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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

Douglas

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Posts posted by Douglas

  1. Posted

    1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

    Magus's plan, maybe. Sirleck's plan is to possess Magus.

    It would not surprise me if Magus anticipated Sirleck's double cross, so that Magus's plan is to touch the diamond, pretend to be unwary to lure Sirleck into leaving Ellen, and then fight him.

    I mean, really, Magus's final approach for getting Sirleck's help was to beg politely. He'd have to be some combination of extremely ignorant about aberrations and/or stupid to think that had any possibility of working, and he did it while specifically emphasizing how he fit the exact requirement that Sirleck considers most important for his new host. It could have just been desperation and coincidence, I suppose, but that pitch fits suspiciously well and Magus had plenty of time to think about how to approach the conversation in advance. I would find it very believable that Magus was deliberately manipulating Sirleck.

    Servant of Tara Gilesbie reacted to this

  3. Posted

    2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    Would require the law change taking longer than I would expect, but otherwise I like that idea.

    Or Pandora coming back sooner. Or both. Maybe a refresh has a much shorter respawn time than a reset, possibly due to not having to start a new personality from scratch.

  5. Posted

    I think the problem with earlier explanations actually was not Magic failing to understand, but rather that Magic simply did not know about the Internet - and especially youtube - because there haven't been enough instances of spells directly interacting with it. The earlier explanations to some extent assumed that when they referred to sharing information quickly, exposing incidents, etc. that Magic understood that they were referring to Internet broadcasting of information. Now Tedd has finally stated "there's this new thing called the Internet that blows all your assumptions about information propagation away," and Magic revised its forecast of what would happen in light of this new information.

    20 minutes ago, Scotty said:

    I do worry that Edward might be put on the spot for Tedd's actions here. It was clear that Arthur didn't expect Tedd to be there so when Liefeld hears about it, what would he do?

    Edward might get questioned about it, but he can honestly say he didn't know. No one in the DGB knew about seers before now, not even Arthur who is one, so Edward not knowing about Tedd being a seer should be readily accepted. As for Tedd's actions, even Arthur agrees, however reluctantly, that Tedd is right. If anything, they'd be thanking her for preventing catastrophe. If not for Tedd, DGB would soon be getting blindsided by a thousand seers bringing magic into the public eye in a far more chaotic and unmanageable way, while handicapped by having lost their advantage of an existing corp of experienced magic users. They'd have Arthur to get them started picking up the new system right away, but they'd be on an even footing with every other group just starting out.

  6. Posted

    6 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

    This is not the delivery I was expecting. If the premise is that the Spellbooks represent Magic's natural way of communicating, Tedd should have been talking in a dry and overly wordy fashion. While this is in a bit more detail than what was said before, it seems to fit better with the "dramatic" nature of magic that Tedd just concluded she was wrong about.

    Also, I wasn't going to cheer for any backgrounds in the main story until we left the dreamscape, but I can't resist. Yay for spider-web background in panel four!!! (And yay for starburst backgrounds in panels two and six too, I guess.)

    I doubt Tedd could "speak Magic's language" in that way, at least not competently enough to convincingly present an argument, and she knows better than to try. The realization Tedd is basing all this on is that Magic does have some understanding of humans, and that understanding is focused on all the big obvious flashy high impact stuff, so to get a point across while "speaking human" she needs to build it around that kind of stuff.

  8. Posted

    2 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

    Suddenly knowing magic is real and that some people can use it doesn't mean you get a spell like Luke's that tells you who has magic.  A Seer would be no more likely to see magic in action after the reveal than before, unless they made a public announcement of their abilities and sat through the inevitable scorn and the hordes of wannabes that would inevitably show up to be Looked at, then get pissed off at the Seer when told they didn't See anything.  Anyone with magic would risk exposure if they went to a publicly known Seer, so many would stay away, or they'd go but would refuse to go public once the Seer confirmed their ability was, indeed, magic.  The longer a Seer goes without being able to publicly demonstrate that someone they have identified can do magic, the more scorn and ridicule, and the less likely a real magic-user would be to go to the shyster.  (After all, Seers may be told what they are, but no one else who has magic will be....)

    Unless Seers would also be told they can make wands, and they can make wands with enough energy in them for normal, non-talented people to use them, and they actually See a spell to put into the wands that is overtly magical (because they don't get their own spells, they only learn the spells of others, so they'd have to see one in order to pass it on in a wand), and they can convince someone to use that wand on camera, or to use it enough to develop their own talents....

