Grrl Power #739 – Swear jar II – A filthy boogaloo
This is the most rich person thing Sydney’s ever done. She’s been… well, not rich exactly, but well on her way every since she got her first paycheck, but she has yet to actually spend any money in a flagrantly irresponsible manner. My question is, is she just going to leave an open jar in the middle of the lounge with ten grand in it?
I know I didn’t actually show Sydney launch into some kind of filth blitzkrieg for all the times she recounts here. It’s not like I’m never going to show her going on a Yosemite Sam-esque rant ever again, but I’m also not going to show each and every one, either.
I think Max’s top keeps getting smaller and smaller on each page I draw it on. It was already a bit of an odd top for her to wear around the base, but at this point it’s downright out of character.
I may have to change panel 2, because honestly I don’t know how military do. I wasn’t really sure what to google either, like “if someone needs some petty cash to buy some stuff for a military base, who do they see?” I mean, I’m sure a big military base has some sort of financial chain of command. Like an accountant and a list of approved vendors, but what if you’re out in the desert somewhere in another country, and the squad decides it needs to run down to the Baghdad Home Depot and buy a bunch of tarps? Like, they’re not close enough to the base to go get them, but they definitely need tarps. Does the squad commander have a platinum Visa on him, or a stack of Benjis? Or do they just take them and tell the manager to call the base for reimbursement? Probably that one, come to think of it.
Anyway, the team is domestic, so they’d probably operate a lot more like a domestic military base. My point is, somebody at Archon manages the phat stax, because sometimes you just need cash in hand. If someone has a better suggestion than “Bursar” I will change it.
Edit: Hah hah! Whoops! I forgot to add in the orbs on this page. I will do that after I get some breakfast.
Edit 2: Okay, Sydney is enorbened.
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Sydney bought a car with the original swear jar, so I’m wondering what she’s saving up for with swear jar II. Given how freely she’s loading it down with cash, I’m thinking yacht.
My first thought was “she’s gonna get a private jet!”, then I realized that is dumb considering her power set.
Well, maybe she wants to be able to relax while traveling, or bring others with her.
With her force field she ‘could’ carry others, but would make it easier, and (depending on the plane) let her bring more people or objects.
This is a valid point… Leisure interstellar travel via space capsule it is then.
Well ya’ll know she could get an olde fashioned dress and use a umbrella too. ;P (plus points for getting this one)
Secret Lair.
Where do bats live that’s also zoned for residential?
PS:
Looking good today Max. Done something with the abdeblo?
She needs a Halocave with a Halomobile.
Um…if it’s a superhero’s (or villain’s) secret lair, then it’s a business location, not just residential. You have to declare it for tax purposes if you make any money there; if not, you have to make sure you keep close track of which zip code you’re in for tax purposes when getting paid while on a jobsite elsewhere.
Well she could make a secret lair … on the moon. no taxes there.
I would say it has a high probability of being secure.
Austin Texas has some of those.
Several neighborhoods in Austin fit that description…
Secret underground bunker for when Frisk visits
Oh I’m sure she would welcome Frix to her underground bunker.
What’s the going price for the first Batman?
Detective Comics #27 goes for over a million.
(From a few google search. I like Batman, but not to the point of knowing this by heart.)
Maybe Sydney hopes to buy Batman himself.
Which one? Hopefully not Robert Pattinson (hopefully in that he never actually becomes another bat, talk about stereotyping… :P)
Yes, Sparkle Batman is as much of a misnomer as Sparkle Dracula.
And runs a serious danger of being as poorly portrayed.
publicly give her swear jar to charity every few months. that will stop every one telling her not to swear.
The Sydney Swearity foundation
+5 for the win of that. (-1 for not capitalizing Foundation, however.)
“We put the ‘%#$@’ in ‘%#$@ Cancer’!”
or kicked the %#$@ out of it
No, something far more expensive. Something that every comics store owner secretly desires. Another store in a different city. I’ve worked in comic stores; every owner seems to want to expand to a second (or third or fourth, depending on the given owner) store.
