Grrl Power #1103 – Interrorgation
And let’s check in with the happenings back in the states. Looks like things are eating up! I’ll show myself out.
Tetsuo Theme.Mp3 for those of you weirdos who don’t read comics and novels with a slew of dramatic music queued up on your soundboard.
Chimyriad isn’t in the Who’s Who because we haven’t seen her face yet. That’s the problem with shapeshifters. Any photo ID of her would be seriously sus anyway.
I think John Carpenter’s The Thing is pretty much the best monster movie ever made. I know, you’re like “But what about Alien?” Alien is, IMO, one of the best horror movies ever made. I mean it’s a horror movie featuring a monster, but The Thing isn’t really a horror movie, so I draw that distinction between them. But you’re like “But what about [insert your favorite genre of scary movie here]?” No, because slasher movies aren’t scary, they’re about boobs and gore. Demonic possession films are all dumb because they’re like… I don’t know. Being scared of radiation poisoning from Microwaves. It’s not a thing. (But people my age all remember those warning signs businesses had to put up by their breakrooms warning of a microwave potentially being in operation, right? What was that about? Maybe early microwaves had shitty shielding and people with archaic pacemakers had to legitimately be afraid of them, but my impression is that it was a new technology and the stupid masses were experiencing the usual bout of unjustified technophobia while everyone with working brains rolled their eyes and patted the dumb-dumbs on the head in a reassuring and definitely not patronizing manner.
What was I talking about? Oh, right demonic possession. It’s mental illness misdiagnosed by the ignorant and pious, and supposedly scary movies about it just aren’t. Also movies/shows about haunted houses/ghosts. The soundtrack is doing a lot of heavy lifting in those. Jump scares are 90% music sting.
Anyway… I love The Thing and Lovecraftian body horror type stuff. If I hadn’t spent my youth drawing my own superheroes and fantasy art, I could have definitely gone down the path of macabre monster art. I imagine I’d be spending a lot of time in ZBrush creating things with tentacles and too many teeth. So I got to practice it a little here. It was fun, but I still like drawing sexy superheroines. Maybe my next project will be Chesty McFadden and the Cthulhu Kid, where Chesty is like a sexy female Hellboy type action detective who teams up with a Shoggoth to, uh… I dunno, save the world from something worse than Cthulhoids?
The November Vote Incentive is up!
I went a little simpler with the art this time, which is to say I didn’t add like 9 passes of lighting and detail work. I wasn’t trying to chintz out on the time input or anything, I’d been browsing around ArtStation since I like torturing myself with all the amazing art there, and found a few people who do nice clean styles that are more Arcane (the League of Legends Netflix show) than Love, Death and Robots, and by LD&R I mean the ones that are like “Look at how realistic our skin textures are!” and not the ones that are more Pixar-y or just like 2D cell art or whatever.
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Okay, this made me laugh, I’d have bitten his hand off honestly, along with the whole ‘lovecraftian horror’ bit
But then his hand would have just been gone, and Chimyriad wouldn’t have had the ongoing pain and THREAT of losing it to use as leverage.
I have to wonder if Chimyriad managed to go on a date with Trent?
Seems like they would get along swimmingly.
They’d really see eye to eye.
… to eye to eye to eye to eye …
Have to checked the “Missed Connections” personal ads in the paper.
…
Is that still a thing people do?
Oh
My
God
I know now that these villains are mind crushingly stupid because they appear to all where the same thing as a ‘uniform. The Mask/Hood/Cape combination could have been more of a clue that they are really trying to be the ‘Overarching Villain’ motif.
I am officially naming the guy in the hood who is being mean to Chimy ‘Simon Cowl’.
Really?
I feel like ‘Reuben’ is much more appropriate.
…
Anybody got some Rye & sauerkraut?
Guessing the teeth through the hand isn’t part of the illusion?
Dabbler uses illusions, Chimriad is a genuine shapeshifter.
There are no illusions, only layers of reality you haven’t experienced.
That… has gotta be something no one else has thought of yet for a shapechanger in an interrogation: ‘pretend’ to lose a vital body part, like your jaw
Oh, jaws aren’t really all that vital.
Not in the short-term, anyway. Could become problematic in the long run, I’ll grant you.
“Oh, jaws aren’t really all that vital.”
I had mine broke, (lost all the teeth there too) no I wasn’t going to die, but try drinking food for 6-7 weeks and then soft food only until the muscles built back up. I’m sure this is a huge nod to the original movie “The Thing” (1982) and it would break off bits to attack other’s or escape getting roasted. I don’t believe Chimy has a normal look anymore, I knew a gal that had dyed her hair for so long she forgot what her natural color was lol. So she might not know or care, and like Dabs said once to Sydney: “If you could change your look in an instant anytime you wanted, wouldn’t you?” I can relate, I’d love to look 21 and have the physique I had back then! (Uh-uh no I never kissed my biceps, no never!) XD
Kinda like a character in an old 2000AD story: they had had so many full body surgeries, they no longer even remembered who they originally were, and they ended up being so non-descript no one even noticed they were in the background (they were occupying a room until the main character moved in because no one knew they were there)
The ballad of Halo Jones.
