Grrl Power #1110 – Telescout
Remember, Harem can’t teleport other people, but Varia can teleport when she’s holding on to Harem. Varia usually just tags along, but she can actually teleport somewhere without Harem. She’s just stranded once she arrives.
In case you’re wondering, Harem isn’t wearing the same body armor loadout as everyone else because the amount of mass she can take with her is limited. She could wear a Level II vest and carry a handgun, some reloads and a ‘light’ utility belt, along with her usual clothing when she has all 5 of herselves out and about. If she drops it to 3 of herselves, she could wear the full kit and carry a decent sized assault rifle with her, but she’s much more useful spreading herself around.
The last two panels kind of make me want to do a page or two from Harem’s perspective on any given day. The problem would be that it’d take 5 panels to show what each of her is doing, and there’s only so much room on a page, so it’d take like 5 pages just to resolve a single (set of 5) conversation(s). Not that all 5 of her are always chatting with people simultaneously, but I think it would make for a string of pages that individually probably wouldn’t have a lot of payoff, but if done right, a complete arc of “Five minutes in the Life of Daphne DeShantis” would be pretty satisfying.
Actually, the best format for that might be video with the screen divided 5 ways, but it would be super difficult to show her having multiple conversations that way. If you wanted to be a purist about it, you could say well yeah, us monobrain/monominds can’t keep up with a quintbrain/monomind like her, so we’d have to rewatch the video several times to pick up all the stuff she would.
Obligatory “Now we’re cooking with evil gas.” reference. It’s just one of those expressions that stuck in my head ever since the first time it attacked my earballs, and now I foist in on you.
The November Vote Incentive is still up! The new one will be up with the Monday comic. Nude version is done along with a few outfit variants. Going to add a few more and do the usual bonus comic.
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.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Hmm… I wonder how good Varia’s control is with the Magnetism-powers she gets from Jiggawatt; could she use it to put the cameras on the fritz, or even turn them to point the wrong way?
Maybe a directed EMP at it, it’d have to be or it would knock out all the electronics in the area and kill the power. Which would be bad if they are 150 ft below the surface.
They only need find a single port to hack thru for Leon. Once all the security cameras are under his control he can give real time data uplink support.
The obligatory ‘evil gas’ reference has been foisted upon us before. We still approve.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-118-got-it-in-one/
That noodle hitting her eyeball is a crazy cringe moment
The look on Peggy’s face when it happened only emphasized the horror.
I mean really, of the various high-level hot sauces the chef had stored in an asbestos-lined strongbox, “The Unmaker” had its own section in there providing yet another level of protection…That’s taking it to the top & then over the top in the same comic panel. Heck, even the chef had to wear a full hazmat suit & use tongs just to pull it out of the strongbox.
Don’t forget the hellish glow that was seeping from the lid of the Unmaker. So tasty …
Ya’ll talkin’bout The Unmaker, and I’m just sittin’ here, wondering what a Bloody Caesar made with Hydrogen Bitters included would taste like…
Something along those lines appeared to be the drink of choice for Nasty Canasta, but Drip-Along Daffy didn’t seem to care for it. Your mileage may vary.
Damn…fire up the Wayback, Sherman…
Tangentially related to callbacks (I love ’em): A recent comment prompted me to start a Grrl Power comic wiki at Fandom https://grrlpowercomic.fandom.com/wiki/Grrlpowercomic_Wiki . Any chance I’ll see you there building some callback links? ;)
I had something like that happen once, it wasn’t 3mil scoville units but it was Texas hot sauce, and it wasn’t a noodle it was a drop that flew into my eye! What I get for drinking shots on a weekend bender. You haven’t lived until you’re trying not to rub or scream while leaning over a sink pouring milk into an already irritated eye! All the while the guys laughing their heads off… grrrrrr…..
As a kid, maybe 9 or 10 yers old, I wondered if pepper really made you sneeze. So I tried it – with hot pepper flakes at a pizza restaurant. I got at least one flake lodged in each nostril (maybe a seed? don’t know). Oh, the burning! Que scrambling to blow my nose & find some way to end the pain! Did you know that snorting Pepsi to wash out pepper flakes in your nose only makes it worse? Yes, I did that.
My friends at the table thought it was hilarious.
Nothing tops getting sprayed in the face – eyes open, mouth open – with max-strength pepper spray, though. I am overly sensitive to capsaicin. That was DAYS of pain.
