#i mostly wanted to translate the last page bc its so funny

[royaltrios]

quick translation under the cut lol

i kept sholmes' katakana words as romaji because the implication is that hes speaking japanese with an accent

しのさん可愛いイラストと翻訳の許可がいつものようにありがとうございます😊このホームズさんはぴったり日本に来た外国人だ😭かわいいすぎるｗ

hmmkウィーク投稿再掲 現パロ

10年ぶりに唐突に来日してきたイギリスの友人

[unironicduncanstan]

the “Tangodeltaindia” blog explained,

aka my brain has cringe spots on it and needs to be inspected by the FDA

hi my names randi/uni and i created a total drama island themed ARG two months ago on a whim that almost no one interacted with bc i started off way too niche and difficult, so i kinda just went increasingly off the rails because i knew most likely no one was monitoring my posts and i could just make a real cursed hidden tomb that could one day be discovered by someone in a goonies esque unveiling. but then i got lice and now im sad and uncomfortable so i’m just gonna explain the entire damn thing in one shot. its absolutely batshit and theres a reason no one uncovered it ok here we go;;;

first of all the name. its so stupid but. ‘tango delta india’ = ‘tdi’ in the NATO phonetic alphabet. it just felt like a funny place to start that implies its gonna be a puzzle blog idk,

moving on to the actual content tho; some of the earlier posts mean p much nothing and were just an attempt to draw people in, such as the mr coconut ‘like if you agree’ or the ‘let him inside hes cold’ posts. 

then theres the cipher (x). it was posted shortly after the height of the ‘using total drama reference pictures to make an alphabet’ meme. in case anybody didnt see that; for a while it was a joke in the fandom to take the transparent references of total drama characters, and line them up, using them like hieroglyphics to make translatable pictures. its supposed to correspond to the alphabet, based on the first letter of their first name. an example could be, alejandro = a, bridgette = b, and so on. there was no solidly set alphabet amongst the fandom though, it was self explanatory most of the time so i made my own solid personal cipher key for that blog to make the whole thing easier.

NOW ONTO THE FIRST PUZZLE POST,,,, (x). theres a scene, a string of text, the cipher key, and a link to a decoder. the way to decode it all is to plug the characters on screen into the tangodeltaindia cipher key, and then plug That translation into the decoder website, and then finally paste in the text under the photo. 

the website linked is to a Caesar cipher decoder. the Caesar cipher is just a code where the alphabet is assigned to numbers (a=1, z=26), and to encode something with it you can move this pattern however you want as long as you keep the regular sequence of alphabet and numbers. so you could scootch over One letter, and “abc” would now say “bcd”. so on and so forth.

looking at the scene + my own total drama reference cipher, alejandro = A, and the beaver = 1, which gives A1. so you could now follow the link to the website, press ‘decode’, and paste in the text under the picture. the ‘shift’ in the middle is automatically set to ‘7′, or as it shows, a -> h, meaning ‘a’ has been moved over by 7 letters. so if you set the shift to just 1 over, or A1, now you can translate the text. it reads;

“lets start simple. after all, a trail of breadcrumbs begins with a loaf. whats the harm in another long winded fandom meme. another inside joke. and arent you curious whats truly lurking inside?”

edgy! simple! kinda just a test to see if people would do it or not. which they didnt so of course i tried to make it weirder-

puzzle 2; (x) using the exact same translation rules as above. we have alejandro and the snake, which with the tangodeltaindia cipher key means A6. going to the website, putting it in ‘decode’ mode, pasting in your text, and setting the shift to ‘6′ gives you this translation.

“in his eyes are an island. nothing but a dream, born out of going to bed angry. sink or swim.”

this was just hinting around at where the story was gonna go so it’ll make more sense later. something else to note; if you zoom all the way in and look into alejandros eye (’in his eyes’), you’ll see the word ‘Thera’. ~thats a surprise tool that will help us later~

so after this one, there are two non-puzzle posts that are also just hints (i was just tryna see if i could get people hyped), the first is a close up picture of chris with red eyes that simply says “those arent his eyes”, and then a post that says “his real names not chris :)”, they’re again referencing his eyes, and this time further implying theres something fake or wrong about them, or with chris as a person. again, it’ll be explained better later on.

moving on to puzzle 3 (x), another test to see if anyones keeping up (which also failed josdfjsdfkjs), using the same translation rules, dj = a dash or minus, and the snail = 5, “-5″, shift the letter ‘A’ BACK five instead of forward, and you get the simple translation of; “getting harder now.”

puzzle 4 and 5; at this point, there are two images posted within hours of each other that i’ll explain together as they line up. (x) (x)

These are some of the only ones that can be translated from just the tangodeltaindia key directly. They end up a string of numbers, which are latitude and longitude coordinates. The first post, labelled “the lie”, translates into “45.57394802102744, -81.46817207492494″. googling that will take you to maps and show you to a place called Lonely Island in Canada.

The second one, “the truth”, translates into “36.404663113177534, 25.39605673375295″, taking you to Santorini, Greece.

This is where the hints got really out there bc i realized nobody was following along but i still wanted to paint a picture. so this is the set up;;; the idea that the ‘island’ (camp wawanakwa) existing somewhere in canada, is a lie. the ‘true’ location being santorini isnt meant to be taken at face value though. the mythology behind santorini is that a man impregnated a goddess and to escape the wrath of her father (triton), she formed the island (santorini) by having her lover throw clay into the sea, and then she gave birth to her son, Theras, on this island, giving the island it’s Other nickname, Thera.

this is again just a vague implication that the island might not be real at all, or that it was formed through cosmic means.

the next two posts are more non-puzzle hints, the first showing the definition of the word ‘fresh’ (new), and the second being images of total drama backgrounds with no characters and the text reading “they were always empty.” more, admittedly very outlandish implications that the island is some kind of illusion, but again mostly just another try to drag people into the blog.

puzzle 6. (x) this one introduces a new concept to the regular translation rules, some of the characters are laying down. its kinda supposed to imply they’re “dead” and that you need to take their corresponding letters out of the alphabet given on the Caesar cipher page, below the shift. The upright characters translate to “-9″, so you shift ‘A’ back 9 letters. Then remove the letters; “TH-E-R-A-S”, and with those letters taken out, you can finally translate the text.

