Grrl Power #714 – Such navigation. So wow.
Sydney’s about to find out if she’s smorgtose intolerant. Even if she is, she might not know why she starts having ear farts.
Looks like Sydney is about to get some honest to god instruction on using the orbs. Or at least that one function of the one orb anyway. Also, apparently being stabbed in the ear is suppressing her blush response at the moment. Normally being sandwiched in between two smexy alien boys would make her go fuchsia. But she also might be getting used to being around them, which inoculates her against her own responses somewhat.
Page is still coming along. Still need to fix up the navigation and tag all 700+ comics with the list of characters appearing in them, then figure out how to use the new cast page stuff. Well, it’ll get done eventually.
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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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Should she REALLY be giving the game away to them? The orbs are more valuable then she imagines… Probably…
Well she needs to learn how to play the game in the first place.
They know she traveled by Aetherium Causeway. They scanned it and intercepted her.
Besides, you have to make friends somewhere, and this is a great starting point.
The whole crew already knows that she has a pocket sized device that can generate Aetherium Causeways, and they are fully aware of how advanced that is
They are also trusted friends of Dabbler, who sent them to pick Sydney up in the first place.
It’s not like they can steal them. And they’re clearly good guys, and a professional navigator will be able to tell her more than a “Jill of all trades, master of none” like Dabbler.
@Elfguy: The classic would be “the host probably needs to die for transferral”. There’s also the option of “let’s pressure the host into working for us, if we can’t just overpower them”. I mean, they probably just have to get per laptop and threaten to publish her secret folder! *ehem*
Also, it seems unlikely that they’ll try anyway, just saying that they probably would have plenty of awful ways of TRYING to steal them, if they wanted.
Sydney seems like the “open book” sort.
She is a nerd, She is into geek culture, Everyone always assumes our taste in porn (and very few care about it these days).
What secret could she possibly have that would seriously embarrass her? (She might still be embarrassed by her browser history, but not enough to give into demands).
If they were going to be evil, they’d just go for hostages anyway. You can reveal a secret (to eliminate blackmail) but it is harder to rescue a hostage safely.
Blackmail only works if the person is willing to hid whatever dirt someone has on them. The minute the person being blackmailed is willing to take the hit blackmail becomes worthless. Jeff Bezos is a good example of this he took over the narrative and will now more than likely has successfully destroyed AMI.
This is the advice I will give everyone here, if someone attempts to blackmail you tell them to go right ahead. Just give your friends and family a heads up about it come clean don’t hid it. Yes it may cost you some friends and your family but it is better than some parasite bleeding you every time they feel they can get money out of you.
Jill of all trades, Mistress of one, surely.
Mistress of many()people) you mean.
So that’s two aliens that have penetrated her now.
(Sorry not sorry)
Don’tcha HATE it when boys’ pokey-bits intrude into your personal spaces?
Giving someone a Wet Willy is a bit different than giving them a Spikey Willy…One can be a lot more painful than the other.
[ForceUser] – Would this qualify as a marriage-proposal, among his kind … ?
[MidnightDStroyer] – She CALLS it a “cheek horn”, but we don’t yet know if it’s necessarily as STIFF as a Earth animal’s horn would be. That face of hers might “read” as pained, but it could also be just “weirded-out”. Given its small size, it may be vestigial, or perhaps it has a function we’ve not yet suspected, such as (for instance) dispensing-&-detecting pheromones …
… in which case:
“Whoa There, Romeo!!!?! Maybe some Flowers, Dinner, & a Movie, before you try for 3rd-Base!!!?!”
;)
:)
Like always, the only really intuitive interface is a nipple.
All other “intuitive” things are learned.
Agreed, most things are “intuitive” only with some basic knowledge.
Well, they are looking at some sort of multi-dimensional puckering of space-time – so, a Aetherium Space Nipple?
Or anus (Sydney would rather not talk about those, for a long time :P )
Aetherium Space Nipple sounds like a psychedelic rock band name…
Altus, horning in on her personal space.
Hey, he’s a horny guy, give him a break.
Hold up there, you two. We’ve already established Frix is the ‘horndog’ on this ship, don’t go crossing the streams!
I have been waiting for this one. And once she knows how to describe what she needs, there is probably interstellar navigation teaching she can get downloaded into her mind at Fracture.
How will the plumbing at Archon handle grakz?
If they can show her how to set Earth as a waypoint, or find it in the menu, she will be able to find her own way home and not need to rely on Dabbler to call her a taxi. And if they can show her how to set a destination from scratch, as the “intuitive” comment suggests they can, she’s basically set. The next question would be, can anyone inside her shield travel with her? The bubble bus may be about to become the bubble ship.
Hopefully she’ll learn how to use more than just two orbs at once. Maybe touching them is a simple user friendly form of interfacing with them. But a more power user mode may be available, such as telepathic controls. Or a toggle function so she could turn on certain orbs and they would stay on even when let go.
