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Of course now that it’s back up, yikes, that art is out of date, huh?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.
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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.
It finally dawned on me who ‘Squidward’ looks like. Sydney is going to need a magic sword.
https://samuraijack.wikia.com/wiki/File:Aku_killed_Scothman.png
He looks solid enough that conventional attack might damage him. Vale, on the other hand… :)
and Aku is basically based on the Kirby helmet design
Galactus
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSBko0Ee8PHgag0NljpnPAYMVLHXFL7Fpz44E4Vj7pCHlx4DYkX
Hela
https://hobbydb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/processed_uploads/subject_photo/subject_photo/image/28915/1501173493-21140-5962/hela-1489087245658_1280w_large.jpg
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/8/87/Hela_%28Marvel%29.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121020221121
Big Barda
https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/3/33935/1018826-brd.jpg
although not Kirby created this squid guy is putting me in mind of Trigon
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/dcanimatedmovieuniverse/images/a/ad/Trigon.png/revision/latest?cb=20160403191241
Sydney really needs to up her game on playing with her balls. During combat situations, they need to float in-front of her hands, minimize the time of switching between Flight and Blast, or any other orb that could come of use.
Also, I Really dislike my imagination sometimes.
Sydney: “Prepare to be defeated!”
‘Squidward’: ‘What is this human going to-‘
Sydney: *Uses Lighthook* “Honk, Honk. YANK!”
‘Squidward’: *Keels over onto the ground with a great big thump, only a squeak of tortured manhood escaping from him*
Maybe she can throw the big guy at the ship.
As she was attacked first without warning more than once then having multiple mechs launch at her make me go for what I have believed in …. always have a velvet gloved hand out for friendship but mess with me bring out the hammer and make them the nail
Sounds good but since they attacked first several dozen times, I think Sydney attacking THAT thing is the right call.
You’re mixing your metaphors. It should be more like:
“Always have a velvet gloved hand out for friendship, but mess with me and the iron fist inside the glove will wreck your day.”
That sort of metaphor I can get behind.
What about a behind and a velvet glove?
Seriously, if Sciona is representative of her race, wiping them out doesn’t necessarily make the Squidlings evil.
Eh – I think the attempt to exterminate with extreme prejudice and on failing to do so while target is fleeing and then trying that again kind of confirms the evil bit.
The Squidlings seem to know Sydney’s orbs, and they seem either terrified of or furious with the owner. There’s no guarantee that whoever created the orbs was in anyway a good guy/gal. Perhaps the Squidlings have a very good reason for what they’re doing? We literally don’t know anything about that!
still, self defense is self defense, and chances are, they’d kill her with no provocation at this point, rightly or wrongly on their part, its STILL self defense when the individual defending didn’t start the fight.
It’s only self defense if it’s necessary to defend yourself. That is to say, if a toddler hits your leg, it does not still count as self defense to shoot him, because you can ensure your safety with less violence/harm than that, even though you were “attacked first”. Similarly, these foes do not pose such a threat to her that this should be seen as self defense. I’m pretty sure her shield recharged faster than the attack took to charge when she took that big hit, and these smaller fighters can’t seem to tax it at all. She could probably just avoid them and be fine, (other than the imminent ‘dyeing of thirst’ problem,) but she is choosing to hunt them down just to gain power based on an assumption that that’s how her orbs work.
Yes, I kinda hope for her that these ARE automated drones and not piloted by aliens, because Sydney’s not a cold-blooded killer at heart, and once she would realize she has essentialy committed mass-murder I fear she would take it very hard. And make no mistake, like you say this is NOT self-defense. If she had killed Squidward when it attacked them, that would have been self-defense. But now she is the attacker, and she is doing it for reasons that are not really well thought out. She seems to be treating the situation as one of her computer games, which is a good way to keep the panic away, but not necessarily the best way to find a solution. Hiding would have seemed a better idea; the aliens didn’t try to follow her, and the drones didn’t attack her until she was approaching the mother ship. Their reaction almost seems panicked to me, like they have fought the owner(s) of the orbs before. Considering how well Sydney is doing even though she can only use two orbs at a time and has access to only a few of their abilities, fighting a being who could use all of them at the same time and at full power is a terrifying prospect!
Fact: The squid aliens attacked first, and with obvious intent to kill.
Fact: The enemy squidbillies are occupying the area where Sydney needs to be if she wants to have any chance of a rendezvous with a rescue team.
Fact: Even if Sydney were to flee the scene, it is reasonable for her to assume the squidbillies will continue to pursue and attack her.
Fact: Sydney has only had a few moments in which to ponder all the ethical BS we’ve been discussing for weeks, and she has been doing it under threat to her life.
Conclusion: Sydney’s actions are well within what would be considered reasonable and ethical given the situation she is in, and the hurt she is bringing to the squidbillies is a direct result of their hostile actions. Even if the squidbilly fighter craft are piloted by sentient beings, the responsibility for their deaths rests solely on the squidbillies.
