Grrl Power #724 – Xenophilia
Nothing like quelling fears about alien invasions when people are distracted with wondering what said aliens look like naked.
This page is my fault for designing aliens who look like fit and sexy humans with different skin tones and minor cosmetic appliances on their face. It’s something I gripe about a lot when watching anything with aliens in it… well, most anything, not stuff like “The Arrival” but it’s just impractical to do a long running show with actors when a good percentage of the cast is technically aliens. Slap some paint and makeup on someone, say they worship “Fandril” and you’re set. Otherwise you have to have a crew of puppeteers working each of your alien cast. Something I appreciated they attempted with Farscape at least.
Now that it’s a lot easier to map CG creatures over actors, I suppose it’s not unrealistic to think there might be a series with a regular cast member that looks like a seven foot tall kaiju, or a floating squid thing or something, but it’s still a lot more work than gluing some wrinkles on the bridge of an actors nose and calling them a Bajoran.
Speaking of mini-kaiju, have you guys seen Love, Death and Robots on Netflix? It’s pretty good generally, but the second story with the monster fights was dope and I want to see a series about that world. Actually, all of the shorts in that anthology really felt like the opening cut scenes pulled from a dozen different video games.
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So are those really handles running down both sides of Cora’s abdomen? Seriously? Love handles? Or is that just hard light, fool the eye stuff?
They may look like handles that stick out, butt they are not
I think it’s more like scales.
I was thinking more corset ribbing.
Guys, they are obviously radiators for all that hotness. Duh.
I keep hunting for the +1 button, but I can’t find it.
Oh perfect. Made my day
Oh hi!
It’s been a while since I’ve last followed yer comic(s).
Someday, I’ll get around to doing so again.
Possibly both. Given that the hard light projection is programmable, Cora could have both versions. One to hold on to and another just patterned to retain the look. Picking whichever suits her (potential) partner the best.
That pattern has been part of Cora’s outfit since we first met her.
True. Just went back and checked.
Check Umbrella Academy on Netflix. It’s crazy Sci-Fi in a modern setting with Superpowers, but they have a CGI mapped genetically enhanced Chimp that is just amazing to see. The mapping is so VERY clean. The story and characters are really good too.
Yeah, the technology is ALMOST there to do something like a movie based on “The Probability Broach” or other comics with fully sentient speaking apes and dolphins.
FAA love paaaa.
Find Beeee.
I’d love a Schlock Mercenary show, but I doubt we could find a production company with that much budget the creator would trust with his IP.
And so far, the coloring books and tv shows have been run as thinly-veiled ads by the arms manufacturers, so the Toughs may be reluctant to sign over additional rights anyways.
Yes. We do have the tech now, even for Schlock! (The rest are “easy”.) I would want to see it on a channel, though, not cinema, simply because of the length. Each of Howard’s “books” is about a full-length movie.
The Orville has Yaphit, why couldn’t a Schlock be done the same way? https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Yaphit
i want vorkosigan saga but lol we’ll never see it either
The effect in Umbrella Academy were terrific, but I can’t say I enjoyed the characters in it. They were all wildly incompetent, and the main villain of the piece …was throwing a temper tantrum. Like, okay, your father was a real dick, but ending all life on the planet? That seems like a BIT of an overreaction. Maybe see a therapist instead? And WHY did the time cops want the world to end? They never explained that. It was just 2-dimensional villainy.
I actually thought that was kind of the whole point of it all. It seemed like it was a comic book/ graphic novel brought to life, with all the 2 dimensionality kept intact, which kind of made it more…unique.
Growing up with someone as controlling as the Prof, and all growing up independently wealthy, they would realistically be pretty incompetent adults. The freedom to make and live with bad choices is where good choices come from.
It’s never really explained in the comics why the time guys want the world to end but we can make a few assumptions based on what they said. The world ending leads to them coming into power, somehow, or it not ending means they lose their position of power. Furthermore, they aren’t actually time police. They don’t care about keeping the timeline intact. They have specifically molded the timeline. The people they’re sent to kill in the comics are not time travelers.
They’re sent to kill people that would change the world, usually for the better and sometimes for the worse but leading to a better world because of the reaction to that evil. Basically, they are protecting a certain cause of events and have carefully guided time to lead in that direction. That said, every time they do this, time seems to come up with other ways to change things, hence the constant need for correction. Either that or by altering the timeline themselves they create a ripple effect that causes more problems that they constantly need to correct.
In the end they succeed. We know this because if they didn’t succeed, they would not be in the position they’re in. We know this because when the kid goes back in time again several events are undone. It’s not multi-verse theory, it is undone, wiped clean. So there is one time and they succeed. And because we are following #4 (I think it was 4, right? I’m horrible with names), because we’re following him we see the events as they play out. He is the ultimate time traveler at the moment, better then any of the others, otherwise he would simply lose flat out. His abilities beat their tech, so they have to chase him along his timeline, and we get to watch the events as they play out from his perspective because ultimately it’s the only one that really matters.
So why do they do what they do? My theory is that it’s the only way they end up in whatever position of power they’re in. Which means that they did not, originally, end up in that position of power or they were going to lose the position of power they were in when they discovered time travel. They got into their position, whatever that is, with time travel. And to maintain it a certain set of events needs to happen. And because they’re not omnipotent, they have to follow every single thing they do and THEN quell the ripples from all of those events and THEN do it again and again until the pond is still. If they were already in power and secure, time travel wouldn’t be necessary. If the original timeline always had them rise to power, time travel wouldn’t be necessary. There for the time traveling organization is a group of time travelers that have altered events to put themselves in a position of power, one that can only be secured by accounting for tens of thousands of years of human history and all the possible ‘ripples’ that can disrupt their job.
It still has some holes, of course. The best way to do all this is to send your team into the past, have them do all the problems outside your subjective experience, and instantly win. But if you’re not the one controlling it all then you’re basically trusting that team of yours to do what you want. So you have to oversee it. Personally. Every. Single. Step. And that means you need not a lot of agents, but skilled ones all the same, tools you can control but that also can get the job done. And that is what we’re seeing. We are seeing this person controlling things at every single step, watching every single person, and effectively making sure that EVERY agent distrusts each other so there’s no collusion. It is a very careful game that for one person will take a long time but if they aren’t at the helm ALWAYS they can’t trust their team to get it done and they personally don’t have a long enough life span to see every problem solved, since you clearly still experience time travel from a subjective view point.
