Comic for Monday, March 31st, 2025
Comic. Would you look at that we got two whole comics this month. What a blistering pace.
As we can see, I’m keeping the schedule of ‘post a comic when folks finally reckon I’d given up on it’. We’ll see what the future holds, but few things going on, mostly the shipping woes of my D&D side stuff.
This is a ‘twist’ that I think many commenters saw coming that Peter Kepler has probably not been Peter Kepler. From the reader point of view, he has simply pulled variations of this stunt too many times for readers to take what they see at face value. But, I see readers guessing the ‘reveal’ before it happens as more of a feature than a bug. Speaking of my other hobby of D&D, I don’t really write DM advice, but its something I get asked about a lot due to my job, and a surprisingly common question I get is how to keep players from guessing a twist in a campaign or how to pull off a unexpected reveal… my advice is pretty universally ‘don’t’; not that you shouldn’t have twists, but you should be happy when the players guess the twist before it happens, because it means they are paying attention and you foreshadowed it sufficiently to be justified. Players will be happier figuring something out before it happens than having something they couldn’t have guessed dropped on their lap.
Story writing is slightly different, but I think shares some parallels. I don’t go out of my way to ensure that readers have enough information to guess everything, but I also don’t try to obfuscate things such that it’d be impossible. I reckon it’s already hard enough to follow what’s going on with the stilted update schedule and my tendency to jump around an already somewhat confusing plot.
Anyway… probably two weeks till the next comic, but I’d be a fool to make a promises and you’d be a fool to believe any promises on the schedule at this point. I’ll see what I can do though.
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just testing something.
As is probably expected at this point, running late. Will aim for next week. The shipping/tariff situation is playing havoc with my ‘day job’ of making TTRPG books, as you might imagine, so I’m neck deep in getting that figured out at the moment (…was not a great time to have a shipment of 13 tons of books coming into the US…).
I was thinking that I’d update this week still, but just ran out of time here as Monday seems to be almost over and I’m still on the second pass of the sketching.
it’s ok pal, this whole year’s been a faflooska of a mess, and we’re only in April. hopefully things’ll get sorted out someday.
Go find whoever just founded Appple llc and get them to bring your books in. Hint, it isn’t me. I didn’t get there quick enough.
It turns out I unfortunately forgot the critical step of having private freight jets at my disposal to fly in product overnight. A foolish oversight indeed. Though I suspect that’s more economical with card-pack-sized object that sell for like 1k or w/e than books, which are basically like bricks made of paper and sell for a fraction of that.
I’m hearing multiple learning moments happening here.
1. Sell playing cards. Steve Jackson Games has gone this route in recent years. Munchkin and Boss Monster are both decent games.
2. You’re not charging enough.
3. That private jet fleet thing. You should totally do that. In the short term though, maybe call up Taylor Swift and borrow a couple of her jets. I’ll text you her digits and let her know you’ll be reaching out.
Going to be another week. IDK what happened to the last week, but nothing productive happened during it. Same spot with same problems as last week in terms of resolving the issues with the ‘day job’.
We will look for “you” then!
I hope this week proves smoother for you than the last two, regardless of comic!
Well played! This scenario was not on my bingo card 😉
No wonder Mium-Peter wanted to keep away from Naomi… she did say something was odd about this Peter!! I’m going to assume because she’s hung out with Peter and Mium so much, she can probably tell them apart, disguise or no. (Also, magic!)
It’s interesting that the Ervon Society seems to be this world’s version of the SCP foundation; or at least connected to them.
My guess is that M.Y.M. wants onto that list is to give Nathan justification to not engage. After all it seems that a “rouge” AI is something that a Warden Wizard needs to destroy, but an Aberrant Entity could be contained, ignored, or otherwise dealt with in a wider range actions than a simple binary. At least that is my Theory.
