ChronosCat

Well, you wouldn't normally see that sort of thing in an official, professionally made rule-book, but (a) this isn't the rule book, it's just Hanma breaking the fourth wall to clarify some points, and (b) Hanma has a rather informal, conversational style of explaining things.

It came up several times back in the old days, so I wasn't sure if it was worth repeating... But if you think it's a good idea, I'll run through it again... Nioi says that the main reason for the Second Life dreams is to age Ellen & Kaoli's souls. If Second Life was a magical simulation with compressed time, one in which they possessed free will and the ability to affect the outcome, Ellen and Kaoli really would be effectively living out a second life in their dreams, and it would make sense that the experience would age their souls. However, if it's simply a recorded memory they're passively watching, why does it age them when the memories they inherited from Elliot and Nioi apparently don't? Furthermore, the second reason for including Ellen in the Second Life dreams was so Kaoli would have someone to share them with. Well, I suppose it gives them another thing to talk about when they eventually meet (though I wonder how much time they'll have to chat seeing as it'll probably be part of the big final conflict with General Shade Tail and Lord Tedd) but as it stands it's not all that different from knowing that someone else watched the same movie as you; main Ellen and Alpha Kaoli don't even know anything about each other besides what little Nioi passed on. It would have created a much more meaningful connection between the two of them if they had both been living within the same world, their real-life selves influencing their decisions. Finally, I really hope Nioi got SL Ellen & Kaoli's permission before copying their memories/lives, as if not that was a huge invasion of privacy. Of course given that Nioi didn't think it was necessary to get Ellen's informed consent before dumping over a decade of someone else's memories into Ellen's head (Nioi sort of asked for permission, but was so vague Ellen had no idea what she was agreeing to, which does not count as informed consent) I'm not all that confident Nioi got proper permission before copying the memories either...

Really? It makes perfect sense to me (but then I've been known to explain things in an overly complex manner myself). Out of curiosity, can you elaborate on what you find "complex"/"strange" about the rules / their description?

I don't think Elliot's catboy form has any affect on him or his mind when he's not in it.

Kind of funny to think that Ellen was once intended to be a villain by Dan, and even made a very poor attempt at it in Sister 1. She sure looks the part now (even if it's Sirleck at the helm). My first guess is that out of desperation and for the sake of his conscience he's fooling himself into thinking Sirlek is trustworthy (if not exactly a good guy). Of course, just being that nieve wouldn't be out of character for Elliot, and Magus is an alternate of Elliot, so perhaps he shares that trait... Francine survived being possessed by Sirlek, so clearly said possession isn't automatically fatal. (Perhaps he slowly drains his victim's life energy (or whatever it is Aberrations consume) over the course of years?)

First of all, "flashbacks" are a storytelling device, they have nothing to do with information transfer between universes (unless you count our universe as part of the equation, which is a little silly). Secondly, other than Second Life, have we ever seen a one-way transfer of information between in-comic universes? Admittedly, how Nioi got the Second Life memories is a bit of a puzzle. Presumably magic, but how did the magic do it? It might have simply copied SL Ellen and Kaoli's memories from their brains, but then why were the early memories so vivid? The only options I can think of are if the spell connected to the SL universe (and probably SL Kaoli & Ellen's minds) when SL Kaoli was a child then followed the universe forward in time at an accelerated rate, or if the spell can read the past of a selected individual. The first option would violate the "universes must travel at the same speed while connected" part of the Don Edwards suggested, though I think that so long as the rest of the rules were adhered to it could still work. The second is rather close to being a form of time travel, but as the information transfer is only forwards in time there still wouldn't be a risk of history alteration (which is Dan's reason for not allowing time travel in EGS). (Incidentally, I really wish SL had been an interactive simulation, not a set of memories. It would have made a lot more sense that way, both for the purpose of "aging" Ellen's soul and regarding the question of how the memories got from SL Ellen to main-universe Ellen. But that's an old rant.)

Well, Dan does say that whether Elliot has fur or not is open to interpretation; if he doesn't have fur then he probably would still retain the human body cooling abilities. Plus, now he has less clothing in the way of that cooling system.

