Tom Sewell

If Edward is correct in saying that Immortals have started wars for fun, the rules aren't that restrictive. That makes it sound like the human world is more of an arena than a sandbox. If it were our world, I could see one advantage to us: the Immortals won't let an all-out nuclear war happen because it could kill off all their human gladiators and leave no breeding stock. I wonder if Dan has read many Xanth books. If he has, we might eventually meet some higher-level Immortals something like the Demons of Xanth, godlike beings that amuse themselves with bets on what humans and other lesser beings will do and whether they will succeed in arbitrary quests.

Tom Sewell is not liking that "Tedd is new immortal" theory. I wouldn't rule out that immortal beings can be born as humans in EGS, but capital-I immortals seems a stretch. Maybe "unaging" to use a GURPS trope (which would be part of Adrian's GURPS write-up), but Immortals in EGS are more like small-g gods. If you really like Immortal characters, I would suggest Wapsi Square.

Guilty of violating Commander Scott's rule: Never admit something was easy for you. Love your Gravatar.

Don't forget that Seers have a potential second function, one that they can't know about ahead of time without becoming ineligible to exercise that second, very, very important function. We're not sure that Heka even told Pandora what that secret second purpose is, but whether he did, or Pandora figured it out herself being perhaps the smartest Immortal of all, Pandora isn't going to tell Tedd. That second purpose is likely why Voltaire is so focused on Tedd. Now for a leap into amazing crackpot plot theory. So far no one has said that Tedd's insight into magic is restricted to human magic. Tedd might be able to learn Immortal spells. If Tedd can do that, he can make wands that can give Immortal spells to anyone. Edward did say at one point that there are human wizards who can go toe-to-toe with Immortals. And if Edward and Cranium are wizards themselves, why do they both used wands, particularly when confronting Abraham in Sister II? This could even be the real reason that Edward lost Noriko. Edward is all about keeping secret what should be kept secret, and if he knows that second purpose, he wouldn't tell Tedd or anyone who might tell Tedd about if he wanted Tedd to remain eligible. This kind of fits the fact that neither Arthur J. Arthur nor Assistant Director Liefeld haven't ever mentioned Tedd in canon. Edward knows what they did to Agent Cranium, and he wouldn't want them to do their thing with his only child.

A reasonably fresh thought: If magic does change, guess who gets to teach his runaway mom the new magical ropes?

Smartphones are more powerful than the mainframes used by NASA for Project Apollo.

Flip phones could text, but not well. No video, no games, no Google maps, no music, no Facebook. In short, all the things that make smartphones so much more useful and fun. Anyway, I started this thread to poke fun at how EGS has followed the times even though it's supposed to have taken place for the most part in less than a year. Try reading through the 87th precinct books that started in 1952 and finished in 2005. I remember Ed McBain (a.k.a Evan Hunter, a.k.a Salvatore Lombino) actually made fun of how much the world around his cast of characters had changed in one of these novels.

No, flip phones were dumb phones. They were certainly an improvement on the brick phone. Watch the first Lethal Weapon movie to see what cellphones were like in the mid-eighties.

One of the changes in magic could have been to make it more "friendly" with the way technology was going to develop. Or it might have been changing all along, maybe even carrying technology and lifestyles along with it, like the way in the nine months since Grace's birthday, flip phones have become smartphones, CRTs have been replaced by LCDs, and Susan and Diane's belly buttons have pretty much disappeared.

A grisley fate awaits you, PRT: Being crushed under an avalanche of exposition. With charts. Maybe even a Powerpoint™.

It's his job (or technically, used to be since he was replaced by Arthur Arthur) to know about Immortals, but neither Edward nor any other human has any personal relationship with any Immortal who doesn't wish to establish a personal relationship. Only visible if they want to be, remember? And the long break between Adrian and his mother occured after Tedd was born. Edward has known Adrian at least since he was in high school, and Adrian was close enough to Edward and Noriko to become godfather to Tedd. So it doesn't seem outlandish to me that Pandora had a direct relationship with Edward during those happier times. But does Edward have a family connection with any other Immortals? Probably not, except as a descendant over who knows how many generations.

How many Immortal or half-Immortal "friends" does Edward have? Old Jerry knew about him, but we don't know if he actually knew Edward. Maybe Edward knew the old versions of Helen and Demetrius; the first encounter with Pandora might have occurred before Nanase and Susan went to France. If Edward had known about the French connection at that time, though, I doubt if he would have really counted them as "friends" any more except in the sarcastic sense. But the most logical "friends" would have still been Adrian and his mother. After all, investigating the incident was more important than Edward's personal feelings.

