Does Nudge have a similar ability/aspect? This ‘cute n fuzzy’ version resembles little in style and tone to the ‘creepy n manipulative’ version that Tina first showed…
Looking back at the previous few pages, CG was mirroring the person who was interacting with her (not necessarily Shelly), except for yesterday, when no other character had the same expression. If not for yesterday, I would have thought it went well beyond just not showing the person’s fear if they had none.
Now I have two questions:
Is CG’s appearance only tied to Shelly’s mood, or is it tied to the mood of the person she is interacting with?
Does CG’s appearance tied only to the presence or absence of fear.
Fwoosh #2: I tried looking up the definition of objective existence and found this:
Can you give me a good definition of “objective existence”?
Best Answer – Chosen by Voters
Your question is an oxymoron. You cannot define objective existence because the act of defining something implies that the nature of what you define is set by you.
well yahoo answers is not that reliable.. lets break it down using google dictionary..
objective = Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts
– a matter of objective fact
– historians try to be objective and impartial.
so basically she is ‘real’.. within the limits of demon or human stuff…
Actually, objective existence is a philosophical term. I think I got the meaning close enough from here. It means existence independent of thought or knowledge. So, not just a concept.
Ugh..do not remind me. The first go-kart I, and a friend made, had a rather ingenious way of stopping the engine: Shorting the spark-plug by pressing a piece of metal on the cylinder and spark plug. Great system ,but ,since the lawn-mower engine was at your back, it took some precise aiming in the blind, otherwise You’d grab on to the tip of the spark-plug.. “twitcy” indeed 😆
About thirty-five years ago, i owned an Austin-Healey Sprite.
Like many a British sports car, it had endearing quirks (or infuriating peculiarities, depending on who you ask and why he’s under the bonnet today).
One was that sometimes it was hard to start. I finally began to suspect that there was a problem n the distributor – that perhaps the points were sticking (i forget precisely i came to that conclusion, but i’m pretty usre i use a troubleshooting tech manual).
So i popped the distributor cap, and, using a (plastic) pen, checked to see if the points had free motion.
(For those who have never dealt with the gubbins of old-style auto ignition systems, every time the points open or close, the coil produces a multi-thousand volt pulse, which the distributor rotor directs to the appropriate plug.)
At that point, i discovered that (A) there was a crack in the distributor cap, (B) the reason i couldn’t see it was that it was rather thin and was more or less packed with dust of various types, (C) the reason that the car was sometimes hard to start and sometimes not was that when the humidity was high, the gunk in the crack became conductive enough to (at least partially) ground out the spark from the rotor button to the distributor case,…
and
(D) I was holding the cap with my thumb on the crack.
Oh, hey, there’s another one of those words that means different things to English speakers the world around.
Bonnet: England=cover for a car’s engine; US=old-fashioned lady’s headwear. Car engine covers are commonly called “hoods” in the US, which is not to be confused with slang for neighborhoods. 😛
too confused perhaps, though, she’s also got an explanation for some of the really messed up stuff that’s happened… but still, no idea where the plutonium came from…
More than likely it was Shellinx that played a role in that. Shellinx told Shelly #2 (first post CM Shelly) that “you” placed the sword in the stone, “you” place the hit in the graveyard, you put the thing (plutonium capsule) inside the tree. “You” implying all of the different Shelly’s of each CM cycle.
Just to speculate on things Shellinx was able to use her place outside of time to setup causality waves that carried through the CM cycles. For instance, Shellinx told a previous Shelly to place the Hilt inside of the gravemarks in Ireland. That change to the timeline somehow survived into the last CM cycle (current timeline) for the German’s to find, get put into a submarine, get sunk, for Stinky to fetch, Bud to find, get the Relic, to wind up in the hands of Shelly #5 t kick off the whole Sacred Forest thing.
I suspect the next couple of weeks will lead to many migraines and head explosions. 😀
On that bikini: I still think they should search for a secluded beach to recap and relax. (I would love to see Nudge lying in the sun on her back ,like our rottweiler tended to do if she was really relaxed) snoring away.. 😆
Actually we saw her for the first time after Shelly came back from the forest realm in this comic http://wapsisquare.com/comic/always-have-been/
and as we can see she was already wearing the long t-shirt.
Shelly’s been physically restraining and touching Conscience since she first appeared, so it would seem she’s solid now. And if she can manifest herself once, no reason she can’t do it again or keep doing it. Or disappear back into Shelly’s head until she wants to pop out again.
Interesting thought. Unless I’m forgetting a comic, I cannot recall Shelly physically touching CG during her previous visits.
Then again, Monica’s demons don’t have a physical/corporal form, yet Monica can physically interact with them (Doubt, Jin-Doubt, Lust, Panic, etc.). And on the same note, Jin-Doubt was able to physically interact (via punch to the face) with Shelly during the Calendar Machine arc, and Monica-Doubt was able to physically interact with Tepoz during her/its debut.
So, not really sure what limitations Demons and Demon-combinations have in the physical world, unless they’re shoved inside a body like Tina 2.0.
The interlude where Shelly was going to volunteer to go to Ireland–Shelly and CG were holding hands and walking out of the dark basement just before Shelly yelled, “I’ll do it!” and scared everyone but Jin at the beach.
The relic will provide a connection to the stability of the galaxy as a whole like the CM did. This patches the hole in Jin’s head. The relic is more stable than the CM is so this is a safer way to fix Jin. This solution really sounds like Maya rigged it.
Huh…I only ever saw Stargate (the movie), SG-1, and Atlantis…and I didn’t even see the entirety of either of those series. Loved it though…I really do need to go back and watch all of them from the beginning.
the first episode of SGU consisted of them dialing the 9th chevron
the rest of the episodes/series was based on the ship.
You might want to reconsider the going back to it as syfy announced recently they are cancelling it so best to see if they give a ending before getting into it again…
not that im bitter about certain cancellations recently..no…
Ok, I’ve looked SGU up on the internet and watched one entire episode and a few previews. My conclusion … the original “Battlestar Galactica” redux. Same basic premise. Chased by a mechanical civilization out to destroy them, and anyone like them. The premise seemed good, but the execution seems to be rehashed melodrama.
Mind you, I’ve only seen a few BG episodes from the internet also. The stupidest was the one in which they, on the run for their very lives, stop at a planet to gamble and party. Yeah, that makes sense.
Actually, the only things Star Gate Universe had in common with Battlestar Galactica was its setting in deep space and that they were both shown on the SyFy Channel.
BG had no aliens, SGU had many.
BG had a human fleet of ships pursued by a inimical race of machines created by the humans. SGU took place on a single ship created by ancient aliens and many alien species were encountered.
Lastly, the BG fleet were the last remnants of the human species while the SGU ship was in contact with Earth & humans slowly spreading through multiple galaxies and could even interact with them using alien technology.
BG was about looking for a new home. SGU was ultimately about finding answers to the deepest mysteries of existence and returning back to the home they left behind.
Now my question is what kind of power output are we getting from a device that requires a nuclear reaction just to jump-start it? I won’t ask how this whole thing helps Jin, because the level of technobabble required to explain that would be well over the legal limit.
Maybe it’s the Lanthian version of a Zero Point Module which taps it’s power from the Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy.
It could also be tapping into the energy flux generated by the rotational friction of MW spiral arms on the underlying gravitational field of the Local Cluster.
Oh, I don’t know about that. I have a laptop with a battery that won’t put out enough power to run the machine when the fans turn on, but it seems to never need charging. The laptop is useless after two minutes.
snap of rubber glove heard in the background….NEXT!
For the initial connection I would say yes but only once. Those knobs on the end means it has to be plugged in somewhere. Probably in the top, or back, of the head.
maybe its just a necklace?
maybe she needs to shift into her serpent form put it on then hopefully when she shifts back into her ‘human’ form it will shrink too?
Or maybe the side-prongs are like a child’s hammer that goes “pweep” when you hit something with it. A functuion to add some levity to an otherwise horrin little contraption.. 😆 😆
First time my wife saw Tom Paxton live, he did “The Marvelous Toy” to close the show – he said “It’s the oldest song I wrote that I still do … and I do not want any full-grown adults coming up to me after the show and saying how much they loved it in kindergarten…”
Interesting – in the live performance i linked to, Paxton doesn’t so the original final verse:
the years have gone by too quickly it seems –
and i have my own little boy
and yesterday i gave to him my marvelous little toy
his eyes nearly bugged right out of his head
and he gave a shout of glee;
neither one of us knows just what it is
but he loves it just like me –
it still goes…
Bud has a hatch in her tummy leading to an internal cavity she can store things in. It’s possible Brandi and Jin have similar arrangements we just haven’t seen yet.
Right. And how long before it sinks in how long Shelly suffered. Shelly is getting too cheerful too quickly here. The drama seems to be draining out of this amazing turn of events. 80,000 years … meh … what’s for lunch?
Agreed. Orrr..the break-down will come, but onlyb after Shelly apparently goes home with a straight back, closes the door and “Wham” there she goes, total break-down and happy tears aplenty.
Well, you can’t really hold the actions of someone not in their right mind against them. Jin has already shown herself to be out of touch with reality to the point of needing to ‘touch’ things questionable to her senses. Whether she has already lost the difference between right and wrong has yet to be proven, but doesn’t seem so from our latest view of her.
Yet.
I get the feeling that by now they actually care about her. For starters, I’d imagine it would be rather difficult to hate the broken person she became after the destruction of the calender machine. Secondly, based on interactions between characters recently, it seems that all manipulation around destroying the calendar machine has been forgiven, on the grounds that it was necessary to save the world. Jin’s manipulations were a big part of why everyone clashed with her. Then again, I could be mistaken. As I have stated previously, I have a tendency to assume the best in people.
So am I.
Jin did all of the things she did ,to save the world, and every soul in it. She’s not evil. Manipulative, yes, but out of neccesity. It’s Jin’s love for all that is alive, that kept her going and suffering to fix all wrongs.
She lost all she loved and held dear several times, just to fix a wrong that was actually her Mom’s fault.
The only ones lashing out in temporarily pure evil, hatred and vengefulness, were Brandi and Bud. And boy do they know that. They stil have a hard time reconciling that to themselves.
All Golem Girls are broken in one form or another, yet Jin wasn’t the one that destroyed the world. She still feels guilty that she couldn’t stop the GG’s rampage.
The only thing that could be held against Jin, is that she grew distant from the humanity that she tried to save.
I have to wonder how much of that was her motivation and how much was her desire to become human again and die. Obviously she hated being eternal and set out to use her condition in trying to stop the cycles. She firmly believed that would “cure” her of her golemitus.
