Grrl Power #1104 – Gaoler Dee and Gaoler Dum
Happy Thanksgiving to those of you so inclined! Enjoy your turkey comas.
Honestly, the security here is pretty terrible. Any cell that you can’t see into allows for shenanigans. It’s known that Zeph isn’t a super, so they didn’t stick him in one of their purpose built cells that can account for a number of powers that might be used to escape. Mostly it just floods the cell with knockout gas, but can also flood the cell with water to put out fires, and can also quickly drain the cell, heat it or chill it, shock the floor, stuff like that. The Grrl-verse doesn’t have power dampers because I think that makes for lazy writing. I mean, no power dampers beyond klonking someone on the back of the head with a sock full of nickels, as being unconscious is about the most surefire way of preventing someone from using most powers.
It is known, at least among people in the know, that Zeph can do magic, but they figure if they strip away any foci he might have, and bind his hands, and gag him when he’s not being actively interrogated, then they can probably keep him under control. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t actually grab Zephan, and now the “4 out of 10 competence rating” Goon Squad gets to reinforce the adage that quality is more important than quantity.
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.
Enjoy variant outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon.
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Honestly the fact they keep using Goon Squad’s goons, despite the dearth of their cognitive collective, really doesn’t speak well of their Evil Overlord status.
Goon Squad goons (probably) have one pretty big advantage for an Evil Overlord: They’re actually entirely expendable. You can let them get killed without having to worry about anything: There will be no missing person leading to questions asked, you don’t have to hire new goons while worrying about loyalty or morale (if a lot of goons die, prospective hires might take better jobs). You can actually use them the way evil goons are supposed to be used without any drawbacks.
They’re also likely fairly cheap on a per-head basis.
The last point especially holds true if Goon Squad can duplicate his equipment.
I would assume his gear is not duplicated. Clothing (which covers the armor) would be but beyond that every item he carries needs to be supplied still. Every gun, bullet, grenade, gas device, etc needs to be supplied. It’s not Goon Troops.
Thus original (if needed) could just put on the helmet and armor, clone up, and then stay secure playing video games or whatever while all the clones go off. If it’s range limited he can stay back while the squad does it’s thing. Probably why they went after the armory back in 1071.
I don’t think they went for the armory to loot regular guns. For one, that kind of equipment can be bought with less hassle, also Archon likely doesn’t have a lot of weapons in their armory anyway – they have a fairly small headcount and most of them only carry handguns. Raiding any police department’s SWAT armory would be better and easier for that.
The most likely goal of securing the armory was to stop the defenders from equipping themselves. They might also have hoped for looting some special equipment: Magic or alien weapons.
So it’s canon. Goon Squad and their higher echelon are the Grrlverse equivalent of Project Freelancer’s Red vs Blue training simulation.
I wonder do the clothes get cloned as well. if not your clothes bill could get quite spendy real quick. your enemies could use that to track you.
I’m convinced that this is normal for this level of criminality. given how effective money is at so much, after all the US has the finest legislators money can buy, there no need to do this kind of thing. there are lots and lost of legal but not terribly ethical ways to make oodles and gobs of money that this whole operation almost has to be an ArcDark training exercise. these guys are too stupid to do this right. if they were smart enough to do this right, they would be doing something else more profitable.
There is merit to this. Your post reminded me of Dr Evil and how his supervillain scheme was pretty much useless as his supposedly criminal organization was making billions of dollars yearly through perfectly legal means.
So it’s canon. Goon Squad and their higher echelon are the Grrlverse equivalent of Project Freelancer’s Red vs Blue training simulation.
Most criminals could probably make at least as much money working an honest (or at least legal) job. This is especially true when you consider the inherent risks of crime as a profession. Besides the threat of possibly being arrested and going to prison, there’s also the risk of being shaken down, ripped off or killed by other criminals. Working at McDonalds may not pay great, but at least you don’t have to worry about getting murdered by the gang from Wendys.