I very much doubt that will ever happen. The two orb max limits her character and prevents her from being OP. Remove that limitation and good God does Sydney become powerful. Though I suppose its possible that completing the inner circle, and maybe all those connector dots between the orbs will allow her to use all of them with her mind instead of holding them. But personally i doubt it.
My theory about the two orbs limits is that you need one brain each, and the human body only has two (right and left hemispheres of the brain are actually fully capable to independently control the whole body, rare cases exist where someone missing an hemisphere managed to live normally)
and you need enough nerves connections to the orbs to activate them with one of your brains, hands have a ton of nerves connection, much more than any other places Sidney tested
when Varia touch her, she basically add her own two brain processors to the mix and together they should be able to 4 orbs at once (like, flight, shield, life support and PEW PEW!”
since there is 7 orbs, we could imagine that it was a set planned for a 7 brains specie, either themselves or nested inside a giant creature with 7 brains that could be retrofitted as a living ship
Putting Aside the portion of your Theory requiring ancillary brains, what if the limitation is actually the number of hands. We have seen several functions of the orbs being manipulated by hand ‘controls’, perhaps the Orbs were designed to require a hand to be able to interact with those controls.
Now here is my thought: What if Cora, fit Sydney with an extra set of arms, using the same technology as that which is replacing her limbs, and is used to directly interact with her neuro-cortex. If so, could Sydney be able to operate more Orbs simultaneously?
I don’t think so. Remember, gloves block the orbs:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-98-triple-facepalm-and-sidebutt/
Also, Sydney approached Dabs already about getting fitted with a cybernetic limb. One of Dabbler’s first arguments against it was that she didn’t know if the orbs would work with them.
True but that was with replacing her own hand/limb to make room for it,
but if it’s an entirely new set added on top of your own (and could somehow still be used)
then there wouldn’t really be any risk if it’s just reading your intent or whatever futuristic method is required.
If they don’t work they could probably be removed just as easily.
still might be worth a try tho if it is a possibility
That’s not how brains work.
has that ever stoped anyone from writing anything about them?
and holy hell the comment box is tiny
So, I find myself wondering what powers Varia would get from aliens, and just realized we have no idea what powers Varia gains from Max or Dabbler. We also don’t know if she gets anything special from the various races of the twilight council’s membership.
Actually, we know that she gets nothing from Max (she says so when she introduces her power to sydney). No clue re: dabbler though
We also know her power let her see Santa Clause when she tested it out on Hope,but she did get a power from it,
Granted the power was kind of eh? it worked how? by bookmarking her being thrown through a mirror? and given how power works in the Wearing the Cape univers that may be irrelavant and is now Ex Cannon! because Ex Cannon is a thing….
Sydney, Varia, and three two-handed swords?
I suspect that eventually she will learn how to “grasp” a third ball, but it would require some loose clothing and ecchi acts…. not something she could do on an ongoing basis, or quickly in the event of an emergency.
The Veil probably is what killed the previous owner of the orbs. That or whatever is giving people powers blocks a living being from passing through the Aetherium Causeways. the original owner got left behind. She will not be able to use the Aetherium Causeway near earth, no leaving or arrival. remember the earth was fuzzed out on the travel menu.
What if the Veil is creating powers for people. It alters perceptions. If humans have a reality altering ability and the Veil is messing with that……
I think that the plumbing on Cora’s ship has already dealt with that. She should be fully purged of that meal, with the exception of what got absorbed into her bloodstream, by the time she gets home. Hmm, maybe her urine will still have some interesting after-effects at home.
Sydney: Quarantine?!
Dr. Chevy: We have to make sure you did not bring any nasty alien pathogens with you. A couple of days in isolation should be long enough to make sure you are clean.
Sydney: Can’t I just have a really good shower to make sure I am clean?
Max: You know that’s not how it works.
Sydney: [ Smirk ] Will there be probing or just whisking?
Dr. Chevy: Here, swallow this. This will let me monitor your vital signs and stuff over the next day or so.
Sydney: Well, I’ve swallowed weirder stuff, especially in the last few days.
This is what happens when Dabbler imagines the conversation, especially the last line.
Sydney: Well, I’ve swallowed weirder stuff, especially in the last few days.
Math and Dabbler: More details please!
Cora’s ship dealt with Sydney’s FIRST encounter with Grakz.
I don’t believe for a moment she won’t go back and try a smaller helping once she gets Aetherium Causway navigation between Earth and Fracture figured out.
Chiliheads are chiliheads.
nice theory, but they already have bunch of aliens from outer space or other dimension roaming the planet left and right, they have technomagical scans too, i’m sure they don’t need quarantine in her case
especially considered that the only two places she went was the destroyed planet that others went too, so if there was any pathogens, they already have data samples for it, and the other is a public spacioport that deal with general aliens and is probably equipped for this sort of issues
not to mention that she is currently riding on what is basically a space marines ship bringing her home, they would have thought of this sort of thing in advance
A hat?
