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Story Friday August 19, 2016

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1 hour ago, Scotty said:

It wouldn't surprise me if Dan's built all this up making us think that Jerry's description of what could happen if an Immortal gets too bored and powerful is referring to Pandora, when it's probably Voltaire that's the insane one.

Pandora's crazy, but Voltaire is the only Immortal so far shown to be engaging in unprovoked malice.

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20 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

If Voltaire's more insane, is he also older and more powerful? Uh-oh...

He could just be less sane to start with, or maybe Pandora's family being there to focus on has helped keep her sane.

 

It strikes me as especially sad that Elves can't have children.  It would be so much easier for Pandora to reset if she saw grandchildren and great-grandchildren spreading across the land.  As it is, an Immortal who has a child is kinda stuck -- their mortal lover will inevitably die, and their beloved child will be left completely alone if they reset.

Hmm, we need a match.com for Elves.  Get them together so they have someone to love who won't die off on them.  Like Duncan and Amanda on Highlander.  Heck, even a network of friends would help.  Some sort of a private facebook group or message board just for Elves.

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1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

It strikes me as especially sad that Elves can't have children.

It strikes me as suspicious that “ Elves can't have children.“ If you don't want to follow that link, here's what The Shive said in His commentary:

This is another one of those moments I have been waiting a long time to get to. While this story has evolved over time, the fact that Raven would want and/or need to conceal Grace's furriness has been a constant, as was his feeling the need for a way to explain her other than "she's my student". Whenever I attempted to picture a "Ravenized" Grace, Susan would come to mind.

Of course, whether that fact has inspired anything beyond this moment remains to be seen. Maybe it inspired a big huge convoluted plot twist that will one day reveal that Raven is Susan's father oh wait he can't have kids. Well, it could still have inspired something equally convoluted. Or not. Maybe. Perhaps. Tacos.

The Shive is not committing Himself.

But how could Mr. Raven be Susan's father when it's the woman in the mirror who looks just like her?

Well, Dan—excuse me, The Shive—did not say anything here about Adrian being her grandfather. 

And how is it that Adrian has not noticed how much Diane looks like him? For all we know, she might even sound like him when she's not doing a her Valley-girl voice. Isn't it more believable that he knows but isn't letting on?

As Obi-wan Kenobi once said, more or less, "It was the truth from a certain point of view." Which only goes to show, like Immortals, and certainly like all politicians, Jedi can lie. Elves too.

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22 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Then what?

Demonic Duck has done a genuine good deed. Carol hasn't.

I though we are arguing about who's more important, not who's more good.

22 hours ago, Xenophon Hendrix said:

You know, the Demonic Duck might be the creation of an immortal, just like the hammers turned out to be.

... extremely likely. Now, WHICH immortal? Would be funny if Pandora, but that would likely make him too old, as he seems more like something she created before Raven than after Raven.

5 hours ago, Drasvin said:
12 hours ago, sstabeler said:

she would be confined for medical treatment- which could include a forcible reset- rather than convicted of a crime.

I know a reset is likely the only thing that will cure Pandora's madness, but I still find it unsettling for it to be referred to as medical treatment, since resetting for an Immortal is their equivalent of death.

Also, being forced to reset IS criminal punishment immortals use.

1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

It strikes me as especially sad that Elves can't have children.  It would be so much easier for Pandora to reset if she saw grandchildren and great-grandchildren spreading across the land.

... and spreading and spreading, forming whole nations ... at least 250 years passed since Raven's birth. That's 10 generations, meaning Raven could easily have thousands of immortal descendants - rather hard to hide. Add another two centuries and it would be hundreds of thousands, enough to form small nation. And that's MINIMUM. If some of them wanted to challenge Zala'ess Vel'Sharen and TRIED to have lot of descendants, and assuming elves are fertile indefinitely, I'm sure they could get to millions in just Pandora's minimal age.

Somehow, elves being infertile starts making sense, doesn't it?

Yes, I would totally like to know if Raven though about using Uryuom's eggs. I think they are his best chance to get child. Of course, those may be barely around long enough for Susan, her mother being from one seems illogical - but that doesn't matter: I don't think Susan is Raven's child or grandchild, I'm thinking more about those "more convoluted" plans which would involve Raven having child IN FUTURE.