If someone has power, and they’re using it to commit crime, rather than make honest money, it’s probably more about deriving pleasure from hurting others or cheating the system than the money itself.
or, they are really bad at making money and picking trusted associates. if your direct reports will not say ‘boss, I think there’s a better way’ or some such diplomatic way of saying the boss is wrong, You are the problem. go find someone to goad you into growing up. there are and have been several object lessons in surrounding yourself with yes men. the Star wars prequels make a semi-controversial example.
Why not both? SmugD has found a way to do both
Has he? I think all that’s been shown is that he is quite proficient at accomplishing his goals while keeping his actions technically legal, and does not appear to enjoy hurting others. He is quite proud of helping people. He may be smug and ambitious, but neither of those are illegal.
You seem to have trouble articulating what exactly it is you dislike about various characters, but it seems to have more to do with their attitudes than their actions.
Was mostly referring to the ‘cheating the system’ part
Of course it’s their attitudes, disliking them for their actions would make me a crate of hippos
I suppose I should say that the honesty is refreshing, but I find it perplexing all the same. But my issue is that you, like many other people, frequently misrepresent your arguments by using others as proxies… Even when your actual arguments would hold up better than the proxy arguments.
these guys can not even dream of comitting the crimes Smug D does. in his case he’s gone about as far as he can legal/nonethical and is comtting the kind of crimes nation states have trouble pulling off. he has successfully stolen land from a country. He has changed the leadership structure of a country and not gone into a chaotic anarchy immediately after as near as we can tell. He has also bypassed interplanetary export controls.
i’ve just signed myself up for a legal brief haven’t I.??? quick tell a bad joke maybe she won’t see!
You appear to define crimes some other way than by their legality. Common, but still nonsensical.
you are correct. most of the things are not strictly speaking in the US criminal code. with the possible exception of leading an unauthorized coup and assisting a foreign power in land theft. however. both of the former are against what passes for international law. and the tech transfer has been identified as against the law of the trading station (remember that Sydney likely cant use any of the official transports as she is in possession of the most advanced tech known.) and as I said this is the kind of activity nation states struggle with. Dues Ex is actually living out the ambitions that usually are associated with megalomania. the catch is so far.. he really is that smart and powerful.
There is also the ideology angles, they feel they deserve it, they feel the system has wronged them or is catering to some group they don’t like so they feel superior going around the system, or like this group seems to have with its cult atmosphere believe they have some higher purpose so the system is a “corrupt network that is beneath us” mindset.
As I live in the US, am over 30 and therefore grumpy. I would condense this down to… They are stupid. I might add that they are also lazy. crap like this is part of what the 7 year old in the Evil Overlord list is for. though therapy is a more effective tool against this kind of lazy thinking, sadly it cannot be weaponized very well.
Hate groups,
Terrorists,
Cults,
and even some crime families started out this way believing the wealthier in the community should be protecting the less capable with the surrounding society against them; and escalates from there thanks to the corrupting power of money and power.
Maybe they get like a free soft drink or a free sandwich for every ten goons?
Now why would every copy of Goon Squad even have a phone?
because GoonSquad pays for the gear by using them as Twitter bots selling Cypto Duh!
Maybe because Goon Squad has a phone himself, and his equipment is copied?
They would still need separate IMEI and subscriptions to make the phones work. It’s more likely that they have a crate of cheap hones with burner subscriptions.
It is possible to clone a SIM card, and have both phones still work. That might even require spoofing the IMEI to make it work.
This is what I came to the comments for…
While that would technically work, having a bunch of independent phones all with the same IMEI and SIM card in the same area will cause MASSIVE glitches due to all the phones receiving the same packets all at the same time. There’s also a major signal to noise ratio issue. If you’ve ever been to a convention and tried to get on the hotel’s wifi, you’ll know what I mean. Granted the phones could be using data and not wifi, but the problem doesn’t go away, just changes frequencies.
Why wouldn’t they? They act independently of Ted, and maybe wants to make a booty-call to his girlfriend
it occurs to me that the longer a clone is “alive” the more valuable it becomes. a “fresh” clone is just a copy of Ted, but after being alive and separate from Ted for a while it will start to become its own person, with experiences and thoughts different than Ted.
Yups, specially if they don’t quantumly share a brain like the Daphne’s
Because they don’t have telepathy or anything like it. They receive verbal orders and they have to come to them somehow.
