hkmaly

Oh my.  If that were true... if the suppressed magic of an artifact was the real reason Abraham's spell was off, that would be interesting enough, something that might make Abraham less likely to to blame himself, but if that were true, the Dewitchery Diamond is a suppressed artifact, there is no way of knowing what will happen now when Magus tries to cast his spell, but I am betting it will be a big surprise all around.
True, but dang, that is such a non-Ellen face, it kind of creeps me out.  Here's hoping Sirleck's plans get foiled one way or another.
 

I can just see Abraham hitting it with a crystal-shattering spell, but it doesn't work on a crystal-over-wood construct. Next, he uses a fire hot enough to burn diamond (the only flammable precious gem) but the actual crystal is not diamond and not flammable and protects the wood core...

Did anyone actually thought otherwise? I was under the impression it was obvious since Sirleck agreed to the plan.

Due to my own condition not being very well understood I was misdiagnosed at first. I spent seven years on an antipsychotic that did nothing for me save slowing me down and making me gain weight. I finally rebelled against my doctors and stopped using it, which immensely improved my quality of life -- relatively speaking. Unfortunately it also undermined my trust in medical professionals so I refused to take any medication at all after that. It took my wife-to-be four years to persuade me to try again with an antidepressant this time.
Doctors are not perfect and patients are not always reasonable. Nonetheless we have to work with what we have. Superstitions about how mental illnesses affect their sufferers and how medication acts do not make this easier, unfortunately.

Who are you calling wet dog?

I've baked more that thousand cookies (well, with Grandma's help) and still no bunny ...

Racism is to divide people by color of their skin. So far, I see very few attempts to stop that: most activists and "anti-racism" politicians prefer to divide people by color, then ensure that all groups get fair treatment. Sure, looking at how unfair treatment some groups are currently getting, ensuring fair treatment for all seems worthy goal, but I have strong suspicion that it is not really helping us to get rid of racism ... and looking at what politicians are doing, balancing all groups seems harder than originally expected. Assuming they are really trying. Botched attempt can make the racism worse.
It's definitely not inevitable, unfortunately. But we can hope.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2469
Damn. Seems neither Dan nor Magus wants the creepily calm Ashley with the ability to calm others. I was looking forward to her. It might not even complicate her relationship with Elliot much - the calm Ashley would definitely understand what is necessary. Wait. Actually, this sounds dangerously close to her committing suicide. Ok, maybe it IS better to not have her.
Aaand, neither got the idea of leaving Ashley in the car. For some reason they want her there. Even in panic. Hmmmm ...
PS: Ashley, this is NOT calm ... well, at least she didn't do anything stupid yet.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2469
Damn. Seems neither Dan nor Magus wants the creepily calm Ashley with the ability to calm others. I was looking forward to her. It might not even complicate her relationship with Elliot much - the calm Ashley would definitely understand what is necessary. Wait. Actually, this sounds dangerously close to her committing suicide. Ok, maybe it IS better to not have her.
Aaand, neither got the idea of leaving Ashley in the car. For some reason they want her there. Even in panic. Hmmmm ...
PS: Ashley, this is NOT calm ... well, at least she didn't do anything stupid yet.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2469
Damn. Seems neither Dan nor Magus wants the creepily calm Ashley with the ability to calm others. I was looking forward to her. It might not even complicate her relationship with Elliot much - the calm Ashley would definitely understand what is necessary. Wait. Actually, this sounds dangerously close to her committing suicide. Ok, maybe it IS better to not have her.
Aaand, neither got the idea of leaving Ashley in the car. For some reason they want her there. Even in panic. Hmmmm ...
PS: Ashley, this is NOT calm ... well, at least she didn't do anything stupid yet.

Entering dread R'lyeh isn't so bad.  Waking up any elder gods that are sleeping is the bad thing.

After all "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

I just realised that Voltaire is not even nearly as smart as he thought he was. He had hoped that magic's change would do away with the current crop of magicians. But if it had indeed changed, the doomsday scenario Tedd and the other seers foresaw would have happened and magic would have had to become permanent shortly after -- with two systems loose instead of one. So Voltaire's master plan to render humanity helpless by traumatising Tedd would, had it worked, instead armed the mortals with a hell of a lot bigger arsenal.

