Tom Sewell

Well, Pandora knows that Post-It notes really work by not-very-reliable magic and do not work well with other spells. Of course she would use tape, probably duct tape. I'm rooting for Pandora to appear in person. "Appear" as in make herself visible to Catalina and Rhoda, because, of course, she's already there.

Kitty could be a student at Moperville South. Since Diane and Justin are the only students there we know have seen Nanase floating, and Rhoda's quite shy and careful, and Kitty only cares about catgirls, it's less likely Kitty would connect Rhoda with the catgirls she saw. And I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing Kitty again. Even though she hasn't got a name yet, Good Tom's girlfriend, which The Shive created just for someone for Matt Cohen to talk to after Susan turned him down, came back several arcs later. So what's Kitty's real name? Kitty Katz, of course.

Mens and Womens restrooms are usually close to each other to share the same plumbing arrangements. This is also why the drinking fountains are usually close to a restroom. This makes a good visible clue if you're searching for a restroom in an unfamiliar building and the restrooms aren't very obviously marked. Since Moperville North is actually based on The Shive's actual high school in Naperville, Illinois, He might well be basing this place on the real thing. Since this takes place in the morning before classes start, few students should be upstairs. It's already established that early-arriving students usually gather in the cafeteria or by the lockers next to the cafeteria, so it should be safer than most other places which aren't likely to be locked. It's still a public place, though, so it doesn't offer more absolute safety than the blind spot in the mall bookstore where Elliot transformed for Ashley. The Shive is in fact free to introduce an unrevealed witness to that later, just as The Shive is free to let Elliot and Tedd to talk for a week or more about Tedd's crisis with no (apparent) witnesses. You know, if he doesn't get a full-time-gig as a monster slugger, Elliot should consider becoming a therapist.

You can always recognize an educated turkey; they have tenure.

At this point, Elliot doesn't know about magic changing yet. And just when Elliot was finally getting comfortable with his own gender fluidity! I'm guessing that Voltaire's "better world" would be one where humans lose their magic again. Tedd would be immensely useful for humans to learn to use magic again. That makes me wonder why Voltaire didn't just try to kill Tedd, but there might be some Immortal Rule against killing Seers, or simply that just killing Tedd wouldn't be as interesting. Presumably Voltaire has more or less the same boredom problem as Pandora or any other Immortal, particular ones that are approaching or past their "Best By" dates. It's very credible that Tedd would be quite depressed over having to choose what sex he'd be stuck as, and worrying how this would affect his relationship with Grace and his Dad and Elliot and maybe Sarah. I'm wondering why The Shive decided to address this right now, especially in a Friday comic. Friday comics are supposed to imply more to come, and this one seems to imply a lot more discussion about these issues coming up. But are they are the only ones who know about this secret private conversation venue? Well, Ashley knows, obviously. Who else might come upon them, perhaps overhearing some of the secret private conversation? Principal Verrucht to check on his latest mural Tony, alone or with his girlfriend and/or "Ronin" Kitty--she could be a student at MNHS That girl who overheard Sarah and Elliot talking about Grace and Tedd switching bodies at the multiplex. Sarah and Susan. Sarah probably doesn't know about Diane yet, but she's been friends with Susan for a very long time and could pick up on Susan stewing over something. Possibly Catalina could be tagging along. Good Tom, with or without his girlfriend. Matt Cohen, with or without Good Tom's girlfriend, who's the friend Matt talked with after getting shot down by Susan. Bad Tom, possibly stalking Ashley or Susan The Chicago Bears, who have lots of free time in January. All of the above, with the possible exception of the Chicago Bears. I'm picturing something like the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera. Finish the scene with vampires showing up and at least Elliot totally blowing cover to fight them.

Have we already forgotten that Pandora marked Kitty? And Catalina and Rhoda haven't escaped from the Mall yet. I wonder who they might run into as they leave the changing room.

Let's take time off from speculating on exactly what sex Tedd is right now to examine a much more important question: What happened to Elliot's butt in the last panel?

Maybe if they'd been closer they would have merged. That happened in an episode of Voyager. Anyone want to date Catarhoda?

