Grrl Power #619 – Numbers. Or, weird symbols mostly
Sydney looks really weird in panel 3 to me. Well, she looks like Xanax Sydney to me, or her own polar opposite sister, like Pinkie Pie and Maud. The expression I was going for was a semi-annoyed “why am I the one telling you to math?” But it looks a little more I caught her 1/4 into a blink or something. Sure, let’s go with that.
So I’m trying something a little different with the vote incentive this month. I want to get better at painting, and that includes composition, so I thought I would try my hand at a cover for a novel. This is for another Michael-Scott Earle (The Star Justice author) novel called Tamer: King of Dinosaurs. It’s basically the novelization of the game Ark: Survival Evolved, in that a guy gets snatched by aliens and put on a world full of dinos and other (alien) survivors, and is left to fend for himself. All the survivors have special abilities, and spoiler, the main character’s ability is to tame dinosaurs. Which in a world full of dinosaurs, is not too shabby. And being a Michael-Scott Earle book, wouldn’t you know it, he stumbles across a group of ladies who are barely scraping by on their own and teams up with them. Harem-larity ensues. It’s a surprisingly fun read, especially if you enjoy long sections of the novel detailing survival stuff like procuring clean water and how to build a fort without any metal tools. You may think I’m taking the piss out of the book, but I found it really entertaining.
ANYWAY. This week’s vote incentive is a cover for a not yet existent book 5 featuring one of the ladies from the book who sort of looks like a silver Maxima. She has low level super strength, so I thought I’d draw her cracking a dino on the head with something big. I should say this isn’t an official cover or anything, I’m just trying to get better at painting and composition. This is version 1, and the plan is that I’ll iterate it each week and improve it until it actually approaches being professional. I may not get there with this project, but each step should help me improve I hope.
Speaking of books, Wearing the Cape Book 7 is available for preorder! If you haven’t heard me go on about it before, Wearing the Cape is my favorite superhero novel series I’ve found, and that was even before Sydney and Co. made a guest appearance in Book 6.
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.
With Jesse Ventura.
Who, by the way, was embarrassed to have been calling himself ‘The Body’ with Schwarzenegger around…
My ex-mayor/ex-governor? Embarrassed? You must be thinking about another Jesse Ventura.
Nope. He did say that in an interview.
Fun fact. During the filming of Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, Bill Duke, Sonny Landham and Shane Black all got super competitive about exercising and trying to one up each other. It got to the point that they were all too worn out during actual filming and the director had to put a stop to it. Shane Black was also a scriptwriter and made script revisions on set when necessary.
What a wonderfully unapologeticaly manly old movie it is.
I enjoyed it. And likewise the sequel. I thought casting Danny Glover was inspired, and he totally owned the role. Whoever had the job of casting a replacement for Arnold Schwarzenegger and making that decision was inspired!
Deserving of a special casting Oscar, in my opinion.
Yes the sequel is often underrated.
I’m pretty sure that “P2” was also the 1st mention of an overlap of the “Predator”-franchise with H.Giger’s “Alien”, because Glover’s character finds a Xenomorph-skull trophy in the Predator’s ship.
I loved that scene. It really got a strong reaction from the audience in the cinema. A perfectly timed reveal.
Yeah, different jungle requires a different sort of hunter, neither would have worked if they swapped locations
Oh agreed. They were both in the correct roles for the settings and characters. Although they are both versatile if you just swapped them over it would not have worked. Danny would have been a fish out of water in a military action role. Whereas a cop out of his depth he did superbly.
Arnie can do cops fine. But he is too much the action hero to capture the vulnerability that Danny’s role required. He gets much closer to the capabilities that an average viewer might have, so you can get drawn in up close and personal. So people can relate to that role a lot easier than they can to Arnie’s performances.
Of course we all want to be action heroes, but not many of us would see ourselves as being realistically able to replicate the things he does. Whereas Danny’s ham-handed way of climbing a leaning drainpipe … that feels like the kind of way I might end up going if I survived feeling heroic.
And assuming I could get a pair of opposible thumbs, of course.
Yeah, was meaning the characters more than the actors :D
It is probably the source of our author’s love for miniguns.
See?
This clip is actually pretty bad. The YouTuber just looped the scene over and over again. But it gets the point across.
They really really wanted to kill that thing none of them could see!
Maxima must be pleased that there’s one WHO can annoy Dabbler as much as Dabbler annoys her :-)
Have you been paying attention on how much our resident ADD unit can annoy?
Yups, she is an equal-opportunity annoyer :D
More like an every opportunity annoyer.
Nice to have her back!
This may escalate into a trolling war quickly. I don’t envy catherder Maxima who have to keep back the chaos of this gang of weirdoes.
Kitten herder is one of the few skills I have been able to add to my CV (resume). Not sure if I am likely to be able to utilise that to get back into the rat race mind. But it is handy for literally clearing out rats, if nothing else.
You forget, Maxi is the Queen Weirdo (in a positive fashion) :)
Compared to Halo, Dabbler and Math sheis a paragon of unweirdness. Yes I like inventing new words.
Seriously? Ms Golden elf Herself? She is literally the second weirdest looking of the lot, plus, she acts all tough and Military and ‘normal’, butt she’s a giant supressed nerd!!
Just wait until you see the Vance suit rupture!
*makes sure Black Flag is ready*
Pom-poms, an essential in any utility belt!
Speaking of… where exactly was she hiding those?
Instant pom-poms. It’s already a well established power. Remember way back when she was aggravating Max in the parking lot outside the bank?
The power of the final orb. Pom-poms.
Or maybe it is just the ‘Anime Orb’. Granting toon powers, but only when it is funny.
Oh and it also radiates a ‘this is perfectly normal’ aura, so that folks do not query how she has gained these powers.
See also the speaking peppers that sting eyes, various chibbi effects (often affecting those around her too) and the ability to penetrate the 4th wall!
No wonder Sydney was unphased at Muppet Maxima. She has gotten so used to seeing this stuff that she considers it normal even when it is not the Anime Orb creating the effect!
That’s all folks.
[end credits roll]
[post credits cameo by wacko]
And remember to do your taxes early this year.
Yeah. I have no idea why I’m here either.
Company accounts already signed off and registered.
Household/council/personal taxes to follow within the week. They might have reached the dizzying heights of about $30, combined, for this year!
Don’t spend it all in one place, Yorpie.
The “perfectly normal aura” is so effective, it even works on Sydney herself!
Lol. Well chosen.
I didn’t recall that and wasn’t sure it really happened. So I looked back and sure enough. Kudos to Yngvar and anyone else who remembered that detail from more than six years ago.
I think it was Yorp recently commenting about Sydney’s adorableness power, so he should rally like her face where she says she is providing spirit.
Today at work I shall be providing my own sound effects, “math, math, math.”
I really need a way to either see how my post will appear with the tags in play before its posted or an edit post function to fix my screw ups.
I did I did, I loved it!
And said so at 7:34 am. Which would have been whilst you were still writing this comment. So nicely predicted.
I remembered the pom poms by the way. But had not yet drawn the dots to connect it to this, before reading the comment. Therefore I second acknowledging kudos to Yngvar!
Pop this website into your bookmarks:
https://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_links_w3schools
It provides a nice sandbox to allow you to do just that. Sadly it has lost some functionality, as WordPress updates have not kept fully in line. So many links that you might embed will not display. But for checking out formatting (bold, italic and html symbols) and how a link (converted into a word or sentence) will display, it does a good job still.