Yups, was a sad, but heroic, end to that character (not Halo) :(
Trying to figure out who is between Maxi and Hiro, but have we seen a female with hair like that yet?
Unless Jabs had a dye-job, can’t be her, and fairly sure Vahriah’s hair is short on both sides…
It’s the chick that does the different powers based on who she touches I think. Can’t remember her name at the moment and the cast list hasn’t been updated since the first 100 comics.
Varia’s last appearance wasn’t very long ago.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1087-adulation-escalation/
I think it’s Varia, but the long hair on top of her head is swept over to one side.
Oh hi Alucard!
Heykidsyouwannaseeadeadbody?!
Really. Release restraint level one. https://youtu.be/0_4nmW5GZhQ?t=1423
Oof. That’s gotta hurt. Hurt his feelings, mostly. I gotta say, “dumb muscle” isn’t usually so… literal, haha!
He was called a ‘weak-ass moron”
It behooves someone with such a powerset to be well-versed in all things anatomical.
Including neurobiology.
It’s kind of a weird flex to say that demonic possession/ghost movies are dumb because they aren’t a real thing, but alien/elder god/horrors from beyond one’s imagination are cool because.. they are real? I dunno, maybe I missed the point there, but it seems a little oddly hypocritical. And I agree, ghosts, magic, witchcraft, etc, are all a bunch of malarkey because science has yet to prove any of them and nobody has ever, even in the modern era, recorded evidence of it. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut same with aliens, so..
Gonna have to disagree with you there. Lots of video evidence out there but since no “big name” scientists have the brass to come out and test it then many assume it can’t be real
Yeah, its a REALLY damn wierd take. Demonic possession isnt real so its boring/stupid in a world where the Thing is just fine. And he goes on to do a superhero comic, where superheroes are also just fine despite not being real.
Also he’s obviously a filthy heretic for calling Alien a horror movie (which is fine) while ignoring Aliens or Tremors which are most certainly monster movies. :P
I suspect what he means is his thing is body-horror type movies, not horror or monster movies.
I think it’s more that demonic possession is dumb and not scary because science has demystified it, where as eldritch entities and “The Thing” are still beyond the comprehension of science and will likely remain so. As such, they aren’t demystified…
Fear of the known vs the fear of the unknown, basically.
Demonic possession movies lost their scare factor for me as my suspension of disbelief reminds me of the history I know regarding mental Illness and the real life horror was the brutality that the church, loved ones, and neighbors would inflict on people they accused of being possessed. There are even stories of people being killed or going along with it out of fear and the entire experience of am exorcism being traumatic and exhausting with some people in more modern times once away from that environment and safe turning around and sueing them for the abuse.
The fact that all the reports about exorcism turned out to be mental illness when studied scientifically says NOTHING about existence of demonic possession. Especially in contrast with Alien or The Thing, which were not found on Earth yet despite all the searching, but, well, they are not SUPPOSED to be on Earth, so, again, says nothing about their existence.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
It is proof. It’s very weak proof, but it’s still proof. Until evidence is given that something exists, the most reasonable assumption is that it doesn’t.
Yes that is what the ninjas want you to think.
the burden of proof falls upon the claimant.
alien existence is statistical and we have “cause to consider” based on Earth based organisms surviving in extreme environments and life suitable conditions being found more and more in space. Its not proof of course, but a good leaning. No one is claiming the specific aliens in those movies exist, although their biological types at a human scale, as they are based on much smaller organisms is not impossible, but again not proven.
Also not to sound rude but read that sentence you wrote again,
“The fact that all the reports about exorcism turned out to be mental illness when studied scientifically says NOTHING about existence of demonic possession”
this is like saying just because we haven’t found a monster in a closet doesn’t mean that out there some kid isn’t right that there is a monster in their closet.
Again, the burden of proof falls on the claimant, and when virtually all examined cases can be dismissed with contrary evidence, and the few that can’t can also be suspected of being politically or socially motivated or else fit similar symptoms. It will require some extreme evidence.
