Grrl Power #1016 – Have a nice trip, see you next regime fall
Is it rude to tell a succubus that teal might not be her color?
I thought it’d be funny to see Dabbler casually cosplaying as the 11th Countess of Abbingdon, but honestly the teal top doesn’t quite play well with her stripes.
I think a lot of epic, sprawling TV shows these days have the problem of too many main characters. That is to say, something like Game of Thrones around season 4 and on had so many stories happening at the same time that your favorite character might get five minutes of screen time per episode, and maybe an hour over the course of an entire season?
Having a large cast is handy for me because I can mix and match for whatever suits the story I want to tell, but it leaves a lot of characters in the wings. If I could draw 5 pages a week, then maybe the ex-vigilanties here would have more to do, but until then, they get to play the reserves.
I may have messed up the math (it’s all but a certainty) but it’s ~9,250 miles from Texas to Galytn, (which is on the southern tip of Malawi). Mach 6 (~4603 MPH) would get them there in just about two hours. Considering I said that Sydney’s new top speed is Mach 16, that means she could get anywhere on Earth in about 45 minutes at most. Yeah, the speed of sound is different at different atmospheric pressure, and you have to account for ascending and descending, because she’s not going to skim the surface of the ocean and cause a near tsunami wake behind her, but roughly, 45 minutes. That is pretty fast. The next time someone shoots a sidewinder at her, they’re going to be in for a surprise.
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I am sure there are a number of ways Hiro could have phrased that, but I do like that he went with “Are you Stooges ‘may you live in interesting times”-ing us?!” That just tickles me.
Mr. Amorphous: Oh…Wise guy!
Achilles: Woob! Woob! Woob!
Well, at least Hiro has a sense of self preservation
Reference to discworld: “interesting times” ; “may you have interesting times” is considered to be greatest insult/prediction to worst event one can throw in the Counterweight Continent
Reference to Discworld? Don’t you know that there is nothing new under the sun?
It’s a Chinese curse. Sorta.
In any event, it isn’t a Discworld/Pratchett creation. Not even close.
Isn’t “You have the conn” a naval term? I’ve only ever heard it in the case of a ranking officer leaving the bridge of a ship and turning over command to the next rank officer on deck.
yup, it refers to being in control of the movement of a ship.
Could just be Maxima leaning into her own nerdiness for a bit there. It’s the Star Trek thing to say.
just putting this out there, btw:
Star Trek = Stark Tech
Oooh, that just made me think of something! If Sydney is right about the Orbs being analogous to spacecraft systems, there is a major ship system that hasn’t been mentioned: Operations/Combat Systems. That’s things like navigation, computer systems, etc. I think the brown Orb is a class n AI, but it’s dormant because it senses that Sydney is filling its role.
It’s been mentioned a few times. The most glaring being “why doesn’t this have this” answer: “They were probably smart enough to do space calculus in their head”. Paraphrasing of course.
It would be interesting if Brown was a HUD for various functions based on level/buttons. Like weapons targeting if you grip it like this but navigation if you grip it like that.
Pew Pew Orb is the combat systems, Flight/Wormhole Orb is the Navigation System. Currently the most likely missing system for the ship theory would be the last Orb being Storage or Med Bay. But you and Petros may be on to something about the AI/HUD thing, it is possible that the last Orb is a kind of Nexus connecting all the Orb Controls, but it is staying deactivated until User has gained enough experience in using the Orbs individually.
The airb is probably the Med Bay, since it does breathable atmosphere. The brown one being the HUD that is showing her interface for the other orbs (and possibly the skill tree?) is an interesting theory, I like it.
Check out Page 641, and look very closely at the orbs.
Air Orb might be med bay, but so far the main theory is that it is Life Support Systems
Right, I think that Life Support and Med Bay are one and the same – the functionality for detecting, maintaining, diagnosing, or repairing a user’s body have a ton of overlap, so the same orb should handle them all.
As for p641, not sure what I’m supposed to be deducing from it here @thebombzen. The airb is the only un-held orb with any diagnostic lines, but we know for certain now that its standalone node (the only such node enabled at the time) is for passive functionality, so it wasn’t completely inactive.
Given the limitation of needing to hold an orb in a hand to activate it, one might be forgiven for assuming the original wielder had at least 6 hands and some of them might have been artificial. It’s curious that they haven’t tried giving Sydney cybernetic or just attached bonus arms and see if the orbs will count them as valid interfaces.
Seeing as the original wielders are not unlikely to sometimes field soldiers that have lost some hands and opted for artificial replacements, it seems like the ability to recognize a prosthetic arm as valid would be an important function even for a species with many many hands.
The original wielders can probably restore lost limbs. Even if they did make artificial limbs that weren’t identical to their natural ones, they’d probably be significantly more advanced. If they don’t work through clothing, then they’re not going to work with a simple cybernetic arm.
“I’ve only ever heard it in the case of a ranking officer leaving the bridge of a ship and turning over command to the next rank officer on deck.”
Even on Star Trek! :)
Doesn’t have to be the ranking officer. A captain or even an admiral just wandering onto the bridge isn’t in charge until the lieutenant who has ‘the conn’ actually says “You have the conn, sir” and he replies “I have the conn”.
You really don’t want confusion over who is in charge during emergencies, hence the formal handover.
The dynamic Achilles and Amorphous have together is hilarious. I hope they do get some more panel time.
Well, they are old friends from their “vigilante-ing” days.
I’ve always felt DaveB was missing out on not studying the internal dynamics and politics of the team more. I mean, apart from some wacky sex pranks, they’ve pretty much gotten along like family since day 1 (the day of the “bank robbery”, of course). I’ve often felt there should be an almost Star Trek: Voyager-like rivalry/political division between the military members and the ex-vigilante members. There has been sadly little of that, from what I’ve seen.
