Messages

31

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 45: discussion

« on: January 20, 2016, 07:28:36 pm »

The footprints could be anyone, such as that invisible guy that stopped Maytag from cutting off her breasts. At the least he's a top candidate due to being known to make himself invisible and watch important things, as well as claiming to work for the appropriate nation.

32

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 45: discussion

« on: January 19, 2016, 04:36:09 pm »

You seem to think flimsy or complicated or unusual for the story should make it exceedingly unlikely, and go with the standard explanation. This explanation could be completely right, but hopefully there are some alterations that spice it up. I'm simply taking an agnostic stance while recognizing that it's hard to take Qtalda's explanation seriously. Anyway, asking why Suspiria did things when she's been physically and even mentally altered (either her memories were altered or unaltered (with alteration likely possible alongside this due to actual unalteration being provably possible due to occurring) when she was monsterized) is somewhat meaningless, as she could have reasons now that she would not have before, even if she believed the same information before.

33

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 45: discussion

« on: January 16, 2016, 06:55:25 pm »

I agree that it's flimsy, but there would still be some chance that Suspiria wanted "genuine" loyalty/other from Crest based on lies more than she wanted to just turn Crest into a puppet directly. That or she wants to use him somehow where such mind control would be discovered, undermining her plan.

34

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 45: discussion

« on: January 16, 2016, 05:42:59 pm »

http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=2301

35

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 45: discussion

« on: January 16, 2016, 01:35:25 am »

Well, I don't know how the group formed but I assumed Crest knew Qtalda was part of its formation. Qtalda did directly meet with Crest (or good enough) to give her side of the story, after all.

36

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 45: discussion

« on: January 15, 2016, 05:54:32 pm »

Did you think the group spontaneously formed or what?

37

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 45: discussion

« on: January 08, 2016, 07:45:20 pm »

I agree that Qtalda should be much less trustworthy to Crest than monsterized Suspiria, who did still at least appear to have reasons for revenge in all instances of what she did, plus appeared to leave her choice of living up to Crest via the healing sword.

I hope Crest is acting or at least considers that possibility that this group is full of shit (either directly and/or by being misled by Qtalda, patriotism, or whatever) even if Suspiria may also be a liar or mistaken. It's not really possible to tell because he really has no reason to confront Suspiria anyway, so whether he's ruled out the things either side has said has little relevance to what he's saying now. I hope he gets more of a plan out of this group, since it would be a bit sad if they didn't even have a false plan to feed him and just hoped he was a total dope that would just randomly talk to Suspiria while they did "nothing in particular". Of course they could simply threaten Crest instead of telling him a plan, but this might not be the best once he does talk to Suspiria, since he could just tell her he's a hostage to people that want to kill (or stop; he can say whatever) her.

38

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 45: discussion

« on: January 07, 2016, 08:47:51 pm »

Technically you could say that there's no reason Suspiria's defensive spell had to reflect rather than merely block the spell, as "normally" it is much easier to block or deflect than to reflect (and Qtalda's spell was biological rather than energy-based). Yes, it makes it up to Qtalda whether all of the Conclave except for her die, but Suspiria theoretically chose to give that choice to Qtalda, expecting her to take it, or at least making it easy to retaliate without looking as bad to Crest. Naturally this did result in Halcyon's death, which wasn't "fair" if the situation was in accordance with how the Conclave members were acting. Incidentally, the situation ended up being pretty convenient to Qtalda if Qtalda wanted to take over sole leadership of the Conclave, so it's possible she expected the result or cooperated with Suspiria to whatever degree.

Yes, Crest saw things...I wouldn't trust Qtalda and friends now if I was him. And of course they've decided that Qtalda is more trustworthy than the situation Crest observed (and/or more trustworthy than Crest himself), without establishing why to Crest in any convincing manner that we know of. One could just say Suspiria looks like a monster now (although as you said she didn't do anything noteworthy outside of destroying the Conclave), but Qtalda is pretty weird herself, too. Maybe the group is patriotic or something.

