Grrl Power #1238 – Cannibalympics
Maxima will get around to lambasting and/or threatening Lapha, but as Sydney is secured, she’s allowing herself a little preamble. Also she’s hoping it throws Lapha off her game a little. It will probably have limited effect, however, if Lapha looks into Sydney’s memories and sees how most of her interactions with the team go.
Being sick/poisoned is about the only time a succubus doesn’t feel sexy, and it’s already been established that they have incredible resistance to disease. Their resistance to poison is pretty good too, as it helped during the time their species was doing a lot of assassination work. Drinking from the same poisoned wine bottle as everyone else makes people lower their guard. It’s not at the same level as their disease resistance, but it’s still very good. Drinking ten mana potions in on night will make anyone queasy though. Well, not like, constructs or magends, or any beings that are more magical than biological. Mana potions either have no effect on them or they’re like energy drinks… which… if most biological beings had ten of those in a night it would definitely fuck them up, so that’s a bad example.
Anyway, remember in Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal did have to cut that one guy’s face off, change clothes with him, drag him to the elevator, pry the door open and throw him down the shaft, although really, he probably had to lower him down the shaft because if he’d landed face up, or with his head turned just right, that would have given away the game. He also had to hoist the other guy into place and pose him, so it was more involved than just looping an extension cord over a rafter and heaving to until he was the right height. Hannibal is the kind of guy who likes to savor the little moments in life, but a properly motivated psychopath? Ninety minutes is probably a little longer than it would have taken, but I think… thirty minutes would be the absolute minimum. Probably closer to 45. Honestly it’s really hard to estimate because a multi-part activity like that is so far out of my range of normal activities. Like, if I was a firefighter and was used to hauling adult male bodies around, I could probably make a better guess, but Maxima’s point stands. Hopkins was in his fifties during that film, I think 52 when it was filmed, 53 when it was released. Not that being fifty means you suddenly start falling apart physically, of course, but Hannibal didn’t really strike me as the kind of guy who was doing 500 pushups a day in his cell, either, so his fitness level should be taken into account. Still, Maxima is probably underestimating what a motivated cannibal can accomplish.
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.
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Sydney should have understood that mittens, clamps and straps was just enough.
This is not for Sydney. This is for Lapha. They wish to impress upon Lapha that she has screwed up and that her leverage is not as good as she thinks it is. Better making Sydney a bit uncomfortable and asking forgiveness later rather than allow Lapha to exploit her situation to the fulness of integrity. Remember that Lapha was ready to sell a nuke-machine-with-near-unlimited-ammo to the highest bidder, along with the previous user attached.
They also want to go to 100% in making sure that if there is a loophole in the orb’s countermeasure against unauthorized use of the orbs, Lapha does not get a chance to find it. Going to excessive lengths, even at the cost of discomfort of Sydney, is better than finding out that there is a loophole (say, what happens if Lapha tries to take over once Sydney is using an orb? Or what if Lapha has tricks to use against Sydney that she is reserving for a situation even more extreme than this? We know that she is ruthless). Remember that Archon does not know, cannot know, how the orbs work or how extensive the anti-bodysnatcher countermeasure is and it is better to not test it.
It could also be for Dabbler but neither Sydney or Lapha are feeling it so she isn’t getting any benefit.
I don’t think this is sexy enough to be for Dabbler. I am pretty sure that this is a jailcell designed to contained Sydney (or more specifically a user of those orbs) but is being utilized to intimidate Lapha.
Also, I would not be surprised if Archon has special teams, even supers, who are able to make customized jailcells (or customize existing jailcells) very quickly. Remember the portal-lady? Vehemence? They got theirs, keyed to their powers, before they woke up. You can’t tell when a super with a quirky power shows up.
Only Bugs Bunny is allowed to call it ‘quirky’ :P
If you live in Finland though, Lapha means something else than demon possessing Sydney
Lovecraft got around it by using “sounds that were not meant for human tongues” or however it was he said it but I have to wonder what the odds are of not resembling another language when you have a pronounceable combination of sounds.
More common than you think when you want it to sound like something a language would regularly say or use and not a gobbligook of random vowels.
for instance for a fantasy continent I combined Ravishing with shire with a bit of cutting up the syllables, and got (Ravashira), which not sure if pronounced the same I later found out is also the name of a food dish in India.
my favorite was when I was ages ago coming up with “the seven ancient races” (since retconned) and wanted a magic based one, originally having one called Manazit I made another called Amana “A mana” (pronounced uh mon-uh) yeah…which by some weird coincidences turned out to be a word meaning holy or faithful in several languages, and biggest coincidence as I designed this species to be like space mermaids in their default form was that there is a goddess shaped like a mermaid who is a creation goddess also called Amana.
so I think the nicer and easier to pronounce you make your word, the larger the chances some language has used the same sound in some capacity at some point.
OH! You’ve played the Hawaiian edition of Scrabble!
Isn’t the meaning of mana ‘gift from heaven’ anyway?
In some, the word shows up in more than one language. In Hebrew it was the food Yahweh air dropped on them during the trek through the desert…that tasted like oil and turned into maggots if not eaten after a single night (every special about this story seems to ignore that part LoL).
In Several South Eastern countries it had a meaning similar to Ki or Chi only focused on the elements.
Which is the version Japanese video games used, and later Western RPGs with magic systems would adopt as a common “exotic” term rather than say “Magic Power” or “Aether essence” or any number of terms used in old fantasy.
Webster’s dictionary
mana
noun
ma·na ˈmä-nə
Synonyms of mana
1
: the power of the elemental forces of nature embodied in an object or person
2
: moral authority : PRESTIGE
-a different dictionary online citing the cultures of origin-
ma·na
[ˈmänə, ˈmanə]
noun
(especially in Polynesian, Melanesian, and Maori belief) pervasive supernatural or magical power.
It is also worth noting here the Author Lord Dunsany, a fantasy author whose stories by todays standards would be very trope filled and cliche…but he basically laid the ground work and whose work heavily inspired Tolkien, Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard, In Dunsany’s cosmology was a god named “Mana Yood” who was a sleeper whose dream was the universe (yes Lovecrafft wholesale stole this and renamed it Azathoth and Lovecraft’s version is better known today), and if ever woken up the universe would cease to exist.
I don’t know if the name was a coincidence like what we are discussing here with naming things and the word just happens to exist already somewhere, or if he was inspired by the “Eastern Mysticism” trends of his time and grabbed onto the name. *Also yes the movie (The Craft) based their god on this has well*.
Tell that to Michael Winslow. The dude that did the sound effects in Police academy. He is an amazing grasp of how to simulate sounds.
Singers and translators also tend to do that as well
I think it might not be paranoid enough. Sydney can individually control the orbs and hit people with them. Turn them hard enough to crack the case they are in. Then crack the case one of her hands is in. Two orbs brushing along a mitten could pull it off. After that the light hook could pull that chair apart without harming herself.
Sydney is not dumb. All she would need is time.
How is she going to hit people with the orbs if the orbs are trapped in their glass case?
If anything, the only flaw I see is that I would have put up a steel age around them on top of what is probably reinforced glass. Dense enough that she can see them but not enough to get a finger through. Maybe put the orbs in transparent sand/packaging material so they can’t even jostle.
This depends on how much control she has.
Press a orb as hard as possible against the case, spin it as fast as possible.
Let friction melt a hole.
Of course the orbs could be friction less. Or there is some other inconvenient fact ruining my master plan.
back when Sidney was being held by Concretia and the man that would be wall paint, I would bring up how weird it was that these super advanced orbs couldn’t be made to force their way through a few inches of building cement, one would imagine they are probably indestructible (although that may be a bias assumption on my part as most Nth level type beings I’ve come up with or seen tend to be so powerful that their tech is practically indestructible and eternal to corporeal beings), so rule of resistance, higher resistance will eventually even with minimal force break through the materials with the lower resistance *provided the higher resistance doesn’t chip away at its self in the process as well*
It is possible that they have a “brake through objects restraining the orbs” functionality but Sydney just does not know it.
*activate the level up function* maybe?
I think by the time an orb is out of their cage and is working on the mittens glass case, the room would be positively flooded with sleeping gas. Or worse.
Or the seat itself (also) have additional functions: the neck brace is also a choker? Electric shocks prods? Additional cover/boxes? Other ‘fun’ gadgets?
… better not let the succubus see that in action. She might want a turn.
