Grrl Power #611 – Sciona ups her negotiation game
Well, a few bandaids will fix that right up. The shirt is probably a write off though. And the pants.
Remember back when I was all “I don’t know how much gore I want to put in the comic, even though I actually love super gory manga where dudes get cut in half down the middle and you can see all their stuffing?” Yeah I’m over that. Even though it turns out drawing remotely accurate bisected organs is really tedious and I’m obviously not good at it yet, so it’s not like I’m going to be shooting for maximum gross out factor for no reason anyway, but why shy away from it? I mean, I did just do a bunch of pages with Harem having sex during a team meeting, Dabbler playing funhouse mirror with Maxima’s boobs, a shower scene, and a bad guy accepting check, MasterCard, or naked time as s form of payment. It’s not like the comic has ever been PG anyway. I just need an excuse for Sydney to go on a swear tear. She hadn’t done that in quite a while.
The Vote Incentive is finally updated. This piece isn’t quite finished. Max’s face looks a little off, I think her eyes are too close together, and there’s some other tweaks yet to make, but I’d been sitting on this one half finished for a while because I messed up the perspective a bit. The background looks like it’s a low angle shot, but Max is kind of straight on. Also the blank spot on the wall behind her was supposed to be a mirror like a lot of gyms have. Not that I would have objected to drawing Max’s backside, but that would have also involved drawing more of the gym, and drawing gym equipment is about the most involved and tedious thing I can think of. It’d be like drawing a cityscape, but every building is under construction, and also full of pulleys. So instead I’ll probably just put some of those big blue pads the stick on the walls of basketball courts so people can run into the walls without smacking into bare concrete.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Viscera, sera
Whatever can bleed will bleed.
My future is tiger feed
I’ll feed carnivores!
Viscera, sera!
My torso is coarsely sliced
No time to be finely diced
I’m one chopped-up señor…
I wish there were thumbs up buttons here.
Well, with the Tumbs-up there would be a Thumbs-down and all that entails with encouraging the bottom dwellers that reach up between the boards of the bridge to grab you by the ….. anyways ….. things would get complicated and this comment tools don’t work that way.
Thumbs down is a discouraging disincentive. So showing the total thumbs down is not nice.
But if a critical threshold is reached, say twice as many thumbs down, as thumbs up, with a minimum of ten, then an objectionable post could automatically be removed. Perhaps being replaced with a ‘Comment deleted due to high volume of down votes’, so that the gap in a chain of comments is not too weird.
Censorship yes, but if it is being voted on by the community, rather than having the burden placed on a moderator, then that is a reasonable course.
However I think the community works well without such.
[Yorp]:
I suspect that an essential part of such a system would be the “anti-bot” procedure of noting the addresses used, so that multiple submissions from the same address couldn’t be employed to artificially inflate either the Negative or the Positive side of the voting.
Censorship will ALWAYS be needed. To assume otherwise is regrettably too altruistic for this all-too-pragmatic reality of ours. While it WOULD simplify our lives if everyone would censor themselves, reality dictates that some external form of censorship is also needed, for those whose “filters” fail to catch enough of the unsuitable content before sharing.
And “BTW”, how do you establish a benchmark for acceptable levels of disagreement (before it reaches the level of “trolling”), who gets to SET those standards, & how do you get a majority of the (infamously divisive) Internet-community to agree upon it?
Perhaps the better question might be, not…
“How to devise the FAIREST form of moderating software for posting commentary”
…but rather…
“How to design this software so as to distribute the minimum needed level of UNFAIRNESS in as democratic-&-unbiased a manner as possible”.
Ideally, the better you are at restraining your anti-social posts, the less-intrusive (& more invisible) such software would be.
If there WAS a flawless method of “posting-with-moderation-built-in”, rest assured that the resulting software would be…
— widely-used & much beloved by web-comic admins everywhere.
— earning the software developer a METRIC_TON of profit, no matter how modestly-priced.
— massively stress-tested by the most eager members of the “Trolling Community”, because such is the perverse nature of the human psyche.
The sad truths are:
— “There is no such thing as [Fool-Proof], because Fools are just too ingenious.”
— No matter how altruistic the system, there will always be “predators”, who will try to abuse it, & ultimately ruin it for the rest of us. Whether their motive is “Profit”, or “Laughs”, or “just for the challenge of it”, we’re not judging them by their INTENTIONS, only by their ACTIONS, & the results are the same in the end.
Having re-read this before posting, I’m sorry to be such a “downer” … your post caught me on an “off”-day.
No need to apologise, it was interestingly put and in an area I think about from time to time.
For instance when watching YouTube I would like a feature which worked like this:
If you are a regular viewer (averaging over one view per day) you get to make a double like vote, once a day. So that if something really appeals to you, there is a way to express that (without the need to do such things as log on with another account/IP address).
Should you try to double vote two items in a day, the system could ask you ‘are you sure you wish to downgrade your vote on the previous video you double-voted on today?’ With a link to the video in question, so you can decide which is actually the better, if need be.
Once a week you could do a times five vote. Once a month you could do a times ten vote. Your ‘video of the year’ would get a times twenty vote.
The levels chosen to give a nice feel-good factor to users, but without being frequent enough or high enough to give shady companies that vote for cash much of an advantage.
Which, of course, validates your anti-bot precautions, and others besides. We would want to encourage legitimate use, rather than reward the abuse.
Thinking again about the downvote, perhaps it would be better to have two options. ‘I disagree’ and ‘abusive’ buttons respectively. Censoring things which we disagree with, even in large numbers, is not appropriate.
Correspondingly there could be separate “I agree” and “like” buttons.
That way we could display agreement or disagreement, in a mini-survey, on every comment that rate such. Whilst comments that people just approved of they could express their like, but without committing themselves to supporting it.
I very often show approval to well presented, or amusing, comments, even if I disagree with the conclusions. It would be nice for folks to be able to have more than just a simple thumbs up.
There’s a difference between censorship and choosing who to amplify. If instead of deleting comments, you can have a “hidden comments” section with a button to show revealed comments, it’s not censorship.
Ooops, replied to the wrong one… pretend that came higher in the list somewhere.
“…Thumbs-down and all that entails with encouraging…”
In this case, shouldn’t that be “all that entrails with”…?
*dew claws up*
That is a glorious bit of lyric mutilation!
Wyrm-Coot: RIP (Rest In Pieces)…We hardly knew ye, but what we knew was probably a bit too much for comfort.
RIP again.
Do you recon that Wyrmil’s regeneration may have been watered down at all? Perhaps some of the more human bits might not work when reattached, and they might need to absorb some passing stranger?
*runs for kennel*
If I were either Doris Day, or Alfred Hitchcock, I’d whole-heartedly endorse this parody with ALL of my thumbs!
(…but I’ll have to settle for offering my own, less prestigious “Thumbs-Up”, instead…)
You sir, win the internet today.
This is what writers define as “establishing a credible threat.”
Re-establishing. There had been a reader who had downgraded Sciona to a B-tier villain.
Whilst she might be outclassed by Deus (at the moment, until Sciona has found out enough about him to develop counters of her own), she has already shown that she posed a credible threat to the Twilight Council. Barring, of course, the unexpected intervention of a powerful team of supers.
