Grrl Power #1330 – Order of order operations
Sciona panicked just a little there. She’s in a really good position and doesn’t want to have to disappear and rebuild another power base. As a professional antagonist, that’s the usual pattern. Build up a power base with some questionable yet never fully explained economics, get into a disagreement with local authorities, make some headway in a takeover bid for actual political power, then some young buck hero comes along and smashes it all, rinse and repeat, since the heroes are okay with gunning down 7,000 storm or shock troopers, but when they get a chance to finish of the main bad guy, they give some superlatively incongruous speech about how “that would make me as bad as you,” as if they didn’t already have a million gallons of blood on their hands. But it’s okay. They were faceless goons.
Speaking of the economics of bad guys… Where did the First Order get their funding? Like, the Empire was smashed, and sure, maybe a few Star Destroyers got away and rendezvoused somewhere – I’m not sure if The Remnant forces are canon anymore with the new movies, but then they convert a planet into a multi barreled Death Star and then show up with a 40 KM long flying wing Star Destroyer, and… well, we can just forget the third one. The new movies weren’t all that well written. I mean, in the second one, the rebels put out a call for help and no one shows up, and in the third movie, they put out a call for help and the whole galaxy shows up. To mention but one of many problems with those films. Like… okay? Did the use Space AM Radio the first time and Lando’s “Moustaches are Cool” podcast the second time? And another thing – did the New Republic or whatever they were called have no navy whatsoever? The First Order blows up a few planets with their Starkiller Base and, like, what? The entire NR navy was in orbit for some reason at the time? That would be incredibly stupid, but the next movie the remnant of the NR, i.e. the Rebels are down to like 5 ships? The Star Wars-verse has tens of thousands of systems. In the 30 years since the Empire fell, the NR couldn’t muster up a police/peacekeeping navy remotely the same size as the Empire managed in the same timespan since Palpatine took over? Those movies just get dumber the more I think about them.
Anyway, that’s not my point. I always wonder when the bad guys show up with a massive army of goons, all with matching uniforms and usually a bunch of high-tech gear, I can’t help wonder about the economics behind it all. How much did it cost to build the volcano lair with the retractable fake lake on top and the orbital vehicle that can swallow up other space modules? Couldn’t all that money just be used to bribe a bunch of politicians to achieve those goals?
Yes, I KNOW. It’s so the movie can happen. Or at least so the movie can be interesting. Watching a guy hand an envelope of money to a guy to get him to vote for Parliamentary Order 3281/b. It would be a bit of a slog to get through. Not that it couldn’t be done interestingly I suppose. But it’d be a harder sell than showing Sean Connery swinging a crane hook into a guy’s crotch, then the guy swings screaming off the catwalk and into garbage compactor and then Bond quips “I guesh he had Prinsh Albert in a Can.” as his feathered-haired companion in a silver onsie with flared bell bottoms looks on in horror.
The new vote incentive is up! (Finally.)
I’m revisiting a panel from a recent page, but I included some comic reactions and a few outfit swaps, so hopefully you all enjoy it. I also plussed up the art from the comic version a bit, though I suspect that despite the time I spent on that, not a whole lot of people would immediately notice that, so I’m gratuitously pointing it out here.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Hopefully at this point ARC has contingencies for Sydney being, well, Sydney, and have an auto recorder or black box thing installed on her wrist computer to alert them of situations like this or just her blabbing top secret stuff while out in public.
I imagine the biometric trackers on her will pick up something funky is happening to her.
Pretty sure the glasses have a recording feature.
In my headcannon, Those are this universe’s equivalent of Tedd Verres’ Glasses (See “El Goonish Shive”)
EGS mentioned!
I too am assuming that will be relevant.
Sydney doesn’t have the PipGrrl anymore, and cereally hope they don’t have something like that as that would be a cereal trust violation (or is it okay for the government to spy on it’s citizens if it is Sydney they are spying on?
As for the glasses (that Archon probably doesn’t know shit about, or her score on the shooting course would be called out), just like a tape-recorder it only works when it’s turned on and set to record (cereally doubt Sydney would like her ‘happy-fur dance’ with her boyfriend to be leaked to Galactic TMZ)
To be fair: if the glasses have a record function and Sydney knows how to use it, she probably would have turned it on while spying on Sciona here.
Bonus chance: Sydney might happen to remember later on that her glasses translated the Senator’s aide speaking Alar. Two, maybe three weeks from now, while she’s in the shower, she’ll remember it.
I wonder what the odds are that she’s having an unusual reaction due to her non-standard brain chemistry and associated meds? I mean, Sydney doing the “who are you” thing after being told to forget is something she’d do stone cold sober….
My worry is, did she forget about the existence of Scionia completely? Like, aaaaaaall the way back to the stabbing?
> or is it okay for the government to spy on it’s citizens if it is Sydney they are spying on
Sydney is not just a citizen, Sydney is a law enforcement officer. It is more than okay for the government to ‘spy’ on its law enforcement officers while on duty (which she is currently). Wielding the authority of the state requires a level of accountability beyond that of a private citizen
“Wielding the authority of the state requires a level of accountability beyond that of a private citizen”
You’re not American, I take it. In modern America, law enforcement has LESS accountability than normal citizens. Thanks to “qualified immunity,” police unions, prosecutorial discretion, and governments settling lawsuits at taxpayer expense, officers and agents literally get away with murder all the time, not to mention all their other crimes and rights violations. We had to have multi-state protests and riots about it just to get one guy prosecuted, and there are multiple channels on YouTube dedicated entirely to tracking and reporting on police crimes caught on film, who rarely report on the same events, and are able to put out videos multiple times a week. And that’s just the ones caught on film, usually via the cops’ own bodycameras.
At least it’s a little funny when cops narc on themselves because they don’t understand how body cams work. Many models actually record constantly, but for privacy reasons they only record to a thirty second buffer. When the wearer activates the cam it doesn’t start recording, it only stops erasing. This means the cam effectively starts recording thirty seconds before it’s activated, sometimes catching cops apparently planting drugs or other evidence. Their story is usually that it was already there, they just forgot to activate the camera, hence the “reshoot”. You can believe as much of that as you like.
Less funny is when they do things such as exploiting laws designed to protect crime victims’ privacy to conceal their own behavior from public view.
@BS We all know by now your country is fecked …
He was just telling how it should be.
@Wizard ,.. which means the cameras work as intended :)
“(or is it okay for the government to spy on it’s citizens if it is Sydney they are spying on?”
