Grrl Power #463 – The crux
Whoops, I just noticed Sydney’s choker is missing in panel 4. I’ll get that fixed when I get up.
Finally we get to the point of the meeting. That does seem pretty serious, given their daily existence depends on the veil. Well, they could exist without it, but a lot of them would have to use up a bunch of sick days since many of these guys are productive members of society when they’re not lurking around weird gothic chambers.
Arc-LIGHT is far more similar to the old A.R.C. than Arc-SWAT. The A.R.C. was explicitly clandestine, which is one of the primary reasons they didn’t run around in blue windbreakers with “ARC” in Helvetica Bold on the back. I’ve said it before, but The A.R.C. and now Arc-LIGHT are a lot like the X-Files or Fringe division, but with a healthy portion of the BPRD thrown in, since often some of their agents were super or supernatural. The Council is used to dealing with them, and even has worked directly with them, as stated on page 460. It’s the whole public facing arm of the group that’s got them riled up now.
I’m not sure if the joke in the stinger lands. It’s been quite a while since I’ve played a JRPG. In fact the last one was FFVII. Well, I played about 4 hours of FFX then traded it to a friend for something else. Of the few JRPG’s I’ve ever played, two of them are actually two of my favorite games of all time, Final Fantasy 2 and 3 (4 and 6 in Japan). In FF2 the main characters only ever says “…” I don’t recall FF3 that well, I don’t think there was a main character, but for some time it was a bit of a joke that JRPG leads are all silent protagonists. Maybe that was just an in-joke among my friends.
As I said I’ve felt my faces (skintone in general, really) are a little monochromatic. I may have over corrected a bit on this page. Sydney looks like she’s either a little cold or drunk, but I’ll get it right soon hopefully.
I’ve updated the vote incentive. It’s a photo from the shoot Maxima did, (or will be since magazines have more than a 2 day turnaround) and actually it’s the throw-to joke on an upcoming page but I figured I’d draw it big and get some extra use out of it.
Mikiron, who did this previous NSFW commission for a Patreon, has done another. Also NSFW. I believe he is available for commissions, though I hear he filled up pretty quick after the last time.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon as soon as I get up. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
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That’s supposed to be a :-\
I’d expect it’s actually Maxima who has objections. She was in the military and hopefully has a good grasp on the principles she was fighting for; the Veil blatantly runs counter to one of my favorite quotes, at the top of the Jefferson memorial.
That, and she’d personally benefit from suddenly not being the weirdest-looking person around. Her “I am become death” spiel feels like a calculated attempt to start chipping away at the Veil effect. A big, fat “suppress THIS!”
“Mind the step”?
“…I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” – Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800.
Seems apropos. The Veil literally hold tyranny over the literal minds of billions of men and women… and maybe dogs? (Does The Veil work on animals, too?)
Either way, it’s disgusting.
How is it disgusting? Humans as a whole are generally hateful, spiteful, xenophobic creatures. Media sure hasn’t helped. These ‘monsters’ are people, too. Many just as much American citizens (some with arguably more claim to that since they predate our extremely young country entirely), and regardless still intelligent beings we share this planet with. The idea we should ALL know everything is, if anything, absolute hubris.
The moment it becomes obvious they’re living in this world, what happens? Riots, marches against integration, protests, assault by people thinking ‘they have to protect themselves’ despite having lived alongside them fine all this time, the militant religious factions, the cultist maniacs who believe the ‘new monster/alien overlords want the cleansing of mankind’. Shit will GO DOWN.
YOU might be able to handle this revelation, can you say the same for your neighbors? Are you 100% positive?
As Agent K once said, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals, and you know it.”
Everything Komm says is absolutely right. I actually know some of the people who would likely be behind some of those riots, marches, protests, and assaults, most of them belonging to conservative religious cults.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” remember? I have actually met preachers who would include all fae, therianthropes, mages, and vampires (and probably golems and aliens too) in that category.
So I will reiterate what Komm said: YOU may be able to handle the revelation (as could most, if not all, of the people who follow Grrl Power), but without a very careful, staged reveal, there would be riots and assaults, or even outright murders, of non-human sapients, whether they used to be human (like therianthropes) or not.
+1 for each of you.
Although I do have sympathy for shapeshedder and A Gray Phantom‘s points of view.
Dave has created a clever situation which does not have the black and white absolutes of good and evil. Giving the protagonists a grey moral issue is both interesting and true to real life. All too often we face situations which have no easy answer. Not if you look at it fairly, from all perspectives.
Actually, another thing I’d be worried about is double standards.
For example, the U.S. Department of Justice defines murder as “one human killing another”. So if a vampire killed me, he couldn’t be convicted of murder, right? Wrong! He would probably be staked out and left for the sun. If the courts of law didn’t convict him, someone would probably lynch him and do it anyway.
But if I killed him? No criminal court in North America would find me guilty of murder, because he wasn’t human. It doesn’t matter that he used to be human. It doesn’t matter if he was born in the United States. As soon as he becomes a vampire, he loses the basic rights he was born with because he’s not human anymore.
Don’t think it couldn’t happen. It most certainly could! To give another example, werewolves could find themselves stripped of their Constitutional rights because all of a sudden they’re not human; they’re an endangered species of animal.
It doesn’t matter if the Veil is ethical or not. (I actually agree with A Gray Phantom that it is not ethical.) If the Veil were to suddenly drop, without a staged reveal to get people used to the fact that we are not the only sapient creature on the planet, sooner or later a human is going to murder a fae or a vampire or a therianthrope, and get away with it because he’s human and they’re not.
And if that happened, that could lead to an all-out war between humans and the races of the council. Thousands of people on both sides would die. And why? For one reason: The human race (in general) is a hypocritical, anthropocentric, bag of dicks. There are exceptions to the rule, but they are few and far between. That’s realism, not pessimism.
They wouldn’t even need a legal double standard, just a perceived difference and a justification.
In my town, I’ve personally witnessed the range–from the fellow in the diner ranting because the law wouldn’t allow him to execute his Wiccan niece like the Bible said, to the guy this past month who advocated, in all seriousness, the preemptive lynching of immigrants pour encourager les autres.
I’d say it was just small towns, but I get the feeling, they are just the ones saying it out loud…
It’s not just small towns. Have you watched a Trump rally, or seen any news about them and/or his Tweets? He has three times dropped barely veiled hints that Hilary ought to be/needs to be shot.
And news-persons interviewing the attendees of Trump rallies have reported, with video evidence, on much more violent speech.
@MSpears “sooner or later a human is going to murder a fae or a vampire or a therianthrope, and get away with it because he’s human and they’re not.”
How do you even arrive at this conclusion? Especially seeing as The Veil allows vampires and other cryptids to prey on humans without them even being able to perceive such events?
I love how you conveniently ignore where I said “If the Veil were to suddenly drop, without a staged reveal to get people used to the fact that we are not the only sapient creature on the planet.”
The fact is that the literal definition of murder is “the unlawful killing of another human being without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought.” (Emphasis mine.)
Vampires, therianthropes, fae, aliens, constructs… they’re not human beings. Even if they were once human, the law doesn’t protect them from some sociopath killing them for shits and giggles. So what should be a murder charge becomes a (relative) slap on the wrist. Instead of 25 years to life, you get “Ayup, you killed a werewolf. That’ll be $50,000 and one year of prison, because they’re endangered animals, ya know.” (Yes, I admit that I am assuming that someone, somewhere, will attempt to reclassify them as endangered animals. Just roll with it… I’m trying to give an example of how the law doesn’t protect non-humans from murder.)
And there are some humans who will try to kill them, for no reason other than being different, or because they can use magic (“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”), or because they’re simply not human. Genesis 1:26: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
I’ve met people who literally believe that if there actually are any werewolves, or vampires, or fae, that we have the right to kill them (or at least round them up and put them on reservations), simply because their God “gave us dominion over all the creatures on the Earth”. The fact that these are not non-sapient animals will not even matter to them. And as for aliens, especially the ones with horns, like Dabbler or Decollete? “Demon spawn! KILL THEM!” will be their FIRST reaction.
You’ve had your own life threatened at least twice, by your own admission. Mind if I ask why? I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that at least one of those times, it was because you were dressed differently than the average person. (Though I’d say “Quite dapper”… I’ve seen only one photo of you, but I would love to be able to pull that look off.)
Bottom line is, I arrive at this conclusion because I have personally met people who would do it, and not even have any remorse, because their victim was not human.
MSpears does specifically mention that this is if the Veil were to drop without any planned reveal, and I agree wholeheartedly- Regardless of your political, religious or societal beliefs, you must know that there are people out there that will go out of their way to kill supernatural creatures of any variety if they pop up without explanation.
“The fact is that the literal definition of murder is “the unlawful killing of another human being without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought.”
I ignore nothing. A definition that exists due to the fact that humanity has had education withheld from them without consent.
Supers have existed just as long as cryptids, but there hasn’t been a massive hunt to murder them. There’s no reason that cryptids and humans wouldn’t get along just as well as supers.
Furthermore, the only precedent we have in this story of cryptid genocide is this: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/comics/2016-09-08-GP0456.jpg
Panel 8 says it all. Humans are not a threat to cryptids in this story, other cryptids are.
Campor says, “Regardless of your political, religious or societal beliefs, you must know that there are people out there that will go out of their way to kill supernatural creatures of any variety if they pop up without explanation.”
No, this is wrong. The question is, how? How would they do that? Without any knowledge on how to kill a particular cryptid, no human would be able to do so.
Um, no. I refer you to the Wikipedia entry on murder. That is the actual, exact, real-world definition of murder. Not some “definition that exists [only] due to the fact that humanity has had education withheld from them without consent”.