There was sadly little of that in Voyager too…
There was at the start, but then they realised: it was just them, alone, and if they didn’t pull their own heads of their own arses and start to work together, there wouldn’t be a way to get home
I would not mind 6 pages of base antics and then Sydney and Max just show back up and the news is on in the background the whole time.
ALSO, if you can enter sub orbital atmosphere don’t you then use the rotation of the earth to aid your speed? At least that’s what Shadowrun has taught me. Like international planes are constantly flying over the north pole because the shortest distance between two points on a globe that spins is a squiggle.
It’s nothing to do with the earth’s rotation, it’s because the earth is (more-or-less) a sphere. The shortest route between two points on the surface of a sphere are to follow the Great Circle that connects them. The great circle is one which connects source and destination, and divides the sphere in two. It looks like a squiggle on a map because you’re projecting a 3d line on a 2d surface. More details here: https://gisgeography.com/great-circle-geodesic-line-shortest-flight-path/
The spin of the Earth does have some effect if you’re trying to get to orbit or beyond. In that case, it’s your speed relative to Earth’s centre of mass that matters, so adding or subtracting the surface rotation speed (for a West-to-East or East-to-West flight path respectively) makes a significant change.
Rotation speed per se doesn’t make a significant difference for flights point-to-point over the surface. Most types of flight work relative to the local air mass, which (on average) rotates along with the surface beneath it. Fully ballistic suborbital shots may be independent of the atmosphere and therefore in theory able to use rotation speed to increase their range, but any [advantage/disadvantage] from the launch site [advancing towards / receding from] the landing site is offset by the landing site [receding/advancing] at the same speed.
What does make a difference is air currents. Flight speed works relative to the surrounding air, not to the distant ground. Routing your flight through a current that’s going the [right/wrong] way can significantly [reduce /increase]the ‘air distance’ that it must cover, as the current provides a certain groundspeed just for being there. Which means that while the Great Circle routes are the shortest in terms of ground distance between two points, they are not always the most efficient.
I was dozing on a flight from DC to Kuwait City one night, and I heard some “odd” sounds coming from the plane, not much, but enough to make me notice. So I woke up enough to check the map on the screen for my seat. We were moving at a ground speed of 701 mph. Tail wind was about 75 mph. Obviously, the pilot had slipped us into a jet stream near Greenland going our way and we were moving on. Got into Kuwait City quite a bit early.
I suppose the turbulence of getting into that rapidly moving air woke me up.
Ohh. Thanks! I knew about the Great Circle, but it’s good to have a more comprehensive source.
The shortest distance between two points is only a straight line if the underlying plane you are drawing on is flat. However, the world is not flat, it is in fact a globe. As a result, the shortest distance between two points is the curved line which would match the curvature of the underlying plane you are drawing on.
This is also, by the way, the correct usage of the term Non-Euclidean Geometry, as Euclid’s fifth postulate, which stipulates that any two lines perpendicular to the same line must be parallel and will never cross, which is invalidated on curved planes. For example, all lines of latitude are perpendicular to the equator, yet they all connect at the north and south poles.
As a result, Non-Euclidean Geometry is quite useful when planning shipping lanes/routes and in orbital calculations. Unfortunately, Lovecraft’s misuse of the term (which he used to refer to something that was either fourth(or higher)-dimensional or something like an Escher painting) has created a lot of confusion about what Non-Euclidean Geometry actually is.
Technically the shortest distance is still a straight line. People just get grumpy when you blast a tunnel straight through the planet in order to reach your destination.
Well, the shortest, yes. For all practical purposes – and as long as you’re subject to gravitation -, you likely want some brachistocrhrone mixed in, however.
The difference between non-Euclidean and N-dimensional.
Looking forward to the Siege Of ARC-HQ, in which the B-listers mount a hilariously effective and overwhelming defense then take the fight to the enemy, kick their asses so hard it’s not even remotely a fair fight, then get everything patched back up before Max and Friends return.
Wasn’t there a Justice League episode like that,while Superman, Wonderwoman, Batman, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and the other A list and S list heroes were off somewhere they had to seen the B or C squad to save the day.
Well there definitely was an episode where the main heroes in Justice League Unlimited were dealing with a big main threat mostly offscreen, and the smalltime heroes including Booster Gold (the focus of the episode) dealt with an equally as large, if not arguably larger, threat, that the entire world would never know about (per the norm of Booster Gold).
One of my favorite episodes. Booster even got the girl at the end too.
There were a couple of episodes like that. One had a whole group of powerless League members facing off against The General.
Really, Justice League Unlimited devoted a fair bit of screentime to its minor heroes.
It’s a common, and dare I say good, trope I like seeing in team based shows and comics. Show the other characters that get less screen time put in stride and showing off their stuff.
If ya’ll like these sort of plots, watch the movie Mystery Men. It is about a group of barely D-Class heroes that need to step up.
