Grrl Power #107 – Dabbler’s green card says “Super duper skilled alien”
Here’s a quick link to page #96. I didn’t draw the phone actually going in but this is where it happened.
There have been a lot of discussions around about the failings of alien invasion movies, so I can’t take credit for Dabbler’s observation. Obviously the idea is new to Sydney though.
Sandy’s arrival puts the headcount in the room at 9, but also marks the end of the interview, so we’re almost ready to move on to a new setting finally.
I’ve updated the vote incentive with the inked version of Dabbler vs. Zintiel (of Flaky Pastry – I linked to the homepage but I recommend immediately hitting the beginning of the archive.)
Oh, and I’ve updated the cast page a bit. It’s probably not all 100% sorted out but at least I finally have Math, Achilles and Mr. Amorphous. And I just realized I misspelled Amorphous. Son of a!
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
“X” means both “unknown” and “eXperimental.”Both could apply to our “brand X shadow agent.”
Also for some reason my computer had trouble reaching a server to get here and another place. First time it has happened coming here but it is working now but not 5 hours ago. Anyone else? I’m assuming that “X” also has a voice filter too so that s/he is keep anonymous as possible. I wonder if it has a new type of cooling and respiratory system so that X can feel comfortable.
It was a problem with the site provider not Dave B’s fault.
Godaddy needing it’s mommy?
Yeah that was bad, and now I feed bad.
Are you saying Gomommy would be a more stable provider?
Maybe faster and more reliable, but it’ll always seize up when looking for porn and berate you for using it instead of being outside….
After I read that, for some reason, I feel as if some one slapped me up side the head. And heard some one say Gooutsideandplay :-)
Don’t forget the original TV series “The Invaders” who though had trouble with our oxygen, they still wanted earth. (Either alter themselves or xenoform earth to their native type.) Such planets are far and between. We never got details of how their home world was “dying” and come to find out a conspiracy on their own world was in play here.
I’m remembering an Outer Limits episode which had an alien ship land on Earth and the humans were told to keep our distance. Of course the humans couldn’t leave it at that and soon a horde of alien bugs were running amock and had to be killed. When contact was made we were told the ship was actually a prison full of their worst criminals and that their society so abhors violence and murder they could not solve their crime problem by punishing these criminals themselves – so they dropped them on our doorstep knowing our own proclivity to violence would made us good proxy executioners.
Yes that is “The Zanti Misfits” sent to earth so that the humans there would carry out the executions the Zanti’s themselves would never do. (They knew that human xenophobia & penchant for violence would do it for them.)
That is kind of hypocrital and really screwed up when you think about it. Its like saying you abhore violance so you instead going to dump a bunch of prisoners off in the middle of the jungle because you are certain the animals, disease, and locals will do your dirty work for you.
It worked didn’t it? And besides, are you going to be the one that goes and tell them they are being hypocrites?
On a side note: scientists believe that the higher a creature’s intelligence, the more prone to (and better at) violence it is. As you go up the food chain, the creatures have to be smarter than their prey in order to catch them. If this hypothesis is correct, the alien racmight be smart enough to know they could probably take us over (or not), but without taking severe casualties. Instead, using us in such a way as to solve one of their problems and weaken us by even a slight margin seems like a good idea.
No, it didn’t work. See: Australia.
What is your source for, “scientists believe that the higher a creature’s intelligence, the more prone to (and better at) violence it is”? I am somewhat a student of human cognition and evolutionary psychology and was unaware of that claim.
They don’t abhor dead prisoners, just killing them.
Sounds like the Devil’s Island idea (see the movie Papillon) of putting the worst prisoners on an island where they can be brutalized and brutalize each out of the sight of the public.
I am also reminded of StarGate Atlantis. A civilization in order to preserve its self from the Wraith made a deal with them, they set up a penal colony on an island around the stargate *which has no outgoing dial device*. The Wraith come through and cull the penal colony (The Wraith feed on people like vampires).
Of course the Earth team took issues with this, especially when the government on that planet started to send people to the penal colony for small crimes in order to meet the Wraith’s quota. Of course this episode ended very controversally, as the Atlantis team evacuated the island, resulting in the Wraith attacking the mainland…so in other words criminals of low and high crimes, and those descended from the criminals escaped, but the people on the main land both responsible and innocent were culled in their place.
The “Wraith” could indeed be artifical since it was shown that they could be converted to human just as humans could become wraith. And one of them became a partial. The actor was on “Enterprise” and had a reoccurring character who was involved in human an wraith experimentation.
