Comic for Monday, December 25th
Dec24
Posting a little earlier as I’ll be preoccupied with Holiday stuff.
And of course, poll winner for the Very Important Santa Hat Poll (click for full size). It’s just a bit of a quick doodle as the Holidays sort of crept up on my and have busier than expected between work still being busy despite the holiday and everyone else not being busy so thinking it’d be a good time to schedule things.
Thursday’s comic should be ontime as we march into the New Year, but probably won’t be up early on Patreon (or maybe just by like a day… 😉 )
Hope you are all spending your Holiday Season with Festive Cheer and what not! Merry Christmas or your functional gift giving equivalent!
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Hey all – Thursday’s page will probably late. Either late Thursday or Friday or something. Unfortunately between Holidays and a lot of work, I’m a little (a lot) behind. Sorry, and I’ll keep you posted. I’ve had more work over the Holidays than the last month.
I dunno what happened – too many fancy manager people spending their holiday brooding at their computer and finding ways to make work probably. This is what happens when they have a break from their day jobs of making meaningless charts.
I suggest you give us “Dead Naomi” days every once in a while (from Megatokyo)
Where, you throw up a pinup, and a sorry for the filler message.
I really admire that you are trying to maintain the comic and the job.
We want you around for the long term. So maintain yourself.
In the land of my ambition, I’d like to make filler AND comics though… :p
It’s tricky, mostly because it comes down to lack of discipline. If I have a buffer, I tend to work more on other things and spend longer on the pages until I don’t have a buffer anymore. So when stuff like holidays and more works comes along, I fall behind.
Ex: The grand answer to updates was supposed to be when I went from 3 pages a week to 2 pages a week, but ultimately all the happened was the pages got bigger with more panels because I had more time to work on them.
Really, my goal is to be more diligent about the buffer and Patreon stuff in general, so that way I always have a buffer for the site. That said, goals + reality = vague ambitions, usually. Too many hobbies, too many distractions and too much work. Patreon has been the best answer so far, because now I feel guilty if I don’t get it up there early, but sometimes feeling guilty only gets us so far :p
There Is an interesting parable you might want to keep in mind. I’ve found that reminding myself of it everytime something new demands my attention helps me make decisions. It works for me, maybe it will do the same for you.
Your life is a is symbolized by a large jar, that’s the time you have to collect the precious stones that will make up your time. Both in hours and in accomplishments. Each goal you set is building a rock or a jem that goes in your jar. Each new opportunity means something else you don’t get to do. You are the judge of each thing’s importance and the final arbitor in each decision. Decisions are binding. There are no appeals.
Be in the world, knowing you are activlely making choices, to include the big things first and the little things once those are accomplished.
PS: If you still watch TV, STOP. TV watchers talk about what others are doing. Non-Watchers are out doing the things Watchers claim they want time to accomplish.
That PS is really unhelpful. You could throw just about anything in there – reading, sports, video games, spending time with friends, browsing the internet…..
Consumption is important for many creators too. If you don’t expose yourself to other stories, it’s hard to craft one of your own.
The material we consume is more important than the medium. And, recreation is important too. As BuilderOfCastles said – don’t burn yourself out. Balance, not extremes.
I think get what you mean, but I think I also get what I think Just_IDD means; I don’t think he’s saying to stop watching things you actively enjoy, but some things it can be really easy to fall into using as a “filler”. Cutting down on filler is a great idea that I frequently tell myself I should do, but… uh… haha. 😀
Personally, TV isn’t my vice – I didn’t grow up watching TV and only very rarely watch shows or movies. I have some degree of trouble watching most movies/shows, but that’s a whole different tangent.
That’s not to say I don’t have my vices. I play video games. Not as much as I used to, but the time table got pretty strained for awhile when xcom2 came out 😉 I also DM two games a week of D&D which takes a not insignificant amount of time.
I used to read a ton too, though I do much less now. I listen to audiobooks sometimes, especially as I can do that while drawing or sometimes while working (depending on what I do) but they are hit and miss for me – I have to like a book a lot more to be able to listen to the audio book than I do to read it, so I frequently don’t have one I like to listen to.
