1350: Lorenz
| Lorenz |
 Title text: Every choice, no matter how small, begins a new story |
NOTE: The above is the first panel of an interactive comic. For a collection of images that appear in this comic, see 1350: Lorenz/Images. These will also be described below under themes.
Also note that the order of the options are random. And by adding that there is a fifth option - and only four can be shown - this means there are 5*4*3*2=120 different permutations of the way the options can be arranged in this first image. So the above image is only shown as it is in less than 1% of the cases! Of course when you choose an option it is indifferent what the order of the other options was.
Explanation
This is an interactive and dynamic comic with a possible first picture shown on top of this page. The picture is always the same but the order of the sentences A/B/C/D is chosen randomly. The result of all the interactions by the people would lead to a crowd-sourced content. In honor of April Fools' Day the comic was posted a day early, on Tuesday instead of the usual Wednesday. This also means that if anyone feels this comic is too silly... Randall can call April fool.
The title 'Lorenz' is referring to Edward Norton Lorenz who among other subjects was famous for Chaos theory and the Butterfly effect.
The title text is a reference to that the story line of this comic does include all of the user submitted dialogue and updates over time based on statistics of users clicks and hence will in nature be chaotic. In this manner it is a reference to the butterfly effect, a phrase coined by Edward Lorenz to describe how a small initial change can lead to wide variations in outcome in a chaotic system.
This comic is an example of a Choose Your Own Adventure story as mentioned in the title text.
Functionality and bugs
The reader is initially presented with only one panel where Knit Cap Girl (Megan?) is sitting in front of her computer. The reader is given multiple choices concerning what exactly Knit Cap Girl (Megan?) is thinking. Upon choosing any option, a second panel appears, to give continuity to the story. Each new panel may have a new set of options or just the button "Continue" to see the next panel without making any choice in particular. Eventually, one may reach a dead end in which the story is interrupted and reader is presented with a text box to suggest how it should continue. Some of the suggestions given should eventually become available as new options.
It appears that new panels may be generated by Randall in near real time as user suggestions to dialog is submitted. The dialogue options are likely based on click-through rates and hence will change over day based on which choices are clicked most using A/B measurement techniques. This will mean that the most popular choices for dialogue line will prevail as the statistics build up. In some cases, dialogue line options do not depend on the continuity of the storyline followed, suggesting that some parts of the story are planned. For example, do several of the storylines involve one of the two main characters waking up and for instance telling the other character, "I had the strangest dream…" or even reliving the dream again. This may be due to common submissions across storylines as well.
Normally, there is a total of 4 options to make: a/b/c/d. Their order changes constantly. Sometimes, there are 3 or fewer options, with the text box to suggest an alternative option. Sometimes, a given panel actually has 5 or more available options, although even in this case only 4 options appear at a time. Refreshing the comic changes randomly which of the available options are visible and which are hidden. As of 2 April 2014, the existence of 5 or more options seems to occur only in a few rare cases, including the first panel itself.
Each panel has a "permalink" button which generates a unique URL for all the choices made by the reader — so a reader can save the chosen choices to compare them to other ways going through the selections. The permalink do only save the chosen options, not the order or the visible options in the image where the permalink is recorded. So it is not possible to save a copy where the options are in the same order as they are in the 1/120 version shown at the top. Also if you go back in the story from a permalink, you can risk, when passing back through a panel with five options, that the option you just got back from, is no longer available, as it is the option randomly not shown this time. Some times it is possible to add your own suggestions in a panel where there are still other choices. But if not before, then the story will always reach a "final" panel where the reader only has the option left to suggest a line. When pressing enter this is then shown in the speech bubble. But these suggestions can't be saved as there are no permalink button after this. The reader has to do a screen shot by himself - if he wishes to save his own witty remark.
Buttons
Instead of clicking with the mouse you can move more quickly through the panels using the keyboard:
- Up/Down - navigate options
- Enter/Right/Spacebar - choose option after navigating with Up/Down
- Left - go back one panel
- a/b/c/d - choose any option directly
Bugs
Since this interactive comic relies on many servers in the background to provide the response to the reader's actions there are some problems reported here:
- Cookies and Javascript are required to see this page properly. Without cookies, the next panel will not render; attempting to load the page in the UNIXKCD terminal or loading the page without Javascript will just get you the previous comic.
- When selecting a sentence A/B/C/D the server does not respond on that selection.
- The servers responsible to provide the pictures are down.