Likewise she defeated an invisible stealth-specialist super sneaking unawares into Sciona’s base. Not to mention (possibly) killing the protagonist. And coming within a hairs-breadth of doing the same to the most powerful super hero on the planet!
While she may out-class Deus in the “Raw Power” category, I’d still consider him to be the current “Top-Tier” on EITHER side of the “Good/Evil” debate, in the category of “Resourceful/Prepared/Adaptable”. Like in most of life, different people will be the #1-Choice, depending on which benchmark is used to judge them.
Well both Dabbler and Maxima are A-tier heroes. But Maxima did not get downgraded to a B-tier when Dabbler beat her in sparring. Likewise if you are a villain capable of defeating A-tier heroes you remain an A-tier villain, even if there happens to be a tougher one out there.
like lex luthor and darkside just cause lex could get annhilated by darkside doesnt mean he is anytrhing other then a list
Exactly this. Just because you lose doesn’t make you weak. Chances are you’re just not as strong as the one who beat you (or a billion other factors). Yet plenty of people think, “Oh, they lost, pfft. Not worth considering anymore.” unless they have personal bias towards liking that character regardless.
I’m not really sure. She managed a very elaborate plan against the Council, that’s true — but after that, she’s proven herself to be reckless, petty, and easily rattled, and then ended up just another sexual conquest for Deus. Some props for getting the drop on Pixel, but Pixel (while clearly formidable) isn’t battle-focused and there were certainly wards, standing spells, and other traps in Sciona’s lair. Syd, gods love her, is inexperienced and not terribly formidable unless she’s had a moment to think and prepare. At this point, a thug who makes his Stealth roll could conk her on the head and put her out of a fight.
She’s going to have to do something a little more impressive than shred Wyrmcoot before I’m going to buy her as a major threat. Because, right now, it looks like she needs several *decades* to get a plan moving, and the second the plan wobbles, she falls apart. ArcSWAT — trained to work together seamlessly and able to improvise well — would wreck her. Now that her ambushes against the Council have been less than perfectly successful and they know who they’re dealing with, I don’t even really like her chances against *them*, and every indication has been that Arc slaps the Council around whenever they feel like it.
Don’t get me wrong — I *really, really want* Sciona to be an omega-level Big Bad. But right now, I’m having trouble seeing it. (And, because I’ve come to respect Khal Barrack as a storyteller, I suspect that she’s going to *really* re-establish her cred in a way I’m not going to like and won’t see coming.)
Cooter didn’t see her coming ;-)
And a thug has tried to conk Sydney on the head. Not just any thug, but a super powered one, using a lethal backstab!
It did not go well for him.
But, yea, your points about Sciona’s flaws are well made. Still even her minions can replicate super powers and have mental attacks capable of taking out Maxima. If she falls under Sciona’s control then the tables will turn.
Not that I am rooting for her. Just pointing out that she has considerable capabilities, despite her handicaps.
The flaws are what make her a more understandable character. She’s not her feats, she is a person. People are flawed and janky.
She and Deus have thus far been fantastic villains, and some of my favorite in the last two decades. Especially with all this recent focus in the last decade or so on villains having to have ‘relatable sob-story’ backstories and bullshit that just stops making them proper villains.
You’re also displaying serious issues with bridging headcanon and transitive property in your assessments. Self-defeating, in a way, to the point it’s almost offensive that you’re so sure that she’s a crap villainous character, or ‘just a sexual conquest for Deus’, which is insulting to both characters who very much enjoyed themselves.
I think the key divide is where folks think ‘I would be demeaned and shamed if I had sex (effectively) for cash.” Whereas Sciona did not give a hoot about that aspect. As far as she is concerned she wanted to have sex, and Deus happened to be convenient, if annoying. More importantly she got her artefact.
From Sciona’s point of view it was a ‘win win’, not caring about the hang ups that human society has over sexual matters.
I suspect that, given succubi are widespread across the galaxy, supernatural society generally will be far more sexually liberated than humans. Much like European morals have spread to become widespread on Earth, I think Succubi standards will have influenced many worlds and species.
“As far as she is concerned she wanted to have sex, and Deus happened to be convenient, if annoying.”
NOOOO!!! She did not want sex, and she specifically did not want to have sex with Deus. Her very first reaction to his ‘offer’ was to strip and ask why she would sully her restored body with him, until Valeur threatened her
Then Sciona reconsidered. As per the caption, showing her inner thoughts:
“Seriously considering it”
Concluding that, as Deus had suggested, she did want to have sex, and saying “fine”. Sorry I am not buying into your headcanon that she was threatened into having sex. She was bribed.
Finally there was nobody called Valeur present.
Butt again, that was after being threatened
It’s not ‘headcanon’, it’s fact, as portrayed in the actual comic, may not have been threatened into sex, butt she was still threatened and she was initially disgusted at the idea of having sex with Deus
The implication that you and Pander have been pushing that she wanted sex, from the start, is complete falsehood
Vale + Voyeur = Valeur
No it was after she threatened Deus, and Vale put her in her place by reminding her that such would not be tolerated. This is necessary with the homicidal maniac. Note what happened to Wyrmil when such was not done.
She did not express disgust. Sciona showed contempt. Primarily because she felt superior. As evidenced by confidently showing off her body. This despite having just had her butt kicked by Vale. She is made of sterner stuff than you think. The banter was just that, then they returned to business.
And you keep ignoring the “Fine”. If Sciona says she is OK with it then that is the end of the matter. She did not add “under protest” or look scared. There is no hint that she is under duress other than in your imagination.
Plus we have seen the conclusion to the scene and Sciona quite clearly enjoyed herself, and was not resentful, or otherwise bothered, in any way. So your theory does not hold up under any scrutiny.
And we have been over all this before. Endlessly. Keep on repeating your view does not sway me, so you may as well not bother. I think we have covered just about every substantive angle and you are not coming up with anything new.
It does?
Taking down a fat aging redneck by surprise from behind really doesn’t establish her as a credible threat.
Above. Whilst in a location where he thought himself completely safe, both due to it being nowhere in particular (and him not doing anything odd to draw attention to himself) and it being in broad daylight in the middle of a city.
Not to mention obliterating him, in the blink of an eye. That really does send a message, not to mess with her. Surprise attack or not.
A fat redneck merged with a powerful, highly aware super.
If she spots Sidney from the air, she’ll be a pile of gore faster than she can even think the words “shield orb.” That spells highly dangerous threat to me.
*nods gloomily*
That could also apply if a sniper decides to pop Sidney….or Sidney crosses the street without looking both ways….falling tree branches…etc.
I’m just not buying this as a “threat credibility reestablished” moment.
That is fair enough. Cooter is just a normal human blended with an almost indestructible monster, after all.
@Coot’s description: Your forgot “worked with/for monsters”
Looks like all available space in the Who’s Who box has already been used up. And that is a less important part of his bio to fit in, when compared to the points already covered.
True all that and in the expanded page it would be summarized by one word – idiot – followed by a HJS* scale number.
*HJS – Homer Jay Simpson… See also Stupid Lucky Fraud
That seemed anti-climactic.
