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Currently On Hiatus: Please Enjoy A New Reader Question Every Weekday!

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I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop when Ravi realizes that the Finn’s gift bound him to their presence; eg. why the gift didn’t show up when Ravi wasn’t around.

How Michelle is reacting is pretty much how I react whenever I’m over at a friend’s house and their family is arguing.

When Master is unhappy, the dog starts growling.

Anybody else want to see Martha lunge at Ravi?

No.
What I want to see is Ravi to be made to realise he is blaming the wrong person.
The real person who caused the problem is Ravi himself.
1. He did not expect his power to vanish when he went back to India after Phineas II was conceived and hatched.
2. In the 20 years, after Paul was conceived and hatched, that Ravi has been back in the UK, Ravi never BOTHERED to check up on things.

Michelle is a Relatable Character (TM).

I kind of wonder now – the way Ravi keeps yanking at this particular rope doesn’t make it sound like the gift *didn’t* come at a great cost to Ravi himself… Well, that, or he’s a hugely self-glorifying old codger.

(I choose to believe the penultimate panel’s typo is intentional and James is outright spitting his words at this point)

Ravi regards giving the Finns the Finn Family Curse as being a Great And Wonderful Gift that the Finns should Always Treasure And Revere. Add to that how much of a name-dropper he was in chapter one, about events he claims he was involved in, and yeah, your description of him as being a self-glorifying old codger seems accurate.

He has twice had a brain BSoD over how the in-universe reality did actually play out. The Curse vanished when he went back to India, and only returned when he did.
Despite that, the Finns played by The Rules and kept the Phoneix Egg a Secret, and kept guarding it as best they could. The Rules of the job meant that to keep The Secret, there were no written records. So this means information would indeed be lost.

If he wrote stuff on the cave wall, around the egg, he might have avoided this situation.

Heh; in computer issues or mysterious blessings/curses, it always comes down to a lack of documentation. The more things change…

This isn’t a normal lack of documentation, such as a programmer not worrying about in code comments, or external documentation.
This lack of documentation is because of the Necessity to Keep A Secret. It is a very deliberate Never Record Information.

Copied from my post about this page, over on Patreon

“Ravi’s memory has definitely failed him.
He’s completely forgotten what he DID do and what that caused
Brushed aside the fact that in the Finn Family Histories he does not exist.
Somehow has no clue about Phineas II.

All Ravi cares about is his The Plan(tm) going exactly as he ordered.
Nevermind what his leaving the UK caused, and what needed to be done because of that, nor the required Secrecy regarding guarding the Phoenix Egg AND keeping that secret not just from humans but also from other Mythicals, nor the impact of lack of literacy in the middle ages and the impact of Chinese Whispers on accurately and completely passing on information.”

The problem is, the more powerful a creature is, the more they get used to things going their way, and the more they *expect* things to go their way, and the more they do, and… you get the idea. It’s this huge recursive treadmill, and sooner or later when the powerful creature runs facefirst into the results of bad planning, happenstance or just plain bad luck, they don’t deal with it well. It’s kind of a “How dare the Universe do something I didn’t say it could!” and denial isn’t just a river in Egypt for mortals alone. Watch it, Ravi; this sort of thing turns into a banana-skin under your feet if you’re not careful.

Wow, go James. I really can’t see why Ravi is can’t see that it wasn’t the Finns fault. It’s been about 800 years ago, which according to my math is around 13 generations removed from Red receiving the gift. Based on Griffins having kids at 60 years of age. And based on my timeline from page 6 of Illumination 2.

Parent Gen -1205 – Red age 40

F1 Gen – 1225- Green born, (Red alive)

F2 – 1285 – Blue born, (Green and Red alive)

F3 – 1345- Blue Junior, (Blue will survive Green and Red during the Black Plague)

F4- 1405

F5- 1465

F6- 1525

F7- 1585

F8 – 1645

F9 – 1705

F10 – 1765

F11- 1825

F12- 1885

(Based on Jim Finn being in the Circus during the 1930s, I would say that he was born during the 1910s if he was 20 during Circus time.)

F13- 1945

(Special thanks to JeniShunk for reminding me that Jim and Paul Finn were born in the 1980s.)

