Grrl Power #351 – Vertigyaah!
Sydney continues to learn about the orbs with her characteristic aplomb.
I’ve used the dolly zoom gag before, but it’s such a prevalent effect that I can’t help it. Some could argue it’s passed into cliche, but that’s part of why it’s funny to me. That and usually when you see it these days it’s being used for comedic effect specifically because it’s melodramatic. The problem for my given medium is that unlike a lens flare or a shallow focus effect, a dolly zoom requires motion to actually play correctly, so you guys get a nonomatopoeia in place of me spending days trying to figure out how to do the gag in animated gif form or something.
Sydney’s experience here is lifted straight from my own. Not the clinging to a superheroine part, but developing mild acrophobia from video games. I can tell you exactly when it happened, too. Star Wars: Dark Forces. The first FPS Star Wars game, and the first game in the Jedi Knight series technically, since Jedi Knight 1 has the same main character. (Which means the real title of the final game in the series should have been Star Wars: Dark Forces IV: Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy) Anyway, even though Dark Forces was a PC game it used checkpoints to save, and they were few and far between. It could take upwards of 45 minutes to beat a level and if you died before then, you’d have to play it over again. Also, the game was true to the Star Wars universe, in the sense that there were no railings anywhere. Combine that with instadeath fall catwalks and crags on slippery glaciers. Oh, there was also an awesome gun that fired a ball of compressed air. It was basically a rocket launcher, only the explosion of air at the end didn’t do all that much damage. It was mainly used for knocking Stormtroopers off instadeath fall catwalks. It wasn’t so awesome when some bounty hunter used it on you though. Sliding towards a crag on an icy glacier or getting knocked into the air by some weapon while on a catwalk definitely gave me a case of the netherclench.
Incidentally, Dark Forces made me appreciate why the Stormtroopers can never hit anything. The blaster rifle they carry is crazy inaccurate. The Imperial Repeater gun on the other hand… It’s one of my favorite FPSs of all time, assuming you can handle the Doom II/Duke3D era graphics, (which I grant can be fairly eye piercing on 22-inch plus monitors), I’d recommend checking it out. Here’s a Steam link and one for GoG.
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That’s… odly specific that the alien orb can influence human brain chemistry like that
It’s possible that it’s psychosomatic
Kind of like if you stare out a window of a skyscraper your fine but if you lean over a balcony your a trembling mess you exactly the same height your brain just doesn’t register the danger
Exactly. Also, imagine yourself swimming in an ocean. You know that there is *a lot* of distance between your feet and the next solid surface. I could imagine this feeling kind of the same for Sydney, especially since she (unlike Max) is able to create a localized gravity field.
It would basicly feel like swimming, just without the risk of drowning.
Right, it’s possilbe that her personal gravity field has something to do with it
It can have a lot to do with the mind set of what you are doing, I CANT stand heights, even when perfectly safe, with harness and all…..
But, I am perfectly fine forward abseiling, even when the is no foot fall(not walking down a surface, just dangling)
It’s the purpose, normal I don’t intend to go over the side, so I’m afraid of it.. but when the purpose is to go over, I’m fine because that what Intend on doing…
Same maybe here with Sydney while she hold the orb, she intent of flying… no fear, lets go, no longer flying, fear even thou she is safe(orb at beck and call) fear take over..
Or it could be simply a side-effect of the orb canceling out gravity: since Sydney’s equilibrium stays balanced no matter what position she holds herself in, she doesn’t feel any vertigo effects.
I like your explanation, makes sense to me :D
Could also be that having ones own personal gravity field means your brain doesnt register vertigo as a result.
Since vertigo is a feeling like one is moving when they are not. More specifically – feeling the effects of gravity making you feel like you’re moving when you’re not. If the orb has its own personal gravity for the user, then not only would it be REALLY hard to move Sydney from place when holding the fly orb, there wouldnt be any effect on the inner ear, which is the most common cause of vertigo.
Admittedly I just looked up vertigo to see the symptoms, but that does sound like a pretty good reasoning, imho.
It is all in her mind. While she is holding the orb, she can position herself at will. Without it, gravity wins and she is falling, invoking an instinctual aversion to going squish at the end of a long fall. She needs to practice letting go from really high up (like skydiving height) so she has time to grab and reactivate the blue ball. Do it over and over again until it seems fun. Keep leaving it later and later until you start thinking about grabbing the force-field instead.
The force field orb wouldn’t stop you from going squish after a long fall.
That kinetic energy still has to go SOMEWHERE, and until we have indication that the shield comes with internal dampeners, it won’t help
It does. Remember the punches Max was giving it? and syd said at best it felt like a light tap. It has kinetic dampenerss of some sort. How effetcive they are is a different matter
That could just be that it’s an immovable wall as long as the center doesn’t move. When Max was punching the shield, the shield itself (or Sydney inside it) didn’t have any velocity. So at most it was absorbing/deflecting the incoming energy.
But if Sydney HERSELF has a crapton of velocity (say, from a fall), the shield absorbing incoming energy isn’t going to stop her own body from going squish because it suddenly stops moving
Not really and here is why. Whether Sydney is moving or stationary is irrelevant. The field protects her from any outside impact. From a Physics standpoint, Max hitting her is the same as Sydney smashing her shield into Max’s fist. Max’s punches had no transfer of kinetic energy to Sydney. If it just blocked the punch, it should have sent Sydney flying like a baseball off a bat. It makes me wonder what would happen if Sydney hit anything more solid than a billboard while flying. What is she it a mountain? Would she Punch right through it as if it were tissue paper? Would she gradually slow down or would she bounce off. IT has been established that she doesn’t just stop when she hits things, so either she would transfer an amount of kinetic energy equivalent to the Kinetic energy of her mass moving at her velocity, to the mountain which would then have to absorb it all, with no reflected energy (since Sydney’s shield protects her from that energy), or she would punch right through because she is immune to the transfer of energy.
This is not well thought out on my part, just stream of thought because I haven’t taken my meds yet this morning, but it is something to consider.
The difference between an outside force hitting the shield and a fast traveling shield (with Sydney inside) hitting the ground and coming to a stop, isn’t the damage/energy dealt to the shield.
It’s Sydney suddenly stopping. THAT is what kills you when you fall. The shield stops (because it hits the entire planet), and Sydney HAS to stop with it. Weither while staying in the middle of the shield or crashing against the wall doesn’t matter. She HAS to stop in a very short moment
Where has it been established that she doesn’t just stop? She never droped to the ground before. We have no indication that the shield would phase through the planet, or that it reacts to falling to the ground any different than a heavy invulnerable object would. The difference is that this invulnerable object (shield) houses a very squishy human inside. Who is still subject to momentum changes
Actually it could matter. What does the damage in a fall (or whatever impact) isn’t that the body (or whatever object) suddenly stops, is that it doesn’t stop all at the same time.
If, and I say IF, when the shield stops it makes Sydney to stop as well, all of her, the whole body at once, each cell (each molecule) at the same exact time, then wouldn’t be any damage.
That is a good point. There is no indication as to that being the case though, since we know Sydney can move inside the shield.
It’s possible the shield can read lethal levels of inertia change (like it reads dangerous levels of sounds, which made it bearable to be inside the explosion inside the shield, during the end of the press conference, but that’s not something you can asume (or test for, asumimg the actual threshhold is the dangerous level)
A slightly more thought out answer, her shield prevents the transfer of energy. In order for her momentum to be stopped, she would have to have energy transferred from the ground to her. The shield blocks that transfer, therefore, she would not stop, and the shield would protect her, so she would continue to move in the direction she was traveling until she dropped the shield or grabbed the flight ball. That seems unreasonable. It could be that the shield would protect her from the effects of gravity so if she let go of the flight ball while holding the shield, would she fall at all? Does the shield absorb the energy or reflect it? It seems to absorb energy, and not reflect it, but it absorbs energy from both inside and outside, otherwise Vehemence’s aura would have passed through the shield when he was inside it. So it would seem, that Sydney’s kinetic energy would be absorbed on impact and she would be unhurt.
