Comic for Monday, November 12th, 2018
I sort of feel this page suffers a bit from being the second half of the last page. Sometimes with these pages that I’m basically converting from full pages the exposition of page is unevenly distributed, as I don’t plan that granularity. I used to have an informal rule that any exposition page should contain two pieces of information the reader didn’t previously have – the reason for this is that with the size of the cast, it’s easy to get caught up in characters telling characters what the characters don’t know, but the reader already knows, so I figure that most of those can cut unless the reader also doesn’t know the information the character doesn’t. I don’t follow that as strictly as I should anymore with the half pages, as sometimes all the information was on one half of the page. Not that I regret this page, per se, just I think this page is more properly the second half of the last page than it’s own page.
So the buffer condition is 1.5 comics right; I think I’ll be 2 comics ahead by the time I leave to travel once more, but that means we will miss one comic on 26th probably. I apologize for this, it really just boils down to really unfortunately travel schedule. After I am back from this next one, we should be good for awhile. It possible I’ll get far enough ahead to not miss any still, but unlikely, so I figure I’d give the notice early. I’ve been trying to make drawing the comic a priority with what time I have (after all, we have lovely individuals that read and support this comic counting on it 🙂 ), but it’s been pretty busy, as only being home every other week means that everything that needs doing (and many things that don’t) get crammed into those weeks.
Considering when I am traveling, I actually have a decent amount of downtime, I may put up a short story – maybe as a Patreon reward or something. The problem is I can’t travel with my drawing tablet (well, really, my computer it plugs into), so maybe I can do something like that – no promises yet, just a thought. Probably a side story, maybe something from Tyler’s past as we haven’t seen him for a bit.
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“When that animal is bigger it smarter than you are… You should look really hard.”
Or, you know. Just start running.
Peter didn’t mention it, but you don’t have to run faster than the bear. You just have to run faster than the guy the bear is going to eat.
panel 5 is the face you make when someone breaks all your toys…and you’re supposed to be grateful.
Thank you. As someone who has a flattened affect and older brothers, I have often wondered what expression to make in this situation. I hope this information came about 34 years too late to really be useful, but at least I can free up those processor cycles. Because I’m one of those people who keeps thinking about things long after any rational person would have ceased doing so.
I’d basically gone with the expression from panel 2 because I just didn’t know what expression to make.
I find it hilarious that “person A talks to person B, person B reacts, B’s reaction must have been person A’s goal from the beginning” is our default line of reasoning when it comes to Peter. Not that I’m disagreeing, mostly I’m finding the observation amusing.
As devil’s advocate, though, Peter himself said that you can’t predict the future; all you can do is set things up and be ready for the most likely outcomes. So could he have known that the family mage would show up, start a conversation, and ask about his origins on central? Possibly, but Peter seems more like the “actions speak louder than words” and the “intimidation and taunting count as social skills” type of person than the “diplomacy and subterfuge for social dominance” type.
Then again, he did “just happen” to mention that the scary powerful IDS forces were what was left standing after Kor’s World flatly defeated them… Oh, and also that Kor’s World was here on Pallindra and so not just a problem for Central. That seems like the type of thing that might be important, and that is before we question exactly how honest Peter’s assessment of the Central situation actually was.
I find it possible that Peter running into him was coincidence, but I find it pretty unlikely that Peter told him that story without having a secondary motive. Peter only vaguely seems people as, well, people (at least besides his family and Kally).
He did only say anything interesting after Oriah introduced himself, so it is possible he just recognized the name and took advantage of the opportunity for dry walk to calls + furthering a plot as a little 2 for 1 deal.
Peter can’t predict the future, but he essentially never acts “randomly”. It was Arron said scared him about Peter is that Peter is always dispassionately rational (though we have seen this to not always be strictly true, such as when Kally or Miko was in danger).
From the methods Peter has admitted to using before, I believe it’s pretty safe that Oriah was on a short list of people whose acquaintance Peter had been waiting for this whole time. It’s quite possibly the reason he’s at the school.
When he runs into one of these people is anybody’s guess. But if he has a few dozen names on his list, and he spends enough time around the school, the probability he’ll run into at least one approaches 100%.
