Results 1,351 to 1,380 of 1489
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2019-12-22, 05:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
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2019-12-22, 05:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2013
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- USA
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Her (nick)name is Legs, and I don't think we've seen her in the latest arc yet. But I'm almost certain that's supposed to be Schlock at the Andromendan core having caused committed/caused some sabotage given that (1) there's a copy of Cindy there (2) the rope-y core of annieplants in the background for baddie manipulation (3) the similarities between the hard-suit and Schlock's one although this is a bit more rectangular than previously depicted (4) the occuptant being unhappy about missing the explosion either for the opportunity to shoot at responders or missing the cool light show. My best guess is that he just unknowingly blew up some part of the DM long gun which will make them think that Petey has some way of firing back.
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2019-12-23, 02:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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2019-12-25, 11:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Ah, it's a big tell not show scene. Why has he become so enamored with this structure the last couple years?
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2019-12-26, 03:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2013
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- Pacific NW
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
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2019-12-26, 08:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
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- Watching the world go by
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
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2019-12-26, 08:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2004
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
I can't wait for the three weeks of tedious banter interrupted by cutaways to completely unrelated, but equally tedious, digressions, before they finally get on with it with showing what the point of all this crime scene metaficton was.
Yeah, yeah, trying to make Schlock look like a compromised dronuri so that the paanuri are fooled or something, but what's the point?Hark! An avatar drawn by Kate Beaton!
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2019-12-26, 10:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2005
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- Eberron
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
The immediate point would be to hide that there is an enemy force an indeterminate distance behind enemy lines. If the beasties realize they've got pests, they'll start hunting. Less immediately, if the beasties waste time and effort trying to determine the cause of a problem that doesn't exist, that's a benefit to team baryonic.
Man this thing was full of outdated stuff.
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2019-12-27, 10:17 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
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- The Lakes
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
IMO, part of the problem is that Howard is ready to move on from this incarnation of the comic after all these years, and has X amount of story to get through in Y amount of time, and it's distorting the presentation from long-form "show" to short-form "tell".
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2019-12-27, 12:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
This started a long time ago though. He could have cut copious amounts of side plot and still gotten to the same endpoint with a better comic for it. That used to be his style; the plots were pretty straightforward here are the bad guys, here are the good guys, halfway in here's a twist. Now there's a thousand sides all vying to get the best end of comic quip in, and he has to rush through storylines just to give them all a chance.
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2019-12-27, 03:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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2019-12-27, 03:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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- The Lakes
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2019-12-27 at 03:47 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2019-12-28, 09:44 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
That arc was also where outcomes became a thing that would be determined more and more by AIs, with humans completely unable to even think fast enough to catch up, where previously this had been limited to Petey (who was deliberately absented from the story for a time for partly this reason). This is essentially the Culture Universe problem - the principle actors in the story are beings who think on a level that is incomprehensible to humans, making it impossible to show their decision making process in an effective way and reducing the human (and human-like alien) characters to bystanders in what is ostensibly their own story. The most blatant example in Schlock Mercenary so far was Cindy's recent destruction of the Pa'anuri, which the entire crew could do nothing but watch happen. This is one of the great challenges of modern speculative science fiction, the conversion of characters into something that bears little resemblance to present day human understanding of how life works. It's not even a purely AI thing, but includes concepts like forking and merging as Thurl has recently done.
Schlock Mercenary has gradually moved away from well, schlock, and towards a more expansionist speculative science fiction space opera (with a strong and continually expanding resemblance to the Culture Universe from Book 13 onward) that has gradually rendered certain character roles largely superfluous. For example, the idea of a flesh-and-blood human captaining a starship and actually making any real time decisions - which is pretty much the core of Tagon's function as a character - seems kind of ridiculous at the current state. The Oafa, notably, don't appear to have that role at all in their fleets.
Originally Posted by Kornaki
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2019-12-28, 11:06 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
I don't buy this. When he did the war against the gatekeepers he didn't have his problem, and that was actually a much bigger theater than what we have now. For example despite this being intergalactic we have basically not at all seen anything from the pa'anuri side, and most of the people that are supposed to be on the side of the milky way really aren't contributing much. The oafans haven't actually done anything in this war yet I think? The all Star people also haven't done much. The espees... They have a crew member in Andromeda I guess? But as you pointed out the crew isn't doing anything anymore so that's another arc that could have been cut.
The problem isn't that there's an intergactic war on, the problem is there's a bunch of **** taking place that ISN'T an intergalactic war.Last edited by Kornaki; 2019-12-28 at 11:07 PM.
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2019-12-29, 02:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
The current war is taking place in both the Milky Way and Andromeda. The Gatekeeper war was only in select parts of the Milky Way.
For example despite this being intergalactic we have basically not at all seen anything from the pa'anuri side
most of the people that are supposed to be on the side of the milky way really aren't contributing much.
The all Star people also haven't done much.
The problem isn't that there's an intergactic war on, the problem is there's a bunch of **** taking place that ISN'T an intergalactic war.
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2019-12-29, 10:39 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2006
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
That arc was also where outcomes became a thing that would be determined more and more by AIs, with humans completely unable to even think fast enough to catch up, where previously this had been limited to Petey (who was deliberately absented from the story for a time for partly this reason). This is essentially the Culture Universe problem - the principle actors in the story are beings who think on a level that is incomprehensible to humans, making it impossible to show their decision making process in an effective way and reducing the human (and human-like alien) characters to bystanders in what is ostensibly their own story. The most blatant example in Schlock Mercenary so far was Cindy's recent destruction of the Pa'anuri, which the entire crew could do nothing but watch happen. This is one of the great challenges of modern speculative science fiction, the conversion of characters into something that bears little resemblance to present day human understanding of how life works. It's not even a purely AI thing, but includes concepts like forking and merging as Thurl has recently done.
