Grrl Power #514 – Concrete knuckles
Well, she is definitely holding its attention. Sydney could have probably flown away before he flipped the side of the building on her, but she has supreme confidence in her shield, and as we know, Sydney is easily distracted by spectacle. Like buildings collapsing on her or someone jangling their keys.
That shape the Super Husk carved out of the building is called a spherical wedge, like when you pull an orange apart. I was disappointed when I learned that. I was hoping it had a distinct geometric name, like a radium or spherelette.
#MakingComics: Let me talk to you guys about rubble. Wow, drawing rubble is tedious. You don’t think about it when you’re reading a manga. Those guys have assistants whose job it is to just draw backgrounds and presumably the lowest guy on the totem pole gets to do the rubble. (which incidentally I think is one of those incorrect idioms and actually the guy at the base of the totem pole was the most important – but you know what I mean.) There are a few cheats you can do when you’re working digitally, (and probably a lot more if you’re working in 3D) but I feel for those guys who for the last few decades did it all on paper with ink and rulers and zip-z-tones.
I mention this because as you can imagine, there’s a fair bit of rubble on the next few pages. :/
Wow I totally forgot to draw battle damage on that thing. :/\/\
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I think Sydney has matured as a superhero.
She got the superhero smacktalk at least.
I agree. Because of how she emulated the Road Runner back when she dropped Anvil on Vehemence’s head, I would have expected at this point, that Sydney’s part of the roof would have stayed stable while the rest of the building fell down with the killabot on it.
Given that her shield intersects with part of the building, that particular Road-Runner-esque shenanigan would be perfectly plausible. If she grabbed the flight orb, she could hold her position by flying. The shield would probably hold that chunk of roof in place, indirectly supporting the rest of the cut-off section. Meanwhile, if the rest of the roof happened to be sufficiently dilapidated, smashing off a chunk of it could make it unstable enough to collapse under the weight of the husk, leaving Sydney and her section of roof floating in mid-air.
Make a note Dave. Do this another time ;)
You know, that brings up a good point, how exactly is her shield passing through the floor while she wals when its perfectly spherical and it’s not even letting in oxigen, Should she not be ripping up the ground wherever she goes?
The bottom of the shield is flat.
It’s been established that the shield extends into the material beneath Sydney, but we don’t have an in-comic explanation for how it moves/resizes without cutting things or compressing/decompressing people in side it.
My guess, however, is that the shield is not actually as continuous as it appears; it actually breaks and reforms whenever its location or size needs to change. Now, this could happen very quickly (say, in Planck time), or–more securely–the orb could form a new layer of the shield before dropping the previous one each time. Either way, the changes are so small/fast that they appear continuous.
Actually, although that remains a possibility, there is no evidence,* in the comic, to support the ‘phasing shield’ option. The more likely explanation goes the other way. I.e. that as warior4356 says the bottom of the shield is flat. There is only circumstantial evidence to support this. But the sheer weight of it makes this the more likely option.
1) We observe that the shield can and does deform, on a regular basis. Getting smaller indoors, deflecting to avoid a table, and becoming streamlined when flying fast.
2) Sydney demonstrated being able to pick up Harem, by forming the shield underneath her feet. Thus proving that it can form in between shoes and pavement, despite the person’s weight being supported on it.
3) Here we see the bottom half of the sphere full of sand. This is not compelling, on its own, as the sand was airborne, rather than solid ground, when enclosed. However at the point it is depicted it has settled, so would be firm enough to stand on.
OK it is already inside the shield, not outside, but if Sydney flew up, when standing on the ground, (for example from standing on a sand dune) the shield would need to allow omni-directional phasing, to let the ground out. Clearly here it is not doing so. Taking this argument into account I feel strongly elevates this supporting evidence (albeit not reaching certainty).
For information, the hemisphere could be either open (like an upside down food bowl) or closed (providing a much safer defense). The former would easily explain how Sydney can walk under such circumstances (whilst noting that an omni-directional phasing shield would do so too).
Thanks to the fact that the shield can form deform though, it is easy to visualise it simply becoming flexible (plus stretching and contracting as needed), where Halo’s feet are walking only, in order to allow her to exert the force on the ground to propel herself forwards.
So a closed hemisphere is workable, if requiring an extra step to explain. I accept that this does make it the less likely, if using Occam’s razor. But the various points above do serve to support it well (versus the phasing shield). Or (at similar complexity) the shield could be open when walking and closed when stationary.
There though is one scene where we see Vehemence dragging Sydney, by her tentacle (with the shield up). Of note, we see dust being kicked up. This does support either ‘phasing shield’ or ‘open shield’.
But can be explained either as artistic licence (conveying the dynamics of the scene, in priority over this specific issue we are analysing) or by the possibility that small amounts loose dirt, on top of the ground may get scooped up (the same as Harem was) and was being incidentally kicked up (a side effect of the shield flexing, whilst passing over rough ground).
