[1271] Few Completions, You're no innocent.

catching up with the others, I really like the interpretation of hime-kubiwa-kamome: Miho came to live when the fans of the character of Erica remained without her...

everything connects nicely

Your theory also lines up with Binary Tears' long held theory that Miho is an AI, known as Moh within the Endgames environment, come alive. Without further elaboration from Fred, the 'support' part and your interpretation could be seen as validation of BT's theory; if you want interpretable evidence, the hardware in disarray in 1248: Noclip could mean a number of things, or some hidden symbolism ... or just exactly what it says on the tin (that's a TVtropes hellhole, beware of time-sucking website!).

Edit: (below)

What a creative error. Still an error, because Mr. Hardass Policeman said : <Are you trying to tell me you had nothing to do with the forceful removal of the subject from that analogue support facility??>. Nobody removed Ping forcefully from that 'hospital unit'. The only person literally flung out of her hiding hole was Miho.

But yes, my money is set on Erika for trying to bail him out. The other, less probable candidate, is Kumakuma-san, Sayuri*. We have no info on which police branch tried to sort the Rickrolling Disaster at the CoE, and how much they know about the causes, so Inspector Sonoda seems less likely to intervene.

*my reasons are of the ho-hum, bullshit intuition variety. Piro confided in no one before going to the hospital, because it was a private errand about a private issue. And Yuki left before he came in. He's truly down a rabbit hole, with no dependents in the know.

This post has been edited by wordwarrior on Jun 15 2010, 08:28 AM

Poor Piro, being questioned by the Tokyo police about Ping...I bet Erika and Largo are going to break him out of there...

Well I am not too sure she is really an AI, I was thinking that people believing in her bring her to life (i.e. more metaphysical).

In that sense she is the real thing because fans are not fan of her because she impersonates a character and brings it to life, but she *is* the character the fan are attracted to (and thus her huge power and dangerousness).
Still there are hints that she has partially outgrown her own character (or at least what people see in her).

In any case not yet enough data to really solve this (will there ever be?).

wordwarrior: "...what it says on the tin" you mean in Few Completions? "puke here"? or craftmans thing? In any case I fear I have missed the reference, but maybe it is better, I have lost already too much time on this

You happy soul. SD people trope-roll each other often. It's an in-house type of trolling, sending people to this time sink, which takes common items shared by TV products ('tropes'), slaps a name on them, and tries to attach examples from every type of media you can think of.

'Exactly what it says on the tin' is taken to mean there is no hidden meaning, and the title literally describes the content (yeah, what a letdown )

... and it serves exactly the purpose stated. Please notice it is marked in English. They see more English-speaking 'clients' than local, trespassing at the 'analogue farm', or just haunting hospitals in search of sick, sad little girls (like in their games).

This post has been edited by wordwarrior on Jun 15 2010, 09:08 AM

He he, thanks for the answer wordwarrior

I knew about tvtropes, but I had interpreted what you had said as "what it says on the tin" i.e literally (recursion!), thus I was looking for a tin, and in this strip there was a tin with "puke here"...

Quite so. There's a definite progression with appropriate time delays from what Fred realizes, figures out, and decides upon, to giving overviews of select concepts to the inner circle as a sanity check of sorts, to the carefully plotted enigmatic slow reveal in the comic itself.

There is something of an effort to encourage people away from the "copy" idea, Fred has said plenty of times in the Fredarting chat and such that it's wrong. Of course most of what he says in there is transparent bullshitting anyway, so I don't really blame folks for not believing him. Needless to say the comic itself will eventually confirm/deny. Honestly I don't think it's a terribly big deal, it's not tremendously worse than any of the other theories we've had over the years. Though when I can point out the blind alleys as such using an objective basis I am happy to do so. YMMV on whether that is helping or being a killjoy.

As for Character Analogue, of course two words isn't much of an explanation, nor do I think it is meant to be. There is a larger definition that isn't the sort of thing that's easily captured in so few words, especially not without blowing the enigmatic slow reveal. Also, as is often the case with Fred, things are constantly developing and crystallizing right up until he puts the dialogue to the art.

Actually I was attempting to point out that people here were applying a misleadingly odd usage to the word. A straight reading out of the dictionary for analogue won't give you the full story of what Fred's doing to be sure, but claiming meanings for it that it does not possess won't even give you the partial story.

Hell, technically I'm not even saying some sort of "copy" theory is wrong, just that the word analogue does not itself support it the way people wanted it to. It's fine to have theories that may turn out to be wrong, but misapplying things as supportive evidence doesn't help the process, it just makes things harder to sort out later on.

Cringe inducing posts, that's our Invisigoth.

