Grrl Power #308 – Harem’s got some ‘splainin to do
This page is a little retread from one of the Dabbler’s Science Corners, but it’s the first time Sydney’s actually discussed this with Harem at length, as evidenced by the fact she didn’t even know her real name. Harem probably said it at the press conference, but Sydney was kind of fading in and out during it. Unrelated, but I am pleased that Sydney is rocking the “Imperious hands behind back” pose, but she’s still fidgeting and trying to scratch her foot through her shoe.
Harem can bring a battle rifle to her teammates, so she could obviously pilfer jewels and hard drives, USB drives, documents, even moderately large piles of cash, and there’d be nothing preventing her from making multiple trips. She’s also make a hell of an assassin, as would anyone who could wholly circumvent any detection, security, and even physical barriers. Of course she’s thought about all this stuff, anyone growing up with powers would. Many of us without those powers would. It’s almost surprising that the worst thing she gets up to (that we know about) is being a double (?) agent with Deus and the occasional prank.
Of course the problem with being able to teleport is alibi. Once it’s known you can do that, every case of something going missing from an otherwise secure location with no evidence of ingress or tampering with the security or vault, people would have trouble not considering you for the crime. Same thing with any locked door murder mystery. Unless you’ve got Johnathan Creek on hand to solve it, suspicion would naturally come your way. Really, it would be a bad idea to use any super power during the commission of a crime (ignoring the fact that it would make it an automatic felony and prompt the involvement of Archon) But if you can rip the doors off a bank vault, it’s a really bad idea to do that, because even assuming you didn’t leave your fingerprints in the steel, it still instantly winnows the lists of suspects down from 7 billion to a few hundred, tops. You can disintegrate stuff with your eyebeams? Guess who we think left this perfectly smooth hole in the side of Fort Knox, dummy.
Actually if you were a criminal with superpowers, keeping them a secret would almost be more important than if you were a hero with a secret identity – Assuming of course that you’re the kind of criminal that likes getting away with stuff and not the kind that likes to instigate brawls in parking lots. You couldn’t tell your crew about them cause they’d flip on you the minute they’re nicked, which means you couldn’t plan any heists that relied on those powers. Obviously there are exceptions. If you could telekinetically feel the position of the tumblers inside a lock, or see them with your N-Ray vision or whatever, you could get away with people just thinking you were a master safecracker, but if your powers left any physical evidence at all, you’d basically only be able to use them as a last resort.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
*snort* Ironclad morals. Daphne. Yes totally.
Actually, if you think about it ( and Dave’s passage in the foot notes ), there is a seriously long list of things a teleporter like her could do, that are not exactly … lets call it “socially compatible”.
Holding back on only half of it would require a rather strong will and morals that are more solid than you give her credit for.
Which means you either greatly underestimate her, or there are way more things than pranks and a little espionage that we simply don’t know about yet. ;-)
Reminds me a little of that horrible ‘Jumper’ movie :)
Try the book,it’s much better :3
Being a reader I have to say most movies don’t measure up to the book. Nonetheless movies can be fun to watch. Even the movies that turn out good often have parts that are left out, added or done wrong. I really liked the LOT movies but still had issues with it.
Should be LOTR!!
Totally agree. In cases where a movie is based on a book I nearly always like the book better, to the point that if I’ve neither read the book nor watched the movie I’ll half jokingly say ‘the book is better’ confident that I’m almost certainly correct.
Eragon.
OH GOD THAT MOVIE WAS FKING TERRIBLE.
Well, the book was also terrible and full of plagiarism. Just sayin’. They got better as he went, but the first one was all LOTR and Star Wars.
Eh. It’s not like Star Wars is an original story at all, it just took a very traditional fantasy story structure and stuck it in outer space. Eragon took that same classic fantasy structure and stuck it in a very traditional fantasy world. It’s not original, but few things are, and I think that while originality can be fun, execution is much more important. I think Eragon did what it was trying to do very effectively. Most notably, I think it had decent dialog, which is something that is really hard to do, and the fantasy genre in particular seems to have a tough time with.
heh… tell that to J.K.Rowling… she basically plagiarized the plot to Star Wars as well… there was a little one page comic i saw on the internet somewhere, that had the basic plot of SW laid out, and everywhere it had Luke’s name. it was crossed out and Harry was put in, and the Force: x’ed out and Magic put in. Jedi/Wizard… it was a pretty funny read… and it WORKED!
My point is that neither of these are really plagiarizing Star Wars. All of these very closely followed what’s called the Monomyth, or the Hero’s Journey. It’s a very, very old story structure, and you can find it in a lot of places. They’re not ripping each other off so much as they’re all pulling from the same type of narrative.
Madcok345 is absolutely correct. The story itself is very old, at least as far back as myth/folklore has been getting written; Jason & the Argonauts, Gilgamesh, the Scorpion King…All of these have old legends include the Hero’s Journey as at least one “cycle” within the overall body of stories.
The real difference in “popular rivalry” between Star Wars & Star Trek is the difference between the “mythic legend (Star Wars; the story itself in highlighted, regardless of who plays the parts)” and the “ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances” (Star Trek; story is generated by the people involved in a given situation). It’s not about those two stories in particular, it’s about a person’s preferences between the two different storytelling techniques
Eregon was awful. My major beef with it was that Our Hero became good at things trivially easy. Let’s show you how to use a sword, kid. Wow, you’re suddenly beating me, the guy who not only has years of practice on you but also has reach and body mass as advantages. This theme was repeated over and over in that book.
But I also did not find the dialogue to be engaging. I’m a bit surprised that a publishing house would take a risk on such a shoddy work buy a young man who has just written his first novel.
Ella Enchanted
worse
Dreamcatcher.
I win.
Congratulations of winning the No-Prize.
:/
I want to thank all the little people who made this possible!
Stop looking in the mirror!
You have minions? That explains a lot.
Maybe the separate personalities of each duplicate harem have different variations to opinions on different issues?
I know it’s a lot of text, but please do read the comic. She JUST explained that she only has one mind. She only has one personality.
Then how do we explain the separate bodies having slightly different personality quirks? Do you deny that she expresses her persona a bit differently to match her various outfits?
Could be a style thing, imo, but I’m not sure.
o_O as far as I can tell it’s the same personality she just dresses each body differently. (I’d actually like to see them “swapping” clothes Goth wearing Punk’s jacket or Vogue in Goth’s dress)
It’s sort of like Harem is just “cosplaying” on a consistent basis. She’s all just one single person, but she’s able to “cosplay” 5 different themes at once. It would be similar if you went to a multi-day comic convention & wore a different costume each day.
Yep.
The personality quirk are affectations according to the cast page.
You don’t behave differently with your family, coworkers, friends, paramour, kids?
Don’t dress differently for work, a night out, a lazy day in?
Never made a decision about dying your hair, getting a haircut, tattoo, piercing, or choosing a style for your wardrobe? Never were unsure or wished you could do both?
Never had to decide between sports and band or being a stoner or skater kid, or working harder at school?
I guess everyone’s different, but if I could have one body to focus on sports, one to focus on music, one to focus on writing, one to do risky martial arts stuff, one to dress fancy, one to get dyed hair and experiment with more daring clothes, etc. etc…
…well, there’s only one way to finish that sentence, I guess.
The interesting thing about that is when you consider muscle memory. UDSD*, Daphne could study five different musical instruments, one with each body, but she couldn’t have one body swap guitar for drums with the same level of proficiency due to physical changes in that body. The difference between theory and practice.
* – Unless Dave Says Differently
The “personality” parts of her brains are all quantum entangeled. Wich means they are always in the same state, down to subatomic particles.
That means she has 5 brains, quantummechnaically prevented from having diverging personalities.
That might also give her quite some resistance to mental attacks too, depending on how many bodies are affected.
i.e. if Vehemences “Aggro Aura” only affected on brain pushing it towards violence but all the other pushing towards normal, she would only suffer 1/5 of the effect.
On the other hand that means that any brain injury in the wrong brain part could kill all of them (as it is mirrored on the other brains). Even 1/5 of a bullet damage is still a heck of a lot of damage, especialyl if whole cells are affected.
or it can spread like a virus to the other brains seeing as they are the same leading to X5 the harem detructive power. it can go both ways, like harem (hehe)
hmm, it could (possibly) break that body out of quantum entanglement if the “right” parts of her brain are damaged, but she doesn’t die.
Entangled, I read to mean that what happens to/with one, is noticed by the others immediately. Not that it ‘happens to them also’.
Quantum entanglement is strange stuff… The example? When I split one particle into two, they become a pair where A+B=C. C is given, but neither A nor B get determined until they are measured, and once one is measured the other instantly, at whatever distance, assumes the other value. Spooky action at a distance. This gets weirder, where how a particle behaves is determined by whether it gets observed or not… And that extends to past behavior being determined by future observations (sorry, no loopholes for getting lotto numbers early…. Not yet, anyway).
Ill wager her teleporting is a extension of that quantum entanglement to her entire body: as I understand it, there’s already a quantum-teleporter of sorts. at least in theory, whereby if you can take that A+B=C thing and intract with A in a specific way (destroying a particle with it) you can get back that lost particle using B, again ignoring things like distance and light speed. — where actions at one end are mirrored at the other end, but not duplicated, and only with the individually entangled particles. The mirror/duplicate distinction is subtle but i think important.
I don’t see killing one of her bodies as being an instant way to kill her.
Except, it is this Harem slash Daphne in particular who is the multi-agent
Pretty sure it doesnt matter which body she’s using as the multi-agent. She might switch off depending on which body’s the most convenient.
Maybe, but so far, it has been Abbey that DaveB has been using
All one times so far.
i just realised harem is lucky Sydney grabbed a body in that outfit and not a skirt. as a non flyer i dout harem gives that to much thought (unlike max)
I’m not sure Harem would care.
