Grrl Power #696 – She’s specular, modular, interactive-odular
So presumably what happened during the fight was Sydney quickly put up her shield, but before she could figure out her next move, Cora shot one of the muggers with her Flay Thrower. Yeah, you read that right. Then Sydney spent the next thirty seconds trying to figure out if her bubble had a windshield wiper option.
Actually nothing really sticks to the shield, but Sydney just smeared around the gore around with the lighthook a bunch. If she had just left it alone, it would have quickly sloughed off by itself.
Once she got that clear enough, she saw Cora using the gravity gun attachment she teleports out on this page to hold up a dumpster as a shield before smashing someone into a wall with it.
Then things got violent because the muggers started trying to “defend themselves” and “run away.”
Edit: Okay, to clarify Cora’s situation, I changed her dialog from saying “I was born a quadriplegic.” to “I was born without limbs.” I thought quadriplegic meant either paralyzed or missing limbs, and some people use it interchangably, but the actual definition of the word simply means extant but paralyzed.
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I have to say that while I enjoy the graphics a lot, your commentary on each page is at least as entertaining. Please keep it up.
Oh, and thank you for the adventure.
Who said that?
You know, I have heard that experienced shapeshifters can take many forms. I’m beginning to suspect that includes turning invisible!
My Fursona, is a Polymorph,Re Odo.
Funny enough, I have some polymorphs who have fursonas.
She is also a Daughter of Tiamat. Which is why she is a polymorph, she was originally a Half Drow.
She is the first Daughter of Tiamat, which are all both female or male. They become Female to become a Daughter of Tiamat.
So basically she’s Megaman.
Also… can she supercharge her hand for…devastating attacks?
When you said that the first thing I thought of was whether or not she had the ability to copy weapons or text that she saw and replicate them with her hands. Next thing you know she’ll be running around with the Cora Buster out.
Now THAT would make me drool.
If Sydney spars with Cora, and she uses her Xbuster, think that’ll unlock the last orb? If it isn’t Room Ball then it has to be Blue Magic Ball (Final Fantasy, to a lesser extent Breath of Fire)
Quadriplegic do not have stumps. Where is her hand?
Probably chopped off to make room for the limb suit.
Um…. quadriplegics can have stumps
You can tell that this topic interested me, in that I was concentrating on it enough not to notice that my reply had been put as a new comment. Mind you given that it was after a reboot I can now confirm that it consistently does do that on the first reply of the day. Although as nobody else has mentioned having a similar issue, I guess it is just affecting me. Hopefully it will go away whenever I move somewhere with a decent internet connection!
As to the topic:
I suspect that the gist was that ‘born quadriplegics do not have stumps’, given that folks who loose limbs in wars, accidents or by amputation clearly can. Plus I can see the logic in that there is a natural condition which appears to be similar to the problems caused by thalidomide (namely very short limbs but with a hand / foot on the end).
As it is a genetic anomaly, which affects fetal development, they are born with short limbs (not necessarily all, but it is possible to be quadriplegic due to this). It is very rare but I went to school with one such individual (who fortunately did not have it affect her legs, and I think had one normal length arm), and she was able to use her hand well enough to play cards, even if her arm was too short for many tasks.
As to whether all born quadriplegics fall into that category, and thereby none can have stumps, that is not something I have knowledge about.
Yes, quadriplegic can have stumps but the medical condition of quadriplegia is a paralysis so it’s not what I expected from that word (mind you, this is not a big deal).
There are three interesting explanations here, the first is that the condition of not having limbs at birth is not as common or known (Phocomelia) so it would make sense that the translator or Cora herslef did not use that word because it would actually raise more questions and it would impede communication instead of moving things along.
The second could be that she or her family actually removed her malformed limbs to make her compatible with the prosthetics a bit of a self-mutilation but maybe she is that ruthless or her alien culture is more lenient on that.
The third is that inside the shoulder is her actual arm, which is significantly shorter than her prosthetic one.
Now, the second explanation could add a bit of a dark side to the character (which in this dark age of comic books could be interesting even the aliens so far were either depicted as non-human or as alternative versions of human without gross differences in behaviour so it would be a slight shift in narrative). The third one is rather illogical for the reader because it takes some reasoning to even consider it, but it could also explain that “mostly” with the face she is making in the last panel because she is not perfectly happy with the solution or had bad experiences because of her condition in the past (because she got dissed for having malformed real arms for example).