Ah, but that would be telling.

Well, Invisigoth lacks subtlety sometimes. Well, a lot of times.

That's a tricky game to play, though. Sure, in the detective show the guy they finger for the murder ten minutes into the show is definitely not the guy. We know from tropes that things are more complicated than they appear because that's more dramatic. But if every single little thing worked that way things would be too schizophrenic. Occam's Razor has to apply in some cases at least.

Besides, just as the simple things are so often revealed to be complicated, the things that seem the most complicated often turn out to be quite simple once the missing pieces and proper contexts are revealed. The TV Tropes site itself shows how genre savvy can work against you as much as it can for you.

And then there's the short story I read once where the punchline at the end involved Shakespeare brought to the present via a time machine and failing a course on his own plays.

There truly are certain concepts that Fred ponders about the nature of fans and their relationships to the things they are fans of, that he wants us to ponder too. So he must get them across to the reader in a way that is correctly interpreted. The main flaw, as always, is the pace of the work, the interpretations are flowing before the thoughts are fully set down in the pages. He can only judge on the fly how well he is doing, the final measure will not come until things are finished. Of course this is one of the major purposes of the "inner circle", as a test audience for the concepts and the plot points as methods of conveying them.

I have not read the Fredarting chat logs, so I was unaware of that fact. If Fred himself says it is wrong, that's good enough for me (although as an old-time fan of Babylon 5, I know the great JMS loved using the newsgroups to distract fans from important points so that he could, in his words, "sneak up behind fans and hit them in the head with a 2X4"). Then you go and say it's transparent bullshitting.... Give me ambiguity or give me something else!

Heck, I have no problem with Invisigoth. I also have no problem being wrong. Just a warning though, if my "screwball" MMT (Multiple Miho Theory) does, by some odd chance, turn out to be right, I'm gonna be insufferable (just kidding... although I'm sure some people already consider me insufferable).

Oh, naturally. That's why I brought it up. Occam's Razor is best applied to science, although it does have a place in literature as well. The statement of Occam's Razor that I have heard most often is "All things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the best." It isn't a law (scientific or otherwise) though, and there is something to be said for complexity. If we could all easily figure out everything that is going to happen, there's no reason to keep reading. Shakespeare's "Much Ado about Nothing" has an incredibly complex plot, but is one of my favorites of his plays. Often art is in a direct contradiction of simplicity... that's why there are so many instruments in a symphony orchestra. The wikipedia page for Occam's Razor has some pretty good quotes in the Anti-Razor section, such as Crabtree's Bludgeon ('No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated.') and a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Who would have imagined that the girl who ends up nailing Piro in the head with a coffee pot would end up becoming his girlfriend?

Agreed. I'm working from incomplete data, and as I've pointed out, my theory could easily be blown out of the water at any time. I tend to avoid applying TV Tropes because in my opinion they're either irrelevant at best and an insult to the author / artist / creator at worst. If something works for your story, I say do it and let the TV Tropes website go to hell. Tropes are essentially cliches, but cliches come about because there is some truth in them. For example, the whole "Taking a Level in Badass" trope. I've seen someone pushed too far in the real world and snap (in such a way that it was actually a "Crowning moment in Awesome." It does happen.

Many people thought that Piro "took a level in badass" with 4 simple words (although over the course of the story he's taken a lot more levels than that in my opinion). Why should a fictional character be any less true in his reactions than people in real life? I seriously doubt anyone as talented as Fred feels the need to sit there going over TV Tropes to decide what to do with his characters. Piro reached his limit and took action. We all do that in the real world. TV Tropes is essentially the "Rule 35" of the internet: If you do something creative, people will identify tropes in it. If tropes do not already exist, they will be created for it (Fred's work already gives the name to at least one trope: "Broken Bird").

You're very right on the complexity / simplicity point, but I'm working with the data I have, which is admittedly not as complete as yours since I lack the benefit of knowing where things are going with author granted foreknowledge. That's cool by me.... I really don't want to know until I can see the comics in finished form. As I've said before, I hope I am wrong. If I am, that means that the actual truth will be a surprise. That's also why I don't mind people arguing against my theory, because the more competing theories out there, the less likely that any of us will know exactly where things are really heading. I just can't resist coming up with screwball theories... so please, if one of you does have "Word of God" knowledge that the Multiple Miho Theory is incorrect, let me know and I'll get out the baseball and screwdriver and figure out something else.

Why wouldn't it be the Inspector. His daughter is the one who caused that little fiasco and I doubt that he would allow Piro to take the fall for her actions . I believe that Yuki, realizing just how badly she messed up by acting out of anger rather than love, will confess to her parents that she was responsible for it. (Yes, I do realize her track record.)

