A junior engineer working for a small engineering firm in Cocoa Beach. The firm focuses mostly on NASA projects.
Neil is Jean’s best friend. When Jean was turned into a genie, Neil became Jeanie’s master.
Too smart for your own down fall Neil and then to stop Jean from himself. So, they found the lamp in the shop instead of Jeans apartment so they mover after the robbery.
Oh no, they found the Bottle in the same store in both timelines. Is just that in this one, Jean was to busy bragging about sex, to pick the bottle himself. Whatever they saw the I Dream of Jeannie marathon together or not, is hard to tell, but all the sex talk from Jean must had gotten into Neil’s head still.
Hollum-Dusk, he talking about the robbery when the Genie Bottle was stolen from Ms Barbra Edens apartment when Jean was moving into his apartment in the same building. Also this Jean, probably didn’t have Belle either, because, that was why Jean picked up the Genie Bottle originally, he was thinking of giving it to her and he was also thinking about the I Dream of Jeannie marathon also. So this probably happened a few weeks after the robbery and marathon too.
I know, but in both cases, the robbery took place on Rouyaa’s apartment, not Jean’s, as one can confirm by checking the apartment’s numbers. The thief took the bottle in both in all timelines, and in all of them it ended in the same store. Jean was the first to open it in the main timeline, Natalie bought it for safety in the second timeline, and in this timeline Neil was the one to open it, turning into a genie.
That may be true, but, the robbery happened while Jean was moving into his apartment right next door. That how the thief got entrance to the apartment complex, Jean left the door open so that he could gain entrance into Rouyaa’s apartment to get the Genie Bottle. Without Jean moving in at the time, the thief could not have gained entrance to her apartment. So that means in both time line, Jean must have been moving at the time the thief wanted to steal something.
If I am not mistaken, Jean left the door ajar, which almost closed, but, the door wasn’t secured as in being completely closed and secure with a lock. After all, he was moving in to the apartment and a U-haul trailer was probably outside even though we don’t see it. So he making several runs from the U-haul trailer and to the apartment the door was partially open and that how he gained access to the apartment, but, he did have to find a way to get into her apartment. It was the main entrance to all the apartment that Jean left unsecured and not the individual apartment that I am referring to here.
Like the Sailor Starlights. I got a piece of Fan Art of them like such (now in my Patreon), and I just made it canon. I needed something for this timeline, and I didn’t want Red and Melvin to be anywhere close to THIS version of Jean.
So Natalie *participated* in figuring out the “catch-all” wish… not realizing or admitting to herself that Jean was and is self-serving, narcissistic scum. My guess is that Jean was aware of the bottle, and knew what it would do, ever since Jeanie blew it (by not blowing it) 😉 in the hotel on prom night. Conniving b*stard.
I *hope* that Jeanie learns a bit from this. But I doubt she will.
@JT: “My guess is that Jean was aware of the bottle”
No, if you read panel 2, Neil says “And I’d heard about this antique shop…” meaning Neil took Jean there. Jean apparently had no clue.
Either that or Jean knew about the antique shop and was the one that was talking about it and there could have been other people talking about it too. I am still betting on Jean knowing about the Genie Bottle before hand and he deliberately lead Neil into that antique shop so that he could touch it and become a the genie instead of him becoming the genie of the bottle. The kind of person the Jean is, I would not put it past him to do something like that to Neil.
Jean could be aware of the bottle without knowing the exact details. If so, he could well have been waiting for it to (metaphorically) pop up.
I don’t know… panels 2 & 3 just seem — to me — to show Jean being more expectant and celebratory, than surprised.
Ah, so the skimpy costume and giant boobs were indeed the result of Jean’s wishes. lol That figures. Neil doesn’t seem the type to see even a genie that way. Though frankly I am now retroactively surprised that Jeanie turned out as modest as she is, if the genie form is based on your perceptions of genies lol
Well, remember, Jean was thinking of the character portrayed by Barabara Eden, who wasn’t unduly top-heavy. Had he been fantasizing, Natalie might have wound up the possessor of a pair of basketballs.
The rule is that when you pick up an empty totem, you become your own personal conception of what a genie is supposed to look like. Jean had just watched a marathon of I Dream of Jeanie, and he likes busty ladies (as evidenced by how stacked Natalie and the other girls she’s created are), so he became a busty Jeannie analog. Neil apparently identified “geniedom” more with Jeannie’s green-clad, brunette sister.
