October 23rd, 2018
23 Oct 2018 · page 844 of 1306
Gonna be at MCM London this weekend, come find me and say hi!
Cast: Dr Esther Flack, Vincent Knott
Comments (60)
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This D.E.F. jam sure seems awfully weepy.
D.E.F. ? What does that mean?
It's her initials - Dr. Esther Flack.
dr is already abriviated from doctor it should be Dr. E.F.
Pity her name isn't Angela or Abigail or something. Then she could be Dr. AF.
I'll see myself out.
Acronyms don't necessarily respect contraction. DEF is a legitimate acronym of either Dr. Esther Flack or of Doctor Esther Flack.
[/pedantic]
I am sensing a distinct lack of scholarly self-control. ^^;
.. and that fan keeps reminding me of Pride's tail. >_<
Oh good gods, can you imagine just how quickly Dr. Flack got caught in a mirror?
Are we talking nano- or microseconds? ;P
We can certainly put a lower bound on it. A light-nanosecond is about 30cm. So unless she was very close to the mirror, it probably took her at least 10 nanoseconds to be sucked up.
However, since neuronal communication is quite slow, it probably took some milliseconds for her to form a kind of thought about herself. After that? Nanoseconds.
Oh no, no , no...it is not Dr. it is DOCTOR.
Scholarly self-control? Many things 'twixt sea and sky there be, but scholarly self-control is none of them.
Oi.
... she just stole his handkerchief. 0_0 In an abode of the law, even.
There has been some thinking in the comments that this whole thing was staged. Maybe it was staged to get something of his for some magical something or other?
That weird fan-snap-look bit was strange, even for such a character.
I think that may have been an affectation at some point in Victorian times? Social history isn't my forte.
In the melodramatic acting style of time, perhaps.
Well, one thing I do know is that Victorian women would sometimes eat small wafers of arsenic if they weren't pale enough. It worked a treat--by killing off RBCs. Hence all the fainting. :-/
Well, some people with the title 'doctor' are very proud of it. I had a teacher in middle school (so many years ago now that I don't want to think about it) who had a doctorate. While you were in his class, he was to be addressed as 'doctor.' Once you passed his class, you were allowed to call him Paul. Woe betide the student who called him Paul without having passed his class.
I'd expect a woman in this time period to be pretty defensive of her title, too, since all the men would assume she was a miss/ms/mrs.
Also 100% true.
She's trying to keep him from getting a clear look at his her face
I'm not convinced that she isn't Mr. Sharpe trying to smuggle himself out of prison disguised as a woman
If someone has the ability to smuggle that getup in without being noticed, they can smuggle themselves out any way they damn please. Also, that would rely on the fact that Vincent is so unfamiliar with the case; otherwise, he'd recognize Sharpe on sight and/or be able to poke holes in the story here. (And come to think of it--the guard was reading his newspaper so he might not have been looking too closely before, but someone making as much of a spectacle as this would probably draw his attention.)
So I don't think this is very likely, but now I really want it to be. Because that means Sharpe had a bunch of options, and decided the way to go was to stumble out of his cellblock crying and hamming it up about what a genius he is. And that rules.
Think about it. The melodramatic behavior (could easily be him imitating feminine voice and mannerisms... poorly), the oddly loose-fitting dress (makes it difficult to discern his/her body shape), constantly turning away from Vincent and hiding his/her face behind the fan (to hide his/her face, obviously), elaborate hair and dress (draws the eye away from his/her face, and the hair looks like it could easily be a wig). Put someone in a wig and makeup and an outfit they wouldn't normally wear, and you'd be surprised at how hard it can be to recognize them. "Doctor Flack" and "phasmia-psychology" sound like they could've been made up on the spot, and the "don't you know who I am" line seems designed to make Vincent feel like it's his fault for not having heard of this person whom I suspect he actually couldn't have heard of on account of the fact that she doesn't exist.
And yeah, there's the whole "I don't know who that is, but he sounds handsome" routine.
I do see where you're coming from, but there's still the sticking point: how would he get those items into his cell to begin with? Also, the guard would probably notice someone walking out of that cell that never walked in (especially after making a scene like that).
Basically: if security is so bad that you COULD do this, you wouldn't have to.
