NP Monday, Jul 1, 2019

[NP Monday, Jul 1, 2019]

I used to work at Borders, the largest multinational bookstore in the world at the time. We got a "customer" come in to rant and rave about how we should only be selling Bibles. Nothing else, just Bibles. So, yes, this is a very believable scenario.

[Story Friday, June 28, 2019]

I find it amusing how feminine Elliot's body language is in panel five, when he's asserting his manliness b cocking a hip to the side, making a hand gesture I've only seen from women, even his facial expression all speak more of She-whose-name-I-refuse-to-speak than his Elliot persona.  He is even standing in a pose that pushes his pecs/breasts forward enough to suddenly show where they weren't before. Of course, that is likely an intentional choice to go with how every argument he offered to rebut his separation from his hero persona illustrated how bad of a liar he is.

[Story, Wednesday March 27, 2019]

As somebody on the autism spectrum, enough so that my parents took me to a psychologist when I was little, who diagnosed me as "bright but very quiet", or in today's parlance, Aspergers, I can see a lot of potential autism-like traits on a number of characters, but the only one I'd feel certain in my judgement on is Susan.  Susan is definitely autistic.  High functioning, yes, but she's definitely on that spectrum. 

Noah and Grace are both part alien, as I understand Noah's character, at least.  Their social issues can be adequately explained by what we know of their childhood, though, so a diagnosis is not feasible.  

Tedd has his/her issues, but autism doesn't seem one of them to me.  There are some traits that could be autism, but s/he seems less likely to be diagnosable than Noah and Grace.

[Friday June 8, 2018]

22 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I don't think Pern rules apply here ... on Pern, dragon needs to bond quickly after hatching (security feature, Kitti Ping Yung was cold and practical), the dragon this scale is from is already adult and quite likely dead.

To be fair to her, the bonding instincts were already present in the fire lizards. She just enhanced it so they would bond to a single person regardless of who fed them the moment they hatched.  It's even arguable that she didn't intend some of the changes, as she had very little time to work with these very alien creatures. 

[Friday June 8, 2018]

Somebody should mention Magus's comments about dragon sirens to Arthur. If nothing else, Pandora and Raven haven't gotten the magic bottleneck cleared up yet, but I suspect that the changes to magic will result in an increase to ambient magic. Part of that may simply be that there is little I wouldn't do for a world like this one and the spells I could get.

There ARE things I wouldn't do. Spend 90% of my waking hours doing nothing but try to learn magic? Already doing that, and failing so far, but who knows when magic might become available for me? Gotta keep trying.

Seriously, there's a part of me that feels the power of creation standing just out of reach and I can't stop yearning for it. I don't even want to stop, as it is too big a part of me, I just try to do the things I have to do to survive around this higher priority.

[Story Monday May 28, 2018]

Perhaps they weren't wrong about what it took to be a wizard, but are wrong about what it takes to be one now. A combination of factors might have been needed to register as a wizard to the tests, just as Uryomoco all read as magically active without getting any magic. Of course, given that we now know that, at one time, they could, and that old rules of magic now work again, I wonder what that will mean for the Uryomoco living on Earth and the hybrids like Grace.

Rule of thumb for magic systems: When it seems people have read the book on magic, throw the book out the window, then dive out after it, set it on fire, strip yourself naked, and then write new rules using the ashes of the book, laughing maniacally.... where was i going with this again?

[Story, Wednesday May 2, 2018]

3 hours ago, Scotty said:

The energy was either floating around anyway, or the golem looked for another item with high amounts of it which could be determined as the source, still doesn't mean Ellen absorbed more of it.

We have the diamond's remains evaporating, a single crate very near Ellen appears to be the only crate that was open prior to the golem and wand emerging, and text from that golem showing that the wave of magic that awoke it, the wand, and the bird mostly flowed into Ellen. That the color has no connection to a mysteriously colored gem that is called a diamond despite being green seems to be stretching things a bit too much.  I'm all for watching what is actually said  in the comic and for checking your assumptions, but there is a limit to how much we can avoid speculation. I could easily be wrong, but that's why I say "almost". My opinion on the color's source is based as much on knowing Dan's writing styles as what is literally said in the strip, but the amount of emphasis he's given on the DD's colors and on Ellen's new hair color, despite the massively added complexity of color based hints in a greyscale comic seems to be either an exploding barrel of red herrings or to actually be connected.