While I also doubt that ARC put something to monitor Sydney’s actions via technology, she’s not just a citizen – she’s a member of the military now. And the police – sorta. Police can and usually do have bodycams nowadays. And soldiers do sometimes have stuff on them to monitor their location while in the field. So yes with Sydney it would probably be okay, legally speaking. At least as long as they told her beforehand about the pipgrrl’s function. Which I think they did (possibly) when they first gave it to her. Insofar as they said it has a built-in transponder with GPS and ‘a bunch of other stuff’ – no idea if they ever told her what other stuff there was off panel.
Also, a problem with that is that Maxima did say it only activates if she’s moving above a certain speed above a certain elevation. Currently, Sydney is on the ground not moving anywhere. Unless that’s ONLY about the transponder and not the ‘other stuff.’
If it was able to track her actions and location anywhere, they probably would have found Sydney when she got kidnapped without Cora getting the signal from Sydney via the glasses.
And like you said, from what we’ve seen of the glasses so far, they only record and send out signals when Sydney does so, or it would have AUTOMATICALLY done that when she was kidnapped as well, without Sydney having to send out the ‘help!’ signal to Cora.
I don’t see why anything other than the transponder would be affected by her altitude and speed.
Wait, when did she lose the Pipgrrl? I think I missed that part.
I would nail a nannycam to her and have three minders following her around who’s sole job would be stopping her from babbling NSA secrets to squirrels.
‘cept she’s not wearing the wrist computer/comm thingy. Just the choker and the glasses
Choker does have some comm capabilities.
Leon: What the?! Sydney just said something weird.
Krona: Since when is that new?
Leon: No, even weirder than normal. She mentioned Sciona. I have to rewind that.
Krona: Sciona? Excuse me. [ Gets off Leon’s lap and heads into the hallway ] Hey, Daphne, can you teleport me to the build site?
Harem: Even as small as you are, you are over my weight limit.
Krona: [ Taps in the air in front of her, on her heads-up display. She shrinks to 1 foot tall. ] Does that help?
Harem: Let’s see. [ Picks her up ] Okay, Krona-doll. This can work. Hang on to your lunch! *VORP*
Nope, doesn’t matter how small someone is, Harem can’t transplant living matter, not even a house plant (not if you want it to still be alive and slash or still recognizable (remember that scene from Galaxy Quest when they attempted to use the transporter on that alien pig-beast?)
Where did it say she can’t teleport living matter? I’ve checked semi-thoroughly, and can’t find confirmation of that, either in the comic or by DaveB in one of his blurbs beneath the comic. Also havent found it in the Dabbler Science Corner on Harem.
There are a few things that imply that she CAN teleport some living matter though.
1) Harem has said in the past that her mass limit ‘includes herself’ – and she is living matter.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-207-ill-take-six-of-these-twelve-of-these/ – last panel – “My mass limit includes my own gear. It also includes my own me, so this me is going to unteleport for a few minutes.”
Harem’s weight limit that she can carry depends on how many of her there are un-teleported, since that seems to affect her weight limit as well.
2) Also Varia touching her allows Harem to bypass that weight limit for Varia, since Varia weighs more than 50 lbs. Varia is also made of living matter.
You might be right about her not being able to transport even a house plant, but there hasnt been anything that has stated that yet in the comic or by DaveB as far as I can remember so what you are saying is only a guess, not canon. For all we know, if The Atom or Shrinking Ray or Ant Man or the Wasp were in the Grrlpower universe, maybe Harem would be able to teleport them as well?
The closest thing we have in the comic to confirmation of what you’re guessing is where Varia says “Cause normally she can’t take anyone with her” but that might just mean that normally people are not going to be within Harem’s weight limit.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-324-she-should-put-all-those-answers-on-a-shirt/ – first panel
Author blurb on page 60: “she can’t take anyone with her. Clothing, equipment, easy, but no people. Possibly nothing else living.”
Can remember the comments about things like gut-bacteria and other bacteria on her skin around that time
Varia is the only one who can tag along with Harem, and that’s an artifact of Varia’s powerset, not Harem’s. I haven’t seen anything that says Harem cannot transport a house plant or a cat, but it may be something she considers a “better safe than sorry” type of deal. Or she tried transporting a potted plant sometime when she was a kid, and it Did Not Go Well, so she hasn’t tried anything similar since then. I’m sure someone will ask her eventually. *shrugs*
More likely in her classes. It has a translator function, which shows the understandable lines as written script. Wouldn’t be too surprised if it had a memory for that as well.
I’m pretty sure that the actual source of the First Order’s funding was bad writing. :)
Great. Now my headcanon includes an Imperial Officer signing copies of her latest romance-thriller. It’s a revisionary retelling of Vader’s heroic origins including a Kenobi x Anakin x Padme love triangle.
What a terrible day to have eyes and reading comprehension.
What a terrible day to have eyes and reading comprehension…
About the guy handing out bribes in a movie: Economic thrillers have been done very successfully.
I’ll be honest, I’ll be glad when this Sciona returns arc is done. She was really 9nky fun the first time. Hopefully this encounter marks the end of her plot and not just an excuse to drag her existence on.
Not gonna lie. Me too
YMMV. As far as I am concerned, this arc is far from perfect (the way Sciona accidentally outed herself and Sydney let herself be caught is exceedingly dumb), but still way better than even more inane Sydney-centered comedy/slice of life filler.
Moreover, returning villains is a major and well-established trope of the superhero genre.
“more inane … filler”
Ah yes, because anything that doesn’t push the plot directly along the railroad is inherently bad.
Not inherently bad, no, but rather unbalanced. As far as I am concerned, we already got a dosage of Sydney-centered comedy/slice of life filler to last a lifetime, while several important parts of the plot and setting remain underdeveloped and neglected for long spans.
For the record, I’m having a great time with this.
Well… Revisiting head villains is a pretty standard part of superhero comics. Even the robot she first set after them is still around. Even Vehemence came back and might now be away to join a demon army.
Your comments about funding remind me of my thoughts with Captain America: Civil War. The whole plan hinges on the secret training facility having a really good documents manager. Everything was stored very very nicely, in good order, well labeled and boxed. Then I started wondering how you recruited for a documents manager for an evil organization.
McKinsey could help with that (recruiting for an evil organization)
The same way mobs recruit bookkeepers and lawyers i guess. There will always be people who don’t care who they work for as long as thevpay is good enough.
Art feels ‘off’ for me today.
Maybe it’s just the shading.
Probably just the shading.
My guess is that it’s extra noticeable today because Slam takes up so much space in the first panel, so you have a lot of the same color there in one patch with no shading.
Pretty much the same as it was yesterday, and the day before: DaveB is just using a simpler method
Naturally, Sydney also had made a mistake in the previous strip – totally forgot to just use yellow orb to spy remotely, as opposed to stalking. Guess she got overexcited :)
Did she forget, or did she her subconscious just decide that that was a mistake it didn’t want to make twice with the same target?