I am comfortable with either of the latter explanations.
* Shadow Boxer phased through the ground before Halo raised her shield, so does not factor into proving any of the options. Harem’s subsequent inability to teleport in though would support either a ‘phasing shield’ or a ‘closed shield’ better than an ‘open shield’, given that the latter would require a completely separate ‘anti-teleport’ area of effect that works despite a big hole in the force field!
I would have sworn there was something that established that the shield extended underground–not a visual, maybe, but someone discussing it? If not, maybe it was in one of [b]DaveB[/b]’s descriptions. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to archive-binge and look for it right now, so it’s just going to have to bug me.
Meanwhile, I defer to your recollection on that point, but still prefer my guess over the selective phasing option.
When the embiggener is being used, in the press corps demonstration, we actually see individual panels disappearing, as the shield is being lowered. Each is a few inches across, approximately.
Further the patterns the shield takes on, when being attacked, exactly match these.
Whilst the smaller shield is probably raised and lowered near instantaneously (we do not have a single example of it part way through the process), the stress patterns match, showing that the panel sizes are just scaled down proportionately.
In 3d modelling, you’re supposed to keep each polygon having only 3 sides (what I was taught in college in my 3d modelling class at least) and some of the animations I’ve done myself move stuff into position automatically as long as you’ve set the timing, and point A and B.
Maybe the shield is a solid hologram whose shape alters based on that kind of rule, and the physics are universal? “There is this much air inside.” “There is this much sand inside.” The size and shape are unrelated.
If Sydney had scuba gear she could go jump in a lake, activate the shield, and do a water drop on those fires she started. That is, if she wasn’t busy distracting Mecha Hornyball there.
Krona: Toon physics enabled = “Yes”
either Sydney has matured or her meds are wearing off
They wore off several hours ago
She took a generic about two hours ago so that wouldn’t be the issue. What ever side effects that generic has maybe though.
The meds aren’t the problem. Even with her airbottle, she’ll run out of air first. It can take days to dig someone out of a collapsed building, even if the method of collapse wasn’t trying to bury that specific person deep as possible.
She can probably blast herself free, then fly out, though.
Assuming that a certain super-fast, super-strong, flying brick of a teammate somehow doesn’t arrive in time to rescue her.
Speaking of- where is she already?
Wait, we already know what side effects the generic med had – Spontaneous Muppet Delusions.
Or was it Susceptibility To Pranksters?
I would agree with Guesticus that the meds have worn off completely by now. Although I would not try to state how long by. Whilst we know that generics are meant to have the same active ingredients, I think it fair to say that Sydney uses a particular brand because it is the one that has the best effect for her. So it would probably run out somewhat sooner than her normal brand.*
In fact, due to the nocebo effect** it is entirely possible that Gwen and Dabbler’s Muppet prank could have significantly reduced the useful effect of the medicine. Or potentially even completely negated it!
Although, as Sydney viewed it as likely to cause ‘side-effects’, that would not necessarily make her think that the medicine would have no effect at all, so I would stick with it just being reduced as being the most likely result. But do note that, in my opinion, both the placebo effect and nocebo effect would stack in this case (due to the Muppet effect).
E.g. brand-name medicine base effect 3 hours + 30% placebo effect = approximately 4 hours improvement. Generic medicine base effect 3 hours – 30% nocebo effect = approximately 2 hours of improvement.***
However, for folks who have a hard time accepting the latter as a possibility, a lot of time has actually passed. They ate their entire meal, then had a long meet and greet session (emphasised by the ‘boring adult talking’ scene between Maxima and Ingsol, showing that it was dragging on but Dave was not boring us with it all).
Then they had the battle, which would have only been very short, but the aftermath will have taken a fair amount of time to resolve, such as ensuring the bunny was OK and reconvening those delegates who scattered. Then having the Council ratify whatever immediate response was deemed necessary. Also fitting in both a debriefing for the fight and a briefing for these missions.
Finally look at the night sky above, whilst that could just be the ever-present glow of a big city (in this case almost certainly still New York) , it seems to be lightening for dawn.
* If nothing else the placebo effect comes into play. Believing that ‘this brand works well’ can significantly improve its effect even if it is absolutely the same product, from a single production line, only differing in the box that it is put in. Which could also account for why we have had contradictory informed opinion on the subject. Some saying that there is no difference, due to strict legal rules over generic medicines for the US, whilst others indicate that named brands can be more effective.
** Less known, but having to be shown to be just as powerful, is the nocebo effect. Which can reduce the effect of medicines just as much as the placebo effect improves it, under different circumstances.
Say “this will make you better” and patients have a marked improvement in recovery chances and times. Say “this will make you worse” and the reverse happens. Even to the extent that it can cause death!