I will admit the Catholic Church in more recent times has taken more of a stance in this direction and sends in investigators to try and examine the cases of having a more mundane explanation before pursuing other avenues.
that said the specific thing here falls on fear of the unknown with space exploration and what-if first contact goes really bad, vs watching a scenario your brain won’t stop dissecting with real world comparisons and making you mentally rewrite the scenes in a real world fashion (heck I did this watching Annabel and imagining the rea doll in those scenes and couldn’t stop laughing)
Seriously, though, can you imagine the horror of thinking you’ve seriously maimed a person and then they sprout extra eyes, mouths, tentacles, etc? If these guys live, they’re gonna need some therapy.
“Dr. Chanard, Dr. Channard, the patient is ready for you…”
I think the cat is out of the bag…well, shapeshifter anyway! :)
Is sometimes a Kitty, yes.
>^_^<
Wait, what was the cat doing in Chimy?
*record scratch-music stop*
…we do not talk about…the incident.
Sounds like she and Schlock could swap some stories, although I suspect they’d have very different points of view.
If I fits, I sits.
I never understood villians who just opened on violent interrogation instead of just working their way to it.
You won’t do the thing I want immediately so let me just risk making you unconscious or physically unable to do the thing. What’s that? You can’t unlock the door cause I chopped off your hand? Well maybe taking your other hand will change your mind?!
I know that isn’t always the case, but A LOT of modern day media and entertainment tends to just use that as shock factor fuel for audiences. Kinda stupid really.
One of my fav reversals of that trope is probably from the beginning of Inglorious Bastards. A simple interrogation through peaceful talking and a glass of milk. But damn, you can feel that intensity
To be fair, they already violently invaded a base and tried to kill a lot of people. Convincing one of the people they captured of their benevolence is off the table. So intimidation and violence is the option. Unless they have the ability to trick him with a holodeck or something, make him belive he escaped and need to use the code for example.
Fair, but he also put up quite the fight using supernatural forces of.his own (to their knowledge). I’d honestly think twice before getting aggressive with someone whose potential powerset is still unknown to you.
Being said, these guys seemed to have done some research on Arcs crew given they waited till the big 3 of.the team were gone but that hasn’t stopped the homebodies from racking up a decent killcount
‘He’ was not a random kidnap. ‘He’ was their target. It isn’t that they don’t know the powerset of their intended target, they did research on that guy. It just so happens that’s not who they got. So it’s a testament (so far) to either the general stupidity of their interrogation techniques OR them being especially fooled by Chymeriad still. She might be very good at what she does.
> holodeck trickery to get the code
Woah, calm down there, Tomalak.
In some movie I have sadly forgotten the name of there was a very interesting example where intimidation was achieved by the protagonist’s friend pretending to be very incompetent at interrogation (also a bit senile) and opting for using some kind of truth serum anyway (guessing which vial it was in, eyeballing the dose, being clumsy and nonchalant) which terrified the interrogated person enough they cooperated fully.
I’m in a similar boat, I think. Where I enjoy this comic enough that I normally wait for 6am on comic day, I’m struggling with my suspension of disbelief with these guys. I really hope Dave is setting up some big reveals, because the conflicting information is hurting.
Some reasons why they’re seriously scary:
1) They’re well funded enough to have a throw-away megayacht. Must be nice.
2) They have enough planning capability to semi-permanently and imprison a fairly powerful super (Concretia/Anima). Spooky stuff.
3) They’ve got enough access to classified information to not only know about the existence of Zephan’s drive, but they have detailed information about how it works including the misdirections it appears to have built in. Sweet Jeebus.
4) They have enough experience with stealth operations that they were able to hire another whole team of supers through a shell corporation and not be near-immediately traced by ArcLight/ArcDark/FBI/NSA/etc. Hot damn.
5) They have supers on staff of the caliber of a telekinetic with enough control to undo fluid mixing and separate out individual molecules of sedative from his bloodstream. Holy shit.
6) They had the wherewithal to utterly disable all electronics communication capabilities from the hardened HQ of a branch of the Military, as well as disabling a number of alarms and security measures (think along the lines of the electrified air ducts). Holy fucking shit.
Some reasons why they’re laughably bad:
1) They staged a raid on the HQ of a military branch (that is filled with the most powerful Supers the US has been able to recruit) with only 5 of their own – Fiddler on the Roof, Fireguy, Claws McStrong, Jean Greychops, and Ted.
2) They had at least mid/high-level agent who had a number of negative traits for a field commander, chief among them a lack of emotional regulation and some hints of uncontrolled sexual sadism. Just utterly unable to deal with Sydney’s adverse(ish) reaction to their truth serum. WTF?
3) The field agents that Cora bugged immediately robbed a convenience store to steal hand sanitizer. Nice job keeping a low profile guys.
4) Left behind a super-distinctive megayacht with apparently no self-destruct, along with 14 crewmates. Unless they somehow scrubbed that sucker all the way down to dust (to remove DNA traces) they’re going to have left a mountain of evidence.
