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Tom Sewell

Story, Friday November 24, 2017

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5 hours ago, WR...S said:

It suddenly hits me - shouldn't flashback-Magus be younger, then?  He looks like he's about 17/18, when Elliot was about 14...

I suspect it's really something Dan wasn't thinking of at the time he set Magus getting Magus thrown into the Moperverse a couple of years before the creation of Ellen. Or maybe he was emphasizing how much Magus resembles Elliot, just as he wanted to make Terra look like a female Tedd, but his art wasn't good enough yet to quite pull it off--as Dan complains in his commentary for Friday.

Magus' very first appearance was closer to thirteen years ago than twelve, and in it he says his plan is for his "resurrection." That implies that he is dead--or undead. Dan hasn't even developed Magus' distinctive blacked-out form yet. Magus could be any age at all at this point, maybe centuries dead. That's a trope that's been used a few times.

Anyway, by the time we get to any backstory for Magus, namely the match between Magus and Terra, it's nearly 200 comics later and Dan's art has evolved. His conception of Magus has likely also evolved. Was Magus actually 17-18 at that point, actually older than Elliot? Perhaps. Or maybe he just had a magical growth spurt. Or even a non-magical growth spurt. John Cleese was already six feet tall at fourteen.

Does Dan want Magus to be older now? Magus does seem more mature than Elliot, but he's had a harder existence than Elliot, maybe even in his own universe before he became disembodied and stranded in the Moperverse. A perfect fit for his backstory would be if his family was killed by a dragon, or an evil wizard, giving him an obsession something like Abraham's, driving Magus into becoming a battle wizard.

By the way, let's not forget that Ellen's second life dreams continued until after high school graduation, which was still more than a year in the future for the gang at Grace's birthday party. Other universes may not be on quite the same calendar as the Moperverse.

 

Edited by Tom Sewell
Second Life considerations.

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6 hours ago, WR...S said:

It suddenly hits me - shouldn't flashback-Magus be younger, then?  He looks like he's about 17/18, when Elliot was about 14...

1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

By the way, let's not forget that Ellen's second life dreams continued until after high school graduation, which was still more than a year in the future for the gang at Grace's birthday party. Other universes may not be on quite the same calendar as the Moperverse.

Dan has stated before that different universes in the EGS multiverse may be ahead or behind the main one as far as time goes; Magus' world must have been ahead by a few years. (This may also explain why Lord Tedd and General Shade Tail look older than the main Tedd and Grace.)

As for why we haven't seen an age difference between present-day Magus and flashback Magus, it's likely that he doesn't age while in astral form.

 

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2 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

As for why we haven't seen an age difference between present-day Magus and flashback Magus, it's likely that he doesn't age while in astral form.

I think of Magus as more being merged with Elliot rather than possessing him like Sirleck. The Elliot part might be be unconscious now, but might wake up later. An internal argument might be coming up in the near future. 

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5 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

I think of Magus as more being merged with Elliot rather than possessing him like Sirleck. The Elliot part might be be unconscious now, but might wake up later. An internal argument might be coming up in the near future. 

We've already had hints that Ellen might be in a position to fight for control. From a storytelling perspective, I think it would be a bit much if Elliot started fighting back too.

I personally think Elliot is possessed by Magus, not merged with him, but the only bit of evidence I could find without a huge search is Dan talking about possession in the commentary for the Nov 12 strip, and it might have just been a quick and easy term to use rather than a description of what's going on.

Incidentally, I forgot to clarify in my previous post that when I was talking about "present day Magus" I meant his appearance in his pre-possession astral form. The current Magus/Elliot body we're seeing is not Magus' body, it's Elliot's body transformed by one of Ellen's beams (probably with some modifications by Magus); I suspect there are some differences from Magus' old body, and we really can't draw conclusions about Magus' age or anything else related to physical appearance from it.