I had one dude in my football team with the medical condition you mentioned, he had normal arms and indeed his arms were malformed but functional (given the physical limits their form imposed of course) so I would not be surprised if the prosthetics are not directly connected to her nervous system (as I came to expect given the high-tech scenario depicted).
I’m a bit concerned that this is distracting me from the story though.
“I’m a bit concerned that this is distracting me from the story though.”
That is just a sign of good writing. It is not like a movie where you need to be guided for your hour and a half’s viewing and getting distracted can make you literally ‘loose the plot’. With written material, in general, and an episodic one, in particular, being thought provoking and allowing the mind to explore different issues expands the entertainment beyond just the storyline.
Reading a comic page does not take very long. Inspiring you to think about various aspects (and Dave does so many there is not time for me to list the categories) can inspire you on and off until the next page is issued.
According to a doctor that I know (my brother), any lack of use of both arms and legs is quadriplegia. It can be from an accident, from paralysis, or from simply being born without them.
So phocomelia is something that would also fall under quadriplegia. Sort of like ‘full body paralysis’ is a form of quadriplegia and ‘what happened to Anakin Skywalker when he lost the high ground against Obi Wan’ is a form of quadriplegia.
I was born with about half of my left forearm.
The cause is fairly common.
A piece of the ambiotic sack – looks like fuzzy spaghetti – breaks off and wraps around a developing limb – before the 6th or 8th week of pregnancy (cannot remember when all limbs are fully developed). This is like tying wire around a tree.
Net effect, the limb stops growing.
In any given year, roughly 25000 kids in the US are born without at least one limb. Of course, there are other causes, but that is the most common one.
Curiously, according to another guy with one hand (for the same reason) is if born with one hand, 90% have the right hand.
The best thing, based on my personal experience && observations, is for the parents to ignore it && insist the kid do whatever other kids do. This includes being blind. If the kid is treated as a cripple, the child will become a cripple. If treated as a regular kid && expected to do the same as other kids, the kid will be a functional adult.
Having said that,,, I broke my left knee … mobility is more important than dexterity.
Remember, that she is not an “earth” human, just a humanoid shaped alien – their biology may vary from “very similar” to “weirdly parallel” – but it it is still unlikely, that the biology is working exactly the same.
Also, while the translator helps get over the language barrier, it will most likely just translate to the next closest word – so it could mean something similar, but not exactly the same.
But yea, why settle for weak and underdeveloped limbs when you can replace them completely with something that will endure much more and can still be replaced easily – and does not make you bleed out when your arm / hand gets severed.
The idea that the translation is imperfect is probably the best explanation here because should she have cut off her own arms it would be probably be mentioned in passing. I mean it’s a rather drastic measure and any reader stopping to think about it would come to this (rather horrific if you indulge in the details) conclusion that she self-mutilated herself in order to be compatible with her prosthetic limbs. So the fact that something was lost in translation is a useful solution here.
I have a friend that after 15 surgeries to attempt to fix a leg deformed at birth had it amputated the day after he turned 18 so he could wear a prostetic leg and have more mobility, less pain, and a better quality of life.
I assumed that she had severely under-formed limbs, rather than the stumps that an amputee would have. Although under-formed limbs usually still have muscle functionality, so would not be considered quadriplegic, but might still be replaced with robotics.
And now I have the Bananaphone song stuck in my head. Wait, Does Cora also share 40-60 percent of her DNA with a banana like Humans, supposedly, do? If so, and she has a phone attachment for that limbsuit, then she can be considered a banana phone.
The genetic shared with a banana makes you a DNA-based living entity on Earth, and one with eukaryotic cells (i.e., a separate cell nucleus, more complex cell chemistry) no less.
It’s funny, actually. Humans share 43% of their DNA with banana trees, but banana trees only share 13% of their DNA with humans.
Plant DNA tends to be more complex and extensive than mammals.
Hell,.. we share a good part of chromosome 21 with Lobsters, thus why human anti-depressants work on the tasty shellfish despite lobsters being older than the mere existence of trees.
As for Alien Cora…who says she even shares 1%? She may very well work on a DNA sequence featuring 6 or more base pairs. All life on earth has 4 base pairs.
I didn’t know this about lobsters, and now I’m stuck imagining a bunch of lobsters lounging around getting high as hell.
DAVE!
Excellent Has Delgado reference. Well, more of an Irwin reference trying to be Has Delgado.
I love it.