That is a MASSIVE if,
it would excuse the Xenoarchy for attacking military bases, and technological infrastructure *blast back to the industrial age*
However the mecha-squids appear to have targeted EVERYONE, so children/larva (whatever Alari do), maternity wards/giant shared womb via Shi’ar, hatchery, whatever,
as well given the giant glowing craters on the planet below, I’d say they also likely targeted the entire bio-sphere of the planet, extinction or pyroforming or clear cutting *still not sure if these are proper invaders or Builder class aliens, and Sydney was the first real threat they detected either by recognizing her orbs as something from a real rival species or something so far outside their knowledge as to feel like they encountered their own version of Cthulhu and are having a freak out reaction *kill it, kill it, kill it*
In any case, they have no issues with indiscrimate deaths of every living thing, and attacked her without so much as an attempt at communication, not even a “This does not concern you (insert orb wielder race name), leave or be fired upon”.
reading your comment made me think of a sci-fi book i have called “Manhattan Transfer”, it’s basically an ordinary day in New York City, and aliens come down and literally cut the city scape of Manhattan out of the planet and kidnap it… BUT, unbeknownst to the kidnapee’s, the aliens that did it are trying to PRESERVE the human race from another set of aliens that are doing almost the same thing as you describe… they totally obliterate the existing biosphere and seed the result with their own biology… and they (the humans) end up escaping captivity, damage the ship, and have to fight off the Terra-forming ship.. only to find out it’s not so much as another alien RACE, but a differing political party of the SAME alien race… who knows, Maybe we’re seeing the same thing here… what Dabbler thinks is that the Xenoarchy finally got fed up with the Alari and blasted them, isn’t it at all… it’s just a coincidence that the terraforming aliens came at that time and everyone is still scrambling to figure out what’s going on in the Xenoarchy as this NEW alien race that is just barging in un-invited…
Have to love it when sci-fi throws out the “planet of hats” bit that pollutes so much of the genre and acknowledges that different factions can exist within the same species and different individuals and groups (not just rebels and lone heroes to save humanity) can oppose one another.
I wander if Steven Universe based its Human Zoo on that *the Gems (alien race of living rocks with hard light hologram projection bodies around the rocks) invade planets and hollow them out for resources; the Gems on Earth had made a Zoo to preserve some human specimens.
Scraped Princess had a similar idea as well, the series starts off making the viewer think its a fantasy world *magic, prophecies, angels and dragons fighting over the human race, agrarian societies* but slowly it becomes apparent this is a post apocalyptic world and the angels and dragons are actually artificial weapons the humans made but an alien race took control of the Angels, and seeing humans as a dangerous life form to the rest of the galaxy exterminated almost the entire human race, but to preserve some of them lifted up a large section of land and sea into a very advanced BOX and had the angels act as a force to control population and developments by acting as the “gods” (care takers) of this world.
of course neither of those goes the full on different factions of the alien government route.
well as I see it just MIGHT be that the world was not Sciona’s home world but an alt universe world and that is why the soul chamber did not go off as they were a peaceful race and only Sciona was the bad one, thus making they squid guys invaders set on destruction any race not them
Dark theory:
What if the reason that soul battery escape pod didn’t launch is because it was a late one to be set to leave, but the external operators saw the other escape soul batteries being intercepted by the aliens who were catching up the souls to use as power sources for their “drone ships” and each of those ships Sydney is really saving souls imprisoned and controlled within them…like Dr. Eggman Robotnik’s badniks and small animals…only with souls.
Hey DaveB, I have a question, unrelated to the current strip. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back around seven years ago you mentioned that you had lots of scenes planned of superheroes flying in and out of the skylights in that common area in Archon HQ. I was just noticing that it’s been… well… seven years, and I don’t think we’ve seen a single one of them. Did you change your mind, or have we just not gotten to them yet?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1844 has it in an indirect way.
I am glad that mentally at the moment she is calling them “drones” or I doubt she would be able to cope, especially seeing as she was horrified when Max took off Kevin’s arm during the Rumble in the Restaurant. I seriously doubt she has even had the “How not to suffer from PTSD when exploding thousands of Aliens who wont be going home to their tentacled loved ones” and “101 things to say to little squidward when he asks you why you melted his father who was just doing his job under threat of death”. Yes they did a Solo and shot first (explains why he and Leia broke up really) but she didn’t try and communicate with them either. For all we know they may have assumed they are in league with the Alari and needed wiping out as well.
In all fairness to Sydney, it is awfully damned hard to open up a dialogue with someone who won’t stop trying to blow you up.
Something only Superman and Goku have ever really accomplished LoL.
-and I do mean “dialogue”, yeah plenty of S-class and Omega-class heroes and such will monologue during a fight with an enemy who is trying to blow them up constantly, but Superman and Goku seem especially good at getting their opponents to actually have a back and forth with them during a fight.
