Nukees

Nukees is a webcomic by Darren "Gav" Bleuel which focuses on the lives of a group of graduate students in the department of nuclear engineering (often abbreviated Nuc.E., whence the title) at the University of California, Berkeley. The strip began on January 21, 1997, and although the author completed his nuclear engineering Ph.D. on May 23, 2003, he has continued writing the strip. It was published online by Keenspot until July 2008, and also runs in the Berkeley student newspaper, The Daily Californian. A collection of strips, entitled Nukees: d/dx, was published by Plan 9 Publishing. Few copies from the original Plan 9 printing remain in stock, and Plan 9 has expressed no indication that there will be a reprinting available through them.
Bleuel also works as a postdoctoral physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has proudly never missed an update.
Characters
*Gav: The cynical-turned-maniacal protagonist and 10th-year grad student. He will eventually complete his thesis, perhaps even in a few more years if he can remember his thesis topic.
*Suzy Gee: Formerly a psychology major, now a nukee. She does not handle the unusual as well as some of the others. She has been declared a Duchess by King Luca, and is referred to by that title by the students she TAs.
*King' Luca: A self-declared suzerain, constantly on the search for new loyal subjects and self-delusions. No one's quite certain (possibly including himself) what his reality must be like. He was previously in a relationship with Suzy Gee. King Luca seems to be the ringleader of most Agnostica activity in the department. (Compare Emperor Norton).
*Danny: A motivated yet confusing theorist whose mind works on a plane with which no one is quite comfortable. He works without questioning, and questions without thinking. Danny never uses contractions unless he is upset. He has an obsession with Teri, and during one story arc became the dashing in order to save her from Gav. Considering the way he interacts with the world, he may also have Asperger syndrome. He may be an INTP.
*Teri the Terapet: Originally a graphic calculator-based digital pet, this emergent AI is now loose and enjoys tormenting Gav. Visually, she usually manifests herself as a velociraptor. Frequently she appears inhabiting/operating a giant robot ant (originally designed and constructed by Danny). It has recently been revealed that she has been repeatedly hacking Gav's police record adding things like "Assault with a deadly ant" or "Grand theft robot". This has caused the police to lock Gav's record, effectively rendering him unarrestable.
*Ma'at: The Egyptian goddess/concept of order, balance, and truth, whom Gav falls in love with, as his goals involve truth, order, and efficiency. She may be a product of his imagination. Gav also thought at one stage that Teri produced the illusion of Ma'at in order to play on his vulnerabilities. (See Nukees 06242005 June 24, 2005, under the series "Love Her to Death").
*Cecilia: A law student involved with the Nukees from the Duchess's involvement as a TA in one of her classes. She is attracted to powerful men, often playing them against each other, and has an obsession with office supplies.
*Linus: A penguin who accompanied Gav during his exile in Antarctica; Gav named him after Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. Linus later followed Gav back to Berkeley (in the Giant Ant, which had been left behind on the ice shelf) and eventually learned Linux system programming. Linus was instrumental in stopping a reactor coolant leak, and accompanied Danny on his adventures as /hua/bin/hood, and his journey into nether reaches of the EECS department.
Agnostica
"Agnostica" is a holiday for agnostics that was created by King Luca in the 'King Luca Agnostic Holiday Special" . December 14 is the start of the Agnostica Holiday, as on December 14, 1900, Max Planck presented experimental results in front of the German Physical Society and announced that they could best be explained if energy exists in discrete packets called quanta, beginning the field of quantum physics.
Agnostica is celebrated by throwing a party where the attendees dress up as their favorite scientist of yore and have a good time. Other items necessary for an authentic Agnostica party include:
*Glögi (see mulled wine or glogg)
*A Schrödinger Box (a large box that no one is allowed to open, representing the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment)
*Mobius Chains (chains of interconnected Möbius strips)
*Mystery Punch
*A Random Bag of Fun (a bag of simple and inexpensive gifts, which everyone participating in the gift exchange gets to blindly pick from)
In 2004, Darren Bleuel hosted a worldwide Random Bag of Fun, encouraging readers to mail in either gifts or else a donation of twenty dollars, so that they could then be mailed a random gift back. About twenty-five people participated.
'Gavspotting'
While Cameo appearances are a common occurrence in webcomics; the frequency of cameos for both the character Gav van Darin and Nukees creator Darren 'Gav' Bleuel (whose real-life appearance is as striking as that of any comic character) have become a phenomenon unto themselves, especially among Keenspot webcomics. Such cameos, called Gavspottings, are listed on a page in the Nukees web site ; when discussing them, it is the usual practice to add either 'character' or 'artist' after the name in subscript to differentiate the two.
Gavcharacter's appearances include (but are not limited to) Clan of the Cats, Sluggy Freelance, General Protection Fault and College Roomies From Hell. Gavartist has appeared in Clan of the Cats (as Gavcharacter's servant), and Schlock Mercenary, among others.
These latter two are noteworthy because the fictionalized versions of Dr. Bleuel have become recurring characters in their own right, especially in Schlock Mercenary, where, after having been revived from suspended animation a thousand years in the future, he was duplicated over 950 million times due to an incident involving a teleportation device; these 'Gavs' have become an entire ethnic group of their own, and appearances of Gavs both in the main story and in background shots has become a running gag. In El Goonish Shive, he is portrayed as a high school physics teacher, embittered over the lack of respect for the laws of nature by certain of the characters; as of June 2006, this version of Gavartist has only had a single appearance , but author Dan Shive has stated that he will show up again in the future. Some fans have taken to referring to these versions as GavSchlock and GavEGS to differentiate them from ordinary cameos.

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