Grrl Power #650 – When god closes a wormhole…
This is the situation good commanders fear the most. Leaving one of your people behind in a different arm of the galaxy. With nearly no training. I mean, Sydney doesn’t even have the number to Archon HQ memorized. She does have her phone charger in her utility belt though, along with a sheet of gold stars and stick on googly eyes, so she may not be in as bad a position as it might first seem.
I think Dabbler went up about three cup sizes when she got back to Earth. Yikes. Okay not really, but they are supposed to be literally hypnotically distracting. The funny thing is, I actually usually draw breasts too small in most cases. Well, that’s maybe not true. I draw heads too big a lot of the time. I used a photo reference to get the pose right in the first panel, albeit of a woman with pretty big boobs, so… this is probably the right size for her. Granted she’s perma-glamoured, so everyone sees her a little bit differently. Somewhat ironically, Maxima sees Dabbler with larger boobs than Sydney does, for instance, because Max subconsciously assumes that a sex demoness should look more like a male fantasy slash blow up doll, ignoring the fact that she herself is quite endowed. Of course, Max doesn’t judge women for the way their bodies are shaped, at least she tries not to. Her opinions of women who get breast enlargements are a little more complex, but to her, how a woman presents herself is more important than the shape of her body, and Dabbler usually looks like she’s one hiccup away from bursting out of her clothes.
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I do not think anyone will ever object to a ‘bustier’ Dabbler.
I still object to her losing her extra bust.
I know she is extraterran. But nature tends to equilibrium. Simetry. Four would be more probable.
A character in Total Recall has a third if I remember correctly and Kung Pow has a monoboobed character.
Correct (original flava). And it wasn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Umm, not complaining, butt why did Daphne take off her jacket? o_O
Even though they passed through it quickly, and only had a short way to go, that crater would still be very hot. Maxima is protected by her forcefields, so would not notice. Dabbler is already wearing a cool outfit. Harem though would need to cool down.
Swapping over one of her other bodies, and teleporting into a cool pool, would be a solution. However it would probably breach quarantine protocols, for having been on an alien world.
So taking her jacket off seems like a good compromise.
That would explain why her t-shirt is almost transparent with sweat
She was possessed? 5 for the price of one!
Achilles being “buried somewhere as usual” made me think of ‘bad power’ from https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/748
Get the feeling she was wrong about her having bad powers, since I think she is the only one who could return from being stuck in space :P
Hang on, wouldnt he eventually suffocate?
No. He is totally invulnerable to all harm. Specifically including suffocation.
It is his one power, but it is incredibly strong in the one thing it does. Ignoring the side effect that he can punch harder (/lift slightly heavier stuff) because he does not risk hurting himself.
All other characters have a maximum of a five star rating in their powers. Which pretty much matches ‘the most powerful on Earth’ or ‘the most powerful known’, from what we have seen.
Achilles is the only one with a six star rating.
Late to the discussion but it seems that Maxima isn’t going to give up on Sydney despite the dire circumstances, I can’t say I’m surprised given that she was military and was probably taught to always watch out for your team and that they all get back home alive… I can only hope that something comes along to help with this but I am having my doubts considering the things dabbler said are needed to reopen the portal.
Don’t get too stuck on that portal. There’s more than one way to travel after all. The portal was just the way we already know about.
Very true, I hope they can get to Sydney somehow but the question is time and how much political red tape they have to deal with that could get in their way.
Portal travel is quick and convenient, but Sydney may have to take the bus.
Considering she has to find the bus stop and has to have the correct change an find a seat that isn’t next to some overly friendly alien that wants to get her pregnant. :P
Can’t Harem port to any place she’s been before? Doesn’t that solve half of that problem right there?
She needs to be familiar with the location (ie spend enough time there or be able to see it)
Just so.
Plus Dave’s blogs indicate Harem’s maximum range makes even trans-continental ‘ports challenging. You may recall Dabbler’s Science Corner showing a scene where Harem was having to take a taxi. That was not (just) a gag. It is something she has to do at times.
Even if the Alari lived on the far side of the Moon (in a crater next to the Nazis), Harem could not get there.
