q&a7 Story: Friday, June 17, 2016

[Vorlonagent 442]

On 6/18/2016 at 1:15 AM, podian said:

Everybody's talking about Noah, nobody's talking about General Shade Tail...

...which is exactly how Shade Tail likes it. 

Honestly, I don't think Gen. Shade-Tail is a mage.  The few comics he has at all been in (assuming you count word balloons from off-panel), he comes across as a brute.  Dan could turn him around and put him in a blender and pour out a mage, but I'm thinking he (shade-Tail) will come across as the full, scary potential of what you get with a Lespuko-Uryouom hybrid.  Grace embraced her inner monster and made it fuzzy and cute.  I'm thinking Shade Tail embraced his inner monster too...and became and even bigger one.

[hkmaly 490]

On 06/17/2016 at 1:56 AM, Scotty said:

Does this confirm that Noah has magic beyond "Uryuom Power"? He's certainly tried to gain earth based magic on his path to avenging his parents' deaths. Did he succeed to some degree? Or fail not only because Adrian talked him out of it, but because it was much more difficult for him to do because of his Uryuom heritage?

It doesn't explicitly confirm it, but it strongly suggest it. The summoning of tonfas was certainly earth magic.

On 06/18/2016 at 3:14 AM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

If the teacher pauses in the lecture and says "this will be on the test", the students know they need to pay attention because it will come up again.

If the Dan pauses in the Comic and says "this is not relevant", the bunnies know they need to pay attention because it will come up again.

Agree.

On 06/18/2016 at 5:20 PM, mlooney said:

On 06/18/2016 at 2:04 PM, Scotty said:

Give Dan some credit, we saw Grace turn 18 a little over 3 years after the comic started. So that would make it somewhere in 2019 that she'll turn 19.

OK, we are fairly sure the next arc is going to be Sisters 3. Unless they are a part of it, we still have Sarah and Sam's "date" and Justin and Luke's date to deal with.  That, based on "So a date in the mall" is going to take a couple of hundred strips each.  So three arcs, let's call it 500 strips at 3 a week is roughly 3 years and 2 months.  That will take care of the next 10 days or so of comic time.  It will be, at most, early February comic time by 2019.  I suspect at least one of the dates is going to be NP canon story line to avoid some of that, but still.

Then another timeskip will happen and Grace's 19.

I would be more worried about the 2020 estimate of Lord Tedd returning. I think he will return AFTER they finish with Pandora, and that would take them some serious real time.

On 06/19/2016 at 9:40 AM, RainbowWizard said:

Seriously though, magic on top of Grace's existing durability, versatility, and general powerhouseness is probably OP.

Luckily, this is comics, not game, so we don't need to care about it being OP.

[Drasvin 123]

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

On 6/19/2016 at 2:40 AM, RainbowWizard said:

Seriously though, magic on top of Grace's existing durability, versatility, and general powerhouseness is probably OP.

Luckily, this is comics, not game, so we don't need to care about it being OP.

That's not entirely true. While games are more sensitive to character power levels, an extremely powerful character in any narrative work can remove dramatic tension, requiring either contrivances or escalation to explain why the OP character doesn't simply solve the problem causing the dramatic tension. EGS does focus more on social aspects than straight combat, but given Grace's pacifistic, fun-loving, and over-all friendly nature, the most likely spells for Grace to get if she awakens would be social in aspect.

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

On 6/19/2016 at 1:40 AM, RainbowWizard said:

Seriously though, magic on top of Grace's existing durability, versatility, and general powerhouseness is probably OP.

Luckily, this is comics, not game, so we don't need to care about it being OP.

we do if it gets to the point of having a negative impact on pacing and characterization.

[banneret 45]

Grace has always been overpowered, Dan simply moderates her impact through her naiveté, discomfort with violence, and placement in the narrative.
 

[hkmaly 490]

19 hours ago, Drasvin said:

21 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Luckily, this is comics, not game, so we don't need to care about it being OP.

