Grrl Power #1090 – Rock ’em Sock ’em Syndrome
Most jobs don’t often provide the opportunity to toss your concussed boss behind the nearest piece of furniture. It’s the little things.
I think people underestimate the difficulty in copying someone else’s voice – for shapeshifters I mean. It depends on the nature of the shapeshifting to a degree. If the shapeshifting involves copying their brain and memories and perfectly copying their throat and muscle memory and vocal cords, then it would probably be easier. You’d still have to be careful not to slip back into your own cadence, or slip in some slang the other person wouldn’t use. Anyone who’s going to be a professional shapeshifter will probably spend at least a little time learning how to do impressions, but if you’re just changing your outsides to match someone else, I think getting the voice right might be the hardest part. How many times have you seen in a show some shapeshifter clonk someone on the head and assume their place, and you think, how do they know what they sound like? Maybe they heard then say a few sentences, but that doesn’t tell them if their target says stuff like “I’m going to head out soon.” vs. “I’m fixin’ to head out soon.” Or whether they say soda or pop or coke (calling soda ‘coke’ is like trying to rent a car and saying, “Yeah, I need to rent a Prius. Do you have a Ford pick up truck Prius?” Coke is a kind of soda!) Or if they say “fireflies” or “lightning bugs” or “firebugs.” A co-worker might not pick up that kind of slip up, but a friend probably would, especially if they like giving you shit about calling soda “coke.”
Not everyone has a super distinct voice, but most people can usually tell their friends apart if they’re talking in another room, and shapeshifting usually involves interacting with people who know the shapeshiftee.
I’d think the more distinct a voice is, the more markers there are for people to key off of. They’re easier to learn to imitate, but those same markers become pitfalls if you don’t get them right. People can sniff out a bad impression of a distinct voice a lot easier than they can a bad impression of an unmemorable one, but people tend not to have a lot of unmemorable voice impressions in their repertoire, and that’s where I think shapeshifting infiltrators would get into a lot of trouble. After all, the guy with access to the BSL-4 level of the bio-warfare lab isn’t likely to talk like Gilbert Gottfried, but he’ll sound distinct enough to his colleagues that you can’t just clonk him on the head and take his place without studying his voice for a while.
There’s lots of other things that could give away a shapeshifter to someone who’s on the lookout. Body language is a huge thing. Maxima definitely carries herself differently than Math or Sydney. If Maxima was suddenly skulking around Archon HQ like an introvert, it might not immediately trigger the impersonation alarm, but she’d get stopped a lot by people asking if she was feeling okay.
Eating a lunch in the breakroom comprised of mercury and stem-cells would probably be a big giveaway also.
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The new one is giving me some trouble. It’s a multi-girl piece and I tried squishing them in together and trying to make the legs look like they’re not tangled up or bent at weird angles took so much more time than it should have. I might decide to do a WIP on Thursday, but I ought to have a finished piece for the next monday post.
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I’m tempted to say Chimyriad learned her counterinterrogation banter from hopped-up Sydney.
Or Black Widow from the Avenger movies.
Or Pam from Archer.
And now I want to know what Pam Poovey/Black Widow team up would look like.
…and would it ship?
*ducks*
Oh…actually, Widow, Pam, and Yor, from Spy x Family. X’D
Hmm… antagonizing your torturer MIGHT not be the best idea in the world. Just sayin.
Video games have taught me that antagonizing your torturer is always a great idea. You should always backtalk them and insult their ability to inflict pain.
… Though perhaps taking life-and-death lessons from video games isn’t the greatest idea.
Metal Gear Solid 1 actually had a bit where they give useful advice on resisting torture. “Never antagonize them. Try to feel pity for them if possible.”
Of course, Robert Heinlein wrote a book, “Friday,” where the female protagonist is first gang r@ped, then drugged, then tortured, in a fruitless attempt to make her tell everything she knows. Which not only pegged them as amateurs, but also was worse than useless – because professionals were trained to resist all of that AND taught to IMMEDIATELY share EVERYTHING they knew the moment they were captured. Which, in her case, was, “I was handed a package, told to put it in the secret pouch hidden in my belly button, and told to take it to this location. I do not know what is in the package, I do not know why I was transporting it, I do not know what will happen to it after I hand it off. For all I know the package is a decoy for something else. For all I know, my entire mission was a decoy, and someone else was transporting the real package – whatever it is. Are we done here?”
(FYI: the amateurs who did all that because they couldn’t accept that she was telling the truth and didn’t know jack beans ended up dying in a fire. Except for the ones who escaped the building and died in a thoroughly one-sided firefight. Friday had a lot of friends in her organization, and they did not approve of how she’d been treated)
I was just thinking about that when I read this page. That is one of the parts of that book that really stand out to me, not entirely sure why.
Ditto.
AWESOME book. Friday was so many different commentaries on so many different aspects of society that even today, it is hard to list them all.
That scene was horrific, but the scene where she runs into one of the (very few) survivors of her attackers later was very well done. I loved how she was perfectly respectful to her attackers, and FAR less so to her interrogator who was a complete idiot for ordering the attacks.
Modern interrogations do not need torture or even drugs in many cases. Just seeing the bruises makes me go ‘Amateur’.
“Never start with the head – the victim gets all… fuzzy. They can’t feel the next hit.” -Joker
https://youtu.be/N4c2-0jx_I8
She’s prolly morphed into appearing to have those bruises and other injuries. She’s uninjured otherwise.
Mystique has been shown to absorb ridiculous amounts of physical damage due to her ability to shape-shift. I think this lady can roll-with-the-punches by just morphing around the attack. She probably has to spend most of her time to make sure remains looking injured.
Or just… Y’know… Morphing away the injuries. If your flesh is that malliable, then why should you have any injuries at all besides asthetics?
If morphing isnt just cosmetic then Anvil like flesh would help eliminate physical injury. A Steel hedgehog morph would make people thing twice about throwing their soft fleshy bodies near you. Quite a powerful abilty if this gets used right.
that depends on material limits, its one thing to regenerate when you are high class bio-morph (of any type), but changing to inorganic materials or harder organic ones may be impossible. Although this character did take on the appearance of clothes, but we don’t know if they completely copy the material when they shift or if its surface only like Mystique or some humanoid mimic.
Varia didn’t seem to have any problem doing blue steel.
She’s not a shapeshifter, she’s a gestalt. A variation of a power copier (including powers from those without powers) It’s not the same thing.
You do realise that the LITERAL definition of gestalt is shape don’t you.
Now Varia forms a different gestalt whenever she comes into contact with someone, i.e. changes her shape.
Oh look, a shapeshifter, waddaya know.
Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to, Whatever.
Yeah, not buying it. She doesn’t control her shape, so she’s not a “shape-shifter”. She has a multipower with a physical component, that being another human. Tom-ay-to, rutabaga.
