oh noe! mr brain lied to me! It told me they were jumping every night of the week.
I’m impressed Cinn even understood that.
Is the world coming to an end? What do we do?
Cinn has a natural comprehension of sin in others, and how to exploit it. This low cunning is what she uses in place of actual cognition.
THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END. THE SKY IS FALLING. QUINN IS BEING NICE.
I’m going outside in my house robes to lie down in front of this huge yellow bull dozer.
Well this is a rather unhoopy state of affairs, Earthman. But I suppose you at least know where your towel is, what with you basically wearing it and all. Let’s just call it a day and go get a pint, yeah?
… but Mr. Blue, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.
Ford, it’s good to see you, but this man wa…..
Wait.
Ford, it’s good to see you, but this man….
>.>
<. <
this man wants to tear down my house.
William wrote a letter back home to Ginger’s parents tryin’ to explain. He said we’re both real sorry that it had to turn out this way. And also Ginger gave birth to a ten pound baby boy!
… but seriously though, there’s definitely some foreshadowing going on here. Though this whole thing has raised questions for me.
1) I’d gotten the impression Rosemary didn’t work; is she volunteering at her church, or was I just off-base?
2) Why is Tarra holding a cane? Just how old is David?!
…man, at some point in the near future there’s going to be some revelations and then bricks will be sh- er, there’s going to be brown, smelly bricks everywhere!
Yeah I think its your icon Mr. Blue, they said something about Tutor… maybe tutor became teacher? A blind one?
Canes for the blind are white, as I recall.
(ZUT ALORS LA. Silence man. I know that, you suspect that, but we can’t let Chris know that we know. Hell he’ll stay turning buildings, cities, the American political system end over end. Dogs and cats living together. It’ll be mass effect hysteria. )
He might also flip a table… but that’s the worst-case scenario. Anyhow, I don’t think it’s Wheelchair Ninja because Tarra never mentioned having any interest in him, and you don’t cuddle up to a symbolic object that belongs to someone you don’t care about. I’d guess it might be a dead grandparent that Tarra was close to who died, but Rusche already established the family has extras rather than a shortage.
It’s not going to belong to someone who needed it for support. If you look at the end of the cane it’s base is narrow, not the larger, grippier type of ends that you see on walkers or canes for people who need them for support. If you look at the cane Blind Guy is using for the Royal Buckinghams picture (big group picture on the Patreon), it has the support end I’m talking about.
It’d work for someone who’s blind, though it’s not the usual form factor (common cane for the blind is completely straight and made to fold up, along with being brighter colors). It looks more decorative. Actually a sword cane or even a tap dancing prop would fit better (though it is pretty thin to have a blade inside it).
Well part of the reason I thought she might have it is it was an older cane he’d outgrown. On the other hand, I definitely see your point about it appearing to be an entertainer’s cane. Maybe David’s a magician?
Mr. Blue goes with our dated/moded cane.
Really, now you can tell everyone what I’m going to be doing. No wonder you couldn’t handle an extra terrestrial electronic reference book with “Don’t Panic” on the cover and threw it into the water? Right?
That would make them an interesting team, especially since he supposedly cleans up her messes.
If he cleans up her messes by summoning Old Ones, he doesn’t need to be particularly physically spry. However, as I replied to you above, the cane is missing the type of tip it would have for someone who used it for support.
Well if he’s practicing the dark arts, maybe it’s an old focus/artifact he’s replaced with a more unhallowed one.
I actually first thought that cane was for her. Because of an injury yet to fully heal. But you don’t exactly hold such a cane that way, I guess.
In response to 1) ‘Fetch me pantsuits!’ was Ellie’s comment when she was going to impersonate her mother. I’m suspecting Rosemary has a career rather than a job.
And as for 2) How old will someone have to be in order to have sufficient life experiences to impress the girl who saved Christmas? Then again, that’s a rather dapper looking cane. The cane of, shall we dare say, a gentleman?
I’m going to guess, based on the questioning from Black Friday’s pancakes, as well as the preemptive strike against Kat and expanding said ban to all of Pumpkin’s friends. . I’m going to guess that mother Buckingham is in the legal field.
Since her husband is a cop, could that result in a conflict of interest?
Not if she were with the district attorney. The main reason I thought she didn’t have a career is she has 7 children, most of which are close in age, and cooks. Those things combine into a massive time-sink.
It really isn’t a conflict of interest. Besides, there are other avenues of law other than criminal defense/prosecution. Civil, contractual, divorce, real estate, Calvin’s dad, medical malpractice, food poisoning. . .
Then there are the pasta legals, law secretaries, etc.
Maybe she’s the school’s nutritionist, and supervises the lunch ladies so that lunch lady Doris doesn’t grind up the gym mats.
There’s very little meat in these gym mats!
Sloppy Jimbos for everybody, then! Tomorrow: Uterbraughtwurst!
*Snort* pasta legal.
Okay, okay. I was/and still an on my phone. Okay. Now I see what an unintentional gaffe that was with the electronically referenced Freudian slip. But I can’t take the credit, for it was the auto-corkboard’s fault.
I intended to say para-legal.
Hey! Don’t be making fun of Mr. Blue’s new job title, man. I’mma pasta legal.
Seven kids is also a pretty big money sink and I’d always thought it was artistic license to assume Herb could support that. Lawyer would be a good high paying job that would have good benefits and good work from home options even before the prevalence of modern remote access tools.
Her birthmarks were that way in the wall of photos where Rosemary was listening too. I’m definitely curious what that change signifies too, especially when considered with X.
