Wapsi Square Forum

Well Atsali has been talking, and LISTENING to, Kath's friends from before.

Good for her.

I was wondering if either of them knew . . .

--FreeFlier

Huh. So that's the reason for the no clothes.

Also, Go Atsali! I don't know why I feel the need to say that but I do.

TheCollector wrote:Huh. So that's the reason for the no clothes.

Whole metric shipload of plot exposition there, Atsali! Thanks!!

Opus the Poet wrote:Well Atsali has been talking, and LISTENING to, Kath's friends from before.

Good for her.

And, she kept her own council, and didn't dump the story onto Pickle prematurely. Maybe even didn't tell her friends what she knew... if she had, the rumor mill would probably have brought the story back around to Castela by now.

I'm sure this will all be hard news for Castela to absorb, but she probably needed to hear it now.

Kath saved the girls from a lonely life in the orphanage. They saved her from loneliness and isolation, just as surely. Even in the face of the changes that life will bring (and which Castela finds so fearsome) they will always have that!

Sad, though... Atsali's words about "a fish" (unnamed) do suggest that Oscar hasn't been part of the picture for a long time. Not surprising, if he was in fact a mundane Betta... it sounds as if he may have been gone for so long that Atsali doesn't remember his name, and maybe Pickle doesn't remember him at all.

Wow, talk about unloading with both barrels. Stali just cleared the decks better than any cannon i ever saw used. Now if Pickle will stop to think and let her brains work shes about to take a major maturity jump.

Dave wrote:Sad, though... Atsali's words about "a fish" (unnamed) do suggest that Oscar hasn't been part of the picture for a long time. Not surprising, if he was in fact a mundane Betta... it sounds as if he may have been gone for so long that Atsali doesn't remember his name, and maybe Pickle doesn't remember him at all.

It's OK. He's in a betta place now.

Atsali's expression and what she says in that last panel - Ow!

"Get over yourself, girl - everybody has problems."

Big Bird is growing up.

Katherine will always be her mom; Castela will always be her sister.

But she's ready to fly.

shadowinthelight wrote:

Dave wrote:Sad, though... Atsali's words about "a fish" (unnamed) do suggest that Oscar hasn't been part of the picture for a long time. Not surprising, if he was in fact a mundane Betta... it sounds as if he may have been gone for so long that Atsali doesn't remember his name, and maybe Pickle doesn't remember him at all.

It's OK. He's in a betta place now.

OI! PUN VAULT! NAOW!

AnotherFairportfan wrote:Atsali's expression and what she says in that last panel - Ow!

"Get over yourself, girl - everybody has problems."

And also "Mom's stronger than you think. A lot stronger."

And maybe a bit of "... and just how is it right for you to say who Mom should be, when you really don't know who Mom actually is?"

Pickle's gobsmacked expression... well, it makes complete sense.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:Big Bird is growing up.

Sometimes it takes a while for things to work their way through her skull, but once in they can't escape.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:But she's ready to fly.

Hopefully in a non-Icarus fashion.

jwhouk wrote:

shadowinthelight wrote:

Dave wrote:Sad, though... Atsali's words about "a fish" (unnamed) do suggest that Oscar hasn't been part of the picture for a long time. Not surprising, if he was in fact a mundane Betta... it sounds as if he may have been gone for so long that Atsali doesn't remember his name, and maybe Pickle doesn't remember him at all.

It's OK. He's in a betta place now.

OI! PUN VAULT! NAOW!

*drops in a copy of Angelfish - A Complete Pet Owner's Manual*

Maybe we will learn more of the fate of Oscar following this.
Sad that was her reason for disrobing at home, I just find it more comfortable.

I'll also lay solid odds that this brings Pickle to holo-mom and/or the Library and discovering a connection to those extremists.

Armorlord wrote:Sad that was her reason for disrobing at home, I just find it more comfortable.

I'll also lay solid odds that this brings Pickle to holo-mom and/or the Library and discovering a connection to those extremists.

And depending on what that link is, it could mess with Katherine and Castela even more.

If that helicopter attack was carried out on the orders of the same people who later created Castela and killed Atsali's parents, then there's a good chance that, for whatever reason, Katherine was the intended target of the strike. She is the only direct connection that the archaeology dig site has to the paranormal world that we know of, after all. The other people getting killed was just collateral damage. So then Katherine, having had to cope with survivor's guilt for decades, would learn that she was indirectly the cause of all her friends there getting killed. And Castela would learn that there was, and possibly still is, a group out there that was out to get her Momma. And that's all without even considering why that group would have targeted Katherine.

Of course, it's also still possible that the helicopter attack was just to stop the excavation, or to target somebody else in the group, or hit the wrong target altogether. Katherine could just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time by coincidence. And there's also still the question of who sent the A-10, and why.

Catawampus wrote:Of course, it's also still possible that the helicopter attack was just to stop the excavation, or to target somebody else in the group, or hit the wrong target altogether. Katherine could just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time by coincidence. And there's also still the question of who sent the A-10, and why.

"Extremists" implies an extreme ideology... which begs the question, "What ideology?" Did they have any connection to the para world at all, it was it a purely modern and entirely human group?

And, if the "hit" on the dig team was in fact what the extremists intended, then just why were they trying to stop the dig? What was there, that they didn't want the team to uncover? A cache of Lanthian nuclear-powered marital aids?

Sounds like a potential future plot line!

Castela call upon holo-mom, learns stuff, offers Kat opportunity for revenge....

Ewww.

Revenge path -- Ewww.

Non-revenge path -- Kat unloads years of anguish and makes peace with it.

Sleeping dogs path -- The act of learning reveals exposure to the malefactors, who now seek to clear up the remaining loose end... More Ewww!

Dave wrote:

Catawampus wrote:Of course, it's also still possible that the helicopter attack was just to stop the excavation, or to target somebody else in the group, or hit the wrong target altogether. Katherine could just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time by coincidence. And there's also still the question of who sent the A-10, and why.

"Extremists" implies an extreme ideology... which begs the question, "What ideology?" Did they have any connection to the para world at all, it was it a purely modern and entirely human group?

And, if the "hit" on the dig team was in fact what the extremists intended, then just why were they trying to stop the dig? What was there, that they didn't want the team to uncover? A cache of Lanthian nuclear-powered marital aids?

It may not have been what was there, but what they thought was there . . . probably treasure, because in there world that's the only reason to spend that much effort.

--FreeFlier

Religious artifacts do make people do some extreme things, too.

On topic: anyone notice that Atsali was channeling her "real" mom there when she was talking to Castela?

Compare with this: Without Dying

Atsali does show flashes of Leucoisa at times...