Not sure how that relates to what was being said about killing prisoners and stuff; but yeah the Wraith are artificial. It was established during the show that the Ancients created the Wraith during an experiment, and the Wraith only won the war for two reasons (as smart as the Ancients were they stunk at military offensive development…using the same weapons for millenia definetly shows lack of development…) anywho,,,the other being “human wave tactics” the Wraith had a clone facility far in their territory and could grow their own vessels so they just ended up overcoming the ancients like fire ants over a toad.
Basically the Ancients had a bad habit of doing experiments and letting then run wild, and as “ascended” beings have decided it is beneath them to interfere…even though like 99% of the problems in all the shows are their fault for leaving their tech lying around including weapons, heck there is strong evidence they made the Replicators (they definetly made the Pegasus galaxy version), they made the Wraith out of the Iratus Bug and human DNA, they made humans as part of some simpler form colonization bit, left behind the STar Gates, numerous colonies, weapons, and they may have even made the Goa’uld by experimentiong on a much larger creature in the water.
I don’t care if they have transmogrified into glowing squids of psychic energy, they are just being dicks by not taking responsibility for their crap. They get my vote as the biggest ass-hole alien species.
Let’s not forget the aliens-as-refugees meme. Remember the movie/series “Alien Nation” ???
Yes the tv show was terrible. Just the movie and the novel were the only ones worth reading and seeing. Hated the show. It was done all wrong.
Isn’t it the yellow orb that lets her see through illusion? or did X drop his cloak?
Dropped cloak.
She’s using the flight orb to get over the table so she can talk to X.
A quick fairly safe way to test possible uses of the two unknown orbs powers is to hold onto them and see if they protect against Dabbler’s lust aura thing
Okay, I admit it — Dabbler is a keeper; Sidney keeps me smiling and I even imagine scenerios where I can used a BLARG attack. Also totally enjoy popping to the web site and seeing what crazy renditons of the cast are ‘this time’. Keep up the super job!
Thanks! I intend to!
Yup she is uber geek nothing phases her.
The official term is “alien of extraordinary ability”.
What makes you think I was referring to Dabbler. refer to the hero of the story who hasn’t batted an eye at the new people she is being introduced to other then Harem but then she shocked her so that doesn’t count.
alright let’s go:
X!? He actually dare calling himself X? Oh well, at least Sydney did corner him nicely. The name remind me of the game “Mr X vs Scotland Yard”. I can actually see X finishing a spy kob and saying “Mr X strike again!” lol.
Interesting, Dabbler actually did refer her as a technological alien and not a demonic succubus coming to take all the vital energy for the NEGAVERSE, MUAHAHAHAH!… Oops, sorry, wrong series…
Finally i like the blue lanyard fom Sydney tube around her throat: It male a goos idea of her future collar in Archon.
I don’t think that’s the strap from the tube… I think it’s the visitor card she got earlier. You can see the tube lie behind her at one of the pictures, and it’s way too small to be attached to her neck.
Yup, it’s the visitor pass’ lanyard, as barely seen hanging off her back in panel 3 two pages earlier.
I for one could never have a lanyard hanging like that. Too easy to catch it on something and get choked with.
It’s too bad X’s voice isn’t being flanged to sound like a Cylon from the original Battlestar Galactica…we know it isn’t because Sydney would have commented on it, dangit…
We’ve already seen her future collar too, white with gold, in a vote incentive.
Just realised this is the second phone destroyed due to Vogue-Harem’s influence (Max’s was the first). That girl is costing Archon a fortune in phones.
Panel 4: wow! cute!
But it true, if your able to space fare across the galaxy, you actually can have oxigen, water and even more expensive mineral from asteroid alone
Yes, attacking an inhabited planet for raw resources does seem counterproductive.
There is one resource on an inhabited planet you can’t get anywhere else: Inhabitants.
After all, what’s the point of having an intergalactic empire if you don’t have some peasants to kick around?
Or if your needs are close enough you remove the inhabitants and get room for colonization.
Which oddly enough makes “They Want Our Women!” make MORE sense than most of the other motives…
Cross species colinization. Because Captin Kirk pretty much said it. “To boldly go where no man has gone before, and then screw their women.”
Works either way:
1)__Assimilation via Interbreeding= “Conquer From The Cradle”
2)__Keep the Genders Separate= “Let Them Die Out in One Generation”
I’d do it like it was done in Babalon A.D., Make everyone sterile and they would all be dead in a century. If Anybody was around who could reproduce their numbers would be so small it wouldn’t matter.
I know it sounds cold hearted, but so what? It’s only my opinion, plus it would keep future problems from poping up, like native uprisings.
I am thinking of the third transformers movie; one of the big plot holes was the whole enslave humanity as a work force thing.
