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Things You Only Noticed On Reread

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7 hours ago, ijuin said:

Given that both Elliot's dream version of extra-girly Tedd and Tedd's own Mark Spell extra-girly form have pigtails, I think that means that Elliot is aware of Tedd having a preference for pigtails?

Or at least his thinking pigtails are an extra-girly trait.

 

And the thing I just noticed on re-read....well, it wasn't re-reading the comic or commentaries, but Professor Tomoe's biography on wikipedia:

 

Quote

 

O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships[edit]

In the early-to-mid 1990s, Lee Jackson competed in and won first-place honors in the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships, held yearly at the O. Henry Museum in Austin, Texas. He won the prepared pun category twice ("Punniest of Show," 1992 and 1995) and the head-to-head competition once ("High Lies and Low Puns," now called the "Punslingers" category) in 1991. Jackson is also a charter member of Punsters United Nearly Yearly (a.k.a. "P.U.N.Y.),[10] a support group for punsters dedicated to holding the World Championships competition.

 

 

I hadn't noticed the part about being a charter member of the group that runs the contest!  (Note that the contest predates PUNY by over a decade, so there's nothing hinky about him winning ;-)

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13 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

I hadn't noticed the part about being a charter member of the group that runs the contest!  (Note that the contest predates PUNY by over a decade, so there's nothing hinky about him winning ;-)

Yeah, the early years were kind of wonky. One guy put the competition together through (I think) the ninth year, then bailed and disappeared. The Friends of the O. Henry Museum tried to put together the contest in his absence, with little success. So, a group of punsters who knew what the contest needed to become a success got together at the barbecue joint that used to exist across from the museum and held planning sessions (with a punning moratorium in effect during the meetings). We gathered celebrity judges, did PR on local radio, put together topics for what's now called the "Punslingers" contest, set up rules, and got the thing off the ground. Our first attempt turned the event around. Subsequent efforts kept it on track and built it up to what it is today.

Trivia: I was the one who suggested the "World Championships" part of the event name, as part of a PR ploy. It worked. ^_^

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6 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Trivia: I was the one who suggested the "World Championships" part of the event name, as part of a PR ploy. It worked. ^_^

Shame you didn't make it "World ChamPUNships" :)

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Just noticed that Sam is just in front of them while Rich was talking about going up against "Samantha" in his next round.  I wonder if Sam could hear him?  Just for a moment, he'd worry that someone knew who he was and was going to blow his cover and out him as trans.

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2 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Just noticed that Sam is just in front of them while Rich was talking about going up against "Samantha" in his next round.  I wonder if Sam could hear him?  Just for a moment, he'd worry that someone knew who he was and was going to blow his cover and out him as trans.

No, Sam's full name is Sam-I-Am.

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5 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

And in the commentary here, Dan actually admits to having watched Battlefield Earth!  Poor boy, I hope he at least had a Rifftrack going....this is one of the bravest admissions yet!  ;-)

I actually saw it that when it was in theatres, But there are no scientologists anywhere close to where I grew up so I did not have the background knowledge to make those connections, and just saw that there was a Sci-fi movie out that, and I was bored.

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3 hours ago, Sjmcc13 said:

I actually saw it that when it was in theatres, But there are no scientologists anywhere close to where I grew up so I did not have the background knowledge to make those connections, and just saw that there was a Sci-fi movie out that, and I was bored.

I got dragged to it by Scott Miller & George Broussard while out one night at E3 one year. Following your bosses usually resulted in fun at E3, but not that night. God, what an ear-smashingly loud movie. It deserved the Razzies it got.

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6 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

I got dragged to it by Scott Miller & George Broussard while out one night at E3 one year. Following your bosses usually resulted in fun at E3, but not that night. God, what an ear-smashingly loud movie. It deserved the Razzies it got.

SF Debris has a very entertaining review of it here.

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From another thread, but something that never occurred to me until now....

Quote

I do wonder about the Dewitchery Diamond.....why is it that the werewolf from the original story seems to have turned people into permanent werewolves, while Ellen only turns people into one-time temporary FV5's?  Or were the werewolf's victims only temporarily dangerous, but were killed off before they could return to normal?  I would think almost everyone's enchantment resistance would be working overtime against something that made them a danger to their friends and loved ones!

To further elucidate, perhaps the werewolf victims only transformed once, but the fear was so great that they would do so again that they either committed suicide or were killed even though the danger was past?

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1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

From another thread, but something that never occurred to me until now....

