I should probably clarify, Biana’s name is Biana Bayer, and Amy’s name is Amy Selah. I think we’ve seen both of their last names before, though they come up less often than Peter’s.
As for if Mium cheated on the entrance exam, I think that really depends on what the definition of cheated is, and if that can really apply to him. Peter and Kally both would have some trouble with Malsa’s terms for magical theory functionality, but they have a basis of understanding of magical theory and technology (the course they were accepted into) that wouldn’t be quite… fair competition. Kally might not use an autocaster normally, but she certainly knows how to use them. She may look like a one trick dragon, but that’s more a matter of preference… and that dragon is drastically OP.
The most important poll of the year is up below. Make sure you cast your very important vote. It’s the most important poll since last year when we had the same poll.
I did want to touch on the Patreon stuff briefly – I’ve not commented on this previously because this is more or less how I was hoping it would turn out. They reverted the fee change (for those not on Patreon, they’d decided to slap an absurd 35 cent processing fee onto pledges, which as the typical pledge is a dollar, was just ridiculous), so everything is just back to normal. I, like most creators, told them I didn’t like the change, and it seems for now at least they’ve listened. For those that dropped out, 100% understand; I dropped a the pledges I supported at $1 dollar for the few people I support till they reverted it, it just didn’t make sense. Touching that, in general never feel like your stuck as patron, or feel obligated to paying – I appreciate any support and it helps incentivize me to make more stuff, but I’m not going to starve or abandon the comic in a tiff becomes my numbers go down 😀
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Unlike your uncle, Arron, I’m entirely willing to be as stupid, foolhardy, reckless, and arrogant as necessary. Just ask him how I’m perfectly willing to threaten and actively endanger his subordinates, IN FRONT OF WITNESSES! Yes, I’m MAD enough to use weapons that threaten my very existence once somebody retaliates!
You know IF PETER knows what he is doing (High Odds on that right now) Biana is totally going to go down in legendary flames. A KEPLER is treating her invasion like a kid throwing a tantrum. And if Peter is off in his estimates… well I’m sure he has reserve plans for that. Like moving out of the country.
Peter’s just like….”Meh, I didn’t even cheat on your test that much. Oh, but with those phone call? Might change the world. Hang on a minute.”
He’s just so nonchalant about it…
(I do love that one bubble though. “Some crazy bitch decided to pick a fight with a country I was busy living in.” Like it’s so inconvenient (and it was probably as planned…)
Panel 6: “I will need A an elevated clearance…”
There’s an extra “A” in there.
Fixed (again*). Thanks! 🙂
*This was previously noted by another comment, I fixed it, but then most have rolled back the page to older version 😉
Peter seems to know which of Biana’s buttons to push, and he’s pushing them pretty hard. ^^
Someone needs to show this to Biana:
I mean, that was a pretty bad trap all things considered. Sort of backfired due to a teddy bear revolt. I’d bet Peter’d account for the native teddy bears when making his trap.
Or, idk, put a grate over the apparently very explosive core of his moon sized space ship so people couldn’t fly into it. #plotcurmudgeon.
Yes, Emperor Palpatine was indeed quite power-mad. He’s had things going so well for him for so long, he’s never quite realized the risks should even the tiniest thing go wrong.
… The only reason she knows Peter’s location is that Peter decided to LET them know by turning himself into bait. Like, at the beginning of the comic. Peter chose to use his real name when he enrolled. I don’t think Biana has a clue just how much Peter outclasses her.
This entire thing kinda strikes me as a setup.
Panel 6 last bubble of Mium’s, “I will need a an” drop the first ‘a’.
Fixed, thanks 🙂
In your commentary you want the phrase “incentivize me”. You give or get an incentive, but when you refer to someone else giving you an incentive, you need to transitive verb form.
Oddly Chrome’s spell check is convinced that “incentivize” is not a word, but Google seems to think it’s a word, so I’m going with it. 😉
Biana is arrogant to the point of stupidity. For crying out loud, she authorized the release of a psychotic serial killer with super-powers into the general population, is honestly confused as to why he went off the reservation, and keeps poking at hornet’s nests, expecting to not get stung! Not the least of which is constantly threatening her boss, Peter’s uncle, who she thinks is senile because he won’t knuckle under and retire, and keeps giving back as good as he gets.
