Grrl Power #1075 – Respect my personal space!
Shén wèi (according to google translate) means “divine guardian” or really “divine guard” because “divine guardian” actually translates to “Shénshèng shǒuhù zhě” which isn’t nearly as pithy sounding. I don’t know anything about Chinese, but it seems weird that changing “guard” to “guardian” so radically changes the translation. Maybe google thought I meant “a person in charge of a minor’s welfare” and not “an actual guard (but ‘guardian’ sounds cooler so let’s say that instead.)”
Not sure what else to say about this page, other than if you’re a general purpose adventurer, an AOE “fuck off” attack is critical. Being the best swordsman doesn’t help with swarms of bees or clouds of acid. If you don’t have a “Respect my Personal Space” move, you’re gonna get fucked one day. Telekinesis is one of those overly powerful powers, almost like super speed, but with TK it depends heavily on the rules of the ability. A lot of TKers can’t lift themselves, or will often struggle with lifting heavy objects or coordinating multiple things at a time. But if you have the Industrial Strength version of the power, then you’ve got pushing, pulling, lifting, flying, force fields, control over air pressure, “fuck off” blasts, kinetic blasts, dancing swords, etc. You’d never need a toolbox in your trunk because you can just make a screwdriver that matches any screw no matter how insane the manufacturer designs them. You’d never need a hammer, drill, a belt knife. Heck, you could just skin and field dress a deer (or a human) at 50 paces if you had enough precision and sharp edges in your TK.
The August Vote Incentive is up!
I’m a big fan of John Byrne’s run on “The Sensational She Hulk” and the imminent show looks very Sensational influenced. Therefore, I was inspired to draw some buff (pun intended) She Hulk, and threw in Red She Hulk for fun. Also, a wild Sydney for scale. Enjoy them posing in various outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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.
Well it looks like the sword did lop off a pinky tip, but X’s little sleepy time injector didn’t penetrate MuttonChop’s TK force field.
Actually X-Attack did penetrate. When we see him, he is just pulling back.
However, the impact might still be severely delayed.
Looks to me like it did penetrate (the higlighted veins on neck, with unnatural color). It just didn’t have immediate effect, so the TK dude managed to fire off his blast while disoriented/loosing consciousness. We’ll see on thursday.
If the TK dude is doing it right he just closed off that blood vessel for a moment, fired his aoe, and his next move will be to reverse the flow and push the sleepy time back out the holes it entered. If the TK dude isn’t able to use them internally then he’s not a very good TK dude.
You’re assuming he has that level of knowledge in regards to human anatomy. Would you know which vein to close off without giving yourself a stroke?
The veins in the neck are symmetrically redundant, he can close off everything on one side and the blood will circulate through the other side.
Increased stress on the system around the brain is Very Bad, and I am speaking from personal experience.
That move won’t (probably) kill him, but it is going to do bad things to his brain & everything else above the neck.
See my post below.
Are you confident enough in this statement to do it to yourself if you had telekinesis?
And more importantly, are you confident enough in this statement to do it to yourself if you had telekinesis and were actively raiding a government super-facility?
I’ve discussed that redundancy specifically with some surgeons and a physiology professor (family friend) who specialized in neurology and brain surgery, in relation to a family member’s ECMO procedure several years ago. “The right carotid artery and internal jugular vein are commonly sacrificed during ECMO cannulation”. As in, those major vessels are permanently sealed off after the treatment is completed. It’s obviously not ideal or risk-free, but it’s routine when needed (which granted is in emergency situations) and the high majority of patients experience few or no side effects.
Definitely not something I’d do for funsies, but as a hypothetical TK with fine-grained internal control – yes, I’d try it for a couple seconds rather than submit. And the villain here is clearly willing to take some risks with mortality, given he’s attacking Archon in person.
If you choke out the Jugular Vein, you die
Sorry but if that is the case almost every pro wrestler would of died. A “sleeper hold” does cut off the blood flow but only for a short time. I was teaching my son it and my god-daughter volunteered to be the subject. It worked a bit too well (i think she was overplaying it lol) but I managed to hold her up until she woke up. I was trained in martial arts many years ago and while age and injury prevents me from using it I can still teach.
That would be an Aorta.
No. The aorta goes from the chest (the left ventricle of the heart) down to the abdomen then splits into two smaller arteries, it does not go up to the brain via the neck at all.
Looked this up to make sure I was right before posting this.
I think she (Lady Sasha) means that if you choke out the jugular vein -for an extended period of time- THEN you die. After a few seconds you pass out as oxygen is dreprived from the brain. It only takes a few seconds (about 5-10 seconds). A few more and there can be brain damage (about a minute or so), and after 4-5 minutes you do, in fact, die. The longest the brain can go without oxygen is a little less than 6 minutes, and even if you recover in the 4-6 minute period you will have SEVERE brain damage. Less (but over a minute or so) can be different levels of lesser brain damage.
