember where she came from. Dead Shelly is the last, and didn’t remember ever being at the tree.. maybe Sphinx Shelly will remember where she came from once she’s back on the other side?
that’s what it looks like…
Sphinx Shelly is Shelly from Time Loop 57,our loop. The dead from radiation Shelly is Shelly from Time Loop 2, because she knew about having to fix the CM. In Time Loop 1 nobody knew the CM was broken because it hadn’t looped back yet.
It seems that Sphinx-Shelly is actually Shelly57 who took her trip starting Here. SS has been in Treeland for 56 cycles, some 81,200 years (56 x 1450). After becoming stuck and discovering she couldn’t die, somewhere in the process she became a Sphinx.
As the years passed, a cycle completed in both Treeland and Realworld, and Shelly 56 appeared on her quest, eventually dying. Ditto for 55, 54, etc, until finally, just now, Shelly 01 appeared and completed the cycle. We were fooled by thinking that Shelly 57 had just appeared in front the the tree — it was Shelly 01. Shelly 57 was the Sphinx!
What remains is for her to pick up the Portal device and return to the 57 timeline where she left off. A few minutes for Monica and company, 80 Milennia for Shelly! Oh, and there’s that new hairdo she has to explain. And the wings. And everything else! 😉
You sir win the “clear headed thinking” no-prize.
Redeamable at any intradimensional TARDIS location.
According to yesterday’s strip, your math is off by one. The sphinx says “Where I was the last of fifty six…” Shelly must not have gotten there during one of the runs through the last 1450 years. If the last 1450 years have been repeated fifty six times, they must have happened fifty seven times, assuming Phix was speaking precisely.
Perhaps there is a 57th Shelly viewing all of this and that’s the one who is in Monica’s kitchen.
THERE WAS NO SHELLY01 at the Sacred Tree. No one knew the Calendar Machine was malfunctioning UNTIL AFTER THE FIRST LOOP so the last Shelly to die at the Sacred Tree was Shelly02. Shelly01 was oblivious, as were all who lived before the first Reset.
At least, I think so….
I’d call that one Shelly 00.
The Least Significant Shelly, as it were.
Yesterday, Paul apparently confirmed that is wrong, though. Kramegame said:
That would be your Shelly 00. Paul said, “A cookie for you, and all others that got that.” That seems to confirm it.
When the sphinx says “last of fifty six”, she can’t be using a zero offset. Fifty six can’t mean fifty seven.
…And if the very first Shelly did go there, your whole reason for calling her Shelly 00 goes away, so let’s not call her that…
I was suggesting Shelly 00 in response to the previous comment, which postulated her, more or less.
And
But i don’t think there were fifty-seven Shellys; i don’t think that that was the part Paul was confirming – just that sphinx is the last Shelly, and the one that we saw die is the first.
I can’t recall (and i can’t find) what Phix said precisely – whether there have been fifty-six cycles … or fifty-six previous cycles.
And there’d be no reason for the Very First Shelly to do anything … because nobody knew there was a problem until the CM reset at a point in time after this point in time. Until the CM reset the first time, there was no problem. The history of the world was just … history.
Okay, let’s walk this dog around a bit…
Human who somehow lives for long enough (usually mystical) becomes a sphinx.
Sphinxes are guardians.
Apotropaic are demon-hunters. Who kill humans to stop the demons.
Demons are an outgrowth of certain humans. (We know of 4 who have them). (Implication is that other humans may have them but not know them?)
So human makes demons. Human becomes sphinx. Sphinx hunts demons…
@Fairportfan: “I can’t recall (and i can’t find) what Phix said precisely – whether there have been fifty-six cycles … or fifty-six previous cycles.
*sigh* If you would have just looked a couple of comments higher, I provided the link. She said it was repeated 56 times, so it’s 57 times total. (The first repeat is the second time.)
Here is another case where Paul confirms the 57. Opus the Poet said:
Paul answered “Correct”. Again, Paul confirmed that it’s 57 times.
Paul has never corrected anyone and said that there were only 55 failed attempts to fix the calendar; everyone has always talked about there being 56 failed attempts, then of course, 1 successful attempt (which was really to destroy it.)
Let’s not forget that the attempt to fix Jin first time around (last time to Shellynx) happened earlier than in all following (previous) cycles. Makes me wonder if Shelly01 pushed the whole “Let’s help Jin” thing…
Whoops! I meant for this to be a comment on DJ’s comment a little below here… 🙂
Sigh.
“You’ve done this fifty-six time. I was the first.”
Are you saying that sphinx Shelly isn’t counting her own trip in that number?
And what Phix says (by my reading) indicates that there have been a total of fifty-six times through the loop, not that there have been fifty-seven.
“You’ve repeated the 1450 years … fifty-six times,” doesn’t mean “plus one for the original cycle”.
“Repeated the first 1450 years fifty-six times…” would be fifty-seven.
But, even if it does mean a total of fifty-six iterations, by sphinx/Shelly’s statement, only fifty-six have been here.
There seems to really be no reason (as has been pointed out before i said it) for the first iteration of Shelly to come here at all, if this is related directly to fixing/destroying the Calendar Machine.
OTOH, if this is a causally-unrelated chain of events – an attempt to fix Jin – then the Very First Shelly might have come here.
But there would still be only fifty-six.
I nver said it would be because there would be fifty-seven; i meant that it doesn’t matter how many there were, the first would not have been sent. Because there would be no perceived need.
What i was getting at is that, per sphinx Shelly’s statement yesterday, Shelly has been there fifty-six times in total; thus, if there were fifty-seven Shellys in toto, there must be a reason one of them (“Shelly 00”) didn’t go.
00Shelly–Double-Oh-Shelly? License to homisuicide in duplicate existance scenarios?
That depends on how closely history was repeating itself. If it is close, one cycle to the next, then the incident with Stinky and the sub would still have happened and Bud would still have found the relic even in that first time period. The relic seems to be separate from the CM stuff. She would have explored the sub out of curiosity and been led to the relic by the bullets and dead crew. Shelly would still have picked up the thing and the rest would have happened anyway. The relic could still be in the very first time period since it esentially traveled back through time. That is, it appeared for the first time before it was constructed due to the retrograde order of things in tree land.
Also remember, Jin knew about the CM malfunction right after it occured. She may also, eventually, have known about what was going to happen as a result and tried to fix it on the very first reset. So it’s possible the CM struggle was going on even then, before the first CM reset.
