ChronosCat

I suspect a large part of Elliot's lack of initiative with Sarah was due to his subconsciously seeing her as a sister. I mean if he's not attracted to her romantically or sexually, he wouldn't really have much incentive to do anything romantic or sexual with her.

Zazu attempting to entertain Scar. (I wish I had properly checked out the games area before, I looks like I missed out on a lot of fun! Too bad it seems as quiet as the rest of the EGS forums these days... Then again, from what I recall it wasn't very active even back when I rejoined the forums, otherwise maybe I would have given it more of a chance...)

It seems to me that Mr. Verres would be the sort to be uncomfortable with the idea of WMDs (magical or otherwise), and object to their use if he were in a position to do so, but not let those feelings get in the way of working for a government he knows has them. So idealism limited by practicality.

The McDonald's I've been to are rather inconsistent with their fries. The texture can vary from slightly chewier than a potato chip, to soft and floppy like a cross between a baked potato and a noodle. Meanwhile the salt can vary from barely noticeable to overwhelming. Once or twice I've felt the need to brush some of the salt off, but otherwise I usually find them an enjoyable snack (if a bit of a guilty pleasure).

Yay(?) for polka-dot/pepperoni/TARDIS-interrior background in panel one. Yay for fiery background in panel two! ...Kitty's argument, including not having tried it, reminds me of something, but I can't put my finger on it. Well, if you don't like cheese or tomato sauce, you could tell you wouldn't like pizza from the smell... Also, if you disliked grease, most pizza-shop pizzas I've had would be a no-go. So it's junk food (at least as it's normally made; there are healthier variations). I wonder, does Kitty go around complaining about cakes at bakeries, or ice cream at ice cream places, or hamburgers and french fries at McDonald's? (Actually, I have heard plenty of people complaining about McDonald's food - though not actually at a McDonald's...)

Seeing as now it's becoming a problem in and of itself, and it's not nearly as safe as advertised... Maybe the regulators in the EGS world were a lot more on the ball than the ones in ours?

http://egscomics.com/sketchbook/2019-012 Cute, but in my opinion that's about all it has going for it.

Starburst background in panel one. *yawn* There are many different types of tomato sauce; for home-made pizzas they sell "pizza sauce" which tastes different from "spaghetti sauce". Also, I have never had a pizza made with ketchup before; I never knew that was even a thing. No cheese? When I was a kid, we would sometimes make "English Muffin Pizzas" with spaghetti sauce and American Cheese. It didn't taste anything like real pizza, but it wasn't bad.

I don't know how helpful reading fictional depictions of police corruption would be, but knowing Elliot likes superheroes, my first thought was "Someone (probably Justin) should encourage Elliot to read Batman: Year One." (That happens to have been my first major introduction to the concept of corrupt cops, though I did see a couple of other references in other Batman comics first, as well as in the 1989 Batman movie.)

I'm sure he didn't avoid the trolls entirely just by leaving the forums (though it must have improved things, seeing as he never came back). However he says in the commentary that he thought of the basics of this scenario "over a decade ago".

More polka-dot/pepperoni background in panel two. I wonder what it's supposed to represent mood-wise? It's once again used while Ashley Bridgette is talking in a heartfelt manner, but I don't know what that has to do with circles. ...I seem to remember a background like this being used for Grace a while back; at that time I think I just called it "bubbly" but if it's being used consistently that's clearly an oversimplification. (Incidentally, today the background is reminding me of those circles in the interior walls of the original TARDIS control room, so that's cool.) Starburst background in panel three. *Yawn.* Re: the commentary: So apparently one of the inspirations for this storyline were the trolls and other constantly complaining people on the forums back before Dan left...

Something like panels three to six is what Elliot should have gone with from the start. Unless she's done a lot more training than we've been led to believe, I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to call Grace a skilled martial artist though. A powerful person who knows some martial arts, perhaps, maybe a "powerful martial artist" if you want to keep things simple and don't mind being a bit deceptive, but not all that skilled (yet). ...I guess Elliot can pull off being untruthful after all!

When I here "The Man", this is who I think of: https://chrono.fandom.com/wiki/Johnny?file=Johnny2.jpg

Yay for polka-dot background in panel three! ...Except I don't really like polka-dots... Also, I kind of wish we could see more of it, if only to be sure it really is a polka-dot pattern; I don't really get what that has to do with the scene. ...Hmm, considering the setting, maybe it's supposed to be pepperoni? Which doesn't make it better for me, as I don't like pepperoni either...