My problem with time is that I only have X amount of hours per day that are going to be particularly productive hours. My daily allotment of focus burns out faster than my literal time, especially as work requires a fair chunk of it – this is why I usually have time to doodle silly things that don’t require much thought, but have more trouble fitting in things that require more proper effort 😉
It’s a common misconception (in my opinion) that creativity and effort are really different. 90% of my inspiration for things comes from sitting there and confront the script/page/etc and being like “okay, brain, we are now going to write something, it’s going to be interesting, you got that?” Sometimes it rebels and makes stupid stuff you end up throwing out, sometimes it makes good stuff you can keep 😀 The problem is this means that it all sort of has then come out of the same pool of time spent marshaling the brain into doing things that are “effort”, as the brain would really rather go off and procrastinate with whatever its filler of choice is. Drawing does not actually take nearly as much effort as drawing the comic does, or even good filler, as it’s coming with the ideas, scenes, expressions, that’s the hard part. While I have the nominal script, I can’t really draw most things the way I think of them, so there’s a lot of translation involved – I think I’ve thought of how something looks, but till I draw it I really haven’t, my mind has just skipped a huge chunk and backfilled it with “yeah, I probably know how that works”.
Now I strongly suspect that if I was better at mindfulness (or whatever you want to call it) I could have more daily focus, but changing how your brain works is really hard, and I’m not going to pretend my brain is a fully functional device all the time 😀
Anyway, sorry. Rambling, unlike work, does not require much effort, so is very tempting 😀
PS: Comic will be up late tonight. Currently drawing it 😀
I have not done much creative writing – certainly nothing published and very little that I’ve shared publicly. But, I find that it helps to brainstorm whatever comes – brainstorming – writing it all down as it comes and sifting through it later to pick out the gems that I can use. I may go back looking through stuff I wrote down years ago to find ideas I had no use for or to reuse an old idea. I used to even keep a small notepad and pen in my pockets so I could jot down any ideas as they come, wherever I am, so I don’t forget them. Also, I’ve read writing articles that stress the importance of writing several drafts.
I think the one of the problem with webcomics is by necessity you guys are getting like draft 1.5 or at best draft 2. If you manage to get your hands on the first draft of basically anything, it’s pretty rough…
To be honest, I would love to rewrite the first 400 pages of The Far Side of Utopia – there are tons of pacing changes I’d make, dialogue that is lackluster, art inconsistencies in how I draw magic effects, etc.
That said, a comic really only hits stride once you have the art+writing for a page, and you can’t really do proper drafts of that (unless you are fancy people publishing and stuff).
I’ve dabbled in more novelish writing, that’s sort of where I started this story, but I’ve yet to be convinced that people as fond of periodical release writing as webcomics, and it’s already a pretty small market for webcomics (though I’ve been amazed how active the readers for this webcomic has been the last few weeks – you guys are amazing).
I will almost certainly publish a novel at some point in the modern age of it being pretty easy to publish them, but I don’t have super high expectations on that front currently 😛
I think Just_IDD’s advice and parable is helpful. It emphasizes the importance of prioritizing which opportunities are most important to us and is a useful way of visualizing and reminding us of that.
But, mostly, I wanted to point out that the bit about giving up TV seems spot on to me. I gave up TV watching back when broadcast switched over to digital. (I never did get a converter box.) And I don’t regret giving it up at all. At first, I was amazed at how much free time this left me. Though, over the years I’ve gotten used to filling my free time with other things, spending some of that watching YouTube or, occasionally, films or shows of my choosing. I still regret the time I wasted years ago on pointless shows like Seinfeld as I’m sure I could have found something better to do.
Granted, Djitt is right in that consumption of fiction can be important for some creators in terms of inspiration. However, if that’s the goal, I think it works a lot better to be very picky about what we watch or read for inspiration. As the idiom goes: “Garbage in, garbage out”…
So casting mechanics here:
Visually, both Kally and Fluffy seem to have their own calculation circles. They are even different colors. I am wondering how much to read into this. There seem to be two different possibilities for what is going on here:
The benign possibility: Kally is casting two spells: One, centered around the dragon’s mouth is doing the main firing. The blue one has some other purpose, perhaps improving the aiming, or boosting the power of the other spell.
The interesting possibility: Somehow, Fluffy is casting its own spell, relatively independently of Kally. There is quite a bit of evidence for this.
* Someone noted that the dragon itself is considered an important tactical unit independent of Kally. This makes most sense if the dragon has significant power Kally does not have.
* We know red constructs have all sorts of interesting powers, including the ability to act on their own without instruction. This implies they have the potential to have their own calculation power.
