Grrl Power #1236 – Bespoke accommodations
Happy leap comic! If today wasn’t a leap year, it would make zero difference in when you received this page, so… there’s that?
Don’t feel too bad, Sydney. Don’t know you that you’re judged by your enemies’ regard for you? Also your sensibly cautious allies. This containment solution would also work pretty well against mages. At least the ones that need to wiggle their fingers to cast spells. The fact that the chair is obviously designed for someone who is exactly 5 feet tall? You know, mages are from the olden times when people didn’t have as much food and were usually shorter… no, this room was designed for you.
BTW, I know a taser doesn’t really knock people out, at least not for an extended period of time, but when Harem needs someone knocked out immediately, she goes for the taser-sedative combo. Also she just wanted to taze Sydney.
BTW, it’s obnoxious that Noun Taser is spelled with an “s” but Verb Taze is spelled with a “z.” Like, was there a word “tase” that the committee in charge of such things were worried people were going to confuse it with? I know “taser” is actually an acronym for “Tom A. Swift Electric Rifle” but the guy could have done us all a favor and changed his last name to Zwift, so both the noun and verb have a “z” in them. Also there’s a million dudes named “Swift” but probably a lot fewer named “Zwift.” You have to have a unique name if you want to be famous. Imagine if Einstein’s last name was Jones or Smith. Or if Ernst Mach’s last name was something boring like Johnson? Or if it didn’t happen to be cool, and instead was something like Longbottom? The movie Firefox would have been a lot different if Clint Eastwood was like “Let’s push it to Longbottom 4.”
My point is, have a cool name if you’re going to invent or name something.
The new vote incentive is up! This is a bit of a weird one as it’s a character that hasn’t appeared in the comic.
It’s my Ifrit Pathfinder 1e monk, Fray! Ifrits don’t really make great monks in Pathfinder, as player characters they get a +2 to Dex and Cha, but -2 to Wis. For monks, Dex is good, Cha is largely irrelevant, but Wis is important as it can add to your AC and also has something to do with Ki points I think. But I didn’t care. I wanted a character with dark blue/gray skin and glowing orange hair, so that’s what I picked. (I don’t think Ifrit even really have dark skin, so maybe she’s 1/4 Drow? Don’t care. I think she looks cool.) Will she show up in the comic? I mean… maybe? Probably in a Dabbler flashback, but who knows?
As usual, Patreon has her in delicto flagrante.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Gonna get ugly when she needs to use the bathroom…
Catheter and nappies
That’ll be ugly when Sydney asks them who’s responsible for doing all of that.
They have staff for that. Apart from various doctors, there should be some nurses around.
Everyone of them is qualified to say “It’s my job” in cases like that.
Literal Doctor and psychiatrist on staff, and on site, assuming this is at HQ, which it shouldn’t be.
Speaking as someone who has worked in medicine, and had to restrain patients, they probably didn’t cath her, as that’s classed as an invasive procedure and generally requires consent (yes, extenuating circumstances, but I wouldn’t sign it in this case, so doubt any of my docs would have either), and as unpleasant as changing diapers can be, it’s general not that bad with a nonambulatory patient. Also, random factoid, vegetarian diaper changes don’t smell as bad.
The parents in the audience will know what I’m talking about. Once kids start eating meat….egads.
Of greater concern, IMO, is how Sydney will deal with being confine like this. Again, I mean. There is significant risk of a very serious PTSD episode, and long-term recurrence. Not to mention just living with the knowledge that her chain of command clearly has this in place. Yes, it is absolutely reasonable, but it also severely undermines trust.
Think back the first Avengers movie. The prison sphere they stuck Loki in? Banner recognized – and stated out loud – that it was intended for him.
There’s a big difference between being vaguely aware that the people you work have the willingness/ability to turn violence against you, and being directly confronted by it. That gets vastly multiplied when you factor in that they have the sanction of state violence, and nobody will be helping you if they decide to use that against you.
And on a personal note, I really, really, REALLY hope nobody tries a gaslighting joke. Coming in and talking to her as if she’s been here as a mental patient for years and is insane. Super not okay.
While there is severe risk of PTSD I don’t think that’s a topic the comic wants to deal with; wrong place wrong time, basically.
Sydney is also the genre-savvy expert on the team. She was keeping part of her toolset hidden for a while in case she had to go up against an Evil Maxima – basically planning for something not too different from this. She knows – as she even states outright here – that there’ll be plans for how to deal with any team member going rogue that aren’t just “Oh, we’ll send this other team member after them.” The room itself might be a general holding cell, with the chair and lockbox being the specific “Sydney went bonkers” equipment.
Try a stomo bag, one that bypasses the intestines entirely (specially the lower), that stinks like no-bodies business, and doesn’t matter what they eat!
As for this countermeasure to when Sydney goes off the reservation? Nope, it won’t damage the trust she has in Archon, it would probably reinforce the trust that they have a means to stop her without killing her or worse
But *do* they? The only reason they were able to restrain Sydney this well is because at the time she was a five foot and change 100 lb.-soaking-wet human with the closest thing to a super power being her ability to handle spicy food. If she’d had access to her orbs, she has demonstrated the ability to murder everyone around her with relative ease. She might even be able to go toe to toe with Max, at least defensively, between her shield and flight. Or drag out a fight in a populated area where Archon would shy away from massive collateral damage that would be necessary to breach said shield (even without Sydney transforming the air into something combustible making any sort of spark around her into a mobile FAE).
And Sydney is nowhere near the peak of her powers. And Sydney has shown a willingness to hide her capabilities. She might be paranoid or genre-savvy enough to know that she may be approaching the point where Archon would consider her dangerous enough to terminate rather than capture. And that’s assuming they haven’t done something, like implant a killswitch in her while she was out.
Doesn’t mean this is the only way of stopping her, and they could have tapped her clock while she was out and she would never even wake up again
> Yes, it is absolutely reasonable, but it also severely undermines trust.