Should anybody feel the desire to dispute the effectiveness of placebo and nocebo effects, do bear in mind that the former is essentially the most tested effect in all medical history. Given that every trial which utilises a control, in order to eliminate patient bias, is also providing us objective data on the placebo (and where applicable the nocebo) effect.
With the effect(s) being so profound that clinical trials which could have a patient bias, yet failed to put in a measure to counteract that, are viewed as unreliable enough to be discounted as flawed science.
*** Those percentages are at the top-end of what you might get from trials, so I am stating the most extreme possibility, for the purposes of emphasising that potential. Likewise our scientist readers would be used to only seeing non-stacking results because clinical trials work hard to minimise such.
However I bet that one designed to both induce a placebo effect in one group and a nocebo effect another (and a neutral control, of course) would be able to show the stacking, when comparing the difference between the positively and negatively affected trials.
I’d been under the impression that Sydney wasn’t under the impression that her meds had been ineffective, but rather was under the impression that they had generated weird side-effects because she’d been dosing herself on a weird schedule, and was in a familiar combination of tired and unmedicated that had previously made her feel loopy.
IE arguably she probably took the muppet as being a sign that her medication was working strongly, but weirdly.
Well pointed out. In fact I actually included something along those lines myself, before editing down the post (hard to believe, I know, given how massive it remained, even after that), in order to keep more to my point.
Yes it may be that Sydney would view side effects as being separate to, and not interfering with, her medication. And there is a significant chance of that, rather than me just allowing for ‘reasonable doubt’.
However anytime that we suffer extreme side-effects, unless we have absolute faith that the medicine is doing good (which is more likely with a favoured brand name than an untried generic) then there remains a strong possibility that the placebo effect will be reduced.
Of course the very fact that our society has lots of medicines with strong side-effects means that your argument has great merit. “It tastes bad because it is doing good” being an example of something unpleasant reinforcing the placebo effect. But if it causes you to doubt it is working for you, then the benefit will be reduced or even lost.
And, for the nocebo side of the argument, given that some side effects can be lethal, believing that she has Muppetosis will definitely give grounds for fear of others (depending on the individual’s personality and circumstances). Our society has instilled in us the negative possibilities of misusing medicines, thus creating a strong nocebo potential, especially when there is something to give it extra credibility.
So I remain comfortable that my assessment is fair, albeit that it is very much a judgement call, depending on what weight we put on each aspect of the assessment.
This. She outright states that the last time she took one of the pills that late it made even loopier than usual. Apparently, loopy enough that seeing a Muppet Maxima
tmseemed normal.Why do I keep messing up the tags why
Ahaha! I see what you’re doing.
I also realize that I should be grabbing my flight orb now. Yup. Should really do that. Probably would have been a good idea.
Why does she need her flight orb? She’s safe in her hamster ball
She can use 2.
And she needs the florb to not fall.
I strongly suspect falling was part of her plan. If she HAD grabbed the florb she would just be grandstanding in front of something that could not appreciate it. This way however has her out of view of the husk and she can now spring back into action when it least expects it.
Indeed. This has gone right past “Grandstanding” and well into “Me! Pay Attention to Me!”
When D&D 3.0 came out, we ran a campaign with a bunch of GMs, shifting between running and playing so we could figure out the rules. The party ran into a group of ogres we could barely handle, and after two rounds of combat my character noticed more inbound. I broke off from the combat and charged the second group of ogres, hurling insults of a petty nature at them in Giant (Diplomacy: It’s not just for making friends). After several absurdly good rolls (which were extremely atypical for me), my character managed to get the second group utterly focused on me – and I then led them on a merry chase in a wide arc around the main fight, scattering verbal abuse behind me and the occasional “No one fights like Gaston!”
Pro tip – amuse the GM and they may let the absurd work. :D
Also, now that Sydney is at ground level she can pick up Krona and give her the protection of the shield while they work on a plan.
And if she was standing where the rubble fell Sydney may end up pick up the PIECES of Krona.
Unless she had another reset coded on herself. Then we would wind up back on the roof again.
It appears Krona displays some good survival instincts, if not good plans. I think she already has safety measures set up. Whether they are useful is a different question….
I mean, her current orders are to “just keep it busy”, so making sure it’s focused on her is the plan. Grandstanding too much would actually be detrimental; if the golem determines that it truly cannot harm her it might move on to another target.
This is a good point.
