Grrl Power #682 – Encounter at Fracture Station
Not a ton to say about this page, other than it’s a little weird that it looks like Sydney could just be walking through an alley in New York and not on a pulsar Dyson warpgate station. I mean, you can’t see the sky all the time.
Admittedly I’m a little disappointed with my alien architecture skills. Ideally this whole place would look more like the interior of the Death Star, but on the other hand, there’s no reason some of the surface of the station or the buildings couldn’t be built out of stone. The accretion disk around the pulsar is full of crap that can be mined, like asteroids and whatnot.
The material the station is built out of manages and harnesses the gravity of the pulsar so that the surface of it is livable. That also hugely affects the density and speed of the crap in the accretion disk, so it’s not like it’s a maelstrom of death traveling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, but there’s still plenty of stuff out there to mine for building materials. Even if there weren’t, it’s a massive trading hub. You can get just about anything in the universe at Fracture Station.
I didn’t see that anyone got the second alien on the previous page, but there were some outstanding guesses. Apparently a pile of tentacles with an eye on top is sort of a common thing for the special effects guy to make for a show.
Someone on the Grrl Power facebook page got it though. It’s from this old ass TV show called “Under the Mountain.” It was imported from New Zealand, and broadcast on, of all channels, Nickelodeon. Remember this was a show based on Cthulhu mythos, but I guess Nickelodeon nabbed it because the main characters were a pair of kids who, I don’t exactly recall, used magic stones to wish the monsters home or something?
There was a movie remake of it a few years ago starring Sam Neil. I don’t recall much from it, but it probably has special effects than the show, which are old-school Doctor Who level mostly. Plus the only videos I can find on it are… poor.
Anyway, it really stuck with me all these years, I think probably because it was the first truly macabre thing I’d ever seen. I was 9 when it was produced. Not sure when it was aired in America, but the creatures in that show were definitely my first tentacle monsters.
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Not all Alari may look alike, but apparently all displaced refugees do.
…Right down to the scarf and rag dress. What, did she have those packed in a bag with the label “IN CASE OF APOCALYPSE, TAKE THIS” written on it? Or did she just use magic to turn whatever she had on into those specifically to say, “take pity on me, I’m poor!”
(Sorry if I offend. I love this comic and I do care about real refugees, it just evokes a strong pet peeve reaction from me if I see the same trope repeated too many times in the same way.)
Judging by the leg wound, I’d say it’s more a case of she couldn’t change between her injury and escape (or the latter caused the former, and less a case of poverty.
Part of her clothing was ripped off to make the bandage.
Yeah other than the tears it looks to be fairly high quality clothing.
You have a good point – I think you just harped on it too much. If you stopped after the second sentence, you’d have a nice bit of cutting humor there.
Only two of them are dressed the same. It could be that those were the clothes handed out to refugees or the uniforms of the place they worked before they had to evacuate (imagine a load of McDonalds staff showing up and an alien assuming that all humans dress like that) or they could be matching dressing gowns for a married couple.
I’d wager that it is just coincidence that she got that look – even if it had to be somehow shown that she is a refugee – and there would also be several ways to explain it… Here is my theory:
If we can believe Sciona, the Alari had planetary evacuation systems in place, since we saw that soul battery and had her comment “Was this the only way you could survive?” (here) on it. So this probably is not their main way to evacuate – just a last resort. They probably have escape pods as well – and these refugees had to leave with the stuff they had on them, as the attack probably had already started. This woman seems to be a mother who got injured in the first moment of the attack. Naturally other people hurry her to the escape pod, as she is a mother with two – not without cuts and bruises, but still alive.
Tunics may be the casual clothes for mothers of her race, a way to dress to walk around in when at home or for going out with, as it seems somewhat impractical to have a tunic on a race that has wings which allow them to fly. Since the child does not seem to have their wings yet, she would probably not fly either way – and tunics can be worn for quite a while before growing out of them.
The shawl I kind of understand, too – I know that a few mothers are using a shawl to hide their open blouse while feeding their child – or can double as a way to protect her tunic from getting dirtied from a child trying the reverse mode of their food intake… so that actually has practical uses for her.
We will probably see how well this holds up when we see the (probably male) fellow refugee next to her..
Now… were the Alari the people which humans of the olden days perceived as “fairyfolk”?
Yeah.
Dave didn’t say they’re refugees- we know their homeworld is destroyed, but Dabbler explained more than once that you shouldn’t assume someone is an alien just because their species evolved on a different planet. Sometimes sightseers or vacationers stick around indefinitely and have kids there. That alari, and possibly her child and the (maybe drow male) next to them could be from a different world, or no planet and are from a ship fleet like the quarians are.
Maybe they’re just waiting in line to make assault complaints to the judoon. Either way, I think Sydney’s going to offer help and introduce herself. Maybe she’ll bring them with her to Earth if they are indeed planetless.
It bugged me at first as to why Admiral Holdo in The Last Jedi spent the whole movie in a nice gown…until I derped, facepalmed/forehead-smacked and reminded myself, they were literally evacuated on a moment’s notice. No one wears their uniform off-duty, and some people do like to look nice when they’re off-duty….and not everyone is near enough to home to grab their uniform and other bits of luggage in a sudden emergency evacuation.…which also doesn’t necessarily allow time for grabbing proper medical gear.
This Alari’s dress is torn and that bandage is the same exact color of it, and not the typical white we normally see. Her kid is clinging to her leg, but in her other arm, she’s cradling a baby…and there is zero sign of a baby bag on or near her (it might be sitting on the ground, but I doubt it.) She literally had time to grab her kids, get them to an evacuation point, and that was it. (We’re also assuming they’re her kids; they could be a sister’s kids, or a neighbor’s, or some random kids she rescued from the rubble while fleeing to the evacuation point…but, from how the kid is clinging, I’d say that’s their ma.)
That is literally what a lot of refugees go through when fleeing a sudden war. If you can grab something, you can…but if you linger long enough to do that, in some situations that just gets you killed because you lingered too long. From the look in that mother’s eyes, she’s remembering seeing those giant golden blasts of doom in the distance, and remembering realizing she only had time to evacuate these two kids. No one else, and nothing else. No spare clothes, no medi-kit, no baby bag, nothing.
