El Goonish Shive

Well, I don't think it's that weird that Tedd's allowed to have the TF Gun. His possession of it is an under-the-table agreement with William and Gillian in the first place, so knowledge of it is mostly just those two, Tedd's father, and Tedd's circle of friends (oh, and the Dunkels, since they were let in on that as of Sister I). Tedd's dad more or less trusts his son (even if he's dismissive of his son's preferences), and nobody else in authority even knows about it. Who would even take it from him? (Note: that last point is another reason why Tedd is more or less just freaking out regarding how he could lose the TF Gun.)

I find it amusing that the farther Shive goes along, the harder time he has with not drawing Tedd exceptionally feminine.

It's like he's finally figured out how to properly draw androgynous people and now he's gone too far over the hill.

The thing about the Will of Magic that's kind of strange to me? That there's apparently more than one. The Uruyohms (I have no idea if I spelled that right) have their own type of magic, and it's apparently perfectly fine with being exhaustively studied.

They don't technically have magic, they have a natural ability that uses the same energy. So Greater Chimaeras give off similar energy readings as people who have Awakened, but it's very difficult for them to actually Awaken. The Will of Magic seems to specifically have a problem with spells being used and understood. Natural abilities don't seem to concern it. Maybe you're right, and there are multiple Wills. The Emissary did mention that the Will might have multiple minds.

The two don't really fit together particularly well because they were introduced at different phases in the comic. The series started as a sci-fi/anime mash-up and remained so until somewhere after Painted Black, when it underwent a sudden genre shift to "Witches and Wizards" style fantasy and everything got retconned to be magic, while the more scifi elements like parallel universes and aliens were quietly swept under the rug never to be seen again.

So now we have magic marks instead of TF guns, Pandora instead of Lord Tedd, spellbooks instead of anime-style martial arts, Immortals instead of Uryuoms etc.

edited 16th Feb '17 5:37:28 PM by TobiasDrake

On a side note, cheers for Elliot hugging Tedd despite this being a really weird situation. He saw his friend was hurting, so he helped with the hurt instinctively. Because that's who he is.

NP 579

Small print.

No story comic until Monday due to illness.

Catalina's the best part of today's update. "She sure fit a lot on that little piece of paper."

"Playing with your cat?" Phrasing, Pandora.

And if you keep playing with her, she'll awaken... I think I played that game.

Hmmmm.

I'm tentatively shifting to the bigender/genderqueer Elliot headcannon/theory I've seen seen float around here.

Something about these last few panels..

Elliot seems like the guy to be what's necessary.

He just has preferences.

Also did Shive just slip in a massive Double Entendre there? "Play with your cat"

He either got somewhere around a thousand emails explaining such, or he got zero. No in-between.

This is why it bothers me that Sufficiently Advanced Technology and Sufficiently Analysed Magic are treated as opposites... The main difference between science ^note in the sense of physics, not the process of hypothesis and experimentation and magic is that the fundamental units of a scientific universe are things like particles, and charges, and forces, while the fundamental units of a magical universe are souls, and words, and meanings.

Interestingly, in our development of technology as tools, we are essentially trying to turn the universe from a scientific one into a magical one. Simple tools like hammers have simple user interfaces (swing it) and produce simple results (hit the thing), allowing us to create more complex tools that can produce broader results - while still, ideally, having to do less in order to use them. The more abstract it gets, the less you have to think about individual steps of applying force to shift the mass to close the volume to capture the energy to drive the piston etc and the easier it becomes to simply accomplish the result that you want.

In that sense, turning science into magic is the entire purpose of engineering.

edited 17th Feb '17 7:30:22 PM by Noaqiyeum

Comic 2313

Ah, friendship.

Reminds me of an idea I had.

You have this post-post-apocalypse society dealing with the technology of their ancestors which seems so advanced it's like magic, so Sufficiently Advance Technology, right?

Except it turns out to be Magitek, from their ancestors' Sufficiently Analyzed Magic. It turns out that they sufficiently analyzed it so much it looped right back around to being magic again.

You could probably do the same thing the other way too.

Elliot has almost never found an obstacle where he couldn't punch through.

Heh... given his status among the students, ever wonder if he's got his own series of Chuck Norris facts that's bandied about the school when he's not listening?

"Elliot Dunkel met Chuck Norris once. For the sake of the universe, they agreed not to arm-wrestle."

I'm surprised Elliot hasn't been investigated by the local Government magic unit. He's a walking political nightmare.

Who says he hasn't been? His best friend's father is the head of Magic CIA. I'm sure there's at least a few manila folders in Edward's filing cabinet with Elliot's name on them.

Pandora confirmed that. "Mr. Verres has been protecting you and your friends from government scrutiny by way of full disclosure."

NP 580

Post script.

I mean, I totally appreciate that Elliot is being true to himself (and, as a consequence, his friendship to Tedd) here. That said, while his words are probably sincere, he's a bit mistaken. The Will of Magic is presumably ancient and effectively a godlike entity. So far as we know, the limits that it has are self-imposed. When dealing with what evidence suggests is a being that's either omnipotent or close enough to be functionally similar to your level, the important thing to realize is that it never has to compromise. Sure, maybe you can convince it to compromise, but what it has to do and what it wants to do are two entirely different things.

Just as a for-instance, the Will of Magic could pick up the rules for the Old World Of Darkness and decide to make the rules similar to Mage: The Awakening - magic can be used just fine when around those aware of it and if done really subtly (the old "fireball bad, gas tank explosion good" rule of thumb), but if you start being "fireball in the heart of Times Square" blatant, you either fail, you take a huge hit of Paradox to remind you that Reality Warping Is Not a Toy, or both. Magic would still be "available," but it'd be even harder to work, and it most certainly would not be a compromise like Elliot is suggesting.

Unrelated to that, given that Dan is the one setting the rules, I think Shive is being a bit of Self-Deprecation with the "needy drama geek with a flair for the dramatic" description.

edited 21st Feb '17 7:54:39 AM by 32_Footsteps

Elliot is basically endorsing punching out Cthulhu. And as much as I've had the nagging gripe in the back of my head that Tedd is going to find some way to overthrow the Will of Magic by story's end, I find myself weirdly okay with the thought of Elliot punching it in its omnipotent face.

Not sure why doing basically the exact same f*cking thing sounds obnoxious if Tedd does it but awesome if Elliot does. Will have to think on this.

Because Eliot is basically Superman, and it's Superman's job to punch Cthulhu in the face for the good of the world. Tedd is a Mad Scientist, it's his job to learn things man was never meant to know, with a fifty-fifty chance that the world will either be improved or screwed over in the process.