Comic for Thursday, October 4th, 2018
First the 10th, now the 4th… time flows in odd directions sometimes. Make sure to get any suggestion for monthly Halloween costumes in; they may end up being filler for, well, you know, Halloween as we are currently hurdling toward the end of the month when I’ll be traveling, and the buffer is still only at +1; still I will only be gone for a week or so, so at worse we might be down one comic at the end of the month, though I still hope for a buffer recovery.
I think Arkady would have had a better argument if he just said that it seems like the rain is getting heavier. Ila holds a bit of a grudge against rain after last time she got rained on. Arkady is having a bit of a weird day, and he’s still not really… collected again. That might take awhile the direction he’s day headed so far…
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Is “You mean to come here…” a intentional grammatical mistake or “You meant to come here…”
Looking back on this comic for the first time i am genuinely confused as to the sequence of panels on the last two rows. I did not realize it before because the narrative just works either way(s). And just noticed it trying to pin down the exact panel number of the above (Posible) grammatical mistake.
Previously you have the little arrow panel kinks and wedges. Here you just have wedge shaped panels that hint that the sequence might not be left -right down left -right. So is it
Arkady – Arkady – Arkady – Illa – left to right gaze – Illa – Arkady or
Arkady – Illa – Arkady – left to right gaze – Arkady – Illa – Arkady or
Arkady – Illa – Arkady – Arkady – left to right gaze – Illa – Arkady or
Arkady – Arkady – Illa – Arkady – left to right gaze – Illa – Arkady or
Arkady – Arkady – Illa – Arkady – right to left gaze – Illa – Arkady.
It also works if their is meant to be confusion.
Well, with the half pages, it always basically 2 rows of 3 panels, that are split up into subpanels; I probably should have arrow-notched these panels because I can understand the confusion.
It is:
Arkaday – Ila – Arkady – left to right gaze – Arkady – Ila – Arkady.
Understandable confusion, basically to understand how this happens, what I do is I split the page top/bottom into two halves, than I split each row into 3 columns, so I have 6 panels. Than I subdivide these panels to make better sense with the passing, so it is basically always top half – top down – left right, bottom half – top down – left right, but I understand that’s not necessarily “good layout”, and when it gets complicated like this, I should probably arrow notch it.
I like the way that Arkady, as some realization of what’s been happening sinks in, changes “It is dangerous” to “It is not good”.
^_^
No, could still be dangerous, provided you aren’t too specific about to whom.
As peter said “not aimed at you”
Re: Arkady’s day and the flow of time.
If it’s any consolation, last night, I was 39, and now I’m 46 (again.) So yeah, it can be odd.
Being mostly dead can be pretty disorienting. Being all the way dead tends to be even more disorienting.
I wonder how well he’ll take to finding out that he doesn’t fly faster than someone he thought was a cute little girl? I would guess that Arkady probably doesn’t use blunt accels like Ila, but I’d guess that’s in part due to him not being able to handle how fast he’d get up to over a long distance, because he wouldn’t be imaginative enough to angle them more straight down so that he stops going faster with each one and merely stays airborne longer. Also, I’d guess that she’d probably start off with six simultaneous (or nearly so) accels, such that she’s almost instantly flying at faster than his top speed. Although she could possibly decide to be friendly and do three simultaneous accels for herself while doing three for him … though that would be affecting his Eidos field, so I don’t know how well that would work.
PastUtopia: For some reason this page is not actually showing up when clicking the buttons, but is obviously posted since I found it by manually changing the URL.
I had to use ctrl-f5 to force a reload.
Not as usual.
For some reason the site – not sure if it was wordpress or my host – got very zealous about caching last night; I contacted them this morning and my site host says the issue is resolved, I’ll keep an eye on it.
Makes sense, playing around certain comics I have cached will the “latest page” button brings me to monday. The rest bring me to today. It’s quite odd, but harmless if it doesn’t persist.
what’s wrong with this site? when i posted my comment last time it didn’t show up. now it shows up sometime later.
Sometimes there’s a delay between when comments are posted and when they go through. I think it’s an anti-spam filter that sometimes gets inundated. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem sophisticated enough to detect duplicate posts. Admittedly, detecting duplicate posts via automation is tricky, since most of the time, they are not actually exactly the same.
Usually it will autoapprove someone I’ve approved before, but if you don’t have a site account (the things I use to make the avatars) it uses your IP, so people that post under variable IPs will have to go through the antispam every time.
