Grrl Power #1145 – Toilette travails
Also heard through the bathroom door:
Well, I got two hot ones burning a hole in my pocket.
Just wish I knew what to do with them.
This glowey web thing is weird.
It’s neat how it spins like that.
Whoever designed this process was not user focused.
What was with this delay? I wonder if my diet has anything to do with it.
Oh man I forgot to try Piri Piri sauce!
I’ll admit I didn’t spend a lot of time researching how airplane bathrooms worked, but I would assume that there are multiple valves to prevent leaks if something breaks. Still for the sake of this page, let’s assume the swirling orbs broke just enough stuff to cause a comical if probably short lived spray of water.
The new vote incentive might be up with the Thursday comic. Definitely next Monday. And yes, it is Sydney centric. (But not airplane bathroom selfies.)
The March Vote Incentive is up! The thumbnail is weird because the picture doesn’t have anyone’s face in it. It’s an odd incentive, admittedly. Trying something new. But hopefully you all still enjoy it.
Variant outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon, as well as the semi-usual bonus incentive related comic.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Well, this is not fully Sydney’s fault, but at least this happened in the toilet and not in the main cabin. Having the Orbs spinning around there might have been a bit more dangerous.
In the non-Grrl world, it’s actually not easy to break an aircraft sink, as leaks are *NOT FUN* to deal with, on aircraft. Obviously, in the Grrl world, they are more delicate ;)
I have seen no evidence the sink is more delicate than a real sink. We know that the orbs are very strong when they want to be, so naturally they would be able to break things that normal humans can’t break by accidents. If you can stop Maxima dead in her tracks, you can break an aircraft sink. The difference is the existence of superpowers, not durability of the sinks.
honestly given what we’ve seen of them I’m surprised they couldn’t go through a few inches of concrete when Sydney was caught in New York (with the only explanation my brain accepts being she didn’t know they could so had some mental block out concern of breaking them, keeping her from making them accelerate from a standstill to smash through.
The lighthook has an upper limit (possibly upgradable to more), it seems reasonable that the telekinetic motion/power of the orbs would also have a limit. Concretia’s trap would have been relatively weak to a breakout given a tensile failure, but still pretty tough. It was also being actively shaped and maintained by her powers, so I can see that adding additional resiliency.
The orbs evidently distinguish different types of moving/putting out force – when Sydney deliberately moves them or tries to pull them along herself, their strength is limited, but when they resist moving away from her, they can win against Maxima.
It makes sense for the rotation setting up the skill tree to be the latter kind, the ‘this is not allowed to be physically overpowered’. This fits well with the videogamelike behavior of the orbs.
Remember the scene in the bank carpark? She left her balls in her car, and they dropped her when she got too far
She can pull her balls along with her if they are not secured (how Maxi figured there was something ‘odd’ about Sydney during the hostage demonstration in the bank), but not if secured (when they were ‘pinned down’ by the tire after the demonstration)
That’s what I mean – the orbs don’t put force into following her and hold her back instead, but they do put force into refusing to be moved away from her.
Misunderstood :(
At least the orbs can fix themselves relative to the plane and not the planet. Accidentally tearing a massive whole through the plane and possibly People and also hanging 10m under the orbs in the upper atmosphere would be an issue.
While half/mostly naked, no less. The rules of comedy state that it would be Hiro coming to rescue her, not Max, and he would have some snarky things to say about her shirt being off during what is technically still a deployment.
Hiro? Being snarky? o_O
Polite and subtle, but yes snarky. He’s heard what she’s had to say about his unshirtedness, and while he’s pretty straight laced we’ve seen with Max that he’s more than ready for some banter.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one thinking this. Hopefully it is continuously relative to the plane, so that even if the plane changes course or speed, the orbs will not destroy it. I don’t think we have seen Sydney try to walk away from the orbs when they are in upgrade mode, but they might be fixed somewhat relative to her.
i think we have when they upgraded after the Koina(? think that’s how to spell the reality warpers name) checkpoint activated
while she was running form the biorobot the orbs kept up with her
Krona, like the currency
Sydney spent about 11 pages walking around with the upgrade tree open, back when she got a point during an appointment with Dr Frost.
Ah yes. I forgot about that. This page shows a wider range of motion: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-938-fast-friends-in-high-places/
Also it seems that upgrade was on hold for hours if not the whole day.
The orbs’ position is always relative to Sydney.
Not anything or anyone else.
If Sydney’s moving (and the orbs are free to follow), the orbs are moving.
What would have happened if the orbs were somehow left in the terminal while Sydney departed on the plane… I don’t know.
But the maximum distance between them is far too small for that to have actually happened.
