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      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
The Old Hack

Story Wednesday August 29, 2018

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5 hours ago, animalia said:

Well it’s that if you don’t care what people say about you then all that kind of stuff is water under the bridge, but if you do care what they say about you then it really hurts. For me personally, it’s a choice of wether I’d rather waste time “putting on appearances” for people who don’t me, or if I’d rather just be myself and hope it works out. That being said, since I have trouble imagining how other people feel, as mentioned, my default mode is to imagine how I’d feel in a certain situation. While it’s not perfect, it’s a good starting place, because (as the link explains) it leads to a “treat others as you’d want to be treated” attitude. Wich to be fair wasn’t what Diane was doing either. Speaking of my biggest problem with said early behavior wasn’t the casual dates, or even that she liked it when boys bought stuff for her, but simply that she wasn’t up front about it. As you can tell honesty is kind of a big deal to me. I am not Elliot and Ashley not bring a cookie into the place that forbids it bad, when it comes to following the rules. But I am just as bad at them at lieing.

I do get where you're coming from (in fact, I have Asperger's myself, though it sound like it manifests a bit differently in me than it does in you).

It seems to me that the biggest difference between the two of us in regards to this issue is that I had it driven home to me as a child (thanks primarily to being bullied) that revealing too much of myself puts me in an extremely vulnerable position, and will often lead to pain. It thus seems worth the effort to me to hide parts of myself I suspect others will not approve of, at least with people I have to interact with in person. (And by "hide" I mean "intentionally fail to mention or show", not "cover up with untruths or false evidence"; I don't know where you stand on the matter, but to me there's a big difference.)

I'm happy for you that you feel up to handling the consequences of being yourself.

...Bringing things back to Diane (and raising a similar point to hkmaly), I don't think we know enough to say if she was being deceptive or how much. It's possible that she never implied to her boyfriends that they'd ever get to actual sex, in which case (not knowing of the rumors) she had no reason to suspect they had any reason to think they'd get that far beyond the presumptuous assumption that dating is always supposed to lead to that. There's also the question of how aware she was of the fact the boys were expecting sex; if she knew but didn't correct their misconception then it could be argued that she was being deceptive (though I see that as less deceptive than actively lying to them would have been); however given the current revelations it's also possible she was naive enough to think they were just happy to hang out with her.

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49 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I think that despite Dan's attempts to make the schools big they're not. Remember how Susan had hard time filling her feminist club ... it shouldn't be that hard in that big school. And it definitely isn't only case where events in comics makes more sense if you assume the schools are smaller.

"All we have to do is find four girls who agree with our cause, four in a school of, what, two thousand?" doesn't sound like a smaller school to me. Also to keep in mind, if MNHS is based on the school Dan went to, it's probably safe to say he'd know how roughly many students there were.

While one of the original members returned, they did manage to get a new one to join. Just because we only saw the 2 and they needed 4 doesn't mean they didn't get them later, yeah it sounded like they were going to count Elliot and Tedd as members but it's possible they could have recruited more off panel.

The again, in the commentary of the first link, Dan states that the club had the bare minimum to begin with, so it's possible they were lucky to have the members they did, and there's the factor of how many clubs might exist in a school of 2000 and Susan's feminist club might have been competing with a gossip club or something.

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Forced? By whom?

There may be not as many bystanders to start with (compared to, say, when Cheerleadra was playing catch with Dame Tara) and it's possible they decided to evacuate on their own, because, well, vampires. Multiple scary vampires.

Security might be evacuating people, other bystanders might have also stepped up to get people out safely. maybe forced is too strong here but either way it would have kept people from staying in to watch event unfold..

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

We see quite a lot of people running away when Adrian is borrowing the sword.

I think you mean this page, but yes people seem to be too busy running and not gawking like when Tara was chasing Cheerleadra around.

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

People not recognizing Mr. Raven might be superman effect - they don't EXPECT that old teacher who wears cane sometimes would be young elf - but still seems weird noone mentioned him so far.

We know there was at least three people standing nearby when Adrian dropped the old man form and they seemed like they should have been close enough to hear him call Pandora "Mother". I guess they didn't stick around to be interviewed.

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Also, apparently DGB confiscated all camera records.

I dunno, they might have got distracted by things happening at the PTTwhatever facility. There isn't much they can cover up really, I don't see them being all "well there's no way we can create a cover for monsters running around or the lights in the sky, but hey there's a conversation about someone being related to someone else, we can totally keep that under wraps!"