    And they'd just happen to see one of those people cast a spell, for them to be able to see the magic happening?  Because Seers aren't like Luke, they can't see someone has talent, they can only See magic itself as it's happening.  Each Seer would have to See a spell happen in order to pass that spell on, they don't get spells of their own.  And an SF/F convention would be full of hundreds of wannabes and wishful thinkers for every genuine magical talent.

    All seers will be made aware of magic, how the new system works, and how to teach it to others. They don't need to find people who already have magic, they can just start teaching. Lesson 1 would be "this is how you, as a non magic user, can get magic." The current system has ways for any random guy to become magical without Immortal help - Edward made a big deal of this when arguing with Tedd after Not-Tengu - and I see no reason to expect the new system to be different in this regard. The ways of acquiring magic would be different, but there would still be some. And all seers would get magically informed about exactly what they are.

    hkmaly reacted to this

  9. Posted

    Ok, Magic has a point that without Pandora there almost certainly won't be another singularly spectacular event such as the mass slaughter of aberrations.

    However:

    Weren't things heading towards a reset even before that?

    Didn't Pandora achieve all previous progress towards a reset by, in essence, helping some (dozens?) people gain magic in one small area and then letting human nature take its course?

    Isn't that something that all seers will be able to do?

    What percentage of seers does past history suggest will attempt to do so, specifically seeking to expose magic far and wide?

    How many seers does that work out to with current world population, and is it really so few that they can't collectively match Pandora's marking spree?

  10. Posted

    2 hours ago, Scotty said:

    Edit: Actually scratch that, I'm not sure Susan could take Ashley's 3 space, she wasn't able to take the 2 space she's currently on which probably meant she had 1-type cards of the same type. She'd have to draw a 2-type card that she can combine with one of her 1-types, or a 3-type card in order to steal Ashley's 3 space.

    Susan was in a 3-type form. To transform herself, she would have needed to replace all 3 types at once. The only restrictions this places on her hand are:

    • No 3-type card.
    • For any 2-type card, she does not have a compatible 1-type card.
    • If she has three 1-type cards, they don't cover all three types.

    There are plenty of combinations that could satisfy that, and plenty of ways drawing 1 additional card from Energize could complete a 3-type combination.

  11. Posted

    My guess for Friday: Convincing Arthur proves its value, as he takes up the argument while Tedd recovers from her shock. One potential point might be to take inspiration from Tedd and ask what percentage of seers have "acted foolishly" in past resets. Even 1% would mean about 10 seers this time.

  12. Posted

    One seer breaking the secret, one person taught by a seer breaking the secret, one person in the right place with a camera phone happening to see a person taught by a seer do something...

    Unless magic itself blocks the spread of knowledge somehow, depending on the behavior of that many widely distributed people is not a reliable option. And we already know how magic itself blocks the spread of knowledge - by doing severe system changes. Depending on that would just mean that Tedd's right and they'd be back with a new batch of seers (around a thousand this time) advising magic on a new change in short order.

  13. Posted

    4 hours ago, Scotty said:

    Not sure if I'll get a response from Dan, but I asked if Arthur, Tedd and Van would remember having this meeting when they wake up. It would make sense if that was the case because it would prevent Arthur from somehow revealing the second purpose and preventing other Seers from being eligible and with no eligible seers the WoM would default to severe changes each time magic got too well known.

    If the three woke up unaware that they took part in the WoM's decision process, then they wouldn't be able to interfere with future changes, so if the system did severely change, Tedd wouldn't know it was because Arthur's argument won, and if magic didn't change and instead allowed a full reveal, Arthur wouldn't know that Tedd's argument won or if Van was able to tip the scale in Tedd's favour. Of course if the WoM decided in favour of revealing magic then there likely wouldn't be any future meetings anyway.

    There's also the teaser potential of Tedd waking up not remembering she met her half brother.

    If seers don't remember when they participate in these meetings, then how does anyone know about the second purpose of seers? People would just know that magic changes, without knowing anything about the decision process.

  14. Posted

    15 minutes ago, CNash said:

    Wait, isn't Arthur skirting disqualification from the second rule on a technicality? He's had an interest in magic changing for a long time now, and would use it for his own ends - even if they're benign. I understand that it is technically not "premeditated" - his last scene, where he explicitly rules out "hoodwinking a god" , proves that. But what if it wasn't Arthur, but someone else with less benign goals and who also had no idea that they were a seer, thus rendering them eligible for the second rule by default? They could cause a lot of damage. Are we to accept that magic didn't think of that loophole?

