hkmaly

I watched it. I did not specify books vs movies, but we were comparing to a movie, and the LotR movies do not get into any of that. Whether there was a plan to double-cross him ("steal the Death Star") afterwards or not, he was involved in bringing Sauron back to power (rebuilding the Death Star) and it's still a perfectly good analogy. Even in movies, Saruman orcs repeatedly argued with Sauron ones, but it's true their relationship may be less apparent. I can assure you that Sauron didn't needed Saruman's help to get to power, and he did not really GET much help from him, although that was mainly because Gandalf interfered ; if Saruman succeeded in keeping Rohan out of war, it WOULD help Sauron somewhat. (Of course, if Frodo wouldn't destroy the Ring, united West armies would be slaughtered in Battle of the Black Gate, even with Rohan. They were outnumbered AND didn't really have anything to match Trolls and Nazgûls. And presumably, in game terms, had lower leadership.) Only until the bits get too far to keep enough air inside. But, as I said, laser microphones getting the sound from the scrap itself could actually explain it.

Yep. From Tumblr: ... that was rhetorical question, meant to show that I didn't realized it's Dan unless you talked about it.

... that's Dan? BTW, regarding high heels: It's not question of IF they are comfortable. The question is HOW HIGHT can they be to still be comfortable. Because NOONE will be comfortable with heels which would be one meter high, and the higher they are, the less comfortable they are.

Agree. Although my solutions might sometimes be TOO outside-the-box. ... ok, I see yours too. I'm sure the wheel can be fixed.

The second Death Star is equivalent to the Lord of the Rings series. Sauron had been powerful in the past, and was defeated; now Sarumon is trying to bring him back, but he isn't quite there yet when the good guys destroy him. Wait what? Did you actually READ the Lord of the Rings? Saruman was NEVER trying to bring Sauron back ; he actually planned to backstab him. (Although probably not AS literally as happened to Saruman later. Maybe.) I was always taught that the difference between fantasy and science-fiction is that in fantasy, dragons can hover, and in science fiction, they can't. Well there are obviously lot of differences and any sentence sounding like you are just mentioning the only one is just figure of speech. Also, note that even in sci-fi dragons can hover, if they are lighter than air (usually that means small dragons and lot of hydrogen involved). But it's true that if fantasy says they can't, it's not pure fantasy: in pure fantasy, dragons can fly because magic and that's enough to explain ANY kind of flying. When moving from fantasy to sci-fi, dragons generally get bigger wings, lighter "armor" and start getting problems with stall when flying too slow. (BTW, one reason Hobbit (movie) is fantasy: if you cover anything with gold in sci-fi, it gets MUCH heavier ; dragon covered with gold wouldn't be able to fly, it will hardly be able to move.) Obviously it's not sci-fi, but it's not pure fantasy either. The song of Ice and Fire actually deals with return of magic to land ; they got little or no magic (and dragons went extinct), then something happened (don't spoiler what if it already appeared) and magic started returning. That's not something which could happen in pure fantasy. In pure fantasy, if you remove magic the sun falls down and the air disperse and escapes (ok, that MIGHT be exaggeration, but even if you happen to have pure fantasy on round world there would be just too many stuff not working without magic.) I'm not sure if it was mentioned in New Hope ; it certainly wasn't RELEVANT. It only started to be relevant in next episodes, namely Empire strikes back. Actually, even very sci-fi movies happens to have "too sensitive laser microphones". The more genres you try to define, the less likely is you will be able to find pure examples of single genre, until you arrive at point where you start having one-movie genres of course. Yes, you can divide space opera from sci-fi, but it will still remain close. But note that wiki calls it subgenre.

New question for debate: what is the ideal wavelength of Susan's hair in relation to its maximum coefficient of whoosh? While interesting question, I don't think it can be solved by debate ; we don't have any input data, we didn't even actually HEARD the sound.

Scratch off the Death Star paint and you get Sauron. Wherever he gazes, doom follows. Sauron doesn't have a disadvantage you can easily exploit with correct intelligence to destroy- ... oh wait yes he does. Wouldn't explain how would the Emperor (Melkor?) build second one. (New Hope alone is really painted thin ; But if you consider whole hexalogy - or nonalogy - it becames harder to replace all elements consistently. Also, the part of LOTR where Sauron forged One Ring is little technological ... the resulting "pretty" numbers notwithstanding, it was implied that basically nothing prevented elves to make the rings in hundreds, given enough time.) Note: didn't get opportunity to make it really on-topic, but to the general sci-fi versus fantasy debate, this is important. Another point to discussion: the difference between fantasy and sci-fi isn't if the sword is magic fire sword or plasma-based weapon ; it's that in fantasy, Hero found the sword in a dungeon and that's all origin story needed ; in sci-fi, the sword was constructed by someone, and that someone can construct another, teach someone else to do it or explain the process to audience. New Hope doesn't pass this test - Luke get the sword uh lightsaber from Obi-Wan Kenobi and we have no idea how old it is or where it came from ; in next episode, Luke is able to build new one: it got turned into technology.

