Grrl Power #502 – Checkpoint checkup
I had this page totally written and was laying out the panels before I started thinking about how the checkpoint would affect Harem and realized I needed to rewrite a bunch of stuff suddenly since… well, you’ll see. So this page became two, which wasn’t too bad because I think the original version of this page likely had too many panels anyway.
Harem and Pixel both understand the term “checkpoint.” Pixel isn’t asking what happened, she’s asking literally what Krona did to cause this effect, and by the way, is there a chance the universe might explode?
I like that Krona conflated fingernails (and by extension, claws) with the kind of nail that you hit with a hammer. Although I guess people hit their fingernails with hammers all the time too.
Edit: Whoops! I screwed something big up. The original version of this page had Krona in the second panel saying “Which is probably why Pixel getting, uh, as you put it, shanked and capri’d, didn’t activate it.” This contradicts Krona in the 4th panel where she says that Sydney is the only one who remembers the first loop. I forgot who knew what since as the author I know it all, and somehow during the jillions of hours it takes me to draw one of these pages I never caught that. As Krona mentions toward the end of this page Krona says she has a log of the events, so the best fix was to just have her pull it up a bit sooner. The log has an outline version, a detailed account, but also a deep debug console version which is what she’s looking at at the end of the page.
This page colored by Keith.
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This could have repercussions….
Well, with Pixel’s reaction to the description of what happened to her, and her look at Krona in the last panel, I’m thinking more re-purr-cussions….
I would be LION if I didn’t SPOT trouble coming up.
Nothing to be scared of, honestly. Remember — don’t fear the re-purr.
what a cat-aclysmic turn of events
I got a bad feline about this.
Is Pixel calling Krona a cheetah?
Seriously guys, cat puns? Are you kitten me?
Are you worried the cat puns will get in the way of a Krona-logical order to the story?
can we stop meow? these aren’t even a litter bit funny!
This whole thread is turning into a cat-ass-trophy.
At least it wasn’t a complete Cat-ass-trophy!
Yeah, people tend to make meowntains out of molehills.
Fur real.
Actually Pixels cat-ass was hung up like a trophy.
Would Pixel being sent to, say, Hawaii be more or less cat-ass-tropic?
Only if it was ‘Tahiti’
It’s a magical place.
Oh dear GODS, I am going to have to beat you all to death with the Pun Hammer!
Just catalog them and move on.
That could take serval sheets of paper. There are an ocelot of them to count.
Each with their own category.
Calm down. Try to be pussytive.
No need to do anything hiss-terical, Wekm.
Yeah, it’s not like it is some sort of catastrophe. Stomtalon started it with the furst pun. At least that was my im-persian.
Whisker your self away if you don’t like it. I guess that’s the tail end of what I wanted to say.
With all due respect [WEKM], I’m not convinced that there are enough Pun-Hammers for this kerfuffle here…
…that said, I just wanna give ‘mad props’ to [Gamesman], for the timely use of the ‘Pixel’s Cat-Ass-Trophy’ pun.
Don’t you mean a… purrfuffle?
Thank you but due to a technical issue (my old clunky computer) it took me a while.
I site Piers Anthony’s Xanth series for nailing that visual into the whiteboard of my brain.
Cite*
Also, been a while sinc I’ve come across another X(a/n)^th fan! I’m re-reading the Apprentice Adept sword of Anthony’s currently, and own a number of Xanth novels, so purr-rusing the puns above were very much making me think of him too!
Catastrophe may not cover it, if Krona has just broken the world. That would be more of a cataclysm!
We when I used to table top gm, allowed extra exp’s or pt’s , depending on the system we used, for puns that made people groan or laugh. purrficly feline system.
You are a my hero.A grrreat impurrovement of the rules.
your Bard has just made the entire village of evil orcs decide to wander off with that horrid pun, what do you do?
I orc-anize a search party
The denizens of the village of evil orcs return and erect a nunnery in your honour, forcing all who enter the village into service as nuns. What do you do?
I step just outside the village and ask our thief if he forgot his lock-picks.
Wow, this is like Saturday night without a date. Might as well wash my hair. Let’s see, instructions say wash, rinse, repeat.
Oh great. Might as well read the comic again.
As things clearly can change, might be a good idea. What else has Krona been doing?
Knickers. Definitely something to do with underwear. Maybe exploiting the Archon rule book saying that ‘pants must be worn, as the outermost leg garment’ by changing the language setting from English (US) to English (UK)?
Yikes, ‘pantaloons’ covers a whole host of garments, including bloomers and tights(yoga pants). I maintain that no ones as looks good in ‘yoga pants’.
Yup, you shouldn’t be wearing them if you don’t look good not wearing them
Haak! Haak! HAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAK!!!
* <– Hairball
I don’t care for puns normally. But you people have purrsuaded me.
Much like I once said to Mick, after a Stones concert, Jag u r purrfect.
Oh god. They broke the Matrix.
the Matrix is already broken, that’s why everything tastes like chicken
I wonder if chickens feel like cannibals. “OMG, was that Harry Redcomb I just tasted?”
Not everything. There’s something that tastes like Tasty Wheat. And some place that has good noodles.
Sometimes even oodles of noodles.
Including that place that had the noodle incident. You know the one.
Sydney was involved. It was an absolute certainty that reality was going to take a hit somewhere along the way. And dang it, every time I see pixel now the theme song for the Pink Panther just starts to play in my head!
Speaking of the Matrix HISHE did a Hero Swap and put Forrest Gump in The Matrix. I thought it was hilarious. BTW What is Gump’s password? 1Forrest1
ABoxOfChocolates.
Krona would be way too overpowered if she could just load a old save everytime something goes wrong.
From Krona’s… not so restrained reaction, something tells me that she’s found out the hard way with repercussions of doing exactly that.