To be fair, Nathan does have a large amount of discretion. He’s also used to Peter’s antics and made the reasonable decision to stay out of it where possible. The first meeting we saw between Nathan and Mium was him thinking he needed to deal with an escaped monster. Once he realized Peter was involved the scenario changed.
Past has described Nathan as a hero of another story, and that shows. Especially where he has enough on his plate, so stays out of the mess of politics Peter loves playing in.
If Nathan Summers is a badass whilst being only the “5th” seat, this LW should be extra powerful. He does not look so. It’s a good disguise.
Panel 5: if I’m a human matters -> whether I’m a human matters
no, the existing is better. You need to consider the context of Whe whole speach. Mym is asking if him being human matters. In this context it doesn’t because he is trying to be classed as an aberrant Entity.
The parting comment is specifically a warning to not go fishing in Mym’s new alternate area. They will ignore it because they think they know better. Mium did that to ensure that they encounter him there in such a way advance his cause to be added to the folder
I think it’s also possible that the place is not Mym’s new alternate area. Rather, it’s somewhere with something dangerous enough that Mym can save them from it and be seen as less of a threat to them and more of a potential ally.
I don’t think that flows with the “being an aberrant entity”. He doesn’t want to be useful. If anything he wants them to stay out of his way.
I love how this illustrates the way mium takes advantage of the gaps in others’ knowledge of him.
We know mium has restrictions to prevent him from killing people or even claiming that he will, and yet he spends the whole update making death threats and nobody notices shit.
What’s funny is the “no killing” restriction is more to prevent Mium from taking the “optimal” path of just being a murder hobo. Which is why it has so many loopholes.
Heck, one of the reasons Mium likes Ila is because he is the embodiment of why the 1st law of robotics has a “through inaction” clause. He knows Ila is going to kill people, and that’s fine with him.
I CALLED IT!!!! I SO TOTALLY CALLED IT.
back when the meeting first started, and we JUST saw peter, i knew it was Mium! i went through most of the archive and cross checked peters skin tone, hair styles, jawline, nose. the bio-metrics just DONT match.
thank you so much for the new page!!! i will continue to wait, as long as the conclusion of this story takes!
its brilliant and amazing!
“Without being able to pull IT into a subspace.”
Hmmmmmmmm ….. Not Peter? That is not guaranteed. Perhaps Peter’s abilities far exceed mere common mortals.
PS – No apoogies for the comic please. You have easily delivered more than two weeks worth in this comic.
I think Peter’s abilities do far exceed that of common mortals. And M. Evron knows that. But this ‘Peter’ kind of failed the role when he mentioned how close Peter and Kally are, or possibly even exaggerated it.
I don’t think that’s the thing that M. Ervon triggered on to determine that Mium isn’t Peter. I think it was probably that M. Ervon tried to do a spell to get a better assessment of “Peter”, and Mium dispelled it, as he does. But I also suspect that Peter can also do that, he just hasn’t been, because he hasn’t needed to show his hand. Well, that, and Peter would need to turn his implant on to do it, and he does that as little as he can get away with.
I’d say good storytelling definitely has plenty of callbacks people can find later. Sometimes that means it’s necessarily more predictable, but it can also pull off something great in the realm of surprise.
So I wouldn’t say whether or not players/readers/viewers guess, as much as how well, after the reveal they can find the documentation and the foreshadowing (and how much it feels like it was well done as opposed to just thousands of shotgun blasts to disguise only a few relevant hits).
Ah, but sometimes the big, obvious mystery is only there to mask the more subtle foreshadowing, so that when the real reveal comes around, it is the “why” rather than the “what” 😀
I see we still don’t have an identification for “little wizard,” but I suppose that is enough of a handle for him for now!
Once LW figured out that this was not Peter he did a pretty good job except he still has no idea *what* he is dealing with, only what he is not dealing with.
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Yes, having veiled events or characters your readers or players can figure out with enough thought is better usually than impermeable secrets, IMO.
Thank you for the comic!