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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Pixel is pretty salty for someone whose life was just saved.
Krona’s save power having … limitations gets a raspberry from me. I’d prefer it if we just leaned into the skid. Krona has root access on reality, hashtag deal with it.
I think her saying limited mean it has some sort of repercussion. If that power is used too many time, there can be some sort of negative backlash or feedback, ripples in the Temporal Continuum growing exponentially.
Pixel has root access, but isn’t the sysadmin, who would rather keep everyone to their own account.
Dangit. I meant Krona. I suck at names.
I think it’s likely that, to continue the *nix metaphor, she has sudo access. She doesn’t know the root password; she just uses her own password to elevate as needed.
There’s probably some restrictions placed on it. (“No changing the root password” comes to mind.) The inability to change things she doesn’t understand seems to support this.
it could be just like a an artifact I read about in one of my D&D books, the artifact in question is a coin that will grant you unbeatable luck to the point where if you use it in a gamble only divine intervention will make you lose, however overusing the coin will have reality push back to get back status quo, which causes “A Very Bad Thing” to happen, this is usually lethal and reality care not how unlikely it is, for instance you could be sitting in an inn enjoying your beer and a red dragon suddenly smashes through the roof devouers you whole and flies off ignoring everyone else, or you run right into a pack of rabid werewolves, who is in wolf form, at high noon and that night will be the night of a new moon not full, in short the universe will try to set things right if used to much and it does not care how hard it has to break the rules to do so, to the point of going back in time to set things up for your demise.
You misspelled Dungeon Master as “artifact.” :P
the coin has rules about it’s use and is a wonderous item so no it’s an artifact.
You missed the joke :D
But that coin sounds like a coin in EQ2: it is quite possibly the most powerful item in the entire game, and yet… alas, it is so slippery it falls from your grasp and is lost causing you to rage so badly you grow hair in places you didn’t know could grow hair (and a tail if you didn’t have one already)
As we’ve not actually identified a power source for Krona’s powers, she might just have shortened her entire lifespan by the stolen minutes. This could be a non trivial thing for her.
Maybe Krona just wants to avoid an endless loop of “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain!”
Your comment suddenly makes me wonder if Halo’s and Krona’s powers don’t have the same source. They seem oddly similar. Or if possibly someone or something like Krona created Halo’s orbs.
You’re right… hmmm…
You mean Krona’s default prompt is root@reality:~# ?
Long before the cool kids started saying hashtag the # mark on a *nix command line generally meant you were root.
Nope. She doesn’t have the root password. But she DOES have a black belt in sudo.
sudo bash
And poof thou art God.
I think Krona’s default prompt is krona@reality: ~$
Also, if she abuses her wheel membership. root might actually take exception. Or possibly notice, not sure which.
Finally, one should assume that root has physical access, so trying, say, sudo passwd root would be a terrible terrible idea. Hence the “it’s limited” caveat.
Mike, did you read all those terrible cat puns we made at page one? I’m quite proud of myself if I may say so myself.
Yes I did. My evil twin /me refuses to read the comments section here. Makes him crawl up in a ball and cry.
Add some names to your list. That is a good stressrelief.
There are some things which are worse than death. Extinction, for example. Likewise an eternal hell of being stuck in an infinite loop of being tortured to death. Or worse…
Another option is that, while she has a system restore, she has to cache the entire local situation to her RAM to make it work, and has to RE-CACHE it every time it loops, until she releases the effect – if she runs out of RAM to cache with, she has to release it, or risk crashing the system. which is to say, the universe. Which is Bad. XD
Well, it’s not so much “limitations” as it seems to be user error or an “Input/output” error. If she ‘hacks’ reality, it’s reasonable to say she does it in the same way that one hacks a computer. Any program will only work with the factors or criteria that are included in the program. If Krona forgot to take into account Harem’s Distributed presences and only worked with who she was seeing or just affected a localized area, etc… then it’s just the mistake of the user and not a limitation of her power. Example: Sydney didn’t know about the lightbee’s ability to teleport her. And experimenting on using an unknown ability while in a life or death situation was a huge mistake on her part and not a fault of the lightbee orb.
That said, this hack that Krona did is essentially fucking with time and space, and Pixel sees Krona going “Oops, I made a mistake” so yeah… she’s not salty about being saved so much as a “Krona, is space time about to collapse on us or what?” sort of thing. That and she could just have the sort of personality that hates being indebted to someone or being helped.
How did Pixel get dressed so fast???
She has the power to dress and undress in seconds!
…
Ok, no – just trolling – try to reread the last comic, then you might realize what happened :)
Pixelicious stripped after the Hackpoint was made
Most inconsiderate timing, for our furry readers.
Still time to re-address that fault (or should that be, re-undress that furry :P)
We need to figure out what exactly Krona saved to see what exactly happened here.
Right now it makes more sense to me that Krona saved the state of everything in the area except the mind of Pixel, Halo, possibly Harem and herself – which would mean that time progressed normally – but they got back to the exact position where they were when Krona saved.
Harem’s déjà-vu might be caused by a few things – but it can give hints at how the hack works:
1.) She has synchronization problems due to the reset and is mistaking the last few seconds for a déjà-vu as everything around her other bodies keeps functioning normally while everything around her punk body is suddenly in a state which it was around 15 minutes ago.
2.) The save state of her mind was reset to the checkpoint – either by a mishap on Krona’s side or because only Halo’s and Pixel’s mind were exempted from a complete save. Now that she syncs up with the Quantum entangled mind, she perceives it as a déjà-vu.
3.) Because she teleported out of range of Krona’s hacked area and due to the unique physique of Harems mind/body system, the punk harem body got duplicated and is now confused about the state she finds herself in – she is not quite synced up with her mind yet, so she does not realize that yet.
With “time progressed normally” I meant There is no “Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff” involved, just plain old copying of values from the current running system into a backup and then restoring the saved variables onto the running system.
It may copy the state of watches or other things or it may not – but timepieces do not measure time, they just indicate time increments.