Exactly. As I guessed in the comments of the previous page, Sydney didn’t necessarily die in there, just the stress-inducing threat of death might have been enough to trigger the effect. I was also correct in my guess that Pixel didn’t trigger it because she’s obviously used to deal with such confrontations & still had a fighting chance up until she got knocked out…At which point, she’s not having mental awareness of stress.
But Krona also said before that she only used that power on herself before now, which indicates that she simply didn’t have enough situational knowledge of Harem & Halo’s abilities to configure her checkpoint as efficiently as she would with just herself to account for.
So the single biggest limiter on Krona’s Checkpoint Settings would be the extent of her knowledge about the specifics of a situation & everyone who’s involved in it. No one can know everything, so the more people and/or the more complex the situation, the more room there is for mistakes to occur.
Sounds like she just reset ALL of Harem, not just the local one. So the question is what were the other 4 Harems doing and was it important?… :P
Sounds more like she reset 4 Harems and the this one is causing a glitch. I wonder if this will cause this one to “Un-entangle.” That could get interesting.
No, it’s the opposite. Meaning it only affects them, and they can expect company real soon.
Either that, or given Harem’s ability to “split up”, she’s accidentally created a sixth Harem and there’s another one still on the mission.
I’m thinking that she has just reset the one Harem, and the others being linked allowed the memory to be stored.
That’s how I read it, too.
That… actually makes sense, except, how can they have memory of something that didn’t happen?
It may not be actual time travel. Maybe it’s actually “restore from backup” for those she specified. the rest of the world wasn’t reset.
Well, when harem unteleports one of her to increase her strength/telecarryload the memories of that harem isn’t lost so her memory is probably shared among all clones even though the other clones might not be able to access it.
Since there is only one mind shared among five bodies, the is only one “Harem”, no matter how many places she is at any single moment. Kind of like five data stations sharing one main server. So, in effect, Krona reset/restored this one station without affecting the main data storage at the server.
She has external hard-drives built into her very existence.
That was my take as well.
This suggest the time mucking about is local and time did pass normally for other harems allowing them to have memories of the past that did happen and only got rolled back locally, which might explain why it can’t be used forever.
Actually it sounds like the opposite. Like it reset THIS Harem, but not the other four Harem, and since Harem takes in information from all of her Harems, this is causing some sort of feedback loop in the quantum entanglement state that lets her experience everything from multiple bodies at the same time. Like… THIS Harem doesn’t remember, but the other Harems do, so now she remembers that way, and it’s causing a type of disconcerting deja vu effect.
I don’t think it reset Harem. She asks what happened because she was exploring the warehouse then she found herself back on the roof.
Logic flaw there, I am afraid. If she had not been reset, then how did she end up back on the roof, if she had not teleported back there herself? Whereas if she had been affected by the reset (which is the only logical explanation for her being there, with the others, then (according to Krona’s explanation) she should not remember the reset, as she did not trigger it.
One option is that it was a localised reset, perhaps just affecting the individuals present at the time of saving the check point (plus whoever they and directly interacting with, such as the arch-villain). Which poses the problem of Harem talking with Maxima, General Faulk and maybe even Obama. Or perhaps being present when Arianna was making a press announcement. One that was being broadcast live around the world. Thereby making Harem interact with a good percentage of the world’s population!
If the power could not cope with that number of individuals being selectively bounced back in time, then the reboot may have affected some bodies but not others (the ones which had too much contact with other people). Which could affect Harem’s status of being quantumly entangled. As not all the bodies have the same memories, after that point. Ergo the brains are no longer in synch, and cannot be entangled anymore.
Another possibility is that there was a universal reset, but the means by which it was done was specifically programmed to handle each individual separately. With the problem that those present at the checkpoint may be handled slightly differently than those elsewhere. Meaning that the Harems may not have been reset in a consistent manner. Accounting for the dejas vu.
Or, it is a matrix thing, where you see a black cat repeating its actions, when there is a dejas vu. Except here she is seeing a pink pussy’s perturbation.
I’m imagining Harem’s mind as a PC with a single CPU (her mind) that has five cores (the physical brains in her bodies). One of the cores and it’s cashe has been reset but the data in the RAM and other cores is intact so while that core has lost what happened parts of the data still exist in RAM and in the related tasks the other cores were processing.
Of course it’s not a perfect example, how does her memory work? Perhaps a 5 drive mirrored array where each brain keeps a copy that’s constantly synced with the others via the entanglement? which of course would also in this situation mean one drive in the array is missing the latest data giving her deja vu untill they re-sync.
Yes, but is the feeling of deja vu coming from Bodie, or from the other four Daphnes?
Now just waiting for one of the other Daphnes to show up to see what the heck is going on with Bodie
When in werecat form, Pixel’s voice sounds like Samuel L Jackson. This is your headcanon now.
Samuel L. Jackson as voiced by Tara Strong. Trust me, she could probably do it and/or make him sound feminine.
So basically like a version of Raven who swears.
Sorry, I just can’t get the idea of Twilight Sparkle saying “Mother-f*cker” out my head now.
Drake: “Mother-f*ucker. I like that.“
good. now imagine the entire Blade movie redone with ponies
(insert maniacal laughter here)
That would be awesome!
Maxima sounds like Jennifer Hale.
I’m down for that headcanon.
What does the phrase “capri’d” mean? I have never seen that one.
Thanks,
Capri Sun. The juice bags you stab a straw in so you can stuck out the tasty juices.
“Strung up like a Capri Sun,” is the quote Krona’s referring to.
How does she remember Sidney describing Pixel’s condition in that manner if she doesnt remember anything else from after activating that checkpoint?
A little off-panel/off-page recap? It does look like a mistake on Dave’s part as Harem and Sydney are the only ones who remember anything that happened, that phrase hasn’t appeared on the last couple pages, and Krona has yet to read her log (which may not even be that detailed).
I was about to say the same. Probably a Dave boo-boo.
