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Story Monday June 12, 2017

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Well, guess Sarah doesn't have to figure it out on her own that Adrian is Box's son, she's going to hear it from Box herself.

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17 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Well, guess Sarah doesn't have to figure it out on her own that Adrian is Box's son, she's going to hear it from Box herself.

It MIGHT be possible Box will try to not say anything too specific which would identify Adrian ... like, she probably won't say the name ... but yes I totally expect she tells something which makes Sarah figure it out.

Also, she MIGHT tell Sarah about the "elves can have kids". Especially the "going to" sounds as if he would have MORE reasons to hate her now than before her trip to Egypt ...

(Also, if Sarah really gets these two informations from Pandora, she's better at interrogation than ASHLEY.)

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1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

Anybody else wonder why Pandora was in Susan's room, but didn't say anything to her? If Grace can see a resemblance between Adrian's true form and Susan, surely Pandora can.

Also, Susan is Sarah's BFF. Possibly relevant to the title of this chapter?

You owe me three w. Luckily they are cheap.

We still don't know if it was Pandora in Susan's room, but the motivation you suggested makes sense: While Grace didn't see the resemblance until Adrian show her how he imagines his niece, Pandora can certainly see it without such help - and I think that similarly to Edward Verres, she did her own background check on Tedd's friends, so she knows Susan.

And I think it's more like Sarah's being Susan's BFF. I mean, Sarah doesn't seem to have problem with social connections, and Grace might be good candidate for her best friend as well, but Susan's social connections seems to be only Sarah and Nanase - even Justin she only knows thanks to Nanase. Still, I suspect the title is more likely to be due to Pandora and Sarah becaming "BFF". But wait, the title IS in plural ...

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3 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Grace wasn't actually looking "through" the mirror at Adrian. She was using the mirror to look at the disguise spell Adrian had cast on her. It had made Grace look like Susan. Case in point: frame one of this following installment, where both Adrian and Grace are in their disguised forms as the world sees them. They're in their true forms for the rest of the installment.

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48 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Grace wasn't actually looking "through" the mirror at Adrian. She was using the mirror to look at the disguise spell Adrian had cast on her. It had made Grace look like Susan. Case in point: frame one of this following installment, where both Adrian and Grace are in their disguised forms as the world sees them. They're in their true forms for the rest of the installment.

Yes. However, Adrian's explanation pointed out that she is SUPPOSED to look as his niece and therefore resembling him. THAT's why she asked if he has children.

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41 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

However, Adrian's explanation pointed out that she is SUPPOSED to look as his niece and therefore resembling him. THAT's why she asked if he has children.

Exactly. Grace is disguised to look like Adrian's "niece", or what Adrian believes his "niece" should look like. Which happens to be exactly what Susan looks like.

But wait, there's more.

Susan may have no idea that she looks like the true form of Adrian Raven, but Adrian would see the resemblance. And moreover, Adrian must have seen the resemblance between himself and Diane. This could help explain why he "bought" Diane's "dumb-valley-girl" act back on Grace's first day of school.

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I'm guessing that while Pandora is USUALLY in a child form because she is feeling mischievous at the time, HERE she appears as a child to emphasize her emotional vulnerability.

 

At least that is my read on Dan's artistic choice.

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6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It MIGHT be possible Box will try to not say anything too specific which would identify Adrian ... like, she probably won't say the name ... but yes I totally expect she tells something which makes Sarah figure it out.

This is one of those cases where Sarah should have enough info that even if this is all Pandora says, Sarah should connect the dots. She knows Adrian's half Immortal, and she probably knows how rare elves are, so she can't really assume that any Immortal she sees is going to have kids, thing is, Pandora is likely aware that Sarah knows about Adrian since she knows that Nanase knows and isn't obligated to withhold that information. Pandora also seems to be on a bit of an honesty kick at the moment, started with Disco Wizard, and she's become more aware of the harm she's done to people, she also likes Sarah so I can see her opening up about this with her.

