Grrl Power #1297 – God, fate, plot armor…
In case it wasn’t clear, I don’t know anything about fishing. Like terminology-wise. I’m sure most of you don’t either, but the one guy who does would definitly be all “Akshually, you’d only use that on a downwind cast.” or something. (I don’t even know if windwardness is a thing when selecting… knots or whatever.)
That thing Peggy is fishing for is definitely something that all helicopters have in them. I checked. You don’t have to look it up.
Trying to free her legs is a natural instinct, but while the one was pressed into the dirt, the other one is trapped between the chopper and a bit of rock. At best, her shin bones probably look like shattered peanut brittle, so giving them a good tug… well no one could think less of her for blacking out a little. Also possibly peeing a little, but she left that out of her retelling, if indeed it happened that way.
The new vote incentive is up!
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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Can I just say I’m loving this. Grrl Power in general is a lot of fun. Reminds me of Gold Digger in general tone but this little side story really gets us down in the dirt and provides contrast. I mean just look at the difference between panel on and panel 7. Good damn stuff. Thank you!
How painful that sort of thing is depends. Back in the 90’s, I slipped on the ice, dislocated my ankle, and then when my weight came down on it, shattered both bones right above the ankle. Down I went, and didn’t hurt a bit.
In fact, it was so painless, I stood up and tried walking away, and went down again.
See, I hadn’t just broken the bones, an edge of the bone had severed a nerve… Ankle’s still numb to this day.
In a way, it hurting is a *good* sign.
Back in my teens, I was riding my mountain bike to pick up my Little Sister when a car reversed out from a brick fence too fast and we collided. Remember flopping around like a rag doll as I got up close and too personal with the car’s rear end then falling backwards onto the ground. Bit stunned for a second or 2, noticed I was thankfully not under the back wheels, just on my back on the same side of the car that I had came from. Saw blood on the ground, so immediately started checking myself for injuries, pretty much all good until I got to the left elbow….
Seems my left elbow had gone through the back window, giving it a nice, wide hole about half the size of my fist with some mangled skin above it. Didn’t even hurt. My first reaction?
“Huh. Skin, fat, muscle….”
Each layer, perfectly defined. A surprise biology lesson…
Driver then popped up, panicking more than a bit. Ran inside and grabbed the whitest towels I had ever seen for my elbow, put my bike inside his house and drove me to the local Doctor’s Surgery…
Guy – still panicking; “Is there a Nurse in here?!”
Receptionist- calm; “Not at the moment, may I ask why?”
*I show the damage under the towels *
Receptionist – shocked; “OH! I think you better get that to the Hospital…”
Me, still calm; “We better stop and tell my Dad to pick up my Little Sister along the way…”
Guy; Where does he work?”
Me; “He’s a Bus Mechanic at *************”
Should have seen the colour vanish from his face…
So we tell my Dad, the guy took me to the local Hospital Emergency Room, Doctor looked at my elbow, removed all the glass he could, X-rays confirmed no bone damage, tried numbing the area but told me that because of the way the damage was, I might still feel the stitches. I was still rather calm with it all (no other damage, wasn’t actually hurting, so no point panicking, the Driver was doing more than enough for both of us ), watched the Doctor put the stitches in going “Nope. Nope. Felt that one. Felt that one. Felt that one” calmly, like he was poking me with a pen or something…
Funniest thing about it all, it didn’t hurt at all. Not while I was examining the damage or in the guy’s car, felt most of the 30 stitches go in, but no pain the whole time. Probably wasn’t shock, I was calm the entire time (had gotten into too many fights before, had taken more damage than that, just not concentrated in 1 spot), could have been nerve damage considering the literal hole in my arm but again, felt most of the stitches…
In fact didn’t actually feel anything from it until I rolled onto it in my sleep that night, woke up doing a cartoon surprise pain scream…
I had a somewhat similar reaction when I was a kid, fell , and cut my knee open to the bone on a rock. My initial response was “I think my kneecap’s showing”. Didn’t panic or cry or anything, even ate my lunch in the car on the way to the hospital and watched them stitich up my knee out of curiousity (twenty stitches in two layers).
