Comic for Monday, March 22nd, 2021
Still on Central. Moving forward, I’m going to use the full black borders for when we are Central, and the white borders for when we are Palindra. Until I forget anyway.
I imagine people can probably guess how Mari might have heard about the resettlement plans, though it’s unlikely it is part of Peter’s plan for her to be involved in more than that, but Mari does not have a high opinion of that everyone would rather she stays out of danger, and as folks may have gathered from what we have seen of her teaching job, she has reason to not love it.
Of course, I wouldn’t entirely rule out Peter’s involvement in varying degrees of directness – while Peter tries to keep people like Miko and Kally safe, he also let’s them do whatever they want even when it would be might be reckless or otherwise muck up his plans – it is one of the quirks of his personality that he tends to give certain people great leeway. We also saw that with Naomi, where he was willing to let her ask Mium to interfere in the war even though he didn’t want to. While Peter will go to great lengths to manipulate things, he generally lets people do as they will, he just tries to account for what that will be, but he takes it far enough that he seems to allow people to do as they will even if when it is moderately inconvenient for him.
We have heard a bit about Peter’s backstory before. He was effectively exiled as they tried to through him prison, but it didn’t really stick.
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The enemy of crowd sourcing is, obviously, scammers.
Before you go dumping too much energy into it, consider that drawing is more fun, and may be more valuable per unit time, all things considered.
Maybe not. If I was half as smart as I think I am, I’d be able to predict every movement in the stock market. Or, you know, SOME of them!
Posting / replying might be a little broken?
First – yes, it does work. I was describing what actually existed on some comic pages that I have followed. Unfortunately, I don’t remember which ones and my first dive into my current list didn’t show up any. I will continue to search.
The editable taglines do not look any different than regular taglines: An identifier followed bu a list of comma delimited tag words. Just requires an additional edit link.IIRC, the taglines were strictly additive: i.e., anyone could add a tag users could not remove them. That probably should be available so that the community could police the tags and counter any spammers.
Second – I absolutely agree that Past’s first priority is creating comics. While adding the info to taglines to a current page going forward as he posts it would only take a couple of minutes I hesitate to suggest even that. That is why I suggested used editable taglines so we could get the benefit of tagline with zero effort on Past’s part.
To add taglines to all the previous comics would be a monumental task for any one person or even a small team. We’ve seen over and over that that does not work. Crowd sourcing the effort takes longer but doesn’t require any commitment from anyone.
I’ll look into it, I see how to add characters to a comic I think (I’ve just done a test with this comic fiddling with it) but I don’t see any obvious what to make those user editable.
Another Kepler present in Malsa… Some IDS higher-ups will be absolutely thrilled by this. And by “thrilled”, I mean disturbed and worried.
Interesting point. What IS the critical mass of Kepler?
For that matter, what happens when House Summer and House Kepler finally combine!?!
Critical mass of Kepler is usually defined as 1 Kepler per 10,000 square miles, but it depends on the country. I believe Malsa has it at 1 per 15,000, but I’m not sure. Been to long since I was in a good legal library in Malsa.
Mari does have a version of Mium on her computer. PastUtopia says that this is unlikely to be part of Peter’s plan, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is at least heavily influenced by Mium, particularly if he is interested in the settlement of people working out.
I also find this an interesting parallel to what Minerva was claiming Arron would do: join the civilians and ensure that both Peter and Central had a vested interest in keeping them safe. Doesn’t it strike anyone else as odd that Mari would be one of the most effective candidates for that? Kyle, Arron, and Peter are all extremely likely to have a vested interest in her safety. Mari herself may or may not be aware of that, but I’m willing to bet that factors into Mium’s calculation. It would even (and perhaps more critically) give Mium access to the “Friends and Family” exceptional powers regarding the civilians.
Mium isn’t allowed to get people killed en masse and now he’s likely being asked to help arrange the movement of 40,000 of them? Making arrangements that would force everyone involved to care about their safety and make his life easier seems quite plausible, especially as he clearly has a line of communication to Mari he could use to influence her.
An alternative theory is that the version of Mium that Mari had wants to get to Palindra for some reason.
While I think that Mari obviously wants to go, it is almost certainly Mium that told her about this.
PastUtopia, First thank you for an interesting and intriguing story. The complexity, character development, world building and (especially) the political intrigue make for a compelling read.
I follow over 50 web comics (yes, I know I need to get a life!), and Past Utopia is in the top five. However, it is very difficult for me (and I am sure others), to keep the various characters straight – their names, roles, backgrounds, etc. So I have a request – no, actually, a plea:
Please add reader editable taglines for tags, characters and a functioning location line to the title header (characters being the most important). It would be immensely helpful in following and appreciating your comic. You have a huge cast of characters, some of which do not show up for weeks between appearances. With a once-a-week publishing schedule and characters not showing up for multiple strips, I, for one, frequently do not recognize who, why or what about someone is speaking but there is no practical means of refreshing my brain. I do not have time for weekly archive dives. (There are six plus years of strips!!!) With a name from a tagline in a Google site search, the background info or earlier appearances could be easily found. In fact, the search code is fairly trivial to add to the comic page itself.
