And 20 years in the Future, 84 is wildly considered one of the two greatest heroes of all time (Moon Shadow, of course being the other one) because of the lessons she learns here …
The lessons she learned here, true…but I think that the more important thing is that she’s going to be teaching these lessons too. Julie 84, the worlds greatest super hero teacher.
I swear to god, if we do not get an epilogue for after this comic done, I will conduct viciousness against the author for unnecessary cruelty. I want to see what this girl becomes!
To be fair if he doesn’t write an ending that leaves room for fanfic authors to write and less face it. We might have a better chance of the author dying leaving it unfinished than having it simply dropped or left without an ending.
An ending would likely be with them still as kids. Zer-Author seems to indicate that he would want an epilogue after the story has ended to show what kind of adults the kids have grown into.
Given the strip is named after the school, and I am unable to find a K thru 12 school in a major city anywhere in the US (also the lack of teenagers in evidence), it’s likely it’ll end no later than grade 8. They’ll be 13 or 14; plenty of room for fanfic (provided Aaron allows such).
Data from the PS238 RPG indicates they are 8 right now. So if it’s a K-5 the strip runs 2 to 3 more years their time; if it’s a K-8 (rarer, but given they’re super kids I’d shoot for that) the strip runs considerably longer. Even allowing for the fact that less than a year has passed in the 10 volumes so far, I don’t think Aaron is too old to finish.
Wanderer — I attended a K-12 school here in the US. (I started there in 7th grade, but most (all but one) of my classmates that year had been at the school together for a bunch of grades before that already.) Admittedly, Annapolis might not fit anyone’s criteria for “a major city”, despite being the state capitol, but at least it’s a city lots of people have heard of (if only for the presence of the US Naval Academy there, maybe also for St. John’s).
Well, to be specific, you need to have the sort of parent who teaches you all the right lessons and then dies with enough time to spare for you to be past the worst of the grief when the main plot starts.
Why was Arthur king? Because his father was.
Why was Cinderella able to go the ball in the prettiest outfit? Because her parents somehow convinced a fairy to be her godmother.
Why did Harry Potter escape his abusive family as something other than a sad statistic on orphans? Because his parents were rich wizards.
It all had little to do with what kind of person they were. Oh, of course, you can argue that their eventual success or failure did. But without the right inheritance, they’d never even had gotten to the start line. Without it… better start picking pockets and hope you come across the right lamp.
I’d say you’re close.
I mean, yes Cinderella’s parents chose a fairy to be her godmother, but she wouldn’t have needed help from her godmother if her mother was still alive. If her parents were still alive, she would have been at the ball in a fine gown.
And Aladin? I don’t think he gained any advantage from his lack of parents. Are they even dead? All we know is that he is a young man making his way in the world on his own. Maybe they were just really poor.
Even Harry Potter didn’t get the usual full package. Usually, the hero’s parents died before s/he could begin to see them as real people (that is, flawed), so they get to be ideal in his/her mind forever, while the mentor figure (Dumbledore, Merlin) can serve as parent to the hero. But Harry doesn’t have an idealized view of his parent, he doesn’t remember them at all, and through the recollections of others he learns that his father died heroically, but was a bit of a jerk in school.
Only Arthur really got the whole package: his father was king, making Arthur royal. His father was dead, meaning the throne was clear for Arthur. His father had little influence over his upbringing, so … it was easier to accept that Arthur wouldn’t be like his father, wouldn’t make the same mistakes.
He still had the right parents. His father was James “Prongs” Potter, unregistered Animagus, youngest Seeker of his generation, and one of the Marauders. Without him, Harry wouldn’t have been a natural talent at flying a broom, had the Marauders’ Map or the Invisibility Cloak, or had a stag for a Patronus.
His mother was Lily Evans, one-time girlfriend of Severus Snape. Without her, he wouldn’t have had Snape on his side up to the last book, keeping him alive. (That’s why Snape always looked him in the eyes — the rest of the face was Prongs, but he had his mother’s eyes.)
Of course, in the end, the choice of hero was actually up to the villain. Voldemort chose the Potters’ child as the one who posed the greatest danger. Otherwise, it would have been Neville Longbottom at the forefront as The Boy Who Lived.
Snape was also reading his mind, something Harry never caught on to until later. Also, every time Harry avoided looking anyone in the eyes, they assumed he was hiding something.