It’s like getting scry-buff-teleport-ganked by ninjas. “Okay, surprise round is over, what do you do?” “Um… do I have to roll separate stabilize checks for each of my chunks?”
Well, if it had been ninjas he would have been expecting them.
except if they worked for the Spanish Inquisition …….
No one expects the Spanish inquisition. This is why they can never get a place to seat at restaurants, even when they call ahead.
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam.
What?
Nobody expects the Spammish Repetition…Except in their E-mail.
If you are going to go that far you might as well,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8huXkSaL7o
I’m more curious how he managed to say ‘bitch’ with most of his tongue on the severed side.
I think he’s using the pavement as the other half of his mouth, with the air-seal being the blood. As to the tongue… I mean, he’s rather tendrilly already, now has Wyrmil-style regen (maybe), and the tongue/mouth is already one of the fastest-healing parts of the body…
Not to mention, that might only be half his tongue we see on the other side.
Plus an unknown proportion of his anatomy is actually Wyrmil’s. Who, being a worm-like critter, probably does not speak in the same manner as humans do.
Okay, but how is his diaphragm even working when it’s sliced in twain? Can’t talk if you can’t force air in and out of your lungs.
Same argument applies. The whole body is lying in a pool of blood, with a flat surface below that, providing enough of an air seal to allow air to pass through the diaphragm and up out of his mouth, without leaking into the outside world on the way.
Any issue of ‘how can an organ work, whilst cut in two’ we just put down to Wyrmil’s super power keeping them functioning even whilst bisected. You may notice that his brain is likewise in two halves, but that has not noticeably impacted on either of their cognitive abilities. Judging as best we can from the brief exchange.
Or, if that does not satisfy, do note that Wyrmil’s part of the conversation is usually an internal mental exchange. Yet is seen sharing the same speech bubble chains as Cooter, on this page. Possibly indicating that he has switched to speaking out loud, or maybe just for convenience, rather than drawing separate thought bubbles.
Assuming the latter though, in this case Cooter might, of necessity, be replying mentally too. With the speech bubble being used to indicate that he is attempting to speak physically (as he did in panel one). So, even though his words may be all but unintelligible, the message is still being carried mentally, to its only listener.
Actually, that bit of red on the left of panel 7 is his cap, we can see his tongue sticking out of his mouth in that panel, and said tongue is no longer visible in the last panel
he didn’t get split straight down the middle, most of his neck and…nope that’s his jaw and the rest of his tongue laying there up and to the left. he may have a working lung though, looks like the outside blows sheared his arms off and grazed his rib cage. the middle one split his trachea though…could be internal dialog?
No, on the left is his hat, his tongue is on the right, poking out of his mouth, which disappears in the following panel where he speaks
That is not his hat. It’s in between teeth just like the smaller bit on the right side. It’s most of his tongue. Look at it. It’s the other side of his mouth. It isn’t even the softer color of his hat, which seems to have been thrown out of the image when sliced.
Freak lightning strike, or hit and run driver, left his body mangled, but I’m more interested in how the veil covers up his regeneration and walking away…or does it only matter if there are witnesses?
probably only matters if there are any witnesses
The comment was a reply to the question posed in the comic strapline:
It is on a cross roads, in the middle of a city, in broad daylight. There is a pretty good chance that somebody either directly saw the incident or will be able to witness the aftermath.
OR as in some neighborhoods, even if there was a street festival at the time, “no’budy saw nut’tin, capisci”.
Very true.
But does The Veil even want the mob, or various innocent bystanders, from knowing about the supernatural? It is not just ‘the authorities’ that it is trying to protect the supernatural from. The general public is just as bad. Or, in this setting, worse. Given that the powers-that-be are all in on the secret, world-wide!
It’s also possible, since the Veil is weakened, that it actually showed a person run up to him, then slice’n’dice with a sword or axe, then run off. Explains what’s left behind easier than anything else.
Mmm, depends on how The Veil works. The implication is that it alters the appearance of supernaturals, to something believable in the circumstances. Whereas what you are asking it to do is to create an illusion of somebody who isn’t there.
At what point does that person spring into life? What if somebody saw that person appear from nowhere? And where do they go afterwards. Especially if some bystanders decide to pursue the attacker. Does the illusion have to persist indefinitely, and serve a jail term, in order to avoid any continuity errors?
Are half our jails full of illusionary people?
You are overthinking this: unless someone was actually tracking Wyrmoot and had eyes on him the whole time, it would be fairly easy for Veil to ‘coverup’ what happened
-“Omahgawd! Did you see what just happened?”
-“No? What happened Jimmy-Sue?”
-“Some one just ran up to this guy and sliced him inta chunks with a sword! And then they stoled something and took off!!”
-“Did ya see which way the varmint went?”
-“Nah, happened too fast, had to look away!”
-“… You been drinking your ‘shine too soon again? If some guy got sliced inta chunks, where is he?”
-“Don’t look at me, trying to figa out when last ated carrots!”
Heh. Well if you are talking memory alteration, sure.
Because there are witnesses depicted in panel 2. So they are presently seeing someone swooping down out of the sky. Even changing Sciona to look like a normal person, with a sword, that is still abnormal behaviour. Let alone departing in the same direction.
But if that can be erased from their memories and the entire scene being changed in their recollections, then you can have whatever details are required.
There would still be the problem mind that the person does not show up on any CCTV from traffic cameras (including the one at this junction), store security and so on. So, at a minimum, The Veil would also need to recreate the scene on the cross roads CCTV footage. Making Sciona invisible, then having some faked-up individual hack Cooter with a sword.
Unlike the altered memory of the witness, the camera would need to show both what direction the individual came from and left.
Plus it ends up with a man hunt for a fictitious person. Who may even be mistaken for someone else in the vicinity. Potentially leading to a miscarriage of justice, in having an innocent person convicted.
Which is why the way we saw things working, when Cooter was first introduced, normally makes sense. Altering the appearance of the culprit to look like a human, of similar physique, means that the authorities would be looking for the real culprit, in their standard human persona.
If a vampire or werewolf goes around murdering people, the Council does actually want them to be caught. They just don’t want the circumstances to reveal the supernatural at work.
So here the solution would not be to create a new random person. It would be to use Sciona’s normal human persona, but have it act in a way that people would believe. If enough of the populace are now convinced that supers are real, then Sciona could just appear to be a flying super with a sword (or left as she is).
Whereas if the majority are yet to be convinced, despite the press conference, then it would be necessary to alter things to make it look like she ran up to him, and chopped Cooter with a sword. Then ran off in approximately the same direction that she flew in.
Still leaving various anomalies mind, like the lack of CCTV elsewhere. But less likely to have an innocent person jailed.
I’m not sure why the veil need do much of anything?
This is clearly a case of “a super did it, call Arcswat in”
Seriously you have in cannon a super fast flying Gold Wave motion gun, And Vidio Of a living lighting bolt, a crazy sword woman who Basicaly makes her own lightsaber out of strips of ribbon, and at least one person who is an empowered artifact user who also looks like a string bean pole next to everyone on her team but the combat chauffer-Drill instructor.
