ChronosCat

I don't know about Fable (or Parable) but often you also have the choice to wander around in the area accessible to you without advancing the plot, until you've done everything there is to do there and/or get bored.

So that was a thing that happened. I really wonder what was going on in Grace's head there - and whether she's going to put any limits on how much she shares with Ashley. In other matters, yay for Tedd's Basement background in panel nine! Er, I mean starburst backgrounds in panels one and two... Speaking of the basement, I notice behind Justin (and in some previous comics) there's what looks like a curtain. Does Tedd have the transformation booth set up like at Grace's Birthday Party?

To me, there's a big difference between suggesting a pairing/group as a joke or writing a story that finds a way to get two or more characters together versus saying "these characters belong together, the writers should get (or should have gotten) them together in canon". I have no problems with the former being quite creative, but when it comes to the latter, I'm usually a lot more picky about the ships I approve of.

True; however the greenhouse gasses humans have pumped into the atmosphere stand a good chance of significantly delaying the next glaciation (or from another perspective, causing several glaciation events to fail to occur). According to an article linked on the wikipedia article on ice ages, the next glaciation might not occur for at least 100,000 years.

I'm not saying I'm surprised people would ship them (though I'm a little surprised neither Grace nor Ashley seem to have cared about Arthur's feelings on the matter), I'm just saying I personally don't see the appeal. Generally speaking, when I encounter unrequited love in fiction, I feel that the person in love needs to move on (or at least accept that it's unrequited), not that the subject of those affections needs to fall in love with or humor their admirer. ...I actually encountered a similar situation in the Sonic fandom years ago. Back in the 00s, the games and Sonic X usually portrayed Amy as obsessed with the idea of being in a relationship with Sonic, but with the possible exception of one or two episodes of Sonic X, Sonic mostly ignored her, ran from her, or at best treated her as a platonic friend. And yet that was enough to inspire a devoted band of SonAmy shippers, a fact which contributed to the great "shipping wars" over who Sonic should be with.

The leading view among physicists is that Dark Matter and Dark Energy are completely unrelated - but it's certainly quite possible a theory of gravity that works on quantum scales might also account for the phenomena associated with both of them. Actually, a more precise version of my question would be: Is it possible to know if we exist within a multiverse (of "real" as opposed to "possible" worlds) and if so, do we? Transfer of information/energy/matter between worlds would be extremely helpful in determining this (and also would be really cool), but I have heard clams that some theories that predict a multiverse would be possible to test without being able to directly detect other universes.

Okay, so I know that any two (or more, or in rare circumstances even just one) characters that exist are potential shipping candidates, but based on my memories of the movie I don't really get this one. From what I recall, Arthur/Wart had zero interest in girls, squirrel or otherwise (presumably thanks to his age, though other options would be available in fanon) and was rather freaked out by the female squirrel's advances. (But maybe I'm remembering wrong? It has been a while.)

I almost said the Relativity/Quantum inconsistency was one of the biggest unknowns in science, though I do think it is the biggest. In addition to Dark Matter, other runners up are Dark Energy and whether we are a part of a multiverse. However there's a good chance the answers to those last two are tied up in the General Relativity/Quantum Mechanics question, and a possibility Dark Matter is too. A Theory of Everything might allow for other methods of FTL and Time Travel besides Wormholes; it would almost certainly have something to say about whether wormholes exist and whether it's possible to create a long-lasting and traversable wormhole. I'm saying that if we didn't know about relativistic time dilation (but it did exist), GPS wouldn't work properly until the people developing it figured out how to compensate. Granted this isn't a great example of technology made possible by knowing advanced physics (as we probably could have brute-forced it without knowing the underlying theory), it was just the first thing to come to mind. A better example might be quantum computers, but they haven't come into their own yet so it's hard to say just how much of a game changer they'll be.