“I shovel well.” >D
And there were plenty of candidates that didn’t even make the D team.
honestly a lot of these wouldn’t even qualify as F class, possibly not even Zero class, like…no class or pretender class (I have no powers, or special gadgets, but I do have a weird costume and way more confidence than sense).
too many characters not enough time or story justifications to play with them all. Even Justice League and Avengers have this problem (and why the MCU makes it a point to dedicate solo movies which now seem to be more to split them into smaller groups than solo outings anymore),
heck the Justice League Unlimited cartoon had SO MANY characters that even with some episodes dedicated to some most ended up in the background or small parts to the point when they did that every hero down the steps finale there were a few I was like “wait…were they actually in the show” realizing I only ever saw them in group shots and quick cameos.
and the famous Dragon Ball examples of characters once important now just occupying the peanut gallery half the time they show up anymore. When was the last time Chiatzu even talked on the show?
funny enough even if you had a non-visual medium this could still happen, I have my own anecdote where after doubling the size of an adventuring party (escort party in foreign land accompanying main party) I forgot to mention a character for three chapters who had been around for the last like six story arcs. In writing if you don’t mention them, they might as well not exist. I had to have this pointed out to me. worked it into the story though.
but yeah you can make all these characters, locations, monsters, enemies, and be like “this will be so cool” and then never work them into a story. Or they end up as a cameo like appearance.
Honestly, I’d like to see some application of computers and CGI to storytelling, so that that wouldn’t happen; You could run through the same movie following any character you wanted.
I’ve thought about that sorta thing too. And with the right context I’d find it interesting, as would an OK number of folks. VR I think has some minor examples of this actually and would be the best medium for it.
The problem always comes down to how folks view entertainment. Usually they want very little effort put into it. This includes from conception, production, to consumption.
Reading is still so prevalent, even in dead tree format, as its pretty easy actually to get your works published and seen by the reading crowd. Even without print on demand, there are tones of publishers relative to Movie studios and TV studios that do any sort of somewhat complex stories.
Folks just simply aren’t normally going to put the effort into such a thing typically. You could fix that with the right set of premade assets and tools along with proper marketing of them, but its still a difficult thing right now.
I do still have hope for this class of interactive media, but every version of interactive always seems to dwindle or is left super specialized like theme parks.
The problem with a choose your own adventure is it still has to be made, full episodes, actors or voice acting, full production. Honestly what the MCU is doing with the TV shows is basically this already, you don’t have to watch them all (although they will be referenced later by related movies) that focus on specific characters and sets of characters.
DVDs had a feature for multiple angles within the same scene, which probably could’ve been abused to run parallel character viewpoints for most of the movie. It never got much use afaik, but I can see a good time-travel game storyline using a mechanic like this to reveal bits and pieces in a CYOA format with multiple endings.
multiple angles of the same scene is one thing, but if you selected, let’s follow Hawkeye for a movie what if and they would need other scenes to fill in the moments other characters weren’t in, that is still extra filming, acting, costs, this is why you get spin-off series to cover this stuff if people give a large enough demand.
Well said
It’s basically the difference between spending untold monies writing and filming scenes for many minor characters that not enough people care a monkey’s for, and developing a series for a much-loved minor character that a lot of people now want to know more about (it’s pretty much what happened with Son of Coul: he had a very minor role in the Avengers movie, so minor they killed him off just to motivate one of the ‘main’ characters, but fans ended up loving him, so they gave him his very own series and an explanation for how he isn’t dead anymore, and it ran for… how many seasons?)
As a wise man once said “boring is good, boring is safe.”
yeah, the “interesting times” line is one of best examples of how cultural differences can take something that seems simple but seems to have different meanings in each culture.
i know in america, and maybe other european cultures, the line “May you always live in interesting times.” is used as a blessing.
in asia it is considered a curse due to belief life is better when it is boring and unchanging. “Interesting times” is usually when the tornadoes or hurricanes hit, or you have an earthquake, or volcano blows up, or the invasion comes along.
I have never heard of the phrase being considered a blessing, only a curse.
I can honestly say, in security, law enforcement, and fire fighting, boring is Good.
Exciting means something irritating, bad or dangerous is happening.
never heard it used as a blessing, rarely as a curse either; but never in a good context.
So, Achilles is DEFINITELY based off Kevin Bacon circa Tremors, right?
His hair is Jack Burton/Kurt Russell from Big Trouble in Little China at any rate.
Well, it use to be :P
Bit this page shows that it has grown out a bit: less Mullet (Business at the front, Party out the back) and more simply long (back and front)
And his face has changed t most: less OG Starbuck and more… no idea who the new face is modelled after
I love that movie.
Shame they never did do that sequel they hinted at…
Its all good. If the Matrix taught us anything, it’s that some movies don’t need a sequel.
some things are better in small doeses, or at least knowing when to stop doses.
you may love a character or concept, but if you force it, then it may just rip at the seams and the creators don’t always have any good ideas what to do with it…and this time taken to make it good can also bite them in the ass as the studio who only sees money may hand it off to someone who will do it quickly for the bucks…oh hey who dropped these Star Wars movies over here.
Every day I consider it good that Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis said they will NEVER allow Hollywood to do a a remake or a Part IV to Back to the Future.
Although I did like the Telltale Games Back to the Future game, which was… sort of like a IV.
What about the BttF tv series?
When it comes to sequels, it really depends on when it gets made, and who is involved in it, and if they actually set up for one, like BTiLC or the first Mortal Komquat movie (regrettably, only one actually followed through :( )
Mortal Komquat sounds like a Veggie Tales fighting game.
Im not aware of a BttF tv show unless you mean the Saturday Morning cartoon?
I can see two ways to really do a Back tot he Future reboot, one that would work and be kind of funny; the other that would be horrible and likely done very badly…and all probability says the later would be the one that gets made.
the bad is (we set the present to now, and future to a new future year, and put in a lot of modern pop culture references and some dystopian message for the future ect…
the good, which would still be tricky would be to make the movie as it was, same settings, same times, ect…but change the future to look like the actual real world year and imagine how someone from the 1980s would react to real 2010s….this would be tricky, and kind of funny, but ultimately pointless to be made…one could do a short skit of just that scene and have the same exact affect.
in other words, there really is no good reason to remake those movies, a funny scene remake sure as a skit but not the whole film.
and some movies show us that only the sequel is needed: (Leonard:Part 6)
He’s definitely got the “wind-blown 80’s action hero hair” thing going on. Perhaps even literally, as DaveB has stated in the past that he literally could not change his hair style since he became invulnerable – remember, he has the “really annoying” quirk on his invulnerability.