That said, if they didn’t all have phones, or if the guy doing the interrogation was supposed to know that they didn’t carry phones while on duty (are the goons ever not on duty?) then the beans could have been spilled here. Still, I doubt it’ll be too much of an issue.
I get the sense they are like Naruto shadow clones, where he duplicates them and anything on himself, and they act independently of the original, but he can’t use their senses at all or communicate telepathically with them. Yet when they die, he gets full knowledge of what they experienced while they were around.
I get this as well
Probably doesn’t and is just stalling. The Goon Squad ain’t the smartest, but I’ll bet they ain’t that dumb or get smarter the fewer of them that are active.
The Top 100 Things I’d Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord
1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
The problem there is then that tips off that they’re all really one guy.
It would, however, prevent someone from impersonating one of them.
Not if that someone was a shapeshifter.
Not a particularly skilled shapeshifter.
Assuming they all know each other. Don’t shoot the new guy. Don’t hire enough goons that they can’t recognise all of each other.
The cells aren’t Faraday cages?
That’s sloppy planning.
Concrete builds are reinforced with rebar. Which makes a wonderful ell signal blocker. Cell signal is also blocked by dirt, and is line of sight. Also cell sight have a crappy angle of signal as well.
Spelling. “slight of hand” should be “sleight of hand”
Maybe only one of his hands is small?
You pre-stole my thought. No fair.
slightly sliding that slight typo-critique of his in there with some visual sleight of hand.
Yeah, that’s SO Zeph in disguise.
Also: Sleight of hand.
And as far as lazy writing is concerned: I think it depends on the medium, e.g. One Piece has such an abundance of vastly different super powers that I’d cut the guy some slack with his usage of power dampeners. IIRC kryptonite was lazy writing initially, but even that was nicely woven into the stories eventually.
But since your universe established that superpowers are so drastically different that they can’t even really describe them to each other (e.g. Sydney’s “Touching a Star”) it wouldn’t make any sense to have one McGuffin to rule them all in the GrrlVerse. Of course there might be all kinds of OP stuff from highly advanced cilivizations where Sydney may or may not have gotten her orbs from, but that stuff is probably not specific to suppressing what we consider to be super powers.
No, Zeph is back at ArcHQ
Remember how much trouble they had safely sedating the Rumblers at the Restaurant? And that was just using normal meds
I think you mean Chimyriad.
You might be right. XD
So, um, who is Zeph, then?
I looked at the cast page, but to no avail.
The cast page will indeed avail you not. There are many characters who are not listed there, and even for those who are, much of the information is either out of date, or no retroactively inaccurate.
Fixing and updating it is just presumably a lower priority than things like getting the regular comic pages out on time, and the monthly vote incentive and such.
We totally need a wiki. I mean, it worked for Girl Genius too.
I kinda thought there was one at one time, but nobody contributed to it, so it stagnated and died. But I can’t even find a corpse, so maybe there never was one.
It would be really nice to have one, but I’m not sure we have the kind of audience necessary to maintain one.
‘Zeph’ is Zephan, the head of Archon’s Magic School of Wizarding
Like Dabbles, he is a former adventurer (and one of the rare breed of ‘finger wrigglers’ who knows how to wriggle them into the form of a fist, and be able to use it effectively)
Thanks, I guess I’ll have to take an archive dive to find him, but I wanted to do that eventually anyway.
He’s basically the protagonist from Big Trouble in Little China, but with all the powers of the protagonist’s teacher in the movie because he’s much older now… Except a lawyer friendly expy of said character.
Chymiriad is the shape shifter that but the guys hand and is impersonating him… She impersonated Zeph so she would be captured and not him, so she could use being in their base to bring the hammer down on them.
I mean, whatever makes actual supers is probably the same source, so if you can counter that, you take out most of the roster. There are only a few non-super superpowered people around – Halo, Dabbler, Krona …
Halo’s orbs are likely tapping into the same source as “natural” superpowers though.
“Likely,” based on what, exactly?
Why do you think that? We have little in the way of hard facts about the orbs’ origin, but the most supported hypothesis seems to be they’re advanced clarketech artifacts.
