Awake Now 2012 --10-02

[Fairportfan]

Shelly's the mechanic. She knows what she's doing.
Jaguars of that model are temperamental and have a hard time starting.

...and prone to backfires, though in those cases the flame usually comes from the other end.

[Jabberwonky]

So, Monica may actually be the long lost illegitimate daughter of Ra ... Ra-Ra?

Hail to the Sun God,
For he is a fun God,
Ra, Ra, Ra!

Shelly's the mechanic. She knows what she's doing.
Jaguars of that model are temperamental and have a hard time starting.


...


Oo, PunPal has an October sale on strangled bodies of Lane Pryce!

I almost choked to death, reading that while eating lunch...

[chalcara]

With all the manipulation and jerking around and the general being-assholes-to-each-other-despite-claiming-to-be-friends, Earth is lucky that it's still in one piece.

If this is really a setup as opposed to Shelly being a thick skulled ideot again, this is sooo going to set off Monica's issues.

I think that's something all the characters forget - between that attack on her during the calendar stuff, those crappy manipulations that made her into a glyph reader, repeatly being the buttmonkey of diverse paranormals abilities and this crap now, Monica has a REASON to prissy. But I guess it'll just end with her being dismissed as overemotional jackass again.

[CraigR]

I think after being frozen 3 times, M's magical side is building a defense that will cause her to be immune to Euryale's gaze from now on, but it needs a chance to overreact and then normalize, which is why Shelly is have Bud wait downstairs: M needs to do this on her own, without a "safety net". Then, the next time our lovely gorgon accidentally uses her gaze on her, Mon's eyes will glow momentarily but she'll be otherwise unaffected.

[Prester Fred]

Why do I get the feeling that Shelly is using the word "awake" to mean more than it usually does?

[sonicthunder]

With all the manipulation and jerking around and the general being-assholes-to-each-other-despite-claiming-to-be-friends, Earth is lucky that it's still in one piece.

A lot of it is just turnabout and fair-play nonsense. Monica was the one who inducted Shelly into the supernatural, and initially had the upper hand on the mechanics of what little supernatural the two encountered. Now, Shelly knows more about the supernatural than Monica, and is letting her endure while Shelly piecemeals information back to her.

Same thing with most of the other supernatural drama that occurs.
**Nudge got irked at the Sphnix's going all Judge Dredd on demons and demon-possessed humans, so she tricked a sphinx into getting a similar treatment from the Library.
**Phix has been smug during her manipulations of the entire cast because she knew what she was doing would be helpful in the end, Bia manipulated Phix and was rather smug about it because she knew Shelly's creation was necessary (for full reasons yet unknown).
**Amanda was always the leader of her group of friends and Monica was the little clueless whiner she drug along, now Monica's the leader of the group and Amanda's the clueless whiner Monica drags along.
**Shelly used an artifact to almost kill Monica in order to open a portal to fix a problem, so Monica used another artifact to almost kill Shelly in order to open a portal to fix a problem.

It's a running theme in Wapsiverse. If you do something major to someone or establish a role for yourself, you can expect the action or roll to be reversed on you at some point in time.

[Fairportfan]

So, Monica may actually be the long lost illegitimate daughter of Ra ... Ra-Ra?

Hail to the Sun God,
For he is a fun God,
Ra, Ra, Ra!

Hey! That's my line!

Shelly's the mechanic. She knows what she's doing.
Jaguars of that model are temperamental and have a hard time starting.
[/size]

I almost choked to death, reading that while eating lunch...

So, Monica's a Jaguar Girl these days.

In twenty years. will she be a Cougar Woman?

[Fairportfan]

Why do I get the feeling that Shelly is using the word "awake" to mean more than it usually does?

I hadn't thought of it quite that way.

Interesting.

[Jabberwonky]

Why do I get the feeling that Shelly is using the word "awake" to mean more than it usually does?

I hadn't thought of it quite that way.

Interesting.

Maybe Shelly should have said "She's illuminated."?

[Brrrr86]

I'm surprised no one has yet pointed out that the Jaguar represents fire in many cultures - further connecting the Sun Goddess statue / Sunshine nickname.

[eee]

Bud's reaction is... odd. She's normally protective of Monica, making sure the Princess doesn't get hurt. Now she hears Monica screaming, smells smoke... and doesn't immediately smash through everything between herself and Monica to see what's wrong.

That's odd.

[Aleister Crow]

Fire!

Fire Two!

So, Monica may actually be the long lost illegitimate daughter of Ra ... Ra-Ra?

Maybe Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec Sun God? Also known as Kukulkan, who is known in the strip to have an unusual fashion sense.

