El Goonish Shive III - Totally Adorkable!

[The Mormegil]

Ya she can alter reality enough to make her fly and do other obviously impossible stuff. She may be able to "Snap her fingers" as Pandora said and just have them straight up appear magically. They might not look exactly like them or be slightly off but it should be accurate enough.

Is this different from just a sexy dream though? It feels different just because this is intentional rather than incidental. I still would say this is probably not like morally reprehensible though. It just seems like it would be similar to thinking of a fantasy while alone. He imagination is just a lot more detailed than a regular one would be.

I would have no qualms about it myself. The way I see it, it would be morally reprehensible NOT to use this power in its entirety. I'm just wondering how Sarah feels about it.

[Silva Stormrage]

I would have no qualms about it myself. The way I see it, it would be morally reprehensible NOT to use this power in its entirety. I'm just wondering how Sarah feels about it.

Agreed I was just raising the question really. Also as Pandora noted that someone else in the government has this spell. Any chance it is Agent Craminum? I think it is at least likely.

[The Mormegil]

Agreed I was just raising the question really. Also as Pandora noted that someone else in the government has this spell. Any chance it is Agent Craminum? I think it is at least likely.

Yeah, that's what everyone seems to be guessing. I'm starting to believe it's a bit too obvious; ultimately still the most likely though.

[Silva Stormrage]

Yeah, that's what everyone seems to be guessing. I'm starting to believe it's a bit too obvious; ultimately still the most likely though.

Oh darn I thought I was being clever . I don't check the official forums at all.

[The Mormegil]

Oh darn I thought I was being clever . I don't check the official forums at all.

Yeah I thought that too, and so did all of Twitter

[The Mormegil]

So THIS is Pandora's scheme. "You can't use this totally awesome spell unless there's extra magic energy around, so have fun helping your friends taking care of the problem!" Uh, oh. Poor Sarah.

[Douglas]

So THIS is Pandora's scheme. "You can't use this totally awesome spell unless there's extra magic energy around, so have fun helping your friends taking care of the problem!" Uh, oh. Poor Sarah.

Or maybe Sarah's gained power since meeting Jerry by using Tedd's watches all the time. The watches require the extra power near Moperville to work for most people, but I think they pull power from the user first, so using them may have exercised Sarah's (rather small) reserves of magic power.

Whether that's true or not, now that she has a spell of her own she should be able to build up power by practicing it a lot. The Moperville energy buildup may be a necessary training support tool for her for the moment, but she should outgrow it eventually. If all else fails, Tedd should be able to make a magic battery for her, like that gauntlet that let him see the invisible whale.

[Rater202]

Yeah, it's been said that using devices like the watches can increase magical power and lead to Awakening.

[Lissou]

Yeah, it's been said that using devices like the watches can increase magical power and lead to Awakening.

Ah. I thought since Tedd can use the watches fine but has 0 magical power and will never awaken, that the watches acted the same with everyone else and not just him. It seemed weird that it would increase people's power, but only if they weren't Tedd. I guess that's due to the whole rarity thing.

[Mewtarthio]

I believe the watches draw power from the nearest available source. So, for most people, even non-magical ones like Sarah, they draw power from the wearer, which counts as magical exercise and makes them more likely to Awaken. For Tedd, who has no magical power (and presumably for people who've exhausted their own reserves, like burnt-out Nanase), the watches draw from Moperville's copious ambient energy.

[Qwertystop]

Ah. I thought since Tedd can use the watches fine but has 0 magical power and will never awaken, that the watches acted the same with everyone else and not just him. It seemed weird that it would increase people's power, but only if they weren't Tedd. I guess that's due to the whole rarity thing.

We already got an explicit answer to this. Panel 6.

No potential != no power.

[Rater202]

Ah. I thought since Tedd can use the watches fine but has 0 magical power and will never awaken, that the watches acted the same with everyone else and not just him. It seemed weird that it would increase people's power, but only if they weren't Tedd. I guess that's due to the whole rarity thing.

Tedd done't have no magical power, it's just he doesn't have the potential to get spells.

The Watches are a magical implement-Like a Magic Wand.

you program the spell into the wand and it can be charged with magical energy-in the case of the watches, from Moperville's ambient magic.

It's not your power going into the casting, when you activate the implement, and it's not your spell, but you're still the one doing the casting and thus it counts as casting a spell as far as getting "experience" counts.

Tedd's problem is he has almost no magical potential, and thus can't cast spells of his own. He has to use implements like the TF watches.

Or at least that was the case before Pandora marked him. I get the feeling that his "more dangerous rarity" powers are not meant to interact with normal spells.

[Lord Raziere]

Or at least that was the case before Pandora marked him. I get the feeling that his "more dangerous rarity" powers are not meant to interact with normal spells.

.....wait.

magical system with two things not supposed to go together + Dan is a magic the gathering fan + this reminds me of Mistborn = Tedd has a broken magic combo

[Yuki Akuma]

Remember: Grace cannot use the watches, because her magical energy is incompatible with Earth-style magic. If the watches didn't draw on the user at all, that wouldn't be a problem - ergo, the watches do draw on the wearer.