That's not entirely true. While games are more sensitive to character power levels, an extremely powerful character in any narrative work can remove dramatic tension, requiring either contrivances or escalation to explain why the OP character doesn't simply solve the problem causing the dramatic tension. EGS does focus more on social aspects than straight combat, but given Grace's pacifistic, fun-loving, and over-all friendly nature, the most likely spells for Grace to get if she awakens would be social in aspect.

It's true you still need SOME balance in narrative work. Difference is that in game, you need to balance all characters using just power of abilities. In narrative work, you only need to balance party against enemy (or did someone complained that Gandalf and Aragorn are OP compared to Merry and Pippin?) and you have much more tools for balancing, like specific disadvantages, bad luck, social aspects ...

2 hours ago, banneret said:

Grace has always been overpowered, Dan simply moderates her impact through her naiveté, discomfort with violence, and placement in the narrative.

Exactly.

19 hours ago, Drasvin said:

given Grace's pacifistic, fun-loving, and over-all friendly nature, the most likely spells for Grace to get if she awakens would be social in aspect.

She might get some guaranteed-to-stun-only spells, actually ... it's definitely something she's yearning for.

[SeriousJupiter 49]

Interesting... So it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for uryuom-hybrids to learn Earth magic. It would take intense determination, lots of time and patience and much more training than any non-uryuom would need.

Wow. Noah is even more badass than we initially thought. We already knew he was a prodigy and it was implied that he's taken down bigger foes than the bulldog dragon before (he only lost that fight because Pandora cheated) and now we learned that he's most likely learned to suppress his Uryuom Power in order to learn Earth magic. Now I'm even more impatient to see him again.

IMO, one of Dan's writing's biggest flaws is the way he keeps introducing new characters when many of his older characters are still shrouded in mystery. Diane, Ashley and Charlotte are good characters and Luke and Sam have potential, but I wish we'd get to see Noah again before Dan comes up with even more characters who might join the main cast some day. Luckily, now that Susan and Diane are about to meet and Sirleck is targeting Raven, it's pretty much guaranteed that we'll get to see Raven again. The girls might ask him to train them to deal with Moperville's vampire problem. If Raven agrees, we'll most likely get to see Noah too. Maybe he will also teach the sisters some tricks.

[Vorlonagent 442]

4 hours ago, banneret said:

Grace has always been overpowered, Dan simply moderates her impact through her naiveté, discomfort with violence, and placement in the narrative.

...Which will insure shock value when we run into what is essentially Grace without all that nice stuff holding her back.

[Scotty 1,061]

37 minutes ago, SeriousJupiter said:

IMO, one of Dan's writing's biggest flaws is the way he keeps introducing new characters when many of his older characters are still shrouded in mystery. Diane, Ashley and Charlotte are good characters and Luke and Sam have potential, but I wish we'd get to see Noah again before Dan comes up with even more characters who might join the main cast some day.

Diane was introduced only a couple months real time after Noah back in 2004. So she shouldn't be lumped in with Ashley, Charlotte, Luke and Sam who've only been around for the last 3 years.

[SeriousJupiter 49]

1 minute ago, Scotty said:

Diane was introduced only a couple months real time after Noah back in 2004. So she shouldn't be lumped in with Ashley, Charlotte, Luke and Sam who've only been around for the last 3 years.

True, but Diane was only a minor character back then. She wasn't relevant to the story until she became interested in Elliot.

[Scotty 1,061]

2 minutes ago, SeriousJupiter said:

True, but Diane was only a minor character back then. She wasn't relevant to the story until she became interested in Elliot.

But Dan had hinted at the idea that Diane and Susan could be related way back in 2007. It wasn't revealed that Noah was the "child left behind" until 2011. Basically Dan's been playing leap frog with Diane's and Noah's stories, so yeah, seeing as we've spent a fair bit of time with Diane's lately, Noah's should be coming up again soon.