Word of God is that James wasn’t a seeker, he was a chaser. Like Ginny, he was a good seeker, and often played with the snitch off the pitch, but preferred goal scoring.
Harry was the ‘youngest seeker in a century.’
The movie assumed James was a seeker before Rowling made it clear, so it was a detail they guessed at and got wrong.
I had thought, when I was only about halfway through, that the Harry Potter books had as a theme that who you are isn’t determined by who your parents were. At least it isn’t locked.
I mean, the stories are loaded with people who changed.
Sirius Black was raised by intolerant bigots, but didn’t become one.
James Potter was a jerk and a bully as a teen, but as a young man chose to defend the weak.
Tom Riddle? Well Dumbledore seemed to think that he wasn’t always doomed to become what he became.
The twist I was expecting was that Draco would turn out to be another apple that fell far from the tree: that he may have been a jerk, but he wouldn’t throw in with EVIL.
My brother took it a step further: Throughout the early books Harry seems like flotsam, being pushed here and there by the tides of people who want to use him. Be it Dumbledore or Voldemort, everyone seemed to expect him to be a piece on their chessboard. Even Snape and Sirius saw him as Lilly or James’ son (respectively) rather than as himself.
That is the kind of childhood that can convince someone that the only way to gain control of their own life is to control EVERYTHING.
He predicted the last book would be about Hermionie and Ron having to stop Harry from becoming the tyrannical dictator of Magical Britian.
Because sometimes people don’t grow up to be the person you thought they’d become when they were a kid.
Not Cinderella except in the loosest sense. Sure the mysterious magician who shows up claims to be Cinderella’s “fairy godmother” but there’s no version of the story which explains just what, if anything her parents had to do with said being taking on that role. As for Arthur, the real reason he becomes King is because Merlin wants him. There was never any evidence of Arthur’s improbable conception except for Merlin’s claims.
It’s interesting that most of the example are the big Mouse’s version of fairytale parentage. For example, originally Cinderella never had a Fairy Godmother, but it was the spirit of her dead mother as a willow tree that give her a gown and shoes of gold to attend the ball. Aladdin was a never-do-well that caused his tailor father to die of sickness from worry and drove his mother and family to poverty and only changed for the better after his adventures.
Interesting that Baba Yaga immediately recognizes the ebb and flow of Heroic Ages. Wonder how surprised she’d be to learn that this one is the last one.
No, that just extended it. Eventually someone else will be given that choice to make again. Tyler’s choice was unusual because it seems to have been the first time we got back to back periods with powers being active.
No, Tyler’s decision meant that people would be getting powers for good. This is indeed the Final Heroic Age where superpowers are here to stay.
Remember that Vashti Imperia and other magic users from her time preserved themselves between the Heroic Ages. Where her peers reentered history upon the arrival of new ages, she chose to come back for the Final Age, “when humans would hold onto their strange powers for all time” (http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/09142012/).
@TxGator- no, the point that Tom couldn’t see (or travel) past was when Tyler was asked the question. Once Tyler gave his answer it allowed Tom to travel beyond that point.
Actually, King Arthur started out as a servant to a lord, aspiring to be the squire of the lord’s son, whom he saw as a brother and was his childhood friend. It was only after he drew the sword that they found out he was meant to be king, and he was drawing it to give to the lord’s son for a tournament.
King Arthur started relatively low for a ‘noble’ being the bastard child in his family, didn’t he? Most he could hope for was to be a squire, and that was before the whole yanking of the sword out.
He was born a prince, but he was immediately abandoned to be the foundling of Sir Kay wasn’t he? He wasn’t even permitted to the rank of squire before he drew the sword from the stone.
So while it could have been a little worse, he was still pretty low in the pecking order.
Cinderella likewise was from a rich background. Many stories are not Rags to Riches, but Riches to Rags to Riches (I believe Christopher Booker discussed this in “The Seven Basic Plots” when it came to the maturation plot). Aladdin is, I think, the only person on that list legitimately from a low background.
But the other three lost everything early, and only earn new riches — or recover their own birthright — after trials.
I’m not sure that “common folk” could rightly be applied to these tales, even if you went back to their original forms. Baba Yaga should know that, right? So either the author screwed up, or she’s deliberately misleading (which could fit with Baba Yaga), or she’s using the terms she thinks will most be understood by 84, even if they’re not the correct ones.
