Grrl Power #1147 – Restless bladder syndrome
I will post an updated version of Sydney’s skill web alongside a very near future page, when her recent purchases are actually covered. I just wanted to wrap this scene first.
Sydney isn’t manic depressive, in fact most people would describe her as simply manic most of the time. Still, she has her mood swings, and a series of perceived failures in a row has her a little bummed out. Even if they really really weren’t her fault. Okay, the thing with the flask of spices probably could have been avoided.
The April vote incentive is up! As promised, it’s a Sydney pinup. Not airplane bathroom selfies, but hopefully her cuteness will satisfy.
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.
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.
Where’s Krona with her bladder pause button when you need her?
I don’t think it would be capable of working for over 10 HOURS.
A few hours would be enough that nobody asks strange questions.
“i technically pee through my sweat pores, how far can i push that”
Why cant it work for 10 hours? Just keep pressing the snooze button :)
I suspect Krona’s trick doesn’t overcome the medical danger of holding your pee for long periods. Obviously you have some time between “I need to pee” and “I am at risk of serious health problems due to not peeing”, and that time might even be more than 10 hours, but… it’s best not to think of it as risk-free.
I just did some Googling on the topic, and it looks like holding your pee for 10 hours (or even a few days) is still relatively safe. Safer than eating Grakz, anyway.
“I suspect Krona’s trick doesn’t overcome the medical danger of holding your pee for long periods.”
I see no reason why it wouldn’t overcome that medical damage. There might be a variable to simply shrink the amount of pee in the bladder for a period of time that needs to be reset every so often, but eventually you need to stop pressing the snooze button. Sydney wasn’t ‘holding it in’ – Krona literally just set a snooze button on whatever was making her have to pee … namely the urine in her bladder.
As far as we know, there’s nothing to say there’s any negative from pressing the snooze button several times. There’s also nothing to say how long Krona’s ‘snooze’ button worked the first time at the Mars factory, but it was for a significant period of time.
I wonder if Sydney can use the comm-ball to teleport out of the airplane, and then teleport back in afterwards?
I’m not sure why she’d want to do that (she wouldn’t be able to do it during the upgrade process to find more room if that’s what you were thinking) but I see several issues with that.
First, the lightbee or whatever the glowing center was called, seems somewhat solid so she’d need an opening from within the plane to the outside to establish a teleportation point. Planes usually don’t have much openings like that while in flight.
Second, once outside she’d be on top of a fast moving object very high in the air. She can survive that using the shield and fly orbs, but it would not be a comfortable transition.
Third, she can’t get back in anymore because of the issues mentioned in the first point, and because she already has both her hands occupied due to the issues mentioned in the second point.
She can’t touch the balls while they are upgrading or she locks herself in that upgrade path. Nothing of this works for upgrades just for normal circunstances.
The lightbee had no problem going through alien force fields
We don’t know what those force fields were actually blocking specifically, other than “attacks”
We technically don’t even know if they were more like point defense fields (so they only actually block/absorb things that are first detected).
Four, we don’t know if the orbs have recharged, or how much they have.
If she can’t maintain flight after the teleport her day would be going from her worst to her last.
if she can teleport, might as well do it back home, i think it would be hard to do it back into the confined spaces of a swiftly moving plane, at least without a lot of practice
not a bad idea, but impractical. the comm ball’s lightbee has to be inside the airplane for her to blink back in. this means that, while using the bathroom elsewhere, Sydney would have to keep track of the plane’s location the entire time, and be able to send the lightbee back to it. also, the lightbee doesn’t seem able to go through solid objects, so just getting it off of the plane would be problematic.
…but she COULD contact Harem to blip in, blip her out again, and get her off of the plane. she could use her phone’s camera to show the plane’s interior, allowing Harem to “see” it. 2 of Harem could ‘port on, one could take Sydney to a bathroom, she could do her business, and then be teleported back to the plane with the second Harem (making the second teleport easier due to one of her being there).
or Sydney, who has utterly wrecked giant space planet-killing god-like entities, could suck it up and just use the working lavatory.