Qtalda is obviously a big question mark from Crest's perspective. He had no relationship with her anyway (I think), so he really has no reason to believe her or care about her. I assume they just wanted to convince Crest that helping the group was morally right for him to do (since we haven't seen them force him to join him, although he still might be worried about their response if he refused them), but clearly he feels extremely uncommitted, so they did a poor job (which makes sense given how little evidence we've seen them give him).

Anyway, she could be using another disguise, yes. I don't know what the plan is, but the default plan in this situation would be killing Suspiria. Crest shouldn't be very likely to actively help with this without more proof than I've seen, so using him as a distraction (with words to and/or "betrayal" of Suspiria) is the only main idea right now. Unfortunately due to high magic very little is reliable, so almost anything could happen.

bulmabriefs114, her memories could be altered in a controlled or uncontrolled manner, which is why there's even a reason Crest can entertain the side of the story Qtalda and friends gave him.

EDIT: In response to page six, either Crest is a good actor or he's a bit slow, unless of course there was lots of off panel proof that we didn't see or at least proof that I don't remember.

39

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 45: discussion

« on: January 06, 2016, 06:05:13 pm »

We don't actually know why she might've wanted Crest to stay on her side...it could even just be sentiment. Leaving him behind for an unknown period of time doesn't really invalidate Crest mattering to her (and clearly she wanted him to be on and/or demonstrate being on her side when she set it up such that he'd have to use (or appear to have to use) the sword on her, which implies that he does matter to her). If she could be altered to think that the Conclave killed her parents then it's possible that instead or additionally she manipulated the Conclave members to act as and say what she wished (perhaps excepting Halcyon for whatever reason). Her killing (you mean she didn't murder them; she did kill them unless that was all faked) the council "illegitimately" would be based on the idea that Qtalda found her parents, who are alive, which is one possibility.

I do agree that Crest probably can't do anything, since if Suspiria knew her parents were alive then Crest telling her wouldn't help (and could backfire), while otherwise she'd be unlikely to trust in Crest's reasons for believing Qtalda and friends (and this could count as a betrayal of sorts on Crest's part to Suspiria). Crest doesn't actually have significant proof (that I know of) that these are Suspiria's parents, and if she was altered to not remember them as they are now then he's unlikely to have anything convincing to say. Anyway, hunting down someone that killed most of the leadership of a powerful country is nothing surprising. Whether or not what she did was "wrong" doesn't make such a response unlikely in the least, especially when it's "monster" Suspiria's word against leader Qtalda's. The main issue is just that they apparently have no plan (although perhaps this is a lie), instead just gambling on Crest saying "something" to Suspiria (perhaps as a distraction if they in fact have a real plan).

40

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 45: discussion

« on: January 05, 2016, 04:35:24 pm »

I suppose if one assumes that Suspiria is unreliable due to having been altered into a "monster" and one accepts that she's a level four sorcerer (or at least very exceptionally powerful now) one could assume that it's possible or even likely that she physically manipulated everyone but Halcyon (if not also him), or created puppets of them after having disposed of them (in Qtalda's case only disposing of an "avatar" by mistake (assuming the current Qtalda is an independent being!)) in order to convince Crest to trust her in a concretely demonstrable way (that may also reinforce his commitment to her) by committing to using the sword on her (perhaps there was no need for this either, and thus no physical risk to Suspiria, if it was all a staged scenario). I don't find this especially likely at least in whole from a story standpoint, but if Crest reset his opinion on the basis of being unable to trust in Suspiria's nature given that it may have been altered by a large amount by the mysterious Thin Man, it could make sense.

41

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 44: Discussion

« on: December 31, 2015, 05:42:48 pm »

Well, you might have a bit of a problem once you take off the flotation device (if the third phase even lets you know you have it on) and have to swim downwards in the process of tackling phase three (or possibly phase four). Also, once you get through you are underwater. You would have a communication method for draining the water after finishing phase three, but maybe you'd have drowned by then.

