Comic for Thursday, January 11th
Jan11
Yes… January… I know what month it is… totally… 😉
Yes, we’ve just skipped ahead a week. It’ll make sense in due time. I sort of wanted to do that between the chapters just because that seems like… it makes more sense from a story structure sense, but… well, didn’t quite work out that way. I could have changed where the Chapter ended and the next one starts, but meh! Not that Chapters matter that much 😉
And lastly, one more yes, Peter is, in fact, wearing a suit. This is also a mystery I suspect will be unraveled in time.
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OK: not to belittle your prowess as a storyteller… if anything respect. BUT… (lol, there is always a but)… it just feels an odd place to drop a time skip.
I mean to be fair, the narrative had hopefully reached a point where all the action has occurred… I mean we DID miss out on what happened after Mium went “…and cut” OR did we? Mium negates Atters’ constructs. Logical conclusion: Atter runs away. And we kind of missed out on the conclusion of Tyler’s battle OR did we? Mium did say his status was optimal and was only at moderate risk (sigh, getting told bits of the story from within the story is sometimes not as satisfying as getting told the story directly). We DID get to see Biana make her play (to take out Peter) and get totally outmaneuvered (and got to see Mium perhaps at his limit (at least running from Eff-8)… I don’t think he was technically in danger: his backup was having Ila with him), BUT (there it is!) we missed (in the immediate sense) the repercussions of Arron/Kally’s actions and ditto for Biana’s actions (to be fair, I expect we will find out what those were soon). We definitely missed out on Nathan’s “talk” with Sophie… if it was all talking, then I guess finding out about it later is cool. At least we got to see the Princess survived (but lost) vs Elizabeth. And then there is the whole question of Nathan’s hunt for Atter. I guess what I’m trying to say a 1 week time skip kind of leaves a lot of threads hanging.
Yeah, I get that it’ll probably make sense in time… most narrative devices do when the audience can read the story from Page 1 to The End. But (I swear, I’ll stop!), the format (web comic, live) means the audience is now (potentially) left in a state of bewilderment & questions. Sooooo many questions. Which will time (more updates!) to resolve.
I promise to be patient.
Also, Peter looks good in a suit.
I don’t disagree, but it has to do with what the focal point of the story is; for me, the question was never “do I show all of Nathan’s story some of it” but “do I show some of Nathan’s story or none of it”. The same goes with Tyler, Karov, Jayce, Rovak, Miko and Ryn. They are all doing things, but only occasionally do I think the things they are doing are things I that we get to see.
I think in a better ‘story’ I would probably not having included roughly half the characters, but at the end of the day I’m not really… you know, a writer, and I have no editor. I don’t really cut things, I just don’t really show them. I’m not saying “I write bad intentionally” more that I view it as I make a world, and then pick from that world what to draw, rather than other way around.
Ultimately I think I could have made the past week of story entertaining updates by showing something, but on the side of the coin, I have promised to eventually end the story, so the question becomes, are seeing the details of the events we missed more important than the other things to the core plot? I decided probably not. Am I write? Who knows, I’m just a guy that draws pictures and rambles. 😉
I definitely don’t think this is the last time we’ll see a time skip (especially of the fairly short variety), and while it is my intention that all questions about Peter’s plan and other central ‘elements’ get answer, to me its fully possible that characters like Nathan, Tyler or Ryn maybe don’t end the story with all the questions answered; they just have too much of their own story to share this one too much. 😉 Think about it this way. I could write an entire comic about what Miko does, and only like 50/400 pages would overlap with this comic, and Miko is on Peter’s side.
OR a better story would include ALL the characters… but yes, I agree that we would end up with some voluminous epic multi-threaded story… Lord of the Rings (all 6 books) springs to mind… and THAT only followed 4 hobbits (if my memory serves me correctly).
Not to mention, you’re not writing a novel, you’re writing/drawing a web comic… I hate to think what the translation of 1 page of prose to equates to in a web comic in terms of number of pages & time to draw.
Editors are over-rated: especially when it comes to written works. I can’t think of any web comic where you get the opportunity to experience the edited version vs the author’s intention… but I can certainly think of a few books where I definitely prefer the author’s version immensely (which they got to release after they became famous and could tell the publishers editors where to stick it).
And, as the author, that makes you most definitely write 🙂 and right too!
Did you ever see the novelization @PastUtopia did for the first couple pages of the comic? It is interesting seeing a direct comparison to prose writing compared to comic pages, and it does not actually condense that much, but changes the information presented. You can see more of the characters thoughts (especially Peter who we almost never see his thoughts in comic) but lose a lot of visual cues.
Personally, I am camp “The Far Side of Utopia infinite” so I do not personally mind if the story bogs down following every plot because I care about almost all of them.
Hmm, in the third balloon in the last panel, changing “usually it involves” to “usually involve” would make it more grammatical.
Ah, Peter at work. Fun to watch, as usual. And Ryn’s getting an idea of how much Peter really gets around.
Some might call it “has his finger in many pies” or something like that. (Though obviously not too many. He’d get the problems to solve each other somehow.) I’d rather ask which ones he stole, poisoned, and/or baked himself. If anything, I almost expect the list to be longer. (And more interesting. Yeah, probably a lot more interesting…)
I also find it amusing that Peter goes from trying to probe Ryn to immediately changing to “Yeah, fair point” at the mere mention of Mir. (I wonder if he had to compare who is more annoying (either to deal with or plan around or whatever), Mir or Biana, which he’d say….)
Actually, that leaked tape of “someone trying to kill him” works really well for him, I bet. Not only does it pretty much certify credibility as ex-IDS, he can answer questions about any interaction with Arron pretty much any way he likes, assuming he’s even asked about it in the first place. (Assuming they do anything overt enough to be noticed in the first place.)