5) Following the Archon HQ raid, the two supers that ArcSwat captured appear to have more-or-less immediately started spilling their guts.
And through all of the exposure to this group it appears that ArcLight/Dark did no investigation of note. My brain hurts Mr. Gumby. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOHMg7IkzHU
“5) They have supers on staff of the caliber of a telekinetic with enough control to undo fluid mixing and separate out individual molecules of sedative from his bloodstream. Holy shit.”
Unless you have the luck to directly hit a blood vessel, (The circumstances didn’t permit carefully targeting one.) you end up creating a pocket of fluid inside the body, probably in the connective tissue between the skin and muscles. That fluid then leaks into the circulatory system over some period of time.
The TK guy pushed it back out through the entry hole before it had time to do that.
That would certainly make a ton of sense. Lots of room for me to be wrong, there. I was going off the comic where there was a lot of blood vessel action going on. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1075-respect-my-personal-space/
With any super hero story you’ve got to have an archenemy in the mix Batman/Joker, Superman/Lex Luther, and so on. While “Kevin” was a big-n-bad, he was a one-shot-hot villain and he’s wanting to go off-world so he can “work” without hurting any of us on earth. I say more power to him but you get my point.
A super villain is by definition smart but dumb in many ways, they think no one can figure out their plans, they all seem to have a need to brag about how smart they are just as the hero figures out how to escape their trap or the sidekick can rescue the hero, etc… The biggest reason that “super villains” are unheard of in the real world is BECAUSE they are smart and cover their tracks in the real world.
To be honest I doubt these guys are anything but a step up from you’re basic minions smart enough (mostly) to carry out their orders and that’s it. And barely that since they did dock that ship and believe a simple zapper would break a super into being a willing slave. We haven’t met the real bad guys behind this all and we may never! (I’m surprised that sicko that had Concretia body didn’t “partake” of it while she was away, pervert…)
Hmm, sounds like you just described a certain psychotic dictator (no, not that one, talking about in-comic)
“2) They had at least mid/high-level agent who had a number of negative traits for a field commander, chief among them a lack of emotional regulation and some hints of uncontrolled sexual sadism. Just utterly unable to deal with Sydney’s adverse(ish) reaction to their truth serum. WTF?”
as a society we do not have any functional filters for managerial skills. In legitimate enterprises there is no real ability to find people who can actually manage a team of anything. why should criminal / secret society types be any better?
“3) The field agents that Cora bugged immediately robbed a convenience store to steal hand sanitizer. Nice job keeping a low profile guys.”
point of order. that was as far as we know the first time anyone has ever seen that type of execution on that planet. it looks traumatic. I think they did good avoiding getting into some kind of locker room/bedroom with a bath and spending the next hour voiding every fluid store and washing the viscera at least 1/2 a mile down the drain. perhaps that was the plan when they got to the yacht.
I will admit the mega yacht is difficult to believe. that’s a lot of capital lost.
“2) They had at least mid/high-level agent who had a number of negative traits for a field commander, chief among them a lack of emotional regulation and some hints of uncontrolled sexual sadism. Just utterly unable to deal with Sydney’s adverse(ish) reaction to their truth serum. WTF?”
as a society we do not have any functional filters for managerial skills. In legitimate enterprises there is no real ability to find people who can actually manage a team of anything. why should criminal / secret society types be any better?
This is a particular nightmare when you are dealing with people who have high value degrees or training. As a newbie manager at a mental health facility I inherited a nurse manager with an antisocial personality. His philosophy was “I keep shit stirred up so that I can do what I want and nobody notices.” Everybody cheered when he went on his way. The catch was he was an MSRN, hard to recruit, and when he wasn’t being a dick, he actually could manage people. One of the things I admired about my wife’s MSW program was that the program had requirements for taking some actual personnel management classes. I’ve come to the conclusions that many professions don’t acknowledge the fact that their graduates are going to end up in management some day. So between undertrained managers and HR departments and policies that aren’t prepares for dealing with the occasional psychopath, it’s a wonder that anything ever gets done.
I’ve taken to saying that here in the US as a society we put more effort into training people to ride motorcycles safely than how to manage people or businesses.
Can confirm.
‘Tetsuo’?
No…
John Carpenter
Tetsuo is likely the most appropriate here. https://youtu.be/_e8ALHji6uU?t=145 I cannot remember the music from “The Thing” at all, even though I watched it about as long ago as Akira. Much more memorable.
With the implication is that Chimyriad is a Shapeshifter/Absorber, this looks poised to be gettin’ REAL good real soon.
Shouldn’t his word balloon be pointed to his neck mouth or something?