There should have been someone sitting in the room with her, waiting for when she woke up. Waking up restrained, in a room with no windows, all by yourself will do a number on anyone. She could be sunk to the bottom of the ocean with no way out for all she knows.
And it wouldn’t have hurt for her to be restrained lying down, for back-pain’s sake.
Her comfort is NOT a concern. She’s being detained here. Both as Lapha, AND as Sydney, now that they have genuine evidence that she’s hiding stuff from them, they’re gonna wanna know WHAT else she hasn’t told them. And, depending on how willing she is to reveal it, they may or may not decide to just seal the room and pretend it never existed, along with its contents.
I’m a bit confused about what secrets people mean. The only secret she blurted out in the last pages was the Nth tech, and that’s a secret from the rest of the universe, not from ARCHON; Dabbler most likely clued them in, and it doesn’t mean much to them anyways, since Earth’s not part of the spacefaring galacting cool kids (yet).
The only “secret info” were details on alien dicks and I don’t think the american government cares that much about those :D
Sydles wasn’t keeping anything from Archon.
Calm the frak down.
Has Sydney concealed the possibility that the orbs are Nth tech? We didn’t see her full AAR of her time away from Earth, and we also haven’t seen all her interactions with the theoreticians trying to figure out the orbs, so it’s entirely possible Archon is already aware of the possibility – even if not from Sydney then possibly from Dabbler (I did a quick search for instances of Nth tech being referenced, and when Deus was explaining the Superion field and they were musing over who could have possibly created it, Sydney and Dabbler both eyed the orbs and Deus responded with “My thoughts as well”). I guess she has concealed her fancy spacemagic eyeglasses from them, but I don’t think that’s too big of a deal, particularly as she has had Dabbler give them a look (they’re a potential security risk if Cora secretly set them up to record and transmit to her, but about the only way Dabbler would have missed that is if she were in league with her, and Dabbler already has sufficient access that giving Sydney secret spyglasses wouldn’t make a difference).
Also, I don’t see Maxima approving of what amounts to extrajudicial execution of her subordinate, and while she is loyal to the US government, I don’t see her compromising her personal morals to that extent. And the US government does not want to risk turning Maxima into an enemy.
Nth tech is a supposition, I think Dabbler’s the person who mentioned it initially (either her or Cora referencing Dabbler on the station “Dabbler calls them the ‘Nth’ tech”)
We can be pretty confident that Sydney’s told them all that she knows about her experiences in space (She’s definitely told them about her battles, it happened on screen and they’re away she can pop back to the space station)
So there’s no evidence she’s actually keeping things back.
Jon just seems to want an excuse to kill Sydney
Yeah, and that reaction would be a damn guaranteed way to make her an enemy
Bharda is quite correct about not cathing people in restraints. Aside from the matter of consent, it is risky for both the person in restraints and the person administering the catheter. I spent most of my career working at a maximum security forensic psychiatric facility and have been elbows deep in the entire process more than is comfortable to think about. It is rough both on the person being restrained and those doing the restraint. Harem makes the crack about every one wanting to zap Sydney but it’s actually extremely stressful to have to restrain someone that you interact with day in, day out. We spent a lot of effort training people to avoid using restraint and seclusion and when used, how to do it without injuring anyone. As it was, employees were far more likely to get injured than patients. Archon hasn’t specified their policy and procedure for personal restraint but in a psychiatric setting there are a ton of regulations for managing a restraint. It is assumed that you are going to have to clean up a mess from time to time but that is the least of your problems with a sustained restraint. Sustained immobility can lead to serious things like deep vein thrombosis. Even a physically fit person can be injured by sustained immobility. PTSD is a significant issue. At least at the facility where I worked mechanical restraint was an intervention of last resort. Most people, even someone who is deeply psychotic, will calm down when being held in a personal restraint. Despite being the place where a person went if they were too aggressive to stay at the other state psychiatric hospitals we avoided mechanical restraint as much as possible. All of this is just to point out that aside from the loss of trust in her employer and coworkers, there are real problems with keeping Sydney in mechanical restraints for any length of time. As it is it’s going to be a race for which leaves Sydney being the most messed up, having her body forcibly taken over by a foreign entity or being imprisoned by her friends and coworkers.
On a mechanical note: Restraint cuffs don’t need locks. If they can defeat the straps that go through the buckles a little lock isn’t going to slow the restrained person down and it is just one more key to keep track of. Restraint mittens are a thing, though they are usually for the prevention of self harm. You don’t leave shoes or boots on a person in restraints. It cuts down on the risk of getting kicked but it’s more important to check the circulation in the feet. The thumb and finger restraints are overkill and a circulation risk. Once you have the mittens and restrain hands at the wrist Sydney isn’t going to be able to do anything. It looks cool in the illustration but that bodysuit thing isn’t going to work very well unless it is a uniform that she dressed herself in and I don’t think that is going to happen with sedated Sydney. Padded cuffs at the wrists, waist and ankles will pretty much get the job done. A restraint chair should not hold a person in an upright position. It is too easy for the head to tilt forward and restrict the airway. Sorry about the info dump but it is a thing that seldom gets done right in any media.
Coming from a similar (if less extreme) kind of background, I fully agree with everything you said and congrats for explaining it more eloquently than I could before I got to doing it. You spared me the effort, thanks. ;-)
All true, assuming they CARE about the comfort of the person being restrained. Someone who is never intended to see the light of day again, they might decide no longer deserves such human amenities.
Careful not to cut yourself on all that edge.
*eyerolling intensifies*
Thank you for the insights. Even without first hand experience, that chair immediately struck me as a terrible way to secure anyone long term. Bad for the restrained, and bad for anyone trying to move them, feed them, etc. etc.
Best in-world explanation I can think of is they didn’t have the Sydney Room ready yet, so they strapped her to a chair in an interrogation room for a few minutes while they worked out the details of Long-term Sydney Storage (or even just to have somewhere safe for a few minutes while they called Zev and the Twilight Council to see if anyone had a quick solution.)
