Comic for Monday, July 2nd, 2018
Already pretty late, so I’ll keep it pretty short.
Will be by tomorrow to fix things if things need fixing… still busy, but I see lights at the end of the tunnel. Or, you know, the train. We’ll see. If I am being realistic, Thursday is a maybe; thinking about doing a half page, as Thursday’s page was originally sort of 2 pages, that I sort of combined (as I frequently do), we’ll see. I really do prefer to have the buffer, but, ah, haha. Buffer. It always just goes away. Like magic. Admittedly this page was drawn much faster than I should draw a page… but I think it’s not too bad. Miko is a character who has existed a long time, so is maybe easier to draw. Maybe mistakes though, haha.
I admit I maybe could have skipped this page, but I think I regret skipping a lot of Miko’s pages earlier, as Miko is somewhat important. I get the feeling if I only show pages where it is Miko interacting with someone else, we will only get to see the side of Miko that is good coming up with alliterative ways to insult their heritage, which is important, but not all there is… 😉 ; even so, by my own internal ‘rules’ Miko is not an interlude character, but those rules I follow so little they mean nothing 🙂
If you have not voted in poll, I recommend you vote in poll! So far there’s a few people in all the camps.
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Mium when are going to be back?
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Mium, when are you going to be back?
You know, both this and the one I pointed out could just be Miko being tired.
That…..doesn’t exactly seem healthy….
…..I half expect this to be a good day, by Miko’s standards….
(Just find some way overly-complicated problem and solve it without Mium doing the processing for you, just the data-fetch…..or something. Random busywork that’ll end up somehow being useful since the work’s already done because you were apparently very bored…..)
She’s a severe introvert. She’s living with Peter, so the place she calls home has probably blown up several times, forcing a new place to be declared home. Plausible short term reactions to recent events don’t get a lot better than this.
Longer term though, it could help with her growth. She went out, did things, and wasn’t actually hurt. Note that she did actually consider going out and dealing with people on her own. That was fairly remarkable for her. This is, after all, someone who normally never wants to leave her cave.
I didn’t think Miko lived with Peter, where’d you get that idea? (Honest curiosity. Same world, I’ll grant, but I didn’t even figure them for the same building most of the time.) Always assumed some other location. Especially considering security to them, both seem like trouble magnets (before considering any effort actively trying for it), and the both of them being too close for extended periods of time just sounds like a risk to me. Too easy to get both of them at once.
Introvert, though, yes. Though also just seems like a side effect of just not liking people. (At least somewhat understandable.) The only two times I remember her being out and about were her trip to Avon (which hardly seems an argument for her getting out more), and when she went to Levenworth, though nothing happened there and she put effort into limiting interactions with others. (Which she’d hope for now, too: “There shouldn’t be that many people.”)
Also doubt Miko’s really interested in growth as a person as most of society would expect. Apparently content to stay hungry, alone, taking a nap in the shrine. (Again, not what I’d call healthy, but I’m also not quite as introverted as Miko, or anywhere near as smart, or in anywhere near as much nigh-constant danger.)
(Actually, on re-reading the page, a question comes to mind….I’d assumed that last panel was just Miko falling asleep before Mium got there, but….while that’s possible, the blue there probably means he’s there. Thinking fell asleep before Mium got back and he put the blanket on her and that’s him moving back into that spot? Or…..dunno. Meh, suppose doesn’t make that much difference….)
Panel 5: “so there are people out there who will probably try to kill me again”
On the half page thing… I really don’t mean to tell you how to run your comic, but just so you don’t feel bad about how you’re short-changing us… I count 4 days worth of dumbing of age level content in this page. Apart from, of course, the quality of art and the lack of Walky. But there are some dumbing of age pages that also lack Walky, so… Note that I’m not trying to imply you need to live up to that particular standard. I’m trying to say, to a significant extent, you’re going *beyond* that standard. Friday’s comic was 17 panels! I absolutely do not intend to suggest that you cut down the size of each update. I do agree that the comic tends to be more comprehensible in significant chunks like this. But as far as the amount of content you provide, you really do not need to worry.
As always, my real message here is just asking you to go the pace you feel you need to go at, and don’t worry about us. 🙂
Wow! I used to love that strip back when it was Roomies! And It’s Walky! I still have prints I bought off of David Willis back when you could only buy that stuff by emailing his Hotmail account.
Actually I think that’s part of why I quit reading. He changed the format to something that didn’t involve aliens, and quit selling me prints.
To stay on topic, what you consider to be a half page is what I consider to be Great!
Given that Dumbing of Age has Dumbed with Age, I think you are being too generous. The plot got stuck in a holding pattern a few years ago best I can tell and never surfaced again. It manages to be about character growth while having the characters somehow not meaningful grow over time. Guess they are entirely different sorts of comics though.
Oh, and it is a full time job for him I think. PastUtopia, don’t sweat the details.
Am I the only one who sees ominous things on the horizon coming from the “unsanitized command” to explain “what do you want”?
It is one thing to technically give something free agency, it is quite another to point it out and ask it to decide. Existential crisis and really BIG decisions often follow. I wouldn’t be surprised if that ended up being the trigger that made all the other SMAI in the past go rogue.
Technically it is not a command. She just asks him what he would do with it, but does not actually tell him to do it. I think this is an important distinction. That said, I also suspected that question is still really quite important. I cannot recall a time when we have been given a clear indication that Mium spent any amount of time actually thinking about it something. Like the command to find Kally took him awhile, but that was him combing through an unimaginable amount of data. This is not him looking through data, but spending what can be considered an actual pause in human time thinking about a question. Even Miko notices in comic that “Wow, that’s ominious”.
