These are some lovely memories
I said yesterday that further exploring Lottie and Claire’s post-16 pre-university mustery solving years was an impossible dream. I forgot that the next page also covered this same period. From this point onward, it is an impossible dream. Sorry for the inconvenience
Lottie’s purple snowsuit was the first thing that came up when I searched for image reference. I wasn’t even looking for a purple puffer one! I’ve been unable to repeat the search term, so I think it was just another bolt from the blue. Sorry, purple.
Could be a sister of one of the strapping gentlemen, resentful at Lottie ruining his life.
It would have to be a pretty serious motivation considering Bad Charlotte’s framed Lottie for murder, excessively stalked everyone she knows, and then tried to murder Claire in broad daylight.
Evillottie really loves her brother!
Maybe I just personally feel like just having her be related to the heist boys would be too predictable in terms of how this all connects together.
If this is the case and it’s executed well anyway, then cool.
Perhaps we’re dealing with a Die Hard 2 scenario where the overt motivation, revenge for a sibling, is in fact a cover for a new heist!
I kind of doubt that given the boys were reportedly all nilhists. Now I’m imagining John Goodman breathing down my neck in a bowling alley.
Chekhov’s cropper! I suspect there will have been more to that accident than Lottie realises. An accomplice? A mastermind? An escape plan gone wrong – or right?
Maybe Bad Charlotte tried to kill Lottie as far back as that trip, only to end up hurting the wrong person.
Could the girl have had a bad ski accident? One so bad that, say, she needed plastic surgery? To her face?
Maybe that’s it. Something Lottie didn’t even notice but destroyed someone else’s life.
Reason number one I don’t partake in the skiing activity.
When I was a not-so-wee lad, we lived pretty close to some world class skiing. Hence a lot of the kids were on the slopes a lot. I noted that a good portion of those kids spent part of their school year in some unflattering footwear, with a scientifically designed tree branch under one or more armpits. Using my Holmesian powers of deduction I figured out it was a dangerous activity, and politely declined when I was invited to such activities.
Besides, they all had more money than me and were typically a bunch of assholes.
The only skiing I ever did was when I was sent to a weeklong conference at a resort in the French Alps where there were talks in the mornings and evenings, and afternoons you could go skiing or… well, there wasn’t much else. So I took lessons with a tiny woman who’d explain the next bit at great length in French to most of the group, then turn to the English speakers and say “We’re going that way” and we’d be off. Then I returned to central New York where there are things that call themselves ski slopes but I figured they’d only be several steps down from what I’d experienced so why bother. Anyway, I’d accomplished my main objective which was to have a ski tag from the French Alps on my winter jacket which enabled me to attract countless women wanting to sleep with me. There is exactly one lie in this story.
Does the lie involve women?
Always
Think of all the after-ski activity you missed, adding at least 10 years to your life.
Being somewhat mechanically inclined, I always thought that the practice of fastening a long board to each foot, then careening down a hill, isn’t just asking for a broken leg but begging for it. (It’s about “leverage” y’know.)
I see that Lottie and Claire opted for the reduced leverage of snow boards.
Yes, but snowboards weren’t a thing when I was a lad.
Our lasses are at least showing that much wisdom. Although I have a cousin who was a semi-professional snowboarder. She’s had several pretty bad injuries, including a badly broken knee that left her in a hospital in Japan for a couple weeks. That was a financial nightmare. It’s a good thing it was Japan which has good medical care, but a bad thing that in Japan they won’t release you from the hospital until you pay your bill. She had to beg her parents to bail her out and fly her home.
It was a good adventure with great emotions, but unless what was an accident for Lottie was a trauma for that girl, it seems that Skelottie wasn’t born here. Maybe it happened in Las Vegas? Shauna seems to be holding back a laugh the whole time.
Maybe the diamond heist is a red herring, where while it’s ultimately unrelated to Bad Charlotte’s Hijinks, even if she was likely at the ski resort during that time.
Assuming that’s her in the white outfit, I must say she looks sort of familiar…
I assumed that was Claire.
Yes, the previous strip shows Claire in the white ski suit.
Please, BUNNY-suit!
I see now.
The way it was framed with that sentence made it look like this was our first sneak peak at Bad Charlotte.
Unless she IS Claire, then that would be heartbreaking as shit
Wait no that makes no sense, Bad Charlotte literally tried to kill Claire not that long ago. Ignore my false epiphany.
But it would be very interesting learning how she managed to drop those slates on herself.
