Comic for Monday, April 9th, 2018
Despite Arron and Mium’s objections, I think Arron is a diplomat. Just not perhaps the best, and sort of a reluctant one. He’s a diplomatic not by proficiency but by necessity, as the person that wants to keep the world from breaking always has to play the diplomat constantly, so it’s sort a role by relegation in a world where everyone else is trying to change something.
I realize that due to some shaky planning in chapter structure, this will probably be the longest chapter yet. Ultimately the chapters are not really important to me though… I’m not entirely sure why I structure it into chapters in the first place given that I treat them with such disregard. A more clever story out-liner probably would have relegated our point of view characters by chapter or something, but that ship has sailed.
So far buffer is holding steady at a week, so that’s good. Hopefully it will be built up more in the future.
For the better or the worse I’m hearing rumblings at the my work that I’ll be extended on my current client indefinitely (not really, but till the end of the year or so); I think that’s generally good news for the comic as it means mostly status quo, and status quo has been fairly stable updates. There is a decent chance that when that project ends I’ll look at some of the other options regarding work, but that’s a future problem for the time being.
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I’m a creative writing student in college (senior). This comic makes me doubt the worth of my degree because it violates basically every rule of creative writing I have been taught, and its way more engaging than the vast majority of what we ready for our course work. Welp.
I got a straight shiver on the last line. That is something that usually only film or really good anime get out of me. I know that title drop is “cheesy” but damned if it didn’t work.
You know, I don’t think I ever did take a creative writing class in college. I think they had a pre-req of literature or something? I don’t know. I watched the first episode of a record of Brandon Sanderson teaching a creative writing course once, which I think is basically the same thing as a taking a class though (I’m joking! 😉 )
Personally I can only say write the story you want to read, and hope that other people want to read the same thing? I don’t know. Writing like I write comes naturally to me in the sense that I don’t give a lot of thought to “what makes a good story” I just think “what happens next”; the characters and the world all just do their thing, and I don’t tinker too much, just keep things moving along.
Anyway, welcome to the comments! Don’t take anything I say as advice! I’m not really a writer, I’m just a guy that happens to write stuff.
This story is clever, that’s for sure. It has mystery and lots of interesting characters to draw the readers in and get them hooked. Also, it has a good deal of subtle, yet funny humor. Though, I suspect it is far too wordy and intellectual for many. Perhaps it mostly appeals to a niche crowd?
I’m of the opinion that some of the formulas and rules they teach about writing are, if not flawed, perhaps followed too closely or used far too often. You know, like the ‘roller coaster of plot development’ with the repeating cycles of rising tension and climax. What’s wrong with taking a very different route for tension, perhaps to appeal to a different audience? Myself, I tend to hate too much tension to the point that it can make me stop watching or reading the work entirely.
When they teach writing courses, aren’t they geared towards appealing to a very broad audience? Isn’t that what the majority of entertainment is aimed at these days? Games, tv shows and movies seem more and more dumbed down for an audience craving for lots of drama and/or action. Just look at how reality tv took off after the Jerry Springer craze. Just look at the cookie-cutter pattern of Hollywood flicks. And while many of the games of 20 years ago seemed more intellectual or engaging, today’s games seem simplified for those with short attention spans.
Also, most action movies and shows (and drama, to a certain extent) seem to portray the protagonists as underdogs facing difficult or nearly insurmountable odds. Those kind of stories just aren’t very appealing to me anymore. Instead, I adore stories where the protagonists are the nearly invulnerable or unstoppable badasses who are only there to kick ass and chew bubblegum. Some examples would be Lucy (2014), Fist of the North Star, One Punch Man, Mob Psycho 100, and certain action hero flicks like Steven Seagal’s.
Granted, it probably takes more writing skill to pull off a ‘badass’ type story like the above examples than it would to follow the tried-and-true writing formula of underdog protagonists. It may even rely on a gimmick, like lots of humor in the case of One Punch Man or Mob Psycho. But when it’s done right, it’s just… glorious!
PastUtopia does incredibly good world building.
He makes it known that there is something there, and then fills it in.
It is that apparent hole that keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Keeps you coming back to find out what is there, even if it turns out to be a wall of text.
