Grrl Power #657 – Grind smarter, not harder
Sydney doesn’t actually know that those ships are drones. They might be manned, but even if all the pilots are Super Hitler, she hasn’t made up her mind if she’s okay with being the sort of hero who kills.
Okay, if it’s Super Hitler, or even regular Hitler, she’d probably sleep soundly at night after offing him. Some people are at such levels of evil that the human mind can’t even wrap itself around, and there’s a pretty solid connection between these ships and the people who exterminated the Alari homeworld, but either way, she’s telling herself they’re drones.
Edit: Oh, I forgot to post this with the page last night. Drawing that low angle with the squinty eyes is super difficult.
And in current events, the Cast page is fixed! So here’s the story. There was an update to WordPress like a year ago that broke it and it had been so long since I’d been up in the guts of the site, I’d forgotten how to fix stuff. So I put off fixing it until I had time to refamiliarize myself with WordPress and PHP. When I originally built the page I actually had a job doing web stuff, and now I have to remind myself of every little basic thing when I go rooting around and making updates.
So yesterday I asked a friend to take a look at it (something I should have done 11 months ago) and he fixed it in like 5 minutes. Turns out the update made some part of WordPress care about case sensitivity and I had a lowercase letter somewhere I shouldn’t have. So long story short, I’m dumb.
Of course now that it’s back up, yikes, that art is out of date, huh? Also the size of the cast has exploded, so I guess I’ll be slowly updating that as I go.
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.
The main event.
indeed. everyone knows you need to go through a mob of canon fodder before going for the main course. it`s like a rule. is there such a rule?
Yep. Sydney refers to it as the inverse ninja rule:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1490
that`s not what I was saying though lol. I`m not talking about the danger level. I`m talking about the fact that there is an order to a super confrontation. first beat the mooks then the boss
Sorting Algorithm of Evil. See TV Tropes for details, if you dare.
I’ve been thinking about something… (No, it didn’t hurt at all)
Once Sydney takes out Squidward, probably her best strategy might be to land on top of the mothership & start blasting down into it. Let’s see any of the drones or the ship itself dare to shoot at her there. Any weapon that they use that might possibly to get through her shield may probably go through the mothership too…
;)
Actually, I think the mothership itself is the main event…As far as the Alari world is concerned, the ship is the World Boss that must be beaten.
Squidward definitely counts as a Mini-boss though & everybody knows that you have to go through the Mini-boss before taking on the World Boss.
At this point you may as well unspoil Sydney’s powers, they’ve been known for most of the life of the strip.
Except for the last one (it’s the “Make a Wish” orb, everything we have seen has been a fantasy)
Sydney has an Skilltree on the Orb-Set.
When you see it like an RPG Game, the Grinding of the Drones should give her one or more “Levelup’s”.
I’m sure, the blue Flight-Orb has an Interspace Setting in it’s Skilltree-Part.
If Dave, tha Autor of the Comic, is interested in Fan-Ideas, I would recomend a Power like the “Quantum Jump”, a Power used by the Marvel Superhero “Quasar –> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar_(comics).
This Power is the ability to traverse interstellar distances in a manner similar to hyperspace travel and this Ability he get from the Quantum Bands he’s wearing.
With this Blink- or Teleport-Power he was able to retour a Way of 6 Months on normal Flightspeed in just some Seconds.
That power rating seems off too. Math gets one more point that Sidney does? When was the last time he blew up a fleet of warships? In space, over an alien planet, after getting nuked?
His energy beam attacks are just as strong though aren’t they?
You’re confusing Math with Max. Math is the martial artist. He technically doesn’t even have super powers. Maxima is the one with the energy beams.
Assuming they ARE up to date, the reason Sydney is lower than Math is because her actual powers haven’t been tested in a proper environment yet. So far we’ve only seen Sydney in combat in 2 scenarios until this one, and ARCHQ only knows the details of the first. Math probably has a combat record longer than most people’s yearly expenses bills.
Math probably can still beat Dabbler, assuming she doesn’t pheromone zap him and he remembers not to get lost in her cleavage. Dabbler can still beat Halo thanks to experience – ergo, Math and Dabbler are on par, and Halo is under them. even though no one disputes that she has more raw firepower and defense.
It has been mentioned that Dabbler loses to Math without magic, and easily trumps him with magic. All it took was an “invisible webs” spell to beat him.
“Sticky air” were Maths complain.
Unless the page is rating them as over-all abilities and not just the class of their powers.
After all, Super-Humans unlike gods and monsters can have some seriously mis-matched abilities to body. Monsters and the like typically are as physically strong and resilient as their powers are.
But human supers don’t have to be. Which can really screw with classifying them.
for instance, Storm from the X-men.
She has an Omega level power (usually *comic writers can be a pain sometimes), but at their strongest Storm can summon hurricanes, tornadoes, high scale lightning, hail stones the size of buses, slashing winds, even get creative with it and have lightning blizzards with spears of ice and radiation cyclone wells (there is a reason she gets nerfed a lot, also not the best power set for non lethal take downs…let alone avoiding collateral damage).
But that said, Storm’s physical strength is that of a trained in basic combat human being. Her durability being the same. In other words, all the powers of a high end sky god; in the body of a woman who could be killed by a sniper.
So if we balance this out she ends up being a B class at best, and a C class at worst, despite having powers that could rival even most A class and even S class heroes. But while she’d have to strike Wonder Woman dozens of times with lightning to even daze her, Wonder Woman only needs ONE hit to take Storm down *realistically, the Marvel vs DC comics were decided by fan voting through the mail so even the writers of those comics don’t consider the fights even partially canon or reliable as sources for who would win in a fight*.
Not to be a naysayer or anything but storm has shown far more power than that to the point of controlling the climate of entire planet at one point in time. And some of the alternate future Comics I think Age of Apocalypse was one where storm start a storm system that ran for hundreds of years.
That isn’t being naysayer as it doesn’t refute what I said, I was just giving examples, she has Omega Class powers.
But her over all class is still going to be lower as an individual due to her not having the super strength, durability, speed, and such to go along with that level of power like you’d see in a god, demon, or cosmic being with total planet wide weather control powers.
She is a glass cannon relatively speaking; that will hurt your battle rankings.
Achilles from this comic is in much the same boat, he looks to have S possibly even Omega level invulnerability, but lacks any strength, speed, or additional powers to make better use of that other than as a defense; as we’ve seen him being buried a few times and removed from the fight that way.
I think storm could take him. As I recalled she was once either stated or implied to be able to control the air inside of her opponents lungs so as to literally pull up out of their lungs cause them to pass out
Nah, there’s no need to “spoil” Sydney’s limitations here. She just needs to think 3 steps ahead.
If she wants to take out Squidward (Miniboss) first, that’s fine, but:
Step 1: For the World Boss (the mothership), she should first land on top of it. If the drones or the ship itself has any weapons powerful enough to get through Sydney’s shield, it’s prbably powerful enough to go through the ship itself too.
