Grrl Power #643 – There ain’t no party like a landing party…
Considering some of the world bosses she’s taken on, it takes a lot for Dabbler to consider something “legitimately terrifying.” Most of that is due to a lack of information about it – also, the overall presentation of “terrifying alien megabeast” is probably intentional. You know, first impressions and all that.
Looking at this page just as I’m posting it, I’m not sure “beam” is the appropriate SFX for panel 2, since in panel 3 it looks more like they fired a mass driver at the ground. It looks like a beam, sure. Maybe it’s one of those weird mass drivers that just happens to sound like “beeeeeam” when it’s fired. But then, maybe it wasn’t supposed to be a landing party, maybe that guy was sitting in a faulty toilet on the ship and fell out the bottom when he flushed and now he’s pissed off. (Yes, he’s one of those weirdos that sits on the toilet when flushing.)
![Tamer: King of Dinosaurs 5 by [Earle, Michael-Scott]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51OTnNC6Q4L.jpg)
Oh, and Tamer: King of Dinosaurs #5 is out now. It’s my second favorite series after Star Justice. I’ve said it before, but this series is basically Ark: Survival Evolved the novel. I’d say minus the PvP stuff that plagues the game, but as the series goes on, it’s obvious there are other survivors out there who will increasingly be a problem for the main characters. Also, there’s a bit of a harem situation going on, but not in that kludgy, fall into bed because the author wants to stuff the book with sex scenes sort of way that lots of harem novels do it, but one where the relationships evolve pretty organically, even factoring in that everyone is an alien and has different ideas about sex and social structure.
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Wow, Halo looks really scared!
dabbler sure as fuck doesn’t, despite her dialogue.
She is allowing her libido distract her from her terror, at the same time realizing that she is way in over her head.
From Dave’s blog description of Dabbler’s usual escapades, this is probably a relaxing jaunt. No fighting or killing to do. Just live in the moment.
well yeah when this is basically behind her
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOKf5r_JMAo
Not London again! :-O
Do you know how much it costs to rebuild it every year? Especially the overtime needed, to get it looking smart, in time for the tourist season.
It just takes a bit of an excursion into side time – that wibbley wobbly timmey whimmey stuff – it gets done in a quantum leap of time just …. don’t …. blink …..
Nooo! Who will make my quirky British panel show now!
Wow they’re really ramping the destroy landmark scale up, they wiped out all of London.
One problem. When you and an object you are holding are in orbit together, and you give it a shove sideways you will still be in orbit together, just lazily drifting apart from each other.
It you just ‘drop it’, it will pretty much just hang there. If you push it downward, unless you are in geostationary orbit, it will still have 17K mph of sideways motion to deal with. It will take a few orbits until it hits the atmosphere, where it will bleed off its kinetic energy as frictional heat. It would be lucky to be still over Mach 1 when it hit the ground. If it managed to avoid tumbling (and slow down further), it will punch a nice deep hole, but not much else.
Keep in mind, the Alien World Destroying Menace seemed to have it in for her, personally, due to the orbs. It’s one thing to be part of the band of plucky heroes taking on the Baron von Badass; it’s another when he identifies, you, personally, as the Chosen One whose grisly death will ensure his prophesied victory.
Or just that you happen to have that technomagical toy of pretty awesome power that does not require a team of 5 divergent mindsets to operate.
BB had assumed the race that could use it was exterminated long ago and the odds of some lower life form being able to use it was only 1:10^100
Note: there are an estimated 10^101 compatible lifeforms in this dimension alone.
When you add dimension hopping to the equation then we get into the big numbers.
Time for an Sydney to have XP level pop-up so she can furiously swipe her skill tree out of her face, accidentally doing something hilarious/awesome. (I’m thinking that every second she survives this alien menace is probably a greater “accomplishment” than any of her past team contributions.)
Also, why is Sydney only transporting herself with her Morb? Would it slow her down greatly to lighthook snag slower-moving Harem and Hero, such that everyone could pick up the pace (heck, snag Dabbler and Max can stay outside to push)?
you think someone about to pee their pants would actually drop their SHIELD to grab someone else to fly at a very awkward center of mass? if she’d drop her shield you could even say she’s defying maxima’s explicit order to put the thing up which could probably get her in even more trouble then the thing behind em XD
If it meant being able to fly even 0.1% faster from the giant death ship launching fireballs down at them?… YES!
Hiro should draft behind her. He could go his normal top speed or faster.
Did you check whether he had beans for lunch though?
That might actually be a good idea. Moving air is at a lower pressure than still air…The faster air is moving, the lower the air pressure gets. At a certain point, the air pressure is low enough that a person can’t breathe; I’m not certain, but I think it’s about 360 mph? I haven’t found the math or an answer to that, so some input might help. Any speed faster than that requires breathing assistance.
I would presume that Max & Hiro are covered from that problem, at least as far as it goes with flying at their own maximum speeds. For Dabbler, I have no idea how how much more she could take than a human could, but it looks to me like she’s got a set of healthy lungs (pun intended). Sydney’s shield acts as a wind screen so the air isn’t actually moving (relatively speaking) past her face. But I notice that Harem doesn’t have such apparatus…
For fastest speed possible, everyone except Max gets inside Sydney’s shield & Max pushes. Heck, Sydney might even fly at her highest speed with Max pushing & it might even help make it easier achieve real Max speed (yeah, another pun intended). At whatever rate of speed, no one would get left behind.
Umm, what has Sydney done after the last upgrade to warrant another one? o_O
Since we have no idea why the functions are locked, we have no idea, right?
Could be gaining familiarity with the morbs. Could be exposing the morbs to novel environments/situations. Could be a linear function over time (one unlocks ever 2 months). It could be based on the amount of novel swear words she expresses, or based on the number of people she offends.
My sincere guess is that it happens whenever the heck Dave wants it to happen and/or it contributes to plot development.
I’m hoping that Dave makes it a function of Syd’s experiences. To answer your question, based on that, I’d say that aside from various training montages Dave has presented, discovering a plethora of mythical earth creatures and a few more alien types, experiencing death, experiencing a time loop, diving into a deep sea trench, being sucked through a trans-dimensional portal/wormhole, encountering a species or technology that destroyed an advanced civilization and thwarting its targeted attempts to destroy you (probably specifically gunning for Syd) for 2…3…4…5…6…7… seconds….
Eloquently argued.
In that case, she should be levelling up every hour, at a minimum
Only if she does all that lot every hour. Which would be a bit more of a hectic schedule than we have seen so far.
Alternately, Maxima could literally pull all of them faster faster faster.
Halo is now furiously wishing she had kept her head during the golem fight, and upgraded the Forb’s speed, like she was advised to.
To be fair to Sydney though she was suffering from sleep deprivation, even before they set out. Only getting a brief nap before having to pilot the Halomobile all the way from the middle of the USA to New York.
Then have a meal. During which she overdosed on her medication, to try and counter the fact that its effects are reduced when fatigued. To the extent that seeing Maxima as a Muppet did not phase her!
Then get all the shocks of discovering that vampires, werewolves and all the other supernatural were real. Then talking to them all and sitting in on the meeting. Then having a deadly fight. Then having to go out on a reconnaissance patrol. Then dying.
So not so much failing to keep her head, as it being remarkable that she was able to even remain conscious!
Okay, whomever is behind them, has too many eyes…
At least we hope they are eyes. For all we know, this is its version of “tea-bagging” a defeated foe.
Anybody who tries tea-bagging Sydney right now is in for a world of pain!
I just hope Sydney isn’t.
First i thought those aren’t eyes ,the whole thing is a targeting icon then i thought of Ningauble of the seven eyes.
One wonders whether Sciona was still near the WHA BOOM site. She was kind of beat up and not exactly looking ready to engage.
On the other hand, one imagines a counter attack could be coming from the perhaps not quite spent and almost certainly pissed off blood mage… WHA BOOM BOOM.
You don’t have that sort of tech and miss by that much. It wasn’t aiming at them. I think you can say goodbye to Sciona.
Invader Zim 1-shotted Sciona in Dave’s version of Robot Chicken’s “World’s Most 1-sided Fights Caught on Tape”?
What about the thing that sent the beam up? Hopefully it wasn’t too sentient, unless the giant space screw intends to remove the orbs and everything “contaminated” by them.
Dabbler, learn to turn off your Sex Drive. Been stranded on a recently destroyed civilization, especially one been further obliterated like it is now, is neither the time or place for sexual advances.
Join a faith that teaches self control, like the Amish, Mormon’s, Jehovah Witnesses, Buddhism, maybe a non-radical sect of Islam, if you have to
Witnesses don’t teach self control, at least, not that sort of control…
I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, I know what sort of control they teach; Self-Control
Stop spreading rumors
Live with a Witness as well
Eh, she’s just trying to keep morale high, distract them from the terror.
Dabbler is a succubus. Learning to stop her sex drive is like for a human to learn to stop digestion. Or to learn to stop breathing.
Yes there are humans who tried. Did not always turn out well for them.
Yeah, Dabbler gains power from the presence of sexual energies, so being able to engage her sex drive in a crisis could literally be a survival mechanism that means the difference between life and death.
I have learned to stop breathing, for a few minutes at a time while underwater anyway. So Dabbler should be able to turn off her libido for a few minutes at a time as well. :)
Can also stop breathing at times, difficult part for me, is remembering how to start again
Hint: Avoid starting again while still underwater. Get to the surface and then start sucking in oxygen again.
“If you skip to step 2 before doing step 1, you may not be able to successfully complete step 2. Or have a chance to return to step 1.”
Thank goodness for simple instructions on complicated things.
Have no intent on ever voluntarily getting into water deep enough to be submerged
“I have learned to stop breathing, for a few minutes at a time while underwater anyway.”
How far can you sprint while holding your breath? I can make it about one city block ~1/20 of a mile, and I am close to useless for a 30 seconds after that.
A potentially useful skill, if you emigrate to Mars.
Sign up for your extra pair of secondary sexual characteristics today!
A) Dabbler is very likely going to need to fight soon, which means she might need every last erg of tantric energy she can get.