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

She wasn't up front about it? I don't think she ever lied to them. Granted, she likely wasn't explaining it in detail either, but most of the boys could notice the pattern ... unless the previous dates lied ... hmmm ...

Like I said before, if the exes didn't want people to know they got used then they'll of course say they slept with her, and after a few of them have perpetuated that claim then it becomes a matter of everyone else that would date Diane to make the same claim or else be considered a chump.

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Despite her "dress like a nun" comment I don't think she means to be cruel. Of course that doesn't mean she isn't. Rhoda specifically was certainly hurt multiple times, but Diane ... well ... Diane should resist that normally, but now when she lost confidence ... hard to say.

Actually, I thought the "dress like a nun" comment was more of a light jest compared to when it seems like she was criticizing Diane's choice of outfit in the previous page, like when I first saw the previous page I was like "Are you really going to be like that, Lucy?" and then the nun comment came up and I was "huh, maybe you're not going to be like that?"

It's still early to tell though, Lucy has seemed more serious about keeping up the routine so I'm still on the fence here.

 

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4 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

...Bringing things back to Diane (and raising a similar point to hkmaly), I don't think we know enough to say if she was being deceptive or how much. It's possible that she never implied to her boyfriends that they'd ever get to actual sex, in which case (not knowing of the rumors) she had no reason to suspect they had any reason to think they'd get that far beyond the presumptuous assumption that dating is always supposed to lead to that. There's also the question of how aware she was of the fact the boys were expecting sex; if she knew but didn't correct their misconception then it could be argued that she was being deceptive (though I see that as less deceptive than actively lying to them would have been); however given the current revelations it's also possible she was naive enough to think they were just happy to hang out with her.

.... aaaaand they might actually be happy to hang out with her on start. Or with stuff not counting as sex, like kissing and hugging. I mean, how long her gold-digging phase lasted? The expectation of sex could appear later and she might sort of missed it. Sure, it may be naive, but it will match her missing what happened with her reputation. She may be detective, but have a blind spot around this, possibly supported by overconfidence in her detective abilities.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I think that despite Dan's attempts to make the schools big they're not. Remember how Susan had hard time filling her feminist club ... it shouldn't be that hard in that big school. And it definitely isn't only case where events in comics makes more sense if you assume the schools are smaller.

"All we have to do is find four girls who agree with our cause, four in a school of, what, two thousand?" doesn't sound like a smaller school to me. Also to keep in mind, if MNHS is based on the school Dan went to, it's probably safe to say he'd know how roughly many students there were.

While one of the original members returned, they did manage to get a new one to join. Just because we only saw the 2 and they needed 4 doesn't mean they didn't get them later, yeah it sounded like they were going to count Elliot and Tedd as members but it's possible they could have recruited more off panel.

The again, in the commentary of the first link, Dan states that the club had the bare minimum to begin with, so it's possible they were lucky to have the members they did, and there's the factor of how many clubs might exist in a school of 2000 and Susan's feminist club might have been competing with a gossip club or something.

They are TALKING about school of two thousand, but it doesn't FEEL like it's that big. Conflicting clues. Yes, it can be explained by big competition, but school of two thousands should be diverse enough ... Dan is likely basing it on his experiences with his school, which was that big, BUT his experiences were limited because HIS own actions were not as far-reaching as actions of EGS characters.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Forced? By whom?

There may be not as many bystanders to start with (compared to, say, when Cheerleadra was playing catch with Dame Tara) and it's possible they decided to evacuate on their own, because, well, vampires. Multiple scary vampires.

Security might be evacuating people, other bystanders might have also stepped up to get people out safely. maybe forced is too strong here but either way it would have kept people from staying in to watch event unfold..

I think that unlike the fire monster and Dame Tara, the vampires just were scary enough people weren't motivated to watch.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

We see quite a lot of people running away when Adrian is borrowing the sword.

I think you mean this page, but yes people seem to be too busy running and not gawking like when Tara was chasing Cheerleadra around.

Ups. Yes, thats the page I meant.

Tara apparently shown enough that she's only after Cheerleadra and won't be likely to hunt bystanders. The vampires were deliberately trying to cause distracting scene.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

People not recognizing Mr. Raven might be superman effect - they don't EXPECT that old teacher who wears cane sometimes would be young elf - but still seems weird noone mentioned him so far.