It may or may not have effects on the environment – a broken window may or may not be restored, depending on the save structure of Krona’s hack
Ok, I’m a sysadmin, and you just broke my brain on that one. I followed it.. but now I have no idea where I am..LOL
So Krona did not create a fixed point in time (too bad). She just save the state of the local system with a SIGPANIC signal handler to restore the system to that saved state. Note that SIGKERNALPANIC is a much more severe situation. Maybe this time SIGBLOODLOSS can be handled by the same Restore function.
I think you more or less have it, and I think her limit is that she has to maintain a cached copy of each reset until she releases all the resources back to the OS. And as anyone who’s ever used their main disk for the scratch disk on an art program, once you fill that memory up a bit too much…well, first things start hanging, and then you crash.
Thanks. This explanation works for me
3.) How could she have *VORP*ed out of range of Kronachrome’s hacked area, but not Pixelicious and Sydney? She was in the same damn warehouse!
ONE of Harem was in range of the hacked area. FOUR of Harem were not. Thus, Harem is now receiving weird, multi-experiences, in a feedback from her distant four, that do not mesh with what her near Harem is experiencing.
Except, she didn’t *VORP* out of range, her other selves were never in the area
That’s the point, the one that WAS in the area due to odd nature of her powers retained its memories of going into the warehouse to look for Sydney along with all that her other selves did during that time so when that version was ‘restored’ it brought all those memories back with it that promptly were shared with her earlier version so she’s effectively experiencing what her other selves did again and simultaneously learning she was put through a time restart.
to explain it in simpler terms:
Harem 1 is in the time loop and is quantum entangled with Harem 2-5 this means all the harems share everything including memories at all times and at all states, so a harem that is rendered unconscious will still have memories of what another Harem, which is not unconscious, did in the mean time, so when something that is quantum entangled travels through time it’s state with the other quantum entangled parts does not change just because i is in a different space-time, they are still the same being with the same memories, only now the harem from the future has shared the memories of the future with her past selves just by going through time, and because she is quantum entangled this cannot cause a paradox
Admit to picking the nits, but that wasn’t what Deedes typed, they basically said that Bodie *VORP*ed out of range of the restore area but was still restored to the roof resulting in a duplicate Bodie (in other words, a sixth Daphne had just been ‘born’)
Actually I overread that she was in the warehouse at that time – that rules out 3.) – sorry, no Harem #6.
Is Krona’s power basically that she can autosave and summon the universe’s console
like a Bethesda game protag?
Is she literally a Bethesda game protag?
Is she the dovahkiin?!?!?!
Would explain Pixelicous’ Fuzz Ro Dah!
Honestly, she’s closer to someone out of Fallout, or maybe the Champion of Cyrodiil – She’s special, but she’s not (apparently?) the reincarnation of some semi-deific entity.
I dunno…still not a fan of this power. I’m really hoping she dies…Is it wrong to hope Krona dies now?
Yes, yes it is.
Mostly because she could use these powers to come back in the next panel. Which would make you more angry.
Ha!
Pixel has gone up a notch in my opinion now. If getting captured, dangled upside down naked and steadily drained of blood does not phase her, then she has impressive force of will.
Plus Sydney has clearly removed Pixel from the ‘I don’t like her’ list. If Sydney likes stroking the pussy, then she is OK by me too.
I see what you did there.
Well, not knowing that those things even happened can make anyone seem calm
except the conditions for jumping back was apparently stress based, so whether it was because she was knocked unconscious in the fight or getting strung up and “capri’d” didn’t bother her, she wasn’t sufficiently phased.
Seems more like Harem is experiencing that Star Trek characters do in a time loop; everything is reset, but they still have trace memories of the loop.
Yeah… it’s a save point. She reset the damned universe to an earlier point.
Even if arbitrarily limited, because… reasons (i.e. balance), its still way too freakin’ powerful. Even one retry on things is too much.
Maxima – “This is a dangerous situation, before we do the actual Op, Krona, save point us. I’ll go in and gather as much intel as I can until the save point triggers, then we’ll work up a plan from there.”
Even if you don’t game it like that – and frankly why *wouldn’t* you? – having a Mulligan on everything, the day, an Op, whatever, is ridiculously useful. Try a crazy idea, if it doesn’t work, just go back. No consequences. Hell, even if you don’t know anything is going to happen that day, make a save point first thing in the morning, if anyone dies because of a surprise event, we reset, that person speaks up, and we now it’s not a surprise.
Hell, it’s not even like the time loop episodes of sci-fi where SOMETHING happened, but we don’t know what, which makes it hard to plan for. The person who died will have memories, even if it’s “I was walking down third street at a little after lunch, I was heading into Super Taco, and then, I’m here.” So you know something happens at that spot, just after lunch, you have a bunch of people waiting there looking for trouble.
Sorry dude, but I think you messed up with this. Character resurrection tricks are supposed to be “once in a lifetime” things (even if there is oodles of them and we know comics never kill any character permanently, unless part of the ‘tragic backstory’, those character stay dead). This is… use frequently, use a lot. There is no reason not to use it.
Except, you know, Krona doesn’t work for Archon. She’s only with them now because this is a joint-op with the Council. This power is not going to be a problem in the future, because she literally won’t be there.
Also, I have seen stories with characters who have save-point abilities. Those abilities did not ruin the story.
Probably because they weren’t munchkining properly. If you have the ability to freely reset time but still remember what happened you are almost arbitrarily powerful. As one simple example, let’s say you want to bypass a keypad and you know that the combination is 6 numbers, you can only try 1 combo per second, and you need to get through it in 1 minute or less before the guard comes around the corner. Try 000000-000059; if you don’t get in, reset time and try 000060-000119. Lather, rinse, repeat.
There’s ways to limit this, but it’s still insanely overpowered.
And yet Tattletale still managed to cap… hmm, spoilers.
Except she DOESN’T have the ability to reset time freely, while we haven’t been told the cost she just stated in this page that she definitely has limits and can’t just endlessly restart things until they finally find a way to win.
Yup.
It would take superhuman(!) courage to deliberately set yourself up to suffer some horrible fate, even knowing you’re going back to a save point, just to get info. Especially to establish that as any sort of SOP. (Standard Operating Procedure).
Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World shows probably the closest that one can do that.
And he breaks; he breaks really badly.