The forb has shown absolutely no apparent effects on gravity or momentum. It is obvious that without using the Flight Orb, the shield would fall with her. So if Sydney falls off a, let’s say, 20 story building, that’s approximately 240 feet (~74 meters) at 9.8 m/s/s her terminal velocity would be approximately 247 km/hr, coming to an instant stop (since the force field neutralizes momentum but not inertia) Sydney would be pulled off the orb, the shield would disappear and ker-SPLAT! Sydney pate.
Basically, as the old saying goes, “It’s aint the fall that kills ya, it’s that sudden stop at the bottom!”
When you fall from 10 story building it’s Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah *bump*. When you fall from 1-story building it’s *bump* Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
What about the guy that has a heart attack & dies from the fear before he hits bottom?
:P
Unless it’s a much longer fall than ten stories, it’s still the sudden stop at the end that will kill him. If I’, anywhere close on the math, that only a two or three second fall, not enough time even after full cardiac arrest to cause brain death.
There’s always the instance of a skydiver whose main & backup chutes fail to deploy…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_on_the_Risers
;)
I believe the shield is an energy absorber and disperser rather than anything related to momentum- remember that Vehemence was able to drag her along by the Lighthook when she had her shield up- so barring any ‘orbs can only be affected by other orbs’ shenanigans, Sydney _can_ have things done to her from the outside.
I’d bet that the reason for the seeming different instances of ‘stop/not-stop’ is that the shield (along with all the other orbs) has a quasi-intelligence, or some sort of massive situational algorithm that allows it to react appropriately to the situation, with the prime directive being ‘does person/people inside shield get hurt by thing outside shield’.
Fall, and impact the ground? Massive reduction in velocity, with the shield absorbing Impulse. Not a perfect absorption, though, and so what ends up happening is an impact ‘crater’- but one that’s less than you’d expect- the lessening coming from the shield absorbing the energy. The way the shield decides how much to absorb (and dissipate in the form of light and sound- hence the fractal glowy and the tendency to ‘bwong’) is based on what/who is inside, and is ‘cutoff’ at ‘non-injurious’.
But then in other situations, such as hitting a mountain, it may very well ricochet her off of it, based on angle of attack and hardness of material- the softer ground would give, helping to reduce the incoming energy, but the harder rock wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised if either the CommBall or one of the unknowns is constantly relaying information about the surrounding area to all the other spheres- with the other unknown being a sort of ‘think’ ball- one that’s currently set up to act primarily as an interface between the other orbs, but can be used to enhance thinking- was Sydney holding either of the unknowns at any time when she was coming up with the plan to fight Vehemence?
She may not stop if her shield hits the ground, but the shield DOES stop.
It has to. There’s an entire planet in the way. It may punch a crater, but it HAS to stop (or phase through the planet.
If the shield stops, but Sydney doesn’t stop, she’ll just squish against the shieldwall. Same result (dead)
What? Things crash into the ground and make craters all the time. It’s not like a planet has a coherent structure.
And if a sufficiently unstoppable object hits the planet, there’s no real reason the crater can’t go all the way through.
There is zero indication that a forcefield is unstoppable
We know that Sydney’s flown her shield through a billboard with no apparent ill effects. To her, anyway. The billboard’s another story. It did not, in any case, stop when it hit the billboard and pancake Sydney against the leading surface, or wrench Sydney’s arm when the force of that impact was transmitted through her orb to her.
We know that Sydney’s shield is capable of absorbing a ludicrous amount of impact and energy, with no significant effect, from when Max was testing it in the ballroom and on the firing range, and from the fight at the restaurant.
We’ve seen the kind of force Max can apply shatter pavement and grind concrete to powder. We’ve seen her blow up tanks. And we’ve seen Sydney’s shield casually resist those things.
Those are pretty decent indications that the shield can do a sufficiently adequate imitation of an unstoppable object. What there’s zero indication of is that, if the shield hits the ground, it isn’t the ground that gives first.
Note that, in terms of the physics involved, there is no difference between Max hitting the shield, and the shield hitting Max. It’s just a choice of reference frames. By the same token, there is no difference between the shield not moving when Max hits it, and the shield not stopping when it hits Max. Or when it hits the Earth.
Those things are VERY BIG and go VER FAST.
Neither of which are characteristics that discribe Sydney falling down a building.
A crater would also mean an explosion (a LOT of energy is released when something like an asteroid punches a crater)
The mistake you are making is thinking it matters which object is doing the moving. The kinetic energy effects all objects taking part in an impact event equally regardless of which one is moving more.
Plus, all objects in known space are always moving and always have inertia. They maybe moving exactly the same as all the objects around them (the planet they are on, for example) but they are still moving.
You’re conflating the idea that on object anchored to something incredibly massive (like a planet) is able to absorb tremendous amounts of kinetic energy without having its inertia altered. But the force field isn’t anchored to the ground, it’s anchored to Sydney… and Sydney is not anchored to the ground, she’s anchored to the force field. Thus, any impact on the forcefield will transfer directly to her. If she *were* anchored to the ground the force of maxima’s punches would transfer to her, and though her to the ground… but not before likely ripping her in half.
Of course that’s not what happened. One could argue that the forcefield was anchored to the ground but that has a number of problems. First for the amount of sound Maxima’s punches were making there would have been damage to the floor (which wasn’t a ground floor btw). Second, it makes the force field some one useless in flight as, without being anchored to a large mass, any serious hit from someone like Maxima would instantly kill Sydney.
It’s much more reasonable to assume it has some sort of inertial dampener effect.
somewhat useless* I meant to say.
“The mistake you are making is thinking it matters which object is doing the moving. ”
It does matter. Imagine you are inside an elevator, would you prefer that I hit the doors or that I cut the cables? ;)
The shield could have an inertia damper but is yet to be seen if it affects only the shield or also Sydney herself. If the former, in a fall she would be smashed against the “floor” of the “elevator”.
It’s possible that the force field orb converts force into power for the force field itself. Meaning no matter how hard you hit the force field, and whatever force confronts the shield will just be making the shield even stronger, so she’ll never actually feel more than the slight tap while the force field is up.
If we can make cars that drive themselves, I’m sure some alien dudes who are a few thousand years beyond us can make an orb can map a mind cold and read/influence parts of it at will.
Just watch out for their equivalent of compatibility issues, programming errors and the Blue Screen Of Death.
…Then how appropriate is it that the Flight Orb happens to be blue?…Or would that be mere coincidence?
Nah, we have no indication that Windows was designed by aliens…Do we?
Food for thought, but I was thinking of the inadvisability of plugging any computer (or alien device) direct into one’s mind / brain.
TV usually makes it look so problem-free (certain episodes of ‘Stargate SG-1’ being the obvious exception). With all that can go wrong with technology under ‘normal’ conditions, throwing in a direct connect to a chaotic Version 1.0 Human Brain AS WELL would be …. unpredictable, I think.
Well, I think a good example was given in the movie Forbidden Planet. The Krells built a machine that measured as a 20 mile cube. It was designed to read Krell thought patterns & project a tangible energy field that would accomplish ANY task. that machine wiped them all out of existence because the machine also obeyed their sub-conscience thoughts.
“Monsters from the Id”
Excellent point.
Now THERE was tech that really needed extra time in Beta. Or, better yet, for people to sit down right at the start and ask each other, ‘Is This REALLY A Good Idea?’
It’s for this reason that any telepaths & telekinetics have to work VERY hard at establishing real control over their powers. This is why so many horror movies included such a person who was driven crazy by their powers.
Windows was not made by aliens, though I suspect Windows 8 was made under demonic influences. (ditto for D&D 4th edition).
I can’t speak as to Windows 8, simply because I have never used it.
HOWEVER, as a person regularly playing in and enjoying two separate D&D4 campaigns, let me compliment you on yet another concise and meaningful analysis of that system.
Yes, to be 100% clear, sarcasm.
…what makes you think they’re alien?
It’s as good a guess as any for where Sydney’s orbs came from.