I wonder if Susan will avoid raising her magic stat to avoid that particular alteration to her appearance? Jumping straight to the final results (as is often the case in the pinups & sketchbooks) holds no appeal to me. Oddly enough though, seeing it step-by-step does hold some for me - though not enough to make up for the fact that I have no interest in this setting...

The gap/inconsistency between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics is the biggest unknown (or at least the biggest known unknown) in all of science; hidden within it could be the secrets of faster than light travel, time travel, all sorts of technologies out of the softest of science fiction, and stuff we can't even imagine. On the other hand, it might turn out that a unified theory's only practical applications are a few technologies which are useful but hardly the stuff of galactic empires (like how the effects of Relativistic Time Dilation need to be taken into account for GPS to work). I'm enough of a pessimist that I find a result closer to the latter more likely (but I would be thrilled to be proved wrong).

Yay for starburst background in panel seven! The traditional Dan starburst, no less. (Though in this case it may be doubling as speed-lines.) If the point of the speed is how much ground you can cover (as is the case when trying to search a large area for missing friends), the speed one can achieve downwards doesn't seem particularly relevant...

Well, I did add the caveat, "to the extent science has given us an accurate view of how the world works". I do tend to think that what science currently says is mostly right, though there are still some important unknowns. I would never say anything is definitely "impossible", but I do think we can say certain things are "unlikely to be possible". Incidentally, I'm not sure which theories you're referring to, but the theory of General Relativity was 100 years old in 2015; and while Quantum Mechanics is a constantly developing scientific field, it had it's foundations in the 1900s-1920s.

You don't need to advance beyond steam technology to conduct archaeology/paleontology/etc. When I mentioned earlier in this thread the idea of future descendants of humanity doing research into the past, I wasn't limiting it to continuations of our own civilization. I didn't go into detail because I didn't think it was important to the point I was making, but I also meant to include possible civilizations hundreds or thousands of years in the future whose technological advancement is limited by the resources we used up, and possible civilizations millions of years in the future who are only a few thousand years or so out from the end of a second stone age (and the members of which bear as little resemblance to us as we do to Australopithecus afarensis). Also, I use the term "descendants" loosely; I'm also including civilizations of sentient robots (though that would be more likely in a scenario where our civilization continued on for a while yet; it's questionable whether we have time to develop sentient AI before Climate Change reaches the point where civilization has to adapt or fall). Yes, but then the conversation moved on without acknowledging it. I felt it was too important a point to let go like that. Sorry for not giving you credit for bringing it up first. I'm not very familiar with the arguments against heat death; somehow I never even heard of them until I read the wikipedia article I linked above when composing my previous post. However, while the timeframe of events leading to heat death is uncertain, and whether the state of near uniformity represented by heat death is the true end of the universe or just the start of a new set of processes, the mechanisms that lead to heat death seem pretty straightforward and I'd be surprised to learn that wasn't the direction the universe was going to go in. ...If heat death is just the start of something new, I wonder if sentient beings could function in that post heat death world - or survive the transition. Definitely fodder for science fiction stories. As for preserving a monument, all materials are capable of erosion - and while encounters with stray particles would be extremely rare in a near heat death setting, they would happen. Over a long enough time frame, any object could be broken down. An artificial structure probably will be the last structure remaining in the universe, but I don't think it could last forever. (Also, what's the point of a legacy if there's no one around to appreciate it?) While we can't predict what exactly the technology of the future will be, to the extent science has given us an accurate view of how the world works we can place limits on what is and isn't possible.