6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, she MIGHT tell Sarah about the "elves can have kids". Especially the "going to" sounds as if he would have MORE reasons to hate her now than before her trip to Egypt ...

This I can believe, maybe that was the lie she told herself, that Immortals weren't responsible for Humans being the way they are. Maybe she had convinced herself that any offspring they would have with Humans would be sterile so that there's be less temptation to have kids. I dunno, there's probably another reason why Immortals rarely mate with Humans. But still, the whole "half immortals cannot have children" statement seems to be getting some large cracks in the foundation.

It would also make my theory that Adrian might have been involved with a woman on a few ocassions in the past, one of which may have gotten pregnant and given birth to Susan's father or grandparent. Dunno if that affects Susan's relationship to Diane, I mean Susan's dad could still have cheated and ended up getting another woman pregnant with Diane, so they'd be half sisters, but it could also be likely that Mr Pompoms had a sibling who's Diane's father or mother and they'd be cousins, or maybe Adrian got 2 women pregnant at different times and their offspring had families that each lead to Susan and Diane being cousins 2-3 times removed or something like that.

4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

We still don't know if it was Pandora in Susan's room, but the motivation you suggested makes sense: While Grace didn't see the resemblance until Adrian show her how he imagines his niece, Pandora can certainly see it without such help - and I think that similarly to Edward Verres, she did her own background check on Tedd's friends, so she knows Susan.

It's possible that after learning that she had lied to herself about elves not being able to have children, she might have originally thought there was a resemblance when she first saw Susan but was "Nah, that's impossible" but now she was like "is it possible?" and went to check for herself, and she found Jerry, and they probably chatted a bit after we last saw him, he mentioned his instincts from his previous life telling him there's a connection between Susan and Diane, and Pandora ends up filling in the gaps for him, while being even more convinced that her recklessness in the kinds of information she passed down through her lives, not only is going to potentially cause Magic to change, but might also have prevented her son from being able to raise a family of his own.

Yeah Adrian has Noah as his family, I'm talking more about having a wife and raising children from birth and such.

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After reading the dam commentary, I am convinced that Pandora Box Chaos Raven is not at all accustomed to having humans show genuine concern for her.  Since her husband died, she probably hasn't let any mortal get that close to her that they would show that kind of concern.

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I agree--it has probably been many years since Pandora has had anybody besides her son showing honest concern for her as a person instead of just thinking of her in terms of her being a potentially-dangerous-potentially-useful Fae/Immortal.

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4 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

After reading the dam commentary, I am convinced that Pandora Box Chaos Raven is not at all accustomed to having humans show genuine concern for her.  Since her husband died, she probably hasn't let any mortal get that close to her that they would show that kind of concern.

Indeed. But this is Sarah. And one of her principal qualities is empathy, closely followed or perhaps even exceeded by her compassion. Box barely even let her close at all and yet Sarah could still sense that there was something wrong. It is one reason Sarah is one of my favourite characters in comics.

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11 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Susan may have no idea that she looks like the true form of Adrian Raven, but Adrian would see the resemblance. And moreover, Adrian must have seen the resemblance between himself and Diane. This could help explain why he "bought" Diane's "dumb-valley-girl" act back on Grace's first day of school.

While he might seen the resemblance (despite hair color making it harder), it doesn't exactly explain why he was buying it.

9 hours ago, Scotty said:
17 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It MIGHT be possible Box will try to not say anything too specific which would identify Adrian ... like, she probably won't say the name ... but yes I totally expect she tells something which makes Sarah figure it out.

This is one of those cases where Sarah should have enough info that even if this is all Pandora says, Sarah should connect the dots. She knows Adrian's half Immortal, and she probably knows how rare elves are, so she can't really assume that any Immortal she sees is going to have kids, thing is, Pandora is likely aware that Sarah knows about Adrian since she knows that Nanase knows and isn't obligated to withhold that information. Pandora also seems to be on a bit of an honesty kick at the moment, started with Disco Wizard, and she's become more aware of the harm she's done to people, she also likes Sarah so I can see her opening up about this with her.

