Vorlonagent

You never know till you try light-haired physics class girl whose name we don't know...

Speaking as a sometime writer, there's nothing more annoying than losing an argument with your own character.

Great. My magic user isn't even the hero now... Just a part of an idiot's posse. Thanks Blizzard. That feels so much better... I do have to say one of my favorite things from D1 was spamming the "Charge Bolt" spell down long hallways in the upper dungeon levels. The bolts moved slowly but I don't think they gave the bolts a range limit beyond destroying a bolt it when it hit a wall. I could go back up to town and be topping off my potion supply and suddenly hear the sound of a minor creature getting killed. That never got old for me.

I see what you mean but I'm not any happier. D3 however addressed this and made the Wanderer Leoric's son, not the D1 hero, if I remember continuity correctly. I guess technically that makes Leah, should she ever return, the heir to the throne of Conduras... Or worse Diablo himself now is.

I was never happy with Blizzard taking over my character and making them do something this stupid. With Diablo 2 underlining how stupid my D1 character had been.

Question then. Do NP comics contain sufficient ambient magical energy for Ashley to cast Rhoda's spells?

It was Sarah as Deckard Cain. I suspect the request was somewhat bewildering for Dan too...

Poor Ashley. She doesn't get any respect... And that golem...If it is capable of repairing itself we simply must call him "Golempool".

The candy coating is my favorite part of the M&M. The rest of it is milk chocolate. I don't dis milk chocolate by any means but there's also a ton of other milk chocolate delivery systems out there if that's all you want. I did experiments to figure out how few M&Ms I could put in my mouth to that that burst of sugary "candy coating" flavor. the answer was 3 regular M&Ms. I used to dislike M&Ms minis because the coating didn't taste right. that has been corrected.

it helps that the creator has pretty much reduced his entire original cast to guest star and walk-on roles...

Or another game....

Oh so YOU'RE responsible for that Oktoberfest incident...we'll be looking for you when we start....The Hunt for Red Hacktober... I'm playing it more like an intelligence analyst. What reasonable conclusions can I tease out of how tenuous a set of facts? Sometimes I speculate outside the facts but I keep the distinction in my head. ...which is entirely reasonable. Lord Tedd could be calling himself that in a super-villain way. As if he's the "Lord of All Tedds" or something like that. Except Shade-Tail does use "m'lud" when talking to Lord Tedd. That is what suggests LT has some kind of actual authority. I hasten to add it doesn't prove it, but it holds out the possibility. We also have Nioi referring to Lord Ted in the privacy of her own mind as "master". Lord Tedd could more like a cult leader than running an actual nation. It just seems like there's some kind of organization there with Lord Tedd at the top. One large enough to have an army with a "General". The important point to pick out is Lord Tedd's organization, however big or not it is, feels isolated, and independent. Rather than inserting a post-apocalyptic scenario, I look around for other EGS continuity I can stick onto that feeling. Damian was supposed to be the "lord of Fire" prophesied to unite the Seynoulu. People have speculated for years that this might actually be Tedd, so why not make it true with Lord Tedd, running a cult/empire of Seynoulu? maybe they're HQed in the remains of the Shady Corporation where Shade-Tail and his brothers were created. maybe somewhere else. I find it amusing though I have no evidence for it that Lord Tedd's headquarters are still in his dad's house's basement. Just drilled out and massively expanded. Since second life has Kaoli living openly, and Nioi is a part of Lord Tedd's world, I choose to believe that Lord Tedd's universe is a darker reflection of Second Life. In a world where magic and aliens are much more common, Lord Tedd's magitech might give him the ability to force the US government to keep its distance. again, I don't have evidence. all I claim is this is a theory that fits the facts.

Democracy is actually a very random and frustrating form of government. It has a great marketing team but you really do have to read the manual and install all the security fixes. One of the hardest problems transitioning from autocracy to democracy is that the people are still acclimated to autocratic methods of getting things done. It's very tempting to get frustrated with democracy and go autocratic or just decide "now it's my chance to rule" and not bother to begin with. I think this is what happened to Russia despite the recent sham elections there. We also get the "1-vote democracy " from this kind of thing, where the people finally get a vote, kick out the old authorities, and the new government decides that's enough elections. This is what happened in the Palestinian Gaza when the Palestinian Authority was voted out and Hamas was voted in. I am making the possibly flawed assumption that Lord Tedd grew up in a roughly 21st century environment and that he established an autocracy in the US with the means to make it stick. If true, there might still be a US government that could fill the power vacuum left by Lord Tedd, should he have an attack of conscience and step down. I told you my memory was hazy... Idle speculation: An Uryouom TF Gun stabilizes a Greater Seynoulu's ability to transform in a lot of ways. Can a device be built that puts a greater syenolu back in his pre-TF-Gun state? It wouldn't stop General Shade-Tail but it would literally and figuratively slow him down...

It's possible. Certainly he wasn't able to move against her or didn't think he could move against her when he and Lord Tedd had that talk. One alternate possibility is Shade-Tail tried to kill Nioi and failed and that's why Nioi was traveling around other universes than her own, but I have no evidence for it. I just throw it out as a theory that fits the facts. Pretty much. People are messy and hard to control, as Nazis, Soviets and the British Crown all found out. This is always the problem with a dictatorship of any size. If there's power to be had, people who want it will act however they must to get it. This is why many third-world autocracies are run by extended family of the dictator. If Lord Tedd wants people around him he can trust he may well have to give up the power that attracts untrustworthy people to begin with. Do we have reason to think Nioi actually trying to eject/eliminate Shade Tail? My memory of the few comics with Lord Tedd, Nioi or Shade Tail in them is a little hazy. It's certainly possible, however.