Regarding the discussion on the merging of the Andromeda and Milky Way Galaxies, I'd like to point out that the light from the Sun will have increased so much by that point the surface of the Earth will be uninhabitable to life as we know it. So most likely either the human lineage will be long ended by then, or our descendants will have spread across multiple star systems (giving them a greater chance of surviving the merging, as well as presumably the resources to do something if one of the systems they live in is in danger, if only evacuate). Well, of course we can build stuff that might outlast the stars, if we put our minds to it. But (assuming some other end-of-the-universe scenario doesn't happen first) eventually there's a far more difficult boundary to overcome: the heat death of the universe. Are you suggesting that with advanced enough science it might be possible to prevent heat death, or to escape to another universe? I suppose time travel, if possible for macroscopic objects (or at least for information) might be another way to escape the heat death depending on what time travel rules turn out to be true... But otherwise, any legacy must eventually end. Storing data takes space (digital data still takes up physical space in the form of whatever medium it's stored on), and maintaining it takes effort. As our digital libraries grow, there will likely come a time where people decide that it takes too much space and/or effort to keep all of it, and they may abandon much of what they don't consider important. There will also inevitably be unintentional data losses. Fast forward several million years, to a time when our descendants are no longer homo sapiens and civilization bears little or no resemblance to what now exists, and it seems unlikely to me that very much information from the present day (or all of recorded history to this point) will have survived in an easily accessible form. Those who wish to learn about the distant past will need to do new archaeological and paleontological investigations. (For that matter, even if they do know a lot about our era, they probably will still want to confirm and expand upon things with archaeology/paleontology; there are archaeologists today who investigate things just a few centuries old, even only a century.) Of course, all this assumes our civilization continues on without any major disasters. Climate change is starting to put major stresses on our civilization, and will keep getting worse for decades or more; lesser changes in climate have brought down civilizations in the past. While it's possible ours might be different, I'm not convinced that it will be. Even a relatively short and mild dark age would likely result in a lot of lost information, particularly that stored in digital form; worse and more extensive dark ages could result in the scenario ijuin mentions where even any digital storage device which somehow survived is indecipherable to them. And if the wars which would almost inevitably accompany the fall of civilization included too many nuclear weapons being used, things could get so bad that any survivors would have to more-or-less start civilization over from scratch...

Yay for starburst background in panel seven! ...Hmm, this is that "splatter" variation again. I wonder if it's meant to invoke a different mood from Dan's usual starbursts, or if Dan just felt like using this version? Not anyone who has encountered it, just those who consider themselves fans. Personally, I've never been much of a fan of canon Ranma 1/2, but I was quite a fan of Ranma fanfiction for a while, reinforcing my desire to retell other people's stories with my own touches. (I don't just mean telling new adventures with the same characters, I mean retelling the entire story from the beginning... I don't know how many variations I've read of Ranma and Genma showing up at the Tendo Dojo for the first time...) The not-Camdin smoke person? Someone who follows the griffins from their side of the world to "our" side?

In a universe with a finite lifespan, a legacy that lasts forever is impossible; thinking on the largest possible scales, one must come to accept that in a sense everything is temporary. However, it is still possible to do things that have an effect on the world/universe for a very long time... If a new scientifically-inclined species arises on Earth in the future, or aliens visit (or abandoning the conceit of humankind disappearing tomorrow, if our far-distant descendants decide to investigate this era) they might not be sure what caused this mass extinction - but I think the lack of iridium would suggest it was not an asteroid. As I understand it, our geologic layer will include pieces of cement/concrete/brick/etc, various chemicals we've made use of, radioactive materials (including fallout from nuclear bomb tests), and possibly particles of plastic (after reading a few articles, I'm less sure of that than I was when I made my previous post, but even if the plastics break down completely they'll still leave behind chemical traces). Millions of years in the future, they might not be able to tell much about our civilization, and they might not connect it with the big-brained apes that spread around the planet at the same time as all the other invasive species (assuming we even leave that many fossils) but I suspect they'd at least be able to figure out there was some sort of technological civilization present. (Admittedly, if we're talking billions of years it gets a bit more questionable what they'd be able to figure out.) As for our space probes, considering the vast distances of space, there's a good chance that even if they fly close to an inhabited system, no one will notice them. They probably will be the last surviving trace of our civilization (unless we start colonizing other worlds or otherwise shift to a more space-based civilization), but no one might ever find them to learn from them.

