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Messages - Shay

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1
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 37: Discussion
« on: July 10, 2013, 07:13:36 pm »
I am curious as to how this involves Maytag. I find it really unlikely, for plot reasons, that she would accept all this as true and then just... do nothing about it. That would make for a strange story, where we find out the truth and then.... nothing happens, Maytag goes back and finishes her competition, it's just a fun fact she learned about the world.

But for character reasons, why does this concern her? She's not the 'save the world' type. She's the entertainer type. Right now, I suspect she's more interested in getting back to the competition than getting involved in some sort of mission to reveal the truth about the world through experiments and overthrowing conspiracy governments/people. I mean... I just can't imagine her abandoning all her friends and goals to willingly go romping about with these guys on some bizarre journey, you know? Where's the motive? She's not that altruistic.

I suspect that she will be roped into helping these guys unwillingly somehow.


2
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 37: Discussion
« on: July 03, 2013, 11:55:14 am »
Okay, the rules of magic are...

1. You have to meditate and train in order to use it, but anyone can use it after this training

2. You use a word to activate spells (unless you're Suspiria).

3. You gain these words (and thus new spells) by meditating/dreaming

4. You do certain tests to 'level up' as a sorcerer.

5. You have a pool of magic you can use, and when you level up you don't increase the pool, but your ability to use it effectively.

6. You sleep to regain that pool of magic.

So, for some reason, these machines have to work in such a way that all these rules remain true, because we've seen the effects of the rules.

So, you have to train to use the machines.... and using them exhausts you. But the meditating to obtain new spells? The machines commands are connected to some sort of... dreamspace?

3
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 37: Discussion
« on: June 29, 2013, 11:32:07 am »
Ooh, this is getting interesting.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the 'dreaming/meditating to get new spells' thing?

Somehow, I don't expect this to be horrifying, like magic eats souls, or something. I mean... that one guy who was with Danzig was using the magic flower...thing. If the truth were horrible, I would expect no one who knew the truth would continue using magic. But if the truth is complicated and hard to understand...

I hope Maytag asks how the Thin Man knows all this though. How do you possibly find out that magic doesn't exist? 

4
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 36: Discussion
« on: April 29, 2013, 03:58:47 pm »
Oh. Are we going to see why it's called "Flipside" now? I always thought it referred to Maytag's personalities, but we now know that she doesn't really have two 'sides' of personalities so...  if there's another side to this world it would fit pretty well.

5
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 36: Discussion
« on: April 26, 2013, 12:46:28 pm »
we don't even know {if I recall} if that is the truth - that she even needed to eat people to power her regeneration.  She may have only THOUGHT she needed to eat sentient beings to power her regeneration.. how sad it would be if she was just demented and delusional!

We know it because Melter told her, and Melter is definitely real and working for the Thin Man because he captured Maytag.
Also, in the Bloody Mary Side Story, Mary tried eating normal food and got sick because of it. So, what Melter said was true.


6
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 36: Discussion
« on: April 26, 2013, 11:16:22 am »
Well... we know that he is telling the truth, as far as he knows at least, because otherwise May would be able to tell he was lying. But I still think it's a little impossible that he's actually a good guy, just giving out power for the benefit of the helpless people, just misunderstood by the world.
At the very least, no one is that altruistic. And no one is that purely good. (At least not in this comic)

I think the weirdness is that we've seen two experiments, gone very differently.
Clairen, who was happy with the outcome, remembered asking for it, and in general is good evidence for what the Thin Man is saying now.
And Mary, who remembers nothing, and seems to have been forced to become a monster. She is evidence of the 'madman experimenter' story that the Phalanx/Conclave have been telling.

There's evidence for both, but both can't be true.


7
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 36: Discussion
« on: April 22, 2013, 02:51:33 pm »
So then, what he's saying is...  if the experiment is unsuccessful, the Thin Man releases them right back where they came from? He doesn't try to undo the experiment, or at least minimize the body horror he's done?
And if none of that is available, if he's created a monster that can never be undone... he doesn't kill them? I feel like leaving them to run free, kill some people, and eventually be destroyed by the Phalanx is a bad alternative to just euthanizing them himself.

8
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 36: Discussion
« on: April 17, 2013, 09:48:40 am »
I have to say, I'm really liking how this is going. It's been awhile since I've been really looking forward to what the next page holds, and this arc is really interesting.

9
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 36: Discussion
« on: March 28, 2013, 11:15:03 am »
What? Are you suggesting that they arranged this whole charade just so Maytag could 'catch' them and feel all savvy and clever and on top of things, when this is all part of Plan A?