Zack Tilly, and there is no guarantee that the save point will work, or if it will work for everyone, or what it will do to the rest of the world
There is a reason why Multi-player games don’t have a feature like that, can’t even pause the game
Some do. Giving each player a limit to the duration of time outs they can call. Not plausible in massively multiplayer games, of course, but doable in those which have a limited number of players in any given game or instance.
God save us from people with no imagination and an inflated ego.
“Yeah… it’s a save point. She reset the damned universe to an earlier point.”
Oh did she now? And your evidence of this is what?
My evidence to contradict this is the fact that Harem wasn’t mentally reset like Pixel was. Why? Cause her distributed mind was elsewhere. If the entire universe had been reset then that wouldn’t have mattered and Harem would have mentally reset as well. Thus whatever effect Krona used must have been local.
Furthermore, it didn’t reset Halo’s mind either… which indicates it’s not based on spacial constraints either… but per individual constraints.
It’s also entirely possible time has not been reset at all… and has passed normally… that only their physical bodies and minds have been reset. Which means our ogre-vampire friend down below is currently staring at her hands and wondering how the hell Halo got away from her. Any moment now she will realize pixel is missing too. And before you point out that Krona was reset too (isn’t imagination fun) Krona clearly linked their reset… if one of them reset they all did.
“Even if arbitrarily limited, because… reasons (i.e. balance), its still way too freakin’ powerful. Even one retry on things is too much.”
Who says she always gets one retry on stuff? Limitations can be cumulative. There might be a risk that applies every time… even the first time and/or gets worse with each use no matter how long has passed between uses. We’ve seen two potential pitfalls already with this particular usage and we are going to learn about more next update or two… but you’re already jumping the gun and throwing around the idea that you already know everything you need to in order to pass judgement.
“Maxima – “This is a dangerous situation, before we do the actual Op, Krona, save point us. I’ll go in and gather as much intel as I can until the save point triggers, then we’ll work up a plan from there.””
Except, as others have pointed out, Krona doesn’t work for Archon. And even if she did… as I’ve already pointed out… you’re making wild assumptions when you assume she can use this particular power any time she wants.
Yes.. I can see the arguments one might make based on what we’ve seen… I also see an easy counter argument. “She wouldn’t use it so blithely if it was risky.” Yeah, let’s just ignore the very flawed and overly-excitable main character who makes all kinds of bad choices all the time and pretend that this is a comic where everyone thinks everything they do through and never makes stupid choices.
“Even if you don’t game it like that – and frankly why *wouldn’t* you?”
That’s a good question. The fact that _you_ can’t think of an answer to it doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Allow me to put my imagination to use and think a few up for you:
Limited power source: perhaps krona’s power requires she have access to something extremely rare on a regular basis that is then used up. Given that she was introduced as part of a Court of Magical Beings this would be an obvious (well to some of us) theme for her.
Or perhaps she’s secretly one of the bad guys and is this is setting up a heal-face turn where the good guys know exactly how screwed they are but have to face her anyway. And then Sydney comes up with a genius plan to beat Krona’s powers and the day is saved again! [victory music]
Or perhaps the laws of the universe are semi-sentient and don’t care for being abused (again… just introduced to a Court of Magical Beings) but you can get away with it if you don’t abuse them often enough to draw attention.
Or perhaps there’s a tactical limitation. If this doesn’t reset time but only resets individuals then it’s quite possible someone familiar with Krona’s powers could set up a trap so that when the reset triggers the heroes reform only to find themselves already surrounded and outgunned.
Again… isn’t imagination fun?
“– having a Mulligan on everything, the day, an Op, whatever, is ridiculously useful. Try a crazy idea, if it doesn’t work, just go back. No consequences. Hell, even if you don’t know anything is going to happen that day, make a save point first thing in the morning, if anyone dies because of a surprise event, we reset, that person speaks up, and we now it’s not a surprise.”
I’ve pretty much already torched the assumptions everything you said here needs in order to make sense. Without those assumptions this _doesn’t_ make sense… it’s just wild speculation.
“Hell, it’s not even like the time loop episodes of sci-fi where SOMETHING happened, but we don’t know what, which makes it hard to plan for. The person who died will have memories, even if it’s “I was walking down third street at a little after lunch, I was heading into Super Taco, and then, I’m here.” So you know something happens at that spot, just after lunch, you have a bunch of people waiting there looking for trouble.”
Ironic… the whole timeloop not-knowing-what-happened scenario is one of the potential pitfalls hinted at in this very update.
“Sorry dude, but I think you messed up with this. Character resurrection tricks are supposed to be “once in a lifetime” things (even if there is oodles of them and we know comics never kill any character permanently, unless part of the ‘tragic backstory’, those character stay dead). This is… use frequently, use a lot. There is no reason not to use it.”
Nah… you just think too highly of yourself and can’t see passed your own ego.
And before you say I’m making assumptions too… no, I’m not. I’m illustrating the existence of other possibilities that you are either unaware of or ignoring. I don’t know or claim that any of these examples or “true” only that they are “possible”. And just by illustrating such possibilities I also illustrate that you don’t know any of the things you _do_ claim to know.
Unlike you I’m content to give the author a chance to explain himself before jumping on my soap box and condemning him.
Long post, but worth the read
…+1…
+1 for the assessment
+2 for the length (ask anyone, donke’s like long posts).
donkeys, not donke’s
Badonke-adonke-a-donkey.
I love stern-faced kitty
What about ‘soft kitty’?
Bad kitty,
scary kitty,
Big ol’ laser claws.
I would guess the power has a few limits, including range and amount of time. If the amount of time difference is about 24 minutes, as the localized reality syncs with normal reality, you probably wouldn’t know it was syncing (1 sec every minute). Do it multiple times and you begin to lose touch with reality. The limited area of effect probably is why Harem still remembers things as each “node” remembers what every other node has done. Since local Harem has rebooted, the remote Harems are unconsciously updating her on previous memories.
…”Would have happened,” girls. You can apply that phrase to a future event with the understanding that you’ve changed events leading up to that event sufficiently that that event won’t happen. Thus, it is an event that would have happened. But instead it won’t.