I can’t argue with how arrogant and foolish Biana behaves. It’s very obvious. (I can hardly wait to see her reaction when Peter’s plans come to fruition and she finally realizes how big a hole she’s dug for herself.)
However, I do not believe that Peter’s Uncle, Arron, is Biana’s boss. Arron is a famous war hero, though, that a lot of people on Central and in IDS admire, including a few working under Biana.
AFAIK, Biana is the director of some branch of IDS, while Arron is the director of Criminal Investigations, a different branch. Taking that into consideration makes Biana’s behavior more understandable and believable, but no less arrogant and foolish.
“Arrogant to the point of stupidity” is, unfortunately, a common attribute of those who have risen to power and who believe it is solely because of their merit that this has happened, rather than understanding the vast number of ways in which luck has figured into their lives and those of the others not in such a position.
Or the efforts of their peers and underlings.
I think that this Patreon debacle has caused a lot of their content creators to take a good, hard look at what alternatives are now available and what their fees and restrictions are. And, from what I’ve seen, a number of them have decided to switch.
This is true. The alternatives right now are not so good for someone like me as Patreon is still by far the biggest, and the chance someone is going to register for a platform they are not already on to support is pretty low, but if they do go forward with the processing fee that absurd, I’d probably leave.
The concept of Patreon to me is excellent – I’ve argued many times that it, or something like it, is the future of online media monetization. I don’t like ads, and the revenue from banner ads becomes more and more pathetic – even youtube ad revenue is dropping, and those are worth far far more than banner ads.
That said, the value proposition of Patreon to me is that it is an bundling platform – if it ceases to become an effective bundling platform, it no longer really makes sense. Personally, I think ‘the future’ is even smaller pledges then $1 dollar; people follow too many things on the internet to support all of them with more than a few pennies, but I don’t think we are really to that revenue model as an online cultural yet – we are still in the ad based economy, where each reader pays a fraction of a penny by loading a banner ad (those that don’t use adblock, and if you do, I don’t blame you, ads are evil – besides ads for webcomics of course… those are not evil… 😉 )
Obviously there are people that have a few “favorites” and want to and can support more, or value the rewards and goals that a creator can offer, but that will be necessity always be a minority of people for any given media. Obviously the idea of “rewards” is something I think about, but it’s only in recent times where art based rewards are even sort of a real consideration, and that’s still mostly going to be “thanks” rather than a “valuable thing”.
Anyway, that’s a bit of a distracted ramble (as I do…). I love the idea of Patreon, but I fully appreciate the value proposition of supporting a webcomic at a dollar is dubious – back in the day I probably read 20-50 webcomics, watched 10-30 youtube channels, etc. There’s no realistic way I could support all the ones I liked, which is why I think a model where 5-20 cents a month or so will be reasonable value level eventually as banner ads die off entirely – that’s about how much people “pay” by viewing ads a month, really.
Extrapolating that idea, my thought is to bundle it all together as one giant “internet payment” – you pay in a total amount, which just gets split between things you follow. More like Youtube Red than Patreon, except for things that aren’t youtube.
Right now, I just pick my favorites, but the option to pay, say, $5.00 a month, but then have that thing split between everything I follow? Ideal, because then I don’t have to choose favorites like I currently do. (I might provide my favorites with payment above and beyond, but that’s separate.)
“…and the chance someone is going to register for a platform they are not already on to support is pretty low…”
I think the chances are not that bad. It depends on the person. Some are more adverse to registering with new websites. But I’m sure that if Patreon had kept their unreasonable fee structure, a lot of donors would be willing to make a switch.
I have noticed that some of the creators who’ve switched have decided to use more than one alternative, which gives donors a choice. This increases the likelihood that their donors have already signed up for one of their alternatives. That, and a lot of people these days already have an account with PayPal.