Never mind that I suspect that word got out that the bean poll actualy took down a Super Without useing her Power Balls, especialy since that was her first broadcasted takedown. Never mind the fact that her actual first take Down includes a cop saying Oh the humanity….
Seriously stop overthinking this.
Heh. I was just following through with the apparently simple solutions presented, to show that they actually lead to the need for over-complicated changes. If you check the various threads you will see that I too am a proponent of letting The Veil treat Sciona as a super villain.
One of those ‘witnesses’ is facing the wrong way, so they don’t count, and we can’t tell which way the one furthest away is facing (zooming in best can, and it kinda seems like maybe they too are facing the wrong way)
And as for the one (semi) confirmed to be looking in the right direction, they may just as easily be going about their own business and not looking up at the sky
Why would the attacker have to be made to look ‘normal’, as SW Thomas said, the existence of supers have been publically made known, plus crazy swordswomen, so all the Veil would need do is ‘hide’ the wings, butt then again… they have Gold-plated flying Supers, so, maybe the Veil doesn’t need to do anything?
This is a simple intersection, no lights at all, why would there be (expensive) traffic cameras in such a location?
Most store security only covers the front door and possibly the register, specially for a Fast Food joint like “Bok Bok Chicken”
We are only seeing one angle, where we can see those two potential witnesses. Even the one who may not be looking up in the sky will sure as heck notice the bloody body in the road, in a moment. And there are likely to be just as many other witnesses when you check down each route leading to that intersection.
Not to mention folks looking out of windows, in shops or otherwise. Someone running across the middle of an intersection would be likely to draw observers eyes. And sure as heck will do so for anyone driving a car. We can only see a small section of road there. There could easily be half a dozen drivers with eyes on him.
By the way Anvildude was the one suggesting that Sciona needed to be altered to look like a normal person wielding a sword. I was just running with the pros and cons of doing that. I have supported the ‘leave her as a super’ elsewhere.
As for your points on the CCTV, they are fairly made. The incident may not have been directly caught. But I bet a lot of the access routes would have cameras covering them, at some point. None of which would show a fictitious axe-murderer.
Not unless The Veil did a massive amount of wide-scale editing. Along with the various complications I pointed out in my ‘overthinking’.
People running across an intersection, in America, is not that worthy of more than a cursory glance at best
Only half a dozen unseen drivers? Why such a low number? Am all for speculizating, butt really need to work with what is presented to make them plausible, or there is no end to what crazy crap we can come up with
Jaywalking is actually illegal in America and he is not using a marked crossing. But the more relevant point is that a fast moving object does catch the eye. And a proportion of viewers would be curious as to why, so would carry on visually tracking him. He may be running from a crime scene, or cops, for instance. And they might get the thrill of seeing a near-miss.
As to why half a dozen it is because the building density is sufficient that is how many I estimate may be in the area. For you to insist that we ignore every possible witness that could be within one block in every direction is not reasonable.
The artist has depicted a cityscape and cities have people in them. Likewise he has drawn a lot of roads, so it is fair to assume that cars travel on those and that Cooter is not alone in a city with just three other people.
Bear in mind that Dave only has so much drawing time per week. He has drawn witnesses. They are there. So arguing that nobody has seen him is just time wasting.
And, just to put the nail in the coffin, the comic strapline reads:
If The Veil is covering things up then it is doing so because there are witnesses. Note that it is not asking whether it covered things up, just how. So even the author is thinking of the bystanders as being witnesses.
The only people who care about jaywalking being illegal, are cops
You are correct, we shouldn’t ignore the two-thousand strong protest rally to the left of the “Bok Bok Chicken”
How about a compromise and say that we can see three people in that direction, and one parked car, so there are likely to be three in each of the other cardinal directions and one other car, moving or stationary, likewise?
So maybe another four or five pointing roughly in this direction (assuming an equal chance for walking towards the junction or away from it). Plus maybe two cars moving, one of which is pointing away from the junction.
Still leaving one driver and several pedestrians wondering what the heck they just saw. Even if it was only out of the corner of their eye, for some of the witnesses.
Would rather we just focus and concentrate on what gets shown, and not speculate on something that is not even there, butt not going to argue over this
Evisceration is an inconvenience for them at this point.
Just as well it was over quick. I think Archon need to assign Sciona a super villain name, now that she is committing crimes in broad daylight.*
How about “The Non-slow Eviscerator”?
* Unless The Veil succeeded in covering the incident up convincingly.
Well on the bright side, once he pulls himself back together, if he lays low, he might survive for quite a while longer since she left him and probably nolonger considers himat all let alone as a threat or something she needs to bother with. Although, relocating to another (preferably 3rd world) contry might not be a bad idea.
What self-respecting monster hunter would turn tail and run away?
The dude just needs bigger guns. And to keep an eye on the sky.
At which point, he gets attacked by a group of ninja moles :P
You seem to have forgotten a P in the first panel. (Epimorh -> Epimorph)
You are right, otherwise I would accuse you of taking the P.
DaveB should correct that.
Release the Filth-Kraken!
Weren’t krakens one two four good enough?
Efficient *and* brutal. This reminds me of that one time my druid got ambushed by vampire rogues…
Damit Sciona! You are the bad guy/woman and there are rules for that.
Rule 1: confront enemy.
Rule 2: Capture enemy.
Rule 3: Boast to your enemy.
Rule 4. place enemy in over the top complicated death trap and then leave enemy for dead.
Amature. Im calling the union.
SCENE: Interior of an office building
Close up shot of blood dripping off a table. Camera draws back to reveal various decapitated bodies sitting at a table. Camera continues to draw back, to reveal a placard poster, on the wall behind them:
To one side is a smashed window, with Sciona’s boots just receding upwards, from view.
Yerp Yorp, that sounds about right. Sciona don’t play games, which just makes her all the more dangerous. She tried to gank Vale the second her back was turned; only being an eldritch abomination saved Vale from ending up like Cooter.
She’s a Combat Pragmatist to the point that I was a little surprised she didn’t try to directly kill Deus in the Vault instead of getting into a pissing match and then flying off with a petty inconvenience.
There she was caught flat-footed. He was an opponent she had never seen before and had zero intelligence on him or his team’s capabilities. Whilst he clearly had full knowledge of her and her team. Yet was completely unfazed at opposing her.
Even combat pragmatists can have a (justifiable) fear of the unknown. A pragmatist does not engage an enemy that they know to be superior to themselves, unless they have some means of negating that advantage. Likewise they will be wary of starting a fight against someone who they suspect is stronger than them.
So, hey, this has probably been ultra speculated on and answered before but I’m going to ask anyway.
Can Sydney use her feet to hold / operate orbs? I think taking your shoes and socks off and looking stupid would be a fair trade off for doubling your available simultaneous powers. :D
Fun fact: When I was younger, I practiced signing my name with a pencil held in my toes.
No speculation needed, we saw her memories of trying specifically that. Along with stuffing the orbs in her butt crack. Both memories being provoked in the initial interview, in the boardroom.
Folks do indeed very often come up with ways for Sydney to overcome her limit. However she is very intelligent, a veteran gamer and had months to experiment with the orbs before she walked into the bank on that memorable day.
