hkmaly

... she's THIS MUCH smaller than the bunny girl? ... oh, wait, she didn't have same height before either. Also surprised she's still at first level of everything and WTF does she wear? Why didn't she bought some better clothes already? Actually, why doesn't she already HAVE some better clothes? ... oh. Wait. Her clothes change with her UNLESS she's on first level which she is. This may be only clothes available in level 1 size.

Hmmm ... that could be it. That definitely makes sense. I had thought that Diane would be easier to awaken than your normal person being that she is 1/4 immortal, in a magic system that does seem to work by bloodlines. Her having a "magical metabolism" would be yet another indicator of that. Also makes sense. On the other hand, I imagine that someone like Nanase from long line of magic users might be just as easy to awaken despite not being so close ... because Nanase may ALSO be 1/4 immortal if you sum it. ... she used wand ONCE. I think she won't awake THAT fast. She just assumes. It's entirely possible she will still have this metabolism even when hitting her mid-eighties. And that's assuming Tedd won't make everyone immortal at that time anyway, which I would personally consider sign of laziness.

In my experience, yes. I was a janitor in my early 20s, also pumped gas while at university (dating myself, 'pumped gas' is no longer a thing); my ex did retail sales. '... am a college student' doesn't count for much here prior to graduation, unless you have a formal internship, and even then you are considered to be an under-skilled temp and given lighter duties. For kids on work study (a form of financial aid, the school provides a job, usually as part of a package including an outright grant, work study, and a loan) a typical job is cafeteria service. This may be due the image that students attend college to party, not to learn; this is true enough to case a pall on the more serious students (dare I say majority?) Somehow, I see cafeteria and retail sales much more believable.

Yes, I find more likely interns are used for stuff like bottle washing and coffee retrieval than janitors being upgraded to interns. That would be unnecessarily hard. I expect people in the lab would know Tedd is directing the research. I'm pretty sure DGB does NOT have anyone who would know how the seers works because such knowledge wouldn't remain hidden from Arthur, who didn't even know he's seer despite knowing he's wandmaker. And obviously any magic researcher for DGB would know that magic exists. However, I totally agree with possibility of other researchers. Tedd has unique qualification and it makes sense he would lead the research, but there is still lot of work which can be done by other people, saving Tedd time. Remember how Tedd complained about having just one test subject for the watches? Well, next time, he can just hand the watches with instructions to researcher and that researcher will do the experiment with dozen people. Some experiments may need him to look at the spell in action, but not all. Also, he totally needs someone just for testing that something works for everyone and not just him. Note how surprised he was that the glove only worked for him. (And, well, it may be easier to get test subjects when it wouldn't be teenage genderfluid researcher doing the experiments on them. Some people might suspect Tedd is pervert.)

That's the part which seems unlikely to me. I suspect that most scientist won't look at janitor at all and that such work would have roughly same value in helping to get internship as selling hotdogs in front of the lab, if not smaller. But, like, maybe in US it really works? Instead of something like this teacher attitude about janitors? ... or, like, "works" at least enough to be usable as cover story.

That was a good point about size of inventory. So much for buying enough XP for level 5. Hmmm, Rhoda and Catalina having kids, sounds like a plan. Note that the restock period might've been shorter before the "cheats off" as well. I don't. There is 52 weeks in year, the potion used to be 1000x stronger, 1000/52 = 19.2 ... Also note that while Dan needed to get her to 0XP to have the visual indication, he didn't mentioned anything about needing her at zero level for other reasons ... which totally suggests she's going to get to level 2 in everything again. Which may actually require just the potions she can buy now plus the one she already has. Then she's probably going to do something for which level 2 in everything is basically fair fight.

Well, I think she looks stronger on that last page, and height would be hard to compare. Of course, her spell casting level looks same and that might be only thing people would notice ... I can agree with the meta (that is, yes, it seems she only legitimately got to level 2 and that what Dan said implies she looked like level 2) but it's not sufficiently convincing argument to be completely sure about it.

