Grrl Power #1166 – Relationships are built on awesome lies
Okay, I know this seems like a bit of a jump in the conversation, and it is, but it’s also made worse by the fact that I forgot to add a line at the end of the previous page. If you don’t feel like jumping back to check it, the last panel had Max saying “So, about that drink.” I’ve added “But first you gotta tell me about that moustache.” (I also fixed one of the Russian words, apparently I had the verb for “respect,” not the noun, so hopefully now it makes more sense if you can actually read Russian.)
It’s still a bit of a jump, even with that lead in, but I’m trying to compress this scene a little without leaving out any particularly salient exchanges.
If you’re a superhero with a secret identity, you enter into any relationship with a pretty major omission already on the books. In Superman’s case, he really is Clark Kent and he really is a reporter. He just leaves out the fact that he’s also Superman. In Max’s case, she is a superhero and that is her identity. Her civilian disguise here is a total lie, which is definitely worse than the omission route. She can defend this by saying she’s just looking to spend some time around normal people. She doesn’t want to say it outloud, but she’s realistic enough to know that most guys wouldn’t get tooooo upset about being tricked into getting to second base with the most powerful superheroine in the world.
I can promise you that Max isn’t going to take some guy to bed only to find out first thing the next morning that he’s the president of the “Humans First Anti-Superhero League and also We Hate Powerful Women and We Hate Being Tricked into Sex Because for Us Sex is About Dominating Women Because We’re Terribly Insecure but Can’t Ever Admit That to Ourselves or Others Because We Stopped Developing Emotionally Somewhere in Our Early Teens.” It’s been done. And while I can definitely think of some ways to play that for laughs, it’s honestly not the direction I want to take the comic.
Previously it was established that Max’s Harper identity is “CIA-grade” (which is probably not proper spook talk but I needed an easy to understand reference point) and that identity comes with tax and employment records. At some point, Harper’s career was discussed, and they settled on “Professional Stuntwoman.” In some ways, it’s a slightly easier cover to maintain because unlike in, for example, True Lies, Max doesn’t need some intelligence operator sitting at a switchboard waiting for someone to check on her credentials like what might happen if she said she had some office job. Presumably a lot of stuntwork is word of mouth through other industry people. A deeper dive into movie production insurance records might turn something up, but again, Max just needs a passable ID, she’s not about to take Harper into deep cover.
Max knows something about what it takes to flip/blow up/shear/toss cars around, and she has military experience with explosives. She’s also a pretty skilled fighter. Not Math/Jabberwokky skilled for sure, but she knows a lot more than just how to punch hard. Add to that a few 20 minute stuntman behind the scenes videos on youtube and she knows enough to fake a conversation about it. Well, unless she happens across an amateur enthusiast, then she might get caught out, but she just wants a night out, dang it!
Honestly, I don’t know how realistic it is that someone could actually be a doctor and a firefighter. Let’s presume he has his own practice and has some control over his hours, and he’s a part-time firefighter, and the two things take up nearly all his free time. I feel confident that what someone couldn’t do is one of those insane hospital residencies with 40 hours shifts and literally anything else. So we know he’s past that stage of his career, at least.
I recently watched Tacoma FD, (helmed by 2/5ths of Broken Lizard (the Super Trooper guys)) doing a firefighter workplace sitcom, and like most workplace sitcoms, there’s very little actual work going on. Maybe I overestimate the downtime, but maybe Rowan station is in a very damp precinct and there consequently aren’t a lot of fires? Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
- I keep forgetting to mention, but Binding Words 10 is out, both kindle and audio, which is my favorite Daniel Schinhofen series.
- Also out is All the Skills 2, an entertaining Deck Building LitRPG which I’ve enjoyed so far.
- Of special interest to me is the Kickstarter for Tamer, King of Dinosaurs book 9. One of the add-ons is a short story about Sheela’s arrival in dinosaur land, which sounds entertaining. I say “of special interest to me” because if you’ve somehow missed it, I have written two full length Tamer novels of my own. I hate to call them fanfics, because to me ‘fanfic’ just means canon characters doing extremely non-canon and usually out of character things. My books just use the same setup, but are wholly original beyond that. I don’t know if there’s a word for that, so I tend to fall back to calling them fanfics. Anyway, check out the sidebar for links to those.
The June vote incentive is finally up! Maxima is prepping for her night out.
And in the Patreon variants, she gets (un)dressed and takes a look through all the makeup options.
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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.
would someone please explain the “my freshman fifteen was more like a twenty-five” statement.
also for non US people – what does “freshman” and “sophomore” refers to?
Freshman = 1st year of high school/college, Sophomore = 2nd. the “15/25” is he started college several years after getting out of high school.
The freshman 15/25 is he put on a lot of weight in college. Often you get less exercise in college especially if you live on campus as everything is a few minutes walk away.
15/25 refers to pounds of weight gain that many people experience when they first get out on their own and start feeding themselves (often junk food)
…or they’re eating college dining hall food which tends to be very starchy and good for weight gain. Also suddenly drinking a lot.
Plus, dining hall food is usually all you can eat. Some people don’t realize their mother isn’t doling out the food any more, and they actually have to RESTRAIN THEMSELVES.
The “freshman fifteen” refers to the fact that many college students gain a bit of weight during their first year (15 pounds (7 kg), although it’s mostly for the alliteration rather than a statistical average). Rowan here apparently put on a bit more, so he volunteered as a firefighter to work it off.
I like that you’ve pointed out the alliteration value, because I’ve known some people who weren’t from the US who referred to the freshman 15 meaning 15kg. Admittedly, those were some larger than life people. (As in, they lived exuberantly and had experiences commensurate with their lifestyles, not were huge. Though I’m also not saying they were smol.) One of those had completely worked off said weight, so there was no telling if he’d really gained that much. Another one had apparently been rail-thin before that, so those 15kg were healthy additions.
Personally, I found the suggestion to be pretty surprising, because in addition to changing to an environment where my parents didn’t have influence over my diet, my first semester schedule was an hour on, an hour off, and it didn’t occur to me to stay on campus between classes. Living over half a mile from campus, I went from being mostly sedentary to power-walking or jogging 4 or more miles a day.
Then the sophomore 16 happened when I learned to stay on campus.
yuffiek is correct about the meanings of “Freshman” and “Sophomore”. Both high school (which traditionally starts at 14/15) and college (which traditionally starts at 18) use Freshman (1st year), Sophomore (2nd year), Junior (3rd year), and Senior (4+ years) to indicate how many years the student has been attending & their approximate progress towards graduation..
However, the phrase “Freshman 15” refers in the US and Canada to the amount of weight freshman in college commonly put on. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/freshman-15#tips-to-manage-weight-gain discusses both the studies that have been done on this phenomenon, and a variety of likely causes, with links to their data sources.
“Both high school (which traditionally starts at 14/15) and college (which traditionally starts at 18) use Freshman (1st year), Sophomore (2nd year), Junior (3rd year), and Senior (4+ years) to indicate how many years the student has been attending & their approximate progress towards graduation..”
In some U.S. school districts. Where I grew up and went to school elementary school was grades K-6, junior high was grades 7-9, and high school was grades 10-12. There was no such thing as a high school freshman; you began high school as a sophomore.
