Grrl Power #500 – Bravery in the faces of danger
Sydney’s rather collected attitude here surprised even me. When I sat down to write this page, I’d intended for her to be a lot more scared. Even though she knows less about Sciona than you guys do at this point, she just saw her cuddly jaguar buddy hanging ten in the corner, so she she should be a lot more concerned or angry, but sometimes characters write themselves.
That said, Sydney has literally no idea how to arrest someone other than telling them they’re under it. Maybe handcuffs are involved, and Miranda Rights (though do supernatural creatures get Miranda Rights? She doesn’t know.) And then what? Stuff her in an uber and drive all the way back to Archon headquarters? And what kind of tip do you leave for that? I mean, luckily she has a radio and can ask someone. (Also Harem and Pixel both know what to do) It’s just that she hasn’t thought through the steps at this point.
Sydney isn’t totally out of options here, but in the future she might reconsider the distribution of some of the stuff on her utility belt. Her wrist com doesn’t have an extendable blade for example. We know this because she definitely would have stabbed herself or someone else if it did. And not that such a thing would necessarily help in this particular situation, but who knows, maybe a taser would, or a jet of tear gas. Both of those would probably affect Sydney as much as it would her assailant, especially if their skin was touching the taser bits and her skin at the same time, but presumably if she was ready prepared, it could give her a slight edge. I’m sure Arc-SPARQ will have its hands full rejecting all her crazy requests.
So yeah. Page 500. Took 6 and a half years but here we are. Not an especially auspicious page to mark the occasion. There’s nothing wrong with it, but page 100 was Dabblers introduction… at least her introduction to Sydney. Not the first time she’d been in the comic up to that point though. Page 200 was the start of the fight at the restaurant. Book 2 almost started on page 300, but I thought if I try and hold myself to arbitrary page counts like that I’d wind up with odd filler here and there to pad stuff out, so I just went with the flow.
So I don’t say this enough (or hardly at all, cause I’m bad at the mushy stuff) but I want to thank everyone for reading, and sticking around when I take Sydney on some extended meet and greet scene. :) I will try and be better about that in the future, but like Sydney, this is all still new and exciting for me, and I get caught up in it.
Of course thank you so much to everyone who supports the comic on Patreon as well. If I still had a full time job we’d be only around page 300-350 now, which is a slightly depressing thought. I’d still love to take the comic to 3 pages a week, but I’m barely keeping up with it at 2 right now. Still, after three years of doing this full time now, I still think how amazing it is that I can buy a gallon of milk or some dumb thing on Amazon because I draw a comic about a super dork and her pals. So again, thank you all!
I asked around a few places online to see if anyone wanted to do some celebratory fan art for page 500, but I’m a terrible self promoter and I only got a few responses. They’re over at this post so check them out!
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Today’s milestone page is free for everyone!
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Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
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SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
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Speaking as a former ER nurse, just from the injury to her arm she should have dropped Halo. That kind of bone fracture would free the anchors for a lot, if not all, of the tendons required to grip things. Even if she healed in a fraction of a second the hand would still have lost all gripping capacity for that time. Rule of drama and whatnot but it just knocked me out of the moment to see her maintain her grip like that.
And the bone managing to wobble and uncrack within seconds was fine, but Sci-fright maintaining her grip is what was too much? o_O
And again, how do we know she didn’t lose her grip for a whole two seconds!?
She is not human (and some claim she isn’t even alive), so what would happen with a hyu-mon in a similar instance is irrelevant!
Kinda get where Emo is coming from though.
We know that Sciona is a mage (see the who’s who on this page), and perhaps she is using magic to keep her arm up and holding Sydney. However, Sydney could keep pummeling that arm with her orbs, breaking it faster than it heals. Note that the orbs can keep pushing on a broken arm, forcing it out of a straight shape. And Sydney could attack the arm closer to the wrist, making it more likely that Sciona would have to let go.
On the other hand, Sydney hasn’t had a lot of practice using her orbs to inflict significant specific damage. Hopefully this event will encourage her to get sufficient practice, so that in the future she can not be held so “easily” (assuming magic involved here in the holding).
agree totally. maybe being non human does give it a different grip morphology, but getting a limb bone broke should have caused some momentary weakness in the gripping hand Magic healing might can do some wild shit, but pain still sucks no matter who you are.
Sciona has four things in her favour:
One is that her body is an orc or ogre, so may well have redundancies that humans do not. For instance tendon attachments might be distributed more widely, than in humans. Say having more points or simply a very broad or long one. In addition to allowing a grip to be maintained,* it may even help to prevent bones from getting too far out of place.
Throw in the ability to contract a tendon (normally the preserve of muscles) and it could even pull the bones back into place. Not regeneration, per se, just a survival trait of a species that lives in a much more savage manner than humans. They may well also have a higher pain threshold, for the same reason.
Two the troll blood will be capitalising on any of the above possibilities. Enhancing a more durable (than human) race to also regenerate. Doubtless this will also include anesthetic properties. Humans need to have accute pain receptors, because any injury is life-threatening to them. For trolls though even major injuries are easily survivable.