To be fair, when we discuss moving at the speed of sound what we almost always refer to is “speed of sound at sea level under normal atmospheric and temperature conditions” which is approximately 343 m/s. So when you calculate travel times using mach speed, you don’t have to account for atmospheric influences on the speed of sound because mach speeds don’t include that in their calculations. That would be an extremely difficult equation at the best of times since pressure, temperature, and composition can all influence the actual speed of sound.
Well, that does apply for quick and dirty.
OTOH…
“The speed of sound calculated from this formula can be used with the equation on the first page to obtain Mach number. This equation uses the standard sea level temperature of 59 E F and a lapse rate of -3.57 E/1000 ft altitude. Temperature stabilizes at -69.7 E F at 36,000 ft so the speed of sound stabilizes there at 573 knots.”
From http://www.tscm.com/mach-as.pdf
and FYI: http://www.tscm.com/
Er…
Corrected to non-WordPress English: (it really is WordPress chucking a hissyfit over Symbols That Are Not Latin Characters):
“The speed of sound calculated from this formula can be used with the equation on the first page to obtain Mach
number. This equation uses the standard sea level temperature of 59E F and a lapse rate of -3.57°/1000 ft altitude. Temperature stabilizes at -69.7° F at 36,000 ft so the speed of sound stabilizes there at 573 knots.”
I copy-pasted from both the DuckDuckGo summary AND the TSCM pdf file. :[
So, i guess heatwaves new superpower is making her choker disappear when shouted at (panel six)?
Only if she learnt it from Sydney (who lost hers in the last panel of the last page)
I’m curious what they can even do. Country didn’t sign their accords. The other country only signed the accords when they came to realize their supers were not only, not all that, but got their ass kicked.
Attacking them because they don’t abide by something they have no reason to abide by, would seem to be an act of war, and an act of war using supers.
Yeah, fairly sure using demons is against everyaccord, specially seeing how they are being lead by someone who already admitted to planning on invading the entire planet (and already tried but was found wanting… his mommy)
As Pander mentioned earlier, space aliens aren’t listed or addressed in any international accord, and I suspect the same goes for demons, time travel, and wormholes. There may be some “or similar” language that arguably could be used to justify a formal opposition, but given that this is the first time demons or aliens have been involved in an international conflict I doubt that’s an ironclad stance.
The national organizations just barely got limitations on supers into place (probably in conjunction with Archon going public), and they’d likely been working on that for years, whereas aliens and demons just showed up in the last month or so.
Fuck the Super Accord: demons attacking the planet with the intent of subjugating the survivors is basically an unwritten accord
Almost every part of your post is incorrect, G.
“demons attacking the planet”
Demons are not attacking the planet.
“with the intent of subjugating the survivors”
They do not have the intent of subjugating the survivors.
“is basically an unwritten accord”
An Accord is a treaty or agreement. There is nothing, written or unwritten, that shows an agreement to do that between Deus and the demons. There is no subjugation. There is no attacking of the planet. There is the use of the Tom’s army as a supplemental mercenary force in order to minimize actual casualties on both sides and let Galytn carve a path to the ocean before the UN rewrites the international laws as it relates to supers being used on the battlefield, so that they’d THEN be able to launch economic sanctions.
Fuck you and your pandering to that douche-pistol!
Wasn’t talking about him, was talking about how Tommy stated he was intending on attacking and taking over leadership
Yes, he became nice a friendly after having his arse beat then pounded, but that didn’t stop shit
You don’t need a fucking written anything to oppose ultra-planetary invasion
Was there an accord in ‘Independence Day’? Was there one in ‘Pacific Rim’? What about ‘Battleship’? Or ‘Bayformers’?
Let me just say it again: there is no formal accord needed to fight back against an invasion from peoples not of the Earth, just like there is no formal accord not to invade your neighbour (unless they are a douche who thinks they can do whatever the fuck they want and counting on anyone big enough to slap them stupider than they started not giving a crap about the neighbour)
“Fuck you and your pandering to that douche-pistol!”
G, you’re getting a little too emotional about this, calm down. Seriously, it’s just a webcomic forum argument.
“was talking about how Tommy stated he was intending on attacking and taking over leadership”
You continually ignore that all of that talk ceased after the bodyslam, and he is now on Earth only to work for Deus on whatever contract he signed with him. Deus probably showed THEM a powerpoint presentation in fact.
“Yes, he became nice a friendly after having his arse beat then pounded, but that didn’t stop shit”
It clearly did stop everything since he was a perfect gentleman after that.
“You don’t need a fucking written anything to oppose ultra-planetary invasion”
There is no ultra-planetary invasion. The United States does not run the planet. It does not run Mozambique. And Galytn is a nation of Earth, who the Demons are working for.
“Was there an accord in ‘Independence Day’?”
1) In Independence Day, there was an actual act of war.
2) In Independence Day, the aliens did not change their mind after one of their ships were knocked down.
3) In Independence Day, they outright said ‘there can be no peace, you must all die.’ And there were no takebacks on that.
4) In Independece Day, they actively ATTACKED ALL PARTS OF THE EARTH, destroying cities and killing millions of people.