B) If there is a fight, getting Maxima into a killing mood is a good pre-fight buff.
C) I’m pretty sure that apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic porn is a thing. Haven’t confirmed, but rule 34.
Regarding C.- The song “I Melt With You” is literally about a couple bumping uglies as an atom bomb is dropped on their city.
I can’t think of the name of it but there’s a very Warhol-esque early 80s (might even be late 70s) flick that opens with a punk couple rushing to find a flat surface to do the mattress mambo on before the bomb drops on them.
There’s also a movie called “The Blood of Heroes” which is a post-apocalyptic sports movie, for the most part. People die in the sport. One of the weapons (sports equipment?) used is a giant metal staff with barbeque brush bristles on its ends so it looks fluffy but so much isn’t.
There’s at least one scene where the protagonist girl has sex with a teammate (I think) and they get turned on by each other’s battle scars.
Hey, Titan, guess what? All you religious fuckers who try to claim some kind of moral high ground because your invented deity is better than someone else’s invented deity, or no deity at all? Yeah, all you fucks are just as much criminals and degenerates and general fuck-ups as any other segment of the population. In fact the Witnesses are higher in degenerate fucks than the general population. You posture a lot as all religions do, because it makes you feel good about yourselves, but no one is buying it but yourselves.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are so stupid that they are still a religion even after failing to see their predicted apocalypse something like three times now. Way to double down like Trump on your stupidity! When your religious leaders guarantee time and time again that something is going to happen and it doesn’t, that’s when any rational person would think to themselves “Hmmm, it seems like this is just a bunch of bullshit after all. Maybe I should re-think things a little here.” But not you fucks, some shaman said a few magic words and you all just fell in line behind him again like the dumb-asses you are. Congratulations.
https://nypost.com/2017/11/20/jehovahs-witnesses-accused-of-systematically-covering-up-sex-crimes/
https://www.jashow.org/articles/guests-and-authors/lorri-macgregor/the-watchtower-and-violent-crime/
Religion is the scourge of mankind. Only once it is eliminated can humanity move on to things greater than wasting time on fairy tales and fables.
Wow Obe…Trigger much? Guess you were scarred by religion when you were a baby.
Triggered? You could say that. When someone claims, as Titan did, that being a Jehovah’s Witness means that they were taught self control:
But when their church has a huge child abuse problem and other well known criminal issues, then I call bull shit on the supposed self-control that religion supposedly teaches. I mean, unless you want to claim that being a non-alcohol drinking rapist is a form of self control. Or maybe you mean that telling rape victims not to report those rapes to the police on threat of being expelled from the church is “self control?” But I don’t think any rational person is going to make that kind of a claim, are they?
That’s rich, Titan. So very rich. Got any other fairly tales to tell us all this fine day?
You… do know that Witnesses are not Catholics, don’t you? o_O
You…do know that religious rapists aren’t limited to Catholics, don’t you?
This is just another of the things that religion tends to support as a group, while in general you won’t find a widespread group of rapists who aren’t using religion either as the excuse for or as the cover-up of child rape.
I included a link to just one of the news stories about the Jehovah’s Witness rape culture. But I guess with you leading the horse to water isn’t enough to make you drink.
Hey Oberon you might have had a hard time with religion in the past, but now you just sound like a bigot who would be proudly smiling as you shove people of faith into gas chambers.
Religion isn’t a scourge of mankind, it’s evil people who do evil things regardless of what excuse they use. As for ‘removing religion’ that had happened before. It was under Mao’s China and Communist Russia where people of faith died by the millions.
That being said, I can see you hold a lot of anger inside yourself. That is not healthy. You need to forgive or at least let it go. Other wise that hate will ruin you.
*nods*
I was going to say something here but Taxil said it much better than I could.
Seconded.
Also, I’m not sure what to think about finding Rule 34 and Godwin’s Law invoked on the same comment thread… This went to a weird place, can we go back to the sci-fi superhero comedy now?
Thirded
I always hate when someone pulls out religion as a moral high ground too.
(and it isn’t Titan’s first time on here as he has posted that he is anti gay because religion in the past)
And I always hate that when someone points out how entrenched the abuse is in religion that so many people come to the defence.
No, no one is attacking religion in general. But no one was attacking Hollywood in general either when the likes of Weinstein were called out.
However the reaction is different.
People didn’t jump to the defence of Hollywood because we know it isn’t all of Hollywood that does it.
We all know it isn’t everyone religious that is into this sort of abuse. But many are abusing their power to get away with it, whether they be high up in their religion or forcing their child to “honour their mother and father” even though they are the abusers.
Admittedly Oberon came out all guns blazing and perhaps a little too strong for some. But how strong should you come out about rapists? Should victims tread lightly around their abusers? Should the victims just sit there and be silent like they have done for years?
And how should we treat people that act like they are superior because they have a religion and refuse to admit their religion has caused so much unnecessary hurt and has done from before we were all born?
Yes, I’m an atheist. Yes I know all atheists are not perfect.
I bet here are many who cannot admit the same about their religion.
Previously:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2576/comment-page-1#comment-551993
Umm, Ohbewrong specifically targeted religion as being evil and a “scourge on mankind”
How else should I refer to any organization which teaches what are obviously just fairy tales and expects people to believe them as fact, and which bilk their followers out of their money and possessions?
How else should I refer to those who claim to follow a “holy book” which includes absolute, direct-from-God commands to commit crimes, hate others, and spread intolerance?
If you saw a headline that read “Group of 5 con men charged with stealing millions from their weak minded victims” you’d probably applaud the news and the lawmen who made the arrests. Or at least I would hope that you would. But slap the word “religion” on that same activity, make it a large, wealthy, powerful, socially entrenched organization and suddenly you think that this kind of activity is just fine and should not ever be criticized? Why the change in attitude?
How about “Group of 5 men charged with multiple rapes, circle of 15 others charged with accessories after the fact for the cover-ups?” Is that better or worse than the con jobs? Is it suddenly just fine that a religion does the exact same thing, rather than some small group of criminals and people willing to help them try to hide the evidence of their crimes?
And then there’s the “my own special form of idiocy is better than someone else’s special form of idiocy” factor. Where a Catholic might criticize Islam for forcing their women to wear the hijab, while Catholics themselves refuse to allow women to be priests. Literally hundreds of other examples can be made here. Is enforcing a dress code on your second class citizens better or worse than denying your second class citizens a job because of their gender? Let’s really get into the moral relativity between the different forms of willful belief in fairy tales, why don’t we? Me, I think it’s all rubbish and deplorable, and I’m not afraid to call it out as the bad idea that it so clearly is.
Guesticus,
as soon as you deliberately corrupt someone’s name to ridicule them as a person and not discuss the point they are trying to make, you instantly lose the argument, in my book.
It is an overused tactic to try and belittle the person and, by extension, belittle the point they are making without even having to discuss that point.
It also makes you look childish.
I have a rule on Twitter, As soon as someone acts childish, they are no longer worthy of my time.
You have just deliberately corrupted Oberon’s name.
Is there something you want to say?
Wee Red Bird,
There has been name calling on both sides of the issue in this comment thread. Oberon called someone an idiot yesterday further down in the comment thread. Like Oberon I thought his premise was silly, but the name calling was still belittling. Should he have automatically lost the arguement then by your logic? Or do your rules apply only to those who have an opposing viewpoint?
This is the first time have ‘corrupted’ someone’s name, even after countless times others (specifically Oberon) have done the same to me, repeatedly!
Crim the Cold
Calling someone an idiot, because you believe they have said something idiotic is one thing.
Corrupting a name for a childish swipe is something else.
And it is rules I apply to people regardless of my viewpoint in their argument. I have pulled up people with the same viewpoint as myself who have resorted to childish made up words because it tarnishes the argument being put forth and tars the rest of us on their side with it.
Guesticus,
just calling the ones I see, when I see them. Two wrongs and all that stuff.
Oberon,
front and centre. Did you do this too? Do we need to sit you in the busy naughty corner with Guesticus till you can play nice together?
And my posts still have a terrible lag on them. Can someone give it a kick? My little claws do nothing.
I would label both calling someone an idiot and corrupting a name as childish. It doesn’t seem like we will agree on this point so let us agree to disagree.
Wee Red Bird you will find quite often (but not always) you post may fail to display, due to recent changes.
The way to get them to appear is to go to another page (comments or comic, whichever is more convenient) and back again. This will give your fine claws the necessary boost to kick the site into displaying your post.
Don’t bother with F5 (/ctrl F5) as this is the only reliable option (if you wish to avoid the very long delay).
Thanks Yorp, That makes sense.
I’m sure I had some that didn’t come up at all, a few weeks back (a reply to your “a little bird told her” post), even when I loaded the page fresh on another machine. I think that one has been fixed.
When every major religion has systematically protected abusers and reliably opposed every advance in civil rights -yes religion is a blight. I didn’t even mention how it stunts people’s ability to reason.
The problem is that religion teaches people to do evil things. And then evil people can use their holy book as the support for their evil ideas.
And really Uhl, posting the same failed references to Communism under a different screen name doesn’t make your point any stronger. Argumentum ad populum only works on tools and idiots.
You’re probably tired of hearing this but I disagree.
Evil people falsely teach others to do evil in the name of religion. They then cherry pick passages out of their books and take them out of context to support their evil. I am only trying to get you to stop arguing in black and white, in absolutes. The world is more nuanced than that. Also please quit laying the blame for the actions of people on something which has no will to act on it’s own.
I can twist something as innocent as a nursery rhyme into something that can be used to justify evil, in this case slavery, just by changing a few words. “Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was black as coal. And everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.” “Here Mary.” The plantation owner said to his daughter. “Her name is Lamb and she will attend to your needs. You can do anything you want with her. She is yours.”
I feel dirty after writing that. If I can do that with a nursery rhyme and believe me I have no intention of supporting that despicable practice then imagine what someone without my morals and ethics can do with something like religion where people want to believe. That is why I believe that ignorance is real problem. Only by informing people and encouraging a culture where people seek to be and stay informed and dont blindly trust what those in positions of power and authority say will mankind ever pull their heads out of their collective asses.