As such I am 100% confident that Sydney has tried every single mundane option available. Things involving magic, psionics, extra limbs (beyond the ones humans are normally issued with) and other people though she cannot have tried, as they were not available to her at that time.
Most importantly though the author gives great thought to how to balance his villains and heroes, to keep the story interesting. Sciona’s anger and impulsiveness for instance has helped Deus to defeat her. Likewise Sydney already has the most powerful set of powers of any of the supers. Only her current inexperience and her two orb limit stop her from replacing Maxima at the top.
We have already had the author acknowledge that, once trained, Halo will probably do just that. Even without loosing the two orb limit. So giving her near unrestricted access to all of her powers would just make her boringly overpowered.
Did you do a good job of it?
I was very good at picking things up that way. Ahem… with my claws.
Well, my handwriting was pretty darn terrible. Hands or feet. :P
It was legible, though.
Well that excludes useing them as Ben Wa Balls.
To which probably had Sidney thanking god for that, givem there relative size….
Oh, you might be able to use them that way (although considering their diameter, it’d be a tight squeeze) – you just wouldn’t get any powers from them while they were in there.
so your saying the thing that makes sciona beatable is that when angered she loses sight of the long term like when she tried to kill someone smart enough to know who she is resourceful enought to break into the twilight vault and scary enough to show no fear in front of an eldritch being without thinking what measures he might have to stop such a thing from occuring simply because she thought he had something she wanted and didnt want to wait
Yes. Sciona has a bunch of mental/emotional problems other than simple anger mind. It is just that the anger is extreme. It gives her poor impulse control, for example. So whilst a hero might be able to focus anger to a useful end, (say fighting on against overwhelming odds, to prevent an injustice) Sciona tends to do stupid things in her rage.
One of Sciona’s other big problems is an utter lack of empathy. She either does not understand how other people feel, or just does not care in the least. Take her draining her vampire ally of his blood. That would be utterly humiliating to him. Whilst he may not actively fight back, knowing how powerful and short tempered she is, I guarantee he would resent being treated like that.
Likewise betraying her henchman, Wyrmil, on an angry whim, will have alienated the rest of her team, and everyone else that they tell about it. Her reputation will be rock bottom now. The only way people will co-operate is out of fear. And they know that they need to find a way to escape or kill her before she kills them.
So Sciona has severely handicapped herself. But, as she can create her own minions, rather than having to rely on hiring people, it is not insurmountable. Plus, of course, there will always be minions who are not well informed.
In other words, Sciona is 60’s – 80’s Saturday morning cartoon villain who uses fear and intimidation to control her minions or has to make ones she has direct control of, and reacts like a spoiled child in wild tantrums with no foresight and assumes she will be followed obediently because of her power. Only minus the kid friendly funny quirks like Skeletor and Prime Evil had that kept them likable.
Deus on the other hand is a long game Xanatos gambit type villain who has plans within plans and uses the promise AND delivery of wealth and power to insure loyalty among his “henchmen and cohorts” while displaying a good public image *basically Xanatos, 90s+ Lex Luthor, Kingpin,*
They are almost Sciona and Deus 2011.
Incentive: Eyes and lips are just fine. It’s the hair. The parting seems like amirror image of what it should be like.
You don’t appear to have either hair or lips. This sounds like a fraudulent incentive offer!
Don’t see anything wrong with the centre-parting
Can you be a bit more specific? If you meant compared to how she normally has it, well, styles change and she is looking in a mirror
I mean towards her back/left it’s slightly leaving the space inhabited by her head skin, sporting a few strands of loosely floating hair. It’s screwing with the angle her head’s at. Cover her face, just look at the hair and imagine where she appears to be looking. Then cover her hair and forehead, just look at the face and imagine where her hair would be growing from.
No sorry, just can’t see what you are seeing, not saying what you are seeing is wrong, just can’t see it
The hair on her left (our right) is pushed back slightly behind slightly on her shoulder, leaving her neck on that side exposed
The hair on her right (our left) is hanging down in front of her shoulder covering her neck on that side
If you meant her parting, sometimes the parting does look like that, doesn’t go the full length
Can Sydney circumvent the flyball underwater by making the shield ball hover at a certain depth and keep on grabbing it?
Not quite sure why you chose that particular orb as your example. Were you envisaging the shield staying full of air, and being dragged down by her weight, when she grabbed it?
If so, that would not work. Assuming Halo started out with a shield full of air, as soon as she let go of it, all the air would bubble out. More importantly all the ocean would flood in!
Now Halo does have another hand free, and you have specified that she would not be using the flyball. So I am guessing the aim would be to have the Air Orb in that hand.
We know that the air bubble can retain its spherical shape in shallow water, but would its surface tension be enough to withstand the sudden increase in pressure from the shield being lowered? You do not have to go down very deep at all for this to become a serious risk. The Mythbusters got uncomfortably close to killing off Adam Savage just from the pressures generated in a tank of water (admittedly whilst simulating something like a whirlpool).
The biggest problem though is that whether sustaining air with the Air Ball or the Shield Ball, is that both would be bobbing up to the surface like a bottle. That is what the Fly Ball has to overcome to keep her at depth. Releasing and grabbing the orbs would make no difference to that effect, other than to render Sydney into a drowning person and subject to the normal flotation involved for the situation.
What would be worth trying is to hold onto some other orb and command it to fly down. Likewise Halo could attempt this trick to fly. Simulating the way that Thor flies by throwing his hammer but hanging onto it and going on for the ride (yes superhero physics very much involved in his technique).
That I suspect probably would not work though, as the orbs only appear to have the punching capability of a normal person. Assuming this equates to ‘the orb can lift the same amount that a person can one-handed’ then this is probably not enough to fly (although it may slow a fall considerably).
Put a bunch of orbs in Tubey though, firmly strapped to Sydney in a purpose designed harness, and she could command five of them to fly in her desired direction. Freeing up both hands, to allow simultaneous use of the Shield Ball and the Air Orb. Good for both high altitude and deep depth travel.
Remember when Sydney was talking about how she doesn’t have any ‘bad’ superpowers?
Coot is basically slapstick wolverine. I expect a passing pigeon to crap on him any moment now.
Or a less cool Deadpool. Same thing.
Anyone else think Cooter getting killed will be a running gag? And one we could never get tired of?
Probably… He’ll likely be this comics Kenny!
OMG they killed Cooter! Meh….
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d replace “Meh…” with “Yay!”
Your cast page is not showing the cast.
It is a known problem. Here is the alternative, which it is best to bookmark:
https://grrl-power.wikia.com/wiki/Cast
Regarding Sydney/Halo we know the orbs work for her hands*, we don’t yet know if they have cross linked ability options, such as the flight orb having the ability to activate both the forcefield and air orbs via cross links in the skill tree.
* https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/589
That is a sensible alternative. One that allows conveniences such as flying in space. But without quite the complications of breaking Halo’s two-orb limit. Especially if the combined power can only be used in specific circumstances (for instance if entering an area inimical to life).
