Grrl Power #651 – Obtuse loop
Maxima probably needs to issue a standing order about not being cryptic in the field. She’s intelligent, but in a world of super powers and aliens and all that good stuff, your’re gonna get situations that even the most on-top-of-it commander will need help making sense of. That’s why you have specialists in the first place. Just need to make sure they’re not being cheeky at crucial moments.
I was trying to figure out how to word Harem’s “new information” without either spelling out what she’s trying to reveal, but also without being obnoxiously obtuse. I think quite a few of you will guess, and if you do, then I uh, invite you to buy yourself something nice, I guess. The prize budget over here is limited.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Still working on it. How’s Sydney?
“-UUUUUUUUUU-”
Still working on her verbalization of her predicament.
Snot On My Keyboard Award to Jayessell!
I imagine Sydney will be vocalizing for at least two more pages. I know I would be.
Thoughts from Alien near Sydney….
“How is that possible, she has exhaled 6 times her mass in air in the cry….. if this continues much longer the planets atmosphere will be irrevocable changed”
LMAO!
LATER…
Alien (a different one): “Fascinating… the composition of the planet’s atmosphere is approximately 70% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 10% profanity…”
Love this thread!
Good one Josh
The recovering ecosystem (Life finds a way) will use that if the oxygen levels drop too much.
The flowers, however, will be unsuitable for Valentines Day.
“Such unusual flowers… the stamens look exactly like a middle finger!”
Truly alien thinking.
Using a sexual organ, as an analogy for a manipulative digit.
Re Curse Flowers – See figure 4…. 00100 you get the point. :)
Only 10% Josh? That’s kind of setting the bar a bit low for Sydney aren’t you?
Mr. Sulu. Evasive action. Anything that strong. To be able. To alter profanity. Into a physical. Ob. Ject. We’re just not ready for.
Captain! Bio-sciences is reporting abnormal mutations, and increases of Mom’s truck stop usage!”
Air-orb, she can keep up that “-UUUUUUUUUUUUU-” all day by just summoning more air into her lungs. Also, upon realizing that, her blackbelt in vulgar language has been upgraded to grand master.
No, no. Grandmaster is seriously underestimating her. That’s at least Deity level. Maxima is the Goddess of Ash, so Sydney would be the Goddess of Profanity. I almost said vulgarity, but that’s more Dabbler.
Although she may get to deity level some day, it’s canon that Math puts her at a 7th dan in blackbelt in cursing.
Gotta remember that was BEFORE she knew how to infinity swear with the orb.
Good call on using the air ball to resupply her lung air.
Also, the author ought to give some credit to 8-Bit Theater, which did the huge “FUUUUUUUUU” thing first.
Found it:
https://www.nuklearpower.com/comics/8-bit-theater/040327.png
I’m sure that earlier instances can be found. And that there will be even more, going back into history and pre-history, which we will not. In one story telling medium or another. At its essence it is just an expletive being given exaggerated emphasis, for effect.
Whilst it is interesting to note previous uses, the key thing is how well a given one has been done. And I think Sydney’s was profound!
“My only regret is that I have no upvotes to give for your comment.”
~Almost, but not quite, Nathan Hale
…even though it deserves all of them from the worldwide web.
So Harem had a level up? What will the new one be named?
Or “How many more have to be named”.
Could be that she has a traveler’s pass – travel 100Mil kilometers by teleportation and you get a new Body for free. And she is cheating the mileage system with intergalactic distances.
That… or she discovered a nearby planet of Harems.
Whelp. Time for her to explore more (pop culture) dressing options…
Hatsune Miku Daphne Deshantis
Hanahana Haruko Harem
There have to be at least 3 more, if my theory is right. She didn’t grow a new Harem. Parallel something or something- like a parallel Earth is what got broken and teleported to the Alari homeworld, which included some Harems. Or something.
“there WERE to many of me” they were in a parallel dimension, I think. there was already a harem on earth and she also connected her while also connected to the ones on earth prime. So there where ten of her. Now there are five again.
Or simply that there were 6 of her – 5 from the parallel universe, and the new visitor.
I don’t think 6 – she’s gone through the “new instance” process before, and is familiar with how that feels – for her to be thrown off… if it was the same feeling, it would have to be overwhelming numbers – I suspect 10
10?
You are assuming a parallel version of her would also have 5, not 3 or 1000.
True
By bet is the portal had a bit that was connected to two times in the same universe. eg a ‘leak’ (the damage) that allowed her mind to detect two sets of Harems at different points in time for the same universe. Normally her mind would ignore or filter out or combine the ‘time fuzziness’ of even here looking at say a vase from 5 different viewpoints.
Now also it could be the end of the portal on Aleri prime could have been connected at a future time. But that would make getting to and finding Syd much harder. (lost in space and time) Now if the time difference was into the future it makes more sense.
-Sciona arrived in future Alari prime
-Harem ‘was connected to two sets of herself. (one via the portal and one via ‘the long way round’)
-Harems confusion was the massive mind sync of data between the current 5 and 1 or more of herself ‘long way’selves. Also the Echo.
-Alari Prime was 700 light years away, so I suspect the time difference was about a week/or a month (Harem in the future has LEARNED more)
It also means she will be discombobulated again but this time from her ‘younger’ self is detected.
