Comic for Thursday, October 31st, 2019
Been a long time since I typed “comic for Thursday”… Least we have that much back on track, though I wouldn’t count on Thursday comics being that consistent, just while we have the buffer budget, but that buffer is going to take a hit in the next few months due to travel again.
This comic references a lot of things about the past, not all of which we have seen, which makes it a bit tricky to follow I reckon. For example, Peter acquired Kally a place to live in Minus Years as back than the IDS wasn’t formalized enough to own its own housing complex, but by the time Peter disappeared the IDS had it’s own housing complex, which Kally relocated to. With IDS CI pulling out, she’d be out of a house again.
The things they are talking about both Peter and Kally would know, but aren’t all things that I have a lot of space in the comic to expound upon.
Likewise, Peter and Kally both know the history of the other fairly well, while the comic has only shown bits and pieces of it. Peter knows that Kally, for example, is the Heir to the seat of summers in name only (due to being Nathan’s sister, and Nathan not having a true heir, but there are reasons – somewhat alluded to here, and previously touched on by Nathan) that Kally would not be likely to become the leader of the Summers family… though she might acquire the Seat of Summers, which would be unusual (as it’s almost always held by the head of the family), but not unheard of. The Summers family in a way may seem not that different than the Malsan Families…
The Kepler family is quite a bit different, in that it is don’t have any sort of hierarchy to it. It’s more “normal” in the sense that it’s just a bunch of people that are related and have the same name, and might get together for BBQ and arguing about politics more than they otherwise would… well, it might go a little deeper than that if the rumors are to believed, but who can say… Peter’s sister did allude to the Kepler family having it’s own problems, and Miko doesn’t seem to be a fan of them…
At this point I cannot 100% promise a Halloween sketch tomorrow, but I’ll see what I can do. The schedule is pretty busy, but I’d like to do one, and I owe a bit of sketching here and there. If I do, I’ll post a comment linking to it or something.
Loading ...
I think to a large extent, families tend to formalize who the head of the family is when the family has some hereditary role to fill. The Malsan Families all have this role. The Summers family clearly does as well.
The Keplers, on the other hand, don’t. They’re individually important. It feels like they weren’t anyone particularly important before the Incursion. But then they made names for themselves. They don’t have any known hereditary magic disposition, so there’s no push for them to have a familial obligation there.
But they have a reputation of getting things done. They seem to merit that reputation. I expect that it probably won’t be too much longer before we find that Marigold Kepler also merits that reputation, but we’ve mostly just seen Peter, Miko, Arron, and Kyle so far. Kyle’s not had that much screen time, either. Just enough to see he’s clearly one of the family.
(I will admit to not being certain that Miko is technically a Kepler, as she’s apparently the spawn of Arron and Kyle’s sister. But who knows. I know two different people who managed to marry someone with their same surname without it being any kind of an incest thing, so I know it happens. It’s also conceivable, depending on the timing of things, that the husband decided he’d prefer the prestige of the Kepler name than whatever his own was. Or maybe he just didn’t *want* his surname. There are people who feel like their surname is objectionable for some reason.)
Peter analyzing Kally: http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-wednesday-september-9th/
Yeah, I agree with your take. 🙂
Happy Halloween! Here’s the Halloween doodle for the year (clicking through should take you to the post, where it’s full size) 🙂
That’s actually awesome and hilarious.
Seconded. Ila continues to be murderously adorable.
The mouse over text on the image says “Woe to the house that give not the sweet-tasties.” for those on mobile, which is pretty fitting to the dialog of it.
What doesn’t line up about “Nathan likes you” and “He finds your existence … vexing”? Totally possible to like someone on a personal level and still find them aggravating.
Well…Query/Mium apparently uses “like” to indicate someone whose presence and/or actions make his achievement of his various goals easier/more likely/less costly.
I’m inclined to suspect that Peter has a similarly…utilitarian view, and may even be the source of Mium’s.
Finding someone aggravating sounds a bit less than “finds your existence … vexing.”
I think Nathan finds Peter to be fundamentally aggravating. Peter makes Nathan aware that everything is more complicated than he realizes… but also makes things more complicated than they were. Everything about him makes things seem harder, even when he’s working on the same side and addressing the same task. Especially when they’re addressing the same task.
But that said, he’d make a good brother in law at some future point when the current issues are resolved. Apart from the current situation in which Peter is apparently a rogue agent, he’s glad that Peter’s around and feels he’s a good person. Now if things could just be simpler again…
Kudos to Past for getting back to biweekly updates! Rock on!
For any who missed it, Samantha Fuller has a last minute post to the previous comic page that I thought was very insightful regarding the unsummoning of Fluffy.
Just wanted to make sure people who are following both the story line and world development didn’t miss Samantha’s insight.
https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-october-27th-2019/
Thanks for the tip!
“You -They might need me.
Heh. She cares, she really cares… but are his interpersonal skills too limited for him to catch that slip and realise what it means?
His interpersonal skills have zero chance of catching that.
That’s why he used his technical skills to craft Query. And now he has Mium. Rest assured, this will make its way into one of the prediction trees.
If someone out there thinks there isn’t at least one tree dedicated to Kally, they haven’t been paying attention.
And Kally knows this. She almost certainly has been feeding Mium corrections ever since she re-established contact with Team Peter.
I actually disagree. I think Peter does catch that sort of thing, and probably even realizes what it means. His analytical skills, including his ability to analyze people, are very good. Where his interpersonal skills are a problem is that he does not know how to react to it or process it.
In Peter’s mind he probably makes a mental note of things like that, but it does not really cross his mind to than have an empathetic or human response to it.
Peter is fairly decent at emotional manipulation. He is not as good at it as he should be given his level of scheming, because he lacks the ability to execute it in a reliable way. But he absolutely does know what buttons to push. There is no way in my mind he misses obvious details like that, but as he is not actively trying to manipulate Kally, he just has no idea how to react to it.
My take is that Peter is fully aware that Kally still cares about him, he just is not quite sure what to do about it, because he has some reservations about her joining his cause (likely to because of the consequences she might suffer by splitting her loyalty, as she clearly is far more pro-IDS than he is… though recent events have been fairly disillusioning for her it seems).
If anyone has weaker interpersonal skills that Peter, it would Kally herself. She is less manipulative which makes her easier to like, but she is often at least as awkward and lacks Peter’s ability to remain collected.
That is my take on it anyway.
He knows what buttons to push, but he doesn’t know how to push the ’emotional response’ button himself. He therefore contracts that out to others, like Naomi.
I still find it hilarious that his chief enforcer is his moralist and his empathist. Admittedly, she’s his chief enforcer because Mium doesn’t have that job satisfaction thing going on that Rovak noted was his one failing as an expert killing machine. Mium does the tasks that need doing, but there’s no pride or joy there. Mium would probably just as soon have someone else do it, if they are able to do it. Naomi, on the other hand, wants to save the world, and has been convinced this is how to do that.
For what it’s worth, I rate myself as slightly more sophisticated than Peter in this one regard: I know more frequently when emotional responses are needed. I’ve been told my feeble attempts at providing them are better than nothing. I’m not convinced, mind you. Even I can tell they’re feeble, most of the time.
I am, for what it’s worth, good at being there. I can be there and understand almost as well as Chauncey Gardener.
And we all know just how great Mium is at doing *that* job.
It’s my impression that Kally has only recently resumed intentionally contributing to the Team Peter data pool. She took quite a while to drop the ‘traitorous criminal’ accusations and stuff, and I don’t think she was intending to give them more data during that time.