As for Sayuri, I think she will be the one who discovers Miho and where she ended up that night.

I don't know if I'd call analogue in American English as common. Although I can see how you (and others) might find it misleading or odd. Because it kind of is. Let's see. A problem is a casual use of the word as a noun is exceedingly vague, likely because in this case it's meant to be a ) vague b ) expressing a concept that's not precise c ) part of a bigger story that's not being dumped upon us all at once d ) etc

Assuming (and it is an assumption) that it isn't meant as in at least some manner of analog in the sense of versus digital -- although it doesn't seem likely that as an American, Fred would have spelt analog as analogue. But assuming not analog/digital, mostly, what do we have in a non "continuously variable physical quantity that can be measured" sense?

Geez, that really nails it down, right?

Perhaps. However, I think of things being described as different than things being shown. Describing is writing it or defining it. (How do you describe blue and red?) While being shown in strip also serves to (or might be able to) describe things, being given numbers of examples (that elements alone really describe nothing much of) in situations between people that show us the nuances and details and ideas can be gathered into a cohesive whole. Which is not the same as simple definitions or descriptions.

I'd more say it's information that hasn't clearly and with enough detail been expanded enough to be demonstrable as to the specifics. But I basically agree with that it hasn't flowed yet. Well, not very fluidly.

I'm not in on exactly what Ray knows or what Ray knows. Well, except what he's said before (and says between your post and this one) about Fred bouncing some things off of various folks from time to time. No matter, it seems clear to me that some here are coming to conclusions not supported by the vagueness of the information we have, regardless of what else I know or he knows or anyone else knows or doesn't.

No, I'd understand, and ask back what she's an analogy for. Now, if you called her an analogue or the real thing and then you vanished, I'd probably try and speak to the cat, or find your notes, or locate whatever you'd been ingesting and take it myself. Unless I had a bunch of MT strips about your cat and its interactions with others, in which case I'd read them without trying to figure things out, and see what impressions I got. Then re-read them again and again until I came up with a logical unified theory as far as I could go with it (as I did) , or until I went insane (as others have done).

All analogue did is further explain what the real thing is. So, we know it's some concept relating to things being like other things sort of kind of like in some way, but not to extent or directionality. But they have a lot of power. Sometimes.

So. She's the real thing, she's an analogue, it's how her story makes people feel, she was in an Analogue Support Facility. We don't understand her motivations or goals, regardless of what's given or hinted at or hidden in the strip (or not). We don't have a proper "Endgames" explanation from her like we do from the other two participants, and we don't know what Piro was going to say to her at the ASF. We do know what she and Yuki talked about, and that she goaded Yuki into taking her to the CoE, perhaps on purpose. It also seems she has planned all of this in some general sense already. (Based upon giving the CoE pass to Kimiko and the Dance of the Evils poster, amongst other things, such as most everything she's done up until now.) When she showed up in person at the Dance of the Evils, we've seen how she affected the bulk of the fans there, which also seems to have affected her deeply as well. Lastly, with no audience to play to, and acting quite differently than we're used to, she went home and then left again because the nutty stalker crazyboy obsessed fans were waiting for her. Oh, and we don't know where Largo and Erika are, and given the nature of the strip, it's unlikely that their further adventures involved wink wink nudge nudge say no more as certain folks around here are no doubt thinking, but rather that they left her off alone for a reason. See, what is it that our hero and heroine of the Miho appearance actually know? In short, see, Miho is the real thing, and.....

Yes. I agree.

As readers? Really, we don't have any rational basis to understand what exactly it was Ed was shooting at, much less what happened to it after. Besides that, we only have his word for it even that the killballs could deal with Miho in the first place! Even more ironic is that he was wrong that he had "killed Miho", especially given he supposedly knows exactly what she is. But what do you expect from somebody that goes after her in the schoolyard even knowing he doesn't have the correct equipment yet, and then has her easily escaping (with a normal human in tow no less) his first attack upon her.

Then it goes downhill from there. So far it's inexplicable as to what Meimi thought was sad, or what she meant by sad. Why Piro's sketch had on the same clothing as what Yuki found. What it was exactly in the chat logs Yuki thought was so wrong (and what else is in the chat logs). Why Piro lied about not knowing where Miho might be, why he let Kimiko guide half of his "explanation" to her, why why why. We also can't explain specifically how or why Miho knew so much about everything going on, and was able to handle everything anyone said or did to her, just plugging along as usual no matter what. And we have no motivations or goals of hers, well at least nothing obvious, consistent and detailed.

