Praise be almighty Helix
February 24, 2014
12:01 am
Originally the plan was just to have nondescript chaos happening in that last panel, but the rise and reign of Twitch Plays Pokemon gave me far superior inspiration. The intrigue, drama, and cooperation in the face of adversity of this rollercoaster has inspired me with new faith in humanity, every victory they score is a victory for all of us. If tens of thousands of people can pull it together enough to collectively progress through a game of Pokemon, there’s sill hope for this species.
I got a kick out of Kratos being the False Prophet
Who says he is the false one? o_O
It is the Twitch players pokemon joke. Helix fossil follows anarchy while the dome fossil follows democracy. The guy with the wings is dressing up as pidgeot the true prophet and Flareon as the false prophet or follower of the dome fossil. (you should see some of the fan art for this)
Bird Jesus will show us the way.
I recently picked up a Chrome extension that changes all instances of “Jesus” to “Bird Jesus” and “God” to “Lord Helix” and I can no longer properly distinguish between Twitch references and actual discussions
Don’t hold out on us! Where can we get this?
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/praise-be-to-helix/gonmdfngfjcldfoejpnmkeaggpnbpmlp?hl=en
Just in case you were still interested in that Chrome extension.
PRAISE HELIX!
I’m so glad I came back and looked at this. Thank you.
Have you heard the good news of Arceus? We finally have a confirmed pronunciation! It’s pronounced–
[SIGNAL LOST]
I’m pretty sure bird Jesus is Jared…
Oh God…What if Jared is Bird Jesus?
The false prophet believes only in destruction.
Flareon was a martyr.
Flareon was sent to teach the Mob that anarchy without responsibility is chaos.
You Domites shall pay for Bloody Sunday! Lord Helix demands it!
I was there on Bloody Sunday man. It was Anarchy, not Democracy that killed Dux.
*sits here giggling uncontrollably thinking about Sontarans*
The aliens from Dr Who who can be defeated by sticking *something* in the back of their *somewhere*?
Well, I mean, they are all clones and probably made from scratch to begin with as well cuz they are meant to be the perfect war machine or something. And I’m pretty sure you just have to hit them in they’re feeding tube port (I think that’s what it’s for) not necessarily stick something in there. But that may only be a new Doctor development, were there Sontarans in the original Doctor Who?
Yes, the Sontarans were in the original Doctor Who.
My amazingly vague recollection is that the first Sontaran in the series crashlanded in Merrie Olde England and got arrow’d in his Special Ouchy Place by Robin Hood.
It’s the whole clone batch thing that got me. And yes, the food port being their week spot goes all the way back to the first Sontarans to show up back with the Third Doctor.
I don’t know if “pulling together” is the best way to describe TPP. In fact, it’s starting to seem more like real life politics and religion every day.
One of my favorite comments about TPP was that “This is everything the internet is, in a nutshell.”
Hmm that Would explain why he gets touchy about BBQ issues and has a vocal mastery of fire bending, also badassery by ingredients.
I am disappointed that Jared isn’t anywhere in the last panel wandering around aimlessly while looking at his Pokedex and constantly checking his bag.
Jared is Bird Jesus.
This should have been so much more obvious but you drew him so fantastically in that Pidgeot outfit that I just couldn’t recognize him.
I knew it was Jared because he’s the only one with a bird chest
In a round-a-bout way, that basically means Jared is the replacement Commander Badass in his absence. Woah.
I don’t think Cdr. Badass would make the same mistake twice…Remember what happened when he put Jared in charge of the power-washer?
I never knew that Jared was THAT unstable.
Really? Remember, he did evolve Mr. Fish from a Magikarp by beating the crap out of all the Pokemon in his way with Mr. Fish as a flail. Jared has some darkness that can be unearthed. All he needs is a little ANARCHY. PRAISE THE HELIX.
Well, Jared does worship only FAT pigeons…
Who is Duke dressed up as? Lapras?
I’m guessing a cubone? But I don’t follow Twich so I’m going off the skull.
Looking more closely at it, I can make out Lapras’s “ear” swirls, so it probably is.
I thought he was wearing The Kurgan’s helmet myself.
I didn’t realize Jared was even in that panel until you mentioned it.
That being said, he makes a fantastically flamboyant villain/well-intentioned but crazy cult leader.
