Grrl Power #1148 – Challenge the heavens
Sydney gets distracted by literally anything – 1:10
Sydney eats lunch and forgets she was training – 2:1
Sydney loses interest after getting a splinter – 3:1
Sydney hits a vital service line underground – 4:1
Sydney sends the wrecking ball or bulldozer blade flying into the building – 4:1
Aliens land and attempt to steal the orbs – 5:1
Sydney spontaneously discovers she’s distantly related to the Hapsburgs and is whisked away to an adventure in Europe – 6:1
Sydney smashes herself with the wrecking ball and spends two weeks in traction – 8:1
Sydney sticks with a rigorous training schedule for a full week – 174:1
This page sort of depends on the fact that you guys know that Harrison is an ex-Ranger, but I think he’s only appeared in one or two other pages, and I don’t know if he even had any dialogue. I’m guilty here of letting the Who’s Who do the heavy lifting for me. The short version is he was working as a Chicago detective, and doggedly followed a case even after the brass waved him off, and in doing so discovered evidence of the supernatural underground, like you do if you’re the main character of the pilot episode of a supernatural police procedural. Like Fringe, but with more werewolves and vampires. Shady supernaturals tried to eliminate him, but being an ex-Ranger, he gave them way more trouble than they expected and was eventually brought into the loop by non-shady supernaturals. He now works with Arc-LIGHT and often partners with Pixel.
It’s possible Harrison is being slightly hyperbolic about how much caffeine was involved in Ranger school. But people in Cultivation novels are basically junkies. By the time they make it to Silver, half of them have stopped eating food that isn’t more “Legendary Mana Tankard” than riceball.
(Next page actually details points spent. I’ll include an updated skill tree.)
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.
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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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I had no idea Harrison was an Ex-Ranger before this comic, but I feel like the dialogue on the page is completely sufficient to establish that, without even needing to look at the who’s who or author’s notes.
I just assume when someone says “that reminds me of X school” that they went to school for X.
Agreed.
I’d love to see some flashbacks of him giving shady supernaturals a hard time if he’s not a Super himself. I wonder how he compares to Math.
He’s probably on the same level as Duke, Peggy & Shawn (the ex-seal, not sheep), aka Team DPS
Math would be better in hand-to-(well anything) combat, but Harrison would be the better scout and shooter. Mind you, Peggy is a far better shooter than even Harrison, so it is not all one-sided.
I get the sense that Harrison is David Goggins in disguise.
All the x men say it that way.
Yeah, the page provides all the context needed.
Hmm I am still curious on what powers the orbs, they seems to have some sort of power supply as she managed to deplete it.
Just seems inconsistant as she was able to space hop multiple times on a whim, fly etc with no issues. Then stuggles on a fairly simple flight back to HQ.
I wonder if it was less the orbs.. and something in the location being the issue, maybe the orbs are part of a much larger object that was nearby.
I think its been said before, maybe the last orb really is the power supply for other others, and they slot in to a ship, a pod or something and it was drawing power away from them as she was in range.
Aka the ship, as they are link to her with a fairly short range, maybe the device extends this further, even gives the user access to all of them at the same time.
She was on another planet and they worked just fine, that was a lot further away than Africa.
They were running low because she expended megaton-nuke-level amounts of energy in Galtyn melting the desert into obsidian. Dabbler goes over it in strip 1095.
No she spent all that energy on fire suppression by making a ton of nitrogen gas.
You do remember that matter is made of lot’s of energy right? That would require enough juice to blow up the planet.
Based on what Dabbler said in strip 1095, she didn’t straight-up make nitrogen gas out of pure energy, she did it by converting oxygen into nitrogen, which only requires stripping off one proton and one neutron from each atom.
Since oxygen has a lower atomic mass than iron, causing it to fission in this manner does take energy (as opposed to fissioning heavier-than-iron elements, such as uranium, which releases energy), so it would require a lot of energy to overcome the binding forces holding those protons and neutrons in place, but nowhere near as much as creating nitrogen from scratch out of pure energy.
Specifically, oxygen’s binding energy is 8MeV per nucleon, and she needs to remove two nucleons to turn it into nitrogen, so it would take 16MeV per atom of oxygen converted. Creating an atom of nitrogen from scratch would require 13,000MeV. So, it’s approximately 10,000 times more efficient to fission oxygen into nitrogen than to create nitrogen from energy.