We know there was at least three people standing nearby when Adrian dropped the old man form and they seemed like they should have been close enough to hear him call Pandora "Mother". I guess they didn't stick around to be interviewed.

Well ... another point is that Carol arrived on scene right after Dame Tara left. It's possible that in THIS case, she was distracted by the lightshow generated by immortals, so arrived later and eyewitnesses disappeared meanwhile.

Especially the ones standing close on start, as they had headstart in running.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, apparently DGB confiscated all camera records.

I dunno, they might have got distracted by things happening at the PTTwhatever facility. There isn't much they can cover up really, I don't see them being all "well there's no way we can create a cover for monsters running around or the lights in the sky, but hey there's a conversation about someone being related to someone else, we can totally keep that under wraps!"

The availability of magic is the real secret. They might expected the conversation revealed dangerously much about that.

Hmmm ... or, alternatively, the vampires destroyed the cameras as part of property damage.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

She wasn't up front about it? I don't think she ever lied to them. Granted, she likely wasn't explaining it in detail either, but most of the boys could notice the pattern ... unless the previous dates lied ... hmmm ...

Like I said before, if the exes didn't want people to know they got used then they'll of course say they slept with her, and after a few of them have perpetuated that claim then it becomes a matter of everyone else that would date Diane to make the same claim or else be considered a chump.

... yes.

It is possible it started just with assumptions and unclear statements, but it's more likely someone lied about it quite explicitly.

2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I wouldn't describe Susan as selfless and she DID actually killed that vampire.

True, but her action might justly be described as selfless in this case.

Maybe. She seem determined to not hide. On the other hand, she doesn't like vampires and she's aware she's quite high on their list of targets in normal circumstances. It can be argued it was preventive self-defense.

 

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1 minute ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:
17 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

It can be argued it was preventive self-defense.

Do unto others before they can do unto you?

Yes.

Also, Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.

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57 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Maybe. She seem determined to not hide. On the other hand, she doesn't like vampires and she's aware she's quite high on their list of targets in normal circumstances. It can be argued it was preventive self-defense.

Hence why I used the term 'might', as I agree with your reasoning here. Mind you, I would question whether it may really be called 'pre-emptive' when the monster is already attacking people in the area openly and would unquestionably get around to attacking Susan and Diane sooner or later if not stopped. If it at the time had just been floating peacefully around wearing a sandwich board proclaiming "Flying Snake Monsters Are People Too", 'pre-emptive' might have been more appropriate.

...how a snake would wear a sandwich board? Er... I...

...a wizard did it, okay? Using magic, so I don't have to explain anything. :danshiftyeyes:

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

Maybe. She seem determined to not hide. On the other hand, she doesn't like vampires and she's aware she's quite high on their list of targets in normal circumstances. It can be argued it was preventive self-defense.

Hence why I used the term 'might', as I agree with your reasoning here. Mind you, I would question whether it may really be called 'pre-emptive' when the monster is already attacking people in the area openly and would unquestionably get around to attacking Susan and Diane sooner or later if not stopped.

It could if you take into account that they didn't seem ready to pursue. If Susan and Diane jumped into car and drive away, they would likely get far enough for someone else to take care of them. I mean, obviously they would as Pandora would destroy them, but even based on what she knew at that point AND not counting Jerry Zeus was implying someone will take care about the vampires it was safe to assume there is SOMEONE in Moperville capable of  take care of them besides Susan ... and rest of main eight. Granted, it did seem it would be after some innocent bystanders would be killed (which might or might not happen depending on if the vampires would actually honor the contract) but she was not FORCED to fight. Hence, pre-emptive (I knew there is better word for that).

42 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

If it at the time had just been floating peacefully around wearing a sandwich board proclaiming "Flying Snake Monsters Are People Too", 'pre-emptive' might have been more appropriate.

...how a snake would wear a sandwich board? Er... I...

...a wizard did it, okay? Using magic, so I don't have to explain anything. :danshiftyeyes:

Considering vampires used magic to turn themselves into aberrations in first place, using magic to wear a sandwich board doesn't seem that farfetched. Also, Adrian directly said one of them is wizard.

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14 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

but she was not FORCED to fight. Hence, pre-emptive (I knew there is better word for that).