In that case, the 3-year jr high is usually called “middle school”, not “jr high”
sometimes. middle school /jr. high are fairly interchangeable. My mother does not answer questions any more but I am fairly certain she subbed in the Jr. High I went to while I was there, later taught. eventually she moved to the Middle school across town. (that’s where the literal trashy teenager story came from)
Down here, it use to be two years, and it was called ‘Intermediate School’
There were high school freshmen where I went, so it’s a regional yes/no.
Kindergarten (Preschool) 5 yo
1st – 6th Grade (School) 6 yo – 12 yo
7th & 8th Grade (Jr. High) 13 yo-14 yo
9th Grade (High School Freshmen) 15 yo
10th Grade (High School Sophomore) 16 yo
11th Grade (High School Junior) 17 yo
12th Grade (High School Senior) 18 yo
Depending on when someone’s birthday is, the ages could be different. 19 years old is too old for High School, and 3 years old is too young for Kindergarten, though.
I had a guy in one of my classes who got a ‘Certificate of Completion” for aging out of the public school system. He was 21.
I don’t think that’s accurate. I’m pretty sure ‘Freshman 15’ refers to new college students gaining 15 pounds their first semester at college because they no longer have a parent monitoring their food intake. Family meals replaced with lots of junk food type of thing.
He went into firefighting because part of the job is physical training to maintain your body.
No sweetie, “freshman fifteen” is slang for weight gain in your first year of college. Supposedly, on average, people gain about fifteen pounds due to poor eating habits and partying.
NO.
“Freshman 15” is a joke about gaining 15lbs eating nothing but pizza and junk food at college. “More like Freshman 25”, means he was gaining TOO much weight and that’s why he started training as a Volunteer Fireman, giving him the ‘structure’ to keep in shape.
TBH, because a lot of volunteer firemen are VOLUNTEER, many of them are not in good shape, especially the elder firemen (My dad was told bluntly he wasn’t to strain himself after his quadruple bypass, so they had him manning the radios for the rest of his tenure as Asst. Chief.)
I was a fireman for about 10 years, it was required since the factory I worked at used some pretty flammable materials, We made both latex rubber (non-vulcanized) and a pad made of cotton/polyester fibers and polyurethane resin. That stuff was awful, it made it’s own oxygen! If the machine operators didn’t sweep the floor up often enough it would cover everything in fiber dust, it would look like ants crawling on the floor if it started to burn. One of the worst fires they had got started because someone hit a light fixture and it sparked. I had to have specialized training to deal with it. Think grain silo… The resin was powered and if enough got air-born… I had a friend get caught in an explosion from the stuff, 30% 3rd degree burns over his body, I had to crawl under the smoke in hot sprinkler water to get back to him to pull him out. When I took the mechanic job they didn’t tell me that part, but I don’t regret it.
The freshman fifteen is the fact a lot of freshman gain 15 pounds in the first year of college
Yes on the freshmen/sophomore, No on the 15/25. Generally it is known when students become freshmen in college, they tend to (not always) gain an extra 15 pounds of weight. In this case he is saying he gained 25 pounds.
I think the “Freshman 15” is how much weight is usually gained (about 7 Kg) during the first year of college. When a recent high-school grad goes off to college, his/her eating habits tend to not be as good as when he/she was living at home with the folks.
I don’t want to be rude, but you’re wrong about the “freshman 15” answer, at least with modern slang. When someone first goes to college, typically they’re eating unhealthy undergrad dining food, drinking lots of beer, and stressing too much about their coursework to get any exercise. The freshman 15 is an alliteration that refers to the 15 pounds (almost 7 kilograms) of fat they gained during their first year of school. This guy joked that he was even less disciplined and gained even more weight than that.
Half right. The “freshman 15” usually refers to a college freshman, on his or her own for the first time, gaining weight during the first year of school. He’s basically saying he gained more than the usual amount of weight and he realized he had to make a lifestyle change if he wanted to be healthy, so he joined an organization that would force him to stay in shape. It probably also made his early romantic life harder.
Freshman = first college or high school year. Sophomore = second college / high school year. The “Freshman 15” are the 15 lbs. (~7kg) that college students gain in their first year.
“freshman 15” is reference to weight gain during your 1st year in college.
usually due to large quantum’s of beers, and fast food.
I think it references the weight people usually gain when starting college/university
He put on 25 pounds instead of the usual 15 pounds as a first-year student in college.
‘Freshman fifteen’ refers to the tendency of US college students to gain weight during their first (freshman) year. This is usually due to disordered eating habits, carb-heavy dorm food and/or excessive partying.
In this context, “Freshman” and “Sophomore” refer to his first and second year in college respectively. “Freshman fifteen” is a term referring to how American college freshman often gain about 15 pounds over the year, usually due to being on their own for the first time and choosing their own meals. He’s saying here that instead of 15 pounds, he actually gained around 25 during that timeframe.
“freshman 15” refers to weight gained during the first year of college, when many kids are away from home for the first time and have negligible oversight of their eating and living habits, resulting in a gain of 15 pounds (~6-7 kg). his 25 comment means he added even more weight than that.
Freshman and sophmore refer to years in high school or college (college in this case). Freshman means 1st year, sophomore means 2nd, and if we continued, junior means 3rd, senior means 4th.
In college, there is the belief that you will gain wait when you first enter college for various reasons (no adult supervision means can consume food without limitation, and lots of colleges have all-you-can-eat cafeterias for those on a meal plan and on campus). Freshman 15 is a cute way of saying “You’ll gain weight (15 lbs for alliteration) in your first year of college”. He’s saying 25, because he’s implying he gained around 25 pounds during his first year.
“Freshman fifteen” is the observation that people gain weight their first year of college – it’s usually their first time living on their own and the dining halls have big portions, so they eat more than they used to and gain weight. He’s saying he gained 25 pounds in his freshman (first) year of college.
Freshman fifteen means that in your first year of college you gain 15 pounds. He is saying he gained more and needed somehow to exercise.
The freshman 15 is about the weight gain people experience in their first year away at university. 15 pounds is a bit less than 7 kg.
first 3 months of college (what other English countries call University) students with a ton of freedom for the first time end up gaining roughly 15 Pounds (6.80388kg) on average (I actually lost weight cause of my ADHD I skipped a few meals but then gained it back the following term cause i got used to routine
Ru: Горшочек, не вари!
En: Stop, little pot!
De: Töpfchen, steh!
Seriously guys, that’s quite enough corrections for a single “someone stated a wrong fact on the internet” case.
It’s possible, when they made there posts, there weren’t any others (the chat system can get a little ‘funky’ with actually displaying posts)
I for one truly appreciate the extra clarity, the first dozen answers were still kind of confusing. /s
Yikes! I didn’t expect there to be confusion about “Freshman 15,” though admittedly I shouldn’t be surprised since very few countries use English measurements anymore.
Yes, it refers to the average weight gain when college students are suddenly cut lose on the work with little supervision. “Freshman 7KG” doesn’t alliterate, and neither does “Freshman Stone” (since British still use ‘stone’ as a weight measurement. It’s 14 lbs/6.35KG)
Well, in my case, I was a college freshman in 1968. I don’t know if the expression had been coined then; at any rate I never heard it. Maybe it’s come in in the intervening half century? In any case it perplexed me; my first thought was that it meant “I signed up for 25 semester hours instead of the standard 15,” but I couldn’t see how becoming a firefighter would help with THAT . . .
