Grrl Power #761 – Piiiiigs in Spaaaaaace (cause they’re cops, see?)
MEANWHILE…
I wasn’t trying to be lazy when it came to drawing the inside of their ships. I was actually thinking about my lack of visionary futurism when it comes to designing stuff that I stick in the comic, like an alien spacecraft with heavy, loud, slow hydraulics on their cargo door. Partially that’s just because if I just draw a panel opening up, and Sydney’s not there to wonder aloud how it works, then it just looks like I drew a lazy door with no apparent mechanism. Which, to be fair, is the case some of the time. But if she’s there acting as the drive train of an exposition engine, then someone can say some futuristic shit about magnets or force fields or manipulating the Higgs Field or some such.
In the case of these ships, I thought it’d be cool if the pilots are held in an antigravity field, and the entirety of the interior of the cockpit was basically a holodeck. So it’s like a 360 view canopy with floating UI so you can slide your altimeter to the side if it’s in the way. Or… really, minimize it, because you wouldn’t need an altimeter in a spaceship most of the time.
Actually, I thought of the idea of a spaceship with the entire interior being handled via holodeck technology quite a while ago. Obviously the reason it never happened in an episode of Star Trek was because holodecks have a cascading chance of failure. It’s probably like 0.01% for any given time you step into one, but a 100% chance that something will definitely eventually fuck up. You couldn’t take a ship into battle if every time the ship brushed against a piece of space dust, the navigation panel disappeared and dumped the ensign manning it onto a featureless black grid.
Still, if you could bring the reliability up to 99+% even when you’re getting fucked up with space bombs, (and physical controls to fall back on when everything still inevitably fails) something like that would solve all the ergonomic issues I was talking about a few pages back. Like how nice cars have user settings, so you don’t have to fuck with the rear view mirror and the seat position every time your wife/husband/anyone-who’s-a-different-height-than-you drives your car, you could have a massively diverse crew manning all your stations. Your helm could be manned (personed? sapiented?) by a pixie on one shift, then a Marileth could sapient it on the second shift, then a tarantula with jellyfish for limbs who can only see in the ultraviolet spectrum could take graveyard shift, and they just wave their primary manipulation appendage over the DNA reader and their preset station pop into existence.
I just had to joke about a tarantula with jellyfish arms on the post for the previous comic. I guess he wasn’t that hard to draw, though tentacles get tedious real quick. I do think the cop pants are funny, though I guess technically it’s a skirt, since tarantulas have basically just one butt cheek.
And yes. The fungus lady has breasts. It’s my comic. I get to draw that if I want. If it makes you feel any better, just assume they can shape their bodies how they like as they mature, and they know that growing boobs gets them free drinks in bars from other species. Or fermented compost or whatever they drink.
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I’m wondering if the mushroom person is a symbiotic life form. A fungus growing over a humanoid form. Maybe similar to the trill. It does look a bit like transformations into fungus-like monster-girls. Of course, they might just be their own thing with form similar to mammalian humanoid female.
Instant thought was that it was a new skin for Ivara from Warframe :P
Dont say a new ivara skin.. we ivara players are kinda mad that DE is intentionally making her ethereal skirt nearly gone every update, it getting harder and harder to see
The new ivara deluxe skin is looking super fine at the moment
That makes them sound like the Clickers from The Last of Us, except less utterly horrifying. :)
Nah, those are more like cordyceps (which are real and horrifying and animals more complex than arthropods are lucky they never evolved to infect them).
Cordyceps ARE fungi. And yes, terrifying concept if it ever species jumped.
I know, saying the clickers are more like this parasitic fungus than a symbiotic one… Come to think of it, aren’t they actually based on the cordycep fungus in the first place in that game? Been some years.
Yep. The game is based on the idea that cordyceps did a species jump from insects to primates, for a “science plausible” zombie game:).
Semi plausible.
Their form lacks a support structure to scale to sizes that large.
Good enough for science fiction or superhero genre fare though.
also that they don’t make arthropods aggressive. Wouldn’t be much of a game (but a good zombie movie mixed with a disease movie that could bring up ideas of cures, humanitarian treatment of the infected, and the hard choice of when to terminate them) as they’d move awkwardly and then seek out a warm and wet place, clamp down in the dirt or wrap themselves around a tree trunk they just climbed up, telephone pole, ect… and wait to die so the fungus would have the perfect spot to grow, consume them, and spread its spores into the wind.
Well in the game, the reason for the aggression is that it takes a while for the cordyceps fungus to actually completely take over the brain, and until that time it makes the person go crazy from the pain and disorientation. When it fully takes over the human, the human goes to a damp place, dies, and the spores burst out of its head, like in the beginning of the game when Joel and Tess are going through the spore-infested part of the city.