That looks handy. Thanks for the link!
*wags tail in satisfaction*
Agreed. Thanks!
“Yorpie-Snax” ™ furrr teh puppies!!!?!
(…cooing as I administer belly-scritches…)
“WHO-zum da bestis widdell fuzzum-poochums?? Izzums VU???!? YESSUMS-IZZUMS-YOU_ZUMMMS!”
*rolls on back, arching into the rubbing*
Snack loverey!
Thank you for your accolades to me, which I just saw. I should say that that was around the time that I first discovered Grrl Power, so naturally I remember it. I also reread it recently. There were some questions in the comments about where the pom-poms came from back then, too, with the superpower explanation being thrown around. :-)
I should clarify the ‘will not display’ part. You put your code on the left of the sandbox, hit the button, and on the right you get how it will appear here. Barring that emoticons vary between the two sites. You will also see links appear. However only the simple ones actually work, to allow you to click on them.
For those (basic Wikipedia pages for example) the right side of the screen will change to display that page, the same as it would if the same code is clicked on here.
Do not be alarmed if clicking does nothing though. It has never worked on YouTube. Plus, of late, more sites do not either. However if you copied it in correctly it should work. But there is no way of previewing that to be sure.
Some of that is doubtless due to constant attempts to defeat adblockers.
Simple way to defeat ad blocking, HOST THE AD ON YOUR SITE. Ad blocking is mostly about preventing “stuff” from coming in from a third party site and doing unknown whatever. I expect most of us have seen that “dare to click anywhere near this ad and we’ll instantly claim your computer has been destroyed by hacking and tell you not to reboot” mess that’s on Facebook constantly. In the stream, I might add. It’s utterly irresponsible to allow something like that to run. Had to reassure my wife just a few days ago that it was just a nasty web page they’d loaded that hadn’t done anything, my security holes are well plugged.
Nope, I have never seen anything like that. My security technique is far more secure. Don’t use Facebook.
I’ve found the ones with the most annoying adverts are the ones complaining the most about adblockers.
I remember back when adverts were just text links, I had no problem with them.
Then we had static images. Again, no problem.
Then the bad ones started.
Adverts that pretend to be something else (I have seen one on AccuWeather’s site a few years back that looked a bit like the controls at the top of Facebook or Twitter’s app)
Adverts with too much animation (flickering images, too much dancing about)
Then came flash and noisy adverts.
Adverts that pop out over the screen if your mouse dared to wander across them.
Auto play videos
Now the level of scripting on an advert has gone through the roof. When you load a page, the delay in it opening is not due to the page’s server. It is down to the Ad script that tracks you, compares your details and interests and sells that advertising space to people who want to pay more to advertise to you. It can double the amount of data required to load a page. Not so good when on a mobile with a capped data plan.
I set my adblock to white list. Companies that behave can show me adverts.
I have gotten fed up with the BBC news of late. They have let some idiot set their priorities for their video player. Presumably introducing features that may be useful on smartphones or the like, but whether that assumption is correct or not, it impacts badly on my experience there.
I am mainly interested in reading articles. Once I have done that, if an embedded video seems like it will add something to that, then I will click on it. However the Idiot Chief in Command has decided that is not good enough. As I scroll through the article it chooses to start playing the video.
Mildly distracting seeing moving images, whilst you are trying to read, but I could put up with that. Then they decided that was not irritating enough, so chose to turn on the audio. Which, if there is someone talking, renders it near impossible to carry on reading. Do they give you an option to turn that off though? No.
The twat’s purpose is to force you to run the video, as that is the only way to turn on the video controls, so that you can either mute it or pause the video. The process being that little bit more irritating in that having had to listen to the preview clip, when you activate the video it then decides to start again at the beginning, whilst you are trying to get the controls to pop up. Meaning that you have to sit through the drivel twice.
Problem solved? No not really. Because when you carry on reading, you know this WRITTEN article, and the video section of it passes above the top of your screen, it then decides to do this irritating pop up (or down I guess) which tells you that there is video up there.
Yes I know! All too effing well! I really don’t want half my screen blocked off by your advert for something you already forced me to look at once and listen to twice!
I have contacted the BBC and told them that, as the only way I have found to stop that is putting Add Blocker on its highest setting to completely block their video player, they will soon loose me as a video watching customer, unless they do something to stop it being so intrusive!
I agree. Nothing worse than going to a page that autoplays a video. Especially if you are browsing the news at work where I don’t particularly want to play audio.
I avoid a few sites who have auto play switched on by default.
Darn, I was gonna ask that! Strange minds think alike , I guess.
possible the same location most women in anime hide their Hyperspace Mallets
Sydney finally mastered hammerspace!
Maybe when she thinks about it she will realize the pom poms mean she’s had Hammerspace ALL ALONG!
Dun dun DUN!
Error… Error… WHAT IS SHE STANDING ON?
They’re no longer at the top of the destroyed/repaired bridge pylonr – they’re either at the midpoint at an abutment or at the bottom by the road, at the base of the pylon. So they’re either standing on an abutment or on the bridge itself.
As someone said, looks like they are on the cross-bar between the support pillars (whatever that cross-bar is called) because you can see the Spaace Gooo holding the wires in place in a couple panels
While I’m quite aware that the author indicated (commentary associated with #66 /archive #370) that Sydney’s “unofficial list of superpowers, besides super swearing and spice tolerance, are super hero baiting and summoning pom poms for comedic effect” –at least now she does have a utility belt and a compartment in it specifically devoted to “arts and crafts” (see #458 /archive #2260), which logically could include defluffed/stowed pom-poms. I’d say that so long as “summoning” pom-poms is an “unofficial” ability, it might be better to assume the utility belt is involved.
:-D
Comedy trumps logic. Sydney could do that in the nude.
Umm … potential vote incentive. Seeing as howDaveB has relaxed the violence threshold. Perhaps Sydney is starting to get confident enough with her own body that she might, well in private, have a practice session.
Practice shaking her pom-poms? o_O
Sydney does not feel confident with herself. We have seen her taking steps to overcoming that. So not needing to get dressed up like a mummy, the last time we saw her in the shower. But if she is to fully get over her terminal shyness she will need to get comfortable being naked. Or even if she just wants to wear a bikini she needs to get used to what that would feel like. So that when guys are around she does not trip over her own feet, in her awkwardness.
Average folks – totally not needed. Someone who has gotten to twenty something and still has nosebleeds at the thought of exposing a bit of flesh? Some extra work required.
Very good points (was more teasing you than questioning you :P)
Personally feel, with her body type and ‘size’, a one piece would be better than a bikini
She already knows what a bikini would feel like: like a bra and panties
Somebody wise has already weighed in on this point, over a week ago.
Sydney has a lovely body and should not feel the need to cover it up more than the other ladies in the unit! Obviously though personal tastes vary, so this is not to disrespect your opinion of what would suit her best. I just think she could pull it off well.
Err … in a manner of speaking that is.
Can get some very attractive and flattering one-pieces, which show off almost as much skin
Unfortunately, allowing Sydney to summon pom-poms at any time means, as someone else pointed out, she would be accessing hammerspace, and thus should be able to stow (and retrieve) other things besides the pom-poms. The author has made a pretty big deal about Sydney not being able to access hammerspace, and therefore I think that the first time, at the bank, could be allowed because of comedy, but any other appearance of pom-poms needs to be more rational (like stowed in a utility-belt pouch).