 

[Story, Wednesday May 2, 2018]

The green certainly comes from the dewitchery "diamond". There is a really good chance that the magic was drawn to her because it created her. While I don't care about her hair color(other than curiosity at where Dan is taking that), but I hope the changes to her form aren't permanent. Her breasts are so large and her waist so small that she looks deformed.  I like fv5 on males as it enhances the sense of change, and is often used to lampoon the male social identity's more ridiculous aspects, though I'd really like to see more variety in the transformations and less of a focus on large breasts, but supersizing the already enhanced traits and doing so so often really takes away from the quality of the comic, in my opinion.

[Story Friday March 23 2018]

Smashing  a bunch of boxes holding recently re-empowered relics seems like such a grand plan; not that Magus knows that, of course, but I still expect the pile of breadcrumbs we've been showered with to make the next little bit rather... interesting.  There are so many ways things could go sideways right now, including somehow super-empowering Sirleck.

 

[Story Wednesday March 21, 2018]

I wonder why Dan chose to give Sirleck 24 fingers/toes(including on his head). It doesn't really matter, I suppose, I'm simply curious.  Also, I didn't realize at the time that Sirleck was supposed to be visible on the mortal plain when he released his prior host. Coming at the new host from behind made sense not from a need  for stealth, but because his entire body is designed to attach from behind along the length of the host's spine and the head.  This leaves me wondering what powers he has between hosts, as he was evidently keeping his prior host's corpse standing  even after releasing it, or the aide would have seen Sirleck emerge.

Edit: Apparently I miscounted, and he has 20 base fingers/toes with 6 more on the head.

[Story, Monday March 5, 2018]

16 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

*Reads chapter title*.

"Elliots and Ellens"...? Why "Ellens"? Is Sirleck/Ellen going to touch the Diamond too? Is there going to be talk about alternate universes and Ellen's place in them? Or did Dan just think making both names plural sounded good?

The question isn't, "Why Ellens?"  The body Magus gets out of this, generated by the DD, will be female, thus more than one Ellen.  Arguably, the counter question is, "Why Elliots?", but Magus is a true Elliot*, so perhaps he will be treated as both an Elliot and an Ellen for the purposes of this story.

*Ellen has a copy of Elliot's memories, but did not actually live through them.  Supposedly, the dichotomy between a newborn soul and a lifetime of memories would inevitably lead to madness if steps had not been taken to age her soul through an AU dream sequence.

16 hours ago, Scotty said:

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2468

"full of relatively useless or inert magic artifacts" eh?

Like ones that might have been used in previous magic systems?

That might not be so useless or inert anymore?

Probably a red herring.

Same place my, and apparently everybody elses', minds went.  Not only could these items suddenly be of great power and/or utility, I expect them to in some way fulfill Murphy's law.

Hmm.  I was wondering how Sirleck and Ellen were going to be separated without serious harm to Ellen, as I doubt Sirleck would voluntarily release a healthy body with a lot of magic to it. I wonder, though, what effect the DD would have on them.  Would it create a free Ellen and a new, Sirleck possessed Ellen?  How about restoring Sirleck's humanity? So many ways this could roll.  I'm rarely excited about story reveals, or by much of anything**, but I am definitely looking forward to seeing where this story will head.

**A side effect of being a calm, serene person is a lack of energized anticipation. It really helps deal with disappointments in life, but at an expense of fun.

I've been trying to stay out of forums because I was wasting way too much of my days feeding my addiction to them, so this comment is a little dated,, but I supposeVoltaire was far more successful at traumatizing Tedd Prime, at least in the revised backstory. Dan has said he made that Tedd's story lighter as a retcon because he didn't like how dark he was planning on taking things, but "less dark" could mean so many things.