But we also know she can adjust the orbs orbits and clobber teammates with them in proximity and even stow them in their tube with just a thought, so it may be that skill/thought connection that allows more than 2 orbs via the skill tree, it makes sense to me…
In space – damn my suit ripped, now i need flight, shield and air, hmm they both* have a green button now, presses both* orbs buttons and the air orb activates (needing the buttons held and concentration** to work)
* Flight and/or Shield
** Not Sydney’s area of skill.
I still say the pixilization in that comic makes it look worse than actually showing it.
Also this gore is a bit lessened by the fact that we know he can recover from it fully.
Plus the added fact of it not being gratuitous: gruesome? Sure, just not gratuitous
See now, this was a missed opportunity of epic proportions. Cooter was in mid-sentence in panel 2. His next word should have been not only evocative of his current opinion of Sciona, which “Bitch” handled well, but also should have finished his prior sentence, especially since Wormy prompted him with “You were saying?” And what exactly was he saying? Oh yeah… “Cunt” would have been the best possible word to use in place of “Bitch.”
Sometimes the simplest of things can do double or triple duty all by themselves, where some other thing doesn’t even do single duty.
Unless he was going to say “Arsehole”, in which case, if used, could have been applied to both Sci-fright and Wyrmil :D
Regarding the commentary… having gore in your superhero comic is perfectly fine. It’s fairly normal, I think, these days, and helps portray the violence. It’s a matter of how you want the comic’s tone to be in terms of seriousness.
Having all the sex and fanservice you’ve had recently in the comic is another matter entirely, though. Not in terms of censorship (I don’t care about that, I can go searching for porn on my own if I want to: this is the internet), but because all of the sex and fanservice-focused pages recently have felt like the weakest pages in the story by far. They haven’t been particularly funny, the fanservice hasn’t added anything to the story that couldn’t have been there without it, and I didn’t find them particularly titillating (for that matter, all the ones with Deus in them made me want to pluck my eyes out and pour bleach into the sockets).
Basically, it feels like there’s been a lot of focus on fanservice lately, and it hasn’t felt beneficial to the comic. :/
Your repeated use of ‘fanservice’ implies that the fans wanted it. I can assure you that there were no fans calling for nude scenes of her, so it was not being provided at our request.
I think most people remember Sciona as a hideous orc construct, plus probably recall her casually murdering people, in particularly gruesome ways. Which I am sure is a turn off for most folks, even though there were a few who quite appreciated her nudity despite that.
The scenes were necessary to establish Deus’s less savoury behaviour, and did so using the “don’t tell, show” principle. And even then they were pretty tastefully handled. No worse than most Hollywood movie sex scenes. In fact considerably less than many, given that we only got to see preamble and postamble.
Not that I am unsympathetic to your request. I would not want to see too many of such scenes. But there is no particular need to now, given that if we see Deus with another woman later, we can pretty much fill in the blanks about what is going on. Especially if seen exiting his bathroom in a towel.
Given the number of conquest volumes Deus has though, I think seeing such hints, in the background, is likely to be a frequent occurrence. Unless he has a cloning facility.
Speak for yourself puppy, Sci-fright is hot, it was SmugD that was uncalled for :P
I do note you are amongst the few. :)
‘Amongst the few’? There are others as depraved as me? o_O
Well there were not the most enthusiastic for the flesh, so probably not. Although I would not go so far as to say depraved. Rather … having more flexible standards.
Even in the real world, murderers and other death-row inmates have no difficulty finding people keen to marry them. Whether or not that is down to wishful thinking, that they are innocent, or perhaps hoping that they will be pardoned and could be rehabilitated, or just down to thrill seeking, I do not know.
So there is something in the human psyche where folks can be willing to turn a blind eye to the behaviour of individuals. Or just that the ‘being naked and hot’ overwhelms any qualms. ;-)
I side with Yorp. Being prone to violent murder is a bit of a turn-off.
… I mean, unless this was the hottest thing ever to you or you’re just really excited by the mating practices of the Black Widow or the Praying Mantis…
Was just referring to her appearance :(
Using appearance as the only metric by which hotness is measured is a good way to get killed by a Cylon.
Only if you get turned on by kitchen appliances
Extreme -ly hot.
Crush -ing on her.
Hazard to my heart.
Seeing as how he is still alive, I feel the veil won’t cover this and it will be regarded by the public as a Supers thing *some flying lady with laser wings sliced apart a guy with Deadpool level regeneration” regardless of the reality behind it
Alternately: Some lady ran up, pushed him, and ran off. He fell down, then got back up, apparently unharmed.
Alternatively #2: Guy ran up with a sword. High on whatever chemical is being publicly blamed at the moment. (Insert Reefer Madness reference here.)
Well he WAS jaywalking. What did he think was gonna happen?
Heh. A bit like the Joss Whedon school of scripting then?
“The girl has one drink and finds herself in a dungeon, preparing to be sacrificed by a bunch of horny cultists. The fact that it is to a giant worm was not accidental symbology.”
Do I need to go all Willem Defoe on you for that word?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG_OezlTZ1A
In which case I shall inflict this upon you!
Grrl Power is #1 on the Top Web Comics list. Keep reaching for the top mr Barrack.
Umm, if GP is #1, hasn’t he already reached the top? o_O
It does have to be repeated each month, so further reaching will be required. Dave will need to carry on working hard, to keep the standards up. Whilst, for now, it is up to us to vote, as often as we can, to keep the comic up there, for the rest of this month.
He could also start reaching for the top of other comic lists too, I suppose.
The Veil made everyone see an Aussie road train run over Coot at near-supersonic speeds. Sometimes it’s hard to make things look plausible.
As to the gore thing. This is one of those movie moments where the director make the audience scream and laugh at the same time. A rare accomplishment. Made funnier because you know Coot hasn’t figured out he’s out-matched.
“what?” zas!! you are dead from nowhere. “arrg..”
too simple and easy.
Dam! So that’s 2 Cooter ows her. Poor bastard can’t seem to catch a break. Hope he pays her back some day. Best served cold right?
Well Wyrmil does have an advantage. He knows that Sciona is afraid of explosions. She did not want to blow off the vault door. Even though Wyrmil could survive the blast, clearly she would have been at risk.
The first time I looked at this, I thought that not only did she slice Cooter to ribbons with her wings, but also whapped him with a frying pan for good measure, and I laughed out loud.
There’s something about the way the sickle is colored that messes with my brain, and I think I prefer it that way just for comedic value.
New Incentive is great- but i can see what is bugging you- it is not size of anything- its perspective- her body /face at slight angle but nose is straight on and left pupil is to close to nose- makes it look like lazy eye…
I just thought. Would the Council, or other part of the… “veil-races” ??¿¿ have some kind of… alarm when the veil gets pushed a bit to much?
For example a bunch of people turning inside out and still living.
If anyone is manning the command console of the veil. But with an outright attack and half the council down or repairing defenses, that might actually be a low priority and not enough people able to do so.
Sciona’s wards warned her of Pixel’s intrusion. So it is reasonable to assume that something similar applies with The Veil. However when it is one wizard with one spell that is easy to arrange. When it is a world-wide network of sigils, I doubt that it could inform a wide number of individuals, whilst the magical internet is down. So I agree with DTD that it would probably require someone to actually be close to one of the sigils, to pick up such a warning.