But DaveB at least has Krona there to blame for it…
;)
The page notes say “I…realized I needed to rewrite a bunch of stuff suddenly ”
So Dave has already done this once, found a problem, and then gone back to do it over. So he is experiencing the same things the characters are. Things can get complicated when we have two nested temporal inversions. A few details can get sucked into null space in the process.
Just don’t make him go back to try to fix it again or the comic might get caught in a chronic hysteresis. https://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Time_loop
Woah shit that is definitely a mess up.
Dang it. I guess Krona does remember what happened… which makes sense that she would want to keep herself in on the reset count as she’s the one who sets up the checkpoint. I guess the info takes a moment to seep back into her brain after the loop, otherwise it would be very disruptive to her just as she’s setting the checkpoint up. And her console is not something you want to wildly mis-key because you just saw something jarring, or were in the middle of another thought when the reset happens.
I think the only way to fix it is to have Krona tell Sydney to bring the others up to speed, as the two of them are the only ones who remember the previous loop. But then her dialog on the previous page doesn’t make as much sense.
I have to think about this. I’d prefer if Krona didn’t remember, that would be easier, but I really like her casually dropping the “shanked and capri’d” line and Pixel’s reaction.
Oh, I know! Easy fix. Edit incoming.
Ok, it’s up now. Just had to have her reference her log earlier on the page.
Nice fix. I had assumed something of the sort, on my first read-through. But the dialogue did not quite seem right, for the reasons picked up on. So it fits much better meow.
I like that edit, it makes the end “I need to check my log” even funnier.
All kids love LOG.
(“It rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs, and runs over the neighbor’s dog. Its fun for a snack, it fits on your back, it’s log, Log, LOG!”)
“It’s better than BAD – it’s GOOD!”
On technical minutiae, shouldn’t Pixel be a wifjaguar or wojaguar rather than a werejaguar, given that she’s a she? Werewolf comes from vir/were or wereman, which translates to male (adult) person. Woman comes from wifman, female (adult) person (using the root still seen in “wife,” although I’m having trouble figuring which meaning came first).
Go back far enough and you find it means shapechanger. With no gender. The Council is old enough (3,000+ years) that they are using the original term. So it is correct.
I assume it’s a reference to how you stab a sharpened straw through the seal of a capri-sun juice pack, to drink the contents.
It basically means this, not these
It’s a reference to the drink, Capri-sun, which is a bag with an outlet to drink from – and to drink you simnply tip upside down.
Pixel was upside down and had a blood drainer at the top of her back, so all the blood would drain out, like a capri-sun.
Pretty sure that’s in reference to a Capri Sun juice pouch.
More generic phrase – she got juiceboxed!
Time Travel Tenses is one of the many reasons why time travel should never be a thing…
I suppose that whole ‘unravel reality” thing should also be on there….?
also the “be your own grandpa” thing…. ?
……
Are the time travel police just big angry guys with a rolled up newspaper who shows up 5 minutes before you start building it, bop you on the head and say “NO!” in a really stern voice?
Already been done :-)
https://xkcd.com/716/
How in Christ is there always a relevant XKCD?
With regards to the complications time travel would have on grammar, Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy did it long before XKCD.
Tijay, Because either:
(a) XKCD is just that awesome
(b) XKCD has been going for so long that any relevant trope will have likely been at least touched on
(c) Somewhere between (a) and (b)
Yngvar, Yeah mentioned the Douglas Adams quote below (I like time travel references, so of course I didn’t reply in the right chronological order :-) )
Also Tijay,
(d) A Venn Diagram between XKCD and Grrlpower readers contains a large enough sub-group to accurately document these crossovers. Meta XKCD reference final move!
For almost any given series of posts you can use XKCD #386 at least once.
Some one is wrong on the internet
Ahh but only if they make a post error.
No. Only if you truly believe they have made a post error. “alternative facts”
The Time Traveler’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations is a grammar book by Dr. Dan Streetmentioner. It is about what tense formations to use when discussing time travel, and is supposedly “the main work to consult on this matter”.
However, the book is exceptionally confusing, and most readers only get as far as the section on the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Subjunctive Intentional before giving up. Because of this, in later editions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.
On a couple of occasions, the relevant xkcd came out shortly after the fact.
As you can guess, I was gutted.
Well, Douglas Adams wrote about the grammer of time travel in the Hitchhiker’s Guide series. The Guide mentioned a book that dealt extensively with that topic to the extent that it got so complex & confusing to follow the proper grammer & terminology that the later editions of the book were left with the last have of the pages remaining blank.
All in all, it was widely accepted that the grammatical term “future perfect” turned out to be not so.
Randall is just that good.
Of course, having Time Travel helps him cover as many bases as possible.
My favorite time traveler to date has to be Micheal Callahan.
Personally I would prefer to date Sydney. Who does qualify as a time traveller.
In truth, everybody is a time traveler. Most of us just happen to be stuck at traveling forward at a rate of 60 seconds per minute…
People make a big fuss about time travel grammar and tenses, but really, it’s not that complicated. Most of the necessary constructions are already in common use. In the case Sydney and Krona are arguing over, the correct usage is “would have happened”. If they didn’t intend to change that particular sequence of events, the usage would be “will have happened”.
The only case I can think of offhand that would require an unusual construction is describing the outcome of a potential alteration to the past, resulting in the establishment of a timeline in which the altered variable has been in its “new” state since its inception. This case can be covered by “will have always been”–still standard English, but less commonly used than the others.
My instantaneous reaction is to call lost temporal branches “What would otherwise have happened.” Otherwise clearly signaling the divergent nature of events. If you can remember it, its still subjectively past tense even if the clock says its happening now or soon.
I suppose I shouldn’t expect the ENTIRE universe to have been reset, but now I wonder
if the four of them will have to reset their watches back at HQ.
Does the villain remember the incident?
Forewarned is a bitch.
it depends on how the checkpoint system works – was it a reload going back in time (entire universe), or was it a reload with time progressing, but certain variables (local area) being re-instated? Considering the effects, I’m guessing the local area… but it will have a range.