Anyway, your other commenters cleared that up for me quickly.
I weighed 7st10lb (108lb, or about 49 kg) when I started university. By the time I dropped out, five years later, I weighed – 7st10lb.
Also, it took me about 40 years to figure out what the hell a “sophomore” was. For the longest time I thought it had something to do with sororities.
I never went to collage in person, although I know how that can be. I used to gain 10-15 lbs every winter and lose it in the summer, until my eldest was born and I hit the age of 35, then I stopped losing it. I went from 185 to 210 in just a few years. After I re-injured my back and couldn’t work I ballooned to 250 (yes, Mr. Rolly-polly) until my first bout of cancer (’04) and dropped down to 195, it’s a great weight-loss program, but I wouldn’t recommend it LOL! I have literally had people say: “How did you lose so much weight?!? You look great! I must know your secret.” so I tell them and they always walk away depressed lol.
my confusion comes from the fact that i’m not from any english speaking country and i’m not used to the “Freshmen, Sophomore, Junior, Senior” distinctions.
i went to school in Germany, and we just referred to ourselves by the Grade we were in at that time. so, just from Grade 1 student to Grade 12-13 Student. no other descriptions needed or used.
we did have different school “levels”, something that would translate to english as General School and “High” School, but the only difference there is that general school ended at grade 09-10 and “high” school endet with grade 12-13 (depending on the region).
Which also nicely explains the guy who semi-recognized Max. He obviously has her confused with Gal Godot’s stunt double. (or whichever other actresses Max could reasonably pass for, I wouldn’t be surprised if Archon convinces movie studios to add “Harper Lux” into end credits for reasons.)
If Max ever gets some down time, “Harper Lux” could actually go be a stunt double to properly earn those credits. Being far more durable than your average stunt double and not needing any wires she could safely knock out some very extreme scenes in a short time frame.
That would actually be a fun week or two for her, and with a low-level demonstration of her powers the stunt crew could film some really spectacular stuff without CGI. Now that you point it out, superpowered stunt doubles would be a very desirable niche for both sides.
Although since supers are all photogenic, the main actor/actress would need to be touched up for the rest of the film (or the super toned down). Probably still cheaper than the FX budget or teaching a random super to act (see: every famous model’s first few movies when they try to transition).
begs for a crash test dummy type super, though
‘what’s your power?’
“I just fall apart”
‘What, you start crying?’
” Yes, exactly that.” (walks off muttering about Darwin Awards)
There’s a DC character loosely associated with the Legion of Super Heroes called Arms-Fall-Off Boy. His power only works on himself, or they might actually have let him join up.
I had earlier suggested that Achilles had been a stunt double for Mythbusters’ Buster before joining Archon. Mind you, with all the various superhero origin stories, all 6 of the hosts (Adam, Jamie, Kari, Scotti, Tory, Grant, Buster) should have gotten super-powers sometime during the show.
Given all the Busters they went through on that show IRL Achilles would have been a godsend for their budget. At one point they had to basically replace it after every episode that used it. And I had a hard time not calling Buster a him, because of the name.
It is canon that Achilles does stunt work. From the cast page —
He’s often off site doing something insanely dangerous – movie stunts, deep sea welding, collecting samples from an active volcano, but he prefers hanging out with the team, citing “You can only drive a car off a plane into an ammo dump so many times before it gets boring.”
Good callout, I’d totally forgotten that. Also that his name is apparently “Harold”, I can see why he goes by his super name instead – it’s a fine name, but lacks the cachet in comparison.
Wonder Man (the Marvel Comics Avenger) has done a lot of stunt work and a few acting jobs
Depending on the practice, being a volunteer firefighter is doable. Many doctors don’t do Wednesdays, for example. Whether it’s to play golf or contribute to their community in the FD may be another matter…
FireDoc!
Sadly, not as great as AxeCop!
And considering doctors need a little downtime to do paperwork, and firefighters often have down time while they are on call waiting for when they’re needed, I could see this story checking out. Especially his personality type. He seems like the kind of guy who would get the firefighter gig because that is what helped get him through medical school, and then just keeping it because it never occurs to him that he doesn’t need to do that anymore. Or maybe he just thinks being a firefighter is a good way to give back to his community so he does that on his days off.
Some people like working.
It’s self-reinforcing too – most of his friends are probably the other firefighters, and he gets paid to hang out with them. He’d have to leave them (and the 2nd paycheck) to make new friends.
Of the doctors I’m acquainted with including immediate relatives, those unavailable Wednesdays may be scheduled out specifically for surgery, or it’s possible that they work at other hospitals in the area. For instance, in my area there is a VA where many doctors from both private and larger local hospitals work there part time one or two days a week.
doctor/firefighter is slightly more plausible than the defense attorney/Police officer who somehow had time to show up in a parody somewhere….
15 pounds. On their own and with less structure, it’s easy for new college students to gain weight.
For what it’s worth, attorney/police officer does happen, though not often enough. Some police officers decide they want to learn enough about the law to actually be able to enforce it rather than just being a jackbooted thug ostensibly working for the city.
But the ‘defense’ part of that, yeah, super implausible. That conflict of interest would almost certainly get them fired from one or both of those jobs if they attempted that.
Way Way back when I was still but a lad, not long after I sliced into my leg with a machete our family doctor retired. He was about 60 or so and was stepping away, he was also a surgeon. But he was not retiring to relax. He was taking classes to become a Lawyer. With plans on being a defense lawyer to those bringing frivolous lawsuits against doctors. The added bonus is that he would KNOW if the Doctor really screwed up or not.
Too bad every provider now requires you sign away the right to sue before they’ll see you.
The corporate healthcare ghouls have bribed the government to allow them to force “binding arbitration” on us, so they can do even more heinous bs in the name of extracting profits from people.
It’s about enough to push from favoring single-payer, to outright nationalized medicine.
Movie work could also be used as an excuse for why she looks familiar.
Wouldn’t your books be spin-offs instead of fanfic?
The difference between fanfics and spin-offs are that one is officially licensed
Unofficial spin-off maybe?
I have always considered those types of works as “Shared Universe”. The description of fanfics that DaveB used is very different then most spin offs I’ve seen.
It is quite plausible for a doctor to also be a firefighter/paramedic, assuming the latter two are on a volunteer or similar part time basis. Full time doctor, part time firefighter. Yes, it’s a lot of work. No, he’s probably not on a city’s FD. But around 80% of the firefighters in the US are volunteers and we usually had far more stringent training protocols than the paid departments.
There is a ‘practical’ side for a mustache. Because you can’t get a proper airtight seal for an SCBA mask if you have a beard, beards are usually not allowed for safety reasons. Mustaches are okay since they don’t interfere with the seal. And more firefighters are clean-shaven than have mustaches.
I was always told bit about beards that in the military, and later met a veteran firefighter with a FULL glorious lumberjack beard. When I asked about it, he grinned and pulled out a mini tub of Vaseline.
There are ways, apparently! XD
I am slightly horrified to note that under the wrong circumstances vaseline is flammable.
And maintaining a seal on an oxygen mask, inside a fire….
Seriously???
