CritterKeeper

Who says they're different Immortals? They likely were all, or almost all, involved in creating the agreement in the first place, depending on whether you believe new Immortals come into existence occasionally. Their basic nature carries over through their resets. Sounds like they need someone experienced in supernatural negotiations and diplomacy. Wonder if it would ever occur to them to ask Edward's help? Maybe Pandora, given that he's sort of family?

I think you underestimate Lois Lane. She might insist that either Superman were considered a sperm donor, or Power/SuperGirl be considered a surrogate and she and Clark be the baby's legal parents. But I don't think she would demand the species go extinct. On the other hand, you, Vorlonagent, have just proven you are a cad. ;-)

(Please note that there is no Politics thread; this post is specifically about how the debates are being run, please refrain from *any* specifics about individuals, and only address the format of the debate itself in any replies to this post. ;-) Next time there's a debate, they really need to give the moderator a kill switch for each candidate's microphone. Any time a candidate starts dodging a question or talking off-topic the moderator can hit their kill switch and instruct them to contain their remarks to the topic at hand. Any time a candidate interrupts their opponent and tries to talk over them, their mic will be turned off and their opponent will get at minimum of twice the time they were interrupted added to their time to speak unopposed before their offender's microphone is turned back on. I'd really like to see how many times being cut off it would take before people started to respect the rules of the debate and stop being rude.

I think the internet is a pretty good solution. Any given book can be photographed and/or OCR scanned, and the scans shared far and wide. Even if such sharing is restricted to academic uses, that's still a lot better than keeping all copies in one physical location, on flammable materials. The more rare the book, the more likely someone wants to get images of every page. Every known copy of Shakespeare's First Folio has been cataloged in detail, with every stain, every little tear, even the crumbs stuck in the crack between pages are known (and commented on by people giving lectures on them ;-), let alone the little differences in text between the start of each printing and the end, as typos and errors were noticed and fixed (sometimes creating new errors in the process).

Lo, these many years ago, I did something similar with tracing paper and copies of Elfquest. Wendy Pini is awesome with faces, both expressions and making each character's face distinct in shape. I suspect I learned more from tracing them than I would from digitally clipping images, but I didn't become a draw-er myself so maybe I didn't learn enough. ;-)

Sirleck's reaction to the news that there was an elf around was what first got many of us speculating as to whether he was switching his ultimate target from Magus, a wizard but a mortal, to Adrian, a centuries-old-yet-still-young-and-healthy-looking half-immortal who is *also* a powerful wizard (Sirleck may not know that part, but it seems likely to be a common trait among elves).

There's also nothing in the linked page to indicate Sirleck is still planning on trying to get Ellen to zap Elliot. He is currently planning something at which he will only get one shot, and for which he needs the two immortals distracted. He could just as well have changed his plan completely.

It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for! Sorry, but in my book simply talking about hijinks does not qualify as hijinks. You have to actually engage in the hijinks discussed. Either that, or discussion of potential hijinks is overheard by a third party, reaulting in actual hijinks based on misinterpretation of what was said.

Wow, sounds like the only way to get it to work is to wave your magic wand.... It's far too complicated a problem for our science to even think of most of the problems, let alone figure out how to solve them, We're just going to have to say that magic is involved, or at least technology that is sufficiently advanced to invoke Clarke's Third Law. I would think that any safeties for pregnancy would have to cover the safety of the embryo and not just the mother. Not much point in permanently changing the mother to sustain a completely non-viable embryo. Whatever your feelings about personhood or soul or whatever else, there is no denying that once an egg has become fertilized by sperm, the resulting zygote is a distinct organism which has its own genetic code, just as much as an adult offspring has their own genetic code distinct from their parents. It's the same DNA, just multiplied many billions of times.

And so is an elf.

When Voltaire brought it up, he said something like, "Well, Elliot is still alive, so plan B is still on the table." To me, the "so" implies that plan B, aka plan CM, requires Elliot to be alive. Oooh....that is an *evil* thought! (This is the point where an old writing group of mine would have chimed in with a collective, "Yay, evil!" because we'd found that the best ideas were almost always evil ideas....) In Elliot's case, the danger is definitely that he perhaps can't live with them.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Jerry is commenting on his own basic personality, and thus what his reset self will likely be like -- someone who will honor a vow made in a past life. We won't know for sure until Dan says so! We haven't discussed this lately, have we? Hmm....a form becomes permanent if you get pregnant while transformed....and Tedd now thinks he can figure out how to change someone else's "default" sex....so maybe you could transform into an 18-year-old girl, then get pregnant, have the baby, and then if you're male gender, you get Tedd to turn you to a now-19-year-old male version of the girl you became permanently by getting pregnant. If they all plan ahead and the guys get gender-swapped-but-otherwise-unchanged versions of themselves saved, then they can become their own normal self but younger. Of course, there are ethical questions, especially about having a baby just to gain another lifespan, but there is still a two-year waiting list to adopt babies with Downes Syndrome, let alone healthy babies, so it's not like they'd be leaving the poor things on a hillside. They could do all the prep work they wanted, investigate potential adoptive parents thoroughly. But, especially for the guys, it might become problematic if the child wanted to meet their biological parents someday.... The *only* healing I can recall in the comic is the option to give Ashley the ability to cure very minor scratches or ease pain slightly. Is there anything in the archive I'm forgetting?