Maybe not quite that bad, but still seriously cringe: a friend of mine once told me a story about his father. A friend of his had grown some peppers that were a little too hot for his taste. Knowing dad had a taste for spicy food, the guy gave him the peppers. Dad was in the kitchen chopping up the peppers when he felt a call of nature. He went to the bathroom, took a leak and washed his hands. About the time he got back to the kitchen, it suddenly occurred to him that maybe he should have also washed his hands before…
Speaking from that exact experience, it doesn’t do you a lot of good to have washed your hands first. Takes an absurd amount of work to get enough of the cap off your fingers to be safe.
These days I use surgical gloves if I’m chopping anything hotter than a jalapeno.
I _soooooo_ miss that art style… T_T
FRom the looks of it, they are in the computer server room, they should be working on hacking the data.
Handyman seems to be only one in entire base that doesn’t seem to be in costume that hides identity. Plus he has access to room with the computers, he has to be high level boss.
Im sure this will never happen, but since Varia seems to be able to at least seemingly directly copy Harem’s powers while in contact, I kinda want to see the parallel universe where Varia clings to Harem for 5 years constantly never letting go until
Pop
Another Varia pops into being.
And after loosing touch for a second explodes into a gory cloud leaving varia with a phantom body until her inevitable suicide as she can’t accept the loss of half of herself?
I don’t think she’s actually copying Harem’s powers, it’s just a really lucky coincidence that the powers she gets when touching Harem happens to also be a type of compatible teleportation. It’s just dumb luck, not a different aspect of her powers.
What hasn’t been explored yet was Sydney’s idea of Varia using bits of blood or skin to see if she could still use the gestalt of the donor. If it works she could have a belt pouch of peal-n-stick bandaids with the samples marked as to the donor or what power(s) she would have. Plus she hasn’t looked at the handyman’s gestalt yet either, not that she’s going to drag him around with them.
Well, that is one way to repurpose a selfie-stick.
I feel like Harem wouldn’t ever need to carry extra ammunition. In the time a normal person can grab something from their belt, she can teleport to where she keeps it all laid out on a table, reload, and teleport back.
Way faster, just teleport out and in at the same time, reload while shooting.
Why would Harem be the one to do the reloading? Someone sitting in her base of operations could simply have the job of keeping a table full of fully loaded guns. This job would also include not walking on the side of the table that Harem would be popping into.
And she could provide rolling coverage, popping new copies with full clips around enemy positions with no risk of friendly fire. She could also draw opponents into dead ends and abandon overwhelmed positions at the last moment.
Downside of that is if I was under fire from a teleporter I’d just wait for the vorp and lay down heavy fire that she’d ‘port into. She needs line of sight so popping in at random would be tricky at best, messy at worst! If it was one guy she could just go into cover, peek out, and ‘port in right next to him and fire before he got over the shock. She did that trick during the first super fight with a sleepy-time shot. I get the impression she’s not a killer by choice anyway.
“Five minutes in the Life of Daphne DeShantis”
Yes pretty please!
With one of them constantly binging Scooby-Doo episodes
I second the motion for some Daphne-cam, possibly including her doing a live-action run of the Scooby Doo hallway chase scenes. Possibly while running the arms course – which I just realized she should absolutely hold the record at by a wide margin.
Harem, Harem, Harem, where are you, we got some work now….
or in her case it’s Harem, Harem, Harem, Harem, Harem LOL!
Let’s not forget that our esteemed writer has already given us one beautifully timed chain-reaction scene of roughly 5 seconds in her life, where (if I recall correctly) an atomic wedgie set off a series of multiplying reactions across the group of clones. It’s been quite a while, but I remember that posting.
Daniel here.
With the “Five Minutes In The Life Of Harem” idea, maybe have it as 5 pages, each page happening at exactly the same time? Synchronised digital clocks with seconds in the background/comic panel border could help establish and maintain how each page fits together. Have Harem listen to a conversation in 1 page, while relaying it in another page/s? Maybe she can plot a prank with someone in 1 page, then pull it off in another? Hidden details most don’t see until another Harem points it out? A bust of the currently followed Harem to help people keep track?
Could be fun actually…
Great minds…
Wow. Infiltration chain. Jiggawatt gets in, who gets Harem in (which is bad enough as far as Harem is 5 bodies on her own). And that lets Varia in.
