Tom Sewell

Balance of Terror was a ripoff of a 1957 Robert Mitchum/Curt Jurgens movies called The Enemy Below about a duel between an American destroyer escort and a German U-boat. It even has the same stratagem of ejecting a dead body to fool the other ship into thinking the hiding ship has been destroyed--and the same stratagem at the end of the other captain making his ship look more damaged than it is to lure the enemy to reveal himself and move into close range. It also doesn't have photon torpedoes. If you look at the special effects, the "phasers" use the same stock shots that were used for photon torpedoes in later episodes. Further, they detonate like depth charges, something they don't do in any of the rest of Star Trek canon. Sadly, this is the same episode that inspired that cult which committed suicide, attempting to catch an alien spaceship hiding in the tail of a comet.

Then we'd have to have air traffic control. Also, turkeys are terrible flyers, particularly Frenzied Turkeys. Maybe Sarah when she gets more spells. She is an artist, so she should have an affinity for imagery magic. Mia Hamm was before your time? Elliot can imagine himself making himself angry, but Elliot really only gets angry about others getting abused. He wouldn't physically attack anyone unless they were getting physical to himself or someone else. However, I can see Elliot getting so angry and/or frustrated that he either transforms unconsciously or just says way too much. And most likely to do that responding to Ashley getting a hard time. Ashley is maybe the weakest part of Edward's cover-up plan: Ashley's an even worse liar than Elliot. Plus, Ashley is "that girl" that Catalina recognized with Elliot at the mall before the Rose Elliot transformation. Plus, Catalina not just knows about magical transformation, she's done it. So there's a really excellent chance that Catalina will home in on Ashley to offer "help" as soon as she gets to school, maybe before Elliot, and especially if Elliot doesn't drive Ashley to school. The potential altitude of the jinks is high.

Notice that the guard is one of the same ones who call in a "Code Spooky" in So a Date at the Mall. Nice continuity, and hope we will see the cranky guard from Indiana Elliot and the TOSF again. Hey, they might even be married.

GURPS Magic Items had an enchantment spell for "Infinite Sleeves." You could just tear off pieces for rags, bandages, wicks for molotov cocktails, etc., and the sleeves would be magically restored.

Perhaps we begin to see why The Shive thought it was so important to go back to October and the previous magical mischief in the mall. Elliot doesn't know Catalina saw him transform, and doesn't know that Catalina has magic. Fear not, Catalina knows about keeping magic secret, and will do her best to help Elliot keep his secret! Oh. Wait. Catalina logic. Okay, maybe Elliot isn't worrying nearly enough about Catalina. Moving on to other people at Moperville North likely to give Elliot grief: Tony. Is there anyone we know at Elliot's school who's more likely to make a remark about Elliot turning into a girl? Not that Tony necessarily believes it. Remember, he didn't recognize Elliot when Elliot was Ellen. Then there's Principal Verrucht. We haven't seen Verrucht for a long time. But Verrucht does know Elliot was Ellen, so he won't be as likely to rule out Elliot being Cheerleadra because of the gender difference. And imagine a hall monitor who can fly!

Assuming humanity survives Donald Trump taking office the day before, January 21st will mark the fifteenth anniversary of El Goonish Shive. Actually, if humanity doesn't survive, the anniversary will still come, but no one will be around to care. So take some time off from working on your fallout shelter and share your thoughts now; you may not get the chance later.

I missed a call this morning, and I keep my phone by my bed when I sleep--when I remember to take it out of my pocket.

So you remember that all three of these actresses played Catwoman in the 1960s Batman TV series? Doesn't this call for a cameo by Adam West?

Actually all I was thinking was "Monday is a school day after all." The folks at Shivepedia have done a lot of work on chronology and The Shive has acknowledged it as canon, so far. However, The Shive hasn't given a day-and-date of any event since Family Ties, and some of us have spent entirely too much time trying to fix the dates in Identity, Squirrel Prophet, So a Date at the Mall, and now Sister III. However, you have an intriguing point. What if Martin Luther King Jr. hadn't been assassinated in 1968? There's a worldbook for GURPS called International Super Teams or IST which developed a whole future history where he wasn't and where he eventually became President. I'm sure there must be other fictions and speculations out there in the same vein. Those alternate worlds could be quite different from the one we've got. However, The Shive runs EGS in the classic superhero meme of "just like our world, but with superheroes." The problem with this meme is that it has to be repeatedly retconned because a world full of superheroes, or mages, or powerful psis (IST has them all) would quite quickly change so much it wouldn't be much like the world the readers inhabit, which tends to drive off the casual reader who isn't willing to invest the time to study the rules by which this different world operates. The Shive has solved this problem so far by stretching out time; fifteen years have passed in our world, but less than a year in the Moperverse. Think Archie with more magic. (Remember, Sabrina the Teenage Witch is part of the Archie universe, or at least started out there.) I don't know what Dan's attitude toward racism is, but given the cast, I suspect it isn't very close to President Trump's. If you'd like to try a webcomic that tackles lots of hot topic issues, I suggest looking up With Fetus. It's on hiatus now, maybe forever, but I liked it well enough to save the entire run, and toyed with an an idea of a crossover fanfic. The prime setting would be located close to Greg's dojo.

Well, so much for my speculation that Monday was Martin Luther King day in Moperville--not a school day. I wonder how long it will take Sarah to try stripping people in simulation. Remember her fantasy in MV5?

