Tom Sewell

It's not 100% clear, but I'm assuming that Elliot dropped off Ellen before or after taking Ashley to return that overdue library book. Nanase was using the car she used for the New Year's Eve party (I presuming one of her parent's cars). Ellen and Nanase could have come back for some reason, but Ellen wouldn't have the garage door opener. Maybe the door doesn't have an opener, or maybe she could use her cellphone, though. I think the parents returning early is the most likely. However, vampires aren't out of the question. Kangaroo Guy surprised me.

As far as we know, Justin is the only male that's been in Susan's house since her dad left. Ellen being there would fit in with Magus' plan to get a body back. But Ellen and Nanase were supposed to be at Rhea and Charlotte's place investigating that peeper. Possibly a vampire? Or mom and dad home early? I think maybe this was supposed to be a Friday comic, but Dan put in an extra comic and pushed this one up to Monday.

The game isn't canon, unless Dan retcons it. Maybe Dan was inspired by that game Chewbacca and R2D2 were playing in the Millenium Falcon, the one where the pieces were animated holograms.

Rhoda has been awakened for over two months now, and Pandora was surprised how great her potential turned out to be. One of the things I kind of suspect will happen in the main story is that Rhoda will save Diane at one point. Role reversal. But, on the other hand, Rhoda's very committed to Catalina. She's kind of the niceness-equivalent of Ashley for Moperville South. I can see Rhoda having fantasies like this, but, no. I wonder how Lucy is going to react when she finds out both Rhoda and Diane have magic?

The Committee on Swamps was an ideal choice to evaluate this bill. Since the premise of the bill held no water, it couldn't be a swamp.

I quite agree. I've been following it from the first comic.

Yes, but it also might mean that she fooled around with a girl or two before that.

When Elliot's Mom says "maybe keep it between girls? Safety First!" do you think that maybe Elliot's mom...?

Otherwise known as The Part Whose Name Shall Not Be Uttered.

I could go on and on and on about politics, but isn't this thread about El Goonish Shive #2418? And speaking of EGS #2418, I'm not exactly sure about what the five middle panels are. True flashbacks to things as they really happened earlier than the moments between the first panel and the last? How Elliot remembers what his parents told him? Or how Elliot imagines what his parents might have said to him? I think it's quite possible Elliot didn't actually tell his parents that he was bringing Ashley home when he knew no one else would be there. I think a much more likely theme to the date is for Ashley to see Heidi and Elliot's other two alternate-personality forms. Now if the pink-haired girl shows up, on the other hand, or maybe Cooler Cheerleadra, things could go as far or farther than they did in the changing room. At least as far as another "thinking about baseball" joke. But I also (still) think that this is a one-comic change-of-venue. Every previous comic in Part 20: Geminis has been set at the mall and centered around Susan and Diane. Dan didn't put a Part 21 at the top of this comic and he hasn't put a Part 21 on the archives menu. Possibly this will change, and I think it should change if we don't go back to Susan and Diane before too many more comics. Here are some suggested titles of further Parts. Some may be dubious. Part 21: Fun with Elliot and Ashley Part 22: Mystery of the Phantom Peeper Part 24: Sarah finds out Sam is Samantha Part 25: Luke fesses up to Justin Part 26: Voltaire gloats some more Part 27: Flashbacks of Adrian and Pandora Part 28: Is that Noriko? Part 29: Susan and Diane encounter minor characters interrupting their conversation about things we really care about. Part 30: Carol Brown shows up at the Mall for some reason. Part 31: The Big Mouth Vampire eats Principal Verrucht. Readers celebrate. Part 32: Dan stalls some more.

You have a point, If you don't notice when I'm gone, it's time to work on my annoyance techniques.

Elliot is home now, but he called Ellen to say that he had to have the car tonight, so Ellen is going to the college to solve the mystery of the Phantom Peeper. Wait, does this really make sense? Well, it might make a lot sense if the Elliot voice Ellen heard on the phone wasn't coming from Elliot. When I suggested Elliott might have become Cheerleadra, who doesn't need a coat, to fly Ashley back to his house, I wasn't 100% serious. Elliot loves flying and so does Ashley, but they've gone to a lot of trouble in the last five days to make people believe there isn't a connection between our Elliot and Cheerleadra. Maybe they did it anyway; it's dark, it's Friday, it's cold. People aren't going to be outside in droves and they'll mostly be keeping their heads down. This is what people do in places where winter is WINTER, like Greater Chicago. Also, Elliot doesn't like to lie and he's terrible at it when he tries. The call could have been from Voltaire, and Voltaire could be the Phantom Peeper. He's the one pulling the longest strings in this story, or thinks he is. Why he would do it? Maybe to make sure Ellen wasn't together with Eliot; maybe to make sure Elliot doesn't have any other heavy magical hitters with him; maybe just to delight in fooling with the "powerful" humans some more; maybe because like Pandora, he was getting too sure how things will work out and wants more random elements to keep it interesting. I'm going to be AFK for three hours or so. I'm going across the street to see Ragnorak.

