The Old Hack

As to his procrastination, I think it all stems from the same problem: being unwilling to think about his gender identity. For one thing, it is introspection, and we know Elliot doesn't like to do that. And searching the comments for superheroine sightings relates directly to that and would only set him to thinking about his gender identity again. Apart from that: as to not wanting to read the comments, I can completely relate to that. And sometimes they are even more of a nightmare if you are a moderator because then it is also your responsibility to judge what may be out of line and what should be done if so. *sigh*

I'll take the Fifth.

That doesn't sound pleasant. Please be careful.

Can yer mammy sew? Get her to stitch this!

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2341

Please do. I'd appreciate it.

Ouch. That sounds like a rough time ahead. I hope the new set will work better.

Bah, she just made that up whole cloth.

Yeah, it deserves to be punted.

Since a large part of the point of this place is to let out steam and to descend into occasional silliness, I don't think anyone will mind. And once again, you are welcome. I hope the new chapter will also include a new hope.

The Fourth doesn't work that way!

Less pointed remarks, please.

The problem is that Abraham was killing the copies out of sheer overcompensation. The first use of the diamond resulted in disaster, therefore all uses of it must do so, at least to his mind. And so he swore an oath he was unwilling to break even when he knew it would lead to evil. However, I am judging Abraham from a modern point of view. I can see your point and from a medieval point of view Abraham might be acting not only sensibly but even commendably. Even so, I personally still feel grave misgivings about what he may have done. And yes. I am hoping the diamond spent most of its time hidden away and that it only came to the attention of the Main Eight because of Pandora's manipulations. I prefer that to it just drifting around from owner to owner with its possessors being largely ignorant of the dangers it poses.

The Moderator: All right. My apologies for the sensitivity. You inadvertently echoed a past troll; this was not your fault. ETA: (In case you wonder about this mess of colours, by poster request here I am posting ordinary messages in blue and cautions and warnings in red. It avoids certain kinds of confusion.)

The Moderator: If this was a joke, it did not strike me as funny. If it is some puerile attempt at trolling, be advised that I do not have much patience with that. In either case, there are strict limits to how much nonsense I tolerate before I start to take action against it.

Abraham was a product of medieval times. Back then the general attitude was that afflictions such as leprosy, madness, childlessness and so forth were God's punishment for some evil or other. Since the only function of the diamond was a flawed removal of spells from persons touching it -- and we know from Nioi that it has a very broad definition of what it sees as a 'curse' -- it becomes all too plausible for me that Abraham has killed one or several beings whose only crime was to be duplicates split off from someone who wished to be free of an unwanted enchantment. Such beings might or might not have been dangerous, but I am willing to lay enormous odds against all of them being innately evil or the victims of an enchantment that made them dangerous to their surroundings. It would be immensely simple for this not being the case. Imagine someone who just wanted to get rid of a spell that had turned them ugly or afflicted them with a disease or the like. Abraham would still be ready to axe the duplicate.

That 'implication' got sort of boldfaced, underlined and chiseled into rock when he came within fractions of a second of murdering Ellen.

Prof, once again, you are more than welcome. And no, you did not bore me. I am just hoping this will lead to some sort of movement in the right direction, i. e. towards less pain, better sleep and generally improved quality of life.

Not necessarily. Grace herself is observant. I know that if I noticed that someone had, say, gotten six inches taller, I would at the very least do a double take. That alone would probably be enough to tell Grace that I had noticed. ETA: It also depends on the story universe. I have seen any number of animes, for example, where characters existed who would just outright say, "Your boobs are noticeably shrinking. Maybe you should stop dieting?" (That these would mere moments later also be crushed into the ground by some nearby Tsundere helps explain the anime origins of Susan's hammers.)

Or... To give an idea of the size of the pig, the girl standing next to it is thirty feet tall. (Even though she claims to only be twenty-nine feet tall. She is a little embarrassed by her height.)

Oh, it is not a question of running out of fodder. In fact, the principal problem with the Guillotine is that given just a handful of so, they can often operate much faster than you can keep supplies coming. But while the proportionate loss of fodder may get smaller, it will not go to zero and the absolute amount of losses will not be reduced at all. In fact, it may even drastically increase as discontent with the feeding process may grow and cause the general populace (the primary source of mass Guillotinage) to rise in protest and make strongly worded objections. In fact, such objections led to the end of the Terreur in France, with one of the last victims of it being Robespierre himself.

A twitter bot has gotten hold of a televangelist's tweets and replaced every mention of 'God' with 'your d***.' It is incredibly juvenile, not really safe for work and it had me snickering madly. Click on it with due caution, but if you do not like televangelists, it is pure gold.

While crash test dummies are less finicky about such things, real humans tend to be curiously reluctant to accept such matters on faith. As one example, back in the black and white Hollywood days they were making a Robin Hood movie. During the movie Errol Flynn was supposed to be fired from a catapult inside a castle and land in a haystack. So they started the shot, had Flynn climb into the catapult, then paused, told him to climb out again and told a stuntman to climb in. However, the stuntman asked if they had tested it first and was told, "No worries, it will work." But he insisted that they test it with a sack that weighed about the same as he did. The director got mad and threatened to fire him -- from the job, that is -- and the stuntman replied he would rather be fired from the job than from an untested catapult. With ill grace, the director gave in and ordered a properly weighted sack procured and the catapult tested, telling the stuntman that after this, he would be in trouble. When they did the test shot, the catapult overshot the haystack by almost a hundred yards. The sack impacted on the tree line and burst. After that they entirely reworked the catapult and the director meekly agreed to three successful test shots before the stuntman was fired. This time from the catapult, not the job. And yes, he did land in the haystack when they finally made the shot. ETA: While the guillotine is much more reliable in operation, it is nonetheless not a perfect method as Scarlet Pimpernelage may cause a certain amount of loss of executables before it has a chance to perform its job.

I'll take it. Thanks for the update. We are all very grateful to you for your efforts on his behalf! The times I have been ill I must have been at the very least a general nuisance to my wife. At least she gave me a disgusted look when I started to make Groucho Marx quotes like, whilst the nurse was attempting to take my pulse, "Either my watch has stopped or the patient is dead."

For some reason it fills me with deep satisfaction when politicians manage to come together and make a truly dramatic improvement for society, even on a municipal level. I am very glad you have that flood control system.