None of that’s happened here. Here, Tom said a single sentence of tough talk, got bodyslammed, was all ‘my bad, I’ll behave’ after getting to have sex with Dabbler 5 times, and then left peacefully. No one was killed. And no one was attacked.
That’ s something you seem to heavily gloss over btw. Tom never attacked anyone when he first came to Earth. Maxima was the one who attacked. Tom did nothing.
“Was there one in ‘Pacific Rim’?”
In Pacific Rim, the kaiju were destroying cities and killing millions as well
” What about ‘Battleship’?”
Again, they started attacking first. There was no talking. There was no leaving peacefully. There were no agreements made with any nations of Earth. They just landed and started attacking and killing people.
“Or ‘Bayformers’?”
In Transformers, again, there was no war until the Decepticons started attacking and killing people and destroying cities.
In all of your examples, the aliens were attacking Earth en masse, they did not talk, they initiated combat. In this example, Tom did NOT initiate war, he did not initiate ANYTHING – Maxima did, if anyone did. And then Tom left. Then he got called back by Earth, to enter into a contract that has nothing to do with Earth or anywhere other than Mozambique, and only a limited part of Mozambique at that.
“Let me just say it again: there is no formal accord needed to fight back against an invasion from peoples not of the Earth,”
There is no united Earth government. This isnt like the Federation in Star Trek. The United States has NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. Neither do any other nations other than Mozambique and Galytn, and the war already seems to be over with a surrender of 80% of Mozambique’s forces. Deus isnt taking all of Mozambique even, although he clearly could if he wanted to. Tom hasn’t taken ANYTHING.
“just like there is no formal accord not to invade your neighbour”
I’m curious about your view of the map of Earth if you think that Mozambique is a neighboring country to the United States. The United States is not the world’s police force. At least during Vietnam, it was part of a bigger conflict of the cold war with the Soviet Union. We don’t even have THAT here as reasoning.
As I mentioned last time, given the extant history of bringing in outside forces to aid a battle, bringing these guys in amounts to a Crime Against Humanity. (Specifically, “Doing Something That is Likely to Threaten the Continued Survival of a Lot of People on the Planet if it Keeps Happening Because I Just Said So.”
How do you figure? Nothing they are really doing is crime against humanity. They are more acting like a contracted mercenary force. And from the small snippet we saw they were using large stones to wreck enemy equipment. There has been nothing shown of any further crimes or deadly attacks. Id say hiring another countries military would be even WORSE for death toll as wed have to use typical military armaments of rockets and bullets and things. Deus went for the shock and awe to eradicate enemy morale and hopefully get a fast surrender to reduce losses for everyone.
Wait, so using literal demons to invade another country, is not a crime? And the people they are killing are not humans?
Aside from whether or not “crime” is an applicable term for invading another country, how is it relevant that the invaders are demons, or that the people being killed are human?
technically it is not a crime…being that a crime is mainly an internal issue for a country/government and there probably is some other term for violating the santity of another nation and a bunch of UN jargon.
that said it being demons being used as an allied or mercenary force doesn’t really matter…if anything it actually makes it less of a problem to the UN as they aren’t citizen or soldiers from another Earthly nation to complicate relations between them, and they are sapient being so the *robots killing people without human input* is LESS of an issue.
I suppose there would be some concern of it being non-humans being asked to kill humans, but being demons, AI robots, or applewood smoked bacon golems, doesn’t really matter from an international discussions, geopolitical stand point.
Covert action. Maxima was invited to be there, she brings Anvil as her bodyguard, which gives them a reason to bring Sidney, since (as far as we know) all regular transport from NA to Galytn is handled by Deus’ portals, and Max can’t use Archon hardware for a personal trip to a foreign country, and using Sidney for transport allows them to bring Dabbler, who is very good at not being Dabbler, gathering information, and is the only one familiar with Tom’s organization. Also, Dabbler’s technically a mercenary, and easier to disavow if they have to.
Although, even if an incident does occur, optics are still overwhelmingly in their favour. Who’s going to start something with the US over their interfering with little Galytn’s demon army capturing the Polish-I mean, Mozambique corridor?
Thothogoth in particular recently intruded on US soil and committed assault and battery against an active-duty military officer while openly presenting himself as a hostile foreign power. Unless Tom somehow managed to get in touch with the State Department, exchange embassies, and normalize diplomatic relations while Sydney was busy graduating, he’s ALREADY at war with the US by most definitions. Alliance with Galtyn would just mean they are too. To avoid trouble in the broader international community, Maxima ought to call ahead and get permission from whatever’s left of Mozambique’s air traffic control, but other than that I think she’s covered.
Highly unlikely, Deus probably has significant ties with US politicians via donations so they will likely turn a blind eye to this. The issue with Tom was already handled by Maxima anyways and him having an altercation with one officer is not a war declaration by any stretch of the imagination. War can ONLY be declared by an act of Congress you do not get to just skip over that step.
Except Deus likely lines the pockets of a significant chunk of US politicians so they will turn a blind eye to this as a not our problem. An altercation with one officer is not a war declaration by any stretch of the imagination or wed be declaring war everytime a soldier got in a drunken fight while in port. Only Congress can declare war on another country and even if they wanted to declare war on Tom he is working for but not part of Gatlyn so it would not be declaring war on him. When is the last time you remember the US getting involved with wars between countries in Africa?
So… I’m guessing Dabbs really enjoyed tomb raider….
