Grrl Power #708 – Refugee callback
It actually wasn’t any easier drawing it from the bottom, even though I tried to cheat with the blur. It actually doesn’t save me that much time anyway. I still have to draw it about 85% as good as I normally would if I wasn’t going to blur it.
Partially I drew this page to make everyone who has a crippling shoe addiction insanely jealous of Cora. It’s actually that way with all her clothes, since they’re all hard light. She still has a closet full of regular clothes, alongside her old cybernetic limb collection, but that’s mostly all gathering dust these days.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Well, that’s nice but are you sure they deserve it?
You don’t write off an entire group because of one of them, Joe.
Lemme guess, you’re one of those people who writes off all Muslims as Terrorist Fanatics, rather than the .001% of them that are?
All gamers are misogynistic bigots
All men are pigs
All white people are racists
All people right of center left are natzis
All x are y
:/
This escalated quickly. Most of these are almost always used as generic reference, the same as “lions live in Africa”, which does not mean all lions are in Africa without exception. Without the “all”. They’re just criticisms of parts of a subculture or a social class that ARE present- except the Nazi stuff, that’s just plain hyperbole.
As for earlier in the discussion, I’m assuming they wouldn’t be written off because of Sciona in particular, but because of being extra-violent imperialists in general. Apart from the fact Dabbler thought it most likely the xevoarchy moved to destroy the Alari homeworld, indicating that the Alari had been going far beyond the rules and for a long time, Sciona seemed to expect quick backup and full support from her peers, which implies a lot more of them are fucked up than just a small ruling class controlling the empire.
Truth be told, we don’t know whether or not all Alari are as inherently malevolent as Sciona. We do know that Sciona was an exile, and she seemed to believe she could get back in the good graces of Alari society if she delivered the Earth to them as a source of slaves and blood. So it probably is a far assumption that the people in charge were pretty wicked, but that still tells us little about the masses.
I believe it would be entirely in character for Sydney to want to make sure these refugees are in a reasonably good place, all things considered. After all there are children in the group. However I also believe it would be entirely in character for Sydney to want to find out as much as she can about how and why the Alari were attacked, and also to find out if they have any information about who the squidbilly attackers were. After all, they were able to decimate the Alari and they clearly had it in for Sydney. She wouldn’t want to put Earth at risk if it turns out they are capable of tracking her.
Plus, we don’t know how much Sciona’s people may have changed from the last time she was there. It’s possible that they may have arrested her on site for her past crimes, if they had been wiped out.
Perhaps the squidbilly invaders were there to settle an old score for the Alari “going good” and leaving them with no evil allies to watch their backs.
The “All Dwarves are Gimli” problem.
Lys the majority of lions live in Africa… so you realize that makes what you said came out as saying those things are true of the majority of people in those groups?
The only truth is that a group ends up being represented by the loudest, most annoying and/or most powerful members. It doesn’t even have to be very many if the rest aren’t noticed.
The Nazi thing always reminded me of Godwin’s law. People eventually end up trying to compare to the worst group they can think of. Which makes me wonder, what was used before Nazis?
Prior to the German National Socialist Party, the worst example was the British
I suspect it’s heavily regional, and varies with time. In the UK, you’d have ‘the Hun’ (Germany -WWI era), the French (17th and 18th Centuries), the Dutch (17thC), the Spanish (15thC), Catholics (also 15thC), Protestants (also 15th C), and before that the French again.
The Nazis were unique in being both truly evil, and identified as such worldwide due to being the first such force to arise in the world of international, globalised news.
Before that the closest you got was continental scourges such as the Mongols and the (original) Huns
No, Dabbles didn’t know who the Squiddies were, and didn’t believe the Xevarchy would destroy the entire planet
Well men are pigs…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob5KzB_EOqc
Long Pigs.
It’s not just one of them though? Maybe Sciona led a militant group, and I just took it to mean the entire race, but I’m pretty sure her race was mentioned as being into the whole brutal conquest thing.
According to a couple of earlier strips…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2872
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2882
Not only did she expect to be welcomed back, but Dabbler mentions that the Alari has been ‘not nice’ enough to potentially call down the wrath of a multi-planetary task-force.
Whether that’s just a part of their civilisation, such as their leaders, some recent despots, maybe, or if it’s more common isn’t explained yet.
But even in those cases, Planetary Genocide is not their thing.
At worst they “knock the species back a few ages”. Wich does not produce masses of intergalactic refugees.
Are you sure about that? After a certain point you need the tech and infrastructure to support the population you got.
I mean, there’s a difference between “Genocide on the scale of Ghengis Khan” which knocks a civilization back to the bronze age and “Glass the Planet” exterminatus.
One leaves a functioning ecosystem and you can just leave the survivors to find their new ecological niche. The other requires Arkships if any of the planets’ species is going to survive.
of subtle part, remember that before they stepped through portal, Sciona had been coordinating the operation with Alarians
And you don’t get to write off criticisms of bad ideas simply because a few of the group don’t express those bad ideas.
We don’t know the motivations of the refugees individually; they may have either supported what other characters in this comic have described as a wholly aggressive and evil government, or they may be like the some german citizens in the 1940s – supportive of their government and patriotic to their country, but utterly ignorant of the horrific atrocities they were committing.
Asking the question doesn’t make you a bad person. Further, questioning bad ideas doesn’t make you a racist. If Christian ideology can be met with so much scorn, bigotry and skepticism, why can’t others?
Wow. Way to take a comment way too seriously. On the flip side didnt they use giant crystals to imprison souls?
I could swear the Alari villain lady (yes, it’s a little embarrassing I can’t remember her name) said they were some sort of worst case scenario failsafe/backup.
