Endtown by Aaron Neathery for October 31, 2014

I believe that is “complete MENTAL collapse”

They’re in trouble now. I had a raccoon when I was a kid. They get into EVERYTHING. He’ll start with the eggs, first.

Well, the predictions made by past coments were correct, Jim’s animal tendencies took over! :| Lock up your house, kids, and fridge. Jim is on the loose.

“Complete metal collapse”? What metal? Oh, “mental”. I knew that.

I would hardly be surprised if, following a long and difficult battle, someone ends up with a nice coonskin cap.

By the way kids, this strip here, is destined to be a collectors’ item, and may be bought quickly, while people try to decide if Aaron made a typo(printo?).

So, and I am just guessing, but I suspect Aaron, contacted through aaronneathery@gmail.com , may still sell the fresh originals for $130US(USD One Hundred Thirty). Contact him for this strip, or any of the prints at the AUCTION LINK which is the lavender link to the left. The auction has less than 48 hours to go for Holly and Wally at the Sea with the Moon, so go on over there, and maybe bid, or possibly buy a print. Those prints look really nice. Support your local artist. Before he has to go to Rick’s Other Cabaret, and try his stripping skills there. Or even worse, go on the road with The Men of LaBare.

“No! He got into the rafters!”What those rafts were doing there, I’ll never know.

I like Jim, hopefully they bring him back from the edge.

Well now I just don’t know. It was metal, now it is mental. Aaron may have a “metal” original available. Write him at aaronneathery@gmail.com anyway to inquire about originals or prints.

Both are bargains and would have made lovely Halloween treats if you’d ordered in time. Still time enough to order of Christmas, Festivus or birthdays.

A former human calling animal tendencies “psychotic” and “homicidal.” That’s rich. Which animal was it that destroyed the world, again, Piotr? Right.

And yet Piotr took the time to put on every bit of his outfit..

Well it looks FUBAR from here ol’ Jims gone full metal Tanooki!“This is the ennnnnnnnnd”The HorrorThe Horror….Some Lizzy’s gonna get bit…Gonna get bit real good!Git r’ done Jim Git r’ Done!It’s Rabid Jim’s Country Jamboree!!This looks like a fun ride kids, if we get in line now we may just get a ride by Monday..

How many crazed raccoons do they see go by in Lizardtown?

Raccoons are cute. They can even make cute pets.

But you don’t ever, ever, want to mess with a PO’ed raccoon. Pound for pound they’re worse than tigers.

Piotr’s explanation of the Shism syndrome matches what happened to Flask during her time in the pit. “Complete mental collapse”Animal tendencies take over"“Homicidal! Psychotic!”Definitely sounds like the Flask we knew and loved. I’m glad she’s doing better now.

Speaking of Flask, bring her back!

Here’s a challenge for the weekend. How about a filk, or song adaptation. It’s a weekend, I’ll see if I can come up with something by, oh maybe Thin Lizard: Jailbreak!

Tonight there’s gonna be a Jailbreak

Wonder if this is going to end with the two of them back in each others arms :). Noted jim dying and the colony burning down around them.

wait…was the whole “kill everyone who is not a reptile” history of this colony a bout of schism syndrome? After all, the reptilian part of the brain is the part that makes you want to fight for survival.

I have been thinking of Flask’s vengance plan often during the past few weeks. I know that the general tendency of the group is to side with Wally and Petey and say that Flask’s actions were wrong. Still, was it much different from the allied bombing of Germany and the fire bombing of Japan during World War Two? The greatest difference I see is that Flask’s mission was based on a tormented soul seeking revenge where the allied bombing was about the quickest way to bring a horrific war to a favorable conclusion.My question is what if there was another “mutant” group fighting the Topsiders and they decided to hack into the drones and program them to attack Topsider colonies. From a certain point of view, the deaths of children and other noncombatants would be horrifying. Still, the Topsiders have spent the past seven years trying to exterminate all mutants and there is little indication that there are any Topsider factions that would be willing to let the mutants survive. One could reasonably argue that killing as many Topsiders as possible may be mutanity’s best chance at survival. Who among you would object to a level headed mutant commander willing to attack Topsider civilian populations in the name of survival?

