Grrl Power #1232 – Crisis partially nipped
Lots of speculation on the previous pages, and quite a few of you called this outcome. This was broadly hinted at in the bonus comic for the Sydney Surrogate NSFW post a few months back. While canon, I’m not actually sure where in the timeline those events occur. Probably not too far in the future I guess, but we’ll have to see. Also the fact that Lapha isn’t totally suppressing Sydney was foreshadowed when she had to jump onto Garamm’s head after the Times Square battle. They seemed to cohabitate rather seamlessly. It’s unclear if totally dominating a host is something Lapha’s species can do and she’s just bad at it, or the effect is different with each species and/or individual they attempt it with.
The new vote incentive is up! Crimson and Scarlett have a present for Ingsol!
It’s them, they’re the present. They’ve decided that “Sire-versaries” are a thing and Ingsol has to be convinced this is a good idea each time. Everyone thinks his pair of names-that-are-synonyms-with-red sirelings who are both women and who were both turned in that age range that ensure peak hotness means he’s a dirty old man, but he actually isn’t. It just worked out that way. And don’t forget that while it looks like there’s a 25 year age gap between the girls and him, it’s actually much worse, as he is 700 years old, while Scarlett is something like 180 and Crimson is only 40. But at the same time it’s meaningless as they were both fully adults when they got turned, so it’s all copacetic.
As usual, Patreon has the pair of them in various states of undress.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Time for the almighty mittens – Halo’s greatest weakness. Just in case.
Urgg soo lame.
Just when it seemed tension would -finally- kick up a bit
We still don’t know what happens if Sydney grabs a ball and Lapha ‘yanks the joystick’.
Probably the same as would happen if Sydney yanks it herself.
This would only apply to the PPO, which is the only one that appers to be controlled by arm movements.
Remember, the PPO is explicitly the hardest one to use, like it has a safety that has to be turned off.
Actually, kinda agree here: not even a full page of Possessed-Sydney with the whereabouts of Sydney unknown
Not as lame as contradicting established lore to artificially increase tension
so true… why do some people allways want to throw lore and backstory out of the window for some cheap drama?
Instant gratification instead of logic.
This specific bit of lore was only mentioned once in an author blurb a while ago, so people simply aren’t aware of it.
Some people find the lore that makes the world consistent and viable to be less exciting than the “raw chaos” they crave. Except they don’t really crave raw chaos, or else they’d engage in self destructive behavior that would weed them out before they could start commenting intelligibly on forums.
Interesting, means the link to her orbs is not chemical or a mind thing. It’s potentially deeper than that, astral?
They know it’s not her trying to grab them.
One issue that’s hopefully not going to happen is that Lapha could take control of the Orbs if Sydney is unconscious. The Orbs are known to power down when she’s asleep.
I
I’m fairly sure that’s where chaining her up and putting mittens on her comes in.
99% sure Max would incinerate her and try to get the orbs to bond to someone else before she let a full on possession of Sydney learn how to orb.
Fairly sure Sydney would tell her to do it and choose who she wants to have the orbs before she let’s some random body snatch get away with them
No. Mittens. Taped on mittens
> I’m fairly sure that’s where chaining her up and putting mittens on her comes in.
And we know of at least two succubi who would be happy to help with that.
It seems it is something like a body + mind thing, maybe. Lapha only has Sydney’s body, which isn’t enough to control the orbs.
I forgot if this was how the spoiler tags work, but spoilers ahead.
In the bonus comic it shows Sydney in a healing tank while a surrogate body is being piloted by Sydney outside of the tank, but the orbs remain with Sydney inside the tank and not with the surrogate body.
Thus it is not just the mind either that is needed to control the orbs.
If we extend the Starship Analogy that’s been used in regards to the Orbs, then Sydney’s body is also technically a ship component and it is Sydney’s Mind/Soul that is the “Captain” of it all.
So even though Lapha is in the “Captain’s Chair” she’s not recognised as the Captain.
And when Sydney used that Surrogate Body, the Orbs stayed with their Captain and the Body that is part of their ship.
It could’ve been different if they actually cloned/copied Sydney.
Is Sydney’s mind “in” the surrogate body though, or is it basically just remote-piloting a robot?
Sydney is still inside Sydney
Telefactoring does seem the more logical probability. A remote control is probably more easily arranged than an actual transfer of consciousness.