I think it is the CM that out in this last cycle because afaik this was the first time in any cycle that they fixed the CM early. The upshot being that they have tried (and failed?) to fix Jin 57 times as well before the attempts to fix the CM.
even if no one knew about the calender machine being broken Jin was.
This whole thing started with Jin needing fixin’
Shelly came here to help Jin first time.
Least from my pov it is anyway.
*goes back to confusion corner to consume more muffins*
Or like DJ said directly above me in reply to another post 🙂
Hey now! Quit hogging the muffin-tray…grmblgrr…
Correct!
Everyone arguing about it only being 56 cycles and not 57 didn’t pay enough attention to the comments Shinx-Shelley said yesterday.
“You’ve been here 56 times. I was the first here you know.”
So, YES she is NOT counting herself in with the other 56 iterations of herself that have come prior. If she had done that she’d have said:
“We’ve been here 56 times before. I was the first you know…”
So yes, there have been 57 cycles. And yes, the cycle didn’t have to come before they knew something was up, I think Jin knew something had gone wrong from the initial go-around when she stopped aging and her mom was sucked into demon land when the CM broke the first time.
Ozymandous:
No, but that was you did. 😛
Since you copied and pasted that, I’ll do the same with my reply:
Not necessarily. If someone talks to themselves in the mirror, they would typically say “You need to stop doing that” or “I”, rather than “we.” Meeting herself is just an extension of that.
I agree that she might have said “we” to emphasize the distinction between versions, but she might have used singular case to emphasize the point they they were really the same person.
You should have read the entire page, rather than just reading the beginning. At the bottom she said
There it is obvious. She clearly did count herself in the 56. That establishes what she must have meant at the top of the page, too.
I agree that there were probably 57 Shellys total, but only 56 of them seemed to have arrived in the Sacred Forest. Therefore, the final Shelly might simply be standing in Monica’s kitchen, viewing what happened through the icon, but not actually participating in it.
From the sphinx’s point of view the 57th cycle of the calendar machine has not finished yet (we are not in 2012 yet, when it would have been reset). She started her guardianship near the end of the 1st cycle (assuming she was Shelly) and has seen 56 cycles (resets of the calendar machine) since then.
as said elsewhere jin knew the CM was broken having watched mommy break it but it hadn’t done something to indicate the damage meant anything until the first reset so after the first reset 56 shellys set on fixing CM/helping jin
So you think the Shelly who departed from Monica’s house in the comic to which you linked became, somehow, the sphinx? And when she picks up the relic she will come back as Shelly, taking the place of the Shelly who “left” in that comic?
Well, yes. That’s what Paul’s been saying – both in the strips and in comments..
But it makes no sense! How can the sphinx be the 56th and last Shelly when there have been 57 Shellys? Shelly #57 was the one who was in Monica’s kitchen a few weeks ago. So are we to understand that the Shelly in the previous time loop was a sphinx? So what happened to her when the calendar reset?
As I see it, There haven’t been 57 Shellys, only 56. The problem is what Phix said is a bit ambiguous. Did she mean there have been 56 repeats of the first 1450 years for a total of 57 periods of 1450 years, or 56 repeats including the first 1450 years for a total of 56 periods. I go with the second since the sphinx kept sayimg 56.
We need a ruling from Paul.
[b]EEEPPP!!!![/b]
Your reply to me at the top about the vision quest just gave me an idea. It’s probably just as much due to a lack of sleep, though…
Shelly #57 died on her vision quest. What if she died all of the way dead? Can the sphinx, which may be Shelly #56, come back as her?
No, I don’t think so, because then she’ll find the relic again. 🙄
I hate time travel! X-(
Okay. I’m pretty sure that what we’ve been following is the end of the fifty-sixth loop.
Therefore there were a total of fifty-six iterations of Shelly.
OTOH, if there were fifty-seven Shellys, the very first (call her Shelly 00) would never have been sent to the Time Forest, because nobody knew that anything was wrong until the Calendar Machine reset the first time.
The first Shelly sent there would have then been Shelly 01, the one we saw die.
The sphinx, Shelly 56, was there, tracking backward in time, meeting each of her previous selves.
@Sowhyme: Well, KrameGame said yesterday, which Paul seemed to confirm: “Since the CM was fixed on the 57th try…” That must mean that there were the first 56 failed and that they must have tried on the first run through, so there would be 57 Shellys involved.
KrameGame also said, “She had to witness 55 other Shellys come to pass.” That’s vague. I don’t know if he meant that as other than the two we see (for for a total of 57 Shellys) or just other than the sphinx (for a total of 56). But only the 57 is consistent with the other things that were said. I also think that 56 failures have been mentioned often enough that Paul would have corrected us by now if we misinterpreted what Phix meant.
[b]@Fairportfan:[/b] Did you see the comments above where I quoted from Kramegame? Paul seemed to confirmed it.
Also, why would this logic depend on there being 57 instead of 56 Shellys:
During the first time through, no one could have known how many Shellys will eventually exist, so how could anyone have based decisions where to send Shelly on that number? Why would “Shelly 00” be sent to the forest if there would eventually be 56 Shellys, but not if there would be 57 of them?
Just a thought, but in one of the GG’s books (Either Jin or Brandi’s) it was mentioned that Monica would have a close friend named either Shelly, Katherine, or something else. (Can’t remember the last name off of the top of my head.) With that said, could it be possible that one of the previous incarnations of Shelly died before reaching the point where she should have gone to the time forest? This would explain why there would be 57 total shellys, and yet only 56 ever made it to the forest.
And my vote is for the Shelly Prime being the sphinx, having evolved to that form after so many years of guarding the secrets of the time forest. This could be a destined way to show her the things she needs to know in order to complete her “mission”. Of course, this is probably just wild conjecture and will be proven wrong…lol.
No, you’re right, it makes no real difference in outcomes whether there were 56 or 57 Shellys. That’s a separate issue. Nor does it make any real difference in outcome if the first Shelly came from the first 1450 year period or the second.
yea my brain was doing that yesterday
im going with (today) there was and has been 56 shelly. 55 who had a reset. 56th fizzled the machine. 56 is the sphinx.
still think the artifact is a jin part and shelly went here because of jin breaking and not the machine but will wait to see what occurs.
@Arumoro:
What we witnessed was the death of the first Shelly (from long, long ago) and it happened now because the order is the reverse in tree land. On earth, the current Shelly just left, but she must have gone to the very beginning of the whole thing with tree land because she would have been the one who arrived first in tree land (from it’s POV). She who is first shall be last and she who is last shall be first.
