Grrl Power #741 – High level meeting
Sydney is concerned about information propagation. One person can keep a secret, but the more people who know it, obviously, the more chances of it slipping out somewhere along the line. She was so concerned with other people getting mind-plundered, that it just didn’t occur to her that some telepath could come by and snatch it out of her mind. From what they know about her shield, its a reasonable assumption that it would block telepathy. But she obviously can’t be in it 24/7. Nor would she want to. They do now know the green orb does “life support” but whether that only includes generating breathable atmosphere, or if it extends to any form of calorie supplementation and hydration is something they haven’t tested yet.
If I was a superhero (or any kind of government agent that made a habit of making enemies of powerful people and organizations) I would be intensely paranoid about so many things. Even before Snowden and Wikileaks, I had zero faith in any organization to keep anything secret, much less any massive, sprawling governments. And that’s in a world without teleportation, phasing, cyberkinesis, or just good old fashion telepathy. Superpowers aside, how many people would have access to Archon’s classified files, and how many of them have families who could have guns put to their heads?
Let’s assume that the only people who have access to intelligence regarding Archon’s full suite of abilities is Archon themselves and everyone is in that one building. That’s clearly not the case, but just as a starting point. Even if an organization had a telepath who could make sure no one is a mole or on the take, you’d still have to check everyone who walked in the door every single day to make sure they haven’t started being blackmailed or have a family member who is “safe, at the moment” since the last time they clocked in.
Even if you did that, what stops someone from getting a video call in iChat or whatever in the middle of the day showing their wife tied to a chair holding a sign saying “leave the door on the roof unlocked” or whatever? Confiscate all phones upon entering, monitor all communications in and out? It doesn’t matter. In the end you’re still dealing with people, and they can be manipulated.
It’s for these reasons and more that people who believe in moon landing conspiracies are ultra-maroons. They really think no one would have slipped up or spilled the beans about it by now? In 50 years, not a single person might have mentioned it. No deathbed confessions? Not even an email anywhere on a server that got hacked? Come on. Come on.
I spent more time on panel 2 than anything else on this page, and I couldn’t get Sydney’s expression how I wanted. It was supposed to be that sort of pinched, “you’ve asked someone a question you know they’re not going to like answering” expectant look. Almost like a Robert de Niro-esque look. I don’t know if that makes any sense. Revisiting it now, I think the thing I goofed on is Sydney’s lips are kind of pursed. I think now that they should be tight, like she’s sucked them in between her teeth. Anyway, she just wound up looking weirdly smug, which isn’t quite what I was going for.
Oh my god you guys, moving sucks. There were like 3 or 4 days last week where I didn’t get any work done on the comic, instead getting like 20K steps in just carrying stuff around and disassembling and reassembling. And that was with movers who did the bulk of the heavy lifting. But we’re finally settled into the new place. Well, not settled. We’re here. We’re a ways away from being settled. Half of everything I own is still in boxes. I’ve already tossed a bunch of crap I never used, and I suspect by the time I’m done unpacking, I’ll have lost another 20%.
I will attempt to update the vote incentive later today. All I have is a bit of a doodle, but hopefully now that the bulk of the moving stuff is done with, I can get caught up in general and put some work into it.
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As a Chaplains Assistant, I was told to hold confidentiality in the highest regard. Legally, I could not be ordered to reveal anything. But lets be honest, I am not scared of the laws of man.
If I started blabbing the secrets I know, it is my immortal soul that I jeopardize. So I would need to be commanded directly by God himself to tell a secret. And at that point, God might as well send a Choir of Hosts to announce it.
With current technology we can actually tell (once calibrated) whether an individual is thinking about specific things. For instance we can tell if you are thinking about Pokemon (this may seem arbitrary, but we can very specifically do this particular task).
In the fullness of time, brain scans will be able to reveal more complex things. Including secrets. It is very hard to avoid thinking about something that you are preoccupied with, and that people are interrogating you about.
That will leave confidentiality in a very tricky place. Much as Sydney is realising above.
Those “revealing brain scans” only work in conjunction with questioning and/or pre-programming for a specific individual with that individuals help. IE The person must submit to a brain scan while purposely thinking about pokemon, to use as a base line for detecting when that person was thinking about pokemon.