* The range implicated by the beam of power we see here is completely unprecedented by any magic we currently know about. All magic we have seen is relatively short range, and uses physical means to get power at larger range (i.e. Illa’s high powered rocks). The one exception is the unusual power of red constructs, which can last even without the mage nearby.
* And this does not look like a physical attack at all (no shock waves).
This maybe indicates that somehow the red beam is somehow an extension of the dragon. But the casting circles makes it seem like a magical extension, i.e., the dragon is casting a spell in its own red construct world.
This opens up whole new possibilities for what red constructs actually are, how they interact with edios, and in particular what fluffy is, but I might be quite off track.
If you look closely, Fluffy is casting the same spell as Kally. Which would make sense, as while Fluffy is a tactical weapon, the driver is Kally (and all evidence indicates Kally likes to retain control). Think of Fluffy like a tank. A red ethereal tank. That flys. And breathes fire (particle beam?) instead of shooting shells. And potentially can carry out preprogrammed instructions (the obvious one being: shield Kally from incoming attacks). And maybe (given enough instructions) can wander off and bite someones head off!!
My current understanding of red constructs is that they DO NOT act without instruction. But they DO act like a robot with preprogrammed instructions. I would assume encoding instructions into a red construct requires a higher level of skill (or a cheat (i.e. piece of technology)) than that required to simply create a red construct and directly command it to do stuff (in real-time). And don’t get me started on the possible problems of having a killer red construct with some preprogrammed instruction set wandering off… because any instruction that is not simple (like the one Atter probably uses: “kill everyone”) is eventually going to fail (i.e. run into a situation that leads to a failure).
We have seen Fluffy shoot down a missile before. But yes, this time the range (and size) of the dragon fire is mighty impressive indeed. You are forgetting magic can’t ignore physics. Dragon fire could be like a laser beam… so range is no problem (so long as you have enough power)… and there is no physical shockwave… except maybe heating of the air, possibly ionisation of the air (if your laser is powerful enough and the correct wavelength to be absorbed by air), catch being you don’t usually “see” lasers. Or dragon fire could be like a particle beam: this gives it those already observed disintegration of missile ability, and would probably heat/ionise the air it encounters (which we “see” as the red glow??). I note a conventional particle beam is of charged particles (since accelerating ions is easy) which would mean a wopping big beam would probably have some lightning effects to it (it’s a beam of charged particles: how could it not!!). Or the dragon fire could consist of red construct “particles”, which would (again) probably heat the air it encounters. Or dragons fire could be some combination of all 3. The dragon would have to “cast” to do any option, because the dragon is NOT intrinsically a working laser, or a working particle beam cannon, or a red construct “particle” gun. I think of the dragon as a tactical platform: Kally can’t support the casting of dragon fire (it would probably burn her lips): but Fluffy can.
So… Miko, in the 4th panel; just before the rocket disintegrated.
We know that Miko has a brain implant that interacts with Edos data, and we know that MIUM can hack those implants, and we know that his disintegration trick even seems to require hacking someone’s implant to do it. So perhaps all of his ability to modify edos data is through his connection to Miko through her implant. In that case MIUM would count as nothing more than an extremely high-powered (by way of his extreme calculation capacity), extremely long range (by way of his connection with the part stolen from the mecs), and extremely user friendly (because he can program himself) autocaster.
Indeed. Remember when the blue-haired assassin lady tried to shoot Miko? Remember how Mium temporarily possessed the implant in Miko’s head so he could disintegrate the bullets? You know, the device which is probably Kor’s World tech that Peter tinkered with and had implanted in her head and which seems connected to the coma she had been in? Remember how Miko was aware of what was going on inside her head – all those calculations – and how time seemed to stand still?
I think it’s a distinct possibility that Miko could become addicted to that greatly expanded consciousness and sense of power from her brain being networked with M.Y.M… if it happens again. And, for the little we’re shown or told in those tiny panels, Miko might have been networked again. Remember, Querry is out of commission now, which means he has one less unit to inhabit. And M.Y.M. might need all the magic processing power he can get.
For all we know, Miko might have volunteered to help in that manner. It might be why she seems to be holding her forehead, as if she has a headache. We know that M.Y.M. possessing and using her implant can cause her body temperature to rise. That time with the assassin ended with Miko falling unconscious and in bed to recuperate. I think Peter said that her brain almost got fried. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it gives her a splitting headache.