You forgot that Harem can’t take other people teleporting with her. Varia is the only one who can teleport with her while touching because of the gestalt.
I wonder if Harem can teleport with the lightbee…
If one of her is touching Sydney, I could believe it…
That is, if one of her is touching Varia and Sydney, or if Varia is holding the comm ball?
Not too big of a stretch… since Varia probably has control over them when touching Sydney
Varia is the only person harem can port in.
“the comm ball’s lightbee has to be inside the airplane for her to blink back in.”
No it doesn’t. The lightbee ‘hologram’ orb CAN go through objects, including force fields. You’re thinking of how Sydney sent that image of the orb through broken windows and grates. DaveB already explained that he forgot the orb hologram can go through solid objects as well. And from what we’ve seen, the hologram orb has no actual limit of how far it can travel away from Sydney.
The only impractical thing about it is not that it can’t go through solid objects (it can) but that it cannot travel THAT fast to get to the destination.
If it will take the plane 10 1/2 hours to get back to Dallas, even if we assume the orbs can travel twice as fast a plane, that’s still a 5 hour trip for the hologram of the orb.
The only way it would not be impractical is if we assume the orb can travel at the speed of Sydney’s flight orb limit (Mach 16). Because then it will take about 20 minutes.
Actually, I found the look in panel 8 of the last comic much more appealing than that sad expression.
If you mean the invotive, that’s supposed to be her ‘seductress’ face (she needs a lot of practice… )
Any chance that she’s upgraded life support, and now finds the urge go away if she deploys that ball? (People used to suspect that the reason you never saw anyone taking a bathroom break on Star Trek was a delicate application of transporter technology…)
Crappy Starfleet fan fiction snippet….
‘Captain that last hit disabled our automated sanitary systems.’
‘oh, crap’
‘Indeed, that has already happened’
‘Computer deploy emergency sanitary facilities’
so, what happens next? other than a cease and desist from Paramount’s lawyers.
‘Emergency Sanitary Facilities’. Holographic buckets appear throughout the ship.
Robert Picardo in a 1950’s Good Humor Ice Cream Man uniform pops in:
“Please state the nature of your excremental emergency.”
I hesitate to imagine how much it would cost to make that video. But I want it anyway.
You want her to fondle her balls in an enclosed public place just to see if one of them removes her need to pee?
https://media.makeameme.org/created/phrasing.jpg
:)
I know it was intended but I wanted to respond with this anyway.
think of the medical benefits of that type of use of transporters. for people who have medical conditions that need either removal of wastes or fluids, or receiving certain needed substances, like insulin. but from many episodes of star trek i’ve seen they usually have other ways of taking care of those problems.
as for other uses, stories by larry niven had other uses for teleportation, such as teleporting pure water out of seawater, or desalinization of it. he had one where character visited wealthy friend, where he realized the glass he was using kept refilling itself by teleporting more fluid in to glass. but star trek has replicator technology, which as i understand it is just an offshoot of transporter technology.
teleporting could be useful in refilling projectile weapons, or watering systems for farming or firefighting, (tho for firefighting you could also teleport theoxygen away, and star trek has force sheilds that can keep fire restricted to small area
So you think… pee is stored in the balls?
I know that’s not a pun but I’m sending a ninja hit squad after you for that anyway.
They’ll bring over some snacks for you though.
And the secret of the final ball is revealed. It’s the Star Trek invisible waste disposal technology. Once active, it can literally beam your bladder and bowels empty.
Just don’t cross the streams.
Actually…
Wait, I’m responding to a Star Trek post. Let me do this properly.
ACK-TUALLY….