At the very least they’re not from this world
…or at least not from this world’s current time-period.
The Esteemed Author wouldn’t be the first to present tech from the far-future (or “lost magic” from the distant past) as though it was alien. Mind you, I’m not saying that this is what’s happening here, merely that this particular trope has not yet been eliminated as a possibility. The mysteries still abound, & most of what we *KNOW* is a long list of things that we’ve FAILED to learn about these orbs. Just off the top of my head:
– Has anyone even tried to apply calipers, to measure their physical diameter?
– How precise is their (apparent) spherical shape?
– How close-to-identical is their size to each other?
(…you get the idea…)
As for me, I still maintain my theory from 100’s of pages ago – that DaveB is letting us speculate ourselves to death in these comments, so that we’ll create for him a huge rich vein of plot-ideas. He can then harvest the best-of-the-best & present them as ‘canon’ when he’s ready!
You see that, Mr.Author?
Yer’ not foolin’ me – Ahm onta yer schemes!
Paranoid?
Who sez ahm paranoid?!?
Seriously – Ah WANT their NAMES!!!
Well Alien doesn’t have to mean ‘from another planet’ it can also just mean ‘very very VERY strange’
Or just “foreing”, like from Jersey, old Jersey :P
You know the saying,
Any sufficiently advanced alien/ancient technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Or is it any sufficient PR spin on demon magic is indistinguishable from technology?
Or is it any moderately advanced technology appears as magic to dumb people?
Or is it any sufficiently advanced breakfast cereal is magically delicious?
Or at least they are outta this world!
No, that’s just Sydney :D
It’s not really a brain chemistry issue. Vertigo and other “balance” issues largely stem from the fact that humans use an inner ear oral balance mechanism. The same system that transforms air vibration into neuron impulses also gets used for gravity detection. Little hairs sloshing about. It’s why divers can get in trouble and lose track of “up.” Suspension in water combined with lack of good visual indication can wreak ones sense of direction underwater.
The Orb doesn’t have to mess with Sydney’s chemestry. All it has to do is create field (which we assume it already does) that extends into her inner ear that says “down” is toward her feet. Considering it already is countering gravity it’s not much if a streach. The same field is also likely pulling on the rest of her organs (including body hair and skin), all of which combined are interpreted “correctly” by her mind as “down” still being under her feet very solidly. If anything a lifetime of video game exposure is what is allowing Halo to not suffer from motion sickness as her body experiences one motion sensation and her eyes tell her another (like when she’s floating upside down). She’s already been desensitized to opposed Physical/Visual stimulation.
While counteracting the physical stimuli from the earths gravitation can be a part of why Sydney doesn’t show any sign of vertigo when holding the forb it can’t completely explain what is shown in this comic. Here she is shown balancing on the edge of a roof that’s rather high.
The dolly zoom feeling she gets when she lets go of the forb is typical for most people when standing in a place like that. We are not used to that situation and feel an intense fear of falling. This setts off a reaction where something as simple as standing still goes from being a automatic action to something we try to control consciously. Trying to balance this way the reactions are much slower and we tend to overcompensate which causes us to wobble and possibly loose our balance entirely.
The severity of this reaction differs from person to person, and it’s possible to lessen the impact through repeated exposure to heights. The exact conditions that triggers an attack is also individual. For some having a barrier of some kind or any kind of safety gear is enough to make height a total non issue, for others looking out through a window is enough to trigger a panic attack.
The way I read this strip I would guess that to Sydney the forb is a a safety device, so as long as she is holding it she knows she’s safe from falling, but when she lets go of it her body defaults to a panic reaction when her triggers are tripped. In other words it’s a mental thing for her. Even though she just has to think about grabbing the forb for it to move into her hand, her subconscious isn’t yet able to grasp the concept.
TL;DR It’s probably mental!
It’s oddly specific that an alien orb would bond with a human at all.
No wait, I meant suspicious.
The orbs reacts to what Sydney THINKS. Influencing her thoughs is logical complement.
I’m curious as to why this seems unlikely to you when we already know that the orbs react, very quickly, to her mental direction. They come to her grasp and are able to be used as weapons, all while still being a set of alien orbs faced with that same human brain chemistry.
Why did Green Lantern’s ring work for him, when it was made by aliens?
Why do the nega-bands work for their various wearers?
Etc., etc.
Sydney’s boa constrictor impersonation with a hip bite countered by a butt push.
a NEW KIND of EPIC fail hehe
Surprisingly calm response from Max considering her reaction when Dabbler did a tenacious buttcling.
Intent counts.
She probably gets a bonus to her pervert rolls, considering Max has some sort of attachment to her.
i think it’s mostly because she knows it’s a reaction out of fear
proof being she “butt pushes her” once Sydney made her…hum…comment?
that’s probably where Sydney is an elementary student on a playground, Dabbler is the shady unshaven guy in just a trench coat with a criminal background.
In hindsight, dabbler probably got close to tapping maxima when she didn’t know about dabblers influences, and hence why she has such a strong reaction to her.
Well, Max did suddenly close her legs on reflex. Maybe she’s ticklish?
And it didn’t seem to be a direct buttgrope… :P
buttBITE hehe
Awww! Dagnabbit! I was going to use the Boa Constrictor reference, but you beat me to it.
Seeing Sydney wrapped around Max like that, even using her teeth to hang on, is absolutely hilarious.
Personally, I thought more of a scared cat.
a scared cat would have been claws out on max’s head or back hehe
Agreed, one of the most funny Sidney moments.
Noticed an error in panel one, Maxima forgets “you” in “And what happens if let go of the orb”. Everything else is awesome, as always.
Fixed!
I just realized, shouldn’t “I used to mildly be acrophobic” be “I used to be mildly acrophobic”?
No, no it shouldn’t because people do speak like that
I love how Max is just standing there, like this is exactly the outcome she expected
She’s probably getting used to Sydney. Syd will have to up her game!
Is that… even possible?!?! o_O
. . . . I am both afraid and hopeful that it is
She’s not used to Sydney, her brain is refusing to believe that some one who has seen her full power would be that brave/stupid… Max is full denial
Interesting that the orbs seem to alter her mind. Bet that will make some people in dark arc paranoid!
Do they necessarily? It could just be that once she has total control of her own personal gravity, no direction really registers as “down,” at least not enough to trigger vertigo.
I guess the best judges for what it would be like would have to be astronauts during EVA. Of course, they all come from years of screening and training.
“The enemy’s gate is down.”
OK, I can see the strap around Sydney’s thumb for her wrist-com in subpanel 2, but not anywhere else?
there is a line, can’t exactly say its a strap.
what i can say however, is that it goes on the right arm, not left.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1020
if you put that on the …. wait a second… buttons…
…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1464
… THE BUTTONS!!!!
I guess it should be, “And what happens if *you* let go of the orb?”
Seems to me that this is the first time that Sydney and Max are alone together since the incident with the Prez. Is that, or Sydney’s aggravation with being pulled out of her shop at New Comic Day, going to come up again?
She is likely over it at this point, unless somebody brings it up. She spend much of the afternoon working on putting a pistol together, not sneaking back to the shop.
Besides which, Joel has some help from Olivia now so she knows things aren’t as hectic back there as they might be. We’ll have to wait and see what happens next New Comic Day, though.
Joel: No! Superman is not put after Spiderman! It belongs over in the DC section.
Olivia: I thought Superman was in Metropolis, not Washington.
Joel: Not that D.C.! Oh, and while I can see the logic of following Witchblade with Wonder Woman, they do not belong together.
Olivia: Joel! This box from WoC is really heavy. What is WoC anyway?
Joel: Wizards of the Coast; they publish Magic: The Gathering and other stuff. Ah, good. This all the replacement D&D books. Don’t worry; I’ll stock these.
Olivia: DND? Isn’t that who Syndey’s working for now? Department of National Defense?
Joel: [ Holds up Monster Manual ] Does that look like the Pentagon?
Olivia: What is that great big ugly thing?
Joel: Oh, that is a beholder.
