Grrl Power #705 – Hot tub space machine
First time making out with an alien cutie? Probably a good idea to take a moment and sort out all potential cultural baggage. Luckily Sydney is well familiarized with the trope.
Generally speaking, setting up some boundaries the first time you make out with anyone isn’t the worst idea either. The danger there is that you start outlining stuff like “Okay, you can stick your finger in my ear, but not your tongue, but if you stick anything in my butt, then I don’t want that appendage anywhere near my ear…” and the other person is like, “Whoa, I was just hoping to get to second base, you’re already planning the 5th inning.”
The idea of a bath or pool seems really weird on a spaceship, because we’re all used to Star Trek and seeing people getting knocked around the bridge when they’re in a battle or a gravitational whatsit. Large jarring movements don’t sit well with the idea of any sized body of liquid, be it a coffee cup or an Olympic pool. Presumably, the inertial dampeners on Cora’s ship are top of the line, or the tub is usually drained into tanks when not in use. Probably both, really.
I want to see an episode of a Star Trek like show where instead of the people on the bridge getting thrown around, they cut to a guy in his quarters trying to build a house of cards or a ship in a bottle. That or the daycare, and show a bunch of kids cartwheeling around in the air. I could actually see The Orville do the first one. Maybe not the one with the kids though.
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I like the Aliens reference.
Also, is it me or do Sydney’s eyes get longer the lower she looks?
Which part is the Aliens reference?
it’s coming up in a moment
when Frix suddenly slams his ovipositor down her throat and lays his eggs in her chest.
Unless it was something on an earlier page of comments, the best guess I can make is the strapline “Of course the females of his species are nine feet tall”.
Which is probably an underestimate of an Alien Queen, unless taken when lying down. But that is reasonable given it is probably their usual position.
The original Xenomorph queen from (Aliens) stood somewhere around 10-13 feet tall. Scaled to the power loader lying ontop of it in the final scene for measuring and how tall Ripley was in the controls.
Later comics and games would scale that up a bit, usually not much bigger. Now AvP went hog wild and make their queen like forty feet long and 20 feet tall or so. Big enough she felt more like a smaller kaiju or therapod dinosaur going by stance; than the monstrous giant humanoid of Aliens.
Don’t the Xenomorph’s take on the characteristics of the ‘host’? That’s why you ended up with four-legged ones who hatched from doggies
The Queen has a default form, the drones and warriors take on the traits of the hosts.
-as far as the extended media is concerned.
the only differences in extended media were the winged Queens *not Kenner toyline* from Vampirella vs Aliens where the vampire DNA from Vampirella granted a Queen alien the ability to sprout giant back wings.
but otherwise Queens tend to have a pretty set shape so long as something external doesn’t influence them *like mutatgens* or turning into an Empress (which can have a few different shapes, but usually giant version of the Queen is standard).
Thank you for explaining
Depending on the version you saw.
One version (the one I’ve seen), that xenomorph came out of a thawing carcass of a bull, complete with horns. I was always angry/disappointed that there aren’t any xenomorphs with horns. After I learned that there’s another version of the same movie where it came from a dog, it made sense.
I still want a horned xeno.
*unloads packing crate with a horned xeno outside Viirin‘s home*
Strange request. Still he is a good buddy, if that is what he wants …
Someone messed up the order, that crate clearly lists “Contents: One Horny Leno”
Trivia note: the full size animatronic alien queen Stan Winston made was 12 feet tall.
“Doesn’t mean we’re engaged or anything”, when Hicks gives Ripley that tracker.
Official trope “eye pop”.
I still thinks folks are overthinking this waaaaaaay too much. This whole situation was just Sydney’s usual lack of impulse control/saying the first thing that came to her mind not being checked by the rest of the team’s usual groundedness and just running away with her.
She seems to have collected herself quite well and recovered nicely though
wow. Sydney has achieved Xuriel levels of sexiness with that last panel.
Ok so it wasn’t just me that thought that. Like sids always been cute but sexy wasnt the term i would have applied….till now
I would love the last panel without the speech bubble, and want it for my gravatar, but have lost how to create a gravatar in the first place
You simply go to https://en.gravatar.com/, sign in (WordPress account), then set it all up there.
Thanks, I did a little cropping and it should show up with the new one, now
Why hello there ;-D
nice, now all we need is a Rastafarian Bugs Bunny
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/62/6a/42626a0bea4cf37d7a16c9102d7d0fda.jpg
More like, how about a Warner Brothers reference?
“Why Heeellooooo, Doctor!”