Sadly, this almost never works out. When you have two, you can’t give each the level of attention which makes a store successful, so one gets a little neglected. Then the owner gets exhausted from trying to overcome this problem and the stores get consolidated (this usually takes long enough to occur that the cycle doesn’t repeat, but not always).
It only seems to work if the owner learns to delegate, and can trust the people managing the store for them. Or if they go partners instead of full takeover of the stores… But I never personally met any comic store owner who wasn’t doing it because they had an overwhelming desire to sell comics (cause they love comics), which tend to lead to case#1. To quote a comic store owner I knew: “If you just want to sell things and make money… open a jewelry store; not a whole lot more expensive to do if you start small, and you make a LOT more money in the long run.”
A friend of mine owned a somewhat successful comic book shop. He then got the idea that he needed to open a second store in another part of town. He realized after the first few months that with two stores he doubled his rent and many of his other expenses, but was still bringing in approximately the same revenue between the two stores that he used to bring in with just the one. Turned out he was his own competition. The customers of his new store were customers ofhis old store that just found the new location to be a bit more convenient for them. He closed the new store once his lease ran out, but the added expenses he’d incurred in the mean time pretty much put his whole operation into bankruptcy. Eventually he ended up selling his store to another comic nerd who still runs it to this day.
Superhero that own a comic book store wants her own story in comic form.
Needs to find out if this is covered in her current contract or if it needs new negotiations. And use redacted reports for getting the writer and artist getting going. Ten thousand well spent though not sure how many issues that would cover. Instant best seller.
I mentioned that she would want a comix shop on Fracture (sometime around when she got there)
Nah, you just need to buy a short range portal door, and have one shop with multiple entrances in different cities. Spend a little extra to make sure you an only exit the entrance you came in.
She’s already said it: Infinity pool.
Sydney’s infinity pool would have six sparkly gems mounted along the side.
She would have to be careful when using it. “Oh waiter, over here.” ~snap~. “Oops.”
Maybe this time, Sydney wants to save up for that pony that she mentioned shortly after she saw her first (partial) paycheck, when she was talking to Archon’s financial advisor?
Ah Sydney, you are one galaxy grade troll… :p
“In fairness, Lt. Colonel Leander… Where was I supposed to run TO?”
Well to be frank, I really needed the XP for my FTL drive
Max – Your what?
Halo – My FTL drive. They don’t call it that though. Some cause way or something.
Max – Are you faster than I am now?
Halo – Maybe…
Math – Dibs on Max breaking her clothes trying to go faster than light.
Dab – Double that.
Sydney doesn’t have FTL drive, she has a Dimensional Gate-way
It’s still possible that even with her speed boost, Maxi is still faster
if you can travel a light year in 1 minute, then it’s a FTL
I suspect with that gateway you can travel ANYWHERE in 1 minute.
If you fold space and only cover the shorter distance, do you count the shorter distance or the longer distance? Moving slow or FTL can both be argued as correct.
Not saying that happened here but what’s your opinion.
Thanks to the laws of physics, any and all forms of FTL require some form of “cheating” to accomplish. Traveling through folded space should be allowed to count as FTL on the grounds that, if it doesn’t, then nothing does.
Depends on the mode of transport: can honestly say am currently travelling around 70.5K MPH
Consider the movement of the earth’s surface with respect to the planet’s center. The earth rotates once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09053 seconds, called the sidereal period, and its circumference is roughly 40,075 kilometers. Thus, the surface of the earth at the equator moves at a speed of 460 meters per second–or roughly 1,000 miles per hour.
Well actchually. Wormgate type stuff doesn’t make you travel quickly, it makes the distance between where you are and where you’re going shorter.
well, if you can cover 500LY distance in 1minute by shortcutting through point c, then your speed effectively was 500YL/min
I am so waiting for them to have a rematch flight.
