Welcome to the Alphabet Korner. Today's host is the insanely iffy and insensitive Monday.

{ "...don't care Timmy! I am not doing the show at the studio. I haven't heard from anyone else who has hosted at the studio. If you want me to do it, I'll do it right now over the phone." }*

...

{ "Ha! Like you can find me. The GPS is off and this is a burner, so I'm dumping it when I hangup." }*

...

{ "Fine. That is acceptable." }*

{ "I warmly welcome everybody to this episode of the Korner. Except Timmy, he's freaking me out. Today we will be talking about the letter I. A word that starts with that letter, is the word I. A very informative sentence that has the word is, 'I may sound paranoid, but I think Timmy is a zombie that is eating the brains of the hosts to expand his mental powers to..." }*

{ "Aw crap! What am I thinking Timmy?" }

...

{ ... }*

{ [clank] [scrunch] ... }*

...

We are not experiencing mental difficulties. Please tune in tomorrow for the next killer episode of Alphabet Korner.

*via cellular phone


-----
Vote for Sluggy Freelance at Top Web Comics. Remember to vote EACH day. Timmy will know if you don't.

Wait, I get it now. We're dealing with wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimeys. Ok, that clears up lots!

..........

I think I understood most of that.

Time-line, bah! Time is not made of lines!

It's made of circles. That's why clocks are round.

The EIGHTH spark?!?


Crap.

Oh, that's not good. I never imagined that the Bug was actively trying to change things. KZK really is relentless in his pursuit of The End, isn't he?

But... is it truly the end if things are twisted so much that there never was a beginning? Oy... this time travel stuff is going to give me a migrane...

Okay, so "course correction" by the fate-web would seem to be the way in which K'Z'K is able to interact with his past self without changing the future. But the cohesiveness of that logic is already hurting my head. To course-correct (and have all of the Sluggy history we've witnessed so far remain valid), Kozoaku would still need to wind up bound to the book of E-ville. I can't imagine how any amount of course-correction could repair the timeline if that pivotal event doesn't happen. In the event it doesn't, we've got an alternate timeline, similar to when future Shlock traveled back to the present to stop K'Z'K. But what would that mean for Gwynn?

That's a good observation. Who knows, maybe [spec]

Apparently.

I'd like to echo all the confusion here. Does this mean that Kozo the Clown -- since he is bound in the web -- can spawn multiple versions of himself in other timelines? And yet Prozo is still outside the web and singular? There are a lot of ideas that I've heard before (particularly in other webcomics like Dr. McNinja) but I'm not sure I understand how they apply here.

Also... at first I was thinking that "destroy the spark" meant everything was obliterated and the planet is re-created. Then it sounded like the Mokhadun spark was well and truly destroyed, but their culture/artifacts were left, meaning that re-sparking was just a new iteration of life... but NOW it appears that Kozy K did not destroy the Mochaspark, which means that I have no idea what "destroying the spark" really means.

So in summary, I'm just as confused about this as Proto-Kozowickywackywackadoo is.

The desert rebels still live and so there is still hope for life to rebuild. That's all I can think of really.

True, and I'm glad for that. Still... why have all this explanation if it's only going to confuse us?

I'm with ya. Pete's talent is incredible and part of what I love most about his storytelling is the fact that he DOES explain things instead of taking the far easier route of just going "because of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff." But in some of the more complex storylines (Oceans Unmoving and 4U City come to mind) the exposition can get so complex and elaborate as to leave bigger questions than those it answers. It's hard to tell if that's where this is headed, but I don't think so. Panel 5 seems like a deliberate wink to the audience, as if to say "don't worry - we're not gonna get bogged down in the weeds here." I'm hopeful things will make more sense as events unfold.

Yep. The funny thing about Oceans Unmoving was that I never reached a point where I [thought I] didn't understand. From my perspective, at least, it all made sense -- even if the exposition was long and there were fringes where no light had yet been shed (like the edge of the map in your standard RTS game).

I agree that Pete's sense of story and attention to detail have never failed us yet. Now to find out where and when the two crazy rollercoaster rides will intersect, and what kind of pileup we'll have then.

Wait, so if this all isn't the way it went the first time around, isn't it pretty much inevitable that this has already messed up the future anyway?

I mean, a lot of people died that didn't die the first time around, and this is supposed to be the very early stages of mankind in this universe. Shouldn't a lot of / most of the characters from the present timeline never have been born now?

Self correcting timeline dude. I don't think we've generated an alternate yet.