Not *precisely* true – when Sydney is trying to move in one direction while something strong is trying to pull the orbs in the opposite direction, the orbs arbitrate that dispute based on something outside of Sydney. We’ve only seen that situation arise once, though, and it was in a parking lot, so we don’t necessarily know what the resolution would be if someone grabbed one of the orbs and jumped off the plane with it.
We’ve seen a few combinations of the leash effect:
– Sydney walking away from the orbs (into the bank), and being stopped without the orbs moving at all.
– The orbs wiggling Tubey while Sydney scooted under the ambulance
– Max pulling the orbs away from Sydney, with the orbs stopping cold without pulling on Sydney
– Concretia capturing the orbs and pushing Sydney apart from them until hitting the limit – not entirely clearly which was moving
We’re never seen anyone grab the orbs so that’s a separate unknown variable.
If she somehow got thrown out of the plane with her bag just inside, I suspect she and the orbs would both come to an instant dead stop, and the orbs would tear through the back of the plane. She’d feather fall for a few seconds until she could summon them to her and grab flight and shield to go rescue the plane. Possibly by pacing it and keeping the back held together by wrapping the lighthook around it, while Dabbler summoned something useful from her lab to patch it?
Yeah, that seems accurate.
Apart from the separation rule though, their position is only ever determined in reference to Sydney.
There’s also a question as to what counts as ‘strong’.
We’ve seen that they won’t break through concrete or the plastic of tubey. And Maxima can’t even break the separation rule, as noted by brichins.
*Would* they break through plane fuselage? Cardboard? Spider web? Paper?
Just now realizing Tubey should’ve received some crush damage, although Max wasn’t exactly bracing for resistance either.
Got to hate when a relevant level up happens when in transit.
That said, I wander if the scrunchy (which is this that a magic scrunchy? I may be forgetting what she was given to help hold her hair back), if so it wouldn’t be surprising if it was somehow interfering with a signal between her brain and the orbs *as they do seem designed to be anti-magic in some ways, so a magic signal so close to their command center maybe might interfere) which saying that sounds like a long shot, but we definitely see an odd sequence here that would imply something was lifted or activated out of no where. Although just her foot kicking them might have woken them up out of recharge mode.
I’m really glad you made this comment. I didn’t notice that when I first read through. I think you are absolutely right that the scrunchy has something to do with it. Looking at it again, it seems DaveB was trying to make that obvious with the panel progression.
Maaybe… although I think it is more likely just a visual hook to connect the ‘camera’ panning down to her feet. After all, having her hair constrained by hairpins and even an enchanted headband never had any effect on the orbs before.
Her power is charged through her hair
I’m wondering if the orbs deliberately held this upgrade until a genuinely inconvenient time in order to force Sydney to make a hasty choice rather than a well thought out and calculated decision. They find Sydney’s unpredictability to be amusing and keeping her upgrades chaotic just adds to their fun.
Sydney doesn’t need ‘help’ to make a hasty choice (remember when she was forced to pick during the examination by Dabbles and co and she grabbed one of her balls?)
Somehow, I’m sure that she will manage to finally complete the pattern by putting the very last pip into the slot that reveals the labels on all the slots.
Very trope compatible theory – but how would you know if that’s what the pip did specifically, or if that would’ve happened no matter which pip was last?
The “pie” in the center of the upgrade web seems to be the tutorial function – purchasing additional slices of it leads to intuitive insights about how the system works. If it were filled in completely, that might reveal a full user manual.
super power upgrades are way better than quarters when you are finding something behind your ear
Hot take, but this might’ve been a bad idea.
Wait, were her orbs out of commission this WHOLE TIME because her upgrade sparkles were stuck in her HAIR???
Her orbs were not ‘out of commission.’ They were in her carry-on luggage, contained. She stopped using them after the police shootout to lighthook the gun. When they were going on the plane they put her orbs in a case. When her orbs are not used for a while they go into ‘sleep mode.’ It has nothing to do with her hair, aside from that her orbs fell out fo the case while she was futzing with her hair being stuck on the hook.
pretty sure the implication being the reason they seemed to need recharging was because they were trying to alert her it was time for an upgrade but for whatever reason the upgrade points came out of her head apparently and were stuck in her hair somehow. So reduced usability as a means to get her attention.
1) What you said in the first half of your first sentence and your entire second sentence seems likely. The fact that it needed to ‘upgrade’ could have been the reason for the reduced usability.
2) The pips did not come out of her hair. She was using her hand to reach up where her hair had been tangled on the hook, then noticed that the pips, which were in her HAND, were glowing. The pips form in her hand, not her hair. Or at least have every other time.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-659-the-greatest-challenge-upgrading/
(panel 4)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-933-ding-psychology/
(panel 4 and 5)
Exactly, love it when you leave a comment I was getting ready to write.
Also, having the orbs shut down mid-use to get the user’s attention is an extremely terrible design decision.