Unless there are some serious – and I’m talking city-eating tornado – repercussions for this kind of time shenanigans, I think I’m in agreement with Sydney’s earlier assessment of Krona being arguably more powerful than Max.
Is she an old friend of Max? Did she power up Max?
She can alter people to her hearts content and probably adjust memories so they don’t realise.
Even if she doesn’t understand a power set, she can copy it to someone else.
She can edit and create her own super team and make them thing they have any mission she wants.
I don’t think Krona could go that far. Just like a programmer writing code for a computer, she would have to know exactly what the task itself is before she can “program” reality to actually do it. If Krona herself doesn’t understand the most minute details of something specific, then she can’t write out the program.
But even so, the know-how in constructing a Logic Flowchart (a general outline of what the task should be) is still pretty powerful; it means that you would have a broad, general knowledge of how things work, even if you don’t have the specific knowledge of why it works that way. Sort of like knowing about the general Laws of Nature about “action makes reaction; cause makes effect” without knowing the higher-level mathematics of specific effects.
The world & the universe in general are highly complex systems guided by Laws of Nature & humanity is only barely beginning to learn them; those Natural Laws we DO learn something about are then defined as Scientific Laws.
Krona, as a human being (at least as far as we know so far), is going to have a limited capacity to know or figure out what to change & how to change it, without knowing every specific & minute detail of everything she’s trying to change.
Our best indicator of Krona’s power level is Dave’s blog under the previous comic. By stating that the checkpoint is Krona’s biggest trick we can rule out the ability to create new super powers (or make mundane people into supers) as that is way more powerful. Unless there are, in turn, very severe limits. For instance only only being able to create one star power rank in the physical super powers, like strength, durability and speed.
Enough to make a small army of super minions, but not enough to make a Maxima-like being, or anywhere close.
The appropriate grammatical term is “couldawoulda’d”
Yes :D
i think a better version of that term might be: Couldawouldashoulda’d :D
If Krona’s ability rewinds time, there is no apparent range to the effect. If Harem is, for whatever reason, immune to the reset, should she not recall a multitude of similar resets, as Krona has presumably used the ability before?
If Krona’s ability is a range limited reset, there would appear to be a host of other problems, like creating doubles of people and things taken out of range before the checkpoint activates.
No because none of her selves were ever part of a reset point until now, so never underwent its effects like happened this time around.
Again, that gets back to range. Either everyone is affected by a reset ( universe state reverts because of checkpoint) or only some area does (time clones get created).
It’s unclear if harem was a target of the checkpoint, but even if she was, that only makes her a trigger for the reset. She was demonstrably still affected by it.
You are posing a very limited interpretation of the potential restriction on Krona’s power. There are many ways it could work besides the version you have postulated.
One mentioned in a thread above is that only those who were physically at the checkpoint are reset. There is no reason why this would create duplicates. However it does mean that others that they interact with will be able to remember the events, which severely limits the usefulness of the power (most of the heroes loose the memories, whereas all of the villains retain theirs).
Another is that it it limited to the entire world, but the way it works is to reposition each element individually. A mindbogglingly big enterprise but, if time is no objective, then it just becomes a matter of programming it to run automatically until everything is back in its correct place and state
Except that Harem’s multiple body existence and quantumly linked brain clearly could not be handled properly by the routine.
Another is that time is fully rolled back, at a universal level. With the program ensuring that everybody who interacted with anybody, at the checkpoint, has their memories wiped.* Barring the person who triggered the recall. Harem’s other bodies would be exempted from the memory wipe as they are not external to her, so are not ‘interacting’ with her, they are her. Yet only her local body would be included in the memory wipe, due to the way Krona programmed it.
None of these would result in duplication of bodies.
Mind you duplication may have occurred, as that is indeed a possible outcome. But it seems unlikely, as Krona has mentioned using this trick before and clearly it has not previously had weird consequences.
* Maybe Krona is a Star Trek fan and knows there is a race who’s memory persists even if time is changed. Or perhaps she knows that such a race does exist and was actually the inspiration for that part of the storyline!
Any speculation before the explanation is given is of course premature. Once DaveB explains the method by which the reset works, we’ll have more to work with.
Regardless, to your points:
Evidence appears to indicate that Krona’s power can not work as you describe in the first case. If only the people physically present are reset, problems get encountered very quickly. She wouldn’t be able to use it on a moving vehicle, for example. Had the party been in a car at the time, they would rematerialize without a vehicle, moving at speed, which would likely be hazardous to any normal humans checkpointed.
The problem is compounded when you consider that the Earth itself is moving, quite rapidly, not to mention it’s rotation. So jumping a few seconds back to your exact same position might place you in the outer regions of the atmosphere (if you’re very lucky). Of course, the matter is made worse when you consider that it isn’t just the earth, the Solar system itself is also moving, as are the galaxy, galactic group, and so on.
Grrlpower is fiction, so we can handwave away the whole earth is moving thing, but even given that simplification, the vehicle problem remains. You might well say, the vehicle is brought back to, but this quickly becomes another problem. Say they checkpointed while going through an intersection. They reappear and are instantly hit by a car that is currently turning.
What if they weren’t in a vehicle, but standing on a very tall platform, which was subsequently destroyed (that may well have caused the reset). Do they now reappear in midair? If the platform is returned with them, how much of it comes back?
Then we get into the issue of what happens to matter that happens to be occupying the space they previously occupied. Where does it go when the party’s state is restored? Is it transferred to the positions they used to occupy?
There may be a single explanation to all of these issues, but it seems to require an increasingly complex set of rationalizations to make it work.
To your second suggestion, the Earth itself being reset while time advances elsewhere. As pointed out before, the entire earth is moving, and it exists within a system which is also moving. A global reset would have to a) extend at least as far out as the moon not to have cataclysmic consequences, and b) have to extend at least as far out as the entire solar system not to have an entirely different set of cataclysmic consequences (as otherwise the earth would find itself quite suddenly displaced from it’s orbit and either suddenly way too hot or way too cold).
Again, handwaving that away, none of that actually deals with the previously mentioned problem of new matter occupying the previous occupied space. Oh, and it would play havoc with Astronomy, as stars would appear to have shifted in the sky.