Given all that, why would any theory (within reason) about Miho be any better or worse? About "what an analogue is" or "what the real thing does". In other words, "Ed didn't kill Miho" and "The Miho that walked into the killballs was utterly destroyed" could both be true. Or neither could be.

This is also a prime example of why for now, the answer of "She's an analogue" or "She's the real thing" is about as far as we can go. We have to wait for our "enigmatic slow reveal" to play itself out!

Yeah, I also hate not having the ability to determine causality, direction and intensity with any sort of reliability.

Not that this is specifically directed at you personally, but what makes anyone think anyone in MT that wasn't there is even aware anything special has happened at all? Perhaps it's only a case of the department of public works investigating equipment at a substation that mysteriously failed and fed back to the rest of the area or some such. Maybe that's all it will ever be, a mysterious failure. Hell, even the bulk of the people there may have no idea what happened. If they even saw any of it in the first place, or understood much of anything they were seeing.

I guess we'll see once we find out what anyone else other than Piro has done or is doing.

Miho is a Character Analogue, not an analogue of a character.

So taking what Ray and Invisigoth say together, Miho is a representation of what a character is?

I still like my "Future Scotch" theory, if just because it's so crazy.

@wordwarrior, the "puke here" has brackets if you look close, so it's in Japanese.

edit edit Jeebuz you'd think I'd learn 2 type.

This post has been edited by tdeg on Jun 15 2010, 09:20 PM

Again - Emotive works better than the pompous sounding 'Analogue' — "... a food product made by combining a less expensive food (as soybeans or whitefish) with additives to give the appearance and taste of a more expensive food (as beef or crab) ... "
Dudes? You have to know that Analogue is the equivalent to 'fake crab' and wouldn't be indicative of the "Real Thing" ...

It's the subtle Big Brother-ish undertones present here and there. Sony scanners knowing how many Sony products you own? Police having a track record of what dating sims you played? The NPC knowing where Piro is by tracing his presence on (presumably) police surveillance cams? It's all for shit and giggles, but it's making you wonder where they draw the line between public interest and privacy.

Just wondering. When the Police dude says that Piro is a fan of a game that Miho is in. but the game hasn't been released yet. what does that mean? Has anyone else heard of any game where Miho is going ot be in it???

Kotone. Or is it called Sight? Not quite sure.

The game is called Sight, the character in question is named Kotone.

Is it just me, or is Miho the basis for just about every dating sim on the planet? Could she, in fact, just be directly connected to every dating sim in the history of them all in some way/shape/form? After all, there was a strip where it was mentioned that Ping was some sort of less-advanced knock-off of Miho herself. If Ping is meant to be a walking, living, customizable dating sim, would it not stand to reason that Miho can be and IS in fact EVERY dating sim?

Miho is the Character Analogue of one particular character type in dating sims. Thus the officer's remark:

<Your records show very few completions with her character type> (emphasis mine)

She is the representation of the 'tragic girl' trope in dating sims.

wow, someone is really starting to get what i am getting at

Did it ever occur to you guys that this plethura of widely varying perceptions is exactly the device i am applying in MT for a specific effect? Also, think about what you just said there in terms of some of the things Kimiko has said, as to who is a big part of giving life to characters.

Now think about how this makes poor miho feel

Ray and Whiteknighty are simply harbingers, armed with many weapons, including the BFG of Secret Truthiness and the Red Herring railgun. I think they try to help (in that manner that is supposed to guide a little and not give things away) peppered with their own interpretations of what they've heard me talk about (they only have my words and thoughts, they dont have detailed kanon of comics to refer to).

I still remember the last time i tried to argue my point about what my intent was. It got ugly, it really did I learned my lesson - never argue with readers about what you are doing. Your intent means nothing, its only what they see and percieve that matters (after all, if you take that away, it takes all the personal emotive investment someone makes in a story).

fredrin

I see what you did there.

Also, today is a red-letter day, for Fred is commenting on the content of SD debate.

So we can't have the greater bubble of fan perception (or fan-fiction, because that's what it is) without the fans and what they bring in terms of personal understanding. From a certain distance, even chaos has a perceivable shape.

The rest of the post you were quoting was the usual fan favorite whine: 'I want to understand nao!'. And, what do you know, it happened - again - within the release of the first comics of a new chapter. When the chapter gets a little more momentum, the whining mainly dies by itself.

Some people are interested in writers' intents...

But that can wait until MT is done and over with: spoilers and such being what they are.

the one thing i forgot to add is... i'm a reader too, really, so my perceptions as a reader also matter... aaaaaaaand tend to have a lot more weight in effecting where things go in the long run.

All the other perceptions are just if i'm really

fredrin

I'm feeling all ominous and stuff now!