ChronosCat

An incredibly courageous German diplomat caught wind of what was going on and he and some of his friends risked their lives in getting word out before the operation started. Many Danish Jews quietly prepared for flight. On the night between October 1 and October 2, 1943 the Nazis started their action but only caught 500 Danish Jews, or about 5% of the total. The rest managed to escape to Sweden or simply to stay hidden in the time that followed.
I have mentioned that my own family was part of this. My uncle Per was only a few months old, and my grandfather and grandmother did not dare to bring him along for fear that his crying would bring the Nazis down on them. Instead my family's beloved and loyal nanny Gerda took charge of him and went out of town, pretending that he was her own. My grandparents and my eight year old father then went to the coast hoping to find transport across the Sound. They could not find a vessel willing to carry them but managed to buy a leaky rowboat for the exorbitant price of five thousand crowns, or roughly thirty to fifty thousand dollars in today's currency. The rowboat nearly sank and one time they feared they had been turned around, but they finally reached Sweden. Fortunately they were not greeted by a Nazi-sympathising government that separated my father from his parents and sent him to a children's internment camp. I am very thankful for that.
Faithful Gerda stayed hidden for three months but rumour got around that she was hiding a Jewish baby and she was forced to flee. She managed to reach Sweden and started to search for my grandparents. Once again, the Swedes did not seize my uncle and send him to a holding facility for refugee babies. And after many weeks of searching she found my grandparents and my father. It was an emotional reunion and Gerda was part of my family for the rest of her life.
Of course, this would have been impossible without the cooperation of many Danish politicians, police officers and civilians. Fortunately not all of the fleeing families had to deal with greedy war profiteers to escape. And happily and importantly, when it became possible to return home to Denmark again, the way opened by the Allied soldiers who fought so long and hard to destroy the Nazi abomination, Danish Jews were welcomed home. My own family found their apartment completely untouched if a bit dusty. All that was missing was a bottle of brandy that the janitor had availed himself of, and given how well he had taken care of everything my family hardly begrudged him that.
I owe my life and freedom to the German officials who leaked a warning of the upcoming purge, to the Danish politicians who quietly spread the word, to all the people who aided in the flight, to the Swedes who so generously gave shelter to my family and so many others, and of course to the efforts of the American and English soldiers -- and to all the Americans and English who worked so hard and paid so much back in their homes. My wife's grandfather, a Captain in the U. S. Corps of Engineers, fought his way from D-Day to Berlin, missing only the Ardennes offensive because he was on Christmas leave. It was a privilege to have known him. (Lord, but the man hated Nazis. I find it hard to blame him.)
This story is very much on my mind these days. I apologise for rambling about it, but I feel better with it out here. Thank you all.

Dear forumgoers,
I apologise but I am not at my best currently. For that reason I will likely be less active. I will continue to monitor the forums and respond to requests from posters, however. I will hopefully recover before too long.
(I have been aware of this problem for some days but it was driven home to me when I was looking at Youtube videos and my brain insisted that one was titled "How will undecided Senators evaluate alligators?" I made the operative decision that I need to withdraw a bit and I will leave the alligator problem in Pharaoh's capable hands.)
Thank you all.
~tOH.

I started reading because I heard there were "transgender transformations" in it (this was long before any characters were revealed to be trans, of course); Sister and Grace's Birthday Party did not disappoint on that account. (If I had known that it would eventually deal with real-life trans issues that would have been even more of a selling point.) The furry transformations were also a highlight of my archive binge (I'm pretty sure I was unaware of that aspect of the comic when I started reading, so it came as a pleasant surprise).
However, what kept me coming back after I'd finished the archive (and long after abandoning all the other webcomics I started reading back then) was and is my attachment to the characters.

I could not find (at least with a very quick search) a definition of "social agenda", but "agenda" itself specifically refers to a plan or list (at least according to wiktionary). This is why I feel a person should have the intention to promote a cause for it to properly be said they have a social agenda. I will admit though that from how I've heard it used many other people do not seem to have such a strict definition of the term.
At any rate, as I said to begin with this is just a semantics argument. Even if a writer does not consciously have an "agenda", they can't help but insert their own point of view and opinions into the story, so the end result for the audience is the same.

So are you suggesting that Lucy has a crush on Diane? I kind of got that vibe as well but didn’t want to make assumptions.