One has to wonder how the antique-store clerk got the bottle onto the shelf without getting TG’d. And for that matter, how the thief who stole it from Ms Eden’s apartment, managed to accomplish that without getting zapped.
Maybe the transformation only occurs when there’s a second person present, to become the “master”… ?
Unless you have to be in actual direct contact with the Totem. Perhaps the burglar and shop keeper wore gloves. The thief to avoid leaving evidence, and the shopkeeper to avoid marring the antiques.
That was my immediate question, yes.
No other customer in the shop picked it up?
It’s almost as if the bottle CHOOSES who it will take.
One way or another, this bottle thinks Jean and Neil were fated to be a genie/master pair.
Then maybe the bottle does choose. However, in each previous case a significant factor is the fact that there was a cork, and it was either removed (in your example) or vanished (as was the case with Jean). Neil’s transformation did not include the “pop” of the cork vanishing, nor was a cork even visible.
I don’t really see how Jeannie having sex with Jean fixes this timeline.
– In this timeline, they don’t have sex, but Jean brags to everyone like they did.
– In the proposed fixed timeline, they do have sex… and Jean would brag to everyone that they did.
Same result either way. There’s something else missing here. Likely what a lot of people suspect – that Jeannie told Jean about the bottle. Which Neil wouldn’t know about so we’re not seeing it in his recounting of events.
Unless
Instead of Jeannie saying “You can even say you boinked me silly”
She may say (after sex) “Don’t make a big deal of it or I’ll tell everyone you were rubbish”
@Makaira: I assume the missing element is Natalie. Remember, Natalie got ill while defeating Danny at chess which seems to be an established element of a timestream alteration. The story then led directly to this situation just as Jeanie’s nausea led directly to adult Natalie. It might be somehow connected to that chess game and Zoey although Jeanie did exhibit illness after leaving Jean the second time as well, so there might be yet a third alternate reality ready to be explored after CD returns in August.
In the original timeline, Jean thought he actually had sex. In this timeline, although he got to brag about it, he knows he didn’t. I would guess he started overcompensating to prove to himself his manhood. Maybe at some point he even started to believe his own hype about being such a great sex machine.
Jeanie could go back in time, and create a duplicate of her Prom-Teen-self, to be left in the hotel room for the night with Teen Jean. Genie-created human duplicates are barely smart enough to speak, but then, that would probably suit Teen Jean just fine. Mission accomplished, and then next morning Jeanie poofs away the duplicate, takes her place, and (as Fearless Ferret, above, pointed out) tells Jean to keep his lip zipped, or else.
But I notice that the big difference in this time line is that Zooey spent the evening with Teen Neil. So maybe simply eliminating that event will put the flow of circumstances back close enough to return to the original. However that might take an explanation from Neil as to just what Teen Natalie did to shift things.
I think it more likely that she needs to hit the line between humiliating him by publicly dumping and humiliating him and making him out to be a smooth player. Basically let the school see him bring her to the prom then quietly turn him down in private later. So everyone thinks he got a cute date for prom and only he and Neil know the sex plans failed to work out.
Does anyone else notice that Neil-as-Natalie always seems to be distinctly sharper than Neil as his male self? Almost as unassertive, but definitely has a bit more on the ball.
It could be something more along the lines of my mail experience when I go there. I generally go by myself being guy. But, when I see the girl, there generally two or three or as many four or more of them. Two of more girls together the guy is less likely to mess with them and that why they go in groups like that. It could be nothing more than Neil having that kind of awareness about other people when he in female form that some guy going to hit on her when she out in public.
Hold on. When a human holds an unoccupied totem, morphs into what the human believes a genie should look. Jean turned into a copy of Barbara Eden after watching a re-run of “I dream of Jeannie”, and we have seen at least another look alike one as well.
Guano also mentioned versions of Genie and Jafar from Aladdin.
My guess is that he only thought of “Generic Harem Genie girl” as his default idea of a genie, with not specific qualities to them. So the bottle just turn Neil into her default girl shape, for her genie form.