Of all the things that bothered me about Admiral Holdo, her gown is probably only #11 or #12 on the list of things I hate about the character.
Plus I somehow doubt that is why she was wearing the gown. It’s a big ship – pretty sure there are changes of clothes on it. :)
There could be spare clothes, but then again, would it come in her size, and does someone else need clean clothing more? (Medical staff certainly would!) Do they need the clothing for emergency bandaging? (Not as likely, given their advances in medicine, but…) Holdo struck me as the sort who’d defer a change of clothes to someone else.
Holdo struck me as the type of person who would tell someone to shut up if they asked any question, no matter how innocuous, like getting a change of clothes, then get half of the soldiers killed and proceed with a plan that makes no sense whatsoever after getting half the soldiers killed. Although I suppose they would need emergency bandaging for all the people she got injured and killed. But seriously speaking, are you really saying ‘they needed all the spare clothes to make makeshift bandages? Cmon… you’re reaching now. Also pretty sure a dressy gown would make better bandages. :)
And yes, I’m pretty sure that there would be clothes in her size. Borrow something from Leia.
Everyone else was able to get clothes but Holdo? Nah.
You do realize the person who ACTUALLY got half the soldiers killed was POE, right?
Holdo was actually kinda justified dealing with him how she did.
Actually Poe’s the reason they won that battle. Although more of the reason was the First Order guy was an idiot to almost Caddyshack Ted Knight levels.
But no. Holdo was an idiot.
Poe’s the reason they got into that fight and those people killed in the first place.
Granted, the Dreadnaught would’ve shot them anyways, but Poe was a fucking moron too.
Vice Admiral Purple, I mean Holdo, was so bad at being a leader I thought she was an Imperial plant, *trying* to get every body killed right up until the end.
I agree with you.
Holdo wasn’t the one who got most of their bombers destroyed in a very Pyrrhic Victory. And Holdo wasn’t the one who helped put together a plan that ended in being captured on board the enemy ship, making them wonder what the heck the rebels were doing on board in the first place, especially when it looked like they were trying to get the enemy’s shields taken down…and getting them to look out a window with high-powered binoculars at oh, hey, tiny little escape vessels attempting to run away…
All I can think of when I see people blaming Holdo for those things is they must be unconsciously (or consciously) misogynists, taking everything that a guy chose to do, and blaming the most convenient (or inconvenient!) female for daring to be in charge of…stopping the guys’ dangerously wildcard plans?
So…. wait, because I think Holdo was massively incompetent, I’m a misogynist.
Despite my being a woman.
That is a pathetic identitarian argument. You are not correct simply because of ‘vagina.’ The movie was awful, and Holdo was the worst person in that movie. I guess you’re the type of person who thinks if someone does not vote or think like their group ‘should’ vote, they are race traitors or gender traitors. No. Also Holdo was the one who had a pyrrhic victory, but apparently you didnt watch the movie. Or you don’t understand what ‘pyrrhic victory’ means.
Calming down now… but the biggest problem with that train wreck of a movie was the wrong admiral survived the bridge exploding. Holdo should have become a new tourist to the vacuum of space, and the one who should have been in charge was a certain Calamari Admiral who understands when something is a trap.
Sorry, I get annoyed if someone tries to call anyone a name just because they don’t subscribe to some sort of group identitarian label, especially when the reason is simply that the movie was awful, and that character was even worse. There have been more than enough reviews of that movie, by men and women, that you don’t need to have the reaction that ‘all I can think of when I see Holdo blaming people is MYSOGINY.’ Nah…. it could just be that I would hold a woman to the same standards that I’d hold a man instead. Just to be clear, I’m a female intellectual property attorney – it’s a largely male-dominated field of law. If I mess up on a case, I’m not going to accuse the partners of misogyny. Most likely, it would be because I did something wrong regardless of gender.
Poe was the one who won the first battle. He was their most competent pilot. And because Holdo kept doing idiotic things and wouldn’t explain -anything- while everyone was getting killed and being placed in a situation where the REST of them would also die. Then winds up doing something which makes the entire rest of the movie irrelevant (not to mention the rest of every other Star Wars movie irrelevant).
Guh I spelled misogyny wrong once.
Girls are probably not very good at it. ;-)
I don’t think she was the worst person in the movie, though she does make the top five handily.
She was a fairly standard ‘vice admiral hardass’ trope.
In a movie with better writers she might have been the worst character, but sadly, that movie had no shortage of terrible writing.
I’m convinced the Rebel fleet was powered primarily by Chekhov, spinning in his grave.
Holdo’s main problem was being in the wrong Genre. They tried to squeeze a ‘serious business’ military mentality into a group defined by misfits and outcasts.
Her second main issue was freezing out Poe out of spite. Even after Leia demoted him he was still their main combat leader, popular with the troops and experienced, if hot headed.
She shut him out for no real reason, and completely ignored the massive morale issue brewing because she was too obsessed with establishing that she was ‘in charge’ to cooperate with Poe.
She broke her own chain of command. If I was as cynical as Ladyofthemasque I’d assume it was some ham handed attempt to send the ‘strong independent woman’ message to the audience, but honestly, I don’t think the writers were that competent. I think she was just generally poorly written, with contradicting motivations and actions, but hit the bullet points of ‘stern authority figure for rebellious type to defy’.
Someone less of a hardass should have included Poe in planning because recognizing that their situation was so non-standard, they’d need help and support where ever it could be found. Someone at maximum hardass should have included Poe because he was effectively her second in command a that point, and regulations would have required his inclusion in any serious strategy discussions.
The fact that she didn’t just points to lazy writing. She fits a clearly defined role and trope, but lacks substance as an actual character.
Honestly I disliked Holdo more than even Captain Phasma (who was just useless, but could have been cool), or Rose Tico, And it’s difficult to be worse than Rose Tico, but Holdo was worse because she’s supposed to be competent if she was a vice admiral, and she was not. With Rose, she’s not been built up to be some competent warrior. Rose… seriously… “It’s about protecting the people you love?” ….. THATS WHAT FINN WAS TRYING TO DO WHEN YOU RAMMED INTO HIM. He was trying to protect everyone and it would have been an awesome, heroic death (or he could have jumped out at the last second and it would have been an awesome, heroic save).
