chridd

It was in Squirrel Prophet.

Mutations are random when the mutation happens. I was saying that it's possible that Nanase inherited magic power from her parents (not random), but that if you go back far enough to where the genes for high magic power originated it could be a mutation rather than an immortal. (...although the point about Noriko probably being a wizard suggests that the descended-from-immortals idea could be right.)

It doesn't have to be random, though; it could have some other explanation. E.g., perhaps some mutation way back causes higher magic power and that's been passed on through the generations, or perhaps the griffins were seeing royalty because Nanase is descended from royalty in the griffins' world. I think Jerry couldn't detect Sarah's affinity because Sarah didn't have enough power, not because the affinity is weak. (Although we don't know whether people with affinities can get non-affinity-related spells, or how easy/difficult it is for them.)

I don't think that's true (unless everyone is descended from immortals), because as far as we know, almost everyone has some magic potential. E.g., I don't think Justin or Dex or Catalina have any particular inherited magic ability. I'm not sure about Nanase, though. As far as we know, she doesn't have any particular affinity and she isn't a wizard or seer. She just seems to have an overall higher magic potential (which wasn't one of the things Heka listed)—basically higher magic stats, as opposed to specific abilities. It's not clear whether those are related, or whether people like Nanase are descended from immortals; it does seem that having a magic affinity without having generally high magic potential is possible (Sarah).

Also didn't Pandora say she caught him? She might have prevented Magus from going to the intended destination (or maybe the intent was for him to continually fall between universes or something, or be stuck in between universes forever).

Biologists have a weird definition of fitness. (...well, at least different from the ordinary everyday definition, and of course the same applies to other scientific/mathematical/etc. terms as well)

If the fruit is bred and grown by humans, then from a genetic/biological fitness perspective, humans eating the fruit is good for the plant, because it gives money to the farmers who will then plant the plant's offspring and water, fertilize, etc. them. I've seen plenty of people who seem to believe things like this, and have never seen any actual evidence. Unless I hear from some actual neuroscientist or quantum physicist that the brain uses quantum effects (beyond the fact that technically everything is a quantum effect), or see actual evidence or an actual explanation of how specifically brains use quantum mechanics, I'm going to assume that brains just use classical mechanics, and that people are just bad at understanding determinism and its implications (or, rather, lack thereof) on free will (or are trying to hold onto vitalism/dualism in spite of evidence to the contrary). (I don't mean that I think people are stupid or uneducated or anything; I suspect our brains just aren't set up to deal with these philosophical issues well.) Regarding the complexity of sexual orientation and gender identity: if you cover all possibilities, then it's super complicated. I don't actually know how many of those possibilities occur in practice; I don't know what the actual dimensions are in terms of how it actually works (e.g., are there dimensions "sexual attraction to males", "sexual attraction to females", "romantic attraction to males", "romantic attraction to females"; or are there dimensions "attraction to males", "attraction to females", "attraction manifests as sexual", "attraction manifests as romantic"? are cis-genderless people high on the dimensions "okay being female" and "okay being male", or are they low on the dimensions "tendency to experience physical dysphoria" and "tendency to experience social dysphoria" with a gender identity that ends up not really doing anything?), and of course people can have preferences that don't come from sexual orientation or gender identity, and might not know which preferences come from where. ...and it's not like other things are simpler; if you consider things people are interested in, there are lots of potential interests (and each person can be interested in any combination of things to any amount), lots of potential sub-interests, lots of reasons to be interested in things, and effectively new dimensions are added over time (the dimensions "interest in computer programming" and "interest in video games" didn't exist a couple hundred years ago).

Physics is simple. There's one set of laws of physics, which apply everywhere; there are a relatively small number of particle types, and all particles of a given type behave the same. Whereas with humans, each human has slightly different genetic code, which is then influenced by slightly different hormone levels etc. and also different experiences etc. If we were dealing with a multiverse of universes with slightly different laws of physics, but there was only one universe with each set of laws; or if each electron had slightly different behavior, physics would be much more complicated. Also, humans can lie (to others, to themselves), and humans can change their behavior based on their understanding of human behavior. Physics doesn't care what we know about it. Oh, and there are ethical concerns in studying humans, too.

I think "pansexual" is the established term for this. This is at least similar to "demisexual" (at least if the person isn't normally attracted to others). Also, from other threads, I think "gender-meh" ≈ "cis-genderless". If being hetero/homosexual separate from being andro/pansexual is actually a thing, then at least in theory we'd need to distinguish people who were, e.g., always attracted to females and always attracted to the opposite sex (like a hetero male with the transformation gun) from those who are only attracted to people if they're female and also the opposite sex (so, asexual when female) (both could be described as "both gynesexual and heterosexual").

Hasn't this already been done (at least up to a year ago... coincidentally almost exactly a year)?

