July 15th, 2022
15 Jul 2022 · page 1117 of 1306
Laters.
Cast: Lei Feng, Pemberton Pryce, Thea Pryce
Comments (84)
Events
ThoughtBubble
14 Nov 2026 – 15 Nov 2026
Harrogate Convention Centre
Manchester Megacon
31 Jul 2027 – 1 Aug 2027
Manchester Central
Welp, that's the end of your ambitions, Mr. Pryce.
Or maybe the beginning of a new one.
When your arcane magic bends the forces of nature to your will! When your power rips the Anchor at the heart of magic from its foundations! When the eldritch guardian reaches across the dimensions and invites you to join him as his equal!
Thea is going to be so disappointed if that’s Jack O’Malley waiting for her on the other side of the portal.
Thea brings all that water with her, soaking O'Malley. He lets out a few choice words. Thea: "Who... who are you?" Mal: "I'm the witch o' Widdershins, ain't I?"
Island and Mountain will see them both alright. May as well educate both newbies at once.
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
And you may find yourself living in a third class cabin
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large passenger ship
And you may find yourself on a beautiful deck, with a beautiful witch
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
I get why he is panicking so much, not only can they not move the Anchor without her, but they will also have to explain to all the passengers why they are landing from the Pacific instead of the Atlantic. Some of them are going to want refunds.
He just lost his daughter. Scumbag or not, he loves his daughter - perhaps the only human he cares about. I doubt he's thought about all those other things yet.
And that's how you get out of abusive parent-child relationship. You just need to find a nexus point of magic that agrees to adopt you.
Years later, she comes ashore on another continent, complete with fins and gills.
If G-d is good, alavai.
Heh.
Wait wait wait, is this a new party member, the beginning/end of a redemption arc, or... or did we just set up the new big bad? This could go so many ways.
Why not all of them in turn? But I think this just means that Island and Mountain have two newbies to educate now, not just one. ^_^
My thoughts exactly.
Well, that is one heck of a sinister victory grin O.o
Yeah, that smile worries me.
Much as I dislike Pemberton Pryce, I can't help feeling a little sorry for him right now. He really does seem to love his Petal, and he didn't mean for his plan to put her at risk.
That's certainly one interpretation, but I don't think it's correct.
To my eyes, he seemed to view Thea as a prized possession, something that he could pull out and show off. On top of that, he seemed to see her as a tool he could exploit.
I'm not at all convinced that he saw her as a person he could love.
(Of course, ambiguity is the soul of literature. Kate might mean one of these, both of them, or none of them. The birth of the reader, etc.)
I think "both" is the most likely answer. His affection for her is probably based on some combination of genuine love and possessive pride, and he's got his head shoved so far up his own pocketbook that he probably doesn't even realize there's a difference.
Reverse ouroborous syndrome is a major job hazard for the self-important.
Seriously though, that's half the parents out there! How many parents go around saying how great their kid is, who is going to "become a ... like daddy"/"continue the family business/tradition"/"be a great doctor/lawyer" etc, etc, and totally freak out when the kid wants to do something completely different? At least this one here was aknowledging her artistic abilities and letting her be rather than whine her ears off for "wasting her time", like a LOT of real-world parents do!
(Edited to remove the word insert as the automatically tried to make it into HTML and messed everything up...)
Dickens wrote a whole book primarily around that sort of BS. Dombey and Son, as I recall.
No matter what his feelings towards Thea were, I don't think I'd want to be the person that he held responsible for her disappearance.
I wonder who that person might be...
Oh yes, my first reaction there was an "Uh-oh" for this exact reason...
Ya know I was really hoping that little conversation back there meant that things we're going to work out after all, and that soft girl Thea was going to return to us.... But that smile says otherwise. I am scared
Same here. I loved the sweet, shy Thea we first met, and I really hope she’s still in there somewhere.
I was hoping for insane maniacal laughter. Young ladies are so cute when they do that.
You simply are enthralled by dangerous women... as am I...
You've been reading too much Girl Genius
I can give it up any time I want.
Heff you effer really tried?
Your avatar says otherwise, mein freund.
Really? I thought she was responding to her father's "Wait!" with "I'm free!"
That is not the smile of someone who is simply happy with her freedom. No, she wants to do some damage.
Not even sure that was actually her smiling...
That smile betides many bad things. I hope they can save Thea. I imagine however that they'll find her different when they try.
That's either a good "heh" or a very, VERY bad one.
I'm trying to figure out what the rope parting in the first panel is. I mean, there aren't a whole lot of things which are good outcomes of a line parting, but I'd kind of like to know what not-good one to expect.
Not sure that's a (new?) break, look at the first panel last week. There are already lines flailing around. Of course, that could still be something to be worried about...
That's Pemberton's line of thought getting mildly disrupted. ;-)
I look forward to seeing old friends again!
Well really, what did you expect, Mr. Dastardly?
... not... that?
I was disappointed that Pryce didn't have a properly curled moustache.
Hmm, I am wondering if the anchor was looking for a witch .
brb, goin to r’lyeh
Umm . . . did we just find a new Deadly Sin?