Jared vs. James. Battle of the bird outfits!
This reflects the inner dialogue I just had perfectly.
“Somehow this is Jared’s fault. Feels like a missed opportunity that he’s not there.”
“That bird Jesus guy is pretty skinn… Oh. Well, shit.”
Maybe she doesn’t mean “Jared is dressed as Bird Jesus in the last panel”, she means “Jared and Bird Jesus are the same entity. Such is the mystery of Bird Jesus.”
Wow Jonesie, way to be insensitive to Rock Lobster’s unique upbringing. Next you’ll be telling us human-robot marriage ought to be outlawed because robosexuality is a sin!
^Already done in Chobits XD
and Futurama
Too bad i didn’t watch Futurama, so i really don’t know about this reference. Thanx for the info ^_^
Wasn’t that also in Futurama?
Twice, actually.
Also alluded to in the …first? episode.
Explains even more about why he gets all bent out of shape when people treat him like a doll they can strap lazers to or can change at marketing whim. He’s made mention of it- but this is the moment it sinks in.
Suddenly the curent active army does not seem all that bad.
You know, considering that they are on a future space ship (station?) maybe coelasquid could throw in a halo reference, if its that far into the future.
or maybe a Questionable Content one….
I’m still not sure what Twitch Plays Pokemon is and I’m still not sure if I should now. I recognized Jared right off the bat, though. Ahahaaa!
The concept is pretty simple. Do you know the saying ‘Sit 1,000 monkeys at a 1,000 typewriters and you’ll eventually get the complete works of shakespeare’? It’s a saying denoting that 1,000 idiots can do what a single genius can. That’s the concept here. This twitch person is playing one of the original pokemon games, but he’s not playing it based on his own ingenuity. He’s set up some kind of thing online where he’s pretty much asked the collective internet to guide him through the game. I honestly don’t know much about it myself, I just understand the concept, but I’ve managed to gather two things from all of the webcomics referencing it. The first is that Twitch has either never played the original pokemon, or is restraining himself from doing what he knows or at least suspects to be the proper way of doing things. And the second is that there’s apparently a HUGE schism among the internet on whether to take the dome or helix fossils. I choose dome myself. I only get it because Kabutops looks awesome. I never use any of the fossil pokemon. I only get them for the singular purpose of completeing my pokedex.
Twitch is not a person, it’s basically a program set to feed chatroom commands into a Pokemon ROM. At and given moment thousands of people are feeding individual commands to the program one at a time like “up down left right a b select start”, but trying to cooperate and oragnize the endavour enough to progress forward. There’s an imrov game where you get a big group of people and have them try to count to ten without anyone talking over anyone else or any two people starting to say the same number at the same time. Twitch is like that except it’s 70,000 people trying to play pokemon.
TL;DR: Instead of 1,000 monkeys on 1,000 typewriters,
70,000 monkeys, one typewriter.
And the typewriter sometimes switches between anarchy and democracy.Just to add, twitch is a streaming site where people stream themselves playing video games. So it’s named that way because it’s played by the twitch community instead of a single person. (Though with it appearing everywhere many players probably have never visited twitch before.)
The saying about 1000 monkeys is not referring to 1000 idiots being able to do the work of one genius. It is about how given infinite time, 1000 monkeys on 1000 typewrites will eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare, not because they know what they are typing, but because they are given infinite time and therefore have an infinitely long string of characters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
Even so, EVENTUALLY the ‘anarchy’ will (hopefully) resolve in a complete playthrough of Pokémon Red Version, and not necessarily any more through collective intent than sheer volume of attempts. So yes, it’s not the most perfect metaphor, but still pretty damn apt from the right perspective.
I read somewhere that Twitch is less 1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters than it is 100,000 monkeys at one typewriter where 80,000 of them are trying to type and the rest are just screaming and throwing sh!t everywhere.
The crucial difference is that TPP isn’t a string of randomly chosen Game Boy inputs, which would, in fact, finish a Pokémon game given enough time (enough time probably being a few millenia). TPP is a string of deliberately chosen inputs, received so that it’s 1) difficult to coordinate any tasks and 2) trolls can easily sabotage progress.