Not sure if there isn’t also another mistake – Sydney & crew DEFINITELY knew that something magical-and-creepy flew through the portal back to Earth. They wouldn’t have definitely known that it was Sciona, but I feel like she’d be a pretty strong contender to suspect for the skull-soul leading the pack. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-649-the-long-way-back/
Yeah, they knew something happened, and Dabbler had some theories as to what happened as she’s familiar with the “soul vault” thingy some Alari use, but Sciona’s fate was labeled as a mid-maybe. The length of the exchange between Kat and Sydney there doesn’t have space for all the nuance of it.
10-4 Super Chief.
Well god dammit. It occurs to me that my last comment might be interpreted as sarcasm instead of the admiration and gratitude that I intended it to be. Stupid posting anxiety …
I meant – “Thank you very much for the explanation, I appreciate the Word of Dave clarifying the situation.”
Time to go hide under a blanket until next week.
Umm, they were all skull-soul’s, but they would not have had the time to notice that the one in front was a different colour, or even speculate as to why
He says about the woman with natural inbuilt superspeed?
Oof. This is why she should have called it in first. Give the team what she knows, and let the professionals, i.e. Arcdark, handle the spying. You are far from the most stealthy member of the team, and as of last page, you were the only person who had any suspicion on Sciona. Now you gave away the info within earshot of Sciona without passing it to someone safe, and now no one has the info. Sadly, she’s not even going to learn her lesson from this.
“I always wonder when the bad guys show up with a massive army of goons, all with matching uniforms and usually a bunch of high-tech gear, I can’t help wonder about the economics behind it all.”
Apparently they were funded by a supposedly-well-intentioned government agency that just funneled taxpayer dollars to them while politicians on both sides of the aisle looked the other way? Truth is apparently stranger than fiction, but I would expect that to actually be a thing in movies going forward from now on.
Seeing as DOGE can’t even identify what department was funding things don’t believe anything they say
(the list of USAID strange funding contains 7 items, 4 of them were actual funded by the state department, not USAID
and they’re at least missing context on all of them when they aren’t outright wrong
– the claim that there was $6 million USAID funding for Egyptian tourism was actually to “increase educational opportunities and strengthen the livelihoods of the people of North Sinai”
– the claim that there was 2.5 million funding for Vietnamese charging stations for BEVS was actually 2.5 million for grants up to $100,000 for ideas to reduce emissions in a country that is rapidly increasing carbon emissions
– the $1.5 million to Serbia for DEI was to address well recognized discrimination against LGBT people in employment
– the closest to accurate is the $2 million dollars to Guatemala for sex changes and “LGBT Activism” which was for gender confirming medical care – which is not all sex change operations and massively reduces the suicide rate of trans people – and LGBT organizations in another society with known discrimination against LGBT
– the claimed DEI musical in Ireland was the State Department funding (or partly funding) a musical event that included US and Irish performers who weren’t all white and straight
– the claimed trans opera in Columbia was the State Department contributing $25,000 towards performing an existing American Opera with a trans lead character
– They didn’t contribute $32000 towards a transgender comic book in Peru, the US Embassy commissioned 3 comic books
‘In 2021, the U.S. Embassy in Peru introduced a comic book called “The Power of Education,” which it used to promote education and exchange programs in the U.S.’
They requested that the 2nd book had a gay character to address anti LGBT prejudice in Peru
So that’s 4 out of 7 they misidentified the government agency and, even with generous marking, 6 out of 7 where they got the description completely wrong
Tourism: The press release for the $6 million indeed does not reference tourism, but instead links to a site that gives an overview of what USAID does for Egypt – or at least it did (the link goes nowhere now). But here’s the archived version – note the title itself notes a great deal of it is to support tourism: https://2017-2020.usaid.gov/egypt/economic-growth-and-tourism
Charging stations: I’m getting conflicting information about how DOGE worded this – you say charging stations, the Washington Post article refuting DOGE’s claims says electric vehicles. And this was actually part of a $36 million project for reducing emissions and switching to “green” energy; if anything, DOGE should have upped the number.
Serbia: I’m going to assume this is the 1 out of 7 where they didn’t “[get] the description completely wrong,” since “addressing discrimination” is indeed the stated purpose of DEI initiatives.
Guatemala sex changes: I mean, “LGBT Activism” covers a lot of ground, particularly if – like many of DOGE’s intended audience for these releases – you consider transgenderism to be a mental disorder (in which case anything that legitimizes it, such as any form of gender-affirming care, could be considered activism in support of it).
DEI musical: Let’s check the name of the program, shall we? “‘Other Voices: Dignity – Towards a More Equitable Future.” Yeah, sounds lilke something completely unrelated to DEI, and DOGE is just picking on them for having some cast members who are neither straight nor white. Please disregard the fact the press release explicitly states it “aims to fulfil the U.S. Embassy Dublin’s mission to promote diversity, inclusion, and equality.”
https://www.othervoices.ie/news/other-voices-and-the-u-s-embassy-dublin-come-together-for-dignity-a-glorious-celebration-of-the-music-of-ireland-and-the-us-this-september
Trans Opera: It’s an opera that is quite literally about a trans woman undergoing transition. This isn’t some random opera that they happened to cast a trans woman as the lead for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_One_(opera)
Comic book: The original grant summary describes it as “TO COVER EXPENSES TO PRODUCE A TAILORED-MADE COMIC, FEATURING AN LGBTQ+ HERO TO ADDRESS SOCIAL AND MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES.” It might be inaccurate that the character is trans – I’m not inclined to register with Dropbox just to download and peruse it to find out (but I found Snopes stated the character was simply gay, not trans) – but it was clearly meant to have someone adjacent to that (my guess is they requested an LGBTQ+ character and the authors said “Best I can do is a gay guy”). “DEI comic” or “LGBT comic” would have probably been more appropriate.
So, slightly incomplete (Egypt), slightly incomplete (Vietnam), correct (Serbia), difference of definition* (Guatemala), correct (DEI Musical), correct (Trans Opera), incomplete/misleading (Trans comic).
*I think this should be kept in mind with the current “culture wars” – a lot of them come down to people having fundamentally different perceptions of reality. Being trans is a physical disorder (wrong body) to one side, a mental disorder (delusion) to the other. Abortion is maintaining bodily autonomy to one side, murdering a human being to the other. It can make it difficult for people to debate things like this when they’re looking at them from completely different – and mutually incompatible – directions, and is the cause of a lot of vitriol on both sides. If you think being trans is a physical problem, anyone who is opposed to gender-affirming care is a monster who wants others to suffer, but if you think it’s a mental problem then anyone who affirms it is preventing the patient from recovering from their delusion and, worse, may be helping them mutilate their own body in their madness. If you think abortion is just a question of bodily autonomy, anyone opposed to it wants to treat women as second-class citizens at best and baby incubators at worst, but if you think it’s a process that murders another human being, anyone in favor of it is advocating murder for the sake of convenience (and you see it as little different from a mother purposefully drowning their 5-year-old because they don’t want to deal with them anymore).