Did the show mention the layer of plastic, glass, concrete, and other man-made materials that will likely mark our presence in the geologic record? Or the signs in the future fossil record of the mass-extinction we're currently in the middle of (and which would go on for a while even without us thanks to invasive species and continuing climate change from the carbon dioxide we've already pumped into the atmosphere)? It's not a very pleasant legacy, but scientists of the future will definitely be able to tell we were here...

I'm pretty sure the only part of the Pharaoh's post directed at you was "Is there actually such a place?"; everything else looks to me to have been directed at The Old Hack.

So apparently Elliot never mentioned ASMA to Ashley (at least not by name). Considering how big a part of his life it was until fairly "recently" (in-comic), this is kind of surprising. (Then again, the entire time he dated Nanase he never mentioned her to Tedd, so not bringing up big things with those close to him is in character...)

The only thing I know about the Fable games is the stuff Dan said about them the last time he parodied them. I'm actually surprised he only did the one strip on the game before. It made such a big (and unpleasant) impression on me, I thought for sure it was a story, or at least a few strips. (Maybe I just dwelt on it for a few days because the forum threads were huge back then...) At any rate, I'm not looking forward to this one either.

http://egscomics.com/sketchbook/2019-014

I'm happy for you that you figured this out, and sad for you that it took so long and was so hard to do so. Here's hoping that your road forward from here is a generally positive one. Incidentally, that avatar sure is quite the shift from Raven! It looks great, but it might take a bit of getting used to!