Page 816 panel 4, says it all really.
Apples and oranges, both fruit. These two are not the same and their power and thus assumed limitations should be assumed the same.
fricken typing from my phone earlier, and their powers not exactly the same, limitations should not be assumed the same.
Also see the PS on examples, its not like Beast Boy can do all the stuff Clayface can do despite both fitting under the shape-shifter umbrella.
PS , different shapeshifters as supers rather than creatures would be expected to have different limitations regardless. Beast Boy and Martian Man Hunter aren’t identical , or Clayface and Mystique etc…
Not, for a Goddess! :)
There MIGHT be a case to be made for keeping up your own morale through defiance.
There’s probably a better case to be made for keeping your torturer too pissed off to think straight. These guys aren’t really about clear thinking. They’re about slaver-levels of dominance and angry, violent temper tantrums when they can’t make that work. We learned that when they grabbed Sydney. So given that their current toolbag isn’t working on Chimy, that they have a different toolbag for supers, that she probably doesn’t want them opening that toolbag, and that she’s stalling for time in a timeframe of hours rather than days… yeah, pissing them off might seem like a reasonable strategy.
its bad when the comic causes the sarcasm detector to destroy its instrument panel, again.
looks like lots of commenters called it.
Why have we not met this shapeshifter before now?
We sort of did on page 1073 – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1073-spooky-scary-shapeshifters/
we have. in other guises. she was so good even Dave couldn’t tell.
… The SAILOR!
I’m sure you’ll all get to know a little bit of background in due time.
Yeah, impersonating someone is not as easy as it is made out in movies and books.
Stealing someone’s identity in the modern world is fairly easy, but ONLY if you are never going to be seen by anyone who knows that person. Impersonating them to close friends or co-workers is not nearly so easy.
That said? People try every day. Nothing new there. If it is even remotely possible and money might be made? People will try.
And yet people are still pretty credulous and easily overlook details that prove what they want to believe wrong. Everyone wants to believe that their friends are their friends and not some stranger in disguise.
I have a Chinese friend who is actually 6 feet, 2 inches tall. Way taller than is average for his ethnicity, and doubly so if he were female. Never the less, at a party, I managed to convince a bunch of people who don’t know him all that well that he’s actually a woman. After that the myth that he’s secretly a woman persisted FOR YEARS. Mind you, I didn’t convince people that he was a transman, but rather just a tomboy who’s adopted a male name. No matter what he told people, it just made it sound that much more suspicious.
I only did it because I knew he’d find it hilarious, because we were both always trolling people back then.
As well as that, consider how log it takes a typical ma to realize a woman has changed her hairstyle. People see what they expect to see, and util they become suspicious, do not review objects or people around them for discrepancies.
Especially Meyers-Briggs N types as opposed to S types.
While it was a fun film, the biggest suspension-of-disbelief in “Face/Off” (1997) was the “body problem”. They covered the face issue (actual face swap) and vocal issue (microchip voice changer), but then each of the imposters spends a lot of time with the other’s wife/girlfriend, even “sleeping with” one of them if I recall correctly.
They’re going to notice body differences (to say the least)! Just the hands would give it away, not to mention even slight variations in build, body hair, walk, etc.
It’d be just as (un)successful as putting a bag over the head of some random stranger and trying to convince someone it was their wife or husband.
Unless you can do the Skrull trick.
Good for parties armed when you’re impersonating a rando mook, or your boss though.
Okay, nice switcheroo
Between Sydney out-rambling and complimenting her captor’s backhand, and Chimyriad, these guys don’t have a good track record with interrogating Archon members.
This page could really do with a tag for Chimyriad
Another possible challenge for shapeshifters could be hidden details, like tattoos or scars that are usually hidden by clothing.
Of course, this heavily depends on how the shapeshifting works work.
“Mercury and stem cells”
I see someone else watched Fringe.
Is there some wiki of grrrlpowercomic explained?
I kind of lost track here with the bi-weekly updates, invisible people, morhping people,people with multiple personlaties., people who were not in the picture for years….
You know the joke about the guy reading the phonebook, and he got confused by the huge number of actors? that is how i feel now.
I have found the easiest way to understand what’s going on with a webcomic when I’m confused is an archive binge. Refresh myself on who was around, what they were up to recently and what they’re capable of.
Of course, if you’d rather have a wiki, AFAIK every webcomic has a decent character page on tv tropes.
Chimyriad is a cameo character who only showed up like fifteen pages ago.
I hope chimyriad isnt JUST a cameo. I’m enjoying the character.
You’ll have to take it up with Management.
I re-read many of my favorite comics from the start or from certain chapters to refresh my memory it’s much worse with a weekly or monthly comic. I’m doing that now with a comic called “The Gentle Wolf” both Dave and Peter are very good at keeping the lore of their comics straight. With unexpected twists!
It got off to a rough start, but Petercat’s The Gentle Wolf is a good read. Another is Quantum Vibe by Scott Bieser.
At that point, a proper villain would just shoot him multiple times. :p
Her, Chimmy is female
You don’t do that with people you need alive.
Too much risk of bleeding out.
Honestly, the way to go in a situation like this, if you’re a proper villain, is defense of a third party.
“Tell me what I need to know, or I’m going to start executing random kids,” and then following through, is the sort of move I would – if I were a villain – go for.
Heroes will usually be willing to sacrifice themselves, but they’re usually less eager to sacrifice others, and given the choice between an indeterminate number of children, and a list of people at least potentially able to defend themselves, or at least get help…most would feel compelled to protect the kids. And this is spite of at least a few of them understanding the specious reasoning involved here.
It’s the villain enacting harm here, not them. They’re in no way responsible for that person choosing to do harm.
…but then, there’s a reason good guys are good guys, eh?
You start off by cutting of an appendage (finger or toe) to put the person in shock, then you threaten to do the same to their family/loved-ones/cohorts as the interrogation progresses.
*BONUS* you discover shifters/illusionists/etc when the appendage changes upon removal and out of the presence of the captive.
Physical torture is worthless, they could tell you anything if it means an end to the pain. Physical torture is normally only used to get a confession out of someone for something you’ve already decided they will be guilty of. You torture them to the point they can’t think straight and tell you what you want to hear. See: Witch trials.
now big problem there are two major situations where this is a significant risk to try and get any useful information.
1: can’t verify the information.
and/or
2: the wrong information ruins a one shot only.
This situation is, they don’t know if this person is willing to lose their life to insure this device isn’t accessed and a one wrong try equals self destruction.
*on that note: this page does confirm they don’t have any tech divers or cyphers on their side; that’s good*.
It is clear this group is all about brute force or paying people like mercenaries. Indicative of groups who think themselves in the right at any cost…or would even use a name like Ascenders. But it insures they won’t get what they want.
