@s854 – She hasn’t actually made her eyes change color. It’s artistic license. Just like her speech isn’t actually somehow “rainbow colored” now.
And consider the alternative – are you suggesting that when people go mad, their eyes literally change color? This is a comic strip. It’s symbolic shorthand, not literal photorealism.
In reality, people’s eyes do not generally change colour when they go mad.
That being said, given what we know of the ‘verse in which SH is set, it’s entirely plausible that eye-colour changes are a legitimate possible effect of going capital-M Mad.
How fast spaceships in Babylon 5 could fly is a minor detail. Driving a major character literally insane suddenly and without reason is not.
She was completely sane and lucid and actively formulating a plan to foil The Dane one second, and then suddenly she’s -actually- gone insane somehow instead of just pretending to be as part of her plan? That’s so monstrously unlikely as to be absurd.
This is like watching a movie in which a prisoner trying to escape their jail cell is seen pulling out a hidden bottle of ketchup, and then the next time we see them is when a guard finds them face down on the floori in a pool of red liquid.
Given the information you were literally given just seconds before, are you really going to believe that they’re actually dead, and not just faking death to foil their jailers?
Of course, being a mad at heart and in her soul, there is a well from which she can pull. I do not regard it as beyond the realm of possibility that to pull off her plan, she must actually go mad.
I mean, mostly a grown person couldn’t fit inside another person with all their organs in, but skin is stretchy enough that I’d bet a skin could fit a good few pant sizes up or down. Just pin the loose bits in.
Skin is more elastic than people think of it as being, so a skin-suit is probably as one-size-fits-all as one-size-fits-all garments ever are. And a skin-suit counts as fitting inside someone, I figure.
Seriously, pull at the skin on top of your hand, or the outside of your elbow, or somewhere else it’s not super-attached. Looks creepy.
For a geek that spent all her time irradiating random things–a relatively sane shadow government job–she knows a surprising amount of the mad scientist…biology? Pathology? Did I miss something in past strips?
She is one of the god figures and literal creators of an entire microcosm of multiple species of sentient creatures in the basement of the annex.
She’s friends with a talking dog, a nanomachine zombie, and an actual mad (if remarkably lucid and high functioning) scientist, and they all got together with drinks to watch a topless mud wrestling honor duel between a cross dressing ex-military psychologist (who she had previously dated and goinked) and a musclebound Russian security guard (who has special Soviet inspired names for his muscles and fists).
She tried to get to that event by bumming a ride from from her jarhead cyborg helicopter friend after turning down a ride on a Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee flying platform belonging to her colleagues at the Department of Jetpack Suppression.
She got ice for the drinks from a friend in Cryonics who, despite being a Kinsey 7, a type of lesbian so profound it was once thought not to exist in nature, still was eager to watch Tip and Konstantin mud wrestle, and who joined Marcie in bugging their mad scientist friend about her sex life with the aforementioned cyborg helicopter on the drive down the river.
She may not be a mad herself, but she is intimately familiar with madness. She even knows the government rules and classifications for the condition, listed as a DSM-IV disorder.
Has anyone considered that maybe she dosed herself on Tigerlilly’s trippy drugs to help get the effect? Maybe it’s all just a distraction while Dr Walske messes up the doomday device?
She seems to be getting “mad scientist” and “zombie” confused,
I don’t believe she’s actually gone Mad myself, but I am sympathetic to all the enthusiasm for the idea: having one of the semi-regular cast going Mad is something I could get behind. After all, every setting is improved by mad scientists, like gorillas.
Are you saying that gorrillias are an example setting that would be improved by Mad scientists (or maybe just mad science) or are you saying that gorrillias are akin to mad scientists in that they improve whatever setting you put them into
She does it so well that I want her to go mad. Make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. She and Chris will need a new sense of purpose when they win the accelerator and join skin horse.
The Dane. So easily distracted. Just not really focused on the task at hand, is he? He’s got the bad intentions and all but he just doesn’t have that fanatical single minded determination.
