Monday, December 18, 2017

[Monday, December 18, 2017]

11 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

We already know she would look older. There was pinup of her.

Dan specifically says in the description that's a disguise. (Also, what makes you think that's set after her reset?)

[Story Friday 22, December 2017]

Well, at least this Aberration doesn't look silly.

2 hours ago, Drasvin said:

Seems that though Jerry was wise and knowledgeable, he didn't understand his own basic nature. Or he did and he wanted to push Zeus to be a more responsible individual. Either way, it's led to Zeus resenting his previous life. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.

I'm fairly sure it's the latter. As for Zeus resenting Jerry, it's a lot like children and teenagers resenting the rules their parents set for them. Hopefully, when he's a bit older he'll realize those rules helped prevent him from doing something he would have regretted, and he'll be thankful for them. (At least, I've heard such things can happen; personally I didn't have a problem with most of my parents' rules a young child, then as a teen I just ignored the rules I didn't agree with.)

9 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Oh, and in case you can't tell, Tedd's a guy.

When Dan wrote those words, the entirety of EGS history had already occurred.
It has just taken a bit of time to work the way through it all.
That is why so much of the early stuff turned out to be foreshadowish, even if foreshadowing wasn't intended.
The future is present in the past.

But that line turned out to not be entirely true. Tedd may have male parts between his legs in his default form, but mentally she's gender fluid.

[Story Wednesday December 20, 2017]

16 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

The extended time can be problematic. We used to have a fan here who would constantly complain about the pacing. He went absolutely berserk over a particular sequence that took place in the cellar of the Verres house and referred to it as the 'Trapped in the Basement' storyline and insisted it lasted forever. When I went back to it and counted the actual number of pages involved, it turned out to be just thirteen pages long and with two of them actually involving a brief scene change to elsewhere. (That Dan at the time was forced by RL to skip some updates did not help, really.)

I remember that. The most tedious part of that sequence was reading all of the complaints in the forums about the pacing. I did find the title "Trapped in the Basement" amusing, though.

Edit: One thing I discovered during my time away from the forums is that the comic's pacing works a lot better if you wait a few weeks between reading the comic, then read everything you missed at once. Of course, that's not exactly conductive to commenting on the comics in the reaction threads...

14 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

I've been betting on that for a long time. But there are at least two questions that follow: How does he want Magic to change? And who is the "they" who are supposed to listen to Voltaire? Is the Will of Magic something controlled by Immortals? Or can it change Magic for the Immortals as well as humans?

I'm guessing the "they" is the other Immortals (or perhaps some sort of ruling council of Immortals if they have such a thing). Perhaps he wants to convince them to change Immortal Law to be less restrictive and allow more interference in human affairs?

As to why the other Immortals would care about magic changing, it affecting how magic works for them too would be the most obvious explanation.

[Monday, December 18, 2017]

While we're on the topic of Pandora's reset, I wanted to mention I'm really hoping that when she does reset, her "Box" (little girl) form becomes her default form. Not only would I hate to see that form go, but it would help signify the fact that she's young again.

[Story Wednesday December 20, 2017]

1 hour ago, Drasvin said:

I've wondered how the secret of elves having children works with a female elf. That can't be played off as their partner cheating on them. And there only being male elves (or only male elves being able to conceive children) feels too contrived (Though it is the answer my own brain echoed back at me whenever I thought on this conundrum).

I wonder just how common Elves are? What if Adrian is the only one alive, and there haven't been any other Elves since the knowledge was suppressed? Alternately, if there have only been a handful since that time, the female ones could have all died young or decided to be celibate (though that would be quite the coincidence).

Then there's more paranoid theories like someone actively hunting down and killing Elves before they can reproduce, though that would require someone willing to gain the wrath of Immortal parents... Which leads to the thought, maybe there's a personal reason why some Immortals seem so intent on hunting down Aberrations...

[NP Wednesday December 20, 2017]

1 hour ago, Tuscahoma said:

So, do transformations "fall" onto people, because, how to put this delicately, it looks that way on Susan since her changes seem to be in mid-drop.  I mean, look at her shirt, it's about to "flomph" down.

