Comic for Monday, December 16th, 2019
The black robbed chap is the one talking in panel 4. I realize in retrospect that isn’t that clear. When I read text boxes, I read them in different voices, so it’s way more clear to me who’s talking in cases like that. I think it comes from DM D&D too much… all the NPCs have different voices, you see. Unfortunately slightly harder to see in text, so in this case you just have to tell by the remarkably childish level of insults leveled at Ashvalt to tell who it is 🙂
Apologies for the unexpected week off, just been really busy.
The following is mostly just whining and life blogging…
Without getting too much into the life blogging, part of it is my fault, part of it isn’t; coming back from travel I had a lot of commitments and work saw fit to pile onto the heap. I was rolled off a project while I was travelling, the week before go-live, and rolled onto a new project. Predictably the roll off never happened (because it was delusional to think they wouldn’t need me full time for the go-live in the first place) and the roll on did, so I was left with two full projects for a bit. Plus I agreed to start going to the gym with a friend, and I feel bad for missing that, so I have 2 days booked to gym, 2-3 booked for D&D and board games and what not, a few hobbies, got to run at least once or twice a week, and a job that sometimes thinks it’s a job and half to two jobs, and all the miscellaneous bullshit that comes up with life… just didn’t have a lot of free time for awhile, at least not of the productive nature.
Clearly the only solution is axe the job from the equation. It’s the only really expendable part of the schedule…
The project at work is now in the out in the wild, so it’s mostly beyond my hands, which should free up some time. I sometimes think people start reaching for the sledgehammers and crowbars as I walk out the door, so leaving them mostly to their own devices for more than a week wasn’t ever going to go well. And both of my projects have a fully global team, which is their code word for 24 hour schedules, meaning that you’re never that far from someone, somewhere, breaking something.
Anyway, at least we are back to schedule now I think. The next few pages are in progress.
…
As for the comic, you know, I have no idea where/when the idea that they used the utter ridiculous use of magic to set the projector and screen came into the picture, but it’s been part of the scene as long as I can remember. I think it just seems odd because we don’t actually see people frivolously use magic a ton in the comic, but some of the Family mages absolutely use it frivolously all the time, in part because they tend to be trained to use magic a lot earlier, so to them the ability to warp the fabric of reality and bend it to their will is more of “I could stand up, but I could just magic my coffee cup over here” sort of thing.
For most people, calculating magic is pretty hard, even for a Natural Mage, so it’s not really a low effort thing; there’s generally thought to be so such thing as a generalist Innate Mage, but a Natural Mage can get experienced to close that gap at least partially. Of the main cast, no one really falls into the category; Kally is a Natural Mage, and while she probably could do something like this if she really wanted (she can play tennis with magic after all), it would actually not be that easy for her, as she tends to operate on a bigger and more drastic level of Eidos change; it’d be like the cracking nuts with a sledgehammer. While Tyler is also a Natural Mage, he’s an Innate Mage too, so power that’s not his Innate power tends to be something it takes a bit more effort to use. People like Arkady and Ashian could absolutely use magic easily for trivial things, though I don’t know I’d call them part of the main cast.
Natural Mages are far more common in here than in Central though, so this sort of thing would generally not even occur to people in Central to use magic like that, but is fairly common place among the Families. Arkady using magic for a handful of stupid things was original in the outline, but most instances of it I think were cut so far… lots of stuff of the side characters gets cut… and we still end up with this… hey, I never claimed to be a concise writer, after all, you’re quite a few paragraphs into reading highly tangential mostly irrelevant stuff I babbled into a text box if you’ve made it here, so that should be self evident.
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Just a head’s up; the issues with the site being hacked continue; do a restore being run it looks like we’ve lost the last page; I might be able to restore that later, but don’t have time at the moment to deal with that.
I’m currently trying to figure out if there’s more I need to do to shut hackers out of the site or what they are even using, as it doesn’t look like they are using wordpress accounts, so I guess they have access to the website directory itself. Will see if my host support can help with this… I pay a lot of extra money to host this site in order to avoid dealing with this sort of thing.
If you missed the Christmas post, you can find it here.
I’ll see what help I can get from the host; it’s possible I will have to roll back a month or more of the site if they aren’t able to provide help with this, than deal with whatever when I get back home (currently traveling related to holiday).
For those that haven’t seen it (like me) I just noticed the Santa Hat poll at the bottom of the page is live again.