I was going to say thatRNG Plays Pokemon is a pretty good analogy to the Infinite Monkey Theorem, but then I looked at the progress page and realized there have been multiple “interventions” to get the RNG unstuck.
I wonder if Jared got his Pidgeot costume the same place James got his Moltres costume.
His closet?
“It’s times like these…”
this may be the greatest tpp reference I’ve seen so far
Oh that is Jared in the Pidgeot costume. I didn’t recognize him at first but who else at the office is that scrawny? Also yeah this is way better than general chaos.
No, that’s not him.
It is him.
*Snag a magnifier glass*
Oh… It IS him… ^^;;
I don’t know why someone would think they “weren’t real people”. I know that is a standard thing in a lot of sci-fi involving clones/golems/whatever term they are using that day. I have just never really understood that point of view. More than likely I am missing something.
Some people put an odd emphasis on “natural birth”. I imagine the who “real people” thing comes from a similar sentiment.
How is that in the least bit odd? Natural birth is the natural thing; deviations from the natural order will naturally elicit a spit take from 99% of the human population.
I can’t sympathize with the idea that something being “natural” or not is important. I can’t agree with “natural”=good, “not natural”=bad, what leads to good consequences is good, what leads to bad consequences is bad. I would say the same about concepts like “normal”.
You may want to rethink your wording on the second half of that second sentence. The way you wrote it makes it seem like you’re saying that the ends always justify the means in all situations. And I dearly hope that’s not what you meant because that is a very narrow minded view that has been repeatedly shown to not be a favorable one.
Also from what I gathered OddStrange wasn’t saying that “not natural”=bad but rather that “not natural” makes you do a double take. And that’s pretty much how your brain works, not some form of prejudice or something to look down on. Your brain notices things that are out of the ordinary for many reasons, one being because it’s trying to evaluate whether it’s a threat, another because of natural curiosity that makes you want to investigate.
I mean, if you were walking down the street and you suddenly saw a guy with a gigantic robot arm do you seriously think your eyes would just glide over them like they do if you see some completely Average Joe? Cause if so that’s not a sign of some high level of acceptance, that’s poor situational awareness.
The “means” are also a part of the consequences.
A gigantic robot arm and a vat-grown biological replacement are completely different things, but both are equally unnatural. Would the vat-grown replacement cause you to do a double-take? Unless it looked completely outlandish, I’d bet that no, it wouldn’t.
What makes you do a double-take is the appearance of something foreign. It doesn’t matter if it’s natural or not, just whether or not you’ve seen it before.
No, but if you found out that the person was a test tube baby you would do a double take, which is what I’m talking about. That’s exactly what happened to Jonesy. Granted, the “You’re not real people” bit was way over the line, but finding out the someone is genetically engineered is certainly going to make you double take, just as seeing someone with a robot arm would. It’s the same reaction. And something “not natural” is by it’s very nature foreign, at least to your brain. Again, that doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it is a perfectly natural reaction to do a double take.
I have a cousin who’s a test tube baby. She’s the product of IVF, since her mother has issues that make it hard for her to conceive. I didn’t know this until she was 4 years old, since it isn’t something that’s physically apparent. I didn’t do a double take. And it isn’t like I was a young kid who didn’t understand what I was being told either, since I was 23 at the time. There was nothing about her to indicate that she was conceived through something other than natural means, just like there’s nothing about the Commander to indicate his origins.
What I’m saying is that unless it’s visibly foreign you both won’t notice and won’t care. Only if/when you’re told will you have any reason to care, and if you then treat them differently you’re a bigot, no matter what your justifications about them being “unnatural” may be.
Your use of a cybernetic arm was an apt one for your side of the argument, because it’s visibly unnatural and would cause you to immediately recognize it as such if you weren’t exposed to them frequently. Which is why I countered with the example of a vat-grown biological replacement. It wouldn’t be visibly unnatural, save for some possible scar tissue where it was attached, and so you wouldn’t do a double take at all if you saw one.
If you were to show up on a farm populated by nothing but Dolly clones, you’d say “That’s a herd of sheep.” because that’s exactly what it looks like to your brain.
So you’re telling me that when you learned she was a test tube baby you had no interest in how it worked, didn’t have any curiosity about why or how? It didn’t stick out as something memorable about that person? Because that’s what I mean by a double take. You learn something foreign to you and it catches your notice. When did I say ANYTHING about treating someone differently? I didn’t and am offended that that’s what you think I was implying. And of course you’d only know if you were told, the robot analogy was one example of an overly obvious situation, but it’s just one example.