42

Flipside Discussion / Re: XMAS Special 2015: Discussion

« on: December 18, 2015, 03:58:17 am »

Was it easier to get and set up that huge meat grinder than it would have been to just grind normally? ;p

43

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 44: Discussion

« on: December 04, 2015, 06:47:57 pm »

On panel one here it looks like the top of the entrance to phase one is higher than the bottom of the exit to phase three. In that case it seems that one could just put a beam between those two points (probably slightly outside of the latter point if not both) and connect someone to a roller or similar connected to the beam such that they simply are pulled past phase three by gravity. Personally I would have it be that anyone that cheated was simply teleported back to before the start of phase one.

44

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 44: Discussion

« on: November 24, 2015, 02:37:32 pm »

It MIGHT be the person to Corona's right that she's blushing and looking away from in panel seven, whom she calls master. ;p

45

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 44: Discussion

« on: November 19, 2015, 04:13:44 pm »

I'm trying to imagine how the logistics of that would work.  First of all, how would you get the 50 foot battering ram inside the door?  Let's assume that the walls are not breakable.  In that case, you couldn't possibly manuever such a huge battering ram into that corridor.  And that's not even getting into how people would be able to hold up the weight while walking through the first 2 phases.

On the other hand if the walls *were* breakable, this is possible.  But in that case, there are actually easier ways to cheat. 

Just have a sufficient supply of interlocking ram pieces and you're good, right? ;p Surely there are ways to engineer something.

Interesting, I hadn't thought of this idea.  But there's a couple problems with it.  First of all, you'd need a ridiculous amount of people, several hundred at least.  Finding several hundred volunteers who are all capable of getting through the first 2 phases, and willing to put such a plan in action would be nearly impossible.  So you'd have to force people in.  That means they wouldn't be practiced at getting through stage 1, which means that it's going to be very difficult to force them in.  And stage 2 won't be any easier.  That means every single person you try to "force" in will be kicking and screaming to push the other way.

The problem is that in order for that plan to work, you need people who are trying to walk forward.  Otherwise you're just going to have a "traffic jam."  A better idea is a conga line of willing participants all pushing each other forward.  It's still extremely difficult to get enough people who can pass phase 2, seeing as how there is a small number of people who have ever done that.  But supposing you had enough people... there's still the point that phase 3 can change the illusion to account for outside things you bring in.  So, hypothetically, the illusion could be something that would make the person at the front of the conga line decide to immediately push back.  Now, a single person might be pushed forward by a conga line of 12 people, but once more of the conga line enters phase 3, the force pushing back will be stronger, and the force pushing forward will be weaker.  That means you're going to end up having a traffic jam anyway.

But still, the conga line is a good idea that I hadn't thought of until just now, so I might have to mention that at some point.

I guess your idea is that the world doesn't have many people that can pass the first two phases, regardless of Lehm's effectively infinite ability to pay them? Anyway, you could do various things to aid or "encourage" people to move forwards instead of backwards. The basic idea is just flooding the area on the basis of it being a fixed area that can be filled. I assumed this wouldn't work because it's cheesy and is generally not considered an option in scenarios like this in stories. I think if you engineer something or can communicate from outside phase one (and there is a limited area with no limit to the number of entities (human or not) you can send in) you can force things...in some extreme example you could simply start flooding the room with acid once you can't push any more people in...if they can perceive this they will run forward, right?

46

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 44: Discussion

« on: November 18, 2015, 08:18:11 pm »

I considered physically forcing people to "pass", but I consider the same level and kind of cheese that just shoving more people in is (after all, you could just shove city after city of people in there until someone passes by virtue of there being no other physical option), so I assume that it is not a valid solution. If it is then I guess the people in the story have a mental block regarding this rather than the story having the "mental block". It would be nice if it was covered, but I'm used to stories skipping dull, technical options that almost never actually work in stories, so I won't really hold it against the story if it doesn't come up.

47

Flipside Discussion / Re: Mistake Thread

« on: October 26, 2015, 07:09:02 pm »

I try to ignore extra commas in most cases because they can simply represent minor pauses in dialogue the characters may make, but panel five here reads "So don't hold back, anymore.". This also could be fine, but it's especially odd to me that Maytag wouldn't say the whole thing as a single thought, instead of briefly pausing to decide to add "anymore" for clarification or emphasis. Like I said, it could be fine, but "So don't hold back anymore." is more natural to me.

