Grrl Power #683 – Observe and ignore
This is sort of an odd page admittedly, as Sydney sort of “Raiders” it, as in she has no impact on what’s happening. Just wanders by and observes.
I wanted to have at least one reverse shot from Sydney’s POV showing Alari soldiers directing people or showing something slightly structured going on, but I wrote and drew the next two pages as 682 and 683, but then realized I wanted to insert this scene with the Alari refugees, so I had to scramble to get this page and the previous one done on time, so I couldn’t get too extravagant with the art. There is sort of a point to this page besides Sydney experiencing moderation, but it’s mostly just setting up stuff for later.
Oh, and since I’m sure someone will ask, but not all Alari have access to the soul battery style escape pod that Sciona found a few pages back. If you have a shuttle, use it why not?
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Sydney’s heart is definitely in the right place, but her head cant find any practical way to listen to what her heart says. If there’s anything that makes the difference between a hero & a villian, it’s empathy for all people. What made Magneto a villian is that he had selective empathy,” in that it was reserved for fellow mutants but not the rest of humanity. Sydney has the Hero’s empathy in that it’s not reserved for anyone, human or not.
…Except how her empathy works with her being a Vegan. She’ll “eat the hell out of fish” but that’s about it…
Being a superhero used to mean doing the hardest right thing you are capable of doing. It was about morality as understood by western civilization.
Now that morality is becoming ambiguous, the idea of doing what is right is giving way to feelings. As a result we rarely see heroism in western superheroes anymore.
Oddly, we find it in manga. Look at Mumen Rider as a classic superhero, albeit without any super powers.
No.
Being a superhero means being a hero and having superpowers.
If you do not have superpowers, or gear that mimic superpowers(like wingless flight, energy beams, superstrength and similar), you cannot be a superhero.
What about Frank Castle? That guy has neither superpowers, nor the any special gear that mimics super powers. The closest he gets is an assault rifle, yet he would commonly be refereed to as a super-character.
Black Widow also has no super powers. She’s just an extremely effective spy with a pistol.
Shang-chi’s only ‘power’ is being really really good at kung fu, but even that isn’t actually a superhuman ability, but rather the result of a life spent in mastering his art. (he’s a bit like Math, actually).
Hell, people without the proper tech or powers becoming superheroes is basically the exact plot of both Kick-ass and Super.
I think it’s clear that having superpowers, or even emulating super powers, is not necessary to be considered a super character.
The Punisher isn’t a superhero.
He is a vigilante anti-hero.
The reason they use the word ‘anti-hero’ isn’t to mean ‘opposite’, it’s to show they use means other than what is considered ‘heroic’ (ie, not letting the bad guy get away or live)
You will find that 90% of the worlds’ heroes are actually unsanctioned vigilantes
The Punisher, Black Widow, Batman etc. have the greatest superpower of them all: plot armor.
Both Frank Castle and Black Widow are heavily protected by plot armor. It’s the same sort of plot armor that has Cyclops, whose only super power is wicked powerful eye beams, never just get cut in half by machine gun fire from the enemy mooks.
I think that at least Cyclops has the excuse of a super suit that is better by far than the best Kevlar ever invented, because X-Man suit tech, but it’s mostly still just plot armor. Frank Castle and Black Widow don’t even have that as an excuse, and yet somehow they live through multiple, multiple firefights without even a scar.
The Wild Cards anthology is just one of the super hero genre that embraces the realities of high powered people fighting other high powered people, or even high powered in a specific way that doesn’t make them immune to being, as Sydney put it, being riddled with bullets, using their powers in a realistic setting. There is a lot of character death in that series, and that makes it ring far more true than any setting in which a super powered character with awesome eye beams is never just mowed down by 10 mooks with machine guns. The supervillans can’t be so stupid that they can’t make that calculus themselves. Most of them are supposed to be super intelligent!
Castle and both Widows are also heavily trained which helps explains how they can survive gunfights (and Frankie has plenty of scars), nothing explains Cyke
Soldiers and police are heavily trained too. But that does not stop them being killed when lead starts flying. It just reduces the likelihood.
And in a world with supers you can bet that anyone with showy powers, but no defences, will draw a disproportionate amount of firepower their way. The mundanes know that is the way to survive a fight with such a foe. Kill them before they kill you.
The Danger Room explains Cyke.
Cyclops has a supersuit which is essentially a Kevlar outfit. Which should give him protection against smallarms, but not the kind of blasts and beams that most supervillains (and superheroes, because half the fights in any superhero comic are usually hero on hero violence) throw around.
Black widow wears a sexy catsuit, which should probably be shredded after most of the fights she get into, but I guess Marvel doesn’t want to be sued by the Empowered folks. :-P In any event, it is just as protective as any street clothes, which is to say not at all, and she should be dead a million times over in the fights she gets into. Being really good at acrobatics doesn’t really do much against a machine gun. The same goes for Spiderman, who has super strength but no particular ability to withstand a bullet. Danger sense is his excuse, I guess. But mostly plot armor.
Punisher and Shang-Chi is not “super” in any way. Black Widow, Batman and even Kick-Ass is actually borderline:
Black Widow both due to an age-slowing treatment she once had, and because she at least used to use wristbands that could both eject lines(swinging like Spiderman) and shoot something referred to as “the widow’s bite”.
Batman has somehow managed to TRAIN himself to peak human condition while maintaining a great intellect … and STAY THERE for at least a decade without burning himself out.
As a comparison, Captain America is also in peak human condition, but he got it thanks to the super serum, so HE is Super, but still somewhat “weaker” than Batman, who is technically only borderline.
Kick-Ass, on the other hand …. well, it isn’t much, but his skeleton has indeed gotten reinforced with metal, and he barely feels pain.
Cyclops …. has spent A LOT of time in the Danger Room, and well, …. i know this is gonna sound like a bad fanfic, but he literally has trained up a high skill for anticipating danger, and just moving out of the way.
By the way, try reading the original X-Men 1-5, they ALL reads like bad fanfics nowadays.
The day after Stan Lee passed NPR did a re-run of his interview with them in ~1992. I caught a part of it by just happening to be in the car during the rebroadcast. He talked about how he tried to inject what he thought was more common sense dialogue into his comics. An example he gave, paraphrased of course, was that in the comics at the time if the hero saw a purple lizard-man walking down the street and breathing fire their first bit of dialogue would be something like:
“That must be a visitor from another world. I will try to talk to it.”
Stan said that he’d probably be thinking “I wonder what business hired this guy in the lizard suit to promote their product” and would be looking around for the other signs and banners that would probably be in the vicinity.