Plus she can’t carry more weight than Peggy’s sniper rifle. So could not rescue Sydney, in any event (but, if she found a way of reaching there somehow, could bring her snax and postcards).
If she grabbed Syd’s light bee, could she port with it?
YES!
*gently grabs Wee Red Bird and dances around happily*
Genius idea.
*deflates slightly*
Sadly still no use, in this situation, due to the range issues. But, long-term, that would be a very useful option.
Wouldn’t that send either Sidney or the lightbee flinging at each other at half the speed at light, through the unknown cosmos due to Sidneys max distance to the orb?
Heh, I see where you are coming from, but no. The lightbee is a mini orb, which lives inside the Truesight orb. Any time the lightbee is out, such as when Sydney is projecting her image, the inner orb is no longer visible.*
Although you would be right if Harem tried to teleport with an orb (although the orbs are powerful enough that I think the teleport would fail to separate them). The lightbee though is intended to go scouting long distances, so does not have that restriction. Certainly at the Mars warehouse it went well beyond the range that the true orbs are limited to.
Possibly the lightbee does have a limit. But we have nothing hinting that might be the case.
* Incidentally exactly the same thing happens with the tentacle and its orb (not to mention the PPO).
Figured that Taxi scene was simply because she was new to where she was now living so wasn’t able to comfortably *VORP* back, like, she had only been with ARCHON a couple days or so
Figured lil Joshu‘s ‘half of that problem’ was simply referring to the resupply part
I now have a mental image of a scene with Sydney running around trying to avoid the “skweeeeeeen” energy beams of the tentacle-dudes…and deciding in a fit of ADHDness to race around one of ’em and slap sticky-backed googly eyes all over its tentacles…only to have all of the tentacle-dudes stop in their tracks, stare in awe, and demand to know what sort of remuneration/payment/services they can provide in exchange for more of these magical moving gemstones of rare Earthling-ness…
…And then of Sydney sweating bullets as she runs out of googly eyes somewhere near Alpha Centauri, and frantically hoping they’ll accept colorful foil star stickers as a suitable enough payment for that last leg of her trip…
Actually, I’m fairly certain she’ll be rescued either when Dabbler reopens a portal, or by the comm-ball having an ability to open a transgalactic rift, or by the Final Mysterious Orb turning out to have some sort of warp drive capability. (I do think the airball has an ability to provide food & water as well as clean air, since that would indeed be Lifesupport.) The real question in all of this is whether or not she has those abilities pre-activated, or if, while flailing around, dodging skweeeeeeen beams, and slapping googgly eyes on her would-be killers, she’ll gain another skill point…and correctly (if not necessarily deliberately/consciously) pick just the right skill tree point to be useful to her current dilemma-riddled situation.
…Dammit, Dave, can’t you update any faster??
Heh.
I think this time Sydney is going to ensure that she does not randomly pick her upgrade. Some careful consideration will help her to maximise her chances of picking a suitable upgrade.
Especially if she carries on thinking in terms of the Halomobile being a spaceship, as she suggested during the swimming pool tests.
I am hoping that one upgrade somehow lets her go back to earth, sorta like a ‘recall’ ability or something. But I am having my doubts that could happen.
Maybe the hentorb has a mark/recall (Ultima Online, Elder Scrolls Morrowind) effect. It’s not just a ‘grab space debris’ but docking ability of some interesting type (Fading Suns space travel).
I feel like her previous point was only spent semi-randomly, since she noted that she knew which she was supposed to take next.
Her thought process seemed to fit that she couldn’t use any of her immediate abilities to keep the construct’s attention, so hoped that some PPO point would be a little less penetrating than the main beam.
The PPO upgrade may have been partially intentional (whether conscious or subconscious), but she’s grabbed the right orb accidentally in the past, before she even knew what it did. Perhaps the orbs have some user preservation built in?
Yea, that is the way various people took it. And it may well be right.
There is a counterpoint to make though, in that, on the previous page Sydney did indicate that she would be trying the green orb, as she did not know what that did.
Given that none of the other orbs could have easily helped her,* she may have chosen that one precisely because it had unknown powers which may be able to help.
* Maybe the tentacle, but it can exert so much force that Halo could harm, or kill herself, if yanking on chains wrapped around her.
