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Well, good for Bloodcarver, probably. Wonder where the second one is.

Anthony perhaps? Eleanor? Iris (Rhonda’s lamina friend)?

yeah, my money is on Eleanor McLean Mothersbaugh XIII

i mean, they are the first Bandersnatch to even be recognized as a person, no way they have a medaillion and their specie only need one so far

Yet I can’t help wonder if a Wonderlander such as herself would WANT a medallion. Despite this, perhaps she would be the best candidate. She doesn’t need one, so if Michelle were to fail, nothing disappointing would happen, right?

S GG e left Wonderlamnnd due to rampant racism and bigotry, and people still look at her funny even in the Avalon
I expect she’d appreciate a medallion.

Feels a little weird to have gone to her just because we’ve never seen Eleanor and Michelle meet, let alone interact, but Obverse/Reverse paired the Wonderland story for a readon.

You’ve reminded me of my speculation at the end of Obverse & Reverse. As that story ended, Michelle had an epiphany and started doing something with her medallion.
My speculation was that she was stretching her disguise to cover both her and ‘Carver, so she could smuggle him into and through the Avalon. (“Here, huddle under my cloak, nobody will notice!”)
She would hide him in the Wonderland forest while she worked on his medallion. (“You’re mistaken; that’s not a dragon, it’s a jabberwock!”)
She could recruit Eleanor to act as a local guide, with the promise of her own medallion. That would allow Eleanor to set foot outside the Avalon, so that Ellipsis can perform with a human-seeming drummer.

Breathe Lion Girl, breathe. Poor Michelle, I feel bad for her, and I understand her anxiety and stress. I can’t imagine what it would be like to try and understand magic and how it works in this universe, let alone reverse engineering and mastering it, hoping it doesn’t mess up somebody’s life, or worse…

Anyways, good work on the page as always Kory! Love it!

Girl, please, relax. It’s magic. Worst things we’ve seen magic do is grow horns on a guy’s head and let a harpy become a mom.

Unless you’re making your medallions out of polonium with a woven asbestos lanyard, I suggest to chill out and stop worrying about them causing problems the long term.

She doesn’t even know what can or can’t go wrong because there’s no documentation on it.
She’s worried about making a medallion that doesn’t work right, like it might turn on and off randomly or not cover the entire body or get stuck on one setting, and then that person would be stuck with it unless she figured out a way to fix it. You get a medallion and your human form has a different face and haircut every time you use it because the person who made it forgot to close a bracket in the magical code.
Magic did also turn one dude into a harpy and another dude into a semi-aquatic horse lion, and it may have created a wide variety of species in the past. If medallions are incompatible, people with different medallion types might not be able to have kids with each other or the kids might turn out to be weird hybrids, and then she’d have to make more medallions for those hybrids and so on.

It should be remembered that this entire society’s smartest people have probably been studying medallions for centuries trying to figure them out, and there’s STILL no technical manual. And nobody has ever been able to make a new one until now.

Jim: “Oy, it’s all super advanced magic and I can’t explain it because I really have no idea how it works!”

Michelle is right to be a bit nervous about this. Can she science it better than anyone’s been able to up until now? That said, I have a hard time believing that the Sphinxes didn’t document their own hard progress in perfecting this technology. If only so other Sphinxes wouldn’t have to duplicate the effort. Are there “Sphinx books” around? Or did they communicate weirdly like Manticores?

That’s probably where the shared sphinx knowledge comes in again. Writing things down on physical media is a lot less important when you can just upload it into the “cloud” so other people can download it directly into their brain. It also helps with keeping the process secret from those who might want to duplicate it for nefarious purposes.
It’s probably all sitting right there, waiting to be accessed, but she doesn’t know how to navigate it.

It was stated a while back (in either story or RQ), that multi-generation inheritance of medallion disguise was an unforeseen benefit, basically an overshot of the more modest goal of cloaking children who’re born “human” until they’re old enough for their own medallions. That might be one of the most difficult long-term details to manage.

For everyone who says “Don’t worry about asking the “What Ifs” questions” I know that is someone who has never had to do complex engineering or design… or at least someone who has never seen the results of it done badly.

“What If?” was one of our daily mantras and it was what made us look at the potential disasters that could be perpetrated by incomplete design or engineering. I have respect for her in that she is not just charging like a bull at the gate and that she understands that there will be consequences with both success and failure.