I’d Say minimalist is the way to go regards space ships. Just think all the “Stuff” we have & place that clutter in zero-G rattling around…
I think that, with a spaceship, you’d generally want something with a low possibility of failure. Holographic panels and solid light controls and the walls all made of holograms or whatnot seem like they’d be very failure-prone the first time a solar flare messed with the power. Hydraulics, on the other hand, are relatively simple, easy to fix, and can work even when the electricity shorts out temporarily. :)
simple to design yes. but easy to repair? not always. to say they are easy to fix is assuming that all the lines are easily reachable, including the connectors on both sides, you have plenty of material that can not just stop the leak but hold in what ever amount of pressure that line is normally under. And that you have plenty of spare Hydraulic fluid to replace what was lost during the leak. And that the pump your using to pressure the system is also easily accessible and repairable. I doubt such will always been the case.
I’m going to make the very big leap that simple hydraulics, which have been around since 1796, is going to be simpler to repair than advanced holographic controls. They won’t be simpler than, say…. nothing. But you’re also not going to open a one ton door to your huge spaceship with just your physical strength unless you’re superstrong. Also, the great thing about leaks is, if you do not have spare hydraulic fluid, you can make some pretty easily in an emergency until you get actual hydraulic fluid from mineral oil or water. Or you can just seal the hatch that is powered by hydraulics until you have a way to repair it. Can’t do that with a force field or holographic wall/panel. Plus if you have hydraulics, chances are you’re going to be also having hydraulic fluid.
How does space Police Academy train their recruits to apprehend and cuff jelly-spider criminals? How would the cuffs stay on and how many pairs would each officer need to carry around with him?
Even the command ‘put your hands up!’ could be time consuming.
I’ve seen some Sci-fi used adaptive holo-bonds and even gel cubes (like the foam idea police had minus suffocating them).
Hundreds of tiny Chinese finger cuffs is the officially approved method.
Although in practice, it’s such a huge hassle to both cops and perps that the accepted unofficial method is “come willingly and quietly, or we send the cruiser around the block on autopilot so the log shows we didn’t arrive until you were already unconscious at the bottom of this flight of stairs.”
If your cops are in the middle 21st century they are being monitored on nearly every level. But then not many would be criminals could afford blocking software and the cops cannot turn any of it off. If they do they call in the Law Enforcement Sanitation Squad to see if they are dead. And if it has been sabotaged the cop could lose out.
As for the giant jellyfish spider sounds familiar. In some occult circles such creatures are talked about. Supposedly terrorized a woman in the 1890’s. Semi-transparent bodies and whip tails since they are from a very ancient stock of spiders going back 300 million years at least. (The ones that preyed on the arthropods we call “fairies”. Very old. Old Evolution at work even in this arcane setting.)
The abdomen of a spider is like our abdomen. But then arthropods have a different body plan than we do.
“giant jellyfish spiders” are a myth.
Don’t mind the servitor: it’s slightly skewed in the region of the third shell ganglion – tends to mesh hypereality with hyperreality.
Ah, but what you can do, really.
Except for amputation of affected appendage, that is.
Or… are they?
https://roaring.earth/newly-discovered-jellyfish/
“Hydromedusa” is a perfect name for it, and one of my new favorite ridiculous but accurate animal names.
I wonder what shroomgirl would think about the “Pleasing Fungus Beetle.”
Date night?
Something like Spider-Man’s webbing would be really useful: strong, variably-adhesive polymer, porous to air (Spidey can web someone’s face without suffocating them), adapts to any body shape. Might not work on something with a very slimy or ablative surface, but other than that, it’d be very broad-spectrum. Cops could carry web-spray canisters instead of something like our pepper spray (the effects of which would vary by species and within species . . . Sydney being a prime example).
Duct Tape…
Not porous/breathable, and the glue that is used on most brands is toxic in large amounts or over longterm exposure. (People will cut off small bits of duct tape and put them on warts to kill the warts.)
Love the Muppets reference… thank you for that.
>microagression
…I honestly have no idea why I still read this comic.
I felt triggered by the use of that term.
Because a character used a word in a comedic strip?
Because in between the occasional nuggest of sheer stupidity there’s a pretty good comic with lots of insights?
I suppose. Still though, the sheer magnitude of stupidity required for one to unironically use the word “microaggression” is a pretty big turn-off
But, clearly ironic usage?
It’s clearly being used here as the punchline of a joke though. :) So it’s not being used unironically far as I can see.
You can say something as a joke and have it be unironic. Context is key.
Okay but my point is that here, it’s meant as a joke, and the context in which it’s used was funny, as was the taranjella’s response (who doesn’t seem to care about terms like microaggression when they’re trying to stop a Fel Battlecruiser), not as speech instruction. :)
Maybe the mushroom girl is VERY apologetic all the time (so a dumb word like microaggression would appeal to her overly apologetic mentality), and the spider-guy is very no-nonsense and clearly did not even care when she said the ‘hands’ thing, and only seemed to tell her to ‘just fire’ when she started wasting time with an unnecessary apology when they are in the middle of an intergalactic police chase.
It’s a joke about the use of the word “microaggression”, and how clumsy that concept renders conversation and social interaction. The character is not using it ironically, “she” is sincere.
However, the writer is using the situation ironically to comment on the culture that produced the term – leftist intersectionalist university culture, if you will.
If your response was “Oh, please” then you got the joke.