Did they even try bribery,
want to know how to win over someone as a potential ally, you don’t threaten their family or them, you compensate them, money for them, money for their family…money to help little Timmy’s cancer surgery…twist it around so not taking the offer turns THEM into the “bad guy”…you could have made your family so much better off if only you had taken our little deal…of course this does not work as well with guys already so financially stable..unless they are too financially stable and think of money like game points and want as high as possible…or else the “we will fund that special project you’ve been wanting to work on”
or in other words things Deus would do.
So the Ascenders are basically school yard bullies with cash who resort to violence and terrorist tactics, and have the belief (something that needs investigating) that they are untouchable so can try to abduct federal officers and attack a federal building.
Obligatory XKCD on security vs torture.
link not working? Google browser.
Not browser specific, I just flubbed the formatting apparently. https://xkcd.com/538/
Ngl, that _is_ the more likely scenario.
I don’t know if it would work. I mean, I know I might let them beat me to death just to be spiteful & perverse, but I am far from either average, or healthy, if I’m completely honest. ._.
“Physical torture is worthless” — nope not when it’s an example of what will happen to others if they don’t tell the truth. Look any time someone says this, they have not read history from biographies of people who did it. We know that both RoV and RoK interrogators used torture like this back in Vietnam and got valid results because they knew it their families were vulnerable. Then we got the CIA who got not even perform a waterboard correctly (aka can’t drown) saying torture does not work along with a bunch of groups that also say other Woke claims that still worship Che’ ( a known torturer).
Does it always work? nope. But the whole “turn the captive” process takes years on average (see WWII British actions).
“Woke” detected.
Opinion disregarded.
↑ SAME ↑ ❗
most of that makes sense but what the Hell is this?
” along with a bunch of groups that also say other Woke claims that still worship Che’ ( a known torturer).”
just using that vernacular makes me want to disregard your statements out of principle. Its like you snuck a troll line in there for no reason *I also have no idea who the hell that is*, and this line has no relation to what I posted. It looks like typing turrets.
Dollars to donuts Vulture is one of those people who thinks torturing “bad guys” is totally moral & ethical & cool, and it totally works guys, cause “they” are bad and weak, not like us, who are good and strong and cool, so they’ll totally give us the super correct INTEL so we can do OPS that win against the TERRISTS an’ COMMEEZ!
*breathless 8 year old DoD brat playing ‘war’ voice retrieved from personal experience*
Che’ used physical Torture and I triggered you over Woke. ‘so thanks for confirming your bias.
There is a noted relationship between Woke and Che’ followers.
/as for the rest, get a clue someday.
You are super good at conflating separate pieces of information.
You’ll notice, if you reexamine my reply, that I didn’t defend Guevara’s use of torture. Nor will I defend it anywhere else, regardless of ideological sympathies.
Just to be very clear, I oppose torture. Period. By anyone, of anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances.
The reasoning is very simple. It rarely produces anything useful, it only further empowers the recruiting program of the opposition, it wholly undermines one’s ethical & moral position & authority, and only serves to further alienate & piss off people who might otherwise have been uninvolved, or even friendly.
Which isn’t to say I don’t very much understand the motivation behind it. I do.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I do not want to drag a capitalist out of their McMansion by the ankles and turn them into a piece of performance art, as a warning to the others to stop fucking with the workers & our families. But the fact is, if I do that, then I become exactly the thing I despise (someone who tries to rule by violence), AND I further justify the police state.
So, moving on from there, let’s examine your theorized “link between ‘woke’ and Che followers.”
First, define woke for us.
After all, we should want to be certain we understand the words, before discussing their relationships.
Funny…
I seem to remember Guevara himself saying the information derived from torture was not as useful as the fear it created in enemies and allies. I cannot find the quote offhand.
Then again? I must be wrong, since I ONLY study factual history and not the incredibly important things like ‘woke’ or whatever else is ‘proper’ in modern hate speech.
Woke = you like I said triggered.
Since you totally missed the references to military history and Vietnam , I am too old for you and your BS wordplay attempts to define the argument.
Psychological torture Is what works. Threats to others than the individual being interrogated fall under that umbrella. Also sleep deprivation, malnutrition, being put on a place with no sense of time, making them question reality, etc…that has more consistent, even if longer to enact results.
I’d like to emphasize that none of these things are “okay.”
Torture is still torture, regardless of the visibility of the scars.
yes this is true.
War in general is a remnant and one of many aspects as to why the idea of aliens annexing the Earth and turning humans into domestic pets is one of the better apocalypse scenarios, or could even be embraced as a fantasy.
At this point in history it should be the easiest thing for people to share resources and ideas and cooperate to advance. But people create synthetic hurdles and fall back on animalistic us vs them, territorial disputes, and violence as the be all end all.
That said I was speaking from a real world sense, and villain tactics (cultist and religious zealots are more my experience/research when it comes to this subject than military or modern government methods). Its hard to right a good villain if you don’t know how dark humanity can get and tactics militaries and such will use.
Your preferences for scenarios “easiest things” miss some of the basics of nature. Not just human nature, but the nature of any animal or being.
Both cooperation nor competition are natural, and so are hierarchies and desire to control others. Such as, for example, your desire to control others and make them “share resources and ideas and cooperate”.
So what. I am not talking about lizards, gophers, dogs or anything else. I am talking about humans, a creature that is supposed to be capable of self analysis and pattern recognition and correction for preferable outcomes. Yes there is a lot of behavior that is instinct and natural. But when people point that out as you have , rather than seeing it and recognizing it for what it is and learning from it and adapting to overcome it, you use it as an excuse for this bad behavior. Just oh well it’s natural nothing we can do but accept being a mindless beast and do nothing about it. In other words an explanation for a behavior is not an excuse. I don’t care what is natural when I am talking to a sapient life form that should be able to identify and work past its baser nature for long term gains. If humans can’t get past that then they don’t qualify as truly sapient.
Added note here I am not saying to erase your instincts and animal urges, but to recognize them for what they are and redirect that behavior into more constructive means or turn that competitive behavior into only sports and games. There is no excuse anymore to still be animals fighting over territory or giving into urges and brutalizing each other. Calling it natural is too often used as an excuse than identifying the problem
Please learn to use the language correctly, before trying to “sound smart.”
At a minimum, from the context of your word salad, you either mean, “neither cooperation nor competition are natural,” which is false on the face of it, or you mean “both cooperation and competition are natural,” which is true, but not especially meaningful. The reason being that “natural” is a value-neutral descriptor in an of itself. Many things are natural, but undesirable, and many things are artificial, but desirable.
And furthermore, many things that may _seem_ artificial – for instance cooperative civilization – are in fact the natural products of the natural social behavior of human beings, which is an evolved survival strategy that has served us well as a species for our entire existence.