[partner555 170]

12 minutes ago, SeriousJupiter said:

True, but Diane was only a minor character back then. She wasn't relevant to the story until she became interested in Elliot.

I think she was relevant the moment the main eight acknowledged the similarities between her and Susan.

[Drasvin 123]

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

On 6/21/2016 at 9:21 PM, Drasvin said:

On 6/20/2016 at 6:41 PM, hkmaly said:

Luckily, this is comics, not game, so we don't need to care about it being OP.

That's not entirely true. While games are more sensitive to character power levels, an extremely powerful character in any narrative work can remove dramatic tension, requiring either contrivances or escalation to explain why the OP character doesn't simply solve the problem causing the dramatic tension. EGS does focus more on social aspects than straight combat, but given Grace's pacifistic, fun-loving, and over-all friendly nature, the most likely spells for Grace to get if she awakens would be social in aspect.

It's true you still need SOME balance in narrative work. Difference is that in game, you need to balance all characters using just power of abilities. In narrative work, you only need to balance party against enemy (or did someone complained that Gandalf and Aragorn are OP compared to Merry and Pippin?) and you have much more tools for balancing, like specific disadvantages, bad luck, social aspects ...

Gandalf was rather OP, but was kept in check by the fact that he didn't do much outside of a few key events and focused more and being the wise old guy... I know of one series that was dampened by disparate power among the main characters: Dragon Ball Z. At the start, there was a variety of active characters with different personalities and styles that people enjoyed, but as the series went on, the threats were continuously escalated to deal with the increasing power level of the main characters, but only a handful of characters had the ever increasing power that necessitated the escalating threats. This led to the characters, characters that people liked, that couldn't keep up to steadily get pushed out of the action and to the sidelines or even out of the narrative with the exception of the odd cameo.

In short, severely lopsided power distribution in a main cast can cause a character to overshadow the other characters and even push them out of the narrative (Why should we have character X involved in this plot when character Y can serve the same function and more?). A writer can certainly prevent a powerful character from breaking the plot and cast dynamics, but it requires skill, forethought, and energy(and possibly time. From what I know which might not be much, DBZ's writer was pretty skilled and had a plan..up to the Freeza arc, but his publisher and/or editor pushed him to continue it on past that AND he had to deal with tight deadlines) I doubt that EGS would run risk of such troubles though. If nothing else, Dan spends a lot of time thinking about his script and isn't above breaking schedule for a re-write if he decides he doesn't like where the script is going and he genuinely seems to love his characters and his work.

Also I would like to note that games can use those tools for balancing characters as well, depending on the type of game and how it's rules and engine are constructed. For instance, there are games, such as Persona 4, that work bad luck both into a character stats and characterization.

[banneret 45]

8 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

...Which will insure shock value when we run into what is essentially Grace without all that nice stuff holding her back.

Optimistically, Dan can replace these qualities with alternatives that are just as limiting. Pessimistically, we may not get there due to pacing anyway.
 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

A few comments about characters and power level.

Relative power level of characters is mainly relevant in a heavily action-oriented comic. This is not what EGS is. EGS is a sort of supernatural slice of life where characters, their development and the social challenges they face are of far greater importance than any action scene. In both 'Sister' stories, the villain (Goo, Abraham) was backdrop to the character development. In Painted Black, Damien's near invincibility was mainly important because of the effect it and his sociopathy had on the other characters. More recently, the power levels of the characters proved completely irrelevant when Ashley settled the conflict by use of a well-aimed football and a few well chosen words.

EGS is an intelligent comic. It is not Liefeld-esque action where power level acts as a substitute for plot and characterisation. Again and again we see how thinking wins out over raw power. There is no danger of power levels ever shoving a character aside as long as it is inspiration and cleverness that ends up saving the day. And even Lord of the Rings, with Gandalf chosen as example of someone 'overpowered', ended up having the day saved not by power but by two acts of mercy and the simple dedication of hobbits, the true everymen of Middle-Earth.