If your response was “Oh, god, that’s offensive to talk about hands when manipulation appendages vary so much between species, I’m SO glad she apologized.” then you didn’t.
If your response was “Oh, god, that’s offensive to joke about microaggression when so many PoC and GLBTXApqrst are subjected to it all day long every day by their patriarchal cisgendered WM oppressors” then you didn’t, and please back away from the computer.
Yep, I agree.
In any case, DaveB was clearly using the term as a joke because it’s a ridiculous term. Which DaveB actually just said outright in a post. I’m referring to how the author is using the word as the punchline to the joke in the strip, not how the character is using the word. And yes, my view of it was ‘oh please.’ :)
I think the reason some people might have overreacted is because it came so soon after the Fox News/anti-immigrant strip, which seemed a lot more political, so the two strips are getting mixed together by the people who had a problem with it or got annoyed about this joke. Overflow from a previous not-as-funny joke (which some people saw as being personally insulting to people in the rela life audience/readership) spilling over onto this funny one (which is not attacking anyone, just making fun of the use of a particular clumsy word for the reasons you just explained).
It’s just a joke :). Because the term ‘microaggression’ is incredibly stupid and politically correct orwellian newspeak, so it’s not something you’d expect to see on a galactic police spaceship by aliens. Pretty much a subversion :).
It’s an Anglicization of a word in an alien language. Evidently, this alien race is the opposite of the web-footed aliens from Westley Crusher’s Psych test (The alien race that are offended by politeness, considering it an evasion of your REAL feelings.)
Was that in an actual ST:TNG episode?
I know there’s also a webcomic called Outsider, where one of the alien races is offended by the concept of ‘word of honor’ because they’re telepathic, so they do not think words can be honorable.:)
Yep, real thing, the time when Wesley went to school… accompanied by some creature that needed a breathing unit, a podmate iirc of the one that was on the Enterprise the episode that Riker went over to the Klingon ship and learned to eat gokkk.
Oh, you mean the Benzite, Mendon… or Mordock. I know there was two of them, both played by the same person because apparently all male Benzites look alike.
Awww, is someone so bigoted that antibigotry terms makes them feel bad? Poor you.
They’re not a bigot for thinking ‘microaggression’ is a stupid word. Because it -is- a stupid word, like many words used in the political correctness lexicon are stupid words, but sometimes can be funny when used in jokes. Because it’s so dumb that it’s funny when being used in the context of a species/situation where the people would not be so involved in trivialities or word-policing. Here it’s being used as a punchline for a joke. How about not calling people bigots for not being into Politically Correct terminology?
Imagine thinking I’m a bigot for saying a word that reads like something out of 1984 is dumb
Ignore this. for some reason the comment didn’t originally show up.
Imagine thinking I’m a bigot for saying a word that reads like something out of 1984 is dumb.
About “microaggression” – When people use polysyllabic verbalisations like that, instead of short words, it triggers me too.
People use jargon to exclude the rest of us. They are trying to prove themselves superior by being obscure. Really intelligent people use simple language to explain themselves. They know that you can’t persuade people to change, if they can’t understand a word you are saying.
Or you could, you know, buy a dictionary, maybe?
Alternatively:https://www.dictionary.com/ in general, and https://www.dictionary.com/browse/microaggression in particular
Mike A – I suggest you put away the dictionary, and actually read what I said.
“Really intelligent people use simple language to explain themselves. They know that you can’t persuade people to change, if they can’t understand a word you are saying.”
If you want change the world, you must start by explaining the problem to people. They won’t understand you, if you use stupid, long-winded jargon. “Microagression” is long-winded jargon, used by people who enjoy being obscure.
As a classical scholar, I understand what “micro-aggression” is supposed to mean. It’s a stupid word, a mongrel formed from the Ancient Greek “micro” (small) and from Latin “aggressio” (movement at or attack). Why not say “small attack”. and avoid polysyllabic verbalisation?
The problem with editing down the explanation to ‘simple words that the other person will understand’, is that they will often then assume it’s a simple problem with a simple solution. Thus, in many cases, causing the next round of problems while failing to fix this one. If being honest about the complexity of a problem works to discourage those who don’t have a clue from sticking their oar in, then those who do know the subject have a better chance of reaching a good solution.
The term is actually a term invented by, and only used by extreme bigots to infer ill intent upon the targets of their unadulterated hate. In the absence of actual wrongdoing they assert innate wrongdoing.
The irony of people using the term is palpable, considering the unreasonable hate required to employ the term at all.
“Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups.[1] The term was coined by psychiatrist and Harvard University professor Chester M. Pierce in 1970 to describe insults and dismissals which he regularly witnessed non-black Americans inflicting on African Americans.[1][2][3][4] By the early 21st century, use of the term was applied to the casual degradation of any socially marginalized group, including LGBT, people living in poverty, and disabled people.[5] Psychologist Derald Wing Sue defines microaggressions as “brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership”. The persons making the comments may be otherwise well-intentioned and unaware of the potential impact of their words.[6]”
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression
The more you know…
You just gave a detailed explanation to what Reality check. said
I guess you missed this the first time…
“Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups.”
