Grrl Power #1291 – Sole searching
You silly primitives and your lack of advanced space medicine. Just invent advanced space medicine already, geeze! Is it so hard? What are you waiting for?
Blowing off a supervillain’s leg when there’s a very good chance that it will get caught on a camera phone isn’t really much better than blowing off their head, at least from a PR standpoint. Of course, if you blow off a head, there’s less chance the supervillain in question will sue you for super-police brutality. Either way, dismembering villains takes the public perception down a specific path – even though Maxima did it in the team’s very first public fight. Arianna would prefer to avoid that path, Maxima would also, but understands the value in showing that the kid gloves come off very quickly when dealing with super powered crime.
But Peggy’s on the team for a number of reasons. She is a pilot and someone Max trusts as an Lt. Also, Maxima didn’t want a situation where Spider-Man is busy keeping a section of bridge from collapsing on some civilian, giving the Green Goblin ample time to fly away on his glider. In Maxima’s scenario, Hiro is keeping a bus from tipping over a bridge, the Green Goblin analog is starting to fly away, and suddenly he takes a 7.62 in the ankle and falls screaming off his glider.
Of course the other important factor after you catch the villain is to not stick them in some ridiculous revolving door penal system like Arkham Asylum. I actually don’t know what is considered canon in the DC universe in terms of how many times various criminals have been incarcerated either to escape or to be declared reformed only to crime again, but considering Arkham was in stuff as old as the Super Friends cartoon and probably a lot longer before that in the comics, it feels like Joker has been in and out of there like 400 times. Like, so many times that the Joker would have to be well into his 80’s if he even spent a few months there each time. You would think that Arkham would probably have been shut down a long time ago. But that’s not really how American comics without a single, contiguous storyline work. Every writer that gets his hands on a title can basically just ignore what came before. The Grrl-verse doesn’t work like that because I don’t have 30 simultaneous books coming out every month!
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Dabbler went somewhere tropical, in a very small bikini. As you might guess, it doesn’t stay on for long, which of course, you can see over at Patreon. Also she has an incident with “lotion,” and there’s a bonus comic page as well.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Why settle for a boring old flesh let when you can have a a super powered cyborg leg or something? I sure would like a sniper rifle leg. Not that practical if you think too much about it maybe but this is a superhero comic.
Go 16th century, Peg Leg Musket:
https://youtu.be/QuP3hoBoEBs
In her case the problem is that with a cyborg leg maintenance/repair would need technology that they don’t have and the aliens wouldn’t give because humans need to find it on their own.
This leg is just her own flesh (I think) Once attached it is just self repairing as the rest of her body.
“need to find it on their own” is definitely one of* the dumbest tropes in SF!
Even the most dedicated ‘hacker’ doesn’t know how everything we already have works and most people know how almost none of it works (on even a loose theoretical basis) with many holding outright absurd beliefs. I already can’t stitch a wound competently: giving me magitech regeneration won’t be a problem.
* I’d say it takes top spot but there’s probably something even worse I’d be overlooking
The idea is that giving a group of primitive people advanced technology leads them to looking for ways to exploit that technology for war or destruction, or even just holding it hostage so people pay you for its use. Imagine a device that provides unlimited clean water. Do you think we would clean rivers and remove plastic from the ocean and help third world countries avoid cholera? Or would somebody stick a price tag on it and sell it to the highest bidder? Or worse, find a way to get pure heavy water for military purposes?
It is still a way stupid and dysfunctional way of dealing with the issue, since any meaningful homegrown tech advance starts to be used and spread across society by being available to privileged or wealthy early adopters or for preferred first uses such as military purposes, porn, or getting rich. That’s the way things normally work. But by the same means, it eventually and inevitably gets available to the masses and society at large, and becomes the new normal. In the long term and bigger picture, it makes no meaningful difference.
With any home-grown technology, the rest of the society is able to come up with competitive technologies on a theoretically even playing field. I mean, it’s not because education isn’t even and access to materials isn’t even, but the aliens haven’t caused those issues, so they’re not arguably on the hook for them.
If they give one person advanced technology that nobody on the planet can possibly produce competitive technology, then when that one person takes their perfectly peaceful tech (say Sydney’s glasss) and uses it to make sniper glasses for all of their snipers, translation glasses for all of their spies, clear armor for all of their troops to wear, and uses the compute power involved to crack all earth encryption, and thus have their army of misfits take over the world, and then a few years later everybody dies because nobody knew how to handle all of the pollutants involved in making the glasses, that’s pretty easy to argue it’s the alien’s fault.
It’s unpleasant, but I can totally see the theoretic alien’s side of it.
Theoretically true, but knowing something is possible at all often is half the battle. You can bridge the remaining gap by stealing, smuggling, reverse engineering, and yes homegrown research of any promising leads in that direction. Notice how the most advanced Earthling actors in the Grrlverse are already a few years at most from having functional FTL, Prime Directive or no Prime Directive. Heck, Deus already has working wormhole tech, even if it still costs him mind-boggling amounts of energy to activate it.
The problem is that knowing that something is possible sometimes is not enough. To make an example, steam engines or similar devices existed in a form or another for thousand of years. One of the reason they started to became used when they did was that around that time were developed new techniques to cast cannons, and those techniques could be used to build boilers that could stand the high pressures that made Steam engines practical and convenient to use.
You tell ancient Romans how to build steam engines without telling how to make the right steel, and the only thing you get is a lot of blown up steam engines. Or steam engines that have little to no practical utility and are little more than toys.
So you have Steam engines and and Hydraulics though relatively advanced but arcane bronze metallurgy performing special effects in temples, drawing money to the theatrical church from believers, and a bunch of guild engineers hoarding secrets, making bank from select patrons, that do not improve the technology level in the lives of civilian mass society in general. Do not provide a competitive advantage the the civilization beyond morale.
You also need the technology to do something with all that produced movement. That had a long development of milling technology (Not only cereal, also pumping mills, forge mills, … ) beginning in the oh so dark medieval ages. Leading first to things like the tower clocks or the automated loom.
When the steam engines came that technology was there. Without that there would have been a big puff of smoke and not much more.
That argument is easily overcome just by giving the tech to more than one group/nation/whatever. If it can be reverse-engineered and duplicated, then the tech will spread so long as one group doesn’t have a monopoly. If someone out there has the same tech you do, there’s no reason to keep it to yourself when you could be selling it, because the other guy will start selling it just to beat you to the market.
You talking about SmugD? The walking bucket of used douche-juice that went off-world and ‘acquired’ advanced tech that most readers have no problem with?