The white violinist is insane and kind of stupid but honestly she was the victim of severe mental brainwashing and abuse and when that barrier between her and her powers snapped it probably had a loooot of backlash. I would argue that treating her like a child throwing a tantrum is exactly how you SHOULD treat her because she is a mentally disabled individual with severe psychological trauma that is in need of intense care and instead had a bunch of children adopted into a home to fight a war against actual murderers and psycopaths (children who have no explanation for their upbringing and a robot mom and alien dad (yes, he is an alien, explaining why he’s also so fricking stupid about people)) who suffer from extreme ptsd on top of it.
I wouldn’t call the show good. Every single person in it is damaged here and back. They didn’t have an Xavier to lead them and help them, they had an alien sociopath. But the show also seems to know that. As you’re watching them, you’re not watching heroes. You’re watching people some asshole dressed up as heroes when they were kids, no matter what they actually wanted or needed.
if the world end puts you in power, you are now the king of ash. power only works if you have a populace over which to have power. 5 was the most powerful man/boy in the world when he was in a post-apocalypse society, mainly because he was the only person left.
You literally miss the entire point from multiple perspectives, shane.
1.) They have the ability to time travel. They can literally be the King of whatever kingdom they want to be.
2.) I stated that 5 was the most powerful time traveler. This is self evident because if he weren’t then he would have lost, being out numbered as he was.
3.) Assuming these people ONLY have time travel or that the ones in charge are even human, given the very alien nature of several events in the story, is an assumption you shouldn’t make. For instance, in the comics, the old, crazy nutbag that adopted all the kids made an Inter-dimensional prison in a place similar to hell. And he looked perfectly human despite being an alien. A literal alien like Cora.
4.) Time travel doesn’t run on paradox. Simply put, if you go into the past to change the future so that whatever you wanted to stop doesn’t happen, negating your reason for going back into the past, then the timeline doesn’t break because it’s still a straight forward line. It just so happens that straight forward line has one day be April 2 2019 and then the next day be April 2nd, 1019. Or whatever. (Check out schlock mercenary for a really good rendition of non-paradoxical time travel).
Sooo….
5.) Be they humans or other, they are in power. They are not limited to earth, or even this dimension. They have the power to be where they want, when they want. Maybe they’re just humans enjoying reliving the 20th century over and over again and one of the agents is constantly killing artists in the past so other artists fill the void, so they’re never board. Maybe they live somewhere else, like on another planet or another dimension. Whatever the case, they are in power, and they only stay in power by doing what they do. Or they’re crazy, which is a lot more boring and kind of just ends up being too stupid to be a choice.
To be fair, she didn’t set out to destroy the world. That was an unintended consequence when wasshername fired a gun next to her ear while she was suspending/crushing her sibs after they attacked her. The two greatest errors the sibs made were when wasshername tried to use her rumor power on Sonic Domination instead of simply saying something like, “I’m sorry, if you want to scream at me, scream, if you want to hit me, hit me, but I’m your sister and I love you and I want to help you move forward and develop your power.”
The second mistake was locking her in the box, reducing her to the terrified state of her childhood and equating themselves with the psychological abuse she suffered as a little girl. This erased or at least subdued her sense of empathy.
Just look at the source material and the ‘authors’, it will then make a bit more sense (not a lot, butt a bit)
I appreciated the characters because they ran the gamut of reactions to a distant father, a Stepford mother, and child soldier upbringing. The broken siblings made a lot more sense to me than the X-Men or Teen Titans stepping out of a metahuman meatgrinder with anything resembling normal psyches. Not that I don’t love DC’s and Marvel’s characters, it just requires putting on my 4-color glasses and suspending some disbelief.
#1: willing to go to any lengths (including the Moon) to earn his father’s love and respect; #2: rebel with a cause — will exceed his father’s expectations, but in his own way; #3: Deprived of emotional support and approval, seeks adoration and fame; #4: rebel completely devoid of a cause, hiding from his own pain and PTSD in a drug haze (until it gets worse and he BSODs into a redemptive arc); #5: Oedipal need to supplant his father as the Smartest Person in the Room, raised by a robot and in love with a mannequin; #6: Really the only one that escapes most of the child-rearing disaster . . . by dying as a child; #7: Most powerful, most broken, most abused. Having her father and sister betray her, creating a dam to hold back vast power tied to passionate emotions . . . yeah, that could never result in a psychotic break and vast collateral damage, could it?
#1 reminds me of Cyclops quite a bit, actually, and #7 has hints of Dark Phoenix. But then, Batman is kind of The Shadow crossed with Doc Savage, Superman is Doc Savage crossed with Gladiator, The Fantastic Four are Doc Savage’s Brain Trust with super powers (kind of) . . . it’s not how original the idea is, per se, it’s how original the story that grows from it is.
At the party, I think Sydney should be awarded the medals she earned for her actions that led her to be picked up by Cora
a Silver Star or Bronze star with Valor for protecting Max from the eye-beam, thinking to clear the dust on the Ilari home world and shielding the team from the orbital blast.
a Purple Heart for being injured while fighting the planet killers on her own.
a POW/MIA Medal for becoming missing while in conflict against an armed enemy for however many days/months/years she’s been gone due to the time displacement that Dave’s been hinting at through the story.
Just the medals I’d have recommended her for if I was her supervisor.
I agree with your assessment, and medals are a huge part of esprit de corp… err morale in the armed forces.
Non-military people should know that all these medals stack really well. We have little oak leaf clusters or stars or whatever we pin on the top of the ribbon to signify how many times we’ve gotten it, bronze stacks up to 5 on the ribbon, at which point you trade it in for a silver, so someone can have 21 of the same award signified on the ribbon with 4 silver oak leaf clusters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_leaf_cluster
Meh.
In my experience Esprit De Corps is boosted more by leave and liberty or (depending on the deployment) a hot shower.
