Set-up:
Q: "If I'm such a great artist, then ________?"

Set-up:
David: "Why should I waste breath blabbing to you?  I think I'll just wait around for Dave Woodard #4!!"
DW3: "Why you little __________!!!!!

 



Set-up:
PF: "That?  It's just my little calling card!   It's very much in vogue amongst all the most reputable figures in the artistic community, this week!"
SE2: "It's... IT'S... ____________!!!!!!!"

 

FULL OF LAURA COLLINS SPOILERS...

I have only just now watched the first Laura storyline (1966-67) for the first time.   Most of the questions I assumed would be answered weren't.  So I'm asking here in case anyone has any ideas, but please keep in mind that I have yet to see the start of the second Laura storyline, since long-ago childhood anyway, and I don't remember it.  No too-specific spoilers for that, please.

(1)  My biggest question:   How can a human being be a mythological bird?   Was she born a bird, and just worked her way up the evolutionary ladder through stick-to-it-iveness?   

(2)  Does Laura *have* to go up in flames?   Why, if she's not old and in need of regeneration to survive?   Is it her nature to do it every so often just to keep going?

(3)  How often does Laura have to burn?   If every 100 years, then why did she burn in her apartment in Pheonix, Arizona, just weeks before this storyline?

(4)  Does Laura actually go to another world after burning?   Where is it?  Is it all black like people's visions of it, and not like her paradise-like descriptions?

(5)  What happens immediately after she burns?   Does she go to spend some years in this other world, or is she immediately re-formed (in a location of her choice?) in our world?   If the latter, why do it?

(6)  Why the deadline?

(7)  What role was David supposed to play in this process?   Why does Laura want to burn her offspring too?   *Does* she have to?   Does she get to take them to live in this other world?    Does she just think that she does?   (She's been through this often enough to know either way, you'd think.)

(8)  Is Laura really murderously psychopathic, on top of also being a genuine supernatural creature?   Is she taking her kids with her when she burns, out of crazy possessiveness, knowing they'll just die?   It's implied that she *did* become reborn at the fishing shack.   The uninvolvement of David didn't prevent this. 

(9)  Was there a sense in which Burke's girlfriend, pre-apartment-fire Laura, wasn't the same person as 1967 Laura?   She, the former, sounded much more "human".   Why did she go to a sanitarium?   Why did she allow it?   I thought it would be revealed that she was locked up for "believing" she was a Phoenix, or for being a firebug.   Why did she let Roger yell at her so much in Augusta?   Was all this just leftover "stuff" of the character of Roger's wife from the start of DS, that they couldn't work into the new story of Laura the Pheonix?

(10)  Was Laura a supernatural creature in 1956, during the Roger/Burke/manslaughter thing?   Did she grow up as 20th century Laura, in Collinsport (despite having lived before as an adult), or just turn up in town one day as an adult?   Why doesn't anyone remember noticing anything strange or spooky about her before now?   

(11)  Is 1967 Laura not connected to Ra at all?   There was a brief mention of the Sun and its life-giving properties at the fishing shack, but that's all.  Was the flame Quentin extinguished meant to substitute for burning and being reborn, sort of like a portable, continuous, ever-renewing Pheonix fire?   If so, that's pretty clever.   It's right at this point where my 1897 tapes start.   (There may be no way to answer this, without its being a spoiler for me.)

Set-up:
VW: "Yes David, it says here that the Mississippi River was very often used to transport dead bodies!   I'm giving you a Dead Body Knowledge Merit Badge!!"
DC: "Forget it!   I'm more interested in _________!"

Set-up:
JH: "Zzzz... huh?  What was I supposed to do again?  Oh yes, __________!  Well, better late than never!"