Adding a wiki would be wonderful source for background material, explanations for world/story/magic artifacts and character bios. It would greatly expand the possibilities for user created fan content, collect prior user comments and analysis, magic mechanics, etc.
All of these could be crowd sourced. Just add the code to these comic pages to allow user inputs (for the header lines) and set up your site for a wiki. Let the readers fill in (or correct), the blanks. Do not add to your work load and try to do it yourself. There are posters here that seem to know your characters and world almost as well as you do.
As it is, not being able to “follow the action” leads to frustration which leads to dropped readers. You have a great story to tell but if the reader cannot easily follow the characters and events there is not much motivation to follow it. Higher awareness and identification increases reader engagement and retention. All of these would help keep readers engaged and increase your audience.
I’m not sure if you are aware, but there is a wiki that has most of the characters. It is linked on the top bar.
On this page, the characters are Mari (Peter’s sister), Kyle (Peter’s dad), and Lily (Peter’s mom).
Mari is the one that likely helped Mium get to Central, as she activated some old thumbdrive Peter gave her, and got herself arrested to have an alibi. She is a teacher and had a student the mocked the locals of Palindra, which annoyed her.
Kyle is member of Civil Service, and is a not-politician politician (according to him).
Lily we don’t know much about but seems to be a retired scientist/engineer of some kind, her only appearance so far that I can remember is the same scene as linked above.
The wiki could certainly update more, but I imagine PastUtopia is pretty busy. Listing the characters would make them easier to find though (though I’m not sure what editable taglines are).
Regarding the wiki, I think it is largely designed to be upon the most interactive of the viewing audience to update the wiki.
Unfortunately I know I was once able to do so, and now can’t remember how I did it.
You need an account for it to edit it I think. Ever time I let folks edit it without an account it starts getting filled with ad spam I have to through and delete/revert all the spam pages, so its restricted to people with accounts.
I don’t remember exactly how to make accounts to be honest as its been years since anyone has asked for one, but if anyone wants one let me know and I can try to figure it out again.
I would prefer to make it so anyone could edit it again, but every time I’ve tried to it to public it just starts getting filled with links to malware, spam, and ads and the other stuff that the spam filter usually takes care of.
Last try was like 2 years ago and I had it set up so folks could make their own accounts and ended up having to delete like 20-30 spam accounts after they filled it the usual ad word/link spam nonsense, and since then I don’t think really think there’s been any updates to it, as only a handful of people have accounts to it.
I suspect any such publicly editable thing is sort of doomed to same fate unless it has some sort of anitspam feature. While I comment less than I used to, I still read all comments as the majority of them go to an approval queue because even comments are just continually spammed (this page has gotten 15+ spam comments since being posted for example, though fortunately the spam filter got most of those). This is why it sometimes takes folks comments a while to show up as I often need to approve a comment before it appears.
You mean the link in the in-your-face top title bar with big capital letters???
Nah. Never saw it! Duh !!!
Actually, when I view the comic I scroll down a bit so only the comic and the top of PastUtopia’s blog is visible. everything “important” in most of the comics I read is below the comic itself.
Hmmmm. Well that was interesting. I went to look something up and it became an archive dive. Now, half a day later I don’t even remember what it was or what I wanted to say.
I did prove one thing though – I have no idea what is going on! Name are not the only issue. I have a technical mind – a physicist. I think literally. I don’t think like a schemer. The complex political shenanigans of the characters are too much to follow. I really need a cheat sheet. It also doesn’t help to be saddled with a “senior moments” brain grappling with multiple parallel storylines each with month long breaks. Anyway, I’ll just continue to follow and pick up what I can.
Thanks for the explanations, Ferrus. I will look at the wiki.
To answer your question, by “editable taglines” I meant a tagline that a user (reader), could easily edit or add to. For example, while Past has had the “Location:” tagline up since the beginning, it has never contained more than the comic title. By making it editable, a reader could add “Kyle & Lily’s home”. Similarly, readers could add Kyle, Lily, Mari to the cast tagline and another might add Peter’s parents. Someone else might add Central to the location tagline or add relevant event or action tags tot the tags tagline. Archive divers could add to the old strips. These additions/edits get sent back to the server to update the page. Would take some time for the old strips but probably would get significant coverage in a year or so.
The real benefit comes from these taglines being visible to Google. In fact, it would be relatively trivial to write a script to scrape the archive and add/update a wiki database with the contents. I looked for some current examples but didn’t find any. Will have to dig deeper.
I’m not sure exactly how many comics I follow, but it’s a fair number. I don’t recall seeing any with reader editable tag lines.
