Jeanie Bottle 536
Sep26
on September 26, 2019
at 12:00 am
and modified on December 26, 2022. at 10:08 pm
Chapter: Story 12: I Dream of a Promotion
Oh my… This sounds serious.
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Oh my… This sounds serious.
I have a theory that just now came to mind:
Blue is faking it. He’s still in control of Jeanie’s body, and has applied magic that makes her body appear human at a genie’s mere glance. But if that genie casts any magic on her, the ruse will be revealed, so Blue put a fake Genie Brand on her arm.
I don’t know why Blue would do this, but his motives and capabilities are pretty inscrutable. Perhaps he wants the group to somehow bring him to somewhere he wouldn’t otherwise be able to go? Like, perhaps, Haji’s palace, while *not* becoming an Entrapped Genie.
Couldn’t Araceli tell the difference between the real brand and a fake?
Maybe? Who knows! I don’t.
Considering how PRECISELY Araceli’s speech was written, it’s not likely magic – literally a brand.
But we all know how much of a stickler these jerks of genies are. They should just go to the cat genie or one of his associates who don’t give a **** about other genies and their laws.
But in a proper response to what you said, Blue obviously would have branded a few thousand humans back in his day.
I don’t like it. Not that it isn’t plausible–it’s actually a good idea, better than any I’ve seen. But I don’t like it, as in, it makes me frown and furrow my brow, though I can’t say why.
Rodge really can’t a hint huh? And flirting at such a critical time?
Yeah, he’s being a bit too sleazy. And he was doing so well when Neil was Natified last time.
So this is the Blue Djiin punishment Jean being a slave. And Rodge quit while your still here or a person.
I sense another boat summoning from Araceli in his future……
Rodger might wake up being a little squeaker dog. Or Rodger how good do you look in a Hooters outfit?
It’s ‘bears’ not ‘bares.’
Oh? I was not aware. Will fix.
So genie’s originally owned humans….
That puts a new spin on a lot of past story events.
That makes me wonder if genies didn’t originally have vessels in the past, and that the vessels we see genies using today was away to stop that practice. As otherwise it would be difficult for them to own humans.
Given how the Genie Lords aren’t technically bound to obey mortals in the current traditional sense (e.g. humans owning their vessels) or Haji himself, that might not be the case. Their statuses along with their authorities could actually allow them to hold some sway over mortals in secrete ways if no longer in these previous ways such as ownership before. Maybe there’s even freed genies (if any planned in this story) that could do this still.
I think there’s more to this historic titbit of human ownership than that. Definitely thinking of retribution for past sins of the Genies here as a possible theory but by whom or which side? The Witches had a hand in it maybe, for the Genies’ reason for hating them? Or maybe it was atonement that the Genie-kind put upon themselves?
One of the stories about the djinn is that King Solomon bound them with his seal–what we would call a pentagram.
The Seal of Solomon is not a pentagram. It is two equilateral triangles, one black, one white, interlaced. It is used to protect esoteric matters to this day by certain organizations. A pentagram is employed in summoning demons, not djinni.
A pentagram is actually a protective symbol. In ceremonial magic, the summoner stands in it.
“Entities” are summoned inside the “triangle of manifestation”.
BTW, the pentagram is a two dimensional projection of the five tetrahedra bounding a four dimensional simplex–it is key in loop quantum gravity
@rachel
Thanks to your comment, I spent about 3 hours reading about “loop quantum gravity,” which I had never known about. I had still thought string theory was the latest thing in physics. (I kept telling my mother how much I learned from reading comics, but she threw them all out anyway. They’d probably be worth a lot now after 50 years.)
Note that it was Rodge who thought of “borrowing” an overcoat from the dozens hanging just a few feet away.
Yeah, he has his moments of chivalry. And his moments of hordogery.
I think you meant “horndoggery”. Although he was resisting Jean and then Natalie quite a lot when they put moves on him.
Ugh, stupid autocorrect.
When did he resist Jean? He resisted Natalie because he developed a huge crush on her the night they met. So not just lust, but genuine affection. And then when Nat started putting the moves on him totally out of the blue, despite Rodge knowing
@Robert – I Dream of Verisimilitude. Jean keeps turning into various women to try and . . . well, I can’t remember the “why” of it, but she was trying to seduce him and failed. I mean, he didn’t know it was Jean, but it still counts.
I am going with the idea that this is the Blue Djinn line of retreat, because I have no other idea of what going on. Because, technically Neil is still Jeanie Master and as long as the Blue Djinn is inside Jeanie body, then Neil would also be the Blue Djinn Master too. After his busted play to kill both Rodge and Neil was defeated by Araceli and not wanting to have to explain himself, he basically punted and chose to do this so Neil wouldn’t be asking all kinds of embarrassing question that he doesn’t want to answer. This is basically a strategic redraw and regroup on the part the Blue Djinn. Smoke and Mirrors to hid every he doesn’t want Neil to know about, especially that he inside Jeanie.
Thanks Rodge I needed the comedy
My read is the Blue Djinn branded Jeanie because he wants to humiliate her for a long, long time.