(Although ... in Ellen's second life, Uryuomn were on Earth HOW LONG?)

1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:
1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

If Voltaire's more insane, is he also older and more powerful? Uh-oh...

He could just be less sane to start with, or maybe Pandora's family being there to focus on has helped keep her sane.

Agree. After all, we have lot of examples of people who went totally insane in less than 50 years (including many politicians), so Voltaire being closer to get crazy make sense. Or ... maybe he's less crazy but his kind of crazy is more dangerous.

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1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

Well, Dan—excuse me, The Shive—did not say anything here about Adrian being her grandfather. 

He said that Elves can't have children.  Having a child is a definite prerequisite for having grandchildren

However, it does annoy me a bit that Dan seems to have discounted the possibility of adoption for an Elf to become a parent.  Noah is described by the somewhat archaic term "ward" instead of "foster son" or being outright adopted by Adrian.

I think it would be interesting to see Adrian fall in love with someone who wants to have children.  Unfortunately, I don't see Dan spending a lot of time developing a real relationship among the older generation, he's mostly focused on the kids (although he does seem to be developing a few hints of romance off-screen with Tedd's dad).

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8 hours ago, Arcanimus said:

To be completely honest, I find Pandora to be no more unstable than the people I deal with every day at work. She's eccentric, sure, but I've always found sanity to be relative.

Yeah, I haven't actually seen much that qualifies her for the level of insanity that people here on the forums seem to ascribe to her. Chaotic: yes, a tad too easily provoked to wanting blood for harm done to her family: yes (but also, I know people in real life that would react much more strongly, and have said they'd do absolutely nasty things in vengeance for someone hurting their family in any way)...but really, I just don't actually see the madness she supposedly has? Even if she has a bit of a God-Complex, that's not really insanity for an immortal with powers on par with demigods.

Sorry, that's been bothering me a while now and you gave me the opportunity to agree with you on it and expand a bit..

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On 8/20/2016 at 3:16 PM, Arcanimus said:

To be completely honest, I find Pandora to be no more unstable than the people I deal with every day at work. She's eccentric, sure, but I've always found sanity to be relative.

This may very well explain why I seem so attracted to Pandora.  She's hot and seems to have the same mental issues I do.  While I know that two bipolar people having a relationship, is at best, a marginal idea, it doesn't stop the "I get you" feelings.

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4 hours ago, mlooney said:
On 08/20/2016 at 10:16 PM, Arcanimus said:

To be completely honest, I find Pandora to be no more unstable than the people I deal with every day at work. She's eccentric, sure, but I've always found sanity to be relative.

This may very well explain why I seem so attracted to Pandora.  She's hot and seems to have the same mental issues I do.  While I know that two bipolar people having a relationship, is at best, a marginal idea, it doesn't stop the "I get you" feelings.

Let me guess: the relationship would only work if those two people would be phase-synced.

21 hours ago, Matoyak said:

Even if she has a bit of a God-Complex, that's not really insanity for an immortal with powers on par with demigods.

Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: You know, I have really had it with this superiority complex of yours.

Female Q: It's not a complex, dear, it's a fact.

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18 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Let me guess: the relationship would only work if those two people would be phase-synced.

Oh God, no.  Two phase-synced bipolars in a down swing is a dual suicide waiting to happen.

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10 hours ago, hkmaly said:
On 8/21/2016 at 0:59 AM, Matoyak said:

Even if she has a bit of a God-Complex, that's not really insanity for an immortal with powers on par with demigods.

Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: You know, I have really had it with this superiority complex of yours.

Female Q: It's not a complex, dear, it's a fact.

You know, I'm kinda wondering if, in the EGS universe, the ancient gods really did exist, and were actually the Immortals before they set up their rules. They would have been so ancient and powerful and bored that they were constantly meddling in the affairs of mortals, demanding sacrifices and tribute and such, then the "Clash of the Titans" happened, nearly destroyed everything, and the Immortals agreed things had to change.

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On 8/20/2016 at 2:53 PM, Scotty said:

It wouldn't surprise me if Dan's built all this up making us think that Jerry's description of what could happen if an Immortal gets too bored and powerful is referring to Pandora, when it's probably Voltaire that's the insane one.