There have been bathrooms featured in Star Trek shows. Archer and Janeway have each been shown to be in bathrooms on their respective ships, Enterprise NX-01 and Voyager NCC-75656. Janeway was in a bathtub taking a bubble bath when Q popped in to annoy her. Twice. Resolutions (Season 2 episode 25) and Q2 (Season 7 episode 19). Neelix also frequented using a bubble bath in his headqurters mainly because water was such a commodity in his sector of space in the Delta Quadrant that most people would not waste it on BATHS.
Archer used a shower in his quarters. And you can see in that episode that there is a toilet stall as well. Unexpected (Enterprise Season 1 episode 5) and Singularity (Enterprise Season 2 episode 9). Plus there are other shots of bathrooms in that show as well a few times.
Also apparently in the blueprints of the Enterprise 1701-D, there are four doors leading out from the main bridge. One is to the Captain’s Ready Room, one is to the meeting room, one is to the Turbolift, and one is to the ‘Head.’ That’s a bathroom. :)
and once again my crappy ideas are foiled. here have some of these:
https://parsleyandicing.com/poop-emoji-cupcakes/
Yuk!.. no…
just no…
Hoshi was also seen using a shower when she “thought she was disappearing” in a pretty creepy way. They used it as a dream sequence trope for her dealing with her transporter fear. Also in ‘Lower Decks’ you can see many crew members in a community bathroom/shower scene.
Most surprising thing about this episode is how quiet Dabbler is being! :o
She doesn’t want to be implicated in any of this.
She’s probably streaming porn directly to her eye while alt tabbing on some research project.
Huh. Wondering now about the mechanics – would she actually get any ‘nutrition‘ from that, or only from other people watching it? Even if she finds it interesting and can absorb her own tantric output, seems like it would be a net energy loss.
Approximately 50 minutes have passed since take off.
So just walk the extra few miles (felt like; depending on the urgency).
And/or ask the flight attendants for some depends…
They′ve handled worse.
indeed
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WBawJauGDaY
Of all the… Once again, a “Karen” strikes! I would of talked to a lawyer, after I felt what that is like after serious injuries having to crawl like that to my bathroom and back, my parents insisted I move back in so I wasn’t alone (i was 24 at the time), I had a shattered foot, dislocated hip and shoulder, and 2 crushed vertebra. (car accident) I know the pain and shame I felt, I can imagine what she felt in public like that.
That’s anything but a “Karen” matter…
It was a single flight attendant that claimed it was a policy while I know for ADA rules it wasn’t, she just didn’t want to deal with it and the rest went along with her. That woman was known to be disabled before and when she boarded and if there were any fee’s it would of been included in the price of the ticket.
…and of course a disabled person has all those policies on hand shortly before disembarking the plane.
Lightbee based solution: teleport into the other lavatory so the attendants don’t see you go in.
Bee can’t pass through solid objects, like a toilet door…
I’m pretty sure it has at least passed through a window so far.
Through a crack in a window (it’s why she had to go look for another entry rather than through the skylight during the Mars Factory investigation)
This airline is going to institute a rule that no one with superpowers is allowed to fly. Even if arguably the worst of the two incidents had nothing to do with super-powers.
Unless Sydney’s ability to eat spicy food counts. But lots of people would have that super-power. It’s not the MOST COMMON superpower, and probably not the second most common, but it could be in the top 10, maybe.
No kidding. My wife carries around a bottle of hot sauce in her purse, just in case.
Appropriately labeled, though. Maybe I should get her one of those bottles just for her sauce?
That won’t fly (!!!) in a world where a fraction of the population have Superpowers.
Too discriminatory.
So, discrimination? They gonna also require people to pass a super-test to prove they are not a super? Even if their power is simply the ability to unkink cords? or straighten paper-clips?
Technically, Sydney isn’t a super, she has no powers of her own
Neither is Batman.
From Justice League: War
Green Lantern: “Can you fly?”
Batman: “In a plane.”
https://youtu.be/UTEKkSFtcJE?t=24
With your typical super, this wouldn’t happen. The actual culprit here are the orbs, and there’s plenty of precedent for items being banned on airliners.
