Grrl Power #1307 – Batmax
What Maxima is implying about the split decision is that the sniper competition judges were probably a bunch of boy’s club old school military types, so naturally anything resembling a tie goes to the “can write name in snow” club.
By “in the service,” Maxima means the Air Force specifically. A branch not usually renown for their snipers. Which isn’t to say there aren’t USAF special ops sniper teams or anything, but if you had to rank the branches in terms of who’s the sniperiest, it’s probably the… Army first? Like, just by sheer volume, plus various special forces. Then it’s kind of a toss up between the Marines and the Navy, which is weird, because initially I’m like, why would the Navy even have snipers, but then I’m like, oh right, the SEALS.
My point is, the Air Force only doesn’t come in last because of the Coast Guard. I won’t say the Coast Guard definitely don’t have a special forces sniper team… but they seem the least likely of any branch. I know I could google it, but it amuses me not to.
What I do know that the Air Force has lots of special ops teams that explore alien worlds and fight the Goa’uld. I mean, if Stargate SG-1 taught me anything, it’s that a P90 can definitely dunk on a Staff Weapon. Yeah, you know what clip that is, but you’re going to click anyway cause it’s baller and it’s worth rewatching at least once a year in perpetuity.
Not sure why I dedicated 1/3 of the page to a drive by on injera. I’ve only had Ethiopian food once, and honestly, it was fine. I mean, the meat, spices, etc. But, if you don’t know what injera is – I couldn’t blame you, I had to look it up – it’s like nan/pita/tortilla, except it’s thinner, spongey and kind of… wet? At least the one I had was. Ethiopian dishes, or at least one category of them, are served on a big injera, like a scoop of 5 different things, and you rip up the injera and use it to scoop up your choice of… topping. Filling, dip, whatever.
Now, I know the burning question you have is, “Why is the American Airbase in Afghanistan serving Ethiopian food?” Simple, the hospital has an Ethiopian chef on staff. Now your next question might be, “Dave, is inflicting Ethiopian culinary sensibilities on American servicemen who are probably mostly used to MREs and relatively unadventurous chow hall cuisine, who are also in the hospital for one reason or another, possibly on drugs that make their whole GI tract a little iffy to start with, a recipe for ensuing hilarity?” Yes.
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Dabbler went somewhere tropical, in a very small bikini. As you might guess, it doesn’t stay on for long, which of course, you can see over at Patreon. Also she has an incident with “lotion,” and there’s a bonus comic page as well.
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I could see where there would be a unique skill set for an Air Force sniper. As an example, headshotting the driver in a ground vehicle from a kilometer away while in a moving helicopter.
You don’t shoot from a chopper they are a terrible shooting platform, between the wind and the fact you are at someone else’s control while shooting it makes it really bad unless you are well spraying and praying. Ground or building, or if you need the back or top of a vehicle that is sitting still not moving.
Regarding the window, how detailed is Max’s contact telekinesis?
I mean, obviously she can grab a car by a flimsy bit of trim, and pick it up instead of tearing off the trim, *if that’s what she intends to do.* Perhaps she could instead rip the trim off, or tear the car in half, if instead she intended that effect.
But, could she put her hand on a window, and open the latch on the inside, just because she’s touching the window?
Maybe without even thinking about it, because she intends to open the window…
There are a lot of ways to get the most out of a power. It is only limited by your imagination.
If you are into reading fanfiction try Worm, it’s in the sites subsection. The writers of this fanfiction mostly specialize in wringing every last bit of potential out of any superpower.
Ment to say it is in the Book subsection of faniction.
Trying to recover from a stroke here. It ts sometimes hard to keep your sentence structure strait.
Basiclly, if you had trouble mentally doing at all it magnifys that effect.
I believe Max’s contact telekinesis allows her to lump an object as a whole unit, rather than bits and pieces. This isn’t a hospital as much as a building that could be converted to one. At least it’s not a military hut! Most likely the leaders just picked a building that was in good shape and cleaned it up to act as one.
No TK necessary, it’s easy to open a slide-up window from the outside if it isn’t latched. I forgot my keys a lot as a kid.