Maybe he doesn’t feel, deep down, that he can succeed even in destroying this one little building with his “doomsday device”. He’s not only trying to do a deal with someone who may be Mad (and he must know how co-operative that’s likely to make someone), but someone with a history of backstabbing.
He could still just be playing along with her, but allowing your prisoner to be untied, and then to bite you, seems like taking things a bit too far.
The more I read this comic, the less I mind the thought of Marcie “gnar”-ing on my arm… Either she’s gotten cuter since the last time I saw her, or I _really_ need to get a girlfriend, nyao…
gnar gnar gnar
hang on, did she ACTUALLY go mad?
She’s and Chris are both scientists, sort of, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility. @_@
What part of “oldest trick in the book” is it that people seem to be having trouble with these past couple strips? It’s called acting, folks.
She was perfectly lucid just a moment ago, do you really think she -actually- went mad in such a short time offscreen?
It’s the colored speech bubbles.
Yes, the colored speech bubbles denote she is speaking in a mad sounding manner.
No, they do not in any way suggest that this behavior isn’t simply convincing acting on her part.
That’s all very well, but how has she made her eyes change colour?
The do however denote that *if* she is acting she is *good* at acting
She is simply using a swirly disc of hard candy as a contact lens.
@s854 – She hasn’t actually made her eyes change color. It’s artistic license. Just like her speech isn’t actually somehow “rainbow colored” now.
And consider the alternative – are you suggesting that when people go mad, their eyes literally change color? This is a comic strip. It’s symbolic shorthand, not literal photorealism.
In reality, people’s eyes do not generally change colour when they go mad.
That being said, given what we know of the ‘verse in which SH is set, it’s entirely plausible that eye-colour changes are a legitimate possible effect of going capital-M Mad.
There is a difference.
Method acting.
If it furthers the plot? Of course.
(See J. Michael Straczynsky’s comment on how fast the Starfurys could go)
How fast spaceships in Babylon 5 could fly is a minor detail. Driving a major character literally insane suddenly and without reason is not.
She was completely sane and lucid and actively formulating a plan to foil The Dane one second, and then suddenly she’s -actually- gone insane somehow instead of just pretending to be as part of her plan? That’s so monstrously unlikely as to be absurd.
This is like watching a movie in which a prisoner trying to escape their jail cell is seen pulling out a hidden bottle of ketchup, and then the next time we see them is when a guard finds them face down on the floori in a pool of red liquid.
Given the information you were literally given just seconds before, are you really going to believe that they’re actually dead, and not just faking death to foil their jailers?
Dave turned pretty quickly too. We just got to see the early onset of it because we could see his personality sprites.
Dave had been diagnosed as potentially mad -six years- before he snapped, and he’d been on the edge for quite a while when it happened.
It’s The Dane. Pulling a Hamlet on him would be quite ironic.
I agree with Walker in that I think she’s merely acting.
Of course, being a mad at heart and in her soul, there is a well from which she can pull. I do not regard it as beyond the realm of possibility that to pull off her plan, she must actually go mad.
she’s surprisingly good at it.
The real trick is the oldest trick in the book isn’t lying. It’s actually going mad.
http://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=628
Unless she went mad long ago and she’s just been equally good at acting sane this whole time (unlikely, but hey)
She could fit inside at least his skin.
I mean, mostly a grown person couldn’t fit inside another person with all their organs in, but skin is stretchy enough that I’d bet a skin could fit a good few pant sizes up or down. Just pin the loose bits in.
Oooo…..kay. I’m sorry are we ready the same comic or have you found insight to the process of the mad?
Skin is more elastic than people think of it as being, so a skin-suit is probably as one-size-fits-all as one-size-fits-all garments ever are. And a skin-suit counts as fitting inside someone, I figure.
Seriously, pull at the skin on top of your hand, or the outside of your elbow, or somewhere else it’s not super-attached. Looks creepy.
I think she means that she has less volume than him, and his shape can perfectly circumscribe her shape.