Yeah. Cut my left index open with a carving tool (we were debarking some tree branches to make staffs (staves?) for Halloween). I barely missed the bone, but I just looked at it and went “Oops.” The pressure mom kept on it while she fast-walked me to the doctor’s office two blocks down the street hurt more. Don’t remember feeling any pain while the stitches went in, either; I do remember the doctor having me soak my hand in a pan of water though; maybe that’s why I don’t remember getting a shot? Still have the scar, though, and it’s been almost 40 years.
It’s really odd how people react to these things. When I was a teen, I got my index finger caught between a belt and a pulley. A co-worker’s quick action kept my finger from going all the way around the pulley, which would have taken my finger off. As it was, my finger was cut open all the way to the bone by the pulley’s rim. No blood, I could move the flesh around and see the finger bone. My boss put a couple of band-aids on it to keep it clean, and I rode my bicycle about three miles to the hospital. A little waiting around, and a doctor took the band-aids off, made sure it was clean with a cotton swab and Betadine, and then he sewed it up. That’s when I fainted. Not the pulley, not looking at my own bone, not the swab, not even the needle. Seeing the thread getting pulled through my flesh.
I was sharpening a wood chisel, slipped and dropped it. Picked it up, kept working then wondered why my boot was getting … squelchy. I’d put a 50mm almost surgical slice on the inside of my left leg just below the knee. the chisel was sharp enough I didn’t feel a thing. Superglued it, pad of folded tissues and wrapped the leg in tape and carried on working.
Oh yeah, still got a vivid scar on my left knee 55 years later.
‘Kay, My turn. Took an axe to the head as a lad, which explains some things. I know the sound of steel hitting skull. It was very sharp, hardly bled a drop. At least I never had to look at it. They raced me to the country doctor, all the while going on about the tetanus shot, “Ooh, that’s gonna hurt!” Why do people do that? It was just another shot. The guy decided to tape me up with steri-strips instead of stitches, so my scar is more Harry Potter and less Frankenstein. Never felt anything besides the thud.
My turn is gonna sound anticlimactic. Kneeled on some glass during a hike with the Boy Scouts. I was embarrassed because they warned us, so I didn’t say anything. Appr half an hour into the hike after the break, I got questioned about the stains on my pants leg. Confessed, they bundled me off to the nearest ER, the sock and shoe were soaked and unwearable, and the most painful part of it all was the stitches. (Turns out Novacaine doesn’t work on me.) Only 9 stitches but I kept bumping my knee and the scar was almost as wide as it was long by the time it healed. That was a few decades ago so the scar has been reabsorbed completely now.
What you’re describing is pretty much the textbook example of shock, even though you didn’t think it was. :-)
Can confirm, in gymnastics after serious falls the first question is “Does it hurt” and people only freak out if you say no. Acting tough in serious gymnasiums is not only frowned upon but a sure-fire way to be strapped to a board and bundled into a weewoo van.
Don’t know anything about fishing either. I should think an upwind cast (for actual fish) might cause the hook to come back in your face, but maybe any weights on the line would keep that from happening.
This arc is certainly a change in pace from superpowers, it’s a good change though.
Sydney not knowing what to say definitely feels right. She’s had some traumatic things happen, but they’re to her, and they turned out all right. Dealing with other people’s retelling is a different thing.
I dont know that Sydney HAS experienced any meaningful trauma. In any case, she has so little perspective on reality that she wouldn’t know if it did.
Lost in space with giant squid types trying to kill her and (at the time) no idea if she would survive to be rescued or if rescue was even possible?
Actually getting killed by Sciona (IIRC), then “getting better” through the reset?
For that matter, getting Lapha’s memories in full living color? Yes at a certain point they’re not her memories, but it can be hard to separate them.
Her perspective likely means that she will try to deal with it in odd ways.
Getting captured, drugged and interrogated by psychopathic supervillain, then getting his blood spread all over her.
I think that’s the one that actually affected her the most.
As someone who has cast in the direction of the wind… with enough of an anchor weight it doesn’t matter. The objective isn’t to hook a target in the cast but to get the range necessary in the cast. Too light and you won’t get far at all but if your target is only 10 feet away you’re aiming for 20. You still need to not cast in a direct line. Side works fine. Over your head and you risk taking your scalp with it. Too close to someone else and you might hook them instead of cast.
