I think this might be their first meeting in this world, with these individual versions, when both of them are adults… who wants to reread to make sure?
I mean, yes, there have been a number of readers in the comments joking around about them becoming a couple, and even that half-jokingly, but this?
This feels pretty out of left field and very uncharacteristic of Artie, unless there’s some detail like you suggest where unbeknownst to the readers, Artie has prior knowledge of who Sergio is and has become enamored from afar.
I agree that Artie falling in love like this seems a bit out of left field. There’s enough side material in the various series that Shaenon has written that we can be basically 100% sure that these two dorks end up married at some point, but this Artie hasn’t met this Sergio yet. I could see Sergio leaning on his alternate universe travels to fall in love with Artie at first sight, but the reverse is …non-obvious.
….Possibly a bit squicky, since, because time travel, he spent a day as Sergio’s First grade school teacher. Only a day because he was also Mel’s grade school teacher and he underestimated his ability to handle her, as usual. Anyway, he was very impressed with Sergio’s ability then, so, assuming the concussion didn’t make him forget everything, I could imagine Artie trying to find out what happened to him later. Not necessarily to date him or anything, but, I could see Artie just being curious what happened to another genius and wanting to make sure he did ok.
Granted, A-Sig probably purged his records or something, so Artie might not have been able to manage it. Or Artie might have been kinda dumb and just not tried to find out about him. He also never took Mel up on that blind date she kept suggesting, despite knowing she knew Sergio when they were kids, so if he was keeping track of Sergio because of that, he was either exceptionally stupid or just not actually tracking Sergio.
So, a couple thoughts: Firstly, I doubt that Artie has done the time travel back to teach Mell yet at this point in time. It’s been approximately 14 years since the end of Narbonic, and there’s various hints that Artie’s travels would have taken place once there’d been enough time for a kid to grow up to be a teenager. Additionally, it seems unlikely that an Artie with access to time travel tech would have been caught in this position.
Secondly, while this may or may not be the canon explanation for his instant love, I’d point at Artie’s habit of predicting people’s actions using Stochastic tricks. It seems pretty plausible that he went very quickly from not knowing who Sergio is to having a fairly complete idea of what he’s been through and the type of person he is once he put together the info of “Named Sergio – cross referencing published papers under that name” + “Someone who knew enough about A-Sig to successfully go undercover”, which might have led to conclusions about him having successfully escaped and come back, and the bravery involved in that. Heck, it’s quite possible Artie had a detailed profile of Sergio, and had him filed under “person would would have been awesome to meet, too bad he’s dead now”, only to find him alive and pretty.
Artie plus a voodoo shaman? The honeymoon will be over the first time Sergio talks.
Maybe he fell in love with Cinnamon, or the cat carrier. Or better yet, perhaps ANTONIO SMITH is swinging in on a rope off-panel where we can’t see him! That would explain everything nicely.
I think you’re thinking of Remy; he’s the voodoo shaman / coroner that supplied Unity with spare parts until she ended that service. Sergio was working as a scientist with Anasigma (somewhat unwillingly) in past story arcs, as I recall.
Indeed, I had forgotten Sergio and conflated him with Remy. I think Remy is currently with Sweetheart and company, so he was more top-of-mind. Thanks for the deconflationification!
Happy to help, and you get extra points for coining “deconflationification” – I’m going to have to work pretty hard to find an opportunity to fit that into general conversation/
I started off with “deconflation”, but when my brain informed me that it had a rediculous variant that both kept meter and rhymed with itself, the struggle to use actual English words was brief.
He took the core team through a multiversal portal to find a cure for the Cypress, and found out that his alternate universe self was involved with Artie. He saw that Artie in both forms, and *might* already know who he was carrying in the present storyline…but the cat would have been the only one really visible.
2. THE CLIMACTIC BATTLE TURNS ON THE ARRIVAL OF A GIANT ROBOT BUILT BY GAVOTTE AND TIGERLILY, HER MIND HEALED BY EITHER TIP OR GINNY. THIS WON’T BE A PURELY MILITARY VICTORY, BUT GIANT ROBOTS GONNA HAPPEN.
Basically.
3. THE POSSUM PARTNERS SURVIVED. BONUS BAD THEORY: IT HAPPENED BEFORE TO A TEST SUBJECT NAMED BERNICE, MISSING AND PRESUMED DEAD. PROBLEM: TIGERLILY ALREADY HAS AN ORIGIN STORY.
Yes on one, no on two.
4. THE SWEAR FILTER BECOMES A REAL BOY AND HELPS RESCUE NICK.
Nope.
5. ARTIE/SERGIO, THE ‘SHIP THAT TIME FORGOT.
Anybody funnier than me want to run point for Artie/Cinnamon?