 

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2 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Dan has stated before that different universes in the EGS multiverse may be ahead or behind the main one as far as time goes; Magus' world must have been ahead by a few years. (This may also explain why Lord Tedd and General Shade Tail look older than the main Tedd and Grace.)

There's further evidence that Lord Tedd's universe is at least a couple years ahead of the main one by the fact we're told that Nioi made herself "a few years younger" prior to touching the diamond, so Kaoli might have been physically 17-18 years old compared to Nioi being 20-22 maybe. Also, the Second Life universe must have been a couple years ahead as well since Ellen's dreams ended with Second Life Ellen saying bye to everyone before going off to college. The main group hadn't even finished Junior year highschool yet.

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12 minutes ago, Scotty said:

There's further evidence that Lord Tedd's universe is at least a couple years ahead of the main one by the fact we're told that Nioi made herself "a few years younger" prior to touching the diamond, so Kaoli might have been physically 17-18 years old compared to Nioi being 20-22 maybe. Also, the Second Life universe must have been a couple years ahead as well since Ellen's dreams ended with Second Life Ellen saying bye to everyone before going off to college. The main group hadn't even finished Junior year highschool yet.

Point of information, it's their Senior year, last half.

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Just now, Scotty said:

It is now, but back when Ellen had here Second Life dreams, they were roughly 3 and a half months from the end of Junior year.

Ah, right.  My bad.  Carry on then.

 

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3 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

We've already had hints that Ellen might be in a position to fight for control. From a storytelling perspective, I think it would be a bit much if Elliot started fighting back too.

The storytelling perspective that counts here is Daniel Elliot Shive's, so I suspect that Elliot Dunkel is not going to take a very long mental vacation.

Here's something new to chew on: What if Magus' and Elliot's minds are actually merging? That is essentially what happened to Ellen. It's what should happen if the separation using the Dewitchery Diamond doesn't come off.

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8 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Other universes may not be on quite the same calendar as the Moperverse.

Moperville is not on the Gregorian or even the Julian Calendar.

The Mopervillians are using the Egyptian Sothic Cycle Calendar.

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19 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Moperville is not on the Gregorian or even the Julian Calendar.

The Mopervillians are using the Egyptian Sothic Cycle Calendar.

Nonsense. Due to mural efficiency, Principal Verrückt has set Moperville's calendar to be equal to the Periodic Table. The current date is the 32nd of Germanium.

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Germanium 32 already?

Darn my dependence upon the Gregorian system.  There are only 112 shopping days left to the First day of Krypton.  And you just know the stores are all out of Kryptonite before Bromine is half over.

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8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
15 hours ago, WR...S said:

It suddenly hits me - shouldn't flashback-Magus be younger, then?  He looks like he's about 17/18, when Elliot was about 14...

9 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

By the way, let's not forget that Ellen's second life dreams continued until after high school graduation, which was still more than a year in the future for the gang at Grace's birthday party. Other universes may not be on quite the same calendar as the Moperverse.

Dan has stated before that different universes in the EGS multiverse may be ahead or behind the main one as far as time goes; Magus' world must have been ahead by a few years. (This may also explain why Lord Tedd and General Shade Tail look older than the main Tedd and Grace.)

It's definitely most likely explanation.

8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

As for why we haven't seen an age difference between present-day Magus and flashback Magus, it's likely that he doesn't age while in astral form.

I can't recall ANY instance where ghost would age, and I don't see why should anyone age in astral form, so yes, definitely likely.

5 hours ago, Scotty said:
8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Dan has stated before that different universes in the EGS multiverse may be ahead or behind the main one as far as time goes; Magus' world must have been ahead by a few years. (This may also explain why Lord Tedd and General Shade Tail look older than the main Tedd and Grace.)

