Grrl Power #696 – She’s specular, modular, interactive-odular
So presumably what happened during the fight was Sydney quickly put up her shield, but before she could figure out her next move, Cora shot one of the muggers with her Flay Thrower. Yeah, you read that right. Then Sydney spent the next thirty seconds trying to figure out if her bubble had a windshield wiper option.
Actually nothing really sticks to the shield, but Sydney just smeared around the gore around with the lighthook a bunch. If she had just left it alone, it would have quickly sloughed off by itself.
Once she got that clear enough, she saw Cora using the gravity gun attachment she teleports out on this page to hold up a dumpster as a shield before smashing someone into a wall with it.
Then things got violent because the muggers started trying to “defend themselves” and “run away.”
Edit: Okay, to clarify Cora’s situation, I changed her dialog from saying “I was born a quadriplegic.” to “I was born without limbs.” I thought quadriplegic meant either paralyzed or missing limbs, and some people use it interchangably, but the actual definition of the word simply means extant but paralyzed.
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So I have to ask; is Cora any relation to Cobra? She seems to have her own Psychogun, and their names are suspiciously similar.
Well, whatever Cora has there, it seems to be useful on those occasions when she just wants to go Psycho…
Cobra is human. I am reasonably certain Cora is not. That would mean they are not related.
Are you suuure Cobra are all human?
Okay, yeah, most versions are. But as a kid my first GI Joe thing I ever saw…or can remember seeing was the animated movie.
That… looks like a different COBRA (nothing to do with GI Joe)
Oh, and just because Cora isn’t from Dirt, doesn’t mean she’s not human (or at least human-descended)
I’m kind of surprised that some commenters misinterpreted the reference. I really thought that this group was more anime and manga savvy. The original comment is in reference to the classic manga turned anime by Buichi Terasawa. Nothing whatsoever to do with GI Joe.
I actually have this on VHS, just been (AWHILE) since I watched it *to put it mildly*, and I didn’t notice a link. Generally when someone references Cobra and anything sci-fi or whatnot, its GI Joe they are references. had I noticed the link and clicked on it, what was really meant would have come back to me.
“Classic”, all too often used as a euphemism for “old”, rather than to signify “culturally significant” or “of lasting quality”. Of course, if it is genuinely a great one, then I’m interested to know, as I do enjoy good anime.
Sadly I am turning off watching older ones as, much like I find with last millennia movies and programs, they do not age well. I’ve seen most of the good ones, and would prefer to see good new material, than re-watch things I have seen before. I enjoy surprises and twists too much to get maximum enjoyment out of doing that. With the exception of material which does not rely on such to be great, of course.
And the older anime I have been stumbling across recently suffer from awful production values, from simplistic art, through poor pacing and voice acting and more. Although I am certain that there will be some good ones I have yet to stumble across. However if I watch a few minutes of a film or series, and see that it is an old style, and is not shouting ‘quality’, then I’m not going to bother going any further. Life is too short to waste it wading through dross.
Yeah, some older ones have that problem. I have forced myself to watch some that are considered classics only to find they didn’t age so well as people claim.
But that said, most things from the 80’s and early to mid 90’s were very well made, even looking better than stuff from the 2000’s and 2010’s for the most part. Especially movies.
Funny enough I am having the reverse problem right now. I seldom come across newer anime I like, or doesn’t turn me away after a few episodes. For example I used to love sci-fi Anime, Ghost in the Shell, Trigun, Macross, Gundam, Outlaw Star, Tenchi Muyo, ect…some of my favorites…but after awhile I got turned off from sci-fi anime…like very few of the one’s I’ve watched or marathoned in the last ten years have been sci-fi…and the reason I realized was…bad endings and inconsistent internal rules. Far too many sci-fi anime in the 2000’s and 2010’s has been the dark ending types where the main character dies…or close to it with an open end (maybe they’ll be put back together or not), or just plain everything is screwed type ending, even the ones that were more than 80% comedy have been like that.
So it just became, fine, fantasy and supernatural it is…or continuations from older ones. Like there are great fantasy ones out now more so than newer good sci-fi…although part of that problem might be the older anime sci-fi was so distinct that people today feel they are copying it so try to make twists like (dark endings, nymphomaniac aliens, combining those two for a psychotic effect, or some weirdness like one I watched like two episodes of…can’t remember the title off my head where they had giant robots…but they were really magical demons and heroes or something…but its also the mundane world…that and the awkward dialogue and I was like…nah I’ll find something else to watch).
That’s the thing, ‘Classic’ usually does mean ‘old’, it also has aspects of the other two
Almost all classic things are old, not all old things are classic though
One thing: don’t judge something by it’s production value, a lot of them were restricted by the technology of the time
Cora’s skin and hair color suggest she is not human, but that is not fool proof. Hence the “reasonably certain”.
It does have additional circumstantial evidence though. Namely that Cora is Dabbler’s old friend, and Dabbler is an alien, who has only very recently (a few weeks before the press conference at the start of the comic) come to Earth.
Some humans, such as those in Archon with high security clearance, along with those who are allied with the supernatural races, are aware of and interact with aliens. So could be expected to be found off Earth. So that does not preclude Cora from being a human. But it does push down the odds, as the majority of humans are kept in the dark by the Veil.
Whilst it is possible that humanity has managed to be transplanted on other planets too, given the behind-the-scenes interactions with humans, for thousands of years, we have not had any indication of that yet. Hence it is wiser to stick with the premise we have seen so far. Namely that humanity is currently still Earth based (ignoring any ship crew cameos of aliens disguised as humans).
Indicating that she lives in a ‘high tech society’ further emphasises that Cora is not an Earth human so, even if she is of human decent, she would still class as an ‘alien’ by any classification which is based on place of birth, rather than biological ancestry (unless she went offplanet as a youngster, say).
She is unlikely to have recently emigrated, given that she captains a starship. Going from ‘member of a primitive society’, learning how to get along in an advanced one, then gaining sufficient trust, by them, to train her in advanced technology usage (the story has twice indicated or implied that humanity is embargoed from learning such), overcoming any legal difficulties in being allowed to do that, and then rising through the ranks enough to captain a powerful ship, would make her a lot older than she appears to be.
Although high tech societies could cheat, and she may actually be altering her appearance, to seem younger, using her holographic technology.
The final clue though is that Cora is not up to speed with some of the turns of phrase Sydney has been using. So is probably not Earth based. Thus again reducing the odds of her being human.
With so many aliens being humanoid in appearance it would make it likely that somewhere along the line some being seeded the universe with life that just evolved differently to fit local environments.
My bad, didn’t notice there was a link in the OP.
#6 is referring to an anime character named Cobra. Click on the red highlighted cobra in his post.
Sydney’s ashen faced reaction to Cora’s brand of overkill should put to rest any of the concerns that Sydney has become a callous battle hardened killer.
I was never concerned about that.
This time.
She is still a bit more hardened to stuff like that now though, compared to her first viewing of dismemberment.
…And her first ever practice at dismembering…Remember those Squidley warriors back on the Alari planet? Considering that they tried to nuke her & otherwise render her into discorporated molecules…
0.o
They are sufficiently non-humanoid and Kaiju sized that they don’t count in that category. Just like it’s different to drop a bomb from 30k feet and to shoot someone with a rifle from 100.
I’m personally quite happy about her not being a callous killer. I like it when the hero has a moral compass – it’s why I like Batman more than Punisher. Okay yeah, Frank has SOME morals, but …. not a lot.
I liked the characterization of Batman in the new Titans TV series. He has no conscience, he has a code. He doesn’t kill, but has no problem with maiming and torture.
The Punisher is a psychopath with the right victims most of the times. The older stories had him change his name to Castle to serve an other tour in Vietnam because he liked war.
I like absolutely nothing about the train wreck of a show that is Titans :) Pretty much the only positive thing I can say at all about the show is Robin’s costume is good. I think that’s…. yeah that’s literally the only good thing I can say about the show.
the show is actually quite good in my mind. You just have to get over the dress they put Starfire in at the start, that also gets better.
You mean the hooker dress? What about the damn dreadlocks? Starfire was (emphasis on past-tense) famous for her long flowing hair that reached her knees (or at least her mid-thighs), oh, and for being orange, not black
Considering that Starfire’s race doesn’t have any nudity taboo, even the hooker dress is better than what she’d normally wear on her homeworld. Which is to say, nothing at all (obviously they can’t do that in a rated G cartoon).
This is because all Tamaraneans absorb ultraviolet radiation, which is used (among other things) to fly at supersonic speeds and fire energy blasts and provides her with superhuman strength and durability, They also don’t need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep, unless they’re low on ultraviolet energy.
That kind of power makes it sort of useful to expose as much skin as possible, or at least to wear clothing made from fabrics that don’t block UV light. And that’s why the Tamaranians have no nudity taboo. (Also, George Perez explained that she was originally envisioned as “Red Sonja in space”, and we know that Red never wore much more than a chain mail bikini, even in arctic weather.)
