Something Wrong 2013-10-16

[kingklash]

Could this also have been part of her later tendancy to bulldoze her way through relationships? Brute-forcing control, before anyone can dominate her. Explains why she was impressed when Monica wasn't.

[jwhouk]

Tar isn't a "being" - it's a soul.

Remember how we've talked about how demons can "block" a soul from leaving? Well, our rapist's "soul" may have accidentally left itself... "inside" of Georgette.

I suspect Monica did Jet and the rapist a big favor by disposing of the Tar.

[NOTDilbert]

I think the cliche' phrase "And the idea took on a life of it's own"has validity here. This monstrous act has dominated her way of thinking throughout her life; because, it was dominating her inner demons - the voices in her head that she (and we all) use to internally debate and think things through. It took on at least as much reality as the personified bits of her, well, persona that Monica rescued.

And now to rescue the soul. The Tar has lost it's fearful power to color her thinking and actions, and can now be cured - as one cures of poison....

[jwhouk]

I also imagine hearing Georgette's voice changing as she got closer to Monica in J-Space - from the adult who walked into Tina's that morning, backward to the 12 year old girl who finally ends up in M's arms.

[txmystic]

@scantrontb: Thanks for the insights, I enjoyed mulling over them. Still a bit confused/shocked to offer any more than appreciation, tho

I do like the speculation about type of plane. I'm inclined to go with a smaller private jet, which would limit the number of personnel. My best guess as to the rapist has to be the modeling agent or someone of such high power. Someone like him is in a position where he has a lot of young vulnerable girls with "stage parents" who may have every reason to be in denial of any nefarious activities due to their own material concerns (plus the plausible deniability with no witnesses). I also think a smaller plane crash would more likely yield only two survivors than a commercial flight, especially two survivors that happen to be related.

Still just speculating from deep in the corner, but I imagine more of the story will unfold before Friday...

...unless Paul makes a habit of this Wednesday cliffhanger thing!

[kingklash]

@scantrontb: Thanks for the insights, I enjoyed mulling over them. Still a bit confused/shocked to offer any more than appreciation, tho

I do like the speculation about type of plane. I'm inclined to go with a smaller private jet, which would limit the number of personnel. My best guess as to the rapist has to be the modeling agent or someone of such high power. Someone like him is in a position where he has a lot of young vulnerable girls with "stage parents" who may have every reason to be in denial of any nefarious activities due to their own material concerns (plus the plausible deniability with no witnesses). I also think a smaller plane crash would more likely yield only two survivors than a commercial flight, especially two survivors that happen to be related.

Still just speculating from deep in the corner, but I imagine more of the story will unfold before Friday...

...unless Paul makes a habit of this Wednesday cliffhanger thing!

If that happens, I'm going to spit up a hairball like a cat, right at your front door!

[jwhouk]

A vote for the small commuter jet thing would be if Georgette isn't originally from the Twin Cities, but is from another city in Minnesota, like say Rochester or Saint Cloud.

Or - heaven help us! - she's originally from Des Moines or... DULUTH???

[Fairportfan]

Or the model agency was Really Eager to sign her and sent a bizjet.

The agency would have control over the passenger manifest on a business charter. While it is possible that the attacker was part of the entourage, I feel the presence of business associates would make this type of assault quite unlikely.

Based on some of the reminiscences by former child models i've read recently, it might not be outside the realm of possibility that the presence of business associates might be irrelevant or even facilitative.

==============

That said, i wasn't suggesting that it was a corporate jet, just that it could have been.

[Yamara]

Tar isn't a "being" - it's a soul.

Did you mean 'not just a "being"'?

< >In most Western philosophical discussions, the soul is the irreducible element of being, its actions the ultimate raison d'etre. Even when only discussed as an outmoded perspective or placeholder concept, like phlogiston. </ >

Since souls are demonstrably real in Wapsiworld, I'd say they're beings.

Remember how we've talked about how demons can "block" a soul from leaving? Well, our rapist's "soul" may have accidentally left itself... "inside" of Georgette.

It could have been an accident, or the "opportunity simply presented itself". Either way, it strongly implies that Jet is another Doorway Girl.

(And the implications of an attacker being rewarded with a captive covey after dying in a plane crash... are mighty dark.)

I suspect Monica did Jet and the rapist a big favor by disposing of the Tar.