Sometimes it gets overzealous though – it frequently flags my comments for review because I use a VPN. I tend to purposefully aim on the overly cautious side to avoid spam appearing on anything, particularly as they tend to link to malware. Though there are a lot of Russian text only ones – no idea what those are.
As mentioned, there is typically a delay in comments showing up due to the anti-spam, but recently there has been a problem with very zealous cacheing; I reached out to my host about this and they say it’s fixed, but I’ll keep an eye out.
As for the anti-spam, it varies how severe I’ve set it up, right now it’s basically it flagging everything for review because we had some spam get through recently in a new tidal wave of spam; the antispam blocks roughly 20-60 spam comments a day, it’s insane.
“Remember the Warmage that effortlessly knocked you out? I ….. might have killed him…. and the tank you were sent to stop…… aaaaand everything else within 2 miles… buuuuut its okay as long as we are friends. We are friends are we?”
I looooooove how you did this. We seem to share a very similar kind of humor. Thank you, once again, for this great story
There is one thing I dont get. Could be a language issue. Ila says “I dont have that defect….”
The defect of not beeing able to kill anyone she wants?
I dont really get what she means.
She views mium’s restriction of not being able to kill the bad guys as a defect.
Historically, she has not seemed impressed by it (link).
From her point of view, either it’d be a defect that she doesn’t have it, or a defect that Mium does have it. The choice, then, is obvious to her. 😉
That’s is one of my all time favorite strips. Panel 11, which I want blown up into an 8×10 or 10×13, is a big part of why I latched onto this comic so hard I think.
Incidentally if you were to choose to draw a large panel of that, if be happy to supply reference photos for a couple large bore anti material rifles.
While that is a good panel, I think I prefer panel 5 from this page.. Maybe the actual panel isn’t as good, but just that is shows exactly how ridiculously unstoppable Ila and Mium are actually working together to seriously engage the enemy.
Yeah, that’s another absolutely wonderful panel as well!
So. Mium may be dead/badly “injured.” Not too surprising but lets see where this goes.
My guess is Mium is either really busy taking care of the crap that went down in the 30 seconds he was busy focusing all of his attention on Ila, or he’s having a difficult time coming to terms with his sister being a murderer, or he’s having a difficult time with his restriction against murder as it cottoned onto the fact that he worked his way around it, It’s also possible that she had an Eidos card, possibly one of the three Peter salvaged from the Kor’s world incursion, installed in her, and that’s been fried. Final possibility I’ll suggest is it could be a come home signal from Mium, of the sort she would be foolish to ignore: she knows she only survived because she was actively linked to Mium when the button was pressed.
I think the issue is that once invited in, Mium isn’t going to fully vacate the F10 chassis, which is why she can still hear him.
Possibly permanent changes have been made to the chassis or to Ila to make this arrangement possible, or possibly maintaining a minimal presence on the F10 helps future proof some plans that were placed in jeopardy over this incident.
Mium typically goes silent when very busy. He is likely restoring everything.
And also the connection between the F10 and Mium was just massively overloaded 4 times in quick succession. They may have broken her communication systems.
Costume Idea – Person of Interest
Harold: Peter
Reese: Naomi
Fusco: Kally
Root: Ila
Shaw: Aaron or Tom
The Machine: Mium or Query
Samaritan: Dr. Mir
Not familiar with the show, but I’ll look into the costume idea and see if I can come up with something that makes sense – at a glance they mostly seem to wear suits, so, maybe a little tricky. 😉
Holy moley! Did she… She killed Kardus! The insane immortal warmage is dead! (Does a happy dance.) Yeah, getting out of there is a good idea, Arkady. Very good idea indeed.
Sorry, no. The insane mortal warmage, known for his lightning, is dead. The more insane immortal warmage, known for his explosions, is still alive and blowing things up elsewhere.
It’s a lot to keep track of, I know. I currently have the roster tracked in 77 files, but there are characters I’m missing.
This does seem like it is going to have ramifications though. Kardus himself was a fairly minor character, but I would expect both Rovak and Acalia to have opinions on this. Considering that Acalia has already tried to assassinate Miko once (pretty much assuring her place near the top of Mium’s shit list), I wonder if her being fond of Kardus didn’t contribute to Mium setting up the dominos in a way that Kardus died.
Probably too much conspiracy there, but Peter did say that people that piss of Mium have to spend the rest of their lives wondering if each seemingly random piece of poor fortune is really Mium fucking with them.