Oh man, that would be the best!
I like when Maytag's confidence ends up being unfounded. Like in the poker game where she ended up losing, hard.

It would be really unexpected (and sort of satisfying) if the next page was something like "we don't care what you want to make clear. We just wanted to verify you were smart enough to be a good test subject. Off to the experimentation table with you! You can't stop us."

I get the feeling Stargoat is right though, and they wouldn't do the charade at all unless they wanted something from May.

10
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 36: Discussion
« on: March 27, 2013, 12:28:27 pm »
I think the worst situation she talked her way out of, was when Bloody Mary was eating her. Mary wanted to eat her, she didn't want that. So her solution was 'become the friend of the lonely girl so she won't eat me'. She had something to offer.

Even when she was negotiation with the Xibulba'd knight in exchange for Bern's life, she made it into a negotiation using intimidation.

With this group, they want to experiment on her (or change her or use her or something), and she doesn't want that. But she doesn't have anything to offer as replacement for that, like she did with Mary. She doesn't have a way to intimidate, like with the knight.

If I were Maytag right now, in a room full of potentially hostile people, obviously trying to manipulate me, without anything to negotiate or intimidate... I would be very nervous.

11
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 36: Discussion
« on: March 20, 2013, 07:18:39 pm »
I think some of that might be true. Giving people what they want, and it turning out wrong.
That doesn't explain Bloody Mary, but it could be Melter going off on her own, or Mary forgetting what she wished for, or any number of things.

I doubt Maytag would wish for anything though, precisely because she understands herself. She's said before how awful she is. Rotten to the core. I get the feeling she would view herself as the worst sort of person to get the Thin Man Treatment.

12
Flipside Discussion / Re: Bonus Story Discussion
« on: February 13, 2013, 05:41:40 pm »
Seeing it now, Clairen reminds me a lot of May in some ways... In both appearance and a little bit in personality.

And yeah, Bern definitely has a 'type' at this point.

13
Flipside Discussion / Re: Bonus Story Discussion
« on: February 12, 2013, 07:49:38 am »
Oh Bern. Why would you crush on this woman?  She's crazy.

Obviously, Polly turned out alright in the end but... sheesh.

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Bonus Story Discussion
« on: February 08, 2013, 10:57:26 pm »
Yesss. There's the scar.
I am very satisfied by this.

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Bonus Story Discussion
« on: January 30, 2013, 10:21:37 am »
Maybe Bern just likes them different? Polly and May are certainly uh... odd birds.

I really don't think May can get jealous though. Simply because Maytag always operates by "if my love is happy then so am I" thing.
Even if Bern left Maytag for Polly, I think Maytag would be very sad about it, but also supportive.
I just can't imagine her clinging to anyone, for any reason.

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Bonus Story Discussion
« on: January 29, 2013, 11:54:35 am »
Yeah, I'm betting this is where the scar comes from.

This doesn't seem like it would be a fond memory for Bern though...

17
Flipside Discussion / Re: Bonus Story Discussion
« on: January 27, 2013, 01:32:15 pm »
I don't think we've seen it in action enough, really.

We've seen her fight with it two, three times. Polly is always against one or two opponents, and she stands still while using it. It might require a lot of concentration to use.
As far as 'feats of a warrior', the sort of things Bern pulls off all the time, we haven't seen anything active at all from Polly. This makes me wonder if she's actually strong, or if it's just her weapon doing all the work. 

18
Flipside Discussion / Re: Bonus Story Discussion
« on: January 25, 2013, 03:59:18 pm »
I wonder if we'll find out how Bern got her scar? We know it came from Polly/Blackbird, and if this is all a flashback anyways it may be a good time for it!
That should be expected from such a backstory?
And I don't think such a scar could be done with Polly ball thingie :-\

But she says so. http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=1293
Admittedly, Bern's scar does seem like more of a blade wound...

19
Flipside Discussion / Re: Bonus Story Discussion
« on: January 23, 2013, 05:01:00 pm »
I wonder if we'll find out how Bern got her scar? We know it came from Polly/Blackbird, and if this is all a flashback anyways it may be a good time for it!

20
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: January 15, 2013, 08:08:03 am »

Alright, so I'm shipping Polly/Bern pretty hard right now.

With Bern and May, May is the young, energetic social girl that everyone loves being around. And Bern ends up taking care of her quite a bit, saving her from danger, being an emotional rock, so on. She's the parent to May's 'child' in many ways. 