Come on Artie, you can figure this out. Cinnamon’s a cat. Cats are cute. You’re just a gerbil. But you’re smart. You can write poetry Cinnamon can use to capture Sergio’s heart. Cinnamon gets skritchies and cat food and the chance to jump onto Sergio’s bed every night, and in exchange, Artie gets to eat some of Cinnamon’s cat kibble. Everybody wins.
Yeh, this feels out of left field, but remember two things:
-Artie is a mad-science product, so who knows what -defects- he could have, like being overwhelmingly attracted specifically to the blend of things Sergio is, in that exact configuration.
-Mirror-Artie DID mention Sergio is almost as rare as himself in the multiverse… do we know for sure Sergio wasn’t tampered with or -caused-, somehow? =P
I hate to point this out, but Artie doesn’t have anything to write with even he get paper. Blood-inked notes have their uses, wooing potential love interests is rarely one of them.
Long time ago, Sweetheart hypothesized that Artie *couldn’t* fall in love, because love is between equals, and Artie was better (or at least smarter) than most of the rest of the world.
Sergio built a gateway between possible universes – while sane! – which argues for him being pretty dang clever himself.
And this does seem sudden, but Artie’s also a guy who keeps business cards on-hand with the answers to questions that you haven’t asked yet, and who spent several strips back in Narbonic answering people’s replies from one step ahead of the conversation. Maybe twenty seconds is all he needs to see to extrapolate enough about Sergio to fall for him?
Yes, but the “business card” stunt is a really cheap trick. It doesn’t take a supergenius to know that people are going to ask about his backstory when they find out what he is. Just about anyone of moderate intelligence can pull that off in specific situations.
So….if I can summarize…love at first sight: difficult to believe. Talking super-intelligent gerbil able to shift to a human form: perfectly normal. Got it.
One is merely defying physics as we understand it – readers can accept that there’s some secret mad science trick to making it work that they just don’t understand.
The other is totally foreign to human experience – readers can’t accept that a character who they are meant to relate to in human terms (and Artie absolutely is “human” for all intents and purposes, in terms of how he thinks and acts) can somehow, inexplicably, upon mere sight, fall in genuine love AND know it.
Why is that so much harder to accept than defying physics? Because while our understanding of physics has repeatedly throughout history been shown to be lacking and needed revising, our understanding of human psychology has not been challenged anywhere near as frequently or so thoroughly.
We have a staggering amount of collective experience that lets us “know” that people don’t fall in love in first sight – they get infatuated, and delude themselves into thinking they’re in love before they even get to know the person. The human mind is a powerful thing, but one thing it is NOT is somehow mystically in tune with the realities of the universe.
We struggle to accept Artie falling in love at first sight because we have a much more compelling counter argument – he’s simply mistaken.
It’s far easier to accept a super-intelligent gerbil that can shift to human form, because we see it with our own eyes (and we trust that we’re being shown the “reality” of the comic’s universe). But there’s no way we can be shown or see whether love at first sight is reality – we can only be “told” it is happening by Artie himself, and since he is not infallible, it instantly puts his judgement in doubt.
1) knight in shining armor effect. Sergio just rescued them, and Artie been hearing that male Latin accent, and it’s been driving him cray-cray.
2) You can’t hear it, but the Romeo and Juliet theme started playing as soon as Sergio took off the helmet. Sergio shook his hair out, almost nonchalantly. Artie’s little gerbil heart was beating so fast he thought it would burst, etc.
So.. I can see/hear it. Not so much out of ‘left field’ for me.
That was faster than I expected, at least see if he is poetic first. (or whatever made him long after that one dude back in narbonic.)
In love with what exactly? The Kennel?
I think this might be their first meeting in this world, with these individual versions, when both of them are adults… who wants to reread to make sure?
Sounds accurate to me
I recently did a read through and these versions have not met each other.
And I’m loving Artie’s reaction.
Our Sergio _has_ met the version of Artie from the crapsack world (in gerbil-form), though, so he’ll recognize him.
Seph, would you have a link to that meeting handy? I only found where our Sergio lamented not learning Artie’s name.
David: Sergio saw mirror-Artie transform in http://skin-horse.com/comic/to-ask-that/. He transformed complete with clothes, which was handy.
Thanks!
I’ve heard of love at first sight but…
…Has Artie been reading about Sergio maybe?
Yeah, this feels… weird.
I mean, yes, there have been a number of readers in the comments joking around about them becoming a couple, and even that half-jokingly, but this?
This feels pretty out of left field and very uncharacteristic of Artie, unless there’s some detail like you suggest where unbeknownst to the readers, Artie has prior knowledge of who Sergio is and has become enamored from afar.
Guess we’ll find out soon enough?
I agree that Artie falling in love like this seems a bit out of left field. There’s enough side material in the various series that Shaenon has written that we can be basically 100% sure that these two dorks end up married at some point, but this Artie hasn’t met this Sergio yet. I could see Sergio leaning on his alternate universe travels to fall in love with Artie at first sight, but the reverse is …non-obvious.
