ijuin

Amusing, but Tedd's experiment on Sarah's first day as his assistant demonstrated that a transformation that the transformed person wishes to maintain will tend to continue as long as energy is available to keep it going. Thus, if Elliot would revert to male while having sex as a female, it would be due to literally anything OTHER than the transformation "running out".

Hmm, I had thought that the term "African-American" was mainly pushed by people who wanted to encourage them to be more aware of their pre-slavery ancestral cultural roots.

I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.

Yes, if you don't have need of a specific dead person, then it would be more practical to use summoned monsters, or perhaps golems made of something tougher than dead flesh, especially if your method of "raising" them does not restore the memories and skills that the person had in life. And if your goal is to spread a plague-like condition that turns people into your servants (or simply disables them), then there are better ways than to have it spread by biting.

Yes, that's how I came to the idea that the flesh is not the Immortal's True Essence, and thus their Astral Selves remain intact even if their fleshy bodies are destroyed.

Thank you. I was saying "flamewars" because in the past such arguing has led to much angry shouting, and was citing that as a reason why we should not "go there". I am absolutely NOT in favor of reviving such a conflict.

The solution, of course, is to add allies and subtract enemies.

For goodness' sake, do NOT allow the A.I. to have access to ANY neurotoxin!

Most alpha males tend not to be submissive, even towards alpha females.

Well, I did say "or wherever their soul attaches to their flesh"--whatever part of their body actually connects their spiritual essence to it. I'm sort of viewing their flesh bodies as "avatars" for their Astral selves--the idea that they are essentially Astral beings who create a body out of ordinary matter in order to interact with the material world. Under such a scenario, damaging an Immortal's flesh-body won't harm the Astral-self beyond the unpleasant sensations of the injuries, but if the body is damaged beyond the point where it is easily repaired, then it will have to be replaced (which may take enough effort or time that the Immortal can not simply respawn fast enough to return to a battle-in-progress). Europe west of Russia is roughly comparable in size to the Lower 48 States of the USA. France is slightly smaller than Texas. Even within France, it's possible to be most of a day's driving distance away from Paris, and nowhere have we heard that Noriko was in France specifically at the time that Susan and Nanase were on their class trip. Anyway, I think that the point of what Helena and Demetrius did was more about "getting an excuse to empower Nanase and Susan" than it was about getting that particular Aberration killed. d

Let's not get into the debate of whether to call a trans person by their assigned gender or their self-identified gender. That way lie flamewars. People like Rich may insist "you are whatever you were born as", but Larry may be more open-minded--note that Larry still thought that girl-Tedd was hot even after confronted with the idea that Tedd was genderbending. On Pandora, gambling, and what use an Immortal may have for human money: It's not like she is going to use her magic to conjure up everything that she ever uses. Maybe she likes to go to a restaurant and eat something made by somebody other than herself once in a while. Maybe her magic isn't so good at duplicating super-complicated objects such as computers, so she would buy her own video game equipment to play (she has been shown to be pretty well-versed in current pop culture such as games and television programs, so I wouldn't be surprised if she partakes of such entertainment to stave off the boredom). Having ultra-powerful magic doesn't mean that she never wants to acquire anything made/owned by humans, and she doesn't seem to be the type to simply steal everything if trading for it is possible. On zombies: Edward explained that classical "undeadness" was not known to be magically possible. It's likely that attempts to do so would result in corpse-golems--they would walk around and perform simple tasks for the Mage who animated them (maybe even acting as a cannon-fodder army), and in general act similar to summoned monsters, but they would not have souls or minds, and would not spread their condition to their victims. (Do take note that "not known to be possible" is not the same as "known to be impossible"--sending things back in time is known to be prohibited, and there's probably magical theories to explain why, but things that are "not known to be possible" may simply be that nobody has ever been proven to have done it.)

I always find it amusing when somebody uses an "X-American" compound to refer to somebody who has no connection to America at all--e.g. calling an African-descent person who lives in Britain and has never set foot in the USA an African-American. Sorry, no, if you're going to use such terminology, the person ought to be called African-British.

"Go forth and multiply" is the One Commandment.

The most important "real" information (i.e. not tautology or platitude) that I take from the phrase "survival of the fittest" is that aspects other than the ability to leave behind descendants (who in turn do the same) are completely irrelevant to evolution. How long you live after your continued living stops contributing to your descendants' survival, how pleasant your life is, how knowledgeable, cultured, or even how moral you are, all are irrelevant. Evolution cares not that you take the moral high road, only that you produce descendants who live long enough to continue the chain of life. This stands in stark contrast to the religious worldview that God(s) reward those who thoughts and actions show moral virtue, and is probably one of the reasons for rejection of evolution by those who do so (along with the "humans came from animals instead of being specially separate only-creatures-who-get-an-afterlife" idea).

