Grrl Power #1339 – Qaplonk’
SYDNEY: “Wait, how am I a danger to myself?”
MAXIMA: “Well, you did you just hit your superior officer with a deadly weapon… even if it’s decidedly non-deadly to me. Still, you did just volunteer to peel every potato in…”
SYDNEY: //fidgeting with bat’leth, drops it on foot.//
SYDNEY: “Ow! Ow! OW! Back of the handle right on the long bones!”
MAXIMA: “Also that.”
If you were an agent of chaos, handing Sydney a giant, awkward, heavy, bladed thing isn’t the worst plan. Or giving her artifacts that grant her amazing superpowers. I’m not suggesting Deus had anything to do with that, but… if he had been in a position to arrange it, he certainly would have considered it.
I think a proper, steel bat’leth would weigh about 20-25 pounds? Depending entirely on how thick it was. The prop that Worf had on the show looked like it was maybe 1/3″ thick, and almost certainly not made of steel. Maybe aluminum? I could probably google it. Hmm. I found a prop replica, 1/4″ thick, made of aluminum, weighing in at 4 pounds. Honestly I thought Worf’s bat’leth looked like a dull nerf weapon if not for the way it caught the light sometimes. I’d assume they’d have two versions of the prop – a dangerously sharp one for display and closeups, then a HEMA or SCA safe version for twirling around and stage fights. The Sword of Kahless looked way chonkier and sharper. I found a “full size” prop on Amazon for sale made of steel, but it weighed less than a pound, because it looked about as thin as a piece of sheet metal. If the prop on the show was made of steel, I’m sure it would be impractically heavy. At least for a human to wield in a fight.
Klingons were supposedly something like 4 or 5 times stronger than humans, but that was just something the writers said. The guys staging the fights never got the memo, because human starfleet officers almost never lost a fight to one on camera. Major Kira, beanpole that she was, won every melee she got into against a klingon if I recall correctly. Oh, but she was an expert guerilla combatant, you say? That’s fine if she’s lacing the hallways with claymores, but I distinctly remember her blocking an overhead strike from a klingon by holding her phaser rifle sideways, then shunting the bat’leth off to the side, then hitting the klingon with the rifle, and he went down. That was definitely just lazy “main character VS. the one-hit-die schlub” writing, but really, a woman (and it was never established if bajorans had any particular strength or skeletal advantage over humans, so let’s just assume that Major Kira was as strong as a fit, slender human woman), a woman blocking an overhead strike from a man who, as most guys cast as kingons go, probably had six inches on her and a hundred pounds… Okay, sure. I can see that happening. If she meets the strike just right and yes, she has a decade of experience as a soldier. Not impossible. If her opponent was a human male and was only twice her strength. However, if that guy is 4 times as strong as her – and really – a female klingon would be 4 times as strong as her. A male klingon would probably be closer to six to eight times as strong as her, her arms would have buckled or her shoulders would have dislocated, or her rifle would have been ripped out of her grip (let’s assume the rifle is made of space polymers and doesn’t just snap in half) and that bat’leth should slammed into her brainpan.
So I submit to you that klingons were nowhere near 4 times stronger than humans. 40% stronger, maybe.
You know what’s weird and unnecessary? You won’t guess what I’m going to write, so I’ll just tell you. Memory Alpha had a wiki page for an “hour.” Is it a space-hour that takes into account time dilation or some sort of galactic unit of time that’s different than a standard 20th century Earth hour? No. It’s just an hour. Why it needs a dedicated page on the Star Trek wiki is baffling to me, but it’s late as I write this so maybe I’m missing something obvious.
I’m going to try something with this new vote incentive.
This month, I’m closing on a new house, selling my Mom’s house, finishing packing Mom’s house, moving city to city to the new house, forwarding mail, canceling utilities, all that. And after that’s done, I get to start the process of selling my old house, which needs a little work before it can realistically go on the market.
SO. I’m going to try and do this vote incentive in stages. Currently it’s just pencils. The TopWebcomics one will update with colors and detail until we get to the no clothes versions, then that will continue over at Patreon. Also there will be a comic or two in between each version to fill out the story.