I don’t think Syndey was using Firestorm/Dr. Manhattan/Dr. Solar level direct elemental transmutation. It seemed more like she was just using the Atmorb to poot out pure nitrogen gas from hammerspace storage or something.
Then again, if she was using direct matter/energy conversion to create N2 from O2, it’s probably a net GAIN because the mass of the extra protons and neutrons could be used to power it. That’s essentially end-stage Star Trek transporter/replicator tech.
You don’t need to convert oxygen into nitrogen on our planet, the most predominate gas in the atmosphere is nitrogen. You just have to compress and cool it, 78% of the air you breath is nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and the last bit is everything else.
This also leaves some extra nucleons. The most convenient option would be to fuse them into more nitrogen, which releases energy, making up for part of the deficit. There might also be the option to just convert some extra nucleons to energy.
At that rate 22.4 L of nitrogen gas (1 mol) is worth 7×10^11 joules. 100 mols of nitrogen gas would be in the same ballpark as the first nuclear weapons. If she used 1000 to 10,000 mols she is now in the multi-megaton nuke energy range. Making that gas may have been in the same energy range as melting the sand.
We don’t know where the nitrogen came from. Portal to the elemental plane of nitrogen? Transmutation of some sort? Blatantly breaking conservation of energy?
Filtering the oxygen out of the local air?
That could explain the nitrogen feat as such, but not really the time she made an air bubble underwater.
I expect she wasn’t making nitrogen but simply moving the oxygen away. Far less energy required, and every species should understand K.I.S.S. keep it simple stupid.
Like I said, that doesn’t explain the underwater bubble, and the nitrogeneration appeared to be an application of the same capability.
In addition to the oxygen paired with hydrogen, there’s a lot of dissolved air in actively mixed water, e.g. an in-use pool with operating filtration pumps. However I tend to lean towards the orb importing or generating gases basically ex nihilo, since a bubble filled with hydrogen and oxygen gas is likely to be detrimental to the health of the orbs’ user.
There’s not that much oxygen in water, you’d need to filter around 30l of water to get 1l of air, so a lot of filtering would need to happen.
Electrolysis (or an equivalent) could work, but as you say, that would release a lot of hydrogen you don’t really want. Importantly, this is also a different mechanism from filtering, so the same problem remains.
A mechanism that relied on filtering gases that are already present would be fairly limited as a life support tool. It would also not allow for using it while the bubble is up (although I don’t remember it being shown, Sydney spent a lot of time on Alari Prime with the shield up, and should have replenished it at sone point) further weakening it.
Sydney’s understanding is that the orbs can make a variety of atmospheres, and she was able to work with this understanding, so she’s likely correct, and the orbs aren’t restricted by the environment like that.
She was on another planet and they worked just fine, that was a lot further away than Africa.
I think the point was they work fine away from the source, but failed because they were *closer* to something. Maybe the original ship is under the ocean they were flying over and it connected to the orbs.
The flight back to HQ was just after using the PewPew orb to melt some 75 square kilometers of sand into obsidian. Probably much more power than we saw her use in the space battle, especially since it would be a long, sustained usage.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1076-obsidian-crop-circle/
She ripped multiple holes in space and time to travel to and from a space station, potentially billions of light years away.
That must have used far more power.. enough for her to notice I would think, so I do think it’s some external factor. As someone said, maybe the ship was under the sea as she flew over.
“Aka the ship, as they are link to her with a fairly short range, maybe the device extends this further, even gives the user access to all of them at the same time.”
They arent that short a range actually. She’s used them before for a rather long distance away. For example, when Vehemence threw Anvil WAY up in the air, where it would have taken some time for her to fall back down according to Anvil. Sydney used her lighthook to grab Anvil and send her back down onto Vehemence VERY fast.
Her fight with the Kaiju was quite a long distance away from earth. I would put it down to mere fatigue. consider what happens to the orbs when she falls asleep. well the earlier strips.
I think you’re responding to the wrong post.
My post is talking about the Lighthook’s range/length.
By now, i also think the last orb is the power supply. IIRC, it did have it’s passive point from the start, so it probably (slowly) charges the other orbs without being held.
I think the orbs are powered by a mix of plotnium and hijinksium. As such, it’s only natural that the orbs attached themselves to Sydney, and by the time they landed in the US, they were back up to full power.