Its not an issue of writing off the whole group cause of one… There are many references to the fact that the Alari, as a society, are pretty bad… Things like Dabbler saying “I guess the Xevoarchy got sick of the Alari Taking what they wanted” (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2882) and Sciona saying “Prepare yourselves to kneel before the might of the Alari empire! Bow to me and I’ll see that you live your lives as battle thralls instead of laboratory samples” (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2872) kind of hints that their governments and society are like-minded with sciona and that sciona has a relatively high position there… And that they are fine with things like experimentation on other sapient species and slavery.
Are all humans hitler?
Are all humans Hitler
That’s kind of the mistake the minbari made in Babylon five isn’t it?
That and never realizing they were the only species to open their weapon’s ports and charge them *so you KNOW they are weapon’s ports* when making first contact.
the Minbari had a tradition of show their weapon as a sign of peace, not unlike the origin of a human handshake in some ways.
However this didn’t translate well to a space craft; and the Minbari were in the entire series the ONLY species to ever do this, so at no point during interactions with like a dozen other races did it ever occur to them to NOT DO THIS when meeting a new species…the human ship panicked and fired on them, starting the Human/Minbari war.
So while the Minbari did make the mistake of assuming all humans were monsters out to attack anyone they meet on sight…it never occurred to them that they were the only ones saying high in a manner that looks like aiming a gun at someone’s face *here is my knife and I’m charging my beam cannons don’t equate very well* With neither side however apparently even attempting communications after this point until plot said to not destroy Earth.
Even if their culture was space nazis (which we haven’t seen any proof it was), would you choose to genocide all of nazi germany after the war? Every man woman and child whose only sin was being born there?
I mean, not if that was their only sin…
Even Nazi’s had a limit to their evil. The Holocaust was nowhere near as bad as The Rape of Nanking, that situation was so messed up that John Rabe, a Nazi Ambassador became a National Hero to Germany, Austria & China
And there’s no denying that the Holocaust was one of the worst atrocities in Human history
Setting up factories dedicated to killing people wasn’t as bad? Auschwitz held about 30,000 people. well over a million died there. It was re-filled with people every other week. That was just one of the locations.
Nanking was about 250K deaths, the Holocaust was millions of jews,romany, and “deviants”. So right now I really wonder where you got your history from. Of course during a longer place in leadership Stalin and Mao killed way more.
The point of the Holocaust was the genocide of the jews, their worldwide population was cut almost in half because of the orders of the NAZIs.
/as for space nazis, yes you kill them all, anyone with the tech to project their genocide on others should also be culled since it is now a galactic threat. call it karma or relative justice, but Space Nazis Must Die!
The question is, is everyone a Nazi, just because the government (and maybe a large percentage of the people are).
Where’s the karma (which really just isn’t a thing but still since you used it) in it for the innocent ones?
Now, that said, in the case of an all out war, sadly there is likely to be casualties and you could write off the innocent ones as such.
That said, the Rape of Nanking doesn’t seem worse than what the Nazi’s did at all.
Though, they were at war with the Chinese, and personally, I’m of the thought that, people are always willing to break “rules” to win a war. If all your people are going to die unless you win the war, who wouldn’t break the rules, if staying within the rules meant losing?
Though, if all you have to do is blame one person for the act, when so many were in on it :p
A governemnt and army that attempts genocide does not arise out of a vacuum , the base culture is already tainted.
wiki List_of_genocides_by_death_toll
and then look at the prevalent culture of those peoples, yeah racism, xenophobia, fanaticism.
That’s just it. Prevalent.
How much is considered Prevalent?
Only 1% of the US population owned slaves, not all of them were white, and the first slave owner was black, but that’s not how people want to look at history, and a lot (at least on the internet) like to look at things as if all are one, when it suits them at any rate.
One could look at as leaders twisting things to their whims within the laws that are there, or creating ones to get things the way they want. History has shown media has been used to sway opinions, even falsely, forever.
We know there were German’s who tried to protect Jews. Do you call them Nazi’s while grouping all the German population as Nazi?
Only a small percentage of whites owned slaves, but a much larger percentage rented those slaves from the owners. So a very large percentage of whites BENEFITTED from slavery, even if they weren’t direct owners.
The history of slavery is far more widespread & complex than most realize.
The whole damn country benefitted from slavery!!!
Not to mention those who were involved in the international slave trade.
Which included… Africans, everyone likes to ignore that Africans were selling fellow Africans to the slavers
Not at all.
Small farmers and small manufacturers who had to compete against slave labor were in fact DAMAGED by the advantage which slave labor gave to those who had the wealth and inclination to use it.
That’s why said the country, as in, the country as a whole
Of course small farmers and manufacturers would lose out in the short term, the same thing happened during the Industrial Revolution and when Ford perfected (or started, can’t remember details) the Production Line
From an economic viability and technological standpoint, slavery actually has always been harmful to states which use it, mainly because it limits the need for technological innovation and removes the desire to diversify what that state uses/trades to become economically successful. At least in a long term sense. Short term, it obviously winds up being advantageous from a purely manpower situation, although you will never get as much work or innovation out of an enslaved population as you will from someone who has contracted to work for you for either training (like an apprenticeship) or pay (like a salary). It’s one of the basics behind capitalism, and why capitalism and outright slavery do not work very well together, especially long-term.
It was one of the reasons why, during the Civil War, the South was particularly at a disadvantage against the North the longer the war continued. The North had a distinct technological advantage in multiple areas (although the North did still have indentured servitude, which is only like one step removed from outright slavery). Also, at least in ancient times (and to a lesser extent, during the US civil war), it often provided a fourth column within a state against the ruling class when outside elements would attack.
But I understand what Guesticus is trying to say. In the short term, it helps the society that uses slavery, but in the long term it damages that society in multiple ways (not just in a moral sense, but in measurably economic ones).