Cyclops also has a secondary element of his powers that allows him to calculate trajectories, ricochet effects, etc. on the fly and enhances his sense of spatial geometry and position. That is a big part of what allows him to ricochet his beams off several surfaces and hit a target, for instance. It also allows him an enhanced ability to figure out where the people he’s fighting are aiming, what effect the shot will likely have, etc. with an eye to not being in harm’s way, assuming he can see his opponents and has some grasp of their weaponry and/or powers. Storm points it out to a new recruit while the two of them are watching him fairly casually avoid two charging Triceratops (because comics).
It’s also pointed out that it’s also a *really* bad idea to play pool against him for money, for the same reason.
I took superhero to mean someone that goes above and beyond average hero and/or who does it regularly. The entire comic/movie Watchmen examines this hero/villain/gray-area/ambiguity expertly.
The only one there that actually had what would be considered a ‘Super Power’ was Dr Manhattan, and he was less than heroic; usually made really bad decisions that got people hurt or killed.
also, High-Technology and Extreme Physical Training/talent/ability are both accepted superpowers by todays standard.
I think what Catelf might be aiming for (and just slightly missing) is …
Superhero is being a super-powered-hero. One can be a hero without superpowers. One can have superpowers without being a hero. You need both the powers (or gadgets offering same) and a hero’s ethos to pull off being a superhero.
Mumen Rider is driven by something. What I read of his character is that he doesn’t do the hero work to carry the title of Hero (like the tanktop crowd), I’m not clear on what drives him, but it seems like every hero in the association has something that drives them.
“Now that morality is becoming ambiguous,”
[citation needed]
Comic books in the Golden, Silver, and Bronze ages practices a Black and White morality.
Dark Age comics threw the whole thing into a mess with the whole *I must kill the villains* but still had that underlining influence from the previous three ages of comics so no matter how sexed up, mullet wearing, bullet spraying, tear them apart, the heroes got, they still had this idea of (The bad guys are totally evil and that justifies what I am doing).
Thing is we then got into the Deconstructionist age of comics *post 2003 or so*; where people asked (what would it be like if super heroes were in the real world), and had real world consequences to their actions. We saw this, it is how events like Civil War came about; even if in-universe it contradicted their world’s own history of past events and past consequences of those events and the new heroes and villains of this new era were in stark contrast to earlier ones, granted Dark Age heroes and villains also stand out…but Dark Age had an advantage, that was the era of indy comics, whose whole universes could start out like that, Spawn, Witchblade, Vampirella, ect…
But indy has sort of died out on new stuff or else is copy cat territory post 2000’s as comic sales continued to drop. So aside from Online comic strips like Grrl Power you don’t see much in the Deconstructionist or I supposed the arguably Neo-Deconstruionist era now.
*differentiated by the new one not just tearing down the tropes but also looking at the world its self and how the world not just the heroes would react to super powers existing as more than just a back ground, basically a tad more self reflecting, but some could argue its a little more just the same only getting its footing on what it means to be self aware and reflecting a sense of real world and real societies with super powers present. Series like Grrl Power have the advantage of starting off fresh and having other supers exist in fiction to reflect off of rather than try to have that same black and white, no consequences world exist in their own timeline*
A possible sign some have stated of Neo- Deconstructionist is the moral ambiguity. Instead of just *you are supposed to be good, but your actions caused X* or *I am good despite my actions causing X*, it is *Am I good? Why am I doing this? What is the right decision? Am I policing, is this just revenge…is thus fun for me?*; sort of questioning your own motives and realizing that people are not props on your adventures, not just there to be saved or thwarted, or magically hate you if you are a mutant even if they love you if you aren’t and would have no way of knowing which was which…but that’s a different rant.
Basically, the grey line is where comics these days try to aim to be more relatable.
Not so with Superman and Batman and many others.
Yup, there is no ambiguity with those two: Soupcan is a hero (not counting that trash in the movie) and Batman is the Criminal Overlord
Those both originated in the Golden Age, not an easy time “ageing up” characters from back then, and we’ve seen attempts to age them up…its never pretty (see mid 90’s Batman and Superman comics), but then DC has never been very good at changing up their characters for newer generations, they always seem to be just lagging behind…even the movies feel a tad darker, like more late 90’s early 2000’s feel than the current age would expect, DC is most on point with tv shows and animated series…the animated movies feel like they are trying to make up for DC having a ratings limitation in the Dark Age comics though…like..yikes.
morality of whom? this is the problem with labeling a thing western morality. we are all murderers we all come from a long line of murderers; either we kill by direct action, ignorance or by informed inaction. how many folks here have walked on by a homeless person? failed to defend a weaker being, thrown away perfectly good food while others starve, failed to help a community in need, looked down on a slower thinker, thrown a can in an ocean lake or river, sat by while your country does the same, ECT?
heroism is that you actually look and see the situation and act; for your own and others good. its not that villains do not act selflessly its that they only act selfishly. someone invoked DR. Manhattan but failed to acknowledge that he is no longer connected to the human race in any way other than his appearance. he doesn’t eat defecate sleep die or any other human thing; he is no longer human in any way but he has to deal with the monkey in his head since it is in fact human. is he going to make bad decisions? you bet; he now has to literally try and translate the monkey because he can no longer empathize with the monkey. kinda like trying to understand a bug for us; we can see its needs but we cannot actually see its second to second wants.
its not western morality because the west has no morality; we are happy to kill and neglect the thousands of things we could do something about. those we label heroes tend to be those who do not let the ideals go unsupported. how having been military and in rather nasty situations; what i see as heroes is probably different than what most see. to me heroes are those that step up when things need to be done. alright i am done hope it was at least a useful dialog.
Oh, please, do not use Magneto as a textbook example of a villain, that character has been abused a whole lot of times.
It seemed pretty clear that Chris Claremont was aiming to, if not make him an outright hero, then at least show how multi-faceted he was.
Also, WE ALL HAVE “selective empathy”, more or less.
Empathy for all humans?
Empathy for all animals?
Empathy for all living things?
Empathy for everything?
Empathy for demons?
…….
Also, what _Is_ “Empathy”, really?
I eat meat, but i have empathy for the living, not the dead.
Also, i have a different outlook on life itself, that do not make me less empathic.
I’d say my different outlook is _because_ i have empathy.
(Implying i have more than others.)
^_^
So yes, we all have “selective empathy”, because we MUST.
Hero/Villan, righteous vigilante/horrific criminal.