By allowing herself to fall she’s giving the golem a hope (a false hope IMHO) that it can kill her.
indeed good point
*ting* “congratulations, you’ve achieved Kender lvl1, Taunting feats unlocked”
seriously, her taunts are good, but perhaps overkill if this is an automaton. It doesn’t seem to be able to compute very far, as the flight orb power is public knowledge. It should have been taken into account, this building-cutting is a waste of energy, so this mannekin shows the computing power of a pocket calculator
Sound like my first 3.0 game my rogue character had maxed his skills into Intimidate to set an enemy up for the tin-can (shaken condition -2 AC and -2 to hit and damageIIRC). Well the Tinman tripped a trap (Like they do) while charging toward a group of orcs that dropped a porticullis-type wall between me and the rest of the crew just as a second group came into where I was. After 3 natural 20’s (and an immense rise in the smell of feces and orc urine) I “convinced” the groups in my part that if they lifted the gate that I MIGHT let them live. XD
“Once again, Probability has proven itself willing to sneak into a back alley and service Drama as would a copper piece harlot.”
One of my all time favorite OotS quotes.
… A-n-d not get buried under a crapton of rubble.
Sure, as long as her shield stayed up, she’d be fine – but tactical options might be kind of limited. Could use her PPO to blast a way out from under, but Syd would first need to be very VERY sure where all friendlies (and miscellaneous innocent bystanders in the next county) are standing.
wounder if she can ACCTUALLY hamsterball it, and use the molestorb to push her along as one of the most anoying sheilds on the battlefeild
She needs to buy the multi-tentacle option on her light-hook. Then she could just extend a bunch from her shield ball and form the classic sci-fi staple, the giant walking eyeball.
Just form a pyramid shape and hang from the orb at the top of it. This would allow her to pull an Illuminati.
I wonder if the shield is a frictionless surface. If it is, escape should be fairly easy using flight orb to lift her up since its powerful enough to fly at mach 4+….
Why is everyone so set on the flight orb?
Has everyone forgotten the remote vision then teleport orb effect?
As long as he remote vision thingy can get outside the rubble then so can she and without a lot of fuss.
Gravity the last time I look still causes damage to falling objects and much like the ill packaged egg in the egg drop Sydney would be scrambled.So the Florb would be a good call.
Incidentally, we just learned that the shield doesn’t seem to prevent Sydney from getting hurt by falling. Though since Sydney can fly and it would be a very specific situation where she can have her shield up but not grab the fly orb this is only a very minor weakness.
She did fall, but only a couple of feet (from the center of her shield bubble to the ground), hence the ‘Ow! I landed on my air thingy.” instead of “Ow, I fell 30 feet off a building and have several broken bones.”
Incidentally, Sydney is now buried under a few tons of rubble, so she may be having some trouble digging herself out.
Digging her in was probably the actual goal of the bloodbot.
We’ll have to see just how strong her flying or tentacle is, when it comes to digging/bursting out.
Looks intentional. Note where it’s tentacle is in panel 5. It’s intentionally rolling the roof to make a Sydney omelette.
Unfortunately for it, the egg in the middle did not break.
Or she could use the cutting laser directly upard, fly orb could probably also move the shield with it.
Using the PPO in shotgun mode straight up to turn rubble into dust….
She can fly several hundred miles per hour. It’s hard to imagine that a mere 2-3 floors of building rubble could possibly prevent her from flying out of it. Especially given that she was above all of it before falling, and not at the bottom getting the full load.
And that’s a much better use of “That’s what she said!” :-P
Depends on what her acceleration is,
The molestorb can lift 16 tons, if I recall.
Oh right, she did. I forgot she was high enough that falling would result in broken bones or worse, and that this isn’t the type of comic where such falls are brushed off easily.
Except for Max, Achilles, Anvil, Hiro, Mr. Amorphous, etc. Sure.
Unless you are a ly…superhero who can regenerate. I guess Harem was making sure that, if their coms were being overheard, that she wasn’t giving away The Veil?
Just expand the force field and the rubble slides off….
hmm… that would actually depend on if expanding the force field just increases the size of the field only. That would require a test. place some goo on the top of the shield, expand the shield, if goo falls within shield then shield is only impenetrable until resized.
Regarding Sydney’s shield. It is usually spherical but it terminates into solid objects. We note from her tank demonstration that it grabbed quite a bit of dirt and didn’t form on it as if it were a surface. So, is it possible for her to use the shield as an anchor into solid objects and, in situations like this, wouldn’t she run a risk of harming herself since the portion of the building is inside the shield and, presumably, can get severed and land on her in a fall?
It has been mentioned somewhere that the shield extends under her feet and is level with the surface she is on. In the second to last panel we can see when she starts falling that the shield became spherical again without any of the building inside it.
The reason there was a bunch of sand inside the shield during the demonstration is that she was too late with activating the shield and it formed around a part of the cloud of sand that was flying at her.
The sand that got caught in the shield during the “LIKE BUTTA” demonstration was blown into the air and inside the shield’s area of effect when it formed. That’s why it all settled to the bottom and partially buried Sydney.
Orb management, it’s on the training list, whenever she actually gets a chance to train…
We finally get to see what happens when the surface that the shield intersects falls out from under her.
Turns out the shield just phases through the surface.
