Jeanie Bottle 498
Huh, Neil’s being coy about Araceli’s hint. Interesting….
Some of you may have noticed Kazom haunting the site for the last few days, and might have already discovered this. But for those who haven’t, I’d like to officially announce that
The Melvin Chronicles is BACK!
Carlos, our new artist and writer, has taken over the comic, and hopes to maintain a Tuesday and Thursday posting schedule. This is his first webcomic, so lets all root for him! I’ve seen the first several pages, I think you guys are gonna like it. 🙂
The first re-launch page is up now, and the second will be posted on Thursday. The new storyline will then begin on August 30th, to give Carlos time to develop a healthy comic buffer. And don’t worry, the JB hiatus will not be starting until well after Aug 30th.
Well, why are you still reading my boring words? Go check out The Melvin Chronicles!
I know Neil’s well within his rights to make Jean sweat this out after all the shit he’s gone through, but I would find it a bit hard to believe that he’s seriously considering banishing his friend.
No, that not it, he trying to intimidate her to get her to act more responsible in the future. So she won’t keep pulling this shit on him, which he doesn’t like. He can take a free shot and he going to take it while he can. But, there no serious effort to get ride of her. This is what Neil game is all about.
Unfortunately for Neil, the Big Blue will likely make him regret this bluff.
Neil’s “little” oopsie here is forgetting what he is dealing with. Jean is a powerful magical being. Sooner or later, “she” will find out that this is a mockery. So…time to one up him.
No you’re not getting it. He doesn’t understand that this is dire for jean. Because aricelli didn’t specifically tell him what happens to genies rejected on haji day. He doesn’t know jean’s going to be imprisoned for centuries if not all time. He thinks jean’s just going to be reassigned to a master that clicks with him/her better. He may decide to “send Jean away” before learning this, or may not even learn it afterwards. This is a situation where a character doesn’t have complete information, so as to allow a deus ex machina to happen caused by him without him seeming unethical.
hopefully Jean can explain why she’s been acting like this to Neil, and hopefully he’ll believe her.
I hate to critique on a fun rant of Neil’s but it’s supposed to be “you’ve magically”, not “you magicly”.
Oh shoot, I noticed that typo when I first went over the comic, but missed it on my actual copy editing pass.
hope this doesn’t send a tag along into a panic
I hope Jean learns a lesso-HAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA! Sorry, couldn’t keep that laugh in. To paraphrase Mayor Quimby, “Jean is so screwed”.
Jean deserves this, but I feel sure that Neil wouldn’t actually follow through. In the long term it may force Jean to improve her behavior as Haji’s day does come around every year.
We know Neil! He bluffing Jeanie out and he not serious about banishing Jeanie, he just want her to act more responsible in the future, which is probably vain effort on Neil part, because, Jeanie will probably forget the whole after Haji days over with.
“More responsibly” is the Master’s job, not the Genie’s.
The genie is only supposed to be obedient.
@50srefugee – because Jean has been doing sooooooooo well on the obedience front.
@He Who Abides: That is between a negligent master and his disobedient genie; none of Haji’s concern. Neil must take Jeanie in hand, or Jeanie’s lost.
@50srefugee He’s not going to treat her like a slave. Besides, he made it clear he’s just doing this to mess with Jean.
@50srefugee – if Neil does that, we lose the “beta-as-master/alpha-as-servant” dynamic that makes the comic so enjoyable, though. Besides, Jean knows what’s expected of her, so the obedience thing is at least partly on her.
I’m not sure if CD realizes that he’s set this up, but since breaking that Chinese genie’s bottle killed her and allowed Big Bad Blue to absorb all her magic (kind of like Gullet over in El Goonish Shive, although Gullet didn’t last very long), banishing Jean like Jehane and like Rouyah would seem to leave the bottle empty again–which could mean that Neil, picking up the bottle to look for Jean, could Jean-ify himself.
Well we already know that Neil not going to banish Jeanie. We know that Neil is just bluffing Jeanie out because he can. This is one of the few times that Neil can actually intimidate Jeanie and he going to take the shot. There is absolutely no possibility that Neil going to banish Jeanie at all. He still see Jeanie as his friend and Neil would not do that to her.
Except … that Neil is the only one who can banish the blue djinn too..
I hope, regardless of what Jeanie gains from this conversation, that Neil begins to accept that he is indeed Jeanie’s Master, and starts picking up his slack. He’s been horribly neglectful in his duties. And he of all people should know that Jeanie is NOT responsible enough to wield her Cosmic Powers without supervision.
