Tom Sewell

Not all the time, but don't forget Tess over in AF04. Maybe we'll see. If they ever get together, our Tedd could give Lord Tedd some time as a girl. How about a pinup of Our Tedd showing Lord Tedd how to put on makeup?

I have two thoughts concerning timing to share. First, if I didn't mention it in the thread about Wednesday, Sister III has now begun its second year in our universe. Second, back in the Beta universe, it's been more than nine months now since Beta Ellen suggested to Beta-Tedd that there were better ways to spend their time together while Beta-Edward was out of town. If Beta Tedd took her up on her suggestion...

Pandora must have known that Tedd had some great power or she wouldn't have given that inaudible warning to Luke. But Voltaire is obviously very interested in Tedd, and I think he's been observing Tedd for quite some time. I think Voltaire believes he's found out Tedd's second, secret purpose. Of course, he could be wrong. How can we know? Dan hasn't revealed it to us yet.

A good point. Arthur seems to me to be a past master at bureaucratic politics to me, hardly the type to tolerate any underling he doesn't find satisfactory for very long. Arthur seems to be doing a good job of finessing his putative superior Leifeld to do what Arthur wants. While I am really dubious about Arthur's true motives, I think what he's selling is the idea that losing all access to magic to the agency for a long time is a better alternative to letting the enemies of the agency's enemies know what they've really been up to. Leifield is really a musclebound overpromoted moron if he doesn't see that losing access to magic basically makes his job obsolete. Either he believes his people will be able to keep some access to magic, or he's more afraid of being prosecuted if a Congressional investigation starts poking into into his administration of a super-secret agency with really ridiculous opportunity to get away with almost anything. Real concern for public welfare? Not much I think.

The assistant could also be something like his niece, his daughter, his granddaughter, or even his wife. And that would tend to support my case or at least not disprove it. If he's not taking the opportunity to check out the bod on the blonde on the treadmill, but he's still staring at her, he must have another reason--like for instance recognizing Carol Brown from watching videos of the reports she made about the fire guy at the comic shop, the aftermath of the dragon incident, and the griffin and floating Jesus at the mall a few days ago (Moperville time, of course). My favorite concept of what could have happened before the first panel of the gym page is that Arthur recognized Carol before tactfully suggesting that it wasn't a good idea to continue their conversation in such a public place rather than blurting out, "That's a flipping reporter right over there, you musclebound overpromoted moron!"

I'm not. Take another look at Arthur's personal assistant. If he likes female eye candy, the blonde would not seem to be his favorite flavor. Also, the blonde not only has blonde hair but pretty much the same hairstyle as Carol Brown in both So a Date at the Mall and Question Mark, except for the sweatband. Y'all owe me a cookie if it turns out I'm right about this one.

I think this is worthy of a link, especially since it's a factoid I was ignorant of. If you haven't noticed, I have a rather large collections of factoids rattling around in my head. Some are even true. Yes, but perhaps a better place for Assistant Director Leifeld to check out young dudes. Now to move into the familiar realm of amazing crackpot plot theories, I'm wondering if there is a connection between Sirleck and Arthur, either directly or through Voltaire. What's raising my suspicion now is that Arthur's policy of protecting the secrets of magic using a strategy destined to backfire, refusing to send aid to protect the public from the bulldog dragon, and the way Arthur seems to have totally missed out on the vampire activity and the repeated griffin sightings that attracted Charlotte's attention. After all, Charlotte's supposed to be a just bright college freshthing. It all seems to mesh so well with Sirleck and Voltaire's plans. There's another factor: Arthur once tried to deport Adrian to Russia. Why would Arthur have tried to deport Adrian so long ago? Possibly professional jealousy at the time. It's implicated that Adrian has had a relationship with the branch Edward and Noriko eventually joined, maybe because Adrian encouraged them. Being replaced by the protege of a rival doesn't exactly foreshadow a happy retirement.

I think your sense of direction is annoyingly accurate. I think that Dan went to the trouble of drawing all that exercise equipment  he complains about because he wanted this scene to take place at a public gymnasium to give an excuse for Carol Brown to overhear the discussion. Notice that in the first panel when Arthur is telling Leifeld that this gym isn't the most secure location for the discussion while looking to his left. When the view widens to show the gymnasium, Arthur is still looking to his left, and he seems to be looking at Carol Brown, whose eyes have widened, unlike the dude that Leifeld is checking out.

I suspect Leifeld used the Abraham incident as an excuse to remove Edward from his job of covering up the truth about magic. Take another look at the gym scene where Leifeld and Arthur are talking. Just how long ago did Arthur float his plan to solve the problem "for decades" go back? How long have Leifeld and Arthur been conspiring to bring on the magical reset? And speaking of that gym scene, isn't that Carol Brown at the far right of the second panel totally hearing Leifeld and Arthur's conversation?

So can Grace on occasion.

Pretty much the same shtick as when Pandora said "It will be her last dream...before waking up."

Ballistic also means not being able to change course. Let's look at previous ballistic Pandora episodes: Trying to get Magus to make Edward kill Abraham. Results: Edward got kicked upstairs, removing much of his power to protect Tedd; triggering her attack on Magus, leading to him allying with Sirleck which led to the vampire jamboree in Moperville and whatever Voltaire has on the agenda later today (Moperville time, of course.) Anger at Adrian scolding her at the hospital. Result: Adrian became even further estranged, which made him more susceptible to Voltaire's setting up Pandora for trying to kill Elliot and Noah. What I'm really hoping is that Pandora will see that she's scaring Tedd and tone down.