Step 2: Sydney should be free & clear to start blasting a hole in its hull. Once getting through the outer hull(s), there is a far less likely chance that there will be any weapons at all that would even pose a challenge to her shield. She could move around & blast away pretty much with complete autonomy.
Step 3: She has a number of different options that could be subject to change, depending on where she goes from there…Anything from capturing the ship commander (or threatening the ship’s controlling AI if that’s the case), to pulling the same tactic as doing the old “Death Star Run” on the power core, to pretty much anything in between these two ideas.
If she gets inside, she will have to hope they don’t just leave the planet (dead ship in deep space) or warp to a staging area (mad flight from MANY Squidwards). That’s assuming the mothership ignores her moon-jaunt attempt.
If she gets inside she better hope there are real aliens inside, or the mother ship could simply self destruct. I don’t see her shield shrug off THAT kind of explosion!
You updating the cast page I believe when it happens. You could also include multiple pictures for the main cast. Cool would tags for the comic pages where the characters are in. I know for Sydney and Maxima that wouldn’t be useful, but Math and Anvil didn’t have that many appearances.
Can we please get a key for wtf all the little icons mean? I mean, I’m pretty sure the empty circle is the forcefield strength, while the basic shield is raw toughness, but I’m not sure what the 2 people icon means at all, and why Math has both a bicep (strength?) and a fist (attack power? combat prowess?) but Maxima only has a bicep – despite hitting hard and knowing at least basic combat maneuvers?
I think the fist is skill. Math is pure skill, Dabbler has a lot too. Maxima is so fast and strong she didn’t have to learn much? I don’t know there was a lot of character development since that was made.
I read the symbols as: Wing – Flight, Shield – Armour/Invulnerability, Bicep – Strength, Sun – Energy attack, Winged foot – Speed, Ring – Forcefield, the two people with the arrows between them – Teleportation, Fist – Martial Skill, Crosshairs – Marksman, Lightbulb – Inventiveness, brain – Intellect, Tri-people – Duplication, Hollow sun – Heat Control, Stretchy arm curl – Flexibility, Lightning Bolt – Electrical Control… and assuming the four arrows pointing inward is energy absorption/redirection
Is it just me or does the alien kinda look like Vilgax?
Yes, but also looks like that black-tentacled “I am not a robot” guy.
Yeah, I was thinking the same(not-robot), since it escaped, and this is maybe in the future(would explain animosity toward Sciona/Sciona’s race, and recognition of Orbs)
You might wanna be careful with the whole Hitler and The Nazis are the bad guys our heroes are facing right now.
Cause even though they did do horrific things, they’ve been so overused in media, that nobody takes them seriously as a threat anymore, seriously when’s the last time you saw anything with Nazis as the bad guy and you honestly though that they might win?
Plus, there’s also the fact that they were defeated over 70 years ago, so everyone who lived through it is either dead or close to dying of old age.
Actually, I’d say using Nazis is entirely appropriate. Or have you missed the part where they seem to be making a comeback? No, don’t be careful about demonizing them. We need to once again turn their name into a byword for evil.
One of the downsides of hammering “these guys =evil, just trust me on this, don’t think about it”, is the inevitable “don’t tell me what to think reaction” that some people end up having.
Plus there’s also the problem of people nowadays just calling everyone they disagree with a “Nazi”
Which has the problem of real comparison being dismissed as being just disgruntled disagreement.
Racism.
Basically being the face and others doing the work.
Considered to have issues mentally.
National pride as a political point.
False media content.
Focus on the military strength and positioning.
Political focus on Improvement to national production.
A few points on Hitler and how few fit a similar start.
Let’s not get political in who does and doesn’t fit but additional points being added could be informative.
Of course, Trump differs from Hitler and other Fascists by:
– Lowering Taxes
– Reducing Government Spending and Regulation
&
– Expanding the Free Market
Lowering taxes ..for the rich.
Reducing Government Spending and regulation that is keeping us from destroying the planet for the benefit of the rich.
Expanding tariffs which is hurting farmers, manufacturers and American citizens in general, partly because they are being met by …retaliatory tariffs
You for two points are best countered by these three videos:
1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMs_3_WOjP0
2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ3gW2p4nUM
3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd_uJBov4y8
And America already had some pretty high tariffs put on it by other countries, some of Trumps tariffs were in retaliation to that. Others were just directed to nations like China, which have taken quite a few jobs away from Americans
Damn… The link didn’t work.
Here it is in a normal format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u88EIoUkKQ0
Actually, I’d say using Nazis as the unit of measure for evil is entirely appropriate. Or did you miss the part where they’re making a comeback? No, no, we need to go back to the days when Nazi was a byword for evil and Hitler was another name for the devil, because right now we seem to have forgotten.
That’s because he and what they did has been surpassed several times over since then (Pol Pot ring any field bells?)
Estimated number of victims of the Khmer Rouge; ~1.7 million.
Estimated death toll of the second world war; ~50-80 million.
By sheer scale of human misery inflicted, the Nazis and the results of their policies were quite a bit worse then Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime. What Pol Pot and his reprehensible regime did to a single country, the Nazis did to most of Eastern Europe.
Realistically though, it’s a moot distinction. Either way, they were evil in a sense and scope that defies any one mind’s ability to truly comprehend. The point of the exercise is to not forget, and work against the ideals and reasoning that allowed such crimes to be perpetuated. We’ve seen where totalitarian and ultra nationalistic thinking lead us as societies. Lets not walk that route again.
One, very large difference, World War Two was a War, and those deaths were on both sides, the Khmer Rouge murders were the direct actions of one man not in war, so yeah, numbers mean shit when you look at the context
You can argue all sorts of metrics for “more evil” but no other group has intentionally killed as many people as the nazis did.
There are a few who have done more but they are current world powers so we can’t label them evil like a dead regime.
Last I heard, Joseph Stalin killed about half-again as many as Hitler killed. About 90 million. So few people make any comparison between Hitler & Stalin nowadays.
And I have yet to see Trump kill off anyone as a consequence of firing them from their jobs like Hitler AND Stalin did…
But only about 4-7 million killed by the USSR were intentional and they had a way bigger time frame.
To be fair, a lot of Germans didn’t see Hitler kill off too many people either, what with all the undesirables being rounded up and put in internment camps for the Nazis to do what they like, away from the prying eyes of journalists and citizens. The official line is that Nazi Germany was only “deporting” the Jews. They just left out the part about deporting them to some now-infamous camps in occupied Poland.
I would argue that point. While the nazis were horrible, they actually are on the lower side of mass killings, Stalin killed more people, Mao Zedong definitely killed more people. I am not diminishing what the nazis did in any way but there are other out there who were just as bad if not worse.
I wholeheartedly agree with using nazis as a standard for evil. But they are no the only standard for it.
Mao and Stalin only killed more if you count famines. And of those only the people in Ukraine were intentionally starved.