Had to double check as the same people are winning yet again (who votes a Naomi/Ila ticket in 2019? They already won last year!) but it is indeed a new one.
Pro Tip: If you vote for all the characters you like, Naomi will just win again. We need strategic voting here if we want to see new characters.
I only voted for Ila to have a chance at a non-Naomi win. I also voted for about half of the non-Naomi candidates who currently have votes. I like Naomi, but she wins every year.
I’m amused to think that the whole reason for the projector was to suggest to the others that they haven’t tampered with this video footage at all, and they think so little about their casual use of magic that they have not had a single thought about whether or not using magic casually would taint the veracity of the evidence they’re about to show.
Meanwhile, other people watch them using magic to assemble this stuff, and realize they’re trying to make it look like they haven’t mucked with the evidence. But these people also think, “but wouldn’t it be perfectly within their capability to fake this?”
How many family heads are there? We see seven people here who seem like they qualify and the “Doll of Destruction” seems to count as an eighth, but is that a correct number? Are all these people family heads or are there others that also count that weren’t shown here?
Absolutely not all the Malsan Family heads, with Ashvalt, this meeting has quorum: enough voting members present to enact a binding resolution. Quorum generally, for boards and councils is usually somewhere between 30 – 60% of the full number of voting members. So it can be reasonably assumed there are two or three times this many family heads in Malsa.
I’ve been to meetings where quorum was defined entirely by the percentage of ranking members present – the ordinary chaff like me didn’t count towards it. We could have 90% of the people there, but only four of the old guard, including one founding member, and no dice. But six of the old guard could meet by themselves and decide anything. Also, six of the old guard could meet by themselves in a room elsewhere in the building while the vast majority of the people were distracted by the scheduled meeting, and decide anything, even though the 10 old guard members would not otherwise be able to normally outvote everyone else.
I wouldn’t put it past the families to have something like that set up. Depending on how voting privileges went, it could be very demotivating for the junior members, such that we wouldn’t actually see them in the meeting most of the time. If this were the case, there could be hundreds of other families who generally don’t bother with the politics.
Eliana was specifically noted as missing. I’d be willing to bet that she has a very large amount of influence with this group.
Note that Tyler probably also counts as a family head, but if they have a hierarchy of members, Tyler’s probably close to the bottom of the pecking list. Not that he’d be stuck there. In a magocracy like Malsa used to be, and by which rules this group still probably operates, the placement of each individual would probably be based more on results of sparing matches and actual feats performed. Tyler just starts out at the bottom because that’s where the FNG goes until he’s had time to earn his chops. But instead, Tyler got his notice of promotion and then walked into a trap, so he hasn’t really shown off at all yet.
Yay! Frivolous use of magic!!
Honestly, at a meeting of the Family heads, I would TOTALLY expect magic to be used for EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING. I mean, I would not be surprised if the meeting were not lit with floating balls of light & all the tables and chairs were summoned forms (except for the observation this power seems rare). Important to show off that power. So maybe not so frivolous after all?
The talk of magic reminds me: Does Peter actually use magic any? I don’t think we’ve ever seen him use magic on-screen, though arguably using high-tech stuff like hologram projectors might well require magic as part of its operation…
We can be sure Peter MUST be able to use magic… he did manage to enrol in Levenworth after all.
As for what magic Peter might use… the only times I can think of where magic (& Peter using it) must have been involved are:
1) the time he gave the guy following him the slip (likely used Ellipses to get away, leaving in his place a holo-projector-bomb-device).
2) when the Consul gets “assasinated”, Arron questions Peter over his use of Ellipses.
I assume Peter uses a holo-projection system plus Ellipses to achieve a more “real” result (fool the eyes & the senses): Peter is after all appears to have mastery of technology!
Peter asked Miko to prepare a spell to locate and “ping” Mium when he was buried and dormant.
Autocaster, no doubt. As might all other instances be – he’s a magician, not a mage.
Heh, he probably hacked the admissions database and sent himself an acceptance letter. 🙂
I believe at some point it was stated that doing well by cheating was acceptable, if they couldn’t figure out how you cheated.
Being able to cheat is considered a sufficiently desirable skill as to qualify you for the school.
That being the case, Peter was a highly desirable candidate.
