Grrl Power #1149 – Cat curls
From the people who brought you Goat Yoga…
Seriously, how did Goat Yoga come about? It had to have been a bet, right? Someone had a line on a shitload of goats and bet his buddy who had a bunch of venture capital laying around that he could get “afternoon wine drunk yoga moms” to do yoga while goats stand on them.
Pixel weighs about 90 lbs in her human form, and Anvil was running out of space for 45 lb plates on the bar. I guess she has a 90 lb dumbbell tied to the other side. I know, you’re like, why doesn’t she just tie a dumbell to each side. You know how it is in a gym, one dumbbell in a matched pair has wandered off, or the 75 lb EZ Curl bar is missing and you can only find the 85 lb one and you can only get 3 reps with that one before your form goes to shit. No, leaning back 45 degrees is not good curl form.
So anyway, Sydney can make 2 lighthooks simultaneously and also somehow pre-emptively upgraded the atmorb. Atmosphorb? Life Supporb. The green one.
Here’s the updated skill tree. I know at some point in the past there was an errant extraneous point in the PPO skilltree, but I can’t find a comic it showed up in. I might have gone back and quietly retconned the art but I don’t recall. Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen. The blue pips are the ones that were filled in when she found the orbs, the teal ones are the newly spent points. By the way, I realize that the second point on the Lighthook branch which allows her to use two hooks at the same time implies that the first point on that branch is required to use a single hook, meaning if that point isn’t spent, the orb is fairly useless. What can I say? Aliens, man.
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.
Well, that’s VERY interesting. The Lighthook skill brach Sydney just added to implies the potential for at least 5 of them if they increase linearly or 16 if it’s geometric.
The Atmorb point though… First point on that branch is “Generate breathable air for user.” Second is “Generate tailored atmosphere from ambient gases.”?
That’s very potent, as you can easily incapacitate (or KILL) anyone without certain life support capabilities by just filling the room with nitrogen or CO2 or pure oxygen. (Oxygen toxicity is a thing)
It also explains what was going on with the Flyball. The orbs weren’t running low on power, they were dealing with a FORCED SOFTWARE UPDATE AND RESTART.
Probably a bit of both. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a system crash because an ill-timed patch installation started eating resources at the same time as the machine was already under heavy load.
This seems like a very good explanation yuffiek. :) Very consistent with everything said in this comic.
And that’s just one branch on the atmorb, imagine what the second branch could do once it gains a pip. I think Sydney is rapidly advancing to Paragon power level.
Well the Atmorb had the passive unlocked when Sydney found them. Taking the spaceship analogy further, I’d guess that pip was “Poisons and disease resistance”, because having your owner up and die from Thulusian flu while traveling the galaxy is kind of bad.
I would then guess the unused branch is “Hazardous Environments” starting with “able to bathe in liquid nitrogen/lava” and ending with “able to surf on a solar flare” without having to use the Shield orb (BarrierBall?)
I think the passive on the Atmorb is probably the behavior it exhibited the first time she successfully used it, where it moved itself into her hand when she was trying to get her mask back when she was underwater (#541)
That would be 1) really lame, and 2) inconsistent with how the passive on the flight orb works.
I think gimme might be right – the passive on the Atmorb might be something generally lame, but also generally EXTREMELY useful and necessary, like automatically being able to generate an atmosphere that the user needs in order to live.
It would make sense since the orbs are not human in origin (most likely unless it’s some sort of future tech from when humans have advanced to Nth level tech), and so the orbs might need to automatically know what will not kill its user.
It’s also not inconsistent with the fly orb’s passive. It’s 1) always on, 2) related in some way to the function of the orb, and 3) passively PROTECTIVE of the user. In that sense, even the fact that it flew right into Sydney’s hand when she was underwater and was trying to get the shield orb instead in order to save her life by creating a breathable atmosphere would be quite consistent.
In fact, the idea that Sydney was able to use it for something it was not yet ‘spec’ed’ for would also make the passive pip consistent – it let her do something to protect herself from a danger around her (fire), even though the orbs were not technically ready to do that yet.
your second paragraph put a thought in my head about who the orbs are for, if the Nth are anything like other higher dimensional beings, type/tier 4 and above, etc… aliens in other series.
on the toy hypothesis, what if the orbs aren’t just a toy for a Nth level being, in and of themselves but an accessory for a toy. Like having a Digimon, Medabot, Net Navi etc…AI companion/battle action figure etc…and you can equip it with special items (sold separately) which some of have upgrades themselves. The toy performs actions to gain experience and they can apply that to the accessory.
even worse if its actually a pet toy using skill point rewards to cause the pets to stay active, an enrichment device.