“need to find it on their own” has all marks of “let’s use simple rule because it’s complicated and better to err on side of not-our-fault”. While every technology has SOME potential to be misused or abused, there are big differences in SIZE of that potential and ways to mitigate the worst problems, starting with “let’s not give the technology to single person”. It’s also important how advanced the technology is – it’s generally worse if you are skipping over multiple generations, no matter how you like those generations. Like, if you give ancient Romans electricity, it’s possible they will skip steam engines completely ; the air would be cleaner, but will it really be good idea or would skipping the steam engines results in distortion of their society?
But yes some SF are really showing the trope in full force of stupidity.
Quick note, will delete if I see a similar response further down.
Most electric power generation is done via some version of the steam engine. The purpose of the steam engine is to convert thermal energy (regardless of source) into mechanical energy. That mechanical energy is usually in the form of rotational energy, which an electric generator then converts into alternating current electricity. Steam turbines are the >currentDirect solar can convert solar energy into direct current electricity. Does not require a steam engine.
>Batteries convert chemical energy into direct current electricity. Does not require a steam engine.
Alternating Current Electricity Sources:
> Turbines
>> Solar Still: Focuses light into a point to boil water to produce steam to spin a turbine
>> Nuclear: Uses nuclear radiation to boil water to produce steam to spin a turbine
>> Coal Plant: Uses burning coal to boil water to produce steam to spin a turbine
>> Geothermal: 2 variants;
>>> Dry earth: Uses high geothermal activity to create steam to spin a turbine.
>>> Wet earth: Takes advantage of natural localized steam sources to spin a turbine.
>> Hydro: Uses moving water to spin a turbine. Does not require a steam engine. Includes both dams and ocean wave methods
>> Wind: Uses Air pressure differentials to spin fan blades to spin a turbine. Does not require a steam engine
>> Combustion Engine: Uses hydro-carbons to spin a turbine.
Other:
> Bio-Electricity: Not sure of AC or DC. Can be used for very low voltage/current applications
Having open access to alien tech would completely wreck Earth’s economy. Just think of how much potential there is for disruption from our own homegrown automation today and multiply that by at least 100, given things like those nanofactories Deus is running*. People are shortsighted, and will readily grab up whatever alien tech they can to resell (or use) for a quick buck, even if that results in absolutely massive unemployment and similar. There’s some tech that should probably be safe, and in fact we’ve seen humans being given access to such (I suspect Sydney’s glasses are legal to share with humans, as was Maxima’s glamour choker – and don’t forget the US government was able to legally purchase a functional spaceship that they are now reverse-engineering, although I think that was something of a concession to get them to give up their salvage claim to the Fel warship Maxima downed), but a lot of the big culture/economy-breaking stuff is off-limits.
*Yes, those nanofactories are an example of a big culture/economy-breaking piece of tech being in human hands without actually causing said disruption, but then it’s under the control of a (mostly) benevolent literal Super-genius. But we don’t really have any of those hanging around. Can you think of any multibillionaires that you’d trust to have access to such tech and *not* ruin the economy? Because I honestly cannot.
Amusingly enough, even though the factories are space-age tech that requires little labor, the additional labor they require is still a net positive in the area because the level of labor was so low in the first place that it’s still better for the residents, and the income generated is being spread around to them and through the economy instead of hoarded by the 1%.
Any tech productive enough to cause massive unemployment and wreck the economy would also be productive enough to allow a welfare state or part-time economy to exist if it didn’t just lead to an economic shift of some kind. It has happened many times in history, where entire workforces were made obsolete practically overnight, but what always happened was that the people who were doing those jobs were free to do other jobs and the economy got better and life got easier. The only issue was when social or economic factors kept people from switching jobs, usually due to housing and transportation problems, which has become less and less of an issue over time. In fact, if not for Boomers, it would be a non-issue in developed nations, but those people refuse to embrace telecommuting even after being shown how easy and effective it was during the pandemic.
There are a lot of options that would work really well if people didn’t get in the way, but the fact of the matter is people will get in the way. Plus, this is the kind of situation where the tech kinda builds on itself – the ones who are able to afford the spacemagic get a massive return on their investment and expand their operations to other areas, paying off the government and buying up the competition, displacing more workers (including the same ones they displaced earlier). Certainly, there are ways to do it that won’t wreck the economy and will in fact improve life for just about everyone, but that’s not necessarily the path we’d wind up taking.
Of course, rereading the bit where it was explained they wouldn’t give Earth advanced technology, the concern isn’t a high-minded “We do not want to interfere with your development.” Rather, it’s “If you can’t get past the Great Filters on your own, we don’t want you coming over to play,” with an implication that there have been cases in the past where they uplifted other species past the Great Filters and it went rather poorly for galactic society. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Fel turn out to be one such instance, honestly. And that’s a pretty good approach from a narrative standpoint if you want advanced aliens in your story without Earth getting bumped up a few tech levels in short order – it doesn’t matter if humans would wind up with serious problems or if they’d be in a great position from the uplifting, the fact it’s gone rather poorly with other species in the past is justification enough for humans to be required to make their own way.
You’re right when you say it would “allow” a welfare state to exist, because it wouldn’t necessarily cause it to exist. All the excess productivity that technology has made possible, and could have gone to reducing working hours or improving living standards has instead gone to paying CEOs more, or bribing governments.
When technology replaces unskilled labor, those people can’t just easily switch to some other job. They’ll need education and training. Which, again, we could use some of that excess productivity to pay for. But that’s not what we do, is it?
We’ve gone from a single income being enough to support a family, to two incomes, to states legalizing child labor again so the whole family can struggle to make ends meet together. What kind of progress is that?
I think it makes sense. I’d feel bad if I gave a baby a rocket launcher and it blew itself up.
If moral advancement doesn’t keep up with technological advancement, the technology leads to self-destruction. You can give people technology far easier than you can convince them to be more moral about how they use it.
Actually, that was, mostly, just Dabbles’ excuse for not passing on her tech (she doesn’t give a shit if they get their tech off of the back of a space truck… or downed Fel Cruiser)
That was Dabbler saying “*I* don’t want to get in trouble with the space police. Go ham as long as I don’t get in trouble”
Hm. Sniping a villain’s *mechanical* leg would not be nearly as damaging to PR, would it? No blood.
Though odds are it would take way more money to replace a cybernetic leg than to clone a boring organic one, if you have the xenotech for both options.
“a sniper rifle leg” — reminds me of Robert Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” filmette.
