Grrl Power #1239 – Sydula rasa
Well, it looks like Lapha has one card left to play. Imagine having to start over with Sydney. You’d have to show her SO MUCH sci-fi and cartoons in order to try and reboot her memories – assuming that’s even a viable solution with whatever brain-wipe method Lapha’s race employs.
Imagine being the lobby guard when Maxima shows up with an unconscious Sydney under one arm and gray blue-ish kind-of-purple alien girl under the other. I guess at some point you’d be like, “Oh, it must be Tuesday.” Working at Archon would probably be more interesting than manning the gate at most military installations. When Tenri gets her body back, she’s might have a jacked up neck from Maxima scruffing her like that. At least, I assume that’s how she’s holding her up, as her tank top isn’t being pulled taut across her torso. Not that the average Space-WalMart tank top would even hold a person’s body weight for long.
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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Yeah, I don’t see that working for Lapha either. Dabs is going to take her down hard.
Meds wear off in 3…2…1…
Time for a Batman Scat Earworm festival in her head.
Samples of what she would have to live forever with.
Sydney whispers into ear of the doll after flame is removed.
“Dooobey dooo, I’m Batman…”
The horror of that being with her forever and ever…
Yes that was exactly what I was thinking.
Being forced to stay in Sidney’s head when she’s off of her meds is gonna be … “fun”.
Not even Sidney herself wants to be without her meds.
I’m afraid the “scare a hardened criminal by mentioning that you watch weird stuff” isn’t a viable strategy.
She doesn’t even share Syndey’s sense of self. So, in all likelihood, she wouldn’t even feel Sydney’s mind starting to spiral.
She’s still running on Sydney’s “hardware” so to speak. And said hardware is a brain riddled with ADHD – which aside from the cliche distractability comes with fun symptoms like short term memory issues, unpredictable hyperfocus on a random activity/topic, distorted sense of time, dulled perception, a constant feeling of boredom or sensory overload – or both…
It’s like loading hundreds of tabs in Chrome on a PC from 10 years ago: Your RAM is maxed, the CPU is spiking between 0-100%, pages aren’t being displayed correctly, that one important transaction timed out because it took too long to load, you’re pretty sure spam-clicking the “send” button in a chat will either do nothing or send your comment dozens of times but you do it anyway, and WHERE IS THIS MUSIC COMING FROM?!
Add Sydney’s propensity for ‘rather hot’ foods and Lapha might very well run screaming if she has ANY sense at all.
Wait a minute… What is Dabbler eating? Is that the chili?
Oh dear…
I think you’re really overselling how bad ADHD is if you think merely having it will convince a cut throat killer/slaver from killing you.
Like, maybe it’ll throw Lap for a loop for an hour or so. But enough to let go of her only piece of leverage? Unlikely.
Depends on how bad the AD/HD is and how sane Lapha is.
Leverage is one thing. Being stuck in Sydney’s head? Ouch.
Better “ouch” than “swiftly executed or imprisoned for life”.
Given how many afflicted die by their own hand rather than li e with it, that’s debatable. It depends on just how bad it is without meds. My OCD issues are far worse than my focus issues, and I’ve thought about it before getting my meds, so…
Unfortunately Laph can only read her memory and not her thoughts. Just listening to her would lessen any effect tremendously.
Yeah… That would for all intents and purposes be murder and then they would reciprocate in kind.
That is kinda the point of a hostage situation. Both parties know that if the hostage taker kills the hostage, the hostage immediately loses all further leverage and will be captured/killed.
The point is to avoid that situation.
Biologically, that makes no sense whatsoever. Setting aside short term memory of the sort you can lose just by being distracted, once something goes into memory, it ain’t coming out short of physical alterations to the brain’s synapses. We aren’t computers with an erase function, just like we don’t have a convenient “pause” button.
Once something is in an adult’s memory, it’s there for life, barring brain damage. When you forget stuff it’s more like you lost to the library card, the book’s still on the shelf.
