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The Old Hack

Story Wednesday February 14, 2018

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... ok. Definitely dramatic. Tedd didn't really said anything new (compared to this for example), but formulated it very differently. And Arthur's facepalm notwithstanding, magic will likely respond that this is exactly the logic it wanted. Which would make Arthur facepalm again.

And, this kind of performance would definitely be something traumatized Tedd wouldn't be able to do.

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Tedd gone crazy? The start of the ordeal? :danshiftyeyes:

Little misformat in panel 3.

4 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Looks like Tedd has his own barrel of exposition. Daddy should be proud.

Barrel is not endless though. But yes.

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Like Father, like Daughter.

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... ok. Definitely dramatic. Tedd didn't really said anything new (compared to this for example), but formulated it very differently. And Arthur's facepalm notwithstanding, magic will likely respond that this is exactly the logic it wanted. Which would make Arthur facepalm again.

And, this kind of performance would definitely be something traumatized Tedd wouldn't be able to do.

She did say some new pieces of information, mainly information about human nature. Which is information that could be inferred from their previous statements or most listeners would already know, but Magic isn't good at subtlety and explicitly has a poor grasp of human nature. Tedd needed to make the implications explicit and correlate them with technology to explain why trying to keep magic hidden is a futile effort in the modern era.

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9 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Like Father, like Daughter.

She did say some new pieces of information, mainly information about human nature. Which is information that could be inferred from their previous statements or most listeners would already know, but Magic isn't good at subtlety and explicitly has a poor grasp of human nature. Tedd needed to make the implications explicit and correlate them with technology to explain why trying to keep magic hidden is a futile effort in the modern era.

I'm really hoping Tedd has more to add to this, because at the moment if I were the WoM, I'd be questioning if humans can be trusted to handle magic at all and decide to make even more drastic a change based on that.

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3 minutes ago, Scotty said:
16 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Like Father, like Daughter.

She did say some new pieces of information, mainly information about human nature. Which is information that could be inferred from their previous statements or most listeners would already know, but Magic isn't good at subtlety and explicitly has a poor grasp of human nature. Tedd needed to make the implications explicit and correlate them with technology to explain why trying to keep magic hidden is a futile effort in the modern era.

I'm really hoping Tedd has more to add to this, because at the moment if I were the WoM, I'd be questioning if humans can be trusted to handle magic at all and decide to make even more drastic a change based on that.

More exposition would like be good (though I don't know if Dan would be up to it based on Twitter and the commentary), but I doubt Magic would consider drastic changes after what Tedd told it. Magic wants to be used and doesn't really care about human morality (which is likely another alien concept to it) outside of whether or not they'll keep it secret if the ruleset says it needs to be kept secret.

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35 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

More exposition would like be good (though I don't know if Dan would be up to it based on Twitter and the commentary)

I'm assumed Dan already had more exposition planned for Friday's comic to go along with this, whether that means he'd have to edit that down to fit as well is a possibility but if it was already planned then he can't really scrap it now can he?

37 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Magic wants to be used and doesn't really care about human morality (which is likely another alien concept to it) outside of whether or not they'll keep it secret if the ruleset says it needs to be kept secret.

At the moment, Tedd's exposition has painted Humans as greedy, opportunistic jerks who will either try to keep magic all to themselves and exploit other with it or sell to anyone willing to buy. that's probably a good enough reason that a severe change wouldn't keep magic hidden for long, but it's not making the idea of letting magic go public seem ideal either. This is why I'm hoping there a "but not all humans are jerks, they'll want to use their magic to help protect people, if there's a natural disaster, someone who can get super strength can clear rubble away faster than anyone can get machinery in to do the job, which would be a big deal if there's lives at stake."

Basically Tedd's exposition feels like listing pros and cons and so far I've only heard the cons and am hoping the pros are coming up next.

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35 minutes ago, Scotty said:
1 hour ago, Drasvin said:

More exposition would like be good (though I don't know if Dan would be up to it based on Twitter and the commentary)

I'm assumed Dan already had more exposition planned for Friday's comic to go along with this, whether that means he'd have to edit that down to fit as well is a possibility but if it was already planned then he can't really scrap it now can he?

He could scrap it if he really wanted to. He's done last minute major script re-writes before, though those are usually unpleasant and stressful.

35 minutes ago, Scotty said:
1 hour ago, Drasvin said:

Magic wants to be used and doesn't really care about human morality (which is likely another alien concept to it) outside of whether or not they'll keep it secret if the ruleset says it needs to be kept secret.

At the moment, Tedd's exposition has painted Humans as greedy, opportunistic jerks who will either try to keep magic all to themselves and exploit other with it or sell to anyone willing to buy. that's probably a good enough reason that a severe change wouldn't keep magic hidden for long, but it's not making the idea of letting magic go public seem ideal either. This is why I'm hoping there a "but not all humans are jerks, they'll want to use their magic to help protect people, if there's a natural disaster, someone who can get super strength can clear rubble away faster than anyone can get machinery in to do the job, which would be a big deal if there's lives at stake."