Comics and stories that let power level dominate them are of a completely different breed. I am not saying that they are necessarily bad, mind you. They can be, but this is most often due to lazy writing or the author falling too much in love with their Mary Sues/Marty Stus. In order for power levels to truly get out of control, the individuals in question must not only have vast power but also unusual reach in time and space as well as at least semi-omniscient knowledge. A Superman is not a problem as long as he can be distracted or mistaken. But if you give him the ability to go anywhere in no time as well as full and constant knowledge of what is happening, he becomes impossible to compensate for in any way that makes sense.

A good example of this was the Forgotten Realms as marketed by TSR. They had a bunch of NPCs called the Seven Sisters as well as Elminster himself. All of them were, individually or together, near or completely invincible. They could all teleport and several of them had impossibly powerful divination spells. TSR's stated purpose was to make a world where 'good always won' so as to not worry parents about what sort of game their children were playing. What they created was a world where no action taken had any meaning whatsoever because even if the world were coming to an end, Superelminster and his Super Friends would always swoop in to save the day. By removing evil's ability to pose a threat, the Gods of Evil themselves held all the menace of Team Rocket or possibly of Ellen back when she thought she was evil. And at the end of the day, any actions the player characters might take would at best be viewed with indulgent amusement by the TSR-driven Mary Sues of the Realms because the PCs had saved them like thirty seconds of light work by saving the world.

But this is not EGS, and arguing about 'overpowered' characters makes about as much sense in Dan's stories as it does to discuss character development in a Liefeld comic.

[Scotty 1,061]

I think, even though Grace had been painted as "the most powerful" early on, the way Dan's been building up all the main characters makes me feel like he wants them all to be relatively equal in power, just varied enough in what they can do so that they have to work together if there's something big that needs to be taken down.

Basically we're not going to see a "the group's only as strong as it's strongest member" but instead a "the group's strength is in the ability to work together".

[The Old Hack 2,448]

42 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I think, even though Grace had been painted as "the most powerful" early on, the way Dan's been building up all the main characters makes me feel like he wants them all to be relatively equal in power, just varied enough in what they can do so that they have to work together if there's something big that needs to be taken down.

Basically we're not going to see a "the group's only as strong as it's strongest member" but instead a "the group's strength is in the ability to work together".

This was the entire creed of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What made Buffy the most effective Slayer ever wasn't her being particularly powerful. It was her ability to form a team around herself and make use of its talents.

[banneret 45]

I seldom encounter criticism of Liefeld's plotting, merely because his character design is a more accessible target. That, and he did record himself inking and driving, which is a splendid way to die with disappointing art on your hands. I know I read parts of Deathstroke, Hawk & Dove, Grifter and that other one when New 52 hit, but I must admit, I mostly remember his SHRINK! strips, which were really quite bad and I wish I could forget them. All this said, when he relaunched Extreme/Awesome at Image, we did get some great intelligent stories produced by other creators, such as Prophet with Brandon Graham, and Glory with Sophie Campbell and Joe Keating.

[hkmaly 490]

23 hours ago, SeriousJupiter said:

IMO, one of Dan's writing's biggest flaws is the way he keeps introducing new characters when many of his older characters are still shrouded in mystery. Diane, Ashley and Charlotte are good characters and Luke and Sam have potential, but I wish we'd get to see Noah again before Dan comes up with even more characters who might join the main cast some day. Luckily, now that Susan and Diane are about to meet and Sirleck is targeting Raven, it's pretty much guaranteed that we'll get to see Raven again. The girls might ask him to train them to deal with Moperville's vampire problem. If Raven agrees, we'll most likely get to see Noah too. Maybe he will also teach the sisters some tricks.

I don't think it's flaw. Lot of authors - and famous authors - write in same way ... only they are writing TEXT, not webcomic, and publish by books, not by page.