I don’t think so, the picture of her in my avatar doesn’t have it either which I first thought was an oversight. Apparently it got more vivid later? Maybe as a result of her “Tarra-forming” which her future self claimed was radioactive? Also her future self had x’s instead which someone speculated may indicate her birthmarks had been surgically removed. If that’s true, perhaps they were surgically augmented first.
Nah. I’ll put 50 on the birthmarks inflating with her accomplishments and some of it with proximity to the tutor.
Belay that. 1500 on the birthmarks adjusting in the manner described above for 60% and the rest directly related to the inverse logarithmic power related to the total length of her hair.
I suspect the birthmark mods are related to the energy used with Tarra-forming and summons and whatever else beyond the normal/expected laws of Physics she does. Since X does some modified Tarra-forming, they must not be necessary, but still quite possibly part of the process or the significance something in that vein.
I think Cinn is the one who’s going to make them go away. I base that upon the following copy/pasted from the author post for the comic Nightmare Fuel (13 April 2014):
“If today’s post didn’t spell it out for you, Sister X is in fact Tarra. The result of Tarra’s vote winning. A future version who’s been physically and emotionally scarred by her sisters, and is now (was) set on their demise. Alot of this idea was implemented in Tarra’s design, way back when I was coming up with her (hince, her birthmark is different than the others.) X has five things distinguishing her from present Tarra, Four of which the median sisters have done, and one she did to herself. Anise obviously cut her hair off. This was the start of her life’s decline, and why Anise was first. For anyone wanting spoilers, Juniper costs her her eye, Ellie causes her speech bubble to change color and Cinnamon’s has yet to be elaborated upon. You’ll see when we get to it. And getting to it, will be sprinkled through the remainder of the comic in small doses. And this won’t be a time loop by any means, but more a play on foreshadowing.”
Granted, that says nothing about how they got to be floaty and pink, though I suspect that’ll be covered either before or shortly after Cinn’s shenanigans.
Damn, I just had the thought, her and David and relations and birthmark changes over night.
We can’t let Flag Day go unfound! Sure, it’s not a day off, and no one really does much of anything for it, and…um…why do we have to find it again? And who would steal it?
Seeing as it is always useful for an immigrant to be fluent (in the local language or what else), moreof doing as a fondue does actually. Of course, as with living on caribbean islands, you’ve got to be able to stand the heat.
Mmm, barely legal shirtless GingI MEAN LOOK AT THOSE HEADLINES!
I love the small things. The fact that Tarra’s braid is still just as long, providing more proof to her sisterly squabble superiority. The birthmark details. The exceedingly bigger and bigger hints as to who David is.
It’s probably a JavaScript thing. I generally leave JavaScript off as much as possible and have to turn it on if I wish to use the Like links on these comments. If the phone has the option to install a different browser that might do it.
@Erik – I’ll be a little sad if that means he’s not Steve Stevens.
Ditto, though I have an add-on that leaves JS disabled globally and forces me to enable it per-domain manually.
I leave it off through multiple add-ons myself. Was just simplifying.
Why would you need multiple add-ons to disable JS in your browser? If the answer is “paranoia” I do believe you deserve some applause; as a fellow technical person, my distrust for technology is very high.
I will admit that I was confused the first time that I read this. I remember that Tarra had slut wear that was banned, but I never thought that she would try to steal boyfriends from her sister. I thought that it was
What I want to know is…how can Ginger sleep with her feet sticking out like that? Doesn’t she know that’s how the boogeyman gets you? (and ofc your toes get cold, but that’s a secondary concern, really)
I think you didn’t look closely enough. Tarra’s in that room. The Boogeyman is sufficiently pants-crappingly terrified of Tarra that entering that room for five minutes results in the need to spend the next several days buying additional pairs of pants to crap in.
Also depending on the temperature in the room and how warm your blanket is, that can actually be quite comfortable. At least for a while, after which you tuck them in again.
Man, I lived SCP for a while. Never got one published though, it’s a difficult form to write in. I eventually gave up, my tendency to write them like a story couldn’t be curbed.
Mr. Blue leaves in search of this information.
Item #: SCP-8100
– Object Class: Safe
– Special Containment Procedures: Instances of SCP-8100 were first discovered in the comments section of ████████. Though its erratic behavior can be jarring, SCP-8100 is relatively harmless, and can be sated with indications of its references being recognized, equally cryptic responses, or by offering any combination of chocolate, caramel, crunchy bread, and salt.
– Description: SCP-8100 is an entity that refers to itself as “Mr. Blue” and possesses the ability to be persist in simultaneous locations, reference media from any point in time (past, present, or future), and interact with people, despite having no corporeal form. It is unknown exactly when SCP-8100 came into existence but it is currently limited to the ████████ website.
1. Safe? Aw, darn. Shucks, drat.
2. Persist? Shouldn’t the correct format be persistent or present in several locations?
by the way. Mr. Blue had been preferential to the proper soft pretzels with mustard and pub cheese of late.
I can understand your disappointment. I always aim for “mostly harmless” myself.
We can talk about updating your SCP snack list, but your classification of “safe” sticks. Here, have some pretzels.
Okay. But I was a little curious about the semantics of the situation.
Heavy stuffy. Heavy, heavy stuff…
People of the comments, be good to your mommas. They wiped your butt for years. Don’t forget to thank them for it (and everything else) every once in awhile!
That being said, not all mothers are good people. Some make bad choices, some make mistakes, and some are just plain bad people. Its important to be happy with what we have. Things can always get worse.
Oh dear- did I sound like I was bad-mouthing Mama Buckingham? Sorry, I really didn’t mean for it to sound that way. I was just in a pensive mood, and wrote what came to mind.