Which label gets used often depends more on who your talking to.
for my example I’m going to refer to One piece and the straw hat pirates. (Luffy and crew)
Are they Villainous pirates that deserve a massive bounty because they must be brought to justice for all the laws they broke and all the times they punished or destroyed people and even government officials with out any due process, how they will think nothing wrong of destroying massive amounts government buildings killing all the staff running them, So they can set one of their friends free.
or are they vigilantes that have constantly fought against unfair and unjust people and organizations that where clearly only looking out for their own interests and not caring how pain it brings to those around them. Are they hero’s that many times have fought very hard won fights against those who where enslaving people, set the slaves free and then ask for nothing in return. Are they the ones who will not think twice about beating down obviously corrupt officials that use their powers to ruin the lives of civilians for fun or profit.
which are they? Hero’s or Villains?
Why do you keep spelling “heros” like that?
Hero: Someone who tries to do the right thing even when it’s inconvenient, difficult or impossible
Villain: Someone who tries to execute their agenda, regardless of whether or not it’s the right thing.
Villains can do good. Villains can even do good most of the time. But at the core of it, what is your objective? To get your way, or to do the right thing? That marks the distinction between a hero and a villain, at least to me. Your mileage may of course vary.
Yeah, a villain is someone who puts themselves first (how dare they use their powers and slash or abilities to further their own goals!!!)
An example of a good villain (or a villain who does good, sometimes) is Doctor Universe from “Spinnerette”, fortunately the titular character can see the good he does and works with him from time to time (as long as her girlfriend and the other heroes don’t find out)
Yeah, Doctor Universe from Spinnerette is something as odd as an actually good guy that deliberately go the villain route because it fits his MO, style and agenda far better.
I think Spinnerette has gotten … not as good, lately, but it shows what i call a “Colour scale” rarther than a “grey scale” when it comes to morality, and i like that.
Grrl Power does this, too, with Deus, Dabbler, Harem, and now also with Sciona as well as her people … and Halo.
I break things down on two spectrums.
One you might call the hero villain spectrum:
Heros, broadly speaking, adhere to a moral code that respects the existence of others. These vary from ‘do no harm’ to ‘allow no harm to happen ever.
Villains, broadly speaking, do not adhere to moral codes that respect the existence of others. They may, paradoxically, still adhere to moral codes. Not necessarily ones that preclude shooting puppies and orphans for the lulz. Like hero’s, these exist on a spectrum with hero’s, the same spectrum in fact. Consider someone who will seek out bank robberies to foil, someone who will foil a bank robbery if he sees it happening, someone who will do nothing if in the robbery, someone who will rob the bank, and someone who will park a pair of 18 wheelers at schools twice a month to stock up, because ‘that soylent green stuff sells like hotcakes’ each of those will fall at a different point on that spectrum.
The other scale I use is antagonist/protagonist.
Broadly speaking, the protagonists are usually the main character and those supporting the main character, and antagonists are those opposing the main character.
Playing with the two spectrums, you can create story lines where you have two heroic level people, one the protagonist, one the antagonist of the story (sound a bit like Civil War?). Such a story let’s you contrast and compare two different ideologies that might both be adopted by heroes, or portray a story where neither side is in the wrong, but both are subject to their circumstance. (You see this some in banner/crest of the stars).
You may put a villain (or an amoral force of… something) in the protagonist role, which is where you’ll often discover anti-heroes. (Desert punk comes to mind). Poorly scripted shows also fall into this bucket, ‘hero catches the bad guy before the bad guy does anything wrong, kills 5e bad guy to stop him, Yay the day is saved’ — who is the real villain in such tales? When it’s clearly in this category by mistake, I tune the shows out as poorly scripted.
Or you can have the simple protagonist hero, antagonist villain, a plot that I find so common and so boring, that i’ll Sometimes tune shows out.
I love the deconstruction, the contrasts, the diverse storylines that can be created by playing around with both spectrums in combination.
Yeah, even in a world of ‘black & white’, nothing is truly ‘black or white’
I prefer Colours …. ^_^
We spell “heroes” that way because that’s the original plural of “hero” even if many Americans drop the “e”.
I was referring to the apostrophe in the word, when they were obviously just pluralizing it. Any my apologies on my misspelling.
Speaking of Magneto, Let’s remember his creator – Stan Lee, who (as I just found out) died today.
Sydney did not defeat the Alari.
Sydney did not drive the Alari before her.
I’m afraid Sydney may have heard the lamentations of their women.
Nah, she isn’t hearing anyone talking. Unlike every mall, airport, crowded street, market place, I’ve ever seen everyone at the Fracture is totally mute. Its why Sydney hasn’t realized there is a translator field or something in effect, she didn’t even hear those two previously speak as she was walking away…
There would be a general susurration, a background Sound of “murmur, murmur, murmur: and “natter, natter, natter” but there might also be “Boo-hoo-hoo!” That’s lamentation.
Personally prefer lamingtons (the red ones more than the brown)
Excellent, page. It is rare for writers to admit that sometimes not taking action is the best course of action.
Though, I am curious where the refugees end up. It is a difficult question in our world, in a space faring universe even more so. A world that was habitable has ceased to be that way, leaving millions, even billions without a planet. Most habitable worlds would be occupied by now, or have sentient (or even pre-sentient) life that the galactic authorities want protected.
Terra-forming would be a viable option. Except, I bet that has been done extensively, with most sutible planets already done or in the process of being done. And if the solar system has a civilization with intelligent life, they would be given priority ownership (sure, exceptions might apply, like if somehow two worlds had intelligent life, but that is the fine details).
Another planet could take them in…… but their whole (former) civilization had a very bad reputation. So that is unlikely.
Billions? I think most Alari DIED there and some probably on way out. There might be just thousands of refugees, or less. Maybe we see all of them on this page. Also, even assuming Alari’s world is not currently habitable, unless the attackers are real jerks, it may end up in state easier to re-terraform than most other places. (Assuming, of course, that the attackers are not keeping it.)
Invaders usually are there for reasons and if these were out for revenge even if the planet just needed reseeded etc I’m sure they would be quick to wipe out any return of the Alari in any form… it did look like a genocide attack to me
It might not even have been for revenge.
Some people just enjoy stepping on insects, even if they haven’t done anything to them…
It may not even have been for revenge. Some people just enjoy stepping on ants. And then there are eldritch abominations, which slaughter life for reasons far more vile and far less incomprehensible than mere vengeance.
i’m getting vibes like the movie Titan A.E. here… the Dredg blew up Earth and while SOME humans made it off planet in various ships, MOST didn’t… same as here (almost)
Or similar to what might have happened to the Humans in Babylon 5’s universe if the Minbari had not stopped themselves at the last possible moment.
