Any resemblance to wizards from urban fantasy novels who don't actually wear hats in the canon but do on most of the novel covers is entirely coincidental.

Were I vaguely alluding to Rhoda reading a novel series, it would be The Dresden Files, but I sort of expect that whole "doesn't wear a hat in canon but does on the cover" thing applies to more than one character. Hats look good on covers.

Leading up to this, I considered whether Grace would have shown Rhoda a picture of Tedd, and the answer was a definite "no." Not because Grace wouldn't enjoy taking and sharing pictures, but because both Tedd and Grace habitually wouldn't take pictures due to secretive magic nonsense. They're very much not in the habit of doing that.

- Diane remembering upset Rhoda just before Rhoda is assertive

- (Two pages later) Intimidating Rhoda

- Rhoda gets in trouble by being assertive

Tiny-but-fierce passive area of effect intimidates anyone within a particular radius who fails their roll against being spooked.

Which stat is necessary will vary by system, and I am not just saying that because I don't know what it would be in the specific system I'm thinking of.

Maybe Will.

—

- Saturday EGSNP

- Pancakes

"The parking garage should always be next to where I want to go.

"I don't think that's possible."

"I am learning magic. I WILL MAKE IT POSSIBLE."

An incredible mystery

I'm about to solve a mystery that I'm sure every last one of you has been wondering about:

Tedd and Grace didn't enter the Dunkel household with any luggage, so how did they bring their outfits with them?!

"They put sets of clothes in Hope's suite before going to the Dunkel's."

They put sets of clothes in—Oh. Um...

Well, it hadn't been mentioned, and now it has, so... ADDRESSED!

Interview!

I've heard what Ellen says in panel four as essentially what's happening at a job interview. You've impressed them enough on paper to be there. What's left is to show that you're someone they want to work with.

Which I assume is very much speaking generally, and there's always exceptions when speaking generally. Exceptions such as "hi there, hello, IMMEDIATELY TAKE THIS APTITUDE TEST and solve this riddle three."

But it makes sense to me.

—

- Thursday EGSNP

I don't imagine that everyone who reads this comic gets their lessons on how to handle interpersonal situations from it.

Regardless, I really wanted to point out that, no, it's usually not a good idea to respond how Ellen did.

Anyway, I find myself thinking about footstep noise.

The entrance to Hope's suite is below the stairs. If not for dimensional nonsense, the stairs would overlap a great deal with the first room. Because there is dimensional nonsense, however, the sound of those footsteps would have to bounce around and go through the entrance, and there wouldn't be footstep noises where the stairs and room (sort of) overlap.

But... The entrance to the room is the only part that "overlaps" with the outside reality... Sound clearly travels through that entrance, but the walls themselves are beyond the entrance. Sound from outside wouldn't vibrate through those walls, they'd have to come through the open entrance, so...

If every wall, floor, and ceiling is soundproofed, but there's an open door-sized opening, what does that do to sounds going in and out of the room? How soundproof, if at all, is it?

I'm writing this way too late at night to think through this properly. I just wanted to point out that the overlap with stairs was weird, but now I'm trying to figure out how interdimensional soundproofing works.

—

- Tuesday EGSNP

I recently tried mapping out the various paths a knight piece could take to get an idea of what spaces were relatively safe from its L-shaped wrath. Long story short, knight can wind up a lot of places a novice might not expect. Where they can end up changes a great deal move to move, and the L-shape is just unintuitive enough to feel sneaky.

Had I the sheer audacity to redesign chess pieces without changing the rules associated with them, I might turn the knights into rogues (apologies to anyone terrible offended by the very idea).

With rooks, I like the idea of someone who charges. I'd say they could be knights, but I have to admit I'm very specifically picturing Sir Lancelot from Monty Python and the Holy Grail charging when I say that.

Bishops could be someone whose GPS is on the fritz. They're trying to get somewhere, but the tiles they're trying to get to are ones they can never reach by only moving diagonally.

Kings could be anyone, really, but I'm going to say someone who spends all their time playing MMORPGs and only moves when they have to.

Queens are influencers who lack the social awareness to realize there are places they shouldn't go, and that's combined with the aura to keep most people from saying anything.

Pawns are the audience of the queen who want to be influencers themselves.

—

- Saturday EGSNP

Self-deprecation sometimes results in splash damage.

I originally tried to have what's on this page and will be on Monday's page all on one page.

Technically, it could have fit. Also technically, you could probably get eight people in a car meant to seat four. There are good reasons not to do either.

I think the reason I tried to get it all on one page was because I wanted to rush to where the heck Ellen is going with this, which is generally a bad strategy (even if it would have prevented a potential weekend of everyone wondering where the heck Ellen is going with this).