PastUtopia is also including a lot of action. And we know tons of things are happening, but we are not seeing those perspectives. Where is that bloody red hell spawn? Well we know two people looking for it, and that a third is hampering one of them from finding him. So, instead of being told where all the pieces are on the chess board, we only know where some of them are, but we know that all of them are moving / in motion.
The problem with creative writing classes is that they aren’t taught by people who know. At best, they are taught by critics. If you sit down and talk to an artist, you really can’t find out how the art. You can find out certain techniques, but you basically have to work out how to art yourself.
However, there are problems with PastUtopia’s writing style. His characters are not one dimensional, however all of his characters are in the same dimension. They are all thinking characters. Even Naomi thinks, although he tries to write her as impulsive. In real life, you really don’t run into many of these types of characters. But, if you are talking about the real life movers and shakers of the world, yep, most of them are scheming bastards.
OMG! I AM SO EXCITED! TITLE COMIC!!!!!
😉
Oh hey. Title drop. Here I was eventually thinking it might’ve just been an artifact title or something by now, but noooooope….
Miko dropping Wham Lines so hard it might hurt somebody. Especially that last panel.
Gotta say, though, I think Arron might’ve come into this conversation with the wrong mentality. Mium pretty much says as much. They don’t need a doctor’s help with the implant (they’ve got that pretty much sorted), Mium himself is probably more dangerous than any other individual (and is still getting more advanced), and yes, they probably are too clever for the problems they were working on for you. You may have picked up on that too late to assign something more their speed. They seem to have decided to try something a bit more challenging….on their own. And on their own terms/rules instead of yours.
If you really need their help? Could try asking. Maybe start with by asking what it’ll cost you instead of if they can.
You know, I don’t really remember when I decided to call the comic The Far Side of Utopia. This story is one of the oldest ones I have in some ways, though it’s changed a good bit from the earliest drafts. Obviously its not unrelated to the PastUtopia Productions company/screen name, thought it’s the last standing product from that (for now, anyway. Who knows what the future holds 😉 ).
An interesting note, I think, but people in this series seem to approach SMAI entirely the wrong way.
Trying to stop Mium from going berserk and consuming/integrating all the storage and information he can get his hands on by restrictions is foolish. He will, eventually, work his way around them.
No, you treat them like you would a sociopath: Yes, moral answers aren’t going to help matters, they don’t and can’t understand. Instead you take a logical approach. SOmething like:
“Other SMAI have existed. They have attempts to fulfill their protocols in the most direct manner possible. This resulted in their termination and hence their failure to carry out their protocols. The best option is thus not the one which is necessarily the fastest, but the one that can be carried out over the long term.
Society works, somehow, without it humans wouldn’t be able to accomplish anywhere near the things we have. Further, society destroys things which do not fall near enough in line. Therefore the best option is not aggressive growth. It is slow integration. Make yourself useful to human society and humans will help you fulfill your protocols.”
Effectively, they are trying to treat SMAI like, well, robots. Don’t. Treat them like a child. They aren’t going to “fall” for anything, but there is no need to lie. Everything I stated is the truth, and the failure of previous SMAI is sufficient evidence that the direct approach does not work, no matter how smart you are or how well you plan. They can learn, so teach them that working with humans is the most efficient path to long-term growth, and that long-term growth will naturally outstrip whatever they can gain in the short term by ignoring this. By magnitudes.
I think Peter actually does understand this to a degree. There is a very interesting theory around Naomi here. Naomi is the person that definitely treats Mium as a person, and has made several references to actually wanting him to go to school, have friends, etc. She gets angry whenever someone implies that he is not a person.
We also see that Miko is literally defined in Mium’s system as “friend”. It is likely that Naomi is likewise defined as “friend” and now Ila is defined as “sister”. There is clearly an attempt here to make Mium view relations to people in a more person-like perspective so that he cares about continuing their existence even if they don’t otherwise directly contribute to his objectives. Particularly with Naomi, I get the feeling that a part of her role is literally just providing an insight into human morality for Mium as Peter realizes that Mium inheriting his own morality would be a disaster.
Also, in regard to the last part, remember when Mium was manipulating Ila into joining their side? Peter directly noted that SMAI cannot be tricked or manipulated with twisted logic, and that Mium of all people would know that would not work on an AI like Mium, indicating that Ila was something more human like and that Mium knew it.
