Grrl Power #668 – All’s fair in love and kaiju battle royale
Weirdly, Sydney’s flight orb doesn’t have nearly as much torque as you’d expect considering how fast she can go. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have a ton of juice, but Cyclops’s eyebeam there is used for paralyzing massive starships and stuff like that.
Cyclops actually has 5 eyes, but the one big one kind of dominates any discussions about him. Well, they call him 1.4 eyes, cause the 4 smaller ones… well, you get it.
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A Tractor Beam is a slurring that was accepted as paralance. The original name was Attracter Beam. Because it’s a beam that attracts things. It’s not called a tugboat beam because that would be stupid.
‘Ttracter Beam does sound so much more exotic…
AFAIK, Doc Smith’s Skylark series was the first with such as an integral part of the story, and they were simply referred to as “attractors” and “repellers”. To hold something in place required using both.
I don’t know his Skylark series but in the Lensman series they were always Tractor and pressors.
BTW. The first two books of the Skylark series is on Project Gutenberg.
So, would a beam that repulsed her be a detractor beam? No, that would be silly.
No, that would be repulsive
That would be pushing things
a detractor beam would just say mean things to your friends about you behind your back
…while beaming a big ‘ol smile at your face.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/tractor
Definition 3: “something used for drawing or pulling”
No it isn’t. It’s the Latin word for “pulling device” or “towing device.” It has the same root as attract, but it’s not derived from it.
so their plan seems to be for cyclops to hole her steady , then mister drools there will cover her in magma and the last one nukes her with the same thing squidward did the first time. that’s seems a little suicidal but they don’t seem to have much self preservation anyway.
It’s not quite clear, is she being pulled in?
Anti-tractor tactics are known: Head TOWARDS the tractor source, (fire the PPO to destroy the source), at the last second go PERPENDICULAR to the beam. This usually gets you some extra speed to zip by at an angle. Pulling directly away is a bad idea, like fighting a rip current.
Unless this is a “hold in place” beam, but those are far less common in fiction.
Teleporting to the side of it’s face without weaponized eyes is a pretty good option if it’s that last one.
“Hold-in-place” are what they are, they can then ‘reel’ their prey in at their leisure
Her best bet would be drop fight orb, switch to light bee and port under it then commence “Operation core it like a pickle and fill it with cheese and spicy mustard”.
…I nominate this description, “Operation Core It Like a Pickle and Fill It with Cheese and Spicy Mustard,” as the official name for any such future maneuver in this webcomic.
All in favor?
Aye!
Eye! Er, aye!
…. wait, are we talking “brown mustard” spicy or “wasabi-jalapeño-mustard” spicy?
If we are talking about a mustard hot enough that Sydney would actually consider it to be spicy, then its use would constitute a war crime.
All your replies made me seriously chuckle! How about calling the final move after it “Fiery red ring of death” with a disclaimer that should the itching burning sensation not dissipate after a week or so it might be due to other “manoeuvres” you were doing with other tentacles.
And that your Xbox warranty does not cover damage resulting from fiery food.
North Carolina Reaper-laced Ghost Pepper and Ancho Chili Pepper Mustard with a healthy dose of Indian Curry Powder to boot.
. . . which we can just shorten to “ghosting the target” for every day use. We’ll all know what it REALLY means though.
Maybe call it “Holey Ghosting”
Ooooo a classic E.E. Smith tactic with the ‘zone-of-force’. cut em up like Swiss cheese.
Aye
Aye! I hope it becomes canon. Otherwise it will always be “Operation Core It Like a Pickle and Fill It with Cheese and Spicy Mustard” in our hearts
Sydney uses the Alcubierre drive. Her drive works by deleting distance in front of her, not by changing her momentum, so her drive generates relatively little force.
Abercrombie & Fitch Drive
Stopping, you making me hungry.
On the strategy side I am torn between Sid dropping the flight (useless while in tractor) and using the PPO to take out Cyclops eye, or alternatively use the light bee to teleport out just before the big bang that is due. Assuming light can escape a tractor beam. Well it has to in this case, we seeing Sidney move.
or using flight and ram that eye.
Hmm, one big eye and a bunch of smaller ones? That sounds more like a beholder than a cyclops.
I hope for Sydney’s sake that none of that tractor beam glitter gets inside of her shield. She’ll be finding bits of glitter in all sorts of odd places for months. There is a reason why glitter is known as the Herpes of the arts and crafts world. Once you got it, you’ll never be entirely rid of it.
That was terrible. Hold still while I throw peanuts at you. 8888888888888888 888
Why does this not really look like an eye…
https://ibb.co/mHa8Gp
I think it might be because you might be a dedicated fan of Alien’s H.R Giger.
Vageyena?
Thought of a few more strategies she might be able to use.
discussed so far:
– Teleport – IIRC I think DaveB mentioned that the light bee(teleport) was not physical and could go through walls, but that Syd might not know that yet. (seeking ref)
– PPO the eyeball – OUCH! where would you find a eye trauma kit for something like that?
Other methods:
– Shoot the ground under their feet – make them loose balance – if PPO works through 1.4’s beam
– use the tentacle to grab one of the other squiddies, and pull herself out of the way of the ‘tractor’ beam.
We’ll see
bit of fun: Don’t think it’s a John Deere tractor beam… It would have to have Green sparkly bits.
So, primarily orange… International Harvester? Chalmers? Massey Ferguson?
And if it’s literally a “Tractor” Beam, then, like a tractor, it latches onto something (like a plow or harvester) and drags it around at a set distance from the tractor. Tug boat beam’d work, too, same principle.
Someone said “stasis beam.” That works, too. Anyway, we shouldn’t get hung up with the fifty eleven SF memes for this. It’s obvious to me that Syd is going to use the environmental orb to blow smoke (or liquid oxygen) up its… or maybe into its eye/aperture.
If you can make a tractor beam that holds something at fixed length, that implies you could “reel” things into a sufficiently large spaceship thing. Just imagine the “harvester” is an internal component of the big death spaceship which is driving in circles, winding the tether around some spindle. I know it’s a beam rather than the tether, but you can imagine how to work through that too, eg. by having a sort of conveyer belt setup which dips in and out of the tractor beam (by means of modulating the tractor beam itself).
Or, y’know, Sydney is just guessing what it is (so that the comic reader has any idea what’s going on in that panel — without the text it would be confusing and look like it’s a constant intensity beam that just missed sydney but is swinging around to hit her but hasn’t hit her yet) and everybody who thinks it’s a stasis beam is also guessing :).
When is the next one coming out??? Need more
Uhhh. The next page came out yesterday.
Tractor beam is short for “attraction beam” i think
As Sydney is running in place in panel 4,
who else imagines the Hanna Barbera
‘Running but not getting anywhere at first’
Bongos?