Olivia: There is beauty in the eye of that thing?
Joel: Not so much, no.
Ah the joys of new employee training :)
Funny, but Olivia isn’t that green when it comes to comics
Well, in fairness, she didn’t think there were anything but superhero comics and that they were all aimed at kids. Remember how surprised she was to find one about zombies? She honestly may have no idea that Batman and Spider-man are made by two separate companies. She freely admitted that she didn’t know much.
Hmmm, thought she knew a little more than that, or maybe it’s her cousin who’s the comic nerd
1) Yes, Olivia was dragged into the comic shop yesterday/4 years ago (depending on your point of view), so yes, her cousin/half-brother has the comics knowledge. She had been assuming that comics were all for kids (e.g. Superheroes).
2) I am assuming that Event Horizon stocks by company, then title, but Olivia is stocking solely by title. She will get used to their stocking system quickly enough.
3) I was trying to fit as many misunderstanding gags as I could, so I had to make her a little thick. Mind you, the reporters cleaned out all the old stuff she could have used for reference.
Heres hoping Sydney learns not to panic when falling and grab the orb. hmm
what would be the effect of her falling at terminal velocity and activating the shield orb instead? would be survive intact or would she still suffer whiplash effects in there?
It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop. So yeah, she’s dead if she falls with the shield up.
…. Subject to possible upgrades in the future. There are a LOT of blank spaces on that tree, after all.
well given that she wasn’t crushed by kinetic energy when maxima was waling on her shields earlier and they are implied to actually be usable in a fight one would safely assume some form of kinetic shunt in the design to absorb impacts from things like bullets, falling buildings, rapidly approaching planetary masses…
maybe, but when Max was wailing on her shield, she and the shield wer stationary.
What happens to the immovable object once it starts moving!?!
What happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object?
They surrender.
The unstoppable force deflects without any loss of momentum.
stationary relative to Earth, doesn’t mean shit for possible alien tech, if she is falling, and uses the shield orb, she just wouldn’t stop until she grabs the flight orb, even as she plows through the earth. at least that’s what I’m assuming.
The Shield may pass through the Earth, but we have seen that Sydney, does not
Maybe, but i’m thinking about Syd inside the bubble. the sand incident during the demonstration proves that gravity still effects her inside the bubble.
so during her fall she and the bubble would act rather like a person and a falling elevator i would imagine
Oh, so you mean just before she hits bottom, jump?
Albion – please tell me you took the name after the early medieval Lombard king?!
Is it nap time??
Well, i use it because it is one of the oldest names on record for the British isles, my home. also i like the work
Gotta love the mostly relaxed, comrade-type relationship Max and Syd have.
How many ppl could actually say they grabbed Max’ behind and got to live to tell the tale.
Also, her relaxed and non-mauling way of solving it.
Dabbler, but she did that for an entirely different reason, and she survived for an entirely different reason than Sydney.
I’m betting “vertigo cancellation” was one of the upgrade points.
Except, that wasn’t where she put the Upgrade point
One of the ones that had already been filled in when she got the orbs.
Oh, you mean already pre-set?
If it’s something that’s pre-set, there’s no need to put a point into it…
;)
Unless one has the option of re-speccing at some future time.
Pre-set as in the previous owner put the point in it
I’m figuring that Vertigo Immunity is already one of the Flight Orbs “Default Abilities.” Think of it as a “Supplimentary Required Power that allows use of a Primary Power.”
Sort of like having Super Strength, which is handy for punching through walls, but unless you have some level of Invulnerability, your hand will wind up more broken than the wall you punch. In the Flight Orb’s case, the ability to fly would be pretty useless if it doesn’t also cancel Vertigo.
It’d be really interesting to see someone with super-strength but not the invulnerability to go with it (we’ve already seen the other side of that). They’d still be decently effective, but instead of punching through the wall, they’d have to just push through- still be able to throw things, hit really hard, etc.- but a more leverage-based style of fighting would work better than a strike-based one, and they’d need to wear all sorts of super-heavy-duty protective gear.
You still wouldn’t be able to push through a wall either. Your feet couldn’t gain enough traction to apply proper leverage.
It even goes so far that, if the skeletal structure isn’t as strong as the muscles, that just lifting something sufficiently heavily would be impossible…Imagine trying to lift something heavy enough that it actually separates several bones from the cartilage, or even breaks bones.
Yeah, without sufficient invulnerability to prevent self-injury, you’d still be hosed.
Potentially. People underestimate the amount of longitudinal force bones can take- I think I read it somewhere that the average human femur has a long-ways compressional strength equivalent to a mid-sized steel I-beam. I’ll give you the cartillage damage, but that’ll also be compressional, I think- there’s going to be a little bit of ‘secondary invulnerability’ with things like the muscles themselves not separating under extreme load, and I’d say that’d extend to the tendons as well, and their connection to the bones. In that case, the muscles themselves will work to support and hold-together the joints against a pulling force.
For the walls- yeah, depending, again, on the footing. In half-loose dirt or sand, or solid stone/concrete, you’ll probably slide instead of pushing through the wall, but, especially if you have the right place to brace, like in a tight corridor or on fractured slab, you could get the leverage.
Something that I think could happen is compression of the bones. You’ll see in martial artists that the impacts they receive in training and combat will, over time, cause their bones to become more dense, and therefore stronger- Same with powerlifters, I’d bet. So to that end, I could see someone with super-strength but not invulnerability, with proper training and practice, as well as through events they survive, eventually getting a measure of ‘vanilla’ invulnerability compared to others, allowing them to do more with their strength.
They’ll probably also end up knarled, short, and a little bit pudgey, but hey- super-strength.
Nah, because in this universe as long as your power is internal (as in not requiring a ‘focus’ (a Champions term) such as Sydney’s orbs) you are an Amazon/Adonis, no matter what that power might be.
Apparently even having your powers be based on your non-human race makes you sexy, if you’re willing to overlook the fact that being part succubus should tend to do that regardless, and that there are probably more than a few people who wouldn’t have sex with Dabbler for money because she is so obviously non-human. We only have the single example to go by, after all. Unless you count the flashback to her high school days.
Ultra Boy of the Legion of Super-Heroes supposedly can manifest any single Kryptonian super-power at a time, but somehow having super-strength without invulnerability never causes problems…
Ultra Boy is sorta like Max; the big difference is that he can only shift his “power pool” into one super-ability at a time, and it’s all-or-nothing with each power.
And I just realized that Sydney *still* doesn’t wear her wrist gizmo. Unless it’s under her sleeve.
DaveB forgot to include the strap in all but the second panel
She is not wearing it. Maxima did not give her time to go get it before this scene.
She said: “Be on the roof *with it* in two minutes.” Of course, they could have been in a locker more than two minutes away.
It’s there in all the panels. (I had to fix that last night before posting it) You can only see the wrist com itself in the 3rd panel, but looking at it now I realize it’s really hard to see the dark blue of it inside her sleeve.
Note by the window: “…: Illegal entry may result in grievous…”
Bodily harm? Lawsuits?
…and then on the other side that or a similar sentence ends in “imprisonment.”
Grievous imprisonment! :D
Attacking you with lightsabers.
Grievous taunting by Dabbler and Sydney?
grievous taunting: Your mother was a Taun-Taun?
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
They still are
As in, still your parents?…Or still a hamster & smelling of elderberries?
;)
Probably added to the ‘fun’ when she was being carried by Max.
I wonder if ANY orb, including the unknown ones, can be used for hovering.
Let unknown #1 stay on the roof and the entanglement
effect wouldn’t let her fall.
She TKed the orbs for a pummel attack past episodes so grabbing
unknown #2 should lift her back to the roof.
This should allow Halo to use THREE orbs!
Force Field in the left hand, Blaster in the right, and orbs in a backpack
working like a jetpack.
Oops… The fear of heights inhibitor isn’t on…!