Harem would probably never been confused if say the time difference was before her birth.
heh a quantum tunnel via a quantum tunnel.
I highly doubt Harem mind is also extra dimensional or extra universal. well at least not yet.
I’m pretty sure ukezi is correct.
Even if it was a parallel universe, the wormhole joined them into a single universe while it existed.
So Daphne suddenly had ten bodies: five from universe one and five from universe two, she existed in both univserses (or, that both universes had a version of her already) before the wormhole was created.
This might pose a problem for “Star Swear – this is the voyage of the Mighty Halo back to Earth”, because there is no way for her to travel back to her own version of Earth without something like the Brane Ripper to open a wormhole back into her own universe.
Universe 1 and Universe A.
We’ve had this problem before (kiss my glorious golden ass).
Just one extra could cause the echo if it was an identical one to one of her other ones (since she keeps her iterations different.)
No. The other universe should be called The Monkees!
Sydney will be fine. I’ve thought for a long time that this was an alternate reality. So, if there’s a Harem there, there must be an alternate Sydney! Who has, of course, made different choices on her orbs! Once they team up, they will be unstoppable.
That was my thinking as well. Seems kinda obvious.
…in regards to ukezi’s conjecture.
Are we sure this is case of conjoined comic book Dimensions (defined as alternate dimensions i.e. earth-1, earth 2, earth 616)?
Another possible explanation is that they never left the same universe.
Perhaps the portal that was meant to conjoin two separate points in space
Instead managed to conjoin two separate points of space AND time.
Thus Harem’s issue.
Does this mean that the parallel Harem is aware of Sydney and can send help?
Will that be a good or bad thing?
Not sure what you mean by “What will the new one be named?” There is but one Daphne Deshantis, so the new one will be named Daphne just like all the other instances of Harem. Whether she has 5 bodies, or 6 or 10 or whatever, there is still only one mind/soul/consciousness.
More for a reader perspective. We have Strawberry Harem, Vogue, co-ed, punk, and Goth (or Blondini etc.). They’re all Daphne Deshantis, but at least Sydney distinguishes between Harem’s bodies, referring specifically to Strawberry Harem.
It might be that she actually had an independent ego, while still being entangled. and now she’s “recombined” into her normal state.
I think “what will the new one be named” could be a valid question here. But I don’t think it involves a “leveling up” as well.
Within quantum theory, only things made of mass are limited to lightspeed but the link of “information” between two particles paired together (for every particle, there is an equal but opposite particle paired with it (The theory of Hawking Radiation postulates not only the theory of paired particles, but how they might become physically separated, particularly within a certain, specific proximity to a black hole) has no speed limit. ie – if the two components of paired particles are separated, they are still equally opposite in their “state of existance,” but even infinite spatial distance between them does not change the fact that they are still opposites…The speed of information is infinite. Therefore, Harem should NOT have been discombobulated if that portal was only a spatial conduit, so it also had to be a dimensional portal to have that effect on her.
Also, it seems that even though Harem returned to her original dimension does not mean that her quantum link has “reset” again (“there were too many of me,” stated in the past tense)…But these seperate Harems would have to also physically remerge with each other first before that link could be “reset.” So I’m thinking that this truly is a “complete & separate copy” of the original Harem. Probably the original Harem that never crossed dimensions might be panicking over the “death” of one of her bodies right now (& will continue to do so until they visually see each other again) & this Harem would still retain all of the memories, abilities & experience of the original…right up to that point when the quantum link was severed. For practical effect, we now have two Harems, each should have the same power as each other…Due to the severing though, each of them should be able to “teleport” only up to four bodies each instead of five.
For all intents & purposes, both of them should be exactly the same as the other, but without that link, they will begin to diverge as two seperate individual minds as time goes on, personalities also diverging more as their individual experiences & memories are now different. We must also take into consideration that the initial severing was mentally traumatic for both of them & how they’re going to deal with that trauma now is the first trigger of the divergence. On one side, we have a Harem who might be thinking that one of her bodies died instantly when it crossed the portal & is still dead…But on this side, we have a Harem that knows that the other has NOT died but is merely seperated.
…And from the expression on her face, I think she enjoys that fact…As ominous as that may be.
Be that as it may, I think Max is right in that, for the “right now,” they have a missing team mate to recover.
So time travel? Inter-dimensional shenanigans?
My money’s on time-travel. So, what critical battle in future is going to involve Harem suddenly discombobulating? Also, can they send a signal to evacuate the Alari homeworld before the cataclysm hits?
I just hope it’s not something to do with the souls released from the soul battery.
I thought about time travel, and the fact that the souls will have given (in the past, from the present) powers to the humans.
Alien souls possessing humans in the past- all you need now are some stupid spaceships shaped like 747’s, volcanos, and fusion warheads.
Spaceships shaped like 747s?
I thought it was DC8s
Maybe it was. Forgive me for not having an exact recollection of the BS contained within the OT manuals, lol. “Spaceships shaped like airliners”, let’s just say that.
Careful, Titan gets really upset when his religion is mocked.
Quite clearly telegraphed time travel… when there was another one of that particular Harem in the same existence, hence the “echo”.
I did wonder if the portal destination was correct in location, but out of time massively, but assuming that Harems lifespan is similar to normal humans, it seems to be between -5 to +55 year proximity to the present.