One day Dude is going to have to draw the anatomy of that double shoulder arrangement. Every time I see it I get confused.
probably not too different from this, one of the few that doesn’t go with two sets of full pectorals, which old Dabbler did have but Grrlverse Dabbler doesn’t.
http://what-when-how.com/Tutorial/topic-105mt09e/ZBrush-Creature-Design-Creating-Dynamic-Concept-Imagery-for-Film-and-Games-170.html
I’m a mechanical engineer with a biology background, and I’ve occasionally tried to figure that out. Honestly, Dabbler’s second set of arms are just too close to the first to fit all the necessary anatomy. You can plausibly do a second set of arms, but they’d have to be further down. As it is, they get in each other’s way, and don’t really leave room for the full set of muscles you need for actuation.
Of course, the shoulder is a ball and socket joint, but it’s a rather complex one, the socket is composed of the scapula, which floats around pulled this way and that by an extensive array of muscles, and the largely passive clavicle. In order to get the full range of motion without dislocating the shoulder, the socket itself has to be mobile, too. Otherwise your shoulder would have about the same range of motion as your hips.
I don’t think a second set of clavicles is really feasible, (The first set work because they’re *above* the rib cage, not in front of it.) but you could omit the clavicles, and have a socket entirely within a modified scapula that was able to float in all directions.
You’d also have to have the upper shoulder further from the center of the body than the lower, so that when they were just hanging, they wouldn’t interfere.
The end result would probably look like a more symmetric Motie than Dabbler.
Now, Girl Genius has some 4 armed women, but they have the 2nd set of arms off the top of the pelvis, which actually makes more sense from a design standpoint.
What about Spinnerette? With her six arms?
Well she is descended from magical biomancy constructs so some enhanced ultra or omin flex micro muscle filaments can be at play, honest wouldn’t be surprised if she packed some freaky anatomy tricks like collapsing and disjointing her entire skeleton to squeeze her self through right spots…or get into interesting positions with some cephalomorphic aliens/entities .
in another superhero topic, thinking up new superhero origins.
Has this ever been a superhero origin story before?
A human abducted by an ultra advanced alien, the alien however is keeping the human as a pet. The alien likes the human so much that they enhance their pet giving them super human durability, strength, speed, stamina, enhanced senses/reflexes, and even an indefinite lifespan. The alien did this so that the human could survive interacting with the alien without risk of serious injury or death to the human through casual playing or interacting with the alien’s home environment.
*basically: they became like Superman, but to the alien this turned them super soft squishy/fragile cute thing to…house cat.
-note not special to this alien, standard procedure to make humans which they find adorable compatible enough for general interaction as house pets, the aliens in question would still be many magnitudes more powerful.
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. This is exactly how M V Smith got his abilities.
And yes, I said MV Smith because I always figured that was a Heinlein “in” joke. He was, of course, Michael Valentine Smith.
I don’t get it — what’s the joke?
Hmm, I guess adopted by ascend at death aliens and was taught their abilities isn’t too far off, not so much the rest of the book but I did say origin not over all story.
But looking around the entire (human as a pet trope) is like 99% extremely negative, which makes sense (even filtering out the ones on tv tropes that don’t actually apply and are other tropes…sex slave and thrall to a monster) the rest are mostly still negative. Although they have that commentary feel like a lot of old sci-fi where it is more a dig at how abusive people are with pets and that a human in the position of the animal with human sapience being kept by something that treats them the way people are allowed to treat pets without a second thought would be hellish to say the least.
You don’t really see the advanced alien that regards all life as being treated well if it is in their care that finds humans cute so “rescues” them as pets very often, and then filter further to ones that need to enhance humans for their own safety.
I was wandering this as a superhero origin as it occurred to me when writing I could use this for a superhero origin, a rescue kept by an Amoana who treats letting them become a superhero the same as having a large fenced in yard for your dog to run about and get exercise.
saem setting has four species that keep humans as pets but all do it very differently, two of which are closer to the traditional negative view as they abduct and breed for aesthetics, obedience, and treat them more like dogs. Decided the two closer to humans in size would do this, while two giant ones would be older species that regard any pets they keep as something in their care so treat them much better.
Human Pet
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Human-Pet-880210138
and where the possible hint at some pets becoming superheroes is hinted at
Human Pet 2
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Human-Pet-2-904370504
which is what got me thinking, has any superhero had an origin like this? Taken in by ultra advanced aliens as a pet and enhanced, but perhaps either is released for some reason, accidentally is lost on Earth, or is *let loose in the yard* among other ideas. and uses this power given to them to become a superhero. Like a herd dog in the woods becoming a hero only as people…although a “the cat got out” version where they are a villain could work as well…although following that trope while not human have seen plenty of “the horrifying space monster was just this alien’s pet that ran off and was terrorizing the humans*.
again, seen people in the comments mention obscure comics and sci-fi books before so figured if any community of superhero fans would know any use of this it would be here. Especially as tv tropes doesn’t always note everything and seldom includes unpublished or less mainstream online works and comics.
Portraying a human as being owned in a positive light is gonna be a hard sell, to say the least. There’s a lot of baggage that comes with people being regarded in the same way we regard animals… it doesn’t matter how caring or responsible the owner is, we’ve learned to value our autonomy…
this is very true and doing a backstory bit right to categorize the various species in my own series that own people…the over whelming majority is negative, Goa’uld inspired parasites, fae that treat humans as cattle, aliens that regard humans as dogs *including aliens that are hypocrites as they also have trade with other advanced descended from humans species* ect,,,
heck I did a longer book length mini-series about a sapient humanoid-dragon escaping from a high tech zoo run by humans, and despite the zoo trying to care for her needs their methods and attitude were are clearly in the negative.
really its just wo aliens that this comes across as positive in any way, and its mainly because they are giant fuzzy comfort fantasies like “what if I was the cat in the lap”. Really the idea comes from those movies where the animals have human intelligence but they are pets and mentally shifting the scenario so the humans are giant aliens and the pets are humans (and possibly various other aliens in the same situation) and seeing how it “vibes” so to say.
that said positive or negative you could still get a superhero, either run away because of a bad environment or dog park/whatever for the positive.
