Grrl Power #538 – Katara denied
That’s the first thing most anyone would try, right? Sydney had tried to experiment with the unknown orbs in the shower and she stuck them in the toaster oven and stuff like that. (They didn’t get warm in the over incidentally) But it was all small scale stuff she could do in her apartment.
The second to last panel, the “fizzzz” isn’t the orb trying to do something, it’s just the bubbles from Sydney smashing her arm into the water. Thought I would preemptively clarify that.
Not too much else to say about this page, other than admitting I really chose the wrong color of pink for the top part of Sydney’s wetsuit. It really kind of matches her skin doesn’t it? Oh well. Maybe she was way more tan (unlikely) or way paler when she got it.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Wow! No calls for DaveB to change panel ten because it’s too confusing? o_O
I thought his explanation made it pretty clear…
I know; it’s almost like onomatopoeias and sentences are completely different things and you’re using a false equivalence in an attempt to prop up your failed argument from the previous comic.
Guesticus’ life is a failed argument.
OK then ill have a go to fill that necessary quota…. Its to confusing I mean does she or doesn’t she have almighty bending powers. It looks like they kick in and such but fizzle what is going on?!?
OK quota filled now back to the occult Eyeing mindset that is panel 7 MWHAHAHAHAH-cough cough… these dusty old tombs i can never get a maniacal in.
Even without the explanation, the art is fairly clear with the EXTREMELY WELL DONE tiny water bubble fizz.
I guess I’m the only one to both (a) get the sarcasm and (b) comment on it?
I feel special…
::wiggles his ears frantically::
(a) No. (b) Yes.
You are. In a non-snarky meaning.
*tries to stroke ears, but gives up as they are wriggling too frantically*
Her nickname is Halo, it would be sort of fitting if the unknown orbs gave her angelic abilities. :)
Kinda like the cabbits in Tenshi Muyo or the horrifying nightmares of H.P. Lovecraft?
Are you thinking something like this ?
Like always having an encouraging word for others (no more swearing!) or healing others (help the doctor out)? Hmm, speaking of The Doctor, Dabbler can set up an illusion of a 1960’s era police box somewhere, with the door open showing a room that is clearly larger than the outside and then tell Sydney that this just turned up. Or maybe better, make it appear in a hall way as Sydney is walking past, with or without the sound of the brakes on.
Well one way that spiritual healing has been rationalised is by the healer taking the wounds or illness. Leaving the patient symptom free, but having to then suffer the effects. Something someone fit and otherwise healthy may be able to do and still survive. Especially if not complicated by other things like foreign matter in wounds or general infirmity.
So very appropriate as an angelic power, due to the sacrifice of taking on other people’s suffering, with no purpose other than altruism. Plus it would explain why Sydney has not been able to use it successfully in all her solo testing, before she joined Archon. Likewise if she attempted to heal her various bruises and scrapes she has had since. The power would not work that way.
If one of the mystery orbs does grant that kind of healing, I hope that it also offers the wielder some degree of mitigation for the symptoms (for instance reducing them or rapidly regenerating such sacrificial injuries).
Otherwise attempting to cure Pixel, the next time she has a girder through her chest could prove to be fatal for Sydney!
“but having to then suffer the effects. ” = “but the healer then having to then suffer the effects. “
Max is being pretty patient with Sydney. Just sayin’.
Sydney can be very amusing.
1. Sydney appeals to Max’s “women aren’t sexual objects” attitude. And likely finds her a nice break from the rest of her easily-sexualized teammates.
2. Powers-wise, Sydney (along with Pixel and Dabbler) are the most powerful supers on the team other than Maxima. Yet she has no real experience before Arc (unlike Dabbler and Pixel who have a lot of experience and a lot of training respectively.) This mean while Dabbler is Batman to Max’s Superman, and Pixel is more like The Martian, Sydney’s prime target to be Maxima’s Superboy.
3. Sydney doesn’t take Maxima too seriously (mainly because Sydney doesn’t take anything too seriously). For Maxima who’s always having to be the top dog that everyone respects, she can act more human around Sydney.
4. Sydney is the super whom most obviously can level up. The knowledge you make make obvious and distinct improvements in someone is pretty tempting for someone with a self-improvement mentality.
5. At least Sydney’s enthusiastic.
6. Max is totes a closet geek.
THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE BENDER!!!
AND FUTURAMA HAS HIM!!!
