Comic for Tuesday, June 16th, 2019
Verbal Ellipses (or the art of letting the other person fill in the blanks) is usually not magical, though can be equally effective on the unwary. Arron is one of the more wary though, particularly while dealing with Peter.
This is where my policy of putting languages only in \<brackets\> when there is multiple languages is more problematic, as it should probably be obvious they are back to speaking in central, but I think it would have been more obvious if it was in brackets, but I decided being consistent made more sense, as if I put this in brackets it would make other times when people were speaking central not in brackets make less sense. Probably should have just put all cases of central in brackets.
So, I have an idea. It has been a long time sense I have done a Question and Answers. There are more people than there used to be, so maybe there will be new people that have questions (or old people that have new questions). If you have a question you want answered, send email to pastutopia@pastutopia.com and I will include it in the next Q&A. Thursday is my birthday, and I’m not taking the day off work, so the afternoon that day is a write off, and I’ll be busy Friday too for related reasons… so for the next comic I might do Q&A instead. That seem fair? Obviously I won’t answer spoilers. Maybe I will use that time to get ahead and make a buffer again, but that’s a bit optimistic. Questions about the world(s), magic system, background characters, not-background characters, general stuff are all fine, though I will answer somewhat selective in some cases.
We are almost done this chapter, so it will be Q&A -> Last few pages -> Intermission (note that Intermission != break, it just means comics that don’t fit the usual flow, but usually do anyway, because I am not very good at intermissions) -> Chapter 15.
I’d originally hoped to use the Wiki to do a running Q&A where people could just leave questions, but then the wiki-spam-ocolypse meant that I shut down guest editing, so that didn’t work out great. If anyone does want a wiki account, I will try to figure out how to make you one. Or unlock it for awhile or whatever. And if you want an avatar for the your comments and don’t have one, just let me know and I will give you or draw you one. You can also email that to me, or comment, or put on the contact page, or whatever.
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Q&A question? Hmmm. This might not be a spoiler.
Peter once told Tyler (or heavily implied) that calling the dragon Fluffy would cause Kally to rip off an arm. Did that actually happen? And did it actually happen the way Peter implied?
For example, Peter could have been exaggerating. Or perhaps Kally did rip of Peter’s arm…because Peter would have died if she hadn’t. And calling the dragon Fluffy was incidental to the arm-ripping-off.
OOh! Has Fluffy ever spoken aloud in the minus years?
Has Fluffy ever had black lines before?
I believe the answer to that second one was implied when Kally showed up to where Sophie was. The solider was saying “It’s just like that time…” Which seems to imply he’s seen Kally fully Manifest her dragon before.
Maybe projection for part of it, but that looks like the blood and body are still there….did he just not turn it off yet? Or was the projection to fake it being the Consul and someone really did just die? (He implies either there isn’t a sniper or it’s his own, but I’m leaning towards the former….) Oh wait, that’s all of it fading out in panel 7, isn’t it? So he just hadn’t turned it off yet, I guess? (Man, this one’s confusing…)
So, now it sounds like the entire thing was a ploy to fake the Consul’s death (to some people), obvious questions include “why?” and “how long does it need to last?”, but curious if getting the Consul out of anywhere is actually the plan at all or if just safe & secure was the plan and whatever works best will do.
(On a side note, it is pretty funny for Peter, who manages pulling of looking like the biggest workaholic ever without looking like a workaholic at all (and sometimes looking like a downright slacker (with that “sinister napping”)), but he comments “You should play video games more often”. Hee~)
You can actually see in Panel 7 the Consul’s “body” is fading away. It is far more transparent than it is in Panel 3, including the blood effects, even the ones on the railing.
As for video games… we do know the Naomi plays video games on the TV in Peter’s house (well, maybe it is Naomi’s house, I don’t really know, it is exploded now), so maybe he just sees her video games while slacking off and waiting for new things to punch. So Peter would probably see a lot of Malsan video games even if he does not play them.
Well, you do have the possibility of squibs. https://squibfx.com. Just think how more convincing it would be if David left with a little blood on his suit.
Thank you, Naldru.
That is almost certainly going to be what finally ends my employment.
It’ll be worth it.
>So, now it sounds like the entire thing was a ploy to fake the Consul’s death (to some people), obvious questions include “why?” and “how long does it need to last?
Obvious answer seems to be Peter is trying to incite them to take action, believing their plans worked out. This will exposure the traitorous elements – that will then discover that they’ve been had and make their removal politically sustainable.
Am I understanding correctly that PastUtopia is such a workaholic that he thinks doing a Q&A special is taking a day off for his birthday? I’m thinking someone should tell him he can just… take the day off, but I don’t want to do it as Gilder will yell at me.