[Rater202]

Revision: Implements such as wands or the watches mostly draw on stored reserves or ambient magic.

The Ambient Magic being the reasons the watches work at all us something established

[Qwertystop]

We still don't know if the ambient magic means everyone's got a bigger personal pool/faster regen rate or if the watches (and personal spells) are just drawing from it. Nothing's come up where there would be a distinction, except possibly Tedd's gauntlet (it's implied that it draws from what he's got, not ambiance, because if it drew from ambiance he wouldn't need to put it on to charge it. If it drains faster than he regenerates, its charging speed would be capped to his regeneration speed after the initial rush - given that, would leaving town change the speed of a long-term charge?)

[Calemyr]

We still don't know if the ambient magic means everyone's got a bigger personal pool/faster regen rate or if the watches (and personal spells) are just drawing from it. Nothing's come up where there would be a distinction, except possibly Tedd's gauntlet (it's implied that it draws from what he's got, not ambiance, because if it drew from ambiance he wouldn't need to put it on to charge it. If it drains faster than he regenerates, its charging speed would be capped to his regeneration speed after the initial rush - given that, would leaving town change the speed of a long-term charge?)

They took out Tengu by draining the energy in the environment. Without it fueling his transformation he got burnt pretty fast.

[Qwertystop]

They took out Tengu by draining the energy in the environment. Without it fueling his transformation he got burnt pretty fast.

That works either way, though. We don't know whether Tengu's spell drew from both his personal pool and the environment (and, when the environment ran out, he couldn't keep it up running just off of his personal pool) or whether it drew only from his personal supply of magic, but the environmental magic was rapidly refilling that supply as it was used (same result - when there's no more environmental energy, he runs out and can't refill).

The only thing we know for sure about usage is that the guardian forms ran off environmental energy, but they're generally very odd. That just tells us that (some?) spells can use environmental magic directly. Separately, we know that Ellen stopped getting buildup issues when she left town for a short time, so environmental magic can also affect personal energy gain rates.

We don't know if spells other than the guardian forms (a special case in a lot of ways already) use environmental magic directly, or if the proportion of environmental to personal use can be varied if you know how apart from the guardian forms cheating it.

We do know that spell catalysts like wands and watches can store energy internally, but again we don't know how the environmental magic has an effect. It might be increasing the user's supply, it might be increasing the watch's battery capacity, it might be feeding into the spell directly, it might be a mix. Even Grace's inability doesn't really help - the watches can't cast spells on their own, or without the whole activation sequence, so even if all the required power is there directly from the watch and/or environment, Grace still couldn't trigger it.

In absence of further experiments (or appropriate situations), we don't know which is which for any of this. Of course, until then, it also sort of doesn't matter - until something comes up that makes a distinction again, like with Not-Tengu, it doesn't have any effect on what we see; if it did that'd be more evidence one way or the other.

[Lissou]

Well, we got our answer/clarification with today's comic: Sarah is not stronger and does not have more magic energy, but using the spell over and over could cause her to awaken and develop her own magic energy. As it is, she's only using the ambient energy.

So I guess it's in Sarah's interest not to get rid of that extra energy right away. On the other hand, the more she uses her spell, the more she uses it up. If she uses it up somehow before she awakes.... I don't think that will happen, though.

Interesting all around, at any rate.

[Douglas]

Ok, so I'm seeing ridiculously strong incentive for Sarah to use this spell all the time, to both exercise her metaphorical magic muscles and mitigate the magic energy overload problem. This might cause issues with secrecy and temptation, but I don't think it will turn her against solving the ambient energy problem; not if she's smart about it, at least - Tedd should be able to make a magic energy battery like his gauntlet for her.

[Cavelcade]

Intellectually, yes, Sarah will still see the long term necessity of removing the ambient magic (probably). But I can see an emotional resistance to the idea coming to the fore pretty easily, possibly manifesting it as her trying to put off the inevitable getting rid of ambient magic and working against Tedd doing it straight away.

People are very good at justifying these things to themselves. I can see Sarah feeling extremely guilty over it and eventually doing the right thing, though.

[Rater202]

As it is, she's only using the ambient energy.

Read the comentary-she does have some magical enrgy, but it's not enough to cast the spell-she uses up her own juice, then takes the ambient enrgy to fill in the gaps.

Ok, so I'm seeing ridiculously strong incentive for Sarah to use this spell all the time, to both exercise her metaphorical magic muscles and mitigate the magic energy overload problem. This might cause issues with secrecy and temptation, but I don't think it will turn her against solving the ambient energy problem; not if she's smart about it, at least - Tedd should be able to make a magic energy battery like his gauntlet for her.

Again in the commentary-constant use won't make her stronger-Her second casting was apparently all ambient energy as she'd used up her personal pool on the first spell. Contant would be bad, but a few times a day would probably work, with time in between to recoup her lost energy.

[Lissou]

Read the comentary-she does have some magical enrgy, but it's not enough to cast the spell-she uses up her own juice, then takes the ambient enrgy to fill in the gaps.