Dont take pro wrestling as scientifically accurate. :)
A person passes out far faster than that as you probably saw with your god-daughter. :) But it wouldnt look as cool for the audience if it happened in 5-10 seconds without an extended struggle. They arent actually having their jugular choked out in those wrestling matches where it goes on for minutes.
Yep, all of this. Also, note that the actual choke hold closes off both jugular veins simultaneously; the villain here only needs to close off one, the other jugular would still be fully functioning.
You… do realise ninety percent of the moves are fake, right?
Pay attention next time, a lot of the time the arm isn’t even touching the neck
True it’s fake… but sleeper holds and choke holds are actually real things. They just work a lot faster than in wrestling since wrestling is fake, and a move that knocks out the other person in 5-10 seconds and can cause brain damage or death if done longer would not be good for vince mcmahon’s wallet or his legal liability. :)
Yes I know I was making a point. First time I seen a wrestler “shake it off” I was rolling with laughter. It takes serious training to pull off a “sleeper” hold you have to know where and how long or you risk them breaking free, killing them, or leaving them brain dead.
If he can use TK internally like that, then he’s profoundly stupid for walking around carrying a sword or firing big blasts of TK when he should just be ripping people’s brainstems in half for one ten-thousandth the amount of energy it would take to pick them up and hurl them into a wall. Having a restriction against internal TK on things you can’t see isn’t “not very good” it’s literally mandatory to not have the power be “Line of Sight instadeath on anything that can be critically hit.”
A one-ounce TK with sufficiently fine control is an untraceable assassin.
There was a whole episode of Babylon 5 that addressed this.
…
Tangent: Alfred Bester was, arguably the best written character in that entire franchise, and Walter Koenig delivered him so perfectly that I haven’t been able to picture him as Chekhov since the 90’s. Which is interesting when I see him in various Star Trek productions…because now I immediately start trying to map out what the Psi Corps is doing to Starfleet & the Federation.
I really did love Babylon 5. It’s a shame that Crusade was so bad though.
I did love the made for TV movies though. If they wanted to make a spinoff show, they should have made one based on Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers, instead of going so heavily based on the Technomages.
Plus G’Kar would have been in it :)
Then we could have gotten more great lines like this:
Sindell : One of the Anla-Shok has acted inappropriately and must be punished, perhaps even expelled.
G’Kar : What was his crime?
Sindell : Staying alive!
G’Kar : Curious. Until now, I hadn’t known it was a crime.
AND
G’Kar : Minister Kafta, this ship is being held together by little pieces of wire and good intentions. If we land in this condition, assuming we do not have an unpleasant encounter with the ground on the way down, I doubt very much they could take off again. They would be trapped with us, and the ship looking for them would find it, find them, find us, find you, a brilliant cascade of cause and effect. Isn’t the universe an amazing place? I wouldn’t live anywhere else.
AND
(my favorite one)
G’Kar: “We live for the one, we die for the one. Funny how you put so much emphasis on the latter half of that creed and so little on the former. Is it not just as noble to LIVE for the one?”
G’Kar: “W
I’ve never seen “Babylon 5”, either the original series or the remake. But that dialogue about staying alive reminds me eerily of a “Deep Space Nine” episode in which a bloodsport had the prey being glum because they were being brought back alive from the hunt. I thought that was so bizarre: hunted prey actually WANTING to be killed rather than survive.
iirc, the questing beast was bred and raised for the purpose. But the high duration of the hunt was also a matter of pride.
You should definitely watch Babylon 5. It’s pretty unique and a great watch. They designed it to have a definite beginning, middle, and end, for 5 years before the first season even started, rather than serializing it.
This design was both its weakness, and its strength…as is often the case.
Also used in the last section of the Eragon books. In that universe magic manipulation at a distance requires exponentially more effort, so the main character learns to kill enemy soldiers at distance by pinching off key blood vessels in the brain, rather than try to swing their swords or throw rocks.
I like the belgariad’s system for magic (the will and the word), it takes the same amount out of you to do something with magic as it does to just do it normally. the requirements are you need a will of sufficient strength, and you need a word to give shape to your will however you have to be careful with your words because once you say something there is no I didn’t mean it, and if you say something impossible well you are committed, one of the series’s big villains accidentally suicides because in a moment of panic during a huge fight he says ‘be not’ (the mother of the gods aka the universe doesn’t allow for matter no matter how big or small to be unexisted so his will is rebounded and he implodes)
Oh yes, Walter “took the black” and “wore the black” so well in B5, he totally koeniged that role.
In ST he always seemed to end up like a gun on the wall that never got used, a waste of a possibility.
The reason for the sword is obvious, especially for anyone who’s played a Shadowrun game. “A good mage can frag you with a manabolt. A GREAT mage can kill you with a pistol, so the enemy doesn’t know who’s a mage or not.”