Most of the medals I earned in the navy felt entirely meaningless to me. Good Conduct? Meh. The bar for that is really low. Medals for stuff the ship did? I had nothing to do with that; my job was the same whether the ship was doing flight ops or sitting in port. When I was looking over my service record at discharge, I discovered that I had medals they hadn’t bothered to tell me I had.
The only medal/ribbon that was meaningful to me was the Sea Service Ribbon, because I certainly DID suffer through years of service at sea.
OTOH, my Dad (WOII, Kenya Regt 1st Pioneers, REME 1940-1946) always maintained medals were awarded purely to mark out the idiots who couldn’t keep their heads down and avoid getting shot. His collection was all theater stars, and he was very proud of those.
That’s a major difference between the US and British military. There is, for example, no equivalent to the Purple Heart, just a badge worn ONLY on the uniform and ONLY by WW1 and WW2 veterans; since veterans don’t wear uniform in the U.K. there is no one currently entitled to wear one. Good Conduct, Long Service etc were all uniform badges and are long since discontinued.
The only medals worn by veterans are Gallantry Decorations, Theatre Stars and the General Service Medals for 1914-19, 1939-45 and since 2008, anything else thought worth a medal but not qualifying for one of its own. GSMs aren’t highly regarded, the 1939-45 one was generally nicknamed the “NAAFI gong” (PX Medal, for our colonial cousins). Theatre Stars were mostly highly prized by those who held them, although this is less true of the modern crop of Middle Eastern ones, probably because of the very low levels of public support for the various conflicts since 1991. Hence, probably, the “uniformed meerkat” which has become a common symbol for the British Army, for no readily identifiable reason.
Medals are only worn by veterans out of uniform on special occasions – notably, Remembrance Sunday. The same goes for regimental insignia – particularly, caps and berets which are often worn formally while parading on Remembrance Sunday, but almost never otherwise.
For her other injuries they may have to come up with a new medal, the Purple Sphincter.
That seems like kind of a lot to heap on a recruit. I’ll have to read up on medals. Also, her injury was… she got cut on the cheek. There’s no way they award medals for boo-boos.
Also, I think the bar for “Valor” might be a bit higher in Arc-SWAT than it is for, like, Joe Infantry. They’re not expected to face down the equivalent of a flying Abrams on a weekly basis, Arc-SWAT is.
But I think it might make a nice scene in the comic anyway.
While true, facing down a bunch of apocalyptic baddies might qualify? I’m not going to try and fish for future plot lines, but most of the events are not going to be possible world ending threats, at least if the rest of the arcs have been pretty typical of what you’d expect super heroes to fight. I expect it’ll be close to Wearing The Cape and you’ll have more personal/local threats rather than possible apocalypses around every corner.
For injury, there was the cheek cut and possibly the gut impact, although her armor stopped it. Unless she wants to admit what happened in the bathroom?
MIA seems reasonable all things considered.
tanking a hit from something adequately described as a Planet Killer, and then sodomizing it with a man-portable stellar converter probably qualifies for a medal of valor, but there were no Witnesses. Sure, Sydney killed a trio of lovecraftian Horrors but there was nobody there to confirm The Kills.
Unless as suspected there are cameras in the choker.
Except, she missed when she was directly under the port-hole!
Three kills? No, she only took down two!
Don’t forget the thousands of zigs when you’re adding up Sydney’s kill count. If each one of them is roughly as effective as a modern fighter jet, and why would an alien fighter be any less effective, then Sydney basically gets kill credit for the entire air force of the combined modern nations of our world. She is an ace many hundred of times over.
She fought the destroyers of a civilization and won. Heck, whatever remaining Alari VIPs might have a medal for her.
She was driven to retreat, she beat two giants (with two remaining, and more likely on the ship), and a few hundred to a thousand or so smaller ships which they seemed to have an endless supply of.
Upon her retreat they were still searching for her on the Alari planet, which they had still decimated, and their massive ship was still fully intact.
Engaging a common adversary and being driven to retreat after doing negligible tactical damage; after said adversary had annihilated your home world killing millions if not billions…isn’t something most would reward, especially not a traditionally imperialistic one that has “battle thralls” if anything it may make their higher ups consider if its possible to use blood control or hypnosis on supers and send them in as weapons against this enemy.
the fox being chased by the same dog that bit you doesn’t mean the fox won’t bite you too.
‘It is no dishonor, to retreat from a superior force” Klingon saying.
Didn’t say it was dishonorable, said the Alari were unlikely to award her for her actions.
She didn’t ‘win’, she ‘survived and fled’, which is entirely not the same thing
The enemy suffered mortal casualties. Sydney suffered a scratched cheek.
That’s a win.
A continent sized ship lost a small number of fighter sized drones and two kaiju out of the four it sent down, while also bombarding the planet with nuke blasts.
There is no dishonor, but speaking militarily THEY won that fight as they drove off the other side of the conflict. Shooting one soldier and then escaping with your own life while the enemy still holds a fortress is not a military win, a personal one maybe *surviving*, but nothing to claim any sort of big picture victory over. At best she managed to gather information should they pursue or be forced into further conflict with this enemy. That front was positive. But in military actions its not a good idea to think of things as “winning” and “losing”. You want to advance. Calling something a “win” creates pride, which creates overconfidence, which breeds fatal mistakes.
You are talking about who won the war between the squids and the Alari, not who won the skirmish between the squids and the Archon force that had been sent to retrieve Sciona.
Remember too, that the squids probably had a purpose of eliminating witnesses to their activities in attacking the Archon force.
Sydney performed a successful skermish action against a vastly superior (at her current experience) force.
A battle report must be written with relative force sizes (as accurately as can be ascertained) in mind.
Any form of injury in combat can be grounds for a Purple Heart, even an injury nobody can “see”. They’ve given Purple hearts out for concussions and I even know a guy who got one because a rock (that he knocked over) broke his hand while making an assault entry into a suspected enemy stronghold (which was abandoned) in Afghanistan.
I’ll throw my 3 creds in this ;)
She was part of a mission chasing a really nasty super villain murderer to an alien world.
Got attacked by another alien races genocide machine(?) squad.