Given how they’d restrained Vehemence, they seem to be more considerate with long term storage of people.
The thing is, in real life you don’t do long term restraint. Unless you intend to kill the person anyway. Even giving the restrained person a drink is choking hazard and feeding them is right out. The worst outcome I am aware of during a restraint occurred when an employee attempted to remove soiled clothing from restrained person. Suffice to say that criminal charges and lawsuits were the order of the day.
I have to give Dave props for really doing a reasonable job on the seclusion room. Most people have ever only seen such things on TV or in the movies. He is dealing with the issues of the Sydneyverse. As such I agree that it would be a short term solution while they figure out how to peel Lapha out of Sydney.
As if getting a patient’s consent has ever stopped a doctor before. I suppose we can assume that a fictional superpowered branch of the military would be held to a higher standard than the US’s medical cartels, though.
Stop believing the right wing nut jobs.
Yes there have been infringements, no they’re not common and they’re certainly not “every doctor”
Why do you assume I got that information from people who want me and every other transgender person on the planet killed? It is my own experiences I am believing in, and it doesn’t matter if ‘most’ doctors can be trusted. Have you ever heard of the phrase “One bad apple spoils the bunch”? Being sure that ‘most’ doctors I go to will not attempt to violate me doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
You do realise that phrase goes both ways, right?
Most transgender people just want to live the life they believe is right for them, and then you have others who want everyone to be the same as them (may just be a few, but… “OBASTB”
It’s actually ‘barrel’, not ‘bunch’ by the way
Oh boy, now it’s my turn to tell someone to “Stop believing in right wing nut jobs”. No Guesticules, I can promise you there are exactly zero trans people who want to make everybody transgender. I can’t even begin to explain to you how asinine that idea is.
Right, just like you know every doctor on the planet, you know every trans person as well
That comment wasn’t to be taken anymore seriously than yours
Sure. Keep on pretending like spreading hate-mongering drivel about a very vulnerable group of people is exactly the same as having legitimate concerns about members of a profession that holds your very life in their hands and lets that get to their heads more often than is acceptable.
When you say “As if getting a patient’s consent has ever stopped a doctor before” you’re making a claim that all doctors ignore consent.
Yes there’s some pretty messed up stuff happening in terms of treatment of trans people but your claim went way beyond what the situation justifies
Looking at the setup, and the way they put multiple redundancy in the restraints, I can figure no way they would be able to change diapers without critically compromising everything but the mittens themselves, which seems contradictory with what they did. If they were to keep Syd in relatively healthy, humane, and dignified circumstances like a restrained patient, they would have to change those diapers 2 times a day or so.
The only solution I can think of in mundane terms is if they were to keep Syd sedated all the time, but this does not seem to be the case, and it would not solve the problem of Lapha having full control of Syd’s body while she is unconscious. This is why I am sticking to my idea of the chair being enchanted to catch and teleport waste away barring contrary evidence. This assuming, consent issues aside, that Syd would have already noticed, and loudly complained, if she had catheters in place.
As it concernes PTSD issues from hard evidence that her co-workers and friends had this contingency in place, yes it is a serious blow but we got abundant evidence that Syd has exceptional resilience to all kinds of trauma that would be life-destroying for others. It is one of her defining features by now. Moreover, she is the genre-savvy expert of the team and she is totally aware that contingencies like this may be a sad necessity in her calling. She planned her own personal contingencies in the case Max went Dark Max, and she is not much of an hypocrite, so we can expect them to be reasonably forgiving to her friends/allies/coworkers.
This, of course, does not exonerate them from their duty to provide her as much comfort as possible, such as showing up soon once she woke up and reassuring her they are working round the clock on a solution to remove Lapha safely (for Syd). And providing her with ways to pass the time. Boredom is torture, even more so for someone with ADHD.
As for Lapha, I could not care less, nor I expect Archon to, if she gets destroyed in the removal process or she survives it and becomes a lifelong resident of Archon’s supervillain prison. She had her chance when she escaped her failed attempt to kidnap Syd, she blew it.
At the very most, I expect they could retrieve Lapha’s previous host body (it was left in Syd’s store IIRC), put it in front of Syd, and tell Lapha “OK, you transfer back to this NOW, no buts or ifs. Or we don’t care what happens to you if you don’t”. Or they could use some empty clone/golem/robot body.
I expect today’s update will show that this particular restraint setup was only intended to hold until they could get set up for the Lapha removal process. As you say, it looks like it’s viable for hours not days.
I think Dr. Frost had at one time said that Sydney is far too distractable to get PTSD or something along those lines.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-753-a-civilized-abeyance/
Specifically she said: “Not to be flippant, but if nothing else, I believe she may be, ah… too distractible to fixate.”
Sydney’s already had several traumatic scenarios that she’s been through and has been fine up until this point.
1) Getting stranded on an alien planet with one, then three killer skyscraper-sized kaiju, with no way back (as far as she knew at the time).
2) Getting captured by Concretia and having a truly evil man about to shoot her in the head and kill her for the orbs.
3) Aforementioned man being exploded into bite-sized chunks in front of her and splattering all over her as she watched.
4) Being in the middle of a living sandstorm with a panicky succubus/genie yelling “What do we do what do we do!?!”
5) Being sexually accosted by a lust-ridden succubi/genie who wouldnt take no for an answer until her eyeball was licked.
Am I missing any other traumatic incidents?
Oh yeah I almost forgot:
6) Dying before time ‘rewinded’ (I know it didnt actually rewind but easiest way to describe the save-point).
Maybe that throne is multi-purpose?
Well, Syd would be aware if she had catheter and/or nappies in place and probably would have commented on it already unless she is too distracted. My best guess, with magic being an available resource, is that throne is enchanted with a spell to catch and teleport human waste to disposal. It seems a safer and more dignified alternative than the above. Esp. so since the contingency might well occur of sane, innocent, and loyal Syd being compromised by hostile mental manipulation or possession as it happened.