To further elucidate, perhaps the werewolf victims only transformed once, but the fear was so great that they would do so again that they either committed suicide or were killed even though the danger was past?

It's possible but the likely length of time between Abraham's master getting bitten and Abraham finishing work on the Diamond suggests there ought to have been plenty of time for the curse to wear off if it was going to.

This does bring the question of how curses work.  How do they stick with their targets when they're unwanted (especially when the target is a high level magic user who ought to have a good resistance)

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2 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

It's possible but the likely length of time between Abraham's master getting bitten and Abraham finishing work on the Diamond suggests there ought to have been plenty of time for the curse to wear off if it was going to.

Abraham's master died in the original werewolf attack and Abraham burned him to prevent him from rising as a new werewolf, a noble was able to kill that werewolf but got bitten and turned, this was who Abraham made the diamond to attempt to cure and ended up creating the unwaking wolf, that werewolf killed the noble.

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3 hours ago, Scotty said:

Abraham's master died in the original werewolf attack and Abraham burned him to prevent him from rising as a new werewolf, a noble was able to kill that werewolf but got bitten and turned, this was who Abraham made the diamond to attempt to cure and ended up creating the unwaking wolf, that werewolf killed the noble.

Error admitted.  But I think my 'time passed by" idea is still valid.

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13 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Error admitted.  But I think my 'time passed by" idea is still valid.

The nature of the werewolf curse wouldn't be an enchantment anyway, it was probably a permanent deal that wasn't controllable, like a magic disease. So it wouldn't have had a duration but more like special triggers like the full moon. Maybe werewolves were the result of an wolf that was infused with large amounts magic attacking a human and the magic merged the animal DNA to the Human DNA and there happened to be a full moon at the time, I dunno.

Anyway, the unwaking wolf that the diamond created never would have turned human again because it no longer had a human form to return to as it had been separated by the diamond, but the nature of the curse was likely unchanged so anyone who the unwaking wolf turned would still be vulnerable to a full moon causing them to change and attack others.

 

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2 hours ago, Scotty said:

The nature of the werewolf curse wouldn't be an enchantment anyway, it was probably a permanent deal that wasn't controllable, like a magic disease. So it wouldn't have had a duration but more like special triggers like the full moon. Maybe werewolves were the result of an wolf that was infused with large amounts magic attacking a human and the magic merged the animal DNA to the Human DNA and there happened to be a full moon at the time, I dunno.

Anyway, the unwaking wolf that the diamond created never would have turned human again because it no longer had a human form to return to as it had been separated by the diamond, but the nature of the curse was likely unchanged so anyone who the unwaking wolf turned would still be vulnerable to a full moon causing them to change and attack others.

Thinking about it, the werewolf's curse could have been a form of vampirism gone horribly sideways.  Being a werewolf means killing and consuming people and total lack of empathy, which fits the definition of being an aberrent/vampire, so there is a superficial similarity there. 

EDIT:
I originally thought that lycanthropy might have been an attempt at becoming a vampire/aberrent that went wrong, creating a sort of werewolf plague.  Then it occurred to me that there could be a "master lycantrope" out there who looks like a normal human, powerful magic user but every now and then turns into a monster and goes on a tear, leaving infected people to further attack and kill with their later killings and eating human flesh in some way sustaining the master lycanthrope without him having to go out and do it all himself.

I just thought of this so I'm not sure how behind it I am but it's something to chew on...

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4 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Thinking about it, the werewolf's curse could have been a form of vampirism gone horribly sideways.  Being a werewolf means killing and consuming people, which fits the definition of being an aberrent/vampire, so there is a superficial similarity there. 

There may be perfectly normal-looking human out there somewhere who infects others with lycanthopy so they do the killing and consuming and he gets the immortality...

I just thought of this so I'm not sure how behind it I am but it's something to chew on...

Another possibility is that werewolves were originally created before the last system change or even further back, maybe when magic was more primal or something.

World of Warcraft's take on werewolves resulted in the Worgen race. Basically a group of Night Elf druids attempted to harness the power of wolves but succumbed to the feral instincts of the animal, an artifact that was used to channel the wolf spirit ended up in human lands and a mage used it to create worgen/human hybrids thus creating the curse. Eventually the Night Elves were able to get the artifact back and used it to make is so those affected could retain their sanity regardless of their form.

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2 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Another possibility is that werewolves were originally created before the last system change or even further back, maybe when magic was more primal or something.

