Familiarity
Jun25
I have a name in mind, but I’m opening the floor to suggestions.
↓ Transcript
Shark
Deep water is no home for you, Ma’am. You must be hungry. I will drive prey to you.
Michelle
That would be nice, thank you. I don’t remember the last time I ate. But will that be a problem for you?
Shark
No trouble, Ma’am. When you use your magic to stun the prey, there will be plenty for all. I only need a name.
Michelle
A name?
Shark
You called. I answered. You accepted my service. A familiar needs a name.
Deep water is no home for you, Ma’am. You must be hungry. I will drive prey to you.
Michelle
That would be nice, thank you. I don’t remember the last time I ate. But will that be a problem for you?
Shark
No trouble, Ma’am. When you use your magic to stun the prey, there will be plenty for all. I only need a name.
Michelle
A name?
Shark
You called. I answered. You accepted my service. A familiar needs a name.
There’s only one possible name. In honor of Jaws, Bruce.
And also in honor of “Finding Nemo”
This! So much this! After all, “Bruce” is only appropriate for an Ozzie shark, right? ;-p
Sounds good.
Bruce works for me. 🙂
I vote Bruce as well
I have always wondered about that though. isnt Bruce Aussie slang for homosexual?
Nope, it’s just the general Aussie male name, like ‘Sheila’ is for women
You might be confusing the reason the television show The Hulk did not you the character’s first name from the comic books. They thought Bruce did not sound manly enough. Ironically this was right around the time Bruce Jenner gathered a bunch of gold medals for track and field at the Olympics.
Considering it’s originally Scottish, ‘The Bruce’ means roughly King, how that could be not manly I don’t know.
The people making the call we from here in the USA and likely completely ignorant about Scottish History (which is a shame given the number of people here of with Scottish ancestry.. Most likely they knew the name from your second comment and not much else.
When The Hulk came out Bruce was a ‘butch’ gay name, like the Village People singer that wore leather.
@ Jessie Case
No, there’s just a lot of Bruces in Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ojhtq51Ya8
Going to have to agree with Bruce
He seems really helpful and polite. I say Jeeves, in honor of stereotypical butlers everywhere.
I’d say Perry Mason; lawyers… sharks… you sometimes find a good one!
NEPTUNE
Minnow
SNERK!!
minnow …
Given her personality, I expect it will be something like “Princess Cuddles.”
One of the main male characters in “Milk Crown” (rom-com manga) keeps a shark in the swimming pool near their exclusive dormitory. Known simply as “Lady” quite the friendly finny creature… sometimes a little TOO friendly.
MC often has scenes where she is talking to Lady, but of course sharks can’t talk.
Lady’s mental response is almost always about food.
While it reveals my age, I suggest CPO Sharkey
I liked that show. Well, I pretty much liked anything with Don Rickles in it.
What gender is the shark is the question… vocal tone is hard to get from text at times.
Michelle addressed him as “Mister” in the last strip. Not conclusive evidence, I know, but still a strong argument for the shark being male.
…Although, it might be quite funny for Michelle to give the shark a masculine name, and then, later down the line, for the shark to grouse about it due to the fact that she’s actually female.
“But, you look and sound male!”
“Maybe to you mammals, but among Great Whites, we ladies are the larger gender.”
Richard in honor of Richard Keel aka Jaws from the Bond movies.
It looks like a white shark or Carcharodon carcharias so… Carry?
They are in the waters of Australia, so potentially a White Pointer, so… Poindexter? (“Whitey” is too obvious 😛 )
Where did Andy say they were near Australia? Could be off the coast of Key West, or India, or Africa, or in the Gulf Stream near Greenland or Iceland. I’m hoping for Oz, too, but I don’t think Andy has said.
Black Eye Pete ;o]
Anything but ”Sharky” or “Sharky-McSharkface”. Literally anything else.
You know what that means, Boaty McBoatface. Or Bitey McBiteface.
Please no.
The whole (something) Mc(Something)face should never have happened. It’s just too painful, and stupid, for words.
Agreed: It’s too painful for words.
“Just me and Mr. Bitey!” lol… too much Hearthstone at one point…
My worry about “Sharky” is in regards to an Eddie Izzard bit. He was going on about Flipper the friendly dolphin and Skippy the friendly seal, and Sharky the friendly shark (but not too friendly).
I recall Eddie swimming like he was being chased be a sharky-sharky. It was right after finding out that splashy-splashy was the aquatic equivalent of “Would you like to come up for some coffee?”
Bob
Works for either gender, thanks to Blackadder 😛
Not to mention, that is what they are currently doing: bobbing in the ocean 😀
Bob is always a good name. Always. No exceptions.
Okay, the shark seems to be familiar (intentional use of the word 😛 ) with what the Neapolitan Trio (Hellena as Strawberry, Shæd in place of Chocolate, and Michelle as Vanilla) have become, so maybe they can lead them in short order to Spooky and Cleo
i say name him/her riptide, it is non-gender, fits a shark, altho i have a perverse impulse to call him/her smiley also
Smiley! Hahaha! I like it. Riptide, is not bad, either.