Both events are happening now from earth’s POV. Current Shelly must have zoomed to the start of the whole thing and has sealed her fate of having to wait for tens of thousands of years as the first sphinx. This must be really disconcerting for current Shelly to say the least. The Shelly we saw die got off easy by comparison.
The person who was current Shelly just started her time of hell from her POV. Her friendship with Monica in the current time period is over. Everything she knew is gone. Effectively she is gone, condemed to an eon of waiting. Very sad really.
On the other side of the time coin, however, her time of waiting is about to come to an end. Which makes me wonder, however, when is it really over for the Shelly who just left? Does she have to go through (from her POV) the whole thing one last time yet, despite her self at the other end of the time span being freed?
Do we have to send all of you through the 56/57 iterations to count them? Does it really matter? I think not.
Someone said that they were trying to remember the other possible names of Monica’s friend. Here is the link.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/doasisay/
Remember a Shelly by any other name would smell just as sweet.
Oh thank you. The way you put it finally makes sense for me.
You need to just reason this out to figure out how man Shellys. Beginning of time, we everntually have Shelly #1, CM resets for the first time. We now have Shelly #2 (CM reset#1). Next CM reset (#2) and we get a Shelly #3 (reset #2)…last CM reset (#56) and we eventually get Shelly #57 who was the last Shelly to touch the Relic and paradoxically became the first to enter the Tree-Realm.
To keep the numbers correct, the Shelly was see dying/dead has to be Shelly #2. The Shelly we see dying mentions “The Calendar” which indicates the gang knows about the CM. Shelly #1 and the gang shouldn’t have any knowledge of the CM.
Another question to comes to mind is what precisely happened when the CM got broken, and when did it’s get broken. Do the CM get broken on 12/12/12 and reset back to 1450 years? Or did it get broken 1450 years ago causing it to eventually reset time on 12/12/12? I think it much be the former. May tries to fix the CM in the modern era (on 12/12/12), it goes kablowey, May gets thrust into the Demon realm, time gets reset to 1450 years ago, and Jin is the only one to know that something is seriously wrong.
Y’know, I think this rtesolves the paradox for me. in fact, I’m starting to believe that though Shelly, AFTER the calendar machine is destroyed, enters HERE, the ver next day’s update, HERE, might actually represent a fast forward ofthe entire 56 cycles, i.e. the Shelly from “Easier said” remains in that realm for almost 81000 years, evolves into a sphinx, and we see her meeting the final Shelly in the “I know you” strip.
So to recap, Shelly takes the relic into the realm of the trees, nothing happens because time cycles travel in reverse there, so 1450 years later she meets herself for the first time (Shelly55), etc., all the way down to Shelly #1. So when she says she does not remember what she was worried or thinking about, I believe it was that she felt weird with her friends staring at her…
But here’s another kicker…when she goes back, will it not be on the first CM iteration, but now with no chance of reset, i.e. she’ll be returning to Monica #1, Bud #1, Brandi #1, And indeed Tina 1.0? Will Tina be alive when Shelly gets back???
All this math… all those 56s and 57s… and all I can think of is… is it blood or is it ketchup? 😯
57 is steak sauce ;p
i can already see what coming. Sphinx Shelly will exposition all week about going home. Friday will be Shell picking up the relic and clearing her mind to go home in the last panel.
And speaking of Conscience, perhaps Shelly changing her personal demon into Conscience (aka Creepy Girl) has something to do with her transformation into a Sphinx.
as a sphinx child she had the power to manipulate her demons in ways mon never could such as crushing them together but she didn’t learn and unlock the full form and power till the forest where the CG was an effective defence being not a demon but not a mortal/human while shelly got her fur and wings.
Ooh I was just thinking about this earlier. If shelly did show back up, after thousands of years, she’d have forgotten sooo much. I’m torn between wanting her to remember everything and build her human life again, or to return to her body with only a vague memory of what happened during her time there (maybe with cool new Sphinxy powers).
Clarification: By “remember everything” i meant remember the whole time in the tree place, thus forgetting her human life… I wish we could edit posts!
*looking back at beginning of sphinx-world-arc*
Funny (and nice) to see how the sphinx morphs more&more into Shelly, as we know her.
The last frame is Shelly as we know her. Paul has sneakily and subtely adpted Shellynx’ proportions too.
I hope the under-eye things disappear though
She has become progressively less scruffy and “old” so, yes, they will be gone by the time Shellinx wakes-up in M’s kitchen.
Hey..maybe Shellinx knows another nice beach, so they can ponder the next steps in comfort.. 😆
Sooooo… the radiation from the plutonium mutated Shelly into a Sphinx?
Having now scrolled back through the comic a bit, I’d like to point out that Monica saw what she thought was Jin when she touched the artifact. If that was the Sphinx is also Shelly, then perhaps what is wrong with Jin is that she, too, is – or was – an iteration of Shellinx. Recall that she was disturbingly powerful even before she became a Leviathan.
Seems far-fetched though.
-JRS
Sphinx is also Shelly=Sphinx that is also Shelly
Now wait. What actually happened to the Shelly who was holding the relic in Monica’s house? We thought she was transported to tree land, but that was Shelly01 from way back when. Is the latest Shelly still standing there at Monica’s holding the relic, never having gone anywhere, mentally or physically?
Whoever it is speaking to her said “do you want to know sphinxes come from? They’re born as humans.” Then it said “I was.” Indicating it is another sphinx talking.
I think we can assume she is going back to earth, but that does not mean she is going back as some form of Shelly. She may be a totally new character. We won’t know until we know what happened with the Shelly standing in Monica’s house. Hopefully we’ll know this week. Anyway, we got a new piece of information about sphinxes in general.
Yeah, confusion corner was a few posts ago but we saved you a seat.
Looking at the first frame again, I’m not certain the sphinx shown is the one who laid down beside Shelly. That sphinx seems to just be rising in the second frame. So it seems to me the one sitting with it’s back to us is also sitting apart from the one by Shelly. It is the first frame one who spoke first, in response to what the one by Shelly said as she lay by her. The dialog boxes set apart are indicative of what the other sphinx is saying. I frame one, it is the one near Shelly, and in frame two it is the one with it’s back to us.
Other Shelly sphinxes, maybe? :/ I dunno
i just thought she was talking to herself
the i was means she was human at one stage.
least i dunno
im not disagreeing with anyone today. we all could be right and we call could be wrong.
Please note that the hand that can be seen in the foreground of the last panel is the hand of dead Shelly. Shellinx is obviously talking to dead Shelly. What she hears is probably her friends calling to her, urging her to come back.
How many characters are taking part in this conversation?