Why would mechanical twenty foot tall aliens with indefinite lifespans want to or could even use an organism less than a quarter of their size with bodies they could squish by accident, and are less than a 100th of their strength possibly be able to use for? Humans as slaves to giant robots…right…no.
and if Cybertron were really that insanely huge (ignoring scale issues through out the movie using the CGI model,,,,) Earth would have no where near any resources enough to make a dent in helping them.
But old alien movies did typically do that need water thing; but in their defense back then we didn’t know how abundant water ice was, we didn’t know there was so much in comets, meteors, that there was water ice under the CO2 Ice on Mars, and covering entire moons and bodies in space.
the current movies and other material seem to focus on protein and chlorophyl as we know of nothing else in space that has these. But if we met organic life forms that could move this far the chances they would first produce a better way to make what we now call “Shmeat” would seem likely. (why invade a world whose organisms may likely be inedible (we can’t eat everything on our own planet) when you can create massive vessels for the production of pure protein and vegetable matter that you have control over completly with no risk of resistance?
Honestly if anything out there is like humans the likely reason for an invasion might just be “Manifest Destiny”.
“Why would mechanical twenty foot tall aliens with indefinite lifespans want to or could even use an organism less than a quarter of their size…?”
Detail work? I’m not all that up on the Transformers universe, but a 20-foot mechanical might have problems accessing small spaces and/or manipulating things on the millimetre scale once there. Of course, that ignores the potential for simply using 6-foot mechanicals, or even smaller if necessary.
Of course, this ignores one potential origin theory: the Transformers were originally a giant fan-art from a culture not unlike our own, and have some subconscious memory of their creators. All it’s missing is the time-travel aspect, to get back from an age that can produce such beings to our own.
They had itty-bitty Transformers in the movies as well, The less said about most of THEM, the better, but they were there.
Sure. In logical terms, invading a planet capable of mustering some defense for their resources makes no sense, but that doesn’t account for the aliens just being dicks, or having a culture of extermination like the Kohr-Ah.
Even that doesn’t make any sense, really: No need to invade. Just drop a few good-sized asteroids on us. (Which should be trivial for any space-fairing civilization.)
In fact, the ease of doing that brings up the only really convincing reason to attack an alien planet I’ve seen: To prevent them from doing it to you, either now or some time in the future. Because it is so easy to wipe out another race’s home planet, contacting them and letting the know you exist with anything less than lethal force is a major risk – you have no idea how they’ll react. Being properly paranoid would say to either avoid contact or wipe them out.
You don’t drop asteroids unless you don’t want the planet. Otherwise it is over kill.
Well…if you do a geological scan of the planet first, then the use of precise kinetic impact/tectonic disruptor weaponry could be used to cause earthquakes and tsunami destroying major population and power centers leaving most of the ecology intact. All that is left is clean up.
Personally the easiest way to defeat this planet would be a very none-violant yet clear display of power. A molecular phase shift inhibibitor targeted to effect combustable petroleum and charcoal base items (something some advanced races may develop as a means to work on machinery and other volatile substances safely, calibrated to specific substances and used on a mass scale would knock out a great deal of power, disable all vehicles, and pretty much all weaponry).
All you have to do next is show up, declare the world yours, make a bunch of “this is for your best, we just did what we did to stop you from forcing us to hurt you which we don’t want to do”, and you are most of the way there. Naturally there would be rebellion anyway forcing you to show your real weapons and wipe out a large number of people while you secretly infect their food and water supplies to alter their genetics to become a hybrid of you and them, but in a number of generations they become you, and by then you will have culled the resistant forces while the rest have accepted all the fancy medical care and such that you have given them; not that it matters because they are now you.
(that at least is how my aliens the Ju-el operate).
Or you could just go all Suihrai and develop a genocide weapon that targets a specific genetic pattern (from a family too a species) and via this genetic signature connected to a quantum entanglement dimensional distorter basically vaporize what ever species with in a single world’s gravitational field or magnetic field depending on how the distorter is calibrated. So you could wipe out just a single space station or with enough power an entire planet’s population.
Asteroids are a perfect weapon if you are a advance party and your mother ship isn’t due for another century or two.
It also gives you time to take care of those pesky survivers, they always pop up at the most akward moments.
Another reason we might want to hit a planet with a asteroid would be to cool it down so we could live on it more comfortably.
Odds are that most of the inteligent alien species out there would be exothermic, so cooling a world down would also keep other races from invading our worlds, seeing as they would be too damm cold for them.
The effects of an asteroid bombardment, while devastating in the short term, are temporary. After a hundred years the planet would be as good as new.
Chances they could breathe our air: Near 0. Chances they could eat any life on the planet: nil.
What, exactly, are you preserving the life on the planet for? Ok, they might have a decent domesticatable animal. Big woop. I’ve got a spaceship, it’s going to have machines. Cost benefit for an animal I’d have to keep a separate biome for is just ridiculous.
