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.
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If Maxima were half the professional she thinks she is she’d have a waterproof page with all the steps she wanted to go through printed out on it, and a wax pencil to check them off one by one and room for notes if any are needed.
But, she isn’t. Not even close.
What happened to Maxima’s rebreather? She was just standing on the bottom of the pool, and we know that Maxima needs air to live. What happened to Sydney’s rebreather? She also can not live without air, and she was also standing on the bottom of the pool last comic.
Both of them can fly, so it’s no challenge for them to use their flight abilities to get them to the bottom of the pool and maintain an upright position without drifting around due to buoyancy and water currents, but they still need to breath unless they just went down for a very brief period or time. And even then they might like some goggles or other eye protection to prevent that chlorine burn from keeping your eyes open while underwater at a pool for a few hours.
We already know she’s not as much of a hardass as she tries to be all the time. That’s probably just a side effect of her being the most powerful super around, I mean she’s basically trying to cultivate the Batman stone face image so she gets more respect to use, I can totally understand that, it’s a very useful commodity to have when you’re ordering people around.
Also, just because you need air to live does not mean that you can’t hold your breath, insects can’t hold their breath and they can still survive being submerged in water for brief periods of time.
If you look on the last page, Sydney was also hovering above the pool in one of the frames. She needs her fly orb to hover…
…
What?
…
No, she wasn’t ‘diving’, she was hovering. See? Clearly suspended above the water. Not even wiggling a finger.
…
Bleh. I’m being told that given a frozen medium like comics, a scene that depicts one or more people in questionable positions only depicts that they were in those positions for only a moment. It is entirely possible that people in questionable positions (suspended in the sky, or suspended under water, or heck, suspended in the core of a star) were only in those positions for a moment before moving on, (going splat, blurble, or fzzt). One does not need a full scuba kit to appear 2 feet below water and survive.
She could just have Ariana – or anyone else outside – hold that list and check stuff off. Literally the whole cast besides those two is NOT inside that pool.
I am not sure if you ever actually saw a pool from the inside, but they tend to have different depths in different areas. So in some area you can stand in others you can dive.
Rebreather is unessesary for a short dive (10-30 seconds for normal humans). Humans are able to hold their breath the moment they are born.
So I fail to see what your issues is.
The world record, though not Guinness approved, is 22 minutes 22 seconds.
The one Guinness has listed, at the moment, is 19 minutes 30 seconds.
Both of those are extreme athletes that hyperventilated oxygen before taking the plunge, but they weren’t supers. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the average super can just take a deep breath and dive for 5-8 minutes. Since even super strength Maxima has a workout routine, I’m sure she’s got some lungs on her worth mentioning. Not too mention she regularly gets high altitude training by flying at altitude.
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“…tubular in the cool way” hmmmm, tentacle porn maybe ?
I think Arian was specific about not making that Connection. It resulted in this thing being called the “Lighthook”.
Yep, and the looks on peoples faces when that subject came up :D
She’s in a pool. Clearly she’s talking about pool noodles.
+1
Tubular used to be slang to mean ‘cool’. That’s the pun/joke.
Like, Totally… DUUUDE, i mean it’s like TUUUBular Dude.
Totally bitchin’, fer shure, fer shure..
That rings a bell.
Derived from the shape of a really good wave when surfing :).
Before it was named the “Lighthook” by Ariana, Sydney used to call it the ‘Molestorb’ or the ‘Hentorb’ which lead Sygney to recommend that Ariana look up Hentai on Google. Max appeared conflicted about this recommendation.
So… which one is gender bender?
‘Sydney’ has that one covered in the name category.
Well Dave does list El Goonish Shive as being amongst the webcomics that he likes. So that option is on the cards.
Personally I prefer her the way she is mind.
I wonder though. Presently Sydney is a tomboy. Presumably, if she flipped genders then she would be a fairly close mirror to her current state. So may be quite an effeminate guy.
Still not keen on the idea, but it is interesting to consider the variants.
Would the other orb be a race bender? Perhaps Sydney would become a rather effeminate Japanese guy (given her art style already places her in the manga category)?
Not something to hang a webcomic on, but it would be a hilarious gag to have a character change sex and race… and retain the same outward (clothed) appearance. “I assure you, I am now an asian man!”
I agree. That actually would be fairly funny. Pointless, but funny.
El goonish shive has done it or close enough
Well, Haram is Bi, and Dabbler is, well, she’s apparently Try, as in she’ll try anything related to sex.
Don’t forget that Dabbler has Porn Sense as it was aptly dubbed by Sydney.
‘Porno Sense’ which Sydney suggests must really tingle when it goes off.
Haven’t been privy to the mystery orb powers debate/speculation, but two possibilities present themselves to me immediately; one orb allows Sydney to access/control the powers of two other orbs, and the other orb would allow her to “handle” three orbs.
I’m not sure I get the math on that last one. As long as she holds the multi-control orb in one hand she can now hold two more orbs in her other two hands. That move is kind of difficult for humans. And if the multi-orb in counted in the overall total of three it does not give her any more than she has now.
Not trying to ‘bust your balls’ here (pun intended), just curious as to how that would work.
Passive abilities because she can’t figure out just by doing stuff. I’m assuming Max is just making sure Sydney really did try everything. So I think that means that the abilities are passive, only activated in certain situations.
Therefore my theory is:
THE HEALING BALL
Mutant healing factor as long as you’re holding the thing. Rapid regeneration. Possibly heal-other abilities in the skill tree. Since Sydney has never been injured while holding it it could easily do all the heals and she’d never know. I think that’s the strongest possibility for one of the balls.
The other? Stealing a page from Xochtl:
THE GESTALT BALL
If held in conjunction with any other ball, triggers a hidden secondary ability of that ball. The Light Hook becomes summonable gear. The PPO shoots ice. The flight orb becomes telekinesis. The telepresence orb becomes a summoning tool, and the shield orb can be placed around other objects to imprison them, and the one I think is a healing ball becomes a debuff ball that weakens enemies.
While those would probably be great ability for the two unknown orbs. Remember the orbs are basically super computers that manipulate the universe. So any two powers will severely limit their ability. So I think that the two unknown orbs are responsible for the MANUFACTURE of new orbs. One of them is a super powerful scanner/simulation machine that is used to make new powers and program New orbs, it probably is also responsible for why the orbs have picked Sydney. The second orb probably manufactures the the brand new orbs, and helps modify currently existing orbs, also known as Sydney’s skill tree. If the two orbs are like this then Sydney may be stuck with her seven current orbs now, but will have the potential for infinite New powers later in the comic.
Let me clarify. The multi-orb allows you to control more than one without having to hold them.
Probably too late for this comment, but why isn’t Syd freaking out about being in the sun? I thought it was her nemesis?! (And, can we expect her to have a henious sunburn from the sun and/or Max’s reflection?
Because she is in the water and diving is one of her major hobbies. On land though, yea, she does freak out. Hence why Dave made this comment, when they first came to the poolside:
Meanwhile the hammerspace it is tied to is slowly draining the pool….
Hammerspace is one thing that Sydney does not have, and was willing to have her arm hacked off, on the spot, to gain!
Although clearly you are right that the orbs do draw upon something, for instance in order to power the PPO. Dave confirmed that the red circle which appears, when Halo fires it, is actually a one-way portal.
As for the tentacle, we can see it living in its
eggwhen not deployed. Unlike the PPO though, it does not have a corresponding summoning circle. Well not one prominent enough to stand out, from our normal viewing distance.If it does have a small one (just big enough for the tentacle to slither through) then we can assume it too is one-way (until it is time to go back into the orb).
It is one thing they have not been able to prove she has so she may have it but not know how to access it properly and actually be draining or filling the pool without knowing she is.
Panel 9 is just adorable…
Honestly I thought Sydney was wearing some kind of strapless wetsuit. Made sense in my mind because having the shoulders free would be tremendously useful as far as flexibility goes; also, the wetsuit is one of the few things that if you add just a hair of elastic there’s very little chance of wardrobe malfunctions
Considering Sydney’s wetsuit looks like an ST:TNG Starfleet uniform in this page, you probably should have gone with red or yellow instead of pink.