That brings up the whole Nature vs. Nurture debate. Most of the Natural differences between males and females are ones that relate to the reproductive/childraising roles or are otherwise direct consequences of anatomy, whereas nearly anything that can vary between cultures (e.g. mode of dress, body language, speaking style, being assertive vs. aggressive vs. submissive) are learned behaviors.

That would apply to ordinary events, but deliberately randomized events such as lottery drawings can be predicted only statistically. If sending information back in time is physically impossible, then the only way to ensure a specific winner is to rig the lottery results. Anyway, Larry is showing some intelligence here, and it's good that he's thinking in terms of learning something rather than just using his hypothetical access to a hot girl body to feel up or gaze at female flesh (self or others). Rather than going into the women's locker room or the similar stereotyped stuff, he wants to get inside girls' heads. Also note that Larry once again (or rather, once before, since this is set two and a half months earlier) voices that he is not at all adverse to the idea of MTF transformations, whereas Rich's reaction is to ring the homosexuality alarm.

Yes, "most kids" should properly be "most descendants". Basically, any strategy that maximizes the number of genetic descendants at any arbitrary point in the future is a winning one. "Survival of the fittest" also should mean survival of the genetic line, not survival of the individual.

That depends on how vulnerable an Immortal would be to non-magical damage in general. Not only can an Immortal move to the Astral Plane almost whenever they want (barring the use of magic to prevent it), but it is unknown how much an Immortal's physical body can be damaged before they are "dead". They are probably not dependent on such things as oxygen and blood flow for survival, so any individual organ other than the brain (or wherever their soul attaches to their flesh) may be expendable. We have seen nothing so far to imply that Immortal flesh is more damage-resistant than human flesh when not protected magically. It may not be so much that an Immortal can not be cut, as it is that even cutting one to pieces is not lethal as long as the brain is intact (like how the Immortals in Highlander can survive and regenerate from anything that doesn't critically damage the brain/spine).

The concept of debellatio would apply in a lot of those wars--in essence, an enemy state is destroyed when its government falls and the new government is not considered to have continuity with the old government. Rome destroyed Carthage as a functioning government (i.e. there was no longer any legitimate authority that could surrender for them).

Well, the rule of Evolution is "whoever dies with the most kids, wins". Contrary to popular belief, "survival of the fittest" takes a backseat, because it matters not one whit to Evolution if you live for ten thousand years or a week, if you leave no descendants behind when you die. Indeed, many species (e.g. insects) take the strategy of producing thousands of offspring per mother, even though 99% of those will die before reproducing. Humans are on the extreme opposite end of that spectrum, with (even in pre-modern times) up to half or more of offspring going on to reproduce themselves, yet we typically have no more than 6-10 children at most, even without contraception. In short, everybody in the past who DIDN'T seek to mate, didn't leave any offspring. Everyone now alive is the result of an unbroken chain of mating going back to the Precambrian.

Given that nation-states are the modern unit of sovereignty for wars, if the town was acting contrary to its national government, then the national laws supersede the local action. Refusal of the town to submit to its own national government essentially puts them in open rebellion against it (i.e. civil war).

I think that from what Pandora is saying, there has to be mens rea (a guilty mindset) at the time that the offense is committed, rather than retrospectively. It is not enough to find out after the fact that she has killed a human, for example--what is necessary is that she attacked him with lethal intent (i.e. voluntary homicide rather than involuntary). Given that Immortals potentially can cause nuclear-bomb-level destruction (Jerry said they might "destroy themselves and take a lot of innocent beings with them"), the intent to cause harm is alarming in itself even if the harm failed to occur due to external circumstances. Thus, "attempted homicide" would be treated equally with an actual homicide.

So, the sentence is instant death, the verdict passed by one's own feelings of guilt. There's a giant loophole here if there is ever an Immortal who is so pathological as to be incapable of feeling guilt or so delusional as to believe him/herself to always be in the right no matter what. As for the possibility that this is how Helena and Demetrius were reset, the immediacy of the penalty makes it sound as though they ought to have collapsed before they had even departed from Susan and Nanase. Did they only realize their guilt in retrospect afterward (e.g. upon seeing how the girls' fight vs. the vampire went), or is there something more here?

"Wishiwashi" sounds like it is an attempt to imitate the phonology of the native Hawaiian language, which is even more vowel-heavy than Japanese. "Sunaba" means "sandy place", as in a beach or even a sandbox in a playground or backyard. Meanwhile, "Shirodesuna" is a compression of the phrase "shiroi desu na", meaning "white, isn't it?"

I was thinking Reverse Danish Notation?