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hkmaly

Story, Friday February 16, 2018

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http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2461

Arthur: "Isn't  that just what we've been saying"?

... yes, it is. It's just translation.

(As we were already talking about in forum for previous comic.)

Arthur's "What" on end is also good, although I predicted facepalm.

(Commentary:) Shark's sensing magnetism is relatively normal kind of sense. Let's look at something harder: Imagine AI which only perceives world through the changes of frequency of specific words in news. (Unless you work in Google, then you don't need to imagine.) Magic might be more similar to this, having most information about world from what spells will people desire and how are they using them ... like, if there is epidemic, it doesn't see lot of sick people. It senses lot of people suddenly wanting healing spells.

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I still hoped that Tedd would have said something more personal to not make it sound like humans are jerks. Heck if anything it might have given Arthur a good enough reason to not fear magic being public as much, I can't even begin to understand what he's thinking right now.

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Just now, Scotty said:

I still hoped that Tedd would have said something more personal to not make it sound like humans are jerks. Heck if anything it might have given Arthur a good enough reason to not fear magic being public as much, I can't even begin to understand what he's thinking right now.

I doubt Magic understands human morality. It's already been established it can't fully understand mortals. Tedd had to repeat everything they said in a way Magic could comprehend to get it to see their point.

Arthur though, yes, I'm also wondering how he'd react to all this. Maybe it comes later?

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That's an interesting perspective into how Magic perceives the world. Certainly makes sense though.

41 minutes ago, partner555 said:
44 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I still hoped that Tedd would have said something more personal to not make it sound like humans are jerks. Heck if anything it might have given Arthur a good enough reason to not fear magic being public as much, I can't even begin to understand what he's thinking right now.

I doubt Magic understands human morality. It's already been established it can't fully understand mortals. Tedd had to repeat everything they said in a way Magic could comprehend to get it to see their point.

Arthur though, yes, I'm also wondering how he'd react to all this. Maybe it comes later?

I imagine Arthur is going to have a very busy Monday, unless he works weekends. He needs to get the Paranormal Division ready for a potential tidal wave of new magic users. He also has to think about how he's going to tell the Assistant Director that his plan backfired. All-in-all, his next work day is going to be a massive headache.

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1 hour ago, Drasvin said:

That's an interesting perspective into how Magic perceives the world. Certainly makes sense though.

I imagine Arthur is going to have a very busy Monday, unless he works weekends. He needs to get the Paranormal Division ready for a potential tidal wave of new magic users. He also has to think about how he's going to tell the Assistant Director that his plan backfired. All-in-all, his next work day is going to be a massive headache.

Hm. Possibly, yes, but with the existing system of magic surviving with only minor modifications, maybe the situation will be more like this: that Magic allows matters to proceed from where they are now and does not inform the rest of the world's seers. That way instead of a huge revelation following on the Internet it would simply continue at the present pace. Which is to say, dribbles and drabbles slowly spreading and probably accelerating, but happening on a slower scale and leaving the various magic bureaus with intimidating acronyms for names more time to adjust and prepare themselves.

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

That's an interesting perspective into how Magic perceives the world. Certainly makes sense though.

I imagine Arthur is going to have a very busy Monday, unless he works weekends. He needs to get the Paranormal Division ready for a potential tidal wave of new magic users. He also has to think about how he's going to tell the Assistant Director that his plan backfired. All-in-all, his next work day is going to be a massive headache.

Hm. Possibly, yes, but with the existing system of magic surviving with only minor modifications, maybe the situation will be more like this: that Magic allows matters to proceed from where they are now and does not inform the rest of the world's seers. That way instead of a huge revelation following on the Internet it would simply continue at the present pace. Which is to say, dribbles and drabbles slowly spreading and probably accelerating, but happening on a slower scale and leaving the various magic bureaus with intimidating acronyms for names more time to adjust and prepare themselves.

Certainly, though due to Pandora's world-wide spectacle, the rate of acceleration for magical awareness will itself be increasing as people post videos and discussions and in general try to figure out what those lights were and why they seemed to cause people to spontaneously combust at seemingly random. The magic organizations will have time to adjust and adapt, but any that knew about the potential magic reset but don't know about the seers' second purpose, like the FBI's Paranormal Division(Though they'll be lucky in having one of the seers that was in the discussion to inform them), are going to get blindsided when the reset doesn't come.

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12 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

but any that knew about the potential magic reset... are going to get blindsided when the reset doesn't come.

That is a good point, but at least this will be more like a slow double take than a huge floodwave of new spell users, which would have been the most likely outcome of a hard reset if Magic had chosen that.

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That was a little too easy. Does anyone else have a feeling of impending doom right now?