Or a hat that leads to another hat? It’s like…twooooo hats. Only…..nooooot.
*I’m really bad at existentialism
Too bad it’s not in the shape of a Klein Bottle Hat
A hat where your head is covered by the out side of the hat – since it doesn’t have an inside.
Actually, all hats use the outside of the hat to cover your head, since it’s just a deformed plane.
Just like water is always on the outside of the glass– inside the concave structure, of course, but still, it’s on the outside of the glass. The glass is neither half full, nor half empty– but a significant area of the glass is covered in water.
Any chance the archives can return to “most recent post at the top”?
:D
I agree, that staticy and weird travel log entry should be visited.
When she has access to some more fire power (like Maxima).
Good grief her face in panel 7! I literally had to wipe down my monitor after seeing panel 7 the first time, i’m just thankful I was eating a sandwich and not drinking something.
“Ha ha, squishy human!” /Morbo
heh….
beefcake sydney sandwich with nerdgasm dressing….
Will seek me you above all other should realize that there are plenty of things that make people nerd out and when you’re talkin to Navigators scientific navigation tools are one of them
Sydney Sydney Sydney you should have known better. You just flashed 2 highly-skilled Navigators with navigation nerd bait. At least it’s not navigation porn whatever that is
The real life version would be airport maps.
Nah, the real life version is a combination of GPS and Google Earth.
Bold of you to assume this ISN’T navigation porn.
Just a general observation: Sydney looks a lot more confident — and more subtly drawn — since letting down her guard with Frix. Maybe bith she and the artist needed that break.
Judging from the boys reaction this might actually be navigation porn.
With my luck I just accidentally coined a term for something that should not be but definitely will gained its niche on the internet
It is an official fetish now.
If I know the internet right it wouldn’t surprise me if there already is navigation porn on the net. I will not google it to find out.
Kinda like: alt.sex.bestiality.hamster.duct-tape
It was sort of a running gag.
Origins (for what it’s worth):
ftp://ftp.armory.com/user/leavitt/html/data/bizarre.html
Rule 34?
yes
For every rule, there is always at least one exception.
Navigation porn are really nice maps, my kingdom for a damn good map, a compass, a good watch and a sexton. With those for things I can get you anywhere on a planet. Well as long as I know time zones on the planet everything else is just math. No really it is a navigator thing anyone that does any level of real navigation has a thing for good maps. Charts which are maps are in another room.
The sheer variety of the Sydney’s facial expressions is astounding.
Here, she is displaying her concussion-eyes. She uses these to signal an urgent need for medical care relating to head trauma.
/Attenborough
I was worried she might be having a hawtness induced stroke owing to the differing pupil size.
Someone better call Frix
He is right there, at the table drinking a malted shake (isn’t that what the cool kids use to drink on a date? o_O)
And being so KYOOT! to boot!
Butt not wearing a zoot-suit :P
No one wants a riot :)
Hey, if she was wearing a zoot suit, then she’d be throwing back a bottle of beer, not a milkshake.
“Normally being sandwiched in between two smexy alien boys would make her go fuchsia”
Actually, with how they were in the batch together and two straw drinking a shake, I’d say Sydney just got laid. I think her blush is probably kaput for a little bit.
She is still recovering from a ‘tailburn’, she is in no condition to ‘get laid’ (unless it’s on a hospital bed hooked up to an IV drip… to her butt :P)
The ‘getitng laid’ I think happened before she had to vsit the ship’s latrine durring bathtime.
In panel one with Frix, with canine jaws/facial structure, would his mouth even be capable of creating suction to use a straw?
I’d say it would be fully possible that it would, yes.
It not only relies on the forms of the lips, as those are mainly used to hold the straw and secure the sucking pressure.
The canines he resembles…and pretty much every other mammal, plus marsupials…can indeed suck on straw-like objects, because that’s basically what nipples are. (Kangaroos have nipples inside their pouches, ya know; that’s what the teeny tiny baby joey latches onto once it crawls in there.)
This might be a space future tech auto sucking straw made especially for Frix.
So I take it Sydney is just going to ignore the fact that whatever Galen’s species is bears a striking resemblance to her best griend and commanding officer eith a mysterious past? Gold skin, statuesque build, pointy ears……
He’s got golden skin in the same way that you can say someone from eastern Asia has golden skin…but it’s not metallic golden by any means.
Was meaning to mention how Galen isn’t as shiny as Maxi, and his ears are a different shape of pointy
I have little doubt that Maxima will come out to meet the ship when they get to Earth. Unless Cora wants to avoid landing for some reason and drops Sydney off in low orbit.
