Classique Carlotta ingenuity
“The Case of the Jade Cartel” was referenced briefly in Wicked Things, the series that Wobbly Head is meant to finally close the door on (copies are still available from your bookseller). I’m not 100% sure what happened during this undocumented mystery but we can tell from this page, for certain, that it involved a lot of jade. And Sonny.
Did the math and this story wouldn’t be able to take place three years before Wobbly Head since July of that timeframe would be the events of Bad Machinery case 9.
The news story was dated July, but that could have been months earlier than this.
Uh, no. July three years ago was the summer after “The Great Unboxing”.
Lottie’s 19 now. Three years ago, she was 16. I’m not sure whether you’re counting “Space is the Place” as case 9 (it didn’t have a case number on the old site, I guess because it’s not “The Case of…”), but it overlaps with “Missing Piece” anyway, so it doesn’t matter much. Lottie’s still 14 in “Space is the Place”, and doesn’t turn 15 until around the end of “Missing Piece”/beginning of “Severed Alliance”.
Shauna identifies them as “15-year-olds” in “Space is the Place”, but while she is, Lottie isn’t yet. It’s set sometime in the spring/early summer, and Lottie doesn’t turn 15 until that July. Even Mildred, the oldest of the mystery kids, doesn’t turn 16 until the very last strip of “Severed Alliance”. Shauna turns 16 a month and a half later. Sonny turns 16 a week after the end of “Hard Yards”. Lottie doesn’t turn 16 until the next July, which is after the events of “Wen-Tack”/”Parents”/”The Great Unboxing”.
You’re all getting the timelines wrong, as I can clearly tell from the fact that Erin’s story in this comic is dated 13 July, 20⌘︎♑︎.
I suspect it may have been the conversion of the dates from the British Imperial system to the European metric one that’s caused the problem here. The pips are measured completely differently.
Well, yeah. “Wen-Tack” was the winter/spring of 20⌘︎♑︎, and “Space is the Place”/”The Case of the Missing Piece” was the spring/summer of 20⌘︎ẞ. Peggy’s baby shower, at the end of “Hard Yards”, was December 18th, 20⌘︎ẞ.
Lottie once told Shauna at the end of Case of the Lonely One that she’s a “poor July baby”. Later she said in Author Unknown that she was eight when she first met Shelley. Seeing how she’s logically nine by the end of the year, I add up that way.
She is nineteen, but it hasn’t been as long since wen-tack as you say.
Also I am sorry if my math comes off as overbearing to some of you. This is all just for fun.
Also P.S. her Giant Days appearances compliment this by having it say she’s 10 and 11 respectively, at times when she would be those ages. So she’s 12 during Case of the Team Spirit.
Again, I apologize for my overbearing math.
The poor July baby strip specifically establishes the three main girls’ ages as of the end of “The Case of the Lonely One”, and pins down their birthdays to at least within a month (more precisely for Mildred and Shauna).
At the end of “Lonely One”, which is explicitly dated to September–October of the kids’ second year, Mildred is 13, having turned 13 on September 1st, a few days before the start of the case. Shauna is 12, and won’t turn 13 until the next day (which I think, from specific dates given earlier, is October 11th, but there are a couple of assumptions involved in figuring that, so I might be off by a few days). Lottie is still 12, and won’t turn 13 until July. It’s specifically noted that she’s nine months younger than Shauna, and also established that she’s ten, or maybe even eleven, months younger than Mildred (we never learn exactly when In July Lottie’s birthday is, though I’m guessing it’s not the 18th, or she would have commented on it in “Forked Road”).
Shauna’s 12th birthday is specifically noted during “The Case of the Team Spirit”. (That’s also the strip where the legendary purple puffer makes its first appearance.) The nice blue coat she gets for her birthday becomes a plot device in that case. Lottie is nine months younger than Shauna. When Shauna turns 12, Lottie is 11, and will be 11 until the next July, which is sometime round about “The Case of the Simple Soul” (the day the girls take the troll to the pub is the last day of school).
From there it’s just a matter of counting years. Unlike Bobbins and Scary Go Round, which operated in kind of vague webcomics time, the passage of time in Bad Machinery is well-defined, marked out by school terms. Lottie is 12 in “Lonely One”, which is the autumn of their second year.
