Comic for Thursday, January 24th, 2019
Sorry about the tardy schedule. I had planned to publish this comic from the Patreon version of the comic, as I don’t travel with my drawing computer, but it turned out that I did not schedule the Patreon post, so things did not work out, and it took me awhile to get the image to post; in general, running a bit behind on everything. I am not a big fan of work travel, and am remarkably bad at sleeping on airplanes and/or hotel rooms sometimes, which combined with time zone madness and the like don’t really agree with me.
Anyway… hopefully travel will be kept to a minimum, because I think the next few chapters will be pretty exciting, so I have more important things to do than day jobs 😉
I don’t think it’s really been mentioned, but while Camilla and Arkady are both members of the Families, Camilla is the Family Head of her Family. While on paper being the head of a Family line does not really come with power, in practice it tends to mean that no one but the Consul or another Family head is going to poke their nose into your business… and usually not even then. While Camilla frequently acts as the Consul’s ‘bodyguard’ or ‘protector’, she also makes up a significant portion of the Consul’s authority – if the Consul has a head of the Families with her, it gives her the implicit backing of the Families when she speaks.
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Final panel: “…when an offer seems too good [to] be true…”
Notwithstanding Mium’s caution the lure of tasty food is too great and warrants further investigation to determine if there is a trap involved and, if so, whether the bait is tasty enough to warrant dealing with the trap.
Am I the only one having flashbacks of “the overly attached girlfriend”?
It would appear that Ila’s definition of “Tasty Food” might be a bit more eccentric than assumed, but I think that makes some degree of sense. Humans think the things they need usually taste good, it is just that most humans have more food than they need, so things that are extremely good for starving humans are not so good for most humans.
Ila burns resources considerably faster than a human it would seem. This may come from doing things that humans cannot (like keeping herself warm while flying through freezing rain, something that would probably kill most humans pretty quick) or might be inherent to how she is built (or both).
Mium food likely completely disregards flavor in favor “digestible”, but Ila likely only shares part of the spectrum of taste with a normal human, given her elevated need for calories (presumably she finds things like sugar much more appealing than even humans).
Of course, I am not really sure we know enough to speculate too much on the dietary habits of a prototype, given our sample size of Mium (ambivalent) and Ila (fixated).
Will be interesting to see Camilla interact with Ila, and see if she ends up on the “nice” or “not nice” list. Given that she and Arkady are engaged, she might have a headstart, but I sort of doubt Ila really understands what that is, as I cannot imagine Mium would bother to explain human oddities like that (and Mir certainly would not…)
I’d personally guess that Mium food is basically stuff with pretty close to exactly the nutrient mix that Mium needs to sustain himself, put in a blender, pureed, then put into bar molds, without any attempt to control taste or otherwise appeal to culinary interests. This process probably also disregards anything that his body can easily reject as waste material, and favors things that are readily available.
If anybody has done something like this in the interests of making something like Futurama Bachelor Chow, you are probably well aware of just how utterly revolting such a process can make something.
I think that Ila has at least seen evidence to suggest that Camilla and Arkady really like each other. That probably gives her a head start, as I’m not sure that Ila is to any point of viewing humans as competition or worth really competing for.
In this world, I picture Mium eating (something like) Soylent pretty much all the time.
I think the only real differences between your thought and mine are that soylent is designed with flavor in mind and Mium’s inactive ingredients list is probably longer, so he can make it a bit cheaper by getting some of his nutrients by including things that wouldn’t be so healthy for others. He probably wouldn’t include stuff that would be explicitly toxic to Peter, just in case Peter had a food emergency, but might have things that wouldn’t be healthy for Peter in the long run.
Basically Huel, I guess.
Considering Mium described Ila’s main process as similar to human and that she wasn’t as aware of her processing as he is, that would suggest that Ila would have things that behave as instincts pushing her one way or another.
That being the case, along with her energy use level, it does make sense that she likes things that “taste good” to her rather than being content with things that she knows are nutritiously sufficient.
I swear Ila never ceases to be weapons grade adorable. Strong preference for sugar might be understatement, considering that stuff is probably basically flavored sugar in a tube.
Sorry to hear about your travel woes, Past. Get home soon!
Eh … it’s more likely a slightly flavored and possibly colored mixture of sugar and electrolytes, considering it’s from military rations.
Or, in other words, it’s probably far closer to something like Gatorade powder than it is to something like Kool Aid mix.
My only problem with Gatorade and all of the other drinks is that it is extremely salty. Much saltier than it needs to be in fact. The best way to make it is about 1/5 strength. That’s actually the reason why I started buying it as a powder myself and I will say that eating it is a lot like eating sweet&Sour candy. Suggestion is an odd thing… now I want Gatorade powder. That’s what I get for doing this before breakfast
I find my appreciation for Gatorade and sports drinks really depends a great deal on what I’ve been doing. If I’ve been physically exerting myself and sweating a lot, they taste amazingly great. Since that’s basically their target model, I have no real complaints about their level of salt content; I just will refrain from drinking them when they aren’t the sort of beverage I need. Just to clarify, it generally takes a lot of effort on my part to make sports drinks taste anything but nasty. If it’s just been hot out so I’ve been sweating, they’ll still be pretty unpalatable.
Please note that this is not at all applicable to what Ila likes or doesn’t like, as she’s very much her own kind of person. It’s possible that she needs the salt, too. It’s possible that she can’t actually taste salt because it’s not a significant nutrient or toxin for her. And it’s possible that Malsan army drink mixes aren’t made the same way sports drink mixes are made.
As TGape noted, Gatorade, and similar sports drinks, was designed to be consumed during/after sustained heavy exertion/exercise.
As such, it’s formulated under the assumption that the drinker has been sweating heavily and is low on salt and other electrolytes. That affects how it ends up tasting, relative to when you aren’t in need of salt.
As such, if you have some when you’ve haven’t been exercising, it can taste a bit much – but if you’ve just run a 5k race, it tastes a whole lot better.
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As for TGape’s speculation on the variance between Malsan army drink mix and sports drink mixes … sure, there will be some differences – the army stuff is going to be less concerned with coloration and flavor, because it doesn’t need to be aesthetically pleasing or something relatively normal people would pay money for the way sports drinks do. The army mix might also have additives to fix particulate and/or other forms of contamination in the water, which probably won’t help the taste for a regular person.
Hmm. Is Arkady being deliberately clever in panel 5? Ila can hear him. I can’t help but think there’s subtext.
Arkady (panel 5): “Be careful, Ila. I’ve done everything I can to vouch for you, but I can’t guarantee you’re safe here.”
Ila (panel 8): “I’ll be nice unless someone tries something.”
You like to think of Ila as a friend, because her non-friends have poor life expectancy…