I’m not sure that the Kor world tech is in Miko’s head, in her computer would be just as accessable as most autocasters. We do know that a lot of people from central, including Peter’s father, have an implant. The implant could be part of the “autocaster system”, though, so that is one possibility. That to say, we don’t really have much info on how the autocasters work beyond “they do the mathy bits for you”. That said, she did have a MUCH more violent reaction to her implant being taken over than others have, it knocked her out completely while others it just gave a headache and dazed for a bit, so I don’t know.
That is why I doubt that she will be getting adicted any time soon; because, unlike with others, the process seems to knock her out completely. 10-20 subjective seconds worth of having a calculator in your head is not worth several hours or days of recovery. I really can’t see even a hardcore computer nut taking that deal.
I think that the lions share of the processing power that MIUM is using is coming from Miko’s computer bank, both the one given to him and the other one that he “stole”. The Querry unit, I wouldn’t think, couldn’t hope to be more powerful than two full standing servers, afterall. That said, there is the issue with other restrictions that this might get past. Remember when MIUM got himself knocked out when going after Illa, thus allowing him to run his main processes on the Avon mainframe. Something like that could be going on as well. Who knows, though, there is still the possibility that the querry unit is a lot more advanced than the mainframes are or that they are geared for general processes while the unit is focused for specific processes and so streamlined for that functionality. I somewhat doubt it, but the possibility is still there.
I sort of assumed the hand in pocket, then the outstretched hand with IME sparkles is Mium’s hand… except, wasn’t Mium wearing a Levenworth jacket (i.e. a green jacket)?
Absolutely adore Kally’s reaction. “OMGWTFBBQ!?! I shot a HVW round down from this angle!?! I mean you, Fluffy did the shooting, but still, OMGWTFBBQ!”
M.Y.M. (pronounced “Mium”) Is a Self-Modifying Artificial Intelligence who inhabits many nodes on the internet-analog in this comic. He has two mobile F-chassis android units, F8 (with the scarf and which is currently rearing the uniform, and F5, which has neither).
Mium generally keeps them in different places in order to maximize his abilities to interact with a wider variety of things (in this case, the object-nullification ability that apparently only the F-units have). Both of them, however, can legitimately be considered to be “Mium”.
He had a third, flying mobile unit but it was badly damaged, earlier.
Notice the panel to the right of the outstretched hand with IME sparkles, immediately preceding the panel with the HVW broken into sparkling pieces – The Matrix-looking one with a blue background of zeros and sparkles? (It’s panel 13 by my count.) That’s the dead giveaway that M.Y.M. was responsible. We’ve seen this background before on more than one occasion as it seems to be the cyberspace or whatever network that M.Y.M. inhabits.
No regrets with voting Naomi. Christmas spent in the ass end of nowhere away from home, and seeing that picture made me smile. There’s something to be said for an unconditionally happy lass, even if she’s fictional. Thanks and merry Christmas.
Spreading holiday cheer is her middle name. I think anyway. 😉 Merry (belated) Christmas!
Of course, the one line of thought that I didn’t realize earlier….
I can’t WAIT to see Biana’s reaction to this. ^.^ She used what she assumed was a 100% guarantee, and it turned out to be a 100% fail. Hee~
Biana. Your career is over, and you were warned. Best leave quietly, or the Malsa’s retaliation is going to go along the lines of “kill every last IDS agent on the planet who doesn’t surrender quietly and immediately” and most of those are your agents, Biana, since Aaron already pulled out HIS agent, except for Summer, who’s a public hero at this point, and Peter who is working for the Malsan government.
The military branch has a serious black eye thanks to your “ruthlessness,” and the military tends to take extreme measures to “remove black eyes.”
Technically I don’t know if either Peter or Arron would consider Peter one of Arron’s agents at this point 😉
The black haired girls do their thing.
Whatever they do, it will look fantastic.
Because, that is what controlling the narrative entails.
There is some text “hidden” in the data page. I think it reads “Very close, Miss Summers.” And something else, the only other word I can make out is “too”.
Good catch. I also cannot make out the second sentence, as too much of it blends into the mess at the middle. I think the last word might be “unfortunate” or “unfortunately”
I’ve looked 4 times now. Maybe my phone just won’t display well enough for me to see it.
I think Kally’s attack would have caused it to incinerate, not disintegrate. She should figure that out fairly soon.
