54 thoughts on “Chapter 5: Lit, page 54.”

    1. she’s on the fast track to naturalized citizenship in the great land of America, so I bet she’s fine with it.

      1. Naw, that only works if you’re already in the country legally. If you’re not, the INS usually just tells you to go eat a bag of dicks.

        1. I thought it was just Sunny who’s not legally there. I always thought Mose was legit. Sunny’s parents just “forgot” to get him legalized.

  1. So, Tuesday.

    Gonna tell us how open-minded you are? About how you’re the shit ‘cuz you’re in an open relationship and dance naked on the Templar equivalent of TV? And how you can take anything?

  2. Repetition alert in panel 3 (“she wuz a a baby”).

    The most disturbing part to me is the implication that Moze is no older than 21 (11 + 10), and more likely younger given the first photo.

    1. I wouldn’t blame Mose at all. This has “arranged marriage” not merely written but seared into the flesh all over. Besides, he’s never actually met her so it’s not like they’ve had sex.

      1. Well, the Buddhists and Bahai are pretty cool but even the Buddhists have a couple of skeletons in their closet

        1. Sorry, do you mean the baha’i, who are deeply involved in the current anti-homossexual laws in various african countries, including advocating death sentence for one’s affective preferences? I kinda have something against then, slightly personal. They seem pretty fucked up and evil if ya ask me. I mean, maybe slightly better than the christian missionaries that are more known for their part in the african anti-homo humanitarian crisis but they are still actively part of it. If western baha’i are more tolerant, well, they are still hypocrites one way or the other since despite the fact that they teach that god’s instructions will be constantly updated by prophets, they too seem to have stopped listening to any attempt of change of dogmas after their founding prophet so they are little more than an updated muslin cult in my view.

          1. To be fair, updating dogma after the prophet is gone is like, say, editing the bible after Jesus has been dead for a few years. You can say any old fucking thing you want to, and, so long as it matches current social trends on what’s moral or not, people will accept it. One of the ideas of religion being effective is having this sense of morality that is objective and absolute, regardless of what era it’s currently in, not one that’s changed to go with the trends of what’s new and hot in social justice.

            This isn’t to say that religious reform isn’t necessary when corruption of the bureaucracy affects the lives of believers and non-believers to a negative degree, though.

            Also, i have strong doubts that Baha’is in west Africa advocate the death sentence for homosexuals. For Baha’is, homosexuality is perceived as an illness to be treated (still kinda messed up), and the only time violence is allowed is through self-defence, or when someone is pushing drugs on you (fun, but true fact). The only time the death sentence is allowed is when there is an irredeemable criminal who will be a threat to whatever society he attempts to join or rejoin no matter where he goes (although, there’s a small chance I’m not correct about that last one). The ones who do those kinds of things cannot be Baha’is because they do not follow Baha’i law.

      2. Only the religions that don’t hold you accountable to standards. If anything is considered “bad” in a religion, then there has to be punishment for it, and the two biggest ones are guilt and fear of that punishment.

        And there are some things, children, you just don’t do to other people and can get away with it.

    1. That’s an oil cake on top of her head. They wore it, and the oil would melt, running through their scalp and making them smell pretty.

  3. Not a scented candle; just a lump of scented fat that would melt down over your wig in the heat of a roomful of people.

    I agree with previous posters: Mose is having some fun tweaking Tuesday. After all, nothing shocks her . . . yeah right.

    1. I think it’s been established quite a lot shocks her, actually. She’s just trying to pretend it doesn’t. It’s easy to go “pffft” after first having an hour-long rant/cry in privacy.

  4. Aaw, she’s adorable :( I guess they’re going to ship her over when she’s…old enough? (Which to them might me, what, 14??)

    1. Modern Egypt currently has marriage at age 18, but that’s a new development. I don’t know what it was before that, I’m presuming lower.