I don't find actual cows attractive, but I do find cow-people attractive - at least the way Dan draws them.
I also love the power-exchange element here. Dan doesn't do a lot of art or storytelling which touches upon this (not counting Rhoda and Catalina's interactions, which are really open to interpretation) but when he does it has a tenderness and respect for both characters that I really appreciate.

Does a better job of making them still look like themselves while transformed, and I like the implied BDSM interactions and power exchange.  Went too far into unrealistic proportions for my tastes, and I just don't find cows particularly attractive, although it was pretty well-executed for what it is.  Facial expressions are good, body language is eloquent!

Presumably relevant to why Rhoda's hair is so long.
Edit: Unrelated, and not much of a surprise, but I figured this ought to be posted here as well:
 
 

I have mixed feelings about this one . On the one paw, I agree with the point Dan is trying to make. On the second paw I'm tempted to argue semantics; while it's impossible to tell a story without some political messages to it (intended or not), the specific term "social agenda" implies to me that one is intentionally trying to bring about real-world change, and (keeping in mind I have no idea what comic Dan is referring to or what the story behind its creation is) it seems possible to me that the creators had no greater goal than to tell what they considered fun stories. On the third paw, often people who claim they have no social/political agenda are lying, so maybe they had an agenda after all.
On the fourth paw, I also have some semantic issues with panel two. A lie and a truth placed side-by-side do not necessarily a paradox make: strictly speaking a verbal paradox should be a singular statement which contradicts itself; two contradictory statements are an antinomy. (Of course antinomy is obscure enough that my spellcheck doesn't like it, and honestly I just discovered the word myself, but that doesn't change the fact that the situation in the comic does not fit my definition of paradox.) ...Also, that's not how paradoxes work, but I'm willing to let it slide for the sake of humor seeing as this is non-canon.
Incidentally, that's a pretty impressive triple-starburst in panel two. I'd cheer for it, but I'm pretty sure it's part of the "paradox" special effect rather than a proper "background".

I could not find (at least with a very quick search) a definition of "social agenda", but "agenda" itself specifically refers to a plan or list (at least according to wiktionary). This is why I feel a person should have the intention to promote a cause for it to properly be said they have a social agenda. I will admit though that from how I've heard it used many other people do not seem to have such a strict definition of the term.
At any rate, as I said to begin with this is just a semantics argument. Even if a writer does not consciously have an "agenda", they can't help but insert their own point of view and opinions into the story, so the end result for the audience is the same.

Technically, V'GER was Voyager 6, NASA stopped after 2 so really you can say that NASA took The Motion Picture as a warning.

Meh, it's less about him being a gamer and more about him placing his own hobbies above paying attention to the girl he is with and anything that she might be interested in. It would be just as stupid if his obsession were about sports, or books, or collecting memorabilia, or anything else.

I remember watching The Transformers and G. I. Joe in the afternoon, after high school let out, when we were in the mood to give our brains a rest for an hour.  I started watching Transformers with the movie (the friend who had wanted to see it, had to explain stuff like why people were cheering when the good-guy boombox ejected little cassette bots to fight the bad-guy boombox's cassette minions), and  only watched Joe because it was on after Transformers.
My older sister and I were savvy enough to know the shows were trying to sell toys, and evaluating how they did it and how successful or blatant they were was part of the fun of watching.  We could appreciate the good writing and try to figure out where the bad writing went wrong, and see writing about new toys as a challenge the writers had to meet, rather than an automatic failing.  When my sister invented the Nocturnicons, she figured out gimmicks for the toys, like a bat who was a spy/had excellent hearing, and the toy was a Mister Microphone-type toy inside.  She also wrote a terrific short story with Starscream's ghost that was modeled after Steven King's short story "Survivor Type" (if you've read it, you will likely remember it the moment I say "med student stranded on a desert island").  I leveled the field by inventing some female Decepticons, again with the toys all planned out.
I don't recall doing as much of that with Joe but I was aware of the marketing elements there, too, trying to come up with things like an excuse to put everyone in new outfits (perhaps an "alternate universe" episode where you can make evil versons of the good guys and good versions of the villains, who just happen to be the same mould with different colors of plastic ;-) or create a new character who was an inventor as an excuse for new gizmos and their toys.
The challenge was to tell a good story in the process of selling those toys, to come up with interesting toys and well-rounded characters who were distinct from those that already existed.  And there were times when the shows managed to do all of that, if you paid attention.  I honestly think a good show will sell more toys than a bad one, even to little kids, and I think at least some of the writers and people in charge got that.  Every writing class or group I've been in has used challenges as an exercise, like "write a story with only dialog" or "write three paragraphs with your main characters, not using the letter 'e' at all" or "write a scene set in an unusual place, where the setting it an integral part of the story."  These shows were a great example, basically "write a half-hour episode which introduces this new toy, in a way that will make kids like the character and want to buy it."  Sometimes, having to follow restrictive rules can lead to wonderfully creative stuff.
 