Since the existence of aliens isn’t general knowledge, I suspect Sydney would make a solo decent from a discrete distance. Halo making a HALO drop, as it were.
on the other hand, the higher ups in ARCHON are aware, as are several of the ARC-SWAT members. one of which was the person who arranged this trip in the first place. i suspect that there will be an actual meeting. Cora certainly seems to assume she’ll get to see and talk to Dabbler for example. i would assume that even if the ship is left in orbit somewhere no one on earth will see it, there are shuttles or the like that can be used for a more discreet landing, and Cora will probably give her crew some shore leave while Cora herself catches up with Dabbler.
The people at McMurdo station might be surprised by a knock at their door.
May I just say that panel 1 is so cute! DaveB has caught the 1950’s meme perfctly with Sydney and Frix. Respect sir!
Yeah, that panel is adorable. :D
Love is in the air! -sniff- sniff- Or it could be a reactor leak, Frix may need to check that out.
No, that’s just Sydney :P
Syd needs a Woof(poodle) skirt to finish off the 50’s look
I like the first picture. So… ’60s teenagers on a date’. Just needs a jukebox playing in the background, and an Impala out side…
Of course a predator would use a prey animal in their example :P
No impala, it ought to be a Ford Galaxy.
They are in space. It should be a Ford Prefect.
Not a Ford Galaxie or Mercury? o_O
Would be a bit cramped (and smelly) inside a Prefect :P
at least you’d know where your towel was
And if you get bored, you’d also have a whole galaxy’s-worth of reading material, entertaining without being as dry & stale as the Encyclopedia Galactica.
A chevy nova?
Having observed a newborn try to learn to breastfeed, I can assure you that nipples are apparently *not* intuitive. (They have to do more than just suck: Target the bullseye, form a seal, have their tongue in the right place, and then execute a sequence of motions while sucking. There are people whose *jobs* are based on this not being easy.)
Just like there are people whose ‘job’ it is to assist mothers in giving birth, something their species had been doing for millennia with few problems, because apparently, sometime in the last two hundred years, females have forgotten how to give birth on their own :rolleyes:
Cannot tell what exactly you’re rolling your eyes at.
For anyone reading who doesn’t know… wandering off to give birth alone was probably never “just a thing” for homo sapiens, sometime orders of magnitude before 200 years ago giving birth became a really dangerous thing for humans compared to most mammals. It’s just that modern medicine has managed to avert many of the possible causes of death during the process. Before 200 years ago, the death rate for women giving birth was as high as 1000 to 1500 per 100000.
So when you see one of these people who condemns modern medicine, or advocates for a return to ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyles… make sure to punch them in the face (literally or metaphorically) for your mom.
1 in 100, actually.
Up until the turn of the 1900s, the mortality rate for childbirth was 1 in 100.
Which is what 1000 in 100000 is if you properly reduce it down ;)
Niece almost died (and her son had slight brain damage) because of a midwife, so, how about punching them in the face instead?
I wouldn’t say no problems exactly…*eyes infant mortality rates and complications before modern medicine*
It wasn’t in the last two hundred years. It was in the last 500. The Malleus Mallificarum fabricated by a discredited priest in 1487 (the Church formally disavowed & discredited it) evoked such a fear-filled, hate-filled propaganda against any female having any sort of specialized knowledge that men didn’t, that it literally wiped out hundreds of thousands of herb-healers and midwives across most of Europe. This set back the knowledge of women’s healthcare for nearly 480 years. Yes, 480. It wasn’t until the 1970s that midwivery skills even came close to catching up to the information that was lost during the literal witch hunts that caused a lot of women to be hanged in most countries, and burned at the stake in a few (mostly just Scotland and France).
And even then. thanks to the advent of baby formula before that point, women in the Western World have been conned into believing that baby formula was somehow better than their own natural breastmilk. Formula usually not, because with rare exception, human milk is the most nutritious thing for human babies to consume…provided you avoid all medications, etc, that have the warnings, “do not breastfeed while taking this” attached to it, and aren’t suffering from some lactation imbalance or inability or whatever that, thanks to centuries of consistently ignoring or destroying information about female health, which is different from male health, women have to suffer in ignorance over. (This is due to the utter trollshite medical community attitude of assuming that if it applies to white males, it automagically applies to everyone else. Modern medical understanding for non-males (and non-white-males) literally is lagging behind by half a century in most cases.)
So don’t roll your eyes. There literally are people–hundreds of millions of people in North America & Europe, etc–who don’t know how to breastfeed out there, thanks to generations of men assuming women don’t need competent, knowledgeable, gender-specific medical health…simply because it’s something they don’t need.
That’s like assuming that because your leg has never been broken, someone else is to be considered stupid if they can’t set their own broken leg.
(*Formula is usually not… missed the verb, there.)