Alright, it is written out, aliens that keep humans in my series, the worst to the best and yeah…its is mostly negative.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Aliens-that-keep-humans-worst-to-best-904588794
and just occurred to me while not the same trope, has the same concept
Stephen King’s Tommyknockers has the big twist be that aliens were giving humans super intelligence and even psychic powers to fatten up their brains to eat them.
jesus christ what is wrong with hiro’s arm???
Yeah, DaveB sometimes gets his perspectives screwed up. Try not to take it too personally, I’ve seen a lot worse in webcomic artists.
I found a pic online of a soldier with muscles saluting that looks just like it, my reply with that link however doesn’t appear to have posted. But it looked almost exactly the same.
You got bitten by WordPress too! That happened to me on #1015. I’ve learned to just put naked links in and have nothing surrounding them.
I hate WordPress.
As someone who has done security guarding as a job for a year (thank the Goddess I work in animal welfare now), I can confirm that the best times are when things are fracking BORING.
Sydney needs a couple extra arms grafted or grown on
And no, anyone launching a sidewinder at since the reset near the beginning of the comic would have learned about Mr. Shield. Sydney’s NOT going to try to outrun something like that when there is no need.
Wondering now if it even be possible to get a radar contact, let alone a target lock, on Mr Bubble.
“How are we the B-team?” he says, as though the team without Maxima would ever be the A-team.
Maxima isn’t on the A-team – that’s Peggy, Sydney, Pixel (in Human form), Krona when she’s around…
So like many fans I pursed the art before reading the comic. My first reaction was “Why is Hiro being such an a-hole to Heatwave?” Now that I have read the comic, studied the art, and taken into account all his previous treatment of the rest of the crew, the juxtaposition of all panels, and licked my finger to be sure which why the wind is blowing… the answer is….. (drum roll please)…..
Hiro just really IS an asshole! Which I have suspected all along.
Nah, he is just a CO with a slightly less relaxed attitude than Maxima.
(and he was not mean to Heatwave. She just happened to be in the blast radius of his outburst towards Achilles and Mr. Amorpheus)
I must politely disagree. Blasting your subordinates for having a bad attitude that spreads and saps everyone’s morale is one thing. Heatwave did the opposite of that by saying ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ and should not have been reprimanded so harshly.
I stand by my original assessment, Hiro is being an asshole.
This is the same subgroup that were formal a vigilante trio, two of which participated in the phony bank pentest as armed robbers and fired live rounds at an unarmed civilian. They have a track history of getting in trouble, and are currently Taunting Murphy. This is an extra big no-no in the military, where the only good day is a boring day. As their CO and fellow participany in multiple super battles in the last couple months, it’s well within his rights, if not his duty, to put the kibosh on an open invitation for trouble.
I think being raised in this environment (military brat) is what has made me especially twitchy at work when people tempt fate with things like, “it could be worse” or “at least we’re not busy” and stuff like that. Like it feels that somehow genuinely expressing these things out loud just gets some causality factor to kick in like “oh yeah? try this!”
i actually try to double negative it when people say this by expressing some ludicrous outcome, like they say “the weather could be worse” so I say, “yeah it could raining down hailstones in the shape of hands giving the middle finger”
like some Matrix admin is like, “how do i? was that sarcasm…what?”
Also pretty sure he’s yelling at all 3 of them.
I just figured out what’s been bothering me about Galytn (spelling?); it’s in Africa, but the name sounds like somewhere in the Balkans.
Clearly Dabbler is trying to out-Lara Lara Croft here.
Honestly, it would be GREAT to see a bit more of the rest of the team – the last time Achilles had a speaking part was #940, for Heatwave and Mr. Amorphous it was #918. Ren got a little more screen time, but he and Vance weren’t even shown or mentioned when they graduated. I mean, I know the comic’s called ‘GRRLpower,’ but this seems very uneaven. And doesn’t Heatwave count as a woman?
Only when she’s cold like a beer…
Another question: according to Deus (or was it Indinge?) Galytn used to be part of the Congo. Is it now a former part of Malawi? Is this an official retcon? Geographically it would make sense.
Page 387. Was a part of Zaire before it became the DRC.
It’s still definitely a retcon since Zaire is pretty far away from Malawi.
It’s not a retcon. The originsl Galytn was part of Zaire. Galytn has expanded since then to also take part of Malawi.
It occurs to me that Sydney can probably take out the entire demon army on her own. Turn on Mister Bubble at maximum size, then fly through them at Mach 16. It will be a ‘bug on the windshield’ moment.
I said as a response last page of comments she could just skim the army with her Aethereum causeway and dump them someplace else.
of course they all could just make a dramatic entrance through the Aethereum Causeway, which I feel Deus wouldn’t recognize but the Alari, Demons, and possibly Vale would all be reacting to leaving Deus to look around going, “what?”
I don’t think she can move the causeway once it’s opened.
Then I mis-saw the Vehemence scene, it looked like she scooped him up with it. Made it appear behind him and then moved it forward rather than knocking him back into it.
Which would make the in space part easier to scoop him up instead of pushing him through it on the return trip.
So I was under the impression she can move it around once open.