Its kind of inconsistent atm. When the “bank robbers” had her, the tube rolled after her. When the tube was stuck on the gear shift, it held sydney still. When max grabbed the tube and tries to yank her out from under the car, neither sydney nor the tube moved. So I think what would happen is, the orb would follow sydney in her plummet down. The REAL question is, if max was holding onto one of the orbs, would she get yanked off the roof? Or would sydney stop falling?
You replied as I was typing and came to the same conclusion.
Let’s see Halo vs a revolving door!
-Halo vs a revolving door-
I can imagine it…
I would love to see what kind of convoluted plan she came up with to escape the dastardly door.
The key point here seems to be which one is being moved (Sydney or the orbs). When they reach their max tether range both Sydney and the orbs basically turns into “immovable objects”, where no force can be exorted in a direction opposite of each other (in the bank robbery, the tube wasn’t moving because it was yanked along with Sydney, it was merely Sydney using her orb power to move it towards her).
As for the orb canceling Sydneys fear of heights; I don’t think it’s the orb manipulating her mentally, but rather a side effect of being unaffected by gravity. Can you truly be afraid of falling down if you cannot properly tell which way is up? Or which direction you’re even supposed to be falling in?
Vertigo isn’t really a factor of gravity though. The illusion of height has the same effect
I believe that the orbs can not force Sydney to move (as indicated by Maxima not being able to move the tube). So Maxima wouldn’t be able to jank Sydney off through an orb.
We also know that, when Sydney tried to move away from the car (where the orbs were trapped in), she couldn’t. But when the orbs were laying on the ground, they followed Sydney.
So it seems that there is an effective rope between the Orbs and Sydney. And neither move further than the lenght of the rope from eachother. Now the orbs not being able to forceably move Sydney is no doubt a safety feature.
So if Max held on to an Orb and Sydney jumped off the roof, my guess is that, after the end of the rope is reached, Sydney would stop falling. And the orb would try to ‘move’ in the direction of Sydney, with the same force as Sydney is. So to Maxima, the Orb would than weigh the same as Sydney
The orbs in Tubey would have followed Sydney, but she is not strong enough to drag her car which the orbs were stuck in.
Exactly, and Max is even more of an imovable object than Sydney’s car. On the other hand, when Sydney reached the end of the tether and came to a stop, Max could not use the orb to pull her back up. The best she could hope for at that point would robably be to move toward Sydney at a controlled rate and effectively lower her to the ground. Max and orb move toward Sydney, gravity pulls her away from Max until max range all the way down.
Remember she could always catch her with her superspeed.
No doubt she has enough fine control over it to catch a stationairy person in midair without him/her suffering whiplash
Max: Don’t worry. I’ve got you.
Sydney: You’ve got me. Who’s got you?
Max: Yeah, I saw that movie too. Are you going to grab the flying orb or what?
As long as the orb Maxima grabbed wasn’t the flight orb, then she doesn’t have to pull Sydney back up or let her down, she just has to hold her there long enough for Sydney to call the flight orb to hand.
It has already been established that Sydney is able to “pull” Maxima with her orbs (in the scene of the bank robbery when she was hiding from sunlight under the truck); but then again, Max probably didn’t expect that when she grabbed the poster roll, so was probably pulled by surprise, not neccesarily by sheer force.
So, my guts and newton’s laws tell me that if Maxima were to grab one of these orbs, Max would basicly feel a momentum similar to when catching Sydney in free fall. So basicly p = body mass * relative velocity. Considering Sydney’s figure and height, I’d say she doesn’t weight more than 55kg.
A 10 meter fall would result in roughly 14 meters per second velocity if we disregard friction.
So, the final result would be 770 kg*m/s.
Rather cryptic value, as momentum isn’t a thing that occurs much in our real life…
… so let’s just compare it to a baseball; which makes a lot of sense considering that the orbs are roughly baseball-sized anyway:
An average pitcher can throw a baseball at roughly 90mp/h, or 160km/h. A baseball weights slightly less than 0.15kg.
So the impulse of a baseball caught at 80km/h [= 22m/s] (I halved the velocity as this is roughly how much the ball will slow down during it’s flight until caught) equals to p = 22m/s * 0.15kg = 3.3 kg*m/s.
So, Max catching Sydney by just grabbing one of the orbs would excert a momentum 200 times that of a baseball in major league. A normal human would probably have his hand ripped off by that. Max however could probably do it.
I apologize to americans for the use of SI units. But science is a lot easier in the rest of the world. ;)
Don’t apologize. America needs to get out of the measurement dark ages. A mile has five thousand something something something feet in it? What idiot came up with that? 6 furlongs to a gallon? 7.75 haypennies to a Rack Unit? 4.8 Parsecs to the Siriometer? Bah!
And no fathoms in an understanding.
It’s all just a buttload of inconvenience.
(Yes, “buttload” IS a specific unit of measurement)
Things would be so much simpler if we just counted in Base 12, you know?
Computers already use Base 16 (hexidecimal) as a means of translating binary into “shorthand” writing. Each single digit in hexidecimal counts as 4 bits of binary. Machine Language expresses computer-code commands in hexidecimal.
To be specific, actual machine language – eg cpu instructions and raw data acted upon by a CPU is still in binary. It’s just that our CPU architecture documentation and editing/debugging tools tend to use that shorthand you mentioned for our own convenience.
Yes, the “translation” between our use of hexidecimal into the computer’s binary processing is already hardwired into the CPU. That’s how the computer understands hexidecimal in the first place.
Would that be a Metric Buttload or an English Buttload?
& is that a wet or a dry weight?
(…insert here the proper “wet T-Shirt”-joke…)
(…followed by the sound of my bones being ground into a fine powder by Max…)
(…still…totally…worth it…)
(…owie?…)
I prefer Metrick Fucktons. Or is that Metric Fucktonnes?
Metric BuggerTonnes?
If one had a buttload of Depends briefs, would the universe implode?
The worst part is that I can’t even tell if those units you say are real or not. They sound stupid, but based on what I know from the Imperial system, they might aswel be real units
The siriometer is real, but almost NEVER used, even by astronomers. Hint: It’s one million astronomical units. For those who don’t know, 1 AU is the average distance between the sun and the earth. 1 Siriometer is roughly twice the distance from Earth to the star Sirius, hence the name. (And DaveB is almost right. It’s 4.85 parsecs.)
The furlong is real, too, but it’s a measure of distance. (Sorry, DaveB, but there’s no such thing as “6 Furlongs to a gallon”. Since 1 Furlong is 1/8th of a MILE, 6 of them would be 3/4ths of a mile… or about 1,320 yards or 1,207 meters.) As far as I know, the only place it’s still used regularly is at horse races.
The Haypenny… is a coin, not a unit of measurement. A British coin, at that. It’s the pre-decimal British halfpenny, minted between 1672 and 1967.
In order to switch over to metric, DaveB, you’re going to have to convince school districts to teach it starting in elementary school. I have a friend who understands “yes, metric makes more sense because it’s all factors of 10”, but I have to give him a cheatsheet for even the most basic conversions. He simply can not get used to metric, because the English system is what he was taught growing up.
I know furlongs are distance and a gallon is volume, I was making fun of imperial measurements since most people would have to look those up to know if they’re accurate or even real measurements.
well, at least you didn’t reference any hogsheads of barrels, or gobs of gloop
:)
I disagree with your claim that there is ‘no such thing as “6 furlongs to a gallon”‘. One could certainly measure gasoline powered vehicle’s fuel efficiency that way. It’s just a slightly impractical set of units to be making the measurement. Sort of like saying Hectometers / Liter instead of Kilometers / Liter. The same information is contained either way, but the numeral’s can become unwieldy for those wishing to convert the ratio to more familiar terms.
If you’re talking about automobiles, since a furlong is only an eighth of a mile, if you’re only getting 6 furlongs per gallon, then you need to have that hole in your gas tank fixed. Even the 1908 Model T got 25 miles per gallon… not 0.75 miles per gallon.
