Comic for Thursday, October 10th (the real 10th), 2018
For the second time this month we have a comic for October 10th, weird.
I admit this Chapter sort of wanders a bit here, as while the plot still marches on, I think the coming chapter we are going to see a bit more insight into character motivations than we have in awhile. This is something I don’t particularly dwell on besides what can be implied from their actions, but sometimes events align in such a way that the spotlight tends to spin backward through time a little bit. Don’t worry, we probably won’t have a flashback in the main comic continuity right now. I am playing with various ideas of how to do them in bonus content, anything from the simplified art style I’ve been toying with (something that would probably only be used for funny side stories, but who knows), or a more written form with like 1-3 pages of dialogue per art page… don’t count on any of these things, and I might just do it them like I’ve done previous bonus comics – the same as these comics, but shorter (either quarter or half pages like this page).
The buffer is back up to a week, but it is doomed to be consumed as I’m heading into a lot of travel coming up, as I will be traveling at the end of both this month and the end of November; right now work isn’t bad though, so I’m making progress.
Speaking of which, we are almost at the closing window for Halloween costume ideas for the characters! We don’t have that many yet, so get them in soon if you have an idea!
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Hopefully they didn’t need that office building or its security forces intact. It’s been awhile since Naomi got to beat up minions, this could go on for awhile…
Ila as Yuna from season 2 of Sword Art Online, or as Quiet from Metal Gear Solid 5.
As much as I like Quiet’s outfit as the next guy, I’m not sure Ila would be the appropriate character for that one…
It’s all about the rifle. Ila may well be too young for either. How do you measure the age of an AI that doesn’t think of herself as an AI?
How about Ila and Naomi as the Gunsmith Cats? A CZ-75A isn’t the same thing as a Barrett M82A1, or a Accuracy International AX50, or a PGM Hécate II …
But I’ll take what I can get. Preferably in something that can be printed out on semigloss paper and framed. Or Past, you could make it easy and sell the prints?
Thanks, I appreciate it!
-G-
Quiet was deliberately designed by the creator of Metal Gear Solid to be a character with a provocative outfit to encourage cosplay and model sales (it worked, for what it is worth).
While I think the question of age for Ila is an interesting one, I suspect she’s actually only a few years or maybe even less than a year old, yet she acts like a teenager or so.
Ila is probably probably aging considerably faster than a normal human, but at this point, she is still a kid in how she looks and acts. I think I would say “kid analog” rather than kid though, as whatever she is, she is not fully a normal human, and views humans with a sort of ambivalence, which severely impacts morality among other things (unless they are her friend).
All of that aside, I don’t have a firm grasp on the age any of the characters. I view Peter, Naomi and Kally as late teens/early twenties. I originally thought they had to be at least 20+ due their careers, but it has become clear that the IDS seems to have basically raised a generation of child soldiers, so they probably started their IDS/Military/Civil Service careers when they were kids.
Appearance can be hard to tell as Miko looks about as old as Ila, but is apparently closer to Peter in age, though that case might have something to do with her past condition.
Why not Sinon if you’re going SOA? Sinon seems like the perfect get up for Ila.
I think he must mean Sinon, Yuna is from the Movie, not SOA Season 2. Plus Sinon is the one with the fancy guns.
Confession time. A co-worker asked me for help identifying a weapon from SAO season 2. He’s trying to print a model of it as a Halloween prop for his daughter. The rifle was the aforementioned PGM Hécate II.
When posting the costume idea, I had to ask him for the name of the anime with the “big rifle”. A quick Google search for SOA 2 heroine resulted in “Yuna”. Apparently I wanted to request Sinon, thank you for the correction.
I was also aware if Quiet as a sniper with a big bore rifle. I wasn’t aware of much else until you folks explained to me that it wasn’t a good match up.
Apologies to the proper fans out there. I just get excited when I see a big rifle.
SOA has a complicated timeline, but basically SOA 2 is not necessarily the same thing as SOA Season 2. Confusingly, SWORD ART ONLINE 2 does not take place in SWORD ARE ONLINE but instead in another game called GUN GALE ONLINE but I guess they didn’t want to rename the anime.
Gun Gale Online is where Sinon is from, and the game is a gun okatu game, with very detailed and expansive range of guns (which is all the guns are modeled off real guns). The main character still uses a sword in that season, but pretty much everyone else uses guns.
The only other famous anime girl with a sniper rifle I can think of would be Yoko from Gurren Lagann, but her outfit makes Quiet’s look prudish.
Yuna and Sinon actually look fairly similar, but Sinon is cuter has a gun, so is definitely the more appropriate Ila. While Sinon after SAO 2 is potentially even cuter (depending on ones views of cat ears), she no longer has the sniper rifle as she’s not playing GGO anymore, so what you want is definitely SAO 2 Sinon.
As the name implies, I’ve got your anime knowledge needs covered. More than anyone here will ever need I am sure.
Oddly enough, nearly 20 years ago, I was a founding member of the anime club, at the university I was attending.
