Tom Sewell

When I was suggesting that in his universe Lord Tedd might be the equivalent of Damien, I'm talking about being a threat. Lord Tedd being less crazy than Damien could make him a bigger threat. How about this: Lord Tedd was taken from his family by his universe's counterpart of DGB. Cut off from real friends and family, he applied his intuition and intelligence and destroyed it much as Damien destroyed the people who built him. Give Damien the equivalent of the friends and family that our Tedd has enjoyed, and he might be more like his universe's equivalent of our Tedd.

That's assuming that Lord Tedd's universe had a Damien. Given how Lord Tedd seems to have turned out, he could be the equivalent of Damien, although he would seem to have turned out saner and even nicer. I emphasize "seem" because while Nioi thinks Lord Tedd isn't really evil, Nioi loves him. There's another big difference between Lord Tedd and our Tedd: There's been no sign that Lord Tedd has any family, unless you count Nioi.

I think so for a different reason: If Lord Tedd believes he needs that gauntlet for combat, taking it away from it could make him helpless. If General Shade Tail knows this, he has a way to disarm Lord Tedd. And if the General knows what's going on with our Tedd, it would become very important to keep our Tedd and Lord Tedd from comparing notes. Something else occurs to me. General Shade Tail may have same morphing abilities comparable to Grace's. If he comes to the Moperverse, he could potentially look like anyone. Maybe the vampire mercenaries won't be the only unwelcome visitors this evening...

Tedd just enchanted that wand without his glove. He didn't think he could do it until Pandora told him to try. Tedd thought he needed the glove, but he really doesn't. Kind of like taking the training wheels off your first bike.

Or: Tedd thought he needed a power boost. I think now that the gauntlet Tedd made (and maybe Lord Tedd's gauntlet as well) is about as necessary as the glove Tedd's been using when he enchants his watches. What he was doing to see the whales was, after all, seeing the whales. He wasn't so much using a new spell as concentrating very hard on doing the most basic thing his magic does.

Perhaps. But even if Edward can't see magic himself, as Tedd once said, his Dad is basically Dumbledore and knows barrels of stuff, most of which he keeps secret. He's the most likely human to know about seers, and it's guaranteed that he's invested a lot of effort in research about what makes Tedd Tedd. If Edward does know the second purpose of a seer, it would give him the kind of justification to lie to Tedd about knowing about the Space Whales. Hey, they can't be much more exotic than the Deathless Army of Rage.

Could it be that it's not all intuition? Could Tedd be changing magic? That could fit that all-so-secret second purpose of seers. It could also explain why Edward never heard of the magic-eating interdimesional whales: No wizard could see them until Tedd changed magic enough for him to see them.

Nope. It was Jolt; now I think it's Red Bull.

Not really. He was home on Sunday; now it's Friday. If Voltaire is pulling strings on Leifeld and/or Arthur, quite possible to set up. Or it could be good-old-fashioned coincidence; Edward himself has seen a lot of that. We can be pretty sure Edward can't teleport or fly or he wouldn't have missed the battle with Not-Tengu. He could just be in Washington, staying overnight because his flight is on Saturday morning. Or maybe he's in Europe meeting with someone he doesn't want to talk to Tedd about yet... The last Hapsburg Empire, yes. The last Emperor and Empress were Karl I and Zita. Also the last King and Queen of Hungary. Possibly. However, it's also quite possible that Adrian was the one who taught magic to Noriko and Edward. Maybe even Nanase's mom, too. Fashion counts as a cultural reference. Although the cultural reference of his costume of an old hat and a shabby raincoat isn't the most helpful one for hanging around a school. Anyone remember the cover of Jethro Tull's Aqualung? Sitting on a park bench Eyeing little girls with bad intent

I think Abraham's "Modern Knowledge" spell was kind of wonky, not surprising when you consider how wonky his enchantment of the Dewitchery Diamond was. Abraham was actually surprised to find two high schools in the same city--larger than any city in Europe was in the era his initial chainmail armor would fit.

