animalia

Sometimes too might tact is a bad thing.
 
Speaking of Grace one of the things I like about her is she has a big, treat other people how you would want to be treated, mindset. If she sees someone in pain. I also like that her bluntness and lower social inhibitions make it easier for them to step forward to help than people who act 'sensitively' and tactfully ignore somebody's distress. While it’s clear that Grace has these aspects because she was sheltered, and not because she’s on the spectrum. It’s something that I as someone with Asperger’s can relate to.
 I hope it’s ok that I talked about how I relate to Grace on a personal level like that. It’s weird, she’s not even my favorite character.

And Ellen is to afraid of bombs.

Err, I think we may have a miscommunication here. I said as long as it is the case referring to his seeing Tedd's gender identity as a sickness/perversion. Should he actually get past that, it will of course no longer be the case.
Though I will add that even bigotry is not necessarily permanent as it is often rooted in fear. Once the fear is out of the equation and the bigot has had the opportunity to see what he feared as human beings, at least some bigots have been known to reconsider their stance.

... wait. Could she be angry at him BECAUSE he made her angry at Tedd?

Yesterday, I watched two birds fighting in flight.
The smaller bird drove away the larger after about a minute of circling and diving.
I suspect that either one of these birds would have been more than enough of a challenge to get Elliot's feathers ruffled.

It's the same thing that confused (and then squicked) Grace -- most people in our society seem incapable of seeing someone naked or scantily dressed without putting it into a sexual context.  If not for that, there would be no more problem with less-aestheticly-shaped people being naked or scantily dressed than there would be seeing them more heavily clothed.

So am I. But I still get to eat my own words and I hate the corvid aftertaste.

I'm not arguing that what Magus currently believes is in Ellen's best interest is valid, but even Dan has been saying that Magus isn't currently in the right frame of mind after having spent nearly 3 years in limbo and desperate to get out, there's a lot of anger and he's jumping to conclusions using obsolete information. It doesn't make him right, but there's hope that he can be convinced of that and this can all be settled without violence or anyone dying.
The Dumbing of Age comic has had 3 major events that involved a date rapist, who once exposed tried to silence the people who exposed him; an abusive controlling father who even after being divorced without custody, still felt that he had say in what his daughter could or couldn't do with her life; and a fanatically religious father who believed his homosexual daughter could be made straight again and even entered the university grounds with a shotgun with the intent of forcing her to return home.  All three instanced ended with the men needing to be hospitalized after getting the snot kicked out of them by either the people they were trying to hurt, or friends of those people.  I'm rather sick of stories like this ending in violence and while the men in the DoA cases deserved what they got, I'd rather it not be the resolution in Magus' situation.

This.  So much this.
And if Ellen does chose to be male, they simply swap who is going to what school and Elliot changes to Ellen for school reasons.  I can't see Ashley having a problem with that.

Elliot's best stance is "Ellen chooses. I'll back her up, whatever it is.  You (Magus) do not get to choose for her.  If she wants to be a male, I am fine having a twin brother now.."

There is a place where good intentions traditionally tend to lead. In fact, the road there is paved with them.

Well, ummmmmm... His intentions are good? That is, he believes that what he intends to do is good. Whether that belief is correct is quite another matter, and depends on whether he intends to ask for Ellen's opinion and consent before doing it.

Wow, this is at the worst end of the range of possibilities I predicted - and that's before we get to the part where we learn Magus doesn't trust Ellen to make her own decisions. (He knows Tedd has the TFG, so it should be pretty obvious even without knowing about Tedd's newest powers that it would be easy for Ellen to assume male form. Sure the TFG's effects are temporary, but it can be re-applied, and at any rate the fact that she has yet to even assume male form once when it is in her power to do so should go to show that having a male form isn't a high priority for her if it's something she has any interest in at all.)
I have a suspicion that Magus is actually quite conflicted about this issue and is doubling down on his prejudice in an attempt to justify his previous decisions and actions. This reads to me more like someone who is trying to convince themselves of their arguments than someone who is perfectly confident in what they're saying. Of course that only provides some hope he might be able to change, it doesn't help anything in the mean-time. (Edit: Come to think of it, it might just make things worse in the mean time.)
On a lighter note, yay for starburst background in six! (Although actually the image of smiling Terra in panel four lifts my spirits far more than a cool background in an unhappy panel.)
It would be rather nicely ironic to have Mr. "I Became A Man To Be Stronger" beaten by the super-powered female form of someone who spends most of his time in male form...