    Why would magic care about any particular person's goals? Magic has its own goals, it just wants advice on how to achieve them. And the second rule would rule out anyone who knows about the second purpose, whether or not they know that they are themselves a seer.

    The purpose of that rule is to get people who haven't been thinking about how to persuade magic to do something. Arthur had no idea that an opportunity for such persuasion would exist for anyone at all, not just that it would be given to him. As far as Arthur knew, magic was going to just decide all on its own what to change. Arthur is not going into this meeting with a pre-planned speech or set of debate points, so the rule has achieved its purpose.

  17. Posted

    Let me rephrase: I think Sirleck is waiting for Magus to use the Diamond, because that will produce a body that he can steal without anyone missing it. Sirleck doesn't care at all about the Diamond, but he does care about not drawing a manhunt onto his trail when he takes his next long term host.

  18. Posted

    I'm almost certain that Sirleck is waiting for the diamond. The point that convinced him to help was that no one knew about Magus at all, so no one would miss Magus when Sirleck takes him. Magus didn't frame it that way, of course, but that was obviously Sirleck's real motivation. Taking Magus when it would mean Elliot's permanent disappearance would negate that.

  20. Posted

    Temporary or not, transforming people without their consent is Not Ok. I expect Susan's first piece of advice to be to remove the word "unsuspecting". Anyone who plays this game needs to know in advance what they're getting into, at least in general terms, and to be able to end it for themselves at any time if they change their mind (which may be advice piece #2).

    Drasvin reacted to this

  21. Posted

    On the subject in the commentary, there's an unmentioned detail of Tedd's pronoun preference that I'm wondering about: If someone is talking about a past event, perhaps relating a story of what happened, does Tedd prefer to be referred to in that context by Tedd's present form or by Tedd's form at the time being talked about?

  22. Posted

    13 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

    It's quite possible that Sirleck just doesn't know that the pair are either young or recently reset, let alone both, and just thinks he's capable of handling a couple of normal immortals.  He didn't seem too eager to tangle with Pandora, though.

    Magus told him directly that they're young and died improperly. Also, Sirlek wants them distracted, and plans to use threatening Adrian as a means to do that.

    So, Sirlek is almost certainly not planning to possess Adrian, as he intends specifically to draw Helena and Demetruis' attention to Adrian at the time he attempts whatever he's planning, and it's hard to imagine how that could possibly go together with attempting to possess Adrian.

  23. Posted

    7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    HKmaly, please do not make this sort of remark in the future. It could smack of a transphobic comment and I would rather avoid that. Thank you.

    Such a meaning didn't occur to me at all, and now that I think about it I can't think of one that would make sense in the context. I immediately interpreted it as "I suspect Tedd is female more often than male when up late working on stuff."

  24. Posted

    5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    What if those are retcons? I will destroy the world as it is now known and replace it with another sounds VERY much like description of magic reset. Maybe she was supposed to cause one deliberately, but then Dan changed mind. And maybe she WAS supposed to be "big bad", as she would be slipping into insanity ... but then Dan changed mind and made her almost seem more sane than when she was talking with Magus.

    The meaning I understood from that declaration was that Pandora would replace "the world where magic users must hide" with "a world where magic is used openly", thereby lifting the restrictions on what Raven is allowed to do. That idea is completely unrelated to a magic reset.

    ijuin and The Old Hack reacted to this

  25. Posted

    47 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

    There is no way to cure, release, exorcise, or un-curse an aberration.  The underlying human had to go into the partnership willingly which means that the human was not a nice person in the first place. (Although this does not mean that the human necessarily knew all the details, or that the parasite did not employ some sort of coercion or deception.) 

    I think you've got a misconception here - as I understand it, there is no "partnership" involved. A human does not pair with a parasitic creature to become an aberration, the human all by himself becomes a parasitic creature that is an aberration. Sirleck - the creepy mask thing itself, not the body it happens to be on right now - used to be a human, and willingly sacrificed his humanity to become said creepy mask thing.

    Sirleck happens to be a particular kind of aberration that exhibits its parasitic nature by taking control of human hosts, but that's not a general trait of all aberrations.

    HarJIT reacted to this