Still, I suppose she does have the capacity to do a lot of damage on the way out.
Is this the point where Dabbler points out that Aetholiths are just sentient spells, and she knows “Dispel magic”?
Biologically, the entire comic doesn’t make sense. Superpowers don’t make sense. Possession doesn’t make sense. What even is your point?
The super powers aren’t biological, remember. They’re the product of some kind of ultra-sophisticated software that’s been coded right into the computational fabric of the vacuum. The only biological aspect is a genetic key that signals to the software that it should be doing something.
Lexi’s point is that Lapha having the ability to do this isnt that impossible in a world where there are aliens and superpowers and Nth level technology.
We can still lose our memories if those engrams are messed with, and if they can be copied, they can be erased. Our brains are essentially biological computers anyway.
Technically, you don’t lose the memories, just the recall button
They might get jumbled up, but they are still there
Biology has little to do with it when a creature that is pretty much a living magic spell has set up shop inside Sydney’s mind.
Going with your library analogy, if Lapha is forcibly extracted it might be like her having tossed all the library books in the back of a truck and ran off with them, the building is still there, but all the books are gone. Or maybe she just changed the locks and kept the only key, again the building and even the books are still there, but you can’t access any of it until you found another way inside.
Is this why I lose/misfile words, yet can recover them if I find the right connection from something I do remember?
(I thought it was just my brain acting like it’s made of clockwork and losing a few gears.)
So, maybe extracting Lapha would only break the connections between Sydney’s memories, yet she could reconstruct them like Uhura did in the ST:ToS episode The Changeling.
Yup. It’s also why passive and active memory are so different. (Active memory is when you actively look for a piece of information, such as “You asked when is my wife’s birthday? August 3rd”, passive memory is when it comes to you unbidden, like “today is my wife’s birthday.”) It’s possible to be very good at one and very bad at the other.
>Biologically, that makes no sense whatsoever.
Biologically, magic isn’t real.
Sez who?
What about the Elves in Wendy and Richard Pini’s “Elfquest” universe? Their magic seems pretty biologic-based to me.
Considering how the two can see each other’s memories, and that species is basically a magical ai, mechanically she is just threatening to cause very specific brain damage
Lapha already has a copy. She’s putting “spin” on her real threat which is “I will inflict lots of damage on her mind before I leave”.
Memories aren’t that stable.
The idea that memories are just stored and are always available to access and don’t change is highly dubious
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183265/
That is why people can re write memories of a traumatic event. Enough “therapy” and you will factually be incorrect on what happened as video evidence will prove your altered memories are wrong.
Also this proves that eidectic memory is a urban myth as well.
No, eidetic memory isn’t an urban myth, it’s just rare (and no more precise as regular memory: they can still make mistakes)
Yeah, I enjoyed having it until my early 20’s. (It’s quite common for it to go away about then, if you have it.)
My experience was that the first time I accessed a memory, I got the actual memory. The second time I got it mixed with the memory of having remembered it. Memories get contaminated each time you access them. So I’d scan the text book right before a final, and then very carefully avoid thinking about any given page until I needed a look at it.
Part of having a photographic memory is being very good at pulling up a memory without contaminating it. But “good” and “perfect” are hardly the same.
I suspect there’s also a collision issue, as you accumulate memories you start bringing up “adjacent” memories, too, when you look at them. That might be why photographic memories tend to go away as you get out of your teens; You’ve accumulated enough memories that the hash table is full of collisions.
pollution of the original memory is the issue and in court cases the multiple recalls contaminate it to the point of contradicts other known facts.
A lot of recants(mea culpa) 40 year later are based on therapy doing this.
Eidetic memory is not an urban myth. Some people actually do have it. It’s just extremely uncommon (and not perfect memory still, just a lot more precise than normal people’s memories). Most of the very few people with eidetic memory only have short-term eidetic memory (usually with children for about 2-10% of the population, and extremely rare to persist in adults). People with long term eidetic memory are even more rare, but they do exist. It’s just different than what is shown in movies and TV shows and comic books. But what most people thinks is photographic memory in popular media is actually a condition called ‘hyperthymesia’ (like how they portray Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory).