No, Hollum… Jeannie in the ‘IDoJ’ TV show, had an evil sister (confusingly, also referred to as “Jeannie”) who was a brunette, and wore a green costume, instead of pink. Evidently, that was who Neil had in mind when he picked up the bottle.
@I am aware of Jeannie’s sister in the show, but I am fully of the believe her design is not related to Neil’s genie form in this timeline. For once, contrary to Jean, who turn into a exact replica of the character, Neil not only keep most of his facial features, but her new costume is just a “standard” Genie costume, contrary to Jeanie’s one, which again, is an exact replica. Neil’s doesn’t even have the iconic fez, nor the right haircut. The rule is precise, if for some reason Neil was thinking of Jeannie’s sister, instead of the actual Jeannie for whatever reason, he would had turned into an exact copy of her, just like Jeanie and Jehane did for Jeannie.
As it is, Neil’s current form is just “Natalie” with a genie costume, which makes me think Neil’s idea of a genie just doesn’t goes beyond a “Genie Girl” with none specific details, which allow him to keep some of his features, even as a girl. By now, green is just a color we associate with Neil, so it’s use here isn’t surprising.
One note: Neil above has Neil’s face, not Natalie’s. Natalie has less nose and chin than Neil. So Hollum’s “generic harem girl genie” is a good guess as to what actually happened. Later, apparently, Jean wanted Neil to look cuter and adjusted face and figure through either the first or second wish.
So new plan goes back to the Antique shop and make sure Neil doesn’t hold the bottle or talk about it all till Jean talks about the I Dream of Jeanie marathon to complete his genie origin story that he helped create for himself.
So, we know of two chains of events that led to other happentracks and other lives. Just what chain of events led to their lives, then? Finding out could create more problems…
That was probably wish number one. If wish one was the special wish he would still have two wishes left. He wasn’t thinking when he made wish number one.
Maybe… except Natalie is still “normal” in the retrospective when they’re figuring out The Perfect Wish.
I wonder if Jean needed a first wish to understand how to go about making The Perfect Wish, and then after figuring it all out and granting that Perfect Wish to get whatever Jean wants, Natalie felt herself compelled to change herself — not as a “wish” per se, but in order to have Jean have/get what he wanted.
@ijuinkun: Well, the entire adult Natalie arc was only 10.5 pages and left it with no actual resolution (unless Natalie ceasing to exist is what you’re looking for). This one looks to be 12 or 13. Resolution does not require an ending, just Jeanie and Neil learning enough to go try and fix it.
If our girl turns Neil, still in the bottle, into the twin of Jean could he make the third wish and use it to delete the second catch all wish. I.E. I wish I never had those wishes.
Too smart for your own down fall Neil and then to stop Jean from himself. So, they found the lamp in the shop instead of Jeans apartment so they mover after the robbery.
Oh no, they found the Bottle in the same store in both timelines. Is just that in this one, Jean was to busy bragging about sex, to pick the bottle himself. Whatever they saw the I Dream of Jeannie marathon together or not, is hard to tell, but all the sex talk from Jean must had gotten into Neil’s head still.
Hollum-Dusk, he talking about the robbery when the Genie Bottle was stolen from Ms Barbra Edens apartment when Jean was moving into his apartment in the same building. Also this Jean, probably didn’t have Belle either, because, that was why Jean picked up the Genie Bottle originally, he was thinking of giving it to her and he was also thinking about the I Dream of Jeannie marathon also. So this probably happened a few weeks after the robbery and marathon too.
I know, but in both cases, the robbery took place on Rouyaa’s apartment, not Jean’s, as one can confirm by checking the apartment’s numbers. The thief took the bottle in both in all timelines, and in all of them it ended in the same store. Jean was the first to open it in the main timeline, Natalie bought it for safety in the second timeline, and in this timeline Neil was the one to open it, turning into a genie.
That may be true, but, the robbery happened while Jean was moving into his apartment right next door. That how the thief got entrance to the apartment complex, Jean left the door open so that he could gain entrance into Rouyaa’s apartment to get the Genie Bottle. Without Jean moving in at the time, the thief could not have gained entrance to her apartment. So that means in both time line, Jean must have been moving at the time the thief wanted to steal something.
@Larry:
Unless,the door not being open, the thief found an alternate way in. (Thieves are ingenious that way.)
