Comic for Thursday, March 23rd
Yes… I introduced three more characters. Well. Technically four, I suppose. Five if we count the portrait? I don’t know the consul counts, because she’s been referenced before. People on Patreon will probably have seen various iterations of these characters for awhile… now you know who those people are!
The consul is a character that I’ve largely sidelined; early on I sort of assumed she’d be about on the same level as Tyler or Arron in terms of PoV time. But, despite what you may be lead to believe, I do try to retain the tiniest bit of focus! Like Ryn, she’s a character that will show more though going forward, as we get to her plot arcs, but, like Tyler, is more the main character in another story than a main character in this one, hers just occasionally overlaps with this one.
Malsa politics are too complicated for me to get in here, but we’ve seen some references here and there that there was a ruling Aristocracy that for reasons not entirely clear or revealed stepped aside, but generally remain de facto in control of the military, due the fact that a large percentage of the Aristocracy are powerful mages. The Aristocracy are usually called the Families, and tend to, like Designer Children, have more colorful appearances. I have some sort of suspicion that is not entirely a coincidence, but what would I know?
Anyway, been a rough week for work, and now we have a new Mass Effect game just sitting there needing to be played (it is really not helping comic drawing time or (mostly) sleep time…). It’s gotten mediocre reviews, but I really like it. It’s definitely less polished than some, but hey, I’m not one to talk about graphical polish in entertainment 😉 anyway. PastUtopia’s reivew -> Do like. Is good. Has a nifty AI in (better than Mass Effect 3’s by a mile so far in terms of how it handles AI). Has lots of cool space things. Dialogue can be stilted, animations are dubious. Feels like it isn’t quite finish, but is a good mix between sandbox and linear, sort of like… a really really wide railroad. Hey. I’m tired. Don’t expect eloquence. Better than I could do. 85/100.
Now I have to decide if I want to a) do more work. b) play mass effect. c) go to sleep. Option C is definitely the right choice. But right choices are hard.
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It is interesting to see what the grown ups are up to. I am curious why the consul is being deliberately not entirely shown here.
It was bandied around way back that Tyler might be a disposable pawn for the consul to distract and annoy the IDS, but it seems like she has a little more faith in him, which is good to see.
So… I hate to be that guy, but I think you need to re-examine the hands panel 3. Took me a moment to identify what was wrong, but there is something wrong there.
Yes, a few people have pointed this one out (with varying … amounts of good nature). I sort of fixed it, the art can’t really be fixed the same way the text can, but it’s patched 😛 I would like to say that’s the first time… but my count it as at least the third, and that’s only the ones someone noticed.
It’s a shame too, ’twas a nice hand.
They think Weber has little common sense. Clearly they have no idea Peter’s working with him.
I get the feeling this will work out better for Weber in the long run.
Though I feel I can’t comment much more on the page, seems like not a lot else to comment on…..or maybe I’m just not processing it properly.
Heh I think they (well Varkim that is) are wrong, Weber has plenty of common sense. What he may lack in, is the fractal corkscrew shaped uncommon sense people like Peter seem to possess.
Not only does your comment get a Peter face to go with it, it gets that Peter face?
That’s…perfect.
Varkim is dismissive of Tyler’s common sense, and would be apoplectic if he knew about Tyler’s dealings with Peter. The Consul approves of Tyler, and the representative of the Families didn’t express an opinion.
The Consul seems to have nearly the same opinion of Varkim as Varkim has of Tyler. ^^
KriegsSpeil (with 2 S’s)
and, I love this dialog.
These last few pages have been sheer joy to read.
^_^
…neither he Nor Malsa had any part…
Actually valid English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegspiel_(chess)
I agree on the “nor”.
Stupid english gits don’t know how to properly smash words together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel
The S on the end of one word is not dismissed because the next word begins with an S. (But yep, it is so oft done that it is considered “normal”) :-p
Yeah, in this case I was using it the word as a reference to the type of chess; which seems to be one S due to the aforementioned git-ness of English folks, though I have no idea beyond the above wikipedia article, I just used the word as I sort of remembered it (and am, in fact, an english speaking git).