You forget Scipina and her entire race, not to mention other non-terrestrial species, like… the Fel
I was referring to Supers and ArcSWAT as the classic center of the story. Despite how different their powers look, they likely all have the same source.
I’m not sure if Alari have anything that counts as superpowers – Sciona is a blood mage with an artificed body and I don’t think we’ve seen anything anything done without her involvement. Maybe the energy blade wings. Escorpia, meanwhile, was a super.
Likewise the Fel, they have technology, but on themselves all they seem to have is minor brute strength.
For the purpose of capturing them, it seems like they don’t have anything that isn’t solved with extra heavy restraints.
Demons might count, but demons often share weaknesses, so that makes two big groups.
Was meaning the non-super Superpowered people, if you are including people like Sydney (tech), Dabbles (magic and tech) and Kronachrome (whatever she is poking with a stick) then you have to include alien races and species
Technically power dampening inverse could be done for 99% of Supers via Medically Induced Comas.
Or having a Super make a Dream VR type thing and lock their consciousness inside a digital dreamscape. (Since if knocking a person out nulls 99% of Supers. Keeping them out would also Null their stuff.)
I don’t think kryptonite was ever well integrated. Basically every superman villain has a kryptonite something. It’s just he is so unreasonable powerful that they had to invent “no powers now” button extra for him. Also he is too stupid to deal with such threads properly, just laser them from a few miles away and be done with it.
Soupcan does not kill, ever (that shitty movie doesn’t count, because it is shitty and wrong)
See Injustice… when he does go kill mode he goes really kill mode… It’s not pretty.
Specifically “superman flash chess” because that is when superman learns exactly how fast the fastest man alive thinks.
All I can say to that is… SHAZAM!
Superman was born and raised a farmer, and farmers kill all the time. That’s why they make such good soldiers. There’s some real good reviews of that movie and why he did what he did, but in the end it comes down to Zod committing suicide. Note that Zod doesn’t directly target civilians throughout the entire movie. He does so that time specifically to force Clark to kill him.
It was death by Superman, and Zod chose it.
Superman… he killed the rabid dog who couldn’t be saved or locked up.
So, they don’t have access to the Phantom Zone in that universe?
The flying Soupcan could simply have blocked Zod’s eyes, and then removed them
No, Superman in that universe did not have access to a Phantom Zone projector. If you recall the movie, Zod survives because he and his people were in the Zone, and when their sentence passed, they were brought back out to nothing.
Superman destroyed everything Kryptonian that was left. Zod had nothing left to live for.
Never seen the movie, not the whole thing at least, only the common repeated scenes
You know… Goon Squad’s ability to bicker with himself is kind of existentially terrifying if you think about the implications of each clone apparently having different sets of opinions too much…
Consider if they’re able to express different opinions and act independently then killing them is effectively murder. Just because they turn into candy or whatever it was wouldn’t change that fact. Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man from Marvel is even worse because he’s had clones refuse to be merged back into him and rather than consider that maybe they’re no longer just duplicates of him but effectively their own individuals he simply forces them to remerge into him effectively killing them. At least Array from the Gold Digger universe could store the minds of all her duplicates inside her original and they all were treated as individuals (she had hundreds of personalities/minds inside her collective).
Then there is Bubaigawara/Twice from BbHA, who ended up fighting his own copies and was traumatized by that so much he refused to make copies of himself, as he wasn’t sure if he himself was the original. He could still make copies of others, which me his power still useful, if limited.
Meh. Just think about how often you go back and forth about a thought in your head. He just gets to externalize that.
Yup. If I had Goon Squad’s power, I’m pretty sure my goons would all argue all the fricking time. I mean, what else do I do in my head?
Well, that, but do you really think I’m not arguing with myself while doing that, too?
You’d think that somewhere in all that screaming they’d manage to include “shapeshifter” to warn the guards outside to not let anyone out. Of course this group has shown to be rather incompetent when it comes to contingency plans when things don’t go exactly as expected.
It’s possible the ‘printing’ isn’t complete, so they have some gaps in their knowledge or the like. That or they do it because it’s funny.