F14- Around 2005 if Paul or Jim had a kid way too early in life.

With James being born in the 1910s and his oldest kids in the 1980s, it shows that not every Finn had their kids when they were 60 and that trends change over time. But based on my table and rounding the dates down to the closest 60 year mark, I would say James is 12th gen and his kids being 13th gen. But I could be wrong what gen they are if some Griffins had kids at a relatively young age.

The reason why this works? Multiply generations could be present during one person’s life. For example, if you look at your family alive currently you may find your grandparents, your parents, and yourself/sibles alive at the same time. That is three generations of your family alive at the same time. Your Grandparents could live to be around 80 years. That means that they would atleast have seen you, their 2nd generation after them.

Yes there could be a Grandpa Finn (F10) would met his Grandpa (F7) would met his Grandpa Blue (F3) who would have met his Grandpa Red (P1). This Grandpa (F10) would be the 3rd generation Ravi is counting if the oral history was past on to only grandchild. Generation in this case would mean number of Griffin Grandkids removed from hearing the original tale from Red.

But if we used generation in the correct family sense, then Ravi is counting wrong. He isn’t counting the number of Griffin generations within 800 years, he is counting the number of Griffin 200 year life spans within that time frame.

Wow! AT least 13 generations of Griffins. Why are you so surprised that the knowledge was lost, Ravi? >:=)>

Just some more food for thought. :3

Additionally, with continuing advancement in medical technology, we’re looking at seeing four-generation families appearing within the next couple of decades, as life expectancy increases exponentially over the ensuing time.

The Finns will have been a four generation family probably since their inception, being that Griffins live up to two hundred years or so. For example, by your chart and my estimation, Red would have died when the children of generation F3 would have been ten to twenty years old, at least assuming death by old age.

Am I the only one who want to see who would win in a non magic fist fight?

I Do!
Though, with James, there might be a chance a claw swipe would “accidentally” get thrown in the mix…

And don’t ignore Martha; if she levitates stuff when she’s bored and feeling lonely, what’ll she do when she’s upset and feeling like her charge is being threatened? She’s not entirely immaterial, after all.

And then there’s Michelle, who’s getting worried as all hell, and who is probably about to play peacemaker (or to attempt it, anyway.)

Whilst Michelle *could* play peacemaker, consider what her method of doing that is. Uncontrolled cast Dispel on targets, sending them back to their points of origin.
For 2 of the Grimm Brothers in Orientations she sent them all the way back to Dis.
Now for Ravi, if she did that, it could well mean his being sent straight back to India.

I actually want to see the form that Ravi used before this one

It makes the most sense that he would probably be the bird from Michelles vision that was next to phinneus the red. The Phoenix egg itself was in the same vision as well as between phinneus and the egg itself on the carving, so I doubt the crow looking bird would actually be the Phoenix itself.

Ravi complains that the Finns have treated his Beautiful Gift as if it was nothing. For most of their history, it actually was nothing.

They didn’t know what it was, and eight hundred years is still a long time no matter how long your species lives. I’m with James here: a LOT of history, especially if it is mainly oral and is not noted down ANYWHERE (which I doubt, but whatever), meaning can completely change over the course of a long period of time, which, again, eight hundred years certainly is.

For example: the episode of Voyager where a back-up copy of the Doctor is woken up hundreds of years after a significant event, which changed the tide of power in that section of the galaxy, occurred, a situation that Voyager had been caught in the middle of. The result of that much time passing, as well as most records of that era being lost or damaged, led to the Voyager being imagined as a powerful warship armed to the teeth and filled with a crew of bloodthirsty savages, who laid waste to the population of the planet, when the truth was quite the opposite.
Basically, history, especially perception of historical events, are far too easily twisted and warped by time and distance. Records don’t always survive, oral history differs slightly every time it is retold; it’s rather the basis of anthropology, and the reason for archaeology’s existence.