If I want to terriform it, the first thing I want to do is wipe out the local life. If I want to mine it, the life’s just going to get in the way.
There is no upside to leaving anything alive on a planet you are taking over. Capture a few specimens for scientific study if you want – you can do that as part of the clean up operation. But it at best will get in your way, and at worst try to kill you.
Actually there are only a few gases that are reasonable supports for lief so the chances that aliens could breathe our air are very high. While they probably couldn’t eat native meat, simple native carbohydrates would probably be edible by oxygen-breathers with minimal processing.
Yes, they’d probably breathe a O2, CO2, N2 mix with some assorted trace elements. It’s the mix and the trace elements that are the problem: We could probably coexist in a space station, but the pressure is probably wrong, the temperature is probably wrong, the ratios are probably wrong, and they probably expect some other trace elements that we aren’t used to. And some of ours are possibly poisonous to them.
Same goes even moreso with foods: Sugar and basic carbs would likely be common, but that only means some candies would be fine. Everything else would at best be tasteless roughage – at worst it’s poison again.
So, yes, if you really tried you could share biospheres. But the level of effort would be huge, and if you are taking over (or just worried that they might be hostile), it’s a lot easier just to drop an asteroid and re-seed with your own biome.
Congratulations, you are now the bad guy in every movie about first contact.
Yep, I’m aware. :)
As I said above: The one truly good reason to attack another planet is to prevent them from attacking you. There is no real reason to actually want to colonize a planet in another star system: By the time you’ve gotten to the point where you can reach it, it’s easier and cheaper to avoid it, and just mine asteroids. You might build space stations around it, but colonizing it would be strictly for the decadent.
Oddly enough then, if you happen to have an extraterrestrial ship come down to the planet, the above logic implies that they are probably friendly: If they were hostile, or even neutral, they wouldn’t have bothered to enter the gravity well. There are some decent reasons to treat an alien as an equal (different perspectives on science/philosophy, not antagonizing any friends they may have, etc.), but none to treat them as inferior-but-worthy-of-life.
The obvious thing that 20 foot tall aliens with no sense of touch would want to enslave us for is manual dexterity.
We have built robots with a sense of touch. The bayformers I can’t be certain of, but I do know the animated shows the Cybertronians show pain in their un-armored parts and can feel for things they can’t see so I assume they have a sense of touch.
Also worth noting that humanity has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet, and we created the phrase “Scorched Earth”. Unless you are absolutely certain they aren’t going to make that phrase a literal truth, an invasion is potentially completely pointless.
Sure, if they were all like Dabbler and did as they wanted, I think the breeding of fully human babies would mostly stop and no male would complain. The human males who WOULDN’T go for aliens would like how many women they could get so much they’d be all forgiving. As for human females… don’t alien/succubi come in male variants too?
Probably one of the best critiques of alien invasion movies ever.
haaaa that nod from Arianna is hilarious
I think the face is even more hilarious. :)
Totaly agree. A “You said it sister” look.
Whaaaat? Dabbler’s an extra-terrestrial? Not supernatural? Awww, that kills so much of the fun about her.
She’s two!, two!, two tastes in one! Out there in both senses of the word.
Careful! We don’t want [Doublemint Gum] suing us for slogan/trademark infringement!
Do you think they would sue twice just to be funny?
No, just use identical twin attorneys.
THAT’S INGENIOUS!!!!! ;•)
well if Hell is a different dimension rather than in earth’s core than demons would actually technically aliens. Soooo yeah she can be both
Even as a kid I never could by the “Hell is in the Earth” argument. Just seemed 60’s crime-show to have a prison in the middle of the planet you’re trying to keep them out of.
Not to mention no prison is foolproof (what a word) so escapees would show up now and then. Not to mention the ones sent after them.
reminds me of Disgaea when it was pointed out that humans believe the Netherworld and Celestia are located somewhere in space (the gates to them being like Star Gates), and Flonne asked if humans think of demons and angels as aliens.
Hey Dave, random comment here(since I dont see contact info)
On the cast page, each main char has a little military style rank pin, on the top right.
Problem is, half the time, it doesnt match what the writeup says.
Fer example, both Harem and Heatwave are supposedly Corporal, but they have different emblems.
Yeah the ranks graphics are totally messed up, I need to find some time to fix them.
PS: in 4th panel, Dabbler actually looks… attractive, in her alien face. This is new. Were you just temporarily playing around, or is this the future look for her?
So far, you’ve made her alienness look either super-cute chibi style, or just kinda out-there weird alienness.
Really that’s just the result of me drawing her at a weird angle. Admittedly Dabbler’s face is a bit… fluid in the same way Sydney’s is – it tends toward the cartoony.
dabbler looks stunningly beautiful in the 4th panel. i wouldn’t mind you drawing her like that in the future.