I have a grossly powerful character in a supers RPG – and by powerful I mean a hell of a lot of powers and many of them are at the campaign limits. On several occasions the villains have decided to open fire with everything they have on that character – who shrugs it off. His response?
“Now that we’ve determined that you can’t hurt me, why don’t we try talking this out?”
They never wanna talk it out…
(Hey, we’re there to roll dice…. :D ).
i don’t remember what book i read it in, but there was a sci-fi book (or maybe a trilogy) where the humans got discovered by one set of aliens that were in the middlle of a galactic war, and at first they tried to stay behind the scenes and justrecruit individual to fight, and one of the ones they try is a true-blue-no-nonsense Pacifist… it follows a few of the aliens and we find out that they are really BAD at being soldiers, one race is great at running, another is great a technological innovation, another is great at strategy, etc, and the ones they are fighting basically have mental powers that can take control of their minds an brainwash them into doing what they want ith the victims… except for Humans… we have a built-in mind-block to that power… so the good-guy aliens come out of hiding and recruit humans en-masse… by the end of the book, that pacifist ends up being recruited as well,and when asked WHY? he said something like “there’s something about killing ALIENS that the mind makes it a nice, psychologically safe victim that the human mind doesn’t end up going psychotic, because it knows that it ISN’T killing other HUMANS…”
Remember that book as well (specially because there was a scene set in New Zealand where a couple were picnicking and were attacked by the Bad Aliens, the Bad Aliens didn’t survive and the couple went back to their picnic :D)
And that’s the problem with the term ‘Pacifist’, many people don’t understand what it means: a Pacifist will fight when they have to, and can usually handle themselves extremely well, they just prefer not to fight
A Call to Arms, by Alan Dean Foster. Was a good read. (Now I feel I must read again)
It depends on what definition of ‘pacifist’ you’re using. The definition you’re using doesn’t seem to be any different from an entirely normal person who prefers not to fight.
A stricter definition of ‘pacifist’ is someone who believes that all violence is cyclical and so, ultimately, self-defeating. Such a person would indeed refuse to use violence under any circumstance, even in defence of themselves or others, as they would believe that it would only make things worse in the long run and the only way of defeating violence itself is to break the cycle.
A ‘conscientious objector’ is someone who refuses to use violence in a particular cause (defence of their nation state for instance) but would be willing to fight defensively in some circumstances.
Do I hear Boss Battle Beats?
open a new tab and search for your favourite boss music, play it while reading
You mean this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovg9S6HyFWo
Well as long as she has her Deadly Boss Mod alert set up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ-D9UwgUlU given that they can get her shield into brown pants mode.
Given the context, I find this song to be more appropriate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyC5eWJhCr8&list=PLkLnTkKXBSxj5ikzKwP2K4pbhpNonD5vm&index=15
This song works to:
(Joke)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yzC4hFK5P3g
(/Joke)
Okay really I mean this one:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9UaSNzCkm2U
Actually, could totally see (hear?) Sydney singing a silly song like “PonPonPon” while in combat like this :D
“HEAR THE BATTLE HYMN OF MY PEOPLE!”
Replace the line “PonPonPon” with “PewPewPew” and it works just fine for Sydney’s battle music.
Naw I only think it is a Mini Boss, the real Boss is yet to come.
Naw, its only a Mini Boss. The real boss is yet to come
Really glad to see the Cast page back up. I missed it. Also… I’m starting to wonder if the ratings listed are really accurate anymore. At least for Sydney. Could any of the others on that list, aside from perhaps Maxima, take on a fleet of space fighters as effortlessly as Sydney is right now? Math and Dabbler are both rated higher than she is, and they’d both be hilariously outgunned. OK, Math might pull some ninja trick and end up getting onboard one of the fighters and then escaping somehow. Dabbler could probably use a trick to vanish or do something similar… but neither of them would be fighting that fleet head on like that. Sure, Sydney happens to have exactly the right powers for a space battle… but still. With her nigh invincible force field and PPO, she’s soloing a super city-sized alien mothership… and believably. That’s not a level 6 power. If you are judging her by her ability to non-lethally subdue super-powered criminals… sure. She’s a 6. But in this scenario, Maxima herself would be hard-pressed to equal her.
There are different types of “power levels” for the different missions. For instance, Sydney has the subtlety of a pink Rhino charging head first into a China shop (she is very bad at stealth). However she is decent at tactics and has a wide range of powers. So Math could easily beat her in a one-on-one if she was ambushed.
Overall, Sydney’s greatest weakness is her lack of experience. Though in time, she has the makings of an excellent General.
I have to think you are oversimplifying. I doesn’t matter if you are a pink rhino or a lavender unicorn if your powers outclass your opponent. Sydney is way more powerful than Math no matter how you look at it. In fact as far as power levels go only Max and possibly Dabbler is more powerful. (remember in the big fight we saw she was using non-lethal equipment and was severely hampered by trying to not kill her opponent)
The biggest power Sidney has is her shield, nothing can get through it so far, not even magic. (she broke the aggression spell by simply shielding up the caster.) While it isn’t Achilles strong it is about as strong as anything else. On top of that she has a laser, teleportation, flight, and a lighthook that she can use with quite a bit of force.