It seems like at least three to me. First the sphinx talks. The next speech bubble with “I don’t remember what I was doing before coming here…” doesn’t point at the sphinx. Is that someone else continuing the thought? Then “Do you want to know…” sounds like a completely different person. It might have continued with “I was” and “Just as you were”, but not necessarily. Finally the sphinx talks again.
Geeze, does this mean the 55 other sphinxes from the other cycles are still there too?
There aren’t fifty-five other sphinxes. There was ever only one.
Then why did the sphinx say she was the last of 56? And why is there another sphinx in this comic?
She was the last of fifty-six iterations of Shelly.
The one that we’ve been following all this time.
There was only ever one sphinx, and she’s it.
jordinyc created this graph yesterday
it helps i think
How many grooves are on a LP record if it skips?
If they are all there still, does that also mean each has a relic as left by Shellys from different cycles? And does that mean, now that it’s all over, each can use their relic to go home as well? If so, where would home be for all the other sphinxes? Monica’s house may get very crowded very soon.
Maybe Phix is ad-libbing in the background. The lack of a background, no trees, no library etc. makes me also wonder. Is this just 1 sphinx thinking and talking, or .. or.. NO! She stated she was “the last” and could go home at last.
I am starting to think the emptiness of the stage conveys an inner dialogue, or a transformation of some kind, the dissolving of the time-tree-realm, now “it is done”.
And maybe, just maybe, The Biblioteki -which I believe has become sentient due to having “all books/knowledge” of ALL times (!) – has something to do with it, though that is admittedly a bit far-fetched.
*hits own head with ACME mallet for utter denseness*
Ah! I get it. The non-connected text-balloons are Shellinx “thought-talking” to Dead-Shelly. The connected text-balloons are just spoken out-loud. >.< Duh!..
No extra characters.
There, there. Tina’s bringing you over another cup of earl Grey
Well, at least you managed to think of it yourself. 🙄
Actually, that is seriously creepy! She’s kind of using dead Shelly as an imaginary friend. “Do you want to know where Sphinxes come from?
I suppose she’s going to be a bit emotionally damaged from all that loneliness.
Still staying quiet and waiting for tomorrow.
Yeah, I’m just gonna take it all in first, before commenting.
You didn’t read this. I wasn’t here.
*slips into the shadows*
Wimps.
😛
I’m still gibbering in the corner. But I am enjoying some hot chocolate.
Cute and cuddly? o_0
Uhm. If Shelly is dead right now… and the Sphinx hasn’t moved into her physical body yet… in what state is her body right now?
Soulless, empty corpse ready to be taken over by deamons?
Or just plain dead on the floor?
You’re assuming that she didn’t physically go to the Time Forest.
At this point, i’m pretty sure she did.
the skulls in the previous strip seem to assume that it is a solid manisfestation in the forest
but it could be a shellinx hallucination also
i swear to god if monica wakes up tomorrow and finds shelly in the shower i wont be happy.
relieved and less confuzzled but not happy 😛
Officer Buns and Kevin might be even less (or possibly more, come to think) unhappy.
That’s it. I give up. The last part of me concerned about this making sense is officially completely numb. Any attempt at resuscitation will only result in pushing stuff around and making sloshing noises.
That being said (and ignored by everyone here no doubt), I’m actually relieved. Now I can just follow the essence of the story without being bothered by the bureaucracy of continuity and pseudoscience. I’m sure Mr Taylor has this all laid out in his head and some day I’ll find it all fits together in an obvious way that enhances the story for me, but for now I’ll just enjoy floating in spooky confusion till I feel the ground beneath my feet.
no one has mentioned a major (to me) point in this comic
sphinx come from humans
that means phix was a human?
and that well…(some?) humans are either destined or condemmed to be the caretakers of their own demons?
i wonder if they have to die. this could be an afterlife for humans.
so with it being all written knowlege on earth – does that mean the library is the data-storage of God?
*swears*
that should have been a standalone comment.
tbh i was gonna reply to you but my brain keeps working so i cannot agree to stop it as it wont 🙁
and i recdopied this and put it later on – alone so this can be deleted if anyone does..
Need a delete comment button here…
Yes, it implies that Phix was once a human woman – rather than a sphinx-kitten or egg or whatever. And that she won’t have a litter with Gregory, however their relationship progresses. This is interesting, but nothing we’ll get to this week. We can look forward to the tale of how Phix got her wings, though.
Maybe i’ve just read more Time travel SF than some, but i’m having no real difficulties getting my head around what seems a logical progression here.
If you want to really get your head twisted, try David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself.
Gerrold’s novel When HARLIE Was One, BTW, is the earliest known use of the term “virus” to describe a self-perpetuating malicious computer program.
I am more of a Space-Opera guy. Time travel stories mostly irritate me, because they are quite often utterly predictable.
The only one i mildly enjoyed was “Soldier of another fortune” ,but that was more of a “parallel-times” story.
Dr Who is the only “time-travel” thing I actually enjoy, especially because he does away with all complex stuff by just calling it “Timey-Wimey”
I enjoy real research in time/space though.
I believe that Wapsisquare can stand on it’s own without trying to completely comprehend all complexities. The story “speaks” for itself.
Most Sci-Fi writers that deal with time travel, lose themself into too many projections and bogus theorizing. The better stories are enjoyable without understanding the timey-wimey-bits precisely.
But hey, that’s just my $0.02
I am severely math and logic-hampered, and I dismally flunked Logical-empiricism…Oddly enough I did exeedingly weel om metaphysics. Go figure.
I’m currently reading a book by Benoit Mandelbrot…plenty of mind-bending stuff in non-fiction, too…
I’m currently writing a time travel/alternate reality/spinoff novel. You think reading it is nutso, try coming up with it! 😀
Proof that Shelly-Sphinx is “our” Shelly is in the last panel of (I hope that worked). Where she said, “Damn. You told me that would work…” Hinting back to Tina and the coffee pot. My you are a tricky one Paul 🙂
Well that didn’t work… The page I’m referring to is 4 pages back, “Outta The Park”.
no one has mentioned a major (to me) point in this comic
sphinx come from humans
that means phix was a human?
and that well…(some?) humans are either destined or condemmed to be the caretakers of their own demons?
i wonder if they have to die. this could be an afterlife for humans.
so with it being all written knowlege on earth – does that mean the library is the data-storage of God?
If one believes in “A God” yes. I guess so.
For the Atheists among us, the library is a semi-sentient “know-it-all” The biggest Data-warehouse ever, that spawned it’s own AI.
I pondered Phix the moment “SHellix was human” entered the fray.
