I had fun coming up with a sixties-ish design for Olga’s wardrobe… now that’s real fashion she’ll have you know! If you’ve only recently joined up with Magellan, Freya’s description of the situation regarding Olga is about as precise a description of her current situation that you’re likely to get – for more details read Redux (and see the links available there to check out earlier stories regarding Gola). Seems like the cadet experience isn’t panning out the way she expected – but you’d also know that if you’ve checked out…
Olga & Brelvis #8: a new installment of Olga & Brelvis is now available through Top Webcomics – to see it all you have to do is vote for Magellan. Olga is “related” to super-heroine former Gola Beh – is that enough to impress the others? Your votage gives us a higher ranking and greater exposure to new readers. Magellan made it as high as #29 during February (with over 2,680 votes)! That was an absolutely fantastic effort. Read more in the blog or vote now! Many thanks if you do or have voted! 🙂
Next update: Wednesday March 7th, 2012: First year law… Olga Beh: teacher’s pet?; plus, bad news for Brelvis! Oh… and a number of the new first year students (who you may have already met if you’ve voted recently) make their debut in the main comic.
Crossoverkill: Hoodoo from Force Magellan has joined with superheroes from other awesome webcomics to take on the nefarious Doppelganger Gang in Crossoverkill! A big welcome to all newcomers, we’re partway through Lock(e)down… and the whole epic Magellan adventure starts here… please enjoy your read.
I’d wondered about the dorm setup. Surely the current situation is ripe with the potential for shenanigans…
There’s definitely shenanigan potential (like Mudge stealing underwear in the beginning…), but I’d think that it also serves to help them see each other as compatriots. When you have a whole bunch of guys and girls interspersed, eventually the glitz of being around the opposite sex wears off. There’s a lot of cultures that have combined public baths, for example.
And I bet it’s helpful for when they’re adult heroes and may have to live in close quarters again! For Olga, at least, she’s going to have to improve her telepathic blocking. There’s probably a lot of learned diplomacy, house-mate-ship, and other lessons that a mixed dorm teaches.
Haha, go Olga! By the way, I’ve been following the Olga and Brelvis strips and think they’re very cute.
Once you’re done with them or you’ve released a significant amount of them, will there (eventually) be a place to view them all? They’re definitely worth keeping somewhere!
With next week’s Olga & Brelvis update (#9) I’ll include a link to an archives of all previous eight strips so anyone who came in late can catch up. The archives will be an occasional feature – I don’t want to make it regular because that might diminish the incentive for some to vote at least once a week. 🙂
Why do I get the funny feeling that Olga has the memories of a 30 year old, but the hormones of a teenager? 😀
Physically she is and hormones fall under physical *snicker*
Oh, that is definitely the case!
this made me to smile alot. she only got herself to blame. xD
How does Magellan handle pregnancies among its students?
good question… I won’t answer that until it becomes a plot point at some point… lol
Not many people get to live the consequences of their past mistakes. hehehe
Gola, teens will be teens. Get over it. You’re not doing much better right now, so can it.
Though, I can’t imagine what it would be like psychologically to be in her position. You wake up from a bunch of faked memories, find yourself in your seventies, almost get your memory back, then get reverted to a teen, lose all hope of memory recovery, and suddenly have teenage hormones mixing with your 34-year-old’s outlook on life. Must be a real mind****, as they say.
This is totally random, but I have been wondering–did alterno-future Rochelle get mentored by MindMistress as well? Technically that wouldn’t be possible, would it? As far as we know, MindMistress has only one reality (though I have only read a few of her earlier stories), and in order for her to be involved in both the “new” Magellan reality and the “old” one, there would also need to be two MindMistress realities to correspond, wouldn’t there?
wow, yes, totally random but a very good question. I’ll defer to Al on this one – although as far as I know there is only one MM (all other variants of her being killed off the Crossoverlord in that particular crossover). So either Rochelle from the Other Magellan Reality wasn’t tutored by MM or, if she was, MM knows about the OMR and is keeping it from both Rochelles. It makes sense that MM could travel to the OMR as easily as she can to This Magellan Reality. But I’ll flick an email to Al inn case he hasn’t seen your question and see if he has any thoughts.
But MM is dealing with MAGELLAN’s reality, which at the very least offers alternate futures. If I was mentored by a particular teacher, the fact that one alternate future me might (gulp!) die tomorrow, and another might (hopefully) live to be 100, doesn’t mean there were two teachers. Those are two paths that diverged from the same timeline.