I must have missed this ‘phasing’ you speak of.
The shield has never been shown to actually bisect matter. It would be a potent weapon in its own right were that the case. I am curious about how it would react to the embiggener being used when Sydney is in an enclosed area, but that has yet to be demonstrated.
It depends how the shield looked like under the ceiling. If it was a half sphere sticking out, or nothing.
We know it doesn’t bisect people, we’ve seen it include an enemy rather than do that.
I’m just wondering how it forms a half sphere when standing on something, and how it turns back into a full sphere when flying (or falling) off that something.
I find it easier to visualize it as a malleable bubble, not a sphere. It may be flat on the roof an not intersect but if she took flight it would reshape back into it’s full roundness.
What? When?
You might be referring to the time Sydney used the telepresence orb to visit ItMakesMeStronger while she was also using the force field orb. Since Sydney and the force field were only an illusion (or whatever), ItMakesMeStronger was able to lean in and appear to be half in and half out of the force field. But he was not, just as Sydney was not actually sticking her arm through Arianna’s head while in telepresence form (radiation to the brain notwithstanding).
Taunting the possibly non-sentient golem is certainly good for the self-esteem, but if your target can’t get riled up by it…. seems sorta pointless, I guess. Still, this is Sidney, and she is a stream of consciousness kind of person.
Just because they can’t get taunted doesn’t stop the self-esteem and morale boost, it’s like talking to yourself to pump yourself up
Her own edification is good enough for Sydney….
Given the tactical adaptability shown by the construct, I’m not sure that we can rule out sentience entirely. Also, it’s big enough that it’s possible there’s a sentient being of some kind at the core…
Also Sydney could annoy a brick wall if she put her mind to it.
If I my head to a brick wall, I’d get a concussion. Our at the very least a headache.
I actually believe Sydney is following orders from Peggy “just keep it busy”. If it has it’s full focus and attention on Sydney, it will not notice Maxima and Peggy hitting it hard until it’s too late.
Sydney, is in full-on aggravating mode, complete with mocking and being a nuisance. Remember that the others are there nearby but it isn’t focusing on them – Sydney has it’s undivided attention, which is allowing them to recover and regroup.
Go Sydney, go!
Drawing aggro is a good talent for someone with a shield and flight. Or she could use the comm ball as a lure, as long as she is careful not to hit the teleport button.
I’m also seeing this as a full-on Kender thing…
Full on Kender? As in kleptomania? Or am I missing something?
Stealing the scene, holding their attention…
taking one for the team!
Well if the golem is controlled by Sciona, or even if she’s just watching it’s progress then I’d guess Sydney is doing a good job of driving her nuts.
Loss of morale, not of morals…
Actually, what would that be. Amoralise? Amoralate? Immoralify?
Demoralise as well. Since it’s the 2nd description in the dictionary and because we know how awful English can be.
I was going to point that out as well… “demoralize” has nothing to do with morals, it has to do with morale.
Obligatory mentioning of the typo in the undercomic author’s comment from https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2457 now completed.
I wonder what her plan for getting out of the rubble is? The Embiggener doesn’t expand the shield right? It just makes it bigger the next time she summons it? Too bad. That would have looked cool.
Sydney did wonder out loud at some point why she didn’t experience any pressure changes while making the shield bigger or smaller, implying she has tried doing this while it was active. No indication yet though if she tried if she can push things away by making it bigger though.
Huh? Its gonna take a while to find that reference. But if it is possible it would just look great and intimidating which Sydney, and I, would love.
I wonder how big it can go? So many applications for an enlarging/shrinking shield.
Didn’t take me that long to find this page.
Then she should totally do that while saying this.
https://youtu.be/aDm4L7gjYNs?t=77
Well if she is under the rubble, then the Lightbee is the obvious solution since she knows it lets her teleport. However, I don’t think she’s actually under the rubble but is rather hovering and obscured by the cloud of dust that the rubble has created. Once the dust settles, she’ll be floating with a smug grin on her face.
So she’s lying about falling on her air thingie?
It’s possible she still fell to the bottom (heh, ‘bottom’) of the bubble when she activated the florb, or maybe she activated the florb after hitting bottom but before the rubble settled over her like a dirt blanket
Bottom…
::giggles::
I read “air thingie” as her Flight Orb, and that she’s basically slinging a whole pile of bullshit to keep Golem Pyle focused on her.
Oh, thought it was the rebreather or whatever for her shielded air supply.
Yea, that is the way I read it. She is wearing it, on the back of her belt It has been visible in various scenes, during the course of the night.
If she was able to bounce on her butt inside the shield, causing some form of pain/injury, then that seems to limit it’s effectiveness. For example, if she’s having an aerial dogfight and gets hit hard enough to knock her into the side of a mountain, she could hit the side of her shield hard enough to become gumbo. Unless there’s some sort of inertial dampening field inside that limits how much acceleration/deceleration she can experience when inside of the shield.
