Sweveham

I like talking to myself. That way I always have an attentive audience no matter how inane and idiotic my rambling gets.

My shrink tells me that talking to yourself, to include answering yourself, isn't a bad thing, as long as you know you are doing that.  It's when you talk to yourself and you think you are talking to someone else that life gets, as he puts, "somewhere between not real good and very very bad".

I like talking to myself. As my Dad likes to say, you always get so good answers that way.

I've said this before, but I can't help but marvel at how Dan gives each main character in the distinctive facial expressions and body language, so that even when they have the body of someone else, they're still recognizable as themselves. Sarah as Grace or Tedd in this comic still has the expressions and body language she usually has. Look also at when Nanase turns into Susan in this comic for another example. That is truly some impressive and subtle cartooning by Dan.
Also, Grace frozen in that screaming pose is just hilarious.

I'm impressed with Edward's fortitude. Being calm and rational in the face of such a dangerous adversary is admirable. He's certainly better at dealing with supernatural dangers than with parenting.

I'm impressed with Edward's fortitude. Being calm and rational in the face of such a dangerous adversary is admirable. He's certainly better at dealing with supernatural dangers than with parenting.

Sadly, most people get more formal training for their paid jobs than they do for (what should be) their most important job.
Edward Veres has done some things wrong in the process of raising Tedd.  But I still would not call him a bad parent

Good jokes often have at least some basis in reality
Steven Brust has experimented with this. In his excellent book Taltos (book four in the series about Vladimir Taltos the assassin) he writes no less than three interweaving stories that all take place at different times and all come together seamlessly at the end. The movie Short Cuts presents a series of short films that all tie together in the end. It is actually a time honoured device to start a story in media res (you enter in the middle of an action sequence) and then only later learn how it all began. In fact, that is the beginning of A New Hope. I also recall several episodes of NCIS which open with one or more protagonists in dire trouble and the rest of the team trying to work out where they are and how it happened.
Mind you, as with all other story devices it may be done well or badly. Done well it adds challenge and zest to the entertainment. Done badly it is just a mess.

Awkward Tensaided is awkward. And somewhat funny.
You're joking, but I know of at least one novel that does this: Lanark by Alasdair Grey. It begins with book three of four. Then comes the prologue and book one. Also, the epilogue is four chapters before the end. There's probably more books that do this, telling a story in a non-linear way is a staple of today's fiction after all.

As a writer, I find Dan's commentary intensely irritating. He is jumping the gun. First of all, to have part two right after part one is no more than pandering to the audience's expectations. One needs to be more bold! I usually don't have my prologue until at least in the middle of part eleven, and in my next planned book I am killing off my protagonist in part three (which comes immediately after part seven, which is the one I traditionally open my books with.)

Poor Dan.  I'm glad he shared with us just how hard it was to create a comic with a character death.  The Geek is strong with him.  We may have only just met Blaike, but Dan has likely known him for years.

I disagree. What makes for a hero isn't success or failure but the act of entering danger in order to protect others, if need be at the price of one's own life. A fireman who is killed the first time he enters action is still a hero.
I fully agree with the tragic part, mind you. *sigh*

Well, it's not about what the terrorists see. It's about what their potential recruits see. ISIS wants to paint the U.S. as evil, so when we do actual evil things, we're giving them propaganda fuel. This is why the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Trump and the Republican party actually plays directly into ISIS's hands—it alienates the non-terrorist Muslims (AKA most of them) and undermines our local support networks in those regions.

I feel Sweveham has the right of it. We have two parties, with similar policies and practices across both the economic and foreign spheres. They differ primarily on polarized social and operational issues which many European countries don't even debate, such as the right to bodily autonomy for women, or the necessity of taxation to fund the activity of government. Our elections are primarily run around the personalities and social stances of our politicians, rather than the expectation of differing political practice.

Of course, to your earlier post, Sweveham, our parties are nearly arbitrary groupings of politicians, primarily differentiated from one another by branding, fundraising, target demographics, and stance on the aforementioned social and operational issues. They persist because they are so large and pervasive that they've established a dominant binary, it is infeasible to practice politics here without participating in one or the other. If Europe is only just moving toward a post-democratic society, we are honestly further down that road.
 