Math is listed too high. Quite frankly I can think of several ways to beat Math quite easily using Sydney’s power set. No matter what Math does he can’t get through that shield and he can only dodge so much before he gets nailed.
From what we have seen I would put her at Paragon power set. Dabbler might or might not have the edge depending on if she can figure out a way to get through her shield. Math I would drop down to Ultra as they are strong but do you really think they could go toe to toe with Dabbler and Sydney? I don’t think so. He might be able to trick them into not using the powers or he might be able to surprise them by attacking first. Just because he can beat them in certain circumstances doesn’t mean he is as powerful as they are. Remember Sydney beat him by just smacking him on the head with a spinning ball, that isn’t even really a power. He then beat her when she tried to do the same thing again rather than just bubbling up and lighthooking him and doing a Hulk imitation of smacking Loki around. What I am trying to say is it isn’t about fighting using certain rules or your knowledge of combat. It is about how Powerful are you and I just don’t see Math as in the same league as Sydney
Dabbler may night have the absolute firepower or shielding that Sydney has, but she has a HUGE variety of powers and technologies that she uses in tandem. Assuming she wasn’t just boasting in the fight against the swordswoman, she has fought and killed gods in the past. So while she may be not nearly as powerful as Sydney in a space battle (assuming she doesn’t have a souped up battle cruiser parked in orbit), she’s probably more powerful in a one-on-one fight against anything with a libido.
I think there are 2 things holding back Sydney from being listed at a higher power level, and when/if they’re overcome than it would make sense to increase Sydney’s rating. As it stands a 6 seems about right, lot’s of potential power but not quite able to effectively use it.
1) Inherent limitations: Sydney can only use 2 powers at once. Max’s inherent “default” power level with everything spread out (without improving her abilities) is already equal to or above Sydney’s with the orbs. Dabbler can unload a handful attacks/powers at once, combining magic, tech, and raw strength as multipliers. Sydney is limited to 2 powers at once, this is currently a hard limit. Additionally Sydney can be relatively easily deprived of the ability to use said powers if they can knock the orbs out of her hands or prevent her from switching.
2)Expierience. if Sydney had the level of experience of Dabbler or Max, then I could see her being rated at a 7 or even an 8. Even considering a handful of XP drops to her skill-tree improving her abilities.
Speaking of new characters, are vampires interested/can do sex in this universe, given Dabbler’s comments towards Ingsol back during the Twilight Council meeting?
Come on people, quit sympathizing with the squidlings. It doesn’t matter their reasoning, they shot first , with multiple thermonuclear explosions, and didn’t even stop to ask questions. Sydney is completely justified in defending herself.
Well our good ‘Squidward” has been very quiet so far. Meaning he has watched every move she makes, noticing when she loses controls when having to switch orbs in her hands, just as Sydney has noticed. This calls for a feint within a feint type move. Sydney needs to do something unpredictable followed by an unexpected attack. Perhaps on what would appear to be the spaceships main engine?
Well if she’s lucky, he’s actually a singular entity, like a Galactus (kind of looks like if Cthulhu, Galactus, and Trigon fused together)…which would also be terrifying, and he is mentally controlling the ship and the drones (think Galactus ship and the time he would use the Destroyers).
Sydney should have unpredictable down. Also- last panel-best image of Sydney yet!
Sydney has unpredictable down flat, but gravity and physics are still quite predicable. Whenever Sydney switches orbs, her flight goes from crazy to parabolic.
Huh, I thought her strategy was to do a Cylon Kamakazi through one of the fighter waves and get in the flight deck “Ha, Ha! Cant nuke me here!” Going right for a Boss fight is gonna be dicey.*Grabs popcorn*
Unless the guy on the surface turns out to just be a low level grunt they sent down to check out what the scout was picking up or one level above the scout, and on the ship there is some Super Cthuluzillalactus Emperor of Death and God of all Overlords type being.
To help with drawing faces, you might want to make/commission/request? a set of detailed 3D models of the character’s faces, so you can just open up that file, tilt the model the way you want the head to be tilted, and then draw that. You could also edit things like the eyelids, for squint-eyed poses like this one, or anything else you might want.
I just had an off thought since Sydney was wishing for a third hand. Couldn’t she put one of the orbs between her breasts, then zip her suit up giving her her ‘third hand’ ?
Heh heh.
We’re not lucky enough for her to get her upgrade there!
But seriously…I’m guessing you mean to put Mr. Bubble under her shirt.
It has already been established that the Orbs are ‘Hands Only’.