Having more extensions for the far-from-maxed-out orbs would be terrifying enough, but thinking of them as a mere accessory to a more significant artifact is nigh unfathomable.
By my powers combined! Sydney-Tron HO! (Insert giant mecha combination power up here)
While yes the orbs were not designed by or for humans, that doesn’t mean oxygen based atmosphere is unlikely.
Oxygen is a fairly light weight element, at 8. Carbon is 6, Hydrogen is 1, Nitrogen is 7. Point being the basic elements for life are all producible within the first generation of stars to form. What this means is that they are easy to produce and abundant in the universe. In short, life that uses them are far more likely to form before life that requires more complex and heavier chemistries could ever get a foothold on a planet.
In other words, carbon based life that utilizes water as its solvent, and breathes either oxygen or carbon dioxide mixed with nitrogen are the most likely forms of life to form anywhere.
Of course this doesn’t mean protein, amino acid, and nucleotide chiralities will all be the same. Nor does it mean that a human can set foot on an earth like planet with life on it and expect a 0% chance to suffer a near instantaneous anaphylactic shock from breathing what ever is in the atmosphere.
BUT it does mean that the orbs are likely to default to an oxygen/nitrogen mix. The exact mix is uncertain as even Earth has varied wildly in its atmospheric mix throughout its existence.
I don’t think so, we already know the orbs respond to her thoughts, including instinctive responses (like how she retrained her startle reflex to “summon shield orb” from “punch behind me”), so her speculative explanation of her “reaching for air” is probably correct. Also, if producing breathable air was only unlocked by putting in a pip, then having a passive that simply brings the orb to the user’s hand when suffocating while the breathing pip is not enabled would be useless. Then again I am assuming that the pips that were preassigned were done so by someone who knew more about how the orbs work than Sydney, it is entirely possible that the previous user was just as clueless as she is and assigned points randomly and that other speculations about factory default pips are incorrect.
It might be that the previous user didn’t assign any of those points, but rather they represent Sydney’s native compatibility with the orbs, and use of them increases compatibility, perhaps if another candidate had bonded with them instead of Sydney the pips would be arranged differently.
I find the prospect of the orbs not having retained assigned points from the previous user to be unlikely, especially given that they retained preexisting landmarks for the aetherium causeway system.
That said, she did have to spend points to gain access, so it IS possible that points were lost, but we have nor reason to assume that all points were lost in what ever caused their previous owner to lose them (presumably the K-T Extinction Event).
if the active branch is just expelling specific mixtures of gasses, then the empty branch would be intaking specific elements from the room around her and putting them inside whatever subspace the other gasses come from.
Oxygen toxicity is a thing but it requires high pressure to cause damage in a short period
Increased oxygen levels at normal atmospheric pressure can cause damage but it’s after a prolonged period of exposure, we’re talking several hours
If she equips with a small oxygen mask and canister she can surround people with her bubble and fill the bubble with unbreathable air.
It’s actually strange to note that the light hook and PPO produce their effects outside the shield but inside the shield is where the atmo-orb produces it’s gasses.
With Sydney’s preferred diet, there would be gases building up in the bubble anyway…
Spicy food doesn’t cause a person to be gassy, on its own. The gas is caused by other things in the food like hard-to-digest complex carbs or lactose (for the lactose intolerant). Beans are in the first category. Some refrito frijoles fall in both categories.
You don’t think deep-fried ghost peppers that are chocolate filled wouldn’t produce a gas related event? Hell, I’m 63 bananas and chocolate milk does the trick!
I don’t think it’s that strange at all. We don’t know the purpose behind these things, but we do know that somebody made them. It’d be really stupid to make a device that instantly blew you to hell if you tried to attack and defend at the same time, or that started pumping air into the vacuum outside your shield as you sufficated.
She stated at the bar brawl she didn’t know how to engage the lighthook inside the shield and why on earth would you want to fire the PPO inside it???2
It’s predominantly free radicals and ozone that cause damage with pure or high concentration oxygen exposure. Presumably the orbs can carefully control the precise isotope and molecular form of the oxygen produced. 16-O2 (Oxygen 16 in O2 molecules) is the isotope and molecular configuration of the oxygen we breathe. If you could guarantee that and only that, presumably there’d be no real chance of damage, although your mitochondria (obligatory “it’s the powerhouse of the cell”) are likely to go crazy having that much oxygen, leading to increased metabolism.
Having looked this up just now, apparently the presence of Oxygen 18 in exhaled breath is a potential sign of being pre-diabetic. Interesting. It doesn’t mean that Oxygen 18 causes diabetes or leads to it, it could simply be the metabolic changes that occur when pre-diabetic could cause cells to favor the exchange of Oxygen 16 for Oxygen 18.