There's further evidence that Lord Tedd's universe is at least a couple years ahead of the main one by the fact we're told that Nioi made herself "a few years younger" prior to touching the diamond, so Kaoli might have been physically 17-18 years old compared to Nioi being 20-22 maybe. Also, the Second Life universe must have been a couple years ahead as well since Ellen's dreams ended with Second Life Ellen saying bye to everyone before going off to college. The main group hadn't even finished Junior year highschool yet.

Nioi's age might be completely unrelated to Tedd's age. However good point about second life universe - although note that Nioi was putting off helping Kaoli yet she was ready to do the nosebeep on extremely short notice ... and those memories are supposed to be actual memories from another dimension ... did Nioi really established some link and that other universe have time going that much faster, or did she like prerecorded those memories and it was all playback?

8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
8 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

I think of Magus as more being merged with Elliot rather than possessing him like Sirleck. The Elliot part might be be unconscious now, but might wake up later. An internal argument might be coming up in the near future. 

We've already had hints that Ellen might be in a position to fight for control. From a storytelling perspective, I think it would be a bit much if Elliot started fighting back too.

Yes, especially if it would be without hints.

8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

I personally think Elliot is possessed by Magus, not merged with him, but the only bit of evidence I could find without a huge search is Dan talking about possession in the commentary for the Nov 12 strip, and it might have just been a quick and easy term to use rather than a description of what's going on.

Incidentally, I forgot to clarify in my previous post that when I was talking about "present day Magus" I meant his appearance in his pre-possession astral form. The current Magus/Elliot body we're seeing is not Magus' body, it's Elliot's body transformed by one of Ellen's beams (probably with some modifications by Magus); I suspect there are some differences from Magus' old body, and we really can't draw conclusions about Magus' age or anything else related to physical appearance from it.

I suspect that the body is really Elliot's with just few physical changes, possibly even just the hair color. I don't think Magus would care about exact age even if he had option to change it.

Note that we know that technically Elliot is enchanted by Magus, as otherwise the diamond wouldn't be able to separate them.

3 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:
8 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

We've already had hints that Ellen might be in a position to fight for control. From a storytelling perspective, I think it would be a bit much if Elliot started fighting back too.

The storytelling perspective that counts here is Daniel Elliot Shive's, so I suspect that Elliot Dunkel is not going to take a very long mental vacation.

As opposed to short breaks.

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:
10 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Other universes may not be on quite the same calendar as the Moperverse.

Moperville is not on the Gregorian or even the Julian Calendar.

It's very likely Moperville IS on Gregorian calendar, but the TIME is different there.

 

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The Moperversian calendar seems to have a superficial resemblance to our Gregorian calendar; same month names with no day-of-the-month beyond 31 shown as  yet. And it seems to have 24 hours to each day, and 60 minutes to each hour. However, the minutes seem to have a variable number of seconds. For instance from the first scene in Squirrel Prophet set in after dark in Salty Crackers Comics until the last scene at the diner after the tournament, something like 25,920,000 seconds seemed to have passed. Say it's about five hours later, that's 300 minutes for an average of  86,400 seconds per Moperville minute. Curiously, this is exactly the number of seconds in one of our days, possibly because it is 300 days between April 15, 2014 and February 11, 2015.

This also implies that the laws of physics must be different since the Earth's rotation and revolution would have to keep slowing down and speeding up, but, as is already in canon, these laws are more like polite suggestions. Or perhaps there are relativity issues between the Moperverse and our own.

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1 minute ago, Tom Sewell said:

This also implies that the laws of physics must be different since the Earth's rotation and revolution would have to keep slowing down and speeding up, but, as is already in canon, these laws are more like polite suggestions. Or perhaps there are relativity issues between the Moperverse and our own.

Nonsense. The laws of physics are the same. It is just that Earth-Moperville and its solar system is moving on a superhyperelliptotoroidal trajectory around and between three singularities in interlocking orbits at high speed. This causes the minor time distortions we have observed.