Unfortunately for Sydney, she doesn’t have the ‘real estate’ for that move, and if sticking it between her butt didn’t work…
She has tried “other” ways to hold the orbs. Only her hands work.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/589
Thus bringing things full circle (literally if she went into orbit) and putting her back in sight of the portal’s closing point for wormhole pickup. Can picture her being rescued Just before finishing this guy off and be like ‘Nooooo! My levels…’
The last panel, I get the impression that while Sydney was busy blasting the skeets, Squiddy the mecha-cthulhu was carefully watching and scanning, gathering data on her combat capabilities and tactics…
…possibly while eating popcorn.
so, how is she hitting them? space is big and her beam is tiny? does the PPO have a bit of auto aim? or does the mean widish increase? or are the drones clumping up to the point that they are easy targets?
Pretty sure when she and Max were testing her powers, they discovered she could widen the beam. Or maybe I’m remembering incorrectly and that was just a proposed purpose of one of the PPO upgrade nodes.
i’m thinking she has mental control over EXACTLY where the end-point of the beam goes… remember when she cut the tank in half at the demo?, the beam started out a bit wonky and off-target, then as she moved the tip/focus/endpoint of the beam closer to the tank, she also corrected the aim so it went right through the center… exactly where she WANTED it to go… so i have no problems with her basically taking the beam and “waving wildly” like a kid playing with a 3D Etch-A-Sketch and just “scribbling” a path in the sky, and because of the mental aiming part, it hits right where she wants it to, and when she wants it to…
Sydney what you need are prehensile feet.
She tried that, didn’t work
It’s not for the orbs, it’s for the fanfic.
Fanfic could have her using them like Ben Wa balls (interesting nugget: while searching to make sure had the name correct, an entry for Wrestler Chris Benoit was listed :P)
Well she could put one in her mouth, but that would keep her from cursing so that’s out.
Before Sydney was recruited, she already had done extensive experimentation and established that the orbs only work in hand, and with skin to orb contact. As she said, “Mittens are my Kryptonite.”
I have suggested that either the aliens or ancient tech humans built the orbs. Now either you do need at least 2 more arms (alien or GMO human) or they can control all of them without direct touch as long it is mind touch is strong enough. if they are from humans it would be those with many extra arms…
Ancient Tech I agree with I like to go with Andre Norton’s forerunners
I have to disagree, I believe the orbs have a limitation of only 2 and the fact that her feet don’t work most likely means the their creators only had 2 hands. Some alien with 6 hands wouldn’t have put a limitation against using feet. (Basically hands are just very specialized feet from when we stopped walking on all 4 limbs and stood up and just used 2.) So they wanted to limit the use to just 2 at a time knowing that more would be bad, perhaps cause an overload? or cause a cascading failure?
Something like these perhaps
https://slideplayer.com/8519260/26/images/20/Protogenoi.jpg
and the
Hecatoncheires
these guys built Zeus’ lightning bolts in some versions (they had six arms)
Those who propose Sydney’s Balls were designed by a species with more than two grasping appendages tend to be those who don’t like to think or are not good at strategizing: if Sydney was able to hold three (or more) of her balls at once, she wouldn’t have to stop and plan her actions
I can see your point, from a story telling perspective and providing limitations.
However it doesn’t work as an in-universe explanation *except* under one circumstance.
In real life when one has a set of tools, its best to have quick and easy access to ALL of them at once. Especially if as Sydney has theorized these are equivalent to parts of a space ship. So having life support, a mooring cable, the weapons, flight, communications, the shields, and…what ever the last one is, all working at the same time would be optimal *especially if say this is some Outlaw Star set up and the central control system of the ship is a bio-android holding these orbs and removing them is like car keys as well as rendering the ship a hunk of metal junk to anyone who’d want to steal it.
But onto where the whole strategy, creativeness, actually “wanting” the limitation of only two at a time would make sense (In-universe), and that would be *they are toys*. The toys of some dangerous high end species perhaps, but toys none the less, a game mechanic where they can only use two of them at a given instance and must think on their feet. This theory is supported by a skill tree actually being present (as if they were really ship tools, you’d think they’d be optimized at full abilities…save for the bio-android unit needing to adapt accordingly so a gradual increase), but simplified as they have a game like skill tree, come across as *switch your skills during real time battles* but only two at any given moment game mechanic difficulty and *it makes it more fun and challenging* reasoning. These orbs would need to be the toys of some powerful and potentially relatively crazy species.
Who said they were ship tools (or the equivalent of a space ship components)?
In real life, when one has a set of tools, doesn’t mean you are holding, and using, them all at the same time: here’s an easy test, try painting and screwing in a light-switch at the same time
Sydney did, several times now. Its her current theory as to what they are. Its why like two pages ago she referred to herself as being an alien space ship. Its not proven, but its the current theory she is going by.