I'm told because of their respective proportions, women have a shorter reach with their arms but an equal reach with their legs compared to a man of the same height. Thus, women often do better by emphasizing kicks more than men. I suppose if most men have trained with an emphasis on punches, and practiced sparring with other men similarly inclined, then women would also have some degreee of advantage by emphasizing kicks because men wouldn't be as prepared for them.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2236 So, I had noticed that the NP story "Question Mark" had been added to the menu for main story comics, but I guess I'd just assumed it was a link to the regular NP pages. Turns out, it's been copied into the regular Story comics section, four to a page, and there are brand new commentaries with each page. They're all dated Tuesday May 17, 2016, which puts them, not immediately after "Squirrel Prophet" when they take place, but after the end of "So A Date At The Mall." I thought that, since I'd missed that fact, others likely have too, plus the new commentaries deserve a place to discuss them.

Hmm, I suspect trying to kill Elliot himself wouldn't fit under "empower and guide," so I think that possibility is already off the board. Still, if Edward doesn't at least try to expand on that vow or point out the loopholes, then I'll be very disappointed in him.

It's a word I see all the time, so it wouldn't have registered for me, but a friend who is just starting the hormonal part of transitioning was highly amused that her new estradiol patch, to be applied to the skin twice a week, is labeled a transdermal patch. :-D

Actually, I've long wondered if dolphin and whale communication might not include sending versions of sonar images, so that they're talking in pictures. If that's the case, then there really would be a huge gap between us as far as ability to communicate goes. They might be able to exchange some ideas with us, but they'd always think of it as a poor excuse for a language, no matter how complex it became.

Your phrasing and mine still don't seem to match up, but I'll take your word for it you mean the same thing I do, unless I see something that tells me otherwise. :-) They, on the other hand, are likely to be able to speak some sort of version of our languages. They've already been shown to understand the idea of grammar and syntax. Perhaps some sort of pidgin language, restricted to frequencies both species can hear and reproduce, using human grammar but with words that are mostly clicks and whistles the dolphins naturally produce? And don't forget the Prude Puffins!

No tea (I want to see Catalina and Rhoda, after all, not some substitute), and wearing swimsuts. I picture one-piece, but YMMV. They've got some frosting on them, but not yet covered in it. And Catalina is holding a proportionately-sized cupcake and staring very directly at Rhoda as she takes a great big lick out of the frosting on it. The promise of more to come is usually much sexier than showing things too blatantly. ;-)

That's the one I'm expecting. In fact, I would expect him to use a lot more truths than lies, just carefully selected truths. For instance, Edward may have known that Adrian is a half-immortal, but not known that his mother is still alive and un-reset. Tell him a heavily slanted view of Pandora, and when he says he's got to check with his sources to confirm things, remark that her son might not give him particularly unbiased information. At that point, if he had even one little thing Adrian had mislead Edward on, he could leave Edward highly suspicious of anything Adrian could offer. Ellen has one attack she can use rapid-fire. I think it would be hilarious if it actually worked, maybe even pinning him to the physical plane until it wore off. Actually, Plan CM apparently requires that Elliot be alive. My guess would be, only if he has his power glove on, and even then, maybe only for a fraction of a second. What would be even more interesting would be if Sarah could see Immortals if she cast her time-stop just as they were fading away. Maybe just a brief glimpse of what they were doing immediately after, but if she could see which way an immortal headed, or the look on their face when they thought they were unobserved, it might tell them a few bits of critical information.

Hmm, if the watches really only require a very minimal amount of Earth magic, then perhaps Grace wouldn't have to go to quite the extremes to be able to use them, as she would to be able to cast spells or otherwise wield power on her own.

Ah, yes, the Freudian Slip, when you say one thing, but you mean your mother. (Actually, Freud was a bit of an ass who said that victims of sexual abuse had invented their stories because they wanted them to happen. I quit worrying about what Freud had to say when I heard about that.)

I'm afraid I'm only familiar with C. perfringens that dogs get, which almost always clears up with Tylan and a few cans of i/d. From the reactions human medicine types give me when the name Clostridium first comes up, I gather it's not so easy to deal with. I'm sorry to hear your mom is having such troubles. I hope at least that her hip is healing?

Sorry, but I think that very much counts as a spoiler for anyone who's been following the story but is a couple of strips behind. It was not hard for me to guess what inspired those looks. Please, when in doubt, use spoiler tags!

If I thought they really were morons (IQ 51-70) or imbeciles (IQ 26-50) then I'd have sympathy tor them.