- In the first week after the comic was released, if a response lead to a panel where two characters speak at the same time, it was impossible to proceed past the first speech bubble. This was subsequently fixed.
As a consequence of these bugs many readers had trouble with understanding how this interactive comic worked.
Themes
Computer
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The beginning
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Knit Cap Girl sits at her laptop saying/thinking something. You choose what from four options and thus starts the interactive and dynamic comic. Originally on April the 1st there where only four choices, but this has increased since. But you always have four to choose from when you begin. |
Computer problems     
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Knit Cap Girl's laptop has an unspecified problem. Hairy walks in and they attempt to fix it by connecting his laptop with hers. There are two outcomes possible:
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Blowtorch    
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Knit Cap Girl becomes so upset with her laptop that she decides to melt it using a blowtorch - a clear reference to the comic from the day before this one: 1349: Shouldn't Be Hard. After this they walk out of the building. |
Political debate
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Debate      
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Knit Cap Girl uses har laptop to watch a debate online between the Politician 1 (on the left) and the Politician 2 (Cueball, on the right), the subject and the actual conversation of which varies according to the storyline. Eventually one of two things can happen:
Subjects debated could be user suggestions but below are one of those from April the 1st:
If the Politician 1 points out some problem with the reasoning, often the solution proposed by the Politician 2 would be doing the same in a larger scale or saying he completely agrees with everything the other says... In the end, Hairy walks in to Knit Cap Girl and points out something happening near which may or may not involve birds (or what ever was the subject) which could be a direct result of Politician 2's project. Again all this could be user input! The last image where Hairy walks in have been used also in other story lines |
Ocean
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| Wrong move
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Knit Cap Girl tries to write something on Hairy's laptop from a note she has in her hand. Hairy watches. This image is also used in the computer problem theme above. But this time it goes really wrong and the Ocean scene appears right after this: |
Sharks    
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Knit Cap Girl and Hairy are floating in the ocean, with or without sharks. A clear reference to 349: Success. Sharks have been the subject of several other comics.
Three giant squids appear and a lone shark seems disturbed. Maybe the squids killed the sharks leaving the blood in the last of these images? Here are some examples with these images |
Beach 
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Knit Cap Girl and Hairy starts to swim out of the shark free ocean and finally reaches a beach - see 349: Success.
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Leaving the bulding
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Leaving
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In some storylines the two characters leaves the building. Either with the laptop intact (like after the politic debate) or with a fused laptop (see computer problems theme). In either case they encounter one of the following scenarios when they come out the door: |
Empty lawn
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Sometimes nothing is outside the bulind except the pawement they walk upon there is just an empty lawm. See this example for both of the first two pictures here. From this point they can move on to walk past stuff - see below. |
Huge hole on the lawn
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There is a huge hole in the ground just outside of the building. The two characters always end up falling into it and one of them awakes from a night mare - see this example. See below about dreams. |
Rocket on the lawn
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There is a space rocket on the lawn outside the building - see this example. See below about dreams and space travel. |
Walking
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| Starting the walk
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When there is nothing outside the building the walk begins. It can though begin in other ways, but that is usually longer into a complicated story. The walk begins with Knit Cap Girl and Hairy walking together, but they also often walks alone as will be shown below. |
Walking past 
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Knit Cap Girl and Hairy walks together past the following items:
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Walking together 
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The two characters are seen walking together from different perspectives. |
Arguing  
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Knit Cap Girl and Hairy stops their walk to have an argument. Then either she or he leaves the other by walking back the way they came. |
Alone - Girl          
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Knit Cap Girl walks alone. This is not necessarily because of the argument! She is seen walking alone in many different poses and perspectives. At one point she is thinking - this does not have to be while alone! At some point a bird passes over her carrying a gift. It then returns - now with a money note in its beak. |
Alone - Guy   
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Hairy is seen walking alone. This is not necessarily because of the argument! He is seen walking alone in two poses. At one point he is thinking - this does not have to be while alone! In one story line the meanwhile image appears before this walk like in this example. |
Rocket launch
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Into the rocket  
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Leaving the bulding the characters find the rocket on the lawn, and climbs into it. |
Out of the rocket 
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In some storylines the rocket does not launch (fail og they do not wish to go into space). So the two charachters climb out again. |
Rocket launch   
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If they do not climb out again, the rocket will launch into space. Sometimes an image from the flight simulator program Kerbal Space Program will appear - see this example where the launch wakes a charachter up from a dream. If the characthers do not wake up here, see dream theme, then the rocket will go into space - see Space theme. Before reacing space a dark image will turn up as shown here.(This picture is also used in the dream sequence with the hole). |
Space
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| Rocket launch