Also, please don’t take this as some sort of personal attack. I think you have the right intentions, but may have got some bad information from somewhere (and, of course, there’s the whole “difference of definition” issue that comes into play, probably in more cases here than I’m giving it credit for). Heck, maybe I’m the one getting bad information; you can find something to support just about any side of an argument these days…
I note you’re ignoring that 4 of the 7 projects they use to show USAID is bad were not funded by USAID.
Here’s the whitehouse page on USAID criticisms using DOGE results
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/at-usaid-waste-and-abuse-runs-deep/
In a criticism of USAID they list projects funded by embassies and the state department
(this list includes projects not on the list I’d seen before, I’m not checking anything below the Egyptian Grant)
The $6 million they referenced for Egypt was not to bolster tourism, but education
“This agreement will increase educational opportunities and strengthen the livelihoods of the people of North Sinai.”
and I’d argue that earlier funding to preserve archaeological sites is doing a fair bit more than tourism
Funding for environmental programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is wasted funding?
And, again, their description was wrong. The grant they identified was neither for charging stations or electric vehicles so the description was wrong, it was for grants to reduce the emissions of business and industry.
So any actual activity to reduce discrimination – even well recognized discrimination is the evil DEI?
So the civil rights act was DEI?
Rubbish
The Guatemala finding of LGBT organisations and gender affirming healthcare is the one that’s kind of accurate if you’re a generous marker, although there is far more gender affirming care and deriding people as LGBT activists rather ignores that in 2022 their congress passed a law that would ban same sex marriage (neither same sex marriage or civil unions are currently recognized nor do same sex couples have the same rights, nor is discrimination against LGBT people illegal in employment, education, housing, health care, banking or other public accommodations, such as cafes, restaurants, nightclubs and cinemas. There was protection for minors from being discriminated against due to sexual orientation or that of their parents but it was repealed in 2023.
So classifying them as LGBT activists misses the context.
And the funding seems to fit the stated goals of USAID
It was not USAID that was funding the Musical Event in Ireland, it was the state department.
Which seems a pretty important point if it’s being used to criticize USAID.
It wasn’t a DEI musical, it was a musical event that many performers of different races and cultures played at
That’s very different from paying for a “DEI Musical”
The description of the event at https://www.othervoices.ie/news/other-voices-and-the-u-s-embassy-dublin-come-together-for-dignity-a-glorious-celebration-of-the-music-of-ireland-and-the-us-this-september makes it absolutely clear that it’s not a musical (you know, a play with lots of singing and a plot)
Is it now bad to put together any group of performers unless they’re all white?
I guess I’ve been to a lot of DEI festivals…
And funding something like that seems perfectly on task for an embassy in Ireland, but even if it wasn’t it’s not grounds to criticize USAID seeing as they had nothing to do with it.
The Trans Opera description ignores the important point that it’s actually the state department (again, not USAID) funding the performance of an existing American Opera which has had several performances in the USA and has generally been praised by critics. Saying USAID is funding ‘$47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia’ is wrong because
a) it’s the State Department, not USAID
b) the state department contributed $25,000 towards it not $47,000. Doesn’t overstating the spend by almost 90% qualify as a big mistake?
c) it ignores that it’s actually supporting the production of an American Opera overseas, which is a pretty important point to consider for whether the spending is appropriate
The comic book had 3 volumes, 1 of them had a gay main character. In no way, shape or form is that a “trans comic book”
and again, it wasn’t a USAID project
Doesn’t any of that raise concerns for you?
Over 50% of the projects they use to criticize USAID aren’t USAID projects
They call something a Trans Comic book, when 1 volume in 3 has a gay character and the goal is to promote education and exchange programs with the USA
(again, the goal seems on task for the State Department)
The call something a DEI Musical to give the idea that it’s a play pushing DEI rather than it being a musical performance by multiple Irish and American performers, who aren’t all white.
They claim that USAID is funding EV charging stations (or BEVs) when what they’re actually funding is grants for companies and industry to reduce carbon emissions.
That’s on top of Musky continuing to claim that there’s $50 million worth of condoms being sent to Gaza when that’s been disproved.
DOGE isn’t displaying the level of professionalism or accuracy they need to be doing this job, they’re wrong about who’s funding things and they’re twisting the descriptions to make them look dubious
It’s a propaganda arm, not an actual investigation into funding looking for waste.
They & the administration called for a freeze without knowing what the effects would be (“However, according to a report from the Office of Inspector General for USAID, the damage has already been done. Over $489 million dollars worth of food is at risk of spoiling because there’s not enough staff to distribute the products, including wheat, sorghum, rice and vegetable oil.” suggests there’s a bit of a problem, and the effect on the poor of the world losing almost $500 million in food is probably not great.
Brilliant way to make your country popular)
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/usaid-freeze-lifted-farmers/
Yeah, they can only work with what they have considering there are people actively trying to thwart him in anyway they can
Remind us how much the Republicans cooperated with Obama or Biden…
And they weren’t trying to stop all foreign aid
– which provides significant funding for American farmers and businesses
– helps people survive in poor regions of the world
– helps for ties with foreign countries
– makes it harder for other countries (like China) form ties with other countries
Cancel the Department of Education
etc
I originally wrote up a much longer reply, but it went under moderation (probably due to a combination of length and large number of links) and probably won’t be seeing the light of day (I may have been a bit snarkier than I intended in parts of it), but here’s the Cliff’s Notes version.
Egypt: The press release when the aid was given gave a link to explain where the money would be going, the title of the page it linked to was “Economic Growth and Tourism,” and tourism was the primary focus.
Vietnam: The general project for reducing emissions in Vietnam was $36 million, so if anything DOGE kinda underreported it.
Serbia: Addressing discrimination is the stated purpose of DEI initiatives. “True but actually a good thing” isn’t in the same ballpark as “False.”
Guatemala: “Gender-affirming care” probably counts as “LGBT Activism” to those opposed to it. I had a whole tangent I went on in the original post about people perceiving fundamentally-different versions of reality (not just with LGBTQ+ concerns, but pretty much everywhere in the “culture war”), but I’ll spare you that in this post.
DEI Musical: The program was called “Other Voices: Dignity – Towards a More Equitable Future,” and their own press release specifically stated that it “aims to fulfil the U.S. Embassy Dublin’s mission to promote diversity, inclusion, and equality.”