....I'm still disappointed in them for not coming out with a Starscream's Ghost toy made of clear plastic....

For some strange reason, this reminds me of my childhood, when half-hour toy commercials had breaks every now and then to show short films about cereal, snacks, and other toys.
Anyway, yay for starburst background in panel three!

Geez I ended up feeling bad for Diane. In part due to my Asperger’s Syndrome I have my own difficulties with social que, and a lot of social rules seem arbitrary. As a result I ended up taking on the idea of just being myself, not caring about my reputation. This is because those who care about you will care about you will care about you for who you really are, and those who don’t, don’t matter. 
It comes from my DEFAULT. mindset of not seeing the point in pretending that reality is anyway other then it is. What this means is that when I try to relate to others I try to imagine how I would feel in their position. On one hand that’s why I messed up and assumed that Diane didn’t care about her reputation. On the other hand I can easily imagine being hurt and betrayed, when all you want is interpersonal connections.
To give a personal example I wasn’t always (If I even am now) the best judge of character. Once when I was a little kid, I was over in the yard of someone who I, at the time, thought was a friend. He ended up chasing me around this huge field with a board (like a 2x4) with a nail through it. I ended up going up and being scared and telling my mom I never wanted to go back. I didn’t even tell her the specific reason why at that point. It was only OVER TWO DECADES LATER when I ended up talking with my parents about it again. In hindsight I realize that such a person and (another who I don’t want to talk about (let’s just say what he did was less terrifying but just as obvious in hindsight) were never really my friends at all. But I was both so bad with social ques, and wanted friends so badly (and could be a bit of a brat myself back then to be fair) that it took something exteme to wake me up to the reality back then.

