Comic for Tuesday, September 2nd, 2019
I spent the weekend moving furniture, and I think I pulled my everything muscle.
I’m dead tired and probably not 100% sober, though I’m pretty sure that the words sort of swimming on the screen is more the tired than anything else. Probably a little more on the typo side than usual, I’ll swing by tomorrow to fix those. Would be funny though if I made less typos while bleary than I do in better conditions though, I guess.
This page (and the last) might seem like a bit of a tangent. I would sort of agree, but the outline seems to think they are important, and I’m not of a mind to argue with the version of me that wrote the outline, as he was probably smarter than the version of me that’s sitting here typing this. We will get back to characters people know pretty soon.
I’m pretty close to being done with the time of troubles. New tablet stand is still not set up as it needs another mounting bracket thing – people say it works as is, but if a flimsy mounting stand dropped a very expensive tablet I’d be pretty sad. Thus far I’ve drawn with the tablet just sitting on the desk propped up on books and stuff, but I think it’ll be a lot easier to draw with it actually mounted on an arm thing, and now I have the desk space to do that.
On that note, the art on this page is a bit rough… I’m aware of that. Won’t say it’ll get suddenly great, but it’ll probably at least be back up to my usual standard next page. I am going to say Thursday again (end of day), though I know that last time I said that I turned out to be a liar, so… that’s about all me saying that’s worth at this point 😀 I’ll see what I can do.
Anyway, hope ya’ll had a good weekend.
Loading ...
I take it comics are gonna be delayed this week?
Comic should be up by end of day Monday. Not sure about a Thursday comic this week or not yet.
Incidentally, Chapter 15 (this one) seems to be sorted between chapter 0 and 1 in the archive, which I find rather odd. Sorry if you’ve mentioned this before and I’ve forgotten it…
This happens each time I make a new chapter, I just forget to fix it. Will try to fix it soon. For whatever reason it does not a assume a new chapter probably goes after the existing ones, which seems like the most common use case, but hey.
If it put them after chapter 1, I’d say, “Ah, he has established some non-numeric chapter names, so it’s using alpha sorting.”
But it’s putting the new chapters after chapter 0. WTF? I mean, seriously?
Baseless speculation:
Assuming chapter 1 was the first one uploaded, it is the start of the list as far as the automated system is concerned, and when chapter 0 was moved to before chapter 1, it got moved to before the start of the list. New chapters then get added to the start, which is now between 0 and 1, as 1 gets moved down to make room, and 0 is before the start.
Chapter 0 was uploaded first, as can be seen by the dates in the archive. It was all uploaded at once, as it had originally been published using a different hosting site, and then transferred en mass to the new site. I’m not sure that this is the same site to which that transfer had been made at this point, but if there has been a transfer since, it’s kept the dates of the site that was new as of Dec 23, 2014.
That having been said, the oldest current comic is chapter 0, page 12, as the first 11 pages have been reworked at least once since Dec 23, 2014. If chapters were sorted by the date of the first comic in the chapter, chapter 0 would occur between Interlude 4 and Chapter 13.
I find this to be more or less as confusing as the days of the week. But the days of the week happen much more frequently. Anyway, have a good Wednesday.
Panel 3: do you mean H. Q. people?
Okay this guy, this guy giving orders I love. He knows someone is pulling something over on him and wants info before he proceeds. The damning fact he may be missing is that time may in fact be the target of the person conning him. But he seems to be willing to give it to them.
On this update’s QC… I think the biggest art issue is panel 5. Specifically, she should have more hand and shorter fingers.
Panel 1: “It’s an odd choice”, rather than “it’s on odd choice”.
Panel 4: “Do what you have to do make that happen.” is missing a “to” between “do” and “make”.
Hand looks fine to me. Remember, that kid was very clear on these being monkies.
Wait, that would be Palindra monkies wouldn’t it? And these people would likely be Centralian? Are they monkies too? Or maybe Central monkies had really long palms?
I’m confused. I need to go out and get a couple of encyclopedias.
Fixed (the text).