So, it would not match what Reality check claimed.
Umm, yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what Reality check. said, just using bigger ‘smarter-sounding’ words
No, not even a little bit.
See my comment above.
Right.
Confirming that (just as I explained) it’s a term for pretending something ordinary is actually offensive, and then attacking the supposed offender while refusing to debate whether the imagined offense could be considered offensive by a neutral party or not, and insisting the supposed offender must be treated as someone with ill intent and made to behave as the supposed aggrieved party desires.
The moral and intellectual vacuum of refusing to debate whether and actual offense occured or not defines both the people who use the term, and the people who defend the term.
It’s not. At least not in the way you are thinking.
Basically prior to the 1950’s or so one might say “this is rude”
However, much like in medicine you have specific terms for specific injuries, in the field of psychology it is necessary to define terminology for specific types of behaviors. This specificity helps identify and classify effect and cause.
Like if a doctor says that you have a Cerebral Microinfarct, it’s far more telling than “your brain’s broke”
One of the key’s here is that from a psychologists perspective the idea of “offended” and “offensive” isn’t quite relevant. The key is
“Does this statement have a negative impact on the recipient?”
“Is the impact cumulative over a period of time?”
For example, the phrase “where are you from?” is, on one level, a neutral statement. However depending on the context of it’s use, it serves to highlight and enforce differences in the speaker and the recipient. Pushing the recipient into the category of “alien”. More so when the speaker only asks that question to people based on a specific trait (again establishing themselves as [normal] and the questioned as [other].
Again, from a psychological perspective it is completely irrelevant for the “neutral party” to claim something is or isn’t offensive. In much the same way it is irrelevant for someone to ask a third party if it hurts someone to touch an injury. (since you know, the third party isn’t injured).
The point you seem to miss is that the point calling something a microagression is not
“to treat someone as ill intent”
it is to call out “this statement has a negative impact on the recipient.”
on the other hand what [does] get someone labeled as someone as how they react to it.
For example you (the speaker) have just been informed that the statement you made had a negative impact on the recipient and served, intentionally or not, to highlight in group and out group difference between the speaker and the recipient in a manner that server to either promote the in group of the speaker or demote the out group of the listener.
If your response to that is along the lines of “how dare you be offended by me” (further dehumanizing the recipient by establishing that their feelings and nature is beneath yours). Then yes, you are further reinforcing the negative impact, this time directly and intentionally, and the likelihood of ill intent increases.
Which is not to say that everything that is called a “micro aggression” is one. But the refusal to even consider that ones behavior might have had a negative impact, or that someone else is not allowed to be or feel things that you don’t allow them to feel, certainly is.
Again it’s simultaneously a complicated and a simple concept all at the same time (like most interactions)
“Don’t be rude”
The definitions of rude will be left as an exercise to the students, please turn in your answers next week.
Thanks for that. It’s a sad sign of the times when basic respect and courtesy are treated as things to be mocked.
Leaving open the question of whether these “denigrating messages” would ever have been considered as such, had the recipient not been primed to expect them and to impute that interpretation. Which is the greater harm – for someone to knock gently up against the reality that the population is not homogeneous, or to encourage them to regard the knocks of life as targeted insults?
It’s not an antibigotry term. It’s a term that exists solely to imply bigotry where none actually exists, thereby driving wedges between people and actually creating MORE bigotry. Plus it sound idiotic in the extreme when someone tries to use it seriously.
I thought it was pretty clear I was making fun of the use of the term, but maybe not.
You underestimated the lengths some people will go to to feel offended (or act offended)
It might have also been in conjunction with the fox news joke a couple strips ago that people took ithis joke the wrong way, despite it seeming pretty clear he was making fun of the use of a nonsensical word like that in light of a serious spaceship battle/chase. Probably not from people going out of their way to be offended. Just mistaken idea that the comic was going in a less apolitical, more pc/sjw direction and there was an overreaction.
Well now DaveB explained so no need for arguing about it hopefully :)
Some people live to be offended.
I mean, anyone who is willing to honestly use that word is pretty much by definition not going to understand or appreciate that joke. It was far too subtle for that…
You have to make it clear that the joke is making fun of the word itself, and is not just a joke about the number of arms an alien has, which, just to be clear, you did not.
I thought it came across as making fun of the word because of the spider-jellyfish’s response. ‘Shut up and shoot.’
It was clear, and pretty obvious given the arachjelly’s response. Just like any comedy that has one character that is overly concerned with being nice and not offending anyone and the other being annoyed by it.
No, it was not clear, as it simply gave off the impression of being a joke about the number of arms, not making fun of the word “microaggression”
Nope, she felt she was being offensive making that remark about the hands thing, the spider made an eyeroll type comment about her acting like that with the “just shut up and shoot” giving the impression this was a common thing with this character. Its a trope. Fairly common in some anime, the apologetic character; who often has a thesaurus of odd terms the casual character wouldn’t even know, like I didn’t meant to invade your thought space type of chatter.