“Furlongs per gallon” would only be a useful measurement if you were talking about something like the M1 Abrams battle tank (0.6 miles per gallon… just over four furlongs), or the M1070 semi-trailer (just under ten furlongs per gallon).
cars, yeah you have problems. Ships… non-Nukes measure fuel use in Gallons per (nautical) mile. 16 gal/mile is considered very good.
well, post pub walking home and six furlongs to a gallon of beer sounds about right. drink two gallons and the amount you sway o nthe way home doubles hte journey to twelve furlongs.
Actually, where I’m from (cornwall) I’m pretty sure a ‘mile’ is the distance you can walk in a hour after leaving the pub, hence I know a few lanes that start with a sign saying “Tresomewhere 2 miles”, three miles later there’s a sign that says “Tresomewhere one mile”, another mile and the next sign says “Tresomewhere seven miles” and half a mile later you’re there.
Sounds like the surveyors were drinking all that the beer.
The difference is though, Hectometers/liter is just Kilometers/liter times 10
So it’s called “English” mesurements over there then? Interesting, here in England it’s called “Imperial”. And we mostly use metric these days… except for beer and roads.
My parents generation work in Imperial, Children these days work in Metric. My generation exist in a sort of weird hybrid limbo where we learned metic at school and imperial at home :P
Nah, it’s the imperial system. My mistake. Well, officially it is, anyway. Unofficially, I tend to call it the English or American system, because some American measurements are *not* the same as in Britain.
For example, the imperial gallon, quart, pint and gill are about 20% larger than their U.S. counterparts, the fluid ounce is about 4% smaller. What this basically means is that a 12-ounce can of beer is 341 ml in Britain and Canada, but 355 ml in the U.S. Similarly, a gallon of petrol in the U.S. is actually only about 0.8 gallons in Britain.
So, for that reason, I tend to say “imperial system” when referring to British measurements, and “English system” or “American system” otherwise. Personally I agree with DaveB on this one… we really need to make the metric system our primary measurement system, and only teach the imperial system for the sake of legacy applications.
6 Furlongs to the gallon is an inverted unit. It is a measure of how much water a horse loses as it runs 6 furlongs.
Responding to [DaveB]:
Agreed.
It’s truly “un-fathom-able”.
(…groan…)
Responding to [Anvildude]:
As for me, I’m thinking that we already use the alphabet to extend our Base-10 system into Base-16, so why not add the REST of the alphabet and make it a Base-36 counting system…?
The range of 00-to-ZZ in Base-36 is equal to 0000-to-1295 in decimal, for instance.
Because base-16 is already confusing enough, except to those of us who are actually in the computer programming field. I’ve been doing it so long I can convert numbers from base-2 (binary), base-10, and base-16 completely in my head.
Base-36? *sound of explosion* That was my head exploding all over my monitor. Also, it would be extremely inconvenient for programming, unless they redefined a byte as (at least) 18 bits instead of 8.
Oh, I completely agree – I program also. I only wanted to contribute to the silly part of this thread, not the serious part. The only time I even think of using Base-36 is when I want to reduce the #-of-digits that are being used for some size-constrained need, such as if I needed to increment a number within a file-name of limited length, & I had no way of knowing just how many output-files would need to be created by any given run. If the format for the file-name is required (by the client) to be: “aaaa####” (& no longer), then the odds of an overflow due to too many output-files drop significantly if we can go from 0-to-1,679,615, instead of 0-to 9,999. Still, such situations are only found rarely.
Historically, the ancient Babylonians used a Base-60 notation, to calculate astronomical distances…
…but even they only used it when working on astronomy.
As for re-defining a byte, I’m not sure that I see why you suggest using
18-bits (0-to-262,143)…
…could you clarify, please…?
P.S.:
I’m sorry, but you *DID* say you were “…actually in the computer programming field”, & so now I’m looking at your “handle” & thinking of:
“MicroSoft Pears – the Sun-Ripened Alternative to the Apple MacIntosh”…
…I’m SO sorry…
*laughs* Actually, my full name is Marcus Spears. I’ve used “mspears” as an online handle ever since college. It’s just a habit that’s kind of stuck.
As for the 18-bit thing… well, if base-16 can express an 8-bit value in two digits (by dividing the byte into two 4-bit nybbles), then base-36 could do the same thing with an 18-bit value… I think. On second thought, I think I’m wrong. I think I might have to think about this a bit more. Or maybe not. I think I’ll get a headache if I think about it too much.
At least we’re not using octal (Base-8) anymore… except maybe in some old industrial machines, like the Kearney & Trecker (K&T) machines that dad used when he worked for Rockwell International. (Nothing to do with the space shuttle, BTW. The Rockwell factory here made plumbing parts.)
Your forgiveness is appreciated, Good Sir.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never tried (or even WANTED to try) calculating in Base-36. I’ve only used it (& even then, only rarely) for certain text-output formats. I’d assumed that all actual work would always be calculated in binary, displayed as (4-bit) hexadecimal digits solely for human debugging needs, & output as (8-bit) text for the customer.
As for getting nostalgic for old tech, perhaps you’re aware that the government was an early (& huge) customer of mainframes, back when these machines switched from punched tape to cards. Those punched-cards were originally cut on the same machines that the U.S.Mint used to cut currency, after printing. When F.D.R. decided to reduce the size of all dollar bills (to help alleviate paper shortages), it was too expensive to even consider reducing the size of punched-cards at the same time. Too many card-reading machines (both government-owned & in commercial businesses) would’ve needed to be re-built in order to make a smaller size of card read-able. Since it was easier to just maintain the status quo, this means that even into the early 1980’s any mainframe that used a punched-card reader had huge stacks of cards that were still of the original size-&-shape as the old, “pre-F.D.R.”-sized currency…
…except of course for the corner that was always truncated, in order to make it easier to restore a card-stack’s sequence if it was dropped.
“America needs to get out of the measurement dark ages. A mile has five thousand something something something feet in it? What idiot came up with that? ”
I agree with the first part ;) but to be fair people don’t willingly complicate their lives unless obliged. Measurement systems are usually very simple and pragmatic at their origin. A Roman mille (latin for “thousand”) was the distance of a thousand paces. A Saxon furlong was the the distance of a furrow plough in a non-resting day, and had 600 feet. Simple.
But then those things called commerce, and migrations, and invasions, happened. Different unit systems started to collide and then to merge. Expectedly they didn’t nicely divide from each other, but old habits die hard. The mile was rounded to eight furlongs, and later the foot itself needed to be standardized, and so the mile… became “five thousand something something something feet” :)
Back in late 1980’s I took part in a mailing list, where other engineering student were discussing about aircraft design features (IIRC, it was “Traveller Mailing List” for Traveller RPG). Most of us were using SI units, but there were some people who were using the obsolete imperial units. When we were discussing about technical features, there were questions like “… yes but what are those values in real units? How many pounds of thrust? How many feet per second…”
In the end, I got annoyed about the questions, and checked which kind of measurement units exist within the old system. When I wrote about airspeed, I gave the results in SI units, and also converted the values to furlongs (222 yards) per fortnight (14 nights). Mailing list members were using these “fpf” units as a joke for a couple of weeks before it was forgotten.
25 years later, I noticed that some young person was using furlongs per fortnight. After googling for it, I found out that someone had expanded the furlong per fortnight system by adding “Firkin” as unit of mass. That joke we did back in 1989 exists now as the Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight (FFF) system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system
I agree, but we’re not the only nation with a history of odd units. Take Britain, with their nigh incomprehensible pounds and pence. They went to a decimal based monetary system in 1971, which is right around the time I was being taught the metric system in grade school. Which was then never reinforced by anything in real use, and so faded just like my 16 hours of calculus which I’ve never used outside of a college classroom.
Without really intending it I’m fairly good with the metric equivalents of small units of measure. I do almost all of the cooking in my household, I’m left handed, and when I pick up a measuring cup I’m presented with the side which shows the metric measurements. One small compensation for having to buy left handed scissors all my life, or having to try to push the blades together on a right handed pair when the natural force of my left hand pushes the blades apart.
You want odd British measurements, you want to look at “Stone”. That can change depending on which neighboring towns you’re in.