Everyone hated Jin because a previous Brandi told her that Jin had to stay distant from everyone. Jin had to stay distant in order to make the plan to fix the CM work. If you read back through the archives you see that fact tearing Jin up inside because they were close friends in previous CM cycles.
Now that the CM had been taken care of. Everyone in the know could tell the others what had been done. Everyone pulled to together in order to help Jin. So I think everyone has forgiven Jin for being the callous she was during this timeline.
Question us (as I see it) not how advance the Lanthians were, but more like: Who became before the Lanthians.
The Lanthians on their own seemed just to be “using” stuff they got handed, with some magicians (like Maya) knowing the finer points of the technology.
As Paul drew them (swords? spears?) they didn’t seem too advanced, just power-hungry enough to let a female-magician f… them over…
I have often thought that Mayahuel, at least, had access to the Library. It might very well be that the oh wow technology did in fact come from elsewhere; Paula is right about it not originating in Lantis. Mayahuel found it while researching in the Library.
Hard to tell if the Lanthians OR Maya are human. If they’re using magic, though, it’s possible they became aware of wormholes long before a techo-based civilization would, because magic gave them a different prespective of the Universe… In fact a lot of the Lanthian advancement may simply be because they approached things in a different way than we are.
That’s a good point. A people into “magic” would be people who weren’t that concerned with why something did what it did, but interested in what it did. They would build on their knowledge based on results gathered through trial and error. Perhaps a lucky few discovered some alien technology and managed to get it to work without understanding a bit of why it worked. Society didn’t progress much because they weren’t doing things for the greater good and use by others in general, just for themselves.
Of course that meant things exploded a lot, or even upset the galaxy, but hey … no pain, no golems.
So, just to reiterate, it uses plutonium in a magic container which somehow reflects more then it gets back in (yet doesn’t cause meltdown) to power a device that uses a mathematical incongruity to tap into the rotational power of a galaxy to somehow generate power.
…feh with that pansy nuclear power. Laugh at puny solar power. Giggle at silly old magic. Create a huge, elaborate card house just to… make power…?
*goes back to old man corner of confusion corner and grumbles*
What exactly is “the rotating galaxy”? I mean, lots of galaxies rotate, as far as we know — even our own, which rotates about every 250,000,000 years or thereabouts. Does Bud mean that the relic draws its power from the rotation of the galaxy? How would that work? Kinetic energy? (Or is “The Rotating Galaxy” the name of the galaxy in question, as it was known to the Lanthians? It seems kinda lame for a name, but so does “The Milky Way”.)
And how freakin’ advanced were these people, anyway? Were they actually native to Earth, or did they come through a stargate or something? (I mean really, we might be at this level of advancement now, if it hadn’t been for the Dark Ages, and it took us 10,000 years. Did the Lanthians start with agriculture 20,000 years ago, then? If so, why didn’t they conquer and overpopulate the entire world like we did?)
I believe it means “galactic rotational energy.” All that stuff whirling around the black hole at the galactic core, keeping it together, has a grest deal of potential energy associated with it. This device taps that energy.
Only thing that I find alarming here (since Lanthian relics have a naty habit of going wrong big-time) if You’d tap into that energy, You’ll disturb the equilibrium, the black hole would become unstable, and starts sucking in more matter than is replenished..
…Actually the opposite would be more likely to happen. Without a certain amount of energy in the system, there would be not enough to hold it all together, and our galaxy would fall apart.
My question is that you need a reletive point outside a system to gain energy from kinetics. The magnets of a generator don’t generate any energy if they are rotating at the same rate as the wires. So, this device, somehow taps into the rotational energy, and at the same time, creates a reference point outside of the galaxy which is not affected by it, yet is close enough to be affected by it… somehow creates energy from this, and then sends it all into this tiny device…
…and then, they want to give this device to a creature which is already powerful enough to pop the planet, and is having hallucinations…
You don’t necessarily need a point outside a rotating system (or any other, for that matter) to tap the energy – you just need two points at different potential levels.
Pretty much the equivalent of hydroelectric power.
I’ve often wondered why we don’t make much more use of hydroelectric power. I mean, talk about a reuseable resource. You use it at one point, then downstream some, you can use it again … and again … and again. It’s really gravity power as stored in the moving water.
Dams are expensive, they have limited locations, and to build more that one or two on a single river could do way more harm than good to the eco system.
Only because the original border was defined to be the 35th parallel (35° N), and we now know it’s about 1.1 critical miles south of that line. And, apparently, Georgia never ratified the line, although Tennessee did.
If the Lanthians had access to the Library and could translate even just a little of it they could get real advanced real fast and to heck with things like ethics.
The “rotating galaxy” thing could be a matter of taking advantage of the relative motion of mass in the galaxy, much like how we boost interplanetary space probes using the mass and motion of planets.
How’s that for technobable?
There’s a couple of technobabble ways to draw energy off our rotating galaxy:
1) Gravitic braking – direct tapping of kinetic energy via the God Knows What Effect.
2) Electromagnetic braking – takes advantage of the fact that the galactic arms are full of streamers of hot gas carrying millions of amps of current flow as the ionized gasses interact with the galactic magnetic field.
Maybe it’s the Lanthian version of a Zero Point Module which taps it’s power from the Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy.
It could also be tapping into the energy flux generated by the rotational friction of MW spiral arms on the underlying gravitational field of the Local Cluster.
I don’t think it’s Zero Point Energy.. A ZPE reactor won’t need to have anything to do with the rotational energy of the Galaxy.
And for those who’s eyes are glazing overy. Zero Point Energy can be though of like the following. (This is hugely simplified)
Zero Point Energy is the lowest amount of energy possible for a system. The ground state at the quantum level. But that doesn’t means there is no energy. This still fluctuate. For example, helium remains a liquid no matter what the temperature is, even down to absolute zero.
Now Imagine the space between the atoms and molecules A real teeny tiny scale. That space according to quantum theory really isn’t empty. Remember there are still fluctuation. From the apparent nothingness a pair of virtual particles can appear and vanish in the smallest of time scales. The part of of particles would be an particle and anti-particle pair (proton and anti-proton). Overall there is still a net nothing in that space.
Now if one could somehow alter conditions should that the virtual particles remain instead of vanishing back into the quantum foam. You’ve now created matter hence energy from the Zero Energy Point.
According to theory this does happen in the universe. Imagine a virtual particle pair coming into existence right at the event horizon of a black hole. And one of the virtual particles is captured by the black hole. The other particle becomes real and escapes into the universe. What has happened is the black hole has loss a bit of mass.
We’re pretty sure virtual particle creation happens; I’m not aware of any alternative explanation of the Casmir Effect. But that’s not to say that the vacuum energy can be extracted and harnessed, and there are reasons to think it can’t.
I’m sure virtual particle pairs exist as well. The theory as far as I can follow it dovetails do nicely with other areas of QM. Besides I get a big chuckle from the though that singulars can not only be naked, but they can be naked and are fuzzy. 😀
Bud said “a rotating galaxy” back here. That makes it sound as if “rotating galaxy” isn’t just a name for the Milky Way. Also it’s not capitalized.
Maybe Bud is just using the phrase “rotating galaxy” because it’s the phrase Maya used, without really understanding the significance of what she’s saying.
The Wardenclyffe Tower comparison that Bud made suggests that there is a point source at the center of the galaxy either created by or causing the rotation (Gravitational? Electromagnetic? Hard to say. If we theorize that there is a supermassive black hole at the center a rotating galaxy, it really could be either case). The idea of the tower was to use one Tesla coil as the transmitter of high-frequency electromagnetic current, which could theoretically be received by another coil placed anywhere near the transmission medium, in this case the conductive parts of the earth’s atmosphere.
So that means that the plutonium-fueled relic they are holding is a matched pair with something that can rotate a galaxy. This is some powerful stuff.
Also bear in mind that time dilates the closer you get to a black hole’s event horizon, so that might explain the time-shifting qualities of the relic…
On a different note, does the fact that Creepy Girl has long hair — and no scissors — mean that Shelly’s in a better place emotionally than she had been? (CG always used to be shown with short hair, and scissors in hand, as though she’d just cut it after her mother’s death.)
Here is the Creepy Girl in her boiler room, as Heather tries to comfort her. (If the link doesn’t work, go to the archive and look up the strip for 28 April, 2005.) AFAIK, she never had long hair until she started manifesting outside the boiler room of Shelly’s subconscious.
I don’t consider that to be CG, though. I think that was a dream that Shelly was having and the girl was just a younger version of herself. As far as I know, the first mention of a “creepy (little) girl” was here, in September of 2008, which was three and a half years later. There is obviously some overlap there, but I think CG was a separate idea that came out of the earlier stuff. The interaction between the girl and the mother is part of why I think that was supposed to be a young Shelly, not CG.
Speaking of Lanthian relics, I bet Paul could do an outstanding arc incorporating the
Antikythera mechanism.
He seems to enjoy taking real research items and extending them into the super normal realm. This mechanism already has such (deservedly so) rich speculation and theories it would be a natural and it is from the same time period.
It’s pretty darn simple. It is a couple of geared wheels on a solid base. While they think it is a calendar now, it is just a portable version of Stonehenge.
Yeah but would she piss on a galatic powered spark plug?
I wouldn’t touch that thing just because Nudge says it’s safe either. Especially if Nudge says it’s safe, actually. “Ha ha … gotcha to touch it! Now you’re stuck for 80,000 years … neener neener!”
*Poit* *BIG NEWSPAPER WHAP!*
“Ow Phix … I just …”
“You fetch her right back here, Nudge, or no pizza for 12,000 years!”
“grumble grumble … put tacks in litter box … grumble”
I’m not sure they plug it into Jin directly. There may still be something at the graveyard in Ireland into which it plugs.
Unless Paul messed up and doesn’t understand that a high explosive charge will also bulge out the steel as well as rip it open, I expect something clawed (so to speak) its way out rather than pushed out with that kind of damage.
But.. would that blow outwards? Nah ,I believe it’s their diet of Bratwurst &Beer.. It’s bound to blow a hole somewhere when enjoyed in an enclosed environment.. 😆
Conventional explosives created the hole in the side of the Sub. And I don’t think the Relic (Hilt) had the plutonium inside of is prior to Shelly’s “Voyage Beyond Space-Time”. I think the various Shelly’s of the past CM cycles put into motion the events which culminated in Shelly #2 chopping down the tree, getting the “thing” and putting it into the Relic (hilt) and Shellinx returning to Earth.
Hmmm..”wormholes” ey? Sooo.. Paul adheres to the multiple universes-part of theoretical(!) physics.
Seems logic that something like “poiting” is a variation of localized wormhole-creation or tapping into existing wormholes.