Provided they keep dealing with whatever situation has caused the injury. Be that moving away from a natural hazard (say crawling out from under a rock-fall) or fighting an opponent before they chop off something that cannot regenerate! They have little evolutionary advantage from being incapacitated by pain. Whereas they gain a considerable one from being able to ignore it completely.
Three as a Frankenstein-like construct, she is doubtless already immune to pain. All examples I can think of are notorious for this. In addition to their phenomenal durability, strength and resistance to delirious effects. Typically coming from those assembled from mundane human bodies. Scionia is not, she has far far tougher base stock. So the compound capabilities will likely be significantly higher than a ‘mere’ Fankenstein’s monster.
Four Sciona is also a blood mage. And an arch villain so powerful that she treats an elder vampire like a lunch box! I seriously doubt that she has revealed even a fraction of the capabilities she has up her sleeve.
In short Dave has not made a mistake. I agree that it would be for a mundane human, but not for this individual. What we should be doing is looking at the injury, and her ability to keep functioning unhindered, and realise that she is a LOT more formidable than a human villain.
* Albeit weakened, but compared to an ogre Sydney is very light. Ogres can probably lift their own body weight, due to their legendarily great strength.
Well…. if you were trying to be logical about the structure of the body, then yes the hand would have gone limp when the bone broke like that. The reason for this, is the bone acts as a shield for some of the nerves, this is why you can’t move a bodypart if the bone breaks far enough to separate.
But with the blood magic involved, you could just assume the blood in the fingers was held in place, as long as the impact was expected. I guess…
Which brings up the question…
If you live in Europe, and you get a bloody nose. Do you call it a “Bloody” bloody nose, or would that just be redundant? Cause otherwise people might think you’re just referring to your own nose in a derogatory way?
“Nose bleed” would be the more common term. And, yea, the “Bloody nose” would be considered to be offensive by the more sensitive types, so folks would usually avoid using it. Although, if threatening someone then it would be more likely.
Likewise if trying to gain attention or seek sympathy for violence against you. Playing up the attack by using the stronger language would do the rick.
So it is unlikely to be used for a medically induced nose bleed, rather than an injury. Other than in playground taunting, which would not be self-directed, in any event.
One thing truly appreciate about this: Sci-fright’s sleeve didn’t magically re-knit along with her arm
Always annoyed me in Buffy or Blade when the vamps’ clothes would turn to ash or disintegrate along with the rest of the vamp
It is a nice touch.
Personally I never felt a problem with the Buffyverse one. I guess because we do not know the mechanism for why they turn to dust. Given that, and the fact that their clothes go at the same time, I figure I just accepted that the process extends beyond just their body.
Perhaps it is energetic enough to also include nearby material. Although we would then need to review all scenes where vampires are in contact with things, to see if that would contradict any lore. Not being in the mood for such a review, I would just opt to say that ‘material that has been in association with them, for a while, becomes attuned enough that when they disintegrate the process affects them too.’
Ultimately it was all down to an executive decision by Joss Whedon that it would be too grusome and dark to require a teenage girl to continually dispose of bodies. The clothes would just be a lesser version of the same. Buffy would need to practice forensic cleanup, after each fight. All the time embedding such thoughts in the minds of any potential criminals or homicidal individuals in the audience.
In other words having the clothes survive would only create problems, yet would not intrinsically add anything useful to the script or the setting. They never felt the need to explain why the bodies dusted, so need not do so for the clothes. We just need to pick whatever rationale we feel fits the observed phenomenon best, rather than get bothered by it.
In case anyone else noticed the broken tooth on the Troll that can regenerate broken bones in seconds … Tooth enamel is the hardest tissue in the body. Problem is, it’s not living tissue, so it can’t be naturally regenerated. Unfortunately, you can’t regrow it artificially, either — not even with those special toothpastes.
Yeah, pity about that, have more than a few teeth falling apart that would like to be able to ‘regrow’ or even simply repair (damn lying false advertising!!)
It’s obvious that she kept the broken tooth because it looks cool. and it does. She made a good choice.
Technically a tusk, rather than a tooth. And tusks have evolved to continually grow. So regeneration does have something to work with. But I imagine a broken tusk probably does remain broken, despite that. Thus your point is good.
Just checked, and my guess was right, broken tusks to not regrow.
Hey guys, I was checking my Kickstarters today, and noticed a little something that slipped in as we passed the 500 page mark.
Wearing the Cape: The Archon Files (A WtC:RPG Grrl Power Sourcebook)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2141951291/wearing-the-cape-the-role-playing-game/posts/1803682
Don’t know why DaveB didn’t mention this, but we got 4 days left to pledge the game and get a copy!
Thanks for letting us know.
Sorry that this post is so late. I had replied to it shortly after you made your comment, but I guess that I must have had a crash, before posting it. Or an internet gremlin ate it on route to the server.