Jeanie Bottle 804
Jul23
on July 23, 2024
at 12:01 am
and modified on July 23, 2024. at 12:04 am
Chapter: Story 17: I Dream of Home Sweet Home
Shula shouldn’t throw stone in a glass house when it comes to sanity checks.
Robert’s off this week. Any fixes (colour and grammar) he’ll take care of when he gets back.
So, rig problem for the new Genie Lord to deal with so Second day is doing pretty good so far. Except if Jean starts ordering command for his amusement in the next couple of hours. A human wishing for the powers of a genie being called a Dijaal nice to know there a name for it.
I’ve tried web-searching the word, Dijaal, for its definition but it seems more of a name rather than an archival word. Wondering where or how CD came up with this new term?
My theory is that it’s happened before.. some guy named Dijall.
I found the wikipedia page for Al-Masih_ad-Dajjal ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Masih_ad-Dajjal ). It’s a rough equivalent in Islam to the Antichrist.
In the etymology section it says: “Dajjāl (Arabic: دجّال) is the superlative form of the root word dajl meaning “lie” or “deception”. It means “deceiver” and also appears in Syriac (daggāl ܕܓܠ, “false, deceitful; spurious”).”
Oh, looks like I was scooped long before now. :-/
I found it on wikipedia, it is an islamic term that means the false messiah, basically it refers to someone who brings death and destruction
Well, that certainly explains why she wasn’t let out of her bottle until now.
I don’t think Lahab would try introducing Kiran aka Ifta to Jeanie if she had known.
I’m actually wondering if that’s the reason she’s not mad with power or done anything too weird. The hundred years probably allowed her brain to adapt a bit.
Possible typo, Frame 1: “…let left him…”
Agreed. Eliminate the word “let”.
Both typos still haven’t been corrected.
Panel 3 – “YOU’RE powers are yours CHOOSEN by your totem…”
Should be “YOUR powers … CHOSEN by…”
Also a comma after “yours”.
Alternately: You are powers are yours choosen by. Your totem a human.
Huh. It’s a simple piece of exposition. But incredibly effective in this instance. I like it. Both the simple implication of what could happen. And the effectiveness of the dialogue and exposition. I like it.
Absolutely agree. It’s so well done!
I find this very interesting. I think it stems from the idea that a human has ‘free will’, but a genie probably can’t, including Jean regardless of being human before. So what happens if you combine a being with free will, plus full access to a genies power to take any path … are they still constrained by rules?
Another thought and I think it explains why ifta is so .. ditzy. Her mortal mind can’t ‘fill in’ the space that a genie mind occupies. So her reactions to being a female genie are a bit … off. It’s a bit like the reverse of when Jean got a serious headache when going genie to mortal. Ifta is probably experiencing some kind of drunk euphoria… question is, would it get better or can a mortal mind simply not be sufficient to deal with the metaphysical complexities …
I think it’s simpler than that. Ifta seems to still be bound to a tome / bottle. I think it’s just that they’re untrained with their powers.
Imagine I handed you a laser rifle with a sliding scale from 1 to 10 for it’s power level. 1 being, “Meh… it’ll feel annoying.” And 10 being, “Armagedon in a can.”
This version of Ifta won’t know how to properly set the scale or modulate their power level given the situation. And might accidentaly blow something up if they’re not careful.
Another example: Imagine I wished for a car. And Ifta, not knowing what to do, summons a car with people in it 50 feet above my head without me knowing it.
Jeanie, a *genie*, is constrained by Solomon’s Law which governs genies and technically does not have free will. She can talk a big game and do crazy things, but in the end, she is compelled to comply.
Kiran/Ifta is a *human* living in an immortal genie’s body with all of the power that goes with it. She has free will and can do whatever she pleases without restraint. Theoretically, she’s even more dangerous than The Blue Djinn because even he was constrained by Solomon’s Law.
All this is theoretical because we don’t know what effect the totem’s magic will have on Kiran/Ifta’s mind.