First thing I think the case they are in is less solid than the concrete mold that held each orb individually. This seems to be just a plexiglass box. Get the orbs moving they don’t even need friction. Enough banging on the side will break glass.
Yes a steel mesh might be a better option. Though I question. Why anything transparent?
we might be fixin’ to find out what that final orb does.
There’s a chance, however unlikely, that Sydney’s encyclopedic genre savvy might
find a weakness in their countermeasures and exploit it.
I would have added a hydraulic ram behind her throne so she’s just short of
of being crushed by the Orbs’ attractive force.
How do you know that there isn’t one hidden from view? :)
Because you are not looking down
I’m pretty sure the tethering force cannot be used to manipulate Sydney’s corpus. When Maxima tried, she just pulled herself with the orbs as an anchor.
“Drinking from the same poisoned wine bottle as everyone else makes people lower their guard.”
No kidding; My D&D character actually pulled off an assassination in plain sight that way. Everybody was trying to figure out who’d poisoned random bottles in the wine cellar, and how long ago, it didn’t occur to anybody that I’d done it, because I’d drank the wine, too.
No poison resistance, I just had a lot more HP than my target.
“No poison resistance, I just had a lot more HP than my target”
Barbarian style assassination. Not everything needs an axe.
I responded to rust monsters with a ground zero fireball….don’t know why everybody else in the party got pissed off.
Then there’s the Drow:
https://www.yafgc.net/comic/0076-gagged/
I wonder if anyone ever made a Drow named Drib
Another character in my last DND group ended up trying to make wine, but made something fatally poisoned. He then sent it to several key local people that he didn’t like
Later we were sneaking through a cultists lair/villa, and he needed to get past 2 guards. So his solution was to act drunk, stumble over to the guards, SHARE the bottle of poisoned wine, then drink the antidote as they died painfully…
He “took a few points towards Chaotic Evil” that day…
There’s a theory that Wesley didn’t put anything in either cup, and that the Iocaine powder, being odorless, had already gotten into Vissini’s system when he took that sniff of the vial, which Wesley did -not- do.
The entire rest of the scene was just Wesley wasting time until the powder kicked in.
That’s a possibility too. In fact I rather like that, might have to remember that little trick…
So you put the poison in his cup. No I put the poison in both cups.
Over the years I developed an immunity to ilequin powder
….. and I’m hearing the line from the Court Jester here.
The flagon with the dragon.
Or was the pellet with the poison in the vessel with the pestle?
Dabbler really just wants to go back to bed with an IKEA shark and sleep it off. We all know that feel
Blahaj best shork
(Someone had to say it)
We’re freaking laser beams!
Got to admit… Between aiming for someone who has ‘anti possession lock’ on their super powers or someone without those restrictions… Jumping into any other super probably sounds like a better plan.
Especially when everyone can joke at the person focused on super hero tropes and how to counter them is the one who fell to the possession issue first.
Finish yer chili, Xuriel, then go back to bed.
Sure chili….
Yes, chili, it was why Maxi wasn’t on scene to get Laph-napped (Dabbles asked Maxi to get her some)
Perhaps the “ultra chili” (aka the Scoville Special) might do the trick to get Lapha out.
“It Burns! It Burns! How can you eat this! It’s fire!”
“What do you mean, it’s a medium spicy lunch”
“That’s it. I want my original body again!”
We have heard of her Four-Alarm spaghetti sauce, that is “made from peppers that are red, but are not red peppers”. But nothing about chili yet.
My dad used to eat hot dogs with pickle relish. Pickled Habaneros to be exact, sliced fine and mixed with fresh raw horseradish (Think wasabi, but a lot stronger than the wasabi sauces you find in restaurants). “It’s an acquired taste,” as he had to explain once or twice.
I think that falls under ‘cruel and unusual’.
It is funny
>:)
Nah cruel and unusual will be a chili pepper stuffed with Grax an extra chili flakes
“what a motivated cannibal can accomplish” is not a thought I care to dwell on, thank you very much.
Saw a documentary on Jeffrey Dahmer a while back. Jesus that guy was a VERY motivated cannibal. Just… yikes.
Yeah. There was a mexican surgeon (dental surgeon?) that inspired the Hannibal Lecter character, but I’m convinced Dahmer was probably who the screenwriters in mind when they were writing it.
Luckily for the rest of us real full blown cannibals are vanishingly rare. When you eliminate starvation and funeral practices and that one guy who wanted to fry up bits of his genitals to serve to his friends, cannibals are really uncommon. Even among serial killers they are a pretty small subset. Lecter is an interesting character but he is still just a plot device, a thinking man’s Jason Vorhees. There are a lot of people who are fascinated with the idea and it is a full on fetish for some but in over 30 years of working in and around forensic mental health I only ever met one genuine, ate a whole body, cannibal. He was a pretty severely psychotic fellow who killed and ate his abusive father/caretaker. He got caught when someone noticed the long bones in the trash. I doubt he is still alive as this was over 30 years ago. he probably lived out the remainder of his life in psychiatric care. I met one accused spree killer who I believe was capable of that level of bad nastiness and studied a number of case files and could argue that both Syd and Max have a point. Paroxysmal violence, the kind that results in a body having 147 stab wounds is usually brief and intense. The flipside is the killer that keeps the body around for extended periods of time and not just because they cant figure out how to get rid of the remains. The point of that ramble is to illustrate that a “motivated cannibal” is a rare bird indeed. The catch is that Lecter is not engaging in either of these sorts of violence. He is goal directed and has a plan to accomplish. He is an experienced killer who doesn’t hesitate once he initiates his plan. The time consuming part would be swapping clothes with the dead guard.
It may not be correct to base Hannibal’s capabilities from what would be expected for someone’s Hopkin’s age and appearance. In the novel “Hannibal”, he was described as ‘having the strength of an ant”. I don’t see Hannibal doing pushups in his cell. He would go in for isometrics. A full body workout straining muscles against each other, all while appearing at rest or casually standing. Hopkins/Hannibal could wrench the handle off an old refrigerator in one of the films. Very motivated.
if you are what you eat, only cannibals are people
I’m sure said accomplishments would be very humanitarian.
humanitarian is a great word for ‘cannibal’
For mana-based-constructs/lifeforms, mana potions would probably just be more akin to water than an energy potion, at least I figure.
Ironically water can stil be toxic if you drink too much.
Some people even managed to kill themselves. Which is not a easy feat!
It’s why never touch the stuff
So you put the poison in his cup. No I put the poison in both cups.
Over the years I developed an immunity to ilequin powder
Nice of Max to get chilli for Dabbler like that. The poor girl really does look rough.
So, Laph is underestimating Syd, Syd is distracting Laph from the rediculous power of the orbs via pop culture arguments, Dabbler needs a really gentle lover and lots of cuddles to go with that chilli, and Syd should be feeling a massive “ewwphoria” style compliment at the setup they’ve put her in.
And I’m glad they turned on the lights in the room behind the mirror. Syd needed to see that they’re there.
I don’t think the pop culture arguments are a deliberate ploy so much as Sydney’s default. Max may be encouraging Sydney in that regard, though.
I see an anti-climatic resolution coming. Dabbler orders a “flame-holder” off Univer-zon, goes back to bed, and then extracts Lapha in the morning when she better has her wits about her. Sydney may have a longer solution coming, as her getting possessed again needs to not happen again.
Or Sydney accesses more memories and tells them where Lapha’s body and partner are located, along with a “flame-holder” and the prerequisite “flame-grabber”. Unless her partner has orders to vacate if comms go dark for an extended time, this is the quickest resolution to getting Sydney free and Lapha contained.
What happens afterward is a whole other issue. Overly aggressive comments regarding immediate death/torture aside, the most logical next step would be a thorough interrogation (not “enhanced”/torture, just normal question/answer). Possibly even linking her to a non-powered human for full access to all memories. After that… lots of different options, but I’m assuming Dave has a few ideas planned out.
There is one complication even if a the wand, there is the question what to do with Lapha that isn’t just straight-up killing her.
She would be useful to Archon, probably (we do not know whether she can interface with human electronics), but her loyalty is in question and she probably knows all the secrets that Sydney does. Which is enough to not let her leave Earth, not without at least some skillful memory-editing if that’s even an option.
To Lapha, Earth is a backwater with no tech that can do something as trivial as making host-bodies for her. It’s currency is currently worthless and the only thing of note in intergalactic terms are the supers and Sydney’s nth-tech orbs that she must not leave with. Archon has nothing substantial enough to pay her.