Historical data disagrees:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/384
joking around with a colige/friend is one thing getting photographed by one of the reporters and having your underwear in every magesine for a week wile people say how horrible you are. is something else entirely
As of the last panel of that page, I’d bet it was one of the many times that Achilles was glad that he can’t be suffocated…
Historical data also agrees: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1242
Heh! Harem is the Most Likely to Earn Multiple Entries in Sydney’s List.
Not exactly sure how that disagrees with my comment… or were you replying to OP?
to Harems discredit, she doesn’t give a damn if someone sees her panties
To give discredit where the discredit is due…
https://davebarrack.deviantart.com/art/Harem-Playboy-Shoot-with-Tops-354161627
She does care, that why she is careful to match them.
One doesn’t choose the name “Harem” if sexiness isn’t a desired part of one’s public persona.
TADDA i was right as i mentionned last page she CAN’T teleport in or out.
i think if the light hook can be outside of the shield it’s because it’s sydney’s power. that’s why not even air can pass it or maxima at full powers or even the freaky agro circle of the other guy.
it was pretty obvious so far…
the only thing surprising me, is the “light factor” on that one.
could be the big problem of that shield in the end…the weakness maybe?
and well makes me wonder if sydney isn’t onto harem’s “side antics” on the last panel.
in all fairness the outer side of the argument was dont assume she cant until Dave makes it cannon
Actually, Sydney doesn’t know how to make the lighthook NOT appear outside the shield, so that’s a bad example
makes you wonder more and more about it…
its still an example of energy moveing from inside the shield to the outside
Guess till she figures it out she’ll just have to summon it and wrap it around herself then shield up to keep it inside if she needs it there.
That’s another good idea :)
Yet.
Assuming one of the future upgrades doesnt allow that.
as we’ve seen in the battle against the dt, where she used flashbang, no flash is strong enough to hurt her.
however, if there were millions of flashes happening in all colors all around her…
Well, considering the team she joined, Sydney is probably getting used to people flashing
i didn’t mean a few flashes here and there.
i mean if someone actually tried hard to cause some epilepsy, the shield would help against that.
That was revealed at the very start of the Restaurant Wrecking: Blondini was banging on the shield to let her in to save Sydney from Crushed-nuts
They are referring to the comment debate that has been going off and on SINCE the scene you just described as to whether Harem could teleport OUT. Not IN. Dave just finally put it to rest in comic which was the only way it would have been put to rest apparently.
Has it been brought up if Harem can shut down one of the bodies when that body is inside the shield? I know she can’t teleport in/out of it, but what about dropping from 5 to 4 (or less)?
Or is it possible that Dabbler (or someone) might one day reverse engineer a shield similar to Syd’s in order to serve as a prison for teleporters like Harem? In Harem’s case you’d have to catch all 5 of her at once, but it could be done.
I’m willing to bet that she can’t from within the shield. The quantum intangibility aspect of the consciousness thing might be unique.
Lots of testing to be done. I don’t know how willing Harem will be for some of it since the implications are that this would be used against her someday. Given the last mind altering fight though Maxima would have a great reason to make her accept it. (if she even cared. She seems kind of care free.)
Actually that would be theoretically possible at least since when she “stores” a body she might not teleport it, more like deconstruct it and recreates it when she “activates” it again?
“the only thing surprising me, is the “light factor” on that one.”
Extrapolating that Halo’s shield probably operates on a “Threshhold Factor,” it would explain why it blocks lasers, but not normal levels of light that are needed to be able to see through it.
It might also explain why it blocks the air too. The atmosphere is a mixture of all sorts of gasses, but any one type of gas would be bad; even oxygen, if that’s ALL there is available to breathe. The shield doesn’t seem to recognize that it’s a mixture, of various gasses & only blocks each type of gas individually.
Good strip… Also Harem is using her GPS… So that force field mustn’t act as a Faraday cage then.
we knew that from the fight she was texting her team mates and using the radio
She’s actually videoing the flight.
But she’s holding her phone vertically, which means that (gak!) she’s videoing it in portrait mode! For shame!
Vertical Video and Espionage, the only crimes Harem is guilty of.
And shoulderboobing.
That’s a public service, not a crime. ;)
Not if you’re his girlfriend.
Depends on the girlfriend and the ROE. There’s a difference between shoulder and hand, after all.
Didn’t we establish that he doesn’t have a girlfriend in the restaurant scene while he was fixing Sydney’s phone?
(too lazy to look it up)
And Leon is probably at the receiving end of both. In the meantime, here’s why vertical video is a menace to society:
https://youtu.be/Bt9zSfinwFA
If I remember right, Dave once explained that Sydney’s Force Field only blocks harmful extremes of the electromagnetic spectrum. Lasers are blocked, light not, hard radiation is blocked but radio waves are not. It would be interesting to see if even more can be blocked when using the “controls” only Sydney can see.
Also, in response to some comments above, the balls are interconnected per the skill tree diagram. Part of that connection must be what allows them to work through the force field and possibly through the com ball, though that might not be active yet. I’m leaning more and more toward one of the unknown balls being life support, possibly with healing and a few other related things included. I just find it hard to believe that anyone, alien or not, would invent a defense you have to drop to stay alive.
Maybe that’s just a design flaw they never worked out, due to one factor or another. Or a precaution to make sure that the shield would have a weakness if the orbs fell into the wrong hands.
Or that Sydney just doesn’t have enough hands.
Hmm, transcranial magnetic stimulation would have interesting effects on someone like her
It sounds like she’s been in Dabbler’s equivalent of an FMRI but I wonder how many other doctors or physiologists looked at her especially while growing up.
Well, congrats Yorp, for your theorie of brain quantum entanglement was spot on, even though it appears to be partly only. ;-)
:) Thanks, but I can’t take credit, as that was already canon. My speculations were just on how it was implemented. Which this comic does come closer to my speculation, in restricting it just to key parts of the brain, rather than all of it. Something that I have raised in the past.
is it me or dus sydney’s chin look ‘off’ in panel 2?
I don’t see a chin in panel 2
also the shield is gone in the last panel
No, it is still there. You can see the shields pattern in the lower parts of the panel.
ah i reject my previous statement
*Recant?
REJECTED!
Are you rejecting the “previous statement,” or are you rejecting Iowten’s rejection of the “previous statement?”
YES!
She’s making a face, her mouth is small too.
I’m wondering a few things. Does Sydney’s shield block basic physical forces like magnetism? And is there a weight capacity to it?
i think Dave has said it blocks things based on how much energy they direct at it. so a compus would work but magneto couldn’t pull her ‘pipboy’ apart and use it to kill her.
as for weight capacity i would say probably not the shield. after all that would also be a limit to a kinetic attack the shield could withstand. but the fly ball probably does have a weight limit and i would guess its about the same as the light-hook max lift
Is it wrong that I just imagines Max kicking the shield with Sydney in it across a long distance?
I mean, sure the shield stops attacks, but at a point, it has to be either bounce or break. I can just imagine Sydney bouncing along in it if kicked hard enough
And if it DOESN’T bounce/move (which I don’t think it does unless she’s “unlocked” its position with the fly ball), that actually opens up a devious way to deal with a super-strong, super large opponent. One of the classic attacks employed by such individuals is grabbing the invincible hero(ine) and tossing them away from the fight. Please see Achilles for details.
In Sydney’s case, though, she could allow the person to pick up the ball shield, give them a few screams of “terror,” then wait for them to pull their arm back for the throw. At the first hint of forward motion, she could then let go of the fly ball. That would get the person to try and “throw” an immovable object, which would strain their arm. Not fatal, but definitely painful.
Then again, this is all speculation and I haven’t had my coffee yet, so….
Well if the fly orb actually manipulates gravity (as has been pointed out) she could just push down and crush said person.
Or she could just turn off the shield once they are committed to the throw.
Like Lucy does to Charlie Brown?
Yup
Good grief.
Oh brother!
Where Art Thou?
Right behind you with a spork.
SPOOOONN!!!!
And knowing is half the battle.
A Placekick special?
One of our theorys on how Syd could “Combo” with Max or Anvil is she wrap the lighthook around their arm and they use her “shielded” self like a ball and chain.
IOf the above theory is correct, that would require using 3 balls at once. Shield, Lighthook and Flyball to “unlock the shield” so it can move.
V could drag sid around using the hentorb while she tried to hold position in the shield so the shield is mobile without the flight orb thus the flight would have to be used to stop the throw not to allow the throw.
This was back when Max was punching Syd’s shield during her debriefing of the robbery.
If it only blocks by energy, is it a version of the shields they had in Dune? You could get an attack through them if it was low energy enough? Perhaps texting Sydney a magical hypnotic gif ?
Dabbler’s hypnoboobs worked just fine through the shield. Unlike Dune though, the shield stops kinetic attacks at all speeds. A little creativity might be needed, but the shield is not perfect.
Well, asuming that the shield works omnidirectional (same in both directions, in and out).
Than she wouldn’t have to worry about a weight limit. The shield can deflect extreme amounts of force (as we’ve seen. Her shield has been hit by direct attacks and shockwaves that would tear a body apart and didn’t flinch), so the force of a single body being pulled down by gravity would be insignificant
i would say depending how the magneto’s power work.
if he was always the epicenter of the magnetism, then sure the shield would block the effect.
that would also mean that he would only be capable of pushing from and pulling to himself.
and that, as we all know is not the case how often have we seen him moving objects in all directions?
also, based on how easy it is it is for him to reshape objects he is controlling, it is not impossible that he has some sort of ability to temporarily modify the “hardiness” of the material he is controlling.
also, if the shield is made out of energy, then a super with energy type power could theoretically drain the shield, assuming he has a large enough (aka infinite) tank.
as the base for the shields power seems to be “equal and opposite reaction” (except for energy passing through this value is lowered by a fixed ammount) there maybe be a countermeasure against that, absorbing the same ammount of energy from you as you absorb from it…
this could go on and on and on…
Honestly, based on everything Magneto does, I think he actually just has very strong Metallokinesis. They try to say he manipulate magnetic fields, but he could do so much worse if that was actually the case. How much? Well, with the size of objects he lifts and how he manipulates them, give him some deuterium and hello cold fusion (pinch method) . He would also be able to power stunt to shape the fields in a way that he could direct the resulting plasma away from himself in a beam. So, why no Magneto fusion beams? Or heck, electricity generation?
to be fair, I’m not sure how metalikinesis would flip the planet’s magnetic field (Something he’s attempted a couple times.)