Assuming that it is future (most likely), the “easier” part that Dabbler may be thinking will be a Daphne vorping to the planet just as she leaves the wormhole in the time loop, picking up Sydney and vorping back. Just got to hope it’s in the future and let Sydney appear in the future time, but no time will have actually passed for her as Sydney is already in the future.
Based on Varia’s introduction, I doubt Harem can grab Sydney, since it was something special that Varia was able to travel with Harem.
She might be able to grab her light bee (or cup it in her hands) and port home with it. Then Halo can easily port to her bee.
Also, Harem may have memories that her future selves were sharing. Could be the location of another portal making device that her future selves remember from her visit to the future… timey wimey wibbly wobbly…
I wonder if she caught next week’s lottery numbers.
Good thinking on the bee port since, at least from Sydney’s perspective, it should be well within Harem’s carry limits. I do wonder, however, if Harem would experience the bee’s weight the same as Sydney, since we’ve already seen others fail to move her orbs in the past.
Harem wouldn’t teleport with the orb, she would teleport with the tiny light particle the orb sends out.
Why are you assuming timetravel?
There is nothing that really implies timetravel, the only thing noted is that Harem somehow connected to another “Harem”, and the idea of it being a Daphne from the future is only one possible solution.
It is just as likely that it is a parallel version of her, or even that there was a being or character with a similar ability that she connected to.
It is ALSO possible that it is INDEED future Harem, but sent there by Dabbler to retrieve Sidney.
Why not assume time travel. Most of us are making some sort of assumption in our comments whether it be time travel, parallel worlds or anything else.
A few helpful hints kind of point us there. For example Sciona saying that she had only spoken to her people a short time before the destruction and being surprised that so much had happened in such a short time.
Besides, a parallel universe portal would mean that the earth is now under threat of both the Alari in their own universe wanting to come and level the planet and the souls of the parallel Alari attacking from within.
another clue to it being time travel is dabbler’s sudden relief is also not indicative of finding out your friend is lost in another universe seconds away form facing a world ending monster. it far better fit with dabbler realizing they have time to make plans to help Sydney.
It DOES make things significantly easier if they know that Sydney will be on the Alari Homeworld in the future. There is time to set up a rescue operation, and Harem will instantly know when her past self arrives through the portal.
I can see it now Dabbler and several council experts placing the finishing touches on the gate to get Sydney. Maxima and Heatwave standing on each side of Harem. Suddenly Harem gets sick and grabs the hurl pail from Heatwave and starts upchucking. Maxima turns to Dabbler and screams “GO, Go, Go, Code Red.”
The lottery is minor compared to her income.
I REALLY hope it´s not time travel. Aside from time travel being a trope so tired it´s already asleep, no one seems to be able to get it right.
But, if this was an accident of blood magic combined with explosions, i guess i can live with it.
Once…
I’m also hoping it isn’t time travel. For all the reasons you mention, and more. It does seem to be a plausible way to double up on the Daphnes, however.
Wormholes have been theorized to allow both rearward and forward time travel, although the first explanation I heard at university did not do it for me.
It all has to do with relativity’s broken synchronization. Let’s say you want to create a wormhole between here and a planet 600 light-years away. As you look at that planet orbiting its star, you see it as it was 600 years ago. So you create a wormhole here with two ends close together, in the same space-time reference frame. You anchor one end here and anchor the other end in a star-ship that will travel at 90% light speed to your planet 600 light years away. On Earth, 667 years pass during that journey. On the star-ship, only 291 years will have passed. So when the star-ship arrives at the other planet, it is 376 years behind. Stepping from the wormhole on Earth, will put you on the other planet 376 years ago. If I am on the alien planet and walk through the other way, I am now 376 years in the future, but on Earth.
This is okay. If I go from here to there, I can set up a message and send it at light-speed to Earth, then come back and set up the equipment to receive the message 376 years later. This was the explanation I first heard for time travel with wormholes, but all you are doing is going around the intervening space; this is not time travel. But there is a way…
Now imagine that not only did we send a wormhole end from Earth 600 light years away, but they did the same thing at the same time we did, to generate a wormhole and send one end to Earth at 90%c. Now, relativity would say that their wormhole has a time different of 376 years as well, but in the other direction.
If I carefully chose which wormhole to go through in which order, I could jump back in time 752 years or jump forward 752 years using a very short journey. I just would not be able to go back prior to the creation of the wormholes.
For the comic scenario, the other end of the wormhole could have been temporally destabilized and connected with the planet a dozen or more years in the future. So long as Harem still had a few living bodies, she could connect with her future self; she just is not used to the experiences of her older selves (e.g. pregnancy, labour, geriatrics, etc.) which confused her younger self. Maybe just suddenly having 11 bodies instead of 5 confused her.
David, some problems:
When you step through the wormhole, you are still in the present there, just as you are in the present here. It is not “376 years ago”-time just progressed slower for them relative to you, that relation being made via an imperceptible absolute time. They are still in the present. If you then sent a light speed message from that planet, then wormholed back home, it will arrive in 600+ years.
Don’t confuse the impossibility of certainty of simultaneity for impossibility of the existence of simultaneity in a universal sense. Things CAN happen at the same time. We just can’t ever be sure they are.