That said, there is still the last orb, and the canon discussion (#543 /archive #2564) of it being a way to store things (like criminals in a brig) –which means if it actually had that power, Sydney would have her hammerspace.
Aaah … umm … sorry hard to focus on what you are saying. I am still picturing the proposed vote incentive. I may not have the skill to draw it, but my mental imagery is vivid.
Here’s the two comics where the author basically ensures us that no matter how Sydney got hold of those pom-poms at the bank, she is not accessing hammerspace:
#164 /archive #1062
#195 /archive #1228
The pom-pom summoning superpower is back.
Nah, that’s just good old fashioned preparation.
Batman proves that with a utility belt, the two are the same thing.
“Ah yes, the old utility belt trick.”
~Maxwell Smart, kinda-sorta
Also, so much happy..
Thank you for making my day better.
(Once played a super and based his dialogue off Maxwell Smart. Happily, no one noticed for about five sessions. That line tipped my hand…)
OK the dude clearly has a portable hole in there. Some of those items were way too big for a belt of many things. So that means he must also have precognition, in order to know which items to put on top, for easy access.
It would kind of suck if your bat shark repellent was stuck underneath the bat butt plugs.
Yeah, suck worse if Dick had to get them out :P
Chief O’Hara “What happened?”
Batsie “Had to get Dick to remove the Bat Butt Plugs”
CO “… That reminds me, need to call me mother in Cork!”
Yeah that belt is his own version of hammer space.
It is the technobabble version of a Pouch of Many Pockets or a Heward’s Handy Haversack.
It’s bigger on the inside with the added functionality of having whatever you need right then at the top.
See, this is the Dabbler that is a real turn on. Succubi are a dime a dozen, but someone who can math on the fly? Very nice.
I don’t know how many problems I have because math is one of them.
Today she is all trigonomerated. Beautiful.
Also, did anyone notice that Syd is looking particularly attractive in panel 3? (Not saying that she is not attractive usually, but she doesn’t immediately strike one as transcendentally beautiful like the other supers… except in this particular panel.) Note high cheekbones and no goofy eyes or mannerisms (usually present) to throw off the cute-smart girl thing she has going on.
Probably because she’s looking more ‘normal’ than usual
Hmm…. I sense a disturbance in the force….. almost like, the prepping of the minigun with the bayonets attached. Soon I hope… soon the precious will get to feed….. soon.
The problem with firing a minigun blindly into the forest (despite how fun it is) is that somebody needs to have their chest exploded FIRST.
Fortunately, Mr. Amorphous probably could survive that.
Also, minigun bayonet attachments = adding a “Will it Blend” option to your ballistic carnage.
Mt Amorphous? Yea, he’d be back.
Well, if we can’t go to Mt. Amorphous, then Mt. Amorphous will have to come to us.
I believe you are mixing up Alien and Predator. The Predator took trophies and the Alien gestated in your insides.
In Predator, after Ventura chased after it, it exploded his chest, which resulted in the whole team shooting up the forest
Ventura certainly had time to bleed at that point, didn’t he?
So the last mystery orb has he ability to turn into Pom-poms
Doesn’t that violate the “rule” that Sydney needs only one hand to use an orb?
Panel two.
For a moment I thought Sydney was pointing a weapon at Dabbler.
No…it was Dabbler’s sleeve.
(Too early in the morning?)
to be fair, our brain isn’t used to people with four arms and one is clearly at her side.
I love how Scoville even though she’s the newest member of the squad not even a full member yet just a recruit is still able to just up and bark out orders and others. Even though she has no authority to do so.
Part of her getting away with it is, well… “they’re good orders, Bront.” Sydney is generally on the ball, and is basically prodding Dabbler to do something that she SHOULD HAVE ALREADY BEEN THINKING ABOUT. The other time she ‘barked orders’ their CO was being actively choked and her plan had a LOT of moving parts.
Another part is ARCHON in general is ‘Military’, but since they’re going to become THE place for Using Your Powers To Stop Crimes, they may be allowing for additional leeway on discipline within reason.
Personal versus Positional authority. Best summed up here.
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2009-04-15
Maxim 2! “A Sergeant in motion outranks a Lieutenant who doesn’t know what’s going on.”
there is also situational authority.
Maxim 3. An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.
no good officer in the field will think twice about following a “take cover!”. What Sydney was doing was more like a “you should really do your thing”. Also dabbler is a civi, so her place in the structure is not clear.
Those aren’t orders.
In the same way that not every suggestion Maxima makes is an order.
Would argue that she is a full member of the squad
Yeah, it’s really not “normal military” for raw recruits to be allowed on actual field missions. Of course, Sydney does have a few “standing orders” from Max in place already, such as Sydney’s shield should be her “first response,” for herself & any innocent by-standers.
Technically, she’s using one of her specific abilities: her expertise. She’s a comic book expert and good at generating ideas, thinking outside the box. It’s like when the corporal who keeps getting promoted and demoted but still knows more about demolitions than anyone else in the battalion tells the captain, “you should move your finger before you pop that lid.”
Well when she shouted math I did have a flashback to her using his 3 steps ahead advice to her
Thinking back to the page showing Sydney’s thought process, when combating Vehemence, it would not surprise me if that was not a strong factor in choosing that turn of phrase. Amongst others.
Is Dabbler still upset from that last time Sydney caused her to slam her face on Zephan’s desk???
Certainly it seems to be irritating her that she’s supposed to be the smart one, but Sydney keeps thinking of stuff she’s missed…
Dabs might be smart, but Sydney is genre-savvy.
To be fair, Dabbler spends a lot of time “thinking inside her box”…er…inside the box, while Sydney’s real talent is “thinking outside the box.”
I don’t think there are any boxes anywhere near Sydney except for the occasional comic long-box and game packaging.
Succubi have a hard time concentrating on more than one thing.
Ahh, typo. You clearly meant ‘any other thing’.
Dabs does think inside the box.
Thing is, her box contains GALAXIES.
He he.
Personally I see Sydney catching things the dabbler missed as being dabbler subconsciously discounts it because the easiest most obvious things tend to be the most likely are normally already counter measured against so averse thing and trying them is usually few towel in the 1st place. Not realizing that here on Earth a lot of those things have never been considered .
Maybe. Or it may just be a Stargate Command vs the Gould issue. Just like Dabbler did not think of attaching a spell to a rock, the latter did not think that propelling bits of lead, with volatile chemicals, would make an effective weapon.
Dabbler’s big advantage is also her disadvantage. She has a wealth of high tech, psionic, magical, racial and other advantages to draw upon, to solve any given problem. Any one of which would normally be way more effective at whatever task it was designed for, than an improvised solution. Plus Dabbler has so many of these things that she should have an option for just about any situation.
Reviewing all of those and picking the optimal one must take some time, even for a super genius.
Allowing Sydney to get to the simple alternative before Dabbler hits on some super dooper augmented solution.
Dabbler is intelligent.
Sydney is wise. :)
Sydney smashed her face into a tree.
Yeah, wisdom? Not so much but Sydney does have a whole lot of charisma.
Oh gods it all makes sense now – Sydney is the BARD with max ranks combined with multiple synergies in creative vocal diatribes.
Ha, Sydney as a bard cracks me up – and has some accurate points as well.
I don’t see her mastering bardic invisibility any time soon though.