Protected the entire team, except maybe Max, from getting atomized, but got stuck behind because of it.
After extended combat with the genocidal giants, makes it to yet another world.
Yes, she gets a ride from a friend of Dabblers, but she also has the compassion to rescue a group of refugees. Refugees from the wiped out civilization that are the same as the psycho murderous super villain they chased in the first place. (Nobody with brains is going to think they’re all villains, after all, humans have more than a couple of their own.)
Humanitarian actions in what amounts to war zones and dealing with refugees can definitely earn medals. As to the goals of Arc, this is probably the type of action they find more desirable than just beating up bad guys. I can see them awarding her something for this, even if they never make the mission events public.
Though some of her public relations brushes could definitely use more training, For a recruit that’s been there less than a month, she’s definitely shown she’s got huge potential. Now if they can just keep her focused in public.
A girlfriend of mines great uncle was in the AF. He went off and did something rather crazy with his flying during a mission. They threw him in the brig for a couple of weeks for doing that, and they also promoted for the same reason. Sometimes breaking regs for the right reasons or just showing extreme skill can get rewarded, while the violations of the rules still gets you punished. People may not think it makes sense, but the military can be like that.
I have a suspicion that her utility belt contains a tracking and recording device that she is unaware of simply because as a super powered rookie she is a potential liability as a security risk and target for powerful villains if they target her as a possible weak link in ARC-Swat. If I was in charge I would not inform the rookie and the device would automatically upload all data when in range of any network using top security protocol. No transmitting of recordings made when in direct communication with higher ranking members so that mission information is secured. Meaning a camera in the belt or collar that relays through her wrist band as a nanny monitor… Full audio, video, and what ever other monitoring element deemed necessary.
I found it odd that Sydney’s playing a pivotal role in taking down Kevin just earned her a passing “thank you” at the post-battle meeting. It left me with the feeling that everything was “business as usual” in Ark-Swat.
That turns out not to be the case. The Wiki article is very helpful. The degree of injury isn’t as important as you’d think, though it does require that she be treated by competent medical authority. (Woof.)
Also, it isn’t bestowed by a superior. She has to apply for it.
I remember one episode of the M.A.S.H. tv show. Frank Burns was awarded the Purple Heart when paperwork got sent in to HQ about him getting a shell fragment in his eye. The problem being that it was an egg shell and happened in the mess tent.
LoL. Didn’t they also try that another time when he accidentally shot himself messing around with a pistol?
(For some reason, I’m thinking it might not have even been his own pistol, but it was a really long time ago I watched MASH)
It was agenerals pistol, it was locked up, he broke into the vault. He’s lucky he wasn’t charged with theft, but they protected him.
Sydney has to apply for it? I can’t see her doing that. Maybe if she wound up with one hand in a cast for 6 weeks, but not for a cut on her cheek.
But I could see Max or Hiro or Arianna ordering her to apply, couldn’t you?
She earned it. She deserves it. Please let her have it.
And it isn’t just a cut on her cheek – it’s a shrapnel-inflicted wound that required stitches.
Was a cut on her cheek – it appears to be completely healed already. Not sure how easily Max will believe all of the details of this mission, given Sydney’s tendency to blow things out of proportion.
Sydney might do a lot of play acting, such as being burnt by sunlight, in the car park, but at no point has she been deceptive to Max, or anyone at Archon. On top of which Sydney is a very bad liar, as we saw when she was trying to protect Joel from learning about the orbs (and thereby being complicit in any trouble she could have gotten into), that her lies were transparent and very bad.
The only time that we even have a hint that Sydney might have was in the awkwardness of her reply to Maxima about the circumstances under which she found the orbs. Which was actually understandable because at that time she was still highly suspicious about Archon and the possibility that she might be whisked away. Plus she had not committed to the organisation, so had no loyalty due to them at that stage.
Clearly Maxima and Zephan had been suspicious, by the significant glances that they exchanged. But they have (wisely) not pressed the issue and have allowed Sydney her privacy on the matter. So far.
Since then Sydney has been honest in all her dealings. Notably in confessing to starting a forest fire, when testing the PPO (something which could have exposed her to criminal charges). The one point where she contemplated doing otherwise was to consider concealing her newly discovered teleportation ability from Maxima. As a contingency, in case she may have to oppose Maxima one day. Something Halo considered very likely, given the super hero trope of mind control or curses, or suchlike, being able to turn a hero bad or create an evil twin.
So I do not think Maxima will disbelieve Sydney if she gives an honest, detailed, report. However there may be disbelief from another angle, in that Halo may decide to downplay her combat power, for the same reasons detailed above. If she tries to get creative she will likely be found out. But if she just decides to downplay her abilities, she could easily get away with it.
After all she did proudly proclaim herself to be the most powerful member, by virtue of having beaten Math (who had beaten everyone else, barring Maxima and Dabbler). Whilst this can be viewed as blowing it out of proportion, it was actually true. So there would be no expectation for Sydney to be modest.
As an individual you can apply for medals to be retroactively awarded if there is paperwork to support the facts that your actions may have earned one. Not every chain of command can submit 100% of the paperwork they should and some things fall through the cracks. I am currently trying to get myself awarded a Combat Action Badge for my time in Afghanistan that wasn’t submitted, even though I was in several patrols that were hit by IEDs and was within 100m of a documented rocket strike on the base I was stationed at.
*awards Yorp Recognition of Bravery Award*
*wagging tail proudly*
There’s no way they award medals for boo-boos.
In the pilot episode of F Troop, Captain Parmenter received a second medal
for the injury received receiving the first medal.
That entirely depends on how you do the write up. “Sustained shrapnel injuries while covering the retreat of her squad in enemy territory and then staying behind, evading the enemy until rescue arrived” would be a minimum of a purple heart.
The real question is how much paperwork Max wants to do, since *she* has to write it up.
I bet she’s grateful for that flak vest that prevented her from being until through the midsection. Also I wonder what her superiors are going to think when she gives them a full rundown of what happened after she was lost in transit
This is why I’d like to see animation, 3D or 2D (I’d especially like 2D, but I am biased) used more in science fiction media. Some weird but plausible alien characters wouldn’t be much more expensive to pull off than human characters. If anything it would be cheaper, as humans put human looking creatures to a higher standard of looking ‘right’.