There’s a fairly strong argument that a substantial driver to the US Declaration of Independence was a fear that Britain might be about to extend the illegality of slavery in the UK to the rest of the Empire.
Interesting how there was a substantial time gap between the War of Independence (and the formation of USA itself) and the War of Slave Control (aka, the US unCivil War)
Guesticus, that’s why l’m talking about events contemporaneous with the Declaration of Independence, and not about the ACW.
It is difficult to make a comparison or to try to draw fine lines of distinction between two events which are both almost incomprehensibly horrific.
Hell most of Germany including the military officials had no idea the holocaust was going on.
Then why did so many civilians who did know talk to civic groups in the United States about it after the war?
I went to a lot of such programs when I was growing up.
The question is: when did they know? And, if they knew at the time, why the Frank didn’t they try and stop it!!!!
Because people who tried to stop it were put down like rabid dogs.
I don’t think you’ll get many takers for the Rape of Nanking being worse than the Holocaust. It was a particularly gruesome (and very late) example of a city sack, and symptomatic of the problems in Japan’s military, and the Kwantung Aarmy in particular, but it falls by the wayside in comparison to some historical atrocities, particularly to Tamerlane, who is estimated to have killed 17 million, 5% of the world’s population at the time.
And Nanjing also pales in comparison to the Holocaust. Not even the worst of Japanese militarists set out to destroy entire social groups, and they certainly didn’t practise for industrialised slaughter by honing their technique on their own disabled kids. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look up Aktion T4).
It’s not about “them” it’s about her. She is figuring out that what she does or does not do defines her and she will have to live with it. I’d rather live with trying to help rather than being someone who does not care.
Well said.
I’d rather be damned for what I did,
Than be damned for what I did not do.
(This, of course, presumes that what you do is trying to help others, to show patience, kindness, courtesy, tolerance, understanding, empathy, so on and so forth.)
Assigning that what one member of a group does being what all members of a group are supposed to do is the basest form of tribalism and is usually the excuse given by extremists to hate ‘the other’ even when a particular member of ‘the other’ has not done anything wrong.
Does the young child deserve help? After asking that question, should Joe Guy deserve help in a similar situation?
The answer is Yes, even DBags deserve help when they are stranded with resources.
Um….what.
They might not want to take off just yet. I think their fourth wall fell down and they’re going to want to put that back up first to be spaceworthy.
+1
“At least her shoe collection does not take up any space”
“Damnit.”
I doubt she’d ask to check on them just to have a look maybe Sydney is going to try some sort of Good Samaritan Act?
I would think that Sydney knows she doesn’t know how things work in the galaxy.
Is there a Marshal Plan for refugees from destroyed planets?
I’m not sure the Alairi want or would accept help even if they need it.
Technicly SYDNEY is a displaced person herself.
Sydney is, or was, merely stranded. She has a home to return to. One where the new “owners” won’t shoot her on sight for having brownish/blondish hair and hazel eyes.
That is why she asked Cora.
“I’m not sure the Alairi want or would accept help even if they need it.”
Why would these Refugees not accept any help they can get?
Stop being a specicist.
As humans we can’t imagine refusing help if children are starving, but
we know nothing about these aliens or their culture.
Not sure how Klingons feel about receiving charity.
I’m just saying that being helped with no expectation of repayment might
be an alien concept to the aliens.
Hows about we wait and see what Sydney is planning before we judge her, mmkay?
Well, these guys may eventually be their best protection against more Sciona shenanigans.
I don’t know about that :(
If you were a disembodied space ghost looking for a “home” on an alien world, how would you view the sudden arrival of some suitable host bodies?
Especially if Sciona was part of a radical faction and the ghost vaults are also from that fringe group.
I agree, it seems likely that Sydney forming a connection of some sort with this group would very likely play into interactions with Sciona and her soul refugee group at some point. The plot likely has a long time between now and then to twist in many ways.
I’d kinda like to see some major shaking up of the Status Quo. Take this series from just ‘another’ Superhero Comic (because it’s already a GOOD one) to a serious piece of speculative fiction in its own right.
If hard light clothes become popular, i wonder how the market would change? Would people charge copyright to use their clothes? A rental fee by hour of use perhaps?
There would be people out there churning out dozens of outfit schematics for hard light replication, just hoping one of their items goes viral and they hit it big on usage fees. :D
Renting by the hour could work, but only if there were ways to prevent the data file being retained and replicated. Even then you would probably see the same as is currently happening in the stock photography business: a race to the bottom with the market being flooded with poor to mediocre content, and years of work and experience becoming almost worthless. On the plus side, if you could develop an ultra-reliable battery that would guarantee an end to wardrobe malfunctions, you could make some serious money.
“Renting by the hour”
This will inevitably lead to people posting videos of weddings where the bride has rented a dress for the occasion and it times out in the middle of the ceremony, leaving her standing there naked.
Hopefully, there’d be a fallback outfit, even it it was a jumper with the brand of the projector written town one arm, one leg, and across the back and chest.
Then there’d be the people walking around with disruptors. .. Then there’d be the people walking around with pulsed disruptors built into their cameras or responsive to their flash remote.
Flash pun is accidental.
Or hacking moves to a whole new information set…
Wedding crasher would take on a whole new meaning, neh?
Heh. You know how some people say to imagine the audience naked if you have stage-fright?
What if you hacked their clothes to make them naked instead?
How long would it take for everyone to notice?
Also, what if instead of disappearing the clothes you simply made them appear naked… but with the wrong bodies?
Our lady of communications won a ship-wide bet
By getting into the planet’s main communications net
Now every time someone calls up on an Argo telescreen
The flesh is there, but the clothes they wear are nowhere to be seen
And we’re banned from Argo, every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shore leave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn’t want us anymore
Banned From Argo by Leslie Fish, verse six and chorus!