“he creates life solely to destroy it. to crush it in his hands. he births chaos so that he may have something to control. the power has given him madness. the isolation, arrogance. don't try to stop him, he's already chosen to be unstoppable. his mind is a perfectly crafted prison, one we will all soon be living in.”

this is where the story gets more on the nose. it’s talking about chris, and about him being an unstoppable cosmic force, a diety who can create worlds within his own mind, and he does so maliciously just for power. hes created the campers through mental energy just to torment them. it also hints that his plan is to expand the world of total drama island and engulf the whole universe.

puzzle 7. (x) same as the last puzzle. beaver and moose translate to ‘1-0′ or ten. the characters lying down to remove from the caesar cipher alphabet are “T-U-L-P-A”. this doesnt have anything to do with the modern way some ppl interact with tulpas but just the actual idea of creating thoughtforms, or willing your thoughts into real life creations, referencing how chris has created the entire island and everyone on it solely through his mind. with those letters removed and the shift set forward 10, you get this:

“his psychic power is unfathomable. the reality he bore was just a passing thought. an idea that became so dangerous. he predates the idea of a mind, the minds own ability to recognize itself, his synapses are paradoxically ancient. the island exists only within himself, to torment the souls hes created, and damned from the start. will they ever be free?”

it states that chris is more than a man or even just a diety, hes an all powerful god already, yet he craves more power. the final line, “will they ever be free” is in reference to the campers, which segways into the next arc;;; freeing the campers from chris’ psychic island imprisonment.

puzzle 8. (x) to solve this one you have to translate the top image with the tangodeltaindia cipher key, and add it to the text given, which creates a link. this leads to a PDF, a page from a book written by terence mckenna. he’s a famous ethnobotanist known best for his studies on DMT, the strongest hallucinogenic drug in the world, its also known as the spirit molecule. many people on this drug (without any prior knowledge of this phenomenon) will recount meeting strange fractal beings that can create things in the universe just by speaking them into existence, theyve come to be known as ‘machine elves’, a term coined by mckenna. ill show the most important excerpt from the page;

this is less about the psychedelic drug part and more about the words and ideas, like “punching a hole through a dimension so it pours through” and “if god didnt exist man would invent him”. its more worldbuilding towards chris’ power and cosmic abilities

then come 2 more clues. a picture of chris holding his own body captioned ‘ego death’, and the meaning behind the name ‘chris mcclean’. the latter is another “please look over here” post, but the first is another minor reference to the previous puzzles answer involving DMT and terence mckenna. ‘ego death’ is a term again used with strong psychedelic drugs, its the sensation that your spirit as you know it is literally Dying, and you are instead connected to and a part of everything around you. another reference to chris’ power and how he may look like a man but his body and spirit are connected to the world hes built in unfathomable ways. at this point im cementing the idea that chris mclean is not a mortal man and cannot be fought with mortal weapons

puzzle 9. (x) this one was an attempt to make easier to solve puzzles, and comes with a visual of chris looming over the island. the text is in wingdings, which can be translated through multiple websites found through google. it says;

“s︎o︎o︎n︎ h︎e︎ w︎i︎l︎l︎ s︎l︎e︎e︎p.︎ h︎e︎ w︎i︎l︎l︎ d︎r︎e︎a︎m︎ a︎ n︎e︎w︎ h︎e︎l︎l︎,︎ a︎n︎d︎ t︎h︎a︎t︎ w︎i︎l︎l︎ b︎e︎ o︎u︎r︎ o︎n︎l︎y︎ c︎h︎a︎n︎c︎e︎,︎ t︎o︎ s︎a︎v︎e︎ h︎i︎s︎ c︎r︎e︎a︎t︎i︎o︎n︎s︎,︎ a︎n︎d︎ f︎r︎e︎e︎ t︎h︎o︎s︎e︎ w︎h︎o︎ w︎e︎r︎e︎ n︎e︎v︎e︎r︎ d︎e︎s︎i︎g︎n︎e︎d︎ t︎o︎ b︎e︎ f︎r︎e︎e︎.︎ t︎h︎i︎s︎ m︎a︎y︎ c︎o︎m︎e︎ a︎t︎ a︎ c︎o︎s︎t︎.︎ t︎h︎e︎ n︎i︎g︎h︎t︎m︎a︎r︎e︎ m︎u︎s︎t︎ e︎n︎d︎,︎ t︎h︎e︎ o︎u︎r︎o︎b︎o︎r︎o︎s︎ o︎f︎ h︎i︎s︎ s︎y︎n︎c︎o︎pe︎ m︎u︎s︎t︎ c︎l︎o︎s︎e︎,︎ b︎u︎t︎ i︎t︎ m︎a︎y︎ t︎u︎r︎n︎ o︎u︎r︎ e︎f︎f︎o︎r︎t︎s︎ o︎f︎ s︎a︎l︎v︎a︎t︎i︎o︎n︎ t︎o︎ d︎u︎s︎t︎.︎ o︎u︎r︎ f︎i︎g︎h︎t︎ m︎i︎g︎h︎t︎ e︎n︎d︎ i︎n︎ s︎a︎c︎r︎i︎f︎i︎c︎e︎,︎ r︎e︎n︎d︎e︎r︎i︎n︎g︎ h︎i︎s︎ l︎a︎s︎t︎ i︎n︎v︎e︎n︎t︎i︎o︎n︎ b︎u︎t︎ a︎ c︎e︎a︎s︎e︎l︎e︎s︎s︎ v︎o︎i︎d︎.︎ w︎e︎ m︎a︎y︎ s︎e︎e︎ h︎o︎r︎r︎o︎r︎s︎ t︎h︎a︎t︎ c︎a︎u︎s︎e︎ t︎h︎e︎ s︎t︎a︎r︎s︎ t︎o︎ s︎h︎u︎d︎d︎e︎r︎,︎ b︎u︎t︎ w︎e︎ m︎u︎s︎t︎ t︎a︎ke︎ t︎h︎i︎s︎ c︎h︎a︎n︎c︎e︎.︎ w︎e︎ h︎a︎v︎e︎ n︎o︎t︎h︎i︎n︎g︎ t︎o︎ l︎o︎s︎e︎,︎ a︎n︎d︎ a︎ w︎o︎r︎l︎d︎ o︎f︎ n︎o︎t︎h︎i︎n︎g︎n︎e︎s︎s︎ t︎o︎ e︎n︎d︎.︎ m︎a︎y︎ t︎h︎e︎ s︎e︎a︎ s︎w︎a︎l︎l︎o︎w︎ u︎p h︎i︎s︎ i︎s︎l︎a︎n︎d︎ o︎f︎ l︎i︎e︎s︎.︎ g︎o︎d︎ pr︎o︎t︎e︎c︎t︎ y︎o︎u︎.︎”

