TSH #342 • Virtuous

[Anna]

http://pasteldefender.com/to%20save%20her%20342.html

Does this mean Kaye shoot Virtue because she thought he invited the two?
She's really no party animal.

[Plasman]

Dun, dun, DUUUUHN!!!
Sprung bad, boys. Yer in fer it now!

Interesting to see Wai's reaction to the hatch being different, considering all the stuff that's been ret-conned since the comic began... Jennifer, did you forget to draw in a latch handle on the outside?

[Monocheres]

Dun, dun, DUUUUHN!!!
Sprung bad, boys. Yer in fer it now!

No, actually, if you notice, it's only Virtue opening up the hatch. He isn't pointing a gun at them. I figure Kaye's taking a nap now, and Virtue has just been waiting all these hours for her to do that before checking whether the boys snuck back in, as he no doubt expected them to.

What I don't yet know is whether Virtue had this in mind all along. Was that whole deal of "OMG I'm gonna LIVE!!" and "I'm over all my doubts" just a big ruse to bluff Kaye into thinking he'd turned coat on the others? If so, then not letting the boys in on his plan was a masterful stroke of manipulation, because it made WaiWai's very loud and vocal grief completely genuine and believable.

Now, Pho was expecting the hatch to be open all along. Does that mean that he had snuck over in the middle of the night and unlatched it, in preparation? Was Virtue watching him (as he did when Pho was weeping out of grief about Only)? Did Virtue deliberately sneak over and re-seal the hatch, so that later the boys would be forced to sit tight until Virtue could make sure Kaye was asleep?

Does Virtue really expect he's going to die now? Looking at #200 again, his (apparent) corpse is not really facing Kaye, which implies that it's not Kaye who kills him. So perhaps it's someone else. Or something else. That mess on the floor looks suspiciously like the effect of a very sharp unicorn-like horn on a human skull...

... except that Only is gone. We all saw it happen. So ...

... could Virtue be planning to stage his death, to convince Kaye that Only is somehow back?

[Monocheres]

Looking at #200 again, his (apparent) corpse is not really facing Kaye, which implies that it's not Kaye who kills him.

Hmm ... well, Virtue's body was (will be) just enough in front of Kaye that she might have shot (might be going to shoot) him in the back ...

This kind of time travel scenario has always necessitated (will always necessitate) some weird nuances of verb tense ...

[Jennifer Diane Reitz]

Virtue's body wilwas bebeen in front of Kaye's, this much is worldlined.

However, the question remains as to how this wilwas dondoing. In the relpast, it seems fairly clear that Virtue wilwas dead, or at least pretty messed up; but this could still be an alteventuality; we still don't know for certain which splayspread our Virtue's worldline ontographs to.

It is possible that Virtue may yet escape that dire relfore, especially since Kaye has not actually been truly murderous -albeit very threatening, and capable of violence- in the relpast. She and the crew may not actually be cruxic; they may still just be part of the ontocloud surrounding another, truly cruxic Kaye.

We wilve known already by the relfore week.

[Monocheres]

Creative grammar indeed, from our esteemed Creatrix. In a similar vein, the double-entendre significance of the title of Strip #200 was not lost on me...

Edit: "Relfore week"? Does that mean "next week"? Are you saying we are but 2 or 3 strips away from falling off the ontological cliff ... and learning whether there's gonna be a convenient ontological sapling to grab onto?

[Alfador]

I'm reminded of the grammar lesson from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe...