Tom Sewell

Pandora lists six reasons Ashley would like to transform people: Irony Comedy New experiences Lesson teaching Complete randomness Pure fetish (could it be "big boobs"?) And Pandora finishes with "and more!" Pandora knows Ashley will feel guilty once she realizes she's been transforming people against their will, and will likely stop transforming people. Or she may decide to give Ashley a spell that suits her goodness better, like giving Good Tom a spell for sensing puppies in danger. If this wasn't set in the past, I'd expect that in the next strip Pandora would tell herself: "Screw it, I'll never find a better transformer." But if Ashley started transforming people two months or so ago, it would have been in the news, even if Ashley wasn't identified, and even if Ashley didn't know she was doing it. Plus, Bad Tom would be a toad.As for Pandora's incentive, she stated it quite clearly: Transformations are the magic most likely to be noticed by normal people. (This, of course, excludes everyone at the card tournament except for Grace.) A spell to transform others means more transformations than spells to transform the casters. Like this post if you want to see Bad Tom turned into a toad.

How about when Elliot is being interviewed? Pandora would then have the complete attention of the media and could just say anything she wanted. Lying certainly doesn't seem to be prohibited, and telling half-truths fits right into what Pandora was doing when she met Blaise. Even if Pandora doesn't particularly care about Elliot, he is Tedd's friend, and deflecting the media from Elliot lessens the chances the newshounds will pick up Tedd's scent. But given the last panel of 8-19-2016's story installment, Pandora may be more focused on finding the interfering Immortal. And I kind of think the Will of Magic section has ended and we won't see Pandora again for awhile. Unless The Shive really wants to quash Elliot's exposure quickly. Once Pandora does this, Helena and Demetrius are going to know Pandora's involved for sure. Whether they will interfere or co-operate with Pandora's fixit plans is anyone's guess; quite probably both. If they decide to challenge her during the interview like they did at the mall, media frenzy will ramp up again, and Roswell will lose whatever is left of it's crackpot tourist traffic.

And since Desiderus Erasmus would have been translating a Greek source copied and recopied over something like two thousand years, there's a pretty good chance the original word meant box and Erasmus (often rated as the most learned man on the planet in his day) concluded that "box" fit the story better and had probably been mis-copied. Or, maybe "box" makes a better joke than "jar" (unless, of course, one adds "-head").

Pandora's next photo-bomb could make the first one look like a firecracker.

Considering he and his friend(s) are obsessed with Cheerleadra, they've got to have seen all these cameraphone videos multiple times, and probably the ones taken by at least four people with their cameraphones at the mall. Even if he refrains from charging over to the Dunkel home, his friend(s) won't and, if Luke is the good guy we think he is, he'll feel ashamed of being part of this even they don't drag him along.

I just thought of a truly horrifying result of Elliot being undeniably exposed as Cheerleadra: Upsetting Justin's love life. Will Luke cancel the date? Will Luke be jealous of Elliot? Well Greg lose yet another potential student? Will we ever even see Luke again? Or ever see that guy (or maybe not a guy) Luke was talking to on his phone? Will we miss out on seeing Luke turned into a girl at Grace's next birthday party? (We know Sam will be there.)

It strikes me as suspicious that “ Elves can't have children.“ If you don't want to follow that link, here's what The Shive said in His commentary: The Shive is not committing Himself. But how could Mr. Raven be Susan's father when it's the woman in the mirror who looks just like her? Well, Dan—excuse me, The Shive—did not say anything here about Adrian being her grandfather. And how is it that Adrian has not noticed how much Diane looks like him? For all we know, she might even sound like him when she's not doing a her Valley-girl voice. Isn't it more believable that he knows but isn't letting on? As Obi-wan Kenobi once said, more or less, "It was the truth from a certain point of view." Which only goes to show, like Immortals, and certainly like all politicians, Jedi can lie. Elves too.

If Voltaire's more insane, is he also older and more powerful? Uh-oh...

I agree. Star Trek's convention of killing a redshirt before the opening credits or a commercial break was above all else designed to make you want to stay tuned. That the body count in dramas these days is generally lower may have more to do with not wanting to pay for so many actors to expire in an episode than a quality improvement. It's less excusable in movies, and even less so in graphic or written fiction. What I've saying here is that I have pretty good reasons for suspecting that the story of Ashley might not have a happy ending.