A fresh thought: What if removing the clog doesn't significantly diminish the ambient magical energy of Moperville? If Tedd is a well of such energy, enough to bend worlds, maybe the real solution is for Tedd to do more magic, similar to the way Ellen and Elliot used extra magic to manage their buildups.

Good thought. Tedd is trying to restrain his reactions; he reminded himself that she can't hurt him unless he attacks. But if Tedd doesn't say something, Pandora is more likely to keep on going ballistic. That actually means "out of control", BTW, as when a guided missile loses its lockon and just keeps going on in the same direction.

Well, at least she only has one head, so far...

Gee, ya think that Lord Tedd also has the power to bend worlds to his will? This mean that the guantlet Tedd built doesn't store magic. It could simply have a placebo effect allowing Tedd to think it's what he's doing when actually he's only calling up his true, unlimited magical power. Also, Pandora is definitely looking scary in that last panel.

Traditionally all the emperors are supposed to descend from a majo named Himiko. Most are supposed to descend from a Korean princess who married one of the earliest emperors considered to be historical. BTW, when Akihito, the reigning Emperor, pointed this out in public sixteen years ago, it began a stir in Japan that hasn't down yet.

A point you have. Like Justin, Luke is attracted to masculinity. So it is natural he would have initially paid less attention to Tedd, who looks pretty feminine all the time, before he god blinded, and would have avoided looking at Tedd afterward until the store had pretty much emptied out and he wasn't going to have an opportunity to check the blond chick or re-check Tedd. I wonder if we're ever going to see Grace use an MV5 form on Tedd? Or demonstrate such a form by morphing herself? Or Ellen blend Tedd with someone else, maybe Elliot? Maybe Nanase? Come on, Dan, don't tease us with the Ellen Demo!

The only time we know of that Adrian was with Tedd and might have been in his true form (which he needs to be in use his ears to taste magic) was in that single flashback scene with Noriko when Tedd was so little he probably couldn't sit up yet. Tedd's magic might have been totally dormant at that time. Maybe Adrian did get a taste of Tedd's magic afterward--and had some grasp of what it meant. I kind of like this alternative explanation of why Adrian is the reason Edward and Noriko will never get back together better than Adrian having an affair with Noriko. But I'm not betting any cookies on it. Why was Luke able to detect Tedd's magic? Well, maybe it had something to do with being marked by Pandora, a ridiculously powerful Immortal. After all, Pandora did sort of warn Luke not to scan Tedd. That page also confirms something I wasn't quite sure of earlier: Luke has not noticed yet that Tedd's hair isn't pink any more, and that Tedd was female for awhile. So without his mark, Luke is less observant than either Rich or Larry.

Where did you get that idea? Luke was blinded by Tedd's aura, meaning Tedd had to have much more magical power than anyone Luke had seen before. Going back to the Emissary, he said there was a rare type of wizards that wouldn't be affected by the change only because they didn't get spells in the first (place.) And that they were the only human magic users who wouldn't be affected. Any old-style spells would no longer work, including the spells wizards learned from other magic users. So, if a Seer is supposed to restore magic use by learning spells by observation, exactly who is he (or she) going to observe? Obviously not by observing human magic users, because no humans would be left with any working spells. Could Tedd learn and adapt spells from non-humans? Immortals? Maybe. But given the way Tedd's character has been constructed, perhaps its more likely that he would rebuild human magic spell-by-spell, in effect creating the new rules of human magic.

Luke doesn't seem to be a capital-S Seer. All he can really detect so far is magical auras, and he can't tell much more than that some auras look similar to other auras. Tedd can actually see magic as it does its thing and analyze it well enough to make wands that reproduce and even modify spells. The Emissary of Magic told Pandora about the rare wizards. Heka told Pandora that the rare wizards were Seers, and that Tedd was a Seer. We already knew Tedd was a Seer from something Voltaire said when he was talking to himself. And from another one of Voltaire's conversations with himself, we know that Tedd's role as a Seer is critical to whatever amazing crackpot master plan Voltaire has to finally make them all listen to his flawless advice. Or at least Voltaire thinks so, so he must believe that Tedd will likely be the special Seer with that so-so-secret second purpose, unless something happens to make him ineligible.

I don't think that's the case. Seers are a rare type of wizard who don't get any spells. That implies that the not-rare wizards do get spells like other magic users, and it would also explain why Noriko and maybe Edward as well have never recognized the nature of Tedd's magic. Maybe Adrian as well. Or maybe not. If he did know that Tedd was a Seer, he could have told Noriko when Tedd was a baby. If he knew and didn't tell, he'd feel like an asshole--which he does concerning the breakup of Tedd's family.

Seers are born, but I think only one is chosen in the end for that secret second purpose. Otherwise why would Heka have used the word "eligible"? Eligibility implies a selection process.

Maybe so, but at present I think Susan and Nanase are better candidates for that. Plus I kind of think it's a rule of the Will of Magic that the chosen Seer must be a mortal. Giving that kind of power to an Immortal doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Think term limits.

Jeanne d'Arc heard voices, or said she did. Now, schizophrenia comes to mind (I've dated three schizophrenics), but the only Immortal we've seen do that is Voltaire, and he needed an amulet to do it. Actually there is a very-well established magical race that are said to speak invisibly to mortals: Djinn. But the only genie connected with EGS so far is Jean Nessman, and only in a cameo by Grace in her webcomic, I Dream of a Jeanie Bottle. And at least so far, none of the genies in Bottle have done the voices-in-your-head thing.