Endtown by Aaron Neathery for June 14, 2020

Well, at long last we have the explanation of “there is no mutagenic plague.”

Now, how does the biosuit prevent any of this happening to you?

The “knife to the face” was here:

https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2019/11/18

I did not realize that Duffy had actually cut him. Of course, there is a problem with the fact that she seems to have been unconscious when it happened.

So, at least some of the topsiders seem to know about the requirement to be unconscious, now.

I would have thought that some cartoon also have human-type character, so they happens to simply exchange form with their counterparts of the cartoon world who happens to be human.

One thing does strike me as strange: Why should cardoodles have species-appropriate lifespans? That’d make sense if they were true mutants, but they’re not. It’s a rare cartoon that gives its animals realistic lifespans.

This explains a lot!

Part cartoon? Those this mean cartoon physics will work for them?

“Don’t look down and you will not fall off the cliff.”

Some people really get into comics..!

OK, I guess that kind of makes sense. But what if we switch the focus to the alternate “from” worlds. If the toothbrushes normally live in a world where they are hive minds, what happens when the swap takes place and human forms migrate to the toothbrush world side? Do you now have one or more “swapped” human form creatures on the toothbrush world lacking in human intelligence and functional ability? I.E. humans don’t normally have hive mind abilities, so the swapped human form beings now have toothbrush intelligence, but no hive mind abilities. Their limited “single” toothbrush soul is now trying to control a vastly more massive and complex human body. Would that make them tragically malformed humans, mentally and physically speaking. who are completely unable to communicate with their fellow toothbrushers? Also, would they be attacked for being different?

And on the cartoon world, any human form transferees would be at huge risk of dying from all of the dropping anvils, exploding bombs, snapping traps, etc. without any native cardoodle healing abilities. Plus, where would they put their 5th finger in gloves that only had 4? Also, switching back briefly to the human world side, the doctor suggested that the reason some humans didn’t get swapped was because their was no corresponding form on the cartoon world side. So what, exactly, constitutes, this corresponding form? Is she suggesting that, for instance, Wally, was swapped because somehow a cardoodle matched the human Wally in some manner, say, a kindred or a twin soul or some sort? Which brings up another question (switching worlds again). What kind of kindred soul would constitute a matchup between the toothbrush world and a human world? A hive mind wouldn’t have any natural boundaries, I’m guessing, so where would the matchup occur to facilitate a swap to the human world and vice versa?

There are still questions here.

and of course, its not ‘just simple plastic stuff’..

How do the toothbrush creatures move? And how does one stop this plague from occurring, and how does one cure somebody already transformed? Still a lot of questions.

Finally!!! I’ve been waiting for an explanation for “there IS no mutagenic plague” for FOUR YEARS!! September, 2016, when the ship’s AI first told Wally that HUGE revelation, and no one’s mentioned it since…

Topsider: “And, the reveal you’ve all been waiting for, who killed Roger Rabbit. That was… Oops, that page of the comic’s been torn out. Sorry ’bout that, Chief.”

That squares with the “you have to be asleep” notion of surviving conversion.

“This explains a lot”

or

Does this explain too much?

Plus, especially in 11 June’s installment, as well as today’s (well, yesterday 14 June), little miss Janie-come-lately seems awful glib about it all!

Most of all, the suggestion that, in the so-called “alternate realities,” there were sentient toothbrush beings? Let alone “cartoon” living beings?

Sorry. Not making sense.

To me, at least.

Did they swap or merge? I seems to me, the cardoodle world MERGED with the human world. The cardoodles and monsters appeared on the human world. The structures, cars, etc. stayed the same – not cardoodle looking. Some of the science/biology/physics of the cardoodle world seems to have transferred – I think – but not all. Though I am not positive if the humans who had no counterpart to merge with gained the healing ability/extended lifetime of a cardoodle. The items the humans created still work in the current merged reality. There might be some items that work ONLY in the merged reality. Not sure if I can clearly state what I mean. It just seems more of a merger than a change of places.

Before you start raising eyebrows at some of the inconsistencies of this theory (how the heck do the suits work? And how do you change an unconscious suit wearer by making a hole in the suit?), keep in mind that this is her scientific theory, not necessarily the reality.

holy crap, I remember all of the dialogue said here as part of the speculation we were doing in the comments on the last update. In fact I speculated about the reason why monsters are created when you’re conscious while transforming myself. Not to say we’re smarter than the author or anything, it’s just that the comic’s world building is so good that we are able to speculate and theorize how things work based on what we’ve seen so far and actually be right. Good job on both the continuity and world building.

This version of Amesworth seems to have something.

I wish we could all recover from things like Cardoodles. It can’t protect from a broken heart though, we know it’s that way for Wally’ and the people he has loved, though he seems not to miss his newest family. As far as he knows, they are all dead.Or is a giant heartbreak coming?

https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2019/11/18For the healing…

Alan’s eye healed: https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2020/03/04

So the radiation from zero bombs and amesworth weaponry didn’t mutate most people into anthros. But it seems that the changes escalated at the same time that the war did. Did the weapons split through the dimensions? Or Did Apex start playing around with dimensional travel to try to escape the war? If they designed the suits for inter-dimensional than immunity to this “mutation” would have been in as an unintended protection against an unknown threat (dimensional body merge).

What a revolting development this is!

The 4th wall has arrived

Knife to his face? When did this happen?

So this is an interesting explanation, but it creates two holes:

1. What’s the deal with people turning into monsters when their suits are opened? Does this mean they have an alternate reality counterpart that’s conveniently in limbo until the suit is breached, kind of like the “other” particle in a quantum entanglement pairing?

2. How did those piles of toothbrushes seen in the photo in the paper a couple installments ago avoid changing into monsters? Were they sleeping in the street? If they were conscious, they should have transformed into phantasms.

[Looks at Toothbrush in bathroom] In some dimension this is an accountant living the good life.

Hmmm. Why were there cardoodles in the first place? Cartoon critters may have animal appearances and sometimes animal habits, but they also exhibit human behaviors. That’s not really something likely to evolve naturally.

Perhaps Aaron Neathery has embraced Heinlein’s Fictons concept, where the act of creating fictions creates universes populated by those characters. For example, the lead characters in his The Pursuit of the Pankera visit universes populated with 1) Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom stories, 2) Doc Smith’s Lensmen Universe, 3) Oz and others. So the act of creating the cartoons in a human universe leads to the cardoodle universe.

Of course, if the “ficton” idea is applicable, there really is an “Endtown” universe — and all that that implies…

I knew this universe was looney toons!

I forget; when in this series was it stated or clarified that anthros have a healing factor?

What about those who do die, seems the cartoon image would have saved Portia, a fall from the tower with the wolf guy, we’ve all seen Wiley coyote fall great heights and survive

cartoon image would have saved Portia, a fall from the tower with the wolf guy, we’ve all seen Wiley coyote fall great heights and survive

What makes one reality merge with another and not multiple random ones?What made some mutate now and others later?And why are all new mutations immediate?