Thank you! I knew I had a vague recollection of a woman with an assault rifle for a leg, but couldn’t remember the title.
Sensitivity training wasn’t in Lapha’s education was it?
Yeah, Lapha needs a leg up in that regard.
Well she’s with a good team now, even if it’s involuntary volunteering, so steps can be taken in that direction….
Not so sure. Sydney also puts quite often a foot in her mouth.
Sometimes she needs to be taken down a peg.
There are leg-itimate issues with her lack of a filter.
Shin on all of you for the ma-knee puns in this thread that has gone on for toe long.
That was lame.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say you didn’t like that little combo? Have you considered having another read of it? Maybe with a bit of help from some new friends, it will regrow on you….
Remember, for her race swapping bodies/parts is an expensive, but fairly common thing. She literately (even with her time in Sydney’s head) has no personal context for why someone WOULDN’T take a free replacement part for a damaged body.
She’s a disembodied intelligence who is used to purchasing uninhabited bodies to use. It makes perfect sense for her to think of body parts in a casual and transactional way. She’d probably have a tough time really grasping ideas like body dysphoria or attachment to a sense of self that is tied in any way to a body or how it’s configured or operating.
It’s not just Lapha and the peculiarities of her species. Notice how Cora deals in a similar casual and transactional way with her own disability with the resources available in her own society. That’s the normal way people usually act when a medical option becomes available. Survivor’s guilt, body dysphoria, and a sense of self that becomes tied to one’s disability are not normal or healthy. They are unfortunate, dysfunctional, self-defeating, and self-harmful mental issues that need to be dealt with through appropriate means. The by far best thing to do for Peggy here is to overcome them with the help of her friends and comrades if need be, gladly accept the leg replacement, then deal with any lingering issues with therapy if need be.
I would think that dysphoria would be at least as much of a thing for disembodied intelligences who spend most of their time embodied. However, just like most humans haven’t experienced dysphoria, she may not have either. For her, getting her next body may have always been a conscious choice. Even though the tail is a bit weird for her, she remembers making that choice.
That said, remembering making the choice is not proof against dysphoria. I mean, it certainly *helped* when I remembered I made the choice, but disturbingly weird is still sometimes really disturbingly weird.
Also, for some people, not having the limb is much more disturbingly weird than having a wrong instance of the correct type of limb. Different people are different. So maybe she gets dysphoria, but for her, the lack is worse.
As Ben points out correctly below, this is survivor’s guilt. Now that they’ve reminded me, I’m remembering this came up before (probably when they were talking about growing the leg for her). I’m personally familiar with dysphoria. Survivor’s guilt? I’ve done my best to talk relatives through it, but I haven’t had it and can’t say that I understand it. I mean, I understand it’s real and it’s a thing. But I can’t put myself in a mindset that would hesitate to make the decisions that the people who didn’t make it had said they wanted the survivor to take, that the survivor had also wanted to take. This is not saying that were I in their shoes, I wouldn’t have the exact same problem that they had.
Seems slightly different to me. She’s been a member of the family and fellowship and support network of DAV’s, and now she’s received a free ticket out. She’s released, her friends aren’t. How does she relate to them now? All kinds of identity anchors will get moved as well, like no longer being a paralympic biathlete.
I received a free release from a support community like that once. Freedom from the burden that necessitated the support is great, but I miss the people.
That may be the main reason, but I was thinking that Peggy somehow feels it would not be fair to get this when other vets do not have the chance.
Questionable Content had an excellent storyline about an AI whose chassis was accidentally destroyed, and when she got a replacement, she experienced frequent severe body dysphoria, feeling like her body wasn’t *her*. It could very well be that Peggy has had her prosthetic so long that she no longer thinks of it as a separate object but as a part of herself, so naturally the thought of replacing could be a source of stress.
Well, she’s right. I’m missing bits, too, and if I could afford to get them replaced with OEM parts I’d do it in a heartbeat.
All this sturm und drang about replacing a broken part isn’t healthy.
It was part of Sydney’s, but they’ve both got some resistance to it.
There is a joke about how you’re supposed to shoot for the legs in german military but it’s hard to translate.
In essence there are several bones all over the human body that have “bein” (leg) in their name
In old German, Bein meant bone in general. Not only legs. The English and German word are related.
Even teeth are called Elfenbein, elves bone.
The german word for leg (Bein), happens to be similar to a old word for bone (-bein). Which is still in use somewhat.
Like “Elfenbein” (Ivory) and “Schlüsselbein” (Calvicle), “Zahnbein” (Dentin), “Brustbein” (Sternum).
The crafting material bone.
Survivor guilt there from Peggy. She is a real veteran, which most of those around her aren’t.
One of the best ways to fight off the dysfunctional and self-defeating syndrome of survival guilt is to stay aware that almost all the other people that didn’t make it, if they had the chance, would gladly use the same opportunity. By doing so, the more lucky or proficient people carry on the good fight of humanity’s advancement for everyone else and make the world and existence better. It has been that way since the dawn of humanity and civilization. To be human is to defy the limitations of nature with culture, technology, and (where available) magic and supernatural resources.
Yeah, i was thinking the same. Her current prosthetic is an.. Anchor? Reminds her that she’s been there, took the hits, bled together with those that did not make it out alive. With a new better leg, would that be removing the reminder? And what would that say about those that didn’t make it out?
Loyalty to dead comrades are a powerful and tricky subject.
Broadly speaking, when describing distance, it’s usually denoted as “Klick” instead if “Click”, probably because of the phonetic alphabet and whatnot.
it comes from the fact that a “klick” is a “kilometer”, hence the K
It’s normally written out as a ‘klik’, not a ‘klick’, also, to differentiate it from the sound. “Roger, Bravo, we’re six kliks out.”
And “Ka-Click” means “angry bunny close by”. ;-)
Okay, this has been mentioned, I don’t need to make a separate post about it. Groovy.
Otherwise, I liked this installment. Cora being both compassionate and empathetic is pretty awesome. She’s one of my favorites in this strip.
Regarding spam, I remember on YT there was a brief time when bots copied other people’s high-ranked comments verbatim and then proceeded to get 5 times as many likes (which the bots probably gave to each other). You could always tell from the cleavage in the avatar.
Also I just love how Sydney virtually always says something insensitive to Peggy when they interact. XDDD
This is currently happening on Xitter.
When I see Xitter my first thought is to pronounce it “shitter”.
I thot it was supposed to be ‘exitur’
That is the standard pronounciation, yes.