https://xkcd.com/851_make_it_better/

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Nintendo Direct: August 8, 2018
(wow, did I really not do this for the E3 reveal? ...here it is anyway, just in case you haven't watched it)
Here's a quick breakdown:
Starting with a character reveal: Simon Lashes Out! That's right; Simon Belmont from Castlevania! "Hey man! Haven't seen you in a while. Now we can re-enact-" Mega Man: "SHH! Don't bring that up!" Pit: "Bring up what-icus?" Mega Man: "AARGH!" The same trailer also reveals that Richter Crosses Over! Two! Two Castlevania protagonists! Ah ah ah! *dramatic thunder and lightning* Incidentally, this means we currently have playable fighters from 32 unique video game franchises (well... 30, depending on how you count Yoshi and Wario) across  On top of that, we get Alucard as an Assist Trophy and Dracula's Castle as a stage, complete with thirty-four music tracks! Said Dracula's Castle stage has numerous enemies from the Castlevania games, from the Mummy to the Werewolf to the lightning-revealed silhouette of a character only called ????? (some people seem to recognize the silhouette as that of Kid Dracula). Dracula appears as a boss, but the conditions for his appearance are still a mystery. Hmm... Right after that, we got two more Echo Fighters (re: clones... Wow, did I really not post here about E3? I guess I didn't. Huh.) Chrom from Fire Emblem: Awakening. He's a clone Echo Fighter of Roy, though he has Ike's recovery and a completely new Final Smash. Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime trilogy. She's a clone of Bowser (I'm kidding). We got some stage reveals as well. Previously, the GameXplain people managed to find 86 unique stages between the E3 direct and demo, and the character showcase videos, snapshots, and and portraits on the Smash Ultimate website. Well, we've bumped that number up to 103! For the record, there's only 120 stages across the entire series, and we're getting over 85% of them! Stages from the N64 Smash Bros. retain their old look while stages from Melee onwards get a graphical makeover. Only teased at in Mario's character showcase video, we now have confirmation of New Donk City Hall, based on the location from Super Mario Odyssey. It's a scrolling stage that goes up the tower to the top before cycling back down. Tired of playing on the Wily Castle stage and having to fight the Yellow Devil every ten seconds? Say no more! Stage Hazards can be turned completely off. This might open up more stages for professional tournament play without having to stick with their Final Destination or Battlefield forms. Can't pick just one stage? Pick two! The Stage Morph option lets you choose two stages. During the match, it will switch between them. You can set the switch to happen randomly or after a certain amount of time has passed. Mix things up! And lastly, every stage will be available at start. There will be no unlockable stages; they're all available from the moment you turn the game on. We saw a stage roster with all stages revealed so far. Including the random option, there's still enough room for six more... "Vegeta, what does the scouter say about the number of music tracks?" "It's over EIGHT-HUNDRED!" "WHAT!? EIGHT-HUNDRED!?" That's just for music for stages; including menu music and fanfare, that goes up to "OVER NINE-HUNDRED!" For the record, assuming no looping or repeats, that's over 28 hours of music! Yeesh. Trips to Namek don't take that long. Music is now grouped by series instead of by stage, so if you're playing a Zelda stage, you can use any Zelda music in the game. You can also make your own playlists, and listen to them with the Switch in handheld mode like any music player. When setting up a match in online multiplayer, the FIRST thing you do is make a rule set. By the way, Stamina mode is an available mode for multiplayer matches. Final Smash Meter! Enable this, and you can build up a Final Smash meter. When it's full, you can use a weaker version of your Final Smash. Multiple characters can now have Final Smashes ready, though only one can use them at a time. Since Final Smashes can be not random (chasing the Smash Ball was definitely random) and are also weaker in this way, this means we might be seeing Final Smashes in professional tournaments. Game modes! Squad Strike! It's a 3-on-3 or 5-on-5 elimination-style match. Basically a three-or-five-stock battle where each stock is a different fighter. You could also have five players per side. Tournament mode! Back to how it was in Brawl, you can host your own local tournaments with up to 32 fighters. Smashdown! Choose your characters for round 1. For round 2, you cannot choose those characters! Play through the roster with no repeats. Heck, if you wanna play strategically, pick a character you know your friend is good at so that they can't use that one against you later. Training Mode got a redesign. Now there's a grid, so you can judge character sizes and distances. Your opponent in Training Mode is a fighter this time instead of a sandbag, so you can test out grapples too. When you hit someone, you see launch trajectories. Classic Mode! Battle your way against several consecutive fighters on specific stages, just like in the old days. Each fighter has their own set of opponents. New items! Banana Gun. Shoot the innards of the banana like a projectile. The peel turns into a regular Banana Peel. Death's Scythe from Castlevania. Instantly KOs enemies that are badly damaged. Killer Edge. When the blade glows red, it deals more damage. Staff. Deals more damage the farther away the target is. Ramblin' Evil Mushroom from Earthbound. This makes other fighters' controls flip around. That's confusing. Rage Blaster. The more damage the wielder has taken, the stronger the shot. New Pokemon and Assist Trophies Alolan Exeggutor. This super-tall palm tree Pokemon acts as a solid obstacle, so you can't get past it. Characters that can wall-jump and cling to walls can do so to Alolan Exeggutor's neck. Vulpix and Alolan Vulpix. Two separate Pokemon. Vulpix appears to use Ember, shooting a burst of fire forwards like Lucas' PK Fire. Alolan Vulpix does the opposite, shooting ice. Mimikyu. This little whatever-it-is grabs a fighter and takes it under its cloak, dealing damage and KO'ing them. Pyukumuku. This sea cucumber Pokemon only deals damage when attacked. Marshadow. This ghostly Pokemon attacks from the shadows. Ditto. Originally planned for Super Smash Bros. Melee but couldn't be implemented due to technical issues (re: bugs), Ditto transforms into a copy of whoever summons it.   Zero from Mega Man X. He attacks using beam swords and other things. Nikki from the Swap Note messaging app of all things. She draws things on a drawing pad. Those things appear on the stage and can do stuff. She's shown drawing a Bonzai Bill from the Mario games, which proceeds to fly off stage, dealing damage to the fighters in its way. She can probably draw other things. SHOVEL KNIGHT. Deals damage and digs up food. Kapp'n from Animal Crossing. He gets in his bus and drives off, picking up anyone in his way (whether they like it or not) and driving them to the blast line. Chef Kawasaki from Kirby. He basically uses Kirby's Final Smash from Brawl, where fighters and items get sucked into a giant cooking pot for a bit before being spat out. A Klaptrap from Donkey Kong. This jumpy little mini crocodile thingy bites fighters. Not that impressive, but hey, they can't all be... The MOON from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. The Moon drops from the sky to crash into the stage! Seriously! The freakin' MOON! Is that Rathalos? The Rathalos enemy from Monster Hunter appears as an Assist Trophy. It also pulls double-duty and appears as a boss on a stage we don't recognize. Hmm... The menu looks nice, but there's this one option that's deliberately pixellated as they can't talk about it yet. Hmm... Sakurai said every fighter will be revealed before launch. A bit disappointing if you wanted some surprise, but in the age of Internet, it's really not gonna make a difference to me, so eh. And for the closer? King K. Rool Comes Aboard! So... Hype?