- Grace orders some pancakes back in Part 2 of Hammerchlorians

- After pancakes on the next page

- When last we saw Diane

Sorry, Tedd. We devoted the last few pages to exploring logical reasoning and Ellen's character. We no longer have time to devote six pages to you making a list.

Incidentally, I wasn't even trying to reference the pancake eating in Hammerchlorians when I wrote this page. Grace's reaction was simply what came naturally for her.

—

- Tuesday EGSNP

- Hope's own issues with not being super intelligent

For the record, Elliot is totally pretending to have a beard in panel four.

Past me wanted to avoid Ellen saying "most seyunolus will want this certain thing" (quite the assumption!).

In this case, however, it does seem pretty reasonable (it's fixing a universal medical issue), and "most will want" is a clearer example of "it might be true, but there could definitely be exceptions."

Examples

Inductive reasoning can range from weak and "so-so strength, but probably good enough in context" to "this is super strong, never skips leg day, and is true 99.9999% of the time."

What are good examples of inductive reasoning are also going to depend on who you ask and whether they're a philosopher, scientist, mathematician, or some Venn Diagram of the three.

And possibly Sherlock Holmes? Much to my surprise, Sherlock Holmes referenced induction during The Adventure of the Six Napoleons (yes, Napoleon somehow came up again). I'm not one hundred percent he knew what it was, he gave a lot of examples of things being figured out, but I was very pleasantly surprised to hear it. There's still the majority of original Holmes I haven't listened to, and I'm hoping he brings up inductive reasoning more than just then.

Anyway, I consider Elliot's very simple inductive reasoning a good example of the sort of reasoning we all tend to do.

—

- Saturday EGSNP

- Ellen in So a Date doubting her usefulness in figuring out the inhuman cloaked figure

- Ellen not realizing that she'd realized something important the other three missed

I wanted to get into methods of reasoning for sorting what they knew about royalty and “the case,” but there were inherent issues with Tedd being the expert.

Or, really, any of them being an “expert.”

Tedd loves to talk through reasoning and science. While Tedd has demonstrated reasoning in many forms, Tedd has not previously made reference to the terminology. If Tedd already knew the terms, we would have heard him reference them before.

Maybe I could have gotten away with that, but I would have known that Tedd had spontaneously gained knowledge that he logically did not have.

- If Tedd knew about P, Tedd would have previously said Q.

- Tedd did not say Q.

- Therefore, Tedd did not know about P.

So someone else had to unleash the power of reasoning (or, at least, the semantics of it). Ellen came to mind simply because she had meddling detective adventures with Nanase, and the whole reason I know these terms is because someone pointed out that Sherlock Holmes didn’t actually use deductive reasoning. That’s what got me interested in them in the first place.

I also liked Ellen having only a beginner's knowledge of it, as I am not an expert myself. Heck, I was scrambling to not mix up inductive and abductive reasoning just earlier this week.

If I get something wrong via Ellen (or Nanase), the character making that mistake will not be an expert, and I'll have options for addressing those mistakes.

So that’s all I initially cared about, but then I thought about Ellen’s canonical lack of confidence in her own intelligence. Suddenly, there was a lot more I could do with it beyond making sense of who knew what.

—

- Thursday EGSNP

- The two conclusions being reached earlier

- The hypothesis being reached earlier

For the record, Ellen isn't coming up with these on the spot. These are things she's been told. What she's doing is organizing them into arguments.

(Which is still an impressive thing to do on the spot like that.)

LOGIC!

Upon realizing I was confused about the distinctions between inductive and abductive reasoning, editing this page turned into a speed run to learn about philosophical reasoning.

Napoleon and space aliens got involved.

The cause of my confusion turned out to be this: Not everyone acknowledges abductive reasoning.

There are plenty of videos that treat deductive and inductive reasoning as a dichotomy. It took me a while to realize that, and it affected how I interpreted what I was hearing. The line between inductive and abductive reasoning started to blur, and I wondered why abductive reasoning was even a thing.

So I read a paper by Charles Sanders Peirce from 1878.

Titled Deductions, Inductions, and Hypotheses (and read by me in a collection called The Essential Peirce, Volume 1), it argued for the necessity of hypotheses and how they differed from induction (it read like an early case for what would become known as abductive reasoning).

It also claimed that Napoleon existing was a hypothesis.

Numberless documents and monuments refer to a conqueror called Napoleon Bonaparte. Though we have not seen the man, yet we cannot explain what we have seen, namely, all these documents and monuments, without supposing that he really existed. Hypothesis again.