Oh, I’ve always thought she was sexy. I’m hoping she eventually gets over her self-body shaming around the other Supers, as many of them have told her, there’s NOTHING wrong with how she looks.
You misspelled “exceeded”.
+ (scouter breaks)
Haha, Frix is great!
I’m not sure how to feel about what appears to be a change in Sydney’s facial design. On the one hand, it looks really good! On the other hand…it doesn’t look like Sydney. I mean, if the change is permanent, then eventually it *will* look like Sydney, but still.
Also lol, Slipnet.
Her design has shifted drastically all over the comic.
I’m aware of that.
I kinda get the impression there have been more than one artist, or at least the one artist experiments with different artistic styles.
I’m always really impressed with the closeups of Sydney when you can see the glow of the orbs reflected in her hair. *Really* well done coloring by the colorists.
I like this better than the bangs pulled back Sydney from the council meeting.
Dr. Dogman is just atrociously polite. It’s kind of hilarious because it’s making me envision this dopey tween-idol-boy voice coming out of a colossal canine.
no such thing as “Atrociously Polite.” It’s called being a decent guy who’s trying to put an unsure woman at ease.
easy there pendrake. Pretty sure Zero was joking around. No need to get delightfully angry about it.
it is quite clearly because anything can appear in Australia and make sense.
the wildlife there is nuts.
I would not bat an eye of Frix suddenly walked out of the deep wilderness of Australia
I would only be amazed he managed to walk out of there alive.
We’ve safely made it through this stage in the courtship. https://imgur.com/gallery/RCPYB14
If Grrl Power were ever live action, someone should see this video tangenelly about Maxima:
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p06dntd7/goldfinger-and-the-myth-of-a-bond-girl-s-death
I’ll give the crew credit.
1) they know they’ve got it
2) They do appreciate attention.
3) they’re willing to work with the person at their level.
weird. let’s see if this comment shows
Yea, some of us experience extreme delays in comments appearing nowadays. I have just gotten used to taking it on faith that it will turn up. Since I have been doing that it has always worked out.
Which is why I know that there must be a teapot out there in space, but we have just not seen it with even our best telescopes.
AHHhhhh… Sydney is so cute right now. Congrats to you Mr. Barrack. You write an awesome action comic. But your making Sydney very real and very charming right now.
I tend to forget shows like Star Trek and movies like Star Wars are where most people go mentally when it comes to sci-fi.
I am so used to anime sci-fi that the idea of an onsen in space or even having a flight deck covered in trees and waterfalls seems perfectly normal for me. If your society is advanced enough, you are going to want to have the aesthetics, and moral boosting spaces.
But I guess when your tech is still somewhere between tuna can with an oxygen tank and we can go really fast but we have to be crammed inside a flying engine in space with electrical boxes and pipes and such; having aesthetics like that is wasteful and you have to do all the conserving you can on resources.
although I’d imagine amphibious, aquatic, and marine sapient species would have these as priorities every step of their technological developments out of their watery homes so get really good at it to the point that even at a relative level of tech they’d have far more advanced water producing and recycling tech than the next terrestrial or aerial species over.
No time to read the other comment before, ok scanned them, but two things about star trek.
1. If you take a bath on the holodeck, do you leave clean?
2. Why don’t they have seat belts on the chairs on the bridge?
Right after I posted that. What if you use a toilet on the holodeck?
Referencing my old old TNG technical manual…
When you are on the holodeck, and things you are meant to eat are created, it uses same tech as replicators. You are eating actual food. And when the holodeck is “turned off, leftover stuff is converted to energy similar way. In other words, you take a bath on holodeck, its real water. eat, its real food. drink, and its real water.
Take a dump? Computer converts it to energy for future use. Ok so they did not explicitly state that, but matter-energy convertors have to work both ways
Everything in Star Trek is potentially terrifying,
all that said to me was this, when the holodeck malfunctions, everything turning real and dangerous was a BEST CASE scenario, rather than…everyone was immediately vaporized and converted into energy for the ship. Talk about a potential mass execution device.
Meh… you want a mass-execution device?
HA!, They’ve ALREADY BEEN USING ONE FOR AGES!!! That device being: The Transporter!
the Transporter has been around since the Early 22nd Century, and then goes up to about 2395 in STG… so that makes it about two hundred years or so… Killing EVERY SINGLE PERSON that uses it… i’d say THAT IS a ‘Mass-Execution device’ if anything is..