Ah, that explains why I misunderstood it. In the sense I have normally seen it used, 'pre-emptive' is more used in the sense of "We know they are going to attack someday so we are going to attack now in order to get in the first punch." I am not sure if it is the best word for it, but 'voluntarily' seems close in the sense that she chose to attack now of her own free will rather than flee and be forced to defend herself later. 'Counterattack' covers it better but I have never seen it used as an adjective or adverb. *scratches head*

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

but she was not FORCED to fight. Hence, pre-emptive (I knew there is better word for that).

Ah, that explains why I misunderstood it. In the sense I have normally seen it used, 'pre-emptive' is more used in the sense of "We know they are going to attack someday so we are going to attack now in order to get in the first punch." I am not sure if it is the best word for it, but 'voluntarily' seems close in the sense that she chose to attack now of her own free will rather than flee and be forced to defend herself later. 'Counterattack' covers it better but I have never seen it used as an adjective or adverb. *scratches head*

Pre-emptive is normally used for COUNTRIES, which tend to be hard to hide and there is relatively few of them. (Or in business, for companies traded on stock exchange, which also makes them hard to hide.) People can hide quite well, and it doesn't seem killing those specific vampires would lower chance of future vampire encounters for Susan ... unless you count the possibility she became famous for her effectiveness in killing vampires, which is double-edged at best.

In similar situation in real-world europe non-magic version, I would be afraid the self-defense claim would not hold.

However, besides the "saving others" angle and "angry at vampires" angle, there is additional, logical angle why her attack was correct action: she needs the XP. Besides her magic likely working very similar to videogames and needing XP literally, she needs some training to find out how to defend herself later (pre-emptively or not). Which reminds me: I hope she will finally start fencing lessons. Seriously, she needs them almost as much as Grace counselling - or Elliot learning to fight while flying.

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1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

In similar situation in real-world europe non-magic version, I would be afraid the self-defense claim would not hold.

Someone attacking a child with lethal intent and you stepping in to stop them? I think it would, or some variation thereof.

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52 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
53 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

In similar situation in real-world europe non-magic version, I would be afraid the self-defense claim would not hold.

Someone attacking a child with lethal intent and you stepping in to stop them? I think it would, or some variation thereof.

Someone attacking a child with lethal intent and you shooting him in head from behind. The prosecutor will be talking about how you should've warn the person first, or aim to injure ... and maybe even leave the situation to professionals, despite them not being on place yet.

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Someone attacking a child with lethal intent and you shooting him in head from behind. The prosecutor will be talking about how you should've warn the person first, or aim to injure ... and maybe even leave the situation to professionals, despite them not being on place yet.

That's the prosecutor's job. In that situation I would rather shoot the attacker and accept the consequences than let a child get killed.

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

Someone attacking a child with lethal intent and you shooting him in head from behind. The prosecutor will be talking about how you should've warn the person first, or aim to injure ... and maybe even leave the situation to professionals, despite them not being on place yet.

That's the prosecutor's job. In that situation I would rather shoot the attacker and accept the consequences than let a child get killed.

Me too. If I had a gun. But I mentioned it because while noone is likely to prosecute Susan, what she did is unlikely to be called selfdefense.

... I wonder what's DGB official stance on this ; did case like this never appeared, was it dismissed because no body or lack of proof some human was killed, do they somehow arrange the court won't happen or do they arrange legal defense? Because I doubt they would actually allow declaring someone guilty for killing vampire, but they can't officially said in court it's because the victim wasn't human.

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6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

 

They are TALKING about school of two thousand, but it doesn't FEEL like it's that big. Conflicting clues. Yes, it can be explained by big competition, but school of two thousands should be diverse enough ... Dan is likely basing it on his experiences with his school, which was that big, BUT his experiences were limited because HIS own actions were not as far-reaching as actions of EGS characters.

 

I completely agree (with this, and your comments from the previous page that I can't quote for some reason), but at least Dan's in good company. J.K. Rowling had this same problem when it came to Hogwarts, and the Wizarding World in general.

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11 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

I do get where you're coming from (in fact, I have Asperger's myself, though it sound like it manifests a bit differently in me than it does in you).

It seems to me that the biggest difference between the two of us in regards to this issue is that I had it driven home to me as a child (thanks primarily to being bullied) that revealing too much of myself puts me in an extremely vulnerable position, and will often lead to pain. It thus seems worth the effort to me to hide parts of myself I suspect others will not approve of, at least with people I have to interact with in person. (And by "hide" I mean "intentionally fail to mention or show", not "cover up with untruths or false evidence"; I don't know where you stand on the matter, but to me there's a big difference.)