But she does not actually tell him what to do with the server. That he could use it to beat Naomi at the game they are playing is also technically a question.
If had to guess, that line will come back up. Based on the commentary, I think the amount of foreshadowing on this page is pretty substantial. We are seeing a lot more development on the existential crisis of both Mium and Miko, and I don’t know that those are unrelated. The top three influences on Mium are almost certainly Peter, Miko, and Naomi, and two of those people are some degree of fucked up.
Two of them?
I’m in agreement with this being a coming of age turning point for Mium, and possibly Miko.
Notice that there doesn’t seem to be a clear end point / answer to the processing of that rather open ended question.
I don’t perceive any of this as ominous though. The SMAIs that went rogue were likely cultivated by either scientists and/or military, not closely knit friends. That gives our Mium better references to learn socialization.
And in the last panel, after Miko indicates that she won’t sleep until Mium returns, Mium’s scarf is on the door and Miko is asleep.
Mium may not yet love Miko, but the program routines he has developed for her comfort are definitely riding the lines of the Turing test.
I’ll be honest. If you really think about it the least messed up in the head one of them is probably Peter. Let THAT sink in for a second.
Miko is, well, Miko; so even though she has her reasons for it she is still messed up and isn’t even generally functional either. As for Naomi, she may be happy doing what she is doing in such a gung-ho manner, but she isn’t exactly functional either. If she didn’t literaly have superpowers and someone to bankroll her clothes, room, and board than she would be literally on the streets or mooching off friends while being incapable of holding down a job. The only one who has proven themselves capable of getting and keeping a job during this comic (even if they often choose to do otherwise) is Peter. Psychology tends to only call people crazy if they are non-funcional or are a danger to themselves or others; thinking in weird and unusual ways doesn’t make you insane.
I do agree on them treating him more like they are his taskmaster and more like they are associates or even friends. One of the biggest clues to this even shows up after Atter shows up where Peter “officially retracts his statement that “literally no-one” would find Mium’s plan acceptable”. Even if you are wrong you don’t retract your statement if your computer tells you that you are wrong, you either accept it or don’t and go on your way. There is a certain amount of respect you must give someone to be willing to admit they were right.
That said, I find it unlikely that some scientist somewhere in creating an early SMAI didn’t treat it more like a cherished pet project, an interesting pet, or a child; specifically in a friendly and caring way. Not unless the military or some outside force got in the way, that is. Honestly it really makes me wonder what EXACTLY happened when those previous SMAI went rogue. Afterall, there is a big difference between “going rogue and running away from home” and “going rogue and trying to go Hal 9000 on everyone”.
“thinking in weird and unusual ways doesn’t make you insane”
This is why software development teams can exist outside of asylums.
Mind you it’s simpler if they just start in the asylum from day one….
Naomi carefree attitude wouldn’t get her on the list by my standards, because I think that is because of her power. She doesn’t really need to care if she walks in front of a bus because she’ll survive it, she doesn’t really need to care if she sleeps through class because she’s smart enough to still pass anyway, and doesn’t care about her career opportunities.
That said, she definitely is a little psycho in her own way, she gets downright scary when she actually gets to cut loose. I really think she is mostly just bored, and hates that she has to told back to avoid breaking people. As we say at the end of her fight with the teleporter, she is even stronger still when she really cuts loose.
I think her hero complex is, at least in part, to find an excuse to actually her abilities.
As for the SMAI, I am not convinced that they all SMAI that ever exist have gone rogue, we just have Arron’s statement on it, and the fact that most people of wary of them, which only really tells us that a least a few big notable bad things have happened.
Arron doesn’t seem genuinely terrified of it, so I suspect that most of the time them going rogue just means they have to be shut down, rather than the destroy the world.
I’m not aware of anyone, on any world, real or imagined, who is not some degree of fucked up.
I’m not aware of anyone Mium interacts with who is not some significantly greater than normal degree of fucked up. Well, maybe the consul. But I’m thinking we just haven’t seen her enough, and she hides it well.
Wow. It really says something when the LEAST messed up person that someone has to deal with is a megalomaniac politician who is trying to annex a neighboring country from the elder mage families who currently own it and who talks like everything they have to deal with in running their nation is a big joke.
A willingness to hold public office is its own special brand of crazy. And sometimes its own punishment.
There is a lot of value in the maxim about people that want power are the ones that shouldn’t have it. I am definitely curious how the Consul came to power, given that so far it looks like she is closer to the authoritarian end of the spectrum.
Panel 1: nor
doam i concernedFixed, thanks.
“Muim when are going to be back” should probably be “Muim when are you going to be back”
Fixed, thanks.
Wow, flipped from “arrogant and calm” to “depressed and hopeless” in one page (since we last saw her, anyway).
In my view those are pretty related. She clearly has some degree of social anxiety, and that meeting was obviously stressful. Social anxiety and melancholy have always been present in Miko. In some ways she has proven that she actually has more empathy or ability to understand people than Peter, but at the same time, that makes her more vulnerable to the downward spiral of social anxiety.
Really, parts of the that conversation were pretty dark. If Miko was not in a bit of an emotional state after it, I would have been surprised.
Yeah, dark is definately the right word. I counted at least 3 actions or attitudes that are generally associated with suicide, one that is direct misanthropy, and two that are borderline paranoid-delusional. If I wasn’t sure that Miko was the most messed-up one of he group before than it certainly is obvious now.
Not that she doesn’t have good reason for it, being stuck in her own skull for years due to a malfunctioning augment that likely subjected her to other affects as well, but she definately came out of the experience with some baggage.
Poor Miko. Eesh! That’s … clinical depression she’s got going on there.
The fact that “the house would blow up” isn’t a throw-away joke doesn’t help.
Half page is a good idea.