Grrl Power #420 – Shipoopi
It will be a long road for Sydney, since she’s used to playing games with little to no death penalty. At least with games like this the worst that happens in that you have to sit out the rest of the round. If this was a game that involved high level raiding, she would probably be a lot more careful. Once Peggy starts making her do 10 pushups every time she dies, Sydney will quickly start valuing self preservation in the game more. Of course there’s a good chance her hands will start getting shaky from all the exercise, but… well, Sydney could use the exercise.
Yes, I know it’s page 420 and no pot references. I do wonder what Sydney would be like if she was high. Probably pretty calm actually… though considering most ADD meds are stimulants, I don’t know, maybe she’d be sedate but borderline self destructively distractable? Like she decides she’s hungry and it takes her 30 minutes to make it to the kitchen, then turns the oven on then it takes her another 20 minutes to decide what to eat and she microwaves something and leaves the oven on. I have no idea really. I don’t partake myself. Well, I did once, but I was the asshole going “How long before something happens? How do I tell when it kicks in? What am I supposed to be feeling?” So as far as I could tell I didn’t get even a tiny bit high, and if I did, I don’t see what the big deal is cause I didn’t notice anything.
Over at Patreon, BrainBlow asked “So how do superpowers factor into video games here?”
Well, pretty much like you’d expect. People with speed powers would have an advantage, stuff like danger sense would be a bit more iffy, depending on iffy it’d work for non life threatening situations. Other physical powers wouldn’t be so useful either, and could actually be quite detrimental to the equipment they’re playing on. You could definitely build a much tougher than average laptop for guys like Maxima, Stalwart, Ren when he starts getting jazzed up, etc, but there’s a practical limit to how much you could reinforce the thing. Really the better solution would be to just plug in a really cheap keyboard and let them pound on that instead.
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Danger sense that triggered in non-life-threatening situations could make a good several comics.
Imagine if you will:
Guy jerks awake at precisely 6:17 AM. “Damn,” he mutters. “Looks like a heavy traffic day today. That danger sense based alarm clock to avoid the boss yelling at me for being late to work is a real shocker, but handy.”
In some situations it might be simply annoying:
Guy is driving and suddenly Danger Sense! Two minutes later the check engine light comes on.
In other situations it might be very welcome:
Guy walks by a florist, feels the tingle of his danger sense. “Ah, right,” he thinks. “Tomorrow is my anniversary!”
Yep, unless it can provide specifics (such as the nature, intensity, direction and/or proximity of the threat), it’s easy to see Danger Sense becoming a huge annoyance. One of various superpowers that sound really good in principle, but arguably need idiot-proofing (or at least an ‘OFF’ switch) added to the design before acquisition..
To draw a loose parallel, what good is a burglar alarm if it doesn’t just get set off by genuine intruders, but for absolutely anyone who strays within a hundred yards of your property?
We have burglar alarms like this. They’re called dogs. Love’em, but man, the number of false alarms you get….
“Ambrosia, that girl’s walking on the other side of the street. She’s allowed to do that. You don’t need to let us know every time it happens…”
My dog wouldn’t bark like that. If a burglar broke into my house, my dog would probably look up, turn on her back, and wait for the burglar to give her a belly rub.
Unless the burglar was a squirrel. Then my dog would go totally Terminator on that burglar squirrel.
My dangersense is tingling hurry or the food is being burned. (Why is his food always perfekt )
My dangersense is tingling must bee extra prise on something an my wife/daughter/son is after my credit card.
Ha! If it didn’t provide specifics it would be less Danger Sense and more Looming Foreboding DOOM Sense. Every minute of every day would be crushing under a vague miasma of DOOM. That doesn’t sound very useful.
… And it’s much worse if visiting, say, Chernobyl.
My check engine light has been on for about 4 months now.
Penny’s (TBBT) has been on for 9 years. I think even when her car died and Leonard bought her a replacement it came with an always on check engine light.
Peggy should move up to paintball. Getting actually ‘shot’ would help Sydney understand her basic principles better.
Yup, that will be next, to see how much of the ‘virtual’ survival lessons she has learnt (wonder just how covered in paint Sydney will be by the time that lesson ends :D)
I think she’s saving the paintball for powers practice.
idk about that, the weights on a paintball gun are totally different from a real gun so they’re not the best teaching tools. Maybe paint BULLETS, i swear i’ve heard of those.
Still would weigh more than virtual digital weapons, and it’s more for translating the lessons Sydney (hopefully) learnt into a real-world environment without her ending up dead
Paintball as taught by Peggy might work, but then so would soft air. But paintball as it’s played competitively would be totally worthless. The tactics for winning in tournament paintball is not going to keep you a alive in a firefight.