Or it could be do to her pumping our more air than what is needed to fill the shield/ personal use.
Fill the room with oganesson and you’ll likely level a good portion of the continent (the stablest isotope of oganesson has a half-life on the order of one millisecond)
Now, as they say, we’re cooking with gas!
I disagree. The PASSIVE on the atmorb is atmosphic generation, but the TRACK that has pips in it is POWER generation.
The last owner of the orbs ran out of power trying to stop the dinosaurkiller asteroid, died, and the orbswent on standby until sydney found them. glassing the desert drained the orbs again, but sydney survived, and it autoselected power generation.
As for the potential 5 tentacles… I predict that the passive will let each tentacle hold an orb. 1 hand on lighthook is 6 available manipulators and 6 remaining orbs.
Atmosphere generation isn’t a passive. It only works while the orb is held, unlike Featherfall.
lol, totally read your name as gimmethepenguin
You aren’t the first, and won’t be the last.
This is the first suggestion (that I recall at least) that the previous owner may have tried to prevent the K-Pg event, rather than causing it. And having a second user come close (?) to exhausting the power / handwavium limits would be a really, really good reason to force a specific upgrade for their protection.
… I may have acquired new head canon.
Sydney can’t even figure out a way for the lighthook to show up inside the shield, so somehow getting a lighthook to hold the shield orb would be tricky.
It could be one of those Path Exile type skill trees where every other point is some stat increase, instead of an addition to the skill. Could even be that the barebones lighthook was telekinesis at arms reach, and the first point was a range increase.
My speculation on the lighthook nodes. The lighthook is basically the ship’s “grapple hook”/”tractor beam” function.
I believe the bottomw row (recently added to), gradually makes the hook(s) more “hand like”. With a single point, the hook was able to flex and loop around objects (how much of that was baseline and how much was the 1 point is still unclear), and with the new point she now has two hooks. I suspect that with subsequent points, we might see the ends of the tentacles split, making the hooks into full-blown humanoid arms with proper hands, fingers, thumbs, and manual dexterity.
Middle row (having only one point) might be range. She has two hooks now but they don’t appear to be going any further than we’ve seen them go before. What kind of range she’ll have at 5 points is horrifying to consider, if the fly orb’s upgrade path is anything to go by.
Top row (with three points) might be “power”. Effectively, how much lifting/moving force the hook(s) can output (currently about 16 tons). Whether this is “each hook” or total weight limit distributed across both/all hooks only time will tell.
“She has two hooks now but they don’t appear to be going any further than we’ve seen them go before”
Actually we’ve seen them go a LOT further than they’re going now, like during the Vehemence fight when she grabbed Anvil out of the air and threw her back down on Vehemence. She was high enough up that she figured it would take a while for her to get back down, and Sydney’s lighthook was able to get to her comfortably. She also did the same thing when denying attacks on her teammates with the lighthook while being a significant distance away from them, and almost did so with Maxima until Maxima corrected herself mid-throw.
Not to mention that when Sydney starts writing words with the lighthook, it’s actually a MUCH farther distance if she was to be stretching that out. We have yet to actually see her have a problem writing anything, even when it’s a rather long sentence like ‘You have just been pwned by the Mighty Halo.’ or when he made an entire platform for others to stand on with the lighthook during the bridge repair after Maxima blew up part of it while trying to catch Sciona.
So, second light hook is cool and all. But kinda expected her to go for a passive.
As far as she knows, she is limited to two orbs simultaneously.
The passives seem to circumvent this.
Yeah, i fully expected her to go for the shield orb passive, seeing how her being “squishy” when not actively using it has come up at least twice now. Once when she activated the shield too late against the kaiju and once when she was unable to use the orbs when she was captured.
I think she planned to go lighthook and passive, but when the atmorb auto-updated, she evidently chose the lighthook over the passive.
Am I speaking for everyone when I say:
TAKE THE FUCKING SHIELD PASSIVE ALREADY!!!
Seriously. Can’t imagine what she thought the
hentorbLighthook could possibly gain that would outweigh near-guaranteed immunity from sneak attacks. Especially given she’s a fragile baseline human.well based on the flight passive being featherfall – it would absolutely not be that powerful
but we can probably expect some for of heightened resilience, possibly on the lower end of the durability of supers
which still would be something absolutely worth taking… it would move her from glass cannon (unless shielded) to someone who can take random/stray hits and probably doesnt have to be concerned about non-powered attacks (weapons would likely still be a threat, but that depends on the type of weapon of course)
sidenote – i am also surprised the sight passive is not a serious consideration (especially from archons intelligence side)… worst case it likely will be a general perception boost… best case it might give her some form of magic senses or passive magic detection
My guess for the truesight passive: vision correction (as part of all-around sense enhancement).