this is essentially saying that the island, the campers, werent all just created from his mind, but from his dreams. this confirms that he Sleeps, and claims hes going to sleep again soon, and during that time period theres a chance to kill him before he can dream up another world (or season) to control and torment. its also saying that theres a chance killing him will destroy the island and campers, but that its the only choice we would have to end the cycle. hey guys i am so bored and over the years i have been on every stimulant and anti depressant doctors are legally allowed to prescribe and its still just not quite there yet huh

puzzle 10. (x) the video, the title translates to “the island of his eye”. its just meant to encapsulate everything ive already been hinting around at but with real footage and some audios taken from the show, and again, it was me tryna make some lore that was easy to digest and also terrifying to an audience with no other context. the final images are the only new clues, if you pause fast enough you can barely make out the characters that (paired with the tangodeltaindia cipher key) would say “set them free”, and you can also see an aerial view of what is actually called “the eye of argentina”. it is a real island that rotates atop a swamp, it is geometrically perfect and no one really knows for sure why it rotates the way it does or how it was formed. this clue is simply related back to the idea that the island of wawanakwa’s location is not in canada, and that it does not function like a normal island.

puzzle 11. (x) what td blog is complete without a uquiz? anyways, it doesnt matter how you answer the quiz, theres only one possible result. the title is a link to a mega file, which is protected with a decryption key. the image attached to the result, when deciphered, is the randomly generated key to the unlock the file. the image you see from the file is this; (TW for mentions of self harm and eye trauma)

in case this is too hard to read ill transcribe what it says;

“How to escape the dream - accept that there is no dream to escape, and no you to escape it. - believe in it anyways. - sleep on your back. - cover your eyes. - hide a nail under the pillow. - wait for the ringing. - when you first see him, dont call his name. dont speak. - keep your eyes shut. - on the second night, ask where the camp is. he wont respond verbally. - on the third night, you’ll see his eyes. - on the fourth night, you’ll enter them. - you can’t turn back after the fifth night. - don’t try to hide your fears. he knows them before you arrive. - don’t shut your eyes for too long when it becomes too much. you risk losing them. - find chris mclean. - don’t stop till the nail is through the socket. - repeat on the other side. - repeat on yourself. - congratulations. they are free”

this is, believe it or not, an idea that comes from my very own sleep paralysis experiences. ive dealt with it a lot, so why not make a weird ritual thing for an arg based off it ig. so whenever i’d fall asleep on my back, i’d eventually hear this ringing in my ears (or it’d happen upon waking up), and then the sleep paralysis would begin. i only ‘saw’ stuff a couple times but the fear for me was really more about the overwhelming sensation of pure dread that always came along with it even when i was aware what was happening, and i Always got this feeling too that if i opened my eyes in that moment, something was gonna stab them.

so moving on to how that applies to the arg, the first few lines are about how, obviously, the island is not real, even in the lore being given its a figment of chris’ imagination, but you have to enter it anyways, and the only way to do that is to believe its real. then it tells you how to ‘enter’ that world, (btw i didn’t expect anyone to actually follow these instructions if found, but even if they did, the whole ‘sleep paralysis being caused by sleeping on your back’ thing usually only happens if you’re predisposed to having it and only happens to Some people who have it, so the intent was like. never to bring that upon anybody. but if you are prone to sleep paralysis plz do not attempt even as a joke or anything thx)

the parts about hallucinating chris then are as follows, “ask about the camp / he wont respond verbally” , meaning he will show you through a dream instead, one that might look a lot like the video from before. “on the third night you will see his eyes”, meaning you will see the island but not be able to interact with it, or basically, how we see total drama on tv right now. “on the fourth night you’ll enter (his eyes)” references the island existing ‘within his eyes’, meaning you will enter the actual island. the next night chris will sleep and you will be able to enter the island again and find him. the idea with the nail is that, if you destroy his eyes you destroy the ‘island’ within them. wrapping back around to sleep paralysis, the idea of stabbing yourself with the nail afterwards is because sometimes, the only thing you can move during sleep paralysis is your fingertips and toes, and wiggling those can help bring you out of the paralysis. so at first how i used to wake myself up, but it didnt usually work fast enough so oftentimes id just pinch the shit out of my fingers and use pain to make my muscles start up faster.

the next post is a link to a countdown. again, i knew nobody was rly following at this point, but i wanted a little more build up before just dropping the ending. it was set up to end 5 days after the last post, aka the one that mentioned a 5 night dream ritual.

puzzle 12. (x) going all the way back to the normal multi step translation puzzles. the coloring of the cipher is a bit different, and its missing chris, but its meant to be used the same as it was before, these changes are only for dramatic effect. and chris is gone because well. we mentally offed him in the inception dream land last time. so anyways the snake = 6, shift A to 6, take out the letters “R-I-C-K” of the characters laying in their graves, and you get this translation;

“its almost time. we must now crack open our minds like a crowbar to a sealed chest. like an egg to a pan. to find our way into camp wawanakwa our ego cannot remain intact, and to traverse it we must stay strong. to escape it, we must glue the pieces back together. now we sleep. dream. end the nightmare.”

this is a final message before ‘entering the island’ to kill chris and free the campers from the island. it acts like a pep talk.

the next post is just the countdown ending.

puzzle 13 (the finale). (x)

this post sends you to a new blog entirely, called @awakenfromthenightmare​. there is only one post on it. the post has another link to a mega file, and the link is attached onto a string of text. follow the link by clicking, then copy the text and paste it in as the decryption key. now you have another image to translate with the tangodeltaindia cipher;

when translated, the text is another link to a youtube video. 

 www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

so there you have it, that video is the ending to the entire arg. it didnt really end the way i wanted at first, i got burnt out from no engagement about halfway through which isnt anybody elses fault, but i still felt this was a well crafted and fitting finale. thank you all for reading.