Also, items consumed or damaged (troll blood anyone?)… do they get reset as well? So… many… questions…
We know the items stay. Pixel’s got her clothes back on.
Forewarned is forearmed. Forearmed is half an octopus. too much forewarning turns into tentacle hentai.
…And we’ve all seen enough hentai to know where that goes…
May I use that as a quote? Well I’m going to anyway, just letting you know!
Pixelicious seems to know Kronachrome well enough to know when she done goofed :D
Well Krona knew Pixel likes to be spanked so yeah there is a connection there.
Ya know, given the extent of Krona’s power, she might have MADE Pixel like spankings.
“Would have will happened” Late Great Douglas Adams FTW!
On another point, “Groundhog Day this ****** until we get in right” describes my playing of most Bethesda games with low level characters perfectly. :-)
Remove “low level” and “Bethesda” for me. I’m savescummer by heart, no matter the level or game. Also completionist, those two traits nicely complement each other. Why waste a hour gathering ingredients for conjuring up hard boss for his rare drop if I could just load the game and get to another disappointment in 5 minutes. Efficiency ftw!
Have you done that in RPG games?…Like in this for example
Wait, thought only Sydney is supposed to know what happened, but Bodie knew she was searching for Sydney, which hasn’t happened yet
Please refer to my first comment at the top of the page.
Oh, and Pixelicious wouldn’t remember anything after being knocked out and strung up (better than being knocked up and strung out :P), but Kronachrome doesn’t seem to remember anything
Not enough men in the area for her to get knocked up. And in that form, he would have to be a true man.
No shortage of those willing to try for her, though. Mrowr.
AAAAnnnnd, THAT is why Krona is “checking her Logs”… to find out exactly what her parameters on the checkpoint DID to Harem. in my opinion, it seems that the checkpoint only reset the locally present Harem but the other four versions were NOT reset, that’s why Bodie is getting the sense of deja-vu as having repeated the same thing over again, ala’ The Matrix… Now the question should be: Are they going to REACT like NEO? or like Morpheus and Trinity did? as of this strip, it seems to be more like how Neo did, in that they’re all ignoring their surroundings as pointed out earlier in the comment by CRAceDKR down below.
then again, if it hasn’t happened YET, do they even NEED to worry, since presumably neither Sciona or her magical security wards even KNOW that they’re here yet? OR has she set them up for the possibility that she knew Krona would/could be coming since Krona is a known member of the Counsel’s security force (The VI’s i think they are called)? and therefore knew that there was a possibility of those powers getting used, so she accounted for them in her security?
I think that’s the most important question here. Are they still stealth?
Can they call in the cavalry and wait, or are they about to have an angry blood mage jump them.
“I need to check the logs”. No good ever comes from those words..
Right up there with, “Let me check my notes.”
notes are logs, logs are notes
Not in this context, really; specifically referencing Riff from “Sluggy Freelance.”
Also ask any *nix admin.
Notes are what you did and thought would happen.
Logs are what did happen.
When Logs are worse than notes (which is probably) you usually start by calmly and rationally finding out how many times you can fit the word “f***” in a reasonably grammatical sentence. :-)
Or, as the Boondock Saints put it, “Demonstrate the diversity of the word.”
Sigh.
It’s been too long since we’ve seen Sydney do that. I’ve been missing it.
To quote one of my favorite platoon sergeants from back in the day:
Frack! The fracking fracker is fracking fracked! Frack!
of course he didn’t use frack
To take this out of platoon sergeant speak:
Darn. The M60 machine gun is not working well. I am not pleased.
Given the PSG that I heard use the f-bomb like that, you would really rather him be screaming f-bombs at you than saying “I am not pleased.” Extra duty almost always followed that phrase.
They are far scarier when they get quiet then when they are loud. Much like other highly dangerous things.
like that time bomb that just suddenly stops ticking…
Boom
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I don’t think they exist.”
“I’ve got it all under control.”
“They haven’t got a clue we’re coming.”
“I checked twice – I’m sure there isn’t a trap.”
“Don’t worry… [anything said afterwards]”
“Hold my beer”
“Hey y’all, watch this!”
Cut the red wire!
Trust me.
Yes I checked it.
I know what I’m doing.
Everything’s fine.
I do this all the time.
No one will ever know.
Did you hear something?
The power just went out, it will be fine to check the basement alone
In that case, I’m going to start praying for the absolution of my sins…If you do screw it up, I won’t have much time to list them.
When you are crossing a swamp that may contain alligators or crocodiles, you need to REALLY check your logs.
I have been canoeing, with my brother, on Lake Victoria. Warning my brother “don’t get too close to that bank, there is a crocodile on it!”
“Don’t be silly, that is a log.”
The ‘log’ then blinked and slithered into the water.
We paddled a lot faster! Away from the bank in question.
I’m an Australian, so trust me, anything that could be hiding a spider, snake or crocodile (which is basically everything) is a danger. Australia, where paranoia of the sorts of “you forget to spray underneath the secondary fridge, we’re all doomed” is common sense. :-) My niece lives up the bush by the blue mountains, and when bushfires aren’t trying to destroy her property, absurdly poisoness snakes and other fatally dangerous creatures need to be dealt with. Mind you, sitting on her porch sipping your morning coffee while watching a herd of kangaroos bound past the boundary fence is sublime to such a state that the fact that everything else around wants to kill you can be briefly ignored. :-)
i am loving the term ‘absurdly poisonous snakes’
It makes me think of what, possibly, their venom would do.
“oh, that one? It won’t kill you if it bites you, but you’ll spend the rest of your days looking for a Koala to marry”
If Harem can remember, she might not be the only one. And you are close proximity to enemy, so get the shields up and call backup.
Also, if Harem remembers, then she knows (or will soon understand) that Sciona has been found, & by spreading the word, the other search-teams can regroup & descend upon this site in force.
I guess I was wrong. Still, I’ll make another guess and say the acute stressor might have been Sydney crying and screaming in terror.