We've already had hints that Ellen might be in a position to fight for control. From a storytelling perspective, I think it would be a bit much if Elliot started fighting back too. I personally think Elliot is possessed by Magus, not merged with him, but the only bit of evidence I could find without a huge search is Dan talking about possession in the commentary for the Nov 12 strip, and it might have just been a quick and easy term to use rather than a description of what's going on. Incidentally, I forgot to clarify in my previous post that when I was talking about "present day Magus" I meant his appearance in his pre-possession astral form. The current Magus/Elliot body we're seeing is not Magus' body, it's Elliot's body transformed by one of Ellen's beams (probably with some modifications by Magus); I suspect there are some differences from Magus' old body, and we really can't draw conclusions about Magus' age or anything else related to physical appearance from it.

Dan has stated before that different universes in the EGS multiverse may be ahead or behind the main one as far as time goes; Magus' world must have been ahead by a few years. (This may also explain why Lord Tedd and General Shade Tail look older than the main Tedd and Grace.) As for why we haven't seen an age difference between present-day Magus and flashback Magus, it's likely that he doesn't age while in astral form.

I happened to be looking at the comments on Patreon, and Dan said something that pertains to our discussion on the effects of the card: So the effects of the card do not include becoming airheaded, but there may be more to the "more ditzy with every use" than we know yet - at the very least Dan doesn't want to spell it out yet. As for the first part, it's a valiant attempt to clarify things, but there's still some room for interpretation. It does modify my interpretation of the card's effects somewhat; it seems Susan doesn't have to be comfortable with it to be influenced by the card -- not actively resisting and not thinking about how she doesn't like the "role" may be enough.

I wonder if Immortals are even capable of traveling to other universes? At the least I doubt they do it often; the fact that the Immortals in the Gryphons' world have a different set of laws would seem to imply that each Immortal has a home universe and that they don't usually just wander from one universe to another on a whim. Unless Abraham crossed between universes and brought the Dewitchery Diamond (and his journal) with him, the main EGS universe used to have Werewolves. We also know that magic has been used by humans for many centuries (the last Magic Change itself was before Pandora's last reset) and there was once a major battle where one side was openly using magic. I suspect that while the main EGS world currently looks a lot like ours on the surface, in the Middle Ages and before that it more closely resembled a world out of myths, legends, and fantasy - and that Blaike lived in the main universe.

It's interesting how Magus says "Please don't let this stop you from pursuing..." then trails off. I wonder if this is because his mind is racing and he just happened to not finish the sentence, or if there''s a more significant reason. On a related note, I wonder if there's any significance to Magus thinking Ellen's origins would have an affect on Ashley's interest in Elliot, or if it's just another example of him not knowing her. (These questions come to mind in part because while Magus claims Elliot and Ellen will be fine, I can't shake the feeling that one or both of them will be permanently changed by this experience, and that Magus knows this.) While Magus almost certainly wouldn't have been powerful enough to force an Immortal to reset, I'm a little surprised he wasn't even there when it happened; somehow I'd always pictured Pandora doing it to help him at a critical moment. Also, while there has been discussion here about why Magus went to France, there hasn't been any comment on the fact that he was in France at all. Am I forgetting this being mentioned before, or is it just that no one had anything to say about this tidbit? Magus has good intentions, and cares about others at least to an extent. However, he believes the ends justify the means, and is willing to compromise his own morals to achieve his goals. He may not be an irredeemable villain, but he's not exactly a stellar example of a hero either.

I can't wait to see Ashley's reaction to being transformed. Also it looks like it's time to continue (or would that be revive?) an old tradition... Yay for cowhead & starburst background in panel 3!

That's not how I interpret it. As explained in the Nov 16 strip (and again in a slightly less confusing manner in that strip's commentary), while under the effects of the Ditzy card, the player may play multiple cards of the same type at once (which is not normally allowed); only one goes into effect but all of them are counted as used, allowing the player to buy expensive squares with only a single transformation. In light of that, I interpret what Hanma is saying here to be that each time the player makes use of the Ditzy card's effect to play multiple cards of the same type at once, the level of ditzyness of the "role" they are being pushed to perform increases. It does not, however, become any harder to resist. The commentary does suggest that if (and that's a big "if") Susan grows more comfortable with acting ditzy (and thus stops resisting as hard), she'll automatically act more in line with the ditzy "role". However, this is unrelated to the increase in ditzyness caused by using the card's ability, and as far as we've seen the card isn't designed to make the player grow more comfortable with it. Furthermore, even if she does become comfortable enough to play along completely she'll still be aware of how the card is affecting her, and she can still resist it just as easily if a reason comes up to do so. (One potentially insidious side of this would be if once you fully accepted the act you would no longer think of new reasons to resist the act, but this seems to run counter to how Elliot's secret identities work, and apparently the "roleplaying" aspect of the card works the same way as Secret Identity Spells.)