If he’s running his own small practice (or even just working at one), and not at a hospital with all their scheduling insanity, he’d have a lot of control over his hours and might even be doing <40/week. And tons of time to study, lots of firemen take up useful hobbies at the station in all the downtime between training and equipment maintenance.
I can see Max really looking forward to an actual relationship with this guy, the small problem of him being a potential kidnap/hostage target for everybody will be worked out.
He could be joining Archon. Being a medical doctor/paramedic/fire fighter definitely qualifies him as being a hero, so he is halfway there anyway.
Dr. McNinja anyone?
You know, we never did see McMinja’s face… and his dad had an amazing ‘stache… I could get behind the theory that this is Dr McNinja, although the rest of his universe would be harder to reconcile.
Although… this universe has time travel and alien medicine already to explain some of the timelines and weird diseases he treated, so the talking dinosaurs are really the only issue… But given the galactic community it’s possible they’re just V’Straki returning to their home planet. And supers are definitely overpowered compared to the rest of the galaxy… I think a GrrlPower / McNinja / Deathworlders mashup is actually a pretty viable proposal!
FWIW, my experiences with working as an emergency services dispatcher confirms the assumption that firefighters (and ambulance crews) frequently do have a lot of downtime at work where they can do pretty much whatever as long as they’re ready to roll inside of three minutes of a call. It’s not something you can count on and must vary enormously based on the area you’re covering, but there’s so much busy work to do around the station and once its done you can do what you like. I worked mostly graveyard, and my crews were frequently napping between calls, with one or two people staying awake to keep an ear out for callouts.
Most folks working in that field would really rather have a nice peaceful shift where nothing happens at all. The other alternative often means some citizen’s gotten hurt or killed – or you’re stuck dealing with some damn drunk or junkie who’s decided they’re dying. Neither of those are really desirable. You get some adrenaline junkies who’d rather be out and working every minute, but they tend to get kicked out pretty fast because everyone else finds them intolerable.
In the UK, it’s relatively true of fire crews but a lot LESS true of paramedics. Part of that might be the fact that they are much more separate services here, it may also be because the healthcare system means people are a lot more willing to actually call an ambulance in an emergency. Refusing to let someone call an ambulance due to fear of a hefty bill for it just isn’t a situation that would happen here.
There’s still downtime between calls, but a lot less of it.
Yeah, actual paramedics don’t get much on-the-clock downtime even in the US. Very few ambulance services have more than a couple of them though. Average crew member is only certified for BLS and (at least in the areas I dispatched for) outnumbered proper paramedics 8 or 10 to 1. They’re supposed to yell for help before transporting if anything looks even vaguely like it might need ALS training, but stuff happens and there were times when positioning and other calls meant I couldn’t get a paramedic to intercept a bus that was already rolling until they were already at the hospital.
Never enough paramedics for an area, but a lot of the veteran BLS-only crew know enough to substitute for one briefly – but not legally, and the insurance will never stop screaming if you don’t at least try to provide ALS when called for.
Or at least that’s what it was like ~20 years ago. I’m badly out of the loop these days.
/nod…
Boring is good! Means nothing got broken, no one got killed.
Granted, boring is not really fun…but it is good.
Dave… She should have gone with a government office job.
“I go places and write reports that important people see. I can’t discuss it because of non disclosure aggrements.”
Oh wait. That sounds like a secret agent. Nevermind.
Mustasche guy is going to ask what movies she’s done and she’ll have to name three.
He might ask about green screen and wire work.
yes. If it’s a fully staffed station in like a city then your day is long stretches of boredom and vehicle cleaning punctuated with needing to wear a lot of gear and run into burning buildings and go really fast. You get called for fires of every kind, bad car accidents where somebody needs to be extracted, other weird extractions although the ambulance gets to deal with some of those too. Ambulance crews are much busier than fire Crews although that may be a district thing. The ambulance I volunteered with covered the northern half of a county with three rigs and our nearest hospital was 20 minutes away. In that area the fire department all had BLS or (basic life support) capabilities and we were used for ALS (Advanced life support) and paramedic.
Because I’m not sure if this is realized but an EMT can be told by a doctor to do certain things and can do basic injections. a paramedic can decide on their own to administer other drugs and under consultation with an ER Doctor has access to inject yet another class of drugs.
Yeah, but apart from her not knowing her secret identity name, I could have easily seen her having worked a few movies to establish her cover. Admittedly, I could also potentially see those movies as being made by a government studio where everyone knew her name and understood that it was all to help establish cover identities for a bunch of super heroes. So the original Archon crew could all have been working on those movies.
Alternatively, maybe she did a few movies like that with more separation between covers. But she was still indisguisable until Dabbler’s choker, so the crew still knew who she was and that she was a super. At best maybe they could’ve done something with her hair and disguised her as a *different* super who happened to resemble Maxima – a disguise that would’ve been much easier before Maxima became as famous as she did when Archon made its announcement.
In this latter case, maybe she went by Harper for the movies, but things went smoothly enough they didn’t need to bring up her middle name and surname. Also, as the crew were all squishies and knew that she very much wasn’t, nobody mentioned “oh, it’s a stripper name!”
Everyone on a movie set knowing her real identity would’ve blown the cover on both supers and her identity. “Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.”
I think it’s way more likely that they went through movies with stuntwomen who have their heads covered by masks or helmets and are close enough to Max’s height and just hacked her name into the credits.
For that matter, they could have hired an actual stunt woman who appears at all similar to Maxi, and paid her way more than normal for a few jobs on the condition that she work under the temporary name “Harper” and keep it secret. And maybe have some big penalty if she ever let the secret out. That stunt woman would not even need to know that it had anything to do with superheros, she would only know that they wanted this name in the credits.
I listened Adam Savage talk about preserving props – he pointed out that movies are usually corporations and when the movie is done they are literally going out of business. to give her enough of an identify to actually find work in that community might be a challenge. but passing even a basic level PI search is probably easy, just hack IMDB and pop her name on some obscure movies/shows/commercials especially failed ones and you’d need Reddit in its prime to realize something’s up.
Remember Arianna probably has contacts everywhere if Harper wants/needs to actually find some work and the choker can stand up to the abuse it would not be hard to get a real role. probably not stunt double for an A lister right out the gate, but given that supers are out of the ‘closet’ now I could see a durable super being a useful stunt asset. the cute one would have Harper claim to have a healing factor rather than being made out of unobtanium.
Yeah, Zakalwe made a similar point below. Getting the name into the right places is probably a zillion times easier than actually setting up a real stunt job for a person under that name.
Hm, maybe someday Arianna could see a need for a nice PR boost, and assign a super to help with stunts in a movie for a few days, using their well-known superhero name. Wouldn’t need any kind of disguise.
Maybe “Harper” did some stunts as a Klingon. That’s why she isn’t recognisable as Harper.
Which of the Star Trek movies (The Shatner ones) had Chekov ogle a muscular female for one second of screen time?
that… puts a whole new spin on ‘Chekov’s gun’
Y’know, one of the practical issues with getting hit with a car like that would be how messy it would be. Broken cars leak oil and gas and transmission fluid and coolant all of the damn place, and the undersides are generally just filthy with road crud and grit. That’s going to ruin your clothes (assuming they’re tough enough not just get ripped to tatters in the first place) and it’ll get in your hair, ears, eyes, mouth and nose.