The did some questionable choices with her design, sure it is an adaptation after all. However it works after you get over the initial outrage over character design, the show is quite good, better then the Arrowverse shows at least. The characterization is more like the old comics, they go the warrior route, she has no problem with burning everything in her way. It works in context. Give it a try.
I tend to refuse to make excuses for a bad show, bad costume design, bad storyline, and bad casting, because then the show creators realize they can get away with giving the fans an inferior product, and keep doing it. Creators should be held accountable to the fans if they produce a poor product, and praised by the fans when they make something awesome. We tend to vote with our wallets, or at least with our viewings and ratings (or in the case of Titans, our subscriptions to their channel).
It’s not really that big of a thing to say it’s better than arrowverse btw :) Sort of a low bar. The Arrowverse has sort of become a train wreck as well, although I like it more than I like Titans. Or at least I like Flash and occasionally like the crossovers. Although Supergirl is sadly awful after episode 3 of season 2, and I want to know why they never brought back Max Lord, who was awesome, Legends of Tomorrow STARTED great for season 1, but then by season 2 onward, every single character on the show either forgets they have powers, forgets when they’re geniuses, or act like idiots where the storylines rely on ‘for the lulz’ or some sort of politically driven social justice thing instead of any sort of cool action sequences anymore. Arrow…. I’ve never really been into Arrow honestly, although I like Felicity Smoak and Oliver Queen on the show – but the show just feels played out now.
Still better than Titans though imho. The Arrowverse manages to do ‘dark and gritty’ a LITTLE better than other DC things when DC tries to go dark and gritty. Although DC usually doesn’t do dark and gritty well ever, unless it’s an animated movie, in which case they excel at it. Don’t believe me? Watch Justice League vs Teen Titans, Under the Red Hood, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, Justice League: Doom, The Flashpoint Paradox, Justice League Dark, Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, or The Dark Knight Returns.
All awesome animated movies, and most are pretty dark and gritty, at least in parts.
Need to do a little rant-y thing. My apologies in advance :) But we’re all nerds here so you all know that arguing about superhero shows is our bread and butter. Anyway…
It’s not just Starfire’s dress that’s the problem (plus the hair is far worse than the dress and LOOKS like a wig, and is a ridiculous color and curly for some reason).
It’s EVERYTHING about the show that sucks. Beast Boy isn’t green and is a lot older than he should be. Raven is a hysterically emotional basketcase, even though she’s supposed to be EXTREMELY stoic and in control of her emotions because of how her powers work. Robin acts more like Jason Todd than Dick Greyson. Cyborg is…. non-existent (despite him being a Teen Titan in almost every iteration, including even the REALLY good animated movie in the end of Justice League vs Teen Titans, sorry about any spoilers there). And is apparently instead in the Doom Patrol wearing a $2.95 plastic mask from Party City. Dove is practically the most homicidal and violent pacifist I’ve ever seen.
Every single aspect of the show that I saw was just… AWFUL. The storyline is awful (Dick Greyson did not leave Batman because Batman’s a killer in the comics or any incarnation, although Batman was a killer in Batman vs Superman, which is not even the same universe as the TV show – and that movie was awful too in any case). The costumes (minus Robin’s costume) are awful. The casting is awful. The forced casting choices are awful.
And to anyone who thinks I think it’s awful because Starfire isn’t wearing a slingshot style swimsuit:
1) I’m female and heterosexual and don’t care about that.
2) The cartoon, which was marketed highly to children and was very popular among teenage girls, had Starfire wearing something which was not a bikini, but did not make her look like a $5 hooker
3) Why oh why would they also add a fur coat?
4) WHY OH WHY DID THEY MAKE HER HAIR LOOK LIKE THAT?!?!?
5) Why is Starfire not orange, like all Tamareans are? (and for that matter, why is Beast Boy not green, but his HAIR is?)
(ps – yes, I care that they couldn’t put the actress in orange bodypaint, since Tamaraneans are freaking orange. Please no one try to race-bait me on this though. It doesn’t matter that she’s black btw – Gamora from Guardians was played by the beautiful and awesome actress Zoe Soldana…. but Gamora’s green, so they put her in green bodypaint because that’s how she’s supposed to look. It’s a show supposedly for people who like comic books, and the creators should do the minimum to make it be SOMETHING like the comic book, or at least the cartoon. For DC or Marvel. Beast Boy’s green, Starfire’s orange, Blue Devil would be blue, Hulk and She-Hulk and Skaar are green, Thanos is purple).
Havent been so annoyed about a TV show or movie since the original Punisher movie with Dolph Lundgren, where they couldnt do the minimal effort and have him wear a shirt that had a skull on it. Sure, most of the Punisher movies werent great (I actually liked the one with Thomas Jane), but at least they got the costumes halfway right after the first one flopped.
We seem to agree on nearly everything you just posted :D
The reason why they made Starfire black, was because in Injustice, they gave her black features (not being racist, go watch any clip from either game, and she has distinctly African features: she was, for whatever reason, modelled on a black actress), and yet, in all of the cartoons and comics, she is simply… Orange
Batman doesn’t have morals, he has psychoses. He’s just as much of a nutter as any of his rogue’s gallery. In Under the Red Hood he tells Jason he didn’t kill Joker because it would be TOO EASY. He intones that he might have become the next supervillain if he did this.
If he’s so unstable that he can’t take a life to save lives without turning into a monster, then he should not be one of the people responsible for protecting others. Even cops are trained how to do that. He keeps putting Joker and all the others in a freaking mental facility where they get out every other week and start killing people again before Batman catches them, punches them a few times, and they go back in to their little holiday box to plan the next murder-spree.
Frank would have completely cleaned up Gotham in half the time Batman’s been punching people. Regardless of anything else, the monsters who make life worse for everyone and kill buttloads of innocent civs would be gone, with minimal casualties. Jason proved this as Red Hood himself, when he started taking control of the underground instead of just punching whoever pops up like Whack-A-Mole, doing nothing to stop the actual underground itself. Bring them to heel, show them you aren’t afraid to kill them all. Punisher’d just skip that and kill them all. Gotham would finally be safe, and crime would become minor as they’re afraid he’ll come back.
Meanwhile Batman’s whole thing is being so scary no one wants to be a criminal, and yet Gotham is the most crime-infested city on Earth.
… Friggin’ hate Batman. Sorry Sydney.
Nah, Batman does have morals. He pretty much spells it out to Jason Todd in Under The Red Hood on why he has to have morals and doesn’t kill. He has a moral code, but he doesn’t refrain from killing JUST because of morals. Because his moral code keeps him from becoming a monster that he knows he could be. Because it would be too easy if he did, and he doesn’t think he’d be able to stop, essentially.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm3Chp2u7HY
Although there are definitely psychoses as well. He wants his parents to be proud of him (based on Batman TAS) which is the whole reason he is on his Mission. At one point, when he falls in love with the woman who he’d eventually find out was the Phantasm, he went to their grave and started asking (okay actually begging) their grave if he could stop his mission so he could be happy and live his life again.
Everyone forgets (or wilfully ignores) the fact that Blatman originally did kill, he even had a pistol
Blatman is the true King of the Gotham Underworld: all the costumed crazies are trained by him, they ‘break out’ (actually released by Blatman himself) and goes out and cause trouble and chaos, the only time he ‘brings them in’ is when a real Hero gets involved or when even Gordo starts asking questions about why they haven’t been caught yet
That’s because that version of Batman hasn’t been canon for fifty years.
It sounds like you’re referring to the Grim knight. If you’re not certain who the Grim night is the centrally brought him back and made the Batman who use guns Canon From Another Earth in the Batman who laughs number 1.
Was referring to the original Blatman, from the 40’s, there is an image from one of his early comics of him hanging someone from his Blat-plane and flying around until they were dead!
No, I did not forget or willfully ignore anything. That version of Batman was dropped and not canon any more than the supergirl that jimmy olsen wished for as a girlfriend for superman is canon for Supergirl.
Batman, from his in-universe canon onward, does not kill.
Until they decide to change him, again
If the original version wasn’t safe from change, why do you feel the current is any safer? o_O
Because the original version lasted only 14 comics back in 1939. And since that time, for the past 79 years, it’s one of the cardinal rules that Batman does not kill, and if he actually winds up doing so, it’s some sort of monumental thing which goes against all of his morals, like where he finally killed Darkseid with a Radon bullet, and immediately died from the Omega Sanction 2 seconds later, in order to essentially save everyone, knowing he was going to die in the process. And also the horrible Batman vs Superman movie, which sucked, because apparently there, Batman kills people where he doesn’t have to, because the creators apparently never read a freaking Batman comic or cartoon ever.
But the main rule for Batman?
Batman. Does. Not. Kill.
Have you not seen the Tim Burton Batman movie? He had a huge kill-count in that movie (at one stage, he literally blew up a clown, and smiled!!!)
I get that you hate him, but I feel like you’re willfully misunderstanding some of the premises there. He does not put the joker into the mental asylym. The law, and it’s systems do. It’s what gives Black and White Case Study such an interesting note, showing asylum shrinks trying to present a credible read of the Joker as sane, so he can finally just be killed instead. But that’s not batmans job.