Panel five here reads "occured" instead of "occurred". Panel seven on the same page reads "self awareness" instead of "self-awareness".

Panel eight here reads "breath" instead of "breathe". Panel nine the same page mixes using "these" and "this" to refer to the same thing. There are various ways to change this if one wanted to, but I'm not saying Lehm necessarily would think of this in the moment when continuing his thought.

Panel three here reads "you can brings things" instead of "you can bring things". Panel four on the same page reads "written to yourself..!" instead of "written to yourself...!" (I'm just pointing it out in case it was unintentional; do whatever.). Panel eight on the same page has Corona missing the black area by her left eye.

Panel one here reads "There's two problems with taking in a message." instead of "There are two problems with taking in a message.".

Panel six here has lowercase text like the original note does, but the replacement text has "come see me" lacking punctuation such as a period or semicolon before "we need to talk." (do whatever; just mentioning). Perhaps more importantly, the same panel seems to spell Bernadette's name "Bernodette", where the "a" that should be in her name resembles an "o" much better than it resembles the "a" in "talk" on the same note within that panel. I realize this could be a question of the proximity of the "d" after it, though, but at least at this zoom it's unclear that it should be an "a".

Panel five here reads "illsuion" instead of "illusion". Panel six on the same page reads "illusary" instead of "illusory".

Panel two here reads "dilligently" instead of "diligently".

Panel one here reads "She's right Corona." instead of "She's right, Corona.". Panel four on the same page reads "furthe" instead of "further".

Panel eight here reads "it's own!" instead of "its own!".

Panel two here reads "it's own." instead of "its own.".

Panel two here reads "There's something important we forgot to address, isn't there Corona?" instead of "There's something important we forgot to address, isn't there, Corona?".

Panels two and three here read "phase 3", while panels four and five read "phase two", which is inconsistent in that one phase uses a numeral while the other spells out the number.

(I'm going to skip mentioning intermission mistakes unless you say you want them, Brion.)

Panel three here reads "with out search" instead of "with our search".

Panel seven here reads "Lie, why are we doing this?" instead  "Like, why are we doing this?".

Panel three here reads "Mr Glyph" instead of "Mr. Glyph".

Panel one here reads "let's" instead of "lets".

48

Flipside Discussion / Re: Mistake Thread

« on: October 21, 2015, 05:33:47 pm »

Panel three here reads "bath-house" instead of "bathhouse". Panel five on the same page reads "comprimise" instead of "compromise".

49

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 44: Discussion

« on: October 10, 2015, 08:38:36 pm »

I would try writing down a message to myself or practicing lucid dreaming. I assume you can't pass just by sending more people in there at once.

50

Flipside Discussion / Re: Mistake Thread

« on: October 02, 2015, 09:18:11 pm »

Yeah, it is a bit odd that it's pointing to what seems to be Lehm's right hand while Corona is in between in the 2D sense. I guess that's why the pointer is much lower than Corona's mouth or head, though.

The last panel here reads "The million gold, plus the new dimensional bag already more than made up for it.". I would suggest "The million gold plus the new dimensional bag already more than made up for it." or "The million gold, plus the new dimensional bag, already more than made up for it.". Also, there is possibly a double space before this line, after "But that didn't matter now.".

51

Flipside Discussion / Re: Mistake Thread

« on: September 30, 2015, 11:50:43 pm »

46 is a double page, representing 46-47, so the next page after it is 48.

52

Flipside Discussion / Re: Mistake Thread

« on: September 22, 2015, 12:24:18 am »

I'm not sure if you're mixing responses to me and Brion together, as I have no official involvement in Flipside and thus wouldn't be anyone to truly "figure out" anything. For the most part in this thread I just find spelling errors he makes (I'm terrible at finding art mistakes in comparison). I didn't mention "excruciating" because Enkida mentioned it before I read the page and could have mentioned it myself.

