Comic for Thursday, March 17th
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Full excuse list: Worked late several days at work. Lost the entire sketch due to a combination of user error and program crashing (manga studio really doesn’t like it when you shut down your computer without saving, and promptly crashes to ensure your mistake is committed). Anyway… 😉
Will continue to try to get comics buffered… or at least, you know, drawn.
I dunno if I’ve mentioned innate technique/innate ability users in commentaries or comics before – there is really not much to the term; they are natural mages who find (usually) one calculation/spell to be very easy; sometimes at the cost of other ones, sometimes not.
It seems Ila has been caught shirking her duties already. But watching Peter was so much more boring then playing games! Who would expect him to run off on his own as soon as you stop watching him?! Ah… well, I mean, not you guys. You would all expect that. 😐
I’ve been looking for an artist to either supplement or take over; while finding an artist itself isn’t hard (considering I would, you know, pay them) finding one that I think would be a good fit may or may not be possible. It’s a mixed bag – I do enjoy drawing the comic, but have long really wanted it to be better drawn; while I was content to work on my own art to accomplish that, unfortunately that’s slowing to a crawl as I’m finding it hard get enough time.
Either way I wouldn’t stop drawing entirely; and in fact having time to draw guest art, vote incentives and sketches would be nice; right now 95% of my drawing time is dedicated to comic pages, and the rest is drawing things on whiteboards at work. We’ll see what comes up I suppose while we limp along.
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Since Naomi finds magic computations so difficult, is she more of an innate magic user, or did she just memorize the ones she uses most?
from what ive seen i think naomi is closer to innate. most of her spells appear to deal with increasing speed and strength.
there was a bit back during the kor incursion where the ids hq mage mentions something about her boosting without an arm band. and anything she picks up ought to have been destroyed or heavly damaged, but comes out fine. note the raquet during her and kali’s match.
It’s a good question. I’d say that she definitely is some sort of ‘innate’ mage on the definition of the word – she doesn’t even really seem to know what magic she’s using most of the time.
Magic works in two steps – the conscious step (calculation) and the subconscious (key). Innate technique users are typically signified by being able to complete the process in only the subconscious without complex (or in Naomi’s case, any) prior calculation for a specific magic.
Of magic that can be used innately, being able to enhance you’re own form is by far the most common, but the reasons for this go beyond the scope of this already rather long comment 😉
Innate technique users of any kind are very rare in the IDS world, even compared to natural mages (mages able to complete calculations without an autocaster) being already rare there.
so basicly there are 3 types of magic users in this universe?
innate, who use a handful of spells subconsiously. may or may not be able to cast other spells even with an autocaster.
natural, who can theroreticly do any thing. but have to do the calculation (either d&d type wave hands and say words. or a quasi computer algorithm like number crunch. im assuming the latter with the way things seem to be working)
the last one is a person who has a key but is unable to do the calculations themself and rely on an autocaster to do such.
im assuming there are ppl who either have no key or cannot generate enough psions? to power the spells.
That’s correct. All humans have a ‘key’ and can use an autocaster (the push button type); though indeed many lack the psions/mana to be able to power much.
As for the natural mages, historically mages relied more on traditional memorization tied to incantations or processes to develop the calculation; with more nuanced understanding very few natural mages do any form outward behavior while calculating now (though many of them still have a habit of gesturing).
The boundries between them aren’t discrete though; it’s not uncommon for a mage to be able to do calculations mentally, but to be far too slow to use it effectively in most situations. General Autocasters for example typically require certain parameters fed into them, and thus would be extremely hard for someone who can’t do any natural calculation at all to use.
I think salmon head got it precisely right with flipping the ‘Be a kid’ switch on and off.
I do wonder when one of them will find out the actual truth… Then again they have about the same chance as accurately reading Peter.
The way I see it, she’s a kid either way. It’s just what kind of a kid she is that changes. ^^
Well, they’ve got the ‘probably not normal’ guess down, but guessing the details? I think they’d need a few significant more dots; it’s far more likely someone would figure out the truth with Mium first – and that’d still require a pretty big leap of speculation.
Guess we’ll see. There is always the other direction – there are plenty of people that already know a little more about what’s going that could let the cat out of the bag… makes it more likely then figuring out Peter, because I’m not sure anyone knows wtf he’s doing 😉