(Imagined the kingdom yawning and stretching when woken up ...)
Evolution, or more exactly breeding. The ones who didn't weren't considered good pets.

Greg's got some wonderful qualifications for Vladia: Moral uprightness, tolerance of weirdness, and a force field.

Trying to reconstruct something I posted before the forum crash... the following is said somewhere in Europe, in some language possibly beginning with the letter F...
 

There is a reason any good Evil Overlord wants an average five-year-old on their council of advisors.
Maybe we could visit some nice place in the subtropics where they have a lot of them growing.
I suspect she had help, in a manner of speaking. Remember that Adrian Raven blames himself for the breakup between Noriko and Edward. He could have fed that pragmatic and magic-professional side of her, unwittingly goading her into making the extreme decision of separating herself from Edward and Tedd.

If Edward has been reporting this though, I would presume that DGB would want a copy of the gauntlet, or at least Tedd's notes for it, and having tried to reverse-engineer it, failed and chalked it up to Tedd being a kid wanting attention or some such.  Still, working watches, from a gauntlet.  Use the gauntlet on something quality that is able to store a charge.  Wand-maker.  How is that not something that should have grabbed Edward's attention?   If Edward didn't know anything about Tedd, perhaps it's because he has a blind spot (too much drama  has happened already to question what Tedd is) or he is too busy with something else (heading off some coming Apocalypse).
If so, perhaps it was the fragility, or perhaps he didn't want Tedd to turn into a Lord Tedd.  In this instance, worrying about your child becoming a supervillain is a legitimate fear.
Or there's always the private sector.  I'm sure Samsung is looking for someone to head up their Galaxy Transformation Wand research section. 

Van's a seer as well though, if Noriko is his mother, it's likely she would have used a magic analysis wand on him after he was born as well, either Van wasn't scared by the wand like Tedd was, or the wand wasn't noisy like Edward's or maybe, she must still have had some concern about Van's ability to defend himself when she first tried to teach him to cast spells and he couldn't.
However, the guilt could have come if Van gave the same results as Tedd, but later on she realized just how ever Van could resist enchantments and maybe figured out that could be the case with Tedd as well. That would make her feel guilty about the way she treated Tedd as defenseless and useless as an apprentice without giving him a chance, she'd also believe that it's too late to go back an try to reconcile things since she had started a new family.
For the most part I do agree with that reasoning for her leaving Tedd in the first place, but it was also probably the biggest conclusion jump someone could do.
Let's see, failure to realize the wand was being resisted, failure to realize Tedd could see magic, failure to realize that Tedd was empowering the watches and not some fancy technodohicky he made, failure to realized Tedd's genderfluidity...
I don't think we have enough palms.
 

This all reminds me of this particular Freefall strip.