So this is on you and everyone else who decided that the usage of a random pointless term in a joke was worth getting worked up about.
I once had a friend who was from Israel, and me, him, and another friend were at a a restaurant. He was having a cheeseburger, I was having like… a chicken wrap, and my other friend was eating sausage or kielbasa or something like that. And he suddenly said to my Israeli friend “I hope you are not offended that I’m not eating kosher.” So my other friend looked at his cheeseburger, looked at my friend, and said with a very deadpan voice “Yes, I’m extremely offended.” And I tried to not crack up, since it was a joke, my other friend was being overly apologetic, and cheeseburgers are not kosher either (mixing milk and meat). It was funny when he told my other friend to calm down about it. :)
1. Again, it was clearly a joke about the arms.
2. If a joke is misunderstood by its audience, than its not a good joke, its just humor 101.
Just do what I do.. snicker every time someone uses the term microaggression, because the term itself is a form of microaggression.
I mean, if a small alien got angry and told a tall alien to get their head out of the clouds (Which a small alien could have as a common phrase to mean to pay attention to what was in front of them), and the tall alien accused them of micro-aggression…. I mean… you see where I am going with that
*SIGH* You’re not the only one…
I’m guessing Halo saves the day? She does have the firepower of a battleship and already caused a few ships to meet their doom
Of course she saves the day. This is most likely those giant space squid, having realized that Sydney may have been from Earth just like people were saying, regardless of how unlikely it seemed to me. So until further notice, I’m guessing that y’all were right and I was wrong.
It is like a 0% chance its the squids, the Fel were mentioned by name by Cora already (she stole a Fel artifact and it is on her ship right now), she didn’t recognize the squids. So chances are they are heading to Earth after Cora.
it’s not Cora’s ship they’re chasing, comic #675 gives a good shot of her ship; plus it says Meanwhile at the top, meaning this is all happening while Dabbler is talking about why aliens look so human
you very poorly mis-read the conversation.
the two I am responding to, believe the ship the cops are chasing is the squids that attacked the Alari world.
I am informing them it is not. The ship the cops are chasing is a Fel ship. and I am informing them that Cora has a Fel artifact on her own ship and has mentioned encountering the Fel, and didn’t recognize the squids.
Thus it is reasonable to assume the Fel ship is heading to Earth to go after Cora.
ohh well good thing i dint call you names when i messed up ^^; sorry; i get confused by pronouns sometimes
No, they are not chasing Cora’s ship, the Fel (the ship the cops are chasing) is heading to Dirt after Cora
Yeah. The Fel really want to get their Artifact of Unspeakable Cuddles back.
Why do I get a voice in my head saying phenomenal cosmic powers, itty bitty living (shielding) space…
DaveB, are you getting all self-conscious about your aliens now? I mean, you just had Dabbler explain why most aliens have a humanoid form, and here you are in the very next comic showing a alien-looking alien. You already managed that with the kaiju, so relax and enjoy!
I like the myconoid with the multiply opposing digits on her (obviously a her because even mushroom people are mammalian it seems) hands.
Her? Those aren’t boobies, it’s budding asexually.
I intentionally made him look weird because I joked about it in the post on the previous page.
I think that there’s a typo in the last panel “I would rather ram it that have to” should have a “then” instead of “that”
“than”, not “then”.
At least, I’m assuming he’s not specifying a sequence of operations. “First, I want to ram it, *THEN* I want to do the paperwork!”
Than, for comparisons.
Some Ed’s post wasn’t visible when I made mine, and I’d delete it as being redundant if this board allowed that.
Then then is correcter than than?
then than is more correct than then.
the easiest way to remember it is that is the answer to what, then is the answer to when.
Doh, flubbed the joke by being in too big a hurry to proofred!
Whoops!
btw, still love the comic, honestly wish I could afford to patreon
In Weber’s Honorverse the crew gets into what is essential a spacesuit, in case of the fairly common hull breaches that happen in battle. Even good compartmentalization doesn’t keep the area which was breached from losing atmosphere, and with the energy weapons involved those compartment lockdowns are just as susceptible to being destroyed as is any other bit of matter that happens to get into their way.
So the bridge crew is all suited up in highly advanced space suits which allow for freedom of movement and doesn’t impair manual dexterity, strapped in to their station in a set up better than a Formula 1 race driver, and then (finally getting to the relevant part related to your holodeck musings) they have a fantastic heads-up display battle board which each station can configure or add to as needed, and which tracks friendly and enemy activity automatically to the best ability of the sensor array.
I’m not sure how a holodeck could be much better, except for the ‘wife’ settings on the station seats that you talked about allowing aliens to slip into the same duty station just vacated by a human or different alien.
After re-reading this page about three times I am now hearing them as Mihoshi and Kiyone from Tenchi Universe.
