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Story Wednesday December 20, 2017

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16 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

More likely for her to think of Raven as her father.

I don't think an Immortal can be *that* confused...   :)

As I think about it, a very likely end for this Pandora life is a deliberate breaking of Immortal law to save her son. 
 

7 hours ago, Drasvin said:

She would also have a compulsion to seek out Sarah, though she wouldn't quite know why, similar to how Helena and Demetrius have a compulsion to follow Elliot around.

That brings something to mind. If H&D have a vow to stop Magus's plan (or keep Elliot safe or whatever) does that mean Magus succeeding is going to cause them to be constantly barraged by unwanted thoughts?

That was the point I was trying to build towards. :)

If Pandora can choose when to properly reset she'll definitely take care of Sarah in some way beforehand.  It's unfinished business that her reset-self might not be able to do for a while.

I don't think H&D have a vow to stop Magus or anything like that.  They certainly haven't acted like it.  The fact that they can shift focus from Elliot to tricking wayward griffins into Vampire hunting suggests they aren't feeling the effects of a neglected vow.  While they know who Magus is I don't think they have any clue that Magus is connected to the "follow Elliot!" impulse that survived their improper reset.

I expect that H&D will put in an appearance at the mall before long.  They could already be there.  I'm pretty sure Sirleck's intended the vampire convention at the mall to draw them there so they would be unable to intervene in whatever Sirleck plans to do once Magus and Elliot are separated again.  I assume he's waiting for that to bodysnatch Magus but that's my assumption.

The wildcard here is Voltaire.  He nudged Sirleck into this plan.  Is it enough for V to just watch the splashy carnage at the Mall and wait for the Will of Magic to say "screw it" and reset?  Somehow I don't think so.

 

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A notion came to me that the story is unfolding so slowly here because of the limitations of the comic format. I thought if this was a video, we could have a split screen showing two or more things happening at once, such as one for Adrian fighting, two for the conversations Diane and Susan are having, one or more for witnesses watching, talking, and/or fleeing for their lives, etc.

But then I remembered that Dan actually did something like this once in So a Date at the Mall

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1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

I don't think H&D have a vow to stop Magus or anything like that.  They certainly haven't acted like it.  The fact that they can shift focus from Elliot to tricking wayward griffins into Vampire hunting suggests they aren't feeling the effects of a neglected vow.  While they know who Magus is I don't think they have any clue that Magus is connected to the "follow Elliot!" impulse that survived their improper reset.

Right ... it is only speculation that the reason why "follow Elliot!" is one of few things they remembered is that it's part of some vow.

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

I expect that H&D will put in an appearance at the mall before long.  They could already be there.

Well, we still don't know about two vampires ...

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

I'm pretty sure Sirleck's intended the vampire convention at the mall to draw them there so they would be unable to intervene in whatever Sirleck plans to do once Magus and Elliot are separated again.  I assume he's waiting for that to bodysnatch Magus but that's my assumption.

No, the vampire convention at the mall is MAGUS's plan to make H&D not interfere while he's possessing Elliot.

Only change Sirleck did was he raised the number of vampires and targeted Adrian specifically. Which might either be because he has some plan with Adrian, OR because he believes it will prolong the time H&D will be occupied ... which MIGHT be connected with his plan to bodysnatch Magus, true.

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

The wildcard here is Voltaire.  He nudged Sirleck into this plan.  Is it enough for V to just watch the splashy carnage at the Mall and wait for the Will of Magic to say "screw it" and reset?  Somehow I don't think so.

He specifically nudged Sirleck into including Adrian in the plan. That suggests that he wants him dead or in danger of dead, either for effect it will have on Tedd or on Pandora.

However, making the Will of Magic reset also seem to be part of his plan and this will definitely help in it, so ...

1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

A notion came to me that the story is unfolding so slowly here because of the limitations of the comic format. I thought if this was a video, we could have a split screen showing two or more things happening at once, such as one for Adrian fighting, two for the conversations Diane and Susan are having, one or more for witnesses watching, talking, and/or fleeing for their lives, etc.

Seriously? Not even 24 tried something like that for such long scenes.

