Grrl Power #1041 – Shortstop
Smash cut to action!
I guess all cuts are smash cuts really. Well, unless it’s a dissolve or a star wipe, or one of those PowerPoint “a bunch of tiles flip over” transitions. It’s a good rule of thumb that if PowerPoint can do it, don’t put it in your movie. Although weirdly, Star Wars (Ep IV) got away with a ton of non-traditional transitions. Clock wipes, swipe wipes, bookend wipes, diagonal wipes, French door wipes, iris wipes, argyle wipes. It should look like a movie that was produced by someone sitting down at an editing suite for the first time, but it all totally works.
If you can’t tell, I’m not sure what else to add about this page. The only particularly notable thing is Anvil using her kinetic absorption to cancel her inertia. KE=1/2 m•v^2. (Yeah, I’m attempting to do something involving math and super powers, so buckle up.) If she gets knocked back, then absorbs all the kinetic energy when she hits the ground, well, she can’t absorb mass, so really, she’s just absorbing velocity.
It’s actually a little more complicated than that, though. She couldn’t just stop herself dead in the middle of a freefall. She could only absorb the energy when she hits the ground. It’s the moment when the velocity violently changes. I guess what she’s really absorbing Velocity Delta. “∆v” if you will. Hence, the name “∆nvil”
(Actually I just made that up as I was writing this post, but it’d be cool if I’d planned that from the beginning. Don’t tell anyone.)
April Vote Incentive is up! Looks like someone had better make sure their life insurance includes acts of Snu Snu.
Alternate versions over at Patreon include less cloth-y versions as usual, but also some of those color changing chokers.
Her shirt, since no one has figured out the kanji yet, says “I ahegao you. (As long as you ahegao me.)”
Edit: I updated the no-tanline nude version that was missing the tattoos, so grab that if you need.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Panel six is where Anvil learns Mahogany Forklift doesn’t have Super Durability…
They’re digging an irrigation ditch.
But doing it the fun way.
They have sand in places and a shower room. Loser helps the other clean up?
Depending on any “extra” abilities that come with being a telepath, I’m sure they can “redistribute terrain”. Pure telepathy though, definitely not. And not counting Telekinesis in that “extra” abilities.
Depends on the ‘extra’ abilities, and also depends on the ‘tools’ available locally. If there happens to be someone with physical combat capabilities in the vicinity (whether through Powers or through a Baseline’s equipment), then manipulating that person for landscaping is entirely on the table.
Flirting between supers gets weird. Unless they’re up to foreplay already. Then it’s just a supers version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Face-planting. You’re doing it … really well, actually.
Man, now I have the image of two telepaths battling it out as the most boring thing imaginable. Just two guys staring at each other silently.
Professor Xavier probably has the advantage just because he’s already sitting and will tire slower ;P
Can’t recall if it’s in the Twinborn series or the Powder Mage series (both excellent), but they do wizard duels by seeing who can draw the most power and hold it the longest, as they have to channel it or be consumed by it. Each wizard has a giant tub of water to vent the energy into when they give up.
To the onlookers, it just looks like 2 wizards glaring and grunting, until one of the water tubs explodes in a cloud of steam. Or, if they overextend themselves and can’t bail in time, one of the wizards themselves explodes.
Then there’s Scanners … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqDmKeFc6Ns
The comics usually have some surreal dreamscape psychic battleground
There’s a scene in one of the Twilight books (ugh) where the telepath and the procognitive play chess. From the outside, the game consists of them staring at the board. I absolutely cracked up reading that. Best scene in the series, IMO.
Depends on the movie and scenario if you watch “Scanners” a low budget scifi/horror movie from the early 80’s about people that were birthed with a telepathic ability because of a “experimental” drug their mother’s took while pregnant the 2 strongest ones were able to explode heads and transfer their minds so yeah.
It’s interesting to think that Anvil’s ability can probably give her a lot of maneuverability and maybe even speed.
I mean, a good part of turning is in cancelling your momentum in one direction and redirecting it to another, so if she’s able to instantly stop and then apply that momentum in a different direction, she can zig zag like crazy.
The most significant aspect or limitation to her power appears to be need for contact with something, so she can’t just stop in mid air, she needs to make contact with something and then she presumably cancels out the energy to prevent friction from just making her slide, holding the dirt and dust still.
