Tom Sewell

Actually, pygmy chimps, maybe our closest relatives genetically speaking, are incredibly promiscuous and pansexual. So, Mother Nature seems to have a different view on human non-heterosexuality as a crime against her.

I think Ellen's "tacked on" attraction to men comes from two sources: As a feature of the FV5 or "Venus" setting that turned Elliot into a girl, and as part of her memories from Second Life Ellen, who was attracted to Archie, and who lived her entire life as a girl.

I have a new theory about Duck's hat: Those aren't his eyebrows. His hat is stifling a laugh.

Us.

Some of you seem to have missed the greatest group of species to benefit from human evolution: Grasses! Sure, trees got monkeys to eat fruit and shit seeds-with-their-own-fertilizer. But grasses turned primates against trees by bringing monkeys to the ground, giving them enough brains to make tools that could cut down trees--and also thin out grazers. All the cereal crops are grasses: Wheat, barley, oats, rice, corn, and more obscure cereals like syllium and emmer. Then they gave humans fire, so humans would cut firewood, and golf as a first step toward lawns. And, of course, booze so we'd be too drunk to see through their insidious control over our entire civilization. And MacDonalds! The Amazon rainforest is being felled to make room for pastures for cows for Big Macs! And the bacon conspiracy! How else do you explain Iowa? An entire state that's one big cornfield.

As the Black Douglas once famously said, "Dinna be sure o' that!"

Elliot doesn't need to copy clothes; she's already produced originals. Heck, as long as she's thinking with might and main about clothes and such, wouldn't this be the perfect time for her to discover her true calling? Fashion, of course!

Is it just me, or are gender issues becoming more complicated than string theory?

What the heck is "pm" supposed to mean here? If it's supposed to be "PM" as in "Post-Meridiem", that actually refers to the time after noon. Dreams are more native to the "AM" or "Ante-Meridiem" portion of our 24-hour day.

Channeling Harold Pinter? Don't forget to tell us where you post your story.

A week in comic time. In our time, ten months, so far. Last Friday in Moperville lasted eleven months, and it took fourteen months to get through Saturday. And Thursday isn't over yet.

Intriguing. I missed Dan's tweet. I wouldn't count out The Other Woman With Susan's Face yet, especially considering the current hiatus from plot advancement for Elliot to deal with his gender issues yet again. Having Susan and Diane's real mom show up at the Mall wouldn't be even as strange as last week's griffin. But would Dan have a backstory that would justify her showing up just now? Isn't that one coinky-dinky too many? I mean, if she knew they'd be there, but how would she know that? Let's go back to the title page of Sister III. The composition of the picture has us nearest Elliot and Ellen, back-to-back, looking down and away from each other. Behind them looms Magus. Behind Magus, Susan and Diane, at the opposite edges of the picture, facing opposite but both beginning to peer back toward each other. And in back of them, the distinctive adult silhouette of Pandora, between them and the horrible true face of Sirleck. All those eyes. Except Pandora is drawn with no indication of eyes. Pandora's arms are outstretched, and her hands are drawn in a way in which we can't tell if the palms are facing us or Sirleck. If she's facing us, she looks like she's about to embrace or tackle everyone ahead of her. And if she's facing away, she looks like she might be barring Sarleck's way. The way her fingers are actually touching the edge of the frame kind of emphasizes that. Well, her eyes wouldn't be showing if she's facing away. On the other hand, the part in her hair indicates she should be facing us. Anyway, my alternative theory doesn't really depend on the title page, though I firmly believe Dan made it with foreshadowing very much in mind. What I'm really saying here is that Pandora might be The Other Woman With Susan's Face. We had a big reminder early on in this arc that "Immortals shapeshift, you dumb dummy!" and it got reinforced by Pandora's antics in Marker and Escape From the Mall. And here's the comic that established just how precisely she can shapeshift. And in the comic after that, Adrian says he hasn't seen Pandora in fourteen years. How old would Susan have been fourteen years before?

I said it wasn't clear that Susan could summon magic weapons until Hammerchlorians. In fact, it wasn't really spelled out that the hammers themselves were magic until then. After all, Nanase can summon clothes, but they're not magical copies. "Summon hammer" could mean "summon my hammer" or "summon a suitable hammer" or whatever. It wasn't spelled out that the hammers didn't cause permanent harm until Hammerchlorians, and the only other thing that Susan summoned before them or talked about summoning was the sword in Sister II--which she never used. Now Susan can not only summon magical copies of her sword but they're even more effective. And they glow, so at least one person in the upcoming Brawl at the Mall is going to call her a Jedi. By the way, until the griffins return, Susan is the only person we know of in Moperville who can permanently kill a vampire. Since the spider vampire didn't live to report in, Sirleck could be completely unaware of the threat she represents.

