Roddy’s Flophouse
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We must imagine that Roddy’s Flophouse is a hostel. Cheap beds, sheets as diaphanous as the Turin Shroud. Night air pungent and betweemed by snores.
Bad Machinery
New comics by John Allison
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We must imagine that Roddy’s Flophouse is a hostel. Cheap beds, sheets as diaphanous as the Turin Shroud. Night air pungent and betweemed by snores.
But nothing stops the Lottiegänger from getting a matching tattoo. Obviously the solution is to tattoo her.
this is a great plan. Lottie posts photos on her socials with a new (temporary) tat, sucker in Evilottie to matching it. Wipe off Lottie’s temps and gotcha
Lottie probably approve this plan.
Didn’t Lottie quit ’em all?
“Social media is the crucible of personal destruction.” she said.
She could do it on Claire’s social, which Evillottie certainly monitors
Lottie, it’s the only way. Put two symmetrical Energy crow on your hands. One of us! One of us! Seeing Lottie smiling so happy talking with Linton is really something that makes me happy.
Why wasn’t there a big blurb on the cover announcing that this story was part of the ITNGUTI mega-event? I’ve seen major companies do more for a brief one-panel reference.
Is Roddy of Roddy’s Flophouse THE Rod? Stewart, I mean…
£15 per person might be enough to keep him in N-scale model trains
The picture certainly looks like that Face.
Every picture tells a story. Comics doubly so.
Sir Rod models in HO scale…. or so I’ve heard..
Simple motto:
‘Stay with meeee STAY with meee’
YES
Remember that episode of Roddy’s Flophouse where Fergal tries to steal back the football trophy but he accidentally goes in through the wrong window and ends up in Mrs. Mackenzie’s bedroom? A true classic!
Sonny’s the only mystery kid we have yet to see in the modern era
I assume by now he’s become the head of NatureCraft
I’m going to call it – Evil Lottie is Sonny!
(or perhaps – given Linton’s question – Jack, although the height difference makes Sonny the more likely suspect)
Linton’s asking about Jack because of what’s going on in this story: https://badmachinery.com/comic/2024-08-23/
Evil Lottie could be Jack’s daughter. Probably not though.
I sure hope not. I still kind of ship Jack and Shauna.
But what if Jack makes it back from the 90s and is now *INSANE!!!*
(And shorter for some reason…)
But yes, I had quite forgotten about his time displacement issues.
That’s been my theory, though I had recanted it upon learning Jack was missing, until I saw another comment below pointing out that Jack was trapped in the nineties.
The vagaries of time travel leave it kinda open how much time in the present passes while one is trapped in the past, though. You could be stuck there for AAAAAAGES and still get back moments after you left. Or before, more messily.
Regardless, the fact that John has indicated that ITNGUTI could be a long-term, ongoing series indicates that he probably doesn’t intend to use Jack in the present anytime soon. So it would make sense for Jack to be missing during this time.
Jack shows up to help, but he’s 50 and has an eyepatch, a cyborg arm, and grizzled stubble.
It’s a vey blocky beige cyborg arm with a 3 1/4″ disk drive.
3¼”? Evil… 🙂
There have been a lot of oddball sizes and formats of floppy disks.
http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/wiki/Floppy_disk
I was going to argue that there’s not reason he’d still be using 90s tech if he came back the long way, but this is Jack, who I’m pretty sure was into vinyl before he became a time traveller.
Could Jack have become Tim?
Shelley already knew Tim before she met the time-traveling Jack. See Expecting to Fly.
UGH
It is a great plan! Come on Lottie, swallow your pride just this once!
BTW is this an ongoing trend of the Tackleford Mystery Kids relocating to Scotland?
All for it here in Edinburgh! I’ll look out for Linton as I’m cycling home past the uni.
Wow, Linton’s relocated to Scotland too. Is this an ongoing trend for the Tackleford Teen Detectives?
Apologies, I didn’t think the first version of this comment went through.
Lately I find I have to reload the page before my comments show up.
These days, I often have to refresh the page to see my comments.
Recently I notice I frequently have to F5 the page for my comments to appear.
Hostels are really mood. They’re a vibe alright. I’m not quite sure they are either room or board, but there are notable overlaps.
I’ll make do with a board at a pinch but I’m not putting up with a rope strung between two walls.
That settles it, I was wrong Sonny is not Bad Lot, Jack is missing because he has taken up a life of revenge impersonation.
Linton choosing to remain single warms my heart, mostly because of his awkward history of girls on the brain. Growth! It’ll be sweet if one day he finds his special someone.
We know who Linton’s flame is.
We do?
I think it’s access to information that Linton is denying Lottie…
I’m hoping he already has that special someone and we know her. But I’m actually more interested in what Linton is studying and if he wants to join the police after his graduation or not.
Linton’s just telling Lottie it’s none of her business. He’s not saying he’s single. At least, that’s how I read it.
Ahh, that makes more sense!
I don’t think Sigma (Σ) Wolf means what Lottie thinks it does.
