Grrl Power #669 – Particle beam-ik
That was a terrible pun, but Sydney would feel worse if she left a potential one-liner hanging.
At some point, Sydney’s going to realize how narrowly she’s escaped death and have a real freak out. Right now she’s at peak adrenaline. Not quite ‘I almost just got shot in a bank’ adrenaline, but ‘I narrowly just avoided ecto-lava driven oblivion’ adrenaline.
It may seem like both of those events would provoke very similar adrenal reactions, but even in the face of battling 3 giant monsters on a dead alien planet, the situation still seems a little esoteric until after the fact.
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When is Sydney (and the rest of arcswat?) going to realise that she can use her feet (barefoot a requirement?) to use two more orbs simoultaniously?
Because that doesn’t work. She was shown trying using her feet and various other portions of her body to activate the orbs but only her hands work. She did this when she was asked about her weaknesses
I still argue that eventually she will be able to manipulate more than two orbs at a time. The seven level-up nodes in the center of the grid aren’t connect directly to any of the orbs, and two of them have been filled in already. Also, the pie chart in the center of the sphere grid has 2/7 of it filled. She will ascend in her orb use… eventually.
It seems to be a logical argument. I tend to agree.
Or perhaps she’ll realize she doesn’t actually need her hands… They are apparently linked directly to her nervous system and act as appendages on their own. I’m thinking the use of hands and the “pressing of buttons” is a requirement that her subconscious is unnecessarily imposing, because human brains are wired for tool use with the hands by default. Once she stops thinking of the orbs as tools and starts thinking of them as appendages, I’m sure the game will change dramatically and she’ll no longer need her hands…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/589 Feet don’t work just hands which is Animalist (animal racism against hands just being a specialized set of feet)
I have to agree with Tokumei here indeed “human brains are wired for tool use with the hands by default” when you hold an axe in your hand your brain incorporates the axe in it’s human body model (to predict movements, it can do so for feet but that generally requires more training with said tool, this is something that also happens in some primates as they use tools to some extend but hasn’t been observed much outside that group of animals.
So it might indeed be caused by the subconscious however if Sydney learns to control all of those spheres at once she’ll be super OP so I doubt that will happen.
My guess similar to @Daniel’s is rather when the link between for instance shield and PPO is filled in it might let her fly shield and fire all at the same time with only the fly and shield orbs in hand..
Meh. At this point, Dave has the ultimate capacity to make me right or wrong. I just think that based off of the sphere grid, there’s a 90-95% chance that Sydney will eventually be able to use more than two orbs, and possibly all of them.
I absolutely agree with @Tokumei that for her to do so would require her to control them just through thought rather than through physical contact. Kind-of like Tower of God and controlling more than one bang’s worth of Shinsoo at a time.
There’s also Varia.
Ah but she is a super with growth stages, she is building it up until she face The Big Bad Boss. Also at the end of the day she is still a small squishy bag of guts. Even with OP ball that means nothing versus a surprise attack.
While it was explicitly shown Sydney trying other body parts, have we ever seen someone else trying to control an orb?
While the feet don’t work (she tried), perhaps Dabbler could polymorph her into a 4-armed shape like Dabbler’s on natural form so she would have 4 hands.
Perhaps the orbs were created by a 4-armed race, like whatever alien race makes up part of Dabbler’s genetic background?
There is no logical argument for feet not working. They’re just as much a control limb as a hand. Just requires some more training perhaps?
If the tech is alien (which is the only current explanation imho) the tech would not now feet and legs are any different from hand and arm of a person.
There could be (more than) two explanations feet doesn’t work.
1. Sydney didn’t believe it would work, so hence it didn’t work (that time)
2. She needs a bit of precision training of her legs and feet to get the correct brain functions to activate when using the feet on the orb.
Don’t get me started on if the “tech” is magical….
Daniel here. While she does seem to have basic control over the Orbs hands-free, it appears she needs to control their specific functions directly, pushing “buttons” on the actual Orbs or at least holding them to make it work. “Simpler” specific functions might only need the Orb held to work (flight, shield activate, tentacle use), possibly using the direct physical connection to the nerve endings in her hands to interact better with her mind. More advanced functions however (shield size control, PPO rapid fire focus) seen to demand physical interaction via her fingers pushing “buttons” on the Orb in question…
it gets into what is called the “body problem” researchers came upon it when they were trying to make the first robots. just cause something can “see” and has an appendage does not mean that it knows it can grab it. most folks don’t use their feet for nought but walking, grabbing is way down the list, It could be that the orbs utilize neural paths connected to the Tool use functions of the brain, maybe if she steps on an orb it might work, but not toe grabbing.
