Comic for Monday, October 27th, 2020
There are some things that readers would know that Arron knows that he’s not saying here:
- He’s not bringing up the Bridgepoint data, which is likely tangled into this mess somehow.
- He’s not bringing up that he likely knows that some of this technology is tied into AI.
One can speculate as to why that would be. That said, Arron doesn’t have as many puzzle pieces as readers would have to how many factors are at play here (we know there’s a tech company that wanted to use Peter’s connection to Central as cover for one of its technologies, the research of which would have violated agreements with the IDS (via PACT)), we also know that at least Avon was involved in what is now suspected to be Kor’s World technology, and we know that PACT is perhaps not as reliable an ally of the IDS as elements of the IDS might hope (if they were indeed involved in the theft of Bridgepoint data, something several factors suggest). Which likely means all sides are in some degree of betrayal of all other sides here.
The last panel is bit silly. In the original drafts of the comic, there was a reoccurring joke that someone (usually Arron) would speculate that Peter was up to some devious master plan, and then we’d cut to Peter doing something utterly mundane. We still see this occasionally as it amuses me, but the comic is less tightly focused in on the back and forth between Peter and Arron than the original versions, so it has less opportunity to occur.
Peter is talking to Miko in the last panel. We’ll probably see more what they are up to… it’s been awhile since we’ve seen what Peter is up to after all.
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Perhaps food is a little more precious to people from Central? I’d imagine they don’t have robust fruit crops, so the idea of letting fresh fruit rot might not occur to Peter? I am probably reading too much into it.
I grew up on a farm. Fruits and vegetables were actually pretty plentiful, at least certain varieties.
And yet, when my mom bought a bag of about a dozen crab apples, I actually ate a few. This purchase had been by mistake. We had an orchard, but we didn’t have any Granny Smith apple trees, and Mom wanted some. Crab apples are very different from Granny Smith apples, even if the bags are marked “Granny Smith apples”.
To be fair, we had some crab apple trees on our farm, and these crab apples were very different from them. We were used to crab apples being these small fruits about the size of an eight year old’s fist. (Specifically, my fist around four decades ago, give or take).
For the uninitiated, crab apple trees are in the same genus as the other apple trees, but they’re different species. That said, there are a few different species of apple trees that produce the fruits we generally consider to be apples.
What we wanted are thought to be hybrids of Malus sylvestris, the European wild apple, with the domesticated apple Malus pumila. They’re a bit more tart than the average apple, but nothing like the extreme sour of a crabapple.
Looking at the possibilities now, I’m guessing what we actually got were just Malus sylvestris. The Granny Smith Wikipedia page claims those as “European wild apple”s, but the Malus Wikipedia page claims them to be “European crabapples”. The Malus sylvestris page identifies them as both “European crab apple” and “forest apple”.
I think my motivation was either guilt over starving Ethiopian children or the fact that we were poor and Mom had spent money from the food budget, and so it needed to be food.
I am reminded of a line from the One Man Star Wars performance:
“Exposition, exposition, exposition, exposition. (Or for you younger folks, Yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda.)”
But the conversation has to happen and there is really no way to have a short cut to the end of it, so… there it is.
As for Peter and Miko, at least it isn’t schwarma, right?
I look forward to returning to Peter’s perspective!
Personally I tend to look forward to exposition in this comic. If PastUtopia ever fully updated the wiki, I think I could spend endless hours just reading about the world. Trying to turn the Far Side of Utopia into a film would probably be impossible…
…actually it might be awesome, it would just be way different. A film of Naomi or Kally’s fight scenes would probably be awesome, just an different way compared to the comic is.
I do think that this scene of him talking to the general is probably less interesting than a scene of him talking to Minerva or Kyle might be, as they may have similar conversations but in that case I would very much want to see the other persons exposition too, but I think it makes sense to have the exposition of what Arron knows here as there was already going to be a somewhat necessary scene with him an the army that sort of gives a better insight into his special status with the military.
It would TOTALLY BE THE MOST AWESOME FILM EVER MADE.
It would be dangerously close to an action movie, and like all films, the majority of the detail is going to disappear. But the right script writer and director means there should be enough standing on rooftops, actors staring at TVs (turned off of course!), and other moments like that to imply more going on that the viewer could possibly understand in the context of a movie.
And as a fan, I would probably hate it for cutting all sorts of things out; but hey: that’s the movies for you. And if they changed anything, I would definitely hate it (that’s the problem with movie makers: they usually can’t bloody help themselves).