That said, once you do your risk analysis, prepare your controls and testing regimes then go bite the bullet and make it happen! Meech needs her friends as her support team to help her keep grounded… Greg is making a good start here. She also needs some folks who have some magic/sorcery knowledge to possibly point out any glaring oversights/pitfalls as she heads into presently unknown territory and some willing guinea pigs who can convince her that they are ready to take the risks with their eyes wide open.

Lawyers are of course right out of the equation! ;-)

Imposter syndrome is always lurking around anyone worth their salt who are undertaking something difficult and who actually understand that it is difficult and how much they don’t understand yet!

If you start thinking that you knew everything there was to know about something you’re probably just starting to become complacent…!

Uh, when did she make those?

Kory is being cheeky.

…also, there has been a time jump. I forgot by how much though. Six months? Two years? I should have been in bed two hours ago, so I’ll let someone else archive dive to get the answer.

It’s been a little over one year. Michelle went to Limbo with ‘Carver sometime in September ’05, and they returned (with Vera) in a few weeks or less. This story chapter started on 29 October ’06, and it’s now the next day, 30 October ’06, in story-time.

A dragon and….who else?

Vera, perhaps? I don’t think we’ve seen a demon with a medallion before.

Vera headed for the hills as soon as they escaped, I feel like Anthony is the more likely choice?

I’m inclined to think it’s not Anthony because we saw him playing guitar and singing on stage yesterday (in-comic), and he was in full harpy form. I feel like if he had a medallion he’d be playing guitar in human form, or a midform if he’d mastered one. I could be wrong though, maybe he’s had some major breakthroughs in his acceptance of his species in the last year or so!

Thought I’d toss my two cents worth into the 2nd medallion speculation. From what I’ve seen so farm there’s three likely people that could’ve received it.
We see Eleanor in full bandersnatch form in the club earlier this chapter, so I don’t think it’s them. It could be a personal preference, but I feel they’d be using their medallion there if they had it.
We also see Antony with his wings still clipped. If he’d received a medallion, I suspect he would have stopped clipping them, but also he would’ve been in human form while performing.

This brings me to the person I think may have gotten the 2nd medallion: Sam Ainesborough. Guy’s desperate for his turning, believes he’s been given a faulty medallion, and is perfectly happy to experiment to make something (anything) happen. I also just thumbed through the chapter again and haven’t seen him anywhere. Possible there’s a new reverse gryphon floating about the avalon?

Maybe making new already existing medallions could trigger a memory? Can’t remember something that hasn’t existed yet.

And testing new ones on people who prefer being their own species anyway, so it wouldn’t be necessary if they don’t work or malfunction?

The biggest problem still is that medallions are such a once-in-a-life-time thing that you literally cannot give someone a second medallion if the first one went wrong or missing. I don’t know if it’s intentionally made to prevent thievery, or just unavoidable for a medallion to work. So it’s completely understandable Michelle just being anxious mess—she just can’t afford to mess up, not when a possible war depends on if she can reinvent the technology, or she can mess someone life up with a bad medallion.

Actually I can’t believe nobody even tried to make medallion after sphinx were gone, this is some essential technology to even live in the world, and with each decades gone by you get less and less medallions just because some might go missing or even just broke due to some mishaps. And now some breakthrough actually happened and they(the elders) still let Michelle work on her own.

Hi Michelle,

What you’re going through is EXACTLY what it feels like to be the ONLY expert in your field: you have no one to go or turn to and would have to take on the FULL responsibility for any mistakes and mishaps that can and WILL happen. It is a LOT of pressure.

First, NO ONE is forcing you to do this. You do NOT have to do anything, you are Michelle and no one else. If you do nothing, nothing happens. That’s okay. The world and life will go one. You be you and do you. You’re in control of who you are.

If you WANT to try, understand the risks and benefits and whether you are willing and ABLE to bear the burden. No one should expect you to do anything. No one is indepted to you. You don’t owe anyone anything.

The responsibility comes if you decide to take them on. Do this when you are ready, IF you are ready.

Michelle, I know that other people have said this, but the fact that you’ve successfully made 2 medallions is AMAZING. Their magic could only last 6 months, and it would still be mind-bogglingly incredible. Though, I do understand that’s the true issue. So much pressure and nobody who you can share it with. Not to mention the fact that you honestly don’t know what you’re doing, and instead just copying off of someone else’s homework that nobody else can see.

The people around you can give as much understanding and support as possible, but it’s never going to solve the fundamental issue of everything unfairly being put onto you. The only thing that can “solve” that issue involves you putting it onto your children, and I don’t see you as being the type of person who would do that.

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