Except they specifically break OUT from that tank to follow the surrogate body if you check the mini-comic at the end :)
What you didn’t see though is in the bonus comic that was part of the Patreon exclusives, the orbs finally shifted from Sydney’s dormant body to the rental body she was currently in. So they stick with her consciousness specifically, not the body.
“They know it’s not her trying to grab them.”
I think that’s just Sydney having sole control over the orbs and just ordering them to move out of the way when Lapha tries to grab them. By themselves the orbs would probably just ignore someone not Sydney trying to touch them.
(Do we have any examples of someone trying to touch the orbs? I can’t remember any, but I feel like it would have happened if only for testing.)
Max had the tube and attempted to yank on it. The tubes did a hard-stop and made Max whack her face into her own hand.
That was touching the tube, not the orbs.
There was one time where Math touched an orb, but that was with Sydney actively controlling it and holding it to block Math’ finger. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-133-tibiassault/
Yes – has been illustrated as such – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-641-well-thats-probably-not-good/
What makes you think it isn’t a mind thing?
I think some folks in this convo are using ‘mind’ (usually referring to soul/consciousness) instead of ‘brain’ (the skull-meats).
huh. I always tend to use ‘mind’ for the illogical aspects and’brain’ for the logical, but I do think that you’re correct about the conscious/physical
It seems like it’s mostly a mental thing, but mental in the fact that they are tied to HER consciousness and only hers.
Huh, so the vote incentives are canon.
Is there a gallery of the historical vote incentives somewhere?
Yeah. Dave posts all vote incentives on his Patreon, alongside nude pinups based of the same vote incentives.
Note that not all of them are canon. I doubt the one where they go to a bikini-only area is canon.
To be clear, they’re not available at the cheapest tier. I don’t remember what tier I’m at, but I don’t pay enough to see this particular set of pictures. Different vote incentives are placed at different tiers, so I have seen some of them.
Some of the older vote incentives are on his DeviantArt page.
What you didn’t see in the vote incentive though was in the bonus comic that was part of the Patreon exclusives, the orbs finally shifted from Sydney’s dormant body to the rental body she was currently in. So they stick with her consciousness specifically, not the body.
Some of them are, that’s why you need to vote every time and collect all of them: never know when one (or more) will be for reals (like that time Sydney entered the Halo-Competition… and lost, totally canon)
*immature giggling*
I like this. ^_^’
…Lapha still needs to be cashed out, however.
So, are the orbs doing this by themselves, or is Sydney controlling them out of Lapha’s grasp?
The conversation indicates it is the orbs rather than Sydney.
Also, is anyone else a little alarmed that Lapha’s first choice was the PPO?
Either… she knew what Sydney’s balls are before storming the cockpit, she learnt what they are after gaining entry, or it was just a random grab (Sydney shoulda let her grab the Unknown if it was a random choice and then revealed herself after several minutes of useless shaking to get the ball to do something)
The orbs are loyal to Sydney, they won’t orbey just anyone.
They are outside anyone else’s sphere of control.
Not everyone, did noone else remember that XIUGDIKBFG” (sorry dont remember how to spell her name and am “working” right now so cant look it up), got the ability of the orbs floating around her too when she touched Sydney?
You mean… Vahriah? The Boston Aztec Princess?
Varia is her hero name. Her real name is Xochitl Xochiquetzal. (yes, I looked up the spelling obviously)
IIRC, Varia did not end up with the orbs around her (I don’t want to get lost wandering the archives to find the page, sorry). In fact, nothing seemed to happen when she touched Sydney…BUT Sydney also wasn’t holding any orbs when Varia tried it. I seem to recall comment speculation that maybe Varia’s powerset would only function when Sydney was holding an orb, and it might vary depending on which orb or combination of orbs Sydney held.
They do orbit around the pair when Varia was holding Sydney’s hand, but neither of them noticed:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-324-she-should-put-all-those-answers-on-a-shirt/
Still say it’s just like the time Sydney camel-clutched Maxi’s legs while on the roof that time, no one batted a whisker about how Sydney’s balls moved to include Maxi in their orbit, only difference with Vahriah was that they were both standing up so the balls went around both heads
Except that’s not what happened at all. The only time I can think of in which Sydney’s orbs altered their path to accommodate another person is the instance in which she and Varia were checking their gestalt, and it’s three panels, with Varia and Sydney barely moving in between the first and second, but the orbs clearly expanding their orbit to include Varia. And with the way she comments on how there should be a clue as to what their gestalt is, but she can’t figure out what it is, is clearly meant to call attention to the orbs. If the author didn’t intend for this to be a clue that their gestalt is Varia being able to use the orbs, then it’s a hell of a red herring.
