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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!
Stature

Story Wednesday May 24, 2017

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4 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

1) How is changing person's default form "empower and guide"? The serenity spell is IMHO guiding, and Dex being empowered and guided was explained in comic.

And according to Pandora, other Immortals wouldn't be able to mark people without their permission either. She could probably come up with some convincing reason to say to changing someone's default form would be considered guiding or empowering.

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10 minutes ago, Scotty said:
20 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

1) How is changing person's default form "empower and guide"? The serenity spell is IMHO guiding, and Dex being empowered and guided was explained in comic.

And according to Pandora, other Immortals wouldn't be able to mark people without their permission either. She could probably come up with some convincing reason to say to changing someone's default form would be considered guiding or empowering.

Well if anyone could, then Pandora is most likely, true.

 

PPS: While talking about possible retcons ... we recently learnt two surprising facts:

1) Pandora didn't know about magic resets

2) Voltaire was framing Pandora for Dex's attack

What if those are retcons? I will destroy the world as it is now known and replace it with another sounds VERY much like description of magic reset. Maybe she was supposed to cause one deliberately, but then Dan changed mind. And maybe she WAS supposed to be "big bad", as she would be slipping into insanity ... but then Dan changed mind and made her almost seem more sane than when she was talking with Magus.

Or it was planned and Dan was enjoying surprising us.

(If those WOULD be retcons, Pandora's monologue about egg falling from nest might be where it's showing.)

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17 hours ago, Entropy said:

They actually know about 5 imortals: Helena and Demetrius from the mall, Jerry from Susan, Box from Sarah, and Voltaire from When he showed himself in Tedd house.

Ok, I haven't messed up basic counting since I finished first grade two years ago.

I was thinking of all (1, 2, 3, 4... ) Five of those immortals when I made my comment.  But somehow ended up with a total of four.

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5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

What if those are retcons? I will destroy the world as it is now known and replace it with another sounds VERY much like description of magic reset. Maybe she was supposed to cause one deliberately, but then Dan changed mind. And maybe she WAS supposed to be "big bad", as she would be slipping into insanity ... but then Dan changed mind and made her almost seem more sane than when she was talking with Magus.

The meaning I understood from that declaration was that Pandora would replace "the world where magic users must hide" with "a world where magic is used openly", thereby lifting the restrictions on what Raven is allowed to do. That idea is completely unrelated to a magic reset.

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24 minutes ago, Douglas said:

That idea is completely unrelated to a magic reset.

A reset isn't what Pandora had in mind, I think. But it was hard for her to remember the previous magic reset. That was unfortunate. It's pretty clear that the last magic reset was done to deprive something like an army of Damiens of their terrible power.

Which leads me to think that maybe Noah's father and his "friends" knew something about that fire-throwing horde and were trying to re-create them to be used as super-soldiers.

Anyway, if Pandora had remembered that magic could change and that a lot of magic use might have something to do with the change, she might not have dammed up Moperville and marked so many Mopervillains.

Mopervillians? Well, "villain" is actually an old French word for a peasant. King Richard II is supposed to have said to his revolting peasants "Villains ye are, and villians ye shall remain!" after going back on his promises to reform the laws and taxes that oppressed them. He got away with it, but double-crossing became an habit with Rich #2, and he made one too many of them by trying to un-Duke his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke. Unlike Dick #1, Rich #2 wasn't a warrior but his cuz was. Pretty soon Cousin Harry was King Henry IV and Rich #2 was dead.

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6 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Mopervillians? Well, "villain" is actually an old French word for a peasant. King Richard II is supposed to have said to his revolting peasants "Villains ye are, and villians ye shall remain!" after going back on his promises to reform the laws and taxes that oppressed them.

Nowadays the spelling "villein" is generally used for peasant and "villain" for an evil enemy.  Originally they would presumably have been interchangeable.

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6 hours ago, HarJIT said:

Nowadays the spelling "villein" is generally used for peasant and "villain" for an evil enemy.  Originally they would presumably have been interchangeable.

King R2 ought to be happy he didn't try that on supervillains. If he'd pulled that shit on Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom, he would have been toast. If he had been lucky. If he had been unlucky, he would have been turned into a quick frozen boneless sludge who ruled over a kingdom full of very startled gorillas.

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22 hours ago, Douglas said:
On 05/25/2017 at 5:07 AM, hkmaly said:

What if those are retcons? I will destroy the world as it is now known and replace it with another sounds VERY much like description of magic reset. Maybe she was supposed to cause one deliberately, but then Dan changed mind. And maybe she WAS supposed to be "big bad", as she would be slipping into insanity ... but then Dan changed mind and made her almost seem more sane than when she was talking with Magus.

The meaning I understood from that declaration was that Pandora would replace "the world where magic users must hide" with "a world where magic is used openly", thereby lifting the restrictions on what Raven is allowed to do. That idea is completely unrelated to a magic reset.

That's the canon meaning NOW. I was speculation that it could have different meaning when written, and them being retconned.

21 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

double-crossing became an habit with Rich #2, and he made one too many of them by trying to un-Duke his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke. Unlike Dick #1, Rich #2 wasn't a warrior but his cuz was. Pretty soon Cousin Harry was King Henry IV and Rich #2 was dead.

So, Henry of Bolingbroke got his first cousin once removed? :)

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5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

So, Hendy of Bolingbroke got his first cousin once removed?

Shakespeare wrote one play about Rich the Deuce and two about the fourth Harry. Rich and Harry were grandsons of Edward III, the king who started the Hundred Years War.

 

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37 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

the king who started the Hundred Years War.

Quite a diplomatic feat, getting all the warring parties to agree on a specific date to end the war a century in advance just so they could call it The Hundred Years War.