The Alari had a bad reputation to DABBLER. Not necessarily to everyone. It would seem unlikely that there’s a single civilization that EVERYONE else hates universally, where they have no allies or friends or people who at least don’t hate them.
Dabbler has a lot of knowledge and is sensitive to emotions.
If she claims the Alari had a bad rep, they probably did.
Dabbles is one individual, and she may have a lot of knowledge, butt there is still a lot she doesn’t know (like who the attackers were or where Sydney’s balls came from)
Well one thing we do know is that Dabler and Sciona were suprised, and we found out that this(or that section) may be taking place in the future from out point of View..
We may be seeing the start of a weird Mutualy self fulfilling closed loot. Sciona and her souls return to what was the Souls past, the souls in the past go and take revenge! on whoever that Giant things were, who may or may not be more or less peacefull untill SUDDENLY A GROUP OF WINGED DEMONS ON A GENOCIDAL WARPATH RUN INTO THEM resulting in them suddenly showing you why you dont Bully the Dragon or Taunt Cthulhu.
Hey, no TvTropes without a warning!
SUDDENLY
PINEAPPLES.
ITYM BADGERS!
Taking an argument from authority about one person’s opinion on an entire race is a pretty bad road to go down, especially since we’ve already seen that she does generalize, even for succubi.
Also Dabbler has a lot of scientific knowledge, but she also generalizes and is opinionated, like most people are about one thing or another. Like… Q on Star Trek TNG is pretty much omnipotent, and even if not omniscient, he’s pretty high up there…. but he also says Guinan’s people are evil, and he doesnt say it as a lie – he says it because he truly does not trust or like Guinan’s people, because he thinks they’re BAD. Which it seems they are not (except the guy played by Malcolm McDowell in Star Trek Generations, who WAS a bad guy).
Plus it seems a bit incredulous that one planet would be universally hated by everyone else with no allies or others who agree with them. It sounds like it would be a two-dimensional, badly formulated strawman evil planet, like ‘Nazi Earth’ on the Berlanti DC Universe. So far from what I’ve seen, DaveB doesn’t tend to fall into two-dimensional strawman tropes – he subverts them instead, which is usually better for well-written stories :)
I am going to agree and add,
DaveB’s comic here has mainly fallen into the deconstructionist side of super hero story telling where tropes are just fiction and has a more real world approach. So it is very unlikely a planet of Hats approach to evil civilization world is going to happen here. Which is why we are likely seeing refugees.
and while here adding to above conversations, I doubt there is a time loop, this event is at most a week later given other events, also Deus is here NOW, so clearly not that far ahead.
Also the Alari were described as imperialistic, chances are the attack was either on multiple worlds, or their colonies/principalities and what not have not *yet* been attacked so survivors may be heading those ways. For all we know this attack on their home world was an uprising from ONE or more of the previously unknown lower tech worlds they took over that got a “bad ass upgrade” and fought back; attacking the home world of their alien overlords thinking them all evil space aliens who took over their planet *so tossed aside typical rules of warfare and went full genocide*…then how humans in most alien movies act…let’s send a nuke to the alien planet, let’s blow up their entire alien race space ship, rather than (we should only target military and infrastructure).
Dabbler didn’t say they had no allies or were hated by all, just that they were known for being imperialist dick-heads.
But whatever allies they had weren’t enough to save their race from planetary consequences.
My point exactly.
Dabbler didn’t say they had no allies or were hated by all, just that they were known for being imperialist dick-heads.
But whatever allies they had weren’t enough to save their race from planetary consequences.
You’re making a lot of assumptions that the attack was because of any imperialist tendencies the Alari government might have had. I don’t think the squidwards had anything to do with any cosequences for anything the Alari ever did.
You’re also missing that Dabbler has other reasons to have some animosity against Alari to begin with that would color her views of them.
Like that they’ve been frequently mistaken as angels over the centuries, and Dabbler is not a fan of angels either obviously.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2806
“Excellent, page. It is rare for writers to admit that sometimes not taking action is the best course of action.”
I knew there was a reason I liked this page! Thanks for putting it into words.
Sidney shouldn’t worry too much about these Alari’s tendency to imperialist unpleasantness; they just saw their whole world razed to the ground. Literally.
That kind of thing tends to shake any sense of superiority people might be harbouring.
Shake? Sure, but we can use the real life example of the British Empire here. The sun literally did not set on their empire, at one point. Now, they’re not near their former “glory” but I’d suggest that there is still a very distinct sense of superiority about them, or at least a sizable percentage.
Relevant xkcd: https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/
The sun hasn’t actually set on the British Commonwealth yet.
The sun hasn’t yet set on the British Empire. It also hasn’t set on the Commonwealth, but that’s a much larger body of multiple countries.
Thank you for correcting my technically incorrect statement. After all being technically correct is the best kind of correct.
Eh, it can go the other way–creating a seething sense of resentment in the descendants of the dethroned. Mussolini rose to power in no small way by trying to appeal to Italians’ sense that they’d been robbed of their place in history. (Likewise, I’d point out that Putin uses this as part of his appeal to Russians who resented the U.S. claiming the role of ‘the last superpower’ after the fall of the Soviet Union.)
What such knockdowns really do is prove to everyone else that the former empire wasn’t as invulnerably bad-ass as their propaganda painted them–which, in turn, makes them more willing to resist when the imperialism bug strikes that particular group again.
I think a far better example of what the Alari are going through is found in the history of Imperial Japan. The USA shattered their pride when they nuked them into submission, to the point that they are actually angry at any of their leaders who talk about rearming or changing the Constitution the US imposed on them. They do NOT want to see what happened in 1945 happen to their island ever again.
Now imagine if instead of “only” a few hundred thousand dead, the US had depopulated the Japanese islands entirely with nuclear weapons and the only Japanese who survived were the expatriates, soldiers on foreign soil and a handful of evacuees. What little culture they had left would be going through some very massive changes, even more drastic than the sea-change in Japan.
Just to cite historical precedence. Japan is an isolated case where their economy boomed so much after words that it reduced any cultural need for a “glory days”.
Most cases of foreign subjugation, especially if you were to reduce the population to isolated pockets…has a greater tendency to result in creating terrorists; extreme elements who feel they must do anything no matter the cost or face complete extermination.
Yeah, this feels very much like it could become a mujahideen situation.
Observation 1. All those ships are the same design therefore they are probably part of some type of Aleri evacuation (or otherwise repurposed as such) fleet rather than a ragtag effort.