Actually, on second thought, there is one thing that they could undermine Lapha and ensure her loyalty: revealing the identity of her employer along with any incriminating information about them. It would be Lapha’s fault and thus targeted for retribution. In such a case, Lapha would WANT to hide in an intergalactic backwater that is interested in her protection (especially if that protection entails supers).
Of course this only works if Lapha knows such information and that her employer(s) are either trusting her or making serious security mistakes. As she is a mercenary, that is unlikely.
Also, Laph now has a massive target on her because she has information on Nth tech.
Safest place for her is behind an Nth tech shield, and she knows where one of those is, and hopefully is smart enough to negotiate staying behind it.
Not really a target if she is willing to sell that information, is she? Which is the problem for Archon. They can’t just boot her off Earth because of this.
The only way she gets that target off her back is if she can somehow convince everyone in the galaxy that she’s publicly shared everything she knows about Nth tech and therefore has no more secrets.
Which is impossible.
No, not for her. She’s a sort-of AI, remember? The tech to upload all her memories, including Sydney’s memories, is probably there. Her people were made to interface with machinery, even if spell-machinery (and I’m betting that they had appropraite converters installed). There is probably even a way for a trustworthy third party to attest that those memories are complete and not fabricated or edited.
Paying her money for those memories online is easier and cheaper than kidnapping her and using manually parsing through all her memories through invasive means. Sure, there might be some wise guys that might try to do it anyway but by that point, Lapha might have gotten herself a nice, safe anonymous hideaway.
You assume that a universally trusted third party exists.
I doubt that Lapha has an employer. She is the employer. The whole crew that got arrested in New York worked for her. She was just sure they could find a buyer for whoever they nabbed.
I personally don’t believe Lapha actually has an “employer” because:
1) Assuming sole contract / direct employer, I question whether something this important would have been left entirely to the skill-sets of the Lapha/Garamm and (former) crew; *maybe* once because they did have some decent tech and supplies with at least a minimum of a plan, but not twice;
2) Assuming this was an open contract there would have been *multiple* hired crews to go after this “prize” but we haven’t seen anything like this;
3) Employee failures of this magnitude would have dire consequences in these types of organizations, but neither Lapha nor Garamm appear to be concerned about anything other than immediate survival and missing out on a payday.
My head-cannon is that she’s an opportunist, with the goal of snatching one of the newly-revealed super-species and *then* trying to find a buyer who’s interested in a super-slave and/or for further study.
Passive Shield Orb pip would probably have prevented this (which explains, narratively at least, why Sydney didn’t take it)
Awwww is poor widdle Dabbler feelin’ bad after mentally violating everyone in the building all night?
Let me get my violin.
She was not mentally violating everyone – she was preventing a crash from when they WERE mentally violated so they would not feel the withdrawal of that loss all at once.
Saying she mentally violated everyone is like saying a pack of nicotine gum to help someone stop smoking is poisoning them.
Remember Pander, these are the ones who called what Parf did was rape
That’ll depend on how the whole Heatwave situation goes.
If the lust Aura makes you fuck people you otherwise wouldn’t had you been in your right mind… then yeah, it unfortunately is.
If it’s not and can’t be used as an excuse for cheating, then no, and we all good.
And what would you call it?
I’d call it preventing additional mental and emotional harm from sudden withdrawal. A good thing instead of a bad thing.
I was asking about Parfait’s aura, not Dabbler’s.
But it doesn’t matter whether you, or Dabbler, would call what she did a good thing or a bad thing. She did it without their knowledge or consent. She took their choice of how to react to the event away from them. She decided that their emotional reaction would be “wrong”, and substituted the reaction she thought was “right”. She treated them as things instead of people. That is utterly psychopathic behavior.
Let me give you a hypothetical scenario that I somewhat stole from Cave Johnson of Portal 2.
You have been exposed to radiation which will slowly petrify your brain, but only if you are made aware of the fact that you have been exposed to ‘something’ (or as Cave Johnson said “Thinking about the reaction is what actually triggers it.”) In order to remove this radiation from your system so that you do not suffer injury or death, someone has to get you to drink an antidote to the radiation. But if they tell you why, your knowledge of it will petrify your brain, injuring or killing you.
So the person slips the antidote into a drink you’re having for lunch. Thus saving you.
Is this psychopathic behavior?
Dabbler believed (because this is apparently something that you learn in sophomore class at Succubus U) that this is the only safe way to fix what Parfait did without causing any emotional injury to the people who were affected by the out-of-control Lust Aura. Sort of like making sure not to bring someone up from a deep sea dive too quickly so they don’t get the Bends. I’m not sure how this is psychopathic, or how this is treating them as things instead of people. She was treating them as people who she did not want to see suffer emotionally due to an accident that Parfait caused.
Also, it’s hard to call what Parfait did rape as well, because as I (and others) have mentioned before, there was no mens rea involved in what she did. Her lust aura went out of control, against her will. Which is why she was trying to warn Sydney and asking urgently to be put to sleep or given a counter-lust aura potion (I forget what it was called).
That is an extremely desperate and convoluted hypothetical scenario. Culturally and legally, we certainly make some allowances for acting to prevent death or physical harm without first seeking consent, under the assumption that people value life above all other things, including freedom or autonomy. But we also do respect, to some degree, a person’s prior determination not to perform life-saving treatment, if they have a “do not resuscitate” order on file.
Regardless, this is not remotely comparable to the event under discussion. There is no reason to believe that anyone was at risk of permanent injury had Dabbler not intervened, and her actions themselves constitute harm. The people affected should have at the very least been notified, and given the choice to opt out of her influence.
You don’t get to choose what emotions other people experience, or how they should react. That is a fundamental violation of their being. Preventing them from feeling harmed does not make the behavior harmless or right. If you rape someone, and then alter their memories so that they believe they consented, that doesn’t make it not rape.
There’s the problem, right there. It’s all about what she wants. It doesn’t matter what they want, whether they think it is right or wrong that they suffer emotionally due to what was done to them. You cannot assume that everyone would just opt out of emotional suffering, given the choice. Our pain and guilt are the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves.
And now everyone gets to feel those emotions at their own pace and under their own control.
Well, no, they don’t.
Dabbler made everyone feel okay about it.
“That is an extremely desperate and convoluted hypothetical scenario”
I would give a scenario equivalent to that of human beings in the real world, except there are no such thing as djinn/Succubi who have out of control lust auras on superhero teams in the real world.
I think there are two important things to also consider:
1. Dabbler is not human. What is psychotic behavior for a human might not be for her. Especially when you factor in that she may not be acting entirely on her own design but taught so by succubus school.
2. She didn’t do it for her own benefit, at least not really. It can be argued that she did it not only for Parafait’s benefit but to maintain cohesion within the team and everyone affected within the Archon building.
That said, I still feel that whole situation was picking the least damaging long-term solution to a bad situation.
Also, intent is VERY important. And I think calling it just an emotional reaction is understating things. It would have torn the team apart and could have caused long-lasting emotional trauma if the effects suddenly disappeared without just mellowing down slowly.
And? Why is that necessarily wrong? You’re claiming that the existence of the team is more important than the autonomy and individuality of its members.
They’re military. They declared that when they signed up.
No, they did not.
Joining the military does not mean you agree to be a slave with no rights.
You have rights as a soldier. But you do not have complete autonomy, or even much autonomy at all. You have to follow a chain of command and orders and comply with military rules and regulations or you will be in serious trouble, which can include incarceration or other punishment. The main exception to following orders is you should not follow illegal orders. But the point is soldiers do NOT have personal autonomy and individuality is NOT encouraged in a military unit, even though they’re not slaves.
That sounds like an argument against the military, rather than for brainwashing.
And while the US military, and I imagine those of other countries, attempt to break soldiers mentally and build them up into what would best serve the military, I doubt that we would allow our military to literally rewire the brains of soldiers and turn them into different people.
> That sounds like an argument against the military, rather than for brainwashing.
Not arguing that.
> I doubt that we would allow our military to literally rewire the brains of soldiers and turn them into different people.
Only because we’re going to have functional military robots before we get that tech, so it won’t be needed.
I don’t have any doubt that we would do it otherwise.
Just because it would be allowed doesn’t make it okay.
Illy, what are you even arguing at this point? Are you willing to go fully pro-military human rights violations to justify what Dabbler did?