Magneto was explicitly revived by Earth’s magnetic field “like a babe suckling on it’s mother’s bosom” once in The Uncanny X-Men.
Also, magnetism is a truly phenomenal physics phenomenon. The magnetic field doesn’t have to radiate EXCLUSIVELY from Magneto. When he uses it to “pick up” a piece of metal, he’s magnetizing it, which causes it to radiate its own magnetic field, which he can then use to attract or repel other metallic objects, or cause it to react to pre-existing magnetic fields. By lots, and lots of practice, he has figured out, instinctively, how to generate/manipulate magnetic ores and metals so they do what he wants without having to draw out long, complicated electromagnetic formulas. In fact, although he’s a tactical and strategic genius, he’s not a nuclear physicist. If he was, his power over magnetism would be FAR more deadly. He could magnetically use the hydrogen in the water of your body. He could use high-tension power lines to rip cars off the street. He could magnetize the iron in people’s blood, or even magnetize the hydrogen in the water on Earth. (Hydrogen is magnetic). Really, Magneto’s power is pure nightmare fuel for anyone who’s really savy about particle, nuclear, and electrophysics.
Interesting theory about the fusion, but I’m not savvy enough about physics to know if it would work or not. As for generating electricity with magnetism, the current production method uses alternating magnetic fields passing through copper coils. I’m assuming other metals would work too. He could probably do it but the direct use of magnetism is more powerful than creating a secondary effect IMO so he would need a good reason.
Quite probably, in conjunction with manipulating magnetic forces. He has been explicitly shown directly manipulating non-magnetic substances. (Such as the aforementioned blood example.)
That or general physics fails on the part of the writers. :-)
not quite magneto has been identified as sensitive enough to feel the iron (magnetic ore) in a persons blood but not have precise enough control to manipulate said iron into an effect thus needing a metal laced suit to magnetically lift himself, as the iron in blood is an easier subject than atoms he can’t just perform fusion, now with a proper facility to help focus his efforts he could use the deuterium pinch plan to drive a power plant. (feed in of fuel pellets, control blast forces that would otherwise overwhelm his magnetic shielding skills, convert reaction forces to usable energy)
nope, not a science failure, just an extrapolation of IRL experiments https://mentalfloss.com/article/21736/levitating-frogs-may-destroy-everything… scientists have levitated STRAWBERRIES!!! Yes, in real life… so he could have comic-book-powers well beyond that need to do so in real life, as the facility needed to do the strawberry was ridiculously power hungry, and the chamber in which it floated was barely bigger than the berry itself.
I’m not too familiar with the comics, but I’ve heard that Mageneto is CRAZY powerful in them. For one, he can in fact create lightning. I don’t know if he has precise enough control to magnetize individual atoms for fusion or whatever, but he can create electricity. I think he also literally lifts New York City into the air.
i know he once lifted 3 spaceship sized objects into the orbit, and seemed rather exhausted.
while big, not quite a NYC big.
unless he used something else to amplify his power, i don’t think he could do that, however, i am not a marvel specialist so can’t say for sure.
The sphere have discrimination effects. Choosing what they will or won’t let in or out. But the choice gets locked once it is made. Hence visual light but nothing damaging. No teleportation but the GPS signal still works. I wonder if they are alive and/or sentient?
depends how it works it could j8ust be a simple energy threshold
It probably works with some form of computer, working in real time, assasing everything that tries to pass based on set paramaters
We are only seeing the exterior control nodes.
The rest is in “hyperspace”.
GPS = radio waves = electromagnetic spectrum = light. It may limit the signal strength, but seems to permit all frequencies through so far – but possibly not blue when being hit? Or it just glows to denote the boundry when you get close…
but it stooped lasers so it would probably stop radio waves as well if they were concentrated enough to do harm
Presumably, some kind of “safety gate” effect.
This doesn’t NECESSARILY mean the shield will automatically block harmful quantities of ALL effects, even though that seems to have been the case so far. I’ll repeat the “so far” for added emphasis.
My point being that Sydney (and everybody else) has absolutely no idea what the shield’s ‘default settings’ might be. Maybe it automatically blocks harmful quantities (by Human definition) of most (?) effects, or there is a different and undiscovered set of parameters it uses.
That should be on their test list. Set up an EM detector inside the shield and measure how much strength of different frequencies it’ll let through.
Safety Gate !
The OSHA approved stargate.
Not ‘discrimination’, discretion
I beg to differ. Inanimate objects can exhibit ‘discrimination’ (eg. electronic circuits), but it’s hard to say they show ‘discretion’.
Naturally, that all changes if the orbs are proved to be living entities 8-)
At a certain point, get the computer advanced enough, and it’s damn hard to tell apart from a living brain, function-wise. AI and all that. I would guess the orbs are slightly psychic. The Light-hook and the Flight orb at least, since she hasn’t really shown a need to manipulate controls on those to get them to do what she wants. I doubt the orbs are ‘living’, since they have, on ocassion, shown the literal minded ‘stupidity’ of machines, such as when Sydney was ‘leveling up’.
If the valuables are secured in a safe she can’t open, take from the wall, and is too small for her to enter, she can’t get to it.
One thing I have thought of for teleporters is a strongbox in a room filled with invisable and oderless poisonous gas
There are many ways to use super powers for crimes.
Precogs cleaning up in the betting pools and casinos is too easy. They could see what vunerabilities their targets would have.
This is a link to a very good chapter for precogs, and dealing with them
Clervoyants can also locate weaknesses.
Maybe a telepath or empath could make the guards slip up.
They also would make great conmen.
Telekenisis can be very useful for seeming to boost your strength moving things so it seemed like lck, and more.
Teleportation works great if you operate your crimes well away from where you normally live. Who would suspect an assassin operating a Boston is living in the UK?
sounds like a grate vagus storyline
Grab the door and vorp back 3 inches? What establishes ‘connected’ for her powers – she can leave the sofa cushion she’s sitting on behind, but can she bring it with her instead? If she looped string around a model ship, could she get it into or out of a bottle?
Just looked through it again. The precog bit starts at page 16 and there is nudity
Well he kinda is a pretty weak precog. In the series worm there is a precog, one of the most powerful supers. “Whats your superpower?” “I win, i know how to win and can execute the steps without flaw”
Yeah, try beating that.
A really, really, REALLY big explosion. Hard to dodge a AoE attack big enough, even if you see it coming. Or simply a situtation too big for him to stop. If stopping it relies on the right things, and there simply is no way to do all of those things, he’s screwed. There’s an upward limit on how much one person can do. Have a ton of things happen all at once, too many for him to stop alone or deal with, constantly throw a thousand problems that could kill him all with different solutions. Make the solutions impossible to do simulataneously. A tall order, to be sure, but not impossible. Heck, make the solution strain his physical abilities. I think the ‘execute the steps without a flaw’ bit is rather unlikely. Also, ‘can’ and ‘will’ are two different things. Make him exhausted, tired. He’s still assumably human.
Looking at the series in question, I’m guessing you mean Eidolon? Heck, you don’t even need to do any of the above to beat him. Simple: DON’T FIGHT HIM. From what I can tell from the cast page, he’s not actually a precog. So, yes, you can’t beat him in a fight, since his powers adapt to the situtation he’s in. The solution is to screw him over without a fight. Work around him, not through him. Or, if you mean Shamrock, I’d say simlarly: play around him. Hell, play Xanatos Speed Chess with him, take his actions into account and adapt your plans to match. If you mean Tattle-tale, see the above about overwhelming with too many secnarios.
Nope, not Eidolon. The precog referred to is something of a spoiler. But suffice it to say, your methods wouldnt work because the power works on a larger scale. If said precog is focused on a long term goal, then you couldnt lure them into the blast radius of a large explosion because the steps to succeed at said larger goal would preclude getting caught in your trap. You can’t rely on getting someone like that into an unwinnable situation then having them “turn on” their power to try and get out. It’s running constantly showing them the path to victory throughout.
Plot armor the power, but present in a setting so high powered that it was merely awe inspiring rather than overkill or frustrating. Definitely one of my favorite representations of precognition.
Ultimate precog defense, Tao/Zen.
To see without seeing.
To hear without hearing
To do without doing.
To be without being.
Depends. Really good versus telepaths or precogs in non deterministic settings. Not so hot when your opponent is seeing what *will* happen instead of what you’re planning to have happen.
Precog’s need to beware of time travelers, they can really screw em up.
What if the precog made sure that placing bets at the racetrack were NOT
$5000 at 20 to 1 to win, but were say, $100 for a particular horse to ‘show’ or ‘place’?
As a precog they’d KNOW when they were gaining undue attention and purposely
lose some of the bets.
you are better off playing games like poker were you play ageist outer customers insed of the house. if the hose isnt losing money they are less likely to kick you out. even less likely if you spend a lot of the winnings at the casino
Make sure to have infrequent losses too – not enough to be losing out, but enough that you seem ‘lucky’ rather than a precog. Then after a big win, decide to ‘quit while you’re ahead’.
Or, buy the winning lottery ticket on a mega rollover, and make some investments. (Fund films/games that you ‘like the sound of’ for a percentage of profits, and help spot bugs or bloopers?)
Rather than gambling,. Play the stock market. A casino can kick you out at their choice, but no one can keep a newspaper from you. As long as they can’t prove your power (lose a little here and there) you’d make a fortune.