Alternatively, Marcie has just thought of a use for all that teledildonics gear she’s been eying up. Just sayin’.
Let’s just take that as a “yes”.
For a geek that spent all her time irradiating random things–a relatively sane shadow government job–she knows a surprising amount of the mad scientist…biology? Pathology? Did I miss something in past strips?
She is one of the god figures and literal creators of an entire microcosm of multiple species of sentient creatures in the basement of the annex.
She’s friends with a talking dog, a nanomachine zombie, and an actual mad (if remarkably lucid and high functioning) scientist, and they all got together with drinks to watch a topless mud wrestling honor duel between a cross dressing ex-military psychologist (who she had previously dated and goinked) and a musclebound Russian security guard (who has special Soviet inspired names for his muscles and fists).
She tried to get to that event by bumming a ride from from her jarhead cyborg helicopter friend after turning down a ride on a Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee flying platform belonging to her colleagues at the Department of Jetpack Suppression.
She got ice for the drinks from a friend in Cryonics who, despite being a Kinsey 7, a type of lesbian so profound it was once thought not to exist in nature, still was eager to watch Tip and Konstantin mud wrestle, and who joined Marcie in bugging their mad scientist friend about her sex life with the aforementioned cyborg helicopter on the drive down the river.
She may not be a mad herself, but she is intimately familiar with madness. She even knows the government rules and classifications for the condition, listed as a DSM-IV disorder.
I assume it’s in the classified appendix to the DSM.
M-DSM
DSM – S and M?
And let’s not forget, she forgot to invite the sentient swarm of bees, which really hurt the bees’ feelings.
Has anyone considered that maybe she dosed herself on Tigerlilly’s trippy drugs to help get the effect? Maybe it’s all just a distraction while Dr Walske messes up the doomday device?
She seems to be getting “mad scientist” and “zombie” confused,
I don’t believe she’s actually gone Mad myself, but I am sympathetic to all the enthusiasm for the idea: having one of the semi-regular cast going Mad is something I could get behind. After all, every setting is improved by mad scientists, like gorillas.
Are you saying that gorrillias are an example setting that would be improved by Mad scientists (or maybe just mad science) or are you saying that gorrillias are akin to mad scientists in that they improve whatever setting you put them into
If you referr to the latter I sadly disagree
Yeah, the animal you’re looking for is the majestic and cuddly cobra.
Not the majestik moose? A moose once bit my sister. No, realli!
What about gorillas who are mad scientists? They’re intelligent enough to make it an outside possibility, especially with help from human ones.
She does it so well that I want her to go mad. Make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. She and Chris will need a new sense of purpose when they win the accelerator and join skin horse.
Yeah, Marcie makes an adorable madgirl.
I don’t usually say that about women who say things like “i could fit inside you”.
You lack joy.
The Dane. So easily distracted. Just not really focused on the task at hand, is he? He’s got the bad intentions and all but he just doesn’t have that fanatical single minded determination.
Maybe he doesn’t feel, deep down, that he can succeed even in destroying this one little building with his “doomsday device”. He’s not only trying to do a deal with someone who may be Mad (and he must know how co-operative that’s likely to make someone), but someone with a history of backstabbing.
He could still just be playing along with her, but allowing your prisoner to be untied, and then to bite you, seems like taking things a bit too far.
It’s both insane and unsanitary.
desiring a yes/no answer is so “binary” odd for a mad. Odder still to ask of a mad. Although, perhaps two mads make a sane?
Just because one is mad doesn’t mean that one can’t be rational. Occasionally.
“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” — G.K. Chesterton
Mad with a capital “M?”
I wonder if you can fake it till you make it.
No, but you can fake having not made it.
This is all assuming that Marcie wasn’t already mad. It’s entirely possible she was and is, and is just good at aping sane.
The more I read this comic, the less I mind the thought of Marcie “gnar”-ing on my arm… Either she’s gotten cuter since the last time I saw her, or I _really_ need to get a girlfriend, nyao…
It’s both. I would have expected you to be into play-bites.