We’ve seen Concretia suddenly discover a slew of aspects to her power she didn’t know existed, so I could easily imagine that Anvil has many more tricks she could pull if the capabilities of kinetic absorption and release is explored to the atomic level. I mean, if electricity is the movement of electrons, could she actually proof herself against even electrical attacks? If she stood still in full absorption mode, it’s possible she might be nearly invincible or capable of sitting in a sort of stasis (not that I’d want to think about how she’d cancel a stasis situation if her mind is frozen up).
Theory… All things are essentially stuff, even air is filled with invisible gasses, dirt particles etc all of it moving and bouncing around with momentum, what if Anvil absorbed the kinetic energy of the matter around her… Basically made air solid instantly?
Given anvil’s powers involve absorbing kinetic energy and converting it to strength/redirecting it, there are a HUGE number of power-stunts she can use that likely haven’t been explored fully, some of them being really subtle.
If Anvil made the air cold enough to become solid it would snow Nitrogen and Oxygen around her for a couple minutes while fresh air rushes in from all around. And then she’d fall unconscious from a lack of Oxygen, after which the solids would turn to gases again creating a strong air current away from her.
It wouldn’t be very useful and it would hurt her more than others.
If she learns precise control it does make her immune to fire, lasers, and other heat sources.
Determining your friend’s strength/durability could be really important in super relationships. Niven covered some of that in his essay “Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex”
SMBC (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) had a funny alternate version of that.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1363
I was expecting this comic, but turns out it wasn’t from SMBC. Also worth mentioning Interviewing Leather, which has a frank discussion of the issues about halfway through.
No worries, Dave. I’m gonna treat it like you planned it from the first moment she was born in your mind.
I have questions about Anvil’s powers now…
There’s technically no difference between say “ground” and “air” – both are just matter, mediums of differing density. Objects lose energy traveling through air – hence objects have a “terminal velocity”, when the downwards pull of gravity or additional kinetic energy is equalized with that lost to air resistance. The extra energy gained is expended to move air out of the path of travel – energy is transferred to the air. There’s no difference with the ground – enough energy and the ground moves out of the way too.
So, DeltaV exists for all objects, at all times, outside of a pure vacuum. Hell, technically DeltaV exists even in a vacuum because massive objects pull on each other. So, as long as two objects exists and can act on one another, there is a DeltaV.
Based on your explanation, there’s no reason that Anvil shouldn’t be able to absorb any of her kinetic energy at any time and she can even pull more energy than the medium should technically allow (she was able to come to a dead stop on gravel).
Of course, this leads to a rabbit hole wherein she could perpetually absorb some of the energy from the downward pull of gravity but then energy also has mass so the pull of gravity would increase proportionally meaning the amount of energy she absorbs would increase exponentially in a vicious cycle until she collapses into her own black hole. Unless the energy is stored in a higher dimension somehow…
Since she can also redistribute energy, she should also technically be able to fly … Indefinitely… and her speed would only be limited by the amount of energy she’s able to store.
There’s a lot more of a difference between “ground” and “air” besides density. They’re also vastly different in phase difference. Hitting one vs hitting the other also causes entirely different reactions. As best as I can figure, she absorbs energy of acceleration events, but there also needs to be a threshold of rapidity. Since she can’t absorb the acceleration of being thrown, but she CAN absorb the acceleration event of impacting something (remember, deceleration is just acceleration in the opposite direction of a relative velocity) the way I figure it, she can only absorb the kinetic energy from an acceleration event if the delta (the difference between the current inertial frame and the last) exceeds a certain amount. This is why she can seemingly only absorb violent impacts, not throws, foot steps, sound waves, or wind.
I think you’re overstating the difference between the two. An observed reaction of an impact against one versus the other would be different, yes, for a constant mass and density of the impacting object. However, the underlying physics governing the interaction are the same.
However, this panel negates most of your argument anyways. Anvil cancelled/absorbed *lateral* acceleration by simply touching the ground. On gravel or dirt, no less!! For this impact, the vast majority of the inertia would be in the lateral direction. This making the “impact” significantly less “violent” (because this impact was AFTER they bounced). So, the velocity in the lateral direction was still great while the velocity in the vertical (or down) direction was small – limited to acceleration due to gravity alone or 9.8m/s2(ish since they aren’t in a vacuum). A velocity which could hardly be considered to cause a “violent impact”.
Yes, the actual net velocity would be somewhere between lateral and vertical, it would still be far greater in the lateral direction especially based on the pictured height of the bounce.
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I was completely engrossed in this chapter from start to finish. The writing was captivating, and the unexpected twists kept me on the edge of my seat.