story Story: Monday July 11, 2016

[Scotty 1,061]

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2213

 

If it kinda was difficult to hate Pandora before, now it's impossible. I'm almost certain that this is why Pandora seems to desperately want to keep herself from knowing the outcomes of events before they play out.

[mlooney 3,417]

Given that there is 6 years of adventuring before Adrian was born, we need to have at least a couple of NP arcs about the adventures of Pandora and Blaike.

I would say a whole separate comic, but I'd rather Dan not spread his time around any more than he needs to.

And I still say that Pandora is "only" a demi goddess of chaos, which in and of its self is not evil.

[partner555 170]

Not knowing is part of the adventures? Definitely reminds me of Luffy. I'll have to ask Dan.

[RainbowWizard 35]

I still am suss, but that's because I mistrust any knife eared lady with more mojo in her than a blade can cut down.

 

Also... Raven shares neither of hos parents hair colours. Sure, greyscale, but it seems like his hair colour should be important maybe?

 

 

[Scotty 1,061]

2 minutes ago, RainbowWizard said:

I still am suss, but that's because I mistrust any knife eared lady with more mojo in her than a blade can cut down.

Also... Raven shares neither of hos parents hair colours. Sure, greyscale, but it seems like his hair colour should be important maybe?

His hair colour might have been a recessive trait in Blaike, maybe one of Blaike's parents had black hair. Not sure how DNA works with Immortals though. Heck for all I know, that theory I made about Pandora suppressing the immortal traits in Diane and Susan could be wrong and she didn't need to suppress anything, the Immortal traits could just happen to be recessive in Diane and Susan, and Adrian just happened to have them be dominant.

[hkmaly 490]

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

If it kinda was difficult to hate Pandora before, now it's impossible

Naah ... People change. (For very wide meaning of "people".) It was centuries ago. It is still possible to hate what Pandora became.

... although there definitely was no reason to hate her when she was with Blaike.

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

Given that there is 6 years of adventuring before Adrian was born, we need to have at least a couple of NP arcs about the adventures of Pandora and Blaike.

I would say a whole separate comic, but I'd rather Dan not spread his time around any more than he needs to.

Waaait ... this could actually be done by some other author, with just few hints about how immortals work from Dan.

14 minutes ago, Scotty said:

20 minutes ago, RainbowWizard said:

Also... Raven shares neither of hos parents hair colours. Sure, greyscale, but it seems like his hair colour should be important maybe?

His hair colour might have been a recessive trait in Blaike, maybe one of Blaike's parents had black hair. Not sure how DNA works with Immortals though. Heck for all I know, that theory I made about Pandora suppressing the immortal traits in Diane and Susan could be wrong and she didn't need to suppress anything, the Immortal traits could just happen to be recessive in Diane and Susan, and Adrian just happened to have them be dominant.

The question is IF DNA works with Immortals. Or half-immortals. It is possible the reason Raven can't have children is that he doesn't have any DNA, or he may have some but incompatible with humans. It's unlikely Blaike was pregnant, so it was Pandora ... and she likely did a lot of "empowering and guiding" to make the pregnancy work. Raven may have black hair because Pandora liked him that way ... or because she deliberately randomized that part of DNA.

Alternatively, Pandora might be having black hair in genes and just changed her hair color with magic.

Note that the pointy ears might be recessive (I doubt that, but it is possible) but the things she definitely needs to actively suppress are related to magic and immortal rules and are unlikely to be encoded in DNA at all.

 

[Aura Guardian 57]

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

If it kinda was difficult to hate Pandora before, now it's impossible. I'm almost certain that this is why Pandora seems to desperately want to keep herself from knowing the outcomes of events before they play out.

Considering what we already know of immortals, well. I can hate some things she does, but... yeah, I can't hate Pandora. I can pity what she has become and feel sorry for how she is no longer who she once was, but I can't hate her.

[Waspinator 2]

About half-immortals not being able to have kids: it could just be a thing where, like mules, a chromosome count mismatch interferes with the type of cell division needed for reproduction.

[Kazzellin 8]

At the moment, I have two comments for this comic.

First: Oh, hey, they killed Aragog! o_o

Second: Baby Raven! Squeee! So cute!  

Meanwhile, I'm going to bed. I will most likely say something more cohesive later on.

[hkmaly 490]

51 minutes ago, Waspinator said:

About half-immortals not being able to have kids: it could just be a thing where, like mules, a chromosome count mismatch interferes with the type of cell division needed for reproduction.

... that is one of possible reasons for the "incompatibility" I was speaking about, yes. Just ... it may be something even weirder.

2 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

On 07/10/2016 at 11:42 AM, sstabeler said:

In short, several centuries of experience hasn't actually made Pandora any more mature.

She MIGHT be regressing now, actually.

I don't want to spoil it in previous comics so explaining now: she seems MORE mature here than she is now. In her case, it's not experience making her mature: it's Blaike.

[Stature 96]

Chaos has not been prominent here. What gives, life?!?

Say, her dark side shows soon after Blaike died. Oy vey.

[Scotty 1,061]

41 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

On 7/10/2016 at 8:16 AM, Scotty said:

For Pandora's case, I wonder if the chaotic role she chose is to blame for her feeling burnt out sooner. One can only trick so many people into doing wacky things in exchange for stuff before the method and reaction starts repeating. Blaike certainly bucked the trend with refusing Pandora's offers, but if that's all she did in 150 years then I would expect her to get bored relatively quickly. Immortals like Jerry probably switched things up over the years to get different reactions and outcomes.

I also think something like this is the case. That "frivolous playing with mortals" is not only something not really worth as legacy, but also likely to get boring relatively fast.

Copy/paste from July 6th thread because it seems relevant here too.