You’re talking about proprioception, the sense of your own body, where it is and what it is doing. This sense is how you can do things such as walk in the dark without falling over or reach for something while looking away from it. Regardless of where your sight is, or even in complete darkness, you have the sense of where your body is and what it is doing without needing to be able to see where your limbs are or what they are doing.
c) Sydney needed to get a bigger cost break on her power structure and she needed another limitation on the whole thing, so she took the one limit left the GM would let her have on the whole damn thing.
(sorry, pen and pencil gamer / Role playing gamer reference).
…+1…
The flight and shield orb would be excellent “feet” orbs, and the put the tentacle, and pew pew orb in her hands… Oh yeah.
Why would whoever made the orbs have only 4 arms? They probably have 7 arms :)
Besides Dabbler’s race, there could well be Barsoomians (probably not on “our” Mars, but there are other star systems) or Bujoldian Quaddies. Now picture Barsoomians using the technology that created the Quaddies, and you get six-handed people with no legs. Spider people and octopus people and (heh) squid people, all of whom can hold an ample number of orbs for most purposes, even if they have some religious thing that doesn’t permit them to use the appendage they use for [use your imagination.]
Personally I think it was an 8 armed species. 7 for weaponry, 8th for scratching that damned itch that always occurred when holding 8 balls.
or she could just learn contact juggling like the Goblin King in”The Labyrinth”
https://media.giphy.com/media/xXDu7guOzpGzS/giphy.gif
thats functionally 6 balls used simultaneously.
One of the very earliest pages (like maybe page 4) said that all this happened about 6 month previous. She is only about 5 days into the first of that, but there was also mention (in one of the ads) that she was going to spend time on one of the alternate Earths as a caped heroine. All this is nothing but a bridge to that time-frame; the author might or might not show us what happened on that alternate Earth. Deus might be a good guy, She might be the only one who knows about the Twilight Council. Certainly SOMETHING happens because on that early page she is greeted as a Corporal, not as a Recruit, Also, we know she spends most of those 6 months either on that alternate Earth, or traveling back to our regular Earth.
We can be pretty sure of a couple things. Sydney will be drawn into that alternate Earth by a teleportal similar to what Sciona created. She will be healed of the injuries she currently has. But other than that, either read the story (one part of the whole “Team-Ups and CrossOvers” book) or wait and see if this author will reveal it.
As much as this has been brought up, now it makes me think…
Could she attach the less-used orbs to some sort of platform or frame, and control them to hold herself aloft without needing to use the flyball? :)
Hey I know this is a week or so late, but remember how I was saying that DaveB said that Sydney and he both forgot that the lightbee can go through solid objects?
Here’s the page where he says it – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2402
Anyway, back to comments on this strip.
Two kaiju down, two to go!
Where exactly does he say the LIGHTBEE can go through solid objects? He said Holo-Halo could have stuck her head through the dirty skylight.
Oh and before anyone points out the seeming inconsistency in panel 9 (bottom left) remember Sydney’s truesight doesn’t work through Holo-Halo. Although this just occurred to me as I’m writing this. If Holo-Halo can stick her hand through someone’s head, couldn’t she have just pushed her face through the dirty skylight? Sydney didn’t think of that either I guess.
Yeah, thats what I meant here. Putting the lightbee through might have worked if the window were clean, but we really can’t tell yet.
The holographic lightbee orb is the same thing as Holo Halo. You realize that right?
Thats why it can travel away from Sydney. The real comm orb is still in Sydneys hand.
Saying that the lightbee has all the same properties as the entire Holo-Halo image is an assumption. AlyxVixen’s interpretation sounds plausible.
Its a very well founded assumption given the holo orb can go through shields as well, and the holo sydney is made FROM the holo orb, which ceases to be once holo sydney comes into being.
