Fulsome talents
Beate’s inferiority complex re: Lottie is poorly thought through. Not only can she drive, she can drive a Bedford Rascal, which is a sweet ride by anyone’s reckoning. Why am I so fascinated with the Bedford Rascal? I don’t know. It’s just a modest-sized van. Readers in global territories outside the UK may remember it as the “Suzuki Carry”.
They are in a van? Ho no, Lottie will never be able to find them and Dean is rightfully angry, On the other hand, seeing how susceptible Evilottie is.
It’ll be ok. Evilottie left Real Lottie the specific location where she plans to kill them.
Could have been worse. Could have been a Piaggio Ape.
The only way they’d all fit in that is if they were sliced and diced. But “Rascal” might be significant to her.
Fiat Panda
Yes! So if Evilottie couldn’t kill them, pneumonia and trauma from the jolts would do the trick.
You know they screwed up when Dean is the reasonable one
“The Homicidal Fake Charlotte” that he couldn’t recognize from the real Lottie?
I can’t really blame Dean completely for that. He was a bit suspicious of HFC when she dropped off the comestibles, but was thrown off the trail when those who should know Lottie better seemed to accept HFC at face value.
And really, Dean is not from Tackleford. He is entirely unprepared for The Usual Business.
He should have known better when they were accepting HFC as Lottie. There was a good reason they weren’t telling him but he failed to see it.
Dean’s always been “reasonable,” he’s just an arrogant ass. I recently read through all of Giant Days, and Dean is a very well written character; doubly so because he is so unpleasant without being a threat.
Dean’s the kind of guy who decided at the age of 16 that he really wanted to be 40 and showed up to university with that mission accomplished and was confused as to why everyone else was behaving like teenagers. He is picky, elitest about the things cares about (operating systems, phablets, games), and mostly seems to want to be left alone, except for the occasional expression of admiration from those who aren’t as squared-away as he.
Dean would corner you at a party and talk to you for 45 minutes about the deficiencies of the ext3 file system, completely oblivious to whether or not you cared. But his complaints would be correct, just delivered in the most unappealing way.
What’s wrong with ext3? And what to replace it with? ReiserFS then? I heard that one made a killing…
I was mostly using JFS when ext3 was current. I actually only stopped just recently, because I figured out that the weird disk problems I’d started having with installs weren’t hardware errors; the problem was that either the Slackware installer or Linux itself no longer properly support JFS. I switched to using ext4, and the problems went away.
But, on the other hand, my new storage server’s RAID has more than 200GB of filesystem overhead now.
I feel certain I’ve travelled in more than one variant of this van, although not trussed up in the back. The hangover however…
She didn’t forget her Big Bobble! It must be her favorite! Perhaps it gives her good luck?
Seeing that hat is what’s going to finally trigger Claire’s memory, make her realize who EviLottie really is, isn’t it.
I don’t know if that’s good luck or not. At this point, it might fit into her plan?
Maybe it’s the only cold-weather cap she has. It didn’t help her when she tried to question the Trio, nor did it help when she went”off-piste” and lost her face to the mountain.
Luck can be seen 2 ways: as what happened and as what didn’t happen. Maybe the conversation with the Trio confirmed her suspicions, and skiing with them might have killed her. When she fell doing skillful tricks for her “companion” she wasn’t killed, but rescued and presented with a solution to her problem with Lottie & Claire, Super Detectives at large
I keep thinking about Titia’s theory in the April 9th comments (responding to dpat57’s 9:23 comment): What if Beate didn’t actually CHOOSE Lottie’s face? What if they didn’t have good pictures of her to work from, used Lottie’s face instead, and she woke up and discovered that she now looked like the very person she (currently) despised most? That really could explain her going completely over the edge into evil insanity.
That would do it for me
(unless my nemesis was famous and I could make a good living as their double, belittling and undermining them at the same time)
“It was this one or Piers Morgan.”
Or maybe the one choosing it was Skelottie, telling then to Bea that it was a way for never make her forget her hate and totally possess her.
I am not sure she is totally possessed. I think the voice in the final panel is Bea speaking to Skelottie in a similar way that Skelottie spoke to her way back when.
Hmm. I was thinking that was Dean trying to be helpful. But then, considering how completely wrong I’ve been so far, you might not want to consider that possibility.
She doesn’t despise Lottie, she loves her, and wants to BE her. She even LOOKS like her now so she must destroy the original in order to take her place.
I have seen absolutely no evidence of this. It made sense as a plausible theory before the flashback.
OK, Respects her greatly. Lottie can do what she can’t (which is why she’s competing in this whole kidnapping act, PROVING she can think and plot ahead) but she wants to be Lottie -In her alternate, black skeleton form she’s a fun, party girl because that’s what she wants: what she’s never been! To Be Lottie, NOT Beate.
Also, she is trying to get Lottie to “self cancel” which would completely destroy her ability to take her place.
Might just be some straight up revenge going on here. Might finish it off with a suicide, too.
Exactly WHAT Self-Cancel means is still not clear.
I think the meaning can only be a fatal one.
It means to intentionally ruin one’s own reputation. In this context. Based on Beate’s past actions while impersonating Lottie, such as when Beate shows up to Lottie’s work/impersonated her online.
I like this reasoning! And yay for a less fatal option (although Lottie might feel otherwise). But I trust she won’t be forced to carry out any kind of self-cancellation in the end.
Probably for Bea killing Lottie isn’t enough, she wants her to be in a living he’ll full of pain and sufferance. She already killed a man, a very famous too, hoping to put her in jail forever, then she tried to kill Claire.