Go back.
Look again.
I was wond’ring when we’d get round to doing this again. ^_^
My own pet theory is that Sydney’s ADHD may be fouling Lapha up to some extent. Her thoughts may just be moving too quickly for her to grasp.
As for the orbs – this is Nth-level tech. No way was it going to be fooled by a body-jacking parasite. It can probably read Sydney’s thought patterns, and Lapha’s aren’t the same at all.
It figures something along those lines would happen.
Calling it now-
SOMEONE is NOT going to enjoy her sly body hijacking attempt. Looking forward to a few panels of pure Sydney cussing. It has been too long since one of her true rants.
The farce has little effect on the strong willed or scatter-brained.
Nothing to see here folks… just a typical spastic Thursday for Sydney…. move along….
Called it.
She’s a carjacker trying to drive a stick for the first time.
No, what’s happening is she can only control Sydney’s body, not the orbs.
Makes me wonder what Lapha was expecting to happen – she was very clear last time that complete mind domination isn’t something she can normally do. So if she didn’t drug Sydney or something with the kiss, and we assume the orbs might work (or they might not) what was the plan for after she possessed her?
This is surprisingly often an issue with villains plans – many of them would be doomed to failure from the start even without the protagonists involvement just based on what the villain themselves knew.
Something something Iroh yelling at Zuko about not thinking things through and then having nowhere to go.
If she could control the orbs, that’s a LOT of power available to someone ruthless enough to use it. Her net plan was probably to escape using the orbs, then selling them to the highest bidder.
Sure but that’s a big if. What’s the plan if the answer to the If turns out to be the very likely No?
Even under a Yes she’d only have partial control as Sydney is still in there and has equal or likely more control over the orbs even if they were only keyed to her body which Sydney still partially controls.
Remember, her first plan was to get Maxima, who would’ve made a much better target. This was the backup plan, or more accurately, the attempt to turn a complete failure into a win. Note that the only other one present is Daphne, who is almost certainly a worse target than Sydney. “Oh, damn, you took over my body. Now I only have five others to nab you with.”
Second, she normally has complete control over the body’s movement, other than speech, from what we’ve seen. Remember, she had to be instructed on the fine art of pissing with a penis–she couldn’t just turn over muscle control to him for a brief period.
Finally, Laph doesn’t read the comic. Her entire knowledge of how the orbs work come from a couple brief encounters, and maybe seeing Halo’s comments at the team intro to the press. She has no idea that the orbs are actually attuned to Sydney’s consciousness, rather than her nervous system (mind, not brain)–i bet she’d be totally able to control something like Cora’s hard-light suit.
That’s what the recommendation about going all your evil overlords plan reviewed by five year old is about.
Avoiding villainous body hijack? (well, partially, at least) another achievement for The Mighty Halo.
also, kinda hopped the orbs would recognize the administrator.
I always expected the Orbs to have some decent level of sentience. I still think they have some form of Artificial Intelligence that activates sfter they are bonded to their user for situations like this as well as other passive features like hovering around Syndey withour her having to actively focus on them
Welp this is a turn of events, the hijacker is getting smacked around.
Could be worse, I used to know a farmer in Africa who had his Truck nicked. In the cab of said truck was a bottle of cheap whisky laced with rat poison which he used in his barns to keep rodents down. They found the thieves still in the cabin of the truck about 15 miles away from where it was, stone dead, and the bottle mostly empty. What if the final unknown orb was a psionic defence tool? Lapha could have been pasted across half the local ether.
So how does this work? if Sidney teleports with the orbs right now, does Lapha get left behind while only Sid gets transported to the new spot?
I mean, since the orbs recognize Lapha is not Sidney, would she still be transported like her clothes on ‘Starship Sidney’? Or ejected like an unauthorized passenger?
Nah, I don’t think it’s that precise. Rather, Sydney controls the orbs no matter where her consciousness is, but Laph’s power still functions normally. So Sydney can teleport her body anyplace she wants to, but Laph still comes with the body.
THe bigger question is if Sydney can actually use the orbs directly–Laph can just bunch their hands into fists, and the orbs will simply continue to orbit with no ability to actually be used at all.
At what point should Max show up?!?