Some Astro-physicists have theorized that wormholes could be used as a fixed infrastructure, like rail.
Teensy details still to be fixed: How to
A) Map the routes out.
B)keep the connections stable while travelling through them. The Lanthians apparently have fixed that bit of the equasion.
I wonder…(keeping my thinkin’ in the lore and paradigmes of Wapsi-World as Paul has established them) would a Golem survive a direct confrontation with a black-hole, so it can establish some kind of time-space equivalent of tunnel reinforcements..time-space concrete, so to speak?
It would take enormous, unimaginable amounts of energy . Maybe a weird oopart like the relic, combined with some humongous time-space-cladding-tiles churning machine-thingy.
To go even further on that thought: Poit-ing is not something inherently built-in a person, but rather a token to be able to tap-in the worm-hole infrastructure.
The unconscious ability to hop on an interdimensional TGV.
Yes, I admit: Totally channelling “Ring” by Stephen Baxter here. 😳
Oooohhh. boy..that little funky word: “wormholes” opend up a can of worms and their holes. 😛 *drops penny in “stale-puns”-jar*
I’m putting my money on the Lanthians being from the future; they were exploring the far end of a wormhole that opened onto paradise, when their end of it went ‘POIT’, and they (and their descendants) spent their lives trying to come up with a way to get home. With their futuristic devices, they shouldn’t have had a hard time convincing the locals that they were gods, and bent an entire civilization to the task.
That’s the thought ,or, to be more precise. It’s the combinations of pre-programmed voice-activations of time/space contraptions that linger somewhere close, but juuust outside our “field of vision” Once learned, you’ll have the voice-commands internalized and can do hem almost instinctually.. (consider this: how deeply does one have to think about usage the mouse while browsing the web?)
It would fit nicely with urban legends about people that instantly vanished from one place, to pop-up in a completely different part of the world.
Soooo..In Your case ,I should be very very careful with silently muttered, grumbling, half-articulated dissent with cockamaney Star-trek physics.. Who knows where You’ll end-up when hitting one of those commands accidentally.. :lol:.
I would think that the internalized “poit” command is more leaning towards normal clicks and command-lines on an easy to adress interface(“easy” being relative here. It has to be learned, like DOS, but isn’t too complex), while the Golem-formula’s call on machine language directly, thusly being something for specialists only..
“Some Astro-physicists have theorized that wormholes could be used as a fixed infrastructure, like rail.
Teensy details still to be fixed: How to
A) Map the routes out.
B)keep the connections stable while travelling through them. The Lanthians apparently have fixed that bit of the equasion.”
To say nothing of establishing fees, timetables, and a cross-dimentional dining car. 😀
Danzier don’t forget the train will need a confusion car! That or a lot of us will be forced to stand in the corner and bemoan the lack of a barista with a ‘view’ to serve us coffee and finger food!
Ok, it is powerful. But Bud refers to it as a sparkplug, which would mean that Jin, and by reference Bud and Brandy are individually more powerful than it . . .
I keep having to upgrade the power level of the GG’s. From system destroyer to galaxy smashers to a possible Type IV on the Kardashev scale. Now that is scary.
More specifically, it’s a reference to a line in the movie WarGames: the folks at NORAD have discovered that the supercomputer they put in charge of their nuclear warheads can’t tell the difference between a simulation and actual war, and are trying to stop it from launching ICBMs at the Soviet Union; one general shouts, “Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!”
Wow, I’ve seen that movie several times and I didn’t grab that catch. What makes it better is there was a spoof of Wargames on Robot Chicken last night and I still didn’t remember that line. “Would you like to nuke Canada?” 🙂
Not that amazing — I’m a child of the ’80s; I saw WarGames in the cinema (my first exposure to Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy & John Wood), and taped it off Cinemax later. (Besides, the General had some of the best lines. :P)
I love actors whose characters are always from the same place the actors are from… My two favorites:
–Richard Dean Anderson, as MacGyver and Col. O’Niell;
–the guy who played Cpl. Klinger on the TV series “MASH”
It’s a sparkplug. If so, where’s the engine? Or rather what is the engine. If the sparkplug is alread that powerful, I wouldn’t be surprised that the engine is a compressed galaxy in some containment-field, that needs the sparkplug to get it’s rotation going, so energy can be tapped from it.
Clown Car: -Well ,Jin, we fixed it, now take that pee
*Jin, looking flummoxed at a tiny rotating galaxy*
Jin: -Ummmm do You guys mind if I re-consider my former, granted, quite optimistic- statement for a bit *gulp* 😆
What is going on? A comment I made an hour ago is “awaiting moderation”. When did this start? They have always just posted before. Not much point in posting if the timeliness of the post is lost due to multi-hour delays waiting for the day shift.
If you make a typo that changed the e-mail address to one it doesn’t recognise (or an invalid one), or if you include more than one link in a single post, it goes to moderation.
Thanks Fairportfan. I guess that was it – there were two links in the post. I just reposted it with one link and it went right up. I hadn’t expected any problem as I am sure I’ve seen multiple links in posts here before.
Speaking of Lanthian relics, I bet Paul could do an outstanding arc incorporating the Antikythera mechanism.
He seems to enjoy taking real research items (search google), and extending them into the super normal realm. This mechanism already has such (deservedly so) rich speculation and theories it would be a natural and it is from the same time period.
It’s probably my wapsinoia talking, but the way Tina said it makes me think there is something specific about wormholes and Monica in particular. Perhaps that’s why the thingy had such a negative effect on her. Safe or not, Tina wanted Monica away from any wormhole. Or … she was talking about keeping it out of sunlight and not Monica’s nickname.
Reminds me of Bud idly wondering (after Monica’s little jaunt to the “fruit market” to get the portal cloth) about what would happen if they shoved Shelly (who, of course, had the other end of the portal link on her front) through the cloth…
Hm hm. It would probably result in a galaxy- wide shloeppp!
that might make
the little tantrum of the GG look like a farting mouse. Brr Bud, Bud no more ‘good ideas’ please.
I was indeed thinking of that..
Larry Niven once postulated a spacecraft that teleported itself to a receiver on (or just ahead of) its own nose.
Since the postulated matter-transmitter was irrelevant – instantaneous over any measurable distance – the ship’s maximum “velocity” would be equal to its length times the number of times it could do the jump in a given period of time.
And there’d be no acceleration (and max “velocity” would be instantaneously achieved) and, since it isn’t actually “moving”, there’s not time dilation effect…
Yep. And I see Officer Tight Buns in similar state as Kevin after returning from a several month long assignment. Although after 80,000 years, they might have to call in the paramedics. 🙂
Heck no. I don’t see this as wrapping everything up. I still want to know more about Tina and what she was talking about here. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/yet-to-do/
Nothing I see in this is a complete wrap up. Yes some questions were awnsered but many more were added. Also given the fact that Paul has hinted at several story lines, Tina’s past or the fact that both Monica and Shelly have characteristics that point to something to do with the Golems. I certintly don’t see Paul ending this any time soon.
If I remember correctly, Paul answered that question in an interview at some point. Apparently, she simply found it at a garage sale, and liked it. Or maybe it was a used clothing store, I can’t remember. Either way, it’s a bit of an anticlimax.
Let’s hop not. I always hated those “posession” storylines
in X-Men. They used those waaay too much.
I cannot remember, was Malice a Claremont-character?
from what i gather
whilst english chips and american fries are both strips of fried potato
they are different
i would not even consider putting vinegar on a macdonalds fries (which are close to the us fries?)
but chip-shop-chips? totally go with vinegar
perhaps because they are larger and thicker?
(and these are the julliette potatoes fried and eaten whilst warm chips/fries..not the sliced potatoes fried and eaten cold crisps/chips…)
Okay among the other mysteries we have going on, there’s the hole in the sub routine. What is big enough to make a sub look like an alien exploded from its stomache?
In addition, who ARE the people Jin keeps seeing. Are they halucinations or are they the souls of the individuals devoured by the big blast of the chimera?
So what is the “horse shit” that GC is talking about? Was the CM supposed to feedback somehow? Was it supposed to be harmful? Or does she just me that the relic isn’t broken like the CM eventually was? Or maybe it never quite worked right and was already harmful, but got worse when Maya broke it.
How did Nudge and CG get to be such experts? Should we trust them?
Having all books from the biblioteki freely available, would be a perk that would make me consider an 80000- year banishment as somethinh worthwhile, to be honest..
Even a hothead like Shelly can learn a lot if she’s got 81,000 years of vacation time and a valid Biblothiki card. Does Phix make house calls to magical forests?
Remember that the CM is a lot older that the time loops. It was mentioned that the CM made Jin and May immortal when it was set into motion. This happened some time before Jin was turned into a Golem. It was also stated that the Chimara and the GGs were created something like 10,000 years ago but the time loop only goes back less that 2,000 years(think the accualy number is around 1,428 if my math is right). The only reason the time loop started was because May tried to destroy the CM and was sent to the demon relm and the loop was started. So although the CM did screw up it was working correctly for at least 8,000 years. And it was stated that the CM was created to help with Jin’s mental issues. In the end I think this new artifact is ether a backup plan by May or is something that Shelly has created in a time parodox going in reverse. Then again knowing Paul, we may never know.
Thanks for you post. Your dates are a little bit off, but close. Lantis was destroyed in 10,500 BC. The loops are about 1450 or 1452 years long.
What I was saying was based on the fact that the CM was damaged by Maya trying to destroy it (July 12, 2007). That may indicate that there may have been something wrong with it all along. In the July 11, 2007, there is a hint that the calendar machine may have turned out to be more powerful than intended. The simple fact that Maya was unable to destroy it and got zapped into the demon realm seems to indicate that those who created it couldn’t control it.
Actually one thing I noticed was that CG and Nudge, rather than Shelly, were doing most of the talking, especially about technical things. That could be just a matter of Shelly being in unfamiliar surroundings, though.
If the knowledge came from the library or Phix, it’s interesting that Monica, who was the researcher and the one most likely to talk to Phix or to go to the library, concluded that trying to learn more that way wouldn’t have been helpful.
I do love how we’ve had a new “little sister” style character just slip effortlessly into the story. I forsee Shelly being put into the big sister role and having to cope with all the “first day at school and boys are stupid” issues that come with the responsibility. 🙂
“Just – re-member that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
and revolving at 900 miles an hour,
It’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
the sun that is the source of all our power.
The Sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
of the Galaxy we call the Milky Way.”…
Well this is certainly an interesting turn of events. I didn’t imagine that I would find myself particularly disliking so many of the characters, but I can’t shake the feeling that I am now watching an ensemble of villains. Very peculiar indeed. The only thing they need to complete the image now is a mustache twist and a sinister laugh about how “now all the power is mine, ah ha ha!”
out of curiosity, and no disrespect, how did you reach that point of view? I can understand from the recent arc yes ultimate power source, 80,000 years of torment etc., but knowing what has transpired before that…. I just don’t see it…
I guess I just can’t get past the whole murdering, what was it, 56 people? Which was now apparently all part of their plan the whole time? And for what, a power source? They sure seem rather pleased with themselves…
Normally I would agree. Thing is, every one of those people would have ceased to exist not all that long after that anyway. As I see it only one Shelly would have been used to cut the tree down and died in the process. We don’t know what happened to the others. Perhaps they were stuck there and died of old age. Maybe they went back to their time period, but without the plutonium source, making the trip meaningless for them. Maybe they starved to death because there was no food there. Sphinx Shelly didn’t need to eat. If there was, technically, a murder, I’m thinking it was only the Shelly we saw die, The first of the “reset Shellys” to make it to the forest.
Apparently there were other sphinxes in the forest as well, and any one of them might have killed the other Shellys, eventually, despite sphinx-Shelly’s efforts to prevent it. It’s a dangerous place even for a human-sphinx hybrid (without a CG protector, that is).
A good chunk of morality rests on the presence or absence of alternatives. If they’ve got the ability to break causality though, one might think it would present some additional possibilities. I mean, everyone is going to die eventually right? So there’s a big difference between someone volunteering themselves as a sacrifice, and someone else making that decision for them.
it’s a reference to a line in the movie WarGames: the folks at NORAD have discovered that the supercomputer they put in charge of their nuclear warheads can’t tell the difference between a simulation and actual war, and are trying to stop it from launching ICBMs at the Soviet Union; one general shouts, “Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!”
I would love for The Tardis and The Doctor to show up at any point now and help out. Not that it will happen. Different universes….though I don’t think that’s stopped the Doctor before.
Yeah, I’m not real great at remembering either, but I try.
BTW, I’m jealous of your ability to tune out the adds. I really can’t. There is one that tends to appear among the Project Wonderful ads just below the box where we type our comments. It has a moving airship in it and it’s like someone it beating me in the head as I’m attempting to type. It is soooooooooo annoying! 👿
I could block it with ad blocker, but I hate to deny Paul the revenue from the ads.
Yeah, it took me a while to think of doing that. Sometimes I will slide a different program over part of my browser to block the ads from sight. Normally I use Adblocker and got out of the habit of doing things like that
Man, it musta been weird being Nudge and Phix, meeting this Shelly and knowing that she, being the 57th one, would be the one to become her Sphinx self and do all this and that was when the time looping would end. That’s kind of a trip. Then not being able to tell her for fear of breaking the time anomaly that had occurred.
CLG looks all normal and stuff in that panel. Its odd.
As strange as it sounds, seeing Creepy Girl not being creepy is rather… unsettling.
mybe she is only creepy looking when she needs to address someones fears.
no one is afraid anymore so no fear addressing is needed?
Ah! Clever! So her appearance is dependent upon the feelings of others with respect to her charge.
*hands Paula a cookie* 🙂
Does Nudge have a similar ability/aspect? This ‘cute n fuzzy’ version resembles little in style and tone to the ‘creepy n manipulative’ version that Tina first showed…
Yay, Paula!
damn!
two weeks right on the trot
im on a roll!!!
*runs off to buy lottery tickets*
Grats to Paula!
Looking back at the previous few pages, CG was mirroring the person who was interacting with her (not necessarily Shelly), except for yesterday, when no other character had the same expression. If not for yesterday, I would have thought it went well beyond just not showing the person’s fear if they had none.
Now I have two questions:
Is CG’s appearance only tied to Shelly’s mood, or is it tied to the mood of the person she is interacting with?
Does CG’s appearance tied only to the presence or absence of fear.
Maybe she now has an objective existence (which is what i was hinting at with my “Dawn” bit yesterday)?
Fwwooosh!! X 2
Fwoosh #1: I never watched Buffy
Fwoosh #2: I tried looking up the definition of objective existence and found this:
WTF?
@Eshmenk: Yeah, I’m right there too… I think that second one deciphers into a loop definition…
“Loop, endless: see ‘Endless loop’.
Endless loop: see ‘Loop, endless’.”
well yahoo answers is not that reliable.. lets break it down using google dictionary..
objective = Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts
– a matter of objective fact
– historians try to be objective and impartial.
so basically she is ‘real’.. within the limits of demon or human stuff…
Actually, objective existence is a philosophical term. I think I got the meaning close enough from here. It means existence independent of thought or knowledge. So, not just a concept.
But–since existence is only known by something that thinks, objective existence is awfully hard to define.
I’d think you’d have to go with the idea that we get as babies, that things which disappear from sight continue to exist and don’t just go “Poof!”
how do you know
if no one is around to see it .. how do you know it exists.
i know I exist because i can always see me
but the rest of you could be total hallucinations 🙂
May’s backup plan?
I presume so. Otherwise, the artifact was designed to do something else, which begs the question: who made it and why?
Indeed! What was it orignally, and what did it do?
PS — Calls to question — not Begs. Begging the Question is a type of poorly constructed argument.
Thank you – I’ve been using the phrase for years, incorrectly, it seems.
i think they use it on tv
i use it like that too
Boy, that’s true desperation.
Do we change Jin’s nick name to Sparky?
Nah. “Twitchy”, maybe…
Ugh..do not remind me. The first go-kart I, and a friend made, had a rather ingenious way of stopping the engine: Shorting the spark-plug by pressing a piece of metal on the cylinder and spark plug. Great system ,but ,since the lawn-mower engine was at your back, it took some precise aiming in the blind, otherwise You’d grab on to the tip of the spark-plug.. “twitcy” indeed 😆
I used a lawn-mower or three with that sort of system. It worked, but I can’t imagine using it behind your back.
About thirty-five years ago, i owned an Austin-Healey Sprite.
Like many a British sports car, it had endearing quirks (or infuriating peculiarities, depending on who you ask and why he’s under the bonnet today).
One was that sometimes it was hard to start. I finally began to suspect that there was a problem n the distributor – that perhaps the points were sticking (i forget precisely i came to that conclusion, but i’m pretty usre i use a troubleshooting tech manual).
So i popped the distributor cap, and, using a (plastic) pen, checked to see if the points had free motion.
(For those who have never dealt with the gubbins of old-style auto ignition systems, every time the points open or close, the coil produces a multi-thousand volt pulse, which the distributor rotor directs to the appropriate plug.)
At that point, i discovered that (A) there was a crack in the distributor cap, (B) the reason i couldn’t see it was that it was rather thin and was more or less packed with dust of various types, (C) the reason that the car was sometimes hard to start and sometimes not was that when the humidity was high, the gunk in the crack became conductive enough to (at least partially) ground out the spark from the rotor button to the distributor case,…
and
(D) I was holding the cap with my thumb on the crack.
😆 😆
Oh, hey, there’s another one of those words that means different things to English speakers the world around.
Bonnet: England=cover for a car’s engine; US=old-fashioned lady’s headwear. Car engine covers are commonly called “hoods” in the US, which is not to be confused with slang for neighborhoods. 😛
Okay Paul:
You (once again) have thrown me for a loop… No explosion from M?
too confused perhaps, though, she’s also got an explanation for some of the really messed up stuff that’s happened… but still, no idea where the plutonium came from…
Professor Brown was doing an experiment with Marty McBug and Shelly (or Bud or Nudge or any of the cast members) stole it *nods*
I was wondering who would be the first to make that joke.
it was made when plutonium was first mentioned in the comic 🙂
I’m still waiting for it too. Kinda looking forward to it actually. XD
More than likely it was Shellinx that played a role in that. Shellinx told Shelly #2 (first post CM Shelly) that “you” placed the sword in the stone, “you” place the hit in the graveyard, you put the thing (plutonium capsule) inside the tree. “You” implying all of the different Shelly’s of each CM cycle.
Just to speculate on things Shellinx was able to use her place outside of time to setup causality waves that carried through the CM cycles. For instance, Shellinx told a previous Shelly to place the Hilt inside of the gravemarks in Ireland. That change to the timeline somehow survived into the last CM cycle (current timeline) for the German’s to find, get put into a submarine, get sunk, for Stinky to fetch, Bud to find, get the Relic, to wind up in the hands of Shelly #5 t kick off the whole Sacred Forest thing.
I suspect the next couple of weeks will lead to many migraines and head explosions. 😀
Oh, man… my brain’s heading back into that, “What the heck is going on?” mentality. Better just shut up and enjoy the ride. XD
yes..
*passes out muffins and settles into the confusion corner*
Cushion 42 is already taken… 😛
So is A000040 …
Cushion 1701 is mine.
very well
i shall claim cushion purple.
and I get the one with owl print. 😀
Mine just has my name on it. I’m sitting on it so you don’t know who I am. Bwahaha!
Someone save my seat while I get some more coffee… 😀
*passes round Danziers cushion*
i didn’t know THAT was their name!!
(…slips whoopee cushion under it, whistles innocently…)
Sneaks a rescue whisle into the whoopie cushion valve before sitting down
FWEEEEEEEEEET!
Did I scare you? 😀
Clinging to the wall, like a befuddled arachnid. All the better cushions were taken, but up here near the top of the bookshelves is cozy too.
Brought my own cushion. That dark corner on the far wall is mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Ahhh … feels like home.
I’ll take up my usual residence on cushion π next to the fireplace…
who needs a cushion?? much more comfortable curled up by the fire… 🙂
i’ll just grab one of those bar stools with the high backs and rest my feet on the table…
Cushion 1984 is mine!
Brahahaha!!!
Still laying out on the couch of confusion. Irish Tea(large) in hand.
… and Tina’s back, and protecting Monica again…
But where did the dress come from? Last time we saw her it was in a itsy beeny teeny weeny tiny bikini. No polka dots.
Long t-shirt type cover-up. Think I saw a beach bag when she showed up.
Right, she had a large shoulder bag with her. It, among other things, no doubt contained what she is currently wearing.
Bud jumped Tina home to get her dress. Since she thought it was safe, she came back.
Then she hears about wormholes and gets nervous again…
Never mind. Your explanation is better than mine.
On that bikini: I still think they should search for a secluded beach to recap and relax. (I would love to see Nudge lying in the sun on her back ,like our rottweiler tended to do if she was really relaxed) snoring away.. 😆
Actually we saw her for the first time after Shelly came back from the forest realm in this comic http://wapsisquare.com/comic/always-have-been/
and as we can see she was already wearing the long t-shirt.
It’s Tina. She’s supposed to be mystic and random. Random clothing changes are an everyday occurrence for her. (>^_^)>
I meant to ask yesterday; does CG have a corporeal form now, and is it permanent?