“Lemme show you a trick Mom showed me when you weren’t around…”
Loved that scene. Wished he had been like that the whole time instead of such a putz.
****
“Very bad. Not good.”
****
“Because they have guns and we have only love.”
I love that quote. Where is it from?
Wizards
It’s hard to say with certainty what those blue radial lines are though – it’s possible that it is the injection juice being deflected?
Should’ve used sleeping gas in his sneak attack. I doubt a TK shield would stop that, what with not wanting it to block out air even if it could.
Idk man, enough precision in tk and you could decide that only harmless photons, oxygen, and carbon dioxide can pass through.
But…. Could a person with TK really TK something they cant even visually see?
I think it did but he’s holding it in place with his TK. At the rate he’s expending his power either he’ll cut and run or get tired and pass out anyway. If he tried to choke a animated statue then he doesn’t have the awareness enough to nit-pick his way threw the air he breathes much less block “sleeping gas”.
“You’d never need a toolbox in your trunk because you can just make a screwdriver that matches any screw no matter how insane the manufacturer designs them.”
No, you’d never need a toolbox because you can TK the screw without needing a screwdriver.
Yeah, this commentary started drifting away from TK into Field Manipulation. TK isn’t what Green Lantern uses.
If this was any more pedantic, you’d need a treadmill.
Ba Dum Tish
You would, also, never need any sharp things, as you could make a TK shield that is monomolecular, and could cut through, almost, anything.
and for what it won’t cut, you always have sarcasm.
:)
They’re lucky that these dopes practically tick off the ‘stupid villain tropes’ one by one. They should have packed up and left when things started to go south, now at least two of them look they’re going to be captured
It have gone south for them, all the minions that are defeated are just a distraction to get him where ever he is going
Is it, though?
1. Goon Squad’s goon attacks were meant to fail, they’re a distraction, so failure is a success.
2. The assault on the reliquary (AKA ZZ’s office) has encountered some resistance (they don’t really know about X and Chimyriad yet), but nothing they weren’t prepared for.
3. Betcha this guy still has a surprise or two up his sleeves.
You can always just use Google Translate in the opposite direction. In this case it tells us that 卫 (wèi) means the *verb* “guard“, as in “protect” and not “protector”. So, yeah, I don’t speak Chinese but you probably got that one wrong.
This is very important.
…no, really. I mean it.
Ouch. An immaculate example of Poes Law 2: Electric Boogaloo. Kudos
Was that him injecting himself, or was that one of our invisible supes?
You can see X standing behind the telekinetic in panel 5. That is the one administering the knock-out juice. Now the question is whether the injection got through the cowl.
I am assuming the psssht sound was the knockout stuff being actuslly injected into the neck, which is why he muttonchop man yelled ‘Ah!’
As a pneumatic injector, it’s possible that the cowl blocked the injection, turning it into a non-penetrating blow. That would be consistent with the artwork.
Though, frankly, actual pneumatic injectors don’t have that kind of umph. I guess this one is weaponized?
I a diabetic and I use Truelicity, it’s an auto-injector that’s spring loaded the button just releases the spring driving the needle and plunger down. And it does make a faint hissing sound when the drug is injected. X is just using an industrial level injector to deliver a massive dose as fast as possible. Trust me, mine sting so that thing will SMART! lol When he just used it on the Teds he dropped the spent syringe and it did have a needle.
This is consistent with Harem using syringes to instantly drop attackers during the restaurant battle, including a speedster with “a redonk metabolism”.
I took the bulging vein/artery to mean it successfully dumped its contents.
But I guess we wait and see.
Me too. Also him yelling Ah! And the pssht onomatopoeia sound effect of a syringe being injected into someone.
I think that is the shapeshifter. The actual X is presumably the one who left the empty crater on the wall.
Naa, that looks more like the explosive effect of his “fuck-off” move if it was an invisible X it would of been more human shaped. Plus in both frames X is outlined in blue like he’s just let off his invisibility cloak.
Background of Panel 5, that’s X’s mask. Suggests they tried to inject him, but the needle didn’t penetrate?
I am assuming it penetrated his neck because of the injection sound effect in panel 4 (pssht) and muttonchop man yelling ‘Ah!’ Which us something that might hapoen if someone suddenly jabs you in the neck with a syringe.
Looking closer, I’m pretty sure the Boss…I, uh, I mean X *cough* got him. It appears that the needles drove the cowl up against his neck, and the sudden, localized swelling may well indicate the sudden injection of a large amount of liquid mass.
If we’re lucky, Darth Insipidus here will hit the floor momentarily.
*peers at you suspiciously after saying ‘the Boss’*
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…… :)
^_^’
…^_^’’’’’’’’’’’’
*peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeers*
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-408-oranges-golds-and-purples/comment-page-5/
See panel 4. That is how much I am hmmmm’ing right now.