Oddly enough I have been using The Colonel/Voltaire as my yardstick for a "normal" immortal.  Neither incarnation of Jerry is typical (though Jerry the Younger is close).  Pandora isn't typical, nor Dimitrios and Helena.  Voltaire seems in the prime of his life, guiding and empowering for fun and profit.

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20 hours ago, mlooney said:
21 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Let me guess: the relationship would only work if those two people would be phase-synced.

Oh God, no.  Two phase-synced bipolars in a down swing is a dual suicide waiting to happen.

Hmmm ... would countersynced work, then?

10 hours ago, Xenophon Hendrix said:

I've been assuming that the immortals were the pagan gods.

I would consider that obvious. In fact, why just pagan?

10 hours ago, Scotty said:

You know, I'm kinda wondering if, in the EGS universe, the ancient gods really did exist, and were actually the Immortals before they set up their rules. They would have been so ancient and powerful and bored that they were constantly meddling in the affairs of mortals, demanding sacrifices and tribute and such, then the "Clash of the Titans" happened, nearly destroyed everything, and the Immortals agreed things had to change.

Good question. Yes, it is possible that the rules only appeared AFTER start of recorded history and some of old legends are about immortals before the rules. It might explain why gods seemed to be more active back then.

On the other hand ... even if immortals themselves demand sacrifices (as opposed to priests), that may not break "empower and guide", Pandora also wanted something for her guiding. And lot of legends are about immortals helping their offspring and/or mortal heroes, giving them weapons and stuff like that ... in other words, empowering and guiding. The rest may be just promises/threats and/or immortals claiming responsibility to stuff they didn't actually caused.

(It is still possible that the "clash of the titans" happened before recorded history ; also, it's possible that current rules are not first version, that they were changed several times already.)

6 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:
On 08/20/2016 at 11:53 PM, Scotty said:

It wouldn't surprise me if Dan's built all this up making us think that Jerry's description of what could happen if an Immortal gets too bored and powerful is referring to Pandora, when it's probably Voltaire that's the insane one.

Oddly enough I have been using The Colonel/Voltaire as my yardstick for a "normal" immortal.  Neither incarnation of Jerry is typical (though Jerry the Younger is close).  Pandora isn't typical, nor Dimitrios and Helena.  Voltaire seems in the prime of his life, guiding and empowering for fun and profit.

Both Pandora the Younger (before Raven) and Jerry the Younger (and Jerry when creating the hammers) seem to be typical for immortals in first century (and something) of their life. (Pandora possibly stayed in this "young behaviour" longer than usual.)

Now, I agree that we don't exactly know what is typical for immortals "in the prime" - which might be roughly second century. We have four examples: Pandora before Blaike's death - doesn't seem likely, not enough elves around ; Jerry - but he didn't show so much of behaviour ; Helena and Demetrius before reset - but we don't really know what they are doing when there is no aberration around ; and possibly Voltaire - because we don't know how old he is.

But personally, I don't think indirectly killing people is normal behaviour for immortals. Killing aberrations, on the other hand, might be favourite fun for lot of them.

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55 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Now, I agree that we don't exactly know what is typical for immortals "in the prime" - which might be roughly second century. We have four examples: Pandora before Blaike's death - doesn't seem likely, not enough elves around ; Jerry - but he didn't show so much of behaviour ; Helena and Demetrius before reset - but we don't really know what they are doing when there is no aberration around ; and possibly Voltaire - because we don't know how old he is.

My reasoning went like this:

  • We have no screen time for Jerry's incarnation through the 20th Century.  While he could be considered "typical" during this time, we have no sense for his ability and limits.
  • We do have screen time for Pandora + Blaike, but Pandora mostly amused herself with easy tricks before meeting Blaike, and then put herself under artificial limitations in order to adventure with him.  She might be typical but there's next to nothing useful there for one reason or another.
  • Jerry's current incarnation is a newly reset Immortal.  Helena and Demetrius, are recent "bad resets".  They are all at the low end of Immortal power and perception and so are not "typical".
  • Jerry in Hammerchloreons and Helena and Demetrius' previous incarnations as the French Immortals were pushing the high end of Immortal power and perception.  They too were not "typical"

That kind of leaves Voltaire by default, who I still like calling "The Colonel"...

