Saint James Infirmary 302: More Please, 3.

[Daphne]

Friday, June 13th!

[GodWilling]

So, yeah, maybe Miriam is Raven's customer.

Or perhaps her investigations have pointed her towards the SJI crew. In desperate need of answers, she walks gingerly, with a long extension cable unwinding behind her. Finally she brings herself to the threshold. She presses the button - gently at first, then really fast and furious - until someone comes. She enters their shuttered palace demanding satisfaction. Jacqui is fetched. Haight's prayers are answered. Our questions are not.

[Haight]

That was poetic.  Thinking about the tower and everyone's horniness, though, it's possible that the tower has been ramping up power slowly - first the campus, then the whole town, which gradually becomes the sex capital of the planet.  I'd be down with that. 

[laguna85]

Will it be bad on Friday the 13th!

[Haight]

How does Miriam really know what her mother's been up to?  It's not like she's had more than 2 five-minute conversations with her since she's been in town.  I guess she's done her homework enough to know that her mom's got a new boyfriend?

Also, is Miriam more endowed than Erin, even?

[GodWilling]

They both come with a fair amount of baggage.

I think Miriam knew what Jacqui was doing in the stockroom while Erin was trying to cover for her. Jacqui told Adrian she had intended to wait for Q while he was in prison. That's maybe what Miriam was expecting based upon her last contact with Jacqui. Or maybe Miriam and Jacqui have a telepathic connection...

I'm not sure what Reka and Weston's reaction in the last panel is supposed to tell us.

A nice touch with Raven using the towel in the first panel. And another shadow to conjure with - though I don't think that was intentional. I like "I want all the coffee" too. In 87 Miriam says she doesn't drink anything with caffeine - I don't know if the discrepancy here is intentional.

[jmundt29]

I'm sure it is intentional.  Maybe not drinking caffeine is or was a post-Q affectation like choosing to walk away from her birth name.  Or, she could have some kind of starter kit to test the coffee to see if it's drugged.  Overeoasted coffee is the only consumable she's seen her mother ingest.  She could be assuming that's the delivery system.  Or, it could just be really late, and Pearl's wiped herself out in her room.  As for the bust question, I don't know.  It would be interesting to get a chance to compare again.

Other interesting questions have also arisen.  Would Reka and Cavalier Twit immediately know Pearl's talking about Jacqui?  Reka might as she's presumably the sober one, but...

Also, who's playing Juliet?  Why is she smashed?  She's supposed to have no poison left to drink.

[Werdna]

I think Miriam's caffeine search is meant to indicate how stressed she is in this (possibly bell tower-induced) environment - so much so that she's abandoning (temporarily, one presumes) an important element of her chosen lifestyle. (BTW, calling her seriousness about her Judaism as a "post-Q affectation" - and this would include both the avoidance of caffeine as well as her name change to Miriam - is, I think, unfair to her.  I don't think people do these things lightly, and if you add the fact that she has chosen to pursue graduate work in Jewish Studies as part of her living out her faith, she seems to be a serious-minded individual about these things.)

As far as her thinking that something's up with her mother - well, presumably there is a pretty close (if frayed) bond between mother and daughter, and enough of a bond for her to know (or at least strongly suspect) that she's not 'herself' in some way.  She has reason to be suspicious as well because she was previously involved tangentially in some sort of mind control plot (even if she understood it as the manufacture and sale of mind-altering drugs (like hallucinogens, say) instead of a mind-control potion) and that she's worried that something else has come up.  So it's not unreasonable, to me at least, for her to suspect something's up.

Reka and Weston knowing about Jacqui: not mysterious to me.  There are similarities in appearance; Erin's castmates would surely know who Jacqui is, even if she weren't the strikingly hot indie record store owner with excellent taste; even more so, it follows that what Miriam says is talking about one person.

[jmundt29]

Perhaps I should have said "an alteration to her habits and personality brought on by the trauma of the experience with Q."

She can be devout and serious about her faith without shi...er, abandoning her birth name or forswearing all caffeine.  There's an element to this new persona she's adopted that seems specifically designed to punish her mother and to erase all traces of the woman from her life.  That element strikes me as false, insubstantial, an affectation, something to be discarded when the truth (including inner truths about Pearl, herself) is revealed.

[Werdna]

@jmundt29 - I grant that what you say is possible - it might be the case that Miriam converted to Judaism (or started taking her faith more seriously) is a result of and reaction to the incident with Q and her mother. It might be the case that taking the name Miriam is an attempt to punish her mother. But that's far from established.  I have an acquaintance who converted to Orthodox Judaism, gave up coffee, and changed his name from Christopher to Avrum.  (Even during the very lengthy conversion process - it took ages of study and reflection before the conversion was deemed 'complete' - he asked that he be referred to as "Chris" because he felt that including the full name of Christ in how he was addressed was disrespectful to his faith.  Doing these things did not estrange him from his family.  Equally important, taking the name and the lifestyle along with it (viz. no more caffeine) was an integral part of the conversion, not remotely something to be discarded.

That's why I think her asking for "all the coffee" is so significant - because she is so rattled up inside that she's not thinking straight.

As usual, though, now watch as it is revealed that the whole thing is part of a long con.  If it is, Miriam should be the hero of the whole comic, because that would be some awesome dedication.

[Daphne]

Also, is Miriam more endowed than Erin, even?

That is the "is Superman faster than The Flash" question of the SJI universe.

[Daphne]

I'll also note that no branch of Orthodox Judaism (that I'm familiar with) prohibits caffeine consumption, except during fast days like anything else.

[Werdna]

Well, in Avrum's case, he gave up pretty much everything because he was so. damn. serious. I don't know if it was a matter of religious instruction or his personality requiring a rigid set of rules into which his new Orthodoxy fit.  But he certainly gave up a lot of stuff: alcohol, refined sugars, caffeine (as well as all non-Kosher foods, of course).  He's a pretty intense dude.

[Daphne]

Well, in Avrum's case, he gave up pretty much everything because he was so. damn. serious. I don't know if it was a matter of religious instruction or his personality requiring a rigid set of rules into which his new Orthodoxy fit.  But he certainly gave up a lot of stuff: alcohol, refined sugars, caffeine (as well as all non-Kosher foods, of course).  He's a pretty intense dude.

There are some pretty serious people in various branches of Judaism. B&H Photo, where I get most of my production gear, shuts down their web site's shopping cart during the Sabbath. Even my Orthodox friends think that is pretty over-the-top.

Anyway, just noting that whatever is going on with Miriam and caffeine, it's a personal decision, not required by her faith.

[Werdna]

What do you know?  I was wrong again about something in the SJI-verse!

Thanks for the clarifications, Daphne.  That's what I call some responsive creative control.