“Why is that necessarily wrong?”
Are you asking me why PREVENTING long-lasting emotional trauma and tearing the team apart is wrong? Really? Do either of those things sound like good things?
“You’re claiming that the existence of the team is more important than the autonomy and individuality of its members.”
Yes. In the military, which ARCHON is a branch of, the team cohesiveness is a lot more important than autonomy and individuality of the team members.
Also not sure how it’s helpful to create long-lasting emotional trauma in its members, either individually OR for the team cohesiveness. Moot point though since in the military, team cohesiveness is the important thing, so that the team members stay, well… alive… during an enemy encounter.
So you’ve abandoned the moral argument entirely then.
This sort of response is basically signaling that any violation, no matter how invasive or abhorrent, is okay because of team cohesion.
But that isn’t right or good. The military should not treat its personnel as things to be used until broken.
“So you’ve abandoned the moral argument entirely then.”
How does not wanting people she is friends with to suffer from a chemical imbalance withdrawal and not wanting them to experience emotional trauma ‘abandoning the moral argument?’
“This sort of response is basically signaling that any violation, no matter how invasive or abhorrent, is okay because of team cohesion.”
No, that’s a very absolutist response you’re making. What she id doing is not very invasive. It’s the equivalent of finding that someone raising the deep sea diver out of the water slowly so they do not get the bends. And again, what she id doing was also not a violation either. The violation already happened by Parfait (albeit unintentional). Dabbler was mitigating the withdrawal FROM that violation, at significant harm to HERSELF.
“But that isn’t right or good.”
Maintaining team cohesion IS right and good for a military unit
Also, preventing emotional trauma from a harsh cold turkey withdrawal is also right and good.
Letting them just crash right away is wrong and bad, on the other hand.
“The military should not treat its personnel as things to be used until broken.”
1) The military does literally refer to its soldiers as units.
2) When you send soldiers into battle when they no longer trust or want to back each other up, they very likely might die. Which is a much less ambiguous way of saying they are going to be used until broken.
3) Basic Training is all about breaking a person down in order to rebuild them as a soldier.
4) What Dabbler did was not ‘using them until broken’ – it was literally the opposite. The only person who got harmed as a result of what Dabbler did was Dabbler. Intentionally.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you or I consider those consequences good or bad, because we’re not the ones being subjected to Dabbler’s aura. However, I would personally consider denying me my legitimate, authentic emotional response to a traumatic event to itself be a horrifying, traumatic event — considerably worse than what Parfait’s aura caused.
I do not consider the team’s existence or composition to be of such high moral value as to be prioritized over the sanctity of the minds of its members. If people demanded that Dabbler be expelled from the team (as Max nearly did, when Dabbler assaulted her), or chose to leave themselves over the incident, that would be well within their rights to feel that way. If you’re not arguing that Dabbler should have just magically influenced Max to make her feel receptive to Dabbler’s advances, then what makes one situation different from the other?
If one of the members were to choose to leave for some other reason entirely, would you argue that the existence of the team, and their membership within it, was more important than their personal reasons for leaving, and that their free will should be overridden to make them choose not to leave?
Fairly sure all Dabbles did was to ‘calm the tits down’ of the team members (specially Heatwave) so they can process what happened and respond in a less-destructive way
Heatwave and her boyfriend (remember, they are just a couple, not married) need to talk about what happened and to proceed from there. Also probably include Jiggs at some point as she is involved in this seeing how she and Morph have feelings for each other
No one were forced to do anything they wouldn’t have down if they didn’t have their inhibitions lowered, so it is not rape: everyone involved knew what they were doing and with whom
If someone decides to leave, then fairly sure they would be allowed to, they are not forced to be there (except for the Three Stooges {who are there because they use to be vigilantes, which is illegal}, and Jabs)
@Torabi:
“It doesn’t matter whether or not you or I consider those consequences good or bad, because we’re not the ones being subjected to Dabbler’s aura.”
1) They are fictional characters in a fictional, hypothetical situation, and hypothetical situations like this are OBVIOUSLY something we, in the real world, can discuss and our opinions do matter for that purpose.
2) The idea that we cannot consider the consequences of a fictional action to be good or bad makes no sense to me. Especially since you already do it all the time (as do I and most other people on the forum).
“However, I would personally consider denying me my legitimate, authentic emotional response to a traumatic event to itself be a horrifying, traumatic event ”
To be clear, you’re saying that someone preventing you from experiencing emotional trauma is a traumatic event. Where’s the trauma? That’s prevention OF trauma. That’s the opposite of trauma. If you take an antidepressent or other type of medication like lexipro or zoloft in order to regulate your anxiety, is the doctor who prescribed that medication subjecting you to trauma because you are not experiencing your unbalanced chemical imbalanaces in the brain? No. They are fixing a problem that would otherwise be more debilitating to your daily life and ability to function well as a person.
“considerably worse than what Parfait’s aura caused.”
What Parfait did was definitely worse (ie, more invasive than what Dabbler did), even though Parfait’s actions were not intentional. Which is the main reason I don’t actually fault Parfait with any sort of malfeasance beyond negligence.
“I do not consider the team’s existence or composition to be of such high moral value as to be prioritized over the sanctity of the minds of its members. ”
1) Their minds were already altered. All Dabbler was doing was making sure they are not unduly harmed as the effect wears off, by making it wear off gradually instead of cold turkey. Cold turkey withdrawal reactions are NOT beneficial for people, especially if there is a gradual alternative available. Which there is, thanks to Dabbler.
2) The sanctity of the minds of the ARCHON members were ALREADY violated by Parfait’s out-of-control lust aura. Dabbler was not doing a violation, she was preventing the violation that had already occurred from causing additional harm as it goes away by making it go away gradually instaed of all at once.
“If you’re not arguing that Dabbler should have just magically influenced Max to make her feel receptive to Dabbler’s advances, then what makes one situation different from the other?”
One situation would be Dabbler doing something to alter Maxima’s emotions from her NATURAL emotions, which would cause Maxima emotional harm upon realization of what was done. The other situation is Dabbler doing something to prevent the unnatural effects of sudden withdrawal from causing people further permanent emotional harm.
“If one of the members were to choose to leave for some other reason entirely, would you argue that the existence of the team, and their membership within it, was more important than their personal reasons for leaving, and that their free will should be overridden to make them choose not to leave?”
1) Choosing to leave the team (I’m assuming you mean legally by resigning, instead of something illegal like going AWOL) would mean they are no longer subject to the military rules and regulations, and would be civilians again instead of military. The military rules and regulations are what makes the need for team cohesion and suppressing individual choice important. So theycan leave if they want to, with exceptions like Jabberwokky or Detla, who are there as an alternative to jail for their previous criminal actions.
2) While you ARE in the military, your individuality is not as important as the group. If you are a soldier, and you go AWOL, you will be incarcerated when caught. That’s how the military works nad is able to function coherently. If you don’t like it, take it up with the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the Manual for Courts-Martial (MCM). You have to go through official channels to resign from the military. The whole reason ARCHON is military instead of civilian was because they wanted to make sure the members would have to follow the chain of command by keeping career soldiers as voluntarily military subject to military rules, remember during the press conference?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-148-just-say-it-its-about-presence/
(panel 3)
Dabbler described her aura as “Hey that’s just what I needed”, which I interpret as altering their perception of the events, not just calming them down or giving them time to process. She changed the conclusion they would come to. She overrode their free will and personalities. If she were powerful enough, she could presumably cut off your own foot and feed it to you while using that aura, and you would think it’s what you wanted to happen.
I’m not saying that we can’t judge the consequences of fictional events. I’m saying that we cannot make those judgments for other people. We can say whether we would consider them to be good or bad if they happened to us, but we cannot assume that other people would make the same judgment. Just because you think something is good, and wouldn’t be upset if it happened to you, doesn’t mean that other people wouldn’t get upset over that same event if it happened to them.
The trauma is in something being forced on you, without your consent. If you choose to take medication in order to regulate your anxiety, that’s you choosing how you want to respond to a situation or condition. If someone else forces that medication on you because they’ve decided that they don’t want you to be anxious, that’s violating your autonomy. You are then a prop in their world, rather than an actor in your own. You’re being treated like a thing instead of a person.
“No one were forced to do anything they wouldn’t have down if they didn’t have their inhibitions lowered”
The scene with Heatwaves boyfriend actual contradicts that.