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When the rocket is launch into space sometimes an image from the flight simulator program Kerbal Space Program will appear - see this example. The characthers do not always wake up if this image is shown as in the example, see dream theme. If they do not then the rocket will go into space and often a black image will turn up as shown here.(This picture is also used in the dream sequence with the hole). See other examples for these pictures in the last two entries. |
Flying over earth
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After entering space, the rocket is in an orbit over earth. |
In space   
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From earth the rocket flies into deep space. At one point it may come close to the sun - which could explain the white color in one image. |
Asteroids
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Passing the Asteroid belt |
Saturn
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Passing Saturn with it's majestic rings |
Fly by   
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The space rocket encounters another space ship that asks a question about relativity, the same one that appeared in 265: Choices: Part 2. The other space rocket will shoot and destroy the main rocket if the question isn't answered satisfactory see below. Otherwise the two rockets fly past each other. |
Little Prince
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Eventually the space rocket meets a guy on a very tiny planet which most likely is a reference to The Little Prince. This could also be a reference to the asteroid 4942 Munroe, then it could be Randall on the rock... The story never seem to move past this point. Here is an example. |
Attack  
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If the answer to the space ship is not acceptable it will turn around after passing, and shoot down the rocket. This will turn off the rockets in the Kerbal Space Program simulator, and in turn one of the characthers (Hairy?) will awake from a dream, see dream theme. Most of the images above as well as this attack is included in this example |
Kerbal Space Program
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| Engines on
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These pictures are from the flight simulator program Kerbal Space Program (KSP). An example of the image in the comic can be seen here. In this case the liftoff with the engine on turns out to be just a dream. But the image can also precede a space travel going into deep space - as the travel shown below. See more on the this under the space theme. |
| Engines off
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Here we see an image with the engines off. See this image from KSP where the rocket engines are not on. This image is usually shown after the spaceship is shut down and it turns out it was just a dream - see this example. See more on the this under the space theme. |
Dinosaur
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Dinosaur Comics    
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The green T-rex from Dinosaur Comics (a clip-art-based webcomic that uses the same artwork with different captions for every strip.) interrupts the story and proceeds to talk about his tiny arms or other subjects. The first three pictures are taken directly from the webcomic, except that the third picture is larger in the real comic (see this particular example where the title text actually refer to Randall and xkcd). In the end, the dinosaur stamps on the house the main characters are in (this is thus Randall's own picture). If it gets this far one of the characters will wake up from a dream - It may be only Knit Cap Girl as she is the one seen fully in the fourth image. Examples where this is the second dream can be seen here and here. See more under the dream theme. |
Boomerang
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Finding Boomerang 
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Knit Cap Girl finds a boomerang on the ground and may express her feelings about it. The other images listed below, may come more or less in any order and any number of times. She may comment on it again after catching it. She may also put it down. See below also for examples of story lines.
Boomerangs are also featured in: 445: I Am Not Good with Boomerangs, 475: Further Boomerang Difficulties, 939: Arrow |
Throwing Boomerang        
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Knit Cap Girl throws the boomerang, and it flies back (and forth). This can go on for a while, and she may even lay it down and walk away. However, more often than not she will end up with an accident: |
Accidents          
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These accidents are:
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Pokémon
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A wild Pikachu appeared
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Some of the storylines involve Pokémon battles featuring Pikachu, a very popular Pokémon. The battles are drawn in the style of the video games. (A trainer in the left-bottom corner facing the foe in the right-top corner, with a narration box below the scene and the trainer's Pokéballs visible, although some elements are missing, such as the level, gender and HP bar.) In this first image Pikachu the wild pokémon appeares. Then the fight begins: |
Pikachu's moves             
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Pikachu uses a number of different moves, though these are mostly made up and are not from the Pokémon games. Pikachu's moves are almost invariably remarked by the narrator as "It's not very effective...", but "It's super effective!" is also possible to appear. (see below)
In the video games, a move is "not very effective" when the opponent's type resists the attacking move's type and "super effective" when the opponent's type is weak to the attacking move's type. Pikachu's moves (see below for examples - those appearing in the examples are marked with ¤$£ etc):
Here are some examples of battle (please help include links to all moves):
Below are some transcript of lines from user input and their references:
|
Not effective  
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Normally after a few failed attempts - where the result is given as It's not very effective, there is an uncomfortable silence as the Pikachu says "Um..." Then it talks to Knit Cap Girl and Hairy and as they then walk away past the Pókemon, Pikachu is left in the tall grass and has time to make a final remark. See this example where they walk away only to meet another wild Pikachu. |
Super effective      
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Rarely, a suggested move knocks Pikachu out. This is stated as It's super effective (sometimes this image comes right after the one with It's not very effective). The result is that Pikachu faints. Knit Cap Girl and Hairy looks at the fainted (not dead) Pikachu who lies facedown in the grass. Then Knit Cap Girl pokes the pókemon and they walk past him out of the tall grass like in this example. |
Dreams
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| Walking up
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Sometimes, Knit Cap Girl or Hairy find themselves waking from a dream, suggesting that all prior events were just them dreaming. Below are several situations where a dream will or may occur described (and shown with the full sequence leading up to the dream displayed).