I tried running out to you but I didn’t get very far. Do you know how long it takes to go from the surface to the moon when your top speed is Mach 4? After that I decided I needed more XP Squidward wasn’t going to let me alone so I’m like you know what take him down then use the XP to get off-planet hopefully towards home.
Yas! Jaws will be a-dropping. Finally.
Uhm Halo? Where’s your halo?
Wups.
It’s a holiday in the US and Dave was kind enough to put out an installment anyway.
I guess we now know that the Orbs Of Power are drawn last.
or they could be in her tube again.
yah but where’s the tube
Probably on a table in the middle of the room, since they yank her back like a dog on a leash if she gets too far away.
They follow close behind her, it only yanks her back, if they get stopped somehow, like with any of these supers stepping on the tube.
At least she isn’t dragging a space ship behind her with her orbs inside.
circling around her ankles like cats. only because badassery, they somehow never trip her.
Fixed now.
He just needed breakfast.
And now we know what really powers the orbs. DaveB is essentially the god of the Grrl Power Universe, and the orbs don’t exist unless god has had his caffeine fix. Thus proving that coffee truly is the Ambrosia of the gods.
Jaws dropping… Facepalms slapping… OMGs shouting… Sydney will wish she wasn’t there :3
will have to have spelling salts for Adrianna
FINALLY! t’s a whole new strategic world out there now!
It’s been almost 40 years since I was in the military, so I don’t know if things are different today. Back then we had an AmexCo branch on post that acted like a bank/credit union. Troops would have savings accounts and could withdraw cash like you would at any civilian bank.
It’s been about 30 for me and I seem to recall a First National at most posts… even Korea.
Mostly, though, the PX (Post Exchange, military general store) could cash cheques and change currency. More importantly, if you wanted to buy something trivial, like a large jar, that would be your natural first stop.
Marine Corps bases had Navy Federal Credit Union.
sydney …:D only she could get max so flustered with a viset to the swear jar :D
If you phrase it like that, Dabbler will make it happen.
THERE IT IS!!! THERE IT IS!!!
Daniel the Human and I KNEW this was coming, and THERE IT IS!!! Yeah, few others guessed it too, but let me have my victory…
Why was that a reply and not its own post? That should have been its own post…
I had the same thing happened to me a few times. Are you posting on a cell phone as well?
Yeah, tried with a mobile. Might give it another shot…
Um… Tubey is not present, so where are the orbs?
Maxima seems oddly non-shiny here. Less gold, more Simpsons.
Anti Polish.
Less reflectability.
Gold colored without being too shiny.
Lighting isn’t as problematic indoors and with more sympathetic lighting sources probably installed because of her.
I wonder what a circular polarizer would do for getting pics of Max
Typically you would place a request with the supply department, which has it’s own chain of approval, they’ll ignore it for a few months, and eventually reject it. You’ll resubmit it, your department head gets involved, you get in trouble, supply approves it, and you get it a few years later, to find out supply ordered the wrong part.
Cue the theme song to M*A*S*H.
The theme from M.A.S.H., is titled, Suicide is Painless.
Yeah, but if you just call it that (you want to listen to Ania’s cover ( https://youtu.be/ZTFMX72qhpE ) of the song by the way) then people don’t follow the thought chain to the (sadly period accurate) depiction of military supply in the show.
Gary Burghoff’s part was genius.
O boy o boy, it’s time to talk about the fact that Sydney might be faster than Maxima. And also capable of uber high tech FTL.
And able to bring her team with her since it’s basically a portal.
you do know what FTLmeans right syd’s the fastest fucker on earth
It’s fair to count FTL as something different from mere speed. The laws of physics prevent actually moving FTL through conventional means, so FTL in SciFi usually involves various forms of “cheating” such as portals or an alternate plane of existence. If we can count FTL capability as making you “faster than Maxima”, then Harem was already faster than Maxima because Maxima can’t teleport.
Keep in mind that her first speed upgrade had her moving massively faster than Mach 4 even before she unlock the Warp between planets setting
Depending on how you count speed, Deus is faster than Sydney. He traveled from Earth to Fracture instantaneously.