He explicitly wants her to experience the field too to get across why he wasn’t faithful.
The aura does, in fact, make you do things you otherwise wouldn’t.
And per Dave, the influence Dabbler exerted was used to make them more receptive to the experience, not just calmer.
Because if they were going to responded in a way that involved violence, regardless of how calm they were, they wouldn’t be all hunk-dory with it either. And yet we see not a single voice of concern or derision, which is pretty unnatural.
@Pander
This constant reference to how the military views people isn’t very compelling. Mostly because I’m not much of a fan of how they do things in the first place.
So even if the military would be willing to roofy their own troops to make them okay with accidental sexual assault, I am not okay with that.
“One situation would be Dabbler doing something to alter Maxima’s emotions from her NATURAL emotions, which would cause Maxima emotional harm upon realization of what was done.”
1)That’s what Dabbler did. Dave’s explanation is actually a bit of a contradiction about this. Cuz apparently it was to prevent grudges but somehow “they’re thoughts and feelings are still their own”. Which should mean there are no grudges to form in the first place.
Like, this explanation only works if some of the team, in fact, were actually not okay with what happened.
2) By your own logic; why not just mind whammy Max constantly to be okay with it.
@DuffenBlaster:
“Mostly because I’m not much of a fan of how they do things in the first place.”
It doesn’t matter if you are a fan or not. It is how successful militaries work, and how they have always worked.
“So even if the military would be willing to roofy their own troops to make them okay with accidental sexual assault, I am not okay with that.”
Sexual assault is AGAINST the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And allowing sexual assault would destroy group cohesion by the way.
“Cuz apparently it was to prevent grudges but somehow “they’re thoughts and feelings are still their own”. Which should mean there are no grudges to form in the first place.”
The thoughts are their own given that they have a little time to PROCESS it. It’s the difference between stopping a person from smoking cigarettes cold turkey and letting them have some nicotene gum first to mellow out the crash.
“By your own logic; why not just mind whammy Max constantly to be okay with it.”
What Dabbler did is not what Parfait did. Dabbler did not ‘mind whammy’ anyone. She just made sure the effects of the previous ‘mind whammy’ did not disappear too suddenly, so they could naturally process their feelings.
“It is how successful militaries work, and how they have always worked.”
Debatable, especially when stretched to this extent.
“Sexual assault is AGAINST the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And allowing sexual assault would destroy group cohesion by the way.”
Drugging your troops without their knowledge to make them get over it faster is also a crime and probably against a code of ethics somewhere in a military manual.
Which is, effectively, what Dabbler did.
She should have asked their permission first.
“so they could naturally process their feelings.”
They did not naturally process them. Those edges being blunted implies they exist and would have changed their stances on this. Par likely would have been barred from the base anyway but still very scummy to artificially lower the discomfort of others just to make her feel better.
She needs to feel how grave of a mistake this is. Just like if someone with a more straightforward superpower accidentally injured a bunch of people it wouldn’t be okay to mind whammy them either.
Like, seriously, a lot of shitty and needless abuse occurs in the military in service of breaking people down.
Calling it all necessary, and trying to rope unwilling mental manipulation into what is considered okay, does nothing but to downplay and ignore the abuse.
It is a fundamentally, morally bankrupt stance to hold.
“Debatable, especially when stretched to this extent.”
No, it’s not debatable. The military is about having a cohesive unit, not about individuality. That’s pretty much the entire point of basic training. Doing stuff like killing other human beings is not something that comes naturally to most people, even when under orders. Basic training is about breaking down a person and rebuilding them to work as a unit and following orders and the chain of command within the limits of the code of military justice.
“Which is, effectively, what Dabbler did.”
No. It’s what Parfait did, although with Parfait, she lacked the mens rea for it to be considered intentional sexual abuse. Dabbler, on the other hand, did not commit any sort of sexual assault at all. At least not this time.
“They did not naturally process them. Those edges being blunted implies they exist and would have changed their stances on this.”
No. Their brain chemistry (and specifically their libidos) were already altered. Going from that state to nothing would NOT be natural. It would, however, be harmful. The ‘blunting’ was to allow them to gradually go back to a state of normalcy, without the negative side effects of harmful withdrawal from the effects of the lust aura.
“Par likely would have been barred from the base anyway”
She was banned from the base.
“but still very scummy to artificially lower the discomfort of others just to make her feel better.”
What Dabbler did was not to make HER feel better. In fact, it caused Dabbler a great deal of pain and discomfort to do what she did, since she had to use a lot of mana potions in order to accomplish it, with the effect of basically being sick from a magical hangover. She did this to prevent everyone else from being harmed.
“She needs to feel how grave of a mistake this is.”
Again, not sure why but you are conflating Parfait’s action (which was not under her control, but had a definite harmful effect) with Dabbler’s action (which was under her control, but was a definite helpful effect by minimizing the effects of the aforementioned harmful effect). To do nothing and let everyone just crash would have been cruel and thoughtless and irresponsible.
“Like, seriously, a lot of shitty and needless abuse occurs in the military in service of breaking people down.”
Not without violating the Code of Military Justice. And what you might consider crappy behavior (like a drill sergeant yelling relentlessly at the soldiers and calling them maggots or other names) might just be a way to break down the social conditioning people have built up from civilian life, which would be incompatible with staying alive in a warzone in military life, as well as keeping your fellow soldiers alive.
“Calling it all necessary, and trying to rope unwilling mental manipulation into what is considered okay, does nothing but to downplay and ignore the abuse.”
AGAIN… what abuse did DABBLER do. Not Parfait. Dabbler. Abuse. Where was that happening?
“It is a fundamentally, morally bankrupt stance to hold.”
Quitting anything cold turkey is not a good thing. IT’s not good for a person emotionally, mentally, or even physically. That seems to have been Dabbler’s main reason for doing something which was deleterious to HERSELF for the sake of the rest of ARCHON. There’s nothing morally bankrupt about that. In fact, it’s sort of virtuous to sacrifice your own health for others benefit.
“No, it’s not debatable. The military is about having a cohesive unit, not about individuality.”
Still doesn’t justify unknown mental manipulation.
“The ‘blunting’ was to allow them to gradually go back to a state of normalcy, without the negative side effects of harmful withdrawal from the effects of the lust aura.”
What harmful withdrawal? Being upset?
Hardly seems like a valid reason for such an extreme action.
“She was banned from the base.”
What was the point of making that statement? The words mean the same exact thing.
“To do nothing and let everyone just crash would have been cruel and thoughtless and irresponsible.”
Irresponsible how? They’re all grown-ups. They can process trauma and get external help if they want on their own.
“What Dabbler did was not to make HER feel better.”
No, she explicitly did so to stop a negative response towards Par. That is the “her” I’m referring to.
“Not without violating the Code of Military Justice.”
Yes it does? This is some real “law enforcement doesn’t abuse people, that’d be illegal” level thinking.
“AGAIN… what abuse did DABBLER do. Not Parfait. Dabbler. Abuse. Where was that happening?”
Manipulating their emotions without their consent. It’s pretty clear cut.
“In fact, it’s sort of virtuous to sacrifice your own health for others benefit.”
I was talking about you using the soldiers have less rights to individuality and team cohesion argument, not Dabbler.
“What harmful withdrawal? Being upset?”
Violence.
Severe Depression. Could be a bit worse than ‘a bit upset’
Obsession.
Suicide.
And what Dabbler did was not extreme in the first place. To anyone except herself.
“What was the point of making that statement? The words mean the same exact thing.”
You said, “Par likely would have been barred from the base” so I pointed out that she WAS. Not would have been.
“They can process trauma and get external help if they want on their own.”
Or they can have the withdrawal symptoms blunted so they don’t have to experience trauma in the FIRST place. The argument you’re making is like saying ‘if you get hit by a car, you can get healed in a hospital’ when I’m saying ‘Or you could look both ways before crossing the street instead, which is the better choice.’
“No, she explicitly did so to stop a negative response towards Par. That is the “her” I’m referring to.”
Where did you get THAT from? Here. REad the page again and tell me where it says that was the reasoning. And remember, this is already AFTER Parfait was permanently barred from the base.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1201-impossible-aura-elevator-mission/
“Manipulating their emotions without their consent. It’s pretty clear cut.”
Again, she wasn’t manipulating anyone’s emotions. She was making sure that Parfait’s lust aura after-effects that was permeating the building went away gradually instead of all at once.