The lack of understanding about breastfeeding also has to do with the unhealthy Western World assumption that breasts are automagically “sex” related, and thus “shameful” and “mustn’t be talked about” and “cannot be shown in public.”
Once formula entered the scene, prudish people pushed hard to get breastfeeding banned from public places, when literally we ave woodcuts and sketches from the 1800s of women breastfeeding in church and no one cared back then. Because that’s literally all it was, nursing sacks being used as what they literally are, food-dispensing flesh bags, to quiet the shrill cries of a hungry infant who deserves to be fed on a regular schedule (because that’s how you get to have a healthy baby, ya know).
This is why there is finally a hard pushback against the notion that breasts are somehow unclean things only meant for sex, and why there are so many ads asking people, “Would you eat your restaurant meal in a bathroom toilet stall? No? …Because it’s not clean enough to eat in, right? Then why are you demanding a woman has to breastfeed her baby in a dirty bathroom toilet stall??”
THAT is because of the systematic destruction of midwivery skills & the absolutely idiotic insistence of guys that women “don’t need that kind of information.” People used to know how to induce breastmilk flow because it was public knowledge. People also used to know not only what mastitis was, but how to soothe it. Used to.
Yes, I’m pissed off about this. We lost so much knowledge because of misogyny and racism, the health of billions has been adversely affected over the generations…and yes, the witch hunt attitude was carried with colonizers to other lands, where they systematically disdained, dismissed, and even destroyed the locals’ knowledge of midwivery & general medicine, too…because it wasn’t developed or approved by white males.
…By the way, the BEST way to fix this is NOT to go into a “not all males…!” tirade, but instead, to demand that medical health research start focusing on the distinct needs of both women and non-whites. So anyone wanting to hump the “Not all…” hashtag, stow it and start pressuring your governments and the medical R&D institutions (universities, corporations, etc) to put billions of dollars into genuine, and bring-it-up-to-equal, amounts of medical research. Because we seriously needed to start investing in catching up on non-male and non-white-male medical understanding way back in the Renaissance, never mind the early 1900s.
Actually agree with you
It’s a shame that women have to basically be taught (tooth and nail against the male medical hierarchy) what should be a natural function
That was what the rolling of eyes was about
“We lost so much knowledge because of misogyny and racism”, most of you are too young, to remmeber a book called, Our Bodies Ourselves, and the efforts to get it banned.
Does anyone remember the pair of “Owner’s Manuals”, printed to look (from the cover) like a car owner’s manual, but containing extensive medical details of men & women, respectively?
I don’t believe that anyone who has been pregnant for 9 months has any confusion about the health benefits of breastmilk… even us “stupid” americans. There are, however, a lot of lazy or “too busy” mothers who are willing to forgo the benefits of it for their child in the sake of convenience.
Also, breast milk is convenient and helpful in the case of inadequate or inconsistent flow of breast milk or where there is no mother. (Women aren’t lining up to feed foster babies, so… formula.)
Whoa, dude…you got a little privilege-stain right about…there. No, to the left…no, not to the right, it’s far more to the left…
Your assumption that everyone knows about breastfeeding’s benefits being superior to bottlefeeding is indeed a privilege. Everyone does not know this. Women and men are kept in the dark by conservative prejudices against sex education, which includes reproductive healthcare, both here in America and abroad. There are girls in America who are living such heavily sheltered lives that they don’t even know they are pregnant until they actually give birth. A simple Google search of “doesn’t know she’s pregnant” turns up dozens of cases in America…and those are the ones we get to hear about.
Your privileged assumption is actually indicative of the problem, because it’s the far extreme: one side assumes it’s right for females (and males) to know nothing about reproductive health, sexualty, healthy relationships, self-care, etc. The other extreme assumes everyone knows, or should know, and if they don’t some how magically know (despite being raised in, say, conservative misogynistic cultural surroundings), then that makes them morons…when they’re simply ignorant. Deliberately kept ignorant, in many cases.
There’s the infamous case of a Member of Congress, elder male, sitting on a panel for discussing female reproductive health rights, who assumes that menstrual bleeding can be “held inside” like urine when someone needs to pee, and was horrified when his own staff assistant said she can’t do that, because she’d still end up bleeding all over the office chairs if she can’t have access to sanitary equipment, or the bathroom breaks to go change it out.
And the capper (making this stain something you’ll want to remove quickly by curing said privileged ignorant assumptions), the Oscar for Best Short Documentary went to a film exploring the fact that there are entire regions in rural India where women didn’t know that their monthly bleeding is natural and normal, and not just some mysterious illness or disease.
I suggest taking the time to watch that documentary, and the one about the Period Man, who suffered social stigma for years, trying to figure out a way to come up with a cheap solution to the fact that far too many women in India had no affordable means of acquiring sanitary (emphasis on sanitary) napkins/pads, just because he wanted to help out his wife, rather than have her suffer from using manky used rag scraps that never got fully clean.