And the point wasn’t just that you would immediately notice, it was then when you learn that something is different it catches your attention. This doesn’t mean you treat them differently or any kind of prejudice, like I’ve said in every post! Would you stop trying to make me out to look like some kind of antagonist and just listen to the point!
When my boss first told me stories of how he was a child soldier in his home country it immediately caught my attention. I didn’t treat him any different, didn’t start peppering him with questions and didn’t make a big deal out of it, but it stuck out to me and I took notice. The concept of child soldiers was not something I’d ever witnessed personally, only read about, and thus was foreign. It was something that stood out because it was something unusual to me. That is what I meant.
When I learned my cousin was a test tube baby my thoughts were “Oh, well that’s neat. Go science!” and that was it. I had known her parents struggled with having a baby, and I had figured that they just got lucky with her prior to learning the truth. I just don’t see what kinds of hangups people could have with it, because until you know that you just think she’s a normal little girl. Heck, she probably won’t ever know that she wasn’t conceived naturally.
But then again, maybe I’m just jaded or something, because almost nothing makes me do an actual double take anymore. Maybe I’ve just been exposed to too many different cultures and technologies, but it has to be something really weird, like the Surinam toad, to make my brain do backflips over how weird, foreign, or unnatural it may be.
The way I see it, anything that exists or occurs in the universe is by definition natural. Just because something is artificial or designed, doesn’t mean it’s less real or genuine; it’s all a product of circumstance, even if that circumstance includes a degree of intentionality.
If your AI robot-friend is robot-sad, and you disregard it because it’s ‘just a machine’, that still makes you a terrible human-friend.
I will always be there to comfort my robot friend when he’s robot sad and how dare you say otherwise!
But I think you’re missing my point. My point was that anything out of the ordinary or something you’re not used to will cause you to do a double take and take notice because your brain is unfamiliar with whatever it is.
The simple fact is that things that are different, unusual, foreign could all be considered “unnatural” to your brain because it doesn’t recognize it and thus takes notice. This isn’t prejudice, this is your brain trying to analyze things, like determine if it’s a threat, if it’s friendly, what it can be used for, things of that nature.
Actually, no human being can really create anything. The whole sum of all human knowledge is based upon what we observe & learn about nature itself. The only thing humans can do is shuffle around the ingredients that nature already provides for us. In effect, there is nothing “unnatural” we can do, unless it’s something that leads to self-destruction…Because THAT’S how nature works.
It’s true; You really CAN’T fool Mother Nature…
Except that it doesn’t, because any form of assisted reproduction isn’t really natural birth, and yet no one except the most hard-line fundamentalists bat an eye at it. The situation with the Commander is simply taking IVF to Gattaca-like extremes.
It isn’t the IVF that’s the problem, it’s the designer genetics.
THIS. IVF is a really unworkable analogy for this situation – IVF is giving nature a helping hand, really; you’re still following the basic premise of ‘egg + sperm + womb = baby.’ IVF is acting like a matchmaker for those two crazy cells, cause they’re having trouble hooking up on their own for various reasons. The commander’s situation is better described as ‘scary spacefuture genetic engineering by powerful controlling organization.’ We’re talking the whole nine yards, ‘scientists playing God’ stuff. Jonesy is totally being insensitive here, but c’mon, genetic engineering on that level IS a scary idea that in our time is set to soon become NOT science fiction. The notion of being able to nip and tuck at DNA to produce a completely custom person? Kinda abhorrent for a lot of people, with good reason. Genetic engineering has the potential to save a lot of lives, but Gattaca has some good points about the downsides to it, too.
Most people haven’t been through natural birth, cause natural birth sucks. We stopped doing natural birth with the invention of pain killers and antibiotics, cause the natural order of things with incredibly high death rates was unacceptable. Look around your room and look at all the synthetic stuff, human love deviated from the natural order cause once again the natural order sucks.
that kinda makes me wonder how much of time is fluid in the command this universe
We shall enjoy the love of our pigeot! We shall mourn the loss of Abby and Jay Leno! Praise Helix!