“I was talking about you using the soldiers have less rights to individuality and team cohesion argument, not Dabbler.”
Soldiers DO have less rights to individuality and the military does put team cohesion first if the military wants to be successful at its core function. That’s just me being factual.
“Violence.
Severe Depression. Could be a bit worse than ‘a bit upset’
Obsession.
Suicide.”
That’s a result of not liking an experience and has nothing to do with being calmed down.
Dabbler would have had to fast-track the entire trauma recovery process, somehow. Which is not what happened.
“You said, “Par likely would have been barred from the base” so I pointed out that she WAS. Not would have been.”
Yes, I was saying even without it Par would have only been banned anyways.
And your analogies are failing again because there really is no analogy for this situation. This isn’t a car crash, it’s accidental SA via emotional control. And trying to solve it with more nonconsensual emotional control is really scummy.
Which Dabbler was explicitly doing by “blunting the edges”.
There is no other way to reach into someone’s mind and make what they feel not traumatic without controlling their emotions to some extent.
“Soldiers DO have less rights to individuality and the military does put team cohesion first if the military wants to be successful at its core function. That’s just me being factual.”
Yes, and I think using that as an argument for what Dabbler did is morally bankrupt.
“That’s a result of not liking an experience and has nothing to do with being calmed down.”
Incorrect. What Dabbler did was not about ‘being calmed down’ as they were already calm and okay about it. It’s about not having the lust aura go away cold turkey so they don’t experience a complete withdrawal all at once, which could have caused all the things I mentioned, in addition to destroying the team.
“Dabbler would have had to fast-track the entire trauma recovery process, somehow. Which is not what happened.”
There was no trauma from what Parfait did though. Trauma would occur from the WITHDRAWAL. Which is what Dabbler prevented from happening. She prevented the trauma and them from NEEDING trauma recovery, since there would be no trauma in the first place with Dabbler blunting the withdrawal. Not sure why you are not seeing the difference.
“And your analogies are failing again because there really is no analogy for this situation.”
THere is obviously an analogy for this since I’ve given several very applicable analogies.
If someone is brought into a hospital unconscious from a drug overdose of heroin, they are going to be put on a medication to reduce the opioid withdrawal symptoms, even if they are not conscious to consent, like lofexidine, and possibly would later be given methadone to ‘blunt the edge’ of withdrawal
“This isn’t a car crash, it’s accidental SA via emotional control. And trying to solve it with more nonconsensual emotional control is really scummy.”
Again, Dabbler is not doing emotional control – she is causing the lust aura to go down gradually instead of suddenly. She is, in fact, giving them BACK their emotional control in a way that does NOT cause trauma.
As for the car crash analogy you just talked about, you would not yank someone out of a car who has been in a car crash – you’d do so carefully, with a neck brace on them and several people, so you do not aggravate an already bad situation.
“Yes, and I think using that as an argument for what Dabbler did is morally bankrupt.”
Then you’d be wrong. Dabbler sacrificed her own well-being for the well-being of the group.
Nowhere is it stated or implied that is why Dabbler did what she did. You literally just made that up.
Dave’s own comments under the page contradict you.
“Granted, it’s not a very big shoe, but the succubi are still manipulating people. You can call it mind control, or you can think of it as preventing a bunch of super powered individuals from developing grudges against Parfait/Sydney/Succubi in general/each other. It’s clear Dabbler is doing what she thinks is best for the team. And what she’s doing is basically clipping the emotional peaks.”
Withdrawal symptoms are not mentioned as a problem at all.
You might be confusing it with that time Dabbler bonked a guy because she didn’t want him having her as a standard for sex.
“Then you’d be wrong. Dabbler sacrificed her own well-being for the well-being of the group.”
That has nothing to do with using military cohesion as an excuse/justification for this.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1201-impossible-aura-elevator-mission/
She used mind control to affect everyone’s behavior because she believes HER morals are “better” than theirs. I’m sorry, but that’s not cool.
She wasn’t doing it because she thinks her morals are superior (although she clearly does think that). She was doing it because, without that gradual come-down, what happened could potentially destroy the team (also to prevent any lingering dislike for succubi in general and possibly Dabbler in particular).
Emotion-manipulation powers/magic are a tricky subject when it comes to morals. There’s an interesting discussion in the first Mistborn novel where a highly skilled Soother (a Misting – basically a highly-limited mage – who can selectively suppress emotions in others) makes the argument – fairly well, I might add – that his abilities are functionally more like a refinement of more mundane manipulations than outright mind control. Now, I think succubus seduction powers are well in excess of what a typical – or even highly-skilled – Soother or Rioter (a Misting who can selectively elevate emotions in others) can accomplish, but that’s arguably just a matter of degree.
Then, frankly, let the team be destroyed or grow past it on their own.
Cuz Dabbler secretly mind whammying away responses to trauma isn’t right. Nor practical considering they will doubtless run into trauma again
No, all she cast was a ‘calm down’ spell, the trauma is still there, they were just given the chance to process it calmly (because we know how Heatwave handles shit like that… remember that time she welded the soda can to her hand and caramelised her top when she found out Harem kissed her boyfriend?)
No they weren’t. They were all okay with it.
So either Dabbler’s spell did nothing or they actually had problems with it and she mind controlled them away.
It is still drugging though if done without their consent.
I don’t remember people getting their panties in a bunch when Archon drugged Vehemence into a stupor without even a glance at consent or due process. Principles aren’t principles if they don’t apply for everybody.
There’s a rather large difference between drugging a super villain who’s actively trying to kill somebody and mind controlling people who aren’t engaging in any threatening behaviour
Rights can be revoked for those who violate the rights of others.
That we put people who try to kill other people in prison removes the attempted murderer’s right to freedom.
The principle “everyone inherently has a right to freedom” does not mean it is never wrong to deprive them of freedom, only that you need to establish why they should be deprived of this inherent right.
So for Vehemence, not being sedated against his will is a right that was taken away from him for very well established reasons and the people who did so were presumably forced to actually prove to a court of law why this was necessary and no lesser confinement would do.
Except in this situation you are proud of Philip Morris for being so good at poisoning them, think they are stupid & inferior (yes, inferior. Go back to the teen succubus story. Dabbler is a literal succubi supremacist) for not liking being poisoned, are cramming the nicotine gum in their mouths while they sleep to keep them from getting mad at Philip Morris (and you because you also poison them for laughs, just weaker) not for their health, and are not telling anyone & lying about doing it because you know damn well it’s wrong.
She absolutely was mentally violating them, because what she did was without their knowledge or consent. And unlike Parfait, she was doing it deliberately. Parfait’s aura presumably only affected people in the moment, increased their arousal, and suppressed their inhibitions. But it didn’t make people do anything they wouldn’t otherwise be interested in doing. It didn’t override their free will. They were still able to choose to resist it. Dabbler deliberately altered how people would process and judge past events for her and Parfait’s benefit.
I think the sexual nature of those events ignites people’s biases. For some people, it’s going to make them feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, and default to judging it negatively. For other people, there’s no such thing as bad sex, and sex improves every situation. But neither of those addresses the real issues, which are deception and consent.
Let’s take the sexual element out of it. Imagine Dabbler stole something, and altered people’s memories to believe that they had given it to her instead. Or that she physically hurt someone, but used to aura to make them believe that they wanted or deserved to be injured.
Yeah, it’s hard to have sympathy for her rn.
Here’s the violin, now play it.
I call this piece, “Fuck Dabbler and not in the fun way.”
*performs a merry jig*
*provides back up on the worlds tiniest double-bass*
No normal person would be that calm being detained like that :p Innocent people can’t handle being cuffed when suspected of something they knew they didn’t do.
Sydney identifies as a Super Hero despite not technically being a Super.
She can take it and she can dish it out.
Sydney ain’t ‘normal’
1) Sydney is not ‘normal’ by any stretch of the imagination.
2) Sydney is very genre-savvy and this is one of those things she’d probably have expected to be in place if she ever went ‘Dark Halo’
3) This isn’t ‘something she didn’t do’ – it’s more like being quarantined for having a disease.
4) Sydney is too excitable to focus on stuff like this most likely
5) Sydney has been through this sort of thing before, but worse since someone was about to shoot her in the face after giving her a truth serum.
Sydney could be really scary if she turned evil.