Although there may be something like a ‘designated duty wizard’ who would be linked to the sigil and pick up warnings even from a distance. That way they could even be concentrated in a safe stronghold, where they could keep each other directly informed of any complications, weak spots or emergencies that were straining the system. Much like an air traffic control centre, as an example.
We need a name for Wyrmil/Cooter.
Wooter?
Coormil?
Wyrmter.
hmmm?
https://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/873/673/e09.gif
I run with Wyrmcoot. But should only use that when referring to the body. As they each retain their distinct personality both Wyrmil and Cooter are still individual people. Much like co-joined twins are two separate people, even though they may be obliged to share various organs.
… You really hate Cooter, don’t you? I mean, he is a really disgusting shallow memetic character, but you keep using him. Even just to cut him up like a sushi roll. I mean, you don’t even give him a chance to fight anything. Just have him show up, spout something to remind us why he is such a terrible guy, and get some of the most painful and embarrassing deaths or trolling in this story.
His greatest acclompishment is clearly saying bitch with have a mouth. Try it, open one side of your mouth and say it with only the other side and half a tongue. Comes out as witch instead.
Well, he’s not protrayed as completely a bad guy. He’s trying to protect humanity from monsters – he’s honestly trying to protect people – he just gets in completely over his head and gets his arse handed to him and has an abrasive personality…
OMAGAWD, COOTER IS YAMCHA!!!
Nah, to be Yamcha he’d first have to be established as a likably unlikable threat/contender who is gradually pushed to the side while retaining a rank of top 5 strongest fighters.
then a generation later have a threat kill him to show how serious the threat is, but because the new generation *watching* doesn’t even KNOW the old material existed immediately regards him as a weakling, and he never manages to regain his rank as more and more threat/enemy/friend of the week characters ever stronger show up and is more or less forgotten about.
Well, its not as bad yet as I got with Peter Jones or Thomas O’Mallory, I actually felt so bad for how much hell punching bag I did that last guy I eventually after several years of torment had him be repented and set free.
Sometimes you just want/need a punching bag character to show case other elements of the series, but it can get weird after a while, heck look at Kenny on South Park, at one point they decided to make his death permanent, then brought him back, but eventually retired the death every episode gag and even had him address the gag in-universe and how sick of it he was.
Then even turned him into a superhero
South Park will never top the Cthulhu mini-series, just having Kenny/Mysterion freak out/down Captain Hindesight like he did was more character development than Kenny had all through the show.
I am genuinely curious if he’ll reform into one, or if we’ll get a Cooter-wyrmil and a Wyrmil-cooter out of this.
This is akin to one of those, “Knowing what happens to Harem if one of her dies” questions.
Huh, puts me in mind of Hedrox from Bloodrayne, if you sliced him up he split into new bodies, but had a single mind though (all Hedrox are Hedrox), you had to destroy the body completely *fire or water…type of vampire burned by regular water* to prevent the splitting.
Also, 2 years from now…
Spirituality Convinced Advocate for Miracles: “Sir? Have You Found JEEEEESSUSSSS? He’ll send his angels on wings from on high to come to you!”
Cooter *immediately drops to prone position and whips his shotgun around*
S.C.A.M.: Sir, no need to be afraid, Jeeesus will send his angels for you!
Cooter: “That’s EXACTLY what I’ma fear’n of! Had a run in with dem flyin’ monsters awhil’ back, ain’t one getting the drop on me again if’n ya’ll tellin’ me its comin’. I’ll blow ‘er head clean off.”
S.C.A.M.: “You… you want to blow the head off an angel?”
Cooter: “Darn Tootin! You’re sayin you work fer dem monsters?”
S.C.A.M. and Cooter eyeball eachother, and slowly scoot away from eachother.
Sounds like a set up for a side character on Supernatural *speaking from not watching the show for four years now though*
That show only had 5 seasons.
I assume you mean this in the sense *stop watching when God says “The End”* and don’t continue watching the downhill nose dive the characters and story did (although I think it dropped in quality after season 3).
Just in case you were not aware, there is an animated version of the series. I watched a couple of episodes and they were pretty well done. Although, only having seen trailers and excerpts of the original, I could not say how it compares.
They recently did a cross-over with Scooby Doo (haven’t seen it as the local network that use to air it hasn’t shown any latest seasons of the cool shows, like “Supernatural” or any of the CW/WB shows)
The Phoenix is a cow boy,
dragons are guys with wings,
lovecraftian horrors are the aliens from V with packman heads,
demons, angels, and “leviathans” defeat each other by touch in a Rock,Paper,Scissors method that makes Pokémon look like D&D advanced.
the show went from monster a week to apocalypse of the season plots after about season 3, so instead of Tales from the Crypt with two reoccurring characters we got Buffy with a lower budget…and it never improved, if anything the quality of the special effects, monsters, and characters went down to Saturday morning cartoon levels only with gore and sex.
They use Rock, Paper, Lizard, Spock, Scissors?
*runs away*
I haz no chance without fingers. I can only do rock, and they would be on to me in no time!
The show has bitten off more than it can chew, trying to up its self each season it (claims) to have these ultra powerful cosmic level supernatural beings, but due to budget limitations they all look exactly like normal people, can be defeated by a simple object or each other with one hit, and never show their true forms or power because….*insert random reason*…
Basically the show had better effects in season 1, and that was back when Demons were these ultra rare encounters that had SIGNS of their arrival like weather patterns and odd phenomenon.
Demons are COMMON now, as are angels, and Lovecraftian horrors….
let’s put it this way, Angel touches demon (demon dies), “Leviathan” touches Angel (Angel dies).
Death can be killed with a one hit weapon despite several seasons of build up as an ageless cosmic being.
Alpha Vampire fights “Leviathan” and its just a shoving match.
In short, the show was MUCH better off working within the budget and having two guys going around hunting random monsters troubling the new people of the week instead of trying to have some apocalyptic plots it clearly couldn’t afford to pull off…I swear half the budget must be location filming costs.
Ahh, E.E. Doc. Smith syndrome. The heroes defeat the ultimate big baddies, in one book, only to find, in the next, that they were mere pawns of the real baddies. But, lo, in the next book it turns out that there are even more cosmically powerful universe shaking baddies. And … so on.
But he did have way better special effects.
Geez this has been a fraught evening. On Friday I received death threats, due to me testifying in a fraud case. On top of having been assaulted, with an iron bar, earlier in the year. Naturally I told them that they will not stop me testifying, and I would be adding a complaint of witness intimidation.
Friends have convinced me to ease off though, as they consider it credible. Under normal circumstances I would be willing to take my chances, but I am trying to publish my social engineering proposal. Given that I firmly believe that it can help move us several steps closer to world peace, I really cannot endanger that, for a fraud case. Even though that in itself endangered (and is still endangering) my life.
So I told them I would not agitate things with another police report, until after that is published. But then a friend said ‘what about if they target the kitties though?’ Which I had not considered. However tried to set her mind at ease by saying that they have absolutely no concern over their own pets, so I doubt they would even think of using mine as leverage.
Then, late this afternoon, I heard an animal being shot, and crying out in pain, obviously dying. It was hard to identify, but best guess it was a dog. I did go out immediately to see what had happened, but there was no sign of anything. Even with a search around.