Think "Diane" instead of "Susan." Rhoda's crush is Diane; as far as we know, Rhoda hasn't met Susan yet, only seen her in the webcasts with Elliot.

Catalina might play Magical Gatherings; she was very happy to join some nerd girls playing a Xena RPG back in Hammerchlorians. Which leads me into a speculation: Could Lucy have been one of those nerd girls? Lucy was roleplaying Xena online when Diane chatted with her in Family Ties, and she's dressed much like Xena in this arc. She's probably named after Lucy Lawless. There may be a pattern here...

Not quite. Rhoda seems to have absorbed Catalina's spell; Catalina didn't cast it on her, at least consciously. We don't even know if Catalina can cast her cat transformation spell on anyone else. If Rhoda can turn herself or other people into catgirls without Catalina, then Rhoda definitely is a wizard. Tedd's dad probably knows Rhoda has magic by this point (October) and will hear about this incident. He might have even taken Rhoda on as an apprentice in time for the upcoming vampire jamboree in Moperville.

I'm wondering now if Rhoda is actually a wizard--which in EGS means she has the ability to learn spells from others. That would definitely make her an S-rank talent.

Besides entering Grace's dreams which take place inside her mind: Sensing that Good Tom wants to save puppies without ever talking to him at all. (494) "The answers they give, of course, are unimportant. What's important is that they consider the question." How could she do that without reading their minds? (496) Three examples of this, including two where the spoken answer is the same but Pandora gets different reads. (497) Reading Ashley before she speaks to her. (500, 501) This is not only reading Ashley's magical aura but sensing her desires and her basic nature. Whatever Pandora gets out of Liz. (504) Four more posts came in while I was writing this. Putting in reference links is a pain even when you have the entire run of EGS and all the canon NPs saved and indexed.

Diane wasn't looking for romance, but it's curious that she didn't either find even a little of it, or admit she found it, before. Which doesn't mean it didn't happen. It's well-established that Diane doesn't like to be seen letting her emotions take over--yet another similarity to Susan. And up to the moment finds out Elliot is Cheerleadra, we don't get any evidence that Diane is expecting any more than an interesting challenge in dating the one boy Nanase went steady with. Could it be that Diane wasn't really attracted to Elliot until she found out he could be a she? I'm actually more interested in The Shive developing a reason for Diane being so mercenary when Susan isn't. I guess one possibility is that she was really crushing on Rick earlier, and compensated by manipulating other boys she wasn't really interested in. Another would be that Diane isn't rich, although with her sister Rhea living in an apartment when their home is clearly close enough for her to live at home indicated their family can't be poor. Although... I've been assuming the college Rhea goes to is in Moperville, but it could be further away. Not too much further or Nanase's mother wouldn't let her drive there at night. Maybe Northwestern or the University of Chicago? Which makes me wonder if and where The Shive went to college.

Actually I think The Shive has made a logical misstep here. Pandora clearly can read minds to some extent, and since Sarah's simulations are going on inside her mind, Pandora should be able to get into Sarah's mind, much like she got into Grace's dream. As for there being nothing beyond the barrier, perhaps, but there's really nothing inside the barrier, just a simulation of the region around Sarah when she cast the spell. Sarah doesn't have to see everything inside that simulation before she casts the spell; the very first time she used it, her sister Carol was beyond a closed door. The barrier could be impenetrable, or could be just a warning that everything beyond it isn't a reliable simulation. Earlier I speculated about recasting while in the simulation, but now that I think more on it, a recasting would be from the point where Sarah's body actually is in the real world at that moment. Since she's probably in a moving car, that point might not be inside the volume of the original simulation at all. As for re-entering on the opposite side of the simulation, that's something that would happen pretty often in early video games like Asteroids. It's easy to program as long as you're not modeling your game world as the surface of a sphere, which was way beyond the capabilities of consumer electronics back in the day of Ultima I. I'm kind of reminded of an Oh My Goddess story arc where Skuld, the cute little mad scientist-goddess, came up with maybe her weirdest invention: A gadget that created more space in a room by borrowing volume from the future. Of course it malfunctioned and stranded her sister Belldandy and Belldandy's boyfriend Keiichi in an infinite room. But it gets better: In that room, an interdimensional flying whale visits them. Remind you of something else in EGS?