Think of it this way- humans are able to infer the existence of time via the observation of varying velocities of objects through space. If we can observe any object moving with a different (non-parallel, and/or having a different magnitude) spatial velocity from us, we can automatically infer a time dimension, since velocity would not be possible without time. Similarly, humans may observe varying velocities through time itself- both SR and GR predict such observations, and they have been experimentally verified. If a variance in velocity through time can be observed, a higher order time is required- one would calculate such a temporal velocity in relative time/absolute time, as opposed to spatial distance/relative time, as spatial velocity is calculated in.
Indeed, if such absolute time did not exist, reality itself could not- any type of time/space continuity would be simply impossible. When we assume relativity, we assume that something can be related via a common medium. A clock that is in a gravity well going half as fast as a clock outside it still has something in common with that external clock- something that permits them both to exist in the same universe and be thus compared to determine that one has been running faster than the other. That background of comparison, causality-the idea that events descend from previous events-demands that there is some type of universal synchronicity, even if it is beyond our effective means to perceive that synchronicity. If there was no absolute synchronicity, and therefore no causality, things could pop in and out of existence without reason.
There is no difference between “the answer is unknowable [to anyone or anything natural]” and “there is no answer.” To posit otherwise is exactly to posit the supernatural. In this case, unless modern physics is catastrophically wrong, the particular “answers” you insist exist, all boiling down to there being a “right” frame of reference, are not simply unknowable to humans, but to any being that could fit in the universe. Therefore, unless there’s a realm that we cannot honestly claim the existence of, there literally are no answers for the questions our brains, built over hundreds of millions of years on the same little rock, have happened to come to.
In fact, there’s no reason to think that causality as we understand it is anything more than a consequence of where our little four-dimensional forms happen to be in this great structure. Nothing needs to “permit” it to exist, since nothing forbids it to exist. Logic dictates that ultimately there is something that simply is, even if that something is an infinite, even uncountable, even somehow proper, class of somethings. So when you find that not only can’t you find any more, but nothing you will ever interact with will be able to, either, ever, nor even at any extreme in any non-spatiotemporal direction, it’s time to stop. Currently it is believed that the order of events outside one another’s light cones is such a thing.
There is a huge difference between “the answer is unknowable [to anyone or anything natural]” and “there is no answer.” A good example is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle; we get to know position or momentum of particles to exclusionary degrees, but just because we can only know the one absolutely doesn’t mean we should automatically assume that the other does not exist. If I have a series of cards with information on both sides, and for every card, you can pick which side to see, it does not mean the back side lacks information simply because you cannot see it for virtue of having picked the other side.
And I DEFINITELY wasn’t asserting that such “answers” are knowable in their specificity, but rather that the circumstantial evidence available to us STRONGLY implies that continuity of events continues even when light cone exposure is temporarily interrupted somehow. To suggest otherwise would require more faith- a belief that somehow the universe ceases to exist when you can’t “look” at it. It’s an incredibly arrogant and solipsistic faith.
Then there’s the whole idea of the potential creativity required for your suggestion. Let’s say wormholes exist, and in stepping through one the continuity of my light cone exposure vis a vis the universe is interrupted. When I exit, if the universe is still there, or any universe, it requires one of two things: either A.) the universe I step into has existed prior to my current exposure to it and has evolved in a casual fashion, which I could perform some kind of archaeology on to determine its history, or B.) the universe I have stepped into was created solely due to the potentiality of me observing it-it was created for me and me only. Now, if such a universe has been generated due to the necessity of my observation of it, and it has any semblance of order, what entity generates that order instantaneously from whatever it was created from? Where does that creativity come from?
I would further state that asking us to believe that things cease to functionally exist when not observed is as egregious as asking us to believe that they do when they have never been, if not more so. And if they do NOT cease to exist, causality must descend from their existence, even if there is an interruption of light cone exposure. If causality descends, then it does so with an order of events that could potentially be charted in relation to an absolute time by an entity not subject to relative time.
It should also be said that such an entity could still easily interact with entities subject to relative time- if this hypothetical entity is able to perceive simultaneity accurately via perception of fundamental non-relativistic informational channels, said perception does not preclude its ability to also observe the derived relativistic informational channels that we use (light cones). Imagine a version of Minecraft constructed with relativistic casual laws- no npc inhabitant could be assured of simultaneity. But a external admin could- they can consult world logs to know what happened and when, but can also log in via a client to experience the world in the present from the perspective of an inhabitant. They could hypothetically come down-we can’t go up. So the short version is no, we could quite conceivably interact with a being able to perceive simultaneity without ever being able to do it ourselves. As such, there is NO reason to believe that events outside of our light cones are the bottom of the rabbit hole, even if you discard the idea of archaeology being performed once the results of those extra-universal events are brought into our cones. I would not consider such a being “supernatural”, but would instead claim that our definition of “natural” was not all-inclusive to begin with. An ant can’t fly, but that doesn’t make a bird magical, just because the ant will never be able to see things with the viewpoint of the bird.
I can guess. It’s really rather simple!
Parallel universe? Time travel?
Time travel! Definitely time travel! Remember, psycho butterfly lady wasn’t expecting her home planet to be a desolate wasteland when they arrived. That is a *classic* time travel scenario.
Poor harem was confused because she was occupying two different places at the same time…more so than usual, in any case.
The only other thing I can think of is that’s going through the portal triggered spawning another body but you’d think she’d be familiar with that sensation by now.