If I am not mistaken, Jean left the door ajar, which almost closed, but, the door wasn’t secured as in being completely closed and secure with a lock. After all, he was moving in to the apartment and a U-haul trailer was probably outside even though we don’t see it. So he making several runs from the U-haul trailer and to the apartment the door was partially open and that how he gained access to the apartment, but, he did have to find a way to get into her apartment. It was the main entrance to all the apartment that Jean left unsecured and not the individual apartment that I am referring to here.
Some bright sides Red, Anderson and the Greek sailors never got Tg, so some of their problems are gone.
Actually, Red and Melvin became Magical Girls in this timeline. I was asked a while back about this, and that’s the canon.
Can we see what they look like?
Like the Sailor Starlights. I got a piece of Fan Art of them like such (now in my Patreon), and I just made it canon. I needed something for this timeline, and I didn’t want Red and Melvin to be anywhere close to THIS version of Jean.
So Red would be the Sailor Uranus of the two?
Nah, they’re all Sailor Starlights, the three female Sailors who disguised as male idol singers during the final season of the show.
Also, what about Belle? Jean was dating her what happened to her?
Are you sure you want to know?
I wonder if Natalie lost her body.
Sometimes getting all of what you want so easily is no good for anyone.
“Be careful what you wish for… you might get it!“
So Natalie *participated* in figuring out the “catch-all” wish… not realizing or admitting to herself that Jean was and is self-serving, narcissistic scum. My guess is that Jean was aware of the bottle, and knew what it would do, ever since Jeanie blew it (by not blowing it) 😉 in the hotel on prom night. Conniving b*stard.
I *hope* that Jeanie learns a bit from this. But I doubt she will.
She’ll probably going to do something vindictive to her past human self on her next redo in retaliation for forcing sex on herself.
@JT: “My guess is that Jean was aware of the bottle”
No, if you read panel 2, Neil says “And I’d heard about this antique shop…” meaning Neil took Jean there. Jean apparently had no clue.
Either that or Jean knew about the antique shop and was the one that was talking about it and there could have been other people talking about it too. I am still betting on Jean knowing about the Genie Bottle before hand and he deliberately lead Neil into that antique shop so that he could touch it and become a the genie instead of him becoming the genie of the bottle. The kind of person the Jean is, I would not put it past him to do something like that to Neil.
Jean could be aware of the bottle without knowing the exact details. If so, he could well have been waiting for it to (metaphorically) pop up.
I don’t know… panels 2 & 3 just seem — to me — to show Jean being more expectant and celebratory, than surprised.
@JT: Jean has the same stupid expression in panels 2 and 3 as he does in panel 1.
So it looks like the wishes were responsible for Natalie’s improved figure after all.
Apparently so. Because there’s a lot of difference between Panels 3 & 4, and what Natalie is sporting now.
Ah, so the skimpy costume and giant boobs were indeed the result of Jean’s wishes. lol That figures. Neil doesn’t seem the type to see even a genie that way. Though frankly I am now retroactively surprised that Jeanie turned out as modest as she is, if the genie form is based on your perceptions of genies lol
Well, remember, Jean was thinking of the character portrayed by Barabara Eden, who wasn’t unduly top-heavy. Had he been fantasizing, Natalie might have wound up the possessor of a pair of basketballs.
The rule is that when you pick up an empty totem, you become your own personal conception of what a genie is supposed to look like. Jean had just watched a marathon of I Dream of Jeanie, and he likes busty ladies (as evidenced by how stacked Natalie and the other girls she’s created are), so he became a busty Jeannie analog. Neil apparently identified “geniedom” more with Jeannie’s green-clad, brunette sister.
One has to wonder how the antique-store clerk got the bottle onto the shelf without getting TG’d. And for that matter, how the thief who stole it from Ms Eden’s apartment, managed to accomplish that without getting zapped.
Maybe the transformation only occurs when there’s a second person present, to become the “master”… ?
Perhaps a person has to think about genies while touching/holding the empty totem for it to trigger and make them into a new genie.
Unless you have to be in actual direct contact with the Totem. Perhaps the burglar and shop keeper wore gloves. The thief to avoid leaving evidence, and the shopkeeper to avoid marring the antiques.
If you go back to the comic where the bottle was stolen and look closely, you may realize the answer to that question (at least for the thief).
https://jeaniebottle.com/archives/comic/jeanie-bottle-399
Gloves. 🙂
That was my immediate question, yes.