Seems a little too late to make her a redshift now and she’s a long way off being captain.
*shirt, darn phone.
No but blue might be appropriate also not all red shirts die. Engineers for instance don’t die on a regular basis and they are red shirts too.
Sydney is totally a yellow shirt. When she’s being useful it’s always by doing something tactical.
I think one of the two unknown orbs is the readme file – that would have had all the instructions about how to use all the others, what the tech tree symbols mean, and everything else, and probably various orb-maintenance functions – repairing/recharging the orbs, the “contact us” information, online help files, and license agreement, disclaimers and safety warnings.
Sydney is apparently enough of a diver, and a total geek, she could have gotten a wetsuit with a color changing top. Either heat or UV sensitive. With her thing about sunlight, probably UV.
I know some divers, and some of them have had custom suits made, so it’s possible that Sydney could have done that even if such a suit weren’t off the rack ready. She’s also shown she’s enough of a geek to do that kind of stuff too.
On the other hand, Dave has the authors power to retcon the whole thing and go back and even change the colors if he wants. Doubt he will, but it’s possible.
Hmmm…. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sydney has a system of LEDs imbedded in her suit so she can do the squid lights thing. That would definitely earn her a whole bitbucket of geek points
You try the orangy brown orb in water, colour theory says no.
Earth, or fire, or even Lava bending maybe but katara was not really likely if anything it might be hear what people say underwater but still unlikely
Though it would be interesting if it was something you just wouldn’t want to test like, the ability to survive in vacume space or cancel someone’s mind wipe or signal if you are in a paradox and keep your mind aware and body safe while inside a paradox or time loop (useful in the right situation stuff) or even the ability to take note that your life is in fact inside a comic strip(but some how i would think she would have noticed that one it’s not that hard to notice especially since she’s held it since the comic started so unlikely that)
I don’t think the orbs are meant to be matched by element.
I dunno there is something to be said for matching the current colours:
Air – blue
Fire – red
Tentacle – pink (octopus tentacles, just google them!)
Eyes – yellow (yes, those octopi again, googling is your friend)
Force field – purple… OK gonna have to stretch this one to be an analogy of the octopussess’s most famous defense, their ink. Photos show it to be in a variety of shades, from light brown, through to black but also including purple. From which we can conclude that the creator was a purple ink producing octopus.
Brown could therefore be representative either be sediment or of octopus skin. Hence could be symbolic of camouflage, disguise or even shape-alteration (octopi are pretty good at that).
Green would therefore be water. Unless ‘turning green with envy’ is a thing for them, of course. In which case it could represent mind or emotion powers of some sort.
Conclusion, the orbs were made by a race of sentient octopuses who can wield all orbs at once! [/joke]
I love this joke theory and find that it may not be quite as ‘off’ as it sounds.
Assuming that it is one of the species with eight limbs, rather than six, they would even have a spare one. Which is pretty important, as they use them for locomotion normally (although the Flyball would negate the need).
But it is also useful, to have a spare tentacle, if wishing to rub your beak.
Wait, so her wetsuit wasn’t meant to be one of those full coverage outfits with ‘skin’ colored regions meant to make it look skimpier than it really is, but that is never quite the right color for anyone? And here I’ve been thinking it was one of those this whole time.
Sometimes pink is just pink.
Although Sydney may have been hoping to get some octopus tentacle action. We know she is into that kind of stuff.
;-)
Okay, I can’t be the only one here that mentally heard Sydney doing her best Alan Rickman impression in panel 5.
I’m surprised she hasn’t tried using them for elemental manipulation before now, I look forward to seeing if she can control fire with it.
I’m kind of hoping one of them is something like a bag of holding.
She never properly tested it for the vag of holding power mentioned earlier in comic and will soon notice a odd sensation down there when she lets go of the orb. LOL. JOKE.
I like how Dave changed the look of the eyes in the second-to-last panel to show the mood of the characters. I like that kind of gag.
Yea, it works well when chibification is applied equally to the visible characters. Great effect.
I like when characters faces temporarily look different for comedic effect.