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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      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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1 minute ago, Scotty said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Why do you think she introduced herself as "Box" to Sarah?

At the time, I think she figured she had an opportunity to start fresh, she admitted to us that she liked Sarah and her vow sounded like she wasn't going to make Sarah jump through hoops to learn magic, her training might be closer to how Pandora trained Adrian (though maybe not as harsh). Though she still sounded like she might still want to play around in general.

It was supposed to be rhetorical question ... and you almost got it. It was because she wanted to separate how she behaves as "Box" and how she behaves as "Pandora". While the "I don't want Sarah to be scared by what she finds about Pandora" angle was more important, it will just as well help preventing people who knows her as Pandora - including Magus - to realize she can also be nice.

5 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Chaos actually seems to be the name given by Magus because Pandora refused to tell him her name, but she of course added it to the list.

ANYONE who would see the form Magus did see would try names like Chaos. I don't think Magus was first.

6 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Of course after Pandora's discussion with Adrian, she's become more aware of what she's been doing over the years and this will likely have an effect on how she behaves around Sarah

She already behaved well around Sarah ... so, it's more like "provide additional incentive to not make any mistake" and "be more careful in evaluating what may be mistake". Note that, as I already said, I suspect she vowed to Sarah not only to raise her trust, but also because she felt like being nice and wasn't sure if she doesn't change mind later.

9 minutes ago, Scotty said:

also Pandora might now consider resetting to avoid letting herself be consumed by boredom again and make more mistakes while training Sarah

Unlikely. The vows should be enough - or at least she thinks so. She is certainly aware that reseting would make her help less useful.

That doesn't mean she won't consider reset if something more will happen ... but I think her current reaction is "I need to be more careful and less impulsive".

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42 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

She already behaved well around Sarah ... so, it's more like "provide additional incentive to not make any mistake" and "be more careful in evaluating what may be mistake". Note that, as I already said, I suspect she vowed to Sarah not only to raise her trust, but also because she felt like being nice and wasn't sure if she doesn't change mind later.

Well she didn't really come across as particularly trustworthy(or sane) the first time she talked to Sarah. The second time talking to Sarah was a completely different experience.

45 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Unlikely. The vows should be enough - or at least she thinks so. She is certainly aware that reseting would make her help less useful.

The vows should be enough to prevent her from harming Sarah or making Sarah do anything bad, but that doesn't really prevent her from searching for ways to alleviate her boredom and possibly causing harm to others. A proper reset would prevent that. As for being less useful, if her basic nature doesn't have enought knowledge to help teach Sarah how to use Magic, she could probably save just enough of what she currently knows to help. Though I really do like the idea of a freshly reset "Box" learning alongside Sarah, helping each other with various things.

 

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34 minutes ago, Scotty said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

She already behaved well around Sarah ... so, it's more like "provide additional incentive to not make any mistake" and "be more careful in evaluating what may be mistake". Note that, as I already said, I suspect she vowed to Sarah not only to raise her trust, but also because she felt like being nice and wasn't sure if she doesn't change mind later.

Well she didn't really come across as particularly trustworthy(or sane) the first time she talked to Sarah. The second time talking to Sarah was a completely different experience.

The "Do you want to save all magic" didn't looked that much saner than the first time she talked with her :). More trustworthy, maybe. But even her first talk was much more trustworthy than any of her other talks ... as she mentioned herself.

36 minutes ago, Scotty said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Unlikely. The vows should be enough - or at least she thinks so. She is certainly aware that reseting would make her help less useful.

The vows should be enough to prevent her from harming Sarah or making Sarah do anything bad, but that doesn't really prevent her from searching for ways to alleviate her boredom and possibly causing harm to others. A proper reset would prevent that.

It would be enough to not "do any mistakes training Sarah". She would obviously be free to make mistakes on other opportunities, but then the reset wouldn't be because of Sarah.

38 minutes ago, Scotty said:

As for being less useful, if her basic nature doesn't have enought knowledge to help teach Sarah how to use Magic, she could probably save just enough of what she currently knows to help. Though I really do like the idea of a freshly reset "Box" learning alongside Sarah, helping each other with various things.

It's not about knowledge. It's about predicting outcomes. Before reset, she may do mistakes because being bored ... after reset, she may make mistakes because she wouldn't be able to predict what will happen.

The "learning alongside Sarah" sounds more like something which would happen in case of IMPROPER reset. Which is why I have strong suspicion that something ("plot") will make Pandora reset improperly - meaning, she will be FORCED to reset.

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17 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

It might conceivably be part of a Sister Act, with Mrs Kitsune played by Whoopi Goldberg.

Please make sure she sticks to the script! I've seen her ad-lib... it's bad.

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I hope this hasn't been brought up in a previous incarnation of this thread.

Arthur knows that magic can change how it works, and why it would do so. Hence why he is apparently not doing a damn thing about any of what's going on.?

Consider the following data:

First, the reaction to Abraham's attack, followed by the on camera appearance of Little Pandie.  

Next, the appearance of the first fire guy, (who shall be henceforth known as Blaze Burns), to which we have likely already seen his reaction.

