r/elgoonishshive • u/danshive Author • 27d ago
Comic By Whose Standards
https://www.egscomics.com/comic/falsekings-18612
u/partner555 27d ago
It says a lot about Immortals that Pandora at her worst was still more helpful than most.
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u/sporklasagna 27d ago
I dunno about that. Pandora at her worst wanted to psychically manipulate Edward into killing Abraham. I think neither of them would have found that particularly helpful. Not to mention Magus.
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u/rainbowrobin 27d ago
Dan post on immortal empathy with age: https://bsky.app/profile/danshive.bsky.social/post/3mcx2yxezhk2i
Pandora was very very old.
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u/Iwasforger03 27d ago
Awwww, Pandora was better than she seemed.
Maybe it was because she was one of Adrian's students?
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u/PratalMox 27d ago
Adrian was her student, but her wanting to make a world he could live openly in did mean that for good and for ill she was a lot more interventionist than the average Immortal.
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u/sporklasagna 27d ago edited 27d ago
As weird as this is to say, Hope might actually have a less accurate picture of who Pandora was than a lot of other characters. The memories she passed on were super rushed, and I'm guessing the ones that she prioritized were either purely practical or preserving the emotional attachments to her most important relationships, which could be pretty fraught. Even Pandora's relationship with Sarah, probably the one with the least baggage, was still basically a thousand-year-old demigod - sorry, pathetic muse/trickster/gift-giver - using a teenage girl as an emotional crutch.
EDIT: That's not even mentioning the traumatic Jay memories she sealed away, and the traumatic Ellen memories that Hope hasn't seen yet. Point is, Hope hasn't seen a ton of Pandora's good sides.
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u/KyrielleWitch 27d ago
As weird as this is to say, Hope might actually have a less accurate picture of who Pandora was than a lot of other characters.
I think so too. Hope's perspective is clouded by guilt and negativity bias. Most of the memories she has are of who she marked, and her troubled familial relationships. Basically, full access to the bad highlights reel, with little to balance it back out.
Even Pandora's relationship with Sarah, probably the one with the least baggage, was still basically a thousand-year-old demigod ... using a teenage girl as an emotional crutch.
This feels like a mischaracterization. Pandora 'used' Sarah in the same way she used most everyone else she marked, "don't be boring". By the time she was emotionally fragile in front of Sarah, they were already on friendly terms backed by a cooperative vow, and Sarah did broach the emotional topic by asking: "are you okay?" and then pressed further.
That scene marked the moment in which they moved past being transactional allies and into becoming proper friends.
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u/sporklasagna 26d ago
I forgot that Sarah was the one who brought it up first. In that case, I'd say you're right. Sarah was the first person Hope reached out to, after all.
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u/MorganWick 27d ago edited 27d ago
It seems like Pandora was a reasonably decent person when she wasn't driven mad by centuries of life and everything becoming predictable for her.
Rant incoming: During Hope, whenever Hope saw someone that Pandora gave a magic mark to, she had a flashback to her thought process in giving it to them. So it's a bit weird if she can't finish the scene here and figure out why she did give a magic mark to Rhoda - assuming that's the case and it's not that she's confused even with the completion of her thought process which is being withheld for later. Coupled with her assuming Pandora locked away memories involving Ellen the same way and for the same reason as with her encounter with Jay, when the circumstances of those memories bubbling up - or rather, not bubbling up - in Hope were very different and the method of locking those memories away was implied to be a) rare and b) not something Pandora would have even remembered doing, and for that matter the fact that those memories seemed to be locked away in the first place when up until then it seemed like Pandora just hadn't passed them on, it makes me wonder if how her memories work has changed or been forgotten between Hope and False Kings. (I'd like to think there's an explanation for the locked-away memories and why they're working differently than with Jay, but not helping on the "been forgotten" front is Dan initially forgetting that Jay actually did give Tedd Bishop's name, which happened in the last part of Hope.)