[dillydedalus]

what i read in june

another very slow reading month bc uni work + migraines = not a lot of reading, also two of my profs thought assigning 500-page books (in the same week) was like, a cool thing to do

bilqiss, saphia azzedine (tr. from french by birgit leib (german)) beautiful, headstrong & intelligent widow (by her own making) bilqiss sings the adhan instead of the muezzin & is put on trial for that & her numerous other sins (like buying a very phallic aubergine). she’s to be stoned, but she’s so smart and eloquent that the judge falls in love with her and keeps delaying. bilqiss herself is incredible but i kinda wish the other two perspectives had been omitted (the judge) or made much shorter (leandra, the white saviour american journalist). also not too convinced by the ending. 3/5

the artificial silk girl, irmgard keun lovely sharp & funny book about a doris, a darling hot mess of a girl, who, in a moment of despair, steals a fur coat from the theatre wardrobe and runs off to berlin (as you do). but weimar berlin, fun and shining as it may be, is not the healthiest place to be for a pretty young girl with no money. doris is sharp and naive and vain and shallow and soft, and i adore her so very much. also the voice in this is so vibrant and specific that i’m really curious as to how it’s been translated. 4/5

dawn: stories, selahattin demirtaş (tr. from turkish by amy mary spangler & kate ferguson) demirtaş is primarily a politician but is currently in prison, facing up a sentence of up to 142 years for... being in the opposition & kurdish. anyway, this is a collection of short (mostly very short) stories that he wrote behind bars, mainly about social issues in turkey, sexism, police brutality, unjust prison sentences, corruption etc. they are more significant for their political content than literary brilliance & some are a bit on the nose, but definitely interesting & often emotionally affective. the title story and ‘nazan the cleaning lady’ were my favourites. 3/5

babel, kenah cusanit  really interesting novel about the german excavation of babylon in the early 20th century, just before the first world war, focusing on the thoughts & reflections of real historical excavation leader robert koldewey about babylon, history, architecture, philology, and middle eastern/european relations&politics. it’s very stream-of-consciousness-y and quite dense & hard to follow at times, and predictably i liked it best when it was actually about the third babylon (berlin in case you’re not up on berlin’s tendency for ridiculous self-mythologising) - there’s a lovely bit where koldewey remembers returning to berlin after years away on digs and finding it completely changed, “looking for the most part as if it had been built last week”, “a city that wasn’t a city but something that had, from one day to the next, grown over its borders into a book by theodor fontane [...] as if this place wanted nothing more than to escape from itself” while in the present he looks on babylon which is also a city & not a city, but a sheet that has been written on so often that it is unreadable, and that is the sort of content i’m here for. I was also kind of surprised that the book doesn’t take much of a stance on the subject of colonial theft of art and relics which is like....what koldewey is doing, but then again i left it really wanting to go to the pergamon museum which is still mostly closed to the public :( 3.5/5

hyperbole and a half, allie brosh (graphic-memoir-ish) if you weren’t religiously reading hyperbole & a half in the late 00s/early 10s, were you ever even a weird mentally ill teenager? i knew most of these stories already but god, allie brosh really gets it and by it i mean depression and how the nothing you feel gets even void-ier every time someone suggests you try yoga or like ~*positivity*~. also it’s very very funny. 4/5

voss, patrick white (uni) in his introduction to this book about a 19th century exploration into the australian bush, robert macfarlane quotes a review of voss by poet a.d. hope who calls its style “pretentious and illiterate sludge”. macfarlane says this sludginess is a good thing (it’s not) but it’s certainly a good description - utterly excessively verbose and not in a fun, exhilarating way but oozily. sludgily. like wading through a mess of words that aren’t quite were they’re supposed to be and anyway there’s too many of them. there’s some interesting stuff here about exploration, systems of knowledge, spirituality and a love affair almost entirely conducted in letters that never arrive and hallucinations, but there’s just too much sludge (and too many descriptions of female characters’ breasts). 2/5

der junge und das meer, cinghiz aitmatov (tr. from russian) lovely little novella about a young boy from an indigenous east-russian fishing community being taken on his first trip to sea with the men of his family, where they get caught up in a storm. it’s a quick read & very sad. 3/5

macbeth, jo nesbo (uni) - dnf another really bad hogarth shakespeare entry. i appreciate hogarth going Full Genre, but mystery is one of my least fav of the genres, i don’t really like scandinoir and.... macbeth is a scottish swat agent (does scotland even have swat???) whose special skill is throwing KNIVES (you have.... a gun....). also like ‘kill the king to be the king’ kinda makes sense, ‘kill the police commissioner to be the police commissioner’..... less so. 2edgy4me/5

anyway let’s hope july is better.

[nyarlethotepscat]

tl;dr: For 2000 years humanity’s best mathematicians stymied by their inability to conceive of the concept of *multiplying four things together*, some guy you’ve never heard of named Descartes solves the problem in half a page.

A bunch of odd conversations about mathematics after Secular Solstice-- mostly picking apart the strange and autodidactic opinions of @winged-light-blog, which I still don’t understand, (this happens when you do the right thing and don’t trust your maths teachers)-- reminded me of the little I know about the Ancient Greeks’ approach to mathematics. Their worldview was interesting enough that I’d thought I’d share them with the world, at least so we can appreciate how much about maths we moderns take for granted and don’t realise involve nontrivial insights.

 To Euclid and Archimedes and the rest of them, a number was a length, and, usually, any operations you were allowed to perform on numbers you had to be done with the old fashioned tools of a compass and straightedge, which led to problems when they tried to do things like trisect angles or square circles.

 But where this way of thinking really got them stuck was how they thought about multiplication. You could multiply a length by a length, but you’d have to satisfy yourself with the answer being the area of a rectangle -- an entirely different object. You’d prove that two areas are the same by some kind of dissection argument or something. You could multiply a length by an area, and get a volume. But if you tried to multiply a volume by something the response would be TYPE_ERROR, because geometry is about the real world and there are only 3 dimensions in the real world. And if to you tried to add a length to an area, or any funny business like that, the response would also be TYPE_ERROR, which is, I admit, a reasonable thing to do. (You could also, I think, multiply things by positive integers simply by adding them to themselves enough times, so that Euclid’s proof of the infinitude of primes still worked.) And for about 2000 years or so this is the way that western mathematicians thought, and this really screwed them over. They couldn’t talk about trying to solve equations with powers higher than the third -- (anything fancy with exponentials or power series was, of course, right out). It was much easier to think of curves as loci of fancy constructions or conic sections than anything you could remotely compute anything with. And don’t forget that this was before modern mathematical notation, so you’d have to write all your operations out laboriously in Ancient Greek. It’s a wonder they got anything done at all.

This whole complicated and annoying mess was finally resolved by Descartes. Yes, he of the fancy coordinate axes and “I think therefore I am”. On the way to basically inventing algebraic geometry and rendering almost all of ancient Greek geometry obsolete he deals with this problem in a few lines and a diagram.

First he declares by fiat that some random line segment is one (pretty much the same way that modern physicists declare that c, G, ħ and any other random constants they don’t like are 1 and that they can just rescale the units) Then he does some geometry with a pretty pair of similar triangles.