So it’s not that he’s so unstable that it’d be easy to kill the joker, it’s because the joker has proven time and time again to be entirely unrepentant, evil, the system has proven that it will repeatedly put him back on the street, or be easily escaped by him, and that he will continue to kill and or maim people that Batman cares about. In those circumstances, PLENTY of people would find it easy to kill him, to let themselves justify it, and some would even consider it a good action, let alone a necessary evil. It’d be incredibly easy to be that ‘unstable’ (though I’d call it pretty understandable), but Batman isn’t. He doesn’t do it, because path to hell, good intentions, etc. Better to lay down a solid, unbudging line, than risk the exceptions steadily getting more and more ‘grey area’, to never start taking over the judge, jury and executioner parts of the process instead of just being the guy to catch them. That’s the sorta thing that leads to the Justice Lords, after all.
Gotham is, and always will be, a crime ridden area, because comic books. Superman will always fail to help out the area, the technology will always be slightly out of step, or aesthetically different. I personally hate that aspect, an artifact of the shared (but not) universe.
Batman should be not trying to be so scary that no-one wants to be a criminal, criminals being cowardly and superstitious, that’s what lets him intimidate them for info, hide the times he’s hurt, etc.
IMO what Jason did, was no different to what Black Mask did. In comes a new mob boss in the area, about as murderey as the last one. I like some Red Hood stuff, but he started wearing thin on me pretty fast.
But then, my favourite batgirl was Cassandra Cain, and she had some pretty lengthy anti-killing bits that rubbed off on me. That and we both know that the joker can’t die either way, so it’d be much less immersion breaking to have to constantly explain how/why the kill happy version you suggest still somehow fails to. At least if it’s on purpose it doesn’t seem so silly.
Don’t you know? The Joker is a CURSE upon Gotham. He’s been killed numerous times, but he shows back up either no worse for having been killed, or worse.
Umm, no, in the comics he only died twice: when he was originally created (he died at the end of that comic, butt he proved, surprisingly, popular so they brought him back as kinda the Anti-Blatman) and then in that Blatman Returns story by Moore (the one that introduced the female Robin)
The movies don’t count as they keep rebooting the entire franchise every 10 years or so (when they get a replacement for Blatfleck they will reboot everything, again, after “Flashpoint”, which means another version of Joker)
He also died in Batman endgame during the New 52 though in that case it was more both he and Batman here at their identity swiped they were no longer who they are in death of the family he was believed there but not actually did.
Which means… he didn’t actually die then
The last respect resurrected both Batman and Joker’s bodies but it wiped their minds. So technically they did. They were just brought back again almost immediately after their death. Aria shows more time between their death and Revival then between the death and Revival of Damian Wayne and which Batman had to literally go to apocalypse to get darkseid’s to shoot his Omega beams to resurrect his son which you captured in some sort of Crystal shard
He did die. He just got better.
Welcome to comics :)
She is not Die Hard, she is Enthusiastic in the violence, during the Big Brawl she hurt someone, but only because she did not realize he could not take being thrown,
She attacked the Mecha because to her they were Vehicles, and like GI Joe she thought if there was living pilots in them there was little parachutes popping out after the hit.
Or they were monsters, and its OK to kill monsters, look at any Godzilla movie!
Or she just realized that she didn’t have a lower level response that she could use against them. Her foes were so powerful that hitting them with the Pew Pew Orb’s Obliterate setting was the only thing she could do.
What about the Molestorb to, you know, physically restrain them? If they struggle too much, she gives it a little squeeze
I don’t think the Molestorb is strong enough to restrain one of the Mechas.
16 tons of pressure would be enough to make even Voltron calm the fuck down and stop struggling, specially if it was applied to, say, the head?
Wouldn’t a super-advanced society have the tech to prevent serious birth defects in the first place?
That sounds more like some genetic engineering of children kind of thing. And when you start to go that route you wind up either with monsters or kryptonians
That is very much the response of the society you live in today and not based upon any scientific evidence. We are quite rightly cautious regarding gene-editing but our fears come from science fiction and the specter of Nazis ideology rather than and science fact.
I would point out that science fiction done right holds up a mirror to issues and sometimes before they come up. Real world scientists think AI will wipe us out. Brilliant minds. But even they fear such. What lines will gene-modding produce? Gattica suggests the gene tweaked will be the new uber race and all norms will be relegated to second class citizens. While at the same time pointing out how the drive to do better can overcome ‘weak’ genes. My fear is more it will only be for the very wealthy and thus the divide between the haves and have nots will widen further. And with the wealthy no longer concerned with new medicines the poorer will be forgotten.
My hope is that the people who make the future happen will read as much SciFi as possible. They’ll take note of what COULD go wrong and avoid it.
I’m reading a pretty good book right now called “Spin State” that deals with genetic stuff- and far from the genetic constructs being the ‘greaters’, their genesets got immediately copywritten, and they essentially became property of the companies they’re made by. You have to have a certain percentage of non-modified human blood to be considered for citizenship.
It’s rather interesting hard SciFi.
Science fiction can bring up possible problems but it focuses on those problems and the worst case scenario outcomes for dramatic reasons.
You’ll note that the scientists who are scared of AI aren’t AI scientists they are people in other fields who are weighing in with their layman opinions. A true AI would be a person just as much as any other person and would have just as much reasons to kill all humans as any of us.
A super advanced race, which uses genetic modification (not all will necessarily want to) will have ironed out the problems. Our society though has yet to go through those. Blindly trusting that ‘we know what we are doing’ is foolish. We observe a likely correlation between a set of genes and a characteristic, then attempt to either get rid of it (if bad) or implant it in other organisms (if good).
Sadly genes often affect more than just one thing, and we simply do not know enough about even our own bodies, let alone all the other critters and plants in the ecosystem. So we will be making mistakes, and some of those will be disastrous horror stories.
Thalidomide springs readily to mind, due to the present comic. The doctors and scientists of the day were just as sure of themselves, and just as ready to promote how wonderful the drug was. And history will repeat itself.
Which is not to say we should not do genetic modification. That is going to happen whether any groups or nations choose to embargo it. It is possible to do, so some organisations and nations will go ahead, when they perceive a profit or advantage from it. And the other nations will then either fall behind, loose out on the profits, fail to keep up with the pace of (technologically enhanced) evolution and become an obsolete race.
Or they will join in as well, to keep up.
What we could do though is try to enforce rigorous standards, via international treaties, to ensure that the race for such prizes do not outstrip our knowledge and that any major side-effects do not get to run rampant through our populations or countryside. Vested interests, after faster profits will oppose this. But more cautious people must fight this, globally. It is in this way that we can minimise the risks, whilst still yielding the advantages that the tech can offer.
Actually, Thalidomide should be telling us it will be a long, long time before humanity can stand unprotected on another planet. The problem with thalidomide was we did not know, could not know, that its two isomers interconvert under biological conditions. It was only in 2010 that Handa et al demonstratied its biological target. So we learn from this lesson that until we work out exactly why some of us suffer from protein incompatibility syndrome*, and then find a fix, humanity is imprisoned inside environment suits or in the Earth’s biosphere.
It goes without saying that much of the remedial work on humans will necessarily be eugenic breeding, the gift Darwinian evolution gives to non-domesticated animals. My thanks go to E.E. “Doc” Smith for allowing me to stand a while on his shoulders in this matter.
* Allergic responses to carbohydrate foods.
“… could not know …”
Yet we found out about it in 2010. So had we been ultra ultra cautious and conducted long enough trials (across generations) then we would have found out. However a balance does have to be struck between the risks and the costs. Progress would stall if we set the bar too high. If we had decided not to introduce drugs until two or three generations had been tested with every drug, then we would be decades (or centuries) behind our current level. And most of those precautions would have been wasted because only a few would have exposed problems like those with thalidamide.
But if we look at current precautions, the USA practically does not bother in agriculture, and there are none being taken at all for nanotechnology. Much like issues with drones governments have to wait until there is a major economic impact before measures are taken to prevent things which are blatantly obvious to anybody who cares to examine risks, even amongst the general public.
The EU have better standards for agriculture (but are under pressure to lower theirs to the US floor). Whereas I think they should actually take more precautions. And they are just as complacent over nano tech as the US. No given department has it under their remit, anywhere, so it is always someone else’s problem, if it is even given any consideration at all.
In my opinion EVERY use of nano tech should have to comply to the same degree of testing, scrutiny and regulation as new medicines, even in industries which do not directly interact with the human body. Simply because the nanites are being introduced into the environment and will be able to make their way into people’s bodies.
Detergents in washing being a prime example. Go into your supermarket and you will be able to find some promoting the wondrous nano cleaning ability (or whatever turn of phrase their advertisers suggest). The particles they use are too small for the human body’s defences to block or remove. Likewise the current filtration systems we have are useless against them.
So those nano particles are wandering around our water supply freely. Yet the manufacturers can proudly state that they fully comply with all legislation. Simply because there is NONE framed to protect us.
Wait until a generation of people have developed some mysterious asbestosis-like disease, then another couple of decades until the causal link can be discovered and proven, then we may tighten the rules. After all it only costs a few million lives, so well worth cleaning our clothes a little bit easier, right?