“…and the revenue from banner ads becomes more and more pathetic…”
And that is sad. I’ve seen a number of webcomics and other free sites disappear, likely due to this sharp decline and an increase in website hosting fees. But this decline is due to several reasons, competition being the biggest. The number of websites with ads keeps growing. And ad farms that exploit ways to show more ads are certainly not helping. Also, advertising on big sites like YouTube has likely lessened the value of regular old banner ads.
“…those that don’t use adblock, and if you do, I don’t blame you, ads are evil – besides ads for webcomics of course… those are not evil…”
Adverts are a little like propaganda in that they’re designed to change the public’s mind about something or get them to do something (i.e., buy their product when they might have done otherwise). I try not to look at them as evil, though: Ads seem like a cornerstone of a free market economy.
Generally, I don’t use ad blockers. However, there are certain advertising strategies that I agree are evil, like pop-ups and especially pop-unders. (Video ads are esp. annoying by blaring that noise, prompting the reader to search for the mute button. Also, they waste a lot of bandwidth.)
Considering their new censorship strategies and what they’ve been doing to their content creators, I don’t feel bad for YouTube losing ad revenue to blockers. It seems like they’ve nearly or completely defunded at least half of the interesting channels I want to watch. It’s not like ad blockers hurt the content creators that YouTube has already defunded.
She is really, really stupid. Peter plays games of wit because he likes playing games of wit, but he is entirely capable of taking pretty much any player off the board with sheer firepower at this point. He probably just finds it and the resulting politics annoying.
No, she’s many things, but not stupid. The fact peter has a got tier AI on his side isn’t common knowledge. Based on Mium’s comments and her talk about ruthlessness I’m betting that she has some sort of weapon. Probably a big bomb.
Mium needs permission for many things. Implicit permission is enough to hack a system, but I imagine killing someone requires pretty explicit allowances.
Whatever happens, it’ll be interesting.
She is grossly underestimating Arron, which is a bit foolish, if not outright stupid, given his impressive record. Because she is grossly underestimating him, she is making the assumption that Peter Kepler is only dangerous because Arron is a softy who won’t stop Peter from playing his games.
Essentially, she recognizes that Peter is dangerous and has done impressive things, but thinks he’s only managed it because Arron is too weak-willed to stop him. She doesn’t believe that Arron could not have stopped him if he’d just been willing to hurt his nephew and maybe do some civilian collateral damage. A calculation she thinks Arron is stupid for, perhaps even rightly (if her assumption was correct), because Peter seems to cause more collateral damage than would be necessary to take him out. By her estimation.
But she seems to think that all she needs is to take a metaphorical rolled-up newspaper into the rabid dog’s bin, swat him on the nose, and then hold him down while she shoots him two times in the back of the head. Sure, he’s dangerous, but she’s more so.
She is, obviously, very very wrong. And if she weren’t blinded by her arrogant underestimation of Arron, she’d be seeing the incongruities in what Peter has pulled off. And the pattern of escalation and deescalation that indicates a deeply layered set of contingencies in everything Peter does.
She is essentially assuming that Peter builds intricate, delicate plans that have far-reaching effects if they’re not disrupted, but that they’re fragile and the only reason they haven’t collapsed is because nobody has been willing to kick them over hard enough. What she is missing is that Peter’s intricate, far-reaching plans are deeply rooted, and kicking them only gets your foot stuck while the trap closes around your ankle.
And thats before you figure in all the assests/allies he has covertly built up. Because it started as one seriously hard kick. Then Peter added Mium and it became one monumentally epic kick or a long series of hard kicks. And then you add in Illa, Naomi and the rest and your looking at something that kicking hard is no longer a good solution. Sure enough kicks that are hard enough will still knock the plan over, but operation BLIND SMASH attracts a lot of attention, and will involve breaking enough things others care about right now that about half way through Peter won’t even be on your list of problems.
I think Peter could challenge that Xanatos fellow TVTropes holds up as the epitome of the master manipulator. he’d likely come out ahead.
Neither wisdom nor knowledge is not equivalent to intelligence. 🙂
Panel 6: extra “director”
But, she might be a director director.
Haha, fixed, thanks 🙂