….Possibly a bit squicky, since, because time travel, he spent a day as Sergio’s First grade school teacher. Only a day because he was also Mel’s grade school teacher and he underestimated his ability to handle her, as usual. Anyway, he was very impressed with Sergio’s ability then, so, assuming the concussion didn’t make him forget everything, I could imagine Artie trying to find out what happened to him later. Not necessarily to date him or anything, but, I could see Artie just being curious what happened to another genius and wanting to make sure he did ok.
Granted, A-Sig probably purged his records or something, so Artie might not have been able to manage it. Or Artie might have been kinda dumb and just not tried to find out about him. He also never took Mel up on that blind date she kept suggesting, despite knowing she knew Sergio when they were kids, so if he was keeping track of Sergio because of that, he was either exceptionally stupid or just not actually tracking Sergio.
For reference, see the first story arc of this comic: http://www.shaenon.com/lilmell/?p=4
…So, anyway, yeah, I dunno why Artie is reacting like this either.
So, a couple thoughts: Firstly, I doubt that Artie has done the time travel back to teach Mell yet at this point in time. It’s been approximately 14 years since the end of Narbonic, and there’s various hints that Artie’s travels would have taken place once there’d been enough time for a kid to grow up to be a teenager. Additionally, it seems unlikely that an Artie with access to time travel tech would have been caught in this position.
Secondly, while this may or may not be the canon explanation for his instant love, I’d point at Artie’s habit of predicting people’s actions using Stochastic tricks. It seems pretty plausible that he went very quickly from not knowing who Sergio is to having a fairly complete idea of what he’s been through and the type of person he is once he put together the info of “Named Sergio – cross referencing published papers under that name” + “Someone who knew enough about A-Sig to successfully go undercover”, which might have led to conclusions about him having successfully escaped and come back, and the bravery involved in that. Heck, it’s quite possible Artie had a detailed profile of Sergio, and had him filed under “person would would have been awesome to meet, too bad he’s dead now”, only to find him alive and pretty.
We do know that Artie has a thing for slim, bronzed Latin men: http://narbonic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/061027.jpg (from http://narbonic.com/comic/october-23-28-2006/ )
Artie plus a voodoo shaman? The honeymoon will be over the first time Sergio talks.
Maybe he fell in love with Cinnamon, or the cat carrier. Or better yet, perhaps ANTONIO SMITH is swinging in on a rope off-panel where we can’t see him! That would explain everything nicely.
I think you’re thinking of Remy; he’s the voodoo shaman / coroner that supplied Unity with spare parts until she ended that service. Sergio was working as a scientist with Anasigma (somewhat unwillingly) in past story arcs, as I recall.
Wasn’t Sergio the one who invented the thing that gave Jonas limited precognition?
Yep.
Yeah, but Sergio didn’t get jolted by it like Jonah Yu did…
Indeed, I had forgotten Sergio and conflated him with Remy. I think Remy is currently with Sweetheart and company, so he was more top-of-mind. Thanks for the deconflationification!
Happy to help, and you get extra points for coining “deconflationification” – I’m going to have to work pretty hard to find an opportunity to fit that into general conversation/
I started off with “deconflation”, but when my brain informed me that it had a rediculous variant that both kept meter and rhymed with itself, the struggle to use actual English words was brief.
He took the core team through a multiversal portal to find a cure for the Cypress, and found out that his alternate universe self was involved with Artie. He saw that Artie in both forms, and *might* already know who he was carrying in the present storyline…but the cat would have been the only one really visible.
“Did you say we?” would imply he only noticed the cat.
Cinnamon was the only one he saw put into the carrying case. Artie just snuck in.
Now I can grade my 2018 crypto-spoilers!
http://skin-horse.com/comic/workings-clanked/
1. WORKER BEES ARE FEMALE AND HAVE COMPOUND EYES.
Late but correct, wrong on the eyes.
2. THE CLIMACTIC BATTLE TURNS ON THE ARRIVAL OF A GIANT ROBOT BUILT BY GAVOTTE AND TIGERLILY, HER MIND HEALED BY EITHER TIP OR GINNY. THIS WON’T BE A PURELY MILITARY VICTORY, BUT GIANT ROBOTS GONNA HAPPEN.
Basically.
3. THE POSSUM PARTNERS SURVIVED. BONUS BAD THEORY: IT HAPPENED BEFORE TO A TEST SUBJECT NAMED BERNICE, MISSING AND PRESUMED DEAD. PROBLEM: TIGERLILY ALREADY HAS AN ORIGIN STORY.
Yes on one, no on two.
4. THE SWEAR FILTER BECOMES A REAL BOY AND HELPS RESCUE NICK.
Nope.