53

Flipside Discussion / Re: Mistake Thread

« on: September 19, 2015, 03:36:05 am »

Well, I typed a lot in response, but it amounts to far too much highly subjective evaluation of what Maytag said and how it relates to the rest of what she said in that speech box or even to what she said in the other panels' speech boxes for it to be worth Brion reading. As I said in the first place Maytag could simply speak that way, and to expound upon that it could simply be that she spoke that way at that time rather than speaking or meaning to speak that way at all times.

Your alternative ("One moment you feel like you're in an oven; the next moment, you feel like you're in a blizzard.") to what Maytag said uses a semicolon, which I rejected out of hand when making my post for being "unnatural" speech, especially when it's hard to convey that you used a semicolon to a listener, which is the context I am using for Maytag's speech to her audience of characters in the story. I don't know why you put a comma after "the next moment" in your alternative, either. Your example needed no comma after "as if to say", nor would anyone ever normally put a comma after ", and", to relate back to conjunctions.

Anyway, your example (The cold ice blanketed the frozen tundra, as if to say that nothing in life would ever be warm again.) doesn't work well for me at all, because you changed so many things so greatly. You decided to change what Maytag used to "as if to say", and then followed "as if to say" with figurative speech meant to enhance the first part of the sentence, which is definitely not what Maytag was doing, as she was merely descriptively listing multiple occurrences. These occurrences contrasted with each other, but were nonetheless independent from each other. Your example instead contained one occurrence (and hence no listing; Maytag was actually listing occurrences for the bulk of that page) followed by technically unnecessary (from the perspective of relating occurrences) figurative language. At best I could relate your example to either part of the sentence (each having an occurrence with a level of figurative enhancement, although less figurative and more descriptive relative to your example), but not to the complete sentence, which would make the conjoining unrelated, as this comes after a complete part of Maytag's sentence, but in the middle of your example. I also have never seen "the next moment" used under Maytag's circumstances, so it's definitely not going to feel natural to me unless you can make it make sense using more directly comparable example sentences than the one you gave.

EDIT: I still think your example was inadequate, but perhaps the gist of things is that "the next moment" is similar to just saying "then", but she didn't actually say "then", so I don't think of it the same way. I avoided suggesting replacing anything with "then" in the first place, too. It just feels too awkward to me in some sense to treat "the next moment" as if it was "then". I guess you can get away with listing things with just "then", but it's awkward to me to just let anything that functions similarly count as being "then". "Then" itself in this sense is an adverb, but thinking of the phrase "the next moment" as actually being an adverb is a bit much for me. How abstracted from the normal way of speaking can one get before something becomes "unnatural"? For example, would it be fine to say "One moment {}, another moment {}.", too? It gets weird at some point!

54

Flipside Discussion / Re: Mistake Thread

« on: September 16, 2015, 11:24:13 pm »

Panel four here reads "One moment you feel like you're in an oven, the next moment you're in a blizzard.". Maybe this is how Maytag speaks (so it's not necessarily a mistake), but I would personally say "and the next moment you're in a blizzard." or "and the next moment you feel like you're in a blizzard." (the latter replacement mirrors the first part of the full sentence).

55

Flipside Discussion / Re: Mistake Thread

« on: August 29, 2015, 07:13:23 am »

Panel four here reads "Would honest win them over?" instead of "Would honesty win them over?" or "Would being honest win them over?".

Panel six here reads "body-type" instead of "body type". I don't know the context for "body-type", though, just that the words in our world aren't connected by a hyphen.

56

Flipside Discussion / Re: Maytag's (Completely Inconsistant) Personality

« on: August 12, 2015, 08:49:45 pm »

Regarding reinventing oneself to become more likeable, it would probably be easier for a young, very attractive woman such as Maytag than for most people in similar situations. Especially when you're also sexually open to many more people than usual.

57

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 43: Discussion

« on: July 28, 2015, 03:02:18 am »

The scene you're thinking of is in chapter 11: http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=407

Younger Bern looks so adorable here.