  5. The naming is a nice way to underscore the bizarritude. What a beautiful baby! What are you going to name her? Mrs. Mose, of course!

    1. From Wikipedia: “Queen Merytre-Hatshepsut (or sometimes Hatshepsut-Meryet-Ra) was the principal wife of Pharaoh Thutmose III and the mother of Amenhotep II.”

      1. Actually, that wikipedia article provides a lot of rather interesting reading. I wonder if the naming conventions have any deeper relations (IE, she might be Mose’s half-sister). Something’s going on there anyway.

  6. Aw. She is adorable! Who’s the cutest little wife ever…?!? Oh, she is!

    But no, seriously, not strangest thing in Templar so far. Assuming that this is a theoretical-only, hands-off marriage.

  7. Compared to a lot of other things we’ve seen around Templar, I don’t think this isn’t the slightest bit weird. Could it be that Tuesday has led a pretty sheltered life? Hmm.

    1. Well, consider that her introduction to this was “My uncle that I seem fine with rants about the end times and is probably the only survivor of a terrorist plot! Hey, let’s talk about the wife you didn’t know I had (she’s 11). :)”

      This might be a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back sort of situation, or a too-close-to-home sort of situation since it’s someone she’s slept with instead of someone she just kinda knows or has only seen on TV. I don’t blame her for being a little weirded out, regardless of what Templar is like.

    2. Well, remember that Tuesday’s from the higher classes (financial/power) of the society – she’s now “low”. So I’d agree her life was probably pretty sheltered. Would explain her rebellion (looking like something crawled up from a grave of a famine victim, dancing naked in TV, being intentionally mean to people, etc.).

  8. My various gods, I LOVE Mose! I don’t see him as tweaking anyone intentionally, he’s just entirely happy and wandering around and perhaps oblivious to the fact that his everyday “normal” is freakin’ bizarre to Tuesday and the rest of us. Confronted, he’d just shrug and go ” ‘s my life” without ever dimming his grin.

  9. Mose probably doesn’t expect her to bat an eye at his child bride — Tuesday dances naked on television after all. But he doesn’t realize that, out of the two of them, Mose is the only one who actually has experiences worth talking about. Cue mixture of horror and envy from Tuesday.

    Merytre is SO ADORABLE. Especially that photo where she’s in traditional costume, those eyes! Ahhh!

  10. Called it! Well, I said she’d be five instead of 11, but the age difference was the important part. I love getting this peek into a Templar-verse religion.

  11. This would seem to add a layer to that picture of (presumably) Moze’s mother in Templar Moms.

    Perhaps she doesn’t care for this prearranged marriage?

  12. The second picture, the one I’m guessing is a school uniform… has that appeared in a previous strip somewhere? It looks MIGHTY familiar, but I can’t put my finger on where it might have appeared before. Any suggestions?

    1. I had the same feeling! But she can’t have appeared in the strip if she’s in Giza. Must just be a resemblance.

      1. I was thinking it might be possible that photograph showed up somewhere even. That’s the best I’ve got.

        OOOH! I know, maybe it was one of the sketches? I’ll look through the archives sometime, see what I can find.

    2. Somewhere at the beginning I remember seeing an introduction of Mose with a reference to his 11 yr. old wife and I am fairly sure there was a picture of her as well. I don’t know for certain though…and can’t recall where.

  13. You know, I’m kinda wondering if Mose is wiser than we give him credit for and he’s trying to get rid of Tuesday. (Or rather, make her get rid of herself?)

    1. Why would he do that? You think that Tuesday is getting under his skin or something?

      That could never happen. Mose is ALL SKIN.

  14. Awwww, I love Mose! He’s both ends of such a terribly broad spectrum at once!

    His little child bride is so cute, I’m afraid to find out how fucked up she is. Maybe she isn’t, and once she arrives they’ll be that bewilderingly happy couple that nobody can explain… who see each other maybe twice a year but still regard themselves as married.

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