As long as Sydney is NOT tied to a tree with a gag over her mouth to keep her from singing!!!
(hint! hint!)
He shouldn’t flash a girl like that!
When did Cacofonix ever flash anyone? o_O
No idea who that is, but the bard was running around in the nude. Right in front of that elf girl in the red robe!
Was it ever determined V’s gender? It had been a running joke for years leaving it ambiguous, even when introduced to V’s partner and their child
I have a bit of catching up to do, for the latest episodes, so I don’t know. I doubt it though. I was just running with the gag.
Yeah, have about 10 years or so of catching up :(
Was more of just a general audience question :)
V and his Spouse and Children are still genderless as far as we know. But there are some surprising things with Durkon going on right now. And Belkar
Yeah, saw that bit with Durkon playing ‘host’ to a cleric of Hel
Oh, Asterix. That is about the usual length of time for my brain to choose to supply a name that I have not heard for years.
*ears droop, shoulders sag*
At least didn’t go with his seriously inappropriate German name: Troubadix :P
I wasn’t sure which bard he meant either until Cacofonix was mentioned by name – had totally forgotten he was in that show!
Much of it is on YouTube now – I send a link to the 12 tasks whenever someone has to go to a government building for permits. :D
There are varying degrees of wisdom, Reltzik!
I think conventions from a game where Wizards way too often isn’t wise …. shouldn’t be used.
xP
I was just trying to be all deep and nerdy. I don’t actually play DnD. Was basing it more on RPG video games :)
*places paws on Pander’s shoulders*
You are so brave, struggling through life, handicapped like that.
*sniff*
So sad. But keep hope alive. You may yet get enlightenment!
Panel three: Sydney’s eyes are more canted than usual, giving her an Asian look. Not necessarily a bad thing, just not her usual look.
I noticed that as well
It’s not just the curve, her Iris’s take up almost the entire area giving her a no Pupils ook you see used for hypnosis.
I di not notice until Dave said something but I do agree with him it’s the only panel that looks off.
Actually, I was thinking that it made her look more like the other women. She looks much more attractive there, and since “all superheroes look sexy” I was thinking maybe the orbs were trying to help her fit in…
I think it is literally the most beautiful version of Sydney yet.
Interesting how tastes vary. Especially so given how diametrically opposed the views are on that panel. Whilst I don’t hate it, I do consider it very unflattering. So it is fascinating that you (and others) love it.
Okay seriously, Harem-larity is now my new favorite word.
is it even possible to gather a goup of supers WITHOUT it being disfunctional? or is it just a women thing?
I think it might affect all gatherings of super heroes, take the Avengers assemble movie, it’s a wonder they could hear themselves think what with all the chest beating and clashing of egos
And that was just from Black Widow :P
It would seam that super powers, or super genius (to build super suits) seams to come with ood personality querks.
“Hulk good at smashing egos.”
“I hit him with a rock. It was a big rock.” – Killer Croc
I thought that was just puny gods
speaking of smashing things
In one of the early story arcs in The Ultimates, Captain America temporarily drops the Incredible Hulk by landing a tank on him, beating him with his shield, then finishing with a solid kick to the groin that appears quite effective.
In a later issue, Cap’s World War II sidekick Bucky comments on how funny he found it when he saw Cap ‘kicking the Hulk in the stones’.
He did it again to nerd hulk in Ultimate Avengers.
He also did it to Valkyrie (Barbara Norris) in New Ultimates, after previously effortlessly blocking her punch. The Groin Attack’s impact is powerful enough to bring her briefly kneel before him.
Yeah, a groin kick is effective against both genders, not just males
“He also did it to Valkyrie (Barbara Norris) in New Ultimates, after previously effortlessly blocking her punch. The Groin Attack’s impact is powerful enough to bring her briefly kneel before him.”
To be fair, Barbara Norris is no Brunhilde (at least in Ultimates) – she’s basically a ditzy 19 year old who calls her sword her ‘pointy stick.’ Not exactly the pinnacle of hand-to-hand fighting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTeEVbiAIiY
Also this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj6yMYaQPrw
Pretty shiny scepter
Now we know where Desu gets all his replicas.
“Replicas”? Mmm mmmm mmmmmm.
Did those posters deliberately turn the sound waayyy down before posting it on UBoob? o_O
Could barely hear a damn thing said, and when you turn the volume up, other sounds on your computer get REALLY LOUD!!
I have heard way lower than that on YouTube. That was fairly low, but still clear enough to make it all out clearly, on my set up.
Yeah, butt not pleasant forcing one to raise the volume when you have another game going in the background that makes a trumpeting sound!
I do have a fun game, called Shooty Skies. Its single worst point though is that it only has ‘on/off’ for its audio options. And it is set way too loud, by default. So I have to drop my master sound down to 25% of its normal (maximum) setting, just to play it.
And every time I have to do that (and then remember to correct it afterwards) makes me that much less inclined to play the game again. Which is a shame as it is quite enjoyable. Ideal if you want a few minutes of mindless arcade fun, as a change of pace, from whatever else you might be doing.
Plus it does interesting things like vary the game (somewhat) depending on which (of the very many) characters you play. And has daily challenges, which I have only just started to have a poke at. Each of which gives you something very different to aim for, thus extending the shelf life of the game.
All at risk of being cut off because of that one flaw interfering with the other stuff I do. And messing with the concept of having a quick break to do something else. Because every time I have to open the sound control (or worse forgetting and getting my ears blasted and scaring my kitties) it is getting in the way of me having fun!
Tamer kinda irritated me, mainly how the dinosaurs act like video game mobs and not actual animals. I know (now) it’s based on a game, but when I read a scene where raptors were willing to lose 2/3 of their pack just to kill a larger dino for lunch, I quit. There’s a reason predators tend to focus on weakened prey – healthy animals are dangerous. Given how dinos behave in that book, it’s a small wonder any predators are alive. It’s more a zombie book than a dino one.
Cheeky spirited Sydney is cute.
Angry Dabbler is scary.
I wonder what class in finishing school would’ve helped with this, had she not dropped out. Self Restraint 101 probably focuses on something entirely different at her school.
Even ‘finishing school’ may have a very different meaning in succubus society!
Happy ending school?
i waited so long for the instant pom-pom to come back. this is a glorious day.
:-D
Dave sure believes in ‘less is more’. Too often and it would wear thin. But this worked beautifully well.
I had to give up on the Star Justice series at Binary Pair, just too much overdrawn angsting about returning any of the multiple females interest in him yet testosterone driven decision-making on the MCs part ‘Sure, we could scout with drones, but I am a heavily armed tiger-man, so Rawr!’
Really grooving on his Tamer series, though, and now have my hopes up on DaveB doing cover art for the series!
Nice vote incentive DaveB.
If I had known you were looking for a book cover to draw, I would have asked you to do the cover of my war/terrorism-reducing social engineering proposal!
:-D
Actually, I thought that Sydney in the third panel resembled Agatha Heterodyne (or at least a younger sister of Agatha).
Thats a scarry thought. Then again, Sydney and Agatha going on an adventure together is a scary thought as well.
Just think of the synergies between their teams of friends and associates.
Actually Math would have a great sparring partner and drinking buddy in the Amazon princess.
I would absolutely read/watch that crossover. Don’t follow Agatha & co anymore because nothing new has happened in years, but the characters would get up to some amazing hijinks in a mixed universe!