From what I've heard, people with a job but not able to afford enough food is fairly common. I don't think being homeless with a job is so common, but then I imagine being homeless would make it hard to get or keep a job. Is having things that we now need really progress over neither having nor needing them? (Well, I suppose I'd rather use a washing machine than wash clothes by hand, and I enjoy being able to travel great distances in short amounts of time... I'm just saying we can't judge progress solely on how much stuff people have.) Anyway, my earlier point was that just because people have what at first glance appear to be luxuries doesn't necessarily mean they aren't really just barely scraping by. (I don't know if you were saying otherwise, but it looked to me like you were implying it.)

Maybe it's better in Europe, but in the US there are plenty of people who are homeless, or don't have enough food to eat or enough money for proper medical care. I'd say the system is failing them. Also, while televisions might be luxuries, the way things are set up these days many of the things you mentioned actually are necessary for anyone hoping to live a stable life. If you want a job you need a way for people to get in touch with you (thus a phone, though not necessarily a smartphone), and clean clothes (thus either a washing machine or access to a laundromat). And unless you live in walking distance of both your job and a place to shop for food and other essentials, you need either public transportation which can get you there (which outside of cities probably won't be an option, and even in cities is not always good enough) or a car. Another worry is that the middle class seems to be shrinking (and not because more people are becoming rich!). Just to be clear, I'm not arguing communism is the answer, I'm just saying that without proper safeguards capitalism can produce some pretty nasty results too, and (at least in the US) the current safeguards aren't enough.

As I was afraid of, Elliot is attempting a level of denial beyond his skill to pull off, and in the process practically confirming what he's trying to deny. Oh well, at least Liz is taking it well, and as a close friend of Ashley's ought to be trustworthy. I think her friendship with and resulting concern for Ashley is pushing her to show more initiative than usual.

You left out SPANCs (Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls). Those are bad?

*sigh* And we're back to the same over-used starburst background in panel one. Yay. ...Anyway... Tensaided makes a good pizza-place manager. Maybe he should take up that job if the video store ever folds? Incidentally, I have decided to call the world of this story the "Pizza-verse".

I hope Elliot doesn't either try to hard to convince Liz he's not Cheerleadra (he's not good enough at lying to pull it off) or simply admit it (he really doesn't know her well enough to be doing that). The best bet would be a very mild denial which he accepts (and perhaps acknowledges) that she probably won't believe. As for the promise of Ashley being safe, when is anybody truly safe? Even without the fantastic dangers Elliot deals with, there are always risks of bad things happening, from (mundane) home invasions and house fires, to earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, and even asteroid impacts or nuclear war.

I have no idea if this has anything to do with Dan's reasoning, but if he created an entirely new cast of characters for this story, ones unlikely to ever show up in the main story, it would feel a little strange having this story in EGS at all.

I agree with Scotty that it's likely just a dramatic background. Speaking of which, yay for fiery background in panel six! ... As for what Liz's "other possibility" is, the idea that she thinks he's gay did occur to me, but another possibility I haven't seen mentioned yet is that she is aware of magic (presumably including her own) and has guessed that Elliot has magic. Maybe she thinks Elliot is hiding magic from Ashley, or maybe she thinks despite being otherwise a good guy he's pressuring Ashley into not talking about magic.

Doubtful. Dan mentioned recently that he lost interest in the series around the time Twilight Sparkle became a Princess (which if you're not familiar with the series was back in 2013; the Friendship is Magic based "My Little Pony the Movie" didn't come out until 2017). He says "franchise", not "movie franchise", so it could be a multi-media franchise that just includes movies. Incidentally, there have been two movies titled "My Little Pony the Movie", but they were unrelated other than both being based on the My Little Pony franchise; the first one was back in the 80s. Some of the entries in the Equestria Girls spin-off series also straddle the line between movies and TV specials, with the first few getting limited theatrical releases. (I suppose if Dan wasn't talking about a recent movie, it could have been the first Equestria Girls movie/special, which came out in 2013, but I don't recall him ever talking about it, and with the limited release there's a good chance it wasn't even in theaters in his area.)

That was surprising? It made so much sense to me I half expected Dan to link to a previous comic where it had already been established. I mean, he is an older male relative who is father to her "twin", and much of what she knows about him is positive, as opposed to her actual father who she has so many negative feelings about; it seems only natural she'd feel this way.

Yay for starburst background in panel one! (For once I really mean it; it's refreshing to see a more stylized "sunburst"-like starburst, and it really adds to the fun drama of the scene.) Well, if that's the least amount of clothes the game will let you wear, then in a way she's as good as naked. Also, I think there are some cultures that don't differentiate between fully nude and wearing only underwear; at the very least I remember hearing that some of the instances in the Bible where it mentions someone being naked the author(s) likely actually meant that they were in their underwear (I'm talking about post-Flood here; it's pretty obvious from context that Adam and Eve didn't have any clothes at all in the Garden of Eden).