Krona, does she remember what happened? Or at leastvwhat happened on thecroof?
You mean with Sydney disappearing? Only DaveB knows
I think it was clear from the last page that Krona *didn’t* remember.
Ummm – priorities guys? Why aren’t you on the radio with hq/maxima right now??? Or having Harem talk to them?
This was supposed to be a low risk recon, by the junior team. It doesn’t even look like any of them are paying attention to their surroundings.
At the very least – why isn’t Halo holding the shield orb???
Because they have to figure out what the hael just happened, and why, which is exactly what Maxi will be asking during their court martial :P
Soo, they didn’t travel through time?
More like for them, time got rolled back to the point where pixel made the checkpoint. Star Trek has done this on several occasions resulting in whole episodes that “did not happen” by the end of the episode, and in Voyager’s case, a whole week once.
I suspect that, just like in one of the TNG episodes, the time manipulation was localised. Hence why Dave was talking about Harem causing problems. Some of her are outside of the area, so she will have two distinct timeline continuities.
This could also cause a separation of Harem into two different personalities. Those which were looped back (possibly just the body present here) and the others. Most significant being that this could interfere with her quantum linking. Pixel was very quick to pick up on that, assuming it is what she is getting her fur in a twist about.
For info though, my favourite Star Trek time episode is Yesterday’s Enterprise. Which did not have localised alteration, as the entire history of the Federation changed! For the better, in some aspects. Such as the Enterprise being classed as a battleship, and having no children on board. For which read ‘no Wesley Crusher.
I think the simplest explanation is to say that Krona’s ‘Checkpoint’ has broadcast data backwards in time – into the mind of the person whose ‘stressor’ triggered this feature. The result is that now Sydney doesn’t know what the RIGHT choice should be…
…but she knows what the consequences were of her last WRONG choice.
Based upon the (hypothetical) energy-requirements, I tend to agree with [Yorp]. It’s much more economical to transmit energy (rather than mass) backwards thru time – & even then, only within a limited region. This justifies the reactions we’ve seen from…
1)__Sydney, as being the recipient (due to triggering the checkpoint),
2)__Krona, via her log-access, &
3)__Harem, because having her other bodies outside the affected region might make her aware of the other “reality”. This is where a kind of “democracy” comes into play: 4-out-of-5 Harems agree on one experience, & so (by majority-vote) she knows that the 5th Harem’s experience was from a timeline that no longer exists (due to Krona’s checkpoint-reset).
(…all this assumes that I *DO* understand Harem’s method of perceiving reality across multiple bodies…)
That is an eminently sensible hypothesis. To which I can add two supporting bits of ‘evidence’ one is purely circumstantial, in that Krona’s name is reminiscent of Chronos. Quite a stretch and still only pointing at time in general, as ‘her thing’. But then we note one of her other powers, which is the predictive text.
This most definitely is behaving in the same sort of way as you are proposing. Sending information back to her from the ‘current’ timeline. Which, of course, as soon as she acts on it then allows a different result in the timeline. We know this because Sydney did not actually say some of the things that Krona predicted she would.
This would also explain why only the one who triggered the recall should remember the timeline. It is actually their experiences which are being sent back.
The way I would explain the Harem anomaly, using that hypothesis, is that Krona is following the timelines of each person present, at the checkpoint, presumably from their point of view (hence how she is able to monitor their stress indicators). Normally this makes no difference to the result, as only the ‘trigger’ individual gains the power to transmit their memories back to the present time.
Harem though is quantumly linked to her other selves, so as one timeline is projected forward (in an instant of real time), that data is being shared with her other selves. The immense time compression though would not make this easy to interpret, even for someone adept at filtering out sensory input from five different sources. Hence why she is only getting the feeling of dejas vu.
It may be like the sensation of our lives flashing before us, due to the adrenalin rush, in a crisis. Clearly we only see flashes of the most important highlights. In this case that Harem was scouting for Sydney. Nothing else more significant happened, so that is the highlight which remained. Plus, of course, it was the abrupt end of the timeline, so stands out doubly.
All in all I think this angle is totally watertight. Even if it is portrayed as actual time travel (and even if Krona thinks of it this way) the mechanics may actually work the way you describe. It would take an exceptional circumstance to prove the difference. Perhaps the logs will be able to narrow it down, but failing that it might take something like opposing an opponent who is completely invisible to super powers.
Their presence may not show up in such a ‘flash forward’, so could throw the heroes when they appear in a location that they believed to be totally clear.
Incidentally her other power demonstrations could well be time manipulations too, rather than reality manipulation, as she portrays. The armed to disarmed grenade is just being put back to a previous time, when it was not armed. Clearly this is not just information being sent backwards or forwards though.
But it could be selecting a grenade from an alternate timeline, where it had not been armed. Or, to push the ‘information only’ to the limit, it might be sending back false sensory information, to the individual who originally set the grenade, to confirm that it was ‘armed’, when it was not.
Rather a stretch though, so I would opt to view it as actual time manipulation, as laid out initially.
The same would go for setting the state of underwear. Likewise her hair colour. Just pick a timeline where she had decided to get her hair dyed. Mind you that would mean swapping places with that alternate self. But if she is a time controller, she is used to dealing with issues like that (psychologically speaking).
Clearly the snooze button on the bladder could be a similar issue. Even the fact that it is limited could be because she needs to substitute an alternate timeline Sydney who is not too far divergent to the current one. So that their memories are otherwise the same.
Perhaps there is even information exchange, in overwriting the memories of the alternate body with those of the current timeline one. Hence why Sydney did not recall having been to the loo half an hour more recently than the present one (or drank less at the meal or whatnot).
So from this day on, one Harem gets premonition powers?
Or are we about to see a sixth one?
Probably they sendt the local area back in time. Which means only one harem was set back in time. And all the harems are connected.
