HarJIT

If Pandora asked me that question, I would probably not answer honestly.
I have always had trouble admitting what I want.  Even as a kid, I couldn't bring myself to tell Santa what I wanted.
But this made me realize something.
When Pandora asks the question, what the victim says is almost irrelevant.
The important thing is to get the subject thinking about the topic. 

So, I usually just lurk here, but this update made me wonder something after looking over some old comics recently. 
Assuming that Tedd is one of the "rare type of wizard" who wouldn't be affected by a system change (which seems very plausible), is it possible that just such a change occurred in Lord Tedd's dimension, and helped him become, well, 'Lordly'? I'm doubtful that plot thread will come up again soon, but it strikes me that being virtually the only human left with working knowledge of magic would be a very big advantage if you were interested in rising to power. The chance of other humans being depowered made me question it, but I actually think the only magic users confirmed to be from that dimension were seyunolu (Nioi, and possibly Shade Tail).

I don't remember if anyone has brought this up, but it looks like whoever empowered Dex and gave him the jar pendant was trying to set up Pandora. This comic and this comic show that Dex's manipulator was willing to kill Noah. We now know that Pandora cares deeply about her family, and that she would never risk Noah given that he is Raven's ward. She believes that her great-Godson's girlfriend is practically family, so Noah must be, too.
If this idea has already been thoroughly discussed somewhere, I apologize.

Only one super power?  Telekinesis of at least 4 or 5 times my weight.  Give you flight and moderate super strength.  And a ranged attack.

Literature would be boring if no one ever tried to write from a perspective they themselves have never had.  Sure, you've never been a woman. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had never been a consulting detective.  Shakespeare had never been a king, prince or Fae.  Presumably Jeff Lindsay has never been a sociopathic serial killer and Steven King was never haunted from childhood by an evil clown.  If this ever comes up again, ask her if she believes the only stories that should ever be told are first-person factual biographies, because that is the only way to avoid anyone trying to write from the perspective of someone they aren't.

LMAO. This reminds me of an incident that once occurred with my friend Liz who is also Canadian. One of the sweetest and gentlest people I have ever known, I once happened to be present when another friend of mine asked her, "So do you speak English with a British or an American accent?" And I swear to God, she bent her head back, looked down her nose at him and in a very offended tone told him, "I speak English with a Canadian accent, thank you."
She is normally so mild-mannered that seeing her offended was actually scary. I actually cringed at her tone of voice.

I'm so glad that typing `ls -s "~/foo_dir" "foo_dir"`  instead of `ln -s "~/foo_dir" "foo_dir"` is harmless when you are trying to make a sym-link.
I must make that typo every other time I try to make a sym-link.
#geekproblems.

Everybody. The newest (and best-to-date imho) workaround is to change your text color from "default" (which happens to be black, except when editing a message) to "black".

In game writing this is bad.  Players assume that when ever the DM starts with reading flavor text something is about to go down. I wrote a dungeon that was the reverse of this empty room were described in loving detail but rooms with traps or hidden monsters were just "it's a 20 by 40 foot room, door on the north wall.
Took them three real life days to figure out what was going on.
 

I fear not the polyester leisure suit, for I have stared in to that abyss and won.
I was even a bit bored by the whole thing.
School pictures, roughly 1975 or 76.

Given http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=580, http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=581 and http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2199, it's apparently a Lespuko skull…