Yet this is something that we “… could not know …” … not.
The nanite one is because there isn’t much potential for working nanites. Much like we don’t have regulations for gravitic or weather control research and development despite the chances of them going bad.
Thalidomide was never legal in the US because it had not been proven safe to our standards. Any American victims of the drug got that way by the woman intentionally traveling outside the US to get the “miracle drug” that they knew had not been approved for use.
An interesting fact I did not know.
Mind you it is still being used in various countries around the world (such as in some South American countries), because it does have considerable beneficial properties and is very cheaply obtained. And it still gets into the hands of pregnant women because they have not been adequately educated as to its dangers and the healthcare systems are not adequate to monitor the drugs use comprehensively.
So even when we know there are dangers the tragedies continue.
And then there is disinformation, such as with vaccinations, which harm good established practices and expose generations of kids to diseases which should no longer be a threat!
On the effects of genes, Sickle cell anemia is an example I personally like. Sucks to have, but it’s recessive/dominant. The recessive trait is the anemia. The dominant trait is a resistance to malaria. Ideally, you carry just one copy of the gene.
Color blindness is another fun example. In WW1, about 1 in 20 colorblind people could pick out the German cammoflage as if it were neon paint (slight exaggeration).
Imagine all the other correlations we’ve missed – what minor genetic defect is there that confers resistance to the plague? Is there a simple protein defect that makes people resistant to nerve gas?
By trying to cleanse our genes as a species, we may doom ourselves.
Very good points: what may on one flipper be considered a flaw or a deficit, on the other wing could be a boon or a benefit
The Nazi ideology you refer to is, I assume, the practice of eugenics. Eugenics, I am sad to say, came about long before the Nazis did. Plato is reputed to have suggested the ”selective breeding of humans” in The Republic. Eugenics in its modern form was formulated by a british scientist, a cousin of Darwin, Francis Galton. The rejection of eugenics as a social policy came about from the revelation of the Nazi eugenics programs, probably one of the few good things to happen because of them. Although, some countries still perform forced sterilisations on some groups, usually the ones least able to object, for example; people with mental disabilities.
Aname has it, eugenics has been a part of humanity for pretty much as far back as we can mention. Not always as an open school of thought. In a way its like evolution impacted by conscious thought. In animals only the strong tend to live long enough to mate. But in humans we can choose the aspects we look for beyond instinct. Which of course leads to trouble as the basis of eugenics isnt evil. Wanting to remove genetic defects isnt bad on its own. The problem is that it never stops there, or genetic defects moves on from, I dunno, clubfoot and harelips to specific races or whatever else the people doing it deem inferior. Or, in the case of forced sterilizations, its an inability to remove the problematic genes so you just take away someones right to breed. The basic premise is good, but humanity has shown it doesnt have the maturity to utilize it morally. Maybe some day.
Gene editing would solve some problems, or at least help with them, but no matter what ‘hard’ science comes up with the social aspects will always determine adoption and efficacy.
Taking for instance your example of cleft lip and palate (or ‘hare lip’) – it’s only partly due to genetics. There are many environmental factors during gestation that probably outweigh the genetic ones, such as maternal nutrient deficiency, smoking, drinking, etc. Some scientists even think the environmental factors may completely outweigh the genetic ones; it’s at least universally accepted that proper maternal care can significantly reduce risk. Yet some women still drink and smoke during pregnancy, and many more aren’t aware of or neglect proper self-care.
Since I’m on the subject, Operation Smile is a fantastic charity that helps doctors travel the world providing free corrective surgery, which can completely change or even save a child’s life.
‘nother issue with eugenics. Time scales.
So you make a decision to breed from two individuals. On what grounds do you make those decisions? Expressed traits of the individuals? Expressed traits of the parents and siblings of the individuals? If expressed traits of the individuals, that means that you wait until they are older before breeding them. Parents and siblings are not a great proxy for the individuals.
What kind of generations are you talking about? 15 year? 35 year? 35 shows a lot of individual expression, but does not show fifty year old and eighty year old stuff that may be of interest. It is also about as late as is practical, at least on the female side, and means a really slow population growth rate. Fifteen year generations would still mean maybe seven generations in a century. That is not a lot of generations for working with, and human politics is not so stable that whatever political mechanism making the decisions would be selecting for the same traits very long.
So a eugenics program is most likely going to be a chaotic and unproductive mess from the time scales factor even before considering the other issues. Like we don’t really understand how traits work together, or what is good and bad. Or that, human sexuality being crazy making, expecting people to breed to order will be causing issues that would make the regimes unstable. People with power would be strongly motivated to adjust the eugenics program as applied to their own circumstances.
Add in that culture is probably more important than genes, and that the cultural effects of a eugenics program would probably more than offset any possible genetic gain…
Eugenics will continue to be attractive to the stupid and the crazy.
” In animals only the strong tend to live long enough to mate.”
That incorrect definition of “Survival of the fittest” again, where “fittest” is replaced with “strongest”, which is incorrect:
Fittest refers to finding a way where you excel well enough to fit in, or so your talent is recognized as desirable or even needed.
True. Many people conflate “evolving” with “getting better”.
Evolution is a random walk against genetic potentials on multiple dimensions, which are selected by an arbitrarily changing environment. The organism that happens to be best at surviving and reproducing under circumstances x1 preferentially passes on some part of its genome to time x2.
It’s like the comic book meme that gene splicing a cheetah with a human will result in a combat-ready fast human…even though a fast human has a completely different physical design than a fast cat, and cheetahs are terrible at a face to face fight. They are designed to run up behind a fleeing prey and take it down… not box with it.
What you would really get is an organism that lacks sensible architecture for doing anything well.
That’s because evolving is ‘getting better’ at least better adapted to its new role or purpose (like a caterpillar evolving into a flutterby)
Your analogy concerning the cheetah is flawed: they are not making an anthropomorphized cheetah, they are giving a human cheetah-like speeds (ie short bursts of adrenaline) that can be used either to sprint faster or hit faster or whatever, basically it would be taking whatever a normal hyu-mon could do and giving them that extra ‘boost’ where or when needed (and you would avoid having to also give them the secondary power of enhanced reaction times that people like The Flush and Quintsliver have to have to avoid running smack into a wall)
It isn’t “getting better” though. It’s finding a balance between different traits that produces the result that leads to the greatest reproductive success. If you had, for example, a zebra that was stronger and faster than other zebras but also had difficulty reproducing as a side effect of being stronger and faster, then it might be “better” than other zebras but it isn’t an evolutionary success since it has fewer descendants than the other zebras in the herd. From an evolutionary perspective, for all that it’s healthier and having a longer life than other zebras it’s still an evolutionary failure.
even looking at evolution as “what gets this critter to spread his personal genes the most” is missing the big picture. It truly is a case of “what gets this molecule, or copies of it, to continue existing for as long as possible”. longevity and fast copy production are at opposing ends of one scale. Simplicity and adaptability are at opposing ends of a second scale (viruses don’t even bother with much of the machinery necessary to qualify as alive). Selfishness and cooperation are a third sliding scale (lone critter, packs, colonies with specialized individuals – and yes, even humans have a few types of specialized individuals…)
DIY said he had nothing to do with Nazis I don’t even really think about them unless someone else brings out first. I was going total sci-fi because of all the sci-fi horror things with shows and things like that one where you what was it called Alice or where human and basically all Mega Million warm-blooded Offspring were being forced to generate dinosaur activism and the whole Kryptonian that should be easy enough to spot from the comic books more or less than 19 was it 87 version where we see how Superman was genetically engineered rather than born.
Not neccessarily. Most societies move on to more advanced forms of artificial body-replacments before they can manage the earliest stages gene-correction therapy. Besides, one might just be a bit more cost-effective than the other.
See Geordi LaForge. Born blind and given cybernetic replacements, but that’s because the Federation is pretty ‘NOPE’ against prenatal gen-modding.
I’m sure that biological therapy (cloned limb transplants) was/is available, but then again some parents are determined to make sure their kids aren’t ‘ordinary’.
Well, since Federation genmanipulation (Chrysalis project) led to Khan Noonien Singh and co., the ‘NOPE’ is very understandable.
Yes, the Federation is a good example of a society going WAAAAY too far in one extreme because of something bad happening in the other extreme.
Then again, that’s pretty much what almost all Star Trek civilizations are – personifications of different extremes, in philosophies, in governments, in technology, etc.
I think Julian Bashir wouldn’t see that NOPE that much understandable.
Given that Julian Bashir wanted the Federation to surrender to the Dominion, I’m not so sure the Federation should take his opinions as being above reproach :)
He didn’t WANTED that, as evidenced by him helping in the war multiple times. He was recommending it just because he though they have no chance to win the war anyway.
Actually he DID want it. He argued VERY strongly in favor of it to Sisko, who shot him down and Bashir was angry about how ignorant he thought Sisko was being, then whined about it for most of the episode about how if the Federation didn’t surrender, it would cost billions of lives.