Jet, yes: We can be almost absolutely certain of that now. The Tar? That really remains to seen. It may be valuable to inquire into what made the man a rapist. But not today.

[AmriloJim]

That said, i wasn't suggesting that it was a corporate jet, just that it could have been.

Didn't think you said "had to be," just making comment on why I thought it might not.

[KnightDelight]

Gotta be more to all this than just her being raped.

Rape trauma + survivor's guilt does sound like a potent combination. I specced before that the tar was a manifestation of evil itself. If you want to define evil as the dark side of humanity, that one-two punch could go a long way into feeding a person's negative feelings, i.e. strengthening the evil part of their nature. It is not an unheard of idea in fiction that a force becomes so powerful/concentrated/ect. that it takes on a life of its own. Once the tar was on the loose in C-space it apparently spent its time terrorizing Jet's demons. I doubt it took its time to manipulate her into becoming a rapist.

Thing is, Tar must have had some sort of agenda. It appears the only thing it knew was rape. That's it. That's what it did. What else would it be doing? So I don't think it's a matter of Tar taking time out of it's busy demon rape schedule to get Jet to do the same. That appears to be what it does, period. Once it had enough of the demons cowed into submission, it could take their place and manipulate it's host into doing what it wanted, and It must have wanted something or why bother? It's true a couple of the other demons sort of kept it in it's place to an extent, but they were kinda slow on the uptake or it would not have gotten to Monica. If it didn't have a lot of influence on Jet, why would Tina call JG in the first place? I'm sure she sees past abuse and worse in many of her customer's auras, yet she has never called on Monica before (that we know about). That's also why I think there must be more to all this as well. There must still be something we don't know yet to have caused Tina to place an emergency call for JG when she never has before. And it may be something more than just helping Jet. There may be other souls involved. The souls on the plane perhaps? They might be royally pissed off.

As to how people get away with this stuff, I recall recently reading about a woman who was often abused by her aunt. The aunt would accost her sexually in out of the way places like a dark hallway. She told her mother, but she said "Oh that's just aunt Ruthy, pay no attention." So apparently parents don't always think it's serious enough to do anything about. Maybe Jet's parents were like that. Or they were willing to look the other way to get their daughter into modeling, figuring it would pay off for them as well. We don't know what sort of people they were as yet.

[Timotheus]

My feeling that it was the pilot is simply based on the coincidental nature of the crash and rape coinciding. The odds of that happening without some other connective factor are just too great.

But if we put the washroom right behind the cockpit, a small commuter flight or privately owned shuttle that may not have a stewardess, and then a situation with one pilot napping while the other is flying or just a single pilot (privately owned shuttle), the situation where everyone in the cabin is sleeping except the pretty 12 year old model candidate who nervously needs to use the bathroom and quietly slips up to enter it could be seen as a moment of opportunity to switch over to autopilot and help himself could be irresistible. If in the rush to set the auto pilot something was missed and the plane started loosing altitude and eventually hit the ground, well...

The model climbed out of the washroom and found her sister alive and stayed with her. And that's were they were found. The pilot was found in the john with his pants down and the autopilot on and the FAA attributes the crash to irregularity.

[Fairportfan]

My feeling that it was the pilot is simply based on the coincidental nature of the crash and rape coinciding. The odds of that happening without some other connective factor are just too great.

But if we put the washroom right behind the cockpit, a small commuter flight or privately owned shuttle that may not have a stewardess, and then a situation with one pilot napping while the other is flying or just a single pilot (privately owned shuttle), the situation where everyone in the cabin is sleeping except the pretty 12 year old model candidate who nervously needs to use the bathroom and quietly slips up to enter it could be seen as a moment of opportunity to switch over to autopilot and help himself could be irresistible. If in the rush to set the auto pilot something was missed and the plane started loosing altitude and eventually hit the ground, well...

...and he expected to get away with it how?

Short of killing her - and i wouldn't want to be involved in a locked room mystery like that - how does he cover it up?

[GlytchMeister]

Monica's demons can manifest themselves as (more or less) separate, sentient beings, yes? And their behavior is indicative of what emotion or set of emotions they represent. Monica's Doubt demon usually just sticks to saying whatever it can to make Monica second-guess herself.

Before I continue, let me clarify that I'm not categorizing the Tar as a demon or as anything else just yet...

