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This month will be another Dabbler’s Science Corner since there were a lot of renewed questions about Harem, but I’m a little behind this month so I’ll have to update it as I get the chance.
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SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
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Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
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Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
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SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
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"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Looking forward to it. Hope you throw up notices to mention when it’s updated though, as I only generally visit the site once a week otherwise.
I feel let down after last month’s ;)
Hah yeah, I have a lot of other fun ones I’d love to do, but the Harem one took so long to get laid out properly, I could have done at least a whole extra page of the comic instead. Hopefully another Science corner will be a little less work before I do another big one.
Chibi Dabbler! YES!!
*Sets up camp chair, stokes fire and gets a packet of marshmallows to toast*
Ok, ready to receive Science! whenever Dabbler starts the lesson. No problems if we get it a bit at a time, over the month. It is always interesting to see a work in progress.
You forgot the *zap* when you say Science! *ZAP!!!* (see?)
Heh. Actually, I was alluding to the G.U.R.P.s skill “Science!” which is only available in 50’s style cinematic settings. Any science! hero can answer questions from the most diverse fields with the authority of a leading expert.
Of course you can use any school chemistry lab to determine that sample ants have grown abnormally due to contact with specific pollutants. But also that exposure to radiation will make them grow exponentially bigger! And even identify their species and likely behaviour, at a glance.
One of the posters at Spinerette get’s hit by lightning every time someone says SCIENCE!! *Questicus get’s zapped* It’s one of those wierd things ppl do after a couple years in a comment thread
Does this mean it’s too late to ask questions about Harem? (For that matter, is this the wrong place to ask questions?) Well… I don’t know, but I’m gonna ask anyway… :P
When Harem gets injured, do her copies just feel the pain of it or do they actually have symptoms of the injury? (bruising, swelling, bleeding, etc.) Does putting ice on it help? Do all of them have to put ice on it, or just the one who was injured?
Given that the harems all have different tatoos and that when one dies they other four do not, I’d say no.
On that note, it does seem like with a weakness like ‘shared pain’, the tatoo would’ve been a one-time thing as I don’t think you’d want to feel that x5 too often…..unless you are a masochist.
This is definitely the right place to ask. Whether you are in time depends on how far DaveB has gotten in drafting Dabbler’s Science Corner on Harem.
Your question is fascinating. Although she has differing tattoos, the needle marks might have affected all bodies, but without ink being laid down, only one will get the skin colour change. Alternatively the needle might only indent the one body, even if the others also feel the pain of it, so to get the same tattoo on each body in the same place would require repeating it five times (or linking up four machines to exactly replicate the tattooist’s movements).
One other point to consider is if she does not get physical reactions then the shared pain we have seen in the atomic wedgie incident is probably just psychological. A bit like any reflex reaction you might have to something you see on TV. Or akin to some fathers suffering phantom pregnancy pains, in sympathy, when their partner goes into labour.
But, thinking on that a bit more deeply, as she only has the one mind, how she views her other selves comes into play quite significantly. How is her sensory input is handled and filtered? How does she handle decision making and initiating actions. Answers to which will change the way she psychologically views the world (compared to a baseline human).
Unless it turns out that Harem has an extra area in her brain(s) which allows her to deal with this issue, we should assume that her mind is pretty much that of a normal human. Albeit the younger she discovered her teleportation power, the more she will diverge from normal. Under the age of about five, physical development of the brain can vary vastly depending on the environment (languages spoken, amount of play, diet/malnutrition, social interaction, illness etc).
However, given that Maxima’s blasting power kicked in when she was fairly mature, lets assume Harem was the same. So a, nearly adult, developed human brain suddenly gains the ability to view the world from up to five different points of view, simultaneously. Probably a very disorienting time!
We know that she is considerably better educated and well rounded than an average person of her age, due to the fact that her different bodies can each be undertaking different tasks. Thereby gaining experiences and learning up to five times faster than normal. If she was able to do this with a couple of bodies, one might assume that she is simply thinking faster in order to be able to do this. But with five copies acting separately, I think we can assume that much of the necessary mental processing is being handled by each physical brain individually.
Consider the alternative, namely each brain being absolutely identical to the others having all the same thoughts at the same time. If she is simultaneously seeing: 1) a busy street 2) a crowded office party 3) a blazing building 4) a museum exhibition and 5) a beach and she sees a child running in front of her, unattended… how can she tell which scene that child is in?
Bearing in mind it is just one of the hundreds of people in sight, many of whom are in the same position (relative to the Harem body perceiving them), with bodies overlapping (if her brain was trying to resolve the input into a single scene). Likewise reacting to the input. All her bodies would have to move identically, if she only had the one mental processor.
Although it would be amusing to have her try and grab the child before it either ran into traffic or a burning building (and grabbing nothing but air or some innocent bystander/fireman/traffic cop) in all the other scenes. Clearly that does not happen with her though. So each brain must be handling its own load of local processing.
If true, then the bodies are not just the one body manifesting itself in multiple locations simultaneously. In order to retain memories permanently, the brain needs to make physical changes. Likewise other material changes to the structure of the brain occur as individuals practice specific skills. Parts of the brain can grow, as others atrophy due to under use.