Parallel universe? And all the Harems have the same quantum entanglement so she could theoretically share the same mind with an evil doppelganger at some point.
Be interesting to know whether simply opening a portal will allow them to become entangled, or if they have to cross the threshold as well.
A reverse crossover?
It’s too soon!
Going through the portal somehow interacted with the mechanics of Harem’s power… I’m guessing it somehow created multiple instances of her during the brief time she went through- and likely back again.
Ok… I’m going with the portal malfunction resulted in them travelling to an alternate reality. All the Harems in that reality were already there so adding a new Harem unbalanced their brain. Also lines with Sciona having been in contact with a not-destroyed Alari homeworld right before they travelled there.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2864
” The portal is unfinished! There’s no telling … ”
Something unpredictable happened. Curious effect is that Sciona and all the rest of the survivors came back through the portal before it closed. Earth now has “guests” from a, ummmm, rather interesting space-time.
So… the portal did some sort of quantum duplication trick? As a result, there were two Harem #3’s in existence while they were on the planet. Since Harem was duplicated, everyone should have had a copy. All Dabbler has to do now is reconstitute the Sydney that’s ‘still in the transport buffer’ so to speak.
Granted, that Sydney will have no memory of being on the other world, and ‘Abandoned’ Sydney will be kind of pissed when she manages to make it back to Earth.
(Evil Sydney WILL show up eventually, that’s a thing you know…)
Will the Sydney duplicate abandoned on a hostile planet adopt the name ‘Tom’ when she returns?
For you non-Treknophiles, here is the reference.
https://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Second_Chances_(episode)
Hey hey, naming new planets is serious business. *snerk*
Those are more clever than I was expecting ;)
The reason why the Dupe Riker was named ‘Tom’ was because that was his name: William Thomas Riker
Precisely.
DAVE! What is Sydney’s middle name? Does she have one?
Or the reason she was attacked in the first place was because the universe that they were in already contained Evil Sydney?
At the risk of being slightly off topic: I just found this comic book page, and it’s sooo Sydney XD
https://media.comicbook.com/2017/12/gabby-honey-badger-reveal-1068446.jpeg
You should read the comics with Gabby and Deadpool
They are great together. “She gave me the finger!”
Clover: “meh, whatever…” (lights snake gizzard flavored cigarette)
Gabby is the absolute best.
Which means Marvel will make her a grimdark villain or kill her within three years.
I haven’t enjoyed a lot of this run but that bit with Danger was perfect.
‘Combobulation’ is a word?
Yes, it is. It’s a more recent back-formation from “discombobulation” (which dates to the 1830s).
So if combobulation is to build or form something up from out of chaos, then if it’s discombobulated back into chaos afterward, then recombobulation would be the act of repairing or restoring something that had already been once discombobulated.
Okay…Makes sense. What stage are we at now?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/combobulate
A word has to be in common usage for fifty years before it’s added to the dictionary. Combobulation hasn’t been used that long, which is why it’s only defined in places like wiktionary.
No; words can enter the dictionary a lot sooner than that. It depends more on how widely they are used. If a word is used a lot (including in places like newspapers and literature) then it will rapidly become something with a definition. Something only used in a specific minor fandom will take a long time to become a dictionary word, but that’s because it isn’t generally notable.
Colbert Report got the word “truthiness” into the dictionary in under a month, IIRC.
Are you sure that’s not 5 years? “Internet” was in the dictionaries by the 90’s already.
So if combobulation is the bringing up or building of something out of chaos, and discombobulation is the breaking down of something into chaos, then recombobulation would be the repair or rebuilding of something that had once been discombobulated.
Okay…Makes sense. What stage are we on now?
On the other planet Daphne’s thoughts were all disheveled. Now that she is back on Earth she has managed to re-shevel them.
No, that’s not it. Quantum entanglement doesn’t care about space, and she just gave the actual reason. There were “too many of her.” This heavily implies that the portal went forward in time, far enough that there were more of Harem than she was used to.
Are you assuming they are still on EARTH?
…..
Although, the “loop” in the title could easily mean that there is at least timetravel involved … and Sidney is soon to get rescued by a more-or-less timetraveling near future Harem and Dabbler and who else.
Obviously not. They were on the Alari Homeworld. It was just a future version of that world. All I meant is that Harem could be anywhere in the universe and still be fully synchronized with the rest of herself, because distance is irrelevant with quantum entanglement.
Also, strictly speaking, traveling to an parallel world will not cause a Harem body from this world to be connected to the Harem entity in that world, not if Quantum Entanglement is the mechanism. QE works by splitting a single particle into two parts and for those two parts to stay in sync. Since the particles that make up Harem-2 are different than the Harem in this universe, part of Harem-1 can’t just suddenly be entangled with Harem-2.
So she can’t have universe hopped. It has to be temporal dislocation (ie: time travel.)
This is a simpler alternative theory than my “wall of text” postulates up above. More elegant too. Krona might be able to pull off a reasonable facsimile of time travel (ie – her “Save Point” failsafe program), but would that be close enough to do it this way?
Or does Dabbler have something else in mind that could involve someone/something we haven’t seen yet?
Sciona, this is your life. As it could have been. Maybe. The artifact created a bubble parallel universe, with five more Harem’s in it. The five come over permanently. Next Thanksgiving Daphne tells mom to set five more chairs.
