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It's interesting that Mark swears "Jesus", but the city usually cusses by the Founder (but Undine still seems to recognize that it's a swear)
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Dec 27, 2020 19:23
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cropoval posted:Had to do considerable digging to find this tweet, but this appears to actually be relevant: 
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Dec 28, 2020 06:37
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if she's already downed four MGs, including one present, that's moved a fair bit beyond 'just' wanting to scare people
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Jan 2, 2021 20:34
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Given the way the inner barrier sticks to buildings, and the apparent reliance on MGs to clear wandering monsters in four hours city-wide, you'd think all urban blocks would be built like fortified cubes with open, defensible sight-lines, separated by long, expansive boulevards with minimal places to hide. Who would want to live in a secluded alleyway? Privacy would have a steep cost of getting eaten alive. Scenes set during MG patrols depict narrow streets and lanes, or steep sloping roofs that would prevent any MG hopping from rooftop to rooftop from seeing that the far side of your house features Goop's greatest hits holding court until 1:59am. But why? It's clearly adaptable, it even wraps around people's laundry. ... thinking too hard about how the inner and outer barriers work is probably a fool's errand, isn't it ronya fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 09:28
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it doesn't seem to be actually super-dire situation inasmuch as normalized into an institution like, e.g., the fire brigade. Yes, every now and then someone's house burns down (in any sufficiently large city that's at least a few every day), and particularly massive tragedies inform civil engineering for decades afterwards, but daily life doesn't revolve around the all-encompassing Threat of Fire. It just passively forms the built environment, like construction code, and unless one is a civil defence planner or a massive nerd, most people would just take it as normal. crash barriers anticipating vehicular collisions dot many city centers today, but most folks wouldn't notice unless specifically pointed out to them... ronya fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 15:35
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presumably Lettie just told the police what she knows about a missing persons case, so it's time to drag the people who last saw the person alive into a room to make a Statement
ronya fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 08:55
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They don't know or even think that it is murder, do they? Cassidy is just officially missing. She vanished on a night which was known to be particularly rough. Her powers are registered so it would be known that she wouldn't leave a body if she got ambushed with her power up. On the balance of evidence one would just assume she got killed in action (which is true, in any case). So now it's time to drag all her immediate peers to the counselor's office to break the official news gently and assure them that it isn't their fault even if they might feel it is. It's still in a professional context (of "you're her immediate serving colleagues and peers, so you deserve to be notified privately so that you can process your grief before we announce it") and presumably the gentle probing of "so uh you saw her alive last, did she say anything that might have indicated her plans or at least the direction she was heading in" will come later, but it doesn't look suspicious presently... ronya fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Apr 4, 2021 |
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Apr 4, 2021 06:38
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when they interview Vedika she'll just do the "let me show you what I saw" thing won't she
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Apr 15, 2021 01:43
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Evil Tessa seems too trite wonder if she'll just grab yet another opportunity to blame herself in a kind of self-consciously self-sabotaging way
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Jul 22, 2021 11:04
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Team Alchemical was all about combining attacks in the only time we see them in action together The initial concept did say: quote:Tessa from Sleepless Domain! Just Gwen and Sally to go now for this set. but it doesn't really come through in the first chapter as eventually written - Tessa needs time to 'charge up' her orbital lance or whatever, which seems like a big weakness against the really small, twitchy, fast-moving stuff that is shown in later chapters. She doesn't answer Sylvia's question of why Tessa always assigns herself the finishing blow, which suggests to the reader that she doesn't have one. ronya fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 16:44
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unrelated: this is darkly funny in retrospect
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Jul 29, 2021 18:29
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https://twitter.com/SleeplessDomain/status/1440893394264416256 Prediction: I don't think Tessa is going to the dark side so easily - "all my friends have been killed, I'm insane now, so I work for the murderer" is just too tired as an idea. Goops as immensely powerful and petty but maybe not very bright fits in with previous characterization. Rather, she tells Goops to buzz off and now has the more interesting challenge of trying to communicate the existence of a threat that programmatically wipes itself from one's memory whenever one looks at the Outer Barrier or triggers any number of other autoforgetting traps. Paging the Mahou Antimemetics Division to the red telephone...? e: mirror since site is down 
ronya fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Sep 23, 2021 |
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Sep 23, 2021 09:28
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Wonder what happens if Vedika is talking to someone whilst they are being mindwhammied hence this foreshadowing, I guess
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Sep 23, 2021 10:29
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Otherkinsey Scale posted:If that's where things are going, I think Cagle's laid the work in getting us from point A to point B. Tessa's gone from being someone powerful and important to being just another high-schooler, and we've seen exactly how poorly she's handling the change. Now, here's someone telling her she matters again. And you'd think having killed her friends would get in the way of that, but Tessa's anger here remains unexpressed - it comes through in her body language, but she's not yet said anything about it. I don't feel like we're ever shown Tessa as having a generic desire to be better than normal. She did want to be queen bee amongst her friends - in the pre-power scene, she is sitting above the other four - but we are never shown her claiming influence or power or recognition outside that peer group
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Sep 24, 2021 04:04
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Sep 25, 2021 06:31
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Sylvia has her own reasons to resent Tessa's role: she was dependent on her MG income as sole earner for her family, so she needed Tessa to give her more air time (cough) This led her to just continuously enable Sally's anxieties (not that she would like to listen to Sally herself) Gwen just shuts off, leaving Tessa to rely on Undine to back her up, but Undine just wants to be peacemaker... just a toxic group dynamic all around. Really well-portrayed in so few pages 
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Oct 18, 2021 07:43
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they don't train or strategize their powers; that HP has a training regimen at all or flashback Undine briefly flirts with being clever with her powers is suggested to be unusual. (a little reminiscent of how ancient Greek city states ensured physical fitness of their hoplites: i.e., they didn't) this means that MG teams really are coasting heavily on whatever their talent grants them in order to manage risks. "NEEDED" is dicey (of what is suggested to be a heavily showbiz job rather than a paramilitary, existential one, at least in normal times; support staff are camera crew and press agents rather than paramedics). Would having someone to oneshot boss monsters be necessary with prerequisite drilling and practice and coordination? Probably not; HP's alive, after all. Would they actually drill, practice, or coordinate if someone to oneshot boss monsters is around? Well - why would you, that's, like, work.  Fourteen-year-olds have got poo poo to do in their life, man.
