Mutti and Vatti
Who is this winsome little bug? She seems very nice. Why have we gone backwards in time? Maybe it’s just fun to look back, sometimes. To remember how things used to be.
Bad Machinery
New comics by John Allison
Who is this winsome little bug? She seems very nice. Why have we gone backwards in time? Maybe it’s just fun to look back, sometimes. To remember how things used to be.
Wow, I had a sudden memory of the smells and sounds of a packed bus on a wet day
This is a particularly well drawn page
Well I hadn’t but I have now.
Thanks for that.
So has her imaginary (and only) friend always looked like Lottie, and seeing the real Lottie (and probably having Original Lottie be rude in some way) drove her over the edge and forced her to fully embrace her inner Lottie and transform herself into Lottie 2.0.?
Or is it her already-Lottie-looking friend the one who takes revenge after Bee is hurt on the ski field with additional consequences of which we do not yet know?
The guy is telling Bee to stop being weird because she’s been talking to herself, surely?
Also, he appears to be standing in the same space faux-Lottie was just sitting in!
I mean, she could have just gotten up and left while Bee was talking to her, but it seems somewhat unlikely to me.
You can see her hair behind them, though.
Just because John drew her in the panel doesn’t mean she’s real.
Nor did I indicate that it did. I was simply pointing out that it wasn’t like she’d suddenly disappeared in that panel. She’s still there, she’s just moved.
Wait, strike that, faux-Lottie can be seen behind her, having just evacuated the chair. So perhaps she does exist for real, and it only seems like she is talking to herself because she was looking away and didn’t notice her interlocutor had gotten up.
Yeah I missed that entirely. I just assumed she was talking to an empty seat.
Her being imaginary doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s not real.
Her first two speech bubbles appear to be, if not imagined, then telepathic, being unevenly-bordered and without… stems? The pointy bit that shows who is speaking. Anyway, something is clearly… unusual about pseudo-Lottie.
I wonder if Beate is a mystery fan intent on launching her own career by following the same trail that, unbeknownst to her, her actual hero La Grote is also following, and then real Lottie will give her the cold shoulder (or maybe she’ll be weird, assuming real Lottie is imaginary pseudo-Lottie, perhaps only speaking to her in German (Austrian? Romansh?)) before solve-stealing her legendary break.
The speech bubbles don’t have stems because they are in front of her face.
It seems every detail that points to “imaginary,” has a contradictory detail or interpretation of that detail that points to “real.”
Even though our beloved Mr Allison is obviously hiding something, he has successfully made that something ambiguous and confusing, and thus successfully hidden.
Her speech bubble has a stem in the last panel. Hmmm.
The tail of the balloon in the final panel is vestigial, at best. With the distance between the character and the balloon, one would normally expect a much larger and/or longer tail.
Though not as pronounced, even that final balloon is somewhat misshapen, tail considerations aside.
Yeah. I am leaning towards Bea having a severe case of Lottie-worship that she is imagining her advising her like in that movie where some shmoe imagines Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade giving him advice on his life.
TheWreck: that movie would be Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, with Steve Martin. I first saw it in 1982, and whenever it’s on telly it still makes me laugh.
Beate idolising the real-life Lottie and then facing a huge disappointment followed by quiet fury sounds very plausible.
No, the movie TheWreck is referring to is “Play It Again, Sam” with Woody Allen.
Joe: you’re absolutely right! My bad.
And now that I think of it, Martin’s character was dealing with “Bogart”, not Sam Spade, and IIRC he was more inclined to dismiss Bogart’s comments than take advice.
It’s complex.
“Meanwhile” Jack has moved from CG-DOS to Lottie 3.11.
I strongly support this hypothesis. Now I feel sad for Beate.
I feel like using terms like imaginary to describe Dopelottie and implying she’s somehow not the original (it *might* just be a case of Convergent Evolution) is jut the sort of thing to push a Lottie down the pth that leads to Bad Charlotte.
Ok I’m generating a theory that our Bee here was aspiring to prove herself and join the Boarding School Thieves Guild, and Lottie botched her chance on the slopes, not long before busting their whole operation.
No idea if Evilottie’s true identity is the blonde girl or the other one. But they are probably BFF. The kind that if something happens to the other, the revenge will be terrible.
Perhaps one is even the other’s security blanket. https://badmachinery.com/comic/big-day-today/
It is notable that they have matching luggage style (bags and backpacks) albeit different colours. Surely no coincidence!
Does Lottie speak fluent angle bracket? (chevronese?)
