El Goonish Shive

:) Sorry, I just feel like you're ascribing much deeper (or perhaps more shallow) motives to Pandora in her trying to short-circuit drama when it probably had more to do with her (and Dan's) propensity to transformation powers.

Of course, as noted, Grace is kind of doing the same thing, assuming that Pandora must have done this due to Tedd, or Sarah, instead of just being opportunistic about finding someone who well fit who she wants to give marks to.

It has to be restated that I don't think anyone here believes Shive has any intention of ascribing these meanings to the things he writes. He seems to be a magnet of unfortunate implications these last few storylines, and this seems to be another case of it. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing he'd write on purpose. If anything, I think he'd be horrified at the possibility.

Yeah I think this is an issue rooted in how long it took to even address the issue at all that transformation magic COULD be used for this sort of thing. This story has years of baggage and it takes a skilled hand to navigate it.

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Creed of the Happy Pessimist:Always expect the worst. Then, when it happens, it was only what you expected. All else is a happy surprise.

...how is she moving one side of the scale up by holding the down part of it? Are the strings on the scale solid wires?

I expect several people will tweet at Shive about that and he'll change it.

Presumably she lifted it from the top, lightly enough that the strings remained under tension. A scale does want to move, after all; if you had to heave on it, it wouldn't be much use.

Edited by Daremo on Jan 18th 2019 at 7:38:43 AM

Creed of the Happy Pessimist:Always expect the worst. Then, when it happens, it was only what you expected. All else is a happy surprise.

Yeah, but the way she's moving it... it doesn't feel physically possible, that's all. Feels like the result would be different from where her hand is and the motion she's doing.

I'm going to go with solid wires.

Writer, or something. And... a button? 🖲️

This is the first puzzle in this NP arc I actually liked.

The bowling ball was too ridiculous to take seriously. The gecko thing being dependent on a color pattern we can't see in the comic's grayscale was a weird choice. Then the shrinky-pin was so uncomfortable that Shive tried to make an Author's Saving Throw to make it feel less sexual harassy - to negligible effect.

But this is fun. I like the way this one's going. It feels logic puzzly.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 18th 2019 at 8:19:51 AM

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I just realised something really disturbing.

Pandora knew Sam was trans, as she likely detected the affinity at the card tournament, even if she didn't mark him then. She could reasonably deduce he was closeted from his behaviour and from the affinity itself. And she knew about his date with Sarah.

And what did she do? She gave Sarah an insanely powerful perception spell and suggested that she use it to look at people naked.

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That's... wow, that is very fucked up.

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There no way Shive was intentionally implying that though.

Writer, or something. And... a button? 🖲️

Yeah, that's almost certainly just Shive making a joke about Sarah being embarassed by the thought of naked people.

...people who live in glass houses...

That's pretty much the definition of malicious interpreting right there.

Creed of the Happy Pessimist:Always expect the worst. Then, when it happens, it was only what you expected. All else is a happy surprise.

Yeah, from what I've gathered the consensus is that Shive is more likely to be Innocently Insensitive than deliberately malicious.

Side note: "deliberately malicious" is making me picture an Evil alternative to Lucky Charms cereal ^note which are magically delicious

Edited by sgamer82 on Jan 19th 2019 at 8:20:52 AM

And would that actually reveal anything to Sarah? My impression of her power was that she only sees what she expects to see, because she's making the world up on her own. So she would see on Sam whatever she expects to see on Sam.

If she poofed his clothes off, she'd see what she expects. If she removed them by hand, she'd see what's really there.

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I think what Pandora is suggesting was intentionally presented as fucked up. She's suggesting using the spell to violate someone's privacy under the pretense of doing something practical with it, whereas she's really trying to tempt Sarah into doing it for her own gratification. Sarah's reaction is appropriately appalled.

I mean, yeah she's blushing, and the "kinky" aspect appeals to her on some level, but on the cognitive level she morally objects and thus wouldn't do it. We later do see her using the sim in a fetishy way, but she uses transformed clones of herself rather than a direct simulation of other people (although making the transformed clones look like real people opens a different can of worms).

In the same scene, Pandora reveals that she's also violated Sarah's privacy by spying on her naked. I think it was to imply that Pandora is mentally so far gone that she no longer has empathy for humans- at least, maybe not when she's in her Demonic Angelica Pickles mode (since the form change comes with a massive personality shift for her).

So, there's a certain amount to unpack there that's deliberately messed up. I think we already talked about the horrific possibility that Sarah might consider doing that to Sam at the time, but there was no evidence then that Pandora specifically had him in mind, or even knew anything about him.

And I don't believe it was authorial intent that she was alluding specifically to him. But now that we know that Pandora knew there was a particular guy Sarah was interested in, and that privacy might be particularly important to said guy, the whole interaction comes across as even more perverse.

So it's not entirely a case of Innocently Insensitive as Dan knows enough about consent and stuff to know when he's writing a character implying something bad (and there's nothing wrong with doing so as a writer as long as you don't condone those actions). But I suspect giving Sam a mark was an afterthought from Dan's perspective, and it just isn't sitting right with other established events (in addition to issues of erasure), and it's certainly not reflecting as well on Pandora as he intended.

Edited by PapercutChainsaw on Jan 19th 2019 at 11:08:00 AM

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What.
Everyone who creates a character can write a motivation into them. People are as free to analyze a fictional character's wants or knows as they are to do so about a human being, even though the "waste of time" factor may not be the same.

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If the bowls are heavy enough, as soon as you lift one the other's weight will pull the strings taut.

Edited by Medinoc on Jan 21st 2019 at 11:24:29 AM

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

...

So. Gravity, then. Gravity is how that is happening.

I refrained from joining in on the discussion but her lifting the bowl was bothering me too. And now, after all the deliberation about how the scale and wires are constructed, Captain Obvious comes in and suggests that basic physics are what did it. And it makes perfect sense.

Wow. I'm gonna go sit in the corner and feel stupid for a few minutes.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 21st 2019 at 8:30:12 AM

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I still sustain that it looks weird the way it's drawn, though, with the strings not moving like they're solid wires.

At this point, I'll just say that, even if Shive doesn't want an editor (and keep in mind, I'm still very much team "Shive needs an editor"), he should at least run certain ideas past a couple of trusted individuals to see if there are any Unfortunate Implications that ought to be worked out.

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I was referring to this:

which implies that the only reason we're criticizing stuff is because we want things to be more pain and drama and Nothing else, and that Pandora would not Understand why we would want that.

And I took issue with this becaues it was ascribing this as a decision Pandora was making as a living breathing person, and us questioning it in this way was being dickish.

When we are questioning it based on the actions of Shive. The Writer. And yes that's an important distinction to make because at the end of the day, Pandora isn't a real person, and Shive is, and this is ultimately a story, and thus ascribing morality to people's criticisms based on In Universe Reasons is messy and in this case, felt passive aggressive.

Edited by MrAHR on Jan 22nd 2019 at 3:40:47 PM

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Double Post: New comic. And this plot is still about grace!

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