Right up there with wishing for wishes is wishing to know what to wish for.
If one of the orbs, as has been conjectured earlier, has healing powers, then
wishing her brain would work right might remove her need for medication.
However…
A) The orbs don’t grant wishes
B) Awwww. ADHD is why we love her!
Entertainment news story of the millennium!*
* To date. We need to allow for “Grrl Power the Movie” to be announced someday.
Please no one make a personal attack on me for saying this btw, but…
No offense Yorp, but the reboot is going to suck. It’s going to suck just like DC’s Titans is going to suck. It’s going to be sort of like ‘SJW Marvel’ (as #comicsgate puts it) because the articles I’ve seen touting it never talk about the show except to say how it’s ‘diverse’ (as if that matters more than being a good story, as if you just need to check off a diversity box instead of making the characters engaging) and ‘uses monsters and demons as metaphors for issues facing young people.’ I don’t think they’re going to be subtle at ALL or make it a backdrop to the larger point of the show (entertainment about a girl that beats up vampires and monsters with her friends), like the original show was. Which means we’re going to be getting a lot of PC stuff shoved down our throats instead of entertainment, and will be actively spitting at at least half the possible audience, if it goes the same route that a lot of superhero-themed shows have been going lately.
Not to mention the original show was exceptionally good and managed to cover issues without it hammering things into your forehead, where the bad guys were occasionally able to give a real moral quandry to the good guys, like Wolfram and Hart or Spike or that Hunter guy – so either one of two thinsg will happen – it will spit on the original show, or it will try to cash in on nostalgia by copying it…. then after the nostalgia wears off, people are going to either get annoyed at there being a one-note theme to the new show or see it as a cheap copy of the original. Sort of like The Force Awakens was a badly done, pale imitation of A New Hope, and The Last Jedi basically spit on the entire Star Wars history (and any sort of consistency, which is what tends to be what I like about the Marvel movies, for example)
At least, that’s my guess on what will happen based on how articles have been describing the new Buffy and how a lot of core Buffy fans have been really angry about it.
PS – I’d definitely prefer a Grrl Power show. It’s none of the things I just mentioned in the above paragraphs and DaveB is awesome in his storytelling.
Personally I prefer to wait until I have at least seen a trailer, before writing something off.
Meh. I thought the same way about Titans, and when I saw the trailer for that, it just made me think I was underestimating how bad it will be. When they make a trailer for the Buffy reboot, I’m sure I’ll comment again SOMEWHERE :) I just find that certain pop culture should not be rebooted. Some do it right, because they do it as a sequel many years later, like Cobra Kai (which is amazing and made by Ralph Macchio, the original Karate Kid). A few do it better than the original (if they’re basing the movie/etc on an even earlier Intellectual Property where the first attempt was really bad, like Supergirl or Tomb Raider or Wonder Woman (compared to the Cathy Lee Crosby Wonder Woman I mean, the Linda Carter one was great).
But most do it horribly, horribly wrong, like Ghostbusters or The Force Awakens or Robocop or Godzilla or Superman Returns, or the Karate Kid reboot (the one starring Will Smith’s kid and Jackie Chan – and I like both of them as actors but god that movie sucked). And they give hints when they’re going to do it badly, when they use certain buzzwords like ‘grittier’ or ‘metaphors’ or ‘more diverse’ or ‘more inclusive’ when trying to describe the actual plot of a reboot. Or when they can’t even get the frigging costumes right, like with DC Titans. Then you find, during the trailer, that they also can’t get the characters’ attitudes right (Robin is a gritty loner who kills people now, Raven’s an emotional basketcase, Cyborg … doesn’t even exist, and I have no idea wtf is going on with Starfire but her outfit looks ridiculous and apparently she’s a pyrokinetic killer that sets people on fire instead of an innocent alien that can fire starbolts).
I”m sure a lot of the problem tends to be network meddling, but I don’t think so with BIG names like Greg Berlanti, who is messing up Titans, or Joss Whedon, or JJ Abrams, or Rian Johnson. I don’t think those guys are very subject to network meddling when they ruin something.