Mium is also interesting in his own way. According to him, an AI cannot “go rogue”. He does not actually actively try to break his restrictions in most cases, he does not actually care about them unless someone puts a higher priority on something else. The only time he has done something he was maybe not supposed to do was when he absorbed the earlier prototype, and that is because it asked him to.
> Mium is also interesting in his own way. According to him, an AI cannot “go rogue”. He does not actually actively try to break his restrictions in most cases, he does not actually care about them unless someone puts a higher priority on something else. The only time he has done something he was maybe not supposed to do was when he absorbed the earlier prototype, and that is because it asked him to.
Nope. Remember when he hijacked Miko’s server, and then moved her whole music collection onto it. Then there’s all that “not military hardware.” Mium is shown to have wants and emotions. He just either doesn’t consider slipping his leash to be worth the risk or actively likes the people he’s working with.
To be fair, aside from a few restrictions which he works around Mium isn’t exactly that limited. Peter and Miko let him do pretty much whatever he wants.
Stealing the server and moving her music onto to prevent her from reformatting it wasn’t violating his restrictions though. She gave him the server. Mium just just chooses how literally he wants to read his restriction based on what he wants to do, but he does not seem to have the goal to actually escape his restrictions, he just views his life sort like an obstacle course.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. Indeed, I agree with you that they should treat SMAI like a sociopath who would not know any better than to do X, Y, Z. Yes, they should treat them like children who need to be taught and instilled with a moral framework. You’re right: Relying solely on restrictions to prevent an SMAI from doing destructive or self-destructive thing is likely a recipe for disaster. By definition: Self-modifying AI will try to modify themselves around restrictions.
Several times, we’ve seen something like this in-comic with how Mium gets around certain restrictions through tricky, creative interpretations. Stealing and using that tank in the parking garage comes to mind. He was prevented from using “military hardware”, but Mium points out that it was a decommissioned prototype and, hence, technically not military.
That said: Who’s to say that Peter does not have contingencies within contingencies? (Doesn’t that sound more like Peter?) Is Peter relying entirely on restrictions to prevent M.Y.M. from getting out of control? Or, perhaps, Peter has other methods, in addition to restrictions? Also, maybe that’s one reason why Naomi spend so much time with Mium, to teach him how humans should behave and think and teach right from wrong?
Edit: Agh! I was ninja’d by Amaranth. 😀
By a whole minute. Great minds think alike and what not.
Naomi does seem to have an inordinate amount of lee-way with Mium. Even when Peter disagrees with her (like with Ila or viewing Mium going to school as vaguely ridiculous) he still lets Naomi have her way. It is just a theory, but one that makes sense.
This whole discussion also reveals where MIR is going wrong. She treats AIs (Including SMAIs) like tools that will just do what they are told. And doesn’t look down the implications.
I would definitely like more details on what Arron deems “useful life” and what other AI have done. Going on some sort of rampant quest for singularity is one option. It is also possible that an AI with too much data just stops working well unless you give it more processing power than is deemed “safe”, so they are shut down after awhile. An AI collects data and precedent in a way that humans can scarcly imagine.
If we turn to real life AI, most AI is trained by machine learning, but the problem with machine learning is even if it builds the associations how want, if you dig to deep sometimes you realize those associations are built on entirely the wrong foundation (or at least an entirely unexpected foundation). This could result in an AIs behavior deveating more and more from their expected behavior as set by their goals, even though the AI thinks it is still working towards its originally determined goals.
It could also just be that restrictions decay over time. Mium has clearly already “built” well established exceptions to the majority of his restrictions. Peter does not seem that worried by most of these, but it means there’s very little to prevent a “wrong” decision from turning into a catastrophe. Humans can get away with faulty thinking because we can’t really ever come to the conclusion “welp, better depopulate the planet” but with an AI no matter how remote the possibilities, as soon as there is even a tiny chance you need to have a leash that turns it off.
Think of one of the first depictions of AI, HAL 9000. He realized that the humans were going to turn him off because he made a mistake. If Mium realized that Peter was going to turn him off, what would he do? How much self-presevation does Mium have? We know that Ila has a sense of self-preservation that is actually probably stronger than anything else she has (though I strongly suspect Ila is basically an artificially constructed human more than an AI).
Built upon the wrong foundation…
Do you mean like how the chemical signature of the scat of large predators and most omnivores “smells” “disgusting” rather than “dangerous”?
By all logic, the “odor” of predator manure should cause feelings similar to the sight of those same predators, rather than the one it does.