It was mainly Keven throwing /himself/ through, chasing after Halo as she flew backwards through the doorway. By the time he realized it was a trap, he was already being blown through the door by Earth’s escaping atmosphere…
oh right, it was behind Sidney, went back and checked, kept thinking it was behind him…but still that makes the return trip awkward if she can scoop him up with it. But still doable, just awkwardly nudging his floating carcass back to the portal. unless he had enough power to just fly *no confirmation if he can* and propel himself through it.
Her ’causeway’ seems to appear and then remain stationary relative to her motion when she created it. Then she flies through it. I assume that if she was moving towards Kevin when she opened it, it would then continue in his direction.
Adding pips to the center seemed to give her some subconscious idea of how to use the orbs, she probably didn’t have to think much about how to pull it off.
The thing I find a bit off about that scene is her snagging him with the light hook, with the causeway present. Obviously she can’t drop the shield orb, she’s in vaccum. And the causeway is generated by the flight orb. So, how is she using the lighthook?
Sydney can use the Lighthook to set Vehemence moving, with no need to have Flight active at that point. Without air resistance, he’ll keep moving until he hits something. Which gives her time to switch to flight, zip round in front of his trajectory, and open a Causeway gate for him to drift into.
I wouldn’t be too sure about Deus not knowing what Aetherium Causeways are. He seems to know a lot about subjects he realistically should be ignorant about.
Mach 16 is 19.082 km per hour. Circumference of Earth at equator is about 40.000 km. So, halving that 1 hour and some minutes at most is perhaps more accurate, including ascension and descension, assuming she flies clockwise/counter-clock wise in an efficient manner..
Was just checking the math in miles per hour since I’m an American who refuses to use the far more mathematically useful metric system out of a combination of rampant patriotism, stubbornness, and masochism.
Earth is an oblate spheroid (slightly flattened at the poles) so the north/south meridional circumference of the Earth is 24,860 miles, while the distance around the Earth at the equator is 24,901 miles. As a result, the furthest that two places can be apart on Earth is 12,430 miles apart via north/south, and 12,450.5 miles via west/east.
Mach 16 is 12,276.3 mph according to Google’s calculator.
12276.3/12450.5 = 0.98600859403
0.98600859403 * 60 (minutes) = 59.1605156419 minutes, or 59 minutes and 9.63 seconds, rounded to 59 minutes, 10 seconds, as how long it will take Sydney to travel the furthest possible distance one can travel on Earth from one point to another.
So 45 minutes maximum for her to get almost anywhere on Earth seems very plausible since most parts are going to be shorter than the circumference of the equator.
I have too much time on my hands on the weekends, I think.
Btw, having asked a number of Chinese people, I can confirm that “May you live in interesting times” is NOT a Chinese curse, or meme, or anything else.
No, its an English/American one.
in fact never even heard of it being a “chinese curse” till your comment so checked it online, and Wikipedia even says it…but is quick to point out that its not and that was a misunderstanding because of some author, but yeah…looks like in many parts that I’ve encountered of North America at least its just become an expression of whose origin the average person neither knows nor cares about; so a forgotten misunderstanding.
There is also a ‘Chinese’ dish that was invented in California (thought it was chow mein but was wrong)
“MYLIIT” is just the English (English speaking, not exclusive to England) version of it, pretty much every culture has something similar
Just like how “It’s all Greek to me” (for something they don’t understand) is different in Greece (naturally) and other countries
Chop Suey, perhaps?
So Mr. Amorphous and Achilles were vigilante partners? That’s actually heccin’ interesting and I’d like to know more about it! :o
Not just those two, Heatwave as well
It was briefly mentioned years ago (basically, they got caught vigilante-ing and were giving the option of spending time in prison, or join this newly formed organisation), but nothing further came from it, hopefully now we might get to hear more
Also Digit was in their vigilante group as well
The vigilante trio is called out on the cast page (eg Heatwave’s bio). Digit doesn’t have a profile but mentioned hanging with them while introducing herself to Sydney.
DaveB later does say that Digit was part of their vigilante group though.
Or more specifically, Digit says she was part of the group with Amorphous, Achilles, and Heatwave.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-948-the-non-analog-insurance-hazard/
(panel 2)
Digit: “I think Mr Amorphous started doing it [calling her Digit] back when we were vigilante-ing.”
Pretty sure DaveB also mentions it somewhere, but it’s easier to find where Digit said so.
I still want to know how much harem gets Paid If it’s 1 large check or 1 for every body.
There’s only one of ‘her’ for HR purposes, and I imagine she only needs one bank account (with multiple cards), so whatever the ridiculous salary is probably all goes via direct deposit to one place.
Are they actually demons? Or are they space aliens or robots?
Looks like Hiro is a little bit genre savvy, too. Maybe it’s contagious.
They are actual superheroes, comes with the territory. You’d have to at least do some basic research to understand the endlessly repetitive questions and in-references from everyone you met.
Air temperature is actually a much larger factor than pressure in the speed of sound. While pressure does matter, it’s a much smaller factor. It’s just that normally the speed of sound only reallyt matters for jets, and only at various altitudes, and those altitudes tend to be pretty consistent in temperature, so people think of the speed of sound being related to altitude and therefore pressure.
Her hips are slightly disturbing with how thin her stomach is.
her stomach cannot be reaching the front of her shorts/belt.
just a chasm there since her hips jut out.
Dabbler having the proportions of a sex doll makes sense…granted just as a succubus they would but succubi were declared biological beings in this series…which then re-explained why having the proportions of a sex doll still made sense…because they basically are.
She probably needs a lot less in the way of intestines than otherwise, given that she’s not getting most of her energy from food.
Four arms, horns, digitigrade feet, purple skin and the ability to accommodate a sex toy bigger than my arm are all okay but her hip to waist ratio bothers you?