I have a question about the website:
Whenever I post a comment, then it goes to
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1291-sole-searching/comment-page-1/
where the comments is delayed before being visible, but if I go back to
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1291-sole-searching/#comments
my comment is there instantly. How come? Do you have all comments twice on your pages and some automated script synchronizes them ever 10 minutes or something? Because if so then I would wonder if there isn’t a way of making this work without redundancy.
I have no idea how it works, honestly. Gun to my head, I’d guess it’s a browser cache thing? If you hit CTRL+F5 after posting, it’ll dump the cache and do a full reload and show you recent changes faster? I have to do that if I ever update the comic, like fixing a typo. The new image doesn’t show up unless I wait 10 minutes or CTRL+F5.
well, of course miss “just got an entire custom body made because she lost her previous one” might have a hard time understanding the difficulties and trauma of losing a limb for organics
When I was a gamemaster for superhero RPGs my groups often give the villain a chance. Loose that chance by (for example) fleeing from prison all bets are off and you might be killed (in self defence of course).
So Sydney was saying leg &then changed her mind. Not sure where she was pivoting to with arr-will to fight though.
Maybe she was going for “arm” for a moment before realizing that was risky too, especially with Cora right there (even though she doesn’t seem to have hang-ups about tactical limb disassembly) before finishing the sentence lamely with “will to fight”.
“Of course, if you blow off a head, there’s less chance the supervillain in question will sue you for super-police brutality.”
The estate of the deceased can still sue for wrongfull death and police brutality just fine! That is what usually happens.
The papers say “the family sues” as shorthand for “the estate of the deceased – as administered by the inherting family members – sued”.
The estate can be sued just fine as well, btw.
There are these numbnuts that claim “the airline crash position is so you die and can’t sue for injury.”
Not realizing that:
1. The estate can sue the airline just fine
2. Wrongfull death is more expensive then injury
3. The airline could now also be sued for the murder line of felonies. I am sure there is something for “make things worse with your orders”.
Mythbusters tested the crash position myth. It was busted (crash position is way safer), but they did note that there is a grain of truyth in that payouts for wrongful death are in fact cheaper than payouts for long-term care for chronic injuries.
Been unjustly labeled as a “supervillain”? Worried that reckless “heroes” will destroy your secret lair, destroy your glorious creations, the work of your lifetime, possibly even take your life? All in the name of so-called “ justice”?
I WILL FIGHT FOR YOU!
Call Hench Wench Legal services TODAY at 866-FOILED-AGAIN! We specialize in cases of super abuse, trespass without a warrant, and civil rights violations! Reasonable terms (you weren’t really using your soul anyway, right?) available!
Huh, that’s a new theory to me, I’d only heard the one that it was just so your remains could be more easily identified, as chances of survival were basically 0 in any position
That “basically 0” very much depends on the crash. There were cases where the crash position helped the passengers survive or reduced head trauma.
In a “full speed into a mountain” scenario of course nothing helps any more.
Some jurisdictions prohibit lawsuits by the perpetrator or estate if the injuries or death occurred during the commission of a felony. A criminal could make an attempted burglary on a wealthy person’s property just to intentionally get injured so they could sue.
Of course Lapha – who sees whole bodies as “plug and play hardware” – would not think twice about replacing a leg.
The normal sapient thing to do is to use all the medical resources that are convenient for your situation and available to your society’s level of advancement. Cfr. Cora. What the space people do is indistinguishable from a modern human taking a drug. Survivor’s guilt is an unfortunate, dysfunctional, and self-harmful mental health issue that needs to be fought against with appropriate treatment.
Survivor guilt… but with leg transplants
Uh.. neat?
No. It is a dysfunctional, self-defeating, and self-harmful mental health issue, even if it unfortunately exists. I very much hope Peggy is able to overcome it and gladly accept the opportunity, also by thinking all her comrades that didn’t make it, in the same situation, would do the same.
No, it’s none of that: it’s simply Peg has lived long enough without a real leg she is probably use to it and would basically have to learn how to walk all over again, and that’s if there are no complications
Sure, but that’s why people developed physical therapy and use it to deal with similar situations all the time.
It still takes time, and sometimes, it just doesn’t work
Back when the leg was first revealed (Peggy came back to Earth carrying it in a jar; it was still growing at that time), she was rather uncertain about it, and Cora guessed she was feeling guilty, like it was unfair to other veterans that she got her leg back but they had to stay disabled. Peggy determined this was probably correct (she wasn’t sure why she was uncomfortable with it, but Cora’s suggestion clearly made sense to her). And, yeah, that’s pretty much how Survivor’s Guilt works, at least the way I understand it.
As for needing to relearn how to walk, that may tech less time than you’d expect. Sure, the way our limbs normally develop, we start out with an excess of nerves to carry commands, the body kinda figures out which ones work the best and the others atrophy to nothing (this is a big part of why young children are so clumsy, every time they move a limb they’re sending signals to multiple parts of the muscle at slightly different times), but the spacemagic (some of which is literal magic) Cora has access to may be able to bypass that whole mess. Plus, while it leans more toward realism than a proper Four Color setting, GrrlPower is still a Supers comic, so “it just works” isn’t that outlandish, at least not compared to plenty of other stuff that’s in the story.
Irioth is right actually. Peggy basically feels guilty about the idea that she could get her leg back when a lot of other people can’t. That does sound a lot like survivor guilt, but with missing legs. There are real life ‘similar’ versions where deaf people do not want to get cochlear implants that could help them hear again because they feel it would be betraying the ‘deaf’ community. It’s not exactly the same as Peggy’s deal but it’s ‘similar.’
I personally don’t get it and would say something similar to Lapha, but I also don’t tend to see loss of function disabilities as a ‘community’ thing. Possibly partially because I don’t have a loss of any physical abilities myself, but I’m thinking there’s some psychological element to it.
“…[B]ecause I don’t have 30 simultaneous books coming out every month!”
Well, why not?!? WE’D read ’em…
It’s not lack of an audience, it’s lack of man-hours. Marvel and DC typically have 4 people working on a single issue of a comic: writer, pencils, inker, and colorist. I think Dave is doing the first 3 solo, and has someone doing flat colors while he does shading.
Shooting someone in the leg is still lethal. Especially with a .50 cal or whatever Peggy is normally toting.
Even if you don’t vaporise their leg, you’re still highly likely to clip an artery, and that’s a 10 minute death clock at the longest.
Same with shooting them in the hand. If you’re not a super with an accuracy power good enough to shoot the wings off a fly (and have a good working knowledge of where the arteries are) shooting someone anywhere is lethal.
