Comic for Thursday, March 8th, 2018
…and it’s up! We return to more TV news anchors talking. I think I’ve taken the “talking heads” webcomic trope to a new level here, as I bring you literally pictures of pictures of people talking! 😉
The women on the couch is someone we’ve seen before, but I don’t really expect many people to recognize her, as she’s not had a big role so far. Plus, last time we saw her the art was a little bit… different (worse).
While we are on the subject of worse art… fck rooms, and fck perspective. Yeah, I know, I know, your supposed to draw guiding lines and stuff. Bah, to that. I know that a surprisingly high number of webcomic artist artists use 3d modeling for rooms like this – I know because many of them tell me how I should and how easy it is, but… the few times I’ve tried it takes… like… forever. It can make super good results, but I think it only really makes sense for people that get to use reuse more of their set than I do… like, most places we only see a few times… it’s just occurred to me that might be Peter’s fault. For some reason places he lives tend to blow up.
Anyway… who do you think is at the door? I bet your guess is wrong… 😉 … well, probably.
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Page’s will be up late this week. Monday’s page will be end of day monday, and I imagine that will push Thursdays page to end of day Thursday. Didn’t get much time to work on it this weekend.
Instead of constantly being late with the pages, why don’t you just take Monday off and post it on Thursday to give yourself a bit more time to get the pages done instead of rushing to get them out. We will be patient.
The fewer pages he posts, the bigger he makes them, so It’s kind of a wash. ^^
I think he might need to do what I’ve heard some authors doing to actually save time. Rough sketch it on an 8×11…
He works in IT, I’m not sure he can afford to take every Monday off.
But I’ve found management usually sneaks out before lunch on Fridays. Consider taking half a day every Friday to get caught up?
Yes, I’m well aware that isn’t what eldestdawn was suggesting. I’m just practicing my Management Speak. It’s like normal English, except you ignore anything that seems inconvenient.
Oh oh oh! It’s Peter at the door, isn’t it? He has an exit strategy for her! Which just happens to really further his plans as well.
Panel 1: “boy, if she doesn’t come to, take her to the fourth door on that big building over there.”
You know… I almost want to see the Warmages discussing the outcome of this job afterwards. Just to see the ‘sane’ one’s reaction to Rovak complaining he ALMOST DIED.
You put “low causality estimates” but I think you mean “casualty”, as in people dying, right?
Fixed, thanks 🙂
On previous pages I sort of forgot who Marc was. And so I did not understand the betrayal. Then, on an archive binge, I found this page:
http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-monday-march-6th
It explains Marc Idunni’s true loyalty. He says Peter is untrustworthy and accuses him of being an IDS spy. Peter does not even deny that, but he points out that Marc is a spy, reporting everything the MSB does to the Exiled Families.
Then there’s this page:
http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-thursday-may-4th
Mium and Ila are holding President Kokato hostage. And he mouths off his theories on who they are working for and why they’re doing this. He says, “…Perhaps even the dissidents, the Exiled Families. My sources suggested they would welcome war.”
Marc’s actions on recent pages makes more sense now. Tyler should have known better than to trust him.
Further, now that I’ve re-read a bunch of pages, it seems hinted that assassins Acalia and blondie here might also be working for the Exiled Families. But it is confusing because it sounds like they might also work for Bianca on occasion. Like here:
http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-monday-april-10th
Blondie says (of Acalia): “I still wish you’d tell me what it was they had you nick off the I.D.S. that got them so riled up.”
He does not specify who “they” are. But Acalia does mention that their mutual friend Rovak was working for Bianca.
The thing that Acalia nicked from the IDS that got them “so riled up”… The only thing that comes to mind is the Bridgepoint data. This has, indeed, got them riled up. It’s the incident that Kalisto Summers was sent to investigate and which started a bunch of things rolling.
But then I got to thinking: What if it was Bianca who hired Acalia to steal (and sabotage) the Bridgepoint data?
Because the data was not just stolen, but sabotaged, Central must want to recapture it if at all possible. What if Bianca (or the Exiled Families) could make it seem like Malsa’s government was behind that? Wouldn’t this give Bianca a blank check from Central to deal with Malsa ‘by any means necessary’, allowing her to get away with stuff like targeting Skyhammer on Malsa’s consul building? Or, if the Exiled Families was behind that, wouldn’t that ensure a war between Arpon and Malsa, one that might topple Malsa’s current government?
I will note this page here.
It doesn’t answer any questions (that’d be just unnatural for me to answer things) but it gives some information about what Miko thinks at least.
On the page you noted, Miko says; “Peter was right, and that annoys me.”
And on the page for January 11th, 2017, Miko wakes up with a migraine after her implant toasted her brain. And the first thing she says (to Peter) is, “Figures you’d be Hell’s doorman.”
I’m also reminded of how protective Peter seems to be of Miko. When Arron found out she was with him he confronted him about it and asked Miko to be returned. Peter actually expressed emotion when he warned him not to press that issue.
My compliments on the hints of Peter and Miko having something akin to sibling rivalry. (I just read that cousin rivalry can be just as intense as sibling rivalry.) But we’ve not seen Peter and Miko together very often and we’ve seen them actually talk with each other on a personal level even less. Though, both of them are extremely handicapped in the social department, so that’s to be expected. But, it would be very interesting to have a flashback on when Peter got Miko involved.
One my favorite things about the writing are how all the relationships are implied through interaction. Every interaction between characters has so much subtext based on their relationship. Kally and Peter is a great example, as well as Mium and Ila and the above mentioned Peter and Miko, even if their on page interactions are surprisingly brief considering their close association.
