Comic.
This admittedly getting somewhat silly in a words to pictures ratio, but essentially with the scheduling what it was, I decided to condense the Intermission from ~6 comics to ~3 comics… given that comics already became a half page (artwise), we are basically now fitting 12 times the words per picture ratio into the comic.
In other news (and most of why this comic is late), I had surgery last week for a bit of an issue with my neck. It wasn’t super pleasant – I do not recommend it. I’m about halfway recovered though now, I can drive and make comics and stuff, so that’s good.
This will be the end of the Intermission, and the next comic should start the next chapter. Since that’s more of an arc, it’ll be a bit more focused, though there’s still a few characters we’ll follow.
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It’s a holiday. Enjoy it.
There will be a comic this week, but it’ll be on Tuesday (the 20th). I’m busy both today and tomorrow, so that’ll be the earliest I can finish it up. I might be busy Tuesday as well, in which case it’ll be Wednesday.
Past, take your time. The pleasure of reading the last comic will tide us over. The storyline is much more developed, understandable and enjoyable with the additional conversation balloons.
Why not both amused and bemused? When she tries to understand what Mium wants and is capable of, she is bemused by the fact that she knows that what she is likely to learn is what Mium wants the consul to think that he is capable of and what Mium wants the consul to think are his desires. She knows enough about politics and manipulation to understand the situation to be similar to a hall of mirrors, a bemusing situation. She then finds the situation amusing because of the contrast with the situation she normally finds herself in.
You also have to realize that there is a means by which the Consul can make herself unpredictable. I have a set of D&D dice that I have used for selecting passwords. (Two ten-sided dies and a twenty-sided die can be used to randomly used to select an item from a list of 2099 items. If Mium can predict random events, it has interesting implications with regard to causality and the possibility of time travel. (Mium writes the answer and places it in a sealed envelope before the consul writes the question.)
I’m sure that Mium would be happy to give advice on the mathematics of such situations.
My understanding is that the Consul is testing here that MYM’s capabilities and responses are in keeping with what Tamara’s team reported back to her. She isn’t confused or puzzled by it, it is largely what she was expecting to hear, but like any good scientist, she attempts to verify her understanding by a practical experiment and, yes, it turns out exactly how she expects it to.
How much do we know about Tamara? As I recall she has blonde hair she has dyed teal (which I guess makes her the 4th character to dye her hair, since Mium, Ila, and Naomi all have dyed hair at the moment).
She also was some sort of hacker previously, but do we know who she works for or what she wants?
I vaguely remember that the old (pre-wiki) cast page said that she is looking for an annoying bastard. That was back in the day when the commentariat called her Tealy because her name hadn’t been revealed.
One of the other comics I read does it as a twofer, there is a comic page and a prose section. The prose section highlights small details drawn in the graphic portion, or changes the impression of a page.
Are you talking about “Alien Dice”? If so, I didn’t know that comic was still running.
Yes. Inquiring minds want to know.
But I found a page for Alien Dice and it appears to have been updated yesterday.
I do feel Webber is gonna look terribly confused, but only because he lacks the context of the above conversation 😀
Are you thinking of a conversation after Vairlem leaves the Consul? Something like this …
Vairlem: Tyler, the Consul thinks that you should go with Peter.
Webber: !!!??? … What … ???!!!…
Perhaps this will be in the next comic.
LOL
Yes, that was pretty much my thinking.
Vairlem: Mage-commander, the Consul approves your request to accompany Mr Kepler; you don’t need to see her in person for that.
Tyler: Well, that’s… wait, what?
Vairlem: Just roll with it; we all live in fear that she might actually HAVE that catapult.
Tyler: What? WHAT catapult?
Vairlem: What part of “roll with it” is confusing you?
At first I thought Peter wanted Weber as his +1 for the upcoming meeting, but the Consul herself is invited to that meeting, and Mium would likely have mentioned that, so that shouldn’t be it… Unless they’re manipulating the Consul’s information flow to make her not go. You know she’d be all over a meeting with IDS higher-ups…
Note: inconsistent name spelling, Varlem/Vairlem.
Typo, third panel: incompressibility -> incomprehensibility
I think that this is Peter going for the Kor’s World Ship he is sure Mium found, and he would not want the Consul (who is an important political figure and likely not combat oriented to be involved to keep her safe) but he would want Mr. Weber, who is a tactical mage and would be of great assistance in seizing the ship.