And I wasn't kidding about space aliens. From later in the paper:

Now, the facts which serve as grounds for our belief in the historic reality of Napoleon are not by any means necessarily the only kind of facts which are explained by his existence. It may be that, at the time of his career, events were being recorded in some way not now dreamed of, that some ingenious creature on a neighboring planet was photographing the earth, and that these pictures on a sufficiently large scale may some time come into our possession, or that some mirror upon a distant star will, when the light reaches it, reflect the whole story back to earth.

I’ll say this for the Napoleon examples: I will never forget them.

ANYWAY! I felt significantly less confused after I read that, and I changed Ellen's induction example. My earlier confusion had, in fact, resulted in the original actually being abductive reasoning.

Hooray for reading and hypothetical Napoleon being photographed by aliens!

Oh hey, there's an Eeevil Hope sketchbook today.

I hope you like logical reasoning!

There will be elaboration on what Ellen means next page, and I'll elaborate further in its commentary (WOO! LOGIC AND REASONING! YEAH!).

I first took an interest in types of reasoning when someone dared to point out that Sherlock Holmes rarely, if ever, actually used deductive reasoning. This bold claim seemed to be accurate.

I didn't take a lot of interest in it at first. I mostly thought, "that's neat," and occasionally thought about it. More recently, however, I've been looking a great deal into it! I've seen many videos, looked things up, read a book (GASP!), and I've reached what I consider a deductive conclusion:

There is no universal consensus on what these forms of reasoning mean.

Which, honestly, is fine. They're guidelines for reason, not literal, tangible things. What matters most (unless taking a test in a philosophy or mathematics course) is that they genuinely assist with reasoning.

I'm going to do my best to stick to what makes the most sense to me, and what would make the most sense for the characters in-context. I just also don't think I can "get it right" from everyone's perspective, and I say that on the basis that I've heard so many conflicting perspectives.

—

- Saturday EGSNP

- "Be wary of a unicorn looking for royalty"

"One of your statements is, in fact, objectively true, but you've reached another conclusion that is quite false!"

As previously mentioned, the EGSNP pseudo-canon* storyline Parable is NOT required reading. Anything relevant will be gone over in this story arc. In any case, what's being said was said by Mist very close to the end of it.

* Pseudo-canon because it didn't start out with that intent, and there's plenty of nonsense I likely would have changed had I known it would make the shift to plot relevancy. Fortunately, it was mostly a literal merging of multiple dreams, so a LOT can be excused by that.

—

- Thursday EGSNP

- "Two for us." "Yes. Two."

- Elliot transformed before sleep (also Tedd in case it was missed)

This is just me musing, this isn't official canon, but!

I'm considering the possibility that Grace's antennae still sense her surroundings to some degree while sleeping. Just like a loud enough noise could wake us up, a silent, unfamiliar presence could be sensed by Grace and wake her up.

I'm considering this because I think it would also allow Grace to navigate to some degree while sleeping. Not perfectly, but enough to avoid hazards and falling off of things (and possibly finding Ellens).

I also propose the simple explanation that Grace wound up over there due to what side she was sleeping on. She was simply facing towards Ellen, sensed a familiar presence, and made like a sleepy hedgehog to get over there.

Again, however, none of that is definite canon, and I'm not the boss of you if you have different conclusions.

—

- Tuesday EGSNP

For clarity, Rhoda did want to jump over one of the legs of the chair. What she did not want to do was clear two legs of the chair. She'd wanted a jump that was more challenging in height than distance.

I do wonder what it would actually be like to run over carpets and rugs at 1:10 scale. The answer would naturally vary by type, but I imagine it would commonly be weird. I ignore such potential complications here for the sake of simplicity, but it could come up at some point.

If ever you see a carpet that seems overly detailed in the style of fabric, be suspicious. I'm probably going to have characters run through it as though it were tall grass.

—

- Saturday EGSNP

Rhoda is at 1:10 scale in this and the previous page, making her six inches tall (15.24cm). The "ceiling" of the DVD structure is 5.25 inches.

I actually made that structure of DVDs in real life for reference. I didn't try to make the DVD cases in the comic match, but I used a box set of The Lord of The Rings, the Game of The Year edition of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and a box set of Parks and Recreation (which I haven't watched yet, but someone did borrow it from me once, so it's been watched by someone).

One idea I had for the obstacle course that wound up not getting used would have involved a ball. That ball would've been kept stationary on something, and Rhoda would have shrunk whatever that something was from a distance. That would've made the ball fall and become a roaming obstacle.

