On Purpose 2013-08-26

[Wyvern]

A Looker for sure (pant pant).. Anyone got a bead on the street sign in the first panel so that we can place where she is ?

30 1st Street North. She's standing outside the Origami Restaurant, corner of 1st and 1st (only in the Twin Cities).

Point your browser here to see the google view. This site is in keeping with long-term trends; we're seeing more places outside the neighborhood in the direction of downtown. (The plotted real world locations actually make a clear southwest-northeast line. Go figure.) And finding a sewer may be unnecessary; she's only about a block from the river as the sphinx flies.

[Sidhekin]

I cannot shake how much this sounds like stalking ...

[Fairportfan]

That's not explaining why the local, presumably Irish, lord's grave carried the Norse name of the World Tree ... it's not even handwaving an explanation ... it just bypasses the question in a flurry of words, hoping no one would notice.

"That's awfully shaky theological ground, Emban."

"I know - that's why you have to get over it so quickly."

[ShadOBabe]

Wow, look at that!!
A human!! An actual, factual, normal human!!
I know I'm late to the party, but you just don't see those here anymore. XDD

[ShadOBabe]

Hey next!!
First day back to school. Taking North American Anthropology.
I just heard the word Anasazi. My ears perked up. X3

[Fairportfan]

Wow, look at that!!
A human!! An actual, factual, normal human!!
I know I'm late to the party, but you just don't see those here anymore. XDD

With her metabolism, she is not "just" a human.

She eats like Monica and stays that slender.

[ActionKermit]

Maybe we'll finally get an explanation of why a Lanthian artifact was buried under an Irish tombstone with a Norse name on it and somehow ended up in a German sub in the Bermuda Triangle?

Not getting my hopes up.

Didn't Shelly arrange for the artifact to be put there because she knew from her reverse-time perspective that the graveyard was where Monica was going to look for it?

[zachariah]

That's not explaining why the local, presumably Irish, lord's grave carried the Norse name of the World Tree ... it's not even handwaving an explanation ... it just bypasses the question in a flurry of words, hoping no one would notice.

Nope. It's a logical chain of supposition. As to the name a lot of the vikings and Saxons DID settle and stay there. In fact the saxon's became the main people of the islands, displacing the picts and celts. So why wouldn't one of them knowing a bit more carve the name of the world tree on it where he knew an ancient relic was buried? Warrior lord were buried and their mounds often were undisturbed as well. Or do you just want a mystical reason for it that involves the paranormals or others? I admit it is fairly mundane but not everything has to happen due to a plan or someone pulling the strings! Since Brandi didn't know about this thing, and indications are she really searched for them for the world grid, this one followed a different path to get where it was. I doubt Shelly had anything to do with it either. While Shelly did set up her vision quest the artifact was beyond her control in the past or the people involved with it. By then the cell was out of power and could not be detected as what it was.

[zachariah]

Wow, look at that!!
A human!! An actual, factual, normal human!!
I know I'm late to the party, but you just don't see those here anymore. XDD

With her metabolism, she is not "just" a human.

She eats like Monica and stays that slender.

Good points. She might be a paranormal who doesn't know she is one. Just like Shelly didn't.

[Dave]

Didn't Shelly arrange for the artifact to be put there because she knew from her reverse-time perspective that the graveyard was where Monica was going to look for it?

Shelly[57].Sphinx told Shelly[1] that "You hid the hilt in the graveyard on Earth with the marker". Presumably, Shellinx was referring to one of the Shelly women (or her direct analogs) from another one of the time loops.

I'm not sure how this would have worked. This apparently wasn't done by Shelly[57] (at least, we have no evidence that she knew about the hilt), it presumably wasn't done by Shelly[1] or she would have known about it, so by process of elimination it must have been one of the Shellys from one of the other CM loops. It's a reasonable supposition that Shellinx was responsible for arranging this, directly or indirectly (e.g. possibly asking Nudge or Phix to arrange it) based on her knowledge of How Things Would turn Out.

Shellinx implies that various Shellys "put the sword in the stone" and "put the thing in the tree". Both of these are actions which took place in the Time Forest, and thus would have persisted (backwards in time from our point of view) even after the CM loop took place. It seems likely that Shellinx did something each time, to make sure that the Shelly from that time loop would arrive in the Time Forest with the necessary element (sword blade, or capsule full of plutonium)... again, likely via Nudge or Phix.

But, placing the artifact in the graveyard in Ireland... that's a "main Wapsiverse timeline" action. Either it took place during the range of years which was repeatedly looped by the CM (in which case, it would have been erased the next time the CM looped), or it took place before the CM started looping time (which was long before human-Shelly was born, in any timeline we know about), or it had to have been done in the final CM loop so that the hilt could somehow end up in the hands of the U-boat crew.

So - how could Shelly have planted the hilt in the graveyard in one CM loop, and had it still be there in another time loop (the last one)?

It feels to me as if there must have been another "player" involved... someone who could "transplant" the buried artifact from one CM loop to the next, until the time was right for it to be discovered. Once again, this might possibly have been Nudge or Phix - anyone who could be in the Library and outside the CM's influence at the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next. Or, Jin might have been able to do it - we don't know for sure whether she was able to carry anything other than memories from one cycle to the next. Or, perhaps, Bia was doing her manipulative thing again, and had to ensure the availability of the Artifact during the precise time-loop when she had decided she was going to breed a sphinx/titan daughter?

