This is, admittedly a pretty weird page for me. I don’t really know where this idea came from really, and its not something I would expect to see a lot of. All these fragments are something at one or another I had planned to be a page or two (or… uh… more… as tends to happen), but ultimately knew that I couldn’t have all of them, so I decided I guess to have none of them and all of them at the same time. They are really not intended to convey anything beyond what they are – little fragments and glimpses into the world as it moves a little bit forward. Some of them we might see more of later, most of them we probably won’t.
I suspect the ones that people will be most annoyed I skipped is Peter and Kally’s, so let me assure you that there was never a plan to show the dialog from the scene, at least, not right now 😉
It should probably go without saying that this page… uh… took a bit longer to draw than I budgeted. I sort of expected this to be a quick page, given the whole no real talky thing, but that many different characters proved to sort of be a logistical problem I didn’t expect; parts of the art may be a little sketchy, but I reckon I’m usually the one that cares the most about that really.
The thing that Kally is looking at in panel 9, by the way, is a green hair tie. I clarify that because I get that it’s probably hard to tell, and I guess it sort of matters, though not too much.
Originally this page ended “…to be continued” but I thought people would view that as too ominous that I was going to take a break or something. Chapter 13 should start on Thursday though, will be an interesting one I think.
For those of you that have not seen it yet, there is now a Wiki! You find it via the new tab at the top, or HERE. This is open for anyone to edit, just use common sense and don’t be a dick to the other users are the main rules. I will moderate it for problems, but not for validity for the most part. I will update parts of it myself as we go, but feel free to put anything there, or peruse. I guess equally important, feel free to request pages you think you would help – things that you don’t know or don’t keep track of.
Run free and wiki, my good fellows!
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I am re-reading the whole comic currently, so: Sorry for digging an older page up.
What puzzles me at the moment: As fae as I understand we see different glimpses of the same night. At Panel 4 we see Mium\Eff Eight with Ila, grabbing snacks. Blue Hair, Blue Scarf. Panel 6 Shows him with Naomi, Black hair, ruined suit.
While thats nit impossible, given his virus nature, isnt he forbidden to run more than one humanoid instance? Because it looks like there are 2 seperate Eff Eight avatars online at the same time.
Is that a: Anexception approved by Peter
b: Mium violating his rules
or c: Something the artist didnt notice?
I mean… I didnt notice, when I read it the first time
It is a combination of A and B. I do not have a link to it because I am on mobile right now, but we did see Mium get the second prototype (body). It was originally the F-5 prototype, and he temporarily hijacked it during the Avon arc to prevent the IDS from arresting Mir and cover Miko’s escape, as he sent the F8 to go get Kally.
It is implied that he was able to do this through a combination of Peter granting him higher access in order to keep both Kally and Miko safe at the same time, and that F5 actually asked to be absorbed into MYM. Even with that, we did see that it tripped a flag that notified Peter that MYM had used “creative interpretations” of his restrictions, but we did not see Peter take any action on it.
There was actually a whole page of Mium’s inner thought process as he worked out how to justify taking a second prototype. It happened in the time took a rain drop to fall past his eye…
Comic will be delayed till tomorrow – sorry.
hey it’s ok. your comic strips are amazing. take all the time you need to post them.
Whatchyou talkinbout Willis?
He’s got sick days, vacation days, etc. He can call off work! Where my comic?!?
Fine, but in the mean time I’m going to be the comic relief.
-G-
ummm…. Am I the ONLY ONE who noticed that SOMETHING (?!?) in the very last panel? I thought that SOMEONE would bring it up by now…
Anyone?
Or did I just hallucinate that junk-monster/robot/whatever walking past at the very end?
I feel like there’s little to say about it, because there isn’t enough information. It doesn’t look like IDS monster hunter armor, though it is similar. It doesn’t look like any of the armor seen so far. Personally, I’m guessing it’s Arpon’s secret weapon.
I’d also add, soon to be taken over (at least temporarily) by M.Y.M. Assuming it causes any troubles for ‘The Plan’.
There is discussion on this below, started by Amaranth on the 16th.