Rooster Teeth has been doing some really good sci-fi animation in that area. So far their “alien” stuff has been robots rather than organic but they do make it move in alien ways.
Red vs Blue actually broke a lot of ground in the machinima space, and do some great quality 2D animation as well (of which I have seen very very little, but their teasers look amazing).
So… does Altus not have humanoid male genitals? Or is he just really small? Maybe he keeps them internal until needed? Because there is nothing there now, straight line from his belly to the crotch.
Maybe his sexual organs are his fingers or toes or something we wouldn’t generally think of as a sexual thing.
Or he wears TARDIS brand underwear.
King Missile has the answer.
Look it up.
Looked it up. Heh… that would be interesting. I assume that would be a cybernetic attachment due to some injury, I can’t see how that would be evolved naturally.
Of course I’ve mentioned this before, even though Cora’s outfit appears to be very form fitting in that it dips into her navel, she apparently doesn’t have nipples, and is – like Altus, and to quote Lexx – “Smooth ’round the bend” – in that she appears to have no labia majora.
So… they are not humanoid aliens. They merely have adopted such forms to lull us humans into a false sense of security. They are either completely alien and are here looking for a new food source, or are robots and are here to destroy the soft fleshy creatures of Earth.
RESIST!
I wrote a story once where a man got a surprise while French kissing a slug-woman, her “tongue” was actually her male genitalia *slug-women are hermaphrodites in my universe like normal slugs*.
that said the penis can shrink and retract on most mammalian males; the real question is the testacies that normally cause the bulge in tight clothes. Of course mammal testacies are external only because the core body heat can actually kill sperm cells *also why they can get loose in hot weather and tighten up in cold weather*; so maybe his species has a different compensation so that particular weak point doesn’t have to be left hanging out where anyone can kick it.
That is possible, and I did suggest keeping them internally until needed.
Of course the real reason is that comics don’t draw such things, especially for men (unless it is a completely different type of comic). Amanda Conner (well known comic artist that has branched out into writing) even mentioned that she was less bothered about the outfits women wore, and that apparently all the men are Eunuchs!
The slug woman story reminds me of a short comic that (IIRC) Stjepan Sejic did where Superman is with Lois Lane and he takes off his pants, and she is “what the hell is that!?” The comic wasn’t graphic, but the implication was that the similarities between humans and kryptonians did not extend to genitalia! :)
Ah yes. “Why does it have pincers?!?” “To…grab onto you?”
I love his mildly confused reply, the most obvious and natural thing, like jeez, you’d think she’d never seen a penis before.
I played Champions online, the superhero MMO. One of my characters is an alien female. She walks around topless all the time. But because she’s not, she doesn’t actually look female. She has a classical email build, pectoral muscles and everything. Her memory glands are in the tip of her tail. Everyone keeps mistaking her for male just cuz she doesn’t have boobs and a corset worthy waist. Which is kind of the point, she’s an alien. Her body and her Traditions are alien to other people in the setting.
On the subject of Farscape:
Chiana: Yeah. I got another one for ya – do Scarrans have mivonks? (knees Jenek in the groin, but then collapses in pain)
Jenek: Yes. But they’re not external.
“5th floor, fire breathing dragons!”
Good old Farscape.
Instead of saying ‘Invasion’ Sydney should be snarking ‘Assimilation’
Resistance is futile.
I’m pretty sure at least one person in that last panel is hoping to get herself invaded, repeatedly. Someone else is hoping to do some invading, but considering the kind of ” human resources” Cora has at her disposal, I doubt that reporter is going to get much further than threatening sanctions.
With all these human looking aliens showing up I’d think some conspiracy types (in-universe) might start to question not just Dabbler but many supers in general really being aliens *like Maxima*. We the readers know that’s not the case, but you will always have those conspiracy types.
Death Worlders is a “Humanity , Fuck yeah!” sort of thing. Earth in the series is considered a Death world due to gravity being too high, predators too deadly, pathogens too deadly, etc
So kind of like Sam’s perspective from (Freefall)?
That doesn’t work as well in the superhero genre where the source of some characters’ powers is just being an alien.
That is kind of the point of the hfy sub-genre. It portrays humans not as the generic default, but as the super predator. If we are the kryptonians to everyone else, and we just don’t realize it because we evolved alongside other dangerous life-forms, what would the culture shock be I’m going out into space and then finding out we are the most dangerous thing on the Block?
I’m a huge fan of the deathworlders series Tama especially since I was in the original thread on 4chan that started the whole thing. It has come a long way.
As a former Air Force, yeah. They will give medals for practically anything. At least, the lower medals. Sure, stuff like the silver star and medal of honor are *not* given out frivolously, but many many others are.
And the purple heart is given out ‘for injury in the line of duty’. She was injured. Whether a booboo or not, she is in fact eligible for a purple heart.
Ok, at this point I think you’ve dragged out Sydney getting a ride home long than Sydney was actually lost and in danger.
I get wanting to put in the little funny bits, but with the release schedule you are basically burning months on filler at this point.
It’s also ground we’ve already covered. Yes, we know the aliens are sexy.
I expected to see Sydney home last year, we’re suffering from some serious pacing issues at this point.
We’ve been waiting nine months. Nine! for the reveal on what was up with Harem and the portal.
The pay off of Maxima’s reaction when Sydney finally returns, nearly as long. Dabbler still needs to give us an exposition dump on Nth tech/the orbs, and since the return wasn’t secret there’s gonna be that too.
But hey. Cora’s tits! Look at these!
I don’t dislike the cheesecake on principle, (and fairs fair we got Beefcake today too), but you’ve been dragging ass so long on Sydney’s return all I can focus on is the need to *get to the point already*.
A mere piffle.
A lot of us have been waiting on Jim Bernheimer to finish writing what should be the conclusion to the “D-list Supervillain ” series for how many years?