[NP Monday December 4, 2017]

The Mythbusters thing Dan mentions in the commentary was one of many "myths" they tested where they missed the entire point.  If you are in shelter and/or know that help is coming, then alcohol is ab bad idea, as it will speed up heat loss.  However, if you are in dire straits and need to drag yourself to shelter, then alcohol is exactly what you need.  It will counteract your body's response to extreme hypothermia, restoring the ability to walk and some fine motor skills(essential if you're trying to build a fire), though only for a short time.  That's where the story comes from, and one of the reasons mountain guides typically did carry some form of spirit with them.

[What happened to Krona helping to figure out Halo' s powers?]

Very little time has passed since then.  This seems to be only a few days after that, in the  10/13 update.  The slow pace is not helped by there only being two updates a week.

[Solutions to the vault]

I find this kind of discussion to be far more fun in a forum.  So, what other solutions do you see for these defenses?  What problems do you have with the solutions thus far posed?

For example, I don't see how Deus's solution can work since nothing that isn't alive can pass through the field, so, how does the item in the field make its way out?  A pipe like tube made of living matter, such as a bunch of bamboo shoots twisted around to create an opening through the middle that is shielded on all sides by (soon to be dead) living material would exploit the same hole in the logic Sciona used, without the added cost of murdering an associate in front of other associates who would then realize this was their last chance to turn on Sciona instead, before they were used to open other vaults.  Instead, what Deus did killed the bamboo while it passed through the field, and then destroyed that dead bamboo when it attempted to move back out, proving that the dagger didn't get out simply by the field only blocking travel in one direction.

My preferred ways to enter the vault would be A: stepping outside of the reality and then reentering inside the vault.  Protecting completely against that would be effectively impossible since anything outside of reality would be outside of whatever laws of nature you are exploiting to protect against intrusion.  Alternately, you could move into the past, before the vault was built, and hide yourself behind an atom or two, or shift slightly to the side in a non-euclidean direction(i'e' avoid the wards against travel by already being there, just hiding in a direction nobody looks.),  while you wait for the vault to be vulnerable thanks to your staged attacks, regardless of how long that wait might be.  A construct could be left in such a manner with something that will rupture the wards from the inside, should you not want to spend millennia playing Solitaire.

This forum sees very little use, but perhaps this will garner some interesting comments nonetheless.

[Story Monday October 9, 2017]

On 10/10/2017 at 6:18 PM, hkmaly said:

Based on my experience, I'm not sure it's possible to explain something thoroughly enough so it COULDN'T be misunderstood.

 

This is why it bugs me so much.  I'll rewrite or rephrase something a dozen times and still not be happy with it.

[Story Monday October 9, 2017]

OCD is generally considered to be an anxiety issue.  In my case, though, I have the compulsion without anxiety forming as a result of not giving in.  It's patterns that I reflexively fall into  when not consciously suppressing them, and a nagging pressure at the back of my mind saying* "Check it.  Check it again.  Are you sure you checked it?" and, "You know, there's only 50 more things you need to complete your collection/game/etc.  You don't need sleep, you don't need work, you need to complete that collection."  The one I think that bothers me the most is when I'm talking/typing/etc. that insists that what I've said might be misconstrued, and so I have to over explain.  At length. Far past any reasonable concerns, I just have to keep explaining and explaining....

I have enough self awareness and self control to mostly contain these issues, but the compulsions still nag me.

*Not in words, mind you.  That would be schizophrenia, which the voices in my head insist I don't have..

[NP Monday April 25, 2016]

On 4/26/2016 at 6:08 AM, The Old Hack said:

Agreed. Some things just leave a bad taste in your mouth.

On the other hand, this is the first time I ever heard that Roman legionnaires wore sunshades. That is awesome. And if they didn't, it's a crying shame and they should have.

I'm pretty obsessive about trying to play every way, but I've found a number of games where the options are so evil I simply cannot play that way.  I've even hacked a game's reward system to give me the necessary prerequisites to unlock options because I couldn't stomach 'earning' that option by playing it.

Also, it seems I managed to kick my forum habit long enough to get my account deleted.  I'm going to try to avoid getting this remade account to the post count I had before(several thousand).  I include this only to say that I am the same Wyrd42 from before, should any of my old friends(such as The Old Hack) care about that.