I'm assuming, given the title and their prominent (though not foremost) positions on the cover page of Sister III, The Shive will cast some light upon the questions I'm about to bring up.
Why Are There So Many Differences Between Susan and Diane?
The short answer: Different upbringings.
Diane was raised with an older sibling to compete with; Susan wasn't.
Susan has become embarrassed by how much her mother spoiled her. Diane might have been spoiled to some extent, but her desire to get men to spend money on her doesn't bespeak being raised in a mansion.
However, we have no clue about the Diane's adoptive parents other than they don't seem to be as well off as Susan's mom. Are they a mixed couple? Are they together?
That last one is really relevant. Susan and Diane have different approaches to handling men, but the underlying attitude is fear of getting hurt. Susan tries to avoid men; Diane tries to control them. Now neither of these suggests a strong, reliable father figure. Diane just wouldn't have this attitude if she was satisfied with the father figure she grew up with.
Well, I'm interested in this, but I'll move on to something I think more of you might be interested in.
Who Are Susan and Diane's Biological Parents?
The Shive has put in a few clues, or maybe red herrings, that might lead to answers. Sometime. Maybe.
First, in a dream and then a flashback, Susan remembers the woman she found with her father. In the flashback, The Shive actually titles the strip The Woman With Susan's Face. Susan tries to cut off her hair and then her mom dyes it so she won't look like that horrid blond woman. This kind of implies that Susan realized the woman was her birth mother. She hasn't said a thing about it in any strip since, but that is quite consistent in her nature. As of now (7-22-2016 in realworld time), we still don't know if Susan knows or even suspects she was adopted.
I hope we don't get adoptichlorians.
Susan's dad? Well, her adoptive dad's face is never shown—it's actually blacked out. Now if adoptive daddy was seeing birth mommy, it's not really a stretch to think that adoptive daddy is also biological daddy.
Except...
Diane wasn't introduced yet. If Susan's dad arranged the adoption of one of his own kids, why not both?
The Raven Factor
In Death Sentence, Grace notices that the disguise spell Adrian Raven uses to hide her three-tailed form makes her look exactly like Susan. Although Raven tells her half-immortals can't have children, he doesn't say that he doesn't have children. The Shive is very cute about maybe denying that this is more than an amusing coincidence in His commentary. What's your call? Remember, by this time we know that Raven can morph to change his appearance. It would have been a necessity to have maintained the same identity as a (somewhat) normal human for as long as he's been teaching at Moperville South.
Also, why exactly does Raven choose to let Diane off when he finds her AWOL from her class in Sister II? He knows Diane isn't the ditzy valley-girl she's channeling; he tells Ellen and Grace right after Diane is gone—but doesn't call out Diane on her ploy to her face. Not proof he has special feelings for Diane, but it would fit very well if he does.
Also, in the flashback strip with Noriko and baby Tedd, Raven's face is blacked out just about the same way as Susan's dad was. This time it wasn't in Susan's mind, so the connection is spider-silk-thin. Still...
Third Sister?
I think The Shive likes ambiguous titles and titles that have multiple meanings. Do Susan and Diane have a third sister?
I don't think I would need Alien Space Bats to posit that the third sister is the mysterious sibling of Tedd, whether or not she's Susan and Diane's sibling, and whether or not Adrian Raven is her father. What, surely I'm not the only one that thought that perhaps that's the reason Tedd's parents split up and Tedd's dad hates Adrian Raven? And why Noriko can't face her son? Come on, how many of you out there aren't panting to finally get Full Frontal Noriko?
Another candidate for a third sister would be Ellen's Second Life doppelganger, possibly along with Kaoli. They're supposed to meet eventually; maybe eventually is coming up soon.
Vladia is Grace's sister, and if she's Gregs New Girlfriend, it gives an excuse to get Greg involved more.
Carol Brown is Sarah's sister, and given not one but two Immortal schemers behind the scenes (that we know of) plus Sirleck, it seems pretty likely that Carol will finally get to the scene of the latest weirdness in time to (choose one or more):
Find out little sister Sarah knows what's going on
Find out little sister Sarah has magic
Find out vampires are real in the worst possible way.
Get The Government much too interested. Hey, you didn't think Grace's siblings were the only people confined “for their own protection,” did you?
So, anyone want to add their thoughts?

Musings:
If someone proved a theory, it is a "proven theory".  This means that "proven" is the past participle, which is usually also the grammatical part used after "have", i.e. "have proven".  But for some reason "have proved" ("proved" equalling the simple past tense) is widely accepted.
Also bend→bent, wend→went.  Wend means the same as go, "went" apparently later became more associated with "go".  Otherwise "go" follows (although not exactly phonetically, by current phonetics at any rate) more or less the same conjugation as "do": do/does/done/doing/did, go/goes/gone/going and one would expect "gid" if the two verbs had developed the same.
KJV spells "show" as "shew" in several places.
"Be", the infinitive, shows obvious connection to "being" and "been", its participles.  The simple past (was/(wast)/was/were/were/were) and simple present (am/(art)/is/are/are/are) show no clear connection to "be", but seem somewhat related to each other, albeit not in any regular conjugation.

A NewScientist "Feedback" column mentioned a lens cleaner ingredients list including:
The "curse of the spellchecker" strikes again.  Googling an exact phrase "acetate butterfat" yields a page stating:
Proportionate is presumably propionate, leaving butterfat to be, most likely, butyrate.
As for "5-chlorine-2-methyl-4-indianapolis-3-one", "chlorine" is presumably from "chloro" (it still makes some sense, in fact).  "Methyl" and "one" are probably untouched ("one" as in a ketone group, saved by its homonymy to the number), and "indianapolis"?  Possibly "indophen"???  That or "indole[something]".
Goodness knows what "propagandist" is.