Well, although Monday will go into detail, the fact Sydney now has TWO Lighthooks is pretty telling.
Also, that’s an impressively sharp bulldozer blade to shank that barrel without crushing it.
That’s not 2 lighthooks, it’s just the one flailing around. Just like Scooby Doo and Shaggy don’t have 6 legs when they start running.
One is holding the Bulldozer blade, the other the wrecking ball. My money is on two lighthooks now.
That would have to be two, since one is holding a wrecking ball, and the other a bulldozer blade, apparently at the same time.
In the high-res Patreon release, there is clear distinction between the two lighthook segments at the orb or her hand or whatever. There is also no evidence of one side being thicker than the other or otherwise doubled back or anything
DaveB says the details will be revealed Monday. I guess we’ll see conclusively then
YES they DOO! *giggles*
I remember when Sydney broke the 4th wall by testing if she could cut away to catastrophic results of them going to a club. Given that context I’d be willing to bet on her sticking to a rigorous training schedule IF she can just turn it into a montage.
Furthermore, I bet she concluded that she can level up her orbs not just through taking down enemies, but also through spending their energy in general, so I’d expect her to spend her training trying to farm skill points in safe-ish ways (yes, the words “Sydney” and “safe” are mutually exclusive, I know :-) ). I mean, I don’t think we have any reson to believe that those orbs only level up by Sydney gaining combat experience like with that Final Fantasy Sphere Board.
Yeah, I wouldn’t necessarily bet on Sydney getting distracted. The thing people don’t necessarily know about ADHD is that people with it can sometimes get wierdly hooked with their attention/focus on something for a long period of time. In Sydney’s case, examples might be comic book series she reads through, Star Trek and other nerd trivia and research, Dungeons and Dragons, etc. If Sydney becomes hooked in a similar way to this cultivator concept, she could go for quite a while.
Hyperfocus – the twin of executive disfunction. I can go from the mess has too much muchness to deal with to breaking down powershell scripts like a lawyer analyzing sentence structure for a technicality.
I hate it when the comment system eats my comment. I’m not clever enough to make a copy before posting.
I think Sydney’s proposed conclusion would be accurate. The Orbs level up based on frequency and intensity of use. It’s just that combat supplies both in great quantity. There are probably bonus points for creative use of the orbs. Just working out would eventually get her to the next level up, just not as quickly as she imagines. My bet would be that she loses interest in training after she has to clean up all of her trash. My favorite theory is that the orbs were not run down, they were holding back as a way of telling her, “the threat is over, use your level ups”.
I would expect that the points are a reward for learning. The orbs have a built-in gamified reward system to make you do your best to learn how to use all their abilities. Every time you demonstrate increased mastery of any of the capabilities, it gives you a point so you can have more to play with.
Thus, practicing any ability that you haven’t already mastered will tend to get you a point. Using any ability creatively in a new way will tend to get you a point. But the number of points given will never be high, because it’s controlled by how many abilities you have that you HAVEN’T mastered.
I suspect it’s less a reward and more a way to introduce the features in steps. As soon as understanding of a feature is demonstrated, new features become available. If all of them were immediately available, the user would be overwhelmed – the way it is, the user can gain familiarity with few features at first, then explore more one at a time.
It’s not even clear if “taking down enemies” gives experience at all. New experiences with the orbs clearly give upgrades, for which combat gives opportunities, but it’s not necessarily more than that.
Those cultivator stories are getting kind of popular nowadays
I’ve read a few cultivation novels over on Royal Road. Though I haven’t read a ‘straight’ one yet, I’ve read all the ones where people decide they are *not* going to play to the trope.
Wow, I did *not* complete that thought. I was going to say that the ones I read were pretty good, but I can also see where the tropes can go very, very bad. A lot of them also seem to be Isekai, which is a very overused trope at this point, so subversion is really the only way to go.
Until that wears out and someone decides to do a ‘classic’ story style.
Not on Royal Road, but I would recommend A Journey of a 1000 Li on either Kindle Prime or Audible as you desire. There’s no isekai/portal elements, but seems to be a ‘straight’ version of cultivation.
If you’re interested in a fairly “straight” example without Isekai, check out Forge of Destiny/Threads of Destiny on Royal Road: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21188/forge-of-destiny
Only wrinkle is that it’s adapted from a quest over on Sufficient Velocity, so there are some quirks to the storytelling resulting from that.
