Comic for Monday, November 18th, 2019
Nov19
Sorry this is late. My schedule got sort of crunched. Going to be traveling these next two weeks, and didn’t prepare all the ducks in a row, so it’s been a mad scramble of duck alignment on the way out of the door and the ducks are still scattered.
Work sort of went full dumpster fire, hoping that it burns itself out before it burns me out, but it’s a hotly contested race.
I’ll still be in the comments section these next two weeks, reading and moderating and what not (though moderating just means deleting the endless spam 🙂 – you’re all good folks).
It does mean that I may or may not be able to correct spelling whiffs. I’ll see what I can do, but may get them when I get back if nothing else.
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There is a typo or grammar issue in panel 1, in the first speech bubble: “…I saw but a fleeting trifle of it when she dispatched a Orish assassin without any apparent effort.”
That should read “…dispatched an Orish assassin…” When preceding a noun that beings with a vowel, one should use “an“ instead of “a”.
Anyway, good work. I’m loving the story. It tantalizes us with tidbits. Nearly every answered question seems to lead to more questions. And the characters grow on us as we learn more about them.
Spam: Anything consistent about the spam messages? IP addresses, packet headers, time frame, content regex… anyway from the PHP side to quarantine it before it’s published? If they’re all from 1-2 countries, disable comments from those countries but still serve the page as a temporary fix? Hope there’s some way to lighten the burden.
Work: What’s your preferred area? Networking, hardware admin, application server admin, database admin, data analytics, help desk? Are you interested in options or are you locked in your current ring of hell for now?
Comic: I feel like Amy’s eyes should either be looking a little down or really really up. The doctor is used to seeing everything, and whatever Magnolia sees is probably unaffected by clothes. Magnolia is apparently not limited to seeing forward. Also she can passively see through walls without doing her active analysis ability thing that wears her out. Ila apparently has a spirit manifestation as a part of her; possibly one of many differentiators between her and the Miums. And possibly part of the difference between Mir and Dr. Martin, at least philosophically.
The spirit form could refer to the giant green hand instead of the kinetic launch capability she has with her 7 calculations. She can either accelerate objects or herself and is the method she uses to fly.
We haven’t previously heard it referred to as a ‘spirit’ form however when Tyler was visiting Avon’s facility, the lady with him mentioned that somebody was “creating and blowing away forms” on the far side of the room. Those were also green.
The more powerful red form is wielded by Kally and a few others.
Mium excells at physical manipulation — creation and disruption or maybe disassociation via Magic. He seems to dig holes and scribble on other people’s glyphs. He also has a massive self-repair ability. He also disintegrates bullets, metal bars, and causes robots to fall apart. All of those could be ascribed to how matter attaches to other matter. He has used that math through other people.
And that brings up an interesting thought, presumably anybody could activate their magic via another host provided there is a sufficient data connection to perform the work.
Have we figured out all of Illa’s known calculations? We know there is the movement one (that she uses to fly and shoot stuff), the construct (that she makes a hand out of), the beam attack, a shield, and presumably a form of self-reinforcement; but that is only 5, or maybe 4 if the self reinforcement is more “pour in power” and less “actual calculation”.
Are there any that I’m missing?
1) Acceleration (she uses this all the time)
2) Weight (she uses this against the IDS Dropship in her first outing)
3) Green Hand (frequent uses)
4) Red Beam (used this to blast Rovak and a few other times).
5) Shield (used this to block heavy machine guns from the IDS Dropship)
6) Boosting (this might not count, as you mention).
If Boosting counts, that is all 6. If not, she has one more we have not see yet. She definitely favors Acceleration and hardly ever uses Weight or Shield, and uses Red Beam (I think it’s called Rupture) rarely, so it’s possible that she just does not use her last one very often. She seems to favor Green Hand for non-lethal usage and Acceleration for everything else.
