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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!
Scotty

More Speculation.

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5 hours ago, ijuin said:

Well, unless Mrs. Pompoms dyed her hair, she is not blonde, which says that Susan and Diane's blonde hair comes at least partially from paternal genes.

And it's quite possible that she dyes her hair for the same reason Susan did. Or as a form of emotional support for Susan (but in that case it'd more likely be the same color as Susan).

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2 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

And it's quite possible that she dyes her hair for the same reason Susan did. Or as a form of emotional support for Susan (but in that case it'd more likely be the same color as Susan).

I do not quite see that as Mrs. Pompoms' hair already had its current shade before she learned of her husband's cheating, as seen here. She might still be dyeing her hair, of course, just not for that reason.

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If Mrs. Pompons is actually a blond, then the "other" woman could be her non-dying parallel-world counterpart, who is the mother of parallel-world Susan AKA Diane. Now, to me, cheating with a parallel-world counterpart is still cheating, but to someone who sees them as different parts of the same person...

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1 hour ago, ijuin said:

If they don't share their memories, then they're not the same person. :D

Twins aren't the same person. Clones aren't the same individuals.

7 hours ago, Haylo said:

If Mrs. Pompons is actually a blond, then the "other" woman could be her non-dying parallel-world counterpart, who is the mother of parallel-world Susan AKA Diane. Now, to me, cheating with a parallel-world counterpart is still cheating, but to someone who sees them as different parts of the same person...

I floated the Diane-is-an-alternate-universe-Susan theory quite some time ago. It's still possible but then there's that darned Other Woman With Susan's Face

I seem to refer back to in every new thread these days. Maybe I should start a thread about the Other Woman?

Mrs. Pompoms has always been drawn in a distinctive way that looks nothing like Susan or the Other Woman. Mr. Pompoms' face has never been shown at all--it's even blacked out in one panel. His hair isn't shown as blond.

The Other Woman Susan sees in her mirror could be a false memory in the real world, but it's out-of-place in the Moperverse.

And speaking of that memory, there's no evidence that Susan has ever told anyone else that she thinks the Other Woman really looked like her. A few days ago I posited that her mom's drinking could be linked to her mom realizing that Susan is looking more and more like the Other Woman. But we don't know if Mrs. Pompoms ever met the Other Woman or even saw a picture of her.

I see the Other Woman as a Chekhov Gun: If you put a gun on the wall in the first act, it should be fired by the third. And since there's no evidence that any of the parents who raised Susan and Diane have magical powers, the Other Woman provides a reason for their powers. Plus it provides a great story hook: Susan and Diane searching for their birth mother.

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How hard is it to implant a blastocyst? Is there any way at all that Susan's birth mother could be an unwitting host mother in an unauthorized experiment in creating clones of vampire hunters? That is, could both Susan and Diane be clones of the Other Woman and have had different host mothers?

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30 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Twins aren't the same person. Clones aren't the same individuals.

Indeed. Note that Ellen started out as literally a duplicate of transformed-Elliot, right down to having all of his memories up until that moment, and yet almost nobody considers her to be the same individual as Elliot.

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14 hours ago, Xenophon Hendrix said:

How hard is it to implant a blastocyst? Is there any way at all that Susan's birth mother could be an unwitting host mother in an unauthorized experiment in creating clones of vampire hunters? That is, could both Susan and Diane be clones of the Other Woman and have had different host mothers?

Depends on your definition of hard.  It requires more skills and equipment than the more usual method of getting women pregnant, but in vitro fertilization clinics do it as an outpatient procedure all the time.  If both of them were IVF babies I suppose that would be possible given a sufficiently corrupt clinic, but if you are going to that much trouble to have a baby, putting her up for adoption afterward would be, well, *strange*.

 

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1 hour ago, malloyd said:

Depends on your definition of hard.  It requires more skills and equipment than the more usual method of getting women pregnant, but in vitro fertilization clinics do it as an outpatient procedure all the time.  If both of them were IVF babies I suppose that would be possible given a sufficiently corrupt clinic, but if you are going to that much trouble to have a baby, putting her up for adoption afterward would be, well, *strange*.

 

They could go both routes independently. 

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58 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

I've asked this question before, but do we have any idea how many junior Van Helsing's Susan's father may have spread around the world?

That question has become more questionable with Jerry's admission that he was just assuming as well.

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1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

I've asked this question before, but do we have any idea how many junior Van Helsing's Susan's father may have spread around the world?

 

17 minutes ago, Scotty said:

That question has become more questionable with Jerry's admission that he was just assuming as well.

I'm not totally sure about that. From a game master's point of view, at least, a group of monster hunters that are so secret that they don't even know they exist is sorta cool. 

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6 hours ago, malloyd said:

If both of them were IVF babies I suppose that would be possible given a sufficiently corrupt clinic, but if you are going to that much trouble to have a baby, putting her up for adoption afterward would be, well, *strange*.