Observation 2. I see a ramp implying they have recently or will soon be taking on of unload cargo or (more likely) passengers.
From Dave B’s comment about wanting to have shown “something slightly structured going on” they have probably just arrived.
Gah, I can’t stop seeing the wing on the right space craft as a robot beak in profile.
It’s really part of the new Gray Ranger Avianzord, The Steel Parrot
It actually kind of reminds me of the nosepass Pokemon.
It occurs to me that while Dabbler claims the Alari are all ‘imperialist jerks’… she probably isnt one to talk. Sydney’s already discovered that all succubi aren’t prone to being intentionally rude. That’s just how Dabbler is. Dabbler does seem to tend to generalize people, including other succubi.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2217
Zack Tilly! Dabbles may (or may not) be intentionally rude (unless she is), butt her opinions are based on her experiences, either first hand or hearsay
She may honestly believe what she said about the Alari, butt that doesn’t make it factual or true
Yep! It’s her opinion. Plus she might only have one perspective on the Alari, and is generalizing for all of them. :)
It reminds me that the Kryptonians used to conquer planets as well, and had actually conquered 80 planets before the Science Guild took over and dismantled the Kryptonian Armada and became sort of isolationist (except for Argo City, which still allowed offworlders for trade). Even a lot of the Military Guild were not imperialists, even if a few like Zod were. Supergirl’s best friend, Thara Ak-Var, and her father were military guild and were not jerks. :) Actually they were close friends of the House of El. :)
For real, that’s in the DC history on Krypton. ‘The Third Kryptonian’ story arc goes into detail on it. :)
I feel good now. I’ve shown my nerdy trivia knowledge.
We kinda saw a little of that when Mon-El showed up: he blamed the Kryptonian’s for both ‘anexing’ his planet plus causing it to blow up when Krypton exploded (and we also saw Kara’s bigoted response to Daxamites)
While I definitely agree that Kara in the TV show was quite bigoted to Mon-El, I try to never mix the comics with the Berlanti TV shows, especially for Supergirl, since I’m pretty sure that neither Berlanti nor most of the actors have ever read a Supergirl comic book pre-New 52. A lot of what they have reads like they glanced at Wikipedia then used about 5% of the info. :) Pretty sure they never mentioned in the TV show that Daxamites were actually just Kryptonians who had been genetically altered a bit by Eradicator and the birthing matrix (plus some interbreeding with the native Daxamites on the planet they settled) when they colonized another planet (which is why they are weak against lead instead of kryptonite).
Honestly, pretty sure anything in the TV show that could be applied to what happens in the comic would be a coincidence. In the TV show, Krypton was -never- a world-conquering planet. It was instead a democratic, wonderful place, while Daxam was a corrupt royal dictatorship. In the comics, the Daxamites were scientists and explorers, who became isolationists after a civil war between the more scientific explorers and more religious isolationists in the population. Very few daxamites after the civil war would EVER leave Daxam, except for voluntary permanent exile, like Sodam Yat (a Green Lantern Daxamite), Kel Gand, and Lar Gand. They did not have a ‘royal family’ in the comics. The closest they had to anything even resembling that was a semi-religious government, based largely on a version of Raoist beliefs (makes sense, considering how much the Eradicator had to do with their origins).
Even though in the comic, Krypton was a very stringent caste system for their leadership and their entire population – first a military dictatorship, then a science-based dictatorship which engaged in eugenics on a massive scale and hid the truth about the planet’s fate from the public so most of the public could not escape – except Kal-El and Kara Zor-El (since the two brothers of the House of El knew what would happen and were ordered by the Science Council to say nothing under threat of imprisonment) and the one Kryptonian Armada ship which had refused to return to Krypton for dismantling when they were recalled (in ‘The Third Kryptonian’). And the criminals in the Phantom Zone, of course. And Kandor, but again, that’s because of Brainiac, not because the Kryptonian government was in any way wholesome. In fact, shortly after Kandor was freed from their bottle and there were suddenly 100,000 Kryptonians on Earth, it took only a few weeks until they were at war with Earth (admittedly largely because of Superwoman – Lucy Lane – and Reactron, but still it was waaaay too easy to get them to want to go to all-out war with Earth).
I’m…. sort of a big fan of Supergirl and have followed the comics since I was 6 :). So I know all this trivia about the comic.
The TV show unfortunately (at least after season 1) tends to strawman anything that counters the main character, often for RL political motivations which totally throws me out of the whole immersion in the show, and makes everything from Supergirl’s past wonderful and pure and good, like the whole Raoist religion :). The Kryptonian religious guild actually tended to weird Kara out when she was on Krypton and the amount of war the Kryptonian gods engaged in with each other, according to the comics, while in the TV show it’s treated like some generic peaceful religion :)
Was only commenting on the TV show, never was a big DC fan (apart from Catwoman and the Legion of Superheroes in the 90’s,and now Harley, Batwoman and Catwoman in graphic novel form) so don’t really know too much about the details of the ‘real’ DC Verse
Big problem for me with the Supergirl show, was they didn’t hide their, for lack of better words, “feminist agenda”, where Supergirl was the greatest of all time and nothing she did was wrong (even when it was, because by the end of the hour she would be proven to be right, again). Heck, when they finally did bring in her cousin, they him weaker than her and had him looking to her for guidance on what to do
I can no longer stand the show, and I’m one of the biggest supergirl fan girls I know to a point where it’s annoying to my friends :) And I agree with pretty much everything you said (although in the comic, Supergirl is technically stronger than Superman, but they had a good reason in the comic which they do NOT have in the TV show).
In the comic for Loeb’s Earth DC, Supergirl’s ship had yellow solar radiation emitters during the entire time she was stuck in an asteroid until it crashed into Gotham Bay 32 years later while she was in suspended animation – it’s why she’s also stronger than Power Girl (who is basically Supergirl from a different universe, Earth-2) since Power Girl’s ship did not have yellow solar emitters, but instead had a holographic VR system for the trip.
In the New 52 version of Supergirl, her ship was in close orbit of the sun for those 32 years instead, so that when she came out she was equal or slightly stronger than Superman, but like with New Earth, she was LESS resilient against green kryptonite than Superman was, and also was not as good at controlling her powers (but she also had an additional power Superman didn’t have – a solar flare which pretty much does a massive amount of power but leaves her very weak afterwards – it was even able to break her free of Wonder Woman’s lasso, but afterwards, Wonder Woman was able to beat her because she was too weak to fight back anymore).
In Silver Age, there were no yellow solar emitters or close solar orbits, and they just said Superman and Supergirl were exactly the same strength levels, because their strength came from the sun, not from their muscles.
