Life Strategies 2014-04-01

[Atomic]

Muse v Muse - place your bets!


Looks like Tina is having a Mongo moment.

[jwhouk]

You do all have to remember she was abandoned and left at an orphanage. She's probably got some Oliver Twist in her.

[DilyV]

Heheheeee... Tina called her 'Critter-plant'!!!!!

She talks about speaking softer... Does Castela even HAVE a volume control? It seems that she has two volumes... top of her lungs, and smothered by Atsali's breasteses... LOL

[TazManiac]

I had a little hickup too, with thoughts of transparent 4th Walls and "Is this reeeeealy Castela after all?" and 'Hell, I used to talk like that at five, well almost', and stuff like that.

Then I remembered Tina was back in the forefront again (I mean c'mon, after all...).


'critter-plant', thats hilarious...

[Dave]

'Life strategies' would seem to be a more complex saying and concept than a five year old might normally have in their vocabulary; but then, Castela DOES live with Kath and visits Phix a lot. Little pitchers have big ears and she may have picked up a lot of concepts and words that children normally don't know. And in this case, she's using some of them correctly...

Soaking up a Zen-like wisdom, and making it part of her life's outlook would seem to be natural for a tender young half-plant like Castela. Soto-synthesis, they call it.

(Deposits a fresh package of chlorophyll gum into the Pun Jar)

[Fairportfan]

'Life strategies' would seem to be a more complex saying and concept than a five year old might normally have in their vocabulary; but then, Castela DOES live with Kath and visits Phix a lot. Little pitchers have big ears and she may have picked up a lot of concepts and words that children normally don't know. And in this case, she's using some of them correctly...

Well, she certainly used "That's BULLSHIT!" properly...

[Fairportfan]

You do all have to remember she was abandoned and left at an orphanage. She's probably got some Oliver Twist in her.

Perhaps more of the Artful Dodger?

[Catawampus]

Did Tina just turn her head more than ninety degrees anti-clockwise to look at Castela?

I mean, in the panel before, Castela is standing just behind Tina's left shoulder...

I'd guess she turned her stance as well as her neck.

Upon studying her torso carefully (always an onerous task, that, when involving the ladies from the Wapsi Square cast), her entire body is turned in the third panel when compared to the previous two. In one and two her torso was turned more towards the viewer's seven or eight o'clock, while in the last panel it's turned more towards five o'clock. So either Tina turned her body in the third panel, or else our point of view was shifted. Or we're seeing Tina through one of her eleven dimensions that we're not used to. Perhaps a little bit of all of the above.

to all here who don't think kids can be this way at an early age: well, they can be, it is just rare, and depends on what they have gone through.

Rare in societies where kids are normally able to be sheltered and pampered. Very common in many other places where they have to grow up right away.

Odd how their hair is blowing in opposite directions in the second frame.

Castela has been taking lessons on hair mobility from a Gorgon?

Tina does know she is being ignored and apparently is used to it. That is a shame.

If her emotional turmoil keeps on "leaking" out and affecting others as it has done, then it's going to be difficult to keep ignoring the problem.

Unless ignoring the problem is part of the being affected aspect. . .

Castella. You had best NOT turn out to be EVIL.

Evilly cute?

Little pitchers have big ears. . .

You think that she's part Nepenthes and part corn plant?

[Sidhekin]

Did Tina just turn her head more than ninety degrees anti-clockwise to look at Castela?

I mean, in the panel before, Castela is standing just behind Tina's left shoulder...

I'd guess she turned her stance as well as her neck.

Upon studying her torso carefully (always an onerous task, that, when involving the ladies from the Wapsi Square cast), her entire body is turned in the third panel when compared to the previous two.

Yeah, when the typos were fixed, Tina (neck-down) was modified too. (As was the background in the last panel.)

(Yes, my computer has photographic memory.)

[kingklash]

She's one sharp Pickle, she is.

[Treesong]

It's not just 'life strategies'. It's also 'difficult' for 'hard' and 'adults' for 'grownups' and being able to extract a nonobvious 'this' from Tina's complaint. Either she's two-natured or it's April Fool's Day.

[Dave]

It's not just 'life strategies'. It's also 'difficult' for 'hard' and 'adults' for 'grownups' and being able to extract a nonobvious 'this' from Tina's complaint. Either she's two-natured or it's April Fool's Day.