I would guess that boosting does not count though, so there is another one out there. My reasoning is that (1) there is no calculation ring when people do it, (2) it really seems like Mium can do it, without otherwise calculating, (3) Naomi is bad at calculating in general, but can boost without any issue. Of those, 1 is the most compelling to me.
2. This could just be downward acceleration.
Yeah, that is what I came up with too, except the weight I counted as downward acceleration (and that argument is bolstered by the fact that her attack is all the same type of ring when increasing the weight on the moving object would inscrease the damage more than a single acceleration ring would). I also agree on boosting not counting, but mostly because people like MIUM and the white monster hunter both have access to it when their thing is disrupting calculations.
So that means that she has, most likely, one or two unknown spells that we haven’t seen. Something like repair and spell disruption would both be extremely useful and something that she really should have, but we just haven’t seen enough to say.
Spam: I’d personally guess, like the spam I used to fight at work, there is generally one thing consistent with the spam: it’s spam. (This is the big reason why I left that gig. It was just playing wackamole 17 hours a day, it didn’t fill the void in my pathetic life, and I’m not an Aquarian.
Comic: I’m pretty sure Amy’s looking to her right because Tyler’s a bit to her left. Magnolia is at least a little affected by clothing – she can see it. But I’m pretty sure she can see through it, too.
If Mium didn’t have a spirit manifestation, I think Magnolia would’ve noted it as a difference. It’s possible she’s just choosing to not speak of him because she doesn’t think he’s a threat, and she’s preferring to keep things that Malsa doesn’t urgently need to know as known to Angola but not Malsa.
But if she’s as open as she seems to want people to think she is, Mium’s manifestation probably just looks more normal. I’d guess, given various other hints given here and there in the comic, that Mium looks like someone who would be expected to not be a mage, but if he studied hard he might one day become a very weak mage.
Why assume Magnolia has looked at Mium? Tyler says “I suppose not,” and she doesn’t correct him.
Unless she’s playing a double bluff, keeping even Tyler in the dark, she needs to actively look around in order to see this stuff.
(That bit about needing to actively look around to avoid walking into things might be accurate or might be a bluff that Tyler’s in on – but this spirit stuff, Tyler clearly believes she needs to actively look around for.)
Why asssume?
Because of the roof incident where the little green haired troll meets Mium and jumps off the roof into Magnolia’s waiting arms… You don’t think just attracting the green haired troll’s attention deserves you to be evaluated? Just what kind of “friend” do you think Magnolia is?
Caveat: Magnolia may, or may not, be aware of his name… As he did not give it to the “lady” in green hair.
Good point. I assumed that since Tyler knew Mium’s name that Amy would know Mium’s name (and could possibly how Tyler learned Mium’s name, even).
But Mium being Mium? It’s possible that Magnolia couldn’t actually hear Amy’s spirit when she was talking with Mium with Maia. This maybe could’ve even been the case if Mium wasn’t actively suppressing that power from her, as for all we know he puts out a field that throws off her abilities as part of his sensing the world around him just to be able to do the magic nullifying stuff he does. (Precision magic dampening takes information on magic, after all – while I have been assuming that is gained through a passive observation, it could also be active observation, kind of like radar.
Guys; Tyler, Mium, Peter, Cali, Amy, Magnolia, Naomi, and many others are part of the same college, and all but Naomi are part of the same exclusive class of a dozen and a half students. They would know each other.
That does track, but Mium is absent a lot, even by the standards of that class. When Tyler and Mium first met, it had been implied that they simple had not been present at the same time for days.
Mium has been apparently choosing to interpret being required to go to school as “at some point during the school day, be at school”.
That said, Amy has seen/met Mium at least as a distance, and has very likely met him other than that by now.
I think there is a real possibility Magnolia might now see the same thing she say with Ila looking at Mium though. We know that Mione did directly try to read Mium and did not see anything obviously wrong with him. Mione is almost certainly not as clairvoyant as Magnolia, but can see into Eidos further than most people (Naomi can see into Eidos a bit, as indicated when she could see the Nathan’s staff was normal, Mione can see better that, and can see through walls and apparently if people are lying, and see spells people are casting and the Eidos Form of things, Magnolia seems to be able to see the spirits of things… which may be another word for Eidos Forms or may be something else).