He wound up being wrong, but he was being an arrogant jerk because he thought ‘he’s genetically superior and smarter, he knows better.’ He didn’t know better. Honestly, the person who did the most to fight the Dominion effectively (aside from Sisko and the Wormhole Prophets) was…..
ROM. Dumb ol’ Ferengi Rom (one of my favorite characters too, along with Quark, O’Brien, and Worf), who happens to not be dumb AT ALL when it comes to engineering. Making the self-replicating mines which held the Dominion at bay for a LONG time. Which Bashir never thought of doing because being a genius does not mean being the best at strategy. Sort of reminds me of Stargate SG-1 where Earth was better at strategy than the Tollan, despite being about 700 years behind in technology.
For all the times where my nerd card has come up short in the past on these comment boards, I hope today has given me back some cred, since I’ve been talking/ranting pretty much entirely about either Batman, Star Trek DS9, or Stargate SG-1.
That should earn me at least a few nerd points. Like maybe 500 quatloos worth of nerd points?
The only way to have known before LaForge’s birth that he was going to be born blind, would have been by screening his DNA while still in the womb
Where does that sort of pre-birth screening stop? Someone is going to be born with a wart? Or snort when they laugh?
Could also be a cultural thing. Perfect cybernetics are all good, but pre-natal gene modding is a big no-no.
Detachable limbs… the ultimate in bondage play… excuse me…
One of my complaints about Star Wars. The inability of a very advance culture to grow a new hand. Even today we have taken the first steps towards growing new body parts.
I always wondered how it was that they could grow whole clone troopers, but an individual hand was beyond their capability.
They probably can, but are you willing to wait 9 years for your replacement limb to grow up enough to be useful?
If it took 9 years to grow, I’d have the prosthetic fitted now and then switch to the biological replacement when it was ready.
Cloning replacement body parts for transplanting is one thing, forced growth until it’s usable size is a whole ‘nother problem…
The best time to start that process (without the tech for forece-growth) is to take cell samples to start with while the child is still in the womb & have the clones grow at the same pace. In the Star Wars galaxy, they do have some limited forced growth capability, but I suspect (without knowing for certain) that it involves additional hormone treatments & other drugs. There may be some risk of poor reactions to such treatment & in the early stages of such a technique, might even produce unwanted mutations or other health problems.
Emperor Palpatine had a whole cloning lab for his personal use because the Dark Force was literally consuming his body & he would use a Force Skill to transfer his mind dinto a blank-minded clone.
So your suggestion is to have clone-farms on hand (intended punage) for if something happens to the ‘original’ sometime in the distant future?
Believe there was a movie sometime in the late 90’s or early 00’s where some of those clones found out what was going to happen to them (killed and harvested for parts, or a complete mindswap) and naturally rebelled at the idea
The Island,
which was sued for copyright infringement. Apparently the makers of this movie didn’t realize that the movie they were literally ripping off page by page of the script *as in identical for the most part*, was not public domain, and that people would recognize it….so much so that week one of the Island and people were calling it a remake of
Parts the Clonus Horror….
in truth people knew it so well as MST3K had riffed on the movie, so many sci-fi fans had it as a quick reference for *cloning people to farm for body parts*.
https://www.realitytvworld.com/news/copyright-lawsuit-claims-the-island-cloned-parts-clonus-horror-1004155.php
No need to wait 9 years, you just keep some spares available at all times. Ideally you’d actually probably have 2-3 a decade or two apart, so you could put a 30 y.o. heart into a 70 y.o.
That’s the movie was thinking of :D
they CAN in Star Wars, it’s just a hell of a lot more expensive, time consuming, and less useful than a cybernetic.
My hypothesis: they do know how to and it is probably considered a routine technique by most medical staff, but:
* It is probably slower to grow a limb than to take a standard mass-produced right hand from the storage room.
* It could very well be more expensive too. The two cases we have seen in the movies were a jedi (monks, vote of poverty, stuff) and a guerrilla officer on the run, so they probably have below-average budgets.
* Clone Wars have been less than thirty years ago, so maybe there is a little bit of leeriness about cloning stuff in the popular mindset.
El Suscriptor Justiciero has it right. In the Star Wars universe, after the horrors of the Clone Wars, cloning is literally illegal and controversial. And there’s other problems:
(1) You would have to wait 18 to 20 years for your replacement limb to grow to adult size. Sure, they can use accelerated growth, but it also causes accelerated aging. Here’s the result. The image linked below is a clone that’s only 23 years old, and he’s already bald and gray. (Physically, he’s got the body of a 60 year old person.)
https://www.rebelcels.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/REB_IA_9504.jpg
Another example: Boba Fett (who is an “unaltered” clone that was made without accelerated growth to be Jango Fett’s “son”) is already suffering from “clone deterioration effects”. The speed of clone deterioration varies from individual to individual, but none of the clones used during the Clone Wars were expected to live past the age of 50.
Oh, and even the Kaminoans can’t make a clone of a clone. So even if making a cloned limb was possible, if you’re a Clone Trooper, like it or not, you’re going to get a cybernetic replacement.
(2) Attaching the cloned limb would probably require the use of a Bacta tank – at least, if you wanted it to be attached scarlessly. But in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, a few people are allergic to Bacta. Ton Phanan, for example, who was a doctor for the Alliance. Every time he was badly injured, another part had to be cut away and replaced with cybernetics because of his allergy.
Something brought up in a Shadowrun source book: what about the growth organism (cloned parts were grown with enough tissues/organs attached to keep it alive, then all of the other bits were ‘recycled’).
Where the clone wars already a thing when they wrote luke’s hand? I don’t think they knew cloning was a thing in the SW universe at that point. Also the mechanical hand was a way better solution from the story telling perspective then replacing it with a cloned hand. This way it is more of a permanent loss.
I also remember that the clones aged a lot faster. Even after they where grown up.
The clone wars was mentioned in the beginning of Episode 4. Luke asks Obi-Wan if he fought in the clone wars after meeting up with him.
The clone wars were a very vague concept for a very long time in Star Wars. I’m certain in ANH it was something cool sounding to indicate that Obi-Wan was indeed a former badass. In the EU, with Zahn’s Trawn trilogy at the latest, it was established that the clone wars were something terrible that had thrown the galaxy into chaos and led to the banning of all cloning – indicating that the clones were supposedly the bad guys at the time.
Yeah, the clones were the badguys, because they were the for-runners of the Storm Troopers, not because they were genetically ‘bad’
Star Wars was based loosely on a series of books.
So they may have know about the “clone wars” ahead of time.
For example i read a star wars book that was not “canon” about Luke and Leia trying to get hold of a gem that augments force powers, and somehow Leia was able to use the force while holding it so this was before empire strikes back so I would say they had some idea about what was going to happen in the future.
Star Wars was created by George Lucas, who used to tell the mother of my best friend (the mother was at the time a teenaged girl and best friends with his sister in Modesto, CA, where they all grew up) stories of this science fictiony/fantasy-ish world he was creating. It wasn’t based loosely on any book, though it was influenced by books, yes. George had been working on designing the universe for many, many years, so plot elements got swaopped in and out, some things got strengthened, some things got neglected…but he basically made it all up himself.
As for the book in question, it was Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, written by Alan Dean Foster & published in 1978…and Foster wasn’t told the full scoop of what we learned in Ep. VI, because that was right after the first movie, back when Lucas was still playing it close to his chest. He did, however, imply that the book Foster was going to be writing was going to be considered part of the official Star Wars canon.
BUT, Lucas did not tell Foster that Luke & Leia were siblings…and it was well before any romance between Leia & Han was revealed.
So, not knowing any better, Foster implied romantic feelings between Luke & Leia, or at least from Luke toward Leia, because all he had to go on were some general directions from Lucas on the plot, and the events seen in the Star Wars: A New Hope movie,/i>.
I have no idea why the book went to print without being checked & corrected for that, since the copyright is listed as “©1978 The Star Wars Corporation” (yes, I have the book on my shelves), but it did. You’d think that, with the copyright being held by Lucas’ company, he’d have checked it himself. And while Foster may have written several novels about someone able to read emotions (if not entirely read minds), he himself was not, and is not, a telepath. He couldn’t read George Lucas’ mind.
It was because of this lack of double-checking the storyline, because Lucas didn’t tell Foster the scoop, that the author wrote in that otherwise logical inclusion of a subtly implied romantic affection of Luke for Leia (remember, this was before ep V & VI happened!!). That was the only reason why the book had to be disavowed and listed as no longer official canon…because–however honestly mistaken!–lightly implied incest was considered icky. Which is weird, because the scenes in the book weren’t heavily done, there was no romantic kiss in the book…and literally it was not much more romantic than the Star Wars movie itself, with that kiss before the swing across the chasm.
(Also Obi-wan was a dink and should’ve told Luke, “by the way, that’s your sister; you were separated at birth to protect you from Darth Vader, and she was raised on Alderaan, watched over by a friend of mine, while I hung around here to keep an eye on you.” Would’ve fixed things right from the start.)
“Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” wasn’t de-canoned because of the implied incest (the official movies played on that right up until the end of RotJ), it was de-canoned along with every non-Lucas book after he began to go senile and started on the prequels and didn’t want to have to deal with fans clamouring for stories written by other, more talented, writers, like Zahn
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was declared non-canon long before then.
Lucas okayed it because he never actually cared about the novels beyond the fact that they were something he could make money on.
Didn’t actually mean it was de-canonized at the same, just that the rest of the books became de-canonized at that time
Gonna miss the twins, Annie Solo, the Jedi Academy and Insane Icearse :(
No, actually Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was declared not-canon about the same time that the Thrawn Trilogy was published. It simply didn’t fit with the canon lore that was established in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, so it was treated as not existing by future authors. Same thing happened to a number of other Star Wars books that had been published in the late 70s and 80s, like the series about the Emperor’s three-eyed mutant son.
*shrug* it could also be something as simple as the umbilical cord cutting off circulation in the arm. and they had to remove it
Probably not that. She was born a quadriplegic. I don’t think that would have happened to all four of her limbs.
I’m just assuming that Cora’s planet was a high tech planet when it came to robotics, but NOT when it came to genetics. Or their genetic science was not as advanced as their robotics, enough to prevent birth defects like being born quadriplegic.
Or she was mechanical damaged, like a severed spinal cord or however that works with the kind of alien she is.
I guess if she was born with her arms and legs paralyzed, that would be true, but I was reading it as her saying that she was born without hands or legs. I guess it could be that she was just born paralyzed due to some sort of in-the-womb spinal injury though, conceivably.
Avoiding birth defects depends on a number of factors. People in our own society have been born without arms or legs, and it has nothing to do with genetics. In the cases that come to mind, it was caused by side effects of medications taken during pregnancy. Birth defects may arise from radiation exposure, trauma, drug use, or other factors. Ideally such issues would be ironed out by more advanced technological societies, but it can’t be guaranteed unless they grow their children in tanks and actively monitor and correct for issues during pregnancy.
Cora said she was born quadriplegic. She had all her limbs but they didn’t work. It may have been a spinal injury or deformity, a circulatory problem, or one or more of several other factors that led to the defect. The point is, it happened, and they fixed it with cybernetics. Downside to this solution is the limbs would need repeated replacement as she grew. Upside is enhanced capability and easier maintenance as an adult. Presumably any power issues or EMP vulnerabilities would have been resolved prior to advocating this solution.
Also entirely possible she was horribly experimented on as part of an augmentation program and lost her limbs in the process, and may or may not remember due to age / trauma / brainwashing.
Perhaps all females of Cora species are quadriplegic.
You’re assuming quadriplegia is viewed as a defect by this society. I mean, if you grow up in a society where cybernetic implants are cheap and common (as Cora and Dabbler seem to have been), then quadriplegia seems like the way to go. I mean, why grow up with weak organic limbs that feel pain and are easily damaged, when you can have a cybernetic limb-suit that makes you super-strong and super-fast? It sure saves you the trouble of having to chop the old limbs off.
Also, from a genetic engineering standpoint, perhaps not having to worry about limbs allows you to better enhance what’s left. Maybe quadriplegia is an acceptable trade-off for hyper-intelligence and enhanced senses.
Oh, and probably enhanced.. ahem… secondary sexual characteristics?
I think I know where they put the batteries. The plate on the back of her suit is a counterweight.
Everyone always assumes that science will find a solution to all problems. This is a misconception. There is no guarantee a given problem even has a solution. There is also no way to determine how “advanced” science has to be before it can solve a given problem. It is quite possible that a given problem, such as being born quadriplegic, is so intractable that science has yet to produce a solution for it. One should never assume science will solve all problems.
One thing to note about Cora being quadriplegic is that neither cora nor dabler were able to get their missing limbs regenerated. Regeneration is a thing, we know because Vehemence can do it, but even an advanced culture like dablers appears to be unable to do so. This implies strongly that their solutions to squishy biological problems is cybernetic tech rather than genetic engineering or some other method of manipulating actual cells. I think it is likely that they really dont have the ability to prevent birth defects. Maybe they simply never saw the need to develop that ability given how good their cybernetic technology clearly is.
It wasn’t Dabbles’ culture that gave her the cyber-hand, it was that nasty organisation mentioned in Were-world that had captured her and the main character that replaced her lost limb and eye with cybernetics (they also gave her a cyber-tail)
Aaw those pesky people trying to Run away when you try to kill them.
So rude.
And seriously? “Trying to defend themselves”? Who DOES that anymore? Everyone knows a good offense is the best defense.
And Cora? VERY offensive.
Uh oh we’re in trouble now Sydney could probably destroy a good portion of that station if she wanted to but Cora Cora is just a battle maniac. I wonder what Cora would do if she was able to see a video image of Sydney’s fight she probably have similar feelings to what Sydney has now.
Cora would mostly have been impressed I guess.
Of course she would not?
If she is not fased by the brutal murder of fellow humanoids up close, then seeing some weird titan die in a recording would get any other reaction besides cheering for the firework.
Don’t be so sure of that…Cora commands a captial-sized ship that could probably lay waste to a planet on its own. She might be impressed that Sydney doesn’t need a full ship & crew to do pretty much the same, though.
The critically thing about Sydney is not necessary the capabilities she has but how compact that all is.
I just love that about Sydney’s orbs.
Her ship didn’t look like anything one could call a “capital ship”,
she had a merc looking ship, likely no bigger than the Millennium Falcon.
Pretty sure someone….it may have been me…guessed she was a head in a suit.
(Plus torso.)
Like TMNT’s Krang. Kind of.
Ronco would be sooooo jealous.
Egg beater attachment also deadly to eggaliens.
Also useful when taking on a certain Batman villain.
Wonder Woman had a similar problem…
Yes, I’m old enough to actually remember that one.
Bring it on,
https://wikimon.net/images/thumb/f/f2/Devitamamon_Collectors_Card2.jpg/150px-Devitamamon_Collectors_Card2.jpg
Or anyone in the right hands:
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2000-08-24
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2000-11-05
Dave, have you been recycling Cora´s face lately? :D
I really am enjoying the last pages, although I can´t wait to see everyone´s reactions when Sydney finally gets home. :)
Hopefully she won’t be pranked with ‘Planet of the Apes’ facemasks.
I’m guessing she’ll be dropped off at a South Pole research station….
Or 100 miles above it.
Sydney: Yeah, you could try landing inside that running track over there.
Cora: The oval down there? Sure. Crewman, adjust landing co-ordinates.
Sydney: I better announce my arrival. [ Pushes her choker to activate the mike ] Um, guys. It’s Sydney. I’m back. I’ll be on the infield in about 2 minutes.
Cora’s crewman: Incoming! They launched a missile at us! Powering shields!
Sydney: Wait! That’s Max, my boss!
Max: [ Right outside the shield, watching the ship’s controlled descent to the infield. ] Archon 1 to Center: I have the object in sight. It appears to be landing at our facility. We will question the occupants after arrival.
[ The ship lands on the infield and the big door opens. Sydney comes running down the ramp to the ground and flops down to kiss the grass at her feet. ]
Sydney: Oh, Earth! I’ve missed you.
Heatwave: So she is so happy to be back that is kissing the ground? That’s kind of cute.
Math: Well, maybe, but I think she is just trying to cover that she tripped when she came off the ramp.
Dabbler: [ Picks up Sydney and puts her in a four-armed hug ] Sydney!!
Sydney: Hey, I missed you too. Can you put me down? Hey, are you crying?
[ Dabbler lets her go, but she is immediately picked up by Anvil and hugged. ]
Sydney: Can’t breathe!
Anvil: Sorry. [ Puts her down ]
Presumably, Cora would contact Dabbler ahead of time to notify them she was bringing in Sydney. The greetings, however, are fairly accurate.
Realisticaly the will land her someplace like Pine Gap in Australia,
Nah, if we are lucky, Wolf Creek :P
So that’s how Megaman does it.
So…she’s banana phone?
Maybe more like Inspector Gadget.
Her eggbeater attachment is why she no longer HAS long hair…
It’s rather inconsiderate when your attackers try to run, start praying to the elder gods for a tentacle enema as opposed to what you are about to get or begging for their spawn bearer to rescue them. It means they get the slow egg beater set to chunky as opposed to the fondue setting.
What the heck is going on with Sydney’s eyes in panel 1? It looks like she has flesh-colored coins filling her eye-sockets. (Very Ancient Greece burial rite looking, and really creepy with that ashen skin tone.)
It’s a weird coin looking thing and it doesn’t look right.
(…Mind you, I love the ashen skin tone, very suited to how Sydney (and most of us) feels right now…)
Irisis are so small you can’t see them. It’s an old cartoon gag. (Inverse of giant iris look of wonder.) Also tied to face going pale. Supposed to be a level of shock comparable to death, where all color drains from the face.
So, you’ve bought lunch and wings; why have you not gotten your glasses repaired, Sydney? Me, that would have been a HIGH priority. I mean, it is always, annoyingly, right there in your face; reminding you that it is broken.
Well… seeing properly isn’t really a huge priority.