Fishing with a belt hook isn’t the same as fishing with a deep sea pole. While I have a guess what she’s fishing for I’d rather not. Wires are a great way to extend the range of your reach.
Spelling error: “bloodied battle bothers”
I would expect it to be “brothers” and not “bothers”
Whether it’s “blooded” or “bloodied” could go either way? Probably “bloodied.”
Play it safe with Bloodedied
Nope, ‘blooded’, as in, they had seen action together (ie, shed blood)
After the crash, they most assuredly were ‘bloodied’, and broken
I agree with ‘blooded’, but ‘bothers’ is definitely a spelling error.
Yeah, that’s why didn’t brother with that one :P
Everyone here talking about the spelling of Blooded/Bloodied when I didn’t even notice that (I incorrectly typed “bloodied” when I was intending to copy it exactly), and was talking about Bothers/Brothers lol
Fixed!
i used to have a floppy wobbler on my PC
that was a cup holder
Ok, what is that thing in the last couple panels. Weird fusebox? Special computer? I don’t think there is anything else that would be in a containing with dozens of wires coming out of it.
My bet is an EPIRB – Emergency Position Indicator Radio Beacon.
Nah, EPIRBs look like a 90’s cellphone but smaller and bright orange. (They are basically mandatory in Australia for all BCF’ing activities….. And bushwalking, you go bushwalking without an EPIRB you are an idiot, because drop bears will fuck you up.
lots of wires for a tourniquet
Not just a lot, extremely long as well (look at panel nine, second to last panel)
Maybe a tachometer/rev counter for the main rotor? The general form factor would make some sense, although there are quite a lot more wires than I would expect..
For what it’s worth, the type knot you use when fishing is largely dictated by personal preference and the kind of tackle you’re using. I get by with a uni knot and a slip knot for 99% of everything.
Wind direction’s generally pretty irrelevant to the actual hardware used, though if you’re trying to cast in really strong winds, you might need to tie on a sinker to get some extra mass, which may be incompatible with the fishing method — like, with fly fishing, the weight of your lure is so low that you basically Just Don’t in any kind of real wind. Surf casting don’t give a f*ck, just add some more weight.
There are some other specialty forms of fishing where knots matter a lot more, but this is generally when you’re working at the extremes of sport fishing — either using extremely light gear while going for normal sized fish, or when you’re going for fuck-off huge stuff like swordfish or something.
There are special knots for monofilament, that stuff is slick. The one I use most on mono is a barrel knot, but I haven’t been fishing in over 2 decades.
i am no expert.
but i think the crash site would be covered in all the US troops in the area in a pretty timely manner. unless something was preventing them (super villain shenanigans)
There a few factors to consider however, it’s a new base they were setting up so most of the troops were busy securing the area in a war zone, it would take some time for them to realize that the chopper had been downed. Add in more time to mobilize a rescue team with enough force to safely send enough of a force to recover any survivors. Keep in mind they got a lucky shot to down the chopper, so they would have to find the guy and take him out before they would attempt a recovery. It’s all up to the CO if they even want to risk it. That’s why I think it was Max that saved her, no one else could handle the situation safely.
Unless that chopper was super low to the ground when hit, taking out the tail rotor wouldn’t cause an immediate crash. The tail rotor keeps the helicopter from spinning due to the main rotors rotating. There should have been at least a few seconds for either pilot or co-pilot to radio in a distress call before the crash.
They would still require some time to find them since they would need to get another helicopter available/airborne, determining the flight path and distance from where they took off from, and in the case of the base they were flying to, they might have to contact another base to get a helicopter up and searching for the crash.
I’d also be shocked if that crash wasn’t giving off some visible signs, like smoke after getting hit by a missile and crashing.
So I would guess an hour or so minimum for them to be located if everything came together perfectly for a rescue/recovery attempt if they had both personnel and available helicopter, and within 150 miles of said base.
Nah, Maxi mentioned she met Peggy in the hospital (Maxi was in for… other reasons)
No Sydney, Peggy didn’t “survive all that”, she’s a zombie and has been all this time (don’t worry, you are safe)
I suppose one could make a joke that a zombie that eats Sydney’s brain would likely not be capable of dealing with reality thereafter.
But that would be uncharitable. And probably wrong, since she actually deals with the reality she finds out about a good deal better than some other “more grounded” folks we’ve seen.