No other customer in the shop picked it up?
It’s almost as if the bottle CHOOSES who it will take.
One way or another, this bottle thinks Jean and Neil were fated to be a genie/master pair.
I’ve always liked to think so too 🙂
Great minds, yadayada.
[salutes a fellow]
The first law of Narrative Causality: If it didn’t happen, there wouldn’t be a story.
Not, it’s not the gloves. At least, it doesn’t seem to be a factor here.
https://jeaniebottle.com/archives/comic/jeanie-bottle-452
Then maybe the bottle does choose. However, in each previous case a significant factor is the fact that there was a cork, and it was either removed (in your example) or vanished (as was the case with Jean). Neil’s transformation did not include the “pop” of the cork vanishing, nor was a cork even visible.
Welp, looks like the powers that be are forcing Jean to “do that” in order to restore the status quo. I’m really uncomfortable with that realization.
I don’t really see how Jeannie having sex with Jean fixes this timeline.
– In this timeline, they don’t have sex, but Jean brags to everyone like they did.
– In the proposed fixed timeline, they do have sex… and Jean would brag to everyone that they did.
Same result either way. There’s something else missing here. Likely what a lot of people suspect – that Jeannie told Jean about the bottle. Which Neil wouldn’t know about so we’re not seeing it in his recounting of events.
Unless
Instead of Jeannie saying “You can even say you boinked me silly”
She may say (after sex) “Don’t make a big deal of it or I’ll tell everyone you were rubbish”
@Makaira: I assume the missing element is Natalie. Remember, Natalie got ill while defeating Danny at chess which seems to be an established element of a timestream alteration. The story then led directly to this situation just as Jeanie’s nausea led directly to adult Natalie. It might be somehow connected to that chess game and Zoey although Jeanie did exhibit illness after leaving Jean the second time as well, so there might be yet a third alternate reality ready to be explored after CD returns in August.
In the original timeline, Jean thought he actually had sex. In this timeline, although he got to brag about it, he knows he didn’t. I would guess he started overcompensating to prove to himself his manhood. Maybe at some point he even started to believe his own hype about being such a great sex machine.
@Mega:
Not necessarily. There are other options.
Jeanie could go back in time, and create a duplicate of her Prom-Teen-self, to be left in the hotel room for the night with Teen Jean. Genie-created human duplicates are barely smart enough to speak, but then, that would probably suit Teen Jean just fine. Mission accomplished, and then next morning Jeanie poofs away the duplicate, takes her place, and (as Fearless Ferret, above, pointed out) tells Jean to keep his lip zipped, or else.
But I notice that the big difference in this time line is that Zooey spent the evening with Teen Neil. So maybe simply eliminating that event will put the flow of circumstances back close enough to return to the original. However that might take an explanation from Neil as to just what Teen Natalie did to shift things.
Given Jeannie’s track record its more likely she’ll turn some random guy into a duplicate of her teen genie self to have sex with him.
I think it more likely that she needs to hit the line between humiliating him by publicly dumping and humiliating him and making him out to be a smooth player. Basically let the school see him bring her to the prom then quietly turn him down in private later. So everyone thinks he got a cute date for prom and only he and Neil know the sex plans failed to work out.
On the plus side.. they are getting closer to the original timeline …
I just wonder if they would become time travelling duplicates if they ever did get back
Does anyone else notice that Neil-as-Natalie always seems to be distinctly sharper than Neil as his male self? Almost as unassertive, but definitely has a bit more on the ball.
I wonder if that’s intentional on CD’s part.
I think I pointed that out a while back, probably something about the difference in brain chemistry.
It could be something more along the lines of my mail experience when I go there. I generally go by myself being guy. But, when I see the girl, there generally two or three or as many four or more of them. Two of more girls together the guy is less likely to mess with them and that why they go in groups like that. It could be nothing more than Neil having that kind of awareness about other people when he in female form that some guy going to hit on her when she out in public.
Hold on. When a human holds an unoccupied totem, morphs into what the human believes a genie should look. Jean turned into a copy of Barbara Eden after watching a re-run of “I dream of Jeannie”, and we have seen at least another look alike one as well.