I second the recommendation on Forge of Destiny. Quite good on the whole.
Didn’t know about that bit on Sufficient Velocity at all…. may have to go look at it now.
I’ve marked it on my Read Later backlog. Which is huge. And I do intend to get through eventually, there’s just so many I am already trying to keep up with even as I’ve been inspired to start my own story (though not cultivation, I’m doing a spin on Dungeon Core)
Thousand Li is terrible.
I fudging HATE how the author goes bends over backwards to have the MC “Epiphany” his way into a higher state of being.
And then the very next book goes right back to the bad behaviour that the epiphany cured.
No repercussions, no loss of power.
Gets an epiphany, starts treating his girlfriend like a human being instead of an attachment, gets more powerful because of it.
Next book, it’s back to bossing her around and making her decisions for her despite her “being as powerful as he is”.
Can’t forgive the author for this.
If you want a GOOD Xianxia, go read: https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon .
Perhaps the most Iconic Cultivation Novels of the modern day are those by Er Gen.
IF you want ONE Cultivation Novel to read, I’d recommend Desolate Era, formerly on Wuxiaworld. It and Coiling Dragon basically launched the Chinese Cultivation Novel Translation craze.
Battle through the Heavens and similar novels by its author are also classic cultivation-style. The three Soul Land books are sort of Cultivation style, with unique twists on them.
I would recommend Novelupdates.com to find more cultivator stories. And other translated stories for that matter. The closest I have found to a “straight” cultivator story (and I assume you mean one that isn’t too focused on a particular gimmick) is “Nine Evolutions of the True Spirit”. The author starts off by saying that the MC is from Earth, but then pretty quickly loses interest in that avenue. The only benefit winds up being that he has a good idea to make money when he is weak, and his spirit is unusually strong. So I feel you can ignore the “reincarnation” tag. But otherwise, it is just him getting stronger, going on adventures, raising powerful animal sidekicks, and navigating issues within his sect. He has plot armor but it is nothing too crazy. No weird ancestor ghost giving him advice, no overpowered internal ability, no godly cultivation method. Just a talented cultivator having battles and getting lucky.
There is actually one gimmick to make it stand out though. For the first two realms of cultivation, before condensing the golden dan, the author came up with something entirely new. The cultivators of that world have to enhance their bloodlines in a particular way.
What I meant by them not being ‘straight’ cultivation stories is that the MC is in some way aware of the standard “challenge the heavens” trope and his reaction is along the lines of “Nah, I’m good. I’m going to go over here and use the cultivation skills I do have to enhance my life rather than battling for glory in a sect”. Off the top of my head, there’s a very popular one about a farmer (Beware of Chicken), and another (that seems to be dead) about a merchant (Dao of the Deal). Both are Isekai, but both have their power potential from the native side of the body they reincarnate into, with the reincarnated half of the awareness mostly just bringing knowledge and a different point of view.
I think I read a couple of others like that, but I don’t recall them off the top of my head.
Put me down for 10 on bulldozer or wrecking ball into building
I’ve got $5 on the Hapsburgs just because it’s funny, but I expect a payout for any European aristocracy.
$20 on her smashing something into a building or other facilities, nothing on utility line damage because surely Archon’s training field was chosen to be as inert as possible.
And $10 on a full week of training given the payout, but only if she has no other duties and we’re allowed to keep putting shiny new ideas in front of her the moment she starts losing interest.
I have a gut feeling that one will be released in the direction of the building, but will be stopped by Anvil or Max – maybe not so likely if it’s like a track house or pool house or something
Obviously she’s got TWO lighthooks now.
Hopefully, Sidney gets a similar physique to hers.
So, lightook passive =two lighthooks?
[Perfect-er Cell]: “Behold the power of TWO hands!”
Pixel looking so cute in the final panel.
I thought Pixel was stronger than that. I guess that applies in her transformations only.
Pixel looks to have fairly impressive musculature for her size, but she’s still rather small compared to the others – I believe she’s previously been indicated to have comparable height to Sydney, who is canonically 5’0″. Depending on exactly what those dumbbells are made of, she may well be lifting a lot more weight than it appears (although a bit of back-of-the-envelope calculations puts the weight of each dumbbell at only around 10 lb even if made of tungsten – but that assumes the artist purposefully drew them to scale, and that would represent a pretty extreme attention to detail).