Did you miss the part where Ingsol said that at least some of the superhumans were benefiting from the Veil as well (at least until ARC-Swat went public)?
Okay, let me rephrase what Campor said. “Regardless of your political, religious or societal beliefs, you must know that there are people out there that will go out of their way to try to kill supernatural creatures of any variety if they pop up without explanation.”
At least some of the legends about how to kill cryptids are apparently true. Ingsol even admits that sunlight causes vampires to burst into flame. Anyone who wanted to kill a cryptid would start with the weaknesses described in legends (wooden stakes, holy water, and garlic for vampires; silver for therianthropes, cold iron for fae, etc) and if that doesn’t work, they’d try something else. Humanity is nothing if not creative.
I would be sympathetic to the victim, because I score very low on the RWA scale. But I’d withhold a little bit of sympathy about the situation because you make a strong point that the reason the law mentions humans only is because we have not yet encountered any other sentient beings, or at least haven’t had it proven to the satisfaction of enough nations/persons*. And that reason is The Veil. There’s likely (well, more like guaranteed) to be some social turmoil regardless of when it happens, but having alien or other intelligences interface in a low key manner with governmental groups and have them pass new legislation prior to the “unveiling” might help out a lot.
The problem the Council faces now is threefold:
1) They have implemented The Veil, and bureaucracies are resistant to change;
2) They have lost their opportunity to implement new laws in an era without a 24×7 news cycle and freedom of information acts;
3) The weaponry available to the average person has become both very lethal and very widespread.
Had they revealed themselves in Victorian times, for example, they would have had to contend with mostly single shot rifles and lesser weaponry only (The Spencer Rifle invented in 1863 was a lever action, 7 round capacity rifle, and a remarkable innovation) and those would not be available as cheaply as the “modern sporting rifle” (AR15 and similar firearms) which can have huge magazine capacities. The news would spread much more slowly and so it would not be quite the same as the global social shock the 24×7 news cycle facilitates today.
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* I personally believe that there should be an outright ban on the killing of whales, dolphins, porpoises, elephants, and apes (and my list might be too small) until such time as it is proven that they are not sentient. Yes, I’d make the opposition bear the weight of evidence before the killing could legally continue (and even then the endangered species acts and other restrictions would still be in place). And fuck a bunch of Japanese fishermen and their yearly dolphin slaughterfest.
This likely will not affect the topic, also I’m not taking sides, but for the sake of accuracy I want to point out a couple things just in case.
There are multiple forms of homicide (to kill a human being regardless anything else). “Murder” is an homicide with special conditions, there are homicides that are illegal but aren’t “murders”, also there are homicides that are not even illegal.
Homicide is not the only kill that violates laws, killing animals can do it too. In general we don’t punish the kill of animals with the same severity that the kill of humans.
“Humans are not a threat to cryptids in this story, other cryptids are.”
That’s a BIG logic fail, right there. Cryptids being a threat to cryptids does not preclude the potential for humanity to be a threat to a single cryptid, or indeed humanity being a threat to cryptids in general. These things are not mutually exclusive.
Depends, actually, on the legal definition of ‘human.’ If a ‘vampire’ was defined as a human, then the vampire killing you would be murder.
I think they had this legal debate on that True Blood show.
All I know re Hillary is that if I told a judge that I had lost supena’d documents, and those documents were later found in my domicile, my ass would be in jail.
Not if the circumstances were reasonable for that to have happened. I have lost my passport, in my own house, searched for it for three days, then reported it lost or stolen. Only after that, did I came across it.
Whilst it caused irritation, for a bureaucrat, to have to reverse the process, there was never any suggestion that I had committed a criminal act, in failing to find it in previous searches!
The sheer volume of documents that an individual or organisation has can also act as a fair mitigator, if something is misfiled or not indexed properly.
Criminal proceedings should only be initiated where there is evidence of criminal intent.
Now contrast that to making an invitation, on television, for Russia to intervene in the election process, via hacking,. An invitation which was taken up, as we know.
In that case we do have evidence. All that remains is for the jury to decide whether there was criminal intent, or if the excuse that ‘it was a joke’ was legitimate.
But it looks like a jury will not be given the opportunity, in that case. Although the court of world public opinion cannot be swept under the carpet so easily!
Yorp, you make a good argument regarding evidence of intent in comparing the Hillary issue vs the Trump issue.
However, comparing misplacing your passport to losing classified government documents is kind of a strawman argument. In the US misplacing classified documents and storing them at your domicile are both violations of the law regardless of the court order.
My place of employment handles government contracts so I am required to undergo training on the handling of classified documents annually even though I personally don’t touch classified documents and am not authorized to do so. Based on that training, I must agree with Mjs that if I found myself in the same situation that Hillary was, I would most likely have ended up with some time in federal prison and paying a hefty fine.
Not really broom stick riding witches more like chemists who brew potions some of which are dangerous. Bad translation.
Okay, have to step in here to make a comment: they DO consider us (fae, vampires, etc.) as “witches” and would happily try to burn us at the stake if given half a chance.
(Stepping out of persona for a second, I’ll add that otherkin, vampyres, etc. are often persecuted right alongside neopagans, practitioners of Candomble/Voodoo/Santeria/etc., and so forth as “witches” or “abominations unto God almighty” IRL, and yes, I DO speak from personal experience here, both my own and those of a few former acquaintances in the vampyre lifestyle. Even more ironic when the word that was deliberately mis-translated as “witch” by order of King James VI of Scotland [later James I of Britain] actually refers to those who intentionally use poisons or destructive magick, not to Wiccae [Old English for “Wise Ones”, i.e. folk healers and the like] per se. Makes me wonder whatever happened to Exodus 20:13…)
I disagree with you. Your collectivism of humanity disgusts me, as you’re deliberately being extremely pessimistic of the good acts that myself and others have done.
Furthermore, the fact that you’re in favor of such oppression is revolting.
“Extremely pessimistic of the good acts that myself and others have done”? Not at all. I can’t speak for Komm, but I am genuinely glad there are still some good people out there… yourself, myself, the firefighters and policemen who put their lives on the line daily to protect people that they don’t know from Adam… in fact, I’d venture to say that the good deeds greatly outnumber the bad. And really, the media is largely responsible for most of my pessimism, because of the way they focus mostly on the negative… that’s where the money is, that’s what keeps viewers tuning in. If I had the money to start my own 24-hour news station that covered only good deeds, I’d do it, just to provide a counterpoint to all the negativity.
But that still doesn’t change the fact that there are cults of people indoctrinated from birth to believe a certain way, and anything that contradicts those beliefs is evil. Two cases in point would be the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), and the Tony Alamo Ministries (which had its headquarters just 20 miles down the road from me).
I could go on a LONG rant about the assholes in charge of these two organizations (both of which continue to run their organization from prison), but I think I’ll leave that exercise up to you. They’ve been in the news a LOT in the last 5 years, so any web search will turn up a couple hundred thousand hits. Because they genuinely believe that their leader is a prophet, and that they have the Army of God on their side, if their leader got a wild hair up his ass and ordered the death of a cryptid (or worse, cryptids in general), they would try to do it.
Hm, I think I was being too personal in this comment, and didn’t stick to the context of the story.
“Humans as a whole are generally hateful, spiteful, xenophobic creatures.”
Mind you, this is a conspiracy against humans to oppress humans. Billions of them. This isn’t good for The Council’s image. Also, there’s no precedent of cryptids being slaughtered en masse in this comic. Rather… https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/comics/2016-09-08-GP0456.jpg
Panel 8 shows that cryptids are a far greater threat to cryptids, setting precedent that cryptids have slaughtered cryptids en masse before, not human beings.
It’s been speculated by myself and others that this slaughter took place to protect The Veil. So it would seem that many lives have been lost to The Veil. One can assume and claim that many more lives would be lost without The Veil, but this is doubtful given how well the response has been towards supers.
“Media sure hasn’t helped.”
You mean media celebrating cryptids? (Yes, I know you don’t mean that. I’m being facetious.) Because in this comic supers have been celebrated, and with the way the world is there would guaranteed be special advocacy groups that would seek to advocate for the rights of cryptids everywhere.
Perhaps, but you can’t feel oppressed by something you don’t even know about. Humans do tend to get a bit tetchy when they feel they’ve been deceived, which they definitely would if the truth about the Veil got out (hence the plan for a staged, gradual reveal.)
Maybe that’s because humans don’t know about them. Or, at least, it’s been long enough since the Veil went online that they don’t believe in them anymore.
Speculated by others, including me.
You’ve said it yourself: Vampires are obligate predators who need human blood to survive. Some therianthropes (e.g. werewolves) have forms based on predators. And we know from real-life experience how some people to this day (especially ranchers and the superstitious) still react to wolves.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think the response towards vampires, “demons” (even if they’re not literally from Hell), and therianthropes of predatory species such as werewolves, would be nearly as enthusiastic, except from cryptid researchers and sci-fi geeks like you and I, without a careful reveal.
“you can’t feel oppressed by something you don’t even know about.”
Which is an interesting notion, because we know by word of god that the Veil doesn’t suppress individual knowledge. Rather, it targets efforts to disseminate that information. Individuals who have been brought ‘into the know’ may well for the most part be appeased by having their situation framed as one of trust and privilege. Everyone, after all, wants to feel special by one means or another.
The reason why Supers have been greeted so well, and something you seem to be ignoring, is that they are still Human! There has been nothing to indicate that Supers are anything but extreme examples of Humanity, no hideous mutations like tails or dark blue fur (or body hair at all for that matter, regardless of colour or texture), not even wings on their ankles
I was under the impression that the slaughter of cryptids by cryptids was to stop them from killing humans.
If that’s the case, they weren’t murdering cryptids just to protect the veil. They were killing them to protect humans so humans wouldn’t get suspicious. Even though the end result is still protecting the veil, there is a big difference between protecting humans and victimizing them.