Basically Tedd's exposition feels like listing pros and cons and so far I've only heard the cons and am hoping the pros are coming up next.

If Magic truly doesn't care about morality, instead of simply not understanding it well, then it's not going to care if humans use it to save lives after a major disaster, or use it to cause the disaster in the first place. Maybe it would care if the caused disaster risks wiping out humanity, as that would severely limit how much it gets used, but some less than apocalyptic issue wouldn't be much of a concern to a truly amoral entity.

Though listing off the pros of humanity and magic going public wouldn't hurt.

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55 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Basically Tedd's exposition feels like listing pros and cons and so far I've only heard the cons and am hoping the pros are coming up next.

It is an old trick when summing up a debate. List pros and cons separately, then weigh them up against another. Often the person doing the listing will choose to list the points on the side they are against first. That way the points on the side they agree with will be fresher in mind for the people doing the deciding. Note that this may be done subconsciously rather than out of calculation and also that it self-evidently cannot be relied on to work this way with the Will of Magic as it is not human and its mind might function radically different from that of a human being. (For one thing, it might have a very good memory. The aforementioned technique relies on short term memory glitching at least a little.)

Also please note that the above example relies specifically on this being near the end of a debate. Given that to humans at least first impressions are important, it may not be a good idea to introduce a subject by listing all the opposing points first -- at least not for someone with a vested interest in a specific outcome who consciously or subconsciously wishes to shape the opinion of their audience.

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What Tedd is basically doing here is expanding on Elliot's premise: Magic is going to have to change it's own rules if it wants to play with humans at all. And considering that the will of magic seems to be the just the will of human magic so far, the only way to deny humans magic completely could be to destroy itself.

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This is not the delivery I was expecting. If the premise is that the Spellbooks represent Magic's natural way of communicating, Tedd should have been talking in a dry and overly wordy fashion. While this is in a bit more detail than what was said before, it seems to fit better with the "dramatic" nature of magic that Tedd just concluded she was wrong about.

Also, I wasn't going to cheer for any backgrounds in the main story until we left the dreamscape, but I can't resist. Yay for spider-web background in panel four!!! (And yay for starburst backgrounds in panels two and six too, I guess.)

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Just now, ChronosCat said:

This is not the delivery I was expecting. If the premise is that the Spellbooks represent Magic's natural way of communicating, Tedd should have been talking in a dry and overly wordy fashion. While this is in a bit more detail than what was said before, it seems to fit better with the "dramatic" nature of magic that Tedd just concluded she was wrong about.

Also, I wasn't going to cheer for any backgrounds in the main story until we left the dreamscape, but I can't resist. Yay for spider-web background in panel four!!! (And yay for starburst backgrounds in panels two and six too, I guess.)

No, Tedd realized that the spellbooks were written the way they were because the WoM assumed Humans understood it that way and that the way they were talking before was just as difficult for the WoM understand . Tedd's correcting that.

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3 hours ago, Scotty said:

I'm really hoping Tedd has more to add to this, because at the moment if I were the WoM, I'd be questioning if humans can be trusted to handle magic at all and decide to make even more drastic a change based on that.

That is exactly where I sit on this.

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6 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

This is not the delivery I was expecting. If the premise is that the Spellbooks represent Magic's natural way of communicating, Tedd should have been talking in a dry and overly wordy fashion. While this is in a bit more detail than what was said before, it seems to fit better with the "dramatic" nature of magic that Tedd just concluded she was wrong about.

Also, I wasn't going to cheer for any backgrounds in the main story until we left the dreamscape, but I can't resist. Yay for spider-web background in panel four!!! (And yay for starburst backgrounds in panels two and six too, I guess.)

Tedd established that the issue is not that Magic is dramatic, it just has trouble understanding subtlety. This is just Tedd casting subtlety aside.

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6 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

This is not the delivery I was expecting. If the premise is that the Spellbooks represent Magic's natural way of communicating, Tedd should have been talking in a dry and overly wordy fashion. While this is in a bit more detail than what was said before, it seems to fit better with the "dramatic" nature of magic that Tedd just concluded she was wrong about.

Also, I wasn't going to cheer for any backgrounds in the main story until we left the dreamscape, but I can't resist. Yay for spider-web background in panel four!!! (And yay for starburst backgrounds in panels two and six too, I guess.)

I doubt Tedd could "speak Magic's language" in that way, at least not competently enough to convincingly present an argument, and she knows better than to try. The realization Tedd is basing all this on is that Magic does have some understanding of humans, and that understanding is focused on all the big obvious flashy high impact stuff, so to get a point across while "speaking human" she needs to build it around that kind of stuff.