It’s also listed on the wiki page for this comic, which I linked to below. But as that’s on the same thread, and there’s nothing linking to the transcripts yet (I figured I’d put something on the main page once I got to a point in the transcripts where I didn’t feel too embarrassed doing so. Other people shouldn’t take this as a statement that I would be opposed to them linking to them. I would probably also link to the transcript for the current page except I do not know how to do that in an automated fashion, and I have enough updates on my todo list already…)
I had an idea for the wiki, not sure what people think. We could make a page where people can ask questions, and other readers can answer them. I know that PastUtopia does Q&A occasionally and I don’t expect him to answer them, but there’s a lot of people that understand what’s going on a lot better to me, and might be a good focus for some of the speculation and theories so people can keep track of them.
What do you guys think?
Not a bad idea. Also it would help know what information would be good to add to said wiki on the individual pages themselves.
Agreed to both of you. I mean, as far as automated goes, there’s a wanted page list with hit count (you can ignore the transcript pages; I’ll get there). But there’s a huge amount of stuff that should go on each page. The section markers that Past Utopia has been putting in on a few pages because some of us (like me) didn’t get the hint from his templates is a really good aide, but it still doesn’t really say what’s missing on pages beyond a really broad brush. The what’s missing section could point out specific things people kind of remember that haven’t been included. Eventually, googling through the transcripts might be helpful for answering those, but nothing helps for showing what should be there like a list of what should be there. And some of us doing the updates might not even be aware of it.
I do, admittedly, have a mental list of some things to put on pages, but it’s a mental list, so lossy. I’ve been intending to wait until I can link to the appropriate transcript as a cite, but I’ll probably forget about a lot of them by the time I get there.
Oh, another note about documenting missing things: Each primary page has a discussion page associated with it; you can get there from the page in question by clicking on the discussion tab. This is the wiki standard place to put questions specific to that page.
That said, I would guess that a single questions and answers page is probably much more useful to someone who wants to contribute but doesn’t know where to start. Eventually, the questions and answers page will reach a point where it doesn’t scale – but that’s ok; at that point, it can be turned into the questions and answers category, and split into sections along lines that will be more obvious by that time than they would be now.
I’m mostly mentioning the discussion tab because I’m pretty sure I’ve already documented some targeted questions on a few, and I’m sure other people will over time, and we shouldn’t forget they exist.
Hey – just a general note about the Wiki. I don’t mind people linking to external sites, but if I can’t figure out why an external link exists or seems random, I will delete it/block the user. If I block someone in error, just email me. The reason for this is because spammers and the like often embed unrelated articles with offsite links that frequently lead to malware.
So, 2 notes:
-This is still the internet. If you see a link to an external site, and make sure the URL it leads to is where you want to go.
-Don’t put external links to random sites without some sort of reason.
If I block someone on accident, please don’t take it the wrong way, just reach to me and I will unblock you.
PS. Obviously I will probably not block if I recognize the user name, so if you are concerned, just use the user name you post here under and it shoudn’t be an issue.
Just to share – Past is sometimes astonishingly quick at this. I’ve seen him manage to respond in under an hour after someone created their account to handle spam posted under said account. I don’t explore the wiki enough to realistically stumble upon spam, but the recent changes page does exist, and so far I haven’t seen anyone make spam without being caught and blocked.
tl;dr: Please don’t spam; not only is it pointless because it’s quickly dealt with, but it distracts our artist.
Ditto, LordRowyn.
Didn’t realize until reading the wiki that F8 and F5 were two separate chassis. Cleared up some past confusions about timeline.
The Consul seems quick and witty. I enjoyed her and Peter’s banter. Seemed like flirting at first, but that’s probably just a part of her personality. Thought for a second that maybe Kally would see the Consul flirting with Peter then Kally would get territorial in that weird way that humans sometimes do, even when they’re not sure why, but I’m guessing that’s a triangle that will never happen. I’m happy to see Kally and Peter spend non-mission time together.
Ditto here. I also didn’t realize that F5 and F8 were two separate avatars until now. You definitely weren’t alone, and it does clear up some of the confusion.l
F5 was rescued while Miko was contracted to Avon, if I recall correctly. He requested to be improved, citing that F8 had been worse off than him, and had been made best. This is something I intend to put a link to from the Mium page once I get to that point in transcripts.
There are some interesting points scattered throughout the pace:
in Panel one, Kally and Peter seem to be having a non-confrontational midnight supper.
In Panel four, we see Tyler, Magnolia, and Amy, apparently still alive.
In Panel five, we see Ila no longer fighting the Orish warrior.