Sarah may NOT know how rare elves are - and in fact, they may not be as rare as we think. She might assume that in Pandora's time, many immortals had kids, and the reason Jerry didn't spoke about any was that they would be since before his previous reset.

And Pandora deliberately didn't told her "Raven" as her name. Why starting now?

I think it's more likely she won't tell the name directly but says something else which she wouldn't realize will be enough for Sarah to connect it.

9 hours ago, Scotty said:
17 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, she MIGHT tell Sarah about the "elves can have kids". Especially the "going to" sounds as if he would have MORE reasons to hate her now than before her trip to Egypt ...

This I can believe, maybe that was the lie she told herself, that Immortals weren't responsible for Humans being the way they are. Maybe she had convinced herself that any offspring they would have with Humans would be sterile so that there's be less temptation to have kids. I dunno, there's probably another reason why Immortals rarely mate with Humans. But still, the whole "half immortals cannot have children" statement seems to be getting some large cracks in the foundation.

It was likely lie her previous incarnation told her current one. But she repeated it to Adrian - and possibly in situation where it really mattered ...

9 hours ago, Scotty said:

It would also make my theory that Adrian might have been involved with a woman on a few ocassions in the past, one of which may have gotten pregnant and given birth to Susan's father or grandparent. Dunno if that affects Susan's relationship to Diane, I mean Susan's dad could still have cheated and ended up getting another woman pregnant with Diane, so they'd be half sisters, but it could also be likely that Mr Pompoms had a sibling who's Diane's father or mother and they'd be cousins, or maybe Adrian got 2 women pregnant at different times and their offspring had families that each lead to Susan and Diane being cousins 2-3 times removed or something like that.

While the father being the one related to Adrian makes more sense, the "other woman with Susan's face" is hinting something more complicated ... but I'm not sure WHY. I mean, I don't see how Susan and Diane being cousins from mother sides would make better sense in story than the simplest solution.

(Note that they can be half-sisters due to father AND cousins removed few times from mother sides at the same time ... like, maybe that's why they have magic and their parents didn't? IF they didn't?)

9 hours ago, Scotty said:

It's possible that after learning that she had lied to herself about elves not being able to have children, she might have originally thought there was a resemblance when she first saw Susan but was "Nah, that's impossible" but now she was like "is it possible?" and went to check for herself, and she found Jerry, and they probably chatted a bit after we last saw him, he mentioned his instincts from his previous life telling him there's a connection between Susan and Diane, and Pandora ends up filling in the gaps for him, while being even more convinced that her recklessness in the kinds of information she passed down through her lives, not only is going to potentially cause Magic to change

Hmmmmm .... I'm not sure what could Jerry actually provide to this, but it's true Pandora can help Jerry and that would be useful by itself, so ...

9 hours ago, Scotty said:

but might also have prevented her son from being able to raise a family of his own.

I still think something more was in game. Like that Adrian abandoned his girlfriend because she was pregnant and he was sure it can't be his.

7 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

After reading the dam commentary, I am convinced that Pandora Box Chaos Raven is not at all accustomed to having humans show genuine concern for her.  Since her husband died, she probably hasn't let any mortal get that close to her that they would show that kind of concern.

Well she wasn't SHOWING to many humans at all ... and there aren't that many humans who are likely to show concern for immortal who is playing with them. Her husband was very exceptional in this ; even more than Sarah, because Pandora already more-or-less wowed to stop playing with Sarah.

On the other hand, Sarah's reaction to Pandora was exceptional from start. Pandora is not used to THAT either.

 

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Ever since Grace noticed that her illusion disguise looked like Susan back in Death Sentence, I've thought that if Adrian did father any children he might have thought it best to have someone else raise them in order to keep their Immortal ancestry secret. Also since Adrian told Grace in Death Sentence that he was the reason there was no chance of reconciliation between Tedd's parents I've thought that Noriko might have had a child with Adrian, because she'd fallen in love with him, or because she wanted to have a child with enough talent to carry on her family tradition, or for both reasons. So maybe Tedd actually has a half-sibling in common with Susan and Diane. And thanks to not-Tengu, it is canon that Tedd's mom has at least one other child.