Shelly’s been physically restraining and touching Conscience since she first appeared, so it would seem she’s solid now. And if she can manifest herself once, no reason she can’t do it again or keep doing it. Or disappear back into Shelly’s head until she wants to pop out again.
Interesting thought. Unless I’m forgetting a comic, I cannot recall Shelly physically touching CG during her previous visits.
Then again, Monica’s demons don’t have a physical/corporal form, yet Monica can physically interact with them (Doubt, Jin-Doubt, Lust, Panic, etc.). And on the same note, Jin-Doubt was able to physically interact (via punch to the face) with Shelly during the Calendar Machine arc, and Monica-Doubt was able to physically interact with Tepoz during her/its debut.
So, not really sure what limitations Demons and Demon-combinations have in the physical world, unless they’re shoved inside a body like Tina 2.0.
The interlude where Shelly was going to volunteer to go to Ireland–Shelly and CG were holding hands and walking out of the dark basement just before Shelly yelled, “I’ll do it!” and scared everyone but Jin at the beach.
We have also seen Shelly touching Creepy Girl once in the real world.
So how is the lack of something that is already gone (calendar feedback) going to “fix” Jin?
The relic will provide a connection to the stability of the galaxy as a whole like the CM did. This patches the hole in Jin’s head. The relic is more stable than the CM is so this is a safer way to fix Jin. This solution really sounds like Maya rigged it.
Patches what hole in Jin’s head?
The “empty place at her center” (or words to that effect).
Just stay away from that 9th chevron (or the 3rd Conoco)
maybe hitting the 9th chevron is their destiny 😉
Okay, now it’s my turn to admit that i’m missing what looks as if it’s a fairly well-known reference…
Having enough power to dial the 9th Chevron on the Stargate puts you on an Ancient starship on a course to the end of the Universe.
From “Stargate Universe”
O-o-okay.
Never saw it.
Oh..aha.
Never liked it. It ,somehow, never connected to me like, say B5, Seaquest DSV ,or Buffy TVS did…
and the name of the ship was ‘destiny’ 🙂
Huh…I only ever saw Stargate (the movie), SG-1, and Atlantis…and I didn’t even see the entirety of either of those series. Loved it though…I really do need to go back and watch all of them from the beginning.
Haha! I knew I wasn’t the only Stargate fan here!! 🙂
…and, um, the version of SGU I saw was very different, as I recall. I’ll have to go re-watch.
the first episode of SGU consisted of them dialing the 9th chevron
the rest of the episodes/series was based on the ship.
You might want to reconsider the going back to it as syfy announced recently they are cancelling it so best to see if they give a ending before getting into it again…
not that im bitter about certain cancellations recently..no…
Ok, I’ve looked SGU up on the internet and watched one entire episode and a few previews. My conclusion … the original “Battlestar Galactica” redux. Same basic premise. Chased by a mechanical civilization out to destroy them, and anyone like them. The premise seemed good, but the execution seems to be rehashed melodrama.
Mind you, I’ve only seen a few BG episodes from the internet also. The stupidest was the one in which they, on the run for their very lives, stop at a planet to gamble and party. Yeah, that makes sense.
Actually, the only things Star Gate Universe had in common with Battlestar Galactica was its setting in deep space and that they were both shown on the SyFy Channel.
BG had no aliens, SGU had many.
BG had a human fleet of ships pursued by a inimical race of machines created by the humans. SGU took place on a single ship created by ancient aliens and many alien species were encountered.
Lastly, the BG fleet were the last remnants of the human species while the SGU ship was in contact with Earth & humans slowly spreading through multiple galaxies and could even interact with them using alien technology.
BG was about looking for a new home. SGU was ultimately about finding answers to the deepest mysteries of existence and returning back to the home they left behind.
SoWhyMe is thinking of the original version of BG broadcast over 30 years ago. It bears only faint resemblance to the modern BG series shown on SyFy.
Now my question is what kind of power output are we getting from a device that requires a nuclear reaction just to jump-start it? I won’t ask how this whole thing helps Jin, because the level of technobabble required to explain that would be well over the legal limit.
yada yada…mass of galaxy…yada yada…stable monopole rotation…yada yada…quantum gap cross connection…yada yada…zero point energy…yada yada….singularity closes hole….yada yada….event horizon effect….yada, yada
Galaxy rotation comes to a screeching halt … yada yikesa!
Aaaand..what’s so complex about that?
The artifact is the smallest Galaxy-scale Wardenclyffe Tower I’ve even seen though..
not seen men in black?
that collar contained a whole galaxy 🙂
My reply to this is a bit further down. Think the last scene of MIB (1). Sorry about the misplaced comment.
@danzier
ive been doing that all week
im sure the comments move…
Maybe it’s the Lanthian version of a Zero Point Module which taps it’s power from the Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy.
It could also be tapping into the energy flux generated by the rotational friction of MW spiral arms on the underlying gravitational field of the Local Cluster.
Just say ‘dark energy’ and/or ‘quarks’ and be done with it. The Star Trek gobblydegook just makes me grind my teeth.
*goes to the confusion corner and grumbles into his mocha*
Meaning Of Life Stuff!
its not the power output that matters, but how long it lasts…
Oh, I don’t know about that. I have a laptop with a battery that won’t put out enough power to run the machine when the fans turn on, but it seems to never need charging. The laptop is useless after two minutes.
Don’t you just love techno-jargon?
So if the artifact works like the CM only better does it even really need to be inserted into Jin?
snap of rubber glove heard in the background….NEXT!
For the initial connection I would say yes but only once. Those knobs on the end means it has to be plugged in somewhere. Probably in the top, or back, of the head.
Or maybe the point of this entire exercise was to obtain the right object to smack Jin upside the head with as you shout “Pull yourself together!”
Ooooh! Tough love!
I like it.
maybe its just a necklace?
maybe she needs to shift into her serpent form put it on then hopefully when she shifts back into her ‘human’ form it will shrink too?
yes i know it didnt with shellinx but well..
Or maybe the side-prongs are like a child’s hammer that goes “pweep” when you hit something with it. A functuion to add some levity to an otherwise horrin little contraption.. 😆 😆
“It went zip when it moved and pop when it stopped,
And whirrrrr when it stood still;
I never knew just what it was,
And I guess I never will.”
I wish I could remember more of that song; it was fun.
First time my wife saw Tom Paxton live, he did “The Marvelous Toy” to close the show – he said “It’s the oldest song I wrote that I still do … and I do not want any full-grown adults coming up to me after the show and saying how much they loved it in kindergarten…”
Interesting – in the live performance i linked to, Paxton doesn’t so the original final verse:
Bud has a hatch in her tummy leading to an internal cavity she can store things in. It’s possible Brandi and Jin have similar arrangements we just haven’t seen yet.
Why worry about a cavity when we already know that Bud can poit anything into Jin’s stomach if she wants to? 😛
How long until M finds out how many times Shelley died in there?
Right. And how long before it sinks in how long Shelly suffered. Shelly is getting too cheerful too quickly here. The drama seems to be draining out of this amazing turn of events. 80,000 years … meh … what’s for lunch?
Agreed. Orrr..the break-down will come, but onlyb after Shelly apparently goes home with a straight back, closes the door and “Wham” there she goes, total break-down and happy tears aplenty.
She seems like the type.
worm…hole??
how frikkin advanced WERE these lanthians???
were they even FROM earth???
Oh and another question.
Are they doing this so Jin doesn’t blow the world up in a moment of pure insanity
Or
Are they doing this because they actually care about her?
(still think of when Jin tried to introduce Alan to her ‘friends’ and monica bit her head off…)
Towards the end of the calender arc they actually seemed to come very close to hating her…
is this still true?
Well, you can’t really hold the actions of someone not in their right mind against them. Jin has already shown herself to be out of touch with reality to the point of needing to ‘touch’ things questionable to her senses. Whether she has already lost the difference between right and wrong has yet to be proven, but doesn’t seem so from our latest view of her.
Yet.
I get the feeling that by now they actually care about her. For starters, I’d imagine it would be rather difficult to hate the broken person she became after the destruction of the calender machine. Secondly, based on interactions between characters recently, it seems that all manipulation around destroying the calendar machine has been forgiven, on the grounds that it was necessary to save the world. Jin’s manipulations were a big part of why everyone clashed with her. Then again, I could be mistaken. As I have stated previously, I have a tendency to assume the best in people.
So am I.
Jin did all of the things she did ,to save the world, and every soul in it. She’s not evil. Manipulative, yes, but out of neccesity. It’s Jin’s love for all that is alive, that kept her going and suffering to fix all wrongs.
She lost all she loved and held dear several times, just to fix a wrong that was actually her Mom’s fault.
The only ones lashing out in temporarily pure evil, hatred and vengefulness, were Brandi and Bud. And boy do they know that. They stil have a hard time reconciling that to themselves.
All Golem Girls are broken in one form or another, yet Jin wasn’t the one that destroyed the world. She still feels guilty that she couldn’t stop the GG’s rampage.
The only thing that could be held against Jin, is that she grew distant from the humanity that she tried to save.
Soap-bubbles and Petri-dishes……
I have to wonder how much of that was her motivation and how much was her desire to become human again and die. Obviously she hated being eternal and set out to use her condition in trying to stop the cycles. She firmly believed that would “cure” her of her golemitus.
Everyone hated Jin because a previous Brandi told her that Jin had to stay distant from everyone. Jin had to stay distant in order to make the plan to fix the CM work. If you read back through the archives you see that fact tearing Jin up inside because they were close friends in previous CM cycles.
Now that the CM had been taken care of. Everyone in the know could tell the others what had been done. Everyone pulled to together in order to help Jin. So I think everyone has forgiven Jin for being the callous she was during this timeline.
@#$^& it. Sometime I really hate HTML. That start of thtat bolded part should actually be “b-word”.
Damn, girl, you took the words right outa my keyboard!
Question us (as I see it) not how advance the Lanthians were, but more like: Who became before the Lanthians.
The Lanthians on their own seemed just to be “using” stuff they got handed, with some magicians (like Maya) knowing the finer points of the technology.
As Paul drew them (swords? spears?) they didn’t seem too advanced, just power-hungry enough to let a female-magician f… them over…
I have often thought that Mayahuel, at least, had access to the Library. It might very well be that the oh wow technology did in fact come from elsewhere; Paula is right about it not originating in Lantis. Mayahuel found it while researching in the Library.
How advanced were they?
Ah, advanced enough to create an indestructable golem that has infinite (as far as we’re concerned) power?
Advanced enough to tap into forces that we’re just now, 5k years or more later, rediscovering?