I’m just gonna assume the orbs bonking sound like that Half Life physics noise. You know the one.
You mean the air-duct clang?
No this
https://youtu.be/_GGfz-o5khc?si=o7E4944OG_-DGMou
So, like sparkler-type fireworks popping, then.
I’d slow it down, since they’re not shown as going crazy trying to get to her, but otherwise, sure. That works.
Actually, Tom A. Swift is a fictious character, from series of books…
https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Swift-10-Electric-Adventures-ebook/dp/B00JL47ZPE/
That’s just one of the many books about him.
And yeah, the inventor of the Taser was a fan of the series.
I always thought Tom Swift was the inspiration for Marvel’s Tony Stark character.
He is.
And the original ones had a famous tendency to employ excess adverbs, to the point an entire category of jokes was created based around it, Tom Swifties. The premise of those is to have Tom say something and use an adverb that relates back to the statement.
“I have a thousand dollars,” Tom said grandly.
“I’m the inspiration for the Taser,” Tom said shockingly.
“I’ll take the prisoner downstairs” Tom said condescendingly.
If we had upvotes, I’d tell you to take mine and choke on it…..
And technically, what was used at the end of the prior page is a “stun gun.” A taser actually shoots two darts with wires attached that conduct high voltage from the pistol that fired the darts. See http://www.taser.com.
Isn’t it actually Tase not Taze?
Have I been writing it wrong…
Well Webster says Tase so unless it’s some regional thing.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tase
It’s Taze if you wanna be cool.
Doesn’t it say you need to use a Q to pretend to be cool?
That’s going to be a bit awkward with this particular word though :)
No, ‘Q’ is only if you want to be Qool. Which is *like* cool, only even more pretentious.
Kewl.
Cool by nineties standards at least.
It’s an American English thing to spell tase with a z, same with recognise, authorise, etc.
Similar to how they seem to have an allergy to the letter U in words like colour, armour, harbour, etc.
Also, most of us can’t be bothered to pronounce the h in herb, despite the word having an h in it. :)
Quite deliberate, too. We can thank Noah Webster – though he felt it made spelling more regular, he also wanted to clearly differentiate American and English spelling.
Though if we wanted to be snarky, we could argue that since we’re the largest population of native English speakers by definition our spelling and usages are the correct ones. I’m sure that will go over really well in the rest of the world.
To be fair, there’s probably enough differences now between the various international Englishes to warrant their own foreign language dictionaries and translators.
Then again, there’s probably enough differences between the various Englishes in the UK alone for that as well!
I’m told Cornwall dialect is very close to North Eastern American dialect. I’m also told there are quite the number of dialects in the British Isles. Something like 40 by actual count.
I recently heard that American English is actually closer to Old English than British English is today.
I’ve learned Oxford English – and your s examples were written with a z back then.
And what function does that letter “u” serve in those words? How would you pronounce them without it? Is it any different? Extraneous letters just waste space, and make the language harder to learn.
The letters “u”, in honour, armour, harbour, etc. were taken from the Latin spelling of these words. My understanding is that they were removed from English pronunciation long before Webster, which made them totally useless.
I wonder if Dabbler used her memory hammer on all the bystanders to make them forget they heard Nth tech mentioned.
There would be legal problems with this if any of them were human.
Although for all I know, in this universe, thanks to Dabbler, those rights might be extended to demons as well. But based on our universe, there would be legal problems mainly if any of them were human. Or at least if any of them were american citizens. Men in Black do such illegal things. Same as the SCP with their amnestics. Oh and also the murdering of D-class personnel. :)
Legal problems are for civilians and organizations that have to follow rules. Not still-semi-shadowy government organizations tied to the DoD.
That’s hollywood talking. In real life, even shadowy organizations have to follow rules and laws. The method for arrest and punishment might be different procedurally, but they still exist.
Are there any existing laws against altering people’s memories? I wouldn’t think most legislators to be so forward-thinking. We don’t have the capability to alter people’s memories, so we don’t have a pressing need for legislation against it, but the concept of brainwashing has been around long enough that maybe we would have some preventative laws against pursuing it.
Memory altering IS a thing of real life. Ugh.
https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/memory-manipulated#:~:text=Our%20memories%20may%20not%20be,according%20to%20Elizabeth%20Loftus%2C%20PhD.
They can be manipulated, but not just straight up excised or replaced. It’s a slow process of gaslighting or lying or suggestion that someone can defend against, but would probably be hard to legislate against. Most people are pretty trusting, and rely on other people to remember things for them. They externalize, depend on group memory. So they’re susceptible to certain kinds of memory manipulation. But it’s not anything quite like Dabbler’s amnesia hammer or the MiB neuralyzer.
Agreed. And there have been clear indications that the law in the Grrlverse is being amended to properly address the potential impacts of various superpowers. In particular, Dabbler told Parfait that using magic to alter someone’s opinions is illegal.
Not, you know, that this stopped Dabbler from doing this to her own teammates.
There are not since memory alteration does not exist yet, like you mentioned. But there are laws against stuff like kidnapping and assault, which is something that can be used in a case of forcibly being brainwashed or having your memories altered, unless it doesnt involve any touching whatsoever (for assault).
I could still see a creative lawyer arguing it as being kidnapping though.
Dabbler is currently too sick to do much of anything.
Depends on how long Sydney’s been out, and how long a mana-potion hangover takes to recover from.
Honestly, just a regular cell with the Orbs in a safe outside one wall of the cell is more than enough for Sydney. The additional measures are likely to prevent Lapha from doing anything to Sydney. Hence all the additional padding that would leave her unable to bring Sydney to harm. I’ve no doubt believing they could have had such a cell and setup for plenty of other potential villains who might require such restraint for equally necessary reasons from possession to abilities that use the hands and such.
I don’t know about that. Even if ess restrictive means would’ve sufficed, they probably didn’t want to take any chances with what is effectively a person of mass destruction.