I agree. I think it might go deeper than that. We have never seen a genie yet create something that ‘can’t exist’ … maybe a genie can’t create a paradox… but what if a human could? Creating things like adamantium or super powers … or even literal horrors of the human mind … the monsters even a genie can not fathom
Commander Adams: What is the Id?
Dr. Morbius: [frustrated] Id, id, id, id, id!
Dr. Morbius: [calming down] It’s a… It’s an obsolete term. I’m afraid once used to describe the elementary basis of the subconscious mind.
Commander Adams: [to himself] Monsters from the id…
Forbidden Planet (1956)
Cdr. Adams: …The secret devil of every soul on the planet set loose to loot and maim…to take revenge, Morbius…and KILL!
Dr. Morbius: MY POOR KRELL…After a million years of shining sanity; They could scarcely have understood the power that was destroying them.
I’ve always wondered what a robot loving a monkey has to do with that movie…
Unrelated to the topic at hand, your profile pic is a friggin’ MLP nostalgia flashbang XD
See androids fighting, Brad and Janet;
Anne Francis stars in, Forbidden Planet.
Wo-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh,
At the late night, double feature, picture show.
“maybe a genie can’t create a paradox” Oh, but they can… we have The Librarian and genie/Neil as examples. True, Jeanie was compelled to go back to try and fix things but that didn’t mean the paradox didn’t happen.
(I still like the idea of Jeanie inserting Natalie into an alternate reality and accidentally leaving her there… and then messing up the timeline so that Neil ends up as a genie and Jean as a pervert. There is no reason why those two characters can’t still exist.)
For once, Jeanie did the Right Thing. Or tried to. Oil on troubled waters.
“There’s no need to be mad at Ifta over an imaginary ‘slight’ committed centuries ago — insufficiently praising your coiffure. This isn’t the same person.”
Instead, the oil went onto a fire.
The “Dijjaal” (two “J”s) is the false Messiah. The Islamic anti-christ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Masih_ad-Dajjal
That’s the “official” definition, though it’ll be at least a week before we learn what it means in the Jeanieverse.
Note that it’s “A Dijaal” and not “THE Dijaal”.
Certainly something/someone which threatens Genie Society. They worry about those. The Blue Djinn panicked everyone.
But they’re quite uncaring about what happens to mortals. Who cares how many of their lives are ruined?
Fishing boat captain. ‘Red’ Thornton. Surfers dumped on Omaha Beach. The Deli owner jailed for passing “counterfeit” money from the Future.
OK. WW2 was a bit much and Eva Braun was punished. But short of that…
Humans with magic powers aren’t unknown. We’ve met witches.
From the “child with a nuke” description, I think that the issue is less one of them having the power than it is of not having the knowledge to control it. The Omaha Beach bit was one example of Jeanie having poor control and doing something that she didn’t really intend. Now imagine “Ifta” screwing up EVERY attempt at using magic with similar unintended effects—she’s a walking time bomb.
I don’t think it’s ‘knowledge’ .. genies don’t seem to be any smarter or knowledgeable than humans.
I think it’s more like lacking the ‘glands’ as Terry Pratchett might have put it. There might be certain ‘brain parts’ that a human can emulate to a degree but it’s not a true genie brain… not that they even have brains made from carbon and neurons… they look like us but that’s literally it.
it’s probably a bit like having an aspect of the universe being run on windows xp instead of some ‘God approved’ standard
Knowledge, skill, whatever term you want to use for the level of control that only comes with long training and practice. She’s like a person with no flight training or experience trying to operate a Space Shuttle—i.e. prone to screwing it up because she doesn’t understand how to do it without screwing up.
Anyway, the root point that I was trying to get at is that I believe that she is far more likely to make a mess of things via incompetence than via going power-mad.
I agree. Jeanie, who is apparently Kiran/Ifta’s DeFacto den mother and mentor, is going to have her hands full for quite a while (Ifta for short from now on).