However, getting back to your obvious & ham-handed accusation that Rhuen has a (presumably secret) “desire to control others,” I would invite you to drop the clumsy pretense and simply say what you mean, directly. That you don’t want to pay your share for the benefits of civilization, and you imagine that everyone else must harbor the secret desire to dominate and control others, because you lack the imagination to see any alternative to the unjust hierarchies that exist. Instead, you just assume that said injustice is some sort of cosmological constant, like the existence of gravity, that can never be changed, and so what Rhuen must _really_ want, is simply to be the one at the top of the hierarchy, and is therefore a hypocrite that you can comfortably ignore, ridicule, or otherwise dismiss, all while patting yourself on the back for being “clever.”
I’m going to guess that you’re a fan of Peterson, Shapiro, and Crowder.
By Nyx, you people are boring. Not even frustrating, just _boring_.
And a little sad.
You might find the youtube channel Innuendo Studios – and specifically the video titled “I Hate Mondays” – to be both useful and engaging.
Who the fuck said it was ‘okay’?
In a war, anything goes to defeat ‘the enemy’, and that includes targeting civilians (in a war, there is no such thing as ‘civilians’, it’s combatants and non-combatants, and both are valid targets)
What’s ironic is that wiping out a group that believes that is one of the only valid reasons to go to war.
Careful not to cut yourself.
What?
@Guesticles
On all that edge…
Also, called a War Crime.
So, why was the US not tried for ‘war crimes’ when they dropped two Atomic Bombs?
Oh right, because they won!
No Guest, I have to disagree with you there. The old USSR and current day Russia is a prime example of that. They have always waged war on civilians in order to break the will of their governments. They’ve do so around the world. Afghanistan, Syria and other Middle East countries, their own former satellite nations and now Ukraine. Russia has never faired well against comparably equipped military forces. The last time they did so was in WWII against Germany and then they were fighting on their own soil. At that they almost lost. Had Hitler not be fighting on two other front and was able to sent their full might against the USSR, Russians might well be speaking German.
Look what’s happening in Ukraine. It’s evident that Russian forces prefer to attack civilian targets. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are attacking the Russian military and are having a devastating effect. That’s a critical difference. There are other factors to be sure but when you have an army that prefers to kill and torture civilians rather than engage the opposing armed forces, that’s a losing proposition.
No, just, no.
in fact armies that have this attitude fuel terrorist cells that use them as an example of the “evil empire” to recruit people to fight against them.
If two groups of people have a fight in a parking lot, would it then be acceptable for the groups to attack any passerby just trying to get to their car? They are a noncombatant who had no choice but to be near the fighting, just like every citizen in a war-torn country. Everyone in range of your knife is a valid target!
There is a reason targeting civillians is a war crime. Because when your goal is to kill any person you can find regardless of if they pose a threat to you, you are not waging a war, you are committing genocide.
Depends on who you ask.
If you ask certain politicians and former politicians in the US currently? Anyone who says they have the right to do so TOTALLY has the right to attack and kill anyone they want because they say they do. And no, that is not any particular, person party or ideology. They ALL have said such things.
War crimes have been around since the dawn of recorded history since war is the abandonment of all sanity and reason. That said? Most of the time, it is only a war crime if the LOSER does it. Kind of like treason, come to think of it. It is only treason if it does not succeed.
Right?
Yes but I think they’re saying that psychological torture tends to be more effective than physical torture because of how a victim will eventually say anything to get physical torture to stop, while psychological torture has less of a specific point where the victim can focus on as the source of their suffering. Plus it weakens a person’s ability to keep lying when they are in a confused state vs in a state of physical pain.
That being said, Joel in the Last of Us did a pretty good job of COMBINING physical and psychological torture to get the info he wanted.
https://youtu.be/3fR42WhYCqU
exactly.
we can even use a mild form of psychological torture as an example. The long interrogation. Some people can fool lie detector tests; with or without this element. If you question someone long enough they get tired, thirsty, and above all else, frustrated. Their resolve breaks down and they become more prone to slip up on their story, double guess themselves, and with the lie detector lose that focus needed to fool it.
True. It’s also why cops offer suspects they are about to question a beverage or water before an interrogation. Makes it harder to keep up a lie and keep your story straight when you need to go to the bathroom.
Can we take a moment to look at how cool Joel’s interrogation was though? :)
@pander
And that is why you never, ever talk to cops.
They are lying, manipulative bastards, who only care about closing the case as fast as possible, regardless of the facts.
Never, ever talk to them, and if you are arrested, the only words that should ever leave your mouth are, “I want my lawyer.”
The cops are not your friends, they do not ever have your best interest in mind, they will harm you if it is ever in any way at all convenient. The cops are the enemy.
Period.
I’ll mention this as part of when I did work in the DA’s office (only for a year before going into intellectual property law and litigation, but still), so I do know a fair bit about criminal law procedures and how the police operate.
I wouldnt necessarily say all cops are the enemy, but they are allowed to lie in order to get a confession (although they can’t legally fabricate evidence obviously), so you should assume they’re lying if you’re innocent of a crime that they’re accusing you of doing, they do know very basic psychological interrogation techniques, and they do want to close cases as fast as possible (and sometimes without considering if the facts actually line up because they tend to be around criminals so often that they just assume everyone is guilty of something). And yes, cops are NOT your friends if they’re interrogating you (just assume anyone who is interrogating you is out to find you guilty), and first and only words out of your mouth SHOULD be “I want my lawyer.”
I wouldnt say all cops are the enemy though. Some cops are bad. And it depends on the situation. But you should not TRUST that they have your best interests in mind. You shouldnt assume anyone ever has your best interests in mind, so when you’re in an interrogation situation where you are the suspect, rather than a victim of a crime…. yeah, assume they’re out to get you and just ask for a lawyer (don’t be unnecessarily aggressive so as to antagonize them, but don’t volunteer information), do not accept any beverages or food, do not answer any questions at all until you have an attorney present, and ask if you are being charged with anything and if not, then you want to leave.
That’s because cops aren’t there for you (unless you have personally bought them off), they are there for everyone else
The reason they want to close the case as quickly as possible, is because most cases are time-sensitive: more time spent on it, the more time for it to never get solved (specially murders or kidnappings)
If you end up being ‘interrogated’ (or simply questioned), it is because they don’t trust you! But it’s not personal, they are not ‘out to get you‘, they probably don’t even know you, they are out to get the perp, through any means that will hold up in court
The game version? Or the live action movie version?
Valid points, Vulture. It also depends on the individual. Low ranking cannon fodder types will typically spill their guts at a harsh look. Another cannon fodder type who’s a “true believer” will not. This goes for people of all levels in a hierarchy from top to bottom. But the low rankers typically do not information of critical value. Bottom line to an intelligence officer is valuable information and physical torture doesn’t have a great record on that. The mind is the key component. Sensory deprivation works well here, lookup “White Room Torture”.