I remember some egyptian, or babylonian queen, or princess, that got murdered by men because she was considered too smart for a woman ,and thusly too dangerous. Phix could be her. As a sphinx, she could have become rather vengeful towards men ,hence her skull-wall, and the ease by which she seemed to have killed -something she later became very ashamed of-
In her case “afterlife” is a discreet possibility.
i was saying God as i was talking about the afterlife
the intelligent Ai wouldnt be concerned with that?
unless we’re back to river/thedoctor/thelibrary/thelibrarycomputer storyline
This reminds me of the sci/fi short story when, uncountable years in the future mankind has built the ultimate galaxy-spanning quantum computer and asks it “Is there a God?” –
And after a couple of seconds, the computer replies “Now there is.”
I like that. It puts me in mind of one of the consequences of a far flung future man-made machine “god.” If it was a true god it would have onmipresence, not only of space, but of time. This means it would exist with us now, even though it has not yet, technically, been built.
Given enough time and enough intelligent species in the universe, it seems almost inevitable such a thing will be created by some group at some point to become retroactive to everyone throughout past time.
And the universal supercomputer, having used up all matter in the universe to power and process, said: “Let there be light.”
Isaac Asimov is/was brilliant.
I don’t think the sphinxes are allowed to be that selective. The sphinx at the gates of Thebes, for example, not only killed the person trying to answer the riddle, but also anyone with him/her. Wife, kids, whoever. According to this story line, the sphinxes are dispatched by some entity to do their jobs. It’s not up to them to pick and choose who to kill or why; human or demon.
All this brings up the question of sphinxes original gender as humans. Are exclusively females chosen for the task? If so why? (no PMS jokes please) Or are males also chosen but transformed into female in appearance because that’s the sphinx norm? Would a male (originally) sphinx shape shift into a male to mingle with humans?
from Wikipedia.
The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face and breast of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless. Those who cannot answer her riddle suffer a fate typical in such mythological stories, as they are gobbled up whole and eaten by this ravenous monster.
Unlike the Greek sphinx which was a woman, the Egyptian sphinx is typically shown as a man (an androsphinx). In addition, the Egyptian sphinx was viewed as benevolent in contrast to the malevolent Greek version and was thought of as a guardian often flanking the entrances to temples
and ahh but well
you get an annoyed lady
she might kill you in a more painful way than a non-annoyed lady might 🙂
That was no lady, that was my sphinx.
Take my sphynx, please!
You’d think an infinite God would have an audio section in Her library.
perhaps
he/she gave moses the ten commandments on tablets of stone not audio cassette.
wonder what would happen now?
ten commandments on blue-ray
or would he use DVD?
Variation in delivery formats occurs too frequently. He’d post them on Wikipedia and link them in various blog posts, comic replies, and sidebar advertisements.
Or, you know, carve them in a mountainside.
Suddenly thought of something rather funny: If Both Shellinx and Dead-Shelly would manifest in the current Wapsi-world, we would for the first time ever have an observable “Schrodinger’s cat” dual-existense.. A Shelly, both dead and alive at the same time, and for that matter NO solidifying of either observable reality, yet both realities at the same time solidifying
*looking at theoretical physicist, specialized in quantum physics going severely fetal* 😆
OW! Stop that!
wouldnt the two realities solidifying colide and splode also? so technically wouldnt there be a splode/nonsplode happening?
Yes, so technically one would observe a quadruple non-solidifying non-event.
Maybe the end-result would be a sort of stasis outside of time/space. Forever stuck in unresolved-ness.
Orrr..It would immediately spawn 4 distinctly different solidifying-events ,each creating it’s own new time-stream (if following the “Multiple universes theory” that is..)
I bet someone already thought-out a formula for that. Theoretical physicists are barmy like that… But, as I stated, I am seriously math-challenged, and wouldn’t understand one bit of it.
*snatches last muffin away from Paula*
You know? I have to go shopping now, and it’s Your fault that I have to buy me a couple of chocolate-muffins from our ungodly good local bakery.. }:( 😛
*sigh* my chocolate-muffin-craving wont be satisfied til friday..when i get paid again and can buy them 🙁
Oh. 🙁 *tries to flatten muffin to fit in envelope ,to send to destitude Wapsi-fan*
Doesn’t this work better with marshmallow Easter peeps? (I mean the flattening and sending in an envelope…)
http://www.bakingsense.ca/products/muffins
Muffins.
mango mousse cake
chocolate mousse cake.
its not in the UK *cries*
and yknow
that theory could have happened but how on earth could you ever know?
Yep. Shelly’s the Sphinx.
Quick note: Having repeated 56 times means there are 57 times it happened. If you repeat something once, it happened twice (the first time and the repeat). Take the number of repeats (56) and add the original pass-through. So, 57 Shellys in total. “Our” Shelly, the Shelly we know from past strips, the Shelly who is now a sphinx, is Shelly 57.
Shelly number 1 just died completing a task that was set in motion up in cycle 57 (or repeat 56). And I think her death is what stirred Jin to muck with the Calendar Machine. Jin may have something to say to Shelly when she gets back (like “She was my best friend, and YOU LET HER DIE!!”)
Phix and the 56 times
As phix said above Brandi has repeated the last year 56 times
this can mean that the year has been repeated 56 times and that they are in fact on 57th year
OR
it could mean that they have repeated it 55 times and this is the 56th repetition of the events.
I assume both could be valid?
Repeated the last 1450 years.
*sigh*
is it cuz im in accounts so i just automatically round up to the next figure. cuz its 56.5 i keep rounding to 57 automatically ^^
“Phix and the 56 Times” sounds like some sort of teen detective novel (a la Nancy Drew or the Bobbsey Twins) or something far more adult themed…
…I’m just saying…
At his age Gregory is probably good for once, maybe twice. Fifty-six is out of the question, even for a teenager.
@Paula, your second assumption is true I think. I’ve been assuming that the CM has reset 56 times from Phix’s command to Brandy. That means everything I’ve been theorizing about is wrong. IF the CM reset 56 times, it would mean that Shelly #2 (from CM cycle #2) would be the one we see dead. But from Paul’s confirmations, it’s Shelly #1 (the original) we see dead. So that means the CM reset only 55 times. And this is the 56th timeline that came into existence. The 56th time that Phix and Brandy has the conversation. And that means the Gang tried to fix the Calendar before the first reset.
And my brain doesn’t hurt any more…than usual. 😀
Nope. In the context that Phix said “repeated fifty-six times” it means that there have been fifty-six cycles.