I really think those three should have tried to find out what sort of changes WoM was considering, particularly for the "minor changes and go public" option. Maybe it's just my pessimism speaking, but I suspect that when the new rules are revealed, Tedd isn't going to be very happy with them.

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1 hour ago, ChronosCat said:

That was a little too easy. Does anyone else have a feeling of impending doom right now?

I have a niggling itch. On a scale of Impending Doom going from 1 to 100, I'm only at about fifteen or so.

(With thanks to Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier.)

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21 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

here's a question: Suppose what magic thinks is a small change actually *is* catastrophic for human magic-users?

All magic must now be used by gestalt beings with at least three components. What do you mean, all humans are individuals? What's an individual?

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Just now, Drasvin said:

That's an interesting perspective into how Magic perceives the world. Certainly makes sense though.

I imagine Arthur is going to have a very busy Monday, unless he works weekends. He needs to get the Paranormal Division ready for a potential tidal wave of new magic users. He also has to think about how he's going to tell the Assistant Director that his plan backfired. All-in-all, his next work day is going to be a massive headache.

I do worry that Edward might be put on the spot for Tedd's actions here. It was clear that Arthur didn't expect Tedd to be there so when Liefeld hears about it, what would he do?

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I think the problem with earlier explanations actually was not Magic failing to understand, but rather that Magic simply did not know about the Internet - and especially youtube - because there haven't been enough instances of spells directly interacting with it. The earlier explanations to some extent assumed that when they referred to sharing information quickly, exposing incidents, etc. that Magic understood that they were referring to Internet broadcasting of information. Now Tedd has finally stated "there's this new thing called the Internet that blows all your assumptions about information propagation away," and Magic revised its forecast of what would happen in light of this new information.

20 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I do worry that Edward might be put on the spot for Tedd's actions here. It was clear that Arthur didn't expect Tedd to be there so when Liefeld hears about it, what would he do?

Edward might get questioned about it, but he can honestly say he didn't know. No one in the DGB knew about seers before now, not even Arthur who is one, so Edward not knowing about Tedd being a seer should be readily accepted. As for Tedd's actions, even Arthur agrees, however reluctantly, that Tedd is right. If anything, they'd be thanking her for preventing catastrophe. If not for Tedd, DGB would soon be getting blindsided by a thousand seers bringing magic into the public eye in a far more chaotic and unmanageable way, while handicapped by having lost their advantage of an existing corp of experienced magic users. They'd have Arthur to get them started picking up the new system right away, but they'd be on an even footing with every other group just starting out.

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1 hour ago, Douglas said:

Edward might get questioned about it, but he can honestly say he didn't know. No one in the DGB knew about seers before now, not even Arthur who is one, so Edward not knowing about Tedd being a seer should be readily accepted. As for Tedd's actions, even Arthur agrees, however reluctantly, that Tedd is right. If anything, they'd be thanking her for preventing catastrophe. If not for Tedd, DGB would soon be getting blindsided by a thousand seers bringing magic into the public eye in a far more chaotic and unmanageable way, while handicapped by having lost their advantage of an existing corp of experienced magic users. They'd have Arthur to get them started picking up the new system right away, but they'd be on an even footing with every other group just starting out.

Edward's tried to dissuade Tedd from wanting to make magic public, I would expect that Arthur and Liefeld have both told Edward how secrecy is important to the safety of the general public, Liefeld could still say that Edward failed to impress that upon Tedd.

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The thing is, Tedd is currently actually helping to keep magic as secret as is feasible.

Granted, that isn't very secret... but it's more secret than would be likely to occur with a major reset.

Now maybe Tedd will turn around and say "Arthur! Let's suggest tweaks to make our current magic system less dangerous? I'll start - give ordinary people significant resistance!"

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12 hours ago, Stature said:

Magic. Magic is SO naïve. But ho yay.

Not necessarily. It IS true.

9 hours ago, partner555 said:
9 hours ago, Scotty said:

I still hoped that Tedd would have said something more personal to not make it sound like humans are jerks. Heck if anything it might have given Arthur a good enough reason to not fear magic being public as much, I can't even begin to understand what he's thinking right now.

I doubt Magic understands human morality. It's already been established it can't fully understand mortals. Tedd had to repeat everything they said in a way Magic could comprehend to get it to see their point.

Arthur though, yes, I'm also wondering how he'd react to all this. Maybe it comes later?

Arthur already reacted. He said that it's what they've been saying previously. Nothing Tedd said is new to him.

9 hours ago, Drasvin said:

I imagine Arthur is going to have a very busy Monday, unless he works weekends. He needs to get the Paranormal Division ready for a potential tidal wave of new magic users. He also has to think about how he's going to tell the Assistant Director that his plan backfired. All-in-all, his next work day is going to be a massive headache.