Often a dream loops upon itself, as a character wakes up multiple times in the same storyline, either from the same dream or from different dreams. Sometimes it even turns out that each character has a dream in the same storyline, meaning that the last to wake up, has dreamt that they were the other character waking up before... See examples of all this below. The dream scenarios (together with the meanwhile image) would make it possible to connect all images into one long sequence! Some situations will always result in a character waking up, others will only in some story lines lead to an awakening. As can be seen in these two images Knit Cap Girl wakes up with her head to the left and the cap lying on the end of the bed. Hairy wakes up with his head to the right. |
Falling  
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One of the most obvious dreams is the one about falling as in this case where both characters falls into a big hole outside the building they are leaving - as shown here in this example where first one then the other characters awake from the same falling dream.
In the case - with the hole - one (or either as shown above) of the characters wakes up from the nightmare after falling into the hole. But they can wake up after any of the three black pictures shown here. The other two pictures (which were not included in the first example) can be seen in this example.(The total black picture is also sometimes used in the space theme). The hole situation will always turn out to be a dream. |
| Dinosaur
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A Dinosaur enters the comic (see more about these same images under the Dinosaur theme). If the comic goes on long enough these four images will appear and after the last the character awakes from the nightmare. It may be only Knit Cap Girl as she is the one seen fully in the fourth image. Examples where this is the second dream can be seen here and here. If the dinosaur steps on the building the story will always turn out to be a dream. |
| Evil spaceship
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During a space travel the rocket passes another space ship. If a failed communication occurs the space ship turns around and shoots down the rocket. At this point it turns out it was just a nightmare and one of the characters wake up (maybe only Hairy?). See this example. In the last picture before waking we see an image from the flight simulator program Kerbal Space Program (KSP) with the rockets off - see the KSP theme. This situation will always turn out to be a dream. |
| Rocket launch
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This dream is not really a nightmare, as opposed to the three above, where the characters always wake up. This is not necessarily the case for the rocket launch. But in this case described here Knit Cap Girl (maybe also Hairy) wakes up during the rocket launch - see this example. In the last picture before waking we see an image from the flight simulator program Kerbal Space Program (KSP) with the rockets on - see the KSP theme. |
| Politic debate
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In this dream, that is not so much a nightmare that it will always be a dream (like the first three) Knit Cap Girl (maybe also Hairy) wakes up after a silly political debate - see this example. |
Waking up
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| Walking up
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Sometimes, Knit Cap Girl or Hairy find themselves waking from a dream, suggesting that all prior events were just them dreaming. After they awake they stay in bed for a while and then go out in to the world. These scenes will be shown here below.
As can be seen in these two images Knit Cap Girl wakes up with her head to the left and the cap lying on the end of the bed. Hairy wakes up with his head to the right. |
In bed - Girl   
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Knit Cap Girl wakes up with a Gasp. She sits for a while - may then begin to sing I woke up like this (This could be a reference to Flawless (Beyoncé song)). After this she may lie down again before finally getting out of bed. |
Yawning - Girl
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Yawning Knit Cap Girl gets back to her laptop and we are back to the first image as can be seen in this example. |
In bed - Guy   
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Hairy wakes up with a Gasp. He sits for a while - may then begin to sing I woke up like this (This could be a reference to Flawless (Beyoncé song)). After this he may lie down again before finally getting out of bed. Notice that Randall forgot to draw Hairy's hairy hair as he lay down again. If it was a wick, it should have hung over the bed like Knit Cap Girls Knit Cap does. |
Yawning - Guy 
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Yawning Hairy walks in where Knit Cap Girl sits at her laptop and tells her about his dream(?) as can be seen in this example, where both yawning pictures appear. |
Salesman  
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Instead of going to Knit Cap Girl after walking up Hairy can take an alternative route where he meets White Hat, a salesman with a small stand. White Hat obviously tries to sell something to Hairy. Will he succede. |
Transcript
- [This transcript only transcribes what can be seen in the picture shown at the top of the explanation here.]
