Drasvin

The potential for perversion is high with this spell. I never appreciated that before now.

Three quarters of a century ago, the Nazis, the Gestapo and all its odious apparatus overran my homeland Denmark. Ignoring peace treaties and all civilised decency they stripped my home of its freedom and independence, reduced it to a mere cog in their war machine, a stepping stone for its conquest of Norway. As time passed, they gradually tightened the screws, taking away all our own mechanisms of government, arresting and imprisoning our police force and eventually inflicting their merciless acts of genocide on Danish homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled, Jews -- anyone that did not meet their nightmarish ideals of Aryan perfection. My family had to flee to Sweden to survive and not everyone made it to safety. Of those that did not, few survived, none of them unmarked.
But the darkness that had fallen across Europe did not last. Eventually a restless giant stirred in its sleep, awoke, and rose to come to the rescue of the Old World. Many nations fought the evils of the Nazis. Of those, few brought as much, sacrificed as much as America did.
That war is long gone now, but I have not forgotten. I and my family directly owe our lives, home and freedom to America and her people. To the soldiers who fought so long and hard, to the working men and women in the factories, to the ordinary people who made the marvelous industry of the giant work and run when it was needed the most. To fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters who sacrificed so much, lost so many they loved. To all of America's people, whatever race or creed, for all of them paid for that war, for that freedom I now have today.
Many years have passed since then. America has changed, since. Grown, and suffered growing pains. She is not perfect and never has been, but she still struggles to improve and make herself better. And precisely this is why America is great: because she always tries to be better.
I will give the last word to my father, who feels this debt as keenly as I do. He is certain that whatever troubles America is enduring she will in the fullness of time rise above them -- because Americans are their own harshest critics, because they cannot rest while they believe injustice reigns.
It has been so for two and a half centuries. And that much, at least, has not changed.
And so, in this dark time of vitriol and partisanship and division, do not forget your roots. America IS great. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.
I believe in you. Thank you all.

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.

I hope not.  Apple is to full of themselves now.  Plus guidelines from on high should not be in a proprietary format
Information wants to be free
DRM is spawn of the Evil Ones.

True. They don't START being complicated. They might just END up that way.

No bets on on "Box"?

You normally get a roll to avoid acting on impulse, but you can forgo the roll (and the book states it's generally good roleplaying to forgo the roll.) On the other hand, she might just have really bad dice rolls.

I already know of one. Me. I firmly believe that if one cannot laugh at oneself, one is missing out on some of the best humor life has to offer.

The accuracy possible increases with the number of satellites used. When the GPS system was new the high accuracy was considered a problem as it could be used by a foreign military. To prevent this a pseudo random time modifier was used by the satellites. This degraded signal was believed to allow for an accuracy of about 100 yards which was thought to be good enough for civilian uses. The US military GPS receivers were able to use the same pseudo random algorithm to calculate the original time and thus were able to achieve the full accuracy that the system is capable of.
While an accuracy of 100 meters might have been fine for some civilian use it wouldn't be good enough for something like a GPS navigator for a car. But through some software trickery GPS manufacturers were able to increase the accuracy to about 25 yards. This was much better but not enough for really demanding applications, and that's when someone dreamed up Differential GPS. By having a stationary GPS receiver transmit the satellite data to a computer they could calculate how large the time error was. That data was then sent as a radio signal that DGPS capable receivers would use to correct their received satellite signals. In favorable situations it was possible to get an accuracy of about 4 inches this way.
Around 2000 it was determined that as DGPS had made it possible to achieve greater accuracy than what the military grade GPS receivers was capable of there was no reason to keep degrading the service for civilian use and the feature was turned off. Even so DGPS is still used for demanding applications today as it can correct some errors introduced by the atmosphere.
Modern GPS receivers can track a large number of satellites simultaneously. While in theory it should be possible to triangulate your position using 3 satellites 4 is actually considered the minimum that's usable and 6 is adequate for most purposes. But modern GPS receivers can track many more than that. Tests show that there are significant improvements even going from 13 to 15 tracked satellites, it can improve the accuracy from about 2 yards to about one.
 
Note that you may get excellent accuracy with only four satellites if the reception is good, but using more satellites improves the reliability.
And why on earth did I feel compelled to write this? I really don't remember, but perhaps it was to remind people just how amazingly complex the GPS system is, and yet we take it for granted today as almost all new mobiles and pads has GPS capability.
 

In your opinion, yes -- but not in the opinion of girls and women looking for role models and heroes of their own. The point of diversity in movies is that as long as we do not have full representation, those who don't get represented feel left out.
(At one point, a teenage gay boy wrote Mark Hamill a fan letter in which he wondered if Luke Skywalker might be gay. Mark Hamill wrote back that he saw absolutely no reason that Luke couldn't be. Such a seemingly small gesture but it allowed a boy to feel included instead of left out...)

How many of us have taken an introductory class to an advanced field in college, or even high school, and wind up convinced that we are now experts? Grace, you are not alone.
But it does provide a more plausible explanation why Grace would be familiar with the "Gender Fluid" concept beyond random web browsing.
 