Not just different colours; you’ll notice that Beate’s (probably imaginary) friend is entirely in greyscale
Maybe it’s not an imaginary friend. Technically this still is Lottie’s dream, maybe that’s her self insert to try to understand what Bee’s life and motivations are.
Yes. Greyscale. Which, we’ve seen, is how the doppelganger sees the world.
Except for the hand pulling her rolling suitcase. It looks more like a skin color.
Yeah, but the last time we saw Actual Lottie that pallid, she’d been subsisting entirely on onions for a week.
I wonder if Dark Lottie’s luggage has a frowny-face on it.
Bee’s friend’s word balloons look… slightly misshapen. A CLUE! Maybe she needs some Lockets.
If she’s German, they would be Em-eukals.
Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Sharlottening’
Uggggh! My theory has been shattered! I was certain it was the French girl Camille from The Modern Men.
Of course I’ve been certain about a lot of things and wrong even more often.
On that note, I’d really like to see what Mimi and Elodie Broussard have been up to these days.
They live with Gibbous Moon don’t they?
Yes. On the moon.
Which also happens to be where the Wendigo disguised as the Easter bunny claimed to bring eggs from
A Wendigo that Elodie and Mimi both saw
The story thickens
Och, i miss the button moon . . .
Not really sure how it could’ve been Camille given the way that story arc ended
I thought Camille would have a) been too obvious, and simultaneously b) made no sense, if you really think about it. Also, John posted something indicating that no one had successfully solved the mystery after Camille had been suggested a couple of times. My reading of his “if it was any of these, it would have been the cursed scooter” line was simply that the solution wouldn’t be blatantly supernatural (by the end of that story, we didn’t actually know whether the curse was real or not, and even if it was, it was handled far more subtly than other supernatural things in the series), not “it was someone from the same story”. Thinking back now, it’s also possible that John simply meant that the scooter was the only one of the Mystery Kids’ antagonists that he’d be tempted to bring back some day.
Having said all that, it’s still possible that these characters are red herrings, and it actually IS Camille, I suppose…
Doppelgröte isn’t quite the cursed scooter, but rather the scooter’s curse! The curse seeks revenge against Lottie for the destruction of its host, and this Bee person provides the new host in the form of an imaginary friend that the curse is able to turn corporeal! somehow. and still requiring plastic surgery (and a wig) after becoming corporeal. A perfect theory with no gaps or flaws!
Yeah, I’m not buying it, either.
OK, the plot thickens, but it’s still barely solid and mostly not there. This might take many more wonderful pages of clever concealment and ruse.
You are absolutely right Glem!
When I made the name Beate from the Scrabble letters a week ago, I didn’t expect it to actually be what they were supposed to spell out.
I think you get points for that. A lot.
tl;dr: I estimate it to be 30 points. Which isn’t too bad for a Scrabble play.
B = 3 points, and the rest are all 1 point, so that’s 7 points, minimum. Played on a Triple Word Score would bump that up to 21. 30 points if the B is also on a Double Letter Score (I had to check, but it just fits). More if all five letters are played on that turn. It would be hard to estimate upper bounds on the points gained from adding to words that were already on the board, so I won’t go there. Regardless, the 50 bonus points for playing all seven of your tiles at once won’t apply.
Beate’s nickname is Bee… and if you include the X that’s visible in the rack, you can get “Bee ATX” (Bee attacks).
Reading this comment was the most Hitchcock-esque moment of the whole saga so far for me. (Imagine the background music suddenly taking an intensely dramatic turn.)
sorry but my Beate comment pre-dates yours 8)
I was originally thinking that Evilottie was a “girl in the chair” secret mastermind who didn’t get caught with the rest of the jewel thieves.
But that is clearly not what is happening here…
The awkward, shy third skiier on the cover is clearly Beate. For me this tips the scales towards today’s interlocutor being imaginary. I think when Beate sees Lottie, she immediately becomes attached, due to the resemblance to her imaginary friend. Lottie’s “rejection” of her, in whatever unintentional way it happens, breaks Beate’s already fragile mind, and her sociopathic obsession begins.
Someone help me, how is her name pronounced? Bee-ah-tuh? Emphasis on the Bee?
Bee-teh
Beh-AH-tuh
Bee-AH-tuh
It’s pronounce Beätchen
If it was Irish, Beate would be pronounced like “Mary”
But since it’s Germanic, it should be pronounced “bay-bee-eveh-lottee”
On the page a while back where EviLottie is plotting to kill Claire, she makes it sound like Lottie had done something similar to her, taking away someone who she needed. Maybe Lottie will inadvertently cause Beate to lose her imaginary friend.
