Comic for Monday, September 18th
Ah, this is up a little late. Unfortunately up way past when I should be sleeping, so there might be a worse crop of typos than usually. I will swing by some time tomorrow to try to fix anything. Turns out my weekend schedule as a bit too optimistic for all the things I was supposed to get done.
Mium really does seem to have fondness for shooting things in the back and explosions. Preferably at the same time. As for military grade hardware restriction, I strongly suspect that Peter has a good notion that it really does not slow down Mium all that much, he’s just offended that a Mium drove a tank through a loophole in it. He’d probably be fairly unimpressed with the sniper rifle Mium stole awhile back too, but Mium’s rational on that one is air tight. To Mium, anyway.
Of course… time will tell if Peter has fully appreciated what grade of ‘hardware’ Miss Eften, and how that interacts with Mium’s methodology…
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At first I thought it was slightly out of character for Mium to exposition about putting a bomb in the tank, since usually Mium is pretty tightlipped. Then I realized, he’s trying to get Peter to gtfo before everything goes boom, but can’t just tell Peter to gtfo.
“….and there’s a tank……”
Jeez, Mium, just steal the entire show why don’t you. I mean, you never weren’t cool, but, I mean, that just made space look like a damn sauna.
=D
I wonder what Mium’s “drastic” options here would be. I mean, potentially he has gotten a not-military-grade nuke somewhere, but that would not really help Peter stay alive. Alternatively, it could just be unshackling more processing power and/or booting up the A.A. System fully, which would either extend Mium’s magic no-sell range or potentially let him use his own magic. Alternatively it hasn’t been confirmed yet that Mium cannot hijack Peter like he did Miko, and Mium running on a human potentially can use magic (or at least Miko implied he could try). Either option makes sense that Peter is reluctant to do so, especially when he has a front row seat to it.
Most likely it involves the full breathe and depth of Mium’s abilities. Aka nukes are going to be raining down on them while he fully powers the AA system and unleashes the unformed magic on everything around him.
It could also involve things like luring him to a populated area, and let the military deal with it, or getting him onto a gate and gating him into IDS headquarters.
Alternately, it could be doing something that could endanger Peter or Mium’s body. Not that the order conditions still allow Mium to kill him, he just has to stall for long enough for Peter to get away, and not do anything that would risk Eff-8.
“Creative interpretations” flag indeed…
“It’s not military grade – the military doesn’t have it yet! It’s still research-grade!”
I did want to spend more time on that in page then I could, but as noted in the comments, a fairly broad restriction like that is not going to have much effect on Mium and Peter knows it, but he was at least hoping that it would prevent Mium from, well, doing what he did.
I mean, the grenade Peter had earlier was also from Mium, so it’s not that he’s entirely unaware that Mium views that restriction with some degree of ambivalence.
Peter and Mium have always had different views on subtlety works.
Eh, I think this is a fair length. It limits the “talking is a free action” trope from getting TOO excessive.
I think the point was clear. Perhaps you and I just have different views on how subtlety works. 😉
Rambling thoughts on the writing process… read at your own risk! 🙂
I think this already wandered too far into “talking as a free action” here due to my desire to avoid thought bubbles for Mium or Peter, and not try to rely entirely on art to clarify what is happening, as that’d be a dubious enterprise in this case, while still framing the exposition as something more than narration.
This is the problem with having them (Peter and Mium) both be extremely limited PoV characters while simultaneously being main characters. I think if I was planning things out now knowing what I’ve learned from writing the comic, I’d probably increase the role of PoV characters (Arron, Kally, Tyler), and probably add a few more (Ila, Naomi, maybe Miko, Ryn), and cheat the PoV less. If I was writing a book, I’d probably say screw it, and make Peter a PoV character, it’s what I did with the one I posted for the first couple pages of the comic, but that works better where words are not a premium.
As is we’ll probably see slow adaptions to fit that, but it’s a slow process (me learning to write, and than applying what I’ve learned 🙂 ).
I would still cheat the PoV occasionally, as there are few times I knew I’d cheat the PoV on Mium, though I still struggle to render those scenes, I think it’s worked out pretty well, but its not realistic to do his thought bubbles besides in very specific circumstances. I’d rather not use any thought bubbles for Peter, though I have before.