The idea that the contents of a person thoughts could be scanned without their extensive cooperation is fantasy. Even then the compution requirements would be on the order of “a completely accurate virtual model/map of every neuron in that individuals brain, with accompanying physics modeling”
I remember my physics teacher debunking my claim that we would be able to detect exoplanets, around other stars, in due course. Yet now we can.
I am confident that, in the fullness of time, interrogation techniques will be used, by unethical governments, which incorporate brain scanning technology. It will likely be no more reliable than present day ‘lie detectors’, and training could be given on how to counter it, so would be inadmissible in ethical countries’ courts. Likewise it would indeed require calibration for a specific individual (as I indicated), and would need leading questions, just as with a lie detector.
But its advantage would be that it would not be limited to “yes” or “no” answers. It could see what part of the brain (corresponding to Pokemon or family members) is lighting up, in response to the questioning.
One area it may be of use is in gaining pin numbers or passwords. A scanner would easily be able to differentiate between someone thinking of a number, a date or a family member or pet. They are all stored in different areas of the brain. So that alone (even without knowing the specific answer) would help narrow down hacking attempts. And with more advanced technology comes the ability to pick out specific individuals (again once calibrated).
So a high tech scanner could feasibly indicate “eldest daughter’s birthday plus a sequential number” as a common password used. Which would be really easy to crack.
Being able to detect a solid object in space is no where near being able to identify an imaginary subject in someone’s brain
Last looked, dates were numbers (unless you meant the fruit)
You are not keeping up with breaking science research. Scientists wanted to be able to find out why the brain maps different objects in specific areas of the brain. There were different theories. But the one that this test was trying to show was whether such areas were influenced by whether an object was commonly viewed in the centre of the viewer’s field of view or in the peripheral areas.
For example we naturally stare at people’s faces, instinctively, to pick up cues as to their emotions, better understand what they are saying and so on. Whereas corridors are things which you rarely look at directly, they are something you see out of the corner of your eye.
So the researchers hypothesised that if they could find something present in only part of the population (e.g. visual recognition of different types of Pokemon) and that it was something typically in the center of a field of view (such as we would expect with console games) then they would expect it to appear in part of the brain near to where faces and the like are stored. Rather than where corridors are mapped.
And it turns out that pokemon do indeed have a discreet area of the brain they are mapped in (consistent across a lot of subjects) near to where faces and the like are stored.
Incidentally they are not imaginary, as we have real world images of them. They are fictional, but as we can see images of them they have bearing on the real world.
Dates are stored in one part of the brain, whilst other numbers are in another part.* Whether they are made up of numbers is thereby not important for a scanner being able to distinguish one from another.
* Stated in a confident tone, bearing the ring of truth. And the bracelet of don’t examine this too closely as I have not fact checked it, but it sounds kinda right.
We have always been able to detect exoplanets. We just hadn’t figured out what to look for (interruptions/bending) of the light emitted by various stars). It was a matter of ignorance, not technology or ability. Your physics teacher was woefully ignorant.
Arguing impossibility? Good luck with that. It’s a tough position to take. Lol. To seriously espouse an absolute limit to something that is a new technology, one would have to be fairly ignorant of all the times the word “can’t” was thrown around, up until the point of could. Also, the logical fallacies you use to support your positions are staggeringly obvious. Sorry, but that sort of thing is painful to read.
He just said that the objects were too small and dim and too far away for us to be able to resolve them with feasible technology. What he lacked was imagination as to what is feasible to inventive humans.
And to be fair to your teacher, it’s only a very small proportion of exoplanets that we have managed to resolve in the way he was apparently thinking of. For any that aren’t [i] very reflective, [ii] far out from their star, and [iii] in the right part of their orbit relative to our sightline, we still have little to no chance of imaging them directly – and even when all those conditions are met, it takes a lot of observations to distinguish a planet from a background star.