ronya fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Oct 18, 2021 |
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Oct 18, 2021 19:07
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it's not the same dress - Tessa's is a strapless ballgown
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Oct 30, 2021 04:58
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panel three is viscerally unsettling to me What exact part of Tessa's question got neatly snipped out of her mind so that it leaves what's left by panel 4? If that's how the memetic censor works, it's be obviously noticeable IRL - people halting mid-sentence and such
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Nov 1, 2021 05:23
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I'm not a super fan of the Dark MG twist but I trust Cube to execute it well Already lampshaded that Goops doesn't seem all that mature, and I don't think there's much fiction exploring "so hey uh manipulating people isn't as trivial as I thought it would be, turns out motivations are complex yo" from the MG antagonist side. Shades of Cassidy's own complex: maybe the anime you thought you were starring in isn't. And we still don't know what Mark is up to.
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Nov 11, 2021 19:30
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Niton posted:Goops wants revenge against the Woman in White for unnnamed, presumably personal, grievances. exactly, right? Tessa's problem was impostor syndrome up the wazoo: the desire to be special, the intense guilt about specialness, vacillating between lashing out in resentment over the burden and demanding recognition of that self-concept what does one really expect from taking this and cranking it up to 11 with even more power and a righteous mandate for an even more ambitious campaign against besides the surface desire to give the WiW a bloody nose, it's not much compatible with a campaign of personalized vengeance ronya fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Nov 12, 2021 |
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Nov 12, 2021 05:57
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those are some absurdly large spiral-bound notebook and pens
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Mar 17, 2022 14:43
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what is with MGs and wanting to get within lapel-grabbing distance in a world of monsters with claws and teeth and venom why isn't every street a boulevard with clear sightlines with a MG sniper nest parked at every intersection e: this post is facetious to be clear ronya fucked around with this message at 08:27 on May 28, 2022 |
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May 28, 2022 08:21
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RIP head nurse, you were too unflappable to live
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Jun 13, 2022 18:54
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Narratively, if it were intended to be read as Tessa, chapter 18.5 would not be written with Goops in the driver's seat. It could just have easily been written with Tessa's pov exploring her rationalizations for taking up Goop's offer Right now we seem to be exploring a joint Goops-Tessa fusion that doesn't map onto any relatable human experience really
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Nov 2, 2022 12:02
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Undine was the bass player on a hit band herself. Fame-adjacent. It does seem clear that the training club de facto revolves around HP - "it's HP's club", it's the club she started, plus club members literally physically follow her around when they show up on page together. During their crisis meeting she winds up sitting in the center after everyone sits back down. It's a mirror to the power dynamic of Team Alchemical. I don't know how much Cagle intended for the rest of the club to also be intimidatingly interesting people, as opposed to HP plus randos. Club members do seem to be all set up as 'adjacent' people, right down to the newest member herself being mainly known as Famous MG's Younger Sister. Having HP not overshadow all of them would undermine the narrative symmetry. ronya fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Jan 23, 2023 |
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Jan 23, 2023 16:42
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I'm full of so-how-big-is-the-city-really questions and it looks like the SD discord is too
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Jan 31, 2023 05:07
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There must be quite a lot of MGs for some MGs to be considered celebrities relative to the rest I can buy the authorial belief-suspension fiat to prevent MGs from being used in industrial roles - allowing magitek or mundane tech so advanced that the powers MGs exhibit don't add any value would make the setting unrelatable But this also intrudes onto the tricky question of MG combat power scaling, which is central to Tessa's character motivation and Undine's sense of inferiority. There are presumably so many average MGs that the city is not seriously under threat (something can be dangerous but well-controlled, like fires and fire regulation IRL) to the point where combat MGs mostly disdain training or planning and just wing it. There's unpowered civilians hanging around as film crew but none as combat support officers to force-multiply MGs, because it's not really necessary to do so. The value-add of being an exceptionally powerful combat MG seems to be mostly social, like being a sports superstar. It doesn't really move the needle on securing the city in the aggregate... .... most of the time, anyway! The appearance of a really dangerous magical enemy - or the unexpected unreliability of the inner barrier - changes the external motivation quite a lot. It makes the "I'm the most powerful I should be making the battle calls because our entire strategy hinges on when I can kaboom something" inciting conflict substantially different from merely wanting to be queen of the playground sandpit I don't think the narrative is going to veer into sudden serious-business "sorry, y'all announcement on your team-up tonight is cancelled because all team-ups have been cancelled you've all been conscripted here are your draft letters" but I feel like the tension has to be answered in some way ronya fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Feb 2, 2023 |