Well apart from the fact that it is quite hard to utter (scream) anything intelligible when you are in agony and fear to be eaten alive, the most likely description probably would be “monster”. Not everyone is thinking in “game terms”, even in world where superheros and aliens are know to exist.
Also, what we saw looked more like some symbiote like thing than a shapeshifter if we hadn’t known it was a shapeshifter.
She is female.
That’s assuming they realize they’re dealing with a shapeshifter. For all they know, it’s the actual Zephan who has a monster transformation available.
I mean, that might well be the reason Chimyriad went for looking like a monster rather than an only practical transformation.
Turkey coma was invalidated. Its simply the huge caloric intake. For turkey to be the absolute source. Everyone would need to eat more than a whole bird.
No one said the turkey was the sole source of the coma, but people tend to over-eat during this time, leading many to basically want to sleep it off
In Bruce Willis’ McClane voice -“Now I have a Cell Phone. ho ho ho!”
You mean Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber voice.
well it is Fall here in the US so its the right season for Hans Gruber.
Not even.
Can’t get over that Woke bit can you?
Your one axis life is less dimensional than this webcomic.
/and thanks for proving me right about you, a good Turkey Day.
I haven’t the first clue what you’re on about, and that makes this baffling response hilarious. X’D
I suspect it’s “fall” in the sense of “plummet.”
When you mentioned turkey’s, thought you meant Ted and Ted…
Now there’s an example of well-trained, experienced or both covering for why they’re asking for the phone. Although I haven’t seen or at least haven’t noticed evidence the original is a smoker which using that excuse is risky, should have said that they needed to clean some blood off and revealed a bloody hand to make it more believable that they were needing a break.
As the Big Bad/Cy walks away down the hall, we hear, “Hey, Ted. You know, I thought that guy said that smoking was a filthy habit and he hated the way it make people’s breath smell, so why is he going out for a smoke?”
This is a perfectly valid question which has already been accounted for, and I am eager to see you’re reaction when the answer is revealed. ^_^
It’s possible that Chimyriad noticed that the guy smelled like an ashtray, and concluded he’s a smoker.
Really hoping he’s a pipe-smoker instead.
At least that smells good.
Not to me.
X is a _really_ good teacher. ^_^
The type 2 goons all dress and look alike. Odds are very good at least one of them smokes. And that’s if “smoke” doesn’t translate into “I have to take a dump and don’t want to say that”.
I think they should have access to a magic dampener, given that we’ve seen anti-magic before like the spikes on the mannequin killers.
It is in the same story line also established that there are around a dozen people alive amd within earth’s infosphere that can build them and the only one of the dampeners that dampened exploded from overload.
Also they only seem to work when magic is used directly against them, because Dabbler and a bunch of others used magic around them without getting sucked dry.
Dabbler’s magic shield for example got “canceled out” and not absorbed like the vampire’s spell and not ignored like the glamour over the suit of armor.
It would still be a valuable tool, but probably at the expensive side.
This isn’t ‘quite’ true.
The magic trap worked by magic being used ON the constructs, whereupon it leeched the mage (not vampire) out of ALL magic.
Dabbler just used magic shields, and the constructs cut right through them. Different from casting a spell on the creatures.
Sure, anti-magic is a thing that exists.
But superpowers explicitly don’t play by the rules of magic.
Magic and supers are powered by different types waves that Deus (and Dabs a while back) were talking about before the sandstorm/man attack. However the body stores energy so while a field could be created it, it would take time for that charge to be depleted. Or like both Max and Sydney their powers are created by an object (Max has hers bonded to her skin) so it’s depends on now much energy those contain, we’ve got a look into Sydney’s limit just not into Max’s (yet). I’m willing to bet her gold skin/body can store HUGE amounts of energy. (What? No! I wasn’t talking about her boobs, nor was I thinking that…. much…) :P
Super powers, violate the laws of Physics. Pru
{ Jacques Cousteau voice } 30 Seconds Later
“Didn’t the boss say that smoking was unhealthy? “
… And when has something a boss, any boss, said was bad (or unhealthy) ever had any effect on workers
Oh, you are thinking that masked idiot is the boss? Personally figured the golden mask was of a higher rankage
Not only did it cost them and arm and a leg but he even got the drive back. Smooth Operator. He does have a point though about the phone.