[Attempted translation: For example, letting AB be unity and wanting to multiply  BD by BC, we need only join the points A & C  and then draw DE parallel to AC. BE is then the product of the multiplication.]

And somehow you’ve multiplied a line by a line and gotten a line.

And from then on he just declares that he is allowed to do this as many times as he likes, and if he wants to take the 691st power of some line segment, so be it. And from there he was comfortable saying “This curve is the set of points satisfying x^23+ 59x^31y^3+y+47=0″ which would have made the ancient Greeks’ heads explode.

Descartes wasn’t terribly modest about his new invention of coordinate geometry, saying that “it compares to the Ancient Greek geometers like the rhetoric of Cicero compares to the ABCs of children”. And he probably should have considered the consequences of unleashing a new branch of maths onto the brains of unsuspecting university students.

(What algebraic geometry looks like today. This is scary and I don’t understand it and I don’t want to think about it) But however much of a douchebag he might have been about it, I do appreciate the ability to take 4th powers.

EDIT FOR BS: Looks like a hazy memory and some dubious sources make for an ridiculously overexaggerated story. @evolution-is-just-a-theorem Ars Magna (published a hundred years or so beforehand) seems happy to use higher powers in its treatment of the cubic and quartic. On the other hand Wikipedia mentions on the entry of La Geometrie that the ancient Greeks had a tradition of using length/areas/volumes for powers as shown. I suspect the reason why Descartes was so happy with this view of multipication is that it allowed him to express such algebraic problems geometrically, whereas previously no such interpretation could be found -- and of course with the classical view of geometry as the foundations of mathematics, this was considered to be very important.

EDIT2: “There was an additional complication: the multiplication of lines was taken to produce surfaces, the multiplication of lines by surfaces to produce volumes, and the multiplication of surfaces to be meaningless; the square of a line was literally a square, and its cube literally a cube (Fig. 5.1). This limited the Greeks’ ability to deal with polynomials of more than the third degree.Weakening of Distinction. Partly under the influence of Arabic mathematics, the distinction be-tween numbers and magnitudes was beginning to weaken.  For example,the brilliant Niccolò “Tartaglia” (The Stammerer) Fontana (c. 1500–1557)complained that some mathematicians were confusing multiplicare, the multiplication of numbers, with ducere, the multiplication of magnitudes. On the other hand, François Viète (1540–1603) argued that algebra was better then geometry, because it was not limited to equations of the third degree or lower. In fact, Descartes claimed that he began where Viète had stopped” So right that this was the Greeks’ view, right that Descartes rigorously resolved the issue at last, but there was a fair amount of groundwork needed to be laid before then -- mathematicians had to get used to the idea of higher powers of reals, even though they didn’t quite have the justification for it. from https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/Classes/UH267/handouts/WFI/c5.pdf cheers to @robustcornhusk

[comicteaparty]

May 3rd, 2018 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party chat that occurred on May 3rd, 2018, from 5PM - 7PM PDT.  The chat focused on Suriska by Claire Burn.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

COMIC TEA PARTY START!

Good day everyone~! This week’s Comic Tea Party is now officially beginning~! Today we are discussing Suriska by Claire Burn~! (http://suriskacomic.com/) For those new or in need of a reminder, discussions about the comic are freeform, so please feel free to bring up whatever you wish. However, every 30 minutes I will be dropping in a discussion question to help those who would like a prompt. These questions are totally OPTIONAL to answer, and you can pay them no mind if you wish. If you miss out on any though, they’ll be pinned for the duration of the chat once they’re posted~! Remember, constructive criticism is allowed, but the primary focus here is to have fun and appreciate the amazing comics that the community makes~! As a bonus, each chat a top comment will be picked and featured in the archives and on an ad for CTP! All that being said, let’s get started and have a great discussion!

QUESTION 1. What is your favorite scene in the comic so far and why?

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I really liked Freyja checking the stove multiple times, I laughed out loud since it's something I've always done when leaving the house.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yes that was a moment i connected with too. not that ive really checked the stove but ive had to deal with other similar issues of checking things a dozen times. im glad for the timing of that too cause it really helped explained why corin going missing got to her so much

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Hello there! I’ll be there in a bit, currently AFK for the time being!

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

kay~!

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I've really enjoyed learning more about Freya as a character too, I feel like there's a lot of depth beneath her that we're just starting to uncover

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah. there are a lot of interesting elements to her character. mostly because i hmm why shes in the town. like corin is understandable because corin's anxiety is a bit more debilitating. whereas freya seems completely functional and yet somehow stuck

i think my favorite scene is less a scene is the one where freya busts into johann's place and just doesnt say anything. shows him the picture and hes like "well shit ive been found out."

🌟Draco Plato🌟

OH! I liked that too, it also added more layers to the story. And yeah, overall I find Corin a simpler character since it's pretty clear why he is the way he is and his debilitating anxiety, etc

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

another scene i like for its effect on the story itself is the story about the origin of the snow. i really liked that it gave the town a sort of history, even if it might be a fictional and fantastical one XD

🌟Draco Plato🌟

Yeah I did think that was really good for expanding the lore of the story~!

wishjacked

I have a really strong love/hate relationship with the scene where the old man at the train station recognizes Corin and asks about his parents. It's really funny in the most painful way imaginable

And I like Freya a lot!! I'm interested to see where her character goes-- I think there are a lot of hints that she's not as functional as she appears at first, and I'm interested to see where that goes haha

🌟Draco Plato🌟

Oh same!!

Omg that scene at the train station, that old man was ridiculously awful in his questions, from bad to worse

felt so bad for Corin

wishjacked

Like the oven thing was funny, but weirdly drawn out compared to a lot of other jokes, and she also has that scene in the bathroom where she has this weird, disjointed cause-and-effect logic that because she left the soap out, it caused something totally unrelated and bad to happen. I've wondered if those things have some deeper meaning to her character or world lol

Me too, I was dyyyyiiiiiing for that whole scene

🌟Draco Plato🌟

same, same, I feel like there's something to delve into there behind her little ticks

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

that is true. the stove thing i get, but the soap out did throw me for a loop. so its a good point that her problems may go a bit deeper. albeit shes at least not so tormented shes staying home all day. i imagine it takes her like an hour to actually leave her house though

that old man scene though, man, i erased that from my memory

it just made me so uncomfortable

like old man where is your human decency O_O

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeeeeah, like geezus 0 sympathy for the poor kid

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah. i mean youd think corin just told him the weather was not so great, not that his parents died tragically O_O

🌟Draco Plato🌟

altho there was a part of me that thought as a writing choice that was low hanging fruit for showing his anxiety heightened and why he has it and I thought that maybe it could have been added in more strategically than so forced

but that was more my thought on a writing analysis viewpoint

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

tbf i actually wondered if that was the true dialogue and if we were getting an unreliable narrator effect going. like the old man was actually being nicer but corin's anxiety translated the words to something else.

http://suriskacomic.com/62.html

especially after that scene it makes me feel that inclination stronger

wishjacked

oh, that's a very interesting thought!!

