Jun07
Con Schedule
CGS Super ShowApril 6-7, 2013
Reading, Pa. - Meg only
TCAF
May 11-12, 2013
Toronto, Ontario - Isa and Meg!
Philadelphia Comic Con
May 30-June 2, 2013
Philadelphia, Pa. - Isa and Meg!
Where to find Meg
Where to find Isa
The Adventures of Ellie Connelly
All New Issues
Amya
Dar
The Devil's Panties
Dovecote Crest
The Dreamer
Eerie Cuties
Everblue
Fall on Me
The GaMERCaT
Girl Genius
Girls With Slingshots
Gloomies!
GRONK: A Monster's Story
Lackadaisy Cats
The Meek
> Seed
Phoenix Requiem
Red String
Roza
Something Positive
Subculture
Xylia Tales
YU+ME dream
Metacarpolis
GGAR
Sister Claire
> Blaster Nation
> 9.18 The Fan, radio
If the plot keeps thickening like this, I’m pretty sure we’re all going to fall through floor =/
Joking aside, I starting to wonder if that first girl that died at the beginning was supposed to do something else if she was to be the Wizard of Oz namesake…
… What? O.o
lol I probably missed something at the beginning XD what I should have said is if Emma isn’t the “Dorothy” that’s supposed to be there then who is?
Wasn’t Karen the namesake for the Red Shoes story, not the Wizard of Oz?
o.o wow you got it, remember at the start? the girl in the wheel chair had her feet removed because the dancing red shoes would not work on wooden feet.
Although it is kind of weird that both stories feature red/ruby shoes.
In the book, the shoes were silver. I don’t recall exactly which canon is in use here. The shoes were made red for the movie because it looked better.
One of the things I really love about this comic is how much each page has me more and more excited for the next. I can’t wait to find out what this “it” Renge talks about is.
My theory is that “it” is the manifestation of all the Dorothys that Emma has been seeing.
you were thinking that to?
The death of each new Dorothy has been breaking Ozma’s heart. We’ve seen before how devastating the effects of a broken heart can be in Oz; so, for Renge, the Dorothy is “it.” She wants to keep the Dorothy away from Ozma to protect Ozma. The Sleeping Poppies are her version of the brambles around Sleeping Beauty’s castle, designed to keep everyone away from Ozma.
no i don’t think that’s it.
I was thinking that too, but on second thought it’s probably something a lot more sinister than that.
I don’t know, that actually seems like the most plausible of every other idea I’ve seen on here, including mine (which was more like random babbling anyway). But, like Karen said, it might be more sinister than that. Maybe Renge has gotten power hungry…?
O_O
Renge either knows big plot things we don’t, has taken on the Warrick school of how best to protect Ozma, or all of the above.
Two things (well, three. or possibly four): Still totally in love with everyone’s costuming. If I can figure out where to get the boots, totally going as Renge to SacAnime in August. (that collar is going to be *so* much fun to draft. Worth it.) And if I can find purple face paint and the time to draft another giant dress, Selva at Fanime next year.
Also, my book came today! Absolutely gorgeous, love the workmanship, very nice. Got a little munged in transit (top corner is squnched, technical term, and I think had ink poured on it. Possibly it’s mud. Either way it’s USPS’s fault.), but nothing serious.
Finally: WHY ISN’T IT SATURDAY ALREADY I NEED TO KNOW WHAT “IT” IS. New plan: build a time machine/steal a TARDIS. Go to Saturday. Find out. (what? all my plans are excellent.)
“It” is probably “The Dorothy.” It’s a category, like we do for things. Clothes, shoes, cups, tools. Even animals. When we don’t know the gender, we say “it.” In a sense, she’s made herself stop seeing “The Dorothy” as “She.” Instead, the Dorothy is “it” It’s the opposite of humanizing someone, she can now kill the Dorothy without remorse because she sees it as an object. And all, probably, to protect Ozma.
Definitely a plausible explanation, but there are a few things from past pages that make me wonder if it’s not just the Dorothy that has Renge so intent on keeping out of the city. The ghost from the Dorothy house, the mask-girl we’ve seen just recently, the monster in the castle of the west, those could all be “it”, rather than Emma.