Yeah, but that’s the point: tactics used to win a paintball tournament would get you killed in a real firefight, but it’s still a good step up in training
That’s exactly the point. Show her how to use a paintball gun, take her to a course, and instruct her that she must hit every target to leave it without getting hit.
I’m thinking she wants to first do something which won’t end up having Sydney covered in bruises. Those paintball pellets still hurt. :)
The only alternative to progressing onto free-range paintball would be ‘caged’ laser-tag
Considering how much she’s died virtually she’d be covered in paint and bruises and that wouldn’t teach anything other than to hate the training.
Ive got that fun sort of ADD that’s got hybrid symptoms with ADHD. Alcohol raises my inhibitors, but my balance and coordination still get impaired. Being drunk is quite frustrating, so I just start drinking water at buzzed.
Oh right, point. Sorry.
She’d probably get whatever the coordination and physical effects are + the opposite of what the “normal” behavioral effects are.
So, the munchies plus becoming even more scatter-brained and hyper.
I see no problem here. Being drunk is just a stupid failure of self control, regardless of your own particular chemistry. I recommend that everyone switch to something non-alcoholic at buzzed, things would go a lot smoother for the whole world if this was a thing.
I happen to know some about Logistics. The System needs to be made for such stuff. The solution to more stuff than you need is either to auto-assign storage space (IT, barcodes&everything) or to assign a Mixed Storage. Because you literally cant throw the Things Away without More beurocracy (and thats expensive). everyone and their mother would be exploiting that to fill up their personal toolbox. It is explicitly not simple to habe Good Logistics.
If buying a dozen bolts is cheaper than buying only the eight bolts you actually need, and letting someone take home saves the hassle of inventory management of a trivial number of a trivial value of bolts you don’t plan on ever using anyway, then I would welcome the enterprising employees who saved me money whilst filling their personal toolboxes. That is the exact opposite of ‘exploiting.’
The subject reminds me of the time I was boarding a flight from Belgium back to the States. The Belgian security pinged on my cigar cutter, and told me I couldn’t bring it on the plane. (this same cigar cutter made it out of the States without incident in the same toiletries kit that the Belgians had spotted it in using the same x-ray machines.) I said sure, fine. Then they asked me if I would like to return to Belgium. I had greatly enjoyed my vacation there, and said that I would love to return. Then I realized that they were going to store the cigar cutter for me and return it to me upon my return to their nation. Which I had no scheduled plan to do. And the cigar cutter was worth something like $3 or less, I had bought it from the impulse rack on line at a Total Beverage, and I used it to enjoy a few very nice cigars in both Italy and Belgium on that trip. It was made of cheap plastic, and if broken apart for a weapon would have provided something that would have been of less damaging potential than my fists. So I interrupted the process they had begun of cataloguing the cigar cutter for my eventual return (11 years later I have yet to return, but damnit I really should), and told them they could discard it or keep it, that it was not worth inventorying.
I’ll rise to Sidney’s [limited] defense on orphan cover.
1-She is now seeking cover at all, a distinct improvement.
2-she is going to be working as part of a team, which means that even pinned down, she distracts the enemy who is pinning her down.
3-Most of her targets will be running, or trapped [in which case, just telling them to surrender and waiting until they realize they have no option is much less trouble] So again, there should be limited call for worrying about the finer aspects of cover.
While there is some value in teaching Sydney to seek cover, she will probably be quite often employed as a human shield for civilians, property, etc. Hell, she can and very likely will be the ‘cover’ other members of the team who can be hurt by bullets use to move from one piece of orphan cover to another, or to non-orphan cover. Riot police shields and helmet masks are often see through for the exact same reason Sydney’s force field will be so valuable for that purpose: Being able to advance on the enemy while both under cover and able to see the situation clearly is a huge advantage!
Teaching he something which will in all probability be never employed in an actual combat situation is not a terribly good use of her time or the time of her instructors. Unless it is constantly reinforced, at the cost of even more time on the part of her and others, she’ll have forgotten it. So really, her having to pass the course before she can move on is just a bit of inefficient organizational bureaucracy. Someone made the rule and said it had to apply to everyone, and so Sydney has to pass that gate.
Imagine Maxima just walking straight at the opponents in the tactical course, rubber bullets just bouncing off of her until she gets a clear shot at them and ‘takes them out’ with her own rubber bullets. Who is going to tell her she failed? Show me the injury that disqualifies her! The same applies to Sydney in her shield, using the Hentacle to either wield the rubber bullet gun or just smacking the weapons out of the hands of her opponents, or holding them up by an ankle. Tell me she failed the course! Show me the place she was hit by a rubber bullet!