’nuff said.
Yeah, but he’s Mexican, he doesn’t count.
I stand by my declaration, meat-bags.
You need to wach the Legend of the Avatar series. ’nuff said.
I always felt Korra was alot more impressive than Aang. Mainly because she had far more dangerous villains than Aang ever had.
Let’s be fair.
Aang’s were more dangerous – “Hey, let’s take on a world conquering army in the midst of a giant war when they’re specifically gunning for us!”
Korra’s were more complex – Freedom fighters standing up for something they believed in who maybe went too far (although I feel the last bit of him was a cop-out), a captialist that was friend to enemy to friend again, a floaty spirity thing that was mean, a single small ragtag group of benders who are upset with her (as her reincarnating self) personally, and human disregard for their surroundings.
Aangs villains. Fire bendesr and a lightning bender.
Korra’s villains.
A blood bender who can remove bending powers permanently with an army of soldiers who can remove powers temporarily and hi tech lightning gauntlets.
A second blood bender at the same time as the first one, both of whom are more powerful than the blood bender katara faced plus can blood bend any time they want.
Master water bender with two insane master water bender children and the spirit that fought and is the opposite to the spirit who gave humans the ability to bend in the first place.
Four of the most dangerous benders to ever exist, each of who have extremely rare bending powers – lava bender, special target lightning bender/explosion bender, expert water vender than doesnt need arms to bend, air bender that can fly under his own power and is an unmatched air bender.
Metal bender with an army of other metal benders, the leader trained by Toph, who also have an army of weapons and vehicles and spirit cannons on a skyscraper sized platinum plated robot who has practically taken over the continent.
Oh and Korra is cut off from the avatar state for most of this.
Yeah uh…. Aang’s villains are not even able to be lackeys for Korra’s villains.
And Aang would have beaten them all because his Avatar State didn’t suck.
Dude, don’t be so quick to call an Avatar villain a Lightning Bender. See this earlier discussion thread for why:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2553/comment-page-1#comment-543687
There was WAAAAY too much going on in Korra for it to interest me at all.
ATLA, you had the War. You had Aang learning the elements. There were a few side plots (breaks, romance arcs, the whole Eclipse arc), but they almost always tied back into the main two plot threads in some way.
ATLK… I don’t even know, I just stopped a bit after Amon went full crazytown and stopped being a sympathetic villain… If the show focused on him at all, with the useless Pro-Bending story which had no drama because of the stupid “Knock all three opponents out at once and you win everything no matter what game you’re on” rule.
One of the unknowns is actually a personal music player. Unfortunately, the creator species is related to bats and the music plays in the 30 to 50 kilohertz range.
I <3 this so hard.
THE SECRET REVEALED!!! DaveB has been HACKED!! XD
Dabbler might hear that, she has the ears for it. Or at least detect it with her detecting spells. She said the orbs were not emitting, and that should include sound at any frequency unless she typically leaves gaping holes in her detection protocols.
And now I’ve gone and talked about Dabbler and gaping holes in the same sentence…
Okay, I am really loving how Max down plays her geekiness.
Max that knows all about ioun stones?
She was the one to call them that in the conference room with the cracked window glass* at Archon headquarters.
* It’s a military outfit. There’s no way it has been fixed in something like 3 days time. The paperwork has been filled out in triplicate and filed with three different departments: One which burns their copy, one which archives their copy using a system no one can figure out the same way twice, and once which actually does the work of subbing the repair job out.
Which means:
Filing a proposal;
Posting it at one or more government contractor RFP sites;
Waiting for submissions to come in;
Reviewing the submissions;
Reviewing the company status vis-à-vis minority owned, woman owned, handicapped employment, small business, disadvantaged community, etc.
Rejecting some proposals for this or that technicality;
Being flooded with appeals by the rejected companies;
Wading through the appeals;
Making a selection;
Notifying all the submitting of the selection;
Being flooded with appeals and/or lawsuits by the non-selected companies;
Wading through those appeals and/or lawsuits;
And only then can the company be scheduled to come onsite and perform the work.