Absolutely. Or even better, the currency markets. No-one could accuse you of ‘insider trading’, which is always a suspicion if you make a killing on a particular stock, and you can use huge amounts of ‘leverage’.
As an example, fortunes were made and lost recently when the Swiss central bank suddenly announced an end to the ‘cap’, and the Swiss franc jumped 30% versus the euro.
Imagine having advance knowledge of that…
Not really ASIC and the Aust. Reserve Bankare going after some currency traders in Singapore and looking for an internal leak. the last few Aust. Reserve announcements have bean proceeded by about half a scoundrel by a spike in the Aussie Dollar. some one is netting Billions each time ASIC and the reserve want to know Who and How so they can cease their ill gotten gains
If you really want to have gambling involved, I’d say the pre-cog would make more being the house than betting against the house. Knowing exactly how things will play out makes it real easy to set odds that favor you. Have a few losses here and there to cover things up. It’s also lets you be much less high-profile than investing in stocks or winning big at casinos. How many people would go for being a bookie when they have precognition?
For gambling go with cyberpsi/elctronickinisies.
Then you go to Vegas and play the slots.
Win say $1000 per machine, 10 machines per casino, 5 casinos per day, 3 days a week.
That’s 50 grand a day, or 150 grand in a week.
After 2 or 3 weeks move on to another state with casinos .
“Clervoyants can also locate weaknesses.”
It’s also why clairvoyant foes, once identified as such, are best to take down first. If you can take them down before they can tell their teammates what you’re about to do. Mystique’s old partner, Destiny, had that problem. She may know what’s going to happen within the next few seconds, but if you move faster than she can talk about it…
I like the way that Harem is just laying there chilling like it’s no big deal to be laying down on an invisible force field while flying through the air at altitude.
well if it fails she can teleport before she dose a wile e coyote impersonation
That does raise the question though, what happends to her momentum when she teleports?
Law of conservation of energy would suggest that the momentum is ‘stored’ in the same way as her physical form is ‘stored’ when she’s unteleported, and than is put back into action when she materializes somewhere.
If that’s the case, she wouldn’t be able to save herself from falling by teleporting (she could pick where she lands though)
Strict conservation of energy would make teleporting from one elevation to another impossible, so there’s not strict conservation of energy going on.
Not necessarily. The human body contains plenty of energy to expend for jumping upwards, and jumping downwards could simply expel the surplus energy as heat. The momentum when falling is an entirely different situation, since it’s not as directly tied to the process of teleporting.
But if she teleports after only falling a foot or two, her momentum wouldn’t be that great and she could materialize standing up, so it would be like she jumped off of a table instead of having fallen out of a flying bubble.
she could also port over a body of water, pot upside down to redirect the momentum por higher so sydney can catch her or land on amorfus
or she could un vorp it entirely, until a good cushion is found.
Not necessarily. She can change poses while teleporting, too, as well as ‘port from a scared defensive pose into a forward-moving pose, thereby seemingly ignoring momentum conservation. Her powers defy physics, so momentum just seems to be something that happens to other people.
They defy physics as we know it.
They don’t defy Physics, they humble asked for an exception that Physics has decided to allow.
Nope, nothing defies physics. It’s just that we don’t KNOW all of the physics of this universe…yet. It’s also why we think of certain events as being “supernatural” in origin; obviously the Laws of Nature allow that to happen, but we just don’t know much (or anything at all) about which specific Natural Laws are in effect.
It’s like Dr. Revenge just said, when he included the phrase “…as we know it.”
She’s destroying herself, storing the information, then using the information of that body’s last incarnation to recreated it elsewhere. Its possible at some point its all just energy and her power/overmind/whatever only stores the information of the actual body itself and any extra energy is either bled off somewhere, used to power the process, or her “true self” is an energy being (the overmind/will thingie I talk about sometimes) and just eats it to maintain itself.
That’s the problem though.
Momentum is an actual physical characterisitic of the atoms/molecules that make up your body. So on that explanation, the information stored would also contain that momentum
She has some specialized psychic mimicking ability that allows her to “feel out” a proposed location for a safe solid free zone to occupy and then either push lighter gases out of the way or switch places with them.
She seems insistent that she is herself and not any one of her meat bodies in particular.
Something magical/ultradimensional links them all in specific parts of the brain instantly.(so she’s already playing merry hells with conventional science even taking into account the whole “super science” thing.)
She can store bodies, probably as information but maybe as something more, “somewhere” in the multiverse.
Plus when she gains the ability to create a new (as opposed to one from “storage”) body it comes into this world aged (not by damage but by time itself I guess) to the same degree as the others already in existence with no body mods, just the original equipment and coloring, not even extra freckles from too much sun even if all the others had done so up to that point. Like she has a backed up overall “template” stored somewhere in the multiverse that some part of her nature is keeping track of and modifying because it believes in time for some reason so reproduces the effect on the template?
When she puts a body into “storage” some kind of energy and or ability to perform is returned to the collective empowering them beyond human norms. (has anyone measured to see if she gets smarter? or just mentally faster which often amounts to the same thing… )
_______________________________
My thought is that what we see of her is the tip of the iceberg so to speak and most of what really makes Harem tick is not in the dimensions we can sense or measure in any way ‘cept through extraordinary beings like Harem or maybe Dabblers tech/magic. She doesn’t just “travel” through such a bizarre hyperspace or whatever it is but actually has the part of her that really matters exist there. Her overmind/will/energy being whatever it is that ties everything together and facilitates the creation, storage, and retrieval of her shells.
It breaks a shell down into energy and data (perhaps bringing a body to its plane of existence makes that a lot easier/cheaper to perform), senses the target location for a secure space to transmit and measures the local momentum, alters the data to match the target location, and reforms the shell now already moving with the earth/solar system/etc…
If we ever get to see a Harem die and it vorps and reforms in a pose and location it was sometime previously we will know the overmind/will is performing “saves” of Harem’s body’s data at regular intervals and storing them. And with all the above going on we can understand why Harem is left to think mostly with her meat brains as the energy “quantum” one is pretty busy.
_____________________________
Short version:
For this to be even vaguely sciencey (even by sci-fy standards) requires a part of Harem “somewhere” to be capable of dealing with a lot of information and understanding it well enough to alter it to fit new circumstances not just store and transmit. The fact that we don’t see that level of intellect or awareness everywhere else in Harem’s life suggest that either it is all tied up performing the actions and maintenance that makes her power possible or that it is a specialized organ, that despite being capable of amazing calculations etc…, is ONLY capable of those specialized actions and leaves will, more general decision making, creativity, etc… to the meat side of the thinking apparatus.
Johnathan Creek = awesome.
One of our best exports.
Ah I clicked submit early somehow.
I watched House of Monkeys at the weekend.
That crime could have been done by a teleporter, the murderer not only never appeared on screen, but they also never went anywhere near the eponymous locked room.
Crime from a distance? Check
Sealed crime scene? Check
which is why they hired him for arc light
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1191
But did they make sure he has a sassy and challenging sidekick*
(haha, more like boss since he was the sidekick!)
Derp… How did I miss THAT?!
Like most good British TV, there just isn’t enough of it. I want more “That Mitchell and Webb Look” among other things.
I reaaaallllyyy liked QI
to bad they only made it thru to M
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_QI_episodes
I learned them most fun trivia on that show.
?
Fret not, series ‘M’ is in the future, and there are no plans to stop.
Thank you so much for the Johnathan Creek reference! I started out watching QI, then hit my public library for the DVDs of Johnathan Creek after they’d talked about it on QI a few times. :-)
Yes! Sydney should discuss everyone’s power at length…. or at least a few and then a montage of the rest – thus showing her TRUE power… metagaming
team mate should have a fairly comprehensive understanding of the ability of the rest of the team. its the only way to adapt to a developing situation
And to know when to get out of their way. Or, in Achilles’ case, who to hide behind.
As long as the known five copies have an alibi nobody suspects her secret 6th body.
Ahh, but everyone suspects the unknown sixth, it’s the seventh everyone overlooks :D
It’s her 42nd body that’s become the True Master of Earth & no one even noticed…
I did, when I let her have the job because I was board with it.
That is one awesome form of flying. Just standing straight up.
She needs a cool outfit to go with it though
I’m pretty sure Kal-El has done it too, during the early years of his John Byrne “reboot” – when nearly every new adversary was attacking him via his mind. Some of his dad’s (Jor-El’s) old tech tried to give him a more Kryptonian aspect, including flowing black robes, a more aloof demeanor, & this more imposing (but less aerodynamic) flight profile.
Darkseid did it in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse. Although Darkseid uses technology to fly – it’s not one of his innate powersets.
Oh and Supergirl did it in Superman: Unbound – when she took out the helicopter in the beginning (based on the comic book story arc Brainiac Attacks, I think).
And Superman did it in Batman Beyond, although he was being controlled by Starro at the time.
https://youtu.be/fkjabdPnz-A?t=131
I don’t know why any flyer would position themselves in any other way. After all, flying face-first with your head tilted all the way back would be very uncomfortable.
Aerodynamics? Given the fact that most flyers are resisting gravity already, I doubt that keeping their head up takes much effort, if it’s supported by whatever keep you flying instead of falling. I don’t know if it’d still hurt your neck if your neck muscles aren’t doing any work. But I agree, I’d rather be upright. Or lying down.
Given the fact that most flyers are already strong enough to fly really fast, aerodynamics isn’t that important for less fast flying.
And for Sydney it’s even less significant, as she’s covered in the shield anyway.
As for your neck muscles, you obviously haven’t tried to look up for some significant amount of time. You’ll get a cramp pritty fast
Yes, it quickly becomes a literal “pain in the neck.”