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11 hours ago, Scotty said:

I'm really hoping Tedd has more to add to this, because at the moment if I were the WoM, I'd be questioning if humans can be trusted to handle magic at all and decide to make even more drastic a change based on that.

Except we have been told that  "Magic wants to be known of and used, but only by a relative few." and that its goals are "extremely loose with inhumanly neutral objectives". I don't think there's any chance that magic will completely cut humanity off. It doesn't care whether you use it to kill people or save them, so long as it's objectives are met, and being used by humanity is one of those objectives. As Elliott said "If magic wants to keep playing, it's going to have to compromise eventually"

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4 minutes ago, Alwaysnewguy said:

Except we have been told that  "Magic wants to be known of and used, but only by a relative few." and that its goals are "extremely loose with inhumanly neutral objectives". I don't think there's any chance that magic will completely cut humanity off. It doesn't care whether you use it to kill people or save them, so long as it's objectives are met, and being used by humanity is one of those objectives. As Elliott said "If magic wants to keep playing, it's going to have to compromise eventually"

That was before and based on human assumption and the WoM's understanding of things, with this new perspective it choose that it's not worth it if humans are going to abuse any system it puts down and it might even decide that making magic public would be just as bad. What I've been saying is that Tedd needs to say something that will assure the WoM that magic being public wouldn't be as bad as some people might think.

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14 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:
19 hours ago, Stature said:

Barrel is not endless though. But yes.

Tedd has exposited almost solidly for two pages now. I think that may have at least equaled Edward's record, and Tedd might not be finished.

However, the hands-down champion of exposition is Grace. Remember this from Sister (1)?

She probably learned it from Edward as well.

13 hours ago, Drasvin said:

She did say some new pieces of information, mainly information about human nature. Which is information that could be inferred from their previous statements or most listeners would already know, but Magic isn't good at subtlety and explicitly has a poor grasp of human nature. Tedd needed to make the implications explicit and correlate them with technology to explain why trying to keep magic hidden is a futile effort in the modern era.

Yes. Nothing new to us - or Arthur - but possibly new to Magic.

13 hours ago, Drasvin said:
13 hours ago, Scotty said:

I'm really hoping Tedd has more to add to this, because at the moment if I were the WoM, I'd be questioning if humans can be trusted to handle magic at all and decide to make even more drastic a change based on that.

More exposition would like be good (though I don't know if Dan would be up to it based on Twitter and the commentary), but I doubt Magic would consider drastic changes after what Tedd told it. Magic wants to be used and doesn't really care about human morality (which is likely another alien concept to it) outside of whether or not they'll keep it secret if the ruleset says it needs to be kept secret.

Even the secrecy is secondary objective, magic DEFINITELY wants to be used. And there may be other priorities behind HOW the magic currently works ... which may be reason why magic isn't going to change to be SAFER, no matter how good idea it would seem to be to human hearing this exposition.

Still, I agree that Tedd should add something positive.

12 hours ago, Drasvin said:

If Magic truly doesn't care about morality, instead of simply not understanding it well, then it's not going to care if humans use it to save lives after a major disaster, or use it to cause the disaster in the first place. Maybe it would care if the caused disaster risks wiping out humanity, as that would severely limit how much it gets used, but some less than apocalyptic issue wouldn't be much of a concern to a truly amoral entity.

It may care about morality but not related to individuals, only to big picture. I would say it wants to prevent big disasters or wars not only because the "wiping out humanity" bit but also because it would consider it bad idea from moral perspective.

1 hour ago, Scotty said:
1 hour ago, Alwaysnewguy said:

Except we have been told that  "Magic wants to be known of and used, but only by a relative few." and that its goals are "extremely loose with inhumanly neutral objectives". I don't think there's any chance that magic will completely cut humanity off. It doesn't care whether you use it to kill people or save them, so long as it's objectives are met, and being used by humanity is one of those objectives. As Elliott said "If magic wants to keep playing, it's going to have to compromise eventually"

That was before and based on human assumption and the WoM's understanding of things, with this new perspective it choose that it's not worth it if humans are going to abuse any system it puts down and it might even decide that making magic public would be just as bad. What I've been saying is that Tedd needs to say something that will assure the WoM that magic being public wouldn't be as bad as some people might think.

Remember that Tedd is STILL focusing only on the question if magic should or shouldn't go public. She's still arguing for "it will go public anyway, better expect it".

 

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

Still, I agree that Tedd should add something positive.

Like this?

That MIGHT convince magic the best course of action would be to disappear. So no, something else.

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17 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

However, the hands-down champion of exposition is Grace. Remember this from Sister (1)?

Funnest 10 minutes of Elliot. She is so much the champion, Edward's exposition possibly took less time and knowledge. A stretch claim, but still.

Then again, Grace's exposition is reminiscent to heists. Edward's goes beyond that. 

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:
2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Still, I agree that Tedd should add something positive.

Like this?

Something else positive might be coming. :demonicduck:

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