Redundancy is the name of the game. The orbs are locked away in a box (transparent so they can make certain Sydney hasn’t managed to sneak any out somehow). If the box fails, there are additional boxes over her hands (again, transparent for viewing). If the box fails, she’s stuck in mittens. If the mittens fail, her hands are strapped down such that she couldn’t fit an orb under them to grab anyway. Also, there’s redundancy in case things fail in the opposite direction – her hands are restrained three times over to make it difficult for her to free them, she’s strapped down so she can’t get up, and her legs are bound so if she does somehow get up she can’t do much more than hop.
I’m actually reminded a bit of Skitter from Worm – when she surrendered, they locked her up and basically implemented security as though she were at least one class higher than they had estimated in each category (hilariously, they had her in restraints meant for someone with super strength, when she was probably only a bit stronger than Sydney). I’m hoping Archon’s solution works better than the Protectorate’s did, since the latter still managed to underestimate Skitter. Of course, Archon certainly isn’t going to be psychologically torturing Sydney by making her think they’re sending Maxima out to beat up and capture all her friends (killing one in the process), so there’s that at least…
Never understood why Lex thought that was a good idea in the first place. Given her history, it should’ve been obvious that it’d make her more likely to swear bloody vengeance than fealty.
Being constantly underestimated might as well have been one of Taylor’s secondary powers.
And the point was to break her, not to get her to swear fealty. They wanted a nice, public, show trial of the broken queen to show that the PRT still had control after the Echidna fallout and the city takeover. And Lex thought Taylor was fully restrained and couldn’t retaliate.
He probably should have paid more attention to the Dinah’s prediction he would die painfully and maybe soon.
In addition to a certain degree of sadism and ego (they wanted to prove they were “better” than the little girl who had been kicking their asses in nearly every conceivable way for some time), I believe it’s because they thought this was all part of some grand scheme by Skitter (she had a reputation as an extremely skilled liar, as well as a formidable mastermind), and they didn’t want to fall for it. Alexandria was trying to get her to play her hand, confident she’d be able to handle anything Skitter threw at them, particularly if Skitter was backed into a corner and consumed with emotion. She was very, very wrong.
It gets even better. She’s in a full body cover all–except the head since they presumably want to interrogate her and aren’t ready to be *that* cruel yet. The point is, Sydney told them she can only use her powers while holding the orbs, but whoever designed this holding cell either assumed Sydney could be lying or could eventually use the orbs by them simply touching her, so by giving her this outfit (with an assumed hood nearby), they further reduce the chance of her being able to use the orbs by them pressing against her skin.
yep, I just assume that there is a dot in that skill tree for teleport orbs to me AND control them by mind only.
One is tempted to theorize . . . There are two orbs without known functions. ARC assumes they must be held in the hand to use them. And that Sydney has told the truth about them all–that they have to be hand held to function, and that those two have unknown powers. But, put on your paranoid hat here, like so many government black agencies like to do “to protect the world and the nation from unknown threats.” Let’s suppose Sydney can, and HAS, established a mental connection with either or both of those unknown orbs. (Or, that’s what the MIB / ARC has to assume if they’re worried about being prepared to incapacitate her.) If she THINKS at one or the other “unknown orb” and can operate it, do either orb have the capability to transport her, or to change her surroundings, or manipulate reality, etc., in ways she could get at the other orbs, or simply disappear with all the orbs to some unknown plane or safe house or parallel universe? Only time will tell. Granted, I think this is pretty extreme hypothesizing, unlikely in virtually ALL cases. (“Virtually”: In essence, but not in fact.)
She already has some mental control over the orbs, it’s just the author is inconsistent on how much force the orbs themselves can apply.
She’s shown to be able to knock down Math and take out a supervillain with her orbs. If she just wills them to punch through the barrier and return to her… what could stop them? They exert enough force to defy Maxima easily!
This point of how much strength and power just controlling the orbs potentially has is something the author has not explored, yet they are definitely weapons in and of themselves…
It seems clear to me that there’s a difference between the orbs’ deliberate motion and the tether between them and Sydney. The latter is extremely strong.
The question is just how the tether works, because we’d expect it to be able to pull Sydney along. It’s anyone’s guess whether there’s a satisfying explanation behind this. If you treat it as an arbitrary rule, there’s nothing strange about it. It’s just strange how this rule is enforced and why something that can stop Maxima can’t use that to move the orbs themselves. (I’m suspecting some sort of video game logic, because the orb skilltree also appears to run on video game logic.)
So it’s not inconsistent, the behavior is well defined. It’s just unclear whether the mechanism behind it makes sense.
Taters Face agrees.
is it comfy?
Oh hey, they remebered when she said mittens would make her mostly harmless!
Morbid question: If this was a horror comic and Sydney’s hands get chopped off, do the orbs find a new master?
Honestly, she should have expected this. She already spoke to Maxima about mind control, and Maxima said people were working on it.
Do the orbs rotate on an axis? We know Sydney can conscious control the position, but if she can control their rotation, they could in theory grind their way out of containment, then smash the arm rest off what looks to be nothing more than a wooden chair…
Also assuming she’s not under observation by someone capable of immediately rendering her unconscious.
We know they can go into a sleep mode if left alone a while, but as long as they stay in the range limit they can do whatever they or Sydney wants. I do suspect it’s an unconscious act on her part though. Archon did take a tip from when Concretia had her contained during the attempt to take Max in New York.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-900-recapitation/
If I were in charge of designing said cell, I’d use total internal reflection to detect any damage to the orb box and trigger a progressive disincentive.
Seems like there is barely enough room for Sydney’s balls to jostle each other, certainly not enough room to do anything
Not sure how you’re getting that the chair is wood rather than concrete or metal.
Not much about the physical properties has been revealed to the readers. We know they’re rigid, we know their optical properties, but they could very well be frictionless. We don’t even know if they have mass or temperature.