Dear Amazon.
Yes, I bought an electric bike. That means, for a while any way, that I will not be buying another one. You can stop with the emails showing me each and every one you sell.
Thanks.

No, it is a large melon-like fruit of a plant of the gourd family, with smooth green skin, red pulp, and watery juice.

Meanwhile, if there is infinite number of universes, it doesn't present any problem. For the same reason you can fit countably infinitely many coachloads of countably infinite passengers each into single hotel with a countably infinite number of rooms, all of which are already occupied.
That's very interesting and complicated idea for explaining something which can be explained much simpler: human memory is stored in way which is not designed to remain clear. Neural nets like brain are very inefficient regarding reliable data storage, but it was working good enough for practical purposes until like few thousand years ago, which is too short time to evolve something better ... especially considering that even now, it's something which would be nice to have but our live rarely depends on it.
However, I have alternative idea: universes which don't differ at all will merge and become stronger in the process. Like, two universes can have different history but get to the same state later. EXACTLY same state, as in noone even remembers the difference - either noone noticed, or they forgot, or the ones who remembered it died ...
And the "stronger" part? That's my solution to navigation: all universes are not equal when you want to visit them. The stronger the universe is, the easier is to "tune" your "gate" to it. And the universe is stronger when relatively low number of improbable stuff happened in it, or when it's result of merge of more universes (which may actually be the same) ... or if more people believe in it (that explain why you have any chance at all to hit universe with something as unlikely as life).
You don't even need multiple universes to realize that our planets only astronomical significance is that all astronomers we know live on it.

That just makes it worse - my mind wants to read Diane as a badly drawn Sarah. Either that or an android (or gynoid if you prefer) - that's a very neat and orderly style (it probably doesn't help that it's freshly cut; if Dan does it right it should look more natural as it grows out).

Yes, but it was Ellen who destroyed the Goo cell, not Tedd. If Tedd had destroyed it, LT might have been satisfied.

Yay for starburst backgrounds in panels 1 & 3! Yay for generic background in panel 2! Yay for sparkly mellow Grace-a-saur and cute Grace-a-monsters (i.e. all Grace-a-monsters) in general! Yaaaay!
...
* Lies down and goes to sleep. *

There are multiple valid answers to that. Magus was the one who got the Sirleck/Vampire balls rolling, so he could be considered the primary antagonist of that plot-line (or the protagonist, by the older definition where they were the one who caused changes and drove the plot), even if he wasn't even close to 100% evil and got away in the end. Meanwhile, Voltaire manipulated Sirleck (and in so doing orchestrated Pandora's reset) and was trying to influence the outcome of the Magic change, so he's also a good candidate for the primary "villain" of Sister III.
The Old Hack's view that the primary obstacle was the change in magic itself also holds some merit.
...Actually, though, this doesn't really feel like the end of an era to me. Sure, it's a major turning point, but Pandora will be back, the masquerade isn't going to be dropped immediately, and the change in magic didn't result in anyone loosing any magic. Pretty much the only things that ended were Pandora's instability, Magus' time as an incorporeal entity, and Sirleck's life, none of which I expect to have a major impact on the main cast's lives (at least once they get past the worst of the pain of Pandora's reset and until Magus launches his next plot, whatever that might be). The magic clog is supposed to end too, and that might actually have a big impact on the cast, but we haven't seen that yet.
I think what will really serve as the biggest ends-of-eras in EGS will be the cast getting out of High School, and (assuming the comic gets that far) their getting out of College. I suppose it would be quite the coincidence to have the gang have to deal with Lord Tedd right around one of those times, but that's the sort of thing I was thinking of.
And a love triangle.

Hmmm....do we really, 100% know that Les Immortals didn't swap?  We saw an elderly male and an elderly female, and then we saw a young male and a young female, but we didn't see which one turned into which one!   ;-)  :-D