April 9th, 2019
9 Apr 2019 · page 889 of 1306
Well.. maybe a little bit.
Cast: Dr Esther Flack, Eliza Swift, Vincent Knott, Will Sharpe
Comments (60)
Events
ThoughtBubble
14 Nov 2026 – 15 Nov 2026
Harrogate Convention Centre
Manchester Megacon
31 Jul 2027 – 1 Aug 2027
Manchester Central
How much can he really be blamed for it when he was literally under the effects of mind control?
I suppose he blames himself for trusting her before, enough to let her do that with him.
"If providence hands you a powerless scapegoat, it is a sin not to use him."
Prince Aaronev Sturmvoraus.
That’s Tarvek’s father, yes? That clan has so many schemers it’s hard to keep track of them all...
If they're breathing, they're a treacherous schemer.
If they're not breathing, it's still a 50-50 chance....
Indeed, given Anevka's disposition breathing is indeed optional.
Correct. As quoted to Tarvek by his ‘sister’.
Yes you are. We still like you tho
If you never get written up for drinking on University premises, then you're not doing it right.
Hey, I never got written up, and I got it plenty right. Or maybe different rules apply in America?
damn will, downer much?? i mean, justified, because yeah you did steal a GUN from your new friends and then dragged knotty through multiple vents, freaked out, and probably destroyed knotty’s use of his arm for the foreseeable future all the while believing the only person who ever paid mind to you WASN’T manipulating you... but hey! you’re free now! ain’t that nice? :)
I think being under the influence (of magic) is a pretty decent excuse there though. Also they were barely his friends when he stole the gun... all of an hour ago maybe.
So does that mean she didn't amplify his self-confidence or was it a twofer?
he's just Like That
i am so happy to hear that.
$5 says they go up against a Doubt monster at some point, and he saves the day. :P
Only his trust? That means all his actions so far - threatening Eliza and Knotty with a gun (kind of), being willing to /DIE/ for Flack, easily, possibly even not hiring a lawyer so they don't get wind of Flack's activities, all of that has just been...him. Being loyal to the very end, because he trusted her. ....He would be /such/ a good friend to anyone who actually befriended him. God damn.
(I mean. I realize he's kind of a cockatoo dumbass, and it's not like I blame people for not wanting to hang out with/befriend someone who's 90% bluster by volume, but goddamn. Goddamn.)
Yeah, I had honestly figured the spirit was more like Loyalty or somesuch, which would be more consistent with going to extreme measures to protect someone. But apparently, for all his arrogance and bluster, a willingness to go to any length to protect someone he believes to be innocent is something he comes by honestly!
The professor's dress is beautiful, but she certainly doesn't know how to act like a lady in it!
I'm very impressed that they all managed to get back up into the vent without making enough noise to alert Dr. Flack!
NINJAS.
The ducts are imbued with the spirit of Diffidence to reduce the amount of noise they make. Including the noise made by people climbing all over them like a jungle gym.
And how did Flack not see it?
Three cheers for villains who jump to logical conclusions!
- Sharpe can't possibly be here. He's in jail, I saw him there.
- These students are acting as if they saw him.
- But he can't be here. They can't have seen him.
- Therefore the spell has malfunctioned somehow.
- It's probably some side effect of far too much alcohol.
Best course, then: remove the spell (done). Roll eyes at students (done). Then start a cover story that will discredit anything these four students might inconveniently remember once they sober up.
We can only hope it will be that simple. Flack has to be fairly smart to have pulled off everything she's done, so this is likely to make her think she ought to be sure things are going smoothly. That could mean anything from investigating the room further to see what exploded the vent shaft, to actually going to the jail to make sure Sharpe is still there. Either way, I suspect the good guys are now in a race against time to find the evidence they need.
Yes, one way or another, I'm sure she's coming back before too long. Eliza could already have the evidence, though -- or sufficient leverage to expose the truth -- and Eliza is smarter than Flack!
What I am curious about now is why she did the big "rage if you see Sharpe" spell in the first place. Like, when did she do it, and what was she hoping to accomplish? I don't think we have enough information yet to figure that out.
