Grrl Power #1007 – On the origin of MacGuffins
Okay. If I was reading some comic and it took 1,000 pages for them to get around to “where did you get your amazing MacGuffins,” that would strike me as an oversight both on the characters’ part, and the authors. This is definitely something that should have been tackled within an hour of Sydney revealing them. I mean, they should have had her tell them exactly where she got them, and within an hour there should have been surveyors and researchers and archeologists on a plane.
So that’s on me Arc-LIGHT.
In my defense, I kept thinking of other funny stuff and kept forgetting to get around to this.
I’d like to point out that the third “cough” doesn’t have the little splash marks around it, meaning she’s actually saying the word “cough,” which is funny to me and also definitely a sign of innocence.
As many of you pointed out under the previous page, Wearing the Cape 9 is actually out. I’m a dumbass and had the wrong tab open last week when I went to post. So… yay! Another WtC novel!
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: Getting Proofed!
Still getting proofed. God damned hyphens. Or is it ‘God-damned hyphens.’ Because the word ‘hyphens’ is adjectivically modified by ‘damned’ but the damned is modified by ‘god’ and ‘hyphens’ isn’t modified by ‘god.’ Or maybe it is? I honestly don’t know. And if I type ‘a hundred and twenty five’ instead of ‘a hundred and twenty-five’ then surely no one can crack my code. LOOK UPON MY CYPHER YE MIGHTY ENIGMA AND WEEP!
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Check out Spying with Lana. Their current vote incentive features a certain gold-plated glamazon. Also it’s a funny comic with tons of skin.
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Wait, I thought… you did tell us where she got them? She found them while diving, right?
It appears that was in fact… A lie
Nothing says yet that was a lie – sometimes you go diving while on vacation to a tropical island.
The language here is a bit confusing. It could be that she never mentioned her parents being there. At the time, she thought the government would whisk her away to a facility to be dissected or something. Probably never mentioned that her parents were with her when she went on vacation, and Sydney never got around to telling Archon that her parents may know about the location as well.
What’s confusing about it? Does someone actually have to SAY “Cuba” for it to be fucking obvious?
Figures Syd Sr. (and Syd Jr.) would be into adventure travel. And Americans going on the QT to Cuba is like the lightest, most entry-level form of adventure travel there is. The thrill of doing something forbidden without actually doing anything evil.
They were in the Florida Keys not Cuba. What the difference? Nothing, I was talking about the conversation on this page. The situation for Sydney to act like that is confusing since Archon already knows where Sydney found the orbs since she told them. Were talking about if she lied for some reason, forgot to mention her parents were there (and might get in trouble for not saying that which is what I am saying), or some other third thing I cant think off.
I thought it was obvious that she was lying about the location she was diving in, but I honestly had no guess for where the ACTUAL location was until you suggested Cuba, which is definitely the most convincing guess I’ve seen so far.
She may not be lying about the location, it is possible that the location is now classified, so her father blabbing that in an unsecure area might be a security breach, so she is trying to get him to be quiet.
…and sometimes you go diving in the back room storage of a small local museum…
“Look, it was a VERY high tide!”
Is it really a lie if you just didn’t tell the whole truth? Yes. It is. But she probably did get them from there, she just didn’t tell them how and why she was there.
I’ve never understood why people think that is so. It’s nearly impossible to tell the while truth and even if you did no one would listen to all of it, they’d die of boredom.
especially when you get to the part about the frogs.
The fundamental, defining aspect of a lie is intentional deception. It’s a so-called “lie of omission” if you intentionally leave out a piece of relevant information that you know would alter the listener’s assessment of what you’re saying.
The implication is that you deliberately left out some of the truth to deceive someone.
That’s the difference between simply being mistaken and lying.
Sydney’s not good at hiding stuff, and seeing that she’s lying is easy as pie. Key lie pie.
or truth. just not where she was diving, if it was allowed, or even if she planned to go diving before tripping and sydney gargle mumbling into a swan dive
He did say they were found while diving, but considering how many different places you can dive in the world that only narrows it down a little.
Three quarters of the surface
Currently 71%, but we will get to 75 once we finish getting rid of those pesky ice caps.
issue# 94. Florida Keys. Just not which key
Thanks!