Regarding the third option you present, it seems a bit odd that Krona would go through all the trouble of resetting everything and then selectively wipe the memories of all but one of the checkpointed party. Why not let the entire checkpointed party recall what happened? I can come up with some edge cases where you might want that to happen, but they seem to be largely outnumbered by the cases in which it would be more useful for everyone checkpointed to recall what happened before they were reset. And since the Harem exception implies that she’s not wiping the memories of people who aren’t in the checkpointed party, what benefit does she gain by excluding them? Again there may be a rationalization, but as before it seems to become increasingly byzantine to try and make it work.
As before, it seems to me that the scope required for a reset to work, combined with the facts that Krona has apparently done this before, and that Harem is immune, requires that Harem be familiar with the phenomenon. As she is not, it seems a contradiction or a flaw in the narrative.
I’ll freely admit that my supposing a limited reset required time clones is imperfect at best. It made a number of assumptions, which I can’t back up without further evidence in the comic. I could go on at length about range remaining an issue even without chronal duplicates but all of this is so much conjecture.
Having engaged you before on these boards, Vorp; I doubt that you will my arguments convincing. As such, I don’t think I’ll have anything more to add to the discussion. Thank you however for the prompt, it was fun to do some thought on the matter.
There is, and it does not. Krona has to program in the variables the same as with any other programmed task. If I said that ‘Krona programs the robot to open the door’ that will require it being able to sense its environment, maintain its balance, walk, avoid obstacles and people in its path, match its manipulator movement to the position of the door handle and much more detail than that.
The car example is meaningless as their clothes got restored to their starting position too. Everything you said about the car has similar issues to their clothes, and that proved to be no problem. None of them were bisected by their clothes, even though Pixels were in a completely different location to her body, by the time the reset was triggered. Krona’s programming covered that and the Earth spinning, no matter what method was used for the reset.
As for the astronomical problem, again you only look at the one solution and ignore any others that present themselves. An obvious one is just to let the Earth carry on doing its thing, and reposition the people and objects, at the time of reset. The only perceivable difference to them is that if they happened to be looking at the stars, any visible planet might have very slightly flickered.
It would cause an issue to any astronomical observations going on, but it would not otherwise cause cataclysms.
If you are doing a reset, then things which got destroyed or killed get reset too. So damaged, destroyed or moved platforms are a total non-issue.
I am sure Harem has suffered dejas vu before. Some of those might have been Krona doing a reset which involved her (for the global ones).
Enjoyable debating with you. You are not the only one speculating that there might be cloning, so it may turn out that you are correct in the matter. Fun discussing it though, either way.
I’m not going to debate you, but I would suggest that you reread my arguments. It may be that I was simply unclear (perfectly possible), or am just flat out wrong, but you appear to be conflating several of the cases I was discussing.
OK, duly re-read. If you want me to elaborate on each point specifically, rather than in brief, here goes.
You added the word “people”. I said “those”. Which could be people or objects. Hence why I detailed that it clearly is not just people it includes objects too. If they were in a moving car, at the checkpoint, then it too would be reset.
Just as well they did not. However it may be a plot point in future. So it does not stop the method from being possible. It just means that Krona has to pick quiet spots, that are not likely to have traffic going through them. Such as the roof of a deserted building. And if she fails to do that, or the villains catch on and sabotage the re-set, then they have problems.
The whole ‘matter being in the way’ thing is an old issue, that has long been dealt with for things like teleporting. The power has a way of dealing with it. At the very least there is always air where they used to be, so it uses one of several options to resolve that. Which is picked really isn’t interesting, other than to determine if there is a ‘bamph’ sound effect or the like.
The reason why I say it is not interesting is because it doesn’t help resolve the issue we are apparently not debating, as it applies to your cloning version just as much as it does to my alternate proposals. Likewise the Earth moving. If your cloning reset did not account for the Earth moving they would appear in space too. So I shall not reiterate my point on that.
I do like interesting hypothesis, and yours fits that criteria. Plus I do agree that we do not have enough evidence yet to narrow it down and say that one version is definitively right, just yet.
Presumably Krona has had cause to use a reset point sometime within Harem’s lifetime. Harem has not noticed the discontinuity of a reset point before this instant. Ergo, we can determine that this is the first time Krona’s reset point has included a Harem. This means that the range is more limited than ‘the world’ and in fact is probably closer to a city block, if not smaller.
The issue of potential duplication is only present if you assume that what is being saved is an actual point in space and time. That isn’t necessary. All that needs to be saved is the states of all of the objects and individuals that are in the area of effect when the save point is triggered, relative to the world around them. In such a case, the saved state tag of anything that leaves the area will do one of two things. It will either A) fall off, causing their absence when the saved state is restored to all other objects in the area, or B) follow them out of the area where the saved state was created, in which case the reset will cause them to disappear from wherever in the world they were to return to their relative position in the saved state. In neither case do we have an issue of duplication.
Is Pixel changing back to human or something? Her eyes are going green on white again.
Her pupils are simply dilating
So… Krona’s system is based on lives?
1UP
A thought just occurred to me. Since Pixel gets a super body when she changes and gains her powers, does this mean the reason Sydney doesn’t have the super body style because most of her power is currently locked? Just an observation and Sydney could just be the odd super out, but it could be an easy explanation, but would also mean she’d eventually start looking more super as the story went along unless the writer decided to stop letting her level/gain powers to avoid having to change Sydney’s look.
No, Sydney doesn’t have the ‘super body physique’ because she doesn’t have any powers, and, unless things get extra kinky during the invotive, probably never will
That would be like saying that eventually Peggy will be able to fire bullets from her stump if she continues to get better at shooting things and slash or people
There are still two orbs of unknown function.
If one orb can increase Sydney’s physical abilities, and if the other orb is a sort of programmable controller for all the orbs then Sydney could be more of a traditional powerhouse by the end of the game…err storyline. Only with a nerdy depowered base form.
Shazam!
You mean like Pixelicious? Only super (with super physique) in her were form?
Thing is, Bodie having some weird deja vu doesn’t necessarily mean anything, people misuse words and phrases all the time
I was too busy with trying to fit the comment into the different kind of ways the checkpoint worked to have thought of that. Maybe her sense of deja vu is simply ‘The small ones are talking nerdy again’.