Also these aren’t unrelated tools, they are a set, which look to be weapons and defense related, any limitation on ease of immediate and multi-task use has to be either intentional or user error. Otherwise its a massive design flaw, after all having a shield up, while flying, while firing at opponents, while having a constant oxygen supply would be a pretty basic set up for any flying craft, having to turn your air off in the cockpit just to fire missile, or have to decide between thrusters and shields would be pretty bad weapons designs. The only two that feel optional reasonably are the comm ball *as so far its one way and teleporting* and the light hook which Sydney believes is more like a mooring cable or a two rope than a weapon.
Doesn’t mean she is correct
If they were designed to mimic a space ship (or any other kind of ship), why not just have one ball that deploys a fully equipped ship?
The comm-ball is not ‘one way’ as she can both send and receive communications via it, the only ‘limitation’ she lamented on is that it can only project her and what she is wearing holding (so no making horrific holograms)
Various control components that require and organic core operating system and they just bonded to Sydney due to lacking their proper core.
Also as to why not deploy a ship? For the same reason you don’t have car keys that deploy a car, even if in this case it would be like hauling around the keys, the radio, the car battery, and the machine guns hidden in the headlights all separately.
Which goes back to the why the limitations would make sense in universe only if they were intentional as a toy and not a weapon proper.
There have been enough (well, a few) stories where a ship was stored in something that was easy to carry
You consider the PewPewper to be a toy!!!!!! Did you skip the part where she described it as “feeling like touching a sun”? o_O
That doesn’t change the possibility only provides an alternative, but that doesn’t mean every alien device will work that way. After all take Outlaw Star for example, why have a bio-android be required to make the ship run at all when every other ship can run without them and their ship has an on board AI already. Its something different with a specific purpose that was revealed later in the series so it wasn’t clear at the start.
As for the toy: this based on the idea that the skill tree and limitation of only using two at the same moment as intentional. It comes across as a game mechanic. And I did say by high level beings. It is a classic trope to come across some advanced technology, super weapon, dangerous creature, ect… and it turn out to just be a toy and/or pet of some cosmic being.
Heck in my own series there is a reoccurring enemy type (Mystic Monsters) that are a plague upon many world, they are various creatures, demons, and abominations of various powers and intelligence that when destroyed explode into harmless blue flames but the same ones (especially intelligent ones) can return at some point. Humans will even seek the power of these magical “fiends” to gain immortality and god like powers.
However as it turned out the native world for these things has a very (artificial) feel to it, and they and that originating world were actually a Virtual Reality created using dimension tech by a powerful race of aliens and the magic and science of other worlds accidently would tap into this pocket dimension causing the game to send its enemy units into their worlds.
Other examples quick to come to mind is an episode of Ben Ten where a dangerous machine on the rampage was actually a higher dimensional being’s baby toy that fell out the pram while they were visiting as tourists.
When you make a game mechanic you design it to reward skill, experience, creativeness, ect… and have limitations to keep it challenging even as your skills and power increase. This is what makes the orbs feel like celestial toys rather than weapons in their current state if these limitations are intentional and its not that the Orbs were originally made by a species with tentacles or multiple arms or actually belong in a dragon ball pedestal looking organic computer control device.
Like I said from a story telling perspective, limitations on “excessive” powers is always a welcome idea. From an In-universe perspective certain ways that works out become questionable as to why they are like that. Sydney’s orbs have really one of two directions..
Either they were meant to be used by someone with an easier time using multiple orbs in some way (what way can be anything from multiple limbs, to spaceship components, to its a mental limitation on Sydney’s part making her think only her hands should work so they do, ect..)
the second is the limitations are intentional by the designer of the orbs. Which would imply they aren’t meant for anything serious, and typically one only intentionally makes clear limitations like building a skill tree and access to only so many at once when its a game mechanic, a toy.
Or it could be a “Tony Stark” training wheels program on the Spiderman suit. The suit was never a Toy but Tony wanted to limit how much Peter Parker could use for many reasons including, giving someone a powerful tools without them learning how to control them can cause major catastrophes.
That is possible, but seems to also imply someone was killed or a crash or something bad happened that resulted in them left on the ocean floor, and were never recovered. If its some ancient Hyperborean super age of magi-tech situation then its even odder they were the only thing in that immediate area and not locked up in that vault by some creature whose knowledge could date back to such a time.
There being left just seemingly at random also makes me think of the higher being left a toy behind trope. The sort of thing you’d expect from that trope, like how a kid might forget their toy at the playground, theater, drop it out of the baby carriage/cart on the mall floor or at a rest stop, ect… just someone comes across something that seems really powerful, but has some really weird aesthetics, limitations, or apparent rules to it, which tends to result in either (Bored Wizard/God messing with people, or celestial toddler dropped his Gameboy).
Frankly, I still don’t see why she has such a problem with having only 2 hands. I feel like eventually she’ll realize that she can hold more than one orb per hand ( and the orbs are about the size of a tennis ball) and she’ll feel really stupid. This still hasn’t been covered in comic and it’s such an obvious fix that I think it would’ve been refuted on the “feet don’t work” page if it wasn’t.