Mom: Are you bringing dates?
Daphne: Er… yeah let’s go with that.
Ok, so Harem was duplicated. Does that equate to every person through the portal got dupes too?
Also , why would Dabbles need an outside power source? Her rail gun thingy delivers giga joules, she could just use the power supply for that.
If you popped into the future (say next week) spent half an hour there and jumped back, there would be two of you existing in the same universe during that half hour next week. The You that took the short cut and the You that went the long way round.
With Harem, there would be 6 of her. The one that took the short cut and the 5 that went the long way round. And, when she catches up to next week, all 5 of her will go wonky.
In this case, the wormhole connected both times into one, so there would be double the number of Harem copies (five from now, and five from the future) which would all synchronise while the wormhole stayed open.
As soon as the wormhole collpased, there would again only be five Harem bodies.
It wouldn’t be double. Only one went through. And only connected while through the wormhole. It didn’t broadcast all of spacetime over all of spacetime otherwise Harem would have this problem every time someone opened a slightly wonky portal that bridged time.
This is one of the reasons why I am favouring the alternate universe option. Harems of a different time have different memories ergo there is no quantum linked state with her past minds, even if they happen to be around at the same time. Quantum linked particles need to be identical. So the past minds remain connected to the past minds and the future ones only to the future ones.
Whereas open a connection between two universes where there are absolutely identical Harems (at the moment the connection is established) then the quantum linking will work.
This however will not happen between universes where there are sufficient differences that the respective Harems have had divergent experiences.
What happens on the Alari homeworld is remote enough that it need not affect Harem (up until going down the rabbit hole), unless Sciona’s prior contact with it made her act in some substantively different way.
Telling humans there’s no simultaneity is the succubus equivalent of telling kids there’s no Santa Claus.
Raen, That may be honestly one of the funniest comments I’ve ever read in the comment threads here.
I’d like every comic web based or not to have the rule of “Stop being so damn cryptic!”
Why stop at comics?
Doctor Who, virtually any detective drama ever (with the possible exception of Colombo)
:)
“Ah, just one more thing…”
Still think that Colombo was talking BS whenever he mentioned his wife.
Why would the capital of Sri Lanka even have a wife?
People have married houses, trees, and weirder things. So there ya go.
Sorry, I meant Columbo, the detective
Colombo is amazing. They were able to make him feel as confused as the audience until the final reveal.
and he could make 1 cheap cigar last all season.
I always thought it was frustrating how Detective Columbo only seemed to close his cases by badgering the perpetrator into confessing, because his solving usually required deductions for which there would be no actual physical evidence of.
My wish was to see one of the perps keep their cool and be the one that got away, just to add a dash grit to the series.
I always wanted to see Columbo catch Jessica Fletcher murdering someone just to complete one of her stories
If anyone could’ve pulled that off, it would’ve been Shatner. But only when he got bored of escaping police custody after getting caught by Columbo for the umpteenth time.
Yeah. I liked Columbo, but a lot of his cases would have been lost if the perp just clammed up and required him to prove it in court.
If Harem’s mind was coherent over that distance, does that mean she can teleport back?
And return to Earth with Sydney’s lightbee?
Maybe? she did say she had to ‘familiar’ with it (joke was she sometimes used a cab )
“Friends don’t let friends teleport drunk!” – sorry had to say that :p)
To return with the Lightbee?, maybe?. In the conference room ‘image’ Syd was like a hologram and could pass thru other people.
It has separate modes. Telepresence, which you are describing. And teleportation, which Sydney discovered when scouting the Mars warehouse.
Just made a facepalm connection. If Sydney ends up using the ‘bee teleportation, discovered in a
WarsMars warehouse, to teleport back from a war on another planet, I will love Dave’s work even more than I already do. That would be some excellent and punny foreshadowing.Say Dave, you once said that you might publish a physical book of GrrlPower if you ever got the money, just wondering if you’re still planning on doing that.
Cause with ComicsGate currently having a huge impact on the comics scene, this might be the perfect time to self-publish like a lot of other Comic book Writers & Artists are doing
Also, regardless of whether or not you do that, if you take advantage of the current POP! Figure craze and give Funko permission to make figures of your characters you could bring a lot of attention to this web comic and definitely make a lot more money
I’d love to see DaveB do one of the limited edition Pairs decks. Pairs is an interesting card game, and the limited edition decks feature artwork by many different artists. The Grrl Power characters would make wonderful subjects for a deck design.
I would like some grrlpower merch. @Dave you could also make a Kickstarter for the printed version, so you can get the money in before printing and shipping. With the amount of following you have a few thousand exemplars should be possible.
As I understand it backpush against all that feminist/SJW/… stuff that is happening over at Marvel and DC? I no problem with new characters they make. What I have a problem with is when they change the characterization of existing characters or replace them with new ones but keep the name in a bad way. For instance I like the new Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan). It felt natural for the fan girl to take up the name. As falcon as captain america was also good, as the name is more a symbol then a identity. I don’t like the new Spiderman (Miles Morales) there are already enough spider characters and Peter Parker is not dead or retired. There is also the ultimate vs 616 thing going on.
Good news! You can get your official GrrlPower ‘Mr Tubey’ carrying case today. Just head over to your local UPS of Fed Ex shipping center and pick one up.
I thought the official TMH Mr. Tubey was genuine simulated leather?