Maybe the window was already open a few inches?
if she only has to concentrate on one thing, i guess her contact telekinesis could easily open the windows latch
also, the question was “why” not “how”, as for why, i guess it is still a bit early before the public announcement of super people, so the big golden army officer catch less attention by entering hospital by the windows
If a window isn’t locked (and I don’t even see a latch for it to lock*), opening it from outside is typically only marginally harder than opening it from inside. There’s no dedicated handle, but the glass is normally recessed into the frame, so you can push up on that. Absent that, so long as your hands (and the glass) aren’t wet, you can press your palms against the glass and rely on friction (including the Van der Waals interactions between your flesh and the glass) to stick the hands and glass together and lift.
That’s for a normal person, I believe Maxima has been indicated to have rather low-friction skin (I think Rowan described it as “slippery,” plus I believe it’s been mentioned that cosmetics don’t really “stick” to her), so it probably wouldn’t work in her case. However, the fact her forcefield can extend to some extent things she grabs (allowing her to pick up heavy things without damaging them) should actually allow her to “stick” to surfaces fairly readily (if she couldn’t already fly, she could easily Spiderman her way around), and do so much more effectively than a mere human could. So her opening an unlocked window from outside isn’t likely to be difficult.
*Even if it could lock, security doesn’t seem to be a concern for these windows – one has an A/C unit in it, and that prevents it from locking at all.
Humble Sniper Woman, that can be her superhero name.
I can actually see why Max is the sort of Boss you would pray for in the military. Genuinely concerned when you are injured, does their own work in checking details and will have your back all the way. One thing I REALLY want to see is how she encountered Math and convinced him to join ARCHON. I know what’s in his character description,but the actual story would be fascinating.
“One thing I REALLY want to see is how she encountered Math and convinced him to join ARCHON. I know what’s in his character description,but the actual story would be fascinating.”
If we’re doing requests then I’ll admit I’m curious as to how the hell Dabbler & Max came to work together.
Peggy is admittedly in the “When I was 19, I did a guy in Laos from a thousand yards out. Rifle shot in high wind. Maybe eight… or even ten guys in the world could’ve made that shot. It’s the only thing I was ever good at.” club.
Para-Rescue are the best shot callers in any branch. Their training is called Superman School by SEALS, mostly because they do BUDS with SEALS and can still wash out after they complete BUDS. There are two branches of Para-Rescue. One does jumps behind enemy lines to extract pilots who have been shot down. They are trained to be field surgeons, evade and escape experts, snipers, survivalists, and that list continues until it’s as long as your arm in very small font. The other does jumps behind enemy lines to paint targets for radar and laser guided munitions, traditional artillery, and snipers.
Fairly sure Ethiopian food (even spongy tortilla’s) has to be betterer than what most service personnel get fed :P
Grrlpower meets Terminal Lance!
Oh heavens Dave, is this the second or third time you’ve linked to the clip of Carter and a P90 dunking on the Goa’uld. :-)
It is a good scene though. A very good scene.
Carter’s grin each time she turnes around is adorable.
“Brassy?” No wonder she was so forgiving of all of Sydney’s one-legged Freudian slips.
Braggy, not brassy.
Wait, is that a ‘why would a window open from the outside’ or a ‘why should a window open from the outside’ question?
Because of emergencies, and most windows have latches on the inside (even if most people forget they are there until the wrong person opened the window from the outside)
Why would the window open from the outside? Because Max “asked” “politely.”
Tactile telekinesis, Superboy’s and Spiderman’s power set.
Allthough, I would love to see if sticking to things was and strength were the limits to Peter’s powers. Could be a mental thing?
I recall one occasion on which Electro suddenly realized that Spidey was relying on static cling, and sucked up all the static electricity in the area. And, yeah, Spiderman fell off the wall. He did on one occasion mention that something had to be a force field, because he wasn’t sticking to it, and he could stick to anything that had a molecular structure. Which implies, yes, amplified Van der Walls force, which could technically be viewed as static cling.
I suppose if he gamed his powers, he could likely push them in the opposite direction, and become effectively frictionless, even to walk on tar without sticking. In much the same way that, when he was temporarily blinded, he learned he could use his spider sense just like Daredevil’s radar sense. (Then promptly forgot when his retinas regenerated.)
A certain Mr Clay once asked the Wildmother also to do something politely….and we all cried.
Space Force: the least snipery and reason the USAF is less “Chair” now.
I haven’t had a chance to eat it for a while, but I quite liked injera when I ate at Ethiopian restaurants. The texture is pleasantly weird and passes my literal taste test as food, which is more than I can say for a lot of more common (in the West) foodstuffs, like iceberg lettuce for example.