Deep breath Pander, deep breath. :)
Or what they did to Luke (which I truly hate since that was NOT how Luke Skywalker would have ever acted, even according to Mark Hamill). Sure… Luke sees a little good in Vader and brings him back to the light side, but sees a little bad in Kylo Ren so considers killing him? seriously? Cmon…
The whole movie was full of plot holes, bad or lazy writing, and horrible characters. Culminating in a Deus Ex Machinae move which retroactively destroys the whole plot of the original trilogy somehow. That takes talent – to make a movie so bad that it ruins even previous good movies :). I think the last time that happened to me was in a video game (Fallout 5, the ending(s) retroactively ruins the entire rest of the game, which was very fun).
Ok I feel sated now. I’ve vented my geek rage.
I’m glad I haven’t watched The Last Jedi… hearing from my military and ex-military friends that they would have fragged Holdo if they had a chance is enough to let me know of what type of commander she is.
Honelty, Alyx, I’d say go watch it.
It has issues, but just like online reviews, people bitch about the bad far more than they talk up the good.
It’s not a terrible movie, there are just specific issues you get with lazy writing.
I saw it in theater, and despite my willingness to rip on the writers, I don’t regret my ticket price.
Also, there’s one specific scene that looked FANTASTIC on IMAX 3D. People who have seen the movie know exactly what I’m talking about.
No Alyx! Don’t listen to TypoNinja!
It’s a trap!!!!!
No, you should go see it, make up your own mind about it
Guesticus, I was making a joke.
“It’s a trap” – get it?
I quite enjoyed the movie. Just sitting back and letting it flow, without over analysing.*
It makes a good morality tale. Just because someone takes up the mantle of a hero does not necessarily mean that their decisions will be sound. Likewise taking up the cause of a freedom fighter can end up making the situation worse, if it is not well thought out and directed.
* I save that for Grrl Power ;-)
Most of that can be associated by not having a roof above your head anymore.
The scraf does wonders to avoid neck inflammations. Wich can be quite deadly if you lack proper food supply, much less medical. More so if you have to care for your underaged family.
The ragged look is also a side effect from no longer having a home to sleep in. That is how clothing will look (and smell) if you have no washing machine and have to wear them 24/7.
I do apologize if I sound like I was mocking; admittedly I could have stated it better.
It’s just that it seems like the image with the kid wrapped around the leg and the baby in one arm has been used countless times, enough that it’s a trope at this point. The image is supposed to say “This is a real person going through real hardship,” but at this point it’s a stock image. Could we have them doing something? Most refugees don’t just stand there staring off into the middle distance – they actively try to find a way to live. If they’ve been living here for months (or years) that kid is probably running around either pickpocketing or playing with friends (depending on how the family is doing and moral standards), and if they’re recently displaced from the Alari homeworld, then why are they wearing the traditional one-tone gray robe that says “I couldn’t afford anything else?” Like most of you have mentioned, they’d have had to leave at a moment’s notice. The Alari were a very advanced race, and if Sciona is any indication, they at least had the concepts of fashion and vanity. That doesn’t look like everyday fashion to me.
(Watch as Dave B. has the next page with her saying, “No, this was the height of fashion on Alaria.”)
No no, this image actually conveys more than “oh a poor poor refugee”, look past the kids, her clothes are torn, but still look previously stylish, she wears not one, but multiple jewelries, she has a wound that is still red from blood coming out, here oldest is still wearing somewhat colorful clothes…
All this is RECENT as in displaced the day before or the day after Sydney and co came in to apprehend sciona.
This
Well…. we did go through grunge fashion on Earth.
You’re not offensive :) What you said was funny.
1) Tropes are tropes for a reason. They are neither inherently good or bad of and in themselves; they represent both a storytelling shorthand and an easy way to convey meaning.
2) In this particular case, this particular trope is common because that’s what this crap looks like in the real world . It doesn’t matter what you’re running from – whether it’s a natural disaster or a war – this. This is a common sight. If you haven’t seen it yourself, or you don’t understand why this image is iconic, you are both sheltered and unempathetic.
As a person who’s been the first one to run back into the disaster when the disaster strikes – this comment irritates me more than it possibly should. It stinks of secure, armchair quarterbacking, ignores how these situations actually work, and lessons the artist by assuming he should in some way consider your comment a valid one.
It irritates me because I’ve worked the shelters and have seen this – /right here/, save not blue or winged – so many times that it makes my heart ache. ANd it irritates me because fans these days seem to think they’re entitled to criticism that essentially cuts to ‘you should do things the way I want’ rather than enjoying the art form for its own sake.
And .. it probably won’t make me popular to say it, but I’m tired. That’s her day dress. That’s her kids. Bad stuff went down, and the world fell apart. People flee in what they had on – and it’s rare I see an artist capture that shell-shocked expression people have when their world flies to pieces quite so well.
You have earnt the right to speak from your heart.
*wags tail*
I don’t think ANYONE could have ever said it better, Grimm. Thank you.
+1
Grimm,
Thank-you for your work with refugees. And for your clarification of the real/life fiction boundary.
But do know that very, very few people have actually done any of that work. They are busy with their own lives, and unless the refugees are literally within a half-hour drive, they won’t reach out. What they DO see are occasional news clips surrounded with the very best Madison Avenue heart-rending images and sounds designed to make them feel guilty for NOT being a refuge. And the very best Hollywood sights and sounds designed to evoke those very real images.
It becomes entirely too much.
We are designed to have a circle of maybe a couple of hundred people we care about, not 7 billion plus whatever can be fantasized. Emotional health requires distance, and in the modern age, cynicism borders on a survival tactic. That someone who has not actually experienced such things might respond cynically is understandable. Especially since we know that this is all imagination.
But yes, it does signal a possible over-hardening which is also concerning.
I think you’ve missed my point here, Grimm. Admittedly I could have phrased it better.