Even in a superhero setting, that’s amazing. If, for example, the Avengers or the Justice League were to do it, it’d be mostly individual effort, which includes brute force busting in through walls which is going to be way loud and conspicuous. The Fantastic Four would have Reed rigging up a teleportation device which requires expertise, and resources to build and operate. Etc.
ARCHON is scary.
Spiderman would have just walked past people as they were looking the other way, and stayed out of the view of security cameras except when the guy watching through them glanced away. That’s more or less the way he snuck into the ultra-secure meeting room in Avengers Mansion that one time.
Having a precognitive danger sense and absurdly fast reflexes makes you fantastic at infiltration.
If it was Reed he’d just ooze under the door with his hand and open it, or squeeze down the air shaft to get in. He’s done that bit hundreds of times in the comics.
Whatever happened to Yorp? I miss him.
he has been a busy boy. *looks at neglected Yorpie treats*. he popped in to tell us he was alive and way busy with work recently.
Aw, SGT Apone, such a sweetie. Although he was a little high-pitched in his final scene.
I wonder if they’ve tested the full extent of Varia’s powers when in contact with Harem.
It might take her some time to figure out but she may be capable of producing clones. If its the same number as Harem, there would be 8 Harems and Varias porting about while two remain in contact.
I’d also suggest they experiment with teleport weight limits. A singular Harem and Varia, in light attire, might be capable of teleporting a 3rd person along with them. Then a stack of Harems teleporting back and forth could quickly bring all the body gear and equipment. Surely Sydney and Seneca would be light enough… Maybe Peggy without her leg…
Easiest takedown for the cameras, I imagine, would simply be to take out the guys in the monitoring room watching them. Advantage of both eliminating your opponent’s security monitoring while also appropriating it for yourself.
If I was smart enough to make a base as complex as this, I would have 3 security rooms with each one having monitor on another so that if someone gets to one room, the other two would see it. The only way to really deal with a camera security system is find a way to hack it and play on repeating loop so empty hallways keep looking empty until they notice “wait, I didn’t see patrol walk by and there was supposed to be one five minutes ago.”
I’d just have a Goon Squad clone in the monitoring room. His memory of Goose killing him suggests he does actually have some awareness of his clones so takedown of one would alert the rest.
Even evil overlords have to do a cost-benefit analysis. Yes, triple redundancy for the security cameras would be nice but there is an ongoing cost for manning the cameras and keeping them up and running. In my previous life, every work area got an annual risk assessment which helped determine the need for things like security cameras and their placement. In my time as an administrator, my building got about a dozen additional cameras but I had to justify the placement of every one and who had access to the video feeds. Rather than three dedicated security areas we had on security office but there were several people in each building/workspace who had video access. In that way there were almost always two different locations monitoring a video feed. One way to defeat the cameras is to look like you belong there. Just having something that looks like a badge will go a long way toward fooling someone who is trying to monitor a half dozen screens. The size of the facility also makes a difference. My building was small enough that I could recognize my peeps and patients especially after the newer high resolution cameras came in but logging into the classrooms or common areas you really had to watch closely to tell who was who. If you have spent enough time watching videos you can spot people who are trying to be stealthy but someone who acts like they belong there doesn’t stand out. A thing that was getting some discussion when I retired was RFID chips in employee badges. The idea didn’t get any traction for a variety of reasons but for keeping track of your minions in the evil lair it would work pretty well.
Why is Harem not wearing body armor? Weight limit issues? I mean even the semi-invulnerable tanks like Max and Hiro are wearing body armor
I think those are more as uniforms instead of any actual protection they might give.
Under heavy fire, the body armour is more likely to survive and not result in a wardrobe malfunction, as seen earlier when fighting Sciona’s cyborg(?).
Read the page text/description from DaveB. Weight limit is exactly it. Apparently she could have 3 clones with full gear for transporting but Max seems to be far more interested in Harem as a secure and undetectable communications relay together with her scouting and watch skills.
She can only carry beside herself, 25LBs.
White hair Harem is NOT wearing her glasses(unless she’s discovered contact lenses or considered laser eye surgery!?)
BTW-will there be a December Incentive soon?!?
No Harem needs glasses. It’s an affectation for style. To make herself look different.
I think they are fashion glasses, no vision correction.
