Comic for Wednesday, November 30, 2022

[Darth Fluffy 302]

Comic for Wednesday, November 30, 2022

"I am the very model of a crazy individual,

 I rant, but to myself, of things that are quite trivial,

 I stew in all my anger 'cause I do not see another way,

 When I find my nemesis I'm surely gonna make him pay,

 The very thought of seeing him just makes me want to seethe inside,

 Earlier we met up, then I made him run away and hide,

 We'll meet up and I'll ask him if he thinks that he is eating well,

 He'll say, "Yes, I ate a prize winning chicken named Mirabel.",

 But when it comes right down to it, the reason for this folderall

 is, I am the very model of a crazy individual." - Diane

 

"I certify this to be true (maybe not the Mirabel part)." - Noah

[mlooney 3,417]

Not sure, exactly, why Diane is trying to "hang on to anger".  That would be bad if she has to talk to some one other the Noah before she sees Noah.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

She has, over the life of the comic, been all over the map in terms of maturity; I wonder if the dialog with her imagined twelve year old self represents some deep seated inability to move past her pre-teens. If she were a real person, I would suspect she had been traumatized in those years.

Does this have to do with mentally coping with being mixed human/immortal blood? If so, why isn't Adrian Raven more messed up than he is? centuries of learning to cope? ... Hmm, is he essentially more long lived than 'Immortals', who have to reboot periodically? If Pandora had him before she was 200 y.o., then he is well over 200 y.o. now, which fits what we know of him. Seems like that might make him crazy, but no ... he's odd, but not out of touch with reality.

Diane, however, is not acting rationally, is not acting in her own best interests, and is not acting in a way that benefits others ... well, that's not entirely true, she did just ask about Noah's welfare, sort of. She is conflicted.

Is EGS turning into a soap opera?

 

[mlooney 3,417]

44 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Is EGS turning into a soap opera?

Turning? It's been one for years.  Working through trauma is a near consent theme in EGS 

[Amiable Dorsai 70]

Big sister to the rescue! I've no idea of their relative ages, but that's such a Big Sister thing to ask. Angrily, if necessary.

 

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

Big sister to the rescue! I've no idea of their relative ages, but that's such a Big Sister thing to ask. Angrily, if necessary.

 

Yeah, we don't know Noah's age as being in Gym class together doesn't really indicate what grade they are in.  He could be a year or even two behind.

 

[Darth Fluffy 302]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

Turning? It's been one for years.  Working through trauma is a near consent theme in EGS 

Plus, Susan endorses soap.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

1 hour ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

Big sister to the rescue! I've no idea of their relative ages, but that's such a Big Sister thing to ask. Angrily, if necessary.

 

There is a basic concern behind the crazy, yes.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

46 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Yeah, we don't know Noah's age as being in Gym class together doesn't really indicate what grade they are in.  He could be a year or even two behind.

 

He could also be much older than he appears to be, with many years of feral living behind him. But I think he's a similar vintage as Grace, similar programs created them.

... Well, consider, he's a child when his dad is talking about the creation of Damien (we think), who Grace was created to fight, and she's slightly older than most of the crew, so that puts Noah a few years older than all of them. He should be graduating from college. But he was orphaned in an environment that likely did not place his education as a priority (much like Grace, again), so is catching up. And physically, he's way ahead, because of his heritage, so age-related physicality is less of a factor.

So somewhere between 'similar vintage to Grace, because Dan never accounted for the time', to 'a few years older, but missed out on normal development'.

[ijuin 572]

That scene may not have been prior to the creation of Damien—it is probable that Damien was not immediately formed as an adult and had to grow up, even if faster than humans do, so the scene could have been during Damien’s infancy before he turned on his creators. I can envision him having done so at puberty, at the age when boys take up the “nobody bosses me around” attitude.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

8 minutes ago, ijuin said:

That scene may not have been prior to the creation of Damien—it is probable that Damien was not immediately formed as an adult and had to grow up, even if faster than humans do, so the scene could have been during Damien’s infancy before he turned on his creators. I can envision him having done so at puberty, at the age when boys take up the “nobody bosses me around” attitude.

I agree, it sounded like 'we are creating him', but could well have been 'we are training him'.

[mlooney 3,417]

14 hours ago, ijuin said:

t is probable that Damien was not immediately formed as an adult and had to grow up

If he had that he would recall being a child and thus not a summoned god.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

24 minutes ago, mlooney said:

If he had that he would recall being a child and thus not a summoned god.

So, three seeming explanations of 'no memory of childhood' and 'very powerful now':

He is actually a summoned god - EGS characters have commented on him being delusional and not actually a summoned god. Only he himself appeared to believe he was. His followers were not upset at his passing. He was ultimately beaten by Grace, who is also powerful, remembers a childhood, and does not claim divine origins.

He was created as an adult in a lab - We can, with varying degrees of success, train an organic brain. We cannot yet build an adequate inorganic host machine for an AI to replace a brain, let alone one that would fit in a (more or less) human head. So it is a fair assumption that Damien had to grow, organically, and was not in some sense built. Even if he was, the most promising AI paths involve training the AI.

A variant of this is, he was actually summoned. In the EGS universe, that could happen, but he still needs to have come from somewhere, so still has a developmental backstory.

He has forgotten his childhood - People can be born and grow and learn biologically and still end up delusional. You don't have to look outside of the Internet to observe this. A traumatic even can trigger this. Given what he was created for, a traumatic event seems likely. More to the point, not recalling the past does not mean it did not happen. So, saying "If it happened, he would recall it" is not fundamentally true. To me, this seems the most likely, and this is how I read it.

 

[ijuin 572]

Even if he was not awake until his body was relatively mature, he still would have needed to be educated, and that would take from several months to a few years—he wasn’t totally ignorant of humans and their society and technology when we saw him, after all.

[Amiable Dorsai 70]

On 11/30/2022 at 1:18 PM, mlooney said:

Yeah, we don't know Noah's age as being in Gym class together doesn't really indicate what grade they are in.  He could be a year or even two behind.

 

I feel sorry for their gym teacher, so many world-class athletes in their school and not a single team player.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

8 hours ago, ijuin said:

Even if he was not awake until his body was relatively mature, he still would have needed to be educated, and that would take from several months to a few years—he wasn’t totally ignorant of humans and their society and technology when we saw him, after all.

Like Grace, I don't think he had a full normal education. Designed for a mission and trained for the mission. Lack of moral and ethical training, apparently.