Stay Calm 2013-06-12

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Dave
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Dave »

NOTDilbert wrote:I hope the plasma blast originated from a part of her anatomy other than the Belly Safe.
I fear that's exactly where it originated from, and that it means we've just seen the last of our two intrepid adventurers.

Plasma is ionized matter... so Bud's plasma breath has to consume something in order to blast out like that.

Bud may have just "used up" the bodies of Katherine and Atsali (who didn't survive the underground meltdown) in order to make that flame.

It's as impressive as it is, because Katherine is an Anasazi. She (or her six donors) date back many thousands of years.

After all, there's no fuel like an old fuel. :twisted:

(drops an entire M132 into the Pun Jar)
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by ShadOBabe »

Guys, I seriously have NO clue what's going on in this comic anymore. Help?
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Dave »

ShadOBabe wrote:Guys, I seriously have NO clue what's going on in this comic anymore. Help?
Hey, welcome back - haven't heard from you for a while!

Whereabouts did you lose context? Are you jumping back in after a while away, or catching up, or has the strip just been bucking around enough that it's tossed you off into Confusion Corner?
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ShadOBabe
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by ShadOBabe »

Dave wrote:
ShadOBabe wrote:Guys, I seriously have NO clue what's going on in this comic anymore. Help?
Hey, welcome back - haven't heard from you for a while!

Whereabouts did you lose context? Are you jumping back in after a while away, or catching up, or has the strip just been bucking around enough that it's tossed you off into Confusion Corner?
Heh, yeah. Been reading everyday as always. Just been so confused I never really had much to say.

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? And then this MIB thing, and the vampires, the choppers, the crystals, the federal government. Monica's some kind of Jaguar goddess... Kath's personality changed incredibly quickly and suddenly and is now apparently a merging of six individuals (I kind miss having some regular characters that really are just regular).

Okay so when Tepoz (who freaking needs to show up again) first introduced the girls they had no memories. When they snapped out of it they set about trying to get normal lives, like Bud being a dance instructor. But was that just a front to put on for Monica? Because apparently they're heads of this MIB organization and always have been.

What is going on here? Where are we headed? What's the plan? And where did all the males characters get to?
I don't even know anymore... :|
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Yamara »

ShadOBabe wrote:Guys, I seriously have NO clue what's going on in this comic anymore. Help?
Feeling lost?

http://wapsisquare.com/comic/a-direct-message/

That's about as omniscient a viewpoint as there is, in-story. So, we're still working toward the ramifications of "Why are secrets being kept from the Library?"

Don't let the Titanic circus acts and the naked Bud setting the Republic of Mexico on fire distract you. :)
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by zachariah »

ShadOBabe wrote: Heh, yeah. Been reading everyday as always. Just been so confused I never really had much to say.

Okay so when Tepoz (who freaking needs to show up again) first introduced the girls they had no memories. When they snapped out of it they set about trying to get normal lives, like Bud being a dance instructor. But was that just a front to put on for Monica? Because apparently they're heads of this MIB organization and always have been.
This ties into an on going debate about a possible disconnect in the series of events. When exactly did Tepoz have the GG given to him to be their care taker. One thought is it happened shortly before the time loop started. Another is it happened 5000+ years earlier shortly after the GG leveled half the earth. Either one appears valid and can be argued for but each time a historical reference appears, such as SDO storing the lost race, it does not eliminate one or the other. This does allow for confusion as to how these events relate and to when the mindless state occurred and how it impacts the story line. If this is ever resolved it will help put a more coherent timeline together.
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. Enjoy that thought as it puts us all in confusion corner. lol.
Ambush questions are fun. Watching the mental impact of them as they distort, or crumble, opinions based on faulty logic.
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Dave »

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!
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by ShadOBabe »

Eh, well thanks for the help guys.
I'm still a bit all over the place. But hopefully not for too much longer.

Well Paul's writing is complex and different, I'll give you that.
But I fine it rather annoying since the story jumps around so much. That's not always so bad by itself, but without some kind of string I can grasp onto it very much leaves me with a feeling of, "well this is all very interesting, but I'm not sure why I should care"?

And we get so many cliffhangers and jumps to other characters, that I totally end up forgetting what we've already learned or what's important.
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Timotheus »

Welcome to the Confusion Corner, our home away from home.

