ChronosCat

* Mourns the loss of Cow-Susan. * I suppose if Dan had gone quite a bit further in the game before he decided to change the rules on how two-type card replacement worked, and the Skunk form was important to how the game played, it would have been a lot of work to back up to this point and correct Rhoda's move. However it still bugs me that there's no in-story explanation for why she bothered to use the Skunk card. And still no view of Ashley. Not that I really expected one, but did have a faint hope that the viewing angle on her in the last strip was just a coincidence. That seems quite unlikely now.

Or you could throw your sword at the enemy! This is often very effective against dragons and other large monsters. However, this technique is inadvisable when dealing with multiple enemies or if your aim is less than perfect, unless you have a large number of swords on you. (Fun fact: When I first played the original Legend of Zelda as a kid, when your hearts are full and your sword can shoot energy blasts shaped like swords I initially thought Link was actually throwing swords.)

I love how absurd and surreal this is. The line-work and coloring are both great as well, though I've come to expect that from Dan.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, it looks to me like the joint of the shoulder is too far from Ashley's head. (I'm basing this on the spot along her shoulder/arm where the fur sticks up, which in all the other pictures occurs right at the curve of the shoulder.) That line running from her shoulder to her back is pretty awkward looking too (it makes it look to me like she's wearing a huge scarf); in fact it's possible that line is part of the reason her shoulder looks so wide to me. As for the socks, it's entirely possible that's the correct shade given the level of lighting and the other shadows in the image. However, in my opinion, unless they're painting a realistic portrait, using art to report the news, or illustrating a scientific document (and sometimes even in those cases) an artist should place a higher priority in conveying the idea of what they are showing than in being completely accurate.

Amazing to think that if it weren't for NP we would hardly have seen Grace at all this year. (Nanase and Justin on the other hand, it really does feel like it's been ages since we've seen in more than passing; hopefully they'll get more screen-time next year.)

I really hope not. Not only would that result in our not seeing much of Ashley during that time, but it would limit the angles Dan can show everyone else at, and as cool visuals are part of the point of having all these transformations, I feel it would really detract from the story. Although, all this makes me wonder, do the player pieces reflect what the players are wearing, or what their cards say they should be wearing? It might just be that Ashley's piece would continue to wear the bikini, collar, shoes, and socks even if Ashley took them off. In this case, Dan might be able to pull this off if he focuses on the board most of the time. (Though unless there's some payoff at some point, I don't see why Dan would want to limit himself this way.)

My goodness, the dialog in panel one is open to so many "naughty" interpretations it's ridiculous. (Personally my head-canon is that while Susan took her shower, Rhoda and Catalina petted and groomed Ashley without going so far it would count as cheating on Elliot. But I can easily think of a number of less tame scenarios that fit what was said...) Hmm, the starburst in panel four is more of an embellishment to the "Attract" text than a background, so I don't think I'll cheer for it. ...But what's this, a special effect that's not a starburst? I'm not sure if it's meant as a background, but I'm going to count it as one anyway. Yay for sparkly background of cleanliness and/or attraction in panel one! I'm still rather baffled by how Dan's been handling the furry nudity (or lack thereof) in this story. I have to wonder if Dan's practice drawing non-furry characters naked for the Patreon Pinups has made him less comfortable drawing furry characters naked. I just hope the ambiguity of Asheley's state of dress is leading up to a good joke or something. Because I'd rather see Ashley clothed than not be able to see her just because she's unclothed. Depends on how much of the legend you're telling. I mean, DBZ had a lot of filler with plot, particularly prior to the battle with Frieza, and there's also the movies, the specials, GT, Super... Not to mention how the anime divided the manga up into "Dragon Ball" and "Dragon Ball Z" in the first place. However, if you restrict it to the period covered in Dragon Ball Z and leave out most of the stuff not in the original manga, Kai was able to do it in 167 episodes. (I haven't seen all of it, and it's been a while, but from what I saw I don't remember them going overboard on recapping in Kai.)

I'm a little surprised Koala is sticking around - I thought he was running away because things got too dangerous. I guess he wants to swoop in and assist the other aberrations when the heroes are nearly defeated so he can still get paid. <singing> In the twelfth strip of Sister 3 Part 22, Dan gave to us a starburst of transformation in panel 8... </singing> ...We now have had twelve starbursts in twelve strips. I think from now on I'm going to think of this chapter as "Starburst Apocalypse"... It's an interesting use of the same phrase, but considering the vastly different circumstances I doubt it was an intentional callback. While Pandora might not have had the time to track down Susan's full family tree, I'm fairly sure she'd know whether or not Raven was Susan's father. (And I personally don't think there's much chance at all of Raven being Susan's father - as I've said before, I don't think he's the type to cheat.) I probably wouldn't have figured it out on my own, but someone pointed it out back when Raven first used it in Sister 2. I suspect it was someone on the forums, but I have no idea who at this point.

