Grrl Power #1135 – Dropping bosses like a boss
Sort of an anticlimactic end to this fight, admittedly. There is part of me that wants to do a OPM style rubble bonanza speed line fest, but this whole sequence feels like it’s getting a little long in the tooth anyway. I’ll save up for the next time I do a big beat down.
If you don’t quite understand what’s going on here, it’ll be spelled out on the next page. But I feel like it’s fairly obvious if you’ve been paying attention.
SuperMassive could have kept the drugs from getting around his system by using a sort of gravitational tourniquette, basically by keeping his blood from flowing away from a limb via G-force pooling, but of course that would only work if someone injected him in an extremity, and it would work for a very limited time. Well, I guess he could cut himself and have all the affected blood shoot out of him like an anime character seeing boobs for the first time. That obviously risks him blacking out from blood loss, but the range on the spray would be incredible, unless the extra gravities were just boringly pulling straight down. Still the forensic blood splatter analysts would be fairly flummoxed in either case.
I’m not entirely sure why I had Hiro say “bog roll” instead of “toilet paper.” He’s not British. To really minimize confusion, I should have just had him say “calendar,” but the idea of higher learning via butt napkins is funny to me, even though I don’t think I’d really trust anything printed on novelty bowel towels not to leave my sweet hams streaked with newsprint.
The February Vote Incentive is up! Yes, I know it’s late and I still owe you guys one for March. I already have the pencils mostly done, so hopefully you guys won’t be waiting for it all month?
Kat, you remember, the newly minted were-hare? Well, someone forgot to give her a copy of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Were-Margaret.” She has questions is what I’m saying.
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.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Never change, Chimmy. Okay, ALWAYS change Chimmy. because they’re a shapeshifter.
[Alucard: “Get it?”]
I need a reminder: who is Chimmy again? Where is (s)he introduced?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1073-spooky-scary-shapeshifters/
She’s also the shape-changer who allowed herself to be captured and interrogated, just so she could send Max the message telling her and the team where this secret base is located. She is actually talking about this (and about herself) in fifth panel.
Ok, THAT one was supposed to be a correction of my bad counting skills. Not sure why it came out blank.
(Man, if we don’t get the ability to edit these things, I may actually have to resort to something drastic, like proof-reading or something.)
Let’s not have any of that crazy talk now.
I hope we never get the option to delete or edit posts. Its more fun this way.
Fourth panel.
Why does everyone insist on calling Chimmy as a “she?” You literally can’t get any more “gender fluid” than that.
Because the one who commissioned her claims she is a she (forgot she was a patreonanged character?)
X confirmed it on https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1090-rock-em-sock-em-syndrome/
Because she’s been referred to as she multiple times in the comic.
Supers in the Grrl Power universe don’t seem to have their powers from birth, and they manifest later in life. So presumably Chimyriad was a “she” before she got her powers, and your own internal identify doesn’t necessarily change just because your body does. If you suddenly got body-swapped into a body with a different sex than your own, how would you think about yourself? Are you your body, or a mind in a body?
How about I just never stop Never Stopping?
I have absolutely no respect for shapeshifters who do NOT enjoy an occasional “freak the mundanes” episode.
With Great Power comes Many Opportunities to Abuse It.
Using a gravity tourniquet on yourself seems a bit risky, and certainly not a something you would make a a split-second decision.
Depends on how experienced you are with your power
considering he was jabbed in the back of the neck… yeah a tourniquet isn’t a good idea, gravity based or not
Anticlimatic, but effective. Oh, and they have a means to keep Supermassive in check, this shapeshifter can, potential, do the same thing as Stalwart.
I thought it had been established that she could change her size and shape, but not her mass, unless she eats a big meal. So she could raise or lower her density to a certain degree by changing her size, but I think that is much more limited than Stalwart’s density adjustment.
combat is like that. when things go right it’s so easy as to seem trivial. it’s when things go wrong that its climatic.
Anticlimactic is an excellent punchline. The trick is to either make sure that nobody expects it or to make it suitably dramatic.
This page is an example of the first type. “Whoops, were you planning a bossfight?”
The Maxima vs Darude fight was an example of the second. “I glassed the desert while you were distracted, sorry guys!”
But how to keep him in check, guys a tool and a man-child, but dangerous and smarter than his act leads him on (that maxima hair trick to free himself was quick witted); how do you keep someone with gravity powers imprisoned?
Same way they did the warper. Put them in a high pressure chamber, if they break out they get the bends. If they try to increate their local pressure via gravity, throw sand at them so they have a choice of suffocation or the bends.
Hiro is a man of culture, that’s why he said ‘bog roll’ :P
Maybe he was stationed in GBR/Commonwealth in the Army.