As a lawyer, you should know that assumptions are not fact, and the biggest ass being umpted right now is that Squiddly even had a shield
Holo-Halo is a hologram, and not a Hard Light one, Lightbee is somewhere in the middle of her holo-body, as such, H-H can pass through objects (as seen with Ari’s head, Kevin’s shoulder and Pixel Panther’s tail) butt Lightbee is still a solid and can’t pass through objects
And thank you for posting the page that confirms that you are wrong: DaveB never said anything about Lightbee being able to go through the skylight, he said that Holo-Halo could, if they had thought of it at the time
“the holo orb, which ceases to be once holo sydney comes into being.”
We don’t know that either. As AlyxVixen quoted:
“In case it’s not clear, the comm-ball has to send out the smaller, inner orb, and the holo-Sydney projects from that point, so it’s a little like Rimmer from Red Drawf once they introduced the “light bee.””
And again, DaveB said that he didn’t think of putting Holo-Halo’s head through the window, which would not have helped much anyway, not that he forgot that the lightbee or the complete image could go straight through the brick wall. Finding a way in is the point of about half of page 497 and I really don’t think he’d forget something that obvious when planning both the art and the dialogue.
But if these guys here are anywhere near smart, they’ll try to smack the lightbee and we’ll have our answer.
When she was being interviewed, she put her holo arm through someone’s head. Im sure she could have gone through glass.
For everyone who keeps saying Sydney’s too OP… Remember, we don’t know what the energy capacity actually is for each orb, nor how they’re charged or recharged. We don’t know if they individually have energy reserves, nor if they’re shared in a mass energy pool, we don’t know how they create energy for the PPO and the shield orb, we don’t know where it found the reserves to repair the damaged section of the shield… We don’t know how long until they’re on such low reserves that they can’t function anymore. Glass cannon can refer to how easily damaged one can be if hit directliy…but it also can refer to a small fuel tank or short battery life. If using the PPO at full blast (pun intended) wipes out 10% of the orb’s energy and the gatling gun 1% per second of firing use, what’s the recharge rate and/or share flow from the other orbs?
For that matter, even if the orbs have a near-perfect energy supply that doesn’t need recharging and has a steady flow…where the energy for them comes from, its source, could be a problem. Is it tapping into the energy for a godlike or demonic entity? Are they going to get annoyed by the “cold draft” of the orbs sucking out power from the back of their right elbow? Or the equivalent of “Hmm, the water bill is a bit high this month, better shut off the hose that I’ve been letting that kid in the camper parked on the street use”…?
We’ve seen that the orbs, when not touched or manipulated by Sydney, “shut down” for a while. We saw it when they were “asleep” in her carry tube, and we saw them when they “settled down for the night” when she fell asleep after her first big baggle vs Vehemence & company in the restaurant parking lot. Are they tied to her? If she gets tired, do they get tired? If she sleeps, is that when they recharge? (Are the orbs alien entities that get bored when she’s not playing with them? Is that why they fell asleep in tubey?)
Are they powered by a specific sort of energy, like tantric or vehemic, only different? (Good god, is THAT why she’s so powerful, because they’re powered by her spastic ADHD geekitudery??) Are they powered by the fact that she is touching them? I don’t think she’s going to crash from the equivalent of having her blood drained (she had legit reasons to be tired in all previous crash-zonk-snore scenarios without this), but is her activity level, or maybe her focus level, making them more powerful? (This set of theories isn’t nearly as likely, but still, something to consider.)
For that matter, do they have a rudimentary sentience? Why did they bond with Sydney? Was it simply that she touched them? Or did they allow her or even guide her to find them? What happened to any previous owner(s)/wielders?
…The thing with powerful weapons (superheroes count as such) is that there is always a tradeoff. Most people don’t realize that a high-capacity magazine (which should be frikkin’ illegal in civilian hands) can rip through its contents in a matter of seconds. The LV gunman fired 9 bullets a second, which means he went through 100 bullets in just over 11 seconds at his rate of fire…and while an after-market magazine can hold 100 bullets, that’s literally 11 seconds of fire, stop and switch guns or switch out magazines, etc. (I do not say any of this to glamorize what he did; it was absolutely abhorrent. I have friends who live in LV who were lucky NOT to be at that concert that night, due to health problems that flared up, making them cancel their plans to attend.)