I was pulling for that as well. As a gamer, Sydney should be cognizant of the utility of a passive shield. I can only assume that she had a ADHD brain fart and fixated on the lighthook off screen for some reason.
Between flailing around with the bathroom, and the frustration of the point getting auto-spent with no explanation, she probably pointed at them dramatically to give them a good telling off and brushed the light hook orb with the tip of her finger.
I imagine DaveB’s putting that one off as long as possible, because while it’s the obvious choice to take, it’s also one that serves to reduce drama, rather than increase it. And any time Sydney chooses not to take it, she can later agonize about how dumb it was not to take it.
it might not take off that much drama, the passive for flight is feather fall, so the passive for shield could just be a basic defense aura. Which could only take up to a certain level of damage either for its strength and/or how many hits it can take before it goes into rest mode *think RWBY defense auras on the later*, and most protagonists on the former.
a basic defense aura means taking falls, small hits, and smashing into things with only getting a little winded rather than breaking bones…but hit hard enough and its not going to do much else for you.
Updated skill tree is off, https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-181-power-up/ is when the skill tree was 1st introduced, and the “errant” point was spent https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-510-maybe-its-a-cupcake-beam/ with the new effect showing on the very next page.
Man, that PPO upgrade was really just THAT forgettable.
It’s definitely the only one so far that didn’t seem that useful.
I think it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that each orb had at least one point to start with to make it useable.
Speaking of points, I found the error regarding the PPO orb, and your current linked skilltree is wrong. It shows teal pip that should be blue, and is missing a pip.
On page #181 the skilltree is first shown and the PPO has 2 filled in pips.
On page #510 the skilltree shows 2 pips before Sydney panic buys a third pip.
On page #659 it shows the skilltree with 3 pips and references the panic buy from page #510.
I think the original error and retcon was that it started with 1 pip, then jumped to 3 instead of 2 after the panic buy, so you went back to make it so it always had been 2, but it’s been a while and I might be mistaken.
Learning that the orb level indices are 1-based instead of 0-based is making me question how advanced these Nth characters can really be.
Maybe they’re not indices. Maybe they’re identifiers or counters. Indices describe the places before an item, identifiers describe the item itself, and counters describe the last item.
They have evolved past Zero :)
Just kidding. I agree with what Killianti suggested.
A pretty full documentation of the orb upgrades can be found here: https://jcc10.gitlab.io/GrrlPowerSkilltree/
It shows exactly what you said, if I understood you correctly.
Wait, what? She didn’t pick a passive upgrade? Why?
The first time the skill tree appeared was here, with the “new” pip already in place: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-181-power-up/
The extra pip was first shown here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-659-the-greatest-challenge-upgrading/
Also pre-emptive upgrading? I’m *very* interested in the process! First thought? Sydney had earned her point by making the obsidian disc, hadn’t spent it yet by the time she created the nitrogen, but the atmorb took it for granted that she could do so (maybe the passive on it is autonomy for emergency use like in the pool?) and assigned the point automatically?
Interesting indeed that the orbs forced a specific upgrade, but required her to stop and do it manually. So that the user is explicitly aware it’s happened maybe? What kinds of horrible things could go wrong from any given node being enabled without the user knowing, and does that say anything about the orbs’ previous owner?
My guess is that she stretched the airb so close to the edge of its capabilities / duration that she triggered a safety protocol to prevent potential failures on the next attempt. “Oh geez, you’re doing that with it? You don’t know how close you came to that not working, we’re gonna force this upgrade before you get yourself killed trying it again.”
Also small nitpick, the first skilltree appearence does not have her first pip in place, it appear later on that page and isn’t spent for a few more pages.
Sorry, I meant the “new” PPO pip as per the skill tree image in the commentary. I should have worded it better *sheepish laugh*
I’ve the feeling it was exactly that free point that made it possible for Sydney to do the nitrogen trick.
Sort of autonomous semi-allocation of the point by the Orbs to enable her to do stuff based on *need* since the point was there anyway.
As soon as Sydney got that second point and started manually setting that other point to the Lighthook, the Orbs formalised the allocation to the Atmorb to reflect the actual use of the points.
Anything as vastly sophisticated as those orbs would have some form of auto-allocation, a ton of failsafes, and most importantly: an edit function to adjust points to tune their function to any job at hand.
It’s just that no-one knows how to access/use them at this point in time.