Ifta is going to get a thrill out of generating her first magic spell. She’s going to want to do that again and again and again until the thrill of it wears off. Now, that’s not to say that her magic with be Earth shattering, but remember how excited Jeanie was the first time she created breakfast out of thin air (page 27)? Ifta is going to have that feeling too. Imagine this scenario… “I created Shawarma!” And promptly goes on to fill the harem with dozens of platters of food as she approaches every genie in Guano’s palace and produces Shawarma for them.
Our girl is going to spend a lot of time cleaning up after Ifta.
Jeanie never did get past Genies: 101, I guess.
Yup. Too lazy to bother reading the manual beyond Page 1.
She made it to page 1? That’s more than I thought.
Neil provided Cliff Notes.
This is off topic but I am guessing the changes to Jeanie’s outfit are permanent as the top banner seems to have changed as well.
Her status in genie society has changed, so the banner is different to reflect that. I’m guessing her current outfit reflects her change from bottle genie to genie princess.
It could be that the “princess” banner is a special for the duration of the current story arc “I Dream of Home Sweet Home”. There was a special banner during the “I Dream of Technicolour” story arc that featured Rouyaa. When that ended, the banner returned to the regular image..
Changing the banner for the Rouyaa arc made sense since the story was about her. The current banner becoming permanent also makes sense since Jeanie is now genie “Royalty” with (God help them) duties and responsibilities.
I’m looking forward to learning how Jeanie adapts to her change of status. Will she grow as a person or fall back on her old ways because it’s less work.
Out of curiosity, I looked up “dijaal” on google translate. It detected that it’s a Hindi word for “diesel.” I don’t know if that’s accurate or not lol
That’s probably a different word than in Arabic.
Yeah, but Google didn’t recognize it in Arabic, so I really don’t know. I know that program isn’t exactly the most accurate though.
clearly Ifta runs on diesel while all the other genies run on gasoline
That’s what Ifta needs; a
dieseldijaal mechanic will fix her right up!If indeed Ifta is really that dangerous, then I doubt that just having Alya stand a bit farther away is going to make her much safer.
I don’t think the idea is having Alya stand a bit farther. I think the idea is that Shula tries to shield her, be position between her and Ifta.
I’m not sure that that’s an improvement. But then, as has been observed, Shula may have a few screws loose.
No Jean, you WERE human.
“A human child with an atomic bomb.” I keep seeing the Bugs Bunny and the Grimlin cartoon. Just hit it on the nose with a big hammer.
I don’t get the analogy. An atomic bomb is much too heavy for a human child to play with.
Shula did call it a Nuclear bomb. You just have to bang on it with a big hammer. I still watch old
bugs. Its to bad genies don’t have to use airplanes. I would like to see our girl go after a gremlin
She could get to meet a young William Shatner!
And damn, he was cute!
The point, I think, is that she can unwittingly unleash massive destruction far more easily than a proper Genie, due to lacking the level of control that one would have, just like a child would press the Big Red Button without actually intending to kill a bunch of people, just because they wanted to see the world’s biggest kaboom.
So is this a new subcomic?
https://www.deviantart.com/jakethepeasant/art/The-Anderson-Files-Page-6-1075928457
He says new updates will be on agenta.jeaniebottle.com
The link does not work for me….
Try, http://agenta.jeaniebottle.com
There isn’t a SSL cet for this site yet.
Thank you
Just curious: in this case we know that Ifta perished in the late nineteenth century. Even if the new “Iftah” was a mortal jammed into a jeanie form at first, would that still be the case given that they were in contact with the totem when it would have been ‘looking’ for a new Genie?
Good question. Are you suggesting that the totem somehow “knows” that the original Ifta did something really stupid and automatically imprinted the new Ifta has its very own genie? If so, the totem should have made the proper physiological adaptations (like it did for Jeanie) and there’s really no such thing as a mortal with genie power (a Dijaal) and Shula is overreacting (as usual).
Why did you tell her? Sheesh.
Your. And some of the bubbles are confusing. I worked it out.