And yet another instance hummingbird wave, a shtick that has a long and honored history at EGS. It's when a character holds both arms out and waves, often so fast the arms a blur like a hummingbird's wings. Either that or Kitty is related to Spinnerette and actually has six arms. Hummingbird wavers so far include Susan, Elliot, and Ashley, and perhaps some others I've forgotten.

Which puts Kitty at a couple of inches above the average height for adult women in the United States according to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA. I wonder if they have a contingency plan for an epidemic of nekomimi (猫耳)? So, would Kitty make a more understanding girlfriend for Good Tom? Good Tom got his magic mark that detects puppies in danger not that long ago in the same mall, after all, so he's probably still there. But, alas, he has another girlfriend in January, the same girl who talked to Matt Cohen after Susan crushed his hopes. Ah, what might have been...

Too bad Kitty isn't Japanese; then she could be Neko Mimi.

Superfluous? Why the heck does (the) Magus (I suspect it's a title, not the actual given name of the character) have to have Ellen and Elliot to do whatever he must do to get a body back? It's a plot gimmick like Jake Sully being the only other person who can use Tommy Sully's avatar body. And take a look at Terra in the magical sparring that led to the Magus losing his body in the first place. Terra looks like Tedd. And (the) Magus is in the cover page for Sister III, the first cover page The Shive has done since Sister II.

And there's another candidate for a sister on the cover page: Magus. Long ago I proposed that Magus is an alternate-world version of Elliot. If Magus finally gets Ellen to zap Elliot again and create a body for Magus, wouldn't that body likely be a female version of Elliot/Magus? BTW, the Dewitchery Diamond is part of the process to restore Magus. Or at least Pandora said so. So maybe we'll be seeing that mysterious warehouse again before the end of this arc. And maybe Abraham too?

I think that, like Grace was thinking in Squirrel Prophet, I should make a JOKING sign. Actually my first thought was "If The Shive hadn't said Kitty was a new character, I'd think this might be Tedd in one of his many alternate female forms."

There are three sisters shown in the cover page: Susan, Diane, and Ellen. But considering how important Tedd is becoming in this arc, maybe there's another sister waiting in the wings: Tedd's. The Shive Himself said in Family Ties that Tedd may have at least one sibling.

You know, Tedd really likes catgirls too, and we know he has a sibling... And is that figure in the last panel Pandora in disguise, or just your average hentai otaku eavesdropper?

Drifting further off-topic, I remember seeing a video ad for an obvious imitation of Cowboy Bebop. I think it was from one of those disks that come with magazines, maybe Animerica. I can't remember the title to save my life. This was back in the era when there were all kinds of Pokemon clones like Digimon and Monster Rancher.

A good point, and one that could be very important to the plot. Voltaire calls Tedd a "Seer." That means Tedd is one of the few mortals who has any chance of sensing Immortals when they don't want to be seen. He could believe wholeheartedly that a world without Tedd would be a better world, couldn't he?

A nice Jewish girl? It's a Hebrew name...

I'm pretty sure my first time was around Thursday, Oct 15, 2015. Or at least that was when I started to get into EGS. I found EGS while I was investigating this crossover from I Dream of a Jeanie Bottle. If I actually looked it up the day that one was posted, this is what I would have found in EGS. I think that would have held my attention. I remember seeing the fairies and thinking "What the heck is going on here?" It took some more time before I got enough EGS time to appreciate the comic. It was well worth it. I have every comic in the main storyline and the newspaper strips saved and indexed now. I thought about scripting all the dialog, but since I'm now without an OCR program (I had a great one on my previous computer that could read Japanese script!) that idea is on hold, probably permanently. But I'm not obsessive. Really, I'm not. Honest. Are you looking at me? Are you looking at me? That last line was from Robert Di Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. It occurs to me that that movie is older than most of you likely to be reading this. Depressing.

With all the cat puns, maybe Moperville is becoming a suburb of Xanth. But all might be well. We haven't seen the Cat Ass Trophy. (credit to Piers Anthony for that one.)

Or, questions that don't really merit a thread of their own, questions such as: How can Elliot have his own car? Edward Verres had to arrange for his family to win a phony lottery for them to afford Ellen, and as Lucy pointed out, Elliot doesn't even have that summer job any more. Why aren't there any servants at Susan's enormous house? How come Diane and Nanase seem to drive the same Chrysler PT Cruiser? How did Nanase get to Moperville North so fast in the second Goo fight? Don't any of the parents other than Edward Verres have real jobs? Are their jobs simply "sitcom parent"? like the Cleavers, the Nelsons (Rick Nelson's parents), etc.? Is Matt Cohen Italian? Because why else would a Lawful character be delivering Pizza when he's under-age unless it's the family business? Did Matt Cohen deliver the pizza Ellen is eating in So a Date at the Mall? Does Diane have a real tattoo on her right arm, or is it henna or something? Why didn't "magic itself" come down on Jerry for providing all women with the potential for summoning hammers? Are Helen and Demetrius Jerry's kids? It would explain why they knew how to teach Susan how to use hammers. Will we ever see Kevin? Would you be willing to donate to the Fund for Nameless EGS Minor Characters? I mean, Ronin, Theater Clerk, Star Trek Fan, Screaming Girl, Bad Tom's Girlfriend, Some Other Guy...don't you feel for these lost souls?

Anyone remember we used to have an airline called "Ted." Of course it failed. Should have gone with double-D's. (Taking cover now.)