And that involves:
Ensuring that all the personnel who will be working on the project have the proper clearance (and this must be done regardless of whether “the proper clearance” is none, or TS/SCI with a full scope polygraph);
Creating and/or issuing the proper ID badges and/or access cards;
Notifying the personnel in charge of the facility to be worked on of the pending arrival of the contractor;
Receiving their acknowledgement back;
Scheduling the contractors to perform the work in cooperation with the personnel in charge of the facility;
Waiting for them to stop dickering over dates and times (the personnel in charge of the facility will invariably open with an offer for the work to be performed across a 6 week time frame, between the hours of 1430 and 1500 each Tuesday and from 0300 to 0315 on alternate Wednesdays);
When at last the personnel in charge of the facility finally come to understand that the work must be performed in a block of at least 4 hours each, spanning possibly 2 or 3 successive days, an actual date and time can be assigned;
And then the contractors can await that date and come in to do the work.
Isn’t our government efficient?
“Okay, instead of just flailing about with the orbs, I want you to…”
“Flailing about with the orbs, as ordered, sir!”
:watches the slow burn fade into resigned amusement::
When you want to be a water Bender and you’re just a normal.
*normie
Maybe i am completely wrong here, but didn’t Krona get a bit of info about the orbs when she saw (and read the code for) Sydneys skill tree? Perhaps she has a hint or two to whatever the unidentified are good for.
She could see more about them than anyone else yet could, and her reaction seemed to imply that they worked… similarly to how her own reality-bending powers work. But we don’t know if she understood enough of what she saw, or saw it for long enough to translate it. Also, since she’s with the Twilight Council instead of Arc, Max ad the higher-ups may not want to use her to try and translate it because… Especially when you remember that a couple of her orbs are classified.
The other aspect of that is Krona’s exclamation at the time is similar to people trying to describe art to people who haven’t seen it – there just aren’t words to fully express what your feeling/seeing.
Also, quite likely that she can’t explain what she saw, it was like a flash of insight or invention in that one moment, then it all passed.
i wonder if korona can give a vague understanding on what the differing orbs do. considering she saw what they said but couldn’t quite comprehend them
She also didnt have tine to write any of it down because they got attacked right afterwards.
I would say that Krona recognized that there was god-level reality code – but now it’s a matter of decoding it. I would bet that most of Krona’s hacking has been done on the “i change this symbol and this happens”
There’s always the more insidious possibility that Krona did understand, and is pretending she didn’t. She’s part of the Twilight Council, not Arc, we don’t know what kind of political drama is going on between the two organizations. They seem to play nice with each other, but that’s probably more out of necessity than out of choice. There could be more going on than we’ve been shown.
There is also the possibility that in all the following chaos everyone simply forgot about it.
I actually wonder if Krona can “Hack” her own memory to retrieve the exact layout she saw. Also she didn’t really act like she didn’t know what it was, she was obviously freaking out as to how much information was packed away in those little orbs.
There is also a subset of them, who are not afraid to be vocal about it, that don’t care much for Archon’s involvement with the Council.
“But they are soooo cute!”
“Shut up, Decollete!”
Well, imagine this someone gives you a 1k page long book about a topic you like and understand while you in a middle of a boss fight that can´t be paused because it´s an online fight with your friends and you all work hard to get to this boss on your console. And then this person says you have 10 minutes time to read it and choose like every few second randomly go to a page. How mutch you would pick up in this time? I am sure Korona have noticed the one or other thing but she is in terms of memory just a human (as far as we know).
So here’s a thought – the orbs have a maximum distance they can travel from Halo, right? but they can travel – why can’t Halo order them to move away from her and they lift her? or propel her through the water?
From what we can tell it seems to be fixed point in space shenanigans, like Mjolnir; it’s not really paying heed to conventional physics. Whichever one would move away from the other just doesn’t move away. Otherwise, when Max tried to pitch the tube like a Major League fastball, Sydney would’ve gone flying.
Maybe the orbs treat Sydney like a fixed point in space; they can’t move beyond a certain distance away from her. And by logical reverse, if the orbs can’t move to stay within that range, Sydney is prevented from moving outside it as well.
probably for the same reason that trying to push your hand past it’s limit doesn’t pull you along behind it.
Tell that to people who try to kick others and the momentum lands them on their ass.
Or Superman.
That’s from the leftover push of the back foot, far less than the front one’s “pull” (not inertia, that’s initiated from the back), but that does sort of raise a point. She may be able to use them to “jump,” if they provide a consistent pull once they reach their limit. That’s where there seems to be a problem. The orbs’ distance limit seems to nullify/counteract kinetic energy/applied force (after a point at least) on Sydney rather than provide an actual pull, otherwise there would have been no face fault here, just a flying Halo. There have been many discussions on this topic in the archives before, including on those pages. (far harder to find that sort of comments thing, so no links)
She could just use the fly orb to propel herself through the water. It would probably hurt tho without the shield up to protect her from stray fish and that.