I’ll give it a like on general principles. My grandmother has a needlepoint sampler up in her kitchen; it’s a picture of a telephone and reads “Call your mother. She worries.” And I told her I didn’t much care for that sentiment as I didn’t like the idea of worrying my mother on a regular basis. To which my grandmother responded that it wouldn’t matter, as she would still worry no matter how hard I tried not to. This, of course, was to be regarded as a good thing, as if your mother didn’t worry about you, who would?
Bit of a weird room set up unless there is another sister in there too. So Tarras hair has not grown in the past ten years or does she donate it from time to time.
I’ve seen the girl’s bedroom arrangement before; think of the Brady Bunch girls room but instead of all pink walls, we have pink and white wall paper stripes.
I could see it either way. With the need for bedrooms for 7 kids, I could see moving into a house with smaller bedrooms and a small thin bedroom (with closet beside Ginger) as a possibility. However larger bedrooms and cramming three in is also a possibility.
Tarra’s hair looks to me like it has grown. Compare it to her in panel 2 of Kerfuffle (7 Oct 2013). In that comic, it’s down to her pants (and her shirt does appear to be coming down to mid-fly). Here if you judge her torso length based upon where her hips stick up from the covers, it looks like her ponytail comes to mid-back or so. While I’d think her hair would grow more in a decade, I guess we don’t really know how she might braid it and how long it might be without the braid (she would presumably double it up somewhat if it was reaching the ground).
Take this from a guy worth a ponytail. That pony tail of Tarra’s has not been cut in for years if she’s had any sister cuts, let alone Mastercuts. And with her height and the length of her ponytail in the present, she had not had any haircuts in the past 1.33 decades.
Well, i can only say for ten years.
Stupid dairy queen commercial.
I don’t think her title implies she’s gotten a haircut. Her intro, however, only states she never received a Buckingham sister revenge cut. So my assumption she never got it cut on purpose was unfounded. Still slightly longer in the present, though.
From the stance of nice accuracy bits, good job on Tarra. Every woman I’ve known who’s a D cup or above (and had this conversation with) has stated that side sleeping is most comfortable, and more than one has mentioned that they need/strongly prefer a body pillow for support as well (if not sleeping with a partner). Actually giving a friend crap about her body pillow in college was the first conversation of this sort, which got me to start bringing it up with others out of curiosity.
I also appreciated the bottom leg (which is in a position I like for sleeping myself, sometimes).
I’m with you. I checked the first appearance of Tarra, (http://shotgunshuffle.com/comic/kerfuffle/#.VH_fLcmN7q4), and I think the ponytail is now thicker.
So, rather than wear it down to her ankles, or cut it, it’s braided larger.
We are also forgetting that this is at least 4 -5 years in the past. Percy is not born yet, so that should place Pumpkin around 9 – 10 (giving for the possible year between Ginger’s graduation, marriage/elopement to William, and Percy’s birth) so is there a bed for Anise? Or there could be three rooms for the girls, Ginger & Tarragon, Anise and Juniper, and bunk beds for Lavender & Cinnamon with Pumpkin in a single.
Not to be anal but it is more like 10-11 years in the past. Ginger is 29 in her current form. Still I do agree that it likely that Anise is also in that room too considering the bed arrangement.
Have we gotten a definitive count on how many rooms the Buckingham house has? Has anyone tried to come up with a blueprint/floorplan from what we’ve seen?
Frankly, if the house allows for it I’d guess a 2/2/3 arrangement, with the youngest girls (Pumpkin and the twins) together. As you grow older you tend to want and need more space, and I think it was implied that Pumpkin only had the room to herself after Ellie moved out.
They live in a four bedroom. I actually had to make an excel for the ages and room set up to keep track.
Interesting. Am I right in thinking this doesn’t show that Cinnamon had to move back in?
Even more interesting is that the pink room went unused by any of the sisters after Juniper moved out. Rosemary probably annexed it for something I bet.
True. It doesn’t reflect that.
So it took a little while to decipher the chart, but it seems as if I was right on both counts- during the brief 5-year period when all 7 sisters lived with their parents at the same time, it was Ginger and Tarragon, Juniper and Anise, and Pumpkin and the twins.
If I had to speculate I’m guessing the arrangement of 2/2/2 after Ginger moved out was because Anise was to keep some sort of parity- Anise is the next oldest after Tarragon, and while Ellie and Cinnamon are the same age, Ellie seems to get along best with Pumpkin, which is why she stayed put and Cinnamon moved in with Juniper.
Who’s “BG” though?
Blind guy
Hmm… Why would he be on a chart of bedrooms? Curiouser and curiouser.
If that’s Blind Guy, then the Ellie / Blind Guy shipping is really creeperrific!
Blind Guy would be very interesting indeed, but I’m thinking it’s Bride & Groom showing the length of the marriage, with Ginger being conceived in Year 5 (spackle anniversary).
That is my guess as well.
Nice. And very informative.
But yes, verrrrry interrresting.
BAM! !!outside of making a mistake by assuming less than our equal to two years between the births of the sisters, I nailed the maximum occupation of the house.
And after Ginger leaves, I’m not sure that Tarragon would give up the princess status of having her own room. Since Ellie was the 2nd to last sister to move out.
I was going to comment on the lack of showing that Cinnamon had moved out, but then I realized that the chart was set for whole years, so it (the chart )wouldn’t show either Cinnamon’s shacking up nor Ellie’s eviction.
I’m guessing that, despite Tarra’s status as the oldest, she didn’t have enough clout to justify keeping an entire room to herself when 3 of her sisters where all crammed together in another one.