CASE pander.suspicion>0
X==pander.suspicion
X * n ^(n+1)
OUT sweardrops=X
*suddenly has flashbacks to debugging her own code 20 years ago and starts gnawing the tablet*
I originally quit a CS program because the languages and tooling were so painful. Came back to it a decade ago and it’s a whole new world, I can focus on solving problems not tracking pointers.
Highly recommend VS Code and .NET for anyone wanting to try modern programming instead of the self-flagellation of the traditional stuff.
I have a new favorite moniker for this character.
You misspelled “Darth Muttonchop”
If you look carefully, you can see X in the panel the cowled dude, so if X wasn’t trying to inject him at that moment, he was about to do SOMETHING.
Psst, it should be “affect”
Yes. Thank you. You can effect change, but generally speaking affect is the verb and effect is the noun. (One can have an affect, as in a false accent or posture, but that’s a homonym. English is a confusing ad hoc mess.)
English is simultaneously a magnificent & horrifying chimera.
Brythonic & Germanic roots, repeatedly cross pollinated with Latin & Gaelic, regularly spliced with branches of Danish & Frankish, then essentially CRISPR’ed with French, and regularly dosed with Greek during the Renaissance, and finally, consuming and integrating words from around the globe during the era of the British Empire.
It is a beast that should not be able to exist, yet continues to spread and consume.
Final Act Tetsuo, from Akira.
…but that’s also what makes it so damn effective.p as a communication tool. Most languages really only have two or three ways to communicate a concept, and can have difficulty constructing novel concepts. Their more rigid structures make them easier to learn, certainly, and often better at organizing thoughts & ideas, and _many_ languages surpass English in nuance and brevity. But no language can beat English for expressiveness, novelty, and flexibility.
“English doesn’t borrow from other languages, it follows them into dark alleys, hits them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar.”
According to Pratchett,
Omg so many hilariously cool quotes from people this strip!!!
this is why puns are so fun. where there are many ways to pun. some are dearly bought, others barely tolerated. Puns are good actually. especially with garlic butter sauce.
and bird puns are often just a tern of phrase
Beat me to it.
*peers* so many ninja hit squads, so little time.
That’s how you deal with the ninja hit squads. Birds.
Specifically Ducks Doves Ospreys & Sparrows, all as fast as possible.
Ninja resources get overwhelmed by the demand for attention, overheat, and shut down.
*waits patiently for Pander to see it*
LOL!
I cannot officially approve this as a spearfishing attack shutdown the company I work for for almost a month. even though I get regular phishing ‘tests’ that are extraordinarily dirty pool! (last one purported to be from my BOSS!)
English is, I would say, the archetypal contextual language.
Take for example this rhyme:
The boy stood on the burning deck,
His pocket full of crackers.
One fell down between his legs
and blew off both his knackers.
To understand the rhyme you must decipher the context of a number of words in it, deck, crackers and knackers.
Deck is easy enough, used as a noun it is a boat deck, verandah, something to stand upon; not as in its verb form, to be laid out by a blow.
Knackers could be gonads or abattoir workers, cant tell exactly which, but by context it is probably gonads. Dont quote me on that.
Now crackers is interesting. Could be white guys, savoury biscuits or explosive devices. Seeing as they blew off his “knackers”, whatever they are, then the crackers are probably the explosive devices.
But then again perhaps the boy had some whites in his pocket and some abattoir workers in his pants. One of the white guys slipped down his pant leg and performed acts upon the abattoir workers.
Whichever it is, when your parrot says “Polly wanna a cracker” DO NOT give it a lit explosive device.
You forgot… deck of cards :)
Included in something to stand upon (blackjack)
I was thinking there is such a thing as a deck of firecrackers.
TIL Brythonic … to use when you could say Celtic but want everyone to have to google something.
One branch thereof.
Brythonic, as opposed to Goedelic.
I do generally try to be precise, and accurate, in my deployment of vernacular.
Last time I played a telekinetic, he was very much the industrial-strength version… able to lift a supertanker, but not great at the finesse side of things. Though that might have been as much about inclination as ability… Maxima definitely wouldn’t approve of his attitude towards collateral damage…
The Great and Mighty Turtle, if you get the reference.
One of my favorite “power stunts” I saw with TK was that player wanted to create a cloud of “TK Particles”. Invisible, and not particularly strong, you could push through them with no, discernable, effort. But he would be aware when something disturbed them, so he could detect invisible creatures trying to sneak up to him, as long as they weren’t intangible as well.
Am I over-thinking it or did the villain just lose a couple tips of his fingers?
One finger, and the glove on top of it.
One tip. Pinky tip.
at least he won’t be pinky swearing anytime soon….. though he is probably swearing right now. Sydney, give him some tips.
He’s got TK, not VE. Also VE isn’t a superpower until you refine it to Sydney’s level…
One tip: don’t attack Archon HQ, ever!