Susan is explaining that the pheromones stop being given off after a while; Ellen might never have had any because Elliot might have stopped giving them off before he touched the Dewitchery Diamond. This doesn't mean that Elliot never had them. My thinking as well. In fact I began to suspect that when Sirleck/Ellen avoided the racoon in the road. Sirleck may have blamed Ellen's muscle memory, but unless Ellen has had to dodge a lot of things in the road I wouldn't expect her body to react to something in the road through muscle memory alone; I would think that some part of her mind (maybe conscious, maybe subconscious) would have to make the judgment "this is a thing I do not want to run into/over" first (even if that judgment is made in a split second). It's strange though; Sirleck presumably has had many hosts over the years, so you'd think he'd know if his subjects were aware (and maybe even able to fight back) while he was possessing them. If so, why is Ellen different from his previous hosts?

If the actual universes in the Multiverse were "selected" at random from all the possibilities, then the chances of anyone having an alternate in another universe would be slim. However the fact that we know Elliot and Tedd have alternates in almost every alternate world we've seen (as of the confirmation of Magus and Terra being alternates of them, the only alternate world we know anything about they haven't been confirmed to be in is the Griffon's world, and that isn't even an entirely separate world) suggests that either a significant number of the EGS universes were "selected" from a group of fairly similar possibilities or that there is some force making those two extremely likely to be born. ...In the process of composing this post I realized that the only other people besides Elliot and Tedd we've seen in more than one canon universe are Nioi/Kaoli and the original human Grace (and possibly "Shade Tail", though personally I don't think our Grace and General Shade Tail count as alternates) - and each of those we've only seen in two worlds. Furthermore, realistically speaking, the differences between the worlds we've seen are great enough that it would be strange for the same people to be born in them. Now I'm starting to suspect maybe there really is something special about Elliot and Tedd...

I expect that there are alternates for nearly all the characters in other universes (Dan has said that the EGS multiverse is finite, so there might be a few individuals whose birth was unlikely enough that they only show up in one universe). And I don't have a problem with new ones showing up. I just think it's poor writing to introduce a character and then long after we've come to know them as an individual character reveal "Oh, by the way, they're the duplicate of this other well established character." I'd feel the same way if the fan theory that Diane is an alternate of Susan were to be revealed to be true. I'd like to think Immortal law would prevent them from impersonating one another (even if it apparently doesn't keep them from choosing the same name), as you'd think such impersonations would lead to some very fierce conflict between them. However, such a law has not yet been revealed in the comic.

First of all, we knew that before we even knew Magus' name or that he came from an alternate universe, so it doesn't exactly match the scenario I was alluding to where I have one opinion and then new information makes me change my mind in time to be right when Dan makes the answer official. Secondly, at one point Pandora said something to the effect of "You need two who are one". I've always assumed that any Dewitchery Diamond duplicate and the person they were duplicated from would work for Magus' resurrection, it was just that Ellen was the only living Dewitchery duplicate alive in the main EGS universe and arranging for another duplicate to be made would have been even more difficult than trying to get Ellen to zap Elliot. If I found out they had been in a relationship for some time without the readers being informed, I would be highly annoyed. If we actually saw them form a trio I'd have a moment of giddy happiness. Either way, my next reaction would be "Okay, now give us cute scenes of them doing romantic things together." ...Which is all just to say that I'm not interested in the possibility of a Tedd/Grace/Sarah relationship for the speculation, I'm interested in it for what we'd get to see if it happened. As for the Magus revelation, beyond being disappointed that I guessed wrong, a big part of my disappointment comes from one of the reasons I didn't think Magus was Elliot in the first place - in EGS (or any other story with alternate universes as a prominent element), the idea that a mysterious new character is an alternate of a known character is just too easy and obvious an answer. It's been implied that Pandora has two mental modes (possibly without a clear boundary between them) - one in which she is a fairly kind human-like individual (and loving mother / widow), and one in which she is uncaring, nearly omniscient, and extremely bored. And until Sister III most of what we've seen of her has been in the latter mode; I suspect it's the state she's spent much of the past few centuries in. I don't think Pandroa ever helped Magus out of the kindness of her heart; she was bored, and thought that warning Edward Verres about Magus then helping Magus to regain his body would alleviate her boredom. (That said, I can't see any reason why Immortals couldn't impersonate one another, so your idea is possible.)