The only time Superman was actually weaker than Superman was during the Linda Danvers /Matrix runs, because Matrix wasn’t actually Kryptonian, and neither was Linda Danvers (a human who had mostly kryptonian powers). They were about 80% of Superman’s strength, which became apparent at the end of the run when Silver Age Supergirl arrived and was stronger and faster than Linda Danvers.
The TV show, however, has no reason for Supergirl being stronger than Superman. She did not have a yellow solar generator in her ship – she was trapped in the Phantom Zone with all the other prisoners, in fact, so she would not be any stronger than any other Kryptonian who was in there – especially since she didnt arrive on Earth until the same time the other Kryptonians did. In the TV show, Superman should literally be stronger because he had 24 years more time soaking up yellow solar radiation than any other Kryptonian and increasing his powers.
Like I said, the show creators and actors never actually bother to read the comics, they just want to push agendas, and it makes the show crappier as a result. It’s sad too, because if they werent constantly pushing agendas and doing very lame ‘copies’ of Superman adventures, it could have been a good show. I mean…. the actor who plays Superman? He did a really good job of being Superman, except in that horrible season finale, and that’s the script’s fault, not his. But instead they keep doubling down on PC and talking about how Supergirl is the best in every single thing, including every opinion she and her scooby gang ever have, and the show ratings and quality of the storylines suffer as a result.
Especially annoying right now that they made Agent Liberty a villain and Manchester Black a hero, when it’s actually supposed to be the other way in the comics. Manchester Black is supposed to be a sociopathic villain who was part of The Elite and briefly Suicide Squad, while Agent Liberty is supposed to be a Captain America Expy-type (same as Guardian is supposed to be, rather than being James Olsen’s alt persona vigilante). It’s annoying to some of us more nerdy comic book fans :)
Don’t get me started on turning the freckled ginger Olsen into a black male model!
Haven’t actually been able to see any of the CW shows for about two years (last season of Soupgirl was were Lois Lane killed her husband, Hercules)
I honestly could have handled Jimmy Olsen, the ginger nerdy guy, becoming a suave, well built black male model with abs of day-um who insists on being called James, not Jimmy, because ‘only the big guy is allowed to call him Jimmy.’ But they just keep piling stuff on, like… he’s also a black belt in karate and becomes the superhero, Guardian…. instead of Jim Harper, the actual Guardian (uncle of Roy Harper, aka the first Speedy, who then became Arsenal). Oh and he also runs the magazine, because being a photographer means you’re capable of running a ‘media empire’ (I don’t know why a magazine started by someone who’s supposed to be a ditsy gossip columnist – who’s actually supposed to dislike Supergirl until she saves her son from Dollmaker, the actual son of Toyman, not Winn – is a ‘media empire’, but it is…. fine whatever… they never read any of the comics, I get it).
And every show, they take established characters and utterly change basic elements of them to fit a very in-your-face agenda, to the point where the characters are unrecognizable to anyone who’s ever read any of the comics. They aren’t even trying to be remotely subtle. It’s just…. really irritating after a while. Again, because I have loevd Supergirl since I was 6 years old, and now it’s just propaganda instead. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Grrr. Gonna zen a bit now :)
Will stop bringing up bad vibes (which one was it that was allergic to natural materials like sticks? was it SoupGirl or PowerBewbs? o_O )
Btw I love the term ‘Zack Tilly.’
Thank you :D
Dabbler didn’t say they had no allies or were hated by all, just that they were known for being imperialist dick-heads.(Also, I think she was referring to their empire, not every individual.)
But whatever allies they had weren’t enough to save their race from the consequences of their actions.
You know, you repeated the same thing three times.
I responded to it once though. Read up where I responded. :)
Sorry about that. Accidentally spammed while on mobile.
It occurs to me that while Dabbler claims the Alari are all ‘imperialist jerks’… she probably isnt one to talk. Sydney’s already discovered that all succubi aren’t prone to being intentionally rude. That’s just how Dabbler is. Dabbler does seem to tend to generalize people, including other succubi.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2217
Gah! Clicking on one of my old pages is almost as bad as going to a TVTropes page. I wind up reading the next 40 pages and then an hour is gone.
That’s a vulnerability all your fans share too. I know I reread about every month or so!
That’s a regular occurrence for me whenever I look up anything from your archives.
Except it’s usually more than an hour. :)
Same :P
For some reason, it pleases me that you are as susceptible to the time stealing properties of your comic as I am.
^^^
Also, I just realized the comment threads here are so addicting because we’re all nerd sniping each other.
How many points for a comic commentator?
*16 wheeler doing a ton*
Yorp, Guesticus, MidnightDStroyer, and I can each attest to that complete TRUTH that you just laid down, birchins.
Please, never lose touch with that magic. And thank you for those hours.
I like this page exactly as it is. I like how it does show personal growth for our heroine, Sydney. And yes, sometimes the right thing to do is to do nothing but walk away and let others handle whatever is going on.
The refugees do seem to have things under control (especially now that we see a broader picture of what’s going on), or at the very least, there’s enough of them at that location to be able to organize some sort of group effort at survival (group efforts are usually far more effective than solo attempts), and collectively come up with some idea of what steps to take next.
About the only thing she could do would’ve been to say, “Sorry about your planet. I kinda arrived after you left, saw what attacked it…and when they attacked me, too, well, there’s fewer of them left now, so…hopefully they’ll be weak enough to be stopped.”
But honestly, that wouldn’t have done much other than self-promote. Mabye salve a few emotional burns with thoughts of someone getting vengeance on the squidly bastiches…but not really. Better for them to just get on with organizing how they’ll survive, really.
Plus the fact is, we still don’t know the full story on why Alari was attacked to such a degree, let alone by whom
There is one thing Sydney should be doing, but in fairness doesn’t realize she can do, yet–so long as she believes language to be a barrier, she isn’t going to get the notion that she should be getting intel on the Alari refugee situation to report back to ARCHON. But with Sciona’s actions on Earth, the fate of the Alari and their disposition going forward is going to have to be something Our Heroes need to be aware of.
Not to mention intel on the alien threat that destroyed their planet shortly before Sydney smacked THAT proverbial hornet’s nest.
Also, even if the Alari are “imperialist jerks”, it’s not like many humans can point fingers at them on that regard, as that’s pretty much been the chosen profession of a large amount of humanity for a great deal of our history. Add being warmongers and punishing people for deviating from the cultural norm and even the most vocal “not all humans” supporter will be reduced to saying “yeah, but…”. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that.