Where reality has overtaken your teacher isn’t so much in the technology, but in the ways we’re looking. Instead of trying to resolve the planet directly, we look for the dip in the star’s brightness when the planet crosses between it and us, or the wobbles in the star’s position around the whole system’s centre of mass. I’m not sure whether the recent emergence of these methods was more due to the tech improving to the point that it could pick up planetary effects, or to astronomers realising that the alternative options existed in the first place, but given the nature of such things, it’s unlikely to be wholly either.
Why question? Scan, flash pictures, get reactions, continue for 15 minutes, put under to rem, awaken, New sequence with refreshed brain, continue. Then ask detailed yes no questions relevant to scanned responces, walla peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!
What should frighten you is, what will it be like when we can copy our consciousness into a computer for the purposes of having a “Backup” that we can load into a robot body when we die, like in “Quantum Vibe?” What could you do with such a backup? Load it into a virtual reality and question it by putting it into a situation where it would need to use its secret knowledge to solve a perceived problem? Torture it endlessly by making it feel pain until it talks? make hundreds of extra copies and compare their reactions to different situations and figure out their secrets that way?
+5
O_o
Enough duress and anyone will talk. you may not fear death, and hold your soul in the highest regard, but enough deprivation of food, water, human company and isolation, coupled with judicious use of a sensory deprivation chamber, and I”m pretty certain a good interrogator can make anyone talk without even having to use the blowtorch, plyers and jumper cables all that much. The fact that some folk have resisted torture, says more about the lack of skill of the interrogator than the iron resolve of the interrogatee.
i feel like im missing something, what is her secret hidden power that i missed?
Presumably, the teleportation.
And the “Atherium Gateway ” is containable secret info. Right now it is know by Cora’s crew and Probably Dabbler.
Also, the orbs as Nth level tech, and the wee chance of interstellar war.
So… three things.
+5
yes it is the teleportation she has not told anyone yet.
shortly after getting it she chose to keep it to herself just in case, and is only now letting Max in on her trick.
here is where she decides to keep it to herself.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-525-tropelock/
Yup. And Sydney did utilise it tactically to good effect, when fighting the big baddies on the Alari homeworld. Hence her desire to keep it secret.
That first panel is amazing, Dave! And I love the artistic choice of omitting Max and Sydney’s facial details in that panel, it enhances the glow of the sunset!
Btw, regarding how high off the ground they are?
They’re NOT all that hgh off the ground, actually.
…Allow me to explain. First, a little background on the dangers of going way too high, and where the reasonable limits are:
At around 3 kilometers of altitude (3,000m or not quite 10,000ft), the average temperature is 0…but we know that Maxima has abilities that can do things like toughen her body, a forcefield that basically includes her clothes, & it’s assumed that she can protect herself from average extremes of cold as well as extremes of heat via this surface-forcefield effect (it takes a REALLY hot explosion to damage her clothes, for example). At 4km in altitude, you’d require an oxygen mask. Flying lower, you’ll run into heat problems if your velocity is too high, unless (again) you have some sort of energy-mitigation power. (Hiro can absorb energy, which we’ve seen him doing with the sonic attack, and Max & Sydney both have shields, Max via her telekinetic skin-tight forcefield that mostly also protects her clothes, and Sydney via the shield orb, which apparently nullifies the vast majority of lethal levels of heat and/or cold.)
(Btw, there is some fascinating stuff on superhero flying and why it’s not a good power to have unless you can migitage such things as temperature, atmospheric pressure, velocity-based friction, etc, etc, via this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/qP-2hMNnhgY …)
HOWEVER…what if that’s not a thunderhead up there in panel 1, aka a cumulonimbus cloud…but is instead merely a nimbostratus cloud?
…What are nimbostratus clouds, you ask? Why, they’re those gray or dark gray clouds that loom more or less close-ish overhead, look kinda flat on the bottom, and just looove to rain all over your parade (and other activities; they’re not picky). They’re gray, not white like cumulus clouds, because they’re thick with water vapor busy condensing into incipient rain; their density blocks the light from refracting through the cloud, keeping it white. The sun is clearly available in panel 1 to illuminate whitely through a normal cumulonimbus cloud near the anvilhead top…yet that cloud is pretty much entirely heavy gray.
“Nimbostratus (rain)Types of Clouds 3
Below 6,500 feet
When you see nimbostratus clouds you are almost surely being rained on or will be rained on. These dark, thick clouds lay at mid to low levels because they are weighed down with water concentration.”
On the illustration image on this page: https://cimioutdoored.org/types-clouds/ …we can see that while cumulonimbus thunderheads stretch way up into ranges where breathing aparatuses & protective insulation would be mandatory…we also see that nimboculumous clouds CAN have a “thunderhead-like shape” while still being quite low to the ground, well below the 10,000-feet mark. In fact, they only go up about as far as 6,500ft…which is well below the “you must be wearing an air tank this big to go past here” mark. It’s probably 35F at most, and Maxima’s probably not going to want to linger long at the height they’re at, but it does look like they’re at a Maxima-safe breathing level (even if only for short periods of time).
The anvil-ish (not Anvil-ish, just anvil/thunderhead-shaped) style cloud in panel 1 of today’s page holds more evidence than that it’s just too dark to be a true thunderhead, which as I said tend to be a lot more white toward the tops, and very very tall, not squat and close to their bases. You see, the tops of true cumulonimbus (thunderhead) clouds are found waaay up toward the cirrus altitude before they spread out in that distinct anvil-flat top. That’s the topmost wispy/streaky cloud range…yet we can clearly see plenty of clouds ABOVE Sydney and Maxima, not just below them.
More than that, we can see LAYERS of clouds above them. Some of the closest are even a little on the dark side–again, despite the fact the sun is clearly available to shine upon them and make them bright & white! Those would be the altostratus clouds, as seen in the illustration on page https://cimioutdoored.org/types-clouds/
They have beyond them what look like clouds above THOSE clouds, which would be the cirrostratus clouds, tiny cirrocumulus puffs like scattered mini cottonballs…and the cirrus “mare’s tails” style clouds beyond those. (BEAUTIFUL layering effects, DaveB! Magnificently well done! …Seriously, could we have a large (and text-free) version on the dA page, pretty pretty please?? *ahem*)
If they were above the anvil-top of a thunderhead cloud, a true cumulonimbus cloud…it would be a lot taller, and there wouldn’t be multiple layers of clouds above the pair, just mostly below them, and like one layer maybe above them.
That’s a nimbocumulus raincloud, which can indeed have an anvil-like top above its stubby gray-with-impending-rain body.
We don’t often SEE the anvil-top of a nimbocumulus cloud unless or until it becomes a towering thunderhead cloud, because of the angle of our line of sight versus how short their anvil-stacks tend to be…and because many nimbocumulus clouds are often accompanied by nimbostratus (flat & dense gray) clouds that pretty much blanket everything up there in the lower levels, blocking our line of sight.
Long story short, there’s plenty of evidence to prove they’re not all that high up. Max can breathe just fine (though she won’t want to stay up there for very long).
Also, DaveB knows his meteorology, way to go!
(Ignore the “nimbocumulus” mentions in this one, I derped on the terminology. Also, other typos. yeesh.)
I’m no meteorologist, either. I just have a general knowledge, of many eclectic subjects.
Here’s an eclectic question. How come meteorologists don’t study meteors?
Because they are vegans :P
XDDDD
Glad that someone got the joke :D
Some of them do study meteors, because meteorology is the study of ANYTHING falling through the sky to Earth…but you have to put points into the Astronomy section of the skill tree, plus several points into Mineralogy and/or Geology.
At least they’re more common than the ones that study frozen fish and frozen frogs falling from the sky, and that super weird time it rained chunks of meat…just chunks of raw meat… That’s a REALLY rare sub-skill-tree of Meteorology. >.>*
(Oh great. Now I’m wondering if the green orb can create food as well as air once properly point-spec’d…and if so, if you put a point in to link it to the PPO, does this mean you can fire meatballs, carrots, and/or kebabs at your enemies?)
Aren’t they meteors when they are in space, and turn into meteorites once they enter the atmosphere?
I could be wrong here, but from what I remember, outside the atmosphere, they’re Asteroids, inside the atmosphere, they’re Meteoroids, and once they’re in or on the ground, they are meteorites.
Not quite, although you’re both right in that the names refer to the same object at different times.