And as was speculated, it looks like Peter is going to turn it into “The GOOD IDS branch is protecting us from the BAD IDS branch.” (As he says “…control the narrative…”)
I think it is pretty clear the Mium cancelled it. As Ferrus notes, you can actually see text in the data page saying “very close, Miss Summers”. From the manner of address and the style, that is almost certainly Mium-thoughts.
This means that her blast probably could have stopped it if it hit, but the she never had a good chance of hitting, which is why Mium was there.
Covering Mium’s action with Kally’s attempt though is a real stroke of genius, and works because he knew what Kally and Arron would do. They would take even a small chance at saving a bunch of lives and stopping the war from escalating, so he just had Mium do what Mium does best. Turn a plan that should not work into a plan that does work.
What I really want to know is why Miko is shown in page.
I would think that what Mium does best is turn a plan that fundamentally has a low probability of success into a successful plan… probably mostly through nudging the necessary players in the right direction with “chance” occurrences, but sometime direct action is necessary (as in this case).
I kind of assumed Miko is sitting at the AA system, which Mium would have needed to use for the extra computing power to be able to deconstruct a HVW round mid-flight (made particularly difficult, because the optimum point of deconstruction needed to be timed to occur with (or just after) Kally’s attempt at shooting it down). And Miko, being Miko, is covering her eyes thinking “I can’t watch” because she probably knows the probability of success: Mium might increase the probability of a plan succeeding… but lets say Mium has a 99% chance of stopping HVW round… then there is a 1% chance of failure (remember, up to this point, Mium’s ability to stop HVW rounds is theoretical).
I think Miko is simplier than that: shes hooked into Mium, and stopping that took all his processing power. That temporarily took *her* offline, causing regression of symptoms.
“Wait. Did I just do that? Isn’t that impossible?”
“Why are you asking me? I’m your imaginary dragon.”
Some imagination
Kally’s solving the wrong math problem for the timing. The time window is however long she can keep the heat ray in one place, plus the milliseconds of window she thinks she has.
Holy shit. I CALLED IT?! He seriously had Mium cancel it!
I feel like Kally right there. =D (Even the dragon is curious at how shocked she is. ^.^) Hmm. Wonder the exact odds for her to figure out that it was Mium who did it. She’s seen him do similar on a much smaller scale, hasn’t she? And she specifically thought it was not humanly possible, and she definitely knows he isn’t. (And I suppose if it doesn’t get too public from her, it’s not exactly telling for his hand that it was him in particular that pulled that….except for almost pointing it out himself…)
And here I thought he slightly altered her spell to correct her mistakes.
The important part, so far as Peter/his plan is concerned, is that Mium appears to have made it look like Kally is responsible for stopping the HVW strike as far as everyone else (with the possible exception of Kally herself).
Kally may or may not buy the deception, if she does, then she’s probably in some degree of shock (and disbelief) that she stopped an HVW strike. However, it is a distinct possibility that she knows that she didn’t stop the HVW – no resistance/pushback/disruption/whatever to her power, since it’s likely that stopping an HVW (even if it’s by blowing it up) is the sort of thing you’d notice doing – and so she’s busy wondering what the hell just happened => trying to figure out what Peter and Query/Mium have to do with the current situation/what the hell Peter did now.
Also, there’s probably some degree of shock and disbelief that someone (who’s nominally supposed to be one of the “good guys”) escalated things this far (HVW strike in the middle of a city, on what Kally would probably consider a civilian target), this fast.
I’m also betting that Biana’s use of Skyhammer is massively beyond the approved rules of engagement that Skyhammer is supposed to operate under. In addition to blowing open the secret of Skyhammer’s existence.
> I’m also betting that Biana’s use of Skyhammer is massively beyond the approved rules of engagement that Skyhammer is supposed to operate under. In addition to blowing open the secret of Skyhammer’s existence.
Remember the timing: IDS does sneaky nasty things (and is found to be lying about holding up their end of the treaty) -> Malsa withdraws from the treaty, and gives a short deadline for foreign military bases to be closed (this actually happens in real life) -> IDS refuses -> Malsa uses force -> IDS uses the equivalent of a tac nuke on Malsa’s capital building.
One of these things is not like the others. In real life, that’s the sort of escalation that causes major UN sanctions, and could trigger a MAD response. Seriously, if a country tried that against the US I’d expect them to be a smoking crater.
I don’t know how Peter’s going to prevent a normal military response to something like that. Because, there’s no way the Malsan generals are going to accept anything other than a full scale, “bomb their bases out of existence,” response.