I am simply saying that, the faster the number of bullets you go through, the sooner you have to reload. What is Sydney’s reload rate for the power of the orbs? Again, she might not have a reload limit; she might be working on zero point (toroidal vortex, think Tesla’s Wycliffe Tower experiment stuff) energy generation. The orbs might shut down at night or in the tube because they’re bored and she’s not playing with them. If they’re sentient to any degree, they might even get annoyed at her and fight her (Though we’ve seen zero sign of that beyond their stubborn insistence of remaining within a certain distance of her…which could simply be an automated proximity program/spell/whatever.)
I don’t see her as overpowered. I see her as, “just how many bullets are left in that barrel? One for the singing telegram girl, two for the lounge door, but has it been two for the chandelier? …Or just one? (“Clue” movie reference, lol.)
(*battle, not baggle, lol)
No, you should stand by your typo and insist it’s baggle!
Fixing your typos are for wusses. This forum is for the tough guys who fail their English and are proud of it.
I insist the typo is “Hoggle”.
‘Hoggle’ is a valid typo because part of me keeps thinking Sydney’s made a Labyrinth reference. (I know one was made in the comments, but srsly, she would totally geek out over that movie.)
One of the best lines from the Simpsons, said by Ralph. “Me fail english thats unpossible!”
My theory is that the orbs are Capsaicin powered. Sydney is the only human who ingests enough Capsaicin to satisfy the orbs’ fuel requirements. When she finally gets back to Earth, the first thing she’ll need to do is stop over to the King of Siam for a quick refill of the spicy.
I could spicy Sydney under the table.
I think we may have found all that dark matter that is missing in the universe…
She is op but at the same time she isnt.
she is effectivly the Minmaxed Glass Cannon
one hit at the wrong time and she K.O
she has lady luck on her side, thought she has died once already….
id say she is the best kinda OP the normie blessed with relics or enchanted items knowing full well they can easly be killed if they don’t play their cards right.
“Tesla’s Wycliffe Tower” was actually the Wardenclyffe Tower in Shoreham, New York.
That picky detail aside, yours is a very good contemplation of the Orbs’ potential limits. All we know, so far, is that those limits have not been met. Or more precisely, those limits have only once been approached.
lots of places in the universe that the orbs could be getting power. maybe they are syphoning off the power from a white dwarf. or a neutron star, heck could be a black hole, then energy near the accretion disk is tremendous and that’s from a galactic scale. but if the orbs are extradimensional, they could have access to a power source that dwarfs anything available in this 3.5-dimensional plane.
That could be the case. I did consider the possibility that power is limited at least on the weapon and that the unknown orb is for managing power.
Sydney being OP doesn’t matter. The limits of Sydneys powers is not the point of this comic. Sydney’s life as a super are the point. The more powerful she is the potent the repercussions of her suddenly being a super are. If Sydney were a minor super, this comic would be boring or at least very different.
If Sydney were only 2 or 3 stars in power, she would either have to “not be in Arcswat” or “not be ADHD/Snarky/over reacting”.
For anyone saying that the tentacles on these things look like the tentacles on the not-a-robot outside Sciona’s basement lair…I don’t really think they look alike. The alien tentacles are brown and have a distinct energy hue to them that is different than the brown ones and purplish-reddish “blood magic” vibe of Sciona’s thingy: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2466
Daniel here. It has crossed my mind. Perhaps slight variations of the same technology? If we were to assume they are the same technology, Sciona’s version WAS made on Earth instead of where ever they are now, so perhaps they were made with different materials? Sciona’s Combat Unit did show signs of sentience, it is possible they rebelled against their creators Skynet style, then when they detected an unknown technology on a supposedly defeated world, their reaction was to “eliminate with extreme prejudice- ERROR!! ERROR!! UNIT 1 DOWN, LAUNCH UNITS 02-04 TO ELIMINATE!!!”
I think I first suggested that similarity…though it was primarily an objection to people claiming similarities to Trenticle.
They’re Tentacled Terminators!?
Final report of the world-conquering starship Squid Deliverer, third officer reporting. The other members of the crew – Squidward, Cyclops and the rest – are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier in about six weeks. With a little luck, the network will pick me up. This is the last survivor of the punitive expedition against the Alari, signing off.