(I’m actually disappointed that no one took up the hook for this obvious pun for this long. My fishing expedition didn’t hook one & I’ve been pun-starved for too long to let it go)
Harem has fancy, auto-dimming, nonfunctional glasses.
if they are auto dimming then they have a function
Meant, they don’t actually work as seeing glasses
Was going to mention how cool it was that Abbey too that extra step with her appearance to use the auto-change lenses in her fake glasses, but you had to go and beat me by ninety minutes :(
It’s called Transitions. I have a pair too.
The foot-scratch thing does bring up Sydney’s one critical weakness. She’s got to have both hands occupied holding the flying and shield orbs, meaning she’s out of luck if she has to scratch an itch. Granted, she could temporarily let go of the shield orb when flying solo for that, but it’d be kind of rude with a passenger. (Harem could of course teleport to safety, but still, that would probably be some sort of super-power etiquette violation…)
You could always extend a finger from one of the hands holding the orbs and scratch with that finger, while still holding the orb.
You could try it right now, hold something the same size, you can still easely use a finger to scratch something
Tie a brillo pad to on of the mystery orbs?
It’s also possible to scratch some kinds of itch with the back of your hand, using your knuckles.
But tying brillo pad onto an orb might cause it’s own problems: Can Sydney see which activation rune she wants to touch if a brillo pad is in the way?
Use one of the two that don’t do anything.
If there’s a brillo pad tied to one of the “unknowns,” then how will she see if glyphs can be activated when the right situation comes up to use it? Chances are very good that it’ll take Sydney even longer to figure those orbs out than it would if she can still see them clearly.
Clearly the solution is she has to demand scritches of Harem.
So she’s five versions of the same person linked in a quasi-telepathic manner. There…summed up that whole page into one sentence.
Also, I wonder if one of the orbs in Sydney’s Sphere Grid Level Up System can allow her to manipulate the shield to allow certain things through it, or manipulate the shape to be form fitting…
When Sydney gains enough control to create fields of any shape,
she should put in chairs.
(Would that require a custom force field inside the main force field?)
She should do an invisible airplane!
But the shield itself cannot fly. She has to have the flight orb in order for that to happen…also, is the shield visible or is that just so we the readers know it’s there?
Dave mentioned before that the shield is visible. Also, during the press conference, the reporters were awed by Sydney’s embiggened shield, suggesting they could see it.
Ah…thanks for the clarification on that. Thus, invisible plane is out of the question.
Unless she is by herself, or with another flyer.
The Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four can do that…She’s capable of shaping her FF aerodynamically so that it acts as a glider even while carrying people in it. It also blocks off air like Halo’
s shield does, but at least she can form an opening at any size or shape she wishes to let air in occasionally. I’d conjecture that Sydney might eventually learn that particular control, once she’s spent more “pips” in the skill tree.
Got a better summery: Harem is a Legion class entity.
In Demonology a Legion is a class of Demon with multiple bodies. It had up to 2000. Harem is not quite there yet, but give her a few boosters and she might try
I’m going to say that Harem isn’t a demon, but I do like the idea of Harem being able to expand her powers to basically be a 1 woman army made up of 2000 copies of herself. Hell, if she could do that, she could essentially become super rich by just working a whole bunch of random jobs all at once, then merging and collecting all of the paychecks.
I always said that if I could have a super power, it’d be basically what Harem has, only I’d want it so I only obtain all the knowledge a copy has accrued by merging with them again.
Your get rich plan has a flaw. If there were 2000 of her, then they would all need to be fed, clothed and housed while they toiled away at their jobs for their evil overlord clone who will effectively kill them once they were no longer useful. (I will agree her power eliminates any transportation costs).
My plan for instant wealth would depend on what happens when a new copy is made. Does everything she is wearing get duplicated as well? If so, just:
1) have the prime copy put on a million dollar diamond ring.
2) Make a copy also wearing the same ring.
3) Take off the ring and un-make the copy, leaving the new ring still there.
4) Repeat as needed.
Since this would effectively crash the world economy, Dave most likely would say no.
No she doesn’t copy anything she’s holding, and when she’s able to make a new copy of herself, it appears looking like her unaltered strawberry blonde self and is nude.
Wait, is that confirmation that Berry is the original? Or simply she is the ‘default’ slash ‘natural’ look and Berry could still be number 3?
She thinks berry is the original, but she lost track quickly after she was able to make her first dupe since she didn’t start customizing them right away.
I keep assuming ‘luck out with your duck out’ blondie is the original since blonde hair is a natural color, while the other Harems have dyed hair colors. Well… white I guess is a natural color too, but usually not at age 19.
I don’t think there IS an original at this point.
Shuffle and alter the copies often enough and eventually you lose track of the one you started with
Just because she doesnt remember which is the original doesnt mean there wasnt an original body :) But I understand what you’re suggesting. that at some point maybe the original was ‘un-vorped’ or whatever (which probably happened since Dabbler’s corner showed the purple haired Harem wrestling Anvil when she’s at full physical strength (unless the purple haired girl is the original and she did the hair-dyeing and stuff to the original).
No, any of them can be the ‘main’ or active body while the rest are, well, ‘resting’
@Pander. Platinum blondes are a thing.
Yeah, though the white haired Harem’s hair doesnt look ‘platinum blonde’ insomuch as it looks ‘white’ – just my view on how it looks.
Berry might be the second (or third, fourth, or fifth) body but was never customised. She just has the look of the original, I’m assuming.
Yup
I personally think her hair is closer to Strawberry Quik than strawberry blonde. Maybe the DB universe allows for naturally un-natural shades, like the EGS universe.
She has one with red hair and one with blonde hair but none of her copies are what I’d call “strawberry blonde”. That said WoG is that blonde is her natural colour.
If Blonde is her natural colour, why is Berry her ‘unaltered self’?
… since when is pink a ‘natural color’
Since people started getting super powers.
So far the only supers I’ve seen with odd colored hair are Maxima (who also had odd colored skin), and Dabbler (who’s an alien/succubus/whateverelsesheis). All the other supers have normal hair – not sure why Daphne would be different. I think Maxima is the exception to the rule. Even the bad guys have been all shown to have normal colored hair.
My bad apparently it’s supposed to be strawberry blonde and the colour didn’t come out right (it came out pink).
It all depends on how the separation and retrieval of the clones works. If for instance she can pull her clones back in without also gaining their hunger and exhaustion levels, then instead she could just work 2000 day jobs in the area and pull them all back in at night, thus only 1 would need shelter/food. Clothing would be an issue, but with enough space there could easily be a week’s wardrobe for them all, and having a couple of clones do laundry would keep it rotating.
Better yet though would be to start a business that would require a multitude of employees to keep working that would normally need to be paid individually. Because they are one, all of that pay would instead go to just one person. Mathematically, $10/hr (not including overtime), 40 hrs/week/clone, and say 10 clones to keep the place running would constitute $4000 a week. Open up 100 locations (i.e. 1000 clones) and you are pulling down $40,000 a week, or over 2 million a year. That is how I’d want it to function eventually. Not sure how it’d work with taxes though.
But if Harem as she is now wanted to win some money, she could just go on Survivor or one of those other reality shows where they get multiple people (this would be assuming no one knew who she was). Since she has 5 working together, they could win any teamwork challenge with ease, and if things came to a vote they could essentially control that aspect. Once it gets to the final 5 people, just vote themselves off in any order and she’d win.
Heh! Harem could become the female equivilant of Dr. McNinja!
d-(^_^)-b
Actually super-strength would be useful for robbing fort knox.
Gold doesn’t carry itself you know. The guy with vaporizing vision would be pretty good at murder, since there’d literally be no body, a teleporter would work better as a smuggler than a thief, et cetra.
Just don’t try to use your powers as a sledgehammer, it works better.
Well they’re also going to be suspicious if the cameras pick up a single guy carrying several tons of gold at the same time.
But you’re right, with some creative use most powers can be used for the perfect crime
You can shoot laser beams from you hand? Use a toy gun to make people think you are using a proper laser gun.
Use an EMP weapon to take out the cameras.
This is where you need the psychics to scan the minds of the security people, and clervoyants to scan the target.
Explains the superhero paradox as well. It isn’t that crooks with powers don’t exist before hand, they just keep it quiet until dragged into the light.
For the record, “vaporizing vision” fails at “undetectable murder”, because matter is NOT destroyed – that vapor is coating all nearby surfaces. Unless it’s 100% efficient at reducing all human tissue into superheated plasma, there’s still DNA evidence to incriminate you.
What about teleporting someone into a vulcano?
That’s a separate issue – I was addressing the issue of “vaporizing vision”.
To address your question directly, we need to be certain of how your power works. As shown in a recent film (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumper_%282008_film%29), there might be a lingering trace of electromagnetic “signature” that might be used to re-connect “here” to “there”, if you’re not careful. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but you need to be careful if you want to do it in a totally untraceable manner. Given today’s sophisticated level of tech, it’s never been more difficult to pull off a crime in a way that guarantees you’ll not get caught.
CaineDM@HotMail.Com
I’ve seen that movie.
I always wondered why they did not just teleport into the middle of the air and when falling teleport elsewhere. That would hinder anyone trying to follow their jump stream.
People are throwing fireballs from their hand, flying through the air like birds that never need to lift a feather, teleporting, literally reading minds, growing in strength merely by the intangible aura of violence in the area, and you think a body vaporise is going to leave microscopic ash particle all around the room? No. The body is simply vaporised.
Okay so two things wanted to point out that no one else seems to have:
A: In the last panel Sydney appears to have gravity defying bangs.
B: Nice Scooby Doo reference Sydney. Because “Zoinks” is from that show, as is the name “Daphne” (one of the characters)
Her bangs always defy gravity when she’s flying, which is why noone pointed it out: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/479
It’s led to the theory that the fly orb works with some form of personalized gravity field
Syd flies by having a personal gravity field. Her bangs defy gravity because her flight works that way.
