Scotty

She's managed to keep Rhoda's spell a secret though, so that says a lot. Catalina's trying to avoid drawing attention to herself, sure it's a complicated way of doing so but it's so far worked, I don't think she'll fudge it up. It is worth noting that she's managed to continue to keep both Rhoda's spell and her spell secret even till the current point in the story, though I do suspect that now that she know's Elliot's secret, I think she'll be willing to talk to him about it.

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=531 By golly, it worked! Yay for determination! Boo for no nudity! Actually....could Pandora have been responsible for this? She is watching, she might have given Rhoda a hand by shrinking the clothes while Rhoda shrank Catalina, but that doesn't go well with the hijinks that Pandora didn't expect. Having Rhoda do that all herself would definitely fit the unexpected hijinks.

It just occurred to me while reading today's Girl Genius page, the Geisterdamen speak in Simlish.

Yeah, but Rhoda is smaller than Ellen overall, Rhoda's cleavage would be proportional to her size which, while she does look busty, they're probably still smaller than Ellen's.

The "stuff you're in denial about" angle doesn't necessarily need to be subconscious though, I mean the part where Vamp!Sarah tells Sarah she isn't exactly straight anymore, could have been a thought that Sarah attempted to suppress at the moment but failed, also she did participate in the designing of an MV5 form within the past couple weeks with 2 girls that she was obviously attracted to in some way. So that thought would have been fairly fresh. I'm not really sure if "thoughts creeping in" can be considered subconscious, at least not in the deep buried knowledge sense that Sarah was initially asking about. Sarah seems to be aware of those thoughts, but she's unable to suppress them because of the nature of her mind.

You very likely answered your own question. If I were to guess, she's shocked because the spell shouldn't be able to do that. This does happen before Pandora becomes aware of the Will of Magic, so she's likely not aware of Flair for the Dramatic, which is probably what happened here. Rhoda was being dramatic enough for the Will to be like "Sure, why not?" If it wasn't flair for the dramatic them, it still ranks up there with Ellen's overcharged beam, even the experts weren't sure how it completely transformed Vladia, but given Ellen's determination to protect Nanase in that moment, it altered the spell. If I were to guess, it might be a combination of both. Maybe the magic system has a bit of flexibility in spell mechanics that allow for unusual effects under the right circumstances. Susan summoning Nase and Ellen copying Nanase's guardian form might fall under that flexibility too.

This certainly falls in line with the Vamp!Sarah scenario. Though is would be what happens when Sarah doesn't have much to go on, while she was able to have a lengthy discussion with Vamp!Sarah and Wolf!Sarah because she had conflicting ideas about how she wanted to play in the card tournament that she was sorting through. Now that she's actually wondering how a conversation like that works, she's not entirely sure, so "Grace" isn't able to give much useful information about it.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2266 Looks like this should put to rest the idea of Sarah being able to use a person's abilities in her simulation. Though she probably could still simulate some abilities, like transformations.

Now that, I can agree with.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to end this discussion, I'm unable to get my point across, and frankly, the "there's probably a part of the spell that gives common knowledge about stuff" is pushing the same type of button that JML has when someone says "this character might be that character". I don't believe that Sarah's spell has any "spell within a spell" parts, I don't believe that anyone who's marked has those types of spells right off the bat, even though I do believe it possible (and it is canon) for that to happen later on. I'm basing my feelings on what Dan has already said is and isn't possible, and we're stuck on an example that we can't agree if it fits in "is" or "isn't".

Possible, she also had both hand out when she enlarged the boar, but the cookie could have been a one hander.

The reason I moved this portion here is because I once got warned by Hack about posting information from a new comic in the reaction thread of an older comic, I was trying to avoid that again. I fail to see why, if Sarah's spell could do such a thing, couldn't it allow her to have a legitimate conversation with a person and ask them about stuff she doesn't know the answer to. You can't have one and not the other.

Just because it "just works" doesn't mean it's going to work exactly how it should work in the real world, that's why I keep saying that Sarah could likely open programs that she's seen before and it would be her subconscious putting that information on screen, if she goes to open a program she's never seen before, it not going to work properly. Sarah could talk to someone, and they'd talk back based on information from Sarah's subconscious, but she could never ask them personal questions she doesn't know the answer to. The illusion created in her head is just an image that can be touched and manipulated at will but it has limits to how much detail it has, computers are not books, and for all intents and purpose, I consider computers in the same grouping as people in the simulation, they'll work to the best of Sarah's imagination, but I don't expect her to be able to discover any information that she never knew about before.

The pinup can still be canon, it just ends up happening after Rhoda and Catalina take that next step mutually.

Ok, sonar itself is probably a bad example, I just wanted to use it as a reference for the fact that it can be an omnidirectional pulse used to create an image. Yes, it might be detailed enough to do pits and ridges for CD/DVD's, and Sarah could certainly open up a computer case and see all the parts, but actually getting it all to function accurately would require Sarah to have the technical knowledge of how all the parts work together and the instructions for each part. The reason it works with books is because it has physical pages that can be individually included in the image scan, and Sarah knows how to open a book and read. The CD/DVD/HDD/SSD could have a PDF version of that anatomy book she was looking for, but she has no clue what RPM the drive needs to spin at, how the read/write/optical heads are supposed to move, how the data is supposed to move along the buses and into and out of memory, and that's not including the fact that she doesn't know how a computer translates machine language into readable material.

