Wapsi Square Forum

Well, I guess Bud and Brandi live near Kevin. But hiding how dark she's become? I really didn't see that...


Edited title

Sounds to me like Bud is feeling a bit left behind too...

DilyV wrote:Sounds to me like Bud is feeling a bit left behind too...

I get the feeling that she feels that way a lot. Missing out on a normal teen/young adulthood. She's brightest when she's out with the other girls as backup...

Yay Bud!

Monica is going to hit a wall yet again, and probably soon. Funny/Sad what fearing yourself can do to you, and those around you.

This is why people need to wait to see what happens before ragequitting the comic. Paul isn't bad at writing a story, he's good at writing a flawed character. Monica is acting in that exasperating manner many people unfortunately do in real life.

And I know it is Paul's artistic style to sometimes omit detail, but the combination of panels 1 and 2 make it look like Kevin only shaved one side of his face.

I'm getting a strong vibe here, in at least three ways: "Caught between worlds".

Monica is caught between the flawed, scarred mortal woman she's been, and the no-doubt-equally-flawed sub-Titan she has been made into.

Kevin is caught, in his way, between the mortal world and life that are his, and the rules and stresses of the paranormal world he's overlapped upon.

Bud is equally caught... the heart and spirit of a rather lonely late-teen, with the body and power and guilt of an immortal who knows she can destroy worlds (because she has already done so, pretty much).

There really aren't any bad guys here... there's no evil, nor deliberate cruelty... just sentient beings, each both empowered and flawed in his or her own way, each bearing the weight of the past and the uncertainty of the future. Each and every one of them can hurt, and does.

shadowinthelight wrote:This is why people need to wait to see what happens before ragequitting the comic. Paul isn't bad at writing a story, he's good at writing a flawed character. Monica is acting in that exasperating manner many people unfortunately do in real life.

Patience does bring its rewards!

And I know it is Paul's artistic style to sometimes omit detail, but the combination of panels 1 and 2 make it look like Kevin only shaved one side of his face.

Are you sure that's not the case? If he's as depressed as he looks, he might have done a poor job of it today.

And, a poor job of shaving was how Sherlock Holmes once deduced that Dr. Watson was living as a bachelor for a while.

Small typo... Second panel, bud saying she never told me of he time in the hospital... should be HER time...

DilyV wrote:Small typo... Second panel, bud saying she never told me of he time in the hospital... should be HER time...

Or THE time.

Could be either.

DilyV wrote:Small typo... Second panel, bud saying she never told me of he time in the hospital... should be HER time...

Also third panel -- apostrophe in "maybe she' tired of hiding" suggests a missing possessive "s". However, the line makes sense either way.

As for the darkness, Monica is the Jaguar Girl. I believe jaguars can, in myth, travel freely back and forth from the afterlife. Every day is Dia de la Muerte for Monica, the Day of the Dead. That's got to color your outlook on the world.

Was the 'Hospital Stay' from Before The events of the comic.
I've been following Wapsi for ages & I don't remember anything like that.

But then again, for years I was convinced that Moica's Boyfriend had disappeared after the events of the calendar machine.
So it might just be a problem with my memory.

ArendJK wrote:Was the 'Hospital Stay' from Before The events of the comic.
I've been following Wapsi for ages & I don't remember anything like that.

But then again, for years I was convinced that Moica's Boyfriend had disappeared after the events of the calendar machine.
So it might just be a problem with my memory.

You're not the only one. I've read this comic from cover to cover and I'm not remember this either.

Also, the first couple of panels read like an exposition dump. I don't think people talk like that.

ArendJK wrote:Was the 'Hospital Stay' from Before The events of the comic.
I've been following Wapsi for ages & I don't remember anything like that.

But then again, for years I was convinced that Moica's Boyfriend had disappeared after the events of the calendar machine.
So it might just be a problem with my memory.

The hospital stay was years before the comic opened... but Monica has talked about it to some extent with other characters in the strip, several times over the years.

As a young girl, Monica apparently suffered from "hallucinations"... she saw and spoke with her grandmother, who she (and we) learned had died several years previously. We now know that this was actually Mayahuel, projecting an image to Monica from within the timeless Demon Dimension.

Monica's family didn't believe her story, and had her committed to a mental hospital for some time... Monica was apparently 14 when this happened. She was released after some months, after her 15th birthday, when a hospital staffer who had been raping her at night wound up violently dead (possibly thanks to Suzie McBride, a vampire who doesn't like criminals).

Sorry I don't have archive links handy...

AmriloJim wrote:

DilyV wrote:Small typo... Second panel, bud saying she never told me of he time in the hospital... should be HER time...

Also third panel -- apostrophe in "maybe she' tired of hiding" suggests a missing possessive "s". However, the line makes sense either way.

Not possessive - contraction, "she is"

Radio365 wrote:

ArendJK wrote:Was the 'Hospital Stay' from Before The events of the comic.
I've been following Wapsi for ages & I don't remember anything like that.