The simplest thing would have been to just move one of the three in with Tarra, but that would have created a big age-gap, so instead they moved both Anise AND Cinnamon.
Three of the smallest sisters. And I respectively submit that Jupiter’s problems didn’t star until Amuse moved out. I surmise that Juniper got bit by something similar to the freshman freedom that college students get when they are away from home and have a lack of supervision.
Besides, she’d also be privy to all the tricks her older sisters used.
Yes, the twins and Pumpkin where the youngest and smallest, but it’s still 3 people in one room and 1 in another, where previously Tarra had no problems with having a roommate. Since you can’t split kids up into pieces to achieve a perfect age-to-space requirement (1.7 children in Tarra’s room, 2.3 kids in the other, etc) they did their best to achieve a sense of equality.
Also, I assume you meant “Juniper”, and she was 16 or 17 when Anise moved out. If her problems started much before that it gets kind of squicky.
That could’ve been based on Cinn & Tarra’s personalities. Leaving Cinn with either Ellie or Pumpkin (both of whom we’re fairly sure she successfully picked on growing up), wouldn’t have been terribly fair. Rusche stated Tarra had anger management issues when younger, so take that with Cinn’s apparent problem with learning not to do things and that could be a bad situation that might even end up compromising the structural integrity of the house. From there it’s just a Tarra vs Cinn matchup with Anise & Juniper and I think we could see how that might work out best. Another possibility is Juniper might be the one responsible for taking out Anise’s eye, so that might’ve been a factor too.
Forgive me if this has already been discussed, but I haven’t had time to keep up on the comments.
I feel like the last couple comics are shedding light on the Ginger-Juniper fight from the Black Friday storyline, specifically how harsh Ginger was on Juniper. At the time, I thought Ginger was just taking a hard line to protect her kids. Knowing more of Ginger’s story, though, makes it seem like she was also a bit bitter towards Juniper. Ginger had her rebellious phase, and when she ended up pregnant from it (I’m assuming), she settled down and shouldered the responsibility. When Juniper went through the same (except for her it was multiple partners instead of just one), she shrugged off the responsibility onto Ginger and kept rebelling. Given the similarities, I would imagine that Ginger feels extra disappointed in Juniper for not settling down and bitter that she did the responsible thing while her sister never changed.
I can agree with this. Sibling rivalry could also be possibly extended towards what others get away with. However, could Ginger also be seeing the proper boundaries in stone for Juniper to see with no possibility of mistaking the meaning of the message?
Mr. Blue thinks that the O’s come into their present state after she becomes, in terms of experience, experienced in dancing more than just the tango, where others have their apartments jumping every night.
If you’re gonna not like teenagers because they don’t want to listen to their parents and think they know everything…well I got some harsh truths to lay down on you, my friend.
If it helps, Ginger seems to have since matured a bit and made up with her mom, as evidenced by the fact that she brings the grandkids over to visit and has no problems with showing up there for the holidays.
We know this issue’s boiled over, but we don’t know how much Ginger has grown out of this. Her entry with the 7 Sins is Wrath, and she does show some temper issues in the present.
I wouldn’t consider Ginger bringing the boys over as a sign of anything on Ginger’s side. Our picture of that showed she was exhausted and enjoying the option to catch up on her sleep.
I still like Ginger, and I’m sure she’s gained maturity in the decade since this comic, but I’m not sure how much her attitudes have changed. We haven’t seen enough to be sure yet. Mission-oriented high-stress shopping with a side of mayhem and a dose of buried issues boiling up at her isn’t conducive to determining if she’s grown out of this or not. Liking her, I still suspect that the degree she’s grown out of this attitude tendency is probably less than 50%.
wait a moment…. “Just a tutor” with Tarra… a cane… what teacher do we know who has a cane?…. it might be far off the mark but… hmmmmmmm
147 thoughts on “20/20 Part III”
ginger packed her bags, left a note for her momma, she was just seventeen..
There were tears in her eyes as she kissed her little Pumpkin goodbye-YIE-YIE
They took a two room apartment that was jumping ev’ry night of the week!
That means they had lots of sex!
Thank you Jackass, we know.
WHAT! WE DID?
oh noe! mr brain lied to me! It told me they were jumping every night of the week.
I’m impressed Cinn even understood that.
Is the world coming to an end? What do we do?
Cinn has a natural comprehension of sin in others, and how to exploit it. This low cunning is what she uses in place of actual cognition.
THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END. THE SKY IS FALLING. QUINN IS BEING NICE.
I’m going outside in my house robes to lie down in front of this huge yellow bull dozer.
Well this is a rather unhoopy state of affairs, Earthman. But I suppose you at least know where your towel is, what with you basically wearing it and all. Let’s just call it a day and go get a pint, yeah?
… but Mr. Blue, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.
Ford, it’s good to see you, but this man wa…..
Wait.
Ford, it’s good to see you, but this man….
>.>
<. <
this man wants to tear down my house.
William wrote a letter back home to Ginger’s parents tryin’ to explain. He said we’re both real sorry that it had to turn out this way. And also Ginger gave birth to a ten pound baby boy!
Better that then a roast turkey.
Young hearts be free tonight!
Third (technically)!
… but seriously though, there’s definitely some foreshadowing going on here. Though this whole thing has raised questions for me.
1) I’d gotten the impression Rosemary didn’t work; is she volunteering at her church, or was I just off-base?
2) Why is Tarra holding a cane? Just how old is David?!
…man, at some point in the near future there’s going to be some revelations and then bricks will be sh- er, there’s going to be brown, smelly bricks everywhere!