My guess is that Oriah’s another member of the exiled families. It’s a case of second or third time is the charm, as Marc was completely unreceptive to anything that Peter could have leaked to him, so Peter didn’t leak anything to him. If this is correct, the message would probably be something along the lines of, “Shit is going down, and your stupid little power struggle is at a really bad time.”
So here’s a scary thought: What if Kor’s World is trying to make a ‘firebreak’ against another world they found/found them multiple steps away? Burning every world between the two of them to the point where its too costly to invade across them.
This is suddenly a very plausible theory based on what Peter is mentioning here. If we add up what we know about dimensions (that almost all of them seem to have life, insofar as Miko mentioning one that was uninhabited seemed to be a major secret being revealed), making a dead world might serve as a literal dimensional firebreak.
Very interesting stuff, especially when you factor in that Peter basically said Kor’s World accomplished their objective by killing off Central’s planet.
Good theory there. This gets a plausible from me.
If Central is a desolate wasteland of a world, with the lucky people packed into a nice space station and the bulk of the population subsisting on a burnt out shell of a world, widespread news of an unpopulated world could very easily be the sort of thing that would inspire mobs to form. Anyone with any sense would understand the place needed infrastructure built before a significant population could be offloaded, but the average person, desperate for survival? They wouldn’t care. Considering that the gates we have seen appear to be magitech devices, the most likely consequence of a premature leak of that information back home would be riots that ended with the destruction of every gate and the death every person capable of building a new gate, and a lot of others.
But firebreaks – aka demilitarized zones – only work if there are defenses in place. ….But that would almost guarantee that the far side of Utopia has a military installation to defend Kor’s World from incursions.
Except it doesn’t strike me as important enough to name the entire comic around one of many defensive fortifications. And I can’t help but think a ‘bigger and smarter animal’ would do something more complicated and more proactive than a demilitarized zone.
By fire breaks I mean something closer to radioactive/toxic wastelands. AKA things that take a lot of supplies to cross safely (and remember you’d have to build and maintain an installation there to go out to anywhere but where your friends already are).
A simple lack of a necessary resource, sapient minds? Flesh? would be enough for certain threats.
For instance if you were to kill off all the hosts for a world jumping infectious agent, that might be a nice firebreak.
True! But how is this infectious agent opening portals between dimensions? Either it’s a self-aware microorganism, or it’s under the control of something self-aware. And that self-awareness comes with the creativity to build dimension portals. Building a dimension portal seems to be more difficult than crossing a radioactive wasteland.
A firebreak does make sense for micro class threats. But a defensive installation will still be highly advised. No matter how toxic or difficult or radioactive or whatever you make the firebreak, anything or anyone that is both self-aware and has a desire to cross the firebreak can be trusted to do their best to figure out a way through or around it. In fact, instead of crossing it, you simply fly into space and orbit the planet until you are at the other side.
I’m not saying that there are no firebreaks. As I said in the previous paragraph, firebreaks definitely do make sense for certain threats. Thanks for pointing that out. If Kor’s World is in the business of making firebreaks, then they had the opportunity to make one out of Utopia either before or during the attacks on Central.
But Utopia as a firebreak somehow doesn’t strike me as a likely possibility. Especially since the whole comic is named after whatever is hiding there. And if Utopia isn’t a firebreak, then maybe there aren’t any firebreaks.
Oh i agree the empty planet one jump from Central is definitely not a firebreak. I’m pointing out that the Kor’s World Incursion of Central might have been an attempt to set one up. Because whatever caused an empty (presumably meaning of human life) planet is definitely operating on a different Modus Operandi than Kors World. And if you have the resources to fortify entire planets (as would be required against dimension travel) to the degree of incursion proof, you’d start with your home, and then you wouldn’t need to go setting up on others. And Peter seems to be suggesting that he found a rational reason for leaving planets uninhabitable by Kors World. And that leaves very few options open.
A world jumping (multi world spanning) infectious agent… like MIUM?
We have met the enemy, and he is us!
MIUM. That would do it. And you don’t have to kill off the humans. Just smack them far enough back towards the stone age that they wouldn’t be producing suitable hardware.