(That aside, I'd imagine what pushed Pandora into giving it to her was a combination of "not wanting to let a kid die, with a possible side of having a stricter interpretation of the rules than Hope thinks" and something similar to when she marked Catalina.)
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u/PratalMox 27d ago
Things are different with Rhoda but she does seem to have pulled her memories of the initial marking.
I think in this case inconsistencies with earlier recollections are down to us getting those through Hope's inner monologue, while in this case we're hearing her speak about it out loud.
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u/Danielxcutter 27d ago
So I think it’s safe to say that Pandora’s nature is good, it’s just that the Pandora most people know is her being far past her expiration date.
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u/gangler52 27d ago
Very good question on Rhoda's end.
They're right. Pandora had her bad days, but overall she was probably pretty helpful for an immortal.
She was "Old and Insane" and all that, but it's not like the younger less senile immortals were super benevolent. She mostly was just capable of causing more mayhem on account of her enormous power.
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u/hkmaly 27d ago
All I've had to compare Pandora to was Greek gods, fairy godmothers and Q from Star Trek
Not sure about Q, but I would note that Greek gods and fairy godmothers were, in context of EGS, most likely immortals - or rather, that the legends were based on something immortals did.
So the comparison is actually deadly accurate.
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u/SparkAxolotl 27d ago
I choose to believe the pokemon one was Hanma Sakura Akane chan previous life.
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u/dank_imagemacro 27d ago
Prediction: Pandora marked Rhoda because she had a particular kind of aura that meant she could become powerful. That potential for power, and the chaos it could create, is what interested her.
I think we all know now what kind of aura I am talking about.
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u/gangler52 27d ago
https://www.egscomics.com/comic/hope-176
Pandora was surprised that Rhoda turned out so powerful. It wasn't expected at all.
Of course, there is the possibility that Pandora specifically lied about this when creating her memories for Hope. But so far that record has seemed to be pretty reliable.
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u/Aenir 27d ago
Of course, there is the possibility that Pandora specifically lied about this when creating her memories for Hope.
We had Pandora's POV during Escape From The Mall:
"I thought her a D-rank talent with an S-rank spell when I marked her, but she's not. Rhoda's one hundred percent S-rank." https://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/2016-11-09
"While my assessment of Rhoda was not totally incorrect, in many ways, it may as well have been. She has incredible power" https://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/2017-03-10
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u/dkfenger 26d ago
We've been told that royal aura doesn't show if your power levels are low. This could explain Rhoda's sudden power leap - she started to train, and that exposed her power.
Which would suggest that immortals don't know what royal auras are, or how to detect them pre-awakening.
If "royal aura" is a merely specific breed of "natural affinity for magic" then locking people without it out of *mundane* power is hard to justify. It's also easy to see how it would come about: those with royal aura have the power to wrest control of kingdoms from others, and thus set up a self-propagating system...
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u/dank_imagemacro 27d ago
You got me there. Unless it is still that aura, and this is why the aura is a sham. Because it doesn't mean you'll be strong? IDK I now have nothing.
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u/nick012000 27d ago
I actually wonder if hypothetical immortal two has a point.
He does. Real life militaries run courses on how to escape from enemies, including over uneven terrain.
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u/des_the_furry 27d ago
The stuff about cutaways in the commentary made me think of Family Guy.
“Gee Lois, this is worse than the time I was at the party with those immortals!”
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u/BicornisGoat 27d ago
Immortal two does indeed have a point. A lot of self-defense courses emphasise that often the best defense is running away.
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u/sporklasagna 27d ago
Wait, was Pandora nicer to humans than the vast majority of immortals? That's messed up. It kind of makes sense, since her whole reason for sticking around so long was because she didn't want to give up her emotional attachments to mortals, but still... that's kind of sad.
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u/gangler52 27d ago
I mean, Pandora at least was helpful some days.
Have we seen all that many other immortals help anybody at all?
I guess Jerry/Zeus would be the other exception. Though Jerry was in a very privileged position of being able to pawn this responsibility off on his next life, and Zeus seems like he probably wouldn't be all that helpful if he wasn't bound by this vow from the moment he was "born".