Hey, not all of us zombies are after brains, human or otherwise. I do have a preference for hamburgers over tofu, but I can eat vegan cuisine. Only vegetable I have a problem with is asparagus, which I dearly love but am allergic to, like bazooka barfing allergic.
Almost said ‘ghost’, but Peggy is very much corporeal but not a corporal :P
And let’s not forget “The Other Grey Meat” (TM)…
Superman is never around when you need him.
Of course not. That ******* has a day job!
Back in the stone age (1964-65) I had are run in with a VW bug. I was playing in a park on Wiesbaden airbase when my dad pull up to tell me it was time to go home. (I heard “cookies “) and booked it across the street. Looked left and coast was clear. As I started to look right,caught a flash of red then next thing I knew I was on the ground with the wheel on the wrong side of my leg. I remember thinking “Dad is going to be mad at me” so I slid out from under the vehicle, put my right leg on the ground and realized that I had a new knee joint. Tried standing 2 more times before the 2lt who hit me was able to get out of his car and lay me down on the grass. All this happened while my big brother watched from the back of my dad’s car(next vehicle in front of me). Needless to say that was very strange. Didn’t really start hurting until I was at the hospital. Found out I had a compound fracture of the lower right leg. Healed up nicely but left a wicked cool scar.
I had to cringe when she tried to pull free, I had rolled over and tried to get up after I landed from being ejected from the car when I had my accident, movement and crushed bone is… unpleasant. I never passed out during that but I wished I had! Spinal damage is almost as bad as 3rd degree burns in terms of pain. By time they had me on the backboard, put me on the gurney, loaded me up, and got the ambulance moving I started to wish for death. Then they started to hit a few pot-holes… Top it all off it had been raining the whole time, freezing rain. So by time they had me in my body temp had dropped and I started to shiver uncontrollably. More so when they cut my clothes off and they just covered me with a sheet. They did put a number of splints on my legs, arm, left hand, and shoulder so it helped a little. This had happened in 1983 btw.
Shivering is a common side effect when the adrenaline wears off and you’re going into shock.
Oh I was in shock, but I also laid on the pavement for an hour waiting on the ambulance in the pouring, freezing rain, my clothes were soaked and my body tempt (in the loud-bus) was 94 and dropping. Normally they don’t remove the clothes in there, it’s done at the hospital. But they were dripping wet and my coat was partly froze to the pavement when they rolled me onto the backboard. What caused the accident was black ice, that’s a layer of ice over the road that melting and freezing at the same time.The “bus” slid past me and had to back up, and 2 cop cars slid off the road that night in the same spot, I had NO chance.
I don’t think using actual fishing terminology would necessarily be appropriate here. She didn’t go fishing for her profession, she went fishing for her survival. The two are very different. Sometimes they can have similar results, but she’s unlikely to catch the same sort of things here that professional fishers are after.
Also, professional fishing is usually all about nets, and she’s using a line, so that’s different right there. Sure, people who fish as a sport frequently use lines, but it’s my impression that they’re a fairly small subset of professional fishermen.
To be clear, I’m not a professional fisher. The closest I’ve ever been to professional fishing was when I took a day trip to Gloucestershire, and I did zero fishing that day. I mean, I’ve used a net in fishing before, but not that kind of net.
Peggy most likely had as much education on proper fishing terminology on this as you have, so you’re fine.
Broke my wrist, and that didn’t hurt a bit, really. But then came…traction. When they tugged and twisted I most certainly felt that…as did half the hospital when I screamed bloody murder for half an hour.
You should have been there when they cleaned the wounds on my left hand, those damn stera-scrubs HURT! that nurse scrubbed until it was showing the meat… REALLY creepy when you move your thumb and can see the tendon move in the hole…. But, for a few moments, I forgot my back and such. 41 years later and the scars STILL don’t tan.
They couldn’t stitch them, not enough flesh left. I did get a cool hand brace since they said I’d never use it again, granted it took a few months but I was stubborn…
Yeah, the doc who reassembled my leg told me he thought I’d need to get the ankle fixated, too. But here I am still using it 25 years later, thanks to lots of SAMe, proactive use of Naproxen before hiking, and being willing to spend a few hours hurting whenever I walk more than a mile.