Try banning Sydney’s balls, double woof dare ya!
actually, only if they recognize her can the ban the balls. remember, they are undetectable to electronic sensors. Since the government knew she was there, and made a deal, they would like to avoid hosting a US military aircraft to remove her. I’m sure there were instructions not to be too curious about Voids in her bag.
Of course she has mood swings. Emotional dysregulation is part of ADHD.
Just need to distract her till the flight ends.
With the way she eats, hell yeah she would be a destroyer of bathrooms.
That’s still cruel to cut past the selection and leave us wondering. But by her words she sounded intent on the Light Hook. I’m willing to bet an upgraded node on it then a link to another orb since it’s something they haven’t tried.
Dabbler probably has some bladder-to-void-dimension-portal tech/magic. It’s what I would invent if toilet visits kept distracting me from mad science.
Would YOU risk finding out what sideefects HER magic has?
This shows that they are not sitting in the front row, so no idea how Anvil is able to sit comfortably (also explains why Sydney had to climb over her)
I was about to mention that.
I thought that they would be seated behind the galley or in the first row so Kenya would have leg space.
Awwwww, Sydney….consider yourself hugged.
Ah yes, the problem of when to use the bathroom on long plane flights. It always feels like when I get up to use the bathroom, someone else always gets there before me.
11+ hour flight (long range) and only two toilets, ‘must be the Hollywood Cineverse. 5-7 on trans oceanic flights is more likely based on my trips abroad.
Since we have way too many sitting on a plane panels, I expect Brad Pitt, Samuel Jackson, or just snakes to make a cameo at this point.
Not gonna lie, I was expecting this months vote incentive to be airplane bathroom related.
Aaaw am I the only disappointed in that we don’t get to see (yet) what Sydney picked for her upgrades?
I didn’t noticed anyone who would NOT be disappointed by that.
What I fail to understand.
Okay, Sydney can fly and with her shield, can take people with her.
I know “rule of funny” and all.
But why take a commercial flight when you can do Mach 4?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-740-predebrief/
Because it’s a trans-oceanic flight, and the flyball was acting strange, and none of them really wanted to risk a thousand mile swim.
Because the orbs started malfunctioning. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1095-cooldown/
Because Sydney found it harder and harder to maintain flight when nearing Africa’s coast :) so they decided to take it safe and use a plane, instead of risking the orbs running out of power in the middle of the Atlantic :)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1095-cooldown/
Did you, perchance, miss the part of the storyline where the fly orb is malfunctioning?
The flight orb crapped out. See summary in the first panel: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1140-air-borne-travel/
“But why take a commercial flight when you can do Mach 4?”
1) She can do Mach 16, not Mach 4. She upgraded during the Kaiju fight.
2) She can’t do even Mach 4 right now because it’s a transatlantic flight and the fly orb was having problems and she was struggling to even go Mach 8 with concentration, hence why they had to stop in Senegal in the first place. The fly orb is still acting ‘wonky’ so it’s not worth the risk to try flying back with the orb, in case the fly orb stopped working ENTIRELY while they were still over the Atlantic Ocean with thousands of miles of open ocean with no land to stop on between them and home.
So it was for more than just ‘rule of funny.’ We’re not sure yet if the fly orb wasnt working well because the upgrade feature was wanting to start. The Fly Orb has always had a bit of a problem judging from the fact that it was found in the ocean after some sort of problem with the aetherium causeway generator.
Smash cut to the fire department meeting them on the runway, and all the passengers debarking via the emergency slides.
Awwww, Sydney. Consider yourself hugged.
This is arguably my most relatable Sydney moment.
For a more than 10 hour flight, there’s going to be more than one bathroom on the plane… With the upgrades out of the way, there’s not much more damage she can do… The question is whether the crew will let her in to any of the other bathrooms.
Well … if they don’t, there will be even WORSE damage.