She’s supposed to look beautiful. It’s just that this is a cartoon so he draws her in a large assortment of styles from chibli to highly realistic.
By the way Wereworld finaly updated a few days ago.
Yeah, It’s been running so long the updates aren’t regular.
Sluggy Freelance has run for many years now and mostly stayed regular.
“Eye of the beholder” and all that. There’s some of us who find her more attractive now than when she was disguised. Very exotic, she is.
They’re always after our
Lucky charmswater! Heh.And updated cast page! Whooo! I find it funny that Peggy has been there since day one and hasn’t even shown up in-comic yet. :D
I love how Sydney’s visitor badge is now hanging down her back; nice little detail!
That happened back in 104 Flail-fu fail
Panel 6: Sidney has apparently abandoned The List.
Poor listy! :(
Your right, I was a little confused when it randomly vanished in 84
I think we can just put it down to one of Dave’s oversights. Either Syd just put it down when she started showing off and Dave’s been forgeting to draw it in since then or it fell out of her back pocket in Flail fu fail; https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/626 and Dave forgot to draw it in there.
Maybe it’s just me, but in my mind’s ear I hear Dabbler speaking with something akin to a Brazilian accent.
I’m not sure how that occurred, but it seems somehow fitting.
I hear her as a “mature-sorority girl” sound. When she is talking normally or abount magic or science or whatever, she sounds really knowledgeable. However, when she is messing with Maxima, she sounds like a stereotypical sorority girl.
Maybe we could get Sonia Braga to be her voice actress when this thing goes anime.
The only way to take a planet and make it your own is to scour it clean of all life then put your own D.N.A. on it. Something like 50% of all DNA matches all, I say, all life on our world.
Btw excellent comic.
All of our DNA comes from the same place so in it all the life you can find inter relations. Not just 50%. But it seems to me more of a problem to destroy the local ecology to replace it. Far too much work and you could leave a poisoned planet to fix. More work.
Depends what your life span is. I do a lot of GURPS, and have a wild imagination.
To some races a wait of 2hundred million could be like you or I waiting untill next year.
DNA. I would like to know what that other 90% of stuff is, you know that stuff that has nothing to do with creating life…
Sorry not used to this kiind of a board
We be an eclectic bunch here. And usually willing to talk white into black and night into day. I’m assuming ya somewhat new here so…
WELCOME TO THE ASYLUM!!
Now, now adamas. TISK TISK. Didnt we learn to not talk about home like that. Hmmm?
*****GRINS******
****Snatches Dabbler Plushy! Runs away cackling***** :p
*Pets his plushy and lets Bismarck play with the newly commissioned one.*
True if you had a life span of a star a few million years would be nothing to you.
I never bought this argument, life span nothing, it is patience and perception that matter. Unless your aliens are slow motiong high perception tree/stone people then all the longer lifespan does it give them a further point to look down to as an end date for their lives and more time to plan stuff. Otherwise time its self really isn’t going to move any slower or faster unless they do the faerie realm time skip stuff.
So it really comes down to patience more than anything. Its like I have time to wait, but in the meantime do other stuff and come back when ready.
The DNA issue was one of the things that made me laugh at those shows (what if aliens attacked), those shows were such crap. Hell one contradicted its self just to give us humans a happy *we might win* scenario, and the reasoning for why biological warfare and why they would come here were both silly.
the first being that it was likely just machines they sent and not themselves. Yeah sorry, but if they are collecting samples of organic life chances are they put them in quarantine first and test for anything harmful to them. So it would matter if you sacrificed a few sick people, they’d end up a tank, scanned, and incinerated long before any possible contact with the crew.
the second being came for protein and chlorophyl (make sense) but at the same time those things can be grown in base form, and collecting up trees and animals is dumb as a first move; especially when you consider that even we can’t eat everything on Earth, so chances are aliens from a totally different line of biological development would have raw compatabilities issues even greater with our organisms.
I’d buy the real-estate reason far better. Such as a Star Gate SG-1 episode where the aliens were pyroforming a planet (remove local life and replace it with their own) while the crew/colonists were in stasis. That is how you do long term, you sleep in stasis until its done.
Yeah, living for 2 million years doesn’t mean you don’t have ADHD.
If you have reached the capacity to travel interstellar distances you would expect them to be smart enough to analyze us to find similarities and weaknesses between our biologies. One thing they would do is to check our intestinal bacteria colonies. If that is even a factor to them. Real estate would be just a small part of their agenda depending on what they are of course.
Or maybe they just like to see a species kill itself and are sending their scouts in to “stoke the fires” and speed up the process.