The bird lies. Let not the trials of the Silph Scope and the Safari Zone be so easily forgotten. Fear not the Sharmat-who-is-Flareon, for He is older than Music and knows the ways we must take to better ourselves! Order is Progress, and Progress is our Destiny.
Jeez Jonesy why you gotta discriminate against perfectly good test tube pod people, it’s not like they’re mixed race or anything.
^So what is wrong with mixed race anyway?
If you asked me that in 1960 I’d probably have said the same thing Jonesy just said, and you’d probably be surprised that I answered a rhetorical question. One prejudice looks just as fantastically ignorant as the other in hindsight, is the point.
Ah, i see what you mind. Sorry, but for a moment i almost thought you are a racist. Really, i’m sorry.
That’s okay, I took that risk when I decided to rely heavily on written sarcasm. And you didn’t post any leaping-to-conclusions accusations so I’d say we got through this unscathed.
Who cares, so long as they’re not Protestant heretics. [/sarcasm]
From what I’ve seen on the twitch plays pokemon… now mind this is coming from someone who is very jaded about humans as a viable species anymore, it doesn’t give me any new hope for us as a people. They have made some progress, sure, but egads every step of the way… *sighs* but such is the way of people and internet.
A theory that was once put forth by a friend of mine: A crowd of humans is actually less intelligent then their average intelligence quotient. When you want to figure out what the intelligence of the crowd is as a whole, average every one together, then subtract one from the total for each person in the crowd. Yes this can go into the negatives, and with some crowds its been proven to be true. Add anonymity to the equation and that seems to negatively affect peoples ability to be decent people, so toss that over this whole insanity of intelligence downward spiral. The fact they’ve managed to get as far as they have with the game is either a bloody miracle, or proves the game was meant to go forward in even a four year old’s playing hands.
Yeah, that’s a common problem among pessimists. The solution is to ignore crowds and look for individuals instead.
In the face of adversity, trolling, and chaos, they still manage to make progress. If you don’t think that’s beautiful, you’re so pessimistic I don’t even want to talk to you.
To be fair last night was especially frustrating with the whole Bloody Sunday thing…I got over it and we managed to get zapdos into the party……eventually
But yeah I agree despite all the frustration, we managed to get 6 badges and a legendary bird. That is impressive
1) We don’t have Zapdos in the party. By the end of the Bloody Sunday, it stayed in the PC, and the only thing we achieved was losing DUX and xCabbage.
2) You’re missing the Monday Massacre.
I’ve never seen or heard of this twitch plays Pokemon thing can someone give me a link?
http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon
Google is your friend!
I don’t care what you say, Google is NOT your friend…A real friend won’t spy on you & record your every little move, keeping that information always & forever.
Google is in a codependent relationship with you.
http://youtu.be/Pt7wsPARyCo
http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon
I’ve never put in any commands, buy my god is it hilarious to spend a few minutes watching Red continually bug out.
I know a guy who wrote a script to put random commands into Pokemon Red and spent five minutes watching Red wander around his house randomly, play his SNES, and talk to his mom. He realized that he recreated a passable simulation of his home life.
thanks. where that was crazy to look at. you need to register to post commands and i don’t feel like doing that but i was an interesting thing to look at
Interestingly, a lot of experiments have shown the opposite. A group of humans are better at guessing the quantities of (x jar full of things) than any one, because biases cancel out. A crowd of people successfully controlled a flight similar with skill when the average of their left/right inputs were taken. Etc..
It is harder to get information from a group, but collective intelligence can do a lot.
I was expecting Jared to be looking through the threshold and just say something like “nope” or “freaking weirdos” but him dressed as bird Jesus was awesome.
Love how you drew bird Jared btw
But Kratos is a Spartan; he would hate democracy.
No one is saying that directly. The style of bubble and the fact that it’s faded means this is what’s being chanted in the background. The only one saying something for sure is St. Pidgeot Jared there.
Please: St. Jared le Pidgeot de Kanto.
YES. THIS NAME MUST BE MADE CANON. Or at least fandom canon. Fanon.
Flareon! Noooooo! The Martyr used as a headdress! U_U
Although, given who’s wearing him, would you be that surprised? @_@
LMFAO! This is going to backhanded, sorry can’t avoid it, but this is the funniest page we’ve gotten in a while, imo. (I know that doesn’t mean much.) Can’t wait to find out more about commander next week.