To be honest, it feels like that would just add more things Dan would have to worry about keeping track of to an already full plate, I don't think he'd want to just go "oh, the government is basically pulling the strings while the gang goes through college" and not even show what that means in their day to day lives, like would they basically get fast tracked through, not having to worry about grades, all because Tedd's been tasked with figuring out how to make magic safe? They don't need to finish the college successfully. They only need to not get thrown out too soon. And, like, they would end up living together despite the college normally putting students in rooms randomly. The fact Pandora formulated it as a warning notwithstanding, I suspect that 1) there is no way DGB could miss employing at least Tedd, if not all of them 2) they wouldn't really need to convince him as Tedd will totally volunteer to do it on his own. Oh wait she already did. Also, my headcanon is that the person Pandora was speaking about was agent Cranium and that agent Cranium considers it second best thing ever happening to her (first thing being agent Wolf saying yes). Seriously, there was a time when I though that Arthur will turn out to be reason why Tedd won't join DGB, but he did very good impression on Tedd and probably plans to retire soon anyway. Yeah, that's where I though it would lead with Arthur not being nice enough. And I wouldn't complain. With TF gun, Ellen's beams and Rhoda that's not even problem. No problem with him in a government-run research facility. The public story is that it's the sort of job a college student can get. He sweeps floors and empties wastebaskets. Later he gets an internship as a junior assistant lab tech and works his way up from there. Also, the facility is funded by a private foundation. The government has nothing to do with it. According to the public story, that is. Hmmmm ... is really believable that college student would be sweeping floors? The internship as a junior assistant would be something which IMHO can totally work but not immediately, that it would need to happen like next year or two years later.

She could have still helped Elliot back when he needed to transform, it seemed like Sarah was into the idea of doing transformation stuff with Elliot back on Grace's birthday, but then nothing ever came about it aside from when she suggested that Elliot transform to look like her and then she developed that "I'm not pretty enough" complex. "Aside"? What happened is that Sarah was into it on Grace's birthday party, but then she got that I'm not pretty enough complex and stopped with it. She possibly get over that complex when working with Tedd, but didn't realized she would feel differently about having transformation-related fun with Elliot until they break up with each other. Beanbag actually. Right. Good point. Sounded like Dan was planning on them going through normal college and keeping the tone of the comic pretty much as it is now, having it shift to DGB mandated school and jobs might be too much of a change in tone. That's not what I was suggesting. I was suggesting that DGB will simply secretly influence normal college, just like they rigged presumably normal lottery to give money to Ellen. We haven't actually gotta confirmation that Arthur was able to get that lab and funding approved yet The amount of red tape in EGS is lower than in our universe. I don't expect any problems with that. What's more likely is that it will be non-trivial to set up any believable reason why would be Tedd visiting actual government facility before finishing college, so they will either just fund more stuff for his basement or set up something in the school Tedd and all of the others would "by chance" go to. And, yes, Arthur totally plans to keep at least Ashley, Ellen and Sarah as study objects for Tedd because finding human guinea pigs for teenage scientist is not easy. Speaking about guinea pigs, the moment Arthur realizes something changed with Uryuoms, Grace's "family" is totally going to visit Tedd. Hmmm ... I see your point but I still don't think this will be chapter break.

I don't think XP potions affected purity, just the cosmetic ones I mentioned it as argument that price is not really an issue. Seriously? Hmmm ... spent time killing bandits which she is opposed to do on moral grounds, or ogling Elliots ... decisions, decisions ... seriously, I think that she WILL be leveling through potions, just not to maximum. That at some point she will just do next story quest, which will presumably give her option to buy better XP potions. She gained level 2 in all three stats when she left the first cave. Then she did a quest where she subdued the enemy instead of killing and thus no XP, did the housing game, then she bought XP and cosmetic potions to get max level while keeping the appearance of having level 2 stats. That's why Dan went with the reset to 0xp thing because just resetting to the level she legitimately earned wouldn't have made her look any different, aside from the morality wipe. Now, I said it's possible, but given how sure you are about it, WHERE is Susan saying she is keeping her appearance specifically on level 2? I don't believe Susan's starting from the very beginning story wise, just her character level was wiped. She'll go back to the hideout or where ever Arthur had her and Rhoda staying at, Arther will either question Susan about what happened or act like nothing's wrong, and then they'll go back to tracking down the other heroes. ... after getting at least to level 2 by using potions, IMHO. And no, I don't think Arthur will notice anything. Why can't it be both, if she's leveling up again AND doing things of questionable at best but apparently evil morality, she'll need to keep some of those potions for herself. I meant her tried method of getting tail was specifically to buy lot of cosmetic potions and give them to villagers. Sure she may buy some for herself, but she may not really need them this time.