Consider that Peter/Mium made it look like Miss Summer’s last-ditch, miracle effort to stop the HVW strike succeeded. Miss Summer did this at the instruction of her boss, Director Arron. And Arron is an IDS director who is very much opposed to Director Biana in almost every way – so opposed that he’s practically at the point of ordering his people to attack her people. And Biana is the one who pushed the Big Red Button and who unleashed the WMD named “Atter”, whom the public has seen on camera destroying downtown and seemingly fatally wounding a seemingly hapless civilian we know as Mium or F5.
Now, consider Peter’s words in the last panel, “Step two… control the narrative.”
That’s all Peter has to do to prevent this from escalating further or to prevent the government from lashing out at his Uncle Arron. He just has to present facts (such as his phone conversation with Biana in which she orders the strike) and spin it so Miss Summers and Arron gets the credit for stopping the HVW. The public will get that this is a major power struggle within the IDS and, once word of this gets to Central, Biana’s career is over. It’s a win-win for everyone, except for Biana and her team.
If the HVW had actually hit or caused fatalities, I’m sure it would have escalated things. But since it did not and there are none, I think it’s safe to say that there will not be an immediate “bomb their bases out of existence” response.
However, I’m pretty sure that Malsan’s government will have some pretty strong words for IDS/Central and they will insist that they git rid of their not-so-secret-anymore weapon platform in space. Indeed, I think the rest of Palindra may join in with Malsa in this complaint and demand.
BTW: You realize why Biana had her team sneak in the parts for that HVW weapons platform and launch it around Palindra? It was to be their trump card.
Remember early in the story when Arron was talking with Biana about an accelerated time table and how Malsa wasn’t ready for the thousands of people she was pushing for? If the nations of Palindra had refused to accept the thousands or even millions of refugees from Central, she would have demonstrated their secret platform and forced them to acquiesce out of fear. But now? Peter has effectively ruined their trump card.
I think that Peter was playing to this point, which was why he was going so far deliberately provoking Biana. He wanted to take Skyhammer off the table before someone more competent used it, or before it was used less predictably. There is almost no chance they would take the chance of firing it again in the situation he has created.
There is also another piece though. Not only has he set up Arron and Kally has “the good guys”, he also just gave them a front seat row to what a full power dragon blast looks like. Malsa is going to realize that the IDS has at least one more trump card in their toolbox, the Tactical Class Red Dragon Witch.
With the fact that a) She has stepped in twice to help Malsa, and b) she is Bad News to be on the other side, if Malsa has any brains, they are going to want her on their side. This happens to be Peter’s side. Peter is once again moving to keep Kally on his side without making her break from the her loyalties. I do not think this is an accident.
He has also kicked Arron into a path that will likely lead to him chewing out the military people that did not stop Biana. Karov might out rank Arron, but it was pretty clear that Karov is scared of Arron to start with, and Ricci is a confirmed Arron collaborator.
Love him or hate him, Peter is really, really good at what he does.
It might look like Kally is responsible to everyone else, but the way it’s breaking apart does not look like it hit a shield to me. That looks like it just falling apart, Mium’s trick. (Can we get a name for it or can I start calling it by the name of a magic from a different thing that it constantly reminds me of?)
And plus there’s nothing of that shield shown when the HVW is shown having been cancelled. No shards, no remnants….I see nothing of that shield there. Either Mium cancelled it just above the shield, or he cancelled the shield at about the same time. Maybe it’s supposed to look like Kally did it, but I do not think she thinks she did it. (Gotta admit though, assuming anyone bothered to care about which department of IDS is responsible for any of these bits, stocks in Peter’s preferred are about to skyrocket in value. Wonder how Kally’s going to take having just been made into….hmm. Superhero? Whatever their equivalent is for what they’re going to assume she just pulled, assuming she doesn’t adamantly deny it being her? (Which I’m thinking Peter might say to try pulling “neither confirm or deny” so she’s not lying but not blowing his cover. Assuming he cares at this point. Hard to tell….I kinda assumed he’d have a more mundane way to cancel it, though saying Kally did it could work I guess.))
> the way it’s breaking apart does not look like it hit a shield to me
There is no shield. That’s the problem. If mages know both where an HVW strike will occur AND have time, they can erect a barrier. Unfortunately, Kally didn’t even have time to get to the target zone before Skyhammer fired.