I thought they were found in the Yucatan/Chicxulub area.
Or Martha’s Vineyard.
Actually, she was dumpster diving in Warehouse 13. The actual location was row 1159, section L, Level V, only a few racks over from the crate containing the Arc of the Covenant.
That’s next to the stuffed Bigfoot, right? Or was that the Sphinx’s nest?
Which key? The ill-gotten key to storage locker #3. Whoopsie!
A Good Guess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF6Cc16K8eg
I had forgotten where exactly Sydney went diving. I had assumed it was somewhere in the Bahamas. To be exact; the Bamimi road. Since her orbs are crystalline with no clear markings nor any symbology I suspected they were an ancient product of Atlantean weapons engineering. But I guess the Keys are close enough.
Nah, the real location of Atlantis was the Richat Structure. It’s the right size and shape, and was a lake when the Sahara was green. The Atlanteans had a canal to the ocean, so they sailed into the Med through the Pillars of Heracles (Gibraltar) and its end was more that it dried up when the monsoons moved south than sinking, after their technology went kablooie and destroyed the city.
I was more-n less talking about the continent itself which at full size would’ve spanned the majority of the Atlantic ocean, connecting parts of the Americas on the west to parts of Africa and Europe on the east. There would have been multiple cities that littered the landmass. The largest of the cities was apparently called the city of the Golden Gates according to either Edger Cayce or Rudolph Steiner, one of the two. The Bamimi road was mentioned by Cayce as being part of Atlantis and numerous spherical crystals of varying sizes were found by divers there over the past few decades (this is not to mention that large crystal pyramid located at the center of the Bermuda triangle *spoilers*). I looked up the Richat Structure just now and it does bare a strikingly impressive resemblance to the described city layout. However it is in the wrong location for an underwater ruin as there is no water presently at the site and is above the sea. The city itself is somewhere in the Atlantic. Also more is the fact that there are no ruins situated along the rings where normally the megalithic-structures would be located. Plato also described that Atlantis lay west beyond the pillars of Heracles, not south. But thanks for bringing up the Richat Structure. I’ll look more into it when I’ve got the time.
Actually, the Richat structure IS to the west of Greece, and if the exit to the sea is through a canal that went west from the city to the Atlantic, then the only way to sail from Greece to Atlantis WOULD be to go west beyond the pillars and then follow the coast to the canal. The Richat structure also fits all the clues in Plato, including mountains north of the city, and the presence of elephants (assuming it was, indeed during the time when the Sahara was last green.)
And I don’t think Plato ever described a continent, just the city.
Closer to the era of -but still long before- the ancient Greek civilization (10 to 12,000 years ago), what was left of Atlantis would mostly have been an island nation. At its height it was a massive continent as I mentioned before. It had suffered three major disasters during its existence. The first seems to be a natural disaster. The second disaster was self-inflicted. An accident of sorts with their own power source going out of control. It rendered the continent almost totally destroyed and leaving only two islands in its wake (Ruta and Daitya). The last of the three disasters is when the remaining landmass (the lone island called Poseidonis formally Ruta) slipped beneath the ocean in ‘one day and one night’ according to Plato. But the Richat structure is still above water and thus doesn’t match the description entirely. And while technically it is west of the pillars it is still far more south. Plato never indicated a southern journey nor location.
Remember that Plato was never actually there himself, and was simply relating stories that had been passed down. Who KNOWS what changes could have crept into the story over the years. For all we know, Atlantis was a Pre-Zanclean Flood civilization.
That’s true, Plato wasn’t there himself. However one of his students who told him was. To be precise; Egypt. While there his student had learnt about Atlantis from some of the Egyptian priests and the student relayed that information back to Plato. Plato did makes some changes to the tales so as not to “offend the Gods” so-to-speak. Like making Poseidon the Atlanteans’ patron deity despite the fact the Atlanteans never worshiped Greek gods as Atlantis predated the Greek beliefs by thousands of years. Several of Plato’s works that contained other bits about Atlantis were never published, probably because of the risk of more heresy to the gods. The Great library in Alexandria did house more information about Atlantis, however that was all destroyed by Ceaser when he ordered the nearby harbor to be set ablaze. The library caught fire as a result. The incompetence and folly of man has many times lead to a great many things being lost over the centuries. I hate the human ego…
They have actually found what is truly believed to be Atlantis: right where they left it, in the middle of the Med
Any mention of Atlantis being in the Atlantic is simply story-tellers moving it further and further west as explorers kept, well, exploring and finding nothing resembling the Mythical Atlantis
“Oh? You have been past that point and found nothing? Oh well, that just means Atlantis was further west then.”