PIXEL! (=D
*happy shapeshifter noises*
I’m actually kinda happy to see her working out in human form, she’s not just leaning on the super thing. I wonder if her gains transfer between forms, or are related in any way?
Pixelicious not like your ‘normal’ super: she only gets powers in her hybrid form
Which raises the question: is she actually a super? or maybe she’s a were-super (did she get bit by a radioactive pink panther?)
nah, it was a cursed diamond…
Anyone who hasn’t seen that series won’t have a clue,so they’ll need to inspect or review the discussion at her were-super debut.
Pixel gets powers in both hybrid and cat form (though not in normal human form as you indicated), and actually different powers in each (laser claws vs invisibility).
Seems like gains in the various forms would translate / transfer somehow, but given that her hybrid/cat forms are part of her super side, only her human form really needs to work out. So maybe she needs exercise more than non-were supers, but still a pretty good tradeoff compared to baseline human.
I did not realize those panels meant invisibility. They obviously do. TIL.
If you are European ancestry, who /isn’t/ distantly related to the Hapsburgs? ;3
while Royal lines looked closer to a stick, many of the boys were pretty free applying that “lord’s rights” thing to their female vassails and any unattached girl seen on road trips/wars…
But then they had to kill off the potential pretenders, so it’s not like they are Genghis Khan.
I might put money on that last bet, just to be that way.
Honestly i think sydney will stick to this even if she gets distracted a bit i think she will go straight back to training.
The only thing I know about Cultivators is the video game “Amazing Cultivator”, which seems a little like Dwarf Fortress except you can pick one citizen and make him super buff.
Double tentacle!
I’m guessing this means Sydney put her pip in one of the Light Hook orb’s trees with only one pip. No idea which pip it could be but one goes as high as 4 and the other as high as 5.
The interesting thought here is that if ONE pip was required just to get the first tentacle then what would the other branches do without it? I figure either 1. the branches would be greyed out until one pip was taken in the branch to give the first tentacle or 2. there are undiscovered functions of the light hook she is yet to uncover.
More likely is condition 1 and the other branches just add to the strength, length and other aspects.
I’d imagine that every orb has some base ability without any pips.
Why won’t Sydney use shield as well, as to not smack herself w wrecking ball?
I’m guessing someone (maybe Syd herself) thought that putting herself in the crush zone isn’t a great idea unless she 100% knows that the shield isn’t gonna crap out at the worst possible moment.
Or that’s the ‘Strength’ part of the workout, and this is the ‘Accuracy’ portion.
The lighthook comes out of her hand.
Nothing gets through her shield.
No, as she discovered during the Restaurant Rumble, the Hentorb manifests outside Mr Buble (she attempted to tie Kevin up, but instead was reduced to getting Dabbles to jump-rope until her bewbies popped out)
When she uses the lighthook while in the shield, the lighthook manifests outside of the shield, which gave her a problem during the Vehemence fight (before resorting to jump-rope with Dabbler).
Okay. So we know that ONE of the points went into the lighthook orb, which lets her apparently have two lighthooks at the same time.
Wonder what the other point went into.
Hey, you forgot cultivation stories include thinking about swords and kungfu leads to the ability to warp reality!
But yeah, cultivation novels tend to use the same sort of hero/plot structure with an intense focus on training and such, Dragonball style. They also tend to run into the ‘heroes all go the same build’ thing that ran wild over a lot of LitRPG stuff as well, usually a really basic spellmonk or spellsword, usually with a couple of elemental attacks and then doubling down rather than unlocking new abilities.
That said, I do like the gardening joke, I really enjoyed a series that hid cultivation abilities in the standard western fantasy class system inside of the worker tree without anyone else catching on. It’s a slight spoiler for like… three of the seven or so books out, so I won’t name it.
But what if we want to read the series now? You could use spoiler tags or give an ISBN?
Do spoiler tags work here? Divine Apostasy if you’re curious.
Link: https://www.amazon.com/Shades-First-Rule-Adventure-Apostasy-ebook/dp/B07TTDGKP2
Thanks, will check it out!
Anyone else kinda wish the shield got their passive activated too?
The passives HAVE been shown to be quite useful if Featherfall is any indication. Not having to hold an orb but still getting a power is very cool. And it does make me wonder what other passives would do.