As a victim of TBI I can say I still have all the information I always had, but to use an antique computer reference my FAT was corrupted. I finally got confirmation of brain damage 20 years after the fact when doctors did an MRI after I bumped my butt in an unexplained fall (I had a triple whammy of low blood sugar, low blood pressure, and a slow even for me pulse causing a major dizzy spell and loss of balance).
I read a study recently showing there is evidence every time we recall a memory, we are erasing it and rewriting it. So my guess is Lapha when she reads only rewrites into herself, so Sydney’s memories are running through her
“Not chess, Mr. Spock. Poker!” She could be bluffing. Dabbler’s knowledge of the species’ capabilities isn’t complete, or she would have mentioned this beforehand.
That’s a huge risk to take. You’re attacking the military, if you want to make hostages things are at risk of not going the way you want. “I can essentially kill her at will” means “I can lose my only leverage and definitely die,” and the military aren’t known for being unable to accept that they can have casualties. None of them wants to lose Sydney… but if that’s beyond their power to stop, they’re 100% able to account for it and consider her a sunken cost, for all that they’ll hate it.
Maybe Lapha would want to see footage of what happened to the last guy who tried to hold her hostage, though. So far, that hasn’t been an activity defined for the longevity of the kidnapper.
Are they though?
She isn’t threatening a board of military directors, she’s threatening Syd’s friends.
AGAIC, she just threatened to kill Sydney. Wiping all your memories, you may as well be dead and a newborn.
Them’s not fighting words, them’s killing words.
For real, like, she just needs to be taken down with extreme prejudice at this point
Doesn’t matter if you have a sad backstory, if you’re an utterly horrible villain
Stop trying to monstrify her. She’s afraid for her life, and is threatening the life of a hostage. In this, she is little more than a scared gang banger holding a gun to a man’s head. You sound like trigger-happy cops looking for an excuse to splatter the ganger’s brains against the wall, and possibly the captive’s, too. “Worth it to get that MONSTER off the street”?
They have Sydney and Lapha safely contained right now. Let’s take the time to consider all options.
No, monstrifying her here is actually valid. She’s not ‘just a scared gang banger’. She’s someone that willingly made the same mistake TWICE. Her plan is to deliver someone that that is the equivalent of a walking weapon of mass destruction to someone that keeps slaves and deliver that person into said slavery. This isn’t someone that tried to pick pocket someone and things have gotten out of hand.
Her species may not be monsters, but she specifically kinda is. Note that in addition to what LuckySimon mentioned, she also had her “friend” kidnapped just so she would have the convenience of not being instantly recognized, despite the fact that she wasn’t in the same body as before and the new one has a tail that the old one didn’t have.
No, the only difference between Laph’s original body (that was eaten by some random alien who got peckish) and her current is that tail, she could have gone with a straight re-grown but Garamm convinced her on getting the tail added
nice try, Lalpa planned this kidnapping and is responsible for all deaths that occur including her own.
That is the law.
As for consequences, I can see Earth researching a “virus” to kill all her kind since we have an aversion to body snatchers. That is how serious this is with a living weapon that wipes people.
So, it’s okay to plan genocide because of one person now?
I never, ever, got any idea of genocide from the comments in this thread. I kind of missed that. But, sure, let’s talk about it. What do you think Laph is planning to do with an enslaved Sydney-weapon? Petty theft?
What do you really think her goal with this is? Consider what she’s actually doing – stealing a body and leaving the hijacked intelligence a prisoner in their own mind… There’s a reason they make their own empty host bodies. What she did IS monstrous. You’re imparting human morals on a non-human being – fair enough. It’s a comic. But if we do that, we should do the same with everything they do.
…why am I arguing on the internet? why… yeah. I’m going back to occasional lurking and my job. Great comic.