“Two cases in point would be the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), and the Tony Alamo Ministries…”
I doubt these will be featured in this comic. However…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/comics/2014-02-06-GP0186.jpg
I guess we’ll have to see what Dave has planned for the fella in panel 2.
Amen! (ba dum tssh)
“These ‘monsters’ are people, too. Many just as much American citizens (some with arguably more claim to that since they predate our extremely young country entirely), ”
Indians didn’t become US citizens until 70 years after the 14th amendment because they were never considered “under the jurisdiction thereof”. In the 80s a single judge made anchor babies citizens, but the US government has no jurisdiction over monsters to claim they are citizens. Note that ARC doesn’t even have a vote.
Even in the sparkly vampire tales, you have vamps killing somewhere between the Ft Dix shooter and the Pulse shooter each over the course of a movie series. There are no tales of Vampires not being parasites who put human lives at risk. It was implied in the previous comic that werewolves spread by biting, in the real world that would be a quarantine situation, with werewolf tales coming from the disease rabies.
However, since the supernaturals have living among us disguised by the veil for a long time, I assume most of them are already citizens with birth certificates, social security cards, passports, driver’s licenses, etc. So any argument against them being able to become citizens is probably moot.
Since many of them were likely born here to parents who were also already citizens, under current law they automatically became citizens at birth. So any argument of being illegal aliens here under false pretenses wouldn’t apply, and if the government starts revoking citizenships based on them not being human, they’re likely to have some high-profile lawsuits on their hands.
Hm, I somehow doubt that she’d have any objection to The Veil. Maxima is all about power and control. Knowing about The Veil gives her even more power over everyone else who doesn’t.
You have a very low opinion of someone who was willing to die for her country, just a few days ago. That seems selfless, rather than self-serving, to me. But keep whatever head-canon makes you happy.
Yorp, I know you haven’t forgotten when Maxima went General MacArthur in the desert https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/comics/2013-12-19-GP0175.jpg
And she suffered no consequences at all for her actions.
With her draw to power it’s no surprise her and Deus had a thing. Of course there’s no way it’d work out between them. They’d both want to be the leader of the relationship.
It’s ironic how you used that clip of Colonel Nathan Jessup, a corrupt officer who lies to cover up a murder. Yeah, very selfless guy. Apt comparison.
Is Maxima going to insist that she’s defending the wall the Trump wants to make? Do we need her on that wall? Do we want her on that wall? ^3^
I’m sure you would, Yorp ;-) So you go right ahead.
It’s pretty disgusting how hard you strained for that distasteful comparison at the end there.
He’s the one who opened up the comparison to A Few Good Men, Konoko, so I simply obliged him.
Jesus Gray, we get it, you hate Maxima. You’ve made this very clear in pretty much every comic in which she’s done practically anything.
I have to say, as much as Gray seems to hate this story and setting… he sure seems really very invested in it.
I used that clip advisedly because I was indicating the opinion that I know you to have of Maxima.
Clearly nothing we say will change your opinion of Maxima. Nor will it weaken your conviction that, should the Veil be removed, all vampires, werewolves, demons etc will be perfectly safe. So I will not bother trying.
You mean Maxima, who has placed herself and her teammates under the orders of non-supers instead of grabbing power herself, is somehow “drawn to power”? This despite that she has yet to give any indication that she would refuse to follow lawful orders or that she enjoys power for the sake of power.
As for the display in the desert, you’re correct that she meant to demonstrate her and her team’s power. However, she also made it clear that they don’t pose a threat to the general population (on the contrary, she’s gone out of her way to make Sydney understand how she could harm others if she isn’t careful), but only to those supers who decide that they are above the law.
Well, yeah. Aside from the Q&A with the reporters, the entire things was exactly a demonstration of her team’s power.
What the f–k does this have to do with Maxima’s display in the desert?
Hey, DaveB, can we go ahead and ban this guy? It’s probably just Mikey spouting his drive-by racism again.
His response that he had that was a 5 reply in that couldn’t be responded to.
No, I haven’t seen that. But I have seen a few other cases where people, presumably either Hillary/Bernie (some happened before the conventions) supporters and/or Trump protesters in general did Bad Things (TM). And it is just as inexcusable.
But those cases, while just as deplorable, are scant compared to the calls for violence by Trump himself and the attacks by his supporters against protestors and others.
There seems to be a desperate need by Trump supporters to try to set up some kind of false equivalency in order to justify their support for a misogynistic, racist, serial lying, serial bankrupting, convicted lawbreaker with literally thousands of lawsuits under his belt.
Hillary isn’t what I’d call a prime candidate, and I’d probably have voted for Jeb if that had been the match up. And she definitely has her scandals here and there, none of which are pretty, but many of which are purely inventions of the Republican Party* But if you pile all of her issues on one side of a scale and all of Trumps on the other it’s like trying to balance Mount Everest against a peanut. You can’t just point at the scale and say “See? There’s weight on both sides, so let’s just call it even.”
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* Eight (8) Congressional investigations into Benghazi. The Republican’s wasted so much taxpayer money with their constant repetition of the exact same investigation, but they were more than happy to do so just because it kept Benghazi in the public eye and hurt Hillary during the primary and in the public eye. This was fully admitted to be the case by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in a taped interview, you can find and watch that yourself if you have any doubts on the matter.
Something that may come as a shock to you, but the USofA already has a wall separating it from Mexico!!!! It already has patrols along the length reportedly to keep out ‘undesirables’
It doesn’t cover the entire border. And it is a failed experiment, only kept going by demagogues who want power at all costs, and damn the economy or national debt.
The wall is in some places ‘virtual,’ meaning there might only be reconnaissance via various means (aerial, vehicular, camera, etc.) and no actual, physical wall. It is crossed constantly by drug traffickers using everything from ladders to ramps for vehicles to catapults to tunnels. And by illegal immigrants using less expensive but still effective measures. It costs the USA far, far more to build and maintain the physical wall and all the personnel needed to provide the virtual portion than it costs a drug trafficker to dig a tunnel. And the cost in human lives to illegal immigrants is enormous.
It produces no revenues, and saves nothing. And since marijuana is slowly but surely becoming legalized across the USA that task of the wall is becoming obsolete.
Trump is a serial and pathological liar, but one true thing he has said is that the only way a high wall can be defeated is by a rope. So where’s the cost/benefit here? We spend anywhere from 8-16 billion according to all the various and different citations from Trump (omitting the farcical “Mexico will pay for it” claim also by Trump**), and someone spends $100 on a sturdy ladder* and $50 on a sturdy rope to defeat it. We lose this war in the exact same way the Soviet Union lost the cold war: We bankrupt our economy trying to keep up.
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* In some places the wall is 6-8 feet high, so two people can simply boost themselves up and drop down the other side. So we spend an enormous amount of money and they defeat it with teamwork.
** Trump claimed that trade sanctions could be used to force Mexico to pay for the wall. This is nonsense. For years (as in, the Nixon presidency) the US has diplomatically bitched at Mexico for not putting as much effort into preventing border crossings as the US, and it hasn’t gone anywhere. Because Mexico has little incentive to do so. If they aren’t willing to pay for some jeeps and the personnel to drive them up and down the border, why would they be willing to spend billions building our wall for us? If no US President of either party was willing to use trade sanctions to entice Mexico to better patrol the border, Trump certainly isn’t going to find a Congress willing to sign off on a further ruining of our economy by wrecking trade with Mexico. It is a complete non-starter.
You call Trump a ‘serial and pathological liar’, but which one is involved in an international coverup of war crimes?
I think the pros and cons of how to deal with ‘illegal aliens’ are reasonable points to discuss, provided it does not get too heated. Given that it does have bearing on the aliens and other supernaturals, by analogy.
But we should avoid drawing in other issues. Especially this close to the election, feelings will doubtless be high, and we would not want the comments board to degrade into a political slagging match.
Sorry but I had to kill the comment that was here. It was just going to provoke meaningless partisan squabbling.
There’s no point debating contentious talking points here since 1) it’s not like it will change anyone’s mind and 2) said discussions almost immediately devolve into factless hyperbole and name calling.
Let’s steer the conversation back to the comic or other related topics please. :)
Very wise. And I agree with MSpears‘s comment above and that this too was a racially-motivated post, given part of its content. In addition to the heavily political side you mentioned.
Sorry Dave, I made my immediately preceding two posts before I saw this one by you. I’ll reign it in.
Perfectly understood, personally don’t like either option (and doesn’t affect me directly no matter who wins), just that bit about the wall always gets to me (and not even from the Americas)
You are not alone. And when a policy causes widespread enmity, even amongst people it does not affect, that is a noteworthy flaw in its own right. Significantly lowered worldwide respect is to be carefully balanced against any perceived gain. Especially when it does fuel extremism.
Speaking in broad terms, such as above, allows us to distance the discussion from specific party politics. Especially as these are global issues, with similar responses, and resulting problems, occurring in multiple nations, around the world.
In the widest terms, comparisons can be made between the Veil and wall-building. Given that both are attempts to separate disparate groups. However the Veil clearly has not been written as an analogy, of that, so such would be a stretch. Although I would not view walls themselves as being a taboo subject. But probably best not pursued at this moment.
The comic is set in the real world. So real world issues will intrude on various discussions. Our best self-editing is to review our posts, to see if it ties back to the comic in some relevant way. I have had to abandon about five separate posts and carefully rewrite several, including this one, before hitting the ‘Submit Comment’ button.
This only being as regards threads which have strayed into politically contentious areas, of course. We should not be otherwise concerned about wandering ‘off topic’, if folks are enjoying an in-depth discussion about science, philosophy, pop culture or all the weird and wonderful topics this community gets into at times.