It's quite possible Edward already knows she is.

I agree with that 9001%. I don't agree with this, especially about it being the only reason. I think Noriko is the love of Edward's life, but I also think he knows she's never coming back to him. He has to know she about her other child/children by now. Heck, it's established he knows pretty much everything that's important to him and his family. This doesn't mean Edward couldn't develop feelings for Lavender, but there could be issues with Tedd--although since Tedd's girlfriend is part space alien, maybe not that many issues. And Edward could feel that he could never offer Lavender the kind of love he had (probably still has) for Noriko. Also, if Dan has ever done a sketch or a pinup of Edward and Noriko as a couple, I don't know about it. A thought: Maybe Lavender is dating Greg now, either because she's interested or because she hopes to get Edward to see that she might not be available forever.

I'm wondering how much more Pandora is going to explain to Tedd. If she's going to truly apologize, she has to, because her creating the dam that increased magic power in Moperville is the big reason the WoM is close to hitting the restart button. And that should include why she did it, namely to make a better life for her son. Also maybe she could get around to telling Tedd that her son is his godfather. By the way, I'm thinking just now that we just might have a clue when Noriko left. When Pandora visited Adrian in the wrap-up of Sister II, he said he hadn't spoken to her in fourteen years. Considering how much Pandora values Tedd, the cause of that break could have been a big argument about Adrian's role in that. That would have been when Tedd was only three or four, just old enough to remember her. I'm also wondering why Edward didn't remarry if it's been that long. And also wondering if Tedd has ever met Lavender.

Pandora is the only Immortal who has ever been shown in an amorphous, multi-faced form. This is the "Chaos" form, and the last time it was shown before the scene in Susan's bedroom was when Pandora was considering what she wanted Sarah to call her. So, no, I wasn't saying that thing was Demetrius and Helen. Could it have been another Immortal in Susan's bedroom? Well, Dan can make it so, but he's invested a lot into making that creepy avatar exclusive to Pandora. Voltaire framed Pandora for Dex with the Pithos pendant, but he's never appeared in any other form than the bearded Man in White. It seems to be a matter of ego with him, he wants to be recognized so he can show how very, very clever he is. Another reason is that as far as we know Voltaire doesn't know anything about Susan. Susan wasn't in either of the fights with Elliot Voltaire set up. There's a plot theory floating around that Susan and Diane are descendants of Voltaire, but I very much doubt Dan will go with that.

I never said that Edward and the cheater's mothers were raised as sisters or knew they were related to each other (of course, we all know that we are all related to each other because a time traveling Captain Kirk impregnated so many women in so many eras that every human has him as an ancestor multiple times) And not only on Earth, of course. There's a scene in one of the recent Star Trek movies where Kirk is in bed with two women at once, and if you look carefully, one of them has a barbed tail. Yes, it is. Hence my alternative suggestion to bring in the Alien Space Bats. I think Dan has put so much apparently contradictory foreshadowing in that no matter what he settles on as the canon explanation, some of us are going to call him on it. On to my next amazing crackpot plot theory: Tedd's second purpose is to choose the new rules for magic. I mean, who would be more qualified than the best seer? If the new rules not only apply to humans but to everyone, Tedd could do some amazing things, perhaps not even consciously. These might include: Shutting down the vampires by taking away their powers--including the power that keeps them alive. Changing or even deleting Immortal powers on the plane humans of the Moperverse live Marking or even Awakening Grace, something he must wish he could do. Giving hammers back to all women. I don't have a reference link for this yet, but I'm pretty sure Tedd put it on his to-do list some time after Hammerchlorians. Anyway, having Tedd shut down the big battle and settling Voltaire's hash by the end of the arc seems like an appropriate and satisfying plot twist.

If you're serious about this theory, Voltaire is sure a crappy great-granddad. Also, if Mrs. Pompoms is so wealthy, how come Mr. Verres has such modest means? On the other hand, if Mrs. Pompoms is Edward's cousin, it might give him reason to be as upset as he is with the cheating cheater who cheated who married her.