What does the Tar's behavior indicate? 1) it can take the form of its host at least temporarily, replicating both body and clothes. The first idea that comes to my mind is that it may not have a sense of identity or individuality. This may be due to a lack of self awareness or possibly due to its inability to create a unique form, and instead must rely on copying the form of whomever it is residing within, using its connection to its host to replicate either what they really look like or how they see themselves. It may even be a result of both lack of self awareness (indicative of a very primitive mind: rats are self-aware to an extent) and an inability to have a unique, personal form (possibly indicative of no experience being a human and thus being a unique, singular organism...or of being something that is an amalgam of multiple complete or incomplete consciousnesses)
2) it is willing to take the form of another being to advance it's own goals. This can indicate it either doesn't understand that this is a rather underhanded move, or that it doesn't care about taking advantage of someone's trust and betraying it in such a despicable manner.
3) it rapes pretty much anything it sees. It raped (nearly?) all of Jet's demons and the moment Monica appeared, it raped her immediately. This could mean it is akin to a demon or personification of unbridled lust and/or lack of self control, is a primitive thing that only knows rape and nothing else, or it is something with enough intelligence to recognize that repetitive raping of demons will bend them to its will, and has few enough scruples to actually do that. My money's on the first two. If it was smart enough to come up with a strategy at all, it would have been smart enough to either recognize Monica as a really dangerous being or would have at least waited long enough to size her up.
4) it fears being raped itself. The fact that it fears rape, yet inflicts it upon everything it can suggests either a messed up version of a "kill or be killed" mentality or, possibly tells us that whatever the Tar is, it's a little bit like the Joker. Whereas Batman made sure tragedy wouldn't strike innocents, the Joker made sure everyone would suffer as he did. And that's a special kind of evil. To be honest, I don't know which one fits better.

...

I probably missed a lot of stuff (dang it, Jim, I'm an engineer, not a psycologist!) so feel free to add your own theories.

[scantrontb]

The pilot was found in the john with his pants down and the autopilot on and the FAA attributes the crash to irregularity.

while I'm pretty dang sure they'll test the pilot's corpse for illegal drugs, and alcohol, etc.... I'm not sure they even HAVE a test for Pepto-Bismal, so I think the the "irregularity" may pass unnoticed. Remember, this was at least 15+ years ago, too. I'm not sure they even keep the evidence for stuff that far in the past.

[jwhouk]

1. Who says it was the pilot? Coulda been anyone on the flight, and (like I said) it could have been what we call a "puddle jumper" connecting flight from MSP to home.

2. 15 years ago was pre-9/11. Rules for pilots being out of the cockpit (pardon the unintentional pun) were much different.

3. A rapist isn't concerned about consequences - they're concerned about fulfilling their need. And Georgette was there - wrong place, wrong time. If Jill would have been the one who would have gotten up to go pee, this would have happened to her, not Jet.

4. Just like another webcomic I follow suggested years ago about a suicide that happened (yes, QC and Faye's Dad) - sometimes you just don't know who it was, or why it happened. There may never be any easy explanations for this - who it was, why they did it, how did the accident happen, etc.

[Timotheus]

My feeling that it was the pilot is simply based on the coincidental nature of the crash and rape coinciding. The odds of that happening without some other connective factor are just too great.

But if we put the washroom right behind the cockpit, a small commuter flight or privately owned shuttle that may not have a stewardess, and then a situation with one pilot napping while the other is flying or just a single pilot (privately owned shuttle), the situation where everyone in the cabin is sleeping except the pretty 12 year old model candidate who nervously needs to use the bathroom and quietly slips up to enter it could be seen as a moment of opportunity to switch over to autopilot and help himself could be irresistible. If in the rush to set the auto pilot something was missed and the plane started loosing altitude and eventually hit the ground, well...

...and he expected to get away with it how?

Short of killing her - and i wouldn't want to be involved in a locked room mystery like that - how does he cover it up?

Even if she accused him, which would be a long shot (threats and intimidation), who'd believe it? He was flying the plane!

Plus it is a plot point.

[Boxilar]

Preview for Thursday's comic is up onFacebook.

[bmonk]

Everybody died WHILE she was getting raped. THAT would explain the explain the tar.

Perhaps everyone died BECAUSE she was being raped?

Or else that she somehow believes it was because she was being raped?

[Mark N]

Or else that she somehow believes it was because she was being raped?

That one would be a common response I think.