I imagine most supers would be pretty pissed with somebody who pulled that stunt – it’s just rude, especially if the car-tosser knew it wasn’t going to hurt you anyway. Capes equivalent of spitting in a fight, I’d think. Doesn’t do a damn thing but it’s insulting and messy. Get a rep for being that kind of fighter and you’re probably going to find out how easy it is to “accidentally” get pounded into septic tanks and sewage lines.
What if Max said:”That moustache makes you look like you’re a denizen of an ancient Gaulish village that bravely held out against becoming part of the Roman Empire…!”
Hmm, the potion’s effects might (temporarily) solve the issue with their respective physical strengths… Maybe she’ll nickname him Getafix.
NO.
“Freshman 15” is a joke about gaining 15lbs eating nothing but pizza and junk food at college. “More like Freshman 25”, means he was gaining TOO much weight and that’s why he started training as a Volunteer Fireman, giving him the ‘structure’ to keep in shape.
TBH, because a lot of volunteer firemen are VOLUNTEER, many of them are not in good shape, especially the elder firemen (My dad was told bluntly he wasn’t to strain himself after his quadruple bypass, so they had him manning the radios for the rest of his tenure as Asst. Chief.)
In France, it’s quite normal to have doctors / firefighters (my own doctor was a lieutenant-colonel in the firefigting force before he retired) – firefighters (even volunteers) are very often among the first responders to medical emergencies in France, so having 1 or 2 doctors you can get in touch easily with helps a lot :). In the US, you’ll more likely find this if the fire service he’s attached to has EMS teams :) (likely less doctors in firefighting services that don’t have EMS team)
“Honestly, I don’t know how realistic it is that someone could actually be a doctor and a firefighter.”
My biggest worry here would be a “conflict of emergencies.”
Fire fighting is a emergency you can be excused for.
So is being a doctor.
What if you are on a doctor emergency, when a fire breaks out? Could the firefighters live with you having a “higher order emergency”, keeping you away?
Not all doctors work emergency rooms. If he has a private practice, then he may very well focus on office hours and non-emergency specialty work when he’s not fighting fires.
If he’s in a specialist private practice he may not have doctor emergencies. Podiatrists very rarely get called in at midnight.
Even if he does have some hospital shifts or on call periods, he can schedule those so they don’t overlap with his time at the Fire Department. Especially in a volunteer FD, that is used to working around other jobs.
A firefighter has hours (shifts). Sometimes, firefighters will trade shifts.
A typical doctor has office hours. Often, a doctor will have a backup to take emergencies.
Yes, dual emergencies are possible, but they can be handled sensibly.
I gotta say, non-golden Max is pretty damn hot.
Yes
Why is everyone insisting this guy is a medical doctor in a hospital? he could have a family practice. Firefighters have more between call downtime than ambulance people do.When I worked on a volunteer ambulance the busy times were evenings. We kept crew onsite with our 3 ambulances from 6pm until 11pm. Most of the calls were car accidents, actual medical emergencies, medical transports (which were scheduled) where we’re taking somebody to or from a nursing home or a hospital location, drinking related stupidity or drug-related stupidity. The drinking and the drugs almost never haven’t between 4:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. The absolute worst calls on an ambulance are when the family did not want to accept the fact that the patient had signed a do not resuscitate also known as a DNR order. So you have to go because you’re called but you can’t do anything without violating the patient’s right so you get to watch them die all because the family couldn’t deal with watching them die alone. It also prevented us from having that an ambulance crew available to go deal with somebody who didn’t want to die.
Literally nobody has insisted that.
When I was in EMS, we’d have the opposite problem. The family would tell us that the patient had a DNR, but if they couldn’t produce it, we’d have to treat the patient. All too often, they couldn’t produce it.
I think the conversational pacing is fine. You don’t want to do the dialogue equivalent of seeing someone park, get out of their car, and go into the building, get on the elevator, ride the elevator, get out of the elevator, and enter a room. You just show them pull up, and then cut to them entering the room.
Gotta admit, Max just.. relaxing and enjoying herself without ‘Maxima’ in the room makes me smile
‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’ is something she wears like an albatross most of the time.
Is there really that much movie/tv production in the Dallas area? Could a professional stunt woman get steady work?
With the invention of fast planes, it’s possible to be based in Dallas and work elsewhere
Not sure how much of “9-1-1: Lonestar” is actually filmed in Texas, but it is at least set there (don’t believe it’s Dallas, but can’t remember where exactly… )
Yes, I’m aware of commercial aviation, but if most of your work is in Southern California it doesn’t make sense to live in Texas.
She could easily be on vacation, or taking a sabbatical, or in town for a couple months for a specific film. Doesn’t really matter unless he brings it up explicitly, but it’s worth having a plan ready for 3-4 dates in.
Taxes. May well make sense.
I’ve JUST realized that they’re all in Dallas. I wonder if Dave ever stated a reason for that? Beside the fact that he liver there for some time…
Yes because most people of that caliber travel for work and are on limited call outs. The do not work 40 hours a week on set.
1) Dallas does have a movie industry.
2) Harper is not going to be around much, so where she is on location isn’t much of a factor.
3) Twenty years ago, I could have afforded a home in DFW out of petty cash from my income in California, so a movie person having a second home here is not unreasonable.
4) Harper’s work here doesn’t need to be steady, as long as she has steady (or strong intermittent) work somewhere.
Yes, there are movies/TV shows shot in and around Dallas pretty much all the time. We get cast as “Generic Southern Big City” more than you realize.
I am personally shocked at how invested I am in Max having a normal relationship with this dude. This is great. Don’t make him a super villain in disguise please.
If anything, I could picture Max approaching Arianna going, “I think I have found someone to be a good fit, like Peggy. No powers, straight human. Firefighter/Doctor.”
Arianna: *blank face stare*
I can see public figure supers pairing up with premium baseline specimen creating a lot of resentment, along the lines of the girl who tried to kick Max out of the bar. “You’ve already won the genetic lottery, and can date any other super out there. Don’t also steal the best options left to the rest of us mere mortals.”
Outside the tiny selection pool of a bar or the like, I wouldn’t expect that resentment to happen. Does anyone get upset when a mega celebrity rock star or whatever pairs up with a non-celebrity type standard human person?
I really don’t see Max trying to get someone she’s potentially contemplating sleeping with put into her chain of command.
She’s not trying to get him a job (he has 2 already) she’s trying to get him vetted for a LTR (if this works out somewhat).
She doesn’t much want him to work for them? Because then it becomes a conflict as she might be in a chain of command.
In place of “fanfic” try “Shared Universe” or “Same Universe” for the Tamer stories. “Shared” would assume it’s authorized by the author as long as it sticks to canon and usually doesn’t use the author’s characters as mains (they may be supporting characters — a little more than cameos — in some cases.)
This is the Comment I came here to write
Interested I writing a third Tamer novel? I really liked your first two.
Is he an actual firefighter? Or just a paramedic assigned to a firehouse?
Plenty of shows (“9-1-1” for one) has firehouses with their own ecnalubmA, and most of the paramedics are hella fit
Being an MD and a volunteer Firefighter is not a problem. Plenty of ways that can work depending on one’s specialty, Family Practice, Orthopedic, , pediatric, Gynecologist, Surgeon, Anesthesiologist etc.
