Comic for Wednesday, December 16th
For those perplexed by Mium’s appearance, I attempted to draw his hair wet. I view this has having mixed results… For what it’s worth, as to why he would go off shower when Peter claims they are busy, I have a suspicion in that in most cases it really doesn’t matter what he’s physically doing… which is probably the source of half of his rather odd behavior.
As for Naomi… (so much restraint! she didn’t even punch him a little bit! so much for Amy’s theory of what happens as soon she stops smiling…) she has a bit of a habit of selling herself short. Personally I doubt that Peter could replace her particularly easily – her former peers in the MSB are some of more talented of their generation and referred to her as a monster… she also seemed to brush over the fact that she is in fact in enrolled in Levenworth in the first place… they don’t really make a habit of taking the non-exceptional sort of people in talent or smarts. While I have no doubt that her plans would end on day one in fire, it’s because her plan probably would read… “Day One: Set everything I don’t like on fire. Day Two: ??? It never makes it to day two”.
I’m going to be really happy to be done with the ripped up shirt. You have no idea how many times I had to go back to because I forgot a rip or whole hole (leaving evidence of typo so comments make sense… 🙁 ) or dirt spot… 😐
Friday’s comic should have gone up on Patreon already, but Manga Studio had this little… accident. Let’s just say it did is monthly reminder that I should save more often… it waits just long enough for me to get a false sense of security, than bam. Crash. Few hours down the drain :/ It’ll be up shortly though, I redrew it in mostly one sitting out of spite.
Various pages are in progress – character page update is about halfway through on art, but I’m going to add some new characters and bio’s for existing ones that have placeholders soon; progress on the Lore and World pages is still sort of in the draft stages as I figure out what those are going to look like (not something to fancy to start with, that’s for sure). Happy to take suggestions if there are specifics people want to make sure are covered.
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If I understand Naomi’s comment correctly Peter is due some credit. I am inferring (thus earning Muim’s scorn) that Peter gave her the veto in recognition of his own limited capacity (understanding? concern for?) “normal” human emotional responses. I mean Peter took an action because he knows he is flawed unlike Dr. Mir or S.A. Otte who would never be able to accept that about themselves.
Setting a failsafe for yourself does seem both disturbingly detached from normal human behavior and analytically practical. So… basically a fairly Peter thing to do.
I think it’s a safe bet that Naomi would make a better failsafe then Miko or Mium, least on not going over the slippery slope of pragmatism.
Besides being far far cuter :). BTW I am trying to get a friend of mine to try this comic and then I will ask him to give you feedback on the new user experience. I was to old user by the time I got around to thinking about it.
It is interesting that Naomi doesn’t really seem to see Mium as an extension of Peter, it does make me wonder what Mium is usually doing when not following Peter’s orders and how much he acts like a normal person when hanging around the house.
I think Naomi has definitely made her choice on viewing Mium as his own complete entity; as for what he does around the house when his not loafing on rooftops… well, I’m sure we’ll find room to squeeze that into the comic some day (though apparently it includes playing video games with Naomi judging by her complaints last time he wasn’t there).
On another subject: I’d be curious to hear more of Mium’s views on humans. There are things about Mium that his friends find weird. But, no doubt, there are things about humans that he still finds puzzling or odd. (And, yes, I am reminded of the talks Data had with friends about human behavior and culture.)
If nothing else, it’d be fun to see “big brother” Mium try to explain to Ila certain things about humans or human society that she finds puzzling.
And now that I think about it, we don’t know much about the inhabitants of Kor’s World. There was that humanoid in the red suit. (Or was that an android?) Are they all human? (Remember the Kromagg in the Sliders TV series?) Some animal hybrids, maybe? Human or not, their culture could be quite different.
I won’t touch too much on Mium’s actual views because they’ll be touched on in the comic a lot more; in the setting AI’s are built from layers of “priorities” and “restrictions”; what his top priority is will impact a lot, but it’s also a good bit more complicated as, like a human, he’s still influenced by experience… and he’s still a bit more complicated then we’ve yet seen.
