Tom Sewell

Ellen hasn't dressed in really feminine clothes very much. She was embarrassed to wear that strapless, tight, short dress in Grace's Birthday Party. I think the only other time she wore something like that was in MV5, and I'm thinking it was to emphasize her femininity in a situation which dealt with turning females to males. Being female is the very first difference between Elliot and Ellen. However, Second Life Ellen isn't shown wearing sexy or even clearly feminine clothes much, either, maybe only in the flashback to sleeping with Archie. So neither set of Ellen's memories seems to feature feminine fashion. In fact, Elliot is the one who actually picked an outfit because it "looked cute." There's also the fact that Ellen lives on an allowance and that the Dunkels are far from well off. Edward had to fix a lottery for them so they could support Ellen as well as Elliot. And Ellen didn't work a summer job, so she didn't get that extra pocket money. Ellen's magic doesn't include conjuring clothing like Elliot's magic. Her clothing budget is limited.

I'm starting this thread for anyone who wants to share thoughts about Susan and people or things connected to Susan. Whether or not "real" ghosts are going to be allowed in the Moperverse isn't settled. To quote Charlotte, "If ghosts are real, ghosts are real." But Susan has certainly been haunted by her past, and perhaps an actual ghost. The the only street view we have of Chateau de Pompoms is an early work of Dan's. Possibly magic has revised the architecture in the better part of a year of story time that has passed since. Still, it's probably still big. I may be living in the po' side o' Santa Clara County now, but I've seen plenty of Palo Alto and Los Altos, two of the richest communities in the world, and I have yet to see a three-story mansion. So who lives in that enormous mansion? Apparently just Susan and her mother. No maids, no butler, no gardener, no chauffeur, no cook. The intercom system plays Mexican radio, but maybe that's for the Mexican ghosts. It's quite likely Dan just didn't want to show any staff. They could be asleep, gone home, gone out. Mrs. Pompoms could just use services as needed. Still, Susan never mentions housework or chores. There are only two occasions where Susan's mother appears. In the very first panel we see her in, she's in her bathrobe and holding a pretty large wineglass. It's dark or getting dark outside but it's winter and a movie night is planned, so it shouldn't be that late. She couldn't put down that glass before coming to meet Susan and her guests? Next we see Susan's mom in Hammerchlorians, later in the narrative but in two flashback panels from Susan's first year at Moperville North. In the first Susan's mom looks sober as she slices carrots, and in the second she's tearing Principal Verrucht a new one. These scenes happened before Susan went to France, got her magic mark, and killed her first vampire. I've noted that wineglass long enough ago that I don't have the faintest idea when. But it wasn't until I started this post that I considered this possibility: Susan's mom is drinking now because she knows what happened in France. Now, if this is true, why hasn't it been mentioned? Why did Susan complain in Playing With Dolls that she would need multiple trips to sneak four dolls from the car into her house? A possible answer: Susan doesn't know her mother knows. And possibly she doesn't want to know. The most likely source for Susan's mother to learn the secret? Mrs. Kitsune, of course. It is very difficult for me to accept that Noriko's sister, from the same long magically-endowed bloodline, wouldn't know pretty much everything that's going on with her eldest daughter. Sharing her concerns with the mother of another magically talented young woman and a prime potential recruit for the covert magical ops that tore apart Noriko's marriage sounds plausible to me.

Perhaps there's another clue in the title of the book Susan brought downstairs for her dad to read to her, or maybe to read with her dad: Sleeping Beauty. Now what might symbolize? It could just have been something like "Mother Goose", or "Fairy Tales", or no title showing at all. Susan's magic is still asleep Losing the fairy tale book as she loses belief in her father Putting to sleep Tiffany the beautiful, trusting little girl I haven't checked through the archives (I have the complete main story line and all the canon NPs on my computer) but I don't remember Susan with another book until she gets her spellbook. ----- Susan's mom would have an extra reason to be torn up about the trip to France: It wouldn't have happened if she hadn't badgered Verrucht and anyone else she needed to badger to send Susan on the trip.

Obviously Nanase's mom didn't know about Gerald or she would have killed him. But come to think of it, it has been kind of a long time since we've seen Gerald alive... As for the others, dating would seem to fit right in with Mrs. Kitsune's basic life plan for her daughters: Get married. Have children. Don't desert husband and children by running off to Europe and never visiting.