It’d probably be run like Amazon’s video prime, for a monthly fee you get a number of free selections, but for the best ones you need to either ‘rent’ per use, or purchase forever… Just hope you don’t loose your service at an inopertune moment.
Terrorists would scramble large groups of clothing, rendering entire parts of a city naked.
Would you believe that someone has already tried that? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081249/
I knew what that was before I clicked the link.
I think the big clothing corporations would try to stop the hard light clothing production, if you’re old enough to have remembered or watched the movie tucker its old movie of a actual car engine that DIDN’T USE oil. Or any oil related products that big named corporations made, and no if your thinking it was steam/solar powered it wasn’t..
The movie takes place during late 60’s and the engine was normal gas and oil engine converted to run on only on water there wasn’t much to convert.. But here the kicker the cars actual exist they went to great length to stop mr tucker from producing his cars. he actual made a whole fleet only to have the government step in steal his engine design by using the national security act, the big oil companies destroyed every tucker car made with exception to six cars that exist in the world with the engine… So you see something so big that big corps will stop anything to stop something that could impact on a world wide globalized creation would be stopped if it threatens there revenue
Strange that…
My brother is all up in conspiracy theories and far out tech, but even he hasn’t heard of a water-powered engine from Tucker.
He did construct a large engine with oil instead of camshafts, and he re-engineered an air-cooled 4cyl engine to water-cooled, but that’s about it.
In fact, I don’t think its mentioned in the movie, either.
Yeah… that’s not quite what happened to the Tucker engine or to the company itself. They made some bad engineering choices and worse business ones, and went broke.
Personally I love a good tech-based conspiracy theory, but have never found a single reputable source that bears out the story of a ground-breaking engine being crushed or hidden by the oil companies / big auto manufacturers. Lots of interesting ideas, but physics is a harsh mistress and sometimes the theory just doesn’t bear up under further testing.
Or sometimes the tech just isn’t there yet – the cyclorotor was patented in 1927 and has some crazy advantages for aircraft (near-instant, omni-directional force vectoring), but being hard to build and control the first working example (a small drone) wasn’t flown until 2011. The rotor found other uses (e.g. tugboats) but could fit a “big air” suppression conspiracy fairly well.
You’re conflating two seperate stories.
The Tucker Automobile https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0096316/
And
The urban legend about the water engine inventor being murdered to suppress his invention.
(Which stil gets traction from the HHO/Brown gas people.)
See the motion picture “The Man in the White Suit”.
Indestructable thread means no clothing ever needs to be replaced
and textile mills would close causing unemplyment.
(To we in the 21st century that thread would have myriad uses
including The Space Elevator.)
On the contrary – textile mills would be converted to producing this amazing new thread, which would enable tons of amazing new applications. Yes, the existing mill jobs be replaced with more specialized roles – but who would be better qualified and experienced to receive that training than the current workers, who already know the industry, the background, and the principles?
The classic examples of this are tractors and modern agriculture drastically reducing the percentage of farmers in the USA (they now do many other things) and computerized banking resulting in more jobs as tellers instead of less (although that shift is still working itself out).
The threat of unemployment was the premise of the movie (1951)
when it would revolutionize bridge construction and countless other industries
just as you said.
PS: I think there was a novelty record that used the sound effect
of the continuous polymerizing reactor heard in the movie.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HCUvded8mqw
The record I mentioned: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HCUvded8mqw
Urban myth. If engines could be modded to run on water, there would be thousands of hobbyists making variations every day.
Given that there are at least 20 (out of 50 completed) Tucker 48s still in existence, and 8 of them are in public display, I think your numbers are off.
It’s not possible for a car to run on water. Hydrogen and oxygen can be used for fuel, but once they join together to become water they cannot be. Water cannot be directly burned for energy and it has negative enthalpy of formation — the bonds between the H2 and the O are strong enough that it requires more energy to decompose it back into oxygen and hydrogen than you get by burning the results.
I think you need to brush up on chemistry and botany, there… Plants separate hydrogen from oxygen in water molecules all th time, via photosynthesis. We do not currently have tech that can replicate this…but there are plenty of incidents of technology being suppressed, destroyed, or the inventors murdered, tech that would’ve bankrupted Big Oil, Big Pharma, and the Military Industrial Complex. Including Rockefeller destroying Tesla’s work on wireless energy generation using the Earth’s own rotation & magnetic field as a giant dynamo. Rockefeller did so because he’d just sunk money into copper for electrical wiring, and was afraid he’d not recoup his investment. (Which he would’ve done anyway because free electricity would’ve meant a craptonne of electrical gadgets being invented, which would’ve required a craptonne of copper wiring. Greed-diseased idiot.)
Nothing in Eaglejarls post is inconsistent with the chemistry of photosynthesis.
As for Rockefeller destroying Tesla’s wireless energy transmission (nb transmission, not generation), the ‘destruction’ consisted of Rockefeller refusing to invest any more money in Tesla’s boondoggle (which Tesla had sold as a competitor with Marconi’s radio work, not as a means of power transmission), Tesla going bankrupt, and, later, one of his creditors dismantling the supposed antenna to recover some of the money owed
In fact, Lady, it is you who needs to ‘brush up on chemistry and botany’. Water is the lowest energy state for hydrogen and oxygen; any reaction that takes them out of that state is going to involve putting at least as much energy in as what you get out. The only way around that is to have the hydrogen and/or oxygen react with something else that releases even more energy, but in that case [i] you’ve just broken your claim by adding a fuel to the system, and [ii] all that energy released from the fuel has to come from somewhere.