Until they reached the point where the Med met the Atlantic and simply moved it even further away
The only true sunken continent is Zealandia, and it’s real, not some made up fairy story
It’s that one really BIG key, the one that’s southeast of Florida instead of southwest.
I am thinking that Sydney saying they were on vacation in Florida is usually easier than explaining why the vacation was actually several kilometres further south in and around Cuba instead. If I recall, that was generally a no-go zone at the time.
Totally believable there.
“Well done, now no one suspects anything.”
Domestic or international?
Well they might not have wanted to push Sydney on the subject, especially after all she’s been through since joining them.
Plus she has said she found them when Scuba Diving, so they probably already have a good idea where and when it happened. Social Media, Credit Cards, and banking stuff are a big tell.
So what age was Syddles at the time of discovery? Over 18 and the parents could be in deep doodoo for analysing the banking stuff. At least they would be in Oz. Social Media however, is a different story.
Gawain probably meant the government people checking on stuff, not the parents.
Her dad always looks like a hamster
I mean, to be totally fair you kinda did tell them when Max hauled her off in front of the ARC council-thingy. You said she was diving off at the Florida Keys.
^
Though that might have been a lie as well, considering the whole ‘hiding teleportation powers in case of Nega-Maxima’ thing.
Would Nega-Maxima be Minima?
Given her skill set and the way she has to balance powers on the fly, would she be MinMaxima?
(I’ll see myself out)
Minima sounds wrong. But as she likely would also gender bent, Minimax might be a fitting inversion :)
Goblins already has a Minmax.
Possibly. Though I believe, mathematically speaking, it’s still technically correct to state a maximum negative value(don’t quote me on that, though), so Nega-Max could still work.
Either way, when they fuse they become Absolute Maxima. :P
If they could build a jail to hold her, it would be a Nega-Max supermax.
But … for some reason the evil doppleganger always is more powerful than the heroic version, except for that one inexplicable weak spot…
We could go with a boring predictable ‘Ultima’, but really, my suggestion for evil inverted Max would be ‘Mama’
“diving off at the Florida Keys”
Just how FAR off the Florida keys? Two or three thousand miles? :-)
To be fair, if we look back on issue#94 (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-94-the-step-mother-of-all-origins/) Sidney Jr. does state she found them while diving around the Florida keys. She just wasn’t very specific as to which one.
Issue #129-2 https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-129-and-these-are-my-super-happy-fun-balls/
I didn’t believe in the keys. Maxima either I think.
“uh, Florida.” I’d say that was a bit more evasive than just not being specific.
The Keys aren’t too far from a place where US citizens weren’t supposed to go on vacation at the time.
Beans, spilled.
Dick, stepped on.
Bullets, in foot.
Foot, in mouth.
That look you get when Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone all give you the Stinkeye and draw in a breath.
If memory serves, Sydney said she found them while diving near the (Florida) Keys during her “interview.” We also know that it wasn’t near a coastline because the first orb she used was flight and did so just after finding them.
The question: how did she end up diving alone far enough from another person that no one could notice?
That IS a good question! Never thought about that, but one thing they teach you in diving class is: “Never dive alone.” We know Sydney’s not a stickler for rules, but did she really go diving far from the coast without any company? I remember Dave having this picture of Sydney flying above the sea, holding the Flight Orb while the other Orbs are moving towards her. And didn’t she say she tried out the Flight Orb when she found them? That would have been highly noticable if she was anywhere near a beach, and at least her diving partner at the time would have noticed something!
She specifically told them that she found them while diving off the florida keys, and attempted to make a joke about it. So either the writer forgot that, OR she lied about it.