Couldn’t it be wheelchair ninja?
Yeah I think its your icon Mr. Blue, they said something about Tutor… maybe tutor became teacher? A blind one?
Canes for the blind are white, as I recall.
(ZUT ALORS LA. Silence man. I know that, you suspect that, but we can’t let Chris know that we know. Hell he’ll stay turning buildings, cities, the American political system end over end. Dogs and cats living together. It’ll be mass effect hysteria. )
He might also flip a table… but that’s the worst-case scenario. Anyhow, I don’t think it’s Wheelchair Ninja because Tarra never mentioned having any interest in him, and you don’t cuddle up to a symbolic object that belongs to someone you don’t care about. I’d guess it might be a dead grandparent that Tarra was close to who died, but Rusche already established the family has extras rather than a shortage.
It’s not going to belong to someone who needed it for support. If you look at the end of the cane it’s base is narrow, not the larger, grippier type of ends that you see on walkers or canes for people who need them for support. If you look at the cane Blind Guy is using for the Royal Buckinghams picture (big group picture on the Patreon), it has the support end I’m talking about.
It’d work for someone who’s blind, though it’s not the usual form factor (common cane for the blind is completely straight and made to fold up, along with being brighter colors). It looks more decorative. Actually a sword cane or even a tap dancing prop would fit better (though it is pretty thin to have a blade inside it).
Well part of the reason I thought she might have it is it was an older cane he’d outgrown. On the other hand, I definitely see your point about it appearing to be an entertainer’s cane. Maybe David’s a magician?
Mr. Blue goes with our dated/moded cane.
Really, now you can tell everyone what I’m going to be doing. No wonder you couldn’t handle an extra terrestrial electronic reference book with “Don’t Panic” on the cover and threw it into the water? Right?
David might not be old, just crippled.
That would make them an interesting team, especially since he supposedly cleans up her messes.
If he cleans up her messes by summoning Old Ones, he doesn’t need to be particularly physically spry. However, as I replied to you above, the cane is missing the type of tip it would have for someone who used it for support.
Well if he’s practicing the dark arts, maybe it’s an old focus/artifact he’s replaced with a more unhallowed one.
There’s probably a sword in that cane…
Good eye. I missed the cane. I was focused on the newspaper clippings.
I actually first thought that cane was for her. Because of an injury yet to fully heal. But you don’t exactly hold such a cane that way, I guess.
In response to 1) ‘Fetch me pantsuits!’ was Ellie’s comment when she was going to impersonate her mother. I’m suspecting Rosemary has a career rather than a job.
And as for 2) How old will someone have to be in order to have sufficient life experiences to impress the girl who saved Christmas? Then again, that’s a rather dapper looking cane. The cane of, shall we dare say, a gentleman?
I’m going to guess, based on the questioning from Black Friday’s pancakes, as well as the preemptive strike against Kat and expanding said ban to all of Pumpkin’s friends. . I’m going to guess that mother Buckingham is in the legal field.
Since her husband is a cop, could that result in a conflict of interest?
Not if she were with the district attorney. The main reason I thought she didn’t have a career is she has 7 children, most of which are close in age, and cooks. Those things combine into a massive time-sink.
It really isn’t a conflict of interest. Besides, there are other avenues of law other than criminal defense/prosecution. Civil, contractual, divorce, real estate, Calvin’s dad, medical malpractice, food poisoning. . .
Then there are the pasta legals, law secretaries, etc.
Maybe she’s the school’s nutritionist, and supervises the lunch ladies so that lunch lady Doris doesn’t grind up the gym mats.
There’s very little meat in these gym mats!
Sloppy Jimbos for everybody, then! Tomorrow: Uterbraughtwurst!
*Snort* pasta legal.
Okay, okay. I was/and still an on my phone. Okay. Now I see what an unintentional gaffe that was with the electronically referenced Freudian slip. But I can’t take the credit, for it was the auto-corkboard’s fault.
I intended to say para-legal.
Hey! Don’t be making fun of Mr. Blue’s new job title, man. I’mma pasta legal.
Seven kids is also a pretty big money sink and I’d always thought it was artistic license to assume Herb could support that. Lawyer would be a good high paying job that would have good benefits and good work from home options even before the prevalence of modern remote access tools.
Because…he WASN’T just a tutor. XD
Maybe David is from the Talamasca…
Is Terra sleeping with a cane?
She’s also missing the red in her “O” birthmark. Knowing this comic, they are both subtle and relevant clues.
Her birthmarks were that way in the wall of photos where Rosemary was listening too. I’m definitely curious what that change signifies too, especially when considered with X.
So past Tarra didn’t have her over the top birth mark yet, interesting.
Maybe it shrinks when she’s about to go to sleep?
I don’t think so, the picture of her in my avatar doesn’t have it either which I first thought was an oversight. Apparently it got more vivid later? Maybe as a result of her “Tarra-forming” which her future self claimed was radioactive? Also her future self had x’s instead which someone speculated may indicate her birthmarks had been surgically removed. If that’s true, perhaps they were surgically augmented first.
Nah. I’ll put 50 on the birthmarks inflating with her accomplishments and some of it with proximity to the tutor.
Belay that. 1500 on the birthmarks adjusting in the manner described above for 60% and the rest directly related to the inverse logarithmic power related to the total length of her hair.
I suspect the birthmark mods are related to the energy used with Tarra-forming and summons and whatever else beyond the normal/expected laws of Physics she does. Since X does some modified Tarra-forming, they must not be necessary, but still quite possibly part of the process or the significance something in that vein.