I see Polly either as Bern's equal, or a reverse of the situation with May. The whole 'taking care of Bern' thing? That's not something May (or most people) can really do.

(Not that May doesn't provide support in her own way. But still. I'm really warming up to Polly here, and hoping for some side by side fighting in an arena. <3)

I would want to see some positive cliche in Flipside for once ::)
Why not?

Well, we've got the 'true love conquers all' thing from May and Bern? Despite their vast differences, so on, so on? That hasn't been destroyed. Yet.


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Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: January 14, 2013, 03:17:16 pm »

Also I wonder what Grant will do when he will wake up sober and learn that his only daughter and/or her friend got such punishment for healing him, I still hope that guy has some spark to set up than just being old alcoholic geezer who doesn't care about anything anymore.

I don't know. I would rather Grant stay as he is.  Having some transformation into his old hero self/good father figure because Bern's sacrifice 'showed him the error of his ways'? It's a little cliche.

I would rather he continue drinking himself to death because, y'know, that happens sometimes. People destroy themselves, and there's nothing you can do to stop them, no matter how hard you try or how much you sacrifice. And I think that's an okay moral for Bern to learn.

22
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: January 11, 2013, 10:38:54 pm »
Oh god that will wreck Bern. And has some similarities to the whole 'Hurting May to punish Bern' thing back in the beginning with the cutting off of fingers and... breasts. But, I don't think they'll go for it.

The Enforcers don't know Bern like we do. They don't know that hurting those around her is a more effective punishment. ( Or that tossing her back and forth through a portal would be pretty punishing also. )

So they'd be hurting their Enforcer, letting Bern go 'free' and hoping that their friendship is important enough that Bern is still punished by it. Which is right, but again, they don't know that.

Why trade a definite punishment, for one that may work and also hurts your employee?

23
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: January 10, 2013, 12:15:21 pm »
'Marks' could just mean 'lashings'. So, Bern would get a thousand strikes of the whip.

...Still a pretty brutal punishment though.

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: January 09, 2013, 12:46:49 pm »
Maybe trying to throw Bern out of the house was something the Healer wasn't supposed to do. It was violent action, after all. And by doing it, maybe forfeited any legal action she could take against Bern later? Thus making this a sham.

In a completely unrelated curiosity... I wonder how Stalkers are dealt with?

25
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: January 09, 2013, 09:29:08 am »

I apologize for being demeaning, but anyone with a brain knows that an entire society can't be judged based on one single upper class neighborhood. That's obviously moronic. It's the kind of thing anyone would realize is wrong if you just sat down and thought about it for a minute. But that stupidity is the basis for your opinion, and stupid opinions are kind of my berserk button.

These kind of insults are unacceptable.  Also, while it's okay to post criticism, it's not okay to post lots of meandering ranting posts, especially if the purpose of those posts seems to be to fill the thread with negativity.

So, I'm going to place a 1 week ban on you.  You are welcome to come back after 1 week so long as you take a more respectful tone with others, and exercise some restraint.

Thank you.

I think both of you are being fairly opinionated right now.

I think Burn's argument has some merit. I think her actions were more impulsive than a matter of relying on Polly to bail her out, but I'm not a big fan of the turn this scene seems to be taking. Bern's a main character and naturally needs an "out", but I wish there had been a little more time before Polly had shown up. It feels a little instantaneous for the sake of the story, though Polly's standing with the enforcers and her general personality do at least make her sudden arrival make sense.

I'm sure that Polly means to come in and release Bern no matter what. But who says she has the authority to do that? And if she tries to do it by force, I can't see Bern being cool with that. If Bern wanted to escape the law by force, or by running, she already had the means to do so. And she didn't.
I'm more of the opinion that Bern will refuse all help, believing that she knowingly broke the rules and so deserves the punishment.
The only thing that might change any of this is if Bern finds out May has been kidnapped.

(Unless the 'sham' comment by Polly isn't just an insult she's using and this is, in fact, a false proceeding in some way?? )

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: January 07, 2013, 09:15:30 pm »
Oh. This latest page made me love Bernadette a little bit more.

I really like this arc.

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: January 04, 2013, 11:18:39 am »
Ugh... That's entirely too much stuff to respond to. K.I.S.S. You know?

The Thin Man is in Iscariot, has been for awhile, and hasn't been caught. Is that Iscariot's fault? No. But that doesn't matter to the average person.
The point is, there's a dangerous man creating monsters in Iscariot, and no one seems to be able to catch him. There is NOT a dangerous man of that kind in Marvallo.
There's no doubt that some people will choose the monster-free country, especially if rumour travels about what's happening in Iscariot.