Her plan was the equivalent of shooting a bullet out of mid air. If she had been directly below the launcher, she could have just aimed straight down the barrel, and things would have been easier. As is, she took a shot in the dark, and knew it.
It looks like she missed, but Mium was in position. The question is if she noticed that she missed or not.
This whole ordeal just emphasizes exactly how important information is in this story. A mage (and country of mages) is much, much more powerful with just a few minutes heads up. It also emphasizes just how broken Peter and/or Mium is.
Kally wasn’t throwing up a shield. She was throwing out destructive firepower in an active intercept attempt.
But you’re right, it doesn’t look like there’s any of Kally’s power around for the deconstruction/disintegration of the HVW. I would tend to agree that Kally probably knows that she didn’t stop it – which probably disturbs her more than if she actually had stopped it.
It’s definitely going to be sold as Kally did it, and in fact, she, Peter, Mium, and Miko, are probably the only ones who know she didn’t – the rest of IDS/CMC are going to believe she pulled off something borderline impossible.
We all know that Mium stopped the HVW strike, but he’s made it look like Kally stopped it to pretty much all witnesses.
Oh, looked like a shield at first, and now yeah, that does look like a beam. In which case it’s still early to hit.
Now I’m wondering though if pinning success on Kally was the plan/one of the backup plans in the first place. I had a thought that maybe it was Mium posing as Arron to get/confirm strike data then forward to Kally to get her in position, (since the calls were only after Peter told Mium to “operate as specified in the file”, but with Arron actively watching the results then it seems far less likely.
From the angle in panel 11, it looks like the HVW should have passed through the rear of the beam.
It was a sustained beam. I think what happened is that Mium deconstructed the HVW right before it would’ve crossed paths with the beam, or when it was close enough to the path of the beam to make it look like Kally’s beam took out the HVW.
I suspect that Mium/Peter had a hand in Arron finding out that Biana was deploying Skyhammer.
As for making it look like Kally saved the day? I expect that that was the primary/preferred plan if/when Biana actually used Skyhammer. Much better to have Kally get the credit for stopping it instead of having a mystery about how/who stopped an HVW strike. If there’s an obvious answer (Kally did it) nobody’s going to be looking into how an unknown entity did it (Peter/Mium).
Well, almost no one. Kally’s going to have questions for Peter, but she’s probably going to keep quiet until she gets a chance to talk to him in person. Amy, who’s been in the room next to Peter, hearing pretty much everything he’s said will probably have a lot of questions too, but she’s probably not going to make them public, and the people she might/probably will talk to about her questions other than Peter aren’t likely to make them public either.
That is why Peter’s plan worked. He knows Kally’s power, and that she would take a shot it as long as she got the information in time, even if she had little chance of hitting. We cannot see exactly how far she shot, but that is several city blocks at least. Likely quite a distance. Considering he knows that he power creates a massive distracting blast of energy, he could pretty sure as long as she was in the ballpark, he could mask Mium destroying it with her shot.
From Peter’s point of view, that is two birds with one stone. He gets to keep Mium’s power more or less secret and he gets to set up Arron and Kally has as the saviors. It is a really clever plan.
I get the feeling that Kally knows she did not hit though. The look she exchanges with Fluffy is just pure adorableness.
That isn’t “several city blocks”, one of those skyscrapers often takes up a city block BY ITSELF. That is at least several miles. And this with a SUSTAINED and CONTAINED beam which is, at minimum, the size of a small building. And consider this: the dragon itself, not the dragonfire specifically, has been mentioned as a tactical asset. Meaning that the rest of its capability is enough that the whole is more than just a vehicle for this one part.
That said, Kally can just look directly down the line of the shot, so she is in the perfect position to see that she wasn’t the one to hit the target.
Can she really tell just by looking though? I mean, it’s not just a kinetic strike from orbit, it’s a “Hyper-Velocity Weapon” – which means it’s moving really fast. She already said that if she could see the HVW, it would be too late to try to stop it.
If Mium deconstructed it close enough to her dragon’s beam, things probably would have been moving and happened rapidly enough that the human eye couldn’t track the sequence of events.
However, Kally probably noticed a distinct lack of feedback from the beam/HVW intercept.
I just noticed that the rocket seemed to be leaving a con-trail. This means that Kally, standing right next to the beam (and theoretically anyone directly under the impact site of the rocket, if they looked directly up as the beam was being fired and were not blinded by it), would be able to see that the two lines did not intersect. Anyone off to either side, however, would only see the rocket come down and then disappear right as it crossed the beam of dragonfire.