In an odd way, I was wrong about Van. He isn't there to contribute a viewpoint. He is there to contribute emotion. He can even do that without words, and he does it well. I'm glad.

I'm now at neutral on how I feel about the Will of Magic.
 

So if Magic decides to change anyways, is there a point at which Magic starts saying "maybe this wasn't such a good idea"? Maybe after Voltaire and a newly-created Lord Tedd outright force Magic's secrecy to be completely and utterly impossible short of an extinction event not seen since the end of the dinosaurs? Or will it take humanity or a human ascending beyond the levels of gods, with the power to bend worlds to his will, putting his gauntleted hand around Magic's neck and demanding submission?

Surely nothing so drastic will be required. We can just make do with the preexisting alarm systems we have like the one on Hawaii...
...on second thought, let's by all means get dragon sirens. And do some failure point analysis on existing systems, and upgrades too. Pharaoh, how did you guys do it in ancient Egypt? Did you have criers and semaphore systems atop the pyramids?

@The Old Hack Have you read JoJo's Many people in JoJo have an abilty that is seemingly useless or harmless but they think of very creative ways to use it. For example in part 4 the main character who is very gentle person and as such they get the abilty to reconstruct things and they and usually uses it to heal people. But when their family is threaten by a serial killer he can also use it to do such things as fuse said serial killer with a rock.
 
The reason I am pointing this out is that JoJo's is a great example of a limited power can be used creatively and even dangerously not just by villains but by heroes. It's all in how you use the tools you have.

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?

If by "natural" you mean humans with stone-age technology, yes. (Seeing hominids have been using tools since before homo sapiens evolved, a human culture without any tools would be unnatural.)
However, developing and using tools, and adapting to new environments and situations is part of human nature. So really, modern technology and society isn't all that unnatural for humanity.
At any rate, people who are well off and are safe and secure enough to reasonably expect their children to make it to adulthood tend to have fewer children. So the solution to the problem of overpopulation is to spread wealth out more evenly and improve living conditions for as many people as possible.
It probably has, we just haven't heard anything from them in a long time (probably because Dan's focus is on Magic and Immortals now, not aliens and other sci-fi themes). I wonder if Tedd has had any visits from them off panel since the last time the readers saw them?

Once again, as a comment on human society these legends serve quite well.

Indeed. As I already stated, as a comment on society it isn't all bad.

You could say that. You could also call him a horny old goat who would screw anything female and didn't view consent or lack thereof as a major factor. As a particularly nice touch, whenever Hera claimed her vengeance, it would invariably be against the victim or the child. This was not a legend written to make the Gods look good.
But as a comment on society, it's not all that bad.

Pandora is waiting for something. That something might be forcing Voltaire to reset himself, or to give Pandora an opportunity to tear him to pieces. After all, he's the one who's really pulling the strings, the final boss in this game.
At least he looks better than Bowser.

Zeus seems to be at the edge of panic, if not diving full into it. Diane is going to be the death of him, either figuratively or literally.
While in modern day, Zeus is most remembered for his infidelity, He did have dominion of other things that made mortals appreciate him. Such as the rule of law and xenia(sacred hospitality, very important in a time which travel can take multiple days and things like hotels didn't really exist yet). Breaking xenia was possibly the fastest way to make Zeus extremely angry.
I doubt Pandora knows about Magus's plan. She would have warned Adrian before this if she did. Even if she wants Magus out of his situation, she's not going to care more about that than Adrian. And she's been more self conscious about her actions recently, so I doubt she would risk his safety like when Adrian fought Abraham.
I agree Pandora is likely referring to herself when mentioning only one is in danger. She knows direct action would be against the rules, but she's willing to sacrifice herself to save Adrian, Susan, and Diane (She probably doesn't care about Zeus outside of his ability to keep the others alive and he's an Immortal. He can take care of himself)
I think it might be a case that she doesn't want a forced reset, but is willing to accept that if that is what it takes to keep people she cares about alive.