World of Warcraft's take on werewolves resulted in the Worgen race. Basically a group of Night Elf druids attempted to harness the power of wolves but succumbed to the feral instincts of the animal, an artifact that was used to channel the wolf spirit ended up in human lands and a mage used it to create worgen/human hybrids thus creating the curse. Eventually the Night Elves were able to get the artifact back and used it to make is so those affected could retain their sanity regardless of their form.

It's an interesting concept:  A form of magic that works by a different, older set of rules.

It would beg the question of how the curse survived the last reset, but nothing besides time travel is known to be impossible for magic so by definition your idea has some validity.  I'm not sure how *likely* it would be, you understand...

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1 minute ago, Vorlonagent said:

It's an interesting concept:  A form of magic that works by a different, older set of rules.

It would beg the question of how the curse survived the last reset, but nothing besides time travel is known to be impossible for magic so by definition your idea has some validity.  I'm not sure how *likely* it would be, you understand...

It depends on how the curse was created, according to Tedd, changing default form shouldn't be reversible if the system changed, so one part of the werewolf curse could be that it's a permanent form, that changing from human to werewolf isn't casting a spell or enchantment. The second part of the curse, spreading it to others, is certainly trickier to explain...

...unless, we don't treat werewolves as being fully created by "Magic". Yet another possibility would be that werewolves have similar shapeshifting abilities as Uryuoms, we know in one universe Uryuoms helped the Americans fight in the revolutionary war. How far back could Uryuoms have visited Earth and what are the chances of the first werewolf being a greater chimera? And as with my WoW reference, the chimera succumbed to the wolf's feral instincts and maybe there was a flaw that allowed it to infect others. Or maybe a mage attempted to do something to it and it backfired, creating the actual curse. This would of course put it back to within the current magic system but I still believe that part of it involves setting the victim's default form.

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52 minutes ago, Scotty said:

It depends on how the curse was created, according to Tedd, changing default form shouldn't be reversible if the system changed, so one part of the werewolf curse could be that it's a permanent form, that changing from human to werewolf isn't casting a spell or enchantment. The second part of the curse, spreading it to others, is certainly trickier to explain...

...unless, we don't treat werewolves as being fully created by "Magic". Yet another possibility would be that werewolves have similar shapeshifting abilities as Uryuoms, we know in one universe Uryuoms helped the Americans fight in the revolutionary war. How far back could Uryuoms have visited Earth and what are the chances of the first werewolf being a greater chimera? And as with my WoW reference, the chimera succumbed to the wolf's feral instincts and maybe there was a flaw that allowed it to infect others. Or maybe a mage attempted to do something to it and it backfired, creating the actual curse. This would of course put it back to within the current magic system but I still believe that part of it involves setting the victim's default form.

We've never seen Uryuoms or Greater Chimera who can affect anybody but themselves.

If you want to go that far out, then we can posit werewolves as operating out of a third kind of magical energy that isn't human magic or Uryuom energy.

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4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

I just thought of this so I'm not sure how behind it I am but it's something to chew on..

I see what you did there.

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http://danshive.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/upcoming-songs-of-egs.html

Dan Shive said:

The next four storylines of my webcomic El Goonish Shive are being planned out. While this is all subject to change, here are some songs that come to mind when I think of certain parts of these upcoming stories. Please note that I have no sort of official connection to these songs; they simply come to mind when thinking about these stories.

"Eye Of The Tiger" by Survivor
"East Bound And Down" by Jerry Reed
"Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down
"When You're Evil" by Voltaire

This in 2010.

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2 hours ago, HarJIT said:

"Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down and "When You're Evil" by Voltaire certainly works for "So a Date" in referencing Elliot and Ashley's budding relationship and the introduction to Voltaire the Immortal and Elliot transforming into Cheerleadra for it.

Actually no, that blog post couldn't have foreshadowed the past few arcs. When Dan posted that blog, he was just wrapping up Sister 2, so if we don't include Q&A 4, those songs would have to apply to Elliot and the Temple of Swedish Furniture, Hammerchlorians, New and Old Flames, and possibly the two T-Minus sets.

Kryptonite and When You're Evil would fit New and Old Flames considering it's where Cheerleadra was introduced and the fact that we now know that Voltaire was involved.

East Bound and Down sounds like a driving song so it would fit Hammerchlorians with Susan, Sarah and Grace going on that road trip. And Eye of the Tiger would certainly work for that race montage of Elliot and Noah through Swedekea.

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