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2018-07-22, 10:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
There's always the visual metaphor route, like when Schlock fended off the invasive proto-RED nannies with his 'metaphorical' plasma cannon immune system.
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2007-08-18Last edited by The Glyphstone; 2018-07-22 at 10:45 AM.
NOW COMPLETE: Let's Play Starcraft II Trilogy:
Hell, It's About Time: Wings of Liberty
Does This Mutation Make Me Look Fat: Heart of the Swarm
My Life For Aiur? I Barely Know 'Er: Legacy of the Void
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2018-07-22, 11:04 AM (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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2018-07-22, 03:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Ok, we have an 11+ year Chekhov's gun facing us next book:
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2007-09-02Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-07-22, 04:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
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- Watching the world go by
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2018-07-22, 05:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
The part where every race that now has effective immortality will go through everything that Vog's race went through.
Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-07-22, 05:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2013
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Except he's done 'hard to show' things in the past. With a lot more detail, generally relying on puns or comedy to carry the strip. The whole "kevin-spirit-guide-this-is-in-your-head-arc" comes to mind, for example. We were getting pretty continuous updates on what exactly was going on there. Or the Tagi going mad sequence. That did an excellent job of communicating what was going on, and reminding you as the strip went on. And we got to SEE the sequence AND the resolution. Tagii, going mad, getting control back, killing the battleplate, killing thurl, then 'dieing', while the crew watches and interacts. Exaggerating for effect, but the way that sequence would go now is, Tagii goes mad, gets control in 1 strip, kills the battleplate in 1 strip 40 strips later, and kills Thurl in a strip 20 strips later, and then 3 pages into the epilogue we find out tagii died off screen to a killswitch.
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2018-07-22, 06:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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- The Lakes
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
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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2018-07-23, 01:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
The problem is, it took two or three regular lifetimes before Vog's species began to go insane, so that Chekov's Gun isn't going to fire for a good 100 years or more, at least as far as humans are concerned. What makes you think there's going to be a 100 year time skip before the next book?
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2018-07-23, 02:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Ahh, but what about book 21 after this concluding trilogy finishes up?
Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-07-28, 08:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Not fast enough...?
Member of the Giants in the Playground Forum Chapter for the Movement to Reunite Gondwana!
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2018-07-28, 10:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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2018-07-28, 07:03 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
Mark me down as cautiously optimistic, this is the story I've been interested in reading about since we first went to the can full of sky.
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2018-07-28, 08:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
I think I finally understand why so many are aggravated with the last couple books: Howard is trying to tell parallel stories in parallel. Consider the last book versus Massively Parallel; in Massively Parallel he told several stories that were contemporaneous without bouncing between them. Well, we bounced a little with the various "What would Schlock Do?" questions that Thurl fielded, but those were more foreshadowing and foreboding than bouncing between narratives.
In Mandatory Failure, imagine if we just reordered the comics. If we kept everything the same up until the Maxim 39 exploded, then followed the adventures (and misadventures) of the Breath Weapon until they got taken by the Schumaker Levy. Then we flip over to follow the groups that remained in Uuplech. We follow them until their story is resolved. Then we have Puutzo prime show up. Then we see the various things inside the Eina-afa info sphere. Then we see the last couple epilogue strips. I feel like that would be a much more satisfying way to follow the story, at least as it was being posted.
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2018-07-28, 08:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2013
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
I do agree that would help. But I'm also just frustrated with some of the stories in general. I didn't find some them particularly compelling or interesting. I realize Howard was exploring a lot of his themes he's introduced before with immortality etc, as well as setting up more long term arcs. But I said before I would have been much more interested in reading a far more detailed follow up to the 'someone tried to start a civil war' then we wrapped it up off screen. Imagine if instead of the pirate arc and Tagon had to go through the same sequence when hunting down the culprits from civil war arc. Nothing changes in the overall meta, but we could get a lot more information and satisfaction in dealing with those opponents than with a random group of pirates.
Spoiler: Today's ComicI'm going to call foul if everyone is dead just to raise the stakes. If Petey had time to make a meat space comment to Kevin he had time to terraport the cities to random location. Space is big afterall. He can lose control of the generator since that's the narrative function that needs to happen.
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2018-07-29, 01:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Or not, as the case may be. Yeah, I'm with Rockphed here--Howard is juggling too many story balls at once, and when something really interesting looks like it's about to happen, he switches to another POV. If the idea is to build tension in the reader, it isn't working, it's just building frustration instead!
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2018-07-29, 06:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
The comment about Massively Parallel is interesting. The "norm" in story telling is to interweave all the various threads. You see it in TV shows where the A/B plots switch more than a TV switch does. You see it in normal novels where switching 3 or 4 plotlines around to show what's happening at the same time is the norm.
Doing a full treatment of A, and then rewinding to deal with B? Generally only happens when you want to have A and B have a really messy intertwined conclusion.Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-07-29, 07:54 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
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- The Lakes
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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2018-07-29, 10:05 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
Well, that's an encouraging sign. But we'll see what happens from here.
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2018-08-02, 01:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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- Denmark
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Eh - I'm pretty sure the .. andromeda pan'auri, is that the name?! .. have nothing to do with this.
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2018-08-02, 02:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
What makes you so sure? Everyone in-strip is telling us that the target was Petey, and Chinook is out of the picture now. Who else would have the tech and the motivation to do this? I suppose Lota has the capability, but as far as we know he has no reason to do it--not to mention that he would probably know where Petey is and wouldn't need to walk his shots like the culprit here did.
Last edited by factotum; 2018-08-02 at 02:22 AM.
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2018-08-02, 10:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
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- Bristol, UK
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2018-08-02, 10:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2013
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
We did get a "complicated math" hand wave. So supposedly it makes sense to some characters.
Last edited by Ibrinar; 2018-08-02 at 10:56 AM.
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2018-08-02, 12:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
So I'm the only one who thinks it's Petey doing the shooting?
Not that I have any shred of a clue why he'd do that. If I absolutely had to guess, I'd say he's ramping up to getting rid of the competition - some contrieved plot to find and eliminate any AI with the potential to threaten him. Why he'd sacrifice his own cities? Hm, to divert blame, and possibly to enlist the aid of the various organics.
But I'm shooting entirely blind here, obviously. All except for that remark 'tell me more about this timing' and the raised eyebrow.
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2018-08-02, 01:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2018
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
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2018-08-02, 02:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
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2018-08-02, 02:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2017
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Yeah, I don't think Petey is the one doing the shooting. But the only thing that is making me think "Pa'anuri" is that they are the only named group that could reasonably do it, and the other option would be "unmentioned group we never heard of before"
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2018-08-02, 02:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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- The Lakes
Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Sorley and Kevin both reached the same conclusion about the Andromedan Pa'anuri "walking their shots" independently.
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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2018-08-02, 11:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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- Denmark
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
'No no - this is not a trap. Please come without armor, weapons or ships. You're my oldest bestest friends.'
Cause protagonists never make good villains - especially not towards the very end of a series.
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2018-08-02, 11:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2006
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- Maryland
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme
Nah, just is "Remember Zoojack? Well, this is just like this, but now they can shoot at us from the next galaxy over"
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2018-08-03, 01:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme