Grrl Power #324 – She should put all those answers on a shirt
So yeah, they missed something fairly obvious there, but they didn’t have much time to experiment. And when Sydney was saying “no whammy” she was hoping that Varia didn’t get feces-kinesis powers from her, projectile mucus, super miasma, or something else awful. Feces-kinesis would be a pretty awful power to have to fight against though. I’m pretty sure I’d surrender right away instead of facing some sort of poopocalypse.
Varia obviously answered some but not all questions about how her powers work, notably whether or not it’s always on when she’s touching someone and if it lasts after she breaks contact, but like I’ve said before, I’d like to get out of the habit of making sure everything gets explained right as it’s introduced. It’s fine to leave stuff for later, and that includes Vance’s introduction for the moment, what with the team leader popping in.
My original draft of panel 3 had Varia just saying “you’re adopted” and the girl with a surprised look on her face, but Xochitl isn’t a dick like that, so I changed it so she’s saying it to a kid who obviously already knows. That said, using her powers to tell if a child is related to their parents is trickier than telling if a brother and sister really are brother and sister since they would have fairly similar DNA, whereas their parents (hopefully) don’t. (Insert joke about the American deep south here. Or European royalty I guess.)
I’ll be at A-kon starting in the late morning. There’s not much going on Thursday, but I work with guest relations and help bus guests in from the airport and all that sort of stuff. The plans for a meetup this year besides trying to bump into each other at one of the webcomic panels is 8pm Friday in front of Media, which is a bar and grill in Atrium II (the main… well, atrium.) Follow me on Twitter if you aren’t already as it’s the easiest way to keep up while I’m at the con, assuming T-Mobile gets reception there. Sprint was mostly no bueno but I’ve switched now. I think I’m going to actually wear my battle pie chart shirt on Friday as the one Grrl Power shirt I have isn’t in good shape. I usually think about getting a new one made when it’s only 3 days to the next event when I’d want to wear it.
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So is there still a two-orb limit if both Halo and Varia are using orbs? Does looping in Varia allow three orbs in play?
…does Varia have to be touching Halo with a hand to share her powers? Can, like, Halo ride Varia piggyback and the two of them use four orbs at once?
This seems unlikely.
It would allow two concentration-heavy orbs to be used (for instance the PPO and the tentacle orb can both require paying very close attention for certain uses). Plus they could, for instance, both use relatively low concentration orbs (say the force field and the flyball – for routine flight) and also mentally control the other orbs to strike foes or push buttons. Standing back-to-back they could fight multiple foes using these or similar techniques.
So there is some additional versatility to be had, in certain demanding circumstances. But it is not much of an improvement. And unlikely to be better than various of the other gestalt powers that we have seen Varia gain (e.g. turning into fire or ice). So it seems to be an unexciting option, which I doubt that the author would have gone for. Most powers or power sets we have seen in the comic are interesting and/or desirable. Whilst that is rather dull.
This seems to be the most likely option, if using the assumption that one or the other need keep a hand in contact with the other. Thus only leaving three hands free, between them.
This and variations on the thought have been brought up by numerous folks. And, yes, it seems likely that if Varia only needs skin contact (unlike Halo who must have palm contact, with the orbs) then they could free up an extra hand by such means.
Most people make this assumption, because all the examples we have seen have had Varia touching her gestalt partner. However every example has always been Varia either initially establishing the gestalt, or doing a brief demonstration of the process. So the behaviour would be exactly the same if Varia only need touch her partner to initially set up the gestalt.
If you think about the practicalities of field work it would be most inconvenient to have to walk around holding hands (or riding your partner like a surf board). Plus it would rapidly become very inconvenient for DaveB to have to always portray these two, in such a way, should they have an extended mission together.
So I think it more likely that they only need the skin contact when initially setting up the gestalt, and that it may then last either until a new gestalt is formed (but which would not require the pair to remain together at all.* If the gestalt is with an infant or a geriatric (or anyone else unsuited to field work) then this is probably preferable.
But if that option is not available then it will be interesting to see how Varia defends her partner, bearing in mind that she can gestalt with anybody, even non-supers. She may need to routinely be paired with Halo, not to share the orbs, but for Halo to provide shield services for a muggle in over their depth. But if that is the only way to get a power needed to save the world then that would be vital.
* Speaking generally here. Sydney’s orbs do not like being separated from their controller though. So, for a Halo/Varia gestalt, I think they will need to remain close to one another.
Unless the orbs are willing to be split up between each of them. Which would be facinating in its own right. If exploring a dangerous mastermind’s base, and having to separate, who gets to have the shield orb? Would the tentacle orb provide the next-best orb to improvise a defense? Who gets to be the pedestrian?