23 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

On 06/21/2016 at 8:40 PM, banneret said:

Grace has always been overpowered, Dan simply moderates her impact through her naiveté, discomfort with violence, and placement in the narrative.

...Which will insure shock value when we run into what is essentially Grace without all that nice stuff holding her back.

... General Shade Tail?

19 hours ago, Drasvin said:

A writer can certainly prevent a powerful character from breaking the plot and cast dynamics, but it requires skill, forethought, and energy

Well, yes, but writing with characters BASED on game have it's disadvantages as well.

13 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

More recently, the power levels of the characters proved completely irrelevant when Ashley settled the conflict by use of a well-aimed football and a few well chosen words.

... good example. In EGS, conflicts are rarely solved using power.

9 hours ago, Scotty said:

I think, even though Grace had been painted as "the most powerful" early on, the way Dan's been building up all the main characters makes me feel like he wants them all to be relatively equal in power, just varied enough in what they can do so that they have to work together if there's something big that needs to be taken down.

Grace started most powerful, but got the least amount of "leveling" since start (well ... since Sister, she levelled quite a bit before that), and it was just using what she already had. So, others seem to be catching up with her.

 

[Scotty 1,061]

2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Grace started most powerful, but got the least amount of "leveling" since start (well ... since Sister, she levelled quite a bit before that), and it was just using what she already had. So, others seem to be catching up with her.

She's been training with Ellen as of just before Christmas. And her major hurdle at the moment seems to be in getting mobile while having her shields up. Once she is able to do that I imagine she'll be a more versatile tank. And yes I am considering Grace a tank, she's got high strength and defense. Nanase, Ellen and Elliot have agility with their martial arts training so they can flank and jump in and out of range quickly, Justin might be an off-tank given his strength aura, he might get some defensive spells later on. Susan and Tedd would be support with possible ranged. Sarah....sadly being the least developed for combat and magic in general (Tedd's at least thought of ways to defend himself and others) doesn't have much to offer yet.

[Vorlonagent 442]

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

... General Shade Tail?

Yes.  General.   Shade-Tail.

 

[hkmaly 490]

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

She's been training with Ellen as of just before Christmas. And her major hurdle at the moment seems to be in getting mobile while having her shields up.

Yes, she's been training. But compared to others, she didn't leveled much. Nanase got Guardian form, which is extremely powerful, Tedd realized (part of) his dangerous rarity, four characters were marked and four characters awakened.

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

She's been training with Ellen as of just before Christmas. And her major hurdle at the moment seems to be in getting mobile while having her shields up. Once she is able to do that I imagine she'll be a more versatile tank. And yes I am considering Grace a tank, she's got high strength and defense. Nanase, Ellen and Elliot have agility with their martial arts training so they can flank and jump in and out of range quickly, Justin might be an off-tank given his strength aura, he might get some defensive spells later on. Susan and Tedd would be support with possible ranged. Sarah....sadly being the least developed for combat and magic in general (Tedd's at least thought of ways to defend himself and others) doesn't have much to offer yet.

Recon and battle field intelligence is life. There is a reason why there are recon units at all levels down to battalion in most armies. Some have them as low as company, and depending on how you look at designated marksman, even some squads have a recon element. Sarah is a freaking great tactical recon element. The next best is Susan, assuming she can get to where she can see via her flock of fey, followed by Nanase. Susan over Nanase due to the number of "UAV" that each can launch. It's canon that both girls fairies are, to one degree or another armed.

[RainbowWizard 35]

On 21 June 2016 at 0:00 AM, Vorlonagent said:

...Which will insure shock value when we run into what is essentially Grace without all that nice stuff holding her back.

'Fallen from' Grace

[Scotty 1,061]

2 hours ago, RainbowWizard said:

On 6/21/2016 at 7:00 PM, Vorlonagent said:

...Which will insure shock value when we run into what is essentially Grace without all that nice stuff holding her back.

'Fallen from' Grace

I think the next time we see Grace go all out in a fight will be when she faces her counterpart General Shade Tail.