- She had a goblin deck

GASP! It turns out the next storyline DOES have something to do with Susan and Jay! Who could have guessed?!

Not past me, that's who. That's why the start date is "to be announced." I have preparation to do, and I don't know how much time I'll need.

That said, I'd like to get to it As Soon As Possible, so... ASAP.

Multiple Decks?

Either many people really wanted an answer to this question, or one person wore many varied hats while asking. Either way, it's a fair question to ask!

That Jay can't answer, because she hardly has any cards. I can't answer it for certain yet, either, because it's not REALLY answered until it's answered in the comic itself. But people (or someone with a lot of hats) want to know, so I've decided we will get an answer in-comic eventually.

Just, y'know, not now. Jay's only got the one deck, and no, she can't just make two half-decks. She tried that already while figuring out what she had to do to make the deck not count as a deck.

We near the end of this storyline, after which will be a short break from EGSNP as I plot out the next storyline.

A storyline I had not originally planned and therefore need a little time to sort out.

A storyline that most definitely has nothing to do with this one, and any suspicions that it DOES have anything to do with Jay and Susan should be abandoned forthwith!

...Forthwith? Is that the right... One second.

Adverb... "Without any delay." First known use in the 14th century? Neat!

FORTHWITH!

- Pounce!

EDIT - I originally forgot about the custom sound for Susan and put a "ding" in panel two. "Incoming Transmission" has to be a bit small to fit, but it's supposed to be coming from another room, so that's fine.

EDIT 2 - AND I made a coloring mistake in panel three that made both sides of Jay's hair look trimmed short (as opposed to the right side just being tied back).

The spell

"How the heck does the spell know all this stuff?" Not a difficult incomplete sentence to guess the end of, but hey, this is commentary. Might as well comment on it.

- Tedd having several questions about this spell while using seer's sight to analyze it (from Part 7 of Hope)

- Jay first encountering this spell

In my mind, Jay sent her text to Susan within fifteen minutes of deciding not to watch any more of the reviews. Susan wasn't checking her messages at the time, so the wait between hitting send and getting a response was likely hours.

While this comic could have been three panels of Jay sitting perfectly still before a fourth panel pounce, I genuinely felt Jay would find ways to occupy her time. She didn't just meet Susan last night, after all. She learned a new spell, and she got a spellbook.

The power of friendship might have taken priority, but she has plenty to be obsessing over just now!

- Previous wondering if she was thinking of a date

- Comfy pajamas

Susan knows full well that her fairies act on her own subconscious, thoughts, yadda yadda yadda. Clearly, this does not stop her from arguing with them.

I find this relatable.

Technically, yes.

The best kind of yes.

- Susan telling Tedd about her new spell (from the Our Future storyline).

The next page gets into the potential mental side effects of using less magic while summoning the fairies (a distraction akin to multitasking). A couple pages later, she uses that to help calm her overactive mind and help herself sleep.

I think the best option when working on anything is no distractions, but a controlled distraction can work better if the mind is distracted by its own insistence on wandering. I don't think this would usually apply to something like studying, but hey. Magic fairies. "Controlled distraction" is just a way of describing them to get the general idea across. She can have a fairy summoned and get some studying done.

There is only one conclusion to reach based on Jay pausing the review at that exact moment:

She's going to go attempt to draw people with cinnamon bun ram horn hair.

Given when Elliot would logically be talking about, it's unlikely Tedd brought up anything related to gender (or, if Tedd did, elaborate justifications were given).

It's safe to assume that, by this point, Elliot has heard such ideas from Tedd.

Labeled Balloon

Elliot was the last one shown talking, and I thought it would take half the speech bubble to get a definite "Susan" vibe, so I unleashed that "S" in Panel three to help identify Susan. I felt having those identifiers throughout the storyline would have been overkill while making the panels look more cluttered, but it seemed like a good idea here.

And yes, that crossover was definitely with Justin. At least, that's authorial intent. If you want to assume it was with anyone else, I can't stop you.

I'll try, of course. There'll be a fight of it! But, in the end, you'll win. Such is the way of subjective interpretation in the absence of definitive canon confirmed within the text itself (and sometimes even when it is confirmed in the text itself).

- Jay's list of reasons (the last one being "pretending to use the force to open automatic doors")

Dun-dun-DUN!

I mean, it's not that dramatic a twist, but I won't have much to comment on until the next comic, so...

GASP!

I apologize for spoiling that Leia's cinnamon bun hair is not actually made of cinnamon buns.

It's supposed to be the big reveal at the end of the movie, and I've just gone ahead and said it.

Well, actually, it's Susan who said it.

So really, I did nothing wrong.

I considered basing their entire review around the hero's journey, but that would have them discussing the actual plot more than I wanted. Considering that got me thinking about how much of Star Wars I wanted to spoil in this storyline, and that brought about Susan and Elliot's goal of avoiding spoilers. That's how we got Elliot with different hair, and nearly everything else in their review.

I really went on a hero's journey to decide not to make the review about the hero's journey.*

* This is not at all accurate

EDIT - The original version version didn't make it clear that the middle panel didn't happen. I've edited in a thought bubble and modified the dialogue to make it clearer

--

I wrote this without Elliot as Susan. When I sat down to actually make the comic, I had a realization:

"Dan, you doofus. You have two panels in a row of mirror Susans."