A small body in separate Solar orbit is a meteoroid. If it hits planetary atmosphere, the streak of plasma created as it ablates is the meteor. And if there’s anything left after that luminous deceleration phase, it’s a meteorite.
The difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly size, but it’s a very fuzzy line in what’s probably a continuous distribution. It used to be loosely based on whether or not the body was big enough to be visible to Earth-based observers (prior to any meteor phase), but the bounds of that ability have been expanding ever since.
I’d think more points in that orb would get you better cusine…1 dot equals gruel, 2 grilled cheese sandwiches, 3, high end chain restaurant fare, 4 Wolfgang Puck actually appears and cooks for you..
Btw, regarding how high off the ground they are?
They’re NOT all that hgh off the ground, actually.
…Allow me to explain. First, a little background on the dangers of going way too high, and where the reasonable limits are:
At around 3 kilometers of altitude (3,000m or not quite 10,000ft), the average temperature is 0…but we know that Maxima has abilities that can do things like toughen her body, a forcefield that basically includes her clothes, & it’s assumed that she can protect herself from average extremes of cold as well as extremes of heat via this surface-forcefield effect (it takes a REALLY hot explosion to damage her clothes, for example). At 4km in altitude, you’d require an oxygen mask. Flying lower, you’ll run into heat problems if your velocity is too high, unless (again) you have some sort of energy-mitigation power. (Hiro can absorb energy, which we’ve seen him doing with the sonic attack, and Max & Sydney both have shields, Max via her telekinetic skin-tight forcefield that mostly also protects her clothes, and Sydney via the shield orb, which apparently nullifies the vast majority of lethal levels of heat and/or cold.)
(Btw, there is some fascinating stuff on superhero flying and why it’s not a good power to have unless you can migitage such things as temperature, atmospheric pressure, velocity-based friction, etc, etc, via this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/qP-2hMNnhgY …)
HOWEVER…what if that’s not a thunderhead up there in panel 1, aka a cumulonimbus cloud…but is instead merely a nimbostratus cloud?
…What are nimbostratus clouds, you ask? Why, they’re those gray or dark gray clouds that loom more or less close-ish overhead, look kinda flat on the bottom, and just looove to rain all over your parade (and other activities; they’re not picky). They’re gray, not white like cumulus clouds, because they’re thick with water vapor busy condensing into incipient rain; their density blocks the light from refracting through the cloud, keeping it white. The sun is clearly available in panel 1 to illuminate whitely through a normal cumulonimbus cloud near the anvilhead top…yet that cloud is pretty much entirely heavy gray.
“Nimbostratus (rain)Types of Clouds 3
Below 6,500 feet
When you see nimbostratus clouds you are almost surely being rained on or will be rained on. These dark, thick clouds lay at mid to low levels because they are weighed down with water concentration.”
On the illustration image on this page: https://cimioutdoored.org/types-clouds/ …we can see that while cumulonimbus thunderheads stretch way up into ranges where breathing aparatuses & protective insulation would be mandatory…we also see that nimboculumous clouds CAN have a “thunderhead-like shape” while still being quite low to the ground, well below the 10,000-feet mark. In fact, they only go up about as far as 6,500ft…which is well below the “you must be wearing an air tank this big to go past here” mark. It’s probably 35F at most, and Maxima’s probably not going to want to linger long at the height they’re at, but it does look like they’re at a Maxima-safe breathing level (even if only for short periods of time).
The anvil-ish (not Anvil-ish, just anvil/thunderhead-shaped) style cloud in panel 1 of today’s page holds more evidence than that it’s just too dark to be a true thunderhead, which as I said tend to be a lot more white toward the tops, and very very tall, not squat and close to their bases. You see, the tops of true cumulonimbus (thunderhead) clouds are found waaay up toward the cirrus altitude before they spread out in that distinct anvil-flat top. That’s the topmost wispy/streaky cloud range…yet we can clearly see plenty of clouds ABOVE Sydney and Maxima, not just below them.
