ShadOBabe wrote:To be totally honest, things started getting weird for me around the time Shelly tapped into her sphinx abilities.
I don't know what the goal is here. What are the characters working towards? ... What is going on here? Where are we headed? What's the plan?
Well, only Pablo really knows for sure.
Here's how it feels to me, for what it's worth. Awareness of the "paranormal" has seeped rather slowly into the lives of Monica and the others in the gang, over the years that the strip has been running. It's been an incremental process, where they've gradually become aware that there's much more than the "mundane" going on... but their access to The Big Truths hasn't come suddenly or been at all complete.
Even through the time of the Calendar Machine saga, what did they (or we) really know? There are paranormal entities in the world (sphinxes and demons and the like). There are alternate dimensions. Human civilization goes back further than is generally acknowledged. There was an ancient civilization (Lanthis) which was capable of some very powerful high technology, leading both to the creation of certain advanced artifacts (the Calendar Machine, the Golems and the Chimera) which led in one way or another to that civilization's total destruction.
As potent as this was for Monica and friends... it's only a shallow glimpse of the past and "out there". Lots of mysteries and hazy gray areas: what happened to the survivors of Lanthis (there had to be some, at least) and where did they go? What happened during the long period between the Chimera's destruction of Lanthis, and the beginning of what is now considered the start of written human history? What have the sphinxes, demons, and other paranormal beings been doing for the past 10,000 years - and what do they
want to do? What are their motives and agendas? In what ways have they been interacting with humans?
Even the three Golem Girls have been somewhat of a mystery. All we've known of them first-hand is what we've seen after Tepoz popped them into Monica's living room one day and they joined the story, and what he said he'd done with/to/for them. But, they've got 10,000 years of history each (not counting the Calendar Machine loops) - hundreds of human generations worth of time, during which they may or may not have been doing various memorable, obvious, or hidden things.
What we knew of The Big Picture, as of the time of the Calendar Machine smackdown, was a hazy look backwards at a very long past. Sort of like looking at a sketch of a landscape, written on translucent rice paper... we see some outlines and some blurry shapes in the distance, but there's no detail. There really
had to be more than that to it - a long, solid back-story which had led to the events we saw - but it wasn't visible.
And now, we're being shoved through the rice paper and are starting to get a look at the real landscape behind it... and it's deep, crowded, messy, and chaotic, and not everything is what we thought it was.
- We now know that the Gods and Titans are real, not myths.
- We have a good sense that they've probably been messing around with humanity for a long time.
- We know that someone (possibly demons) seems to have wanted to stop them from doing so, and was willing to use some of that Lanthian high technology to do so (and possibly endangered life-on-earth by doing so).
- We know that the Golem Girls were not simply "robots under command, and then silly drunks" through those 10,000 years.
- We know that Phix has been lying-by-omission (concealing her own relationship to Shelly) and seems to be playing some games of her own (encouraging Tina's evolution towards personhood).
- We know that the Lanthians didn't all die out - some survived, and seemed intent on following the same dangerous path that their Priests had opened up. Somebody decided to stop them.
- We know that at least some of the God/Titan class (certainly Bia, perhaps Tsillah and Charon) are still playing the "manipulate humans" game... arranging for Shelly to be born, arranging the Key which gave Monica effective immortality and sub-Titan status, and who knows what else?
- We know that the Library is sentient, quite powerful in its own way, and may have its own agenda. We don't really know what the Library truly is, but we know it's not just a passive room-full-o'-books.
- We know that some human groups have known some or all of the above, and have been using this knowledge in secret for a long time. We don't yet know their motives for doing so.
There seems to be a really rich and involved story-structure here, dating back a long time. We're now seeing more of its branches and trunks. Not all, by any means, and we're probably facing some of the "Can't see the forest for the trees" problem because a lot of the trees are so striking (in the "whompin' willow" sense).
And where did all the males characters get to?
I don't even know anymore...
Women are, in many ways, the stronger and tougher ones among us. Us males can't always tough it through... so maybe the male characters in the strip are hiding safely off with the new "class" at Darin's
zachariah wrote:All the rest that is happening lately is a side story for Kathy's adventure. Not to sure how it directly relates to the main story line. It might not relate at all for all we know and the details revealed here are not facts but details to tell Kathy's tale.
I'll place a 10,000 quatloo bet against that hypothesis, zachariah! I think I recall your saying that the strip of Kath, nakedly musing that she "needed an adventure", was just filler and didn't have anything to do with the plot. I disagreed then and I still disagree today.
I think Kath's adventure is a
huge part of the main story line. Pablo seems to be using her Adventure Quest (which she thought was for a doll, and is actually for her own true self) as a way of "pulling back the curtain" onto a portion of the post-Lanthis, pre-Historic past that the earlier parts of the storyline have hinted must exist, but he hadn't yet had a chance to show.
Yeah, we've been hit with a lot of stuff in the past few months, and maybe it hasn't all quite gelled together yet... but I expect that it will.
So, that's how I see it, ShadOBabe, for whatever it may help you. I don't claim to be right in my guesses... I'm just doin' the best I can, and enjoying the ride... and I really
love the ride! Paul's storytelling is not simple, it is not obvious, it is often thoroughly unpredictable - in fact it's the opposite of most Hollywood media storytelling - and I find it all the more fascinating for all of that. I doubt that any "simple, straightforward" webcomic could have stimulated the sort of engaging debate and discussion that enriches this forum!