Supers are perfect specimens of humanity. I seriously doubt white haired Harem needs glasses, probably fake lenses to add to the individual customisation of each Harem.
Was gonna comment on that if no one else had :)
Also, do Abby (Schoolgirl Harem) and Bodie (Punk Harem) have different coloured eyes? Abby has blue but… does Bodie have purple? Difficult to tell on this page
Actually speaking of purple, just noticing that both Harem’s in the final strips have basically the same purple hair as Max. Wonder if that’s an homage or a coincidence.
Most of your nicknames for the cast I can figure out, but where do Abby and Bodie come from?
Abby was because felt she was more ‘sciencey’, and named after the cute goth from NCIS
Bodie is short for Boadicea and wanted more of a ‘fighter-type’ name rather than ‘Punk’ (or maybe it was named after one of the characters from “The Professionals”, been so long ago can’t remember, it’s possible it’s both answers)
As for their hair colours, not sure, Gothamer use to have a different shade of purple (as seen in the “Who’s Who”), and it’s possible Bodie changed her hair after joining Archon as homage to Maxi (she is the one who seems to remain in uniform more than the others)
Varia should be taking lessons from Halo on uses of powers she suddenly gains in cqc situations. At least Halo would recommend a dozen comics for her to read.
In fact present a “must read list” of comics to Arcon for the troops. Include The Boys, for the unpowered to use for reference in fighting powered folks and supers.
But what happens when folks find out hero reads MLP?
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xIgigqLQPFI/maxresdefault.jpg (careful, not safe for kids)
Other way around actually. Sure, Sydney is very genre-saavy and thinks well outside the box, but Varia has actually worked with hundreds of powers over many years, often (presumably) with little or no notice.
You forget: Sydney knows everything about every power, and how to improve them, even for people like Daphne who has relatively decades worth of experience using their powers
Harem doesn’t really need to carry weapons with her – she could prepare her personal armory and just vorp over to grab a rifle or whatever when she’s getting into a firefight.
I feel bad for Handy-Man. He spent hours practicing his quick draw with that stun gun because he just knew that one day he’d be the last line of defense at EvilCo when all the Ted guard morons inevitably screwed up and would be seen as the hero he knew he was. Then when his big moment finally arrived who does he run into but an electrical super his stun gun doesn’t work on. At least this time he’s knocked out behind the lockers instead of stuffed inside one like back in high school.
LOL yeah poor guy, he’s worked the same boring job for years and when the one time he could be a hero to his peers he runs into supers… It would be sad if it wasn’t so damned funny ;)
Earballs? Okay, DaveB, we suspected as much, but what species are you exactly?
*winks*
You haven’t seen the show “Archer” have you?
As described, I’m not certain Varia… should be able to do this, or at least not in the way that’s depicted here? Clearly she can, because she just did, but I’m not sure the reasoning presented tracks.
The following are given:
Harem can’t teleport other people because of mass limits.
Varia touching Harem gains the ability to teleport (presumably copying Harem’s power to some extent, or luck of the draw getting a teleportation ability).
Harem has to “know” where she’s going to teleport. She was able to fake it with a video call. Now that one of her is here, her other bodies can teleport in.
Varia, however, still wouldn’t know where she’s going. She’d need to see the video call, and it would be as much of a risk for her to teleport in as it was for Harem to perform her initial teleport. Synching with Harem’s power shouldn’t matter, because Harem’s power doesn’t give her the ability to bring Varia along (because of the mass limit).
So either the teleportation power Varia gets from touching Harem is “better” than Harem’s, or the ability is more than teleportation. As depicted, it almost seems like Varia is getting temporary access to “Harem-net” (Harem’s weird multi-body consciousness), which could have all sorts of interesting applications. If it were the case, Varia touching Harem might be able to call on her skills as a mechanic, for example, with the downside that they would have to remain in physical contact, and the sharing of memories would presumably not be limited to just useful skills and wouldn’t just be one way. Varia might learn about Harem’s dalliance with Deus for example, but Harem might also learn about Varia’s .
I’m probably just wrong, but it seemed interesting.
Curious, a portion of my comment I’d placed in brackets got sniped out. “…but Harem might also learn about Varia’s (insert dark secret here).”