More than that, we can see LAYERS of clouds above them. Some of the closest are even a little on the dark side–again, despite the fact the sun is clearly available to shine upon them and make them bright & white! Those would be the altostratus clouds, as seen in the illustration on page https://cimioutdoored.org/types-clouds/
They have beyond them what look like clouds above THOSE clouds, which would be the cirrostratus clouds, tiny cirrocumulus puffs like scattered mini cottonballs…and the cirrus “mare’s tails” style clouds beyond those. (BEAUTIFUL layering effects, DaveB! Magnificently well done! …Seriously, could we have a large (and text-free) version on the dA page, pretty pretty please?? *ahem*)
If they were above the anvil-top of a thunderhead cloud, a true cumulonimbus cloud…it would be a lot taller, and there wouldn’t be multiple layers of clouds above the pair, just mostly below them, and like one layer maybe above them.
That’s a nimbostratus raincloud, which can indeed have an anvil-like top above its stubby gray-with-impending-rain body.
We don’t often SEE the anvil-top of a nimbostratus cloud unless or until it becomes a towering thunderhead cloud, because of the angle of our line of sight versus how short their anvil-stacks tend to be…and because many nimbostratus clouds are often accompanied by nimbostratus (flat & dense gray) clouds that pretty much blanket everything up there in the lower levels, blocking our line of sight.
Long story short, they’re not all that high up, and Max can breathe just fine (though she won’t want to stay up there for very long).
I’m hoping that after Sydney clues Max in on her new abilities, Max will rethink running Sydney through the same basic training a normal recruit gets. They had Halo running laps, and specifically ordered her to not use the fly ball while running them. That may improve Sydney’s obviously wimpy physique, but only to a level any normal human could reach. On the other hand, if they would let Sydney use her orbs, then Sydney would every so often rack up enough points for yet another superhuman power. They should be working to improve the powerset that makes Sydney a unique asset, rather than working to improve her mundane aspects.
It’s quite possible that flying laps wouldn’t do anything for her; The orbs are apparently quite smart, perhaps they hand out the upgrade points only when she gets in situations where her present power set is looking inadequate, or, alternatively, when she’s demonstrated enough operational understanding of her existing powers to move on to new ones.
Her best bet for farming new points is probably setting up sparring sessions with Maxima.
But, given her ditzy personality, and recruit status, do they want her to get more powerful? Maybe they’d prefer that she learn the ropes and demonstrate some reliability first.
If it wasn’t unrelated to attacking technology, then I’d say an eating competition at that grakz shop with Clover would get a point.
That makes no sense.
Improving physique overall affects a lot of things, including how long the body can go without sleep, resistance to disease, and overall stamina.
All of those are things she will need.
Nice idea, except what if someone is able to isolate Sydney from her balls, even for a short time? She will be back to her ‘wimpy physique’ barely able to defend herself from a gust of wind
I see your point. However remember that even Maxima was unable to move Sydney’s orbs past a certain limit. How likely is it that Sydney packing a few extra pounds of muscle mass will make a difference against an opponent who accomplished what Maxima could not? If more time is spent drilling Sydney in the use of her orbs, then that should speed up the process of Sydney unlocking additional features. Features that are likely to make a hell of a lot more difference than a few pounds of extra muscle mass ever could.
When your cadre of recruits consists of metahumans with unique and highly valuable abilities, it just seems to me that a one—size—fits—all approach to training is ill advised. Training should be customized for each recruit to maximize the abilities that makes those recruits so invaluable.
Didn’t say ‘remove’ Sydney’s balls, just ‘isolate’ them
Remember that Sydney-vision of someone stuffing them in a burlap sack? Sydney would no longer have access to fondle her balls, butt she might be able to overwhelm them and regain control over the ball sack
Sydney could literally swing the orbs around inside the sack, turning it into a “sock full of pennies” in essence, and whap the person trying to keep them from her.
Considered Sydney hitting someone in the head with her ball-sack
Improving her base physical fitness is still a good idea
As for the rest of it: fairly sure they would have individualized training to mesh with their abilities, the morning jog and obstacle course are general fitness that everyone takes part in, even Peggy and Les
See, the strange thing is, while most people assume that the points being gained are based off of physical activities or skill sets, I’ve been assuming that the creators of these orbs are watching the events and once a sufficient number of viewers donate to the halo channel she gets a new point, ergo Sydney just needs to be is entertaining as possible.