There’s a place in rhetoric for that technique, actually. Because rhetoric is the study of how best to present your argument using language that the audience will understand and appreciate. Even if you have to butcher things a bit sometimes. I’m just not sure that’s what’s being employed here.
Also, this is making me wonder how many of the old tales employed actual peasants rising to power, and how many were just royal folk who had fallen?
That’s not the door to the final room/vault/whatever. Completely different design, and appears to be freestanding as well. Looks more like she conjured up an exit with that casting from last strip – maybe a backdoor into her hut? I’d guess she’s no longer trapped, and her release condition was to have a mentor chat with whoever got past the mist gate next.
1. She’s playing the role of the Wicked Witch leading an unsuspecting child into her lair.
2. The first words she spoke to Julie were a lie, Baba Yaga is guarding the final door & Julie should fear her.
That was supposed to be in reply to Rev. Mik McAllister up there.
To clarify, all of those tales have the theme that those in power should wary of those from humble origins. Arthur is unique in that he is a protagonist who didn’t learn that lesson.
In that list, the protagonist is the one that “those in power” have to be wary of, despite their humble origins. So it’s not a lesson for Arthur to have learned…
While Arthur wasn’t really from the “lowest of the low,” he was raised in a somewhat minor noble family and largely overlooked as a squire until his true heritage was revealed by drawing Excalibur, playing to the theme Baba Yaga outlined. Those In Power were the various low kings and other powerful lords who underestimated him and rose up in revolt before he successfully bested them, becoming high king in practicality as well as in name.
Ignoring the lowest of the low isn’t really what brought Arthur’s downfall, either. Mordred was hardly lowly: in at least one version he was already steward of the kingdom while Arthur was out on campaign and used the opportunity to try to usurp the throne, which ultimately lead to the division in the kingdom that killed them both. That’s not the lowest of the low coming up to unseat the unwary powerful, that’s treachery from within by one’s right hand.
In some versions, Excalibur was drawn from the stone. However, in the version I have, when Arthur drew the sword from the stone in battle its brilliance would blind his foes. However, in one battle the sword from the stone was broken. Merlin told Arthur he might be able to get another sword neaby, which turned out to be Excalibur (from the Lady of the Lake). What I also remember, was that Merlin chastised Arthur for saying that the sword was more valuable than the sheath, where Merlin indicated that the sheath was far more valuable than Excalibur.
Yeah, the sheath had magic that would insure that no wound could kill Arthur as long as he wore it. His belt broke when he took that last stab at Mordred, so Mordred’s reprisal finished him off too.
Interesting difference. In my collection of stories, the sheath was stolen by Morgan le Fay and give to another knight (name escapes me) who was tricked into fighting Arthur. The knight couldn’t die despite Excalibur and Arthur’s skill – near death, Arthur realized that the sheath was his and tore it from the knight. Then the spell preventing the two from recognizing each other broke, and they stopped fighting. What happened to the sheath I don’t recall.
I really wish Aaron would stop breaking conversations over pages like this. It’s annoying that the first thing I have to do is scroll down to the bottom of the comic (semi-spoiling it) to go back to the previous comic so that I can see what 84’s comment is in response to.
And then on the next comic, I’ll have to go back to this comic to see Baba’s question so that 84’s response makes sense. I think this is one of those things that works better in print than web.
This is a FISS storyline. This is the Baba Yaga teaching their representative what they should do.
They’re showing the world they’re not to be looked down on (Baba Yaga’s 1st lesson). Who got Bertramzilla out of the city? Not the other heroes, despite their derision for the FISS, but the guys they looked down on. Did Neuronet or the Conjuror get through to the final goal of the egg? No, despite their high esteem for their abilities and because of their arrogance.
At the same time, the FISS are not going to get the respect they want if they don’t promote themselves at least a little bit (her 2nd lesson). We’ve seen this with both Phlo and Firedrake. Phlo is the smarter, more effective hero but she’s relegated to the background. Firedrake pointed out that you need to make yourself flashy but we also know he’s not arrogant and high-and-mighty. He was quite honest about himself, in fact.
Humility has always been a tricky virtue. But it’s worth it.
