Grrl Power #345 – KA-POW + KA-BLAM = KA-CHING!
That’s recruit pay Sydney. Wait till you make Corporal.
Most stories are about ordinary people in extraordinary situations, but at this point you guys know I prefer writing about extraordinary people in ordinary situations. I don’t think making Sydney well off will hamper my story telling at all. Besides, as has been said many times in the comments (and I think at least few in the comic itself) that having super powers usually means you can make a seriously good living totally within the law. Why rob a bank when you can make more money by telekinetically unloading freighters in 20 minutes each, or lay transcontinental cable in a fraction of the normal time with your water breathing and super strength combo? That makes getting someone to potentially get shot at with bullets, lasers and lightning is a tougher sell unless you make it worth their while. Of course there are thrill seekers who want the adrenaline of either breaking the law or stopping that type, or they’re sold on nationalism or responsibility or whatever ideology motivates them, still, a healthy paycheck helps keep them around and provides stability to the team composition.
It was challenging to write so many pages of the comic without the topic of pay coming up. I don’t think I’ll say what the exact dollar amount is, but it’s something in the order of “you can have one jet, or ten supers per year” Admittedly that’s a huge range depending on what jet you’re talking about (and whether you include the R&D costs, maintenance staff and infrastructure, etc.) One Heatwave is not worth one jet in terms of crime fighting power, (not that people do a lot of crime fighting in jets, but you get what I mean) Ten Heatwaves… arguably worth one jet, or at least ten Heatwave level supers. One Maxima is worth an entire battle group, so mileage varies, but at least supers don’t require nearly the same support staff. Their insurance is rather a bit higher though.
The prior page ended kind of vaguely, which wasn’t ideal, but that’s because I wanted to save Sydney’s entire reaction for this page. I realize now that I’ve drawn it, her reaction is actually quite similar to Fry’s, if somewhat more terse. (She doesn’t faint, but we’ll get to that.) I thought it was more heavily inspired by Ren and Stimpy where Stimpy gives up $47 million to be back living with Ren, but looking it up on youtube, Ren’s reaction is just to get angry and smack Stimpy around. This is one of those pages that’s been floating around in my head for so long it probably has several influences.
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And now the right wingers get upset about the government paying high wages to anyone for anything (paying lots for military hardware is okay, paying lots to multi-billion dollar companies bec
ause they want it is good too, but Gawd forbid you pay actual human beings!)
I haven’t actually heard any right wing people complain about paying lots of money into the military. They mostly want as much money put into the military as possible.
The problem right wingers tend to have to simplify things is a lot of this tons of money being spent is most of the time there’s a lot of pork barrel spending into vanity projects and the like. Not that they don’t have some hypocrites in their number and things are never as simple as all of that. But the base issue is spending money where it’s not needed.
Nick: In the U.S., Republicans generally resist efforts to increase military pay/benefits. As Eric notes, they prefer spending on hardware, and specifically on the ‘big stuff’ (missiles, planes, drones, etc). They also prefer spending on offensive power, while shorting on protective gear.
Rumsfield’s infamous “You go to war with the army you have” comments are an example of this line of thinking. The U.S. controlled the timetable for the Iraq war from the outset; it would’ve been completely possible to delay three-six months to order top-level body armor and vehicles equipped with anti-IED shielding on the underside. It’s not like we were facing an opponent that was projecting power outside their own borders at that point–there was no need to rush in half-cocked. That aspect of things was simply not important to the leadership.
I think we need to pay our soldiers more money. As a right winger, I think the way we treat our soldiers is…ridiculous. From the VA Hospital crisis to the way the Vietnam Vets when they came back. And I was speaking from my own personal experience. I’ve talked to both republicans and democrats and every right winger I’ve personally talked to on it says the soldiers need more money and better body armor while the left wingers I’ve talked to have always talked passionately about shorting the military budget and didn’t even hesitate to say soldiers got overpaid.
I don’t disagree with Eric at all. I just think when we get to generalizations we get over simplified views.
The pay in the military has always been one of my biggest gripes, especially when the media always makes a big deal when professional athletes are negotiating new contracts and whine and gripe about not getting what they feel they are worth when they are offered a $3.8 million contract as opposed to the $4.3 million contract they feel they deserve when our military, police, firemen, nurses and teachers are forced to cut corners or are a paycheck from financial ruin.
OK. I’m getting off my soapbox now.
This must be a specific US thing (underpaid soldiers), as a friend of mine signed up for the Dutch Navy, and his pay per month is twice of what I’m likely to get per month for the next 10 years, assuming I actually get a job with career opportunities (in my field).
Ivain, the pay in the US military is far better since we ended the draft. However, unlike the Netherlands, the pay differential in the US is not between private and military pay, but between private and civil service pay rates. It *used* to be that civil service was a low-paying option, with good job security to compensate for the low pay. Today, the combination of benefits and pay for civilian government workers averages twice what their equivalents in the private sector here get, ….and they still get the job security. the major problem with that is that the States which have ladled out the huge pay increases and benefit increases over the last 40 years are now also the States closest to bankruptcy, such as California and Illinois, and cities like Detroit and Chicago. Under our federal system these all have to raise their own revenues, and now find voters balking at paying what government employee unions bargained for, …..bargained for with the same legislators they were making political contributions to and encouraging their members to do campaign work for.
Not sure what civilian government jobs you are looking at but my experience is that most of the highly skilled US federal civilian workers get paid slightly less than their private sector equivalents (or not at all when they get furloughed during “sequestration”). I’m also of the opinion that the enlisted soldiers get underpaid for putting their lives on the line to fight the nutcase/fanatic/sadistic/warmongering/militant/misogynist/bullying/power-hungry people that make up ISIS.
I read somewhere that the military has a hell of a time getting congress to budget them for stuff they need. Instead they get budgeted to purchase a lot of things that they try to tell congress that they don’t need. I think one of those was tanks, there’s apparently a lot more tanks than the experts at the pentagon feel they need, but it’s something congress likes paying for apparently.
come to think of it, that might explain why they used a tank in the demonstration at the press conference.
Tanks and Planes and such are big and flashy and the factories that make the parts and assemble them are in certain Congressional districts so they keep building them so the politicians can all yell “SEE? We care about NATIONAL SECURITY and OUR MILITARY!!” so they can be reelected. (The whole conjuring with “National Security!!!” shite is another rant for another day.) Unless I’m completely bugfrigged in the head the price of one tank would equal the pay for YEARS of payroll for the average platoon. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that hardware is important, but when the people who are supposed to be using the hardware are yelling “GODDAMNIT WE HAVE ENOUGH!!!” You might wanna listen
Don’t forget the bragging about the jobs they saved/created when it comes re-election time as well.
It’s a good soapbox to be on, feel free to rant some more.
Don’t let me pull you off your soapbox. One reason I hate watching sports is the overinflated salaries those guys get for doing something kids do in an empty lot for free. Not that they aren’t talented at it or that it’s not hard. Obviously they are and it is hard. But they cry and cry that they want more money while teachers have to spend money out of their own pockets to pay for the supplies they use through the year.
Hell, there was some college athletes demanding to be paid for sports. Excuse me buckos, you ARE being paid. A damn college education is expensive. Though I say let them get paid. Minimum wage and no college free ride.
We need to pay our real heroes more, and sports heroes less.
Not going to happen simply because of how economics works.
Sports sell merchandise. Good players sell Sports. Players get payed for pushing said merch by playing the sport. Its all private sector money.
How do military and schools get payed? Taxes. What do people hate? Taxes. Until you privatize or incentivize giving the government money to pay their employees with those employees aren’t going to be getting much money compared to the private sector. This is why private school teachers get payed more than public school ones. Its also why private schools in general give a better education.
You know a thought just hit me.
Kickstarter style taxation. instead of voting on new levies, projects are presented to the populace with totals on how much they would cost.and simply saying, “If X is donated we’ll do it. Heavy donators get X.”
*shrug* Likely wouldn’t work to well but hey, I’ve seen some crazy stuff get funded on Kickstarter.
There would have to be some kind of controls put into place to prevent the people/corps with all of the money having all of the power.
Why? They have all the power now, why would that change?
The idea that the US of A of still by, and for “the people” is a joke. We have government by the lobbyists, for the people who can afford lobbyists and of the people who will become high paid lobbyists upon leaving office.
Government in the 18th Century frequently raised money for projects by a lottery not unlike some states these days. Need a bridge? A courthouse? Buy some tickets.
I agree. With all of this; https://www.military1.com/army/article/402211-how-much-stronger-is-the-us-military-compared-with-the-next-strongest-power & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures spent on the bells and whistles more should be done to address the imbalance in spending on the actual men & women who do & did the fighting.
As an independent voter who has felt pushed into the Democrat camp by my utter disgust with the current state of the Republican party (I voted for Regan, both terms, and Bush, Sr., first term), and I have never once heard a left wing person speak a single word against soldier pay. It would be an indefensible position to take…
But I have seen a great many Republicans use “support the troops” as a political tool while voting against life and limb saving protections for the soldiers. The entire planning for the Iraq war, if it can be given such a dignified label as planning, was done with a shoestring budget in mind. The general who recommended that 500,000 troops be sent in was sidelined and essentially forced to resign by the civilian politicians who thought they had a better idea of how to conduct a war than a career officer. It’s no coincidence that civilians deciding how to conduct war in Iraq was just as disastrous for American interests as when the same thing was done during the Vietnam war.
And the “Swift Boating” of John Kerry was completely disgusting. There you had Republicans denigrating a decorated officer’s military career solely because he was running for political office for the opposing party. And purely because his own service record stood up so strongly against that of Bush. If any Democrat dared to speak the same slanders against any former soldier who happened to be running for public office under the Republican ticket you’d hear the most outraged wailing and gnashing of teeth out of the Republicans and Fox News Entertainment that was ever heard.
“Swift Boating”: asking the people who were there what they thought, instead of just accepting a political PR pro’s word for it.
How dare they?
For me it wasn’t the questioning (that should be done for every politican who runs) It was the manner of it. That whole mess of a campaign is a perfect example on how races went from “Here’s what I want to do and Why you should vote for me” to “Why my opponent is a worthless human being who is the enemy of all we stand for”
Is that anything like brining up thirty year old dui’s, wether or not someone might have engaged in some bullying in high school, and dogs in carriers on rooftops? Or is it only disgusting when the other side does it?
No. “Swift Boating”: Lining up people long after the fact to express their suddenly formed strongly held opinions, revealed upon investigation to be false allegations, about events which they neither saw fit to voice at the time when the officer in question wasn’t running for office, nor which they saw fit to include in that officer’s record.
How dare they?
On the other hand, George Bush is on record as failing to fulfill his duty obligations. That record is a statement of fact, not opinion.
But really, if you’re so credulous as to believe that a blatant attempt at downplaying the strengths of a political rival are anything other than a political hack job, you’re too stupid for words to describe. Trying to turn a rivals strength into a weakness is a common political ploy, and anyone with two brain cells to rub together should be able to spot the tells. That requirement appears to exclude you, unfortunately.
On the other hand, George Bush is on record as failing to fulfill his duty obligations. That record is a statement of fact, not opinion.
Based on what? Dan Rather’s spurious discovery of a memo proving it, written by a man who conveniently died shortly before this went public, which was proven to have been produced by equipment that didn’t yet exist at the time it was supposed to have been written? As far as the “Swift Boating” of John Kerry, (who served in Vietnam,) I believe most of those guys either served with him, or served with guys who did. His hand picked “band of brothers” aren’t the only ones who get to say what they remember.
Don’t believe me, a good sense of credulity is a good thing. Just don’t also believe others, either. Believing what you’d like to believe, perhaps because what you hear plays to your political leanings, is the path of the fool. This is how a great many idiots are convinced, to this day, that Obama was born in Kenya, or is a Muslim, or is the anti-Christ.
Do the smallest amount of research, and you can find impartial citations of fact. You might start with wikipedia.
I have actually discussed it with people that claimed to be democrats that flat out said that they felt we gave the soldiers too much and listed a whole bunch of stuff like housing, food, and pay. Wouldn’t listen to me when I said we don’t do enough for the people that put their lives on the line, even going so far as to interrupt me.
Despite being a republican, I think both parties are a bunch of bozos, like South Park said, your choices are a douche and a turd sandwich. I consider myself specifically an economic conservative. One does not simply spend themselves out of debt. With many social issues, I side more with the liberals, but overall I find myself on the conservative side of the aisle. And even I find myself disgusted by many of the abuses of my own party.
Swift boating was real members of his unit. I guess you didn’t complain when Sen Tokyo Rose McCain got swiftboated by Trump. McCain was just run off a native American reservation this week. McCain killed 134 US sailors on one of his 3 crashes, he would have been kicked out of the military before he became a songbird prisoner if he was not an admirals son. Not everyone in the military are Heroes. Chuck Yeager even admitted to committing war crimes before he died.
Republican voters mostly do support better pay/respect/treatment/body armor for the troops. The Republican party politicians manipulate that into billions dollar contracts for planes and tanks and the like. Voters don’t offer retired Congressmen and Senators 5 days a month,1/2 $million a year, consulting and lobbying jobs when they leave office. Defense Contractors do.
Dems are every bit as bad in their own depressing ways.
Aboo, you are correct, there. I’ll even lob a softball at you. Every Democratic Party voter I’ve ever talked to believes that we need to set the minimum wage at a live-able level. If you work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, that should be enough to support yourself at a bare minimum, and ideally at least one other person.
The way to achieve that is to get the MW to that level, and then have it be adjusted via the Cost Price Index to account for inflation.
Democratic politicians, however, don’t do that. Instead, they wait until things get completely ridiculous, where MW workers on full-time plus cannot even manage bare sustenance. Then they champion a one-time increase as part of the campaign. Even if they follow through on the promise (not always done, of course), they invariably then let the matter lie fallow again. So, natural inflationary pressures arise over time, and in 10-20 years, they’ve got another round of having an issue where desperate people need to vote for them. It’s cynical and disgusting, but if you’re an MW proponent, they’re usually the only game in town.
The problem is the minimum wage is not meant to be a wage someone can live on, much less support a family on, and hasn’t been for decades. It meant to be what you get paid at your first job, usually when you’re a teenager, and only last until you start getting promotions and raises and better paying jobs. If someone in their late 20s to early 30s with child support payments to multiple baby-momma, or even a spouse, is still working a minimum wage job at McDonald’s, that sounds like a personal problem.
Except that there simply isn’t enough higher level jobs for EVERYONE that isn’t a teenager without any dependants to be above minimum wage?
That, and anything from someone changing career, needing to start in at the ground floor or with “personal problems” like cancer or accident or trauma holding them back…yeah, there are plenty of people that need minimum wage to be enough to basically survive.
Part of the problem is workers are paying for Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico to collect social security disability for not speaking English, while everyone on their island speaks a form of Spanish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States#History
And you seriously think that prices aren’t going to raise when salaries are raised? You think the new money is going to rain down from a mythical magic money tree?
Here’s an easy solution that will also fix Social Security, poverty and Welfare at the same time:
Everyone pays a special flat tax of X% on all income and/or capital gains. No exemptions. That’s fair.
That money is divided up equally and sent out to every adult citizen annually. Everyone get’s it. Currently homeless people get it, you and I get it, retirees get it, the Koch Brothers and George Soros get it. That’s also fair.
Ideally the average Joe get’s back pretty close to what he put’s in.
You would lose at least 60% of that to pay for the supporting bureaucracy and red tape. Another 30% would likely get looted for the General Fund….that’s the main reason Social Security is broken.
Government wastes money, the bigger the government the more it wastes. Why would you want to give them more money to waste? Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal it doesn’t matter….you should not ever trust them with money.
That wouldn’t fix anything. You would drastically reduce the amount of tax revenue. Social Security would go bankrupt next year instead of in the next decade.
Flat taxes are not fair, they’re hugely regressive because no matter how much you earn, a load of bread costs the same amount.
the left wingers I’ve talked to have always talked passionately about shorting the military budget and didn’t even hesitate to say soldiers got overpaid.
I have to say that I have seen far more Republicans claim that the left says this than I have actually heard the left say it. And that’s a statement I have to use about more and more issues this days. I’ve got six years of Navy time in my history and my little brother retired with 20 some in the Air Force. The military budget for this country is ridiculous… but the excess is decidedly not in the wages of our service members. Especially not our enlisted. It’s better by far than when I was serving, but its a long way from being a realistic representation of what they earn.
Which side was in control when 6 billion got lost by the state department, millions spent on embassy art but a gay ambassador to a muslim asks for more security a month before he died without it? Oh yea Ready for Hillary to give back the $40milliono she took from nations that execute gays while sect of state.
The problem is the definition of “not needed” varies rather dramatically. For some those human beings don’t “need” to be paid that much. For others having more jets that we have pilots trained to fly them is a necessity.
So when some one talks about unnecessary military spending don’t assume their definition of necessary is rational. Yeah it sounds good when some one says “down with unnecessary military spending” until you find out they consider the military itself unnecessary.
Having spent my entire working life as a civil service employee of the Federal Government, I can assure you that both parties have no problem wasting taxpayer money on pork barrel vanity projects. I’ve seen the closure of an unneeded field office vetoed simply because the Democrat Congressman for that district didn’t want to see that many fed employees laid off in his district. I know of another unnecessary field office that was created for no purpose other than to appease a Republican Congressman who wanted to be able to brag about bringing high paying federal jobs to his district. Politicians wasting taxpayer money to bring pork to their districts is a bipartisan thing.
It’s called “emotive conjugation”. My district gets a fair share. Your district gets stimulus spending. That guy’s district gets pork.
Speaking on behalf of a good number of right wingers…. I don’t have a problem with people getting paid good salaries. But I DO have a problem with the supervisor of a school district having an unlimited expense account and a salary HIGHER than that of the President.
If you don’t have a problem with that, then you need to re-evaluate something
Isn’t the “salary” of the United States President something like $400k a year. Quite a few Middle Management Corporate types get more than that.
No middle management I know of gets that much or even close to that. The people who get that are upper management, effectively VPs and even then, most VPs probably make around about 200-300K. What differentiates them is they usually get stock grants and large amounts of it. If the company does well, the stock grants (they don’t pay for them unlike options) can give them net worths in the millions but the aren’t allowed to sell the stock immediately. They usually have to announce they will sell X% at least (IIRC) 3 or more months in advance.
Most politicians like military spending on both sides as it helps their most prolific contributors, military companies. Its truly galling to think that combat pay is only an extra $255 per month. https://www.militaryrates.com/military-pay-incentives-hostile
Yeah I was counting the stocks and other bennies when I said Management.
Here’s the article I found about Presidental pay and benefits.
https://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepresidentandcabinet/a/presidentialpay.htm
Middle Management is typically 100-250k a year. Incomes higher than that include sales commissions.
… Plus the president gets a lot of perks that corporate america doesn’t, such as guaranteed salary till death. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge the president his salary, or his perks. I do begrudge appointed officials making more than he does, and doing half-assed jobs in the process, and there being no way to remove them.
For a district supervisor to be making that kind of money, pay cash for 3 separate homes on an unlimited expense account, and then walk away tax free with all 4 homes is obscene.
A comedian once said, and I always remembered it… “The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans believe that Corporations have the right to be as greedy and corrupt as they want to without interference, whereas Democrats feel that all the greed and corruption should be in the hands of the government, where it rightfully belongs!”
I suppose it matters greatly where you live and what you do. My salary is in that range and I am no where near middle management. And I make no sales commissions, despite participating in various capture activities. Last year my ‘bonus’ was 50 shares of stock (worth about $1,500.00), and my performance review was at the highest level. I typically manage between 5 and 30 persons on a project, and I consider middle management to be two levels up from me, managing 100+ persons.
But then I live in the DC metro area and work for a large IT company. I occasionally pick up a real estate guide when I make a business trip and just about anywhere but the coasts for what I paid for my home on a postage stamp sized lot I could have a larger home on a 5-20 acre lot with a separate 2-3 car garage, and typically a barn sized ‘shed’ for the necessary tractor and accessories (mower attachment, plow blade attachment, flatbed attachment, etc.) needed to maintain the lot. But then I’d have a very hard time finding a job at my current salary. So I plan to make my money while I can and then retire to a more pastoral setting. I’m quite partial to Montana, despite the harsh winters.
” Still, we can’t justify paying a recruit this much, so we had you reclassified as materiel. ”
” Okay, but why is my check made out to Air Force One? “
“Well lets just say that if the President asks for a Piggy Back Ride you give him one.”
Air Force one is planes, and generally airforce controlled.
marine One is helicopters and generally marine controlled.
so if he hitches a ride with a flying super, do they use the callsign “archon one”?
So would there be a Navy One if he was a Naval ship or an Army one if he’s riding in a Humvee?
These are aircraft callsigns, so they don’t apply for non-aircraft.
Note that Marine One is /any/ aircraft that’s marine-operated. The designation depends on who’s piloting, not what kind of vehicle it is.
Navy One and Army One have been used at certain points, but it’s very very rare. Executive One applies if it’s a civilian aircraft. It too is very very rare.
A flying super would therefore be Executive One or Archon One depending on affiliation.
What do I know about military callsigns I’m a Civvie? =P But it was a moment of curiosity. Just what are the military Ground/Sea transports the president happens to be on called?
The actual callsign (what it’s called when speaking over the radio) for Airforce One is “David 14.” Which always made me wonder; whatever happened to the first 13 Davids?
O.o
Outdated & replaced? Not American (Not an Earthling either technically, but I hang my hat Down Under), but I’ve never heard of any of them getting shot down…
probably security decoys. and that David 14 designation has probably been changed to something else by now, especially since we KNOW about it. and if WE know about it, then the “bad guys” do too…
In the event of Supers attack on the President. Sydney flying POTUS inside her shield, the same as she did with Harem, would potentially be an ideal option. If the shield was big enough, like 15ft diameter, the air would last for hours. She could fly him at top speed (something over her established 400mph) half way across the country if need be.
Now I want to see this. :) Harem switched between lying on her side and sitting with her legs crossed. The POTUS would have to get a seat somehow. I wondered if Sydney could fashion one with her tentacle orb, but she couldn’t make one inside her shield, and that would be three powers at once. Will Archon make a specially designed seat for VIP transport?
The Secret Service will totally shove the Prez to the ground if they think it’s necessary for safety. I think sitting “on the floor” would be completely acceptable in the midst of a super trying to harm the Prez
If he is ‘too good’ to sit on the ‘ground’ while being rescued, then they should leave him for the bad guys to use as a cheap piñata
Heh, once again she’s down to a single shoe.
Yo , Max ,
Sandy, Broke Sydney !!!
Probably the first time today that Sydney has managed to ignore the menstrual cycle that she woke up with this morning…
Now I really, really hope we see Sidney do a little out of character uber splurging on geeky stuff. I don’t see her going all High Roller, but I could see her little apartment stuffed with signed comics, movie props, and the like. That or Nathan Fillion in Carbonite…
Yeah, considering her unboxing stuff earlier, I can very much see this happening…
She’s going to need a bigger Cosplay Makeup Box…
Just to let you know as someone who has an FN five seven ( I am guessing you want it to be kinda realistic, but if you want it to be fake then ignore me) the barrel does not tilt up like most pistols, it slides backward; also there is no guide rod, the spring is wrapped around the barrel, most of your parts look right though there aren’t that many screws, they are almost all push pens. All in all been a fan since one of the first page, GLHF, and keep posting.
The way the Five seveN fits together, I’m not sure what Sydney did is even possible, or that a few missing screws would have prevented it. Just goes to show how much she has to learn.
BTW, this is the diagram I’m using for reference. I didn’t realize those were push pins. I guess Sydney didn’t know what to call them either.
“In any case where an author is ignorant of a fact or some terminology, it should be assumed that the character speaking is, as well, unless such an assumption is completely untenable.”
I was just trying to help him, hence my comment at the beginning. Mostly I was trying to comment on the barrel looking as it tilted up as she drew the slide and appearance of a guide rod, now that I look at it again I am not sure if it is a guide rod or just a peace of her shirt, kinda hard to tell. That said it is not like a mind too much or want him to redraw it, just trying to let him know.
If you are going to outfit them with FN57s there is the tiny problem of only one manufacturer of the ammo, & its in Europe. You have to order it in advance.
Not sure where you are getting the barrel is tilting up, it looks to me that she is inserting the barrel into the top piece, with the rest of the weapon on the table
Alright, this page SEALS IT! That last panel has me convinced that your style is partially inspired by Tank-Girl!
Absolutely love it!
Read this literally a few minutes after figuring out how much (or rather, how little) I’ll be making over the year as things stand. Good for Sydney, though!
I had an idea that I found rather hilarious, and I thought I’d bring it up here since this is the most recent page at this time. It would start with the heroes talking about lame powers, and then someone would mention a hero based in Colorado. He is cursed to always die from freak accidents and bad luck, but is gifted with the power to wake up back in his bed a few seconds later. He goes around in an orange parka with a big hood. And yes, he goes by the name of… Kenny.
…Perhaps the action that activates his power is some random guy/a friend of his saying the activation phrase…
“Oh my God! They killed Kenny…”
it would be more dependent on the second part “You Bastards!” either as a required second part, or the “they killed kenny” being a reminder for the activation phrase.
If I remember a Southpark movie (or was it just merely an episode?) where they revealed why there are so many Kennys showing up in sequential order…For every Kenny that dies, his parents have another baby that comes out wearing the same orange parka & they name him Kenny.
…Which still doesn’t explain why every “new” Kenny manages to grow up fast enough to still be in the same grade at school as the other guys…
Of course, per the discussion of Wolverine back in the day, it might just be that Kenny simply has the ability to serially reincarnate, and thus has become completely blase about death. (Hell, I remember a Marvel Comics character like that. Captain Immortal, I think–he was part of the “Great Lakes Avengers” that Hawkeye and Mockingbird hooked up with after they left the real Avengers group. IIRC, both of them had killed someone–Hawkeye killed the living-brain thing that led the Kree and was threatening to destroy Earth, and Mockingbird had killed her brainwashing rapist–and Captain America didn’t like that. In retrospect, Captain America was kind of an asshole in that time-period.)
I remember that one too, but I thought it was Mr. Immortal. I remember one time they were like, “Is he?” “Yep, dead as a doornail. Should be alright in a couple of minutes.”
Cap’s usually ok but yeah there’s been times where he was a REAL ass about something.
For comparison, this is what ACTUAL military people get paid per month (unless noted elsewhere):
file:///C:/Users/Bryce/Downloads/2015MilitaryPayChart.pdf
Page one, footnote #5 shows what Sydney would be making in *our* world. It’s not much at all to start. Sydney would then be earning pretty much every enlisted bonus in there, from Hazard, flyer, demolitions, etc. and they’d be making up new ones…
That said, the military get paid twice a month (beginning and middle), not every two weeks. It makes February the best months.
Whoops:
https://www.dfas.mil/dam/jcr:7061e0ca-a436-42f9-aa30-1a93b6454aa3/2015MilitaryPayChart.pdf
The flip side is that Archon appears to be a non-DoD organization, I’m guessing that all supers are automatically assigned status as a special-skills operative of some sort with a high pay grade.
Actually, Archon IS a new Branch under the DoD:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/953
Since there are four weeks in a month and the beginning and middle of the month are two weeks apart, how is that not every two weeks?
ummm – think about that for a moment….
4 weeks is 4×7 days = 28 days
How many months have only 28 days…
As an example – let’s say the month is August and the first paycheck came out on 3 August. Two weeks later (17 August) another check is issued, then two weeks after that (31 August) yet another check comes out – 1 month, 3 checks. Most months it will be 2 checks, but occasionally it works out to be 3.
Another way to look at it is that a year has a little over 52 weeks (52 weeks is 364 days – one shy of a regular year and 2 shy of a leap year). Getting paid twice a month would be 12×2 = 24 checks but getting paid every 2 weeks is 52/2 = 26 checks.
Which is why when you retire from the government they give you a single check for an entire month so you don’t get any of those extra paychecks that would give you a few dollars more to survive on. So you only get 12 big check that are in total less than what you’d have gotten from the 26 smaller checks.
It’s the difference between being paid every 15.22 days (twice a month, averaged over the year) or every 14 days (two weeks).
Because every month doesn’t have 28 days. Paid every two weeks is 52 weeks divided by 2 is 26 paychecks per year. Paid twice is a month is 12 months times 2 times is 24 paychecks per year.
Military is paid on the 1st of the month & the 15th of the month. It’s that second paycheck that you have to make stretch a little farther.
You just might be surprised how many people have trouble around the end of the month…
You’d have thought they would have made it the 1st & the 16th, which would have spread it evenly for all the months with 30 days, instead of just 28 (February).
That way, March 1st would seem to come ‘early’ and feel like a bonus.
Do you think I’d get a reward for pointing out they’ve been doing it all wrong? ;-)
I might be giving away my age but originally military paydays were on the 15th and 30th but in an accounting trick to help balance the budget they moved it to the 1st. Which moved 1 pay cycle into the next fiscal year . I think that was 1988.
Now that makes sense. Thanks.
They switched it at the end of one fiscal year to move pay checks to the next fiscal (maybe calendar) year in the very late 80s or early 90s.
It was before my ETS, anyway.
Every two weeks = 26 paychecks a year
Twice a month = 24 paychecks a year
Yet another way our active military are underpaid, they get shafted two paychecks (and the 4% additional pay that should be in those checks) a year.
They really get budgeted pay for the year, it’s just sliced up this way.
But yes – the fact a lot of new recruits with families end up on food stamps is deplorable.
I grew up in a large military town, and it is disgraceful that the families of lower rank enlisted have to scrape by on so little. The discount by shopping for necessities on Base shouldn’t be the only way to make ends meet.
Most of the “on-base discount” consists of lack of taxes…No sales tax, no excise tax, etc.
When you see how much that government actually taxes civilians, it really makes you notice how badly the government is price-gouging on the whole civilian population for everything they buy.
Its awesome how far she got for an amateur putting a gun together from the parts rather then a standard field strip XD
The real fun will come when Peggy gets out the stopwatch.
please note that there is a booklet AND her Ipad thingy WITH PICTURES showing her how to put it together too… so, yes, I’m impressed that she got as far as she did for what i think might be her first time putting it together EVER… but…. if that Ipad is set up how i think it is, it’ll be practically impossible for her to have put it together wrong in the first place… IF she’s actually FOLLOWING the instructions and not just “winging it”… you have not SEEN how incredibly DETAILED military instruction manuals can get… for even simple things like taking an MRE and heating it up with the included heater unit… it SEEMS so self-explanatory… until you do it wrong…
Also, keep in mind that Sydney is ADHD which means attention to detail is not exactly her forte.
Attention to boring details isn’t good with ADHD, but at least with ADD, and probably ADHD there is also hyperfocus. It’s easy to hyperfocus on something fun, that can go bang.
Well, all they have to do is just ask her if Batman would take his training seriously, & she’ll get right into it. Even tho Batman doesn’t use guns, they probably still did that anyway. Probably looking forward to the end result too…
And she has proven herself to have hyperfocus. “Super ADHD Brain activate!!” :P
granted, he doesn’t use guns that fire bullets designed to kill people, but he does still use items that CAN be called “guns”… they aren’t most peoples definition of a gun, per se… but what about the various grapnel launchers and smoke grenade launchers and stuff like that… TECHNICALLY those ARE “guns” it’s just that they use different ammo than we’re used to… so I’m sure he has to do field-stripping in the event of a jam/misfire, regular cleaning/maintenance, etc… as for the focus she displayed on the “Super ADHD Brain” page, that was in a very serious, life-or-death situation… this… this is just busy-work until Harem gets back with the info Sydney was waiting for when Harem finished with those conversations… she’ll do as best as she can, but I’ll bet she just isn’t “feeling it” and therefore she isn’t really paying “Batman In Training” levels of focus. i’ll hazard a guess that Arianna and or Sandy was at least one of the two people Harem was talking to, the other one? Max maybe?, in order to find out what pay-grade she was to be entered in the books as?
Batman doesn’t use guns?
https://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2116/144/1600/tec033-01.jpg
I guess you mean the most recent reboot of the franchise hasn’t used one, yet.
I’m guessing that holster is for a grappling gun, not a ballistic-metal-slug-of-death gun. Batman seems to have always had a do-not-kill style to him. Knock’em round, take them down, but never kill, always let justice do it’s thing…
Actually, in the golden age he used guns happily and killed people. He even used the gun that killed his parents. The do not kill rule came in during the silver age.
cool, learn something new every day…
Batman doesn’t use guns, but he knows them & how to use them intimately…it’s his expression of the idea on how to best “know thine enemy.”
In one issue, he used a sniper rifle (taken from a some hitman just recently) at a very long range to shoot another gun out of someone else’s hand…Just to prevent people from getting shot. Even the sniper that Batman took the gun from admitted that he couldn’t possibly have made the same shot at the range that Batman took.
Wow, that pay is pretty impressive. If a paycheck is more than she made the previous year, she can afford to live alone, and a $40 lunch made her comment on how expensive it was, and not, go “OMG that was my meal budget for the week,” I figure she has to be making at least $20K, assuming she lives in a bad neighborhood, etc. That means she’ll be clearing over $500K each year, which would put her gross at just under $1M. Bare minimum. Sydney is movin’ on up!! To the top!
i’m really dating myself here, but: NO…she’s Movin’ on Up… To the East Side!…
You think she’ll get a deluxe apartment in the sky?
Yep, that is some high-class pay.
Definitely ‘we pay this much so you don’t think of leaving’ level pay.
RE: Sydney’s reaction last panel…
Me, when I got my first paycheck at the job I’ve held for a decade now? Sheesh has it been that long? Course, the cost of living in California is pure and utter CRAP, so that reaction didn’t last long. But ohhh it felt so GOOD thinking what I could do with that. >.>
Well, I know I’m gonna make that last panel a Gravatar! Anyone else want me to leave a un-bordered version around for them?
Might even tweak it a bit, merge it with other stuff for fun…
Panel #4 – Mmmmmmmm! Cankles.
That’s basically the real reason I’d want superpowers.
Basically ANY kind of metahuman ability would make me able to start my own company, with me as all necessary equipment, boss and sole employee.
My favorite would probably be having Poison Ivy’s powerset, I’d get rich enough to build my own space station on designer proteins alone. The whole “ability to turn desert into farmland with a wave of my hand” schtick is basically just a bonus…
I mean seriously, if she really wanted to save the plants, she should have gone legal from the start, eco terrorism just makes you look bad. =p
Sydney not available. Please leave a message after the drool.
I wonder where her reset button might be . . .
Hopefully not the same place as on Chi from Chobits >.>
forehead but only using a flick with a pointer finger works
Remembering the nose-boop, let’s not let Anvil do this.
Not a ‘Gibbs Slap’?
…Well, Sydney did hit one kind of “reset button” just this morning ( https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1635 ), but it’s probably not the same button for this instance.
Okay, seen one too many complainers so will post just one message and be back on Thursday
Good to see Sandy again :D
Oh, and did we miss a page? Last page was Gothamer pushing a floating Sydney, supposedly because it was easier (and quicker) than Harem have three conversations at one time, and then we get to this page with Sydney working on putting together her puzzle-shaped-weapon
My guess is since she was told to give Harem time, she went to try tinkering with her gun. Sandy showing up seems to be a direct result of said conversation. It’s just the in-between happened off-screen…
I think Sandy is going to answer Sydney’s (our) questions about the money side of the deal on Thursday.
Yeah, miss-read what Gothamer was saying: she was basically telling Sydney to sod off and be productive elsewhere while she got things sorted out
Sydney has encountered a problem and needs to close.
Having money doesn’t make $40 a ridiculous price to pay for lunch, especially on a daily basis.
doesn’t make $40 a LESS ridiculous price to pay. It is utterly ridiculous. Silly grammar, you got me again.
For some reason, people just aren’t too sympathetic when rich people get gouged.
There are definitely rich people out there who are willing to pay over-inflated prices, or even go out of their way to pay such prices, just to show off how much money they have…
Correction: how much money they used to have…
I’m gonna repeat my earlier speculation that part of the issue is that in order to work even in the public/civilian section of the ARCHON building, you need to pass a security check, be willing to sign and abide by an NDA about what you see there, and be willing to deal with the danger of working in such a locale, all while probably being pretty top-notch at your job. Such people do not come as cheaply as your restaurant’s usual busboys.
And he food itself probably has to go through all sorts of expensive scanning to make sure that villains aren’t slipping in nano-bots or time-release mind-control potions.
Similar to how at an airport all the food is more expensive because the costs are higher.
I confess, one thing that I never really liked about Spiderman or any other story where the protagonists are in constant financial peril (Cowboy Bebop, Firefly, etc) is that it gets tiring after a while. Any humor it’s got tends to be cliched and quickly played out, and then I just find it depressing.
And for to many stories it seems like it stops being an integral part of the plot and is instead just a cheap method for the writers to force their characters into bad situations, or for the universe to kick them around a bit more.
There can be good storytelling in having the heroes struggle to overcome obstacles. But if they don’t ever actually overcome them then what’s the point of constantly bringing it up?
Because it’s a constant part of them
Yeah, but after a while the constant financial peril thing just turns into Sisyphus and the boulder. I mean, come on, sell a photo to Time for once, instead of the Daily Bugle!
Yeah, but most writers don’t seem to be capable of pulling a decent story out of it. All they do is drag it up once an episode to say “yeah this characters life still sucks”; 90% of the time it’s being used as either filler or cheap drama.
That’s the way life is, it’s not all spandex and rocket flights
But if I want to read about “the way life is” there’s dozens of stories that do it better, or I can just turn on the news. I pick up a superhero comic book because I WANT TO READ ABOUT THE SPANDEX AND ROCKET-FIGHTS!
If it were done well or occasionally I wouldn’t mind so much. But instead it comes across as “hmm, I’ve got half a page of space to fill here, lets have Peter Parker’s asshole landlord threaten to evict him again”. Or even worse: “good story telling means making shitty things happen to the characters everyone likes, because apparently happy stories are for babies”.
To be honest, my reaction would probably be much like Sydney’s.
Ok, lets make a game out of this:
Click on this link 1-3 times,
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Random
And in each case, Explain what kind of job in the real world you would use it for~
For example, my first was https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Social_Magnetism and can anyone say PRESIDENT?
The next would be https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Bubble_Manipulation and boy, let me tell you, I would go to Vegas and become a bubbly MAGICIAN! This would be a show to SEE~!
And finally I got https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Enhanced_Memory and god I wish I had this one. >< my memory is duller then 1000 year old butter knife. I would use it to memorize college books, scientific info, and such and become a teacher, to bring that knowledge to others.
I’ve played this game before- some of the things that come up are really weird or specific.
I think the first time I did it my super ability was knowledge about the future but without being able to alter major events (anything that would affect the timeline). So basically I was just gonna end up super-rich.
I rerolled and got some sort of black/dark/destructive energy manipulation, which probably has a lot fewer practical uses outside of the demolition industry, but seems like a lot more fun.
FYI, the site has a category that lists powers, but no one that fits it.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Power_with_no_known_user
They state:” If you know a user with one of these powers please add them”
One of them is https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Multitasking
“The user can perform multiple separate tasks at once, as their brains can process multiple independent trains of thought/function at the same time and their bodies are able to perform them without interfering/overlapping with the other actions.”
I think someone should post Daphne/Harem as a candidate for this one.
Yeah, pretty sure Harem is the almost-perfect embodiment of Multi-Tasking! The only catch is if 2 actions are too similar, they may cross the streams a bit, & sudden events can affect the others via shared reactions…
Daphine has that power until you do something that hurts one of the end points. then you have pain
Skitters Master ability allows her to Multitask, she can choose an entire species, a single insect, “Everything that can fly” ect. and direct them to do something different than the rest, and she can make quite a few swarms each do its own thing.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Nonexistent_Realm_Creation Having the power to throw things into a void dimension of nonexistence would be pretty damn handy. I could make billions emptying out landfills, and I can think of several corporations who would pay out the nose to see all their hazardous byproducts magically vanish with no consequences.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Life-Force_Conversion Well, aside from throwing Kamehamehas, I can’t think of much use for this besides medical application. The ability to pump life itself into a patient would make me the world’s most valuable EMT.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Character_Manipulation Well, I’d need to learn Kanji for this to do anything at all. I’m also really not clear on how this works, all I know is it seems to be about controlling people and that just sounds hella evil. Even if I tried using it for crimefighting or something the moral and ethical outrage would be catastrophic.
Radioactive waste disposal no longer an issue …
RDM,
I’m not sure what planet you live on, but on this one, that’s still an issue. Bury it in a cask and put it under a mountain is the current ‘long term’ solution that isn’t.
I believe that was in reply to Zero above, specifically to his first stated power, not to anything current on this planet.
Indeed. Insert ‘would be’ if it clears it up for you …
Character Manipulation…I’d use it to make politicians honest & honorable.
…Think about that one for a minute…
;)
“I am nothing but a crook! Wait a minute, Um, I completely meant to embezzle all those millions you’re accusing me of stealing, along with the other billion you haven’t discovered yet!………..Ah shit…”
Well, if they’re going to be referred to as “the Honorable (such & such),” it’s best to make sure they live up to it…
‘Honourable’ is not synonymous with ‘Honest’
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Absorption
Recycling would be an excellent use for this. I mean, absorb garbage, then convert it to power or some such.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Blindsight
Stealth missions and/or resue missions.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Defense_Break
Military usage. In the battlefield, who could stop me? I could kill a tank. I could kill a building.
So, yeah. Pretty combat based.
looks like i got a pretty combat-oriented set XD (at least that’s the first thing that came to mind :-) other uses folowed)
#1: Classical element manipulation https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Classical_Element_Manipulation
#2: Darkness manipulation https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Darkness_Manipulation
#3: Water absorption https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Water_Absorption
being someone who likes to play a magic-user type of character in fantasy RPGs, i immediately thought: offense/defense, mobility/utility and healing, all together! Perfect mage-bundle XD
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Demon_Ice_Breath
So, those mountains need a new cap of snow/ice to melt down into streams and water reservoirs? I can do that…
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Sealed_Form
I got nothing…
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Freedom
Well, assuming all the applications are applicable, I’d make the ultimate hazmat worker, wouldn’t need any sort of OSHA protections and could walk into a nuclear reactor while it’s running, and otherwise just go do things that should kill people.
Sealed form – Gotta generate the abilities after all. Maybe re-enter the form as a means to increase the basic levels of said powers?
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Omnilock
Exist outside/unbound by all laws of reality? So I’m basically an actual god?
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Projective_Omnilingualism
Project a telepathic field that translates any spoken language. Quite useful, Not much use being a deity if I can’t communicate with my worshippers.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Hippopotamus_Physiology
FANTASTIC.
1. https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Sentient_Weaponry – I get a talking weapon, I’m thinking Lilarcor from BG2.
2. https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Absolute_Darkness – Complete and utter darkness… that I can’t see through either.
3. https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Size_Enhancement – This will be handy, means I’ll actually be able to wield Lilarcor, considering he’s a two-handed great sword and all.
Now if only I had a miniature giant space hamster handy. “Go for the eyes Boo! Go for the EYES! RAAAGGH!”
I got an interesting selection.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Succubus_Physiology
Which means that I change genders to become a relative of Dabbler’s apparently. Considering I’m straight, I’d have preferred to change into an incubus, though. Maybe I’d be a lesbian succubus?
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Magic_Arrows
With this, I get to create a shoot magic arrows to clobber my foes. Or at least to chase off unwanted suitors.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Curative_Countenance
According to the description, any ailment or affliction, including insanity, could be cured with one look at me. That would be pretty wow and I’m sure I’d be in high demand . . . if I wasn’t already because of the succubus thing. It would also be a godsend when my magic arrows miss and I shoot the wrong person.
1. https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Caprine_Physiology – So…I’m a goat. An anthropomorphic goat, hopefully. I guess I climb things? Search and rescue is a possible application.
2. https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Poison-Fire_Manipulation – I’m a goat…on FIRE. Poisonous fire. I make a career, or at least an avocation, out of not being killed by religious fanatics who think I’m a demon. I suppose, with the right interpretation, it could be useful for handling the aftermath of industrial accidents or explosions/fires. Pretty topical right now.
3. https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Law_Creation – Oh. Oh, my. I get to decree physical laws?! Even in a limited space, that’s something special. Manipulate laws of particle physics to clean up radioactive waste. Locally modify entropy to make net-positive generators or reverse aging. Create a region where carbon rapidly precipitates out of the atmosphere into crystals, simultaneously fixing global warming and giving De Beers conniptions. Tinker with thermodynamics and local light speed to make a starship, or just skip the trip and play with wormhole physics. Anyone with an imagination could write their own ticket with this (or decree a region in which tickets spontaneously write themselves).
I’ll take it, horns and all. :D
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Psionic_Embodiment
The user embodies all forms of psionics, they possess limitless control over psionics becoming nearly unstoppable.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Life_Infusion
The user can infuse objects (usually a weapon), beings or powers with life, empowering and energizing them and allowing the user to manipulate their qualities and efficiency, allowing them to heal, mend and purify rather than harm, including potentially resurrecting the dead.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Absolute_Existence
The user has complete control of their own existence. The user is beyond all there is, even reason, physics and logic. No rule or law can apply to them other than their own.
This allows the user access to any ability in existence, said abilities being as absolute as their maker/wielder.
Only one description for this one: “I am that I am”
Well, I you all will excuse me, I am off to create a new universe. I think I will do it without the talking snake this time.
Oooo, sounds fun!
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Inducement
Inducement? *Reads examples* Interesting. And since it’s the generic brand, there’s no specifics…
Damn this 1 can be overpowered…
You know the old Earth thing of wanting to kill your boss? Cybertronians can get it too. Love to go mess with Megsy, Wavey too. Fuuuun…
Whoops, forgot the other 2 :P
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Random
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Destiny_Manipulation – User is able to perceive, shape and manipulate destiny allowing them to affect reality in several ways both overt and hidden. Many users have an object that is physical manifestation of this power, common forms being Book or Spindle and a cutting tool.
Oooo, seeing & altering Destinies? I can have fun with that! You’re destined to get that last biscuit before me? NOPE, Awesome sunnies says event rewritten… ::P
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Distance_Manipulation – User can manipulate distance; a numerical description of how far apart objects are. In physics or everyday discussion, distance may refer to a physical length, or an estimation based on other criteria (e.g. “two counties over”). In mathematics, a distance function or metric is a generalization of the concept of physical distance.