Well let’s home Halo fares better than the Xenomorph did. Good thing she’s not fighting Ripley.
How do we know she won’t be? They’re not down to “The Last Girl (er, Squid)” yet.
I think it’s a trope, the last survivor is ALWAYS a badass.
I wish Sydney would narrate her actions like a respectable superhero. I could not figure out what I was looking at in today’s strip at all.
I also forget when she learned to teleport. That is also confusing since it is not listed among her assets, the closest being telepresence. Has she tried to teleport to Earth yet?
After her first level-up, she accidentally locked herself into spending a point on the comm-ball, which includes her lightbee/telepresence and truesight functions. They chose an orphaned node to see if it would give her a new power. Later, when she was with a squad looking for Sciona’s base, she used her telepresence to look for Pixel, and in the process learned accidentally that she could now teleport to her telepresent body. Then Sciona killed her and the quick-save kicked in to save her. Knowing all that, what happened is clear: she sent her telepresence orb (aka lightbee) up to the eye to get inside its shield (because we know the lightbee can pass through it) and then attacked the weak point for massive damage. She can’t teleport to Earth any more than she could fly there, since she would have to send the Lightbee first.
As has been mentioned earlier, she discovered her “teleport” ability purely by accident when using her Light-bee to snoop on Sciona back in #499.
In order to teleport, Sydney must move her lightbee to the place she wants to teleport to.
So unless Syd’s got an insanely long life-span, say the BILLIONS of years, and the Squid Kaiju are willing to sit back and wait that long while Syd sends her lightbee on a course for Earth…
Yeah, not happening.
AND she would have to know WHERE Earth is. It’s orbiting one of those dots up in the night sky…but WHICH dot in the millllyuns and billlyuns of stars that could potentially play gravitational home to our pale blue dot…
DaveB’s said that the Alari homeworld is 700 lightyears from Earth. At that distance our sun wouldn’t even be visible without a telescope.
Not to forget, no way to know in which direction to even look, Earth is probably on the other side of Alaria right now
I had sort of assumed the orbs had zero point generators like the ones in Stargate and Stargate: Atlantis. Use a physics quirk to explain them?
I don’t see why the universe is so picky with conservation of energy…there’s plenty.
Good reasons. One of my biggest fears is that zero-point energy exists, and it will eventually be possible for any lunatic to build a device in his garage that will create a Theia-scale explosion.
If not ZPM power, then they probably tap into some extra-dimensional source like an alternate universe. Or each orb could be the manifestation in our dimension of an actual complete universe, which would explain how hard they are to scan, they’re literally out of range of every means of scanning them in some sense.
I’m of the opinion that (considering we can see a representation of each orb’s function inside the orb) that they basically contain exactly what she uses them for. When she said using the PPO is like touching a star, I believe it might actually contain a star, or is linked to one. Likewise the Molestorb seems to have the tentacle inside of the orb itself.
The Eye has it; a three Excedrin headache.
One-shotting a giant monster. Nice going Sydney.
Another couple and you can claim dominion over a world. Probably.
I wonder if Archon will pay her a finder’s fee?
Machina Industries wants to both match the fee and give a legitimate magical sword from Sydney’s favorite anime/cartoon/game. We saw The Sword of Omens, Zabimaru, The Master Sword, and a few others. I’m sure she’d go that direction.
I mean plus, when everything’s popping all around you, you don’t really have time to zoom out and think about how crazy it all is.
You know, eye don’t think they saw that coming. You could even say they were blindsided by it…
Okay can someone explain panel 2 to me? Actually maybe it’s panel 3, the rectangular one in the middle-left.It seems to be the moment of teleportation, but what’s all the extra stuff happening? Are the other two titans trying to shoot her? I really can’t tell.
The 1 with the word “Teleport”? I think the other 2 beastys are firing at the “trapped” Sydney. Tractor-Beam-Eye-Guy did land in the middle, so the other 2 can fire from either side. I’m thinking the panel with both greebos on the same side was a goof-up on the artist’s part. He’s Human, I guess he’s allowed to stuff up at times. We Cybertronians on the other hand…….stuff up as well. Daniel the Human is giving me some serious Stink-Eye at me thinking we don’t make mistakes. He’s also counting the dents on his metal baseball bat from MY mistakes…
I don’t think there is a screwup. Imagine your point of view in the SKREEE/ZZZZZIIIP panel is behind and to the left of the whoosh alien, who is facing away from you and toward Sydney.