Schlock Mercenary has gradually moved away from well, schlock, and towards a more expansionist speculative science fiction space opera (with a strong and continually expanding resemblance to the Culture Universe from Book 13 onward) that has gradually rendered certain character roles largely superfluous. For example, the idea of a flesh-and-blood human captaining a starship and actually making any real time decisions - which is pretty much the core of Tagon's function as a character - seems kind of ridiculous at the current state. The Oafa, notably, don't appear to have that role at all in their fleets.
And it is a little sad to see the agency shift away from the human/natural protagonists like that.
Though at the same time. The shift has also been interesting. And the ideas/evolution of technology quite interesting.
I like how far Howards imagination has reached. As such going all the way up towards a technological apothesis where the most advanced civilisations eventually leave the galaxy.
And at the same time then give us a reason for why they are not around any longer.
But it will likely become the last book in schlocks story? I dont know if Howard has directly announced as much yet.
All the same it seems unlikely to continue after the Panuri threat has been ended. I kinda hope he tries his hands on a fantasy comic next.thnx to Starwoof for the fine avatar
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2019-12-29, 11:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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- Greece
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
I don't really mind the shift to AI agency. Our protagonists do have a small role to play even in a grander conflict. What I mind is the shift in storytelling away from SHOWING us the cool action to TELLING us about the cool action that happened off-panel. Sclock's nuke is only the most recent example in a long series of similar resolutions, and pretty much all of them would have worked better if we actually saw them happen even if nothing at all changed in the events themselves.
Many thanks to Assassin 89 for this avatar!
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2019-12-29, 12:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
The gatekeeper war had an alliance between all these different systems and species to fight the gatekeepers, and we got some interesting stuff about how Breya was struggling to keep the whole thing together, without Howard resorting to a year long plotline introducing each of those entities. The literal list of actors in this war isn't actually bigger, he's just giving more screentime to the randos.
We've seen the UNS, the Uniocs, the Oafans, and Petey all engaging in a fairly massive battle inside the Unioc home system. The thing to remember is a lot of cultures/species aren't really tooled up to fight the DMEs. You need teraport-derived weapons to do anything. So unless you expect to be fighting the DMEs, you aren't going to have a fleet that's able to fight the DMEs. Frankly it's surprising that the Uniocs were able to be useful at all, but the three biggest known powers in the Milky Way have already engaged and are taking significant losses in doing so.
Yeah, but that's.... that's kind of their thing. They have their agents in play out there, namely Putzho but there could be others for all we know. They're not interested in engaging with the rest of the galaxy because the last time they did so, they had to mind-rape most of the galactic population to preempt genocide.
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2019-12-29, 06:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
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- Watching the world go by
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
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2019-12-29, 09:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Oh, yeah, the suicidal Oafan. I almost forgot that was a plot thread.
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2019-12-29, 09:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
The comic didn't actually begin to move towards 'big final war' status until the Pa'anuri started firing their long gun - which first happened on Nov 19, 2017. Assuming some level of lead time, and the general fact that the main plot of 'Mandatory Failure' is totally disconnected from those events, this suggests that Howard made the decision to begin a serious move towards a conclusion some time during 2017.
Originally Posted by Rockphed
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2019-12-30, 02:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2017
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
I think what hampers the comic the most is trying to end every daily strip with a joke. Given how short most non-Sunday strips are, this means around half of all the panels are spent setting up & executing wisecracks.
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2019-12-31, 10:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Yeah. I could easily live with less jokes in return for more story.
thnx to Starwoof for the fine avatar
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2020-01-04, 02:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2013
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- USA
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Today's strip seems the perfect example of this given that the joke is essentially "Haha you don't know what's going on! (Ignore the fact that this is my fault because I haven't shown or told you anything.)"
But I don't think it has to be this way. I'd hold up the "Sharp end of the stick" as a great series were pretty much every strip had a joke but still moved the story forward, Meta jokes with the cartoonists aside. Or at least required no little to no setup.
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2020-01-06, 07:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
She doesn't seem to be happy about being able to do that still.
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2020-01-06, 09:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Hark! An avatar drawn by Kate Beaton!
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2020-01-06, 09:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2013
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
So I just noticed the latest blog post. Quoting the relevant bit.
Originally Posted by Howard Tayler
Or alternatively: ' You keep saying that... I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.'
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2020-01-06, 05:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2005
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
She requested that she not be rebooted until they're willing to free her. She expected that they would only be willing to do that after editing her to prevent the behaviors they're concerned about. What she just did was one of those behaviors, or at least the appearance of it, so the fact that she can do it tells her that they did not do such editing. The lack of editing gives her reason to believe that they're still not willing to free her.
In short, because she can still do worrisome things she expects that she's still untrusted and captive, and that is what she's unhappy about.
She should be much happier once they explain that just scanning her, plus discovering the root cause of her corruption in Iafa's old hardware, was enough, and that they do now trust her.Like 4X (aka Civilization-like) gaming? Know programming? Interested in game development? Take a look.
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2020-01-07, 09:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Or worse, she dislikes parts of her own personality, and she was hoping that she could get others to fix it, but now she might have to learn to love herself while also living with the remaining trust issues others have towards her.
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2020-01-28, 11:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
"...should have been on our list of assets".
I think I detect a Princess Bride reference.Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2020-01-28 at 12:47 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.