“Varia usually just tags along” implies to me that she can just… Go with Harem with a degree of difficulty comparable to me “tagging along” while holding your shoulder as you walk down the street. I can walk. You can walk. So when you walk, I start walking as well and just… Follow.
The tagging along part is the problem, at least as described. How is the information of the destination being communicated to Varia? Since they appear to be teleporting together, how are they synchronizing that activity? This is important (for a given value of important) because if Harem goes first, Varia can’t follow, but here they seem to be entirely in sync. Also their proximity is an issue. Harem doing the whole teleport by herself is fine, but two separate teleports in which the subjects start and end in physical contact seems fraught, considering Harem’s previous fear of the consequences of jumping blind. If Varia or Harem mess up, they might end up fused, for example.
All of which is to say, the behaviors shown here imply a bunch of secondary abilities that are a lot more complex than simply “Varia can teleport”.
I’m sorry, I don’t know how to respond to this. I’ve never met someone unfamiliar with the concept of following before.
I’m sorry, I don’t know how to respond to this. I’ve never met someone unfamiliar with the concept of reading the comment before.
The thing is, she initially described her gestalt with Harem as “I get to tag along wherever she goes.” That we’re now being told that it’s broader than that, and she can teleport on her own, doesn’t invalidate that we’ve already been told that she has whatever additional abilities are necessary to “tag along”.
We don’t know how either of their teleportation works, exactly, whether it opens a portal perfectly shaped to them, or they disintegrate or turn into energy or phase shift or what. Not knowing the mechanism of their teleportation makes it difficult to say how difficult “tagging along” would be.
I am missing something. Where are we being told that Varia can now teleport on her own?
Never mind, I found the blurb.
I fear I’d long forgotten her original infodump on her power. I didn’t mean to imply that what we were being told now invalidated what we had been told previously. Merely that the only the information presented here didn’t seem to follow.
While the ability to be Harem’s “plus one” is weirdly specific that is, as she said, sometimes the nature of her powers. I still think that there might be a more elegant way of explaining her powerset when touching harem, but it’s clearly not how things are.
It’s my understanding that rather than getting self-cloning abilities like some suggest, Varia’s power set when touching Harem specifically includes the ability to do exactly this thing. She also doesn’t get the ability to unteleport herself, or getting stronger when there are fewer of her. So Harem has several abilities, Varia gets exactly one of them plus this new thing which is highly related to Harem but not something Harem can do.
Exactly, when we first saw this happen (in basic training) it was specifically stated that Varia is “tagging along” with Harem, so whatever’s happening is a single teleportation event, not 2 separate but simultaneous co-located events.
In effect Varia is just another Harem doing a teleport. Limitations don’t change but amount of Varia is also one. She carries maximum vorpable and has one Harem lead the teleport to the other. Harem leads, Varia follows the same vorp. There is no secondary teleport. Varia’s only negative is she can only vorp either line of sight or via Harem guidance. Like a seeing eye dog.
Not quite, more like she becomes part of Daphne, like an extra shirt
We don’t know Vahriah’s limitation, other than she can’t *VORP* back
Which then leads to what other interesting consequences might there be to Varia becoming part of the Harem collective, given Harem’s mind sharing powers? Could Harem read Varia’s mind, could Varia read Harem’s?
She doesn’t become part of the ‘collective’ any more she becomes part of anyone else she touches
My apologies, I misunderstood your shirt comment.
Fair enough.
:)
That’s not how Varia’s power works.
The touch of someone else triggers a super power to open up in Varia, full stop.
It doesn’t hook the other person’s power into her. Varia gets powers if the other person doesn’t have powers.
Touching Harem allows Varia to teleport, or Harem to bring her along with her if she teleports ‘for free’. End stop. That’s the only powers she gets, she doesn’t hook into Harem’s powers at all, she just gets some of her own.
It sort of seemed like maybe “access to the collective” might be the power that was being opened, and from that the other abilities followed. But if that’s not the case, then fair enough.
Huh. If Harem would need to de-pop 2 of herself to teleport with the full kit, you’d think she could do that, then re-pop the two of her she de-popped. She’d only need 2-3 of herself without the full kit. Might be worthwhile to have at least just 1 with a full kit just for protection. She can easily pop in to hand herself any tools she needs, thus eliminating the need for even a light utility belt as she technically has access to WAY more than she can reasonably carry, provided it is within her limit.