“As for consequences, I can see Earth researching a “virus” to kill all her kind”
Reposted the genocide mention, seeing how you missed it
Killing an entire species for the crimes of one member? Sure, why not
If that was done to the Hyu-mon race, it would have ended with Cain
I know I seem to criticize you more often than not, but I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on being the sane and moral one in this thread. It is utterly baffling how readily people twist and ignore words these days. Makes it difficult, if not impossible, to have a rational discussion on any topic, when people are living in entirely different realities from each other. The post calling for genocide is indeed right there, not even buried somewhere else. For not just one, but two people to claim that it’s not is quite disorienting.
actually I am pointing out how it’s ridiculous that a multi species association allows a race that is comfortable with bodyjacking, kidnapping, blackmailing others without a solution for this species already.
Alien Batman on the galactic council should be doing his job.
Nice strawman. Cause taking out the single person threatening to kill you is gEnOcIdE.
Delve much deeper into that copium mine and you’ll unleash balrog.
Maybe not a genocide virus right off the bat, but I can already imagine rules of engagement regarding her kind in the future…
“Extremely dangerous, potentially near fatal at close distances, use of lethal force authorized under all conditions”
What you’re describing is called ‘felony murder’ – and you are correct…. up until a point.
Basically it’s like if a bank robber is robbing a bank, takes a hostage, and police, while trying to stop him, wind up ACCIDENTALLY shooting the hostage, then the bank robber is on the hook for felony murder. If, however, the police decide to go to the bank robber’s home, and shoot his wife dead, then kidnap his daughter and use her to force the bank robber to surrender…. that is NOT going to be felony murder or kidnapping by the bank robber. Or if, after the bank robber is captured/killed, the police decide that, in order to prevent his daughter from seeking revenge, they murder his daughter, that is also NOT felony murder – it’s straight up murder by the police. And psychotic.
Felony murder only is applicable during the commission of the crime. It also requires a lack of intent by outside parties to commit other crimes as well. Creating a virus afterwards would not be during the commission of the original crime. It would be intentional genocide which would not be the fault of Lapha. And would be rather psychotic.
you are correct (par for you)
as for “consequences” , not about lalp individually but I meant for the racial ability of her species and that they will use it w/o being considered pariahs. This indicates there is a long term threat to any species that can be affected. Thus the realpolitik plan for enemies threatening your species protocol. between their ability and a bodymasking holo projector ,bodyjacking aliens seem to be that much of a threat.
She’s threatening to destroy Sydney’s personality completely if she doesn’t get to take Sydney away.
Her intent was to deliver Max into slavery
We don’t have to monstrify her, she’s doing it herself
Spare me your sophistry. She came to earth specifically to kidnap someone and sell them into slavery. She’s no fucking hero.
So that’s it, huh? There’s only monsters and heroes, nothing in between.
Honestly, at this point I expect Maxima to point out that Earth isn’t part of the greater universe yet, and that AI doesn’t have any rights on Earth. Meaning that she’s being nice by offering to remove her instead of just deleting her outright.
Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend Earth go violating the recognized (by the greater universe) rights of aliens right now, or they may end up the galactic equivalent of North Korea.
Lapha is being REALLY short sighted. Remove Sydney’s memories? that recall device gets put far far away. also, again, this can’t be the first time. there’s a way to fix this against Lapha’s will. my money’s on that the method will be something that Lapha will not like or enjoy. her survival is also optional. these kinds of hostage situations make for good drama but there’s an inevitability to it.
I see some aliens are going to be persona non grata. I think they are going to be surprised how long the memory is for this.
I say get a meal from Sydney’s favourite restaurant and see if Lapha can handle the spice
Daphne: Okay, the boss has given the green light for you to have a meal, Sydney. She got this vegetarian chili for you. You’re staying restrained, so I will be feeding you. And YOU, Lapha, don’t try jumping into me ’cause I can teleport away if you try anything stupid. Well, stupider. [ Scoops a spoonful of the chili for Sydney and approaches her mouth. ] Okay, open up.
