Jeanie Bottle 679
Jan25
on January 25, 2022
at 12:00 am
and modified on December 27, 2022. at 1:10 am
I think Danny isn’t quite so good at chess as he proclaimed.
Also, please read CD’s Hiatus announcement. Don’t worry, the currently storyline will conclude before the comic hiatus begins.
EDIT: By the way, the previously Patreon-exclusive Bonus Page 673.5 is now available on the main comic timeline.
So, Neil/Natalie got the date and dominate the game fantastic prom night.
Queen takes Bishop.
Where is the like button?!
Where is the like button?!
Ah, yes. Danny, “the king” (#664), got swapped and put out of the way. Nice one. Natalie proves she’s a couple of steps ahead, which is why she won so often.
And a further thought: I guess you could say Danny got rooked. 🙂
Ahaha! I was confused what that line actually meant, but now it clicked lol Take THAT Danny!
Natalie also performed another castling
the couples in the dance
Danny tries to use psychology to intimidate. Sure sign of a 2nd rate player.
Hmm… Natalie’s feeling sick last comic has cleared up. Rather than being a sign of Jeanie *again* changing things, I (now) think that it was a sign of the initial branching of the timeline, which went away after Jeanie cleared things up for her earlier Jean self and poof-ed over to pick up Natalie.
That’s a pretty sly expression Natalie has there.
She is *so* cute!
Castling isn’t a move I learned until college. But, I never read any books or really studied chess in any way. So, not a surprise there. Imagine I would have been happy with winning one game against Natalie.
My suspicion is the nausea indicates a branching of the timeline, creating new memories for Natalie/Neil. The “castling” she mentioned obviously has nothing to do with the chess game on the table in front of them (except as a distraction tactic). Once the new memories were accessible in her brain by Natalie/Neil, her task was completed and Jeanie provided a convenient means to exit.
I agree that her comment had nothing to do with the chess game. If your theory is correct, then do you suppose Natalie knows that teen-Neil and Zoey have developed a relationship and (now) seems to have known it all along? This would mean that when they return to their present, Neil has a main squeeze. Jeanie is in for a surprise, and as the focal point for the time travel adventure would remain unchanged while everything else changed around her.
Zoey: “Hi, Neil. Dinner is almost ready.”
Neil: “Thanks honey, what are we having?”
Zoey: “Oh, I’m experimenting with a Kibble Burger recipe I found online. Jeanie, dear, would you set the table?”
Jeanie, open jawed in surprise and confusion: “Huh?”
Oh, you guys might actually agree that we are in the Kelvin time line now?
@Larry: Key word… “if”.
The time line that both Jeanie and Neil came from has already been corrupted now. We have already crossed the Rubicon and there no going back now. The only question now is, in which direction are we going in and what will the time line look like once we are finished.
It would be so nice if something like this actually happens. Probably not, IMO, but I like imagining the scene on its own.
It also makes me wonder if whatever will happen next will create another Natalie and maybe even another Jeanie. What about the Natalie we met in the last version of the present day. It kind of brings to mind an old Next Generation episode where there were dozens of alternate Worfs toward the end. Wouldn’t you drool to see multiple Jeanies arguing with each other?
We are only dealing with one universe here and messing up a time line that might change the future. In the Next Generation, they were dealing with multiple parallel universes that where side by side to each other and as they cross from one universe to the next, they would run into another Worf. We aren’t going to be seeing multiple of anybody here once everything been straighten out.
@Larry: Unless we’re dealing with multiple universes… aka Multiverse (2019) or Spider-Man, into the Spider-Verse (2018). Having a duplicate Natalie is entirely possible if CD so choses.
As intriguing as multiple Natalies might be, I really hope CD doesn’t go that way. I quit reading his SailorSun comic because it became too confusing with all the time-duplicates of the main character.
@Makaira: If it was only a story line about Natalie coping with having been left behind to grow into adulthood, I think that would be interesting. Trouble is, we know what happens in the end of that story if, to quote Highlander, “There can be only one!” And that ending would be depressing.
So why is it we never see this saavy, clever side in Neil? Natalie always seems so much smarter and more competent than Neil (the doorstop) ever does.
@Chelsea: Neil is, in his own eyes, a low status schlub, excepting his engineering skills. And even there, he lacks the assertiveness needed to build on that to make social points, even with his own boss. Typical nerd.
Natalie, on the other hand, is high status by virtue of her bombshell looks; even Neil, looking from his male perspective, has to acknowledge that. This gives her the confidence she needs to display her competence.
There is also Natalie’s advanced chess experience and skill, which has given her confidence in the face of a not very impressive male teen blowhard. (I wonder if she’s getting any vibes from stri–that is, librarian Natalie about how to manipulate salivating males.)
@50srefugee: What? You think that the Dancing Librarian is more assertive than the Schlub Engineer? To quote Rocket… “Oh, yeah!”