Today's page at least rules out the idea that she was guarding against what actually happened. She did not foresee any chance of him escaping custody once he was awaiting execution!
But Will is about to tell what he knows. Eliza will connect that up with the papers she found, so we may be on the verge of an answer.
The answer that seems logical to me is the staff and students at the university were to be witnesses at Sharpe's trial and reactions of rage toward Sharpe combined with reasons to dislike him in the first place would, if it could make them start raging and attacking him on sight, cause them to say and do whatever it takes to have him hanged. When it is the defendant's word against that of a bunch of witnesses and there is no evidence any judge or jury would have to accept the claims as sufficient evidence unless there is proof that the claims are improbable.
I never thought about that, though I have to say it seems like it'd be a little disruptive to the courtroom if every witness tried to physically attack the defendant. I thought she'd done it so she'd know if Sharpe came back to the school -- enough angry people making noise would draw her attention.
>I thought she'd done it so she'd know if Sharpe came back to the school -- enough angry people making noise would draw her attention.
That’s what I thought too, but since that’s exactly what just happened and she didn’t follow up on it, now I’m not sure. Unless she’s going to come back and search after chivvying the students off to bed...
I would be shocked if she doesn't look into it. She would have to be incredibly stupid and foolish not to. She must have noticed the vent shaft in that room had been completely destroyed, just to begin with. But that by itself wouldn't set off the anti-Sharpe spell, so something else must be connected to that. At this point, it's a race to see if Knotty and crew can find the evidence before Flack learns of Sharpe's escape and brings in the big guns.
"must have noticed the vent shaft ... had been completely destroyed..."
You'd think, yes. Maybe it's that thing where people often fail to look up. They'll look left, look right, shoulder check behind, but miss the anvil (/whatever) coming down from above. You want to hide something, do it on the ceiling.
I'm not sure how much this phenomenon happens in real life, but it is a well-accepted axiom of drawn worlds, one that has worked in cartoons since earliest Disney. If it seems like Flack really should have seen what we saw, that's explainable because Kate's been angling the shots.
Or, you know... maybe she did see some motion up there, but decided getting rid of potential witnesses had to come first.
Edit: She has her back turned while the three are getting back up into the vent shaft, so there wasn't motion in her field of vision to catch her eye and make her look up to see the damaged shaft.
Further edit: Flack's "Tsch." may be her hearing something and noticing the destroyed shaft... although it's possible that at this point she is just thinking, "Oh, more students up to drunken shenanigans. Have to come back and check that out after I've dealt with these four idiots."
She was looking up at the ceiling when she first came into the room asking "What happened here?" though.
So whether it's plausible for her to overlook it, she did seem to notice.
It's probably a Safety precaution. for what our heroes are actually doing. Remember it's just not Will who's provoking these reactions it's Knotty and Liza too. They're Guarding Flack in case someone decides a Student with Below Average grades couldn't possibly have cooked up something so fancy.
No no, it's not Knotty and Eliza. Remember the porter was completely fine seeing both of them until he saw and recognized Sharpe, and surely the students would have seen Knotty dangling down before looking up to see Sharpe. I think it's just that Sharpe triggers the rage directed at him, but when he's no longer a clear target and the spell is still in effect, the rage becomes more general (the students were attacking Knotty and Eliza while still badmouthing Sharpe).
Then why the cook? Was the cook also to be a witness? that does not make sense.
There's some big piece of this puzzle we haven't gotten yet. Because on top of the point you raise, it seems like all Flack's problems would have been solved if she'd amplified some quality of his that would have made him quietly go to the guillotine, rather than trying to dig his way out or accept Knotty's help.
So that makes me think that all of the Sharpening we've seen so far was for some other purpose we don't know about yet.
Hypothesis: it's easiest (or simply most obvious) to amplify an emotion that is already prominent. Everyone we've seen raging so far has given some sort of semi-legitimate reason for their anger. Even before being triggered, the students in this scene had some pretty desparaging things to say about Will. Ask anyone at the University "so what do you think about Sharpe?" and just amplify whatever emotion pops up first...