There’s a wood texture, or what seems like one
One will get you three that the box has a car window style shatter sensor in it. The moment the glass is compromised, room fills with knock out gas, alarms everywhere, and the super-warden (and/or Maxima) shows up to re-secure things.
Panel 8 confirms that Lapha can control Sydney’s body when she’s unconscious, so that justifies the precautions, IMHO.
If Lapha can control syd’s body when she’s unconscious, why was her head lolled to the side like that and drooling when Syd woke up?
Because Lahp got bored and stopped propping Sydney up five hours ago?
I wonder if Sydney’s spiciness tolerance extends to Lapha or not. Cuz I can imagine Sydney getting bored and asking for some spicy food
Laph is just in Sydney’s head, not physically there, so doubt she would feel anything
She appears to get all the sensory feedback from her host body (she would hardly be able to control it otherwise.)
For example, in https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-931-escape-from-new-york/ she can feel that Garamm has to pee.
On one hand, there’s no particular reason a living spell that’s intended to function as the control system for a complex machine to ever sleep. On the other, computers literally have sleep and NOOP commands. And they’ve evolved to be more like a person, rather than just a computer, so they may sleep just to fit in, or run maintenance on all that data during downtime.
But yeah, Lapha probably took a nap once she exhausted her escape options and got bored.
That’s exactly how I pictured her waking up, right down to the padded room and the mittens. And the box on the wall containing the orbs. I figured Lapha would be awake and in control while Sydney was out, so it figures she’d try to get free while Syd was still under the sleepy shots. I doubt there isn’t a way to remove Lapha, just got to wait on those people to come along to do it. it’s be fitting if Tendi was the one to come, but I don’t expect that. Just as likely that she sweet-talks lizard-lips into letting her use Lapha’s body and go about her life like nothing happened, or do a better job at what ever you call what Lapha was doing.
Don’t forget that Syd was effectively kidnapped before, and restrained in almost exactly the same fashion as this, by Concretia, so they know it works. The thing that saved Syd before – her mouth, to Concretia’s sympathetic ear – won’t work here, because they know Syd is not entirely in control.
Still, though, they’re gonna get bored. Can Archon at least provide them with some TV?
The idea is it was meant for disciplining Sydney, boredom is her sentence, if ever she ended up here/ Speaking from personal experience, boredom is the WORST thing for someone with ADHD.
No reason to believe that.
Depends on whether Sydney can sing decently, or at least remembers enough lyrics to bother doing so. Also, her penchant for parodies.
“I am the very model of a modern superheroine~” etc.? :D
No evidence backing that up.
Containing her in case of madness, mind control etc seems much more likely than discipline.
You sure as hell don’t want to put somebody in this situation when they have access to the amount of power Sydney does to try and discipline them.
If you have a super hero on the team, you need to have a way to contain them when they go rogue. Sydney knows this, she is a fan of Batman. Who had contingencies for every member of the JLA.
Hael, there are clips of Batsie planning contingencies for everyone, including Bugs Bunny, Ed (from Ed, Edd and Eddy) to the Powerpuff Girls and Danny Phantom
That dude is paranoid as all fuck
I’m sure a tv playing her collection of Star Trek series starting from the beginning would entertain Sydney and torture her new co-pilot.
I give this contingency plan a 4/10. Mostly because it looks like a repurposed bondage setup in a psych ward. I’d say that gives me the ick but in context the setup is smart cheap and replaceable. That said this is most likely the drunk tank equivalent. I expect a more permanent setup would be less easily bypassed by an outside force.
Sydney’s gonna have a stiff neck from sleeping in a seated position.
Can Sydney make the orbs spin like drills and have them slowly abrade their way through the box?
I think that they’re super smooth. Drilling and grinding isn’t an option.
We don’t know how much force they can exert. Concrete contained them during her NYC adventure.
If all them pressed against their box or hammered it or vibrated it….?
Sydney really should test just how much force the orbs can exert. We know they can break bones, but apparently not concrete.
I think they need space to accelerate, honestly. The times we’ve seen the orbs be a physical threat they were always in the open and moving, and the times we’ve seen them be physically useless they’ve been unable to move freely.
Hey if you follow draconic martial art traditions all those wisdom bonuses could be based on charisma! https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/monk/archetypes/paizo-monk-archetypes/scaled-fist-monk-archetype/
As long as you’re having fun :)
So… they didn’t have a way to get the possessor out of her?
If I had to guess, caution is the name of the game.
When dealing with alien species with powers you don’t fully understand, the only reasonable thing to do is proceed as gently as you are decisively. Say they are able to grab the fireball over her head and just yank. There’s still no telling if the person doing the yanking could get taken over, or if the yanking would cause Sydney irreparable harm.
Thoughtlessly just trying the first thing that comes to mind is one way how you get brain-damaged supervillains.
We don’t know how long it’s been. Could be twenty minutes, could be half a day. They could’ve asked Dabbler who went “Ugh, one of those guys. Drop her in the tank, lemme sleep off my hangover, and I’ll go get my clippers WHEN MY HEAD ISN’T DOING THE BAD KIND OF THROBBING!”
Well, they now have plenty of time to come up with one. There might even be a slim chance that Lapha is not going to be utterly annihilated in the process. Which they will attempt anyway, if the threat she poses cannot be contained seperately, though she seems quite oblivious to that fact. But then she does not even seem to have realized that the only thing she gained is exactly these prospects.
They didn’t have a way to get the possessor out of her QUICKLY. Presumably, they want to spent some time planning and trying to get information from Dabbler and possibly others.
It’s more… will they BOTHER to, or just leave her locked up. Because Laphra just LITERALLY opened Pandora’s Box, and it honestly might be easier for everyone involved to disappear Syd for good. Claim that she was killed off, and the orbs just vanished. (And whether or not that turns out to be a lie will depend on which branch of the government gets to deal with little miss secret-keeper). She’s lied about the abilities and the origins of her orbs, so really, they CAN’T trust her. And now that it’s out, there’s a lot of people who will say she’s too dangerous to live!