Note that enthalpy – how favoured a reaction is – depends not only on the relative energy demands of the reagents and products, but also has an entropic component based on how many separate molecules there are on each side. Some reactions do bind more energy than they release, and the system cools down in doing so, but they’re generally favoured by a large increase in the number of molecules. Water’s a very small molecule; there aren’t many ways to split it to get that increase.
Plants do indeed have means of driving certain reactions against the flow of enthalpy, but they need to use a lot of energy absorbed from incoming light to do so. They also need some sophisticated organometallic catalysts to do it, which Humans are only recently starting to figure out the intricacies of. Even with those catalysts to lower the initial energy barriers (and direct the products into relatively stable organic compounds compared to pure elements) the process is not very efficient – anywhere between 6% and 30%, depending on how you define the input.
As for the conspiracy theories, come back when you have some citable evidence.
Actually, water CAN be burned for energy. With fluor-based “oxidizing” agents like FOOF or ClF3 (Dioxygen difluoride or Chlorine trifluoride). Both those chemicals can burn stuff like water, sand, glass, ash and asbestos. They are also extremely toxic, just as the product of the fire, and generally hard to use. Chlorine trifluoride would likely corroded your car fuel tank on first kilometer (even if it would be from gold). Dioxygen difluoride would blow whole car up even faster. Oh, and Azidoazide azide (1-diazidocarbamoyl-5-azidotetrazole) would explode if you THINK about using it as propellant.
Not to mention the clothes side where they always FIT.
Next would be the Ronco scan-o-matic, to scan up your current collection.
Folllowing that would be the Scanner shop addon to alter materials on-the-fly. Fron the oridinary to the extraordinary. Latex, leather, goo… bubbles
likely the same eula stuff that IP stuff has now. purchase the right to use it for singular personal uses, to not deconstruct it, or modify it outside of specific tolerances (ini/cfg edits, in this case sizes, or ‘covering’ blemishes).
possibly a subscription to a brand to get savings on future purchases.
Aren’t there virtual clothes designers already on Second Life?
what is she trying to do? Does Cora have like a MRE dispenser? or does Sydney want to take them to earth with her? … I’m not sure any of that is helpful to them…
Sydney want to abduct aliens. There might be an obscure interrogation involved.
Wonder what the plan is here. She isn’t authorized to invite them to Earth. Is she wanting to trade supplies and or currency for information concerning what happened on said planet?
She sure as hell can’t be coming to offer to transport them back to their own planet.. with said mecha monsters on it and such.
I find it odd Cora would just up and transport them as well to Earth without prior knowledge they couldn’t stay. I could see Cora employing some folks for a while though. Or bringing them to meet Dabbler for potential employment opportunities.
All in all, I can’t see Syd’s plan here. Unless she plans to just introduce Aliens to the world less than 2 weeks after Super verification. WIthout authorization from her government, which, considering her contract and job, seems like it might be in violation of some rather serious regulations.
Unless it really is “i have nothing to offer, but one of your kind tried to murder me and friends and end our world. Could I interview you about how your world ended?” caus unless syd’s borrowing from Cora etc, she’s got nothing to help them really.
There’s already aliens on earth, She is already traveling back to earth on an alien ship…
I don’t know what the problem would be.
They could at least be “illegal aliens” hehe, which wouldn’t make much difference as they seemed to not be all that many. Or they would fall under the twilight councils juristiction
You’re assuming that her plan is to relocate them to Earth. Which it may be… I’m not a telepath, so I don’t have any insight into DaveB‘s plans. Seems to me that it would be possible to drop them on a multi-species colony world that needs extra hands, or even to leave a few worlds fallow for exactly this kind of situation (like the Coalition of Civilized Worlds in Palladium’s “Aliens Unlimited” setting)… just drop them off along with enough supplies and pre-fabricated factory and housing modules and give them a chance to build a new society.
I have a feeling that the Alari changed dramatically after Sciona’s exile. After all, we have no idea how long she’s been away; it could have been hundreds of years. Alternatively, now that they don’t have to worry about the secret police monitoring what they say and do, the Alari refugees are a lot less imperialistic than their government was. (Kind of like the batarians in Mass Effect… once you get them away from the watchful eyes of the Hegemony, most of them are a lot less racist.)
NOW BLOW THE LAST OF THEM TO KINGDOM COME!
MWAAAA HAHA HAHAAAAA
Are y’all seriously trying to second-guess Sydney?? :D
Five sydney snacks says that those refugees are lower class citizens. The Important ones got shoved in the soul battery.
Best of all, I don’t mind losing, since to be honest, they are a bit too spicy. Maybe Yorp wants em?
To mangle SM Stirling: one of the frustrating things about fighting the forces of Evil is that you usually have to start out by fighting a bunch of farmers that Evil drafted for the war.
well said.
folks seem to forget that a government and ruling class is not the same as the population. also that conscription and lies are tools in the politicians tool box; so you arent going to meet the evil ones on the battle field over a gun. you will meet them in the parler over tea. the ones you meet on the battle field are usually just some kid who has been told to kill you because you are evil.
I want them if you don’t. You got the Ghost Pepper or the Pure Cap flavor? Pure Cap don’t really have an actual “flavor” aside from the base chip flavor, but Ghost Pepper has a bit of a fruity tang kind of a cross between a sweet pepper and a bite out of the Sun’s outer corona.
Or did you have the puffs? The Cheese and Ghost Puffs are to die for.
And after about 5K Scovilles I can’t tell the difference except in the other tastes, my heat receptors stop working above that and just leave me with a mild burn and tingle around the lips.
You can’t get the really good Sydney Snacks anymore. Not since the last Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.