“PastUtopia, you can just take a day off if you want to; a birthday is a good reason, but it doesn’t HAVE to be a particularly good reason”
That do Kevin? 🙂
People try to tell him to take a break, but does he listen?
Nope.
(But seriously dude, you can take some time off. None of us will be upset.)
People people people!
If Past wants to celebrate his birthday by working extra hard to provide us with more in universe flavor, who are we to deny him??
Don’t listen to these Nay Sayers, Past. Do up a quick, easy 30 hour session or so. A little more if you want to treat yourself, it’s okay.
Happy Birthday!
For Questions: What is Callisto Summer’s Dragon’s Favorite Food? Or Ila’s for that matter?
Also Peter pulling the puppet strings again
I don’t think Ila is very fussy when it comes to Tasty Food, although much more so than her brother of course.
Fluffy doesn’t seem to need to eat, but presumably is willing to experiment with volunteers…
“if they had the sniper they thought they did…”
It might very well be Naomi took out the sniper, but I don’t think Peter is playing this hand as though he is short a critical player. Thus I feel confident that Mium really is 100% back in play.
I’m not sure where Ila-interface-Mium is going to shake out in this process, but regular Mium is definitely operating full bore.
To quote the consul:
“We aren’t playing with the same cards… you see, I have some cards, but you have the whole deck, including MY cards”
If I’m understanding this, it’s implying that David’s I.D.S. squad did shoot the consul (or at least the hard light projection)?
David’s squad THINKS they shot the consul.
Theirs was only a scantily veiled assassination attempt. The moment they thought it was successful, they gave up any pretense to the contrary.
Whether Peter had any extra magic on that hard light projector is left an open question.
However Peter knew where David expected the shot to come from, and projected a convincing display with the appropriate angles.
They appear to have departed quickly. How soon they discover the deception now probably depends on when they expected to debrief their sniper.
That probably works in Peter’s favor. Even David is not stupid enough to transmit over any sort of call communication with the sniper. The sniper probably had plausible deniability stamped on his forehead.
David will now report that Consul is dead (tragically), and attempt to leave, and that is when we are going to get full shit hitting the fan when David realizes he can’t leave through the gate, and the Rogue Families or whoever start their coup with a very alive Consul.
A very alive Consul that is probably meeting up with Camilla, a tactical mage (Elliana), a Mage-Commander, and at least 3 other family mages (Ash, Arkady, and the other one). Not to mention an eventually potentially a fully feed and operational Ila, though I am not sure if that is a plus or minus in the Consul’s favor. And maybe now Peter & Arron and handful of IDS Soldiers, if Peter decides they will be more useful there. And a fully armed and operation Dragon (with a Kally) might be coming too, for that matter.
Assuming the sniper ever existed at all of course.
Just because David thought there was a sniper (and possibly even briefed that sniper personally) doesn’t mean it wasn’t a product of Peter’s scheming.
That’s a fascinating idea. Maybe like the AI experts hired by Avon, and the supposedly clean test computer for the Consul, the sniper was a Peter proposition from the start.
Poor Naomi! If that’s true, it was one less thing for her to smite!
I am sure she is already miffed that Atter got dragon-based and not fist-based justice…
I’m sure she is.
In Fluffy’s defense, Naomi maybe could do it, but it would take a VERY long time to attain that level of destruction with punching alone.
I think that is an open question. Naomi could handle one of Atter’s monsters once she got a little annoyed by it, but she has not done anything on the same general level as Kally’s dragon.
While I cannot say for sure we have seen Naomi’s upper limit, she did not seem to be winning against the Kor’s World Soldier, sufficiently so that Naomi of all people seemed to realize it. On the other hand Kally basically stomped the Kor’s World Soldier.
My personal view is that Atter is a borderline nation-threatening existence. He can spawn seemingly quite a lot of red constructs that can act as killer-drones, and was borderline indestructible, he just ended up fighting really bad opponents (and even then it was his arrogance that mostly got him in trouble).
Mium (with Peter’s safety on the line) and Kally (a.k.a. The Red Dragon Witch. The IDS Bigwigs that seem only vaguely aware Malsa exists were aware of Kally. I get the feeling she is a sort of a big deal). I think his fight card just skewed the perspective a little too much. Even if you count Nathan, that does not really make it better, given Nathan is potentially the only person higher on the “this guy is bad news” list than Mium and Kally.
Anyway, I spend too much time thinking about these things, particularly as Naomi seems like there has to be more going on with her than has met the eye so far. In terms of special effects, she tends to blow the budget the most, but that might just be artistic licence and her being the “mascot” character, or it might indicate that she has comparable raw power to someone like Kally, but only uses it to punch things (very hard).