I would say maybe he was originally from Hong Kong, but that ceased to be a British colony in 1997 and I don’t think Hiro’s old enough to have been there when he had a sizable vocabulary, even if he was from there.
Also, ‘Hiro’ is a Japanese name, not Chinese.
Good point. It totally went over my head that his name is Hiro, and Hiro is a Japanese name.
Sometimes you just pick up a phrase and it sticks. Just like bog roll.
Maybe Suck Hole is stupid enough to try putting a tourniquette around his neck, and he has to consciously turn it off, but he loses consciousness before he can :D
She got him right in the spine at the base of the skull, an almost instant knockout! DING DING DING TKO!!!
X is a _really_ good teacher.
Here’s the thing: that’s Chimmy’s real teeth… !
I hope one day we’ll get to see her in her natural form (hint, hint Dave)
By now she may have completely forgotten what her natural form was before her powers kicked in. She’d have to dig out a photo album to approximate it.
Yeah, I’m sure. I worked with a gal that changed her hair color often, so as a joke I asked her what her natural hiar color was and she didn’t know! She was old enough she had started to grey so she started to color it. I’m sure Chimy isn’t that old, yet. She might relax and let her natural form out to rest, like after the “damage” she took at the start of this all.
I think Chimmy is a first-order shapeshifter. She doesn’t HAVE a natural form.
When she sleeps, does she keep shifting and go through a dozen unrelated forms a minute? Or does she relax completely and sleep in a bucket?
Or a bathtub full of Ovalkwik.
Sergeant Schlock would like to recognize you for a promotion, sir!
Nice reference!
Now quote all of the Maxims! On the double!
66. Necessity is the mother of deception.
Chimmy knows these to well…
We’ve seen quite a few of the 70 maxims in this fight, a few people have even called them out e.g. number 23.
5. Close air support and friendly fire should be easier to tell apart
23. The company mess and friendly fire should be easier to tell apart
And my absolute favorite-
42. “They’ll never expect this” means “I want to try something stupid
Followed immediately by one of my top 5 (can’t pick just 1), #43 – “If it’s stupid and it works, it’s still stupid and you’re lucky.”
That grin on the last panel puts Speed-o-Sound Sonic to shame. :)
That grin is going to give me nightmares!
Then it is a perfect grin! ^.^!
when I got to the end… I couldn’t help it. I gave an evil chuckle. remember these people are paid to sit around a wargame out this sort of thing, and several of them have read comics.
I’m just thinking the MCU hasn’t happened in this timeline yet. listening to the professionals go ‘NO that’s not how you do it you morons!’ might be fun. or some variant on the video series where people who’ve actually do the thing rate movie depictions.
“Bringing down this entire facility down” think there’s one too many “down” in there
Sometimes, people talk like that, they don’t always have a way to edit what they said in the past, only what they are going to say in the future
ie once it’s been said is too late, and even if you practice, you can still make a mistake
“Down down doobie doobie down down.”
-Attributed to Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka
“Down, down, to Goblin Town?”
– Animated Hobbit, I think?
its also in the book. and the guy who did the audiobook of the hobbit did that part REALLY well.
Down, Doobie Doo Down Down, Comma Comma, Down Doobie Doo down down…
Whoops! Fixed!
Hey Dave, couple things. I couldn’t find a way to DM you straight off, so I’m trying here.
1104, Chimy is saying ‘Slight of Hand.’ I think she actually means ‘Sleight of Hand’, which is picking pockets and stuff.
In 1106, you have a picture of Mr. Amorphous with very blue eyes, and in 1133 his eyes are brown. Not sure which is right?
Might wanna check the text in panel 5. “Bringing down this entire facility down in a…”
I known villains tend to double down, but this is a bit on the nose. :D
Double “down” in the vainglorious speech bubble. Assuming that’s not intentional?
I think I understand what actually happened, but I don’t understand what “word of the day” means in this context.
Hiro is referring to the fact that Chimmy used several “high dollar” words like vainglorious and truculence which people would usually only learn as a novelty, such as through a word of the day calendar.
Or by reading old books (Even comic books!) from a couple generations ago, when people were expected to have larger vocabularies and a better grasp of grammar.
*cough* books *cough*
I think that the mere idea of a library card has become something completely alien to the newer generations…
Which simply means that when the New Dark Age begins, it will be we Keepers of the Old Ways who will be responsible for shepherding the masses back into the light of knowledge and reason.
Interestingly enough, she did the same thing when breaking out of her cell in the form of her would-be torturer, using a lot of five-dollar words on the Teds to browbeat them into obedience.
Given how verbose she is when being pummeled, I gather she just likes to talk.
Oh, okay, thanks. None of those words struck me as especially unusual or obscure, but I don’t recall ever hearing “word of the day” before. Or “bog roll,” but everyone else was having that explained already.