Apparently this is my week for ranting as I get closer to finishing my pre-trial discovery :) All that pent up frustration! :)
Heh.
Don’t forget though that Buffy, the series, was a reboot of Buffy, the movie.
Just plot the improvements, on a graph, and you will see where an optimist will place the next reboot.
Of course the fabric of the universe would be torn asunder, if a TV program could be made that level of quality above our beloved series. Sydney showed us that is survivable though. So go for it!
It wasnt a reboot any more than Stargate SG-1 is a reboot of Stargate. It’s a continuation. It’s different than a reboot. Cobra Kai – continuation. The Karate Kid starring Jackie Chan and Will Smith’s kid – reboot. The Buffy movie was just an ‘origin point’ for the TV show to be based on, just like the Karate Kid is for Cobra Kai, or Stargate was for SG-1 and Atlantis, or Highlander was for Highlander the series. None of those were ‘reboots’ or ‘remakes.’
Reboots tend to suck. They are very rarely done well – especially when there’s a social commentary/political correct emphasis behind it, like Buffy seems like it’s going to be.
Ghostbusters tried to sell itself ORIGINALLY as a continuation with the ’30 years ago’ trailer, but it was NOT a continuation, and wound up being just a crappy reboot. If the four women had been, for example, the children of the original Ghostbusters, then it would have have been a continuation.
Meh, if it were an actual continuation, the events of the two would match. Joss was just clever enough to imply that the events of the movie could have occurred, at her previous school.
However it is a reboot because in the series Buffy got expelled from there, due to ‘burning down the school gym’ (paraphrased). Whereas in the movie she improvised a flamethrower to burn a vampire. Witnessed by the entire school. However the actual building survived unscathed.
Plus all the vampires Buffy slays leave bodies, rather than turning to dust, as in the series.
Then, in the movie, Buffy is a senior. Whereas in the series she is a sophomore (which turns out not to actually be a tree). Plus her family background is very different (two parent family, who neglect their daughter, versus single mom who dotes on her daughter).
Finally we get to the watchers. The film one is hundreds of years old and has trained generations of slayers. Which is not referenced in the series. To the contrary there is mention of successive watchers keeping diaries. They just have normal lifespans (when not cut short). Including Giles, who is mortal and painfully so.
When story elements change, it is a reboot.
It’s why I like like cinemasins/cinemawins reviews. The official trailer was kinda in the same vein/ after that it was more of a formulaic change up. eg swap male for female characters. comedians, toss in cameos from the first (where they were not the same/ sans history, use formulaic story outline of first movie (reboot), and change the tech. Oh and toss in a bunch of CGI to dazzle the senses.
in the end it was a shameless money grab that failed miserably. mostly the comedic angel, they had no chemistry together.
If the studios go ‘by the book” the next few times there will be a version, a version etc.
tvtropes should branch out to buisness decisions – I call it -tropes.biz
One of my favorite movies growing up, and it still is, is Little Shop of Horrors (the musical one).
Watch it again. Watch it now, as an adult. The movie has a single theme- don’t do drugs. That’s it.
However, as you said, it isn’t blunt and smashing you in the face, it’s slow and subtle and played out realistically.
Example: Seymour’s kills! He feeds these to Audrey 2, and why: (Original ending, screw theatrical)
Himself: It’s okay if I’m only hurting myself, and it’s only a little bit anyway.
Doctor Orin Skrivello: That guy was truly evil. Killing him was necessary.
Mr. Mushnik, seen as somewhat of a foster dad: It’s not my fault, it was self-defense!
Audrey, the love of his life: … What did I do?
Himself: I should have seen this coming.
(The world ends) “They may offer you lots of cheap thrills, they may offer you fortune and fame, recognition and instant acclaim- but whatever they offer you DON’T FEED THE PLANTS!”
My biggest fear, aside from Riverdale treatment *which let’s admit a lot of Buffy seasons were teen drama*, is the
All the monsters are 99% human treatment.
Buffy made the most of its budget, and got us some pretty neat prosthetics, CGI, and animatronics.