I know it’s hard to tell from just the pencils, but this is Heatwave and Jiggawatt. The comics will explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. Although I feel like even saying that much makes it easy to guess, but hopefully the journey will still amuse.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Yards.
Thirty _yards_.
It is really a good thing for everyone that most of her coworkers are all, in one way or another, resistant to accidental injury.
That sounds about right.
No, if it slips out of her hands it won’t fly thirty yards; she can’t swing it around that fast.
But you just know she’s going to try using the tentorb instead of her hands. And I don’t think she’s *less* likely to swing it in the wrong place with that
On a different note:
Swords mass a lot less than people think. A two-handed sword for a human, long enough that I can’t chin myself on it, weighs less than 5 pounds. Weapons are levers, they don’t need to be heavy to do damage. They do need to be stiff enough to work as a lever. Which makes melee weapons some of the most difficult things to make; part of why a good sword was quite expensive.
No weapon on a show is going to be sharpened, unless it’s a show like e.g. Tod’s Workshop where the point of the show is to see if you can hack things apart with it. There will be replicas that look convincing on a wall or in someone’s hands, and then you’ll have things that can be swung at someone’s head.
A bat’lith is pretty silly as a weapon for a long list of reasons. But I suppose it fulfills its purpose, which is to attract the eye and give the Klingons a “cultural” thing to use. The energy whips of the Ferengi seem similar, though they stopped being used when they were rehabilitated from caricatures to characters during DS9.
And that “catch the light and glint to look sharp” thing is easy to do without actually making it sharp. Juggling knives do it all the time.
Ah, but it won’t make the *ting* noise if it isn’t sharp.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AudibleSharpness
Her colleagues are either invulnerable to it, able to dodge it or stay well away from Sydney when she is handling it.
Maxima only got so close because of she has both, thus not considering it a danger.
Actually, that could be a weakness? If she doesn’t consider “metal object swung by Sydney” a danger to even dodge, you could end up hitting her with her Kryptonite (if she has one).
We’ve seen his collection of “replicas”. He absolutely could have sourced one.
And if she misplaced and others found it, they might have examined it. Then he would have to explain how that company he owned happened to be correct about it.
The part of me that loves to watch the world burn would have given her one as well.
This would be a great way to convince Sydney to work on her strength.
As someone lucky enough to play around with a full-size bat’leth replica (made of, yes, high-carbon steel), 8-12lb. MAYBE 14lb maximum if the alloy has significant levels of other useful metals in the mix (tungsten, vanadium, etc.).
And if you use the grips in a vaguely sensible manner, that’s not bad- well within the range of quick and wieldy two-handed weapons. Ok, it’s on the upper end of that range, but it’s in it.
Of course, this is Sydney…
Yes, Sydney is fit and strong for her size, she’s still a 5’0″ woman and not very buff one at that. I used to do katas with a chunk of rebar, to keep my arms toned and joints mobile in spite of arthritis, and as I recall (it being almost 40 years since I stopped) it weighed about 15 pounds and it would regularly get out of control because inertia was a bitch to overcome once I got that thing moving and the biggest problem was not the weight, but the moment of inertia with the CG out about 2.5 to 3 feet from my hand when I was one-arming it.
Maxima was definitely fast enough to get out of the way, especially since she was presumably observing it happening.
She’s enjoyimg this.
Nah, not 20-25. I knew an honest-to-God forge that made them, and they were around…8 to 10?
20 lbs sounds far too heavy. Recall that a normal longsword is only 2-4 lbs. Yes, the Bat’leth is a far worse design, but it’s not that bad.
Here is a fun video of some HEMA fighters trying them out. They concluded that it’s not as bad as we all thought, but as I said from the second I saw one of those silly things, a regular sword is a far superior weapon. One thing they didn’t mention was that while the grip is versatile, the fact that the grip sections are broken up means that you telegraph like hell any shift in technique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_BNXNFOwe8
Telegraphing a shift in technique is a feature, not a bug. An honorable warrior race like the Klingons would not abide by a fighting technique that involves hiding or concealing before attacking.
