Live Blogs The Great Nitpicky Live Blog of El Goonish Shive

MrAHR

Gilphon:

So… I actually agree that the sequence directly following Ellen's creation is pretty terrible, so I'm guess I'm nitpicking a nitpick here, but since you raised the 'soul' question, I feel obliged to point out that it's established by the end of this arc that an entirely new soul was created for Ellen.

AHR:

Yeh. I know. It's why I brought it up. But the thing is what does a "new soul" mean exactly. It just seems like a bunch of placebo words.

Maturity and personality comes from two things:

Your developed brain and genetics

Your upbringing

Ellen has had BOTH of those that Elliot had, so what exactly is different from her soul? And what makes it so easily snappable?

I am not the most spiritual person in the world, so I would greatly encourage an explanation if there is one.

Goggle Fox:

More to the point, why does jamming memories into Ellen's head from an alternate universe self's life that has very little to do with this universe do anything positive at all? If anything it should leave one dazed and confused.

e X:

You know what you said earlier, about Elliot never actually hitting Nanase in their fight? We have the same thing here, in the struggle between Ellen and Elliot.

Also, even if Ellen is the physical manifestation of female variant No. 5, she still has all of Elliot's memories and thus, I assume, his character, yet, from after this arc til she receives her "own life", she never displays any discomfort with being a girl now.

Cakman:

Uh oh. A Moderator seems to be upset with me on the other board. e X! WHY DIDN'T YOU WARN ME ABOUT THIS?!

AC Drawings:

To respond to Cakman, the reason why I'm not refuting anything is becuase I spend enough time here already what with the R Ps and all. Responding to every isngle little thing AHR said would require more work and time than I'm willing to commit, and Cakman? Frankly his posts annoy too much, I just skip over them and directly read AHR's since that's what I came for anyway, Cakman's just seem intrusive.

Point is, I'm still here in spirit, just don't expect me to say much, you are entitled to your own obsessive nitpickings and while I agree with many points you make (I mean seriously, Ellen's responses should have been identical to Elliots and her thought process is nonsensical at the dawn of her creation. Clearly Shive effed up here, I mean come on, man, they're direct clones of each other, her having a different set of sexual organ should not change that much of her personality!) I shall still maintain my love and enjoyment for this comic, still having all those wondrous elements I love.

Cakman:

Oh AC, I kid. I know. You're just my resident punching bag.

Edit: Besides Dan Shive. Edit edit: Also, far too beautiful of a quote to pass up. I hope you don't mind.

AC Drawings:

^ Dah heck? Is dat.... My quote in yo' sig?

AHR:

Don't take Cakman too seriously, AC. He's mostly a troll.

Also, it appears the EGS counterpart thread got baleeted. Oh my. Cak, what did you do?

Then again, can't say I'm surprised.

182: You may be able to forgive him for that "cliffhanger", but I'm not. That's not a cliffhanger, it's stalling, same as when they spend an episode on two attacks in DBZ. Luckily the next strip does what this one should have, competently.

184: Over in the MSPA thread while we were debating free will and time travel (which is to say, any time at all before you arrived) several times it was said that "a given person put in a given set of circumstances will take one and only one action, even if it'd be hard to predict that action ahead of time". Unfortunately, they're not in the same circumstances; Elliot had exactly what he expected and hoped would happen happen, while Ellen is utterly at sea. Plus I do think the diamond had some effect on her; if it turns werewolves into something even nastier than what you started with then I'll assume it magnifies the curse somehow, the curse in her case being "being a girl" (don't you dare quote me on that out of context). They're pretty close to the same person right now, but I wouldn't expect them to be talking over each other's time-travel-codewords. Of course they'll diverge in less trivial ways later.

I guess I'll give you that I wouldn't expect him to be crying since he's got years of male social conditioning, but I'm willing to buy panic.

185: Tranquilizers? I'm suddenly picturing an army of zombies stumbling around in a half-conscious state. Probably more useful would be, like, an army of people who were given near-fatal doses of steroids or speed or something. Even alcohol might get you decent results. The key is probably finding something you can mass-produce that it recognizes as a curse though.

186-187: I have to agree, this entire scene makes no sense at all. Who wants to be the monster of the week when everybody's perfectly willing to treat you otherwise? In any other series a magical clone this unhinged would be a clear sign that this person's not supposed to live through the episode and you're not supposed to care very much, but then he goes and makes her a permanent (and relatively normal) cast member anyways.

188: The degree of sociopathy inherent in that scheme is... insanely impressive. Now, repeatedly turning someone ELSE into a frog who'd swallowed a bag of gold coins and curing them, that'd be slightly more reasonable (at least in the sense that the victim is slightly more distanced from yourself).