I wonder if this will cause Weber a problem like the one he almost had the last time he was in the Palace Beyond. (I hope/think I got that correct) Mium was concerned about Weber’s sanity. Could loss of sanity be a problem for other powerful mages? Perhaps a solution has been found.
Rule 35 – That which does not kill you has made a tactical error.
And showing Mium that pocket dimensions outside of the fixed ones exist is so far beyond a strategic error we need a new word to describe it…
“Note: inconsistent name spelling, Varlem/Vairlem”
I think he may also have been called Varkim at one time.
From the Category:Cast wiki:
Varkim. A senior adviser to the Consul of Malsa.
I think they’re different people; we saw Varkim in chapter 8 and his hair was greyer.
Your memory is MUCH better than mine. Please do NOT post a link to chapter 8 or it will cause me to read old comics for an hour or a few. -(grin)- I am easily distracted.
Shouldn’t it be “Mr. Weber wants your input if **he** should participate.” ?
Consul’s mood: Terrified? Giddy? Both?
Bemused and appalled.
I don’t think she is bemused; as I understand it, she knows that Mym can pretty much predict her actions, and is manipulating her by curating the replies she is given to the queries he has also predicted.
On the other hand, she is pragmatic to a fault, and knows that, in general, Peter (and hence, Mym) isn’t opposed to her getting what SHE wants, provided it isn’t incompatible with Peter’s own goals. She just needs to ride the waves that are going in the direction she wants to go, and step out of the way of the ones that aren’t – which if she does it correctly, will put her further ahead than if she didn’t have Peter, and much, much further ahead than if she is trying to oppose him.
The only strength she has is that Peter fundamentally doesn’t care about her or her country, its just a convenient place for him to stand, for now.
The Consul’s main defining attributes are pragmaticism and ambition. She seems more than willing ride the chaos of Peter being in her country (given there’s not much she could actually do about it anyway), if gives her opportunities to shake up the status quo and get what she wants (expelling the IDS, taming the corporations, rounding up the rogue families).
I think she also has some degree of assurance that Peter is probably not planning to seriously intentionally harm Malsa, given his association with Naomi. Naomi would probably not be onboard with anything that caused widespread destruction to her country, and is clearly onboard with Peter’s plans (and as readers know she has enormous influence over Mium).
I am not sure ambition is the right word, but honestly I can’t think of a one better.
The Consul has pretty much absolute power, but also has political rivals that could dethrone her if she messes up too badly. One benefit of the current shakeup is that most of the faction opposed to her are doing REALLY badly, mostly due to Peter’s machinations (and a bit due to Mium not wanting Naomi to be upset if he can easily avoid it; hence the intervention of Little Miss Not Aimed At You on a couple of occasions)
She is also ambitious on behalf of her country as a whole, although I am not sure what her endgoal there would be (her position doesn’t appear to be hereditary, so she may just see that as “doing her job properly”)
She isn’t easily pigeonholed 😀
I think her test of Mium is caused by her being bemused.
She finds the capabilities he has shown fascinating in addition to finding them horrific. So, she pokes at them/him, to try to get a clearer view of him and his powers of deduction.
I think that might be more “amused” than “bemused” 😀
Resigned, but optimistic.
Is “working” a mood? She knows Mium’s powerful, but needs to know his capabilities to determine how best to leverage him. The council has shown a great ability to roll with the punches and use the resources she has. All while not coming across as a schemer, like Peter does.
She could have been doing paperwork or playing a mobile game for all we know before the messenger arrived.
What Jim said!
I love Mium’s synopsis, which aligns wonderfully well with what Joid and Miss Anseli have presented. Miss Anseli’s closing comment is perfect, too.
I’m *so* looking forward to this next chapter.
Mium’s not perfect, and we’ve seen him make mistakes before. What’s interesting is one of his priorities (either set externally, or self determined) seems to be the happiness of his “Friends and Family.” Not just safety, but actual happiness. What makes this interesting, is those people want him to live and not go crazy. So, those are some of his priorities as well.