Even if it is just the one finger tip is is going to hurt like crazy. It’s also going to bleed a lot and sling blood every time he moves his hand. Even if TK boy can use his power to staunch the bleeding it going be a distraction that is out of proportion to the actual damage done.
To say nothing of the fact that he seems to be using his TK to isolate the flow of blood in his neck, in order to stop that Sleepytime Special. It won’t take long for that to start impairing him almost as much as being drugged, as messing with the flow of blood around the brain is Very Bad, even without taking oxygen fluctuations into account. Messing around with blood pressure around the brain & the various nerve groups around the skull can easily create auditory & visual failures & misfires, and induce intense vertigo.
That last one, I’m speaking from experience. A less-than-one-millimeter shift in an artery in my skull put enough pressure on a nerve bundle in my inner ear to give me crippling vertigo almost daily, for years. Like, fall down, throw up, life-is-a-teacup-ride-attached-to-a-tilt-o-whirl-please-goddess-take-me-now-mommy-make-it-stop-I-want-to-die vertigo. Vomiting until there wasn’t even any bile left, but let’s just keep trying anyway and pull all the abdominal muscles.
…and given this guy’s proximity to “thank you for fixing me Daddy,” I feel he absolutely deserves that.
Can confirm this bleeds profusely, though it depends a lot on if it was into the bone or just flesh. I lost the very end of a fingertip and it took months to heal, and years to stop being sensitive. Didn’t actually hurt that much at the time, but dull throbbed for weeks.
If our heroes are unlucky this guy will walk out of the building in same style as Lucy did in beginning of Elfen Lied…
Panel 5.
It looks like X from when Sydney displayed her ability to see the unseen.
Zeph probably should not announce to the bad guy that his powers are ineffective against the guardian. It just is a reminder to attack zephan directly instead.
Never give the enemy advice when they are making a mistake.
Comicbook rule however basically means that it’s either expository narrative boxes, or the characters calling out explanations for their attacks/powers, especially when one contradicts another one we just saw, even more so when the effects of one or more of them are invisible to begin with.
Does it fly in the face of common sense to talk $%^& and advise your adversary in actual life-or-death seeming combat? Yes, yes it does. Does it look better than a longwinded omnipotent narration though? Yes, yes it does.
Otoh, demoralizing an opponent can be a great way to end a fight quickly.
Especially if said opponent is essentially a bully, who is only attacking in the first place because they’re convinced they have overwhelming strength & you can’t resistance or harm them.
Yes I realize the ‘Rule of Cool’ is probably why he said it (all good and all that), but just was pointing it out since the webcomic does tend to deconstruct and point out a lot of comic book tropes like what Zephan did. :)
I think that maybe that’s what really gives comic books a reputation as “juvenile” or “childish”, more than the style or content: when they talk down to their audience. You don’t have to spell everything out. Let the audience figure it out themselves, or allow it to be ambiguous and let them debate about it! I’m guessing that’s what separates “high art” and “low art” in people’s minds.
From what I see, Mutton-Chops indeed did loose at least one finger tip and X got him with the sleepy-time injection (see his veins, the injection sound and him halfway gone down in the last panel). The question is, if he can actually be put down that way.
Looks like they are after a MacGuffin that ArcLight has. New Plot Line! :)
Or they are here for ZZ himself.
That’s my theory as well – the Top man rocks.
Thats a really good theory considering he is head of intelligence for ARCHON. Didnt even consider that one.
Thought he was Head of Magics…
He is the head of Arc-Light, the intelligence section of ARCHON.
It is also specifically stated on comic 80, last panel, that Zephan is the head of the Intelligence Department. And Gwen is in Arc-Light as well. I think Leon is as well, judging from their placement and duties during the restaurant fight.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-80-she-used-this-spell-to-scan-a-hotdog-once-once/
The thing about telekinesis is how it works and on what level is completely up to the writer. The most obvious are about just moving and throwing things but there are many other versions. Lot’s of stories utilize tactile telekinesis where the telekinesis essentially mimics super strength but also overcomes some of the limits physics imposes on super strength like the weight of the object being lifted crushing the lifter who is not invulnerable or the weight of the object causing the object to break apart when lifted and put under stressors it is not intended for (the “telekinetic field” supports it an holds it together or keeps the weight off the lifter).
Two of my favorite examples of telekinesis are in Drew Hayes Super Powereds novels and Robert Heinlein’s short story Project Nightmare.
In Super Powereds one category of super power is called Advanced Mind, basically telepathy and telekinesis combined. One of the main characters is the strongest telekinetic seen in years and can lift and throw more than anyone else, she has the strength to do this while maintaining a telekinetic shield. The advanced mind teacher is strong as well, not that strong but she calls herself Emerald Hydra because she can manipulate so many objects at once. Another of the characters doesn’t have nearly the strength those two have but has exquisite fine control because rather than think of himself as an advanced mind he is a fan of Star Wars and thinks of himself as a Jedi reaching out to the force. He cam move many objects at the same time but also subtly press on nerve endings or blood vessels to paralyze people or knock them out.