Meanwhile, her socks (in the non-mirrored image of her) are shaded in so close a shade to her fur that you wouldn't know she was wearing socks just from that image if it wasn't for the mirror. Combined with what I perceive as messed up anatomy in panel 4, and Dan seems to have been having quite the off day artistically speaking.

I said rays of light, not rays of white. And seeing as this starburst reminds me of the rising sun for some reason, yellow light would be just fine.

I'm a bit disappointed by this strip; after Dan's talk of "pandering" I thought we were going to get something really fun here. Instead Ashley's scene cuts off before it gets good, and we don't even get to hear Susan's thoughts on her cow form. As for the last panel, if the next strip continues from it, we might get to see some interesting interactions, but it's not doing anything for me at the moment. Also, it could just be the unusual angle combined with a lack of reference points, but it looks to me like Ashley's body is misshapen in that panel; in particular it looks like there's too much space between the joint of her shoulder and her head. Oh well, at least there's a bunch of rays of light to lighten my day. Yay for starburst in panel 4!

I was trying to decide what pronoun to use when talking about this aberration, perhaps I should have used a gender neutral one. I can "read" them as male or female... It looks like they have a relatively flat but muscular chest, but that could be breasts rather than muscle. Meanwhile it looks like their waist is narrower than their hips, but that could just be the angle we're seeing them from and the position they're in. I really wish we'd seen more of them; a few more shots might have made it easier to tell their sex (though knowing their gender would have required someone actually having a conversation with them). ...I suppose we could try asking Dan...

I really like the design of this aberration; too bad he's another one-shot enemy.

From what I've heard, the prevailing view is that ordinary citizens worked on the pyramids (and other monuments) when the Nile was flooded and they couldn't do any farming, and it served as a way of paying taxes. (This is from memory so I might not have the details exactly right.)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/space-kitty-15706467 I seem to recall seeing Susan in a skirt in a fantasy sequence before, and this certainly isn't canon Susan, but it's still very strange to see her in a skirt.

Something about that doesn't sound right to me, but I can't put my finger on it. On the other hand, I was considering adding to my definition the restriction that for it to count as technology there should be a mechanism for passing on the knowledge of how to make the tool, which has a similar effect to your definition on what tools count as technology. To my knowledge, my revised definition would rule out all existing animal tool use except that by humans and chimps; yours would further rule out chimps. As for Australopithecus and other ancient hominids, we don't know enough about how they acted to know if their tool use met your definition of technology; the archaeological evidence that far back is so sparse and open to interpretation we may never know. That sounds a lot like the point I was trying to make at the start of this conversation... If modern technology is "unnatural", but humans naturally do unnatural things, doesn't that mean that it's natural for humans to use modern technology?

True. But sometimes we come across a situation where the exact boundary is important (such as this conversation), and then we have a problem. By the definition I'm using, yes. And technically so do chimps (a very simple, pre-stone age technology, but it still fits the definition). The Wikipedia article on technology actually seems to count any tool use as technology, but I think perhaps that's going a bit far. I think I'd limit it to cases where the tool is actually created or modified by an individual or group for use as a tool. That still includes tool use by a number of animal species, including elephants, orangutans, crows, and as I already mentioned chimps and several million years worth of pre-sapiens human ancestors.

If you have a less--broad definition of "technology" that you prefer, I'd love to hear it. As for "pre-stone age people", if you restrict the term "people" to Homo sapiens, there weren't any - hominids at least as far back as Homo habilis are known to have made stone tools, and there is some evidence the creation and use of stone tools may go back even further, to members of the Australopithecus genus. (Which gets us back to what I was saying earlier, that tool use is a part of human nature, and you can't really talk about what's "natural" for humans without taking it into account.) I agree that if we could figure out the "boundary" between the way we use tools and the way other animals use tools, that would be a useful basis for refining the definitions of "natural" and "unnatural". However, I'm not very confident it's possible to identify that "boundary". Yep, that's probably my third favorite mass extinction, after the Permian Disaster and the K-T event.

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=710 *jawdrop* Susan likes that form?! Boy was I wrong. I suppose can see how she might like certain elements... I mean, Susan does like being blonde even if she never chooses to keep it (technically I think her hair is black-and-white at the moment, but that's probably close enough). And maybe like Sarah she's fantasized about being bigger in the chest even if Susan would never admit it (though I doubt it would be as persistent a desire as with Sarah). As for the cow part, I had assumed that she'd object to the idea of a cow form just because of the associations that tends to bring. But even if she isn't letting such things sway her, I don't see how she'd actually like the cow aspect of the form... Unless she just really likes cows or something... At any rate, I really hope we get some insight into what she likes about the form in future comics. Meanwhile, Ashley has fully embraced her ditzy side and I love it. ...And I guess that petting is one of the things Dan was talking about when he said some things might happen he wouldn't want to put on the site! Oh, one last thing: Yay for starburst background of enthusiastically agreeing to pet someone in panel one!

I don't remember that. Care to provide a link, or at least a general idea of where I should look for that statement? http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=700 Well, that shows that Susan objects to the stereotype that women with bigger breasts are more attractive, but it doesn't mean she isn't subconsciously influenced by that stereotype. She also mentions that not everyone likes them, but that doesn't mean she doesn't like them, and also for many people there's a difference between what one thinks looks good on someone else and what one thinks looks good on oneself. Of course it's entirely possible Susan either dislikes or is indifferent to having large breasts, I just don't think that strip proves it.

In that case we need to define technology. Wiktionary's definitions are pretty vague, so I don't think they're helpful here; Wikipedia on the other hand says "Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to achieve some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems. It is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator." By this definition, stone tools (and other tools used by stone age people) count as technology; the Wikipedia article even goes on to list stone tools and fire in the history of technology. Actually, if ghosts really existed they'd probably count as part of the natural world (at least according the broader definition); my mentioning them was a half-hearted attempt to make a joke on the term "supernatural".

She explicitly said that's NOT the part she liked. I don't remember that. Care to provide a link, or at least a general idea of where I should look for that statement? I get the impression that enough of a person's normal personality is still there inside their head during Secret Identity spells that they usually won't do things under the influence of the spell that they would object to without the spell. (Elliot kissing Carol being an exception to this, probably a result of it being done thanks to a spur-of-the-moment impulse.) Susan probably thinks that by asking that she'll prompt the non-ditzy internal Ashley to think things through, and override the dizty outer Ashley if necessary. And until and unless we learn otherwise, I'm going to assume Susan's right. Well, I was thinking they might get enthused with the petting and take it into NSFW territory.

In many countries (the US included) those labels are stupid. Unless there are regulations defining the term (like with "organic") and enforcing it's usage, they can mean whatever the company wants them to mean, or nothing at all. Even beyond food labels, though, the definition of "natural" is a tough one. Wiktionary mentions several, the most relevant being: And they define "nature" (again omitting some irrelevant definitions): By the first definition of nature, humans don't count as part of nature. In that case we can't talk about what is or isn't "natural" for humans, because by definition we're not natural. However, I don't like this way of thinking, as it makes it seem like we're alien to the Earth, and don't belong here. By the third definition of nature, it's hard to figure out what would be unnatural, other than perhaps ghosts and invaders from another universe. Ideally there should be a definition somewhere in between, that acknowledges that we are a part of nature without making the term nature meaningless, but I don't know if such a definition exists or what it would be. I think a combination of approaches is most likely to produce the best results... We probably shouldn't pursue this part of the discussion much further, though, as it's getting close to stuff that probably belongs in the politics thread. Well, that depends on how you define "people". If we're restricting it to homo sapiens, I agree. However, a population of sentient robots & computers could probably manage it... Heck, if it provided enough of a survival advantage, a future species of hominid might even be significantly more rational than us.

Her feet are more like rabbit feet, and her hands are bigger. Given the way the boundaries between her pink and white colored parts are jagged, I suspect she's now furry; it may be that the snout, hands, feet, and fur all came together as part of a furry form (similar to what we've been seeing in NP but without the sneakers).

Also on patreon in two larger sizes: https://www.patreon.com/posts/milestone-comic-16050162 (I don't think we really need two threads when it was released roughly the same time in both places. At least I'm not bothering to make a second thread.) I didn't notice at first on the Sketchbook version, but as the larger versions make obvious, Tedd is wearing makeup in this (including lipstick). I approve. I also like the look of his ponytail. I doubt canon Tedd is self-confident enough to do wear makeup while male, but I hope one day he is and we get to see it. I read Tedd as male until the final panel, but when I got to the final panel I started wondering if one of the remote's buttons had affected him, or if he had used his mark for some reason. Looking at the highest-resolution version carefully, he'd have to be much smaller breasted than usual if he were female in that panel; I think it's just a combination of the vest lying a little funny and inconvenient shadow placement.