Advanced enough to discover alternate dimensions and to create machines that could transport objects into them.
Advanced enough to do pretty much anything Paul wants them to be able to do. 😉
Hard to tell if the Lanthians OR Maya are human. If they’re using magic, though, it’s possible they became aware of wormholes long before a techo-based civilization would, because magic gave them a different prespective of the Universe… In fact a lot of the Lanthian advancement may simply be because they approached things in a different way than we are.
That’s a good point. A people into “magic” would be people who weren’t that concerned with why something did what it did, but interested in what it did. They would build on their knowledge based on results gathered through trial and error. Perhaps a lucky few discovered some alien technology and managed to get it to work without understanding a bit of why it worked. Society didn’t progress much because they weren’t doing things for the greater good and use by others in general, just for themselves.
Of course that meant things exploded a lot, or even upset the galaxy, but hey … no pain, no golems.
So, just to reiterate, it uses plutonium in a magic container which somehow reflects more then it gets back in (yet doesn’t cause meltdown) to power a device that uses a mathematical incongruity to tap into the rotational power of a galaxy to somehow generate power.
…feh with that pansy nuclear power. Laugh at puny solar power. Giggle at silly old magic. Create a huge, elaborate card house just to… make power…?
*goes back to old man corner of confusion corner and grumbles*
StJason I’d give you a beer (beer is good for you, in moderation), but I’m not sure it’s allowed so I didn’t bring any.
*lightbulb*
humans were deemed not worthy of library access…
i never thought…
who IS worthy of access…why would a demi-god or sphinx want access to it?
i assumed because of our warlike ability and the library of alexandra etc..
but what if it was because the lanthians abused it?
there…is not just human writing there..maybe?
(got that from reading everyone elses comments btw)
nowadays i spose the equivallent of the library is
wikipedia?
L-space, home of the interwebs…
Paula, I believe, you made another excellent point…
at this rate Paul may have to give you the whole jar….of cookies…
A new version of Space-time continuum!?
faster than the speed of light
What exactly is “the rotating galaxy”? I mean, lots of galaxies rotate, as far as we know — even our own, which rotates about every 250,000,000 years or thereabouts. Does Bud mean that the relic draws its power from the rotation of the galaxy? How would that work? Kinetic energy? (Or is “The Rotating Galaxy” the name of the galaxy in question, as it was known to the Lanthians? It seems kinda lame for a name, but so does “The Milky Way”.)
And how freakin’ advanced were these people, anyway? Were they actually native to Earth, or did they come through a stargate or something? (I mean really, we might be at this level of advancement now, if it hadn’t been for the Dark Ages, and it took us 10,000 years. Did the Lanthians start with agriculture 20,000 years ago, then? If so, why didn’t they conquer and overpopulate the entire world like we did?)
I believe it means “galactic rotational energy.” All that stuff whirling around the black hole at the galactic core, keeping it together, has a grest deal of potential energy associated with it. This device taps that energy.
Only thing that I find alarming here (since Lanthian relics have a naty habit of going wrong big-time) if You’d tap into that energy, You’ll disturb the equilibrium, the black hole would become unstable, and starts sucking in more matter than is replenished..
😯 *whimpering* eeeep…
End-result: “SHLUUUUUURP.P.P..” *nothingness*
Then you just replicate Jin twice and throw the two extras in the black hole. Problem solved with simple algebra. 😀
…Actually the opposite would be more likely to happen. Without a certain amount of energy in the system, there would be not enough to hold it all together, and our galaxy would fall apart.
My question is that you need a reletive point outside a system to gain energy from kinetics. The magnets of a generator don’t generate any energy if they are rotating at the same rate as the wires. So, this device, somehow taps into the rotational energy, and at the same time, creates a reference point outside of the galaxy which is not affected by it, yet is close enough to be affected by it… somehow creates energy from this, and then sends it all into this tiny device…
…and then, they want to give this device to a creature which is already powerful enough to pop the planet, and is having hallucinations…
You don’t necessarily need a point outside a rotating system (or any other, for that matter) to tap the energy – you just need two points at different potential levels.
Pretty much the equivalent of hydroelectric power.
I’ve often wondered why we don’t make much more use of hydroelectric power. I mean, talk about a reuseable resource. You use it at one point, then downstream some, you can use it again … and again … and again. It’s really gravity power as stored in the moving water.
Dams are expensive, they have limited locations, and to build more that one or two on a single river could do way more harm than good to the eco system.
Yeah – google Lake Lanier/Georgia/Alabama/Florida/”water wars”
Screw the lake. A couple of years ago, Georgia tried to move the GE/TN border so they could divert the Tennessee River.
Only because the original border was defined to be the 35th parallel (35° N), and we now know it’s about 1.1 critical miles south of that line. And, apparently, Georgia never ratified the line, although Tennessee did.
If the Lanthians had access to the Library and could translate even just a little of it they could get real advanced real fast and to heck with things like ethics.
The “rotating galaxy” thing could be a matter of taking advantage of the relative motion of mass in the galaxy, much like how we boost interplanetary space probes using the mass and motion of planets.
How’s that for technobable?
There’s a couple of technobabble ways to draw energy off our rotating galaxy:
1) Gravitic braking – direct tapping of kinetic energy via the God Knows What Effect.
2) Electromagnetic braking – takes advantage of the fact that the galactic arms are full of streamers of hot gas carrying millions of amps of current flow as the ionized gasses interact with the galactic magnetic field.
(Hangs head in shame) I’m such a geek.
Pats NOTDilbert on the head, ‘That’s a good geek. Now have some tea and enjoy the confusion.
Think “WardenClyffe” on a grand scale.
Maybe it’s the Lanthian version of a Zero Point Module which taps it’s power from the Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy.
It could also be tapping into the energy flux generated by the rotational friction of MW spiral arms on the underlying gravitational field of the Local Cluster.
I don’t think it’s Zero Point Energy.. A ZPE reactor won’t need to have anything to do with the rotational energy of the Galaxy.
And for those who’s eyes are glazing overy. Zero Point Energy can be though of like the following. (This is hugely simplified)
Zero Point Energy is the lowest amount of energy possible for a system. The ground state at the quantum level. But that doesn’t means there is no energy. This still fluctuate. For example, helium remains a liquid no matter what the temperature is, even down to absolute zero.
Now Imagine the space between the atoms and molecules A real teeny tiny scale. That space according to quantum theory really isn’t empty. Remember there are still fluctuation. From the apparent nothingness a pair of virtual particles can appear and vanish in the smallest of time scales. The part of of particles would be an particle and anti-particle pair (proton and anti-proton). Overall there is still a net nothing in that space.
Now if one could somehow alter conditions should that the virtual particles remain instead of vanishing back into the quantum foam. You’ve now created matter hence energy from the Zero Energy Point.
According to theory this does happen in the universe. Imagine a virtual particle pair coming into existence right at the event horizon of a black hole. And one of the virtual particles is captured by the black hole. The other particle becomes real and escapes into the universe. What has happened is the black hole has loss a bit of mass.
We’re pretty sure virtual particle creation happens; I’m not aware of any alternative explanation of the Casmir Effect. But that’s not to say that the vacuum energy can be extracted and harnessed, and there are reasons to think it can’t.
I’m sure virtual particle pairs exist as well. The theory as far as I can follow it dovetails do nicely with other areas of QM. Besides I get a big chuckle from the though that singulars can not only be naked, but they can be naked and are fuzzy. 😀
Bud said “a rotating galaxy” back here. That makes it sound as if “rotating galaxy” isn’t just a name for the Milky Way. Also it’s not capitalized.
Maybe Bud is just using the phrase “rotating galaxy” because it’s the phrase Maya used, without really understanding the significance of what she’s saying.
The Wardenclyffe Tower comparison that Bud made suggests that there is a point source at the center of the galaxy either created by or causing the rotation (Gravitational? Electromagnetic? Hard to say. If we theorize that there is a supermassive black hole at the center a rotating galaxy, it really could be either case). The idea of the tower was to use one Tesla coil as the transmitter of high-frequency electromagnetic current, which could theoretically be received by another coil placed anywhere near the transmission medium, in this case the conductive parts of the earth’s atmosphere.
So that means that the plutonium-fueled relic they are holding is a matched pair with something that can rotate a galaxy. This is some powerful stuff.
Also bear in mind that time dilates the closer you get to a black hole’s event horizon, so that might explain the time-shifting qualities of the relic…
On a different note, does the fact that Creepy Girl has long hair — and no scissors — mean that Shelly’s in a better place emotionally than she had been? (CG always used to be shown with short hair, and scissors in hand, as though she’d just cut it after her mother’s death.)
1) She lost the scissors in the Forest.
or
2) She left them in an Apo Sphinx who wouldn’t mind her own business.
Like.
No, I thought CG was always shown with long hair (longer than this) and normally without scissors. Here is an example.
I can remember CG with scissors, but would you please provide a link of CG with short hair?
Here is the Creepy Girl in her boiler room, as Heather tries to comfort her. (If the link doesn’t work, go to the archive and look up the strip for 28 April, 2005.) AFAIK, she never had long hair until she started manifesting outside the boiler room of Shelly’s subconscious.
Thanks for providing the link. I worked.
I don’t consider that to be CG, though. I think that was a dream that Shelly was having and the girl was just a younger version of herself. As far as I know, the first mention of a “creepy (little) girl” was here, in September of 2008, which was three and a half years later. There is obviously some overlap there, but I think CG was a separate idea that came out of the earlier stuff. The interaction between the girl and the mother is part of why I think that was supposed to be a young Shelly, not CG.
An early hint was here:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/surpriseyourself/
I agree with @eschmenk. That’s not Connie in the strip you linked, it’s a young Shelly.
Speaking of Lanthian relics, I bet Paul could do an outstanding arc incorporating the
Antikythera mechanism.
He seems to enjoy taking real research items and extending them into the super normal realm. This mechanism already has such (deservedly so) rich speculation and theories it would be a natural and it is from the same time period.
I know I would love to read it.
Perhaps it was an early prototype of the Calendar Machine?
It’s pretty darn simple. It is a couple of geared wheels on a solid base. While they think it is a calendar now, it is just a portable version of Stonehenge.
Yeah but would she piss on a galatic powered spark plug?
I wouldn’t touch that thing just because Nudge says it’s safe either. Especially if Nudge says it’s safe, actually.
“Ha ha … gotcha to touch it! Now you’re stuck for 80,000 years … neener neener!”
*Poit* *BIG NEWSPAPER WHAP!*
“Ow Phix … I just …”
“You fetch her right back here, Nudge, or no pizza for 12,000 years!”
