[783] Is that her name?

Parley's comment, combined with Jeanne's "A fine strike, fille", make me wonder. Do you think Parley's trying to imply that Jeanne let them live, or at least didn't go after them as hard as she could have? What could that possibly mean in the bigger picture? Was she testing them?

And to Annie's comment: Why DID Jeanne memory-dump on them? How much of that full-body-flashback was Jeanne's doing, and how much of it was Parley's etheric abilities? She's never touched a ghost before, maybe she drew the memories from Jeanne rather than Jeanne pushing the memories to them.

Very, very interesting. As always, one answer elicits 5 more questions... C'est si bon!

Random note: I believe I see Jeanne's sword in the third treatise. It didn't look like a fencer's sword before, but looking at the sword ghost Jeanne was wielding as well as the one laid upon her corpse, I think they match.

But man, having all those emotions, all of those experiences dumped into the girls' minds. That's enough to give anyone serious problems for a long period of time. Especially experiencing the betrayal and Jeanne and Elfboy's more intimate moments near simultaneously.

I hope they manage to cope.

Looks like Smitty and Parley have perhaps opened up just a bit to each other, though. So... silver lining?

Still wondering why Jeanne didn't go for the kill outright if she's as good as Parley said.

I think she refers to Jeanne's attack on Parley.



Perhaps it was about Parley fighting for her love, for her feelings and also for her friends (not to speak of her life) which Jeanne didn't do in her time. She was a warrior, she could have fought her way out of that place. she could have fought against the oppression of the court, but she didn't. She tried to sneek away at night instead and walked into the trap like the lamb to the slaughter.

Perhaps she let Parley live, because she recognized, that Parley deserved her feelings, because she is willing to fight for them even against an overwhelming opponent as Jeanne herself.

Panels 1&2 are sweet!

I think they will recover just fine - they have each other to talk about it with.

The way the last panel has the question hang there makes me think maybe Parley knows something about someone named Jeanne.

She could be referring to what happened to Jeanne, not that Jeanne shared it with them. What happened to Jeanne most definitely was not fair.

I think Parley turned out very pretty in this strip overall.

I agree with Rex that Parley seems to be regaining her composure faster than Annie, but then again we're not as used to seeing Annie display strong emotion.

The site seems to be down for me...any mirror sites?

It's even more terrible than Boxbot.

Now it's working for me again. I don't know what happened, though Tom's mentioned recent site problems.

I took Annie's line as being that a ghost shouldn't be able to attack and almost kill them. I mean, she was snipped before, which came as a major shock, but that wasn't a homicidal attack. I don't think Annie has seen ghosts that intend to harm her - the vast majority of supernatural creatures she's encountered have been her friends.

Plus, if she went down there with the intent of facing Jeanne and figuring out a way to help her, being attacked would be totally unexpected - if Parley hadn't come along when she did, Annie would have been trapped as long as Jeanne held the blinker stone, and who knows what Jeanne's intentions would have been?

I think maybe Annie's comment, "She shouldn't have done that... a ghost shouldn't do that... it's not fair..." is in regards to Jeanne trapping them by taking the blinker stone.

Given that a ghost knows what it's like to be etherically stuck in a place, it would be especially mean and wrong to do that to a living person who is using a blinker stone.

I think Annie is still shaken up in that panel by the feeling of being trapped outside of her own body, stuck in a place against her will. She's right, it's not fair and Jeanne should not have done that.

Annie has had a lot of experience with ghosts, and does not think of them as even slightly scary. Surma had even more, and was confident that encountering one, even one trapped in this world by his confusion and terror, wouldn't be dangerous. For a ghost to pose a serious threat appears to be unheard of, which would explain Annie's confusion and frustration regarding Jeanne's attack. She absolutely did not expect this.

I rather like this theory: a ghost has no power over you but what you allow it. The cut actually supports the theory, I think. Annie certainly believed she had been cut, and saw what seemed to be blood, but later discovered that she had no cut. The cut then was an attempt to scare Annie, and might have worked if not for Kat's timely arrival.

On George and Andrew, they seem to have gotten past the awkwardness brought on by George's teleporting them all to her bedroom, to the point where they're speaking to each other at least.

I agree with Aegis and Jayne who said that Annie's "not fair" lines refer to Jeanne forcing all those emotions, for which Annie is not old enough to be properly equipped to handle, onto them. I'm trying to thing of a proper word in English or a concept to explain the idea of "forcing someone to feel something they haven't willingly agreed to" without using crass terms, but essentially that's what the mental dump amounts to.

One of the reasons why this encounter with Jeanne may not have been the same as the times that she has carried out her guard duty and slain the few people that have ever tried to cross the river (this according to Tom) is because this is the first time, presumably, that Jeanne has encountered humans such as herself who are there purely etherically. When she met Annie the first time, it was Annie in her physical form. Now she is only seeing Annie and Parley in their etheric forms. Maybe that's part of why Jeanne reacted differently.