I'm happy for you that you feel up to handling the consequences of being yourself.

...Bringing things back to Diane (and raising a similar point to hkmaly), I don't think we know enough to say if she was being deceptive or how much. It's possible that she never implied to her boyfriends that they'd ever get to actual sex, in which case (not knowing of the rumors) she had no reason to suspect they had any reason to think they'd get that far beyond the presumptuous assumption that dating is always supposed to lead to that. There's also the question of how aware she was of the fact the boys were expecting sex; if she knew but didn't correct their misconception then it could be argued that she was being deceptive (though I see that as less deceptive than actively lying to them would have been); however given the current revelations it's also possible she was naive enough to think they were just happy to hang out with her.

If it helps explain things I didn’t enter public school until high school. 

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I suspect that, up until now, vampires being killed was pretty much a non-event, meaning there was no proof any creature had ever existed, and no one knew that the monsters used to be human, so murder would never come into it.  If they hadn't wiped out 99+% of the vampires, there would probably be at least one savvy enough to find some sort of way to seek official recognition as people, probably claiming they themselves were not guilty of any crime and weren't responsible for their condition.  DGB would have to choose between testifying that they had evidence Aberrations were always killers (or in the case of Sirlack, kidnappers at the least), and thus reveal just how much they had known and for how long; or keeping quiet and risk allowing precedent to be set that would make their job much more difficult and/or create a lot of bad publicity if they tried to quietly take out the Aberration that was challenging them and were caught or recorded.  A really clever Aberration would probably arrange thing so that an attack on them would be on camera and they'd have defendors in place to make sure they survived to gloat.

As it is, there are so few Aberrations left, I doubt any of them will be seeking out attention....

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1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

I suspect that, up until now, vampires being killed was pretty much a non-event, meaning there was no proof any creature had ever existed, and no one knew that the monsters used to be human, so murder would never come into it.  If they hadn't wiped out 99+% of the vampires, there would probably be at least one savvy enough to find some sort of way to seek official recognition as people, probably claiming they themselves were not guilty of any crime and weren't responsible for their condition.  DGB would have to choose between testifying that they had evidence Aberrations were always killers (or in the case of Sirlack, kidnappers at the least), and thus reveal just how much they had known and for how long; or keeping quiet and risk allowing precedent to be set that would make their job much more difficult and/or create a lot of bad publicity if they tried to quietly take out the Aberration that was challenging them and were caught or recorded.  A really clever Aberration would probably arrange thing so that an attack on them would be on camera and they'd have defendors in place to make sure they survived to gloat.

Remember that DGB had ZERO problems creating Ellen's identity. They seem to have quite lot of power. It is possible there is no way to arrange things so their attack would be recorded AND get to public without looking like paranoiac, which, again, isn't how you want to look if your goal is to convince public about something.

Also, the Aberrations MUST kill. Becoming famous and always observed is dangerous for them. Except body snatchers - for THOSE, there would definitely be option to became so famous noone dares to attack them.

1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

As it is, there are so few Aberrations left, I doubt any of them will be seeking out attention....

Especially considering the Aberrations left would be likely those who were good at hiding already and this event won't convince them to try becoming more public.

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Dan did say body-snatchers wouldn't be affected by the Big Burn if they were attached to a host who'd get hurt by it.

Picture an Aberration like Sirleck, on a host like the first one we saw him possessing.  A host who, according to Sirleck, was brain dead and would die the rest of the way as soon as he left him.  A body-snatcher could arrange things so that they had a trail of at least three verifiable brain-dead people they'd taken control of, and pretended a miraculous recovery except for amnesia, which would explain not knowing their friends and family.  That Aberration could claim to have been doing that all along, only taking over bodies that "no one was using anymore."  If their situation became public, with a spin of their choosing, I'd bet there would be people willing to do the equivalent of leaving their bodies to science or donating their organs, to give this poor unfortunate being a new home.

Sure, it would all be fake on the part of the body-snatcher; we know they are officially completely without remorse or empathy.  But they could make all sorts of trouble for DGB and get themselves some sort of legal status and rights -- which they could then abuse for years to come.  And that sort of Aberration could always choose to disappear and go back to their evil ways if playing (ostensibly) by the rules didn't suit them anymore.

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