So what prominent emotions would Will display with Dr. Flack? His usual cockiness is unlikely, if she approached him about his bad grades, also unhelpful if she is trying to use him as a scapegoat. (Plus, as several other readers have pointed out, she looked pretty surprised to see him boasting about the Thesis to everyone.) Actual sheepishness, which would be the kind of thing to make him quietly go to the guillotine? Seems even less unlikely.
Making use of a student's outcast status to establish yourself as their mentor and confidante, then magically amplifying their trust until they follow your every word and defend you literally to their last breath? Seems like a plan.
However, while this ensures your scapegoat won't point any fingers at you, it doesn't mean they won't try to escape the noose for their own sake, and in the immortal words of Dan Bern: it's just good to have a backup plan.
The idea that Flack's doing all this purely to scapegoat Will and cover her tracks is the simplest explanation, but I just don't buy it. Imbuing this many people would exponentially increase her risk of being found out, if that's all there was to it. There must be some other purpose.
Likewise, the situation you present mostly tracks with what we've seen. But if she knew that Will's an outcast and she made herself his confidante, then she'd have been able to, for instance, get at his insecurities and amplify them into outright despondence. I think amplifying his trust was a means to some other end, or maybe even an end in itself somehow.
He's got a rich family... political power? Blackmail? Revenge? None seem to apply, since they were said to be ignoring even his execution.
@CountSessine:disqus Ooh, excellent points, all of you! It does seem quite likely that Will's trust was was amplified for some entirely seperate reason that remains to be seen (maybe he was just a guinea pig? unlikely, but possible), and Dr. Flack simply made use of his Sharpening when he stumbled into her Political Plot to blame everything on him...
Ooh, wait. She DID look surprised, didn't she! So... maybe she really had just been tutoring him. Now that we see her in a context where she doesn't think Sharpe is anywhere near, she does seem to be more concerned with making sure students don't break the house rules, than any sort of actual villain. So perhaps she is mostly motivated, most of the time, by 'in loco parentis'. She didn't start out plotting anything against Sharpe, in particular, or planning to use him as a scapegoat, but he might have accidentally stumbled into the middle of a scheme she and a politician were hatching.
ohhh trust in her. i thought she amplified his faith in her. close but i was wrong.
Well… yes.
But you're young.
And by all indications, you've quite the miserable life, so it's understandable that you'd be an easy mark for anyone offering affection of any kind.
Can I say I adore this layout? Because I love how they're scampering away in the background a lot!
Those are some IMPRESSIVE stealth checks, guys.
Poor Sharpe's suffering some trust issues here T_T
Also wow, Dr. Flack's really good at having others take the flak for her ^^;
Well done you three for climbing back into a duct completely silently.
I’m kind of surprised that Knotty was the last one into the vent; given that he’s the shortest and has an injured arm, I would have expected one of the other two (probably Eliza) to wait and give him a boost. Maybe she turned around once she was in the vent and reached down to pull him up.
With his injured arm he'd have difficulty pulling himself into the vent, boost or no. It makes more sense to help him with that part.
It would make most sense to do both, which they could do since there's two of them, but they're trying to rush, move silently, and panicking a bit at the same time. Not the best set-up for thought-out teamwork.
Do you REALLY want us {specifically, HER} to answer that?
I thought she was hitting them with a slipper and my first thought was "No! Not la chancla!"
Ah, the good old days before student fees, when academics were allowed to hit students with sticks if they didn't get out of the way quickly enough.
That's a fan. It's a whole bundle of sticks!
The principle is the same. In my day fans were out of fashion.
Yes, but think how much happier your professors would've been if they could've hit disobedient students with multiple sticks at once, like in the good old days of Dr. Flack!
I realize this makes me the odd ball here...but how did Flack NOT see the broken air vent?
she saw it, not sure why people think she didn't? she's not going to look in it when there's a pack of wild students hanging around below it though, it just looks to her like they pulled it down by trying to hang off the vent or something while mucking around.
I think the lack of acknowledgement on Flacks part is what makes us wonder if she seen it..but she could have been responding to the noise of the vent breaking in the first place..something I didn’t think about until later..
Enjoying these by the way!
In a word, Sharpe: yes.