Unfortunately Crim, you have this exactly backwards.
Good people pick and choose and cherry pick passages out of their holy books and ignore all of the really horrible parts of their religions. But any reading of any of the “Big 3” holy books will clearly show that if you don’t cherry pick the good parts what you have is a psychopathic and xenophobic organization which orders their followers to commit terrible deeds. All justified in the religion, of course, because these commands came from God, so it’s not even a crime in their eyes.
But then the basis of the religion is so absolutely horrible that good people must do this or become criminals, I’ll suggest that they go just one step farther and ignore the entirely of the fairy tale. Because anything you can get from a selective reading of any of these holy books you can also get elsewhere, and getting it elsewhere won’t require you to suborn your intelligence and common sense and believe in myths and legends as if they were actually real.
We’re both right. I never said that good people dont cherry pick passages either. My argument was more that it is people doing things to people. I guess I have inadvertently been playing devil’s advocate. There is a reason that while I believe in a higher power I am not a member of a religion. All religions have been twisted over time from what they once
My damn phone decided it was ready to post for me so you just got an unedited post. I’ll finish what I have to say later when I have more time. Please be patient with me.
Umm… Should I assume you’re a rapist because you’re not religious? there are a lot of non-religious rapists and horrible people out there too, But I don’t just assume every non religious person is “Out To Get Me.” Please don’t conflate “There are horrible people who are religious” with “Religious people are horrible people.”. That just leads to hatred and division. Why not just judge people by the content of their character?
I’m always happy to judge a person by the content of their character. And that is why, when a person reveals to me that they believe in clearly fictitious things like God, that my opinion of their character takes a sudden drop. How would you react to a person who told you in all sincerity that they believed in the Tooth Fairy, and if only everyone else did also that the world would be a better place?
And then when you asked them to describe their beliefs in a little more detail you discovered that there was a Molar sect of Tooth Fairy worship who argued vigorously with the Incisor sect of Tooth Fairy worshipers, to the point where there were documented cases of wars being fought between the two factions, terrorism from each side against the other, and other crimes all committed in the name of the Tooth Fairy. Oh, and the Tooth Fairy will punish you with eternal hellfire if you fail to place your teeth under your pillow as instructed. It’s all right there in the Holy Bible of the Tooth, after all. And even though they haven’t really read the whole thing they can quote a few verses from it that justify their hatred of people with dentures. Those sick bastards will burn forever in the lands after death! It’s all there in the holy book, so it must be true.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? No one could possibly believe such nonsense, could they? And yet they do.
I often refer to their preferred deity as Adult Santa.
Like children in early December, many are only behaving because Adult Santa is watching and ready to move them from the nice list to the naughty list.
Some even claim that without their book on Santa, you cannot have morals for it tells you to be nice and not naughty.
And often that is fine. If the only thing stopping them going on a killing spree is Adult Santa, then I don’t want to burst that bubble.
But then there are those who use Adult Santa to attack others, verbally or physically. To make people bend to their will of fear the wrath of Santa. That they are wrong for having the sexuality that they were born with and/or claiming it is a choice. To refuse medication to those who need it based on their “Santa Freedom”
Those people claim to be on the nice list, but their actions have already landed them on the naughty list and generally should fuck off out of the way of decent society.
I agree.
Using your logic, again, you say that because there is a problem you should condemn/judge the whole. You see that there is also a huge child abuse problem in the Hispanic community. By your logic we should get rid of all Hispanics because “they are all evil”. What Titan was saying is they are taught self-control and morality. But just because the imperfect man fails, does not mean that that the religion is at fault. The religious people I know admit, contrary to your blanket statement that “All you religious fuckers who try to claim some kind of moral high ground…”, admit to their being imperfect, flawed, weak or sinners. They ask for strength from their deity. They work to correct their faults, and feel guilty if they should fall again. It seems that insecure people, like you, who troll people’s faith, seem to be looking to cause the problems by creating a reaction to your inflammatory comments.
Ah, yes. Falling back on confession and asking for forgiveness is yet another way that religions mislead people. In almost every case where some preacher or televangelist, rich off of the backs of the people they are abusing, gets caught with a few male prostitutes or a few female lovers who they aren’t married to, they will inevitably get up on that pulpit again and cry tears of contrition and beg their idiot followers to forgive them and pray for them and claim that God has forgiven them and therefore so should all men.
The fact is that religious persons are just as flawed as non-religious persons. They on average cheat on their wives and husbands just the same, embezzle from their employers just the same, rape just the same, murder just the same, divorce just the same, and on and on and on. So why are you trying to hold up their guilty feelings and admissions of failure as some kind of badge of honor? An atheist can feel guilty for murdering someone or cheating on their spouse in exactly the same way, and they don’t need to believe in an invisible man in the sky or Dionysus or the tooth fairy at the same time. Anyone who isn’t a sociopath will feel guilt for wronging another. No deity need apply to try to claim credit for that kind of natural behavior. Our primate cousins demonstrate that kind of social behavior all the time, and they don’t need to go to church to feel bad about hurting another.
So basically, your a flamer and a troll and no matter what anyone says, or believes, they are wrong if they don’t believe the same as you and praise your intellect. I don’t have any more time to waste on you. I’m “washing my hands” of your waste of bandwidth and moving on with my life, because you know, you matter not.
^ This.
“Move on people, nothing more to see here.”
Stonewall242,
after you threw this line at him, you have a cheek to call anyone else a troll:
“Wow Obe…Trigger much? Guess you were scarred by religion when you were a baby.”
And they excuse their actions as “the Devil was in me” rather than owning their mistake and doing something about it. Including handing themselves over to the police with a full confession to the duty officer.
Not religious myself, but there’s pretty strong evidence that religion is the reason human civilization exists at all. Gobekli Tepe predates Stonehenge by 6,000 years and all the archeological evidence suggests the reason people invented agriculture was so they could hang around their recently constructed temple rather that roam nomadically.I personally kind of like civilization. “But now that we have science, we can leave religion behind.” Maybe. But the need for the ritual of religion seems to be deeply ingrained. And as I’ve said before, we’re all just really smart apes running the same operating software we had when we were hunting Mammoth and living in caves. We aren’t really any different from those people. We just have more stuff.
+1
Don’t be silly. Creationists can tell you with a straight face that the entire universe is only ~6,000 years old. So how could anything have been built 6,000 years before Stonehenge, when Stonehenge is itself at least 4,000 years old? That would mean that the universe was at least 10,000 year old, and that just isn’t possible. So there must be issues with the dating methods used, because the bible’s genealogy is clearly the more credible source of information than some flawed scientist.
Religion has a role to play in society. I’d argue that without it there can be no society beyond tribal groups of about 150 people. Tear that down at your own peril.
Creationists are neither representative of the whole, nor regarded as rational by the rest of the whole.
Basically, it’s the equivalent of a conspiracy theory, which happens to be associated with a religion. The vast majority of conspiracy theories are unrelated, so that’s basically the equivalent of a cherry-picked group.
Creationism isn’t just one local church that teaches their few hundred members that the universe is only ~6000 years old. It’s a large, well funded and well organized part of Christianity. To the point where they are constantly challenging the schools that teach our children to add their “conspiracy theory” to the texts and to consider their conspiracy theory as an equal to the science that teaches us very differently about the origins of the universe.
And it doesn’t “just happen to be associated with a religion.” It is an entrenched and widely accepted belief.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx
“The percentage of Americans who accept the creationist viewpoint ranges from 69% among those who attend religious services weekly to 23% among those who seldom or never attend.”
Here you can see the direct correlation between attending church and believing in things because some priest told you they were true rather than believing in actual evidence and science. The more a person attends church, the more patently false things they are willing to believe.
And no, you can’t consider almost 70% of frequent churchgoers to be some cherry picked, fringe group. That is a strong majority.
Religious indoctrination teaches its followers not to question anything they are taught by their religion.
But then I’ve seen figures claiming 60% of American’s believe in the story of Noah’s Ark.
I’m from Scotland. Rain for 40 days and 40 nights is called Summer. But believing, without question, that so much rain fell that it covered the tallest mountains? Really? Come on people.
The Matrix had a flaw. Which we saw in the protagonist, from the outset. Namely that he felt that ‘something was wrong with the world’ (to paraphrase). Which left him dissatisfied. Normally that would not be a problem for the machine overlords, but the nature of this dissatisfaction meant that he (with assistance) became aware of the real world beyond the Matrix.
Which is not something the machines wanted. The second Matrix documentary came up with some waffle about this being a necessary part of the design, but that is about as convincing as humans making a good energy source, to power a machine civilisation.
But lets pop you all back in your pods, and fix the Matrix.
The aim being to keep you in there, rather than climbing out and becoming a nuisance. So when there is dissatisfaction (which is indeed something pretty much unavoidable with humans, at some point or another) any qualms must be directed in such ways that they do not encourage individuals to break free.
So any who just want simple things, that will not drain too much processing power, can be put in totally self-contained environments. As an example someone naturally inclined towards solitude could be given a hermit-like setting. Provided that this was not coupled with an urge to continually explore beyond the horizons, this could be sustained indefinitely.
But most people crave at least some degree of social interaction. Simulating superficial human-like behaviour is not too hard, so another demographic of the pod population can be satisfied in seemingly complex settings. However only if they are content with ultimately dull unimaginative interactions.
If there is a large sub-set of the population who would be happiest in a simulation where the rivers were made of chocolate, and everyone ran around singing all day, it could be cost-effective to run that shared environment. Provided that all of the individuals, would be satisfied enough, with such a setting, not to realise that it is nothing more than a simulation.
Dedicating too many resources to satisfying those who crave significantly more social interaction, or greater complexity, then becomes less cost-effective, Hence ‘the Matrix’ becomes a necessity.
But running multiple versions of such complex environments, to satisfy all the different wants of the population, is impractical. For instance, you could have one running with a creationist setting and another working by the rules of the Big Bang. But that would leave vast segments of the population dissatisfied (for example those inclined to various Eastern religions or philosophies).