My guess would be that the transformation actually "rises"; this would sort-of explain why Ashley's hair (and to a lesser extent Susan's hair) is lifted up. Susan's breasts likely look the way they do because the panel has captured things just as they start to fall back down again.

[NP, Monday December 18, 2017]

3 hours ago, Scotty said:

Best guess, Catalina couldn't buy the 3 space, and when Susan landed on it (Catalina's standing at the time) and bought it, Catalina's piece knelt as a way of showing that Susan owned the space.

You might have something there. When Catalina bought the space she and Rhoda were on by transforming Rhoda, Rhoda's piece got down on her hands and knees. I had thought that was just it acting dog-like, but it would also be consistent with your idea of only the owner of the space getting to stand there. (On the other hand, Rhoda's piece is still on hands and knees despite owning her current space.)

[Story Wednesday December 20, 2017]

4 minutes ago, Tuscahoma said:

Wait, so JerZeus knows that humans can be related to Immortals (thus know that Half-Immortals can have children)?  Really, Immortals must all be introverts, since there appears to be no sharing of information between them.  Or it's just Pandora who is the introvert.

He might not think Susan and Diane are descendents of Raven - he might think they're descended from relatives of Blaike.

Alternately, he might "know" that Elves can't have children, but be more willing than Pandora was to think that bit of info is wrong.

[NP, Monday December 18, 2017]

I was more focused on Susan and her piece at first, but now this is starting to bug me. Why is Catalina's piece in a "begging" position in this strip? She's not even in dog form anymore!

(For that matter, in the strip from the 15th, the piece is kneeling, which I also don't really get, unless it's an unusual way of showing her appreciation for Susan's transformation.)

[Story Wednesday December 20, 2017]

<bored voice>Yay for starburst-of-shouting-something-you-wanted-to-keep-secret in panel six.</bored voice> (I mean, I like special backgrounds and effects, but couldn't Dan throw in a few other things besides starbursts?)

7 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Ok. Pandora is clever and postpones the questions for later. ... wait, only one of us? HOW?

My guess is that if Susan (or Raven or Diane) is in danger of dying, Pandora intends to step in and deal with the vampires even if it means breaking Immortal Law. ...Of course, if she's forced to reset that's going to put a damper on explaining everything...

[NP Wednesday December 20, 2017]

Okay, so let's start with the formalities:  Yay for starburst backgrounds of transformation in panels 2 and 4!

Now that that's over with, I have to say, I'm a little disappointed the card only switched their transformations, not their appearances. On the other hand, if it had we wouldn't be able to compare how the same transformations manifest on different characters. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that Dan actually designed different furry fox faces for Susan and Ashley, rather than just having one generic furry fox face.

I also didn't expect to like the cow-girl look on Susan as much as I did on Ashley, but actually it looks pretty good on Susan too. ...Not that I expect Susan to feel the same way.

6 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

How does Susan lose the "Ditzy", yet end up more confused?

She was really taken off guard by Ashely's choice to use the Switch card. (Plus, her "What?" is before the switch takes place.)

[NP, Monday December 18, 2017]

Yeah, I don't think Susan's going to be too happy about this. For her sake, hopefully Susan'll get a reset card or an animal-form card she likes better, or lands on a space she owns (which also allows you to remove transformations) fairly soon.

I do wonder however whether this is merely "exchange transformations" or a full "exchange appearance" (i.e., the visual effects of "body swap" achieved through transformation rather than moving minds/souls). That could be fun.

[NP Friday Dec 15, 2017]

On 12/16/2017 at 9:06 PM, hkmaly said:

Maybe those fur-clad characters take him more time or require greater effort in selecting correct angle?

It should actually take less time to draw a furry character without clothing than a furry character with clothing - at least so long as he doesn't put too much detail into the fur. Of course if he was planning on making them as shaggy as the werewolves in Sarah's fantasies during the card tournament and he insisted on doing shading to match, that might have been a bit more time consuming.

I suppose posing/camera angle could be an issue too, though he hasn't seemed too concerned about that on furry characters in the past.

[Monday, December 18, 2017]

Yay, I called it! ...Like many other people on the forums, but whatever.