That functionality seems like a waste of effort to create/program/whatever-was-done-to-make-the-orbs-do-what-they-do, when she can just grab the flight orb and do the exact same thing. Typically products do not contain ‘workarounds’ or ‘loopholes’ which duplicate another function, it is redundant and wasteful.
It wouldn’t be a waste if it allows her to fly and use two other orbs at the same time. Imagine a flying Sydney who was shielded and could fire the PPO / use the Molestorb.
Since the effect mirrors TK and TK usually includes the lack of a link between action/reaction commonly associated with transmission of inertia, it seems unlikely she’d be able to do that.
But it would be amusing as all hell if it did.. :D
Yea. Mind you if they could do that, would the creators have even bothered to make a flyball? Although not identical, they would both grant flight. Thor does not need an Iron-Man type suit to fly, because he has his hammer. Whilst there are situations where one might not be available or optimal, it still would be a waste of resources for such a small return.
In Thor’s case the lost resources would be his political power in having his own independence. Whereas if he accepted Stark’s assistance, he would be beholden to Stark. Not something Thor would want for something that he can already do himself, without that loss.
Of course we do not know what motivated the orb’s creators, so the presumed cost may be negligible to them.
Based on the other orbs….
Speed (Flight Orb)
Constitution (Forcefield)
Strength (PPO)
Intelligence/Wisdom (Telepresence/Truesight)
Dexterity (Tentacle Orb)
Charisma – Unknown Orb 1
Luck – Unknown Orb 2
So, with that…
Charisma: (Mind control/reading? Nah. Disguise?!)
Luck: (Future sight [when in contact with someone]? Probability control?)
Max did let her do her own thing for quite a while. The charisma thing might be on point.
Hmm… you got a point there.
“Charisma ball… +3 aura of relaxation.”
Charisma: Improves people reaction towards you by a step.
Luck: re-spawn after 10 seconds ability if killed violently.
Good luck testing for that!
I was going to say before, what if with the time save point Krona did, Sydney’s orbs interfered in some way preventing the time reset from working correctly. Maybe that’s why she instantly leveled up when the time loop reset. Some kind of automatic activation once the orb did its job in an unprecedented scenario.
If that was the case then after Dabbler and Krona went over her code together they probably would have noticed that it does actually time reset and that it didn’t trigger properly. Instead they stated that it works differently than Krona Thought.
You were almost there.
Strength (Lighthook)
Perception (PPO)
Endurance (Force Field)
Charisma (Unknown)
Intelligence (Truesight)
Agility (Flight)
Luck (Unknown)
Are you SPECIAL?
Thankyou for taking the baton the rest of the way!
Now Sydney needs a dog.
She already has a pipboy…
PPO is Perception? How does blasting things into their constituent atoms count as being perceptive?
I’d put the Telepresence orb as Perception, since it actually expands her perceptions. She has seen IGetStronger’s angry runes, at the Council she saw the auras of the collection of artifacts, she saw through Dabbler’s glamor which was said to be impossible, and she saw the manikiller’s unusual skeletons.
PPO might be Dexterity, as in many game systems ranged attack success is based upon Dexterity rather than Strength.
The Flight orb might be called Movement or Initiative rather than Agility, if that term is uncomfortably close to Dexterity.
It was a Fallout reference. Perception has to do with ranged hit percentage in those games. PPO being a ranged attack.
Charisma is the intelligence running the orbs, Luck is the power source.
Every time Sydney uses her powers, somewhere in the world, someone rolls snake eyes when they wouldn’t have otherwise.
Charisma – Gains the Power of the The Big Lebowski – much abides, very chill, so sedated. Wow.
Is it just me or is Sydney looking less nerdy and more girly here? Not that nerdy and girly can’t coexist just…she looks really feminine here compared to how she normally looks.
Hmmm, maybe. The wet hair?
That seems like a large part of it and I can’t say I’m put off by her wet look.
I think you nailed it. Her usual hair-do is more angular and “hard,” but with it wet it lays down better and looks “softer” and therefore more feminine.
The glasses effect is also probably playing a role… And maybe how the suit matches her skin color and makes it look like her shoulders are exposed?