It has never fallen out of my ‘must read asap’ list. Not quite following the ‘nothing new’ angle though. Given that there is new stuff all the time.
Would love a crossover. Or even some more of Sydney doing Agatha cosplay.
New pages frequently, but I was paring back my reading list a couple years ago and when I got to Girl Genius I realized I wasn’t really anticipating new pages or even enjoying them much anymore. For me it felt like most of the world and character exploration had been done, and the story arcs were just being recycled. Pulled it up a couple months ago and read a few dozen of the latest pages; didn’t see anything to pull me back in.
Still a great series and I understand why people like it, but I have come to terms with the fact that my reading list will always grow faster than I have time to consume it, so I have learned to drop stuff that falls too far from the top. …stupid full-time job and grown-up responsibilities.
Mmm. Glad nothing nasty like that has happened to me.
That’s the great thing with the web comic landscape now: so many to choose from, and with the whole online-archive system most have set up, can binge-dive after a couple months (or longer) so you can drop a few and pick them up again later, not so easy with the few olde-paper physical comics left
Just as well you do not have to go to a tree museum to find them. Yet.
“Nothing new”? They finally reached what remains of England
Yea and the whole Paris arc had a lot of interesting content in it. I loved the Castle trying to take over Paris, and the robot body professor opposing them. And there were interesting political developments with the return of the Storm King and the climactic showdown.
Although I appreciate that ‘political machinations’ could be written off as being par for the course. However I don’t think that the marriage of convenience, and all the comedy around that, paralleled any prior plot. Just as one example.
Plus we have been gradually getting other plot arcs developing. Such as hints on the time travel, who the Other is, finding out that the Queen of England knows more about the green haired girl’s country of origin, so opening up the possibility of her finding her way home. And having Gil’s loyal pirate turning on him was a real surprise development, handled in a superbly comedic way!
‘robot body professor’, you mean the Master of Paris
We have known who the Other is for years. Dupree ‘turned’ on Gil in an effort to save him from his father, who was doing an ‘Other’ to Gil, so hopefully, in an effort to save one, they will be able to save both
Totally knew Queenie would manipulate Agatha in staying, butt would _really_ like to see her try and stop Agatha when she remembers she has an entire town depending on her
We can guess, but we cannot say for sure. And the comic does pull twists, so that is an interesting thing to see how it eventually plays out.
Actually, given the context I believe they’re referring to Beausoliel, AKA “How many ways can you die right this minute?”
Just a thought…
With all the flying and the ledge supporting that Sydney has done won’t those two orbs be due for a level up soon™?
Also for those saying she has fixed limits for weight carried and speed etc, those may be artificially restricted by her current level, her maximums (limits not assets – pay attention Dabbler) could be a lot higher than she can currently reach.
The orbs don’t level up based on individual use. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to choose which orb she leveled. (Because leveling up your armor swords skill when you haven’t been using swords to gain that experience makes no sense at all!)
She’s leveled exactly twice — once when she shielded the press conference from being nuked by Max, and once from coming within a hair’s breadth of death and getting checkpointed out. I think it’s tied to either exposure to massively powerful magic/superpowers.
Could also be total cumlative experience of the user. In most games that focuse on just user level, you can put points in anything when you level up, even into skills you rarely use. When Syd leveled, she wasn’t restricted to which sphers she could level, she had the option to level any of them.
For some reason my head canon was that Sydney firing the PPO at (then) highest power had been a key part of her leveling, but on re-reading I see that the orbs didn’t go into upgrade mode until just after she let go of the shield after Max’s demo at the press conference. She had released them after her own demo, so it must have been tied to the shield usage.
I too am thinking it’s a cumulative XP rather than per-orb, especially since she gets to select an orb to upgrade. I am wondering more now though what counts most towards XP – e.g. what was the biggest factor in putting her over the threshold for the first upgrade, the size of the shield, the number of people in it, or the size of the blast she blocked? Some combination of the 3?
And is it Sydney’s XP, or the cumulative XP of the orbs? They already had quite a few points assigned the first time Sydney ever saw the skill tree – were these selected by a previous user, or did she just experiment to fill out the default loadout and enable user customization?
…… huh.
….. you know, zooming in on that mathy stuff actually tells me a lot about the setting’s history.
A lot of those symbols are OUR math. Dabbler’s using Arabic numerals, Greek letters, and standard arithmetic operators, including superscript for powers.
… and also she squared pi. … for some reason. …. twice. …. magic is WEIRD.
But she’s ALSO using symbols that our mathematicians don’t use. That three-petaled rose curve. The eye symbol over four dots. The plus sign with four dots.
Math — at least its symbology — is a lot like a language. It evolves. Just like the English of today isn’t the English of Beowulf or Shakespeare, the math (symbols) of today is not like the math of Fibonacci or Euclid. Yet in the past couple of centuries its evolution has ground to a halt, because the increasingly precise definitions of symbols and their worldwide adoption leave very little room for someone to say “hey, let’s change this” and have anyone go along with it. New stuff gets added as new concepts are explored and summarized in symbols, but the old established stuff stays fixed.
Which makes the fact that Dabbler’s using OUR notations for arithmetic and alien (or at least arcane) notations in the same formulae very, very interesting. I mean, I know she knows hundreds of languages but she likes to lapse into her own tongue when concentrating or surprised so you’d think she’d do the same when working math under a time crunch. Especially since she knows Sydney and most others watching can’t read it anyway. So that suggests that this isn’t just her trying to accommodate us. That’s how mages and/or aliens do magic math.
Which means that they’re using our numerals for 2 and 3. EUROPEAN numerals for 2 and 3, which are derived from Arabic and Indian numerals but look very different. And numbers are some of the most primitive operators in mathematics! You don’t CHANGE those once you get them nailed down solid! Same with arithmetic notation.
Which says to me that whoever developed this math system doesn’t predate us, This isn’t the product of an order of ancient Egyptian mages who developed all of this thousands of years ago, or of a galactic community that was technologically advanced while we were still thinking in geocentric terms. THEY BASED THEIR MATH ON OURS. Specifically on a notation that developed in Europe and didn’t really solidify in the form we’re seeing here until, oh, around the 17th or 18th century. So whoever made this math system must have cribbed it from us, probably because they didn’t have their own, and then either shot ahead very suddenly without publishing (suggesting some sort of hidden community of math supergeniuses), or developed it in parallel with us (suggesting that they were learning math at about the same rate that we were) WHILE being based out of Europe, perhaps with the new symbols suggesting divergence into applications (like magic) that have no real-world analogue. But it’s not a worldwide community of mages, because the shots we have of the Sigils DON’T use those symbols, and that’s pretty much worldwide-community-of-mages landmark accomplishment right there.
I can think of a few other explanationsm but they don’t really hold up. Maybe some alien contact taught the Council and its member groups advanced math, and centuries later some natavist movement made a pointed effort to rewrite the math they’d learned and incorporate Earth symbols… but why would Dabbler be using their silly version? Maybe they influenced the development of our math… but why so slowly, over centuries, in such an organic process spreading out from a variety of point sources?
But if there’s one thing I do know, it’s NOT because DaveB through together a bunch of mathy-looking stuff at random and I’m way overthinking it!
It might be mix-mashed because, on a fundamental level, “math” is the same everywhere in the universe.
It’s just that some parts of a species’s math systems are more effective than ours, but some parts of our system are more effective as well.