It’s basically for people to learn a new word, and see how big a douche-bucket they can be by using it in a sentence
Chimmy Osmond was using big words (‘bellicosely’, ‘vainglorious’, ‘truculence’ & ‘facility’) that Suck Hole probably wouldn’t understand if you smacked him in the head with Miriam and Webster while in Oxford…
Hmm, Facility is pretty standard. Maybe not quite everyday outside of work, but if you work in a tech environment especially, facility will be a common word for you.
Also, ‘facilities’ is the name of a department in many large companies.
As for the other three you mentioned, I probably wouldn’t say them unless I was in the right mood (some folk get snippy by using larger words. I may be one of them), but I could see writing them in a story, just usually outside of character speech and not all at once (unless a circumstance calls for it)
Was a joke :P
Schrödinger’s Douchebag strikes again
Lidlow needs to be a word! I don’t care if its from a sniglets calendar 20+ years ago. It needs to become a word!
Just because you are a moron, doesn’t mean everyone else is
I take it you understand “moron” to mean anyone who doesn’t share your sense of humor.
Very few share the same sense of humour, but they at least acknowledge it was a joke (even if it was a bad one)
As AdamB pointed out, ‘facility’ is (or should be) a very common everyday word, which is what the joke was about, and it worked, because it brought out the morons who didn’t ‘get it’ (and, again for the slow witted, even people who don’t find it funny still ‘get it’, and that’s fine, most attempts at humour fall flat)
Do you understand the concept of “Schrödinger’s Douchebag”? I can’t tell if you know what it means, and are rejecting its applicability, or if you’re just discarding it out of hand. You didn’t respond when I explained Poe’s Law, so I don’t know if you understand that either, but they’re related concepts.
A cruel or disparaging joke is made no less cruel or disparaging by being a joke. It really doesn’t matter that much if you’re serious or not.
Dismissed it out of it being a stupid insult, because that’s all the pair of you seem to be able to post, so yeah, nah, not going respond your bullshit and insults
And it was a mocking joke, would suggest you learn the difference, but neither of you are willing to learn something new that differs from your blinkered hatred
So things beyond your comprehension are “stupid”. And you mocking others is fine, but our criticisms are just “blinkered hatred”.
I really should just leave you to roll around in the mud. There’s not much point in engaging with someone who refuses to learn anything new.
No dumbass, just your brand of bullshit (just because didn’t feel the childish need to respond to it doesn’t mean didn’t understand it for what it was: a stupid insult)
Go back to your pouty self-important bull-corner, and burn it down around you!
Any one word would be fine, but together they indicate someone who is trying too hard.
lol – “Chimmy Osmond”
He gives splendiferous* examples of an enhanced vocabulary.
*Se the early 19th century Tall Talkers movement.
My first encounter with “splendiferous” was the movie, “Zorba.” ^_^
Facilities? Really? Jeeze I feel old. It was ‘the’ slang word of the week for bathroom when I was a teenager. I don’t know why it was decided that was funny… ;)
There exists a desk calendar that has a page for each day of the year that has a different obscure word from a dictionary printed on each day page — it’s called “Word of the Day”.
“Your husband is quite the [checks word of the day calendar] philodendron, isn’t he?”
– Who’s Harry Crumb
There are desk calendars that have the daily page you rip off the next day. 365 days in a year, so 365 pages, on a 4×4″ pad (so, about 3″ thick stack-wise). One word per page, some simple, some complex, most normally not in common usage. Whether you remember the word later is always an issue, though. “Word of the day” aren’t the only version od desk calendars, or course; some have a daily sudoku puzzle. One of my friends had one having to do with exercising, which one day innocently asked, “what’s your favorite way to work up a sweat?” Wr had a good laugh over that one, being the immature college students we were.
If you are so old to NOT laughing at THAT innuendo, you are probably already burried.
… well, ok, it will probably be closer to smirk than good laugh for mature people, but still.
I would never think of buying a desk calendar, so that probably helps explain my perplexity. These days my monitor tells me what the date is . . .
I’m more impressed that you picked up on what a bog roll is.
Dear gods that is creepy…
Hiro calling it bog roll could just be efficient syllable usm and he knows Stalwart gets the reference so maybe it’s something they brought up in their friendship together
So ‘bog roll’ means ‘toilet paper’, huh.
I’ve only experienced it in the context of things like people calling their web log a ‘blog roll’.
This is like when I figured out ‘sidhe’ is pronounced ‘shee’ – so many puns make sense now!
oh there’s a lot of ways to describe the crapper all euphemisms of one kind
in fact the English language only has euphemisms for it.
even toilet (its comes from the french for changing room)
That’s what “toilette” means? Well, I guess “Eau de toilette” makes a lot more sense now…
In the Philippines it’s the “CR” (“comfort room”).
