By Jove 2015-2-3

[zachariah]

Just to remind... AFAIK the 'bodies' you see are a 'construct' (mom calls it 'a uniform' ), NOT their real bodies!!! they are manipulated like a 'puppet' by their 'real' shadow body...
If you 'look up' you will only see a 'blank space'...

That could be as it would explain how her skull head could become detached from her body like it did when bird-girl literally knocked her block off. Still, I believe Tsillah is the only shadow manipulator. Nudge, for instance, is a shape shifter. I think Thymbris is one as well. She also seems to share certain body similarities with Nudge. I'm not sure we are seeing her true body shape even now. After all, Nudge can also appear as a human complete with human legs which she does not have when in her true form. But who knows since these paranormals seem to be random mixtures of animals and humans. Those could be her actual leg shapes, unlike Nudge's animal shaped legs. I'll bet whatever entity came up with the mixed bodies of the paranormals is probably responsible for the Duck-Billed Platypus as well. Those creatures being a failed experiment with no sentience which escaped into the wild. In fact other of those failed experiments may exist there (like the kangaroo). At the time, the creators probably figured, what the heck. Nobody lives there anyway.

Let's really mess with everyone's head.

If Tisallah and Thymbris have full control over the images they project as bodies then any physical impact with those images is because they allowed it. After all how do you hit an image even if it feels solid. The hand, or object, should just go through the image after all. The only time it wouldn't would be if the image was deliberately made solid enough for an impact to occur. So Thymbris let Sali knock her block off and manipulated her image so her head hit the ceiling. Tisallah let Sali deck her. Etc. Isn't that a fun thought?

OTH: Variable permeability fits right in with using all the tropes that can be put in. Their bodies are solid when the story needs them to be solid. All other times they a less than solid so nothing can harm them. Very convenient.

[eee]

I'm gaining a lot of sympathy for Tsillah...

I wonder where the nearest secondary gate is, that they can use to get back to Atsali and Nadette. To judge from Tsillah's panicky vibe there may not be one.

[CPUGuy1]

Yeah ... What see said ...
Um ... What did she say? What ever it was ... it sure was a mouth full ... and then some.
Just as long as Thymbris understands what she said.
I hope she knows what she says.

[Dr. Otter]

I'll bet whatever entity came up with the mixed bodies of the paranormals is probably responsible for the Duck-Billed Platypus as well. Those creatures being a failed experiment with no sentience which escaped into the wild. In fact other of those failed experiments may exist there (like the kangaroo)

So Australia is just one big beta-testing site?

[Sidhekin]

Wouldn't that imply that Eurafrasia is the release?

(The Americas would be that elusive creature, the gamma-testing site. Or, perhaps more likely, the staging site?)

[Dave]

North America did serve as a big staging site for a major upgrade of the mammal populations of South America, a while back. When the Panama seaway closed, and advanced placental mammals could spread south across the land bridge, a lot of the native marsupials in South America went extinct.

We did get the Virginia opossum in return, though. Not quite sure which demigod designed that one...

[Gyrrakavian]

In the words of TFS Frieza, "How do you function?"

[AnotherFairportfan]

If Tisallah and Thymbris have full control over the images they project as bodies then any physical impact with those images is because they allowed it. After all how do you hit an image even if it feels solid. The hand, or object, should just go through the image after all. The only time it wouldn't would be if the image was deliberately made solid enough for an impact to occur. So Thymbris let Sali knock her block off and manipulated her image so her head hit the ceiling. Tisallah let Sali deck her. Etc. Isn't that a fun thought?

Nah. Like silicone rubber ("Silly Putty") - press on it and it deforms and flows. Hit it hard and fast, and it shatters.

I figure that when Tsillah asked Atsali "How did you move that fast?" what was implied was that the punch was so fast she didn't have time to lose solidity.

Or maybe Atsali is, literally, a shadow-boxer...

[Sidhekin]

Or maybe Atsali is, literally, a shadow-boxer...

I like it.

I note though that Tsillah spoke of "my shadow" when confronting the vamps, but "me" when describing what Atsali "actually" hit.

*imagine a beat panel here*

[Thor]

Hey, Tsillah? You know how you are feeling in panel 3? Hold on to that feeling and sit down, because I have a hard truth for you.

That feeling is exactly what everybody else feels about you. All. The. Time.

[Dave]

Hey, Tsillah? You know how you are feeling in panel 3? Hold on to that feeling and sit down, because I have a hard truth for you.

That feeling is exactly what everybody else feels about you. All. The. Time.

Very true... and it adds a new possibility to Tsillah's action in that frame.

Do you think that maybe Tsillah absorbs facepalm from the people around her, so that she has plenty available when she has to deal with her mother? Maybe that's why she behaves as ditzy as she does... she's a farmer, fertilizing the fields of friends, so that she can harvest plenty of fresh, healthy facepalm to store at home, and Use As Required.

[Mark N]

Tisallah let Sali deck her. Etc. Isn't that a fun thought?