I guess Kardus shutting down Ila (causing her what at least amounted to distress) was probably enough for Mium though.
Acalia actually seems like one of the more dangerous enemies, because her power is so game-breaking (assuming she is not stupid enough to try another frontal assault after failing so thoroughly against both Miko and Naomi).
Agreed. There would probably be fewer ramifications if they had started with the more insane immortal warmage. I don’t think that Acalia is fond enough of Rovak to start trouble on his behalf, but she definitely seemed friendly with Kardus. I think Kardus’s response to Rovak biting it would be to tell IDS, “Sorry, you can’t pay me enough to stay here. Bye!” He might have tried to convince Acalia to follow him, but I think she feels pretty invincible since she can just teleport out. That basically leaves the good doctor… who I think is currently hiding from everyone who isn’t Rovak; if that’s true, he would probably find a new hidy hole if Rovak bit it, before causing more trouble.
That said, starting the killing spree with Acalia would have been much worse, because she’s friends with a lot more people than the warmages. Taking her out would probably bring out significant portions of the exiled families, though there are likely a lot of those who see the game she’s currently playing as beyond the pale, or possibly would take her falling on the front lines as an expected possible outcome from her choice to be on the front lines, rather than something that merits revenge.
Then again Acalia might also take this as a warning to get out. She’s dipped her toes in twice and nearly gotten killed both times, and then the next time someone in her little gang got involved they got dead. It definitely means the warning shots are over, and with all the zany not-rightness Peter’s crew displays I wouldn’t bet anything that my talents could get me out.
True. You’re sane, relatively speaking. Acalia did not strike me as someone who is so well grounded in reality.
It’s also possible that she feels like she can’t just leave. I could imagine her trying to make one final attempt on Tyler, because he can identify her, and she doesn’t realize that Mium can also, and probably Naomi, since Naomi’s had time to talk with Mium after.
Sure, it’s likely that Amy’s on guard at least – but what of anyone else? Can Amy handle Acalia on her own?
Naomi definitely could Identify Acalia after their clash, because 1. She ripped her arm off, ON ACCIDENT, and 2. Marc fragging named her. So now they have a name AND good description of the teleporter who tried to kill Miko. Which given that Peter treats Miko’s safety as a top priority, already spells bad things for her. Okay maybe Acalia doesn’t have any good options.
“It’s, uh, dangerous!” (Tank and warmage are both wiped out.)
“….whuh….WHUH?!”
Sill! Betting this “fight” didn’t have the expected fallout for much of anybody involved. (Alas, poor Kardus whatever-your-name-was (oh, Velzor), we hardly knew ye, other than that you were apparently kinda useless.)
I personally found it hilarious that Ila is like “Oh I can kill whoever I want” and meant it as reassuring. Meanwhile her friend is freaking out about all the blood.
The best part is how without the jammer everyone would have probably lived. It’s when they escalated and went for needless killing that things went wrong.
I’m not so sure about that. The Arpon forces were definitely intent on killing people. Admittedly, I think this is on the officially Arpon side of the Malsa / Arpon border, so by some ways of thinking, they were within their rights to be. It’s all complicated, and I’m not wanting to get into the right or wrong. I’m pretty sure that everyone is at least a little wrong.
Well, except Ila. Nothing could possibly go wrong with her choice to start the blood bath. At least, besides everything. Rotating fertilizer distribution system engage!
I don’t think it’s all the blood, but rather the fact that she was able to somehow win that fight without appearing to take even a slight injury that got Arkady to freak out.
I suspect EmperorArthur may be correct: If Kardus had not used the jammer given to him, then Kardus (and, possibly, the pilot of the Arpon tank) may have lived to see another day. The reason I say that is because, without the jammer, Kardus would not have been brazen enough to engage with Illa. (He [b]was[/b] warned about both her and Mium.) And, unless I’m mistaken, I think it was Mium in Illa’s body that killed the tank pilot. For all we know, Illa may have only ripped the limbs off the tank or shot it with a few holes to immobilize it.
Anyway, Illa did not start this bloodbath. It was Arpon for sending the tank with the full intention of slaughtering anyone on this base. Illa just wanted to save her friend. Finishing off Kardus was mostly a grateful Illa wanting to please her older brother after he as much told her to. (Granted, she probably wanted to.)