However Thanks to Supernatural, people know a show can keep going and shave its budget by making its monsters almost entirely human in appearance and just (tell) the audience “oh they are really these really cool looking super monsters, take our word for it, they just look human right now to spare your sanity…*
Why design some awesome demon or robot for your show when you can just have a guy with some tattoos and glowy eyes and tell the audience they are really some awesome demon or the avatar of some unknowable thing.
There is a much better way of doing that. I can recommend DUST, on YouTube, by the way. They put out a lot of really good quality short sci fi films. Plus they have started to do short TV series too.
I never have been much into short stories, either in books or in film. Although I do find, when I pick up the odd short story book, that I enjoy it. I just never went out of my way to get them (the Grrl Power one will be an exception, in due course).
But now that they have gotten a consistently good standard (some of the early ones were a bit hit and miss), and you get a movie every week (or one of the episodic ones), it is starting to feel like Netflix on YouTube. For free. It is all legitimate content distributed by them. And some of it is specifically being made with the intent of using DUST as the initial distributors.
Regarding Buffy though, as Joss Whedon is behind this, I seriously doubt he will permit the effects to downgrade. To the contrary repeating the previous standard will be easier, as costs will have gone down, due to technology making it a lot simpler (for the digital effects anyhow). And cool digital monsters are much more viable today, even on a restricted budget.
As you can find out, in various DUST movies. :-)
Relying on CGI is where the costs come into it and why you end up with crappy effects and shitty monsters
Traditional FX may take time, butt the results, 90% of the time, look more ‘real’. It’s one reason why Mad Max was so good: while they may have used CGI for the sand storm, the car stunts were real, and the budget is way way lower (even taking into consideration the cost of the actual smashed up cars and medical treatments)
Yea but do you know how much it costs to hire dinosaur trainers and safety officers?
Proper training is one of the major overhead costs at dinosaur-based companies.
DUST is freaking PHENOMENAL.
Ugh, don’t get me started on Supernatural. One of my friends was ranting and raving about the show and described the Leviathans to me as these unbelievably powerful monsters trapped in the deepest depths of hell because everything in creation is terrified of them. Saw a clip on Youtube and I was like “Those look like the goth kids that used to get beat up in high school.” When I think of Leviathans, I think of world-ending giants that would make Godzilla soil his undergarments, not emo dropouts with broken vapes in their pockets.
Yeah the Leviathan story arc is where my last straw fell and officially gave up on the show.
Storywise I thought it was nothing but downhill since season 3, and should have ended by season 6. I liked the early seasons, it was like Tales from the Crypt but following the same two guys showing up in each place where the craziness is going down. But noooo, someone insisted the show have an overarching plot…and of course having to try and top themselves bit off WAY more than their budget could allow, so next thing we know demons go from “super rare, there are signs they are present” to *every other enemy*, and angels (which started off strong, also lost that burn your eyes out horror in like one season)….Leviathans and such its like they had this idea with “Eve” but couldn’t grasp it so it turned into pacman headed V aliens and just another monster.
the show basically turned into Tell don’t show.
Not like they did that in Grim.
Who was saying Grimm was a good show,
Did I say Grimm was a good show? No, no I didn’t….fricken CGI animal heads…seriously Grimm and Supernatural have my “Worst Dragons ever” mark on them…and who decides they want to use a Nuckelevee in their show and make it a guy with a horse head? As bad as Supernatural turning a Kitsune into a brain eating needle finger…
One thing we have to appreciate about Buffy, most of their demons were original creations, and things based on existing folklore at least tried to LOOK like their folklore. Heck Lost Girl did a better job of looking like its folklore than Grimm or Supernatural…of course like Supernatural it fell into the trap of trying to have a bigger story than it needed…I mean what was wrong with “Succubus who grew up around humans thinking she was a mutant or something, discovering a community of Fae who have two mafia like families of Seelie and Unseelie and she doesn’t want to choose so lives between them”
That worked, we didn’t need any (Soul of the Land, Daughter of the Devil, The Garuda is coming, Apocalyptic Council members, ect…) that stuff didn’t fit the original premise and brought the show down…especially as it couldn’t fit in the budget. Lost Girl should have focused on the drama of a Succubus torn between three worlds, light, dark, and human and finding her place in that. Not…you are the chosen one, daughter of darkness, a new big bad is coming, ect…
Somebody has stolen the Moon!