Yup, which means Sydney’s Curse-way doesn’t count
She can do that too, she just didn’t have Earth bookmarked yet.
Ans also she doesn’t need a whole powerplant to open it.
She’s going to need to remember to find out how to do that, now that she’s back on Earth. Sadly, I doubt Leon can help much… and Krona, while she probably could, shouldn’t be allowed to (catastrophic failure at the level of her power and the Orbs would exceed the scope of merely catastrophic).
Dazzler, as a high Tech Level tech, is a slightly better bet..
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-715-wormhole-101/
Already taken care of.
I for one am really hoping that future strips will include Halo taking various team members on side jaunts to galactic locations that Cora helped her bookmark before they came back to Earth.
It is entirely possible the distance from Avari planet to Fracture was bigger than distance from Earth to Fracture. WE HAVE NO IDEA.
The reason Max’s top keeps shrinking is because Dabbler managed to get her hands on Cora’s holoprojector. Now, it’s not just causing Cora problems with reduced coverage, it’s also doing the same for Max.
“You engaged it?” Said in a tone of ‘of course you did’, because it is Sydney they are talking about.
Look I needed a LOT OF EXP to unlock my FTL and tehnicaly it was self defence.
I’m no lawyer, but I don’t know if coming back to fight after having successfully escaped can be considered self defense.
In this given situation it likely would be. She was effectively “trapped”
Say you escaped in to your house from someone attacking you.
but they set up to stave you/dehydrate you to death
Its still self defense to break through and escapep again, or kill them and escape. or maim them and escape.
because you were never techincally out of danger.
her options were A) keep flying noe where space and die of air long before food or water.
or fight.
She has a life support orb, she really is a spaceship, but you are right that she hadn’t really escaped, since they could still follow her at that speed.
There is no jurisdiction in which you have a duty to retreat if you’re being pursued by a kaiju-sized monster trying to kill you. :) Especially when their range is planet-wide, and you can’t actually get off the planet to another planet (which she could not until she got the upgrade for aetherium causeways).
Every where she went they were attacking.
Yeah, its self defense.
Oh yeah. DaveB, the orbs have gone AWOL in this page.
I’m expecting some of her team members are going to be very nervious about the levels of power her current kill count reflects.
Even more so when they find out not only did she kill one of them but she killed two of them but we believe she killed that second one and she pulled a Robotech on who knows how many of the shield that spacecrafts that came out to attack her
Except for Achilles, I presume.
But really when you get to Maxima level powers, the power intimidation factor kinda maxes out for most people.
Her recklessness on the other hand gives her a natural +5 to intimidation though.
Shouldn’t be.
I love how casual Sydney is about that. Also just how many tirades did she go on? From her perspective it was only today so how did she go on enough tirades to equate to 2000 $5 dollar bill?
Well the shock of seeing an alien warp station probably accounted for half of that.
dont forget frix i bet she dropped a number of F-bomes there
I bet at least half were from the aftermath of the spicy food.
It’s not the number of tirades she is paying for, butt the number of words used in each tirade
I don’t believe that that is how it was explained in the first explanation of the square jar in the text beneath that I’ll have to go back and see but I believe there was explained that she doesn’t put money in for every word she puts a $5 bill in every time she goes on the swearing tirade
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-424-the-curse-of-curse-aint-no-curse-of-course/
She doesn’t put a dollar in the swear jar (AKA “The Vault”) for every bad word she says, instead she sticks a five in for each tirade. It’s quite a bit cheaper that way. While this system was initially designed by her mother a punitive measure, she uses it now as a sort of savings account that she cashes out once a year,
Feed Your bursar some dried frog pills and tell him he doesn’t have to deal With Sydney on a daily basis…
(Not in the US Armed foreces, but… )
Unless it’s some very cheap stuff, as in ‘packet of gum’ cheap, they use requisition forms.
Or they have shopping accounts and they get an itemized bill once every month or so.
I suspect someone will take that Swear Jar II into the briefing, at which point Maxima discovers she’ll need it.