And then take the time to realize that yes, there are kids here in America that are indeed that ignorant. That’s why liberals fuss so much about parents pulling their kids out of sex education classes, and why “abstinence only” education is so damaging…because we are not born knowing how to take care of ourselves from day 1. We have to learn. Education is required, and it has to be effective, fact-based education.
Being kept stupid (or the extreme opposite, shaming people into feeling stupid for not knowing, which means more often than not, they don’t feel good about asking for more information or seeking it out independently) helps no one…and yes, it does happen.
Just an FYI for the nipple and latching and intuition talks, for babies with issues latching, or where nursing appears to be non-intuitive, a possible tongue-tie should at least be evaluated by someone who is very familiar with them – unfortunately, not all lactation consultants are. Revision drastically helped my daughter. It is not the only cause, but it is an oft-overlooked one that can cause more problems later on.
I…don’t normally say anything here, but that is just….repugnant. I happen to be pregnant now…with our second child. If it had not been for modern medicine, I would not have survived the first one. That being said, I am not exactly a spring chicken, I did not go out and mix my genetics with anyone, I waited until I was ready, found someone I wanted to be with, and we have been married for just over 10 years. So, I am sure my age is a factor into this. That being said, not all pregnancy related deaths happen at the time of childbirth, In fact, the whole 9 months (7 and a half for some of us) are not a real great time for a women’s health. Your hormones go crazy, your balance is completely shit, and you start loosing sleep (with someone kicking you in the kidney’s) to prepare you for the impending months of 3 hour sleep cycles you will have to endure once the new arrival happens. There are so many things that can go wrong here, it is not just “go squat in the woods and kid just slides out”.
Breastfeeding is a whole separate issue, that can vary depending on size of boobs, and it took me weeks to perfect my football hold because I am naturally well endowed. So while it may come off as intuitive, there are no manuals, no guides, and it is a hell of a lot easier to have someone there to help show you the best way to get it to working. It is no different than learning anything else, and some people can do it on their own, but there is nothing wrong with having someone who has experience and training to offer to help…like they did…for hundreds of years through midwives, wet nurses, etc. Before that shit was seen was witchcraft and all the other aforementioned bullshit that killed off thousands of women who saved the lives of others before modern medicine.
That being said, I am not going to go on a rant about men, my OB is a man, very nice, a bit preachy for me, but he has delivered over 30,000 babies in his career, so I am gonna guess he has a fairly decent idea on how the female reproductive system works, and if he has seen and dealt with some crazy shit in his time, hopefully that will mean if anything strange happens with this one, he will have an idea of how to handle it so we can all survive the situation.
Rubbery cheek horn
Sounds more like Sydney’s complaint is that he isn’t wearing a rubber on his horn :P
Surprised one of them didn’t go “So pretty!” in panel seven :P
I bet the two hot space nerds would love to study that tunnel in panel six more intimately.
With or without Sydney’s involvement? Or maybe forget she is even there halfway through :D
“Oh hey Sydney, forgot you were there!”
Anyone who comments “So intuitive” when shown something needs to be handed three shells with one word: “Explain!”
I’m Male, so I only need one shell.
Well, when one shell loves another shell VERY MUCH, and they are adult and mature, pretty soon you get the 3rd shell. But only if they transfer bodily fluids.
Grab with two of the shells. third shell scrapes any leftovers.
So, once Max and the gang know Sydney is alive and well, could she sign on as a temporary member of Cora’s crew? Maybe learn more about her orbs… and Frix?
And Coras crew would no doubt want to learn more about Sydney’s orbs. Frix could also be something worthy of a more close study.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that the unknown orb is power and interface. Medical would be included in life support (green orb), but hasn’t been activated yet. The unknown orb harvests dark/vacuum/zero-point energy and acts as a battery for the others, along with providing an interface to the user: the ability to summon an orb to the hand, tethering the orbs to the user, etc.
Just a theory of course.
nah, the unknown orb is a handheld video game system … for long flights
…except long flights necessitate both hands being busy, one with the flight orb, one with the shield orb, so unless the original creators had 3 or more hands to work with…
I’d guess 7 hands, or 7 sucker-tip fingers on each hand.
I’d guess 8 at least (7 orbs and one hand free for misc).
Well considering the ‘universe’ supports magic…
Syd: “Abracadabra!” *poof* ball of light engaged
I don’t think it’s a power amplifier, because the individual orbs already have that function (going from Mach 4 to Mach 16 with the flight orb, for example). I honestly do think it’s either Medical (Sydney still hasn’t reached for it when ill or injured, yet), or something none of us have considered.
Things might get interesting when the battery orb goes into auto reloading mode and start absorbing heat from the surrounding area.