“grumble grumble … put tacks in litter box … grumble”
I’m not sure they plug it into Jin directly. There may still be something at the graveyard in Ireland into which it plugs.
And what the hell blew out that hole in the sub!?
I bet that there is a rather big hickemadoody-thingy waiting somewhere in a secret place. The Oppart is just a small part.
It has that typical non-specific shape that weird techy-parts in adventure games have.
“I’m not sure they plug it into Jin directly. There may still be something at the graveyard in Ireland into which it plugs.”
That’s a distinct possibility.
“And what the hell blew out that hole in the sub!?”
That’s something we (and Paul) haven’t really addressed since Shelly took her Long Vacation.
A scuttling charge.
Unless Paul messed up and doesn’t understand that a high explosive charge will also bulge out the steel as well as rip it open, I expect something clawed (so to speak) its way out rather than pushed out with that kind of damage.
But.. would that blow outwards? Nah ,I believe it’s their diet of Bratwurst &Beer.. It’s bound to blow a hole somewhere when enjoyed in an enclosed environment.. 😆
Seems logical.
Conventional explosives created the hole in the side of the Sub. And I don’t think the Relic (Hilt) had the plutonium inside of is prior to Shelly’s “Voyage Beyond Space-Time”. I think the various Shelly’s of the past CM cycles put into motion the events which culminated in Shelly #2 chopping down the tree, getting the “thing” and putting it into the Relic (hilt) and Shellinx returning to Earth.
Hmmm..”wormholes” ey? Sooo.. Paul adheres to the multiple universes-part of theoretical(!) physics.
Seems logic that something like “poiting” is a variation of localized wormhole-creation or tapping into existing wormholes.
Some Astro-physicists have theorized that wormholes could be used as a fixed infrastructure, like rail.
Teensy details still to be fixed: How to
A) Map the routes out.
B)keep the connections stable while travelling through them. The Lanthians apparently have fixed that bit of the equasion.
I wonder…(keeping my thinkin’ in the lore and paradigmes of Wapsi-World as Paul has established them) would a Golem survive a direct confrontation with a black-hole, so it can establish some kind of time-space equivalent of tunnel reinforcements..time-space concrete, so to speak?
It would take enormous, unimaginable amounts of energy . Maybe a weird oopart like the relic, combined with some humongous time-space-cladding-tiles churning machine-thingy.
To go even further on that thought: Poit-ing is not something inherently built-in a person, but rather a token to be able to tap-in the worm-hole infrastructure.
The unconscious ability to hop on an interdimensional TGV.
Yes, I admit: Totally channelling “Ring” by Stephen Baxter here. 😳
Oooohhh. boy..that little funky word: “wormholes” opend up a can of worms and their holes. 😛 *drops penny in “stale-puns”-jar*
I’m putting my money on the Lanthians being from the future; they were exploring the far end of a wormhole that opened onto paradise, when their end of it went ‘POIT’, and they (and their descendants) spent their lives trying to come up with a way to get home. With their futuristic devices, they shouldn’t have had a hard time convincing the locals that they were gods, and bent an entire civilization to the task.
Plausible, and time travel clearly isn’t an issue in the Wapsiverse
Wait. Does that mean that Glyph is some sort of programming language? Now, that is an interesting thought…
That’s the thought ,or, to be more precise. It’s the combinations of pre-programmed voice-activations of time/space contraptions that linger somewhere close, but juuust outside our “field of vision” Once learned, you’ll have the voice-commands internalized and can do hem almost instinctually.. (consider this: how deeply does one have to think about usage the mouse while browsing the web?)
It would fit nicely with urban legends about people that instantly vanished from one place, to pop-up in a completely different part of the world.
Soooo..In Your case ,I should be very very careful with silently muttered, grumbling, half-articulated dissent with cockamaney Star-trek physics.. Who knows where You’ll end-up when hitting one of those commands accidentally.. :lol:.
And God forbid you add an extra space to the end of a line or make a typo… 😯
IIRC, the original idea was that the glyph language was the programming language of the golems among other things. The May 4, 2009 strip uses the word programming.
I would think that the internalized “poit” command is more leaning towards normal clicks and command-lines on an easy to adress interface(“easy” being relative here. It has to be learned, like DOS, but isn’t too complex), while the Golem-formula’s call on machine language directly, thusly being something for specialists only..
Or sumptin’… 😛
“Some Astro-physicists have theorized that wormholes could be used as a fixed infrastructure, like rail.
Teensy details still to be fixed: How to
A) Map the routes out.
B)keep the connections stable while travelling through them. The Lanthians apparently have fixed that bit of the equasion.”
To say nothing of establishing fees, timetables, and a cross-dimentional dining car. 😀
The Dining car I would try.. just to see if my burger would get inverted during traverse… 😆
Danzier don’t forget the train will need a confusion car! That or a lot of us will be forced to stand in the corner and bemoan the lack of a barista with a ‘view’ to serve us coffee and finger food!
Ok, it is powerful. But Bud refers to it as a sparkplug, which would mean that Jin, and by reference Bud and Brandy are individually more powerful than it . . .
I keep having to upgrade the power level of the GG’s. From system destroyer to galaxy smashers to a possible Type IV on the Kardashev scale. Now that is scary.
It’s a reference to something Jin said a while ago.
More specifically, it’s a reference to a line in the movie WarGames: the folks at NORAD have discovered that the supercomputer they put in charge of their nuclear warheads can’t tell the difference between a simulation and actual war, and are trying to stop it from launching ICBMs at the Soviet Union; one general shouts, “Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!”
Wow that is an amazing catch. That movie is from 1983.
Wow, I’ve seen that movie several times and I didn’t grab that catch. What makes it better is there was a spoof of Wargames on Robot Chicken last night and I still didn’t remember that line. “Would you like to nuke Canada?” 🙂
Not that amazing — I’m a child of the ’80s; I saw WarGames in the cinema (my first exposure to Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy & John Wood), and taped it off Cinemax later. (Besides, the General had some of the best lines. :P)
*sigh*
I was thirty-five (or thereabouts) when i saw it the day it opened…
I saw it on t.v. and on video several times and wasn’t old enough to tie my own shoes when it came out… but it’s still on the “good” list.
Yeah. It’s a Barry Corbin classic line. He’s a Texan who always plays a Texan.
We Texans are arrogant ’cause we’re awesome…
Damn skippy! 🙂
Heart War Games!!
I love actors whose characters are always from the same place the actors are from… My two favorites:
–Richard Dean Anderson, as MacGyver and Col. O’Niell;
–the guy who played Cpl. Klinger on the TV series “MASH”
It’s a sparkplug. If so, where’s the engine? Or rather what is the engine. If the sparkplug is alread that powerful, I wouldn’t be surprised that the engine is a compressed galaxy in some containment-field, that needs the sparkplug to get it’s rotation going, so energy can be tapped from it.
Clown Car: -Well ,Jin, we fixed it, now take that pee
*Jin, looking flummoxed at a tiny rotating galaxy*
Jin: -Ummmm do You guys mind if I re-consider my former, granted, quite optimistic- statement for a bit *gulp* 😆
…And somewhere, there are ginormous aliens playing marbles with it and a whole bag full of its brothers and sisters…
I got both on DVD and blu-ray… 😳
What is going on? A comment I made an hour ago is “awaiting moderation”. When did this start? They have always just posted before. Not much point in posting if the timeliness of the post is lost due to multi-hour delays waiting for the day shift.
If you make a typo that changed the e-mail address to one it doesn’t recognise (or an invalid one), or if you include more than one link in a single post, it goes to moderation.
I found out that a accidental space, or other typo in “NAME” does the same.
You have a gravatar? I f that’s missing, You’r immediately sure thete’s a typo somewhere.
Thanks Fairportfan. I guess that was it – there were two links in the post. I just reposted it with one link and it went right up. I hadn’t expected any problem as I am sure I’ve seen multiple links in posts here before.
Anything with more than one link in it goes into the spam-filter moderation queue. Not that a Captcha would be more fun but it’s a defense mechanism.
Paul is pretty good about clearing stuff through.
By the by. How sweet that Tina, despite her apparent dread ,is so protective of M…
[Reposted with just one link]
Speaking of Lanthian relics, I bet Paul could do an outstanding arc incorporating the Antikythera mechanism.
He seems to enjoy taking real research items (search google), and extending them into the super normal realm. This mechanism already has such (deservedly so) rich speculation and theories it would be a natural and it is from the same time period.
I know I would love to read it.
Ooo…now that’s an idea! 🙂 Here’s to bringing in actual historical WTFs!
It’s already had a guest spot; I think Amanda mentions it, and Monica mistakes the reference for the Calendar Machine until Amanda corrects her.
Ah. So, the relic has that ‘tastes great, less filling’ thing going on?
It’s probably my wapsinoia talking, but the way Tina said it makes me think there is something specific about wormholes and Monica in particular. Perhaps that’s why the thingy had such a negative effect on her. Safe or not, Tina wanted Monica away from any wormhole. Or … she was talking about keeping it out of sunlight and not Monica’s nickname.
If that’s your wapsinoia talking, it’s been talking to me too. I had the same thought.
Yeah, why is she focused on keeping it away from Monica specifically?
M is already a “wormhole”. Her gateway is closed, more or less. But a closed door doesn’t mean theres no room behind it.
Shoving a wormhole through another wormhole could have rather unpleasant results, like infinity-loops, sucking all of existense in a maelstrom….
Good point.
Reminds me of Bud idly wondering (after Monica’s little jaunt to the “fruit market” to get the portal cloth) about what would happen if they shoved Shelly (who, of course, had the other end of the portal link on her front) through the cloth…
Hm hm. It would probably result in a galaxy- wide shloeppp!
that might make
the little tantrum of the GG look like a farting mouse. Brr Bud, Bud no more ‘good ideas’ please.
I was indeed thinking of that..
Larry Niven once postulated a spacecraft that teleported itself to a receiver on (or just ahead of) its own nose.
Since the postulated matter-transmitter was irrelevant – instantaneous over any measurable distance – the ship’s maximum “velocity” would be equal to its length times the number of times it could do the jump in a given period of time.
And there’d be no acceleration (and max “velocity” would be instantaneously achieved) and, since it isn’t actually “moving”, there’s not time dilation effect…
Then there was this year’s “Comic Relief” special “Dr Who” short(s)…
I believe I can see the future!!! Shelly will spend much time with Officer Tight Buns.
Yep. And I see Officer Tight Buns in similar state as Kevin after returning from a several month long assignment. Although after 80,000 years, they might have to call in the paramedics. 🙂
Viagra and energy drinks. And carbs.
oh my!