Movie would likely include lot of cuts, taking advantage of fact that we WOULD be able to follow conversation Diane and Susan (or Diane and Zeus) are having despite being interrupted by few seconds of Adrian fighting, witnesses watching / fleeing for their lives etc.

1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

This can actually work in comics in general, but doesn't help solving the webcomic problem of one-page-per-two-days. We will see what Dan will do tomorrow, but I suspect (based on commentary "you just KNOW he's going to elaborate while some actiony thing is going on with Raven") it will be images of Adrian fighting (and maybe some of those witnesses) with bubbles of Diane and Zeus's conversation on top of it, which effectively doubles the amount of content in one page.

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38 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

This can actually work in comics in general, but doesn't help solving the webcomic problem of one-page-per-two-days.

The extended time can be problematic. We used to have a fan here who would constantly complain about the pacing. He went absolutely berserk over a particular sequence that took place in the cellar of the Verres house and referred to it as the 'Trapped in the Basement' storyline and insisted it lasted forever. When I went back to it and counted the actual number of pages involved, it turned out to be just thirteen pages long and with two of them actually involving a brief scene change to elsewhere. (That Dan at the time was forced by RL to skip some updates did not help, really.)

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Right ... it is only speculation that the reason why "follow Elliot!" is one of few things they remembered is that it's part of some vow.

I prefer to think that they held onto one thing that was important to their previous incarnations.  If "follow Elliot!" was at all related to a vow, I'm not certain they could have stopped, as I mention above.

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Well, we still don't know about two vampires ...

They could be shadowing vampires but I don't think they're doing anything to them.  They could be weak enough that there's nothing they could do, but Pandora isn't weak and she's not doing anything either.  Of course, H&D could have a new engine of destruction to point at Vampires after their griffin went home...

 

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

No, the vampire convention at the mall is MAGUS's plan to make H&D not interfere while he's possessing Elliot.

Thanks for the reminder.  I had forgotten.

 

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37 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

This can actually work in comics in general, but doesn't help solving the webcomic problem of one-page-per-two-days.

The extended time can be problematic. We used to have a fan here who would constantly complain about the pacing. He went absolutely berserk over a particular sequence that took place in the cellar of the Verres house and referred to it as the 'Trapped in the Basement' storyline and insisted it lasted forever. When I went back to it and counted the actual number of pages involved, it turned out to be just thirteen pages long and with two of them actually involving a brief scene change to elsewhere. (That Dan at the time was forced by RL to skip some updates did not help, really.)

Yes.

Problem is that if 30 minutes is described by 30 pages, it is perfectly ok if you read it as dead-tree comic (or when archive-binging) and it takes you 30 minutes to read (and that's assuming it's big pages with lot of text, in most cases you can read quicker) but it takes author easily 120 hours of time to draw it (if not more) and that time might be spread over two months of real time because the author also have full time job, family and possibly likes to sleep sometimes - and spending two months on that 30 minutes sequence can easily feel too long.

Therefore, in webcomics, it is necessary to be careful with pacing and it may still seems slow to some. It's a pity because some parts of story would totally warrant that page count if not for that enormous amount of real time involved.

3 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Well, we still don't know about two vampires ...

They could be shadowing vampires but I don't think they're doing anything to them.  They could be weak enough that there's nothing they could do, but Pandora isn't weak and she's not doing anything either.  Of course, H&D could have a new engine of destruction to point at Vampires after their griffin went home...

They might've recruited another vampire hunter, yes ... but certainly not as efficient as Andrea.

Or, there IS something they could do, it's just very ineffective and that's why Pandora doesn't bother. After all, her son can finish those vampires in few minutes if she guide him properly and just little more if she let him enjoy it.

 

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13 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

They might've recruited another vampire hunter, yes ... but certainly not as efficient as Andrea.

Or, there IS something they could do, it's just very ineffective and that's why Pandora doesn't bother. After all, her son can finish those vampires in few minutes if she guide him properly and just little more if she let him enjoy it.

There are enough people with marks in Moperville that H&D could have a group going.  We learned from Luke that there's a couple of others with unspecified marks who are trying to figure out what's happening.  There could be more.