I think this was a neat idea, but staging it would have been difficult, and might have added another full page or two to the sequence. It also would've established that Rhoda can do something like that from a very far range (proportionately) while running without it taking a lot out of her, and I decided that wasn't something I wanted. The idea got cut for two reasons, each one of which would have been enough reason on its own.

Still, I do think it was a neat idea.

- When first we saw Rhoda in this arc

- When last we saw Rhoda

- When last we mentioned Rhoda (Rhoda being one of the people Tedd especially wants present while figuring out royalty because she is supposedly quite powerful as mentioned by Hope in the previous arc)

Rhoda!

This page didn't originally have the "Rhoda" narration, but between the similar hairstyles, the lack of earrings, the physical transformation, and the closed eyes, I've seen a LOT of mistaken identity being reported.

Funnily enough, this issue hadn't even occurred to me. It felt obvious in retrospect, but not once while originally making it.

At some point, I need to have a serious meeting to sort out how many characters have similar bangs and decide who are getting haircuts.

Fun!

I think I have the most fun behind the scenes when what comes next is a puzzle. Not a "I don't know what I'm going to do at all" puzzle, that's just writer's block. I mean when I know basically what I want to do, but there's something to figure out along the way.

What Rhoda's doing on this page is an example of the answer to one puzzle giving rise to another (how to start this part followed by how exactly to do it), and that, to me, is fun. If I know exactly what I'm doing and how I'm going to do it for too long, then it's just a thing I've got to get done. If I've only just figured it out and getting to create the result, or I'm figuring it out as I go, that's fun.

It's one reason I prefer loose story planning to having every last detail sorted out well in advance. It's genuinely less fun for me.

Granted, that previously mentioned writer's block is also not fun, so there's pros and cons. The best middle ground I can think of off the top of my head is to have enough planned out to not get stuck, but not so much planned that there's nothing left to figure out or play with.

—

- First EGSNP after False Kings went on break

- Most recent EGSNP

I was expecting to have another page after this in part 6, but editing makes fools of us all, so... Part 6 over, part 7 next Wednesday!

- The discussion waaay back in Sister 2 about magic buildups

- The specific page about having to sleep while transformed

- Realization of not getting energy buildups anymore in Sister 3

I didn't intend panel three as literal conscious thought. That's basically a summation of what Elliot remembered was relevant in that moment translated into words we can understand.

It wound up being a lot of text, however, so speed lines and italicized thought bubbles, GO!

I think a lot of thoughts in comics work out that way. Not all the time, but I figure there's a lot that's subconscious wizardry being localized into English.

Novels naturally do this less, as their narration can more efficiently address what characters are thinking about without breaking immersion. When we do get their thoughts in text, such as I want a sandwich in italics, I assume that's literal conscious thought.

—

- Tuesday EGSNP

- "It would not stay hidden for some reason." From Father.

- Ragnarok flashback during the Hope arc

- Seeing Ragnarok upon meeting Ellen

"It took THREE MOVIES! LONG movies! And the theaters didn't even have intermissions! Why did they stop having those? Honestly, they expect you to set for so many hours while drinking soda? It's ridiculous. Also, I think I'm thinking of something else, and that something else might be a prophetic vision of the future, because I don't know what a 'movie' is."

—

- Saturday EGSNP

- Start of Hope reacting to seeing Ellen

- "You haven't (hurt me)."

If going strictly by how applicable it is to real life, I'm not sure if the ethics of what Pandora did regarding her own reincarnation are worth debating. We can compare it to parents placing expectations on children, but it's a bit of odd as an allegory.

As one of those weird questions that comes up in fantasy and science fiction, however? Philosophical debate!

If you're going to reincarnate as a new person—possibly similar in nature, but minus all the nurture—is it ethical to pass along feelings the current you believe are important?

Do you have the right to do that to yourself? Does it matter that, in many objectively real ways, you'll be someone else?

Does the fact that it would still technically be you make it entirely up to you as you are now?

Please keep in mind that this is entirely fantasy "what if" nonsense (as far as I'm aware, anyway), so it's probably not worth arguing too hard about this.

Not that I'm even sure anyone's even going to discuss this, but figured I should at least try to get ahead of anyone throwing chairs at each other (or, more likely, using chair throwing text emotes).

—

- Thursday EGSNP

To be perfectly clear, authorial intent was that those were extremely innocent whispers about whether one bed would be appropriate under the circumstances for literal sleep, and they decided it was probably best to go with two.

I can't stop any other head canons, but then I also can't stop any head canons in which they're actually plotting a bank heist. Head canons are the wild west of canons.

I know you might have read that the lawlessness of the "wild west" has been exaggerated in fiction, but we also can't stop all the head canons out there that say it was complete lawlessness.

—

- Tuesday EGSNP