58

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 43: Discussion

« on: June 22, 2015, 07:20:04 pm »

I believe that Flipside has had uncovered breasts in the past. I couldn't say exactly when, though. The only thing that comes to mind right now is Maytag bathing with Regina.

59

Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 43: Discussion

« on: June 15, 2015, 05:33:52 pm »

Bern in her 'crime' did not hurt anyone, did not kill anyone, and only intimidated the possibility of force ...Only to get a professional healer to heal on their agreed upon time that they said they would wait for her to acquire the funds to save a man's life...  AND simply because Bern refused to be their sex toy or maim herself or torture/kill another person ALL for their Sick pleasure... they decided to have a hit-squad of killers brutally murder her in a arena spectacle that they intended to make money off both with admission fees and side bets!

Well, we know that Bern probably wouldn't have followed through on her threat of force, or at least not to a maiming/killing degree, but realistically the law has to take threats of force very seriously (this is no comment on the specific consequences actually enforced upon Bern), or it becomes easy to just threaten people (which is very frightening and coercive, as from the victim's perspective they're in grave danger) and then just claim one wouldn't have followed through on it (even if one would have, something the victims have to consider).

Also, as I recall it she didn't threaten just to heal him on time, but to heal him for free (or perhaps (or perhaps not from the healer's legitimate perspective) she would've paid the pittance she could, but this makes little difference). It may sound nice to force free (to all but the healer) health care, but things may seem a bit different if one is the healer with theoretically limited ability to heal per day (or other period of time), and someone comes along and demands that you comply in healing someone for nothing or a pittance. Even if you had lots of healing per day the fact that it's a job implies that the overall market for healing is not unlimited or nearly unlimited. So either it's a good job (that you invested a lot of your time and/or money (even if just via opportunity cost) into, for which you could reasonably expect a good return on, lest you be swindled) and the thief is taking a lot of your money by either eating resources you needed to work that day (or other period of time) or at least by heavily diluting the market by encouraging more people to try to take your healing by force (which would result in a massive, probably catastrophic income loss if successful), or it's not a good job and you need every bit of money you can get, in which case you most especially can't afford to lose resources or lose your market by supporting the idea that healing can simply be taken if the would-be recipient just gets violent (and/or claims to really need it and be unable to pay the market price, etc.).

Incidentally, even a generous healer probably couldn't afford to do background checks on everyone (that the customers would ultimately have to pay for, no less) to determine if they really can pay, and if so how much, especially if the healing is needed immediately or quickly (which would also tend to be when the healing was the most difficult and/or resource-/time-consuming and customer-expensive). So even if you try to enforce such generosity as a moral upon healers in general it can still be wildly impractical and ruin their ability to maintain a steady enough income, especially in relation to their investment into becoming a healer in the first place (I assume we all prefer having market-priced healers to having no healers, and the latter is a consequence of the job becoming a poor investment).

Basically, if the government won't pay for healing and the government won't protect healers from being forced to heal at below market prices, healers will find their situations highly tenuous and likely will leave for better governed lands (changing jobs is possible, but less attractive given your investing into becoming a healer, especially if you can't hide the fact that you used to be a healer well, as then people will simply hit you up for healing on your new job) or will choose to not become healers in the first place, as it would be seen as a job for suckers that don't mind being robbed. In either case healing would become rather hard to come by if you lacked the wealth to personally hire and guard a healer, for personal or "general" (very expensive) use. Obviously the government is leaving some things to be desired, but unless there's reason to believe that effectively abolishing healing would push enough relevant people over the edge to successfully and without excessive cost overthrow the government and replace it with a superior enough one (I believe it's unknown to us whether such violent revolution is truly possible, as well as whether the new government would be better or worse, and by how much) it would seem better to keep the market for healing functional.

60

Flipside Discussion / Re: Mistake Thread

« on: June 15, 2015, 04:50:01 pm »

Panel one here reads "you new" instead of "your new".

Panel five here reads "simulteneously" instead of "simultaneously".

Panel four here reads "re-inventing" instead of "reinventing".

Panel five here reads "anamoly" instead of "anomaly".