I always interpreted that scene as indicating Sirleck had been controlling the old man for quite some time, the Old Man was terminally ill, and Sirleck was providing some sort of magical life-support since he wasn't ready to change hosts just yet. It never occurred to me the lack of signs of illness in the Old Man's later appearances might have any significance; I just assumed Dan didn't feel the need to devote the time to reminding the readers the Old Man was sick. I suppose it's technically possible Sirleck possessed the Old Man around the time of that strip (though that really doesn't look like the moment of possession to me), but why would he possess a man who is already sick and dying? Sure, he was rich, but there's plenty of healthy young rich men and women he could have picked from instead.

The idea that Magus might be Elliot's alternate has been floated around in the forums since we first saw his origins, but I've always been in the camp that believed the two to be entirely unrelated and blamed the similarity of their appearances on Dan's art style not having many different faces back then. While this is not the first time Dan has proven my predictions of what he's doing wrong, there's usually enough foreshadowing for me to pick up on my mistake before the big reveal. This time however I was caught completely off guard. After knowing that Magus was Elliot, though, Terra being Tedd didn't surprise me in the least - I actually did notice the resemblance between those two in a recent re-read, I just dismissed it at the time because it wouldn't make much sense for her to be an alternate of a character we know and Magus not to be.

Thanks for the welcome. My intention was merely to comment on what hkmaly said; sorry if it seemed like I was commenting on your mix-up. Regarding Elliot and Ellen, was it ever said they have a high level of magical talent/ability? Clearly Elliot has a high level of martial arts skill and the ability to combine that with some simple combat magic (and he also has a flying-brick superhero form), and Ellen has a wide variety of non-attack "beam" spells with a lot of potential if used creatively, but I've never thought of them as unusually talented or powerful in the magic department. Thanks for the welcome to you too. (I have to say, though it's very strange getting multiple welcomes now. Even ignoring my brief visit back in June, I've been back since the end of September!)

While I'm not particularly fond of the ditzy trope, if would have been fun to see it applied to Susan for a little bit. I wish that instead of seemingly ditching it entirely, Dan had tried just toning it down. Over on Patreon Thatoneguy suggested the effect might be on the mini figure, which would be better than nothing, but I still hope there's some mental/verbal affect on Susan herself.

Although it's possible Dan has some surprising revelations in store, my assumption is he just meant Elliot in the "family" category, with a far greater concern about the "friends" category (and probably a great deal of concern regarding the family of certain friends).

If you mean that Susan missed landing on the same space as Catalina and Rhoda, Dan did say in the Nov 10 commentary that his original roll here was another 7, but he felt that would be boring from a story perspective and re-rolled. (If that's not what you meant, I'm curious what you did mean?) That was my first thought as well, but it partially depends on what interpretation of "ditzy" Dan/Hanma is using here. She could be easily distracted and perhaps talk in a stereotypical "ditzy" manner without actually having reduced intelligence or being dangerously absent minded.

So, my speculation: this occurs after a scene we'll be getting to later in which Susan and Diane get into a fight with the army of aberrations, possibly with the help of one or more "good" Immortals, which somehow leads to a magical lights display in the sky. I'm actually a little disappointed Dan felt the need to "keep the tone from getting out of hand". Dan has already shown with Painted Black and the previous Sister stories that he can take EGS to a fairly dark place and then pull it back into fairly lighthearted comedy/drama, and I feel like those highs and lows help to give the world a greater feeling of depth. Of course, there's plenty of room for things to still get darker, but I don't see why this particular scene couldn't have a darker tone. ...Also, Magus could have followed Sirleck's first suggestion and still explained everything to Ashley; she doesn't have to be able to talk back for him to exposit at her.