Or Sydney forget that she already told them, this is Sydney.
But why would she be squirrely now and not then? Nope, she is hiding summat, and the Dad has just realised what it is.
OR she forgot about it.
OR she knew somehow that her father was going to be more specific than she had been.
Or… she’s embarrassed about having a vacation with her parents?
OR Her mother didn’t know about the vacation because they wanted to get up to their usual hijinks and she doesn’t like it when they get injured/arrested/nearly-killed-by-walrus-because-he-looked-cute.
Cuba is off the Florida Keys and it has a travel embargo on it.
Okay, yeah. That’s probably it. While it’s not hard to get their a legal way, she probably got to the Keys through Cuba while she happened to be on vacation there. That seems like a very Sydney thing to do. Both Sr. and Jr.
Yeah, that was my thought. Easy enough to go there, but politically sensitive, and maybe they didn’t observe all the legalities.
There is precisely 0.0000% chance they didn’t ask for the exact location, so she’s in big trouble if she lied about it.
Actually, the first panel of #95 has Zephan asking exactly where Sydney found the orbs, but everyone was conveniently distracted by a Harem interrupt.
Cuba legally owns all treasure found in it’s waters. This could be a serious headache for Arianna.
I understand why max and arianas eyes narrowed, but wouldnt her mom should know exactly where they went on vacation?
Two options:
1. mom wasn’t present at that vacation
2. «you didn’t tell them?»
She knows and she has deduced that Sidney lied to ARChon about it.
Laura’s eyes just narrow out of force of habit. She DID raise Sydney, after all.
I thought first she tried to signal her father that the exact location shouldn’t be spoken about in public, but those last panels now make me wonder if it is actually because she lied about where/how she got the orbs, or at least fudged the details somewhat.
I mean she was questioned about that and she did tell them. So unless she lied about that the only issue is her father should not be saying anything essentially in public.
Exactly right.
Certain people in Archon are cleared to know the location. Dad should not be blabbing the location in an open area with lots of people who are not cleared to know that secret.
Or she lied to Archon. Even if she lied Archon probably looked over the families electronic footprints and figured out the real location right away. They would still not want dad to spill the beans in front of this many people not cleared to know.
“Or maybe it is? I honestly don’t know.”
It’s Ok, DaveB. NOBODY knows. The English language gave up its innocent purity the moment the Parliamentarians took away the Divine Right of Kings.
There are many tongues on this planet that don’t have a language authority. Most of those don’t need one due to cultural mores. However, English has no cultural mores, and as such has swept the globe in a linguistic jihad the likes of which will be endlessly repeated. We have already conquered France: “le biftek” has been approved by l’Académie Française as authentic French.
So rest easy, Dave. Put your hyphens where you will, and remember: half the English-speaking population will hate you, the rest won’t (care).
Consider this counterpoint: l’Académie Française are a nepotic remnant of a kingdom asserting its power through linguistic authority, it houses no linguist, and it’s a club for rich people giving each other presents (such as castles) on the taxpayer’s dime. Oh, and also, their stated goal (which they haven’t ever tried to deny since) is to distinguish the “man of letters” from “ignoramuses and simple women”. They can say bifte(c)k as a French bastardisation of beef steak if they want – beef is from Old French anyway (normanfrenchinvadersaywhaaaat) but they will never take our FREEDOM!
¿Que?
Personally, I think the French are still pissed that the global Linguae Francais isn’t French anymore.
Probably true. But.
When Cap’n Cook was sent to the South Pacific for the Transit of Venus, and for some years fololowing, the French were… sniffing.. around the Indian Ocean. A couple of Captains were told off to go have a look around The Great Southern Land, but one of them decided that Mauritius was a much better place to be and holed up for about six months there before returning. The other did manage to miss the Abre Os Olhos islands, took one look at the western coastline (80% cliffs, the rest shallow reefs and sandbars) and fled for home.
No real spirit of adventure there.