Two recently reset immortals wake up together, but otherwise alone.  They know each other, they know they need to do something involving Elliot Dunkle of Moperville, but have huge gaps in their memories after that point.  They are lost children who can only rely on each other.
If those two were German, it would have been better to call them Hänsel und Gretel.

I'm just going to take a moment to appreaciate how awesome Edward is in this comic

I'm telling you: Google Dolphin...

MRW I finish reading this comic

They're coming already. Here, have a cookie while you wait.

Not exactly.  Ellen copied Nanase's Guardian form directly, she didn't copy Nanase and then cast the spell.  There's also the fact that the Guardian spell is an extremely special case, which may or may not require divine intervention/approval to use.
If Ellen could copy Cheerleadra and obtain all her powers, I would think Ellen and Elliot would know it by now, given how much time they spend together and how willing Elliot would likely be to try it once the idea occurred to them.
Huh.  Now why didn't it occur to me before to see whether a wizard could learn the Cheerleadra spell itself?  That would certainly solve a great many problems, plus add to the wizard's arsenal of tricks considerably!  I suspect it wouldn't be that easy, though; most likely Elliot's Dewitchery Diamond-influenced spells would be a bit "off" to other magic users, and thus difficult for anyone else to obtain.
Read a few comics further.  As soon as this is brought up, Edward tells Elliot to just change his face more the next time he becomes Cheerleadra.  Elliot can control what he looks like as Cheerleadra, probably as much as he can control his appearance any other time he's female.  This is later comfirmed when he becomes a completely different-looking superhero with the griffins later on.
This might be another case of magic with a lot of moving parts, with Elliot's "girlie-morphs" spell and his "superheroine" spell interacting.  That would likely make it even harder for anyone else to truly become a fully-powered Cheerleadra copy.  Tedd was having trouble reading Susan's fairydoll spell, remember, because it was an interaction between her summoning chest and Nanase's fairydolls.  I'd love to see Tedd's reaction to observing Elliot using his Cheerleadra-cell-phone spell....  :-D

One would assume reading the users spell book would help, it is a common enough fantasy trope...

I think Tony is just stupid.

I think what is happening is Mr. Verres is so overprotective he is accidentally hurting Tedd. He knows how much emotional baggage Tedd has as a result of his mom leaving him and being bullied and he doesn't want that to happen to his son. Combine that with the fact that Mr. Verres job consists of telling blatant lies that obvious aliens are in truth humans, and I wouldn't be surprised if he thinks Tedd is just overindulging in one of his kinks and is worried that may do more damage to his psyche. If he realized it wasn't just a kink but a fundamental part of Tedd's identity I think not only would his attitude change but he would have a "My God, what have I done?!" moment.

Nah, Tedd is currently in a male form, I think you're okay using "he" unless/until there's some indication that Tedd is feeling female/wishing he could take female form right now.  Dan has been using pronouns to fit Tedd's form and/or spirit for a while now, I tend to follow his lead.
I suspect part of Tedd's reticence is because he knows that his dad knows the criteria for giving a magic mark -- telling his dad he got a transgender mark would be the same thing as telling him he has a strong desire and/or it's part of his inherent nature to be able to switch gender.
Personally I'm hoping that Tedd's dad isn't as condemning as Tedd fears he'll be.  Edward expressed an honest worry that spending too much time transformed as a girl wouldn't be good for Tedd.  If/when Edward learns more about gender fluidity, or figures out that it applies to Tedd, he might express relief to learn that there isn't anything harmful in it after all.  Maybe even gratitude to the existence of the TFG for sparing him gender dysphoria.  I can see Grace slowly influencing Edward, slipping bits of information on transgender and gender fluidity into conversations or leaving web pages open on the computer for Edward to find.

... remember that good people like Elliot, Ashley and Good Tom are rare.
I did. And for reference, I don't think I'm furry or scaly: for the "transform for one day" it wouldn't be important, but I'm basing my desire to be dragon on dragons who can transform to human (or humanoid) shape. Like the Ryath from Riftwar Saga, Filia from Slayers or Tyrygosa from Sunwell Trilogy and all those examples being females definitely has nothing to do with it shut up you know that dragons have charisma over 30 ...
(I actually once found nice "motivational" image "Number one reason for half-dragons - What? Did you think the Charisma 34 went away when she took human form" ... unfortunately, after "how to train your dragons" I wasn't able to find it again.)
EDIT: Found it:

Nope. And on that thought, Ashley and Elliot are both dorks, so it would have been the will of Magic to get them together, it wasn't just a coincidence that Elliot just had to morph at the time that Ashley went to talk to him about Susan.

Conservation of detail is just a general policy for writers to follow, it's not a law handed down from on high.  There is Zero reason to think that Susan's father is any one we have "meet" yet.
Don't mind me, really, just the automatic assumption that way too many fans (and not just of the EGS) have that the cast of whatever they are fans of can't ever increase with out major changes happening to the whole universe of the item in question drives me up the freaking wall.
Snarl.  Grunt.  Snap. Bark, etc.
 

How has nobody yet expressed the desire to transform into a dragon for a day?