In Panel seven, Naomi apparently has failed to convince Mium of the value of letting her play the game she wants to play.
In Panel eight, we see Miko up and apparently feeling good enough to be back at her computer.
In Panel ten, It looks like Peter is taking the opportunity to sleep in without Naomi there to wake him up. ^^
And in Panel eleven, I’d guess that Madame Consul has made her decision.
What else do you guys see? 🙂
> In Panel seven, Naomi apparently has failed to convince Mium of the value of letting her play the game she wants to play.
I do not think she failed, if you look closely. She has a blue mark on her face, and several green marks. Given the game they were probably playing was some form of paintball, it seems exceedingly likely that she succeeded.
Panel four is interesting, because I got the feeling that Amy and Magnolia were not particularly close, so I have to wonder if Amy fell asleep on her shoulder intentionally.
The Arpon generals arguing seems likely to be foreshadowing something there, but not sure what yet.
The last panel seems to be some sort of mech or heavy armor. I would guess this is what Arpon is deploying to the battlefield to turn the tide. Hopefully for them it is not fully automated…
Good catch on Panel seven. Even at high magnification, I can barely see the colors on my Chromebook. ><
Iirc (and I looked it up ^^ ), Amy was apprehensive about Magnolia, and not so much the reverse. It's also possible that Amy fell asleep first and Magnolia let her be.
The mech in Panel 12 wouldn't have to be fully, or even mostly automated for Mium to be able to mess with it. If any part of it is computer controlled, it’s toast. ^^
It is my opinion that panel 4 shows growing confidence in Amy with respect to Magnolia. Amy was initially protective of Tyler when Magnolia showed up.
Now it appears to me that Amy is napping while Magnolia keeps “watch”. Which is to say I think Tyler and Amy sleep but I believe Magnolia is awake.
Panel 6: is that arguing? Or commiserating? It looks to me like the later. It’s also possible that they are arguing, but for the same side without realizing it. Note that my negotiation special ability is to spot when people are in violent agreement and don’t recognize it. However, this ability is really dependent on the words we don’t get here.
Panel 12 reminds me of some of the armor stuff we’ve seen IDS folks in, but either more detailed than usual, or just a more sophisticated version. Either way, looks familiar, just can’t place it right now.
My thoughts, but with some help from Delta-v and Amaranth… and of course anyone else who comes along and updates it, because it’s a wiki.
Normally, I wouldn’t put my thoughts up as a transcript, but in this case, apart from two captions, it’s all pictures. It’s almost like Past realized what would make the transcript guy who actually writes descriptions of the pictures have the most work to do. Of course, I know better. But the timing of this compared to when I started putting my transcripts up, and thus Past getting to see that I describe panels – and reference other panels to save myself work – does make the paranoid thought possible, if not plausible.
I mean, I have been threatening for a long time to convert to a silent comic to get around my inability to grammarify correctly.
I have to say reading the linked page… there is something weirdly surreal about reading a blow by blow transcription of the comic.
One of the main debates I had when I did that odd novelization of the first couple pages was if I was going to literally word for word quote the speech bubbles – ultimately I did, but it definitely somehow reads a little weird when they are not in speech bubbles. I think in writing I tend to default to more words to build the inflection of the sentence, I guess.
I dunno, it’s weird. Appreciate all the work though, Tgape. That’s an ambitious undertaking from the page you’ve linked there, haha.
I will note that I say in the commentary what Kally is holding, because I realized it was basically impossible to tell from the art, but it’s a hairband (the kind that is looped around multiple times to make pony tail or the like).
Ah, thank you. I try to be resistant to the wall of text affect, but between work lately, my ambitious undertaking, and stuff, I accidentally let this one crit me. That’s actually well depicted for a hair band, my mind just didn’t go there. Thanks for the confirmation that was Kally. The outfit seemed enough different from the sorts of things I’m used to seeing her in I was not sure.
Panel 3 guardian guy that Ila shrugged aside looks not terribly happy and still in the hospital. Though that’s not terribly surprising with what we saw. Mium taking Ila for snacks after suggests that Tyler’s probability of being successfully killed has dropped now that the first one was foiled.
Panel 8 Miko looks to be at a workbench to me, not a computer. The table light suggests working on something that doesn’t emit light on its own.
I see no indication that the table light is on. I think we’ve seen indications that Miko had superior, perhaps augmented, night vision?