5. ARTIE/SERGIO, THE ‘SHIP THAT TIME FORGOT.
Anybody funnier than me want to run point for Artie/Cinnamon?
Keep ’em coming, Ogden
Come on Artie, you can figure this out. Cinnamon’s a cat. Cats are cute. You’re just a gerbil. But you’re smart. You can write poetry Cinnamon can use to capture Sergio’s heart. Cinnamon gets skritchies and cat food and the chance to jump onto Sergio’s bed every night, and in exchange, Artie gets to eat some of Cinnamon’s cat kibble. Everybody wins.
Cyrano de Gerbilac?
The magic works.
Yeh, this feels out of left field, but remember two things:
-Artie is a mad-science product, so who knows what -defects- he could have, like being overwhelmingly attracted specifically to the blend of things Sergio is, in that exact configuration.
-Mirror-Artie DID mention Sergio is almost as rare as himself in the multiverse… do we know for sure Sergio wasn’t tampered with or -caused-, somehow? =P
I hate to point this out, but Artie doesn’t have anything to write with even he get paper. Blood-inked notes have their uses, wooing potential love interests is rarely one of them.
If Artie does come out, Sergio is sure to recognize him.
Out of left field, but a strike over home plate! If the catcher doesn’t drop the ball, the runner is out! This is comedy: the inevitable surprise.
Artie possesses a positive propensity for pensive poetry. Will it be palindromic?
Perhaps in pentameter…
Pensive Ponderings perhaps?
…not to mention alliteratively literate. Literally.
Since Sergio has already met Artie’s doppelganger, will he find this reality’s version as appealing?
Long time ago, Sweetheart hypothesized that Artie *couldn’t* fall in love, because love is between equals, and Artie was better (or at least smarter) than most of the rest of the world.
Sergio built a gateway between possible universes – while sane! – which argues for him being pretty dang clever himself.
And this does seem sudden, but Artie’s also a guy who keeps business cards on-hand with the answers to questions that you haven’t asked yet, and who spent several strips back in Narbonic answering people’s replies from one step ahead of the conversation. Maybe twenty seconds is all he needs to see to extrapolate enough about Sergio to fall for him?
Yes, but the “business card” stunt is a really cheap trick. It doesn’t take a supergenius to know that people are going to ask about his backstory when they find out what he is. Just about anyone of moderate intelligence can pull that off in specific situations.
Maybe it’s like a sideways karma. If you have unfinished business in one universe, you have to work it out in another.
And then sometimes, there’s just love at first sight. It happens.
AWWWWWW!! That is just so adorable you could plotz.
So….if I can summarize…love at first sight: difficult to believe. Talking super-intelligent gerbil able to shift to a human form: perfectly normal. Got it.
One is merely defying physics as we understand it – readers can accept that there’s some secret mad science trick to making it work that they just don’t understand.
The other is totally foreign to human experience – readers can’t accept that a character who they are meant to relate to in human terms (and Artie absolutely is “human” for all intents and purposes, in terms of how he thinks and acts) can somehow, inexplicably, upon mere sight, fall in genuine love AND know it.
Why is that so much harder to accept than defying physics? Because while our understanding of physics has repeatedly throughout history been shown to be lacking and needed revising, our understanding of human psychology has not been challenged anywhere near as frequently or so thoroughly.
We have a staggering amount of collective experience that lets us “know” that people don’t fall in love in first sight – they get infatuated, and delude themselves into thinking they’re in love before they even get to know the person. The human mind is a powerful thing, but one thing it is NOT is somehow mystically in tune with the realities of the universe.
We struggle to accept Artie falling in love at first sight because we have a much more compelling counter argument – he’s simply mistaken.
It’s far easier to accept a super-intelligent gerbil that can shift to human form, because we see it with our own eyes (and we trust that we’re being shown the “reality” of the comic’s universe). But there’s no way we can be shown or see whether love at first sight is reality – we can only be “told” it is happening by Artie himself, and since he is not infallible, it instantly puts his judgement in doubt.
Perhaps. But sometimes “love at first sight” is lucky enough to bloom.
That the concept exists proves it’s an ideal we long for…
Oh, this should be GREAT. **glee** Artie, it’s about time you felt the slings and arrows yourself.
1) knight in shining armor effect. Sergio just rescued them, and Artie been hearing that male Latin accent, and it’s been driving him cray-cray.
2) You can’t hear it, but the Romeo and Juliet theme started playing as soon as Sergio took off the helmet. Sergio shook his hair out, almost nonchalantly. Artie’s little gerbil heart was beating so fast he thought it would burst, etc.
So.. I can see/hear it. Not so much out of ‘left field’ for me.
I have been waiting for this for YEARS.
To be fair Sergio *did* come to his dashing rescue, so this is at least slightly earned.