Continue to divide it up into different Matrices and you would need to devote the resources to running millions of different servers, each with a smaller and smaller population, to satisfy the niche philosophical variants and religious denominations. But, most significantly, each having a smaller and smaller population, and thus loosing the desired richness and complexity.
But not if you customised the Matrix so that each pod’s hardware was matched to the core personality of the individual! So the Apple creationist hardware could be fitted in some, whilst the IBM (Incredible Bang Machine) big bang or Samsung mysterious Eastern hardware would work best with others. And so on.
Then just make sure that, when each individual interacts with others, that the simulations that they are perceiving sync up.
So it really does not matter what hardware everybody else’s pods are running on, when they are happy in theirs. Berating them will not convince them that your hardware is superior.
Now if they become dissatisfied with their own hardware themselves, that is a different matter. The machines may choose to swap it around. But they are unlikely to do so if it will risk disrupting the simulator. So only when an individual is totally convinced that the world is wrong, will they send in the service squids, to tinker with the hardware.
Whilst always ensuring that any changes never interfere with the core simulations that other users are running. No miracle would occur within the perception of an atheist, for example. It literally could not, because they are running IBM Big Bang hardware, which does not support that feature.
So anything which manifested as that, produced by an Apple creationist pod, even if looking identical to an IBM pod-person, would have some nice, safe, rational verifiable ‘real world’ explanation being projected to them.
Disclaimer: The Matrix is NOT real. It does NOT exist!
Please refer to your own pod’s environment, for how the world really works.
I thought it was alcoholism.
Water deposits after a rain have some plant material in it, and hey guess what it was rice, wheat, barley, hops, etc. Something like that.
That’s good water! Let’s find a way to get more. Agriculture invented. Civilization invented.
Just for laughs: Robin Williams, edited for language:
They say the Irish invented civilization,
drank a couple of Guinness
and forgot where they @#$% put it.
Wow, misotheist much?
It’s not like communists (the party line of which you spout), atheists, or “enlightened” naytheists have killed people by the hundreds of millions on a repeated basis… OH WAIT! (Points at WWII, The Soviet “revolution”, mainland China’s “revolution” and “one-child” policy, and the “secular” government under Saddam Hussein.)
Don’t be so eager to throw stones, ye who lives in a glass house with no clothes on.
Oberon… The last group that said “religion is the bane of mankind” were the Soviets under Stalin and Lenin. They murdered people by the hundreds of millions. Do you really, really, truly wish to be associated with them?
I never said that people can’t be jerks even without religion. That would be idiotic and I would never do that. But the evidence is clear that more atrocities and more deaths can be laid firmly at the feet of religion that can ever be laid at the feet of atheism.
People like you who cite WWII as being an atheist or a secular war need to do their research. Hitler was a Catholic and constantly used religion as a propaganda weapon. He did what all religious persons do, and picked and choose the parts of religion which supported his own world views and goals for power. Hitler was an authoritarian, and so are all organized religions, and so they were obvious allies and bedfellows. The Catholic Church strongly supported Hitler because at that time the church was still in their “the Jews killed our God” phase of idiocy. Oh, and because he made them richer. The “Holy” bible was cited over and over and over again in the early US as the basis for justifying slavery, for the simple reason that the bible codifies slavery and even lays down the laws surrounding the ownership of other people. The Siviet and Chinese communist revolutions were both authoritarian regimes who killed most of the people they killed through idiocy rather than intent. Gross mismanagement of resources and gross incompetence isn’t the same as a deliberate pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany or any of the other countless “cleansings” which some religion or another is always behind.
You can refuse to believe the evidence of history. That is your right. But that only makes you the same kind of a fool as any person who believes in some clearly invented and fictitious fairly tale like Santa Claus or the tooth fairy or Thor or any one of the thousand or so deities that mankind has invented across the ages.
I am probably going to regret involving myself in this but I am opinionated and occasionally too loud for my own good.
I would argue that it is not religion that is the bane of mankind. I would also argue that it is not the lack of religion either. I do believe that the true bane of mankind is ignorance and authorities that encourage ignorance among their followers or constituents. The best advice I can give anyone is to never trust a scholar, cleric, priest, pastor, or politician to not have an agenda and to always expect them to cherry pick their ‘facts'(some only facts “from a certain point of view”). I believe that while ignorance is not sole cause of each of the atrocities listed it is common to every single one of them.
I left my religious preferences out as I believe they are irrelevant to my arguement.
Sorry. I really shouldn’t reply to myself but I feel I need to add some clarification. Every organization, secular or religious, will contain malicious actors. It gets so much worse when they get to the top of those organizations. They will use any means to get what they want whether it is power, wealth, or sexual depravity. I have found that their most common tactic is to utilize the ignorance so common to our species. Of course they use coercion and other methods to achieve their goals but they get away with it either because people don’t know or don’t want to know.
There were more religious people in history than atheists. That would likely be THE reason why “But the evidence is clear that more atrocities and more deaths can be laid firmly at the feet of religion that can ever be laid at the feet of atheism.” is true … and totally meaningless. Now, did religious people learned from their mistakes? THAT is the question.
You do understand that this is a web comic right? Why are you trolling your “religion” of hatred toward religion here?
Don’t you see how lock-minded and foolish you are coming off saying that religion is the basis of hate but you couch it in comments like “All you religious fuckers who try to claim some kind of moral high ground…” and “only makes you the same kind of a fool as any person who believes in some clearly invented and fictitious fairly tale like Santa Claus or the tooth fairy”? Do you not see that you are doing exactly what you are claiming the “religions high and mighty” do? Do you not see that it is the nature of man to fight for their beliefs? It is not “Religion” or “Anti-Religion” it is man not caring for their fellow man and “coming at them like a spider monkey” because they can’t truly respect the others beliefs, religious or otherwise. Like you are doing here, on a comment section of a web comic.
There have been plenty of atrocities performed through history that had nothing to do with a deity religion. Politics and property come into mind as pretty big motivators for conflict.
Oh and to say that someone’s atrocities where based on religion, just because that person said or claimed a religion, still states it is the person at fault, not the professed religion. Stating that Hitler professed to be Catholic and skewed scripture to his own needs is foolishly saying that just because you say you are something makes you that something. There is an old adage that says, “Just because you say you are a chicken and sit in a hen house, does not make you a chicken.”. Hitler also said he was a Mystic and had many of his followers looking for “magic” items to help his war effort. The man was a psychopath. He would say and do anything to promote his agenda. And just that, it was HIS agenda. The use of religion was a tool. And you said it yourself, he “picked and choose the parts of religion which supported his own world views and goals for power.” It was him, not religion, that was driving the atrocities.
Another thing you are doing is using generalities and blanket statements, again I am supposing to create conflict and anger in your readers of your post(s), stating that ALL religions are authoritarian because authoritarian regimes used religion to promote their agenda. Yes, there is ample examples, as you have stated, and there are ample to the contrary as well. Even in the groups you claim were 100% religious autocrats there were those opposed to , or not participating in, the atrocities. But what you seem to fail to recognize is that they were not religious in the true sense. They used religion, like Hitler and his Nazi’s, as a tool. Just like politics, land, property, etc. have been used as tools to subjugate and harm others. Even anarchy and atheism have been used, ad nauseam, to force ones will on others.
So what we have here is a fault in mankind. Some might say because of “sin”, or “hubris”, or “vanity”, or “selfishness” , whatever. The nature of man is truly egocentric and will look for whatever is right in their own eyes. Religion, or lack thereof, is only an excuse. And no matter what you might believe, true religion is not “the root of all evil”. To use another quote (too many quotes here, sorry), “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
‘You do understand that this is a web comic right? Why are you trolling your “religion” of hatred toward religion here? ‘
Then rants for several paragraphs forgetting that this is a web comic.
When someone uses their religion to show intolerance of people because of, say LGBTQ+ status (which is what Titan has done) are we supposed to just shut up and put up with it?
Is that because this is a web comic and only your side should be put across?
Is that because this is about religion and only your side should be put across?
When someone uses religion as a shield to hide their bigotry, I, and many others, will not be silent.
If I pointed to the crimes of some specific snake handler as the basis for religion being a really bad idea, all I’d get in response would be “don’t judge the entire institution by the acts of a few” or “don’t let a few bad apples spoil the barrel.” But the problem with that is, as we have seen with both the Catholic Church and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, is that a vast, systemic, and criminal mind set exists in even those where did not carry out the child raping themselves. All those other people were all too happy to attempt to hide the crimes of the actual child rapists. And they all did it in defense of their religion.
Any version of “this horrible thing that one of us did might make the church look bad, so we need to cover it up” should always instead be “this horrible thing that one of us did needs to be turned over to the civil authorities so that justice can be done for the victims, and so that this crime can be stopped immediately.” But that isn’t how cults train their members to think.
What you are describing is what happens in any institution, where they choose to protect their reputation over ensuring that justice is done. Most of the time, because the people deciding to cover it up, they have the power to ensure that it does not come to public attention.
We have seen instances where this has failed though, for instance the recent scandals over rapes and institutional cover ups in US institutes of higher education. Then we have the ongoing enquiry into paedophilia by UK politicians. Which has obstacle after obstacle thrown in its path, to drag out the enquiry and any potential prosecutions.
Clearly with the aim of ensuring that when the dirty truth is fully exposed the individuals will have already left the positions of power they currently hold. Or, if they can keep up the institutional stalling long enough, that it does not break until they have already died!
As such you are cherry-picking in using that to support your argument against religion. It is present in secular society as well as religious parts of it.
A more socially useful line of debate would be to champion the prosecution of everybody involved in covering up crimes, and legislating to increase the penalty with the greater the position of power and trust the individual holds. So that we can both bring them to account and change social attitudes, to deter institutional cover-ups from continuing.
Yet you continue to use this logical fallacy as a ‘proof’ of your opinion that religion is bad. You may as well argue that civilisation is bad because it creates the organised institutions which allow such situations to occur in the first place!