Forgot an end-quote putting in the link~~~~
It’s… kinda cute, how Sydney believes the reason she’s not levelling up is because the ‘drones’ are grey to her, and not that that is not how her levelling up works
So, say she actually does get a new perk point. Won’t that cause her orbs to start floating in front of her, and if she grabs, say, the forcefield orb, she’ll accidentally spend her point? She’d better get back to the ground before she tries to use Mecha Squidward as EXP fodder, or else she’ll learn what explosive decompression feels like.
Of course, if she gets closer to Robo-Cthulu, it can hit her with its explodey beam that might actually break her shield.
and something she should consider is that the attack it used might not even be its strongest attack.
It fired four dots that caused four explosions around their target, but the discharge points on its body were those four small tentacles around its head. After the giant three legged shadow we saw and now the head shoulder’s shot, chances are it may have started with its weakest attack a little *eye beam* equivalent and not its version of a Kamehameha.
The orbs seem to wait until a “safe” moment to offer the level-up. (Post-demonstration; during the scouting report-in)
They’re not prescient, though, so she can be jumped immediately after it goes into perk-selection mode.
Aren’t even grey to me?
It’s been a long time since I heard that phrase. These things sure don’t look like Rikti, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the big guy gets named U’Kon Gr’ai.
Bad pun! :P
Oh man, it’s been years since I’ve thought of CoH. Now I’m sad.
One thing Sydney (and most everyone else) is making a serious error about: the times she got the Skillup was after doing something new and different, not repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again
Also, when she got to upgrade (after the demonstration for the press and at the Mars factory) she wasn’t holding the orbs and in a safe position. At least until the not-robot showed up.
I agree and thank you for pointing that out. In addition to doing new and different actions, Sydney acquired the skill points while inadvertently (i.e., unconsciously) accomplishing those actions.
What Sydney should be doing, is looking for a convenient unshielded exhaust port that leads directly to the main reactor. That’s the only way to destroy world killing space ships.
Weight with a T and lines under it … Telekinesis
Hammer … Weapon shapeshift? Tensile strength? Mr Amorphorus.
Unsure if this has been mentioned yet, I would assume on the page where we meet NegaSquidward to begin with, but reading through the comments takes awhile: Maybe they attacked her because they’re their orbs? These squid thingies have more than two holding appendages afterall.
Kinda like M.E.G.A.S. XLR?
Aliens develop prototype. Humans steal it, and it falls through a time portal. Ends up in a junkyard and is forgotten. Then it gets found accidentally and upgraded using gaming components.
I miss that show: https://youtu.be/OY1-IbIzlaY?t=13m13s
I wa wondering the same thing. They might think she’s a thief who made off with them. She did find them in an odd place.
Problem: They don’t seem all that familiar with the actual capabilities of the orbs. If these were “their” orbs, then surely they would understand the limitations of the orbs and know how to overcome them. They started off with a single, land-based operative, whose strongest attack is not quite enough to break her shield. This suggests that they were unaware of her shield’s exact durability. More importantly, it implies that they didn’t know Sydney can fly at Mach 4. If they knew that from the beginning, they would have sent something that could potentially keep up with her. (Sydney was keeping pace with Hiro, who is much slower than her, and she still nearly escaped.)
Well their ground scanner did NOT launch an attack that almost breached the shield, it laid a target painter. The orbiting ship sent the beam of doom. Also we know there have been upgrade points spent before Sydney found them, who’s to say a different orb owner didn’t upgrade shield strength between the squids losing them and Sydney getting them? It’s also just as likely the reason they cannot breach, catch up to, or counteract the functionality of the orbs is that they don’t have them, Sydney does. On top of this, the thing on the planet was there before Syd even got there, so why would they have assumed they would find their orbs there?
It’s important to note that Sydney’s PPO is, at best, enough to destroy a medium-sized building. It is certainly not an anti-city weapon. With the estimated size of that ship, it would take a VERY long time to do significant damage. “Squidward” is a level boss. The ship is a raid boss.
The tank was, let’s say 10′ tall and 20’long and Std cut it in half in 1 second. DPS = 200 seat per second. If that ship is 1 mile tall, then near the middle it is about 1/8th mile wide. 750′ wide x 750′ deep = 562500 sqrt ÷200= 2812 seconds = 46 mins to cut it in half. That’s not unheard of in raiding.
One major difference: the tank wasn’t fighting back
I assume Sydney is exaggerating a bit, but “the size of every city on earth combined” is still the closest estimate we have to work with right now. Sydney is no stranger to cities, so that phrase shouldn’t be taken lightly. New York City alone is approximately 304.6 square miles. That ship is COLOSSAL.
Also you aren’t taking any resistances that ship might have against the Freem Orb’s damage (I’m not calling it what Sydney called it, I don’t like that term), so to me, it’s the Freem Orb.
Another idea on the last orb- it’s the Respec Ball. Just use it while the grid is up and she can redistribute points. But only while the grid is up (unless she puts points into the combiner slots).