Regarding getting laid, I’m reminded of Niven’s “Man of steel, Woman of Tissue.” But in reverse in Max’s case. Orgasms tend to be uncontrollable and yeah, given that she can render her skin to to be all soft and silky at will, how does that work with the big “O”? I mean if he’s balls deep and she clamps down in the heat of passion…?
Phone sex without the phone. 10 feet apart or so? Toys.
“I don’t know how realistic it is that someone could actually be a doctor and a firefighter”
well, Before I retired, I was a Podiatrist Practitioner* and Swift/floodwater Rescue Instructor … until the Podiatry became too busy during Covid. It is possible.
* Podiatrists in the US title themselves “doctor”. We don’t do that in the UK.
In the U.S. a big issue is paying off medical school bills. A lot of younger physicians that I know had to work like dogs just to may for med school. One of my nieces dodged that by making a substantial commitment to the U.S. Army. In the U.S you are starting to see a lot of Nurse Practitioners as it is a less expensive degree.
“Humans First Anti-Superhero League and also We Hate Powerful Women and We Hate Being Tricked into Sex Because for Us Sex is About Dominating Women Because We’re Terribly Insecure but Can’t Ever Admit That to Ourselves or Others Because We Stopped Developing Emotionally Somewhere in Our Early Teens.”
That’s going to be one crazy long acronym.
HFASLAAWHPWAWHBTISBFUSIADWBWTIBCEATTOOOBWSDESIOET.
The activist group formed to counteract them is called “Global Emissaries Striving to Uphold Nuturing, Diplomacy, Harmony, Equality, Inclusion, and Tolerance”.
+1 for you. Well done.
You keep doing neat posts like that and I will probably have someone slip the antidote into a future meal.
That will add an interesting twist to the weekend BBQs.
Being able to carry people to safety is what you might call Required Secondary Powers for firefighters, alright.
It’s also a pretty tight requirement for infantry linemen. Not only do they routinely have to walk/jog fairly long distance with a backpack full of rocks (full field gear weighing upwards of 60 lbs. but in “troublesome circumstances” they’re also expect to carry a wounded buddy out of the danger area…Plus all of his gear too.
This is why women are not supposed to be allowed in a position of field combat. Sure, some women may be able to work themselves up that far but *virtually* speaking, women are not capable of doing that. No man on the front can really trust his very life to women under combat situations.
No I don’t care what the government or the military allows these days…It’s wrong for all of the worst reasons.
I have a friend who served with the Israeli army who would disagree quite strongly with you about your opinions regarding females serving in combat roles.
she’s going to have to take it up with the Israeli army first, who really don’t like putting the women in active combat roles. Support, light guard duty, etc, sure. Active offensive infantry combat? No. Most of the active literature on the effects of female troops in combat come from the Israelis, and they all support keeping women OUT of active combat roles if at all possible. Most of the female troopers who have been near active combat will tell you the same thing.
The big complainers about such things are women who’ve never actually been in combat, and the pure physical demands that women are NOT able to satisfy. They just don’t want to believe there is a major physical difference between women and men that is incredibly hard to overcome, but experienced soldiers are very aware of. Go look at the performance standards for men and women in the armed forces, and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.
It takes an extraordinary woman to perform at the level of an average male soldier, and it is virtually impossible for a woman to perform at the level of an elite. They just don’t have the raw strength to make it happen. Everything else, sure, but strength is so, so key.
My friend was a he, actually, and he has told me some stories of the exploits he witnessed from the female soldiers.
But why disqualify women who can carry that much weight, just on the basis that they’re women? The qualification is what should matter, and it’s silly to use other properties as proxies when you can test the relevant property directly.
Reality would like to have a word with you, sir.
Men generally have to “work themselves to that point” as much as women do, nearly everyone does. This is one of the reasons why boot camp exists for everyone.
If anything, I’d be less likely to trust you on the front lines, since your obviously sexist arse is going to have nonsense opinions which leaves to bias affecting attempts at rescuing in the heat of the moment, and if I had to make a split-second judgement call between rescuing you and literally anyone else on the battlefield, it would be the someone else, because I would know they would be a better asset on that metric alone, speaking as someone who grew up military.
Hey, I do a lot of stunt work too!
Don’t judge me just because most of it is accidental…
Film studios reach out to the DoD all the time to get military assets included in their films, in return the Pentagon will ask for a certain amount of veto power over the script to make sure the film doesn’t make the military look bad. It might be easy to add a requirement that they have to add a credit for a stuntwoman named Harper despite said stuntwoman never appearing on set. Getting your name in the credits of a few films will probably be sufficient to really solidify your false identity against a google search or look at IMDB.
The Doctor/Firefighter thing is roughly as realistic as Doctor McNinja. It’s basically a total no-go for any pathway in medicine apart from being a part-time GP at a multi-doctor practice. I can’t think of a single hospital based role that will accommodate a doctor who can’t be on call when they are not at the hospital and can’t be in the hospital 50+ hours a week. If an intern/resident ever told the senior doctors at their hospital they are moonlighting another career it would be career suicide.
It never occurred to me that they could “skip the middle man” and just push that name into the credits. That’s obviously the best way to go. Maybe it deprives Maxi of a little fun time, but any SERIOUS fun time would have blown her cover anyway.
You want emergency services to have a lot of down time, because emergencies are random, and randomness is lumpy. i.e. it is not uncommon for multiple things to happen at the same time. i.e. the local pizza place could be on fire together with the chinese restaurant on the other side of town while all kittens are getting stuck up trees simultaneously.
So you want at least two fire trucks, which means that most of the time at least one truck is going to be idle.
Which is part of the reason why I am completely baffled by the limit put on the allowed number of medical students. Having too many medical professionals is a good thing! Even if they end up become abstract sculptors for most of their career, at least you have trained experts available when, for example, a pandemic hits.
Yes, but if you have less scarcity then you can’t demand two to three times the income of other professions with comparable education and the AMA doesn’t like that.
I’ve heard it argued that “doctor with a private practice” is one of the best jobs for a superhero’s secret identity due to the ability to set your own hours and disappear on “house calls” when necessary, so clearly it does allow room for another part-time job if you want it to. And my understanding is that firefighting is mostly waiting for an emergency to happen, and there’s only so much of that waiting you can fill with training and equipment maintenance.
Fingers crossed Rowan is a super and this is his cover persona. Looking forward to the moment of hilarity when he attempts to come clean and tell Harper that he’s actually Kind of A Big Deal and that he has to break up with her to keep her safe.
And although that would be funny, really really hoping he’s just a baseline Joe, far more potential there. We’ve already got more supers in this story than screentime.
Oh dear gods I can see that scene…
Rowan: “I’m sorry, but we can’t see each other anymore.”
Harper: “Why not, we get along so well?”
R: “I’ve been working for some real bad people, and am about to turn evidence. They’ll come after anyone I care about for revenge.”
H: “‘Real bad people’?”
R: “Mob, supers. Telling you more would put you at too much risk.”
Max starts laughing so hard she forgets to keep her feet on the ground as she doubles over.
R: “?!?”
ok in addition to the ID harper needs an IMDB page. That is the first way to look up someone in the film industry. Good news is that as a stuntwoman she might not put her picture on it, so it would be no issue.