Why? She doesn’t really need a mouth to talk anyway, and having it coming from nowhere makes it even scarier
You are correct, however…try imagining a chorus of the same voice from dozens of toothy, dripping maws, all on the same being. Now try picturing the anatomy behind that.
Now picture them moving.
About the only ghost type horror movie I found at all entertaining was The Grudge. That was genuinely scary, and my wife waking up in the middle of the night to go “Guh, guh, guh” in my ear after we’d watched it didn’t help.
Sadly, Lovecraft movie adaptations are usually incredibly sucky, when they’re not campy. The only decent Lovecraft adaptation I can think of was the 2010 The Color out of Space. (Ignore the recent Nicolas Cage remake.) Starts out slow, but the build up is worth it.
From Beyond wasn’t half bad, but Combs isn’t capable of anything but camp, in the end. And if I want camp, Bruce Campbell is my go to.
The above scene is cool, but how does it advance the mission, which is letting everybody else know where the bad guys are?
What about Dogon?
Hadn’t known about that movie. Sounds like a good horror flic, but a bit intense to watch when I’ve got a 14 year old in the house. These days “Hotel Transylvania” is about as horrifying as we get, at least for a few years more.
“Dagon” really is one of the better Lovecraftian movies. It really owes more to “Shadow over Innsmouth” than the story “Dagon”. But yeah, depending on the 14 year old, the nudity, rape and dismemberment might be a bit much. My 16 year old sister watched the “Exorcist” when it hit cable in the 1980’s and she couldn’t sleep alone for a month. For those who are interested The 2010 movie can also be found under the title “Die Farbe”. I also enjoyed the “Call of Cthulhu” an independent film supported by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. It’s made as a 1920’s style black and white silent film. The filmmakers are big fans of HPL and the story sticks as close to the original story as possible. Watch it with the same mindset as you would “Nosferatu” or “Metropolis” and you won’t be disappointed. My favorite bit of Combs Camp is “Re-Animator”.
Which version? The original or the crappy SMG remake? Or maybe even the sequel to the crappy remake?
The above isn’t about advancing the mission, unless the mook in Chimy’s mouth is part of it and playing along
Star Trek might disagree with you on Jeffrey Combs. And I’ve met the man.
First, be patient. The fun in a story is the ride, not the destination.
Second, to quote Confucious, “Find something you enjoy doing, and you will never work a day in your life.”
…Archon has provided many opportunities to not work.
When the Mimic has you in his jaw…
GYAH!
No no! Don’t pass out yet!
This is going to get so much worsebetter…
Early microwaves had the potential to interfere with early pacemakers. Both have improved since then.
Chimy is still in a room with armed people with their hands tied behind their back. I’m not sure this is a smart move.
Why do you think a shapeshifter can ever be bound by normal mortal means? Specially when the captors don’t know they are a shifter of shapes?
“Normal mortal means” is going too far. Depending on her biology, you might be able to immobilize her with a Taser, if her control over her body requires electrochemical messages like a normal human.
Tying her arms behind her back certainly won’t do much good though, considering we currently see her growing extra appendages and sharp things in places they aren’t supposed to be that could probably untie her.
You’re all thinking too small… ^_^
“Might” be able to, but they would have to have the taser on hand and manage to use it (including hitting her) before she escapes and eats your face
And for get about her growing extra limbs to untie her, when she can simply alter her form to slip out of whatever restraints they used, including thumb-cuffs (simply ‘shrink’ the thumbs so they fall off, or retract the thumbs entirely)
Getting warmer.
The thing about shapeshifting is, you can go exploring all kinds of crazy places, if you’re flexible & creative enough.
Like the sky. Learning to fly is_amazing_, even when you’re kinda restricted by the laws of aerodynamics…unlike the Golden Wonder. *grumps*
Thing is, though…the sky? That’s where storms happen. Also insane cold?
The point is, if you wanna fly with the Big Dogs…er, Big Birds…as a shapeshifter, you better learn how to insulate yourself.
Those lightning bolts _hurt_…
Except having a Taser on-hand to shoot someone with is well within the confines of “normal mortal means”. They may not have prepared that way in this circumstance, but no one would bat an eye if they had, since that’s something entirely reasonable to have when you want to kidnap someone.
Except, they don’t have it on hand, and they sure as shit in a blender didn’t use it
None the less, pacemakers still have warnings about strong EM fields. You should stay about arms length away from an active microwave or induction cooker. And can’t do an MRI without a cardiologist present. After the MRI you need to reset the pacemaker settings.
But it’s not “stick your head out the subway window” level of risk, more a “stick your head out the car window” risk. The memory in it could get corrupted, resulting in it forcing an arrhythmia. But it’s not guaranteed to happen, just likely enough to warrant a warning.