Another possibility is that something in Atsali's Incubus heritage is what allows her to make a contact hit on a shadow being. Thymbris did say that Atsali's father would be proud of what she did.

[TazManiac]

Yeah but from what I've seen, when they choose to be Humanoid, they are rather solid, likes it's an indented position they fall into.

When Tisallah (and her Mom for that matter) choose to be solid, it would seem they are and interact witht he world around them as such. When a change of status is required or desired a change is made.

[Catawampus]

In the words of TFS Frieza, "How do you function?"

Well, she's apparently functioned for several thousand years at least. Perhaps she wasn't always like this, or is only sometimes like this. Hmmm. . .there are lots of possibilities.

1) Thymbris' wacky antics might merely look to be impetuous and random, but are really signs of a hidden system of awesome analytic power that hides itself in a cloak of silliness to keep from being noticed.

2) Thymbris has suffered some form of brain (or brain-analogue) injury over the past few thousand years. Perhaps she was caught in the same chimera blast that knocked Charon around.

3.14) Tsillah is Thymbris. She is caught in a time-loop and ended up as her own mother. With each iteration, her silly nature carries over and reinforces itself.

4) Thymbris is the result of some sort of genetic experiment and is the original of her own tier of paranormals. She is to those other paranormals what Tepoz is to the other golems: a sort of prototype or beta-test version. Not all of the bugs were worked out yet.

5) Thymbris' approach to life might be a way of coping with something very unpleasant that she has faced. Trauma in her past, an extremely unsettling and disturbing current career, whatever. . .by not thinking about things too deeply or paying much attention, she can avoid looking at whatever it is.

6) She might have many very heavy responsibilities while on the job in Hades, and so in her off-time while cavorting around the upper world she likes to switch her mind off, shed her inhibitions, and just have fun. Being indestructible, she can get away with doing that without too many negative consequences for herself.

7) It might be that after a few centuries, Thymbris' mind gets “filled up” and she has trouble remembering things or less-accessed memories get erased to make room. She has accepted a decreased attention span and less time spent thinking about things around her as an attempt to keep from overloading her millennia-old mind with memories.

8) Her mind has been overloaded, and now she has trouble remembering anything currently going on. As an even more far-out possibility connected to that, perhaps Tsillah was created as a sort of living external hard-drive for storing memories (storing files in “shadow memory” instead of “cloud memory”?); Tsillah's lesser amount of scatter-brainedness is the result of her own memory space getting contaminated by the wackiness of her mother's memories that were transferred over.

9) Thymbris spent too much time hanging out with Sibyl and her drugs. Or perhaps was Sibyl, who Charon was chatting up not long before the chimera made a chunk of the world go kablooie. Part of her current mission is to covertly check out Nadette's qualifications for the oracle job.

The most likely reason is, of course, that Thymbris is simply very very silly, and Tsillah less so as a result of either heredity or environment.

[Dave]

Well, she's apparently functioned for several thousand years at least. Perhaps she wasn't always like this, or is only sometimes like this. Hmmm. . .there are lots of possibilities...

3.14) Tsillah is Thymbris. She is caught in a time-loop and ended up as her own mother. With each iteration, her silly nature carries over and reinforces itself.

I saw what you did there, Professor!

You could be right, though. Matters of identity, family, and inheritance among the Greek and Roman gods, demigods, and titans were notoriously complex and shifty... enough so to have greatly influenced human culture and legends.

[Dave]

Also wondering whether the strip title "By Jove" bears a deeper meaning. Jove/Jupiter/Zeus play basically the same roles in Greco-Roman mythology, and Zeus has been specifically mentioned in Wapsi Square (as the patron, in effect, of Bia).

Add to this the fact that the Gods were notorious for behaving capritiously and arbitrarily towards mortals, playing on their vulnerabilities, using them for the Gods' pleasures or agendas without so much as a beg-pardon...

So... could the way that the Library is and has been behaving (which Tsillah critiques quite strongly in the strip after this one) be an indication that Zeus might be playing a role in what's going on here? Might his voice, be the voice of the Library?

[AnotherFairportfan]

Also wondering whether the strip title "By Jove" bears a deeper meaning. Jove/Jupiter/Zeus play basically the same roles in Greco-Roman mythology, and Zeus has been specifically mentioned in Wapsi Square (as the patron, in effect, of Bia).

Zeus is, indeed, the father of Pan, via Thymbris...

[Dave]

Also wondering whether the strip title "By Jove" bears a deeper meaning. Jove/Jupiter/Zeus play basically the same roles in Greco-Roman mythology, and Zeus has been specifically mentioned in Wapsi Square (as the patron, in effect, of Bia).

Zeus is, indeed, the father of Pan, via Thymbris...

Forgot that entirely

So, if my wild hunch is correct... then maybe problems are occurring here, because Zeus is hassling his ex (or one of them)? This whole charlie-foxtrot is a family affair?

[jwhouk]

The concept that Library = Zeus is, of course, incorrect.


We all know that Library = Pablo.

[oldmanmickey]

And in the waspiverse the difference between Paul and Zeus is?