If they debrief in a room with one of those special mirrors, I’d either expect the viewer in there to see Maxima’s hilarious reaction to Sydney’s story without actually hearing what’s going on, or to hear everything so that when Maxima checks on them she finds them facepalming whilst their jaws are on the floor.
“Ok so the FTL drive is gonna be one of those “secret powers” like truesight, right?”
The photos on her phone are gonna get classified so hard
Sidney will find out that the phone can ‘take’ those pictures. because, lets be honest here, Sidney will show them to someone inappropriate othewise.
She did a Sydney no more no less, and as for where the orbs are? If it’s not a boo boo then they might be out of shot hovering near the ceiling.
It’s called Disbursing.
They usually handle the financial paperwork, so Mr Shrapnel the Not-a-Horse would be a part of their team. Financial paperwork would include direct deposit, life insurance, 401k, handing out Leave/Earnings statements (paycheck receipts), ATM’s, and stuff like that. On a ship that goes out to foreign ports, they’ll bring in a money changer so people have local currency instead of dollars.
Re: Max’s top.
Obviously, Dabbler’s been doing magic to slowly shrink it.
Re: The swear jar.
Sydney’s still has to pony up for six-to-eight hours of grakz evacuation. …. dammit, she’s saving up for a pony, isn’t she? (Probably not, probably a house.)
Re: Debriefing
Everyone’s invited in to hear this debriefing, right? Because you’ve got a large team of gossipy supers, most of whom have had their curiosity piqued and at least one of which has super hearing, so don’t even pretend that you can keep this secret with a closed door.
Re: Debriefing
Are you kidding?! The only person allowed in that room that wasn’t on the alien world would be General Faulk.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Halo should have some kind of…halo of spheres around her head?
So.. Sydney reappears at a semi-secret military installation, after two months adrift in parts unknown, with previously unknown aliens in tow (if not unknown to Dabbler/Xuriel, who seems to be something of a mixed blessing as an intelligence asset) and she WASN’T hauled off to debriefing before her feet touched the floor?
What is Max a Colonel of? KFC?
I’d have thought first stop would be the infirmary for examination and quarantine of potential alien pathogens, just in case. But yeah, order’s out of whack. Max thinks a lot more like a friend, boss, and big sister than a CO.
You finally, figured that out, the whole team sees her as a little sister.
I think they probably already had this conversation with Dabbler, which goes something along the lines of “Cora’s onboard medical services exceed the capabilities of any Earth based medical technology, so she’ll be okay”.
Firstly, since they knew she was there for a few hours at most and then was picked up by dabbler’s friends, they thought she just hid until she got rescued.
Secondly she was finally home, the were probably gonna have a party that she’s home safely and then debrief her.
They have a point though about the order being weird. It IS a military organization after all. Mind you, not that I could speak from any kind of experience…
Debriefing should come first yes, but considerin that Halo was picked up by Cora and given an in-depth (*wink* *wink*) medical examination, quarantine might not be needed.
This. I have been annoyed over the last few strips at how casually the team leaders were taking Sydney’s return, but I today it finally clicked that they already had a report from Harem that Sydney was fine. I’m guessing the leadership grilled then-present-Harem extensively, and she was able to report that future-Harem knew that Cora had already picked up Sydney and that no serious issues had been reported.
Which obviously doesn’t account for the fact that future-Harem wouldn’t have a full account yet, nor that she isn’t cleared for the full version. But the leadership has had 2 months to calm down, knowing that Halo would be returning safe and sound, and likely got complacent enough about it that they figured they had the highlights down and could do a full debriefing after a short welcome-home event. Archon is, after all, a non-traditional branch that is far more flexible than other branches.
Which is still an oversight, but much more understandable than just not doing a debriefing at all.
The pickup crew themselves don’t have any idea what Sydney did, nor did they mention the causeway stuff because people on Earth are technically not supposed to know about anything remotely like that according to intergalactic law, so I think they left it up to Sydney to explain those parts at her own discretion.