Ila was crudely hacked together by Mir though. Mium was made by Doctor Martin and Peter. The quality of construction is probably not comparable.
When I was in college, one of my classes had a mere 18 students. I didn’t learn all of their names in that class. (There was a second semester of that class, with just 17 students, all from the first semester, and I learned one name in that class that I hadn’t in the prior semester. I cannot say at this time whether that meant I’d ever learned all of their names. I knew the names of about 6 of them fairly well.) Also, what Amaranth said.
“Don’t worry, Doc, I’ll probably be too swamped in paperwork, and just catching up with current events, to do any more fighting until long after this all blows over…”
I’m almost taking it from Magnolia’s description that Ila LAUNCHED the would be assassin. Almost. Magnolia gives Peter a run for it in crypticness.
Also is it just me or did the entire page get sepia toned.
I’m taking it that Ila attempted to launch the would be assassin the way she normally attempts to launch people she doesn’t like: by putting a lot of kinetic energy into little hard things, such as pebbles, aiming them in the general direction of the people. This generally doesn’t launch the person very well, just bits of the person. Sometimes important bits.
Full dumpster fire, huh? I think my favorite description in that line I heard from a coworker was “Everything’s been on fire, but the fire itself just burst into flames.”
I resisted the temptation to set the cardboard-only dumpster on fire today. It took everything I had.
You shouldn’t do that unless you bring enough marshmallows for everyone.
I had surgery once. This is how I wanted to interact with the doctor, albeit at least marginally more dressed. Unfortunately, my first day after surgery, it was all I could do to not puke. Sometimes that was more than I could do.
Admittedly, I don’t really remember all that much of the very early recovery process. I may have left on day 2 or 3, after the puking was no longer an issue. After that, I don’t actually remember how long I took off before resuming some work.
In comic related stuff, I thought that Tyler’s biggest issue in that fight was not a lack of arrogance, but misplaced trust and a concern regarding excessive arrogance.
While I don’t feel like we’ve really seen grounds to distrust Magnolia, it does feel like Tyler may be playing into her hand. Also, concerned about excessive arrogance.
By playing into her hand, I mean, if you remove yourself from the care of doctors when you need critical attention, you may become overly dependent on any around who can act as a magical battle medic. Since he’s not going to trust Rovak, I think that means Miss Dai is his known recourse, given the power sets of those we know about.
I do believe Miss Dai might be a troll. She’ll fit in quite well with the rest.
Well, apparently we now have a hint at the limits to her magical sight. She didn’t see Amy through the walls in time to give Tyler adequate warning.
So, no, I don’t think she’s being a troll here.
My guess is she saw Amy through the walls in plenty of time. There was, however, one of three problems, and we’re not going to find out which it was for a long time.
1. Amy was just outside talking with the medical team about Tyler’s condition for a bit, so Magnolia didn’t have a lot of warning between when she was just out there talking and when they headed in.
2. Magnolia was really wanting to finish giving her summary of Ila before mentioning Amy’s imminent approach.
3. She couldn’t resist the opportunity to be a troll.
4. She knew Amy has a crush on Tyler and wanted to give Amy a peek to either reduce or enhance the awkward between them.
I agree Amy needs to be looking a foot over Tyler’s head, which she would only know to do if she hadn’t already looked.
Tyler’s Story may yield additional hints into the Amy Tyler dynamic.
Just trolling a bit myself there…. 😉
As I recall from it, it does tell us that Amy thinks that Tyler is distracting good looking and friendly. Tyler has not seemed to have anything but impression that Amy is diligent and helpful.
Though at the point we have seen so far, Amy is still technically spying on Tyler. Likely within that year Amy’s loyalty mostly seems to have shifted to Tyler himself, so a lot could have changed.