-not to be mistaken for Kiyone from Tenchi Muyo…which is a different character and the equivalent there is Noike instead…
Thank you. Now I can’t get that out of my head when reading the captions here. :)
If I remember correctly one of the ships on Babylon 5 worked on holographic controls, or at least the weapons did. The gunner went… somewhere off the bridge…and then they were sort of floating around in space, basically seeing the area around the ship, which allowed them to see where they were shooting in full 3D. I distinctly remember them throwing punches and kicks which somehow fired the guns… honestly the writer for that one must have been an anime fan… I think it was the Ranger spinoff series or possibly one of the related movies.
Why they thought this was a good setup I have no idea, it takes far longer for even the best fighter to throw a punch then it does to pull a trigger or press a button, and while the whole area around them was visible they still had to look around to see anything…
Ugh, That was Legends of the Rangers…well after the series and its spinoff had ended (or been cancelled for spinoff ) and we dont talk about that one. ;)
But yes, thats exactly what it did
To be fair, Sci-fi and Fantasy genres are full of things which are rule of cool power fantasies for the viewer that probably aren’t that practical if you start analysing it.
I guess whoever thought it up thought it would make a nice daydream for bored people, like a superhero catching a plane by the tail without snapping it, or dodging bullets via martial arts and maths.
It’s just that we all thought that it was too stupid and the film wasn’t very good anyway.
In Bab 5, Minbari Sharlin class war cruisers had holographic displays. This was seen onboard the Grey Council’s Sharlin class ship in the Battle of the Line, as Londo recounts the story of why the Minbari stopped short of destroying the human race, during the Earth-Minbari war..
To be fair, in the Babylon 5 series the Minbari cruisers were shown to have a command deck that gave full spherical view of the battle for the commander and voice control to the crew.
Of course, for the White Star design they went with the simpler traditional bridge design for the less advanced species (which totally was not because such a setup was both cheaper and gave more potential for dramatic staging ;))
The Minbari cruiser ‘holodeck’ was for command / control. Actually operating the ship took place in a more traditional bridge-like environment (hinted at in Minbari video communications).
The White Star combined both bridge and C&C operations, so it was more compact, and well, cluttered.
I don thee Fungoobs and Arachnajeans.
dub*, don is put on or wear, like one might with one’s arachnajeans, whereas dub is name, i name thee
not trying to be a grammar fascist, just, your comment was gibberish cuzza that 1 word
also dub is “speak”, like English dubs for anime
Viirin:”I know what I said.”
1. Fel might be after the Alari refugees.
2. Where did the guy meet his fungus lady? At a salad bar.
that there after certain young hyper active heroine that killed three of there giant monsters
That was an unknown Alien Race, Cora was well aware of the Fel.
right, what if the unknown race is the ones that are called the fel, since they was never named to us but that ship looks identical to the one that launched the fighters
We only see the end of the ship, and that end doesn’t look anything like the Squid-ship
Again, Cora is well aware of what the Fel look like, so would be aware of what their ships look like, and she did not recognize the Squid-ship above Alari Prime
After all the discussion on the previous page about ergonomic support of multiple species, I’m wondering if Officer Trouser Bug is actually the size of a bug, and if Constable Truffle is mushroom sized. Nothing on the page provides us a reference to scale after all.
The spider is 15 feet long and suspended in heavy gases, their species evolving in the upper atmosphere of a dense atmosphere planet between terrestrial and jovial in build and their first big step in development was exploring downwards to gather materials as they lived on island of the sharp peeks of the few mountains that poked that high into the atmosphere.
the mushroom is from another planet’s Hell/Netherworld, evolving on floating islands of self contained temperate forests within eco-forcefield created by giant blue humanoids call the Caretakers, between these islands a dense black nebula of unknowable horrors and random specks of light from the abyssal beasts within; touching it however transported one randomly to another of the nether environments. Her kind the “demons” of another world
(no one said any two worlds share the same Hell)
-okay the spider thing off the top of my head, but it did remind me of some of those tentacle limb bulbous body creatures seen in thought experiments about what life might evolve into under different atmospheric conditions. the Mushroom thing…are my Mushroom people (which I’ve done nothing with since I never use that Netherworld for anything other than references…I feel so bad now, to be reminded I also made mushroom cap girls and never did anything with them. Well time to crank out the ole idea train and revisit that).
not the first time this comic has inspired me to revisit some ideas. Heck seeing Cora in a Lamia shape got me in the mood to right a new Lamia story.
found it, luckily on Deviant art
Fungus People
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Demon-Fungus-People-655779964
although may need to update some details…and noticing typos I didn’t when writing like writing “fat” instead of hat…
Mushroom cap girls are such a rarity in the monster girl circles for some reason.
Made a mushroom hat girl in Guild Wars II years ago
yeah, I really don’t get why we don’t see them more often. Not like they are any weirder than Lamia…and honestly less weird than slime girls.
you mean as one of those leafy ppl? i forget their name but they have that whole Dreaming thing… they’re my fave race to play as, so much fun with the glowiness
Back before they basically made it pointless to have more than one character (last straw for me was combining the wallet, petty probably, butt personally liked keeping earnings separate) had one of each race
Of course the spiderthing has pants, where else would he/she/it keep their pockets? Ask anyone, pockets rule.