Caught the Shaggy reference, but didn’t link it to the name Daphne until I read your comment. Thanks :-D
Actually, ‘Zoinks!’ was more of a Velma catch phrase (or was hers ‘Jinkies!’?)
Shaggy was “Zoinks!”, Velma was “Jinkies!”, Fred was “Gang”, Scooby was “Ruh-Roh!” “Roh No!” “Relp!” “Raggy!” etc.
…I dunno that Daphne had any recurring phrases.
Fred’s should have been ‘Ascots are manly dammit!’
scooby’s daphne had one “fred help” as she got snatched.
Or just screaming ‘help’. Kinda a natural response to being kidnapped, really.
. . . strange. I never encountered that. Might of been the drugs I used on the first that stopped them calling out.
Velma’s is Jinkies, Zoinks belongs to Shaggy.
Ah, sorry for the double post but I JUST noticed that bit on the bottom about hentai manga called “naked thief” which is hilarious considering there is a hentai manga about a naked female hero (or perhaps superhero possibly) called Keiko Kamen!
Actually it’s Kekko Kamen (or Kekkô, which might be why it was spelled Kekkou in the OAVs released by ADV), and it was allegedly based on a high school girl’s fantasies. Just discovered that they actually made 11 live-action movies as well.
Sorry. My Asperger’s kicked in.
Eleven? I only knew of three.
Maybe it was in binary :p
That makes sense…If it was in hexadecimal, it would’ve been “B.”
I wonder if Daphne can train to carry more…
It’s an inherent weight limitation thing with her power. It’s not because of her innate strength.
who has to keep their identities more?
unmasking a hero would mean making EVERYONE in his/her environment a potential target.
but unmasking a villain only makes him a target, which he already was.
a villain could easily target someone the hero cares about, and the hero could do nothing other than cooperate. a good example of that is in this comic https://blue-blaster.com/archive/ chapter 15.
(i posted archive instead of a page to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t gotten that far)
if a villain defeat the hero, then all there is left to worry about are the government forces.
as we’ve seen with V, at certain power level guns and canons become irrelevant.
also, there are powers that could make him untraceable, be it his own or of an ally.
so, for a low lvl villain, i suppose it is very important to hide his identity as he is sure to get jailed,
but later on, they got ways, while heroes stay as impotent as they were.
A great deal depends on the capabilities, methodologies and principles of both individual heoes AND individual villains.
if you are “if you touch my daughter, i am going to find you, and kill you” Hollywood movie “hero”,
that can hardly be called a hero.
what kind of heroes do we know?
-noob hero: is there mostly for fame, not taking anything seriously.
-corrupt heroes: only there for cash and fame, but if you get to know them, they are not heroic at all.
there are plenty of examples in manga “sidekicks” and “ratman”
-codex hero: like superman, never kills, even if deserve it. how many times did joker escape now?
nearly everyone in the marvel universe
-fallen hero: heroes who gave up their codex and just have to get the job done.
example of it would be the detctive from “watchmen” who since certain event thinks “certain people don’t deserve to live”
other example would be the superman from “injustice: gods among us”
2 of those can’t do shit, corrupt heroes don’t exist in this universe, yet, as the archon has been publicly announced “yesterday”, and the “fallen” heroes are considered criminals.
so villains only have to worry about armed forces until maxima finds them.
but in case of someone as powerful as V, assuming he can keep his power over longer time unlike V, has not much to worry about. and if its a group, then one of them can keep watch while the rest is resting. also, they may be hiding outside of the archons influence.
so, at low lvl, army can easily support the heroes, but on higher, they just can’t keep up and the winner is the one who can do more. dirty moves are an advantage that villains have most of the time, that could be a deciding factor on higher lvls.
Um…yeah. Got some problems with your phrasing good sir. The codex hero bit kinda implies Superman is the one who doesn’t kill the Joker and thus let’s him escape. I’m also not sure where the term ‘codex hero’ came from, because all that word means is either really old books or lists of medicines or chemicals. I’d go with ‘Moral Hero’ or something similar. Also, I know this is grammatical nit-picking, but please use capital letters, if only so my OCD stops screaming. It sounds like a tea-kettle, and it’s bugging me.
Yeah i should have put batman there.
I am not sure how “codex” is specific to herbs or chemicals, but there is no edit button so there is nothing i can do about that. i just couldn’t find a word at that moment. But yes, “moral” should be there.
Going after the friends or family of a super would be stupid and cause that particular super to “Take off the Kid gloves”. Would you really want a super like Max or Sydney to go Batman on your ass. Especially when they have all the resources of ARC? Even worse most people would turn you in if they knew you. Stealing is one thing but attacking innocents would turn most of the world against you and many would turn a blind eye to any overkill the super used on you. I can’t think of a quicker way to become a smoking grease spot.
“take off the kid gloves”
in case of Maxima it could be 1hit KO in most of cases, but as we have seen, some villains are more powerful than Maxima, and make the army unable to contribute when the fight begins.
as for arc resources, again, what can they do, aside from locating you? that is, if it is even possible to locate you.
“Even worse most people would turn you in if they knew you. ” yes, if they knew you. which is why…
why would you let them know who you are?
so if they know you, but they dont know it is you know wrote the “do it or i kill her” note, how will they deal with that?
“I can’t think of a quicker way to become a smoking grease spot.”
again, assuming she can do that. yes, maxima is the most powerful known super, but then again, she is only the most powerful KNOWN super.
“…it could be 1hit KO…”
I take it that, in the general context of this thread, “1 hit KO” doesn’t mean “1 hit knock out.” It would mean “1 hit kill off.”
O.o
i meant knock out, but sure it would be kill off if she was pissed enough.
again, in most cases. she has gone all out agains V on the infamous “tectonic throat punch”
and all it did to him was “just a flesh wound”.
indeed, we don’t know how effective would be her “molecular shredder” that she used on his arm, but clearly, you can survive a punch from her. well, maybe not “you”, but you know what i mean.
The point is that even people who would usually never kill sometimes will when under the right pressures. Also, kidnapping is really not a good idea, if the hero in question thinks about it. How likely are you to actually let the hostage go? Especially if they can ID you? The answer is ‘not likely’. Blackmail with hostages tends not to end well for the hostage, and a hero who knows that might prefer to take a risk and try to save their loved one, rather than just tamely go along with your plan.
you can “free” someone from the villain’s hold, but you can’t really save them.
i mean, how many ways there are to stealth kill someone, or just “nuke” their house.
(no, i don’t mean actual nuclear bomb)
what kind of villain villain would let others know his/her identity?
A) an idiot or a noob
B) someone VERY confident in their ability to fight back, like V.
another question is, whether its a:
-“generic” villain, who does evil for the sake of evil. kind of like joker.
-“honorable” villain, who do respects the deals he make. like DR.Universe from Spinnerette (who btw is not actually a villain, but government dislike him so they say that he is).
Most criminals aren’t “Evil”. In fact even the ones that kill people usually don’t plan on it. There is a very small minority of criminals that even come close to the “Evil’ of movie villains. If you truly think that the resources of ARC couldn’t find someone who committed a crime in this age of video cameras everywhere you really don’t understand the abilities technology gives us. It might not be as fast as the movies show you (or it might be faster) but finding someone is not that hard. Also people will know that person and seen him/her before with or without powers. How long did it take to catch the Boston Bombers? And they didn’t have access to the stuff ARC has (or the people). I’m sure ARC has trackers both powered and unpowered. How could you hide from a psychic? No I still say fuck with a super’s friends or family you best turn yourself in and save your skin.
what are we talking about anymore?
my first post was that on low lvl, villains probably need to hide their powers and identity more than the heroes, because as you said its easy to find someone who commited a crime.
on higher lvl, the villains gain edge, because dirt play.
you argued that going after someone is stupid, cause it gets you on the kill list.
then i said that if you are either, omnipotent, or untracable, you dont give a F***.
now you are saying “oh, how amazing are all the things we are capable of” and… wtf?
so now, apparently word “villain” includes common tieves… what does that word even mean anymore? common thieves don’t kidnap your family!! if they do, its because they panic and wated someone as a meat shield to figure out the escape.
when i said said about villains targeting your family for any reason, i meant professional villains who really know what they are doing.
don’t want to be seen? BECOME INVISIBLE!
don’t want to leave footprints? FLOAT AWAY!
cant do either of those? TELEPORT/VORP/PORTAL OUT!!
CANT DO ANY OF THOSE?! WTF ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?!
have to deal with a super hero? hire an anti hero!
when say untracable, i mean really no physical evidence.
if you are worried about someone recognizing you, just conceal your identity properly.
you talk about how amazing the technology side is, but you have no idea how powerful can villains be if they work together.
there could be even a power that could literally remove you from reality until you change your mind!! HOW DO YOU TRACE THAT?!?
actually harem does that in a way! although, one of her bodies have to stay.
and if archon can be sooooo powerful, why wouldn’t another organization be?
One name Bin Laden. And we didn’t have super powers. My point was no one lives in a vacuum. There are people around you no matter who you are. Even teleporters leave behind traces. Skin cells, hairs etc etc etc. Most police don’t have the training or tools to find these small traces but ARC will. Hell Dabbler can find you by your lust. No attacking any family or friend of an ARC employee would be dumber than attacking Obama. He has no supers protecting him.
at the beginning of your comment, pls quote what you are answering to.
” Bin Laden. And we (i assume he) didn’t have super powers”
with only human capabilities, he hid himself for YEARS.
and they only found him, cause they knew in what general area to look for him (also, postman).
a teleporter would not give them the advantage of “reduced area of search” as he could teleport to another continent, make a video there, send it, and comeback in an hour (with decent jump range and cooldown), and no mailman would give his position.
“Hell Dabbler can find you by your lust”
F.P.
she can detect your presence by lust, that doesn’t mean she can recognise you, and that does not allow her to trace you. also, that’s even assuming you see her, because without that, she cannot make you lust to find you.