Warning! Incoherent rambling ahead! Possibly uncomfortable and raw on feelings. I started writing this last night but never finished. Tried to pick it up and finish it today but failed to beat the rambling into something readable, so I'm posting it as is...
Oh, there may be some who feel uncomfortable by the use of words like "freak" and "normal". The thing is that neither of these are absolutes, but both are things that a lot of people use in their mind when comparing themselves to those around them. For some being a freak means getting turned on by shoes, for others it might be wanting to have sex with bicycles, but only those with a "ladies" frame. Or it might be that you feel that being gay is enough that you label yourself as a freak. I'm not saying that it's healthy, but it certainly is way more common than it should be.
I've tried to read through it to make sure there aren't any really bad triggers, but I may have missed them. If you find anything really objectionable then drop a PM and I'll see if I can rework that part or I'll delete it all if necessary. Or you can just ask a moderator to nuke the post if it's that bad.
I know I had some idea I thought was important when I started writing this, but now I'n not certain I managed to communicate it in this text...
Just because she likes to play a some what risky game with her friends it doesn't mean she's suddenly some kind of sex fiend.
She probably figured out that she's a "freak" at a very early age. Discovering that you are different from the "norm" can be quite hard on a kid. There are a lot of us here on this board that has gone through this, and a lot of posts has been written about how that has influenced our lives.
We have yet to learn anything about Ashley's parents. Most parents want their kids to be successful and fit into society, and usually this means they should be "normal", because that's what their parents taught them. It's easy to hurt someone unintentionally by assuming that your "normal" is going to fit all. At the same time you should not assume that any time someone is claiming something you consider part of the "normal" range to be abnormal they are doing so because they hate you. There are so many ways to deviate from any definition of "normal" you are likely to run into that it's almost bound to happen to all of us, even those who consider themselves cis normal heterosexual.
What we've seen of Ashley she seems well adjusted and outgoing. She doesn't seem to have many issues with her sexual orientation or gender. She has said she consider herself somewhat bisexual, and she's had fantasies about gender swapping and transformation of herself as well as of others. Of these only the part about being bisexual might have caused much of a negative reaction from others as the transformation and gender swapping are just fantasies as far as most know.
However even if her parents and close friends might not be bothered by her sexuality it's likely she's had enough people react negatively that she's taken to keeping that to her self only trusting close friends and potential boy or girl friends about it.
Secrets like these, as small and unimportant as some of them may seem, can easily cause a kid to classify itself as somewhat of a "freak", and that can put a damper on things like dating or even socializing with people they find themselves attracted to. In Ashley's case it can be as simple as her feeling that she doesn't want to have to choose between a girlfriend an a boyfriend, but that she want it all. Polyamory may be a hurdle for a youth trying to fit in and it's not certain that it would be the right thing for Ashley. Add bisexuality and it doesn't get easier. Now she's met Elliot, and it all started with her seeing him transform into a woman. Elliot ticks off some boxes in Ashley's spec sheet that no one else she's met could touch. Elliot can be both boyfriend and girlfriend without the need for a poly amorous relationship. This probably lowers the threshold significantly.
Her previous relationship was probably not something she went into wholeheartedly. I doubt she told him about her possible bisexuality or wishing she could have both a girlfriend and a boyfriend. She wanted to fit in with the rest of society and she needed to find out if she could be happy in a classical Boy / Girl relationship. Now she had the bad luck of hooking up with a manipulative jerk.
This time she met someone that fit her preferences way better, someone who is genuinely nice, and who is surrounded by family and friends that many would consider weirder freaks than her. Add that she has learned that magic is a real thing, that transformation isn't confined to comic's and fairy tales and suddenly sharing her fantasies and wishes with these new friends feels safe. Exhibitionism might or might not turn her on. Having wardrobe malfunctions in a game about transformations doesn't necessarily mean it's about sex or being sexy. It could just be another part of the game, and for what it's worth they are not likely to look much like themselves at any time after the game has started.

I think that's broadly right, but trying to figure out how Tedd's statement could have been better phrased I think I figured out what she really meant. The term "rules" has been used in this chapter and on the forums as shorthand for "set of rules" (or at least that's how I interpreted it), but I think when Tedd says "if the rules were all ideal" what she meant was "if each individual rule was set to it's individual ideal setting".
So adjusting the rules of magic is sort of like when you're adjusting the colors on a picture; you don't want all the colors at max or you'll wind up with solid white, or at minimum as that'll be black, and keeping everything in the middle doesn't change anything. (Another example that comes to mind is adjusting the sound on a sound system / program that allows you to play around with multiple characteristics of the sound.)

I'd much rather something like Incarnations of Immortality, where magic and technology work equally well, with no cross-interference.

I read it as Tedd asking a hypothetical.  "Here's this system, and it has a down side.  Here's this other system, and it has other down sides."  "I don't suppose you could just give us a system without all these down sides?"  "Nope, 'cos then disaster!"

If Magic needs to actively suppress systems to prevent them from working, that would explain why Magus's magic and the griffins' magic(assuming their rule system is different) work in Moperville.

Cheetahs are rather high-strung and skittish.  At the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park, they routinely will raise an individual cheetah with a very laid-back dog as a constant companion.  They bring the pair near the crowds, the cheetah starts to get nervous, looks over at their buddy and sees that they're still calm and happy, and the cheetah relaxes and copes with the crowds much better than without that emotional cue.

More educational would be one-day gender and race transformation wands..