April 5th, 2019
5 Apr 2019 · page 888 of 1306
FYI there is now a Widdershins Discord channel on a shared server with a few of my comic buddies :) Gotta be a Patron at any level to get an invite though!
Cast: Dr Esther Flack, Eliza Swift, Vincent Knott, Will Sharpe
Comments (69)
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Well, there you go then. See how easy that was? Might wanna say that to the judge, just in case.
Aaaand, now they have the failsafe word.
But you have to say it in Wizard Speak. If Harry Barber's readings at the end of the last arc are any indication, it's not as simple as just saying the syllables.
Ahh wizard speak is just adding squiggly lines to some of the letters, how hard can it be!
You also have to highlight the first letter in Octarine, the color of magic. The flash of color people see when they close their eyes (probably best represented as purple).
Sorry I just miss Terry Pratchett sometimes...
As do we all
Sharpe's In training to be a wizard, right? He may be able to do it, if not do it well.
True, but the point stands that it might not be possible for Swift or Knott to un-Sharpen someone.
Now Sharpe is free! Yay!
AHAHAHAHAHAHA the villain accidentally undoes he spell on sharpe
A beautiful mistake, indeed. The question now is, how will Sharpe react?
poorly ?
How much will they all remember?
quiscete sounds like quiscent which means "dormant". I'm not sure if she completely undid the imbuement, or only rendered it inactive temporarily.
[The Latin word can mean both](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=quiesco&la=la#lexicon "http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=quiesco&la=la#lexicon"): see I.A. "to rest, repose, keep quiet" and II.B. "to cease, leave off, desist from any thing".
I'm expecting a man with a bucket on his head to be Monster of the Week in the next series of Dr Who.
Are you my mummy?
Now that was a scary monster.
Second-highest behind-the-couch factor EVER.
Only Blink has more.
And that few seconds of Every Flippin' Stone Angel In Cardiff they tacked on the end was the cherry on top...
It's actually an early draft of the costume for Ro-Man, the Robot Monster
Ha, did she just tell them to quit it? XD
(Well, quiet down / deactivate, but still, that's hilarious)
If I'm not mistaken, it's telling them to rest, but yeah. :)
Up until now I hadn't ever had problems pronouncing the Somewhat Latin Wizard Speak, but that failsafe word's got me stumped. I'm glad that I'm not in Flack's situation, wouldn't ever manage to say that. What's wrong with choosing a nice, simple word like Pineapple? Other than the raised risk of setting a million phobias free on accident, I mean.
In classical Latin, c's are hard, the e's are pronounced. In IPA, /kʷiˈeːs.ke.te/; in my attempt at spelling pronunciation: "kwee-EH-skeh-teh". (Although the unstressed e's are more like the 'e' sound in Spanish than the short 'e' in English.)
I've heard that British schooling in the 20th century used different pronunciation rules, and wizards in Widdershins could very likely do something else entirely!
One of these days I'm gonna have to learn how to read IPA
I learned because I took a linguistics class in college, but I think for the symbols relevant to English you can probably pick it up by leaning on this [guide from Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English"). Also by using Wiktionary to look up pronunciations since it uses IPA -- for example, [the RP British and General American pronunciations of "chartreuse"](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chartreuse "https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chartreuse"). The tumblr blog All Things Linguistic also has some good resources [here](https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/40375921441/protolinguist-resources-teaching-yourself "https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/40375921441/protolinguist-resources-teaching-yourself") (ctrl-f "IPA" for the relevant section). Hope this helps :)
Hurray!!!
Why there is a 1823 in the last panel?
My guess would be because someone got bored in a lecture in 1823 and had a sharp implement to hand.
Student graffiti. It's already in an educational institution near you!
There's also a "[Name] was here" carved and cut off on the far right
I was just thinking. Suppose Vincent saves Sharpe....but then Dr Flack is convicted and sentenced to hang. And he knows she's guilty.
I mean most likely it won't come to that since he'll probably gain the courage to talk to his father and tell him he wants to be a lawyer and not a hangman, and maybe she'll be sentenced to prison not death or escape leaving evidence behind. But it's possible he could have one last job to do, that he can't avoid by getting the person off.
I think she won't be hanged. First, there are a lot of other repressive measures, not only the capital punishment.
Second - we saw people preparing to an action for the abolition of the death penalty. The Mayor, I think, will be more then willing to save her friend's life.
Makes you wonder what we pay our taxes for.
Aye!
The wicked lady-wizard will receive justice.
Knott will find the courage to be proper hangman... just as hangmen are no longer needed.
And some other characters will find the heart and brains to set themselves back to normal, too.
It will be like the Wizard of Oz!
but just in time for guillotines!
beside, Vincent can't hang her if he's in prison himself, for drugging a guard and helping an inmate escape
Work release?
Or maybe the inmate 'escaped' on his own, and Vincent tracked him down. And in the course of tracking him down discovered he was really innocent, or at least innocent of anything meriting the death penalty.
Apparently hiring convicted felons as executioners was a common practice! At least according to some video I saw last week. It was such a stigmatized job that it was sometimes offered instead of the death penalty.