Consider “reps”. If you’re lifting weights, and you do ten “reps” (repetitions), do you lift the thing ten times, or eleven?
true
means I’ve been exercising wrong all this time
first set is 1
2nd set repeats one so first rep
so doing a rep of 10 should be 11 times you do the exercise but I’ve always counted the first one O.o
Oy! We’re getting lost in semantics. The biggest question is -as someone quite astute already mentioned- HOW the artifact came into being.
It didn’t. It simply exists.
And Shelly took a really, really long time, one small step per round, to assemble it.
I come for the comic. I stay for the community novel. I’m not dumb, but I just can’t follow the convolutions – I just have to follow my gut.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Shellysphinx will return to the girls as Shelly, not as a sphinx, and that her memory will slowly return to her (plus the memory of all the other cycles she has just lived through) in the same way Picard had to reconcile his second life in “The Inner Light.” (My second favorite episode, for what it’s worth.)
And for the record, that’s an intriguing view of a Sphinx from the back.
reminds me of then shelly first cut her hair.
when she played with the boys
My vote is with you, Old Wolf. I kinda shut a lotta stuff off when we had the physics discussion and time shifting/loops.
Now Shelly definitely knows what NOT to do!
I tried following my gut. Now I’ve got a stomach ache.
Whatever happens, it seems there will be a profound change in Shelly when she returns. The Shelly we knew will be history (no pun intended). I trust the fans will be prepared for it.
Erm.
I didn’t see that graph appear yesterday or read the commentary about it, but I think it’s flawed. It says that Shelly 57 dies, Shelly 1 takes her place. I thought the whole point of all this is that the LAST Shelly – 56 or 57, whatever – NEVER dies. She is transported to the sacred forest and is effectively the first to arrive there because time runs backwards in that place. (A cycle later by her reckoning, second-last Shelly arrives and dies, followed by second runner-up Shelly, etc) OUR Shelly, the last one, lives in the sacred forest for 80 millennia, and develops into a sphinx. In OUR Shelly’s timeline, this strip (http://wapsisquare.com/comic/easier-said/) literally jumps forward in time 80 millennia as the Shelly 01 appears to complete OUR Shelly’s sentence as she is transported.
Once Shelly 01 dies, our Shelly, the last Shelly, who has been waiting outside of linear time for time to run backwards to the first cycle, can return to “earth”. Never once dying or taking anyone’s place.
Which begs the question… to which cycle on Earth CAN Sphinx-Shelly return? Time on Earth is in cycle #1… unless all the cycles exist simultaneously and she can choose, or unless it’s some sort of Narnia-esque time pocket as others have suggested, and she’ll appear not to have gone anywhere at all.
Haha, I’m with Team Paul-Should-Maybe-Jump-In-Here!
yea the guy who wrote it said he wasn’t sure on timelines
tbh i dont care on that myself (well in relation to that graph as its just an awsome graph)
take the timeline how you may 😀
*joins Team Paul*
Then again to join a team there must be an opposing team.
Team Cliffhanger?
Team Confuzzlement?
Team Linear Thought And Storytelling?
I don’t know why Shelly’s a sphinx. I don’t know how many Shellys there’s been. I have no clue what’s even going on.
I’m sure it’ll all be cleared up eventually. But for now, I just know we’ve been looking at Shelly topless for the last two weeks. 🙂
I’m a pig and I am not ashamed.
shelly topless with fur.
least hmm
would a sphinx have lions fur or would it be a cross between lions fur and human hair in its corsisity?
Let’s just say that the risk of her having flees in her hind-quarters-fur sortof completely kills-off any titillation I might possibly, remotely, in an off-moment could have felt, were I severely drunk and/or stoned.. 😆
(“Furry” fetishists creep me out..)
Ok — let’s try it this way — Conisder there were Only 3 Loops.
– Due to whatever rules, the time paradox is resolved by having the Shelly who exits the loop after the Calendar Machine is destroyed (Shelly04) enters Treeland at the Start of the Treeland time line.
So, in Treeland time:
Start – Shelly04 arrives and becomes Sphinx.
Loop 01 – Shelly03 arrives after 1450 years, dies.
Loop 02 – Shelly02 arrives after 1450 years, dies.
Loop 03 – Shelly01 arrives after 1450 years, dies.
At this point in Realworld, the Calendar Machine is broken by Jin’s Mom & Co. Shelly00 encounters the Artifact for the First Time Ever and teleports to Treeland – dies. Shelly04 recognizes this and longs for home (the Current Episode).
So I stand corrected by Fairportfan for pointing out the need for a Shelly00, who originally entered the time line at the beginning of the first loop.
In programming,it’s easy to get confused over the differing conditions at the Start and End of a loop, much less a series of loops. In my example, there were only 3 loops, giving us a Before Loop Shelly and an After Loop Shelly, plus 3 In-The-Loop Shellys.
That’s 3 Loops, but 4 Shellys. The 3rd Loop Shelly exits the loop (CM Destroyed) and becomes Shelly04.
And thanks to jordinyc for an excellent graphic!
It was a good idea to simplify things that way, but I disagree or don’t understand your interpretation.
No, Shelly00 would not have existed in the real world at around 550 AD to be able to do that. The first Shelly (Shelly01) would not have been born until the twentieth century, which would exist only within the time loops (and once more for the final pass) toward the end of the 1450 year period.
I agree that there would have been four Shellys, but I don’t understand why exiting a time loop would create an extra Shelly. Also, why are you saying that Shelly03 became Shelly04? There was a final Shelly that was born outside any loop. That would be Shelly04, according to your numbering system. She wasn’t ever caught in a loop thanks to the CM being destroyed before it could reset time.
I see your point. Simplify, simplify….
-Realworld-
Jin/etc breaks Calendar Machine.
1450 years pass. Shelly00 goes to Treeland, dies.
Loop resets. (1 complete)
1450 years pass. Shelly01 goes to Treeland, dies.
Loop resets. (2 complete)
1450 years pass. Shelly02 goes to Treeland, dies.
Loop resets. (3 complete)
1450 years minus a few pass. Calendar Machine destroyed. Shelly03 goes to Treeland, becomes Sphinx (Shelly04)
-Treeland –
Shelly04/Sphinx wait 1450 years. Meets Shelly02, who dies.
1450 years pass. Meets Shelly01, who dies.
1450 years pass. Meets Shelly00, who dies. Loops Complete
Shelly04/Sphinx longs for home — Current episode.
The last Shelly went to Treeland and waited through all the loops encountering the other Shellys in reverse order. I made things confusing by distinguishing Sphinx Shelly from the Shelly that entered that loop.