“Make your daily toilet” and similar wording used to refer to all aspects of getting your body cleaned up / presentable for the day, but got abandoned as the more specific usage overtook it. Might even say it was eclipsed, by a full moon.
It can be seful, in such a case, to specifically use the French spelling when referring to le toilette, and the English ‘toilet’ when refering to the w.c., loo, jakes, bog, etc.
Yeah, ‘banshee’ is actually ‘Bean Sidhe’ (similar, but more known, to the Bean-Nighe)
It’s actually a bit more like ‘shi-ee,’ where the ‘i’ is as in ‘it.’ Not quite two distinct syllables, but similar to a glottal stop.
this thread needs some crappy puns to add to the ambiance.
And toilette Pander know we’re still thinking of her, and ways to spin her up, every day.
When you are trucking do you just spend the entire drive thinking up new puns to torture me with? :)
(some of hem are actually quite well done like ‘toilet’ as ‘to let’ but still…. pirate ninja koalas are en route to you)
I am undeterred.
We have a new kitten at home, and he is very sof boy floppy cuddler. They will not be able to resist, and in all likelihood will starve to death because petting the sof and not disturbing his purr napping.
(No shit, he’s hypnotic. I literally lost like an hour just in petting & cuddles. Was almost late to work!)
Dangit that’s a good defense.
Also, you need to use the French pronunciation, to really get the full impact. ‘TWAH-let’
I will send pirate ninja koala MIMES at you if you try to make me use french pronunciation
It appears that the English pronunciation actually IS the French pronunciation. Unless you are pronouncing it just like “toilet,” but Merriam Webster doesn’t even suggest that as an alternate pronunciation. And I suspect if you use it anyway your hearers will misunderstand what you’re talking about . . .
Fiiiiiiine. But I will not spell it the french way.
USA! USA! USA!
*bald eagles flying overhead*
USA!
USA!
USA!
USA!
“…not to leave my sweet hams streaked with newsprint.”
Uh…. how would you know?
If it comes off onto you, when you sweat later on, some will transfer to your clothing. Or possibly a partner might tell you.
Honey, why do you tightie whities read like the sports section?
In one of my early first aid courses the instructor told us that in a pinch, you could swaddle a new born baby in news print on account of it being reasonably sterile. He explained that you wanted to dry off the baby first otherwise the ink would inadvertently tattoo the baby. This was the same sergeant who would sit off to one side of the pistol range and spoil your five shot groups with an air pistol.
Imagining Plastic Man splatting himself up against the background in the comic book like he were Silly Putty, using the copied background to blend into it , pretty much creating a ‘fifth-wall’ gag
Imagine a Plastic Man movie, directed jointly by Taiko Watiti and Spielberg, staring Brendan Frazer.
You’re welcome.
Oh great there goes my appetite.
Is it just me who gets a chuckle looking at the last panel?
Nope, I want a chibi bobble head with that face on it.
YES!! Make it so… please
the Cheshire Cat and B.O.B. had a kid, and it was THAT face
Did The Mighty Halo’s Orbs of Power recharge yet?
Is she even getting an indication that they are recharging?
[Don’t put them in the microwave! Even if that did work it would take years !]
Pretty sure the plan was to fly them the hard way, then figure that out in quiet at the base.
A word of the *day* bog roll implies a distressingly low usage of toilet paper
id argue it implies a damp moist paper cold to the touch….
It’s not like you only use a single sheet, just there is a different word on each sheet
Well, no. That would be a lot more than one word a day.
Technically, it wouldn’t be a ‘word-a-day’ roll, more a ‘word-a-wipe’
Hmm. Now I want to see if I can find some EULA boilerplate TP.
Not finding any yet, but I did find Biden’s face, Obama’s face, Jong-un’s face, $100 bills, (which is wrong, they’re still worth more than TP, at least for the next month or so), but no EULA boilerplate TP. Yet.
Ohhhh it’s Chimmy. At first I thought it was Harem, and I was instantly disappointed in Arc-SWAT’s dental coverage.
Personal appreciating the effort Chimmy went to making crooked teeth instead of defaulting to perfect ones.
How rude! Those are her natural teeth, before she started her change
Supers have inherently “perfect” bodies. While she might have had crooked teeth as a child, once she became a super, her teeth would have become idealized. Ergo, she didn’t revert her teeth, she got creative with them.
This is assuming she’s actually a super, and not a cryptid. I don’t think it’s been said whether or not the members of the Twilight Council have idealized bodies. If so, though, considering the vagaries of fashion over the centuries, such as the preference for more “Rubenesque” women, with fish-belly pale skin, in times past, some of the older ones might have bodies that were quite fashionable once, but are somewhat out of style today, like a day-glo, lime green, polyester suit with wide lapels, and a brown on yellow paisley print shirt underneath.