“Throws blanket over food replicator”
Well Fracture is probably the place to get that replicator mod pack that fixes those pesky limitations
Mmm, salty :P
Oh great, if she takes them back to Earth, then all the disembodied ones that just snuck there through the portal will have 100% compatible bodies to steal…
I had the same idea, but you beat me to it.
The original sighting of the family was discussed and the “Mother” Alari was adjudged to be wearing apparel that would not be lower class.
Also, “important evil” and “important society” are not always inclusive of each other.
When did her rags get adjusted to be high-class rags? o_O
Spicy? Yum!
*opens mouth*
Man, she really would need hardlight shoes, given her abnormally tiny feet. It must be impossible to find shoes in her size.
Since she doesn’t have any actual feet, she can basically make them any size and shape she wants. The ‘shoes’ are really just an extension of her hardlight limbs.
“the only good Alari is a dead Alari.” Is this what you think? That was said of my ancestors. American Indians. Genocide is wrong.
Then Sciona is currently a very good Alari….
She ain’t dead, she’s simply disembodied
Yeah Americans tend to be really short-sighted about their own immigration history.
So far all we know about the Alari has been that a significant faction of them are known far and wide as war-mongering space Nazis, but fortunately I think we are about to see some better examples.
At this point they have several options:
1) Provide clothing, rations and Medical Aid
2) Transport them to a planet Allied to them (refugees)
3) Transport them to Earth, where the Twilight Council would have jurisdiction.
4) Gather Intel on what exactly happened on their home world.
Some may not want help, some may. I’m guessing that mom is willing accept any altruism.
5) Sell them to Deus as a slave work force in his plan for World Domination.
(Sorry. Just trying to live up the the ‘all humans are evil’ claim from a prior thread)
6) land on them, Tarkin-style….
7) make a burn-out on them with primary thrusters full on….
but that will not be Sydney-approved, she never seemed very fond of wholesale slaughter, and WILL sound misplaced in DaveB opus, besides getting a -18 rating to that story
After all, we allready had a collateral burning of “Orphanage and Bunny rehab”
And even those were only imaginary.
When I saw this page I was thinking about 4) – she wants to ask questions about what happened and how. And finally find out she’s several months in the future and starts to worry about her comic shop, because law of funny.
All other options are out of her reach, or she would have to at least have long discussion with Cora if she’s capable and willing to participate in such help, before offering (we were shown few refugees, but what if there are 100k of them? The station is big enough for such number, Cora’s ship not so much).
Is Sydney going to lead a military-esque campaign against the mega-nega squidwards to retake the Alari homeworld for those refugees?
I mean, I don’t know if any action would be better than no action in a case such as this.
Relocation to an empty but habitable planet would seem more sensible. Just as long as it doesn’t go horribly wrong and ultimately lead to a “Khaaaaaaaan!” moment.
Though the Khaaaaaaaaan! moment was mostly due to the planet he was left on really _not_ being habitable.
Khan et al. were left on Ceti Alpha 5, which was described as “habitable, although a bit savage”. Shortly afterward the neighboring planet Ceti Alpa 6 exploded (been there, saw that). The explosion disrupted the ecosystem on CE5, incurring the wrath of certain residents.
Panel 7 looks familiar. Like, page #674 familiar
When you have to turn out a couple of highly detailed pages each week, Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V become a very important pair of tools in your toolbox. This isn’t the first time DaveB has taken advantage of this productivity multiplier. Check out the last 3 panels on Page 703 for a prime example. Cut and paste, then a quick touch up to add the differences.
There is an established tradition of recycling in the world of comics and animation. Many broadcast shows repeatedly reused linking sequences, often with no modification whatsoever.
Yeah, like every anime, ever. Transformation sequences and special attacks/spells tend to be entirely stock footage, so they can avoid having to draw 3-5 minutes of every episode.
Wally Wood has been quoted as saying “Never draw what you can swipe. Never swipe what you can copy. Never copy what you can cut out and paste in.”
Main possible reasons Sydney can have to speak with refugees:
– ask about how an WHY was their planet destroyed
– ask about that “Souls” which caused her to be stranded (she don´t know what those were)
Alternatively:
– mention that she fought with those invaders
– ask about Sciona and her position with their people
– ask about their plans – she can´t invite them, but with enough information others can
Tell Sciona that her people haven’t all been eradicated; hopefully she will be grateful enough for the kindness that Sydney showed them (in not leaving them stranded somewhere) will spark something good in Sciona later on… like maybe not surrender and become a hero, but at least tone down her brand of villainy within the confines of Earth and/or spare Sydney during a massive conflict to repay the favor.
Best guess is finding out the situation with their planet. So Intel gathering and any small offer she can like make a case for them to those that could offer them refugee status.
For the Sake of Argument Lets assume all Lions are meat eaters.And The Entire Race are Monsters. Well How do they change if they die out and shown no Mercy? If a Alien was to Judge Humanity it would be seen and Fairly as a race of Planet Killers.. But only by showing mercy do you see some one change.. Now If they stay dirt bags Does it make a difference? Would you kill a Lion cub? We can control what we do and be concerned for are choices that does not mean we should should worry about what they will do. I would not condemn the Last Lion cub to death even if it eats meat. And I think it would Break and Kill Halo to dream each Night of that child and Mother holding a baby starving… Plus this got the Whole Dragon ball Trunks Vibe Going So maybe there Planet Killing Dragon Ball Drow like Zayins .. But Now there Sydney’s Planet Killing Dragon Ball Drow like Zayins…. Thats a Big Difference! Hey Maxima Look what Followed Me Home !
All enemies are potential friends.
If Dragonball is used as a model, yes.
Under any circumstances. I barely know Dragonball.
also Bamse.