As far as I can tell, the two Rochelles were once one, and diverged around the time Epoch saved Go!Anna. If the one singular Mindmistress taught Rochelle up to then, which she did, then both Rochelles would still have Mindmistress as teacher. Admittedly, that would mean “Stairway to Heaven” probably just happened to one Rochelle, since that was after that divergence point.
On the other hand, from MM’s standpoint, a constantly diverging future Magellan timeline would mean Magellan’s reality would by like the “broadening of the bands” described in Larry Niven’s “All the Myriad Ways” where any of these futures could be visited by the singular Mindmistress—which means to most Rochelles, MM would visit less and less….unless Rochelle summons her, and MM follows the beacon of the Rochelle who summoned her…
See? I knew those years of reading sf wasn’t wasted!
Thanks Al… a curly proposition indeed! Good thing MM has a great memory, she’d need it in order to keep all the Rochelle variants straight in her mind. Of course, there might only be those two realities where Rochelle is a cadet of Magellan Academy, in other realities her life’s path may have played out very differently, if she exists at all!
there are two main methods of building character in cadets: to control them so thoroughly that doing what is right is normal and second nature, or to allow them the freedom to make mistakes so that you can deal with those mistakes in a controlled environment. in america, we don’t have the stomach for mistakes, thus our cadets are controlled, which means mistakes that do happen tend to have bad consequences. frankly the coed system is one that gives plenty of opportunity for mistakes that can affect a hero’s career greatly, with or without the shenanigans. just think of some hero like joe or nadine getting stripped in public, simply having someone else look at you while naked can be disruptive to some people, and the following porn postings via the internet are bound to get under even the most thick skinned of people. let’s not forget more wholesome things like a fan’s crush, what happens when a rather attractive fan decides to seduce mudge?
Well, there have been instances of that in the Magellanverse – most notably Epoch having his semen stolen by an overly devoted (norm) fan who then impregnated herself and ultimately giving birth to the little bundle of joy otherwise known as Charisma. (That story is slated to be the next one after Chapter 6, BTW)…
Charisma doesn’t seem very much like her dad, probably because he didn’t know about her for some of the formative portions of her life. I wonder what her mother is like?
Currently in an institution for the mentally ill…!
Wow. I wasn’t aware it had gone that far. Certainly impregnating yourself with stolen super-hero sperm is pretty nutty, but I didn’t know the nuttiness went as far as that.
Does the Magellan verse have the ‘Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex’ issue?
Yes. Charisma did mention to Bill that she and Lyta were basically his only options when she noticed he was crushing on Kaycee.
I think it’s probably possible to get around, for several reasons. 1) the super-strong person could just be really careful, but that probably is only feasible for people of lesser strength, not those like Charisma and Billy. 2) It’s possible that technology could be developed that would let the super-strong person interact normally with the normal person. Since powers like super-strength seem to be almost universally caused by the “etheric energy field” phenomenon, this might be feasible sometime in the Magellan universe’s future. Maybe courtesy of Rochelle’s genius?
I don’t think the being careful option is really open to Billy, he could just lie completely still I suppose but that would be rather boring!
Well, we already know that the “technology” exists to equalize norm to super, in the Hex2O. It’s a temporary effect making a normal-strength object strong enough to cut an invulnerable, so I bet that magical research could make a spell to turn a norm strong enough to withstand a super-strong person. Hyper-restricted, of course.
But I think the problem is more the fact that Billy is invulnerable, and thus doesn’t realize when he’s using his strength more in the heat of the moment. You don’t see Redd over-extending, because her body lets her know when she is. So I bet it’s more of a control issue.
It should be kept in mind though that the magic water doesn’t effect the super, it effects the metal it comes in contact with – and literally only for a few seconds. No doubt there are some magics that might reverse/reduce some powers but they might not be safe to use.
Perhaps some supervillain has built a power-nullifier thingie at some point that has since fallen into the Magellan Vault? It seems like Lex Luthor can manage to get another one every few weeks.
Yes, it certainly does and The Kings Raven is right about that comment by Charisma. She knows Billy has limited options (as does she to a certain extent).
I wonder what she was like as a teen originally? Didn’t she have those thoughts and feelings? Or was she too busy getting ‘bombarded’ by the thoughts and feelings of others? There’s a reason many telepaths go insane. There’s a reason I’m out of my mind (it’s dark and scary in there!).
Maybe it’s just me, but I keep expecting that flower on “Olga”‘s shoulder to squirt water, as a joke!
lol – sorry, it is just you! 😀
On a completely unrelated note: shouldn’t it be septuagenarian? If she meant Gola Beh was in her 70s.
Yes, it should be – I realised that error on the weekend – I blame Freya, clearly she doesn’t spell check her file notes! 🙁