To be honest it’s probably one of those words I shouldn’t have used as it’s sort of unclear (meaning things in other languages it does mean in English), but made sense to me at the time. The only reason I’m familiar with it some friends made a video game version of it back in college that was really quite cool.
I have no input on Kriegs(S)piel, however I have to disagree on the wish for nor over or, I don’t know anyone who actually uses nor in conversation and was under the impression that it was just a logical construct.
By the way I am a mathematician, logician and programmer, and include myself in the category of people who only use nor as a logical construct.
not editing previous post though I could I looked it up and it would seem grammatically nor is correct in context, still how many people speak perfect grammar.
Haha, yes. I might fix that one when I get a chance, but we’ll see. I’ll do my usual very scientific method of seeing how many people complain about it in comments by the time I get a chance to fix it 😀
It’s an odd place writing dialog, how much you should follow what’s right and how people say stuff. Well. Considering my loose grasp on grammar the point is frequently academic 😛
I remember the great war of the “irregardless”.
Dialog writing is a whole skill on it’s own, I think anyway. I specialize in ramble-writing.
I use nor all the time in speech.
My heart leapt for joy when I read kriegsspiel.
I thought, how wonderfully appropriate.
Like I said, these last few pages of dialog have been heaven for me.
From ice cream to kriegsspiel.
Apparently Kokato’s kriegsspiel was not up to the challenge of ice cream.
On one of the other comics I read tried to say a wound was fatal (the character was still alive barely). I pointed out that until the character was dead that the wound was not fatal. Fatal is an all-or-nothing word there’s no partially fatal.
“Nor” only has one job. Please use it.
You have a bit of leeway on certain word-use issues because Malsan English might be a different dialect than anything in the real world. In practice, you seem to use two dialects – one that omits articles as in “I know this is challenging concept” and one that’s more formal as in “Magus Weber from the MSB has reported in”. It’s somewhat jarring when someone switches from proper to improper mid-sentence.
Haha, alright. By the will of the comments, it has been changed to nor.
“I’ll do my usual very scientific method of seeing how many people complain about it in comments by the time I get a chance to fix it”
You might want to rethink that criteria. I, for one, would not comment on a grammar/spelling error, no matter how gregarious, if someone has already pointed it out.
I use it as well. It is much less stilted than saying “neither or”. If you think saying nor would get you a stange look, try saying that instead and see how people look at you.
I think my brain might avoid the use of neither as well as nor, so I will do a negative of either or rather than neither nor directly, I don’t know I am definitely not a good benchmark for normal.
I’m beginning to think everyone in this world has a dysfunctional relationship with their subordinates.
By the rules of the cast page, technically this only adds one character, as we only heard Vikram’s name. The Consul and the Aristocracy Lady remain unnamed. I think the only one you added before giving a name was Tealy the Hackergirl, and see how that worked out.
I am still not clear on the Aristocracy and hair/eye colors. I was starting to think that mismatched eyes and hair meant Aristocracy, since we know Naomi (with them matched) is a designer child, but all three of the confirmed Aristocracy (this lady, Arkady at Levenworth, and ***** in a jumpsuit that tried to kill Miko) have matched hair and eyes.
Are you sure Naomi is not one of the aristocracy? She seems stronger than normal people and would sort of make sense being that she’s sort of the main character.
Naomi is a designer child. See my namelink for confirmation.
Well, dysfunctional relationships are more fun to write. And I suspect based on what PastUtopia has said this past week, although I wouldn’t want to project or anything, perhaps sometimes closer to his current work experience, wherein the bad managers frequently know less than their staff (although sometimes the other way around)…
Hahahaha. I think I have a bit of a special vendetta against petty middle managers and bureaucrats (no offense to any present, #NotAllBureaucrats).
I wouldn’t be surprised if the tone of the comic is somewhat more bitter in general when work is being a pain in the ass, but as sort of an specialized resource these days, I deal with both the managers and the grunts, so I have plenty of shit to fling all in directions; I typically get sent in on salvage (figuratively, salvaging the client) missions it seems like these days, so I get to see both at their worst. If everyone does their job well, they don’t usually need me, so sometimes I go awhile without seeing people do, in fact, know their ass from their elbow.