-Noel
I love it when pretty much everyone’s right.
mrJimp started a nice thread about Sydney using her feet to control the orbs, and it made me think of a related question. Could Sydney use two orbs as a form of levitation and even limited flight? If she were to, say, stand on two of the orbs and will them “up”, could she then ride on them? Of course the limiting factor would be her being able to balance, and that would take a lot of practice. But it would get around the problem of having to cling onto the flight orb to hover, thus freeing up a hand for something else.
Oops, looks like you got the idea just before me. Maybe if she mounted them in a frame or something hanging from them instead of trying to balance on top of them.
I’m picturing a bunch of the council (and Krona) gathered around a mystic circle, doing their best to open a new wormhole to Alariworld. They get an aperture maybe six inches across and Max is shouting for an antenna to poke through to try to contact Sydney. Nobody notices lightbee zipping through until Halo taps Mr. Amorphous on the shoulder and says, “What’s up?” And he starts explaining, wherupon five Harems vorp to Sydney and hug the crap out of her.
Dollars to doughnuts it’s on MNN (Magic News Network) the betting pools are probably going wild.. Surely there is a Scrying ball somewhere tuning into it.Nothing travels faster than good gossip
Thinking about it, for those who think Sydney would not be doing this, and had she been on Earth with back up and escape route she likely wouldn’t. Consider the following. Realising you are stranded on an alien world alone, no back up is coming, your friends are gone maybe even dead, surrounded by those that one slip up means you are burned to glass, would you rather go out like Halo Reach style taking as many as possible, fighting till your lungs give out and even with your last gasp still spit in the eye of death telling it “come on then if you think you are hard enough?” Or would you go out in a whimper, soiling your britches while rocking back and forth calling for those that falls on deaf ears? This is the true meaning of fight or flight, she knows she has no alternative, or rather the alternative is death. This is the making of what is seen as a true hero. She knows she could try and hide, she knows this is likely her end. The tank is down, the healer is AFK. the warlock’s soul stone expired at the wrong time, the other DPS disconnected but this is the last one standing and I swear by Grabthar’s hammer I will not go gentle into that good night.
Good point… in her place I would probably have hid among the ruins until they left, then tried to find ways to survive and only then think about ways to get back home… but I tend to be far more cautious than Sydney. :)
Given their shall we say “interest” in the way they acted as soon as they noticed she had the orbs, them leaving really didn’t look to be on the cards. In fact wiping her off the face of the planet seemed to be the order of the day. Given the size of their detonations which even on a Maxima scale was likely off the charts and the fact they had likely just wiped the floor with an equally aggressive race I don’t think there would be anywhere on or under the planet she could hide in.
She started to run, realized that the moon wasn’t getting bigger, decided she needed to upgrade the orbs to get home, complained about hating to grind, and dived in after the drones.
Then she declared the drones grey to her, (which means so low that they give no exp; green still give exp but are easy kills.)
Then she took on the first of the big monsters, hoping to get enough exp to advance her travel orb, which she did, (just in the nick of time, and got nicked for taking too long.)
In short. She fully considered running, then decided that wasn’t an option and dived in.
She thought about running again when the three stooges showed up. She’s poked Curly in the eye, let’s wait to see what she does to Larry and Moe,
That first alien artillery being got named Squidward, and it stuck, and it was good.
I now second SeanR’s nomination for the current trio to be nicknamed Larry (veeveevee beams), Curly (eyepoked), and Mo (for everything else, there’s fwoosh™ dude (yes, I cribbed that from Looking For Group))
Larry, Moe and Curly work for me. Gotta call them something, and Curly has already been eye poked in a big way.
IF Sydney manages to kill all of these guys, and ArcSWAT pulls her out shortly afterwards, i can imagine her talent tree popping up and Maxima seeing all the new points she has to spend going ” What did you do Sydney?!”
My words-of-the-day for today are HAPTIC and PROPRIOCEPTION. Their applicability to Halo are obvious.
The Society for the Active Prevention of Punning Habitual Overdose (SAPPHO) treated Halo with their strongest measures, but it seems that she is a re-Sydney-vist…