Given how common blood is for a magical focus, and given the human bodies ability to bleed from anywhere, not just the hands, I’d make a guess that even if Zeph had gotten nabbed, things wouldn’t have worked out too differently.
This reminds me of a novel by Donald Tyson. Some of the characters were resurrecting dead sorcerers to gain their knowledge. The first step in dealing with a reconstituted sorcerer was to bind them, blind them and cut out their tongue. It complicated interrogation a bit but they didn’t cast any spells.
“… bind them, blind them and cut out their tongue. It complicated interrogation a bit but they didn’t cast any spells…” What total amateurs.
True enough. In the context of the story their point was you don’t give a potentially powerful sorcerer a chance to throw a spell at you. Sorcerers tend to be a bit cranky when roused from the sleep of ages.
Having blood probably isn’t enough if your hands aren’t free enough to actually work the magic.
This is why you _always_ plan out to acquire Still Spell and Silent Spell.
Assuming that’s a thing in Grrlpowerverse.
If our unnamed bad guys have done their homework, which so far seems the case, then they would likely know it’s a thing if it is and feel the need to make precautions – they didn’t.
Per the described scenario, his feet were left free. Drawing sigils / runes / etc. seems doable.
It occurs to me now to wonder if power dampeners were at least partially introduced in the old comics so they didn’t have to kill. If I finally subdue Serial Killer Sam who can turn invisible and bend metal with his mind, chucking him in a power-dampened room is a lot more FCC friendly than executing him on the streets of Gotham because he’s obviously gonna escape fairly quickly from San Quentin or even ADX. Granted it would be more interesting to lock him in an all plastic prison with weight sensors Magneto in X2 style, but even that didn’t actually work in the end
To be fair, someone broke Magneto out of that prison. Sure, they did it in a way that left Magneto doing the heavy lifting. However, he wouldn’t have managed it nearly that quickly without that assistance.
That has never stopped, The Joker!
Fun fact Joker was the first villain Batman didn’t kill and thus the first reoccurring villain. This was due to the editors saying they need to stop killing every criminal so they can have an ongoing detective vs criminals story. Don’t remember if censoring was a cause.
That glimpse through the door.. .. .. are they still alive? No? Ok.
I bet a cell phone could be used for a few different spell components, so magical MacGyvering would be a possibility.
It makes good financial sense to keep using Goon Squad as guards around the base. Why pay dozens of idiots to do a job badly when you can just pay one to do all the same jobs?
Pay multiple idiots to do a job badly, or pay one idiot to do all the jobs badly? The choice is yours!
Honestly…Ted might not be the sharpest crayon in the bag, but I feel like he’d be a net asset for Archon.
Better training & discipline, and better working conditions, would essentially let him fill the one gap in Archon’s toolbox.
Manpower.
I wonder if Ted himself is actually that dumb, or if it’s just his copies. Maybe they share brainpower in some way.
You should just add a copy of someones face on the “who’s who” list for each page whenever the Shapeshifter is part of the pages.
then write under the copy shapeshifters power set :3
While that would work, I think there was an intent to make us recognize Chimyriad for ourselves. That said, when there isn’t a need to do that, I kind of agree. I don’t know whether it would be better for it to be the picture of someone in that particular update or not.
It would be kind of odd to see the Who’s Who here showing two pictures of Goon Squad, one with their powerset and one with Chimyriad’s, but since I don’t believe we have a name for the other guy yet, I think that would be the most appropriate way of showing a picture for Chimyriad on this page without completely spoiling which character on the page is actually Chimyriad.
Use the last image from the last page as part of the rotation with about a 40% chance of appearing, with the other 60% being various people thought to have been impersonated by her.
In frame three, I see an arm, and a leg. Did those belong to the same guy?
How many people were in the room again? I’m not sure there were a lot of options for who would be supplying body parts.
Of course, that makes everyone here look incompetent.
Not anymore.
“ now the “4 out of 10 competence rating” Goon Squad gets to reinforce the adage that quality is more important than quantity.”
When you pays peanuts, you gets monkeys.
