Tom Sewell

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2436

I think you wasted your two cents. The hips aren't nearly as wide as the chest, and the bulges on the chest look to me more like massive pecs to match the massive delts and biceps. And that hair. What self-respecting female vampire would be seen in public with that hair? But boring. The problem Immortals complain about most is getting bored because they've seen most everything. They could solve this problem by resetting sooner, of course. Wonder why they don't? It sounds to me like the rules they have are the very best they could all agree on, or enough of them to force compliance on the minority. And I'm sure he would give us an absolutely unambiguous answer.

I'm thinking Voltaire's real goal is to eliminate all elves. Voltaire sicced Sirleck onto Pandora's son and has to know that Sirleck really intends to kill Adrian, not just create a diversion as Magus believes (At least I hope he really believes it). This plan would involve holding up Pandora's relationship with Adrian as why even trying to have children with humans should be against mortal rules. The real flaw in Voltaire's plan? What if Pandora is so powerful she can't be forcibly reset? You see, this ties in very well with tearing Voltaire to pieces.

Why? It was clear case of empower and guide. You may not agree with ethics of what they did, just like Jerry didn't agree, but immortal laws are NOT forcing ethics. What counts is whether they still believed they were following the rules after they saw the results on Susan. An asshole like Voltaire can stretch the rules further because he can rationalize away being an asshole.

Do you know that Pan Am actually accepted reservations for moon flights?

Zeus had a proper reset. Contrast how Helena and Demetrius behave. Of course, given that before they reset they attacked Magus without giving him a chance to plead his case, and their irresponsible manipulation of Nanase and Susan into killing a vampire--which probably caused their forced reset--they were more like crackbrained adoslescents at their maximum maturity than Zeus is is after only a few months. BTW, while it isn't set in canon, Jerry said it would be awhile before he could start fulfilling his vow, so maybe Jerry's proper reset meant some effective time when he was either metamorphosing like an insect pupa or just not able to interact with the material plane. How much down time Helen and Demetrius may have had is another mystery, but Magus told Ashley that Ellen never seemed to want to zap her brother when Magus was with them. There wasn't a lot of time between the creation of Ellen and Grace's birthday party where Magus finally got Ellen to try to zap her brother, and Helen and Demetrius don't appear at all (except in flashbacks) just before that incident. So maybe they weren't around at all much before that. But I've opened up a giant plot hole with those premises. If Helen and Demetrius reset two years ago, why did it take Magus so long to get Ellen created? Did Tedd just figure out how to program the FV5 option for the TG gun? And if Helen and Demetrius didn't reset until shortly before Grace's birthday party, why didn't they either destroy Magus or finally learn he really wasn't a monster?

There's evidence that the Americas were depopulated twice! Archaeological finds and genetic analysis now suggests there was a human population South America well before the famous Siberia-to-Alaska migration from Asia. They seem to have come from either Australia or sub-Saharan Africa. Their culture suddenly disappears a little while after the route from Asia opened up. The last surviving pure-blooded aborigines of Tierra del Fuego don't have any Asian genetic markers. BTW, there are only three of them.

England successfully reduced the surplus population of Ireland just a few years after the publication of A Christmas Carol in 1843 by continuing to export food from Ireland during the Potato Famine. Ireland has only about half the population it had before the famine, after 170 years. To be fair, not all of them died off; more emigrated, to the United States, Canada, Australia (many as prisoners), Chile (it's navy always has a ship named O'Higgins)--and England. Hence the Liverpool Irish that gave us the Beatles. I know, topic drift.

Unfortunately there's no proof that practical FTL travel will ever be possible, at least proof that isn't being hidden by the MIBs. So maybe it would be a good idea to explore ways to get along with a stable population while we wait for a definitive answer to the FTL question. No doubt about that. The the population could get reduced to zero.

Getting back to the birds and the bees and Grace, we don't know if Grace can make meteor eggs, but we do know that Grace has to be in human form to get pregnant.