I think Cinn is the one who’s going to make them go away. I base that upon the following copy/pasted from the author post for the comic Nightmare Fuel (13 April 2014):
“If today’s post didn’t spell it out for you, Sister X is in fact Tarra. The result of Tarra’s vote winning. A future version who’s been physically and emotionally scarred by her sisters, and is now (was) set on their demise. Alot of this idea was implemented in Tarra’s design, way back when I was coming up with her (hince, her birthmark is different than the others.) X has five things distinguishing her from present Tarra, Four of which the median sisters have done, and one she did to herself. Anise obviously cut her hair off. This was the start of her life’s decline, and why Anise was first. For anyone wanting spoilers, Juniper costs her her eye, Ellie causes her speech bubble to change color and Cinnamon’s has yet to be elaborated upon. You’ll see when we get to it. And getting to it, will be sprinkled through the remainder of the comic in small doses. And this won’t be a time loop by any means, but more a play on foreshadowing.”
Granted, that says nothing about how they got to be floaty and pink, though I suspect that’ll be covered either before or shortly after Cinn’s shenanigans.
Damn, I just had the thought, her and David and relations and birthmark changes over night.
“local teen saves christmas – search continues for flag day” made me laugh harder than i have in a good long while.
We can’t let Flag Day go unfound! Sure, it’s not a day off, and no one really does much of anything for it, and…um…why do we have to find it again? And who would steal it?
Well, I’m Swiss. So no offense, but Flag Day is not exactly high on my priority list.
Maybe he just felt unneeded and quietly slipped of to start a new life as a local holiday on a caribbean island?
Could he have gone the way of your cheese, moved to a papal state and became holey?
Seeing as it is always useful for an immigrant to be fluent (in the local language or what else), moreof doing as a fondue does actually. Of course, as with living on caribbean islands, you’ve got to be able to stand the heat.
Mmm, barely legal shirtless GingI MEAN LOOK AT THOSE HEADLINES!
I love the small things. The fact that Tarra’s braid is still just as long, providing more proof to her sisterly squabble superiority. The birthmark details. The exceedingly bigger and bigger hints as to who David is.
And it’s great to see the meta comments again!
I can’t get the like function to work on my phone. Stupid phone.
It’s probably a JavaScript thing. I generally leave JavaScript off as much as possible and have to turn it on if I wish to use the Like links on these comments. If the phone has the option to install a different browser that might do it.
@Erik – I’ll be a little sad if that means he’s not Steve Stevens.
Ditto, though I have an add-on that leaves JS disabled globally and forces me to enable it per-domain manually.
I leave it off through multiple add-ons myself. Was just simplifying.
Why would you need multiple add-ons to disable JS in your browser? If the answer is “paranoia” I do believe you deserve some applause; as a fellow technical person, my distrust for technology is very high.
That is so hideous wall paper!
The striped wallpaper and pillows symbolizes jail bars for Ginger. So yes. Hideous! lol
Me just say “not first” but still happy me not Grimlock.
I will admit that I was confused the first time that I read this. I remember that Tarra had slut wear that was banned, but I never thought that she would try to steal boyfriends from her sister. I thought that it was
**spoiler alert**rest*of*entry*deleted**
What I want to know is…how can Ginger sleep with her feet sticking out like that? Doesn’t she know that’s how the boogeyman gets you? (and ofc your toes get cold, but that’s a secondary concern, really)
The Boogeyman tends to prefer having its hair.
My first non-plot-related thought upon reading this comic: “Damn, those feet need tickling.”
Yes. Those feet must be tickled.
I think you didn’t look closely enough. Tarra’s in that room. The Boogeyman is sufficiently pants-crappingly terrified of Tarra that entering that room for five minutes results in the need to spend the next several days buying additional pairs of pants to crap in.
Also depending on the temperature in the room and how warm your blanket is, that can actually be quite comfortable. At least for a while, after which you tuck them in again.
The boogeyman? I don’t know about that, but it is how SCP-072 gets you.
Oh man, don’t bring SCP into this. People thought TV Tropes was a time sink…..
Man, I lived SCP for a while. Never got one published though, it’s a difficult form to write in. I eventually gave up, my tendency to write them like a story couldn’t be curbed.
Mr. Blue leaves in search of this information.
Item #: SCP-8100
–
Object Class: Safe
–
Special Containment Procedures: Instances of SCP-8100 were first discovered in the comments section of ████████. Though its erratic behavior can be jarring, SCP-8100 is relatively harmless, and can be sated with indications of its references being recognized, equally cryptic responses, or by offering any combination of chocolate, caramel, crunchy bread, and salt.
–
Description: SCP-8100 is an entity that refers to itself as “Mr. Blue” and possesses the ability to be persist in simultaneous locations, reference media from any point in time (past, present, or future), and interact with people, despite having no corporeal form. It is unknown exactly when SCP-8100 came into existence but it is currently limited to the ████████ website.
1. Safe? Aw, darn. Shucks, drat.
2. Persist? Shouldn’t the correct format be persistent or present in several locations?
by the way. Mr. Blue had been preferential to the proper soft pretzels with mustard and pub cheese of late.
I can understand your disappointment. I always aim for “mostly harmless” myself.
We can talk about updating your SCP snack list, but your classification of “safe” sticks. Here, have some pretzels.
Okay. But I was a little curious about the semantics of the situation.
Heavy stuffy. Heavy, heavy stuff…
People of the comments, be good to your mommas. They wiped your butt for years. Don’t forget to thank them for it (and everything else) every once in awhile!
That being said, not all mothers are good people. Some make bad choices, some make mistakes, and some are just plain bad people. Its important to be happy with what we have. Things can always get worse.