Thank you
I was gonna suggest Jaws, but that’s too painfully obvious. Then there’s Sharktooth, but that’s more of a description for an actual shark. An OotS paladin has named her shark familiar/steed Razor, so that’s possible. Nah, nah; we shouldn’t crib from another webcomic author.
Oooo! How about Buzzsaw?
Buzzsaw is already taken. One of the kittens in Carly’s house was named this, for the tenacious tendency to attack male humans with sharp claws. It would be too confusing to have the same name used for more than one character.
Also, Buzzsaw was one of Generation One Transformers Soundwave’s cassette beasties (one of the two buzzards)
Right, right. Dangit, forgot about that.
Okay, now I’m going to show my age… Mister Teeth. If anybody remembers Mister Teeth.
Also, I wonder if they may be surprised at what kind of “prey” Mister Teeth can drive to them in the deep open ocean? To put it politely, it’s not likely to be anything small. And the “plenty for everybody” thing reinforces that if they think about what it means.
Could mean a school of fish, it’s what sharks tend to do: ‘herd’ a big school of fish together, then just swim through chomping on those who don’t know which way to turn
That’s what sharks do close to shore where there are schools of small fish. Out in the deep water fish need hydrodynamics that feature a smaller drag-to-calories-burned-swimming ratio, or they’ll starve to death before they get far enough to encounter something edible.
For small fish, it’s absolutely necessary to stick close to the food supply. Whatever the food supply happens to be.
Smaller drag-to-calories-burned ratios are available at larger sizes.
Don – Short for Megalodon.
It also works as a reference to Don Rickles as CPO Sharkey.
There can be only 1 possible answer:..
“Candy-gram”
As in “Candy-gram for Mongo?” Why not just Mongo? I was king of joking with the “Princess Cuddles” line above but it might fit Michelle’s personality, Minnow or Phineas seems the best so far IMO. (Not a vote – yet, as said below.) Remember that Michelle was once a bird so it will probably be a bird name like “Pigeon.” (Anybody remeber the old cartoon “Catch that Pigeon?”)
No. As in “Candy-gram” from the SNL “Landshark” skit.
Never saw that one.
And Mongo was only pawn in game of life not a familiar….
Genius!!!
Looking at the suggestions on the page… Bruce is good, but so is Minnow. Then again, since Bob is a good enough name for a planet, the shark should be happy with it. Ultimately though, I’m not voting here. Yet.
Now picture a comic in which Shaed and Helena banter all our suggestions back and forth until Michelle pronounces her decision – Facey McFaceyface. (Kidding!)
“I got fins to the left of me…”
Hmmm… Phineas, Phin for short.
Chumly
In honor of Steve Altens upcoming Movie/ ongoing book Series -Meg or Angel.
I think Phineas or “Fin” for short would be appropriate. She did say get your finny tail over here earlier.
Wilberforce!
Oh boy, The Wilberforce’s, from “Under The Mountain”?
BRUCE. It is a moral imperative. DOOOO EEEEEET.
Finn
I like Bruce. I like Phineas/Fin. But I still gotta go with my original thought: a rounded implement with points on one edge to bring food to you…SPORK!
Why when you say “open floor” I hear “trapdoor”?
It should be something friendly, respectable toward the shark, and easy to say. All because it looks like she is stuck with him.
Bob was there, too. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/CaseyAndAndy)
Sorry, that was supposed to be a reply to Garanhir. ^_^
I suggest ‘Fang’, because … Well … Because.
Benchly or Roy (in honor of Roy Scheider)
Horst Smidlappe call him Smiddy, just because.
There’s only one rational choice (showing my age now): Jabberjaw
It just occurred to me… the magnetic sense that permits a shark to know where he or she is, may now be permitting that shark to pick up radio or television signals, like the documented instances where fillings or braces have done that. If that’s true, a shark might inadvertently pick up quite an education from discovery channel, Disney channel, yada yada yada. From the nearest signals, Sharky McSharkface may know to the meter how close they are to whatever landmass.
Maybe they can even monitor the internet! I don’t see a way for them to “send,” so they’d be dependent on whatever was sent by humans and aliens and so on, but our sharky familiar might very well have a better grasp of TV Tropes than any of the – what did Guesticus call them? – “Neapolitan Trio” have. So when Michelle says, “How about Toothy Mc-” he or she will interrupt with “Mistress! Please, not *that* trope, I beg you.”
About those fillings, some of the older metal fillings would react with the acid in your mouth to create a weak battery. If the filling had a crack that limited the power flow it would act like an antenna, only flowing when it picked up a radio signal. The flow then would cause the tooth to vibrate with the signal. This would only work with a powerful signal that had a frequency that matched the crack size (which is why it was rare and most people don’t believe it). I’ve heard something similar, there were pay phones directly under a radio tower that would pick up the station even with a ‘dead’ line. It made for some interesting calls.
‘What’s that in the background?’
‘a radio station’
‘can you turn it down?’
‘no the phone is picking up the tower’
I am surprised no one suggested JabberJaw