It’s hard to say exactly where Harems memory is stored, but it’s likely not in one harem alone. This means this harem can get her memory back by feeding it from the others.
With five brains and all the various structures connected to them, Harem forms memories in *all* her instances. So one Daphne goes into the warehouse, all of them experience and form the memories associated with that, *one* of them gets rewound, the memory is still there in the brains of the other four, the resync process throws an exception, and it’s deja vu for the unique qualia locus they’re all entangled with.
Or something.
Its also possible that because her awareness exists across all of her bodies that it exists outside of space-time entirely. So that even though all of them were wound back, the memories they formed during the wound back period still exist in her mind. Because her bodies were affected by the rewind, but her mind is enough “outside reality” to avoid reality hacking.
I think it might depend on what Krona did. If she reset the state of everything in the area to where it was when saving, while harem teleported out of the area – yes we might see a 6th harem.
If she reset (local) time, then we might have a glitched harem which has to synch up with the others.
Arnold Rimmer: It will be happened; it shall be going to be happening; it will be was an event that could will have been taken place in the future. Simple as that.
Thank you. I knew I couldn’t be the only one reminded of this exact scene.
Dear Pixel;
Do not, I repeat, do NOT taunt the girl who can hack reality!
Who’s taunting? Have you forgotten? Pixelicious was the one placed in charge of the B-Squad, so of course she is going to be asking what Kronachrome did, seeing how the ‘girl who can hack reality’ is worried about what she done did
And the proper response is “Kept you alive?”
Perhaps, but at what costs? Last thing the group needs is reality throwing a fatal exception error resulting in a temporal tear in the fabric of space-time at their present location due to an unforeseen variable.
In other words, last thing they need is a crash, freeze, destroy the continent error.
Focus damnit. First order of business: Tell everyone that the target is inside, and has wards up.
Next: Bring in the cavalry
We are talking about Sydn… ooo, shiny! Wait, what were we talking about? Squirrels?
Yeah, tell them about the troll blood and all. Might be kind of important.
Keep in mind that the other harems are also aware of what just happened on some debatable and it’s entirely possible/likely that one of them is reporting the information as we/they speak.
Er, debatable level.
Also, once they know about the troll blood, Krona can just hack reality so that instead of drinking troll blood, Sciona actually drank platypus blood. Would remove the regeneration and only have a low risk of giving her the combat skills of a semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal of action.
But do not forget that platypuses are the only poisonous mammal. So you would be giving the arch-villain a dangerous attack capability. Not to mention the risk of her becoming a were-platypus orc construct vampire blood mage!
Rather than “Platypus”, I’d vote for “Naked Mole Rat”…
…she’d be nearly blind, VERY susceptible to cold, in fact aside from the incisors, I’d call it completely helpless & easily subdued – no matter what size it assumes.
Krona is doing exactly what she chastised Sydney for doing, experimenting with her powers in the middle of an emergency. Of course, Krona *hasn’t* chastised Sydney for doing that now.
No, Kronachrome isn’t experimenting with her powers, she has used that “Checkpoint” stunt enough times on herself to know what it normally can do, she simply hadn’t accounting for Harem’s special… specialness, and has to check to see just how much it messed with things
What Guesticus said. She’s not experimenting. There’s just an unknown variable and she’s trying to figure out if she fucked up. Krona may have hax powers, but she’s only human.
Unless I miss my guess, her powers sort of codify elements of reality, and she’s a genius programmer. And any programmer will tell you how easy it is to fuck up with just a slight miscalculation or leaving out a single digit or misplacing a single bracket.
Or worse yet. Have a completely separate program interfere with the functioning of your normally perfectly stable program.
Which is basically what happened here.
Something funny about Harem’s bewbs, there. Hope nobody’s messing with her, draining her bewb powers, or whatever.
Yeah, had noticed that as well
“Krona, did you break space-time again?”
“Umm, Bent it a little, Maybe?”
Please define break…
One thing I don’t get (and that is for either scenario where the checkpoint send them back in time or simply restored them in current time as they were at the moment of checkpoint creation). How did Krona remember things that happened between setting of the checkpoint and the reset trigger if, as she said it, only Sydney is supposed to know what happened?
And I’m talking about the “shanked and capri’d” comment. Sydney said that after the setting of the checkpoint but before activating the trigger, so only Sydney is supposed to remember that.
You noticed that too, eh?
I suppose Dave simply made a continuity error here.
Krona says “Pixel getting, uh, as you put it, shanked and capri’d” so we can reasonably assume Sydney has already told Krona about this part of the incident off panel. What Harem (or mayhaps only THIS Harem) remembers however, is another thing altogether.
If Sydney already told them what happened off panel, between this page and the previous one, why does Krona ask Sydney to do it again a few seconds later?
Also, Krona starting with “You didn’t necessarily get killed” is a direct follow up to what Sydney said last page, implying little to no time elapsed between pages.
TL;DR: Krona’s phrase “as you put it” STATES that Sydney has used this phrase to reference Pixel’s captivity off panel.
Krona stating that Pixel was “uh, as you put it, shanked and capri’d” STATES that Sydney has used the phrase “shanked and capri’d” about pixel, meaning she must have told Krona about it off panel. However, Sydney could (and probably would have) given this information in a random adrenalin filled stream of consciousness stream that probably missed many salient points, so Krona would want Sydney to recap calmly and explain things chronologically, without pressing the girl who has just had a near death experience.
“You guys! Pixel is shanked but good! She’s strung up like a capri sun!”
You are right in that Sydney has stated that Pixel was in this state, but as I already pointed out in my original comment and have linked just now, Sydney said this in the timeframe between checkpoint and trigger, which is the same timeframe Krona says only Sydney should have any memories about.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying Krona remembered Pixel being “shanked and capri’d”, I am saying that Krona remembered Sydney saying that Pixel was “shanked and capri’d”.
Sydney told her off-panel that Pixel got shanked. Yes, she also told her before the reset, but she was told off-panel AFTER the reset, as well. Apparently she didn’t get much further than that in telling of the events that happened. The context more than supports this.