This is weasely bull. Unless you aren’t counting 6 MILLION Jewish people just to start.
6 Million wasn’t enough
And everyone forgets (or ignores because they are Jew lovers) that Hitler specified the complete and utter annihilation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, proportionally, more JW’s died than Jews (and unlike the turncoat Jews who were happy to collaborate with the Nazi’s and turn on their own people, not one JW turned)
And you forget it wasn’t just Jews they gassed or burnt. Gays, the Disabled, the Romi, Blacks, etc.
Fact remains Mao and Staling killed more people.
Hell, more Chinese died in WW2 than the entire losses in the European Theater, and that was due to the Japanese, nothing to do with Hitler.
If you count the kills made by each army that said that “God is on our side”, especially adding in the people tormented into suicide or died from extremism, and add that all together over the last 2048 years or so, then Christianity is more evil than Naziism.
Plus, Nazis are seriously still a huge threat, and will become a bigger one very soon. Mark my words. The problem with Germany’s Nazi party is that their country wasn’t unquestionably the biggest military the world had ever seen. The United States military is. Also the potus is a sympathizer and public demonstrations by openly stated Nazis happens here. The world would have to unite as one to take us down, and they still might lose.
It’s only going to get worse. I can’t personally imagine anything else.
Um, Mike, you must not know much about the WW2 era.
Joseph Stalin and his Communist government intentionally killed roughly 15 to 20 million civilians during his reign, compared to the roughly 11 million killed by the Nazis up to and during WW2.
Stalin was “Uncle Joe” because we needed the help of the USSR to defeat Nazi Germany.
Apparently, even the German hierachy were a little bit shocked when they started finding mass graves from the Katyn massacre (when the USSR had straight-out murdered 22,000 soldiers and civilians) just after they rolled through Poland during Operation Barbarossa.
A fictionalised use of communication intercepts decrypted at Bletchly Park from the German military about the massacre was a plot-point of the movie “Enigma” (2001) and the need to keep it secret to avoid unrest in the UK over their alliance with the USSR.
Also why D-day was treated as the clinchpin of WW2 post-war, rather than the Diversion it actually was, as actually admitting the Battles of Kursk and Stalingrad were the actual ones (which they were) would’ve made Stalin look heroic.
D-day was simply a diversion to pull Axis forces off the Russians. They were fighting five times as many axis troops as anyone else.
This is also why American-made planes the Russians used like the P-39 Airacobra tend to get forgotten compared to the P-51 and such, despite the fact they had a far better service record and amount of use (over 10000 were built, most given to the Soviets).
Americans didn’t win WW2 militarily, but they sure as hell did industrially, but it’s Russian blood and sweat that broke the Axis powers’ back.
The German hierarchy had agreed to the mass extermination of millions of people, soldiers and civilians alike. Something tells me their shock wasn’t genuine.
But I’m glad you laid out those numbers. Stalin was an incredible asshole, no doubt. Don’t let tankies tell you otherwise, especially the ones who pretend the USSR only ever acted in self defense. The Winter War calls BS. But my point was, he killed that many over a 30 year reign.
Hitler, on the other hand, only became Chancellor in 1933. It would still be a little while before he had the Holocaust happen, but he only lasted until 1945. So 12 years. Almost 1 million a year, in a regime where the ideology held that nations had to constantly test each other by going to war and had to systematically exterminate people.
And on top of that, Winston Churchill turned around and wanted to rearm those same Nazis at the conclusion of WW2 so they could launch a surprise invasion of the USSR, so they almost got to rack up even more.
Now, if all this leaves a bad taste in your mouth more so than equating the Allies with the Nazis, it’s also a good time to remind you that despite all this, it’s safe to say most people aren’t holding competitions over who has the most dead friends and relatives.
I’ve seen a chart measuring evilness using “kiloNazis” as a unit. For what it’s worth, it measured the hypothetic offspring of Sauron and Cruela deVille as somewhere between 4.5-5 kN.
I always did love that chart.
That chart was in the Order of the Stick.
I endorse all cross-webcomic-references that are both respectful and funny.
+5
Nazis are really low on world evil levels.
He’s next to Pol Pot and his killing fields.
But Stalin and MAO make both look like rookies 100 Million combined…
And the Mongols…
Really depends on how you measure. If you’re doing it purely on body count then yes, Stalin comes out at about 3.5 Hitlers. On the other hand, Stalin never mechanized murder the way Hitler did, so the ‘quality over quantity’ award definitely goes to Hitler.
As to the Mongols…yes, Genghis Khan piled up the bodies. On the other hand, the way he did it was to say to a city “Surrender or be destroyed”, and then actually carry through on the threat. If they surrendered then there was no butchery. He also created an appellate court system, largely stopped the internecine clan wars, started a scientific revolution, and imposed the rule of law on most of a continent. He was a complicated figure.
*SIGH* Really now, saying Nazis are LOW on the “evil” totem pole, even on a world scale?
Just saying that and using the examples you used probably means you’re hopeless, but in the interests of other people who might read this and be swayed away from such delusions…
1. Saying a bloodthirsty dictator was “less terrible” than another due to body count is ridiculous – on the level of saying Jack the Ripper was less horrible than John Wayne Gacy.
2. The (combined) death tolls for Mao and Stalin you stated are at or near the highest-end estimates for both. The highest-end estimate for Pol Pot’s regime is 3.4 million – about 800 000 less than the lowest-end estimate for the Holocaust (whose highest-end estimate is well over 6 million and only counts Jews, and as such does not include atrocities and genocides against: the Rom (220 000-500 000), non-Jewish Poles (2 770 000; pretty much everyone agrees on that number), and the Soviet Union’s casualties (13 684 700, both due to wartime casualties -the Nazis started it so it counts against them- and intentional genocide), Freemasons (80 000-200 000) and their own disabled/”inferior” people (275 000-300 000). At the very least he makes the Top 3, likely alongside the other 2. The Mongols were terrible but their atrocities can’t all be put at the feet of a single man (not even Genghis) due to how things worked in a medieval nomadic empire, and the fact that their atrocities took place over a span of 150+ years.
3. Ideology matters. While Stalin and Mao were undoubtedly horrible people, the original ideology that they ascribed to, communism, isn’t in and of itself “evil” – its goal is to ensure equality and decent living conditions for everyone. Of course, it was horribly perverted, leading to a number of the worst atrocities in human history, but that wasn’t its original intent. German national-socialism, on the other hand, as Hitler himself outlined in Mein Kampf, the stated goal of Nazi Germany was destruction or at least radical reduction and/or enslavement of populations deemed “inferior” for the benefit of those deemed “superior” -i.e. germanics in general, Germans in particular.
So yeah, claiming Nazis are “the Diet Coke of evil” is ridiculous.
I’m pretty sure a philosophy of mass theft and slavery is also by it’s very nature evil. Communism just has a better pr department, but it’s the same evil of all these other atrocities.