I believe that we can go with Neil doesn’t have to show his cards off because, he knows who he is and has one or more trump cards that he can pull out if he need to. However as Natalie and the fact that she a bombshell, she has to be more careful with herself, than the male version of himself. Also us guys have a tendency to over rate ourself and to under rate the girls and in Natalie case, it is defiantly the wrong move to make.
@Larry: Are we reading the same comic? I mean, one of the chapters was actually called “I Dream of a Nerd.”
@ mike, Oh, we are reading the same comic. It seem like most of the people here like to take a certain position that may be possible when they choose to take that position originally. Then they have a tendency to want to refuse to change there minds once it no longer possible for there position to be possible anymore. But, once we cross the Rubicon and there is absolutely no way of re-crossing the Rubicon, that when I will generally become dogmatic that your position is now impossible now, then I will also give up even my own position when not possible also.
I think in modals and I project out where this story can go and about where it going to cross a point where it has to go one way and not another way. I have done this several time reading this comic, that even CD Rudd and Robert have counter dicted my. Go back and re read my comment, if you don’t believe me, that in the first hundred episode or so, in the comment section I am telling you that Jean is going to turn into a girl internally an
d just about everybody else blew it out and disagreed with me.
Let take Jean being transformed into Jeanie a female genie as an example of what I am talking about.
I am the first one to start referring to Jean as Jeanie, because, I could see where this story has to be going even before the author and the prof reader saw where this story was going even along with most of you people who like to read this comic like I do too. So how did I do that?
It simple, I ask question of myself as to what we have to work with and which way does this story have to go in.
Question one: Who is Jean and what did we have to work with in the beginning? Answer, we have a self centered man who is into himself big time.
Question two: what happened to him? He was turned into a female genie body and it was total too, but, he still had his old nature as a man in him and so he is still a man in a female body or in this case a female genie body. now.
Question three: what else was put into Jean, beside Jean being put into a female body? Besides the outward trappings of being a female genie, there the internal trappings of being a female genie too and what are they? We have a new nature that has to be installed into Jean to transform him into a female genie like installing the nature of a female genie into him now like a mother spirit which is endemic to female genie and calling there Master Master and things like that. This story revolve around this process of transforming Jean into Jeanie.
When I first started saying that, just about everyone protested including the anther of Jeanie Bottle even.
@Larry: Well, I was a late arrival to this epic story, and I’ve always called our girl, Jeanie. I’ve always felt that the transformation was more than just superficially physical and went far deeper. Her mannerisms have evolved and that emotional hug between Natalie and Jeanie indicates a deeper attachment than best buddies. There may be something akin to love developing (and I’m sure 50srefugee will agree with that observation).
All that being said, it doesn’t change the fact that time travel stories have only a few possible outcomes. The most prevalent theory is that you cannot change the past because the past has already happened and what you “changed” must, by definition, have been what actually happened (Star Trek’s Voyage Home is an example, which I quoted previously). This is the linear theory. Alternately, there is the radial theory, whereas time is a series of decision points where either A or B can happen and if A then history goes one way and if B it goes another. Travel back in time and change A to B you cannot return to your present. Period! You return to B’s present (Back to the Future is a prime example. You keep referring to it as the Kelven timeline, but I don’t feel that comparing time travel to a reboot is quite the same thing).
I lean towards the radial theory, but it’s CD that has the final say in how this story turns out.
@mike, I ran into the same thing that CD Rudd has run into with Jeanie Bottle Series over even most of the other comic series that he has done so far when I wot “Lorance Morehead and the Court Jester President”. It a cut above what other people are putting out there when it comes to comics or short stories that other people have written. Jeanie bottle has developed a life of it own and has some real meat to it now. Like Lorance Morehead, Jeanie has attained her own person hood in the mind of the author and that what he putting down on paper now. To really see what going on in Jeanie bottle series, you need to read it that way, which is a lot higher than anything that he has done before. The train has long since pulled out of the station where CD Rudd in no longer making a comic, but, he is making her comic now and most of those other people that do these comics haven’t reached that point yet.
Most of the other comics out there are flat or dead or lifeless or there one denominational characters. It every so often they will do slam bam boom or it will show some ladies tits or it will have a shallow story line and that all there is to it. That why there is only like about 8 to 10 of those comics that interest me. Most of the rest of those comics don’t have anything in them.
Natalie is dealing with an old acquaintance of Neil’s, but with the benefit of a decade of additional experience and maturity. That’s a huge advantage and confidence booster.
As for Natalie being more suave than Neil, that’s pretty simple. Like most shy people (and many engineers), Neil is always overly self-conscious about anything he’s doing. Overthinking and over-analyzing how he should act socially. When he’s Natalie, he’s Neil but with a problem to solve (how to get back to being Neil). That makes him to focus on something other than his own behavior, thus subverting the social awkwardness.