“Even teleporters leave behind traces. Skin cells, hairs etc etc etc.”
ok, they know yo were there, but then, second step in tracing you, is identifying you, by comparing the finds with their database. if you are not in database, they cannot find you’r house. so, if you are a “secretly sheltered super soldier with no identity or any sign of previously existing” they once again can’t do shit.
“harder” doesn’t mean hard.
and as i already said, “find you” is only the first problem. because then, they have to overpower you, and catch you off guard. yes maxima is powerful, but the doesn’t mean there can’t be someone even, or more powerful.
also, multiple, mind affecting powers.
what if an alternative archon like underground society decide to wage a war on them?
“…people who would usually never kill sometimes will…”
That’s exactly why I specifically included the phrase “in the general context of this thread” in my previous comment above…
;)
This is why I should never have superpowers.
Oh, sure, I’d try and do good with them if they were big enough, but I’m also mercenary enough that first and foremost I’d find any way I could to use them to make my own life more comfortable. After all, if you could walk undetected into a bank vault then sure it’d be suspicious for a cool mil or more to disappear, but three or four hundred every couple of weeks could be chocked up to an accounting error or computer glitch, and it’s doubtful that multiple banks in the same area would talk to each other enough that several of them having the same mysterious glitch would set off “SUPERVILLAIN” alarms.
The same could be said for the accounting departments of many large chain stores where writing off thousands of dollars in goods a month is just a matter of course: while taking goods isn’t my style, they use enough fuzzy math for profits and such that shopping there once every couple of weeks and popping into the back for a hundred or two in withdrawal would likely never be noticed.
Sure, it wouldn’t be the most exciting use of superpowers ever and on the scale o’ villainy would rank right around using one’s super-dexterity to become a professional pickpocket, but with careful planning and patience one could amass a very comfortable life with little to no real risk of detection or detainment. After all, in a sufficiently sized urban area you can have several banks and large department stores, malls, and outlets within a couple of square miles, meaning you could probably have a new place to hit every other day or so, equating something like a 20 dollar an hour daily job.
Not that I’ve spent any time whatsoever thinking about this. Nuh uh. Nor can you prove otherwise.
Melanie E.
Until tax people or neighbours start to ask questions. It might be even better to use teleportation powers for honest work than small scale crime. A courier service or similar stuff.
Up to a certain point, the “honest job” actually works as an alibi. As long as you don’t get too ostentatious with your overt lifestyle, you can be quietly investing your ill-gotten gains in a wide variety of areas & just continue to live simply (but comfortably).
Heck, you could even use your “honest job” as a cover for your criminal activity.
Job as a courier? Smuggling the death ray you stole and casing a target’s place
In Dark Angel the main character was a courior and used it to case places to rob, move around the city freelt and a few other things.
Everyone just thinks you are a dupe if you get caught! Great! They don’t realize you have your wealth hidden in different places under different names, like long term deposits, or stocks in one company when you are robbing and damaging their main competition.
Even easier cover: just say you’re a freelance artist or writer and only work for cash, and keep meticulous “records” of what pieces you’ve sold. Still have to pay taxes on everything, sure, but it’s a cover that’s easy to maintain simply by occasionally actually DOING what you say you make your living by. “Most of my patrons prefer to remain anonymous, but I have these clients who are willing to vouch for me.”
It always amazes me, that people spend so much time to rationalize breaking the law for the questionable benefit, while the powers they want for it would allow them to earn money legitimately.
The most successful counterfeiter in US history was a man who only printed $1 bills. He was a retiree in New York in the 1930s. He only produced a few at a time, and only used them occasionally to buy food for himself and his dog when he could not make ends meet. It took over ten years to track him down, and then only because his apartment building caught fire and the NYFD found his equipment. One main reason they could not catch him was that he never spent the bills in any one store more than once since he felt guilty about cheating the store owner out of the money.
https://www.snopes.com/business/money/mister880.asp
If you’re not doing it for the spice of villainy, there’s no reason not to run a legit courier service. Like, entirely legit. You can simply get objects below your weight limit (and the Barrett is a notable weight limit) from point A to B faster than practically any other service on earth. You make money and exchange it for goods and services, and nobody ever even tries to arrest you.
Easiest way to use teleportation to make money is to have the exoport capacity (teleporting things other than yourself).
Get some $100 bills memorize them, go to a store in the morning (groceries are good) pay for it with 1 of the bills you have memorized, wait 8 hours teleport it back to you.
Continue doing that when you need to and voila you have a decent chunk of change, from the change from the bills.
Also change the bills out every month and do not keep hitting the same place repeatedly in a short space of time.
And chain stores are better than mom & pop stores.
Dave, your link to the Oxford comma in the commentary really made me laugh. High 5, I’m a fan of the Oxford comma as well.
Also, Daphnia has morals? Ironic how it us the same body that visits Deus that says this.
*Daphne
*glares at autocorrect*
Most people don’t spot those hidden links, well done. They’d be better about looking for them if I put them in every commentary but I think I’ve only done it 4 or 5 times.
Aww, you never congratulated me, I’m jealous :P
Off the top of my head I recall 7 before, the first one far back to “Lecherous Martial Artist” (#95? #96? around there), also I think this is the first time you use a comma.
I could have missed some though.
Just because she has been tattling to Deus (or, more likely, his lovely assistant, he just happens to be in the room at the same time) doesn’t mean she doesn’t have morals, so far, we haven’t seen her tell the assistant anything they couldn’t find out on their own
I favor the serial comma as well. I just call it the serial comma because, alas, Oxford University Press no longer uses it.
This explains why I sometimes feel the urge to put a comma there (cause I was probably taught that way back in the day) but when I look for an example in times of doubt it shows it without.
But with every year of exposure to web speak I loose more and more of that stuff anyway. Not to mention the fact that I when I type quickly (by my standards) my mind just grabs the first word that sounds like what I thought and sticks it in the slot. I know the difference between their and there but you wouldn’t know it unless I spent a lot of time editing. (who has that kind of tim?)
Eh, it actually doesn’t take all that long. But then again, I read fast.
Sadly I don’t do anything fast. TT
That worked for you? Weird. I saw it, but my tablet didn’t recognize it as a link when I tried opening it in a new tab. It just asked if I wanted to select it/select all, copy, etc. :( I shall have to try again later. :)
I’ve always wondered why some people didn’t use that comma. It was taught to me as simply being the way things were done. I had never heard that some books don’t teach it.
I love the flying pose, but honestly I get a more Magneto vibe. This is almost entirely as a result of the bubble around her as she flies and while not a standard pose like it is for Darkseid, I feel like I have seen Magneto use that pose to fly before (probably one of the animated series).
I’m sure Dave drew it that way purely for the gravitas it imparted to Sydney, and not because it saved him the trouble of drawing her hands, the orbs, and the little glowy CGI around them. :)
Darkseid maybe, but Maggie tends to fly with his arms crossed in front of him
I see Sydney has Harem pegged right. :)
I wonder if Peg has a harem?
Ooo Ooo Ooooooooooo! Please allow me to be the first one to start Peg’s harem!!
I thought Peg has Harem as a harem? Or maybe its Harem that has her when her body starts beggin’ for a Peg’in.
If you want Harem to start pegging, feel free to volunter
IF it was spelled my way I would. (sometimes spelling matters a whole lot!! O.O”’ )
Oh hey, someone else who watches Jonathon Creek. I love the way people are always looking for these elaborate set ups with wire or whatever and it’s generally nothing like that at all.
In addition to ‘rocking the hands behind the back pose’ I like the way Sydney plays with her vertical orientation during flight at the end there.
I think locking your jewels in a vault would keep Harem out… if the vault was too small for a human body to fit into.
Nice to see the old “two of the same letter” hero naming conventions are still going, at least for some of the supers.
I have the same disease as Stan Lee.
Automatic Alliterative Appellation Application?
+many
EXCELSIOR!
‘Nuff said, True Believers.
Except to point out that Dave deserves a No-Prize for that.
Ah but if that is the case Dave, where have your Cameo’s been hiding in each book hmm? :P
Dave’s cameo has been on pretty much every page already. You see his avatar here, don’t you?…It’s been all throughout the comic so far.
:D
With that pose Sydney fully qualifies for the job of Imperial star destroyer captain.
so…. Sydney’s hair in the last panel… I have three theories:
1) Sydney uses a LOT of ultra-mega-omega-super-hold hairspray
2) Sydney’s flight ball is actually a personal anti-gravity propulsion generator
3) The author doesn’t give a damn about all that, and just thinks drawing sydney upside-down with her hair in place just “feels” right.
Old news. Flight was the very first power Sydney demonstrated, and we saw her hair then. It seems fairly established that the flight orb provides Sydney with her own personal gravity field.
Yup, to paraphrase Maxi: Sydney flies in a most aggravating manner, to her, no matter what position she is in, ‘down’ is still towards her feet
Or just wherever she wants it to be. She has flown horizontally (Page 158).
…And then I realzie that that example does not prove my point. IGNORE ME!
*Realize
Lol, N-Rays :D
Hentai manga? Naked Thief? Why does your mind go there, Dave?
Seems to be a lack of characters in this story with ironclad morals. That’s actually disappointing. I like characters like that.
…
Okay, maybe I would read Naked Thief.
Sometimes I mentally give my characters the Thor’s Hammer test. I’m really not sure who would pass, since “worthy” is an undefined term. Thor himself has obviously killed since he fights trolls and ice giants and the like, so that’s not a disqualifier. He hangs around Circe and Sif and the Enchantress and has probably had his share of impure thoughts, and he’s often brash, arrogant and conceited, so it’s hard to really say what qualities the hammer is looking for.
Offhand I’d assume Maxima wouldn’t qualify, Dabbler certainly wouldn’t, nor Harem. Sydney probably wouldn’t pass, but Anvil might. I think she falls short of the Captain America standard, and he was able to lift it in a comic once.