I think a lot of this conflict could have been avoided by Phineus I simply writing down what he heard and having Ravi read it. Ravi would learn mortal limitations; the Finns would have Word of Ravi. Oh, it’s a secret? Specifically, what is secret? What they’re guarding? What it does? Jim and his dad seem quite casual about letting non-family in the caverns. So all an enemy has to do is pretend to be a Finn friend. Put the record in the hidden chamber with the Grail — I mean egg. Unless James is the first Finn to go down there since Phineus II, the then-current Cave Guard would recopy the secret to modern language. No Ravi, no Gift? At least one Finn per generation would know!

Ravi’s point of view is coming across as really cynical and James should certainly call him on that. If Ravi was really that unrelentingly cynical I’d expect him to have gone sour a long, long time ago. After all, Ravi is supposed to be basically a good person though so I think it’s a bit soon to be giving up on him!

Personally, I’m betting this was all the fault of an attack by the carnivorous dwarves who used to inhabit the caves; but that’s just me.

Come on James, you and Martha can totally take this disrespectful, ego-maniacal, douche bag if it came to a fight.

Also, ego maniac, I finally found a word that describes how Ravi comes off to me.

I think that fits, he isn’t caring at all about anyone else’s feelings. He’s just doing what HE wants to do not caring about anyone else in his path. He believes that what he did in the past is still going on perfectly because he can not convince of the notion something HE did didn’t keep on happening.

CONCEIVE ugh. I’m sorry for that mistake.

It’s okay, this comments section could really use an edit function.

Maybe Kory should switch to Disqus…

Please, no. Don’t say something like that.
Disqus is nothing but a huge pile of data-leeching spyware.

I don’t know about the spyware thing. But something it definitely is, is a target for scammers.

“My roommate bought a new McLaren P1 last week for $18,000” (the hell he did… Even the older McLaren F1, of which a new one hasn’t been made in 16 years, costs over $1 million at auction) “because I run this work-at-home scam, using a spambot to post my crap all over Disqus, hoping that rubes like you fall for it, and every time you shut down or blacklist one account, I just create another.”

Happens at least once a week on another webcomic I frequent. A spambot comes along and posts the same message, just slightly modified to slip past text filters, and posts the message to 3 or 4 days worth of comments. It’s slowed down recently, but the author has been dealing with this regularly for at least a year, reporting the account to Disqus, blacklisting the account (again), blacklisting the IP address, etc.

Weirdly you’d think immortality would improve your people skills, unless you have been a hermit. Ravi has been around people, he should get more social cues, if just from being forced into the habit. Of course, if you didn’t pay attention from the start, not much you can change about that.

Actually, now I’m pondering further…

If Ravi is as ancient and powerful as he’s coming across, I imagine he might not have had many times where *he* could’ve used a gift. It’s not like he’s in a rush to experience all sorts of things, and he might not even need to eat, being nourished by the earth itself through his connection to it (or something similar).

My point being… I don’t know if Ravi’s ever been indebted – emotionally or otherwise – to someone else. I’m not sure he fully understands the kind of boundaries and limits that are involved in gift-giving and debt. In a way, that’d mean he would always be the giver and not the givee, but, while ordinarily that’d make one deprived and bereft, he doesn’t seem like someone who would need much of anything (pure conjecture on my part here, honestly). So what you’re left with is a savior that doesn’t need anything in return, but who thus becomes disconnected and petty towards the subjects of his boons.

That, or he’s kind of a jackass. Who knows, really.

Violence, as they say, is the last refuge of the incompetent… but I can’t be the only one hoping that James pops Ravi one in the nose for being such a jerk. I can’t help but feel that Ravi’s made a lot of assumptions that required knowing what *he* knows, even though it appears he didn’t share that knowledge. I mean, if he’d sat down with Phineas and actually, you know, explained things, there might not be all this current confusion. And also, Ravi might take official notice of the fact that not everyone is nigh-immortal and nigh-omniscient.

That said, I love a character that I want to love and hate at the same time — that’s hard to pull off. Thanks, Kory!

For my part, I would like to see Ravi have to eat his words. As Ravi himself mentioned, he does not have a firm grip on the concept of time. He might have difficulty realizing that not only was James hatched long after the time the Finn’s family gift faded, but neither was James’ grandfather. Not told, not present therefore not culpable. I speculate that if the gift is dependent on Ravi’s presence to be maintained–otherwise it fades away after a century or two–then Ravi might be at fault for not returning soon enough to renew it.