But I concur with several other folks here, including Larry, Kirby, and Saylor, so far, that Neil is very unlikely to actually send Jeanie away.
I wouldn’t blame Neil for “slacking off” on his supposed duties as master. He has a rather demanding day job as a NASA engineer that uses a lot of brainpower. And he probably has to catch up on work that didn’t get done while Natalie was going boy crazy over Roger. Jeanie has been the irresponsible one from day one.
Not to mention that Neil probably has to pick up the slack at work while Rodge is moping around about Natalie. (Not that Rodge usually does much, anyway.)
He wouldn’t be a good person if he treated someone as a slave. So no, that’s not going to happen.
Plus previous strips made it clear he wouldn’t banish Jean, this is just a bluff.
I’ll note, too, that he’s known about this since reading the Manual–and neglected to mention Haji’s Day to Jeanie. Shameful lapse, on his part. I admit, I think that if he has to send Jeanie away, it’s more his fault as master, than Jeanie’s fault as genie. He’s the brains of the pair, and needs to step up.
Unless, of course, he’s fibbing about having read this in the manual. After all, he WAS tipped off by Araceli. My guess is that that the bit about the manual is just a cover-up. After all, it’s what, 10,000 pages of small print? I doubt that even Neil would read all that.
Neil’s an engineer. Engineers read technical catalogs on the toilet, for Newton’s sake. Of course he read this manual.
You can likely figure out how it works on your own if you’re any good, but reading the manual can get all kinds of interesting details you’d never stumble acress on your own.
Isn’t the manual searchable? He could’ve, after being tipped by Araceli, searched for Haji’s day and read that part of manual.
@50srefugee: He’d have to spend the rest of his life on the toilet to get through that thing. Besides, nowadays engineers don’t read manuals, they just use Google search queries. 😉
@hkmaly: Why bother? She already told him what Haji Day was.
Yes, even when Neil did look at the Genie Manual to learn about how to take care of your Genie and what kind of Genie are out there, he basically skip read the Genie Manual and since there was 10,000 plus pages, I doubt that saw most of what was in that Genie Manual. He only spent a few days at the most looking at the Genie Manual and so he probably only spent a few hour looking at the Genie Manual, before throwing it to on side and probably not look at it since.
So there probably a lot about Genie that Neil doesn’t know about Genie that would have been in the Genie Manual that Neil doesn’t know, like Haji Day that a Master can return a Genie that he is dissatisfied with to Haji. Neil may of have seen it in the Genie Manual or he may not have seen it and he is just placating Araceli that say it in the Genie Manual or Araceli may him that there was a Haji Day.
It really not important which way it is, only important that now that Neil knows about it, he going to take advantage of the situation and it going to be interesting to see how Jeanie response to it and how the Blue Djinn that riding inside of Jeanie will respond to it too.
We know something going to happen either from Jeanie or the Blue Djinn as they see themselves being threatened by Neil taking liberties and the opportunity take a pock at Jeanie.
The manual is gargantuan (fun word, BTW), and as I recall crashes whenever you try to use the search function (per I Dream of a B’Witch). I think he didn’t mention Araceli because he knows that’ll probably drive Jean over the edge, which is the opposite of what he’s trying to do.
You clearly don’t read the previous strip then, he learned about Haji day from Araceli.
She had it coming. Most people would have banished if not sealed her outright a long time ago.
Yeah, except Jean was Neil’s friend before he was Jeanie, probably not that common.
He couldn’t banish her before and he made it clear that he still wouldn’t do it now.
You know, it’s actually in Jeanie’s best interest short term, to just turn Neil into a baby or maybe a cat during haji’s day to ensure she’s not sent away and still be a nuisance to Lord Guano to prevent him from being promoted to haji’s.
Very true. However I wonder if by banishing the genie all wishes would be undone… poor Neil will lose his sandwich
Unless the master can send the genie away with just a thought, rather than an explicit voice command.
Jean should really read that manual, herself.
“Jeanie’s best interest short term”
Not even in the short term is this in Jeanie’s best interest.
See today’s Questionable Content. https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3802#
(She’s supposed to be learning how to grind the rough spots off that artificial hip sample.)
This will backfire spectacularly of course.
Is this the most backbone we’ve ever seen from Neil? I mean we all know he wouldn’t really do it, not on purpose anyway; although I could see him accidentally blurting something out at the wrong time and then having to go on a wacky adventure to get Jean back and safe from a fate worse than death which Jean takes as licence to act even worse because now she knows that Neil wants her in his life or is at least prepared to put up with antics to keep her safe; but still, this is still the most spine I think we’ve seen from Neil.