@Makaira: We’ve observed Neil being somewhat of a schlub as 50srefugee puts it, on many occasions. However, when he’s placed in a female body, he becomes much more assertive and dynamic. You’ll recall his heroics when transferred into Araceli’s body due to her mistakenly thinking Caley had wished it? More recently, adult Natalie demonstrated an ability to make what appeared to be a fruitful life out of nothing at all, and now teen Natalie was savvy enough to deflect Danny so that teen Neil and Zoey could be alone together (although we’re yet to see how that works out).
I don’t think this change in personality has anything to do with Neil focusing on getting back to his male self because subconsciously he probably knows it’s temporary (well, he didn’t know that for sure while growing up into adult Natalie, but still took the steps to securing Jeanie’s bottle just in case). I feel the change is a result of the differences in male and female brain chemistry, the brains operate on different wavelengths with different motivations and triggers. Natalie is more assertive than Neil because it is hard wired into her personality.
I have a suspicion that Danny was playing Chase, but Natalie in the gown was playing Chest.
Perhaps Natalie–this Natalie–had her sick moment because she subconsciously realized she had just screwed up the timeline again? But she refused to accept it after Jeannie returned because she was caught up in her own triumph: She had “fixed” the mistake Neil had made in not sticking up for himself and letting Zoey go to the prom with Danny without ever telling Zoey how he really felt about her.
But this isn’t going to restore the timeline this Natalie nor this Jeannie remembers from before the Return of the Kibble Burger, is it?
@Tom Sewell, I agree with you. It kind of blew hell out of the time line that both Jeanie and Neil remember coming from.
@Tom and Larry: There is a third theory we should consider.
In the movie Timecop, Jean-Claude Van Damme is living a life in which his wife had been killed during a home invasion. He learns that a corrupt politician is using time-travel to get rich enough to buy his way into the White House. Van Damme goes back in time to stop him and discovers the politician’s goons were the killers. He defeats the politician, saves his wife, and RESTORES the timeline that should have been.
Perhaps Jeanie and Natalie being in their past is restoring what should have been in the first place.
Moving the King an extra space. Or moving Young Neil to Zoey.
Is that how the past worked out originally?
So Natalie castled the king, Danny, out of the way so that the knight, Neil, could capture the queen, Zoey, and rescue the fair maiden.
So does this mean that the other universe is gone or has it not been fixed yet, also I don’t suppose we might get a spin-off on how teenage Natalie managed herself after Jennie changed the past?
Actually, we are only dealing with one universe here, not two universes.
The best way for me to explain it to you is to tell a short story of a scientist that that created a time time machine and he is showing it to his three friends. One of those guys had a really bad grandfather that he hated very much, so he got into the time machine and went back in time and killed his grandfather. Mean time the scientist the created the time machine is telling his two friend about the time machine. It the same universe, minus the one guy that went back and killed his grandfather. Because, his father was never born, then he was never born.
I know, its just a story, and not an actual problem- but my first question would be- what happened to the time machine the suicidal guy took to the past?
My second, why did he pick a time to kill his grandfather that was before his Dad was concieved, and not, say, after his dad’s wedding?
What happened to the grandparricidal guy depends on which model of the time stream you adhere to. Using the ‘many worlds’ hypothesis, killing his grandfather would fork the time stream — there would be the ‘original’ time stream, where his grandfather was not killed and the grandson went back into the past (and was now missing), and the forked time stream, where the grandfather was killed by his grandson, which would have left the time traveler in a universe where he has no legal existence. If he traveled back to his origin date, it would be along the forked time stream, so that he would return to a ‘present’ with no record of his existence. The first time stream would not have the time machine the scientist created, and the second may or may not have the scientist creating the time machine (depending on how big the ‘ripples’ from the death of the grandfather were), plus the one from the other time stream.
That’d be a fun story for someone to draw as filler during the hiatus!
If only we knew someone that can draw as well as CD.
Hollum-dusk has already started a side story via his Patreon showing that alternate timeline, though the majority of the scenes are expected to be about the Melvin crew with fewer scenes focused on Natalie.
These are all good question, don’t know the answer. That was as much of the story that I remember reading.
Given that Danny did not see Jeanie enter his obvious conclusion is going to be that somehow Natalie was using Jeanie to cheat and that he is still a chess champion.
Clutching at straws but he has to save his ego somehow.
I just now found panel 673’5. But I thought librarians always used glitter in their hair.
I love what this suggests on how Natalie survived all this time.
This is the best for Neil but I can’t help feeling a little sad we didn’t get to see more of alternate timeline Natalie’s life as she grew up again but as a girl.
Someone mentioned up-thread that this idea would make for a great filler comic series to post during the comic’s upcoming hiatus, if anyone wants to draw it.
That someone would be you.
Natalie prom night will always be rember’d as awesome.
On a sad note, since we’ve just recently taken a fantasy detour through television nostalgia, actor Howard Hesseman, who played the radio disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever on the sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati” has died. He was 81. Hesseman died Saturday in Los Angeles due to complications from colon surgery.
RIP Dr, Fever. But watch out for the phone cops. Rest in peace.