Episode 70 of the Letters Page - Sunrise

There were some excellent meta shenanigans. :D

Otherwise, I remain pleased with the "run through a single comic series" episodes. Granted, I thought we got a bunch of Citizen backstories previously, but at least a few seemed new. (I especially like Citizen Hammer's. Just how much strife in the world of Sentinels is caused by witches?)

well considering that a good 25-30% of it’s villain population are likely members of the cult of gloom, I’d say quite a lot

Really enjoyed this one. I'd love to see Termi-Nation done in this style, since it seems to have so much going on (Chokepoint, the Sentinels becoming Void Guard, and the experiments under Fort Adamant all tied to it).  Plus, the timeline for this event seems to be a little strange; some clarification on what happened when would really help in establishing the lore.

Not telling anyone what to do, but if one of you higher level Patreon backers want to use one of your suggestions to get a Termi-Nation storytime, I certainly wouldn't complain.

This was a good one.  Lots of good questions, lots of good info.

That said, that parting shot from An Angry Taxpayer was a bit much.

Yay they answered my question about Blood, Sweat, and Tears!

Who are simultaneously more creepy and more lame than I ever thought they were. Using gloom magic to turn themselves into living materials like that is pretty creepy, but their reasons for doing so are laughably lame. Also their group magic explains why they do so much better together.

And poor Citizen Spring... Just wants to help people but is stuck with the other three who aren't very nice.

~Komori

You know, since Christopher has always seemed to me the more talkative of the two, I wonder if Anvil's muteness is supposed to be a joke on that.

Really fun episode.

That's what I always assumed.  I was surprised to learn that in universe, it's actually part of a curse, and not just his personality.

Considering how we can hear him struggling not to spill the beans on certain things sometimes, I'd say that's accruate.

Was Citizen Anvil from, like...medieval times? With highway brigands, and mobs with torches? Is he immortal?

So comic book science is comic book science, but sometimes, UGH. The Moon strictly reduces the amount of light from the sun during an eclipse. There's no extra energy and no shift in spectrum!

I actually have a hand-wavey explanation about this, Trajector. 

So Dawn's power is derived from light, right? In a solar eclipse, you can see the corona which you normally can't. So when the corona becomes visible, Dawn can access that completely untapped energy source because she can now interact with the corona's light. 

It makes no sense except it sort of does. 

I had both of these thoughts during the episode too.

It’s quite possible that dawn is drawing power from both the moon and the sun.

To be more specific: Dawn draws her power from light but is no less useless at night because there’s still light from the moon and the stars.

So when there’s a solar eclipse the light of the moon and the sun combine. Have you ever been told that you shouldn’t look directly at a solar eclipse without glasses? That’s because, despite the lack of light the thing is still hella bright, maybe even mire bright than the sun on it’s own. That’s what I think, at least. I have no idea if I’m right or if this is even real science and not just something I pulled out of my ***.

The moon doesn't actually have any light of its own.  It just reflects the sun's light.

“And the sun doesn't give light to the moon assuming
The moon's going to owe it one”

-Linkin Park

During any partial (or partial phase of a) solar eclipse you should not look at the sun without protection as the uncovered portions are still bright enough to cause damage. During totality (i.e. when the moon's disk is entirely blocking the solar disk) you are free to look at it without protection. Through sheer cosmic coincidence, the sun is about 400 times wider than the moon, but is also 400 times farther away and so they match up almost perfectly (due to eliptical orbits, we sometimes get annular eclipses as well where the moon is fully in front of the sun, but there's still a ring of uncovered sun around it). This allows us to see eclipses that are complete enough to totally cover the sun's surface but still leave the corona (the sun's "atmosphere") visible. Total eclipses are cool, 10/10, would reccommend.

Edit - notions about it being worse to look during an eclipse has to do with if your surroundings are darker because of the blocked light, your pupils will dilate to let in more light as they normally should. If you then look up at the still-bright-af sun you can potentially do more damage than if you'd looked at the sun normally.

Yeah, the corona is ALWAYS there, with its light reaching the Earth. During an eclipse, it becomes visible because the solar photosphere, which usually drowns out the corona, is hidden.

Similarly, the Moon only reflects sunlight, and during an eclipse, we're looking at the dark side of it (since the sun's on the other side of the Moon!) so it doesn't supply any extra light.

That's an awesome gif, WalkingTarget - is that your footage? I wish I'd driven up to Wyoming to get into totality last summer....

Yeah. I was worried I couldn’t do both that and Gen Con 50, but I wound up driving over 12 hours straight to get from Indy back home to pick up my wife then down to the Kansas City area to our hotel in the path of totality. After a roller coaster of anxiety and excitement (the morning was very cloudy and forecast rainy), eventually things cleared up and we had good viewing for almost the whole partial phase. Those light clouds rolled in only a few minutes before totality, but we could still see things through them, so I was happy. I also took several photos during the partial phases that you wouldn’t be able to tell were during an eclipse at all if it wasn’t for the crescent-shaped lens flare, to reinforce the idea that you shouldn’t look at it directly without protection.

I will be missing Gen Con for the first time since #35 (when it was still in Milwaukee) this year, though, as my wife will be about 8.5 months pregnant at the time and I’ll be staying close to home. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to road trip with the kid for the total eclipse in 2024. I would hope five and a half would be old enough to think it cool, but we’ll see I guess.

I wend down to Carbondale with my now-wife and another couple.  Was awesome, and was worth the 9 hour drive from Carbondale to Urbana.  (Usually just under 3 hours)

My sister just moved into the path of totality for 2024, so that'll be a LOT easier.

Hey, I went to UIUC! I miss a lot of the restaurants.

Yeah the drive back home after the eclipse only went from 3 hours to 5.5, but still not fun.

Yeah, we were originally planning on driving back to Chicago once we got to Urbana, but gettingto Urbana at nearly midnight put an end to that.