Perhaps Diane looked different enough from both parents that it was obvious she was not their biological offspring.  Different race would be the most immediately obvious.  A couple set enough on having their own biological offspring, instead of adopting, to invest the time and effort of IVF, would be a lot less likely to be willing to raise a child who was obviously not "their own" just because of some mix-up at the clinic.

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Just now, mlooney said:

I'm not totally sure about that. From a game master's point of view, at least, a group of monster hunters that are so secret that they don't even know they exist is sorta cool. 

I'm just saying that if Jerry just assumed, then the chances of Diane and Susan just being coincidental lookalikes and not sisters is higher. The only thing that can save him is if they do find proof Diane is Susan's sister, either DNA test, or Diane's adoption records or something that links her biological mother with Mr Pompoms.

I don't feel like getting lost in the TVtropes site but isn't there a trope involving someone who makes a big claim about something, then gets called out to prove it and has to rush to find that proof? Anyone think that, rather than coming out and telling the girls he just assumed Diane's relation, he'll go out and try to find proof?

Oh god...do you think he'll go and find Mr Pompoms and get him to tell truth to Susan if he is Diane's father?

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Stay tuned. It's been a very long time since we've seen the Other Woman or even heard her discussed. Perhaps it's about time Susan told someone else about how she sees herself in the Other Woman.

One more thing Susan and Diane have very much in common is that they both are extremely protective of their families. Susan has just defended her father despite what he did; Diane loves Rhea despite Rheas insufferability. And Diane wanted Nanase to be sure whether or not Susan knew she was adopted before telling Susan about Diane. I think we may take the tone of Susan and Diane's developing relationship from the cover page: tentative, Probably neither one wants to tell their families yet.

Of course, this being Moperville, they'll probably wind up being interviewed by Carol Brown together after or perhaps during the impending hellstorm

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On 3/12/2016 at 1:16 AM, CritterKeeper said:

Perhaps Diane looked different enough from both parents that it was obvious she was not their biological offspring.  Different race would be the most immediately obvious.  A couple set enough on having their own biological offspring, instead of adopting, to invest the time and effort of IVF, would be a lot less likely to be willing to raise a child who was obviously not "their own" just because of some mix-up at the clinic.

Adopting is actually a rather difficult process. How difficult depends on where you live and how much you're willing to spend.

I've not adopted myself, but I know (online) a woman who has one IVF daughter and one adopted daughter, so clearly the two are not mutually exclusive.

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I know we've probably speculated this page to death about Jerry's hesitation possibly meaning he knows something about Tedd's mother. But now, I'm wondering if Jerry knew about Tedd being a Seer.  Voltaire knows, and it seemed like he knew for a good portion of the year seeing as his goal was to traumatize Tedd. What if that knowledge is commonly known by most Immortals, Pandora knows as well though she might not have realized the significance of being a seer until a several hours ago comic time.

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The Whale knew about Tedd's nature, and I doubt that the Whales are sharing gossip with Immortals, so I'm going to say that Tedd's Seer status can be detected via reasonably common magical means (e.g. Luke-style Aura Vision) if the viewer understands how to interpret what they are seeing.

As for Pandora realizing the significance, it is probable that Seers, while rare, are not exclusive to times where Magic is considering a Rule Change. Everything that we know says that Tedd was a Seer (or a Seer-to-be) from birth, and I highly doubt that Magic was planning the Rule Change before Pandora put the Energy Clog in place. It is far more likely that there are always Seers at any given time as opposed to them being created only when a crisis looms.

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So....the Lord Tedd plotline is still very much up in the air at the moment, Dan's mentioned before that he might have introduced Lord Tedd too soon which suggests that he may not have fully fleshed out where he wanted to go with it, but we can't deny that Lord Tedd is tied to the story and I'm sure many of us hope to see more of it.

One possibility I thought of, has to do with the fact that Beta Tedd warned that Lord Tedd was trying to kill all other Tedds, if that's still the case, there's one Tedd in particular that would be in danger, and that's the Tedd from Ellen's second life dreams. Ellen had speculated that the main reason Nioi chose her to share memories with Kaoli because of the possibility of either of them visiting the other's universe one day, well what if Nioi discovers that Lord Tedd sent one of those goo things after second life Tedd, I would imagine she'd want Kaoli and Ellen to go save him because they would know that world best and not stand out as much.

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Might as well post this piece of speculation about why Tedd's magic is weird (not necessarily things I think are likely, but some ideas I've been thinking about):

So, as far as I can remember (combined with looking it up on the wiki), these are the people who we know are wizards (based on who's been explicitly called a wizard):

  • Mr. Raven (male)
  • Abraham (male)
  • Magus (male) (though he's from a different universe, potentially with a different magic system, so might not count for this)
  • Agent Wolf (male)
  • the emissary of magic (male)

So what if wizards are all supposed to be male?