Okay, I can see that in theory, but….
… you’d think they’d keep the foundations of their math systems — things like numbers and arithmetic operators. The concept of “talking” is universal to humanity, and yet every language has different words for it and those words are among the most resistant to change simply because the act is so basic.
…. also, I have a hard time imagining that they incorporated a rose curve as one of their symbols, and yet needed to borrow our symbol for the perimeter constant because we do circle-stuff better than someone who made symbols out of polar coordinate functions.
Or Dabbler could be using standard Earth-math symbols where they’re applicable, but use other, more alien, math symbols for doing math that Earthers just haven’t thought of yet.
Or the assumption that earth symbology predates whatever she is using is backwards and earths modern mathematical symbology was influenced by “Demons” early on since that civilization had the capability of visiting us. Also cuneiform and roman numerals suck for anything outside of addition or subtraction. That plus the radical concept of zero as a place holder.
Sure, I could buy that, and it would especially fit into the Catholic Church outlawing Arabic numerals for a bit there (kinda), but the actual historical pattern of deployment is all wrong for us to have been influenced by another civilization. We’d need that influence to either happen ONLY in India sometime around the 5th century and then spread out organically from there — note that the symbols are different in India — OR we’d need parallel influence slowly creeping in where the system expanded to. The best explanation I could come up with from that angle is a big “oops, prime directive violation, we let the primitives get a look at our math”, but even that doesn’t explain why Dabbler’s using Latin script rather than Devanagari.
… okay, MAYBE it’s part of a huge “hey I’m learning the language” effort from Dabbler. I guess I could buy that explanation.
“and also she squared pi. … for some reason.”
It’s because of the rule “Pie are square”. I think I heard that in math class once.
As for the other three leaf symbol, in Earth math we use the sign ∞ for infinity. Dabbler uses a 3 lobed sign because her math goes “to infinity, and beyond”.
So much love here…
Thank you for making my day so much better…
Cake are square, pie are round.
I’m just giving you a +1 for this because it’s so damned witty.
Mmmm, frosting.
Maybe the 3-lobed leaf symbol is a 2-D version of the infinity sign, and the extra lobe indicates an infinite plane instead of a line. If so, the 3-D version would either be a 4-leaf clover or require a lobe extending out of the board… I suspect that Arcanum++ may require 3-dimensional notation. And look like balloon animals.
….. maybe?
The use of the lemniscate to represent Infinity dates to John Wallis in the 17th century. Why Wallis adopted it for infinity is unknown, but it’s speculated to be either a variation of a roman numeral representation of 1000 (which colloquially meant “many”) or the greek letter omega. I tend to see it as the snake devouring its own tail. But no, we don’t really know where it came from.
That said… that’s a WEIRD PLACE for an infinity symbol in that expression.
Perhaps the ‘γ’ on either side of it is some sort of operator rather than a variable…? I agree it’s out of place for human physics, but magical notation must do surely some things we wouldn’t expect. After all, any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science*, so there has to be some give and take.
Pretty sure Dave B just threw some symbols into equation-y arrangements, but it is fun to speculate and he does pick some interesting details to delve into sometimes.
* Yorp, the irony of me quoting this immediately after saying (on the same page no less) that I don’t read it any more is not lost on me. :) It’s just such a great line! Though I do note it is from 2008…
Those y-things are the lower case Greek letter gamma. They mostly get used as variables, but I think there’s a constant or two they represent.
…. and I see that you used a gamma symbol in there and so already knew that.
That said, that part of the expression is gamma-rose-gamma, which would make the supposed-gamma-operator unary in both a pre- and post-position. Which…. would be really really weird. It’d be a lot easier to buy that the rose curve symbol is an operator.
Typically gamma is typically density (specific weight) in my field, but it varies widely by field. I didn’t see any great matches, but perhaps gyromagnetic ratio, which has units of radians per second per tesla, would be appropriate for tracking someone with magical energy wings… Maybe Leon would know…
Krona might actually have a pretty good handle on what Dabbler is doing here, but her math looks much more traditional. Maybe this is notation Dabs came up with herself even?
Greek letters often get used as variables angles. Since Dabbler’s trying to track someone’s trajectory, it’d make sense to be using geometry in there, and those could be prime symbols next to the gammas signifying derivatives. I could buy that, with or without the wings. Maybe the rose curve is some sort of (non)linear transform? Two instances of a variable, one inverted, flanking a variable/operator feels very linear-algebra to me.
Some of those may even be French letters.
That comment must have tickled you to post :P
That would be a safe bet.
At least you’re frank about it.
Ahh, but that is the Lemniscate of Dabbler. It has subtle properties which she will likely have picked up travelling via Alpha Centauri. Its use would be shorthand for half a dozen other equations from different branches of mathematics, other than just the human analogue for infinity.
Pfffffft! So much silly! I love it!
Or it would be too hard to create symbols and numerals from scratch.
Panel Sydney looks ‘weird’ because she looks almost ‘normal’ (as opposed to her usual Anime self), and the eyes look more ‘Asian’
I agree with the Asian eyes.
Plus the top half of her face seems disproportionately large to the bottom. Or, to put it another way, her mouth and jaw seem to be too small.
I suspect that this is heavily affected by the glasses being so big. Oddly they are the same size lower down, in the pom pom frame, yet do not convey that effect. So I think it is because of them having been straight on to the ‘camera’. Making everything seem a bit too flat.
Although I am probably not capturing the issues as well as other artists might. But I too found that panel to be unstintingly odd on my first read-through. So wanted to try and figure out what was causing it.
Her glasses are usually ‘too big’ (look at panel six), agree with you about the two halves of her head though: her chin isn’t normally that pointed and her mouth is smaller than usual
It’s not the glasses, it’s her eyes themselves: they are ‘flattened’ at the bottom and her pupils are half covered by the upper lid
Also, Dave needs to wrap up the current storyline quickly. Sydney has six more updates to get to a theater..
He he he.
Nice chronology tie in.
I had completely forgotten this! It would be funny if Dave did a flash-forward page just for the premier; catching up to the present in time for continuity would be about one year per panel. Might feel just a wee bit rushed.
…And a pony reference by Dave.
^_^
Is DaveB a bronie? :-O
Dun dun dun!
Or is he just channelling General Faulk and Sydney?
Are you trying out a new technique? A couple of the panels have a definite Phil Foglio feel to them. :)
What is this Vote Incentive, exactly?
Depending on how you are accessing the comic (PC or smartphone) and what screen resolution you have, you will find the relevant panel either to the right side of your screen, or way down the bottom, after the comments.
It is headed up “Vote Incentive” and has a photo to the right, giving you a sneak peak. Clicking either on the link or the photo will take you to the Top Web Comics voting screen. Here you have to prove you are not a bot by picking the image that matches the name given. Once you do that your vote is registered and added to the total.
The TWC website is frequented by a lot of people who have a passion for web comics, and like to vote for their favourites out of the thousands submitted to the website. You will find Grrl Power consistently in the top ten. Usually in the top three, and often in the top position, as it has done for the past month.
The most dedicated readers will pop in each day to vote. Plus those who can access the web from more than one location (such as from work or from home) are entitled to vote from each such location.
Basically the more rabid a fan you are the more your voting counts. ;-)
This is a nice way of thanking the artist/author for all his hard work. Plus it advertises the comic in the wider web comic community. Plus there are a couple of other voting sites on that same side bar, to spread the word further.