(Only slightly joking)
:)
Good headcanon.
And plausible.
Cause honestly, when you’ve solved all the riddles of the universe, what better entertainment than dropping supertech on primatives smart enough to use the device but not smart enough to understand or reverse engineer it. and watching the chaos.
The brown orb is the Aetherium web cam that is sending live feed of her antics back to the main studio of “The Galaxy’s Funniest Homo Sapiens”.
very “hunger games” or “running mam” way to look at it…. and the possibility exists however I figure it is not on “public” donations or ratings. rather on “closest choice to how they would have done it” earns her points. and enough close or exact choices gets her a star for being a good little toy. in the meantime the Nth are placing bets on how close she will come to doing what they would do…
“Five to one she uses the hentai orb to grab the rocket! ten to one she ‘shotguns’ it with the PPO! 20 to one she blocks it with her shield before it hits the building.”
I’m assuming that the controlling artifact (which is probably extra-dimensional), when it bonded with Sydney, understood her enough to provide a “training wheels” level of power, and an interface which she would understand intuitively (ie, the skill tree/wheel), and the better control she gets over the lower settings, the more powerful features become available.
In essence, the system is training her, without letting her accidentally blow a hole in the planet.
Yep, the orbs level up according to the # of “likes” she gets on Nth-tube livestreams.
Or when she gets high-level patron donations, a la Hunger Games.
I don’t know what it is, but Sydney seems to get worse and worse in the face, but Max, better and better.
I think the unique qualities of the light, on this page, favour Maxima’s reflective skin. Whereas Dave was having time issues and an artistic block in sorting out the complexities it raised with Sydney’s face.
Overall though I like to focus on the positives, which is that the page is spectacular, and Maxima is shown incredibly well. Not to mention the background being a work of art in its own right.
Why wouldn’t Sydney essentially live in that bubble for the rest of her life? It doesn’t seem to interfere with her motions (walking or flying around she has never been blocked because of having a force field surrounding her), or her social interactions (speech and body language isn’t blocked at all). So there’s no down side other than occupying a hand. I’d be keeping the force field up as much as I could.
It is down to a social thing that would not spring to mind for you. But the closest analogy is how troops policing civilian populations in
an occupieda liberated country have to make the choice between wearing their helmet or a beret (or going uncovered, as the case may be). Having a helmet on (or forcefield raised) is dehumanising. A scared civilian will see the individual as being a faceless soldier (figuratively speaking), rather than a human.This affects the relationship from the outset. The soldier (or Halo) will be sending the message “I consider you a potential threat” or, under other circumstances “I am scared to be here, so I have this protection, but you have nothing, so are probably going to die”. Or variations along that theme.
Likewise there will be a psychological barrier raised even in personal interactions that are not in a potential battlezone. Even subtle body language like crossing your arms can make people feel that you are defensive, and possibly put them off interacting with you in a positive way. This would be far worse!
Similarly there is the simple inconvenience of not being able to pick up a cake or coke. Or make use of the toilets. Basically if you are so paranoid that you need to have the shield raised all the time, then your enemies simply need to be more patient and/or pick a location where you need to lower your shield. And this has been done in assassination attempts in real life. Everyone has to take their body armour off, or step away from a bodyguard, at some point. If they want to have any quality of life.
I was going to say doors, and most other entryways/hallways aren’t designed for a 6-8 ft ellipsoid
Objects around her have never been shown to be a hindrance to the force field. Or Sydney would be shown banging up against every mailbox/fire hydrant/utility pole as she walks down any given city street. It can be safely assumed that it morphs shape to account for objects in her vicinity.
Agreed.
There is a huge difference between the appearance of a completely transparent force field and the combination of mirrored sunglasses and advanced combat helmet. And unlike your typical soldier or police officer in a potentially dangerous situation, Sydney is capable of making eye contact and giving the appearance if not the actual fact of being completely at ease and relaxed. Cops and soldiers can be shot and killed while conversing with what appears to be a civilian, Sydney does not share this limitation.
Good counters, but I do not feel that they negate my argument. The effects would be weakened somewhat, as you indicate. However they are magnified due to people knowing that this is a super power (and an extremely powerful one at that). Not to mention its sheer size. Even though it is smaller indoors or in confined areas, the shield does nonetheless project a large area of personal space, in a very physical and visible (albeit admittedly translucent) way.