Yeah unfortunately way too many people get their firearms “education” from pop and mainstream media, so they do not realize how horrifically lethal “just shoot them in the leg” actually is.
If you are aiming the weapon at them at all, you are aiming to kill, full stop.
> If you are aiming the weapon at them at all, you are aiming to kill, full stop.
And the people behind them.
*Arrows* go 2-3 people deep if they’re unarmoured, never mind bullets with mostly-wood-and-plaster walls.
In 2019 there were almost 40,000 firearm deaths in the USA and around 115,000 non-fatal firearm injuries
About 60% of firearm fatalities are suicides which are presumably much more likely to kill you than injure you we’re dealing with around 16,000 deaths to somewhere around 100,000 non-fatal injuries (I doubt 15,000 people try and commit suicide with a gun and fail in a year but let’s take 100,000) so that’s about 1 in 7 people who are shot by other people or by accident that die.
So while it’s true that you can die from being shot in most parts of your body it’s not instant death
Of course using a 0.50 anti-material sniper rifle makes the odds of surviving worse, as do some ammunition types designed to fragment more or hollow-point
The problem isn’t how much of the human body can be shot without killing you (at least not for the purposes of this discussion).
The problem is the distribution of the fatal areas, leading to how accurate you have to be to be sure you won’t hit them.
Imagine trying to shoot at a standard target, but your goal is to not hit any of the lines while still being inside the smallest circle.
That’s what you’re trying to do when shooting “non-lethally” at a human, except the target is also on a flag and the flag is on a moving flagpole. If you clip a line, then your target bleeds out in 10 minutes.
Depends more on bullet velocity than anything else. Shock waves from mach plus bullets do more damage than the actual bullet.
That makes the lines chunkier.
Well, sure, gunshot wounds don’t usually kill you, (For a moderate value of “usually”.) because people who get shot usually get fairly prompt medical care, if only a tourniquet. I nearly lost my foot when I broke my leg back in the 90’s, because the hospital was in Detroit, and they kept putting off treating me in the emergency room to deal with gunshot wounds! Why? Because they could be pretty darned sure that leaving me sit there wasn’t going to kill me, at worst just cripple me, and they couldn’t say that of the gunshot wound victims.
Doesn’t take much of a wound for somebody to bleed out, if you just ignore it.
Back when I was a bicycle safety advocate I compared the lethality of motor vehicles with bullets using FBI statistics: at the time when hit by someone shooting on the street, not a trained marksman, bullets had a 1 in 9 lethality ratio, motor vehicles crossed that lethality ratio at 23 MPH impact speed. The speed I was hit at had a lethality ratio of about 1:1000000, that’s why when the EMTs got to me they checked for a pulse and just immediately got out a body bag.
People are worse at killing themselves than you’d think. In college, I had some pretty severe depression and the free mental health offered by the college was useless to me, so I joined the depression support club. I expected that this would be something run by the student health center with trained psychologists in charge, but it would be all group counseling. I was wrong.
This club was sponsored by a professor who had been through a major depressive episode when they were younger, but thy got through it. They understood it was a big deal. They also understood that mental health professionals had been useless to them, so they didn’t enlist their aid for this club. It was the patients treating the patients.
And surprisingly, that worked. Helping other people with their issues gave me a break from dealing with my own and also gave me valuable perspective in dealing with my own. I still went to professionals decades later when I had more issues and no such group to go to, and fully trained professionals turned out to sometimes be much better than students. (I still had to try a few to find someone who was really helpful.)
The bit of that experience that was pertinent to this discussion was I met a number of people who tried to kill themselves, and several of them had tried to kill themselves with a gun. You would be surprised at how difficult that can be. Most guns are finely crafted instruments, made with incredible precision that most people take for granted. They are highly accurate tools. In the hands of somebody who knows what they’re doing and is paying full attention to what they’re doing with the gun, it is possible with an average gun to hit a bullseye on a target 50 yards away almost 100% of the time. So it seems like it would be really simple to use it to hit a target that is 0 feet away.
One guy I talked to had made three prior attempts. Once he entirely missed, once he had a misfire, and the third time he blew his cheek out rather than the back of his head. I think only about half of the people I met who tried to kill themselves with a gun actually managed to injure themselves.
Now, to be fair, I recognize I have statistical bias. 100% of the people who succeeded in killing themselves the first time did not attend any of those meetings afterwards. One person who attended those meetings at the same time I was succeeded during the time I was attending those meetings. (To be clear: Not during the meeting. We didn’t get to see it. We were just told about it at a following meeting.)
Ain’t got time to bleed.
Got time to duck?
Also Lapha: Syd, I dunno why you’re trying to shove your foot in your mouth, it might help if you detached it first?
Sydney: Don min me, dis is jush par u our relashunshi…
As much as I dislike Lapha on many other issues, I am 100% with her and Cora here. A major defining feature of humanity is our endless quest to overcome the limitations of nature through culture and technology. We created and keep striving to advance medicine for very good reasons. There is no meaningful difference between using an herb-derived or synthetic drug and getting a vat-grown or cybernetic replacement limb or organ. YMMV, but personally I loathe those characters in scifi, (modern) fantasy, or superhero stories who purposefully avoid using available advanced tech, magic, or supernatural treatments for a disability or disease of theirs out of a misguided and misplaced sense of solidarity or respect for RL people with the same condition. It is self-defeating and stupid, since the vast majority of RL people with the same condition, if they had access to the same miracle cure, would enthusiastically use it too. Very few choose to stay ill or disabled for the sake of it if they have an effective and reliable alternative. If it would be the same as someone in a developed country shunning to use modern medicine out of misguided solidarity with people in past or underdeveloped societies.
True, a few people exist who make their disability or disease a defining feature of their identity, and seek to perpetuate it in themselves, glorify it, and spread/replicate it in others. A legitimate if unwise and way questionable personal choice for themselves, something to fight against ruthlessly if they seek to influence others to harm themselves.
> If it would be the same as someone in a developed country shunning to use modern medicine out of misguided solidarity with people in past or underdeveloped societies.
Looks at the antivaxx movement… (And the hippies)
Bunch of deranged losers if you ask my opinion. Also way harmful and dangerous if they seek to influence anyone but themselves to imitate their craziness. Otherwise, it would be natural selection dealing with a bunch of Darwin Awards.
That’s more of a protest against transparency and the drug companies than it is a protest against drugs and medicine (although there are those religions that don’t accept any but natural healing). They simply don’t trust the corporate culture anymore.