Peggy is going to be so jealous.
A Canadian sniper in Iraq was just confirmed to take out a target at a distance of 11,300 feet. That’s over two miles, with a bullet flight time of over 10 seconds. The rifle was a TAC-50. I forget the one Peggy favors. https://www.newsweek.com/world-record-sniper-kill-isis-iraq-canada-628156
An object falls about 1000 feet in 10 seconds. That means the shooter would have to aim about 500 feet above the target to arc the shot up that amount for the first half of travel then back down for the second half. (If I got the ballistics wrong, sorry. It is a rough guess)
Apparently this is how they do it
https://www.quora.com/Do-snipers-aim-a-little-bit-higher-at-a-target-instead-of-the-actual-spot-before-they-take-the-shot
I read several articles about that. Peggy has been shown using the Barrett .50 (M95 bullpup version if I remember correctly). One of the articles mentioned that the shooter has to not only calculate the drop but the amount the bullet will drift off course due to wind. And since he was shooting from the top of a hi-rise building the wind at the beginning of flight would have been different than the wind nearer the end of the flight (near ground level). Intense math involved, which is one of the skills needed for a successful sniper (among many others). They also mentioned in the article that at that range, he even had to adjust for the curvature of the Earth. The other top five confirmed distance kills have all been around 1.5 miles ± .05 so this guy’s 2.15 mile shot won’t be topped anytime soon, probably. Also 3 of the top 5 confirmed long distance kills were by Canadian special forces.
(A bullpup is a firearm with its magazine and action BEHIND its trigger group. This configuration permits a shorter overall weapon for a given barrel length. This maintains the advantages of a longer barrel in muzzle velocity and accuracy, while improving maneuverability and reducing weight.)
From the top of a high rise….
So he was shooting at an angle (downward)? That reduces drop, so another adjustment. Target must have been playing with himself or something to stay in one place that long.
I’ve watched a couple YouTube vids on snipers with real footage. In some I’ve seen targets (people) notice a round hit the ground near them, and they still stay in the exact same spot, not moving at all. I’d at least shift my position. One guy was on the ground after they all dropped when the first round missed, laying behind a bit of scrub underbrush as though that was either cover or concealment. A second round missed, and he just lay there and ate the third round. The rounds were not coming in fast and furious. After each shot the sniper would be spoken to by his spotter, he’d make an adjustment, and then it would take him a while to lay in the next shot and fire. So maybe a good 20-40 seconds between shots. And he just lay there! As Ron Weasley said “How dim can you get?”
I am a reservist in the Canadian Artillery. We were talking about this last night. The consensus was that we should make him an honorary artilleryman.
as an american, i’m in full support of this motion. a deed that awesome begs a reward just as incredible.
Peggy uses a Barrett light 50.
Excessive buoyancy syndrome attacks Sydney! Seriously, humans are just not that buoyant, and float about chin high in fresh water. Especially in the upper right panel, they would have to be in the Dead Sea or Great Salt Lake to get anywhere near that high out of the water.
If you look at the orbs she has around her head you can see she doesn’t have the flight orb orbiting which means she is probably holding it and using it to stay above the water
ah ok, im blind, ignore everything I just said as I am completely wrong
Actually Maxima is head & shoulders above water – More likely both of them are just standing and the water is only like 4ft. They are in the shallow end so they can talk (in theory, since Sydney is playing anyway)
Max has SOO many good looks in this update.
first crona they couldn’t find anything to do with those balls. and second why doesn’t she use the truesight and look at them. i mean cause she now has detective mode right? actually why didn’t she use that when she first got to the warehouse if she can see mana shouldn’t she have seen the blood fountain of people sitting there
First of all, I am honored that e.e. cummings has now joined us as a commenter on this board. Second, once Sydney knew about the true sight power she did use the orb at the restaurant to scan the other orbs for clues.
Omg…. Dying from laughter right now because of the e.e. cummings joke :)
I have a friend from college who so loved e.e. cummings that she never used capital letters in her name.
Miss her so much some days…
That is actually a very good point. However in all of the months that we have been commenting on that scene, that is the first time that I recall anyone suggesting that. Others have suggested looking around with the truesight, to spot illusions (which there were none, as far as we know). However that ‘aura-seeing mode’ is different, and you are right that it probably would have revealed the hostages.*
If the collective wisdom of the readership took months to spot that possibility, then it is more than reasonable that it simply did not occur to Sydney.