Go ahead and read up on the ethics of using one…
Which is why will only ever take the shuttle
Oh trust me, even without reading extended universe stuff I picked up on that thing’s nasty side ever since we had two Rykers; and I was like…hold on…its a cloner that kills the original due to its molecular disassembler scanner then….holy hell who would use something like that?
While the transporters do seem terrifying in that respect, they’ve actually addressed that fact in the show to dismiss it, and say that the person who goes in is the exact same person who comes out, no cloning or duplication.
We’ve seen two examples of the transportation process from the person’s point of view, which show that it’s a continuous experience with no breaks or gaps. You literally see the matter-energy stream and you suddenly appear in your new destination. And in ST: Enterprise the man who invented the transporter talked about how they had to do all kinds of tests to prove that the person who comes out is the original and isn’t a transporter clone or anything else.
Still, it would scare me initially to take a ride through one.
It’s actually a frequent topic of discussion among transhumanists, and it pretty much comes down to your theory of identity — what determines whether a person is “you” or not.
Most people will agree that identity is determined by consciousness, not by normal physicality. If you get an arm bitten off by a shark, you’re still you. You would continue to be you even if all your limbs were cut off and your heart, lungs, and kidneys were replaced with external machines.
On the other hand, pinning down what defines your consciousness is tricky…
If you go to sleep, is the person who wakes up in the morning still you?
If you get knocked out by a blow to the head?
If you get knocked out by professionally-administered anaesthetic?
If you get amnesia?
If you get dementia?
If you suffer a tiny amount of brain damage? A lot of brain damage?
Are you the same person at 60 that you were at 40, 10, or 2?
If you were placed into the Matrix such that all your sensory inputs came from a computer and not from the real world, would you still be you?
Suppose that, as in the movie, you can move around inside the Matrix and interact with the simulated environment — you can pick up a book and feel it, but your physical body doesn’t actually move where it’s stuck in the pod. Are you still you?
Now here’s the really tricky one:
Assume technology advances to a point where you can be put in a machine that scans your brain in real time, down to an arbitrary level of precision, and creates an exact replica of your brain state in a computer. The electronic version is kept perfectly in sync with your meat brain — every electronic neuron fires exactly as the corresponding meat neuron does, etc.
Is the physical person (the one who is made out of meat) you?
Is the electronic simulation of your brain you?
Does it matter if the electronic version is perfectly in sync (i.e. time lag is 0 between a change in the meat and the corresponding change in the simulation)?
How about if there is a lag of 1ms?
1 second?
10 seconds?
24 hours?
Suppose the electronic version is allowed to diverge. It is a perfect replica of you at a particular point, but then it is placed in a virtual environment (e.g. the Matrix) and stops being kept in sync. It runs according to the standard (albeit simulated to arbitrary precision) rules of biology. Neurons fire that correspond to sensory inputs and memory formation. Sensory and motor functions are sent to a perfect simulation of your physical body, which can ‘walk around’ and ‘touch’ the simulated environment. Is this electronic being you? Why or why not? Did your answers to this phrasing differ from when I asked it in the original group of questions?
Depending on your theory of identity, the transporters are either mass murder devices or a really convenient and perfectly innocent method of travel.
That is tricky one, because, even if you suffer no physical injuries to your brain, you still change, who you are at 30 is not who you were at 25 (unless you were locked in an environmentally-sealed cage for five years with no sensory input {other than life-sustaining nutrients of your choice}) because what you experience of a day-to-day basis changes you
It’s a good chance that, what you would have done (or not done) at 25 would not be the same thing you would (or would not) do at 30, if in the exact same situation
Like Tom Riker
Completely makes sense (which is asking a lot from Star Trek :P )
So Sherlock Holmes and Moriarti were real people.
They played God.
Remember in Star Trek, The Motion Picture when the Ilia-shaped V’Ger Probe appeared in the sonic shower? The sonic shower itself even incorporates elements of the matter-replicater (transporter technology) in that, when a crew-member is done showering, they can step out of the shower-stall fully clothed, in uniform. That’s because the uniform itself is “transported” right onto the person’s body.
I could actually see The Orville do the first one.
You have a higher opinion of the intelligence and originality of the writing on The Orville than I do.
You… do realise that “The Orville” is a fan-created mockery of “Star Trek”, don’t you?
And yet it is still a better ‘Trek’ series than “STD”
Its not a mockery. Its an homage… and its more trekky than modern Star Trek to a ridiculous degree :) Mainly because Seth Macfarlane is a huge Star Trek fan and wanted to produce aStar Trek series but they went the … I will be nice and just say ‘bad’ … route and made Star Trek Discovery instead of something good.