Probably any seconds considering how fast she can fly and how far syd’s store is to arcon HQ
*Yawn* And here I thought things were about to get dangerous. Guess not.
I wonder if Sydney could handle things via eating spicy food? If that ‘resistance’ is body based, or more mental based.
Though given that the vote incentive was canon… I don’t think that she’s going to come out of this unscathed. Since I assume it’s a healing thing, and not just for fun… I wonder if rental bodies count as some kind of ‘level up’ worthy experience. Or allow different unlocks, depending on unique abilities of said rental. There are those faded lines on the skill tree. Though whether it’d be useful when Sydney returns back to her own body is a different story. Not knowing the mystery options makes it really hard to predict. (And I think we’ve already been told that Sydney isn’t going to be getting all of them… Though I hope we’ll at least find out what she passed on eventually, rather than it being a forever mystery.)
Who knows, maybe having multiple hands would allow more than two orbs used at one time?
I’d been wondering if the orbs were MAC Address locked to Sydney’s consciousness, and it appears they are.
Puts me in mind of “Unconscious-by-astral-eviction Spidey won’t let Dr Strange grab the magic box” from No Way Home.
Hopefully, the next few pages go in a fully “The Man With Two Brains” direction.
Some people (including parental units) might see possession as being an improvement :P
They should use this opportunity to grab the orbs since Sydney is anchored to them. They they’d have Laupha trapped. Sydney’s strength is her greatest weakness.
Quick apply hot sauce. sydney is immune but Laupha will explode
Considering Lapha and Tenri are literal flames, yes Sydney, that is racist as well as being an insult
it might be racist, but seriously, would you give a rats ass about your bodyjackers sensibilities in that scenario? anything goes to rile them up :p
And once again called it. Knew that something like those orbs would have a failsafe for body possession. Hypnosis might be easier, but I have a feeling Sydney is immune to that as it involves slowing the thinking down to a certain degree, and as someone with A.D.H.D. myself… yeah, no, not happening.
Question towards the peanut crowd in the back: do they know what is happening? or just enjoying the show?
Yeah, the other demons (Parfait included) are likely to be pretty angry when they twig to that not being Tenri there. Her body is trivial, but they’ll want to know where her flame is right quick, she is a friend from school after all. Presumably they can’t tell the flames apart and have to rely on being familiar with the body or they’d have realized – unless they’re in on this, which seems a little unlikely.
Garamm definitely didn’t fight back, and they had the same goal(s) anyway. So it’s not surprising that they worked together rather seamles.
Lapha is still being kind of dumb, given that she’s surprised that the others could identify that Sydney, known ‘non-burning-eyes-and-flame-in-front-of-the-forehead-haver’, might niot be herself if she has … burning eyes and a flame in front of the forehead.
She was counting on gaining control of Sydney’s balls, and it wouldn’t matter what anyone knew
Even if the orbs were like Sydney’s body, she’d only have contested control over them, so what’s her plan then? Sure, she can take out enemies with the PPO, and then what? How does she get away with Sydney doing her best to not let her?
From what we’ve seen, her ability to puppet someone’s body is absolute, except for speech (which, admittedly, is weird)–while she was in Garamm’s body, she couldn’t even voluntarily let him take care of going to the bathroom. I suspect that she’s also occasionally body-jacked cyborgs and had no issues using the physical connection to the nervous system to control the prosthetics. So there’s no reason for her to NOT think that she’d have control of the orbs, and that they came with enough feedback for her to be able to use them.
And, of course, we have to remember that this is an improvised/impulsive option when her failure to lure Maxima became apparent.
“From what we’ve seen, her ability to puppet someone’s body is absolute, except for speech”
WoG is that it’s shared control, even with the rightful owner having the last word: “They’re still separate entities, and both have control if the other one doesn’t object. She, and most of her species are relegated to passenger if the host doesn’t want to play along.” https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-931-escape-from-new-york/
It’s also what we’re seeing here, with both Sydney and Lapha using facial expressions and body language of Sydney’s body to support their speech.
I’m not sure what happened in the bathroom part. Lapha didn’t want to see it and turned Garamm’s head away, which lead to a mess?
“And, of course, we have to remember that this is an improvised/impulsive option when her failure to lure Maxima became apparent.”
1. Do we know that? Maybe she gave up on Maxima and tried for other earth supers? Sydney would make sense, since what she has looks like technology more than inherent powers, with better chances to steal or reverse engineer.