I get the impression that Chimyriad is making fun of Masshole by making a face at him as he goes down. While keeping up with an in story population of a hundred supers and as many supernaturals/cryptids and so on could make it difficult to keep the story on track, I do hope that we get to see more of Chimmy. They seem like a potentially fun to develop character.
I maintain that X and Chimmy have both been in a lot more pages than we realize.
I hope so. In Chimmy’s case at least it would probably be convenient to have a recognizable baseline appearance for interacting in the workplace. That said, you might never know when that random co-worker was actually Chimmy.
Like Chimmy being the uniformed personnel at a computer terminal desk displaying what does not seem like admin/logistics nor tower security visualization on screen, when Sydney was first brought in, tells of the vending machine, and is forgotten about?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-78-melodramatic-sydney-is-melodromatic/
Waiting Sydney thinking she is alone, went on to verbalize stories imagined about a flaw in window tinting.
Speaking of: what is that button they are reaching for in the final panel?
Can’t remember if it was picked up and commentated on back then…
At a guess. Probably the button to unlock the door back out, to the public part of the building where the vending machines are.
Where I work, the secretaries have a similar button to let people in.
When did Michael “Mike” Wazowski become a spapechanger? And cross-dress?
Mike Wazowski!
Mike Wazowski!
CHOMP!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! (my favorite scene)
Just Chimy being Chimy is all, like when she did the happy face to X, even he thought it was creepy as all hell LOL! With my evil sense of humor I’d be doing worst that then hehehehe….. :)
Yeah, it’s Chimmy Osmond pretending to be that other portal bitch
Wait, when did Chimmy meet her? It was Harem, Vahriah and Jiggs who encountered her in the cells…
Adventuring on your own and getting caught by a Mimic?
That is why you don’t adventure alone!
I think it’d be fun to have a mimic in a fish tank, with it believing the fish is the room boss, and the little diver is an adventurer (or plunking an adventurer into the fish tank, shrunken down,, etc.)
It sounds like Chimmy has a bunch of codephrases to identify themself. I’m guessing that Hiro used his own codephrase ‘bogroll’ to help confirm for the others.
That’s a good idea when dealing with a shapeshifter, but they aren’t fighting her.
Bogroll makes me think of the idiots that grab the roll off the dispenser, wipe with it, and drop it into the bowl because it’s “funny” to flood the room and trash the bathroom. That’s why we now get the huge super thin roll in in a locked round box. I worked at a crappy motel as a janitor that only had 1 bathroom/shower per floor, trust me that’s just plain stupid and nasty to clean up.
THAT needs to be retrocannon.
How do you know it’s not already?
Have you ever heard anyone talk like that outside of television?
I have, but only because I’m me, and genuinely enjoy being a wordsmith. Nobody expects it from the bluecollar. X’D
I like blue collar plain speak, I despise blue collar social speak.
The difference between keeping it short, direct and to the point Aaand the bubbly go nowhere meandering yeahs but no double freaking stupid collations, makes it easy to appreciate someone who might break the mold.
Also, hate to say it Chimmy, but you’re dangerously close to greasy car salesman tactics. Ease it up a bit.
AH Chimy, you have officially been added to my fav character list! Good call on the shot location too, right in the spinal column! Instant brain sleepy time, he might not wake from that but well worth it. He was about to hit everyone around him with a gravity blast, he has impressive control, best put him into a medically induced coma for safety. I doubt putting in a room with happy-time smoke will help. Maybe something that would limit his ability to use his higher brain function?
A cell that is essentially a radio grid, and a radio-wired explosive collar.
Any attempt to leave the cell results in a clean up on aisle 3.
Suck Hole likes to be “flashy” so he might just suck a hole in his cell and pin down anyone in his way. better to make his so wasted that he forgets how to “suck”… oh wait, he sucks period! Heheh…
That just results is A, an unsanitary cell, and B, a slow, lingering death by thirst.
Because we can just stop providing service, if there are threats on lives.
In the immortal words of the TF2 engineer, ‘That there is just ugly.’
Thats a bad acid trip right there.
Ioun Toilet Paper of Insight, +2 insight at every wipe up to a max of 20?
Hiro sounds like he might be 2nd generation military, i.e. a military brat. We pick up lots of things linguistically, like calling tea a “cuppa” (got that one when stationed in Newfoundland).
Can confirm.
It gets even worse if you’re Navy, as you tend to get stationed in places with even more diverse linguistics, and often in foreign countries altogether.
The first conscious years of my young life were informed by the BBC, NHK, and even some stuff out of Vladivostok, when the atmospheric conditions were right. Add to that a steady diet of multi-national families for neighbors, shopping in an open market at a regularly packed port, and big multi-ethnic enclaves from India, Japan, the P.I., Oz & NZ, Singaporeans, Taiwanese, H.K.’ers, and various Pacific Native peoples, and you get an idea of why I am the way I am.