Actually, Zweibelchen, science is one of the areas where America does use the metric system… it’s convenient, especially when working with their overseas colleagues. The other area where America uses the metric system is in the military, because it’s useful when performing joint exercises with other NATO countries. It’s also used frequently (but not universally) in the automobile industry, because so many car parts these days are made overseas.
Quite true. Anybody in the USA that has a toolbox uses tools made for both US & metric systems. It’s very common.
To expand on that, the U.S. is better though of as a ‘dual’ country than a metric or non-metric country. Both systems are legal for all purposes, and both are taught to children at the same time. Heck, we probably use more metric in our school years than we do English.
That said, English is pretty much the default system for most everyday things. Which is…not really a problem.
I seem to recall the destruction of some high-tech space probe and the failure of the multi-million dollar mission some time back because someone forgot to convert from or too metric. Given that NASA is run by the US government, do you suppose the person who made that huge blunder got a promotion?
I think that’s the guy who got re-assigned in NASA from satellites to manned space launches, just in time for the Apollo 13 launch.
I was actually being half-serious about the Base 12 thing, simply because for many common daily measurements (Yard, Foot, inch, etc) you’re working in factors of 12- 3, 12, 6, etc. And those Imperial measurements are basically derived from the human body- my foot’s about a foot, my nose to my arm (or a single pace) is about a Yard, my last thumb-joint is about an inch. Makes it easy there to give approximate measurements just based on comparisons to myself- whereas I have no such reference for SI units.
But that’s exactly the point. Why actually have so many different units for the same thing: length?
Why the hell would you seperate a distance between 3 different units (yard, foot, inch) instead of using just one? “So, umm. I am 4 foot and 16 inches high. No wait, where was the break point in which inches convert back into a foot?” … it’s confusing as hell and absolutely not intuitive. Also, it’s inconsistent. Why do we, for example, have LCD screens with 50 inches of diagonal length? Wouldn’t that be 4 feet and 2 inches?
And don’t let me even start about Fahrenheit, the most arbitrary of the arbitrary scales…
You might think so, but then recall the Mars probe which crashed and was destroyed because one system used metric measurements while another used Imperial measurements.
One would have to peruse a country block in order to find such a god-awful amount of commentary on measurements.
Really? No replies yet?
On second thought, the orbs follow her when she walks, so backpacking
the orbs may have limited utility.
She’d have to TK one (or it might have to be three) to the ground in able
to lift one (and herself) 10 feet up.
Sometimes I confuse Superhero physics with Cartoon physics,
(It’s more likely like a Venn Diagram with some overlap.)
Sydney… Verti-no means verti-no. Besides; a hero always asks permission from a lady before spastically grabbing the lady’s buttocks in sheer terror.
So, um… were they as firm as I’ve imagined?
No, that was Dabbles who grabbed Maxi’s butt-ox, Sydney is biting them (slight but significant difference :P )
Okay, so were they as tasty as I’ve imagined? /silly
Sydney would probably prefer a little more atomic-hotsauce :D
BTW, DaveB, the features and expression on Max’s face, in the 4th panel, are truly sublime and perfectly expressive of the moment. What really hit me is that I’ve seen that exact face and expression on a TV or movie actress and I can’t think who it is. It’ll come to me…
AHA! It is Tracy Dawn Scoggins! She played “Cat” in “Lois & Clark”, and “Captain Elizabeth Lochley / Colonel Elizabeth Lochley” in Babylon 5. That is EXACTLY who Max looks like. Right down to being a buff babe. Did you do that on purpose?
Wow, an actress of the 80’s and 90’s if ever there was one. I’d never actually heard of her, but Max is definitely supposed to have that Scandinavian jaw and slightly perterbed look on her face most of the time.
It is the eyes and eyebrows that really give it away. And check out Captain Lochley in a uniform very similar to Max’s.
You should also check out her role in the “Highlander” TV-Series, for a (VERY distant) scene of her skinny-dipping in a waterfall.
The Orbs don’t alter Sydney’s brain anymore than they alter her physiology, the ‘no vertigo’ is obviously a side-effect to the localised gravity deal the Aggravating Flight orb gives her (as someone already mentioned: if ‘up’ becomes whichever way she wants to be, then there is no ‘down’ and thus no vertigo)
For some reason that just made me think of her looking across (i.e ‘down’ form our perspective) and suddenly getting ‘horizontigo’…
Quick query for anyone else who like me a) suffers from vertigo and b) wears glasses: Does your vertigo manifest as a feeling that your glasses are going to inexplicably fall off into whatever chasm you are being abused by?
I mean, barring knocking them my glasses never fall off. But as soon as I’m more than a foot higher than usual, they just feel like they are going to drop.
YES!!!
I’m very aware of how much they slip down my nose when I’m looking over a ledge, so yeah, me too.
I don’t have Vertigo, but I always have this fear that my glasses would slip off and fall down into the abyss when I’m staring into it
Remember, when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gets glazed. And checked for glaucoma
#NietzchesOpticians
I think I’m immune to glaases seeming to slide off effect now. That or I have my glasses jammed on so tight they don’t shift at all. Mind you I think there’s a permanent dent on either side of my nose from how long I’ve worn glasses too.
…So your glasses wind up aiding the Abyss so it can stare back at you…
Hey, if your glasses improve YOUR eyesight..
Imagine if Maths saw them like in panels 4 and 5
Two day coma due to extreme loss of blood through the nasal cavity? o_O
I don’t think Math is the least bit attracted to Sydney.
I don’t think Math has any preference other than Girl..
Math’s mental check-list for lechery….
1. Is the subject Female?
Subject suitable for lechery
Exhibit A:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/709
Exhibit#2:
[grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1326]
Slight revision:
1) Is the subject a human female?
OR
2) Is the subject female and vaguely resembles a human, in mental and physical characteristics?
Yes,yes I know she flexed her gluteus MAXimus(heheheh) muscles, buy the first thought I had was “Did she fart?”
Good to see I wasn’t alone in that.
…Or, alternately, you could have spelled that as “gluteus MAXIMAs.”
;)
is it just me or is Syd noticing Max’s body a lot lately? And wouldn’t Dabbler be so jealous? lol
Probably wondering why it’s okay for Sydney but not her :)
Max:”When you do it it’s always INCREDIBLY Inappropriate!”
Dabbles: “But you still love it!”
Come on, when she grabs the orb it will vertigo, and so long as she holds on it’s vertigone =P
Is it just me, or is Maxi’s butt-oxen an unfortunate lighter shade than the rest of her outfit? o_O
Yes, Powdered Toast Man! *glomp*
With Frank Zappa as
The PopeThe Man in the Funny Hat.No, wait, it was “The Man With the Pointy Hat” according to wikipedia. It’s been so long since I had seen the edited re-run, and the youtube clips either had no titles/credits, or the original version.
Packed with Vitamin F !!
Heh. Sydney learns about “orbs”.
Yeah, Maxima is the original “hardass.”
Does “im clinging tenaciously to your buttocks” mean something special here? Its just the way she said that implied some sort of meme or something. Anyways, I am so looking forward to this. We are FINALLY getting a chance to test limits of her orbs. Im guessing first it will be raw speed, then some maneuverability tests, just to make sure how agile she is in the air. (My guess is pretty damn agile, and she can turn at the speed of thought) After all, if she has total control of her personalized gravity, she doesnt have to worry about gforces. Especially not with her shield up.
It’s a Ren & Stimpy reference, via their super-hero character Powdered Toast Man. Like both Maxima and Halo, he had flight superpowers, and when carrying passengers while flying, he insisted they grab his butt cheeks in order to keep from being blown away while he was in flight (it WAS Ren & Stimpy, after all.)
and next panel we see sidney grabbing the orb and not actualy falling bu staying in the air upside down behind max :)
Uh, Dave? I think you may have made a boo boo in Max’s second speech bubble. I think you forgot a ‘you’ in there.
I only vaguely remember Dark Forces. I did have it and I did play it, but for whatever reason I don’t think I played it all the way through. I do have fond memories of other games from around the same time though – Doom, Duke Nukem, Redneck Rampage, and so on.