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

Wild theory maybe, but considering what Pandora said to Sarah, what if the whole "Huge evidence, right in front of me, right there!" comment was more than just a passing "they seem familiar" moment for Pandora? Like rather than the other woman with Susan's face being another offspring of Adrian, it was actually Pandora?  Pandora could have done a number of questionable things  during fits of boredom, would causing married men to be unfaithful be one of them? Or maybe setting up someone to be exposed as being unfaithful and then getting out the popcorn to watch the fireworks afterwards? She could have broken up her own grandson's family and not even realized it until a couple days ago(comic time).

Slightly more likely than Adrian being Susan's father, but still unlikely. Dan has been treating Pandora as a good & sympathetic character for some time; I doubt Dan would reveal something like that about her at this point.

[Story Friday December 15, 2017]

11 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Hmm, good thing I'm still using a laptop from 2007 as my at-home computer.  This iPad probably doesn't have enough space for very many explosives.

Actually, lithium-ion batteries can be explosive (at least in the sense of spewing fire everywhere, I don't think they create much explosive force) if they are punctured, crushed, overheated, overcharged, or abused in some other ways...

[NP Friday Dec 15, 2017]

21 hours ago, Stature said:

The ditziness seems gone, though. No mannerisms here.

As far as physical mannerisms go, her focus is on examining herself; I doubt a "ditz" would act much differently. As far as speech patterns go, it could be like Scotty said that Susan is actually focusing on resisting the card right now... Or it could just be that Dan couldn't fit the gratuitous "likes" and such into the space he had available.

19 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Lot of cartoon characters, including Daisy Duck if we are speaking about classic, are not wearing ANYTHING below the waist. Unless it's one of modern cartoons where the fur is actually pants and they have shorts with images underneath.

That and "multiple comics of that".

That's why I mentioned Sally to start - in season one of "Sonic the Hedgehog" (the 90s Saturday morning series, AKA "SatAM") and the early Archie Sonic comics the only thing she wore was a pair of boots. In the second season they added an open vest to her ensemble; this would be her default look in the comics for 17 years.

On the other hand, given Susan's opinion of skirts (and presumably other feminine or "girly" clothing) I suspect that if given the choice between PG furry nudity and wearing Minnie Mouse's polka-dotted skirt and high heels, she'd go with the furry nudity...

As for "multiple comics of that", apparently Dan's okay with doing one or two drawings of a fur-clad character, but not a whole bunch? It's probably the main reason ("too hot for long fur" is a pretty lame excuse, considering Catalina was just wearing a parka) but I don't get it.

13 hours ago, hkmaly said:

16 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

But socks and sandals are a scandal.

I heard that to. Why?

Because it doesn't look good? At least, I don't like how they look together (particularly white socks; some other colors aren't as bad).

7 hours ago, Scotty said:

I do wonder what would happen if someone used the Furry card without an animal form though?

In the previous strip's commentary, Dan said:

Quote

if combined with an animal card, it makes the player a more furry version of that animal card. If they don't have an animal card on them, it's just the other parts of the outfit.

So if Susan hadn't had an animal form, she would have wound up in the collar, bikini, socks and sneakers, without any fur.

(As I said in the previous comic's thread, I find that a little disappointing; I don't see why we couldn't have a person with fur but an otherwise standard human body.)

[Story Friday December 15, 2017]

8 hours ago, K^2 said:

She's looking at someone who moments ago looked to be in their sixties or seventies now looking barely older than she is. As much transformation as has been going around, that ought to take a moment to process. That this is Raven's actual form. The fact that he's an elf, and a dashing one at that, can only increase the duration of that necessary moment.

Besides, half-immortals cannot have children.

Some of us (myself included) believe that the big revelation here is that human magic users are all descended from Immortals - which of course requires that Raven (and by extension Pandora) was misinformed. ("Box's" conversation with Sarah about her son provides more evidence for this theory.)

That said, I don't think Raven is Susan's father - he doesn't seem the sort to cheat. (Also, unless Pompoms is Susan's mother's maiden name, and Susan adopted it after the divorce, Susan's last name would probably be Raven in that scenario.) I do however suspect Raven is both Susan and Diane's ancestor (and possibly not all that far back if their identical looks isn't a result of them being half-sisters). If it was on Susan's father's side, he and Raven might even look similar - which would tie into Susan's current shock.