Then who is the snowboarder in grey in the middle? They, and Beate, are wearing outfits that match their luggage (with Charlotte in classic Michelin Man puffer).
Assuming Bad Charlotte is either Beate or her (imaginary?) friend, props to her on commitment to the impersonation! In modern times, she talks to herself in English, , when she’s alone playing with wigs and saying crazy shit about killing Claire. More amazing attention to detail from John!
Also, I’m guessing Beate is alone and the Lottie friend is actually Lottie, not an imaginary friend. It’s still Lottie’s dream on the train, after all, and Lottie wasn’t there for this. I think she’s inserting herself in the dream to try to figure it out.
Hmm. That actually could explain why her face is hidden. We don’t usually see our own faces in our dreams. I don’t know, though. It strikes me that there are other clues that suggest otherwise. I guess we’ll find out.
Although, rereading this page, I’m not sure this IS Lottie’s dream. The caption says this is “three years earlier”. I think maybe John just used Lottie’s dream as a convenient segue into a flashback. We’re not necessarily seeing exactly what Lottie’s dreaming.
She seems to be wearing the Skelottie costume, so I don’t think it’s Good Charlotte inserting herself into the scene.
I don’t see any signs of a skeleton costume there. She’s wearing black but there’s no sign of bones. However, the absence of a purple puffer is certainly an indication that this is not Lottie.
Yeah, I think you’re both right. Plus the guy pointing out that Beate’s being weird, probably by talking to herself. Standing corrected and on tenterhooks waiting for this mystery to unfold.
You don’t want to stand on tenterhooks, sounds very painful. Just hang from them instead.
What I do with my tenterhooks is between me and Jesus. And I guess the tenterhooks.
Also, it just occurred to me the guy calling Beate weird is the one who’s going to introduce Claire and Lottie to brunost.
A supervillain origin story? I love a supervillain origin story!
“By Monday I will be a legend” certainly has a supervillain ring to it.
Or Bee was intending to uncover the theives and be the hero, which we all know did not happen – as theorised by others in prior days’ comments
I am also going with this theory. This is shaping up to be “The Case Of The Amateur Sleuth Whose Chance For A Big Break Was Stolen By Her Own Idol.” And I am here for it.
AND RUUUUUUULE THE WORLD! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Try JOKER with Joaquin Phoenix. It’s sensational. Their side of the story.
May I point out that the Lottie in this page not only lacks a purple puffer but is seriously under-dressed for the weather?
And lest we think I imagine I’m pointing out an error (I don’t have 6K quid (does one still say quid?) to spare for the Fortum & Mason etc., etc.), I’d say under-dressed advocates for imaginary.
Assuming that Beate’s imaginary friend at some point took over her mind, causing her to eventually morph into EviLottie, would those letters on the Scrabble board be a muffled cry for help from the real Beate who’s still somewhere in there?
Or a clue left by Claire?
Pedantry alert: The correct German spelling is Vati (Mutti is correct).
What a fool am I
But what KIND of fool am I?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUILRZGAfsA
That’s 3 hampers at least, what are you at?
Hmm… any chance someone’s a fan of Erich Kästner’s classic German children’s novel Das doppelte Lottchen?
Sadly, Google spoiled my assumption that “Garmisch Partenkirchen” is the sound that a German bus makes when shifting gears going uphill…
I hadn’t really thought about whether “Garmisch-Partenkirchen” could be this onomatopoeia, but now it’s my headcanon, whether there’s another meaning or not.
Hmmm. Google translate identifies it as German, but doesn’t even change the spelling when translating to English, so its second meaning remains a mystery (that I’m sure Lottie can solve (by simply going there)).
Ummm… It’s a place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garmisch-Partenkirchen
A place that Lottie can resolve the mystery of its placeness (by simply going there)…
It’s near the Zugspitze and Wank mountains. I wonder if either of them are going to feature in this story?
If you have never watched the ski jumping competition from Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Jan 1 you have either partied too hard or not hard enough on New Year’s Eve. Classic hangover TV!
“Mutti” !?
“Vatti” ?!
Along side “BEATEX” from the scrabble! … ?
Jaysus JohnA you’re cramming in the clues, aren’t you?
Never have I ever been so tempted to break the elextronica seal and read the end toute suite, but your pacing is perfection.
I’ve already
stored the PDF, just in case, but I shan’t read ahead.
Thank you sir.
Never
I’m leaning toward EvilLottie being some kind of supernatural thing, gradually gaining substance in this world through her connection with Beate.