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Feb 2, 2023 07:58
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A society that is convinced it is a good and noble collective sacrifice would absolutely send their teenage daughters into it, for the most part with enthusiasm, and those daughters would likewise be mostly enthusiastic, at least initially: This was real! Millions of children were in it, even from families tortured and killed by other youths in the same movement, never mind purple goop horrors from beyond the veil! "But y'all are child soldiers" would be a criticism met with bafflement in that situation, I think. All that said, it's not very relatable narrative material to Average Reader Of Online Mahou Comics perhaps, so I doubt it's steering the narrative ship that way. I think. ronya fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Feb 3, 2023 |
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Feb 3, 2023 07:16
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There's no need for denial - if it is perceived as a noble contribution for a righteous cause, people will do it. If it's not actually all that dangerous, it may run on for many decades without backlash and disillusionment. People still show up to uniformed youth groups today. Point is, a sense of a really dangerous magical threat dominating the A-plot undermines Tessa's conflict. She's the only one that shows up to the strategy meeting in chap1. Obviously it's a little self-serving if the one who is really powerful also insists that the threat is really dangerous (therefore listen to what I tell you to do), but then this theme is undermined if the threat then does become really dangerous. So some kind of spanner in the Spectre of Stressa seems imminent. ronya fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Feb 3, 2023 |
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Feb 3, 2023 17:42
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 https://www.sleeplessdomain.com/comic/chapter-14-page-09 so they presumably disagreed about something Leila Nasri (her surname is used in the older tags) seems to promote HP's media presence intensely, whereas Arthur is suggested to manage quite a raft of teams, doesn't follow individual members all that closely, and might be open to just writing off what was never a A-lister media career anyway (for quite logical reasons that one might suggest to Undine: even if she does want to go out still MG'ing, she might want to take her final years until natural retirement taking it easy). Speculation based on a few pages at most, of course, but it seems like the obvious point of disagreement. ronya fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Mar 19, 2023 |
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Mar 18, 2023 20:10
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The working theory is messed-up MG and they can say: we (that is, HP, the famous celebrity and not a backup dancer survivor) think there's a rogue MG out there stalking and killing other MGs and we've both seen her. Also she makes prank calls sometimes? The famous solo MG leading a vengeance crusade on-behalf-of writes its own celebrity TV headlines We the reader know wot did it, but in-universe nobody has any reason to link it to the barrier shutting down early It's going to be awkward if a reporter ambushes the other survivor of the Team Alchemical massacre for a reaction. ronya fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Apr 23, 2023 |
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Apr 23, 2023 11:09
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so, leaning into the inspirational role model public image to pitch a "we know you're struggling with your powers o mystery mahou and we're here to help" message?
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Jun 26, 2023 17:45
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I don't think a culture inured to superpowered child soldiers would have a taboo around child soldiers. It's more like being a Soviet gymnast: some of you will die, some of you will have life-changing injuries, most of you will have a mediocre career before fading back into normal life, but a few will be celebrated national stars, and anyway your informed consent in the stakes - if you are identified early to have potential - may be less than entirely ideal. Unfortunately the reader is not shown how many children have the dream (it can't be that frequent, or it wouldn't be special) and yet do not participate in civil defence. The vivid and sudden hair colour should make it impossible to hide. But Rue does not appear to suffer any social sanction. Perhaps non-combat and non-useful powers are common enough that merely being an MG is not tantamount to being a useful MG.
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Aug 10, 2023 17:04
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Captain Oblivious posted:Is letting go quite how you'd describe getting to this point, Tessa? Is it really? I mean, she walked out expecting death. That's a kind of letting go. it only makes sense as a remark if post-merger Tessa doesn't really view herself in continuity with pre-merger Tessa, since she seems aware that her current motivations and goals are not Tessa original flavour's motivations (survivor guilt, etc.)
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Sep 3, 2023 21:03
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I wonder what % of each age cohort gets mystical mahou powerz Too rare and there'd be a lot more buzz about the certainty of passing on powers via the magic of teen pregnancy
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Dec 10, 2023 11:16
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