Yeah, no surprise Diane, Ashley and Grace all see the nonverbal clues ... and react similarly to them. I'm thinking she's feeling bad about how she treated Elliot's transforming while they were dating. The one time she encouraged Elliot to transform, she reacted badly to instead of trying to be more supportive, she could have also offered to help pin down a standard for Elliot to use that didn't look like Ellen. Basically, she's become so used to transforming herself since the summer, she had plenty of time to get Elliot involved while they were dating, so she's now seeing Elliot and Tedd talking about it and thinking "I should have been the one doing that". Maybe she believed that Elliot only transforms because he must and only now realizes that transformations could be something they could've shared instead of basically transforming separately? Pretty sure a watch still would have done the job, as long as it wasn't too dynamic, which I guess is probably the problem with Elliot's spell anyway, too dynamic for him. As long as Tedd set a fixed height and figure to Elliot's liking, it would have worked fine. I suspect that watch would not be able to hold spell like Elliots, BUT clone forms were definitely possible and that would work for this purpose. I though the whale said that the watches would only work in the local area, but I could be wrong. The whale MIGHT've meant for people who are not strong magic users themselves, but maybe not: Maybe the watches are not really able to draw magic from people's energy pools ... Yeah, and she'd love to have all her friends stay together to the point of even sharing a house with them. Bed. She would be completely ok with all her friends sharing bed with her. That's probably not going to happen ... That's definitely possible, despite how unlikely it would be in real life. I mean, what college would so different people be visiting together? ... on the other hand, sharing rooming house doesn't mean sharing all classes, so maybe ... When she finds out. Because beside the option of doing it deliberately, there is option that Arthur will set that up for them to raise chance their secrets will remain secrets.

She'd have to drink more potions to get back to where she was than what she used before, like a lot more , and the price of the potions probably hasn't changed any either so it'd be much more expensive. You think money are problem for her? If that would happen, she may just change the rent so she needs 10 minutes instead of 5 to go from zero purity to max out. Things, maybe. She seems opposed to killing bandits, though. I wasn't entirely sure she was specifically looking as 2/5 in all stats, but it's probably true at least for magic, so maybe. My point was that while she's zero now, she will get at least to the 2/5, maybe 3/5, quite easily. I agree that getting to max would be too hard now and she's probably not going to ... which will match the meta comment about Dan needing her less overpowered. Probably still stronger than what the game is scaled to (considering the original fable 2 still has easy to abuse rules), but not so strong it's boring. Definitely. Also, I suspect that she meant it when she said she wants the tail back.

Dea Elsea however does say "at this part of the story...", seems unlike he'd point that out if all the story itself reset to the beginning too. If the story would reset to the beginning, he wouldn't say anything because he's not accessible AT ALL from start of game. Yeah, most games I played did scale based on location and what locations you can access depended on story points. And, the items you could buy in stores scaled based on location as well, so ... Actually, DLS said that it's still easy WITH THE POTIONS. You know, the potions Susan has full inventory of and if that wouldn't be enough she can buy more for money she is getting as landlord. So, she can just drink those potions and easily get on level roughly matching what she's expected to currently be on. Unless she lost those money, but I don't believe she wouldn't check before entering the shop. Not speaking about the games where you can see the money all the time, and the games where you can see the money when you enter the shop. No, the fact it was not mentioned yet strongly suggest that didn't changed. Also, it's Susan, she would likely notice if she lost the purity as well. ... in fact, Dan's "if I only undid the XP gained from potions, there'd have been no visual indication that anything had happened" suggests she will fairly quickly get enough levels to look as before, or maybe as this.

Yes, but it wasn't a non canon video game parody. Ok, if that's your counterargument it means I don't need to count how long Playing with Dolls was, nor Escape From The Mall ... there is still Goonmanji with 132, but that's starting to look short.

If he wanted to "hide" is external reference, he has a built in excuse. He's a teenage male and the reference book is, well, his softcore porn stash. Also good point. Considering his usual breast size, even Elliot should be able to make that excuse.

He only needs the picture to look as movie poster or something. Most people would be willing to believe they don't know every actress. Or, well, he can skip most of the hard work and just choose some existing actress. Or rather, to avoid looking as someone else, some actress from few decades back. Additional bonus points if she's already dead and if people are intentionally cosplaying her and it might even be someone else than Marilyn Monroe but hey why not ... ... seriously Elliot would be ideal cosplayer. (BTW, ideal actor to copy would be Elvis. But of course Elliot can only do girls.) Hmmm ... I've re-read the strips and I'm not sure. The "half-size" limit here could be just limit, it probably doesn't mean she always needs to go to limit. Of course, the shorter and taller joke wouldn't work as well if she had more freedom ... I think the issue is Elliot's trying to fine tune an existing form, like when he wants to go default female, the spell wants to make him look like Ellen. If he wants to make that form different though, he's probably thinking "I wanna be that form, but taller" or "I wanna be that form but with smaller boobs" and the problem is, he's not being as specific about "how tall" or "how small" as he should be so the results aren't always going to end up the way he likes. It's kinda like how someone saying "big boobs" when about to transform or any other stray thought affects how he thinks about the transformation. Probably what Tedd might suggest Elliot do is to try not to think of the default at all, just think of what Elliot would look like as FV1 or something (I think FV1 doesn't affect height or figure much if any). It might also be related to him not being good at imagining how he normally looks. But yes, the solution would be same: external reference. Imagine the result in absolute terms instead to relative to himself.