Hands are obviously one of the things I am not really good at the best of times, and this was not the best of times. Hands are something I can only really draw on model if I cheat; I have 3d posing tool on my phone, and I use that as reference (or I just use my own hand if viable).
The problem with hands (and arms in general) is that they cannot be easily cheated into 2d like most of a human; rarely do I draw things in a real 3d perspective, and when I do, it takes a lot longer, but hands are always sticking out and doing things in 3d space around the otherwise essentially 2d characters, which means they are always some degree of foreshortened, tilted in weird ways, and none of that is to mention they are shaped like a stubby legged octopus from the start.
I still avoid drawing hands when possible, though I’ve sort of eased up on to the point where I don’t really intentionally place characters to avoid it, I just don’t typically focus on them.
Usually a well drawn hand (or even decently drawn one) takes nearly as long as the character’s whole face.
In thi scase, the whole character in the 5th panel looks weird because I shifted the angle to account for the Director sitting down, and it didn’t quite work. It’s not bad enough I hate it or am going to redraw it (I try to avoid ever doing that as it’s a dark path; I may continue the redraw of the oldest comics at some point as that impacts new viewers/readers, but redrawing current stuff would be a bit futile 🙂 ), but it’s not what I’d call an artistic high point.
For what it’s worth, most of the time, I feel your hands are pretty good. For example, check out panel one on this page. I could never hope to do that well. They may not be perfect hands, but they’re pretty decent.
That said, given the amount you struggle with hands (according to your report), I’m surprised you don’t have more people folding their arms on their chests with their hands tucked under their upper arms rather than over. By using this pose, you have almost no hands to draw, and that bit is just a small amount past the wrist (i.e. no fingers.) To be fair, it’s an unusual pose, but I have seen a number of people choose to do it in real life. I use it myself sometimes, especially if it’s really cold.
That’s just great, Tgape! You just triggered an ice age on Palindra.
Well, mammoths are pretty cool, almost as awesome as unicorns. And just about as rare.
Thanks for the comic! BTW, its’s Tuesday, September 3, 2019.
I’ve never grokked the time zone here. I suspect Past lives on Easter Island. Or he really does exist in a parallel dimension.
Iceland (no DST) or Cabo Verde might explain it?
There is no time zone in which September 2, 2019 is a Tuesday, though, which I think was Pittsburgh’s point.
No time zone on Earth, maybe.
I’m not convinced that Past lives on Earth, however. Or, at least, not the Earth that we live on (ref. innumerable conversations about virtually every language names the homeworld “dirt”. There’s a few outliers, such as the Norse who referred to the planet as “the middle place”.
… which seems a heck of a lot like Central. Are the people of Central secretly Vikings? That could explain Biana’s attitude towards things…
In any event, the Earth I live on also has some idiosyncrasies with time. For example, last week, the days of the week were Monday, Monday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Friday, Friday, Saturday. But I’m pretty sure that’s not how things are normally.
Crazy talk. Just crazy.
Besides Sept 2 was a Tuesday just 5 years ago in 2014. I’m pretty sure that was in all the time zones.
But Tim said, “There is no time zone in which September 2, 2019 is a Tuesday.”
By specifying that, he made it a lot more challenging.
It won’t work in the Hebrew Calendar, the Christian Calendar (BCE), or the Astronomical Calendar (which includes a year 0 and pushes all the BCE numbering back one year). Maybe later I can try some other systems.
Judging from the Holidays PastUtopia references, they have are probably in the US. Judging by their posting times, they are clearly not in the US. After years of careful deduction I have come to the conclusion that there can only be one answer: PastUtopia does not sleep enough.
If you think about it, this also explains how a date that cannot exist existed for PastUtopia: delirium from lack of sleep.
The weird part about the date typo is that it is backwards from how you would think someone would get it wrong. I can see checking the date, as I frequently do not know what the date is without looking at a calendar, but this implies that PastUtopia knew it was 9/2/2019, but did not know what day it was, so checked that, but checked it after midnight and it had already ticked over to Tuesday.
