Comic for Thursday, February 16th
The Levenworth Entrance exam was actually something we were supposed to see, but I cut it. It works a lot like many higher level tests where it is not really designed for perfect scores both by the nature of the questions and the timing. Leaving aside exactly how one goes about testing Mium, we’ve seen reason to believe that he may not run on a typically human clock speed.
I need to figure out what to do with the big empty white space at the top of the page now. I don’t know what to put there yet, but it seems like a giant gaping hole in the page. Maybe I need to shuffle everything around again.
Been trying to work on angle and perspective a bit more. Also looking for ideas what do for bonus art or doodles, particularly involving practicing hair, faces, and expressions, if you have a good one. I know I should put the next Patreon goal up (or a vote for what it is) but I haven’t really decided and we are still not too far into Minus Years to be able to promise another full bonus comic feasible 😐
I feel like I should have more to say here, but I don’t. I dunno. My brain melted out my ear awhile ago and I’m rambling on auto pilot. G’night. G’morning? Whatever.
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Perhaps, Mium, you should not phrase things quite like that, since he’s probably going to figure out what you are pretty quickly.
Try something simpler, like “You need a more specific query, Mr. Weber. May I make a suggestion?”
I am not sure Mium really has all the subtle points of acting like a human sorted out… or he does and just can’t really be arsed. I think he gets by on the that most effective way to pass the Turing Test is if the human doesn’t know it’s participating in one.
I think the person that has the best chance of putting it together is Kally. Not because she is more perceptive or clever than Tyler, but because she knew Query. If Arron did not know that Kyle had Query, Kally probably didn’t either. She would likely assume that Peter still has him. From there it is not that big a jump to realize that Mium is probably Query, considering his relationship with Peter and some of his habits. If she sees Peter talk to his computer addressing it as Mium/MYM I expect her to connect the dots pretty quick that either Mium = Query or that Mium is Query’s successor.
Speaking Kally, it is going to be hard to think anything but “awwww” when she shows up after the last few Minus Years pages. Trying to cross her last appearance in the main comic as an utter baddass with a dragon and her being adorable is frying my brain, and I am not usually that weak to cute things.
Adorable??
Don’t make me dragon you!
//No I didn’t just draw that for this comment, it was a Patreon drawing. Since I don’t want to taunt people, I’ve marked it as public, you can see it here.
as someone that DOES have a weakness to cute things all I can say is !!!
cat hoody! Kally!! ^^
I think more Query’s successor than Query itself. Maybe based on, or similar design, but don’t think Mium’s quite the same AI as Query.
He could probably pass himeslf off as Query though if he wanted to, I bet.
My theory is that MYM is Query combined with another AI, possible two or three others at this point… AI identity or individuality is a little more complicated than humans.
@PastUtopia You said on the previous page that after all of this time you were still where you were when you started and I would have to disagree. Your art has improved greatly your ability to maintain schedule has improved as well. You may not see these as improvements but these are the trees that are parts of your Forest. Now you may not be where you hoped to be that’s not something to be frowned upon either. You notice where you had issues and made steps to correct them. I have seen continual improvement even though I only comment occasionally. Even your spelling has improved somewhat. So you aren’t where you hope to be and I would have to say you need to get used to that feeling because nobody ever gets to where they want to be when they want to be there.
I think being unhappy/uncertain about the art is more or less a prerequisite of being a webcomic artist, as many of us are hobby/amateur artists publishing our dubious doodles for the general public and all to be recorded forever by the internet (obviously there are some pros that do webcomics too, but that’s cheating 😉 ). In many things you either get the chance to learn it first or people never see it, it’s like having that one time you tried to sing in the car printed on a CD and readily available for the rest of time.
I recognize that it’s gotten better in the last 2 years, but it also seems like it frequently is at a plateau without much improvement, with just sort of the wheels spinning. Two years seems like a long time to do something without getting pretty damn good at it, but I guess that’d be unfair to the people that have been doing this for 10+ years.
That’s two years of part time drawing, 2-3 pages per week. Roughly 300 pages total. That’s significant, but not “I should have mastered this by now” huge.
Look at this strip again when you hit the 1k mark and compare it to your current style.
