On time comics… in a manner of speaking. Despite being a little empty looking, the buffer did grow again – I have the next page sitting next me drawn (the full page) I just need to put the talky bits on, so that’ll go up tomorrow on patreon, and mean we’d be effectively at a 2 page buffer. I’m going to keep doing this for a bit (drawing a page, posting half a page) until the buffer is somewhere I’m fairly confident in (until the buffing under goes buffer-astrophy and vanishes again…)
I know that it’d be better to be back at 2 pages a week, and we are getting there, but let’s get at least a week or two of buffer first, or otherwise we’d go back to the day-roulette posting schedule that is in all ways terrible.
Speaking of the buffered comics, people that did see the early version may notice the wording changed a bit on some of the speech bubbles (beyond just the corrections that people give me ahead of time to help me cheat! 😀 )… while it may seem like I did that just to make sure that the there was new grammar for me to break, it’s just that the first version was written in a bit of a rush, and I saw some things I wanted to make… more betterish; things that were easier for me to “read in the character voice” when I read it to myself in my head, which is where I store all the voices of the characters – I’m not crazy! Some of the voices in my head, THOSE are crazy, but I’m perfectly sane! …
I am pleased to note that the time of troubles can mostly be considered… contained. Work will still be work, and is still a bummer, but everything else has been mostly sorted out. This doesn’t necessarily mean there is a fountain of free time on every corner, as a lot of things have been neglected during the time of troubles, but overall… things are a bit better on the schedule. For the time being that’s going to be seen on the comic side of the fence by a growing buffer, and from there, we’ll see.
Appreciate ya’ll putting up with me 😀 … Also, maybe these commentaries will start being about the comic again if I have less #lifeblogging to bitch and ramble about…? Who knows, but we can dream, can’t we?
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Hey, Peter’s doing the “have several answers, respectively” thing again! For some reason it amuses me when people do that. Especially Peter’s group. They’re usually just such wildly different trains of thought that imagining someone trying to actually keep up with that is also amusing. (Then of course, half of both his questions and his answers are also amusing…)
Other implications….Peter’s playing with the world map as a chessboard, helping his uncle get twice as many immigrants/colonists/extended stay visas as they were expecting, and somehow, neither of those sound like an endgame that he’s doing this all for. (In other, less related news, I’ve forgotten that Central needing lots of “extended stay visas” was something they even needed, so I’ll have to go do some re-reading at some point again….)
Also, Peter is only mentioning “corporate affairs made a mess”. No mention of Kor’s World still being active at all. Were either of them informed of their continued operations?
And, just like that, Machiavellian Peter is back! I was starting to worry a bit–silly me. ^^
In the final panel “a habitat is” seems wrong. Should it maybe be “the habitat is” if there is only the one or “her habitat is” if he is refering to one belonging to minerva? Or even Habitat A if that is the name of it.
“A habitat is under pressure. I’m not bothering to specify which one, because I don’t need to. We both know the details, and we don’t need to worry about people listening in as much if I don’t say. Sure, we don’t have to worry about the locals from Palindra overhearing, as the information would be rather useless to them. But it seems like a couple of your soldiers have families that *live* there, and the information about how dire their straits are isn’t public yet, so that would be a real problem if they accidentally overheard.
…
You know, the two who are acting as your bodyguards right now and are right outside.”
It’s probably better if he just keeps it at “a habitat”, as that other would be a bit wordy.
Seems odd to use “a” instead of “the” then. It’s switching levels of specificity throughout the paragraph as-is. Looking at the literal semantics he’s talking about a generic habitat and a specific offer.
The way that using “a” would make sense is if it’s a general statement, i.e. “habitats, all of them generally, are under pressure; it is well known that that’s how habitats are”. That would make sense if there was something in this world we called “habitat” the way some stories do, like a terraforming dome on mars or something. But I can’t recall any such.
In this case I would say it’s more natural english to say “The habitat is under a lot of pressure” unless there’s some context I’ve missed.
Well, I’m the last person to be right about grammar, but here’s what Peter means which may or may not clarify (as I happen to know that):
-> There are a several habitats. One of them (in particular) is under a lot of pressure. Hence… “A habitat (of the many) is under a lot pressure”.
Saying “the” here would imply (to me) that there is only one habitat which is under pressure, which would not be correct. Maybe the confusion comes from the fact that “a habitat” is a “a thing” in central, sort of like “a city”; rather than referring to “the whole environment”.
I prefer Peter saying “a habitat” rather than name of the specific one as he is treating it like “oh, this is a thing I happened to hear about… one them habitat things… it isn’t doing so well is it…?” when clearly Peter probably knows a good bit more than that about the specifics.
“A habitat is…” is perfectly grammatically correct in this instance, I would strongly recommend not changing it.
Not only would I agree with it being grammatically correct, I think I even pretty much understood the intended implications the first time…..weren’t we just chatting about some kind of space stations just a few pages ago? If those are your “habitats”, then yes, any of those being under pressure would be rather a big deal…..
(Even if they aren’t, “a habitat” as in “living conditions area” would still be something you don’t want to be stressing about…..is part of the reason Central/the IDS is working on gates and stuff is just to colonize other planets because theirs is a bit on the borked side?)
I interpreted it as “Habitat A is under…” as opposed to B or C Habitat.
I interpreted it to mean that a habitat is under pressure.