The cardboard ones aren’t even suitable for Cosplay.
I thought it to be yellow hard plastic,
You do know that Miles is from an Earth where Parker is dead, don’t you? o_O
Yes, I know. He is from the ultimate universe. And Marvel did promise multiple times not to replace 616 characters with ultimate ones. That is my main problem with him. Entirely out of universe and solely with Marvel and how they treat fans and promises they made. I somewhat lost interest with most of Marvel after the Secret Wars 2 kind of reboot. I just fell like I have seen it all before at Marvel. Now they even reanimated Jean Grey again and Wolverine is around again. In multiple iterations at the same time. Lets hope that they don’t change deadpool.
*off canon* Marvel went dumb with Wolverine. Magneto and him sucking the Adamantium out? *cough* BS!. Adamantium poisoning? BS! Adamantium was supposed to unbreakable and immutable once solid. _steps off podium_ Yeah, go ahead and make it painful every-time he pops the claws, but he has awesome regen. That’s the price to pay to use em – Pavlov’s law is still in full effect.
I like Kamala too, but f I had to make a complaint, it that they’re not doing anything with her character wise, she’s had no emotional growth
Asking this group to refrain from being cheeky might be an unrealistic goal.
Right up there with asking Batman to not brood.
Or to stop hanging out afterdark with teenage boys in short-shorts and tights
or L to not wear white t-shirts and jeans without shoes
Honestly, I can only hope against hope that I have as awesome a follower comment section with my own comic that Dave has here with us.
Well, It was not really a parallel universe since they were just really far from the earth. What I’m thinking is that she either found someone with the same power there. Or her powers base of souls, of which there were many of on the planet and she connected with them
Remember how Sciona was in contact with her people just a couple of days ago? At this point, I’m fairly certain the war that wiped them out took more than a few days. The incomplete portal sent everybody to the future, and Harem was thrown off because she was linking to a slightly older version of “herselves”.
Come on Maxima you were a comicbook nerd why would there be too many Harem (Harems?) Think it through
Dabbler: “So we just grab Universe B Sydney, who is presumably still on earth. It all balances out. I mean… how different could she be?”
*imagines a quiet, demure Sydney who hates comics, can’t handle spicy stuff and doesn’t even know how to swear*
Would that be worse or better than goatee’d evil twin Sydney? I’m not sure how the goatee would work, just that it’s a necessary part of being a card carrying evil twin.
From what I understand, the female version of the goatee is dressing/behaving aggressively sexual.
Dabbler is evil Sydney!
Evil-twin females wear all-dark-leather (if they start out that way when Good, it now must become teh skimpiest) and have to go get cleavage.
I’m sure Dabs would be up with that, black, red, transparent
And the coolest go all black-veined too.
Would the most unsympathetic,hard hearted member of Archon vote to leave Sydney stranded in Sciona’s dimension!?
Pretty sure it’s just another planet, not another dimension.
Unsympathetic and hard-hearted? From what I’ve seen of Archon, that’s…
Maxima.
So, no.
I suggest you have another look at this page. It looks more like a mother and daughter relationship there. Plus Maxima and Sydney have had similar bonding moments, such as in the aftermath of the bank robbery, after the Sword-fight at the Steak House Car Park™ and when enjoying the joy of flight together.
Even when Sydney interrupted the meeting with the POTUS, and other heads of state, Maxima had to purposefully steel herself to resist Sydney’s puppy-dog eyes. With great difficulty!
Maxima is incredibly warm-hearted.
She is just professional enough to have a tough approach to villains.
But even then do note that she has enforced a ‘do not kill, unless you have to’ policy, consistently.
So the over-kill giant Squid thing was just cleansing the planet to prevent dimensional or temporal contamination?
That’s alright then. :/
Wait a second wait a second is she insinuating time-travel travel shenanigans?
Yes. Yes she is.
1st My theory is that she conected not with another version of herself. But with how the race of sciona stored themselfs.
2nd If we actually say what is to come you could do something. Like hide the names of whom were right in the comic. Like in a wanted list or something.
wanted for a severe case of genre savviness.
Ok….so that answers my first question about why Harem was all discombobulated two pages ago.
Of course, that opens up all sorts of other questions, but I think they can wait now.
No, no we can’t, and won’t, wait!
Just get on with bringing Max’s Girl Crush back you two!!
What do you mean? Bring her girl crush BACK?… Dabbler is standing RIGHT THERE!!! :D
I think you are confusing “girl crush” with “girl she’d like to crush”.
Potato potahto. They’re the same thing right? Sydney strikes me more as a little sister daughter Vibe as far as Maxima is concerned
I have an idea! for dave… unrelated to the current comic. Anyway, it would be a funny little Easter egg if every time a succubus (aka dabbler or decollete) was on screen while Sydney had her comm ball in hand, they looked kinda plain (or freakishly alien, but we already established that dabbler looks normal enough without her glamor).
I think it makes sense that they wouldn’t necessarily be actually super sexy underneath their glamor, because why bother? The glamor is almost impenetrable, so I’m assuming it even works on other succubi (succubuses?). Most entities powerful enough to pierce the glamor can also probably cancel or shrug off the beholder aura, and probably aren’t going to be impressed with any particular definition of physical beauty, so it’s not like they’re risking anything.
Anyway, it just sounds like a cool thing you could work in subtly.