Even if there’s an optometrist nearby, I doubt she has her prescription memorized. She may be crazy enough to eat alien super-spice food, but I doubt anyone is dumb enough to walk into an alien doctor’s office without a translator and stick their face / eyeballs in a diagnostic machine.
There appears to be enough left of her glasses that an optometrist could determine the prescription by measuring the lenses with suitable instruments.
On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be anyone else in any scene on this planet wearing glasses. So I’m guessing an optometrist with suitable instruments would be hard to find.
In a society this advanced classes are probably not a thing anymore they would probably just make repairs to your eyes or give you cybernetic implants if your eyes were bad enough that they needed them
BAH! The technology is advanced enough that her glasses should be easily repaired in a matter of minutes. Heck, they did a genetic scan to determine what was safe to eat. I’m betting it didn’t take more than a minute for that scan. Scanning and repairing Sydney’s glasses with an automatic nanotech 3D printer is almost within our 21st century capabilities on Earth.
Is it me, or does Sidney’s expression in the last panel look like Edna’s from The Incredibles?
Out of curiosity, how does one stay in such great shape with no limbs capable of actually exercising? It can’t all be crunches.
She has a high-intensity core workout regimen, as hinted in the last panel here:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/3045
If her limb suit matches the capabilities of real limbs then a “normal” work out with the limb suit would work her actual body to maintain good muscle tone.
I like that Cora is doing the finger touch test to make sure her hand works.
is cora’s hair alive or something?
Because it moves? Most peoples’ hair moves when they do (or when it’s windy), unless it’s held in place by several cans of lacquer
Sydney’s response to being told that Cora is/was a quadriplegic and has a (within context) normal life thanks to a limb suit seems.. odd.
Struck me that way too – I think she’s hung up on thinking “suit made of body parts” instead of “cybernetic exoskeleton.” Once she thinks of it that way, she’ll probably want to swap out a limb herself – probably a leg since chopping off an arm might reduce her ability to handle the orbs.
You can spin it either way… just because you can overcome a disability, doesn’t mean it doesn’t still exist. Not everyone would be content with an artificial limb, no matter how cool it might be, no matter how many weapons it might have built it.
I played a cyborg RPG character, whose origins had left nothing of her original body save the brain. In darker moods she’d describe herself as a brain in a jar… which wasn’t inaccurate, despite the fact that the ‘jar’ was indestructible, tireless, capable of throwing cars around, *and* able to pass for human. Because cool as it was when everything was right, sometimes it just didn’t feel like her body…
Flay Thrower?
(cues up “Wave of Mutilation” by the Pixies)
“Da kids LOVE dis one!”
You’d think that a society with such high tech as this one would be able to prevent birth defects to begin with. I’m gonna assume that their biotechnology is well behind their other technology, even though that doesn’t make much sense to my mind.
Maybe it wasn’t a birth defect. Maybe it was a mistake made during delivery. Take a look at Sylvester Stallone, for example… the reason for his trademark scowl is because someone was a little careless with the tongs during delivery, and he has partial facial paralysis as a result.
Or maybe it was a birth defect that they’ve never seen before, or is so rare it hasn’t been studied extensively. Like aquagenic urticaria, which is so rare that there are only 30 recorded cases ever. Would they be able to treat it, or even able to recognize it? If it was rare enough, maybe not.
(P.S. I always thought Cora’s arms and legs looked bionic. Suspicion confirmed.)
Similar thing almost happened to great-nephew: stupid midwife almost killed him and his mother
The latter is a very good point. It will now be my headcanon until there’s evidence to the contrary.
Similar thing happened to my eldest stepson. Tongs caused damage to his brain that caused seizures in his late 20’s. Permanent. Good thing they have drugs for that.
Maybe her parents were space hippies who wanted to do everything au natural. Or part of some fringe religious group that didn’t believe in medical aid. And only after years of struggle was she able to break free of their oppressive dogma and seek out medical… Ok how about I just let Dave tell the story.
Those are good points though! I didn’t even think of that!
It is always possible that their science just has not solved this one yet.
There is probably long list of defects which can cause this. Cora might’ve been unlucky she had something they were not testing for until too late.
Or, maybe she was the reason they started testing for it (ie patient Zero)
Oooh, that’s a fun idea.
I’m really, really, really happy that Sydney was uncomfortable with how violent Cora was :)
The tagline makes me think of Kryten and his egg beater. Especially since Sydney references a ‘light bee’ earlier.
Please, no flashback. It’s so unfair to give us one of those long-winded expository background fillers and omit the dismembering fight!
Well, now we know where she keeps the hologram projector.
So another flashback in the main flashback.
HA! My hair fears no egg beater! It casually killed a high end Dremel at 30,000 RPM and the worst part was combing out fragments of the cutting wheel for the next hour.
I won’t go into detail other than to report that I had to buy my fiance a new Dremel and she won’t let me use it any more.
Gol-dayamn, son! You wrecked your lady’s dremel?? You better believe you had to replace it! A woman’s tools are sacred!
…When my parents got married, my father told my mother, “My family is from Savannah, Georgia. That means I grew up with corn bread, not corn cake. If you ever put sugar into corn bread and make it Yankee corn cake, I will divorce you!”
My mother immediately shot back, “See this big drawer in my kitchen? The one filled with all my tools? You will bring back within 24 hours any tool you borrow, or I will divorce you/i>, and I am as serious about this tool drawer as you are about corn bread versus corn cake. Got it?”
(They just celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary, so yeah, he go it…but my sister got what-for, for borrowing a tool for longer than 24 hours.)
(Boy, I am having problems closing my html bracket command stuff today…sorry, folks!)
Huh… Cora has a flenser and a graviton weapon… wonder if she has a nervefire weapon in her modules.
I think “a nerve suit, ew” pretty well sums up why I don’t like Sydney.
She’s not just impulsive and poorly controlled she’s narrow-minded. She’s bizarrely puritanical for someone who survives being so neuroatypical. She’s fast, but she’s also shrewish and ignorant. I wonder if, for all the things she’ll learn about being a superhero, she’ll ever learn anything about _herself_.
Yes, Isle, I’m sure that your instant reactions to everything you ever encounter are all perfectly politically correct and always lack any appearance of insensitivity or other error of mind, and would never possibly insult another sentient being, no matter what physical or political persuasion they might belong to…
…but then in that case you’d be an incredibly boring character and no one will give you god-class magical balls to make plot-driving mistakes with.
In this case, Cora did not find Sydney’s instantaneous reaction to Sydney’s interpretation of the term “limb suit” to be offensive or inappropriate. Thus, taking offense on Cora’s behalf is just a kind of white knight posturing.
(Which I hear is something you can get a formal degree in these days, at bad colleges.)
Yeah Sydney can be a borderline tourettes case, but she means no harm. Still, people are allowed to have opinions like ” that something someone said is kinda rude even if the person they said it to isn’t phased by the rudeness! ”
Also, just my personal opinion, but if anyone ever gets god class magic powers I hope they’re a boring character. I live in interesting enough times, thank you very much.
Besides, despite her heavy reliance on orbs Sydney has yet to grab an idiot ball to progress the plot. Circumstances have done well enough.
Pardon, but no. She is not a borderline Tourette’s case. Speaking as someone who has the actual syndrome. She shows no symptoms. Her freak-outs have no ritual-like pattern, perfectly repeated without her capacity to prevent them, or at least the urge just under her skin to engage in them. Her cursing is reflexive, but non-repeating, so we can also rule out coprolalia, the proper name for that incredibly rare tic. She has severe ADHD, a temper, and few inhibitions about language. Honestly, if she had Tourette’s, right in this situation, under high levels of stress and uncertainty is when she would be ticcing. She has her struggles, but Tourette’s is a border miles away.
+1
Form of hyperbole, sorry. Sometime I say stuff like “my mouth is literally on fire” when objectively my mouth is not on fire.
Sydney has shown the capacity to condition herself with reflexive repeatable behaviors ( going for the shield orb ) but that would still be consciously controllable so it’s neither here nor there.
I find it interesting that she was born specifically quadriplegic, since that implies her congenitally paralyzed limbs must have been amputated to accommodate the limb suit.
Or at an absolute minimum, her left hand must have been. I can’t really rule out her limb suit mostly existing as a thin layer over her biological limbs that moves them, but she clearly does not have a left hand inside that gun.
I wonder whether he really meant “quadriplegic”. Getting a “limb suit” as opposed to, say, an artificial exoskeleton or nerve reconstruction, makes it sounds like he had in mind that she was born without limbs, as opposed to with paralysed limbs
It could be something as simple as all four limbs were existant to some point but needed to be amputated for the suit to be attached. It could even be something unusual like mother stranded and not having the proper nutrition while bringing Cora to term. Once she was returned to civilization the damage had already been done to the fetus but it was otherwise viable or possibly they were recovered at a later stage.
YThe fact that they have a similar teleportation system could be that they met while they were both going through surgery initially. Remember Dabbler says that she has a cybernetic arm because she’s not as good at sword fighting as she thought.