Could even be that the “Level Up Menu” is actually a failsafe to warn the user there are unallocated points/insufficient allocations for the desired use.
Like the “good old” Windows warning popups.
Interesting, I like this more than the subtly different idea already presented – that she unlocked that specific pip unconsciously by using its ability, and then the system was forced to grant a point to spend there – which seems like a broken “anything goes” system limited only by her wild imagination.
But I can see her having a point on deck from glassing the desert, and having that existing point auto-spend on an available node when she unknowingly tried to use a currently unlockable power. That would let the user implicitly perform upgrades while the orbs were still in use, which is super useful – could’ve saved her life in the kaiju battle when her armor took the hit with the tree open. She’d need to know more about the options to utilize it deliberately, but it’s pretty consistent with what we’ve seen from the skilltree so far.
*looks at skill tree* Aghhh She either needs the single passive power of the unknown orb, or start the linked to others lines on the outside line. Get your stuff working together, new powers in general.
Maybe the auto-apply was due to her being at high altitude? If so, I would expect it to have gone to a “passive” upgrade slot, like the slow-fall one on the flight orb.
The “atmo-sphere” as I like to call it already had a passive point. Was a thing they were trying to figure out even after figuring out that the passive points were a thing.
“Atmo-sphere” is perfect and I hope it becomes the canon name!
between atmo-sphere and atmorb.. i think atmorb is easier and quicker and will be used due to simplicity, efficacy, and general human lazyness.
She’s flown out of atmosphere before (on Alar), which is more extreme that high altitude, and the post-battle pips weren’t forced onto the airb then. Although at that time she really, really needed her own transportation, although forcing the causeway upgrade wasn’t forced so I find that to be an unlikely exception.
Makes the most sense for it to be related to Sydney jumping from “air please lol I forget about breathing” to the advanced use case of transmuting / generating a specific element while putting out fires.
On Alar, forcing the upgrade at high altitude (i.e. outside the atmosphere) would have killed her. She was safe in the plane.
Ah, so an upgrade due to her current location, not her recent escapades… hmm, maybe. But as you say, she was perfectly safe with the cabin pressure on the plane, so her absolute altitude seems like insufficient cause. And forcing an upgrade based on the conditions that the tree arbitrarily decides to open seems like a very poor design choice for the creators.
Possibly. Might have been an automatic function detecting thin atmosphere outside the aircraft and presuming a requirement for air.
…Here’s a big theory though. What if the orbs are for terraforming? What if the passive pip only works when the atmosphere is outside a certain optimal range that isn’t presently set for human acceptable CO2 levels? The presumption would then be that either the orbs adjusted Earth more optimally for life or it’s much older than the crater and dates back to the beginning of life on Earth.
The Orb then spent millions/billions of years steadily producing optimal atmosphere. Now it has an upgrade opportunity, detects sub-optimal atmosphere around the aircraft and forces and upgrade to cope with the extra load.
Hum, I do think that was a forced safety update for the selfless and actually quite reckless behaviors of Sydney standing in smoke and making pure nitrogen atmosphere around her. Brilliant for what it does. But if she kept that uo for too long at one time without holding her breath…? Noble gas suffocation is a terribly sly thing. Your blood only monitors built up C0², so if you are readily breathing out the whole time, then your body does not have any means to give the advanced warnings. Meaning that light headedness slams down very closely followed by unconsciousness as your cells panic that its NOT oxygen the blood cells are carrying. Helium argon and nitrogen all do this. It takes an equal amount of time to work out of your system as you spent breathing the pure gas if the gas isn’t reactive, which noble gasses are known to not be.
Imagining this as “Point counts for bravery, but you definitely need that dang passive crazy lady!!” So I’m betting there’s a way now to generate the air outside AND inside of the shield now. At different points of the shielding widths.
Actually, there’s an oxygen level based system that kicks in at blood O2 levels that you’d normally never encounter unless you were suffocating or really leaning in to holding your breath. (Or hiking at very high altitude, I suppose.) But it doesn’t involve that desperate sensation of needing to breath, it’s more of automatic breathing over-ride of your voluntary control.
But if you’re surrounded by inert gas, all that does is speed up purging your blood of oxygen.
What’s up with Pixel’s nails? They leave a streak as if they’re glowing, but she should only have the laser claw powers while in her were-jaguar form. Can she do partial transformations or something? And only on her nails, to use the super power while in human form?
This is an excellent point.
Also, is it weird that I’m just as excited for more data on Pixel’s form-specific sizes and capabilities as I am to speculate on the orbs?