Ravi: “The gift has not been manifested since when? I left for India . . . er, let me think. Second World War . . . the first Queen Elizabeth . . . Protestantism . . . the Crusades. Oh, I’ve been away for THAT long? Heh, heh, time flies, doesn’t it. No wonder everybody has forgotten my gift. So that means this mess . . . is . . . all . . . my . . . fault.”

I also can’t wonder if Ravi left the LA on his own, or was he kicked out.

(I have ellipseses available at reduced costs. Express your thoughts trailing off with ease. Can also bu used as suspension points. Hurry, because supplies are limited.)

Pretty much yeah. It’s easy to lose track of time when time ceases having any meaning.

Also, I suspect that Ravi is well used to being the one with all the answers, and has forgotten what it is to be wrong about something.

m’Thinking that Ravi may have ‘given’ the gift/curse and egg as sort of a ‘Hey man. Can you hang onto this for me?’ and didn’t say ANYTHING else about it to the original keepers. Ravi THINKS he bestowed this great and wonderful thing, when he may have just did stuff on the sly and didn’t explain a damn thing. Magic-types tend to be like that, I feel. ‘Oh. Magic? Psh. Everyone does it. Everyone knows what it does. OF COURSE its fine.’

I get the feeling that Ravi didn’t make sure ol’ Finny the Red actually understood what Ravi was doing centuries ago, if Ravi’s communication skills are anything to judge by.
Something along the lines of:
Ravi: “Hey! I think you would be great to protect this phoenix egg! I wouldn’t go around telling others about it, if you know what I mean! Ha ha! Might even doom us all, but no worries; I’m going to give you a gift!”
*Poof*
Ravi: “What? You mean you don’t understand what I have given you? Oh! The hair! A lovely shade of red–I’m afraid that might be permanent, and your descendants may inherit similar traits, but with this you’ll be able to protect the egg!”

No explanations of what the gift was, why the Finns had to protect it, WHOM they were protecting it from,
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, NEVER GAVE HIS NAME!!! It likely happened in the brevity of ten minutes before Ravi went off to do Ravi things.

Wait. Ravi gave his name, at least we know that from the flashback. Still probably didn’t give a how-to about the gift back then.

what flashback?

I think he means the message from Michael Jocasta’s shade. But remember, Michael’s shade seemed to know things (like the fact that he, himself, was an unTurned sphynx) that he didn’t know when he was alive. I wonder, did even the Finns actually know Ravi’s name?

Michael wasn’t unturned remember?

As far as the stories have showed, when Michael was still alive, he was unturned.
We only saw him in full form, in Orientations, when Michelle was unconscious and his Shade was communicating with her.
In the flashback in Reunion, his Shade was in full form, when he retrieved the Medallion.
But there have been no flashbacks showing Michael in full form while he was still alive. So he was unturned.

No back when she told her mom, her mom showed that she had a ‘dream’ or what she thought was a dream where he was a Sphinx. So he WASN’T unturned. Maybe he was cursed to die if he ever turned, and then something happened that required it, so that is why he is saying “i’m sorry” in that little flashback of her moms.
BUT HE WAS A SPHINX. At least for a few moments.

That was the Shade of the dead Michael Jocasta.
The living person had died years before.

Hey Kory, I was recently reading some homestuck comics on paradoxspace.com and noticed that you wrote/drew one of them! (http://www.paradoxspace.com/party-crashers/1)
I did not know you liked/read homestuck.
Could you please draw some trolls as ‘mythical’ creatures?
Here is what I have come up with so far, (please feel free to use or change any of my ideas)

Aradia – glastig (or other ram/sheep/goat creature)
Tavros – Minotaur (obviously)
Sollux – ?bohemian lion?? (Split tail)
Karkat – crab creature or noseless one
Nepta – Nemean lion
kanaya – noseless one??
Terezi -gorgon (blind and reptilian[dragon] and snakes smell/see with their tongue)
Vriska – one of those spider-centaurs or something arachnid
Equius – centaur (of course)
Gamzee- a goat-fish (literal Capricorn)
Eridan – nixie/nok
Feferi – mermaid or octopus-mermaid (Ursula)

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