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7 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
12 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

This also implies that the laws of physics must be different since the Earth's rotation and revolution would have to keep slowing down and speeding up, but, as is already in canon, these laws are more like polite suggestions. Or perhaps there are relativity issues between the Moperverse and our own.

Nonsense. The laws of physics are the same. It is just that Earth-Moperville and its solar system is moving on a superhyperelliptotoroidal trajectory around and between three singularities in interlocking orbits at high speed. This causes the minor time distortions we have observed.

Not just the solar system (you know how big navigation hazard would that be for Uryuom? On second though, that might explain why they are no short-term Uryuom tourists). Whole EGS universe is moving in that trajectory, relatively to ours.

In fact, it would be multiple universes, as I suppose that Lord Tedd's universe time is running similarly as EGS-universe time. Then there is this universe ... hey, maybe it's our universe moving that way. Do we know ANY universe with time similar to our own?

 

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Just now, hkmaly said:

Not just the solar system (you know how big navigation hazard would that be for Uryuom? On second though, that might explain why they are no short-term Uryuom tourists). Whole EGS universe is moving in that trajectory, relatively to ours.

No no no no. One, it would not be required to. We can observe relativistic time differences even inside our own universe. Two, the Gooniverse is actually moving along a fractalized trapezoid-shaped path on the inside surface of the Fermionic Klein bottle shaped and held in stasis by the opposing pulls of the Source and the Rock of Eternity.

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23 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

No no no no. One, it would not be required to. We can observe relativistic time differences even inside our own universe. Two, the Gooniverse is actually moving along a fractalized trapezoid-shaped path on the inside surface of the Fermionic Klein bottle shaped and held in stasis by the opposing pulls of the Source and the Rock of Eternity.

My theory:

Time in one universe is unrelated to time in another universe if there is no contact between them. Time flows in the same direction in both (in all, in fact) but possibly at wildly different rates, and not necessarily even at the same ratio of rates.

If a communication or matter-transference link is established between universes, time must flow at the same speed in both universes for the duration of the link. (Note: closing the link and then re-opening it always establishes a new link, not a continuation of the old one, no matter how brief the interval is in either universe.)

Also, the link is between a specific short period of time in universe A and a specific short period of time in universe B. It is then impossible to establish a link between a later moment in universe A and an earlier moment in universe B.

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2 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Also, the link is between a specific short period of time in universe A and a specific short period of time in universe B. It is then impossible to establish a link between a later moment in universe A and an earlier moment in universe B.

Not entirely. Dan shown multiple times it is possible to establish unidirectional communication link between universes to earlier moment (it's called flashback). But obviously, it is impossible for bidirectional links and there must be some rule for combinations of unidirectional links ...

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12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Not entirely. Dan shown multiple times it is possible to establish unidirectional communication link between universes to earlier moment (it's called flashback). But obviously, it is impossible for bidirectional links and there must be some rule for combinations of unidirectional links ...

First of all, "flashbacks" are a storytelling device, they have nothing to do with information transfer between universes (unless you count our universe as part of the equation, which is a little silly).

Secondly, other than Second Life, have we ever seen a one-way transfer of information between in-comic universes?

Admittedly, how Nioi got the Second Life memories is a bit of a puzzle. Presumably magic, but how did the magic do it? It might have simply copied SL Ellen and Kaoli's memories from their brains, but then why were the early memories so vivid? The only options I can think of are if the spell connected to the SL universe (and probably SL Kaoli & Ellen's minds) when SL Kaoli was a child then followed the universe forward in time at an accelerated rate, or if the spell can read the past of a selected individual. The first option would violate the "universes must travel at the same speed while connected" part of the Don Edwards suggested, though I think that so long as the rest of the rules were adhered to it could still work. The second is rather close to being a form of time travel, but as the information transfer is only forwards in time there still wouldn't be a risk of history alteration (which is Dan's reason for not allowing time travel in EGS).