Quit being an ass. we've waited YEARS for Pandora's back story arc.
Well, okay, a year in my case but i'm new here.
Also not a Mary sue. Power alone doesn't make a character such, a Mary sue is such because their traits are disproportionate and inappropriate, with no depth or substance. basically the opposite of the immortal four, since, aside from the newbie not having a past yet, those four have very real limitations, pasts that matter to how they behave, and internaly consistent motivations and behaviors.

Back in the day I got banned from a store for writing a 2 line computer program on their display C64
10 PRINT "This is a computer"
20 GOTO 10
The sales person didn't know how to stop it.
 

Thank you for that link"  It does an excellent job of explaining why choice of language is so important in this area!

Iran already had all the materials and capabilities needed to build a nuclear bomb. The question was, when? Without a deal, the chances they would have been delayed as long as this deal is due to last are very poor indeed, and that chance relies on military intervention.
As for the 'track record in the mideast' paragraph - all of those claims seem very shaky to me, especially... actually, yeah, all of them.  The 'Apology Tour' was named that by Obama's political blood enemies, and if it contained any apologies, I'd like to see them. What could we possibly have done to help Green Revolution? Why would our arms sales to Egypt be canceled based on the outcome of an election?
The efforts to arm the rebels in Syria were a failure, yes, but that's because the situation on the ground and who would end up aligned with whom was very murky. Of all the weapons set aside for rebels, we actually delivered very few - a farcically small amount... and good thing, because yes, they ended up on the wrong hands. This was not due to carelessness. Had they actually been careless, it would have been far, far worse.
How does Iran cheat on the deal daily?
The 'Bland Euphemisms'? He's avoiding using the words that the enemy wants him to use! "Violent Extremism" is literally true and a strong condemnation. He condemns it plenty. He just refuses to hand the enemy a major propaganda tool.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2015/02/how_obama_thinks_about_islam_and_terrorism_why_he_chooses_his_words_so_carefully.html

The Moderator: I would like to remind the people posting here that we have at least one Muslim poster here and we may have lurkers of that faith, too. This sort of reductionism is insulting to them. There are many Muslims in the world who live in countries friendly to the United States (millions of them in the US alone, for example) and to make the claim that all their clerics 'feed them anti-US propaganda' is a staggering oversimplification about as reasonable as saying that all Christians are homophobic, anti-science and against LGBT rights.
Once again, please do not descend to this particular kind of argument. Faiths are not monolith blocs led by the Borg Queen. And for that matter, terrorism is not limited to the Muslim faith. I am watching this thread closely and I truly do not wish to lock it -- but if I judge it necessary, I will.
~tOH.

... unless it's hereditary
Well ... she might be right on this. But Adrian would rather die than not try, just as his father.

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=485
Fish augmentations? Sounds legit.
I seriously can't blame Dan for just doing a single panel here considering the story page.

I disagree. What makes for a hero isn't success or failure but the act of entering danger in order to protect others, if need be at the price of one's own life. A fireman who is killed the first time he enters action is still a hero.
I fully agree with the tragic part, mind you. *sigh*

Well, it's not about what the terrorists see. It's about what their potential recruits see. ISIS wants to paint the U.S. as evil, so when we do actual evil things, we're giving them propaganda fuel. This is why the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Trump and the Republican party actually plays directly into ISIS's hands—it alienates the non-terrorist Muslims (AKA most of them) and undermines our local support networks in those regions.

I think this comic represents the true source of Pandora's insanity.  Think of her choices.  Blaike has gone on to that ultimate adventure, the Undiscovered Country, death, and Pandora can not follow.  Her son, being long-lived, is still around and is a living, breathing connection to the love she had with Blaike.  If she resets to protect her sanity, her memories of her son and husband will be as if she were reading them in a memoir, stripped of their emotional context, stripped of their life.  Right now, with the Immortal's near perfect memory, Blaike must seem almost alive in her mind and heart.  To regain sanity, she must rip him out of her heart.  I think if Adrian had died some time ago as well, when she was more sane, she might have been able to do reset herself, but her perfect memory of a mother's love must be keeping her from resetting as long he lives.  What would it be like to know you would never again really love your son if you reset? That if you saw him again, you would think, oh yes, I know about that person, not I KNOW that person?
Her quest to remain unbored is her quest to keep from finally giving in to complete insanity.   Insane, she might think nothing of killing all around her, including her son.  I think if Adrian were to die now, Pandora would let herself give in to that terrible state of mind, the closest she might think she would ever get to some kind of final peace.  I wonder, can an immortal be killed?  If so, how many immortals might die fighting an insane Pandora.  Pandora might be the nightmare that keeps other Immortals awake at night.
 

Cancer sucks and has no respect for age.