Kor’s World did recognize him and pretty much instantly react with “kill it with fire” after referring to him as a virus…
I think we did learn at least two things here. First, that Peter was intentionally leaking information to Oriah (or at least, almost certainly intentionally). Considering he is already the Acting Head of the MSB, there is some reason he is deliberately leaking this information rather than just sharing it with the Consul (and it is likely that Arron already did that). Second, we learn that Peter has a good guess what Kor’s World was doing, and that he is fully aware they have designs for Palindra. While this was widely speculated as the reason he is here, how much they factored into his plans was not really known.
Thirdly, it is always enjoyable to read Peter’s dialog. He is not exactly a laugh-a-page character, but he has a solid dry wit that I personally enjoy. He is often telling a joke that only he understands fully, but since we, the readers, have at least some of his point of view, we are in on it. It is a clever narrative device.
I think part of the appeal of comic is the characters. Part of it is the world, but you have also made it enjoyable just to watch characters go about what they do – Peter being clever, Naomi punching things, Ila being adorably murderous (and comically missing the point), Rovak being jovial psychopath, etc.
The Consul is already aware of everything he leaked to Oriah today. She probably knows everything he leaked yesterday.
The Consul seems competent, so if that’s true, everybody the Consul feels should know this stuff (that is, she knows she can trust them to make use of the information for the her benefit and the benefit of Malsa) and would trust her knows this stuff. So Oriah’s father is probably either not Malsan, exiled families, or a VIP of a major PACT member corporation. There is also an outside chance he’s an important rival to the Consul or an otherwise VIP Malsan who the Consul does not trust.
“I’ve been known to think on occasion.” – Peter Kepler
And the understatement of the comic award goes to…..
That said, I feel like we should know who this “Oriah” is, but we will know who his dad is. (Or who his dad knows. Something.)
Sure, the exposition doesn’t offer new information… But it’s still a very Peter conversation; a little networking, a little education and we get to see Peter being Peter, so even if it weren’t attached to new info from the prior half-page, I’d call it an acceptable bit of repetition
Yep. Peter does indeed not talk to random people he encounters. He talks to “random” people he “just happens” to encounter.
Zactly right!
I personally hold that this is a perfect comic, all to itself. The splitting of what Past perceived to be a single comic, into it’s appropriate two comics, made for a wonderful cliffhanger.
We got to spend the weekend speculating, and sure enough! In Monday (some) of our speculation was confirmed. This is no random encounter but yet another piece of Peter’s game being advanced.
yeah, Peter only stuck around long enough to drop his bombshell. Now I’m wondering who Oriah’s dad is….
We just have to hope that Kally was still out of hearing range as he refers to her as “my umbrella” having arrived…
It reminds me of a hilarious tidbit where Peter was accusing Kally using using Fluffy as an umbrella…
I normally read this on a phone. I had to open it on a laptop and blow up the image considerably in order to see that it was Amaranth, Kally, and? Mione? Walking towards Peter.
Amaranth is a good avatar for you! You perceive beyond mere sight!
Mione has purple hair, not lime green. Lime green is either Maia or Vera Feline. And I somehow doubt that Magnolia and Kally replaced traded Maia for a talking head while we weren’t looking. Possible, but not likely.
I’m so looking forward to time to do some wiki updates again…
I feel I should point that the character is named Magnolia, not Amaranth. Funnily enough I do the same thing of associating avatars with user names occasionally.
I am pretty sure the group is Maia, Magnolia, and Kally.
I typically zoom in a little on the images, as I tend to find @PastUtopia can be sneaky with putting stuff in pretty small. It is why I always check for mouseover text despite the fact that he almost never puts it in, just because he has done it a couple times.
“Now I’m wondering who Oriah’s dad is….”
Someone who was deliberately under informed by the Consulate.
Just because Peter is helping you, doesn’t mean that Peter isn’t also forcing your hand. In fact one pretty much implies the other.
Once is happenstance
Twice is coincidence
Three times is enemy movement.
Four times is M.Y.M. screwing with you.
Five times is Peter was there all along.