Also Diane makes that remark about "the lovebirds" still being in their room. She's referring to Rick and Elijah. Perhaps she's disappointed that Rick turned out to be same-sex oriented, but she isn't really making a big thing of it. So, homoerotic relationships don't really shock her. I would not be surprised if she'd known all along that Rhoda was crushing on her. Diane seems to be better than Susan at picking up on these things. I hesitate to use the word "gaydar" in this instance, although I wouldn't be particularly surprised if Diane discovers she is gay or bisexual. One statistic in favor of this is that she seems to have dated as many or more boys than Nanase. Another is Charlotte's observation to Nanase that Diane has a platonic crush on her--or maybe not platonic. And yet another may be in So a Date at the Mall. Did anyone else think Diane and Charlotte may have had a moment here?

Looking at the car behind and on Sarah's left, it looks like it could be meant to be the same one Susan drove in Hammerchlorians, a kind-of-boxy minivan. So Sarah noticed Larry's Dad and went back to check--using her spell. Meanwhile, her body is still riding in the passenger seat. Susan may be talking to Sarah not realizing she's out. This is pretty much what I thought was happening earlier, but I just thought to compare cars.

Taking a wild guess, Catalina and Rhoda are going to see whatever Kitty does with her cat spell and think it's their fault. Given Catalina logic and both their nice natures, they're going to try to help Kitty. I wonder if the mall cop will call animal control.

SOOOO MANY QUESTIONS! I think I'm channeling Ashley. The first one is kind of picky, but exactly what color is the end of the world? White? Gray? Powder puff pink? Does it glow like a lighting panel or an old-fashioned TV tuned to a channel that isn't in use? [Look at the original Poltergeist if you're too young to remember raster-scan low-res cathode-ray-tube television in glorious black-and-white] It's not like a wall because the lights from the cars are acting normally on everything up to the end of the world but don't seem to affect it at all. I know it's all magic and a simulation, but... What would happen if (when) Sarah goes through or tries to go through that barrier? I can think of three things off-hand: It's like a solid wall and she can't. She comes back in the opposite point on the perimeter. The simulation expands, but beyond the "barrier's" original radius, it gets less and less reliable and more dreamlike. Or it draws more magical energy to scan again; maybe Sarah has to consciously re-cast, or maybe not. I'm also thinking that since Sarah's spent a lot of subjective time in this simulation, she might really already be at school, or maybe in the back of an ambulance with a cop waiting for her to wake her up so he can ask her some questions. Except for the magical spell part, that actually happened to me once.

The Shive doesn't know what louvers are? Shock! The most memorable louvered door is, of course, the door to the closet the alien hides in in ET. Louvered doors on changing rooms beat the heck out of the curtains you always find in thrift stores.

Sarah drives Elliot's car in Sister. It's kind of odd because Susan is riding with her. Maybe Susan doesn't have her own car, though of all the characters she would be the one who could best afford one. It would tie in with Susan's determination not to be spoiled (except for Star Trek stuff.)

Or Japanese. Doesn't look crappy enough to be Australian.

At least one Finn is supposed to have said during the Winter War of 1939-1940 between Finland and Russia "The wolves will eat well." He would have been referring to at least a hundred thousand Russian corpses left in the snow. I think Dracula turns into a wolf somewhere in Bram Stoker's novel. But association with wolves is more logical; vampire bats were unknown to Europe before they'd had some experience in the Americas, and vampire legends are older than that.

I don't remember Batman ever doing that, but I do remember from over fifty years ago there was a Batman story where Bruce Wayne was injured and Robin used a special costume to act as Batman while Bruce recovered.

The Romulan cloaked Romulan spaceship uses the tail of a comet to better hide from the Enterprise. Somehow the nutball leader of the cult either thought this was real or just sold the idea to his followers to convince them to die along with him. Pretty much like what Jim Jones did in Guyana.