Yeah, I know what you mean. Honestly at times I have been very tempted to create a “recommended reading” list for Grrl Power where I list every comic from 1 to current and then note whether it’s actually necessary to read it for the story. I mean, of course I don’t know what will come back in the future, but I honestly think you could cut out literally hundreds of pages and have a tighter, more-entertaining story that reads better. For instance, pretty sure you could just clip out several pages of recent ‘Syndey on a spaceship’ and not really lose anything.
Being necessary or not isn’t really my issue, and world building is good.
The problem is the release schedule. 4 pages of ‘look at the press freak out!’ is fine if I bought a 50 page volume.
But the story has been “Sydney’s going home” for five months. In those five months we’ve gotten ‘aliens are sexy’. So once she’s FINALLY back on earth and the plot might actually move forward, and answer some very long awaited questions…. we get another week of ‘aliens are sexy’.
I like the goofy humanizing bits, gag’s like the ‘A Team’ having to stick around are fantastic, and the ‘real people who happen to have super powers’ is the angle that separates this from a typical super hero comic.
But months of filler is just bad pacing.
ps. Other comics being worse about it doesn’t magically make it acceptable, it just means you’ve set the bar lower.
You’re missing the forest for the trees. (saplings, I’d say)
(In this metaphor, this comic is an old-growth forest, lush and verdant. Mostly the canopy is sovereign, but here and there enough light gets through that a plot sapling can survive, if not thrive.)
But enough metaphor.
This comic has plot only insofar as it enables goofy shenanigans, innuendo, and other such “filler”.
The plot is not the motivation for the creator, the characters are. He just throws in some plot-like activity to give motivation to villainous types, without which there would be no reason for Archon itself to exist.
For those of us who enjoy the character bits, this is not a problem.
Those of us who don’t, well, enjoy your griping…
This.
There are plenty of superhero comics that are plot or action driven. The point of Grrlpower (as I understand it) has always been the other off acreen stuff about being a super. Like Sydney using the henticle and the light bee to get a new roll of toilet paper when bathroom has none.
I do believe this is a character centric story not a world building or (epic adventure) centric story. I’m honestly surprised it has in these years had as much world building and adventure as it has. Usually super-hero character centric online comics go even more minimal on the epic adventure and world building side (See: Super Redundant Heroes) for example.
I am reminded of the people who complain about “towny episodes” in Steven Universe; missing that the series was more about the emotional and mental development of an individual and those around them; and no really focusing on but slowly building up around them this epic alien civilization conflict.
so honestly paceing wise, while yes it can be frustrating to get four pages handedly slowly, when a comic book a month company gives you like ten a month…one has to remember this is one person not a team of like six people. If they try to *rush* their story; then anyone doing an archive crawl would end up finding a sloppy, poorly paced, story missing huge chunks just to get to “the juicy bits”. Anything worth anything takes time, especially with only one cook in the kitchen.
So please provide us with a link to that perfectly paced, fantastically funny, highly artistic, and updated three times a day perfect web comic that you have created. Personally I get a little sick of the talentless critics that constantly try to rip at the entertaining story that Mr Dave is providing us when it is clear that those critics could never create anything even a tenth as good themselves.
Me-ow.
Aren’t you a peach.
Welcome to the real world, where people have opinions, and air them.
Take a chill pill, lean back, and be less hypersensitive on behalf of others.
“I have issues with the pacing” is not the meanest thing Dave’s been told, and its not the meanest thing he’ll hear about his art.
You can agree or not, but it is my view of the current progress, and you jumping down my throat about it isn’t going to magically change my mind.
Most of Sydney’s trip home has been fairly entertaining and has advanced the plot and Sydney’s character arc to some extent. However, the last few strips seem like empty filler, unnecessarily delaying a hotly anticipated reveal. So far, Sydney’s return has been just another Tuesday evening. And while I don’t want Sydney to stop being Sydney, her behavior might have at least reflected some aspect of her personal growth; something subtle but notable, eliciting some kind of reaction. So far, she might as well have failed to tell anyone she was going down to the corner store.
As Patient M. says… A mere Piffle (such a good word, Piffle, too bad i don’t get to use it often)
but if you think only nine MONTHS is unbearable, then i guess that you would hate a comic called “The Mansion of E” by Robert M. Cook… that took TEN IRL YEARS to get thru only about 24 HOURS of comic time…. AND he updates EVERY DAY!!!
Honestly I’m surprised it’s going this quickly
It feels like a pacing issue, because you’re caught up. I’m curious at what point in the story you started reading, because this is far from the first time that it’d feel extremely slow, painful and repetitive if you were following it update by update, but when you go back through the archive, it works. Hell, there’s potentially been a few places that were a little TOO rushed in hindsight. Yes, the aliens are sexy and we already know that…but the press’s reaction to aliens and vice versa is not something we already knew.
I completely agree that the pacing of the story is good
from the *start* of the series ;
I’ve read thru from beginning to *now* twice
and I like the speed of the storyline just fine !
if’ve you caught up to *now* (like almost all of us are)
yah, it’s slow – but ONE artist/writer by himself
is going to be “” slow “”
and dave doesn’t make enough $$$ from this
to be able to hire some help.
that’s the only way , really, to speed up the posting of pages.
Another point about aliens. J. Michael Straczynscki, creator of Babylon 5, tried to put in some truly alien aliens. There was a zone on the Babylon 5 station for aliens, and they were crowded together; his concept was that they didn’t have the same worries about “personal space” as humans. And there was a bug-like alien that was just an animatronic puppet of some kind, and it moved in jerky ways totally unlike a human.
Audiences hated both. People complained about the crowding and everyone thought the animatronic alien looked “fake”. JMS shrugged and axed them.
Nobody complained about the Narns, humans in makeup. Nobody complained about the Minbari, humans in makeup.
On the other hand, the Vorlons were pretty much puppets who didn’t move much, and I guess people didn’t complain about them either.
Not even sure why anyone complained about the crowding. the station was from the get-go a hub for all races to meet in neutral territory
Because people like to bitch and moan as though they are being deliberately and personally targeted, no one else, just them, personally and maliciously
Worth noting when discussing Love, Death, and Robots: the episodes were shown in different orders to different people. The episode that was second for you was first for me, and in other positions for others. Netflix claims it is for research.