Dave,
Highly recommend finding a way to crowdsource those tags. Your enthusiastic fans will likely enjoy revisiting pages and tagging them for you.
Sydney’s “card rank” (see cast page) will probly go up to 7 or 8 when she gets home to make a full report – corroborated by Cora, so Maxima can tell it’s not all hyperbole.
But Sydney also have her phone… with pictures…
Yeah, she should be much higher than a 6…
Actually, was just reading the cards and noticed a reference in Peggy’s card about Maxima being injured in Iraq… Anyone have details? Maybe something about that super who is as powerful as her who is presumed dead?
It’s generally believed that Panel 4 is the super you’re referring to.
I can’t see user icons on the new page. To make it really odd, the very first icon always shows as a slightly rotated gray square, no matter which user it actually is.
I am viewing this at work, which enforces an internet filter, but I could see icons before the new page design.
The professional aspect is a modern thing, but getting experienced help for a mother in labor doubtlessly goes back as far as humans have had language. Anyone in near that much pain is going to seek help from an expert, like the matriarch of the tribe.
Put in a different context, all humans can tell stories and draw pictures. They have done so for thousands of years. We all come here because Dave is a professional in a field that didn’t exist 100 years ago.
Put
(See my comment above about the centuries of devastation wrought by the asshats who published the Malleus Mallificarum, because getting exprienced help for mothers in labor was seriously interrupted for the last half-millenium.)
Yeah, I sent that thread to my wife since we had issues with latching with our first child and we thankfully had lactation consultants to fall back on (2011). I thought she would enjoy the history and knowledge aspects of it.
Just an FYI for the nipple and latching and intuition talks, for babies with issues latching, or where nursing appears to be non-intuitive, a possible tongue-tie should at least be evaluated by someone who is very familiar with them – unfortunately, not all lactation consultants are. This drastically helped my daughter!
That first panel is disgustingly adorable
That comment is even funnier with your avatar.
Hey DaveB, not to be a smartass, but isn’t Altus’ horn on his temple, not his cheek?
You need to take a closer look at panels 4, 5, and 7.
I agree it looks like a temple horn, so technically it would be a shofar. :)
If it’s of similar length to the horn on Altus’ right side, then Sydney has a good reason to complain about it sticking shofar into her ear.
*snerk* You win the Internet for the day!
Looks like Sydney will do anything to speed up her journey home…!
Big Question
what happens if she accidentally activates in while the ship is IN warp?
Super warp?
Takes over the warp drive on the ship for a coarse change?
Tears a where she is at to the destination?
Dimension hops?
Goes PLAID!
The part of the ship near her goes one place one way, and the rest of the debris field (sorry, ship) goes on it’s original path.
SEE ALSO: Opening a jumpgate within a jumpgate from Babylon 5, divide by zero, The Dummies Guide to Interstellar Navigation, and Zen and the art of warp core repair
I’ve been thinking about that whole “divide by zero” schtick. If you divide zero by any other non-zero number, you get zero because there is no other number that will fit into zero…Zero is zero.
But if you divide any non-zero number by zero, you should get “infinite” because no matter how many zeroes you have, they take up no room in any non-zero number, thus infinity is the result.
But if you divide Zero by Zero, the result should be One. Only one Zero can fit inside of a Zero.
Just as long as they do not go into the dimension where every one is knitted yarn people.
[Drakeye]:
“O! – M! – G! – We’ve bypassed Warp-Speed, & accelerated to the Speed-of-LINT!!!?!”
( … “SSSPOO-OO-OO-OONNN!!!” … )
Love the cuteness in the first panel
Sydney and Frix are SO FREAKING ADORABLE sharing a shake. <3
OH NO! Didn’t notice it till now … the diagram is inside-out!
Making it a one way portal.
I run into this all the time due to my support function. Everyone is an expert in their own field. Syd’s is Comic Books and to a lesser extent video games. If you gave her Schlock’s Plasma Cannon or Captain America’s Shield, she might recognize them for what they were, she might even be able to use them in some limited capacity, but she would never really understand their full use. Her odds of being severely injured would be super high, too do to not knowing what she does not know.
She is going to have to expose those sphere’s to a lot of experts to get any real use out of them.
As for taking them away, good luck with that.
Has anyone simply asked nicely? o_O
Sydney’s balls seem semi-sentient
“Hey, would you seven like to come with us?”
“Oh Grunk yes! We have been trying to find a way to leave every since she grabbed Snangle from his resting spot! Have you seen what she eats? And the language!!”
Sydney’s odds of being injured are always super high.
LOL… Well, yeah…
I wonder how long it’ll take after she gets home to realize she had gotten to experience being on a multi-race spacestation, and fly on a starship. then geek out over it. I know I would.
And then had sex with a hot Alien.
All together an adventure that would make Captain James T. Kirk proud.
And defeated giant alien super squids. Commander Shepard would also be proud.