When I was a kid, I was really into swords. I always wanted to own a real sword. It was the first item on my wish list for every birthday and Hanukkah. Of course, my parents never bought me one, for obvious reasons.
Then, years later, when I was all grown up with a full-time job and all that jazz, I happened to be visiting a Renaissance Faire when I found a booth selling real, genuine steel swords. Not only that, but one of them was a replica of the Master Sword from The Legend of Zelda, my favorite video game series of all time! Naturally I HAD to have it. My lifelong dream had come true! And…holy CRAP was that thing heavy! How does Link manage to swing that sword around with one hand?! I could barely manage it with BOTH hands!
…Then I remembered, “Oh right, he’s a trained swordsman and I’m a noodle-armed computer nerd with zero muscle definition. THAT’S why.”
More like because a lot of replica swords are made far thicker than a real sword would be (although to be fair, often this is because the swords were designed too thick so they were more visually-impressive) and, because they’re not meant for combat, they tend to be balanced poorly (having the center of balance off away from your hand makes the weapon feel heavier when wielding it). But I do remember that, in the old A Link to the Past comic, when Link got the Master Sword and immediately had to fight a small group of “soldiers” (animated armor constructs), when he was done he collapsed and complained that it felt like he’d been chopping wood all day, so the Master Sword being heavier than a normal sword may be appropriate.
For the bat’leth, if an aluminum one of the right proportions is 4 lb, you’re looking at around 11.63 lb. The one Dave mentions was actually thicker than he estimated for Worf’s weapon (1/3″ thick rather than 1/4″ thick), so the latter would be around 8.72 lb.
There’s a bit on Picard where Riker picks up Worf’s Mek’leth sword, remarking on how holy shit he had no idea how heavy the thing was.
https://youtu.be/JbMdvywftfI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_BNXNFOwe8
Weapon weight is… ridiculous in lore.
And, ceartanly, those 20 pounds you suggested is even more ridicolous
And he just happened to have it on hand at that time? Or is it more likely he had he ready for a while as a diversion for her and was using it now.
you forget that all the “regular” klingons are most likely lazy and utterly sure of them selves constantly.
only the ones like worf would be going to the gym constantly and focus training to be the best.
But Worf was constantly getting worfed (or written as The Worf? not sure how that should go), even against Riker.
imagine if she uses her tentacles on the blade and swung around with it on the tip.
now that is some damage!
Sydney is being Sydney.
Deus, being Deus, understands a good way to keep her from being a nosy pest and meddling in supervillain business is to give her a gift that is appealing to nerds and keeps her distracted and (even more of) a threat to herself and others (who don’t have superhuman defenses). I hope you are taking notes, Sciona.
We learn a few juicy details about Sciona’s background. So she was a pariah to Alari ruling elites. Then I guess she was on Earth as an exile and/or trying to take over Earth as a way to get back in their good graces and rebuild herself a power base. Although I guess such issues should be on the wane since Alari survivors have bigger concerns.
Maybe, maybe not, on the ‘bigger concerns’ issue. If a group of humans crash-landed on another planet, and were taken in enough that their basic needs (food, shelter, etc) were almost immediately taken care of, and then discovered that Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler or Ted Bundy was ALSO on the planet, I doubt they’d just shrug it off. Given how fractious the Alari Houses have been presented so far, if Sciona has been enough of a problem that they all agree about putting her down, it’s unlikely that they’d just ignore her presence on the planet.
Part of the problem with Bat’leth’s is the classic design actually makes them heavier and more impractical than they need to be for a two-handed weapon.
Some people have redesigned them to be more practical, with one of the better ones being shown by Skallagrim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nia6Z01MSTw&ab_channel=Skallagrim
Isn’t Major Kira NOT human, and therefore maybe from a race that is even 6 times stronger than a human (or Klingon)?
Plus she made the rank of Major in a guerilla army.
She’d hardly have risen that far (or lasted that long!) by just knowing how to lay munitions out effectively and having zero close quarters combat experience.
I would like to doubt that.