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I did wonder that too Rebel!

wishjacked

Honestly I took the scene at face value bc I straight up am that old man. and thaaaaaaaaaaaat's why I have no friends XD

🌟Draco Plato🌟

LOL!!!

wishjacked

there tends to be a really strong "unreliable narrator" feeling in general-- beyond Corin's anxiety rewriting speech bubbles, Freya's narration is just snarky enough that I'm not quite sure exactly how biased she is in her representation of her town and etc

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

hmm im not sure i got that representation from freya. her items i took more at face value. that being said, i do think shes suffers from a sort of complex in how she sees herself? like she got super pissed about johann not trusting her and thinking she couldnt handle the secret and what not, and something about it struck me as kind of odd. tho i couldnt put a finger on what

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I was surprised how agreeable she was to covering up for an affair

and how nonchalant she was about it, since that's a rather big deal

it made me wonder where she lies on a morality line

which i thought was intriguing

cause my first assumption is she'd be very anti it so it went against my expectations which i like

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

that is also true. not to mention its a very risky secret to keep. the about page says this towns population is 150. and small towns of that size generally make it hard to keep secrets of that level

🌟Draco Plato🌟

right! So I'm interested where that story route will go

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

QUESTION 2. Throughout the comic we see the portrayal of mental illnesses, from Corin’s anxiety to Freya’s OCD tendencies. Was there any aspect of their portrayal you particularly connected with? Why? Do you think Corin and Freya will be able to learn to cope with their illnesses better? If so, what do you think has to happen for them to be able to get a better handle on life? Particularly in the case of Corin, what do you foresee as potential conflicts he’ll have to face in regards to his anxiety, and do you think he’ll triumph over them?

as for the first question

once again http://suriskacomic.com/62.html

that page

ive been there. where no matter what people are actually telling you all you hear is how worthless you are. not fun times. and i thought that was really a lovely way to illustrate it. the sudden change in color schemes really sets the mood. and the messy handwriting for corin's added thoughts really i think emphasis the volitile nature of them

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah I felt that was relatable as well(edited)

to a much smaller degree than what Corin has though, but I've been there with crippling anxiety before

My hope is that by the end of the story he'll have learned to cope with it but I could see the creator not taking that direction as well

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

itd be a shame if corin didnt learn better coping mechanisms though. :< like, what a horrid life to live with such anxiety. not to mention from the sounds of it corin moved there to change himself, so hes not gonna be changing himself if that happens. granted i dont expect him to ever be fully "cured" (for lack of a better word). just still, itd be nice if he could go outside or open the door without thinking about how people secretly all hate him or something.

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I do think he needs to change for it to be a compelling story arc for him

cause a lack of progression in his condition would just be overly sad especially with the background he came there to change

but if the change character is Freya and not Corin I could see the story not helping Corin in his condition

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yeah thats true. and tbh im not sure corin is in the right place to change as far as his anxiety goes. im really torn about that. cause on the one hand being able to go to a remote location could be a good mental break. but on the otherhand it can also worsen the anxiety. however corin progresses.

im interested to see how corin handles being on a train

cause thats not really a place where you can actively avoid people in super close proximity

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I think there's also a small chance Corin could be the "antagonist" of the story

if he flips out to such a degree

that it hurts those around him

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

alrighty, I'm here at last

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

hi super~!

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Hi Rebel! Thanks again for doing the CTP

Before I jump in I want to say I like the winter aesthetics of this comic.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

corin is kind of the antagonist. he did hide that letter. which is...like i get he doesnt want to go but he didnt need to deprive freya of the reunion. hes an adult so she technically cant tell him what to do.

yeah its really nice to see a winter setting, especially one where ppl are actively dressed for it

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

^

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah i like the winter aesthetic too, and yeah that really made me question Corin on the morality line, that he hid the letter from her just because he wasn't sure if he wanted to go or not. It made me feel he was super self absorbed and doesn't consider his actions and their affect on other people

also who was he mailing the letter to in the most recent page?

it had a sinister feel to it the way it was portrayed

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

considering he was looking at a magazine catalogue thing that had a thing that looked like a radio for 19.99, i assume he was mailing a letter that said "plz give me this product"

🌟Draco Plato🌟

oh! was that it, i didn't notice, I wonder why it was made to feel like such a big deal then panel and tone wise

I guess it could have been done that way because of him over hearing the conversation too

I just didn't think it was that relevant to him since he wouldn't have known the tickets were for him and Freya

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

well to be fair the next page may directly say "these are for the farthas so they can go to their reunion" and then corin may be all gasp

i kind of thought the tone was sinister too although i assumed that was an artistic choice to express corin's anxiety. cause when you arent a fan of people, going out where there are people is probably gonna be a sinister undertaking

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah, maybe the next page will piece it together better, that could change a lot. I think if his anxiety was the focus there'd have been more focus panel wise on his expressions and less on the letter and mail box

I was actually surprised it didn't focus on his anxiety more

since it seemed like him going there would be a big deal

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

thats true. on a side note and kind of off topic, i like the pattern on corin's hat. like i think its just a really nice detail.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

>On Page 59 >Chills at around -20 Is that in F or C

🌟Draco Plato🌟

probably F since the creator is from the US

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Holy Christ

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

QUESTION 3. Suriska may be a small town, but plenty trouble seems to be afoot even so. Do you think Corin will ever hear the end of the whole town going out to look for him? Do you think Corin will be able to maintain employment, or will his employer eventually let him go? In regards to Freya who discovered Johann’s affair, do you think she’ll actually be able to keep the secret? If so, do you think she might take advantage of knowing it since she already got free train tickets out of it? Do you think there are any other shadowy things happening within the town? Regardless, do you think being in the town will help Freya or Corin change perspectives on their life? If so, how can this particular town help? Alternatively, do you think the town is actually making their individual ruts worse?

well it is a winter town. those temps are expected

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

A part of me feels sorry for Corin.

