20

Feb 2014

Chapter 3: Page 6 - Shaky Aim

Posted by / in Comic / 49 comments

And another update.

Many thanks again to commenter Amberlight for the help improving Viktor’s Russian. 1000 DA credits to whoever (not Amberlight) can figure out what Viktor is saying. I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t very nice, so use your ***’s wisely when you post the translation ;)

patreonlogoIn case you didn’t guess, we made a Patreon! I previously made a blog post about it, but you can just click to it directly via the image above. Basically, you can subscribe and pledge $$ to get bonus content: wallpapers, pages the week before they post here, and other goodies (help me come up with some!). Thanks to Marius and Delta-v, our first two Patrons :)

In fact, I don’t know if you all remember Delta-v’s guesses way back in the comment section of two pages from Chapter 2, but he predicted that the source of death from above would be “Naked Amazons from Mars.” Well, since that was so hilarious, Seba has made a drawing of them (practicing his traditional pencils and inking, no less), available for view over on our Patreon page.

Yes, I know I’m sneaky. But you don’t have to pledge to see this one, just click over and look at our page and consider pledging :)

 

  • Amberlight

    [quote] 1000 DA credits to whoever (not Amberlight) can figure out what Viktor is saying. [/quote]
    No fair!

    • You got like 10,000 for helping translate in the first place, so no complaining :P

      • Amberlight

        You can’t have too much of those!
        By the way: why won’t you turn Minerva Credits into a real currency that can be spent to buy a limited assecc to Patreon content?
        1000 for a single bonus picture, for example. That gota encourage people to fufill your whims:P

        • Because we’re poor and need to make money :P

          • Amberlight

            That’ll actually encourage people to spend money. Got a thousand or two of Minerva Credits, spent them on a sneak-peek of the content, started to want MOAR, payd for the subscription. That’s how demo-versions work.

          • Hmm…well, unfortunately I don’t think there is any way to physically do that with/through Patreon. I could do it individually. Alright @disqus_8XKHAw4roh:disqus, what incentive do you want to trade your 10,000 credits in for that could entice you to pledge on Patreon? ;)

          • Amberlight

            I’m not a best example of being encouraged to donate money, since I’m a jobless student and ruble to dollar exchange rate is a complete bul… ahem, not friendly to he people who want to pay for foreign stuff.
            Nontheless, if you would have a wast content base - wich you will in several months - a chance to see a few bonus pictures out of dozen of others would encourage me to spend some coin to see them all.
            There are many other things that may be worth paying some money for. Like fanservise sidestories:D

          • I feel ya, being a student myself. Well, let me know (you have my email) what you’d like to trade your 10,000 in for. I’ll work on the extra content and whatnot. Although we probably won’t end up having anything more fanservice-y then the drawing Seba did (the one I linked to on the Patreon page above).

          • Amberlight

            You need to make a picture of Murderbot in bikini. No excuses.

          • Totally. I’m gonna ask Seba to make that one for sure :)

          • Sebastián Píriz

            Noted ;)

          • It has been made. See my new top-level comment ;)

          • When we finally get around to doing our e-commerce type thing for the “pay what you want” stuff… I’m totally gonna call our coupon points MC (minerva credits)… and I’ll spot you 500MC from my personal stash for the idea :D

          • But, I came up with the name MCs…although @Amberlight did come up with the idea of using them as real site money.

  • Amberlight

    And why is Tenzin shaking? Concussion, being worried sh*less for a friend, or both?

    • Probably a bit of both, and just the need to have extreme precision.

  • Jason Clayton

    I’M HERE B******! F****** DEGENERATE DEVIL TOASTER

    • Pretty close. Actually, I’ll have to ask @disqus_8XKHAw4roh:disqus to confirm, since he/she (sorry I can’t tell from your name!) corrected my attempt :)

      • Jason Clayton

        Can i get the credits anyway since i was close AND it’s my birthday ;P

        • Hmm…You got most of the words, so I’ll give you partial credit. 750 Minerva Credits for you. Let me know how you want to trade them in ;)

          • Jason Clayton

            so that puts me at what, 1,750 total correct, i just might have to keep ’em in my pocket for now…

          • Sounds good. I have to figure out an appropriate exchange rate for them anyway ;)

    • Amberlight

      Close, but not correct. Google translate will probably have problems providing the correct meaning of “virodok”, as it has several meanings depending on the context.

      • Guest

        Though it’s head does kinda look like a devil toaster

  • Roger Jay Sharp

    Ublyudok may be the intended Russian word, so the first phrase might be Here you bas***d! The second phrase may be approximately D**n f***ing geek toaster.

    By the way, your impassioned pleas for votes would be more likely to get responses if always accompanied by a link to the voting website. Make it as simple as you can for people to do what you want, and it may happen.

