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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

Don Edwards

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  1. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from Ser Pentrose in NP, Monday, August 1, 2016   
    Almost every writer I've heard talk about the process of creating a story (and I attend writing panels at sci-fi cons) has mentioned getting into an argument with one of their characters - and losing.
  2. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from The Old Hack in Story Monday August 1, 2016   
    I've often wondered just how powerful a deity is, who can't sanctify a marriage without the permission of a preacher and/or a government official.
  3. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from The Old Hack in Story Monday August 1, 2016   
    I've often wondered just how powerful a deity is, who can't sanctify a marriage without the permission of a preacher and/or a government official.
  4. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from The Old Hack in Story Monday August 1, 2016   
    I've often wondered just how powerful a deity is, who can't sanctify a marriage without the permission of a preacher and/or a government official.
  5. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from Vorlonagent in NP: Wednesday, July 27, 2016   
    Everybody. The newest (and best-to-date imho) workaround is to change your text color from "default" (which happens to be black, except when editing a message) to "black".
  6. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from Vorlonagent in NP: Wednesday, July 27, 2016   
    Everybody. The newest (and best-to-date imho) workaround is to change your text color from "default" (which happens to be black, except when editing a message) to "black".
  7. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from Scotty in Wed, July 20th, 2016   
    Mr. Verres would need to borrow the TFG to fill that costume.
  8. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from Scotty in Wed, July 20th, 2016   
    Mr. Verres would need to borrow the TFG to fill that costume.
  9. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from banneret in NP: Friday, July 15, 2016   
    My daughter has a story of a an RPG where the other players persuaded her to play a gnome thief - and then their characters immediately started with jokes about short people...
    She managed to persuade the king that kidnappers were after him, escort him to a place of safety, go back and convince the royal councillors that the king had been kidnapped and they should choose her as the courier for the ransom money, frame the rest of her party as the kidnappers, bring the king back and collect a reward from him for protecting him from the kidnappers, and then rescue the rest of the party...
    ... there were no kidnappers...
    (This involved a LOT of notes to & from the DM. Just to make things confusing, some of the notes she passed said things like "think a moment and then tell me no".)
  10. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from banneret in NP: Friday, July 15, 2016   
    My daughter has a story of a an RPG where the other players persuaded her to play a gnome thief - and then their characters immediately started with jokes about short people...
    She managed to persuade the king that kidnappers were after him, escort him to a place of safety, go back and convince the royal councillors that the king had been kidnapped and they should choose her as the courier for the ransom money, frame the rest of her party as the kidnappers, bring the king back and collect a reward from him for protecting him from the kidnappers, and then rescue the rest of the party...
    ... there were no kidnappers...
    (This involved a LOT of notes to & from the DM. Just to make things confusing, some of the notes she passed said things like "think a moment and then tell me no".)
  11. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from banneret in NP: Friday, July 15, 2016   
    My daughter has a story of a an RPG where the other players persuaded her to play a gnome thief - and then their characters immediately started with jokes about short people...
    She managed to persuade the king that kidnappers were after him, escort him to a place of safety, go back and convince the royal councillors that the king had been kidnapped and they should choose her as the courier for the ransom money, frame the rest of her party as the kidnappers, bring the king back and collect a reward from him for protecting him from the kidnappers, and then rescue the rest of the party...
    ... there were no kidnappers...
    (This involved a LOT of notes to & from the DM. Just to make things confusing, some of the notes she passed said things like "think a moment and then tell me no".)
  12. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from Ser Pentrose in NP: Friday, July 1, 2016   
    Essentially, "gold" is the official public-release version. And when you're releasing a physical disk in a pretty box possibly with assorted "supporting" material (such as a catalog listing the company's other recent products), the thing must "go gold" some time before it can actually be released - because most likely the assembly of the complete package is occurring in some second-world country and the result has to be shipped to the first-world buyers.
    With electronic distribution, of course, a product can "go gold" at 10 AM and hit the market at 10:05. Electronic distribution is also much less expensive than preparing masses of atoms and hauling them around the planet.
  13. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from mlooney in Story: Wednesday, Jun 29, 2016   
    Well, we know that the intimidation factor is why superheroes that can throw nuclear-grade fireballs from their fingertips carry guns.
    (Well, that, and sometimes you want to shoot something small but not leave a crater.)
  14. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from HarJIT in Story: Wednesday, June 22, 2016   
    It is. Even being only mildly genderfluid. Not that I'd equate it, or even compare it, to what someone who's transgender deals with - I've had dysphoria for hours *total*, they suffer it for hours *daily* - but it's nonzero.
  15. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from Maplestrip in Things You Only Noticed On Reread   
    There is also something called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. It's essentially a defect in the receptors for one or more male hormones, particularly testosterone. Genetic males with this defect are divided into three categories depending on how severe it is. The moderate form is the easiest to detect, as it causes the person to be born recognizably intersex. Males with the mild form are less fertile or perhaps sterile, while males with the severe form seem to be completely female - and, quite often, unusually shapely - but are sterile.
    Genetic females with it... are more shapely than they would be otherwise. They are NOT less fertile.
    The shapeliness occurs because in the female body, the major source of testosterone is fat cells... such as what fills in breast development and widening hips in puberty... and the androgen receptors are a major part of what tell the body to stop enhancing those areas. The bigger the boobs, the more body fat in them, therefore the more androgens saying "okay that's enough" - and nobody's listening.
  16. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from RainbowWizard in Story: Monday, June 20, 2016   
    Of all the Discworld books I've read (most of them but not all), I would have to rate A Hat Full of Sky as the best preparation for writing Sarah learning about her magic.
    It would be mildly beneficial - certainly not critical - to read Wee Free Men first.
  17. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from Ser Pentrose in NP Friday June 10, 2016   
    Pretty much everyone nerds out about something. It's just that nobody admits it's nerding out when the "something" is sports, auto mechanics, or a few other select subjects.
  18. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from HarJIT in Things that make you worried.   
    There are a lot of medical tests that are cheap, easy, and have a high false-positive rate of detecting problems - sometimes to the point where a detected problem is more likely to be a false positive than a real problem. If you get a positive result from such a test, the proper response is to order a retest (if retests don't generally repeat the false-positive results) or a more difficult/expensive test that is significantly less likely to give a false positive.
    So why don't they order the more difficult/expensive test first? Because the cheap test alone will give a correct, negative result for most people, saving them the expense of the expensive test. If it's a choice of having 100 people pay $2 (total $200), or having 90 people pay $1 and 10 people pay $3 (total $120)...
  19. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from mlooney in Story Tuesday June 7, 2016   
    Spell schools (D&D definitions) and who I can remember using them - I have probably forgotten several:
    Abjuration: Greg, Dex, Jerry, possibly done *to* Magus, possibly threatened by Tara Conjuration: (Summoning) Nanase, Susan, Dex, spidervamp; (Healing) Elliot (superheroine), Grace, Sirleck - all arguable; (Calling) Dex, Abraham; (Creation) Nanase, Jerry; (Teleportation) Nioi, all Immortals, possibly done *to* Magus Divination: Edward, Nanase (fairy and guardian), Ellen (guardian), Tedd, Sarah, Tara, Nioi, possibly the ether-whale (for telepathy) Enchantment: Jerry, Magus, Tengu, Nioi, Pandora, the ether-whale Evocation: Dex, Justin, Terra, Sirleck, Edward, probably Tara Illusion: Nanase, Justin, Raven, Jerry Necromancy: -- and I doubt we'll ever see it in this comic Transmutation: Tedd, Grace, Hedge, Guineas, Vlad, Elliot (superheroine), Ellen (guardian), Nanase, Abraham, Tengu, spidervamp, Nioi, all Immortals Universal: Susan, French Immortals, Pandora The order of names on the above lines has far more to do with the order in which I thought of them than anything else.
     