I believe that we are not, and can not be, a healthy democratic society under the two party system. The enforced binary does not empower politicians to seek change, for it is inherently reductive and repressive. Unanimity in economic and foreign policy has driven decades of interventionism and increasingly unwise deregulation. Even the progress we have made in recent years on social issues is vulnerable in the face of this uneven polarization that prevents functional compromise in these areas. We can, we must reform both ourselves, and our political reality.

You know, some days I really get tired of the hate showered indisciminantly on politicians.  Or lawyers, or used car salesmen, or any other entire profession.
The vast majority of people who run for an elected office do it because they honestly want to make the world, or at least their corner of it, a better place.  They start out with something local, they see an injustice, and they step up and try to do something to fix it.  Whether they succeed or not, they discover that they can indeed make a difference, or that inaction allows injustice to continue, and they carry on trying to make a difference.  Sometimes they have to give up a promising career in some other field, or time with their families, or put up with insults from total strangers who know nothing about them but just assume they must be crooked.
Not everyone agreed on what will make the world a better place.  I know I'm not going to approve of all the changes every politician wants to make.  Some of them want to make changes I would find horrific.  But I don't automatically assume they're evil and trying to commit crimes, I assume that they see the world differently and that it might even be possible for them to change their minds someday about the things we disagree about.
The current system makes it easy to make compromises for the sake of the greater good.  Some of those compromises are moral ones, and some politicians end up on a slippery slope towards doing things they never intended, but I do not believe that is the overwhelming majority so many people seem to think it is.
The term "career politician" is treated like it's one of the worst insults you can hurl, but why?  Like any job, there are doubtless tricks of the trade, things you learn how to do better and better with more practice.  Some people casually advocate a "throw 'em all out!" attitude.  Why would we want our country to be run by a group of people none of whom have any experience at doing so?  Seems to me the best way is to have some new members and some veterans to show them the ropes and provide continuity.  Like, you know, any other business/profession/skill set.
Are we really so cynical and pessimistic and even nihilistic that we'd each rather just assume everyone in the world is evil except ourselves?

This is cute. Pandora must really have loved Blaike, considering she still uses his name.
 And I love all this backstory. It makes Pandora into a far more complex and sympathetic character. It seems as if Pandora's efforts to amuse herself by playing with mortals were far more considerate than they would later become. She gave useful information in return and most importantly, seems to care if they got hurt, which she certainly does not do in the story's present.

I love this cover. It makes you excited for the story that's to come. 
And I learned a new english expression as well.
 

Is it weird that the first thing that popped into my head after seeing this was Tedd and Elliot telling their shocked friends "It's not gay if we're both girls!"
Also, it seems I'm not late to comment on these pinups this time. Yay.

Let the Geek flow! It is your destiny.

Come to the Dork Side, Diane. We have griffins.

It's adorable to see Diane geeking out like this, even if she does deny it.
How she justifies seeing this film to Lucy, despite it's "dorky" origins, is interesting though. It's because it is a big-budget blockbuster. In other words: it is commercially successful.
Too many people sadly think like this. For them, films and other artforms are only worthy of respect if they make money, not because of what they mean for the audience. It's such a pitiful way of thinking.

It's adorable to see Diane geeking out like this, even if she does deny it.
How she justifies seeing this film to Lucy, despite it's "dorky" origins, is interesting though. It's because it is a big-budget blockbuster. In other words: it is commercially successful.
Too many people sadly think like this. For them, films and other artforms are only worthy of respect if they make money, not because of what they mean for the audience. It's such a pitiful way of thinking.

It's adorable to see Diane geeking out like this, even if she does deny it.
How she justifies seeing this film to Lucy, despite it's "dorky" origins, is interesting though. It's because it is a big-budget blockbuster. In other words: it is commercially successful.
Too many people sadly think like this. For them, films and other artforms are only worthy of respect if they make money, not because of what they mean for the audience. It's such a pitiful way of thinking.

It's adorable to see Diane geeking out like this, even if she does deny it.
How she justifies seeing this film to Lucy, despite it's "dorky" origins, is interesting though. It's because it is a big-budget blockbuster. In other words: it is commercially successful.
Too many people sadly think like this. For them, films and other artforms are only worthy of respect if they make money, not because of what they mean for the audience. It's such a pitiful way of thinking.

This is...uh.. random.
Well, at least they can't deny evolution now. Though, knowing creationists, this kind of thing wouldn't stop some of them.