Last page we have Sydney talking about a checkpoint and asking if she died, with Krona trying to explain the trigger only to be interrupted by Sydney celebrating to be alive.
This page starts with Harem reacting to Sydney mentioning a checkpoint and Krona explaining that Sydney didn’t necessarily die and what the actual triggers are.
Are you saying that between Sydney mentioning the checkpoint and celebrating, and Harem and Krona reacting to something said last page, Sydney somehow told about everything up to finding Pixel, using the exact same random spur of the moment phrasing?
So no, the context doesn’t support this. The context supports this page happening straight after last page.
Gah! I want like, 6 more pages immediately!
*gets slave driver whip prepared*
FASTER, DAVE! FASTER!!
A word of advice. Do not make demands on the person who is giving you something for free. Put on tattered clothes, hold up your bowl and with big puppy-dog eyes say “Please sir, may I have some more?”
(Yorp may be able to give you lessons on the eye technique)
Seconding this. I’m active over on the SCP Foundation wiki, and someone once jokingly demanded my review rather than asking. He got off lightly with a lecture about how reviewers there are not paid. Burnout amongst reviewers is depressingly high over there.
Guys. Chill out. I can tell the little fruit loop was joking. Don’t air your grievances on a joke, it makes you look all fogey, and I don’t want to have to be lumped in with that. I’m still hip!
Ithink the comic will be better if Dave can work without stress. A bit of money probably helps too.
Well then it should soothe all your souls to know I’ve been a supporter on his Patreon for as long as he’s had it. I DO pay money for this, I have chatted with him, I love his work, and am simply excited for more.
Fruit Loop 42, signing off.
Awesome. Please keep up the good deeds. With grateful appreciation from those of us who lack the means.
If Sidney should be the only one remembering what happened, then why can Krona remember her describing Pixel as “shanked and strung up like a Capri sun”? That’s a reference to strip #2406, before the checkpoint got triggered.
Krona says “Pixel getting, uh, as you put it, shanked and capri’d” implying Sydney has told her about it off panel.
I already made a bigger post about this up there, but the “as you put it” only implies that Sydney said it. As Demodocus pointed out, and I did earlier as well, Sydney did say those phrases in the referenced page which is within the timeframe that has been rewind.
DaveB no Valentine’s day post this year?
I haven’t seen a reference or link yet.
– rest yah-
I can now see Sydney sneakily sending her lightbee around ARCSWAT building during classes when she has only moments to get somewhere else or get in trouble… Kabeee and beepoof she’s there. She needs to test what she can carry and how much
I’m disappointed that the Valentine’s Sex Drive project didn’t even seem to do anything this year…
:(
Is he still doing the Valentines Day thing? I checked and it said he was signed up, but nothing came out on the 14th or up till now.
As I see it either one of two things happened in the way how the checkpoint works.
1) It saves the physical and mental state of all party members. Things happen and the trigger is activated. After activating the trigger the whole party is then restored from the ‘save file’ and placed back in current space-time. Harem doesn’t store her memories in her body however but ‘in the cloud’ and when she was restored she immediately had access to the most current version of her memory.
Dangers of this method are: Everyone else experienced time normally, so Sciona now knows they are out there. And in a more general kind of danger, if someone knows a checkpoint has been set up they can booby-trap the spawn point.
2) It saves a specific moment in time and the party members are given a way to activate a set trigger. When someone activates the trigger their mental states are send back to the moment of the checkpoint, allowing them to do things different based on their memories of the future. Harem’s mental state being something that exists outside the norm she also was able to keep her memories and her other bodies are now going through things she already experienced, which is why she is having a weird deja vu.
I think I kinda like option 1 better; there’s less timey-wimey to futz with. Though, if that *is* true, they’d better stop discussing it and turtle up, because Sciona is going to figure it out pretty quickly (I assume) and go looking for them.
2 sounds more likely. 1 has severe tactical issues. If you’re making your own… reality-spells, you wouldn’t make something with that big of an issue, which can fuck an entire mission. In a serious-mode, everything to the wire mission, could cause catastrophe.
Ooh. If the other Daphnes have the shared memory of the one that went into the warehouse and was rolled back, that implies that the rollback was localized, not the whole universe. Or else the other Daphnes would have rolled back, too, and *none* of them would have the warehouse memory. So how big a rewind-bubble can Krona make? Are all their watches slightly off now, compared to the rest of the world? Didn’t Krona have to time-rewind and *teleport* that chunk of the world to wherever the Earth had orbitted to while this was all going on? I have so many questions! Which is not helping my sinus headache!
Depending on the range, there could be another Halo in the tunnels with Sciona. Could the world handle a second Sydney? Will everyone be hoping the other version was stabbed?
You’ve got it backwards. This Harem, the one that was rewound, brought future knowledge back with her and uploaded it to the other four when she resynced.
To quote Kryten: “This is hardly the time to be conjugating temporal verbs in the past impossible never tense!”
I wonder what stress indicator it triggered on.
Krona’s log – reset event triggered on bladder emptying.
A deus ex machina to be properly effective, must be used VERY SPARSELY!
Also, if I remember correctly, Dabs explained that Harem’s dupes are connected by quantum mechanics or something similar (I don’t know, I flunked physics) and Krona’s checkpoint must messed with it.
*must have messed with it*
*must will have messed with it*
“wioll on-haven” according to Hitchhiker’s Guide.
… I’m going to write a script that steals first post on each page that has either Maxima or Krona in it just to yell “Maxima’s/Krona’s presence in this comic does not make what they do a Deus ex Machina!”
A Deus ex Machina is when an impossible to solve scenario is suddenly fixed by something out of the normal story narrative. Krona is an introduced character that actively participates in the current plot and she had been shown to setting up the checkpoint even if she didn’t say at that moment what it was. I might say you’d have a point if without any build-up time had been suddenly reset after which Krona says ‘Oh by the way, I set up a checkpoint in case something happens’ but it was shown clearly that Krona prepared something.