My point is that because it’s a trope at this point, it’s de-humanizing. No one wanted to ask about who she was or what she did before this point, she’s just suddenly “a refugee,” like that’s her identity and that’s all you need to know about her. It bugs me because that’s not her identity; it’s not like the last 30(0)(0) years of her life are suddenly invalid. If she’d been wearing a business suit, she’d at least be “the Alari businesswoman.” There are lots of easily readable occupations. She could have been wearing a hairdressing uniform, or a food service outfit, or anything… But no, instead it’s a stereotype.
It says to me that here, in a place we’re supposed to see the humanity in this character, Dave B. didn’t plan her as anything more than “a refugee.” To ask your audience to care about your character when you as an author don’t even have a backstory for them feels like hypocrisy, and suggests that the stereotype has cheapened to a point that it’s used for drama without thinking about it.
Clearly it would be ridiculous to expect Dave B. to plan out the backstory of every minor character, and I don’t. But in this case, it struck me as unfair and I said something I probably should have left alone. My point is that refugees are people, they each have their own story, and making something like this a trope reduces them in the eyes of those on the outside to a conglomerate unit. That upsets me, and given that you work with refugees, I’m sure you can understand why.
NOW who’s entitled?
The woman is a mother of two children that we see. One looks & acts like he’s not old enough to be in kindergarten. The other is small enough that a human mother would probably still not be healed.
Maybe to you “mother” is no backstory, but I, for one, respect a woman’s choice to remain with her multiple offspring for the first year or so.
Assuming that’ what happened. We don’t know. We cannot know without a substantial diversion, and this ALSO is part of the point.
Grimm got your point just fine. The thing is, it really isn’t dehumanizing. Ok, my homeworld wasn’t blown up, but I know something of what it’s like to be shell-shocked from first hand experience. And I also know what it looks like from the other side, from different first hand experience.
It doesn’t matter what you want to see. Refugees tend to not wear their past life on their sleeves. They were not prepared for what happened, and their minds are reeling. They don’t have the thing you want to see at their disposal right now. They just don’t. I mean, there are *some* who have something left. Generally, the people who had less to lose are less shocked about having lost it. The people who cared less for what they had are less shocked to lose it. But even they are still shocked by it all.
Probably the people who seem least affected by it are people like me with a flattened affect. And, um, I don’t have what you’re looking for most of the time because I just don’t have it naturally and don’t understand how to fake it.
OMG! I immediately recognized what the character was, but I couldn’t remember the show name. For 30 years I’ve wondered what it was because, for me too, it was the first “scary” thing I ever saw. The kids sliding down these “organic” looking tunnels fueled recurring nightmares for years after I watched that show. I thought it was “Into the… something” and I have searched for information on it intermittently since the internet was created and I’ve never been able to figure it out.
You totally made my day both in knowing that I knew something that your uber-geeky readers didn’t, and for finding the mystery show for me.
Hey, we’re uber-nerds too, don’t pigeon-hole us.
Also, glad your mystery was solved!
I thought it was from that show, too. Didn’t recognize it as New Zealand at the time but remembered it later and realized it. The family of the tentacle beings went by the name “Wilberforce” (“the Wilberforces”). Haven’t searched that yet. Didn’t have time to go through all of the comments to see if someone else mentioned it. I was watching Nickelodeon in the early/mid 1980s. Not sure if DaveB has put in any references to “The Tomorrow People”.
Its more because scarves and rags are really all a refugee can get, usually donations or just whatever scraps they can scrounge, really. <:( My heart goes out to them, really. I would hug 'em if I could. You really captured that soul-crushing depression well, there. <:) Well, you capture a LOT of emotions well, in your art. Not just that one. ^^;
Yeah I did not see this coming but it makes sense in retrospect considering that not all the population would have been caught flat-footed and some would likely have escaped either through portals ships or what have you sometimes by being off-planet when The Invasion happens.
Sci implied that there would have been more of those escape pods, butt that something had happened to the one she found, so yeah, not surprised that there would be Alari ‘off-world’, either as survivors or simply travellers
To paraphrase “Why didn’t this one launch?”
Possibly because there was no one left alive to hit the button, everyone inside were reduced to spirits
I wonder if the Alari’s bling is gold?
And if it is, does that make her rich or poor?
Given what is said about mining accretion disks, no not really. Gold is much more available outside of a molten core planet like ours. (until you get the ability to siphon metals out of the molten core as mentioned on a previous page.)
If she found the right collector, it might be valuable as an example of art from a (possibly) extinct race, especially if acquired from one of the last known survivors. There are some things money can’t buy.
There’s also the off chance that the jewelry includes some kind of tech that would make it useful or valuable, but I kinda doubt it. Not that we have many other examples of Alari culture to go off of, but it doesn’t seem to fit somehow.
Good news is everyone! NASA estimates the value of material in our own asteroid belt at 700 qentillion Dolars! That’s just under 1 Billion dollars for every man, woman, and child on earth.
“Here’s a pickaxe, go get it! Anything you bring home will be tax-exempt.”
Way back in high school they gave us the job aptitude testing thing, the #1 on mine was “Asteroid Miner”. Everybody but me was a bit shocked by that, including the person from the testing place.
I’m still waiting for the job opening by the way… ;)
Unfortunately, since everyone has at least a billion dollars, it now costs $3.2 billion for a McDonald’s Happy Meal.
Fortunately you can probably still get a good deal on the 1 billion dollar menu.
And it still tastes like crap on a year-old donut :P
I should have used Wendy’s as an example instead, I guess :).
What do Wendy’s taste like then?
Wendy’s tastes awesome. As opposed to McDonalds and Burger King. :)
For some reason, the phrasing of that comment made me think of a certain book in Skyrim. A thief steals a massive diamond, but has no way of selling it, and ends up still being dirt poor despite carrying around something of immense value.
A similar instance occurred in a book by Andrew Harman (believe it was “101 Damnations” or another in the series): a guy ended up in hell after wishing for something like a million dollars, he got it, in the form of a check, problem is, he couldn’t find anyone to cash it for him, so he had a valid check for $1000000 but died as a pauper
Ok now I’m curious about reading the book and why he couldn’t cash a check for one million dollars. Banks cash any check if it’s a valid check.
