Ref: Triquetra first appearance.
Yes, the size is different; we were still being cautious about being too obvious back then – I’d been afraid if we made it too large we might as well just stick one of those “Monty Python” pointing finger overlays right on the image. However, now that it is coming into play it’s been enlarged. Comic magic!
I really debated whether or not to have Marissa reference the show Charmed, which also used the triquetra symbol prominently, but the idea that she’d gravitate toward Ninja Leprechauns instead just seemed like more fun.
And yes! A new page! Sporadic as ever, but they’re happening. AND NEW VOTE INCENTIVE!!!
More below!
Bobservations
Witchy Woman
I actually have a couple of self-declared witches/wiccans/people with black fingernail polish in my immediate family, both male and female, so I do have people I could consult as we get into this part of the story. However, I tend to shy away from doing that, since they’ll probably just tell me I’m doing it wrong. And then turn me into a frog or something. I think it’s been mentioned before that I am not much for religion, but I do tend to have an insane passel of superstitious beliefs. A lot of my effects work involves putting up high ladders, right? Not once in my whole life have I ever walked under one, even if going around meant stepping in mud or squeezing past thorn bushes. My family will testify that I keep a block of wood in the door pocket of my car, simply so I will have some wood to knock on if I even think a statement bordering on optimistic. I had to buy all the same color socks, because when I used to have socks that were different colors I swiftly developed “lucky socks” and “evil socks” and getting dressed started to get really complicated.
So while I might carefully and respectfully query some of my incense-wafting relatives about a nuance or two, I’ll probably try not to bother them too much. Wouldn’t want to upset anyone. Even though I don’t actually believe any of that stuff is real or anything.
Ribbit.
— Bob – who could totally pitch a ninja leprechaun animated series
Sixth WOMAN Maxie old boy!
Not a good idea to be annoying your “Guardian Angel” and all that
Without her help, you more than likely have long since been promoted
To “Fully Dead”
SECOND woman, Ro’Wan, old boy.
I didn’t expect you to be a superstitious fella, Bob.
Well, adding this together… one might get the the idea that someone (something? somebeing?) was already after Sophie and waited for a chance to catch her without protection… Since you can go to bank all your life without getting involved in a robbery. And a failed & dirty one on top. That might be a new angle to consider. Perhaps they don’t have just a gangster and the cops on their tails, but something supernatural, too… then again, I wonder why it didn’t already strike.
About ladders… Somehow I… learned(?)… that there is some truth to it: Ladders are prone to have paint buckets, tools and whatnot put on them, these in turn have an increased probability to fall down when the ladder is getting nudged, and even if you don’t nudge it, someone on the ladder can drop said paint bucket or tools even without external encouragement and then your probability to get hit by the falling item raises quite some from near zero in case you happen under the ladder.
Tl;dr: This superstition does something good 🙂
I know much less about socks and colors. I just have my preferences, actually one: No blue.
“you happen under the ladder.” -> “you happen to be under the ladder at that time.”
New page is up? Great! That means it’s time to… hmm… I don’t seem to be able to vote. Trouble with TWC? It just redirects to their main page.
Personally I’d rather go over the weaponry, but whatever floats your boat.
Oh now that you mention it, I had the same trouble. After several failed attempts I scrolled down the list and voted there. Nice incentive, if a bit bloody.
Which reminds me… there was something about the last one that weirded me out a bit: Marissa’s teeth. And here I see the same with Max’ teeth. While I think I have an idea about why it’s weird for me (because everything else is rather realistic, the flat white teeth seem to be from/in a different style), I have no idea how to do it any better, not even theoretically. (But still…)
“nobody will notice” i told myself…
Also, new vote incentive posted, so come back and vote! Vote early, vote often 🙂
Not much point in voting if they say that a computer that’s been off since noon Friday has already voted. Whatever they changed, it looks like it borked up the site.
Checked out the new vote incentive. I don’t think Marissa could possible jog in that, seeing as she’d bounce rather painfully o_o
no pain, no gain
It’s not just about pain, from what I’ve heard bouncing like that provoque sagging. Sometimes about the movements tiring or wearing the supporties tissues…
I choked on my beer at “Adobe Acrobat” last night so you owe me a new keyboard (Still it’s something of a necessary evil I suppose Adobe not the beer). 😀
Sixth “man” can indeed be man or woman. English speakers get weirdly focused on the few nouns that remain clearly gendered (cows, geese, foxes, man, mankind). Good for you for not rushing into deliberate linguistic ignorance (and ethnocentrism, btw – take that pronoun warriors – as an ETL speaker married to an ES[seventh]L speaker raising an ES[second]L speaker, I can stand up for English literacy without as much of the usual static.
Also, the Clive S. Lewis or G. K. Chesterton in me wishes to harrumph that ” I am not much for religion, but I do tend to have an insane passel of superstitious beliefs.” should perhaps replace the “but” with an “and”. Atheists and agnostics tend to, from our perspective, to go towards either the hyper-rationalist extreme (more common from the French Revolution to the 1970s) you assume or (more common before or since once The Big Bag got so many of the hard science types, and y chromosome Adam and mitochondrial Eve worked on many of the softer but still firm science types) towards superstition/folk Confucianism/various shamanic paganism. It is analogous (Lewis dealt with this at least in A Pilgrim’s Regress, Perelandra, some Narnia, Mere Christianity and the below-cited work, and Chesterton’s Father Brown had some quips about it) to this Lewis thought: There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (originally 1942; this edition: Harper Collins, 1996) ix.
Well, you have no problem handling English, that’s certain. 🙂 And I definitely fall into Category Two there – I’d elucidate further, but that would be Bad Luck.
The most likely source (imho) of Max’s phrasing “sixth man”: The 1997 movie “The Sixth Man”, about a ghost helping a basketball team. That the Strike Team has five members (same as the number of players an official basketball team is allowed to have on the court at once) who aren’t ghosts makes it a more obvious parallel; but it might be that even if they had a different number of people on the team that weren’t existentially challenged he’d have used the same phrasing.
All y’all need to go to TV Tropes.com: in this order, search “The Team”, then “Five-Man Band”, then “Sixth Ranger”. Although I do hope our ghost girl averts the usual powering-down-over-time aspect of that last one.