Isn't the important question not when Arthur works but when Assistant Director works?

7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Possibly, yes, but with the existing system of magic surviving with only minor modifications, maybe the situation will be more like this: that Magic allows matters to proceed from where they are now and does not inform the rest of the world's seers.

I'm pretty sure that's the idea.

6 hours ago, Drasvin said:

Certainly, though due to Pandora's world-wide spectacle, the rate of acceleration for magical awareness will itself be increasing as people post videos and discussions and in general try to figure out what those lights were and why they seemed to cause people to spontaneously combust at seemingly random.

Will still be relatively slow to get from that to actually OBTAINING magic.

6 hours ago, Drasvin said:

but any that knew about the potential magic reset but don't know about the seers' second purpose, like the FBI's Paranormal Division

I think only people in DGB who knew about magic reset were Arthur Arthur and Assistant Director. And it would be similar or worse elsewhere. Seems knowledge about reset was lost quite well.

5 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

I really think those three should have tried to find out what sort of changes WoM was considering, particularly for the "minor changes and go public" option. Maybe it's just my pessimism speaking, but I suspect that when the new rules are revealed, Tedd isn't going to be very happy with them.

I suspect that will happen on next page. Still, Tedd would likely prefer it to the reset. One of the possible options is raising of magic defense of normal humans, which he wouldn't have any problems with ...

41 minutes ago, Scotty said:
1 hour ago, Douglas said:

Edward might get questioned about it, but he can honestly say he didn't know. No one in the DGB knew about seers before now, not even Arthur who is one, so Edward not knowing about Tedd being a seer should be readily accepted. As for Tedd's actions, even Arthur agrees, however reluctantly, that Tedd is right. If anything, they'd be thanking her for preventing catastrophe. If not for Tedd, DGB would soon be getting blindsided by a thousand seers bringing magic into the public eye in a far more chaotic and unmanageable way, while handicapped by having lost their advantage of an existing corp of experienced magic users. They'd have Arthur to get them started picking up the new system right away, but they'd be on an even footing with every other group just starting out.

Edward's tried to dissuade Tedd from wanting to make magic public, I would expect that Arthur and Liefeld have both told Edward how secrecy is important to the safety of the general public, Liefeld could still say that Edward failed to impress that upon Tedd.

That would require active malice from Arthur. He's experienced director. I'm sure he would be able to report what happened in way Assistant Director barely notice Tedd's name there, OR maybe in way which makes Assistant Director approve Arthur's request to immediately start recruiting Tedd. It's not Tedd's fault there are thousand seers, and not only Arthur agreed with Tedd, he agreed EXPLICITLY because NOT making magic public would actually make it public FASTER.

 

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3 hours ago, Haylo said:

All magic must now be used by gestalt beings with at least three components. What do you mean, all humans are individuals? What's an individual?

Would this be a mental gestalt (like a hive-mind), a physical fusion, or both? And would it be a permanent combination, or could they connect just long enough to cast a spell, then separate again?

At any rate, so long as magic provides some way for people to combine, I'm sure there would be some people willing to go through with in order to access magic.(If those of Uryuom descent can be part of the gestalts, it could even bring the Tedd/Grace/Sarah OT3 to a whole new level!)

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8 hours ago, Drasvin said:

The magic organizations will have time to adjust and adapt, but any that knew about the potential magic reset but don't know about the seers' second purpose, like the FBI's Paranormal Division(Though they'll be lucky in having one of the seers that was in the discussion to inform them), are going to get blindsided when the reset doesn't come.

The only people in the organization who we know that knew a reset might be coming soon are Liefeld and Arthur. Quite awhile ago I pointed out that they were talking about this in a gymnasium rather than one of their offices, probably because they didn't want anyone else in the division to know about it.

What odds to you think that Dan will go on to the next part to demonstrate the minor change in magic instead of more riveting exposition? That's for the Q&A which will almost certainly follow the end of Sister 3.

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34 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

The only people in the organization who we know that knew a reset might be coming soon are Liefeld and Arthur. Quite awhile ago I pointed out that they were talking about this in a gymnasium rather than one of their offices, probably because they didn't want anyone else in the division to know about it.

What odds to you think that Dan will go on to the next part to demonstrate the minor change in magic instead of more riveting exposition? That's for the Q&A which will almost certainly follow the end of Sister 3.

The Paranormal Division and others like it won't be made obsolete with magic being public, there's still Uryoums and other extra terrestrial entities that they need to take care of. In terms of things magic related they could handle things that have to do with national security and such, but for domestic stuff, there'll probably be special police units set up to deal with that, though that might have been what Liefeld hoped to avoid since it'd probably generate a lot of paperwork and political debate on how to treat magic related offences and what even is considered a magic related offence.