Neither.
Congratulations, this debate has proved yet again that the surest way to start an argument is to bring up either politics or religion.
I’m not attacking anyone’s beliefs as such with that statement, only commenting that people tend to have very strong opinions about such matters, regardless of whether their beliefs are at all consistent with reality or not.
Please tone it down a bit. We need to keep specific party references out of it, where possible. Clearly the USA election is a huge issue, but the general principles are something everybody in the world is facing. Various European countries are building walls, so we can discuss the issue of ‘do walls help?’ in more general terms. Without making it a party-political-broadcast.
Regardless of what press you may follow, it is actually a big deal in the rest of the world. Israel has steadily been loosing favour with each major incident, along these lines.
European press cover this issue heavily, and many politicians, in various E.U. countries, call for sanctions against Israel. It is only America acting to block that, which has prevented it happening already.
Obviously it is even more sensitive in the Arab world, and is one of the elements helping to drive the impressionable into extremism. Every act of oppression, such as building walls, and the ongoing deaths on borders, creates more people willing to die to fight that.
You cannot stop diseases with walls. To suggest that you can is such utter nonsense that it makes your entire case look foolish!
You either invest the time and money to cure a disease, or you live with it.
Hoping that a wall will restrict it to just affecting ‘brown people’ is the way to guarantee that you will be paying the costs in your community, in the long run.
I guess you didn’t hear about the HIV travel ban, no wall needed. People said lowering the ban would let in Drug resistant AIDS. Well just this year refugees brought drug resistant AIDS into the US. When that spreads it will be the 80’s all over again with people just dying. If you look at the outbreaks of Shigellosis in the gay community you will see they are not using protection, they are using TRUVADA Prep instead of condoms, which doesn’t protect against other diseases or drug Resistant AIDS.
While my own opinion of Maxima is very low due to her views on feminism, you’re completely wrong. Maxima is about ORDER. Order to keep people safe, order to let people live their lives without constantly living in fear of everything and everyone around them. You know, like a good soldier should be? Too much order becomes tyranny, too little becomes anarchy. Both are bad, but she has yet to show she’s an extremist in that regard. She is focused on ‘threats to the people’, not ‘how can I make the people do what I want when I want how I want’.
Look on the bright side, Komm. Maxima may be a feminist, but at least she’s not a misandrist like Lily in Leftover Soup. Lily automatically assumes that all men are violent sex offenders because hormones.
Maxima just doesn’t like being flirted with unless she initiated it. Lily, on the other hand… her fantasy world is one in which there are no men at all, every married couple are lesbians, and all children are produced by cloning. (Actually, it’s a bit more technical than cloning, more along the lines of “sexual reproduction without men”, but cloning gets the point across.)
I can live with feminism, as long as it’s not radical feminism, like the woman who yelled at me for holding the door open for her, calling it “sexist”. (As I explained to her, “No, I was trying something unique. It’s called being polite. Maybe you’ve heard of it. I would’ve held the door for anyone, male or female. There’s nothing sexist about it.”)
Misandry, on the other hand? Unabashed, unapologetic misandry? No. The idea that men are all violent and only interested in sex just because they happen to have gonads instead of ovaries is bullcrap, and I keep my distance from such women. (I keep my distance from misogynists, too. Because if they accidentally start a fight, I don’t want to get caught in the crossfire.)
P.S., I find it amusing that spellcheck insists that “bullcrap” is two words, but lets “bullsh*t” pass.
In Lily’s fantasy world, lesbianism is also treated as a disorder–she’s object-oriented sexually, and writes it into her world as the default.
(ELLEN: “So. much. robot. sex!”)
You’re right; I stand corrected.
The trouble with Feminism is there is no clear definition of what a feminist is.
For example, Germaine Greer is considered an iconic feminist. However she hates male to female transsexuals. No way I could include myself in a group that has someone like that.
Many people prefer the term Humanist when discussing the fight for equality.
If every single person that is identified as a feminist has to have perfect matching views on everything with everyone else that is identified as a feminist, there’s going to be some big problems. And changing the label to humanist or egalitarianist or whatever isn’t going to change that basic problem, because sooner or later someone under that banner will say something you disagree with.
Just because someone is an iconic feminist, doesn’t mean all of their views should represent the ideal, and certainly shouldn’t stop other people from pursuing the ideal under the same banner.
True, but I think we can both agree that the radical feminists tend to give the entire movement a bad name. People tend to tar entire groups with the same brush, after all. What one has to keep in mind is that the actions of one member are not necessarily condoned by the entire group.
In regards to what Wee Red Bird said: Germaine is 77 years old. How should older celebrities answer questions on trans rights? They probably shouldn’t. It’s a minefield. (I would argue that while Germaine isn’t a “celebrity” in the way that most people would think of when you say the word “celebrity”, but she is regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminist movement. That makes her a celebrity of sorts, at least in my opinion.)
It seems to be vogue now to encourage older people (especially famous ones) to give their views on transgender people. Their slightly outdated views are then gleefully published everywhere by newspapers so as to encourage people to tweet and Facebook their outrage, ideally with links to the article, thus generating more readers.
There’s something pathetic about trying to get a 60-plus-year-old to say something that will get them into trouble, just to cause a momentary stir on Twitter. That would include my 86-year-old mum, who is definitely old-fashioned when it comes to transgender people. And what kind of jobs women should be doing. She’s practically an anti-feminist, because she believes women have no right to be front-line soldiers, or policewomen, or climbing telephone poles with the guys from the electric company.
Sure, fighting bigotry comes in all forms, but it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) generally begin with online screaming at an 84-year-old author.
The problem is not just asking her questions, but more the problem of her allegedly actively encouraging hatred towards trans people.
And can you tell me at what point I have been online screaming at anyone?
And who is the 84 year old author I am “online screaming” at? The only person who I even mentioned was Germaine, who you said is 77.
And as for being pathetic about someone who is 60-plus-year-old, remember that America’s two main presidential candidates are 68 and 70 years old.
If you don’t think someone who is 60+ is able to handle the world the way it is, why are you not complaining and trying to stop those two from being elected?
You haven’t been screaming at anyone. That wasn’t addressed to you specifically. I’m just saying, I have a strong dislike when the media uses underhanded tactics for the sake of generating clickbait and/or readership.
The problem is that she doesn’t actively encourage hatred towards trans people. That’s taking what she said and twisting it to support someone else’s agenda. What she actually said (paraphrased) is that “just because a man has surgery to turn him into a woman, doesn’t make him a female.”
I could look up her exact quote if necessary, but that’s the gist of it right there. She doesn’t believe that going through gender reassignment surgery turns you into the opposite sex. (And genetically, that’s true… a M-to-F transgender still has XY chromosomes.)
Myself as well. Any man who says it’s about the “promotion of women above men” is either deluded or a troll, and any woman who says that it’s about the “promotion of women above men” is more of a misandrist than a feminist.
To make it clear: I wasn’t saying you were pathetic. I’m saying the media is pathetic for using dirty tactics to generate readership.
Ooops, a missing ‘\’ messes up the formatting
I always highlight names in bold. Unless I forget. Or mess up a tag. Yeah, I’ve missed the ‘\’ more than once. :)
Almost the entire post was a rant against the media, though. Sorry for the confusion.
As they should. Which is why I said it was only technically true.
It is when you get down to the definition of Feminism.
Some say it is “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities” which is something I whole heartedly agree with.
Yet many define it as promotion of women above men, to insult, belittle and put-down someone because of their gender at every opportunity.
I picked one name, as an example of how someone defined as a feminist is not about equality. And they are not an isolated case. There are many who are known to hate one particular gender and express that opinion on a regular basis. It doesn’t make them the majority of feminists, but I don’t see anyone trying to distance themselves from that kind of behaviour.
Well, other than someone saying they don’t want to be included as a feminist for these reasons who is now apparently in the wrong.
I’ve said it before, Komm, and I’ll say it again. She’s as good of a soldier as MacArthur.
That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement when you realize that MacArthur was fired not because he disagreed with the President (though I’m sure that was a factor), but redacted testimony revealed that he was pushing to expand the war into China. Rather than post another wall of text, I’ll just sum up by saying that this would have been a bad idea for a lot of reasons. (I’ve provided a link below to an article discussing some of the testimony during a closed Congressional meeting; it’s interesting reading.)
I don’t see Maxima’s actions as evidence of a “draw to power”; I see them as an attempt to put a little fear in any superhumans who were having thoughts of trying to begin a criminal career. It certainly would’ve worked on me, unless I had power and/or assets at least equal to hers. I still don’t think she should have done it; it might even be the proximal reason for the fight with Vehemence (who was looking for a challenge).
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/redacted-testimony-fully-explains-why-general-macarthur-was-fired-180960622/?no-ist
Ahem: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/comics/2013-12-19-GP0175.jpg
Dropping that nuke, making threats against the world, she was completely out of order. It was supposed to be a simple demonstration, and she went extreme with an uncalled for display, followed by an ultimatum.
She does not have the authority to do so, akin to how MacArthur did not have authority to expand the war into China.
Ahem: She wasn’t making threats against THE WORLD.
She was making threats against the gallery of rogues, by which she means supervillains.
Having said that, I already agreed that it was something she probably shouldn’t have done. Not because she doesn’t have the authority to do so, but because … well, let’s just say that I don’t think Arianna approved that message. It’s the wrong message to send, whatever her motivations for doing so.
I’m a firm believer that it’s not the harshness of punishment that deters crime, it’s the certainty of it. Sending the message “if you don’t surrender peacefully, we will hurt you or even kill you” doesn’t exactly encourage a peaceful surrender, IMO. Someone who has nothing to lose will fight to the bitter end.
