story Story: Monday, August 8, 2016

[Howitzer 32]

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2224

Granted, he was being rather dense, but you didn't have to call him a dummy.

[inqntrol 3]

How come the Disco Wizard doesn't know that Immortals can shapeshift? Being the ''Emisarry of Magic itself'' you'd think he knows much more.

[Matoyak 51]

Is Disco Wizard Greg?

Also, Child-Like doesn't only have physical implications. I was confused by the last few panels due to this, as I assumed it meant mentally child-like, which Pandora def qualifies as having.

[lonjil 11]

He knows immortals can shapeshift, he just doesn't think very much. DW is used to being the smartest, most knowledgeable guy in the room, but know he's conversing with an ancient immortal. 

"So this is how Grace felt talking to me"

He didn't even have time to remember.

[partner555 170]

I wonder how things will go now that Pandora is trying to stop her own plan?

[The Old Hack 2,448]

11 minutes ago, partner555 said:

I wonder how things will go now that Pandora is trying to stop her own plan?

I've been wondering the same thing. I don't think it will necessarily be easy for her. The way she phrased it made it sound straightforward but straightforward is not the same as 'easy.' For example, getting from the base of Mount Everest to its top sounds straightforward enough and it's not really that far, distance-wise. But add in the condition that you can only do it by means of muscle-powered climbing and any number of mountaineers will tell you that when you actually try to do it, a certain number of complications start to set in. Then put in a time limit just for fun...

[ChaosSepher 10]

Would not be surprised if there is gonna be a twist that Pandora actually isn't the main problem.

[Waspinator 2]

Yeah, I would be shocked if such a long-running plot point is solved by a single conversation and then what Pandora does next. There's going to be some kind of problem.

[Scotty 1,061]

PLOT TWIST!

For Disco Wizard that is....Not us, we already knew all this.

Would be interesting to see how DW handles it though. Pandora already said she'll fix the things she's done, but will DW still fly off the handle about the fact that she caused it in the first place?

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

When Pandora was playing the part of Grace, she should have grown a tail.

I am having a thought about the "Emissary".

If you needed to, you could play the part of an expert on almost any subject if you were given a few notes and answers to likely questions that someone who knew less about the subject might ask.

I am thinking the Emissary may be another dreamer who was recruited by someone or something claiming to be the "will of magic" and sent on wild goose chase.

But why would "the will of magic" play such an elaborate game?

Possibly for the same reason Pandora "Warned" Luke.  There may be some requirement to make the warning, but no need to make the warning known.

Quote

“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”  

-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy   

 

[Stature 96]

Clueless Wiz is clueless.

And not the film Clueless.

[mlooney 3,417]

Disk wizard suffer from Dunning-Kruger effect if I were to hazard a guess. Of course Pandora might as well, but an immortal her age, not likely. Might apply it a crazy manner, but she most likely knows what she doing when she does it. Maybe not fully why, but that's a different issue.

[Tom Sewell 268]

I'll point out what's obvious (to me, at the least):

• Pandora does not say anything about unmarking.
• Pandora hasn't said that she caused the ambient energy problem.
• Gee, doesn't Pandora remind you of George talking about his Magical Shield of Ignorance? Henceforth, DW will stand for "Dumbass Wizard".

Also, how does DW "know" about Pandora's childlike form? We don't even know if DW's physical form is in the same universe. Grace has seen Child Pandora only on TV, and in canon, Pandora has been visible to mortals of the present day only three times (After the "egg fell from its nest", after Abraham struck at Moperville South, and in Sarah's bedroom earlier on the same night this is taking place. Even Immortals aren't supposed to (usually) be able to see other Immortals if they don't want to be seen. Yeah, yeah, "magic itself." Right...

[PSadlon 88]

Sorry I just had to.

[animalia 64]

59 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

I'll point out what's obvious (to me, at the least):

• Pandora does not say anything about unmarking.
• Pandora hasn't said that she caused the ambient energy problem.

I thought about these myself.

[Tom Sewell 268]

Yet again, here's the conundrums of DW and "magic itself":

• If "magic itself" can do anything, why is it choosing this fantastically obtuse and ineffective way to get out the warning? Can't act through a Space Whale?
• If Pandora is so dangerous to the "will of magic", why doesn't "magic itself" just take away her powers? Then only thing that makes sense is that Pandora is as powerful or more powerful than whoever or whatever "magic itself" really is. How can a being dependent on magic be more powerful than "magic itself?

Pandora kind of sounds less like the mythical Pandora to me now than Prometheus or Loki, both sentenced to dreadful punishment for giving the power of fire to man. Hmm... that horde was gonna throw fire when suddenly they couldn't...