It just occurred to me (randomly flipping through old pages) why Mium stole the sniper rifle from the Avon black ops agents. He was working around the “no military hardware restriction”. If they had a customized rifle, it wouldn’t be military hardware because they were not military. A sniper rifle would be dime a dozen to him, but a highly powerful specifically not-military sniper rifle? That would be worth hauling back.
Always struck me as odd he took it, but suddenly makes perfect sense. And bless him for doing it, because the scenes with Ila using it are hilarious and awesome.
Unrelated to the page, just occurred to me now.
Yup, I think that sounds about right in retrospect. There is also the subtle hints a few times that Mium sort of likes collecting things he can shoot things with, a collection that may have extended to Ila.
The fact the military hardware restriction exists at all is interesting. Peter knows it barely slows Mium down, since Mium has decided to take it literally. So, why bother? Especially since Mium constantly has need of military hardware.
I doubt that the restriction is there to hamper Mium greatly. My suspicion it’s more there to help keep him thinking flexibly.
It also might be there to keep him from “helping along” some military (or military contractor organization) so he can get them to produce some hardware that he’d like to use.
Sometimes you set a restriction to keep farther away from the line than you think you need to just to be safe for some of the places you may have miscalculated elsewhere.
This is an amazingly good point. I’ve seen enough movies where a supposed rogue agent helps the enemy to develop technology that their former side had already wanted but couldn’t get… and then after they made the advancement, they took the tech, sabotaged the lab to the point where the enemy could not even make the tech they had at the beginning, and defects back to the original side with the new tech as their justification, for me to feel really foolish for not having spotted this. Because so frequently in real life, any attempt to pull one of those maneuvers off backfires horrendously, because the enemy is not stupid enough to trust their recruits newly defected from the other side to that degree. Also, backups of the backups of the backups of the backups.
Military-grade specifically is just that, military-grade. Probably just too easily specifically described, or easier to track than specifically not military-grade things. (Especially if you just got a shipment from some military depot for an entire armory’s worth of gear. Six dozen sources for two or three pieces of equipment each might make it easier to catch wind of scraps of Peter-related data, but spread out enough would make it less likely to be tracked or traced, especially if each is given different information and it’s spread out over time. One gun found, track the serial number to a shipment, you could have everything….or nothing.)
Or maybe it’s more of a personal preference in that too much military stuff hanging around would make him feel like he was in a military building, and he’s more comfortable with “civilian” (no matter how much of a stretch it is to call it not military) stuff.
Or maybe it’s something else entirely. Maybe it’s someone else’s idea (or there because someone else would’ve suggested it had they a say in the matter).
Maybe the ban on military hardware is to keep Mium far away from collecting an entire military. Soldiers and all.
This is a pretty great page. We get to catch up on everyone together, and also remember a bit of how many “everyone” there is. It gives a much-needed sense of simultaneity.
Well, that’s good to hear 🙂
The wiki looks great! I am not sure I will be able to add much, as I am a consumer of smartness, not a producer of it.
Massive props to the people that have contributed though, I look forward to a new era of having comments section and comments section 2.0 so I can understand what is going on.
I will try to think of something even I can add to it.
Just to mention some low hanging fruit, there’s a lot of characters who are listed in Past Utopia’s cast pages who do not have pages in the wiki yet.
Slightly higher fruit: there are also many other characters with nothing on them in the wiki, such as the Consul.
As it’s generally easier for most people to edit something that’s already there, even a basic page for these people would be helpful.
I’m not interested in doing this particular work, because I’ve already come up with my own massive contribution to make.
Gotta be honest, I’m digging black haired Naomi.
I am not sure, but that might be blasphemy.
It’s at least illegal (in the comic universe, anyway).
Haha, maybe I should make that a future poll (not that it would likely impact the actual future of the plot, I just would be entertained to see the likely polarized results…)
🙂
Ditto, LordRowyn.
Didn’t realize until reading the wiki that F8 and F5 were two separate chassis. Cleared up some past confusions about timeline.
The Consul seems quick and witty. I enjoyed her and Peter’s banter. Seemed like flirting at first, but that’s probably just a part of her personality. Thought for a second that maybe Kally would see the Consul flirting with Peter then Kally would get territorial in that weird way that humans sometimes do, even when they’re not sure why, but I’m guessing that’s a triangle that will never happen. I’m happy to see Kally and Peter spend non-mission time together.