I’m not sure having “your hands tied behind your back” actually means that much to a shape shifter on Chimy’s level. We’re basically talking an organic T-2 Terminator, here.
There still exist microwaves which can interfere with your wifi if it’s too close to the router therefore there still exist microwaves that can potentially mess with your pacemaker. I’m sure they’ve found ways to reduce the risk but my friend got a small toaster oven instead of a microwave for reheating when he got his pacemaker.
The way her shapeshifting seems to work, it probably gives her a strong healing factor too, so she might not need to fear normal guns.
From what I’m seeing about her as long as her brain is awake and alert, she can change any body part into another. Fire or acid would do her in obviously, drug her into a coma, maybe, it depends on how reflexive her powers are, either way she may not be as powerful as Max or Anvil, she has staying power far beyond any “normal”. I wouldn’t be surprised if she morphed into a gelatinous mass and oozed out to get free.
You have to wait and see… ^_^
“Fallen” with Denzel Washington was arguably a demonic possession movie that did a pretty good job.
But certainly, few things beat the Lovecraft type horror. I mean, people bering in godly/demonic beings, some bring in aliens and some go with extra-dimensional or afterlife and dreamland stuff… Lovecraft put all that together for something so mindbending it didn’t need details to align and make sense. He just said that anyone able to make even partial sense of it simply became insane.
I simply liked to think of it as the Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the people gone insane were essentially those who had been taken briefly out of the cave and returned so that they could no longer look upon the world the same as everyone else.
Certainly though, I’m not certain anyone has really thought through just how far a shapeshifter’s ability could potentially go like Chimyriad’s here. Most just see something similar to XMen’s Mystiq, altering to look like others, without the thought of complete alteration to any imaginable body horror setup or other messes.
So ‘Cthulhu kids’ would be Scooby Doo… with a shoggoth as Scooby? Hey, maybe Scooby was a shoggot. Who’ve ever heard of a talking dog.
You call that ‘talking’?
That’s one hell of a speech impediment
It’s still a lot better than “BARK! BARK! Bark-bark woof arooo-OOOOOOO!!!”
Scooby sounded about as clear as any other shoggot I’ve heard. Just sayin, so you know.
I mean, to be clear, it’s not the usual, um, accent, but still. It tracks.
Have heard hyu-mons speak less coherently than Scooby
Scooby is canonically descended from the host of an eldritch entity. All talking animals in that universe are.
Maybe Shoggy, the seldom Dog?
Cthulhu kids? I am receiving the image of a Larry Correia character, back when she was around ten or twelve, going into the local woods, an elephant gun over her shoulder and her pet shuggoth trailing close behind her.
It is so easy to tell these “bad guys” are not terribly intelligent nor thoughtful. Very simply, NO CAPES, NO FLASHY COLORS in fact some nice gray scale with a touch of greens and browns to change the counter shading when you move is perfect. And don’t expose the mouth.
What flashy colours?
And Edna was a maroon
You’d be amazed how a dark maroon fades and blends my friend, don’t look around too quickly. They might move and you’ll miss them. I was speaking of the more basic style anyway. Then there is dazzling which done properly can even induce vertigo in an observer, though bejeweling such clothing is always a no no.
Different kind of maroon. Although Vetinari claims that dark greens are superior.
That’s the one, good old Bugsy
Oh, so that’s what a lot of people pooping their pants at once sounds like.
It’s at this point that you’ve realized that you’ve majorly fucked up.
*Edward Norton voice-over*
“There. That was the exact moment I began to question my life-choices. There was a pattern emerging, and…I didn’t a lot of warn & fuzzy feeling from it.”
About the November incentive,imagine Math and Jabberwocky doing a movie poster parody and the poster I decided to choose is…Juno!
Check this out:
https://www.movieposters.com/products/juno-mpw-125121?gclid=Cj0KCQiA4OybBhCzARIsAIcfn9l7TQo5pyT6-LdHwpE9ybqlhDL5i3JHlwApBL84Zp8aL2n697Ws5J0aAtuxEALw_wcB
How would Jabberwocky look as a pregnant teenage girl?!?!?
How would she look? Adorable
For a moment there, I thought it was Trent with a human form.
What’s scary depends on what weirdness your mind can accept, and that can change from day to day. THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and the first film made from it (THE HAUNTING (?)) work for me because I’ve been in places that had bad vibes, and can totally accept the premise that whatever is wrong with the ‘heroine’ might be inside her own head. I’ve had days like that myself.
Demonic possession doesn’t work for me, either, except in a ‘is it possession, spores (like the fungus that takes over ants), or inborn madness?’ scenario.
Villains just don’t seem to have time for the whole sinister interrogation thing anymore, they just go right to the ineffectual torture.
It’s like fast-food & insta-meals.