The heaviest swords used in battle likely weighed around 3 to 4 kg (6.6 to 8.8 lbs), with anything heavier being impractical for sustained combat.
And those were swords, weapons that swing around their center of mass a lot.
Why would a bat’leth weight more, even if used by someone who is 40% stronger than an average human?
Ah yes, a ceremonial and ritual weapon, but ultimately impractical by any measure. If I’m going bladed it’s honestly a dilemma (throwing aside that I need decades of training) between the Asagi or a mostly straight blade with a slight curve, length between 38″ and 42″ (though I’d favor the longer version) a goodly practical edge not some super sharp but also sharpened half the back of the blade. And kids, remember the sword is just a stick and you use both hands. ;) I hate ruining an edge hitting bone.
So the odd thing about swords, they’re not nearly as heavy as people assume, the absolutely massive Zweihander that was well over six feet long was also only about 14 and a half pounds. The bat’leth is an odd shape so even though it’s not quite as absurdly long it’s a lot wider in the middle so it’s estimated they would weigh about the same.
As for Klingon strength… yeah there’s just no way they’re That much stronger than a human. Warf was fairly strong for a Klingon amd he rarely won a fight (there’s a whole trope about that)
Vulkans were said to be stronger than humans too, but they actually did usually overpower humans… well, Spock occasionally tossed People around and supposedly the nerve pinch was meant to be something only they had the ability to do (although some writers never got that memo) but then again Kirk was able to hold his own against Spock during Pon Farr when they used those big Vulcan spears (google says they’re called a Lirpa) so I suppose everyone’s strength really did depend on the plot.
Now is the time for another “appropriateness of a US soldier receiving an expensive give from a ambiguously-aligned foreign leader” discussion.
Well, her commanding officer is obviously aware of what happened and not objecting. Moreover, and more importantly, Archon and the US government’s current policy seems to court the friendship and favor of said foreign leader for tech advantages, insights about the nature of supers, etc. Therefore, Sydney is in the clear about accepting a gift from that source. Ofc, a request for formal approval shall have to be sent up Archon’s chain of command (dunno where the buck stops in these cases), but I do not expect any real trouble for Sydney. A bit more work for Archon and DoD paper-pushers (thankfully in this timeline Elon and his puppet/accomplice are not decimating the federal government).
You think the ‘hour’ page on Memory Alpha is bad? You should see their page on blankets!
More like ‘still taking gifts from outside sources despite the training I know you had that says not to do this’.
Blue energy swirl around ankle is that her fly orb passive?
There’s a scene in Deep Space Nine where Jadzia Dax’s Bat’leth is described as being 5.3 kilos, about 12 pounds. Length 116 centimeters. I didn’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but I remembered there was a moment where the size and weight was brought up.
Not sure what one would have to weigh in real-world metals rather than space composites, but that’s a pretty average weight for one in-universe.
QUESTION
What is the hand gesture in panel 2 Sydney is making?
’cause I almost see it as a question of Sydney pointing at Deus and Sciona and asking if they is something going on between them?
to me it does not ref picking up and putting it down, but I am unsure.
Not to mention how a phasor rifle would actually do when struck by a batleth. A modern high power rifle has a forged, high carbon steel barrel because it has to safely contain an explosion, but a phasor is mostly electronics right? I mean, sure, it will be mounted on a high quality frame, but no one issuing a collimated energy beam weapon is expecting the user to bludgeon opponents with it.
Functional versions of the bat’leth have been made, in steel, and tested. They’re entirely wieldable by a human. Actual weight of a functional, properly made one, would be on the order of no more than 6-8ish lbs or so.
An Iberian Montante, so-called battle ready, weighs less than 6lbs and has an overall length of 66 inches.
only 30 feet?
Oh you poor, sweet, deluded fool…
I’d have thought a proper SFCA fan would know not to maim, injure or kill their fellow fans. Syd becoming overexcited?
*sigh* of course.
high-carbon steel? Sounds inadvisable for a large bladed weapon, sure a weapon like that would be a lot of work to sharpen, but personally I’d take softer steel that I need to sharpen more often than harder & more brittle steel that may shatter.