Minus one.
Yeah, except that it’s not what communism was supposed to be. The implementation was horrendous, but the philosophy wasn’t about that at all. Come to think of it, capitalism (especially the unfettered 19th century one, which saw children under 10 working in mines among other things) could also be called a philosophy of theft and slavery; nobody has a monopoly on virtue.
More like ‘high on the totem pole’. Lower totems are more important.
Oops, forgot the higher end of WWII Soviet casualty estimates, which is 40 000 000. My bad.
The Mongols weren’t evil.
Ask that of the nations they conquered, and how close they came to becoming the rulers of Europe
Maybe she should try to pull a super sonic and just use flight + shield to make a hole int he spaceship, I mean if the shield could withstand massive explosions, it can probably shrug off a spaceship hull.
I mean a damaged section at least
The problem with that is, can her speed generate enough force to penetrate it?
Yes it can take a hit without her feeling it, but is Mach 4 enough to damage something of that mass?
The problem is we don’t know how thick it is, or what it’s made of.
A better idea might be: Get above it and fall down while firing on one spot directly below you with the PPO.
The worst part is though… what if they leave while she’s on the ship?
Then what?
Ignore this
I accidentally posted it by pressing ENTER twice, thus it’s incomplete.
Completed version down below
Ignore this
I accidentally posted it by pressing ENTER twice, thus it’s incomplete.
Completed version down below
Ah Godwin’s law never misses, btw why never mao or stalin? =)
I think killing hitler would be much more difficut for her since he is a human (at least species wise) and these are hostile aliens that could very well be just drones or biological war machines (like alien).
Back to funny comic – yeah more grinding – btw taking out intelligent drones should give xp. She realy should focus her fire on the big guy or the ship. I personaly would start with the ship but i think she made it clear she will go for explody beam guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall_(2004_film) – she better watch out, if she sees this movie she won’t be able to kill him. Hitler as a horribly flawed human, instead of caricatured monster …
Only humans, can be monsters, he was pure evil.
Not if you consider his “pure evil” to be a side effect of late-stage syphilis and/or Parkinson’s disease and/or Huntington’s disease and/or borderline personality disorder and/or schizophrenia and/or sleep deprivation and/or his regular use of methamphetamine, cocaine, potassium bromide, atropa belladonna, synephrine, oxycodone, sulfonamide, barbital, strychnine, morphine, papaverine, atropine, metformin, and about 70 other medications prescribed by his doctor which most of Hitler’s friends considered a quack.
TL;DR: Hitler was not a healthy person, and some of his medications and/or mental and physical illnesses may have caused or exacerbated his behavior. So the depiction of Hitler as a horribly flawed human (and not a monster) is an accurate one.
Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
After all: People have gone through far worse and have managed to not turn into the monster Hitler was.
You can’t blame everything on Hitler’s drug use and declining health: Hitler made his earliest known recorded statement about the Jews in a letter (now known as the Gemlich letter) dated 16 September 1919 to Adolf Gemlich about the Jewish question. In the letter, Hitler argues that the aim of the government “must unshakably be the removal of the Jews altogether”.
Hitler was born in 1889 so in 1919 he was 30? A young man in good health and, I assume, not yet under that doctor’s care. He did a lot of bad stuff before the war, and he wrote Mein Kampf while he was in prison so that should tell you something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler
I am german and hitler/nazi regime was subject of many years of history/political science (and some other subjects) in school. Don´t need no movie for that to know… That guy was certainly no saint or good person more like a lunatic but he was also not a total devil. He liked animals and made laws to protect them (that will not redeem any of his horrible acts but that was one of his good things). I often don´t understand why there always has to be this black and white – absolute good vs absolute evil thinking. It is like Deus maybe he is evil but not every of his actions has to be for an evil purpose.
No, “maybe” about it. Hitler was completely evil.
I think you should read the posts again… the maybe was about DEUS oh and by the way only a sith deals in absolutes.
Isn’t that sentence incredibly hypocritical?
If I were a woman, I’d ask you to marry me.
I would agree, only a sith, or an idiot deals in absolutes, life is so rarely black and white. Heack there’s situations where even grey is not enough to cover it.
while Hitler might of been flying high of a insane mix of drugs, still that does not excuse all the evil he did do, and he was obviously sane enough to keep everything together, and to keep any one of his generals from taking over. so while he’s not all evil, certainly I think the amount of evil he did far outweighed the good that he did. And it’s hard to say if things would of gone any different had he not been so drugged up. Due to him holding various rather flawed and dangerous beliefs like eugenicists, i think there is still a pretty sizeable chance he would still of done many of the atrocities that he is so infamous for.
I’d say how together he was makes him more evil. He wasn’t delusional or crazed, he knew what he was doing and did it intentionally and methodically.
I often say half in jest that the scary thing about the worst example of humanity is not that they are inhuman, but they are in some ways the most human people I have ever known.
There is something about talking with a murderer or rapist and coming to understand that they acted on human desires, that they have human needs and human traits, they feel human pain and have human survival instincts and then taking another look to see that outside of that one twisted thing they often do have some redeeming traits that we all share.
No, what made Hitler so dangerous is that he was human. Yes he was a powerful leader but at the end of the day what made him so dangerous was that he was a human that many people could empathize with.
But his weapon of note that is often overlooked is his ability to inspire others to demonize those around them. People can get silly levels of scary when they think they are right.
I get the feeling that Sydney won’t care about the “tragic backstory” of the racist, genocidal maniac that is responsible for one of the worst events in human history.
The only reason people consider Hitler to be the ultimate evil is so they can pretend they have the moral high ground. Given the opportunity every one of you would be marching your chosen “bad guy group” into the gas Chambers with a vicious grin, patting your self on the back after you finish washing the blood off your hands.
The more you deny the evil in your soul, the more it festers and consumes.
Certainly true for myself, which I’m entirely aware of.
That’s why I do what I do- entertain others with my wrath in a constructive and humorous way.
Now if I was obscenely rich? Had a lot of political power? Couldn’t get got? Well, that’s that, and this is this.
Hitler definitely isn’t ultimate evil. Even if you find him worse than Stalin, Mao and other past dictators, you can’t compare him to FUTURE dictators. It can get worse.
I’ve already thought this out. I would kill as many as I needed to pacify my enemy, but then I would be incorporating their culture, language, and religion into their education and upbringing. One never knows when some unappreciated member of some “undesirable” group produces some amazing or world-changing idea/art/science/invention. (Srinivasa Ramanujan, T.A. Edison, Wm. Kamkwamba are a few examples of this.) I don’t know, offhand, how many people who learned their native lore and skills have used said knowledge to further the survival of their community or their family.
I would, of course, require technological education, too, but not at the expense of native lore and culture. I want a functional technologically advanced “melting pot”, not pretty cookie cutouts preaching my creed or praises.