I have mentioned elsewhere, but might as well also say it here, that based on page 406 /archive 2029 it is certain that Varia does not need to touch a powered person with her hand to access power. So, imagine a special glove into which both Sydney and Varia can insert their hands, the backsides of their hands touching each other. The glove would have 10 fingers, five bending each way. Both sides of the glove is a “palm”, and both palms (perhaps the fingers also) of the glove would have holes allowing contact with the orbs, and so 4 orbs total could be handled this way.
Before going so far as to actually construct such a glove, Varia needs to do some more testing with Sydney. When they touch, can Varia mentally command an orb to move toward her palm? That’s a basic power, independent of the orbs’ specific functions.
If Varia always gets a different power, than that of the person she is physically contacting, maybe she can’t do that. On the other hand, it is the orbs that grant powers here, not a person. It might not matter what someone can already do, independently from the orbs –if the person can interact with the orbs at all (besides getting bonked, such as on page 120 /arc 709), then the full suite of orb-powers ought to be accessible by Varia.
Honestly, Syndey’s pretty light-weight and Varia’s quite sturdy — why faff around with funky gloves when the same comic you referenced shows Sydney could just ride her piggyback, if she rolled up the cuffs of her pants to ensure skin-to-skin contact?
That would be a lesser-mobility configuration of these two heroines. Not usually a good choice in hectic circumstances.
in theory, if they linked elbows they could each rock two…i think
Here’s a thought: what if that isn’t the power she gets from Sydney?
Based on what Varia says about her power, so far as she knows the power she gets from a given person never changes. If we assume that to be true and assume that the power she gets from Sydney is the ability to use the orbs, that implies she would have gotten that same power before Sydney even found the orbs; I think we can all agree that sounds weird.
Thus, I see three possibilities:
1) The power she gets from somebody actually can change under certain circumstances, and finding and bonding with the orbs was such a circumstance. Before she found the orbs, she would have given some other power.
2) Sydney was always destined to get the orbs or something like that. (Maybe she’s a double secret space princess of whatever species made the orbs.) Sharing the orbs was always the power she gives; it just wouldn’t have been very useful when the orbs were still underwater.
3) Sharing the orbs was never the power she gives; it’s just a side effect that something about Varia’s gestalt power makes the orbs think she’s also Sydney. Sydney gives some non-obvious power and they haven’t figured out what yet.
So far as she knows. Has Varia dealt with many supers whose powers-slash-very-being were fundamentally altered by alien magitech? Before Sydney found the orb, she was a regular joe; now she literally can’t get more than a few meters from them. So obviously they’ve bonded to Sydney in some fashion — and it’s likely Varia has no idea how that kind of bond would interact with her own gestalt.
It’s also possible that the orbs were made by the same technology that created supers in the first place, and thus break a lot of rules that powers might otherwise have (like Harem being unable to teleport through Halo’s shield).
Dave, Dave, please remove the connection from speech bubble four to speech bubble six. It’s so confusing.
First time through the archives and I figured out why Varia turns into lightning when she touched Ren! His ability is overclocking, by which I mean amplifying the electrical signals to and from his brain allowing for enhanced perception and strength. Varia is manifesting that externally instead of internally!
Is it possible to to output the orb in different ways? High Frequency Pulse Lasers would slice through almost anything and make tiny explosions as they did so for example. A hail of small projectiles would make for a nice bullet hell, and a burst of plasma would basically form a video game shotgun. Also, can she shield be manifest differently? Say, a flat deflector plane? Or a monomoly knife?
Doing a re-read and finally noticed that the orbs started orbiting Varia in the middle two panels of the bottom row. She hasn’t learned that Sydney has to touch the orbs to make the powers happen yet. So I’m betting that Varia could do a leg-hug around Sydney and then they’d be able to use 4 orbs simultaneously.
Kinda shipping Xochitl and Sydney, tbh
Huh.
I know what Varia’s power is.
Genetic Splice/Metafilter.
Halo’s orbs are coded to her DNA (most likely), and the only way for them to recognize another person as a valid user would be for them to have Sydney’s DNA as an integrated part of their body, even if only temporarily.
This also proves that *every* human technically has the DNA to become a super, but they lack the specific “Activation Gene” to allow them to actually express a power.
Varia, meanwhile, can take-on someone else’s DNA and put it through her own Activation Gene, which leads me to believe that there is something different *besides* that Gene which effects _how_ a given power is expressed.
Oh hey, there’s a Chekhov’s gun that still hasn’t been fired
It doesn’t look as though anyone else commented on this, so I have to ask….
The adopted kid says “duh, my parents are White”, while not being obviously Black or Asian or Jewish or NA/FN or any other ethnicity I can think of. Does anyone have any solid idea of what “race” this kid is supposed to be?