Nobody has the time to do things right anymore, because of ever-spiraling productivity demands.
Really, evil-rich-guys aside, capitalism is bad for villains, too.
Also Deus have claimed most of the old fashioned style villain market forcing other villains to pursue other styles of villainy.
Yeah, early microwaves had crap shielding. I remember my mother selling Tupperwere at a camping and caravan exhibition. A couple of stands down from her a guy was demonstrating one of the new microwaves. The shielding failed and he got his hand fried. No wonder it took so long for us to get one at home.
It’s all a factor of power. It doesn’t matter the frequency any frequency can cook you with enough power. In fact some really low frequencies can cook you without you really knowing it and that’s even worse. I mean most people don’t think about this but the sun is part of the RF Spectrum and sunburn is being cooked by RF energy in the form of light.
I have metal fragments in my left hand after nearly losing it in a bad car accident and I can tell you that even the newer microwaves leak, I can feel the metal heating up in my hand if I forget (easier to do than you might think) and reach for the door with it. And no I’m not imagining it I was warned about that.
There’s basically two ways to get the radiation shielding on a microwave right, if you are unable to learn about them in school and there’s nobody with more experience than you have.
1. Risk vastly over-engineering it.
2. Give your best lowball estimate and hope it’s good enough.
3. Assume the engineer who gave their best lowball estimate continued to fudge the numbers to give a safety margin and cut the budget accordingly. Possibly several times at different points in the process.
Guess which one a capitalistic company would take.
Sure, they had formulas about the amount of energy output they could expect given the energy they were putting in and roughly how much energy a given Faraday cage could block. But that doesn’t factor in exactly how efficient your microwave is in converting that input energy into microwaves or how much energy the food is going to soak up. Also, I believe there was a fair amount of inexperience with Faraday cages relative to a decade later, especially when talking about cages as small as a microwave. What exactly is the optimal Faraday cage design when one is talking about microwaves and microwave ovens.
I mean, sure, we can answer that now. It’s even possible that someone was able to crunch the numbers and get the right answer back then. But do you really think that management would be willing to spend those resources on every microwave oven if they didn’t know for sure?
To be clear, I agree that capitalism works better than feudalism or the barter system. But it has some inherent design flaws, in large part because most people are really bad at seeing the big picture.
What gets me, is that thanks to a hundred years of propaganda, most people can’t understand that markets are not naturally married to capitalism.
Markets predate capitalism by literally millennia, and are a social technology – a tool – that can be used in pretty much any lager economic system. Including one that doesn’t trade public safety for a .0000001% uptick in the ‘line go up.’
Markets predate capitalism, sure, but it’s not because they used to be nicer to people. I think that the closest thing to what you think about is not about market but about production: in past, craftsman had a honor, reputation and pride and would want his products to be as good as he can make them. Today, companies makes product as cheap as they can, sometimes deliberately making them last shorter time.
point of order… I work in aerospace defense. We don’t even take things out to the 7th significant figure. maybe those semiconductor people do but they are EEs and they are heavily involved with imaginary things at least on the power side. that is of course a real and rational pun. unlike pie, that’s irrational and misspelled.
I recall reading something about it a few years back; they had made some subtle mistake in the “near field” calculations for how much power would leak out through a given sized hole. It was pretty complicated, mathematically.
The mistake got fixed in later models based on empirical testing, and it was only recently the problem could be accurately solved analytically.
Well prepared to go back to the predatory mimic/imitator theory for this character.
On the what is scary, as always very subjective, but I have simply never been able to be scared of horror movies, unnerved if I am in a more sensitive mood at the time *usually just some pain empathy…but that also requires the film make to have accurate anatomy*, as nothing turns a gore scene from *yikes* to me laughing like some real bad anatomy. And honestly the kinds of things it would take to genuinely unnerve are so messed up most film makers wouldn’t show them anyway and it would be less actually frightened by the film thant disturbed by what the film makers were thinking…so probably doesn’t count.
scary movies tend to come in certain types, and people seem content with *rollercoaster* just little adrenaline bursts but nothing that sticks with you…which yeah a “jump scare” but that’s startling. A cat leaps out of the bushes at me while mowing will startle me, especially if off daydreaming, but its not “scary” its not like I am going to be dreading the next bush for a cat.
I could also say a lot of slasher movies I saw as a kid were like softcore porn…which may explain a few of my early horror stories in my late teens t mid twenties being mistaken as only erotica…thank you subconscious and mis understanding the point of those films having sex and violence together. I thought it was a juxtaposition of something sensual so close to something horrible that it was supposed to make the horror worse by contrast…it wasn’t…and thus a few early stories got mistaken for “hard vore” and the like, found that out quick LoL, thank you internet.
