Indeterminate advanced technology
on March 28, 2018 at 12:01 am“Thousands of years, I’ve reigned, from the very beginning…”
I didn’t want to say “millions” or “billions” because that automatically makes Joyce wrong, and this arc is called “FAITH and Science,” so we can’t just kick that out from under her here. So, um, let’s consider potential other “beginning”s for The Cheese other than the dawn of the universe, I guess.
Also, I put a red herring here as to The Cheese’s identity.
In retrospect, I think the red herring identity would have been better. It’s more obvious, but now I believe sometimes you have to sacrifice that a little for some more solid emotional resonance. Then, I was more invested in it being a surprise. This requires solutions to be more left-field and footnote-y, but gaddangit you get your surprise! Hopefully!
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I’m trying to think of what “beginning” The Cheese could be referring to that’s only thousands of years ago instead of billions. The beginning of human civilization perhaps?
I don’t *think* this is a spoiler since I’ve honestly forgotten most of the Cheese’s backstory, but my best guess is he means his own beginning, he personally has only been around for thousands of years.
yeahhhhhh, that doesn’t really work unless we’re talking AT LEAST *twenty* thousand years as our “thousands” of years, honestly. and that’s only if we’re insisting on modern anatomical humans building structures that we STILL have physically evidence of as proof of “human civilization”.
my definition’s rather broader than that, personally. we KNOW Modern Anatomical Humans date back *at least* 50k years, and that’s not accounting for ANY hominids before that. and I, myself, really don’t feel comfortable calling non-MAH-hominid-races Not Human, in general but especially given what genetics have shown us re: neanderthal and denisovan traces in modern human populations.
I’ll go with The Cheese dates back thousands of years, but elsewise…. nahhhhhhh.
50+ thousand years is still thousands of years. As long as it’s under a million, it’s even the most natural way of saying it: “tens of thousand years I’ve reigned” is a weird sounding mouthful.
Maybe you’re overthinking it. Cheese was invented somewhere from 7½ to 10 thousand years ago.
For shame. Your issues with Joyce’s faith made you give up a Carl Sagan reference. THE Carl Sagan reference. “Billions and billions”.
And you had a cop out. Cheese could have been talking about the universe, not Earth. Flat Earth and the universe revolving around the Earth are, I assume, already not excepted by Joyce. And clearly alien life forms exist, so he just could have been talking the rest of the universe.
“Billions and billions.”
???
Joyce believes the Earth is young, because she’s a Biblical literalist. It has nothing to do with whether the Earth is flat???
???????! I’ve read the Bible cover to cover many times. It LITERALLY does not say anything about how old the Earth is. This is an American thing, yet again, not a Christian thing…
The Bible does explicitly say how old the Earth is via the magic of genealogies. Like it never States it plainly, but there is a lineage from Adam that can be traced to Noah, to Abraham, and finally to Jesus. Add up the approximate ages of everyone, and you get a number around 6,000. Of course, there are two contradict Tory lineages for Jesus presented, but there are lots of ways around that that have been come up with.
Doesn’t the Bible also imply that until Abram, humans lived for a greatly extended period of time? Like, over 900 years?
Dark: Yes, but it also tells us how old each father was when the next person in the genealogy list is born. You don’t get to count all of Abraham’s 950 years, no. We know his three sons were born by the time he turned 500. And so you lop those final 450 years off the timeline.
It’s not really an American thing or a “Christian” thing. It’s a some sects of Christians thing. The theory dates back to early Christianity (maybe back to Judaism?) and was pretty widely accepted through the Middle Ages.
Those that still buy into it generally don’t really make a huge distinction between creating the Universe and creating the Earth – God did both and did them all within those initial days. The rest of the universe is really just a backdrop for the important stuff that happens here anyway.
A perfectly reasonable approach for a bunch of bronze age shepherds.
Yeah, IIRC the religious Jewish calendar to this day still has its “Year Zero” as being the traditional year and day of creation as calculated from the biblical genealogies; as I recall, the calendar dates the Creation to late September, ~5700 years ago (can’t remember the exact assigned date off the top of my head).
To belabour the point, modern Christian Young Earthers are basing their beliefs on Archbishop James Ussher, Primate of All Ireland 1625-1626, who was not American. And even today they exist outside America; I used to work with one here in Scotland.
But I think Yakumo’s point was that Flat Earthers also claim to be Biblical literalists, based on their interpretation of what the bible “literally” says (“God commanded the sun to stop in the sky for Jonah, not the Earth to cease turning” is one I remember hearing), and Joyce can presumably work around that, so why not the Young Earth bit?
And the answer is because that’s what her version of Biblical literalism taught her the Bible literally says.
Also, remember that there are two creation tales in the Bibel, one for the Universe, and one for the Earth. Billions of years could separate those two.
*scratches head*
I think the idea that one of the creation stories is for the Universe and the other for the Earth is… not supported within the text itself.
Yeah, zero support in the text for that take. Most interpretations I’ve read see the second account as expanding on the first.
You could have used aeons!
TRUE
What was the red herring identity?
I swear I’ve read all of these (at least until the paid strips) as well as Shortpacked! and I’m not afraid of spoilers…
I don’t know, I’m only guessing, but is it maybe Sal?
It’s implying that time is cyclical, that it has lived this part of time before and is back here again. And the way The Cheese’s self-recrimination is written here could easily be re-purposed as Sal dialogue, without really changing anything.
Almost definitely Sal, I think. “I need emotional detatchment and to avoid the ghosts of my past” is very her.
Sal as the cheese?
That… that actually sounds good.
Sounds cheesy.
This is why I love the commentary. Willis says there’s a red herring here and even Wack’d is like, what red herring?
Hint: Not Sal
Another hint: The Cheese repeats a bit of dialogue in this strip that another character said recently.
It’s a common enough saying, but it’s supposed to be a red herring nonetheless.
Found it.
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/the-beard-makes-you-look-like-a-sissy/
“Indeterminate advanced technology” reminds me of Dina? But it’s not a common saying, so *shrug*.
besides, Dina can’t be a sort-of-omniscient deity when nobody’s looking. She’s the standard abductee and 100% okay.
Dina will always be okay.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClarkesThirdLaw
Slightly misworded but yeah, common enough.
That’s because it’s not the saying.
It’s the
“I must not fail. Not now.”
Dina was the one who went for the BFG in the Fans arc, because she’d failed in the past.
Just in case anyone forgot the last reel surprise reveal, Willis was actually hinting at it quite early on!
Location: who knows where
“No matter. His backdoor to my universe has just been sealed.”
Sounds like The Cheese is into butt plugs.
Honestly, I like the Cheese’s true identity well enough, but I would love to see what things might have been like with the red herring.