Pretty sure the hundreds of leaders before and after the rise of Hitler disprove that impossibly stupid idea.
Which group of people do you honestly think deserves unmitigated genocide?
That last panel.
Again, pretty clear resemblance to the tentacle-golem-looking-not-a-robot Sciona sent out.
Hmmm, interesting idea.
Sciona did mention “battle thralls”.
What if she/her people had captured what they thought were powerful adaptive creatures and enslaved them using blood magic. But were actually diplomats or peaceful colonists, ect..
and that one signaled their home world about what happened…and their home world went total overkill on the potential threat to their colonists *species bias and all, if it doesn’t look like you and at least some of them have attacked you, unlikely to consider the idea any of them are good and go full murder mode on all of them*.
Wuhahahahaha, that explanation regarding the cast page! XDDD
But you’re by far not the first artist I’ve met who tends to be scatterbrained about everything but their art, so I’m really not all that surprised that the fix was so easy to do. I’m looking forward to the cast/about page update that will contain explanations what the Archon branches are (even though I know by now because Reltzik kindly explained them to me on the previous page).
its not just artists, i think many techies are too, kinda come with the territory
I once spent an hour trying to figure out why a customer’s email wasn’t getting set as the reply-to field in a contact form only to realize that in the example I was working off the customer didn’t put in their email address, the form was working fine.
That’s one of the reason I have certain friends that I go to for advice. I need someone to point out the obvious since I’m always focused on the complex.
And thats the story of how Halo started an intergalactic war……Yknow seeing Syd rationalise multiple genocides for level ups is kinda funny given how easily shes levelled up before while killing absolutely noone.Still this archs kinda summing up why I cant get invested in the character-shes not even halfway to max “level” yet and shes effortlessly slaughtering a force powerful enough to literally commit terracide.How can I possibly feel any tension in a scene shes in when she can pretty much kill the cast of Dragonball super?
Squidward might qualify as one of the weaker members of Dragonball which is why I assume it was sent in response to her overpowered balls which the scout surprisingly seemed to recognize(?). The rest are too numerous to have any real power.
Possibly they are some kind of race of space ninja’s? https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu
The tentacle thing did nuke her first. Also Halo seams not only start the war, she also ends it.
The answer is simple; Sydney will be put in situations she can’t just blast her way out of.
I mean, think about it, she can’t do anything like this on earth without killing hundreds of bystanders.
Genocide? In what way? They attacked first, got her stranded and then attacked again, she started to leave, realized she couldn’t, returned to the planet and they attacked again, so what is she supposed to do? Allow them to kill her?
Also it’s not genocide because she’s not trying to wipe out their race. Genocide isn’t just synonymous with “killing a lot of people”.
Since they are soldiers on a battlefield who shot first it’s not even murder.
Good point. I’m seriously disapontied the aliens are so weak here. Sciona was badass, this was a complete world full of her kind, the aliens wiped them out – and here is Sydney, slaughtering them by the hundreds without getting a scratch? And she’s not even halfway through the skill tree of her orbs yet? I just hope she’s not coming down with a case of Superman Syndrome, because that would make it really hard to come up with believable threats for her in the future. I mean, SIlver Age Superman got so ridiculously powerful, they invented a whole rainbow of Kryptonites to threaten him with. Fun, but not believable and what I like about Grrrlpower is that the supers are treated realistically. Hopefully DaveB yet has a surprise in store for us, because if this keeps up, Sydney will soon be able to take on Maxima without breaking a sweat! ;)
Sciona couldn’t even scratch Sydney’s shield, and she clearly needed a boost to not get instantly killed by Max.
What exactly were you expecting?
I see what you mean. However, we’ve already seen that she’s not invincible. Sure, it does take the energy level of a small nuke to damage her shield, but it shows there is a limit.
Theres still plausible non-kyrptonite weaknesses left.
1. She can overtax her powers. Aka there’s a power generator that comes with her orbs, and using it too much can either drain it or overtax it.
2. She is not immune to the effects of space-time distortion. If she was, she would not have gone through that portal. If this ship has an advanced warp drive capable of distorting space, it could harm her that way.
3. Sydney herself. She may have a Raid Guild level of focus when in a dangerous situation, but she can’t keep that up forever (as we saw in the Vehemence fight, she had enormous trouble focusing while concocting her plan). Right now she’s probably in ‘automatic’ grinding mode, meaning she’s literally treating the enemies as mobs in an MMO, and will not be able to react properly if they do something unexpected.
4.Task complexity. She can only focus on one thing at a time and can only hold 2 orbs at once. Meaning that once you get USED to her powerset, or have time to prepare for it (as these aliens might have since they know of the orbs), her power becomes less relevant.
5. Reaction speed. Crazy awesome alien spaceship powers though she may have, Max or some other speedster or some sort of stealthninja could still catch her by surprise and easily overpower her before she has time to get her shield up. This makes her susceptible to kidnapping and assassination, since she can’t react in time. She’d have to spend her days with her shield up permanently.
The biggest difference between Sydney and Max, and why Max is still significantly more powerful, is that right now Sydneys powers are categorized. What I mean by that is that she has the shield, and she has the flight, and she has the PPO etc, but they’re all separate powers. There’s hints they might get synergy later, but the most ‘synergy’ we’ve seen so far is the PPO being able to fire through the shield.
Max, on the other hand, has fine control of her abilities, and can improvise as needed. I don’t just mean this in terms of experience, but also in terms of ‘build’.
I do agree there’s a bit of ‘superman syndrome’ going in here, when you come right down to it though. Showing Sydney mass-murdering spaceships, even if they’re small-fry drones, is a bit over the top. I’d prefer if she had to individually attack each spaceship instead of mass-blasting them.
The main redeeming feature is that, the way I see it, Sydney basically inherited a Lvl 50 character from some other alien, and she’s now leveling it up to the level 100 levelcap. or something like that. aka her powers have already been powered up to halfway their max potential.
Good points! Though looking at her skill tree I’ld say she’s about level 25 or so – it’s still more than half empty.
As I said a few strips ago…
She has finite and diminishing stamina
AND
Her Meds are timing out.
She’ll have to finish this soon.
If she gets points or however that works she should spend it on leaving.
If only she could go to where Greenie the waitress got her transportation to Earth.
(Going straight to Earth might not be a good idea.)
I mean… TECHNICALLY she’s acting in self defense. I think getting nuked out of the blue is generally a pretty clear sign that someone is trying to kill you, so killing them back is halfway reasonable.
syd will be fine. there was no save point
syd will be fine. there was no save save point
“people who exterminated the Alari homeworld”
Yes, the Alari, such kind and peaceful folk that Dabbler was actually considering the possibility that a combined coalition or “police force” made of the more law abiding races of the galaxy might have bombed their home world for crimes commonly committed by them (she ultimately rejected that idea due to the level of response but she honestly considered it) can’t think of any reason a non-evil race would do them in…
Let’s just stick with Sydney’s in a tight spot and the aliens who tried to kill her and her friends on sight have the Vaseline. In a fine showing of human survival instinct some part of her is resisting giving too much thought to the true nature of what’s in those tin cans. That’s fine by me, she wouldn’t be the first person to have their freak out at the deeper significance and possible ramifications after the heat is off.