 

[Avistew 5]

10 hours ago, Matoyak said:

Also, Child-Like doesn't only have physical implications. I was confused by the last few panels due to this, as I assumed it meant mentally child-like, which Pandora def qualifies as having.

I was confused for the same reason. I didn't read "child-like" as "looking like a child" but "childish". I was confused why Pandora thought he meant "looking like a child" at first.

[Aura Guardian 57]

9 hours ago, partner555 said:

I wonder how things will go now that Pandora is trying to stop her own plan?

TV Tropes has an entry on this, called "Gambit Pileup" (link omitted to avoid SAN checks). [Also, though Dan hasn't read it, there's a book I read in the Vorkosigan saga in which a villain's worst enemy was their own previous plans; I'm hoping that this will remind me of that book]

[HarJIT 97]

…I've generally heard "childlike" and "childish" as distinct attributes: "childlike" meaning the virtue described in Matthew 18:2-4 and "childish" meaning the vice as partly described in 1 Corinthians 13:11.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

5 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Gee, doesn't Pandora remind you of George talking about his Magical Shield of Ignorance?

I think you meant to link to this comic.

3 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Yet again, here's the conundrums of DW and "magic itself":

• If "magic itself" can do anything, why is it choosing this fantastically obtuse and ineffective way to get out the warning? Can't act through a Space Whale?
• If Pandora is so dangerous to the "will of magic", why doesn't "magic itself" just take away her powers? Then only thing that makes sense is that Pandora is as powerful or more powerful than whoever or whatever "magic itself" really is. How can a being dependent on magic be more powerful than "magic itself?

I don't think Magic can do "anything."  Best analogy might be a mosquito or biting fly.  A horse is a lot bigger and stronger than a biting fly, but they can't see them well enough and move fast enough to bite them, and they may not be able to swat the fly hard enough with their tail to kill it.  They can't invent a tiny cannon capable of shooting down just that one fly, nor can they build a box and lure the fly inside -- they are limited in what they can do.  But a lot of animals will deal with one persistent biting fly by rolling in mud, thus caking their skin and blocking not only that one individual insect but also all the other flies, mosqutoes, gnats, etc. in the area.  The system change is going from bare furred flesh they can get to easily, to mud-caked skin the insects have a hard time finding a way to get through.  I'm sure if enough critters stayed caked in mud long enough, so that it became the usual, then the insects would evolve ways to deal with the change; likewise, humans will eventually figure out how a new magic system works, but in the short term, they'll be at a severe disadvantage compared to now.

[wanderingmagus 15]

41 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

I think you meant to link to this comic.

I don't think Magic can do "anything."  Best analogy might be a mosquito or biting fly.  A horse is a lot bigger and stronger than a biting fly, but they can't see them well enough and move fast enough to bite them, and they may not be able to swat the fly hard enough with their tail to kill it.  They can't invent a tiny cannon capable of shooting down just that one fly, nor can they build a box and lure the fly inside -- they are limited in what they can do.  But a lot of animals will deal with one persistent biting fly by rolling in mud, thus caking their skin and blocking not only that one individual insect but also all the other flies, mosqutoes, gnats, etc. in the area.  The system change is going from bare furred flesh they can get to easily, to mud-caked skin the insects have a hard time finding a way to get through.  I'm sure if enough critters stayed caked in mud long enough, so that it became the usual, then the insects would evolve ways to deal with the change; likewise, humans will eventually figure out how a new magic system works, but in the short term, they'll be at a severe disadvantage compared to now.

So humans are... parasites, feeding off of a living force of nature... as humans are wont to be, it seems.

[Matoyak 51]

Just now, wanderingmagus said:

So humans are... parasites, feeding off of a living force of nature... as humans are wont to be, it seems.

No more so than plants are parasites feeding off of the energy of the sun. (Also, one wouldn't call a mosquito a parasite either).

[animalia 64]

6 minutes ago, Matoyak said:

No more so than plants are parasites feeding off of the energy of the sun. (Also, one wouldn't call a mosquito a parasite either).

Do you even know what a parasite is?

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

*puts on vet/biologist hat*

A parasite is something which feeds off of or takes resources from another (generally larger) host creature, to the detriment of the host and the benefit of the parasite.  The classic form is endoparasites, such as tapeworms that live in the intestines and feed off of the host's bloodstream, but the term can also encompass stealing resources another creature has gathered or depositing eggs in another bird's nest so that the other bird will expend resources on raising the parasitic young instead of their own.

Mosquitoes are parasites -- they take blood, and the host does not benefit in any known way from the relationship.  They're not predators because they don't kill the host (at least not directly, the diseases they can carry are another matter).  The plants do no harm to the sun, therefore they are not parasites.

*takes off vet/biologist hat, tries to fix bad case of hat-hair*

[Xenophon Hendrix 47]

It is better to be at the top of the food chain than the bottom.