If Sydney is smart, which really depends on how DaveB wants to do this, she will make up something to everyone about diverging sensitive information. They will probably pull her dad aside and ask more questions to see if the Florida Keys story is true or not, but will already understand he didn’t know that she got them there at first due to him clearly stating it should have realized after their trip. It also needs to be mentioned that Maxima and Arianna’s reactions could be that she didn’t disclose her father’s presence on the trip. Mother would be that she didn’t know any of this information.
Is Sydney smart? Yes.
Is she good at deceiving people? No.
Congratulations Sydney Sr.! You’re daughter has acquired two more mother figures to berate and lecture at the two of you for your wacky hijinks that you definitely should have told at least one of them of!
“I honestly don’t know.”
Considering the patchwork language that is English, it’s not surprising. But I’ve always learned that the modifiers are hyphenated, and the nouns after them are left as standalone words. So in this case, it would be “god-damned hyphens”.
Also I echo previous comments in that Sydney said the Florida keys before. In her interview with the higher-ups, she said Florida without hesitation, just wasn’t sure of keys. Second round during her team introduction, she was hesitant for both. Nervous while in the spotlight? Or trying to remember her first lie? Stick around until Thursday and (maybe) find out!
She said she found them in the Keys, I always assumed that during an off camera moment they asked her which one and that the inevitable ARC-Light search turned up nothing of interest.
Yeah, same here…
Stuff happens off camera. Trying to imply that something that should have obviously happened by now didn’t actually happen feels like a forced retcon because it breaks the established rules of how comics and tv shows work… You don’t have to show us everything for us to know it happened.
Even if it didn’t come up during the interview, this just sort of seemed like a thing that would come up during weeks of training and all that. We didn’t get told about every time Sydney went to the bathroom in the past few months, we didn’t get told about every single meeting she went to. We didn’t see her walk from the Archon building over to this stage. Just seems natural that we didn’t get told about how she gives the exact latitude and longitude of where she found the orbs and they say “cool”, or maybe let Arc Light pull up their file on her and found when she went on a vacation near the keys and they send some people to go look in the months that she was away in space.
The only way this should have been believable is if there had been a previous scene where Sydney explicitly refused to answer / lied / said she didn’t remember.
It was “Coming out, loud and proud day” for Super’s. They were formally acknowledge as a valuable national resource and such.
I was in the Military, trust me, it is not a stretch of the imagination that something critical like that was missed while a million other arguably more important things were going on.
Don’t you just luuuurve “Military Intelligence”!
Especially the part about pulling up travel records. ARC-Whatever has the authority to dig up plane tickets, credit card records, whatever, and know precisely where she was. Really asking her where specifically she found the orbs is more of a courtesy than a necessity.
Technically speaking, they could pull up the travel records and find out exactly where she went. It’s *possible* that by checking financial records, they can find out exactly when and where Tubey became available for her later life as a sidekick. (I can easily see a comic book co-owner taking advantage of a conveniently placed vacation to make a delivery of merchandise that was not able to move through more conventional reasons due to angsty customer. If that sale officially took place at the time of the transfer and went over a credit card, there’s a record of it. Of course, that record could just say “thing purchased” or “TRMG post” or something else indecipherable.)
On the other hand, if the real origin story was she hand delivered a signed poster to a fanboi from an Nth tech civilization here specifically to get an autographed poster who didn’t have the cash and wanted the poster *so* badly they traded their space ship for it. Then there’s no record of the point of sale because barter doesn’t work like that.
Have never understood that rubbish about the cops being able to find out exactly what was bought just by checking bank records
Unless they were able to locate the docket slash till receipt itself, all they would know is the total spent
They’d know the vendor too, who would almost certainly have transaction details going back a few years in the POS logs. It’s a few extra steps and maybe a warrant, but not that much harder.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone, another set of orbs, with cheap pieces of rope glued to them in pairs, sits in a run down second hand thrift shop in a dusty box labeled “Klackers”. Any hope of them ever being found? None. The shop is in Sandusky, Ohio where people keep strangely disappearing in the bar bathrooms next door. (a billion gamer points for those who understood that reference without looking it up.)
Leather Goddess of Phoebus?
Classic game :D
“Leather Goddesses of Phobos” actually
I had the string version of that toy as a kid (and the bruises on my arms to prove it)
Then they went to the wimpy small plastic balls with a ‘Y’ tether on a stick (after all the lawsuits)
Uh,oh! Sydney will be forced to tell the truth….!?