A guillotine is much more energy efficient and can be quickly made with extremely available and inexpensive materials. Consider how much energy one expends using the elevators in any suitable tall building. Cleanup is much easier. There no risk of innocent bystanders or cheering audience members being injured or killed by a falling one-percenter. And most importantly, the gullotine's reialiability has yet to be bettered. As the famous Defenestration of Prague proved four centuries ago, a fall from a window can be survived if the defenestrees land on large piles of shit. It is my observation that there are many, many large piles of shit, most with legs.

Sister III, Part Deux: The Search for Ashley [text roll continues after the title] Ashley, depressed that in spite of her awe-inspiring cuteness, spunk, and essential goodness she doesn't even have one lousy spell or even a surname, knowing that she is Elliot's transitional girlfriend (Maybe even before Liz told her), decides to write herself out of the series by throwing herself into the jaws of a giant fire goo griffin in Sister III (Part Un to be added on the higher-priced Special Edition Bluray available only at Mr. Tensaided's.) Racing to save himself from mobs of angry Ashley fans with torches, pitchforks, brickbats, bricks, and bats, unable to explain that it was not his fault, he boards his Amazing Universal Plot Device in the nick of time, setting course for Heaven. When the AUPD arrives at the outskirts of Heaven, Dan realizes there is no way he'll get past the gate. Fortunately he runs into Stonewall Jackson who helps Dan flank the guard as Jackson is well known to have done because that's what Stonewall Jackson does. Ask any son or daughter of the South. However, Dan has to do it with one arm held in the air to keep the blood balanced like Stonewall. Dan searches for “Spock” to learn the secret behind his return after dying in Star Trek II. He finally finds Dr. Spock, who with considerable irritation tells the latest idiot to bother him that he was a baby doctor and anti-war activist and not the Star Trek Spock. But Dr. Benjamin Spock does tell Dan that he won't have to go back to Earth because the actor who played Star Trek Spock is also in Heaven now. Dan locates Leonard Nimoy who tells him he asked to have Spock killed off in Star Trek II and reminds him that his first autobiography was titled I Am Not Spock. Dan reminds him that Nimoy's second autobiography was titled I Am Spock. Nimoy tries the Vulcan nerve pinch, fails, and then explains for the nth time that he is not a super-intelligent half-alien telepath but an actor who'd grown tired of a role. Nimoy went on to say that while he knows many nude models who are still working on Earth if Dan wants to improve his naked lady drawing, but that Dan would either have to work out his own way to bring Ashley back or look into reserving a nicer mansion, since there's a waiting list. Also, a package deal, Heavenly mansion plus Asbestos long underwear to cover both bases. After a short break to catch Josephine Baker dancing in her banana skirt to Louis Armstrong's trumpet, Dan sets out on the next leg of his voyage of discovery and/or flight from the wrath of his fans and now his God (Who can quite upset with casual visitors)...

Which Yorkshirman are you supposed to be?

Still indisputably cutting edge tech!

Perhaps the term "centimation" will come into use, particularly applied to a certain 1% who seem to think they can keep on subtracting from the other 99% without fear that the 99% will do some subtracting of their own. Anyone want to chip in for a guillotine? This is a device that divides and subtracts all at once.

For one thing, a Roman legionary killed Archimedes before he was really finished inventing calculus, and we had to wait until Newton and Leibnitz re-invented it nineteen centuries later. Do you kids still get taught Roman numerals in grade school? I did. Of course, I'm so old there weren't any Arabic numerals. Back in those days to write numbers so they were harder to read you had to use hieroglyphics. They were a pain to learn, but they had their good points. Look up the hieroglyphics for "9" and "10" sometime. The Romans went in for practical math, especially subtraction. They subtracted loot from all their neighbors, subtracted freedom from millions of slaves, and subtracted democracy from everyone, including, eventually, themselves. But they were beginning to have a grasp of percentages. "Decimation" comes from Latin. It means "Kill every tenth person."

Not so. The alternate worlds could have their "clocks" set behind or ahead of our own. Or time could pass at different rates--this is a very common feature of stories about mortals visiting the faerie realm. So you can have the appearance of time travel, just not within the same universe. Although according to relativity theory, time travel is theoretically possible in our universe. Just not possible in the universes inside Dan's skull. So far. ------- Piers Anthony's Xanth stories have a very clever idea along these lines: our universe is sort of like a merry-go-round from Xanth's POV. Depending on when one goes from Xanth into our world, one could travel to or from many different eras of human history. Xanth has had many invasions of humans from our world, around every two centuries, with some later ones coming from earlier eras than the previous one. Before I formulate a properly long-winded response, please clarify: By "C" do you mean "100"? "12" in Base-13 or more? (No need to explain that one to anyone who's played enough Traveller to know what a UPP is.) "C" as referring to "Carol"?

