story Story: Wednesday, July 27, 2016

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

3 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

The fact that Disco Wizard changed his tone to be less commanding says he no longer has the upper hand.  Odd that he felt comfortable giving orders to Immortals at all. 

Actually, it is not all that odd for someone or something to act aggressively, determined, or overconfident when they know that they do not have the advantage.  Ever see a Dachshund chase a German Shepherd out of the yard?  A little noise can substitute for a much greater quantity of muscle.

I'm thinking that the Disco Wizard fired a shot across Pandora's bow because, depending on how outclassed he is, she might not have even noticed a direct hit to the broadside.

[ijuin 572]

In short, he was bluffing and she called his bluff.

[Tom Sewell 268]

17 hours ago, JustBecauseICantDraw said:

Isn't it odd that, in fiction, we always assume the exposition given by a character is correct?

It may be an unwarranted assumption, but it's not odd that we assume exposition given by a character is correct. It's because it's such a common device in fiction going back a long, long way. Shakespeare has tons of it, particularly in his historical plays, where there are battles that wouldn't fit into the theater. In radio it can hardly be avoided unless you have an anonymous narrator.

There are exceptions. In a mystery, you can hardly avoid having different stories from different people or it wouldn't be a mystery, would it? But, still, you expect the detective to be telling the truth as he or she sees it.

[Vorlonagent 442]

13 hours ago, Drasvin said:

Possibly he's strong enough to forcibly eject the average Immortal (putting him on par with Agent Wolf) and just momentarily forgot exactly which Immortal he was threatening.

I'm not sure Agent Wolf would be comfortable taking on an average Immortal, however we define "average".  He's the most powerful wizard in the midwest, but that might not be enough.  This comic is the closest I've ever seen to a comparison between an Immortal and a human magic-user, though it's not very useful for generalizing to other magic users or Immortals.

If Disco Wizard''s ability matches his attitude, he could confidently expect to eject a 200-year-old Immortal from Grace's dreamscape.  That's why I thought he might be the second most powerful being we've seen.  He just backed down from the first most-powerful.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

If wizards learn new spells from seeing them cast, I wonder if a really strong wizard could learn a spell they saw an Immortal cast?

[Vorlonagent 442]

1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

If wizards learn new spells from seeing them cast, I wonder if a really strong wizard could learn a spell they saw an Immortal cast?

Remind me where it was established Wizards could learn spells by seeing them done?  I *think* it was established, but I can't find where it was. 

I went through Q&A 7 to make sure it wasn't there....

[hkmaly 490]

19 hours ago, Drasvin said:

21 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

The fact that Disco Wizard changed his tone to be less commanding says he no longer has the upper hand.  Odd that he felt comfortable giving orders to Immortals at all.  he may be the second most powerful entity we've seen in EGS...

Possibly he's strong enough to forcibly eject the average Immortal (putting him on par with Agent Wolf) and just momentarily forgot exactly which Immortal he was threatening.

I think it was more he didn't NOTICED than that he forgot.

15 hours ago, ijuin said:

In short, he was bluffing and she called his bluff.

... or that.

6 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

On 07/27/2016 at 1:05 AM, JustBecauseICantDraw said:

Isn't it odd that, in fiction, we always assume the exposition given by a character is correct?

It may be an unwarranted assumption, but it's not odd that we assume exposition given by a character is correct. It's because it's such a common device in fiction going back a long, long way. Shakespeare has tons of it, particularly in his historical plays, where there are battles that wouldn't fit into the theater. In radio it can hardly be avoided unless you have an anonymous narrator.

There are exceptions. In a mystery, you can hardly avoid having different stories from different people or it wouldn't be a mystery, would it? But, still, you expect the detective to be telling the truth as he or she sees it.

In fiction, you can generally assume that exposition from character is correct unless there is specific reason why it shouldn't. In reality, what people say is rarely correct even if they don't lie, because even if they know, they are likely to forgot something.

5 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

I'm not sure Agent Wolf would be comfortable taking on an average Immortal,

Even if he wouldn't, Edward Verres said he should - if the immortal would be playing fair.

3 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

If wizards learn new spells from seeing them cast, I wonder if a really strong wizard could learn a spell they saw an Immortal cast?

I suspect they will NOT see the spell being cast. For the same reason why magic power of immortal can't be sensed.

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

Remind me where it was established Wizards could learn spells by seeing them done?  I *think* it was established, but I can't find where it was. 

Here.

[HarJIT 97]

On 27/07/2016 at 7:06 PM, mlooney said:

Web Designer Bitching

I really has issues with how this editor deals with identical spans.  I'm not sure why this is a problem, but it freaking is. I am also not found of it using <strong> instead of <b> and <em> instead of <i>, but that's an HTML5 problem, not unique to what ever semi WYSIWYG editor this forum is using.  In addition the editor is using the default web pallet for text colors.  Use the damn name, not the weird ass hex notation.  Of course the up side to it using HTML5/CSS instead of BBCODE is that if you want to play weird games with your message you can.  Dictionary lists, for example.  One of my favorite things.  I've also just found that if you do "hand insert" HTML and/or CSS it doesn't try to convert it to it's preferred style.  That's great.  Next thing on the list of things to find out is if I can include my own CSS block or if I have to deal with using style="foo;" all the time.

More a HTML4-Strict thing.  HTML5 no longer marks <b> and <i> as deprecated, although it does restrict their use to non-emphatic semantic purposes (ship/species names, alternate moods, etc) － where <strong> and <em> would be incorrect but there is still semantic need for the emboldening/italicisation.