I’m not saying what you suggest couldn’t possibly work, just that it seems rather different.
It would probably need to be different to get the sort of effect that you’re looking for, but there’s also the aspect that different provides a cost to our author and artist that would detract from more story.
I think it would possibly work better to use a system that allows select people to be deputized to the roles needed. There are a few commenters here who seem like they could possibly be trustworthy, but I think the state of the wiki suggests that none of them have time to do it.
I don’t like that answer. I’d like character tags. I used some earlier today to look up stuff to be able to feel comfortable making a response to a commenter on another web comic. But I also am aware that the time to put character tags on all the entries would probably be more time than it would take for PastUtopia to draw another page, possibly two. And that’s if you had access to a database like Tgape seems to have. If one needed to go back and figure out for all the characters from scratch? The comic probably wouldn’t recover from such an effort, if it were done as the top priority thing.
As other comments have noted, there is a wiki, though it hasn’t been updated much recently (as discussed in other comments it needs an account to edit it). But what are “reader editable taglines”? That’s not something I’m familiar. I’m not necessarily opposed to any of that (depending on how much it would take to set up, add, or moderate) but I just don’t know what those are.
See above
There is also the fact that she has a lot of friends who are already “trusted” by the high members of the government of Malsa. (I put the word trusted in quotes since The Consul doesn’t really completely trust anyone. ) Shirley Temple said she obtained a lot of meetings with foreign officials because they wanted to see what the former child actress was like. There are probably a lot of people in Malsa/Palindra who would be willing to see Mari just to see what Peter’s sister is like.
Thank you for another great comic!
So…. commentary on distinguishing Palindra vs Central scenes, so we’re likely snapping back and forth at least a bit in the foreseeable future. Excellent.
And we’ve got all the indicators that a minor character is about to be stepping into the foreground. We may well have another contender for the Hat!
Well, she has my vote. I mean, assuming we still get 10 or whatever.
I agree with Mari on this one. If they’re moving 40,000 people to Malsa, they probably do not have that many who can speak the local language well enough to get a job who haven’t already gotten work going to Palindra somewhere.
I probably did not need that qualifying there.
Many of the people who relocate that have *any* clue about Malsa are going to be former students of her, so she’ll have people there who will tend to trust her as an authority on linguistic and local sociopolitical stuff besides anyone organizing the relocation that tell people to listen to her.
I have a vague recollection of having heard of various stories about people colonizing various places, and they tended to really love sending people in the first wave who had thorough textbook knowledge of the locals with no actual experience dealing with them all. With any luck, Mari at least will have and make use of some guidance from Query and Peter on what things are actually like, rather than simply relying on the textbooks she’s been teaching from.
(To be clear, having thorough textbook knowledge of another country is better than no knowledge, which is what most of the colonists will have.)
I’m a little curious how what works though.
If the urgency is so real, and I get the impression that Malsa wasn’t discovered too long ago, who wrote the text book? I get what you’re saying, Kyle is clearly indicating that Mari has never been to Pralindra at all. But then who did go, learn, and then come back to teach?
The young people that grew up during the war appear to be under 30. Kyle and Arron are? 40s? 50s? Arron’s hair is gray. Kyle’s is graying. I’m guessing that the great war with Kor’s world is not more than 15 to 20 years ago.
Palindra was discovered no earlier than mid war, perhaps after the war. Assuming Mari is super bright (Kepler powers activate!), she became a subject matter expert on something in a very short time without first person experience.
How? Using what text book? My guess is in large part by learning directly from those who did go there, and by reading their reports. If there is a text book, Mari and people like her wrote it from the sources I just described.
Just a comment regarding textbooks: One of the reasons for the exorbitant price of college textbooks is the practice of the professors to write their own knowing that they have dictatorial powers to compel their student’s purchase. It is a corrupt system where a single textbook can cost hundred’s of dollars. Very few subjects change much over decades let alone year to year to justify this practice. It is just greed and ego..
But in this case, Yes, Mari could very well have written the (not previously existing), textbook.
I think part of the urgency is new from a “habitat” starting fail, presumably meaning they are going to need to evacuate a large number of people.
From what we have seen about Central so far, I would guess that this has been a priority for quite awhile and they have done absolutely nothing productive about it, but now that it is urgent they are trying to cram it through in a hurry.
…I wish I could say this comic was cynical about government, but damn if that doesn’t seem painfully realistic.
Cynical about government? I think this comic tends to portray it through overly rose tinted lenses.
It portrays different governments differently, if I’m not mistaken.
Most of the governments seem to get a fairly realistic treatment, although they’re depicted to be significantly different from our governments in various ways.
Malsa’s government gets the rose tinted lenses, though the fact that the Malsan government is new but was peaceably selected may explain that.
But there’s also the aspect that the comic doesn’t really show us the part of the world that we’d need to see in order to really tell if Malsa’s government was as good as it claims. Just about everyone depicted in the comic is a member of the elite.