I’m intrigued by the various theories of why the skill tree is only appearing now, given it’s been many many hours since she glassed the dessert. Sleep mode makes the most sense, except that she had plenty of time alone in a room with the orbs active during the supermarket entrapment. And there was a noticeable amount of time between the Darude post-action cleanup and the farewell press conference where she wasn’t actively using them, whereas after the Archon range demo for the press the skill tree popped up almost immediately after she dropped the shield.
Dramatic timing and a major milestone seems to be the only constants.
Could be their charged by ambient radiation, and flying at the height that planes due mean they were getting a quicker recharge (it would make sense for an advanced civilization to make devices that charge based on background radiation, especially considering they’re space faring). When she was flying them home before she was pretty low altitude. This would give her the superman trope of needing to fly high orbit to recharge quicker.
Except, they didn’t run out of ‘gas’ until after Somalia, and she wasn’t involved in that (this time)
The only milestone at this time was her posting a nudie in a public place…
Obviously the orbs are powered by nudity. Problem solved!
:)
they are powered by plot. they are the Orbs of the Mechane.
Plot is powered by nudity. Gotcha.
I was trying to post this yesterday…
Up until now there hasn’t been an issue with the orbs & she hasn’t “kick started” the upgrade mechanism to check the skill tree\points other than that one time (Alari homeworld).
All the energy expenditure used by Sidney prior has previously been recovered\self-replenished, until she went into super heavy power draw dealing with Darude & the orbs went into power saving mode for the journey back having had no chance to sufficiently recharge.
So we can’t see it here clearly, but……
Could the middle actually be a power\battery indicator, its been depleted & while it may have sufficiently recharged a little, Sidney might actually need to drop those points into the middle as a battery boost.
My knowledge of board games and video games approaches nil but it
may be that instead of choosing an upgrade Sydney has the opportunity
to ‘redeem’ the pips as fuel.
The Orbs of Power have infinite energy.
Sydney had used up her points to access it.
Like a debit card.
Haven’t seen anyone suggest this before, interesting theory. I think this would mean she has to keep advancing her powerset in order to maintain the feedback cycle? In that case she’d have to keep doing more and more dramatic things, or the orbs would have to start cannibalizing bought skills and convert them to fuel in order to keep working at all.
In which case, what happens when all the skills are bought and civilization is relying on her now massive capabilities and ongoing action? Would she be forced to try something truly colossal to prevent backsliding – maybe even something the magnitude of the K-T (K-Pg) event? Something so big it backfired, overwhelmed the shield and burned up a large chunk of the purchased points, and resulted in a giant explosion that killed most of the planet?!
/wild speculation
That might be the case, but I don’t think a battery boost is really necessary. This only happened after Sydney remodeled the landscape with the PPO, for normal operations she has more than enough power.
“Still for the sake of this page, let’s assume the swirling orbs broke just enough stuff to cause a comical if probably short lived spray of water.”
I actually did some research on this because of your blurb and… guess what.
That’s actually what would happen. A short comical but very short lived spray of water. The pipes in the airplane sink only hold a very little bit of water between the sink and the air stop valve that leads to the water reservoir in the underbelly of the plane and the other area for the ‘gray water’ (waste water). Since the sinks (and toilets) use vacuum suction, the air stop valve is there to prevent there from ever being too much water in the pipe, and also to prevent air from causing depressurization.
The result is if the airplane bathroom sink broke, there would be a brief comical spritz of water until that small amount of water between the sink and air stop valve was gone, and because of the vacuum suction, it would be rather quick and indeed in ‘spray’ form, not just sloshing onto the floor.
Not even all the water in the tubes would come out, just a quick spritz of perhaps a few teaspoons as the pressure equalized and the flow was cut off. Of course, this being Sydney, it still had to spray her directly in the face for maximum slapstick effect.
Indeed. While the Rule of Cool sometimes happens in comics, with Sydney, much like Roger Rabbit, the Rule of Funny is always in effect.
And then her selfie clicks right in the middle of the orb upgrade spin and the splash.
Of course, her glasses are capable of livestreaming the entire event.
The more Sydney’s calvacade of destruction grows, the more I become convinced the the mystery orb is some sort of repair tool. The Lighthook is a rather clumsy way for her “spaceship” to interact with other things. Presumably it might eventually be able to take a different shape than just making one long tentacle, but it clearly can’t do any fine work so its utility has a glaring hole.
Hmm, maybe the brown orb is a combination fabricator and sonic screwdriver?
To be fair, I don’t think she’s upgraded the lighthook at all, not even its passive. For all we know, lighthook may be the orb’s most basic function, and it can actually take on many different methods of interacting with stuff, maybe even messing with the fundamental forces in the process?
I get it. The reason she was having trouble with the FlyBall is because her XP bar was full.
I suspect static electricity. Not sure how the hair band would transfer it but that’s my most plausible guess.