No We are starting the game The last few comics were simply a preview or demonstration I think she would be able to drink enough XP to match the position in game she's at - meaning, after recruiting first hero. DLS said quite directly that the power of available potions matches to how far in story she got. Well, Pandora's Box has 393 pages ...

Ellen does have the Copy beam But she wouldn't necessarily want to simply copy Rhoda Or at least not without her permission, and that would involve explanations.... I was speaking about beam making target smaller.

The cloaked dude or the Emissary of Magic? I'm assuming they aren't the same person. Yes. Actually here I was talking about the Emissary of Magic, as hoping to finding out the cloaked dude isn't noteworthy, while the Emissary of Magic happened some time back so it's noteworthy that despite that time I still hope we will eventually find out. Also, note that if cloaked dude will be revealed as Emissary of Magic, it would mean the real identity of Emissary of Magic is still pending. (And I consider both Zeus and Noah more likely, but Emissary of Magic IS on the list.)

Not only that, noone mentioned Ashley yet. "Quantum rocket science physics" is probably FTL engine: either something capable of going faster than light in normal universe, which is not supposed to be possible at all but there may be cheat how to do it, OR some kind of wormhole generator. Not simple stuff. Although maybe Uryuoms would disagree. I'm not sure what's stopping her. Doesn't she have beam to do that? ... actually, maybe she already tried and now wants Elliot to try. Main problem with using them day to day is that they affect her mind. We don't know what goth version does, as we haven't seen her for long periods of time like we have seen mild mannered and Heidi. If that is or isn't problem depends on situation However, Elliot also can't switch to them without going through cheerleadra, AND may prefer to keep them secret for their original purpose of cheerleadra secret identities. Well, it seems that for some reason he doesn't want to use THAT form as his consistent reusable form.

You think small (granted, may be more practical). Instead, you should put the glass and the vax/ice plumb inside bigger container, evacuate whole container, put vax/ice plumb inside the glass, open the container, pour water on the plumb. Hmmm ... alternative to vax/ice would be something like salt or sugar which the water will simply dissolve. Harder to time, though.

The only reason to get XP would be to keep going with the game. Because the antagonist got meta about Grace and cheat codes and what not, I don't think the game is going to go on any more. I think that the antagonist made her forget part of what he said, with possible effect being she doesn't know how much meta it was and will therefore continue with the game. I definitely wouldn't. On the other hand, she presumably had it easier than it should be until now ... THEY seem to not have full control over the game and may be unable to actually end the game. Also, THEY seem to believe Susan can help them find Grace. The evil cult leader is antagonist INSIDE the game. This person is one or two meta levels higher. Hmmm ... COULD it be Emissary of Magic? That would be someone we sorta know so revealing it's him would mean something, and he might be wanting to know Grace more, and he was able to appear in her dreams ... maybe that dream with forgetting to wear clothes in class was not only dream he intruded into. I still hope we will find out later. Wait, who you want to terminate?

Also, sounds like Susan would still be able to use the potions to get at least SOME XP, although probably not to max up on everything ... And I suppose this will be IN ADDITION to actually finishing the story. Actually, completely new person would not know ABOUT Grace. There would be people who may want to know Grace better, from different angle they already know her ... Rhoda for example. Or Noah. Also, Zeus is still in game. Sooo ... he likely make Susan forget he was talking about how this is from Grace's head. And about the elastic waistband ... yeah there are limits to elastic. And yes I also have clothes which seems to hold when I stand but start to move downwards when I'm walking ... (I'm fixing it with belt).

What would be motivation of that limitation? I think they should've left this part in.

There's also the possibility that holding onto a transformation too long could make it permanent too. I think that this is only true about different kind of enchantments than what Tedd is currently using, but yes it would be relevant ... Why not? I mean, sure, we don't know how transformation works in first place, but it's seem it's even more arbitrary than the general transformation safety unless you are Vlad. Yeah, of course, there would be specific healing spells too (instead of using enchantments).