Veles not only wants Julie to win, he knew she would from the start – he just wanted a way to:
1) Force her to accept the position of “nemesis” so he could have a decent challenge again, and
2) Force everyone else to accept that she was the one for the job, by putting their “best” representitives into a challenge with her that he knew only she could succeed at.
It will be interesting to see what Veles will do while he waiting for Julie to grow up. He seems to be bored with life right now. someone said this a while ago and it would be fun to see Veles become a Teacher at PS238.
I will also state that I got a strong vibe of a semi-flashback scene from Dune (novel) where Paul remembers the lessons he received from the Reverend Mother on ruling.
“The second is that being overly humble rarely makes one a better hero unless you’re in a fairy tale.”
I’m probably splitting hairs here, but since 84 is technically in a fairy tale at this moment, does this mean she need to continue being humble until she gets out?
Remember: Nodwick is based on this world’s distant past, in an age where “superhero powers” took the form of D&D abilities, and they had Harold Porter even back then, so for someone who can sense ripples in time, it was likely an easy bit of divination to link the two together.
Two things Baba Yaga’s first lesson made me think of, likely neither of which are the (primary) point she (and the author) is(/are) really trying to make:
1) She could be giving a hint as to the identity of Julie’s personal hero. While Julie hardly “looks down” on or “ignores” Tyler, she thinks of Moonshadow as being supremely super-powered, forgetting that everything she’s seen him do has been gadget- and skill-based. In that sense, she’s overlooking a fundamental truth about Moonshadow, even as she knows him.
2) As somebody else mentioned, the FISS tend to be “overlooked” by other heroes for their genericness, despite how powerful the FISS package really is. So powerful, in fact, that Argos is ruled by them. It’s an interesting contrast, how Argos is dominated by their FISS and the FISS of Earth are considered also-rans.
Baba Yaga explicitly mentions “the stories you’ve been told.” She must be somehow divining information from 84/Julie herself. Not quite mind reading, but something similar.
I’ve read (but I don’t remember where) a story where a character was accused of knowing the future. That character responded that they didn’t know the future, but were able to generate a pretty good idea by reading the environment and knowing the folks involved. It was compared to predicting the course of a river by looking at the contour data for the landscape. Not perfect, but usually quite good.
In this case, though, it’s a lot more than a mundane explanation could account for. Baba Yaga has been trapped there for who knows how many decades, yet she knows about Harry Potter.
They’ve been there the whole time. They make sure people don’t cheat the maze by just flying over it.
“You can try to go over the walls, but no one has survived it before.” ( http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/2014-11-12/ )
And 20 years in the Future, 84 is wildly considered one of the two greatest heroes of all time (Moon Shadow, of course being the other one) because of the lessons she learns here …
I was gonna say she could just ask Tyler directly for advice, but she doesn’t know he’s Moon Shadow yet, does she?
The lessons she learned here, true…but I think that the more important thing is that she’s going to be teaching these lessons too. Julie 84, the worlds greatest super hero teacher.
I swear to god, if we do not get an epilogue for after this comic done, I will conduct viciousness against the author for unnecessary cruelty. I want to see what this girl becomes!
To be fair if he doesn’t write an ending that leaves room for fanfic authors to write and less face it. We might have a better chance of the author dying leaving it unfinished than having it simply dropped or left without an ending.
An ending would likely be with them still as kids. Zer-Author seems to indicate that he would want an epilogue after the story has ended to show what kind of adults the kids have grown into.
Given the strip is named after the school, and I am unable to find a K thru 12 school in a major city anywhere in the US (also the lack of teenagers in evidence), it’s likely it’ll end no later than grade 8. They’ll be 13 or 14; plenty of room for fanfic (provided Aaron allows such).
Data from the PS238 RPG indicates they are 8 right now. So if it’s a K-5 the strip runs 2 to 3 more years their time; if it’s a K-8 (rarer, but given they’re super kids I’d shoot for that) the strip runs considerably longer. Even allowing for the fact that less than a year has passed in the 10 volumes so far, I don’t think Aaron is too old to finish.
Wanderer — I attended a K-12 school here in the US. (I started there in 7th grade, but most (all but one) of my classmates that year had been at the school together for a bunch of grades before that already.) Admittedly, Annapolis might not fit anyone’s criteria for “a major city”, despite being the state capitol, but at least it’s a city lots of people have heard of (if only for the presence of the US Naval Academy there, maybe also for St. John’s).