The main character of Goku, aside from his family members and the other generation 2 characters *Trunks, Bulla, ect…*, every single one of his friends (main reoccurring cast) has either
A: been a rival
B: been an enemy
and/or
C: tried to kill him at some point.
with the only exception not his own kids being Master Roshi (who did pose as Jackie Chun and fight against Goku in a tournament, but that was less rival or enemy and more to keep him from winning the world martial arts tournament as a child so he wouldn’t lose interest in martial arts)
Everyone else?
Bulma (shot him in the head)
Krillin (rival)
Yamcha and Puar (tried to kill him, desert bandit)
Tien and Chaotzu (assassins from a rival martial arts school)
Piccolo (its complicated, but mainly tried to kill Goku)
Vegeta (tried to kill Goku)
Android 18 (was created to kill Goku)
hell even the comic relief Oolong started off as an evil shapeshifter terrorizing a town that Goku fought.
doesn’t stop there, but its so noticeable that they talk about it in Dragon Ball Super a few times, how Goku makes friends and allies of his enemies; we shouldn’t be surprised if come Dragon Ball Super X or whatever Goku is on the same terms with Freeza as he is with Android 17 and Vegeta, and Goku’s granddaughter becomes friends with Freeza’s son or something, forcing Goku and Freeza to “fake it till they make it” as friends. *which would be a sort of rehash of Goten and Trunks being friends but eh…
I mean Majin Buu is on friendlier terms with Goku also but…Majin Buu is more friends with Hercule Satan, and connects back to Goku as Satan’s daughter Videl is married to Goku’s son Gohan.
But Kid Buu’s reincarnation Uub (end of Dragon Ball Z after a time skip *yes this is NOT GT so I don’t want to hear it, go back and watch your last Dragon Ball Z video people, sheesh*, which Super takes place inside that time skip.;…anywho Uub becomes Goku’s student.
and heck even Fighter Z implied Android 21 could come back as a reincarnation or wished back to become an ally (I trust the story would change if made officially canon anyway).
and that said, fans have wanted Cell back at some point, either brought back from Hell, or the maintimeline Cell somehow survived Krillin’s attack on its fetus growth pod delaying its growth and doesn’t need 17 and 18 to achieve its Perfect form (heck 17 and 18 were stronger in the main timeline than the alt future anyway)…basically its become an expectation at this point for Goku’s rivals and enemies to join his friend cast at some point unless they are secondary villains that are killed off and stay that way.
it’s a standard Monkey King style trope. The Monkey King character stand in (Goku, Luffy, Naruto, Gon, etc) will have certain characteristics, including an extreme loyalty to friends and allies, and a willingness to accept nearly anyone as part of that group.
Argh, such a cliffhanger. What’s the plan, Sydney? You, personally, have squat for resources to offer them. Words of encouragement/motivational speech?
I don’t know, I think she’s got stuff. If she has convinced Cora to take them to Earth then she can say to Archon “Hey, here’s these Alari who might be able to give us intelligence on Sciona.” Even if Archon isn’t interested, they don’t really have a way to send the aliens off-planet and they aren’t going to simply execute them.
You know, the smart thing here would be to get info on what happened to the alari homeworld. If these refugees have any idea why they got attacked or by who. Not only to learn what went down but also because…. sydney just one woman armied their invasion forces. She casually obliterated armadas of fighters, took out I think three of the big boys, and was pretty comprehensively scanned by them before doing so. Might be nice to figure out if they are capable of or likely to seek out revenge. I mean sure in an MMO you can genocide the heck out of that night elf city all you like, then move along, no harm no foul. In reality, the night elf people are going to hunt you down and likely declare war on your people for this mass slaughter.
I wonder if Cora will tell Sydney that she’s NO captain of a refugee ship!?
Obviously that didn’t happen or there would be no panels nine-eleven
well if she run out of space she can just hang them outside, there is plenty of space there
Gotta be honest – the ship from the bottom looks like a cross between the ebon hawk and a Kymellian ship from the comic power pack (I probably outed myself as really old with that second reference).
Friday?
Is that you?
Well, I can tell you that they don’t look anything like the spacecraft from Major Matt Mason.
all i am seeing is colored lights so i think either the spaceship from ET or Cocoon.
Given her “I know this isn’t a taxi service… but…” line, I suspect Sydney wants to stick her head out of the airlock and ask “Can we drop you guys off somewhere?” Returning to Alari Prime would not be a good idea, as the planet is trashed and its location is compromised, so the attackers could return even if they have now left. There may be a remote established colony world somewhere that has escaped attention, or failing that an uninhabited planet with a compatible and benign ecosystem. Drop them off with essential equipment and allow the emergence of a hopefully less conquest-oriented society. If the location of the planet was unknown to the squids, they would be safe for a while, at least. It sounds like social engineering, but Sydney would probably tend to see it as charity. And anyway, Deus shouldn’t have a monopoly on playing god.
Yeah, one of their colony worlds or moons.
Say….is the Alari Moonbase still running?
(Maybe that’s too close to the enemy forces.)
Umm, no, that line was in reference to Cora taking Sydney home (as a favour to Dabbles), not Sydney wanting to pick up hitchhikers
Setting aside everything else, my one and only question is..why is Sydney suddenly able to break the fourth wall. She Deadpools herself a couple pages back claiming about how things are being drawn. Now she does it again. Since when did she become self-aware she was in a webcomic?
She used to sell comics.
Maybe she’s referencing an egregiously poorly drawn spacecraft
from a graphic novel.
Dave has infrequently drawn in little META vignettes with those specific drawn-type characters in the tiny panel.
I’m just assuming he kept that one within the comic.
It’s specifically a callback to a recent page where Sydney first saw the ship, and completely in keeping with other trope-aware moments, scattered throughout the archive.
Turbosquid.com Keeping the hentia tentacles at work supplying you with cloths, Hair-care products, & porn for over 10 galactic rotations.