You can’t call it “cherry picking” when it is a systemic problem which occurs over and over and over again. Religious people doing idiot things and using religion as their excuse is a systemic problem. And that is true whether they are covering up child rape by other members of their church, or doing the raping themselves, or whether they are using a stuffed lion as their lawyer.
I just ran across this randomly while flipping through posts on imgur:
https://imgur.com/gallery/lhSz5lT
I googled it, because it seemed to be preposterous. But nope:
https://metro.co.uk/2018/06/07/couple-lose-custody-of-child-after-using-toy-lion-they-thought-was-jesus-as-their-lawyer-7612419/
I can only hope that all the religious fanatic child rapists also use a stuffed lion as their lawyer. It’s a good thing their kid was taken from them, because just going from the statements the husband and wife made as cited in the article I linked, it seems like she was in deadly danger of both physical and sexual abuse from the day she was born until the day she was taken away from her nut-job parents.
Indeed it is a systemic problem. But, as I stated, common across all society, secular and religious alike. You have failed to prove that it is uniquely or even predominantly a religious problem. Hence I stand by the statement that you are cherry-picking.
Doing more cherry-picking does not prove your case, it is just repeating your previous error. As there are just as many instances of secular paedophilia, your tactic of linking to emotive stories is unconvincing.
If I were as tacky I could do the same, for those. However as they are likewise both irrelevant to the topic of religion’s worth, and common knowledge, I shall not waste my time linking such.
Further you have failed to provide objective analysis weighing the good that religious organisations do versus the harms.* You purposely point to relatively rare** failings yet fail to account for the counselling that clergy provide, across the globe, to people seeking solace and comfort in times of emotional crisis.
Likewise to the substantial charitable works that religious organisations and individuals conduct. Further they can provide social stability. Even totalitarian regimes, which have attempted to eradicate religions and religious organisations, found that doing so had a destabilising effect.
The void that religion leaves creates a moral vacuum, a lack of the social support that clergy can provide and leaves a huge gap in charitable works and donations which we have historically seen is not adequately filled by private or state charity.
You attack religion and have shown a clear desire to see it gone from the world, yet have not offered anything to replace it. Will you go to the bedside of the dying, to offer them comfort? Will you man the soup kitchens? Secular society can do such things, but religions can and have done them well for thousands of years. Will you ensure that similar support is provided everywhere else religion is abandoned?
As such it is merely your unsubstantiated opinion that religion in today’s society is harmful, which you have not made a convincing argument to support. So it is my conclusion that yours is a negative attitude, which only offers harm to society, albeit in a misguided attempt to improve it.
* Importantly, as this harm that you are trying to attribute is neither created by nor sanctioned by religion, it is irrelevant to the discussion. Even if all religion ceased to exist overnight both paedophilia and institutional cover-ups would remain.
** Despite the fact that they get a lot of press such instances are very low compared to the numbers of religious people and clergy in society. How big the hidden problem may be is just as concealed within secular society as it is within religious institutions. As such any attempt to attribute that is mere speculation.
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is saddened to hear you feel this way about it as well. Nevertheless The Flying Spaghetti Monster (Sauce Be Upon It) is not so prideful that it would throw you in a burning pit of eternal torment, so please enjoy the remainder of your life on this world it accidentally made and enjoy the better one it made on purpose for afterwards, provided you’re not a douche.
Two questions (I’m an ordained minister in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster):
1. In your view, does the ‘beer volcano’ have the same effect as the bottle of cold syrup in Mary Poppins that changed flavors per person so everyone got their favorite flavor?
2. In your opinion, does the ‘stripper factory’ produce women of the archetype commonly seen in rap/hip-hop videos?
I can’t wait for humanity to move on past fables like “justice” and “mercy” and “compassion”.
Hang on. No, I’d quite like for humanity to continue to believe in those things – that’s the best way to make sure they come to exist.
Those things aren’t fables, idiot. And they are also not sourced from religion. Any reading of any of the “big 3” religion’s holy books can easily see that justice and mercy and compassion are a long, long way away from the major tenets of the faith.
Some number of religious sects in modern nations do a whole lot of picking and choosing to try to whitewash over the “eye for an eye” and “kill the heretics” and “here’s the laws for keeping slaves” and other vicious and cruel and criminal behaviors that their holy books support or even demand. But whitewashing over the bad stuff doesn’t make it go away, and for every church who doesn’t use the bible to teach their congregations to hate gays or blacks or The Other or whatever, there are many, many others who do teach that sort of non-just, non-merciful, and non-compassionate behavior with gusto. And they use the exact same holy books to justify their ways.
Actually, in the New Testament, they’re basically adjacent to the core of the faith.
I’d rather be stuck in an elevator with a Witness than with an Atheist. Sure the Witness may try to convert me, but essentially he’s doing a positive thing: he’s concerned about my soul and trying to help me out. That’s downright neighborly.
All the Atheist would want to do is to spend the next however long spitting and cursing at me to show me how much smarter than everyone else he is. Bitter, hateful, jealous people are they.
“99 % of atheists make the rest look bad.”
I take it you’re a good religious person,
but I have to ask:
How large is your statistical sample?
Well, so far right here in this comment section, we’re 1:1 for “non-negative mention of religion” and “screaming hysterical atheist must flame Christianity immediately”. How’s them statistics?
But yes, I’ve been ‘trapped’ in conversations with both radical Christians and atheists. While at least a few of the Christians were a little goofy, at least they weren’t nearly as hateful or loud as the atheists.
Note that it DOES seem to be just Christianity they hate so much. One wonders why you never see the so dedicated Atheist crowd going after mosques with the same fervor, and if there’s something we Christians should be doing to imitate Islam in order to get that kind of peace?
Much as Han Solo pointed out to C3PO, “A droid doesn’t tear the arms off of people it loses to. Wookiees have been known to do that.” I’m reasonably sure that if we Christians were to adopt the practice of beheading those that disagree with us regarding our religious beliefs, we’d have that kind of peace. I don’t advocate that course of action, because that gets into conflict with one of those pesky commandments; you know, the one that says; “Thou shalt not murder.” They’re referred to as commandments because of the simple fact that nobody took them seriously under the previous title; The Ten Really Good Suggestions.
Very good point about how beheading goes against what the majority of Christianity is supposed to be about (of course, you get a few nutters, butt they tend to be the minority, which is the reverse when it comes to Islam)
History lesson: Titan tried to claim that the Jehova’s Witnesses teach their members self control. As an absolute, if you are a Witness you have self control claim. I pointed out, loudly, that the Witnesses who were involved in the systematic rape of children and the coverups of those rapes clearly and obviously did not practice self control.
And I’m the bad guy? If religion wasn’t a part of the conversation no one would even blink an eye at my retort. But tread on the clearly fanciful beliefs of fools and out come all the white knights in support. It is as predictable as the sun rising or the tides coming in.
Many religions will claim that morality flows from the religion and the beliefs. But I am an atheist and I do not rape and murder. And it obviously isn’t because I’m afraid that the invisible man in the sky will see my misdeeds and punish me for them. It is because I have no desire to rape and murder. I am absolutely not exercising “self control” because I don’t need to curb any impulses towards that kind of behavior. And anyone who claims that their special form of fairy tale belief gives them any more self control or any kind of moral high ground over any one else is just trying to convince either themselves or others that their special form of fairy tale belief has some value to it. It does not.
I’ve tried to stay away from the religion subject because nothing good ever comes of it when it rears its ugly head. To be clear, I believe in God and nothing or no one is going to shake my belief. I don’t preach (at least I don’t think I do), but I have had a few experiences I’d like to share. 1. I had a JW group that ranged my neighborhood and would stand at my door, bible open and preach to me how their way was the only way. I tried every way I knew to make them understand that a person’s relationship with God is a sacred and personal thing… that I felt that no man or woman should push their beliefs on another. When they asked what I thought would happen to me on Judgment day if I weren’t aligned with a major religion (preferably theirs I’m sure), they stated that if I didn’t know God through a church, I wouldn’t get into heaven. I told them that on Judgment Day, each of us would stand before God and would be judged not on the church we attended, but how well we lived our lives by His laws. If we had followed His laws, we would enter Heaven, and if we hadn’t, we would be cast into the lake of fire. They took great offense to that and haven’t been back since. I’m not sure why. 2. I’ve been in one argument with an atheist. When he said my ‘fake’ God didn’t really exist, I asked him one simple question: “If he doesn’t exist, what are you so afraid of and why do you go to such great lengths to deny His existence?” Which when you think about it, in fighting so hard to deny Him, aren’t you really confirming His existence? 3. In reference to Dave B.’s mention of islam, I can only say this. There is no ‘moderate’ islam, only islam. Any muslim espousing and believing anything less is apostate and the punishment for apostasy is death. I have been in muslim lands and have dealt with muslims. Face to Face they may be friendly, but the moment your back is turned, watch for the knife. To better understand them, I read the Koran… I could go into the many parts of the Koran, but I will leave it with this… Read Sura 9:5, the verse of the swords. That is the heart and soul of modern islam. Also research terms like abrogation and Taqiyya. Sura 9:5 begins: “After the holy months have past, slay the idolators wherever you find them… set all manner of ambush for them…” Abrogation is the act of earlier, more peaceful passages of the Koran being replaced by the more violent later passages… and Taqiyya is the Allah approved act of lying to their enemies to make it easier to attack them. I’ve seen it in practice first hand and up close. No DaveB I don’t think emulating islam isn’t the way.
that should be DaveP, not Dave B…
It’s more likely the atheist would simply wait in the elevator until it stopped and got off on the floor they were heading towards in silence.
I’ve been acquainted with both types often enough to know that both stereotypes exist for a reason. It’s funny how the loudest and most strongly opinionated minority of any group will always make an ass out their entire group in the eyes of others.
The best example of both sides that I can think of is the Happy Holidays vs Merry Christmas people. Irregardless of your religion or lack there of if someone says either of these phrases the appropriate response is “Thank you” and to wish a similar sentiment back. They are wishing you well and their courtesy deserves to be met with some courtesy in kind.