Go Obezags!
“Have the right parents”, in three out of four tales.
Also, have dead parents.
In most cases that covers having the right parents.
Well, to be specific, you need to have the sort of parent who teaches you all the right lessons and then dies with enough time to spare for you to be past the worst of the grief when the main plot starts.
Not even close to the point I was making.
Why was Arthur king? Because his father was.
Why was Cinderella able to go the ball in the prettiest outfit? Because her parents somehow convinced a fairy to be her godmother.
Why did Harry Potter escape his abusive family as something other than a sad statistic on orphans? Because his parents were rich wizards.
It all had little to do with what kind of person they were. Oh, of course, you can argue that their eventual success or failure did. But without the right inheritance, they’d never even had gotten to the start line. Without it… better start picking pockets and hope you come across the right lamp.
Ah, very true! Though I’ll still argue that the parents dying is a vital aspect — you can’t get an inheritance from a living parent, after all.
I’d say you’re close.
I mean, yes Cinderella’s parents chose a fairy to be her godmother, but she wouldn’t have needed help from her godmother if her mother was still alive. If her parents were still alive, she would have been at the ball in a fine gown.
And Aladin? I don’t think he gained any advantage from his lack of parents. Are they even dead? All we know is that he is a young man making his way in the world on his own. Maybe they were just really poor.
Even Harry Potter didn’t get the usual full package. Usually, the hero’s parents died before s/he could begin to see them as real people (that is, flawed), so they get to be ideal in his/her mind forever, while the mentor figure (Dumbledore, Merlin) can serve as parent to the hero. But Harry doesn’t have an idealized view of his parent, he doesn’t remember them at all, and through the recollections of others he learns that his father died heroically, but was a bit of a jerk in school.
Only Arthur really got the whole package: his father was king, making Arthur royal. His father was dead, meaning the throne was clear for Arthur. His father had little influence over his upbringing, so … it was easier to accept that Arthur wouldn’t be like his father, wouldn’t make the same mistakes.
@ SpyOne: Actually, in the original version of the story, Aladdin lives with his widowed mother. And yes, they’re poor.
The Dursley’s were not the “right parents!” Mind you, they were not Harry’s parents, just his guardians.
Nothing wrong with them that a good offing would not have cured.
He still had the right parents. His father was James “Prongs” Potter, unregistered Animagus, youngest Seeker of his generation, and one of the Marauders. Without him, Harry wouldn’t have been a natural talent at flying a broom, had the Marauders’ Map or the Invisibility Cloak, or had a stag for a Patronus.
His mother was Lily Evans, one-time girlfriend of Severus Snape. Without her, he wouldn’t have had Snape on his side up to the last book, keeping him alive. (That’s why Snape always looked him in the eyes — the rest of the face was Prongs, but he had his mother’s eyes.)
Of course, in the end, the choice of hero was actually up to the villain. Voldemort chose the Potters’ child as the one who posed the greatest danger. Otherwise, it would have been Neville Longbottom at the forefront as The Boy Who Lived.
Snape was also reading his mind, something Harry never caught on to until later. Also, every time Harry avoided looking anyone in the eyes, they assumed he was hiding something.
Word of God is that James wasn’t a seeker, he was a chaser. Like Ginny, he was a good seeker, and often played with the snitch off the pitch, but preferred goal scoring.
Harry was the ‘youngest seeker in a century.’
The movie assumed James was a seeker before Rowling made it clear, so it was a detail they guessed at and got wrong.
I had thought, when I was only about halfway through, that the Harry Potter books had as a theme that who you are isn’t determined by who your parents were. At least it isn’t locked.
I mean, the stories are loaded with people who changed.
Sirius Black was raised by intolerant bigots, but didn’t become one.
James Potter was a jerk and a bully as a teen, but as a young man chose to defend the weak.
Tom Riddle? Well Dumbledore seemed to think that he wasn’t always doomed to become what he became.
The twist I was expecting was that Draco would turn out to be another apple that fell far from the tree: that he may have been a jerk, but he wouldn’t throw in with EVIL.
My brother took it a step further: Throughout the early books Harry seems like flotsam, being pushed here and there by the tides of people who want to use him. Be it Dumbledore or Voldemort, everyone seemed to expect him to be a piece on their chessboard. Even Snape and Sirius saw him as Lilly or James’ son (respectively) rather than as himself.