P.S. I love that fact that Dave B. has been working on the comic so long that his day job knowledge has faded into unusable ancient history for him. That’s great!
Yes, “bombing back to the stone age” is totally the same thing as “complete and total extinction”
By the way, Humans have done far worse, and to their own damn kind!!
Guesticus, did you miss the part where (unless there are Alari colonies somewhere that we don’t know about) that the ones in the soul battery were the last of their kind?
Whatever this alien force is, they were trying for “complete and total extermination”. They just didn’t get to finish the job.
The only ones of their kind we have seen. We’ve seen only a tiny part of what is after all an entire world. I actually thought Sydney would land somewhere else and run into more survivors, but after this, they might run away from her the moent they saw her!
We know that, these Squiders don’t know that
How do we know they didn’t start with the colonies
And yes, they didn’t succeed at “cate”, butt they gave a damn good try and that tentacle thing Sci stepped over was probably left to detect for any survivors (either those who escaped the destruction or off-world colonists returning to rebuld)
VGer47: Sci couldn’t detect any blood, so fairly sure that means no survivors
Honestly don’t know what’s going on with this reply (or most of the chain for that matter). It has the form and feel of strongly disagreeing with me but what is actually being said either agrees with me or doesn’t have much to do with what I was saying.
Huh… guess I’ll just be glad I managed to evoke a chain of responses. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m fairly sure that doing evil to evil-dooers makes you evil not good. OTOH, we don’t know what led up to this either.
And, as far as drones… I’d figure anyone advanced enough to send a ship that big across interstellar distances in a reasonable time would be smart enough to NOT send things with blood or souls to fight the Alari.
Unless those ships are powered by the souls, and that’s why the soul battery hadn’t deployed (because one last survivor set to launch it realized the others were being taken and used by the squid mechs).
think a Harvester type alien…sub-set *we can’t make our own AI for some reason* (its a weird thing), basically assimilators except they only take either the brains or souls/life force of other races to power and operate their machines.
(the balls from Phantasm, that Battle LA movie *I think it was that one* where they were taking human brains to operate their robots*, ect…). There are some soul examples but I only recal some episodes of anthology type shows doing that like Outer Limits.
Sure, and that’s why I said she’ll probably have a huge freak out later when she’s either done with or at least reached a restful break in, her struggle to survive/get back home. Right in the stressed out here and now she’s seeing what she wants to see.
Sign # 293 that you are getting old.
You hear ‘Alari’ and fighting swarms of aliens, and this is the image you think of.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UZlEXl9xgR8/maxresdefault.jpg
She may have gained enough XP already to level up something. Even from the big hit earlier. She won’t know till she stops somewhere and drops all her spheres.
You have to hope that’s how it works. She couldn’t use the orbs once the upgrade panel appeared last time, and she’s floating in space now. If she levels up and the panel appears in mid fight again she’s going to experience explosive decompression in a vacuum.
IIRC the last time her upgrade screen came up she wasn’t using any of the orbs at the time and they started spinning really fast and she tried to run away from them… I think she’ll be fine on that score… that she can’t upgrade until she’s not using any of the orbs. She certainly doesn’t want to let go of at least the shield orb until the threat has been ameliorated… then, “DING MUTHAFUCKAH!!!”
The last time she had upgrade was at the Wars factory in this arc (at an inappropriate moment). That was when she got rapid-fire on the PPO, which turned out to be rather unsuitable for the boss she was fighting at the time.
If she does get a point to spend, does she have a prepared slot to put it into, or will she have to pick at random like last time?
Watch there be a cap on exp gained before applying skillpoints and she can’t get more Exp than what would take her half way through the next level.
Or even worse, she stopped gaining Exp at the moment she had enough for the next pair of skillpoints.
However, regardless of whether or not this will apply toward her XP total, I would assume her skill ups are on a log scale. Easier to level in the early days, but a massive grind to get those last skillpoints.
….. I think….she’s calm and collected now…cause she’s saving all the freak out for later…. I’m pretty sure she’s gonna reach interstellar levels of freak out later…. like in the shower or something she’s just gonna fold up on herself or curl up on a sofa/bed with a blanket and just shiver/scream/whimper/all of the above.
She’ll be adrenalin fuelled for now. She’ll get to relax when she gets back to Earth among her team and probably crumple at that point.
Does anyone else think that that thing that started the attack is just waiting patiently for her to come back? Let me is like he saying you can run away for a little bit but sooner or later you’re going to come back to me because you have no other choice.
Maybe it has the keys to the ship?
Actually the impression I got on that next-to-last panel was a damn MGS EXCLAMATION POINT ALERT! complete with sound effect and whatever Squidward’s internal monologue version of “Oh, fuck.” is.
This is definitely a new side to Sydney. I’m really, really enjoying it.
She leveled up by blowing up an empty presumably ammo-free tank. Not sure why a thousand alien battle drones aren’t enough.
Hopefully we figure out its requirements for level eventually. My personal guess is that it is based on life experiences of the host. Blowing up the tank was her first intentional destruction (the trees were basically an accident).
This will be her first intentional kill of an actual person.
I always thought she “leveled up” when she either proved a better understanding of her bond with the orbs or gained master over more of the features she already had access to but didn’t know about till she did some exploring. Like a built in tutorial. Use a certain percentage of the currently unlocked features and prove you understand their full use properly and you unlock more advanced features.
yea im also thinking it works like more on a “demonstrate understanding of unlocked features” then “kill stuff, get exp”
Reasoning:
before her first unlock point she had been experimenting with the shield orb and just worked some parts of how the ppo works.
before her second upgrade she had discovered several new features of the scouting orb.
so maybe she’ll get a point for working out how to multitask with the orbs???
Or maybe they don’t shutdown the shield and force her to pick an upgrade while fighting in the vacuum of space?
note i said “get a point” not “open the upgrade tree” i was musing on how level ups happen. in both cases weve seen of the upgrade screen opening sydney has let go of the halo long enough for for us to assume it has to recognize a “inactive state”
It can be both. You may be exactly right, but “experience points” are a game mechanic and a syntax for talking about and evaluating a process.
Way back when, when the first edition of The New Warriors came out in Marvel Comics, a friend and I decided to apply Hero System rules to the comic, evaluating what we saw and discussing when a given character had done something significant enough to “earn experience points”. While we on occasion differed on whether an individual had gotten a personal award, we rarely disagreed on party awards.
Interestingly, when we felt that a character had accumulated enough “EXP” for a new power stunt or power, within an issue or two, they ALWAYS got a new power stunt.