Yeah, and that’s me. If someone says Merry Christmas it’s just them wishing me well, and that’s just a nice gesture. I’ll reply happy holidays because that’s me wishing them well also. There’s really no need to fuss about these little things. But don’t try to tell me that your belief in a fairy tale gives you special insights into how the universe was created, or what happens after we die, or anything else that is just a pile of nonsense. And don’t try to park your religious advertisement (mangers and other such displays) on public land. Keep that to private property. Because I won’t just let that kind of crap go by without comment.
Please note that I am not accusing you of being a belligerent atheist. You are far removed from that based on my experiences. Others mileage may vary of course. I hope you don’t see me as a belligerent theist/deist. I try very hard not to be. I do disagree on the use of public land especially land set aside for use by the community. I have no problems with Nativity scenes but if they are okay then a community event on Diwali or a celebration on Eid al fitr must be okay as well. This is why more and more the answer has been to simply not allow any religious displays as the more belligerent members of various religions or non-religions take issue with the traditions of everyone else. I do wish that instead everyone could get along. My beliefs are not so shaky that I cannot go eat dinner with a friend on Eid al fitr or accompany another friend to the cemetery on the first Dia de Los Muertos after he lost his mother. Some cemeteries are public land. Should families seeking comfort in their remembrances of those who are gone be denied the use of that land because you think they believe in fairy tales?
The reason the religious hate atheists so much is because they make them insecure.
Didn’t know I was an angry secularist until the Pope invented the term.
Oberon,
Anyone who tries to tell you that they are better than you because they are religious have completely missed the entire point of religion, at least in Christianity.
“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” Straight from Romans. we are all in the same boat and all need a Savior. Sorry on behalf of all those who tried to flaunt there religion with the terribad ‘holier than thou’ bs.
All I ask is that you not judge God by the imperfect followers, we are honestly just doing our best. Also don’t forget that the Old Testament of the Bible was written for a very specific people group, in a time where things were very different than they are now. We follow the New Testament as the Old Testament was fulfilled by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
I appreciate your position, and your admission that a religious person has no greater moral position than a non-religious person. But look what you’ve just done. You have essentially said “Followers of Christianity (like yourself, Josh) have the right ideas, but followers of Judaism and Islam do not.”
What makes you so certain that you’ve gotten it right and all the Jews and Islamists got it wrong? There are more followers of Islam than there are Christians, so just going on the numbers (which is a fallacy in any event, but allow it for the purpose of the point) you’re more likely to be wrong than you are to be right.
I know that you’re all wrong, because all of it is just a bunch of slightly different fairy tales. But then we get to your assertion that the Old Testament is obsolete and it’s only the New Testament that has the messages which should be followed. I’m going to set aside all of the very many horrible things that are in the New Testament, and all of the obvious fables as well. All I’m going to do is to quote your deity made man.
When asked if he was come to bring a new covenant, Jesus said (Matthew 5:18) “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” So there is Jesus himself making the absolutely unequivocal statement that nothing of the old laws is going to be replaced or changed. Heaven and Earth have yet to pass away, and so the laws are still in full effect. So be sure to keep that in mind the next time you go to beat one of your slaves, because the Old Testament has a very clear codification of exactly how harshly you are allowed to treat your human property.
I skipped them for brevity, but if you’d like to discuss in greater detail all of the truly awful things which the New Testament has in it, since you seem to be basing your faith on the position that the awful stuff in the Old Testament can be excused “because Jesus,” I’d be happy to do so.
I’m actually very glad that Oberon made this post. Here they are talking about how much they despise religion. Here they are showcasing their hatred, their intolerance, their inability to even respond to arguments without ad hominem personal attacks, and in general emphasizing a consistent theme of “I am actively seeking to behave like a terrible person and my opinion should probably be discounted purely on the basis that no decent person would want to emulate my behavior.”
Thanks for your endorsement of religion, Oberon. This Jew is very appreciative that you would do so much to encourage others to be less like you and more like the rest of us.
He he he.
Please don’t stone me for mowing my lawn on Sunday as your fairy tale demands that you do. Or for holding my pig roasts twice each summer. First one is coming up!
As a matter of fact I will do exactly what my religious texts teach… specifically, the bit about how my faith’s rules do not apply to people not of my faith. Because another tenet of my faith is to study and not simply repeat what others have said that allow me to feel smugly superior to those who disagree with me.
Though honestly, if you’re going to try to brandish a rapier wit, you could at least try to sharpen it. Pig roasts and lawn mowing? That’s the best you can do? You’re going to have to step up your game if you want to reach even the level of, say… Protestants (y’know, the folks who started the Ivy League such as Harvard and Dartmouth).
Also, wouldn’t that be Saturday?
What, she should get adopted* into the Shakers just for the irony value?
*They don’t marry or allow conversions, so that’s the only way to become one.
A Succubus turning off her sex drive is like you turning off your blood sugar. Like injecting a full vial of insulin at once. Succubae literally feed off of sex energy, her brain and organs would stop functioning.
Mmm. It is just turning off the appetite (in either context). So the food processing mechanism would still work, and the individual may consciously choose to eat, in order to stay alive. But would just not get any endorphin rush reward (or whatever equivalent Dabbler has) for doing so.
Chase Scene! Now im just wondering why they haven’t tried retaliating or at least lob a few fireballs over that alien ship… who knows u might hit a death star weakspot ;)
I don’t think this is a chase scene. It’s a ‘real heroes don’t look back as the world explodes behind them’ scene.
So far, it seems our heroes aren’t actually being chased, anymore than someone fleeing the scene of a predator capturing its prey. The heroes don’t want to get tagged by predator’s computers as “shooting at me, shoot back until craters appear”.
As Maxima noted, they’re Waaaay outside their jurisdiction. I don’t think that was a joke. It’s a legitimate consideration and a smart one. This mob have presumably just wiped out a race of people roughly equal to the power we’ve seen from Sciona without her blood boost. You don’t wanna provoke something like that and raise yourself up their invasion priority list if it’s at all avoidable. Maxima certainly doesn’t have Authority to declare war for the U.S. or Terra, and fire first on something that’s yet to shoot at them.
cue: benny hill music
Already did that last page :P
Chase Scene! owo , Now im just wondering why they haven’t tried retaliating at the alien ship( maybe lob a few fireballs at it?) who knows you might hit a deathstar weakspot ;)
And if Max was alone, she probably would… full power. But she’s the commanding officer, and her first concerns are keeping all the squishy people alive and getting home… taking out the target might be fun, but it’s not on her priority list.
Well Maxima IS one of the most powerful beings on Earth.
Btw I dont think whats coming after thrm is from Earth so… retreat until you have an idea of what your enemy is … is probably the smarter choice anyway if its an option – squishy team members or no squishy team members.
Last time Maxima badly underestimated an opponent was Vehemence remember.
Nah. She said that they were well outside their jurisdiction, and I believe she meant it. Now she is just trying to get her people home. Even if alone I don’t think she would engage the thing, she’d do the same thing she is doing now, look for the way out.
Retaliating? For what?
I’d just like to point out that the mystery aliens so far have not actually attacked any of the team. Sure a scary looking (from our perspective) alien creature scanned the group, and now another alien creature has just made a rather dramatic entrance, but against the team these mystery aliens have not actually done anything overtly hostile (yet).
While Sydney and her orbs are clearly of great interest to the mystery aliens, we still don’t know why. Just because we don’t understand the alien’s motivation doesn’t mean that motivation involves actual hostility. Now it is still perfectly rational to flee and avoid a possible conflict, but it isn’t necessarily wise to initiate hostile action. Particularly against a creature who apparently can survive being deployed by a high speed mass driver.
Mass Driver… Larry Niven, Ringworld mostly, now what was it he said… “A spaceship drive’s effectiveness as a weapon is directly proportional to its power.” But I did understand he was talking about broad-acre destruction, not pin-point.
“Mass Driver” is just a category. It can include anything from a slingshot shooting peas to something launching planets at relativistic speeds.
I think whoever owns that ship looks a lot like the guy with an orb in his head who sits on the Council.
Probably the only one feeling this, butt hope Sci is going to be okay :(
That character is too well developed to let her die off in obscurity.
Remember we are still in flashback.
Well, looks like you can’t put videos in the comments.
Here’s a link to what I was trying to put in: https://youtu.be/I0fc-3-PXSo
I should have said this earlier…
Maxima…team leader…leading a tactical retreat…
Should not have needed to ask Dabbler if she needed
Air evac.
Hiro had already determined that Harem needed it. Halo has her own.
That should have been planned beforehand.
If we’re gonna mention should-haves …
Sydney should have instantly enveloped everyone with her shield while flying at top speed back through the portal. Possibly she could have left Max out to fend for herself. Nobody should have had to tell her or set it as Protocol ahead of time: Max is the only thing that can out-fly her, and that may not be by very much.
I would expect that this will be set as fairly standard Protocol “under most conditions” for future missions involving Sydney.
That would nesscitate dropping her shield, if only for a short moment. And it looks like all of Sydney’s self preservation instincts are telling her to absolutely not drop that shield.
No, Sydney didn’t deploy Mr Buble until she was scanned, she should have enveloped the others at the same time, or at least Dabbles seeing as Maxi was too close on her left and we don’t know where Hiro and Blondini were
Nothing was actively attacking/chasing when Sydney got scanned.
There was visible active scanning happening – Dabbs put some kind of shield up, remember? Best to assume the energy rays coming at you are hostile until proven otherwise.
Also, +1 for point out Sydney has to drop her shield to get others inside it. Have been tired of seeing it suggested for that last couple pages but couldn’t be bothered to comment. There really should be a protocol in place (once they get a chance to develop some with Sydney’s skill set) for who should turtle up inside Mr Bubble and what threshold triggers it.
with Dabbles being a Jill-of-all-trades, Maxima was probable actually asking if Dabbler was prepared for this in some way, with an escape spell
Oh…..
If Dabbler *could* magic them all back to the portal,
then just picking her up might be a fatal mistake.
I hadn’t thought of that.