Actually it's both, and an anime as well; I used to own a dvd of the first series and several volumes of the manga. Eight digits; dinosaurs have been gone for around 65,000,000 years, unless you count birds. A barrel of it if Edward comes downstairs. Which would probably fit right into Leifield's and Arthur's plans, especially if they take over custody of Tedd. Say, Edward wouldn't be out of town again on some unexplained assignment, would he? Exclusive services of a von Braun or a Tedd is the kind of thing a lot of extremely black operations have been run to obtain. Ever heard of Operation Paperclip? Historians do use different years here, but none of them use "fall of the Roman Empire" to refer to the Holy Roman Empire. The traditional date for the founding of the Holy Roman Empire is the crowning of Charlemagne (AKA Karl der Grosse) on Christmas Day, 800. However, the title really lost its meaning soon after the death of Charlemagne, and wasn't really revived until Otto I in 962. It was formally dissolved at Napoleon's pleasure in 1806, although the Austrian Hapsburgs managed to hold on to and even expand what became the Austro-Hungarian Empire up until 1920. Possibly marrying yet another Hapsburg princess to Napoleon had something to do with it, although the previous Hapsburg marriage to a French Monarch was cut sort (a head short). It's an old saw that the empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Something I'm unsaying now.

I suspect Dan isn't really a big Alternate HIstory guy, I am. An awful lot of the history leading up to the world we live in depends on Genghis Khan, and I'm not just talking about which battle was fought where and when and who won. A very sizeable portion of the population of Earth seems to be descended from GK. Put that together with all the people back then who didn't leave the same descendants thanks to the efforts of GK and his wacky Mongols and you get quite a different population from ours. It could be another reason that Dan has decreed a ban on Time Travel in EGS is so he won't have to work out the implications of radically different alternate histories.

I'm thinking of another possibly relevant Manga: The Familiar of Zero. Louise the Zero has a reputation as the worst and weakest mage at her academy when the story begins. She turns out to be the most powerful mage on her world. And that just might apply to the Tedds.

The alternate Tedd in the Sugar Sugar Rune universe is the CEO of WandMart.

Indeed they do, and, curiously, the same offensive capability as the crows in Adrian's murder shroud. There's no evidence that Adrian knows anything about Susan's magic. However, Edward knows plenty, and probably knows a lot about Adrian's magic.

Well, by her own admission Ellen isn't the sharpest pencil in the box. Although she was the one who figured out how to defeat Not-Tengu by running down the amgient energy he was using.

Cranium recognized Not-Tengu from his missing eye, so someone must have been close enough and conscious to see that wound, most likely the person who inflicted that wound. Either that or someone found Not-Tengu's eye lying around after the battle. And the only thing we know about Noriko's magic is that she can summon magical weapons; we don't know if Noriko can fly. So maybe Not-Tengu was smart enough to fly away from Noriko, although it's questionable whether he would be able to see well enough or even be conscious. Losing that eye indicates that Not-Tengu's monster form has one weakness: His eyes. The Goo could just grow more eyes in its shell. And it now occurs to me that if Ellen had her flashlight spell at that time, she might have been able to blind his remaining eye with it, or for that matter, temporarily blind any opponent. Maybe Dan will realize that before he finishes his current NP arc about Ellen's powers. Losing an eye also suggests danger to that thing that kind of looks like a big walnut sitting right behind your eyes could be in danger. Not-Tengu should have at least been in shock after taking that wound, and pretty likely passed out. Too bad he didn't have an invisible force field like Greg's, although to be fair we only know that Greg's field is Jeremy-proof. I think a more likely scenario is that Noriko went to help or try to help some of Not-Tengu's victims and left him enough time to recover enough to make his escape.

Perhaps the fight between Noriko and Not-Tengu occured at the Reichenbach Falls?