When we came back to the States, the culture shock was pretty damn traumatic for me. I remember crying myself to sleep because the kids at school relentlessly mocked me for my clothes and shoes. I imagine that it wouldn’t have been as bad, probably, had we been living on base, but mom’s ex _insisted_ on living off-base. I tell you know lie, never believe for a moment that the US is a “classless” society.
In fact…now that I think about for a tenth of a second…that might actually be where I started my movement towards being a Leftist.
Anyway…I caught it for how I spoke at the time, too. Back on the island, we kids practically had our own polyglot, assembled from the various languages we all spoke. The white kids told me I couldn’t speak English, and the Mexican & Pilipino kids told me _they_ could, quite angrily. Turned out, the thought I was mocking them whenever I slipped into using Spanish or Tagalog words. Some kids would even tell me (and this is quotation of hateful words) “dirty Jap spy,” because I knew a bit of the language, and their grandparents were speaking from WWII.
You can imagine the effect that would have on a military brat.
As I got older, though, I learned to use that broadness of experience into a shield. Most brats learn to pick up on the local patterns quickly, and it takes next to know effort to become a chameleon. It’s how I avoid confrontations on the road, when I have to haul freight in places controlled by fascists. Say “rahs” the “raht way,” remember to call it “coke” instead of “soda,” and use “supper” instead of “dinner,” and most of Georgia won’t care to notice you. For bonus points, use “larder” instead of “pantry,” when talking about food storage, and never, ever use “cupboard” for anything but dishes. If you’re in rural areas of the upper midwest, be “shur” to stay on the “ro-ad,” and watch “ya” “do-ant” hit a “kee-at,” or a “dee-ur.” In California, the biggest roads are all freeways, regardless of who built them, and the biggest of all is call “the” 5. in fact, all numbered highways are called “the” locally, and only ever refered to as “highway thus-and-such” when talking to someone who’s never been there, or otherwise doesnt have a local frame of reference. They’re “tock-ohs,” not “tack-kohs,” and if you ask for a coke, you’ll get a Coca-Cola, or asked if Pepsi is okay instead. “Dude” is a unisex term, unless preceded by a definite article, and often used generic expression of emotion, rather than a noun. Lastly, it’s pronounced “hah-mih-shah,” not “ja-ma-cha.”
“in fact, all numbered highways are called “the” locally, and only ever refered to as “highway thus-and-such” when talking to someone who’s never been there, or otherwise doesnt have a local frame of reference.”
Hunh, never heard of that, must be a Southern California thing.
Southern, and also coastal, at least as far north as Ukiah. On the 99, too, as far north as Sacramento.
…hmmm, not so sure about the Eastern Sierras, along the 395 past Liberty, or 99 north from Chico.
I had some of that, dad was air force, but 18 years of living withGerman, Philipeno, Portuguese Italian Korean and Japanese neighbors, you pick up odd things all the time. One of the weirdest days was when in Alabama I was asked why I hung out with a (nword) and I was like um hes actually Portuguese ( next year they met a woman of African decent with a strong English accent)
The correct response would have been, “what the fuck is wrong with you?”
Hm, yeah. I’ve been reading some Louis Barcata lately, eyewitness reports from China (and Russia) back in the fifties and sixties. Those “leftist” worker’s paradises were anything but classless, despite party pretention otherwise. The US isn’t classless either, but it’s supposed to be socially mobile. That doesn’t change that some areas are full of strongly provincial and entirely too judgy people.
What you’re describing has very little to do with class, but everything with blending in with the locals. Shit, back when I was a student, in-group vocabulary changed by group, varying from club to club, house to house, and among different departments. Of course, should I get it wrong they’d just look at me funny rather than pummel me for being an outsider, I was still a student. But, at a guess, that might well have happened had I dared pop over to the wrong village at the wrong time.
So I think it’s unhelpful if you frame that mechanism as “fascism”. You’ll do it anyway because that’s how you justify your political leanings. But I think you’d be better off learning about the why of this part of human social interaction, you have the how of blending in down pat by the sound of it, rather than start with some beardy nitwit’s imagined universal solution and try and pretzel reality into that framework.
Well, since you’ve decided to pen this kettle of worms, you can start by showing me where I claimed that either the Soviet Union or China were classless on practice. You can also point out where I said anything about either being a “worker’s paradise.”
What I described had everything to do with class, as it was motivated by the economic structure that informed those kids. Specifically, since you’ve opened the topic, I was constantly given shit for “dressing like a Mexican,” by the white kids, because they had learned to associate my lack of name brands and fashion labels with poverty, which was (and arguably still is) most associated with lower income families here in San Diego, who often did their shopping in TJ’s markets. The Mexican kids gave me shit, because I was a white kid who was poor, and therefore someone they could vent their frustration on, because I was outside the white, more affluent social circle, and therefore not likely to trigger backlash from the other white kids, or their parents.