And… all the comments seem to have missed that this is the first instance of actual pathos in a comic that generally runs on sitcom rules. Has no one else noticed that Jeanie is literally broken? Jeanie sobbing brokenly in a corner isn’t something I ever expected to see. It’s karma, sure, for all of the damage that Jean has intentionally committed or thoughtlessly left unrepaired but this is the first time Jeanie hasn’t been able to face up to what’s happening and cope, however badly, with the situation of the moment. It’s the biggest twist so far, and I for one can’t wait to see where it leads
It’s not the first time we’ve had Jean’s shit catch up with her (the end of I Dream of Verisimilitude, where Jean realizes how sleazy she was with women when she was a guy, comes to mind), but you’re right about how broken Blue’s left her.
Yeah, Jean is due for some more character development.
That’s a really good point. I wonder if that is at the root of my theory. Perhaps unconsciously, I don’t want to believe that that’s actually Jeanie.
My wild, stupid idea with absolutely no evidence whatsoever:
This is Lily. She was a sentient being, and somehow, that meant that she couldn’t just be killed. (Possibly because Blue couldn’t just create an intelligent being, even a plant. In effect, he stole Lily’s “soul” to animate his plant being, and now that the plant has been pureed, Lily is returned to her normal self.) If so, she really is going to need a caretaker.
Robert’s idea, that this is Blue in disguise, is still a solid, plausible alternative. I said I didn’t LIKE the idea, but frankly, my idea is just as distasteful.
I don’t know about everyone saying this is still blue. Araceli clearly said she is human now, meaning no magic. And on top of that, wouldn’t it make sense for someone like blue if he separated himself from her, taking her magic along with him, to then brand her as his slave?
Frankly, I’d prefer that this be, in essence, an empty husk, with both Blue and Jeanie called to Haji’s Court, or somesuch. But I understand the urge to make Blondie be Blue in disguise. Not sure if he can successfully hide his genie nature from another genie, such as Aracelli. But at this point, we don’t know much more than Neil does. (Although one of my quarrels with Rudd’s story is that Neil, a goldanged ROCKET ENGINEER, is singularly SF-genre clueless. He’s made little effort that we’ve seen to try to understand what’s going on. He’s made a stab at RingTFM, but that’s about it. No engineer I’ve ever met would be so incurious.)
If Blondie is, as I suspect, an empty husk, Neil iis now saddled with the care and feeding of a severely disabled brain damage victim. As in, better put a towel under her on the drive home, and pick up a package of adult diapers on the way.
(I’m hoping, though, that’s she’s just in shock, and will be able to care for herself soon enough.)
I don’t think it’s empty in that regard as we’ve seen her crying. If she was empty she wouldn’t even have feelings.
Crying is kind of a low level function–even babies cry. But, yeah, I mostly agree, and as I noted previously, she also moved her hands on her knees as Neil knelt down next to her, so “empty” is too strong a word. but she may not have a fully functioning personality, either. Or–my preference–she may be Lily. We’ll see. I don’t think I know enough to make declarations yet; all I (or anyone) can do at this point is list possibilities and maybe suggest some “if this then that” consequences. “Waiting is,” as a friend says on another web comic board.
We don’t know who she is or even what she is yet. Stay tuned to Jeanie Bottle for the next episodes to find out who or what the blond girl is or made of or is human or a genie that undercover.
Until then, it anybody guess.
Goodby for now!
If this is really Jeanie, then whose body is Blue in? I am still hoping that it is Lilly so Rodge can had his girlfriend back. I just liked Lilly.
Again, making human bodies is surprisingly an easy trick for genies to pull off. Jeanie, being a young and not so bright genie, made a dummie Neil, and more in topic, Kazom, a genie who can’t use to much magic at risk of dying, made a human body for Ghost Genie without any problem. Genie was indeed turned into a human girl before!
If this is Jeanie, Blue may still be in her original genie body, while this is just an human body he made to get ridd of her for now.
I don’t think Rodge would take Lily back. She was only after his body, literally.
I share your desire for Lily to become a continuing character, but I can completely understand if the author doesn’t bring her back.
Continually coming up with the non-human viewpoint of a plant in human form would be REALLY HARD, and this comic is about the relationships between genies and humans. Adding a plant person to the mix could really slow down the plot.
One way to do it would be the way the movie version of Groot became a tiny version of himself in a flower pot. It could be funny, for instance, if the next time they show that restaurant, there’s a tiny potted plant on the table with thought balloon comments about what the humans at the table talk about…or about what they are eating.
Really, it’s Araceli’s openings that Rodge is interested in.
Given that Rodge is Caley’s uncle, he’s likely to get legal custody of Caley should anything happen to her parents. Of course, if this was Disney, they’d already be dead.
Disney World is in Orange* and Osceola counties, just west of Brevard County where we find Cocoa Beach. So, maybe the Mouse’s influence has expanded enough…
*They have Orange County California and Orange County Florida. They still have Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia to collect. ^_^
Once they get to Rodge’s apartment they will need girl clothes. That means a trip to Jean’s apartment where they will hear Rouyaa yelling for help next door. Releasing her will add another character to the mix. Remember Mr. Blue–“Hxxl hath no fury like a woman.”