For some reason i have a picture in my mind of Arianna having the EXACT SAME grimace on her face when she realizes that she’s lost control of “her” reporters to Cora and crew, as the grimace that MAXIMA had when she figured out just exactly HOW Dabbler was distracting Vehemence… and probably the same ultimate reaction as well… they were both “conflicted” over HOW it was being done, but it worked out well in the end for both of their circumstances… “oh well, so be it… NEXT!”
If you liked kaiju fight (Sonnie’s Edge) episode of Love, Death, and Robots definitely check out anything by the original story author, Peter F. Hamilton. That man can create a world, and much of his short work lives in settings similar to that one, if not in the same world.
Sonnie’s Edge is background for the Night’s Dawn trilogy, which is pretty much my favorite SF epic ever.
Night’s Dawn is still my favorite by him. The Commonwealth stuff is interesting, and good, but the world just isn’t as exciting.
soft gay porn much and catering to women, its bad enough you have the males running around half naked but you wont show women topless not in sexual positions. And not to mention all the males are all body builder level of looks. Yet all the men are more often than not half naked or with torn clothing. good job catering to the queers and women.
This page features both a man and a woman wearing basically the same outfit, and both the men and women are highly idealized forms. You’re an idiot, and that you read any sort of bias into it reveals more about you than anything else.
The three Billy Goats Gruff are in the next fable over.
Your appointment is there.
What FFKonoko said. Also what’s wrong with catering to queers and women? Do you think everything should be written and drawn to fit your preferences? If Dave want his comic to be popular and profitable by attracting both male and female readers he can and should provide both male and female fan service.
‘unimpressed’
Is that the nickname you acquired the first time a woman saw you naked?
DaveB, have you seen any of the Orville yet?
They’ve got actors in light to heavy makeup portraying most of the aliens, the Krell/Krill (who worship the god Avis) have especially heavy prosthetics, & there’s a character called Yaphet who’s a CGI gelatinous lifeform.
I’ve been enjoying it.
Well you seem to be a bigot anyhow, and I don’t overly care about what bigots think.
As a straight male I this is one of my favourite webcomics. Not everyone needs naked body parts to enjoy a piece of art.
So, who would care to talk about the Intrepid Reporter’s posture and body language here? I’m getting a very mixed bag of signals, so I’m wondering what everyone else thinks.
I think “mixed” was the desired portrayal – obviously she is intimidated by his size and at least a little concerned by aggressive approach, while still being open to his looks and attention. Others have already thoroughly covered the various points about a realistic (and rational) female response, but I’d label her as “overwhelmed, a little scared, but intrigued and cautiously optimistic enough to not run away because she might really like where this is going”.
Considering that this comic is mostly about humor and fan service (and that’s why I like it) I assume that the redhead is flirty.
As a guy, I have always had a problem with the “trap the girl between you and the wall” style of flirting. A compressed version of Stockholm syndrome is not an acceptable pickup tactic. But it is a natural human response to want to curry favor with someone who intimidates you and has you trapped.
As yet another guy, I also find the “trap the girl between you and the wall” move problematic. It doesn’t look like a romantic overture, it has more of a predator/prey vibe to me. Unfortunately there are far too many guys that are either oblivious to how outright threatening this can be to a woman; or worse they just don’t care.
Maybe this priapic behaviour is normal in the culture Altus comes from. It wouldn’t be nearly as intimidating if the female was of a comparable size to the male. As we can see however, Altus easily out-masses the reporter by about 3 to 1. I would hope Altus is sensitive enough to realize before too much longer that he is really pushing some boundaries here.
As a 6ft 6 man, I have to agree. Making women deliberately uncomfortable has never been a solid tactic if your goal is to express affection for them and have it reciprocated. it always just comes off creepy and borderline violent
She is not trapped, he is not looming over her with his arms on either side of her, he is standing to her side looking down because he is two feet taller than she is, Pinkie has plenty of space to move away, if she wants, the fact she is still there, twirling her hair and positioning her leg that way shows, at the most, that she is conflicted butt his attention is not unwanted
A man doesn’t have to completely envelop a woman for her to feel that she is trapped. I hate to mention something political, as I really don’t want this discussion to go down a partisain path; but we are seeing this in the news these days with the women who never said anything in the past about Joe Biden’s touchy-feely ways. He certainly never cornered any of these women, but he was a man in a powerful position. The women have actually said that they felt like it wasn’t their place to call him out on how uncomfortable he was making them because he was the Vice President of the United States. Altus may not have political power, but he is still a very imposing figure and he is a very important potential interview subject. Baba Wawa certainly looks to me like she is experiencing at least some intimidation and discomfort.
Bull klank!
That’s implying that all a man has to do is look at a woman and she is obligated to mate with him
Worse, that a female reporter has to resort to sleeping with a male subject to get the story
There is absolutely nothing in what I said that implies in any way that a woman is ever obligated to mate with anyone. Obviously you are reading in a whole lot of garbage that was never actually said. Disagree with what I say all you want, but never try to distort what I said just to give yourself something to bitch about.
Well, as a woman: if someone that big was standing over me like that I would either be frozen with terror, running like hell, or reaching for my mace and praying to any god that might listen that it will work on him. Wicheverway freeze, flight or fight takes me. There’s no amount of sexy that would ever make upfor the casual threat in his posture.
I too would like to see some alien aliens.
It’s part of what I greatly enjoy about less limited formats like 2-d “drawn” cartoons and comics. You don’t have to limit yourself to what a human actor can easily mimic. I’d greatly enjoy some explanation for why all these species are basically humans with internal technology and some minor cosmetic tweaks, but I’m also hoping that you’ll one day show us some outright alien stuff.
Things as different from the main cast as Tyranids from 40k or Protoss from Starcraft, the Angels from Evangelion, or The Flood from Halo, or The Thing from The Thing (especially from the short story writtten from The Thing’s perspective where it’s horrified at humans’ inability to change shape and divide themselves).
Or out and out multidimensional beings like Ramiel or The Entities from Worm, that are really just a 4-dimensional shape intersecting with a 3-dimensional plane. Even if you manage to wipe out everything in this reality, it really only had its toe in our plane of the universe.