I don’t think the point of this comic is to provide an accurate portrayal of military life.
Am I the only one who is wondering where Halo’s “halo” is?
Hardly, see the previous comments for several examples.
I am fairly certain this will be the debriefing to end all debriefings. and at least one general cussing up a storm
Especially when he learns she has a portable FTL in her arsenal
will the swear jar demand payment for said cussing? Sidney’s coastal cliff top mansion with secret underground lair/hot tub isn’t going to build itself.
Clever girl Sydney.
Now I’m imagining the 3 kaijus hiding behind the desk while Sydney fumbles with the door handle.
Given their sizes “behind the desk” would be outside the building.
For unexpected expenses, officers will often have a credit card to get stuff for use by the unit, with strict limits on what they can buy and how much they can spend, as in “you have to justify all these expenses”. Drivers going off base often have a “Fuel Only” credit card. In either case, these are issued by the military financial services office in Ottawa and not some other financial institution. I have not seen one of those for years, so I don’t know if they subscribe to Visa, MasterCard or what.
For planned expenses, you put in requisitions to the base quartermaster. If they have it in stock, you get it quickly. If they do not have it in stock, it can take a little while. Good luck with that.
If it’s not in stock you hope you have a finagler like Radar or Klinger to get the supplies you need
A. I’m going to go with the benefit of the doubt and assume her Halo spheres are back in tubey at the moment.
B. As soranic mentioned, on a military base the place for Sydney to get her back pay would be the Disbursing Office.
C. The first thing Sydney can use her replenished swear jar for is to replace the Maxima Pony she lost in “Wearing the Cape: Team-Ups & Crossovers.”
Darn it, someday we’ll get a self-edit function.
I hope we never do. It’s more fun posting when you can’t edit your mistakes.
It’s a lot like like twitter, but without the delete function.
True, you have to think before you post, particularly to fix spilling and grandma errors ;P
Indeed, proper grandma and punchuation saves lives.
Next time she should probably took a sample of the monsters she kills.
But… she ISN’T swearing?!?
She’s paying back for the swearing she did off-planet
I think an exception can be made in this case since, well, SHE WAS FIGHTING FOR HER FUCKING LIFE!
…. Can someone borrow me a couple of bucks?
to be fair she is doing it to herself and gets to keep the cash. she is doing it this way just to troll max
Being in garrison (domestic, as you put it) pretty much just means being a civilian with a job where you where the uniform. Most bases have all the basics including a bank or at the very least an ATM or two.
I’ve never heard of a bursar. Five years in the Marines.
Think purser. Same kind of thing. I think theirs is called A. Shrapnel.
Translate that as admin pogue.
“Bursar” is not a military term, it’s the person who manages the finances for a college or university.
Their base has a floor with several restaurants and coffee shops where I am sure they’d have an ATM if needed. It is just down in the civilian floors.
True, but most ATMs will not dispense $10K for a single transaction. The machine probably does not have that much money loaded into it at any given time.
What an ATM dispenses depends on your bank and it’s daily payout limits. Also I’ve loaded $160k in $20’s in one, so they definitely hold enough.
Actually, looking at the money again, the fact that it’s strapped means it didn’t come from a machine, and those are $100 bills
During the debriefing is when they figure out Sydney is going to need a lot of treatment for PTSD so she doesn’t get the kind with triggers that induce violent reactions. Because as powered up as she is now a random violent reaction could get REALLY bad REALLY quick.
I’m talking environmental disaster bad, mass die-off bad, new volcano in populated area bad.
Well firstly I think she’s so hyper that she has a bit of a PTSD resistance (and maybe like the flight orb blocks vertigo, maybe the shield orb blocks panic).
Secondly she already reset her panic response to the shield orb by surprise headdesking.
I thought we’ve had confirmation that the shield orb blocks panic. And that’s a lot of how it was she engaged the things.
PTSD does not occur as often as you think. And especially not as much in warriors who had the basics in sharing your mind state with your group. And the tip jar thing is exactly how to unlink the violence from the emotions.