For more theorizing on who Acalia works for and why, I reference this page:
http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-monday-june-26th
Ms. Summers: “You could start with why you kidnapped Kokato. It seems hard to deny that was escalation, or that you did it.”
Miko: “That’s obvious. Step one of any plan is take control of the timeline of events. By manually triggering that event, their actions can be modeled to a predictable timeline for us to act on. Also, they tried to shoot me. It’s really them that escalated the problems.”
It’s kind of funny because Peter said the same thing about taking control of the timeline of events. And it was revealed elsewhere that IDS was meeting with Arpon’s president and pushing them to wage war on Malsa, which is what Miko meant by “triggering that event” – war with Arpon.
Miko said that “they” were the ones who tried to kill her – i.e., they sent Acalia, the teleporting assassin. From the context (kidnapping the president of Arpon being either retaliation or self-defense), this implies that Arpon – or some agent of Arpon’s goverment working in some official capacity – was behind it. But, it seems like Peter’s main goal in kidnapping President Kokato was to secure Resh’s non-interference in Malsa’s war with Arpon. Now that I think about it, though, perhaps their real aim was to weaken PACT even further? Maybe that’s a bonus?
It is my view that PACT was using Arpon as something of a puppet state to get their claws into Malsa. A lot of the background events have to do with that Malsa does not get along with PACT, and that PACT is supported by the IDS Corporate Affairs branch. The fact that the IDS has a Corporate Affairs and, best I can tell, not a Nation Relations branch seems pretty telling.
This is what makes everything so complicated though, as there are multiple layers of politics. Part of Peter’s plan to keep the Resh out seemed to be to convince them that Arpon was using Orish Agents (warmages), playing on the fact that Resh and Orin seem to have poor relations. This may have intentionally or unintentionally lead to the Resh and Orin now seem to be on the verge a war.
What is clear is that the war has sort of been a disaster for the IDS and PACT. They have looked powerless and impotent, and Malsa is just sort of sweeping Arpon aside due to having more powerful mages, and Arpon being on the verge of collapse from internal turmoil (one of the powers of playing the Peter card in your deck is that your opponents start suffering from mysterious internal turmoil…).
March 6, 2017. Ferrus called it re: Tyler being betrayed.
To be fair, Naomi, the exception the tank fell through could also be used for this stuff. Or `Well, they were just laying there in an old battlefield. Which everyone was avoiding, because of the possibility that some of the shells were live. I just cleaned up the mess. Also recovered the museum piece launcher that fired them the first time around.`
Or maybe it was even team Rovak, trying to cover up that their leader was trashing the place he was supposed to be defending.
Re: the commentary. Possible lampshade: “Wow, Peter, this apartment looks just like one of your old ones!”
At the door? It’s the Spanish Inquisition, of course! I always expect the Spanish Inquisition; a healthy survival choice, because they only ever show up when they’re not expected. Of course, that means I’m not expecting them, so they’ll show up at any moment.
I concur with your assessment on the Spanish Inquisition.
Oh, wait, I’ll finish this comment later, there’s someone at the door, I’ll be right b-aaaarghhhh…
What?
‘I’ll be right b-aaaarghhhh…’
What is that?
He must have died while writing it.
Oh, come on.
Well, that’s what it says.
Look, if he was dying, he wouldn’t have bothered to write ‘aaaarghhhh.’ He’d just say it.
Well, that’s what’s written on the page.
Perhaps he was dictating!
Oh, shut up. Does it say anything else?
No, just ‘aaaarghhhh…’
[Couldn’t resist.]
Regarding the smoke screen, I don’t think Mium used the same exception. I think instead he hacked into the Malaysian tactical net, and in Weber’s voice requested a medical unit on standby and smoke screen to cover his withdraw. As for Weber not carrying a radio, well he is a mage. That’s not requisitioning military hardware, its just being helpful to the Malaysian forces. Weber might even be sharp enough to remember giving the order later.
Biana… Is that you trying to slink back?
I think this is actually in regard to Arron and Kally, as they are the only ones likely to be “fully cooperating” with the M.S.B. (which is currently Peter). It is sort of a running theme that Malsans do not hold the same importance in the difference between the branches that the IDS does, which makes sense.
A lot of text on this one.
“Don’t have confirmation *if* this action” should either use “confirmation whether” or “confirmation that”. They mean different things. Or you could omit the “if” entirely, which implies the “confirmation that” meaning.
“Widespread structural damage” or “widely spread structural damage” would be strictly correct. The speaker may be using an informal tone rather than a strict one.
“Smokescreen” is usually one word; splitting it changes the meaning slightly but it’s insignificant.
“Twenty four hour” should be hyphenated twenty-four.
As a matter of writing style, the long sentence in the central panel should be split at the second “as”. i.e. “have been maintained. Arpon forces…”. Or you could split it at the first “as”.
In “One of the last conflicts”, conflicts implies there are a whole lot of Arpon groups attacking independently for completely different reasons. You probably meant something like “skirmishes”, “clashes” or maybe “engagements”.
The “continue to circulate about” sentence needs re-writing because as you have it the “about” wants to assume its alternate sense, meaning “around”, so it can stick to the “circulate”. There’s no simple fix, though. I approve of the comma splice in that sentence, it makes the speaker seem informal.
The comma splice after “expectation”, though, should just be a period – the diction is the same, so you might as well use proper grammar.
“Explosions the that” needs to drop the “the”. If someone claims the rest of this sentence is ungrammatical, remind them it’s the second half of a sentence it interrupted.
…and I think that’s it.
Fixed, I think. Thanks 🙂
You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty on this one… so many words….. 😐