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NP Comic for Thursday, Jan 16, 2025 Hope floats.

Comic for Friday, Nov 22, 2024 Hope's play seems odd. I'm not seeing the goal. The art for the imp seems to be a non-Dan style. I wonder if he's trying some new technique?

Comic for Wednesday, Nov 20, 2024 Hope and Sarah playing, off to a slow start. Hope and Sarah are cute with longer hair. The Persistent Healer looks bored.

Comic for Monday, Nov 4, 2024 For a comic that is mostly a posting of coming matches, this comic has a lot of activity. Jay backpedals a bit on her marriage proposal, I guess realizing what she said. Susan has no time to respond. (I think the ship still has structural integrity.) Sam seems nervous to be paired with George, fearing that George will notice his actual sex change. Susan, paired with Larry, is distracted. By thoughts of Jay? They left a lot hanging. Sarah and Hope are happy to be hanging out. Jay and Tedd are nervous to be hanging out. And the chapter ends, to be resumed midweek, next week. I hope the pace keeps up.

Comic for Monday, Oct 28, 2024 Hope went right to dumping the frijoles. She is more confident than she was minutes ago, this makes sense how? Still, it works, and it is keeping a nice pace going. Jill is confused. I'd be confused, but she has the advantage of already knowing about magic, and Hope just mentioned, "I'm an magic bean" (frijole). We all know the hazards of magic beans, they make big plants that climb up to the clouds overnight and let huge giants climb down. So don't plant Hope. Susan figured it out right away, authenticated Hope, and is hopping down the bunny trail. I like that they stepped up the game quickly.

Comic for Wednesday, Oct 30, 2024 Hope is still finding her way, no confidence. Panel four, she was at her limit, running on fumes. But everyone was agreeable and accepting (not something I expected from Jill). Panel seven, Hope is shipping them as well.

Comic for Monday, Oct 14, 2024 Hope is needing counseling, I hope Sarah's up to the task. Really bad lack of eye contact, I'm assuming that means what we'd normally take it to mean. Meta - It's a generally positive comic, so of course it will work out.

Comic for Wednesday, Oct 9, 2024 Hope is emotionally torn up by recent revelations; Sarah to the rescue!

Comic for Monday, Sep 9, 2024 Pandora had reasons, Hope can't wrap her head around those reasons. Her current concerns aren't good enough. 'Pandora' seems to be correct, Hope needs to decide what she wants and then go for it.

Comic for Friday, Sep 6, 2024 Hey! Who's in charge in my own head! Memory of Pandora has a lot of clout for someone that was reset.

Comic for Wednesday, Sep 4, 2024 Pandora was exclusively focused on family and Sarah; She locked up many other memories. The last panel, "She didn't even know it was there" says that the Pandora-like figure in Hope's memory is not exactly Pandora. Hope will look in the box, and will not suffer in the extreme way Pandora would have. There is a set of engineering terms that seems related to this. Pandora was very insightful, and in most circumstances instantly grasped case and effect consequences, enabling her to adjust her desired actions, i.e., her direction. (She did not do so well with damming in the ambient magic, but she was able to adjust once she had the knowledge.) Hope is still on the early part of the reboot learning curve, and does not adjust quickly. The differential equations that let a missile fly towards a target (for instance) are described as underdamped if they react too quickly, and overdamped if they react slowly. (Critically damped if they minimize the time to completion.) A problem with underdamped, critically damped, even lightly overdamped systems is overshoot; the system reaches the target value, but passes it and needs to correct back to the target again. If passengers are involved, this will feel like periodic motion. This is why elevators slow as they approach your floor; if they overshot, it would be very annoying, and passengers might feel motion sickness, perhaps some loosing their lunch. (In modern high speed elevators, this is not resolved buy strictly overdamping; rather, a meta control system changes the parameter as your elevator car gets close to the desired floor.) A governor on an engine is a typical overdamped system. The hazard of overdamping is that the system might not be able to keep up, your missile is not as agile as its target. The hazard of underdamping is different. If you've ever seem a film of rocket experiments in the dawn of the space age, you've seen the hazard of underdamping. The system thrashes between corrections, the error accumulating if the underdamping is extreme, leading to erratic behavior. (In the film, the rockets crash.) The actual math has additional considerations, unstable points to avoid, and stable points that help stabilize the system. A human in the loop can learn to adapt and provide a high degree of stability, but we tend to react more slowly than a system with no human in the loop. Pandora was very underdamped, to the point of insane, and Hope is overdamped. She might well be able to handle the information that Pandora could not.