Wait, “temporary alternate present created by Commander’s absence”? So let me suss this one out: If the alternate present was created by the absence of Commander then I’m going to assume that it is how things have gone since he left. Now if that universe was created (or continued after he left only to be eradicated when Commander returns) by the by Commander jumping to the future then it has only existed from the length of time between the jump and this comic. So waiting room time, maybe like 15 minutes to 3 hours, walking down the hallway with Captain lithe yet handsome, 10 minutes?, that alternate present has only been absent Commander for at most a few hours and its already gone to that.
…And that’s entirely reasonable from what we’ve seen of Commander. He is a badass after all, a collected badass with good managerial skills.
Well, that’s assuming that Commander & Jonesy don’t return from the space-future to a point in the present just shortly after they left the present. That’s why this is an ALTERNATE present that would get wiped out.
Time travel works best (at least, in this comic) when you don’t think about it too much.
Yeeeah, basically this means Coelsquid’s going to veto the joke when Jonesy and Commander get back. Pity. I would have liked them to have come back to this point and have to deal with the drama when they get back. Could lead to more jokes and some action but hey, what do I know?
Hey man you don’t know how the cards are going to fall.
Any chance you could provide a link to the comic that has the “steak and dirt” line? Actually, it would help if you gave us a link to the right comic whenever you make a back-reference like that.
http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/07192010
Found it! Though agreed that it would be nice to have those links ready when a direct reference to an older comic is made.
Jonesy just said it was one of the first things he told her. Naturally that means one of the first strips. There’s really not that many strips overall.
Hint: It’s not even in the first 20 strips ;P
Still, considering Jonesey is easy to spot whenever she appears, it didn’t take long to find it (if I counted out the pauses to read early Jared jokes).
Dude I barely have time to draw these things let alone cite all the jokes.
I really like that the whole “in the future soldiers are just a marketing product” theme started out as a joke and now it’s being developed into an interesting idea for a dystopian future. I dig it.
From the sounds of it, I don’t think it ‘started out’ as a joke. I’m pretty sure it’s been the plan the entire time and we’re only now seeing it.
It would have to have been the plan for a minimum of half the comic, but I’d wager easily it’s been in the works since near the beginning. Most comic creators aren’t going off half-cocked and creating each comic off the top of their head on the fly if they have any kind of story to their comic. If there’s a story to be told, you create at least a basic script first. Character backgrounds and so on. The reason I say at least halfway, though, is that the whole ‘marketable soldiers’ theme took center stage when when the big ‘bishounen virus’ event came along. So it’s been a pretty central part of Commander’s life for quite some time.
I mean, it was brought up like ten strips into the comic with the action figure with a gun that shoots smaller guns.
True enough. What I referenced was purely off of memory, but that comic in particular pretty well proves the presence of the theme within the story from an early stage.
I spent a little while looking for the gun-shooting-smaller-guns comic (it took way longer than it should have taken, because I kept stopping and admiring the amazing early Jared faces), and in case anyone else was going to do the same, the link is http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/07052010. Hope this saves someone some time.
That last panel is exactly what I imagine is going on in the Twitch Plays Pokemon chat.
Seriously, they are people, doesn’t matter how they were made. shit lady…
Does this mean that Commander can’t run for President (or possibly Future Space President) because he is not a natural-born citizen?
Also, can we have a wallpaper of that last panel, please?
That last panel really makes the joke – inspiration can come from the damnedest places, but if it works, it works, and this one works by virtue of being so timely.
Democracy.
Wait, you mean they’re actually (slowly) beating Pokemon? I just assumed it would fail from the start and haven’t watched it since.
Whoa…
Despite some issues with releasing pokemon into the wild, and boxing and unboxing some of their strongest (which took well over a day to resolve), they’ve got a rather strong team, including a Zapdos, which they somehow managed to use the Masterball on.
they’ve gotten six gym badges.
7 badges now.
And they just beat the game.
They did have to use the “democracy” mode (which only inputs the most common suggestion in the last 20 seconds rather than all of them) to finish some navigational puzzles. But even whether to use “democracy” or “anarchy” (original) mode is chosen by users.