I wasn’t really playing any of them technically though since I got a lot of use out of the cheat codes . . .
Omigod! I still have those stupid games! I just pulled my old shoe box full of games out and there they were! Unfortunately, they don’t work on more modern computers. I just tried to install Dark Forces and it wouldn’t do it. If I want to try these old games out again, it looks like I’ll have to check out DaveB’s links to Steam and Gog.
GoG is your friend! They started out just basicly updating older games to modern computers (Ultima series, Wing Commander,King’s Quest etc etc.) But now you can find a fair number of Modern AAA games on it.
You can get DosBox and install it in that. You’ll have to manage the configuration yourself. It’s what Steam and GoG use for those old games. https://www.dosbox.com
In fact, in at least one case, Steam is using the GoG version. I bought a lot of stuff during the Eidos sale a few months ago, and the original Tomb Raider was part of that bundle.
The original Tomb Raider is a DOS game, so it had to be played through DOSBox. Imagine my surprise when I looked in the Install directory and found an ISO image of the original CD… and the filename was GOG.ISO (the reason for the CD image was not for copy protection reasons. The music was stored on the CD in Redbook format. Therefore, they had to include the ISO so that you could enjoy the game as it was meant to be played.)
From Dave’s mini-blog: “…an awesome gun that fired a ball of compressed air….mainly used for knocking Stormtroopers off instadeath fall catwalks.”
Who needs the gun when you got Force Push?
:P
“…the Stormtroopers can never hit anything.”
(Insert your favorite joke about the Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy here)
I second Dave’s take on Dark Forces. It was the first FPS I played that had so much scale to it. Giant fortresses, bottomless chasms, spindly catwalks, looming AT-STs, refueling lines that you could walk on (and in—though that might have been the second game in the series).
And the stormtroopers chatted with each other while you were sneaking around, which was cool.
You’re thinking of Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. That game really did open up the scale of FPS level design, but had the curious side effect of making everything feel vastly empty. It was probably also one of the earliest to use textured polygons for everything instead of sprites. Really a crazy good sequel to a crazy good game. It also had an expansion pack called Mysteries of the Sith, which had my favorite map in video game history: an ancient Sith burial temple. Breathtaking.
Dang it, now I want to go play the refueling station again…
I like these test/experiment pages more than the financ-y/inside the office ones… :)
Also, nice to see the camoflague gear in action. Yay spindly Halo.
Just thought of something. Can Sydney use the orbs with the back of her hand? Or does she have to be specifically holding the orb?
as far as we can tell she has to have hold on them in her hands.
She has tried that (and including between the fingers), conclusion is that the Orbs require palm-print activation
Was pretty sure on that, just wanted to check. Was kinda thinking batman-ish on Maxima’s behalf. Since she’s the strongest and the one in charge it’d probably rely on her to deal with the others if they go rouge. She tested Syd’s shield to a bit over what she did at the press conference so as to be sure of what it can handle, but probably didn’t go full power on it. Taking a worst case is that the shield can take her full power ramping speed and simply breaking Syd’s fingers before she can grab an orb would nullify her. On the other hand, Syd and Dabbler working together can probably handle Max if she goes rouge (when batmanning you gotta plan even against yourself, though only loosely as you don’t want to start making counter plans). Syd will likely get drafted into helping making up such emergency plans.
Hey Dave I think there is a grammar problem in the first panel last chat bubble. “What happens if let go of orb? I think you meant to say “What happens if YOU let go of THE orb” maybe not but it just sounds funny the way it was written.
I’m not scared of heights. I’m terrified of the sudden stop at the end.
And I long ago decided that the Star Wars Universe never heard of OSHA.
Somehow, I think safety regulations concerning the massive cloning process to allow Stormtroopers don’t have specific “jurisdiction.” Stormtrooper safety was never a high priority on Emperor Palpatine’s list.
Anyone’s safety (other than his own, of course) was never a high priority on Palpatine’s list. For example, most of the TIE pilots were not clones… but a TIE Fighter has no life support, no hyperdrive, and no deflector screens. Neither did the TIE Interceptor or TIE Bomber. The Empire as a whole favored vast numbers of fast, cheap attrition units because they had enough manpower that they could afford to lose pilots… they were expendable assets.
Yeah, for TIE fighters, their Engagement SOP includes “withdraw unless you outnumber the enemy ships by at least 3-to-1.”
Oh, and if Nar Shaddaa is anything to go by, the Hutts didn’t care much about safety either. Though in their case, it probably isn’t due to a lack of concern about the safety of their workers… it’s because installing safety equipment everywhere is expensive and eats into their profits.
This was clearly Sidney’s plan to nibble Maxima’s butt retribution-free.
Well done, Sidney! We all envy you.
I’m shocked and amazed that nobody has yet to comment on the myth of storm trooper inaccuracy. This myth comes from two parts of the original trilogy. The first was aboard the Death Star, where it was part of Vader’s plan to let them go, in order to find their hidden base. The second was on Bespin, where it was part of Vader’s backup plan to let them go, so he could capture Luke in space, on board a disabled Millenium Falcon, if the boy managed to escape from his trap.
And the third was on Endor, where they were defeated by a bunch of teddy bears with some heavy logs.
Stormtrooper armor was pretty useless anyway. It doesn’t have enough padding to mitigate even minor impacts & balster-fire cuts through it “like buttah.”
That’s mostly due to Stormtroopers being expendable. Even under Imperial rule, most of them (but not all) are clones. The armor is basically designed to protect against light blasters, concussion, and shrapnel, but won’t do much against a heavy blaster. Where it excels (in the RPG’s, at least) is that it has more “hard points” (for customization) than any other armor, such as the heating system used by Arctic Troopers, or the Enhanced Optics Suite built into almost all Stormtrooper helmets.
Stormtroopers were vaders elite strike force, there was a non elite army that out numbered them 100 to 1.
No, the real reason for their perceived in-accuracy was because it would have been a very short movie if the heroes got blasted on the Death Star
And it’s also more than likely the ‘Troops on the DeeTee were just basic ‘grunts’, not the Special Forces
regarding vertigo, i know it’s all in my head, but it’s still scary. when i was 7-8 i climbed to the top of our windmill (on the farm) and couldn’t get down. mom had to climb up and get me. still get willys when in a high place and look down. regarding vertigo via video games, when i played world of warcraft, i couldn’t fly through blades edge mountains unless i closed one eye. those spikes gave me the creeps.
Never used to have a problem with heights (used to climb on top of the house roof and jump off) but now get nervous just climbing a ladder to fix the lightbulbs (we have eight ‘candle-stick’ bulbs in our chandelier and insist they all must go out before replacing them, even if the last one stubbornly holds out for three months :p)
Have a similar problem with games, hate doing the quests in the Overrealm part of EverQuest 2 (floating islands in the sky) or any game that has mountains you have to climb (yes, “Sound of Music” is horrible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvDFoF9sfQA)
My personal bugbear with those zones in EQ2 was navigation – I was constantly getting lost in Bonemire and TT, unsure how to get from point A to B. Especially annoying if I’m autofollowing a party member and it just … stops autofollowing because reasons. Then they get a couple of islands ahead before I realize it and I have to ask them politely to come back for my navigationally challenged ass, or burn a cooldown on Call of Heroes >.<
Curious question then – did you have any problem with the flying mount travel posts throughout the overworld zones in this game? I remember many a route that required hopping on a griffon or sokokar fast travel thingy, flying halfway to the landing point and then *jumping* off from hundreds of feet up to fall directly at your actual destination.
No, haven’t had any troubles with the Taxi service for some reason, but haven’t tried the flying-frogs yet
I really liked the dolly zoom effect in this one — it was less gag-like and worked pretty well without animation.
Tenacious Buttclench.
Sounds like a rapper name.
Or a Heavy Metal band
It’s actually a reference to Powdered Toast Man, from the Ren & Stimpy Show. It’s packed with Vitamin F !!
POOOWWDERED-TOOOOAAAST M… ah man…