Although... the Jaguar is the symbol of Quetzalcoatl's rival, Tezcatlipoca. I think we danced around this one before, back when "Jaguar Girl" first got mentioned.

[Boxilar]

Bud's reaction is... odd. She's normally protective of Monica, making sure the Princess doesn't get hurt. Now she hears Monica screaming, smells smoke... and doesn't immediately smash through everything between herself and Monica to see what's wrong.

That's odd.

Well, Bud knows Shelly has knowledge she dosen't, (damn Sphinxes, being mysterious all the time) and that Shelly isn't overly concerned. In fact, Shelly's whole attitude is along the lines of "well it's about time".

The question is, how long has Shelly known this was coming? Pure idle speculation here, but I'm guessing some where in the intervening two weeks Shelly and Phix sat down and had a heart to heart talk and hashed things out. Shelly finally accepted that she is an immortal Sphinx/Titan as evidenced by her showing fang when relaxed and holing an otherwise human form. Phix, in turn, would probably filled her in on everything that was going on. Shelly isn't being mushroomed anymore. She's moved up the food chain.

But then, so, aparrently, has Monica.

[Jabberwonky]

Bud's reaction is... odd. She's normally protective of Monica, making sure the Princess doesn't get hurt. Now she hears Monica screaming, smells smoke... and doesn't immediately smash through everything between herself and Monica to see what's wrong.

That's odd.

Bud helped found the shadowy 'MIB' thingy, she may know more of what's going on with the Pocket Elf than she does. There seems to be a lot of 'things gotta happen before things happen' going on...

[Jürgen A. Erhard]

Noticed how yesterday it looked like M incinerated her hand? But today, both hands look fine. Hmmm...

[kingklash]

Well, if they go up there and put her out, how will she learn to do it herself?

[Julie]

"Trust me...Give her a minute...Mornings aren't her strong suit...Especially when dealing with freezer-burn."

*leaves a box of Ziploc Freezer bags for the pun vault just in case it's hungry*

Everyone seems to have all of these concerns about Shelly telling Bud to wait (and Bud actually seeming to listen...which may not be the case by tomorrow's page), but giving Monica a chance to try and get this fire-stuff under control before she sees any friends could also be good advice. If I woke up one morning shooting lights out my eyes and setting everything that touched me on fire...well I'd freak out even more if any friends walked in to see me like that before I figured out how to stop it. Yes, M's friends are familiar with the supernatural..and yes, most of them seemed aware that she was powerful even when she didn't acknowledge that. However, M didn't see herself as supernatural (and therefore didn't think that her friends saw her as such), so it would probably bother her to have her friends see her that way when she's not even come to terms with it herself.

Just my $0.02.

Well, if they go up there and put her out, how will she learn to do it herself?

That too.

[Sphinx-Napped]

Fire crawler, come crawl with me so you can light my path in the darkness lol

[jwhouk]

Come to think of it: wasn't Monica's statuette something like a sun goddess-like thingy? (cannot find the pic fast enough) If so..then..ARGH!..goddamit.. Paul has been pulling oneof those "looooooooooooong foreboding-" things.... Again....

Her statue did have a sort of sun-ray-aura appearance to it. One example is here. Chekhov's Figurine?

And you'll notice that her hair turned white-ish after the blade got pulled out...

[Dave]

Why do I get the feeling that Shelly is using the word "awake" to mean more than it usually does?

I hadn't thought of it quite that way.

Interesting.

Maybe Shelly should have said "She's illuminated."?

I'm thinking "enlightened" might be more technically correct, and will be even moreso as Monica figures out what's going on.

Shelly is the one who is "illuminated", in the sense of an illuminated manuscript... at least, she was illuminated, but the ink is gone now. I assume that she still has the scarring from the portal-cloth tattoo.

In any case, Prester Fred, I think you're right. Shelly's remark "M's awake" is either trivial to the point of being silly, or very meaningful.

As to Shelly's grinning reaction, and whether this was a setup, or payback, or... it does feel to me as if Shelly is well aware that this was going to happen, but maybe not in the sense of something that was being done to Monica. Rather, it's more something that Monica is doing... maturing, gaining access to her own powers, realizing her own nature, becoming a butterfly by breaking out of her cocoon, something like that.

Considering how guilty Shelly felt about blindsiding and stabbing Monica during the CM shutdown (necessary though it was) i doubt she'd have done something similar a second time.

How much Shelly knew, when she knew it, and whether she could have been more direct in telling Monica what was going to occur (without freaking Monica out even worse, and/or actually interfering with Monica's transformation) remain to be told.