I’d say that his horn is on his temple more than his cheek, myself.
thought i would point out Varia hasnt been added to cast page yet.. i like her. shes cheeky.
Stray thought theater: Sydney can generate an Aetherium Causeway for travel. What if she could generate an Aetherium Cannon for destruction? (That would be creating a partial AC and then letting it “snap back” without restraining the consequences. Or just using an AC like a slingshot with what is inside it as the projectile.)
Any FTL system can be used as a weapon if you use it to fire a rock at someone.
The term you are looking for is Mass Driver, and even one pound of matter will pack an ungodly punch when it is going at a large fraction of the speed of light.
Well if it’s going faster than light it might not have mass ;)
But it’s carrying a LOT of energy…
A similar trick was used as a weapon in the TV-Series “Farscape”, when a wormhole was opened next to a battle-fleet, with the DESTINATION-end in the photosphere of a star.
One second, you’re adrift in cold vacuum.
The next, you’re deep inside a thermonuclear furnace’s VERY-STEEP gravity-well!
It’s FAR more efficient, once the targeting-details are ironed-out.
Why fire a weapon at a target, when merely opening a channel allows you to use a star’s own gravity to grab hold of a target, & pull it into that star?
[McClaw]:
Also:
Most “FTL”-systems fail as projectile-weapons, because their method of transit is based on doing MOST of their travel in another, higher, dimension, in order to bypass our own “Einsteinian” limitations. It’s not-so-much a faster way to travel, as much as using normal, sub-light travel-speeds to navigate a “shortcut” through non-Euclidian space. The best compromise that I’ve heard, is where some OTHER form of “mass-driver” can be fired THROUGH the “FTL-drive”, with a destination that opens-up just before the projectile’s arrival (& in close proximity to the target), in order to minimize any warning to the victim.
A prime example is depicted as a “LOTA” (“Long-gun Of The Apocalypse”), in the “Schlock Mercenary” web-comic. I refer you to the link below, for a good place to start reading:
[https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2015-02-23]
Many FTL systems are not DIRECTLY usable as projectile weapons. That doesn’t exclude the possibility of the same technology having applications which are far more destructive than the traveling.
@Dave if you want to crowd source the page tagging you could set up a shared google spreadsheet with the comic number and then we fans can go through and fill in which characters are on each page (either csv or one name per column depending on how it works best for you).
Not sure if your system would allow importing it but at least you’d just have to copy and paste when filling it rather than having to type it up each time.
I’ve been wanting to do some machine learning and crunch the entire archive, but don’t have the experience yet to generate all the data I want. Ideally, I’d end up with each comic having a list of which characters appear in it, in which panels, and with a per-character transcript. I’d also want to save a data model that could auto-process new strips.
Assigning word bubbles to the correct character in the correct order is a tricky proposition, especially detecting the connecting lines between multiple bubbles. Any approach I’ve come up with so far would still require a fair amount of manual validation and correction, but it could be drag & drop instead of a lot of typing.
Like most of my app ideas, my imagination outpaces my time and skillset. I’d love to make an app that could crunch any comic’s archives and run a SaaS offering, but I feel like there’s not that big of a market for it.
[brichins]:
I’ve also tried to help, making my slow-&-careful way through the list of characters, & trying to standardize the format of data therein.
It’s a work-in-progress.
If enough people are interested, it might be fast enough to hand-build a database of appearances and maybe transcripts. A wrapper for something simple would be pretty easy to throw together – what do you have so far? Anyone else want to get involved?
If it’s just tagging for the character appearances, a Google spreadsheet would work fine, but if anyone’s interested in transcribing (e.g. for searching the archives) I’d either build my own app or go with something like Caspio. Airtable and such are great, but they all have a pretty low record limit on the free tiers and are hard to do anything sophisticated with.
I have tags for all known characters i recognized and some i gave unknown characters for every comic page. Some still miss some tags (mostly press since almost noone had a name – except Suzie Wen). Since i taged every known charakter in all pages they have spoilers.
One page per line (714 lines with this comic) comma seperated and ending with ;. If i used placeholders they are all the same so they can be replaced with a simple text editor. Any idea how i could get it to DaveB or post it here for everyone to enhance?
Example:
Kopykraut, Omnigal;
Kopykraut, Omnigal, Illumina;
Sydney, Joel, Olivia;
Sydney, Maxima, Anvil, Stallwart;
Sydney, Joel;
[BlackIkarus]:
Two Minor Revisions, If You Please, to your line-entry for Page_4 …
1)__”Stalwart”, not “Stallwart”.
2)__I’ve been told by others that the 5th figure in the final panel of Page_4 is Peggy, our “Sniper Extraordinaire”.
(far background, up above on the balcony)
… on another note, I’m a little unsure of the syntax used for tags … wouldn’t all of these tags need to start with a “#”-character … ?