You’re right BUT the way the checkpoint was introduced in the story is similar to a deus ex machina. The only difference was that the situation in which was introduced wasn’t narratively impossible.
Deus ex Machina (TvTropes warning)
No. The very fact that it was shown that Krona was setting something up means it was part of the story narrative, she even said it was for in case anything happens hinting what it was for even if she didn’t explain it at that time. Her setting it up beforehand, and shown to do so, means it was a Checkhov’s Gun and/or Foreshadowing.
So it’s Deus ex Checkhov then?
Chekhov ex Machina
Go on, say “Nukwere Wessel”!
Okay, I’ve seen that movie, so I can check it off…
In regards to DaveB’s blog: I don’t know about other people, but I definitely hit my fingernails with hammers all the time. As I have always said: “I’m no good at hammering nails, but I’m really good at hammering my thumbs.”
That’s why it takes me forever to drive a nail. I’m always hitting it with these quaint little “tap, tap, taps” out of fear that if I really take a swing at it, I’m gonna miss and break something made of calcium. Like, you know, a finger bone.
You seem to have forgotten that your thumbs have nails on them…The rest of your fingers do too.
;)
That’s why I have the phrase “That’s hitting the nail on your thumb” to refer to the painfully obvious statement.
Stealing that.
“I like that Krona conflated fingernails (and by extension, claws) with the kind of nail that you hit with a hammer.”
‘Confused’ is the word you meant, Dave. Lots of people seem to be confusing ‘confuse’ and ‘conflate’ lately.
No, nono – it’s correct – You see, Krona said
“Tough as nails refers” to the nail as metal fixation device used to connect two loose (mostly wooden) pieces/ hang something (most of the times a picture) on the wall.
Tough as Laser Claws refers to Pixel’s Claws which are a type of Finger Nail, a type of keratin / horn plate, usually found on the tip of a finger / toe.
A metal nail (fixation device) would probably lose a fight to Pixels laser claws / nails (Horn plate on fingers). So Pixels nails are tougher. By extension Pixel is not “Tough as Nails” but “Tough as Laser Claws”.
Now conflating means something like “To put two things in the same category” or at least “using something as a synonym”
TL;DR
It just refers to the fact that Kronachrome put “laser claws” and “metal nails” in the same category of “nails” even tho the metal nails used in the common saying “tough as nails” are the metal type.
PS: yes I blew this up with extra detailed explaining ;)
Exactly my point. Krona confused one definition of nails with another. She didn’t conflate the two definitions into a single definition.
Totally saw Lucy rather than Krona having some ‘splainin to do.
Player 1 (Halo) has re-entered the game,
Player 2 (Harem) has re-entered the game,
Player 2.1 (Harem) has re-entered the game,
Player 2.2 (Harem) has re-entered the game,
Player 2.3 (Harem) has re-entered the game,
Player 2.4 (Harem) has re-entered the game,
Unexpected error encountered. Reboot of Earth required…
Krona had better hit the Pause Button on the run-time before she checks those logs, or she might not have a chance to actually check the logs.
*sigh* this is why you do not use the var String playerName as unique identification key.
“Reboot of Earth required…”
I think something like that happened about 65M years ago when a group of raptors were playing a game of ‘Grand Theft Dino’ and tried to restore from a save. Their little clawed hands couldn’t type correctly and accidentally hit ‘reset’ instead of ‘restore’.
There was a bright light in the sky and then all the little furry mammals poked their heads out of their burrows and said “Where’d they all go?”
Followed by: “Hey, does anybody know what to do with all this frozen meat and veggies?”
There were a few small feathered dinos that were using old mammal burrows that may have suffered some survivor’s guilt after the firestorm, but it probably passed pretty soon.
They were only birdbrains, after all…
sort of wonder if at that time they had Twitter
The “Future perfect tense” of their conversation is no longer relevant considering the said events happened in the past and they are now currently following the path of an alternate reality.
Therefore, The Tense they should have used should have been in “Past Perfect Tense”
Also, does that mean there is a distinct possibility that the bad guy also knows about the Deja Vu?
Krona just broke the space time continuum. Now Krona has to check the eventlog before the universe BSOD’s due to a kernel panic.
They only have to do a local restore, not the whole universe. The rings around Saturn are actually the backup disk for the solar system.
Nah, like they do, over in the Wapsi Square-verse they use the Akashic Records to back up the universe… and only a very select handful of entities know that what currenttly the majority of our mundane Astronomers and Physicist’s call “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy” are actually what makes the Akashic Records possible…
Check the backup: Since Pluto is officially classified as a Dwarf Planet, do the scientists still deny that it IS a planet, even as they have labeled it as a specific TYPE of planet?
The problem wasn’t that they “decided” Pluto wasn’t a planet but that several other objects in our solar system would qualify as planets if Pluto kept the title. Is a go-cart a car because it has 4 wheels and a motor? A couple of asteroids and some large Ort cloud objects are similar in size and orbit the Sun are they planets? Science is about facts not feelings.
I just think that if a “Dwarf Planet” can’t be considered as a planet, then they should change the label so that it doesn’t include the word planet. That would be in accordance with the context & usage of the language.
Dwarf Giant Rock with a Big Heart?
Exo-Grinch?
But what would they name it? Planetoid, planetesimal? It’s not a moon or an asteroid. It orbits the sun and is larger than most of the stuff out there.
Far- Orbit Solar Satellite
I strongly suspect the universe doesn’t run on an OS that does Blue Screen of Death. Actually I suspect that’s not even a full on kernel panic, I suspect it’s just a user space assert failure. At worst it made the UI reset and logged of the current user, with out changing the `uptime` results.
Of course if you are the current user, it might suck to be you at that point.
Thank God that he didn’t consult Bill Gates on writing THAT code…
Soo, its a Grey Boy Loop?