So go blow smoke up someone else’s ass.
As for my explicit reference to certain areas of the US being controlled by fascists: I’m sorry, we’re you unaware of the recent move by TN to undermine marriage rights? Or FL trying to prevent kids from discovering that gay or trans people – gasp! – exist? Or TX trying to construct a registration of women & their menstruation cycles?
Exactly what the _F U C K_ would you call any of that, if not explicitly and openly fascist?
Don’t bother replying, Nope. I’m not actually interested in debating these very objectively factual things, or giving air to your bad faith rhetoric. Go fry ice.
So you like to ask questions then pompously declare you’re not interested in anything but your own self-declared righteousness. As punctuated with random invective. Because “your way of knowing” trumps all else, and any words you use in aid of that will just have to bend their meaning to your will rather than stand for generally accepted definitions. Not unexpected, but clear enough.
Let me take a page out of your “leftist” buddies book: “Educate yourself.” Specifically, go look up what really drove the fascists back when the term and the movement was invented. Then you can show your work by explaining how what you describe fits the tenets and ideals of that movement, rather than just pasting the label at your convenience over objects of your ire and demanding others prove you wrong. In this too, I find you disingenious.
More like you brought up a bunch of stuff they didn’t even mention?
Like, what does leftism have to do with anything about their original comment?
They were the one’s who mentioned “places controlled by fascists”, it’s what they do, and then start spouting more shit when they get called out on it
So having a problem with fascists automatically makes you a leftist. Nice to have that in writing.
uh… fascism is on the left? It’s the government model just before Socialism as you move left?
You’re joking, right? Fascism is very much a right-wing ideology. I’m not even sure what would be to the right of fascism. It’s pretty much all the way over there.
But it is true that the extremes have a lot in common.
The Stupid Shuffle.
To the Left, to the Left.
To the Right, to the Right.
Now sit onnit, and spin.
And the rigid expectation to ‘blend in with the locals isn’t what creates a insoluble painfully rigid classist society how exactly?
Chimy is definitely a fan of Mythos art.
I am a fan of _most_ Art.
It really help with expanding my repertoire.
God damnit Chimerical, stop doing things that qualify as “cruel and unusual”.
Chimyriad doing her (?) best.
Wait, how did Chimmy make the purple portal haze effect in panel 4?
Didn’t.
That’s Super Masshole’s Fling Ring. You know where people don’t usually look?
The ground. Almost nobody looks at the ground they’re standing on, and that means it’s a great place to filter up from.
Which is weird, if you’re a Super. You really should think in three dimensions, in a super fight. But supers are still fundamentally human, and they tend to focus their attention on a 2-D plane.
The enemy’s gate is down, as are the rendering artifacts.
Mama Petra, she watching!
Most people only think in 2-D. Even though they operate in a 3-D environment this is true of most of the pilots that I know. The main exceptions I have seen are aerobatic pilots and fighter pilots. This seems to hold true for both full size and R/C pilots. I wonder if this also holds true for scuba divers?
Guy thinks he can take the heroes because he’s dealing with people who have physical powers. Let’s run down his weaknesses: He has to see to use his powers. He has to breathe. How tolerat of damage is he? That needle looks fairly ordinary and it penetrated his skin lie a normal needle arguing he’s “merely” human.
He’s a glass cannon. If he misjudged Maxima and let her hit him with 1% of her baseline strength, he’d be a grease spot.
His biggest weakeness is arrogance. He doesn’t realize that he had the upper hand only because his opponents didn’t know what they were dealing with till they got into it with him.
This is why, _if_ you are going to be The Villain, you do not ever FA. You instantly grease every threat as it appears, with full force. No chance to feel you out, to learn your patterns, behaviors, weakness, etc.
You _must_ be an informational black hole.
He chose to FA, and so he FO.
“You sly dog! You got me monologuing!”
It’s become a cliche, but it’s still a function of human nature…
Bingo
No one these days seems to have a CLUE about the Evil Overlord List.
Hmmm. Is that good or bad?
We’re pretty sure Deus has it memorized, and if he ever does formalize his greed-centric religion it will likely be part of the canonical works.
That’s what I’ve been saying, Suck hole is just a man-baby with attention issues, a true super wouldn’t waste time posing and monologue-ing, they’d get it done fast. And that was his weakness all along, the need to be feared and respected.
It takes special training to think to look in every direction, few people worry about what’s overhead and at their feet, that’s why so many people get bit by spiders and snakes. I had training for that and I still don’t look up, got forehead scares to prove it… Granted I wear ball caps most of the time, that’s part of it.