Sydney: [ Chew, chew ] Ah, that hits the spot.
Lapha: What the hell is that? Are you eating fire?!
Max: You want out? Here’s an option for you? [ Holds up her stolen inanimate body ]
Hmm, what would happen to Lapha if she jumped into Harem? I guess a segmentation error as she is split among 5 locations.
I wonder what the odds are that Lapha already knows, without even needing to access Sydney’s memories, that Sydney is the human that was filmed eating multiple bowls of Grakz on Fracture Station.
She jumps on a Harem.
Harem Despawns the infected Harem.
Candle in the wind.
Gone.
Poof.
Be a bad choice.
Except the Harems aren’t airgapped from each other. So there’s a chance when you get Lapha’s ‘mind without a body’ chocolate in Harem’s ‘five bodies with ONE mind’ peanut butter, Lapha suddenly is in ALL of Harem’s bodies.
Even if that wasn’t the case, that’s one of Daphne gone
Which she can respawn later
That has never been successfully demonstrated, and Daphne is certainly not going to depend on that, the same way she doesn’t casually throw her dupes into wood chippers. She values her bodies, and isn’t going to waste them.
Remember the lead-up to the doc fixing her arm?
Perhaps the reason Lapha is trying to kidnap Sydney is that she want to be a professional grakz eater.
Now we find out if any of the demon countries those people recalled to are willing to extradite Parfait’s friends in order to maintain or normalize relations with earth, especially with detailed evidence on how they went about things and that the ‘trying to bully a succubus into picking one of them as the new master’ part likely violates the hell out of their own laws.
That is the Mindripper from the Black Archive, I think? Or at least a convincing facsimile?
Can’t find a Mindripper in the pages following this one. Please help? https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-566-surprise-billionaire/
I suspect that Sean is thinking of the ‘brane ripper’, as wielded by Cooter/Wyrmil here:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-585/
Named as such by Sciona here:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-608-twofer/
And used by her to create the ‘skybreaker’ here:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-623-stargate-diy/
Not terribly similar, in my opinion, to the aetholith extractor Dabbler’s produced on this page.
Probably getting confuzzled by also reading Delve :)
Great webic, that happened to have a Mindripper character (complete arsehole)
The military loses an asset either way… but if they let Lapha go they give that asset to someone else as well as the information she got from Sydney’s memories. There is no one with a functioning brain that would give in to her demand.
This, exactly. Lapha has an immediate “you won’t kill me or change the status quo” advantage, but not one that gets her any result she actually wants beyond immediate survival.
Also, in the second-to-last panel, I thought there was a visual indicator of Sydney quietly saying something, a word being projected out of her mouth, and had to zoom in to realize “No, those are her teeth.”
“For you, that was the weirdest day of your life. For me, it was Tuesday.”
Uh oh. So now there’s a whole bunch of loose lipped demons certianly willing to sell the N’th information to the highest bidder somewhere out there? Things will get real heated up for earth, real soon, me thinks. No wonder Deus is trying to speed up the superification process.
So the funny options have been taken off the table
“If you don’t let me go, you shelve one of your most important assets.” Whereas if they DO let her go, she goes off WITH one of their most important assets.
I don’t think Lapha’s position is as strong as she thinks. Shelved and contained is still better than N-th powered terrorist at large.
Time for some extreme measures. It’s been a long time since last grakz incident. She will BEG to be let back to hers (Tenri’s) uncontaminated body.
Yeah. Lapha is clearly an idiot. They have literally no motivation for letting them go, and every reason in several worlds to keep them. All her threat does is ensure she will go nowhere.
Now that “light and funny” isn’t an option just how dark is it going to get?
Reading minds is often reading memories anyway, plus there are memories of your own thoughts. So if Lapha had jumped to Maxima, Maxima could have read her memory of planning with Garram. And now, so can Sydney. Reading minds vs reading memories is a distinction without a lot of difference.
Maxima eventually COULD read that memory, but it would be too late.
