Ser Pentrose

My own pet theory I want to carry on in the new forum context is that what lead Pandora to go overboard and skip "dying" was that she was deeply in love with a mortal, probably Adrian's father, and couldn't cope with only knowing of him instead of directly remembering him.

on that note, supposedly intelligent characters in games doing trigger-guard-spins of pistols and revolvers as an idle animation is equally stupid.

SECONDED.
The very minimum that should be required of ANY gun owner should be knowledge of basic gun safety. And while I do not belong to the school that says that video games are the cause of all of today's violence, I do feel that it could improve the genre a lot as a whole if shooter games became more aware of this. Not necessarily to the degree of being sermonising -- but it would be nice if gun owning heroes got small reminders of the fact that it is not necessarily a good idea to wave your gun around like a bollocking toy.

I would do it where, in the point of time in the main comic that an NP arc occurs, put right into the comic stream, a comic which says, "There is a canonical arc of NP which occurs now. Click this image to go read that next, or click 'next' to skip it". Naturally enough, it links to the beginning of that NP arc.
At the end of each NP arc that the main comic points to in this fashion, there is a page that says, 'this is the end of an NP canon arc. Click this image to go to the first main comic after this arc, or click 'next' to keep reading NP'.
So, Question Mark wouldn't get that treatment yet since there isn't a comic right before it or right after it. But once there's a comic that happens after it, then it'll be slipped in and everyone will get a chance to see it.

Even if her mom is her birth mom, it's still an awfully important secret to keep from Susan, that she has a sister, a twin, and for some reason they not only separated them, but never told either of them about the other!  They stole an incredibly important relationship from her, years and closeness which can never be reclaimed, and I have a very difficult time coming up with any sort of adequate justification for doing that to both of them.  Her mom would have been lying to her her whole life.  That sort of revelation irrevocably damages a relationship, and she'll never look at her mom the same way again.
 
(By the way, folks, let's be careful about using terms like "real mom" in our discussions.  If you have to make a distinction, use "birth mother" and "adoptive mother" or something else descriptive rather than judgemental.  We try hard to use the right terminology in regards to gender, sexuality, and identity; we should show the same sensitivity and accuracy here.)

As the protagonist, we never see the pile of "unqualified adventurer" corpses that preceded us and the military boss yelling "we're gonna need another Timmy."

I can understand there being a chance that Carol has the same innate ability as Sarah, but it's probably just as hard to detect and I just don't see Pandora having marked her as well. I see Pandora taking interest in Sarah because of her friendship with Tedd, and upon taking a closer look at Sarah's potential during the deck building phase of the tournament, noticed her innate ability and thought some fun could be had with it.

I hadn't heard about "stale", but there was the little problem that any water not from wells - and water from some wells - was contaminated with whatever sort of bacteria the folks upstream were currently suffering from. And the denser the population, the more of an issue this was. Population was, of course, densest in cities.
Yes, they regarded water as unhealthy to drink, for the very simple reason that people who drank it tended to get sick (not including drunk or hung-over) more than people who didn't. So they drank wine and beer instead. And they also mixed wine/beer (and later rum and other distilled spirits) with water, to reduce the intoxication (and stretch the expensive stuff), but if it had enough alcohol to kill the bacteria they didn't know was in the water...
In China they had the same problem; rather than fixating on alcohol, they drank tea. To make good tea you have to boil the water. Which kills the bacteria they didn't know was in the water.
So China invented the tea ceremony, and Europe invented the "Hold my beer and watch this!" ceremony.

It.... really doesn't matter if he's her "real" father or not. He was responsible for her, and had her complete trust, and he betrayed it horribly. It might, however, help her understand what happened and why, which can be a big step to healing.

I have always been of the opinion that charging the receiving party and not just the sending party for all text messages is akin to making all postal mail cash-on-delivery. It's basically a form of harassment if you are forced to pay for an unsolicited message that you would have rejected had you known who it was from, yet you have to pay for it before you can even find out that it's an unsolicited message rather than from a friend. Imagine if you had to pay postage on every piece of advertising that is sent to you in the mail whether you wanted to receive it or not.