I’m usually pretty good with illogical thought. too bad logic runs so quick, tho, it always seems to escape me (unless it’s pointed out, in which case it just stands still waiting to be noticed)
The silhouette resolves into a figure as it emerges from the dust cloud…
“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Korg. I’m kind of like the leader here. I’m made of rocks, as you can see, but don’t let that intimidate you. You don’t need to be afraid, unless you’re made of scissors! Just a little Rock, Paper, Scissors joke for you.”
+12
I really like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5ThccaxWmk
Oh wow, haven’t thought about that in literally decades, although I did think of this guy, who is just a few years more recent.
The irony is that Korg was defeated by paper…he didn’t print enough leaflets for his uprising.
The irony of that scene was that Korg was beaten by paper (or the lack of enough of it). His attempted coup failed because he didn’t print enough leaflets.
What are they all scaired of. the incomming landing party is all wearing red shirts. lol 10 pionts if you get that referance.
Red shirts mean they will fall easily. Even tripping over rocks and exploding. But it does not mean they miss when they shoot. We want the white armor for that meme.
You do recall that Picard was a Red Shirt, do you not? o_O
Yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6kbd3Ne49c
The “Red Shirt” of reference was only for TOS, not TNG. After TNG made Command the red uniform, that trope could no longer be used.
Perhaps it was why they did that.
When ever I hear “red shirt” I remember an old joke:
Seems there was a treasure ship on its way back to port. About
halfway there, it was approached by a pirate, skull and crossbones waving
in the breeze!
“Captain, captain, what do we do?” asked the first mate.
“First mate,” said the captain, “go to my cabin, open my sea
chest, and bring me my red shirt.” The first mate did so.
Wearing his bright red shirt, the captain exhorted his crew to
fight. So inspiring was he, in fact, that the pirate ship was repelled
without casualties.
A few days later, the ship was again approached, this time by two
pirate sloops!
“Captain, captain, what should we do?”
“First mate, bring me my red shirt!”
The crew, emboldened by their fearless captain, fought heroically, and
managed to defeat both boarding parties, though they took many
casualties. That night, the survivors had a great celebration. The
first mate asked the captain the secret of his bright red shirt.
“It’s simple, first mate. If I am wounded, the blood does not
show, and the crew continues to fight without fear.”
A week passed, and they were nearing their home port, when
suddenly the lookout cried that ten ships of the enemy’s armada were
approaching!
“Captain, captain, we’re in terrible trouble, what do we do?”
The first mate looked expectantly at the miracle worker.
Pale with fear, the captain commanded, “First mate…. bring me my
brown pants!”
That thing is definitely terrifying, which means it is going to be a bitch to draw later on when a thousand of those are invading Earth
I’m wondering if Dabbler is really getting anything out of her embrace with Maxima. Dabs lives off the tantric energy of other people. Rubbing up against someone who gets then gets horny is like a light snack to Dabs. However, rubbing up against Max is not doing anything to Max’s libido, so Max isn’t generating any tantric energy for Dabbler. Of course Dabbler could just be enjoying the thought that she still is making Max uncomfortable.
Just because Max is in control doesn’t mean she feels nothing. Previous comics indicate that Dabbler does affect Max. And, that is what makes Max mad. It’s unwanted, non-consensual, yet still a distraction she has to deal with.
But, sometimes a joke is just a joke, even when inappropriate. I think that’s all that is going on here: Dabbler has the luxury of making a (relatively innocent) joke, at Max’s expense, in the face of something that actually could kill them. Gallows humor to cope with facing death.
I still expect Dabbler to tease Max later on about “My Hero!” and various knight-in-shining-armor jokes. I also expect Max will take it all in mostly good humor, so long as Dabbler doesn’t take it too far. Surviving death together builds camaraderie and Max likes her well enough, apart from the constant sexual harassment.
For Dabbler, inappropriate speech is a free action.
If you look at the last panel, you don’t know how much energy Hero is putting out, but I suspect more then zero.
So Hiro is carrying one of the Harems eh!? Maxima is stuck with Dabbler..? ! ?
Meanwhile all Sydney has got is …
to go faster!
Anyone seen Achilles lately? Last I saw, Hiro was smashing the pillar pinning him to the roof. Didn’t he get pulled through the portal with the rest of them?
Yah that was my thought too!
Oh wait, I went back and looked again and that’s just Harem with her coat flipped over her head. At first glance the inside of her coat looks Achilles’s hair.
Dave confirmed that only the ones we saw in that scene had come through, and specifically that Achilles was not one of them. As you say, a few folks have mistaken Harem for Achilles, due to being covered by the coat.
Of the Alpha team, Mr Amorphous is also unaccounted for. Not having been seen since they entered Sciona’s outer vault door.
To me it looks like a laserbeam to ionize the air, then massive discharge of plasma through the channel?
Plasma bolts dissipate too fast in atmosphere to be usefull, but if you use a pilot beam, it becomes a weaponized lightning bolt.
It kind of reminds me of the beam weapon in ‘Independence Day’
Looking back at the glowing craters on previous pages, I had been thinking in terms of asteroid bombardment &/or railgun-large mass driver weapon. Seeing the beam in action today, also considering an anti-matter charge being zipped down a path cleared through the atmosphere by an ionizing beam or somesuch. Contain a half million or so atoms of anti-matter iron (or even a couple hundred) inside a magnetic bottle and shoot it along a path cleared with a light-speed beam weapon until it encounters something solid = Impressive Fireworks.
Good thing for Hiro that he has a Harem shield!
Cunning.
Only trouble is that such shields are so unreliable, as teleporters are never there, when you need them!
Where’s she going to go? I mean, she can always leave a bad situation by just un-teleporting any particular Harem and then teleporting it back into existence later, just as she did when she broke her wrist. But that kind of action is pretty much a career change, because desertion in the face of the enemy isn’t usually take very well. And here she might even have issues with that, since some kind of disconnect with her gestalt has been hinted about.
Unteleporting would likely be risky (if even possible), for the reasons you say. However that would not interfere with a regular teleport. We know that Harem has a finite range, even for her ‘familiar place’ teleports. So we can pretty much eliminate her being able to teleport to anywhere on Earth.
However Harem can also teleport anywhere in line of sight. She has a panoramic view of the landscape right now. Most of which is actually not on fire or in the path of a fireball. So she can just pick whichever open area looks safest. Then turn around and teleport ahead of the rest of them, to a similarly clear area.
Should the portal dump a chunk of the Earth at her arrival point, just as she is teleporting there, her own power has a safety which would allow her to abort the teleport. In which case she can just pick another spot and try again.
It’s not desertion if the officer in charge has ordered everyone to retreat.
Good point.
Although there were additional orders like (paraphrased) ‘we must fix the portal’.
But Harem could argue that she is as likely to be able to fix it from the Earth side as the Alari homeworld end. Probably not likely to be that convincing mind, given that having her on both sides of the problem is more likely to yield a result. And, if she can work past the echo problem, she may be the only one able to coordinate things with whatever the Delta team (et al) may be doing.
Plus the gist of the order was not ‘retreat’ but ‘retreat in good order’. Fixing the wormhole, whilst under fire, would require some of the team to provide cover or perform other tasks as may be required.
Those types of shields only really work effectively once tho.
He he.
All it requires now is for the ship to start firing T-Rexes at them!
T-rexes with lasercannons.
Ahh, Australian T-Rexes.
Tyrannosaur Sydney.
For some reason I read T-Rexes as Texans for all 3 posts. Australian Texans with lasercannons. Lol. What’s next? Space Lobsters? (V)(‘,,,’)(V)
Dawww, cutest arthropod overlord ever. And now you’ve tricked my brain into reading it as “Texans” as well, so I’m involuntarily picturing them with cowboy hats.
I bet there wont be long until Texans carry lasers.
It doesn’t need to be more like Jurassic Park. It’s already close :)
Any bets on a complete change of mood? Like the aliens that come our are insanely cute and fangirling for Halo’s autograph?
I like how you think.
Take a good look at the background of the last panel. That thing doesn’t exactly look “cute”.
I’m not saying that wouldn’t be funny, or even that I’d be upset, but I kind of like the mostly serious tone of this arc, and I think I’d prefer for it to last to it’s conclusion.
What do you think this is, guardians of the galaxy of something ;)
We are from the planet Duplo, and we are here to destroy you.
or the aliens that come out will be Lego universe versions of all the Grrl Power heroes and heroines, and the Lego version of sydney will be like: “told you that would get them out of the movie lot.”
I wonder where the right hand of Maxima is.
I wonder where the right hands of Dabbler are. We can only imagine.
Taking into account that Max is flying, wherever Dabbler´s right hands are, will not hinder Max´s movement.
We can see where Hiro’s hand is… Watch it there buddy… Max might get pissed… Oh wait… she’s got her own problems right about now…
Judging by Maxima’s face, her hand is probably forming a fist about now.
Maybe Dabbler’s too?
Why doesn’t Halo just carry them all in her shield?
Would have to drop the shield first – and that would take a bit of time. Also makes her vulnerable – not a good thing when you are the main target.
+1
Not to mention blind panic tends to push out any thoughts that aren’t “Run as fast as possible in the opposite direction of the scary thing”
Sooooo… anyone is getting an independance day vide from this ?
I’m getting an Independence Day/Jurassic Park mashup vibe.
Clearly the enemy admiral is Jeff Goldblum!
They are booking it at top speed and still aren’t near the portal yet. How much of Earth has it sucked into itself and spit out the other side? I think the map of the US may need to be modified to indicate the new ‘Eastern’ Grand Canyon.
Hopefully, when they reach it…it won’t still be underground, or it could get messy.
Those nerd survival skills are working overtime. Her instincts are probably told her that they’re running from a WOG style weapon that or massive Invasion Strike Team
I feel like this whole sequence could have used another pass in the storyboarding phase.
The portal they’re supposedly running too needed to be better established, especially the part where it receded to whatever distance it receded to. If as claimed in the previous page the portal is “dropping parts of earth between it and us” (and what does that even mean?) then the art completely fails to communicate it.