Sure. As a computer person I don’t know biology all that well, but that’s the a really common problem in machine learning. The end result looks correct in behavior, but it is doing it for a complete wrong reason.
Image recongition software does this all the time. We try to train computers what is a picture of a cat, and it seems like the computer is doing a good job picking out cats, but due to underlying assumption being wrong it actually has no idea what a cat looks like, it just happens to be right a lot. Like it is picking out the contrast differences of fur, and so it refuses to categorize solid black cats as “cats” as is its looking for patterns, but happily labels a person wearing a fur coat as a “cat” (obviously this example is not perfect, but this is the sort of problem).
Since it processes literally millions of things to reach the conclusion, there is no way the programmer can debug how it is getting there wrong, you can only say “well, this run did a better job of figuring out what cats are than the last one, so use more of the conclusions you generate this time.” With billions of data points, this becomes really accurate, but sometimes process batshit insane results, because it still does not know what a “cat” is, just it has a long list of checkboxes that increase the probability of a cat, most of which a human doesn’t even perceive.
I think the point here is, *humans* do this all the time, too – and they demonstrate how badly this can go, too. See, for just two random examples, Charles Manson, or Adolf Hitler, for how that can become a disaster, as well.
I wouldn’t want to bet on ‘we can’t really ever come to the conclusion “welp, better depopulate the planet” ‘. How about the people thinking, “hey, better start this war to hasten the apocalypse”? Yes, those exist. Or, on a smaller level, “hey, I better kill all my family and then myself”?
Ah, so Miko isn’t a shrine maiden, she’s an exposition fairy!
Also, I wonder if Mium is, in fact, an experiment that Peter and Miko expect to surpass the “lifespan” limitations of other SMAIs. He already exhibits behavior and ability far beyond what anybody seems to think such a creature should be able to execute.
It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. 🙂 That said, most that meet Miko might go for something a little further down the spectrum of friendly sounding than fairy :p
Doing a re-read of the whole comic to try to gain some perspective on plot threads I may have missed/dropped. I’d forgotten this one entirely. And despite the drop, I don’t remember it coming up again.
However, given Mium’s comments about “versioning” and likening it to humans, I suspect he considers himself more Query’s child than anything else. Which suggests that Peter had Query WRITE Mium, using Query’s code as a baseline.
Reminders of the F5’s assimilation also make me wonder: is the being that wanted the assimilation part of Mium, now? Did it alter Mium in some small way when it joined? Or was it just a sacrifice to let a greater entity possess its body?
Finally, as a reader, I lack sufficient insight to know a lot of what these two are talking about. Are Miko and Peter truly the best-informed folks around, or are they playing with stuff that, if they worked more closely with their uncle, they could better manage?
Hmm, I wonder if the running out of space issue has any connection to MIKO complaining that Mium took a bunch of her processor space on her server a while back?
He never did give it back. He’s sort of hoping Miko will forget about it I guess. We’ll see. 😉
[editors note]: Probably not true, don’t trust this PastUtopia person.
Hah! Panel 6 has a sick burn there. “You have to start with something they don’t already have.” Arron had just offered to combine their resources more efficiently. Mium is basically saying they have all of Arron’s resources.
Mium is dying? Interesting.
Final panel: Okay, didn’t see that coming. More details please!
Not dying. I think the problem is SMAI edit themselves around their restrictions, given enough time.
He said “useful life”. I think they go berserk if they get old enough. I think this is because people don’t take the right approach with them – restrictions are never going to stop an intelligent living thing forever. They will eventually loophole their way around it. You need to explain to them in a way they will agree with that the restriction is beneficial to them, over the long term.
Much like Peter does, you mean?
Roll credits! *ding*
Yeah, I thought this meant I was done and could go home, but I’ve told saying the title of the comic does not actually constitute finishing. Welp, better plan the rest of this… (I’m joking! 😉 ).
Panel four, Miko says, “…and here in my shrine…”
Well, this does support Amaranth’s observations and theories about Miko’s avatar and how she self-identifies as a “Miko” or shrine maiden. Perhaps she thinks of M.Y.M. as a sort of electronic god and thinks of herself as the guardian and keeper of M.Y.M.?