People are living in Marvallo. All I'm doing is proposing one reason why they might have chosen to live there.
You seem a little jumpy at people who defend the place though.
Chill out a bit. There's no need to be quite as demeaning as you're being.

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: January 03, 2013, 11:21:58 pm »
1.It only seems less dangerous because the only time Bern's spent in Marvallo has been in the good neighborhoods, protected by badass former gang leader Polly.

Bern spent at least three years in a ghetto when she was in that gang growing up. And Bern hasn't exactly been protected from anything except for loud drunks who weren't even bothering her specifically. We've seen literally NO actual enemies in Marvallo.
We have a hint that Bern's memories of this place are 'dark', but that's not that specific.

But it's not like Marvallo doesn't have villains. There's just no reason they'd appear out of nowhere.

Why not? That's what happens everywhere else. Assuming the ghettoes are breeding grounds for the worst kind of people... wouldn't it spill over? Wouldn't there be stories of 'the twenty people murdered last week' or some other such gossip going on in the background?
The healer implied that being forced to heal is something that shouldn't happen in her neighborhood because of 'dues'. But no one has expressed any sort of fear or disgust for the ghettoes and what happens there, pity for those who live there, so on.

In short: The ghettoes don't sound so much like a hellscape of violence and awful, unthinkable deeds. They sound more like... the wrong side of the tracks, where you're likely to get mugged, or shot at if you piss off someone. Which, again, is a bit better than the monsters that Iscariot keeps pumping out.

Both Clairen and Bloody Mary just happened to be in Iscariot, because that's where the comic was set at the time.
...
Noventia's villainy taking place in Iscariot is also a matter of the comic's setting, since laws against violence wouldn't have stopped the clearly psychotic housewife from killing Seraph, who wasn't even "dangerous" or a villain to begin with.

Arguing away things with 'because that's where the heroes were', isn't really an argument.
Clairen, was already a capable swordswoman, and an assassin (I believe?) before getting the Thin Man treatment. And it was a pretty tame treatment. You can't blame her on the Thin Man, she did that stuff all on her own.

Bloody Mary was created, but she was loose in that town for... a long time. The Phalanx 'protection' is pretty equal to Marvallo's in that regard. Spots get missed, but that doesn't reflect on the system as a whole. It just means you need more people to keep those spots from getting missed: Which is what Polly was saying.

And technically, the psychotic housewife killed him once and managed to get away with it for like... MONTHS. No one ever caught her, and authorities didn't seem to be chasing after her. The only reason she was stopped was because of the murder/suicide thing she did with her husband.

In Iscariot we've heard about, or directly seen: mass murderers, insanely powerful magical objects that may turn you INTO a mass murderer, people disappearing, various Thin Man subjects of increasing horror, and so on. We've seen and heard of none of that in Marvallo.

The protection in Marvollo is probably about the same in Iscariot. The same number of people sign up to be Enforcers, as sign up to be Phalanx/guards/security for Iscariot. The difference is that in Iscariot, there's some seriously scary stuff going on that doesn't seem to have a parallel in Marvallo.

The rest of your stuff was a bit too political for me to tackle.

29
Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: January 02, 2013, 09:42:54 am »
One thing I think Marvallo has going for it? It seems less dangerous. Bern's been running around there for awhile now, and grew up there even, and hasn't run into any trouble... besides some unhelpful people.
Compare that to the rest of the world where you had the Xibulba collar and its two serial killer products, Clairen, Bloody Mary, Suspiria, that sorcerer and his wife... Outside of Marvollo, there's some sort of enemy appearing every other week. Enemies that won't hesitate to kill people, and do so very easily.
If news of those sorts of people and incidents keep drifting down to Marvollo... is it really any wonder that people might stay there, pay their dues, and know that they'll live a safe, happy life as long as they keep making the money to do so?

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 35: Discussion
« on: December 14, 2012, 12:50:27 pm »
I'd imagine it would be hard to start a community like that though. If you do a selfless act, one that loses you money, you hope that your 'friend' will help you down the line in return but... if they don't, you've lost more than you would've than by just relying only on yourself. You can't even take revenge in any way on that person, so they have nothing to fear by refusing you when you thought they would help.

I'd imagine family would be very close here though. I'm also curious if there's some way of punishing people here, without breaking the violence rule. Like, if this Healer refused care for you and your family... would you then be able to ostracize them in some way? Or... something?

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