Can see that. The problem with the “punch it harder” method is that it is Atter’s data that the Dragon destroyed, not just his physical form (given he can apparently jump to dead bodies without an issue, presumably physical form doesn’t matter too much)
But none of that really matters to settle the question of if Naomi would be peeved that the Dragon got the kill, and she didn’t get a chance to punch Atter into oblivion, and of COURSE she will be peeved; logic isn’t really much of a defense (and I suspect mym would give her a way to apply fist-based justice to Atter anyhow, even if not efficiently)
Naomi has a lot of raw power, and as a booster, she seems more or less unmatched. But her effects are all purple, which is apparently the lowest grade of magic. The list we’ve been given is violet, blue, green, yellow, red.
Note that casting circles are not the same color as the effects; casting circles are usually blue, though dark lavender and white/gray happen moderately often. Golden/yellow casting circles are clearly a big deal, as it’s basically Nathan, Magnolia, and the Kor’s World Soldier that do these, and the Kor’s World Soldier needs to initiate their combat interface to do that.
Nathan only does the golden circles about half the time, the Kor’s World Soldier does them a bit less (it’s possible they’re hard to do when one is flustered or pressed for time.) Magnolia has only cast on panel the once, so no real telling with her. There are no red or green casting circles. Well, except Fluffy.
Naomi may seem like she has unlimited potential, but she’s not really applying herself. So long as she’s only boosting and affecting things at the pure Eidos level, she’s not really going to be able to compete effectively at Kally or Sophie’s level outside of games.
All of that said, if she applied herself and studied and trained until she could manipulate power at the ultimate level, would she be more capable than those who are currently operating at that level?
It’s still tough to say. Everybody seems to be impressed with the amount of up she can do, but it could just be they’re impressed with that based on her otherwise unsophisticated use of magic.
Kally hasn’t shown a need for endless magic; she has a problem, she dragons, Fluffy breaths, problem is gone. Nathan hasn’t shown a need for endless magic; he has a staff, he writes Ka’vil to Hyle, invokes through Ka’vil, problem is gone. Camilla hasn’t shown a need for endless magic. There is no reaction time, she already cast her spell, the problem is gone. Magnolia has only had to cast once.
There’s also no clear indicator whether the different colors of magic have the same or different level of power per brush stroke per se. It could be that her notably endless power means she’s way overdue for learning how to do blue effects, but anybody who is able to do green is demonstrating a similar level of endless violet power with every green cast they do, simply because it’s that much more concentrated.
Thanks for an amazing story. And the Q&A offer. But all my questions would involve spoilers so I will wait (usually) patiently for the next page and continue to depend on your wonderful cadre of commenters to keep me clued in. When I read the previous page on Friday, it had a visceral impact until I started reading the comments and going back with the stronger glasses on. Happy Birthday! (mine is the 19th)
“In the office [I was] prepared to accept…”
“But it should not be so easy to fool [those] assembled here…” ([the people] would also work)
In Panel 4 Peter’s comment is worded weirdly, I would suggest “You are going to tell me that [human senses]…” Though it may just be a Peterism.
Couple corrections I noticed.
Fixed, thanks 🙂
Also from the commentary, Tuesday was June 18th, not the 16th
The only one I see is in the comentary itself. You say “speaking in Central” but what i think you mean is “speaking Central.” It is the difference between “speaking in Spain” and “speaking Spanish.”
In this case you have established that Central is both the name of the planet and how the residents of the planet refer to their language. In the case of Central, I think this is the best choice within English, similar to Thailand & Thai as the name “Central” doesn’t verbally flow with any of suffices that we regularly apply to denote language of the place.
I think speaking Centish or Centic works in English for a language name. Unless Past wants to give it a name with a different flavor. I request that you please limit the language name to two syllables and simple Latin characters.
I can read Lao & Thai, but I get rusty, and don’t need any fictitious alphabets.
‘Speaking in Spanish’ sounds perfectly viable to me, so ‘speaking in Central’ would also be fine, to me.
That said ‘speaking Spanish’ and ‘speaking Central’ also are perfectly workable, in my opinion.
Wouldn’t the analogy be closer to saying someone is “speaking Spain” or “speaking England” to saying someone is “speaking Central”? Even then, you aren’t “speaking in Spain” or “talking in England”, you say they are “speaking in Spanish” or “talking in English”. Not completely sure why we use that oddness when talking about languages, though.
No, I don’t think “Central”‘s analogous to a country’s name. Central is primarily a world, and secondarily a state and a language.
As such, a closer analogy would be saying someone is “speaking Vulcan”. 😉
That is a much better example than I was able to think of at the time. We don’t have a consistent Earthish language. My comment was more around the inclusion of the article ‘in’ in the sentence. Generally when speaking of talking using a particular language, you don’t say you are speaking ‘in’ the language, but rather you are speaking “the language.” The article ‘in’ usually refers to a container or sequence of some sort. As a result, speaking is a function with out a containerized aspect. Thus the sentence shouldn’t have the article.