That is the kind of childhood that can convince someone that the only way to gain control of their own life is to control EVERYTHING.
He predicted the last book would be about Hermionie and Ron having to stop Harry from becoming the tyrannical dictator of Magical Britian.
Because sometimes people don’t grow up to be the person you thought they’d become when they were a kid.
Not Cinderella except in the loosest sense. Sure the mysterious magician who shows up claims to be Cinderella’s “fairy godmother” but there’s no version of the story which explains just what, if anything her parents had to do with said being taking on that role. As for Arthur, the real reason he becomes King is because Merlin wants him. There was never any evidence of Arthur’s improbable conception except for Merlin’s claims.
It’s interesting that most of the example are the big Mouse’s version of fairytale parentage. For example, originally Cinderella never had a Fairy Godmother, but it was the spirit of her dead mother as a willow tree that give her a gown and shoes of gold to attend the ball. Aladdin was a never-do-well that caused his tailor father to die of sickness from worry and drove his mother and family to poverty and only changed for the better after his adventures.
Interesting that Baba Yaga immediately recognizes the ebb and flow of Heroic Ages. Wonder how surprised she’d be to learn that this one is the last one.
Is the last one? Or does it seem to be the last one, because it is the one we are in atm ?
It’s the last one because Tyler decided that people got to keep their powers, meaning this age of heroes wouldn’t end, as had it’s predecessors.
No, that just extended it. Eventually someone else will be given that choice to make again. Tyler’s choice was unusual because it seems to have been the first time we got back to back periods with powers being active.
Or you know keeping the powers will destroy everything , mostly.
No, Tyler’s decision meant that people would be getting powers for good. This is indeed the Final Heroic Age where superpowers are here to stay.
Remember that Vashti Imperia and other magic users from her time preserved themselves between the Heroic Ages. Where her peers reentered history upon the arrival of new ages, she chose to come back for the Final Age, “when humans would hold onto their strange powers for all time” (http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/09142012/).
I wouldn’t be surprised if Baba Yaga knows more things about time than anyone alive. Knows enough to even know when the time mages/heroes are wrong.
Besides, wasn’t there certain point in time that even the kid with time powers could not see past? Maybe that time is the next age of none powers.
@TxGator- no, the point that Tom couldn’t see (or travel) past was when Tyler was asked the question. Once Tyler gave his answer it allowed Tom to travel beyond that point.
I’ll give her Aladdin, Cinderella and King Arthur, but how does she know about Harry Potter and not know it’s one of those ages again?
Perhaps it’s because everyone in the magic world knows Harry Potter… 😉
The same way she knew of 84 not singing her own praises.
Umm… King Arthur did not have a Happy Ending.
He also didn’t start as the “lowest of the low” so they’re both wrong there.
Actually, King Arthur started out as a servant to a lord, aspiring to be the squire of the lord’s son, whom he saw as a brother and was his childhood friend. It was only after he drew the sword that they found out he was meant to be king, and he was drawing it to give to the lord’s son for a tournament.
“One of these things is not like the others…”
King Arthur started relatively low for a ‘noble’ being the bastard child in his family, didn’t he? Most he could hope for was to be a squire, and that was before the whole yanking of the sword out.
He was born a prince, but he was immediately abandoned to be the foundling of Sir Kay wasn’t he? He wasn’t even permitted to the rank of squire before he drew the sword from the stone.
So while it could have been a little worse, he was still pretty low in the pecking order.
Fosterage was a common medieval practice, though.
Cinderella likewise was from a rich background. Many stories are not Rags to Riches, but Riches to Rags to Riches (I believe Christopher Booker discussed this in “The Seven Basic Plots” when it came to the maturation plot). Aladdin is, I think, the only person on that list legitimately from a low background.
But the other three lost everything early, and only earn new riches — or recover their own birthright — after trials.
I’m not sure that “common folk” could rightly be applied to these tales, even if you went back to their original forms. Baba Yaga should know that, right? So either the author screwed up, or she’s deliberately misleading (which could fit with Baba Yaga), or she’s using the terms she thinks will most be understood by 84, even if they’re not the correct ones.