Also curious why he didnt just deposit the money in the bank if the bank had a problem with not having $1 million in cash on hand…. then take out the money as needed. Unless he really really really wanted to keep all the money under his mattress instead of in a bank. :)
Can’t remember the details (been two decades, maybe longer)
It wasn’t meant to be a terribly realistic story (one character got so angry when her evil Dalmatians ran off, her milk bath turned into cottage cheese :P)
Ewwwww…… :)
Cottage Cheese is tasty, or did you mean it dripping off her naked body?
Yes. That.
And also the idea that the milk turned to cottage cheese – ie, almost reads like it curdled and became spoiled or something.
Curdled, yes, because she got so angry she basically boiled the milk, not spoilt it
Add chives (spring onions to some people) and would have licked her clean :D
I feel like taking away the +1 internet I gave you earlier because of the visual images and smells that you’re inspiring for me. :)
Good cottage cheese doesn’t smell bad (to be honest, can’t recall it even having a smell)
Sorry but if I buy milk and it turns into cottage cheese, I’m not taking any chances. :)
What about if it turns into a book. Would you read it?
In but a few years it is likely that you will not be able to cash a cheque, as banks are planning on phasing them out.
wealth is not defined by gold. Xerxes the great was probably the richest guy in the world in 479 BC, but compared to even most poor folk in the US he lived in grinding poverty. Wealth is created by using existing resources in new and useful ways. even a ton of gold is worthless if it cannot buy you what you need to live.
I think Jordan Peterson has said something like too in a few of his debates :) :) :) Not sure if he mentioned Xerxes but I think he did once. But yeah, whatever you use as money is only worth whatever others agree to give for it.
Under the Mountain, both the 1981 miniseries and the 2009 film, were based on a novel by Maurice Gee. While there are some similarities between the goals of the world-destroying aliens and the goals of Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones, I was not aware of any connection from Lovecraft to Gee, and that’s having read the book, seen the film, and re-watched the series all within the last few years. The person I could’ve asked a few years ago has sadly since passed away.
That said… the 2009 film was pretty forgettable. Storytelling for the series was much better, and the difference in special effects doesn’t begin to make up for that.
Come on, Sydney; make friends with the family. They look like they could appreciate a friend.
Dave linked to ep 8, here is ep 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJpUA3hQyO8
Aaaaannnnd Sydney asks (for the second time in this comic) the big question: When using the term “universal (symbol, gesture, whatever),” is it really “universal?”
As for Sydney being racist here, I’d say no. At first glimpse all she saw were the recognizable wings…she had to back up a bit to get a more complete view. After all, if you get a first glimpse of something that might be dangerous & you need more observation to determine if it’s really a threat, that observation is best done at a distance.
I agree, she was cued by the wings, and has given no indication of enmity towards the people she sees.
yeah, she saw someone’s back and glowy wings and freaked. Until she had a chance to take a closer look.
I have every confidence that Sydney will do the right thing here because she is a Hero after all.
I see that biting her in the ass soon.
She sees two aliens fighting…
(None of my business){You’re a hero}
(I don’t know the situation){You’re a Hero}
(It would be crazy to draw attention to myself){YOU’RE A HERO!}
(%$#@!!!) [Holding Energy Tentacle like a Lightsaber] What’s all this then??
Sidney see two aliens interacting. Whether there is any hostile actions is not yet clear, tho the kid suggests violence is in the air. But what the Alari is doing is something she may well want to know, and she has no alternate plan at the moment. And while drawing attention to herself is something she very much needs to do [or she may starve], there is no rush about it. She can wait a bit. Avoiding this Alari or spying on her are both reasonable plans and maybe she will find out if she waits.
Story needs suggest she will hear the two aliens talking in “English”, which would give her motive to contact either. That could go a lot of ways, but one that would fit the situation, and the desire to have Sid do some hereoing would be the “he” is a pimp, who is recruiting the Alari, or “encouraging” her to work harder. Things turn violent, and Sidney steps in, to the discomfort of the pimp. And so she gains a local contact to move the story along.
No, jayessell wasn’t referring to now, butt positing a possible future event
Can vaguely recall a similar event with a clueless ‘good-guy’ who inadvertently helps the ‘bad-guys’ (probably that episode of “The Simpsons” that spoofed James Bond, butt could also be something else)
“Do you mind Pinkskin, we’re in the middle of a delicate negotiation over the mining rights to sector 76!!” *resumes fighting*
The Dosi from Star Trek DS9 are extremely aggressive in negotiations, to such a degree that fatalities happen.
Later, Sydney finds out Sector 76 includes the Terran Solar System :P
Has anyone considered that this is the first time aside from the restaurant she eats at for the spiciness, to test if that orb they don’t know about is or isn’t a translation orb?
It could be a really useful time to figure out what Alari Blood magic is all about, and capable of??
If indeed there is forward time travel involved, how long do we think it is? A day? Two days?
Are we going to see Joel standing at the entrance of Archon demanding to know where his friend is?
Until categorically stated by DaveB, going by no more than 24 hours Earth time
Regarding that clip you found: yeah, that is as good as you will get for kiwi programmes from that era (that’s how it looked when it first aired)
You know, not all the Alari were likely at home when the attack happened (world spanning empire, yes) and the folks shown may be from a ship attacked because there ain’t no more Alari big bads to come after pirates targeting them. The line she is in may simply be a McDonalds equivalent for the first available meal. In space where environments are controlled, clothing is rather optional. And not every Alari has spent thousands of years studying magic –or being hurt by it– so she can’t just go ‘heal’ and be healed.
Love Sydney’s expressions. Nice 3D cartoon feel.
Look like the Death Star? What? NO! NONE OF THAT! SHAME ON YOU! The Death Star was an absolute crappy design, even the finished one, on the inside. Seriously, no handrails anywhere? Just a drop into the endless abyss that has no reason to be accessible? I can understand a large amount of empty space to allow you to upgrade station facilities as needed by simply adding stuff on the inside but if you want a good design for a station look to Cloud City, original OR revised. Sure, the landing pads still needed some sort of handrail for basic safety but excluding that you had WALLS everywhere keeping you from falling to your death. The death star sucked. Whoever designed that place should have been executed… and they probably were.
That is what happens when management’s solution to “health and safety rules slowing down construction” is to “execute the health and safety officer!”