Guess she’ll no longer be a part of ARCSwat,instead Maxi assigns Sydney to the Archon Cooks and Bakers School!?!?
You think she’d actually let Syd around stoves with open flames?!? Are you MAD???
Am I the only person thinking “off the Florida Keys” = The Bermuda Triangle?
I really hope I’m not the only person thinking “off the Florida Keys” = “There’s a place called Kokomo”
… Well I WASN’T thinking that…
+1
Except Kokomo is a city in north central Indiana…… (and yes, I know you were referencing the Beach Boys song, but they weren’t exactly good with geography either)
Next thing you know, you’ll be telling people that Brazil’s in northwestern Indiana.
Last I checked, there were Centervilles and Richmonds in most states. I think one of them even had two Centervilles, just far enough apart to be very clearly two distinct minicipalities, but still way too close for any adult of sound mind to possibly live in one of them for a substantial amount of time and not know of the other. I feel there’s a story there, but I’ve never been curious enough to drive out and chase it down.
To be clear, while there is a Kokomo in north central Indiana, it’s very clearly not the one the Beach Boys were singing about.
Bermuda Triangle weirdness would explain how the previous user of the orbs became previous.
Materializing from your Ætherium Causeway inside a coral reef instead of safely well above the planet you’re going to visit tends to have rather unpleasant on your trip history… and continued existense.
The orbs could just as easily explain the weirdness of the Triangle – the previous owner screwed up the local spacetime curves by warping themselves to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Either way, this is my current favorite candidate for the true origin location, with an ancient souvenir shop on the China coast as a close second since Sydney lampshaded that herself to start with.
If it ends up being the secret power source for EPCOT’s original Imagination pavilion that Sydney happened upon during a behind-studio tour I will be so disappointed. No wonder they had to shut it down and it lost all its magic.
Lets be real here.
As soon as they found out about her ARC-LIGHT *should* have done a full background check AND looked into everywhere she went for the past several years. They’d be able to narrow down the area to a pretty short list with or without her help.
Soooo… This is ARC-LIGHT dropping the ball super hard.
There were a whole lot of irregularities in Sydney’s hiring, though. Sydney was scouted, recruited, and hired over the course of an afternoon. They didn’t have time for a proper background check, just what their intel teams (probably Leon) could pull off the net. I don’t think they even had time to dispatch Arc-LIGHT — they just had one of them sit in on the interview and another one scan the orbs. Those sorts of irregularities are what dropped balls are made of — cut a lot of corners to get something in under the wire, and you can forget to tape a few of them back on after the fact. All because they wanted the person from the bank robbery videos on the team in time for a press conference.
I think that makes it ARIANA’s fault. (And Sydney’s, of course.)
Dropped balls? Really?
… okay, in fairness, that was an early-morning post, someone else set up that phrasology for me, and they really did drop researching the orb origins from their agenda.
This is a military Intelligence unit, they just called the NSA and had them dump Syd’s travel of wherever cell [hone visited… and her dad’s … and her moms… and her comic shop co-owner.
To be in Intel you have to tell them EVERY time you left the USA, so they already have Syd’s approximate location of the Artifact site.
It’s “God-damned hyphens” or just “Goddamned hyphens. Without the hyphen, damned becomes a verb, and what you have there is a sentence saying that God has sentenced hyphens to damnation, rather than an interjection grumbling about hyphens that God has damned.
… not that it really matters. It’s English. If you come across clearly enough that people understand you without too much effort, you get a passing grade.
…. assume that my grammar was good enough to have included that missing closing quote while I was pretending my grammar was good enough to explain grammar.
“B”. For the effort. Or should that B an “E”?
I mean, it’s not like they can be too angry with her. After all, they never asked.
Yes, yes they did ask, during her interrogation interview
And they apparently didn’t follow up on it for more details.