Some of our ‘crippling addictions’ are way more costly (and restrictive) than shoes. Such as converting a relatively inexpensive and kind of ugly Hi-Point into a super fuckin’ awesome futuristic but literally twice as expensive bullpup. XD Still doesn’t even come close to my friend who moved to a far less restrictive state and now makes builds that top the $4k range. Then makes another for his wife.
Yeah, she’s a keeper.
I’m VERY interested in how the author is going to handle the downfall of that action.
Trying to save a whole race from being galactic refugees is all nice and fluffy and rainbows, but finding them a place to live, and a way to actually make a living is … hard.
Unless you really have a good grasp of what a real space opera of many FTL races setting should allow you to do, which, lets be honest 99.999% of writers fail miserably at…
1st it’s always been my opinion that D&D gamer’s (and similar P&P games) are some of the most non judgemental there are. This is a generalization not a hard fact. But Sydney is the post child for this. She tends to judge others based on action not on race, religion, creed, or etc.
2nd I don’t think the xevoarchy are the ones who destroyed the planet. The giant world killing monster hiding in the rubble and the ones hanging out in orbit are the most likely culprits. And if they were apart of it Dabbler probably would have mentioned it.
3rd the refugees are almost certainly the lower class general public. Possibly even just those people who were traveling during the destruction. The ruling and upper class would have had escaped plans. Although from the looks of it I don’t think they had time to use them. That Pillar of Souls is probably whats left of them.
Plus the fact Dabbles specifically said that she did not recognize the Squiddlies (which is why they are referred to as ‘Squiddlies’, amongst other names) and that the Xevoarchy is not know for planetary genocide (just knocking them down a few technological ages, basically to give them time to think about what they did to cause them to get knocked down)
One day, an old man was walking along a beach that was littered with thousands of starfish that had been washed ashore by the high tide. As he walked he came upon a young boy who was eagerly throwing the starfish back into the ocean, one by one.
Puzzled, the man looked at the boy and asked what he was doing. Without looking up from his task, the boy simply replied, “I’m saving these starfish, Sir”.
The old man chuckled aloud, “Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?”
The boy picked up a starfish, gently tossed it into the water and turning to the man, said, “I made a difference to that one!”
I wanna now hug a puppy.
Then the water receded another forty feet from shore.
Although, even with the best intentions, it doesn’t always work out for that starfish.
I was thinking she wanted to go back for some of that atomically spicy food for the trip home.
Maybe she could “borrow” some of the spice from Cora’s replicators. or ask.
You know that if Sydney does set them up on a new planet there will be a new religion created in her honor and temples built to ‘our lady of the orbs’.
We may be seeing why Sydney eventually gets promoted. He is starting to think of others and may have more than one reason for picking up that family. One, because they are refugees. Second, because they may provide insight into the events and even reasons the squidwards attacked.
There is no dishonor in combining compassion and strategy.
Not sure about the protocols here but: I belong to a community that creates content for an ancient computer game called Freedom Force. So, here is a first draft of Max:
https://imgur.com/R8tDzbW
Since I can’t create the meshes, I use a program to cobble together pieces from the hard work of other more talented people. So, the jacket still has problems and the base has funny feet. Still, it isn’t a bad first try. It is hard to see that she has shiny skin.
Freedom Force still has an active modding community? Wow.
To be fair, I haven’t checked in a long time, even though Freedom Force was one of my favorite superhero games back in the day.
I’m more surprised someone managed to get that game to work properly. I certainly never managed that. But good for them! :D
I’ve now had two separate accounts that simply stopped being able to post. No error messages, just no post ever showing up. I don’t think I’ve ever been disruptive or rude, so what might cause that?
Aaaaand, no sooner do I post this than the things I submitted 5 minutes ago suddenly appear, just to make me look like a loon. Argh.
The comments have a well-established pattern of sometimes taking a long time for things to show up, don’t assume your other comments were blocked or lost either. Give it some time to clear the processing queue and bypass page caching, then try a hard page refresh (Shift+F5) or a different device / browser.
Wow, going back to finish the job eh? Ruthless.
Looking at that last shoe that Cora tried on, and looking back at page #704 2nd panel, I’m wondering if Cora’s race is a naturally two-toed species. Obviously Cora can have as many or as few toes as she likes, but I could see her going for something that looks normal for whatever species she is.
I was thinking the hooves were due to Dabbler’s influence, but you could be right. It would give a new meaning to the phrase ‘blues and twos’ (which may mean nothing to those outside the UK).
(google google) “Blues and twos” – obscure British term for a police vehicle, named for the color of the flashing lights and dual-note siren.
Is she about to do something that would drive Trump insane?
Of course as this is still actually… what? 2013? Obama would still be in charge, so probably not as big a deal.
Why do you think he created the Space Force? To keep out those ‘illegal aliens’!
When the opening sequence of the comic rolled Sydney’s car had a 2011 TX inspection sticker on the windshield in the “future”, and Obama was still President.
Oh! Calling Sydney’s alignment s Chaotic Good (help people first, figure out political fallout later).
Well… the comic started in 2010, and for Sydney only about ten days had passed by the time she was stranded on the Alari planet. It’s been hinted that that wormhole also displaced them in time, so there’s a good chance that by the time Sydney reaches Earth, she finds that several months have passed there. But even if we finally reach the end of that loooong flashback, it would still mean that in the Grrrlverse it’s early 2011, and Obama still has years as president to look foreward to.
But you need to remember, Sydney’s Earth is a Sci Fi world where America has a black president. Which means only one thing. Bring on the asteroid!
So what does that make our world with an Oompa Loompa as POTUS? o_O
That would reference Buckaroo Banzai and the President’s Doomsday plan (short form)