For me, the main fact that the movie conveniently skipped over was that the Death Star(s) was a giant ship with an equally giant crew. This was never brought up as a plot point to be considered.
The mission briefing should have gone something like “We have a space ship with a crew of over 1 million people headed our way. Luke, your job is to drop a bomb that will destroy the main reactor and kill all 1 million of those people in a giant fiery explosion. Are you good with that? Fine. Let’s get started.”
You’re taking it out of context, though:
“Luke, your job is to drop a bomb on a space station carrying a crew of over a million people. Yes, it’s a million fascist, tyranny-happy soldiers, but it is also a space station, I will remind you, that is capable of blowing up entire planets. Such as Alderaan, which had a population of over 58 billion people. A planet whose rubbled remains you actually went to go visit, remember? And it will keep doing that to other planets, world after world, all the way up to Coruscant itself, the capital world, which has, for the moment, a fragile population in excess of 315 quadrillion people. Untold lives are at stake, if it is not stopped here and now.”
Luke (& most other moral people–in fact, I’d argue you cannot be moral if you disagree after reading all of that–) would probably then respond to that perspective-setting exercise with something along the lines of: “With all that’s at stake, all the lives we can spare and save…I am surprisingly okay with killing a million soldiers right here and now, with just one shot.”
…Even if you left Coruscant alone, it literally cannot sustain its population (the entire planet is nothing but buildings, homes, business factories, with zero agricultural expanses; they even paved over and built upon the oceans) without supplies being shipped in from agricultural worlds all over the galaxy. The Death Star would disrupt trade, and the people on Coruscant would literally begin starving to death in a matter of days or weeks…or possibly months depending on the species, but still…lotta people facing the horror of food shortages, famine, and starving to death in a very short period of time.
The saying “we’re only 9 meals away from anarchy” refers to how fragile our timely delivery of sufficient food supplies is. Not just in poor countries, but literally, this will affect the millions and millions of people living in the richest cities in the world. Your hometown if it’s not a big city might be okay for a couple weeks…if you live in a culture where you keep a stocked pantry (diligent Mormons are supposed to keep 2 years’ worth of basic food staples on hand at all times, rotating out stock on their shelves) …but imagine New York City not being able to get food shipments for just 5 days. Or Tokyo. Paris. London. Mumbai. Tens of millions of people. Hundreds of millions if you start counting other major cities.
We live in an era where most of us do not farm (or even know how to; I’m lucky in that my mother was a farmgirl and taught me how to have a home vegetable garden, but my house sits on a plot of land so small, I can only grow about a week’s worth of veggies for a family of 3 without ripping up my lawn, turning all of it into greenhouse, and going into multi-tiered aquaculture…and even then, my main source of starches would end up being potatoes at best). It used to be about 90% of all the people farmed and roughly 10% did all the non-farming stuff, from making furniture to forging metal, cutting and shaping stone, anything to do with art, music, entertainment… Nowadays, we have just 5% of the people doing farming, here in America…and we’re not the only major nation built that way. Literal billions of people depend on the combined forces of agriculture & efficient, effective shipping methods, not to mention food preservation tecniques (freezing, canning, drying…we hardly use salting anymore due to concerns over heart disease that led to the excessive use of corn syrup as a preservative, which in turn exacerbated weight gain, but salt preservation used to be huge, same with smoked meats, which are now a “luxury” item in comparison to frozen, etc).
Yes, killing a million people is absolutely horrific. But the Stormtroopers, the Empire, all of that was a direct analog to Nazis. I’m not invoking Godwin’s Law, either, because my best friend in high school, her mother grew up in Modesto, CA, was best friends with George Lucas’s older sister, and (aside from constantly having to step over him as he lounged on the porch steps in that annoying way of blocking the path that little brothers have) she remembered him saying this back when the movies were nothing more than some ideas he had. He literally said that he was basing his Evil Empire and Stormtroopers on the whole WWII Nazi fascism thing…and considering that Nazi ideology is to mass murder entire groups of people (whole planetfuls of people count!) simply for existing and daring to be different…I’m perfectly okay with punching one million Nazis right out of existence to save millions of times more lives.
George certainly was okay with it.
Naa he was just nostalgic and wanted to pretend he was shooting mugwomps again.
Just remember, George was also responsible for the Prequels and ‘editing’ the Originals
Never once did I say he was perfect.
I’m saying it’s 100% acceptable to prevent Nazi types from doing Nazi things, which is killing people for fun & fascism, or teh lulz of it, or because they’re somehow “monsters” or “subhuman” or…any excuse to mass murder others, really.
The only thing we must never tolerate is intolerance…particularly when it’s attached to genocidal ideology.
That’s like saying every single German was a member of the German National Socialist party
You know where the German’s got the idea for concentration camps? The British
Tha ancient Babylonians were building and using concentration camps three and a half thousand years ago and they have been in frequent use ever since. It is disingenuous to ascribe the inspiration for them to modern times.
That just reinforces the point
I basically take the view that he lost his freaking mind before he started changing things and did those atrocious prequels. Or he was off his meds, or on the wrong ones, or something. It definitely wasn’t the same George Lucas that did the originals and even talked about his ideas and plans.
Also, that midichlorian thing was the most F’d up. Was that some kind of LSD dare? (Had to be more than a drunken dare.)
Ok, I’m way off subject here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Star Wars character type cameo coming up somewhere.
There’s a fan film that explained the Midichlorians pretty well being set after the second prequel… I need to go find the link for it again at some point, they had the explanation that Midichlorians were NOT responsible for granting a person the Force but were an ancient Sith created genetic marker virus that flourished in creatures with varying degrees of access to the Force, the higher the count, the more access. If you had no access, the midichlorians just died off.
That… sounds plausible, way more plausible than Little Orphan Annie being ‘fathered’ by the Force (what was most likely is, Shmi, being a slave, was passed around countless ‘clients’ and simply didn’t know who the father was)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDxZkHCq4Tk
See this video based on the the comedy stylings of
Patton Oswalt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goIg1YqgT8A
Yet another thing I didnt like about The Last Jedi.