Perhaps a similar anomaly than Diane and Susan? Older Sarah is also taller, has bigger boobs, and hips. I mean, Older Sarah has hips. FV1 Sarah Sarah's hips look like MV1 Sarah Sarah's hips. Older Sarah could be a lost older sister of Sarah Sarah whether or not she's from an alternate world. Do we know whether or not Sarah is adopted? No, although the differences between Sarah and Carol could kind of sort of maybe hint at adoption. Older Sarah's hips also suggest that she might be a mom. I knew a woman in the Navy--in fact, I was her supervisor for awhile--who had very wide hips. And she told me once that before she had a child, she had had hips like a boy's. An age difference doesn't rule out the same-person-different-universe theory. There are two points in Ellen's Second Life story in Grace's Birthday Party that make it possible: Ellen has memories from her second life that happen more than a year after the time of the birthday party, and Ellen says that Second Life Tedd started out shorter but ended up taller. I really think Dan just had to make up a bunch of "extra" characters for Family Ties and re-used elements, such as Elijah's hair for one of the Lesbians. But if we all believe really really hard, Older Sarah will turn out to be another Long Lost Sister and we have yet another Sister (roman numeral to be designated later) coming. And Tinkerbell will come back to life. Also maybe if we bug Dan enough like we maybe did to make Carol Sarah's sister.

You saw the bit of turtleneck above whosits arm, didn't you? The same-hair fooled me. Of course, it could be that the owner of the third foot is a third, entirely different person, perhaps of an entirely different gender preference. It could be that the third leg showing is, in fact, not actually attached to a body at all. The spare leg doesn't seem to align either with the turtleneck-wearer or the owner of the spare arm blocking our view of most of the collar, assuming said arm is not another independent limb. Perhaps the spare arm and the spare leg are both protruding through a gate to another worlds, with the main portion of their owner on the other side. Or gates, owners, and sides. Or they are indeed Spare Parts™, practical jokes I have seen on sale, completely real in our own world, that come with a length of sleeve or pant leg. But whomever the third leg in view does belong to, that leg has a line drawn on it which has to represent either the bottom seam of a pant leg or the top of a sock--not a shoe because we don't wear shoes in anyone's home. The point is, whether the line represents a pant leg or a sock, it indisputably and clearly represents clothing. And the line that indicated the shoulder seam on Rhea's shirt in the first panel does not appear on said shoulder in the second panel even though the shoulder is clearly in view, despite the different POV and possibly longer range from the "camera." I tweeted Dan at @elgoonishshive with the question "Is Rhea supposed to look naked". Perhaps Dan will tweet in reply. I sound rather like a lawyer, don't I? Perhaps that comes from my girlfriend. I met her when she was going to Stanford Law School 29 years ago. On a final note for this post, perhaps we can safely remove the quotation marks from "lesbians" after reviewing panel two of this following page.

Party pooper. Do you tell kids there's no Santa too?

True, true. Actually what I was driving at is that Rhea appears to be naked in that one panel. It's either a gag (as in "Let's see if anyone notices that.") or maybe it's saying something about Diane's nascent magic. Come to think of it, how is it stealthy to jump as high as Diane is doing? Shouldn't Diane make a big THUMP! when she lands? Could it be that Diane's stealth is magical? Just sayin'...

And I'm not going back to Vegas until Vegas puts the Raiders back where they found them. I was born in Oakland.

So you don't believe that there's absolutely no depiction of the shirt showing in the second panel when Dan clearly took some care to differentiate the sleeves from the arms underneath them in the first panel? You could be right about the shoes, but we'll never know since Rhea's feet are never shown anywhere in Family Ties before that second panel. You, of course, may continue to believe to believe that Rhea is not naked. I will continue to believe that Rhea is naked until I die or until Dan himself says otherwise. By the way, some years ago my girlfriend was waiting for an MRI at Stanford Hospital and she found out there was a mummy ahead of her. Was that you?

Yes, Rhea is naked. The seam line of her sleeve at the shoulder is gone, and that's above the streak. In the first panel, the sleeves on Rhea's shirt are drawn noticably wider than her arms. Rhea's arms in the second panel are skinnier because the shirt is missing. The extra line near Rick's ankle indicates he is wearing pants. And note that in the second panel Diane is literally covering her sister's butt. I wonder if this will mean Diane will be on call to fill in for Angelic Tweeting Bird or Prude Puffin in future comics?