Ultimately SMAIs in the setting have a bad rep – while they don’t necessarily go rogue; the flexibility inherent in highly useful general AI can have very bad consequences very fast; take for example an AI’s whose highest priority is obedience (the most common original template); while it will never go rogue, you can very easily ‘make mistakes’. Say you tell it to get a carrot, unfortunately not realizing carrots were embargoed, and there is no carrots in the country. If it’s first priority was to obey, and it’s order was to a carrot, an international war for a carrot seems perfectly reasonable to it.
Obviously that’s what the restrictions are for (to make an SMAI say “I can’t do that” before doing things that are absurd) but the more and tighter restrictions, the less useful it is; something like Mium is very very complicated because he interprets very general orders, but Peter still realized he’d screwed up when he told it get Ila since what he actually did was tell him to listen to Naomi, who’d defined Ila as Mium’s sister, something even Peter’s probably not entirely sure will do, rather than simply retrieve Ila from Avon; just for an example.
Kor’s World is definitely a wrinkle. Judging by his reaction to Mium; it’s likely at the very least he’s not an Self Modifying AI; their integration with both normal technology and magitek is a good bit further along, but (or maybe because of) I’d suspect they have something fairly personal against “virus-people”… 😛
Their culture may not be as monolithic as Peter believes, but he’s got pretty good grounds on his feeling towards them; they tend to be incredibly ruthless and non-communicative; that the one talked to Peter is incredibly unusual for them.
Haha sorry these answers are ridiculously long, but I can’t help myself… 😛
While I’m not sure I 100% understand some of it, I appreciate the detailed answers! I would ask better questions if I could but I’m still trying to figure out half the things! ^^
I think your questions are fine. You may have noticed that @PastUtopia quivers like a bird dog smelling a quail at the chance to answer any question, so ask away. If you’re still a little lost, ask again. He really wants everyone to get it. 🙂
That’s not the… ah… exact… wording I would personally use… but yes, I rarely turn knowledge seekers away from the gates of truth. 😉
As long as questions aren’t spoilers I’m generally happy to answer them. Though if you’re gunning for 100% understanding… not sure that’s possible – then I’d be failing my authorial duties.
Well, I may have been a trifle um, whimsical, in my description, and 100% comprehension would require omniscience, but I was still pretty close, right? ^^
I’m not arguing about the content of the message… just persevering dignity and mystique here 😉 … us author-folk are supposed to be aloof and cryptic! 😛
Sounds like there’s a little trust issue between Peter and Naomi. Peter left Naomi out of the loop, so to speak, because he worried she would veto his decision. (It seems implied that he worried she would make another veto for sentimental reasons – like before, rather than listen to reason.) But, Naomi is saying here that she is well aware of his ability to make plans work and respects his intelligence. Another words, if Peter was confident is reasons were sound, then he should have trusted Naomi to recognize this and trust him.
There are definitely some fine points to work out in their working relation; particularly for Peter. He’s probably trying to work with her, but Peter is not exactly a good (or experienced) team player.
I think he probably doesn’t grasp that Naomi actually does trust him fairly far (as this would be a bit of a foreign concept to him), and still operates more in ‘schemer’ mode the ‘leader’ mode; Naomi for her part generally is the opinion that her contributions are for his benefit as well, even if she’s aware that objectively they are going to be ‘worse’ routes; probably relating to her ‘sentimentality’ 😉
As long as you don’t forget whole holes. partials holes could be just a fold in the fabric.
Haha, Least that typo was in the commentary and not the comic 😉
Shoulda gone with my original instinct and reduced to a simpler concept “no like bad shirt. has bad spot. forget bad spots 🙁 ” 😀
Hmmm, wet or dry, that lock of hair should still be white.
As I recall, Mium is markedly larger than the F8 chassis, and able to multitask. 🙂
If I’m reading Naomi right, she’s more hurt than anything else, and is overstating her supposed inadequacy. She’s really going to need this talk with Mium to lift her spirits. 🙁
Ah, there is a reason the lock of hair isn’t white – the hair is in fact freshly blue-ified (there was getting to be a whole white swath after the Avon incident…); is also a shade darker on the whole (not just an art change… 😉 )
Indeed 😉 Though not as much as he’d like to be…
She just wanted to meet her new friend, and is freshly reminded that Peter is, well, Peter. Unfortunately they are just passing by in the hallway, but Mium may find a way to lift her spirits in time (or at least distract her) anyway… 😉