In what sense? What's the "it"? And whatever the "it" is, which girls does "it" go between?

Too bad that classic got pissed on by yet another awful remake. Well, forty-nine years and this one hasn't been desecrated yet.

Well, Ashley's coat is coming off. Will anything join it? Wait, what about that (gasp) overdue library book? Wasn't that why Elliot needed to use the car so Ellen had to get a ride from Nanase? I think Monday's comic will change the scene again. I don't see any compelling reason for Ashley and Ellen to talk about stuff before the action starts, and if they really do do it, Dan won't show much, if he shows anything. Dan didn't show Pandora kissing Blaike, the love of her lifetimes. I'd go to Ellen and Nanase for the main cast of the next scene. They have a mystery to investigate. Is it part of Sirleck's plan or just the usual Moperville weirdness?

And Christopher Lee would have made a great Bond, but like Sean Bean, he only got to play a great Bond villain.

Yes. of course. No need to worry. I mean, it's not like Voltaire has shown any contempt for the restrictions of Immortal law, or that Voltaire has ever looked like he was about to go postal. I I put in the wrong quote. I was referring to your belief that we didn't need to worry about Voltaire actually attacking anyone himself. Or were you being sarcastic?

Yes, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. "We named the dog Indiana!" What's indisputable is that Connery is the only Bond who was a real-life badass. Remember the scene in L.A. Confidential when Russell Crowe calls a hood's date a hooker made up to look like Kim Novak and she turns out to actually be Kim Novak? The hood was supposed to be Johnny Stompanato, and he was also very real and very much Kim Novak's boyfriend, despite studio attempts to change that. He was definitely a Made Man, bodyguard to Micky Cohen, who was running the LA rackets until he was busted for income tax invasion. Connery made a movie with Kim Novak in England and Stompanato went to England and got in Connery's face on the set. Connery flattened Stompanato. Not too much later, Kim Novak's daughter stabbed Stompanato to death. There was going to be a big movie built around that incident some years ago, but it died in pre-production. The working title was Stompanato.

Google Chrome I'm getting a problem with Chrome I've never had before, on this forum. I will be typing along and suddenly I get a full-size window--or more than full-size window. Some of the Facebook games I play have an option that uses the entire screen without the framing that has the tabs, the address window, etc, but all of them have either a button to press or a keyboard shortcut or both to get out of this mode. But I haven't found one for this problem, even a general way to get out of full-size windows on the Chrome help site. Probably it has to do with the gaming keyboard and mouse I bought yesterday, both Corsair products (and both way more money than I should have spent but the feel is great and they light up and Fry's Electronics had demonstration units...curse you, Fry's, I cannot resist you though well I know your evil ways! I also changed over to the Avast antivirus, two years for forty bucks. I really thought about spending the extra ten for the extra year first--but that was before I touched the Corsair display!

I got a new keyboard and mouse yesterday with a lot of bells and whistles, and I keep losing windows by hitting the wrong key or clicking the wrong mouse gadget. If you're curious, the keyboard is a Corsair K70 RGB Rapidfire and the mouse a Corsair M65 Pro RGB. Would any of you be interested in me starting an off-topic thread about computer, web, and smartphone geekery? My geek cred goes back to mainframes and punch cards. Never mind, I'm using Softwares & Hardwares.

I didn't notice the comma. But then again, I got the idea you were saying Edward didn't encounter Pandora before the egg from its nest. My last posting was all about how Edward could have met Pandora without knowing the creepy little girl was the same Immortal he'd met before. What's unthinkable about Pandora visiting her son's protoges when Edward was a big part of their lives? She wouldn't have had to tell them her name was Pandora, or even that she was an Immortal or that she was Mr. Raven's mother. "They" and "them" mean young Edward and Noriko. Maybe Nanase's mom as well.