I've been working hard to make it more comfortable since we've ALL been spending so much time here. We've coffee, drinks(Just finished getting the ice maker hooked up in the closet with the tappers for the beer taps and soda spigots. Now I gotta find the leak in the High-C Orange line.), pastries, popcorn, a microwave, occasionally fresh fruit, comfy chairs and massage loungers, and a semi permanent lectern set up for Paul to use if he ever wants to drop by and give presentation on just where the story has been going.

Otherwise, I can only say we're as confuzzled as you are and the more outlandish the proposal is the more likely it is to be taken up for discussion. I'm tending to believe that some of who and what's been shown are actually illusions created by our resident Shadow Mistress to cause events to happen as they have. So the first order of business will be determining what was real and what was staged. Next will be who was ordering who to do what when and who was being misled. And finally, WHY! What was the reason for all this? That has still not been made clear, or even been really distinguished from all the other possible hints.

We're still standing in front of a large table of puzzle pieces and only a couple have been fit together, The rest are grouped by color or shape but we're still not sure were they go or if they're even part of this puzzle or if we're still missing pieces. And of course the top of the box is missing so we don't know what the picture is supposed to look like.
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by reddfrogg »

Ah so that's how that massive wildfire in southern Colorado got started..
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Dragon Hostler »

Well spoken Dave.

If the Adventure of the Deja Vu Engine was the Lord of the Rings, then were into the Book of Lost Tales now.
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by DilyV »

Dave wrote:
NOTDilbert wrote:I hope the plasma blast originated from a part of her anatomy other than the Belly Safe.
(drops an entire M132 into the Pun Jar)
Zippo!!!!
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Jerry Lewis »

Bud: I... need... to think... clearly...
Brandi: O, duya?

*pun-cinerated*
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by displaced »

I'm truly hoping that what she just dispelled was no where near what she can actually unleash. remember, she is capable of destroying the planet. if she gave one tenth of what she had at anything in line of site, she would be building a tunnel across the nation.
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by zachariah »

displaced wrote:I'm truly hoping that what she just dispelled was no where near what she can actually unleash. remember, she is capable of destroying the planet. if she gave one tenth of what she had at anything in line of site, she would be building a tunnel across the nation.
The amount of power Bud can generate is open to debate. When the original blast occurred all three girls were fused into a single entity and Bud's part was the cause of it going out of control and leveling half the earth. The assumption is that each of the girls has one third the full power of the Chimera. This outburst is just a minor eruption, sorta like kicking a chair in anger. But you are right we do not want to see what she really can do even when separated into herself.
Ambush questions are fun. Watching the mental impact of them as they distort, or crumble, opinions based on faulty logic.
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Fairportfan »

Dave wrote:Plasma is ionized matter... so Bud's plasma breath has to consume something in order to blast out like that.
Zero-point?

Connection to another dimension with a much higher energy state?
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Dave »

zachariah wrote:The amount of power Bud can generate is open to debate. When the original blast occurred all three girls were fused into a single entity and Bud's part was the cause of it going out of control and leveling half the earth. The assumption is that each of the girls has one third the full power of the Chimera. This outburst is just a minor eruption, sorta like kicking a chair in anger. But you are right we do not want to see what she really can do even when separated into herself.
Well, we'd don't know that the Chimera's destruction was actually the GG's upper limit, either.

Specific things that have been said in-strip (and may or may not be valid therein):
It's possible that these are all exaggeration on the part of the characters, of course... but given the GGs' history, I don't think I'd care to bet on it if I were living in the Wapsiverse.
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Dave »

Fairportfan wrote:
Dave wrote:Plasma is ionized matter... so Bud's plasma breath has to consume something in order to blast out like that.
Zero-point?

Connection to another dimension with a much higher energy state?
You're quite right, those are possibilities... but I couldn't make the pun work that way. 8-)
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Mark N »

Dave wrote:
Fairportfan wrote:
Dave wrote:Plasma is ionized matter... so Bud's plasma breath has to consume something in order to blast out like that.
Zero-point?

Connection to another dimension with a much higher energy state?
You're quite right, those are possibilities... but I couldn't make the pun work that way. 8-)
It is also likely that the plasma blast was using the radiation in the area (or herself) to get rid of it so the girls are not exposed to fallout.
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Re: Stay Calm 2013-06-12

Post by Timotheus »

Mark N wrote:
Dave wrote:Plasma is ionized matter... so Bud's plasma breath has to consume something in order to blast out like that.
It is also likely that the plasma blast was using the radiation in the area (or herself) to get rid of it so the girls are not exposed to fallout.
In goes the bad radioactive mass, out goes the short half life plasma surge?
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