We know she's two-natured in at least one sense - she is a plant/animal hybrid. This might have some interesting implications for her mentality and personality... perhaps one aspect of her is more mature than the other?

[Weird factoid of the week: the protozoa which cause malaria have an unusual organelle called the "apicoplast". Without it, they cannot reproduce successfully... it manufactures lipids without which the young protozoa can't survive. The apicoplast is actually descended from algae that were "digested" by the ancestral protozoa... so, in a sense, these protozoa are plant/animal hybrids just as Castela is!

She shouldn't be ashamed of this, though... they're very distant cousins, from a thoroughly disreputable side of the family that nobody will invite over for Christmas dinner. ]

[davids4250]

It seems to me that Castela must be a human-plant hybrid. The only animal form we have ever seen her in is human, so it follows that this is her "normal" animal form, or the easiest for her to assume. Also, she is very intelligent (moreso than most "ordinary" humans, says I) and there seem to be very few species that can say that.
Therefor, she is a human-plant hybrid, not just an animal-plant hybrid.
I have always assumed that she is part human, but people keep referring to her as "animal-plane" so I wanted to put in my two cents worth.
Which I have now done.

[Mark N]

It seems to me that Castela must be a human-plant hybrid. The only animal form we have ever seen her in is human, so it follows that this is her "normal" animal form, or the easiest for her to assume. Also, she is very intelligent (moreso than most "ordinary" humans, says I) and there seem to be very few species that can say that.
Therefor, she is a human-plant hybrid, not just an animal-plant hybrid.
I have always assumed that she is part human, but people keep referring to her as "animal-plane" so I wanted to put in my two cents worth.
Which I have now done.

The ones using animal/plant hybrid are doing so because Humans are classified as animals (and some animals may just be are far more humane than humans)

[Fairportfan]

It seems to me that Castela must be a human-plant hybrid. The only animal form we have ever seen her in is human, so it follows that this is her "normal" animal form, or the easiest for her to assume. Also, she is very intelligent (moreso than most "ordinary" humans, says I) and there seem to be very few species that can say that.
Therefor, she is a human-plant hybrid, not just an animal-plant hybrid.
I have always assumed that she is part human, but people keep referring to her as "animal-plane" so I wanted to put in my two cents worth.
Which I have now done.

The ones using animal/plant hybrid are doing so because Humans are classified as animals (and some animals may just be are far more humane than humans)

“No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.”

[Sidhekin]

Others have speculated that she may be a Titan-plant hybrid.

Castela says she's "part plant 'n part animal", without specifying species, and so far that's good enough for me. This is all fantasy, with fantasy species and "species", many of which display human-like form and human-like intelligence, so I don't think there's enough data on which to found even a proper speculation.

Not that wild-spec is discouraged, mind. But we shouldn't forget, it remains wild.

[NOTDilbert]

I think she's gonna grow up to be a Dryad. He plant-self will finally take root, and her 'animal'-self will be free to move, but still bound to her plant-self.

Or she may have begun as a very young Dryad - and the Blokes in Black Hats spirited her away for the Madboys to experiment on - and was then discarded as a 'failure' of whatever goal they had......

[Catawampus]

It seems to me that Castela must be a human-plant hybrid. The only animal form we have ever seen her in is human, so it follows that this is her "normal" animal form, or the easiest for her to assume. Also, she is very intelligent (moreso than most "ordinary" humans, says I) and there seem to be very few species that can say that.
Therefor, she is a human-plant hybrid, not just an animal-plant hybrid.
I have always assumed that she is part human, but people keep referring to her as "animal-plane" so I wanted to put in my two cents worth.
Which I have now done.

Did anybody ever specify that it was just one species of animal, though? She could have human and rhinoceros and hummingbird DNA, for all that we know.

[jwhouk]

The Dryad aspect brings up an interesting possibility:

It's been about, oh, three years (calendar time) since Shel returned from the Time Forest. What if our little Castela was the "wood nymph" of the Yggdrasil?

[NOTDilbert]

Did anybody ever specify that it was just one species of animal, though? She could have human and rhinoceros and hummingbird DNA, for all that we know.

Wow, that must have been some party!