The thing I see (and which is alluded to, sort of, in ‘The High Frontier’) is…. just how “necessary” are planets to a starfaring (or even merely spacefaring) civilization?
Think about it, To build those huge colonization / invasion ships / fleets requires a lot of resources and a very respectable infrastructure. More than likely, most if not all of that would be space-based anyhow. If you have what it takes to build those things, you can certainly build space habitats by the buttload.
From a purely space-based point of view, planets have all sorts of problems. They are basically immobile – you can’t simply move an entire planet if you want to adjust the climate or move to greener pastures or avoid danger, Planets use enormous quantities of mass just to generate a gravity suitable for the inhabitants. Habitats use up much less mass to do the same thing. Planets hae all sorts of weird hard-to-predict things going on at any given time – earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.. Not a problem for a habitat, no matter how big you build it.
Yes, but will a planet be uninhabitable if it doesn’t get maintenance every year? Will a planet send it’s inhabitants into the vacuum of space because someone pressed the wrong button? Will a planet lose all of it’s oxygen because of a typo? etc., etc., etc…
That depends on if you terraformed a stable planet or are forcing the environment to be stable via a climate control system (like the original Phantasy Star games or the anime Kiddy Grade where Nanite systems and satelites were in place to keep the climate and atmosphere stable, otherwise the planets would return to their natural state).
Otherwise you are looking for a planet that is in the right place, and the right size (gravity issues as well as space), and can be used to hold the right atmosphere via your systems. Heck for humans we’d need a stable rotation which requires a large satelite *like the moon*
These are just one of the many reasons I think a sufficiently advanced species may try to look colonizing alternate timelines of its own world (pretty easy for a planet to be inhabitable when its your own planet, just a version where you don’t exist, or in the anti-paradox model of time travel you can conquer the past with out affecting your own timeline because its a different timeline and you can’t travel into your own actual past).
Or like the Jurai look into creating massive sub-space environments, kind of like a biodome, only more sustainable at a large size, like little flat planets. It has the same issues kind of as a space ship only more self sustaining and take up less space, get enough together and enough power and you may be looking at the whole, planet in a bottle up to a system in a crystal type scenarios.
@Torrisbulba: The maintenance concerns you speak of are true of any technological civilization whether planet-based or not. Just how much work goes into keeping ANY building (or entire city) safe and viable? Lots, I can tell you.
,,, And I am not saying that moving off-planet to live in space habitats is an inevitable path. Just that it MIGHT be an option for some advanced civilizations.
Adamas: Thanks, I think.
Night Gaunt: Who says stars don’t dance?
Rhuen: Your thinking like a human. To the long lived there are other things to do while your waiting for the canning jars to boil just set your calendar. Patience and perception can be see as awareness or conciseness.
Dave B: Yes that does happen more often then ya think.
Night Gaunt: Reavers, (Yes my shirt is brown) a human dies it mutates into a killing thingy, and kills on and on, I prefer the melted earth method, where ya melt the first 5miles or so then let it cool.
Torrisbullba: Ya the do what we want and well will protect ya, or give ya nifty toys. We were drunk one night and used a hologram burning bush method with rocking music and booming voice once. Ya, got my hand basket ready…..
7thsealord: Ya mostly materials for mater converters at the higher levels, even a star would become building materials, well if they thought like us, they may need things like planets to survive, aliens are strange nebula the shapes of them are astounding, some look organic, like the sea life we find deep in the seas here, but light years across, heck they found bear in one nebula. So then, life, what’s important to the race, how do they see the worlds, as something to be dominated, used, or have a care takers attitude, made one race to explain why nebula form in the first place, worked for me.
Rhuen: love the stable rotation comment, Earth is not round, were a bit egg like, and without the moon we would wobble to much and flip. Won’t that be fun….
7thsealord: self maintenance is another life form I don’t want to get into, makes my head hurt.
Thanks all I was not expecting this much activity on my comments
@forestshade
I had a laugh, I have never been accused of thinking like a human before. The exact opposite a good number of times, even by creative writing instructors who felt I made these deep supernatural characters and alien life forms but my humans always felt…flat, like I just couldn’t get how the group thought and only really picked up on the outsider with a very different way of viewing the world.
As for time, no I think I am dead on. Its one thing to be able to go, “okay while this project is on, I will do this, this, and that, and with my brain/equivalent there of able to process these long term events I will remember to come back, with the help of course of a calender and still remember what I was doing” vs, Okay I just started this, and perceptually as people seem to imply with how they word it, they will only get as much done in a few thousand years as humans would in a week, with a brain slowed down to match their time. Like plants which in fastforward moveabout and feel and climb, but we don’t really see. Something that became the dominant life form of its world and moved into space shouldn’t be such a slow mover/perciever and simply instead just be able to contemplate its long term goals thanks to having that as an option.
so does Sydney get her own collar thingy at any point like the rest of the team has?