5 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

This seems to be the 'helpful' reaction of many an overly trigger happy fictional high command. The Council in 'Avengers Assemble' that ordered a nuclear strike on New York City. In 'The Swarm', the US government's quite reasonable reaction when hearing of a swarm of killer bees on the loose is to order a full nuclear strike on Texas. In 'Monsters vs. Aliens', President Colbert almost orders a nuclear strike on San Francisco to stop a marauding alien robot.

Perhaps the nuclear strike against the alien UFO in 'Independence Day' was a bit better reasoned. Too bad it didn't work.

Nuclear weapons never seem to work when they're really needed in the movies.

Except in the Alien series for some reason... I mean, sometimes a single Xenomorph will escape from the blast zone along with the main characters, but if there's a whole lot of them around the rest will be incinerated. Then again, the Xenomorphs are a lot like ninja - alone they're nearly invincible, but in large numbers they're much more vulnerable.

[Story, Monday December 11, 2017]

11 hours ago, Drasvin said:

A lot of research came about not from people seeking a solution to a problem, but from trying to better understand how the world works and then seeking a problem for their solution. Or the research was a side-effect of other research. A better solution existing would limit proliferation of the new technologies, but whether magic were a truly better alternative would require answering questions of production and cost in addition to effectiveness. And typically, costs of a solution weigh much more heavily than effectiveness of the solution.

True. I was assuming that for the early competition between magic and technology, magic was more cost effective; this would mean that there would be less incentive to make use of the knowledge gained from trying to understand the world, at least so long as the initial technological solution was not much better than the magical one. Meanwhile, if no one (with the resources to pull it off) was visionary enough to predict that a particular form of technology could surpass magic, there wouldn't be research being done for the sake of developing that technology either. And as a lot of technology builds upon older technologies, many inventions would never be made simply because the technologies required to make that invention were never invented (or they were invented and then forgotten).

Of course, eventually scientists would probably come to questions they couldn't answer with magic alone, and would need to develop the technology required to assist them, and once they did that more commonplace uses for the technology would be found. So the world probably wouldn't be technologically stuck in the 18th century or whenever; however some technologies would never be invented, and others would be significantly delayed.

[NP Friday Dec 15, 2017]

I'm guessing Susan would not have been happy to wind up with Princess Sally's classic outfit. EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, Susan probably would have hated Minnie Mouse's classic outfit even more...

So, according to the commentary, Dan considered "only fur" but rejected it because it was too warm in the house for long fur. I'm a little disappointed, but oh well, it's his comic. Susan still looks pretty cool like that - and the larger hands are a nice touch.

Oh, and yay for starburst background in panel 2!

[NP Wednesday Dec 13 2017]

7 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Main comics? He did in NP and probably in sketchbook, but I don't remember main comics like that.

It's only partial nudity, but: Grace without her shirt on in Sister 1. (Scotty Ninja'd me on one of them.)

Grace was completely naked in Sleepy Time.

I'd forgotten about this, and it isn't quite the same thing thanks to strategic arm placement, but we actually saw the werewolf naked.

The panel cuts off just high enough we don't know how much detail Sarah was imagining (given the next panel it probably wasn't PG), but naked werewolf Tedd and Sarah. Also from Sarah's fantasy sequences (and without strategic panel border placement), Werewolf Sarah and Werewolf Nanase.

I also can think of a few naked furry Grace images in the Sketchbook section, but I don't feel like looking up the urls right now.

 

[Story Friday December 15, 2017]

Yay for starburst of super-jumping in panel two!

Boo for starburst-outline of tripping and falling in panel three. (Well, it's the tripping and falling I object to more than the special effect. That looks painful. I'm also a bit surprised to see it happen to Susan even if she was swinging a sword around with no idea what she was doing.)

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

Also, did Adrian guess at Susan's awareness of him? Or did he already pass Diane who mentioned it? Grace was pretty vague about who saw him that day and I'm not sure if Adrian knows that Grace, Nanase, Ellen and Justin are friends with Susan.

At first I was sure someone must have mentioned it before on panel, but then Dan didn't provide any reference links. My current suspicion is that Pandora told Raven after the end of the last comic we saw them in.