*takes off her seamstress hat, puts on her linguist hat*
Technically true, but colloquially ‘it’ is reserved for inanimate objects, giving anything that can think ‘they’, because English gave up its true neutral pronoun group when it gave up gender, forever ago. (I have a rant about this. You don’t want to hear it.)
*takes off her linguist hat*
That being said, Renge has made a distinction between “It” and the Dorothy with Emma, which leads me to believe that it’s probably the ghost lady thing.
You seem to be forgetting that not everybody follows proper English grammar or literary etiquette. Indeed, there are legitimate reasons to break convention, especially for effect. (Just one example: What if the story has one or more poorly educated characters or foreigners who don’t have a firm grasp of English grammar?) For that matter, we are talking about a fictional universe that probably exists in a dimension separate from Emma’s world. I’m actually surprised they speak so close to modern American English that Emma hasn’t noticed a difference.
Also, Renge may well have reasons to call The Dorthy an “it.” Or she’s just that mentally unhinged. And some people will call someone that just to be insulting.
“You seem to be forgetting that not everybody follows proper English grammar or literary etiquette. Indeed, there are legitimate reasons to break convention, especially for effect. (Just one example: What if the story has one or more poorly educated characters or foreigners who don’t have a firm grasp of English grammar?)”
Er, that’s what I just said. Colloquial does not equal proper. Colloquial equals slang, actually, and the less educated and/or more foreign you are the more likely you are to use colloquialisms, because that’s what you hear other people using. Given how Renge speaks, she may in fact be incredibly proper about these things, but I’d need to hear more of her to come to any conclusions.
“For that matter, we are talking about a fictional universe that probably exists in a dimension separate from Emma’s world. I’m actually surprised they speak so close to modern American English that Emma hasn’t noticed a difference.”
While we haven’t been given enough dialogue to come up with concrete proof for or against a different dialect of English (I’m assuming that the language barrier has been handwaved as part of the Namesake thing), we also have been shown that Oz (so far) uses the same general forms and rules that modern American English uses, which lends weight to the idea that the it/they societal idea of gender nonspecificity is also in effect.
I’m actually surprised they speak so close to modern American English that Emma hasn’t noticed a difference.
If you go back to the Oz books, they speak pretty close to modern American English. They’re a little bit politer — if you look at the Scarecrow, you’ll see that he speaks more formally than Warrick. A good number of years have passed though, and language evolves in Oz as well. However, I do my best to try to keep modern slang out of the Ozites speech. I’ve made a couple of slips that were corrected for the book. I usually try not to use slang that’s past 1910 in Namesake.
Has she made that distinction? I took her “You’re not ‘it’. You’re not the Dorothy.” as emphasis, not as two separate things.
You will post photos after, please?
I hate Renge the person, but she is definitely striking in appearance.
I’ve got this feeling that yes, “it” is Dorothy, but “it” is also not Dorothy but the ghost. I wonder what nasty business it’s up to.. Because, we know it is up to something.
I agree, because this is the second time Renge said the same thing using it and the Dorothy “Where is “it”? Where’s the Dorothy” and “You’re not “it”, you’re not the Dorothy.” Which, to me, implies that whatever “it” may be, shows up when the Dorothy does. And maybe the phantom chose Emma instead of a Dorothy to throw everything off kilter…
I’ve been reading since the beginning, but its my first time commenting. I LOVE this comic so much!! The writing, the artwork it’s all so amazing! Ok that being said I have a theory I’d like to throw out there
What if the ghost really is all the Dorothy’s whose souls are unable to leave Oz. Maybe they are the “it” Renge is referring to. Maybe that monster locked in the closet and the ghost are one in the same. Maybe the sight of the souls of the Dorothy’s in such a state drove Ozma mad and Renge had to lock her away for her own protection. Maybe the Dorothy’s are using Emma to get back into the city, back to Ozma…for revenge or something else? That’s why Renge is trying to keep everyone out of the city in case one of them is transporting the Dorothy’s souls the way it appears Emma is….Just thoughts. I love that this comic keeps on constant pins and needles!!! It’s my favorite one, keep up the amazing work!
It is still unclear. (Pun intended… I think.
) But what is clear is that “it” refers to either The Dorthy, or The Phantom inside Emma, or The Thing which attacked young Warrick and Selva inside the Castle and which Adora (their mom) died protecting them from. It’s one of those three. And the latter two might be the same thing.