It’s actually incredibly likely that all civilizations are “imperialist jerks” because it’s a very effective strategy (hence why (most likely) literally every civilization on Earth engaged in conquest). It’s in vogue now in the west to pretend otherwise, but it’s just silly self rightous bullshit.
It’s not a sin unless you know it’s a sin (should shoot missionaries on sight). The rock I choose to throw it a mile wide asteroid! It should get there in a few thousand years.
Lol
I can only assume that the Alari, unlike us, caught the smack down simply because they didn’t want to stop despite their being no need.
Like if America tried to conquer Europe despite being given every opportunity not to.
Let’s all take a moment to honor Stan “the Man” Lee: writer, actor, comic book innovator, and military veteran. He will be missed.
It really sucks to feel you should do something, but to also know there’s nothing you can do.
For some people, it can be a humbling experience, specially if you have to just stand by and watch suffering and death (not in this case mind)
To put it in a simple term for Sydney:
“You first need to be able to help yourself, before you can help anybody else. Much less think about helping everyone else.”
That is true in any survival situation. For instance, if your aircraft depressurises, you must put on your air mask first, before helping even your own loved ones. If you do not you may loose consciousness and then become a burden on others or even die before you can help anyone else.
However Sydney has passed beyond the immediate danger to her life and is in a stable (if still precarious) situation. However that situation is very similar to theirs. Both her and the Alari are refugees. Her difference is that she has a home to go to.
In other words Sydney can help both them and herselves with the same sets of actions.
Conversely the galactic community may be gearing up to help those refugees. So by aligning herself with them she could get vital aid too.
I just realized… Sydney’s going around with her orbs out. Which is sensible enough, of course. But assuming those orbs aren’t a well-known thing, people will likely assume they’re just something her species has – like the Alari energy wings. If she interacts with anyone, humans are gonna get a *weird* rep.
There are enough aliens that visit earth to correct any aberation like Sydney. They could also just asume it is some form of equipment.
The aliens see weird shit everyday.
We know the Orbs are bonded to her.
The aliens might think the Orbs are in charge and use
a humanoid as an assistant.
Are they wrong?
It also might be like when we see someone using a 1980’s style satphone. ”WOW. Somebody still uses those things?!”
Given what Sydney just did with those things and the tech we’ve seen other aliens use, I’m pretty sure they’re still ahead of the curve.
Anything like Raijin or Nippon Ichi Software gods wandering around who have “orbitals” that are part of their bodies technically and they probably won’t give her a second glance.
Also, as a rubber head (at least partially) universe chances are aliens might not even recognize her as human right away.
Heh, interesting take.
The various counter-arguments are solid. Mind you not everyone will be familiar with the natives of a sex-tourism planet. So others may well get the impression you say.
Actually, Sydney is wrong on one thing. She has one resource that any group of refugees needs: Hope.
She went to their homeworld, and did some serious damage to a number of Kaiju monsters, and escaped.
That story alone would give them hope that they could one day return to their homeworld.
Of course, she also came straight here from the Alari homeworld via a boom tube that CAN be tracked so long as you scan it before it closes. And the Death Screw has very powerful scanners, so they just might be on their way here.
Well argued.
Very good point :) Although she doesn’t know that they’d be able to understand English just because Sciona can. :)
And she won’t unless she tries
Well as far as Dabbler being biased, Sciona seems to think believe the Alari are always up for a good planet invasion/cleansing. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2872.
Fair point. Sciona’s plan was for her people to invade and conquer Earth, destroying all resistance and collecting supers for experimentation. Everything we’ve heard and seen before now suggested that the Alari Empire was heavily focused on territory expansion and military development. There is no telling what life was like for their own civilians, or how much the general populous of their homeworld knew about the rest of the empire.
It’s sort of like saying all humans are going to kill all aliens since World War 2 happened, or since sometimes certain country leaders want wars of aggression for conquest. So far, all we have seen is Sciona thinks that, and was in contact with some elements within her government who were in agreement about that, and that the Alari had a history of war and expansion, although we have no information on the details of those wars.
Also Sciona might have been a bit biased on her view of Earth being a planet that should be taken over since they (well, the Council) did mostly cut her head off and had been hunting her for decades. That might bias a person against a planet as well if we’re talking about judging an entire planet based on a small ruling party.
So if Sydney is in a parallel universe, with a parallel Harem, and parallel Alaris who had their world ravaged by parallel cyborg-cthulhu-kaiju(?), how did Deus end up in this same parallel universe? Or is Fracture Station at the intersection of multiple parallel universes? Or was the thing with there being “too many” Harems all a red herring?
Wasn’t a parallel universe. The screwed up portal jumped them forward in time. After that they just waited until Harem had to deal with a duplicate to know when to send a rescue team. It didnt jump them very far ahead in time.
Entirely plausible.
To champion the alternate world hypothesis though, the can opener was tuned (by virtue of the accident) to that universe. So having used the same artefact to open their stargate, Deus and Vale will logically have arrived in the same location (or time for that matter).
Two sets of Harems could be explained either by travelling to an alternate universe or by time travel. What it would not explain though is how Harem would maintain a link, across time, once the wormhole closed. Whereas it is more conceivable that (once exposed to it) Harem could independently keep a link between universes open.
A third possibility is that it is just Harem who has been duplicated and neither time travel nor alternate universes need to have been involved. Harem does create duplicates by teleporting and leaving her originals behind. In this case she was being teleported by an artifact, which had gone haywire. So it could have replicated her usual process, but with a twist (copying all of her).
Not that I rate the latter as particularly likely, but when weird things are happening to insanely powerful devices, of unknown capabilities, it gives grounds for wild speculation.
what if the universes don’t run parallel, just closely adjacent? and possibly cross paths somewhere in future/past? timelines always connect, in some way even if it’s by Gordian Knot
What if there was no parallel universe or time travel involved?
Then there won’t be an excuse for a cameo by the new Dr Who!
If nothing else, seeing the Alari refugees confirms this is in the future, even if it is a short amount. There would be no way the refugees would be there fleeing the destruction of their world if there was not time to get them off the planet. Too short a time frame to be real time. This ties in with my previous comments about Harem.
Not necessarily, there’s still a lot we don’t know. For instance, as it has been strongly inferred that the Alari were expansionistic, it would be expected that they were in control of at least some nearby planets/systems. So if these kaiju/squidward folks reduced those planets first that would give the homeworld some warning. And if they went for the homeworld first, those other worlds would have time for a hasty evacuation. If they had the resources to level every planet the Alari controlled at the same time, they are not an enemy we want Sydney leading back to Earth.