Then there are the monsters who don’t care about information. They just enjoy the physical pain of others. We are seeing a lot of horror stories coming out of Ukraine because of the Russian Orcs. Then you have those who basically see others as subhuman because of their religion and/or ideology. This is why there are radical Islamists flying airplanes into buildings, throwing LGBT+ types off buildings and why Sunni’s gleefully pour gasoline over Shiite pilots and burn them alive, behead reporters etc.
The CIA has rumored to have found that the best avenue for information extraction is sleep deprivation. Keeping someone awake for long periods of time apparently makes you prone to hallucinations and makes you suggestible.
While I think this was *kind of* touched on/acknowledged in other parts of this discussion, I think there is something that bears mentioning. There are situations where torture is actually useful (note, this is not *condoning* torture as ethical or moral or acceptable, but rather as a viable tactic that can be used reliably if one ignores things like ethics). I agree that it is worthless for obtaining confessions, and when information is not verifiable or when false answers cause a mission failure. However, in situations where the information is actually verifiable *and* you can take the opportunity to punish proven lies, torture can be a very effective means of extracting information. I’m not sure if physical torture is the *most efficient* means of doing so, especially against a trained operative or in a world with superpowers, but if you are certain the target *has* the information you need and you can recover from being fed false information, then it should *eventually* get you what you want/need.
An example I like to use is a serial killer, if you ask them if they killed those people, you’re likely to get false positives if you have the wrong person. If you ask them what they did to those people, they can just make something up to get you to stop. If you ask them where the bodies are buried or where you can find evidence of their killings, then they will tell you sooner or later (if they actually know, in the case you legitimately have the wrong person you’ll likely go on a few wild goose chases before being forced to admit you made a mistake, at least to yourself).
We don’t know how many failed attempts trigger the brute force fail safe on the drive, we only know that there *is* a fail safe against brute force attempts. We also don’t know whether the bad guys are more, less, or just as informed about the protections on the drive as we are. It could be the case that the drive uses some kind of algorithm or something to identify a brute force attempt vs just a lot of failed entry attempts. Like, it would be really stupid for the drive to brick itself after a single failed attempt because then all the data gets lost in the event that somebody pushes the wrong button by mistake in a situation where the data is being legitimately accessed, like when there’s a major forest fire and they need the info for the guy who converts fire into cream cheese, or whatever (would a forest covered in cream cheese be any better, ecologically speaking? I’m legitimately curious but have no idea how to google that). They likely *have* a few attempts before the drive bricks itself or whatever, so they probably wouldn’t have to worry about testing what their tortured prisoner tells them, at least until the second or so lie. Granted, these are also pretty clearly amateurs who don’t actually know how to torture someone effectively because just beating on them is far from sufficiently intimidating, particularly for trained operatives.
“Torture has never been a reliable means of extracting information. And as a means if control it is ultimately self defeating – one wonders why it is still practiced.” – Picard
https://youtu.be/eym6adS_rfY
Physical torture had him believing there were actually five lights at the end, despite there only being four. Had the two guards not come in to tell the interrogator to gee Picard cleaned up to be returned to his ship, Picard would have said there were five lights.
The interrogator actually had far more success in getting Picard to do what he wanted with psychological torture instead, like saying he would be letting Picard leave and would instead interrogate Dr Crusher (he was lying about her also being captured) in order to get Picard to willingly stay for more interrogation/torture.
They already removed clothing… didn’t appear to work.
Plus shooting the person might send them into shock, then you can’t get any good info out of them.
Er… not that I’d know anything about that.
Good recovery.
Now nobody suspects a thing.
I am a master of subtlety.
‘looks at pile of ninjas’
Indeed.
*handwave*
These are not the ninjas you’re looking for…
Well if you can *see* these ninjas, then obviously not. Hiring ninjas like that will never-… er, I mean, nope I don’t see any ninjas.
they were certainly looking for me!
How dare you imply I am not a master of subtlety! I am going to send so many ninjas after you for that! But not the pun ninjas. Totally different ninjas, because no puns were made here. The LOSD (lack-of-subtlety-defamation) ninjas. You will be able to tell the difference by what is written in orange letters on their ninja t-shirts, you fiend.
At least they are not the BSOD [Blue Screen of Death] ninjas.
They are not that group… right?
RIGHT?
Um…. Please say they are not.
You won’t know that until it’s too late. They can attack at any time, even while you’re reading posts. In fact, I once heard that a particularly unfortunate soul was minding his own busi3egdhirgorrhior%535r2frwe
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage
to your computer.
PFN_LIST_CORRUPT
If this is the first time you’ve seen this Stop error screen,
restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow
these steps:
Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed.
If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer
for any windows updates you might need.
If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware
or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing.
If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart
your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then
select Safe Mode
Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x0000005e (0x00000099, 0x00900009, 0x00000900, 0x00000900)
Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete
Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further
assistance.
Time for a Classic Film.
DOS Boot
Bharda….
I have you a +1 elsewhere for using the word hootinanny, a very underrated term that needs to be used more often.
I’m giving you a -1 now for that joke. Rendering the hootinanny +1 meaningless. Sorry. I respect you but… no. Just no. :)
@pander
I didn’t realize my joke would be so…charged.
B)
*yeeeaaah!*
Ninja hit squad en route.
* Adds “Pile of Ninjas” to list of prospective band names. *
May I propose, “Cuddle Puddle Ninja Huddle?”
Puddle Ninjas
Cuddle Ninjas
Ninja Puddle
Kung Fu Yiff Bunnies
That last one feels like yer tryin’a sneak furries into this here hootnanny.
I will give you a +1 for using the word ‘hootinanny.’
Shapeshifters can be very fun to play in TTRPGs for these kinds of schenanigans. I once infiltrated an enemy mining base / prison to the point of briefly taking it over by accosting and taking the place of enemy officers of increasing seniority while “escorting prisoners” (the rest of the party), until I briefly took the place of the head honcho and promptly caused upper chaos so we could free the guy we came to find (along with the rest of the prisoners, who happily started rioting, allowing plenty of further confusion to cover our escape). Practical difficulties, such as the voice, can often be handwaved away with magic + a pumped up skill modifier + RPing it in a way that’s entertaining for all concerned.
One of my favorite personal characters for a Pathfinder game, was a custom race of moon-mad highland shapeshifting crazies, inspired a bit by the Lunar Exalted of WW publishing.
I named them the Lunayn. They were smart & quick, but unstable both physically & mentally. (+2 Dex/Int, -2 Con/Wis)
They took double damage from silver, and a -4 on saves v. polymorph effects. They could freely shift back in the next round, but had essentially no resistance. And finally, they could only reproduce with other humanoids.
Soooooo much fun!
So X says things like “sleepy time”?