I was also wondering what happens when all 7 of the inner sphere pips are filled. If they give her a greater understanding then all of them filled might let her know what ALL the other pips do instinctively.
I got 10 on ‘distracted by literally anything’, toss a dollar at ‘sticks with it for a week’ and 5 on ‘sends the bulldozer blade *and* the wrecking ball into a nearby building’
Nice to see Sydney and company back in the USA.When Harrison mentioned Ranger school, Avil should’ve replied that she was in the Marines…!
Ridiculous. Everyone knows you don’t do lines of caffeine; you take caffeine intravenously, while simultaneously adding pure caffeine to every liquid you consume (including the ketchup on your burger).
Clearly you haven’t been around people stupid enough to crush caffeine pills. As entertaining as watching that was, no you don’t want to do that, it is painful and doesn’t work nearly as well as you would think.
Knew a guy who caffinated his coffee, chem major; only way he could get through teaching his class.
Omg why is Pixel in human form so adorable this page?
Technically, human-form Pixelicious is always adorable, but with her trying to bolster her base-form turns the dial up a few notches :)
This is true and I will agree with you. But her exerting herself in that last panel is just too cute for words.
Presumably, the buff from going panther form is a multiplication of her “Normal Form” stats, so pumping up your natural strength makes a lot of sense. By working out in human shape, she’s making her were-form better too.
Much like, IIRC, She-Hulk in the comics, who had proportional strength to her human form (without the rage rampup), which meant that she weight-lifted as a human to get stronger as The Hulk.
Reminds me of the various video-game exploits involving temporarily de-leveling yourself via a percentage to raise your skill faster. I think Phantom Brave had something like that, a Title that lowered your stats by 90%. Since raising those stats got harder as you got higher values, it practically became necessary to use those Titles to grind.
Five on her sticking with it for a full week. Not a big bet, but a big payoff. And not really impossible, especially since it would be a dramatically interesting story bit for Sydney: once it’s on the table, all the other outcomes look timid.
If you want a police procedural with werewolves and other bogies, check out Grimm
Basically, it answers the unasked question of “What if the Grimm’s Fairy Tales weren’t fairy tales?”
I really like the first few episodes of Grimm, but the writing got really formulaic pretty fast and they focused too much on the procedural side and basically ignored the fantasy premise.
Currently on season five, and there is very little cop shit happening unless it’s involving wessen doing bad shit connected to the Global Takeover in some way
Looks like poor Pixelicious put all her training previously in crunches to get abs like that, but nothing in arms or legs
Whether she wanders off or not instead of training depends entirely upon whether, because of what happened, she becomes hyperfocused on getting more skilled. If that happens, she could be like that for weeks to a few months.
I’ve had that happen with quite a few things due to my ADHD. Got hyperfocused on making chainmail jewelry and eventually gave myself carpal tunnel issues in both wrists (thankfully I was able to correct it without surgery, but haven’t been able to make jewelry for over a decade).
There was a shortlived TV show, Special Unit 2. Had that kinda keep the supernatural stuff hidden while protecting citizens.
sexy sect babes.. I guess is the example (if not is fits) read up till the the human changed from armor to micorbot swarm its haramesq qualities were ok then over done.
Yeah, I like his work *except* for the focus on sex scenes. I started reading Sexy Sect Babes because it had such an over-the-top title that I assumed it was a tongue-in-cheek joke about the typical scenario.
Sydney swinging a wrecking ball around is like an untrained person swinging nun-chucks around. Eventually you WILL hit yourself with it.
Add to this the issue of now trying to control two lighthooks with the same arm. The human brain is not mapped to manage multiple manipulators that way. The possible technobabble solution is that each one is mapped to a finger and the skill tree can let her use up to five at a time.
Does she actually control the hooks physically? or mentally?
Two things:
1- Once a Ranger, ALWAYS a Ranger;
2- There is absolutely nothing illegal about taking LOTS of caffeine pills, in whichever method works for you. At least that’s what my Drill Sargeant told me.
Your Sergeant was incorrect.
You can OD on caffeine, and injure yourself severely in the process. Doing so in a way that interferes with completing your duties falls under “intoxication on duty,” and and if you do any permanent damage, you can go to mast for that, too.
Don’t take too much caffeine, it’s extremely dangerous. I ODd to a “minor” degree once and it lead me to blacking out and collapsing, and then for the rest of the day after I came to I felt like absolute dogshit.