There’s a place in rhetoric for that technique, actually. Because rhetoric is the study of how best to present your argument using language that the audience will understand and appreciate. Even if you have to butcher things a bit sometimes. I’m just not sure that’s what’s being employed here.
Also, this is making me wonder how many of the old tales employed actual peasants rising to power, and how many were just royal folk who had fallen?
She said <b?mostly about the lowest of the low.
She also said those in power should be aware of those beneath them, which Arthur failed at.
Actually, it depends on which version. If you ignore the parts that the French added to his story, than it does.
Wait a minute! Baba Yaga entered first! Is she playing 84 for a chump?
That’s not the door to the final room/vault/whatever. Completely different design, and appears to be freestanding as well. Looks more like she conjured up an exit with that casting from last strip – maybe a backdoor into her hut? I’d guess she’s no longer trapped, and her release condition was to have a mentor chat with whoever got past the mist gate next.
Yes. In this egg, Fairy Tale Rules apply:-
1. She’s playing the role of the Wicked Witch leading an unsuspecting child into her lair.
2. The first words she spoke to Julie were a lie, Baba Yaga is guarding the final door & Julie should fear her.
Generally under Fairy Tale Rules, guardians aren’t allowed to lie, only give misleading (but technically true) answers.
Neither did Voldemort. Or Maghreb/Jafar in Aladdin. Or the wicked stepmother/stepsisters/father, depending on the version.
I never noticed it that theme.
That was supposed to be in reply to Rev. Mik McAllister up there.
To clarify, all of those tales have the theme that those in power should wary of those from humble origins. Arthur is unique in that he is a protagonist who didn’t learn that lesson.
In that list, the protagonist is the one that “those in power” have to be wary of, despite their humble origins. So it’s not a lesson for Arthur to have learned…
While Arthur wasn’t really from the “lowest of the low,” he was raised in a somewhat minor noble family and largely overlooked as a squire until his true heritage was revealed by drawing Excalibur, playing to the theme Baba Yaga outlined. Those In Power were the various low kings and other powerful lords who underestimated him and rose up in revolt before he successfully bested them, becoming high king in practicality as well as in name.
Ignoring the lowest of the low isn’t really what brought Arthur’s downfall, either. Mordred was hardly lowly: in at least one version he was already steward of the kingdom while Arthur was out on campaign and used the opportunity to try to usurp the throne, which ultimately lead to the division in the kingdom that killed them both. That’s not the lowest of the low coming up to unseat the unwary powerful, that’s treachery from within by one’s right hand.
He drew the Sword in the Stone. Excalibur was given to him by a watery tart.
In some versions, Excalibur was drawn from the stone. However, in the version I have, when Arthur drew the sword from the stone in battle its brilliance would blind his foes. However, in one battle the sword from the stone was broken. Merlin told Arthur he might be able to get another sword neaby, which turned out to be Excalibur (from the Lady of the Lake). What I also remember, was that Merlin chastised Arthur for saying that the sword was more valuable than the sheath, where Merlin indicated that the sheath was far more valuable than Excalibur.
Yeah, the sheath had magic that would insure that no wound could kill Arthur as long as he wore it. His belt broke when he took that last stab at Mordred, so Mordred’s reprisal finished him off too.
Interesting difference. In my collection of stories, the sheath was stolen by Morgan le Fay and give to another knight (name escapes me) who was tricked into fighting Arthur. The knight couldn’t die despite Excalibur and Arthur’s skill – near death, Arthur realized that the sheath was his and tore it from the knight. Then the spell preventing the two from recognizing each other broke, and they stopped fighting. What happened to the sheath I don’t recall.
Well, I am remembering something that I read when I was younger than Julie.
I really wish Aaron would stop breaking conversations over pages like this. It’s annoying that the first thing I have to do is scroll down to the bottom of the comic (semi-spoiling it) to go back to the previous comic so that I can see what 84’s comment is in response to.
And then on the next comic, I’ll have to go back to this comic to see Baba’s question so that 84’s response makes sense. I think this is one of those things that works better in print than web.
This is a FISS storyline. This is the Baba Yaga teaching their representative what they should do.
They’re showing the world they’re not to be looked down on (Baba Yaga’s 1st lesson). Who got Bertramzilla out of the city? Not the other heroes, despite their derision for the FISS, but the guys they looked down on. Did Neuronet or the Conjuror get through to the final goal of the egg? No, despite their high esteem for their abilities and because of their arrogance.