Her relative, Claire Big
Me too. The “white” suit appears light blue on my screen, especially compared to the white snow.
I’d like to know more about this accident. Right now, this unnamed, unseen girl is my top suspect.
Given that John claims he *forgot about this page*, there’s room for doubt Chekov’s accident girl will be fired in the last act.
We know from previous experiences that John has been known to blatantly lie about things like that, though.
POSSIBLE DREAM
I LOVE the purple snowsuit.
I went on a ski trip with an international-type school and had a mangled English accent for a while, so I am having a good chuckle.
it is a PUFFER snowsuit! Very nice.
The beginning of Lottie’s love affair with puffer outerwear?
I think you can go right back to the start of Bad Machinery for that! The first purple puffer appearance is, I think, December 16th 2009 – “a three-pack of sheggings and a comb”.
I love Shauna’s besotted look in panel 2 at the story of these strapping gentlemen
Is it for the story, or is she looking at Linton? 😉
I… was dumped by my first boyfriend on our high school ski trip. Perhaps Evilottie is a spurned teen whose boyfriend couldn’t help but be charmed by Lottie’s penmanship.
(No, I have NOT frequented any plastic surgery places since then to exact revenge…)
“TOO MUCH”
Oh Lottie, you wondrous creature. Too much is never enough.
For those (like me before looking it up) who came a cropper parsing Lottie’s penultimate panel… apparently it’s to fall heavily, or suffer disaster/defeat.
Methinks Lottie is talking about herself there?
I had to look it up as well as the expression isn’t current in Californian vernacular. If Lottie isn’t talking about her, then I wonder if whoever came a cropper is Evilottie all along?
What you’re thinking about is “Wipe-out DUDE!”
Ate it for real. Totes gnarly.
I don’t think she’s talking about herself. The text in the last panel implies that she fell down constantly, not just on the last day. I think what she’s talking about in the second-to-last panel and what she’s talking about in the last panel are two different things.
Lottie could have been too busy dealing with the strapping gentlemen to do any actual skiing until the last day? I’m probably reading too much into the wrong things, so I’m not convinced of my own guess, but I am leaning heavily toward the girl who came a cropper now having Lottie’s face, regardless.
I could be wrong, but “a girl came a cropper on the slopes on the last day” and “me falling over every three minutes” sound like entirely different things to me. The first implies a single fall, and sounds like something you’d only say for a fairly serious fall- not necessarily requiring hospitalization, but a noteworthy fall, nonetheless. The second implies minor falls happening frequently.
I will defer to your far greater experience with the phrase. Plus, past-Lottie’s comment is on-brand for Charlotte Grote overdramatics.
What far greater experience with the phrase?
I assumed she was referring to herself.
You know, this could fit quite well with the “Interpol agent” theory John Campbell and I espoused on the previous page. Imagine, the unnamed purple-haired girl, secretly working for Interpol, is about to move in and capture the gang when something Lottie does inadvertently causes an accident, causing PHG (Purple-Haired Girl) to break her leg or something, and then Lottie swoops in and captures the thieves herself.
RSS is showing all posts on inoreader again. Thank you if you did something to fix it.
If you’re using Inoreader, they did something that seems to have fixed the problems on their end. But presumably not affecting any other RSS readers. See my comment at the “RSS woes return” page.
I just noticed her pin! Has it been shown before? Such a perfect expression of who Lottie is! Too much, and she owns it, with pride and humor!
After a short dive, I’ve concluded the pin is new, and has only been seen from a distance the last few pages.
I think I first noticed it when “Bernice” headed north. It’s seen fairly close up two pages later (concluding page of Part 1), as she arrives in Glasgow.
I’ve a friend who had a well-travelled childhood and studied at international schools. She has that interesting accent, gets a lot of funny guesses about where she’s from.
A girl is Arya Stark of Winterfell, and she’s wearing Lottie’s face.
Actually Maisie Williams is about as close as a real live human being can get to looking like Charlotte. Too bad they didn’t make a Bad Machinery series instead of Game of Thrones!
Yeah, the other day I was watching Maisie Williams in Two Weeks to Live, and my brain kept wanting to call her “Lottie”.
I grew up in a town that literally built its own ski hill. They were building a hotel, mall & condo’s – and took all that dirt and made a pile of it. Then had some poor slob stand out there with a power hose making artificial snow. As you can probably guess, the fake hill and fake snow attracted a lot of fake people.
Holy shit I caught up, finally. Got busy there for a bit. Loving this story!!! Linton!!!!