This is a flashback. We know Sydney survives this.
like yuki said, this is (still) a flashback, we know she’ll survive and won’t hold anything against them, and they won’t hold anything against her. they’ll get the cosmic tealight out of her head, and everything will be good.
She’s far too powerful not to use. Most governments would be worried that some other government will have access to similar power. The US government in the comic quite publicly decided that it’s far better to treat supers well and benefit from their cooperation than attempt to stigmatize them, control them, or drive them underground. Deus would be glad to accommodate any refugees were the US government to turn against their own supers!
The lie about the origin of the orbs was solely “where they were found” Archon knows as much as Sydney about the history of them, iirc Dabbler is the person who brings up possible N-Tech during the first conference when people are deciding whether to offer Sydney a place in the team so they were fully aware of as much as Sydney was about the history
I believe she kept information on 1 upgrade power back, basically an anti-Max option iirc
Which Archon has been aware of for a fair while now
So there’s nothing here that would justify any action happening in terms of Sydney’s action.
and considering what Sydney and Max can do if aliens threaten the earth any increase in threats triggered by the Nth tech information of the Orbs has to be weighed against the defence Sydney provides.
Also if they displace Sydney then hostile aliens won’t believe it, anybody who knows about N-tech will probably assume the orbs are still around…if they kill Sydney they don’t know if the orbs can be bound again (there might be a 1000 year cooldown to avoid people trying to take them over)
So I’m not seeing that as a sensible approach, never mind the actually disappearing her as a moral approach
There’s no way Maxima is going to let one of her people get disappeared and anyone who suggested such a stupid thing should be fired (preferably from a cannon).
Yep, Max was quite explicit about that.
yeah. “no amount of cool results in whisking!” seems to imply “even if it’s nth-level cool”.
If Lapha can take over and have some mental control of the orbs while Syd is unconscious, why couldn’t she have done that immediately after the events of the prior comic, before they got all trussed up and boxed?
Assuming she can (and it’s not shown that she can, even when Sydney is unconscious), most likely Harem’s fist task was to contain the orbs in a bag and get mittens on Sydney’s hands simultaneously after she was tazed. Or tased. Or whatever the spelling is.
‘Fist’ task? Fraudulent slip there Pandy? :P
My phone sometimes sucks.
I’d call it a handy pun
She can control the body, not the mind, Sydney’s balls are hard-wired into the mind and they know when something else is at the controls
She was referring to trying to physically break out of the chair, not controlling the orbs
There’s no actual evidence that Lapha has any influence on the orbs
How long will they keep Sydney like that???
As long as they can :P
I was partially correct. Mittens WERE part of her capture and containment protocol.
Betting they “accidentally” leave her in the room once her unwelcome tennant is vacated. She’s had this coming for a while, after all. And I can say, from experience, forcing someone with ADHD to sit still for an extended period of time is the ULTIMATE punishment.
What’s she being punished for?
people think literal torture is a sane, measured response to sydney’s largely benign adhd shenanigans, rather than 10 laps or 100 pushups.
Here’s hoping you’re never in a position of authority over anybody, including children
This does make me wonder what sort of precautions they have for if Maxima goes ‘Dark Maxima.’ I’m assuming they have something for that too. Most likely magic or mind-control or breathing-sedative-based (since she still needs to breathe air, and we’ve already seen that she’s vulnerable to mind control – especially if the mind-control disc isnt cracked, and we already saw that a weakness aura did affect her, even if she was too strong for it to fully remove her strength). Or all three.
Given his knowledge of her origins, it wouldn’t surprise me if Deus had come up with said precautions, and sold them to the US government.
It would also help explain his (over?) abundance of confidence in their interactions, although he’d probably be like that anyway.
This is true. When everyone else is on page 3, Deus has already finished the book, written a thesis on it, and is teaching a graduate-level course on the subject of the book for 26 years.
The metal bars over the mittens seem a little excessive… and also ineffectual? Like, it’s over a mitten, by its very nature, the fingers will be about to slip out if it can slip out at all.
Every redundancy is an extra layer of security. Better too much than too little, and she’s already chained into the mitten, so her hand ain’t going anywhere.
They are to hold the hands down, the wrist restraint is to prevent them from moving backwards
By putting bars over the front parts of her hand, fingers, and thumb, you prevent the hand from moving or turning or being able to grasp things, as well as prevent the mitten from being pulled off of the front if you happened to get the case (broken)open or off. The wrist locks keep her hands and arms in place, but I bet that if you didn’t have the bars in front and you pulled hard enough on the mitten, you could rip it off of her hand even with that wrist lock still in place. With the mitten off, then she could probably bend her hand up just enough to grasp an orb.
All she needs is the truesight orb in one hand and with the lightbee and she can teleport out of several of those restraints.
The bars are there, I think, to make sure none of her orbs will *FIT* under her hand if, for some reason, these transparent barriers turn out to be insecure against them.
Given that we don’t KNOW if Syd ever mentioned the orbs possibly being Nth tech to anyone from Earth, she might be being detained for a VERY long time, while they try to decide if just eliminating Sydney and burying her orbs in the sun is a viable world preservation tactic.
In best case, sending the orbs to the sun will do nothing to them. In worst, they explode and destroy whole solar system.
Dabbler has a memory erasure spell (and it looks like a hammer). This situation is pretty quickly resolvable unless Dave wants it to drag out longer.
The readership has forgotten this entire comic is a flashback I see.
To be fair, the comic has been 99.5% flashback, so it’s easy to forget ;)
It could be argued that the author has as well. Or just that neither author nor audience expect the comic to be held to it.
I’m surprised that so many commenters expect the comic to go really dark places, given the overall positive, hopeful tone the author has set, and I suspect it has more to do with their real-life anxieties about government and social collapse. But I guess it’s a good thing if there’s still tension and uncertainty in the comic, rather than plot armor taking all the drama out.