A lot of successful rehab is just having a high tolerance for pain, and being really stubborn, I guess.
I’m sure most of you have read my story of getting killed by a DUI in a pickup truck, but when I regained consciousness after getting scraped off the street the only thing I could feel was the broken hip. The other break in the femur, the tib-fib fracture, and the hole on my leg with all the missing skin… ad nauseum… I didn’t find out about for days. I think the morphine drip might have had something to do with that after the shock wore off
“I don’t know what it is and I don’t know how it will be useful, but it’s the only thing within reach and the alternative is lying here, counting grains of sand until I die of dehydration so GODDAMMIT I’m gonna get it.”
Or else she’s planning to use the longer wires to extend her “fishing” range. The next step would be to try and acquire her rifle case currently out of reach to her left (see previous comic).
So you’re a zombie that says, “graaaaains”.
A zombie body-builder doesn’t say brains, it says “gaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiins…”
.
.
Crap, the “bad dad-joke” cops are here! RUN!!!
(gun fire)
Yeah, “Grainnnns” is a Vegetarian Zombie.
Or “braaannn…”
You know you have a story when Sydney tucks the ADHD aside long enough to apologize for your experience
1970’s, bloke tried to escape from a Police station I worked at – by jumping out an upstairs window. Police raced outside expecting him to be lying on the footpath outside. NOPE. He was hobbling uphill with TWO broken legs – impacted fractures of Tibia and Fibula of both legs. An ‘impacted’ fracture is where the bones telescope, one end driven inside the other. About the only fracture rated worse than a compound fracture with the bones sticking out according to my old Army medic instructors. Luckily I wasn’t working that day, so I only got to hear about it rather than witness it.
Gonna tie off the leg and do a 127 Hours re-enactment? Ouch
Badly shattered limb bones can be a very real problem. It wouldn’t be necessary for Peggy’s leg to be amputated in the crash for her to have it amputated later. The loss of circulation from the crush injury alone might be enough. In 1945 my father was in Washington state waiting to ship out for Japan. By 1946 he was at Fort Sam Houston waiting to muster out. There was a weekend pass and he and a couple of friends decided to make an epic road trip back home to Oklahoma. Today this is six hour drive today but they were doing it in a prewar car without the benefit of the yet to be developed interstate system so it was more like eight hours. They would have had time to just about say “Hi”, eat lunch and turn around to head back before their leave expired. By the time they were approaching San Antonio they were running late and were technically AWOL. All the passengers were asleep and shortly before reaching San Antonio, so was the driver. The car rolled and amazingly no one was killed but Dad woke up with a crushed elbow. He spent the rest of his military career in Brooke Army Hospital. He always felt he was lucky that they were close enough that they took him to the Army hospital. If the accident had happened in rural Texas he would have ended up getting his arm amputated in some county hospital. Instead he ended up in what was probably one of the premier trauma medicine centers in the world. As it was, he spent the next weeks with six inch long pins in his elbow. He received over 100 injections of penicillin to keep from getting an infection. Apparently he was one of the first people to ever have an elbow pinned back together in that manner. He had a copy of the x-rays and they were pretty gruesome. This relates to Peggy’s situation in that having rapid access to advanced care makes a huge difference. In Peggy’s case she is stuck in the desert with a helicopter sitting on her. Her best case scenario is half an hour with a chopper sitting on top of her. Even when help gets there, if they are under fire it may be a case of cut and run.
So what is that “helicopter thing” that kind of looks like a coke can with a squarish hole cut in it?
As to being conscious or not, people react differently to emergencies and catastrophic damage.
I’ve seen people freeze up in emergencies, and people hurt go unconscious even if seems like there’s no wehre near enough damage for that.
Unfortunately I’ve found out that I don’t freeze in emergencies, and I can take the loss of body parts without even getting dizzy. I’m actually more capable of action for the few minutes during/after I get mangled than I am for months after surgery, which really seems odd.
I hope nobody else ever has to find out how they react in those situations.
“I’m actually more capable of action for the few minutes during/after I get mangled than I am for months after surgery, which really seems odd.
Not that odd. You’re likely hopped up on adrenaline immediately after an injury, while you’re likely only conscious hours after the surgery is complete. With surgery your body likely doesn’t give you adrenaline at all, since it’s now in “crisis over, healing now” mode.