???
Because there is ALWAYS a habitat under pressure, usually near the breaking point, and days or hours from impending doom.
Think Agent K of the MIB explaining that the Earth is always in imminent danger, and life goes on mostly because the vast majority of humanity is blissfully ignorant of it.
Here is the thing. Last we saw, Peter, via Naomi, failed to get the Bridgepoint data. The Kor World soldier destroyed it first, and left after Naomi played dead and Mium was deactivated.
It seems unlikely Peter would not have been notified of this failure, but he is strongly implying here he has the Bridgepoint data, both with words, and his offer to move 40,000 refugees, unless he plans to move those with the traditional gates Mium has seized.
If Peter was a normal person, yes. But Peter is kind of Fae; he says exactly what he means and no more, and he’s okay with misinterpretation. Sometimes, he is intentionally crafting his words to encourage misinterpretation, but making sure he never *technically* lies.
Peter very intentionally did not confirm or deny that he has the Bridgepoint data. He merely stated that Corporate Affairs and Kor’s World were not prevented from interfering, thereby being a breach of agreement. (If that makes the deal not make sense, say it backwards: “You keep Kor’s World from interfering and I’ll go get the Bridgepoint data”)
You have to be careful talking to clever people like Peter because reading between the lines can be just as much of a trap as believing exactly what he says.
Good catch. Somehow, despite living with a lawyer, I missed that. You’re right. Peter didn’t actually state that he had the bridgepoint data. He merely said, we had a deal, and you failed your part. Admittedly, I had said I was tired. And yet, somehow, I’m once again up at a time when I should be sleeping. Sigh.
He implied that he had the data, simply by the suggestion that the 40,000 migrant allotment is really meaningful in the short term. Of course, it’ll mean a great deal to many of them, but without the bridgepoint data or some other means of widening the gate, it will be logistically difficult to make it happen.
That having been said, it’s much easier to get people to put up with letting 20,000 refugees camp out in your airport that could technically hold 30,000 people knowing that there are homes for the refugees somewhere, and it’s just a matter of waiting for the one puddle jumper that can land in the airport near where they’re going to be living to ferry them back and forth than it is to get permission to move 20,000 refugees into an airport as their new home.
That’s probably not a perfect analogy, but it might be somewhat analogous.
Well, for what it’s worth, per recent comics, Mium seems to know a bit more about gates than he was expected to.
Possibilities:
– Peter’s lying, figuring that the current situation will take long enough to unsnarl for him to recover or recreate and forge the data before it’s actually due.
– Peter’s already recreated and forged the data. (I do mean both of those. The data has to work, so it’d need to be recreated. The new data needs to look enough like the old data to fool the researchers who collected the old data, or someone will call shenanigans.)
– The bridgepoint data was duplicated without Kor’s World realizing it. They destroyed one copy, but there was another elsewhere for Peter to collect.
– While it’s not actually the bridgepoint data per se, Mium has learned enough about the gates to fake it pretty well. Rather than making the new data look like the old, however, Peter’s just going to say he’s holding onto the data, and simply making bridgepoint quality gates to handle that relocation.
– Somehow, Peter didn’t get the memo. They were confident that the location had the bridgepoint data, and since he didn’t hear from Mium or Naomi that the data was gone, he assumes they have it.
– Peter’s tired and delusional.
– I’m tired and delusional.
– Past is tired and delusional.
– I’m not tired and delusional, *you* are!
– I should go to bed.
– I may have strayed a bit from my original notes. But, in short, sex is more fun than logic.
The flow of that conversation is weird. I highly suspect Peter was being deliberately manipulative with how he mentions bridgepoint, only to immediately change the topic. It’s as if he was only using it to disrupt Arron’s train of thought, and create an opening to send Arron on a different one.
I agree with you. However I also suspect that Peter really does have the bridgepoint data. Suggesting that he has it is quickly going to result in someone wanting to barter or bargain for it’s use, and that doesn’t sound like something Peter would bluff about.
I’ve long been wandering if Peter and Mium are still truly hunting that data, or if they’ve just been following up on leads to make sure no one else has it. Seems the sort of thing that works best as a monopoly.
I’m pretty sure they can move that many people through existing gates though perhaps with difficulty. Note that Minerva was lobbing for down to 20,000 for this year of the region of palandra on 2-26-16 knowing that the brigeport data was sabotaged. They recently moved 100 plus troops through gates near the capital of Malsa in one day, so they probably could manage 40,000 spread over a years time.
Note that he mentioned the brigeport data in response to the question about his “needs” and has recently mentioned giving a public talk on the nature of linked universes in one month’s time. He may want to attach the bridgeport data as an addendum to that talk. But is fine with Arron assuming he is holding it ransom for cooperation.
Your half pages have finished drifting into full pages again. Just Landscape orientation.
In this case, while I am aware they were drawn as one page (as I saw it on patreon), there is even a slight scene shift between the two “half pages” which really makes them effectively two full pages.
In just this “half page” there is: a joke (or gag), character development, plot developments, a handful of implied lies, several implied threats, and refocus on plot thread from more than a year ago (the relocation of Central refugees to Malsa) with fairly explosive implications given the current situation in Malsa. AND a return of the of Bridgepoint plot.
That is plenty of content for a weekly update. It will take at least a day to unpack, and the rest of the week to comment on properly.