Comic for Monday, August 27th, 2018
Well, unfortunately the wiki is now account-by-request only again. I kept it unlocked last week, but there was pretty much a direct correlation between duration it was unlocked and amount of spam bots botting spam (well, probably penny-per-hour flesh and blood spammers, sadly). With the actual site, about 90% of it gets caught in the automatic spam filters, but I think the spam filters for the wiki are just not as robust, and IP blocking really doesn’t do what it used to in the modern of VPN work around being trivial and automated, and ultimately, its not really worth my time or anyone else’s time to keep just banned the spam there.
The wiki will still be open to anyone that wants to edit, it will just work like site accounts (the avatars on comments) – just email or comment somewhere on this site, and I’ll make you an account on the wiki to edit with. I imagine that’s probably too much effort for most people, but, well, it’s what we got.
Still have a week of buffer, though fell behind a little this week, got stuck on some random crazy stuff, but thanks to buffers we are still up to date. I ended up sleeping very little last week due to scheduling things, which means even the free time I did end up having was spent being uselessly mentally catatonic as tends to happen when you don’t get even the minimal sleep I usually run on.
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I love panels 4 and 5. The MYM logo gives no indication whatsoever of looking sheepishly sideways and whistling innocently, but that’s definitely what’s happening.
Peter’s “I know what you did.” look is priceless!
I frequently get less than optimal sleep. It doesn’t help when “optimal” changes every night…
If by “like Skyhammer” you mean “can punch a city into a crater”, then, sure…..it’s probably not too far off.
If by “like Skyhammer” you mean “have any hope of stopping it with force”, also sure because heh no you’re not shielding against that…pretty much ever. (You might be able to bribe it to hold off for a week with a truck of ice cream, though.)
(That said, “Not pointed at you” is still pretty funny. Not worrying about something because it’s “not pointed at you”? I think they’d be worried it exists! Who cares who it’s pointed at?! XD)
Peter seems unamused by this particular development, though I wonder if he’s deduced if it was an actual request, or just Mium doing it on her behalf anyway. Get the feeling Mium’s silence on the matter is supposed to play into that, though could be wrong.
Consul looks almost annoyed with Peter’s answer in that second-to-last. (Though if she wants things messy, that does pretty much spell out “To make a mess, send Arkday to the center of your problems, maybe tell him to bring an umbrella”.)
Messy.
Mium has a non-human approach to problem solving. Repeatedly placing Arkady in danger might quickly escalate to a “Consul must be assassinated to keep Miss Naomi happy” result in the decision tree.
Almost entirely the right idea of messy.
Ila also has a non-human approach to problem solving. Which means it could get Very Messy.
If this is not a test of the Consul’s caliber and Peter wants her to remain in power, he’ll presumably mention something more explicit about that when he has the Consul’s ear in a more private venue. “The mage who rescued Arkady won’t blame you this time because Arkady asked for it, and you didn’t know Arpon had the warmages at their disposal. If you send Arkady in over his head deliberately… She’s not actually political. She just cares about her friends. That’s it. Do not mess with her friends.”
Of course, this is Peter, so of course, it’ll double as a test and he won’t be quite so explicit.
Well, this basically confirms that Tamara is looking for (or stalking) Peter. This page gets a lot of mileage out of no text panels.
That panel between Mium and Peter is both hilarious and intriguing. Peter seems to be somewhat vexed with Mium for clearly finding a loophole in how to save Arkady without being asked to interfere. It seems like Peter was maybe trying to make Naomi actually make a decision on that, and Mium is undermining that by just making everything work out.
Remind me, please, because I’m dreadful with the names in this story: which one’s Arkady, and why would Mium be protecting him?
Arkady is the family mage who suggested the restaurant, paid for the meal, and then played a game with Ila in Chapter 4.
Mium’s logic is explained on Chapter 13, Page 8, aka Comic For Monday, August 13th, 2018
You could consult the wiki for Arkady, but we haven’t gotten quite that far yet. :/ (He is mentioned on the cast page, but he doesn’t have his own page yet)
Ah, thanks. That at least puts this in immediate context.
If I have any complaints about this web comic, it’s similar to one I have about Girl Genius: so many things going on at once, with jumps back and forth, that it’s hard to keep track of what led to a particular comic when reading it as it’s released!
(Sadly, I don’t have a good solution. The least work-intensive might be a “previously…” link that just points to the last comic that dealt with this current scene. But even that might be a lot more work than it sounds like; I know pouring back through archives to find the right one is a pain on my end.)
Can you setup a wiki that’s SEOd for bots and spammers, then put ads all over it? You might make more from it than the bots on a site with no meaningful content to any human. Probably best on a separate domain.
If that works it is pure EVIL genius!!!
Well, it does at least mean probably less than mach 5, seeing as how Hypersonic is generally used for Mach 5+, though it’s more specifically about what aerodynamic effects have come into play
Whoops, was meant as a reply to Gurst, I replied to the main thread instead.
Peter’s ‘not pointed at you’ line for some reason made me laugh myself out of sleepiness. Honest thanks for that.
“Well over supersonic” doesn’t make sense because ‘supersonic’ goes all the way up to the speed of light. “well over the speed of sound” or simply “very supersonic” would both work, although the second is a bit odd.
Technically true, but a lot less clunky than most of the alternatives, and most people will know roughly what it means. I considered using “well into supersonic” but that sounded weird to me, so I went with this.
Could also do something with “Mach” that sounds just as good to a casual audience while still being technically correct. “Somewhere between Mach 2 and Mach 3” if you explicitly want to keep it vague.
Of course, that’s assigning a number to it, which breaks the “unspecified speed of plot” side of things, I guess, if you want to exploit that in practice. But then, I doubt that’ll really make too much of a difference insofar as suspension of disbelief is concerned.
Would seem reasonable they don’t HAVE an exact figure for speed – she is going to be hard to track at best, and repeated use of the accel isn’t the same as constant thrust…
Well technically in OUR universe, Hypersonic speed is Mach 5 and above… so Supersonic speed nowadays means you are faster than the speed of sound (Mach 1) up to Mach 5. So “well over supersonic” speed makes sense!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supersonic
Obviously, you haven’t heard some of the generals I’ve heard speaking. “Well over supersonic” sounds just fine, considering the source.
Admittedly, most of those generals were talking to reporters. One would hope they give a bit more detail to their superiors. That said, I have it on good authority that at least one of them did not.
Technically (or pedantically), it should read “well over the supersonic threshold” but, as written, I can’t see how anyone could misinterpret what was meant. Said any other way would sound clunky or stilted – not how anyone would actually say it.
Technically (or pedantically), it should read “well over the supersonic threshold” but, as written, I can’t see how anyone could misinterpret what was meant. Said any other way would sound clunky or stilted – not how anyone would actually say it.
[This is supposed to be a reply to Gurst but for some reason it is not going there.]
I’m with Tgape, sounds fine to me. The general sounded like he was trying to avoid giving any more information than was absolutely required.
If you want to be vague about the speed, you could just say it was moving “improbably fast”.
I do love Peter staring at the wall of Mium’s logo as he works out what’s going on. The “Whatever” isn’t directed at General or the Consul, but at Mium.