Show me a programmer who’s never wasted half a day or more debugging an error message that turned out to be a typo and I’ll show you a liar.
She could use the lighthook to grab ALL of the balls! Then put in contact around her head. (forms a kind of HALO)
I was just checking out that “bad comic” review for Grrlpower mentioned last page, and I realized something.
At one point he takes a page from the comic and edits it to change the flow. Now, I’m not going to completely disagree with the guy, the flow would be much better for a purely action based story the way he did it. So I had to wonder, why did Dave choose to do what he did, and something occurred to me. The scene is when Vehemence reveals the source of his power being Vehemic energy, and the part that the reviewer cut is mostly Sydney trying to hide the fact that Dabbler is a Succubus alien, which Vehemence sees right through… because he knows about Succubi and parts of their culture, like those thrones he mentioned.
… Why does he know about that? Also Vehemence was doing some pretty cool magic stuff and had some magic tattoos across his body. I wonder if that is going to end up being foreshadowing for something coming down the line.
And, you know, I can’t exactly argue the guys point about pacing. I love this comic to death, but I feel like there are hundreds of plot threads in the air, and we are just inching through them, sometimes even forgetting things by the time they become relevant again. Like, I really wish we had done more stuff with Jabberwocky, I liked that whole plot thread and it’s currently on hiatus.
Of course, I also realize the easy solution to this (Dave should totally just post three times a day so we can get more story faster) isn’t exactly reasonable, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing sometimes
The pacing is fine, if you read it in chunks
You try reading any comic from The Big Three at one page every three or four days and you will run into the same ‘problem’ with pacing
Oh yeah, I try and read all my comics in chunks. Grrlpower is just the one that I can’t seem to stay away from long enough to let it build up an appreciable chunk. Which speaks to how much I love this comic.
But, that isn’t to downplay the fact that we are 8 years into the comic, and Sydney has actually only been a member of the team for… maybe two or three months? I know we did a few week time skip after our first encounter with Sciona, but still we’ve barely scratched the surface of the story Dave wants to tell, and it has taken a long time to get here.
Yay, that always bothered me.
Seriously though, it felt that it was longer than 11 months, felt more like 2 years… Shows how I feel time.
Sydney should be using the dakka-dakka option for the PPO (the one she discovered while fighting at the Wars factory), unless she is firing at a single target. That might clear those maybe-drones out a little faster than the focus shot.
She is using the PewPewper laser like she did against the tank: literally cutting a swathe through the enemy ships
The rapid fire/spread shot looks to have wider ranges, but also looks to be intentionally weaker and shorter ranged than the cutter beam. Why she used it on the Blood Doll working on the portal as it would explode the cave ceiling too.
I wonder if she’s yet tried to insert one~
Am I the only one who thinks the long distance shots of Halo firing the PPO (panels 2 and 5) look really cool?
This reminds me of a story…
Back in City of Heroes, we had a color coded “con,” or “consider,” system where an enemy’s name color reflected their difficulty/value. Grey was the lowest, trash mobs under your level worth zero EXP. One of the main heroes of the game, Positron, was actually the lead designer’s character, and when jokingly questioned as to why his NPC character would just stand around watching heroes die near him, his response was “You all con grey to me, no EXP.” This reply hit legendary status, to the point that one of the toughest enemies in the game (at the time) was named after it, the Rikti Elite Boss “U’kon Gr’ai.”
I’m sure the idea of grey-named trash mobs isn’t exclusive to CoH, but given the context of a superhero comic, I have to believe Dave was a CoH player, and that this was an intentional reference.
Holy cow! Another refugee from Paragon City! I thought NCSoft had hunted everyone down and eliminated them. Are there any others left?
In all seriousness I miss that game flaws and all. It got killed just when it had started to mature. I have not found another game that matches the level of character customization it had. That’s part of what made it special. There hasn’t been another game like it and the world is lesser for its absence.
Oh 4 fuck sake, Syd. In space, you do not need additional propulsion to sustain speed, you need it for acceleration, in every application of the term. Let go of the flight sphere until you look up inertia, vacuum, and then acceleration.
She doesn’t appear to be complaining about ‘needing to sustain speed’, but about her ‘trajectory becom[ing] predictable’ (in a panel with countless fighter-shots peppering her shield). In other words, she is using the Flight orb to evade incoming fire – nearly always accelerating in one direction or another – rather than just to stay aloft. We don’t know to what degree the cumulative fighter-shots are stressing the Shield, but it sounds like she’d rather not take the risk that something of larger calibre may be available.
No flight orb means no acceleration, means a neat gravitationally parabolic trajectory, means the fighters and/or gunners know exactly where to aim. Being in space makes that job easier, as there’s minimal air resistance to distort that parabola, but it’s only marginally relevant to her problem.
O. She’s back in atmosphere, where acceleration means something different and inertia means anything at all. I thought that thing was at least partially outside it.