I call them "sidelocks" and they're quite common in anime. They aren't shown on many other characters in EGS besides Pandora and Grace. Both faces in the mirrors (Susan's and then Grace's) have sidelocks. I think that leaves only one other character: Akiko, who has very long sidelocks. Pandora as Susan's and Diane's biological mother is an interesting idea, and I've considered it, but I think there may be even more difficulties with it this theory with Adrian being their father, including: Why would Pandora give up her daughters when she's proved she'll do anything for the sake of her son? Why haven't we had any hint that Pandora even knew Susan existed until she showed up in Susan's room? Why would Pandora cheat with a married man? The only man we know she ever had sex with was Blaike. Pandora's standards are pretty strange, but she does have standards. Now there is a way Pandora could have gotten around at least two of these problems. Being a shapechanger, Susan's mom could have been Pandora taking another form. For that matter, she could also be Diane's mom in still another form. And we may have two examples of Pandora being in two places at once--actually four--here and here. Pandora could have been living in Moperville all along, raising both Susan and Diane and, of course, disguising their pointed elfin ears, and also keeping a more distant eye on Adrian. Kind of brings a new appreciation of parent-teacher conferences at Moperville South, doesn't it? Or we could bring in the Alien Space Bats. Having Pandora morph into Susan's mom, and vice-versa, would be an interesting sequence, in canon or not.

The Egyptian god of magic who summons excellent scones for tea (Possibly a legacy of the long British occupation of Egypt.) It hasn't been officially debunked, quite. However, something Heka almost finished telling to Pandora strongly suggests that Fairies have lots of descendants. (Heka calls Pandora a "Fairy" because the former Fairies calling themselves "Immortals" now implies that they are the only Immortals, leaving out other immortal beings, such as Heka.) It certainly impiies that Tedd, a seer, and Edward and all other human wizards are descended from at least one Fairy/Immortal, which also means that they must have at least one elf ancestor. Adrian told Grace back during Death Sentence that "Half-Immortals cannot have children." But he didn't explain why Grace saw an image of Susan staring back at her from the mirror she'd just used in the previous panel. And Adrian's statement might not be true. He could have been lying (for a good reason, of course) or he might have believed he was telling the truth but was wrong. And since this comic is now over five years old, it is possible that Dan has decided on a different truth than was true when he made that comic. As I mentioned awhile ago, the next time we see Pandora is when she appears in Susan's bedroom where Jerry is puzzling over the relationship (or lack of it) between Susan and Diane. This kind of implies that whatever Heka said to Pandora suggested that Susan was suddenly important to her, even though Pandora had never been shown with or mentioned Susan in the ten-plus years since her introduction in Hidden Genesis. And on the next visit Pandora pays to EGS, she tells Sarah that she told a lie to her son something that wasn't true and ends the comic with the now-notorious statement "Of course they were his!" Now, none of this is absolute proof that half-immortals like Adrian can have children, but if Dan decides that they can't after all this, it proves that Dan is a big doofus.

May I suggest another possibility for Susan's origin: She's a changeling. Mrs. Pompoms had a stillbirth, but she was under full anesthetic, and Susan was substituted. Difficult to set up, but it would explain why no one, not Susan and not even her mom knows. Horndog or not, Adrian can't be Tedd's father because Noriko told Adrian that Edward was Tedd's father. That doesn't rule out an affair between them that resulted in a sibling or siblings for Tedd, but Tedd is still Edward's son in every sense of the word. I really don't understand how Susan can be ruled out as Adrian's child when Pandora went to see her right after her visit with Heka and after Pandora had never been shown with her or even knowing about her in the over fifteen years of plot development before that. And if Pandora didn't know about Diane at that point, we can be sure she now knows everything Jerry knows about Diane. The simplest explanation is that Pandora believed the lie she'd told herself about Adrian never being able to father children up until Heka told her whatever he told her.Show Reply

Oh, I don't know about that. Hatsheput might be up for it. After all, it's been a long time since her last date.

I don't think it's clear that Susan left with that watch for Susan with all the mods she asked for. But it is clear that Nanase left with her watch. Anyway, if it is Susan's watch Tedd is working on, it gives an excuse for a conversation something like this: PANDORA: Why are you working on that watch? TEDD: It's for Susan, a friend. I guess it won't work for very long, but I think she might use it tonight.

I'm guessing that Tedd is working on the watch he promised to make for Susan back in Playing With Dolls. His promise was only six days ago, Moperville time, and one of the features Susan wanted was changing her hair color. I think Tedd thinks Susan might want to be able to turn blond for Diane when they meet at the mall after school, and he wants to give the watch to Susan at school. Sounds like a good excuse for getting out of bed when he wasn't sleeping anyway.

Possibly Drew was the maiden name of Edward's mother? However, Drew does have one advantage I don't think anyone else has pointed out: Thanks to actress Drew Barrymore, Tedd has a gender-neutral middle name.