Aside from the possibility that Dan may decide this particular other shoe on us sometime, if Adrian did have children he felt he couldn't raise himself, it would go a long way toward explaining how important Noah is to him, and how important Tedd was before Edward broke with Adrian. Since Adrian knew both Noriko and Edward when they were teenagers (and maybe before then), extra guilt points for breaking with them.

A further extension to my Amazing Crackpot Plot Theory™ is that Adrian is actually behind the blacked-out face of Susan's dad (here, here, and here). Why not? It's canon that Adrian can change his appearance. And it also has congruence with his blacked-out face in the flashback scene with Noriko when Tedd was an infant.

For this to be true, Adrian has to be a horn-dog, a cheating cheater who cheated (where did I hear that phrase before?). It doesn't seem to fit what we've seen so far. But it does explain why Adrian seems to have been totally absent from Susan's life since the divorce. As much as Susan's mom hates her ex-husband, she didn't want Susan to hate him, so Susan's mom shouldn't have denied him visitation. 

(I wish Dan would get around to giving first names to the parents in this series besides Edward) 

Anyway, if Adrian actually raised Susan for awhile, he would miss her terribly, feel terribly guilty, and if Diane is also his daughter, he would be having constant reminders to renew his guilt. Now that fits.

However, there's still the other woman with Susan's face. If Susan's memories are correct, that woman would likely be her real mother and Adrian would have been...ugh. Thanks, Dan.

Well, maybe Adrian has a sister and Susan really is Adrian's niece.

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27 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Ever since Grace noticed that her illusion disguise looked like Susan back in Death Sentence, I've thought that if Adrian did father any children he might have thought it best to have someone else raise them in order to keep their Immortal ancestry secret.

... all this depends on Adrian lying to Grace ON THAT SAME PAGE. I don't think he did. He really IS convinced he can't have children. If he wouldn't, he would have no reason to say he can't because JUST NO WOULD SUFFICE. (Well ... "no" and then "yes" on "are you sure".)

Note that parts of your theory might still be true - it is even possible (although unlikely) that Noriko has Adrian's child. Just ... the person the immortal ancestry was kept hidden the best was Adrian, so he wasn't the one doing it. (Unless memory erasure spells are involved, but those sounds like VERY bad idea and Dan luckily was able to avoid using that cliche as far as we know, and there were MULTIPLE cases where it would make sense to mention them.)

31 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

But it does explain why Adrian seems to have been totally absent from Susan's life since the divorce. As much as Susan's mom hates her ex-husband, she didn't want Susan to hate him, so Susan's mom shouldn't have denied him visitation. 

First, I would totally expect she would deny him visitation. Second, he may not WANT to. Third ... even if he visits every week there would be no more reasons for US to see him than to see Justin parents (which we still didn't).

33 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

However, there's still the other woman with Susan's face. If Susan's memories are correct, that woman would likely be her real mother and Adrian would have been...ugh. Thanks, Dan.

That bit about Mrs. Pompoms accepting Susan despite not giving birth to her seems unlikely AND it would turn out in Edward's background checks, unless someone falsified the records really well. On the plus side, it would make Susan and Diane being twins option again.

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My WAG on elven reproduction is that first-generation elves are not interfertile with pure humans. However they are interfertile with humans who have some certain percentage - or more, up to 50% - of fairy blood, and then second-generation elves are interfertile with everyone. The catch is, elves are rare in general, and trying to keep their fairy ancestry secret, so they rarely meet - and thus, second-generation elves are even rarer than first-generation. So maybe they don't know about this very limited exception. (You'd think the female elves involved would notice, but then if they don't reveal that they're elven to even their own children...)

Or, there's the example of mules. A cross between a donkey and a horse, the fact that mules are sterile is so well known that Asimov used the title "The Mule" for a character in one of his novels to indicate sterility... but there are very rare instances of mules being cross-fertile with one or the other of the parent species. "Very rare" being something like 20 documented instances in the past 2,600 years. Heck, that's rare enough that it could require a certain sort of mutation in the non-mule parent.