Remember, the COVID vaccine actually isn’t a vaccine, it’s a booster shot, just like against the flu. A true vaccine would take too long to make and would be too easy for anyone to replicate to be commercially viable. Booster shots can be tailored, patented, and fall away in value quickly, so new ones can be made continually and you don’t have to worry about competition.
You’ve seem the Wakefield documentaries, right?
And the overwhelming majority of the anti-COVID-vaccine people were MAGA weirdos who were sacrificing themselves for daddy DonOld.
The vaccines were developed under Trump, he advocates them, and claims credit for them, so your bigotry needs some refinement.
Trump claims a lot of things, like he won the last election, and that Hannibal Lecter is both great and late.
He routinely claims so many – often contradictory – things, that we have kinda reached the point of accepting any batshit thing attributed to him without feeling much obligation to verify.
I don’t _think_ that he’s ever claimed to have sent John Rambo to rescue POW’s from secret Vietnamese prison camps, but neither would I be surprised to find out he had, in fact, made that claim.
Tell me a politician, any politician, that doesn’t claim some bullshit or another
And you have people who will deny anything they say (even if it was that the sky on a cloudless sunny day was blue), and people who will believe everything
Herr Trumpet isn’t the only one
Nobody said he was, it’s merely being pointed out that he does it so often, that he stands out. The exemplar, rather than the originator.
It’s a different in scope & scale, rather than in kind.
You’re falling back on an argumentative fallacy that carries no weight in this discussion. “everyone does it” means nothing.
You know the only time I’ve seen Trump get booed by his own cult was when he tried telling them to go get vaccinated, right?
I was all set to get the vaccine when I went and came down with Covid first, and my doctor told me that it was best to put it off for a few months as a result, because if you get vaccinated for something you’ve just had a case of, you’re setting yourself up for a bad reaction.
By the time it might have been safe for me to get it, they just got so over the top about demanding that people get vaccinated whether or not they’d already had Covid that I got stubborn and dug my heels in. I didn’t spend 4 years studying human biology in college just so that I could ignore everything I know about the immune system just because some bureaucrat thinks it’s easier to track shots than infections.
So you kept yourself vulnerable to the varients and made yourself a threat to everyone you met out of spite?
Yeah, after years of him spouting, encouraging and supporting anti-vaxx views. We were all there, don’t try to paint the past differently.
Please don’t post propoganda here.Trump is responsible for covid’s massive spread by underplaying how bad it was + encouraging antivaxxers. He claimed being responsible for the vaccines but still spread anti-vaxx rhetoric in the next breath (despite him and his staff having taken the vaccines themselves) and pushed his regime to block efforts, information and research on death toll metrics, he auctioned critical medical supplies and equipment meant for aid, all because he is two faced and notorious for double speak. Whenever he makes a claim, he will say the exact opposite at another time in a different situation. Then he will refer to one or the other as per whatever suits him in the moment. He got around 2 million American’s killed this way.
It that was the corporations which made them without his help. When Biden took over they found out that his team had no distribution plan figured out, and set it up themselves.
I prefer to explain Vaccinations in an analogy of accepting and using enemy battle intelligence in an Inter Kingdom War against microbes that have killed more Homo sapiens than Homo sapiens in the last century.
Paying skilled people for intel gathering in far places where threats develop rather than waiting for them to appear in your homeland is proactive defense.
Analysis can be professionally distilled into a program to help identify and defend against multiple different enemy battleplans.
Getting Enemy Battleplans and letting them sit on a shelf or a desk drawer does nothing when you get attacked.
Some people are very confident in their defenses, even if they have been practiced in fighting similar opponents feel they do not need additional training. These are very unprofessional fighters at best, and at worst those who will provide shelter and comfort to the enemy, allowing soft haven for the enemy to grow stronger and a base to deploy against others they could be better protecting. Some compromising their long term capabilities. (Long Covid)
Training with Enemy Battleplans employs your defensive forces which may well react like being under attack, and employ an array of defenses like a live fire exercise. Don’t feel so good? Embrace the Suck. If it ain’t raining you ain’t training. This is exercise without your enemy really growing in power as you learn to fight better.
Training your defensive forces to respond to enemy attack without providing resources for appropriate rest and needed supplies can lead to training accidents, and in very rare case Training deaths.
The value of a Defense training program is if it saves vastly more lives than it harms.
Do what you can in the fight against deadly virus scourge. Be Ready. Be Smart. The Enemy Adapts Rapidly.
LOL, it’s usually because many authors don’t want easy access to miracle cures in their settings.
Or the thing hampering them is, itself, also supernatural in origin and not easily healed.
Reminds me a bit of some of the hoops they went through to justify Oracle/Barbara Gordon remaining paralyzed (pre-nu52, obviously) when she had access to all the healing tech and other stuff on the JLA Watchtower.
A delicate line to walk and the feeling of getting the jump ahead of people with similar disabilities has to be strong.
Dear Universe, how much I loathed the Oracle storyline. IMO it was one of the most stupid, self-defeating, and yes offensive consequences of the desplicable trope of artificially and forcefully keeping superhero settings a close copy of RL modernity. In a realistic situation, advanced-tech and/or magic healing options would gradually and naturally spread across society like improvements in medicine always do, and almost everybody in Oracle’s situation would eventually be able and most importantly willing to use them. That’s why Oracle acting as she did is crazy.
Yes, at some meaningful stage during the process there would inevitably be privileged early adopters in the superhuman community or those adjacent to them that would get access to such resources well before the masses, but that’s the way such things inevitably work and always have across history.
I agree, with ONE exception. Barbara Gordon becoming Oracle allowed her to establish her own identity, not as Batgirl, not as a Batmanette, a Batman-lite, but as something unique to herself.
I would love to see Barbara return to fighting crime in a costume… an Oracle costume. Fighting as Oracle. Much like how Marvel’s Storm spent a few years depowered, and when she regained her powers she retained the lessons and character growth she’d developed as a “badass normal” hero.
True, but changing costume is like Tuesday for superheroes. Nobody says the work she did as Oracle wasn’t valuable, with a healthy body she could have gainfully split her efforts between desk jobs and field jobs as convenient. Being a Robin or a Batgirl/woman in the Bat Family is a legacy job: one hero(ine) takes the mantle for a while, then upgrades to a different super identity, and another takes his/her place.
