Drasvin

That is taking it somewhat too far. My belief in Murphy's Law is not in a religious sense but rather in the engineer's sense. "I need to eliminate as many ways this can conceivably go wrong as possible. If I don't, someone will someday stumble on the flaw in my design and will all too likely do so in a very painful and possibly terminal way." Admittedly I am not in a position where carelessness of mine is likely to hurt a large number of people but as a rule of thumb it still strikes me as attractive -- the more careful I am, the less likely I am to get myself or people around me into trouble.
As an aside, this was an important part of my father's work before he retired. He is a doctor specialising in clinical chemistry and one of his particular interests is to devise an international standard for such work which includes designing procedures so they are as safe and error-proofed as possible. As an example, back when I was a paramedic in the Army I was supposed to deal with pairs of blood samples from three hundred soldiers. This procedure was... not very well thought out. We had six hundred test tubes, had to fill two of them with blood samples from each soldier, and we did not get the sample labels until after we were finished drawing the blood. In other words, I sat there with six hundred labels to fit on six hundred test tubes full of blood and had to hope like Hell that the test tubes had been placed in the grids in the right order in both trays -- yes, to maximize confusion each pair of test tubes were placed in different trays in what was optimistically hoped to be the matching position on both trays. Oh yes, and if a mistake happened? Clearly it would be the fault of the paramedic doing the work.
After I had related this tale to Dad, he said that this was exactly the sort of disastrous lack of organisation he and his colleagues were striving to do away with. A proper procedure, he stated, would have all the test tubes labeled with the name and number of each soldier and before you tapped the blood into the test tubes you showed them to the donor and asked them if the label matched their identity. Both vials. And so in one fell swoop you eliminate a huge number of potential errors from the process. Very dangerous errors, too. I am sure I don't need to give examples of possible bad consequences.
That is what paying one's dues to Murphy means. It doesn't mean a nihilistic everything-will-go-wrong-anyway attitude. It means that smart designs are less likely to lead to avoidable human mistakes.

Magic called on the Seers to provide it with a human perspective, but didn't give them the perspective needed to properly provide their own perspective.
And subtlety is hard even when you don't have the perspective of a diffuse entity spread across an entire planet(or more)
Voltaire wanted Tedd bitter and distrustful towards Magic. If she was distrustful towards Magic, she likely wouldn't have believed what it said about Pandora coming back, meaning she wouldn't have calmed down and likely would be unable to convince Magic to go public while so filled with anger and pain. Magic calming her down required a level of trust from her.
Also, plan CM was likely never intended to traumatize Ted (though Voltaire certainly considered that a bonus) The purpose of Plan CM was probably an attempt to discredit technology as a significant threat vector for Magic's reveal, which it did (or almost did, depending on what Tedd says in the next comic)
Well, freelance Monster hunting likely doesn't pay well in the modern era, so she needs some way to pay her bills.
I doubt he would take that route. For one, he wouldn't get to enjoy the benefits of all his hard work (his next incarnation would, but that would be a new person). And for two, he went through a lot of effort to maneuver Pandora into breaking the Laws. If he was willing to break the Laws himself, he could have just done that and not have dealt with Plan Complicated Mess at all. He could have just killed Elliot himself instead of trying to get Tara to do it for him.

Something about this page manages to evoke an emotional sense of "the narrative rises up in preparation for the crescendo" in me. I like it.

In an odd way, I was wrong about Van. He isn't there to contribute a viewpoint. He is there to contribute emotion. He can even do that without words, and he does it well. I'm glad.

Write him a letter and tell him I am going to want my time machine back!

Bartender!  A glass of your best hourglass for everybody!

The lady on the radio says the snow has stopped.
So this is the Fake News I've been hearing so much about...

Crowded.

This brought to mind the following scenario:
A world where everybody has gotten used to magic changing regularly, and the Will of Magic never consults any Seers because the Second Purpose is common knowledge. Then one day when preparing for a new change, the Will of Magic finds a kid who happens to not have heard of the Second Purpose.
The Will of Magic tells the child, "You are to help decide whether the rules of Magic shall be severely changed to keep it hidden, or if minimal changes shall be made to accommodate it's reveal."
The child replies, "Huh? But everybody knows about magic."
The Will of Magic still doesn't get it.

Ooh, that's a good one.
I also found this on the EGS facebook group:


I think this is also a valid point to bring up.

According to Pandora, Magic is a butt face.

Of course it wouldn't be that easy. Though all they've established is that it cannot be hidden, not whether or not it should be hidden. Most humans would figure that once you establish that a thing cannot be hidden, then whether or not it should be hidden is a moot point, but Magic doesn't think like most humans. It likely wouldn't care about having to reset continuously until the secrecy sticks, which could (and, most likely, would) be never. Maybe if the knowledge of the magic reset spreads to enough people that the reset does not meaningfully reduce the number of people that know about it, then Magic would be forced to abandon the secrecy notion regardless of what it or the seer's think.
I doubt Magic is about to dismiss them.
From a Watsonian perspective, Magic wants logic and perspective from the seers. It has deemed the logic it has been presented with so far to be insufficient for magic going public. To send them back now would prevent them from presenting more logic and perspective, especially if the reason the logic is insufficient is because Magic doesn't care about if it could remain secret, only if it should. The seers obviously want minimal changes (even though Arthur is reluctant in that regard), so why not let them present more logic?
From a Doylist perspective, Tedd just won a significant victory by convincing Arthur that changing the rules to keep the secrecy is pointless. To have Magic declare their logic insufficient and boot them home without giving them a chance to supply more information would simple pull the rug out from under her. There a plenty of writers who would do that, but Dan isn't normally that mean to his characters.