“I can make an infinite army of myself who maintain all of my strength!!!”
“Isn’t that overpowered?”
“Well sure my strength does not get spread between them, but my IQ is.”
“Ah… well at least you are able to get more done.”
“What is more productive? A man with an IQ of 250, or 10 guys with the IQ of 25?”
“Okay I see your point.”
Trying to divide up IQ is… weird. Because your IQ is no indication of the raw amount of intelligence you have; it only tells you how many other people you’re smarter than. If your raw intelligence were halved, it’s hard to say how many points of IQ you would lose as a result.
Also, IQ as a concept is *heavily* tainted by, y’know, racist and eugenicist thought processes. It’s by no means an unbiased measurement of intelligence.
even Rorshach tests have actual answers. To me, that’s a little bit weird, ’cause if anyone said ‘oh that’s: (correct answer)’ I would tend to think they were totally mental.
The reason the Rorschach test isn’t used anymore is because it’s been determined to be complete bunk… Also because of people like me who would if given the opportunity to do so give the correct answers for all but one and then sat that one looks like two bears high fiving. Just to let the shrink know I’m fucking with them and the test won’t yield accurate results with me even if it wasn’t bunk from the start.
Having administered a couple of thousand IQ tests I can say that for the average person, it is just a mostly meaningless number. This is especially true when a score is viewed in isolation. Diagnostically, an IQ test is just a small part of the picture and should be interpreted in the context of the persons history and functional life skills. I’m probably pissin’ on someone’s validation but Mensa is just a circle jerk. IQ tests can be useful in identifying relative strengths and weaknesses and I had a few times when it helped to confirm a medical diagnosis. As for the Rorschach, I worked with a few people who liked it and even trained on it enough to follow what they were talking about. As I trained on it, there isn’t “correct answer”, there are categories of answers (responses to the card) each with their own implications separately and in context with responses to other cards. At least with the technique that I trained on, it is pretty labor intensive and usually used in the context of individual psychotherapy. Projective tests have their uses but as with IQ tests they are pretty meaningless when viewed in isolation.
As a former member of Mensa (I quit for some very good reasons) you are wrong. Mensa is a not massive circle jerk; its worse. A circle jerk would imply that they’re jerking eachother. No, this is all of them in a room together jerking themselves off to prove who can come the most and who has the bigger eggplant.
Actually it’s worse than that. When I was quit it was because I had gotten sick and tired of brown beating idiots in Mensa who swear by f***ing homeopathy, reiki, and other nonsense. There was even a flat earther, back before it became a menace on the internet.
So here’s how it works in Mensa. “I have an IQ, which is a mostly meaningless number, that is higher than 99 point some excuse me let me jerk one out, ahhhh, ok where was I? Oh yes, higher than 99 point some more numbers percent of the population. The plebians beneath me say that homeopathy is nonsense, but I read a book on it and the logic behind it makes sense to me and I’m smarter than they are and therefore I’m right and they’re wrong and western medicine is nonsense and homeopathy is the only real medicine.”
That is why I left. I have much more laconic ways of describing what Mensa members are like from the inside, but I’m pretty sure they’d hit some kind of profanity filter or get me out on some kind of watch list.
I thought I remembered from the earlier attack that Ted’s (Ted Prime) knew what killed his clones. Is Ted’ able to pass that information down to them or is it a one-way flow of information? Because Chimmy plainly slaughtered the goons in the room and these two could be stalling for time. They obviously have no self preservation it they were controlled into being nooks attacking a base.
As for how smart they are, maybe Ted’ doesn’t give each mook much of his transferable IQ pool unless its needed for a particular task.
There weren’t any Goon Squad guys in the cell, it was two Masked Guys.
Wasn’t one of the guys in the room holding a phone up to Chym’s face in the last strip? Why can’t she use that one? Did it get destroyed in the fighting?
That was the stolen hard drive.
Love the little peek through the door in panel 3.
Two bodies and and more blood visible than wall.
At least I think it’s two bodies… It could be two body parts from the same guy.
Small typo, fifth frame: “slight” should be “sleight”. Both words are pronounced the same, but “sleight” refers to fast hands, and “slight” refers to little hands. Please delete this comment when you’ve corrected the typo. Thanks!