Apparently, we were in synch with the writers in this regard. Mind you, some of the power stunts themselves made no sense to us, but the timing was always perfect. :D
If it was level-by-learning, then learning about the Commball’s Lightbee Teleport, Air Ball’s oxygen generation, Commball’s Detect Magic, Commball’s Truesight, Flight Orb’s maximum speed, would all have leveled her.
Instead none of those did.
thing is how do you know they didn’t, as someone noted earlier the halo at current is ~30 – 40(cant remember the exact number) pips in
also knowing something exists does not mean you have show proficiency in using it
Dalewarrior is doing a better job of explaining than I am.
The tentacle thing did nuke her first. Also Halo seams not only start the war, she also ends it.
this should have been a replay to https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2934/comment-page-1#comment-694297
They show up on a dead world.
A scout left behind detects them, first thing the return ship does is attack them.
They try to flee…attacks them again.
She tries to flee into space, no good, comes back around, they attack.
She didn’t start anything, this is all self defense. Yes it is starting to look like “Mugging the Monster”
but hey, when a genocidal monsters mugs a “bigger monster” its poetic justice.
Sooooo why not target the ship directly, instead of shooting the fighters down? Why target the useless crawler on the ground? So many questions. :P
Because that ship is massive. It is as tall as the atmosphere, attacking it would be even more hilariously unbalanced than attacking Mt. Everest. I doubt Sidney has the necessary firepower.
I like how the first panels mirror my thoughts from previous comments about Sidney’s limitations in airborne combat as well as functioning like an actual space ship. With only two hands she can’t even access half the necessary functions at the same time.
Sidney can’t tank Squidward, a single hit from it came close to breaking through her shield. I don’t think she’ll damage it easily either.
It’s entirely possible that she’ll lose the fight… but that might not be the worst outcome. Who knows who these aliens are? Maybe they are enemies of the species that created the orbs but don’t have any beef with Sidney? Or they are enemies of the Alari and couldn’t care less about a human?
It’s possible that they can simply send her back home.
Squidward looks evil, but maybe he’s not?
I am not sure such a ship has anything efficient against such a small target like Sydney, she’s just too small – that is probably the reason why they keep sending the “fighters”. It looks similar to the Death Star: built for massive combat but vulnerable to smaller attackers. On the other hand, the PPO packs quite a punch and if Syd focuses on one section, she could probably cut right through it. Right?
We’re talking about a ship the size of a continent here. A smaller version of a DeathStar, really, and Sydney doesn’t have a blueprint to find out where the weak point is. Not to mention she has no clue what protections it may have. It’s very possible its actual mega guns arent capable of targeting something as small as her, but why risk it when your first plan is to grind some small fry until you level up?
Ah OK, so her current objective isn’t to get rid of the spaceship right away but rather level up (or try to). Now the reference “they aren’t even greys to me” makes sense, thanks! :)
Three words: Thermal. Exhaust. Port.
Found it
https://map.what3words.com/thermal.exhaust.port
So that’s how big a Womp Rat is.
Two words: zerg rush.
While she’s mainly focused on grinding (read the next several strips as well) XP with the
Cylon raidersdrones, rather than eliminating them as enemies, it’s important to clear out the chaff so you don’t get distracted while taking on the Big Bad.If it even has such a thing. Ship design much like architecture of buildings is based not only on cultural aesthetics but the biology of a species, their size, shape, type of mobility, and even things like their physical resilience.
Why bother with radiation shielding if your cells are radiotrophic, if their tech operates on Aether Nano fields it may not even have circuitry. Maybe it uses mental field controls, maybe they can withstand and love high heat so the machinery just feeds it excessive heat back into the ship and they use internal cooling to protect the machines.
Maybe they use quantum net distortion fields to super impose cooler air onto heating parts,
maybe it doesn’t even have external engines as it uses super position tech to just *put* the ship where they want in space (it kind of looked like it did something like that when it arrived). Its only external openings could very well be the “drone” launcher. Heck for all we know the main weapons on the ship are positioned within an energy field around and fire outside the shields (much like Sydney is doing) or the freaky tracking lasers in some anime. For all we know at this time the ship could have force field bubble crushers *part of the force field is projected off, encases the target and constricts till it crushes them*.
“I like how the first panels mirror my thoughts from previous comments about Sidney’s limitations in airborne combat as well as functioning like an actual space ship. With only two hands she can’t even access half the necessary functions at the same time.”
You were not alone – a significant portion of the commenters made that same point. This is DaveB dropping something into the comic that explains the issue for those who don’t read the comments in an organic way that doesn’t feel too forced.
It’s also reinforcing the idea of Sydney as a “gamer-girl”/”genre-savvy” by showing her applying the scientific method to the problem and drawing conclusions from her testing. Sydney may be something of a spaz when she doesn’t need to focus but she’s all business when she needs to be business-like.
Has she considered the problem that when her orbs upgrade, she becomes unable to use them for a while? Perhaps they don’t enter upgrade mode if they’re in active use.
Sydney, look at it from their point of view. They’ve just killed an entire planet. You’re their Boss Battle. Just like you, they are looking for repeated actions that they can use to attack the boss.
Are we gonna see some major changes in Sydney,like she’ll no longer be the hyper-nerd she was formerly???
Not that I want the characters to die, but why aren’t the enemies using the attack that actually did some damage to the shield?
Standard rule is that “Big Weapon is designed for stationary targets”.
Energy cost-to-benefit ratio – you don’t want to use your big gun, miss, and have to wait for the power-up again. Maintaining that kind of energy expenditure over time has to be traumatic for the processing materials, if only in cumulative micro-damage. Given that most high energy systems in the real world also tend to require frequent and extensive maintenance, it’s not unrealistic to include that as a limiting factor.
Biggest technological feat in the Star Wars Universe? Compact energy storage. I mean, seriously, the power cells in that setting are insane…
In WWII the gigantic Paris Gun was significantly degraded/damaged with each shell it fired.
Dubya dubya wun.
Dave…look into an edit Function.
Always awkward when you try to fire the main cannon and it’s still warming up.
Big red healthbar?? Try at least 10 healthbars in different colors layered on each other!
You know, it really out to just work or not work. Its not like shooting people requires a certain number of bullets depending on their experience and rank.
OK, she thinks about having to switch from Flight to PPO. This seems to indicate the air hasn’t been getting bad / thin in the force field since she took off. I wonder if some of the others run automatically if the need is serious enough?
The volume of air in there is easily enough to sustain her for ten minutes.
I’m pretty sure that she’s got some sort of “appropriate air mixture restorer” for the orb that she bought as a power up (Conceding I could be way off on this).
Sydney is killing the things in vast numbers with each shot (a hundred a shot isn’t inconceivable based on the shot of the first salvo).
If we’re using Hero System, 5 rounds = 1 minute.
If we’re using 3rd Ed D&D or later, 10 rounds = 1 minute.
Not whole heck of a lot of time has gone past, in all likelihood.
