Discussion for comic for 2020-03-23 (Monday) ✣ .
Veni, vidi, wiki (I came, I saw, I edited).
Poor Kaja. I guess mailing out comics doesn't count as an essential industry. I'm a little surprised the USPS et al. are still running. Also surprised that any of the peanut gallery apart from Trelawney would argue that they're needed to explain underwater England to Agatha! Well, and Rakethorn I guess. (Are we supposed to start liking him? He's been pretty well-behaved since the battle of the temple.) Oh, to mention the obvious, that was a pretty stupid remark by Agatha in the first panel. Yellow guy saves the day; I wonder if he's confused or is deliberately misleading His Serenity because he wants this meeting to happen. Another thing, those straps on Agatha's face look really stupid; I'm surprised Tarvek let that get past him. And, okay, the big question you've all been waiting for, what secret powers are we talking about here? Not the queens, presumably; they're not secret, even though they're powerful. Extradimensional beings? The time police? Or is it going to turn out that the rocks are sentient? Bkharvey (talk) 06:53, March 23, 2020 (UTC)
... or are we about to learn who made the Mirrors, which are said to antedate the queens? Bkharvey (talk) 07:24, March 23, 2020 (UTC)
- I had the same thought about the face straps. They did look slightly less ridiculous before Agatha put her glasses back on, which seems to have just happened in the first panel here.
- I hadn't thought about the Mirrors. Before I would have said that they had to be the result of time travel, since the Queens had the only technologically advanced civilizations that we knew about that were anywhere near as old, and even they didn't know how the mirrors worked exactly. But the Great Cetaceans are described as being vastly more intelligent than typical humans, and are not necessarily of human origin. So maybe there are a bunch of powerful non-human intelligences hanging out in various remote parts of the Earth, predating human civilization. Or maybe it's Sparky time travellers after all. Quantheory (talk) 08:29, March 23, 2020 (UTC)
my guess is that "secret powers of the earth" is in some way something to do with england sinking -bikke
Another guess: it has something to do with whatever powers the Dyne (which may also relate to Albia's "safe power source" and the reasons Lucrezia and/or Vapnoople were drawn to England beyond Europan politics). That could explain why Ankhokanth doesn't want any of the other sparks present--the Dyne is a Heterodyne secret, after all, and Ankhokanth doesn't know who besides Agatha might know about it--and the Deepspeaker's stressing the importance of Agatha being "not of these waters," quite apart from her being "not from around here" and thus a presumably neutral third party in the dispute Vapnoople provoked between the Great Cetaceans and Albia. (ramblin_rosie) 107.182.110.85 08:41, March 23, 2020 (UTC)
Rereading this, I realize that the Deepspeaker here says twice that Ahnkoranth specifically wants to speak to Agatha because she is an outsider unfamiliar with England and the seas around it. I suspect that they just want to talk to someone whose view of them isn't going to be seen through the lens of the war Vapnoople stirred up. Although possibly they also have reservations about dealing with someone loyal to Albia, if they don't trust her. And given Albia's mental powers, anyone who is around her for long enough seems susceptible to being "made" loyal, even if she supposedly doesn't usually go in for direct mind control. Quantheory (talk) 08:48, March 23, 2020 (UTC)
- The Mirrors are interesting possibility, a gift to the then Queens from the Great Cetaceans? (Only the Queen of Isthar has been identified as a possible survivor of Lucrezia, beside Albia) To me though, a more likely reveal is what the energies in the wellsprings are about. (The Dyne, and the spring in the Cave of Lozz in England) since The Serenity speaks of the secret powers of the Earth.
- Yes, it bothers me that given Albia's ability to incur loyalty, Lady Steelgarter and Lord Moonbark seem immune, as well as Francisia Monahan. Have they some secet antidote? Doug Relyea (talk) 10:19, March 23, 2020 (UTC)
- Alternate possibility is that Albia's powers are fading after all these centuries. And yeah, I suspect the source of the Queens' power, or even the Spark itself is what is going to be discussed. I still hold the theory that the Great Cetaceans are second-stage Sparky whales. --Geoduck42 (talk) 12:43, March 23, 2020 (UTC)