As for getting out from under the debris, is she able to expand her shield without dropping it?
It clearly has an ability to resist being moved. Noone except vehemence and gravity have been able to move her so far, and V may be because he wasn’t trying to move the shield, he was moving the Light Hook, which was moving Sydney, which was moving the shield.
Let’s bear in mind that physics had no universal reference frame. This means that the shield is capable of preserving her current momentum (nothing is ever stationary). So in the “smacked into a mountain” scenario, either the shield will have inertial dampeners or she’ll punch a hole through the mountain.
Shield seems to follow her and is otherwise immovable so I think the only way she can get knocked hard enough to hit the side of a mountain with it on is if the shield is overpowered in which case she’s dead anyway.
It behaves a little oddly on the ground by shaping itself to it which I assume is something programmed into make land walking critters happy and mobile (without doing the bubble monkey thing). Its only this function which allows Sydney to touch the ground and sit on it which screwed her over when she fell with a chunk of the “ground” and was able to “sit” on the ground shaped shield. When she’s floating it pops out to bubble mode and doesn’t touch her.
She probably does have an inertial dampening field, that doesn’t mean she is static in the center of the bubble
I’ve sort of imagined that the shield emanates using Sydney as the point of emanation; I also imagine the shield also actively tries to keep her at its center, which would help to reduce being too badly hurt inside it (with the caveat of letting her walk/run, and so on).
Hey Dave! You absolutely don’t need to worry about drawing battle damage on the blood ‘bot. Who’s to say it didn’t fully regen aside from just fixing its arm, eh? ^_^
Let’s hope Sydney knows what she is doing…!
That will be a first :P
She knows what she’s doing, and that’s whatever the first thing that pops into her excitable mind is….
She can enlarge the shield with the enbiggener pip on the orb control hud, she shouldn’t need to shut it off…so, in theory, she can shake off that rubble like a dog shaking off water. Or, simply Lightbee up and back onto the roof, and then teleport up. Or, do the Superhero Cliche’ exploding up out of the rubble with the flyball. You can probably expect the Golem to look down, and then turn, walk away, and get stopped, by the lighthook wrapping around it. Either way, it will be interesting! One thing she should do, is gather up Krona, so she doesn’t get injured further by either falling rubble, or direct attack.
Indeed, these 2 options were my first and 2nd thoughts, too. Hope she does any of it before the Super Husk walks away or turns to Krona.
I wonder if any of the orbs have abilities to allow Sydney unlimited breathable air or similar. This has probably been suggested already at some point.
Doesn’t she have that portable air breather device they made for her sometime back?
The portable breather device is probably the ‘air thingy’ that she fell on.
Has it been explained the ‘air thingee’ is a CO2 scrubber?
(As seen in the motion picture Apollo 13)
Actually, it was first introduced to the public during the real Apollo 13. they actually did have to duct tape to adapt the canisters as the movie depicted.
That’s true, although the scene where they dumped everything out on the table and said “We have to make this fit into the hole for this using nothing but that” didn’t happen. One of NASA’s engineers figured it out in his car when he was driving to work! :)
Rebreather https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebreather Just an advanced version…
I think Achiles’s influence may be rubbing off on Sydney!
I think that Achiles and Sydney got get into an aggro draw match and make it end in a draw.
A draw as in all the armies of the world being drawn to their combined aggro draw?
Just don’t mention “mouth feel”… :-)
You excited to look at the ceiling?
Maybe it regenerated the damage when it regrew its arm?
::watches as David Nuttall throws DaveB a bone::
Uhm…
::watches as the bone is neatly intercepted mid-flight by a certain canine commenter::
Overconfidence, Sydney. Not a good thing…
In another note, Sydney excels as a tank, both in the shield department and in tainting.
*taunting
sorry…
Heh… tainting…
Tainting would be an excellent way to draw aggro from most sentients.
I’ll leave it to a certain purple-furred sextuple-limbed demon with a zweihander.
Bless her dorky little heart :3
Careful, “bless your heart” can mean anything from “I’m sorry to hear your favorite dog died” to “your momma dropped you on your head a lot, when you were a baby”. It’s the proper southern lady’s deadliest weapon…
#MakingComics: Color me majorly impressed by the breakage of the brick wall going along the outsides of the bricks instead of straight through them. I LOVE details like this!
Really? Because it is a time-honored rule of real estate that those at the top with the best view and other perks are the most important.
Ever tour a Renaissance-ish era town or city? Did you notice that there were no windows on the ground floor of residences? That’s where the servants lived. No windows for less ability for unwanted guests to break in. The owner and his family lived in the upper floors, with windows, a view, a breeze or shutters to keep out the weather (and the windows were typically too small for any enterprising burglars to slip into as well) and all the servants in between themselves and any intruders.