But then again, for years I was convinced that Monica's Boyfriend had disappeared after the events of the calendar machine.
So it might just be a problem with my memory.

You're not the only one. I've read this comic from cover to cover and I'm not remember this either.

Somebody'll pop up w/ a link but basically I recall her core-dumping about being in the Nut-Ward and revealing the Dr. would pay her a visit, strap her down on her stomach and 'have his way with her', all the while she was helpless and underage to boot.

Colored her world-view and still does.

There is some evidence that Lily's partner (???) paid him a visit and snacked on his fresh corpse or at least flung him from the roof...

Also, the first couple of panels read like an exposition dump. I don't think people talk like that.

yeaaaah. nobody talks like expositional Wapsi-Square characters, whatcha gonna do?

[edit] Dave posted before I finished mine but if you combine ours together you get the idea of what happened.
(I'm currently balancing a keyboard and monitor, at the same time, on my lap while posting. Makes for post-in-a-rush syndrome...)

Dave wrote:

ArendJK wrote:Was the 'Hospital Stay' from Before The events of the comic.
I've been following Wapsi for ages & I don't remember anything like that.

But then again, for years I was convinced that Moica's Boyfriend had disappeared after the events of the calendar machine.
So it might just be a problem with my memory.

The hospital stay was years before the comic opened... but Monica has talked about it to some extent with other characters in the strip, several times over the years.

As a young girl, Monica apparently suffered from "hallucinations"... she saw and spoke with her grandmother, who she (and we) learned had died several years previously. We now know that this was actually Mayahuel, projecting an image to Monica from within the timeless Demon Dimension.

Monica's family didn't believe her story, and had her committed to a mental hospital for some time... Monica was apparently 14 when this happened. She was released after some months, after her 15th birthday, when a hospital staffer who had been raping her at night wound up violently dead (possibly thanks to Suzie McBride, a vampire who doesn't like criminals).

Sorry I don't have archive links handy...

It wasn't talking to her great-grandmother - who was actually there, being Someone Else in disguise - but her apparent suicide attempt, running in front of a bus in Mexico City, because she was being driven by her demons and not looking where she was running, trying to get away from them. (The fact that she was yelling at someone no-one else could see to go away and leave her alone didn't help.) She was forced to see a psychologist for four years after the great-grandmother incident, which must have been the years from when she was ten until fourteen, when the bus incident occurred. (I was looking for the actual accident, but i hav't found it yet.)

At which point, her heart stopped (people thought she'd been hit by the bus, but any injuries she had were apparently caused by Jin tackling her out of the way not unlike Jin's injuries when Bud tackled her as she was about to kill herself with flintlock pistol after Mayahuel de-invulnerabled her), and she was "dead" for a few seconds, which was how she became a gateway to Other Realms.

It was also, due to Jin being delayed saving Monica (i think) that Jin failed to show up as Tochtli to Shelly on her vision quest (which was coming to a head) in time to prevent her from "dying" temporarily as well.

She was apparently in and out of institutions.

It's been alluded to several times - Monica almost lost it with Amanda once when she thought that Amanda was suggesting that she was less than stable and ought to see a shrink, which Monica saw as the first step back to the Quiet Home for the Very Very Nervous.

Does Kevin only shave half of his face?

I'm wondering if this arc might be about how Monica is saved from darkness and despair, rather than Monica doing the saving...

And again, Bud has it pretty much figured-out. In the wisdom-department, she can give Phix a run for the money..

I figured her lurking god-complex would cause trouble for M, and for those around her that she cared for. Apparently those of us that were bothered by what M has become, were right. Afa the characters in the story go, they feel the same.

And, to repeat myself, M has once described herself as a sociopath. I am still not sure if it's meant as a cop-out, so as to absolve herself from any responsibility, or that she really ís a sociopath. :pondering:

TazManiac wrote:Somebody'll pop up w/ a link but basically I recall her core-dumping about being in the Nut-Ward and revealing the Dr. would pay her a visit, strap her down on her stomach and 'have his way with her', all the while she was helpless and underage to boot.

I believe it was an orderly. Hmmm. Just says "he", but it sounds like an orderly.

There is some evidence that Lily's partner (???) paid him a visit and snacked on his fresh corpse or at least flung him from the roof...

That'd be Suzi McBride, who has a Thing about victims and the lost and forgotten.

She ripped off his jaw, drained his blood, and threw his corpse off the roof. {Warning: That page is a verbally-graphic recounting of the hospital thing.)

Here's the bit about the settlement, with an explanation of how Monica could be hospitalised for an extended period in her mid-teens and still have earned advanced degrees by the time she was in her mid-twenties. {Same Warning Applies}

And here and here are Monica and Georgette beginning to sense the connection between them. {Hmmm - i hadn't considered the implications of how they're dressed in that one, combined with the situation.}

Jabberwonky wrote:Well, I guess Bud and Brandi live near Kevin. But hiding how dark she's become? I really didn't see that...

That's very much like manic depression.. has to be treated with care.. I know a few friends like that...