* IF it can penetrate through so much earth. Previously Sydney was only looking through a single wall, and was right next to it, for that matter. Whereas they were underground and possibly quite some way away (we have no way to know, but statistically the hostage room was likely to be further away, than close, all other things being equal. We know the access point to their chamber was from the Mars warehouse and only one compass direction from there leads to where Sydney was observing the location.
Krona has not had a further chance to examine them (as far as we know) because she has been too busy studying her own powers, with Dabbler. Having determined that they are not intrinsically unsafe, I figure she, will now be using the new-found knowledge of how her powers work, to double-check that all of her existing coding will work properly.
Bear in mind she has to factor in things like Harem’s multi-body now. And other weird things that are present in Archon, but that she may not have been exposed to before.
Krona has already embarrassed herself once, by having her code behave unexpectedly. I am sure she will want to do that double checking, even with Dabbler saying the code looks safe. Krona did seem to be friendly to Sydney though, so may well do help her out, in due course.
Plus there is the practical problem that Krona cannot see the orbs code unless Halo has the skill point screen open. Which she had to close in a rush, to avoid dying. So the most viable route she has to help is not an option until Halo next levels up.
Seriously though, does that girl use Crisco for hair gel or something? Or does her hair clump together and float on top of water like that because she’s just an unwashed gamer geek?
That’s actually a thing for some hair types.
Granted, Sydney’s normal look is counter indicative for that hair type.
DaveB’s having fun with art. :D
When she put them in the toaster oven, did faint glowing elven-runes appear on them?
You are probably thinking of Sydney’s favorite snack, the onion rings of power.
awesome image, I’m just wondering how you would make an onion key ring (imagine a slew of onion rings all hanging onto one other onion ring, like a….well, you get the idea)
Dave, is other another name for toster oven?
“…..She stuck them in the toaster oven and stuff like that. (They didn’t get warm in the over incidentally”
DoH! over i ment
*oven
It’s the claws, we get it… :D
::carefully taps at the keyboard with his hooves, taking an hour to type this sentence::
+1
You have my sympathies for having an even harder time of it.
I love this comic XD
derp face ftw
Why is the red orb glowing in the water??
Because they all glow, and/or because she’s holding it, and/or because it’s doing something subtle that they haven’t noticed yet.
Maybe one’s a Healing Orb?
Ok…. so when are they going to finally figure out the obvious educated move here is to simply ask Krona if she can figure anything out about them? But seriously, Sydney already knows she has some kind of insight on them.
She already has, and unless its in Skill Tree Mode, Krona doesn’t see all the extra stuff that is there. Also, just because Krona saw something, does not mean she can, or even remembers how, to explain what she saw.
Where’s Dabbler during all of this?!?!?
Changing into less anatomically correct swimwear, on orders from her scandalized superior?
Watching from the side of the pool while having nothing constructive to add due to being excessively distracted by the beefcake show?
Yup. The former is the more likely. But the latter is in keeping with the comic’s policy. Dave said that he would not show any characters not directly contributing to a scene, to save on drawing time.
If Dabbler is there all she is doing is watching, or doing something else unremarkable (at the present moment, anyhow, Dave can only show so many things on one page, and keep to his update schedule).
As long she don’t show up buck naked….! :p
Is it just me or do Maxima’s shoulders look narrower than usual right now?
Question what if that orb creates a water elemental? I mean the other orbs all offer unique skills. The unknown orbs skills are unknown, for all we know one of them can create creatures of the elements or allow Sydney to breath underwater or something.
So far and to me at least, the orbs seem more science-fiction-based than fantasy-based.
Not saying you’re wrong, but the feel seems.. off… to me.
She can exert several tons of force through the light hook without feeling any reactionary force so it should in no way function as a prop.
Just because Sydney doesn’t feel any reaction doesn’t mean that the lighthook can’t act as a semi-prop or semi-turbine. It can move, and it is very strong (13 tons strong?), that is all that is required for it to be able to move water in a similar manner to how it moved her Prius. Even a tool that isn’t completely suitable for a task can be made to function, however poorly, if it is capable of doing 13 tons worth of work.