Hope this helps!
Am I the only one who remembers the library talking to Phix and Nudge, telling them they are both librarians now? Maybe Sphinx-Shelly starts out talking to herself, and the forest(or possibly the library) talks to her. There does seem to be a deus-ex-machina voice in a few comics now.
Incidentally, the RSS feed button isn’t working.
Found it!
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/via-a-riddle/
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/go-well/
You are named after a mythical house?!?
Very few people catch the Lord of the Rings reference. It tends to be my online name just about everywhere, and now it is also the name of my rabbitry.
odd thought but what was jin doing in all the time loops you figure at some point shed put a mental postit note up “shelly + relic = Death” after the 10th 20th or 50th time
maybe jin doesnt know about the relic?
or maybe this is happening a couple of days before the calender is sposed to be fixed.
So Jin would just know Shelly isn’t there any more..not that she died.
And the WTF train just keeps chugging along the road and on down the line to hopefully a conclusion.
She’s talking aloud because she’s been “stuck” in the universe with the tree for 56 iterations of the universe… all by herself
You think Jin has a touch of the crazies? Jin’s probably got nothing on Shelly Sphinx
I think Shellinx will be just fine. Shellinx’s actions from Just Do It are classic Shelly.
sphinx shelly is not alone she has CG aka conscience for company and to talkto like this
I think my recap above might be lost in the noise, so I want to repeat a question in a fresh thread, if y’all please…
The way the time flows in the place of the trees put the current time of the scene above, in earth terms, at iteration #1 of the Calendar Machine cycles. but the calendar machine is fixed, and I think Shellynx needs to get back to earth to make that a certainty (just in case).
Which means, she’ll be coming back on iteration #1, meeting Monica #1, Bud #1, Brandi #1, and hopefully a now-fixed Jin.
But what about Tina? Is she not still alive in iteration #1? This is a very intriguing possibility and I wanted to hear feedback from the group.
I’m getting verklempt…talk amongt yourselves….
…discuss…
maybe it was only working backwards to undo stuff.
now it may work forwards again?
and after all this discussion im realising why we all have a bee in our bonnet about how many shellys.
cuz if there are 57 and only 56 entered then our 57th shelly is fine. possibly 56th was shellinx
but if there is only 56 and 56 entered then shellinx is still about and hopefully about to enter through the comic strip in real time OR calender yearn#1
Nope. Shelley will be talking to Monica, Bud, et al #57, just as when she left.
Shelly/Sphinx’s day 2 was our yesterday, her day three in the tree world was our day before yesterday, etc.
When she comes out she’ll be right back in the current reality, because Monica wasn’t taken back in time before she grabbed the relic when bud held it out to her. If physical time travel occurred when the relic was grasped then Monica would have experienced it and us along with her.
Ok, to help clear things up as a LOT of people seem to not be understanding this.
1. There were 57 total cycles in the “mystical forest” (MF for short).
2. The sphinx, who came from Shelley, is *our* Shelley (#57), the one we’ve been following since Wapsi #1.
3. The Shelley we just saw die was Shelley #1, the very first of her kind, who apparently came into the realm to help Jin.
4. No, the first CM repeat cycle wasn’t the first time they knew something was wrong because Jin had been unaging since it initially broke and she had seen her mom sucked into the demon realm before the cycle every started over.
5. Everyone arguing about it only being 56 cycles and not 57 didn’t pay enough attention to the comments Sphinx-Shelley said yesterday.
“You’ve been here 56 times. I was the first here you know.”
So, YES she is NOT counting herself in with the other 56 iterations of herself that have come prior. If she had done that she’d have said:
“We’ve been here 56 times before. I was the first here you know…”
So yes, there have been 57 cycles.
—————————————-
I do have a question… Why is everyone assuming that she’s there physically? It this is a metaphysical realm where time starts from today and goes backward all 81k years to the very first time Shelley popped in to visit, it could be entirely mental/spiritual and NOT physical.
With this in mind #57 Shelley, our girl, would not have to worry about physically being a Sphinx, although she could have been so in disguise the whole time and didn’t know it.
So rules to remember with this…
1. Time for us moves this way, with Shelley #57 being the last of her kind (and is the Sphinx in some alternate realm that we don’t know is really physical)…
————————–>>>>>>>
2. While in “Tree World” Shelley #57 experienced time this way:
<<<<<<<<—————————–
So although to her 81k years passed (mentally/emotionally/spiritually at least), in the "real world" where she/we just were, a mere moment could have passed and her not really have physically traveled anywhere at all.
Did Monica "physically" travel to the tree world when she grabbed the relic? Nope. She saw a vision, BUT SHE STAYED IN THIS REALITY. And had a fairly amusing expression on her face also.
With this in mind, why does everyone think that our Shelley #57, Sphinx-girl, and apparently the only one to do this after the CM was fixed, actually physically went to tree world?
Maybe Shellinx has already entered “Our Shelly”, more precisely the moment she died for real on her vision-quest.
Our Shelly=Shellinx since her true death on her vision-quest.
There is no guarantee that both timestreams run at exactly the same pace I think it’s imperative to hold on to that thought.
Shellinx could have fulfilled what she was meant to do, the moment that dead-Shelly filled the oopart, and got back into the empty shell that was Shelly-on-vision-quest.
I think that even Jin was unaware of the switcheroo.
That’s the only way I can make out head or tails, and I am sticking to it.
The current “vision’ is indeed that, just a vision ,recorded on the oopart, to explain Shelly who she really had become.
The coming days we’ll see how close we were anyways.
Stuff like this is good for a mental work-out, but I am not going to do all that iteration-counting. That’s too much like school. 😛
Acausal anomalies are what led to Jin’s condition…I know it’s high-minded to think in synchronistic terms, but if we do not find a causal path starting with Shelly entering the tree realm after the CM is destroyed and ending with the current scene, I fear Jin will remain broken.
What you say actually make sense in the many worlds theory, where infinte simultaneous universes can overlap…but we are given that time has a certain directionality in the tree realm, and according to quantum theory, once information is gleaned from a quantum system, it must collapse into one of these many states, which will have its own causality laws that must be followed.
Buuut..It only collapses when observed by an external source/intelligence….
Time is “experienced” as directional, because the observer (shellinx) has a serial-mind. It doesn’t mean it is actually seial…. The whole problem of paradoxes in relation to Quantum-Theory, would be utterly easy to solve ,weren’t we “wired” to experience and understand events always in a “first this, than that-way”
I believe it was Einstein himself that remarked that our sense of serial-time was hampering our objectivity.