Trans Opera: The opera in question is called As One, and in addition to starring a trans actress (which I agree is insufficient to call it a “trans opera”) the central focus of the plot is a trans woman discovering her gender identity and subsequently transitioning (which I think is more than sufficient to call it a “trans opera”).
Comic Book: The original grant was explicitly to “[feature] an LGBTQ+ hero to address social and mental health issues,” but from what I can find about it (I found where you can download it online, but you have to make a Dropbox account), you are indeed correct that the character introduced is gay rather than trans. So the grant wanted someone in the set that includes trans, and the author opted to pick a different part of that subset, so I’d say calling it a “transgender comic book” is highly misleading.
So, slightly incomplete (Egypt), slightly incomplete (Vietnam), correct (Serbia), difference of definition (Guatemala), correct (DEI Musical), correct (Trans Opera), incomplete/misleading (Trans comic).
An interesting fly in the ointment when it comes to identifying what came from the State Department and what came from USAID is the fact that USAID is itself part of the State Department, which may have caused some of the confusion (combined with the interference Guesticules gesticulated towards). But I do agree DOGE should have been more careful about getting their facts straight before reporting it.
When has anyone in the government (either party) bothered with getting the facts straight first?
And that’s not to mention the press
DOGE – and the Trump administration in general – is supposed to be a departure from the same-old BS most other administrations have engaged in, so doing the same crap as everyone else isn’t a good start. Or, to put it in a more meme-tastic way – “You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Bureaucracy, not join them! Bring balance to the Budget, not leave it in debt!”
They have to start somewhere, and that usually means clearing out the corrupt and surplus shit
Have you looked at their appointees?
An attorney general who has previously accepted campaign donations from people under investigation and quite coincidentally dropped the investigations…
Hell, have you looked at Trump’s history of corruption?
What about the guy who literally handed over a country to criminals, a country many nations were trying to help protect from said criminals, not to mention all the lives lost in that help
What country would this be?
Do you seriously think the unlected billionaire with massive conflicts of interest is clearing out corruption? Among other things he is directly clearing competition and people investigating him.
Remind us how much the Republicans cooperated with Obama or Biden…
And they weren’t trying to stop all foreign aid
– which provides significant funding for American farmers and businesses
– helps people survive in poor regions of the world
– helps for ties with foreign countries
– makes it harder for other countries (like China) form ties with other countries
Cancel the Department of Education
etc
So you’re fine with people using funding from other departments to claim that USAID is wasting money and should be dissolved?
You’re fine with them claiming that there’s $50 million worth of condoms that were going to be shipped to Gaza when it’s been confirmed that’s bullshit?
You don’t think it’s important to get accurate information before making decisions on where hundreds of billions of dollars worth of funding goes?
Like said: both parties are just as bad, but everyone has a hard-on against Trump, the guy who tried to make peace with North Korea and Russia
Where “make peace with” translates to “Reward Russia for invading another country” and “Get played by North Korea who commit to nothing while continuing to develop nuclear capability”
“Both parties do bad things” does not mean “both parties are equally bad”. If one person steals a candy bar, and another murders a dozen people, they’re not equally bad.
One party is thoroughly corrupt, and trying to dismantle every part of government that protects the weak from the powerful. The other occasionally oversteps the proper bounds of government, and has a few bad actors or corruption, like any other large group of people. They are not equally bad.
Economically, they both advocate for slightly different versions of capitalism, and yet are called out as being extremely different from each other. The ways in which they’re similar, they’re treated as being very different, and the ways in which they’re very different are treated as if they’re alike. Either people are insane, or they’re being lied to.
Lot’s of people in government get the facts straight first. Consider all the testing that goes into medicine for the FDA. The huge amounts of data in censuses. The statistics on car safety by the NHTSA. The numbers on crime statistics by the Federal bureau for justice statistics…. And so on for dozens of groups that have gathered and vetted tons of impartial data that hundreds of thousands of companies can use for free and had used until recently to make important impactful decisions.
For future consideration: more than zero links in a post? Goes to moderation.
Yeah, nah, still getting posts that don’t show up for hours and haven’t posted a link in months
I can only imagine how strange it would be interrogating someone with ADHD, especially if you just dosed them with truth serum/ alien LSD…
Didn’t someone already try that?
yeah, the masked people downtown when the alien tourists landed, they used petrakinesy lady to stick Sidney to a stone chair and gave her truth serum, it went sideways fast
I think in this case we’re seeing that the drug has a strong hypnotic effect and Sciona made the mistake if first telling them all to forget her, then asking how they figured out it was her. It strongly suggests nothing bad is going to happen to Sydney or the others but their discovery of Sciona will be forgotten… Unless one of Sydney’s unknown orbs has a trick to counter it.
Only one unknown orb now (green makes air, and is probably life support).
But the space glasses could also maybe do something.
I can’t tell if Sydney’s hat is supposed to be ugly looking or blue-tinged camo (?) just isn’t her colour.
Also, nobody cares about your “sexy bunny butt”, girl. We can’t even see it in this panel.
Okay, minor correction: we can see her ass. But I really question why it was important other than her ears and feet (paws?) not being as pornographic.
People say weird shit when they’re high. That’s it. That’s the point of that line. Same with the “meteor’s coming right for me!” dinosaur joke.
Or maybe Dave’s a secret furry? There’s the half-naked human with a bunny tail view from a few weeks ago.
Slam’s comment is because she can see through time (as she whispered in a previous panel)
Pretty sure she is just high. High people sometimes make false claims.
That said, maybe she can see through time and chose just the moment she was hit with an apparently mind altering chemical to reveal it. It stretches plausibility, but this is a webcomic, and we can’t put anything past Dave.
Pretty sure Dave drew furry stuff under the name Dynotaku. Google at your own risk.
I Googled the username to check if that held up, which it does, but I’m not gonna look at the art. I don’t think I need to explain why.
That does explain why porn brain keeps slipping into this comic though.
“Slipping”?
* From the “about” page: “I thought I could keep my interest up if I was drawing well packaged hot women all the time.”
* Dabbler. Everything she says and does.
* Pin-up art for monthly vote incentives. Nude versions as Patreon incentives.
I think you’re seriously confused about the comic you’re reading, if you see core elements as surprising intrusions. This is basically a superhero sex comedy with a lot of worldbuilding that examines and sometimes subverts superhero story tropes. You might as well be complaining about how unrealistic it is for there to be magic in the comic.
IN order on some of these:
The sheer size of the Galactic Empire allows massive amounts of money, manpower, and resources to be hidden. The last movie makes it plain the Empire has access to entire systems the Republic doesn’t even know exist, and has for a very long time.
