reprinted from today's AKOTAS newspost

[scarfman]

If you looked at the new character analog timeline table added a few days ago to the AKOTAS-2 FAQ, found it legible, and are a Doctor Who fan, you'll've noticed that Nimue is not analog to the two most recent Doctor Who companions, though she is to almost all the others past and future.

(This table shows that she's even analog to Leela in AKOTAS-2, which she was not in KAITAS. That's only because I got lazy when I was making the table, trying to fit all the lettering in. I'll decide for certain for the first gag that forces me, and if necessary update the table, somehow.)

I mentioned parenthetically the other day that often I draw inspiration for a gag simply by noting the biggest gap in the AKOTAS-2 timeline between existing gags. For today, according to my spreadsheet, the centerpoint of the biggest gap fell analog to the Doctor's time with Donna, one of those two companions Nimue isn't analog to. Having failed, in the time since I realized Nimue couldn't be analog to Martha or Donna if she were analog to Rose, to come up with a character from mythology, folklore and legends with red hair, yesterday I went to the Wikipedia page on red hair. There I discovered that, among others, Mary Magdalene is traditionally portrayed with red hair.

Mary Magdalene also, despite common or even base origins, spent a short time as a companion to a charismatic, world-saving man of superhuman ability, after which she descended into obscurity (doing so for the sake of survival, Dan Brown and others tell us), yet for her time as a companion has had songs sung about her through history (and is revered as a goddess herself, Dan Brown and others tell us).

I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it as hard as I thought about it when I was considering who ought to be the Superman analog in KAITAS, Hercules or Jesus. I made my decision then on the basis that Dejanira makes a better Lois Lane than Mary Magdalene does. But (a) that was back in the days before the Holy Blood, Holy Grail premise was made into novels, movies and History Channel programs, and (2) (b) not all the reasons Mary Magdalene lost out in the running for Lois Lane necessarily apply to the selection for Donna Noble. (Though I haven't any intention of showing or implying, as the paragaph above this one may suggest, that, in the AKOTAS-2 universe, Merlin turns out to have been Jesus in a predestination paradox. Jesus would be analog to ... I dunno. Wilf. Not that he wouldn't still be, you know, Jesus. He'd just also be Merlin's best friend in Mary Magdalene's neighborhood.)

Meanwhile today's cartoon takes another subject entirely. Or it will have once I've written it.