Well, if Pemberton is angry, then whatever Thea is doing is either not so bad, or so much horrifically worse than anything Pemberton could have planned.
Or the same amount of bad, only this time he's effected by it too, but I'm pretty sure it's the second one.
Pity the Certainty Engine won't run anymore; Pemberton was probably powering it by at least 50%.
Yeah - if anything saves Lei, it's news that the Engine is going bizzaatz!
Even if Pryce’s plan for Grand Theft Anchor comes to naught, the ability to move large objects across long distances in the blink of an eye is still going to be worth a lot, especially in a developing country like the US. And there’ll be societal benefits and hardly any tsunamis.
Yes, but one can hardly keep a secret of stealing an anchor if one had to patent their method of doing so beforehand. Having the patent now would be admittance that he knowingly hijacked a cruise passenger ship full of very wealthy people, and that makes it harder to retain a money-making goldmine when they sue.
Regrettably, Patience explaining the Confidence Engine and its application to Verity will count as disclosure which means the patent won't be granted, unless Pryce has already filed his patent. Perhaps details of its mechanism could be patented or kept as secret know how to make it difficult to copy. Opens up fascinating speculation about how intellectual property rights for magic are protected.
Ehh, it's America. We have software patents, and we're not supposed to have "obvious thing but this time a computer is there" patents, but we do anyway. So I doubt Pryce would have much trouble.
I'd suggest that he could just twist copyright to cover it, but the DMCA is a few years away yet.
I was thinking of rejection on the grounds of novelty rather than inventiveness. By disclosing the invention to a private individual, Patience has placed the invention in the public domain, so it can no longer be patented.
And good point about copyright. You could use that to protect novel incantation circles and incantations.
Fair point, though I'm not convinced it matters as far as the "people get patents they really shouldn't" problem is concerned.
It also seems rather odd to me, given that if you're right, it would mean that nobody would be allowed to talk about their inventions before patenting them, which doesn't sound right to me. I'm not saying you're wrong, of course: Plenty of laws make little sense or have unfortunate implications.
That's one of those questions to which the answer is "Um, yeah, TALK TO A LAWYER." The impact of disclosure on patentability is complicated.
Copyright law can be quite insane and from what little I know about patent law, it can make copyright look downright simple by comparison.
The 'novelty' part is there to stop people getting a monopoly on common things that aren't patented, like a wheelbarrow. You can tell people what your invention does before you patent it 'it transports a ship and its cargo a long distance in the blink of an eye' but not how it does it 'we collect the confidence from the passengers'. If you do need to disclose technical information before you file the patent, for instance to raise capital or find a manufacturer, you get them to sign a confidential disclosure agreement where they promise not tell anyone else the secrets you will tell them, so the information isn't in the public domain.
Now I'd better shut up before everyone's eyes glaze over.
Like I said "TALK TO A LAWYER."
They're paid to not have their eyes roll back in their heads in situations like this...
You have [submarine patents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent"), too.
Relevant to Patience and Verity. ;)
I don't think Alice would apply. The use of a drawn, physical circle with prescribed symbols around it as a necessary part of the ritual makes it an embodied invention rather than a mere means of achieving a business goal.
But it opens a fascinating area of speculation. Would the drawings of a circle or the written incantations be classed as an 'artistic work' covered by copyright, in the same way that software code is, because it is written text like a novel even though the operation of the circle or the software might be patentable.
I suspect the circle would be copyrightable. Incantations would likely run into the idea-expression merger problem, and the same might also be true of the circle.
But in bringing up the DMCA, I was thinking of the anti-circumvention provisions. I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but if you'll permit me to ramble a bit:
Basically, Pryce can get protections he wouldn't otherwise be entitled to by including something copyrightable and slapping some kind of magic DRM over the whole thing. It's the same loophole used against owners of firmware-containing devices from cell phones to printer cartridges to farm equipment to coffee makers. (I don't know if that last one got overturned in court or the company just backed down due to public outcry.)
Of course, Pryce probably can't actually do this because the comic is set somewhat earlier than 1998. It's not too infeasible that the existence of magic in the Widdershins-verse prompted similar legislation to be drafted much earlier, but I'm not aware of any evidence of this.
Who knew that messing around with powerful and poorly understood magical forces could have unexpected consequences. If only there had been some way for Pryce to predict that his course of action might not work out the way he wanted it to!
I am not entirely sure it was an "unexpected" consequence. You know what her smile says to me? That she knew it was going to happen.
I interpret that smile as saying that Thea is no longer in control and something else is.
50/50?
Possibly. We will probably know more the next time we see her.
I'm hoping for a Voss/Envy situation of negotiated control, but this clearly isn't another Deadly Sin situation. Is it Confidence personified, or is it something from the deep waters? I'm leaning towards the latter.
you know what that smile says to me? "All according to plan."
....And there's your greater good.
The greater good
Shut it!
Well that went from zero to supervillain pretty damn quick
sigh Alright, let's go talk to Jack...
Is her hair turning into water, or just turning blue?