And yeah- without tech, a lot of disabled people would be…
….Ugh. I had a nightmare about that horror movie with the sloughing skin…
Which of course reminds me of this:
https://compote.slate.com/images/fcd32c3a-80cd-45c3-a736-6c50cfa167a2.jpg
Okay the head line was clearly intentional, but the secondary blurb about “arms control” was nice and subtle.
About Cora
Perhaps she was born without arms and legs , and forced growth clone parts where not aviable ( forced growth clone part is science fantasy ) hence the cybernetics.
Cobra yes he apears human but he has inhuman resitance to punishment.
But if I want to make a female Cobra I would cal her Naja .
Cora is most likely an alien (see a thread about this on the previous comments page). As such she probably does not share any DNA with any Earth-based life forms.
However there are a couple of plausible exceptions to this:
1) If panspermia is correct, then we could share DNA with a variety of aliens.
If this is by natural means (comets hitting planets and knocking stuff with DNA into space and then to another planet) then she would need to have originated pretty close to Earth to have any significant overlap (given that even on Earth we diverged significantly from any microbes which could potentially have survived such a journey).
2) There are a lot of aliens present on Earth, in the Grrl Verse, and have been here for at least 3,000 years. Many of whom apparently come for sex tourism. And at least one such species is compatible enough with humans to produce offspring (namely Succubi). Although all the offspring of those are Succubi, presumably there is an admixture of the non-Succubi DNA.
So if Cora is actually a Succubus (entirely possible as we know their physical forms are quite varied, depending on the non-succubus elements – using Dabbler vs the Twilight council succubus representative as my examples), then she may well overlap with both human and banana DNA to some extent. Likewise if there are one or more other alien species which can breed with humans.
Ssooo… since Cubis would share at least 60% of their DNA with humans and bananas…
Succubus + banana = banana succubus?
That would happen way too often.
We could though envisage developments of current technology eventually leading to being able to 3-D print an adult body, following the DNA (and mitochondrial DNA etc) of a sample. This would need to be incredibly sophisticated, as it would need to predict all the developmental stages, and factor in hypothetical diet and other environmental factors.
E.g. would you want the clone to replicate the mother having lived in comfort, eating a mediterranean diet, and with the child growing up in an idyllic version of the same. Or would you want the mother to have experienced a famine (which can affect the development of a baby even if it is born years after that) in Africa, and the child to have moved to Asia at age 3 and have grown up eating a traditional (non-western affected) diet?
Those two options would result in significantly different adults, even from identical DNA (as we know from identical twins growing up in very different circumstances).
But, as this is something we can potentially do, it is science fiction (albeit fairly distant future) rather than fantasy. All it would then take is for some corporation to decide to call this technique ‘forced growth’ (to take advantage of public familiarity with the term, and a very similar result to what science fantasy describes, to have that in real life. Given how many companies rush to make use of things like ‘skynet’ and ‘cyberdyne systems’ and that is pretty much likely to happen.
About mediteranean diet it’s overated my country is semi-mediteranean with 79.5 years of male life expetancy and 85.4 female life expetancy .
And the country with the longest life expetancies iare Japan ,Switzerland – no mediteranean country by any means – and Singapore .
For 3D printing it’s a good explaination.
Well, there’s also the fact that those countries have excellent healthcare, lower poverty etc.
However one important factor would probably be what conservants are allowed in food.
E.g. sodium nitrite is often used in curing salts (for meat) but it’s known that it can yield toxic substances that can lead to cancer when overcooked (which is why I use table salt when curing meat). And for some reason it seems to also be used in many processed meat products (see the WHO report about the correlation between meat and cancer which indicates a correlation between processed meat and cancer).
Sydney’s comment about Dabbler never going “full ham” is why I could never bring myself to write a cross-over fanfic with Dabbler. Never seen her in a serious fight (not counting Wereworld, as that was too short, likely outdated abilities, and even less than what we’ve seen here so far). As a personal hang up, I’d hate to write something *granted fanfic* only to find out later (oh…she did have a way around that, defense against that, a spell that could do that, was into that sort of thing, or the worse couldn’t do that.). Like assuming Dabbler has a Dragon Slave equivalent spell only to later find out her top attack power is closer to Fairy Tail’s building blasters not Slayer’s mountain annihilators. Or in the reverse,
I suspect that the gist was that ‘born quadriplegics do not have stumps’, given that folks who loose limbs in wars, accidents or by amputation clearly can. Plus I can see the logic in that there is a natural condition which appears to be similar to the problems caused by thalidomide (namely very short limbs but with a hand / foot on the end).