Yeah, that exactly :D
I don’t think it’s a time rewind. Some of you folks mentioned a backup and restore earlier, but I think it could also be like a mirror-image and replacement scenario – in the case of a computer, you copy the contents of a drive to a second physical drive – a snapshot of the contents at that moment of space and time – and subsequently replace the original drive with the mirror when something goes wrong with the original. In this case, Krona took a snapshot of where the team was at a specific point in time before the op, and stored that as a separate, external entity. When the right circumstances were met, the damaged originals were replaced with the healthier – if out of date – backups.
As for Harem remembering – her consciousness is shared. Therefore, her memories of scouting the facility would have been shared with her clones – hence the deja-vu. In harem’s case, her memories are externally backed up, and when she was restored from her mirror-slash-back-up job, the external backups did what any relevant restoration utility did and wrote those files back in, hence the memories.
There is also this to consider. Krona only mirrored-slash-backed-up her team. For all we know, Sciona is still in her lair, wondering how the freaking furry and Halo suddenly vanished and could well be preparing to either vacate the premises with much haste or getting ready to launch her own recon-slash-assault.
What does “shanked and capri’d” mean?
shanked – stabbed with some kind of improvised weapon. capri’d – see yesterday’s comments. some are very funny about. this.
I will say this- Pixel being captured and hung for blood-draining had quite some weight to it. Sydney’s de-facto power-up similarly added to the story’s expectations. There was a whole lot of momentum there that was just sort of dropped. Regardless of the checkpoint power’s limitations in general, I feel there were negative consequences of this particular instance.
That’s all for today.
I have a vague idea . . . I think she imitates the checkpoint effect, but doesn’t actually do it. She resets everything in a limited area back to its prior state, but everything outside that remains unchanged. I bet if they pulled out their watches, it would still look as though time had passed.
It seems like Harem, through her distributed consciousness, remembers everything. Which makes me think it’s very . . . localized. After too much time passed, I imagine you simply could not have it work. It wouldn’t . . . ‘Fit?’
If everything in the limited area reset, then so would there watches and the watches wouldn’t show time has passed
I mean, I automatically assume that all watches sync to satellite now.
All watches?? Phones maybe these day, but a phone isn’t a watch, it’s a phone with a clock feature. Some of us got ten dollar watches from Target that have no such capabilities and are manually set. And yes some of us still use those due to company policy on having phones while on duty. :p
Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man related by X-Men comics, is similar to Harem in some ways, but very different in other ways. In this specific topic, whenever Mardrox makes a new Dupe (short for “duplicate”) of himself, it becomes a distinct & separate person; it starts with all of the original’s memories, thought patterns, personality traits, etc. but it has a mind of its own (no real “link” to any others) & it starts to accumulate its own distinctly different experiences, divergent from the others.
If Madrox doesn’t “reabsorb” a Dupe over a long period of time, it will eventually accumulate enough divergent experiences that it may change goals, priorities & even seek to stay separated…Even to the point of loathing the thought of re-emergence back with the original.
This is something that really could never happen with Harem, unless the “quantum link” between one mind-among-five brains got severed somehow.
That, and I’d expect that if the clones had “temporary” separate experiences, I’d expect some sort of envy to occur between them based on what tasks or attention they were given, causing a lingering frustration even after being absorbed.
This is one of the reasons I like the single-minded form of duplication better than the mental-clone variant. There’s far less confusing ethics involved.
For some reason the single-minded version is very rarely used in media, outside of entities that are completely alien. I’ve seen a few, but DaveB’s portrayal of Harem does by far the most with it.
Wait, one more thing- With Sydney now being a teleporter, are her stats on the cast page due for an update?
Well, not necessarily. We’ve all been assuming that the one-star teleport icon was for her telepresence ability alone, rather than a possible sign of things to come.
just thought of something
Krona intended a limited temporal reset
but Harem is having Deja vu, which would hint
the effect is obviously local at most horizon radius
and that they might have reset without the intended temporal displacement
Essentially cloning them, which might mean that there is a version
of Pixel and Halo that are currently still being drained of their blood
and Sciona might have clones of Halo’s Spheres.
which you really don’t want in the wrong hands
and after planning a course of action or calling for backup
they might find a few extra corpses in the dungeon
No, the possible reason why Bodie is having deja vu all over again may have something to do with the fact four fifths of her were not included in the reset, although that still shouldn’t matter, but, that does depends on what, exactly, the Krona-skip did: restore just these four to their previous state and location? rewind local time (including Sci-fright and everyone else inside the warehouse)? rewind Universal time? We will just have to wait and see what DaveB has planned
what do you define “universal” time to be?
resetting the entire universe or Multi-verse is a pretty tall order,
not to mention the power that would be required to accomplish it
Local temporal reset is more reasonable, also explains why the amount of resets is limited
also depends on your definition of local, 1km, Horizon, hemisphere, planet, planetary system,
Solar system, Galaxy, Galaxy Cluster
Earth is moving through space at about 600Km per second
not very fast in Galactic terms, but for a planet and space craft it’s very fast
imagine what would happen if “local” time de-synchronized with the rest of the planet
Earthquakes, tectonic shift, throwing earth off orbit, or ripping part of the crust into space
it could end very badly, for everyone involved.
Defined ‘Universal time’ to include the entire Universe
Fairly sure ‘local’ implied just the area they are in
*hands kuraimizu the daily Pedant Trophy*
::pouts::
No one told me about a trophy!
::scuffles off looking disgruntled::
Well if you subscribe to the multi-universe theory (Not multiverse!) which is an actual scientific theory. Everything that can happen does happen in some universe. Now whether that applies to the Grrlpower Universe is up to Dave B. But think about Krona’s power in some other universe always backfiring.
umm..
Multiverse means Multiple universes, it’s the same theory.
Our reality we define as the prime Time line, as there is no evidence of Time Travel or similar anomalies.
if there was evidence of such anomalies, it would be evidence that we reside in a non-prime reality.
it’s not so much as krona can hack reality.
there’s only one Krona or Krona Time-stream, and Krona Hacks what reality/ies she manifests in.