Obviously, because they just did
“Sleepy Time Cocktail” is common slang for any drug that’s meant to knock someone out long term (chloroform takes awhile to work and basically only works while your holding it to there face)
and generally its best not to say the names of said substances in public because of a myriad of reasons everyhting from media laws and just stupid people trying to get them
I’m under the impression that “Sleepy Time Cocktail” is really a super’s product. It’s been in use since the first big battle. Since they’re not afraid to use it on literally everyone it couldn’t contain anything that might set off an allergic reaction and thus it’s not a known chemical.
“Coke is a kind of soda”? You obviously aren’t from Georgia…
;)
In my life, I have heard: coke, pop, soda, and very rarely, soda pop.
I personally like saying soda pop. I like getting odd looks.
It really varies regionally.
‘Coke’ is a GA/Southeast thing. ‘Soda’ was urban coastal, and ‘pop’ was a Midwestern thing.
Lately, I hear ‘soda’ most everywhere but GA & the immediate environs.
Now, if you want a genuinely weird one…according to my mother, in the Midwest, it was common to hear bell peppers called ‘mangoes.’
Down here, it’s ‘fizzy’
‘Mangoes’? Guessing they never had real mangoes
I was born and raised in Indiana. I’ve never once heard a bell pepper called a mango. Mangoes are those green and orange things they put in fruit salad.
Aka papaya
Um, nope.
Mango has one big, flat, seed.
Papaya has many, little, seeds.
https://www.mango.org/blog-papaya-vs-mango/#:~:text=Papayas%20are%20squash%2Dshaped%20fruit,flat%20seed%20in%20the%20center.
Wait, is it papaya and pawpaw that are the same? o_O
Papaya and pawpaw are not the same thing, although there has been confusion due to their similarity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba#Names
My wife (who was from northern Kentucky) would call it “sodie pop” while I was from northern Indiana called it “pop” but since we moved to to the middle of the state everyone here calls it “soda”. I have heard it called “coke” by a few people. Going back to my wife, she also called wasps “waspers”, iron “oren”, and mosquitos “skiters” to name a few more. It was cute and funny to me ;)
Yes, my mother was calling a bell pepper a mango just a few weeks ago so can confirm that.
So you haven’t heard it called fizz, or cola yet? on an different note- here non-alcoholic beer is usually referred to as hops pop.
Negative on the fizz, and I don’t _think_ I’ve ever heard ‘cola’ as a general name for all soda pop before.
Etymology time :). Cola is a flavor of soda. Not the actual proper name for soda. Its the flavor combination of vanilla, cinnamon, citrus oils and a few other flavorings derived from the kola nut (hence the name cola).
But in some regions, like Coke, its become a word synonymous with ALL sodas.
The word ‘soda’ itself is a catch all word for any beverage thst is primarily carbonated water, so ‘soda’ is the proper name for the beverage. Pop is informal slang for ‘fizzy drink’ due to how carbonated water has bubbles that ‘pop.’
And ‘Sodie pop’ is clearly language used by clinically insane people who speak in adorable parlance.
Sorry Scarsdale :) (I’m kidding about the last part but the rest is totally accurate).
‘Pander’s Etymology Corner’ would make for a useful regular spot on here.
Coke is also some sort of fuel.
Just ask Willem Dafoe!
DaveB’s been quite forthcoming with being from Texas, specifically the Dallas/Forth Worth area, IIRC.
I grew up in Plano, one of the surrounding cities that Dallas has been slowly swallowing up the empty space between. Frito Lay and Dr Pepper have headquarters there, which lead to the following situation: There are 6 vending machines in the cafeteria. One Pepsi-branded machine, one Coca-Cola-branded machine, one glass-front machine that vends bottles of fruit juice and water, and 3 Dr Pepper-branded machines. The Coca-Cola and Pepsi machines vended Coca-Cola and Pepsi cans… but if you wanted a bottle, you had to go to one of the Dr Pepper machines, one of which had ONLY Coca=Cola Products, one had ONLY Pepsi products, and one had Dr Pepper products.
I told you all that so it would make sense that, occasionally, both teachers or students would ask someone to “Go to the Dr Pepper machine and get me a Pepsi.”
Being from that general region, I have had the following conversation: “Do you want a coke?”
“Sure.”
“What kind?”
“Anything as long as it isn’t a Coke.”
In Sydney, it’s the opposite:
“Can I have a Coke?”
“Is Pepsi okay?”
“Sure.”
“That’ll be three fifty.”
“Is Monopoly money okay?”
My mom lives in Frisco, and I am planning on moving nearby to Denton. Both right next to Plano and in the DFW area. :)
Already took the Texas bar (and will take the OK bar this year) plus Thanks to TEAS (and continuing to keep my NY bar cert and hiring per diem attorneys if I need to have minor NY appearances), so its not like I cant still also practice in NY.
But I will still call soda soda because I am not a savage!!!! :)
You wander to an Unclean Land…
Lemme know when ya get settled. I might could grab freight headed to DFW, and treat you & yours out to dinner.
I know couple nice places.
Oh! And we can invite Dave, make it a whole thing! ^_^
:)
I drink my non-Coke coke by the non-Xerox xerox machine, blow my nose on a non-Kleenex kleenex, and then patch up a wound with a non-Band-Aid band-aid.
And here in northern Alberta, we drive to work on our non-skidoo skidoo.
Is… Maxi not wearing a bra? That rip is showing too much orb without any hint of cupping
She’s a super, and her skin is metallic, plus who doesn’t want to see a deep-V top on her? For her a bra is just extra cloth to get torn up. I’m sure if she had to dress up or appear before top brass she’d wear one.
It was more of an observational query
She and Sydney have GOT to meet.
We keep missing each other.
Don’t worry.
It’ll be a party.
Been planning to challenge her spicy food thing.
Um, just to clarify…
How would we KNOW if Sydney has met her?
DUH!!!! *slaps forehead*
Never mind! Sydney would know. Even if Chimyriad fooled everyone else, Sydney’s nerd sense would detect a duplicate and she would spaz.
Reading the comic description suddenly made me remember the movie series Darkman. Especially the scene with a walkman playing the villains catchphrase on repeat.
“TAKE IT! TAKE THE FUCKING ELEPHANT!”
Still have a hard time believing Liam Neeson played that role. It’s a Classic, though.
That man can act. No question.
It’s also possible the bad guys were shown a photograph of their target and they have no idea what he actually sounds like.
My issue with shapeshifters is when they copy the clothing as well as the person. If you have morphed yourself to look like you are wearing a shirt/pants/shoes etc., then how do you take the item off later?
That was brought up about Dabbler taking off her “shoes” while wearing her glamor at the nightclub that she, Sydney, Harem, and Vari went to. With a shape shifter it depends if they can effect clothing permanently or she’s actually naked. I kinda doubt that because I wouldn’t want to enter a combat situation like that where even spent casing would leave burn marks! Plus it was the middle of the night so she might of been in her sleep wear.