She should really be flattered that they’re so thorough that they have multiple barriers between her hands and the orbs. It shows that they respect hr power.
Dabs was definitely involved in the cell’s design work… There also seems to be a lot of “We always WANTED to do this to her!” input from the other designers.
I wonder what accomodations they have for the alien college thug earwitnesses? Hopefully it’s very unpleasent ones before Dabs uses her memory eraser hammer…. ;3
A little upset that their wasn’t some kind of message for Sydney to reassure her the moment she showed signs of waking up. She is a risk but she is also a member of the team (and freind) and you think they could spend a little effort on some active monitoring or atleast a sign in front of her.
We don’t see what’s in front of her. I suppose we WILL see it next page.
Same. Someone should be sitting in the room with her.
If for no other reason that to reassure her that she hasn’t been dropped into an inescapable pit.
They might have decided not to have somebody in their physically in case there was some special orb power that kicked in and made things incredibly dangerous.
There should have been a voice over an intercom by now but it’s probably a plot thing to keep these happenings on one page
Or risk the mind-maggot to attach itself to someone else
Ha! They DID take her glasses!
And now I wonder if they’re going to notice the alien tech Cora put in them…
Dabbler already knew about it, and she’s likely the only one who would recognize it.
” taser-sedative combo.” Yet Lalpaca was still able to control her body to attempt physical acts?
That implies she can possess a ’67 Mustang then, since a sedative suppresses both the brain and spinal control of muscles. No thinking hardware required evidently.
How about a black ’82 Trans Am with the “Kitt Lights” addon?
Getting Sydney into this with Lapha actively resisting would be harder. IMHO she wasn’t able to control Sydney all the time, but became able to sooner than Sydney wake up.
I imagine the sedative was for Sydney, the taser was for Lapha. The shock to the hardware may have knocked her out for a while .
They were originally supposed to control artificial systems, so a car doesn’t seem implausible. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1233-attack-of-alexsiri/
She’s gonna regret telling them her weakness is mittens when those hands get sweaty and she can’t itch
Little disturbed at the number of readers thinking ARC-Swat is doing this or set this up in part as a way to punish or torture Sydney. Where’s all this cruelty coming from?
Must be desire to “punish” her for “misbehaving”. Understandable but still not good.
A lot of people seem to hate the sheer amount of ridiculousness Sydney is allowed to get away with, so they want to see her punished for a change. Personally, I’m fine with her zaniness having relatively-minimal consequences – in addition to the fact that this is largely a comedy, my personal head-canon is that she has some sort of passive effect that typically prevents people from getting too upset with her and thus gives them a chance to recognize the humor inherent in the situation. I’m almost certainly wrong about that, of course, but it helps to suspend my disbelief a bit.
Which part has you disturbed? That it was Archon behind this? Or that this is to torture Sydney?
The comments about intentionally torturing Sydney. She’s a team member who has REPEATEDLY proven to be incredibly useful, team-oriented, and kind. She has saved the lives of multiple team members (including Max) on more than one occasion. She’s a spaz with ADHD, can be exasperating, and has broken a few national-security rules (barging in on a meeting with POTUS on her second day, as an example), but nothing she has done throughout the entirety of the comic even remotely justifies actual torture.
No one on the ARC-SWAT team would ever torture Sydney. All would likely risk their lives breaking things to get her freed if they thought she was being tortured.
I believe some people are taking the *consensual* bondage/slavery themes (the tickle-fight, and the whole succubus concept entirely) to a level that is both inappropriate and unrealistic.
I’m disturbed that people believe that Archon wants to torture Sydney, and that this would be reasonable. Sydney’s shenanigans are certainly eyeroll-worthy, but some people here seem to want her to be waterboarded
Agrecian with you on that: torturing Sydney would be going too far for any member of the team, including Daphne
yeah. it makes sense that this crazy setup exists, it’s like how batman had a contingency plan in place to eliminate anyone in the justice league if they turned rogue, but it’s not a punishment, just containment while they figure out a way to get syd back in full control of herself.
they could have given her a tv, but i guess there was fear of that somehow being enough for them to escape.
Probably didn’t want to give the entity possessing her a possible vector of escape through the TV.
Makes you wonder what kind of world these people want to live in!
On the bright side, escape plans are currently not required, Sydney just has to wait until Dabbler comes and removes the “stowaway”.
I love how they have been planning this since brining her on the team. They even used her own suggestion against her. She told them her biggest drawback was mittens, low and behold, MITTENS!
And this will be how we learn about the panic induced safety feature that lets her open Causeways without touching the orbs.
Considering that didn’t happen when she was similarly restrained but literally had a gun to her head and was moments away from being executed (Cora showed up and… unwound the attacker), I’d say simply being restrained isn’t going to cause it either.
But here is there is a foreign entity inside her that the orbs do recognize as a threat. Maybe they’ll lash out once they realize she wants o force it out.
How to get rid of body possessor:
1. Give Sydney very spicy foods.
2. Stand back and watch
3. Profit
The taser was invented by Jack Cover; Tom Swift is a fictional character and thus has no agency to change his name or the name of any and all books featuring him.
This is why Batman was 90% correct in having contingency plans for the rest of the Justice League. Yes, those contingency plans have gone wrong at least twice – which is why I said he’s only 90% correct.
1: he should have had better password protection or similar security for the Batcomputer, rather than just assuming that nobody would ever find the Batcave (as if multiple enemies haven’t already found it).
2: in more recent comics it turned out that he had created an unstoppable, super-powerful robot to track him down and kill him if he were ever to cross the line and take a life. Which is so stupid on so many levels, raising questions from “why didn’t he use this technology for more proactive purposes against criminals?” to “why did he make a robot that would simply incarcerate him nonlethally, and repeatedly emphasize the fact that it had no interest in actually harming him?”
They got the mittens!
anything else feels overkill to me.
Yeah. Rather than offended, she should be touched that they remembered the mittens.