16 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Say, where's the Friday cliffhanger here? Perhaps it's in Susan's reactions in the last three panels.  Does she notice something about Adrian Raven now she didn't quite see in their first encounter? Perhaps the natural way Adrian helped her up triggered some memory?

Dan has always written for the archives. I'm pretty sure every "Friday Cliffhanger" has just been a cliffhanger that happened to fall on a Friday, and would have been written exactly the same if it had happened to fall on another day of the week.

That said, I am curious to know if Raven looks like Susan's father.

[NP Wednesday Dec 13 2017]

21 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I agree with the idea, but maybe Dan decided to not risk drawing that because he doesn't have enough experience with PG-thick fur? Also, I'm sure SUSAN wouldn't like that.

Maybe not on males, but he's drawn females "clothed only in fur" before. Most recently in pinups, but he did draw Grace that way several times in the main comics.

Still, I could definitely see there being some actual clothing with the fur as something Susan insisted on.

[NP Wednesday Dec 13 2017]

Yay for starburst of transformation in panel three!

...Speaking of backgrounds, I had refresh my memory on where the players are sitting and reference the board charts below the comics to figure out exactly who and what we're seeing in the background of panel one. (To any who haven't figured it out, we have Ashley's stocking foot, and behind that Rhoda's leg and sneaker-clad foot, with Rhoda's tail behind that.) And I still can't quite figure out what those lines in the lower right-hand corner of the panel (just under Rhoda's leg) are.

Moving on to the transformation, it's interesting that the "furry" clothing card comes with skimpy clothing and a collar (and as mentioned in the commentary, doesn't actually result in fur if the player doesn't have an animal transformation going). The collar is a nice touch, but personally I think it would have made more sense (and would have been more fun) if the player grew fur even if they didn't have an animal form, the fur was thick enough to keep things PG, and the fur was all the "clothing" the player wound up wearing for the length of the transformation.

Oh, and like, I didn't think to mention this before, but it's like really cool when the ditzy card affects how Susan talks and stuff.

6 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

St Bernard to Fox in two turns?

Is this most transforming Catalina has ever experienced without involving feline characteristics?

That's, like, not Catalina, Pharaoh. (The only way Susan could have transformed Catalina is if she was taking the space from her, but Catalina never actually bought the 3 space, since she didn't have the cards for it.)

[Story, Wednesday December 13, 2017]

Yay for starbursts of thwacking in panel six!

9 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, had Susan throwable stun hammers before it became her spell or is that upgrade? (And Nase armed again ...)

I don't remember seeing thrown hammers before. My guess is it's an upgrade.

...By the way, any opinions on what Koala means by "the face"? Is he complaining Susan hurt his face? Commenting that her face looks familiar? Cursing someone who goes by the alias "The Face"?

[Story, Monday December 11, 2017]

17 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Communication is quite important area of research. If there would be considerable limits or problems in using magic for communication, there would be no reason to stun technological growth in the area. Unless, of course, the reason would basically be that magic users are trying to keep monopoly through preventing ANY research and are very successful in it.

My thinking is that in the 18th and 19th centuries, magic could do similar things to the inventions made in those centuries in our world, and as such many of those inventions were never made or never became well known. As a result of this the technological growth of this alternate world was stunted, and they're still decades or more away from developing the miniturized electronics required for cell phones (and PCs for that matter) - assuming anyone has thought to research such things at all.

For instance, if they already possessed a magical means of two-way audio & video communication (something which has to be set up in specific locations and cannot easily be moved, like say a pool with runes carved into its stone walls), they might not have invented the electric telegraph or land-line telephones. And if they could light their homes with magic lanterns instead of oil or gas based lanterns, there might not be any incentive to build an electrical grid. And so on.

...It occurs to me this is a lot of speculation built on the facts that we weren't told that Magus took Ashley's phone, and we haven't seen any modern technology in the brief flashbacks we've had to Magus world. I still stand by my claim that my scenario is possible, but knowing Dan it's more likely Magus world has modern tech and either Magus and Sirleck did take Ashley's phone and we don't know it yet, or they simply forgot. (We could even wind up with a scene of "I thought you took her phone!" "No, you were supposed to do that!")