(Incidentally, I really wish SL had been an interactive simulation, not a set of memories. It would have made a lot more sense that way, both for the purpose of "aging" Ellen's soul and regarding the question of how the memories got from SL Ellen to main-universe Ellen. But that's an old rant.)

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19 hours ago, hkmaly said:

did Nioi really established some link and that other universe have time going that much faster, or did she like prerecorded those memories and it was all playback?

I think everything that happened in the Second Life universe had already happened, so Ellen wasn't experiencing things in real time which is evident by the fact that she experienced the first 6 years of the second life in 12 hours. Also, considering when Ellen told everyone about the dreams, she said Nioi appeared at the end but she felt it wasn't actually Nioi but a prerecorded message from her, so my guess is the whole thing was copied somehow from Second Life Ellen and Kaoli and gradually inserted into our Ellen and Nioi's dewitchery twin. It'd probably be like being hooked up to the Matrix and having kung fu lessons uploaded to your brain, it'd take a couple minutes but if it's implanting memories of actually training for years, it'll feel like you trained for years.

One more thing, Ellen also felt that Nioi had another reason for wanting to have someone else to share the experience with Kaoli, and that was to have someone not in her universe to get in contact with at some point later. That sounds like heavy foreshadowing to me that Kaoli will find her way to the main universe and needing to find Ellen to ask for help, which would probably mean the General Shade Tail situation would probably have gotten worse.

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2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

It's new to people here. You don't have to sit on it for that reason! ^_^

It came up several times back in the old days, so I wasn't sure if it was worth repeating...  But if you think it's a good idea, I'll run through it again...

Nioi says that the main reason for the Second Life dreams is to age Ellen & Kaoli's souls. If Second Life was a magical simulation with compressed time, one in which they possessed free will and the ability to affect the outcome, Ellen and Kaoli really would be effectively living out a second life in their dreams, and it would make sense that the experience would age their souls. However, if it's simply a recorded memory they're passively watching, why does it age them when the memories they inherited from Elliot and Nioi apparently don't?

Furthermore, the second reason for including Ellen in the Second Life dreams was so Kaoli would have someone to share them with. Well, I suppose it gives them another thing to talk about when they eventually meet (though I wonder how much time they'll have to chat seeing as it'll probably be part of the big final conflict with General Shade Tail and Lord Tedd) but as it stands it's not all that different from knowing that someone else watched the same movie as you; main Ellen and Alpha Kaoli don't even know anything about each other besides what little Nioi passed on. It would have created a much more meaningful connection between the two of them if they had both been living within the same world, their real-life selves influencing their decisions.  

Finally, I really hope Nioi got SL Ellen & Kaoli's permission before copying their memories/lives, as if not that was a huge invasion of privacy. Of course given that Nioi didn't think it was necessary to get Ellen's informed consent before dumping over a decade of someone else's memories into Ellen's head (Nioi sort of asked for permission, but was so vague Ellen had no idea what she was agreeing to, which does not count as informed consent) I'm not all that confident Nioi got proper permission before copying the memories either...

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1 hour ago, ChronosCat said:

Finally, I really hope Nioi got SL Ellen & Kaoli's permission before copying their memories/lives, as if not that was a huge invasion of privacy. Of course given that Nioi didn't think it was necessary to get Ellen's informed consent before dumping over a decade of someone else's memories into Ellen's head (Nioi sort of asked for permission, but was so vague Ellen had no idea what she was agreeing to, which does not count as informed consent) I'm not all that confident Nioi got proper permission before copying the memories either...

I must confess that I personally have been suspicious of Nioi. Not of her motivations -- I believe that she means well -- but rather of her actions, which strike me as in many cases impulsive and perhaps not that well thought out. She was unsure of the 'soul' problem that she brought up and the problem is that just because certain events seem to correspond, it does not follow that there is also correlation. Then there's the problems that you yourself have pointed out and we end up with a well-intended meddler who may be causing more trouble than she prevents or is trying to solve. :/

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