On a positive note, I like the close-up in the last panel. Funny that Harem is yelling “faster” when she’s actually the reason they aren’t going faster. As discussed in the #642 notes, fear of putting too much stress on her body is the major thing keeping them at car speeds rather than airline speeds. (Dabbler is tough and could probably take stress that would leave Harem with a bruised brain.)
I like old Dave here, but I’m not sure there was even a first pass in the storyboarding phase.
I think part of it is that Dave has a community who study every little thing. So there are a lot of folks who will be aware of all the small details. One of which was that the portal was right next to them (seen in the city devastation panoramic view).
On the last page they were trying to get to it, yet Dabbler’s fastest running speed was clearly insufficient.
Admittedly the point about ‘bits of the Earth being transported here by the wormhole’ was mostly conveyed just by that dialogue. With a few barrels and other bits to hint at the stuff that was out of shot, in the direction they were facing.
A good spot for a ‘view ahead’ shot (or from behind). However this needs to be balanced by the dramatic needs. In this instance keeping the point of view fixed on the deadly stuff behind them has had a powerful effect. To the point that some folks are feeling that it has shifted from being a comedy!*
Which has swept the audience along. So we will just have to wait until the needs of the scene switch to their destination, before we get to see that.
And I imagine that will be a powerful reveal. Best done on its own page, to avoid detracting from this one.
The final consideration being the art time required for the view ahead and the view behind. Being a one man crew Dave does have to balance these issues.
* This is a good thing, because building up tension, through fear or intense drama, can make the release of a comedic moment that much stronger.
So, you’re saying that the portal got stuck on the fourth wall while the camera was pulling back? :D
I wonder… If Sydney leaves her projected self behind, would closing the gate cut off the transmission?
I doubt this will occur to her given her current state of ohshitohshitohshit, but it is a thought.
My other question: You think Dabbler has a way to see what Sydney sees when using the Comm Ball(tm) and it’s magic sight? Might help a lot with all this weird magic going on.
That last panel.. is something howling?
Aside from the need to have everyone in the same panel, it does seem like Sydney and Max are flying low to the ground. If they had a little more altitude they might go a little faster.
The problem being that they are heading to something on the ground. So going up would be taking them away from it.
Plus it would not make much difference in flight speed, unless they went all the way up to high altitude, with a thin atmosphere. Which would be taking them well out of their way.
Now avoiding ground based hazards is a reasonable choice, so gaining some height may help loosing time to dodging.
Only trouble is that it also makes them a much clearer target for anyone behind shooting at them. Presently anyone using human-like sight (likewise for targeting systems that we know of) will have difficulty in picking them out from the clutter on the ground. Something Maxima will be very much aware of, with her air force career, in two separate wars.
Of course it may make no difference to the advanced technology (or weird bug vision) of aliens. But they have not been hit yet, so nape-of-the-Alari-homeworld flying could be helping.
It just occurred to me that if Sydney just had a bit more presence of mind she could scrape the ground with her shield blasting up a bunch of debris and dust which would provide the team with a bit more cover. We already know that her shield will tear right through a billboard. Partial contact with ground can’t be much tougher than that.
Stirring up a dust trail could also make it easier to target them or predict their destination. Also, being obscured in a dusty cloud, which won’t happen at the speed they’re moving, really only helps if your enemy is relying on visual tracking to target you.
I wonder if they could go faster if Sydney scooped them all up in her shield and flew them together to the portal. Or would that just slow them down? At least this way they can split up if attacked.
Okay, I realize that this is a totally mind freezing, terrifying situation where even our most powerful heroes are out of their depth. Beating feet back through the portal is a first off, save our asses from the horrible thing behind us. However. Comes the thought that escaping back through the portal might lead the terrifyingly, horrible, Cthulhu type thingy back to home world EARTH, could be a BAD IDEA! I believe that Dabbler has already hinted that closing the portal may be difficult.
Will Max realize this and sacrifice the team? Does it even matter if they can’t close the portal where they are? If they make it through will the terrifying thingy follow? Can they close the portal from our side and prevent a Cthulhu type extinction event on our world? Even if they do close the portal can the terrifying thingy still track to the point of origin?
Tune in next Thursday and find out kids. Or maybe a month of Mondays and Thursdays.
Well thought through.
Secretly? Really?
Maximum 4. A munitions officer at a dead run out ranks everybody
so by that logic Cadet Scoville is technicly giving a legitimate order
Except that she’s not a munitions officer ;)
That’s Maxim 3, not “Maximum 4”.
“An ordinance technician at a dead run outranks *everybody*.
Also, maxim 9 is “never turn your back on an enemy,” so they’re already not following those rules.
Maxium 3 is a seargent in motion out ranks an officer standing still
Yorp, you mentioned you were going to make a Facebook account. Every profile has a number. Mine is 773776. Until recently, I’ve been homeless, for more than 20 years, and kept myself online and writing my RP without fail the whole time, so I think you need my skills. Contact me.
Anyone else that needs my power, contact me and let me know what you need. I’ll be there for you. The first skill you need is one I fought against gaining- the ability to let others assist you.
Thanks. I will do. I’m a dreadful multi-tasker though. Plus am currently in fixated mode.
*puts fanatical hat on*
Given that I have no doubt that my proposal could help the world, that must take precedence over personal concerns.
*doffs hat*
Although, knowing the timescale of such things, it may not do so until 20 years after my death. But don’t be too concerned, I have allocated time for that, before I depart. Err, on my journey that is. So I will tweak my schedule, to make sure I contact you sooner, rather than later, once I am turn to that.
Plus I can couch-surf, for a while, so I’m not being overly reckless.
How do you even know such weirdos exist that sit on the toilet while flushing?
#checkforcameras
They are probably the same ones who put the lid down afterwards.
With no thought of how anti-social it is to cover up a drinking bowl!
Man, it’s too bad Sciona’s probably buggered. I was hoping for an extra character. Yes Arc-SWAT has Dabbler and that one professor looking dude, Math and as well as their connections with the supernatural world to tap for magic knowledge, but sometimes you need a bad girl, err… fuck it, sometimes you need a bad girl to tap too.
…
Speaking of bad girls, wonder how Vehemence is doing.
Anyone notice the Cast page is borked? I thought it was my AdBlock but it seriously isn’t working on Firefox nor Internet Explorer for me. Maybe it’ll work in the other browsers but I’m too lazy to check.
Has been for years.
https://grrl-power.wikia.com/wiki/Cast has all the info.
Ah, my bad. I think I remember now maybe pointing that out years ago, but I’m not sure. Regardless, thanks.
If so, you must have been under a different pseudonym. I’m sure I would not forgotten otherwise.
There’s the Dabbler we know. I was surprised she didn’t make a joke last panel (all seriousness aside).
So it looks like the ship sent down a person? Hopefully that’s just a bunch of red dust and not the bloody remains of our vampire friend…
Ingsol and Scarlet are cool people (with a status abnormality)!
Oh you meant… right, her. She’s a blood mage, not vampire, though she does harvest the blood of others as well.
I was thinking the same, given the conduit of light in panel 2 going past whatever the projectile is. (My guess is someone doing the superhero landing pose as an intimidation tactic.)
Looking at this in hi def, that a thing behind them looks to be roughly humanoid with eight glowing eyes and at least six tentacles coming from it’s head. This thing is either an alien Mech or that ship is so huge because the crew are roughly the size of Godzilla.
That thing seriously reminds me of the Amigdala from Bloodborne. Anybody else think the resemblance is a bit uncanny?
Naa, those aren’t eyes, they are glowing toenails.
The “ship” is just a shoe that has fallen off.
Well the good news is, whatever that thing is, it seems to be legitimately scared of Sydney.
….. wait, does that belong in the “good news” or “bad news” category?
I’m still kind of hoping these things are mostly curious, and don’t really have any malicious intent towards any non-Alari life.
Well cats and dogs do explore things with our teeth, not having those useful hands humans are issued with.
I guess these aliens have a similar use for high explosives?
*puts on bomb-squad suit, in case they want to say “hi”*
Looks like Dabs is going to have to check GNN (Galactic News Network) for info on this, or her own contacts within the Xenoarchy for who is responsible for the Alari geneocide. But since this is recent, it is likely it hasn’t been reported to anyone of relevance at this time.
Didn’t you see the GNN reporter filming Sydney, and beaming up his outside broadcast transmission?
That GNN anchor must be desperate to catch up, to do the interview!
At this point in our current adventure I’m afraid I may need to invoke the same logical complaints brought against Indy in the first ‘Raiders’ movie. What role did he play?
1) He does all his running around and performs his feats of daring do. End result: the Nazis get the Ark, open it, and all get zapped and die.
2) He turns down the offer to find the Ark. End result: the Nazis get the Ark, open it, and they all get zapped and die (probably).
What positive role is Archon performing in this story line?
1) Sciona gets her artifact, uses it to open a portal and manages to find her way back home, only to find a wasteland with monsters/aliens with beam weapons where she gets zapped and dies (probably).
2) Archon intervenes: An unstable portal is opened and they get flung through a cosmic twister to a place that is not Kansas. They find a wasteland with monsters and aliens and ships (oh my!) Here Sciona gets zapped with beam weapons and dies (probably). The end result is the same, except for the giant wormhole that is busy eating Earth, and an alien armada that may follow them back home in order to grab Sydney by her orbs.
Well, the first problem is that the characters aren’t allowed to read ahead in the script.
Since nobody knew the portal would lead to anything but a functional and aggressive Alari empire, there were excellent reasons to try and stop her.Hell, according to Sciona this must have happened in the last few days so it was not a predictable outcome.
Secondly, we have no idea what would have happened if Sciona had a fully functional Brane Ripper. She might have gone home, gotten angry, and decided to take vengance on the Earth by opening a portal to a dimension of superpowered face huggers, or sentient grey goo, or worse.
Third, my go to example for null effect protagonists is the D&D movie. I walked out of the theater saying “So the result of the movie is exactly the same as if they had burned the map in the first scene, only they’re all dead now.”
Have you considered that the Indiana Jones movie was about Indiana Jones and his own quest for the Ark of the Covenant, and not about the Nazis and the geopolitical ramifications of them finding an ancient magical artifact?