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The Old Hack

Story Wednesday January 31, 2018

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Not sure if I'll get a response from Dan, but I asked if Arthur, Tedd and Van would remember having this meeting when they wake up. It would make sense if that was the case because it would prevent Arthur from somehow revealing the second purpose and preventing other Seers from being eligible and with no eligible seers the WoM would default to severe changes each time magic got too well known.

If the three woke up unaware that they took part in the WoM's decision process, then they wouldn't be able to interfere with future changes, so if the system did severely change, Tedd wouldn't know it was because Arthur's argument won, and if magic didn't change and instead allowed a full reveal, Arthur wouldn't know that Tedd's argument won or if Van was able to tip the scale in Tedd's favour. Of course if the WoM decided in favour of revealing magic then there likely wouldn't be any future meetings anyway.

There's also the teaser potential of Tedd waking up not remembering she met her half brother.

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1 minute ago, Tom Sewell said:

I just wanted to know which book or two Don Edwards was referring to, or whether he was citing EGS itself.

Sorry, bad joke referring to that old meme of linking people to a Rick Astley video where he sings, "So tell me what you want, what you really really want..."

My own guess would be the Xanth series where magic works much like that. The most powerful talents are usually named Magicians and have a multitude of uses. An example was a girl who had a talent of being able to enhance things. It was believed that it was a rather weak talent until she did such things as turning a rather slow friend of hers into a supergenius, strengthening ordinary armour to near impenetrability and made a quite young dragon's rather weak flame into a white-hot blowtorch. (It should in passing be noted that she also enhanced its curiosity, its friendliness and its protectiveness to make it a loyal companion. Given that dragons in that world are supposedly difficult to affect with magic, this was no mean feat.)

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4 hours ago, Scotty said:

Not sure if I'll get a response from Dan, but I asked if Arthur, Tedd and Van would remember having this meeting when they wake up. It would make sense if that was the case because it would prevent Arthur from somehow revealing the second purpose and preventing other Seers from being eligible and with no eligible seers the WoM would default to severe changes each time magic got too well known.

If the three woke up unaware that they took part in the WoM's decision process, then they wouldn't be able to interfere with future changes, so if the system did severely change, Tedd wouldn't know it was because Arthur's argument won, and if magic didn't change and instead allowed a full reveal, Arthur wouldn't know that Tedd's argument won or if Van was able to tip the scale in Tedd's favour. Of course if the WoM decided in favour of revealing magic then there likely wouldn't be any future meetings anyway.

There's also the teaser potential of Tedd waking up not remembering she met her half brother.

If seers don't remember when they participate in these meetings, then how does anyone know about the second purpose of seers? People would just know that magic changes, without knowing anything about the decision process.

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Just now, Douglas said:

If seers don't remember when they participate in these meetings, then how does anyone know about the second purpose of seers? People would just know that magic changes, without knowing anything about the decision process.

We got 2 confirmed Seers that made themselves ineligible by doing too much research, so mention of a Seer's purposes must be written down somewhere, if they are notes written by Seers who participated in meetings like this, then that would throw the idea of not remembering the event out the window. It is possible though that the notes were written by someone else, either a Seer that figured it out, became ineligible, but witnessed another seer suddenly fall asleep just before a system change might have put two and two together. Or maybe an Immortal guided someone to write the purposes down. Maybe it was an Immortal that pointed the 2 other Seers towards that information so that there'd be less available for this meeting. Anyway there could be a number of ways for the information to exist and for Seers who fulfill their second purpose to not remember doing so.

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2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

My own guess would be the Xanth series where magic works much like that. The most powerful talents are usually named Magicians and have a multitude of uses. An example was a girl who had a talent of being able to enhance things. It was believed that it was a rather weak talent until she did such things as turning a rather slow friend of hers into a supergenius, strengthening ordinary armour to near impenetrability and made a quite young dragon's rather weak flame into a white-hot blowtorch. (It should in passing be noted that she also enhanced its curiosity, its friendliness and its protectiveness to make it a loyal companion. Given that dragons in that world are supposedly difficult to affect with magic, this was no mean feat.)

That little girl who enhanced the dragon and the rather-dim boy grew up to become the King of Xanth and had three daughters named Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm. Rhythm managed to summon a stork before getting a husband and so the aforementioned little girl has a granddaughter named Cadence.

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5 hours ago, Scotty said:

Not sure if I'll get a response from Dan, but I asked if Arthur, Tedd and Van would remember having this meeting when they wake up.

I'd be surprised if he answered it; that sounds like the sort of thing he'd consider a spoiler.

1 hour ago, Douglas said:

If seers don't remember when they participate in these meetings, then how does anyone know about the second purpose of seers? People would just know that magic changes, without knowing anything about the decision process.

I'm guessing Immortals; one might have been in a seer's dreams when the seer was contacted by WoM; they might also have other mystical means of gathering information.