I'm not saying that booting from CD-Rom would work normally, I was originally saying that the spell wouldn't translate any digitally or magnetically stored information, but then you were like "what if it was stored in video memory?" and so I used RAM as a general reference in my response to that, because VRAM and DRAM have similar function. Even if it was possible to see all the ridges and valleys on a CD-ROM that doesn't mean it would work, Sarah would have to still have an accurately functioning computer to be able to read it, and Sarah is hoping to become an artist, not a technical engineer, so how well would you think her knowledge of how computers work is? For the last bit, Hack and Banneret explain it better that I could have. And I took think the first option in Banneret's is more likely.

Not necessarily multitargeting, but encompassing, or rather, maybe more like how Amanda's shrink soda was supposed to work, and ended up working. There's still the cleavage. Though.....considering what Rhoda was thinking about as she was casting the spell. That may not be likely anymore. There might still be a suitable pocket inside Rhoda's jacket for her.

She behaved how Sarah's subconscious expected her to behave around Tedd, and may have been an over-exaggeration, which essentially proves that the spell didn't carry over what might have been going through Grace's mind at the moment of the spell cast. So that would also apply to anything that might have been loaded into memory on a computer. Sarah's interaction with Grace here is not any different from her interaction with vamp!Sarah and wolf!Sarah, it's basically all inner monologue.

Also Note, Elliot's phone was connected to him when he was morphed, the phone still exists and is functioning with Elliot. The computers in Sarah's illusion are illusions themselves, not merged devices. Of course her brain wouldn't be able to keep all that information. Of course the spell is still in progress, but the initial scan was basically a sonar pulse on steroids, it created an image of the area around Sarah, nothing more, there's no storage of the state of what's on RAM or whatever. This part is in the wrong thread. ...Although, I just realized my mention of the comparison to the holodeck is wrong thread too....D'OH! Not saying it would, just saying that at least the devices would function on a computer simulation, it would require a fair but of programming to make it accurate, but doable. Sarah wouldn't have even that knowledge to make devices function accurately. stuff that she makes appear on the screen would be from her imagination. Hmm, I read through that bit 3 times and can only believe that the "admin" just reported the guy to the actual admins just prior to sending the message and just said all that to make the other person feel better. She said she barely knows computers, but knows about all the social media sites, it'd be enough to report someone for abusive behaviour to all of them and have him banned. Heck it's probably something she could have got the ball rolling on before she arrived at that person's place. None of it really screams "OMG that's a super power!"

Head was just one example that just came to mind when thinking about the question, though I do hope that aiming her palm at her foot never just affects the foot. Though that brings us the next question, how did she return to normal size after the cookie incident? Did she aim her palm at herself, will herself to normal size, or wait out the duration? Considering Voltaire was pumping extra power into Dex to allow him to summon bigger things. There is a possibility of Pandora giving Rhoda a bit of a boost. I'm not saying that's what happened, but there is that faint "what if?", and yes, Voltaire used the pendant to channel extra power into Dex and have no confirmation if Voltaire was with Dex, or working from another location (the voices Dex heard could have come through the pendant as well), that may not be required for Pandora who's likely more powerful and literally watching over Rhoda's shoulder.

This is something that feel I need to stand firmly on. Because what you're saying would make the spell completely OP, and while this is a high end spell, I don't believe that gives it the authority to do simulate everything down to the atom or electron or blood vessel. Dan made the comparison of this illusion to the holodeck, yes the holodeck can simulate computers and electronics and whatever, but consider what's powering the holodeck, a computer system programed with all the information about how these things should work. What's Sarah's illusion powered by? Beyond the initial spell cast, her brain is powering the rest of it, allowing her to view and manipulate what's there. The spell basically has 2 phases, phase 1 creates the illusion by doing a single pass of the area the moment it is cast, phase two is basically up to Sarah what happens, any physics involved will be based on Sarah's knowledge of physics which are likely fairly limited, so there's a lot of stuff she likely wouldn't be able to properly simulate. The computer analogy is the same as the brain analogy, it's all electrical impulses, if Sarah can't accurately simulate electrical impulses in a person's brain to interrogate them for information, then she can't accurately simulate electrical impulses running through a CPU to load top secret documents.

I think it's safe to say that their escape will be successful, it's just that they route they took had the highest chance of failure, It's like Rhoda's initial plan of "just act normal and walk out" had the success threshold of 4 on the D20, and Catalina's plan needed a nat 20 to succeed, and they got it.

This one supplied by Dan: Funny the things you get while chopping wood.

In Rhoda's case here, while Dan had stated that her thinking about "It will be mutual" didn't have a chance of shrinking them both, I wonder if the thought still helped Rhoda shrink both Catalina and her clothes. Like if Rhoda just tried to focus on both as separate entities that she wanted to shrink simultaneously, the chances of not getting it right would be high, but having one focusing thought "It will be mutual" kept her mind from overthinking what needed to be done. I do have to wonder though, how would Rhoda shrink or grow herself? Would she have to hold her hand over her head, or can she just will herself to a different size the same way Elliot does morphs? If it was the latter, the maybe there still was a chance of the "It will be mutual" though causing them both to shrink, but that's probably more of a stretch, but then again Dan's commentary suggests that Rhoda isn't completely immune to "sabotage" with her spell, so that leaves it open to interpretation.

In Rhoda's case....Hmm, actually, I'll explain that in the relevant thread.