True of the first time she casts it after a while, but if she casts the spell often, she'll be using only ambient energy from the second time on. If she wants to muscle her magic muscles she needs to wait long enough between each time she uses it. However if she wants to force an awakening she might need to use it pretty much non-stop. Those might get in the way of each other (although when she goes to bed hopefully that gives her time enough to replenish her energy. We don't really have a time frame of how long it would take her. Does it replenish slowly because she's not a strong caster and not able to replenish her energy as fast as more experienced users, or does it replenish fast because it's the same rate for everyone and she hits her cap really quickly?).

[halfeye]

Again in the commentary-constant use won't make her stronger-Her second casting was apparently all ambient energy as she'd used up her personal pool on the first spell. Contant would be bad, but a few times a day would probably work, with time in between to recoup her lost energy.

There's the caveat at the end:

(assuming Pandora is to be believed)

That's a total let-out for the author changing his mind. We know she misleads (I'm not certain about lies because my memory is terrible, but probably that too).

[Squark]

I don't think Pandora lies- Mostly because bending the truth is more fun for her, as opposed to any actual principles, but still.

[Mewtarthio]

She does strike me as the sort of psuedo-fey creature that always speaks in half-truths just to inwardly chuckle at the irony of her words.

[Qwertystop]

She does strike me as the sort of psuedo-fey creature that always speaks in half-truths just to inwardly chuckle at the irony of her words.

Exactly. She's almost definitely not actually unable to lie, but it's a fun little thing to do - maybe moreso with her, since she's all about unpredictability and little challenges.

[Landis963]

So what's the other half of the truth?

[Rater202]

I like to think that Pandora sometimes tells people the exact and complete truth, but relies on either her personal reputation or the reputation of the Fae-like immortals to make people misjudge her words-either they take her at face value and they do what she wants, or they distrust her and do the opposite of what she wants which could potentially lead to unpredictable results.

Evidence: Back when Magus first appeared, she told Wolf, Cranium, and Edward Verres exactly what happened, but did so in her "creepy child form" and did so using an egg metaphor.

Here she's telling Sarah exactly how her spell works, but is once again in creepy child form and all Sarah knows about her is she appeared on television and caused a panic, and that she's probably the one going around and marking people for mysterious reasons. Either Sarah believes her, or she doesn't do to not trusting the creepy magic child.

[Gez]

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2049

What is up with Ashley and books, though? I'd she allergic or something? In fact, that would be pretty funny.

She really likes reading, and is likely to get sucked in and trapped.

That would be funny after this setup.

I think the most likely scenario is that she hates reading books - like, really can't stand it - but she's ashamed of it and is terrible at fibbing, so she's bound to do something really stupid (likely to impress Elliott). Liz, being level-headed, knows this is a really bad idea, they've discussed it before. Naturally Elliott is like, even worse when it comes to reading, so it's really all in her head. We have a lot of room for embarrassing misunderstandings.

The way Liz told her "no bookstore", my guess is that she loves reading, and Liz thinks such a nerdy thing would be a turnoff for guys (or even, it has been in the past).

Pretending you don't like something that you do doesn't sound like something Liz would encourage to me as that is more or less the definition of conformity.

Well. Maybe the reason is a bit more complicated, something like "books explode if Ashley gets too close to them" or something, but I don't think the reason is "Ashley doesn't like reading". Not from her reaction to being told to avoid the bookstore. Plus she wouldn't need to be told that if she didn't like books in the first place. So I think Ashley likes books and is likely to want to go to the bookstore but for some reason, it's a good idea for her not to.

Oh, well yea. I am leaning towards "gets sucked in" myself which is not the same as not wanting Elliot to know that she likes reading.

Oh, I see. I didn't mean "Liz doesn't want Elliot to ever learn that Ashley likes reading". I meant "Liz thinks that getting sucked into a book and completely ignoring your date as a result probably isn't a first date kind of thing to do and could completely blow her chances".

really? You guys think she's into reading? We'll see. I still think everything points to the contrary. There could be a subversion, but that's not what I expect here.

Then, why was her answer to "don't go to the bookstore" "what's wrong with bookstores?" rather than something like "eww, of course not! Those are full of books!"? And why would Liz have to tell her to stay away from a place she's already want to stay away from?

Look at her eyes. Also, she literally says "books are great they're full of paper and have words in them".

As for why she'd have to stay away from the bookstore, I think it's to avoid to get in a situation where she'd feel forced to lie about reading (peer pressure and a culture of "reading is for smart people"), because she's really bad at lying. As you can see in the above panel, and as she said herself.

Because we have obvious evidence. Yes, she was a kid back then, but I have yet to find a person, who outgrew books or comics, when they really liked it before.

That's evidence she likes manga, not books. That's hugely different.

Here is an idea? Judging by the fact that Mr. Shive said something like "no one will guess this", I think it will be something Wacky (capital W). My guess is that the last time she went into a book store she ended up making a book fort, which Liz(?) had to spend the whole day coaxing her out of. The employees of said book store still have bumps on their heads from the books dropped on them when they laid siege on Ashley.

Well that was funny.