*Internal server error test*
So If I type a lot I get an internal server error message, okay, a link to what I typed about power dampeners,
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/journal/Power-Dampeners-938472366
okay, so I can reply to others, type new comments. But any attempt to copy and paste that or even retype it out has resulted in an “internal server error”
Ah the power of a true shapeshifter… With careful use Chimyriad could take out most of the personal in that location but why should she has all the fun? Besides she has taken a beating and no doubt needs to rest soon. And consume mass quantities of protean and carbs to replenish what she’s used up in the escape.
We don’t know what she’s left of those guys in the cell. She might already be topped up.
‘Protean’ is mutability of form, which is fitting for a shape-changer. But methinks you meant ‘protein’, since you coupled it with carbs in your phrase. ^_^
Having both Protean & Vicissitude is better, but you need Protein to effective use Vicissitude, so really, you want Vicissitude, Protein, and Protean.
VPP, we call it.
Naa I was dead tired and trusted spell-check, we had a calf born and it was the first born to the mother. You haven’t lived until you lay on the ground with ropes running to the calf’s legs while you pull for an hour… My son usually does that but he was at work when she started so yeah. Sadly it was a premie and didn’t make it :(
Erm…think I got confused by the conversation on panel 4-7…
Panel 4: Chim asking the Right goon for phone
Panel 5: Chim should still be speaking to the same right goon (currently left in this POV) about why you don’t bring a phone…hence the other goon (Left goon…though it appears right from this POV) mentions about melting locks
Panel 6: Left goon says that’s Macgyver nonsense (despite panel 5 seeming to be him mentioning about melting locks)
Does that make sense to others?
When you are talking to the Ted’s, being confused about which Ted is normal :)
And that’s just if there is one of him :P
Pov shift.
Notice how the wall in P5 has no door in it.
So in panel 5-6, it’s the same guy saying he could use the battery to melt the lock or something in panel 5 and then saying that’s macgyver TV nonsense in panel 6.
The convo felt like he was saying he could do something and later saying it’s impossible to do said thing…
That doesn’t explain panel 6 tough: even though they shifted the POV back, it’s still the guy on the Chimy’s left (the right of the door) talking about the McGyver-ing when it should have been the guy on the right of panel six who countered with the McGyver TV line
Yeah, the transition from 4 to 5 suggests that the camera rotates around to the other side, but the dialogue in panels 6-7 is laid out as if the camera didn’t rotate between 5 and 6.
You are correct. Dave reversed the proper conversation bubbles for the last two panels. They should have gone to the opposite Teds.
He probably thought he was being clever with the Point of View shift, and it backfired. :)
He was being clever, so clever he fooled himself :)
Faceless legions bad? Seriously that’s been on the Evil Overlord list for years.
I wonder if goon squads kinda dumb due to his cognition being split? One mind split to many ways to really be entirely present anywhere, or maybe the copies don’t get a full mind. He could just be kinda dumb, but it could be a power thing.
That doesn’t affect Harem, BTW it is pronounced Hareem.
isn’t the long -e- pronunciation specific to the term meaning ‘forbidden’?
where the harem (short -e-) has been taken to mean the group within?
Yes
come on guys cymirad needs to make a call…. make with the CELL phone.
To be totally honest I’m not sure why she isn’t carrying a tracker or cellphone in a pouch or something inside herself for just this kind of thing, especially given she’s doing this on purpose.
if “power dampers” are lazy writing, is not drawing faces for minions and giving them mirrored faces masks lazy art-ing?
All that effort and now Chimyriad is just gonna dial archon and have them trace the call
That just starts the Game Clock.
The game being, “How many of these jokers can I neutralize before Max arrives?”
The point is to push the high score as much as you can.
I adore the goon squad. These guys have such good vibes. Plus they behave like, well, dudes. Not hyper intense soldiers or a silent death squad, just a group of guys (I guess technically there is only one true goon) doing a job. I like that.
I legit love Goon Squad, and I’m note sure if I’m supposed to… = 3 =’
Kind of gives me Twice from My Hero Academia vibes.