April 26th, 2019
26 Apr 2019 · page 893 of 1306
Conspiracy!
Cast: Dr Esther Flack, Robert Hackett
Comments (60)
Events
ThoughtBubble
14 Nov 2026 – 15 Nov 2026
Harrogate Convention Centre
Manchester Megacon
31 Jul 2027 – 1 Aug 2027
Manchester Central
At some point she'll get enough of his nagging and go all THIS. IS. SPARTA on him. There's a pratical infinite cliff just next to them after all xD
Bob finally gets his own tag. Wonder if he'll be retrospectively labelled in his previous appearances?
he will be when I'm not on extremely slow holiday internet connections any more
In the meantime, I believe his first appearances start here - [https://widdershinscomic.co...](https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/june-16th-2012 "https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/june-16th-2012")
done, btw
Oh now, that's interesting! Mayor Hackett's experiences with magic going wrong include not only No Rest for the Wicked, where Fairbairn tried to cheat in a mayoral election with imbued lamp oil, but also Piece of Cake, where he was trapped in a time-loop with Gluttony.
His feelings about magic by now are probably... complicated!
Honestly, I'm surprised he doesn't just up and leave at this point.
Ah, precision, and nothing but. So no accuracy. (Compare the old "very accurately measure about one gram of $chemical" lesson.)
I don't believe I ever sat through that lesson in any of the chemistry classes I've had. Could you give me a quick run-through?
I think it's more about the "...very 'accurately' (measure) 'about' (one gram) ...".
So it's an accurate 'just about' amount...
Like Gilbert and Sullivan: we don't know which of the two is which, and there's absolutely no doubt about that!
"Of that there is no manner of doubt!
No probable, possible shadow of doubt!
No possible doubt whatever!"
In lay usage, "precision" and "accuracy" are used interchangeably. In scientific usage, "precision" is associated with variance and "accuracy" with bias; in other words, something that is high precision but low accuracy will have very detailed results that are consistently wrong in some way (e.g., a high-quality scale that was calibrated wrong, so it always overestimates the mass by 1 gram even though it can distinguish masses as little as 1 milligram different form each other), while something that is high accuracy but low precision will have results that are right on average but are individually unreliable (e.g., choosing a small but uniformly random sample from a set of devices to test to see what fraction of them are operational).
The terms are used similarly in archery!
An accurate archer usually hits what they're aiming at. A precise one always does the same thing and hits around the same spot.
A precise but inaccurate archer can more easily learn better accuracy--if you're consistently low and left, do the same thing but higher and more to the right. An imprecise archer can only be so accurate, and precision can be harder to learn so they may fall behind even if they initially score better then the inaccurate but precise one.
That makes sense - but then how does one make a single measurement very accurately, and what is the lesson?
The image with targets on here gives the TLDR version: [https://www.dnasoftware.com...](https://www.dnasoftware.com/our-products/copycount/precision-and-accuracy/ "https://www.dnasoftware.com/our-products/copycount/precision-and-accuracy/")
Kind of assume she's got a fail-safe installed in the mayor.
Anyone else interested in what it says on the board in the second panel? :3
Looks like filler scribbles to me. I'd wait for a closer angle.
My guess is a schedule, the top left looks like it says 8:?? am.
I wonder what happens if she refreshes the Sharpening with Sharpe himself in range. Will it just affect Knotty and Eliza (which could be bad) or Will too (which could be worse)? Or might it cause some sort of feedback and have interesting effects on Lovely Dr Flack?
I would suspect some form of constant undirected rage, because Sharpe is always near himself but incapable of hating himself.
I think the infusion on Will and the other students was undone with the failsafe word, and would have to be redone with them inside a new summoning circle.
Unless Flack already has a circle around the one she's drawing here (and it seems unlikely, given the topography of the depths), I don't think they're in range of whatever she's doing.
Although I'm curious what would happen if, say, you had a circle around a building at ground level, but your target was in the basement, below it.
I doubt any of them are gullible or careless enough to get into Flack's magic circle to let her enspell them. Probably even Will is not that dumb, even considering that he's not the sharpest bulb in the taco.
That being said, Knotty had that theory that the spell doesn't actually change you, just accentuates what's already there. Eliza has a fair amount of contempt for Sharpe, so the spell would probably be effective on her. Knotty doesn't, though, so I wouldn't bet on it working so well on him. And Sharpe has so much self-regard that I doubt even a really strong spell could get him to hate himself.
On a possibly related note, Eliza has retrieved her gun from Sharpe, so that could be foreshadowing that she'll try to use it on him later.
Based on previous magic in the comic "in range" is inside that circle... so I'm thinking our heroes might be slightly smarter than that. :P
Yes, I was assuming this one worked the other way round and would affect people outside rather than inside the circle (but presumably within some range, or within the bounds of the university - it would make sense for the university to have some kind of general containment circle around it to avoid 'accidents').