Apparently the whole Luke Skywalker Red Team Deathstar bombing run never needed to be done. All they needed to do was lightspeed a ship into the deathstar and it would have blown it up without there needing to be that small flaw.
All those Bothans died for nothing.:(
I bet the only defence against an attack like that would be to have a space station the size of a small moon.
Doesn’t seem like that would make much of a difference.
Also…. where the heck was Holdo during all that stuff? At a dinner party? :)
Just check out the dinosaurs. The ones on the surface got wiped out by that crashing Imperial Star Destroyer. But those in the control centre, at the centre of the Earth, did just fine. Ships are teeny compared to celestial bodies. Even blowing up they only have a fraction of the energy necessary to destroy a planet or a moon.
Not for nothing, they made delightful floor rugs and Hoth-survival gear :P
I’m grudgingly giving you +1 internet for being funny, Guesticus.
I like how, in panel 4, when Sydney peeks one eye out around the corner, the orbs stay behind the corner. Almost as if they know she is trying to stay hidden.
I think Sydney simply moved faster than the orbs orbit, in that panel. Indeed, in the next panel we see the orbs orbiting where her head would be if she stood up straight.
No, panel four Sydney is peeking slowly around the corner
I’ll amend what I wrote, but mostly because of what is portrayed in the 2nd and 3rd panels (Sydney encounters wings and VERY quickly moves out of their way, and the orbs keep up). I now think that the orbs orbit in the 4th panel is fine; it is where Sydney would be if she stood up straight. Also, in the 5th panel, the orbs again orbit in the place where Sydney would be if she stood up straight. The difference in those two panels is clearly Sydney sticking her head out more in the 5th panel.
Fourth panel, Sydney’s balls are vertical, rather than their usual horizontal, even if her head was right up against the wall
Second panel, she stops, third panel she moves back behind around the corner, there is no motion lines to indicate her balls are moving at speed to catch up
The only difference between four and five concerning the position and angle of her head, is how much of her head is visible
S: “Um, hello? I couldn’t help but notice that you’re Alari. Do you understand English? The Alari I’ve met spoke it fluently.”
A: “Oh! You startled me. Are you from Yarth? By now, my sister should have conquered it. Are you one of her minions, come to fetch me?”
You say Yarth, and I immediately thought of the far right of the top set of panels on this Girl Genius page: https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20090601#.W-bMbuJReHs …the little bucket container of “Fried Yarthling – In Space Butter!”
(I even had the opportunity to act out the role of the Weasel Queen, Ferretina, in this very Radio Play when it was performed at Aussicon 4 back in 2010, Squeeeeeeeee!)
Whoa, serious honour!
DaveB should do a short arc with audio acting in mind, for a similar use.
It’s been yarn (that’s years in old BSGalactica) since I read Girl Genius. I don’t remember any Weasel Queen. Good on ya, though! The only acting I ever did was the part of the glasses man in Rose Colored Glasses, 8th grade. I like Yorp’s idea. Which voice(s) would you consider doing?
It appears that Sydney is on the verge of learning something.
Jump cut in 3…2…1…
Since we are in space this week, I would like to point out that today is Carl Sagan’s Birthday. If we get the word out well enough we can literally send him billions and billions of happy birthday wishes.
Wow congrats DaveB…your webcomic which i absolutly love has been banned by hugesnet. Seems you must be pr0n because of your sites name lol. Thought ya might get a kick outta that.
course, it might also be all the Fanservice-ey characters XD
I hope Sydney decides to push to get them refugee status. Aside from the benefits of Earth having a population of Alari that have ‘gone native’, it would be a pretty good way for humans to enter the galactic scene – somebody attempts to extinct a species, and within days another species with flat nothing as far as space colonies and assets starts taking them in? That kinda sends a message.
There’s probably a historical precedent, but would it really
be a good idea to take in refugees that someone went
to a lot of trouble to eradicate?
Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
Agreed. Those seeking asylum, to escape genocide, are the ones who most need to be granted it.
And not the ones simply looking for a handout and an ‘easy life’
Ah, another conservative fairytale. Are they coming to take jobs or a handout? If conditions are bad enough to walk or come thousands of miles to petition for refugee status they have to be pretty determined to take your stuff..
Have not heard of any troubles in South America that would result in two ‘caravans’ of refugee’s
Let me rephrase that:
There’s probably a historical precedent, but would it really
be a good idea to
take inbring to Earth refugees that someonewent to a lot of trouble tois currently in the process of trying to eradicate?
Yes. Because if you do not learn from the mistakes of history you are doomed to repeat them. There is always the temptation to avoid risks or hardships or simple inconveniences in the present. But it is overcoming those that marks the worthy.
If humanity’s first steps into the galactic community are to preserve a species from extinction, despite the potential risk, then that will go over well with the elder races who value such actions.
Whereas having been involved in the extinction of a race (humans were on the planet whilst the fires were still burning, and Sydney destroyed ships of unknown affiliation), and then turning their backs on the survivors, would send a different message.
Earth’s supers would likely be able to deal with the repercussions of one hostile race. But if they fall out of favour with the galactic community, the fallout could be much more radioactive.
Stone as construction material in high tech space hub.
Sure, why not. Cheap to obtain or make, strong enough to do the job, might even just be molecularly assembled from the dust cloud around that pulsar. To make things of metal would require there to be more metal available, which might not be the case, so they’d use that substance more sparingly.
On the other hand, it might just be a stylistic thing, like the concrete buildings we have that have a surface texture and coloring to make them look like wood. (more or less)
The Alari refugee. She may not be a refuge, but with the distraught expression, the unhappy child clinger to her leg, the babe in arms, lack of any carryall that we can see, the wound, and the state of the clothes that has been torn several times, she’s definitely not the local magistrate.
On a side note, the one beside her (in front of her in line?) that we can barely see might also be an Alari, even though we don’t see wings. Maybe only females have wings, or they are furled somehow. The skin color is similar but a lighter shade, the hair is the same color just a different hair style. Even the clothing is the same color.
How can that be an Alari when their entire planet was wipe out?