Lottie is still 12 in “Fire Inside”, which starts on New Year’s Eve, though Mildred is again noted to be 13, and Sonny is also established to now be 13, with his birthday on Christmas Day.
“Unwelcome Visitor” is set during the summer between their second and third years. Lottie has finally turned 13.
“Forked Road” is in the autumn of their third year. The first trip through the time hole was October 30th. Mildred and Shauna are 14, but Lottie is still 13.
“Modern Men” is in the spring of their third year. Sonny has turned 14, but Lottie is still 13.
The summer between third and fourth years is the story-within-the-story of “Big Hiatus”, assuming that it happened at all. But even if it didn’t, Lottie turned 14 around the time that it’s set.
The autumn of fourth year is the Bobbins story “Into the Woods”, which is mostly set in November, with the epilogue, including The Boy’s second death and Mordawwa showing up on Scientist to tell Shelley that she’s pregnant, in February of the kids’ fourth year. Mildred and Shauna are 15, and Sonny has turned 15 by the epilogue, but Lottie is still 14. And note this puts the rest of the series on a hard (yards) timer: Peggy is born no later than November of the kids’ fifth year, and Bad Machinery gets time-fixed to this by the “Big Hiatus” framing story (which was the day before “Severed Alliance”, and immediately after a specific “Hard Yards” strip; Lottie just missed Erin leaving Shelley’s) and the kids’ involvement in “Hard Yards”.
“Space is the Place” picks up in the spring of the kids’ fourth year. Shauna is 15, but it isn’t July yet — because there needs to be room to fit most of “Missing Piece”, including a two-week timeskip, in before end of term — so Lottie is still 14. As I noted above, Shauna identifies them as “two 15-year olds” after the simulator sequence, but while Shauna is 15, Lottie isn’t quite yet.
“Missing Piece” overlaps “Space is the Place”. Blossom’s coup happens while Shauna and Lottie are away in Wales. The interstitial strips that establish this were cut from the published version, but nothing was added that contradicts them, so I’m assuming it’s still the case. Shauna and Mildred are 15. Lottie is still 14 at the beginning of the case, but turns 15 sometime around the end of it, which is the last day of their fourth year.
“Severed Alliance” picks up a few days later, in the summer between fourth and fifth year, around the beginning of August. Lottie has recently turned 15. Mildred is still 15; Lottie says in the second strip that Mildred won’t be 17 (when she can get her driver’s license) for a year and a month. The very last strip is the first day of their fifth year; Mildred has just turned 16, but Shauna and Lottie are still 15. Shauna turns 16 a month and a half later. Lottie won’t turn 16 until the next summer, around the time of the Case of the Jade Cartel. So the events we’re currently witnessing are the winter Lottie was 16, which was the year after Mildred turned 16, because Lottie is at least ten, maybe almost eleven, months younger than Mildred.
The kids aren’t always 100% precise about stating their ages. In addition to the one I noted above where Shauna lumps 14-year-old Lottie in with herself as “15-year-olds”, the most obvious one is in “Lonely One”, where Shauna tells Lem’s dad that she’s 13, but the “poor July baby” strip establishes only a few strips later that she’s actually still 12, and was jumping the gun by a few days.
This particularly applies to ages when things happened a decade earlier.
I appreciate the work that went into this post.
I know Bad Machinery states what Lottie’s ages are. I’m just saying that it’s retroactively off since later stuff established that Lottie was 8 in her first appearance, in a story set in 2009.
Which brings me to the point that Scary Go Round wasn’t that vague in its timeline. It took place right along the years it released from, being 2002-09 (which is also what I reference when adding upwards on my timeline). A lot of characters didn’t necessarily change, but the school kids did, which Allison has pointed out once.
Again, I really don’t mean to harp on about this.
I’m already aware of everything you pointed out.
Luke Drotos is like a child in a Victorian short story who loves a pet so much that he accidentally squeezes it to death. Try to love the Scary-Go-Verse just a little less Luke and we won’t all have to pay for John A to be buried in one of those giant hampers he keeps asking for.
I will gladly contribute to funding the hamper
This probably came out wrong
Why not just enjoy the story, instead of doing the math(s) ?