So MacFarlane made his own heavily Trek influenced yet still original show instead. Even Star Trek TNG, DS9, and Voyager had comedic moments interspersed in the scifi.
For that matter so did some of the non trek best scifi shows like Firefly, Stargate SG1, and Stargate Atlantis.
And some of the humorous moments were simply because of the absurdity of the situations they find themselves in. Jadzia and Worf carrying each other to Sick Bay after their…let’s say “Workout”… was One of the funniest things I’ve seen.
Yeah, knew used the wrong word :(
Knew it was a homage and that he had gone back to the fundamentals that were in the original series (which included humour)
Possibly the reason so many don’t like it, is because they simply don’t like MacFarlane’s brand of humour (he’s the same guy who came with the brilliant idea to give Barney Stinson diarrhoea so bad that he {what for it…} fills two hats with crap in the middle of the street), or they are the 1% who like the ‘STD’
The Orvilles humor is admittedly a lot less shock value than some of MacFarlanes other stuff like A Million Ways To Die In The West or Calvacade of Comedy or sometimes Family Guy. The humor feels a lot closer to Trekkish Kirk and tribbles/Quark from DS9 level humor to me.:)
Yeah, butt some people only associate him with ‘Family Guy’
As you said, the humour on this show is a lot more toned down, maybe even more ‘cerebral’, so that alone may be putting people off (they don’t like to admit they don’t get the joke, so blame the joke-teller for being unfunny)
It also helps with the Star Trek feel that MacFarlane hired some TNG/DS9 writers for the Orville too :)
Family Guy wasn’t ever funny.
That’s, like, your opinion
There will be shows you feel are funny that aren’t
True, humor is subjective.
but Domestic Abuse isn’t funny. never has been. never will be. and 80% of Family Guy’s “humor” IS that
“True humor” is ALWAYS based on someones PAIN !
You Tell something you think is “Funny” and i will point out to you who is hurt.
Lawyer Jokes, dead baby jokes, dirty jokes, clean jokes, someone is always hurt.
Don’t like some of the Jokes in Orville, BUT they are still jokes and some are FUNNY .
Re: StarGate
In interviews, the producers said the secret behind the show was that they “Made a comedy disguised as scifi.”
You do realize Seth McFarlane is also the guy who thinks domestic abuse is “good comedy” right?
You mean like “The Honeymooners”?
Everyone gets beat the shit up on “Family Guy”, butt don’t recall Peter beating Lois, or his kids…
Well… except Meg.
Meg. *Pthhhhbbbt*
Verbal putdowns are not even close to the same as physical abuse
What happens between Homer and Bart could be considered domestic abuse, butt at the end of the day, they do both care about each other (well, as much as any other ‘normal’ father and son)
Meg is psychologically abused to the point she feels she has to let the family constantly put her down so they will get along with each other.
It is one of the things that made me quit the show, along with a whole host of “darkness induced apathy” for pretty much every character on that show.
Peter beats Meg regularly post-season 1. Season 1’s the only season they even ATTEMPTED at making him actually act like a father.
Must have cut that from the international release
That is possible, many times the *jokes* on a show will be censored from one country to another for various reasons.
But the truth is, while Family Guy started off funny and made light of these things, the show just got DARKER over time, till every character was either physically, mentally, verbally, or all the above abusive to one another; with many going off the deep end. Like I’ve said, (darkness induced apathy), I ended up just finding every character just so unlikable, hypocritical, or downright horrid after awhile *which seems so much worse since the renewal happened like they wanted the show cancelled*; that I stopped caring about any jokes that might be funny or scenarios, and just didn’t care what happened to any of these characters.
Pendrake has a particular cause to champion today.
i’m calling it now. the law of narrative causality is going to ruin this somehow. Sydney may not go zipping back into her shell, but i don’t think this is happening now, on page, etc etc.
Suddenly the ship is under attack by the Squidward ship :)
And Sydney goes ballistic and reduces it to scrap, shouting “DO YOU MIND? I WAS HAVING A ‘MOMENT!’ HERE!” While Frixxie is cowering in the corner thinking “Wow! For such a gentle seeming person, Sydney is someone I don’t ever EVER want to anger”
…while wearing nothing but a wet t-shirt.
Aww yeah, Sydney’s following the example of my favorite Star Trek captain.
Yea, Sisco was very good at taking care to avoid cultural misunderstandings.