Susan Is the Only Main Character Who Has Killed And Susan has only been in one fight, killing the first vampire. In the second fight with the Goo, she does call a sword, but never uses it. Grace did not kill Damien; he suicided. I guess we'll see Susan fight in the current arc, since vampires are probably going to be a major feature. But Susan would seem to be ill-equipped. As far as we know, she hasn't been training for combat, unless you count all the practice she's gotten hammering obnoxious males. I guess her best tactic if she has to fight a vampire like the spider-guy would be to use exploding fairies as a standoff weapon, move in with hammers to daze it more, and finally finish it off with a magic sword. Or several swords, since they'd vanish after each solid hit. And if the vampire can fly, maybe Tedd's dad has a Stinger missile for Susan's treasure chest. Or how about a toy phaser? Perhaps it's magical copy would work. And it is so appropriate! Shouldn't Susan Be Guarding Diane? As limited as her vampire-killing skills and abilities appear to be, she's the only proven vampire-killer in Moperville. The most practical method would be for one to move into with the other and transfer schools. It even has a viable cover story: “I want to spend more time with my sister.”

Is Ashley Doomed? The recent confirmation of The Shive that Ashley is so darned Good she impresses Pandora isn't exactly a surprise to me. I've been an Ashley fan ever since her existance was revealed. But... When the story had been trending for a long time toward Susan and Elliot hooking up, why bring in Ashley? Just to shake things up? What is this, Sweet Valley High? If you haven't noticed, Ashley pretty much fits in the same character niche as Sarah: A very nice girl who has no magic but wishes she did. So we are not talking about Archie Andrews moving on from Betty to Veronica, but from Betty to Betty. Ashley is clearly going to be drawn into Tedd's Wonderful World of Wierd Science, just like Sarah. If Ashley lives long enough, I can guarantee we are going to see a harem fantasy with Tedd, Grace, Sarah, and now Ashley, either in a "No, bad brain" panel or in the sketchbook. It's already been demonstrated that Ashley going to be glued to Elliot and will follow him into danger. But without magic or even any martial-arts training, she's clearly outclassed. Sarah is pretty much the same; her spell leaves her body unresponsive and unknowing while she uses it, like Nanase using her fairy spell. But since she's not going with Elliot any more, Sarah isn't as likely to become a collateral casualty when Elliot gets into his next big fight. Kind of like Sarah got to dodge a bullet without knowing it, yet... Ashley being so improbably good has already created mixed feelings in Susan, and suspicion in Nanase. Once Ashley starts working with Tedd, I suspect Sarah will begin to get jealous. While Ashley isn't a prodigy like Nanase, Sarah is going to feel outclassed by Ashley's athleticism (kick a soccer ball to hit a flying griffin in the head?) and gracefulness (a ballerina, for #^@*'s sake!) and perhaps jealous of Ashley's growing relationship with Tedd--and Elliot, of course. Yes, I wasn't kidding when I said Ashley could be an Apple of Discord. Her being so good is going to make it worse. I can see this arc ending with Adrian confirming that his mother's meddling has led to Ashley's death, finally convincing or forcing her to reset. Ashley as a sort of Deadly Goodness Grenade, and Pandora pulled the pin herself. Whether or not The Shive will do it that way is doubtful. He's only shown the death of one person we can really sympathize with. But in the midst of the section he titled Bringing Back Silly, he showed Susan killing the vampire, and shows in the same page how badly that experience scarred Susan. Dark times can come amidst silliness in the Moperverse. Quite a long time ago, I wrote some fanfiction where I killed off a several characters from the original series . I got some negative emails. I answered the most affecting one by saying that I thought it was right for my stories. If only extras or guest stars die, then they're just redshirts. And I still think it was right. Of course, this was before the movie Misery came out. That might have given me pause.

Remember, the girls created a bunch of male forms for the TG gun in a previous canon NP arc, and Ellen was an enthusiastic part of the team. Who knows, maybe The Shive had this very situation in mind when He created that arc? The easiest solution would be for Ellen to be "Elliot" and Elliot to be Cheerleadra. Talk about natural casting. Or maybe supernatural casting. (Penguin ducks flying produce)

As I said earlier in the arc, I think Pandora resetting may be the climax of this arc. It makes sense story-wise. Exactly how she would do it is up to The Shive, but given that Voltaire outed Adrian to Sirleck, I think what Voltaire has in mind is that Sirleck kills Adrian which makes Pandora rampage. One trope which might be awesome is the one from the climax of the third season of Sailor Moon: Pandora comes back as an infant or a small child.