18 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I don't want to spoil it in previous comics so explaining now: she seems MORE mature here than she is now. In her case, it's not experience making her mature: it's Blaike.

Blaike definitely had an effect on how she viewed Humans and such. Blaike taught her that she could get more enjoyment from not knowing what's inside a cave before you step into it. I imagine that way of thinking probably kept her sane longer past 200 years old because it wasn't just about getting an expected outcome as what it seemed like she was doing before she met Blaike. Unfortunately it's been obvious since the first time we saw Pandora, that it's gotten increasingly more difficult for her to do something with no expectations, she's basically got "I've seen it all" syndrome, but she still refuses to reset herself because she believes there's still something that can surprise her.

[hkmaly 490]

38 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I imagine that way of thinking probably kept her sane longer past 200 years old because it wasn't just about getting an expected outcome as what it seemed like she was doing before she met Blaike.

Or at least TO the 200 years, which is improvement as she was getting dangerously bored already before meeting Blaike.

38 minutes ago, Scotty said:

but she still refuses to reset herself because she believes there's still something that can surprise her.

I don't think that's the reason. Sure, she would like something to surprise her, but the reason why she didn't reset likely has something to do with Adrian Raven.

[ijuin 572]

Pandora is in her 150s when she falls for Blaike. That means that his death by old age would be rather close to when she turns 200, which in turn probably means that losing him will be a major reason for her to start delaying her reset.

Also, check Pandora's rounded ears in the penultimate panel. Posing as a human during their adventures, perhaps?

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

Awww...

Baby Adrian barely looks like a pompous (but well intentioned) jerk at all.

And they escaped the Lion Bear.  Now I want to know what happened to the beast?  Did it produce offspring that hated each other and eventually settled in Detroit and Chicago?

[Sweveham 65]

This is just so cute.

And Pandora is really sympathetic here. It makes her state of mind in the story's present so tragic. One can only imagine how it must feel for Adrian to know how his mother is now, considering how she once was .

[hkmaly 490]

38 minutes ago, Sweveham said:

And Pandora is really sympathetic here. It makes her state of mind in the story's present so tragic. One can only imagine how it must feel for Adrian to know how his mother is now, considering how she once was .

... hmmm ... right, it's likely he still remembers her sane.

4 hours ago, ijuin said:

Pandora is in her 150s when she falls for Blaike. That means that his death by old age would be rather close to when she turns 200, which in turn probably means that losing him will be a major reason for her to start delaying her reset.

If he dies by old age, he is VERY good adventurer.

4 hours ago, ijuin said:

Also, check Pandora's rounded ears in the penultimate panel. Posing as a human during their adventures, perhaps?

Part of the experience, I guess. She has pointy ears again in next panel.

Hmmm ... what will she do if she falls in some trap while pretending to be human? Somehow I don't think she would actually get hurt.

Blaike: "Are you alright?"

Pandora: "Looking at the spikes in this pit, I think I'm dead. You will need to finish this dungeon without me. I'll wait for you in tavern."

...

I think they did a lot of roleplaying.

 

[Stature 96]

"Kill the witch with the pointy ears!"

Forty-four years. If true, Pandora would be the first to go before Blaike.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

3 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Awww...

Baby Adrian barely looks like a pompous (but well intentioned) jerk at all.

And they escaped the Lion Bear.  Now I want to know what happened to the beast?  Did it produce offspring that hated each other and eventually settled in Detroit and Chicago?

No, but the older child got into a serious streetbrawl with a unicorn and eventually they got drummed out of town.

[ijuin 572]

Well, it was a Crown fight . . .

35 minutes ago, Stature said:

 

"Kill the witch with the pointy ears!"

Forty-four years. If true, Pandora would be the first to go before Blaike.

 

Blaike would be at least seventy by the time that Pandora reaches 200 (unless you really want to claim that he was under 20 when she first met him). In a world with only pre-industrial medicine, 70 is starting into the "death by old age" range. I think that Pandora's reaction to Blaike's death happening near what would have been her reset-time was a major contribution to her decision to put off resetting.

[Tobyc 22]

4 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

And they escaped the Lion Bear.  Now I want to know what happened to the beast?  Did it produce offspring that hated each other and eventually settled in Detroit and Chicago?

Brisbane I would think, and I'm not sure they would hate each other.

[Tom Sewell 268]

I kind of think Blaike didn't die of old age but died when Adrian was still a child. This would give Pandora a legitimate reason for delaying her reset--and maybe resetting at around 150 instead of 200 was something she had been doing in her previous incarnations for a reason other than approaching the limit of boredom tolerance.

Also, if Blaike was killed, Pandora would be so angry she wouldn't be likely to be bound by the rules. Maybe she went on a berserker rampage that got her in trouble with so many other immortals she had to remove to the current universe, or at least to the current side (the other side being Dame Tara's and Lady Andrea's). 

Speaking of the rules, it's already sort of implied that immortals aren't supposed to have kids with mortals. So maybe when Adrian told Grace half-immortals "cannot" have children he was telling something less than the whole truth.

Wouldn't Granny Pandora be kind of awesome?

[Haylo 57]

8 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Wou wedn't Granny Pandora be kind of awesome?

At least we've got great-godmother Pandora.

[ijuin 572]

Hmmm, yes, the "can not have children" was not explicitly stated to mean infertility, so it might indeed mean "must not", as in being forbidden.

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

5 hours ago, ijuin said:

Blaike would be at least seventy by the time that Pandora reaches 200 (unless you really want to claim that he was under 20 when she first met him). In a world with only pre-industrial medicine, 70 is starting into the "death by old age" range.

If this is 1600 or earlier, as pandora's age would suggest, you're lucky to live past your 50s.