Yet again… does Jeanie have any actual girls clothes on their apartment? Everything she wears, she just poof it. Maybe Neil has some Natalie’s clothes saved in case of emergency, but still, due to the situation, I don’t think that wearing male clothes it’s something that has ever bothered Jeanie to begin with, much less in the current situation.
The problem with Jeanie wearing Neil shirts is, Jeanie has double D boobs and Neil shirts have a tendency not to fit right on her. Now I like the idea of getting Natalie clothes for Jeanie, because, Natalie did buy some clothes for herself. While there getting Natalie clothes for Jeanie, Neil think about going to Ms Edens apartment to see if she has any extra clothes that she can spare too and he fine Rouyaa in the apartment yelling for help. Now that would work for me.
Almost completely unrelated: today’s Ziggy comic is about a genie. I don’t know if it’s okay to include tags in comments here, so you can find it by Googling “Ziggy by Tom Wilson & Tom II for September 27, 2019”.
It’s OK to include a single link, but I think the spam filter will remove your comment if it has more than 1.
I’m finding this story arc rather disturbing. I discovered I Dream of Jeannie Bottle less than a year ago and burned through the entire series in just a few days. It was delightfully humorous and encapsulated the spirit of the original I Dream of Jeannie series as I remember it while growing up. This arc, however, invokes an unsettling feeling that the series has crossed a line that can’t be recovered from. They often call this Jumping the Shark, that point in which everything that follows does not live up to the best of original concept. Does anyone else feel this way?
There is another kind of crossing the line: the writer of a formerly joke a day comic discovers what his real story is. It’s often grittier and darker. Fred Gallagher’s Megatokyo is a classic example– Gallagher actually bought out his original partner, the real-life largo, to start building his complex world and to tell the story he found there. I happen to like it, but many don’t.
Well, stay tuned in, in the next Arc I am sure that it will lighten up again. Once the Blue Djinn has been dealt with, Jeanie can get back to being herself more or less. Considering that there will probably be a few changes in her thinking and maybe how she treats Neil too.
Wow, I haven’t thought about Megatokyo is probabaly a decade… Used to be a huge, huge fan, but the story just got too overwrought, and there were too many Sad Girl in Snow fillers.
” the story just got too overwrought, and there were too many Sad Girl in Snow fillers.”
nod-nod. Then there’s just plain not posting new strips for weeks at a time. I still read new strips when they come out, but thank heavens for RSS feeds. Gallagher’s exploring the border between story and reality, and what happens to the characters in a story when they find themselves at that border–it is, unfortunately, rather like chasing willow-wisps in a swamp. It doesn’t help that he seems not have an ending planned. An admirable effort, and I love his art–but as you say, overwrought.
tl;dr: self-referential meta gets away like hydrogen in a Baggie.
@mike Not really, how I put this… between years of anime, young adults books as a teen, and modern age cartoons (Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Regular show…) I am used to this kind of storylines, on usually cartoonish stories.
Yes, a couple of random Genies have die, the one Chinese genie being the one that shock me the most, but again, I am used to this, and yeas, things seem dire at the moment, but the comedy still there, and we KNOW Jeanie is coming back from this, I keep brining this up, but we know Jeanie and Neil have future time travel adventure coming! We may not know how or when, but we know Jeanie is getting her powers back, we know Blue is gonna be defeated!
I dunno, ever since Guano was introduce way back, we knew genie business was serious, we even got a tease of that when Araceli and Jean swap places, and Jeanie seemed to get trapped on the bottom of the ocean, no clue when or how she was going the get out of that, so having a serious plot with the genies was something we always knew was coming… and yet again, we started this arc, knowing everything was gonna be ok by the end. So I don’t think we have jump the shark, I do think things may get darker before they get better, but I am sure everything will turn alright at the end, and I still expect plenty of comedic moments along the way.
“So I don’t think we have jump the shark, ”
Neither do I, if I haven’t made that clear. As you suggest, this appears to be Rudd exploring his story world; “Jumping the shark” implies doing crazy, irrelevant things because the writer has run out of honest ideas.
Rodge, you’re about to get zapped.
Yeah, because what Rodge meant to say was, “You may have an opening for me.”
…Yeah, yeah, I’ll show myself out.
By the way, for all his pudge, Neil carries that girl around pretty easily. There’s good reasons why firemen don’t carry adults in their arms like that.
And, good reasons why new husbands traditionally show their strength by carrying their brides over the threshold in the manner Neil demonstrates.
Of course, the fireman’s carry is not the most modest position to put a girl in.
I love this comic! Not one person speculated about or even mentioned the mark on her upper arm. There’s a whole new bit of genie lore that’s been added with just a few panels.
Well done!
The most surprising part is that no one noticed. It’s been there for the last couple of pages if you go back and look. Yet not a single comment on those pages.