Mutiverse is a comic term used by a certain brand of comics and therefore unbound by science and maybe trademarked.
Just because comics use a term doesn’t mean that science can’t use the same words or phrase.
Especially since science fiction makes frequent use of current scientific theory.
Sometimes fiction borrows from science
And sometimes science gets an idea from fiction.
Very true. But comics aren’t actually science fiction even if they my borrow a concept or two.
Comic Books are merely a medium of printed Fiction
Science fiction is a Genre, specifically a sub-genre of Fantasy
Also a fictional narrative can have more than a singular genre
for example Grrl Power is Both Fantasy/Magic,
as well as Fantasy/Science-Fiction, as well as Action
not to mention probably a few other genres too.
Actually the word was coined as a scientific one in 1952, and is well-supported by science. You may note that the guy who came up with it was Schrödinger, who liked putting his cat in a box.
I’m thinking I don’t like Kronas ticked off face. After all, when you’re dealing with someone that can probably corrupt your metadata, archive you onto a disc, and probably mess with your flags for various psych & bio states, she’s not somebody you want to have mad at you.
At the very least, just imagine if she decided to Rickroll your mind!
Halo has six orbs and mysterous unexplained powers.
Pixel has a debug console with six panels and mysterious unexplained powers.
Coincidence? I think NOT!
Halo has seven orbs…
Krona has a…
…dueling console by HaxCo.
… cute smile.
I think there’s a bug in her glitch….
How would that compare to having a glitch in her bug? o_O
It’s a pretty big glitch that’s going to be bugging me for quite a while.
Send for Vance. He can solve your bug problems.
Course then you have a colony of spider problems, but hey, one problem at a time.
She could have a glug in her.. no, wait.. didn’t think that through.
Aside from the second and fourth panel things you mentioned in the edit, Krona should have realized something was up when Daphne asked how she would get back on the roof because SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SYDNEY, but she doesn’t glom on until Harem says she has deja vu. Could be kind of she missed, seems off.
Might be Krona was too distracted with explaining to Sydney she didn’t actually die and then reacting to Pixel who reacted to the “shanked and capri’d” comment. She gets back around to it at the end of the page at least though.
Krona looks distinctly unhappy about having to explain herself.
Indeed. Although I took it as irritation in being asked to explain herself, despite indicating that she would not know until she had checked the logs.
I daresay a lot of programmers with emphysema with this.
“Yes, something has gone wrong. Yes, it is my program, so whatever it is that has gone wrong it is my fault. I have told you that I am urgently investigating why it happened. No, demanding an immediate answer will not mysteriously make me be able to instantly provide you with one!”
It could also be a…
“Busy.
Seriously, busy.
Dammit, leave me the cluck alone, BUSY!”
thing going on…
Check it out, its Riff from Sluggy Freelancers, dodging questions and “let me check my notes”-ing.
I don’t think I’ve noticed anyone yet noting that being a ‘tough as lasers claws chick’ worked against Pixel, she was well on her way to being drained to death because being stabbed, immobilized, and turned into a blood generator didn’t meet the qualification as an ‘acute stressor’. We haven’t learned yet if the restore could be simply triggered by ‘I desire a reset’ so if Sidney hadn’t triggered things it might have ended with her death since if being stabbed and hooked up as a blood generator wasn’t an acute stressor slowly bleeding to death might not have been either.
Might be that once she was low on blood and closer to dying the trigger would still activate but having only been hung up a few minutes prior (and being unconscious) she wasn’t that far along yet.
Again, Pixelicious was more than likely having a ball before being rendered unconscious, which means she had no awareness of being shanked and capri’ed, thus the trigger wouldn’t have gone off
Probably the easiest price is similar to when Harkle Harpell got a magic log book going that detailed events, but saying anything about it or directly from it reverted him back to when he created it (about a month) with no recollection of what happened after, or that a month had gone by in the interim.
In regards to the repercussions of the reset, I’d think that everyone involved with the trigger, would retain some knowledge of it during the reset…which still means a villain could know something weird happen, and what WILL happen shortly, with the intruders. Or something. I hate temporal mechanics. Throbbing headache.
If we knew nothing else about the reset, yes. However Pixel has specifically indicated how it normally works. In this case being that only Sydney should know.
Clearly Pixel does not however, nor Krona herself. So her assessment that Harem is an exception to the rule does hold water. The rest of them are behaving according to her prediction (but not to yours). As such, unless one of the villains has a similar exemption, then they should not also have memories of the incident.*
Mind you they might have some other power or spell that gives them a clue.
* For example Guinan (played by Whoopi Goldberg) in Star Trek belonged to a species who’s memory persisted even when the timeline changed. She would have memories of both versions of history, so could tell that changes had occurred.
Guinan often also withheld information and claimed that influencing folks by giving them information they didn’t have access to could alter the situation. Which is, of course, possibly giving them information they didn’t have access to at one time…
Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow….
This page seems oddly saturated, to me. Like, the colors got more garish, and the lines got less distinct?
Maybe that’s an actual effect on the character’s reality, as a manifestation of the cost for Krona using the ‘checkpoint’ ability?
^_^
Maybe there is something wrong with your monitor (or eyes)
Personally I do not feel that it is off. However it is worth noting that this page is coloured by Keith. So the slight difference in style may account for the difference that you feel you perceive.
Or maybe Keith will be coloring this section of the story arc until Krona fixes the problem to act as a visual representation that something is off.
Which would be totally cool if this was planned. :D
Indeed! I hope that this is the explanation.
Crap! Just thought of something: a couple days ago Scientists acknowledged a previously unknown continent, did Kronachrome cause that to happen? (by the way, thank you Krona, glad to know we are now officially and geographically not part of Australia :P)
Well of course. Silly name for it though. We all know it should be called ‘Middle Earth’!
Considering 95% is under water, at least it’s not “Water World” :P
The U.K. should apply for separate continent status now too, given the Brexit result.
*gets chisel and hammer out*
I think Sydney needs to give me scuba diving lessons.
Perhaps, and this is just a thought, too many resets will break the minds from having to deal with multiple reality memories of high stress events? Ones that are simultaneously real and not real?