Truth is a lot of horror movies just don’t have a theme that sticks around,
killer ghost…so the people it kills also become ghosts right? violent death, need for vengeance right? I thought of that when I was like eight; and I know others have had the same thought…so does the ghost just end up building an army that will kick the crap out of it on the other side?
etc…
Weirdly I think *horror for kids* sometimes has more scary themes, even when the delivery is fantastical, that stick with you. I think because the writers couldn’t rely on too many jumpscares, or gore or sex etc…so on focusing on what might scare a kid without those got those deep rooted fears we carry into adulthood and may be worse as an adult…”they’re just children’s stories”, but there is a reason old folklores told to keep kids safe stayed with us the longest.
“I could also say a lot of slasher movies I saw as a kid were like softcore porn”
I was actually pretty clear on why I went to see “Motel Hell”; I was sure hoping to see a lot more of Rosanne Katon than the flic actually delivered. But it was a fun movie anyway.
Agreeing about ‘The Thing’ – where the BEST line [IMO] is when Palmer [a guy who -has already been- replaced] going ‘You’ve got to be [effing] kidding’ when Norris’s detached head has grown legs & is spotted. …Palmer is one of ‘them’ but suffers a moment of body horror & is repulsed by seeing what -can- happen. I just LOVE that bit.
That’s part of the real body horror of The Thing – the ones it’s already taken over? They don’t know.
They don’t know they’re already infectious alien shape-shifting monsters that are slowly consuming every life-form they come into contact with until something forces them to acknowledge it. The blood test, being shot, being alone with one other person, injured, and so hungry they just have to *blackout* and then they’re really alone, where did that other person go, what happened?
The Thing doesn’t just eat you and pretend to be you, it runs your mind in emulation until it can’t get away with that anymore. Anyone could be an impostor – including you.
I always liked Peter Watts’ short story from The Thing’s perspective: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
Played a Mutants and Masterminds game one with a half shoggoth, half bulldog pet. It allowed me to really screw with the rules (it was a sidekick so not OP). Invisibility just meant people staring right at it couldn’t process it. Got to use levels of growth and Shrink at the same time because non-euclidian etc. Main hero was a dumb jock who got powers by accident. Thought he had “cuttlefish powers” and thus the growing tentacles.
M & M is where Chimyriad originated, actually. o.o
A few lesser-known haunting movies that are excellent.
Oculus – A brother and sister trying to destroy the haunted mirror that (I think) killed their parents.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe – A coroner dealing with the body of an unidentified young woman found half-buried in the basement of a suburban house whose occupants had all died violently.
Kwaidan – A Japanese horror anthology
AKIRA soundtrack – Geinoh Yamashirogumi – “Tetsuo” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De3cWcjZ0Q0
Ok, the face with too many eyes/mouths is off-putting, but not really scary for me. I’ve seen actual freshly dead bodies with the blood still oozing from the crushed skulls and dismembered limbs, you’ll have to do better to actually scare me.
So, you worked Walmart black Friday to.
Between the many, many faces and the rude, panicly people rushing around and lets not forget the gimpy old guy that can’t get out of their way fast enough (grrr….) yeah I worked it, main door, 6am, the second employee “in the way” once they opened the door! Oh yes the horror…
Vale already is an eldritch abomination. Chimeriad should take lessons from her.
Being a Lovecraftian Horror is the best superpower! Tentacles for all things, eyes for days, and so many teeth- it’s like the multitool of superpowers! The only way it could be better is also if you could be on fire while being said Lovecraftain Horror, because (and I may be biased) ninja’s can’t catch you if you’re on fire!
Depends on the scale but body horror shapeshifting is awesome. I have at least four fleshy mimic characters like that, and a few slime ones as well but the symbiote visual isn’t as visceral as describing something reshaping and deforming organic features.
Om Nom Nom!
Thug: My hand!
Chimyriad (Swallows): Wrong. It’s mine now.
I’m really hoping that her name is a portmanteau of ‘Chimera’ and ‘Myriad’ like it looks like. If her powerset is along the lines of the ‘Prototype’ game … the possibilities are delicious.
Kind of like people originally thought Sylar’s powers from the series “Heroes” worked?
You are what you ate….
Gaining new powers from everyone she absorbs is probably too OP for the story here, but “you know what you eat” should work fine.
Getting some Nyarlathothep vibed from Chimmy there.
@DaveB getting definite vibes about Julie of Monster Hunters International with the shoggoth and the kid vibe.
You should reach out to Larry Correia the author. He’s on FB very nice guy and great writer.
Maybe you could do a poster of the duo. It’d sell. The fans loved Mr. Trashbags and Julie story.
+1
Oh, yeah, Mr. Trashbags was the best.
I suspect Correia would love to have Owen do a cameo.