(Varkim seems like a fun dude to listen in on, too. That only makes…..what, most characters with a name now, I think…? (Sure seems that way, anyway…))
Interesting. Is that the biggest time skip yet? Raises a lot of questions. What happened to Atter in the meantime? We are missing the meeting between Sohpie and Nathan… as well as why Mium needed Ila (since he didn’t need her to stop the HVW strike). And what happened with Tyler and the Princess.
Panel 1 narration: Withdrawal (not withdrawl)
Panel 1: Doesn’t end when they withdraw from Arpon
Panel 5: One man show
Panel 7: Those labs
Panel 8: I’ll see to this matter
Fixed, thanks 🙂
Panel 3: I want less to do with all that then you could possibly know.
Panel 5: I am willing to work with you
with youherePanel 6: It seems like quite the bold move
whileall the while…Panel 8: Fine. I will see this matter and find a way…
Panel 9: Can’t talk about the details here. (not there)
Panel 3 actually says “possible know”, not “possibly know”. (Well, it does at the moment, anyway….)
Fixed. I think. That does it. Next page is going to be written purely in emojis and pictographs.
😐 😯 😕 😉 😈
Not sure if rollercoaster, or if you missed one….
😛
They could be southern American. Those come with drawl built in.
To quote Fozzie, “I kill me!”
Also panel 3:
do with all that THAN you could possiibly know.
It should be than.. then is used for time not things. Just like you wouldn’t say, “what happened than.”
If you want to go absolutely crazy with the grammar you could always paste your copy into a word processor and let it highlight the grammar corrections
Also final panel, 3rd bubble:
Original: “And, from what I’ve seen, his interactions with THEIR CONTRACTORS it usually involves yelling AND THROWING things. Not a lot of lost love there.”*
Suggested change: “And, from what I’ve seen, his interactions with THEIR CONTRACTORS usually involves YELLING AND THROWING things. Not a lot of lost love there.” (-“it”, +bold on “YELLING”.)
*ALLCAPS refers to bolded text
Fixed. Probably. 😐
Mess of a page, haha.
No problem. ^_^
I am glad you are feeling better. (Assuming, as you didn’t say you were still sick)
Thanks 🙂 Mostly better! But work deadline used cover of sickness to sneak up on me, so still busy for a bit. 😐
Editing note:
Starting two separate bubbles with plus is probably not the best grammar. It does happen in real life, but we try to avoid it when possible.
I changed it, though this version is probably more wrong 😉 I originally used “and,” (like I changed it back to) but reckoned that was probably a grammatical no-bad-thing.
Lol, at that last bit. It’s one of those, “Yes, I know all about your tech. I made it for you after all” things. You know, the sort of thing that would freak Ryn out far more than he currently is.
What’s going to be hilarious is when MIR finds out about this. Doubly so if Mium is with him.
The thing is, Peter is the one that indirectly got Avon to hire the IDS Contractors, so that he turns around and lectures them for doing that as “bold” is pretty priceless.
If this was anyone but Peter, trying to keep track of who know what about his puppet show would instantly make his head explode.
It wasn’t indirectly. He got the ef5 chassis for Mium from Biaca and then got them to hire his cousin to be one of the Security Consultants because they would recognize him or mium. Then Mium picked up Ef8 when it wanted to join to improve itself and then was outside they went home together (Simplification). After all of this, Ryn stood up in a meeting and said Peter’s tech was his so he could get access to it.
Ryn may be a genius, but Peter is a Mad Social Scientist who puppeteers other Geniuses into doing his bidding as he tugs there little wires!
Kevin is referring to Aaron and Kally. He convinced those two to work for Avon so they couldn’t be easily removed by central.
Yes, and this is why the line “not a lot of love lost there” is a little brutal, because he is almost certainly talking about Kally, and, from what we understand there, there is lost love there.
His use is clearly intended to be idiomatic, but it is one of those minor writing tricks @PastUtopia loves use to make the dialog have more meaning to the readers than the characters.
I am not sure if Peter views that as a sore subject or not. There is no real indication he actively misses Kally, just is vaguely protective of her. That said, Peter displays human emotion less often than most cars.
Um… my understanding is that the character (blue hair, blue eyes) that we refer to MOST as Mium is Eff-8 (the “failed” prototype). Ila is Eff-10 (the “successful” prototype). And Eff-5 (white hair, blue eyes), often seen tailing MIR, when the Avon research facility comes under attack by Rovak et al asks MYM to be improved like Eff-8 (“Eff eight. Was worst. Made better. Made best.”) then goes to save MIR… because allowing the IDS (Miss Beyer to be precise) to acquire MIR would be disruptive to someone’s plans (MYM is the obvious assumption).
Not sure how Biana (I assume that is who you meant by Biaca) who works for the IDS (not Avon) has to do with anything involving the F-series.
And yes, it wasn’t indirectly… when Peter (now MSB chief) met with Aaron, he talked about hiring contractors (implying Aaron & Kally & who knows who else) to stop Atter (his job as MSB chief!) and that while Malsa (or the MSB) could NOT hire IDS contractors, Avon could.
It would seem you’re confusing this event with the previous event of Avon needing to hire “security contractors” to AI-proof their s**t (which occurs as a result of Mium (Eff-8) liberating Ila (Eff-10) from MIR/Avon and then deleting all MIR’s research data on the F-series). Peter did take advantage of this situation to ensure “codeR” gets hired (his hacker… I mean security consultant screen name!?!)… and of course Miko ends up having to go because Peter and Mium would be recognised at Avon.