In this case, it’s more of an “if you commit a crime, we CAN stop you and arrest you” kind of message, considering the bad supers might think they’re powerful enough to get away with it. Maxima proved that they probably aren’t. And the ones who might be will take the challenge to THEM like Vehemence did, rather than go for innocents first.
Yeah, that’s the other take on it, is that the message was deliberately calculated to lure people like Vehemence out so they could be taken care of before innocents got involved.
Of course, it’s obvious which take A Gray Phantom supports; he seems to have taken a dislike to Maxima since day one. I myself don’t disagree with the principle behind the “we CAN stop you and arrest you” message, I just think that Maxima made it sound more like a “we can stop you and DESTROY you” message.
A Gray Phantom ignores that Maxima specifically directed her demonstration and threats at people with super powers who feel “… your powers give you primacy to hurt or rule over others“.
Whilst he chooses to inflexibly interpret that as “making threats against the world” there is no reasoning with him.
While Arianna is a PR rep, Maxima is the commander on the field for the troops. I’m pretty certain that while a PR rep can make suggestions to a field commander that field commander is neither forced to follow them nor forced to vet all of their actions through them.
The argument could be made that this might lessen the value of said PR rep, but that argument, while true, is irrelevant. Arainna still has plenty of things to do, like staging fake bank robberies and helping restaurant workers sue supervillains. Good, solid work (that’s sarcasm, son).
The bank robbery was dodgy, no arguing. The helping the restaurant worker to sue supervillains is actually a very important task for the overall job of the organisation. Archon wishes to integrate supers into society. This case will establish important precedents, for that, and it can be done now.
Arianna will have a route map for what principles need to be established, and what court rulings will be necessary to get to the next stage. This apparently simple civil case will lay important foundations for the much more profound issues that will come later.
Take a deceptively basic issue, for example, which we have touched on this page. Will supers be recognised as being human? If they are not, you cannot sue them. Arianna will likely want this pushed up to the highest court in the land, via appeals, to ensure that once recognised as human this cannot be reversed later, by a higher court.
Keeping the issues clean with this simple case (a loss of income claim*) will allow her to force the courts to make the decisions now. Is Vehemence human, in order for the waitress to sue him. And Arianna will be bringing this case now because she is confident that she can win it.
Is this important for Arc-SWAT? Damned straight. They need to know how the law will handle damage from super powers. And even their basic right to being legally recognised as people.
Plus it is far better that it is villains who suffer in the glare of publicity for this, than Arc-SWAT themselves. That will come (and possibly from this case). But, by acting fast, Arianna is ensuring the waitresses case will be the one dealt with first. And the defendant will be a highly visible villain, to remind people why Archon has been formed. Rather than a cop being on trial.
* As opposed to a property damage claim, which will take many months to deal with as many companies and bits of public property were damaged. And there will be issues of ‘who did what and why’. Likewise as regards the criminal trials. All of which will probably take years to resolve. But will be shortened if Arianna does her job right with the waitress.
Please provide a direct quote containing one threat she has made against “the world”, either on that page or any other. Go ahead, we’ll wait.
Nearly two months and he’s not followed through. It’s almost as if he knows he’s wrong.
Due to the council’s shock, it seems that damaged sigils are NOT a regular occurrence (they don’t just burn out every few centuries like light bulbs or otherwise get damaged regularly). This suggests the possibility of sabotage. However, since it appears that few on the council knew about this, so the damaged sigil is likely out of the way, where the effect wouldn’t be immediately catastrophic. Sounds to me like either a distraction or, perhaps more likely, a test run. I’m guessing that outlying sigils are less defended than, say, one in the center of New York. This could just be a dress rehearsal, with opening night just around the corner.
Operation Jenga was a success!
Anyone else think it happens to be somewhere in the middle of Africa? <.<
I think I know what you’re implying, and I thought the same thing at first. But Deus is unapologetically motivated by greed, and I fail to see how he could profit from breaking the Veil. At least, not in any way that wouldn’t immediately advertise to Archon and the Council “I revealed the supernatural to the masses to profit off their fear”, and that just seems shortsighted for him.
Who said anything about fear? ;)
I’m having trouble figuring out how Deus could profit from breaking the Veil. AFAICT, there’s nothing real monsters could do for him that pretend ones couldn’t. Revealing what’s behind the Veil doesn’t get him anything that he couldn’t get otherwise, and most especially without making the kinds of enemies this council represents.
If, and I say IF Deus was responsible, it stands to reason that this was in pursuit of some larger goal.
Well. Consider that he could spin it as ‘monsters are infesting the world’, and he’s ‘ready to step up and defend us all’, you just need to fund his search and destroy mission…
Which then makes him, personally, the focus of enmity from angels, demons, mages, vampires, golems, etc etc. Not much profit to be had from that.
Plus, even if he managed to avoid personal entanglement in the affair, an all out war of extermination between humanity and the supernatural races is likely to be rather harmful to the business environment. To say the least. Deus has shown that he prefers creating healthy societies to operate in, rather than profiteering from a bloody civil war.
Depends at what level he gets involved.
From the shadows he could push the idea that they should all be destroyed by using several mouthpieces promoting the same ideas.
Then sell weapons of supernatural destruction through various 3rd parties so they cannot be traced to him while making large piles of money and having several unofficial armys, or even countries, under his control.
See, now, Dues has always seemed as the kind of Tyrant who expands his empire at the head of a business board. A kind of business-minded Dr. Doom, if you would. And so I can easily agree that Dues would have his hands in so many pies that it wouldn’t even be possible to keep track of them; he would never, intentionally, let his businesses bring him any trouble that he couldn’t handle. Now the problem with this, is that, what can Dues handle. If you remember his office, he’s got so awesome décor, and a couple of them you can only get by defeating/killing the previous owner/wielder.
He could. But I am basing my comments on his actual behaviour.
*sculpts a nice ceramic birdy*
Do you think Deus would like this in his office? He can have it for his track record of keeping the people happy, whilst he goes about his nefarious schemes. Err no need to kill me for it. Actually, I think I will send it by post, rather than in person. You know, just in case.
However, such beings would either have to limit how they respond to him or risk making it seem like he has a point about how dangerous they are. In fact, their best bet might be to leave him alone to make him appear like a fearmonger.
Imagine the signals are made out of gold or lets say magic money. If you look at the Chinese documentary “Empire of the dust” you will see some areas can not have working trains because people will steal the track.
There IS a specific subset of veil creatures he’s expressed interest in.
I think I have an idea of what he wants to do, and it doesn’t involve disabling the veil everywhere.
This, however, may have been a “dry run”. I doubt that it would have happened “offscreen” otherwise.
He is also a human, unless he is a super, which seems likely but hasn’t been demonstrated yet. If he is a super he’d be able to “see” the things The Veil is supposed to keep humans from seeing. If he is a human he could not see them, and unless the Council is incompetent he couldn’t see the sigils either. Because if humans can see the sigils without any kind of obfuscation going on (i.e. The Veil) then this wouldn’t be such a shocking occurrence. After all, humans are pretty much everywhere, and you probably want your sigils placed in centers of dense population for the cheapest bang for your buck.
You’d have maintenance men running across them all the time…
“Damn circuit cut, has to be around here somewhere. Hey, what the hell is that!”
*poke, poke*
*fizzle*
“Damn, now I’ve went and broken another circuit! I’ll be working overtime for weeks. Say…. *$$$$$*”
“If he is a super he’d be able to “see” the things The Veil is supposed to keep humans from seeing.”
No, that’s why Sydney is a special case. Hence Harem getting yelled at for barging in and the “road rash” remark.
There may be other exceptions. I’d expect a good telepath might detect the effect and be able to block it, or scan the thoughts of council races. Notice we haven’t been introduced to one yet, that we know of.
There is far more profit to be made quickly in fear and destruction than their is in creating wealth. The author of “Confessions of An Economic Hitman”:
“John Perkins: Things have just gotten so much worse in the last 12 years since the first Confessions was written. Economic hit men and jackals have expanded tremendously, including the United States and Europe.
Back in my day we were pretty much limited to what we called the third world, or economically developing countries, but now it’s everywhere.
And in fact, the cancer of the corporate empire has metastasized into what I would call a failed global death economy. This is an economy that’s based on destroying the very resources upon which it depends, and upon the military. It’s become totally global, and it’s a failure.”
With those D bags from Daesh smashing any ancient artifacts that predate and or countermand there twisted deathcult version of islam im thinking middle east
Solidly tying in real-world thinking. Unlikely for the comic though, as it is set in 2011.
Which is probably for the best, as all the stuff they have been up to, across the board, is seriously depressing. So that would not help the comedy side of the comic.
Islam has been destroying churches & shines for over 1000 years. Instead of Egyptian & middle eastern things today, consider the Buddha statues being destroyed around that time frame.
Remember the reclining Giant Buddha in Afghanistan? That was blown up within the last ten years
Actually, if this damage to a sigil ties in to events we’ve already been shown, I think that Deus is a less likely source than either Dabbler’s nemesis demon coming back or the MASSIVE outpouring of Vehemic energy from that little brawl. I mean, just how much power is required to spontaneously create perfectly fitted pants in a size that no human wears? Vehemence recognized Dabbler as a succubus and Dabbler commented that she had never heard of a human using Vehemic energy . . .
In either case we have someone who may already know about the veil and who could make use of the chaos that would be cause by its failure.
True. Although we do have some suspects in this chamber to consider too.
You mean Pixel? or Zephan? o_O
You omitted the most important ones. Remember remember.
Heh heh, that is one ‘foreign’ holiday that we ‘celebrate’ (as opposed to ‘Christmas’ or ‘Easter’ which are Global)
I switched all my sigils over to LEDs long ago. I haven’t had to re-enchant one yet.