You have hit on the most important part of maintaining control. As long as Lord Tedd defaults to Shade Tail first and before anybody else, it's all good for Shade-tail. The "I don't keep track of your pets" strip is what suggested to me that Shade-Tail is getting complacent. It's an indication that Shade-Tail doesn't consider Nioi to be a threat to his manipulation of Lord Tedd. and we've seen Nioi as a very proactive individual. Nioi can become a threat even if she herself never figures Shade Tail out. She can become the voice Lord Tedd listens to more than Shade-Tail. she can encourage Lord Tedd to be more self-reliant. Running a "she's a manipulator" game against Nioi is itself a problem because it asks Lord Tedd to look for manipulators and consider what a manipulator is and how they operate. Shade -Tail is best off with Lord Tedd being clueless. Anything that asks Lord Tedd to grow up and take responsibility for who is around him and what they're telling him is a threat to Shade-Tail's control...even if the asking comes from Shade-Tail. Nioi likely knows what's up and realizes that she has the same problem. Pointing out Shade-Tail as a manipulator will also allow Shade-Tail to say the same about her. her best bet is to build up the hurt and damaged parts of Lord Tedd and hope he will see the truth himself.

Needing reasons is actually a symptom something is going wrong. As any good manipulator knows, it's all about removing choice by evoking powerful emotions The mind being manipulated will provide any number of rationalizations to support an emotional decision without prompting. If the manipulator has to actually provide those reasons themselves, they're losing control. Yes. Because it exposes the puppet strings the manipulator has in place. There are always some even if they aren't total. Probably not in the military even, but likely what we'd call today a "civilian contractor." I don't actually know though. It's a tough thing to deal with someone like Nioi who has the potential to disrupt the emotional dependency the manipulator needs to have control. A lot of time the best thing is to make sure the dependency on the manipulator is intact and leave the rest alone. Acting against a Nioi directly is something else that calls unwanted attention to the manipulator's puppet strings.

I see shade-Tail as encouraging an emotional dependency on himself. Shade-Tail is the steel in Lord Tedd's spine. Shade-Tail wouldn't want a series of rational reasons why he occupies a special place with Lord Tedd but a void in Lord Tedd's life that only Shade Tail's confidence keeps at bay. A good manipulator can insinuate themselves into exactly the position you describe without ever having to tell the person they're manipulating what to think. I expect that Nioi has no official role in whatever Hierarchy Lord Tedd has. Not to go all Godwin's Law, if Lord Tedd is Hitler, Nioi is Eva Braun. Hers is not a General Staff sort of role. Also, if shade-Tail is a General, that implies soldiers.

I'd agree that Shade-Tail dpoesn't have Lord Tedd on marionette strings. But has striven to be the one Lord Tedd looks to for advice and confidence, meaning that Lord Tedd shouldn't make a big decision without consulting Shade Tail and Shade-Tail's approval. I see Shade-Tail's control as primarily political. I don't think Sahde-Tail is trying for a cult-grade contorl over Lord Tedd's personal life. I would expect that's how Sahde-Tail would put it with the goal of keeping Lord Tedd a bit distance from everybody else. I don't think he'd want Lord Tedd to look too much on his subordinates as pets. Shade-Tail is a subordinate! 9at least on the organization chart) That "not caring" was what I took as evidence of complacency. Even if Shade-Tail isn't trying to control every aspect of Lord Tedd's life, he should be keeping his finger on the pulse.

Shade-Tail seems to accept Nioi's presence, if grudgingly. Perhaps judged that removing her would be worse than letting her stay/live. What little time we've seen suggests to me he's the "power behind the throne" with Lord Tedd as the one on the throne. If I were to read into what little we've seen, I'd suggest Shade-Tail as someone encouraging Lord Tedd's feelings of abandonment and alienation and the rage that goes with them. People are most easily manipulated through their emotions, so I would guess that Shade-Tail is trying to keep Lord Tedd in a raw, immature and highly mercuric state, with Nioi in the role of a sort of "living plushie" that a permanently adolescent Lord Tedd clutches at to make the pain go away for a while. I'd also suggest that Shade Tail might be a little complacent, maybe a bit too used to his position.

I'd agree. I'd say the needs Elliot and Grace meet for Tedd are being met by General Shade-Tail and Nioi with Lord Tedd. I'd also say that force of personality only gets you so far. Being manipulative is also knowing when and how. That's cleverness.

Lord Tedd's methods to date don't show much subtly...or cleverness even though they do show a good deal of knowledge and abstract intelligence. For General Shade-Tail to be manipulating Lord Tedd as we all seem to think he is (me included), he has to be clever, or at least moreso than Lord Tedd.

Why wouldn't we think General Shade-Tail to be clever? Lord Tedd is likely a tool. There's only so many really good artificers out there so replacing Lord Tedd is something of a non-option.

Beta Tedd = Scrappy Doo then?

...but why make himself out as an enemy to all the other Tedds in all the other universes that he could find? it's not like a bit of assassination is just fun and games between Tedds...

How go the CD sales, Prof?