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2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:
3 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

the king who started the Hundred Years War.

Quite a diplomatic feat, getting all the warring parties to agree on a specific date to end the war a century in advance just so they could call it The Hundred Years War.

He should definitely get points for trying, although the war actually took 116 years (from 1337 to 17 July 1453), with two pauses (9 and 26 years) and additional 20 years of technically continuing without any battles.

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11 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Shakespeare wrote one play about Rich the Deuce and two about the fourth Harry. Rich and Harry were grandsons of Edward III, the king who started the Hundred Years War.

It's kind of strange... most of the great battles that are taken as defining the English identity occurred in the "Hundred Years War"... which England pretty decisively lost.

Seriously. At the beginning of the war, the territory that owed fealty to the King of England included (approximately) the southern half of the island of Britain and the western half of France; meanwhile the territory that owed fealty to the King of France consisted of most of the northeast quarter of France. At the end of the war, Britain was almost entirely kicked off the mainland, and France had approximately its modern border.

And yet... France derives most of its sense of identity from the Napoleonic Wars. Which France lost.

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5 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

It's kind of strange... most of the great battles that are taken as defining the English identity occurred in the "Hundred Years War"... which England pretty decisively lost.

Seriously. At the beginning of the war, the territory that owed fealty to the King of England included (approximately) the southern half of the island of Britain and the western half of France; meanwhile the territory that owed fealty to the King of France consisted of most of the northeast quarter of France. At the end of the war, Britain was almost entirely kicked off the mainland, and France had approximately its modern border.

And yet... France derives most of its sense of identity from the Napoleonic Wars. Which France lost.

But all this just leaves me wondering whether King R2 would later be followed by D2.

Or maybe I am just confusing it with the legend of King R2 and the Jedi Knights of the Round Motherboard.

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6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

It's kind of strange... most of the great battles that are taken as defining the English identity occurred in the "Hundred Years War"... which England pretty decisively lost.

You mean like Battle of Trafalgar? Oh wait that's bad example. :)

Sure, I don't know much about what battles makes English identity, but google search for british most important battles produces list like this or this, which don't seem to be dominated by hundred years war.

 

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32 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Sure, I don't know much about what battles makes English identity, but google search for british most important battles produces list like this or this, which don't seem to be dominated by hundred years war.

I am amazed that Dunkirk did not appear on either list. Ah well.

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

Sure, I don't know much about what battles makes English identity, but google search for british most important battles produces list like this or this, which don't seem to be dominated by hundred years war.

I am amazed that Dunkirk did not appear on either list. Ah well.

Maybe because the battle was not important and the evacuation was not battle?

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12 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

It's kind of strange... most of the great battles that are taken as defining the English identity occurred in the "Hundred Years War"... which England pretty decisively lost.

There's a very old, very classic history by Fletcher Pratt called The Battles That Changed History and if you live in Canada you can read it for free online. Or I guess if you are a student or faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania. Some libraries may still have it; I read my first copy from a library when I was in high school

Anyway, Pratt rates the most decisive battle of the Hundred Years War not as one of the spectacular victories of the English (Cressy, Poitoirs and Agincourt) but the seige of Orleans. That chapter is called Joan of Arc and the Non-Conquest of France. And Pratt rates it as decisive for a reason which you probably won't guess: If England had actually permanently conquered France, it would have been absorbed by France and French culture, and we would all be French now. Talk about a close call.

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3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Maybe because the battle was not important and the evacuation was not battle?

Hm. You could make that argument, of course, and I suppose that since 'battle' can be a fairly abstract and flexible term it could come out either way. If you were to classify it as an event, however, I'd nonetheless be perfectly content to argue that it belongs among the ten most important of British history.

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35 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

There's a very old, very classic history by Fletcher Pratt called The Battles That Changed History and if you live in Canada you can read it for free online.

I never realized it, but apparently I do :)

42 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

If England had actually permanently conquered France, it would have been absorbed by France and French culture, and we would all be French now. Talk about a close call.

You mean something like what would happen if William the Conqueror conquered England and make most of nobility Norman oh wait that happened :)

(Fletcher Pratt actually described it as "second Norman conquest" ; I don't think it would result in complete absorption, just like the first one didn't. Obviously, there WOULD be consequences, but hard to say how big - maybe most of them would be reverted after Napoleon.)

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6 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

You mean something like what would happen if William the Conqueror conquered England and make most of nobility Norman oh wait that happened

The nobility spoke French, but they were a tiny, tiny minority. The thing is, they stopped speaking French after the end of the Hundred Years war. Hank the fourth was the first native-English speaker to reign since the Norman Conquest--that's 419 years of kings who either spoke no English at all or learned it as a second language. Now if England had conquered France and the same dynasty went on reigning, the focus of government and culture would have shifted to France the longer that went on. England would basically become to France as Scotland became to England after James VI of Scotland became James I of England as well. Anyone English who wanted to get ahead would learn French.

I don't agree with all of Pratt's insights. Given that Henry VI of England (who would have become Henry II of France instead of the Henry II who was Louis IV's grandad) turned out to be a long-lived flake, the prospects of a lasting Plantagenet dynasty in France don't seem too likely. But it is a phenomenon that's been seen elsewhere, most notably in China which has been absorbing its "conquerers" for three or four millenia so far. At that time there were something like ten Frenchmen for every Englishman. The English had to play a long catch-up game, but now the English in England outnumber the French in France.

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On 5/26/2017 at 4:10 PM, The Old Hack said:

Or maybe I am just confusing it with the legend of King R2 and the Jedi Knights of the Round Motherboard.

Two packets.  At least one up the nose.

 

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