Ah, thinking of the 1k mark is intimidating. I wonder what % of story webcomics make it to the 1k page mark? Are any of them still rough at art, or does the sheer nature of drawing 1,000 pages make you pretty good at it?
Current projections seem to make it likely we will probably get there, but I really might split it up into Part I and Part II or something, as I’d really like someway to make the old archives less of a barrier.
But yeah, definitely. It’s 2+ years of being a hobbyist/amateur artist, not the same as 2 years of school/job. Drawing is definitely not a hobby I would have thought I’d have in the future when I was younger as I was never particularly artistically inclined.
Mium gets a broad question, “what can you tell me…” and chooses to focus his answer on the “can” and “me” rather than the rest of the sentence.
I hadn’t really noticed that, but it is a good point. I wonder if he has something of a weakness to being asked questions considering that in all probability he is at least partially Query. Even if he does have to answer though, trying to pin him to his restrictions or rules would likely be impossible.
I am really curious how much Tyler knows about him though. Can he guess that Mium is not a human, or is that just too outlandish a concept? It is obvious from how he talks to me that Mium is an AI, but I am reading a webcomic so I expect AI. I would never really consider an actual person I was talking to was an AI, I’d think that they had, well, a social disorder.
I wonder how Tyler would react if he knew that Mium had read EVERYONE’S profile. 🙂
It would rather take the wind out of Tyler’s “I know secret stuff about you” ploy. ^^
I think Tyler has not quite grasped how outclassed he is (how could he?). Whatever computer systems Malsa has I cannot imagine represent even a speed bump to MYM, considering he can waltz through the IDS and Avon. Tyler is basically talking to a walking repository of everything he, his school, his government, or anyone he has ever met has committed to a computer if MYM is so inclined.
Panel 2: “Come with me a bit” sounds odd to me. “Come with me *for* a bit,” perhaps?
I’m impressed with your ability to resist Maia’s puppy-dog eyes from the last page’s comments.
Also, interesting choice of words there, Mium: a “query”…
PastUtopia actually has a buffer now, so any response to Maia will be down the road a bit. 🙂
I am pretty sure that Mium is at least in part Query, which is all sorts of interesting comparing the two. It does make me suspect that Mium has some degree of weakness to being asked questions as well, which may explain why tends to evade or give trollish instead of lie or ignore the question.
Interesting possibilities to be sure. I would like to know how much Tyler has guessed, based on how he asked the question. While it backfired, he did try to aim broad intentionally it seems, a question that would basically spell out who Mium is and what he knows if he answered it.
As much as I like Tyler though, I think he has basically zero chance in a rules lawyering game against Mium though. Mium is a professional rules lawyer.
Hey – sorry this took a bit to fix. I somehow spaced this entirely after seeing it originally.
Anyway… fixed! Thanks!
“It’d take too long for me to explain, and you’re too dumb to get it. Therefore, I’m not gonna waste my time.” Mium, just slap him around verbally, why don’t you?
At least he didn’t Montoya it. “Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”
Hey, it’s like Kally told Aaron: He only speaks in cryptic observations and what might be making fun of you.
While that is denotatively what he said, I don’t think that was the sentiment. The mockery wasn’t of Tyler’s intellect, but of Tyler’s assumption that what Mium knows about the situation is small enough to speak of in a short period of time. And an implication, not that Tyler is dumb, but that Mium’s mind encapsulates more than Tyler’s. The humor, even, I think, from Mium’s perspective, lies in how much smarter than normal Mium is, not in how “dumb” humans are.
In short, I don’t think there’s an insult to Tyler’s intelligence, but to his assumptions.
Mium actually did *not* say that Tyler wouldn’t be able to understand it, merely that he wouldn’t be able to store all of that information in his brain. It’s an important distinction.
Especially considering I am pretty sure that Mium is the patron saint of technicalities.
Can he be a saint if he is still alive? I thought saint was one of those strictly posthumous things.
Well. I guess there is a much bigger issue on the table if AI can even qualify for such things, if you open MYM’s Task Manager, is spiritual-essence.exe running? 😛
Maybe Mium is PastUtopia’s equivalent of the Papal Mainframe from Doctor Who.