Alternately, at some point there was a Seer playing around with magic that allows you to better remember your dreams and/or uncover lost memories, and accidentally uncovered it.

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1 minute ago, Tom Sewell said:

That little girl who enhanced the dragon and the rather-dim boy grew up to become the King of Xanth and had three daughters named Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm. Rhythm managed to summon a stork before getting a husband and so the aforementioned little girl has a granddaughter named Cadence.

I think that one important part of the enhancement talent was that it could only bring out what was potentially there. She couldn't have made Hugo a genius if he hadn't at least had some capacity for thinking. I always did suspect that Hugo tried hard to think but fell short, then when his horizons were magically expanded for him he also had the will and ability to reach for them.

Similarly, I doubt she could have made the rejuvenated Gap Dragon friendly if it hadn't at least had some capacity for friendship. She needed something to work with, is what I mean.

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31 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

I'd be surprised if he answered it; that sounds like the sort of thing he'd consider a spoiler.

Yeah, I figure any time he doesn't answer a question, it means it's too close to spoiler territory, even if I'm wrong, just saying I'm wrong might be giving away too much, I dunno, I figured I'd try anyway.

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11 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Precisely. No friendship, no magic.

I think there may be some propaganda at work here.  Moperville isn't exactly bubbling over with friendship...

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2 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

I think there may be some propaganda at work here.  Moperville isn't exactly bubbling over with friendship...

Apparently it's a lot better than the Moperville Lord Tedd came from!  Tedd, at least, is surrounded by supportive friends, almost making up for the lack of support from his dad (which I'm still hoping is born of misunderstanding rather than actual hostility, and hence could be resolved satisfactorily for both parties, as well as for us readers).

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1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

Apparently it's a lot better than the Moperville Lord Tedd came from!  Tedd, at least, is surrounded by supportive friends, almost making up for the lack of support from his dad (which I'm still hoping is born of misunderstanding rather than actual hostility, and hence could be resolved satisfactorily for both parties, as well as for us readers).

I hope so too.  I don't think Ed Verres has put 2+2 together and realized Tedd is genderfluid.  I think he's seeing what he thinks as a bright but traumatized (straight) kid spending a lot of time as a girl among other things.  Despite being out to pasture these days, Verres might still not be home enough to internalize how much Tedd has matured.

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2 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

Despite being out to pasture these days, Verres might still not be home enough to internalize how much Tedd has matured.

A state of denial parents are all too good at achieving, I sometimes feel. *sigh*

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30 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

A state of denial parents are all too good at achieving, I sometimes feel. *sigh*

Dan is too kind to his characters for Ed Verres to be outright prejudiced.  If he was willing to take the time to rehabilitate Melissa, to say nothing of Pandora herself, then there shouldn't be something irredeemable about Verres either.  It has to be that Verres doesn't realize how much damage his disapproval is causing, or something like this.  His private talk with Nanase about why she shouldn't tell Tedd about Noriko should be enough to tell us he is very concerned about his son and doesn't want to see avoidable hurt inflicted on him (even as he, presumably unknowingly, inflicts hurt himself).  Verres' willingness to test Tedd's watches outside Moperville's magic buildup and his willingness to let Tedd's researcht pretty much unsupervised and unrestricted suggests Verres respects and supports his son's work too.  Even as Verres disapproves of Tedd transforming himself, it's important to remember he never tries to stop Tedd, when he could easily do so if he wanted to. 

So we have these important ways Ed Verres does not answer to the the description of the judgemental parent who refuses to accept their child. 

I don't know what Ed Verres' deal is or what Dan will give us when it comes time to work out that father-son relationship.  My best guess is Verres never made the connection that Tedd was genderfluid.  The counterpoint is that Ed Verres is nothing if not observant.  He and George could have observe-offs and the result might be in doubt (though I'd probably bet on old age and treachery), so as Tedd matures and continues to spend time as a girl, a simple narrative of "straight Tedd" should be creaking under the weight of assumptions that it can't support.

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22 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

So we have these important ways Ed Verres does not answer to the the description of the judgemental parent who refuses to accept their child. 

I should stress, I do not consider Mr. Verres to be beyond redemption. However, it is all too possible for a parent to inflict harm on a child while never meaning to.

Nor do I expect any redemption to happen swiftly and easily. First, because that would be an insult, and second, because Dan is too good a storyteller to allow that to happen.

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1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

so as Tedd matures and continues to spend time as a girl, a simple narrative of "straight Tedd" should be creaking under the weight of assumptions that it can't support.

"Heterosexual" and "homosexual" and the various clinical and slang synonyms thereof kind of fall apart when trying to deal with non-standard genders or non-cisgender individuals.

Tedd has, to my recollection, shown no romantic or sexual interest in males, regardless of Tedd's form. With the possible occasional exception of Grace when Grace is in a male form. So if Mr. V persists in seeing Tedd as male, that would be "straight". But I would prefer "gynosexual" because it isn't affected by whether Tedd is currently male, female, or indeterminate.

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