Actually, thinking about it, a road perfectly suited to a Bedford Rascal. I wonder if this is mere coincidence or if Evilottie is really very thorough… (thinks emoji)
(meant to be a follow up to my comment below which has inexplicably ended up in the wrong place. I am not very thorough)
Ah, the bracing ramblers’ weather up on Bamford Edge.
*BAM*BAM*BAM*
“Rascal” would be a good name for an automaton in fancy dress. Maybe it’s secretly an evil Daffodil Hater that’s teamed up with Nottie for its own nefarious purposes.
Maybe she’s not even driving because “Rascal” knows the way??
Well, I think every part of my theory on the previous page has been proven wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.
Wouldn’t be much fun if we all knew what was going to happen
There’s a reason why those of us who read on Patreon can’t post spoilers.
Does Claire even know what a bad hangover feels like?
Claire weighs about as much as the lower half of my left arm. A sniff of a wine bottle cork would give her a bad hangover.
Never underestimate Claire. Remember that she’s a Fire Master.
Regrettably, I don’t know what that means in context. 😐
Ronald do you not recall the Bad Machinery story where Claire is revealed as a secret arsonist? Perhaps you should reread it in the NEW ARCHIVE!!!! https://scarygoround.com/badmachinery/index.html?pg=255#showComic
I remember her being an ARSONIST (a crime which IIRC went utterly unpunished at the time), I just wasn’t familiar with the term “Fire Master.” 😐
I think it just means “master of fire”
Also, are there such things as good hangovers?
She presumably knows what a “regular” hangover feels like. All she needs to do is compare and contrast.
I wonder who it is that’s replying to Skelottie in the last panel. The speech bubble shape isn’t regular. That could be either because the voice comes from the back of the van through the wall (the more probable explanation) OR because it is now Beate who has been reduced to being Skelottie’s mental companion (the outlandish explanation).
I’m betting more on the “outlandish” explanation than the “more probable” one. The question then becomes whether the tied-up trio can hear the Companion Beate speech balloon.
That being Bea’s voice would be fun.
The tail on the speech bubble does seem more to point to the passenger seat than to the back.
Also, I can’t wait to find out who says “I’ll be you” to whom on 19 May. This suspense is killing me.
Take cover and come out when it’s safe!
I like this theory! I had assumed it was Dean, being a smart aleck, but it being the voice of the more reasonable part of Beate’s psyche makes a lot of sense.
I think it was Dean. His studied sarcasm may come in handy as a weapon to trigger Beate’s inferiority complex, putting her off guard, prodding her to do something careless.
“Shut up, moron” is *not* in boldface, unlike her words in the previous panel; this seems to indicate she’s not shouting to someone in the back, but speaking in lower tones to someone in the passenger seat… or in her head.
What if there’s actually someone else there? What if Beate has an accomplice? Maybe someone who she’s coercing in some way?
This is a very good theory.
You know someone’s evil when they steal a disabled person’s means (plural) of transportation
There’s still the possibility that it’s her wheelchair. After all, after the accident she probably had to use one for months.
It could be a discarded wheelchair from the former hospital where the trio were caretaking. OTOH Skelottie couldn’t know beforehand that she would find one there, so it makes more sense to assume that it’s Beate’s former wheelchair.
She had visited there with Dean before the kidnapping event. Time to snoop around and find resources like wheelchairs in storage.
There seem to be at least two wheelchairs. One to Claire’s left, one on Glenn’s right, and (depending on perspective) there might be one for Dean also.
‘Rascal’ is just a splendid word, and to have it applied to an inanimate object feels fun and silly. Perhaps that’s the draw for you?
Poor Dean wishes he could have used his fulsome talents to keep him from being a captive, and this makes him sad.
Fulsome Prison Blues.
There is, of course, a possibility that Dean’s talents are not actually as fulsome as he imagines them to be.
Speaking as someone who has some experience of roads and the things found upon them I’d say that is a most excellent rendering of both the Bedford Rascal (cute but far too small for me) and that particular bit of the A57 (narrow but quite scenic when it’s not raining)
I prefer the name “Holden Scurry”.
Perhaps, but she knows Lottie would drive it with more panache
I just realized that this storyline more or less paraphrases Eminems “Stan”. Not a bad thing imo.
Is this the first time we’ve seen Claire without her glasses?
No, I believe this was.
And then Claire losing her glasses was a major plot point in “The Case of the Lonely One”.
Thanks. I’m just not obsessive enough to know all these things other correspondents know about the strip(s). Sometimes I lie awake at night and worry that I’m not obsessive enough.
Tell you a secret: I cheat. I have a local copy of everything I could salvage of the old site from the Wayback Machine, which means I can rapidly flip through entire storylines.
I remembered that Lem had to get Claire’s glasses off to hypnotize her, but wasn’t sure if we’d actually gotten a shot of glasses-less Claire in that scene. But it was simple to check (we did), and then to page back through to her first appearance (which was just in the previous case) to see if there was an earlier instance (there was).
I saw one of those vans on a visit to the UK in the early 90s and really, really wanted one. I don’t think they were ever widely available in Canada though. Plus, being narrow and having a high center of gravity,
I imagine they could easily tip over sideways navigating the ice of “rutting season” or driving on very windy prairie highways.
Is the license plate “6526 OMF”? I know what the significance of “OMF” is, anyway. 🙂
Open Media Framework?
or
On My Face?
Our Merry Fishman, obviously.
I checked Google earlier and, evidently, one of its meaning is the same thing that OMG means except with an F. What does the F stand for? I think there’s a rather obvious guess. 🙂