I am enjoying the story first
The maths are a mere hobby
Did Erin Winters write the article in German or it was translated later… either way it’s meant heavy use of Google translate for me
I wonder if Ms Anderson’s fiance has an interesting surname, like Hohl or Hoe
Or Sossedge
I think you mean TranZlate – from Zambian Computing
I wouldn’t be surprised about find out that Erin is a polyglot able to talk and write in 6 different languages and more. Maybe something that her life as Mordawwa gave to her.
I think the fact that this is from YorkshireLive indicates that the article was written in English, and was translated (likely by someone else).
Lottie doesn’t seem very happy in the article photo. The case may have made her jaded.
Yellow card!
I still want to learn about Lottie’s famous case of the Politician, the Lighthouse, and the Trained Cormorant
Even Claire’s phone has a lisp!
It does? All it seems to say on this page is “BLING.”
It’s probably Clojure.
Just the coding language…
Presumably Sonny was hidden in a large jade vase and then forgotten about.
The Erin Winters byline makes me too happy.
Also, Sonny!
You beat me to it.
Also, I just realized the really shocking implication of this:
Erin got the kids’ names right in an article.
Nah. The translator fixed the names.
I love “one step ahead of them with only half as many feet” and am grateful you wrote it.
“Well Lottie, whatever you did, I thuppose it wasn’t dubiouth and unlikely to haunt us in the dithdant future.”
What a website to get your news from, Beate! Surprisingly international
I think she looked at a British site because she recognized them as British sluthes.
She… Binged them?
They are indeed binge-worthy.
Ask Jeeves?
Finally a chance to see again Sonny, even if it’s a photo from the past.
Aw, let us see that rock!
And to echo everyone else: hooray, Sonny!!
Like True Professionals, they don’t say Diamond or Jewel, but ROCK (as if they don’t really care what it is except a reason to be professional.)
Lottie may care a little bit. Note the BLING reflected in her eyes.
You shouldn’t call a gem a “rock”. Folks will just take it for granite.
Indeed. Not gneiss at all.
Definitely not gneiss. More like actinolite schist.
Watch your language!
I’m not saying that they said rock and my brain immediately went to ‘stone of mystical significance buried under the resort,) but I’m very specifically not saying that for *reasons*. I love mystery, but I’m a fantasy nerd at heart. My daughter – currently dressed as a different teen sleuth for World Book Day – would no doubt give me side-eye.
Loving the use of ‘abgespeckt’ in the news article, a rather casual term implying a reduction of some kind that literally translates to ‘de-fat-ed’. Probably a translation of ‘slimmed down’? 😀
Abstract?
The, uh, the object with a face, behind Sonny, what’s that about?
Type “jade artefacts” into Google, Ronald…
I think the comments on this page may haves reached a new record for “people finding something odd about aspects of the comic that are perfectly reasonable for the real world”.
Wait, isn’t Lottie’s first name “Charlotte,” not “Carlotta”?
I think Lotticia is just being ‘international’
She’s Charlotte Meredith Grote (assuming Mildred didn’t make that up; you know what she’s like). But she frequently refers to herself as “Carlotta”, I assume to make herself seem more exotic.
Similarly, Miss Haversham’s name is not actually “Mildew”, and the guy who hangs around is named “Glenn Durgan”, not “Glyn Durban”, or “Goblin”, “Gremlin”, “Gürm”, “Glem”, or “Gimli, son of Glóin”.
You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?
Wait just a danged minute! You’re giving us a flashback story about a case we’ve never seen that contains reference to yet ANOTHER case we’ve never seen featuring the only Mystery Kid that we know nothing of as of yet?
Aaaargh, as they tend to say.
The key concept here is “giving.”
And we are very grateful for it
Thank you, John
This is what is called “mise en abyme” in literary theory. A narrative technique at which it is absolutely forbidden to go “aaaargh”, as that will unfortunately summon a beast from hell.
There are no
“Mystery Kid [s] that we know nothing of as yet”.
I fear the dental work of this free equine might just be too intricate for yourself.
I’m reasonably sure Mark meant “Mystery Kid whose current situation we know nothing about as of yet”.
Fair enough.
And I forgot to mention that the snow-capped mountains reflection in the window Claire looks out of is brilliant
I of course recognize the icons to share this story on Amstagram and Z (formerly Zipper? My memories from before the takeover are a little hazy), but what service is that lowercase ‘f’ for? Some new upstart?
Fishbook, Des’s newest venture.