I am sure that the resident geek knew all of this when he made the ID.
I will posit that such a page exists in the interest of a ‘thorough cover’
Granted, with Max’s.. ‘physique’ there are not alot of actors she could be a stunt double for. Jolie in the Tomb Raider movies?
> the president of the “Humans First Anti-Superhero League and also We Hate Powerful Women and We Hate Being Tricked into Sex Because for Us Sex is About Dominating Women Because We’re Terribly Insecure but Can’t Ever Admit That to Ourselves or Others Because We Stopped Developing Emotionally Somewhere in Our Early Teens.”
You could have just said “Republican” and we’d all know exactly what you meant.
Oh, you’re one of those…
I’ve personally known many hundreds of Republicans in my life, and not a single one matches your description, so your broad-brush smear of a hundred million Americans says a lot more about your own bigotry than it does about the object of your hatred. So don’t deign to speak for what “we’d all know”.
Beyond my personal circles, I can think of numerous prominent Democrats who treat women like disposable napkins (and sure, a few Republicans too), but you don’t see me overgeneralizing from it or jumping into discussions to spew political smears in a non-political forum where most of the posters have better sense than to do so.
Sorry, but watching the stupidity in the U.S. the last decade or so, and in particular the last few years; it is pretty obvious that the percentage of Republicans who match Illy’s depiction is significantly higher than what you are asserting.
There are perhaps just as many Republicans who only identify that way because the Republican party has demonized the Democratic party over the decades as there are Christians who never attend church services and don’t really know anything about their supposed religion.
On one hand, an organization is just a bunch of people. But the majority of the people in it may not have any control over its direction, and are just there along for the ride.
> There are perhaps just as many Republicans who only identify that way because the Republican party has demonized the Democratic party over the decades as there are Christians who never attend church services and don’t really know anything about their supposed religion.
I would expect those two groups have a lot of overlap.
> But the majority of the people in it may not have any control over its direction, and are just there along for the ride.
But they choose to identify with it, given how it presents itself.
—
Interesting fact: The majority of Republicans agree with every Democrat policy, and can’t state a single Republican policy.
All true. And to a certain degree, they’re still culpable for the awful things the party and its politicians do, even if they identify with the party for other reasons, and would rather it not do awful things. That they put up with the bad, as long as it only hurts other people, makes them pretty selfish and scummy. That they put up with the bad when it hurts themselves makes them idiots. But there is also a great deal of misinformation out there, spread by the party, and while their followers are ignorant, only some of it is attributable to willful ignorance. Some of these people might be decent people if they weren’t living in a world of complete fabrication. How would they know better? They’ve been lied to their entire lives, and humans being social creatures, tend to trust what their social network tells them over their own experiences.
And pretty much everyone engages in… failing at statistics. Prioritizing narratives over reality, casting a single story as representative of all events. Just because one thing happened one time doesn’t mean that every similar story has the same explanation behind it. Not every black man is a criminal, but not every black man is an angel either. Not every single mother is a welfare cheat, but I imagine there’s at least one who is. No matter the issue, there is no one narrative that always applies. Every situation is different. But it’s so much easier to paint with a broad brush, and ignore the details.
But yes, the Democratic party has a serious messaging problem. And too much hesitancy to follow through, make a difference, show that their policies could work. So everything ends up half-baked, and they end up looking incompetent and validating the claims that their policies won’t work. All while Republican policies fail, and they just double down, claim that they would work if we committed even harder to them, and beg for bailouts.
> And pretty much everyone engages in… failing at statistics.
There’s a wonderful essay by Issac Azimov at the start of his book “The Relativity of Wrong” that uses the following analogy:
People who believe the earth is a sphere are wrong. It’s an oblate spheroid. People who believe the earth is flat are also wrong. But the people who believe the earth is flat are more wrong than the people who believe it’s a sphere. Science is the process of making models that are less wrong than the previous one.
So yes, while everyone fails at statistics, it’s important to note that Republicans fail harder. Much, much harder.
As for the Democrats, they should take their example from the Minnesota party. Those folks are showing what Democrats should be doing federally – weilding power to make everyone’s lives better.
Right-wing media is an engine for turning anecdotes into fear. They will find one example of someone doing something weird or extreme or wrong, and claim that it’s representative of all their enemies. And then claim that no other media will report on it, which is true — because it’s not newsworthy. It’s just some single random person with no authority, not a vast conspiracy.
But the Democrats’ problem is the belief that actions speak for themselves. They need to talk more about their successes, and more about Republicans’ failures, and less about abstractions that the average person doesn’t understand or care about. They need to be bold, make people’s lives better, and then take credit for it. Otherwise, the right-wing dominates the narrative, takes credit for the left’s successes, and blames the left for the right’s failures.
“agree with every Democrat policy” is pure delusional malarky.
Name six Democrat policies that you imagine the majority of conservatives agree with. Then show me, in each case, where the Republican platform contains the opposite plank.
Just because you can find an extreme Republican who has a particular view does not mean that it’s the official Republican policy, any more than AOC or Sheila Jackson Lee or some antifa dweeb sets policy for the Democrats.
> Name six Democrat policies that you imagine the majority of conservatives agree with. Then show me, in each case, where the Republican platform contains the opposite plank.
Ok, I’ll bite.
I fully expect you to quibble about the details, but my examples stand.
1) Adults shouldn’t have sex with children. Republican policy is to keep child marriage (which is a form of institutionalised pedophilia) legal. And the Republican party doesn’t expel proven pedophiles from it’s ranks.
2) Healthcare should be affordable by everyone. Republican policy is still to repeal Obamacare.
3) Slavery is wrong. Republican policy is still in favour of the legalised forms of slavery practiced by private prisons and the farming industry.
4) The minimum wage should be enough to live on if you work a 40-hr week. Republican policy is to oppose minimum wage laws.
5) Seperation of church and state. Republican policy is to reintroduce christian prayer in publicly-run schools.
6) All children should have equal opportunity in life. Republican policy is to continue the postcode lottery for if your school is any good. School quality directly corrolates to life outcomes.
> Just because you can find an extreme Republican who has a particular view does not mean that it’s the official Republican policy
When it’s a Republican govenor or presidential candidate it kinda does.
> some antifa dweeb
Just for the record: Antifa, circa 1945
There is no Republican platform. At the last national convention they declined to create one, preferring to declare themselves a cult of personality supporting Whatever Donald Wants.
Turns out we’re all really, really bad at estimating what “the other political side” really believes. This is called affective polarization bias, and is one of the reasons that in the US, independents have significantly outnumbered both GOP and Democrats for more than a decade, after being roughly evenly matched for the 2-3 decades before that.
That’s a really interesting site. But what does it tell you when the perception gap about Democrats is higher than the perception gap about Republicans?
I’d like to see some data that distinguished between the views of voters and politicians. Because the politicians have gotten rather extreme, likely more extreme than the voters, and yet people conflate the two.
It tells me that most people need to read more before forming opinions, but I’m sure it could be interpreted to cast either side in a poor light.
What it tells me is that there is a great deal more misinformation out there about Democrats than Republicans.
So, do you believe that the presentations of the explicitly DNC-aligned media in the US is a representative sample of the relevant elected officials, let alone the actual public?