New theory: The sleepy-time cocktail is actually a magic sleep potion that doesn’t care about body mass, and Archon pretends it’s a normal drug because the masses (and most of the team below a certain rank) aren’t cleared to know magic exists.
that… makes sense. the cocktail would also pass most normal drug screens as it doesn’t work in a way the test can find.
The nice thing about military characters is that, at least if their stationed abroad, it can explain foreign idioms. And though even the higher ranks can feel less need to censor themselves, bog roll just sounds funny enough to make it worth the censorship, from the state side point of view. Using the foreign word isn’t censorship. Yeah, “pardon my French.” :/
Okay, so he’s captured, along with a few others. Now, how to they KEEP him?
Any cell could be collapsed with his gravity power, bars bent, etc. He can project the force quite a distance, so how do they feed him in his cell?
Or the Void lady. Teleportation, dimension door, etc. Another high-pressure cell?
I suggest Dabbler inject him with some nanomachines that will explode if there’s any readjustment of the local gravity field, installed inside all his limbs. Then install a bigger one in his nasal cavity that’ll explode if he leaves his cell.
Then make it plain that the door to his cell is hardened against explosions to the inside, and give him the chance to test his powers ONCE by only blowing off his little left toe or something. Then dare him to leave his cell.
If he’s sensitive to mass and gravity he’ll be aware that he’s got something in him, the demonstration will prove they are serious, and if he likes his limbs and head intact, he’ll stay put.
Maybe put a Boflex in there so he can stay busy admiring his own non-blown apart physique.
Excellent idea. Allow me to modify it.
You shouldn’t need Dabbler’s level of tech to fit him with an exploding collar with a gravimeter in it.
If that doesn’t work, they can just gas him. He has to breathe. So long as they don’t choose an anesthetic gas that is enough heavier or lighter than air that it can be quickly centrifuged out.
Also, they kept opal very well by keeping her in an aired-up hyperbaric chamber until she was released.
If they have access to alien tech, aside from the pressure chamber or.doping him. They could use artificial gravity of a high grade no safeties nature to counter act his powers, the sensors set to compensate . Which let’s be clear if they have stasis guns that slow down a localized time bubble I’m sure Dabbler or Cora can find or make a gravity compensater, like the suits or vehicles used to explore high gravity planets in some sci Fi.
that is not a face you want to see as you drift off into unconsciousness.
Sez you!
It gave me the giggles
I am working on the bobblehead. I have to work up the courage to put $120 depposit for making the mold and prototype. It’s only $35 plus shipping for eack after that.
3D print is the way to go for one-offs, several online printers that can do multicolor high-res and ship it to you within a couple days.
I find them to be of lower quality than actual castings.
Oh for sure, even the high end ones show their origin clearly. But some of the industrial-quality ones are really good, especially if you don’t mind a little light sanding and painting. Haven’t gotten into painting yet myself, but seen some great examples and have a couple projects in mind.
Jill Cypher, is that you?
*sudden disturbing laughter in a public place*
That’s good. You’re good. I’m not gonna massimilate you now.
*just imagining someone like a combination of Jim Carrey and Jeff Dunham, but with MPD, gaining superpowers based on those abilities*
Wouldn’t that just be Carrey’s character in The Mask?
What about that cross-over with Ace Ventura?
Aww misspelled it lol.
I was thinking Jill Cipher as in like, a female version of Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls after seeing that big crazy eye and grin :P well, w/e.
The absolute best kind of fight.
One that is over before the enemy knows it is happening. Because, just like schoolyards and politics, there is no ‘fair’ in war. At least, not if you want to win.
Yes, the best kind of fight is one that is ended quickly and definitively (hopefully in your favour… )
Have to appreciate the outcome. As this scene further demonstrates that Archon is acting as law enforcement, while these Ascenders, or at least this guy, is so detached that he thinks life would just become a comic book. Certain he fully expected Maxima to give a speech about justice and compassion and he no doubt has a prepared monologue about advancing humanity and his select few ruling over them as gods. And then engage in a one on one fight while everyone else just watched.
I take it Chimmy’s word is Cheshire, just to annoy Max…
Also Re-Bog Roll: Hiro has been a soldier for how long? Rule of funny can explain absolutely any idiom in any language spoken inside NATO becoming a part of a Canadian Soldier’s vernacular, and both Canadian and American soldiers have immense exposure to Bitish culture due to how much of certain areas of military expertise co-mingle. It’s not a question of whether it’s too British, it’s whether he should be using NCO type references as an officer. I assume he’s just cool like that.
He’s 32, so 14 years max? I don’t think it’s out of the question that he would have enlisted at 18. https://grrlpowercomic.fandom.com/wiki/Hiro
Sesquipedalian
Now “sesquipedalian” is a proper two dollar word.
nah, you can get it for a buck and a half at a swap meet
I think you meant ‘exposition’.
swap meet = reposition exposition