Don Edwards

Elliot is forgetting he can break character if he wants. And also that he can copy his secret-identity forms using his be-a-girl spell, and not have to deal with the mind alterations as well. As for keeping up with the spellbook, i's one think spotting that there are a few new pages at the back with a new spell on them. It's something else entirely to notice that a few words have been added or changed in a spell that has been there for some time and you're already familiar with - even if the change requires the insertion of a new page. (Ninja'd on this part.)

A totally normal book wouldn't need a title that says it's a totally normal book. What's the problem? "Going out with my girlfriend."

Time travelers do a lot of voluntary policing of each other, and it also turns out that reality is somewhat self-correcting. Example of both

That's the general theory... under the assumptions that Magus correctly understood Pandora, Pandora was telling the truth, and Pandora's knowledge of what would happen is correct. While I don't have any specific reason to doubt those assumptions, I'm wondering what Pandora gets out of it if they are all true. Whereas if Pandora is lying, or simply not particularly confident that what she told Magus was correct, we get a possibility of an outcome that would surprise Pandora. She likes being surprised.

We know that Magus thinks Pandora told him that, and has been acting accordingly. Immortals can lie.

I recently learned in another forum that Seattle Slew was the only Triple Crown winner who did not have centaur ancestry.

Based on what I can find online, I'd advise to not get your hopes up too much. This apparently is a first novel, and not on bestseller lists. And it's about space pirates. Odds are that author royalties won't cover the advance. (Of course, if you deliberately gave the wrong title to not give clues to your identity, then you can ignore this.)

And even if he's surprised, it doesn't mean he's surprised at the *possibility*. It could be that he knows elves exist and are extremely rare - such that he'd be surprised to learn that there's one anywhere in the state, let alone in the same city. But... Immortals can, by their own rules, only guide and empower mortals to deal with aberrations. Elves can act freely, including using their powers, to protect others from dangerous magic - and aberrations involve dangerous magic pretty much by definition. So Raven is a greater danger than Pandora.

That's one of the saner theories, actually.

Although it doesn't mean the scenario is impossible. Poor young couple can't support twins, give up one, then later have a huge unexpected inheritance (or otherwise strike it rich)... It's possible. I'd bet against it, though. Susan being Mr. Pompons' daughter by his mistress (and Mrs. P being unaware of that fact) is one among many scenarios that are far more likely.

Hmm, he can sense there's *something* there, but he was still surprised by Adrian being an elf later on. So if you went looking for an elf by such means, you might have to sort through who-knows-how-many other creatures of various sorts. We don't even know that what Abraham sensed was Raven. After all, Raven is human/immortal; both have been on this planet for a long time, and obviously are capable of interbreeding. On the other hand, humans are not normally capable of interbreeding with squirrels, and uryuom and lespuko are apparently more recent arrivals than Abraham; so by his standards Grace is far more unnatural than Raven or Ellen. An aberration has far more to worry about just for being an aberration than an elf does about restrictions on what he/she is allowed to do. Not to mention that Raven is a wizard, known to the government to be a wizard, and routinely in contact with several other magic-users. What do you base that statement on? I don't see anything that clearly points either way on whether Sirleck was aware that elves are possible.

Low, but nonzero. And fiction in general is full of unlikely coincidences.

I think Sarah would.

Or, she means exactly what she said. She doesn't actually care about her cousins. She goes and visits them on holidays because her mother is going to visit with HER parents/siblings.

English has four genders just in pronouns. Most of our pronouns are neutral (they/them plus all the first and second person pronouns), but we also have male (he/him), female (she/her), and nonperson (it, that, those). There are some languages, mostly African if I remember correctly, where the only genders are person and nonperson. And some others where the genders are animate and inanimate.

And as for terminology, there are languages with no grammatical gender at all, and languages where the grammatical genders have absolutely no relationship to sex.

Well, you know, if you look around in various mythologies... Not all divine beings are good Not all divine beings have complete control over who can draw upon their powers Not all great powers have anything to do with divinity

The copy spell is a Breaker power because it temporarily adds the target's powers to Ellen's. (Whether it removes Ellen's powers is undetermined - it's part of the Guardian Form power that using IT temporarily removes any other powers. But if Ellen were to copy normal-Nanase, and then have the Guardian Form power but not use it, would she still have the FV5 beam? Dunno.) And it's a Thinker power because it gives her a significant understanding of what someone else's powers are. She doesn't even have to wait for the other person to use them, like Tedd does (on the other hand she probably gets a less thorough understanding). And she can not only tell her teammates about those powers, but demonstrate them.

As for Diane realizing that Nanase suspects she and Susan are sisters: Nanase is talking about Diane having an inherited characteristic that is not in any way apparent to normal senses. And she's speaking as if she's confident of what she's saying. It's a very logical conclusion that Nanase believes she knows (or knows a fair amount about) one of Diane's blood relatives. Diane knows that Nanase knows Elliot and that Elliot knows Susan, whom Diane already suspected is her sister. This is not a hard set of dots to connect.

I've also seen that in a lot of these issues, the majority of the people most loudly offended by some terminology that they say is disrespectful of some group are NOT PART of that group. And if you think using the offending terminology brings down their wrath, just try being part of the group yet not be offended at the terminology...

But its shape still hasn't been given, as far as I can recall.

Elliot is certainly capable of qualifying as a Thinker, with that ability. But with KerPop's advisory that the rating is based on how one would fight them, I'm going to say he doesn't... because he isn't prone to thinking. But if he did, well, some of the recommended countermeasures (disrupt communications) would be ineffective... Guardian form carries Thinker automatically, so incorporating a smartphone - while a nice non-magical enhancement - wouldn't add the category. I just made a policy decision and revised the list to match. Copying powers from someone else doesn't put one (Ellen) in the category for those powers. Because the ability to copy powers means they potentially go in ALL categories, and doing that makes putting them in ANY category uninformative. However, that means I really need to put this ability in as a Trump power, which I had been reluctant to do. (It's also a Breaker power and a Thinker power.) But observing a power and knowing what it is and can do is still a Thinker power, not a Trump power. According to me.

I suspected when we first saw that page of eight marks that all eight had already been given at that point. Sarah getting a mark not on that page strengthens this view (but does NOT PROVE it). Also, the shape does not have to have ANYTHING to do with the power. That's canon, and supported by Susan's mark being the classical symbol for females - which has no apparent relationship to the summoning of objects. (This is a good thing. The one symbol looks to me like two people having sex in a bean-bag chair, and I don't think I want to know what power would go with that.)

Interstellar travel requires at least one of: FTL, coldsleep (long-term cryogenic hibernation) and near-lightspeed, temporarily stepping into an alternate universe, long-distance teleportation, or generation ships (vessels that can go 50+ years with minimal maintenance and no outside supplies). Freefall uses FTL but, between still having a huge propellant-to-payload ratio and still having transit times measured in months, also uses coldsleep to avoid the need for suitable accommodations and life support for active passengers. It also uses near-lightspeed ships (plus coldsleep) for transferring large amounts of stuff that's less time-critical; this includes colony ships (the ones that bring more or less an entire colony, hundreds to thousands of people with everything they need to establish a colony). We don't know how the Uryuom got to earth. It's canonical that either their ships are shaped like flying saucers, or that's what some human thought of when the subject came up. (I don't consider the scenes on/near the moon strictly canonical - something about a knife-fight involving a shark being interrupted by a loud cry from someone on earth...) But even if they are saucer-shaped, that doesn't explain what mechanism they use for interstellar travel.