Yep, we’ve seen it on a promo ad. It has H’s.
She has to join the team before she can get the collar, and she hasn’t joined…yet…spoiler.
Not really a spoiler that she joins the team, we learned that way back at the start of the comic, this has all been kind of a (how she became a member of the team).
Depends what your life span is. I do a lot of GURPS, and have a wild imagination.
To some races a wait of 2hundred million could be like you or I waiting untill next year.
DNA. I would like to know what that other 90% of stuff is, you know that stuff that has nothing to do with creating life…
Recent discoveries in DNA architecture has found that, yes, active genes in a human’s DNA only form about 15-20% of our chromosomes; they are used for the generation of proteins. In the remainder, about 5% is control genes; these do not create proteins, but are used to activate and deactivate other blocks of genes. About 1% appears to master architect genes that activate groups of control genes in specific sequences in specific timings to grow a human at various stages of development. Scientists are still working out what the other about 75% is. Mind you, I am not entirely sure of the ratios given, but I think they are close.
Much of the rest of the DNA is old sequences that we no longer use. In humans, one of these is believed to be involved in growing a tail. Almost all of us have a damaged control gene that prevents us from growing a tail during in-uteri development. In very few people, a mutation of the control gene restores its function and a small tail is grown on the fetus. Much of our “Junk DNA” appears to be old unused sequences of this nature.
We appear to need our junk DNA to protect us. Yes, some old ideas can be re-expressed, like fur over the entire body (happens now and then, and runs in families), but mostly it gives us a statistical protection from random mutation. When radiation or a mutating chemical gets at our DNA, a base-pair gets: 1) removed, 2) added, or 3) changed. Any of these changes will change the protein that is being generated by a gene. If this protein was needed for normal cell functions, then the cell with the mutation dies without the essential protein. If the protein is actually toxic then that cell dies as well. etc. Many different scenarios, most end with cell death; most of the others result in run-away cell reproduction: cancer.
However, much more of the cell’s DNA is inactive “junk DNA”, so the mutation is more likely to occur there rather than in the active genes. As no proteins are generated at the damaged site, there is no net effect on the cell in this case. Thus greater viability and lower rates of spontaneous cell death and cancer.
You misunderstand, but I was kind of expecting this, I don’t put down my thoughts as well as I would like.
Nova did a movie called Cracking th Code of Life. In it (the dna) they found “stuff” Yes I’m quoting Eric Lander. This stuff has nothing to do with us, it is a life form all it’s own. Has nothing to do with us. This stuff is over 90% of our DNA. Sleep well…………
I think the Zoanoids from Guyver had a simular deal, except for them it was imprint DNA, humans were the first stage of a weapon design by the Creators. This massive block of DNA just needed an extra code to synch up and form monstrous transformations.
There was something else, can’t remember what it was I saw that stated humans were descended from another race. This ancient and deadly species was defeated in a war that took all the other races in the Galaxy combined to defeat, however the only way to win was a new genetic weapon that sealed the powers of this race turning them into the soft weak squishy humans that exist now. This race having relied on powers and not technology was defeated and per some (we are better than them) decision by the alien council banished the last of them to Earth. I think super-human powers were explained as a mutation in humans overcoming the seal on the DNA.
I can’t remember if this was a comic book, anime, cartoon pilot, or something else. But I do remember the concept being good…but I don’t think the actual thing was anygood (the characters and setting i think bored me, just liked the opening backstory).
Can’t believe this has gone by most of the week and no one’s noticed (including me!): Syd’s holding the wrong orb. Previous two pages it’s been the yellow orb, this page it’s a blue one (in the same hand) with no sign of it being swapped out.
It has been noticed, and it has been explained, on the previous page of comments. Sydney no longer needs the Sensing orb to see X, as he(?) de-cloaked on the previous page. She does, however, need the Flight orb to shake his hand, given the foot or so difference in height and the table in the way.
(The swapping of orbs doesn’t actually look all that unexplained. In Page 105 panel 8 and P106p1, Sydney’s holding the yellow Sensing orb – in her right hand – to see and point out X; P106p3 he’s de-cloaking; by P106p4 the Sense orb is back to its orbit, p11 and p12 we see both hands empty; P107p1 the Flight orb is in her left hand, leaving the right free to shake hands.)
Bleh, yeah I see it all now. That’s what I get for trying to post something when I’m not fully awake.
So when she saw him previously he was XBusted.
Dabbler and Sydney’s conversation kind of reminds me of Samantha Carter picking apart “Signs” on SG-1. Good stuff.