The more people who get to see how popular the comic is, the more folks who will check it out. Thus enlarging our community. And the bigger the population coming back regularly the more likely we are to find patrons, who have the means and the inclination to financially support the creator of it. He earns his living just producing this comic for us, making such patronage absolutely vital!
So please help spread the word.
It’s how I found Grrl Power, after I found Dreamland Chronicles, after I found Two Lumps…
If you are talking about this particular month’s image mind, that is all explained in the author’s blog above. It is customary for vote incentives to be freely downloadable, for personal use as wallpapers.
Obviously the copyright remains with the artist, with all other rights reserved.
Uh, are they still flying near the top of the bridge? Because the broken top of the bridge is in the background, but Sydney’s not holding onto her flyball, and Dabbler’s just writing random stuff without Sydney holding her up with her lighthook like in the previous panels.
The bridge has a crossbeam just below the tip of the tower. Stretch Armstrong is standing on it in the previous strip. I’m guessing in this strip Sydney and Dabbler are on it. Interesting that Sydney’s acrophobia isn’t kicking in being that high on a narrow strip. Maybe she can ignore it if she is distracted.
She’s had some practice letting go of the flyball on accident, when she was doing flight training/testing with Max. Can’t find the exact page, but Max let her just fall until she remembered to summon it back so the lesson would have more… {puts on sunglasses} …impact.
Heck, it would take one humongous spider to make a web that big! No wonder she has … arachnophobia.
{facepalms and offers up a Yorpie Snax}
*snarf snarf, yum yum, gobble gobble … bbbbuuuurrrrrp*
You know, they should seriously consider Sydney for command training at some point.
No, I’m *serious*. She is consistently able to keep a cool head in crisis situations and come up with sensible things to be doing or not doing during an emergency. For all her comedy routine, she just kicked Dabbler into motion finding Sciona maybe minutes earlier than otherwise would have happened. That could end up being the difference between catching Sciona and another escape.
And Sydney does stuff like that all the time. She has good ideas, figures out who can execute them, and then has them do it. That’s the kind of talent you can’t train for.
I would agree that does show command potential. First they have to finish her cadet training. Then when the timeing is right perhaps try her out incharge of a small squad mission (3 people). She has also demonstrated a hidden level of responcibility under all that wakyness.
Yeah, even Officer School Candidates have to get through Basic Training before they can attend the Officer School. But Sydney is definitely earning brownie points to get on a fast-track into the school, as in “top of the list” with as little waiting as possible, once she’s done with the “recruit stuff.”
It does help that she already commanded the first super battle ever captured on live TV (once Maxima had become incapacitated). Both saving her C.O.’s life and achieving a decisive victory.
Not to mention figuring out how to beat a foe who automatically defeats anyone who attacks him, and coordinating the testing of her theory and the practical implementation of the solution.
All only possible to having the survival instincts necessary to survive a super-powered assassination attempt right at the outset!
I think Sydney would actually be pretty good at planning stuff, and we’ve seen her think well under pressure, but I don’t know that I’d put her brand of ADD in charge of a squadron/mission all by herself. Maybe if it was protocol to keep her meds in her utility belt and verify she’s taken them before heading out on a mission.
Remember the start of the comic? What is that rank Maxi addresses her by?
You mean Corporal?
I know that one, it’s recruit, not cadet. If they can get her to live with military discipline, then they’ll talk switching her from the NCO track to the CO track.
Anvil corrected her during the press-conference (and Daphne was horrified at the thought of Sydney as an officer), and said she had to make it to NCO first (and that was when Sydney said she didn’t do military because thought it was a place)
Absolutely not. commanders with brilliant ideas kill troops often enough when the ideas are good, and they often are not. Corporal is as high as she should go. [A sergeant has to babysit “brilliant” officers, not add to the danger.] Now she should be attached to some senior officer [as she is] who can evaluate her “brilliant” ideas, where she could be highly useful. But anyone under her command should buy all the life insurance they can get.
Well argued.
But that said there will be times when Archon are stretched and have to operate in multiple places at once. And there are only so many competent officers, in their command. They could more easily spare a competent NCO to advise her.
The key difference being in the interaction with other branches of the military or civilian bureaucrats/politicians. If Sydney urgently needs to have an airstrike on a civilian building, or have the power turned off in a city block or get Vehemence released to instantly Ka-Pants a vital part, she would have a lot easier time doing that with Captain’s insignia on her uniform, than by asking Anvil to convince them.
Whereas if one of those plans was too oddball, or did not have sufficient safeguards in it, Anvil would have the common sense to fix it or the gumption to get Sydney to drop the idea.
Most importantly there are bound to be times when Sydney’s quirky genius can see a solution that nobody else can. If the world is on the brink of being snuffed out, and she is the only person who has figured out a way to avert that, you do not want anything slowing down her fix. By the time she has explained the solution, it may already be too late to implement it!
That’s the thing: Sydney isn’t the one with brilliant ideas, she just knows who does and prods (or probes, in Dabbles’ case :P) them into action
Not at all. Sydney figured out what For Whom the Death Toils’s power. Likewise it was her who worked out how to take down Vehemence. Neither of those involved anybody else in the thought process at all!
Likewise the ‘cast the tracking spell on a rock and throw it through’ was Sydney’s idea. The fact that she does not know how to cast the spell herself is no different to the fact that she does not have hypnoboobs.
The ideas are coming from Sydney, and she is delegating the implementation of them to those who have the appropriate capabilities to put them into practice. In this case that capability is advanced mathematics and intelligence analysis.
Halo is having solid tactical ideas and is delegating putting them into practice to appropriate individuals. Not only that but she is doing so fast. Which if trying to catch a teleporter is both a brilliant idea and is showing good leadership skills in delegating the task to the person best suited to implementing it.
Note that a lesser individual might have just called up the map, on the Pip Boy, looked at Sciona’s course history, plotted a line and checked if it intercepted any known point of interest. However Sydney did not waste the time doing that as an untrained amateur.
Nor did she pass it to Maxima to turn the seed idea into a practical solution. Maxima would have better capabilities than Sydney in both plotting a course and analysing the intelligence available. Sydney recognised her own limitations, saw that Maxima would only be able to make an educated guess, thus would need to delegate the task, so moved straight on to the optimal solution.
No, those were Sydney with smart ideas, which is not the same thing as ‘brilliant’ ideas: most ‘brilliant’ ideas are ideas to save money or resources and implemented by idiots who view soldiers’ lives as simply ‘numbers’ on a page
I would view the two terms as being synonymous. Either could be used in a sarcastic manner, for example. I was just taking the assessment of Sydney’s capabilities as being the straight forward meaning. Given the fact that she is not a bean counter and has shown herself to be very concerned with the welfare and lives of her team mates.
Sydney demonstrated that unequivocally, when she was willing to risk her own life, trapping herself in the shield with Vehemence, in order to stop the rest of the team from blindly fighting (even amongst themselves).
So whilst you are right that you do not want to have an officer who only looks at their soldiers as being disposable assets on a balance sheet, there is nothing to link Sydney to that type of person.
Minigun into the woods Unloading boxes of ammo….Sexy, i mean that sounds fun…
if Dabbs wasn’t so focused she would have made a comment about seeing Sydney in a Cheerleader outfit in the near future.
