Your no plan plan is a pretty bad plan!
Hey, an anthology I'm part of is being Kickstarted right now! It's another fairy tales book, this time African instead of Europeon tales, and it's got some amazing names attached, go have a look!
Cast: Alexa King, Edie Shaw, Ethan Booth, Gladys Shaw, Rosie Bell, Samuel
Comments (21)
ThoughtBubble
14 Nov 2026 – 15 Nov 2026
Harrogate Convention Centre
Manchester Megacon
31 Jul 2027 – 1 Aug 2027
Manchester Central
Heh... How long until you get "sent home", lad? This doesn't QUITE work as you'd like for it to...
Can't help thinking of Firefly...
Kaylie: "But the Captain has a plan, right?"
Zoe: "You are possibly forgetting some of his previous plans."
A natural limit to how much a person can provide, sure. And then, when that limit is reached, they find someone else to feed for it. Eventually, they're gonna run out of cleaning staff, and you'll be on the list. And then they'll summon more cooks and the cycle will continue until natural accident ends it.
The previous baker was already "sent home"...
Wasn't the cake contest being held at the hotel as part of a grand reopening thing? If the hotel is open to the public, there'll be an endless supply of replacement cooks, cleaning staff, and guests for Gluttony to snatch . . . especially if it can access multiple time frames to spread out the snatching . . . the current state of events could easily continue indefinitely, if no one puts a stop to it.
It's in different states in each person's timeline, basically. In Alexa's it was just run down and crap, in Gladys and Edie's, it was being renovated.
So they were holding a bake off in a hotel that wants to steal the best chefs? Coincidence? I don't think so!
Well, I may have been wrong about that but it's still open to the public and has staff that can be stolen.
I think the original spell required the spirit of gluttony to bring in only the very best cooks. It can't just bring in anybody.
But as the current crew dies, the 'Best LIVING Cook' in the times it can access changes. Of course, this means the food will go downhill gradually, but gluttony is never depicted as being fussy... I'm assuming that the original order to bring in the best cooks was part of the plan to save the hotel, not due to the wishes of the spirit, but I could be wrong; it might be interested in keeping them alive so it can continue to eat the best food possible, the one chief we know it took out of production was refusing to cook anyway.
Actually, one of the interesting things that I got out of "The Screwtape Letters," by C.S. Lewis is that gluttony is not always about too much food (though that's the obvious application). There is a character in the story that is picky about her food to the point of being impossible to please; she is gluttonous, and doesn't even realize it because she doesn't want a LOT of food. Food (sorry!) for thought.
Yes, in fact this was the definition of gluttony that nailed it for me: the owner was clearly acting like this kind of a glutton concerning the dinner that would save the hotel, never being satisfied by the dishes offered for the menu. Then suddenly ta da! somehow Mrs. Sykes "conferred" with him and The Deadly Sin Itself was ensconced. Maybe the owner is the one who really could use a drink right now.
The day of the big dinner, every bigwig and their nearest and dearest went into that dining room. Am I to assume that some stop-time trick is in place so they won't be missed (given that Gluttony is clearly pretty time savvy) in that dimension? My little brain boggles, however, since clearly time did march on, the hotel hurtling forward on some timeline or other, picking up our characters along the way. So some astute reader please help me:
Was there a second mayor to show up at the subsequent city council meetings? Thus nobody would know anything was amiss at the Gula.
Or . . . is there a collection of very concerned wizards encircling the Gula at this moment (um in 1838) that might just include Harry? But it couldn't have gotten into the papers, otherwise . . . oh snap . . . patience is a virtue . . .
You raise a very good point. Perhaps the story is currently taking place in a version of the hotel that is outside of time. If Alexa manages to lead the Best Chefs Team to end this satisfactorily, releasing Gluttony from its current binding, then that time bubble will collapse, and everyone will be returned to their native time.
Though, to avoid "it was all a dream," the things that happened in the bubble will still need to have happened to those who were there. They'll have their memories. And those who died will still be dead.
That would mean that, from the point of view of someone in 1838 who wasn't at the dinner... a bunch of VIPs walked into the Gula. Some of them staggered out babbling of horrors, others were found dead in a state of extreme emaciation in the dining room... er, no, probably the bodies were stashed elsewhere in the hotel. In any case, a huge sensation at the time, eventually forgotten.
That's if they win. Someone else can work out what will happen if Our Heroes fail!
No, it can't do this forever, just until we're all dead.
If nothing else, you'd expect the Widdershins Miscast Cleaners to be summoned by the police about this.
Oof! Massive vodaphone ad blocking a large chunk of the comic...
Mrrgh! Keep getting those recently, apparently. I need to get one myself so I can use firebug to tear the tag apart and find out which ad network is serving it. If anyone else gets it and is willing to have a dig, the answer will be Google AdSense, Mad Ads Media, Pulsepoint or context web.
I got one! Have emailed the ad servers, hopefully they have a solution to offer.
I am in China, and the pages or images stop loading.....
I cannot get the last few updates to show....
Really Ethan, you just seem to get off on being contrary. You already yelled at someone for saying they can't do this forever and now you're thinking it.
[http://www.widdershinscomic...](http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/september-4th-2013/ "http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/september-4th-2013/")