In movie 8, the Rebels were initially ignored because it was a skirmish between two forces fighting for some stupid reason somewhere and nobody wanted to get involved, it couldn’t be that bad.
Then the First Order blew up a planet, and everybody had to take anything about them seriously. But their first reaction was to circle the wagons, cheer that the supergun was already destroyed, and protect themselves.
In the third movie, the ultimatum went out to the whole galaxy. The galaxy ultimatum’d back, is all.
The New Republic only had a peacekeeping navy. Systems were largely expected to provide for their own security, mostly because of pirates and things whose activities would have run an overarching navy ragged (and were doing so in the Mandalorian series). The Empire actively tried to destroy and get rid of all system fleets as a part of its foundation, and those fleets, like the Mon Calamari, were backbones of the Rebel Allliance. The Republic simply returned to its previous roots, rightly fearing that a massive centralized navy was going to cause more problems, and not having an obvious enemy to require one.
The main reason organizations can get away with so much stuff would economically be fanatics working for them, and you don’t have to pay fanatics much of anything. So all the money normally spent on amenities and luxuries instead goes into the military. All you have to do is look at any tyrants in the modern age, who pour money into their militaries and look great, while their people starve. That’s the Empire in a nutshell. If your people are brainwashed fanatics who don’t mind living that way, even better!
Is Sydney telling the truth, or is she seeing how far she can toy with Sciona.
Yes.
That was my thought as well, but look at her pupils in panel 6, apparently not as bad as slam’s? In panel 5.
The pupils of the three of them look basically the same to me, and I take this as evidence Sydney is genuinely affected and not faking it and pulling Sciona’s leg. Another piece of evidence is her thoughts acknowledging she’s high.
cvfdgbfgfh
First Order got some of the funds taxing the worlds they occupy, and the rest from the equivalents of USAID.
USAID funded countries, not terrorist organizations.
Really should get off twitter, dude.
And maybe notice that Elon just dismantled an agency meant to monitor bribery of US politicians and stole 80 million USD from FEMA.
And you believe FEMA wasn’t corrupt?
What about orders to ignore houses that had Trump signs?
Yeah … no. That was a fantasy dreamed up by some alt-right agit-prop operative. (Because it suited their narrative if the american voters believed the then administration to be incompetent and hostile).
The only thing that actually happened is that in a handfully cases fanatical maga cultists got so worked up over propaganda (aka outright lies told by their favourite tv personalities) that they threatened aid workers to the point that they had to leave.
If you have evidence of corruption present it. Otherwise you just sound like every other caller into Coast-to-Coast AM alongside the people claiming alien interbred with ancient egyptians for their gold. Remember all those FEMA conspiracies around hurricane Katrina or the California fires, or pick any disaster and they ranged from takeovers to white genocide, and none happened. At most there will be some mishandling of money or misfiled because that is unavoidable at scale, and even then we have prosecutions for the real stuff.
Examples of evidence will include real things like how we can look at doge and see them dismantling NASA and then see addition of contracts to SpaceX. Or the myriad of financial reports tying trump to foreign money, then acting in ways that appear to weaken the US but align with foreign interest. Things like getting rid of USAID cause the US to lose cheaply purchased diplomatic power and let China step in to provide cheap AID and get the diplomatic power instead (like power to choose where military bases go). And so on dozens of visible topics.
actually
USAID does fund organizations in the middle east with ties to Hamas.
city journal “The money has kept flowing, as the U.S. has distributed $2.1 billion in Gaza since Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages on October 7, 2023. But the warning signs predate October 7.”
Might be because if you don’t fund aid into Gaza people starve to death and, since the Israelis cut off power and destroyed all the hospitals, they need medical assistance as well.
There was tidbits in #8 about how weapons developers were selling equipment to both sides, presumably to spark wars and shit, but it seemed like a cynical insert that didn’t go anywhere since they never really did anything with it, but the movie definitely seemed like it was a series of shorts/scenes stitched together as best as possible.
Well, some of the stuff for the latter series could make sense.
1) The Super SSD type would make a great flying base with full mining operations that just swallows asteroids whole and was taken over as one of the bazillion super weapon projects the Empire had running at its height, and this just remnant forces taking over.
2) Building a big ass super weapon into a planet is probably easier than building a whole ass Death Star, just look at what happened with the (original) Dark Saber! Probably slightly less likely to get a torpedo up the exhaust port and the entire thing goes up. I personally think the Galaxy Gun would have made a better analog, where they have a massive portal machine thingy that yeets a mass of destructive energy toward planets so it can target anywhere.
3) Once given access to all the weapons and materiel they could want, they just did the whole roaming cult thing.
Holy shit do RKVs in the Star Wars verse piss me off.
Palpatine sure loved to make secret superweapons.
In one of the now-non canon books, someone did get hold of a SSD and use it for personal use, and fairly sure one of the non-Hutt criminal gangs had a few as well
Starkiller Base is the eviscerated and no doubt mystically violated corpse of the world Jedi would visit for countless millennia to obtain the khyber crystals for their lightsabers. The comics show the process was well underway during the ESB/RotJ time jump. So I suspect it was less a case of easier than it was a weapon of Starkiller’s magnitude could only be made by utilising a planet with such a deep connection to the Force.
Also, @Guesticules: it wasn’t a a super star destroyer. The Errant Venture was just a standard issue Imperial-II class that the smuggler Booster Terrik captured and painted red, and was allowed to keep it as the only SD in private hands on the condition she was stripped of almost all her weapon systems
Thank you, knew it was something like that (and that it was painted red :) )
And that was just the one known; in the entire vastness of the Empire (and beyond) there were no other SD (of any size or type) that didn’t end up in ‘private’ hands?
You know, for a long time I also repeated the stock meme about, “Good guys slaughter hordes of faceless mooks but spare the bad guy so he can go to prison because [he actually counts as a person] killing him would be morally wrong.” Except then I suddenly realized I couldn’t quote an actual example. I’ve scoured TVTropes and trivia forums and found a teeny handful of examples of heroes that kill mooks but spare the big bad. Mostly this page: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim and then tried to figure out if each example was actually hypocrisy.
Heck, there are games where you can stealth or non-lethal the mooks, but are required to kill the boss! Deus Ex: Human Revolution (before the director’s cut) and Mark of the Ninja come to mind.
Admittedly, in some shows there’s room for interpretation on whether or not mooks were killed or “just knocked out”, but in Hollywood and cartoon land, it seems to be accepted reality that you can easily beat somebody unconscious and they’ll just wake up bruised and headachey in a few hours.
Like in Avatar the Last Airbender, the Gaang probably left a lot of lifechanging injuries in their wake, but not corpses, so sparing Ozai (but crippling his bending) wasn’t hypocrisy. You also have to wonder what those laser guns in GI Joe were doing, but also I don’t think they got many chances to capture Commander Cobra. Batman usually has a code against guns, but in The Animated Series, it’s a code against killing.