In any case, I get the distinct impression that most fans are firmly entrenched in their disbelief in the possibility that Renge might be referring specifically to The Dorthy alone, with no knowledge of The Phantom.
Renge’s lines on this page is swaying me more towards the belief that Renge is referring to The Thing in the locked closet which attacked Warrick and Selva in their ancestral home. She declared, from looks alone, that Emma was not The Dorthy, not “it”. (Possibly both at the same time.) But she probably doesn’t know about Emma having a ghost hitchhiker.
But it is interesting that Renge asked Emma, “WHAT are you?”
That’s almost as impersonal as calling Emma an “it”! The more obvious question would have been, “WHO are you?”
OK, I think I’m grasping the thread of the conversation about the grammar and meaning of hte word “it”, which is really good, as I’m studying English in my University degree.
But, Xspacetrue, I think in this case “What are you” is not just a question of dehumanizing or not – it asks about a different matter than “Who are you”, for what I understand: while “who” asks for the identity, “what” asks for the nature. That is, the answer to “who are you” would be “I’m Emma”, while the answer to “what are you” would be “I’m a human being”. I’m saying this on the basis of all the fiction I read and the RPGs I play, these questions appear a lot when there are different supernatural beings around, or different magic races.
I haven’t been following the author’s commentary or comment threads, so I don’t know if the reader community knows who Emma is. I’ll try to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t come to the same conclusion I did.
Did Emma’s prototype namesake ever get to Oz? If so, who did she interact with? I’ve only read a few of the books.
I’ve read the entire original series, and a fair portion of the Ruth Plumley Thompson series, Emma has not been in any of them. Take that with the fact that the Namesake Organization doesn’t know of any reference to an “Emma” and I think we can be sure she isn’t connected with the OZ series to date.
Do you guys remember when Ozma said
“‘IT’s’ back”
and then Anilssa said to Warrick
“Our princess died and it’s all your fault!”
Okay, “It” is definitely the real Dorothy, but Emma isn’t the Dorothy (as we knew all along). I’m fairly certain that the real Dorothy hasn’t come to Oz… yet…
Btw, I love the new header, Isa!
It’s beautiful and reflects your improvement in art :3
I have to agree, the new header looks awesome!
So I stumbled onto this webcomic through one of the others that I read and I had no clue what was going on at first; I flipped back about seven pages and couldn’t make sense of anything. So I started at the beginning, and read the entire thing all the way through in one sitting. This is some fantastic story telling! And the graphics are fun too. I am definitely hooked
That’s probably the downside of namesake, the story goes pretty fast, so only reading a couple of pages really can’t give that much of a feel of the story… Not everybody gives it a chance and reads the archives. I’m happy you did!!
Thank you so much and welcome aboard.
Enough of us do that I quit counting how many bumped up against the presentand complained. Are you forgetting us, your loyal fanatics? Nah, the way the plot twists keep coming, that could not possibly be it.
GUESS WHO’S DONE READING
Fanart will be on the way. It will.
I’ve been following this comic for months and never had anything important to say, but I just got my book in the mail, and it looks fantastic!!! You guys rock. I’m lending it to my sister (who is totally the Emma to my Elaine, except that she’s the younger one) and I guarantee that you’ll have another fan by midnight.
I’ve been wearing my little Warrick pendant around my neck all day, close to my heart. He can borrow mine any time he wants.
I think I’m banking on Emma being the first of her namesake. Renge straight up says that Emma is not the Dorothy, and she says it in confusion, a reaction to Emma, well, not being the Dorothy. When it is said on pure reflex, it is much more likely to be true. However, I don’t think “It” is the Dorothy either, I get the impression of two distinct beings. While, in Renge’s eyes, neither one is desireable, only “It” is referred as having to be kept out. Neither desireable, but at least the Dorothy isn’t deliberately doing harm. I get the distinct impression that, while she has taken it several steps too far, Renge is ultimately only trying to protect, is a reasonable person.
Emma’s just been told she’s not a Dorothy, but she doesn’t seem the happier for it…
Oh… I think I see now…
Just got here from an archive-crawl of Chapter 9. Based on this, it seems as though creepy-ghostgirl-woodthing/blacksludge creature is the ninth/new Dorothy (though, that doesn’t explain the wardrobe, unless whatever was in the wardrobe has possessed what should have been this generation’s Dorothy.)