Anyway, depending on what’s going on and the type of combat you want to show, a CIC table seems the most reasonable for ship to ship combat. While there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be monitored to keep a ship running, a lot of it isn’t necessary while in combat.
In the last panel I think the first that should be a than.
Micro aggressions? I know this is a fantasy series, but lets not be silly.
At least the spider jellyfish alien tells her to shut up when she uses such silly newspeak in the middle of something serious :)
Considering the last two strips, how did evolution of space creatures managed to give boobs to a species without a mouth?
Priorities.
One word – boobmouths.
something I have actually seen in fetish art (in several forms from benign to terrifying)
Those are spore sacs. Duh.
and at the height of orgasm both partners *hermaphrodites or a shared gender feature (chest based spore sacks) either way* ejaculate their spores into the air which meet and cross-fertilize one another.
Btw, spaceships have been handled by holodeck technology in Star Trek a few times. By Moriarty in TNG, and a few times in Voyager by those renegade holograms.
Wait… did it evolve to have apparent boobs in order to survive better by having other races give it stuff?
Do they actually need to be be breasts?
Given genetic diversity and variety, could they not be some other relevant fungal organ, that just happen to have a resemblance to human breasts.
And we, as humans, see what we expect to see?
Yes. Cupps has a galactic-spanning business.
On the other hand, they could be mammals. I mean, it is a useful trait to develop in a wide range of circumstances. There is no reason why parallel evolution could not have it show up in mushroom people.
Ah like the mushroom people and the Goombas from Mario Brothers. :)
the beings behind the panspermia of breasts being so common were like, “I don’t care if they are for nursing, venom, spores, sexual display, are actually mouths, shoot lasers, or serve no apparent function. I said I wanted all my humanoid creations to have boobs and by…well…ME…they will have boobs me-damn-it”
Title for a new movie…”Microagressions…. IN SPACE!!!!!!”
Maxim 78 – It isn’t a microaggression; you just aren’t using a big enough weapon.
Why do I read this comic? Because even the mushroom people ladies are as hot as f**k! (Also, I have a fixation on slim girls with glasses and geek cred, so Sydney. Buff Sydney in the bath a few weeks ago made my top ten list.)
*adjusts her glasses*
*throws towel over panders head to save them from the flood of oncoming anime style Fan letters thrown at their locker*
Stoic intelligent Lithe college boy: Only you can prevent Anime style eye injury
Random human:*Shows up on the command deck with a towel* “Trippe technicolor dream sequence mate”
Security officer:”WTF WHERE DID YOU COME FROM!”
Random Human:”cool off mate i just stuck my thumb out and hitched a ride.”
Captain: “Seems legit carry on ENSIN get this being some coffee. Alright grab a seat were currently in combat with the bad guys and were the good guys if your not aware.”
Random Human: “…Cool.”
Are you sure he’s human and not from Betelguese?
that depends will the girls of his home star knock him off his feet? If so he is from Betelguese, if not he’s human.
To be fair, noisy hydraulics are probably going nowhere for operating big, heavy doors. And big, heavy doors are probably always going to be the portal of choice for cargo bays. It’s just danged near impossible to envision something that works as well without introducing a stupid amount of complexity and multiple points of potential failure. Force fields and such may be possible, but it would be a very foolish engineer who builds a cargo bay on a space ship that has only a force field for holding stuff in since it’s always going to be one blown fuse from the vacuum of space.
I could see force fields being used as a backup door though, like how they use them in Star Trek so that a shuttlecraft can go through the opening without the hull integrity being lost and everyone in the shuttle bay being blown out into open space.
Plus, a slow-moving loading door is a critical component of escaping a ground-based shootout in a ship.
Crew: we have 3 Useless slow moving doors in this ship that have no point being here. if that doesnt make matters worse we have random drums marked explosive and random people whose sole job is to walk around with panes of glass. WHAT IS GOING ON?
Captain: i got the idea from TEE VEE some weird documentaries of really cool ships in space.
Crew:is that why we only have one fuse box in the entire ship?
Captain:…well i kinda went low on funds paying for the crews salaray for the next 10 years and everything else.
Crew:well you pay 3 times more than my job normaly does so…ill deal with your dumbness for a while.
Is that the same carrier that Sydney was fighting against back on that other word before returning home? Oh come on, why are those aliens so hell bent on going after Sydney to get them damn orbs? This has got to be really ridiculous.
These are the aliens from whom Cora obtained The Artifact Of Unspeakable Cuddles.
That was not funny.
Read this:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-674-space-cavalry/
And then this.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-709-para-go-on/
I didn’t name it.
Welp, Time for Sidney to become a God-Tier Superhero in the eyes (and/or any other possible sensory mechanisms) of the whole of the Universe.
There is a saying among beings of great power, “When the Apocalypse comes, all that will remain are Cockroaches and Human beings” (sources: https://ibb.co/pd382jT https://ibb.co/CQKNsHw don’t remember how to hyperlink by hand)
Fear Earth, and pray that we are too busy getting distracted by shiny objects and string to……………. I just saw a red dot on the floor, I am going to go chase it now.