I remember this one time when I realised bananas contained radioactive potassium that I tried to work out how many bananas you had to eat before the radiation became a significant cancer hazard. I think I arrived at something like half a ton to a ton of bananas a day for an entire year before the radiation effects reached that level. I somehow suspect that it would not be the radioactive component of the bananas that would end up killing you.

I absolutely love it. Also, it is now confirmed: Elliot has a HUD. It should therefore be possible for him to play Angry Birds while in superhero shape.

Congratulations Elliot. You're now a magi-cyborg. Get a better smartphone, fool! You now can watch Youtube videos and read internet forum threads directly via your body while superheroing.
 
On second thought, let's not read internet forum threads, they are a silly place.

I'm happy about how happy something made me!
I think I've mentioned that our local public library is closed for renovations.  For the next year and a half, they'll be moving 40% of the collection to a temporary location, which will be opening in one week.  Anything not in their top 40% (or checked out when the main place closed last week) will be in storage, completely inaccessible, and we'll have to request stuff through interlibrary loan to get any of that material.
The temporary location happens to be directly across the street from our animal hospital.  Pretty cool, to get to have the official public library close enough to walk to on half a lunch break!  They're still putting the place together, and I went and peeped through the windows at lunch today.  There were shelves, some full and some empty, chairs, computers, check-out stations, most of the necessaries were in place.  I could even see stairs leading down to a basement area, which were prettied up and not blocked off, making me think there's more library down there, too.
As I stepped away from the window to walk on to Subway, I realized I was grinning from ear to ear!  I'm feeling so excited that we're getting a new library to explore right across the street!  Books and movies and programs and magazines....it doesn't matter that it's less than half what we already had access to every day anyway, and what will be there is the same old stuff.  It's still so cool!
I'm happy that I still feel that child's excitement at the thought of what can't help but feel at least a little like having my very own special library, moved there just for me.  That I can't wait to explore the new space, discover where everything is, stumble across new stories I haven't read before.  I can't wait to see what sort of children's area they come up with, what sort of displays, how they'll work around having so much smaller a space.  Maybe sneak over there at lunch when I'm not tied up in surgery, and just sit and read.

What makes me happy (and amuses me no end) is to inadvertently look up at a tab and see that it reads, "Robin has sent you a mess..."
Said message being the one where he has returned me to moderator status. XD

Just had an epiphany about Helena and Demetrius' role in this story. Way back in "In the Shadows" we see Edward, Wolf and Cranium discussing their investigation into the disturbance in the forest and getting that warning from Pandora about the "Egg", they didn't get any more information about it so Edward takes them off the case and states his intent to "enlist the assistance of some friends"  following it up with "let's just say there's a reason I know so much about Immortals".  Remember how Jerry said that Edward was a VIP in the world of the paranormal.
I've stated my belief that Helena and Demetrius have been following Elliot around because they were asked to, it's also been very strongly implied that Magus is the "Egg" that Pandora mentioned, and Magus knew that Helena and Demetrius had an improper death. I'm now thinking that Helena and Demetrius are the "friends" that Edward spoke of, they would be better suited to investigate the activity of another Immortal and if they did uncover anything important, their improper deaths might have been caused by Pandora to prevent them from reporting that back to Edward. Part of that info would have been the plan to use Elliot to get Magus back into the mortal plane but their memory only just mentions "blah blah follow blah blah Elliot blah" so they just assume that he needs to be watched but not sure why.

No offense was intended.  If I don't double check every detail, I make mistakes.
Strange how the spellcheck accepts "Dianne" with two Ns but rejects "Tedd" with two Ds.