Probably, although Not-Tengu (Dan used it himself, so it's his official name until Dan says otherwise) obviously escaped alive, so it's a fair guess that he got his own licks in. I don't think Edward would keep Noriko's death secret from Tedd unless he had reason not to. Not-Tengu's battle with Noriko seemed to be a recent event from Agent Cranium's outburst, and his defeat by Ellen and Nanase happened as little as seventeen days ago, Moperville time. Noriko could have died in hospital in the interval. If she did, Edward could also be waiting until, say, the end of the school week to tell Tedd. That said, I don't want Noriko to die and I don't think Dan will kill her off, at least yet. But Dan could surprise us all, even me, the author of a Sailor Moon fanfiction where I killed off Chibi-Usa.

Pandora has decided to wait until Saturday, Moperville time, before talking to her son again. As I've said before, this could set up the classic trope of an action postponed until it will be forever too late. If Pandora waits for tomorrow, Moperville time, whatever is going to happen tonight may mean Pandora will not exist tomorrow, or at least Pandora in the form we are getting to know so well by now. There are other people Pandora might decide to visit before the big whatever coming up later. Most people in Moperville are asleep now or should be. Pandora might have been thinking of talking to Susan, but Susan was asleep. So it's something like 1 AM in Moperville in this scene. 1 AM in Moperville is 8 AM in France, assuming the MopEarth uses similar time zones to our world's. I was considering ending this post with the last paragraph, but I'm going to be explicit: I'm talking about Pandora talking with Noriko. The way that Pandora looks away from Tedd in the last panel of this comic may indicate she knows more about Noriko than she really wants to tell Tedd now, but I don't think Pandora has met with Noriko at least since she left Tedd and Edward, and maybe never before. Why? For one thing, Noriko seems to be still alive unless that's another awful secret Edward is keeping. For another, Pandora must have talked with Adrian about the situation and he would have tried to get her to leave Noriko alone. Going directly from this scene to a scene with Pandora and Noriko would be a natural transition given that we've gone from a previous scene with Pandora and Sarah to this one with Pandora and Tedd. The wand looks to me like a good scene ender, especially if Dan has special plans for the spell on that wand. Pandora doesn't seem to have any specific intelligence about Sirleck and Magus' plans for this evening and doesn't seem to have identified Voltaire as the culprit who tried to kill Tedd's friend. Again, the best evidence is that Voltaire hasn't been torn to shreds as yet. But Pandora knows Tedd is being targeted, so that wand may come in very handy before the end of the day. Why spoil the surprise for us readers now? I kind of think this hypothetical meeting between Pandora and Noriko may not be portrayed before the big whatever. Why? Because if there was ever a better time for Noriko to return than just in time for the big battle if there's going to be a big battle, I don't see it. Dan kind of pulled a similar surprise at the climax of Painted Black when Nanase returned as a fairy.

In raw power, probably not. With the restraints she chooses to (mostly) follow, Pandora or any other Immortal has a much narrower scope than a human magic user. Lord Tedd's only restraints appear to be the influence of General Shade Tail and Nioi; otherwise he looks like he's already conquered his own world and plans to move on to others, wiping out potential competition from the other Tedds (I wonder if the various Tesses are included.) But we've also had evidence from Jerry, Tedd, and Pandora herself that Immortals that forget their restraints can be incredibly destructive. There is one thing humans are definitely better at than Immortals or, for that matter, Vampires/Aberrations: teaming up. If my guess is right about the "Will of Magic" being an office or an automaton set up by the Immortals, the biggest motivation for this restriction might be that magical armies could be a danger to the Immortals themselves. Hey, notice that this fits in surprisingly well with the notion of gods continually putting upstart mortals like Adam and Prometheus in their places when they get too uppity? Looking through that lens, Tedd already has a potential cadre for a magical army of a dozen or so, which we're likely to see in action before the end of this Friday, Moperville Time.

MUWAHAHAHA! You fell for my brilliant plan! While you were slaving away searching for Pandoras, I was taking a nap! That said, I'm voting for more Pandora Pinups, particularly in that Playboy Kitten costume she wore in Escape From the Mall.

NP, arguably (I won't count them) but I only recall one appearance of Pandora in the Sketchbook, and no pinups.

Pandora just became one of Tedd's favorite people. She's a mother who's stayed by her son for centuries.