Thus the user is able to manipulate how far objects are from each other, regardless of the other objects around them. For example: user can make two objects touch each other from different sides of the room, without having to move them.
Interesting. won’t need any Ground or Space Bridges anymore, just move where I wanna be right next to where I am…
So, all combined? I’d be able to see someone’s Destiny, then Induce various effects which causes them to take different life-paths. And if they get suspicious, & can either Induce a “Naaa, it’s nothing” reaction or just Manipulate myself out of there…
I got: https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Mayan_Deity_Physiology
It includes all of the powers of Mayan Deities
Almighty infusion – make things ultimate powerful in their current strength. Manufacturing high value items, tanks, swords, a spring could be an unlimited power source. Shoes?
Blur – speed, running, so messenger, pizza delivery…
Universal force creation – one man construction team. Rescue services, golem based manufacturing
services.
Combined, that’s one impressive super.
Almighty infused blur illusion and the world goes dark…
Super fast with blur, make anything temporarily with universal force creation and infuse it with almighty power… Talk about a glass cannon. With such defences that doesn’t quite work despite glass cannon being accurate.
I got:
Musical combat, sadness augmentation and cosmic energy absorption. Can’t really think of any real uses
Musical Combat: For when you want to give a professional musical performance that’s guaranteed to bring the house down…
The Tum Tum Tree, in the Vorpal Blade series… the characters are looking for some Ancient Tech they were told about, when they showed up in a nearby star system they found a space station that was originally used as a musical stage… it expanded to cover about 10 percent of the surface area of the STAR… and projected a force-field that DIMMED the visible light output of the REST of the star so as to not interfere with the light-show… a light show made visible by ionizing the PLANETARY ATMOSPHERES of the four, perfectly symmetrically orbiting gas giants that were extremely modified in their atmospheric gaseous content, in order to provide the equivalent gasses for what we generally term “neon” lights… even though neon is just one of the gasses used, other gasses make different colors of light.
anyways… to make a long story short, the good guys use the stage and it’s light show to vaporize quite a few of the bad guys ships that were trailing them, all using music and musical avatars to guide the beams of energy…
I think she’s starting to have a seizure from shock
Cash-gasm
LOL sounds about right…
So, even if you’re bringing home $25k a month, $40 is STILL a lot to pay for lunch. No matter how much money you have, you should still require value for what you spend. IMHO.
The perceived value placed on high quality goes up when you have more income. ie: Is $30 too much for an all organic 1/3lb burger on a handmade baked-that-morning roll, with a thick melted slice of gruyere? Well if you food budget for the week is $60, then it is too expensive regardless of quality. But if you make enough that a weekly food budget isn’t really something you do, then sure it’s a splurge, but it’s a really good burger.
(yeah Sydney’s a vegetarian, but I can’t think of a reasonable $30 salad)
No, it doesn’t matter how much money you make, $40 for one persons lunch is way too high
Daniel the Human works at a place with a $55Aus meal, with possibly more expensive meals in the complex, but then again it is a place where there are people who loose & make millions in hours all by chance…
I believe the troubles she was having at the comic shop are no longer a problem.
Eric, the majority of the military budget is paid to real people in uniform, or those who were in uniform, as pensions and salaries and medical treatment. Indeed, the money paid to contractors also goes to “real people”, who spend most of their time filling out forms to justify the cost+ contracts that Senators and Congressmen demand, or suing the government when it denies their expenses as detailed on those forms. It is the pols who demand cost+ contracts, because over the last 75 years they have learned how to gain maximum political leverage from them, and have shaped the corporate cultures of long-term contractors to look first to the pols, and whatever contributions the pols demand.
Uhhhmmmmmm… I think your math is a little off here.
A cost of a Super’s ability can probably most reliably be estimated as opportunity cost. It is worth at least “how much money is doing something equivalent instead going to cost (of course, factoring in money-cost of time)?” And of course, definitely paid a little less because it’s going to be a ridiculous sum of money anyway and so that’s the payer’s BATNA on how high they’d willing to go… but the Super is definitely willing to settle for way WAY less, because again, ridiculous sum of money. (See Sydney).
Using the F-22 Raptors (awesome dogfighting, super-advanced jet – saw no action) as the model of comparison… the cost by Air Force estimates in the GAO was $469 million… if nothing goes wrong. Which, obviously it does. If you do your own estimates… if maintenance cost per flight hour is ~$44k-$68k… and cost to just build is ~$150M… and you can get about 30 years or 8000 flight miles… as a rough estimate, that’s in the ballpark of $502M-$694M per plane for say, 30 years, assuming we actually use exactly 8000 flight miles in the 30 year time span.
I am willing to bet the value you get from a Super is WAY more than a single F-22 raptor, which, did I forget to mention? Has not yet seen actual combat. (You could deploy a Super for normal policing, secret missions, or any sort of combat that you couldn’t deploy such warplane machines in… they tend to be way to finicky about being super-specialized).
And let’s be honest. I would not be surprised if these Supers were able to take on 5-10 F-22s on their own.
Taking ALL of this into account, and probably grossly underestimating the actual Super’s value here, my BATNA to hiring a Super (ignoring such positive externalities like fact that by offering them gainful employment here, I’d be removing a potential headache of letting the equivalent of insanely powerful war machines walk around to potentially cause chaos)…
my BATNA would be about $83M-$231M/year in equivalent F-22s…
Yeah. Considering my choices, employing a Super for anything less than $80 million annual salary would be a steal, $230 million annual salary would be “eh, slightly high, but more versatile and don’t want loose cannon…”, and anything in between would be acceptable…
From the way Sydney’s asking though, considering the biweekly salary as acceptable for annual salary, considering her previous employment as a comic shop business owner… I’m willing to bet they are definitely underpaying her. So… maybe ~$100k for biweekly? So slightly more than $5.2 million annualized? (or if a particularly successful business owner… ~$500k for biweekly? ~$26 million annualized)
Geez. Government and their skimpy pay, amirite? No wonder people opt for corporate. lol
She’s also a recruit. She’ll get more as she ranks up.
The real question I really have… is, how close was my estimate of what you imagined? And how much more is “more”?
Hm.
Okay, this being the US, let’s work with US dollars.
Sydney is a small business owner. In general, they don’t make a lot of money. That being said, if your take-home is less than the poverty level, running a small business becomes a lot less enticing. So let’s assume her take-home is above the poverty level of USD 11,770. Round that to, say, $12,000. If that one check (out of 26) is more than that, she is now pulling down $300,000.
Of course, if you make different guesses based on your assumption for Sydney’s prior annual income. I’m going to guess that while she’s not making a lot, she’s well above our laughably low poverty line. So I’m going to peg her new Archon income at around half a million per year – i.e., enough to be *really* comfortable, but not so much that she could retire after a year.
On the other hand, working off the notion of 10 supers == 1 fighter, I’m lowballing it pretty hard. Off the top of my head, the cheapest military aircraft which might reasonably be called a fighter that the USAF has fielded in recent years is the A-10 Warthog (I could easily be wrong; I’ve simply been googling “cost of $aircraft”) is about USD 12 million. Which means Sydney’s takehome ought to be rather more in the range of a million or so.
That said, from a narrative perspective it doesn’t really matter. What we have is that so long as Sydney is in Archon and does not spend her money too outrageously, she ought not have money woes – but she does not herself have enough money for it to be a plot point. She will be neither Tony Stark nor Bruce Wayne.
I was about to disagree with the $12,000. but then I remembered that in early comics, Joel was saying 6 months until the store went under.
I am guessing though, at her rank of Corporal, that $300,000 is about right. But in a couple years, probably $500-600 thousand (assuming “time in grade”, she gets promoted once, and that does not go Officer, OH DEAR GOD NOOOOOOOOOOOO. sorry, Sydney as an Officer scares me, badly).