Sydney is bonded to the orbs.. Lapha isn’t…. willing to bet the orbs haven’t acted because nothing Lapha has done ACTIVELY or indirectly has harmed Sydney… I’m willing to bet IF Lapha tries to hurt Sydney, the orbs will eliminate her… she’s got no choice but to leave and return to her body and hope for a new opportunity, or get ripped out. No-one believes she’s going to just leave Sydney voluntarily… so letting her go is never going to happen.
I hope the mystery orb turns out to be security, and it either ejects or imprisons the trash slaver.
If that was the case, it’s surprising it hasn’t acted already.
What if the mystery orb is a memory (or other neurological) back-up?
Maybe it hasn’t really woken up yet, or it hasn’t registered that the trash slaver is an actual threat – yet.
I always loved Sydney’s “Am I a spaceship?” Idea, last orb is decontamination, just flushes Lapha out on activation
Initially I thought, it’s a storage orb, for which containment of hostile entities may be a function of. Now I am considering the possibility of a respawn orb.
I hope the mystery orb doesn’t turn out to be something that will likely only be used once in the comic. It would be very disappointing if it was so specialized, when the others have multiple interesting uses.
How about that.
Sad backstory or no, the trash slaver is a GARBAGE person. =_=
Don’t tell me you’re actually surprised.
Can’t do that if she’s asleep
Tenri’s neck is OK, her weight is supported by the wedgie
Nah. You’re forgetting that Max has zero-range telekinesis. She can pickup anything under her weight limit when touching it.
Which makes this statement confusing, “At least, I assume that’s how she’s holding her up, as her tank top isn’t being pulled taut across her torso.” Did Dave forget about that?
Blaspeemer! Writers do not forget… they conveniently ignore…
I don’t think she’d be sore from getting scruffed. Remember, Max has that ability that extends to whatever she’s holding, the thing that allows her to pick up a car from whatever angle without the rest of it bending under the stress of its own weight.
Eh, Sydney causes as many problems as she solves. Plus, I figure if they do nothing, she’ll vacate of her own volition in a few hours at least. No one could survive being in Sydney’s ADHD mind when it starts trying to cope with not being able to move for more than 15 minutes.
100%. magical ai or not, she’d be left a gibbering mess if they left the two together for an hour.
… except she isn’t sharing Sydney’s mind, as Dabbler notes here. All of Sydney’s crazy ADHD thoughts aren’t going to touch Lapha’s mind.
But Lapha’s being pretty stupid here. She’s giving them the choice between letting her leave with an extremely powerful asset, who will either be enslaved or (more likely in hopes of someone else being able to bind to the orbs) killed, or keeping her imprisoned and mindwiping said asset. Sydney’s also a friend… but Lapha’s saying “Either I go free and enslave/kill your friend or you capture me and I mindwipe her.” Either way, the optimal and most moral solution is to capture Lapha and then try to restore Sydney (and if you’re fine with breaking with morality a bit, you might be able to do the latter by ripping Lapha’s essence apart and reinserting the memories, or torturing her until she agrees to restore them herself).
A better option for her to give would be to arrange for an exchange – Lapha swaps to a new body and is allowed to leave freely in exchange for not harming Sydney. It might require some sort of mutual curse to ensure neither breaks their word. Then Max would have a difficult choice – does she allow an unscrupulous mercenary (with dangerous and valuable intel) to go free to save Sydney, or does she sacrifice Sydney for the Greater Good?
They don’t share minds, but sydney is probably going to get bored and start talking to lapha.
The constant chatter about anime and superhero comics that will be coming from Sydney might wear her down.
Imagine being stuck in solitary for days with someone rambling to you about nonsense you have zero interest in.
If memory serves me right Sydney is also a fan of hentai. They should make Lapha watch some of Sydney’s favourites with her comments and critique.
Enough to risk dying over?
Sydney can still say her disturbing thoughts out loud. If I know her right she definitely will.
Have a look at Sydney’s saves compared to the problems she’s created.