    (Terra gets a link because she's such a minor character and I want to make it clear that I did NOT mean Tara.)
  20. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from mlooney in NP Friday June 3, 2016   
    What do you mean "originally"? If humans couldn't have telekinetic/etc. powers WITHOUT some special sort of microorganism, how does it make scientific sense for the microorganisms to grant such powers?
    (Of course, it remains indisputable scientific fact that "midichlorians" were a really bad answer to a question nobody was asking.)
  21. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from HarJIT in Story Thursday June 2, 2016   
    I usually have the same gender identity that Dan states. It wobbles a bit. If it wobbles far enough in one direction, I get mild dysphoria - I've had that for a few hours total, and even that sucks, making me very glad I am not trans. I have no similar guide to how far it wobbles in the other direction, but I suspect my normal range is fairly symmetrical.
    Sexual (and romantic) orientation, though, I am very solidly - perhaps unusually solidly - gynophilic.
    Hot-wing sauce, medium-mild. (On most shops' 5-star scales I go for 2 stars.)
  22. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from RainbowWizard in NP Friday 27 May 2016   
    Probably only because FOOF (dioxygen difluoride) technically isn't flammable at all.
    (In the presence of FOOF, practically everything else is flammable, and most other things at least border on being explosive. Water, for example, burns like crazy - and the smoke will melt your lungs.)
    Catch is... thinking about chlorine trifluoride, I suspect it actually isn't flammable either.
  23. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from SeriousJupiter in STORY: Monday, May 16, 2016   
    Well, all the aberrations we've seen were wearing clothes that fit them reasonably well. Spidey's had some serious custom tailoring (which he may have done himself, but then he'd still have to acquire fabric, thread, buttons, and preferably a sewing machine and a reasonably-secure work space). They may prefer to not live outside in the rain and cold. They may need to eat ordinary food to maintain their bodies, more often than would be satisfied by their need to drain victims of life-force. Most probably need to travel every so often to avoid attracting too much attention. They may have ambitions beyond living a really long time - Sirleck for example.
    Money would be useful.
    However, if I were an aberration and learned that someone was trying to draw a lot of aberrations to Moperville, I'd be careful to stay well away from that city. Preferably on another continent. Because the expected consequence of a concentration of aberrations is a concentrated aberration-hunt. 
  24. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from ProfessorTomoe in Changing Medications (Level of Trust Required)   
    And if you don't feel better soon, or you notice any of your fingers bending where they shouldn't or changing significantly in length, haul your hiney to a doctor to get it X-rayed and all the bones lined up to heal properly.
  25. Like
    Don Edwards got a reaction from tuoteg in NP: Monday, May 16, 2016