My casual understanding of hyphens is that you use them to denote which adjectives are combined into a single compound adjective to disambiguate by ruling out the interpretation that the hyphens are simultaneously “damned hyphens” and “god hyphens”. (i.e. “god-damned hyphens” because “god-damned” is a single adjective which modifies “hyphens”)
You don’t use them in “single compound adjective” because it’s a “single (compound adjective)” (a single adjective which is also compound) rather than a “(single compound) adjective” (an adjective with/made from a single compound) and you don’t use them with adverbs because “quickly running stream” is already unambiguous by virtue of a “quickly stream” making no sense.
Now I begin to understand why Weird Al wrote ‘Word Crimes’.
There’s a great line in one of the Star Trek novels about English: “It doesn’t so much borrow words from other languages as it does follow them into dark alleys, mug them, and go through their pockets.”
And for a long time it not only followed them into dark alleys. It also broke into their houses …
And english is such a mess.
That is why the lights are on but the stars are out.
Why you move goods by ship, but ship goods by car.
And so many more examples of … well … English …
Cargo goes by ship, shipments go by car
Parkway. Driveway.
you drive over an underpass, but under an overpass, and both can be the exact same structure!
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.” — James D. Nicoll
Ah, but which “English”?
We won’t count the Celtic spoken around the Roman invasion, since the Angles, Saxons and Danes pretty well erased almost al traces of it. So we’re left with Beowuf’s “Old English”…
Then William the Bastard superimposed Old French over the Old English…
And then England went a-Viking and found all sorts of new toys\\\\tongues…
I’m blaming Willie.
English isn’t really a language.
It’s a very advanced pigin.
“Tok Pisin” please.
Terry Pratchett!
I’m not a fan of the illustration style being used for Sydney in profile in these past couple of comics. In the abstract it could work, and it works in the little “below the comic” illustrations, but it just looks odd when it’s full-size and only her.
The style is “chibi” and derives from manga artwork. And yes, AFAIK it was intended to be quick place-holders for non-essential characters in specific frames. But I could be wrong on that factoid.
I mean a) didn’t she find them at the bottom of the ocean and b) would it have been more notice if she was attending comic con with her dad. Would have been easier to notice then.
I FUCKIN KNEW IT! I KNEW she didn’t get them diving!
Actually, I’m starting to think it was either Bermuda (which could technically be considered “off the coast of Florida” (A long WAY off, but there’s nothing in between but the Bermuda Triangle) or Cuba’s north coast (Same reasoning, but more of an issue, since Cuba is diplomatically problematic and I think has laws about anything found in the ocean there belongs to Cuba, right?)
Thought about the possibility of cave diving, but the flashback showed too much light for that, I think…?
Of course her mother’s reaction could be “what vacation” or “and you haven’t told me about this conclusion because.. ” or any of several others.
Max, on the other hand, seems to think it’s going to be a serious complication. So, yeah, territorial waters seems like a reasonable question to ask.
That face when your dad volunteers you for Guantanamo.
The look on Sr.’s face in the last panel is what I love the most. It’s Halo’s “I just figured something out that I should not have” smirk and just fits so well.
The fact that Archon hasnt already scouted the crap out of where she got the orbs is kind of tragic.I hope theyre more competent at the rest of their job.
Also Sydney?Dont bother hiding that info,They already know enough to work it out and at a push less moral people can kidnap torture and once done mindwipe your parents to get a hint on where to look =).
1 mom doesn’t seem to know they went on vacation at all.
2 “to Vega Prime…” says Sr. Trying to cover it up.
3 They got lost…3 hour tour…went to a con…went to Florida to bid on a cartel king’s comic book collection and took time off to party in the keys… which would tie Scorpia back in to things.
Scorpia “the old boss invested how much into comics? Where are they now?”
Do we get an archway Spring Break poster out of this? All on beach… Achilles gets tossed in right direction out to sea and makes do beach forensics magic. The rest do cheesecake and fan service. Dabbler says “tantric buffet ” and drools… Max stands there… “I have a suspicion that we were fooled again…” While holding a massive boat drink. (You know the ones with 7 types of rum in them.)
Arcon. / mages autocorrupt
Where did she really get those wonderful toys?
My guess is that she was outside the US when she found the orbs, making this a potential international incident. She lied because of the fear that the orbs might politically be forced to be returned and by extension she would be extradited.