Comic for Thursday, Feburary 2nd
Well, first of sorry for the delay, and I appreciate your patience!
I am back from travelling and more or less back in the saddle. Sorry for leaving things MayW’s hands but as the only commenter I know in real life, she was pretty much my only choice. Ah… I mean, thanks for taking care of things while I was gone, MayW!
I will be fixed the rest of the spelling errors in the coming days, I nabbed the first couple pages last night.
Anyway, things are back to normal, I’ll update again this weekend then it’s on to buffer rebuilding. Minus Years will start updating again on Patreon, as well as a constant trickle of “PastUtopia works on learning to draw sketches” where you can see ridiculous things like Ila with a mohawk. Once I have Minus Years a bit further I’ll do some sort of vote for the next bonus comic chapter.
This is… the third appearance of Tom? I think third. And no one has punched him this time. I guess technically Kally didn’t punch him the first time, but I assure you she wanted to.
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Even if he got it from him, Peter’s like a magnifying glass (or six) on those “traits” everyone finds so annoying. ^.^
Well then, nice page.
First of all Arron is worrying about what Kyle’s schemes are, which is interesting, might Peter and Kyle be in communication or be working together?
What I find more interesting though is the pseudo-invisibility displayed by Tom. The name may mean something, Ellipsis : “The omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous”. Naomi mentioned that her eyes were not focusing on him when he was following her (Note: I think it was mentioned that Naomi has enhanced vision). May Ellipsis work by tricking peoples minds into ignoring the person? That seems like it would require directly affecting others, which would be difficult/very hard because of their interference fields as well as have a few obvious weaknesses (cameras, viewing form a distance and mages with a strong interference field). I don’t know enough about magic to know how one could do it without accounting for others interference fields, so there may be a way. (I wish I could take some classes at Levenworth). Another possible method of functioning could be bending light around that caster, though that seems unlikely as it fits the evidence less, as well as probably being even more complex, especially if the caster has to do things like account for the variable change every time light shifts. Just wildly guessing here now but Toms invisibility could even have something to do with his crowbar and how he dresses! It could be a mundane/technological ability, Tom doesn’t appear to be using any magic in panel 2, or any of the others. The way he phrases how Arron pioneered it makes me not think it is just a gadget, some kind of skill/spell/ability. What ever it is it seems to be pretty powerful, it seems that even thinking/knowing that someone is there isn’t enough to see though it.
Apologizes for such a long comment, I like to analyse things if I can. Also, even if this is the third appearance of Tom, I would be more curious about the times he DIDN’T appear :).
We the reader could see Tom when Naomi seemingly could not, so I have assumed that it is somehow not literal invisibility.
It does seem somewhat implausible that it directly effects everyone else around him given that effecting other mages directly is said to be very hard. My guess is that somehow he is interfering with his own Eidos form, either screwing with how his “data” is read by reality or changing part of it that makes people “notice” him. While we are still very short solid on magic system info, we have had some good hints. I am secretly hoping that the upcoming arc will actually show them in class more so we can look over their shoulders, though PastUtopia does love to cut exposition…
It is worth noting that how Naomi seemed to find it was some sort of “mana sonar”, she noticed there was a spot she could not interfere with mana, and assumed there was a mage interfering with that spot even if she couldn’t see him.
For long comments, well, you are right at home here. This is the bastion of long speculation/theory comments.
I’m wondering if the hoodie Tom is wearing has something to do with Ellipsis, since he has the hood down when interacting with people, but up when skulking around.
Unless the effect is a total sensory block, Arron may have been able to hear Tom’s movements, or, given Tom’s general state of dishevelment, even smelled him. 🙂
I think you have nailed it based on the name (Ellipses). That is an unusually big hint for this comic as to how something works. I think somehow Tom is becoming “omitted” from what people notice about their surroundings… but people that know how it works (Arron) or have super keen senses (Naomi) notice because they notice the absence even if they don’t see him. I think that is what Tom is failing to understand, and maybe what Arron is subtly warning him about here. Note Arron does not agree with Tom’s assessment that he has no advantage in detecting him and so can’t, as Arron clearly knows he is there.
Depending on how it works, it could even work against video cameras. If he can walk in front of you and you don’t notice, he could walk in front of a screen you were watching and you might still not notice.
The only problem is how is he doing it if you can’t effect other mages. Two possibilities. One he is just effecting himself and adding some property of “this thing is just a background object, ignore it” maybe helped by his outfit that looks like the sort of person people would typically try to avoid or not pay attention to. Two maybe he is effecting people in a purely informational way that does not effect their Form, since he is not actually changing anything about other people, resistance might not apply.
A new fun thing to speculate. I am with you and Amaranth. I would not mind sitting in on a Levenworth class or two, but that might take a whole chapter on its own.
I will say this as a helpful addition, it masks a presence yes, but there are two other options, 1: there is a sort of “hack” done to a persons senses that dampens it, much like a cloaking device the only affects the naked eye but not a machine, but can be a bit more advanced. I.E. 1 person may see a Japanese schoolgirl and another might see Abraham Lincoln, but he is still the same, which could still work on somebody that can be part machine or wholly machine as it was just a simple explanation, the process would just be a bit different.
2: he could ne using a devices that does two things, 1- secretes a sort of pheromone that changes the wiring in the brain. 2- sends out a electronic signal that contains a program that can hack any machine that would have a sensory function,I.E. A camera, a motion detector, a metal detector, or a heat sensor, to scramble or mix the message.
I base the second part as something I have a knowledge of thanks to a large amount of computer work. You can think of it in terms of a remote card reader that people use for identity theft by simply standing near the unlucky victim, with a virus to overwrite a certain sensory with an “all clear” by a signal that would be emitted simultaneously. Think of the myth busters episode where Kari, Tori, and Grant try to be a thermal imaging scanner with multiple methods on themselves, but instead sending a signal to the thermal reader showing that there is just an empty room.
I think Tom generates what Douglas Adams called a Somebody Else’s Problem field. It doesn’t make him invisible, as invisibility is Hard; it simply makes people tend to not notice him, and anyone who does notice him (briefly) ignores him as “somebody else’s problem”. 😎
Nobody notices homeless people.
People notice maintenance and cleaning people, in an office building, even less.
That is my belief on why he wears a patched hoodie and how ellipses, in part, works.
Also, Nathan, on the characters page, is shown as a question mark.
And a crow bar is a large metal question mark.
I think we have seen Nathan a few times and haven’t even noticed. :-p
Haha, that would be great. Or bizarre. And bizarre?
I do really want to know why he carries a crowbar and if the crowbar is in somewhat significant.
A nod to Half-Life 2, perhaps?