I could have spent all this effort analyzing what is going on in the actual comic, but I already did that the first three times I read the page.
I think it’s very likely just a memory/recall error caused by lack of sleep. It’d work something like this:
“Memory, what day is it?”
“Monday, 9/2/2019”
“But midnight has passed, so it’s not Monday anymore.”
“Right, Tuesday it is now.”
“Tuesday, 9/2/2019 then.”
… here is where the “You forgot to fix the number part” reminder would normally kick in, but failed due to lack of sleep.
This is also not the first time Past has done this….
I usually lose track of the day of the week after I’ve been working every day for about 10-14 days (i.e. no weekends). Considering that Past chooses to have what is for some a full time job as a hobby, I could easily see this state being all the time.
I do get reminders of the day of the week from my meeting reminders, but this only works so long as I have few enough meetings that they don’t blend together in a perpetual meeting haze. Having meetings with different people can also help keep them distinct, or so I’m told.
Losing track of the date is rare for me, as my computers all report the date more or less constantly. My window manager shows a clock with the date in the lower right hand corner, my shell prints the date and time in each prompt, and in the window titlebar. ls -l reports the date and time files were last modified, and I’m much more prone to look at listings of files modified today than any other day.
My log files are all rotated by date, and much of my work life is log files. Beyond the date on the log file name, it’s also stamped on most of the lines in the logs. At this point, I should probably admit to having occasionally been confused about the date temporarily, due to having spent too much time analyzing some issue in old log files. But that doesn’t happen much; most of the time, I’m looking at today’s log files.
The way he talks about this like it might all be part of Kyle’s plan makes me think Peter’s apple doesn’t actually fall very far from the tree
It’s also funny to see how he refused to “be played the fool by magician tricks”
After all, that is exactly what he is doing.
And yet another person who thinks they have an idea what is going on, and yet is completely off the mark.
Are they really off the mark? Or just pessimistic about the quality of situation being “everything is in Peter’s hands”?
I think for people who don’t know what Peter’s team is doing/has done, they’re remarkably well informed. Honestly, it seems like Aaron’s answers would line up fairly well with what we think is going on.
Biana is probably the real wild card here. I’m not expecting her answers to be too different from what the brunette expects, but I think her chances of success at this point would be 0% even without Peter. The real question is, how much damage is she going to do to Central’s position in the name of attempting to salvage something from this?
I sort of feel bad for the two staffers. It sucks to work for an idiot who thinks he knows what is happening and that his demands will produce results.
I’m pretty sure he knows he doesn’t have a clue whats going on. He just knows what will lead to bad result for himself. Unfortunately he is wrong about who knows what is actually going on.
Yes, but he still is not listening to the staffers and they have grasped the most significant aspect of the situation – that all of the gates have been closed. They don’t know how, but they do know it’s a really big problem.
I’m not sure that the gates to Malsa all being closed is necessarily more significant than there are reports that the head of state has been assassinated, most likely by the IDS.
Also, he hasn’t really disregarded it, it’s just not one of the details that is most important to him.
If there is a certain amount of known flakiness in the gates, this would make perfect sense. Back in the days of Windows 95, 98, and ME, an office with a hundred computers having a couple locked up at any point in time was more or less normal. All of them locked at once? That’s different, but not *that* different.
I know Windows, and any other OS is still a bit flaky today, but there’s a whole different level of magnitude that’s easy to forget here…
I think, from the viewpoint of the IDS leaders, assassination of a head of state (the Consul) is less concerning than having someone lock down all the gates. The reason is very simple: Assassination exists well within the power scope of the IDS. Whomever is capable of it, and or might get angry about it, is something they can fight. The gate lockdown, however, is outside the power scope of the IDS. Just as their gate detector can’t detect everything in an area the size of Malsa, their gate shutdown capabilities aren’t good enough to lock down all gates in Malsa. So whatever did it, might actually be a threat to the IDS.
That is exactly the point I was driving towards. When something happens which they can neither explain nor duplicate, the IDS must see it as a serious threat.
COMIC!
And rant too, so… awesome!