Yep. That’s probably why Harem was scared at first, when she thought Lapha was going to be able to take control of the orbs and it was a ‘takeover body’ thing instead of a ‘shared body’ thing. Even Maxima’s plasma blasts havent been able to get through the shield so far.
its likely that Sydney will just shrug this whole situation as “something batman would have done” so its fine, its logical that the US goverment would have special cells to contain some of its most dangerous assets not even if they go rogue or go against orders but as we see here there are plenty of shit that can take away your agency and make you do stuff that you would never do
Imagine if Lapha would have actual access to the orbs shit would have been catastrophic because as Maxima said she could flatten a metropolitan area in less than 10 minutes and only a handful of supers could actually stop her (one of them being incapacitated at the moment)
im sure after all this is over they are going to have a talk about super prisions and that basically everyone in archon has one specifically designed for them
Has Dabbles always had the Gamora-eyes? Comic version
Yep. One of her eyes is a cybernetic one (that she made herself). It’s probably got better Truesight than Volo’s…
The blue one’s cybernetic. She also has a cybernetic arm. She lost the originals in two different duels, and made her own replacements.
Talking about the markings around the eyes, not the David Bowie eyes
She also has a cybernetic tail (she is keeping that reveal from Maxi a secret until their honeymoon ;) )
Never signed Canon where her Kayla was cybernetic. That does not include an artificial one made for well. … entertainment
heh… now i wanna see dabbs with succuflu where shes all drippy and disgusting and trying to be sexy about it…
There must be something wrong with me (apart from the obvious): Energy Drinks have no affect on me (still try them though, every new type or flavour)
I find it depends on which ones I drink; most of then I can drink up to 5 per day, and the only effect is from drinking that much liquid. One brand, though… I can feel a little bit of a rush after about 1.5
for me, energy drinks and caffeine in general just makes me sleepy.
it’s a known possible symptom of adhd, maybe i should get tested…
Probably you are developing resistance. Try to not drink any caffeinate drink for a couple of weeks.
Keep aspren or tylenol around for the first week of “caffene cold-turkey..”
One of the potential symptoms of ADHD is resistance to caffeine for some baffling reason. Other neurological disorders related to ADHD (like certain forms of autism) also express this symptom.
It’s really, really annoying. Coffee doesn’t do shit. :|
Haven’t drunk coffee in twenty years… okay, do occasionally drink ready-made cans, but not often, usually just to add the cans to The Collection
And refuse to take headache pills, not even when having a stroke (and have had far too many of those to bother keep counting now)
If I drink enough coffee I get that glowing eyes feeling but that’s the only effect. Energy drinks haven’t done that before as I’ve no inclination to drink more than a couple. I can drink over a dozen cups of coffee a day if I feel like it or none. It’s just another drink.
i love when maxima geeks out SO MUCH.
Yes, once again Lapha under-estimated both humans and supers, as well as to what we are willing to do to keep things secure, even if it meant immobilizing a colleague in the most uncomfortable way. I get it’s how she makes money, but c’mon! you keep going after the A-listers and lose. Every. Single. Time! At this point, this might be the very last time you have a body, ever! Plus there’s a good chance that Tendi is going to wind up with your body AND your “boyfriend.”
I think they’re terrifying Laph. Once she finds out the kind of horrors humans routinely have in their entertainment she won’t be able to get out of Sydney fast enough.
They’ve already said that our entertainment industries are galactically viable profit sources.
I rather like it when humanity’s hat is our imagination.
Show her the tentacles!
Both kinds :P
Well, bad things happening to people isn’t a feature of life exclusive to humans and earth entertainment isn’t a secret, so I doubt it’d work on a hardened criminal.
given Lapha’s near death experience a few online art portfolios full of “erotica vore” might persuade her to abandon Earth and never come back…and result in Sidney and the team wanting their own memories erased of the experience as well LoL
Not really, no.
Well, they can’t kill her or torture her.
Lets see here… To get rid of Lapha they need to do something that Sydney likes but Lapha hates…
Calling it right now, they’re going to have her eat something super spicy.
It might be the opposite. They may have to torture Sydney to get Lapha to leave.
Burn a near mint Amazing Fantasy #12. Detective Comics #27.
Play the ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’.
Show an animated Mockbuster festival.
Watching the Star Wars Holiday Special is nowhere near as bad as burning a comic book.
Actually saw it when it was first released… then spent years believing imagined it because no one would even talk about it :(
‘Play the ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’.’
is it awful, yes. but Sydney has seen it. (its on Youtube!) I’d suggest filtering the plot, fight scenes, and any dialog from later dragon ball so all you have is hours and hours of grunting and staring.
So… The ani-abridged version from Half Star
I am proud to say I managed to watch the whole Star Wars holiday special without taping my eyelids open.
Grakz might do the job.
going in or going out?
Don’t think about getting an itch anywhere right now Sydney.
Why the blank doesn’t Maxi say this. its just so devious and awful. they have dr. Frost on staff so she can help sydney get past this once its over. also, horse pills with ‘laxative’ ala Kari Byron.
Mmm, chili.
Also, the more I look at this page, the more I like it. At first, it seemed like a typical Sydney digression, but then I noticed that it was Max who was mostly pushing the idea along. And I assume that Lapha has some variation of the “I am a wolf, and you are all sheep” sort of attitude. So, considering that they are about to enter into a hostage negotiation with her, for both Sydney and Parfait’s friend, it is probably not a bad strategy to start by casually pointing out to Lapha that she is dealing with the sort of primitive culture that enjoys watching some pretty horrifiic stuff for entertainment, and which also employs some rather severe forms of punishment on their criminals.
Syd’s all like, “You wanna occupy my body, you’d better APPRECIATE it more!”
Not just a fictional movie Laph, a fictional movie designed for entertainment!
And that was the tame one in that franchise…
Someone should tell her about “The Human Centipede” :)
I feel an acute HFY coming on…XD
“Terrans? Do not talk to me about Terrans. They do things for entertainment that would get you locked away in an institution for life, on the home world. Some of it, anyway. The rest would count as a Great Filter on a third of the inhabited planets in the galaxy. Even _demons_ tread carefully around Terrans. Too unpredictable, and theres a non-negligible fraction are too happy to indulge in the kind of that would make an Alari queazy.”
somebody has a youtube channel reading the HFY stories. some of them are quite good. I liked ‘those who run’
I liked that one, especially the reveal that the name ‘those who run’ was a mistranslation of ‘those who chase’.
I recommend “The Truth About Humans.” I think it’s an Aggro Squerrill narration. Less “Humans are psycho” and more “Humans do the craziest, most dangerous shit for no reason at all.”
And the one Terran word all aliens should learn and fear is “Ooops!”
When a Terran says ‘Oops!’, things are about to get ‘interesting’ (best observed from the opposite direction… in a different galaxy) :P
Yay for Sydney being confirmed as on par with a nuclear warhead.
more like an automatic rapid-fire railgun loaded with not tactical, but _strategic_ antimatter warheads.
And you got to figure that’s only on level two. We haven’t yet seen some of the other variations of her PPO.
thing is Maxima would probly resist the control more then sydney due to military training and sheer will
Also Lapha likely wouldn’t have been able to pull off that sneak-attack-kiss maneuver in the first place, considering Max’s reflexes (even when not using superspeed), training (trying to grab someone for a kiss and for a grapple aren’t entirely dissimilar), and experience with Dabbler (who you know has to have tried something like that at some point).
Dabbler got in a 2 handed grope early.
Superspeed is almost always handled irregularly in comics
Superspeed isn’t the same as super-reaction-time.
Max almost certainly has her reaction time dialed down close to human norm to make interacting with us slow types easier.
Confirmed Max did get nuclear-grade Sydney vom on her boots at her first encounter with Miss Scoville. She can be surprised.
Hannibal Lecter is described in the second book as having kind of the strength of a madman. Not that I truly acknowledge that there ARE other books than Silence of the lambs.
And this over top top draping of one former police officer… well, that’s a director getting carried away with the visuals. The book doesn’t have it.
Silence of the Lambs is the second book. Red Dragon is set and was written first, and is a superior book, although both movie adaptations (Michael Mann’s Manhunter and the horrible Brett Ratner Red Dragon) are inferior to Jonathon Demme’s SotL.