I don’t know as Schism Syndrome is going to really make Jim go completely berk. It may go the other way and cause extreme depression as I think it did with Wally. Running away and trying to hide would be a pretty normal response to your entire world collapsing on you. Sides, even if he did “go native”, well… even raccoons run and hide from things they’re unsure of, especially if they think everyone else around them is a bigger predator.

Go Jimbo! Those arrogant Saurians need to be taken down a notch. Xenophobia is never pretty….

I SOOOO CALLED IT!!! Good luck trying to put him in a pet carrier now!…Let’s hope Holly and Chic can soothe this savage beast.

…after he has destroyed this colony, preferably…

This is going to get interesting. Jim’s sanity has gone bye-bye and getting him under control is going to be more than a little difficult.

raccoons eat mice and chickens

Oh yeah, like locking him up will really solve the problem…

This actually fills in and answers a basic question of the change. If people are in their right mind when the outer form became monsters, then why did they not just accept the form and continue. On the other hand if they are concious during the change, the mental anguish of the change forces the schism and the mind goes too. As poor Spark Plug found out with his wife (and what was left of his child)

I suspect we won’t see this kind of a mutant/Topsider war as this doesn’t seem to be the way Aaron’s themes go. We are more likely to see some more light shed on Topsider society.At this point we have not seen any mutant society that has the resources and firepower to match the Topsiders. That does not mean that such a society doesn’t exist. Jim and Sarah mentioned a world beyond the great wastes that was beyond the Topsiders’ reach. That suggests mutants with technology that is at least a match for the TS or mutants with some sort of “super power” (like telekinetic abilities) that allows them to hold off the technically superior Topsiders. If we assume that no such "competitive mutant society exists, then there would be some sort of asymmetric warfare. One possibility (at least in the short term) would be to hack into the Topsiders’ system and use their own capabilities against them. If a mutant group could get a feed from the Topsiders’ own satellite, they could learn where Topsider colonies were and then hack the drones and send them to do to the Topsiders what they did to the ruins above West Alboin. Since the drones do not distinguish targets as friend or foe, it might not be hard to have them fly to (possibly) the Topsider main colonies and have them do what drones do. This tactic may be limited as the Topsiders may figure out how to plug security holes, possibly even ditching automated weapons like the drones altogether. It should also be noted that hacking into Topsider systems would not be easy, they did catch Flask hacking into the rocket data after all.The other possibility is to make roaming the wastes so dangerous and expensive that the Topsiders are forced to rethink their options. If we assume that other mutant settlements have access to some sort of ray gun, mutants could coordinate to set up ambushes where the Topsiders are lured into a place where they are out in the open and their attackers have good cover. If Professor Mallard was able to engineer the ray guns to pierce a biosuit (like the zero scalpels can) one could set things up where they would just have to puncture one suit and escape to let the monster deal with the rest.I agree that both scenarios have their limitations and they require the mutants to have some extremely capable people on their sides to pull off either scenario. Still, if the mutants wanted to fight the Topsiders, they are not totally without options.

Saturday night…. I’ve been thinking of how characters who had a problem with schism syndrome seemed to overcome it with, if you don’t mind me being “earthy” a little nookie. Here’s my reference: Gustine really overcame her fear of the schism after being intimate with Al after he was healed. Wally overcame his fear after being with Holly. In this story, Sarah is definitely more centered after being with Piotr. Is there anybody willing to sacrifice a little “intimacy” with Jim?

You know, in some ways, the Saga of Albert and Gustine seems like it belongs to a different universe—-one more broadly comic and silly, light-hearted (at least at the beginning). By the time Wally came on the scene, so to speak, it would seem jokes were being made and funny situations came up from time to time, but the undertone, the story itself, was very serious…

“So Jim has run off…What’s the emergency??” I’m amazed how Sarah couldn’t care less about Jim.