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3 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

but Pandora mostly amused herself with easy tricks before meeting Blaike

Why "but"? May easily be typical for immortals for half of their "life". But yes, not much screen time of that either.

3 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

That kind of leaves Voltaire by default, who I still like calling "The Colonel"..

Problem with having someone to be typical "by default" is that it's hardly typical. I agree that the other immortals for various reason doesn't show much of the typical behaviour. But that's not really good reason to assume Voltaire is typical just because we are not sure about anything which would disqualify him. We would need several other immortals with lot of screen time before we can make any assumptions about immortals in general.

Also, is hard to objectively judge someone's behaviour without knowing his motivation. That's why it's hard to judge Helena and Demetrius for what they did in France, and that's why it's hard to judge Voltaire. Although ... to me it seems Helena and Demetrius were more good:)

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Also, the top religions today whose followers would be offended are monotheistic, and it is extremely implausible that Immortals, either singly or collectively, qualify as The Creator Of The Multiverse.

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13 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Problem with having someone to be typical "by default" is that it's hardly typical. I agree that the other immortals for various reason doesn't show much of the typical behaviour. But that's not really good reason to assume Voltaire is typical just because we are not sure about anything which would disqualify him. We would need several other immortals with lot of screen time before we can make any assumptions about immortals in general.

Also, is hard to objectively judge someone's behaviour without knowing his motivation. That's why it's hard to judge Helena and Demetrius for what they did in France, and that's why it's hard to judge Voltaire. Although ... to me it seems Helena and Demetrius were more good:)

Good points.  Perhaps we'll see when Pandora confronts Voltaire.  It may be there is not "typical" for Immortals...  :)

There's a lot of general stuff about Immortals we can come up with just comparing Jerry-before and Jerry-after reset.  Even as a fledgling Immortal, post-reset Jerry had a good idea that the punch at the new years eve party was magically spiked and he had some basic assessment of the whole situation to realize that Ellen + nanase could stop not-Tengue, plus some idea of how Ellen's psyche worked to realize that a pair of snow angels could give her the idea of copying Nanase's Guardian Angel form.  It's easy to assume that Jerry did not intervene directly because he simply didn't have the juice to go toe-to-toe with not-Tengue even if he wanted to, which he probably didn't, even if he could.

We can see that Immortals possess some intrinsic insight even fresh off a reset, though what magical ability they have is unknown, especially on the physical plane. 

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16 hours ago, Xenophon Hendrix said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I would consider that obvious. In fact, why just pagan?

Meta reasons. I'm assuming the author doesn't want to draw flak from adherents of today's major religions.

That explains why author will not draw attention to that. It still may have happened.

7 hours ago, ijuin said:

Also, the top religions today whose followers would be offended are monotheistic, and it is extremely implausible that Immortals, either singly or collectively, qualify as The Creator Of The Multiverse.

Qualify? No. Claim to done it? It's not like they can't lie.

Like, that burning bush might've been some immortal. Or, immortals might've pose as angels and pretend to have message from higher authority they made up.

5 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

Even as a fledgling Immortal, post-reset Jerry had a good idea that the punch at the new years eve party was magically spiked

Meaning magic vision or something like that is natural for immortals and not learned, yes ...

5 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

he had some basic assessment of the whole situation to realize that Ellen + nanase could stop not-Tengue, plus some idea of how Ellen's psyche worked to realize that a pair of snow angels could give her the idea of copying Nanase's Guardian Angel form.

That MIGHT've been just lucky guess (combined with "no better idea"). For seeing abilities he had even this young, I would look at stuff like that he knew Diane is Susan's twin - this probably WASN'T part of old Jerry's instructions.

5 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

It's easy to assume that Jerry did not intervene directly because he simply didn't have the juice to go toe-to-toe with not-Tengue even if he wanted to, which he probably didn't, even if he could.

Actually, not-Tengu was not aberration, meaning Jerry was forbidden by immortal laws to attack him directly.

 

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13 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Actually, not-Tengu was not aberration, meaning Jerry was forbidden by immortal laws to attack him directly.

...not-Tengue didn't seem that hard to provoke.  One a human takes the first swing, the gloves are off.

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