And now we will see what the unknown orb does heh heh heh
and yes I know that this is unlikely but hey it is a fun thought (well at least to me)
Oh noes, do you think that it is the dreaded censorship orb!
It better not be because I like it when Sydney starts artistically swearing and using absolutely flowerey language.
Exactly! Art shouldn’t be censored.
Speaking of, did you see I sent you a link to my Discord where you told me to awhile ago?
Only just spotted it this weekend, and was hoping to contact you, but have just had a call from work asking me to go in and cover someone else’s shift. So won’t get a chance to contact you until I get another break in my shifts.
Soon Sydney will get an answer to one of the universe’s greatest mysteries. Does Frix’s back leg twitch when you scratch his belly?
I checked what was available of Frix’s anatomy. Head, two arms, two legs… Which leg is the back one? He looks bilaterally symmetrical to me.
That said, I wonder about involuntary limb motion too.
Someone may have already asked this (shame on me for not reading through the comments backlog), but with the timing, is there any chance the VDSD page this year will involve Sydney and Frix?
smug doggoat face was hilarious.
Well, this page settled it. I have decided I really like Frix. Please let him be a reoccurring character and not just a one off.
*nods*
We should see more of the canine character(s), they are cool.
Why the hell am I cheering for a fictional character?
Because Sydney probably needs this, Frix is awsome, and it will be hilarious when Dabbler asks her about it later!
A sign of good writing, if you can care about the character, hen the author has done his job. Same as with the villains.
This one made me laugh out loud!
(which is good because this whole situation has been feel awkward. Think we can just skip ahead to arriving at Earth already?)
Is it me, or does it look like the last two pages need an in-between page?
I know a lot of this reason is because comics don’t show every bit of continuity, but Dave’s been pretty good at connecting one page to another.
I love Frix’s face in that second to last panel.
wonder frix’s race females as said tall if the comment is true. but wondering if no boobs or like Charr in guildwars 2 flat chested female charr but knowing cat or dog body they would fill out when pregnant type thing
What are the odds that Dabbler can tell with perfect precision if other people has had sex recently, even if Sydney will keep perfectly mum about it?
I’d say around 105%…
130% I believe is the buff figure she pulls off auras. Trust me Sid is going to be projecting an aura.
@200+% Hello, “Succubus” Feeds off of erotic energy.
Sydney is going to be “glowing” even if it ends in “Mutual Grooming” nothing further happens.
–BUT, If / when Xurial gets near A “satiated” Sydney will it be like a shooting a pound of Meth/Adrenaline ???
I don’t think we’ve seen Sydney without her glasses for this many panels. She has pretty eyes.
I like that Frix’s teasing was what really broke the ice with her.
Just noticed that he has horns in addition to long ears. Hrmmm…
Frix is obviously…..
….a horndog.
Cue sad trombone. Womp womp.
I might be wrong but the guy seems to be a goat not a Wolf.
That smug look on his face… hahah… too adorbs that cocky son of a wolf man. hehe
…Seems like Sydney just got an eyeful of just how “cocky” Frix can get…
Furry time….
o maybe not,im litle suspicius Do..mean Cora maybe make a bid about sidney reaction of this situation or maybe will be a joke.
¿hmmm maybe frix is dabbler in disguise mode?
Furry time….
o maybe not,im litle suspicius Do..mean Cora maybe make a bid about sidney reaction of this situation or maybe will be a joke.
¿hmmm maybe frix is dabbler in disguise mode?
Duplicate pls detelete and sorry.
Furry time….
o maybe not,im litle suspicius Do..mean Cora maybe make a bid about sidney reaction of this situation or maybe will be a joke.
¿hmmm maybe frix is dabbler in disguise mode?
Sorry duplicate ,pls delete.
It’s probably a good thing that she’s not hooked up to the heart rate monitor any more or that poor thing would be beeping in the ultrasonic range now.
And poor Frixie would be clutching his ears in agony :P
It looks like Sydney has just realized that her eyes were bigger than her appetite?
I’m not very good at knowing when to shut the hell up, but Sydney is worse. And post panel 7, so is Frix. All she wants is to brush fur, so turn your back, say thanks that would be nice, and just listen while she works on your back and her comfort zone on her own. Don’t say anything unless it’s to encourage her to open up more. If she rinses your back before retreating, then you’ve done all that you can.
But no fucking hand-holding; she can make the leap on her own or she can stop and make a stepstool out of all her regrets. Let her decide how many life or death crises she get through before before she lets herself live.
Not gonna lie, I am kinda of jealous about the presumably really nice view that Sydney just experienced…