I have always had an odd love-hate relationship with Karma meters. I like the idea and it does add variation to the games, but sometimes the choices are so STUPID. For example, in classic KotOR where you play a force sensitive character you keep getting choices between Light and Dark Side. In one situation you meet a man being mugged by gangsters. You can elect to save the man (Light Side), ignore the event (Dark Side) or kill the muggers because they irritate you (Dark Side.) Okay, no problem. But afterwards you can either help the man a bit more (Light Side) or extort all his money from him (Dark Side.) Er, what?
Let's say you were trying for a Darth Vader style character feel. I can totally see him kill some muggers because they irritated him. But can I see him taking the victim's money afterwards? No. Why not? Because it is TOO SODDING PETTY. It is so much beneath Vader's dignity that it is ridiculous. And that is the problem with Karma meters. They all too often oversimplify, or worse yet, do evil for evil's own sake, purely for the muhahahaaa of it. If I play a villain, I'd like my evil to at least make sense.
This can also be a problem with Good, but in my experience Evil tends to be the more egregious of the two. (Or Light and Dark Side, or in the case of Mass Effect, Blue and Red.) Sigh.

There's a reason Justin Trudeau is at the Nuclear Security summit right now, he's getting ideas.
Yep Canada is sick of the world thinking of us as polite, apologetic lumberjacks. When WW3 happens, we'll be ready, and we'll make everyone apologize.....
 
 
Yeah....I couldn't keep myself from giggling as I typed that.

Point, though based on my (admittedly limited) knowledge of the situation and history the US is going to have a revolution soon. I'm both hoping and praying that it's peaceful, but sadly I doubt it.
And as for shrapnel, if nukes are involved the whole world is screwed. Should it come to that I'm selfish* enough to want to go first and quickly. Which raises the question: What are the odds that Toronto will be a prime target if there's a nuclear war?
*though it's probably at least partly my depression talking.

Heh, I could totally see me forgetting some important detail that was mentioned in passing. I would also feel like an idiot for doing so even were it totally understandable that I forgot, or more likely that it didn't register as important information and thus not be stored properly.
Furthermore I recall reading somewhere that when under stress it's harder to recall things, which is why people will be taking a test and totally blank out on the subject at hand. (Which is why doing relaxation exercises before a test can actually help you pass)

Well, being true pacifist IS hard. Any pacifist who think it isn't is spoiled by our civilization.
 
Sooo ... how exactly would that strategy of "help them kill something while letting them get the actual "kill"" work? I mean, are those NPC competent enough to be able to actually kill the enemy when you help them?

So I guess this game does not have non-lethal weapons, like tranquilizers of some sort. Not that it would not create iffy situations too...
"Don't look at me! They shouldn't be driving motorcycles while sleeping!"
"What do you mean I shouldn't tranq people that are next to a cliff? They'll be fine, the sea is down there. 100 meters is nothing, I've climbed steeper staircases."
"Well, it's not my fault that driver does not care there are people on the way."

Heh, I could totally see me forgetting some important detail that was mentioned in passing. I would also feel like an idiot for doing so even were it totally understandable that I forgot, or more likely that it didn't register as important information and thus not be stored properly.
Furthermore I recall reading somewhere that when under stress it's harder to recall things, which is why people will be taking a test and totally blank out on the subject at hand. (Which is why doing relaxation exercises before a test can actually help you pass)

To be fair to her, though, we don't know when that flashback takes place, right? Andrea's been here for months, and the actual flashback could be years ago. Especially if this half of the world is a particular interest area for Andrea. If Tara is used to Andrea giving out random facts about this world, then it's easy to let it gloss over. Think about any time your S.O. has talked to you about a specific detail of their work or school major. These are topics that come up enough to make you think you've heard it all and don't really need to completely grab hold of the specifics... especially if it's in a field you understand little about and have already decided won't ever fully understand. When I talk about specific aspects of learning programming, there's no way my gf would be able to remember specific trivia about a random language construct. She doesn't know enough about the subject for the info to do her any real good, and doesn't care about it beyond it being something I like, and thus she likes it by virtue of it making me happy.
Point is that unless we learn this flashback is specifically their preparation for both of them coming over to this world, there's ample reason to not get too down on Tara for not remembering this one aspect of the world.