I think it must be some combination of Courage, Ability, and Self-Sacrifice/Nobility. And not being a dick.
One way of looking at the “Worthyness” would be a test no so much of never thinking of doing anything wrong, but of knowing when something would be wrong and deciding to try to avoid doing it, even if that goes against your automatic insincts.
One would think that ‘worthy’ would be based on displaying the virtues valued by the vikings. Not killing isn’t one of them, courage is.
I’m not certain how accurate the modern ‘nine noble virtues are’ as to what was actually valued by the vikings, but they’ll give you at least some idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Noble_Virtues
Obviously the one who would pass would be Joel.
I would bet big bucks that Squirrel Girl could lift the hammer :D
So far, Peggy is my favorite hero in this story. She’s down-to-earth, and has a great sense of humor. Also, I like scars.
Oh man I REALLY want to see that happen.
Of all the silly mary-sues, Squirrel Girl is my fave.
I think just about everybody does the Mjolnir Worthiness Test for their characters at some point, and it’s hard to say just what qualities he has in particular that aren’t held by anyone else around other than a select few like Beta Ray Bill and Captain America. Obviously those qualities are tied to Norse virtues though centering on the warrior since killing’s acceptable (at least in combat as we see in Asgard against its threats, but then again some of the enchantment’s don’t work in Asgard since the time limit goes away while he’s there if memory serves), as well as honor and courage and unshakeable devotion to doing what’s right.
I tend to think of it in terms of Enneagram integration. Every personality has certain stresses that cause them to pull together and be their best, and certain stresses that cause them to break apart and yield to negative behaviors. People who are integrated tend to be what we would generally call virtuous people, while those who are not integrated kind of fall into a pit of bad behavior and low morals. Archetypes are detailed here. https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/
Mjolnir could be judging based on how psychologically integrated a person is, as one element of its test…. but remember that Mjolnir’s test is often context sensitive. Worthy could be essentially ‘would you do what Thor at his most psychologically healthy would do with this power in this situation’. That’s why some individuals are able to wield it in a crisis (because in that crisis, using the power to resolve that crisis is an appropriate and necessary measure), but lose their ability to wield it afterwards, and why Thor loses his ‘worthiness’ when he’s acting like a shit; he’s not psychologically his best in that moment, and may abuse the power.
Maxima has heroic principles and keeps unshakingly to them, even in the face of adversity. She does have her flaws (such as her temper, her cynicsm as to the motives of all men and ‘mostly accidentally’ destroying the mosque, as examples) but so does Thor, as you listed.
I think Maxima would pass, based on what we have seen of her.
Every superhero gets “unsettled” when they find a limitation to their powers.
Superman: Hey Wonder Woman you have a magic sword that can cut me?…I don’t like it.
Spiderman: Spider Slayers?! Why are you building Spider Slayers?!
Green Lantern: Sooo you’re wearing yellow again? Green’s a cool color. Just sayin’.
Kid walking past Batman; Hello Mr. Wayne.
“Could you tell my why Little Tiffany deserved to die?”
“That kid was about to start some shit, Zed!”
One of the more useful powers when committing a crime is being a shape shifter (aka Mystique).
The best way not to be charged with a crime is to make it blatantly obvious that someone else, in full view of witnesses and security cameras, was the one to do it.
On a related subject, how does Dabbler perform her ‘glamor’? If it is just a mental projection to those around her, then the instant she stepped in from of the cameras at the press conference the whole world would have seen her in all her purple four armed glory.
The trick with framing someone is you have to make sure they don’t have an alibi.
As far as Succubi glamors go, they’ve had to evolve with the times, so the glamor now includes a holographic element to trick non-meat brains.
Better NOT to be so blatant about it, making such an obvious effort to be recognized and recorded would seem strange especially given the framed victim (unless you actually had another power to force them to falsely confess to doing it) would protest it and have no evidence that he’s got any of the stolen stuff and point out in a world where Super-powers are known to exist that someone must have been impersonating him. You’d want to make it look like he just ‘accidentally’ was caught on camera rather than mugging for the camera and shouting his name every five minutes.
Just pick another villain to impersonate. 1) They don’t hang out much in public so they would not have a good alibi. 2) The police would suspect them of being the type to commit a crime anyway. 3) Villains always want the world to know how great they are and will flaunt their crimes. 4) All villains have to shout their own name every five minutes while committing any nefarious act. It is in the bylaws of the Guild of Nefarious Intent.
A word of warning: Just be sure to pick one that is weaker than you, in case he finds out what you did and comes after you for it.
– “The naked thief, stealing things wearing only a maid outfit.”
– “But then she’s not nak…”
– “Ssssh…”
Apron.
With pockets.
Yeeeeeah! ;)
Would that be the female version of The Invisible Man wearing a banana hammock?
‘The (Mostly) Naked Thief’. Have the ‘mostly’ be microscopic, and we’re good.
Wait, it’s considered an automatic felony add-on to use a super-power, any at all, to commit any sort of crime? So you’re somehow a worse criminal if you pick-pocket someone with telekinesis than reaching in and stealing their wallet, or spy on someone with telescopic vision instead of binoculars? That’s just not right.
Maybe not right, but that is just the way it is
The same as someone using steroids to bulk their muscles instead of using hard work is considered ‘cheating’
Except those aren’t the same, since for one a super who has enhanced strength due to their powers isn’t taking drugs or otherwise cheating that’s part of who he is, you’d need more along the lines of what Northstar did in his backstory after he learned about his flight powers he used them to take his less than stellar ability at ski-ing and become a gold-medalist instead (revoked when the truth finally came out).
By the same token not all powers or all crimes are created equal, and if you stick an automatic felony upgrade on any crime using any power even when the crime is identical to what someone doing it without powers is you’re effectively criminalizing possession of powers because you’re saying two otherwise equal crimes aren’t because the one had a power he used so you punish him more harshly not for his crime but for his tool. Like giving a voyeur with telescopic vision (something Superman did quite a bit of in the comics) a harsher sentence when anyone with binoculars could do the same thing and expect a lighter sentence. That’s inherently unjust.
Having harsher penalties based on basically being a super would cause escalating problems since if you’re going to punish someone more harshly simply because of who they are rather than because they deserve it they’re going to simply do worse things anyway since why not? They’re going to get unfairly punished anyway may as well make it so they honestly deserve it. Your use of a super-power should reasonably justify a harsher sentence or charge, like using fire powers to intimidate someone for a robbery as you’re basically threatening them with a weapon like a flame-thrower, but again the guy with a flame-thrower shouldn’t get a lighter sentence because he used a weapon like the flame-thrower instead of natural fire powers to create the intimidating flames.
Sorry, i only made it halfway through the comments before asking this, so im not sure if I am repeating but, if harem can only teleport based on her mass, could she becomes the human blob and teleport huge amounts?
Supers in the Grrlverse don’t store excess energy as bodyfat, so she’ll never be able to test that theory.
But she could increase her limit by beefing out?
I think she would just end up loosing teleport capacity till she was a naked bald bodybuilder woman vorping here and there. I guess Dabbler could cast an illusion spell of clothes on her.
So, she’ll never put on weight, and increase what 25% of her mass would be? Convenient.
…Brings up the interesting question of what certain…aspects…of the female super’s anatomies are made of, if not fat. And probably several other important questions, such as what they store excess energy as instead of fat. And where. And how. Probably more questions that it answers, really, which may have been your intent with that comment. If so, well played, good sir, well played.
*than. I suspect I find the lack of an editing system more annoying than most. HEIL GRAMMAR UND SPELLING!
I take more to mean “doesn’t make more fat to store excess energy,” which doesn’t imply that supers won’t have any fat at all. Having fat on the human body is a matter of genetics & it’s a survival mechanism to help during times of famine…But apparently the superhuman body just doesn’t accumulate more fat than what the human genome already has set for a “default level.”
Just occurred to me that due to her toughness and military background, Maxima is a literal hardass.
Dave, you can use that one.
Don’t, though.
…
Except maybe do.
I don’t know about Max being a hardass. Vehemence was doing pretty good at softening her up for a while there…
Assuming that Harem’s double agent thing is exactly as it appears (i.e., she’s really keeping tabs on Archon for Machina Industries, not the other way around) then Sydney’s shield preventing her from teleporting plus some trivial suggestions equals a way to hold Harem’s feet to the fire.
Example: Arclight or someone on the team suspects that Daphne is double agent-ing on them. A reason is devised for all of her to be in one physical location at the same time. Halo goes big shield up around her, with Max and possibly others inside as well. Really effective interrogation ensues, and perhaps Harem gets a sleepy armband x 5. Or Something https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/558
The key to Harem’s escape is to separate Syd from Shield-Orb, so defending Syd is at-least as important as intimidating Harem. I’m sure Math would **LOVE!-LOVE!-LOVE!-LOVE!-LOVE!** to be the one intercepting Harem’s attacks on Syd, but we might need one-or-more “less distract-able” bodyguards as backup…?
Just sayin’, Syd – make sure that shield is nice & big, to fit all your friends.
There is actually an easy way to tell when Harem is meeting Dues.
The collars work as GPS systems and monitor their bodies. Harem takes one off when she meets Dues. Any time Harem removes a collar she is to be considered suspect for anything that could be happening then
That’d just about do it, yeah. Unless she’s found a way to spoof the collars to transmit false biosigns.
Yay, and thanks Dave for the power exploration/discussion love!
So it is less like having several ‘selves’ and more like good old mundane multitasking or even comparable to using a time machine to do 5 different things all at once.
I think Sydney might be just plain wrong about how consciousness works. Maybe the brain is a cpu, which lets you organize your data, but your consciousness –the soul– is pure “software”.
So consciousness would not be a result of the brain, but the brain would be just the medium by which the consciousness interacts with surroundings and expresses itself.
One might even call it the ghost in the shell.