As it is a genetic anomaly, which affects fetal development, they are born with short limbs (not necessarily all, but it is possible to be quadriplegic due to this). It is very rare but I went to school with one such individual (who fortunately did not have it affect her legs, and I think had one normal length arm), and she was able to use her hand well enough to play cards, even if her arm was too short for many tasks.
As to whether all born quadriplegics fall into that category, and thereby none can have stumps, that is not something I have knowledge about.
Quadriplegic specifically means that four limbs are paralyzed, not missing.
quad = four, plegic = paralyzed.
Phocomelia is being born with no limbs
Oops. Thanks for setting me straight on that!
Kinda explained that at the bottom of the first page, that you commented on puppy
Your initial post, on that page, left me with the impression that there was a similar condition which was spelt differently (rather than being a conjugation of the same word), as such my understanding of “quadriplegic” was not changed.
The next time I returned to read the comments a new page had started. As I am (mostly) unable to reply to comments on older pages now, I work my way through the new page initially. So at the time of posting my reply, in this thread, I was still blissfully unaware of my ignorance. But thanks for your contribution, even though I cannot reply any further to your post on that page.
No worries, understand it was a bit confusing, that’s why said “kinda explained” :D
“She mostly comes at night. Mostly.” -Cora
“What does?” – Sydney
“Dabbler.”
“Ew.”
Still better than a bunch of Xenomorphs!
I’ve seen some…interesting Xenomorph fan arts and comics that would still fit,
…But can she deck herself out like Mistral from Metal Gear? There’s a less risky option for Sydney than chopping her own limbs off for cybernetic ones.
When everyone is hung up on a limb suit, but you want to talk about the flay thrower and Cora’s arsenal
https://www.strangerviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/pibk-rickk.png
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4E5noLrAhag/maxresdefault.jpg
Also chances are, Sydney’s “ew” comment as out of place as it seems, her first thought hearing “limb suit” was taken too literal (I know my ADHD rattled brain hearing those words went to the above images first, rather than as a prosthetic harness, or cybernetic limb implants, or biomechanical artificial limbs interface or whatever…but rather like…organic limbs being worn on the body…like Pickle Rick with the rats.
I just re-read the whole comic into 2 days. I laughed a lot, and was reminded of so much. Also we need Max word bingo to make an appearance again.
The first panel is awesome first of all. But I’m having trouble reading if Sydney’s eyes are dinner plated or closed. The color tone is just a little too close to her flesh tone. Maybe adjust the shade/tint to make it easier to tell? Otherwise, fantastic page as always.
Dinner plated, they are white, and empty, and the reason they are ‘too close to her flesh tone’ is because, in that panel, her flesh has gone ashen-coloured in reaction to what Cora did to those aggressive panhandlers
This is why we need more toons on television and not just (animated series), people are forgetting or just never learning all the classic toon expressions. Which Sydney as a hyper character is shown using to distinguish her exaggerated emotional states relative to those around her.
I’m all for poetic turns of phrase, as they turn mundane text into interesting reading. However it is best to be wary, in case the meaning is altered. In this case the individuals involved were not begging for money, then turning aggressive when it was not offered (or otherwise). Rather it was a straight out attempted armed robbery, from the outset.
Having been homeless and jobless for a significant part of this year (and only being due my first paycheck today) I have been feeling a particular empathy for the panhandlers I have been seeing on the street. I was only a hair’s breadth away from being one of them, as friends and family have practical limits on how much help they can provide.
I’ve often compared this webcomic to G.I.Joe,well just certain characters.So I’ve selected certain Joes with certain Archon members:
MAXIMA:
https://www.yojoe.com/images/resize/w/MAX/imagestore/109/38642.jpg
How would Maxima look in THAT outfit?
Well now Sydney has an entirely new list of things she shouldn’t say when she is around Cora and she thought it was difficult to not say the wrong thing around Peggy!
Ya know… I never thought this would be important, but I am bothered by the lack of nipplage on Cora. What is that shirt/boob-holder thing made of that it allows for bounce without pokies???
Sorry… I just binge watched 4 seasons of Highschool DxD on Hulu and I have been forever changed…
Hard Light,
Cora mentioned this to Sydney when they met.
One assumes you can control the shape and density of a hard light suit so its just form fitting enough but pads out where needed to prevent poking and camel toe.