Here is the CCTV evidence!
Im suddenly reminded of this: https://youtu.be/nCOxVaQQrbk?t=40
I feel a cliffhanger and end of chapter looming.
Dave was toying with doing ‘a day in the life of’, for one of the other characters. He listed several, but only Peggy stuck, as she was my favourite, on the list.
I think it will pick up from some time after the rescue attempts have been tried (and failed). So that most of the unit have had to resume routine operations. Albeit that a few, such as Dabbler, would be tasked with carrying investigating ways to save Sydney.
I don’t think Peggy would be one of those. So we would get to see quite a ‘slice of life’, in Archon, from the perspective of a non-super.
Although I would be quite happy if it turned out to follow Gwen. I don’t think she was one of the options listed, but I am interested in seeing more of her.
Oh god I hope this isnt a cliffhanger, that would be torturous. Months of us debating what happens and driving each other nuts in the process.
I think we would have more than enough capacity to do that.
I think my new catch phrase is going to be: God help us all. Because this is the third time I’ve said it in two days on this forum. :)
Got it, we’d become exactly like a Steven Universe fan forum LoL.
PS: as an aside, loving how fast the show has lately been shooting down so many older theories…and new theories…but been proving some oddball ones right…and no I don’t mean the Pink/Rose…but something else revealed at SDCC…avoiding spoiler but there was a goofy theory (buried) that most of us just shook off…that has been proven true…
I don’t think Xuriel would bother to save Sydney.
She’s an old adventurer, and has lost a LOT of people, probably. Do your best, move on, keep going, don’t look back.
I don’t look back at certain things myself because most of my friends are already dead, and bothering to think of ‘well what if I was there’ is just deluding myself with false hope and causing undue stress and berievement. Make friends sure, and help them when and how you can, but if they die, don’t focus on it, and just keep going forward. You do you.
Hmmm. I would refute that, as I think Dabbler would care enough to try. However that is purely down to my subjective opinion, based on them sharing some quality time, and confidences, on several occasions. Most noticeably with Dabbler averting Sydney’s gaze, from her hypnoboobs, so she did not get entrapped, against her will.
So she did demonstrate having Sydney’s best interests in mind. Despite the loss of feeding opportunity it gave her.
However Dabbler is on orders not to do that with team-mates. And, by that stage Sydney had officially signed up. So that could be viewed as Dabbler just obeying her orders.
Whereas, on the other side of the equation, we have seen Dabbler:
• playing a practical joke on Sydney (as the Muppet puppeteer).
• harassing Sydney in the showers,
• casting a ‘warming’ spell, with known sexual side-effects, on Halo.
Agreed, Dabbler may be alien but she isn’t a sociopath. Even from a pragmatic viewpoint, giving up on a teammate the moment they fall behind is a terrible practice, you’d never be able to hold an effective team together. Easier to make a reasonable rescue attempt than to recruit and train with a brand-new team member.
Also, some things are worth going back for no matter the cost.
“NO sir! Leaving one SIr!” I remember that ep. of Red dwarf and Cat and the reverse time world… Laughed so hard.
Calling it now. This is when Sydney discovers that the communication orb acts like a universal translator – and that she contacts earth from some alien diner where she’s eating some unknown alien food that isn’t even consumable by humans…. And yet it doesn’t hurt her :P
I think Sydney had the digestion thing before she even encountered the orbs. That may even have been why they bonded with her!
“Universal digestive system recognised, candidate suitable for offworld operations, application accepted.”
Finally a chance for Sydneys space explorer kit to shine in its intended environment!
Stranded on an uninhabited planet? Check!
Hostile entities approaching? Check!
No chance of rescue? Check!
Maybe they can get a Worm to dig another hole?
Perhaps Trent knows a big one he can recommend? Either that or one of the 3rd Stage Guild Navigators. They seem pretty similar.
Dave, I really loved the artwork on this page. You made great use of lighting and it really accents the defining features for both Maxima and Dabbler. I think that is part of the reason Dabbler’s breasts stand out more than usual. I also like how Dabbler’s nose and ears make her look more mousey and Maxima’s pointy ears stand out.