Unicorns or virgins?

Considering that Sirleck is behind Pandora on the title page, that seems possible. Of course, Sirleck has been set up as a catspaw of Voltaire's.

Maybe your paladin should switch to unicorns. It goes without saying that your paladin is a virgin.

Demonic Duck has done a genuine good deed. Carol hasn't.

Maybe Ellen can use her copy spell on Cheerleadra. But...it might have the same limit as Nanase's guardian spell. It was very hard for Ellen to copy that, and to be a convincing Cheerleadra, Ellen has to copy not only the form but the powers. If Ellen can do it, though, she can solve the "Elliot Dunkel" problem...for awhile. Of course, then people might notice later that Ellen kinda looks like Cheerleadra...

If it wasn't for the Demonic Duck paying his tab... The Shive may have made Carol Brown Sarah's sister with this arc in mind. Hey, it is called Sister III, so it would fit in the theme.

I doubt any of the crowd would pick up on a detail like that--unless maybe one of the interviewees is Luke or one of the other meddling college students investigating magical wierdness. But Carol or any other imaginable reporter would be much more interested in Cheerleadra and "Elliot Dunkel". Which brings up the question, did Carol remember that Elliot is/was Sarah's boyfriend? If so, Carol could well step up from occasional stints as comic relief (I believe the Demonic Duck has made more appearances.) Carol might even have a crisis of conscience about dragging her little sister into this uproar.

So what else about Ashley? Why did The Shive show us Ashley, giving her two strips? Okay, Rich and Larry got two, but that's still only one apiece. Surely not merely to show us Liz with huge bazooms. That's what's the sketchbook is for! Say, does this mean Ashley has been crushing on Liz? I'd vote for it, but the Moperverse is not a democracy; The Shive rules. Still, we can say our pieces here. And I'll get over my disappointment over having my splendid theory about Ashley having hidden power shot down. Any day now. Any ideas about a different spell Ashley could be granted? Has to be appropriate. Somehow. Magically enhanced intuition? It might fit, provided she doesn't get it before the time she was dating Bad Tom.

Whenever she wants to. Do you want to try to wake her up? And who are you calling a demigoddess? Think popcorn chicken. Actually, Elliot getting his cover blown isn't a big deal (except for Elliot.) Arthur J. Arthur has already set up an out: "I just got powers, I don't know how. No, Mr. Wolf, I am not an alien..." The much bigger cat let out of the bag at the mall was the revelation of Immortals. So far all we can be sure anyone in the crowd heard was "Elliot Dunkel" but we haven't heard any of the interviews yet. Anyone want odds on us catching part of Carol Brown's latest interviews of Rhonda (no, it's Rhoda) and Catalina pretty soon? Do you think Carol will remember that both of these girls were around when major weirdness (bloodgrem at Moperville North, floating girl at Moperville South, megapig...)

Okay, no "I'm joking" sign for this one. Elliot and Tess became a couple in the non-canon NP arc Oblivious Wand Waving, and Beta Ellen is Beta Tedd's canon soulmate, or at least she has the hots for him. But I think it's more likely that a secondary motivation for the creation of an Ellen in the Moperverse was to create a version of Elliot that would be acceptable to Nanase while retaining the original male Elliot for Tedd. And who could think this far ahead? Pandora could. Try this one on for size: Pandora arranged for Magus to be evicted from his own universe into her son's and her great godson Tedd's the same year Nanase and Susan went to France. Helen and Demetrius were following Nanase at that time--Helen almost says this at one point--and Pandora sets them up so that Nanase gets awakened. And Pandora diddles them into followng Elliot during or right after their reset. Why? Nanase has to already be awakened for the showdown with Abraham. Gee, it's almost like pretty much everyone is Pandora's catspaw, doesn't it, even a couple of younger Immortals.

Once again, I have to remember to ask Grace to borrow her "I'm joking" sign.

Okay, Disco Wizard is probably not Edward after all, unless he is. I'm running out of suspects that are actually part of EGS. But here's one suspect who actually has a connection to disco! Who else? Demonic Duck! Yes, the demonic duck. He's worn sunglasses before, he knows illusion magic. He's probably (small i) immortal. He thinks he's cool. He is... (pause for dramatic effect) The Disco Duck! (Now I'm going to go hide while you try to get that song out of your heads)