In Project Nightmare it’s not about moving big objects and incredibly breathtaking telekinetic fights, its about moving really small things. Like atoms. The telekinetics in that story can speed of or shut down atomic level reactions and can prevent nuclear bombs from exploding or likely trigger them. Nightmare indeed.
My favorite telekinetic was “Gill the Arm”, in Larry Niven’s fiction. Gil lost an arm in an accident, and developed a telekinetic phantom limb replacement, which he kept after the arm was replaced. Not terribly strong, he was straining to lift a cigarette, and the reach was the same as a real arm, but with a tricky bonus: He could reach through a video display to the person on the other side of the camera, or through solid objects; He could give you a heart attack by pinching your heart just right, for instance, or feel around inside a closed box.
I was thinking of that story, but couldn’t remember the name or author, so thanks.
The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton.
ARM was also the name of the organization, iirc.
Alex is NOT an advanced mind, dammit! lol
He could also manipulate energy, and in one scene he defeats a super very similar to what Stefan is using here
Hooo boy, been a LOOOONG time since I studied Chinese…
But I am pretty sure that Shén wèi is essentially to guard ones spirit.
While Shénshèng shǒuhù zhě essentially means a spirit guardian.
Any native Chinese speakers feel free to correct me.
“Being the best swordsman doesn’t help with swarms of bees…”
Pish and tosh. You’re not “the best swordsman” if that’s actually the case. A few thousand one-hit-kill targets like that should barely raise a sweat for a properly badass fantasy/anime/supers blade saint. Hell, even Remo Williams could probably manage it unarmed.
Now, if you tell me you have to kill one specific bee in the swarm without harming any of the rest, or that you have to take them all out with only non-lethal strikes, then we’re talking a bit of a challenge. :)
At that point you’re into Ranma 1/2 territory; There actually was a story where he did training against a swarm of wasps, and eventually was limiting himself to non-lethal strikes against them to avoid running out of wasps.
As Emma Mode would say, “No Capes!!”, but apparently a well-designed cowl can provide some needed (needled?) protection.
I think the needles made it through.
Umm, Edna possibly? But yeah, cowls are cool, Altair said so.
Silly spook…. should be using a BFG like a 50 Cal Desert Eagle.
Goose!
Affect vs Effect usage:
* to Affect — to influence/alter something that already exists
* to Effect — to create a new effect on something
Woah, Dave! Have you read Hinamatsuri or There Was No Secret Evil-Fighting Organization (srsly?!), So I Made One MYSELF! ?
Anyone else notice that the invisible person also got slammed? I hope they’re okay.
Using “effect” in this manner means “to cause”. Perhaps you meant “affect” as in “to alter”?
Telekinesis is fun. Re: tool usage, in the GURPS tprpg, that’s an advantage telekinesis gives you by default. Don’t suffer from the lack of the correct tools when attempting some kind of physical challenge that would normally require them, and you even get a bonus. Things like picking a lock or disassembling a watch which normally require all kinds of specialty tools are just things you can… do.
Fairly pricey point-wise, of course, especially if you want it to actually be combat viable.
If ones’ TK ability had feedback could it be extended as a low level field for a proximity sense. It would make it very hard to sneak up on a TK user.
‘Telekinesis’ actually has MANY subdivisions. Your guy here is showing multiples.
Telekinesis is the ability to manipulate solid objects, like having an invisible hand moving stuff around. Just that is pretty powerful, and he’s showing super-strength at it.
Launching stuff at velocity is ballistokinesis, ie. TK Bullets.
TK force bolts is psychokinesis.
Force fields are a completely separate ability, because you are making ‘nothingness’ rigid against a hostile effect, i.e. you are creating a layer of force without mass or substance.
Being able to TK water or gases or fire is hydrokinesis, aerokinesis, and pyrokinesis, respectively. Electrokinesis for lightning on top of it. Gravitokinesis, magnetokinesis, etc… energy control and TK are very different things.
Tactile TK is TK with no range but touch, but also much stronger for it.
Brute force, fine control, and multiple objects also tend to be very separate powers, as are surface penetration, range, area of effect, and so forth.
TK force fields are kind of a cop-out. IN reality, a Telekinetic should be manipulating something solid around him for a defense, not just making a force field out of nothing, unless it’s a seperate power.
IF you look at Susan Storm of the FF as an example, she’s actually an advanced aerokinetic. She has the ability to harden air and manipulate it. Her force fields are basically permeable to anything the air will let through (light and sound, for example). That also keeps with the four elements theme of the FF.
If Susan Storm is an air bender, does that mean she has to shave her head?
More an air compressor. She probably is required to grow it out.
Quick, someone feed him Sydney’s leftovers. He’ll surrender for a glass of milk and a roll of Tums!
no, couple spoonful’s of her otherworldly takeout. even if he escapes we will find him whimpering in a corner later when the crap happens.
