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[Egan_BW]

ava's demon, latest update

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At first I noticed that the cowsheep in Odin's dream has a square pupil, the same as Odin. Then I noticed that all the leaves, fruits, and trees filling each panel's borders also have square patterns. Practically every living thing in the memory has a square pattern somewhere on it, animal or vegetable.
That could just be a stylistic motif for Odin's planet, but I theorize that all life on that planet, including the humans, was artificially made or modified. Maybe the square used to be a company logo, but it's started to fade as the marked organisms naturally evolve.

[Zangi]

When your priorities do not align with your friends.

[Arcvasti]

Jeez this latest strip is getting pretty tense.

[Imic]

This is goin’ somewhere, and wherever thta place might happen to be, it’s probably Gil’s fault.

[Rolan7]

It certainly is going a place.  Fortunately the next page will have simplifying things, soon.

Meanwhile (heh) in Schlock Mercenary, the current story seems to be about one-way mind uploads again.  A concept which has always been fascinating to me.  I saw it explored in two different short stories, a while ago. 

One was a lot like this:  FTL was only practical for minds, so people would be well-payed to send "themselves" off to work on an offworld colony.  Like the earlier "downlifts" in Schlock Mercenary, this often resulted in dissatisfied copies and cheerful "originals".

Another was someone simply copying himself into a simulated reality to test his craftsmanship.  Repeatedly.  Many, many times.  You see, there was a hardwired option for simulated sentients to "opt-out", and for some reason all his clones got pissy and terminated themselves, rather than help.  The story starts after he disables that option.

Spoiler: The twist of a very old pulp sci-fi story I have no idea how to find (click to show/hide)

He didn't disable the option, he took an amnesia drug and put on an interface.  He simulated the experience of being simulated (with the help of his girlfriend, who played the "real" him in the scenario)

Anyway I'm excited to see this explored some more.  The war for Earth was one of my favorite storylines.  I like all the extreme-stakes precursor stuff, but it's starting to feel tiring and slow.  This story moves that plot along, but by exploring a very creepy concept on a personal level.

[Egan_BW]

The war for Earth was one of my favorite storylines.  I like all the extreme-stakes precursor stuff, but it's starting to feel tiring and slow.

You know that things are getting real when the arc where the sol system almost got plunged into civil war by a hostile foreign power hacking thousands of people's brains is one of the lower stakes stories.


Ah, but I do like the implications of sci-fi universes where there's FTL information travel but not FTL matter travel. And equally I like the implications of a universe where you have FTL matter but not FTL information.

[smjjames]

It certainly is going a place.  Fortunately the next page will have simplifying things, soon.

Meanwhile (heh) in Schlock Mercenary, the current story seems to be about one-way mind uploads again.  A concept which has always been fascinating to me.  I saw it explored in two different short stories, a while ago. 

One was a lot like this:  FTL was only practical for minds, so people would be well-payed to send "themselves" off to work on an offworld colony.  Like the earlier "downlifts" in Schlock Mercenary, this often resulted in dissatisfied copies and cheerful "originals".

Another was someone simply copying himself into a simulated reality to test his craftsmanship.  Repeatedly.  Many, many times.  You see, there was a hardwired option for simulated sentients to "opt-out", and for some reason all his clones got pissy and terminated themselves, rather than help.  The story starts after he disables that option.

Spoiler: The twist of a very old pulp sci-fi story I have no idea how to find (click to show/hide)

He didn't disable the option, he took an amnesia drug and put on an interface.  He simulated the experience of being simulated (with the help of his girlfriend, who played the "real" him in the scenario)

Anyway I'm excited to see this explored some more.  The war for Earth was one of my favorite storylines.  I like all the extreme-stakes precursor stuff, but it's starting to feel tiring and slow.  This story moves that plot along, but by exploring a very creepy concept on a personal level.

Not sure why the Oafans can't send a copy of one of their own as I thought the Oafans were the ones who wanted to ask questions of the unnamed species inhabiting the worldship. I'd probably also have tried to contact the worldship by hypernode first both to see if they're still alive and to prevent any negative reactions from suddenly showing up.

Incidentially, I'm also not sure what they can get out of them that they can't via hypernode. Sure, it might be out of range of Petey's energy budget, but the fact that it's one way implies that they would be able to get information back. So, either Howard is doing it for the sake of story, or the Oafans have other motives/goals here.

[Rolan7]

The Very Dangerous Array has grown up so much (':
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-03-10

[Egan_BW]

Oh yeah, we do still have a specific thread for Schlock Mercenary.

[Karnewarrior]

New Ava's Demon update.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So, blueboy is confirmed for the Big Gay, surprising basically nobody. More importantly though, he seems to have some kind of cousin or something back at the HQ, or at least someone with a similar look, and that person is with someone with a Demon. Wonder who this girl is...

[Telgin]

I'm pretty late to the party here and I see it got some discussion earlier already, but I started reading Freefall recently.  I burned through about 1100 of the strips over the course of a few days, and I'm surprised by just how much is left to go.  No idea if it's still being updated, or at what point they started making colored versions.

The humor gets a bit formulaic at times, but it's still pretty enjoyable.

[scourge728]

It is, in fact, being updated, 3 times a week, every week actually

[Telgin]

Wow, that would certainly explain how there are so many strips already.  The art is simple, but it still seems like that would take a ton of time, so the artist has my respect.

[Telgin]

Double post, but it's been a month so I think it's fine.  And the discussion of Freefall was ages ago, but that's also fine.

I thought the comic got way more interesting somewhere around the ~1800 or 2000th strip, where Florence went back to Ecosystems Unlimited to try to deal with the robot problem.  I'll avoid major spoilers in the remote but still conceivable chance that someone else here wants to read it one day but hasn't yet, but I thought the way they portrayed Florence as a AI was really thought provoking.  The fact that she has hardwired behavioral limits and can be controlled much like the robots in ways was actually pretty disturbing.  It's occasionally played for laughs, but I think the comic actually does a good job of subtly showing how terrifying that kind of control over a person is, and could conceivably be applied to humans.

On a lighter note, while Sam is kind of one note throughout the first half of the comic, his antics are actually pretty funny during this part of the comic.

[Mephisto]

It's been another handful of months.

I'm not really big on webcomics. Used to follow a few. Found a new one linked in a Facebook ad of all places.

Home Sweet Home is pretty good. I keep getting this feeling of Tokyo Ghoul meets Parasyte or Deadman Wonderland, but toned down significantly.

Some questionable choices were made, however. The first quarter or so of each update consists of the last several panels of the previous and there is entirely too much dead space.

It's not done yet but updates appear to be very regular.