Apparently the game The Last of Us 2, the show 24, and the movie Roadhouse are real examples. Luke has definitely killed some stormtroopers, but he doesn’t really spare Vader for moral reasons, but personal ones.
As for underwater volcano lairs, the bond books are super pulpy and cheesy, but in the book Dr No there’s a whole big digression about what a massive, insane flex it is for him to have built his absurd facility.
Arrow TV series is really bad about it in season 1. He’s a murder-death-kill machine to mooks in that, but somehow the rich guys at the top always get to live.
It’s the same in the first “Expendables” movie: it’s fine to shoot someone with a gun that literally cuts them in half, not to mention kill all the other pirates, but hanging one up as a warning was going too far? o_O
All pirates should be strung up as a warning (already dead is not required)
The Curse of Sydney strikes again.
If only she facepalmed her own memory wipe stuff onto her face the idiocy would be complete.
I have a question it the triceratops high or is she seeing what happened to the triceratops whose fossil she got “bitten” by in its last moments?
A triceratops in the Yucatan would not have been left intact enough to get fossilized. One over in Texas or Louisiana should have only gotten slightly tossed around and cooked. Shake & Bake! I expect Slam got her alternate forms around there. It was not the meteor that was coming right for her but the heat wave form the impact.
Alright
Looking at how most people react to ADHD drugs, I would expect Sydney to be less affected by Scoripa’s medicated hands. In a few hours, after Doc Chevy looks her over, her mind will return to normal, well normal for Sydney.
Sydney [ thinking ]: Oh there was something important for me to remember from when I was out at the build site. Time to check The List. [ Reads ]Aide = Sciona!!! Going to watch her.
Sydney [ thinking ]: Right! I have to tell Max, but how did I get so high?
This could end up biting Sciona in the tookus, as at some point Sciona will come up in conversation at ARC and Sydney will be ‘Sciona who?’ or ‘Oh, before my time?’ or something similar, and the entire room will have a Roh-roh moment.
Assuming Sciona is able to end this scene w/o further blunders that compromise her cover(which admittedly is a big IF at this point, after messing twice in a row), so what? It would make Archon assume Sciona is back in action on Earth and at some time she somehow messed with Sydney’s mind. Not much more than what they already deem a possibility, according to DaveB’s comment Sciona’s survived the destruction of her home planet and crossed the portal back to Earth, likely as a disembodied soul). It would give them no clue about Sciona’s current whereabouts, identity, or plans.
If the order did indeed wipe her memories of Sciona (that’s a pretty big “If”), it would also wipe Kat’s memories of her. So what they’d likely do is, upon determining Sydney’s memories have been messed with (and confirming it’s not a side effect of her getting possessed earlier), they’ll probably put the word out to test for others who’ve had their memories of Sciona deleted. That will point them to Kat. They’ll undoubtedly remember the Incident of Kat, Slam, and Sydney all suddenly and inexplicably tripping balls, and determine that’s likely when it happened. They then check to see who all was present at that top-secret site at the time. Escorpia will be one amongst several suspects, but I’m unconvinced her cover will hold up under that much scrutiny (particularly considering her hair has apparently mysteriously grown, and matches the color of Sciona’s hair).
Of course, I really don’t think her power follows Asshole Genie rules, plus it’s more likely to work against memories that have either been formed recently or haven’t actually been written from RAM than those from several months ago, so it’s more likely to have only wiped/suppressed Sydney’s recent memories. If it’s actually affected any of them at all.
If you ask my opinion and Sciona got some of her smarts back, she would do well advised to hide her tracks about this blunder as much as possible by faking an event where Kat, Slam, and Sydney got drunk/high together on duty by mundane means as a dare or prank that went out of control.
I.e. give them some strong stuff to drink/take (I suppose manufacturing it from thin air on the spot would not be difficult for an expert blood mage), then adjust the hypnosis effect to give them a few fake memories. It would look like the stupid stuff Sydney at her worst is prone to do, and the other two are rookies. Any oddities about their memories of the event would be easily explained by the intoxication.
The hair change is easy to justify by pretending to have got a change of hair style and a few extensions by mundane means.
Sometimes little clues go a long way. Particularly for groups with billions of dollars in funding. Investigating everyone Sydney came in contact with in the past 6 months is a tall order. Certainly possible for a team of a few dozen normal human investigators, something ARC could afford. It is also certainly a lot smaller than “Somewhere on Earth”.
DaveB, whatever settings you’ve got for this commenting system is eating all posted links, including to previous strips.
My understanding is that comments with links go in a moderation queue, and must be approved manually. It used to be that it took more than one link to be held for moderation, like four, but maybe he tightened it down as some spam was getting through.
The comment system does seem to be collapsing under its own weight, one way or another.
If, as i suspect, Halo’s communications collar acts as a constant transmitter of both what she says and her health status, (which, knowing the military and how they want something like that for their personnel) likely both the name she said, and the her vitals spiking, SHOULD have gotten the attention of whatever AI they have monitoring the data transmitted by these chokers.
Hence, I figure Sciona has about a minute and a half, at best, before Max shows up, closely followed by the rest of the cavalry.
Yeah, I think Sciona is about to get caught.
Worse, if Deus is financing the construction being done, (highly likely, as it would be good for public relations) his people are just as likely to show up at about the same time.
This could be a major Charlie Foxtrot…
Playing TCGs has taught me the importance of doing things in the right sequence.
Okay, so….
Sera bangs her head against the construction pylons while sneaking….
Sciona triggers Sydney’s expectations, then in a moment of panic mind-wipes all three of them before learning what they actually know, and also setting up all sorts of future shenanigans.
Meanwhile, upon realizing that Sciona is (potentially) present… fails to contact Max, fails to use her Comm-Ball to spy the situation out, fails to put up her goddamned shield which would let her ignore almost any threat anyone might make, ever….
I’m just saying, the rabbit is clearly the smartest one of the bunch. No wonder her ass is so sexy–smart is HOT.