    • Amberlight

      I’ll post it for this page http://topwebcomics.com/vote/15797/default.aspx

      But as I said, put a “Vote” button on the interface!

    • Uncle Roger? You read my comic? And you speak Russian? Awesome on both counts!

      And the impassioned pleas actually come from a reader of the comic, not a producer. Delta-v is just really passionate about voting ;)

      And @disqus_8XKHAw4roh:disqus I will bother Nick about adding a vote button by the share icons. He’s just busy moving/starting a new job.

      • Delta-v

        Uncle Roger is my new BFF! I’ve kind of wanted something like that, but the guys have made so MANY changes and concessions already that it seemed impolite to whine about not having a bigger cherry on the top of my free Sundae. :)

        And seeing my silly comment made reality in the Patreon-bait section is just too funny for words. Is that Curiosity making a cameo in the back?

        • You’d have to ask Seba, but I believe so.

          • Delta-v

            Okay, I’m asking. And great job on an otherwise silly subject, sir. :)

        • sebasp

          A generic rover i’d say :)

  • Very nice, I must say. If you feel the need to put in an Israeli character, I might be able to help with that. :-) Good tension with the two of them… and Jane.

    • With the translation of terms or designing the character? What do they speak over there? I have a good number of Jewish friends here who speak Hebrew, but I don’t know if that’s actually the same dialect or whatever that people actually speak.

      • Israeli Hebrew is the “Mizrachi” or “eastern dialect”, while most of the time the Hebrew dialect you’ll hear in the West (EU, USA, Canada, etc) will be the “Ashkenazi” dialect, which is heavily influenced by Yiddish. Whereas Yiddish is mostly German, with a bit of Russo-Slavic language influences, but written in the Hebrew alphabet (super confusing).

        So an Israeli would call the last day of the week “Shabbat”, while a western Hebrew speaker would call it “Shabbos”. They can understand each other, but they’ll each the other guy has an accent. The Israeli Hebrew is sometimes called more “throaty”, for lack of a better word.

        The official languages there are Hebrew, English and Arabic, but few Israelis keep up with their Arabic after they graduate high school. Kinda too bad, it’s a very poetic language.

        • Good to know. Do you speak any of those fluently?

          • I’m “pretty okay” with the Mizrachi dialect after living there for 4 years, but I’m not close enough to fluent. But enough for a character who has, maybe, one parent from the region and who is a “part-time” resident there, or something like that, no problem.

  • Jane can both patch into other suits and run an emergency override to control them. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a House Party Protocols-type finale, where she reaches out and pilots all of the fallen soldiers’ suits in sync to take down old devil toaster with a squad of the dead!

    • Amberlight

      That would be… Rather scary. But it won’t happen, I’m afraid. Look closer at the suits - only Tenzin has one with artivicial mussles that can be controlled by the AI. Other teammates wear relatively simple non-augmented heavy armor that has no motors.

      • @Amberlight is right @ottyjustason . Although that would be kind of creepy-awesome.

    • sebasp

      The attack of the A.I. reanimated armored corpses!!

      • Watch out Seba, you might be setting yourself up for another fan request ;)

  • Amberlight

    By the way, we still don’t have a completly correct translation of Viktor’s words. Only closely correct one.

    • Amberlight

      Since people aren’t eager to earn their Minerva Credits for an accurate translation, I’ll give one for those who just want to understand what the hell is Viktor saying. That would be:

      “I’m here, you bastard! F*ing spawn of a damned toaster!”

      Translator’s note: “virodok” is a polysemantic word, that may mean both “spawn” as an… disliked child of something, as well as a mild swear word to depict someone degenerative and harmfull to others. “Chertov” would litarary translate as “devil’s”, and the actual translation would be “damned” (as a swear word, not as “cursed by the supernatural evil power”).

    • Demetri Ermak

      I doubt that “translates” from a person named Dmitry would come as legitimate “translates”.

  • Per @Amberlight’s request, Seba made the Deathbot in a bikini. Check it out on our Patreon page: http://www.patreon.com/creation?hid=243191

  • I wanted to point out earlier- the rifles here are very well done (that doesn’t mean the other stuff is badly done, of course). I really dig the detail and form on those. Actual thought went into them, it is obvious. I love well-designed tech. While my project now is BOHICA Blues and the Iraq war, I also have a far-future science fiction tech story I want to do someday, and I try to do good tech details as well.

    • I look forward to reading that one too :)

      Also, as always, all the credit for the awesomeness goes to Seba. He does his research really well.

  • Really nice detail on the shaking part. In some stories/comics like these it feels like the author forgets that even well trained soldiers are humans with limits. Well done! (not only here but other places earlier too).