Secondly humans don’t get PTSD as a rule from killing other species. And she has a bubble for incoming violence.
^^^^
This.
PTSD is more linked to the stress of killing other humans than the emotions of combat (Fear/terror/anger/etc). When it was first being studied, the military noticed that PTSD symptoms are vanishing rare in occupations that killed at a distance, regardless of how dangerous that occupation was. For instance, pilots in WWII had pretty high casualty rates, but since they were able to rationalize there actions as shooting down enemy planes, they experienced PTSD at a lower rate than say, the infantry.
I imagine you can get PTSD without ever killing anyone, if you were trapped in a dangerous environment, for a long period of time.
Yeah, that’s why during World War One it was called “Shell Shock”, an it was usually (not always) the result of coming under heavy artillery fire or trench fighting
Now you get diagnosed with PTSD after spending an hour stuck in a fucking traffic jam!
PTSD isn’t just about combat. We became aware of it as a genuine condition and not just a “military thing” in recent decades, BECAUSE it used to be called “shell shock”…but it’s so much more than what the military experiences. You can get PTSD from sexual assault, from other kinds of assault, even from car crashes, to the point that some people cannot stand to be in cars, or cannot drive themselves anymore. You can even get it from being in a house fire, or an earthquake…
I have PTSD about a foot injury I had as a teenager. I have genuinely serious & very bad reactions to seeing exposed tendons…especially when they’re moving. I discovered this from a video posted on Facebook that auto-played. My shock and reaction were so bad, I nearly vomited on my keyboard, and barely got myself aimed into the wastebasket in time. Panicking, crying, swearing, nausea, shaking, hyperventillating, and it took me at least half an hour to calm down to the point where I wasn’t crying anymore.
I had no clue that I had this PTSD, because I’ve literally gone for decades without a triggering incident, but it exists. The actual incident with the foot injury wasn’t too bad…except the doc in the ER pulled my tendon out of my foot to show me the nick on it, and I guess that set my Very Bad Reaction threshold. It’s not a commonly encountered thing for me, which is why I didn’t know about it. Other people have other things, more common triggering events.
Please don’t make fun of PTSD. Yeah, there are people who exaggerate…but by making fun of them, you make the people with the genuine condition feel a thousand times worse with your mockery. That’s being cruel to more than one person, and it encourages others to be cruel. Don’t spread cruelty. That’s a jerk move, and I’d like to think y’all are better than that. Wouldn’t you like to actually be that much better?
Thank you for speaking up.
I’m under the impression that *most* people with PTSD got it without hurting anyone… in large part because it’s also a symptom of being abused, either as a child or in some other abusive relationship. That may not be as common as it once was, but it used to be dreadfully common, and still far more common than it should be.
PTSD is unprocessed traumatic memories.
It can come from any traumatic experience that the person didn’t deal with at the time.
As a person ages, the mind becomes less able to suppress memories (usually in one’s late thirties or one’s forties) and the event(s) must be dealt with in some fashion.
That’s why military dependents during the Vietnam era had PTSD rates at a similar rate as combat vets, because going to school in military towns stateside was like being a Crip trapped alone on Bloods turf.
Given that the military/law enforcement cultures that we see more prominent numbers for PTSD are still working their way out of a “suck it up” mentality in regards to talking about feelings and mental state, it’s not surprising…especially since these professions are also more commonly exposed to traumatic things(the T in PTSD). It can also take many forms and sneak up on you…understanding how the mind works is still a very elusive subject and everyone’s reactions and resilience will be different.
In Sydney’s case, I suspect that post debriefing she will speak with a counselor the Arc SWAT provides, but that her particular experiences are fantastical enough that she can process it like a comic book. As these experiences become more common in her life, it will probably take different methods to process though. We still haven’t caught up to where the intro strips to the entire comic had her
Maxima’s first sentence confuses me. I think it’s a mix of tenses and/or some double negatives.