She’s saved Max’s life, the lives of everybody who went after Sciona etc, captured somebody who could duke it out with Max for hours…
The problems she’s created have generally been pretty minor.
Yeah, the joke has come to fruition here I think.
Sydney crying her eyes out about Laph’s backstory only to then have Laph threaten to mind wipe her out of spite.
‘Remember, kids: a raw deal during your formative years does NOT justify being a garbage person NOW.’
Yeah, not a smart move from Lapha to alienate the person with the most sympathy for her. If she was a little more patient, she might have been able to convince Sydney to help her escape. Even if she intended to betray Sydney later, it would have been wiser to try to act friendly with her. But Lapha has yet to display an aptitude for planning or patience. So indeed it’s ironic for her to say “shut up, the adults are talking” when she’s such an impulsive child.
Very good point.
If Lapha were a little more genre savvy/aware that she’s dealing with people that are at least presenting as superheroes, she could have banked on them needing to show some leniency since she didn’t do much harm.
Is it time? Is it when we finally know what the final orb does? Why do I have a gut feeling the time is nigh.
Huh. Okay, well, based on how we’re still in flashback mode (according to the under-comic joke when Sydney and co. went from recruit to private), we know she didn’t lose her memories. Unless she did, and they were somehow recovered? Anyway, interesting to see how this plays out! *grabs some kettle corn to munch*
Dave mentioned at one point that the flashback idea had been discarded, didn’t he?
I still reckon we’re going to find out what that last orb does; some kind of psychic shenanigans.
Yeah… I don’t think Laph understands she is dealing with a military and that if she does that it would just be blacksite and murder time ….
They went several months without Sydney around, how long does Laph think she would last if Sydney gets bored?
I kinda wish the comic would stop making jokes right now. This is an extremely serious situation. Lapha just threatened to kill her. I swear to god if Lapha gets treated like anything other than a grade A terrorist after this, I’ll lose all respect for Archon.
Vehemence repeatedly told Maxima that he was going to have to kill her, but all they do is imprison him, and much later have some friendly sparring matches with him. He then requests to be allowed to leave with Thothogoth, and Max thinks his argument is persuasive, and says that she’ll “bring it up with the judge.”
This is simply not a dark, serious comic, despite how often it calls out and explores comic book tropes, and tries to examine how realistic they are. I don’t understand why people keep anticipating extremely violent and authoritarian government action from Archon or the US government in the comic, other than simply as a reflection of their real-world anxieties. The whole comic is premised on the idea of trust and freedom, that people acquiring incredible power wouldn’t inevitably lead to the collapse of civilization, or needing to destroy it to save it. It assumes that people are generally halfway decent, and that there would be just a few deviants to police, and not outright chaos.
Lapha is bluffing I believe, thinking no one would know the limits her kind has in this situation. She’s proven that she spouts off stupid crap in hopes of getting herself out of trouble. As far as her comment to Sydney about “adults talking” I think she should exclude herself as well, Lapha clearly needs a reboot, herself!
This could be a lead-up to discovering what the final orb does as well…..
I think you are onto something here. absent confirmation of her ability this seems likely to be a bluff.
Well if I understand the explanation of her “race,” she’s a data processing AI, not a server core, so her ability is rather limited to what she can do, a “read-only” system if you will, or a data compiler. She can “hack” into Sydney’s mind, take partial control of her body, but I doubt she can erase it or change it, otherwise she would have been able to use the orbs. Why else would her race have to buy a blank body, rather than just taking one? Picture Sydney as an AI car, self-aware, with the rights of any human, and able to make choices and decisions on her own. Then someone STEALS her. Would the outcome be any different? Sydney would be locked up, unable to move, but the thief would be only able to survive in her for 3-4 days before thirst would drive them out.
This must have come up before, with other members of this species, right? Elsewhere in the galaxy? and Archon has umpteen resources at it’s disposal.