I suppose one could argue that, technically, Malsa started this by their escalation to war. Though, one could counter-argue that it was IDS and PACT that pushed Malsa into this course of action. How? By their undermining of Malsa’s sovereignty, breaking their agreements, lying to them and heedlessly ignoring their laws and endangering their citizens. And let’s not forget how IDS used SkyHammer aimed at their capitol building and how they set the walking catastrophe that is Atter to go on a rampage in a major city. Also, I have to believe that Malsa already knew that Arpon was itching and preparing to go to war with them, anyway.
Finally – and do correct me if I’m wrong – but I believe that the military base being attacked here is Malsa’s and that it is located inside Malsa.
I think Arkady needs some time to pull himself together, and maybe spend some time with his best friend to relax.
I love Ila conflating death with other non-death states.
Have we actually seen Ila sleep in this comic?
Maybe. After Ila was original recovered she was sleeping on the couch, but that was implied be more that she “off” than asleep. That said, we see her yawning and wearing what looks sort of like pajamas HERE which could be taken imply she just woke up, but that is a bit of a stretch as she could just have stayed up all night playing video games or something.
Well, death is a strange thing for an AI, even a very human AI like Illa. If I recall correctly, when Illa was first introduced, Muim notes that since Illa is a black-box AI he cannot assimilate Illa, mentioning that to take over the F10, he would have to wipe Illa’s process. Which means that for this body exchange to occur, he would have had to copy Illa’s process somewhere else, and then copy it back. But can mere data be said to be alive? How alive is it compared to data properly placed in a low power machine built to run the data? (i.e., run out of power or knocked out) Is it more alive depending on whether there is an all powerful AI who has promised to put back the data in the near future? You can see why one would get confused.
As you note, the twist here is that by most common definitions, Ila did die here. She, unintentionally, seems to have uninstalled herself from her prototype. Given that she is basically a human, this was basically accidental suicide as she cannot reinstall herself and run a normal computer like Mium.
The only reason that this worked is that Mium had a system prepared to back up Miko in case she died (which suggests the priority on protecting Miko has been taken to a uniquely Mium extreme), and it seems like he used that system to create a virtual server that Ila could run on.
This let him run on the F-10 as I.L.A. was put safely somewhere else. Once he fixed the F-10 problems, he transferred the I.L.A. consciousness back into the F-10, bringing her back to life.
This process seems like it was taxing even by Mium’s standards, as somehow just by having Ila running on his system was apparently causing him a great deal of problems, probably because he can’t really handle her black box human-like thinking method, so it was basically hemorrhaging his system with errors trying to understand what it was doing.
I think it brings up some interesting questions that Ila can unintentionally uninstall herself from her hardware, and likely suggests that she was installed to her hardware in the first place. At some subconscious level she still has AI like behaviors, but she fails to grasp she can’t run on a non-F-10 environment, and started crashing as soon as she switched to running on Mium’s servers.
It is all very interesting to me.
My guess is she’s a clone that was modified to be controlled by an AI, rather than a machine built to mimic a human. This hypothesis would be tested if she ever gets seriously hurt – does she have metal under her skin like Mium, or does she have actual fleshy bits that she really does need to survive?
Way back near the start when Mium first met her I think Mium said something about her using the same chassis as him. She is obviously at least somewhat different as, well, she’s a girl, but I would guess they are at least similar in composition.
Considering that someone probably wouldn’t make a child sized machine body on purpose, it is very likely that she grows up in a somewhat biological (likely accelerated) rate. This could also explain her obsession with food, as we already know human food is considering low density by prototype nutritional standards.
Of course, this would imply the F5 and F8 were once Ila sized, which I find oddly terrifying, given that they were puppeted by very much not kid like intelligences… In fact, Avon’s experiments are just sort of dark and twisted. Like, really, the more I think about it, the more I suspect that the black ops side is probably pretty messed up.
Messed up enough for their head researcher to go into hiding, and the replacement head researcher to transfer herself to a machine body? Oh, and how about having a security guy with a penchant for setting up magical traps that merge people with the floor.
Oh, what am I thinking, there’s no way they’re *that* messed up! They are probably only crazy enough to enjoy Taxi or something.
I love how Ila conflates knocked out and death.
Makes me wonder, have we seen her sleep? I know that’s usually off camera activity, but with those comments I’m wondering if she does…
Sort of. But we have definitely heard that she sleeps from a source who is usually reliable, and his logic is sound.
Note for others, Quonone dup-posted because of not realizing there’s sometimes a delay of up to 10 minutes (or more?) between a comment posting and showing up, and most people responded to the second one above.