Wouldn’t a four armed alien species make four armed limb suits?
Where are you getting Cora is four-armed? o_O
Doesn’t mean she can’t make a four legged, six armed suit that would need just some time to learn to control. The brain adapts to its inputs and outputs.
A leaping assumption that Cora and Dabbler are the same alien race.
Which clearly they aren’t. If Succubus rules hold up, they follow the appearance of the host species plus some demonic accessories like horns. It can be assumed that the alien half of Dabbler looks exactly how Dabbler looks…only perhaps minus the horns *maybe*.
Dabbler is such a mutt, it can be unclear which of her traits come from what bloodline. We have not seen a pure doppleganger yet, so we have no idea what they look like. We HAVE seen a pure succubus (Decolette), and they have four limbs, not six. That leaves that ‘1/6 unknown alien species’ bit to speculate on. Could Xuriel and Cora share this species in common? Maybe. But, there are a LOT of alien species out there. It could even be that Xuriel’s extra pair are a genetic ‘accident’ emerging from the genetic cross, and not a normal feature of any of the three base races (there’s probably a genetic term for when that happens, i don’t know what it is).
mutation.
I hereby grant you an entire paws worth! That is, like … well … a LOT!
What if the last orb’s actual ability is stupid and boring and useless to Sydney?
“Degrade to mortal plane” ball.
God-tier item, so to be on this plane, you’d have to decrease yourself or something to even be here.
That’s the thing: most ‘gods’ are only ‘godly’ or even mildly powerful because they are on the mortal plane, on their own plane, they are basically ‘ordinary’ because everyone on their plane has their same strengths
Typically they come here because they were banished from their own plane, or want to come here and mess with the ‘primitives’ in a fashion that will get them banished, or worse, if they get caught
The phrase ‘Big Fish in a Little Pond’ comes to mind to describe them
This concept was the basis for setting in motion pretty much everything I write as the far background.
The 9 Divine Realms, home of the Eternal Gods; however in their own realm they had ordinary jobs, baker, farmer, political stuff, ect…but none of them were in charge; that was the domain of the 9 princesses *really 10 one is a twin soul (two bodies one soul)*, the queen, empress, and the four great demon generals. But anyway,
these Eternals *as in couldn’t permanently be killed* had powers they could develop, but never had the level of the champions of each realm or the top royals. But they could also travel to mortal worlds, where they could have demi-god offspring *not as immortal as themselves, and could be killed by ALOT of things back in the Eternal World…also Eternal World didn’t really have organic life just aesthetic stuff…so no food for half mortal offspring*….
but the big deal was when the Eternals went to mortal worlds they were worshiped, *think like aliens visiting a more primitive society*, but in this case they were indestructible *or else couldn’t be really killed by anything*, didn’t need to eat or drink but could, and had magical powers unlike anything the mortals had. So they came to call themselves the Eternal Gods.
But they go home and that *King of the Gods*, finds himself back to *magistrate over east quarter of South Kingdom* sort of thing. Or that great warrior god hero on Earth-XPC3004 would return to the Eternal World and be reminded he was a lumber jack and would never measure up in power to the champion of the realm let alone the royals.
-long short without getting into too much detail- this caused some strife between them and the “royals” as their egos took over.
If interested the background
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/The-Eternal-World-770245777
The Eternal World.
Darn, I’m caught up again. This is such a great comic; but I can’t stand to read long-form stories like this in small chunks so I’ll be leaving for a few months until my backlog of unread strips fills up again.
In the meantime, just wanted to say I love where the story is going; there’s so much potential for interesting developments just based on what we’ve already got, and the recent revelations about the possible origin’s for Sydney’s artifacts just go to show how much unexplored territory there still is. Great work!
One thing you are missing out on, is the comment discussions :D
From Batman thread, on the first comments page:
Ahh, that must have been “The Nightmare Before Batmas”.
Your comic title makes me want a Cora based parody of Queen’s “Killer Queen”
“She’s a killer! Specular, modular, interactive-odular…”
The limb suit reminded me of something. “Dororo” by Osamu Tezuka has an anime adaptation this season. It’s about a guy that offered all his son’s limbs and organs to demons (traditional evil demons, not Dabbler-like demons) in exchange for political power. The series follows the boy getting his limbs back and getting revenge on his Dad.
WOW. gotta say the “we are cops so we do try to use non-lethal force as much as possible” line has aged. rather very poorly lmao