I was just re-re-re-re-re... I was just reading Family Ties again (I've re-read it so many times I've lost count) and I saw something I missed before. Take a look at Rhea in the first two panels, especially in the second panel where Diane dives past Rhea. Diane leaves sort of a white streak behind her--and Rhea is naked! Was this just a gag, or did Dan plant another hint about something there? Naked Rhea may be old news to long-time EGS fans. This forum doesn't go back that far. When I first started reading EGS Elliot and Ashley were already on their date at the Mall (so it was only five days ago, sort of.)

Mr. Tensaided's game room is big enough for that tent in the background? Or maybe it's just a backdrop. My very first guess was this was something like a Renaissance Faire. My latest alternative is that everything in it is imaginary, including the costumes but excepting Ellen, Nanase, and the wizard who might be Tensaided. That's how Dan's handled instant messaging and magic card game duels. But Dan has usually told us that's what he's doing. So whatever The Dan originally intended, he can still assert with a straight face that the panel did represent a trip to another world and another Mr. Tensaided. Especially since we don't see Dan's face in the comics, unless you want to count George. And speaking of George, am I ever going to get feedback on my pretty-old theory that George is George because "Daniel Elliot Shive" and "George Eliot"?

Maybe Dan was planning to visit the alternate universes. That's similar to the basic Star Trek trope of visit the planet-find the problem-fix the problem-next episode. Lord Tedd is an obvious recurring adversary for that, like Q started out to be in TNG. Ellen's Second Life is another element that would fit. The "You saved the village!" panel at the beginning of Family Ties kind of looks like it might be on a different Earth, or maybe the Other Side. The griffins are very surprised to learn that Nanase and her friends know of several other alternate Earths and have contacted some of their inhabitants. And Edward's new job as head of Paranormal Diplomacy would seem to be exactly the right job for managing contact with other alternates. So, the worlds-next-door trope has at least a few hooks in place if Dan decides to use them. David Gerrold, the guy who wrote the script for The Trouble With Tribbles, also wrote a book called The World of Star Trek back in the early Seventies. One of his prescient observations was that the Prime Directive in the original series was made to be broken because the Enterprise was like a cosmic Mary Worth. (Mary Worth has been butting in on other people's business since 1938.)

So how old will Elliot's nextborn be when Susan is ready?

How far into the future is EGS going to go? Dan himself said he didn't expect the characters to stay in high school that long, but this comic is entirely built around the high school trope. Genre high school romance novels end with the senior prom. Second Life Ellen's story ends with the summer after graduation when the old high school gang is splitting up. Are they going to all be recruited (or drafted) into Dad's Government Job? Not likely if magic does change. Are they going to become a superhero team? It's my guess that Dan was considering that fifteen years ago. What do we really care about in EGS? What I care about is the characters. Strip away the magic and most of them seem real, certainly the Main 8. I care about them. Underneath everything else, EGS is a soap opera, at least to me. It's certainly gone on longer than many overt soap operas. My favorite arc is Grace's Birthday Party, which has no monsters at all unless you count Magus causing Ellen to zap Tedd or the demonic duck. And the character who I'm most compelled by? Susan. A year ago I wrote a complete fanfic where Susan winds up with Matt Cohen. That would resolve the Susan-and-Elliot-and-Ashley problem, wouldn't it? @Mlooney, would you put any Q$ on that happening?

openly I admit, I've never read the novel. Was van Helsing a medical doctor? I'm not sure "doctor" really was a common synonym for a physician then. "Doctor" is a very old term that comes down unchanged from Latin, deriving from "docere" "to teach." It's also the title used by gladiator trainers. And sometimes it applies to people who are very far from healers, such as Dr. Goebbels. Yes, and yes. But the like-a-sister factor doesn't apply to Ashley. Even if the transitional woman trope holds here, Elliot won't want to hurt Ashley, and won't want to risk his friendships with Sarah and now with Susan. Plus, what other woman is totally attracted to Elliot's female forms? Well, openly.

Did we ever see Elliot kiss Sarah anything like this? And anyway, all I said was Elliot's firstborn. You mean instead of using Elliot's sperm, or having Tedd change one of them into a male long enough to get a sperm donation? I think Ellen might be up for that.