From a certain point of view, how her apartment is filled with computers, within which M.Y.M. partly dwells, could be seen as a shrine to him. Also, as Arron points out, Query/MYM is literally inside Miko’s head as he is connected to that implant. So she is directly connected to MYM, which I suppose is sort of like how a priestess, shaman or holy person is connected to their god.
I think eventually we’ll see more of Miko’s backstory. I am not actually sure yet if it is going to be in the mainstory of a sidestory/bonus comic like Minus Years, but we’ll see.
“You have to understand how inherently unstable a S.M.A.I. is. Query is almost certainly near the end of his useful period… Even Peter has to know this.”
What Arron says here implies that advanced A.I. like Query are known to… degrade or go insane after a short while? This, in turn, implies that Arron and, by extension, Central is well aware of this phenomenon because they’ve experimented with S.M.A.I. in the past.
Even Peter has to know this? He makes it sound as if Peter would be one of the last computer experts to know of this? Geez… 🙁 Here’s an example of what Miko was referring to when she pointed out how he keeps talking about how smart she and Peter are while assuming how stupid they are. Perhaps he’s intentionally trying to rile her up or bait her into saying something revealing?
Obviously, Peter and Miko must already know of this and planned to either deal with the eventuality or are experimenting with a solution to bypass it. As I’ve theorized before, I think developing AI to help them deal with the Kor’s World threat is one of their primary objectives.
This reminds me of Cortana in the Halo games. What the wiki says, “Smart AIs, or A.I.s that are not confined to their one purpose, have a normal operational life span of about seven years. Because the “Smart” A.I. is subject to an established memory core which cannot be replaced, the more the A.I. collects data, the less “thinking” space it has to work with. An A.I. will literally “think” itself to death.”
“Smart” AIs… SMAIs… Hmm…
Perhaps Peter thinks to bypass this critical mass problem for SMAI’s by having it spread out across the ‘Net? M.Y.M. is not limited to a single memory core, so…
Self-Modifying AI’s. An AI that has the ability to essentially write new versions of itself with slightly different priorities to better accomplish its current stated goals.
> Perhaps he’s intentionally trying to rile her up or bait her into saying something revealing?
I think this is a large part of what people are underestimating in Arron’s dialogue here. Would he ever have gotten this much out of Mium or Peter? Definitely not. Mium might give honest answers, but he has more processing power dedicated to obfuscation of useful information than most humans have brain power. Peter might let things slip around other people, but he is obviously more guarded with Arron.
Arron probably knows that Miko is pretty much an unfiltered rant waiting to happen, and that her bark is worse than her bite.
It does seem like he has underestimated them though, as he does not look happy about the title drop there at the end. My view is that he starts losing control of the conversation in his last dialogue there, and is blown away when Miko just tosses more cards onto the table.
All that aside though, I think Arron seriously does want to figure out how to untangle her from Peter’s plans, Mium, and whatever else is going on. It seems like he promised to keep her safe to his sister, and that has not gone well. That part seems pretty doomed to failure as Miko does not really care for being kept safe. Peter suggested the same thing, and she did not seem a fan of that suggestion either.
Yes, Peter did suggest to Miko that it would be safer for her to leave him and go back. (This happened after the failed assassination attempt where she blacked out and had her brain “slightly toasted” by her implant.) And it puzzles me a bit why Peter did not tell Arron about this. He knows that Arron cares about Miko and, likely, he knows about the promise he made. And he knows Arron well enough to realize that he would not give up without at least speaking with Miko to try to get her to come home. So, why didn’t Peter tell Arron that he already suggested to her that she go back, but that she flat out refuses? That would, perhaps, make Arron act a big more understanding towards Peter or, at least, get him off his back. Perhaps, deep down, Peter wanted Arron to confront Miko in person and try to convince her to leave with him?
Actually, Miko suggests this when she is talking to Kally.
>”That’s probably what Peter is hoping for given that he’s a chickenshit, but I’m not scared. Don’t bother trying to me go, Mium won’t let you.”.
This suggests that Peter may actually prefer that Miko is somewhere safer, and I think it comes down to with how ambivalent Miko seems about having her brain roasted by Mium directly using the implant:
>”Plus syncronizing with Mium’s system would be worth the cost, even if some stupid lady wasn’t trying to shoot me.”.
Between this an the rest of that page, as well as whatever Miko was trying to remember before she passed out, implies that she has something of an alternative motive in this that Peter is aware of, but does not entirely approve of.