I'd go farther then that and just say that Star Wars is fantasy. It's just happens to be fantasy with a sci-fi paint job. Scratch the paint off, and you've totally got elves, orcs, swords, and wizards. But the paint still counts! ... well, not for much, but at least a little. (Waaaait ... what will appear under the "Death Star" paint? It's pretty important plot element and IMHO hard to replace with something from pure fantasy. You can replace other starships with normal ships, but Death Star would then still end up being something on too big technology level to be acceptable in fantasy - carrier maybe. Unless ... maybe you can replace Death Star with flying island and fighters with dragons. That might work, although it still sounds at least little technological as the island will still need to be build. Likely by dwarves or gnomes.)

(Reading what that "*" means on that link): Oh. Well ... only if they didn't run out of ideas already. They only added 72 last time, if they add 72 now it wouldn't even be 800.

The longer the hair, the whooshier it gets. I'm not so sure about it. She needs to tune the length to the best whoosh. Sorry, I though you disagree with what I said. (BTW, good example: I knew about this character, but forgot about this page.)

That doesn't change the fact that on the continuous line between pure fantasy and pure sci-fi, Star Wars is closer to fantasy. Anyway, good authors don't let existing genre limit their creativity, and bad authors are not able to hit the target they aim for, so no wonder drawing borders between genres is so hard task. 1) Earth likely IS in Star Wars universe. It may not be near, but they have fast ships 2) Parsec in Star Wars can be defined based on different planet's orbit, just like other units - year, month and day are all based on Earth properties, or for example foot or mile which are based on people's measurement can be based on any other species measurement instead. I'm sure days and years were mentioned in Star Wars, not sure about miles and feet, but it wouldn't surprise me ...

(sorry for doublepost)

Nah, she wants to control her hair with her mind. I'm pretty sure that she means this kind of control. Although, changing length is part of package. (See also tvtropes if you dare.)

Yeah! And the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in just twelve parsec! I'm sure I already mentioned I consider Star Wars more fantasy than sci-fi. (Also, "usually".) Also this. Who else? Anything bad in Star Wars is either because he wanted it that way or because he wasn't able to correct when someone else did the mistake. Or because he sold it to Disney.

... hard to imagine Pikachu stomping over something. Taurus, meanwhile ... or Rhydon ... or Rapidash ... (Note that my knowledge about Pokemon without help of google and wikis like this would be seriously limited. I'm not even sure how many pokemons there is nowadays - it used to be 251 ... now ... what? 727?)

So, most common type of magic is transformation. And mostly not combat oriented. What is the second most common? Flying is definitely something lot of people WANTS, but is it REFLECTIVE of them? What about health-related spells? Although, I guess that transformation can also be solution for people with various disabilities ... Is Dex exception, or are there lot of summoners who were lonely? I think that Susan doesn't WANT longer hair ... that she's satisfied with the current length.

I think it WOULD count as any excees energy. I know, that quote is for animals, but it might still be issue for humans as well, just not so big.

Well,they are still the same species, so you might say that was metamorphosis not evolution. You can argue like this for most pokemons. Hell, Caterpie - Metapod - Butterfree is classical example of metamorphosis. In fact, that's where the "meta" from "metapod" came from. He likely got the pom pom in same way Kadabra get spoon when evolving from Abra.

If the enchantment is a spell, it'd be similar to the enchantment that Not_Tengu put on the punch at Rhea's New Year's party. An alchemical enchantment would be like Germahn Labs Shrink Soda. Good examples. You might be right - comics didn't mentioned ambient magic could influence the strength of effect, while it did mentioned it influences the duration. Although the idea about "not working as good" would still work if the ingredients would be something you need to specially cultivate instead of just find - it always had SOME effect, but only when she planted it in Moperville the effect got this strong.

Well, maybe .... but we are talking about engineer or other science-type person describing 60 feet 7.4 inches, if you mean 20 meters. I was hoping that someone actually KNOWS how to compute that. So, let's put it together: to completely vaporize human, you need 3GJ. To turn him to gas, you need 142MJ. To push him back 1m/s, you need 19GJ. Completely confirmed: pushing with light is dangerous.