Why bother looking sexy under the glamour? It is a non-tactile illusion. They need to feel sexy under the glamour. (Uh… be felt sexy ?…)
I think a non tactile illusion is a very far cry from something I’d call impenetrable.
Impregnable?
Pregnable?
harem looks unusual this time… I’ve looked and even though almost all her features are shaped the same (her eyebrows are a slightly higher angle), the art makes her more… catlike? Not a bad look, mind you – just… different – though Yorp may feel differently.
Yeah, noticed a difference to Blondini’s look as well, plus how her hair looks different in the final panel
Hmm I am gonna throw this one out there. Look, Harem’s power IS teleportation, and multipresence, and space warping in general. So, when she was exposed to alien portal tech, it instantly formed another Harem in “stored” space as her powers “learned” a new method.
But. But! The /space/ that Harem is still stored /on/, is STILL Atari! She /may/ recall it to her largest grouping of selves… but is it /really/ a good idea? Well, with careful planning and quick tests Dabbler may build a device to bring, using the harem on the other side of the “string”, to Atari to communicate via Haremgram for continued efforts to recover Sydney from a dead planet being excessively laid to waste still.
At interstellar distances, time travel is necessary to get anywhere. So there must have been some time travel involved. Whether it will directly help Sydney get home is another matter.
If it was a case of duplication, of the same Harem being in two places at once, then in her case duplication would mean not two, but 10 harems. I’ve seen others here speculated on that happening, but I don’t think simple time travel is enough to explain it.
What is Harem’s range? If they were on a planet clear across the universe, would she even have contact with her others? Duplication does seem to be the best answer, it’s the how I’m not sure of.
I just realized – if this does turn out to be an alternate reality, Harem is (was?) integrating with her Linear Guild counterparts, she just downloaded a couple decades of experience in the other realm – and vice versa. She would now be each universe’s foremost expert on the parallel world, making her an invaluable asset.
And gives her the opportunity to be an interdimensional quintuple (?) agent.
OH! So dimensional travel was involved and they’ve been popped out at the same place in another dimension. Which means there’ll be an alternate reality version of all the arc-swap members!
I’m CALLING GENDER SWAP WORLD – Placing bets for GENDERBENT DIMENSION NOW!
Now I want to see how weird Maximus is.
However, Math and Achilles were the only ones genderbent in this particular genderbend dimension. (It’s just a minor gender swap dimension, not like complete swap genderbent dimension, which really confuses the angler fish and the seahorses.)
So Daphne is related to the Alari? As in the Alari souls were multiples of Daphne?
No. I’m quite certain that it means they were in the future, and she was connecting with her older “selves”, resulting in more than five of Harem. Now, she’s back in the present and thinking clearly, but perhaps having some lingering memories from Future Harem to work with.
Sounds like we are hitting quantum level string theory here. Like hitting warp 10, you start to exist at all points in the universe all at the same time.
Let my grab my really hot cup of tea. Just be glad we have not got to fractal probability spacetime.
If it is too hot, why don’t you mix it with some of the tea, from Russell’s teapot? That is nice and cool.
…fits all the points of know data _at that moment_…
Fundamentals of trial and error. ponder, test, fail , reponder, test – succeed.
Yes, DaveB you can use my ‘observations/jokes’ about Harem (jokes)
My favorite theory as to what “too many of me” means involves neither time travel or multiple dimensions. The Alari homeworld exists in our current time and in our universe. The portal was Daphne’s first experience with teleportation that was not due to her own power. This, combined with the fact that the portal was incomplete and probably defective, caused Daphne to instinctively attempt to vorp her blond instance to safety. She succeeded in pulling herself out, yet the portal still transferred her to the Alari homeworld at the same time. Thus Daphne unexpectedly found herself to be a six-pack.
Daphne’s discombobulation may be perfectly normal since we have never seen how she reacted the previous times she acquired a new instance of herself, or it may have been due to the new instance creation having been forced upon her. At any rate she seems to have adjusted by now.
Given how pleased Daphne seems to be at this point, I’m assuming she got to keep the new instance. In fact, the instance currently with the team is the new instance.
This is the only theory, so far, that makes sense. Everybody else seem to be reaching way farther than necessary.
Dave, be honest, have you been reading Legion of Superheroes?
Oh geezus I’m kicking myself for not realizing this sooner, what if it wasn’t space that was the issue BUT time? What if that WAS Earth taken over by by Sciona’s people and they didn’t GO anywhere but rather went ahead into the future? A future where Sciona had won or something. I mean if Harem says there were too MANY of her then it could be that she kept multiplying over the course of… I dunno how many years but it must of been a lot to confuse her with so many her around.
Well my best guss is the overload was because she split again. (whole another body of sensory input could def make you a bit confused. but she can recover quickly because she had to deal with it before. #6 is back on the other planet with Syd. possibly under rubble that protected her from the big bang.. Perhaps Dabber is planing on using her quantumly entangled minds as a beacon..
I dismissed that because you’d think she would be used to it by now (at least enough to say “ahh I’m splitting” and not be confused about it) but maybe it caused a split in a new and different way.
I’m thinking the broken portal sent them forward in time, and the disorientation was because Present Harem was connecting to Future Harem. Now, Present Harem is back where she belongs, but has lingering memories from her furire self that will help them get Sydney back.