I doubt we'll ever know, of course, because nobody will have means & opportunity to do DNA sequencing on any of the fairies.

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9 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

I doubt we'll ever know, of course, because nobody will have means & opportunity to do DNA sequencing on any of the fairies.

The question if they even HAVE DNA (when they not actively using it) is open ; however, someone may be able to do some DNA sequencing on Adrian Raven.

12 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

My WAG on elven reproduction is that first-generation elves are not interfertile with pure humans. However they are interfertile with humans who have some certain percentage - or more, up to 50% - of fairy blood, and then second-generation elves are interfertile with everyone. The catch is, elves are rare in general, and trying to keep their fairy ancestry secret, so they rarely meet

IMHO it didn't USED to be that way.

13 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

So maybe they don't know about this very limited exception.

It used to be relatively common knowledge before some idiot fairy way over recommended reset date got the idea of lying to her next incarnation. I don't care what Heka thinks about it, it couldn't be good idea.

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How about quarter-immortal grandchildren being impossible now, because some very ancient reset changed the way mortals used to have children by/with magic, and the immortals  chose to forget because the loss of families is too heartbreaking to remember? Especially if, say, immortal/immortal reproduction is difficult because two doses of chaotic magic is really rough on growing lifeforms...

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35 minutes ago, Haylo said:

How about quarter-immortal grandchildren being impossible now, because some very ancient reset changed the way mortals used to have children by/with magic, and the immortals  chose to forget because the loss of families is too heartbreaking to remember? Especially if, say, immortal/immortal reproduction is difficult because two doses of chaotic magic is really rough on growing lifeforms...

That could match what we know, but not what is hinted. Adrian imagining his niece looking just like Susan is very likely to become plot point, I already pointed this page suggest Pandora learnt some NEW reason why her son will hate her (and having children would be top candidate) ... and last reset was VERY long ago. We can't actually rule out that getting magic by having child with fairy was something which APPEARED with last reset.

Note: I suspect that Pandora being perfect example of "why" is related to the fact she postponed her reset to be with Adrian and that elves in general become less popular idea because fairies don't like forgetting their families ... and it will get even worse if those are not just children but wide families.

But telling their next incarnations it can't be done remains bad idea.

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I'm just wondering how the secret was kept when everybody who knew about the secret was gone. 

Sex is a pretty big thumb on the scale of behavior.  Elves are not going to say to themselves "I can't have kids so I just won't bother having the sex that would have the side effect of showing me I CAN have kids."  It's going to be more like: "WOO HOO!, No consequences!".  With no shadowy enforcers maintaining the lie, it's going to disappear on its own.  I''m surprised it hasn't.

Unless elves are not strictly INfertile but ARE not very fertile.  Mules or somesuch.

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If male elves are certain they are infertile, then the women they impregnate were "obviously" having affairs with other men.

Female elves, that wouldn't work... but maybe elves are always male.

Catch is, if you trace EVERYONE'S ancestry far enough back, you get to a point where any given ancestor of anyone is an ancestor of everyone. And if you're looking at a geographically cohesive subset, say "Europe", you get to an equivalent point rather sooner. If a single elf was born in Europe 10,000 years ago, and has ANY surviving descendants, probably every living European would be a descendant of that elf.

Simple genealogical descent is not sufficient. There must be some specific genes involved.

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1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

Catch is, if you trace EVERYONE'S ancestry far enough back, you get to a point where any given ancestor of anyone is an ancestor of everyone. And if you're looking at a geographically cohesive subset, say "Europe", you get to an equivalent point rather sooner. If a single elf was born in Europe 10,000 years ago, and has ANY surviving descendants, probably every living European would be a descendant of that elf.

Simple genealogical descent is not sufficient. There must be some specific genes involved.

Somewhere up our ancestral tree is swimming a lungfish we are all descended from. I knew this fad of breathing air and crawling on land wouldn't lead to anything good.

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