Exactly. Shelly is an external observer who uses the artifact to enter the tree realm, thus collapsing it into the state with the opposite sense of time. Of course, I am assuming she is phsically there, an assumption which is being challenged. I don’t think we’ll know for sure until she returns with the relic.
And if the artifact is self-protected, i.e. no gamma ray leaks, how will they know the plutonium is still in there?
“And if the artifact is self-protected, i.e. no gamma ray leaks, how will they know the plutonium is still in there?”
They will do science to it? It has a red blinking light? If Shelly returns with the memory of what happens, she would remember, but you are assuming she won’t?
@eshmenk–I thought it had a see-through bauble in the middle
^
{0}
V
And you could see the plutonium through the 0…
…granted there’s some problems with that theory.
Not necessarily. If someone talks to themselves in the mirror, they would typically say “You need to stop doing that” or “I”, rather than “we.” Meeting herself is just an extension of that.
I agree that she might have said “we” to emphasize the distinction between versions, but she might have used singular case to emphasize the point they they were really the same person.
You should have read the entire page, rather than just reading the beginning. At the bottom she said
There it is obvious. She clearly did count herself in the 56. That must be what she meant at the top, too.
Seems like Jin’s medicine is having a friend who went through the same amount of time that she did?
I think it will, at the least, re-kindle the deep friendship they apparently had in former CM-loops.
Jin is in need of a true friend that understands at least partially what she has suffered.
She deserves it after all her machinations and self-sacrifice, all motivated through an unending love for those around her. She is about the least ego-centric of ALL actors in Wapsisquare. A saint-like being almost.
I agree about Jin. Perhaps an uber-saint since no existing saint has ever gone through but a small fraction of what Jin has to right the mess left by her mother.
i’m getting the feeling that shellinx(shellly sphinx) won’t be home before next week 😛
not complaining though, just joking
As long as Paul keeps on drawing beautifully introspective Sphinxes, I am not complaining.
This discussion has gotten insane, and totally mired in minutiae. For me, it’s time to stop and just watch the pretty flashing lights. At least until things solidify in coming strips when we have the luxury of hindsight.
True dat^^
Agreed. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m willing to see where it’s going.
then raise your seats and get comfy. i’ve brought popcorn, both salt and sweet.
and of course, the wapsi square food: PIZZA!!
Forget the comment below, if there’s pizza…
No! there are *four* lights!!
AUUUUGHHHHH!!!! *Turning into a sphinx to wreak havoc!*
Oh wait … did someone say pizza? Nevermind.
*switches-on pocket-LED* Nope ,FIVE!!….heheheheh 😛
One . . . two . . . three . . . five!
Five is right out! :O
And what about this scary little thought… Shelly has been through this 57 times? If the calender machine wasn’t taken out those previous 57 times then why do this task? Wouldn’t they be working frantically up to the final moment to fix the calender? So the girls “fix” the calender and then embark on this quest to help a POST calender machine “Fixing” Jin… Did they “Fix” the calender 57 other times as well and now we are entering a time when Jin goes mad because she knows that everything seems fixed (Mom is back, demon world back to normal et al.) but knows it isn’t? Is the completion of the artifact the key to really fixing the Calender???
The assumption has always been that they didn’t fix the CM in the earlier sequences because everything was reset. What if that isn’t what happened remember they didn’t fix the CM this time they destroyed the CM. This would mean that something is now different from the previous times. In all other renditions maybe they fixed the CM but Jin was being driven crazy. It could be that Shelly was coming here to help Jin and instead by accident or design resets the CM causing Jin to be driven crazy. The assumption has always been that they didn’t fix the CM because everything was reset.
Paradoxes being what they are Jin was being driven crazy because the CM was reset, the CM was reset because Jin was being driven crazy. So instead of fixing the machine you destroy it then you only need to go back and stop the original Shelly from resetting the CM the first time thus stopping the need for all subsequent Shelly’s from resetting the CM.
Paradoxes within paradoxes it is all so wonderfully confusing.
This thought just blew my mind….
The CM works in 2 directions.
Cycle from when the CM was started/broken by Jin’s mom to when it was destroyed.
Cycle in reverse, when Shellynx enters the Tree Realm (with time flowing in the opposite direction) to the point where the CM was destroyed.
Time flowing in 2 different directions with the same inflection point.
yipes….
Shelly older, wiser and sphinxier. (Is that a word?)
She’s probably coming back to our timeframe. One would think she has a round trip ticket. I do have to say she needs a better travel agent.
“sphinxy”…almost sounds like “sexy”, but you’re describing a sphinx. I like it.
It is now.
For my 2 cents worth I think that one becomes a sphinx in addition to being human if Phix’s taste in recreation is any indication.
That might mean Shelly’s human memory has been preserved intact while her inhuman sphinx mentality kept her from going crackers in the sacred grove.
I think Shelly will be fine, but she’ll have to get the hang of changing forms at some point.
So now we know what the uranium is for.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/plug-you-in/
If I can post this link correctly
Interesting. Very interesting. You could be onto something.
Ooops, that should read as plutonium instead of uranium.
Fairportfan:
Assuming that was directed at me, no, of course, I’m not saying that. Why would you think I was saying that?
I disagree. I think it’s 57 times total in both cases, and don’t know why you would think it was different. In any case, she said “last 1450 years”, so there is still an adjective before the number of years.
What? If have been arguing that there were 56 Shellys total and that 56 different Shellys arrived, so how could you not be arguing that the first of the 56 Shellys was sent? She had to be to be, otherwise only 55 Shellys could have arrived. If she would have been sent if there were 56 Shellys total (your assumption), she would have been sent if there were 57 Shellys total (my assumption).
I think there is an extra Shelly and it could be the one that we have been following. The sphinx Shelly could be the one from the last loop, rather than the final Shelly (which we know) who never got not in a loop because the calendar machine was destroyed before it reset.
😳 That was supposed to be a reply to this comment.
Holy crap! I just realized something, this being our shelly makes more sense when you remember what dead shelly said. Remember, she said something about ‘Need’ and then ‘The Calendar’. At the time I was confused, cause, the calendar machines gone, and our shelly is the only shelly that knows that, so she wouldn’t say she needed it, that’s for sure. But the first shelly would, what she meant by needing it, was needing to stop it.
I wonder if the off-screen voice is Phix or the Library, or perhaps that honcho Tepoz spoke to early on – I’m thinking Phix.
I am still wondering what the bleep broke out of the sub.
Canned air?
i guessed a wile ago shelly but..not sure now