Not to throw shade at Dave specifically, I think this is more of a generational or mass cultural thing, but I’m really tired of questions like “where do the bad guys get their funding”…you don’t need money when you can threaten to murder anyone who doesn’t obey your orders like a slave. The whole deconstruction and moral relativism thing has officially gone too far these days; sometimes The Bad Guys are just Bad Guys and you don’t need to think about how they’re operating in a day-to-day sense, because they simply do not live the way you live, they are not comfortable digital citizens of a prosperous and passive Internet age, they are barbarians and they solve all their problems by splitting skulls with axes, it doesn’t require anything more than a willingness to do that and a lack of opposition positioned to prevent them from doing that. In the case of Star Wars, the Empire happened because the Old Republic was too incompetent to stop it (and then the First Order presumably happened because the New Republic was too incompetent again, which doesn’t even have to be bad writing, it could just be the same sort of overly comfortable people falling into the same sorts of complacent behavior patterns, specifically repeating history because they didn’t care to bother learning from it). In any case, when you’re starting to ask about the villain’s revenue streams, you’ve officially gone too far, and maybe you don’t deserve to have stories to entertain you anymore for a while, not until you’re no longer so far up in that ivory tower of yours where blockades have to be legal and minions have to be paid.
The nazis learned that there are significant problems with depending on slave labour to make high tech weapons. They had a much higher rate of ammunition that failed to explode because their forced labor force sabotaged them in construction (and there are still roads in parts of Asia which slant the wrong way on corners because the POWs forced to build them by the Japanese wanted to disrupt travel as much as possible)
You don’t build star destroyers with axes, and any society needs to obtain food enough to feed themselves somehow, splitting skulls with axes rarely feeds people for long.
People can have different reactions to stories than you without it being a sign they’re in an ivory tower so drop the judgmental bullshit
Another takeaway is that war, any war, is EXPENSIVE. Even a stalemate situation is enough to force an entity like the Empire to maintain a wartime footing. That gets expensive, if not in terms of cash then in material resources and manpower. Granted, Star Wars is (gasp!) just a story but a lot of people enjoy playing in that sand pile. Discussing and debating what makes it all work is part of the fun for some people. Part of the problem for the Nazis is that the war didn’t go according to plan. By 1943 the Nazis were already running low both in terms of strategic reserves of thing like tungsten and skilled workers. The Nazi’s managed to put off the inventible for a while longer until the allies pounded them into the dirt but once they failed in Russia it was all over. The Galactic Empire on the other hand could go on a lot longer by virtue of having literally thousands of planets. The empire could maintain the industrial wars that produced the starships and weapons by gutting other less developed planets. As far as the average worker in a starship factory knows the Empire is a stable and happy place. Its not always easy being the winner either. Witness one of the Nazi’s opponents, the British Empire. After two world wars in in just over 30 years they were broke. Along with the political reality that it just wasn’t possible to maintain a colonial empire and still be seen as one of the “Good Guys” the British just didn’t have the financial capital to easily recover from the war effort. They went from one of the great industrial powerhouses to being a relative has been. The New Republic would have similar problems with just trying to reestablish good governance. Lot’s of resources have been consumed, at least in some areas of the galaxy. They are still trying to get some planets back up an running while at the same time there will be whole worlds where the fall of the Empire will be seen as a bad thing and they would likely be supportive of organizations such as the First Order. So in real life it is hard to be Saddam Hussein unless you have the resources of a nation/empire to back you up but on the other hand sometimes an entertaining story requires minions and a volcanic lair and you shouldn’t worry too much about how they are cooking the books to make it work.
Starkiller Base was made out of the Planet Ilum, a sacred place for the Jedi, as it had natural occuring Kyber Crystals, which the Empire had been mining for the Death Star.
Sidney! For god’s sake!
Report first! Then investigate! You ass!
I hope she reported what she was doing to someone using her communication device.
Far out, man!
Sydney will remember saying “forget about who now?” in a sarcastic tone, but not at who.
ADHD powers will manifest realizing that soon enough — assuming Sydney is not getting “stoned lite” and “mindcontrol lite” due to one of her orbs being responsible for extra capsaicin resistance and her meds only half working.
I tend (and wish) to assume Sdyney is genuinely affected by Sciona’s drug-like power just like the other two and not faking it, as indicated by her thoughts acknowledging she is high and the state of her pupils. In the unlikely case she is anymore resistant to this than any other Muggle or were, I expect it is for a plausible reason like an unknown function of the orbs.
Please do not let it be a stupid ‘Mary Sue’ reason such as “my super ADHD powers make me resistant to super-crack and mind control”.
That’s what a lot of the comments seem to be wanting, or expecting
Hmm, I suppose the best Sciona can do from the present situation might be to extend the mindwipe concerning her to the other two, tell Sdyney to erase any recording of the last events if any (if they are known to her and under her control, I dunno how the situation is for the glasses and the collars), summon some mundane booze and/or drug with her magic, and tell the three to drink/take the stuff and remember they got drunk/high as a prank.
Really, Sciona? All you had to do is step around the corner and say, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing after investigating what made the pipes fell. Who’s Sciona?” and introduce yourself. I’m sure you could come up with a plausible reason for vaguely remembering stabbing Sydney–bad memories from a rough childhood, perhaps? “Phony friendly” is a well-established trope for gaining intel, last I heard. Maybe it’s not be an Alari thing? :/ As a bonus, you could give Sydney a lecture on safety in construction areas!
The problem is that Sciona doesn’t know how certain Sydney is (because she also doesn’t know how Sydney figured out who she was–for all she knows Sydney’s been stabbed by multiple people, not necessarily including her). We know Sydney wasn’t super confident, and thus this would have worked well. But if Sydney HAD been confident in her hypothesis, she’d have responded to this approach by putting up her shield and phoning Archon, which would have been horrible for Sciona.
(That is, Sciona may have thought that Sydney was already confident and was just trying to catch her doing evil stuff, not just confirming her suspicions.)
I can see that Sciona likely make a big mistake here, as it will look suspicious when Sydney keeps asking who that person is when she has been on site and meet her before.
Sciona is an arrogant arse, an overconfident blowhard, and a world conqueror who looks down on everyone, particularly those of other races, as inferior and less capable of herself. She is capable of surviving being dead, and it gives her extreme confidence and overconfidence that she can handle any situation.
She is NOT a natural spy and infiltrator with a bunch of honeyed words at the ready. It takes being faced with overwhelming power, like Maxima, for her to rein in her dominating tendencies… like an Alari.
Welp, it’s a good thing Sydney recently got her memories backed up on Lapha.
I do think that would be an interesting way for this to resolve, and an opportunity for Lapha to be valuable to the team and build some trust.
the current art style actually works here as drugged.
Even villains screw up on things like this, it is natural. Well good news Sciona, you don’t really have to worry about Syd telling anyone. Okay now that’s out of the way. Oh gods the Terians tripping are cute, granted I tink Slam may need some emotional support… I mean she is reliving the extinction even of her hybrid form. Also, yes that is a sexy bunny tail.
I’m going to guess that Sidney’s glasses have some type of recording feature that will get looked at later, maybe much later.
Everyone seems to be overlooking the possibility the commball has an autolog feature that Sydney doesn’t know how to playback yet…