There’s always the old “Empty soda bottle” trick. Though the time I got caught in traffic and had to resort to it with a Mountain Dew bottle, things got ugly on the drive home…
That’s a little more difficult logistically for some people than others. :)
A long time ago I added a funnel to the old emergency roadside kit, though most people assume it’s for more precise filling of windshield washer fluid.
but really, isn’t it?
Sydney definitely has to inquire of Dabbler if she has a solution, but I suspect Dabbler just morphs her biology to increase her bladder size for things like this.
Some days nothing goes right for you, who hasn’t had a day where even breathing caused something bad to happen? Hang in there Sydney, it’ll be over soon. Her only mistake so far was listening to Dabs and not realizing what Anvil was thinking.
Hope they get home…without incident!!!
I have known several people with general mania as their baseline mood. While they’re pretty resilient to depression and seemingly immune to chronic depression, when they do hit a setback big enough to cause them to check their overall mania, it generally hits them hard.
Five minutes later, boundless energy once more. But for those minutes in between…
I do want to clarify on the ‘seemingly’ immune, because one of them at one point proved to be not as immune as he seemed. I lost track of him because of moving, but it knocked him down long enough to get diagnosed with chronic depression and get on meds. And then his doctor kept wanting to futz with the dosage and what meds he was on because he was convinced *this* couldn’t be the way that guy was supposed to be.
I may be missing something here, but why exactly didn’t Sydney just put her bra back on before leaving the bathroom?
Panic, and she already had put her shirt back on
The voting pic has an unfair amount of adorableness
Yea, ADHD can trigger a lot of self hate and depressive moments. Unfortunately that comes with the package. :(
I had to live with that during grade school and during that time ADD and ADHD was a “new” issue they hadn’t figured out yet (late 1960’s). They just gave me a pill (I forget the name now) and called it won and done, which it wasn’t.
Don’t blame that on the ADHD. It sounds like you’re in a bad environment. At most, you might be in an environment where only ADHD people get depression because it’s particularly unsuited for ADHD people.
Ok, wait, as someone who grew up traveling…
They were in Morocco. They are flying to the USA, and they have already been in the air long enough for the fasten seat belt sign to turn off, Sydney to get up, hog the bathroom long enough for it to be noticed, and then come back and sit down.
The USA requires you to go through customs at first point of entry. Once they’re in the USA, ARC will have their own faster transport than commercial.
Morocco to New York is ~7 hours. Morocco to Miami is ~9 hours. Morocco to Chicago is also ~9 hours. You could do Houston, which would be over 10 hours, but the shorter flights are going to be easier to find, cheaper, and it would fit their travel profile better.
What flight are they on where there’s 10 hours left after they’ve been flying for at least an hour?
Seems like a northwest hub airport like Denver. Since Sydney already forced a delay, it may be possible it was the only flight option left that day.
Who said they were in Morocco?
Dakar Senegal to Dallas Texas is 10 hours 39 minutes on an average flight speed commercial airliner. This plane was a backup so it might not be as new and might be a bit slower.
They were in Dakar, Senegal, not Morocco.
Thanks, I was mis-remembering – but the difference in flight time will be less than an hour, so the analysis still works.
I propose that this would have been an awesome time for Sydney to test the range of the lightbee and see if it could zip to Archon and teleport her across the globe.
Come to think of it… Sydney is trying to keep her ability to teleport secret, isn’t she? She probably wouldn’t want to resolve this situation that way simply for that reason.
Looks like they are just passing either Galapagos or Canary
Since Galapagos are in the Pacific, I doubt it’s them!…
It’s definitely Canary, you can hear the cheeping
Oh right, new they were both of the west coast, just forgot they weren’t the same coast
And if you are hearing cheeping from the canaries, you are in the wrong mine (the islands were named after canines :P )
Point being: smart people should be able to figure out possible destinations by adding 10 hours from those islands
I return after giving up following the cosmic.
Her mood is not happy that’s why she has such a bored face.
Even for a character like Sydney, who is usually described as manic, it’s natural to have ups and downs.