Still could be a problem. You’re supposed to get medical attention for erections that last over four hours. . . .
fairportfan that’s before. After it’s spelled ICU intensive care unit. And Shelly going, ‘I broke him . . . well, dang!
I’m STILL looking forward to M and Amanda visiting the Minneapolis Annex of the Biblothiki!
And, of course, there’s still Owen/Lakshimi and Georgette to encounter at some point…
…and Katherine.
Wipe that grin off your non-face, you stupid lanthian artifact! (Or am I the only one seeing a grin there? 😉 )
Nope! But it’s so unnerving, that I prefer to deny it’s exostence.. 😐
*giggles*
i see it!
it has little eyes too 😀
thats cool 😀
And it’s giving us a sly wink, as well.
Is it just me or does the recent wrapup mean that Paul will end the comic?
Heck no. I don’t see this as wrapping everything up. I still want to know more about Tina and what she was talking about here.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/yet-to-do/
Nothing I see in this is a complete wrap up. Yes some questions were awnsered but many more were added. Also given the fact that Paul has hinted at several story lines, Tina’s past or the fact that both Monica and Shelly have characteristics that point to something to do with the Golems. I certintly don’t see Paul ending this any time soon.
Also, why does she always wear that choker necklace? The only thing I know is that she claimed it doesn’t hold her head on.
If I remember correctly, Paul answered that question in an interview at some point. Apparently, she simply found it at a garage sale, and liked it. Or maybe it was a used clothing store, I can’t remember. Either way, it’s a bit of an anticlimax.
I’m still darkly suspicious of that thing.
(mumble) Malice (mumble)
Let’s hop not. I always hated those “posession” storylines
in X-Men. They used those waaay too much.
I cannot remember, was Malice a Claremont-character?
The choker absolutely does not cover up the duct tape that does keep her head from falling off.
So they’ve got the artifact and it can help Jin. Does this mean Bud and Shelly don’t have to go to Ireland?
Oh poo. I wanted to see Shelly have her first glass of Guinness…
If it’s anything like the face my then GF made..not really..
It’s ,apparently ,a taste to be aquired, like vinegar on fries.. bluegh!!!
Add salt and bake till dry. It helps a lot.
from what i gather
whilst english chips and american fries are both strips of fried potato
they are different
i would not even consider putting vinegar on a macdonalds fries (which are close to the us fries?)
but chip-shop-chips? totally go with vinegar
perhaps because they are larger and thicker?
(and these are the julliette potatoes fried and eaten whilst warm chips/fries..not the sliced potatoes fried and eaten cold crisps/chips…)
Paul, is the correct adjective “Lanthian” or “Lanthan.” I don’t have time to search the archives, but I thought I have seen both used.
he spelled it Lanthian here:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/not-going/
“Lanthian” is the correct one. If I spelled it the other way, either I goofed or a character was mispronouncing it.
A Wizard did it.
Thanks. And I could have seen the other spelling in the comments, too. 😀
Okay among the other mysteries we have going on, there’s the hole in the sub routine. What is big enough to make a sub look like an alien exploded from its stomache?
In addition, who ARE the people Jin keeps seeing. Are they halucinations or are they the souls of the individuals devoured by the big blast of the chimera?
When we were similarly speculating on what they might be in another comments section, Paul said they were hallucinations.
So what is the “horse shit” that GC is talking about? Was the CM supposed to feedback somehow? Was it supposed to be harmful? Or does she just me that the relic isn’t broken like the CM eventually was? Or maybe it never quite worked right and was already harmful, but got worse when Maya broke it.
How did Nudge and CG get to be such experts? Should we trust them?
80k in a forest with possibly books to read.
is possible that shelly is as smart as einstein now..
Having all books from the biblioteki freely available, would be a perk that would make me consider an 80000- year banishment as somethinh worthwhile, to be honest..
Even a hothead like Shelly can learn a lot if she’s got 81,000 years of vacation time and a valid Biblothiki card. Does Phix make house calls to magical forests?
Yes.
Yes she does. Shelly said that Phix had visited her, and that she had learned as much from Phix’s words as her silence.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/yes-and-no/
Remember that the CM is a lot older that the time loops. It was mentioned that the CM made Jin and May immortal when it was set into motion. This happened some time before Jin was turned into a Golem. It was also stated that the Chimara and the GGs were created something like 10,000 years ago but the time loop only goes back less that 2,000 years(think the accualy number is around 1,428 if my math is right). The only reason the time loop started was because May tried to destroy the CM and was sent to the demon relm and the loop was started. So although the CM did screw up it was working correctly for at least 8,000 years. And it was stated that the CM was created to help with Jin’s mental issues. In the end I think this new artifact is ether a backup plan by May or is something that Shelly has created in a time parodox going in reverse. Then again knowing Paul, we may never know.
Thanks for you post. Your dates are a little bit off, but close. Lantis was destroyed in 10,500 BC. The loops are about 1450 or 1452 years long.
What I was saying was based on the fact that the CM was damaged by Maya trying to destroy it (July 12, 2007). That may indicate that there may have been something wrong with it all along. In the July 11, 2007, there is a hint that the calendar machine may have turned out to be more powerful than intended. The simple fact that Maya was unable to destroy it and got zapped into the demon realm seems to indicate that those who created it couldn’t control it.
Actually one thing I noticed was that CG and Nudge, rather than Shelly, were doing most of the talking, especially about technical things. That could be just a matter of Shelly being in unfamiliar surroundings, though.
If the knowledge came from the library or Phix, it’s interesting that Monica, who was the researcher and the one most likely to talk to Phix or to go to the library, concluded that trying to learn more that way wouldn’t have been helpful.
I do love how we’ve had a new “little sister” style character just slip effortlessly into the story. I forsee Shelly being put into the big sister role and having to cope with all the “first day at school and boys are stupid” issues that come with the responsibility. 🙂
lanthanein, greek, “to lie hidden” 🙂
“Just – re-member that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
and revolving at 900 miles an hour,
It’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
the sun that is the source of all our power.
The Sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
of the Galaxy we call the Milky Way.”…
Galaxy Song from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. I recognized it straight away.
hi hi
Well this is certainly an interesting turn of events. I didn’t imagine that I would find myself particularly disliking so many of the characters, but I can’t shake the feeling that I am now watching an ensemble of villains. Very peculiar indeed. The only thing they need to complete the image now is a mustache twist and a sinister laugh about how “now all the power is mine, ah ha ha!”
out of curiosity, and no disrespect, how did you reach that point of view? I can understand from the recent arc yes ultimate power source, 80,000 years of torment etc., but knowing what has transpired before that…. I just don’t see it…
hi hi
I guess I just can’t get past the whole murdering, what was it, 56 people? Which was now apparently all part of their plan the whole time? And for what, a power source? They sure seem rather pleased with themselves…
Normally I would agree. Thing is, every one of those people would have ceased to exist not all that long after that anyway. As I see it only one Shelly would have been used to cut the tree down and died in the process. We don’t know what happened to the others. Perhaps they were stuck there and died of old age. Maybe they went back to their time period, but without the plutonium source, making the trip meaningless for them. Maybe they starved to death because there was no food there. Sphinx Shelly didn’t need to eat. If there was, technically, a murder, I’m thinking it was only the Shelly we saw die, The first of the “reset Shellys” to make it to the forest.
Apparently there were other sphinxes in the forest as well, and any one of them might have killed the other Shellys, eventually, despite sphinx-Shelly’s efforts to prevent it. It’s a dangerous place even for a human-sphinx hybrid (without a CG protector, that is).
hi hi
A good chunk of morality rests on the presence or absence of alternatives. If they’ve got the ability to break causality though, one might think it would present some additional possibilities. I mean, everyone is going to die eventually right? So there’s a big difference between someone volunteering themselves as a sacrifice, and someone else making that decision for them.
to the confusion corner…. i don’t know what to say anymore.
that line’s either from a movie or a show. An officer in the military said “Hell, I’d piss on a sparkplug if I thought it’d help.”
dafydd replied earlier
it’s a reference to a line in the movie WarGames: the folks at NORAD have discovered that the supercomputer they put in charge of their nuclear warheads can’t tell the difference between a simulation and actual war, and are trying to stop it from launching ICBMs at the Soviet Union; one general shouts, “Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!”
That’s what it was!
Tina: “Would you like to play a game?”
Bud: For the love of God don’t play Global Thermonuclear ANYTHING!!
I would love for The Tardis and The Doctor to show up at any point now and help out. Not that it will happen. Different universes….though I don’t think that’s stopped the Doctor before.
Just a thought.
oh, and copyright. that might be more powerful than being in a different universe.
Wait, so does that mean the relic harnesses SPIRAL POWER?
A nuclear powered spirograph!
I normally don’t run ad-blockers, but for todays page there is some really annoying ass baby laughing sound on some ad.
there are ads?….. 😕
OOOOHHHHHHH!
how have I not seen those before?
Are you seeing the TWC vote button? Hint! Hint! 😉
normally i just vote when ever you guys post a link to it, and the week following…. after that i kinda forget…
Yeah, I’m not real great at remembering either, but I try.
BTW, I’m jealous of your ability to tune out the adds. I really can’t. There is one that tends to appear among the Project Wonderful ads just below the box where we type our comments. It has a moving airship in it and it’s like someone it beating me in the head as I’m attempting to type. It is soooooooooo annoying! 👿
I could block it with ad blocker, but I hate to deny Paul the revenue from the ads.
I just scroll the window a bit to get those ads to go below the bottom of the window.
Yeah, it took me a while to think of doing that. Sometimes I will slide a different program over part of my browser to block the ads from sight. Normally I use Adblocker and got out of the habit of doing things like that
… Of course, covering the ads with another program only works when I’m only trying to read what’s already displayed.
to be honest, I do see them, it’s just that I come here so often, an get so wrapped up in the comments that i forget about them…
I just realized we’re on the cusp of a Friday update…
…Gulp.
Holds handrails in terror and double-checks seatbelt…
Gah! It’s one in the morning and I have to get up at six. I’m sorry, Paul and everyone, I’ll have to catch up later. 🙁
Man, it musta been weird being Nudge and Phix, meeting this Shelly and knowing that she, being the 57th one, would be the one to become her Sphinx self and do all this and that was when the time looping would end. That’s kind of a trip. Then not being able to tell her for fear of breaking the time anomaly that had occurred.
GENTLEMEN, I GIVE YOU!!!! TIME TRAVEL!!!!!!
after 2 am and still no update, can’t see, everything getting blurry…
I’m re-reading some of the archives and I came across:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/supposedtobeyou/
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/atyourbeckncall/
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/stilltrustyou/
When you think about Shelly’s concerns about Monica and recent events….
Whoops! I wanted this on Friday’s page. I forgot I went back a page.