Maybe a spin-off movie: coming to a theatre near you: AIR BALL! Meet the plucky designer child Naomi, and the talented red dragon witch Kally for what promises to be the most exciting Air Ball tournament ever! All of the intrigue would be around the how & why Peter got Kally into the tournament… Naomi didn’t need any encouragement. LOL.
Two things.
One. “Dune” was good. The 1984 “Dune”, that is. It’s about as convoluted and opaque as this, revealing things slowly, and then we have Paul Atretes riding a sand worm into battle.
Two. Like music, sculpture, and graphic arts, movies, books, and comic books are all very different art forms. “Pictures at an Exhibition” tried it, but you generally can’t turn a painting into a song, and it’s similarly hard to distill what makes a good book into a good movie. Books let you head-jump, and see what’s going on, either by riding the character’s perspective, or having a narrator who knows more than you telling you what the character thinks and why they think that. However, explosions fall flat on the page.
Also, people will tolerate a ten hour book, but generally prefer their movies to be around two, or less. That means a LOT of important detail ends up on the cutting room floor, (or never shot to begin with.)
Then there are the BAD adaptions. Ones like “Starship Troopers”, which seemingly go out of their way to warp the message into a farce of itself. Or just about any movie where the character changes ethnicity or age to fit the actor or actress. Which incidentally brings us back to “Starship Troopers”. Or dump the content of the original story to go its own way, like “Wanted” did. (Although, I can understand about “Wanted”. I doubt the filmmakers had, or could get, the cooperation of DC to make a villains ascendant movie.)
That said, generally serial art is PROBABLY easier to adapt to the screen than is a regular novel. For one thing, it’s already storyboarded. However, maybe it’d work better as a multi-season television show. Pulling off the FX would be expensive, however.
There were many cuts made of the 1984 “Dune”. If I recall correctly, the full take was generally considered to be wonderful by people who’d read the book, but too long for the attention spans of anyone who hadn’t, and even those who had sometimes needed significant intermissions breaks. The Director’s cut was pretty good. The 2 hour even with commercials added hack job that I first saw was a convoluted, confusing mess.
{whisper}Also, I couldn’t figure out why people were whispering all the time.{/whisper}
A lot of things became much more clear in the longer versions, where you could actually see things like their lips weren’t moving as they were whispering, at least in some of the early scenes of these loud whispers, indicating they were using it to convey something other than speech.
Re: Starship Troopers: You’re trying to tell me that people in Brazil aren’t typical Caucasian Americans? Look, mate, I’ve seen a globe, and Brazil is in South America. So, they’re Americans, therefore Caucasian, right? Oh, wait.
I’m not sure I can recall any other movie I’ve seen but also read the book where they changed the ethinicity of basically *everyone* in the entire human cast.
I’d think it could make a good Netflix-style show.
My comparison point would be GoT, in the sense of having lots of involved plots by many interacting characters to follow. Having not watched it, my understanding is that the general impression was “mostly good, last few seasons notwithstanding” (which just says “don’t let the adaptation get ahead of the source material”), so it’s kind of a proof-of-concept to my mind.
[In some ways, the way I read it in my head is already kind of like a TV show… more so than many webcomics, anyway.]
I think the magic, mech suits and multicoloured designer children aspects probably lend themselves more to animation than live action, but if it was going to be adapted it would have to be as a series. There’s way too much going on and far too many characters and subplots to cram into a 2 hour move without losing everything that makes this comic great.
If it was going to be live action it would need to be a high budget production like GoT since you’d need the FX to be top quality.
I’ve had schwarma, and it’s not bad. I do understand there could conceivably be bad schwarma, just like there can be bad {any sort of food}.
Crab apples, on the other hand, regardless of how much they might look like eating apples, are very, very sour. If I recall correctly, and I had nothing to eat besides crab apples and lemons, and I could only survive long enough for that situation to be rectified by eating one or the other, I would mostly go with the lemons.
That said, I’d almost certainly eat several of each as I tried to figure out which was less sour… more along the lines of, after a while, I’d disbelieve whatever was eating was the less sour of the two, so try the other, before going back to whichever was less sour for a bit.
I am incredibly glad that I’ve never been in such a situation.
I would probably try chopping them finely then adding them to apple pie filling; should end up with something a lot like apple and rhubarb, but without rhubarb….
My grandparents used to make crabapple jelly. The general solution to eating crabapples appears to be a combination of cooking them to take the edge off, and adding sugar.
I love crabapple jelly, mum makes it most years and it is super tasty, a WMD on fresh toast! (I think Ila would agree, mostly because it is FULL of sugar!) she would line the jars up along the windowsill so the sun would shine on them making them glow a gorgeous deep ruby!