I wouldn’t call Rosemary a bad momma for this, just an overreacting momma.
Oh dear- did I sound like I was bad-mouthing Mama Buckingham? Sorry, I really didn’t mean for it to sound that way. I was just in a pensive mood, and wrote what came to mind.
I’ll give it a like on general principles. My grandmother has a needlepoint sampler up in her kitchen; it’s a picture of a telephone and reads “Call your mother. She worries.” And I told her I didn’t much care for that sentiment as I didn’t like the idea of worrying my mother on a regular basis. To which my grandmother responded that it wouldn’t matter, as she would still worry no matter how hard I tried not to. This, of course, was to be regarded as a good thing, as if your mother didn’t worry about you, who would?
Bit of a weird room set up unless there is another sister in there too. So Tarras hair has not grown in the past ten years or does she donate it from time to time.
I’ve seen the girl’s bedroom arrangement before; think of the Brady Bunch girls room but instead of all pink walls, we have pink and white wall paper stripes.
http://www.westcollection.org/images/mbennett2517.jpg
It’s the hair’s power. As long as no one cuts it, it will always have the exact length and form that Tarra wishes.
I could see it either way. With the need for bedrooms for 7 kids, I could see moving into a house with smaller bedrooms and a small thin bedroom (with closet beside Ginger) as a possibility. However larger bedrooms and cramming three in is also a possibility.
Tarra’s hair looks to me like it has grown. Compare it to her in panel 2 of Kerfuffle (7 Oct 2013). In that comic, it’s down to her pants (and her shirt does appear to be coming down to mid-fly). Here if you judge her torso length based upon where her hips stick up from the covers, it looks like her ponytail comes to mid-back or so. While I’d think her hair would grow more in a decade, I guess we don’t really know how she might braid it and how long it might be without the braid (she would presumably double it up somewhat if it was reaching the ground).
Tarra’s title is “She who’s had the longest hair for the longest” which implies she’s gotten a haircut or two herself.
Take this from a guy worth a ponytail. That pony tail of Tarra’s has not been cut in for years if she’s had any sister cuts, let alone Mastercuts. And with her height and the length of her ponytail in the present, she had not had any haircuts in the past 1.33 decades.
Well, i can only say for ten years.
Stupid dairy queen commercial.
I don’t think her title implies she’s gotten a haircut. Her intro, however, only states she never received a Buckingham sister revenge cut. So my assumption she never got it cut on purpose was unfounded. Still slightly longer in the present, though.
From the stance of nice accuracy bits, good job on Tarra. Every woman I’ve known who’s a D cup or above (and had this conversation with) has stated that side sleeping is most comfortable, and more than one has mentioned that they need/strongly prefer a body pillow for support as well (if not sleeping with a partner). Actually giving a friend crap about her body pillow in college was the first conversation of this sort, which got me to start bringing it up with others out of curiosity.
I also appreciated the bottom leg (which is in a position I like for sleeping myself, sometimes).
So nice touches here.
I’m with you. I checked the first appearance of Tarra, (http://shotgunshuffle.com/comic/kerfuffle/#.VH_fLcmN7q4), and I think the ponytail is now thicker.
So, rather than wear it down to her ankles, or cut it, it’s braided larger.
We are also forgetting that this is at least 4 -5 years in the past. Percy is not born yet, so that should place Pumpkin around 9 – 10 (giving for the possible year between Ginger’s graduation, marriage/elopement to William, and Percy’s birth) so is there a bed for Anise? Or there could be three rooms for the girls, Ginger & Tarragon, Anise and Juniper, and bunk beds for Lavender & Cinnamon with Pumpkin in a single.
Not to be anal but it is more like 10-11 years in the past. Ginger is 29 in her current form. Still I do agree that it likely that Anise is also in that room too considering the bed arrangement.
Have we gotten a definitive count on how many rooms the Buckingham house has? Has anyone tried to come up with a blueprint/floorplan from what we’ve seen?
Frankly, if the house allows for it I’d guess a 2/2/3 arrangement, with the youngest girls (Pumpkin and the twins) together. As you grow older you tend to want and need more space, and I think it was implied that Pumpkin only had the room to herself after Ellie moved out.
They live in a four bedroom. I actually had to make an excel for the ages and room set up to keep track.
Interesting. Am I right in thinking this doesn’t show that Cinnamon had to move back in?
Even more interesting is that the pink room went unused by any of the sisters after Juniper moved out. Rosemary probably annexed it for something I bet.
True. It doesn’t reflect that.
So it took a little while to decipher the chart, but it seems as if I was right on both counts- during the brief 5-year period when all 7 sisters lived with their parents at the same time, it was Ginger and Tarragon, Juniper and Anise, and Pumpkin and the twins.
If I had to speculate I’m guessing the arrangement of 2/2/2 after Ginger moved out was because Anise was to keep some sort of parity- Anise is the next oldest after Tarragon, and while Ellie and Cinnamon are the same age, Ellie seems to get along best with Pumpkin, which is why she stayed put and Cinnamon moved in with Juniper.
Who’s “BG” though?
Blind guy
Hmm… Why would he be on a chart of bedrooms? Curiouser and curiouser.
If that’s Blind Guy, then the Ellie / Blind Guy shipping is really creeperrific!
Blind Guy would be very interesting indeed, but I’m thinking it’s Bride & Groom showing the length of the marriage, with Ginger being conceived in Year 5 (spackle anniversary).
That is my guess as well.
Nice. And very informative.
But yes, verrrrry interrresting.