These Alair might have been in space already on their way to their
Homeworld and found out it wasn’t there any longer.
We do not know how fast aliens travel, nor how close Alari and this Dyson sphere are. It may only take an a day or an hour to make that journey. Or it may be instantaneous.
I’m pretty sure the whole “parallel universe” idea has completely fallen apart at this point. The strongest hypothesis at this point is that the broken portal just sent them forward in time by somewhere between a week and a month. This would explain why Cora (Dabbler’s friend) was concerned with the precise timing of their arrival, and how Deus’ project reached completion by the time Sydney arrived at Fracture. For Sydney, it has only been a matter of hours since she left Earth.
Good points. Not conclusive mind, as rescuing someone stranded in a deadly environment is time-critical. The actual dialogue was:
The first part is pretty standard for any time your travel takes you to another time zone, you will hear it on arrival in a plane for instance. In this case cut short because it is an emergency situation and that is not relevant.
The key issue being that they arrived later than they were expecting, thus making Sydney’s situation slightly more perilous than they had anticipated (the longer that has elapsed the more risks she will have had to endure on her own).
As for Deus’s project having been ready, that can simply be down to him being well prepared. Which he is well known for. He clearly knew all of the contents of the vault before setting foot in it. Hence there is no reason why he would waste valuable time by only waiting until he had acquired the can opener artefact. He knew where it was and how to get it, so will have begun construction as early as it took to ensure that the project was completed at about the same time as he expected to gain the final component.
Or, of course, you could be right in your analysis. Both options are still on the table. Plus the possibility that neither time travel nor alternate universe options are correct. This could just be their normal universe at the same elapsed time as the rest of the team have experienced.
That however would require explaining why Alari was OK when Sciona called through the night before travelling. Easy enough, in that the invasion could have occurred after that point. The fires were still burning, so that is entirely possible.
The biggest point supporting the other two interpretations though is the two sets of Harems. But we have no indicators whether that would be due to time travel or world hopping. And there could be other explanations. Such as the wormhole and/or Harem travelling through it, could have connected her to the other set elsewhere/elsewhen (i.e. not necessarily where Sydney is).
Less a whole second set of Harem’s than six Harem’s trying to use a five Harem mind, but your argument stands. The wiggly part is their having a precise time ‘datestamp’ for the rescue ship arriving ‘.. we’re a bit late’. Though that can always be handwaved away by Xuriel having a timepiece on her that synchronizes to the atomic clock on Galifree, or the ‘six Harem network’ having functioned well enough to get the future date the system crashed, or some other equally ‘yeah, I can buy that’ explanation.
At some date in the near future, though, the Harems will need to take a day of mandatory medical leave, so they can be someplace noncritical and sitting down when time catches up to them.
An FTL drive must take into consideration, both time and space. Einstein, said they are the same thing.
Not to go off topic on the page, but
my suspension of disbelief is bugging me about something.
We don’t know if universal translators or a translator field is in effect but…with how busy and multi-purpose this Fracture facility seems to be…shouldn’t Sydney have overheard someone talking by now? Like a conversation at a sales booth, two individuals gossiping, something?
Maybe it also provides privacy?
She might be doing what a lot of people do with large crowds, instinctively tuning out the crowd noise so isn’t paying enough attention to the people around her to pick up what language anyone is talking, since she’s kinda convinced herself she’s not going to hear English on the Fracture.
Though why she hasn’t noticed the street/shop signs changing slowly to English is what niggles me at the moment about Sydney’s interaction with the Fracture’s translation ability.
Just look back at the sequence. Sydney has not been close enough to hear any conversations yet, other than the one where she had a geek monologue. Plus if you look at panel 4 on this page, we see the scene from Sydney’s point of view. And she cannot see the sign.
Sydney’s normal ADHD state is to have her attention flitting from one interesting thing to another. Hence taking in a lot more of her surroundings than an average person. However, in a crisis situation, where she has to accomplish a vital task, her ADHD makes her hyper-focus on that alone.
Hence why the sign is blurred out, in the frame linked. She is focusing on what she can say, in order to make herself understood to the aliens. So she is able to trot off several complex phrases, in different languages, and gauge their reaction to her dialogue. Yet is unable to take in the (mostly) English sign behind them.
Something we all do mind, but it is just moreso for her. Likewise, in the next scene we see her deep in introverted thought. Not to mention that crowd noise drowns out anything being said by any one individual. So she may or may not be able to understand them, but nothing is distinct enough for her to do so yet.
I’m kind of surprised Sydney isn’t projecting her Hologram
to look around corners and stuff.
Or keeping the Lighthook orb in her hand as
a non lethal weapon. (Inactive but available.)
(Of course, she can use any or all of the Orbs
as blunt force instruments within their
permitted radius.)
You know, I’m a PSW-level nurse, with a lot more first-aid and general health knowledge than your average person, and helping people having health problems is literally what I do for a living,
and within that context, I had almost the same situation when I passed through a mall where a heavyset woman on the hallway benches was having difficulty breathing, was weakened, and struggling to remain conscious.
At the time I arrived, someone had already sat her up at a good angle, was supporting her to make sure she didn’t fall over, had angled her head to maximize opening her airway, and another bystander had already called 911, and an ambulance was on the way.
There was really not much more for me to do, at least within my “scope of practice” and admittedly limited diagnostic ability. Everything I could think of to do to help the poor woman was already being done.
Of course, while I was taking my time, analyzing this situation, and coming to these conclusions, I’d basically walked up, then just stopped and stared, not doing or saying anything. People asked me if I was some weirdo who just came to watch a woman gasp. Awkward.
After basically explaining myself as I just did above, I walked away. Once again; everything helpful I could think of to do was already being done; I had nothing meaningful to add… and my continuing to stand there was obviously already weird.
Were the ones asking if you were just ‘sight-seeing’ people who themselves were just watching and objecting to you blocking their view? o_O
Good question!
No, see they were all “concerned”. Like good little Christian neighbors.
But since I was standing there with a, thinking, puzzle-solving look on my face, I guess I’m not as good a person as all of them, standing around looking worried, and doing little else either. >.>
Reading about Renee Bach trotting around Uganda playing doctor and killing 100 children and then reading this really makes Sydney look like a grown-up. Yes, you don’t know anything about these people, as far as you know you don’t even share a language, you don’t know what they need and how far they are from getting it and you don’t know anything about what kinds of systems are supporting them or failing to support them, so maybe don’t rush in and start knocking over furniture and demanding fair treatment for the people standing in line peacefully. (She doesn’t have anything to bargain with except firepower, what was she even going to do?)