Man, I really wanna see the notebook pay off some time soon. Get Revenge Sydney!
Anyone else notice the Zephan Zoeng lookalike in the last panel, right next to another otherwise normal looking woman?
Might not be a lookalike. He might be a regular attendee and took his normal seat while ARC.Swat causes a ruckus on the main floor.
Yeah that’s actually him. I’ve been forgetting to put him and Gwen and Pixel in the backgrounds so I figured I’d add him in the mage’s booth.
Does the Council know that one of the mage representative also works for ARC? That seems like a potential conflict of interest.
Pretty sure they know.
The way Dave described the Council seems to mean that the Gallery have a voice but do not have necessarily a vote, those at the Table are the ones making the decisions.
Also every group have several factions from diverse worlds (except maybe the Konami girl) I think it’s unavoidable that many members of the Gallery also belongs to local organizations of some sort.
Several persons starting with Guesticus right at the start, but your thread got Dave’s confirmation so: Congrats! :)
It helps when someone actually spells his name correctly :P
What’s the fun in that?
I like most of the alternate names you use :)
Apart from the Harem names, most are accidents (like thinking his name was ‘Zephon’ :()
Nobody is perfect :) but I’m also talking about “craparazzi”, Golden Idontremember of Destruction and the like.
Don’t tell me “Dabbles” is a typo, I find it hilarious :)
Keep forgetting about made up words and descriptive names, was forced to leave two webics because of it :(
The list! I haven’t seen it in a while. I kind of forgot about it.
*Bump
Yeah, we see the return of the list.
But what about poor Tubey? Stuck in Hammer Space, forgotten, with no loving!
…I’m willing to bet that a certain gold-eyed `gentleman'(mr. the clensing has begun from Max’s bring it and be tacnuked reaction page ) might be responsible for the failed sigil…
That actually makes sense. If we assume that they’re coming up in chronological order (since Vehemence is first on the list and Goldie is next), then Goldie might have something to do with this. Of course, this is a wild guess, since three’s a pattern and we’ve only seen one villain (not counting Deus).
It is entirely plausible. It is worth mentioning that the demon in panel 3 has made an appearance, but before the page in question, in Dabbler’s flash-back, at the firing range. Plus I recall folks speculating about a possible sighting of the bandage-wrapped guy.
*waves paw vaguely, toward’s Deus’s arc*
But the most interesting possibility it to compare the last panel, of the previous comic, to the is the centre panel, of the linked page. Courtesy of Duende Sociopata and Guesticus, for spotting that.
Except, Bandage-man has been refuted as being in the employ of Deus with the simple notion of “he is a man” and the one employed by Deus is not
All that happened when I was unable to access the net. So I only skimmed the debate, in passing, when doing my catch-up. I felt I should mention it, for completeness, even though I did not recall it coming across as being convincing. Hence why I stuck the ‘speculating’ and ‘possible’ caveats in.
My guess is there’s something like 7 Sigils, and if one has a problem, the other 6 can cover for it, but if 2 or more go down, trouble starts. Also betting they were very much made to last, and have pretty high security, so one going down without warning is a big deal unto itself.
The problem with the Veil is probably just a bad service pack when trying to do an update to handle a new class of cryptid. Just back it out and restore a previous version. You HAVE been making system backups haven’t you?
There was a story/comic I can’t place where a hacker intentionally fed a bad update to a secure system. They also copied the real malware into a file inserted onto their server that had the same name as the backup file. This caused it to be installed without going through security checks.
Not surprising; some real malware spreads that way. It disguises itself as a system file, in some cases even providing all the functions of the file it replaces. This guarantees that you can’t delete it under normal circumstances, and (in the case of Windows) will eventually propagate to all your automatic Restore Points, which is one of the reasons for creating manual restore points every now and then. Believe me, it makes life difficult (and profitable) for people like me, who get called to fix it.
Maybe something with a more Shadowrun feel to it?
I can picture a gathering similar to what happened around the crash site of Thor’s hammer around the damaged sigil as to the reason for how it got damaged to that degree.
Maxima got a big ole butt! I ain’t lying! #Vote ncentive
#VoteIncentive #Opps
the List!! The List RETURNS!!!
About the stinger line and the connection to Final Fantasy games, FFIV’s protagonist is Cecil, who is debateably the most vocal member of the entire cast. FFVI, on the other hand, starts out with a character (can’t remember her name at the moment) who spends the first twenty minutes or so with a brainwashing crown on her head, basically turning her into a robot for the duration of the intro.
My best guess for the ‘silent protagonist’ idea is that you’re thinking of FFI on the original Nintendo Entertainment System, where the characters were the Light Warriors, and never said one word throughout the entire length of the game.
FF1, FF 3 (the original, the remake game them character), Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross (when someone takes over the protagonist’s body and speaks through him, some companions comment that he hasn’t said much until then), Legend of Mana, Super Mario RPG, the whole Dragon Quest series, Earthbound, the Shin Megami Tensei series,
“but for some time it was a bit of a joke that JRPG leads are all silent protagonists. Maybe that was just an in-joke among my friends.”
It’s not just your friends, it’s a real thing. I’ve noticed it attached more to Chrono (of Chrono Trigger) than others, probably because there’s actual dialogue scenes where you click through his line (or rather lack thereof) and people react to him as if he talked.
*GASP* THE LIST!
I was wondering where that had been lately. Hadn’t seen it. Felt a little odd.
Is that Zeph in the background of the last panel?
Yes. He is one of the mage faction’s delegates. As confirmed by the author, on the first page of comments.
Ruh-roh! Scarlett’s on the List!
Anyone else think that the list should get an entry in the ‘Who’s who’?
Elaborate
&
Wyrmhand
From the last page of comments.
So three of you so far. (this update anyway)
… Past panel, second row… Isn’t that Zephan on the right..?
Yup
Uh Oh. Vampire Girl has just made ‘THE LIST.”
What im confused about though, is that its the USA that got a liason with the twilight council, who seemingly cover things for underground races the world over.
I cant help but think its strange that they are working with one of the youngest gouverments in the world, instead of some of the older ones.
Mostly it’s because the author, DaveB, lives in the USA. In fact, he lives about three hours from me. “You write about what you know,” as the saying goes.
Could just be that it was only recently that they included ANY government in with the secret at all.
True. Within the last century, anyway. Most of the members of the Shadow Council, except perhaps the (human) mages, probably have very long lifespans measured in centuries, if not millennia. And perhaps even the human mages have life-extending spells.
(Dr. Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme in Marvel Comics, is well over 5,000 years old, counting the time spent fighting for the Vishanti against the Trinity of Ashes. Doesn’t look a day older than his mid-40s. Could be a magical spell, could be something the Vishanti did.)
Anyway, the point is, that creatures with such long life spans… at least in most of the fiction I’ve read… tend to be very slow to change. So you could be right; the inclusion of ANY government may be a recent thing. (If so, because the USA was only 235 years old in 2011, it would certainly have to have started within the last two centuries, three at most.)
i’m leaning towards the fact that the USA being the youngest country on the block, IS the reason that the Twilight Council CHOSE to work with the US government… there would be less of a deeply ingrained bureaucratic attitude that: “this is the way that it ALWAYS HAS BEEN DONE, so it MUST CONTINUE TO BE done this way” that many older country’s have… so some of the “futurist’s” from the Council, even from way back in Abe Lincoln’s day (and possibly even earlier) as stated back in the ARCHON background info page… are trying to work out a VERY LONG-TERM method to allow them to finally have a peace with the humans that doesn’t end in their extinction.
with a new country, they could get a clean-slate as a way to get out of the ingrained, static, status quo of just hiding in the shadows, and basically have to resort to the outright brainwashing of the general public JUST to be able to stay ALIVE (as a loose definition of the exact status of the word: ‘alive” that is :D )
That can’t be cannon. My Doctor Strange comics show him as a medical doctor in a modern looking hospital (electric lights, etc) prior to his transformation into the superhero. Are you perhaps thinking of The Ancient One?
Now, the only thing constant about comic book continuity is that it is never constant, so things might have changed (a lot, if that 5,000+ years old figure is accurate) since my teens.
All I gotta say is, I hope the upcoming movie has Clea in it. Her (SFW) leotard and patterned tights outfit did wonderful things to my adolescent self. :-D
That information is from marvel.com, Marvel’s official website, in the who’s who entry for Dr. Strange.
Full who’s who here: https://marvel.com/universe/Doctor_Strange_(Stephen_Strange)
Hmmm, ok. So, 5k years after he got his powers, and even then kinda sorta didn’t happen with all the didn’t age, didn’t remember, timey wimey stuff just a few months after he left stuff. So comic book…
I too recall Dr Strange as being a modern doctor who gained his sorcerer powers. Albeit otherwise only having passing familiarity with his story. So I do not know the details, however if he travelled to another plane, where time progresses very much faster than in our dimension, then the paradoxical discrepancies vanish.
The ‘not remembering’ bit certainly is a comic contrivance though (or a sensible precaution deliberately taken to allow him to reintegrate into Earth life). It does rather smack of a TV serial where the status quo is always restored by the end of the episode. No matter how radical the divergence during it.
Oh trust me movies which just assume that the USA gets to represent the whole world, rather than the UN, do rather irritate me. Unless there is a good reason for the particular circumstances.
In this case I am quite happy with it however, given that no world government has acknowledged the existence of either super beings or supernatural races. Other than the USA. They have started with the former, and it sounds like (from Ingsol’s recent comments) that they will be working towards officially recognising the latter.