🎶 “Defer, defer, to the Lord High Executioner...” 🎶
Who could and would work as an executioner tended to vary a lot. In the ottoman empire for example it was usually only outcasts (like the roma) who could work as executioners, and they were not buried in the same cemeteries as others in their communities. In feudal Japan, a similar (thought not quite severe) stigma was attached to the profession, and executioners tended to be dynastic in their succession. They also didn't just do executions, but performed a variety of general duties related to law-keeping, though usually administering other punishments. Such a scenario was common throughout the medieval world.
In the west, after the enlightenment, there seemed to be somewhat less stigma attached, but it was still a job people didn't exactly line up for. The work was unsteady, stressful, and unlike in feudal societies not every governance or prison would pay to have a hangman on retainer. Compensation by commission was common, and so executioners would usually only do the work sporadically. With the exception of the pierrepoints and a few other dynasties (especially in the States) it was rare for executioners to pursue the career for a period of more than a decade. In the states, especially after the turn of the century, it was more common for prison guards to carry out executions, especially with the development of the electric chair.
As such, who would get hired to perform an execution tended to vary. In the west, executioners were usually on a roll, like with jurors in a trial. The governance would go through and select one that was available and hire him for the job. Who was on the roll in the first place would depend. Usually when an executioner died or left the rolls, the prison administrators or court would seek out their family or other associates first, before accepting general applicants. They wouldn't necessarily hire just anyone though, and a certain degree of professionalism and moral conduct was expect. Albert Pierrepoint's father for example, lost his career as a hangman for showing up drunk for work. Still, given the nature of the job, they might be less picky about criminal records.
There's that letter we haven't seen clearly yet, but Eliza has. I bet it will provide her with sufficient leverage to ward off putting Knotty on trial at all.
Wasn't the whole reason (poor as it was) for the death penalty was that the paper was missing, and a dangerous theory was out there who-knows-where? As long as they get the paper and hide and/or destroy it, I doubt anyone will be executed (as long as the judicial system isn't too corrupt).
Hey you! In the purple! Weren't you in Plants vs. Zombies?
How fortunate that one of the affected students was in a position to threaten Dr Flack, and that all of them were awake enough to hear the safeword!
Edit: It's so very fortunate to have so many things have happened just exactly right, especially in the third panel of the previous page, to produce this outcome, that, why... it's almost as if... you know... amplified spirits of emotions don't like being permanently bound to a person! As if they might even do their best to defeat the person who bound them?
I'm not sure exactly what they'd be able to do about physical moves. Perhaps make one direction feel more like fulfilling the imposed emotion than another? In panels two and three, though... it's easy to see it as the bound spirit of rage responding to Flack's voice by pumping up the bucket-head student's "Sharpe" rage.
I still really want to hear what the Witch of Widdershins would have to say about this technique - although it probably wouldn’t be fit for polite company.
I'd be inclined to think you don't have to be awake for the safeword to work. All that is necessary is for the spirit to hear the safeword, and the spirit never stops listening.
Good point.
Ha! Hoist with her own petard...
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!
Ah, so there is an escape word!
A thought I just had: are the smoky lines showing the de-Sharpening a symbolic thing, like the spiral above the dazed student’s head, or are they visible to the eye? If the latter, hopefully Flack won’t notice a stray tendril of yellow rising from behind the bench...
I doubt they're visible to the ordinary eye. Maybe visible to a witch, but there isn't a witch on the scene.
The yellow tendril above Will would be the same thing as those red streamers above the students in panel 4, namely, a bound spirit escaping the spell.
There's no visible sign of spirit-influence in Will's eyes back here, where he explains what he did: [https://widdershinscomic.co...](https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/november-9th-2018 "https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/november-9th-2018") But then, it does show up here: [https://widdershinscomic.co...](https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/february-8th-2019 "https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/february-8th-2019")
This has puzzled me. I conclude that Will's binding was quite a bit more complicated, so it makes sense that it would take a few seconds longer for his bound spirit to escape once it heard the safeword.
I don't know if Flack can see any of the spirits, but I rather think she is about to have a number of more urgent matters to deal with, all at once.
Huh. He didn't know.
Oho!
I am enjoying Knotty hanging on Sharpe's arm there in panel 3 :3
[I'll just leave this here](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NiceJobFixingItVillain "https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NiceJobFixingItVillain")
The fan is the magic object!
Just realized the different colors are probably related to the type of spirit. Red for wrath, yellow for... pride?
not every spirit is a sin :)
Most likely Sharpe has been imbued with either love, trust, or admiration. I think Vincent suggested it was trust at one point.
Edit: Actually it's probably loyalty or devotion now that I think about it, given how much of a pedestal Sharpe puts Flack when under the effect of the spell.
I think this hag Flack has to understand now that Will is present or was here just a minute ago - otherwise the students weren't so sharpen-activated.
So - she'll understand Will is somehow out of the jail.
Aaaand... I just hope she can't sharpen these boys anew at once...
Sharpe... is no longer Sharpened. He has in fact been Dulled
And now you know the word. Yay! :)
Is that spelling correct? Think there is an N in that...
Clearly her evil scheming needs practice.
Ooohhh ... Eliza is smooth...