@Random22: Maybe not the most backbone; he’s hollered at her a couple of times–and she was suitably impressed–but this is pretty stiff. Worse, Neil is being relatively calm about it. He’s read the Manual, knows about Haji’s day, and has real grievances.
He may not invoke the Haji’s day privilege offhandedly, but I wouldn’t dismiss it as an idle threat. I think. he feels he’s been pushed quite far enough. And I also think he may be ready to take on the responsibility being a master entails.
He didn’t read it in the manual, Arecely told him, remember?
Besides, it’s not really backbone since he won’t actually do it. It doesn’t take backbone to bluff. He will also loose the bravado once this is over.
And it is an idle threat, did you miss what he said when Aracely told him about Haji day? He said he wouldn’t banish Jean.
So yes, it is a bluff. One that will bite him in the ass because of Jean’s evil new friend.
Looks like he won’t have to be tricked after all.
I was just thinking if Jeanie take Neil seriously about him into a girl or being turned into Natalie, she may be tempted to never turn Neil into Natalie again for fear that she might be sent away on Haji day maybe next year. So we might be seeing the end of Natalie happening here. But, we know that Jeanie has a short memory and she will probably forget her promise to not turn Neil into Natalie and we will probably see her turn Neil into Natalie a few more time, before we don’t see Natalie no more.
This clears up a couple of things. First, Neil evidently DOES remember everything that happened while he was Natalie (although it doesn’t seem to bother him much.) And second, this is going to push Jean to try and figure out just WHY she Nat-ified Neil anyway, and why she screwed with his brain chemistry. Which just might cause her to wonder about her “magic talking to her”.
If she happens to mention the latter to Neil, he might consult the genie manual, and they might both get suspicious of where the voices are coming from. That in turn might lead them (well, Neil, anyway, Jean’s too stubborn) to ask someone for advice (Araceli, Kazom).
And no, Neil is just taking the opportunity here to yank on Jeanie’s chain a bit. He’s not about to send his best friend away for life. That would be mean, and Neil’s not mean.
Unfortunately, Jean’s new friend would not know this and will think he’s serious.
He might take drastic measures.
@Jacqui: Probably true. But the chances are that this might stampede the BD into revealing his presence. He’s clearly even more afraid of being sent away than Jeanie is.
One has to wonder if that was how Guano managed to get rid of Big Blue? (Guano doesn’t seem bright enough to have done anything clever – so I’m guessing that it was more of an accident.)
Holy smoke, I just had a thought. Could being banished back to the palace be Big Blue’s plan all along by messing with Neil and making him angry enough to banish Jean? This gets him in there with all of the magic he has picked up recently. I know we only saw the one genie have her bottle destroyed but even then I had the feeling she wasn’t the only genie he killed. Jeanie and DD could be overflowing with more than enough magic to take on Haji.
That was a thought I had considered as well. It’s entirely possible that Big Blue wants to be sent back to Haji, since that’ll get him in killin’ range.
@SaylorA: If that were true, then Blue wouldn’t be saying things like “We cannot let him send us back.” He’d instead be trying to MAKE Neil send Jeanie back.
Kattgirl. DOH! right, I forgot that.
lol whoops. Totally forgot that this was revealed last week. The buffer got so long that it’s easy for me to forget which plot bits have been revealed and which haven’t.
But you never complained about me magically messing with your head while I was actually doing it! It looks to me like you actually liked that!
That’s like saying, “But, you never complained about me putting you in a coma, while you were in a coma!”
I agree that Neil would never intentionally banish Jean. However, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Remember how the key to the apartment fell out of the air when Neil off-handedly made a wish?
I think the real danger is probably that Jean, who’s less than perceptive about a lot of things and has a temper, will get so frustrated with Neil’s dangling Haji’s day over her that she’ll do something stupid. Did I say “probably”? Well, kind of like “probably Earth won’t be demolished by Vogons for a hyperspace bypass tonight”. Maybe something as stupid as joining Haji’s harem after all? That would show Neil!
HAHA in my best Nelson voice.
Also i wonder if Blue is going to take over to protect his freedom?
Good question! He definitely going to feel threatened by Neil pocking Jeanie like this, because he riding inside of Jeanie for the time being because he currently doesn’t have his own body and he has to use a host body who just happens to be Jeanie.
Regarding Panel 1:
I can see Jeanie being lazy enough, and self-centered enough, and inconsiderate enough, to ask Neil to get her a cup of coffee rather than get up and make it herself.
What I can’t see is Jeanie being patient enough to wait for a whole five minutes while Neil gets her coffee, when she could just poof it up, and have coffee plus instant gratification.
*continuity error*
It’s about maintaining her alpha status moreso than the coffee itself, methinks.
Maybe poof’d coffee doesn’t taste as good as the real thing?
Robert! Have you been eating dinner from the replicators in Ten Forward, again? 😉
Hey, I’ll have you know that those things are perfectly functional!
You do realize, our dear editor, that “functional” and “good” are two entirely different things, I hope.
Then again, what the hell do I know? I drink tea.
A genie can not impact a mortals free will. If a mortal wills it, a genie can not stop it under any circumstances… I think the fact that this rule exists and even blue fears it… means they could not stop Neil from invoking it. Harm to a master is punished quite severely I suspect.
Though we know blue can certainly influence free will to a degree, or at least change what feels like a good thing…
I hope Neil enjoys the next 24 hours… maybe he could wish it was Haji’s day everyday? 😉
And people wonder why I find the blue one more sympathetic than the pink one?
I kind of have to agree. Araceli isn’t perfect, she openly wants to be with Neil, but hey, that’s not wrong. And she doesn’t have the huge ego and totally self-centered attitude that Jeannie does.
That said, I would miss Jean if she wasn’t around. I just wish she would grow up a little so I could like her more.
I kind of agree with you on this matter, but, if Jeanie did that, there wouldn’t be much of a story then. So the story basically revolve Jeanie being a selfish self-centered bastard. Jeanie is like a horse that kicks against the prick that on the wagon that is put there to keep the horse from kicking the wagon that the horse is pulling. Jeanie the horse that will kick the prick anyway tear her legs out anyway, because, she doesn’t like the situation she in.
CD Rudd is getting ready to end the ” I dream of Jeanie Bottle” series, but, not right now, because there is still plenty of story to tell about Jeanie that a Genie to tell yet. We know that Jeanie like being a Genie now, because, she has said so in the past. Where before she didn’t want to be either a female or a Genie. She use to being a Genie and she has come to like it, but, she still doesn’t want to be a girl yet.
What I would like to see is Jeanie finally give up kicking her legs against prick tearing her legs up, that she finally decides to accept her role as female blond Genie who has a motherly spirit and like it that way and is well adjusted Genie that happy with herself, wants to marry her master like in the TV series. To do this, she going to have to ask Neil to do her a favor so she can finish her transformation into a female Genie. She said to Neil I would like you to make on me to develop the hart of a female motherly type of Genie and like being that kind of Genie and stop some selfish jerk that use to be guy and become what I am suppose to be now and like it. That selfish guy that I use to be, Jean needs to go away forever, because, there is place for him here anymore. There only room her for a female mother Genie who called Jeanie here now. We would only see this when CD Rudd is getting to rap up the series and bring it to a satisfying conclusion where you say “and they live happily every after. THE END’!
But, this is going to be awhile before this happens.
He is only going on Hiatus, to “recharge”.
Nope, I’m going on a hiatus for work reasons. My work is sending me somewhere where the internet connection is poor (dial-up speeds) and I won’t be able to bring my big tablet.
Neil, once asked to be Natilie, for one weekend, and watched soap operas.
But, there was a reason that ask Jeanie to him into Natalie, because, that was the only that he could teach Rodge how to be a better engineer, because, that what he was suppose to be. Rodge wouldn’t pay attention to Neill, but, would hear how to be a better engineer if Natalie told him. The boss also threaten fire both Rodge and Neil if he didn’t become better at being an engineer. So out of self preservation, Neil ask Jeanie to turn him into Natalie for a week so he could teach Rodge to be a better engineer.
So Neil and Rodge’s boss, decided to give the Los Vegas trip to Rodge, because, showed best improvement of any of his engineer included which was the one that taught Rodge, alias Natalie, which got Neil roped into the female companion to Rodge’s trip to Los Vegas.
Neil was actually trying to protect himself and being turned into Natalie for a week was just a necessary evil that he had to put up with and not that he actually to be Natalie per say, but, just a necessary evil he had to put up with.
Larry covered most of it, but I’d just like to add that Neil was watching soap operas because Jean stayed in Vegas while Rodge and Neil-as-Natalie went home, and thus Neil was stuck in his magical girl-suit until Jean bothered coming home. I suspect he didn’t use the lamp to call her back because he was afraid of ending up back at the Hiram instead of getting changed back into his normal male self.
That’s going to be a long list.