They do look extra sharp and pointy, so that is my guess as well. Being able to fine-tune one’s hybrid form is usually considered more advanced, so she might not currently be able to do stuff like fight in this form, so she’s practicing doing a partial change and holding it during a conversation as part of her training.
Best guess is that she IS in were-jaguar form but we’re seeing her through the filter of the veil. Probably so Anvil can get a better workout from the extra mass.
But DaveB is mentioning that Pixel weighs 90lbs, and I HIGHLY doubt he means her wereform weighs that much, it’s about as tall as Anvil herself.
It’s explicitly 90 lbs human form. Based on the numbers at the bottom of the comic, Anvil can curl 88 of those (7920 lb), and working backwards from that we find Pixel’s wereform is roughly 377 lb and the full puma is 720 lb.
Literally the first thing I noticed.
Neon nail polish + motion lines = the trails. It’s showing that Anvil is curling her.
Related to Pixel’s nails; do were beings have to re-do their nail polish every time they shift? Assuming there is a size difference as with Pixel.
say the orbs are semi-sentient, or have their own AI, maybe it makes some decisions on its own where points MUST be spent due to its users actions with them.
The point that automatically went to the green orb was a penalty.
She broke the rules and it needed a reset.
Does that explain why the flight orb went to safe mode?
Yes… It’s like when you can’t print in black and white when the cyan is empty.
Hard to see an extra point as a penalty, or the auto-application. If anything being granted extra power for your own good is kinda badass. Needing a restart to adjust for unexpected user behavior is a pretty good theory though.
On a related note, I’m still hoping for a non-plot reason that the orb capability degraded but the points didn’t manifest until many hours later, long after they were earned. She had plenty of time chilling in Senegal with the orbs active during the marketplace sting.
So, it sounds like she was able to think in such a way as to get a feature out of the orb that it wasn’t meant to yet.
It might have been mind reading to find the “right” atmosphere, and she was able to hyperfocus in just the right way….
… or the orbs are a set of trainign wheels. The POINTS are just training wheels. She was able to work around them, and in the future she will be able to more.
So she ran the battery down by making it do things it shouldn’t. The point she spent went into the function she was using already. Somehow this makes it so she can do that all she wants without draining the batteries?
That’s as close to thinking it through as I can do.
Hmm, I like this theory but am not sure how it scales. It makes sense that the orbs would force her to spend a point on something she over-extended as a safety measure, but being able to force-unlock any arbitrary node by using her imagination seems a) really dangerous to the user, and b) extremely OP to the point of breaking the universe.
“Never mind the skill tree isn’t progressive, the main character can just invent powers retroactively now because the magic was inside her all along” would be a huge break from the premise of the comic.
“magic inside of you already” Is kind of the POINT of this comic.
When human supers are a product of Nth tech to give them access to the superion power source and there’s artifacts of more value then entire PLANETS left behind by them… then yes, it makes perfect sense for the orbs to have a nearly incomprehensible power cap beyond anything you could imagine, being held in check by the assigned points and the imagination of the wielder.
She THINKS in terms of skill tries, experience points and skill points, so that’s WHY it takes that form.
It could just be handing out points as she’s ready for them, as her body adjusts to them, or as she can handle channeling more power through them.
So far two of the strongest supers have had powers brought to them from outside. Nither goldie nor halo started with the genetics for super powers. Both ended up with variable systems that get more powerful over time.
Literal magic (a la superpowers) here though, not the feel-good inspirational speech kind about the power of confidence. There are no rules for our non-super heroine to lampshade, invert, or grind through if she can just wish new powers into existence whenever it’s convenient.
actually, Max has been hinted to have the super-gene and its the reason the golden goop was able to bond to her and not to others. Mentioned a very long time ago in the comments.
Oh, there’s something I ought to tell you. I’m not left-handed either.
Inconceivable!
I think that’s Anvil’s speech bubble. Letting Pixel know she’s using her off hand, not her dominant hand.
Pretty sure it’s Sydney making nerdy references to leveling up her new dual wielding ability.
To me, that does sound more like Sydney than Anvil.
I do not think amiss what you think amiss.
Pixel is only supposed to have light sabre claws when she’s in her were-leopard form (but not full leopard which grants invisibility).
So I’m guessing Pixel is actually a were-leopard right now but we’re seeing her from the filter of the Veil.
So is Sydney pretending to be Inigo or Westley? Haha :)
Okay, I think it auto locked a point because of the amount of times she decided to do some space walking. Second, is Syd making a “Princes Bride” reference. Third…. why did it go from the 80s to 11 when saying Anvil could curl Pixel?
size of pixel. human, tiny. were-human, sizeable. full cat, THICC.