As such it is appropriate for the USA/archon to have their seat. Once other nations start to do likewise, then they can figure out how to share out the delegate allocation amongst them. In due course, if the majority of countries officially recognise the Council, then it will presumably become a UN box.
not trying to pick nit’s, but… from Ashley’s comments about why the uniforms weren’t ready for the press conference, it is implied that we (the USA) jumped the gun a bit, in order to prove we were the first country with Supers…
Mmm. Good point. But it does not change the basic point that the USA have officially recognised the existence of supers, whereas others have not. Regardless of what their main motive was, for doing that.
true as far as we know…it hasn’t actually been shown in-comic whether or not other countries have (or have not) acknowledged their own supers yet, but i assume that they HAVE since Sydney walked in on Max when she was talking to the Prez, and some other world leaders… and that was a few days ago if I’m remembering comic-time vs real-time correctly… but basically I’m assuming that Dave wants to move things along and this would have been a tiny tidbit of extraneous info that got cut as not being really relevant to the story line… no biggie either way…
That was the day after The Restaurant Rumble, and while other countries may be getting ready to acknowledge the existence of Supers, USofA seems to be the first one to have an official government department comprising Supers to police and combat hostile Supers, whether homegrown or foreign
I am confident in saying that the USA was the first, in that the assembled press reacted in a way wholly consistent with such. They were clearly very surprised by the whole situation. Which they would not have been, if it was following an international trend.
Plus there was no questions such as “why has America lagged behind France, in recognising supers officially?” or “is Archon’s capability comparable to Germany’s super organisation in power?”
To the contrary it was indicated that various governments have secretly used supers, in the past, including the USA. Such as in the battles in which Maxima was involved. So whilst there are other countries who are aware of supers, they have been concealing that from the public. This is changing though, as negotiations are proceeding, on a treaty, to keep supers out of international conflicts.
Obviously other countries will have to come out into the open now, for the above reasons. Or pretend that it is all an American conspiracy and is not true. What policies they push, when doing the former, will doubtless influence the Council’s decision on whether to offer them representation. Whereas the latter clearly cannot be involved.
The US are only people paying at least their fair share by treaty into the UN is the US. There are 191 members of the UN and the US pays more than 185 states combined. UN peacekeepers often cause more harm than they prevent.
thats more because of human nature than because the US pays more on the UN, or what do you believe russia, china or japan could do a far better job if they payed that amount
Sounds like they lucked into some kind of informal relationship with some of the members (first individuals and so on) back in the old A.R.C. days and it developed from there?
Say if the U.S. was one of the first to fully develop such an organization and then say that one of those “kill/enslave all humans” or some other large scale Veil piercing plan just happened to start coming together in the U.S. (maybe our defenses were weak somehow because we were so young a nation) first in the modern “super” era then well, just circumstances led to agents from both groups working together and the start of some info sharing via desperate need (maybe this attempt the supernaturals were also using the new supervillain muscle available sparking A.R.C.’s interest) and the rest just developed naturally from there. Cause if they are old and set in their ways as a group then those elements that saw the need for a change (Ingsol) would pounce on a relationship that had put a human government group in good standing with some of their agents to help prove to the others that they COULD be worked with and trusted.
Something like that. A series of “happy” coincidences that matches up with what we know of the past so far.
Summary: Basically, if it just so happened that the extremely untrusting organization happened to find themselves in a desperate enough position to put some trust into one human government group then why would they, if it became time to do so, decide to put their trust in some “untested” government?
Not really sure about the whole “young” government thing anyway. Don’t have time for research before work but aren’t the current incarnations of MOST modern governments just as new? The COUNTRIES maybe be older by far but the governments themselves, etc… must all seem pretty new to the long lived (with I assume an even longer archive of recorded history) supernaturals? So why would they be anymore worthy of contact?
Here’s just as good a place as any then and it of course is easier for the author.
Re. ‘young’ governments/countries.
Long lived, or immortal individuals, such as Ingsol will likely favour stability. Which would require society carrying on functioning similarly in each century to the previous. With any transitions of power being unobtrusive to daily life. There are a few countries in the world where he could have lived in which would have fulfilled that, if you put aside the world-wide unavoidable changes, like cars and television.
England is said to be one of the most stable (and perhaps the most stable). Most ways that you could choose to measure such would end up giving it an edge, when compared to any European nation, given the Nazi occupation of Europe during WWII. Be it the societal changes from being under occupation, or alternatively, of being one of the occupying powers, who then suffered the post-war repercussions.
Likewise similar issues faced all the countries caught up in fighting Japan. Or those since, when dealing with changes to or from Communism (or opposing it). Or before, for all countries affected by colonial rule, by the Eurpean powers, and their various wars, in support of such.
Yet there are houses in England which are the same today, as they were when Ingsol was born. Where village life will still centre around a pub, a church and playing various sporting events. Albeit that crops are brought in by combine harvesters now, rather than horse and cart.
Mind you, here on the border of Transylvania, they still have horse and cart. But the changes wrought by Socialism have had vast effects on the landscape and countryside. With the majority of the populace having been moved to the urban centres, under the social planning directives, issued by the USSR. So I suspect that English vampires would have found their lives to be more stable than here.
By comparison things were very different in America when Ingsol was born.
Yeah, and I remember watching some little family clan somewhere in Mongolia still living somewhat similarly to the past but the government/laws/etc… had changed. I can see what you are saying as far as being more comfortable with a type of human who doesn’t change much though.
I think Ingsol is not much like those vampires though. He strikes me as a new idea man, a mover and a shaker, who was unpopular in his younger days but through effort expended, connections made, wisdom gained and by just being around long enough he has gained a powerful position much to the surprise and dismay of those more traditional vampires.
It would be amusing if DaveB ties it all together and has it become known that Ingsol and a few other key Councilmen are the driving force behind the ever growing relationship between the U.S. government agencies and the Council and the reason for it is at least partially that Ingsol and these certain long lived members were big supporters (behind the scenes plotters) in the founding of the U.S. and a few other important moments in its history. Thus making his fondness for it the fondness of a man and his personal pet project/hobby/dream.
And also explaining all the noses out of joint over his inclusion of them in so many proceedings. The more traditional factions didn’t feel comfortable allying with the “young” U.S. in particular, perhaps not with humans at all really, and express their resentment of A.R.C. and Ingsol whenever they think they can get away with it.
Are we actually sure that the Baseline Human seat specifically belongs to the USA, as opposed to the Government of wherever happens to be hosting the current meeting?
This evening’s meeting is in the USA, for a variety of reasons including a certain recruit with a Truesight ball. But if a similar Special Meeting were called elsewhere, then it would make sense for the host Government to fill the Baseline Human seat – say a meeting in Salisbury to discuss goings-on at Stonehenge, in which case the UK Government would be the most relevant.
Makes sense. We have seen that there are closed-door meetings going on between the POTUS and other world leaders. The initial impression we got was that they were regarding super matters. Which is probably true. However they may also discuss supernatural ones at the same time (or perhaps with a more select group, as not all governments are likely to have overlapping agendas for such matters).
Ack, Tumblr-nose on Sydney! No sir, I don’t like it.
The author is currently experimenting with the colouring, and acknowledges, in his blog above, that Sydney’s nose makes her look drunk or sick. So it is all in hand and normal (or improved) service will resume shortly.
Someday we need a “Sydney Evolution” chart with all of these changes lined up in a timeline. Could be fun.
So the damage of a sigil, heh makes em shut the hell up good. Meaning that the supernaturals are gonna get found out then shot on sight. Arrogant jerks the lot of em.
It is because they do not have anybody to train them.
*wags tail confidently*
Umm, what is that in the wave behind you? o_O
Mermaids confirmed? O_O
They are so sexy, or SHE’S so sexy, Decolette? You only brought a gift for one person after all . . .
*Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge* 😉
Say no more, say no more.
That’s the thing about succubi. They do so love to corrupt people, and Sydney’s so innocent, she’s got a Halo!
…
Sidney just gave a vampire permission to come to her house…
=_=;
Fairly sure she didn’t, and she stopped halfway anyway
Sadly Sydney had already said the key bit “that’s OK”. Even though she did cut off whatever she was adding after that, halfway through. So I would have to agree with the point raised in an earlier thread, that Sydney has not only invited Scarlett but every vampire (and other supernatural) in earshot!
Any rules-lawyering, she might offer, is a bit too late to stop them stepping over her threshold.
Or, she was simply saying it was okay that she can’t visit them (simply saying a blanket ‘okay’ is not enough, remember that scene in “Lost Boys”, when that old guy wanted to enter the house, Michael had to specifically offer the invitation, and he had to know what he was saying, even if he didn’t fully know the repercussions: ie he had to know he was formally inviting the guy, not that he had to know he was a vampire)
“We can come to your house…” is explicit however.
“That’s OK” then gives permission to do that.
The only loophole being that ‘coming to’ and ‘entering’ can be argued to be to different things. However it really depends on how (and if obviously) such things specifically work.
If it went purely by the words alone,* then Sydney would be safe.
If you consider it in legal terms** and use normal social language, as the guide, I think most judges, in the world, would say that an invite had been extended. If, say, a trespass case was brought, for coming onto Sydney’s garden, and then, seeing the door open, walking in.
Whereas, if you did not take into account just the wording, but also included the intent, *** then it is even worse. Sydney clearly wants to hang with them. So the invite certainly would not be just to ‘come and stand outside’. It would be “Y’all are welcome!”
Sydney rolled a critical failure on her wisdom check, on this one, I am afraid.‡ Or it might be a success, if it endears the friendly vampires, enough to compensate for the security risk created, from potentially hostile ones. Scarlett’s reaction though does not seem to make the latter likely.
* Such as if signing a pact with the Devil, as portrayed, in popular culture.
** So this would be how it worked if vampires did this due to a social code, vow or being bound by a supernatural entity(s). Society, the individual or an arbiter would decide if the terms had been met.