Actually, changing costumes is very rare, because the readers tend to be idiots who have trouble recognizing the character when they are not wearing one (usually that’s because of the different artists having different styles)
And what you said about being part of the Blat-family being a legacy job is exactly what Archone said: Babs didn’t want to be just another Bat, she wanted her own identity
Usually the only time they ‘upgrade’ is after a traumatic incident (like getting beaten to almost-death by a deranged clown, or getting kicked out of the Family because you dared stand up to the Bat-dictator)
I must agree with this sentiment: Oracle was a huge shift of a character, as a handicapped person active in the superheroic world without having powers of her own (albeit she IS one of the smartest people on the planet). Oracle is a much more unique character, whose influence and power was far greater than Batgirl ever achieved.
I would be plenty happy for Barbara to play the ultimate gal in the chair to all supers forever and let someone else be Batgirl, despite how well she fills out the pajamas.
If Barbara decides she is going to be more useful to the superhero community and the world being Oracle, the girl in the chair, 24/7, instead of being half that, half costumed heroine in the field, good for her. I’d trust and accept that judgement, her being one of the smartest persons in the world at all. I’d just point out that Tony Stark and Reed Richards being in a similar situation, made the opposite choice of dividing their time and efforts between the lab and the field, and they are just as smart or smarter than her, so it is not necessary the best choice.
But she had no good reason whatsoever to do so while bound to a wheelchair, for the same reason she would have no reason to stay a sufferer of any chronic disease or disability treatable by modern medicine in a developed country. In her ‘country’ (the superhuman community), her condition was treatable.
“ Blowing off a supervillain’s leg when there’s a very good chance that it will get caught on a camera phone”
Yeah, you don’t want that kind of foot-age.
*golf clap*
oof, that’d be a clip of a clip with a round from a clip
Man, the mental strain of deciding to get an actual leg attached again – I love this comic for its quickness and its comedy, but THIS is the kind of deep cognitive dissonance that really makes for great character and development. Much respect, sir.
Prosthetics and the sense of ‘self’ can be a tricky emotional subject. In the real-world, there’s months if not years of physical and emotional/mental therapy required to get someone used to a replacement limb, and it can be incredibly hard for a person to acclimate and consider it their ‘own’, to the point that a lot of upper-limb amputees just don’t bother wearing their arms if they’re only missing one. For legs, its more common to go with it, but from what I’ve heard (directly from amputees) it’s a sort of 50/50 whether the prostetic feels like a ‘new limb’ or whether it feels more just like a special shoe that they have to put on. They’re often rather uncomfortable to start with, and it takes even LONGER to dial in comfort levels in the socket design, gait adjustments, and training the body to be willing to rely on something it can’t feel when they remember how a real leg works so easily. I knew someone who was a congenitally bilateral knee ‘amputee’ (never had lower legs in the first place) who said that their prosthetics, though they could easily use them, just felt like wearing awkward stilts all the time.
There’s some differences if Peggy’s prostetic is osseointegrated (which I think it might be? Though that’s not always a good choice for someone with a very active lifestyle, as it increases the risk of spiral fractures of the implanted portion), as the bone-to-bone connection allows for much more organic feedback and a feeling of sturdyness that you don’t get with socket based prosthetics. But if, in that case, Peggy IS incredibly used to her prosthetics, and they DO feel like limbs to her, changing them out for a new one might feel like ‘losing’ her leg all over again, even if she intellectually knows that it’s ‘just another prosthetic’.
This is the sort of thing where I hope that Peggy and Cora and Peggy’s prosthetist and psychiatrist have all been getting a chance to sit down in a room and discuss with each other beforehand, as it’s possible that Cora might not understand some of the deeper rooted insecurities that receiving a new limb from someone else might incur. After all, for Cora, SHE was the one that MADE her prosthetics, and so they are ‘hers’ in a way that isn’t commonly available for amputees on Earth.
… I know it’s not the same, but I would note that after some walk in terrain, I feel the actual SHOE as part of my leg.
Who says Peggy needs a leg? Did you ‘need’ a tail, Laph?
Does anyone need to live at all? Strictly speaking, no, but it is the normal human/sapient thing to do, to try and survive and be healthy and functional as much as possible.
Lapha’s preference for a tail, or the lack of it, is different issue since it hardly affects her health or functionality. At her tech level, it is a lifestyle choice issue, just like clothing or hair style for you and me.
How does having a prosthetic leg affect Peggy’s health or functionality?
She did quite well during the Restaurant Rumble, even when Cree tried to ambush her
DaveB, you don’t have 30 simultaneous books coming out every month YET!
here, here! Now to up his circulation by a few million viewers, increase his Patreon fiftyfold so he can hire some artists, and really go to town.
I can sort of relate to Peggy in this moment. Like, I’m no amputee but I have needed glasses for 20 years. My glasses are part of my face and my identity at this point. If someone offered me free eye surgery tomorrow, I’d hesitate too before accepting it because, free surgery plus no more spending money on eye exams and glasses
Arkham’s an asylum, not a jail – the whole point is that because the courts and police in gotham are so corrupt and ineffective, the villains get off on “insanity” pleas and are put in arkham instead of the actual prison.
Joker gets put in the Arkham a bit less than once a year, to the best of my knowledge. I haven’t really been tracking it that closely, but they don’t bring out the big guns all the time so that they don’t lose their edge. So he’s been there more like 40 times rather than 400, even though that was certainly part of the Batman live action series from the 70s.
TAKE THE LEG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7f02FNPTSo
They (Arcon) should make their public stance: “Most super powered criminals are bullet proof and will shoot accordingly. If your superpower doesn’t make you bullet proof, then don’t do crime.” Knowing full well that most supers are not bulletproof, but to encourage them to not use their powers for evil.
Yeah… not a big fan of using “Judge Dredd” as a serious inspiration for law enforcement…
Outside of movies Dredd doesn’t actually kill that many people given how much he deals with lethal threats, it’s just that most of the people he sends away for life actually stay in prison. At least he’s no worse than modern day police when faced with lethal force and probably better.
Well, David, I’m sorry to say that I’m disappointed in your lack of simultaneous books coming out every month >:(
Regarding Dave’s comment on the Joker and Arkham. I spent most of my career at a facility that was esentially Texas’ version of Arkham. Competency for trial and manifest dangerousness was, and still is, the facility’s bread and butter. The Joker would likely never be found “not dangerous”, so unless he was able to be found competent for trial he wouldn’t be going anywhere. The Joker would probably be competent for trial in that he generally meets to criteria of understanding the charges against him and being able to cooperate with his defense. If he didn’t meet the standard of competency he could be held until the duration of his stay was equaled the maximum sentence for the crime of which he was accused. Even then he would have to be found to be capable of being maintained in a less restrictive envirionment. During my time working there, I witnessed several extremely bad actors who finally just got too old to be that violent anymore and they aged out of the system. In the real world that is what would usually happen to a Joker or Hannibal Lector. Or Leatherface, of whom the local kids believed the myth that he was one of our patients. An escape would be Joker’s best option. Even without Harley Quinn, he has enough of an organization to pull off a snatch. At our facility all it would really require is a couple of armed guys and a helicopter. Arkham is basically just a plot device for recycling villains who are too popular to kill off.