Okay, now we’re going to learn the REAL story of the Halo wars, before that Master Chief guy got all the credit.
lol. Arianna had the ring systems built as a massive cover up.
They are clearly testing her capabilities. This is standard evil overlord stuff. You send hordes of wimpy minions at the hero so you can see what the hero can do. Then you send progressively stronger minions and so on.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SortingAlgorithmOfEvil
Sydney is so damn sexy when she’s in serious mode
There was a woman I used to date (completely poor choice as dating partner, but I digress). When she was focused on her work or hyper-focusing on one of her hobbies, she got this zen look that was so intensely interesting and beautiful.
I used to tell her, “You are so gorgeous when you’re doing something you do well.”
Sh did not feel this was a compliment. :D
It doesn’t matter what it’s in, competence is sexy.
https://www.leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=733
Word.
Hooty Hoot Hoo! Cast Page is fixed!
Hooty Hoot Hoo Two! DaveB is going to be updating it and adding all the additional cast members!
Thanks DaveB!
Also, at this point, you may need to adjust some power ratings (Halo’s in particular – she’s been powering up rather a bit.
So happy….
Boss fight? Or miniboss fight?
Probably more like boss level, as in the levels you get after beating the main levels in the Mega Man series, but before facing the actual boss: you have to go through their castle first.
Let’s just hope it isn’t a Secret Boss.
Monsters: Meant to die to level the player.
Miniboss: A test to see if you leveled / learned what was taught so far.
Boss: Meant to provide a serious challenge.
Secret Boss: You aren’t required to even know this exists, or fight it. If you do, expect a Game Over.
I will say other than the Disgaea series I have never seen an RPG justify (in-universe) the existence of the secret/hidden/post game bosses.
Especially RPGs that try to take themselves seriously, like (Oh you know that living god that was trying to remake the world in its own distorted image and had four forms and command over the cults and monsters of the world?…yeah over here in this cave is a demon beast like a hundred times more powerful just chilling out, let’s fight it)…worst was Final Fantasy X…like the post game bosses were all PETs to some dude in a cave…while the final boss was basically Cthulhuzilla who had the world stuck in a cycle of destruction. If we try to think of them as In-universe that dude and his pets could have at any time ganged up and butchered the last boss.
I suspect the growth point here will be when Sydney realizes she completely misunderstands the leveling mechanic, and it is not in fact a reward for being a mass-murderer.
What’s ‘grays’ in this context? Too low-level for good XP?
Yes. A lot of video games use a color system to help the player determine weather an enemy is worth fighting.
Gray is worthless, green is decent, yellow is a challenge, red is very tough, red with a skull next to it will f’ing murder you.
Exactly that.
In many games enemies are colour coded for danger and grey is often used for so far below your level that you don’t get any experience.
Yeah, its just for those games that do that annoying exp adjustment thing.
Honestly not a fan of that system, but the alternative I guess is the Dragon Quest method of keeping enemies at a default exp but requiring the player to require ever increasingly..to the point of being insane, amounts of exp to level up to the next level.
It may just be because I am more used to it, but I do prefer the later.
Chickens and Rabbits and Drudge Slaves instead of Olthoi Queens and Giant Monouga.
+1 nerd credit for anyone who recognizes this.
A few thoughts:
(1) Time is a factor now. Judging from the text, it’s been an hour or so since she was cut off. Unless there’s some time dilation between Earth and this Alari hellhole, Maxima must be digging a minima into the ground with her feet.
(2) Time is a factor now. Halo’s in constant combat now (probably racking up a ton of XP), but she didn’t pack supplies for an extended stay. No food, and definitely no water. Maybe no trips to the bathroom.
Biology is a pain in the backside at times like this.
(3) I’m assuming that by her expression, adrenaline has faded and she’s just grimly pushing on. When she gets back, she’s going to face quite a debrief. Possibly a new round of psychiatric evaluations:
Like it or not, she can’t keep this going forever, by herself. This incident could seriously affect her personality: I think we’re still in the flashback before GP #4. If you consider all that she’s been through in such a short time… this changes the whole “tone” of the yellow-box text in there. Up until now we’ve always thought of Halo as this mostly bouncy-happy young lady. Thinking of that moment now, there could be an undertone of “I’ve been through a lot already” thousand-yard stare heaviness in those words, which could be starting with this incident.
I agree with most of your points, except the Thousand yard stare “I’ve seen some shit”. While I’m not saying it wouldn’t happen to Sidney, that look isn’t automatic to those who’ve gone through war or seen/done a lot of things. It happens to people who’ve burned out, and never gotten any counseling, or anyone they could vent at, and were forced to just hold it all inside and never felt they could tell anyone.
Sidney has a bunch of coworkers that she can talk to and help understand her situation, as well as Archon has got to have mental health counselors. Also, even hospitals have something called a “Critical Incident Stress Debriefing” where after a stressful ER situation, the staff included in the incident gets together with a counselor and talks the whole thing out, one moment at a time, and helps a whole lot. I’m sure Archon would have something similar.
Well, after showing off like that… “big guns” is completely justified and not just a funny joke.
So, if she successfully destroys evil squidward, does that mean the alari owe her for destroying their enemies?
And luckily, since Dave’s been doing the “Who’s who” blurbs right next to each comic, he has all the image files and text written up to update the cast page. It shouldn’t take much work to just put that all up.
Nah. They’re not going to offer payment after the fact and absent any agreement. Especially not when they appear to have all been killed before she arrived.
Nah they’ll be a Red bar, a Yellow bar, a Green bar,a Blue bar, and a White bar to get through. YUGE experience! Simply YUGE!
Fun gaming fact: the multi-bar system is designed to make players feel like they are doing more damage to the opponent than they really are, a sense of accomplishment, and boosting their pride making them more inclined to continue playing and take down the opponent.
Back in the day the life bars stayed the same on screen but used an HP count to adjust how much of the bar would go down with each hit. So from a player perspective where the multi-bar you’d think (Yes I took down one of his five bars, I can do this), in the old system it would be (crap I’ve only taken down like a little over a quarter of his life bar).
In relation to the genocide question… I’m not sure the term or concept applies here. A few points that stick out are: a. Is this one ship and everything in it the entire squidward race? b. Even if they are the entire race, they have declared war on Sydney, trying to kill her… certainly she is entitled to defend herself from attack. c. For advanced beings they don’t seem very smart… they’ve tried several times to eradicate Sydney, but have failed, while she has been disposing of just about everything they’ve sent against her… A smart alien would know it is outmatched and pop smoke (GTFO of dodge so to speak). d. In the real world, someone breaks into my house and tries to hurt me and steal my stuff… Do I take out my angst at that individual on the entire number of whatever ethnicity that person happens to be? No… only those who are there attempting to hurt me. Right now, Sydney probably hasn’t had time to even ponder the idea of genocide as a reaction for being attacked… She’s been too busy with what’s in front of her.