also yea

He just looks like the guy that goes through a lot

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I bet something spooky happens because it's a small town, small town stories generally like to focus on the spooky

someone will die or something supernatural will happen

O_O

also it seems like the witches will be proven to be real or something since it had such a long introduction of importance

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

twist: the winter story was true and corin is gonna run into a fox and corin will bring more winter

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

omg Page 68 tho

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah, omg yeah that's probably it rebel

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

and the stuff about an affair

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I feel like the fox/witch story had such a long focus was because it's going to become a big part of the story

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Now that you mention it, maybe(edited)

🌟Draco Plato🌟

also the guy in the story looked a bit like Corin

so i feel there's a connection there

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

mmm

I smell foreshadowing

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i actually got the opposite impression. i cannot see the fox/witch story becoming part of this story in its current course. cause that was the only moment where anything remotely supernatural was even mentioned. and since the rest of this comic is so ingrained in real life issues, it would just be too out of the blue to me to bring it up again

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

what if that was only part of the story

and there's a continuation

of sorts later on(edited)

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I do think the supernatural turn would actually be unwelcomed since that's very common and I prefer it being rooted in reality for what it has been so far. Buuuut small town stories, they love to go into the supernatural and that was a long focus on the fox story

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

still would doubt that. cause again, its delving into the supernatural where 90% of the rest of the comic has nothing supernatural about it.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Maybe the story could have some kind of greater meaning

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I've read a lot of comics before that have turned supernatural though in the middle

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

rather than just connecting Corin to it

🌟Draco Plato🌟

so it wouldn't be that strange

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

also yea

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i did think the focus was long, but it can come up in other ways. like maybe corin will use the story as an inspiration to go on a journey. thats more realistic

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

^

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah it definitely could be used in other ways

I'd rather see the story be an emotional journey for the characters without the use of a supernatural trope

but again I don't think it'd be uncommon for it to go there

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

I'll say I'm for the emotional journey part(edited)

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I mean Corin could also just flip out and start murdering people saying he is the fox or something

the story is pretty wide open atm

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

true. i mean maybe the supernatural will come up. i cant really even say this is the middle of the story cause who knows how long its going to be. for all i know were still technically in the beginning.

🌟Draco Plato🌟

Maybe Corin doesn't want to go on the train so he runs away into the woods and he meets the fox

and then he goes on a journey with the fox

and freya has to find him

and then he gets over his anxiety by realizing he still has freya left or something

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yes that could be a possibility. the story couldve just been there to be there. add to that winter lore

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Maybe the fox could be Corin hallucinating or imagining it(edited)

and it speaks with him

🌟Draco Plato🌟

Fox could be the manifestation of his anxiety

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

^^^

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i do think the story is going to go the route where corin has to leave the town. imho i dont think the town is helping him at all atm. especially freya cause shes kind of an enabler of just letting him laze about the home. like....hes 21 and she treats him like hes a teen or younger. and i personally think those conditions make it hard for him to grow.

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah I agree, Freya is an enabler since she doesn't require him to do anything to help around the house or anything

so it breeds stagnation

He needs to make an emotional journey alone most likely

cause the demons are first and foremost inside himself

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

yes.

at the very least if he stays in town everyone will constantly remind him about how he ran away and the whole town searched

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Yea

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

cause man did that town look excited about it XD

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

I'm thinking he migrates to someplace a bit warmer

if I had anything to say

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah, omg Like geezus this town(edited)

he'd be lucky to go somewhere warmer, lolol

oh you asked about if he'd lose his job or not, I actually thought it was amazing he even had a job with his level anxiety. Was legit shocked by that XD(edited)

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

lol

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

im confused a bit by the geography of this town. in the sense is this town just experiencing winter atm or is it like eternal winter.

🌟Draco Plato🌟

same

I couldn't tell if the curse made it an all year thing or just seasonal

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

which is what i thought the point of the fox/witch story was more. to create something about the seasons

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah if there was a concrete answer regarding it i missed it

but it makes a huge difference

cause if there really is a curse and it's an all year thing than that already puts the supernatural in

if it's related to the curse that is, and not just hey we're winter all year cause of geography, etc

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

for some reason the town really reminds me of alaska

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Me too

I thought it would be someplace in Canada

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I was thinking more of sweden or switzerland

based on their haircuts and clothes

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

but Alaska was what came into my mind first

the clothes looked more Russian to me

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

was skimming the beginning for clues, theres a magical thumb that covers the location

so im gonna assume it doesnt matter

maybe its symbolic

suriska the town is a state of mind

🌟Draco Plato🌟

lolol

i'mma assume it's fictional until otherwise stated

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Yea(edited)

Kabocha, Marquess of ✨Sparkle✨

(It might be estonian, based on the fact that they mention Kalavinski which... is a giant rubber boot in estonian apparently)

🌟Draco Plato🌟

a wild Kabo appears

Kabocha, Marquess of ✨Sparkle✨

Only briefly!

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

eey Kabo! o/

also lol, is that really a thing?

🌟Draco Plato🌟

okay yeah that adds up with their clothes

Kabocha, Marquess of ✨Sparkle✨

But yeah, I was figuring northwest Europe somewhere. Originally I'd thought Nordic, but Estonia makes sense too.

erm, northeast.

🌟Draco Plato🌟

norway would make sense too cause of her name

Kabocha, Marquess of ✨Sparkle✨

............ directions, man, what are they even

Right?!

🌟Draco Plato🌟

like duuur why didn't i connect that even thought it earlier

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

My mind will forever think

some kind of cross between Alaska and Russia(edited)

🌟Draco Plato🌟

so the name Corin is Irish

that doesn't help

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

fartha is also an irish name?

well assume europe

thats good enough

🌟Draco Plato🌟

somewhere in europe, yus

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Yea Europe sounds good

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

in regards to corin's job, it does sound like its a pity job so his performance may not matter

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah i like when that was brought up cause it made it make more sense to me

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

tho i wonder if he's 1) getting paid and 2) contributing to household utilities and such

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

^

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

QUESTION 4. At the beginning of the comic, Freya forcefully declares that she and Corin will be going to a family reunion, whether Corin actually wants to go or not. Do you think Freya will actually get Corin to go, or will Corin magically vanish come time to leave? If Corin doesn’t go, will Freya go alone? If they do both manage to go, do you think the reunion will go well? What do you think in general will happen at the reunion? Speaking of which, what do you think the other members of the family will think of Corin? Do you think something at the reunion will make Corin have a new perspective on his parents’ death? If there is no reunion, how do you think this will affect Freya and Corin’s relationship with their family?