Pandora looks uneasy to me.  She doesn't look like someone who thinks the vampires are going to be easy.

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

However, making the Will of Magic reset also seems to be part of his [Voltaire's] plan.

I've been betting on that for a long time. But there are at least two questions that follow: How does he want Magic to change? And who is the "they" who are supposed to listen to Voltaire? Is the Will of Magic something controlled by Immortals? Or can it change Magic for the Immortals as well as humans?

 

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14 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Right ... it is only speculation that the reason why "follow Elliot!" is one of few things they remembered is that it's part of some vow.

I prefer to think that they held onto one thing that was important to their previous incarnations.  If "follow Elliot!" was at all related to a vow, I'm not certain they could have stopped, as I mention above.

If eliminating vampires is linked to another vow, it could possibly let them move away from following Elliot whenever they get a whiff of one. Would also explain why they are so keen about getting people to fight vampires. That does bring up the question of what happens when an Immortal has conflicting vows (Probably unpleasantness).

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16 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

The extended time can be problematic. We used to have a fan here who would constantly complain about the pacing. He went absolutely berserk over a particular sequence that took place in the cellar of the Verres house and referred to it as the 'Trapped in the Basement' storyline and insisted it lasted forever. When I went back to it and counted the actual number of pages involved, it turned out to be just thirteen pages long and with two of them actually involving a brief scene change to elsewhere. (That Dan at the time was forced by RL to skip some updates did not help, really.)

I remember that. The most tedious part of that sequence was reading all of the complaints in the forums about the pacing. I did find the title "Trapped in the Basement" amusing, though.

Edit: One thing I discovered during my time away from the forums is that the comic's pacing works a lot better if you wait a few weeks between reading the comic, then read everything you missed at once. Of course, that's not exactly conductive to commenting on the comics in the reaction threads...

14 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

I've been betting on that for a long time. But there are at least two questions that follow: How does he want Magic to change? And who is the "they" who are supposed to listen to Voltaire? Is the Will of Magic something controlled by Immortals? Or can it change Magic for the Immortals as well as humans?

I'm guessing the "they" is the other Immortals (or perhaps some sort of ruling council of Immortals if they have such a thing). Perhaps he wants to convince them to change Immortal Law to be less restrictive and allow more interference in human affairs?

As to why the other Immortals would care about magic changing, it affecting how magic works for them too would be the most obvious explanation.

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9 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:
13 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

I've been betting on that for a long time. But there are at least two questions that follow: How does he want Magic to change? And who is the "they" who are supposed to listen to Voltaire? Is the Will of Magic something controlled by Immortals? Or can it change Magic for the Immortals as well as humans?

I'm guessing the "they" is the other Immortals (or perhaps some sort of ruling council of Immortals if they have such a thing). Perhaps he wants to convince them to change Immortal Law to be less restrictive and allow more interference in human affairs?

As to why the other Immortals would care about magic changing, it affecting how magic works for them too would be the most obvious explanation.

Magic changing for the Immortals is a possible answer, they it's likely that they would care if it only changed for humans, because it would change how they can interact with humans. Right now they can use magic marks as leverage to get things done. To give humans the tools to complete a task or as a temptation to get the human to do what they want. If magic changes, it's likely that magic marks won't work any more and Immortals will need to find a new way to influence humans.

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16 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:
16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

They might've recruited another vampire hunter, yes ... but certainly not as efficient as Andrea.

Or, there IS something they could do, it's just very ineffective and that's why Pandora doesn't bother. After all, her son can finish those vampires in few minutes if she guide him properly and just little more if she let him enjoy it.

There are enough people with marks in Moperville that H&D could have a group going.  We learned from Luke that there's a couple of others with unspecified marks who are trying to figure out what's happening.  There could be more.

But none of those marks might be useful in fight with vampires.

1 hour ago, Drasvin said:
2 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
15 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

I've been betting on that for a long time. But there are at least two questions that follow: How does he want Magic to change? And who is the "they" who are supposed to listen to Voltaire? Is the Will of Magic something controlled by Immortals? Or can it change Magic for the Immortals as well as humans?