Things get even more squirrely when we ask whether the Artifact that Shelly[1] was carrying in the Time Forest, was or was not the same one that we saw Shelly[57] holding in Monica's living room just before the big time-jump-into-the-forest. Timeline loops and convergences and merges are prone to cause migraines.

The details as to why there was Norse labeling on the tombstone... Yet To Be Revealed. Possibly it was given into the care of one of the ex-Lanthian "Immortal Politicians" at the start of the final CM loop, and he (or she) was living in Norse society at the time? An Immortal of that sort could easily have been seen as a Norse god by the Norse people (possibly as Odin?), and the relic buried with him if somebody did eventually manage to kill him (immortality does not necessarily imply invulnerability).

[jwhouk]

I'm gonna point out something - if y'all don't have Pablo on Facebook, you'd have already known that this was not only Georgette, but you knew he actually thought people would biatch about it.

EDIT: Oh, and Georgette's last name (it is assumed) is "Sundahl". We got that when Monica ran into her sister at the "little house" along Lake Calhoun.

[kingklash]

Is this what we've come to, any change of direction causing us Wapservers to find a myriad of ways that it could possibly go wrong?

[ActionKermit]

Considering that the last arc was all about bad things that happen when you don't put enough forethought into the consequences of your actions, yeah.

[sheik]

Edit to note, I wonder if normal folk who knew M before her current upgrade will comment on the fangs? They seem to be permanant.

Nobody ever seems to notice anybody's fangs.

Well, yeah. It's been brought up in comic twice that I remember. Monica asked Tina about her Teef, and Bud commented to Brandi that not many women had the teeth to bring down buffalo.

Still, Tina and the GGGs had thier fangs before Monica knew them. Shelly regularly sports her pronounced canines, probably as a sign that she has excepted who and what she is. Shelly is also a shapeshifter who can alter her mass and volume and manifest or delete an extra set of limbs at will. Keeping her teeth under wraps would be easy for her, if she chose to do so.

Monica, OTOH, seems stuck with her carniverous dentation, and didn't have it before. People are bound to wonder.

I'm beginning to wonder if fangs are some kind of supernatural "I AM DANGEROUS" marker. It seems almost mandatory.

[shadowinthelight]

Is this what we've come to, any change of direction causing us Wapservers to find a myriad of ways that it could possibly go wrong?

"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow."

[Wyvern]

I'm gonna point out something - if y'all don't have Pablo on Facebook, you'd have already known that this was not only Georgette, but you knew he actually thought people would biatch about it.
EDIT: Oh, and Georgette's last name (it is assumed) is "Sundahl". We got that when Monica ran into her sister at the "little house" along Lake Calhoun.

They could also read about her on the Wapsi Wiki, of course.

[dex drako]

Is this what we've come to, any change of direction causing us Wapservers to find a myriad of ways that it could possibly go wrong?

isn't that more or less what all stories are about?

the drama comes from the characters world falling apart because that way we get to see then work through it.

[Timotheus]

I'm beginning to wonder if fangs are some kind of supernatural "I AM DANGEROUS" marker. It seems almost mandatory.

Fangs, for the memories...
(Would plastic buck teeth work for the pun jar?)

[Yamara]

Didn't Shelly arrange for the artifact to be put there because she knew from her reverse-time perspective that the graveyard was where Monica was going to look for it?

I'm not sure how this would have worked. This apparently wasn't done by Shelly[57] (at least, we have no evidence that she knew about the hilt), it presumably wasn't done by Shelly[1] or she would have known about it, so by process of elimination it must have been one of the Shellys from one of the other CM loops. It's a reasonable supposition that Shellinx was responsible for arranging this, directly or indirectly (e.g. possibly asking Nudge or Phix to arrange it) based on her knowledge of How Things Would turn Out.

...

But, placing the artifact in the graveyard in Ireland... that's a "main Wapsiverse timeline" action. Either it took place during the range of years which was repeatedly looped by the CM (in which case, it would have been erased the next time the CM looped), or it took place before the CM started looping time (which was long before human-Shelly was born, in any timeline we know about), or it had to have been done in the final CM loop so that the hilt could somehow end up in the hands of the U-boat crew.

If the Relic is a "redundant feature ... manifested by the Calendar itself" it may be able to be spacially moved on Earth, and survive its spacial placement in time resets (much as the Rogue Queen intended for Monica herself). Thus, any one of the first 56 Shellys could have hidden it in the Yggdrasil grave in Ireland (during their early 21st Century lifetimes), and it would appear buried in the ground in AD 562 when the time loop rolled the galaxy back. Subsequent Vikings (arriving AD 795-1014) would find the Relic, recoil from its banshee-vision, and leave it in place, with a new grave marker.

But if the Relic didn't have that unique property, then some Shelly or other would have to travel across time from her 21st Century, and across time loops to "hide" it in Earth 57 (our current Wapsiverse) under a Viking-era marker, sometime after the marker was placed (circa 1014) but before the U-296 raided it (in 1945).


So there's still some e'splainin' to do.

[Neveko]

I'm gonna point out something - if y'all don't have Pablo on Facebook, you'd have already known that this was not only Georgette, but you knew he actually thought people would biatch about it.

Wait, where did that second part happen? I finally managed to find his facebook thinger, but he doesn't mention anything about thinking people would complain about it.

In all honesty, the only thing I would really complain about is if Georgette DOES end up being a paranormal. Because. Seriously. We don't have enough side characters to keep track of let alone their weird powers to make them more "interesting."