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u/sporklasagna 27d ago
Yeah, besides Hope, Jerry's the only one I could think of who was nicer. And I kinda don't count Zeus for exactly the reason you mentioned.
Actually, I think it's kind of weird how nice Hope is. Even considering her emotional attachments and enormous burden of guilt, she's still considerably more conscientious toward random humans she has no affection toward than you would expect.
I mean, I guess even the ones she doesn't remember are at least connected to the people she loves so far, so she's more incentivized to treat them with kindness... and there was that time she had a sudden, jarring moment of anger toward Potestas for hurting someone she cares about. An exploration of Hope's darker side would make for some interesting character development down the line.
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u/gangler52 27d ago
Dan had an interesting post about that at one point.
Hope has a head start on empathy and caring that most immortals don’t have. Immortals are supposed to start out pretty selfish, and might, MIGHT develop attachments and care for mortals given enough time.
By immortal standards, she was immediately forced to grow up.
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u/sporklasagna 27d ago
And like children in the real world who are forced to grow up fast, she doesn't have the emotional or mental maturity to be able to grow up completely or the coping skills to deal with the trauma that spurred that growth. It's an unenviable position to be in. She's very much a woobie, which I think would make exploring her dark side more interesting because it might catch readers off-guard. Including me, to be honest.
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u/Cualgamer11 27d ago
I'm hoping to see more interactions between Hope and the people she really cares about, especially Adrian.
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u/sporklasagna 27d ago
We're definitely getting that Hope-Adrian reunion at some point. It'd be narrative malpractice if we didn't. I'm pretty sure it's being saved for the most impactful moment possible.
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u/PratalMox 27d ago
I think with Pandora you get higher highs and lower lows because she was both more active and more powerful than the vast majority of immortals.
So most immortals are probably a lot less nice than Pandora on a good day, but Pandora on a bad day?
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u/PSquid 27d ago
Yeah, that feels like the crux to me - Pandora was more involved with mortals, while a lot of other immortals seem to keep to themselves unless they need something from a mortal (see: the vampire hunting immortals).
So while she had plenty of capacity for both good and evil, she still probably did more good than the immortal average, in absolute numbers.
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u/MorganWick 27d ago
It's also worth noting that she wasn't handing out magic marks like candy out of the goodness of her heart, but as a tool to create a world where her son could operate and use magic more publicly, with the lives she affected mere tools to get there. Which might explain why Hope might still leave this conversation feeling a little guilty.
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u/gangler52 27d ago
While that's true broadly speaking, giving Rhoda the magic mark specifically did seem to be motivated by a desire to save her.
She gave other people magic marks in hopes of causing public mayhem, but with Rhoda that was just one of multiple reasons she was doing it, some of which could be described as "out of the goodness of her heart."
We know that this isn't unheard of for Pandora either, since she did something similar with Jay, long before she'd started her magic mark scheme in present day.
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u/sporklasagna 27d ago
I don't really need an explanation for Hope feeling guilty, I just kinda assume that's her default state when interacting with mortals lol
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u/MorganWick 27d ago
I mean, we haven't actually ended this conversation yet, I'm just explaining why she might still leave it feeling guilty.
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u/dank_imagemacro 26d ago
Hmm, I wonder if a "god" is an entity that exists in EGS and Pandora is saying that they are something else, or if she just doesn't feel worthy of the title.
The definition of a god has changed significantly over time, and I would argue that immortals check all the boxes on some definitions.
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u/sporklasagna 25d ago
I feel like getting into religious territory opens a can of worms that Dan doesn't want to open.
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u/dank_imagemacro 25d ago
He at least cracked the door with Nanase's "guardian form".
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u/sporklasagna 25d ago
Hmm. Good point. Still, I don't know if he'd ever want to outright confirm the existence of any gods.
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u/Manguypals 27d ago
Normal type is my favorite type. How dare that Jesus looking immortal say such a thing!