I’ve only known of two real life examples from my previous life as a mental health professional but there is such a thing as caffeine induced psychosis. At some point it becomes a chicken or the egg question. Both cases involved the person basically having a cup of coffee in their hand during every waking moment…which weren’t many. So is the psychosis due to caffeinism or sleep deprivation? Both cases reverted back to their baseline behavior once they were no longer ingesting caffeine.
Correction: should be “were many” not “weren’t many”. I hadn’t completed my own daily caffeine infusion.
I can verify that regardless of caffeine intake sleep deprivation hallucinations and psychosis is a thing. I also know that people who don’t get ‘caffeine jitters’ are infinitely more likely to hit the caffeine OD state before caffeine abuse causing sleep deprivation induced psychosis is also a thing.
(Canadian here- there was a alternative lifestyle scene I was around the edge of that replaced caffeine use with other stimulants for the purpose of using extreme sleep deprivation to break down inhibition and spur creativity. The craziest ones actually did the hottub/sauna alternating with snow bank baths as part of that process. )
“It’s possible Harrison is being slightly hyperbolic about how much caffeine was involved in Ranger school.” It’s way more possible that Harrison was being understated about how much caffeine was involved in Ranger school. I have seen guys nearly overdose on caffeine in Boiler Tech “A” school.
Pretty sure Formwork carpenters have every other trade AND the military beaten for raw amount and common abuse of substances WHILE working, with the possible exception of concrete laborers. To the point where people like myself, who don’t partake, are the oddballs in the industry.
In my experience, the form guys might have some stiff competition from painters (always a couple screws loose) and sheetrockers (probably on speed).
And is no one going to mention how seriously cute Pix looks in the final panel? Really? No one? My goodness.
Only about 15 times so far. That’s where I stopped counting.
Speaking of the Who’s Who, I don’t see it at all when reading this on my cellphone.
Also, I am glad to see more talk about cultivation novels. I am a big fan and hope they get more mainstream. That stuff about drugs is spot on but to be clear, they are referred to as elixirs and are made from magical ingredients. The concept is that these cultivators can speed up their progress by eating magical plants or animals but the results are better if someone refines them (magically) first.
On both desktop and mobile, I don’t see it on the frontpage, but it’s there when I go to the archives. If you want or need the Who’s Who for any reason, try clicking Prev, then click Next. That should open up the current comic in archive mode and bring up the feature.
Hey, Dave, any way to get it showing up on frontpage?
Technically, the elixirs are better because they don’t have impurities, not that they do any better… and that’s completely up to the story. There are stories where just eating normal food with Chi in is just as helpful over time as any elixirs, and it’s when they are concentrated down into medicine that they also concentrate the impurities and do bad things.
Impurities are big things in cultivator-land.
Technically, the benefit of the elixirs is up to the writer. My current favorite, “Nine Evolutions of the True Spirit” actually has a major downside being that the elixirs contain impurities and these impurities prevent people from over-relying on a particular type. Then again, it also goes a very different direction with the initial stage of cultivation by focusing on a cultivator’s blood.
In my experience, whether the elixirs are more efficient than the ingredients is determined by whether or not the MC is an alchemist. If MC is an alchemist, then elixirs are a great way to refine down magical ingredients to get the most benefit from them. If MC is not an alchemist, elixirs are a good way to get benefits from magical ingredients but their primary use is to spread it out among many people. So the various forces raise their armies with elixirs, but MC is super-powerful because he directly ate the powerful plants and animals.
Bets on Les being in either one of the crates or barrels?
Double if Sydney has no idea at all
How long will Sydney keep this up?
My money’s on: “What would Batman do?”
5:1 is a very generous payout for “aliens land and try to steal the orbs.” I would totally put some money down on that one.
I’d out a few bucks on Sydney training all week, not because I expected it to heppen, but because the payout would be impressive as well as funny.
so Sidney is reading Wuxias?
i recommend “I shall seal the heavens” starts slows, but will make you laguh, cry, hate and love the characters…
anyway, yeah, by the next day sidney will be all about Alien Woof nude pic answers hahaha
Good choice, I loved “I shall seal the heavens”.
Did you read 9 star hegemon body art? another good one IMHO.
“Stop, Friendly Fire” is completed, and pretty good too.
Harrison also sharply reminds me of the “Chief” character from Sydney’s pitch for an ARC-Dark TV show.