Though I suppose there are two levels of “Cheat the PoV”; one is showing scenes that no PoV character is present, which I do literally all the time, and the other is showing thought bubbles for non-PoV characters, which I also do, but less frequently. Really, I think I’d rather do less of both, and just make more PoV characters, limiting the off PoV to intermissions more often, but at this point we are getting entirely theoretical 🙂
Writing PoV is actually really hard, a lot harder then just going third person and that only gets multiplied exponentially by the number of characters whose viewpoints you use. This comic actually does an excellent job of managing it. This is especially true since it is a true multi-PoV story rather than a simple “single-PoV story with side-chapters exploring other characters viewpoints”. From my own work I’ve found that the unexpected difficulties just multiply as the characters get deeper and as you get more of a full view required to see how what you are looking at may be less “tone” and more “viewpoint”. Among these issues are “unreliable narrator”, “unobservant narrator”, differences in observational focus, and such things that you only really realize are due to the character when you have more to compare it with. This story has a fair number of characters with diverse viewpoints. For a webcomic, though, keeping a bit of third person in there allows for a lot better better scenes of what is going on and so is probably best. Afterall, a true 1st person view would only see the main character in mirriors and pictures.
To be honest I never really read many comics or manga or any sort of visual medium like that, so I’m more influenced by books then comics/manga when it comes to writing, but I also didn’t really know how to write a book either (even if I’d made a crude stab or two). I didn’t study writing in college or anything, so I’m not really fluent in the terminology around it, but writing this comic has been a great experience in all of it.
The way I write is basically a top down simulation – I have a pretty detailed outline (mostly in my head) of the world (magic system, geography, etc) and then I add characters (which are personality + goals + current event knowledge), and run through how they’d react. Once I have most of the main characters fleshed out, I decide “a) which of these are the most interesting, b) which of these are most plot relevant, and c) can I realistically draw that?” -> from there I’ll draw the page. I think I greatly benefit from the internet sized audience, as I can afford to write a story that’s going to be fairly niche in appeal – a lot of people want purified drama, more coherent and packaged delivery, etc, but I think this comic has been a good show in that there are people that are more interested in the type of story where things don’t work according to good story rules, as long as it builds the world or develops the character.
I think the term for it like tent-pole writing or something. I know the big events the hold up the plot all the way to the end, but a lot of details get filled in as I spend time thinking about what characters are doing, sometimes I realize I’m going to have to modify the future because I didn’t consider a character well enough and they’ll do something that impacts the future, but for the most part I have how the major characters interact with the plot premapped, and it’s just spun a little differently here and there. To be honest, it’s been slightly influenced more this direction as time the main other thing I write for these days is D&D campaigns where I have to be open to the characters doing literally anything – here I, in theory, puppet all the characters, but I also can’t predict them entirely until I sit down and think through “if I was Kally, how would I react to this?”; usually it’s “smash with dragon” but occasionally I have to confront that it’s not, and something will have to be tweaked. The pro is I think that this makes the story (at least, when I do a good job) more realistic and relatable, and the con is that it meanders a lot, and has ended up taking longer than I ever anticipated to tell the story, especially as I don’t have the heart to cut characters as ruthlessly as I probably should – Tyler, Miko, Ryn, the Consul, etc, are all characters were part of the ‘story simulation’ in the background, but that I liked too much to cut their roles down in the actual comic to truly background characters, but that means that means adding months/years to the story.
It’s ended up being a bit of a weird genre; the original outline was more of a sci-fi/fantasy mystery/adventure, when I changed to making a comic, I decided to go more toward the action style as that’s what my perception of what comics/webcomics were, and in the end it’s sort of settled between all of those somewhere.
Hey man, nothing to add but wanted to say I love reading these behind the curtain thoughts. The writing process has always seemed mystical to me and these help demystify it seeing the way the brilliant minds (like yours) tick. Keep up the good work man, this story has great writing.
Lets be honest here. Mium probably trips that flag so often there’s no way Peter could read all the logs. Heck, it probably does that on purpose.
In case I haven’t mentioned, I really do love Mium. It’s perfectly nice, helpful, and actually seems to like most of the people around it. It’s also a muderbot that loves stealing “not” military hardware and shooting things in the back.
Panel 4: “I do admit, I am curious about what you can do.” Panel 12: “For example, the bomb i put in it for when he rips it apart is distinctly not MILITARY grade.”
Fixed, thanks 🙂