At the same time, the FISS are not going to get the respect they want if they don’t promote themselves at least a little bit (her 2nd lesson). We’ve seen this with both Phlo and Firedrake. Phlo is the smarter, more effective hero but she’s relegated to the background. Firedrake pointed out that you need to make yourself flashy but we also know he’s not arrogant and high-and-mighty. He was quite honest about himself, in fact.
Humility has always been a tricky virtue. But it’s worth it.
Related thought: selfishness can be a tricky flaw. To help others you sometimes have to help yourself.
Very true, sir. Very true.
You can’t rely on the bad guys to not backstab you after, but you can bet they’ll help you prevent mutual annihilation should the situation arise.
And.. has she delayed her long enough yet?
I dunno if Veles WANTS Julie to lose, at this point.
Veles not only wants Julie to win, he knew she would from the start – he just wanted a way to:
1) Force her to accept the position of “nemesis” so he could have a decent challenge again, and
2) Force everyone else to accept that she was the one for the job, by putting their “best” representitives into a challenge with her that he knew only she could succeed at.
It will be interesting to see what Veles will do while he waiting for Julie to grow up. He seems to be bored with life right now. someone said this a while ago and it would be fun to see Veles become a Teacher at PS238.
I will also state that I got a strong vibe of a semi-flashback scene from Dune (novel) where Paul remembers the lessons he received from the Reverend Mother on ruling.
“The second is that being overly humble rarely makes one a better hero unless you’re in a fairy tale.”
I’m probably splitting hairs here, but since 84 is technically in a fairy tale at this moment, does this mean she need to continue being humble until she gets out?
Yes, for the moment. After all, the theme of the story is humility.
Harry Potter huh? I expected Baba Yaga to have been trapped too long to know who Harry Potter is. Shows what I know I guess.
Remember: Nodwick is based on this world’s distant past, in an age where “superhero powers” took the form of D&D abilities, and they had Harold Porter even back then, so for someone who can sense ripples in time, it was likely an easy bit of divination to link the two together.
At least she and Tyler will be able to have long talks about all that praise heaped unwanted upon them.
“Wear what on my breast? I don’t have any breasts!”
*looks down*
“At least, not yet, I don’t. Although Miss Kyle said in a few years…”
Nobody said whether the Eye was a thing or a person; maybe Baba Yaga IS the Eye.
Two things Baba Yaga’s first lesson made me think of, likely neither of which are the (primary) point she (and the author) is(/are) really trying to make:
1) She could be giving a hint as to the identity of Julie’s personal hero. While Julie hardly “looks down” on or “ignores” Tyler, she thinks of Moonshadow as being supremely super-powered, forgetting that everything she’s seen him do has been gadget- and skill-based. In that sense, she’s overlooking a fundamental truth about Moonshadow, even as she knows him.
2) As somebody else mentioned, the FISS tend to be “overlooked” by other heroes for their genericness, despite how powerful the FISS package really is. So powerful, in fact, that Argos is ruled by them. It’s an interesting contrast, how Argos is dominated by their FISS and the FISS of Earth are considered also-rans.
Baba Yaga explicitly mentions “the stories you’ve been told.” She must be somehow divining information from 84/Julie herself. Not quite mind reading, but something similar.
I’ve read (but I don’t remember where) a story where a character was accused of knowing the future. That character responded that they didn’t know the future, but were able to generate a pretty good idea by reading the environment and knowing the folks involved. It was compared to predicting the course of a river by looking at the contour data for the landscape. Not perfect, but usually quite good.
In this case, though, it’s a lot more than a mundane explanation could account for. Baba Yaga has been trapped there for who knows how many decades, yet she knows about Harry Potter.
She has the entire Harry Potter series on her Kindle. Amazon, it’s everywhere!
Has no one else noticed that there are dragons flying around in the sky?
Their presence and purpose are mentioned when they first entered the egg on pages http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/2014-11-06/ and http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/2014-11-12/
They’ve been there the whole time. They make sure people don’t cheat the maze by just flying over it.
“You can try to go over the walls, but no one has survived it before.” ( http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/2014-11-12/ )
anyone else weirded out that Baba Yaga the myth on which hanzel and grettle is based is helping a child out