” It can move, and it is very strong (13 tons strong?), that is all that is required for it to be able to move water in a similar manner to how it moved her Prius. ”
Well, just because something can exert 13 tons of force does not mean it can exert 13 tons of force on a fluid. Eg – Just because you can do a pull-up doesn’t mean you can fly through the air by flapping your arms. Sure, Sydney can create turbulence by cavitating and displacing water, but that is not useful work. Since reactionary forces aren’t conveyed through the orb, Sydney would need to be connected to the light-hook itself to move with it, and even that may not work in the face of supernatural physics negation of the orbs. It may be like trying to lift yourself up by your ankles.
Telekinesis effects are usually highly variable in terms of action/reaction pairings.
It’s possible it can only do that when Sydney is telling it to do that.
This is very convenient, but we’re talking super-powers here, so unyieldingly consistent effects and strict adherence to the laws of physics may be expecting too much from the genre.
Panel 7. Just, yes. So awesome
Something very few are commenting on, but it kind of is important, is that the unknown orb chosen first did do “Something” when Sydney thrust it under water… a fizzle isn’t impressive, but it’s something, so they probably are on the right track.
That’s just the air dragged along when she slammed her arm under water, functioning as the equivalent of crickets chirping in the background.
Shouldn’t they have Dabbler scanning this as this happens or something?
Her scans didn’t pick up a thing when she was first brought in to scan Sydney’s orbs way early in the comic. not sure if they’d do anything now
They also had that ARC research person with the eye scan powers look at her orbs in multiple parts of the EM spectrum. She did not see anything either. And Gwen used magic to do a scan of them on Sydney’s first day.
What were the most common guesses for the orbs powers?
Incidentally I think your cast pull downs for who’s who isn’t working. each name at the top is blank when it switches to their profile
I can confirm this (using Firefox or I.E. on PC running Win7). Aside from the page header and the navigation buttons the page is blank. Personally I blame aliens. They are getting us back for that virus Jeff Goldblum loaded into their mother ship.
Instead of trying to spin it like a prop or use it as a flipper, she should consider turning it into a somewhat longer tube and using a compression wave through it to create thrust. She can lift several tons with it, if the compression strength is similar that’s an awful lot of thrust.
Nah, you did a good enough job giving it texture, defining the neck line, wrinkles around the elbows and shoulders, and seams that is isn’t an issue.
Only in panel 10 where you go all chibi is it lacking that.
And now I’ve read the good half dozen or so people who said they didn’t know her wetsuit even had a top above the ‘halter top’ lower portion with a much more contrasting color.
It was pretty damn apparent, if they would just take a look and not gloss over the entire artwork while reading. It’s a graphic novel for a reason, folks!
#smh
I just want to say how much I appreciate max looking nearly cherubic in this set. She looks youthful and a bit like a kid with maybe a touch of hope and expectation about her. A welcome change from the sour. Well done on the arts, well done indeed.
So as more and more I try to analyze Sydneys it seems to be a device for the field study on unknown planets.
You have one high defensive power that even let you keep your atmosphere around you.
A pretty strong offense (cutting tanks don´t look so bad if you go on a world and maybe just need to defend against the local fauna)
Lighthook that let you grab and interact physically with an object over your actual range.
Trusight and Telepresence to look around without being in danger.
Gravitation manipulate flight (good if you on a big planet wit ha high G)
So if you look on the remaining two this way it’s pretty obvious that they need to be a supportive nature.
Healing is something I miss in the set even if you self are really saved with the shield you maybe want to heal others or better say bring it back to its original shape to get it for study (maybe something like a tranq function to get it save back to your ship as one of the upgrades)
And as the last something for understanding different languages. If you meet a more or less intelligent species it would kind of interesting to talk to them so you need a way of a general translator and maybe to change your look and smell (and every other way of recognizing you) for them and they don’t notice you as “alien”.
That at least my guesses for the last two Orbs. I hope we get some information about them soon.
We see the gang hanging by the pool because they have some free time. It may be a little too much free time for a certain new recruit. Washington press reports say that a mysterious stranger showed up at a White House technology demonstration and was seen modifying some of the equipment with what looked like craft supplies.
https://static1.businessinsider.com/image/571dfcb9dd0895507f8b463f-2400/gettyimages-523960690.jpg
This is what I would suggest Max and Sydney try next. Sydney take hold of both mystery Orbs then dive down while holding her breath. She stays down as long as she can and see if either of the Orbs react to her being down there.
One or both of the Orbs might act to protect her from potentially harmful environments.