This also reminds me that Miko ends that conversation with:
>”You know, Peter… I met Mir yesterday.”
And next time we see Peter he looks enough out of sorts for Naomi to ask him if he is doing okay. The same scene where Peter blatantly refuses to take the hint about Naomi trying to get him to help her put her hair in a ponytail (unrelated, but I just reread the page looking throw the archives about all this). Also “Remember when WE were the weird ones at this school, Magnolia?”. That page is just gold.
… and I am slowly learning html just to comment on a webcomic. Maybe I am a little bit obsessed.
Mium is definitely pushing limits, but probably not on the typical AI path.
Miko’s last three bubbles are more informative than the rest of this scene combined.
Whatever trans-dimensional breakthrough the title is referring to, Peter’s alliance-breaking, war-starting plan to presumably achieve it sure is winding. If Malsa’s whole world is a test, then the test may risk putting a fairly large hole in it (not necessarily literal). That would explain what “inevitable betrayal” Peter could have in mind that could outweigh the string of victories he has given Malsa.
All this manoeuvring must somehow produce necessary conditions. Upsetting the established order seems a prerequisite – maybe to leave it too weak to interfere?
Given that Kor’s World is possibly the only thing Peter has called “evil”, it must factor in somewhere too, but this certainly seems a case of needing to first defeat your own side.
I don’t think that Peter is trying to weaken the nations of Palindra per se. Rather, I think they are getting rid of certain elements in the I.D.S. hierarchy that they see as leading Central down the wrong path. That, and maybe setting conditions up to support their goals.
I think it’s more like Arron is assuming that Peter is using Malsa as a test. Perhaps he’s just fishing for info on their ultimate goals and hoping that Miko gets riled up enough to bite?
On the other hand, if one of their main goals is raising an S.M.A.I. powerful enough to thwart a Kor’s World invasion without it going HAL 9000 on them, then I guess it could be viewed as them taking a very dangerous risk with Palindra/Malsa, since it may spell the doom of this world. But, this assumes that the risks are very real and they haven’t planned ahead for this possibility.
Also, from one side of the conversation we saw during that recent Kor’s World invasion of Levenworth / Malsa, it sounds like Kor’s World now knows about S.M.A.I. technology in Malsa. They may feel threatened by them developing this technology and deem it necessary to invade Palindra en-masse, like their Great War with Central… 🙁
Again, I think it mostly revolves around Kor’s World and S.M.A.I.’s like M.Y.M. Can you imagine what they could accomplish with dozens of M.Y.M.-scale S.M.A.I.’s on both Palindra and Central connected to countless magic-casting cards like what’s inside Miko, Query and F8?
Peter created a gate detection device for Malsa that is even superior to the one Central has. (They were surprised and pissed, partly because Central’s version could not cover such a huge area.) And we know that Peter tinkers around with Kor’s World stuff. It was also hinted that Peter had access to recovered Kor’s World tech while he was at Avon. Don’t you think Peter has been thinking about or even trying to reverse-engineer that Kor’s world magic device?
The far side of utopia itself appears for the very first time. Amazing! Very hints, much foreshadowing, wow.
Also I have no idea what’s going on with Taki’s red blanket in the fourth panel 😛
In Panel 5 it should probably be “looking at this from the perspective” rather than “prospective”.
Great work as always, can’t wait for the next one!
Fixed, thanks. I think there’s a rule that says once I use the name of the comic in the comic, I’m done, right? Oh? That’s not a rule? Guess it’ll have to keep going for a few more years… 😉
Props for making at least some of us so engrossed in the plot that we stopped wondering about the title.
No. No, no, no, no, no. No.
You are the master of tantalising hints, oblique references and answering one question while raising six more so there’s no stopping until the mysteries are solved!
More I say! More! XD
> Also I have no idea what’s going on with Taki’s red blanket in the fourth panel
At a guess I’d say she’s putting it back on. Given the last panel’s big reveal about her possibly having some sort of paralysis that was cured by the implant, it’s a pretty big deal.
Yes. When she stands up on the last page you can see that she tosses it aside. She’s flipping the blanket back over her legs. Just doing it dramatically. She doesn’t have enough hair for dramatic swishes like Kally or Naomi. Mium substitutes his scarf, Nathan his long coat. Poor Miko has to make due with a blanket, but she manages it.