Meanwhile the council is a massive contrast. Both in how she treats him (not it), and in how she’s always trying to figure out just what his capabilities are. She and Peter are similar in that regard. Mium is a person, but also an asset. So, what can he really do?
I mean, even at the basic level, having an assistant with perfect memory who’s able to rapidly summarize the reports and paperwork she already has can be a game changer.
As Webber has mentioned before, this story is really about how all things are possible through the power of friendship. Especially when said friend is a ludicrously powerful AI.
I think it would be neat if Weber’s aggressive friendship attempts actually succeeds in making Mium put him in the ‘friend’ category, or at least in the category of ‘liked’.
The Consul is probably close to being in the ‘liked’ category herself, because of her perpective. She sees Mium as distinctly non-human and distinctly a person, and my impression is that Mium appreciates both.
“those people want him to live and not go crazy. So those are some of his priorities as well.”
There’s probably something to that, but I think what really differentiates MYM from other SMAIs in the ‘not going crazy’ department is the way there are multiple AIs in the pot, each with different priorities. A standard SMAI will just optimise heavily for its own set of priorities, resulting in the mentioned deterioration into obsession and incomprehensibility, but the MYM-gestalt has too many priorities, such that one cannot be heavily optimised without compromising the others. Which is honestly very organic.
A human mind is not unlike this – it does also optimise itself, just less transparently, and when a human only has a single priority this optimisation does cause obsession and extremely unhealthy behaviour – toxic relationships, being married to the job, and depressive spirals are all things which can be caused by the mind optimising for one thing in an unhealthy way. It’s setting up disparate priorities which make the optimisation problem more complex which keeps the brain healthy, and that’s exactly what the MYM-gestalt achieves.
It’s possible that Naomi’s main purpose in Peter’s plans to stabilize Mium’s personality. Naomi is pretty much the opposite of Peter and Miko, the other two people that have the greatest influence on Mium.
Because he has to balance between what would make Peter, Miko, and Naomi happy, he cannot slide too much any direction. Naomi is optimistic, friendly, and impulsive. Miko is cynical, misanthropic, and… also impulsive. Peter is pragmatic, manipulative, and calculating.
Thinking about it that way, it makes a lot of sense. Naomi is also opposite to Peter and Miku in skill set (being a combat capable brawler), so her addition to the team makes a lot of sense even without that.
Peter seems analytical enough to be somewhat self-aware about his sometimes overly Machiavellian nature. Not enough to change how he acts, but enough that he doesn’t seem to want Mium to perfectly mirror his own behavior.
We know from when Ms. Sister was asleep on Peter’s couch that Naiomi is st leadt partly explicitly there to act as Peter’s conscience.
She also seems to be there to instill something of a sense of ethics and morals in Mium. Mind you, the fact that someone who clearly has blood knight tendencies and no respect for authority is one of the best people to teach Ethics to Mium shows just how out there the main cast is.
Mium has to be able to handle being friends with Naoimi, Miko, and Kally. Plus, everything with Peter and his sister. All while being a mix of a social AI made by Peter and a killing machine made by Dr. Martin. I suspect most other SMAIs would have gone crazy from that alone.
Was it mentioned / implied sonewhere that MYM was supposed to be a killing machine?
Took me a bit, but here are two references to Dr. Martin stating that M.Y.M. is supposed to be deadly.
https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-february-26th-2018/
https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-thursday-july-5th-2018/
If I recall correctly, Rovak claimed to think that Mium is supposed to be a killing machine. That said, his sources may be a bit off, and it’s possible his sources skewed what they related to Rovak either for control reasons or because they wanted to say something that would be easy for Rovak to accept.
I did not remember this. Thank you for refreshing my memory!
Past, hope your recovery keeps going well. Please don’t apologize for the comic to words ratio. This was an Excellent Comic. The words help explain what is going on far better than talk bubbles squeezed into small comic frames. While smash and slash comics provide the action, the words are thought provoking, entertaining and enjoyable. Please keep up the good work.
I for one welcome the inevitable descent into this becoming a webnovel.
As another alternative, we could all chip in and get Past a quality 3D animation software package. However, at that level, the animation might end up behind a paywall so let’s forget that suggestion. Maybe 3D comic software instead but I don’t know the learning curve with that. Leave the comic for free and use it as a storyboard/draft for a 3d version?