Either she is saying, “While you were gone I missed your weirdness,” or “Now I miss how calm it was while you were gone.”
I noticed too. One negative too many.
It makes perfect sense, if you’re weird.
“I missed how weird it wasn’t around here without you”
=>
” I missed how weird it wasn’t [when you were gone]”
=>
“When you were gone, it wasn’t weird around here, and I missed the weirdness you bring.”
I counted 14 shown, culturally agreed upon, swear words from Sydney’s time in space. I can assume she nontuppled the amount with off camera time and the grantz, for 126 swear words. At 50 bucks a pop that’s 6300 dollars. So she might as well drop 10Gs in the jar.
Yeah, probably also accouts for one uber powered one when the space butthole got space alum.
Probably quite a few for when the kaiju was playing ping pong eyebeam with Syd as the ball.
They should include Cora and Dabs too to add perspective to it or they won’t believe Halo
Military accounting is atrocious. There’s a reason they lose billions in cash and have no idea what happened.
I used to be in military auditing. I’d find a $20 million irregularity and the usual response was “it’s only $20 million, don’t worry about it.” Uncle Sam doesn’t cut my paychecks anymore. Can’t work for someone that lazy and incompetent.
That was also how you covered paying for secret projects that nobody in the General Accounting Office had clearance to know about. It was also why an order of 40 toilet seats would cost $1000 a piece, $5 for the actual toilet seat and the rest for the stuff we can’t tell you about.
For the record, it was $500 for a “ceramic toilet shell”, that is the thing that covers the entire toilet, not just a seat. Civilian airlines paid $600 for the same part so the Air Force was actually getting a good deal. It helps to know what is actually being bought.
Yep. A coffee maker for a troop plane that makes a hundred cups of coffee in 5 minutes is not a Melita.
For the record, several very large accounting firms have been hired as consultants to figure out where the zarking money all went, and their recommendations have either been “follow basic accounting procedures for fuck’s sake” or “actually do that recommendation this time you criminal idiots”.
This none of our armed forces do. Military accounting is to go “oops” and then ask the fools in Congress for more money. Which they raise the debt limit which exists only to screw the people from real government, and then borrow and borrow some more and then hand it over with no strings.
So of course there’s ten grand on base for Sydney. Why wouldn’t there be.
I had a odd reading of that “ceramic toilet shell” considering they do use artillery… a privy buster bomb? or was that strictly on chilli night?
Well, there was that one time <a href="https://www.midwaysailor.com/midwayva25bomb/"the US Navy sent North Vietnam a special load…
Finance and how it’s handled would be peculiar to Archon, as it’s a separate command.
In forward deployed areas, there’s a finance office at major bases, and they cash checks and disburse funds. And yes, the CO does have a government credit card for purchases that are either “MUST HAVE NOW” or “too minor to list”. As do a number of other officers. Those get audited from Hell.
That’s how the US Army was handling matters a few years ago, other branches may vary. And Archon is going to keep a LOT more cash in the finance office, given the payroll they’re handling.
(Finance has their own networks, their own servers, and are a great honking pain in the IT leads rear. Trust me on this one.)
I was waiting for that….
I cann’t wait for them to hear that she did enough to get three new points
1.Whatever happened to the first swear jar?
2.What kind of debriefing will Maxima have in store for Sydney????
1. its at home, it handles the non-professional (cheaper) cussing.
2. sadly it will be PG rated. long, tedious, repeated questions, recorded for posterity, classified slit-your-throat-BEFORE-reading, and hopefully feature decent catering.
1. she probably had to upgrade the size for now that she’s rich
2. Well they have to question her on what happened while she was gone and what she’s allowed to tell her team, other people and the public
She doesn’t have to upgrade the size, she’s just using hundred dollar bills now. The other jar is presumably offbase.
She used it to make a down payment on a car, in a flashback. Someone posted a convenient link in an earlier comment.
Not a down payment, the WHOLE payment. When the salesman asked how she was going to finance she said “CASH!!!!”
Treasurer?