A friend on the outside smuggled them in in a cake or something. Pretty sure they weren't regularly checking for that trick back then.
Somewhere, Lei Feng, Thomas Macavity, and Verity Cunningham are all nodding in approval.
... OK, just who/what did he summon? And, what did he get them to do? o.O
I imagine she's just meant to be rushing away, but with the angle she's at in panel 4 and what we can see in panel 5, I can't help but feel like she's just face planting right there lol.
10/10 for fan use!
And is that just overly powerful eye contact in the second panel or did she do some magic?
She cast Respectus Authoritas. It's super-effective!
"Phasmia-psychology", well, it is interesting indeed. I wonder whether it means "psychology of spirits" or "human psychology in terms of/associated with spirits".
Yes.
I think i no trust weepy lady
....she seems very, very fishy. Culprit-level fishy.
Worse than Fairbairn once, uh-oh.
In three panels, she went from demure to seductive to waterworks.
We're talking shark-level fishy.
I think panel 2 is more “Do you know who I am, young man?!” than seductive, but the emotional switch is still whiplash-inducing.
Alright, Sturzkampf, alright, not a parent.
And she's not in a relationship with him (VoG). So why is she upset? The attitude of most tutors to their students is neatly summarised by Prof Diaz in the last panel of this strip.
[http://www.girlgeniusonline...](http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20090515 "http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20090515")
Perhaps she just fancies him. If it's all part of an Evil Plan, why is she acting out of character? :-)
I know, I know. To find the answer to these questions and more, don't miss the next exciting episode of Widdershins!
It might be that she's invested in him as her protege. He's her star pupil, so when he does well, it reflects well on her and so forth.
I'll be interested to hear what William's opinion of her is.
My working hypothesis is "She's guilty in some way and is distancing herself from the terrible-things-he's-allegedly-done".
It's him in a wig and a dress.
Look, Doctor, as long as you didn't teach him about Horcruxes, you're not doing quite so badly as some.
Am I the only one noticing that 45% of the female characters in this comic are completely untrustworthy, another 45% are trustworthy but scary as hell (not a bad thing, but a thing nonetheless), and only 10% seem to qualify as "normal" people. Ish. Is that just the anchor attracting odd people, or what?
Clearly you need to recalibrate what you define as "normal" ;p
I don't really believe in the concept, TBH. But some of the characters make a spirited attempt at it. Even if you adjust the numbers I quoted to 50/50, it's a rather different distribution than I encounter IRL.
In my experience, normal people are just people you haven't found out about yet.
Can't argue with that.
Out of curiosity, what would you say is the breakdown of male characters in these terms? My suspicion is that it has less to do with the rate of weirdness in the population as much as it is that, as a storyteller, Ms. Ashwin is choosing to show us the interesting parts of their lives where their underlying personality quirks are likely to rise to the fore and be important.
my male characters trend towards goofy idiot and my female characters trend towards competent yet vaguely terrifying. idk, i write what i like.
As do we all, milady.
I will say that Kate's male villains/miscreants tend to be more obvious in their competence than their heroic counterparts. Sid is actually quite a capable man when you get down to it (though funnily enough I think Harry is more aware of this fact than he is himself).
Kate will have to confirm or deny, but I've always assumed that she is (consciously or unconsciously) inverting the yesteryear convention that heroines always appear less competent than heroes, even if they are equally or more capable in actuality.
Slightly off-topic, but the reboot James Bond films have played with this too, though more in the spirit of ridding themselves from the spirit of misogyny that persisted to an extent right through "Die Another Day." I find this spirit quaint and amusing in the Sean Connery films, but increasingly grating as time progressed. By the Pierce Brosnan era it was embarrassing.
The males aren't exactly normal either. Except Ben.
"Being normal" is quite a vague concept. I, for myself, tend to include "well-adjusted" ""well-socialised" into its definition. In this view, Wolfe is more "normal" than Ben.
At other hand, I really feel that calling Wolfe "normal" is outright and shameless flattery of any society. :))
She was unhelpful.
I don't trust her.
(Phoenix Wright investigation music intensifies)
Vincent, get to your lawyering. And I'm surprised that is an actual word.
It really should be "lawying".