Comic for Wednesday, Aug 28, 2024 Hope is not hopeful, but she's contacted by Sarah, so that may change. I thought Justin was playing against her, but I guess she's just turning in her score. AJ looks slightly worried.

Comic for Friday, Aug 16, 2024 Grace has figured out stuff. Hope is sitting nearby, being a withdrawn significant presence. Jay is more accepting of her help than seems like Jay would do, but whatever, EGS characters drift toward healthier outlook all the time. AJ is a bit more busted, which is probably irrelevant. Which all raises issues with the previous comic. The people staring at her seem aware that Jay caused the flicker. Tedd is probably sure. Susan has enough experience with magic to not be surprised. What is her friend Mark thinking? Does he know about her magic?

Comic for Friday, Aug 2, 2024 A fair amount of awareness of her past, nothing else new, really, she already determined she needed to talk to Sarah alone.

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/hope-089 Is Sam specifically aware that George claims to know everything that happens around that shop? Does George give off "i'm watching" vibes even when he's not watching? Or is Sam paranoid? Running with the bulls, Hope? I think you may be on the wrong continent.

Comic for Monday, Jul 8, 2024 As portrayed in the comic in the past, rebooted immortals are kind of clueless - the couple that have been hanging around Elliot, perhaps selfish - Zeus, who is watching out for Susan and Diane. Pandora rebooted retaining much more than normal memory of her relationships, yet the outstanding feature of Hope is that she is hampered in functioning, more so than others who reboot unencumbered. Was it just a bad idea? I have the impression that is not what Dan intended. I expect her to be dialed in more quickly than a normal reboot; able to reconnect with her past. Of course it could be that Pandora was discounting the affects of her own actions and how it would affect her future self. She clearly does not understand people all that well. I hope she connects and gets guidance. Jay's response is a bit odd. Is she surprised that Susan has friends? Implying that she does not?

Comic for Monday, Jul 1, 2024 VS list with some mental images. Tensaided looks fierce, Tedd looks apprehensive. Susan and Rich both look freaked out. I think George is getting ready to stomp AJ. Hope still looks worried and withdrawn. She needs to pull Sarah aside and talk to her.

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/hope-069 Please, pay attention to what is important. Turn in your results and see if there is any way to have Justin set you up against Sarah as your next opponent. Besides, if memory access is set by Pandora's rules, games are likely to take precedence before anything else. But on reflection, a possibility comes to mind. Did Pandora mark or awaken Jay as a way to annoy Arthur?

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/hope-068 is it just a coincidence that a comic about Memory is posted on Memorial Day in the United States? Probably. Pandora had good intentions. But she should have anticipated that simply putting up barriers would only feed the curiosity and determination of a being much like herself.

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/hope-057 The Line Cutter has official initials now. AJ. I suppose it could mean lots of things. But until I see confirmation otherwise, I'm reading it as "A Jerk". So which opening round pairing will be first in our focus?

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/hope-055 Hope, don't mess this up. Slightly off topic, perhaps it is time for Ted et al to create a code of ethics regarding independent magic research There needs to be a way of helping a novice magic user come to terms with their abilities that falls some where in between fending for yourself and turning you in to the nearest shadow government agency

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/hope-056 The date in the title is not incorrect. This comic was dated Thursday instead of Friday. Reasons unknown to any of the voices in my head. The Line Cutter makes his return. And without even meeting him before, Hope knows he intends to cheat. Unless he is here as a justifiable target, his presence does little to enhance my enjoyment of the story. I deal with far too many people possessing this attitude on a daily basis.

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/hope-053 So, an awkward conversation is ended, but much is left to be resolved. Incidentally, Justin, how will anyone who can't hear you know to get to where they can? (I know, he means for them to get to where they can hear him when he's not shouting; it still sounds funny the way he said it.)

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/hope-052 No, Hope Don't push Tedd away I know you are confused and overwhelmed by the plans and Ideas Pandora had near the end, and some of those plans involved tedd But none of them matter now What she could or should have done was all lost in the Mall incident Learn from her dreams and mistakes if you wish, but at this point you will need help if you want to implement or correct anything And where are you going to find a sympathetic magic user to help you realize your own plans?

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/hope-050 That's a lot of character tags for a strip where relatively little happens. Anyway, I should probably say something meaningful about the comic. I know! "Yay for starburst background & foreground in panel six!" There, perfect.