Can you imagine anything more dangerous than, for example, Maxima, confused and afraid and feeling cornered, lashing out at anything that doesn’t make sense, which is everything at the moment? If that’s the case, I think Krona’s caution would be eminently reasonable.
It just dawned on me… Krona’s hole-interface should totally project a black background behind the runes. They’d be a pain in the ass to read, otherwise, depending on what real-world colors happen to be behind them.
Unless you expect me to believe she can alter history, but she can’t make air look dark.
*holo-interface. >_<
Or, maybe, she can read her hole without being distracted (unless being yelled at by an angry pink pussy), alternatively, she can move it so she can read it easily, because, you know, it’s just a hologram and literally doesn’t weigh anything
I agree.
Being yelled at by an angry.. nope, nope, just can’t do it…
Keeping a dark background behind it serves just as well, and does not require her to waste her power (or alternatively distract her) on something fairly trivial.
Hmmm… And now there are likely 6 of Harem’s bodies!
Yes, that does seem like a possibility, but that would have to mean there are also two Sydney’s (or, at least, one live and one not)
I suspect that, as the re-set was designed for individuals (as opposed to collectives, like Harem) then Sydney and Pixel are fine, and there is just the one of each. But I do agree with JasonAW3‘s insight that the process might have duplicated Harem, partly due to Krona’s coding error and partly because that is what her super power does.
But even Harem might not be aware that this has happened. If any one of her ended up with different memories then that might break her quantumly entangled mental state, for that body. Something can only remain entangled if it is absolutely identical.
In this case though it could potentially be partial. Some parts being entangled, whilst others are not. This then accounting for the deja vu. Almost remembering the alternate time-line, but not quite able to, because that part is no longer in sync.
Possibly resulting in only partial contact with the new body (or partial loss with the old one, if it is that one which has become impaired). Or potentially completely severing contact, if the problem caused by the discrepancy cascades and causes the link to fail entirely.
Meaning there could be an extra Harem out there, still scouting the warehouse, but in a state of panic, as she has been cut off from the rest of her mind!!!
I would feel very sorry for her, if that is the case. Given how used to their constant presence she is, it would be like us having our arms cut off!
Not quite as extreme as losing a limb, more like a limb that has gone numb
A reasonable distinction, given that mine implied the death of the limb. Whereas for yours it is still alive.
But I was talking more about how she related to the parts she no longer has contact with. i guess it all depends on whether it is permanent or not. If it is temporary, then, yes, I agree with you But if she is eternally cut off, then that is a different matter. A numb limb you can still see, or touch with other parts that are not numb. Whereas Harem’s other selves always used to be present, and feeding her sensory information, no matter how far away.
There is no longer any way for her to reach out, to ‘touch’ the missing limb. She does not know where they are, they do not know where she is. Nor can they tell what the other is thinking. Essentially they are now two different people (albeit that at least one still has more than one body).
Yes the other bodies would still be like twins. And she could use mobile phones to remain in touch. But both are a huge step down from her previous relationship with her other selves.
Imagine Maximas face when she realise she have two Sydney to handle.
Except, one was about to be ensanguined to death, so, still only one Sydney to handle (albeit an hysterical Sydney who just found out she died, and then has to explain that to her parents)
Would her next-of-kin (presumably defaulting to her parents, unless she nominated Joel or a sibling) get paid a ‘death in duty’ gratuity? Likewise any life insurance the service may have granted her? Would Sydney Scoville Jnr’s home now pass to her next-of-kin, meaning that the surviving Sydney Scoville 2.1 would be homeless?
Presumably the contract between her predecessor and Archon becomes void upon her death. So Sydney 2.1 would not even be able to stay at the Archon HQ. Plus would not have a salary anymore. And Sydney the Jnr’s share of the comic shop would either pass to her next of kin or Joel, depending on what arrangements they have.
Poor Sydney 2.1 is unemployed and could be spending tonight in a cardboard box!
Well, she is always welcome to share my kennel! We can mourn Sydney Jnr together.
*puts back legband on*
In the next comic we will see Maxima coming back to the roof with newly rescued Sydney and naked Pixel. If there was a akwardness detector there it would explode.
Whilst Maxima would be mad about Sydney’s near-death, I do not think she would be phased, in the least, about Pixel getting naked. That is how she has to do her scouting, in order to turn invisible. Her clothing probably does not turn invisible, and would pose an unacceptable snag hazard for the sneaking and leaping her jaguar form is required to do.
If Pixel behaved in a sexual manner, when like that, it would be another matter mind. But whilst she is being professional and practical, I feel Maxima would consider it a non-issue. In fact she has probably authorised it, in writing. As the unit commander it would be up to her (and General Faulk) to sign off on any unusual uniform (or lack of uniform) requirements. And this would have come up long before just today’s mission.
I suspect Maxima would have put a whole bunch of restrictions, on when it was acceptable mind. For instance not stripping when the media or general public are present. But such would not be a problem here.
We should have Dabbler in this scene too to make some lewd comment about twin Sydneys and Pixels.
Yes, but only until someone goes back into the warehouse and collapses the state.
The white highlights underneath Pixel’s eyes are very distracting.
Do you keep getting the urge to shoot her, now that you can see the whites underneath her eyes?
You do know that it is not jaguar season, right?
Yeah, everyone knows it’s wabbit season
Are Halo and Krona using items from the same original tech base??
Possibly. They do share some similarities. By comparison to other supers and supernaturals, they both appear to be totally unique, each in their own way. Yet their interfaces do share an identical colour scheme, and number of elements. Albeit that Krona’s may be totally due to aesthetics, whereas there is some significance to Halo’s orbs (if only to ensure that she grabs the right colour one, for a given task).
Further their origins are mysterious. Krona because we do not know her backstory yet (other than it clearly will not be like typical supers or supernaturals). Whereas Sydney’s is suspect because she appeared to be prevaricating, when telling her origin story.
Plus both power sets are capable of bypassing universal laws. For which see Halo’s ability to defy gravity ‘in an annoying way’. Whilst Krona can tinker with reality to her heart’s content.
That said though the connections are tenuous and superficial. Relying more on a lack of evidence than any clues pointing towards the conclusions stated. So what correlations there are could be nothing more than simple coincidence.