BAM! !!outside of making a mistake by assuming less than our equal to two years between the births of the sisters, I nailed the maximum occupation of the house.
And after Ginger leaves, I’m not sure that Tarragon would give up the princess status of having her own room. Since Ellie was the 2nd to last sister to move out.
I was going to comment on the lack of showing that Cinnamon had moved out, but then I realized that the chart was set for whole years, so it (the chart )wouldn’t show either Cinnamon’s shacking up nor Ellie’s eviction.
I’m guessing that, despite Tarra’s status as the oldest, she didn’t have enough clout to justify keeping an entire room to herself when 3 of her sisters where all crammed together in another one.
The simplest thing would have been to just move one of the three in with Tarra, but that would have created a big age-gap, so instead they moved both Anise AND Cinnamon.
Three of the smallest sisters. And I respectively submit that Jupiter’s problems didn’t star until Amuse moved out. I surmise that Juniper got bit by something similar to the freshman freedom that college students get when they are away from home and have a lack of supervision.
Besides, she’d also be privy to all the tricks her older sisters used.
Yes, the twins and Pumpkin where the youngest and smallest, but it’s still 3 people in one room and 1 in another, where previously Tarra had no problems with having a roommate. Since you can’t split kids up into pieces to achieve a perfect age-to-space requirement (1.7 children in Tarra’s room, 2.3 kids in the other, etc) they did their best to achieve a sense of equality.
Also, I assume you meant “Juniper”, and she was 16 or 17 when Anise moved out. If her problems started much before that it gets kind of squicky.
That could’ve been based on Cinn & Tarra’s personalities. Leaving Cinn with either Ellie or Pumpkin (both of whom we’re fairly sure she successfully picked on growing up), wouldn’t have been terribly fair. Rusche stated Tarra had anger management issues when younger, so take that with Cinn’s apparent problem with learning not to do things and that could be a bad situation that might even end up compromising the structural integrity of the house. From there it’s just a Tarra vs Cinn matchup with Anise & Juniper and I think we could see how that might work out best. Another possibility is Juniper might be the one responsible for taking out Anise’s eye, so that might’ve been a factor too.
Forgive me if this has already been discussed, but I haven’t had time to keep up on the comments.
I feel like the last couple comics are shedding light on the Ginger-Juniper fight from the Black Friday storyline, specifically how harsh Ginger was on Juniper. At the time, I thought Ginger was just taking a hard line to protect her kids. Knowing more of Ginger’s story, though, makes it seem like she was also a bit bitter towards Juniper. Ginger had her rebellious phase, and when she ended up pregnant from it (I’m assuming), she settled down and shouldered the responsibility. When Juniper went through the same (except for her it was multiple partners instead of just one), she shrugged off the responsibility onto Ginger and kept rebelling. Given the similarities, I would imagine that Ginger feels extra disappointed in Juniper for not settling down and bitter that she did the responsible thing while her sister never changed.
Just my two cents.
I can agree with this. Sibling rivalry could also be possibly extended towards what others get away with. However, could Ginger also be seeing the proper boundaries in stone for Juniper to see with no possibility of mistaking the meaning of the message?
Wait, Tarragon still lives at home? I thought she was too old for that. And too perfect.
She is only 15 in this comic so they can’t legally rent her an apartment. This is Florida , not Japan after all.
I’m confused. Is this a flashback or are they talking about the pumpkin situation?
Flashback.
Which is also what you see from the rear when Flash Gordon loses his shirt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4_Z84-rRE
FLASH!
Gordon’s alive!?
And somewhere, the choir broke into “Ahhh ahhhhhhhh”
Wait, Tarra’s “O”s aren’t red! Could it be they only glow during the day?
Maybe they’re just going into low power mode?
Mr. Blue thinks that the O’s come into their present state after she becomes, in terms of experience, experienced in dancing more than just the tango, where others have their apartments jumping every night.
o_ô
Is either that, or they came into their present state upon her successful completion of her learning Tarraforming.
Yeah, something about the path of Tarraforming and summoning Eldritch Gods is my guess for the birthmark enhancements.
There is another possibility. Her 16th birthday. And what every final exam that the title may have lined up.
Well this is definitely giving me a bad impression of Ginger. I’m starting to not like her.
Oh well, at least there’s many sisters still likable.
If you’re gonna not like teenagers because they don’t want to listen to their parents and think they know everything…well I got some harsh truths to lay down on you, my friend.
If it helps, Ginger seems to have since matured a bit and made up with her mom, as evidenced by the fact that she brings the grandkids over to visit and has no problems with showing up there for the holidays.
Yeah, I mean… it’s a flashback… why start disliking a character for flaws you know they’ve already grown out of?
We know this issue’s boiled over, but we don’t know how much Ginger has grown out of this. Her entry with the 7 Sins is Wrath, and she does show some temper issues in the present.
I wouldn’t consider Ginger bringing the boys over as a sign of anything on Ginger’s side. Our picture of that showed she was exhausted and enjoying the option to catch up on her sleep.
I still like Ginger, and I’m sure she’s gained maturity in the decade since this comic, but I’m not sure how much her attitudes have changed. We haven’t seen enough to be sure yet. Mission-oriented high-stress shopping with a side of mayhem and a dose of buried issues boiling up at her isn’t conducive to determining if she’s grown out of this or not. Liking her, I still suspect that the degree she’s grown out of this attitude tendency is probably less than 50%.
wait a moment…. “Just a tutor” with Tarra… a cane… what teacher do we know who has a cane?…. it might be far off the mark but… hmmmmmmm
Why does The Perfect One have a cane in her bed as she sleeps?
Because No Sharp Objects was an established rule.