It’s okay, Jonesy, I’ve said stupid/offensive shit because I didn’t think about how it would sound before I said it.
I love that you saw your chance and took it in the final panel. He just can’t leave them alone for potentially forever without them completing falling apart, can he?
After seeing Jared in a Pidgeotto(?) costume, I suddenly imagined David Bowie…
And since CB is in a space station, no Chris Hadfield singing Space Oddity?
… Okay, Bird Jesus Jared looks… disturbingly sexy.
This is perhaps the most brilliant reference to TPP I’ve seen yet on the web. And I’ve seen some doozys. The -only- thing that disappoints me about this image is that there’s no one abusing the PokeFlute, but you can’t have everything.
Case-in-point, however:
http://imgur.com/gallery/VdlwwD9
And given that they’re recently revived Omanyte from the Helix Fossil…
… oh Helix, he’s naught but a mere mortal again. AVOID THE PC!!!
… but in all seriousness, nice use of the reference =3
Are they made by the same people that made Khan from Star Trek though?
>.>
Has no one yet addressed that Kratos is wearing a skinned Flareon on his head? I mean, what the hell?
Also, I have to be curious as to where Mr. Fish is in all of this. I would imagine just off somewhere unconcerned and watching TV, but when the cable bill doesn’t get paid, he’s probably gonna be pretty pissed.
It fits. In the context of Twitch Plays Pokemon, Flareon is the eeveelution that nobody wanted but they ended up accidentally getting. If the Helix Fossil is a god and Pidgeot is Bird Jesus, Flareon is an antichrist figure.
I really really hope when this is all over, we can see Jared in that costume in the normal timeline. For no real reason. He doesn’t even have to know the reason, maybe just feels he was supposed to be in it. But I want a better up-close view of that outfit.
A close up view.
Without text bubbles obscuring it.
For reasons.
Is that Captain Falcon dressed as the pigeot? Looks a little skinny to be him, but his bulk could be hidden by all the feathers.
That’s Jared.
… And now I’m asking myself why I didn’t realize that earlier, considering how he’s one of the main cast and among the few scrawny enough to fit in that suit. Maybe it was the mask and Captain Falcon felt like a pun.
Meanwhile, just outside, Jared is on hour 5 of his attempt to cut down that oak tree that’s been blocking the light from some of the windows.
They released Jared! Those bastards…
I’m trying to figure out how people don’t realize that Jared is the nutter in the Pidgeot costume. I mean, he IS the only twiggy guy who’s a part of the cast.
I blame the badass facepaint. Totally didn’t recognize him. I have no excuse for not noticing the arms though.
Noooo, Flareon…
Now founding the Flareon Protection Society!
Don’t let the actions of the so-called ‘False Prophet’ ruin the reputation of Flareon-kind! Spread the word! Protect the Flareons!
Isn’t flareon’s reputation being the worst eeveelution with a shity movepool? I’ve always liked all the eeveelutions but flareon’s got a lot of strikes against em.
In Red, yes, largely because it predates the physical/special split by a good 3 generations and Flareon’s best stat is Attack, which is Not Good for a special-based type.
These days, Flareon is… well, still not that great, thanks to a lack of decent physical fire moves. Flare Blitz is really the only halfway decent one it can learn, and the recoil effect makes it impractical on something as fragile as Flareon (base 65 HP and 60 defense? OUCH.)
Jonesy might need a visit to one of those Sensitivity Lectures…
Ha ha ha oh wow, ‘Cause that’s not a shitty thing to call someone.
Truth hurts, luv.
Any chance of getting the last panel in a bigger size or as a print? Its fucking gold.
Is there any chance we can have a bigger version of the last panel for wallpapers and stuff?
“I put this question to you gentlemen. What is Helix?”
This is the kind of vibe I’m getting from Jared in the last panel.
I’ve never seen Twitch Plays Pokémon.
And wow. I never expected Jonesy to say something so insensitive.
Angel is incredibly beautiful. She stands out even in this comic that has a fair share of good-looking people.
I wonder if we’ll meet The Commanders three siblings while we’re here in the space future. Or if the council he’s going to see to complain to will be a mockery of the judges from the hunger games given that the future space-time military symbol is a mockery of the mockingjay pin.
Yeah, the last panel just seems like shameless filler because you couldn’t think of a joke to end the update with.