Which isn't the worst problem in the world to have, but it made me want to do something more with panel two, so now Elliot as Susan with Elliot hair exists.

Spoiler: Information regarding a story that can make that story less suspenseful or surprising.

Everything is a spoiler by this definition. For example, Keanu Reaves starring in John Wick is, strictly speaking, a spoiler. Someone who didn't know that could be surprised by Keanu appearing on screen (and possibly say "whoa" in response).

A person who says "that's not a spoiler" might be wrong in the strictest sense, BUT their most likely meaning is obvious: "that spoiler doesn't matter."

This presents us with a more subjective, but way more useful, definition:

Spoiler: Information regarding a story that can make that story less suspenseful or surprising in a significant way.

Is Keanu gracing us with his presence in John Wick a spoiler by this subjective definition? Everyone can decide that for themselves.

Spoil: Sharing previously unknown, or potentially unknown, spoilers with one or more people.

A person can spoil things for themselves (I sometimes spoil things for myself because the story in question is stressful in some way and I actually want to reduce the suspense).

Can you spoil something that's really old?

Objectively yes.

Many arguments that you can't spoil older things come with assumptions of similar age and experiences. Those arguments hinge on everyone being of a demographic close to or matching the person making the argument.

Even then, the actual arguments tend to be less "it's impossible to spoil it," and more "no one's obligated not to spoil it."

So it's possible to spoil something that's old, and the question is whether someone cares.

Sometimes, you shouldn't. Generally speaking, if someone my age hasn't seen Star Wars yet, the argument "if they actually cared, they would've seen it by now" seems fair to me. Star Wars has been widely popular, widely referenced, and came out before I was born. If I hadn't seen it by now, it would be selfish of me to demand everyone else stay quiet about (imagine the biggest of all Star Wars spoilers here) purely for my sake.

Not everyone is my age, however, and even if they are, exceptions could exist. It's really going to be contextual what's reasonable and what's just not caring about other people's feelings.

Magic is far more cost effective than wigs.

I didn't start this storyline thinking I would be paying homage to the silly skits from review shows I used to watch. Once that decision was made, however, I decided not only to commit, but to consider what Elliot and Susan in particular could bring to the table.

Obvious answer was obvious, they bring the reckless use of actual magic to help with their skits.

- "I haven't seen any of the Star Wars movies" - Grace

There used to be less to spoil when it came to Star Wars, at least in a movie and TV show sense. We did have additional things like the Thrawn trilogy books to spoil.

In any case, it's canon that, in the EGS timeline, they're only up to having all the prequels out.

Excluding future media wasn't a conscious choice. I simply established that what they were up to in-universe was the same as what we were up to. Since then, our bounty of Star Wars content has kept growing while theirs is likely unchanged.

Granted, different universe and such. I could claim pretty much anything. Maybe they have a Broadway Star Wars show that we... One second.

Okay, I don't think we have a Broadway show of Star Wars. Maybe they have one of them.

Elliot sounds familiar because reason!

Reasons?

Look, there's some reason, but there's no way we're getting any sort of confirmation right now.

I wound up rewriting this one quite a bit, as I found myself going back and forth on what I wanted Jay's conclusion to be (and maybe something else that might come up later).

Speaking of, that conclusion might be based on no more than a hunch, but she's probably right.

EDITING!

There's a lot wrong in the last panel in terms of video editing, or so I assume. I have serious doubts that it's standard practice to exclusively edit via keyboard (and especially not one resulting in such posture).

My assumption would simply be mouse and keyboard, but I've seen accessories intended for video editing that resemble numeric keypads from outer space? Maybe those get used a lot? There are people who want them to get used a lot, at least.

Point is, I think Imagined Editor Susan is actually writing an absurdly long response to a rude comment.

Susan and Elliot's review show was inspired by a whole bunch of review shows of the time, and those shows had things like made up personas and names for the reviewers and scripted skits.

And sometimes epic world-threatening narratives for some reason?

Anyway, Elliot and Susan are just themselves in their show, but I figured, hey, let's circle back to those scripted skits, shall we?

Which was what I didn't want to spoil in the previous commentary. We're not just seeing Susan and Elliot in "on camera" mode while reviewing. We're seeing this nonsense.

I enjoy Jay being unreasonably hostile towards Elliot, but only in a limited context. Part of that context at the moment is he's entirely unaware of it.

I wrote more to this commentary, but I realized it was a spoiler! So what I wrote is migrating to the NEXT commentary, and everyone's just going to be stuck spending their weekend trying to figure out why Elliot got hit with a cardboard tube.

Unless you're from the future, in which case you'll know in a matter of seconds.

She hasn't even gotten to learning his first name yet. She's still recovering from the first second she's left on pause.

The day I made this comic, I had to finalize a very important decision: Who would be cosplaying as who?

Ultimately, the answer that disappointed Jay won because that gave me the most to work with. Sorry, Jay!

Also, I cannot overemphasize how much I like Luke's outfit in the first Star Wars and how much that's what I picture when I picture Luke. I know he's worn other things so much more throughout media and that was just his "I'm a dude on a farm" outfit, but it's my favorite.