The whole issue with Hannibal Lector – and MOST fictional works I’ve seen – is that they require the guards to be literally too dumb to live. In the case of Lector, it was only two guards showing up for feeding time. When one was attacked the other charged in to close range instead of shooting/tazing him from a distance… and to top it off, THEY NEVER NEEDED TO OPEN THE CELL DOOR IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Seriously, watch that scene again. They were bringing in a food tray that would have easily slid under the bottom of the cage wall.
ok wait a minute. firing antimatter anything into an atmosphere sounds like a fantastic way to irradiate the planet but not create an impact crater. wouldn’t the compressed air (regular matter) in front of the dart react strongly to the antimatter substance? or does it need to be element to element?
It would not need to be element to element. Antimatter annihilates not on the atomic level, or even subatomic, but on the level of elementary particles. Which means that you don’t even have to have a proton to annihilate with an antiproton, a neutron will do fine (and vice-versa, antineutrons will happily annihilate with protons), you just don’t get a complete annihilation (you leave behind a meson, but those decay rather quickly).
You’re looking at something like xkcd/what-if/1
The relativistic baseball.
Dabbler eats with a spoon but no hands.
Big spoon or little spoon?
Tablespoon.
I put a comment up before, but…I take it back. My squint is so poor that I saw the two hands in her lap, but not the other two.
There is no spoon
Nth Tech
Go back to #690 – Götterdämmermcguffins
My read is that “the nth” would be mythical, and if there was any credible evidence of there existence it would be a favorite for con artists.
“Primitives who can barely get off the surface of their planet…I think they call it mud or dirt…anyway they have nth tech just lying around to be picked up.” Yeah, that’s going to be taken seriously.
Most probably wouldn’t, but space pirates and adventurers would probably think, “yeah, where better to hide your ancient super tech” or in the case of the “it was a test all along” leave clues near the higher tech civilizations but put your orb of ultimate power in some random cave on a more primitive planet whose locals wouldn’t recognize it for what it is, fall for easy scooby doo tricks to keep them away from an area (stay clear of that tunnel, there are weird sounds and apparitions…and its disguising some relic of ancient knowledge.
-that said they do know that 3rd tiers exist and it was established they like to pull the classic BS quests and riddles stuff, so it might not be much of a stress to assume that the primitive planet just thinks something is “Nth” when its really 3rd tier, which to be fair both would be likely seen as physics defying god tech to a below 1 tier civilization (most anyway). Even though, if you think there is 3rd tier tech that’s something special too. Even if you don’t believe its *26D technology that can rewrite local physics and create a viable pocket dimension like its Mine craft*, it might still be a zero point energy crystal module that fits in your hand, or hard light constructs that adapt to energy weapons, or spell implants for super powered magic exceeding normal mana limits, etc…
I mean if you are the Star Trek federation level does it matter if you are finding Organians or Q tech, they are both beyond what you have and you could assume the pre FTL locals just assume the former is the same as the later so exaggerated a bit.
So what will they do? Leave Sydney like that or find a way to the flame being back to Lapha?!?
Syd has access to memories with all needed information. Location of Lapha’s body, location of Tenri’s flame, location of an illegal flame-grabbing device, and location of a flame-holding device. As of this point, she’s only been possessed *and* awake for a few minutes total at most. She’s only been able to access the memories that surfaced ADHD-style directly related to the meandering conversation. Dabbler only has to ask Sydney if she can see what happened to Tenri, and Max secures the devices within a few minutes.
Assuming Garamm hasn’t vacated the area with the devices, that is. We don’t know how long Syd was knocked out from the combo stub-gun/medication injector (assumed… stun guns don’t actually knock people unconcious, so there must have been something else). But if still there, and Garamm didn’t appear to be in a hurry the last time we saw him, the devices and everything else can be secured within a matter of minutes of Sydney telling Max.
But that’s just the easy solution… who knows what Dave has planned out?
I am curious how you expect Max to reach Garamm, Tenri, or the devices within minutes when they’re not even on the same planet. Not without Sydney opening an aetherium causeway for her. And she hasn’t yet displayed the ability to open one to a place that’s not in the orb’s travel history.
Good point, forgot that Lapha’s body and Garamm are at a demon-school on a different planet.
Isn’t that the jacket that Anvil bought for Maxima?
Never mind. It’s not. It just looks very similar, but there are different zippers and a few other minor differences.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-834-we-dont-need-another-hero-dressed-like-a-stripper/
I wonder if Lapha can help Syd with her orbs. Maybe somehow becomes integrated with them.
I mean you figured that Lapha was originally designed to control ancient and archaic maybe even mythical devices.
When you also consider that Sydney knows the details of her fight off planet which is considered a secret as well. I mean I don’t necessarily like either the options of permanent prison or termination. There’s also the matter of another person who got involved in voluntarily. The one the lizard is guarding at the moment
I had an odd thought too.
What if Lapha is exactly like the pips Sydney uses to activate sections of her orbs. Intelligent control. Praises quite a bit more questions.
Wait a minute…. That’s not ARC!
That’s the super villain super lair super prison Maxima and friends raided a few ‘weeks’ ago!
the first panel made me think I missed a page, “as Sidney said”…she didn’t say that. Double checked last page, yeah it would make sense for her to say that, but…she didn’t on page.
Top-right panel Sydney says, “Well now your memories of your childhood are making me sad, but that’s no excuse to try and kidnap… wait… you had a childhood and parents?” [rest of comic is ADHD/sad/trauma divergence]
I see it now, I must have glossed over it when I read the page somehow.
This is absolutely over the top for Sydney.
Put the orbs in a locked suitcase and you could basically hold Sydney in a wet paper bag.
The only way it makes sense is if there is a concern Lampha is able to use magic.
This makes sense when you consider that this primarily for Lapha rather than for Sydney. Partly for intimidation and to give Maxima some advantage but also to prevent any further accidental discoveries how the orbs work.
Also consider that nobody knows how the orbs work. Everyone was surprised when the orbs failed to work for Lapha. Nobody knew this countermeasure and nobody knows how well this works.
Now consider the possibility that there is a loophe that Lapha might be able to exploit. Say she is able to interface with them once Sydneey is using one of them. Or Lapha has some some horrible trick in reserve in case things turn out even worse for her, like turning this from a body-share to a full-on posession by being able to suppress Sydney or even wipe her mind out of her body.
If you were Archon, would you allow that to happen?
So yes, this makes plenty of sense.
The orbs haven’t failed to work for Lapha. Lapha hasn’t been able to grab one to activate it yet.
That is a good point. For all Archon knows, that’s what happened. Or Sydney moved the orbs out of reach so Lapha THINKS that they won’t work for her.
That’s what I’ve been thinking. If Syd has to be awake to keep them away from Lapha’s hand, it gets very dicey the moment Syd goes to sleep. Lapha’s “people” were made as sentient magical spells and used, utility style, to control or monitor things uninterrupted for long periods of time. So Lapha probably doesn’t need sleep.
That may be her “long game” here – she may not be able to completely control someone who’s awake, but they eventually have to sleep and she doesn’t.
Sydney has telekinetic control of the orbs.
They don’t know for sure that the orbs can’t be accelerated to high velocities at an instant, spin to generate friction, or any other kind of override to ensure the possessor of the orbs can’t be disarmed of them.
Just because that capability has not yet been displayed does not mean you should not overengineer a super prison cell to account for unknown powers or surprising extent or scale of said powers. Especially when dealing with a super on Halo’s level of mass destruction.
And for anyone with any *actual* sympathy for her, remember that the first thing she did was grab an orb and try to shoot people with it.
Yeah, absolutely zero sympathy from me, tragic backstory or no.
She went to grab an orb, I don’t know if it’s certain she knows what the orbs do
Glad to see that Dabbler got her chili.
I can’t say I feel a ton of sympathy for Dabbler considering her condition is entirely of her own making.
As for Lapha, all I’ll say is that after four-five actual weeks of easy sex jokes, a comic that abrupt and played for drama was pretty jarring.
Its not quite the most extreme example of a jarring a tone shift, and its not like the comic hasnt veered into this kind of territory before. But it was kind of sudden this time, wasnt it?
I’m not getting much of a tone shift here. We went from one attempt at invasive mind control to another. Pretty much the same tone.
From one nonconsensual kiss with overtones of a mind control attack, to another nonconsensual kiss with overtones of a mind control attack?
Not much tone shift I can see.
One thing Syd got out of this was that she finally kissed a girl – two different girls in fact – and both of them attempted different kinds of mind control effects, and Syd didn’t like it either time.
Sooo, yeah. A straight girl who’s not into being mind controlled. Not too surprising, since I think the VAST majority of girls aren’t into that regardless of their orientation.