Sounds like another one of those wider implications that Dan isn't supposed to be interested in. But I'm interested. It could be a trope from Star Trek or space opera stories in general. The two or three really important alien races in Trek are the Klingons, the Romulans, and the Vulcans, and all of them are much longer lived than humans. The Trill can effectively be immortal through their symbiotes. One piece of Star Trek trivia I'm aware of that I don't think most people or even most of the current generation of Trekkies are aware of is that when Gene Roddenberry laid down the rules for what was acceptable in a Star Trek script, one of them was that there wasn't supposed to be anything about humans living longer in his future. I think there was only one human character in the original series who was allowed to live far beyond a mere century, Zephram Cochrane, whose life was prolonged by an energy being who was in love with him (!). But throughout the episode, he regretted living so long, and the resolution was that he got to grow old again, which he actually said he looked forward to. Oh. Wait. Maybe this is an issue Dan wants to explore the darker implications thereof, what with aberrations who surrender empathy to keep from dying from old age, or Immortals who have to create a substitute for dying from old age to keep from going nuts, or elves who aren't allowed to age or reset. I'm pretty sure Pandora told her son it wasn't a good idea to get too atttached to mortals who all die of old age if something doesn't kill them first. And, of course, that's exactly what Pandora did and why Raven is here at all.

That's a logical step too far IMHO. It could hold true for all, some, or none, but I don't believe Dan has given any indications of this. BTW, how many of you EGS fans have read any of the Vorkosigan books I mentioned a few posts ago? A really key gizmo in the whole series is an artificial womb Lois McMaster Bujold dubbed a "uterine replicator". Meteor eggs have the same function in EGS. If you're familiar with the Vorkosigan series, you should realize how major the effects on society if things like this become widely available, one of them being the possibility of lynching any politician who tries to make them illegal. Meteor eggs should really be a bigger secret for Edward to keep than just alien tourism or the odd deathless army of rage.

Damien also believed he was basically a god, not a mere mortal. And even if he knew how, I don't think Grace's "grandfather" would have made Grace that way. Our Grace is more than anything else the daughter of his daughter. Of course, Dan hasn't said that Grace can't make a meteor egg as far as I know. Speaking of meteor eggs, shouldn't William's and Gillian's egg have hatched by now?

I don't think Grace can make a meteor egg, or at least make one by herself like Mr. Guyer. Because roughly half of us don't have to be pregnant. Have you read the latest Vorkosigan Saga book by Lois McMaster Bujold, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen?

Hair stealing vampires are real. I have proof right on the top of my head.

Plus his barbed tail is on backwards. Scorpions have barbed tails that curl up forward so they can strike in front of them. Dan should have at least looked at a picture of a scorpion before he designed that vampire. And ;the lances on its arms were way too short. Oh. Wait. These are the B-team vampires. They're supposed to be incompetent. Of course he was. Another example of incompetence, going after Raven instead of Susan with her yard of luscious blonde locks. I'm beginning to wonder if Sirleck did his vampire shopping at garage sales.

Because--hey, isn't that some kind of demonic duck?

I think Hinckley's reasoning was along the lines of "I shot the President for you!" The effort should have been enough to prove he deserved her love. I wonder if anyone's been mean enough to tell Hinckley Jodie has a wife now.

I was thinking about plans to do something that succeed in accomplishing carrying out all the necessary tasks successfully, whether or not those tasks have the effects the insane planner thought they would. For instance, an obsessed fan plans on shooting President Reagan and succeeds. However, this does not make Jodie Foster fall in love with him.

The disguise that Raven created for Grace was specifically for her to pass as his niece. That's why it made her look like Susan. Remember at that point Raven hadn't met Susan. Or at least we hope he hadn't met Susan...

Also a possiblity. But if Susan has a kid with Matt and that kid has kids with the offspring of Tedd and Grace, those kids will definitely be far ahead on genes for nerdiness and weirdness. And I hope Dan's subconscious forces him to get Lavender and Edward together and hatch some more siblings for Tedd.

There's no "might" about Voltaire's sanity deficiency, but there are a depressing number of precedents for insane plans by insane people that didn't fail.

So Grace's kid will have kids with Susan's kid? So we now know that elves come in male and female versions. But Dan hasn't said yet that the same elf can't be either or both. It would be unfair to limit that option to only guests at Grace's birthday parties.

Zeus' Panel Six answer to Diane's Penal Five question was that Jerry wanted him to be a responsible successor.

Ask a divorce lawyer. So I guess the vow is what kept him from making passes at Susan or Diane even before Wednesday night.. Bet he kept a close guard on the girls in the shower, though. I now kind of think young Zeus is pretty much like young Jerry, and since old Jerry knew that elves can have kids, I'm wondering if young Jerry fathered any kids.