He goes on the air to make an official statement as soon as possible, and goes to theatrical lengths to expose the existence of wizards - and completely contradicts previous tactics in doing so.

Then, when Blaze returns, bringing his family and their adorable little pet, what does he do?

Absolutely nothing. But what may be even more important is his reasoning behind his inaction.

Reading between the lines of what he says there indicates that he is fully aware what will happen if magic becomes too mainstream - and that the result of it is, ultimately, his goal. Rather than fight an uphill, possibly even Sisyphean, battle to cover up the accessibility of magic, he decides to let the events play out and have the Will of Magic take care of the problem itself.

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Just now, AFNB said:

Reading between the lines of what he says there indicates that he is fully aware what will happen if magic becomes too mainstream - and that the result of it is, ultimately, his goal. Rather than fight an uphill, possibly even Sisyphean, battle to cover up the accessibility of magic, he decides to let the events play out and have the Will of Magic take care of the problem itself.

That's possible, it may also be possible that he's aware of the Main Eight's involvement and might be expecting them to fix things too, like "they're in this too deep for us to deal with, they'll either prevent the change for us, or fail and it wouldn't matter."

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One thing we can say with a fair degree of confidence:

Arthur doesn't know just where the tipping point that triggers a magic reset is.

Apparently even Pandora, who is almost certainly the oldest of the immortals, isn't old enough to fully remember the most recent reset.

Archaeological finds are unlikely to be sufficiently detailed to pin down just how prevalent magic was just before the reset - or whether there might be other factors that affected the exact timing of the reset, allowing magic to become more (or less) prevalent after the reset is triggered but before it happened.

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2 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Apparently even Pandora, who is almost certainly the oldest of the immortals, isn't old enough to fully remember the most recent reset.

She kept the knowledge in her memoirs, but as Jerry put it, those are like reading from a book. It sounds like memoirs are a different form of long term memory, not easily accessible like thinking back to what you did last Tuesday, but still there and can produce a sense of deja vu. So Pandora wouldn't have had that knowledge readily available, not until Disco Wizard mentioned it and it sounded familiar.

I don't think the whole bit about Immortals getting more clairvoyant means that their past lives' memories become more apparent, it just applies to their current incarnation being able to predict the outcomes of events. The memoirs are there, but the Immortal still needs to open the book to learn what they hold. A vow being carried over in a reset would likely have a "HEY! READ ME!" notice attached to ensure that the Immortal knew what the vow was about.

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15 hours ago, AFNB said:

I hope this hasn't been brought up in a previous incarnation of this thread.

Arthur knows that magic can change how it works, and why it would do so. Hence why he is apparently not doing a damn thing about any of what's going on.?

Arthur has already chosen the Nuclear Option.  Stretch it until it snaps.
http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2317

Quote

On 03/01/2017, Arthur J Arthur said:

... the next incident could be the last straw.  And that would solve the problem for decades.

 

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7 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Arthur has already chosen the Nuclear Option.  Stretch it until it snaps.
http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2317

I still think Arthur was pandering to the Director, Arthur was tasked with maintaining secrecy, he knows what would happen if too many people figure out magic.  His announcement on TV that magic was real, sounded crazy, but I think his goal was to give the impression that magic was rare and random. If he sent agents out to deal with the dragon, then it wouldn't look so rare anymore and it might have caused people to figure it out sooner which would have probably  brought about the system change earlier. That lul* in the number of incidents during the time skip might have made Arthur think that things had calmed down, but then got the wakeup call in the form of the incident at the mall.

I don't believe he's intentionally trying to ensure the system changes, but he likely doesn't have any way to prevent it either aside from trying to minimize exposure, which is difficult when you have Immortals involved.

*#1: The boar was before the time skip, but I don't think it drew too much attention, yeah there was the mystery left behind about it's size, but aside from Rhoda, Catalina, Grace and Adrian, no one else saw it while it was enchanted so that was probably forgotten after a bit.

*#2: Rhoda and Catalina's adventure in the mall was seen by a number of people after their transformations got mixed up, but it apparently didn't make the news and only Kitty attempted to pursue them so it's likely that incident was fairly isolated and forgotten.

*#3: New Years Eve would have been considered an isolated incident, as Edward was able to call Cranium and Wolf out for assistance. It also helped that the majority of witnesses were drunk and didn't even realize something had happened.

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1 hour ago, Scotty said:

*#2: Rhoda and Catalina's adventure in the mall was seen by a number of people after their transformations got mixed up, but it apparently didn't make the news and only Kitty attempted to pursue them so it's likely that incident was fairly isolated and forgotten.

Self-isolating, I would think. A couple of young girls cosplaying cats were running away from their big sister, who was chasing them when her oversize sleeves fell and messed up her balance. A bit wierd, but not supernatural-type wierd. Just some children goofing off. (It helps that with them running, probably nobody got a really good look at them.)

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29 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

Self-isolating, I would think. A couple of young girls cosplaying cats were running away from their big sister, who was chasing them when her oversize sleeves fell and messed up her balance. A bit wierd, but not supernatural-type wierd. Just some children goofing off. (It helps that with them running, probably nobody got a really good look at them.)

and people would be somewhat jaded about it anyway.  "this is Moperville.  Weird stuff happens here."