I'm guessing the "they" is the other Immortals (or perhaps some sort of ruling council of Immortals if they have such a thing). Perhaps he wants to convince them to change Immortal Law to be less restrictive and allow more interference in human affairs?

As to why the other Immortals would care about magic changing, it affecting how magic works for them too would be the most obvious explanation.

Magic changing for the Immortals is a possible answer, they it's likely that they would care if it only changed for humans, because it would change how they can interact with humans. Right now they can use magic marks as leverage to get things done. To give humans the tools to complete a task or as a temptation to get the human to do what they want. If magic changes, it's likely that magic marks won't work any more and Immortals will need to find a new way to influence humans.

It may be why he needs not just ANY magic change but some specific one. He needs the reset AND the seer in "correct" mood - possibly to make sure that the magic marks (or something else important for Immortals) wouldn't work and the other Immortals would therefore be more willing to change the law.

Note also that Voltaire might not be completely sane and his plan might have no chance to actually work.

 

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3 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Note also that Voltaire might not be completely sane and his plan might have no chance to actually work.

There's no "might" about Voltaire's sanity deficiency, but there are a depressing number of precedents for insane plans by insane people that didn't fail.

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45 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

But none of those marks might be useful in fight with vampires.

The only mark we definitely know of from Luke's group - Luke's mark - definitely COULD be helpful.

Not in actually fighting vampires, but in identifying high-magic-energy people even when they aren't doing any magic. Vampires presumably qualify, so at a minimum he'd identify a lot of people as not-vampires. He might, with some experience, be able to distinguish between vampires and other sorts of beings with high magic energy.

The first step in "know your enemy" is knowing who is an enemy and who is not - and that's where Luke could come in.

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22 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yeah it totally makes sense as Voltaire's plan. Also, yes it's probably too far in Lord Tedd's direction to actually happen.

What does Lord Tedd have to do with what I said? O_o

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1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

There's no "might" about Voltaire's sanity deficiency, but there are a depressing number of precedents for insane plans by insane people that didn't fail.

Actually they do usually fail. It is just that they manage to do so much damage in the process.

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2 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Actually they do usually fail. It is just that they manage to do so much damage in the process.

I was thinking about plans to do something that succeed in accomplishing carrying out all the necessary tasks successfully, whether or not those tasks have the effects the insane planner thought they would. For instance, an obsessed fan plans on shooting President Reagan and succeeds. However, this does not make Jodie Foster fall in love with him. 

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Just now, Tom Sewell said:

For instance, an obsessed fan plans on shooting President Reagan and succeeds. However, this does not make Jodie Foster fall in love with him. 

It is also worth pointing out that the President didn't actually die.

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1 minute ago, The Old Hack said:

It is also worth pointing out that the President didn't actually die.

I think Hinckley's reasoning was along the lines of "I shot the President for you!" The effort should have been enough to prove he deserved her love. I wonder if anyone's been mean enough to tell Hinckley Jodie has a wife now.

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4 hours ago, Don Edwards said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

But none of those marks might be useful in fight with vampires.

The only mark we definitely know of from Luke's group - Luke's mark - definitely COULD be helpful.

Not in actually fighting vampires, but in identifying high-magic-energy people even when they aren't doing any magic. Vampires presumably qualify, so at a minimum he'd identify a lot of people as not-vampires. He might, with some experience, be able to distinguish between vampires and other sorts of beings with high magic energy.

The first step in "know your enemy" is knowing who is an enemy and who is not - and that's where Luke could come in.

I would assume Helena and Demetrius doesn't need this. They need someone to actually kill the vampires.

4 hours ago, Kazzellin said:
On 12/21/2017 at 8:29 PM, hkmaly said:

Yeah it totally makes sense as Voltaire's plan. Also, yes it's probably too far in Lord Tedd's direction to actually happen.

What does Lord Tedd have to do with what I said? O_o

There is speculation that Lord Tedd would basically be what would Tedd became without Elliot, and Voltaire tried to remove Elliot, so he effectively wants to push Tedd into same direction as Lord Tedd. But for story purposes, this can't get too far, because we need our Tedd to FIGHT Lord Tedd.

 

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