The person at the bottom of the Totem pole is usually the most important because he bears the weight of the rest.
It wouldn’t have been the view looking up to the sky, aka (rotated 90)
“If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”
“Really? Because it is a time-honored rule of real estate that those at the top with the best view and other perks are the most important.”
The ones at the top are often CONSIDERED the most important, but they are also the most replaceable. Replacing the bottom without affecting the top? That takes a lot more work.
It’s like working in an office. The ones at the bottom do all the hard work while the ones at the top get the good view, act like the place wouldn’t run properly without them and take all the credit.
This is a really poor false equivalency. You are comparing one VIP with all of the worker bees, and that’s not how this works.
Replace any worker bee in any decent sized company. Impact to that company: Negligible. Stock prices remain steady, product continues to ship, corporate direction remains unchanged, etc. Replace the CEO or any one of a handful of highly placed executives and the impact to the company can be quite marked.
Yea, if you used their salary to hire one hundred extra workers, productivity would go right up.
And now we’re back to the false equivalency of comparing one vs. many, which I’ve already explained is not a valid point. And it only took one reply to get there!
Only because I was using it to wind you up. :-)
However the disproportionate salary is a fair point to bring in, even if I chose to do it in a comical way. Back in the 50s we had a society where management only had salaries up to (say) ten times that of a worker. Or twenty times for exceptional individuals, who could make a profound difference.
This is a fair level of remuneration. Increasing the salary, beyond that, does not proportionately increase their effectiveness. In fact it has no benefit, only a net loss to the company. The only argument which holds water is that other companies could poach them away, by offering more.
However this mechanism is harming society by disproportionately rewarding individuals more than is necessary to encourage them to work. Executives in the 50s quite happily carried on working in the companies they were employed in, after all.
Of course if one country put in an arbitrary limit such as tying the maximum salary (including share options etc) to being no more than 10 times the average (or minimum) staff salary (or 20 for a strictly limited number of individuals), then there would be a migration away to other unregulated countries.
Unless, of course, the G20 implemented such a rule. Then the only direction to go would be to a country that is not amongst the 20 richest on the planet.
And the G20 could impose trading sanctions on any that did offer such a haven. They have already shown willingness to do that (in principle) to stamp out offshore tax-havens.
Of course we would be more likely to achieve such anti-capitalist goals if disgruntled societies voted in idealists, rather than multi-billionaires and other members of the establishment, with their noses firmly in the trough. But c’est la vie.
There are some short cuts to doing rubble in 3d, but they are still front loaded with quite a bit of work.But if you are one with a procedural shader and you have a decent shatter tool it can be alright.
It occurs to me that if some villain grabbed her bubble while she was not flying and shook it violently, it might cause her damage. As far as I can tell the force field is not intertially bound to stay centered on her.
Despite the author’s notes, I have to wonder why Sydney wouldn’t grab the flight ball and just hover as the building collapsed underneath her.
That would have had an equal amount of ‘demoralizing’ effect, assuming again that the thing can be demoralized. It also would have prevented her from falling on her SCUBA tank, and she would also have been still doing her actual job of keeping it under observation. And although I guess Peggy phrased things a bit vaguely by only saying “Keep it busy,” she doesn’t know what it’s busy little self is getting itself up to if she’s busy bouncing around on the inside of her force field like a BB in a freight car.
Also, that was a very poor use of “That’s what she said.”
I just had a interesting thought. We have determined that Krona’s “checkpoint” was NOT a time loop and that a significant chunk of time has passed since Sydney was in a calm situation. Given her behavior since the “reset” I’m guessing her meds either were used up during the non-loop OR she was due to take them again and did . . . during the time she was waiting for Pixel, inside the non-loop. Also, super fights seem to burn through her meds somewhat faster than average day-to-day life: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1554
She could have, but I think she wanted to see what it was gonna follow up with. and she’s mostly trying to keep it focused on her–not demoralize it. If you just up and show it that nothing it does can remotly effect you…. Its just gonna ditch best it can, or switch targets. If you bait it, it migth take the bait.
Plus she was in “this is so comic booky!” mode and wanted it to finish.
On the totem pole thoughts, the guy on top does the least work, is under the least pressure, but that’s the guy everyone looks at and that person gets all the credit.
How is this different from any modern corporate CEO? Or department head? The totem pole just reflects the social hierarchy we all know and “love”.
well, the answer is in the Dilbert Principle ;)
Sydney, you are supposed to be reducing the amount of property damage, not encouraging it.
Given the strength of the tentacle orb, I have to wonder why she didn’t just grab onto the bot and start riding it. Pounding on the shield would just amuse her.
She didn’t think of it…
With Sydney making such a small shield, I would think she would forget again and start to run out of air before support arrives. Or, she is going to need to a quick drop/enable of her shield without being taken apart.