I don’t doubt there are explanations one could come up with, but that’s not really my point. She’s got control over her limbs now, so they, whoever “they” are, did something to give her control over them. But in that case, why amputate her limbs in the first place? My point is that “quadriplegia” is not, by itself, an answer to “where is your hand?”
So presumably Cora has the gun stored in a leg. I wonder if she even drew it in this encounter?
I get the reverence but why would you have a handgun if you can replace the hand with a cannon?
Steerable mass. Yes the hand gun has a shorter operational range, but it deploys faster and redeploys quicker (changing targets). We also need to consider our radius of operations. In this scenario most opponents are within 5 meters, probably nobody is outside 10. The cannon has a destructive rage of 100 meters… The cannon will certainly remove its target, as well as anything/body in the line of fire. Not what we want. The hand gun–I’m thinking a Beretta Px4 Storm Type C 9mm parabellum–has an effective range of 20 meters, an efficient range of 10 meters, with the absolute warranty the projectiles will not go beyond the immediate target, and a mass of 785 grams plus full 17 round magazine, say 250 grams. If we translate that to her off-earth tech, she is far more safely deadly than with the cannon.
Cora can still be horrifyingly destructive to her attackers, but with much less unwanted “collateral” damage. Think “Friendly Fire”. I am wondering if Sydney’s psycho-shock is due to the collateral destruction rather than the rapid deaths of so many gangsters?
Did someone say “egg beater attachment”?
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2000-06-30
The quirl of doom will have a long and illustrious career.
So since it’s confirmed that Cora has an egg beater attachment can expect a Cora vs. Dabbler cookie bake off?
And only in aprons?
Those are the rules.
Well, that’s a relief. Even wacky as she is right now, Sydney DIDN’T go Wolverine on those muggers. It seemed out of character for her, but after all, we’ve seen her go berserk on muggers before, and that was before she had superpowers. Glad she reacted the way she did.
About Cora’s arm – for a civilization as advanced as hers, you would expect that fixing quadriplegy at the source would be trivial. The same for giving Dabbler a new eye and a new arm, though in her case, I can see her having cybernetic replacements just for the extras.
She went full wacky with the mugger back then because she didn’t have lethal combat powers of any kind. (Physically lethal, that is; her swearing capabilities are lethal on an emotional/mental level.) Sydney is now very aware (Maxima helped drive it home) that she has lethal capabilities now. She’s not going to react the same.
She also has much better non-lethal options now… particularly in the form of the light-hook, which among other things, can be used to restrain, disarm, or simply to administer a mild beating from a safe distance. So as long as she can resist the urge to pick them up and throw them through a wall, nobody needs to get seriously hurt.
So this flay thrower,
is this like an epidermal melter?
A variant of the Yuatja’s net gun that uses micro-fiber blades to then (slide off) when tight enough?
A swarm of micro-bots that surgically slice up the target?
Or something like a chainsaw beam/destructo-disc only hitting from multiple direction and only going skin deep, resulting in the skin peeling off in sections after the blast from any movement by the target…or gravity…just sections of bloody flesh peeling off the body like bad wallpaper following the flash of multi-colored lights.
It launches Bobby Flay at the target with such velocity that the target’s molecular structure is instantly warped to Flavor Town.
If you mean the chainsaw beam from Metroid, it doesn’t actually do damage, just opens doors and destroys fake blocks in front of Samus…
Any way! Weapon discussion!
Could be a disintegrator that flash destroys the skin, leaving the muscle and nerve tissue intact.. and open to the atmosphere.
Other options are a particle beam infused with cutter nanites (which target skin), an electromagnetic nanite “flamethrower”, a radiation gun (similar to the gamma gun in Fallout) which burns off skin, a low-penetration version of a shattergun (explodes a ceramic disc into a cloud of spinning hypersonic blades, it is NOT a subtle weapon, a shattergun’s retort is described as sounding like a jet engine backfiring), a transmat beam that moves the epidermis five feet to the left…
I was not aware of that glitch in Super Metroid (had to google it).
-in truth it was me mis-remembering the name of the Cutter Beam from Star Trek the animated series.
(although I did make a ki technique version of this for my own series I named “Chainsaw Beam”, but its really just this).
Funny thing is after typing this I saw the facebook post for this page and a duh moment hit me.
Laser Net, Plasma net, energy net. Pretty much was I was trying to describe. Basically an energy net that cuts through the skin but stops there. Although using a burning energy would seal the wounds not flay the skin, so something more designed to cut and peel through than just wrap and burn.
Up till this point I thought that Cora’s build was just a jab at the whole Dabbler having a sexy cohort. Yet, with the revelation that she was born a quadriplegic her ample physique makes total sense. When people do not have limbs there are a number of changes they have to make sure they factor in, else they get overweight. All the mass they do not have is a load they do not have to lift. They also do not have the calorie needs for all the cells that would have made up those limbs. Yes, if you are born with out limbs and grow into your adult body you tend to do better than having your limbs taken later. However, the basic body functions continue and functions such as fat allocation and overall calorie need are things one needs to watch.
With fewer fat areas for Cora’s extra calories, it is obvious that her body is storing them in the only places not needed for the strenuous prosthetic connection points.
In other words, her chest is one of the few places for her to naturally store extra fat that would not cause problems. She has no thighs, would have very little in the way of a butt, and areas such as her shoulders and upper pelvis will be busy taking the load from the burdens placed on her artificial limbs.
She naturally would need only about 58% the calorie intake of her race’s average.
So, her chest is also a bi-product of her condition, so we should not judge.
I shall be suitably sympathetic to her plight.
As someone who used to be a cup size H, I object strenuously to the phrase “her chest is one of the few places for her to naturally store extra fat that would not cause problems” because it’s been 4 years since I had over 5 pounds (over 2.5kg) taken off, and my back is still heavily fuqued up to the point that I have to do constant physical therapy exercises & get massage therapy treatment, or I wind up in excruciating pain.
…Although I will admit that if her hard-light suit can “lift & support” those breasts with total-field integrity (perhaps with something similar to anti-gravitics), and not put all the strain of supporting all that weight on her back muscles, then that’s another matter.
I’m hoping that’s what it does…but I know all too well the pain involved even with a really good support system (custom built bras), so I’m not holding my breath.
Maybe I should have said, “cause problems with mobility and connection points for her robo-limbs.”
I was not making any assumptions about the physics of her chest size for other activities or end-of-the-day muscle fatigue. It all comes down to how you are configured (Cora without limbs) or, as my K-cup wife can attest, solid muscle with a strong build vs. model thin with beach balls plugged on.
I agree, given her relative size to body I see Cora taking more of a stand your ground and blast away over some more active approach to fighting / moving. In many ways she is a tank!
It launches Bobby Flay at the target with such velocity that the target’s molecular structure is instantly warped to Flavor Town.
I wonder if she has a mixing bowl attachment with the additional pasta maker attachment?
:-D
Many a true word spoken in jest. Whilst the comic has focused on the combat options, I bet that the utility of replacing the hand / weapons with tools would not have been missed by Cora (or even more likely by Dabbler). With a large laboratory, to hold any items desired and the ability to teleport them to her person, it seems very likely that some of those will include tools.
Especially given that Dabbler is an inventor, so will often be using a variety of tools. She will long ago have found that she can speed up construction if she does not have to leave the task she is working on, in order to go pick up a tool she needs.
And the same would likely be true of any other hand-held tools used elsewhere, such as when cooking. Although if social cooking she may avoid doing such, as drawing attention to something other than her sexy nature would be counter-productive to the process. Hence we can expect use of normal utensils under such circumstances.
If Dabbler were to develop attachments for Cora to use, you can pretty much count on them being of the NSFW variety.
I tend to agree that some would be NSFW in a sexual sense, but suspect the majority would be NSFW in the violence and gory sense, and others would be sexy in the sense that women making cookies can be sexy. Even if Maxima makes her wear panties to use them.
Comments from other readers has me wondering if maybe DaveBmeant Cora was born without limbs (Phocomelia, which is connected to thalidomide usage) or without sensation or control of all her limbs (which is different to quadriparesis, where the limbs have muscle weakness, resulting in them being flaccid or spastic)
Well pointed out. I suspect that it may just be a typo, in that there is just a single letter difference between what DaveB wrote and “quadriplegic”. Hence, with the slight blurring of the screen (which is not currently positioned at an optimal distance from me), I had not even noticed the difference!
I had to spell check what I typed, and if Dave had done the same his spell-checker may have suggested the wrong word, to the one he intended. But, it being so similar-looking, it would have been easy to accept it as the one intended. We know that Dave works intensively on the comic, so a small miss like that would have been easy to make.
The other option, that it was the word he intended, seems less likely. Given that it would not explain the missing limb, unless it had been amputated. Which seems unlikely, as a high tech society could probably find a way to restore control to a limb (such as with cybernetic additions to it, rather than replacing it).
Umm, unless DaveB edited the page since yesterday (and he normally acknowledges when he fixes things), he did write “quadriplegic” (which is the second definition posted)
Guessing should have used “…rather than…” instead of “…or without sensation…” :(