I agree with all that except that it isn't set in stone that Edward hasn't met Pandora before the "hawk and egg" incident. Pandora uses other names and routinely uses different appearances. Adrian's last meeting with his mother was fourteen years before she visited him in hospital after the fight with Abraham. Which also means it was when Tedd was at least three yeas old. We don't know exactly when Noriko left,, or when Edward and Arian became estranged, and even if both of those things happened more than fourteen years before Abraham tried to kill Ellen, Adrian and Edward probably weren't totally out of communication. Dad's Government Job, remember? We don't even have any examples of Pandora taking on her appearance as Creepy Little Girl before Magus got hurled into the Moperverse. It's a fine point and doesn't disprove what you said in the quote I'm citing here, but it does prove that Dan doesn't need to use smoke and mirrors to reveal that Edward (and Dan) can always come up with something he's never revealed to the other cast members and to us. Dan's spent a heck of a lot of time in his commentaries citing earlier plot points to support new ones, and even telling us how he's changed his mind about some things like Lord Tedd, the character concept of Susan, the permanence of Sarah and Elliot's romance, and, of course, The Goo. He really cares about the consistency of these things, more than every other comic creator I can think of. So I think Dan has become more and more careful about revealing things until the last possible instant because he keeps changing his mind about his story and knows he'll keep changing his mind. That way there are less things that were only true from a certain point of view. Speaking of lies, the only thing I use Twitter for is El Goonish Shive.

That we know about. Dan may do something in the dark in order to resolve this storyline the way he wants to. Except for the pithos, Voltaire seems to be winning now. Adrian is very powerful, but he was still defeated by Abraham, who isn't an Immortal or an aberration. If vampires surprise him, it's much more likely he could be killed.

Shouldn't the distraction be somewhere else besides where the main target is? How much of this master plan does Magus know? There hasn't been any evidence that Magus even knew Adrian was Pandora's son before she told him Abraham hurt her son. The distraction, yes, that sounds like it might get Ellen and Elliot together to get Ellen to zap Elliot instead of Tedd, a vampire, whatever. (Tony would be nice.) But if the vampires attack Susan, not only Adrian but everyone is likely to come converge on the mall at maximum speed. Same result if Adrian gets attacked. And making anything like coordinated attacks on multiple targets just isn't happening; just getting them together without killing each other is a major achievement. I don't think the army can do much better than just start making trouble wherever they are when the signal everyone else seems to be sure is coming, comes. I don't think the whole bunch of them could defeat Adrian unless they achieved total surprise--and I'm pretty sure Jerry is still watching the girls and may be keeping an eye on Adrian as well. Maybe even Pandora. Susan has her not-date tonight, so she's either finished bringing down the magic to a safe level, or she's going to finish up later. Either way, Pandora doesn't have any reason more than curiosity to watch her. And, of course, Helen and Demetrius are either still watching Elliot, or putting together a nasty surprise for Team Vampire. Remember, the vampires don't get any bonus for killing Slayers, just not losing the bonus for not killing anyone except Adrian Raven. And I don't see any reason for Voltaire to have set up Pandora's son. Tedd knows Raven is his godfather, but he doesn't remember him at all. Wait--maybe there is one that sort of makes sense. If Raven had trained Tedd, Tedd would be an extremely powerful wizard by now, able to create wands of far more versatility and power. And if he is the Chosen One for the special role after the next change of magic, Tedd could shape magic in ways that perhaps Voltaire would rather he didn't. If Raven gets to train Tedd after all... well, Voltaire doesn't seem to want to kill Tedd, only warp him in some way. So, killing Raven ties up that loose end forever. I suspect that Voltaire would be quite happy if none of the vampires, Sirleck, or Magus survive, and perhaps he has already taken steps to ensure that happy ending. I also suspect that Voltaire is going to outsmart himself. He may have already. Remember the pithos on the amulet that was controlling Dex? Pandora has never called herself "Jar". It's possible that this mistake has already informed Pandora if not of Voltaire's actual identity, at least that the same Immortal who tried to kill Elliot also tried to frame her. Raven knowing this could explain some of the tension he was showing when he had his encounter with Susan and Diane.

I think so, too. Big Mouth seemed to be a lot more reckless than Scarf, but now there are slayers very close, not to mention the primary target. Still, Diane and Susan are heading away from the mall entrance and Raven. What's Scarf waiting for? More slayers? Scarf was obviously the smart one in his previous appearance and this looks to me like maybe the best chance to catch the half-immortal alone and by surprise.