pink flamingos nearby. (I don't really expect this thread to be revived for long, I just felt like providing a long-needed recap. Note that, following the Pharaoh's lead, I have altered some capitalization and punctuation to make it easier to read.) Recap: Thomas went to school wearing his Adorable Pink Frilly Parka that was a gift from his late cousin Amelia. She acquired a quite unusual taste in fashion. She had neon streaked hair, and many chains hanging on her neck, but despite her excessive muscle growth she's entirely harmless and she gladly hugs almost anyone. A long time has passed since Amelia died in a prank gone wrong; apparently fireworks were installed with faulty launchers, making it rain explosions. Nowadays, she haunts a very large part of town. Paranormal investigators love to try to cajole information from people who knew Amelia years ago. At school, Thomas has problems with solving a problem involving other problems. His teachers hate his habit of nesting problems within convoluted webs of letters and numbers to process the streams of data from the latest Paraguayan economic indicators. What that even had decided be relevant, was questionable on the grounds of various things that are related to absolutely nothing. "What are you even doing with those gigantic orange binders?" asked the floating magical girl hovering upside-down behind the unlucky teacher. Jumping a good five meters, the former astronaut replied, "Who are you and how did you become inverted in time?" "I am Sunny Jim. To paraphrase McCoy 'I'm a Doctor, not The Doctor.'" Looking far into the interstitial chronosphere for an apple fleeing from several poorly aligned sandwiches in pursuit of the lonely astronaut. A sudden burst of loud music shook the heavens and shattered walls for miles. Mr. John Foster Dulles Pinkerton flew to the Moon, only to realize that the invasion had already begun during the SxSW Conference several decades ago. (Six months later...) A grand resurgence took place in my intestinal tract as many bacteria as there were stars in the recently ruptured appendix as a result of over consumption suddenly developed sentience and began moving to Detroit. There wasn't much there – or so it seems to Detective Banconbits Von Neuman Vandertramp III, and it soon became quite a pickle. The pickle leaped into the ominous star filled void. A vacuum cleaner removed evidence of vinegar from several ancient relics. The mysteries deepened as strange things began coming from the slightly melted relic void. Tentacles grasped the TV remote in a desperate bid for cartoons. Ren and Stimpy was Lqrwxkl's favorite flavor. A grand broken toe appeared, stubbed on earth, and crying out silently in space through a mellophone in the shape of a round unpressed button. Suddenly, huge letters fell from the sky, spelling out the Manifesto of Lqrwxkl. It began thusly: Cthulhu fhtagn R'lyeh E Pluribus Unum, for glory and for all of the marbles. First a potato cannon will replace artillery when they beat the Spud Militia. This in turn will begin the dawn of a new baked potato fueled empire of sour cream and chives. Nigel Mansell spontaneously combusted. Meanwhile several awkward little extras played poker without stopping to change the lightbulb. As a result Gir stopped by and sang "Doom". Random magic explosions caused everyone to point towards demonic charts and graphs about cheese manufacture as performed in the Death Star for Darth Esrom. Following the sidetracking, more sidetracking occurred. Needless to say, someone said "needless." Nothing productive happened. Seven years passed, during which there was a brief... incident Thomas witnessed which involved quantum soda, yogurt, a minigun firing rockets, and seventy sporks. The reason for the incident was televised globally, despite objections from the MPAA. It seems that a pause feature was added without the knowledge of the pope. The secular authorities issued a statement regarding the questionable actions of certain squirrels, but no operator charges were billed to the agency responsible for unreliable communications for inter-agency communications. "What 'agency communications'?" you may ask if you are unaware of the Agency Communications. However you look at hotel vacancy averages and you see a peculiar correlation between the amount of money spent and the alcohol consumed, wild variance in the results of people most heartily accepted when the aliens landed on the lawn of several thousand college dorm residents. Pizza rained from the land of Endless Falling Dairy. Mario Andretti sat on a wall of the new NASCAR Barrier System, stolen from IndyCar and refitted with weapons-grade spaghetti sauce to combat premature shrinkage in everything that is not Spandex. It was a new beginning for the Biscuit Topping Monopoly of the last gravy boat in the Grand Navy is on approach to the Royal Academy for the Glorious League Of Associated States - International. Hilarity ensues when a recap request results in hats. However, this means little to the imagination, since the purpose of hats is so clear. Margaret Thatcher's ghost. The Lady's not a herring, so canneries cannot confuse them for any simple-minded fools. Meanwhile, at the UFO Storage Hangar located near the star-spangled popcorn that was made by James Hird, strange things were happening elsewhere. Many dingoes assembled at the maternity ward, in order to perform alchemy with spoons in 1699 small rooms, culminating in a large Summoning Circle for the forces of Baron Siegfried the anal-retentive monarch of his timeline. A woman of grace and shoelaces joined the party and promptly ate absurd amounts of ghost peppers. She began to scream out in joy, but paused when the sauce expired. This was because she learned that her dog's pancreas was switched with a goat from Latveria. This was rather fortunate because the pancreas was filled with plutonium. Cue dynamic entry. Suddenly Amelia's ghost hosted a talkshow which was seen at awkward angles in all directions on every machine with great gusto. Then, it was called by a cheap TV "psychic" detective, who then burst into flames. It was then apparent that nothing could damage the prematurely air-conditioned supermarket. Fruits and vegetables, almighty and powerful, empowered the weak by giving them a mild case of telekinetic abilities after a pause in which many suspicious looking vegetables began to show their back sides to an unsuspecting public at the local market. Many suffered mild indigestion from eating spiders with Alfredo sauce. This led to antidisestablishmentarianism becoming widespread in Normal, Illinois. Meanwhile, in the octogenarian's daughter's perambulator the TARDIS manifested. The TARDIS then opened up and the Doctor exited. "EXTERMINATE!" rang out. "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" It seemed that a Dalek horde had arrived at the market. However, there was also convention of pink flamingos nearby.

Ah, but that would have to happen after this NP story (Tedd and Elliot clearly aren't dating yet in this story). We were talking about what might happen between the current Story comics and this NP story.

Yay for starburst background in panel nine! It's a new and interesting variation too; almost a paint-splatter effect but less random. Sometimes certain self-censure phrases become so widely used that they become common phrases in and of themselves. Examples that come to mind include "What the heck" and "For cryin' out loud". (Also, I can't remember anyone else using it, but my grandfather would often say "Shoot a duck".)