Cowlguy, Whimpering: Like the Embers…of a fire…
You can see the injector, pushing the “cape, (cowl?), onto his neck, then there is a pink mist, between the cape and his neck.
So is For Doom The Bell Tolls Part II here going to collapse from the injection or are we not done yet?
Mutton-Chops, his name is Mutton-Chops
And wouldn’t that be For-Whom-The-Death-Tolls II? It’s a phrasic portmanteau, remember? (I’ll just leave myself out now…)
ooo lost the tip of his finger. that smarts.
Speaking from my own experience (read: injuries while cleaning kitchen knives), fingertip injuries hurt like hell and bleed like a stuck pig even if they’re shallow. Hopefully he needs to be able to concentrate to use his powers effectively, and doesn’t have much practice against opponents with no incentive to pull their punches.
I have found those, to be most annoying!
*Affect, not effect. “Effect” needs to be corrected in the speech bubble and the subcomment to “affect.” It’s a fairly common mistake that many people make, but thankfully it can be relearned & fixed.
Affect = verb
Effect = noun
(These two things cannot be exchanged. You cannot use a noun in place of a verb… Or to put it another way: Use cannot you a use in use of a use.)
Correct usage:
The effect of the drug will affect his system, making him sleepy.^
One of the easiest ways to double-check you’re using the correct word, affect vs effect, is to use a thesaurus to substitute in other words.
Alternative wording:
The results of the drug will interrupt his system, making him sleepy.
Of course, the only way to check is to swap out affect & effect…but you need to use the alternative vocabulary to make it clear. If you try it the wrong way around, it *sounds* wrong by the time you’re done:
The interrupt of the drug will results his system, making him sleepy.
Affect = to change, an action undertaken to make said change.
Effect = the results of the change, the intended outcome
I think of it as Affect = chAnge, so I remember the A at the start, while Effect = rEsults of whatever is intended, so I remember the E.
This is one of those subtle variations that a lot of people either never learned in school, or forgot long ago (as life has a tendency to get in the way and occupy one’s attention–life affects the memory, and the effect is to forget affect vs effect).
Another common one is assure vs ensure vs insure. Here’s an easy sentence to remember that will help you separate them out:
Correct wording:
I assure you that I will ensure that someone will insure your car before your big road trip.
Correct wording explained with alternatives / synonyms in parentheses:
I assure you (as in reassure, literally it’s right there in the replacement word so you shouldn’t have to forget its usage) that I will ensure (guarantee, see that it is carried out) that someone will insure (provide insurance, monetary coverage in case stuff goes bad) your car before your big road trip.
if you mix that sentence up, it stops making sense:
I insure (buy insurance) you that I will assure (reassurance) that someone will ensure (guarantee) your car before your big road trip.
So just try to remember that assure = reassure (which is to assure a second time or more). Insure = insurance, the purchasing of a service by a guarantor company that will provide monetary assistance in case something goes wrong and you didn’t do it to yourself. Ensure = doesn’t have a second version of the word that means more or less the same thing, so just memorize it as “guarantee” “see that it will be done” “oversee” “demand it gets followed through, even if I have to go all Karen or something (but hopefully not, because that usually backfires)”.
…
^Presuming the drug in the syringe that X just injected is indeed some sort of soporific or anesthetic, of course, as well as presuming the pronouns are he/him for swooshy-cape guy.
I always remembered it as,
Affect, when they like you.
Effect, when they’re hitting you with their purse.
But that’s just a theory … an English theory.
Not a promising start for the big bad of this arc. Unless he’s the Death Toll instead, then yeah, par for the course.
I’m fair certain he isn’t the BBG, or even a genuinely significant lieutenant.
From the lore I’d say most supers have at most 3 abilities even Max has a limited number just hers is off the charts and Sydney is limited (currently) by the number of hands she has. Yes, Dabs has more than Sydney but she’s limited by her mana reserves and planning. Every super, villain or hero, has a limitation. It’s kind of a unwritten law in comics no one can be so OP that they can’t be beat. The trick is figuring it out, Sydney has proven that at least twice in this universe. Superman it’s kryptonite, Mr. Universe it was his humanity, Batman is his reliance on his tech, and so on.
Apropos of nothing, I just ran across this surprisingly long list of federal organizations with armed agents acting domestically. Thought of the debates here and of course this page from the original press conference.
why tell him why his power is not working? well this might be naptime for everyone in the room
Not words I learned when I was studying chinese back oh god over a decade ago, but I would assume divine guard would translate in a manner similar to a shouted anime maneuver or the protection of the heavens sorta way, while divine guardian would actually be like the spirit soldier thing you got there, a soldier of the heavenly bureaucracy and emperor of the celestial heavens.
I’m disappointed. The baddies failed so miserably. There are no stakes. Even when the big heroes are gone, villains are all push-overs. It’s killing my interest.