WHY do villain lairs not follow basic OSHA safety standards why are they missing WALLS but have a door why even HAVE the door but no guardrails AUGH
villains. I tell ya.
"No diabolical lair should be safe"
[http://www.cassiopeiaquinn....](http://www.cassiopeiaquinn.com/comic/the-body-snatchifiers-pt-16 "http://www.cassiopeiaquinn.com/comic/the-body-snatchifiers-pt-16")
I'll raise you this...
[http://www.cassiopeiaquinn....](http://www.cassiopeiaquinn.com/comic/the-body-snatchifiers-pt-35 "http://www.cassiopeiaquinn.com/comic/the-body-snatchifiers-pt-35")
I was just about to make a health-and-safety comment but you beat me to it. In all likelyhood though, they could probably toss dangerous/failed experiments off the edge if they needed to get rid of them. Makes explosions much less deadly if they're happening in a cavernous chamber rather than a small confined room.
it's hard to have OSHA (or wahtever that is) standards when magic randomly change layouts
...fair.
Its bc villains use a different set safety standards
The OSHA inspectors tend to... irritate villains, and hence they're the first ones to go into the shark tank.
Well, if they let OSHA see their lair, OSHA might also tell them they're not allowed to do evil...
Did we know the mayor's name before now? I don't think it was mentioned in his debate with Fairbairn.
A poster on [this page from the beginning of the chapter](https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/september-11th-2018 "https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/september-11th-2018") reads "Vote for Stability: Re-elect Mayor Hackett".
I don't think we have seen his first name before but [Eliza found a suspicious note from "R"](https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/march-19th-2019 "https://widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/march-19th-2019") earlier.
Looks like no. We knew he was the mayor but he wasn't given a name until this chapter.
Well, that last panel certainly isn't directing our attention to Chekov's Pit, nosireebob.
I’m wondering if Our Heroes are down there listening in.
"I checked on him in his cell just a few hours ago."
Yes, Doctor, and do you remember the nervous young "lawyer" you met as you were leaving? Could he have something to do with this, do you think?
Well, in her defense, Knotty isn't exactly someone you'd consider a threat to your plans. Or a threat in general. I don't think I could consider him a threat even if he was seconds away from hanging me.
it's always the ones you suspect the least
New career idea for Knotty: butler in murder mysteries!
I know it probably doesn't work this way but, they were talking about Sharpe before he even showed up, and now I'm imagining that if the conversation had just kept going they would have ended up setting themselves off and rioting anyway.
That might even be what Flack thinks happened.
Am I the only one who thought the yellow patern in the center of the rug looked like something peed under the table?
Bad Bob.
What are the white things with orange flames outside the door in the first panel, looking vaguely like ghostly boots?
Melting candles, looks like.
Ah, thanks - yes, they're casting a glow. So I guess those doors open in the opposite direction.
There should be a stuffed crocodile somwhere here too, probably hanging from the ceiling just out of view...
Also wow, she is willing to put her furniture very close to falling-death-pit. O.O
If I were experimenting with something dangerous on my desk, I might want to have the option of suddenly pushing it over the edge into a deep drop.
the website's background just changed to black (for me at least) which goes really well with the whole conspiracy thing.
Gah, politicians in this town.
So she not only makes him take the blame but turned all his classmates against him so nobody notices he couldn't have done it.
Precision, eh?
Refresh my memory, Hackett is pro-death penalty, yes? If so, I guess maybe he wants to use magic to reduce false convictions and thereby remove some of the opposition's ammunition.
Hackett's re-election slogan is "Stability." His opponent, Councilwoman Jasmin Rana, uses the slogan "A Call for Change" ... but, unlike Hackett's previous opponent, she's not wanting to ban magic... instead, she's campaigning on getting rid of the death penalty, and she's getting a lot of support. Eliza thinks she'll probably win.
To overturn that, he'll have to influence a lot of voters who are currently against the death penalty to suddenly feel it is necessary after all! And he has to do it before the election, which is almost upon them! So... he can't be after anything as mild as reducing false convictions. He'll have to frighten voters into thinking change is dangerous, or else make them angry enough at some criminal(s) to want (him/her/them) to die.
I'd been thinking they were planning some sort of mass application of the Flack technique to the entire population of Widdershins -- and maybe that's still what they're up to.
But it just occurred to me that the plan could, instead, be to create ... what American politics calls an "October Surprise" - a shocking last-minute event that grabs voters by their emotions.
That'd be my guess over all, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what Precision, of all things, has to do with it. Flack's line reading seems to imply that they'll be summoning something along those lines: even if "precision" isn't an emotion and thus not what they're summoning, I would expect, based on this exchange, for it to be something similar like Diligence, Circumspection, Thoroughness.... I'm just at a loss for how such a thing could be helpful for pulling off a last-minute upset.