That’s how my sister got her Blackberry when they were brand new, her boss had given out a number of them to the top execs and explained that everyone else would be getting them as the old contracts expired – a week later she somehow managed to drop her phone and quote “There was no way in Hell I was going to stick my hand in THAT water.” She was phoneless for about a day lol
the whole (he/she) thing for X-position seems like it might temp DaveB to do something weird, like make the person under that suit a shemale or a transvestite.
Maybe X is part plant and can reproduce asexually and doesn’t need genitalia and is therefore genderless?
Just to let my inner botonist shine through, but Lichens are the only asexual “plant” and their status as plants is debated (may be Protists). Plants have three possible genders with some having up to six variations on gender alignment. and that isn’t including the ones where “individual” is debated where you could have a fallen branch re-root and exist as a clone, or its roots meet up with and merge with the “parent” root system and operate as a single organism again (there are whole fields and mountain sides populated by a “genetic individual”).
I thought lichens were a symbiotic combination of fungus and algae?
is that what they are? Been awhile. My ecology class focused more on grasses and woody plants.
Maybe.
Assuming that advanced civilizations are limited to radio and other basic EM stuff for interstellar communications (something that has always seemed very dubious to this Trekker), maybe the ‘Water Hole’ is deliberately keot clear for a reason. Maybe it is the Galaxy-wide Distress Frequency range – used only when something B-A-D is happening someplace.
.
Oopsm goofed. This was intended to go on the earlier thread about space resources and SETI, My bad.
Hola senor, my name is Dabbler, and I am here to make money for my family back in the motherland. Could you buy some enchiladas or maybe a bag of oranges?
I….have to say it, with the strap of the tube around her neck like that, Sidney looks really good using it as a choker.
Depends on who she is choking, I’d have thought. ;)
Later in the timeline does Sydney get to see dabblers double stacked form?
I bet “Alien Trade Treaty Draft Negotiations” is an R-rated film.
Maybe M if Dabbler has anything to say about it.
???
M like an M-rated game? Those have less leeway than a rated R film. M is scenes of intense violance and brief nudity. AO games would be closer to an R-rated film (at least before they started to decrease the R rated film content to bring in a wider audience). Really we need a rating between PG-13 and R, like a PG-16 or something. Which would be where I’d put an M-rated game.
I meant AO, just got stuck in video games. Thanks for correcting me, and isn’t there a PG-17 rating already? Or did I imagine that?
“PG-13” but no “PG-17” anymore. I haven’t seen it used in awhile. Just have “R” which covers it now. Depends on the movie, the star and the vehicle.
There is a “NC-17” rating which strictly prohibits viewers under 18 because of adult content. It is almost never used.
I just read through the archives (via leftoversoup from 1/0) and I really love your comic. I love the way the characters interact with each other, and the way they lean into panels to add quips, and the way you avoid the heavily predictable humour. Thank you!
Thanks! It amuses me, I’m always pleased to see that others enjoy my humor too. I do have to work a little to avoid the predictable humor though, sometimes the initial thing that makes me chuckle is the obvious joke.
This comic is great so far! always making me laugh Sydney is pretty funny all her own as well. Plus it’s nice to see a Zephan somewhere else!
Thanks! I don’t recall the origin of his name now. I think I misheard someone else’s name in a show and it evolved from there.
Why did humans conquer the galaxy? Because it was there. There have been many novels depicting humanity as the worst thing that could happen. Isaac Asimov wrote a short story where all other galactic races tended to become calmer in large groups and were really surprised to find out humans became more aggressive when grouped together under stressful conditions. Larry Nivens’s Kzinti were defeated by the physically inferior and peaceful humans because we could conceive of using the plasma drive of a starship, or its high powered communications laser as weapons and it turned out our killer instincts were buried under a very thin veneer of civility.
A highly advanced race would not design weapons specifically, they don’t need to. The devices they create for other means could double as weapons. And they would be that powerful.
Imagine a race so powerful it could manipulate stars to create Gamma Ray Bursts to eliminate bothersome species up to 6,000 light years away made to order.
After rereading everything and then reading the wereworld comic, i can understand why the military deemed dabbler a potential threat, needing to have an handler assigned to her :) (and if dabbler’s story in wereworld is cannon here too, i guess it tells a rather darker story on some of her enhancement’s origin :)
I thought succubi WERE demons. That’s how I read of them: they’re female demons that use their abilities to seduce men and drain them of their souls while they’re sleeping. Their male counterparts are called “incubi”.
A demon that comes from somewhere other than Earth is technically an alien.
I ran across that when watching “Buffy” and especially “Angel.” They were essentially aliens, called “demons” by humans.
*updates official threats compendium (ongoing emergency edition V43-8+1)*
Dabber: Enhanced hearing.