Or things that look like they’re from Australia, or deep sea life, or things that used to float in a low-gravity world or barely even crawl (slither) in extreme high-g worlds.
At least I often find interest in what interactions and conflicts might arise between species that are so fundamentally different not just in bodies, but in how they percieve the world, the very nature of their consciousness.
A Tyranid, for example, isn’t really a creature so much as a remote-controlled waldo with some programmed behavior controlled by a single massive compound mind that looks at planets the way we might look at a single meal, with all the normal tyranids vs humans being regarded as we would regard our digestive enzymes vs food.
Perhaps we already have. Maybe the orbs are not “tech” but “life”. They do seem to have personality at times.
Even if they’re technological life (artificial intelligences) that would also be interesting.
I came across an article that shows a certain well known commenter on this board is also a secret super-villain and has been destroying asteroids in his spare time. Is this just the first actions of an approaching invasion fleet from Canis Major?
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/dante-lauretta/20141211-the-yorp-effect-and-bennu.html
Fear mah powah!
Muh ha ha ha!
All hail our furry overlord.
I thought that the goldish colored neck appliance they all wore when Cora introduced the Bridge crew, was the hard light suit that Cora developed. I kinda assumed that since they all had a similar ‘look’.
Now I am a bit confused with Atlas(sp) since that bit seems to be missing? DaveB? claification?
It could be that the gold collar devices were a rapidly deploying emergency helmet for use in the event of a hull breach. The crew were wearing them when we first were introduced to them because they were warping into a possibly hostile situation. They aren’t wearing them now because they are not under fire and they are within an entire planet’s life support sphere. Very unlikely they will need self contained life support in the current situation.
Or possibly Dave just forgot them. That happens from time to time with the number of accessories these characters have.
Totally agree with the special effects to have ‘aliens’/ It bug’s me in Mass Effect was the same (bar the Hanar and Rachni) At least Star Trek had the idea to show why humanoid species looked alike (TNG S6 E20)
And yes Love, Death + Robots is awesome
Many, many years ago, a friend who wanted to be a writer and I were trying to come up with the designs for a science fiction play. He described his aliens to me and I sketched some ideas, primarily a leonoid human (this was years before Vincent in “Beauty and the Beast”). He was disappointed, because he wanted a more “alien” alien. I pointed out that the problem with a REALLY alien alien was that you would have to put it on stage to interact with the human actors, and we would have to have a human actor in the alien suit, too… or TWO human actors. I designed a kind of “fake horse” using two people, giving thought to some lightweight internal bracing to eliminate the wrinkling similar suits have. I was also for a set of fine manipulatory appendages near the head, but we never got much beyond that. I think it COULD be done, and on stage where they closest observer might be 20-30 feet away it would be better than on TV with closeups.
What I would do is script scenes avoiding direct physical interactions (or cleverly staging ones that appeared to happen) and use a CGI character projected on stage. This would not be a recording but a live, real time, rendering of the actor portraying the alien.
This was pioneered in King Kong, so that the actors could directly see the expressions and actions the monster actor was using (and importantly how King Cong looked and behaved as a result). Doubtless there will have been post-production work to improve things, but the actors commented on the immediacy created for their performance, by having that unprecedented means of interacting with a non-human (/non puppet) character.
Of course it could also be mixed in with some puppetry or animatronics, depending on what type of alien was chosen.
For instance a gigantic alien might have an animatronic hand/claw/tentacle. So clearly the alien would tower over the human and there would be no way for her to reach up high enough to touch it. Hence no disbelief that they did not physically interact (and also conveniently allowing a projection screen suitably hidden in the background high up and with no risk of visually clashing with physical props or actors on the stage).
Then at some stage the hero could be picked up or villains knocked over, in suitably choreographed scenes. Whilst the whole performance would retain the two-way interactions only gained by having real actors, rather than one part of the performance being a static pre-filmed performance, which could get out of synch or otherwise lend to a stilted show.
Sonnie’s Edge is set in Peter F Hamilton’s Confederation universe, the bulk of which is covered in his Night’s Dawn Trilogy. Spaceships have babies with their captains.
*sits on bum and tilts head to one side*
*attempts to mesh front paws together, at various angles*
*tilts head the other way and tries more variants*
Uuumm … oookay ….
Sit, Ubu, sit.
It’s not as bad as it sounds. Really…
That was my favourite too! “Just a couple of Bioware Processors grafted to a spine!” Awesome stuff.
I’m not sure if this is mentioned but I think that some of the aliens (not all) in shows and movies are shown humanish to make it easier for the audience (humans) to identify with.
Sydney had better buy the super tailor a beer when she gets settled, his body armor saved her life.
What’s with all the bulges in this reporter guy’s face? Did his head get stuck in a bee hive?
Man, I really miss the 2017 art style. The character’s faces were so much more expressive.
This makes for quite a brilliant counter to an alien race that touched down to an uncommunicative cloister in some country no one has heard of.
“Here we are with a few very…interesting…extraterrestrial immigrants on a street you may have walked down before, asking questions about how thrilled they are to be on our planet!”
I have no idea how the people that comments that Miss Reporter looks intimidated and highly uncomfortable, reads others. She doesn’t to me, nor do I think she’s meant to.
It was stated she was looking away from Altrus, which she doesn’t. Her head is slightly turned but she is looking towards him. Her expression is somewhat neutral, not scowling. She is also playing with her hair. You don’t do that if it’s an uncomfortable situation.
As for Altrus, he is close but he is not crowding her or hindering her from walking away. From the looks of it, she is leaning/keeping mostly her back towards that wall, while Altrus is side-leaning against it a smidge further down.
If anything, she looks interested but also a bit unsure. Which makes sense with the whole alien thing.
Which brings us to the point that Altrus is an Alien. His customs may be very different from ours and so far the reporter hasn’t stated anything related to that she wants him gone. So how would he make any other assumption?
Cora even said to Sydney they were “good guys”. I’m sure Altrus would leave Miss Reporter alone if she so desired.
Usually I don’t comment on “old” pages, but this was annoying me.
To add to this: It feels like some people are reading into it a bit too much.
I for one welcome our new sexy alien overlords.