2. If she was going to take Maxima, what was the plan there? Body hijacking runs into the same problem, and she doesn’t seem to have anything else prepared, or she could have used it on Sydney. Last time she had a stasis gun to neutralize Max and a stasis pod to capture her and a crew to carry her away, fight anyone else and take the starship to get away. That was still reckless and overly optimistic, but from what she knew it at least could have worked.
3. Improvising is still stupid if it can’t work to begin with. The right play would have been to cut her losses and keep pretending to be Tenri until she can get away – or maybe another opportunity opens? An actual opportunity that has an actual chance of success, this time?
Maybe she originally planned to rely on Brelx & Co to take out Sydney, then hijack her while she’s unconscious or something like that. Still a long shot, but it can work – and if it doesn’t she can get away without losing much.
That would emotionally explain that she was disappointed her plan didn’t work and refused to cut her losses – but still dumb.
I think the “How do they know I’m not you” is aimed solely at the orbs, not people
I don’t think she realizes what the orbs are, pretty sure the fact that they’re “Nth-tech” isn’t widely known (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-690-gotterdammermcguffins/ and https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-691-the-full-sydney/ ).
Heck seems like Nth tech isn’t even widely acknowledged as a possibility and Dabbler can’t detect anything at all off of them
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-103-i-think-dabbler-is-about-to-detect-the-peoples-elbow/
So it’s not completely unreasonable for Lapha to think if she can control the body she can control the orbs
So … given that Lapha really is nothing but a flaming eye …
Should we measure her evilness on the micro-Sauron scale?
no. % of height of Barad-dur. she’s at 2%
You haven’t taken over my body…. I’ve trapped you inside it with ME.
I’m thinking it’s going to take Lapha a long, long, loooong time to recover from this, the therapy may take years.
Laptha walks past a trashcan with a “Flaming-hot Cheetos” box sitting on top, and has an involuntary shudder.
Laptha wakes up in a cold sweat and immediately shouts, “No! Not the stuffed ghost peppers again!”
Instead of just making whatever orb Lappie reaches for dodge, Sydney could just move them all out of her arms reach in different directions, to the maximum distance they can move. This would effectively lock her in place and eliminate any possibility of her somehow grabbing an orb.
We haven’t actually seen the orbs resist Sydney moving without a physical barrier so that might not work.
Yeah, good luck trying to posses someone with ADHD. It’s like trying to hack a computer that randomly errors or redirects every other request in a pattern that takes ages to even halfway predict…
She’s a bodyjacker, mot a mindjacker. ADHD probably won’t effect her since she’s still using her little flame thing as her brain.
It’s probably not cool to mention anime here, but this reminds me of “Konosuba” when Darkness was possessed by the demon mask, with similar hilarious internal/external conversations. It doesn’t go so well when a demon intends to cause unspeakable suffering to the possessed, when said possessed is a nigh-invulnerable masochist…
The author mentions anime and manga himself, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be fine for the audience to do the same.
Readers mention other anime, comics and what-have-yous all the time
We need to find laugha’s weaknesses. Please don’t let a hot guy with abs turn up. Or something shiny.
I’m looking forward to seeing Sydney making it really hard for Lapha to move as she gets the orbs hung on all sorts of things.
If it weren’t for the burning eyes and a flame in front of the forehead it could take days for her friends to recognize she’s been possessed. as opposed to off her meds.
If the orbs aren’t connected to the body or the mind, then we’ve just seen evidence supporting the existence of the soul.
Lapha gets sentenced to 100 years as an eternal flame in Halo’s emporium
Hey, is your username a reference to John Ringo constantly killing Joe Buckley?
Heck, most if not all of Baen Book’s authors have killed Joe Buckley at least once. Some have been nice enough to only wound him…repeatedly.
I’m reading David Weber’s ‘Mission of Honor’, and he not only killed Joe Buckley as a person, he noted 4 or 5 starships (depending on if you count a cruiser as well as all the super dreadnaughts) named after him that got destroyed.
Baen even printed a book: The Many Deaths of Joe Buckley.
Fairly sure it was just stated that they are, indeed, connected to the mind, seeing how Sydney is still inside her body
Some folks in this forum seem to use ‘mind’ differently than others. Usually, though, it’s supposed to be a distinct from or an emergent property of the brain. That said, if it’s fully distinct, then yes, this fictional reality would have something analogous to ‘souls’, which is pretty common in supers universes, really.