Technically anyone along the line of the dragonfire could have looked up and seen it, but only if they were directly below the fire and not only looked up but also over at the precise angle to be looking where the rocket discriminated would be able to see it. How wide an angle underneath would be able to see it would be determined by exactly how large the beam of dragonfire was and by how much she missed (I assume the dragon is a “she”). Also confounding eyewittness reports of missing is the fact that it is unknown how close the rocket would have to get to explode. We assume “it has to hit the beam to explode” but that is because we assume a contained beam of energy; if it was leaking heat (like a flamethrower that did not hit but you can still feel the radiated heat) than the excuse could be made that it was “close enough”.
After that the ney-sayers would be treated like tin-foil-hat people because “everyone knows” what really happened, there are even thousands of eyewittness reports of it. Anyone saying differently probably just saw things wrong (or some other excuse).
PS: plus, you know, there seems to be Kally’s view of it discintigrating followed by a confused look between her and the dragon. That might be a good indicator too.
@EnderDDT
The problem with Kally successfully shooting down the HVW was never going to be that the path of her shot wouldn’t intersect with the path of the HVW (she knows exactly where it’s coming from and where it is targeted), but that she (presumably) couldn’t maintain the beam at a strength sufficient to destroy the HVW for very long.
In other words, the problem with this perpendicular active intercept was not the where to shoot, but the when to shoot. Kally knew the where (that was the easy part), but the when was a very narrow window. It looks like Kally got the when part, or got it close enough.
As for the contrail/shockpath of the HVW not intersecting the beam, one, I bet Mium took it out really close to the beam, and two, do you know exactly how the beam interacts with the air around it? I don’t and probably nobody on Malsa does.
Even if the path of the HVW stops slightly before intersecting the core of the beam, it’s a logical conclusion that some aspect of the beam/radiant effects or the destruction of the HVW by the beam had some effect on the air around it.
You’d need to have a high-framerate, high resolution, frame-by-frame video breakdown of the “intercept” to prove that the HVW never touched the beam. I don’t think anybody has that proof – I’m sure that there are videos, but I doubt that anybody had a sufficiently capable camera pointing in the right direction, and at the right angle to see that the HVW never hit the beam.
Besides, even if you make the claim that Kally and her dragon didn’t stop the HVW, the question is then who/what/how was the HVW stopped instead?
Any conspiracy theory that has staying power needs to have an alternative narrative.
I think that it’s far more likely that any conspiracy theories arising from this incident would be that it was faked (fake HVW with a self-destruct) to make the IDS look better – not that there was a real HVW strike that was stopped, but that it wasn’t Kally/her dragon that stopped it, that someone/something else stopped it.
The situation (as it appears) – that Kally stopped the HVW – is unbelievable enough without throwing in that some unknown third party stopped the HVW instead. Much easier to just call the entire thing a fake incident, designed to make the IDS look good/better, and to put pressure on Malsa to change its mind about kicking the IDS out.
@Kytheros
I agree that the conspiracy theory “IDS fakeout to make themselves look like heroes or to make a fake threat without loss of life by way of an internal self-destruct” is the most likely conspiracy theory and that most likely there lacks the camera footage to even convincingly make THAT claim (how many cameras would be pointed UP anyway, especially ones that are powerful enough that people would’t just discount them as “I can’t really tell what I’m looking at”?). Additionally all the stuff about not knowing how the beam works further would make anyone discounting Kali’s shot look like idiots (once Peter’s footage is uploaded, at least).
I disagre that the issue was one of timing rather than location. The picture clearly shows a solid beam just as the rocket is getting to that position. The issue is one of extremely small lines (on a global scale) not intersecting. Sure, Summers knew that the rocket was heading toward a certain building at a speed where she would have to shoot by knowledge rather than see it coming, but where exactly in the sky the rocket was aproaching from makes a BIG difference. There is no rule that the rocket has to come from directly up, it could instead come from just about any direction at all above the horizon. With something like that, buildings would give NO cover whatsoever from the approach.
The fact that Skyhammer’s orbit happened to be almost directly above (not assuming a geocyncrinis orbit) only made things easier on MIUM and made the specticle look better for onlookers. This was likely Peter’s plan. Even so, space is far away, and even a 1% error in knowing the angle at which the rocket was approaching would likely be many times more than enough to miss with a blind shot (even if the timing was absolutely perfect).