I’d love to see Sydney, Didget, Dabs, and Chimy interact I think it would be funny as hell!
To quote Pam from Archer “Maybe your daddy will give you a roll of nickles!”
Gestures and mannerisms also play a part in impersonations. At one point in my career I did group therapy with a room full of teenage boys. There was always one or two of them who could mimic my gestures ( talk with my hands a lot) and even my distinctive walk (I have a hitch in my giddyup). Unless they have some ability to absorb a bit of the identity of the person being copied, a shape shifter would need to mimic both speech and mannerisms to really sell it for any length of time. The day to day familiarity of the kids allowed them to mimic me. Chimmy is likely familiar with Zephan as a coworker and can mimic his mannerisms but the bad guys lack of familiarity and their being unaware of the switch will also play into her ability to sell it.
I am a half-decent amateur impersonator, of men anyway; my ability to imitate women is more limited due to my lower vocal range. Getting the voice right is a matter of listening carefully with a good ear, and using your vocal flexibility to make the appropriate sounds, with the right pitches, intonations, accent, etc. and I imagine her vocal flexibility would be much greater than mine, making the task even easier. I also expect she will be practising a lot more than I do to, which also can make the quality of the impersonation be even better.
Wow, Sydney was right. Your gloves are really soft when you slap me like a little whiney bitch.
This will have to be somebody else. I think the guy from Manhattan got exploded.
He did, although we never found out where the bio-tracked henchmen were tracked to. Seems like that would be a good starting point.
Weren’t they tracked back to that boat?
Fairly sure they were last ‘seen’ buying up all the sanitary wipes and gel they could find
Cree told them where to find her
Had to go check the timeline, but the goons in the high-rise are still on the loose. The boat was located by Concretia.
We see a flashback to the swan boat aftermath (when Cora and Sydney arrive back at Times Square with Concretia’s body). Concretia then joins the fight before Arianna pulls the plug on the LLC, and a couple pages later Cora reveals the tracking monitors to Max, where we see they are robbing a store for sanitizer.
I believe the technical term was, “unwound.”
Exploded like a human sized bag of lasagne.
I love the way shapeshifters (They were called facedancers IIRC) were done in the Dune books. They constantly toed the line between being shapeshifters and being actual copies, to the point where the best shapeshifters often forgot they were shapeshifters and thought they were the original.
Myself is a reflexive pronoun and not an upscale way of saying “I” or “me”.
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
(please, everyone, stop saying myself).
… What? o_O
I’m a bit confused about this myself.
I’m afraid I have to disagree on the “Coke” thing. Yes, it’s a carbonated beverage of the “soda pop” variety, but when I say to someone, “Get me a Coke out of the fridge”, I expect Coca-Cola, not 7-Up.
Now, some (many?) people use the word “Coke” as a generic for “some kind of drink”, but, and I can’t stress this enough, *they are wrong*.
After working at a movie theater off the highway I encountered ALL the variations, and annoyingly enough the customers never realized these were local terms and didn’t apply everywhere. Had people ask for a coke and I say diet, regular, or zero and they look at me weird and say another one…it was like….I asked them which soda they wanted; so clue in. Not using the same terminology as them.
Most would say either Soda, or Pop. Only ever heard Soda Pop from kids who thanks to their giggling gave away they somehow thought they were being smart aleks.
soda/soder pop was common among my elders. Here in Michigan it’s generally just called pop.
Now, for bonus points, do you have anyplace local where you can still order a phosphate? ^_^’
The last time I saw a real working soda fountain (separate soda water and syrup dispensers) was in the mid 1970s. You can still get the phosphate additive if you like to roll your own.
I do, and I do, on occasion.
BUT!
Not too very far from where I live, up in Julian, CA, there is a still operational soda jerk, and they have about two dozen phosphates still available. ^_^
I like to start with a chocolate-cherry phosphate with my chili dog & fries, and then have a lemon-lime one as a palate cleanser.
Oh, also, for anyone who might find themselves driving the 15 between L.A. & Vegas, stop at Peggy Sue’s, outside Barstow.
It’s a good diner, and they still made phosphates, too! ^_^
Is that, that old train looking place?
On that note having lived in Barstow and Fort Irwin…I don’t recommend staying in Barstow longer than you have to. So much stuff stolen off the porch, our car’s license plate for some reason, hangers, bikes…I hate to call a place a den of thieves, but that is the impression i got from Barstow California.
Peggy Sue’s is of the Ghost Town Road exit, and has the cement dinosaurs behind it.
Classic tourist trap stuff.
Big green roof.
Foods good, though, and so is the service.
Clean bathrooms, too.
I can personally recommend the chili cheese fries, the mushroom Swiss burger.
The milkshakes are good, too.
Lots of memorabilia in the decor, and signed celebrity photos. And a nice little gift shop, too.
Addition: A disclaimer on my remarks about Barstow, last time I was there was like 1997 or so.
I am sure the Coca-Cola Company would agree with you, for the defense of their trademark. I’m equally sure that most people don’t care, just like they don’t care about Adobe’s claims to the word “photoshop”, Johnson & Johnson’s claim to “Band-Aid”, or the opinions of Kleenex.
When treated as generic, “coke” is “cola”, never some other kind of soda. Whether it refers to the brand name or not is personal. (I currently prefer diet coke, but years ago preferred RC.)
‘Stealth yoink!’ might be my favorite line in today’s comic.
Surely it’s more of a stealth yeet though, I’ve always considered a yoink to be grabbing something towards you, not tossing it away.
A stealth yoink yoinks in a way that one would not expect, according to top scientists in the field.
Yeah, ‘yeet’ is tossing away, ‘yoink’ is snatching
Pander:- tell them to get out of the field and back to their labs
I tried but they yoinked then yeeted my glasses, then ran away while I went to get them.
they actually did it!?!?!
oh crap. I’ll be back.
She yoinked his appearance, she yeeted him. Easy interpretation.
You are clearly a very brilliant and learned individual, who is also extremely handsome and humorous.
Chimyriad isnt in the Who’s Who?
Give it time.
they are but thanks to active camouflage kevels of shapeshifting you can’t see them unless you squint at just the right angle.
*sets the The Angle to change by random degrees at irregular intervals*
Chimmy, X, and Glen all make frequent appearances in both the comic and the Who’s Who.
Can confirm.
Technically, we haven’t seen what they look like yet, unless you want a giant ? in place of their face
You don’t think that’s her real face on page 1073? That might be as close as we get.
I’d be content ;)
And it’s not like the Who’s Who system doesn’t support multiple entries per character, with increasing amount of information as it’s revealed in the comic.
Would we even KNOW if she was?
I also noticed we don’t have details on Chimyriad. I think it is time the Cast page needs some updates and new art please!:D
Patience, Iago…patience.