Sydney needs to be a little more careful about how close she can bring Dabbler to the boiling point before she blows up. With humans there is the ‘I’m giving you to the count of 10’ before they retaliate, because that’s how many fingers we have. With Dabbler, Sydney could only have to 8 if she uses just the first pair. Or it may be up to 16 if she uses both pairs. We need to know the standard demon custom for this, because math.
Except Dabbler’s version of blows probably has the word ‘molest’ in the description.
‘blows up’ Da** lack of an edit button.
And let us not forget that she is a demon. If she looses it she may REALLY lose it!
Sucubbus have evolved into a Dominatrix. Further evolutions get realy interesting.
Succubus + tentacles = ?
I believe that’s Demonatrix. :-D
Were they a character in “Asterix” o_O
In the adult series.
Thanks for the heads up on Wearing the cape book 7. Book 6 was what actually brought me to the webcomic. I liked the characters in the cross over enough to hunt your stuff down.
Release pushed back to 4/20 or so.
Chapters 1 – 6 at the author’s blogsite.
Apparently, the utility belt has pompoms for just such an occasion.
Now I want to see Batman pull pompoms out of his utility belt.
Not holding my breath over it though…
Breathe again. He keeps a whole cheerleader in there.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SggmBp2zvCU/hqdefault.jpg
OK now I want a utility belt like that.
“It beats firing wildly into the forest with a mini-gun…”
“Does it? That sounds super fun.”
Ah, I fondly recall Herzog Akitrom the Merely Worried’s Fireball Fun in the Forest for visiting mages…
Too bad about the druids, though.
Nice trollface in panel six.
Which one?
This one? Or this one?
Nah, that’s Sydney’s ‘terrified’ face
Look at that wide mocking smile. Very trollish.
No, that’s her being terrified of Dabbles’ face and trying to be friendly slash harmless slash ‘pleasedon’tkillme,we’refriends’
I agree that terror can have the wide open eyes. However that is shared with surprise. Seeing a fierce face could evoke either terror or surprise. However terror does not usually have a cute smile! So I think ro jaws is calling it right here.
Sydney is surprised, and leaning back from Dabbler. But she knows that Dabbler is just ticked off, but not dangerous. So is not scared or terrified. Importantly humour is Sydney’s go to place to keep her confidence. She is smiling because she knows she has pushed Dabbler’s buttons.
It is not easy to get a rise from a hundred plus year old demon who is not just world-wise but galaxy-wise. So her smugness is justified.
Now as to whether Sydney was trolling or genuinely trying to encourage Dabbler, that is another matter. I would be inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, that she was getting caught up in the moment, and genuinely trying to encourage Dabbler, out of team spirit.
Making the button pushing a pleasing side-effect. The surprised eyes would fit in nicely with that too.
‘Cute’ is in the eyes of the beholder, and terrified Sydney is trying to make the Big Scary Demon less scary, like in either a cartoon or animated movie* when a bunny was confronted by a big bad predator and made the Giant Eyes face in an attempt to get the BBP to not eat them (*can’t remember what it was, can just remember the bunny), to a lesser degree you had that Mort the Bushbaby from the Madagascar movies, butt considering bushbaby’s have the giant eyes to start with, it’s not as much of a ‘thing’ (specially seeing how most predators wanted to eat Mort anyway :P)
Dabbler obviously don’t want to be seen as the Big Scary Demon. On the contrary she want to be the fun silly friend. So she makes a effort to not be too scary. Sydney is smart enough to understand this.
*nods*
Dabbler would not want to scare Sydney into falling off the girder or whatever they are standing on (even if that is the deck of the bridge). She is smart enough not to misjudge that.
And, on Sydney’s behalf I must say that she would not be scared by Dabbler. She is made of sterner stuff than that. Even in a suitably dark and moody setting, Sydney was not phased by a vampire. Plus when she was first surprised by seeing the purple ‘monster’ her reaction was not to scream or run away. Rather she attacked Dabbler with a chair!
Equally something that Dabbler does not want to provoke here.
And the smile confirms that.
And Dabbler was the first non-human sophant she saw – ever since then she’s been fearless with or without her shield active. She not only didn’t cower from Ingsol and Mr Fluffy, but actively goaded them, and the vault guardiant and Sciona didn’t elicit more than a snarky comment and a quick summoning of her shield.
Still not quite sure if she’s that brave and quick on her feet, or just lacks a fully-developed sense of self-preservation.
Oh Sydney’s self-preservation instincts are spot on. She did not hesitate a second when Shadow Boxer tried to back-stab her!
Where she took her single greatest risk was trapping herself in with Vehemence, in order to break his aggro aura on everybody else, using the shield. Now that was a calculated risk mind. Halo had figured that she had enough of a rapport with Vehemence that he would not try to kill her.
Yet we saw that this this took real courage, rather than fear being alien to her. As she backed up nervously until she bumped into the shield wall.
Plus the mere thought that Vance might not be kidding, about being a spider colony in a Vance suit, had her scooting as far away as she could from him. A very sound precaution. Yes he may just be the (human) new guy teasing the new team member.
However he may be getting his kicks by telling her the truth, and silently laughing at Harem for thinking he was not.
So Sydney’s survival instincts were working overtime. If he was lying, then there is no harm, other than to her dignity. Whereas if he was speaking the truth, then keeping a safe distance from a (probably) deadly spider colony is very wise.
Spiders are out and out predators. Their world-view will be very different to that of humans. So, even though he is able to pass for human, an astute person will not assume that Vance’s instincts, social morals or appetite will make him safe to be around.
Sydney’s 2 spells: 1) summon pom-poms. 2) make everyone forget they’re illogical. Nifty magic, someday it will trip a magic detector and everyone will scratch their head over what happened (surely they’ll blame the 1rst of April over it)
Superman has his ‘this is not the same face’ glasses. Sydney has her magical pom poms.
Neat incentive, even if it’s more like fan art than an actual cover.
Maybe after it, you could offer a few cover commissions for indie writers?
Well, seeing how that book hasn’t been released, who knows, maybe by the time it is due DaveB may have done a version that becomes the actual cover
Spotted a MAJOR error, DaveB.
You wrote math,math,math, when it’s clearly ka-MATH!
Well Dabbler IS doing transforms…..(I think. I don’t math so well)
Transforming is one of Dabbler’s specialities.
The correct term is “en-math-en!”.
I will accept that as well, although since her math is basically doing a magical divination, I do stand by ‘ka-MATH!’ as the correct onomatopoeia. :)
Dave, you forgot Dabbler’s green forehead marking in the last panel.
Well bindied.†
† This is a word for spotting a point to do with foreheads.
*sits down in front of Wiktionary, to try and figure out how to create a new entry*
Better than being Irwined (when you get crikey’d by a stingray)
A sad loss. Especially so for his son. Obviously so mind, but compounded by his dad encouraging him to follow in his footsteps. I hope that he is managing to cope with his loss OK.
*When you get inexpert first aid by a cameraman.
Small details check, the pom pom dancing panel.
One of those two Sydneys must be fake! There is only the one set of orbs. And it is not Halo creating an image, as all orbs are accounted for, above her head, and each of her is in different poses.
Plus zoom in on Dabbler, until her face fills the screen. Then consider that Dave creates six to nine panels, twice a week, all to a good basic standard.
Seriously how does Dave also manage to slide in such great art‽
We need panel 6 without speech bubbles.
Both faces would make suitable additions to the banner rotation. It has been a long time since any have been added to that.