*** Such as if the supernatural entity judging the case were benign in nature, rather than malign. Or if the magics, preventing them entering, acted by the spirit of an agreement.
‡ Unless she lucks out due to supernatural creatures being in league with the Devil!
In most cases, Vampires (and certain other creatures) are physically restricted from entering, unless given express permission to enter (again, citing “The Lost Boys” as an example)
Yea, but what is causing that effect? Some kind of mechanism is allowing it in one instance, but not in another. Depending on how it operates brings you back to the same kind of points as I raised above. In 2 out of 3 of the categories Sydney does provide express permission.
About those banners we’ve been seeing,should there be a guide to what group they are?
Where would the fun be in that? o_O
SOME readers might not know what group they represent…!
That’s where the fun comes from in the comment section
Here are the ones we know. Marked [D] for deduced or [C] for canon. The rest are just descriptive of the banners.
Panel 2, top row: Vampires [D], Star Trek, Celtic braiding.
Bottom row: Angels [D], yellow crescent on a green field, Archaeologists [C], small banner yellow on blue field.
Final panel, top row: Adam’s head *, Mushroom folk [D], Winking skull
Middle row: Grey swords and pyramid on purple field, Mages [C]
Bottom row (banners out of sight): Konami code (girl with goggles), Odyssians (Helmeted warrior & female Cyclops) [D]
* Frankenstein’s monster, but using the only name he referred to himself by. This would make the faction the Aegirs. But there is nothing presently that corroborates that interpretation enough to make it sound.
The delegate, for example, does not leap out as being a ‘golem, construct or artificial sapient’. Although he may well be that, he could alternatively be an alien, thus the banner might represent ‘little green men’. With bolts in their necks. Or their green space ships.
Oh she has a little list… she has a little list…and none of them be missed…and none of them be missed…
*hums to self, and scribbles notations…*
On the whole ‘people freaking out if there’s a big reveal’ thing… I think most people would at least be nervous around vamps and weres, ’cause they’re pretty well described in legend and can turn humans into them. Also anyone who knows anything about actual fae will understandably be nervous as well.
And remember way back when all those reporters were asking Halo questions, and she ended up writing the questions on little cards? One of them asked (oddly enough, since Dabbler hadn’t shown her ‘battle form’ yet) if Dabbler was a demon and if it proved the existence of Hell and God and stuff, or something along those lines.
So there’s a bit of precedent for some religious upheaval at the very least, at least until someone tosses holy water at Dabbler and she doesn’t burn, proving that she’s not an ACTUAL demon (unless she does burn, which should set off alarm bells for anyone sane) or something in this comicverse.
Sydney did that back in the comic shop, after the brawl, where Dabbler showed her “Battle Form” which was after the press conference where Dabbler described her Battle Form as looking a lot like a four armed Succubus otherwise its doubtful anybody would have associated it with Demons. (which now sort of makes it look like Dabbler had an interest in people getting the RIGHT idea… )
But it was only one question in a pile that was mostly about fashion/dating/measurements or in other words sex.
Or that she’s not a Demon from that particular religions system anyway or that the one who blessed the Holy Water has faith issues…
I think the higher level supers and near possible immortals like Achilles would be enough to cause that sort of upheaval if its gonna be caused by such a reveal. Maxima makes most vampires look pretty tame and Dabbler had to use the inherent abilities of at least two different type of “Council” race bloodlines, train in magic, and build cool highly advanced technological gadgets just to fight her to a “draw”. (and probably groped her for a quick emergency distraction besides!)
Interestingly enough, back in the original press conference they tried to suggest that vampires (among other supernatural “legends”) could have been inspired by some random super way back when. Wonder if that sound bite will bite them in the ass a little when they do finally make the supernatural reveal as it suggests misleading the public on purpose as opposed to just keeping it “Top Secret”. (though I don’t think anybody is going to understand the need to keep this a secret from the people anyway)
Actually it is very cleverly phrased, so that it is actually true. Early superhumans will have been mistaken for creatures of legend.
Plus, when this is all made public, Archon can indicate that they were being open about the existence of supernatural creatures, by that very statement. Thereby laying the necessary groundwork, for a phased reveal of the supernatural, at a rate that the public could handle. Starting with the elements that they were already somewhat familiar with, namely supers.
Well, they actually said they might have been the “source of inspiration” for some of the old legends and then went on to name what seems to be one of the larger groups of the Council races as a possibility. Maybe on purpose to help get the worlds subconscious ready for what is to come but to the wrong person, in retrospect after the reveal, like they are using an official press conference to subtly discredit the existence of such beings as races or even legit individual supernaturals but rather just some random super of the past that was blown up into an entire race of such “monsters”.
The only way it works the way you are saying is if you believe that vampires fit under the umbrella term “super” which given they have Dabbler in the public as one maybe they should go with that? (redefine a few terms for good PR)
I am sure that they will have several research projects going on, covertly, seeking to determine if the supernatural races are just supers who have bred true (ignoring the ones who can be simply classed as being aliens or artificial constructs and the like). From everything we have heard nobody knows for sure yet (neither government nor Council).
So they could publish the least classified (or most credible, if different) research, as a justification for why they made that speculation. Which is all it was, so the turn of phrase cannot be classed as being a falsehood.
Arguably misleading, true. But, as based on reasonable, informed speculation, that is not outweighed by other evidence, no charges would stick. So any grumblings could just be ignored, or countered with some positive spin, depending on the political needs, at the time.
Dabbler did actually use her natural form in the Battle at the Steak House Car Park™. You may recall her drawing her demonic sword, from Hammer Space, and the sword fight ending up outside. Where there was at least one outside broadcast unit filming.
Likewise her ‘clop’ backstep, with her cloven-hoof, as she realised what Vehemence was talking about when describing his power-source as being ‘vehemic energy’.
Although Dabbler described it as a ‘battle form’ it does have rather demonic features, such as the horns and hooves. In addition to the points Observer makes above.
“Battle at the Steak House Car Park”
Perhaps we can call it the “Showdown at the O.K. Car Corral”?
Sorry, but I’ve played so many JRPGs, including modern ones with fully voiced casts that I needed to read your explanation to get the stinger. Plus, there are enough silent protagonists in other genres that I don’t recall ever thinking of it as a JRPG thing.
I so love panel 5 — a century-old badass, but *still* has an instinctive concern about being on The List.
Lol.
And yea, very true.
Pretty sure sunshine is on the list.
Scarlett should feel honoured.
Or worried. A vampire being put in the same place as sunshine…
considering sydneys powerset i would be very concerned too, hell she described her PPO as “touching a star” so maybe it would be super effective against vampires
Wow! Someone put Sydney in her place! Amazing!
Heh, she does get away with a heck of a lot, that a raw recruit would not normally. Supers are a bit different to your average recruits though, given their rarity in this world. Plus the fact that the private sector has deeper pockets. So the way they have to handle their supers is a blend of “A list celebrity” with the basic training.
So if you watch a TV special, showing A-List celebrities going through actor basic that should give a realistic impression of how Archon would have to treat their staff. They need fitness training, they need to know how to do their job and they need discipline. But they also need to pander to the occasional hissy fit, or other celebrity complaint, that a regular soldier would never get away with. Because they are too valuable to risk loosing.
and now she is on the list because of that, and vampire or not i wouldnt really want to be on bad graces with the girl that has the seven dragon balls floating over her head
Now we get to see everyone at the council looking around to see which group hasn’t shown up or all showed up late, because they were warned not to just waltz into the meeting, as their protection from detection has gone AWOL. (Was that run-on?)
Crimson is officially my favorite character.
Or is it Scarlet? Sydney did her confusion-fu again. How hard is it to recite names in the order people are sitting?
That is Scarlett. The Who’s Who panel* is your friend.
I love her hair. Plus the whole pale skin goth feel is always a favourite of mine. Even if Scarlett is otherwise rather colourful for a goth. I prefer Sydney’s playfulness though, to Scarlett’s more sombre behaviour. But that would not suit everybody, I am sure. So all in all I think you have good taste.
I wonder if Scarlett would feel the same about you?
* Found at the bottom of the page, or on the right of your screen, depending on what device and window layout you are using.
Quick and odd question; do the sigils used in the veil also have glyphs that accompany them? Mostly to act as specific modifiers, and in some cases nullifiers.
The sigils are structures with glyphs on them, which use a magic equivalent of a programming language, in order to control the magic of the Veil. Programs do include variables and other mathematical functions, including those which negate other things. So yes.
I suppose that’d be how they’d function in-`verse.
DaveB: “[F]or some time it was a bit of a joke that JRPG leads are all silent protagonists…”
Yeah, a lot of games (not just JRPGs) are like that, so the player can project themself into the character.
Of course, you could also say that everyone pictured in the last panel are quoting Nagato Yuki, but not everyone has read the Suzumiya Haruhi series of light novels…
(I used Japanese name order for the two names simply because the original light novels were in Japanese. For all us “round-eyed hairy barbarians from the West”, you could also call them Yuki Nagato and Haruhi Suzumiya. Me, I don’t care either way, it’s just a matter of personal preference. Non disputandem gustabus est, ja nai? -_^)
>last panel isn’t a bunch of “nani?!” and “BAkana!”
missed opportunity tbh fam
Those are some really neat character designs. I hope mindflayer, magma elemental, and truffleguy show up later on.
…
Is that an Azerothian Gnome in that last panel?
No, but I can see why you’d think that.
humm… Wait, I know that girl from future episodes, did not know that this was her first appearance
What is Zeff doing on the council?
I suspect he’s there as part of a faction representing Humans with access to magic, either as mages in their own right and/or as custodians of magic objects. The general population of Baseline Humans may be little more than background NPCs in comparison to most of the exotic factions present, but some have access (either direct or indirect) to enough power to be worth taking into account.