Like, I’d think it’d be ideal to have 1 fully armored Harem, 1 with light armor to act as a de-popper and to give herself any tools she needs and doing other support tasks as needed. And 3 in the armor she is wearing ready to do whatever it is that she is doin with those bodies. If she needs to teleport with the heavy armor, she just depops 2 of herself and then repops them after she finishes.
Of course, this could just be a thing that Harem simply never thought of, which Sydney could casually bring up with “Too bad you can’t do this” and break Harem’s brain like she did to Dabbler over chucking a rock into a portal.
The other issue with Harem is that she doesn’t really need armour for survivability – if one of her bodies gets a disabling hit, she can just drop that one (and increase her toughness and strength in her remaining bodies).
That’s assuming the effects of said disabling hit don’t boil over to her remaining selves, like what happened during her affair with Deus (ahem) or when Max delivered one heck of an atomic wedgie to her early on. If she’s still in control however, then by all means.
That’s a big risk in that it is a fatal hit rather than simply a disabling one, and that’s something she has mention several times she doesn’t want to experience (like any one else without full regenerative abilities, or Les)
Agreed, came here to say this also. Rather than popping in with more ammunition, I’d imagine lightly armored Harem would pop in with a fully loaded gun to trade with fully armored Harem. Lightly armored Harem would also not take time to reload, that would be the job of a non-super at wherever Harem was using for a supply depo. She could probably also offer that service to other people in fully armored Harem’s vicinity.
That would be much like in the Car Park Brawl.
But what if she needs to teleport all 5 instances, each with a fox, a chicken, and a bag of corn?
Not gonna happen: she can’t *VORP* people or aminals
What happens to Harem’s (Harems’?) gear when one of her is in absentia? Does it just fall to the ground? Is she, or a brand new Harem, nekkid when she appears?
Naa… it all goes with her .After the first super fight one of her got a broken arm and her and Sydney were in the medical and she squeezed Sydney’s hand because of the pain and vorped in the injured one. She was still in field-dress from the fight. I’d look up the page but my time is short.
Oh, also, are we done with Varia’s nigh-incomprehensible Boston accent. Excuse me ‘Bahston’.
She’s only said 8 words so far and we can’t hear her so yeah give it time.
Is it just me or did Varia also get a tiny bit of a Glow Up now that she has Harem’s powers? Like it was some metapower that now she looks a little more Insta-Ready™? Just saying.
Varia plus Jiggawatt in the same team?
“Varia Twins Magnetic Power Activate!”
Stop Thinking PRINT.
The optimal way to tell a Harem POV would be to create 5 ROWs, each about the size of your 1/3 page panels above. Each row is a Harem. Then you line them up “timeline” style, going as wide as you need to for the image.
Sure, it’s going to be a Pain in the Ass to translate off the computer, and you’d need to link out, as it’ll break the pages CSS. But most monitors are wider than they are tall, and scrolling back and forth is simple, and convey’s meaning.
I like this, but inclined to say columns would be easier to follow than rows.
Yeah, reading down would be betterer than reading across
Harem should definitely read the Steven Gould novel Jumper and its sequels. The Teleport-Grapple-Teleport-Release-Teleport combo is a must-have.
I think that is in her list of books to read. Check out the pile of books in the first panel.
Exept that the only person she can teleport is Varia, unless she deteleports all but one of herself, since she said the amount she can teleport includes her own mass, she could then presumably teleport with 4 Harem-sized people or two people of twice her mass, or one person 4 times her mass.
Other than Vahriah, Daphne can’t *VORP* with living material, so no flora nor fauna of any size or mass that is not actually part of Daphne
Can’t recall reading about a limit on living matter actually, just weight? Another person may be too much, but seems like she could take a small dog or at least a rodent along.
“she can’t take anyone with her. Clothing, equipment, easy, but no people. Possibly nothing else living.“
Thanks for the reference, haven’t read that in a while. Picked up one other tidbit I didn’t know – “Harem is the youngest member of the team”.
Only physically the youngest
Yes. Temporally she’s in her fifties, making her the second oldest person on the team behind Dabbler from a practical viewpoint.
Even though she’s experienced more, due to being able to do more simultaneously than other people, her mind is no older, because again, she had many of those experiences simultaneously. She hasn’t matured any faster. If anything, having to process all those experiences may have slowed down her emotional development.
Don’t confuse having experiences for gaining maturity.