Sure, she does have that spell, but I still think her rampage would be with the hammers, because those will be the weapons she'll instinctively use. Unless she trained with the "real" weapons much more than shown. Magic is a force capable of flagrantly violating the laws of reality. If Magic wanted there to be enough energy for everyone to use big, dramatic spells, there would be enough energy for everyone to use big,dramatic spells, Conservation of Energy be damned. Magic is a force capable of flagrantly violating SOME laws of reality. That doesn't means there are no laws which it MUST follow - although we will likely have hard time to differentiate between what magic wants and what it must do - if that distinction even have any sense (water usually flows down because it wants or because it must?). Also, it would be similar to what happened with Uryuom: every Uryuom can use a type of energy classified as magic, but it's completely predictable, without any drama. That's what I was talking about (you're right that forcing magic user to use defensive spells shouldn't be that hard nor that risky.) There was seven vampires in downtown Moperville and it's notable and big cause of concern. Most magic users likely don't know aberrations exists AND will never meet one. Case in point, Edward didn't considered necessary to warn Elliot and Ellen about them. He also didn't warned Diane yet. Susan needed to go to France before being attacked - nothing happened till then. Despite all talk about Not-Tengu not being special, the amount of magic users like that is apparently low and generally, people like Noriko are able to hunt them down before they cause serious damage. Also, they generally won't attack other magic users - for spreading terror, attacking civilians is more effective. Note that he only attacked BECAUSE he had personal vendetta against Noriko. And BTW, I suspect the cult didn't feed just his EGO, but also his magic. Again, this obviously don't happen often. Pandora is likely only immortal that much crazy (Voltaire, while more evil, is likely less crazy). And note that not everyone reacts to magic power like Dex. We don't know what the relationship between governments and paranormal organizations is: it's possible that USA is exception rather than rule. But that's not important: yes, there are organizations maintaining the status quo through threat of repercussions, and they have enough battle-trained magic users for this threat to be taken seriously ... which might not really work as good in case of more combat oriented magic. Look at wild west for example how the society where everyone needs to be ready to defend himself may look. Also, it could be bigger potential for corruption - government might be using the same threat of repercussions against magic users to allow government wizards to learn new spells. I'm not sure if Voltaire was lying when said she's not threat to him. And Jerry even implied that there IS some self-defence exception to the "empower and guide" cause. On the other hand, Voltaire WAS looking concerned, so maybe there IS something Tara could do to him if he wouldn't retreat quickly - possibly not kill him but still harm him or cause pain.

It would if they would work as catalyst for reaction(s) which would use other matter. Which they likely do, as they don't seem to do anything with the cup. In other words, the bodies submerged in Moperville magic anomaly are easier to transform by stuff like magic tea.

PS: Although I guess the word "vaporize" would be better than "melt". You can't exactly melt humans (or animals and presumably Uryuom as well), as they are already mostly liquid. I think it was ranged, as Tedd probably wouldn't able to "tweak" it so radically. On the other hand, he MIGHT quite easily tweak the range, which would explain the feet. We the comics viewers are not supposed to be under normal rules for classified information. Besides, it's DEFAULT. Of course the MAXIMAL effective range is bigger (likely around 300 feet, just like Ellen). It would actually make sense if the sentence would be "TF gun default power settings have range 60 feet" or something like that. I just think it's not so much longer it would be shortened like that. How the sentence is written, it seems that the range is deliberate, already-rounded value written in manual. See above: Any distance written in any manual will be rounded to units used in manual. Any manual originally written in imperial units contains suspiciously ugly looking numbers when translated (unless the translator is impertinent enough to aggressively round them risking they would be wrong). Of course, it's possible that the range is 100 of relevant Uryuom units and it just happens to translate to 59.8 feets so it's safe to round it. It's just not likely. On the other hand ... note how the minimal and maximal range - 30 and 300 feet - translate to 9.144... and 91.44 ... meters, which COULD be rounded to 9 and 90 meters without being dangerously imprecise OR suspiciously ugly. So, it CAN happen. 60 feet, meanwhile, translates to 18.288 meters ; 18 looks suspiciously ugly and 20 would be dangerously imprecise.

The secret tea ingredient is passed through the generations, but it didn't worked nearly as well (or maybe at all) outside Moperville magic anomaly.

This doesn't necessarily have to be magic on Téa's part, just advanced herbalism and access to ingredients with magical properties. Well that's of course also possibility, but then we can't blame Pandora for it.