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Hmmm

I think Corin would make some excuse to go and just

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I bet we don't see the reunion, lolol

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

stay on the side

🌟Draco Plato🌟

and corin will run off and freya will have to find him

cause I think it's unlikely the story will shift away from the small town

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

idk i feel like the reunion is a potential future still. albeit i consider the liklihood of corin actually going to be slim

i could see freya just going "fine whatever stay here by yourself"

and then she goes to the reunion

🌟Draco Plato🌟

since the small town is mentioned so predominately in the about Is why i think they're going to stay there

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

unless his personality takes a full 180 by then

🌟Draco Plato🌟

cause the town is itself a character

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Is that so?

🌟Draco Plato🌟

"Suriska: population 150. It's neither Freya nor Corin's definition of paradise, but it is their home... if you could call it that. Apparently it's where you end up if you try to change your life for the better. What does it take to get out of this rut? It might take spite, it might take snowstorms, or it might just take a reevaluation of your morals."

ALTHOUGH

"A slice-of-life comic about trains, bad weather, and insecurities."

that's the tagline

which makes me think they'll get on the train and get in a bad snowstorm and get stranded, lolol

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Hmm

Why do i keep thinking Corin should just do photos of the snow and mountains for a living

with a camera

and store all the photos somewhare

like to give people a taste of what life looks like up north(edited)

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i dont forsee that working. it doesnt look like the town really has many electronics of any sort. like theyre still using landlines

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

also yea

you do have a point

🌟Draco Plato🌟

plus making a living as an artist isn't the easiest thing, lol

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

double-point taken

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

just cause they go to a reunion doesnt mean they cant come back. and you can still make the town predominant if the characters talk about it. like i imagine freya's family has lots to ask about it. so in that context it still makes the story part of it. but man, i bet you if freya did go to the reunion she would tell her sister with the foot thing all about johann's affair. make it even thinking nobody will ever meet

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

I wonder what time era this takes place in, or if the residents deliberately don't use much electricity in case the power goes out or something and it'd be hard to repair

🌟Draco Plato🌟

Personally I'd like them to go to the reunion, i think it'd be interesting,

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i assume its modern times but that their town is super remote. cause if you have a remote enough town you dont get a lot of stuff we consider common

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Yea

🌟Draco Plato🌟

that's what i assumed too

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

ya know

theres a way for the reunion to happen and them to not leave

freya's family comes to them instead

and everyone has to cram into freya's tiny house

🌟Draco Plato🌟

hahah that's true

altho trains being in the tagline makes me think that's going to be a huge thing

so one way or another they're getting on a train

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

yea

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

maybe. i mean the trains are already kind of a thing

cause it was part of corin's job

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah but then you'd say train stations

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

not necessarily? its a tagline. its supposed to entice not be 100% to the letter accurate

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah, I know

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i do think someone is getting on a train

cause now these tickets are a big deal too

🌟Draco Plato🌟

yeah that did increase the importance of the journey

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

I always liked when stories go on trains IMO

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i wonder what freya would even do if corin just stayed in bed when theyre supposed to leave and said "nope not going"

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

I'd be curious about that too

🌟Draco Plato🌟

I wondered that too, if she'd make him go forcibly, but there is a point I don't think she could physically make him go

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Yea

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i actually kind of hope freya goes and corin doesnt to a degree. cause i think him having to be alone and take care of himself might be good for him. or more id just be interested to see how he copes for a weekend. cause im slightly worried about his eating habits XD

🌟Draco Plato🌟

oh you know what

corin could stay and freya goes but the train gets in an accident due to the storm and he'd have to deal with the loss of freya too potentially

but freya doesn't die, just has to deal with being stranded

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

although ya know, being so far from home might be hard for freya. cause she cant exactly check the stove while shes hundreds of miles away

tho led my mind to comedic routes. imagining her trek across the snow for miles to get home. corin is like "omg youre okay" and first thing freya does is check the stove and sighs in relief

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Hmm

That would be cool for a scene or two

Also I wonder what kind of foods they eat

prolly all warm stuff

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

well corin had a muffin. i assume its normal stuff that they eat. tho i imagine they do stick away from cold stuff just for matters of practicality

on a side note

im really impressed corin dresses so lightly

cause corin does not have any heat insulating body fat going on really O_O;;;

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Yea

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I made it home before 10pm. ^_^;; Just wanted to say, I didn't have much free time this week, and so I didn't get far into the narrative, but that's partly because after I read the bit at the start with the kid and the teacher I thought if I don't stop now and do some marking, I'll read too far and be even more behind at work.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Oh hey Math! o/

Welcome to the final six minutes

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Enjoyed the start though! Curious to see what others have to say about it.

Better late than never?

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

Also yea the beginning was cute

especially with the kids

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

hey math~!

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Apparently it goes to trains passing in the night.

🌟Draco Plato🌟

Hi Math~!

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

i did like the part where freya gave the kid coffee and then tricked her completely away from wanting to grow up so soon

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

^^^

That part got me especially

🌟Draco Plato🌟

hahah i liked that too, but didn't think it'd work in real life XD

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

We teachers can be tricky.

🌟Draco Plato🌟

also took offense since i don't drink coffee, gosh

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

aside from loading the kid up in caffeine

I don't drink it either

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

I also don't drink coffee, wooo.

🌟Draco Plato🌟

i drank more coffee as a kid than an adult freya, gosh

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

I loved cappuchino growing up

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Anyway, I'll let you get final thoughts out.

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

(I don't like warm drinks)

Great comic overall, hope to see it continue.

Everything about it was really pleasant to read

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

my last thoughts are that i really like the patterns on all the clothing. its that little bit of extra detail that adds some character to the setting and people existing within it

Superjusting of ✨Time🕑&Space☄✨

^^^

MathTans the Pun 👑Prince👑

Nice.

✨🐱 RebelVampire 🐱✨

COMIC TEA PARTY END!

Unfortunately, the scheduled Comic Tea Party time is now up~! Thank you everyone so much for reading and joining this week’s chat~! We want to give a special thank you to Claire Burn, as well, for making Suriska and volunteering it for our reading queue. If you liked the comic, please be sure to support Claire Burn’s efforts however you’re able to. All that being said, if you would like to continue discussing this week’s comic, we highly encourage you to do so~!

For next week, Comic Tea Party will focus on Linked by Kabocha. As always, please use the next several days to read as much of the comic as you would like. We hope to see you next Thursday on May 10th from 5PM to 7PM PDT for the chat~! Until then, happy reading~! Comic: http://linkedcomic.com/