Of course it wouldn't be that easy. Though all they've established is that it cannot be hidden, not whether or not it should be hidden. Most humans would figure that once you establish that a thing cannot be hidden, then whether or not it should be hidden is a moot point, but Magic doesn't think like most humans. It likely wouldn't care about having to reset continuously until the secrecy sticks, which could (and, most likely, would) be never. Maybe if the knowledge of the magic reset spreads to enough people that the reset does not meaningfully reduce the number of people that know about it, then Magic would be forced to abandon the secrecy notion regardless of what it or the seer's think.
I doubt Magic is about to dismiss them.
From a Watsonian perspective, Magic wants logic and perspective from the seers. It has deemed the logic it has been presented with so far to be insufficient for magic going public. To send them back now would prevent them from presenting more logic and perspective, especially if the reason the logic is insufficient is because Magic doesn't care about if it could remain secret, only if it should. The seers obviously want minimal changes (even though Arthur is reluctant in that regard), so why not let them present more logic?
From a Doylist perspective, Tedd just won a significant victory by convincing Arthur that changing the rules to keep the secrecy is pointless. To have Magic declare their logic insufficient and boot them home without giving them a chance to supply more information would simple pull the rug out from under her. There a plenty of writers who would do that, but Dan isn't normally that mean to his characters.

I have seen a few games where 'winning' was a mere end condition and the outrageous events underway were the real purpose of the game. They have always been a favourite of mine. And in a good tabletop roleplaying game, things will go like this. Ironically enough, some of my greatest successes ever of this kind as a storyteller was in the crapsack World of Darkness. Since the true enemies were basically unbeatable we didn't have to worry much about winning so we had awesome fun with drama, (sorta) heroic sacrifices and occasional downright absurdity. We even had a campaign end in utter tragedy and when it was over we sat looking at one another a few moments. Then one of my players said, "That was awesome. So who feels up for starting a new campaign? And how about pizza while we discuss it?"

 

If Susan becomes a Supervillain, she has already called dibs on Elliot as a minion.

Liefeld: "What happen?"
Arthur: "Someone set up us the bomb. We get signal."
Liefeld: "What!"
Arthur: "Main screen turn on."
Will of Magic: "How are you gentlemen!"
Will of Magic: "All your base are belong to us."
Will of Magic: "You are on the way to destruction."
Liefeld: "What you say!"
Will of Magic: "You have no chance to survive make your time."
Will of Magic: "HA HA HA..."
 

If keeping magic secret is futile, then as I said, what of simply giving out the "harmless" stuff like self gender transformation or balls of light or minor telekinesis like candy, and then making anything actually powerful like fireball cost a ridiculous amount of money, time, effort, power and teamwork/organization along with a great deal of rationality?

"This blaster? Dead as a doornail." (points it at ceiling and pulls the trigger)
(shortly thereafter, outside the burning building:) "There is a profound difference between 'insufficient charge' and 'no charge'."
-- from one of the Man-Kzin books

TOH, you are a wonderful moderator 99% of the time, which is an exceptional proportion, and we are far better off with you than without you. Adding a few helper moderators might reduce the burden on you, give someone to fill in during absences, and give you someone to nudge you on those rare occasions when you do over-react.  I suspect truly replacing you would require several people and would be met with middling success at best.  In other words, we need you, and we appreciate all you do for us!

I don't think the WoM would give the option of minimal changes to accommodate magic's reveal if the amount of available energy was limited or could not support widespread magic use, I mean sure it's possible to use up ambient energy in an area, but supposedly the space whales have been eating excess energy for ages so magic energy must naturally generate somehow so it would truly never run out. And then there's the fact that people generate their own magic energy and using magic just builds their ability to have more energy so it's not like everyone would be draining ambient energy all the time.

I can't see Dan going with "Magic as something that will eventually be permanently used up"; if it won't happen for thousands of years or more then there's little point in making it a plot point, and if it's in danger of happening soon either we eventually wind up with EGS without magic, or a search for new sources of magic - and as those sources would likely belong to other intelligent beings who wouldn't want to give them up, it would lead to a major shift in mood for the series.
I was picturing it as a renewable resource. In fact, I was picturing it more like water than energy resources. It flows from place to place (like from one "side" of the world to the other and back), and has a natural cycle to it. Humans and other beings can take from this supply, but after doing so the magic is returned to the pool in a state that requires it to work it's way through the cycle a bit before it's usable again. So the danger isn't a matter of everyone everywhere running out of magic forever, so much as certain places running low on usable magic for a time.

Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.
 

Or maybe Mr. Verres thinks his kid's sexuality and gender issues are none of Arthur's business.