I really like Ethiopian food, but the first time I had it I did find injera weird. It’s one of those things where repeated exposure engenders fondness, though.
Most air forces usually have regiments or brigades as part of their structure, primarily to protect their airfields and airbases even in places like Afghanistan.
This includes having Snipers.
USASOC International Sniper Competition seems a bit of a misnomer, as it is mainly a US military competition which includes guest teams from about half dozen countries allied with the US.
Imagine Max saying, “Yet for the first year and a half of your tour, you were on kitchen duty…!”
BTW, Dave, the Coast Guard DOES have in fact a special forces division, with a surprisingly competent sniper contingent that routinely beats out most other branches. if you think about it, they have to shoot out the engine of speed boats going 80-90 mph on rough open seas from a helicopter with an RC-50 anti-materiel rifle. They don’t shoot at the people on the boat, because they’re meant to be Law Enforcement, they should be arresting them, not killing them.
Right, I’m not saying they don’t, only that CG snipers have less mindshare than the other branches sharpshooters in the cultural zeitgeist. Most people can name a specific SEAL team, but don’t know what GC snipers are called or even that they exist, generally.
Pressed “post” too quickly, but this is my source: https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-trending/coast-guard-snipers-msrt/
I think the US Coast Guard’s “special forces” are those rescue swimmers who jump into 32.5° water in the middle of a storm to rescue mostly-dead fishermen and then climb the rope back into the chopper using only their teeth. Or something.
If you told me that there was an expert sniper in the Coast Guard, my first thought would probably be that they had retired from some other branch of the military. But on further reflection, the CG is still part of the armed forces, and it got me wondering who deals with things like poachers and such, if it’s not local LEOs. I don’t hear to much about japanese (or icelandig or norwegian, thanks google) whaling ships coming all the way to north America to steal our whales, but if they did would it be the CG that gets sent out to shoo them away? If only because the Navy has better things to do with it’s time?
Kinda got me wondering, that’s all.
my son has a P-90. i’ve fired it. his has the longer barrel and no full-auto (special gunsmith licensing is needed for the short barrel). it may look like it should have a “Mattel” logo stamped on the side of it, due to its polycarb furniture. but it’s an ambidextrous shooter’s dream. brass drops out of the bottom. charging lever on either side. i enjoy shooting it when i can, and, should i decide i want a carbine, i’ll likely buy one of those. it’s accurate, versatile, not too difficult to break down for cleaning, and the huge magazine is convenient on the range. can recommend.
TIL, Space Force has snipers…. WTF?!
November Annabella “Nova” Terra.
I have described injera as “fajitas, but the tortilla is a sponge, and totslly different spice profile.”
Snipers are needed in all branches. Think of snipers as very precise artillery. I’m looking at you sniper of the Pacific Ocean I forgot what his name was. Augustus Lee. Snipers with battleship guns.
Not crazy about Ethiopian food either.
Don’t need to click on the clip. It’s already seared into my brain.
Hate to give props to Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children but the Marines actually have the best sniper training program.
3 times on the presidents 100 tab, ok research you have it or you don’t, it’s not an award it’s authorized to be worn based on being assigned to that duty.
I don’t know anything, but I’m pretty sure the Coast Guard has marksmen that can shoot the engines of bouncing boats from a helicopter. I don’t think that counts as special ops, and I don’t know how that ranks them, but it’s kind of special.
Pretty sure Peggy could write her name in the snow from any distance and with any caliber you care to name.
…oh, you meant piss. Right. Yeah, but I bet her competition would get “shy bladder” if you hinted she was hiding uphill somewhere…
There are several ways to open a window from the outside. A Burglar would be able to answer better, but the simple way would be if it was already cracked open to allow some ventilation, then it could be slid open further.
Why is everyone focusing on Max opening the window via spooky-action-at-a-(very small)distance? It looks like a plain old single-hung slider. If the latch wasn’t thrown last time it was opened, anybody who can reach it can just slide it up from the outside. That happens pretty often. And if it’s not on the first floor, the chances of the latch being unlocked get better really fast.
I can see Peggy as a USAF Special Warfare Combat Controller sniper.
I love Ethiopian food, one of my favorite cuisines. I quite like the texture of injera, but the kind of sourdough note it has is the best part.
If it seemed wet btw, that’s because it had soaked up the sauce from the food on top of it. Plain, it’s like a spongier naan.