By the time Miss Kitty was an hour and a half overdue I got really fraught, that it may have been her, after all. Even doing another search by lantern light. With my worries getting all the worse when the other pair of kittens returned for their next meal, and Miss Kitty had not even come for her first.
But, the good news is she came in a little while ago! I guess she had just been spooked by the gunshot and animal screaming. The other two kittens had been agitated even in the house with me.
So they have each had a rare treat of premium kitty food, from sachets, in addition to their normal food. I think we all needed a treat, and mine is being able to hug my kitties!
Gadzooks, on all counts. Stay safe, okay? Use that canine sensibility we’ve come to respect and admire.
Agrecian: stay safe, butt don’t be intimidated to do what is right
Was just saying to mum the other day how far too often nowadays (as in the last 10 or 15 years or so) people flee rather than stand up and fight back (in whatever manner is appropriate)
Be cautious. And do what you think is right.
Thanks all. Sorry about the downer. Reading the comic and participating in the comments is a way of chilling out. Which is much needed at the moment.
You may want to hit up police for witness protection. But I understand having a major potentially world-changing project that you don’t want to risk. (I myself am working on a pretty neat one) and I know I’d do a lot to protect it. That said, standing up to oppressive forces in the world does a fair amount to strengthening your PR when your project comes to a head, so it could help instead of risk, if you handle it right.
This is Bulgaria. The police will not even talk to you unless you can pay for an interpreter. And, amongst the crimes that I am aware of, in my region, not a single one has been solved by the police. Still I manage to file a written witness report, despite the obstacles and without great expectation of results.
But ‘witness protection schemes’? Heh, this is a country where you have to bring your own bed linen in to hospital. And where not a single contract killing has resulted in a conviction (last time I checked there were over 300 unsolved and only one arrest).
Or a big billboard out the window
Seeing lots of talk about the veil, various posts, no good place to make this comment.
But how conscious/sentient/sapient is the veil its self?
I mean a lot of suggestions I’ve seen would require an active real time imagination, abstract thought, understanding of cultural norms and taboos, current events.
From how the veil was explained it seemed more just a wide spread glamor / mild psionic influence.
In other words, set target races are glamored over to appear as humans to humans,
mean while *unusual* events involving said races induce a sense of apathy/disinterest in humans when they should otherwise be more noticed and more wide spread. Such as Maxima’s high school years, the story of a golden girl with super human powers should have been everywhere, the partial veil covering meant locally she could be seen, but the larger apathy/disinterest influence prevented anyone from taking the story serious enough or caring enough to see if its true or not to investigate, and then quickly forget about it.
hence why a public reveal via major news stations and mass media was able to break the veil’s partial hold, it shook off the mild psionic influence related to supers.
However the rest of the super natural community is still being blocked, but not in what seems to be a very active way. For instance it could be just as possible via some big event caught on national news for one of the groups to such as werewolves, vampires, pyro harpies, sylphs, leprechauns, whatever to also end up severed because humans as a greater whole suddenly *believe/know* they exist. Which seems to be that is needed, wide spread acknowledgment of existence severs the glamor.
Which is pretty typical of lower grade glamors *it is a wide spread system, not likely/makes sense it could devote much processing power to individual cases unless controlled externally to do just that for a planned event*, once someone points out the man in the corner just knocked over the fruit bowl with an invisible tail and every pays closer attention it loses its cohesiveness as it was meant for a passive glance.
I think the Veil uses the “target/victim”‘s imagination to function.
Basically the Veil emphasizes an observer’s innate desire not to see anything unusual or threatening. So if you see a minotaur, when your mind quickly goes through a list of things you could be seeing that *aren’t* a minotaur, it grabs the image YOU find most plausible and tells you that *that* is what you are seeing.
Suddenly, it isn’t a minotaur, it is a bear, or a big guy in a viking helmet, or whatever is most plausible in the circumstance, maybe even a cosplayer.
In theory, two people standing next to each other with vastly different cultures or life experiences would see different things, but then they’d be unlikely to discuss that fact and discover it.
In this case, however, you are still seeing a guy get sliced literally to pieces, so whether you saw an Alari, an angel, or a drone doing the slicing is kind of moot.
You both make good, interesting, points.
The Galactus approach, not sure off the top of my head what the technical name of that method would be, although you also point out a major flaw in using that as a mass design rather than (Eldritch Abomination / Semi-Abstract entity being perceived by mortals) is that it is different enough between people to cause them to contradict each other, which if enough people are around and know each other, peer review is known to distort/confirm one’s perception of reality (enough that people can be convinced to see a real pipe as a monster’s head *psychology experiment did this*), and possibly break the illusion if peer review perception is different enough (although likely locally it isn’t), but seems simpler to just glamor over it,
as well as being a reason why the council would still need enforcers for their rules, if the veil could cover anything with “realistic excuses” then there wouldn’t be a threat if say a werewolf went nuts in a bar, or vampires fed on people in the open, or anything that could expose them to a larger group *such as media exposure*. If they could cover anything they wouldn’t really need much beyond (don’t wipe out an entire town) or attract the attention of government agencies.
A simpler glamor over would work, after all we assume their laws prevent the average member to dive bomb a guy in broad daylight.
Although I could see a simpler version of it, related to the apathy/disinterest affect, like shrugging off something strange as their mind is focused enough to make an excuse for things like *reaching further than the human should* like the Kaiju guy picking up a cup from a table in physical space would have a longer reach than his human glamor, or the tail knocking over something, the mind just corrects for “imagined it”, “mind playing tricks on me”, “must have been a coat tail”, ect…
I’m having a hard time with the notion that Cooter is in any way a particularly good monster hunter.
Lol.
I suspect that most monster hunters in film and other media would have a hard time standing up to a hard-core attack like that. Hollywood likes to give their heroes a fair chance of surviving.
Sam: “Why are you constantly carrying around that reflective umbrella and never closing it, even on a sunny day?”
Dean: “I heard about another Monster Hunter who got hit by this bad one awhile back, this is the only protection.”
Sam: “You look like a Southern Belle out for a Sunday Stroll.”
Dean: “Better than dead.”
Sam: “This isn’t going to help our image…”
Lol.
Sorry about laughing at my own jokes. ;-)
I kind of feel most monster hunters are probably terrible at it unless they are actually monsters themselves being used by the council as enforcers and tricking some humans.
Meh. I really like the idea of some human without powers being at least on par if not better than the supers from a hunting perspective. The badass normal. Probably because of shows like Supernatural (Dean, Sam, and Bobby Singer), Angel (Gunn and Wesley), Heros (Noah Bennet), Star Trek (Captain James Tiberius Kirk), Powers, and Army of Darkness (Ash…. Housewares), LXG (Allan Quartermain and Nemo), the Marvel-verse (Nick Fury, Hawkeye, Iron Man), and DC (BATMAN!).
Pretty sure the only one who even comes close here so far is Deus. Another reason I really hope he’s human without some special powers.
Human monster hunters can be super effective… if they are doing the hunting. In this case, Coot was the prey.
True. Although technically he was actually hunting Sciona. He wanted revenge on her. He just did not realise that she had already found out he was still alive.