I think that’s generally the way that Joker specifically gets out of there. Many of them, honestly. Like, Poison Ivy, Joker, maybe some of the other ones are generally shown as being under heavy lockdown, and only get out due to, say, someone not following procedure and letting Ivy get access to a male guard, or too many plants, or Joker managing to get a shiv or communicate to outside allies.
Others, like Two-Face, Quinn, or Scarecrow, are smart and knowledgeable enough about both the legal system and how Arkham as a facility operates, that they can either sneak out or feign lucidity long enough to get released some way or another.
For the second half of that, feigning lucidity would stop working after the second mass murder.
Lucidity and extreme evil are not mutually exclusive. History certainly has enough examples of that. You just dont see it that often because you need an army or political organization backing you up to really pull off a mass murder. I have been in the room with an accused spree killer. (Having audited his chart, I firmly believe he did it. He just hadn’t gone to trial at the time.) It’s hard to describe all of the internal alarms that go off if you have the least bit of situational awareness. He was the sort of fellow that the hair would stand up on the back of your neck when he came into the room. On the other end, I have also met people who had commited crimes out of psychosis or confusion. There is probably an exception out there some where but as a rule, those folks aren’t up to organizing a mass murder or epic crime. I suppose that is what makes those characters interesting. You just dont see those traits all together in one place any where except in big business and politics.
“The Grrl-verse doesn’t work like that because I don’t have 30 simultaneous books coming out every month!”
I think you’re right: you need to write 29 additional books per month.
I think I get it. It’s not that she can’t replace the leg. She’d probably be better off with it. But the loss of the leg is part of who she is as a person now. Part of her identity. So replacing it is kind of like betraying a bit of herself. It’s why she doesn’t want to. She’s greatful for it and probably would love to ensure others get the chance to replace the limb, but it’s loss is part of who she is now.
Yes, this
Back when I was a bicycle safety advocate I compared the lethality of motor vehicles with bullets using FBI statistics: at the time when hit by someone shooting on the street, not a trained marksman, bullets had a 1 in 9 lethality ratio, motor vehicles crossed that lethality ratio at 23 MPH impact speed. The speed I was hit at had a lethality ratio of about 1:1000000, that’s why when the EMTs got to me they checked for a pulse and just immediately got out a body bag.
One in a million? Seems like just crashing a bicycle into a parked car would be more dangerous.
Immediately got out a body bag? You meant a lethality ratio of a million to one, not one in a million, right? It was a miracle you survived?
Feeding even earthly pets hyu-mon food is a risky move, but all these extraterrestrials seem to have no problems with it. Did they bring their own palm scanners?
…and yeah, “other people’s feelings” aren’t a high consideration to a street-hardened waif.
Looks like Peggy is conflicted there, I hope she makes the right choice…!
Peggy, take it and close the book on the whole thing. Survivor guilt is a mean thing, and if it wasn’t for that she wouldn’t hesitate. I know I’d love to have my legs returned to normal again, mine work, but oddly and with a great deal of concentration, so I understand her feelings. I’ve met several people that are paraplegic and I can’t help but wonder: why me? I went from ICU on more machines than I knew the name of, to walking 6 months later. I always feel guilt when I see someone less lucky than I. One of my doctors told me that since I was in such good physical condition, that had a lot to do with it. Heh, after than, I lost most of that, can’t work out save for hand weighs, the last time I tried to train my teacher told me it was a bad idea.
Who says she has survivor guilt?
Because she survived the helicopter crash with just a loss of limb she has to feel guilty?
Should someone who survived falling out of second (or higher) window feel guilty because someone died stumbling off of a curb?
She said it herself quite clearly, she feels it’s unfair for her to get a new leg over all the other disabled vets out there. That speaks well for Peggy, she cares for her fine fellow survivors on wheels/prosthetics. I understand it for the same reason, there’s so many people that suffered back injuries that can’t walk, while I can. If you haven’t been there, don’t judge, we lucky few doubt we should be the lucky ones. If you have a heart and empathy for your fellow man, it nags at you.
Heh, reading about this scene and the related discussion made me realize I can chalk immunity to survivor’s guilt as another of the many perks of a personality like mine (thanks, Universe), since I find the concept almost incomprehensible. I never feel guilty for anything but my failures and mistakes according to my values and personal ethics, and being a survivor sure as heck is not one of them.
I’m reminded of the old Skeen series, where the locals have to cut off Skeen’s arm when it gets infected and are afraid of her reaction when she finds out. And are taken aback when she just says “It’s OK, I’ll just go to a flesh farm and get a new one when I get home.”
“How did she take the news?”
“She wasn’t impressed.”
Is it just me, or is Hyper-realistic food in Lapha’s hand going to be a running gag now?
Omega mart, you have No Idea what’s in store for you.
New this week, hyper realistic milk.
(There’s a YouTube video on Omega Mart out there.)
*singing 80’s commercial, terribly*
“Nothing beats a Greeeeeat pair of Leggs! Doot de doot!”
Yes, it exists on YouTube, no I won’t torment you with it.
You’re on your own if you look at it.
Peggy I will forgive you for aiming at the head. After all, you live a hard life with a lot of pop culture around you, but in you heart you always need to be a professional sniper and aim at the torso.
… Why does she need to be forgiven?
Thor and the Avengers would like to have words with you…
In her line of work, Peggy regularly has to deal with hostile supers, aliens, and supernaturals. They often have enhanced physiques (by default with supers) and quite possibly supernatural durability, endurance, and/or regeneration. In such cases, a bullet or three to the torso often is not the enemy-stopper you think it is. With a humanoid super/alien/supernatural, the safest bet is to aim for the presumed seat of the brain.
Ofc, for the same reasons, chances are the hostile is bulletproof and using firearms at all is an utter waste of time, effort, and ammo, but that’s another issue. There is a reason why Arc-Swat and Semper Vigilantis only field superhuman combat operatives or people functionally indistinguishable from them, apart from Peggy, who is the team pilot.