Pixel sitting on the weights as Anvil lifts them…!
Now,how will Max react to the orbs leveling up???
So if I’m understanding this correctly, it might be possible for Sydney to ‘unlock’ points herself, without ‘leveling up’. By managing to achieve what a point spend would get her, without it.
Which would likely ALSO result in a point due by itself. Though whether or not it would do so in the future is unclear. (Basically getting a xp reward for managing it, but not a sure thing that it would be enough. Plus she did manage a good deal of use in it.)
And also likely that the less effective use of the orbs is a consequence of such. Maybe power being diverted to the activation systems? With the ‘leveling’ being more usage of the orbs having part of it diverted. Given that there aren’t specific ‘must upgrade this specific orb’, it seems to be shared. Well, outside of this one instance of an orb upgrade going weird. Which could easily be, again, a forced power diversion to fully activate it.
So Sydney using the lighthooks, the used power is only say 90% going to that, with the rest being sent to the ‘point batteries’.
The life support path used, I guess the third/final on that path is ‘weaponized’? Since it seems to be go ‘breathable/life support’ for the first, and ‘fire suppression’ for the second. Alternatively it’s a finer tuned controls.
But hey, at least the unofficial interactive orb skill tree now has confirmation on what two paths involve. (And a correction for the errant point, which handy links on there are 510 showing ‘already bought’, and 659 showing the PPO point.)
And a clearer look at more mysteries. For instance, the top right, there’s faded paths between the PPO orb and the flight orb that appear to go into each other. Or at least rather close. The pie pieces might be ‘unlock path’, if they’re not ‘unlock new orb’.
At a guess the PPO ring is ‘extra gun’, which needs to be upgraded individually for each one. At least that’s the idea I’m getting, with the new Lighthook upgrade. Lighthook-PPO inbetween point allowing the firing from a lighthook. More useful now that Sydney actually can have two lighthooks out. It does seem to match the ‘five lighthook upgrades’ and ‘six guns’. Leaving a ‘regular mode’ and ‘lighthook attached’ for the rest. Though possibly working a bit differently.
I’m looking forward to whenever we end up learning more about the categories. Why some paths are shown the way they are. Such as why the faded lines on the flight orb, to an already purchased upgrade (Maybe there’s potential points to be placed in between? Still some damage on those systems?)
Goat Yoga is a thing because of bored middle aged ladies wanting socially acceptable variety, and cuteness without having to put up with ungodly stink of goat pee, males peeing on their faces, the shared trauma between goat and innocent owner of all that is banding (don’t look it up man just don’t), male goats to prevent this, “dead body” caustic nonhydroys lime to cover it up beneath the bedding, housing grazing straw alphalfa and grain costs. For a creature that is relatively useless for meat in the states, and lets face it, the kids ARE cute as hell with their prancing about and their little grain-vaccum mouths… it’s a creative use of cities often having nearby rural areas or at least a use of large wasted suburban lawns.
I hesitantly guess that my mother’s three PET whether nigerian dwarf goats cost her about… eh. $70 to $100 a month or so to maintain depending on how much she walks them for grazing time. The lime stretches over about 6 months.
I notice she has the pip linking flight and energy blast. Any idea what that gives her?
None. She was about to note that she had an idea about what it did during one of her upgrades and grabbed the flight orb by mistake, upgrading it’s passive and saying no more.
The only time we’ve seen her use them together was to shoot the tank and that was the time she had issues activating it and then later told Max that the power frightened her. Its easily possible that it was just the unleashing of the destructive power that gave her pause for concern rather than feeling additional destructive power but thats all we’ve seen to give us any hints.
So if I read this right: the Aliens had to change the skill tree because Sydney rule lawyered her way into new skill :D
Regarding the implication that the lighthook wouldn’t work without the first upgrade point it isn’t the oddest of ideas considering in the first two megaman battle network fames you had to apply a single power up to the charge stat raising it to level 2 to even use the charge shot.
Is it possible to get a labeled version of the skill tree? Or would I need to go through the archive to do that myself?
There is no labelled version of the skill tree published. It’s part of the mystery of the comic, finding out what they do one by one.
I personally believe it’s because the orbs are being monitored and Sydney is being tested by the creators of the orbs. There’s no logical reason for the tree NOT to be labelled, otherwise.
maybe you are onto something, maybe she just needs the truesite orb passive to be able to read node labels.
Several of the comics show sigils on the orbs, she just can’t read them.
Labeled version is here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-506-square-root-access/
… what, you mean labeled in English? You don’t like labels in n-th universe modification source code?