I had a similar idea, and just didn't post it. Do I get Oreos too? (...it's been way too long since I've had Oreos...) About Elliot's gender identity: many people consider things like jobs, interests, nationality, religion, etc. to be important even though someone can't have an instinctive sense e.g. that one is supposed to be Christian or a programmer (at least not specifically, since those are culturally dependent and haven't always existed). Couldn't someone who doesn't have a gender identity (in the sense trans people do) still consider their gender (or in Elliot's case, the ability to transform between male and female) important anyways, similar to jobs etc.?

I don't remember that being the case (though the time limits have always been changeable, though perhaps not arbitrarily so). Originally (before she gained any new forms), she could get pregnant in human but not part-squirrel form. I don't think we know about any other form, or whether being zapped by the transformation gun for the first time (which changed how she transformed) changed that fact.

I'm not sure why hermaphrodite in particular, but male genitals + otherwise female would almost certainly be possible. (I guess with magic it would be possible to make a hermaphroditic human... would a lesbian be more comfortable having sex with someone with both genitals than someone with male genitals? As an asexual virgin I honestly don't know the answer to that...) I don't think "flip" is likely, given that nothing we've seen so far involves flipping (unless one takes heterosexual-vs.-homosexual to be more basic than androsexual-vs.-gynesexual...*). "Set" or just not modifying gender identity at all would be more likely (or something in between, where it partially modifies gender identity or depends on how strong the person's gender identity is or something), and both would help a trans person. * Given animalia's comment and some things I read on another site (at least one genderfluid person said they feel gay no matter what their gender), I wonder if which of these is more basic depends on the person... and if so are impossible-to-satisfy combinations like heterosexual+gynesexual+female identity possible?

There might also be ways with magic to have a kid without one of them being male. One of them could get a spell that either causes her to be pregnant or to impregnate someone else (in a way, a spell that can make someone pregnant could be seen as an extension of "make more female"), or allows them to create a baby directly (I mean, it's possible one of them could transform into a baby Ellen-Nanase hybrid and the touch the diamond...).

I don't see any reason to believe it's deliberate. As far as we know, Tedd hasn't tried talking to him about it (and probably wouldn't have known what to say if he did); and as for seeking information, remember that even Tedd, who has a reason for looking it up for himself, didn't know, nor did Elliot (who is both Tedd's friend and potentially has a personal reason). And even if he did, there's no guarantee he'd find accurate information. How Edward has acted has caused harm, and I would not want someone to act like he did. At the same time, I don't think he intended any harm, and we don't have any reason to believe he was knowingly avoiding something he should have been doing. Those can both be true at the same time.

Regarding Edward: "Is Edward doing a bad thing?" and "Does Edward intend to alienate his child?" are two different questions. It is entirely possible that Edward has no intent to alienate Tedd (and every intent not to) and is doing what he thinks is right, and also be doing things he shouldn't, not doing things he should, and doing things which will harm and/or alienate Tedd if he keeps doing them. Regarding giving transformation magic to all trans people: keep in mind, most of the people we know in this comic are still in high school (not old enough to be responsible for a problem that big); many people, including them, don't really know about trans issues (at that age, I think I only had a very vague idea (if that) of what transgender meant, and I didn't really understand it until recently); and giving magic to everyone isn't simple or consequence-free (consider that Tedd does want to give magic to everyone, and hasn't yet).

I see Victoria's Secret catalogs can also be disguised as "perfectly ordinary books". (It might be an oversight, but it seems appropriate...)

My guess has been that Elliot is cis-genderless/cis-by-default. He doesn't seem to care (at least maybe until this comic) that much about being male or female in general, but rather about how people will react to him transforming. He thinks people will make fun of him, and he didn't like that it was causing problems with his relationship with Sarah, but now Ashley and one of the griffins likes him for it. Isn't popato a type of chisp?

Also, isn't Nioi part animal? The "pets" comment could have something to do with that as well.

The fact that we know Mr. Raven is a wizard and we know he's descended from an immortal is evidence for "immortals" being the missing word. Do we actually know this? From what I can remember, the only information we've gotten is that Mr. Raven says elves can't have children (and he might be wrong) (or he could be referring to a rule elves have to follow rather than lack of capability). The only elf we know is Mr. Raven, and we know nothing about his sex life or lack thereof (and of course he could be infertile for other reasons, or have children that he doesn't know about, or for that matter have children that he does know about but have reason to lie about it).

I think emoticons broke when the forum was down for a couple days that one time (when the background changed to light blue). Also attachments and avatars from before then are gone as well.

It's referring to the commentary below the comic. (The comic may or may not contain an elephant.)

...I was worried this would be too subtle... what she says is the same; how she says it is changed. The less subtle version I was thinking of had additional dialogue:

I might as well try this... From story 2002-10-02 + Undertale (so spoilers): From EGS:NP 2016-03-25: From story 2017-03-27 (most recent):