Most people’s understanding of lupine social dynamics is complete pants. Apparently the scientist who created the ‘alpha wolf’ idea has spent the intervening time trying to explain that he was completely wrong about the whole thing.
Yeah, it was only one species of wolf, and, more importantly, it was in captivity. In the wild, no hint of “Alpha/Beta/whatevs” structure has ever been observed in wolves
A single family of wolves of a particular species, in captivity specifically iirc? So at best claiming to be an “Alpha Wolf” is like saying “Your Daughter calls me Daddy too”…and the most of the rest is just calling people your kids/wife?
Though really uh, I’m starting to suspect that whatever most people who lean heavily into the terminology are actually basically saying is that they’re just secret Furries? If only because the thought amuses me the most out of all other options.
I don’t think they were even related wolves, so it was basically like trying to study family relationships by observing power dynamics among prison inmates.
What’s the matter with those wolves? Haven’t they ever been to Wall Street or Madison Avenue?
It was too late. The terms had already been used for a series of animated movies, very successful in the Furry community, and for a kind of narrative mostly produced in Suth Korea, Japan, and North America.
I have never met a wolf that knew any Greek or indeed statistics.
As far as you KNOW.
The alpha-particle-emitting wolf, or “alpha wolf” for short, is crucial to the Helium industry. Beta wolves, on the other hand, lost the war against VHS wolves.
It’s a shame, really. The beta wolves were sharper and had better color definition.
In the end it made no difference. The advent of the laser-wolf ruined an entire industry.
And then streaming wolves kicked them all to the curb and, to top it all off, put all the Flockbuster stores out of business.
Who, day and night, must make all the decisions
Feed the lesser wolves, decide where to hunt?
And who has the right, as master of the pack
To have the first meal from a kill?
The alpha! The alpha! Tradition!
The alpha! The alpha! Tradition!
Who must know the way to keep a proper pack
A quiet pack, an ordered pack?
Who must raise the pups and run the pack
So the alpha’s free to be the wolf in charge?
The beta! The beta! Tradition!
The beta! The beta! Tradition!
… Wait, no, that’s Lazar Wolf.
I cannot possibly upvote John Campbell’s filk enough. Bravo, sir. Unfortunately this page doesn’t give me the option to reply directly to John so I’m latching on to this subthread in general.
At first I started tracking school
And then they let me hunt
I hear they picked a pack for me, I hope
it’s friendly.
The sigma! the sigma! Tradition!
The sigma! the sigma! Tradition!
There’s no such thing as a sigma wolf (only alpha and beta.) This is a long running meme thanks to the tireless spreading of Vox Day memes by the Zoomer population. He was unsatisfied with the fact that there are only alpha and beta traits, so constructed a byzantine socio-sexual hierarchy around the topic that he doesn’t like most male writers (i.e. Neil Gaiman.) From that he came up with the gamma. The sigma is like the gamma “but cool.” (Not really, but I feel free to rudely simplify here.) Sigma somehow crept into memes, at first ironically making fun of the aloof “alpha but not really alpha” secret king sigma personality, but then later losing its irony and becoming just another term for “lone wolf”.
fwiw there’s no “beta” in his thing, it’s called “bravo” (I guess someone likes the NATO radio alphabet a little!)
The Sigma Wolf thing is a reference to an image I sent to my nephew claiming that I was having coffee with a “sigma wolf” and on the wolf’s sweater I wrote “no conformo”
https://www.instagram.com/p/DBBqRERg-lU/
Nothing is wasted
I had forgotten this delightful trifle. Thanks for the reminder!
That looks more like a collie than a wolf.
Everyone’s a critic
Technically, domestic dogs are a species or subspecies of wolf. So collies ARE wolves.
Looks like a hamper to me.
Lottie as the sum of all wolves? There will be no escape…
TATTOO??? All they need to do is give Lottie a tiny radio transmitter “a bug” that will verify her real status, while the OtherLottie will be silent and easy to spot. (Or the other way, to provide warning when the imitation is nearby.)
She could get chipped at any veterinarian’s clinic. Very handy for establishing one’s true identity.
Or cut both their hands and plunge a red hot iron into the blood sample, the fake’s blood will try to jump out of the petri dish.
I saw it on a late night documentary about arctic explorers.
I refuse to stay at Roddy’s Flophouse until they fix that serious leak in their “The Next Day” pipe.
Maybe that’s how Jack ended up in the ’90s. Leak in a “A Week Earlier” caption pipe.
I can see the plumber taking a hard look at the leak before explaining that “…context caption piping systems are well complicated”
In reply to the inevitable question, “Can you fix it?” he will breathe in audibly through his teeth and cock his head to the side, and after a long pause reply “We’ll ‘ave to remove the escutcheon and see if we can get a straight stop saddle valve in to redirect the timeline, but you run the risk of continuum paradoxes in yer trap!”
The main problem with fixing a “next day” pipe is that the repair will forever be one day away from completion.
So, just like fixing any other pipe.
It really is so good to see these three together again.
BETWEEMED
I am a rebel. You can tell by my tattoos. I have none.