I have the impression that you don’t need to be able to *do* magic to enroll there. I mean, Mium got in, back before Past decided to make null caster a standard (but rare) ability.
You do need to be able to do well on academic tests, many of which would be very difficult for someone without magic to pass. Kind of like my colorblind brother testing out of color theory in college – a class he would *not* have been able to pass without illicit assistance. To put that in perspective, I’m not colorblind, but I couldn’t have passed the test or the class. (Admittedly, part of that was growing up with two colorblind older brothers and learning to appreciate colors from them. *DOH!*)
Pith is not your forte, to be sure, Past!
But if we wanted pith, there are other things we would be reading. I’m sorry that your work world behaved predictably, both for you and for those relying on that roll out! Nothing like that has ever happened before, either there or elsewhere in high tech. Nope. Never.
And yeah, it seemed likely that it was Cadaver speaking in Panel 4. His reaction after his effort to make Ashvalt look dumb blows up in his face (metaphorically, sad to say) will be worth twice the price of admission!
“Pith
1a : a usually continuous central strand of spongy tissue in the stems of most vascular plants that probably functions chiefly in storage
b : any of various loose spongy plant tissues that resemble true pith
c : the soft or spongy interior of a part of the body
2a : the essential part : core
b : substantial quality (as of meaning)
3 : importance”
Well we have no evidence whether Past has any mastery over the spongy tissue within a plant. Do you even like to eat the pith Past?
As for the core meaning… how about we wait till we finish reading Past’s work before be make such assessments? Ditto on importance.
In fact, you might describe some of Past’s style as “pithy”, as in language/words that are brief, but meaningful and forceful: it is a comic after all that is delivering on several extensive subjects, and includes a significant dose of world-building.
Perhaps you mean Past’s comic is not verbose? I mean, it’s verbose for A COMIC. But if I wanted to read something verbose, then that’s what novels are for (I choose The Count of Monte Cristo as my example of verbose), and if I wanted to read something long-winded… there’s always Lord of the Rings (long winded in a good way) or Catch 22 (OMG it’s so hard to read) (still working on War & Peace: so not sure if it’s long winded or verbose)). Past tends to be a little on the verbose side in his comments… (thus showing mastery of both verbosity (in his comments) & succinctness (in his comic) (well most of the time)).
OR perhaps you mean Past’s comic IS verbose… in which case you would only be correct if comparing it to other comics.
Somewhat taking the pith, then? 🙂
Dread Pirate, sir –
It is his casual commentary at least as much as his ongoing tale that informs my opinion. That he *can* write a terse character does not make him laconic, himself.
It is a pithy that we cannot have this conversation in real time.
And understand, I enjoy the wordiness. If I wanted everything to be brief, I would stick to my copy of ShrinkLits!
PastUtopia is verbose, but several of the characters are pithy, yet the characters are written by PastUtopia. Does this make PastUtopia pithy or not? I think I stopped learning before we got to transitive properties…
I feel we need a pith helmet joke here.
Panel 4 bubble 1: “Ladies and Gentlemen… and Ashvalt as well…”
I think that might be intentional.?
I don’t know what he is talking about, but it might be “gentlemen” are male family heads, “ladies” are female family heads, “and gentleman” is a reference to “the Canthi boy” (whose name I can’t remember.)
It would fit characteristically with the arrogant “Cadaver” we have thus far observed to finically differentiate that in his address and as he further points out Ashvalt does not fit in any of the above categories.
Yeah, that was my take. I’m not sure who you mean by the Canthi boy, but I was thinking the singular ‘gentleman’ was a reference to Ashian, who is not a regular in these meetings.
Ashian is “the Canthi boy”. He is the brother of Camillia, whose name is “Camilia Canthi” according to the wiki anyway.
I think this is the first time I ever get to explain something about plot in comment! (by cheating looking at the wiki)
Past apparently updated the wiki on August 13 and August 14 for the current chapter’s characters. Cadavar isn’t listed, nor anyone who could be him. Cadaver’s, red-headed friend isn’t, either, nor Saraine the last two pages. But Akatmar Shemoki, Ashian Canthi, Ashvault Arduni, Elmond Kafari, and Regin Enkari are all listed now, and Camilia and Arkady have surnames! Horray!
Not noticing stuff like this is one of the dangers of having a local cache.
I think she’s suggesting that Ashvalt doesn’t have the manners to qualify as a “gentleman”…
^_^