On Shapeshifting, it is such a varied power that if someone says, “my power is shapeshifting” I am just like…you will need to be a lot more specific. Shapeshifting is one of those powers that you can mostly throw the power scale out the window unless you get into the specifics, as there are so many sub-versions divided up in so many ways.
-type of material.
Elemental-morps,’
Metal Morphs,
Mecha Morphs,
Bio-morphs,
etc….
and so many subs of those, especially in Bio-morph,
like do you have a set limit on the number of forms you can take *one-form types like to call it a transformation instead of shapeshifting but it still counts(, does it have to be the whole body at once or can change parts of the body individually, various other restrictions as well, like obey conservation of mass; and if not is there a mental, mana, or metaphysical energy-mass pool limit, limiting how small or large you can become.
Examples, a Zoomorph, the Animorphs have to touch animals and then can become a copy of that animal (but not people as far as I know), but other Zoomorphs can become human/animal hybrids, transform part of their body at a time like get cat eyes while using crab claws and goat hooves, etc…
*and switch that around to others like a Mecha Morph that has to scan a machine or metalmorphs or geo/petra morphs having to touch the material first and get some aura scan thing going from the touch *copy its essence*.
-and Metamorphs/Polymorphs who can copy organic and inorganic at the same time we ask about mass and detail, like if they turn into a cop with their uniform do they also copy the gun, or is this a more biological mimicry where its all surface only and not the actual materials and items *made a lump on their side that looks like the gun and holster but it is physically attached *my own predatory shapeshifters I called Mimics/Imitators are this type, the transformation is only skin deep…yet still scans as the material and biology to fool all senses even a dog’s sense of smell*.
of course then we get the mess of free form shapeshifting and same issues as the transformation types above with materials and restrictions but also more aesthetics on how the shapeshifting looks.
-poof,
-necormorph,
-slime morph,
-claymorph,
-energy morph,
-Smooth morphing (the fakest looking yet the most natural)
etc….
-and all of that is tip of the iceberg, going over in my head I realized I’d be writing an insanely long page to cover all the variations of shapeshifting in folklore, myths, fairy tales, comic books, etc…-
On that same note the voice thing. Funny enough when researching for my own supernatural forest predators *shapeshifters and vocal mimics*, it was interesting to find that no animals *except humans* use vocal mimicry for predation above the hunting small arthropods level. Not even like a lizard imitating a frog to lure them in, or a dog imitating the sound of a mother deer to lure out the fawns. This sort of thing is the domain of hunters *duck calls* and supernatural monsters (the thing in the woods had a voice just like my mother, but I knew she was in the house).
that said vocal mimicry is very real, just not used that way; some people can do it same as all sorts of birds. It may even be a skill you can learn with practice like doing bird calls or impersonations.,,,humans are the monster in the woods luring out its prey by mimicing their sounds LoL.
Wow Rhuen, excellent run down on shapeshifters. There’s also the illusion thing which would be mind altering ability or some kind of holographic projection, neither one which would seem to apply here. Well, possibly mind altering would work, but I don’t think that’s where Dave is going. So let’s say it’s a Mystique type of morphing, using one’s own body mass to duplicate virtually anything surrounding, attached to her body. We saw Chimyriad morph into Zeph complete with smoking jacket. So what happened to the smoking jacket in this page? If she or they took it off is that part of her still under her control even though not attached. Telepathic connection, or when detached is that part under some kind of latent instructions or programming? Also, if she is using control down to the cellular level, then as has been mentioned, she can absorb a massive amount of damage and be able to suppress most pain. In some ways, she might be better in some aspects than Wolverine.
yeah the jacket thing is making me think Chimyriad falls under a Clayface or Venom(Marvel symbiotes) degree where they can create detachable parts. Maybe that’s their plan, while the main body is being tortured that jacket tossed somewhere has slipped away like a small mimic or octopus changing colors and textures to slither around *going over my own mimics messing around with the idea of being able to imitate meta materials and bend light as a result or so smoothly copy was is behind them to create fake depths and with coloration fake shadowing *optical illusion territory) and appear invisible. To find the drive or alert Archon to their location.
Yes Chimyriad definitely feels more of a ‘clayface’ shapeshifter in how she can have clothes that can be removed without giving away her shapeshifting. Sort of like how Clayface made that little girl who befriended Robin, except Chimyriad actually has control of all her parts, whereas Clayface did not.
And maybe the robe/jacket can morph into something else (a rat, a cat, etc) to leave and tell ARCHON where she is.
It’s even better/worse than that.
Let’s just say, I never run out of ingredients in the kitchen.
Oh god. Oh dear god.
Yes… Much worse. Best guess then is that everything needs to be biological to some extent. So she can copy ingredients for kitchen use because they’re all biological, Certain items such as pens and guns might have appearance but not the robustness or functionality… or at least I’d hope she can’t form guns with working bullets, grenades…
I think a professional shape shifter would probably want accent training on par with this guy. If you really know what every region’s accent sounds like, there are little tells in the most mundane statements, and that will clue you in to regional dialects like pop vs soda vs Coke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1KP4ztKK0A
Hey, it could be worse. He could be torturing someone like Maula Bloodhand, who would give him torture tips, asking if they have a rack or some other “Real” methods of torture, or even falling asleep.
For your “Coke” illustration, it’s probably better to use “Jeep” than Prius. Historically, Jeep came very close to being the generic word for SUV.
So it would be
“I need a jeep. Do you have a Toyota 4Runner to rent me?”
Having done pen testing in the past, it is amazing how oblivious people can be to the obvious. I had a lady who thought something was odd, ask me about it, and then take the plausible answer and go on her way. If you see Billy Joe Bob, and he is slightly out of character I would expect most people would think oh he is just out of sorts, not “Hey that is a shape shifter in Billy Joe Bob’s skin!”
I will note that it is not uncommon for shapeshifters to be unable to shift away wounds. Traumatized or dead tissue may simply not be responsive to further shifting, so the dead blood that forms bruises and the split and ruptured cells may simply not move around like they want to. If she doesn’t have the ability to detach them and get rid of them, those are real injuries.
On the other hand, not actually taking much damage by having the right combination of fat and muscle taking the blows and not impacting bone, and making it ‘look worse’, could totally be within her skillset.
Is one of Chimmy’s side effects to her superpower a lack of pain receptors? because that would make her a hilarious foil around Achilles…
I wonder if Chimyriad is actually injured or her adaptability actually gives her a level of super healing and she’s just putting them on. I mean, with complete shape shifting I could easily imagine she’d be able to alter any wounded body parts to be healed.
The face she made at X suggests her adaptability is beyond mere copy/clone so she’d likely only need to be unobserved for a moment and adapt herself to slip restraints, look like another cultist and find the nearest communicator.
*giggles*