Easy, they had space travel, so even if there was a 100% effective blockade and bombardment (unlikely), there would very likely still be a number of individuals off planet for various reasons. Don’t forget, they, or at least one faction of the race, made enough of a nuisance of themselves that somebody decide to nuke & pave their planet. Also, since the attackers left that watchdog thing, we know they weren’t confidant they got all of them.
I too am of the opinion that when Sydney realizes this person isn’t like Sciona, she’ll feel a bit guilty and try to help. Being Sydney, she’d want to help anyway if it were possible.
Oh yeah, speaking of food, didn’t she have something in her pack or did she already eat it? Seems she was a bit too busy earlier to munch on anything. Sure, it doesn’t qualify as real food, and in a situation like this she might not remember right away. (Not sure if it was a couple of granola bars, chocolate bars, or ration bars. Been a while since I saw that page, and she did lighten her load, but she’s bound to still have some nuclear hotsauce at least.)
There were probably 10s of thousands of
Alderannians off-planet when
The Death Star stopped by.
Including one Princess and her nanny (unless that was ret-conned away)
There’s evidence that our ancient ancestors knew how to make geopolymer aggregate out of kaolinic limestone (soft & clay-rich), natrion salts, magnesium salts, and thus made the blocks of the pyramids in-site via wooden forms. (There’s a very convincing series of videos online about it, & the chemistry checks out.) There are even hints they could could do a similar trick with geopolymer aggregate…but by using crushed granite instead of limestone aggregate (shells, pebbles, etc, that get dissolved out, then added back in, during the creation process)…which explains why a lot of those granite sculptures look like they had a sort of cement putty applied around a core stone or several stone blocks, which was then shaped when semi-hard…and which peeled or chipped off over time exactly like how cement can flake off of whatever it’s been formed around.
If the ancients could do this, then why not a spacefaring race, with access to a far higher understanding of mineral chemistry and a far higher level of construction/creation equipment? Stone is far more prevalent than easily accessible water via cometary fragments and Oort cloud chunks, far more present than metallic ores, so why not make stuff out of it?
D’awwww.
This question may seem strange, or maybe it’s been asked before and I just haven’t seen a reply, but is there any fanfiction of Grrl Power or is that something that is forbidden? I know there are crossover events with other webcomics, but I really want to see Grrl Power’s cast of genre savvy deconstructors in other realities where the Idiot Ball reigns supreme.
Odd you should ask!
Not so much ‘fan’ fiction, but a collaboration between Dave Barrack
and Marion Harmon for a chapter of ‘Team Ups & Crossovers’.
There’s a link to it on this page!
https://www.amazon.com/Team-Ups-Crossovers-Wearing-Cape-Book-ebook/dp/B01M9GOOQB/ref=as_li_ss_il?&linkCode=li3&tag=grrpow-20&linkId=e89dd3ad1c80a3df3675f63f542f3ccb
DaveB has plenty of great art in this strip, but the last panel struck me hard. Very evocative of tragedy and heartache. The Alari had a bad reputation according to Dabbler, and Sciona was apparently an advance scout to conquer Earth, but this mother and child could get an empathetic reaction from a stone.
Quite well done.
So where does the current comic fall in the timeline in relation to the intro pages? On page 4, after Syd leaves her gaming group and reports to HQ it says “Let me back up a few months.” Have we passed that or are we still in that time span referenced in the intro pages?
It’s stll a flashback….
Less than a month of being in ARCswat?
yeah I bet a lot of readers have forgotten that since page 4, everything is one long Tarantino rewind.
Or a Shamallama’sdingdong tweest
Sydney, you must immediately slay that Alari witch and the evil child she is raising up to do more evil! It’s the only way to be safe.
Re: the heated debate about admiral Holdo.
First of all, as viewers we were supposed to dislike her character. We like Poe Cameron, the flashy, cocky fighter pilot who ‘saved the day’. Despite explicit orders not to do so from the leader of the rebel alliance.
(Kind of how we were set up to like and trust the lovable roguish hacker character of Benicio Del Torro just because he resembled Han Solo when we first met him)
Second, Leia had just demoted Poe when in fact he should have been locked in the brig for the stunt he had pulled. Holdo was, at that point, one of the evacuees.The only reason we, the viewers, wanted him to be informed about ‘the plan’ was because we liked him. In reality he was just one of the pilots and had no longer command authority. He should not even have been allowed on the bridge.
Holdo had no reason, at all, to inform Poe of her command decisions. He was after all just another fighter pilot and should have stayed near the hangar in case the command to scramble came. of course they thought that jumping into hyperspace meant they had shaken off pursuit.
When proven wrong shortly after the true cost of Poe’s rash action (and blatant disregard of orders) was revealed. The fleet no longer had its defensive fighter screen so the attacking first order fighters were in a shooting gallery where they could pick targets at their leisure. It also reminded the audience why the retreat order was given initially. The battlecruiser was not a relevant target. Throwing their meager screen at it was pointless since the fleet meant to jump away within minutes. (mind the /threat/ of the bomber run was a sound tactical decision as that was indeed a credible threat to the cruiser and might just make it back off until reinforcements could arrive. Following through on that threat was .. not so sound tactics).
And of course after the fleet was followed through hyperspace there was even more reason to classify the escape plan as ‘divine eyes only’. After all, everybody knew that following a ship through hyperspace was impossible which left the most likely explanations either a spy on board or a tracking beacon. The first option meant nobody who was not absolutely vital to the plan needed to even know there was a plan. And at this point Poe had made so many bad decisions that he was near the bottom of the list of really don’t need to know. The second option the plan meant to circumvent by getting the crew off the ship(s) and have the ship, with the tracking beacon go on leading the first order on a merry chase until it ran out of fuel and was blown up.
Then Poe reinforced the fact that he was not command material by breaking radio silence and inform an actual spy, albeit off ship, of the plan, enabling the first order to find and blow up the shuttles.
So, yes, Holdo was /meant/ to be unlikable. She was an object lesson for Poe how very far short he was falling at being an actual officer. And Poe is in fact responsible for almost all the deaths at the rebel side. First by causing the death of nearly all fighter and bomber crew in that pointless attack on the battle cruiser. And then by blabbing out critical details about the mission on an insecure channel.
The only rebel soldier Holdo killed was herself when she weaponised that cruisers jump.