"Sob! What _is_ reality?"

NathanAlderman · Post by **NathanAlderman** » Tue Mar 20, 2001 8:49 am

... and the "Shanna-seeing-right-through-her-imprisonment" gag just keeps getting better. I was very nearly laughing out loud at this one.Still, if T promises this is their scariest story ever, one can only imagine that it can only get worse from here. I wonder if T and co. have seen that "Farscape"episode, "Won't Get Fooled Again", where the hero thinks he's in an alien-created simulation of home (again) to fool him into giving up his secrets (again.) So he basically blows his "responsibilities" off, makes fun of everyone, throws people off balconies... and then he learns that the aliens aren't trying to get information out of him. They're just trying to drive him insane.-- Nathan,
who bids a hearty "welcome back" to Jason Waltrip and his peerless art. [This message has been edited by NathanAlderman (edited 03-21-2001).]

Czhorat · Post by **Czhorat** » Tue Mar 20, 2001 9:11 am

Shanna's obviously not much of a poker player; she's showing her hand far too early. Her only weapon might be her ability to manipulate her captor's perception of her state of mind; bragging that she's figured it all out gives away that advantage. Had she played along, the doctor wouldn't know if he was getting to her or if she was playing along. Now that she's openly defiant, there's that much more insentive for the FiB to start resorting to drugs or surgery.

Catnik · Post by **Catnik** » Tue Mar 20, 2001 9:14 am

<IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/biggrin.gif"> Whooo! <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/biggrin.gif"> Shanna just kicks more and more tail - she is rather rapidly becoming my favorite ("non")Fan. However - what if she's not -in- the FiB headquarters anymore? She's bound to be waiting for Smithy Jones to show up, and we all know that claiming sanity in a real institution is the fastest route to getting pegged loonier than the Trix rabbit... and her tactics won't accomplish much. So, unless that buxom blonde betty is actually Will, then she's still in deep trouble...
Das Catnik!
brought to you by too little sleep, and too much coffee. Hah!

Glazius Falconar · Post by **Glazius Falconar** » Tue Mar 20, 2001 10:38 am

Heh. In re false commitment:Ya. The quickest and most effective way to break her would be to fake a transfer to an _actual_ mental institution from some _other_ mental institution, where she has a faked past and calls there to inquire after her are monitored by an FiB wiretap.Mention she has a history of paranoid-delusional psychoses and they'll do a _very_ nice job of trying to break whatever hold she has on reality.Especially if they actually _don't_ deny anything but her own existence at appropriate history-making scenes. After all, her presence was largely undocumented, and she wrote the crackpot column in a small-town newspaper. And anyone else who might know of her existence is not in any position to pick up their phones right now. If, indeed, they choose to humor her and "feed her delusion".As for mental institutions keeping the supposedly sane locked away... yeah. It's happened before. In a clandestine study in the 90s, some psychologist-certified sane volunteers went to mental institutions claiming they were hearing voices. It was interesting, to say the least, to read some of the doctors' comments on the absolutely normal behavior they exhibited there - and what was truly odd was that the other mental patients figured out they were plants.I can't give you chapter and verse, as my psych text is currently at home and I am at college, but yah. True sanity is the exact middle on a whoooooole buncha bell curves, and I doubt you could find a hundred people in the United States who hit it exactly.Undersexed and overanalyzing,--G. Falconar

FrustratedPilot · Post by **FrustratedPilot** » Wed Mar 21, 2001 1:47 am

Two further observations: 1) the nurse looks like Kenji of Waltrip's "Metal Bikini"--2) remember what Kei of "Dirty Pair: Sim Hell" did in the same situation?

NaKaithus · Post by **NaKaithus** » Wed Mar 21, 2001 4:18 am

Hey everyone...A word about the casting: I got the feeling that the doctor and nurse was more of a nod to Animanaics rather than bowing to the old stereotype. I mean, the hair is a bit more, shall we say, vertical than that of Dr. Scratchnsniff (did I get that right?) in his pre-Warner days. However, if you put him next to the too-curvy-for-her-own-good nurse, the similarities become that much easier to pick out...Nak

Blondlot · Post by **Blondlot** » Wed Mar 21, 2001 5:45 am

The doctor is Thack. They're in the prison of her mind, peeling it like a grape via neural link from the inside out. Or outside in, for that matter. either way.At any rate, this might not be Thack, but I don't know...Ex animo,
Matt, who is hanging on to his newly won crown for dear life[This message has been edited by Blondlot (edited 03-21-2001).]

FrustratedPilot · Post by **FrustratedPilot** » Wed Mar 21, 2001 9:14 am

Testing out the Clinton Definition of _Is_? (It had to emerge sometime in this topic...) For the record, Leo Rosen thought of it first and included it in his book "The Power of Positive Nonsense" in the Q and A section.

NathanAlderman · Post by **NathanAlderman** » Wed Mar 21, 2001 9:32 am

Sweet jumpin' cats! Looks like Blondlot was right-- the doctor DOES seem to be Thack. Check the shape of the glasses and the face. And besides, writers almost NEVER flash back to a long-defeated villain unless they're planning to reintroduce him/her later in the same story (to bring newer readers up to speed.)Great art, too-- Mr. Waltrip seems to have benefitted from his vacation. Something about that eerie blank expression on the nurse's face -- the way you can see her eyes in silhouette-- is givin' me the creeps. Or maybe she's just been self-medicating lately. (=-- Nathan,
whose own grasp of reality is tenuous at best...

FrustratedPilot · Post by **FrustratedPilot** » Wed Mar 21, 2001 10:00 am

"Self-Medicating"? Reminds me of an episode of Degenerate Hospital.

