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Re: The Deal 2013-05-15

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 1:25 pm
by dex drako
yeah I'm leaning towards brandi acting on what she thought was a world ending event only to have everything clam back down after already splitting her self. And so being unable to remember "saving" those people to bring them out of storage. lol

Re: The Deal 2013-05-15

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 3:10 pm
by Timotheus
Dave wrote:Brandi died right at the start of Timotheus's (quite excellent) timeline, as part of the "The Chimera is created" event at around 10,500 BCE.
I must must make it it clear that all I did was copy/paste the appropriate section of the larger timeline in the wiki. I'm rather notorious for assembling timelines for stories I'm fond of but in this case someone has already done an excellent job ahead of me. I just trimmed it down a bit to take up less space as a forum entry for reference to the discussion.
http://wapsisquare.wikia.com/wiki/Chronology

Re: The Deal 2013-05-15

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 4:22 pm
by Wyvern
Sphinx-Napped wrote: that would be my guess and thabk you for doing that chronological event this might been taken place before, but i wonder is this brandi before or after she was killed?
After; she was killed 10,500 years ago. You can read her version of it here, but lay in chocolate and kitten pictures beforehand. You've already been pointed to the timeline page.

Re: The Deal 2013-05-15

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 5:04 pm
by Dave
Wyvern wrote:
Sphinx-Napped wrote: that would be my guess and thabk you for doing that chronological event this might been taken place before, but i wonder is this brandi before or after she was killed?
After; she was killed 10,500 years ago. You can read her version of it here, but lay in chocolate and kitten pictures beforehand. You've already been pointed to the timeline page.
And a bit of the prequel was discussed about six months later. Not at all visually graphic, but (or perhaps therefore) at least as disturbing. I recall one night that week when I stayed up late to see the new day's strip roll in, and was kinda sorry... I had real difficulty sleeping.

Paul has a way with words and images, he does.

Re: The Deal 2013-05-15

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 7:59 pm
by jwhouk
Dave wrote: Paul has a way with words and images, he does.
Understatement.

Five of the biggest punches to the gut in WS:
  • Bud telling the story of how she and Brandi were killed;
  • Shelly 56 dying in the time forest;
  • Phix having Apo for lunch;
  • Bud tearing Monica's heart out;
  • Phix "facing off" against Monca.

Re: The Deal 2013-05-15

Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 8:38 am
by Julie
jwhouk wrote:
Dave wrote: Paul has a way with words and images, he does.
Understatement.

Five of the biggest punches to the gut in WS:
  • Bud telling the story of how she and Brandi were killed;
  • Shelly 56 dying in the time forest;
  • Phix having Apo for lunch;
  • Bud tearing Monica's heart out;
  • Phix "facing off" against Monca.
I dunno...Brandi's tale of how she became the being she is...that was a serious gut punch, just minus the accompanying imagery.

Re: The Deal 2013-05-15

Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 1:13 pm
by Dave
jwhouk wrote:Five of the biggest punches to the gut in WS:
  • Bud telling the story of how she and Brandi were killed;
  • Shelly 56 dying in the time forest;
  • Phix having Apo for lunch;
  • Bud tearing Monica's heart out;
  • Phix "facing off" against Monca.
Re Shelly 56's death... the moment of her death didn't hit me quite that hard when I first read it, as I was very new to Wapsi Square at the time (that's actually the point at which I tuned in to the story) and didn't have a history with Shelly or the other characters.

What did hit me quite powerfully came over the next few days. Seeing Shellynx (as we then learned) weep over Shelly 56's body and say "I think that I can go home now", and struggle with the question of whether she has a home and friends to return to, and then dare to pick up the Artifact despite her fear, and the time-lines converge once again... wow. As somebody wrote in the Comments section for "So Fragile", my brain was officially blown.

It was a bit like G'kar, in the Babylon 5 episode "Mind War"... a character who had been portrayed as a blustering heavy, turns out to have a great deal more personal depth than had been seen... "No one here is exactly what they appear"... and what he said about the First Ones showed that the whole story had great depths that were yet to be seen. That's the sense I got from just these few days of Wapsi Square... and I was deeply, deeply hooked.
Julie wrote:I dunno...Brandi's tale of how she became the being she is...that was a serious gut punch, just minus the accompanying imagery.
I think I'm with you on this one, Julie.

It doesn't have to do with just the imagery or the absence thereof. It's what's being described.

Bud's tale is terrible, no question... two young girls, tortured (and raped IIRC) and killed most painfully. What was done to them was horrible.

Brandi's tale hit me even harder, on a deeper level... because it was in part about what she was made to do. In trying to defend herself, she took an innocent baby's life... and in doing so, her own innocence was lost, probably forever. She was burdened with a guilt that she did not deserve... and it's been far more than just a "life-long" guilt. She surrendered to the priests (and what she was probably sure was her own death) without fighting any further... but her death did not erase the guilt.

"My job was to protect them." I hear her saying it almost in a whisper... and for me those six simple words are probably the most heart-wrenching thing Paul has ever written into the story.

Re: The Deal 2013-05-15

Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 2:39 pm
by Sphinx-Napped
Dave wrote:
Wyvern wrote:
Sphinx-Napped wrote: that would be my guess and thabk you for doing that chronological event this might been taken place before, but i wonder is this brandi before or after she was killed?
After; she was killed 10,500 years ago. You can read her version of it here, but lay in chocolate and kitten pictures beforehand. You've already been pointed to the timeline page.
And a bit of the prequel was discussed about six months later. Not at all visually graphic, but (or perhaps therefore) at least as disturbing. I recall one night that week when I stayed up late to see the new day's strip roll in, and was kinda sorry... I had real difficulty sleeping.

Paul has a way with words and images, he does.
i agree he certainty does have a way, i remember reading the entire archive when i found this comic took me at least 4 days to read the entire thing and understand things but we both know Paul has a way to give us the proverbial { don't want to say the f word but he does do that to us sometimes, and that's why i love this strip..