I thought all orange cats were male: Heathcliff, Garfield, Sunshine. Sunshine? Sunshine was an orange cat my grandmother kept. He was a farm cat, unfixed, and lazy--except when he wasn't. He would catch hummingbirds right out of the air, something that Grandma hated. My favorite memory is when a mama cat from across the road came trooping with her kittens behind, and one of them was a little Sunshine. And Sunshine was doing a very credible double take, like, "Who, me?"

Another thing about my being so darned old is I've seen attitudes about sex, sexual preferences, and sexual expression change over my lifetime while most of you know it as history. The Kinsey scale looks pretty superficial now but it was revolutionary in the 1950s. In the Sixties males who cross-dressed could still do jail time. The love that dared not speak its name had damned good reasons not to. Anyway, the last panel on this page gets my vote for best in the whole series about this subject. Maybe best in the whole series, period.

You are absolutely right. My post was more about getting to the inflatable sheep (which I've seen) than anything else. That's why I didn't get into the really icky stuff like necrophilia.

Maybe. Seems clear to me in Dan's commentary that he is clearly not making himself clear. Hey, your scale doesn't have fetishes at all. Here are some suggestions: Shoes Hose Shimapan Nekomimi (Tedd, Kitty, possibly Rhoda) Furries (Quite possibly Tedd) Rubber Leather Aromas Lolicon, Shotacon Adult Babies Sheep (real or inflatable)

Yes, that too. Although assuming we ever see Ashley again, maybe conversation might turn to exactly how Elliot began transforming, maybe when they discuss Elliot's poster boy/girl/whatever and his/her/whatever request.

Right, Ashley and Susan talked while Tedd and Sarah were present here, here, and here, but neither was introduced.

As far as we know, Ashley can't do that herself (yet) and Elliot can't do that to her (yet), so someone else would have to help. However, here may be a relevant reference to how deep Elliot's sexual preference(s) might be buried.

To quote Helena, "Ya think?" Thanks for the rainbow reference, BTW. Related Thought I bet Tony has never met Nanase yet. Most logical place to run into Nanase? How about the Mall? How long would Nanase put up with him? Would Tony mistake Nanase for Tedd? Would Nanase kill Tony before Nanase's mom killed him? Perhaps this could really happen: Nanase saves Tony's life. Or Susan saves his life. Or Justin saves his life. Now that would be a story for the Shipping News.

Well, Noah can make straight guys see rainbows. But maybe Elliot should ask Sarah to lend him her Kinsey scale. Hang in there, Justin! There may be hope yet!

Grew them or married them.

My thread seems to have strayed into the Nanase-and-her-mom dynamic. Anyway, looking over Shadows After Dark, I took a fresh look at the last page of Justin's dream. Dan went back to comment about this comic, but he talks about Samwise Gamgee and maybe by extension Sean Astin; Samwise wasn't really as big a figure in Tolkien's epic. That's not what I want to talk about. First, this comic mostly is a recapitulation of Painted Black: The elves--except for Sarah--are the ones that went to rescue Elliot; the hobbits are the ones that stayed behind--again, except for Sarah. Why is Sarah an elf? More important, why isn't Susan an elf? Or, why did Susan stay behind in Painted Black? Most likely, story reasons. It isn't clear that Susan is able to summon magic weapons until Hammerchlorians unless you count the hammers, and the hammers were only comedy elements until the flashback in Hammerchlorians. So there looks like there was a sound tactical reason why Susan should stay out of it, particularly if Dan hadn't decided Susan was a vampire killer when he was writing Painted Black. However, there isn't any sound reason given why Susan didn't ask to go. Susan was ready to fight the goo, after all. But why would Susan be a hobbit, even in Justin's dreams? It took me awhile to figure out the dark-haired hobbit chick was supposed to be Susan. Real-world Susan didn't even have her signature bangs at that point in the story. I'd say Susan is the character in the story that's furthest away from hobbit-like behaviors. And Susan was blonde through all of Painted Black and in the dream she had just before Justin's dream. Finally, and appropriately in the final panel, Susan is actually touching Justin and saying that we can't compete against that, namely, Sarah the elf. Now this is Justin's dream and it's expressing Justin's feelings of competing with Sarah now. But it's way before we find out Susan is attracted to Elliot. Foreshadowing? Maybe.

A grandmother effect sounds like it might be an epigenetic phenomenon. There was a study of periods of hunger in a small, isolated village over several generations which found there seemed to be an effect that showed up two generations later. Your genes don't determine how you'll be on their own. There seem to be a lot of things that can make them express differently, and we're not at all sure what all of them are. That said, the magic of the Moperverse has got to have all sorts of potential to out-do your grandmother's smoking.