So, in addition to my previous arguments, it is also crowding out people in the area. Big supers are probably not that phased by it, even unconsciously. However civilians probably would feel uncomfortable, even if only subconsciously.
Forcefield up means no hugs ever again. I would consider that a significant detriment to the quality of life.
Also, you really need to interact with food and toilet, so it would be impossible to stay bubbled all the time – there is that.
Unless there’s a pip on the force field orb’s skill tree that lets her shape the shield. Then she could just put her s*** through an airlock by pinching off a second bubble. Pretty useful.
…But if she still can’t have hugs, then it’s no good.
It does reshape itself fairly often. When in high speed flight it is torpedo shaped, when indoors it is smaller, and we have seen it deform around inconveniently positioned furniture.
Although that is not to say there may not be an option to actively and dramatically change its shape.
I’m pretty sure the concepts of “privacy” and “confidentiality” are myths. On the other hand, that’s no reason to just yell, “Hey Max, did you know I can teleport, open wormholes — aetherium causeways, whatever — and fly five times faster now?!” in the middle of a casual office party. The loosening of lips and subsequent sinking of ships can at least be put off for a while.
Shouldn’t Max be in the bubble with Sydney if this is supposed to be a private conversation?
Except if you remember why Sydney didn’t tell Maxi in the first place
Evil Maxi-clone: “Thank you for that information, time for you to go to sleep, permanently. No no, don’t struggle. Shhh!”
Soon-to-be-dead Sydney: “grrgle…”
I never really understood the tin foil hat thing. wouldn’t a tin foil hat aid in the broadcasting or reception of signals?
it is supposed to BLOCK the “Orbital Mind Control Rays” that “THEY” are using to secretly control humanity to do their bidding…
Shiny side out. Repels heat. So in the sci-fi method of thinking, shiny side out will repel a telepath probe. Dull side out absorbs heat. So it would allow a telepath to read a persons mind.
Look up faraday cages. Maxima’s is essentially continuous, but nonethless, should do a nice job of blocking electromagnetic radiation (ie, radio waves).
Doesn’t do that much x-rays, t-rays, gamma rays, neutrons, and other strange waves and or particles, but hey, don’t concern the tin-foil hat brigade with *facts*. Or mention that radio waves will pass through the lower part of their head via reflection. ;)
> In 50 years, not a single person might have mentioned it. No deathbed confessions?
It can just mean that whoever was confessed to had a reason to keep that secret, too.
Would you be willing to tell everyone that your grandfather was not a great hero but a scumbag that helped fool the world in an elaborate hoax created to distract your fellow citizens from government corruption and war crimes?
Sure, if you knew your grandfather was a scumbag that helped fool the world in an elaborate hoax created to distract your fellow citizens from government corruption and war crimes
It occurs to me, that Sydney, with a little bit of push from the orbs, will be able to reform the force shield bubble into a transparent body sheath. Maybe not skin tight like Max’s, but similar to wearing a wet/dry skin diving suit. Also, since I started to read this web comic, I’ve noted a few times where the orbs appear to have independent will. It’s been very subtle. Also I’m kind of hoping that one of the orbs will give Sydney the ability to either shrink to ant size or have a shape shifting or morphing ability. As for someone reading her mind. Somehow I think it would be extremely hard for people to tell which is actual classified information dealing with her abilities and others, with the amount of comic book s she has read over the years, also toss in her ADHD and the fact she takes meds for it, would probably cause a telepath to have a nervous breakdown after spending a few minutes inside Sydney’s thoughts.
Possibly available in one of the other shield lines to shape the shield more than just embiggening it?
VOTE
I absolutely loved the shading and lighting on this page, Dave!
As for the caption at the bottom.. it’s very true. Just as no plan of action survives contact with Second Lieutenants (I’m a medically retired Army Paratrooper). XD
I would have to say that Sydney’s mind is so much chaos and ADHD disorder that a telepath would not be able to figure out what her orbs can do or any company secrets due to how much her mind shift from moment to moment.