If the each of the brains is perceiving things differently, they will each be developing and changing in different ways (eg one spends all of her time in sporting activities it will accumulate appropriate mental and physical conditioning). In conclusion, if the brains are able to function and develop separately, then the same should follow for the body too. Including injuries being specific to one and not the others.
Possibly this is corrected whenever she merges forms (each gaining an averaged out brain/body that includes all of the changes) thereby avoiding the risk of her copies gradually getting different personalities and/or becoming separate individuals!
If that complex line of reasoning matches how Dave sees it (and bearing in mind she is superhuman, so that is not necessary), injuries to one body will not physically harm the others and Harem could eventually be trained to ignore the pain from other bodies.
Harem Jeanne (the middle one, aka Military/punk) looks bored, Daphne (aka Thing 1) is looking at Dabbles and is just glad she didn’t poke a little higher (or maybe disappointed?)
Not sure what Sydney is talking about, the drawings look great
Hah, an artist will usually have a different scale for what qualifies as bad art. I had 5 brains drawn with proper crenelations and in proportion that I used reference for, then I erased them and freehanded it, trying to draw the brains kind of blobby and off kilter. I probably could have made them a lot worse looking though.
They still look great, but when did Sydney become an artist?
Critic, not artist. And we all think we can do that without artistic skills ourselves. ;-)
Oh yeah, that’s true, and most critics (including so-called ‘professional’ or ‘expert’ critics) have nearly zero talent themselves (they barely rate as ‘human’ as it is)
The brains look nicely drawn and very consistent. If I tried that, each would look quite different. Mind you most of my drawings look like if they were improved, they might qualify for XKCD. That’s right. Stick figures are the limit of my artistic ability. That is why I teach physics and math and not art.
If Dabbler can do block transfer computations in her head that’s probably a bigger deal than the rest of the team combined, considering those can alter the very state of the universe.
Mind you, possibly you need an entire planet of people chanting them, and/or or a giant satellite dish.
Or a giant evil web/tapestry thing.
Yeah, those episodes where confusing.
Logopolitian block transfer calculus? Wow, that takes me back. I remember very little of that story, actually.
Doctor Who reference spotted – I’m surprised only one person commented on that so far. Maybe it’s because it’s fourth Doctor (and final fourth Doctor, at that)?
Dabbler is quite cunning. Even whilst drawing/writing, she can anticipate where she and others will be standing, during the course of her presentation. Taking into account hair and ear profiles, as well, for example. To ensure that the text/images are contoured around their silhouettes!
Umm, what was Prof Dabbles going to do with that syringe of heroin and that, umm, furry mamalian earth-creature?
Does this mean that if one of the copies is unconscious (and doesn’t automatically get ‘re-absorbed’), one of the others could control the body?
They all share the same mind. She does not consider her control distinct like that. If you are not using your right arm, would you use your left arm to control it, or would you just use your left arm instead? Same idea as far as Harem is concerned. If one body is tired, she will go to sleep and the shared mind will be made of 4 awake and one dreaming brains. The dreams of one body could be distracting to the other brains, so they probably all go to sleep at the same time.
Well, Goth just used her mind to make the fist of the other Teleport to punch herself in the face (it also shows that, with warning, she can isolate the touch sensations so that not all bodies feel it: going back to the Atomic Dental Floss incident, the reason why they all reacted was because she didn’t have time to prepare)
Oh, and if the right arm was not functiong for whatever reason, and was in danger of some sort, you bet would use the left to control it to move it out of harms way
Actually, I think that Sydney “helped” the demonstration by using the ice cube on one of the other bodies. Besides, an ice cube down the backside is a lot safer than a heroin-spiked weasel(is that what it is?). Goth’s reaction was because of the surprising sensation in the other body, which then smacked Sydney. Harem-Goth had no direct influence on what happened off-panel.
You have to think of Harem as physically separate but mentally one. This is sort of like Dabbler’s (or Spinnerette’s) arms, except those are physically connected to the same body, but separate; each can do different things. A surprising or overwhelming sensation in one arm may cause a reaction in the other arms as well, because all of them are managed by one mind. Same with Harem.
Spinerette may not be the ideal example. Fine for most limbs, but you forget bottom lefty has a “mind of it’s own” or at least is less shy about expressing its personality than she is. At the very least it is under the influence of Spinny’s subconsciousness part of the time.
But the intent of all your comments are spot on.
As regards unconsciousness, if one brain has received enough trauma that it shuts down, then her mind would not be able to control it at all, until it has recovered enough to respond to input. When it initially happens it is likely to be problematic to the rest of her, if only from the distraction. But when she has recovered from the shock, the fact that one of her bodies is non-responsive should not affect the others.
Of course, if one dies then that raises a whole new bunch of questions. On one hand, she may just be able to replace the lost one with a new body, get a bunch of fresh tattoos and be fine. Thereby being immortal unless all are killed simultaneously, or until old age or some disease common to all catch up with her. Or loosing one might permanently diminish her power in one way or another.
I never forget bottom-lefty!
good lord! did she just give that squirrel heroin?!?! RUN FOR IT!!!!!
Wanted to vote, ’cause I really do enjoy the comic… but when I clicked the TWC link, I was directed to a web page that shows the following message:
“The comic voting page you tried to visit was for a comic that was inactive or unknown. If you are the comic owner, please check your settings or contact support.”
Thanks! Yeah the malware issue from yesterday probably triggered something on their side. I’ll see about reactivating it.