- [The comic starts with two panels. In the top panel we see Knit Cap Girl sitting at a desk in front of her laptop typing. There is a speech line up to a gray but empty speech bubble.]
- [The second panel below has the same gray background as the empty speech bubble above. Here is presented four options to what Knit Cap Girl could be saying. They are marked a, b, c and d written in small white rectangles next to the text. There is a small arrow at the top pointing to the first panel:]
- a Let's see if BSD is any easier to install nowadays.
- b Oh. Hey. There's some kind of political thing going on.
- c Hurry! We're in talks with Facebook.
- d Refresh... No new email... Refresh... No new tweets... Refresh...
- [Once the reader chooses one of the options the text will appear in the speech bubble where the gray area is replaced with the usual white background. The lower gray panel disappears. Now the comic really begins.]
- [A new panel is shown after the selection, again with one to four options to choose from in the new gray panel below. This will continue until it comes to an end where the reader finally only has the choice to suggest the next line.]
- [The order of the up to four options are random, and changes every time you begin again (or even go back to a previous frame). This means that the a-d in the transcript is not the same next time. In some few panels there are even more than four options. To see the fifth you have to reload, then you may find this fifth option next time. The first panel is one of those with five options.]
- [The fifth not shown above is: These stupid tiles... I'll just play one more game.]
- [In the first days of the comic when it developed quickly, new options appeared only to later disappear. Gravity. Lots of it. is one of those lost options from the first panel. At one time there was also by mistake two versions of one of the other five mentioned above. But this was later deleted. Maybe there could still be a permalink to these lost stories out there...?]
- [Although it may be impossible to finish it has been tried to make a complete interactive transcript.]
Trivia
- In one panel Hairy is drawn in bed without his hair - see the Waking up pictures.
- The most common pictures are "Not very effective", Throwing, Waiting, Leaving the House.
- The rarest pictures are The Little Prince, The beach, An exponential chart.
- The all time longest comics by panel - top three.
- Please only include clearly different storylines:
- 77 panels - Space/dinosaur double dream, boomerang, and exploding rocket.
- 39 panels - Politics, dream and boomerang.
- 36 panels - Hole dream, blowtorch laptop, rocket take-off dream.
- There may be no upper boundary!
- But this is then the list of the longest comics with most panels as found so far.
- If you beat a record please post the permalink here.
- Please note themes included in comic.
- Please move beaten records down and delete the fourth.
- Longest by themes - click to expand:
- Include only more than one if the story is clearly different from from the record.
- Multiple dreams:
- 77 panels - Two dreams one by each charachter, after space and dinosaur attack.
- 36 panels - Hole dream, blowtorch laptop, rocket take-off dream.
- 35 panels - Two times the same dream with big hole by the same charachter (shovel/blowtorch and then boomerang).
- 28 panels - One dream with hole that returns to starting point - does the dream continue?
- 26 panels - Two different dreams by the same character after hole and rocket.
- 22 panels - Two different dreams by the same character after hole and dinosaur attack.
- 21 panels - Two times the same dream with big hole - once be each character
- ? - More than two dreams
- Boomerang:
- Space:
- Dinosaur:
- 77 panels - double dream etc.
- Political debate:
- Blowtorch:
- Pokémon:
- Sharks
- 13 panels - reaching beach
- Multiple dreams:
- Longest by starting point - click to expand:
- Only the longest:
- These stupid tiles... I'll just play one more game: 77 panels
- Oh. Hey. There's some kind of political thing going on: 39 panels
- Let's see if BSD is any easier to install nowadays: 28 panels
- Refresh... No new email... Refresh... No new tweets... Refresh...: 24 panels
- Hurry! We're in talks with Facebook: 13 panels
- Gravity. Lots of it: ? (This option do not seem to be featured anymore?)
Where's the discussion block?
It was getting large, so the discussion block has been moved. You can still discuss this comic here: Talk:1350: Lorenz