Leave Sydney on ice for a day or two, and start asking around to see who has a solution. Deus might have something, the more senior members of this species might have something, maybe Gestalt Power Girl could come up with something…
I was thinking the same thing, if that’s inherent to that race that they can just hop onto another host, take them hostage and kill them without any way of dealing with that then they’d probably not be allowed on a bunch of planets, basically everywhere where someone of their species used that ability that way and also everywhere where someone considered that they might.
It’s established that this one is a hard-core criminal of her kind. Just because anyone can kill anyone doesn’t mean we keep everyone away from everyone. It’s only the crimes actually die that we punish, not the possibility that we can do crimes.
Now that I’m thinking of it- How is Lapha going to manage when Sydney’s ADHD meds wear off? I imagine it’s going to get very distracting trying to focus when you have another mind yammering twenty three different things all at the same time
Can Lapha remain in a dead body?
If not, then to Sydney it would just be another achievement level.
“Died to expunge possessing entity Level 1 of 10”
I’m curious about one thing. The body that Lapha used, and her own body back with her boyfriend; how much intelligence does that body have when not occupied? Is there enough instinct that the body will at least eat and drink? Will it avoid an obvious danger? Would it evacuate a burning building on its own, or will it just sit there and burn?
We already know that the Succubus race was originally constructs that evolved into a true race, and that Lapha’s people evolved from high level spells. Do the corporations that make the construct bodies for Lapha’s people incorporate safeguards to prevent these constructs from becoming their own race? Are there civil rights groups that seek the manumission of construct beings?
Imagine Maxima finally getting Lapha to agree to go back to Tenri’s body, only for the construct body to voice an objection. “That’s not my! Æolyth!”
So far we have no indication that those bodies move at all, if not possessed.
So far it has been implied that the bodies have biological and motor functions but no consciousness. The basic functions are there such as respiration and heartbeat but it was built to have a resident entity. Without Lapha the body is basically in a coma.
“Nah, a REGULAR Mind Ripper pulls you out with all of Sydney’s memories. This is Dabbler’s Delux Mind Ripper 3000(tm). It rips you out while leaving behind all the memories. ALL the memories. YOU would be the empty shell.”
“Sydney, please tell me all about how Lapha intends to rejoin her lizard-guy companion. Rendezvous points, passwords, everything.”
“Sure! So, she was gonna meet the guy at…”
————–
“Got all that, Dabbler?”
“And sent to galactic law enforcement, yes.”
“Right. Now, Sydney, what are the passwords and access codes for Lapha’s bank accounts? After that we’ll ask about safehouses or places of refuge.”
“Her username is – okay okay okay I give up, I’ll get back into the old body!”
Not sure it works like that. You get all the memories, but they aren’t sorted or labeled. “Here’s a memory of setting up a safehouse, but there might be other memories in the pile. Oh, wait, here’s a memory of that first safehouse burning down.”
The challenge with this setup is that there is very little incentive for ARCHON to resolve this quickly unless they desperately need Sydney to address a situation. Keeping Lapha in Syndey doesn’t make anything worse, and has the possibility of identifying an alternative solution. Letting Lapha go releases a very large chunk of information on ARCHON out into not just the wild, but certainly organizations that are actively plotting against them.
In addition, there are a number of threads that ARCHON should be trying to follow up on before making the decision to let Lapha go, including on following gup with her lizard companion and possibly contacting Galatic law enforcement. I would be surprised, if these AI-esque entities are out there, if there had not be already developed solutions for this particular situation.
At his point, regardless of any further actions and outcomes, Lapha’s chances of survival are minimal. Barring it being simply impossible to do so, she is bound to be eliminated one way or the other – she poses way too much of a threat and has proven to be a narcisstic psychopath (a rather disorganzied one) on top of that.
Furthermore, neither constitutional nor any other laws regarding humans or terrestial species apply. Basically this a hostile act by a (literally) alien invader and Archon still is a military branch.
Why didn’t you just play a Scaled Fist Monk so that it would be charisma-based instead of wisdom-based? At that stage Ifrit is a [i]good[/i] pick instead of a bad one, and you’re still playing as the Monk class.