This is how I do hyperlinks by paw:
<a href=”https://ibb.co/pd382jT https://ibb.co/CQKNsHw“>source</a>
Which gives a result like this: source
I need to remember that.
Although I just noticed that I had copied the sources, thinking it was just one, but not realising that there were two. Hence I should have separated them out into two separate tags, having one as ‘source1’ and the other as ‘source 2’.
The weird thing being that when I tested it I did get one of the linked websites appear, so thought everything was OK. Although clicking on my resulting ‘source’ now only gets an error (due to that issue).
However (barring the error of having two https: etcs in one tag) the layout I typed is correct, for anyone who wants a word (or phrase) to replace a web address, in links they wish to post.
The evil squirrel overlord‘s dastardly plan has now been revealed!
So the War of the Red and Grey has come to this?
It is always sad to see biological warfare used. The Grey’s risk the whole world declaring war on them to stop their madness. That level of racism is always nasty.
looking at the evil squirrel overlord link caused me to spend 15 minutes reading comics again before i went oh yea i was doing something.
Glad I’m not the only one.
Dont f**k with the squirrels, Morty!
Not without wearing ‘protection’
Never. F**k. With. The. Squirrels. Morty!
source
I suck at hyperlinks :/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpZZQ2ov4lc
eventually the boobs explode and send spores everywhere
Nightmare fuel
Or they erupt like a volcano from a nipple like point that forms for that purpose, or open up like squishy mandibles that fuse shut and split open as needed.
which is pretty hot…from a certain point of view *Rule 34, yes this is out there too if you search long enough*. Although the woman spewing spores thing is usually out the mouth, even if mouth boobs and tentacle boobs and such are oddly common in certain eldritch circles.
I repeat….
Nightmare.
Fuel.
:)
Microaggressions? really? How far into the retarded side of the left are you? Truly this comic become a pointless waste of time.
You should really change your e-moniker into something more suitable.
Like “overtriggered retard who despises humour in any form”.
And maybe – just maybe – give DaveB a credit of trust for it to be a simple joke on the expense of overtriggered retards like, say, a certain disappointed reader, and nothing more.
Seriously it was clearly a joke
inside the mind of “a disappointed reader”:
How dare Dave make fun of the left!!!
(fume)
wait – you mean it was satire?
against the left?
never mind… carry on…
I think I am going to -try- to stick to legal and comic stuff. PC debates get too tiring. Not that enjoyable after the first few.
Shouldn’t be too hard in this forum where topics like fungal boobs and spider pants can be quite popular. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Very true :)
I’d rather talk boobs than politics any day.
Most people who talk politics are boobs :P
It is a weird topic thread, spanning through (response about mushroom boobs,…reply about someone being offended by someone afraid they were being offensive…or something equally idiotic apparently…and missing the eyeroll trope moment there; then zombie…more mushroom boobs, weird aliens, and back to someone hating the comic because it used a word that apparently is on their list of freak out over if they ever see it, like a bull from a cartoon seeing red.
I’d much rather discuss the many purpose a fungoid’s breasts could be for, from nursing its young with a protein paste, to stored nutrients for its self, spore sacks, to actually being fused shut when not in use mouths full of long barbed tentacles that shoot out and drain the fluids from her victims…to just ya’know there, no real reason, horny gods / precursors or whatever.
I’m responsible for the zombie thread and I do not regret it.
I actually had the holographic interphase (kind of) when writing a Voyager fanfic eons ago. First officer was also head engineer (before Trip Tucker, and before I learned all modern commanders were always redshirts). He installed holo controls over all bridge stations, allowing them to keep everything at eye level.
Just seemed logical to me
There were living holograms in Voyager, who had a ship, which they were using holographic controls on as well. And Moriarty once controlled the Enterprise using controls he created with the holodeck
After much deliberation, my headcanon is that, in real life, you must be a combination of Ally McBeal and Sheldon Cooper!
Ally because lawyer, funny and imaginative. Sheldon because you have accumulated such a volume of nerd knowledge, across diverse fields, on top of holding down a demanding & skilled job, that you must also have gained a bunch of neuroses!
I bet, one Yorpie snax, that at some point, you wrote a roommate contract!
I’ll give you the Yorpie snax anyway, but I’ve never had a roommate before unless you include boyfriends or college. :)
But I will not dispute the neuroses. I do have a large comic book collection, but most of it was stolen from – er… I mean… given to me by my older brother, who trained me in the art of nerdity.
No, not Sheldon, anyone except Smelly Shelly, Raj, Raj is good, he’s funny, and clever, and not a smarmy anti-social arsehole!
Supposed to have stopped the italics after ‘anyone’ (must have forgotten the ‘/’ when moved the end from after ‘Shelly’)
An alternative to Raj (does he still need to drink to talk to girls? that was about his only real neuroses) would be the hobbit roommate (the one who married the less-attractive daughter of the late Paul Hennessey), he has a load of neuroses butt is very social (he is the one that everyone else in the group mostly connects through)
I would need to be a lot more socially awkward to be either Sheldon or Raj.