Do you think Fox is DNC-aligned?
You do realize that many on the right have some incredibly strict purity demands, and that any deviation from the party line makes someone into a full-fledged enemy, no matter their history or other stances?
Yes, many right-wingers now think Fox has “gone woke”, and now turn to even more deranged sources of “news”.
It’s funny how Republicans consider themselves the party of free thought and free speech, and castigate liberals as authoritarian, but they don’t allow any actual “diversity in thought” on a great many important topics.
> You do realize that many on the right have some incredibly strict purity demands, and that any deviation from the party line makes someone into a full-fledged enemy, no matter their history or other stances?
That’s a remarkably good description of one of the core tenants of fascism. Mind if I steal it?
> Yes, many right-wingers now think Fox has “gone woke”.
That’s because they fired Carlson for lying on air too much, right? Or were there some who thought that before then?
> It’s funny how Republicans consider themselves the party of free thought and free speech
“Every accusation is a confession” does seem to get proven rather a lot, doesn’t it?
I didn’t think it was all that elegant, but I suppose it’s succinct. Take what you like, and I hope it serves you well.
“That’s because they fired Carlson for lying on air too much, right?”
Oh no, long before that. When they deviated even slightly from Trump’s election denialism, many of their viewers branded them as “leftists”, and went to places like Newsmaxx and OANN for “real news”. Because as Fox later determined and admitted, their viewers don’t want to be surprised, they don’t want new information — they want to be lied to. Right-wing media is comfort food for the dispossessed.
“Every accusation is a confession”
Which is terrifying, in light of the depraved acts they accuse their enemies of.
‘That’s because they fired Carlson for lying on air too much, right? Or were there some who thought that before then?’ oh dear you wish that were the case. He was fired because the texts where he mocked/questioned THE BOSS (not Springsteen) were made public. that particular boss will not tolerate that from his paid lackeys.
Explicitly DNC aligned… so.. JUST CNN? Because it’s literally the only one that is.
Not the rest of the channels fault the truth is an alien concept to you.
The problem is that two people observing the same reality and commenting on it looks similar to two people conspiring.
Especially if you don’t have a real concept of objective reality.
Do I need to go find a video of Florida Rep Barnaby’s “Mutants, Demons and Imps” rant for you?
Republicans today are PROUD of being the non-mutant villians from the X-Men. Those are the characters who were based on the German Nazis and the KKK.
They cheer for people who praise Hitler.
They get upset when Indiana Jones punches Nazis.
They put a child rapist in the White House, and want to do it again, knowing that he’s a child rapist (incidentally, Hitler kept his neice as a sex slave)
They are cheering when the right to abortion is taken away (which the German Nazis also did, btw. Along with handing out medals to “aryan” women who had lots of children)
And that’s not even getting into them openly trying to genocide the trans population. (Another thing they’ve copied from the original Nazis, just to add to the pile)
—
And you want to compare that to some Democrats who are fuzzy on what affirmative consent means with adult women? Which, when you run the numbers, are still less frequent than the number of Republicans who do similar things. And the Democrats tend to get thrown out of the party when they get caught, whereas Republicans tend to get re-elected.
You really need to take your meds and turn off whatever DNC-porn you’ve been watching.
Aww, you went straight to the ablism and didn’t even try to refute any of my points.
I thought you’d have more conviction than that :(
Groan. Politics.(8<(( Please take it somewhere else.
Politics and comics go together like the X-Men and Magneto.
I read last week about a republican book banning group had to issue an apology for posting a direct quote from a Nazi group.
Desantos made child abuse punishable by the death penalty, then make being trans or giving transgender care a crime of child abuse.
It isn’t all that complicated, really.
It was a direct quote from Hitler, not just a Nazi group.
This just in! Reality is pornographic!
A lot of things make more sense now.
An independent physician also being a volunteer firefighter?
Can confirm it’s not that much of a stretch.
How far can Max turn down her powers? She has been shown allocating her power in various ways; can she limit herself to essentially normal levels? In Larry Niven’s essay “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”, he points out that an orgasm is essentially a pleasurable epileptic fit (this was used for comedic effect in the movie “Hancock”), and, since Rowan seems a nice enough guy, I would hate to see a “Woman of Steel, Man of Kleenex” end to the evening.
A stunt actor makes a perfect cover to explain why she’s so buff, good call Max! I think if this guy isn’t blowing smoke, he just got a check mark with Max there, Although the “fireman’s mustache” is that you can’t have much in the way of facial hair, the air masks won’t seal over a beard. Although I did have a “fu man chu” style for a bit, as long as I trimmed it to fit inside it wasn’t a big deal. Lots and Lots a vasalin however on the rim, just to make a good seal. Tool-tip: if the mask starts to fog, you missed the warning bell that told you it had 5 mins left, current tanks have a much louder horn and a rumbler to give you a vibration as well.
Well. Maxima finally gets to meet a real hero. Bravo.
To be honest? Scratch a fireman and you’ll find a big kid that like to play with fire, you feel an amazing rush at first every time. We appreciate the hero name, but few feel like that. I miss it myself, sux I had to leave it behind. The “hero” aspect kicks in when a building it almost engulfed and you KNOW there’s someone in there trapped, and all you have is an axe and a big water hose.
Plus people tend to ignore the PTSD.
My older brother’s a full time firefighter and was injured on the job (floor gave way under him and his oxygen tank broke his back, thankfully cleanly so it healed and he can still walk).
Between that and some of the horrific accidents he’s been to (he’s an auto-extrication specialist), it’s surprising he’s not farther gone than he currently is. Still needs a truckload of counselling.
That’s very true, I had nightmares for weeks after I pulled a friend out of an area of the factory that had 3 degree burns all over his face, arms, and back… the skin was handing off him in strings… and I had to drag him out of the bathroom he had got to, listening to his moans and screams while I took him outside, thank GOD the ambulance had just pulled in when i carried him outside… Sad thing was he wouldn’t talk to me anymore after that…
It tears you up but it’s worse if you CAN’T help someone like that! Having to stand there watching an apartment house burn because it’s too risky to enter and the supervisor won’t let anyone go in after the cries for help and the ladder truck is 10 mins away…
But you have to suck it up and keep going or next time someone might die if you don’t help… Yes I had counseling too. But not just for that.
I have a family member who does Search & Rescue in a rural area, loves being able to help people. But won’t talk about the searches that don’t end well, and won’t let anyone close to them fly in small planes.
Max is basically saying she’s Julie Strain (6’1″ actress/model who did her own stunts).
Max is basically saying she’s Julie Strain (6’1″ actress/model/bodybuilder who did her own stunts).
“You gotta tell me about that moustache” sounds like someone went out of their way to avoid “I moustache you a question”
“Well this isn’t just lip service, it’s my way of whiskering away any doubts about my ethnicity. Shaves me a lot of time explaining my hairitage.”
-1 for you cancelling out the +1 that I gave you earlier. Go sit in the corner and think about what you just did. Go! Git! Shoo!
Okay okay I’m going, sorry for bearding you. I knew that would get your goatee.
Okay throwing the antidote out now….
KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!
(cough cough) sorry old habits ;)
No, no. No need to apologize. That is a very appropriate response to bad puns.
Have a cookie. You’re all good.