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42 minutes ago, Scotty said:

The Paranormal Division and others like it won't be made obsolete with magic being public, there's still Uryoums and other extra terrestrial entities that they need to take care of.

They will probably also still be trying to hide how versatile magic is - given how spells are obtained, it is in their best interest people don't realize what can be done with magic. People getting fireballs is actually less dangerous (considering there already ARE weapons capable of causing similar damage) than people who get spell like Sarah and would be using it to obtain national secrets, or people with spells like not-Tengu who go into politics.

On the other hand ... magic made public can make their job easier: lot of extra terrestrial stuff can be "explained" by magic user making practical joke.

47 minutes ago, Scotty said:

In terms of things magic related they could handle things that have to do with national security and such, but for domestic stuff, there'll probably be special police units set up to deal with that, though that might have been what Liefeld hoped to avoid since it'd probably generate a lot of paperwork and political debate on how to treat magic related offences and what even is considered a magic related offence.

As long as magic is public but rare they can still handle it, although with more paperwork. With more magic users, however, they will be forced to give wand to normal police so they can solve some easy crimes themselves ...

 

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5 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

They will probably also still be trying to hide how versatile magic is - given how spells are obtained, it is in their best interest people don't realize what can be done with magic. People getting fireballs is actually less dangerous (considering there already ARE weapons capable of causing similar damage) than people who get spell like Sarah and would be using it to obtain national secrets, or people with spells like not-Tengu who go into politics.

On the other hand ... magic made public can make their job easier: lot of extra terrestrial stuff can be "explained" by magic user making practical joke.

As long as magic is public but rare they can still handle it, although with more paperwork. With more magic users, however, they will be forced to give wand to normal police so they can solve some easy crimes themselves ...

 

It really depends on how things are handled, while magic related incidents are not exactly a new thing, they've been covered up pretty well up until recently. Even if the knowledge of how to learn magic was kept relatively secret, which might not be possible (those 2 Seers that were too diligent in their research for instance might be in the process of sharing everything they learned for all we know), there might still be a public outcry for government regulation of magic users (GRRL Power covers this with Supers being made public).

If the knowledge that anyone can get magic isn't kept secret then of course it's going to cause issues because a lot of stuff will need to change in order to accommodate this. In Magus' universe, Magic was either always public knowledge, or allowed to become public knowledge at a point where adapting didn't take a lot of effort so that after hundreds of years, the education system would have curriculums for developing battlemages and other types of wizards. How easy would it be to suddenly have to develop a curriculum based around proper magic use and safety and then try to fit it in the modern education system? Probably not very easy since you'd have to figure out how old students should be before being taught magic, what would be covered by lesson and who would be qualified to teach. Adrian of course would be able to expand his area of expertise from History class and he does have experience teaching others about magic so he might be able to advise on how the curriculum should work and he'd of course continue to teach in Moperville.  Just would need to get the rest of the country/world to follow suit.

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2 hours ago, Scotty said:

those 2 Seers that were too diligent in their research for instance might be in the process of sharing everything they learned for all we know

While possible, it would be coincidence if they would be ready to go public exactly now after the reset attempt.

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

there might still be a public outcry for government regulation of magic users (GRRL Power covers this with Supers being made public).

That's the more paperwork I speak about. Case can be made that government already regulates magic user, just in secrecy.

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

If the knowledge that anyone can get magic isn't kept secret then of course it's going to cause issues because a lot of stuff will need to change in order to accommodate this. In Magus' universe, Magic was either always public knowledge, or allowed to become public knowledge at a point where adapting didn't take a lot of effort so that after hundreds of years, the education system would have curriculums for developing battlemages and other types of wizards. How easy would it be to suddenly have to develop a curriculum based around proper magic use and safety and then try to fit it in the modern education system? Probably not very easy since you'd have to figure out how old students should be before being taught magic, what would be covered by lesson and who would be qualified to teach. Adrian of course would be able to expand his area of expertise from History class and he does have experience teaching others about magic so he might be able to advise on how the curriculum should work and he'd of course continue to teach in Moperville.  Just would need to get the rest of the country/world to follow suit.

Even if knowledge that anyone can get magic gets public, it doesn't mean that government is required to help people learn magic and add it to standard (public) education system. Firearms training is not part of standard education either, is it? Actually, even driver's education isn't, based on this article.

Magus's universe have not only public magic, it also have dragons as serious danger, and magic is likely widely used there. Yet we can't be sure that magic is taught to majority of people there: the school Terra and Magus were visiting might've been special school.

Also, it's not like it would be logistically POSSIBLE to teach everyone magic even if someone would decide so: not enough teachers.

 

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