You meant clever and internet relevant, right?
No, I mean shameless and irrelevant. Coelasquid heard about TwitchTV being the most popular meme of today, and so she decided to attempt relevancy by swiping at that low-hanging fruit. Only problem is that in about 6 months from now, it’s gonna make this comic look even more dated than it already is.
Or I found a thing on the internet that made me happy and realized that it would perfectly fit into a spot in this present story that had previously just been reserved for the general, random chaos of Jared in charge and chose to use it so that years from now I could look back and remember how much I enjoyed a thing that briefly touched my life. That’s also a possibility.
I don’t know if you expect me to apologize for including pop culture jokes in a pop culture joke webcomic, but if I cared all that much about dated references I probably would have felt worse about that Power Rangers joke straight outta 1993 from a couple months back.
Dude, seriously, you need to drop the snobby entitled tone. This is a free webcomic that costs you nothing to enjoy, and the artist is running herself ragged to give it to us because she’s a successful professional with a million demands on your time. Quit acting like somebody overcharged you for something you ended up not enjoying.
*her time. This is what happens when I post before I get my coffee.
I get bored often. If I don’t like how something turned out, I bitch and moan about it. It’s called “being Yahtzee”. And I see no reason to stop doing it.
Yeah dude you’re just like yahtzee.
I need a closeup of Jared. I can’t even make out his facial hair.
Praise him! https://churchofthehelixchoir.bandcamp.com/
“you aren’t real people ?” … uh not the most subtle person, are you.
YES! All praise Bird-Jesus! All hail the mighty Helix!!
(love this comic btw, huge fan :) )
And here I was thinking you wouldn’t be able to do a Twitch Plays Pokemon joke because continuing the story arc.
So we’re finally in the chrome-covered nondescript spacefuture. When will we meet the Space Commies?
http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/07052010
I’m not quite sure if Kratos IS the false prophet Flareon, or if he KILLED the false prophet Flareon and is now wearing its skin as a trophy.
Probably the latter. I mean, I assume you’ve seen the strip with him and the bubble tea.
things we can’t have around Kratos:
false prophets…can
CAN
aaaarrrrgh
I believe that earlier was said that CB had siblings (three?). I think that Angel is one of em. AFAIK and ICBW
Insofar as pod-people can have ‘siblings’.
What I want to know is, how far into the alternate present are we? Did we actually skip ahead a few days, or did this literally all go down in the span of a baseball game + casual walk down a space hallway? ‘Cause I’m kinda hoping it did happen that quickly.
I love you forever for the Twitch Plays Pokemon reference~
Any chance we could get a higher res version of that last panel?
so.. is this a “Brave New World” scenario? Are the Commander and the others grown from natural DNA, and brought through the various stage in vitro, “decanted” as babies and raised naturally thereafter, or are they grown in a bottle to adult stage like – oh, Rocky in the Rocky Horror Show?
I’m thinking here also of a Blade Runner/ Androids Dream etc scenario. where the androids are physically very similar to humans, indeed to specific humans BUT physiologically different in that they cannot repair or reproduce, wear out in about four years and can be distinguished by identifiable mental and physical characteristics.
The difference would be that a “Brave New World” Bokanovsky clone would be physically and mentally human by any meaningful test, but a “Blade Runner” android wouldn’t be by quite specific indices
Well, I guess there goes my theory that Commander Badass is actually Future Jared.
That last panel made my entire week. PRAISE HELIX!
Didja hear they beat the League? Yesterday before the break of dawn. They already started Crystal.
Yeah Duke, you kick Kratos’s ass for wearing the martyr.
…It took me a whole day of researching TPP to reach that conclusion.
I desperately want a wallpaper and poster of the last panel. That will complete my life.
I’m just curious as to where Mr. Fish is in that last panel >.>
I demand a Praise Helix wallpaper! I will give monies for this!!!! Take my monies!!!!
is that the fire eevee on kratos head
is that the fire eevee on kratos head
Get with the program, Jonesy.
“Aheh, yeah, that was a shitty thing to say, wasn’t it? Sorry, I was just surprised. So, what do you guys call yourselves? Tube-kids? Pod-people? I want to chew him out for not telling me, but I don’t want to inadvertently slur you guys in the process.”