Human maturation involves both experience (practical & emotional) & neurophysiological development. Daphne’s brain may be “quantum entangled” on five axis, but it’s not yet fully wired up. That development doesn’t usually finish until the mid-twenties.
Nice Aliens reference in the addendum text!
Does Harem wear colored contacts? Her eye color seems to be inconsistent across her bodies.
I think she does wear contacts, I’ve noticed her eye color does change between her different parts too. Heck, I’ve seen so many different styles of contacts that don’t do anything BUT change eye color or make you look like cat, goat, eagle eyes, and so on. I seen one set that give the wearer all-white or black eyes! Spooky emo thing I guess… A common thing in movies too.
Noticed that as well, but wasn’t sure
I want a tiny spy boroscope for my phone!
My HF boroscope barely meets the every six months rule but when you need one they are super handy.
Amazon, seen 3 different types. NOT cheap though.
Thank you for taking me down the Simon and Hecubus rabbit hole.
never watched much KITH when it was on but the Pit of Ultimate Darkness was truly funny.
Sorry-in-advance if this is redundant, but what if you divided the page into 5 vertical strips, to display 5 synchronized Harem perspectives?
“she’s much more useful spreading herself around.”
:snrk:
So, Max just said the drive is secured…is the drive secured? I don’t recall anyone getting it yet.
Not “secured”, just “secure” as described in Zeph’s expository remarks about its security measures. They expect it to take weeks or years to crack even with alien tech, so a few extra minutes getting to the drive during this infiltration isn’t a tactical factor.
Ah, thank you, I misread that.
Although the drive was, at least briefly, in the room with Chimyriad, so perhaps she has secured it.
To a certain degree.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1103-interrorgation/
Would love to see that Harem comic in a starburst style, or like a pie chart? Harem in the center, but each pie section is a different her, with different stuff going on in it. Does that make any sense?
Ooh, that could work as a series of panels. Maybe with the center being a “core” style of her combined self-image, and/or with the size of each clone’s panel fluctuating based on how much attention she’s giving to it.
You know, at first blush I’m wondering “Why is Maxima wearing tactical armor?” I mean, there’s nothing she can wear that’s more durable than, well, her. But she’s gonna wear *something*, and it might as well be a thing that’s got all the pockets and hooks and whatnot for this kind of thing, not to mention being meant to handle *most* of the abuse it will take. I also get the feeling she believes in being careful anyway and not relying on her superpowers for everything.
(Betcha she doesn’t wear the ceramic plates, though)
It’s also part of the uniform, and she doesn’t expect her troops to wear something she isn’t willing to wear as well
Ish. Even IRL, Special Ops has a fair bit of leeway regarding their combat load. If she could get something that was appreciably better for, say, carrying gear by sacrificing all pretenses of it being armor, she would probably do that: appearances are good, but having enough tourniquets and ammo is better. With Supers there’s a fair chance there will be *someone* whose powers preclude standard kit anyway.
I wonder how Sydney,Anvil and Dabbler are doing in Senegal with the Lionesses?!
As, do I!
Please don’t start: just focus on what DaveB is telling rather than what you want Him to be telling (every time he spends too much time on one thing, and that ‘too much time’ can be as little as two pages, whether it’s action or Slice-of-Lifeing or one group or person, someone pipes up wanting Him to switch to someone or something else)
Well we’d be satisfied if he’d just switch to twice-daily releases and follow all the subplots to completion. /s
The only way he’d be able to tell you all that as fast as you’d like would be for him to cut the quality of his comics down to basically speed-drawing, probably no coloration at all.
So, possible, but do you really want to see the quality fall that much?
jus sayin,, as a mechanic/janitor i had the keys to go Anywhere.! kinda hard to fix (quickly) the big bosses fancy chair, if i have to go through a week long get permission ordeal..
also BDSM 101, NEVER tie restraints over any thing (boots) ,, they can slip right out..
Depends on if they can untie the boots, and we don’t see what they did to his hands
And at least they tied him to that pole
Hmmm, there’s only four Harems active. I wonder if she’s keeping one spare elsewhere for instant egress because she can unteleport any of her at any earthly range. And then second question, can Varia piggyback on an unteleport.
been a while since we seen some of the more civilian members of Sydney’s life joel
The content of this chapter is really good. I hope the next chapters will have more thrilling and interesting details.