FrustratedPilot · Post by **FrustratedPilot** » Wed Mar 21, 2001 10:06 am

A few words about the "casting": That doctor looks suspiciously cliche. Sure, the Freud/Jung model of the philosophical but self-serving old man with whiskers to match his labcoat has plenty of humorous appeal, but these days a psychoanalyst is more likely to resemble Dr. Joyce Brothers--or Bob Newhart ("Do you want to go with that today, Miss Cochran?").But I'm afraid that under the fake hair and mustache/goatee he's that character actor who played Les Nessman on WKRP in Cincinnati (and also appears [in heavy make-up] on Star Trek and Babylon 5--"You will know pain, and then you will know fear, and then you will die.").

Glazius Falconar · Post by **Glazius Falconar** » Wed Mar 21, 2001 10:59 am

What _is_ reality?What Agent Smith wants, he gets. What he wants are FANS! who are compliant, who have had their wills stretched to the breaking point and snapped or who have quietly shriveled away into nothing.What if he _has_ them?What if that 23-Sider Of Power extended its tendrils into another dimension and hauled the pathetic and broken minds of the FANS! there into the bodies we've come to know and sent their minds into a world where their worst nightmares have perhaps come to pass. Where they are nobody. Where what they do and who they live with are complete aliens.What if this Shanna _did_ break like her mother? What if the natural course of events was something other than the one-in-a-million chance that _brought_ the FANS! together and made them MIGHTY?A scary thought.A _very_ scary thought.And now they are heroes in mortal bodies again, and who knows what will come of it...--GF

Catnik · Post by **Catnik** » Thu Mar 22, 2001 4:49 am

*Looks up at Murasaki* Hmmm.... sounds like a Dean Koontz book I read once....Das Catnik!

Tuscahoma · Post by **Tuscahoma** » Thu Mar 22, 2001 8:15 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by NathanAlderman:
Sweet jumpin' cats! Looks like Blondlot was right-- the doctor DOES seem to be Thack. Check the shape of the glasses and the face. And besides, writers almost NEVER flash back to a long-defeated villain unless they're planning to reintroduce him/her later in the same story (to bring newer readers up to speed.)Great art, too-- Mr. Waltrip seems to have benefitted from his vacation. Something about that eerie blank expression on the nurse's face -- the way you can see her eyes in silhouette-- is givin' me the creeps. Or maybe she's just been self-medicating lately. (=<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Yeah, the doctor does seem to match Thack in certain ways. So, either we are left with the possibility that FiB is forcing Thack to work for them after bringing his mind back together, or, he escaped and infiltrated their program in order to get revenge on the Fans and get back his technology from FiB.Or it's all just an elaborate misdirection.Oh yeah, the nurse's eyes creep me out as well. Maybe we're just supposed to think that the doctor is Thack, and he's actually the nurse! No wait, maybe the nurse is that damn Terminatrix v2.0, sent to orchestrate events (perhaps keep Thack in check while he does his handiwork). After all, they're both kind of prepostrously top-heavy with no visible sag.--Tuscahoma

FrustratedPilot · Post by **FrustratedPilot** » Thu Mar 22, 2001 9:46 am

Terminatrix v2.0? Well, then I hope Shanna doesn't try any of that Tae-Bo she learned from Rumy.

Tom the Fanboy · Post by **Tom the Fanboy** » Thu Mar 22, 2001 10:06 am

Pssstttt.....Murasaki.....It was in Colorado. The game wasn't THAT Lovecraftian.I do think that the Termanatrix is a possibility, she hasn't moved yet after all. And she has those haunting lifeless eyes! Those soulless white voids! How they HAUNT ME!!!!!*breath*As far as the Doc being Thack....it's a possibility. He would have been VERY interested in seeing what she thought of him. I doubt Thack would be given such an assignment since he was such a threat before. then again, what does the goverment usually do with hackers when they catch them?
Put them to work.Heh, I remember my college had a hacker doing community service as a network engineer. He was being to efficient for the big lazy administrators and they fired him. Silly admins, never fire a hacker. <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/wink.gif">Hmmmmmmmmm........ LaFou, you know I've been thinking.....If the Doc IS Thack, he might not know it. The FiB used his neural uplinks to "reformat" his brain. He is now Dr. Linus (why? because it's a cross between Lucas and Linux! Geeky enough for ya?), esteemed psychologist. He was curious about Thack because somewhere deep inside, it struck a memory of who he used to be. He is now curious about "The Club" (aren't you glad T didn't name the comic that?) because he remembers a bit of that too. I can't wait for the images that she thinks of when reminiscing about the other Fans.Now, against Doc/Thack, I don't think that the flashback to Thack foretells his resurgence. Since Fans! has been a "webcomic" for sometime now I don't think the old strategy of helping new readers out is neccesarily true. The archives (except for the crossover, which you should ALL BUY!) are available to everyone. But T is a Comic Book writer, and not a comic strip writer (note the caps? eh? eh?). This is evident in his style as well as his method of preplanning. His Shirt-Guy-Godai (SGG?) days are carefully thought out and planned for. I think this is what sets Fans! apart from most other webcomics. It's style. Speaking of other webcomics, I just added Avalon to my list. Heh, not to open up wounds but it's the first "Realistic" comic I've read since CCS got aliens. I just hope Fanboy Otaku's Gamer Club doesn't get toooo wacked out so I can count two comics without an element of fantasy. *snicker* I'm confusing myeself now.....Good God I love parenthesis!------------------
Tom the Fanboy
http://www.geocities.com/tee-moss
The House of Tee-Moss, home of Billberg University and the Pop Subversion League.