Guano also mentioned versions of Genie and Jafar from Aladdin.
With that in mind, why did Neil become “Natalie”?
My guess is that he only thought of “Generic Harem Genie girl” as his default idea of a genie, with not specific qualities to them. So the bottle just turn Neil into her default girl shape, for her genie form.
No, Hollum… Jeannie in the ‘IDoJ’ TV show, had an evil sister (confusingly, also referred to as “Jeannie”) who was a brunette, and wore a green costume, instead of pink. Evidently, that was who Neil had in mind when he picked up the bottle.
See, here are the two of them: Jeannie and Evil Sister
@I am aware of Jeannie’s sister in the show, but I am fully of the believe her design is not related to Neil’s genie form in this timeline. For once, contrary to Jean, who turn into a exact replica of the character, Neil not only keep most of his facial features, but her new costume is just a “standard” Genie costume, contrary to Jeanie’s one, which again, is an exact replica. Neil’s doesn’t even have the iconic fez, nor the right haircut. The rule is precise, if for some reason Neil was thinking of Jeannie’s sister, instead of the actual Jeannie for whatever reason, he would had turned into an exact copy of her, just like Jeanie and Jehane did for Jeannie.
As it is, Neil’s current form is just “Natalie” with a genie costume, which makes me think Neil’s idea of a genie just doesn’t goes beyond a “Genie Girl” with none specific details, which allow him to keep some of his features, even as a girl. By now, green is just a color we associate with Neil, so it’s use here isn’t surprising.
One note: Neil above has Neil’s face, not Natalie’s. Natalie has less nose and chin than Neil. So Hollum’s “generic harem girl genie” is a good guess as to what actually happened. Later, apparently, Jean wanted Neil to look cuter and adjusted face and figure through either the first or second wish.
So new plan goes back to the Antique shop and make sure Neil doesn’t hold the bottle or talk about it all till Jean talks about the I Dream of Jeanie marathon to complete his genie origin story that he helped create for himself.
Makes me wonder how it was placed on the shelf
Gloves. Same way the thief got it, unharmed.
So, we know of two chains of events that led to other happentracks and other lives. Just what chain of events led to their lives, then? Finding out could create more problems…
Natalie looks cute like this!
Wow, those two were drawn a lot better in this timeline!
I really love the flashback effect for this strip!
Whoa… didn’t notice until now, and appears no one else did either. 🙂
Panel 3 — should be DISAPPOINTED with two ‘p’s
They are too busy looking at Natalie to notice spelling errors.
I wonder if there’s still a website of girls that hate Jean.
https://jeaniebottle.com/archives/comic/jeanie-bottle-429
It’s probably a Twitter feed by now.
Though it possible he has stuck with Natalie in this timeline.
Will one of the wish’s be that made Natalie be more busty?
That was probably wish number one. If wish one was the special wish he would still have two wishes left. He wasn’t thinking when he made wish number one.
Maybe… except Natalie is still “normal” in the retrospective when they’re figuring out The Perfect Wish.
I wonder if Jean needed a first wish to understand how to go about making The Perfect Wish, and then after figuring it all out and granting that Perfect Wish to get whatever Jean wants, Natalie felt herself compelled to change herself — not as a “wish” per se, but in order to have Jean have/get what he wanted.
Is there any way to know when this storyline is over? The implied and threatened rape is consistently making me very very uncomfortable.
Mid-April I believe.
That implies that there are only about six more strips left. I do not see this entire storyline getting resolved that quickly.
@ijuinkun: Well, the entire adult Natalie arc was only 10.5 pages and left it with no actual resolution (unless Natalie ceasing to exist is what you’re looking for). This one looks to be 12 or 13. Resolution does not require an ending, just Jeanie and Neil learning enough to go try and fix it.
If our girl turns Neil, still in the bottle, into the twin of Jean could he make the third wish and use it to delete the second catch all wish. I.E. I wish I never had those wishes.
If Neil gets the bottle, he gets three wishes as normal. And he can use the first one to nullify Jean’s.
I expect that the way that Jeanie and Natalie get out of Jean’s control is by Neil getting hold of the bottle.
guess we don’t get st patrick Natile on the banner being back to Jean at top of page.
interesting learning new history
hold on a minute – since Jean is also Jean wouldn’t that mean the wish works for her as well?