Except that she doesn’t seem to have a roommate and a cheap as hell apartment will run about 400$ a month, she has a car which I’d put at around $300 a month assuming it wasn’t a gift, probably $100 or so for gas a month, if her lunch before the bank was an indicator of her usual work day lunches, then by prices in my relatively small town it’d be around 15$ a day, 5 days a week or about a $300 budget for lunch a month and likely at least $250 for other food possibly more since she’s a relatively healthy pescatarian, maybe $100 for her phone, less if she’s on a shared plan. And since she’s not complained over much about crippling debt I’ll leave that a freebie, but still that would leave her making around 17.5k or so annually(assuming no recreational costs)from the shop, so nothing spectacular or even good(still more than i make) but a far cry from 12k
$400 a month for an apartment?! I wanna live there! The cheapest apartments here outside Section 8 is closer to 600
In upper, upper Manhattan (north of Harlem) a 400 sqft studio goes easily for $1400 a month. The equivalent space in Detroit goes for $450.
That’s inside the city limits of Detroit. Just south of Detroit (where I live) that studio will go for $600 or more. I’m lucky in that I own my house outright, but it’s a squeeze to even afford the property taxes on the disability income of $12,000 a year I get. Because of the winter weather my budget plan payment for elec and gas is over $300 a month, it’s $100 a month for car insurance, $100 a month for internet and cable. On top of that is medical bills, food, clothing, car maintenance, and house maintenance.
College town, utilities separate, technically shared with 3 other people who pay their own rent, but separate bedrooms
One commentary on superheros and their paychecks (or lack thereof) was in the Wild Cards series where GRRM’s creation, The Great and Powerful Turtle, the best reward he ever got was a briefcase of unmarked bills. Other than that the only way he had to earn money was iirc the meager income from an electronics repair shop & junkyard which really put a dent into his hero-ing time, and selling his old battleship-armor ‘shells’ to a museum.
Was anyone else suddenly reminded of this clip?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBXU0wj3sUE
In Sydney’s defense, when you’ve worried about money for a long time, realizing it’s no longer a problem can actually make you a bit ill as stress leaves the body.
then more stress as you realize you just jumped a few tax brackets and all that that entails, and all of the relatives that you never knew you had, showing up on your doorstep wanting a “loan” and of course all those charities that just want “a few dollars, to help those in need”… and those are just the LEGIT ones… never mind all the scammers out there that WILL find out about her new-found wealth…
“Most stories are about ordinary people in extraordinary situations, but at this point you guys know I prefer writing about extraordinary people in ordinary situations.”
This preference is why one of my longer Divine Blood short stories is about Hel Logesdottir attending a launch for a special edition release of the Precious Puppies toy line (Divine Blood’s expy of My Little Pony). And yes, Hel is THAT Hel, just currently sixteen years old by virtue of recent reincarnation.
Something completely different (posting it here because it’s hard to find a specific comic that marks the end of the super battle royale and this one is the most recent strip):
Isn’t it weird that Sydney didn’t “level up” from the super brawl? I mean the last time she leveled she basicly only destroyed an unmanned tank…
This time she bested 3 supers. Sounds like a huge chunk of XP right there…
During the demonstration she discovered a new way to use/control an orb (Expanding the shield). She didn’t really use/discover anything new during the fight. Arguably seeing the Aggro-aura might count but it could also be considered simply an extension of seeing through Dabbler’s glamour, which was before the fight so that experience was added to the demonstration’s.
I thought a big part of her leveling up before was the sheer amount of energy absorbed by her shield during Max’s Big Badda Boom demonstration.
Nobody (except Dave) knows how the orbs “level up” so all we’re doing is tossing out theories
Tossing out theories is half the fun, though. ;)
You shouldn’t forgot the time in between finding the orbs and the demonstration. Who knows what she did with the orbs in that time. The destruction of the tank could have been just the extra experience she needed to level up.
i posted way back about this as well. in my logic the only NEW thing she learned about the Orbs was her epiphany about WHY the PPO was so hard to use… because it had a safety… everything else was just incremental uses for something she already knew how to do and were NOT worthy of a level-up event…. thus everything that she did in the “food-fight” at the restaurant was just another use of an already discovered power, again, not level-up worthy…
I just realized, that Sydney has a way to boost her pistol aim with fly-orb. Her fly-orb essentially makes her body weightless for her, so her arm does not need to compensate for gravity, and therefore will not tremble while aiming.
More like the orb appears to let Sydney create and control her Personal Gravity field (As when she spun and her hair and clothes didn’t fall down while upside down. When she flies she could just be designating a point infront of her as “Down” and “Falling” (With STYLE!).
You will notice from the last panel of the previous comic that a floating Sydney can be affected by outside forces. If she shoots a gun in flight mode one of two things will happen. If the gun is at her center of mass, she will be pushed backwards. If it is off center, the shot will start her spinning.
Worst case scenario is that she is firing an automatic weapon and does not release the trigger. She would recreate the ‘death blossom’ scene from the Last Starfighter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlAsSyDAWR8
Love that scene! It has partially influenced me: “If you are going to die: TAKE AS MANY OF THE BASTARDS AS YOU CAN WITH YOU!!!”
On actually viewing that clip… realised got that mixed up with The Valkyrie’s death from “Battle Beyond The Stars” (unfortunately, can’t find that clip :()
This actually made me laugh out loud, and to which I can only add two words: mini, gun.
Sydney is going to be on her best behavior during training in hopes Peggy will let her fire “Old Painless” as a graduation present.
I am making a list of all the really cool artifacts I can find that could conceivably be used by one person(such as the Talismans of Shendu, from Jackie Chan Adventures, Mjolnir, and Captain America’s Shield.
So, I am curious, what are Sydneys orbs called?
I was thinking “The Seven Pieces of Halo’s Halo”, but that just sounds weird.
Little help?
Halo’s Orbs is a nice term. The orbs haven’t got a name collectively. Just as individuals.
If Sandy is Arianna’s number two,what is her official position?
Slap yo bad self.
Alright, time to do some number-crunching.
According to Glassdoor.com, the average American cashier takes home around $18,970 a year. Assuming that Sydney was paid minimum-wage or thereabouts during her time at the comic-book store, it’s safe to say that she’s been living quite the low-key lifestyle at that payscale.
If she gets paid more in two weeks than she does annually, let’s bump her monthly pay up to around $37,940. Twice a month is a safe-enough estimate, and if we multiply that by 12 we’re left with a whopping $455,280 annually.
I think we know why the others weren’t very phased by the price of dinner, to say the least.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Memory_Implantation
So this one is interesting. I think that the standard answers would involve things like going into the mental health field (cure PTSD, etc) or espionage related things (let me recommend Joe for this job, I’ve known him for years!). However I think that training would be the most interesting application for me. Learn some good skills yourself, then put them in other people’s heads quickly.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Bio-Tech_Manipulation
Super vague write-up, but if you assume that this includes the ability to CREATE your own bio-tech then it’s pretty useful. I’ve read enough sci-fi about deadly plagues and nano-tech gone bad that the idea of being able to defend against that kind of thing seems both useful and cool. So I would say private bio-tech firm that specializes in preventative applications.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Toxikinetic_Exoskeleton
OK. I have absolutely NO inspiration for anything non-combat related with this one. Best I can come up with is “guy who does dangerous stuff” such as fire fighter, law enforcement, etc.
What’s interesting to me is that putting all three together is actually somewhat thematic as far as a power set goes. Altering memories and doing the poison armor thing both strike me as potential specializations of bio-tech manipulation.
The pay check has too be big. 1 combat pay. 2 exlusive ability.
1 the danger make it so a pay bonus is mandatory.
2 super power are rare. If the goverment pay too little pig time corperation cold hire them or terrorist or maffias.
of cours some supers most alredy be in allternet work