I think you missed the part where she just fell on the thing that extends her air supply by at least some amount of time. We don’t know by how long, but she’s only been in the force field for perhaps 15 minutes tops at this point. If her “air thingy” can’t give her at least 15 minutes of air on top of what is included in the force field when it goes up, it’s not really worth carrying around.
Dave, I can’t decide if I love your art, story or epic daily commentary best. But thank you all the same! You’re awesome!
Isn’t Krona under that building? The one in the process of artificially accelerated dismantling?
Heh. That would be sweet. I think you’re on to something.
Halo uses TAUNT. It’s super effective.
Robo-venger used DIG. It’s not very effective.
Her reaction is something i would have seen Achilles doing.
She doesn’t need to dig herself out any longer, folks.
She can LIGHTBEE TELE-POOT now.
It thinks she’s out if the picture…so BEE Line to safe area and PORT.
Form shield and go on attack?
1) We have seen it can’t go through solid objects.
2) She has her shield up.
3) Was the designer of the orbs smart enough to figure out a way for the energy construct light-bee to pass through the energy construct shield?
We have seen the light-bee go through solid material, when she was looking for Pixel, it just can’t form unless she can make a solid copy of herself. That being said, once the copy is made, there is nothing stopping her from having that copy walk through stuff. Also, to answer your 3rd question, yes, reexamine the first at the diner, this page for example: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1422 to see that she can use the light-bee with her shield up with no issue.
Besides, rubble isn’t a solid object…
For what it’s worth, from a guy who was about two blocks away from a building collapse, a lot of dust is kicked up, and it takes quite a while for it to clear. They were doing some construction digging out the basement for a new building, and it triggered a collapse of the front of the (fortunately empty) building next door. The bottom two of the four floors were barely visible as much more than outlines for about 10-15 minutes.
Dunno if that helps, but it might save a bit of time on the art.
Cool comment.
Even cooler avatar (seriously old school).
Sydney reminds me of some mobs in eso when i’m 50 and make a mistake and die but a lvl 30 runs up and almost has it dead by the time i revive. i feel the Super Husk’s pain
Yeah that game is mega turning me off. The lower your level, the stronger you are.
She sure is enjoying life. Well she is very effectively keeping its attention on her. I think falling with the rubble probably kept its attention better than flying would have. Flying probably would have had it try to escape, it’ll probably keep trying to bury her or smother her in gas at this rate.
Yakno for all the panicing she did before about Syd being anywhere near the big bad..
She sure is letting this go a while, so she can rid in the chopper instead of super speeding. I wonder if the copter is just much easier to prevent detection via observation tools or if Max is letting Syd gain exp?
Also realzied that she effectively told the enemy that she requires air refreshing in her orb. Oh dear.
I feel a need to get picky about how the golem was able to apply enough pressure to the building to crush his way through many tons of masonry. He is using basically a blunt object. The inertia of the initial flail move should only take it a few feet into the structure. After that, continuing to push on the building should have just shoved him backward across the roof since he probably weighs less than the building. Maybe because it was created through ‘magic’ it has an anchor spell for this sort of situation.
But then again, we are in a universe where Stalwart was able to kick a field goal with a tank that outweighed him by a few dozen tons.
I was under the impression that it’s made from something akin to magic metals and rather than just pushing through the masonry it effecitvely used its arm like a wire saw along with the force.
Note how its toes are digging into the surface of the roof?
Hmmz dunno, Stalwarts comments during the fight with Kevin (aka Vehemence) seems to suggest he can alter his relative weight (I weigh as much as a space shuttle right now) so being heavjer than a tank would be possible.
For the record, Dave…
“Demoralizing” is bad for “Morale”
It’s a pun – he’s deliberately making a mistake.
Pedantry!
If it makes you feel any better, sometimes the main artists have to draw Rubble over and over again as well.
Just look at The Flintstones/Flagstones. ;)
I am still not certain if that thing has Pixels invisibility power now. But if it does, letting Syd loose sight is the prefect opener.
Sydney could have Lighthook Grabbed it, if it went invisible right in front of her.
But now it can move around freely.
It could get a surprise attack vs Pixel and Harem in, before Syd can warn them.
Or it might just disengage with a new power, now that it’s mistress has fled. And Maxima is underway.
I don’t think so. Remember that to get invisibility, she has to be in full jag form, not the hybrid form she was in when she took the hit. As the bot has yet to actually change forms, I doubt that we will get to see it disappear.
moral and morale, despite how closely they are spelled, are actually two very different words.
And demoralize covers them both. “Whatever” covers everything else.
The Blood Droid cares not for any of it.
Actually, they’re not that different… If you have good morale, you have good conduct. Someone with bad morality will not have good conduct. The two words are more linked than you realize, and they even come from the same root: https://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=morale
+1