It went something like this…
Dude: I need 20 signatures on this sign up sheet. The University gives clubs $X to spend it of our activity fees. If you sign up, every month we’ll have snacks and anime!
Me: And beer?
Dude: No alcohol on campus. But snacks and anime!
He made good on his promise. I have no idea what anime we watched.
Tele-tubbies.
Sesame street muppets.
Mr, Roger’s Neighberhood’s land of make-believe characters.
RWBY.
Thomas the Tank Engine.
Actually, it would be kinda interesting to see some of the cast members trying to cosplay as /each other/. They could then be arguing back and forth about how bad or well they did in their impersonations.
Okay, in the second panel I accidentally read it as “Request inadequate! Backup security agents down!” rather than it being just the first request of backup. I choose to believe my first interpretation is more in keeping with established canon regarding Naomi’s presence.
No, you misread the punctuation, too.
“Request inadequate backup! Security agents down!”
Basically, the guy making the request just wants some time to run away, and he knows he doesn’t have it with just one other Naomian punching bag around.
Wait, I may have also misread it.
“Request inadequate backup! Security agents! DOWN!”
As in, send in the cannon fodder. Everyone of worth, take cover!
Mium or Illa as some sort of robot. The ironic costume.
@pastutopia PS…Thursday is the 11th.
I’ll just go with no comment here. 😐
Halloween costume idea: Kally dressed as a dragon. Fluffy dressed as a human.
I get the feeling that Miko resents Peter being overprotective more than a little, given that the high priority on family probably mostly exists to protect her.
Her frustration there could also be with that it prevents Mium from acting against Arron, who she seems to view as a lot more dangerous and sinister than Peter does, though it is hard to say at this point if that is just Miko’s issues and paranoia.
Oh no!
One of the team that is fighting Naomi is right behind Peter!
Who could have counted on so many minions?
I think that Peter at least knows he is being tailed, as it seems like he switches to speaking in . This could be because he is talking to only Miko at that point, but he almost always talks in unbracketed Malsan, but deliberately switches here.
That said, the fact there is a goon following him out of the Consul’s building seems like it might be cause for concern, especially if Mium is offline.
I think your less-than-greater-than got absorbed as an HTML tag.
Peter’s aware that Naomi was left out of the loop re: Arkady. I suspect that he’s not wanting to deal with explaining about that to Naomi while she’s in the middle of a fight – or even while she’s in a place where a fight could happen at any time.
That said, it’s my understanding that Past Utopia is sophisticated enough for things to happen for multiple reasons.
Isn’t Naomi being in a place where a fight could happen at any time the default, given that place contains a Naomi? 🙂
Bwahahaha… that is very true
I don’t think I said that it would be easy for Peter to get Naomi into a position where it’d be safe to talk with her about it… apart from recovering Arkady, so he could be included in the conversation and thus demonstrate at the very start of the discussion that he was safe in a way that would not be as distressing as starting out the conversation with, “Don’t worry, Arkady is safe.” Or, worse still, “Everything is fine.”
Possibility not. I’ve noticed that all minions look close to the same. You would think they would have a uniform beyond dark suit though.
If Peter is being followed, it will be interesting to see what he does. May confirm if he can use Ellipses or not (if he can, good luck minion, he’s as good as gone already).
According to Kally, Peter is a might bit better than Damn Good at this. So I’d say hundred gets you hundred and a penny that if he notices that he is being followed he’s as good as gone. So the real question is will whoever sent the agent after him get their agent back.
Either that, or we see him send the message he was letting himself be followed to be able to quickly send off…
I think that depends on the purpose for which someone is following Peter. If the Consul merely gave Peter a bodyguard without telling Peter about it, and the guy doesn’t get any spying ideas in his head, the bodyguard should be fine.
Otherwise, I would guess the tail will shortly come across a lead that must be followed up immediately that takes him somewhere far afield – possibly a disused playground somewhere or something.
Isn’t the default to receive a IOU from Peter for “one missing spy” ? 🙂
I think that was Kally’s hyperbole.
More likely, the standard experience is for the spy to go missing with no trace. Some months later, they turn up. They’re fine. They’ve been working for you the whole time, and you find they have provided an incredibly valuable contribution to your cause. Except, it also happens to be an even more valuable contribution towards Peter’s cause. Depending on how much you dislike Peter, you may be thrilled to be able to keep employing them, or inclined to kill them, or anywhere between. But regardless of how you feel about it, what you can’t do is explain in a meaningful way to your organization any reason to not pay the spy for the work they did for you that was not the work you wanted them to do for you.
But it all depends on what Peter’s priorities are for that person. And contrary to what Someone’s Ed might have you believe, that probably has far less to do with whether they were officially assigned to spy or not, or even whether they attempt to spy or not.
So? Miko is connecting directly to Ila? Almost human direct to not quite human brain?
Which is the almost human and which is the not quite human? 😉
Precisely the point I was getting at!
😉