Here’s an interactive one made by Joshua Cline which is super cool: https://jcc10.gitlab.io/GrrlPowerSkilltree/
He needs to label the Lightbee, and he’s missing the third slot on the middle orb?
The only one I would note is that the Atmorb had the least number of pips/points invested into it of any other Orb. It had only a single point for generating atmosphere and the passive which they haven’t even been able to figure out.
The next lowest is the red-unknown followed by PPO.
So what if you can’t upgrade other orbs too far above each other? The last Orb to get a Pip was the flight orb which has the most points/pips with 9 and is the most upgraded with 3 of Sydney’s 8 points going into it.
The one problem with this explanation is that it doesn’t explain the pip auto extending the existing tree and not forcing her to choose one or the other. That fits in better with other’s suggestion that Sydney either mistakenly upgraded it in the field as she was fiddling about, or a strong use of it forced use of the pip there.
I wonder if the passive on the lighthook would allow her to use the tentacles to move herself by pushing or pulling on something nigh-immovable, like the ground or an anchored column? Then she could move around Doctor Octopus style with no need to use the flight orb if she’s close enough to things to pull herself along.
Rather than the single point on the lighthook being required to activate it at all, it’s possible that it’s a matter of increasing the degree of control. A lighthook without the point might have a fairly crude level of control – for instance, if we take the ‘hook’ part as being its actual function, without a point it might only be able to form in the shape of a hook that can be extended and retracted but not much else. With one point, the finesse of control increases into the tentacle that Sydney knows and loves. With two, the finesse increases again so that the lighthook energy can be split into two tentacles that can be wielded individually.
Looking at the skill tree means that she can use a maximum of 5 tentacles simultaneously.
I hope her ADHD can control that many tentacles at once, since they’re controlled by her mind, not her actual appendages.
Um.
Yeah, there’s at least one point missing from that skill tree. I was looking at it and I said, “Didn’t Sydney buy an upgrade to the PPO at or around the time she was on that alien planet?” And I looked it up and yes:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-659-the-greatest-challenge-upgrading/
I think that’s specifically the errant skill point in the PPO tree that was mentioned.
Oh good. I was worried Sydney wouldn’t be able to go full tentacle monster…
I would very much like to see Patreon Art with Anvil curling Pixel.
Could be that there are multiple XP bars for the orbs. One that lets you apply a point to any orb, and a bar for each orb that can only be spent on that orb.
Interesting premise, although I’d hope the design would highlight where a point could be spent. Up until now, she’s been able to apply them completely arbitrarily to unlocked nodes on any orb.
Do you think it has a timer to apply and if no decision is made in x time it randomly selects? Can’t remember how much time she spent on previous decisions.
On her last upgrade, she walked across the building and had experts sit down with her to help figure it out.
Come on DaveB, you know exactly what there being a ‘1 tentacle’ pip means: That the initial intended use of the light hook wasn’t as a tentacle generator, and that Sidney has completely missed a skill set because she jumped right into the “look a light tentacle!!” mode.
At a wild guess I’d say that’s a Force Multiplier Effect.
Row 1 is Extra Appendages, Row 2 is Appendage Dexterity, Row 3 is Boosted Strength, etc.
She just never thought to try the light hook as a glove rather than a whip.
Does anyone get the references in the 4th panel? Normally I’m pretty up-to-snuff or he explains them in post.
The crates and barrels they’re talking about are those that Sydney was smashing on the previous page.
The “not lefthanded” thing is a Princess Bride reference.
Here’s a link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT0TBWg3C3k
It could be that the first pip is a range upgrade and the tree alternates between +range and +quantity.
In which case the full tree could be 3 lighthooks with, say, 50m range.
Alternatively, +quantity and +lifting capacity and at max upgrade she gets 3 lighthooks each about as strong as Maxima.
Re Anvil, there is absolutely no way that Archon wouldn’t have depleted uranium plates. Almost three times denser than steel.
So, just like my computer, the orbs’ performance drops while they’re upgrading, and they don’t ask you if you’d rather put it off…
Dave, the point you’ve marked teal in the PPO was already there since the beginning. That’s not one of her upgrades. SHE thinks it is, but the very first time the tree showed up, before she put anything in, that pip was already unlocked. See your commentary here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-945-upgradde-with-a-double-dose-of-indecision/comment-page-1/#comments
And here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-181-power-up/
Perhaps the orbs are intelligent and are waiting to see if Sydney is ready to know that. This would be the base-line “first contact” with her, showing the orbs “know” if/when she’d be ready for communication and real instruction. That would be a HUGE revelation! The real question would be if anyone would believe her, and how they would react to it? Most of all the “norms”! “Sydney’s been taken over! What will we do?!?”