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On ‎04‎/‎27‎/‎2017 at 4:55 PM, Vorlonagent said:

and people would be somewhat jaded about it anyway.  "this is Moperville.  Weird stuff happens here."

Just like the people of Metropolis no longer get excited when some tourist shouts, "Look!  Up in the sky!"

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19 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Just like the people of Metropolis no longer get excited when some tourist shouts, "Look!  Up in the sky!"

I'm told people in New York identify tourists because they're the ones looking up...   :)

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44 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I'm told people in New York identify tourists because they're the ones looking up...   :)

It's true, you live in a place long enough, the scenery becomes so familiar that you may not even notice if something changes, where as someone who's visiting for the first time are like "OOOOH, AAAHHH!"

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Just now, Scotty said:

It's true, you live in a place long enough, the scenery becomes so familiar that you may not even notice if something changes,

New York as a massive change-blindness experiment...

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So last week, Dan tweeted this:

Looking back at 2007, I can see two possible plot points that could fit this. The first one that's I'll mention only because it was the first that came to mind and seemed obvious, but might be a red herring, would be the woman with Susan's face, and the possibility of Dan revisiting that as part of Susan meeting Diane. But then I got thinking. this plot point seems like something that still has a ways to do and Susan meeting Diane is just a stepping stone, so I don't think we'll see anything come of that in Sister III.

The other thought I had relates to Magus. Or more specifically, the warning Pandora gave Edward. It leads us to think that the hawk is Magus succeeding in getting as physical body back and wrecking havok on Moperville. Thinking about this more, and what's about to happen, I'm wondering if Pandora's warning was more about a chain of events rather than one specific entity, Magus would be the egg, but Sirleck and the looming vampire threat is the hawk. We know at the time of the warning, Pandora claimed that she didn't want to know what happens, but that doesn't mean she wasn't manipulating things a certain way, her assistance with Magus, she was feeding him tidbits of info, she also introduced him to Sirleck whom was the one that bribed the security guard that the facility with the diamond. I dunno if Pandora was responsible for Magus being here or if she just saw his arrival as an opportunity to have some fun, the "He had no place to land, I caught him in my wings." suggests the later.  So I'm thinking the Hawk is either Sirleck, whom we recently saw dumping his last host for a new one, and the whole "rain hell down on Moperville" part.

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Intriguing. I missed Dan's tweet.

I wouldn't count out The Other Woman With Susan's Face yet, especially considering the current hiatus from plot advancement for Elliot to deal with his gender issues yet again. Having Susan and Diane's real mom show up at the Mall wouldn't be even as strange as last week's griffin. But would Dan have a backstory that would justify her showing up just now? Isn't that one coinky-dinky too many? I mean, if she knew they'd be there, but how would she know that?

Let's go back to the title page of Sister IIIThe composition of the picture has us nearest Elliot and Ellen, back-to-back, looking down and away from each other. Behind them looms Magus. Behind Magus, Susan and Diane, at the opposite edges of the picture, facing opposite but both beginning to peer back toward each other. And in back of them, the distinctive adult silhouette of Pandora, between them and the horrible true face of Sirleck. All those eyes. Except Pandora is drawn with no indication of eyes.

Pandora's arms are outstretched, and her hands are drawn in a way in which we can't tell if the palms are facing us or Sirleck. If she's facing us, she looks like she's about to embrace or tackle everyone ahead of her. And if she's facing away, she looks like she might be barring Sarleck's way. The way her fingers are actually touching the edge of the frame kind of emphasizes that.

Well, her eyes wouldn't be showing if she's facing away. On the other hand, the part in her hair indicates she should be facing us.

Anyway, my alternative theory doesn't really depend on the title page, though I firmly believe Dan made it with foreshadowing very much in mind. What I'm really saying here is that Pandora might be The Other Woman With Susan's Face. We had a big reminder early on in this arc that "Immortals shapeshift, you dumb dummy!" and it got reinforced by Pandora's antics in Marker and Escape From the Mall. And here's the comic that established just how precisely she can shapeshift. And in the comic after that, Adrian says he hasn't seen Pandora in fourteen years.

How old would Susan have been fourteen years before?

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35 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

How old would Susan have been fourteen years before?

Seeing as she turned eighteen the following new year, three or four years old. Hm. I see what you mean, but I would have thought Susan was more like five or six years old when she caught her father in adultery.

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4 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

especially considering the current hiatus from plot advancement for Elliot to deal with his gender issues yet again.

The first Sister arc revolved around Elliot getting turned into a girl which lead to the creation of Ellen. Sister 2 involved Elliot's awakening and the need to deal with energy buildups by turning into a girl every night and a couple times a day. I would have complained if Sister III didn't show us what kind of effect that's had on Elliot.

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5 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

 especially considering the current hiatus from plot advancement for Elliot to deal with his gender issues yet again.

Please do not be petty. Elliot's gender identity may not be of interest to you, but I assure you that it is important to others -- conceivably many others. Stating that you are not interested is fine. Declaring it a 'hiatus from plot development' makes you sound presumptuous and petulant.

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