A couple possible ways this could result in Tedd being magically weird:

  • If this is the case, then it would be rare for two wizards to have a kid together (assuming sex-change magic isn't that commonly used outside Tedd's group of friends)... so perhaps Noriko was born a wizard with a male body and transformed at some point into a female body, and had a kid with Edward, also a wizard, and since Tedd was the son of two wizards, he became a dangerous rarity. If transformations affect genetics/can be passed on to kids, then this might also explain Tedd's feminine traits (e.g., if the transformation included making her face more feminine, this might result in a gene for feminine faces in general), and it could also mean that Mrs. Kitsune meant her "I have no sister" line literally (if she considers Noriko her brother).
  • Or it could be something about Tedd's own gender—perhaps magic sees him as partly male, so made him partly a wizard. This could be simply due to his genderfluidity and/or androgyny; or perhaps Tedd's parents used some sort of magic before Tedd was born to make him male (so he could be a wizard), and that's why he's somewhat feminine and not cisgender and not a normal wizard.

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2 hours ago, chridd said:

Might as well post this piece of speculation about why Tedd's magic is weird (not necessarily things I think are likely, but some ideas I've been thinking about):

So, as far as I can remember (combined with looking it up on the wiki), these are the people who we know are wizards (based on who's been explicitly called a wizard):

  • Mr. Raven (male)
  • Abraham (male)
  • Magus (male) (though he's from a different universe, potentially with a different magic system, so might not count for this)
  • Agent Wolf (male)
  • the emissary of magic (male)

So what if wizards are all supposed to be male?

A couple possible ways this could result in Tedd being magically weird:

  • If this is the case, then it would be rare for two wizards to have a kid together (assuming sex-change magic isn't that commonly used outside Tedd's group of friends)... so perhaps Noriko was born a wizard with a male body and transformed at some point into a female body, and had a kid with Edward, also a wizard, and since Tedd was the son of two wizards, he became a dangerous rarity. If transformations affect genetics/can be passed on to kids, then this might also explain Tedd's feminine traits (e.g., if the transformation included making her face more feminine, this might result in a gene for feminine faces in general), and it could also mean that Mrs. Kitsune meant her "I have no sister" line literally (if she considers Noriko her brother).
  • Or it could be something about Tedd's own gender—perhaps magic sees him as partly male, so made him partly a wizard. This could be simply due to his genderfluidity and/or androgyny; or perhaps Tedd's parents used some sort of magic before Tedd was born to make him male (so he could be a wizard), and that's why he's somewhat feminine and not cisgender and not a normal wizard.

Cranium's a wizard too, right?

I don't think gender matters with who is a wizard and who's not. I would think that distinction would have been mentioned at some point.

What Tedd is goes beyond gender, and I don't think being genderfluid is why he's a "dangerous rarity". I'm pretty certain that when the whale stated that, the whale knew that Tedd was capable of decyphering magic and making it public, which would mean that the whales know about magic having a will and would change the system if it got too public.

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11 hours ago, Scotty said:

Cranium's a wizard too, right?

She might be, but unless you remember something I don't, I don't think we've seen any indication that she is.  We know that she has at least two spells (seeing things, and hair color change), suggesting she's awakened*, and if her spell is the same as Sarah's then she has a really powerful spell, but neither of those make her a wizard; and we know that at least some agents in that department aren't wizards because that's why they need wands, so being an agent in that department doesn't mean she's a wizard either.

* although, as the wiki points out, she might have used a wand for the hair color change, so we don't even know that much for sure

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On 1/27/2017 at 7:06 PM, chridd said:

She might be, but unless you remember something I don't, I don't think we've seen any indication that she is.  We know that she has at least two spells (seeing things, and hair color change), suggesting she's awakened*, and if her spell is the same as Sarah's then she has a really powerful spell, but neither of those make her a wizard; and we know that at least some agents in that department aren't wizards because that's why they need wands, so being an agent in that department doesn't mean she's a wizard either.

* although, as the wiki points out, she might have used a wand for the hair color change, so we don't even know that much for sure

The best answer I'd say we have is Cranium has never been identified as a "Wizard" and leave it at that.  We don't really know if she is or isn't. 

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Everyone's saying that a system change would make everyone lose the ability to use magic for a while until someone basically stumbles upon it again and learns the first spell of the new system. It's been heavily implied that Tedd would be the key to figuring out the new system faster should it change because his "dangerous rarity" apparently makes him immune to the system change and his magic insight would let him see the changes. I actually wonder how that would be possible, if everyone lost the ability to use magic for a while, for Tedd to see a spell being cast to decypher the new system.

I'd like to propose the theory that Tedd is a natural wizard, and has been learning spells as he sees them like other wizards do, but even though the whale said he couldn't have spells of his own. that could just be that Tedd couldn't have spells under the current system.

Basically what Tedd's been doing without realizing it, has been preparing himself for a system change, so that once it happens, it'll unlock those spells and instead of waiting for the first magic user to come along to look at their spells in action, Tedd will be the first magic user with an arsenal of spells ready to go.

I'm not saying that Tedd would have been preprogramed with the new magic system years ahead of time, but that the nature of his abilities would automatically adjust Tedd's power to whatever the new system is should it happen. That's would be a proper failsafe for keeping magic from dying out because it guarantees at least 1 person with access to magic right off the bat.

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