Teaching her how to act when not able to deploy her shield is worth while training – even if the only take away is “always remember to deploy your shield before showboating.”
Because Sydney will always have her shield up?
Remember: two orb limit!
There’s bound to come up situations where her shield-orb isn’t highest priority.
e.g. Flight and Pew-Pew Orb (I’m not hip), for laying cover from above, or Light-hook + Truesight when tripping up Deus’ invisible squad.
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OMG (late to the party?): I just realised why Deus was so pleased when Harem briefed him on the Truesight! Harem probably didn’t know about Deus’ invisible “abdication squad”, so didn’t realise how valuable that info was!
Deus now knows to counter-plan / keep his abdication-squad out of Sydney’s sight!
Yes, the force field orb and one other.
Would you trade “I can’t be hurt” for anything else? I would not.
Well .. I only have a small Painkiller resistence, meaning they take a really long time, and a bit more than usual until they work ..but man, all the deins make me pretty high.
On the other hand I had actually 8 fillings made and later changed and most other dental work done without any local anesthetics.
The story behind this. As a child, on one of my first dentists appointments I got the worst painshot ever. It felt like the nurse tried to pry out my tooth with the needle. I hated injections since then, even when in 99.9 % of all times it does not even hurt.
But the funny thing .. the filling without the shot hurt less then all the others .. sometimes there was a cold straining feeling, which the dentist explained should have been the nerve .. but else I don’t see whats the fuss about ..
Butt dial a grenade during a shooter fight….. Well, that still better than the guy who put the grenade in his bandoleer backwards to be ‘cool’, and had it’s safety lever snap off and explode as he low-crawled.
wait that happened?!
thought boot weeded out the really stupid ones…then again if that was boot i guess it kinda did
It was at boot, and it was a training gernade instead of an actual one. But yeah, it happened.
yea we ADDers have some weird brain chemistry that makes stims mellow us out thats why alot of us if not on meds self medicate with caffine
wait that’s why I drown myself in coke when I have a bunch of extra shitty customers? This explains so much
I’m medicated and I STILL drink coffee all the time. Getting drunk on the other hand is not a good idea. I don’t get much in the way of mental effects but can’t seem to stand.
Why an XM on DE_Dust_2? Ever?
I mean, MAYBE on CT side playing B-site boxes, but even then a FAMAS is probably better.
Great strip, though! No way to teach someone the horrors of war like putting them in the most competitive FPS played seriously in the US.
Liquid RIP. American dream dies in the Semi-finals…
Hm…one thing I’d say about this, is that they’re PROBABLY overloading Sydney a bit too much. She’s cramming, notstudying. When you cram, it doesn’t really go into long-term memory as much.
This is just the first stage, next is field exercise
Problem with that is how long it will take her to learn that and get it down pat. She hasn’t exactly displayed much skill with physical activity in these areas ether and punishment by non related physical activity doesn’t do anything to fix the problem. She’ll need a LOT of practice.
Kind of surprised that Peggy didn’t give her a grilling on effective weaponry and their effective ranges ether. Thought that would have came just after panel 2 with the shotgun and her far from an effective range for it.
When I drink all I get is a fever as my body burns the alcohol off.
Speaking as someone who was well on the way to being an irretrievable dope fiend before being diagnosed ADHD and having to give up weed because it… doesn’t play nice with the meds, being high often had the same effects on me as dexies but (in terms of behaviour pattern) with more of a bias to media consumption and introspection than the productivity (creative and otherwise) and pragmatism on my meds. In terms of internal experience I had the same swings between jittery hyperactivity and calm stillness depending on the topic (as opposed to normally where it’s jittery hyperactivity or distracted hyperactivity), same overall increased ability to focus, the main difference here being that with dexies I have a lot more physical tics and involuntary gestures, but with pot I had a lot more *awareness* of tics I was experiencing, like chewing my lips to bloody shreds when we were working out my dosage versus spending two hours stuck in a cycle of smacking my lips, realising I was smacking my lips, consciously resisting smacking my lips, drumming my fingers instead, realising I was drumming my fingers, consciously resisting drumming my fingers, smacking my lips cause I wasn’t focusing on not doing so, ad infinitum.
I am confused when you say Sidney plays games with a lower death penalty than CS:GO. From #293 and #373 show that she raids with her guild in an MMO daily. I for one don’t know any MMO that has little punishment for dying during a raid. Also, any guild that raids on any day at short notice is a hard core raid guild too.