If you were expecting high-stakes super battles, I think you’ve come to the wrong place.
It’s basic writing 101 – There have to be some kind of stakes. Either interpersonal, societal, physical, etc. There needs to be some kind of struggle. Even in a comedy. When you do include a combat event, like an invasion of a base at the same time as a major villain battle elsewhere, you need some kind of danger or stakes otherwise all you’ve written is filler.
Yes, every combat scene in this webic (even if it lasts nine months) is filler
And yet people enjoy the comic for what it is. I’ve yet to see a writing rule that wasn’t made to be broken. The assumption that all creative works should engender a limited set of emotional responses, that all people have similar preferences… it doesn’t bear out, given the variety of successful creative work in the world.
There are stakes, you just don’t know exactly what they are. Everyone else has been shown to be fodder. We don’t know why Darth Muttonchops is here, but he’s the minibigbad, as much as we get one. In a moment, we get to see what these 14-16 pages were really about.
Meanwhile, we got to see a bunch of characters have their individual moments in the sun.
They may still just be the pawns.
To quote magneto…
“In war, as in chess, you sacrifice the pawns first.”
The hard part, is figuring out if you are the pawn, if so, get the fuck out of there asap!!
And ditch any maroon tops you have
Oddly enough, despite that quote, Magneto did know how to play chess.
You lose a couple of pawns first, but they aren’t generally sacrificed. Most sacrifices include a fast moving piece.
You have no idea what their actual objective is yet.
Yes, we’ve speculated about Top’s office, and even the man himself, but the truth is, we. Don’t. Know.
Sit the fuck down, stick a beer in your mouth, and enjoy the ride.
Or, don’t, if you prefer, but in any case have the courtesy to respect the rest of the audience and shit in your own Cheerios, instead of ours.
The fact that “shén wèi” is more of an action rather than referring to a person happens to also explain what’s going on with why “shénshèngshohùzhě” comes out as such a long translation for “divine guardian”. Because that’s the translate function being overly precise to avoid the ambiguity between a verb and a noun.
Picking that apart, “shen” would be read on its own, without any other context, as a noun meaning “god”. So Google Translate is giving “shensheng” to make it clear it’s “divine” or “heavenly”, as a quality, rather than a… an actual deity or something. Similarly, “shohu” is the action of guarding, and “zhe” is a person in charge of something, so… the whole string is being rendered very precisely as, let’s say, “someone that’s guarding who has heavenly qualities”.
It’s not wrong, it’s just that Google Translate is being too correct, precisely so it avoids the misunderstanding that “shén wèi” gives. Personally, I figure something like “神卫兵” would be a happy middle ground (“shénwèibīng”). Bīng means “soldier”, wèibīng would be “guard” in a martial and military sense.
I posted a longer reply on this, but I think the website form ate it. Oh well. Since it seems that’s lost… real quick, as others are saying, “shén wèi” gives no indication that there’s a person involved. And that’s the reason why Google Translate generated that long “shénshèngshohùzhě” line, it was being extremely precise in qualifying “divine” as a adjective… making it clear that the phrase is saying “godly” rather than just “god”, and that we’re talking about a “person who’s guarding”. That’s what all the supposedly extra words are. The longer one works out to “godly person who’s protecting”, the shorter one is just “god protect”. Personally I’d suggest something like 神卫兵 (shénwèibīng).
At this point the site seems to have eaten my reply twice. Maybe the form field doesn’t like the Chinese character sets in my reply? Apologies if this ends up being posted multiple times and there’s just lag. Yeah, okay, REALLY REALLY short version, the difference in phrases is because Google Translate is getting enough context from “divine guardian” to kick out something that’s extremely precise and accurate, but a bit too precise. Whereas “divine guard” is ambigious. What you’re actually getting is… the short one works out to “god protect”, the long one is “godly person who’s protecting”. The extra words are turning “god” into an adjective rather than a noun (i.e. godly or divine), and “guard” from a verb into a noun.
I’ve personally never had a reply fail to post, though others have reported that there’s a clear error message if it does, rather than just failing silently. There is a significant delay in the post showing up most of the time, however.
lol. jacky chan had too much of an influence on me.
i can’t help but read :” your telekinesis can’t affect my John Wayne!”
That’s a terrible cowboy name.
It still sounds better to me than his real first name, which was Marion. Call me an uncultured Dutch guy, but that doesn’t sound tough to me. At all.
Yeah some things about the Duke I’ve never been impressed by, but I was actually referring to this Jackie Chan scene: https://youtu.be/iYFf-953aTA?t=13
Little known but very scientifically accurate fact but John Wayne was indeed immune to telekinesis.
My favourite fact about John Wayne is that he actually met Wyatt Earp.
7 Degrees of History. The past often isn’t as far back as we think. Family lore says that my great grandmother Grady Earp didn’t think highly of Wyatt or his brothers.