Grrl Power #742 – Rank = knowing stuff
Yeah, Sydney basically forgot that Maxima is a Lt. Colonel and she’s not even a Private yet. She’s just gotten used to being in the know. She found out about Arc-DARK, Dabbler, and aliens within minutes of entering the building, and figured out Earth is host to a lot of not-humans in her first week on the team.
At some point here, probably on the way back down to the base, Maxima is going to read Sydney the riot act about keeping important stuff from her, like secret powers. I don’t have a comic covering that conversation planned, cause it’s just a lot of “Seriously.” and “Okay, I promise.” Just be aware that it does happen.
I was going to write more here, but I started rereading the comic from the Dabbler reveal page linked above, and now it’s 1 am and I’m tired. At least it made me chuckle quite a bit. Boy, Sydney has actually calmed down quite a bit since then. I’m sure that’s good for like, character growth, but I almost feel like she needs to have a relapse or something, cause those pages were pretty funny.
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I must say, we’re getting there now!
As if Leon would ever let anything like that end up on Wikileaks for more than 10 seconds.
It’s definitely possible he’s got some automatic website scanning programs keeping an optic on sites like Wikileaks. He seems to know what he’s doing. Although, I’m wondering what kind of safeguards you could set up against someone with technomagical/technopathic abilities…
Alright, not my big words, Daniel the Human came up with them. I think he came up with a Super with powers like that…
Exactly, philosoraptor.
Then again, they are friends with certain individuals that are… actually they don’t. There aren’t AI even in the Twilight Council. Dave must have them somewhere else. “No Sydney, no robots.” That was said. Icon is constructs/golems/intelligent weapons.
If they had friendly sapient digital life forms, then they could do it as a side job, I guess.
Check out A Girl and Her Fed webcomic, there are apparently ways to protect your data from people that can literally crawl through your computers, like encrypting your code so it “looks” like grotesque extreme porn.
What do you mean ‘looks like’? o_O
Steganography. Hiding the data in a picture in order to conceal it.
No, meant why have it ‘looks like’ when you can have ‘actually is’
The first gate is your porn folder, and they have to find the correct image that has the link to the next stage (and it starts off with Disney Porn and progressively gets ‘worse’ :D)
Hehe, some computer languages/programs are cryptic enough as it is, but say for instance a haskel type program written in ‘whitespace’ between the actual program text. Yes; _whitepace_ is a computer language
Writing it on non-digital stuff.
books instead of programs
I don’t think you can keep that stuff out of wikileaks and the likes. It will come back pretty soon. There are read only external drives, offline storage and the like to store stuff you don’t want to loose to hacking.
What you can do however is flood the real information in a mountain of fake news and start a bunch of conspiracy theories about it.
Flooding like Batman did when he revealed that Bruce Wayne was funding Batman [etc]’s operations and needed to discourage people from realizing that Batman [I] = Bruce Wayne.
I would agree for you except for two things: First, Leon would just have to ask his girlfriend for help and the entire problem would be gone in seconds. Second, even if that weren’t the case he’d only have to keep the page down for an hour, tops, before Arc Light had the backups taken care of.
There are hundreds that just crawl pages like wikileaks and copy everything that goes up, about as fast as the government would find it. And soon you would have jurisdictional problems. Arc Light has no mandate in Russia or Sweden.
Very true!!! Plus anything that ever gets on the internet is never private again.:) As a general rule of thumb, no matter how good a hacker you are. Thats why Batman had Oracle make “Internet 2.0” to replace the normal internet.
Also Batman writers do not understand how the internet works :)
Blatman writers don’t understand how anything works!
Especially not Tom King. He doesnt even know how basic story telling or the protagonist in his book works.
I want to emphasize this by going into depths of unnecessary and stupid drama that makes things look even worse until you look at the context and realize it’s baloney. But that would mean I would be writing like Tom King.
Somehow, feel better not knowing who Tom King is :P
Only thing worse, is the fans who feel Blatman can (and does) do anything and everything, because he’s fucking Blatman!!!
He’s a Batman writer who’s doing his best to make writing a money cow like Batman somehow unprofitable, with ridiculously stupid storylines.
Like Poison Ivy taking over the entire planet with plant spores in an hour, except for Batman and Catwoman (because somehow Batman knew to make a special antidote for something he had no possible reason to know about), and Batman’s idea for when Poison Ivy talks to him through a mind-controlled Alfred is to try to slam his fist into Alfred’s face, only to be stopped by the Flash running in front of the fist to be knocked out instead of Alfred. And if you think that sounds idiotic, it’s only because it is idiotic.
And after that, Batman seems to be pretty chill about the entire world being controlled by Poison Ivy.
Then Poison Ivy undoes her control of everyone in the world because… actually he doesnt exactly explain why. Or where he has Superman punch Batman and kill him…. and then Batman’s alive again because…. okay actually he doesnt actually say why there either. I guess Death by a Kryptonian shattering your skull is just a flesh wound that Harley Quinn can fix because she’s a psychiatrist, and psychiatrists are also brain surgeons who can fix shattered skulls and undo death, even though they aren’t, since Tom King does not understand how anything works.
That’s pretty much how Tom King Batman stories go. Batman does something, or something happens to Batman that the readers utterly do not care about because there’s no reason why it happened. Then other stuff happens that make you think he forgot what he wrote on the previous page. Or the rest of the book. And then the next book, no one remembers what happened in the previous book.
Bob Kane and Bill Finger are probably glad they’re dead so they don’t have to see what happened to their creation under this hack of a writer. :) John Byrne needs to give Tom King lessons in basic storytelling.
PS – I’m probably being too subtle, but long story short, I don’t like Tom King. :)
That… would explain Blatsie being the Ultimate Marty Stu (difference between normal people and Blat-fans, the Blat-fans see that as a positive, and will beat you with a robin-bar if you say anything negative about Him :P)
Just look at the recent movies post Ledger
Most assuredly, one of the reasons we did not have some like the internet back in the 60’s too.
People are paranoid. MULTICS was a OS the was created to provide a ‘internet utility’ like the phone, gas, water, etc. Then they found out people were paranoid about ‘sensitive information’ being just ‘out there’ on servers were ‘other people’ could access them.
UNIX was eventually the ‘single server’ variant that MULTICS boiled down to
Eg: where do you put _your_ porn?. There will always be a need for ‘personal’ storage of information.
I have considered that the sort of nonsense surrounding UFO’s would be exactly what you’d want as a coverup.
OTOH, you couldn’t possibly explain the fact that all reported UFO’s appear to be piloted by insanity – or natural forces. And crazy doesn’t develop space travel. There’s logic/math that has to match the structure of the universe that crazy can’t develop. Not even idiot savants.
What kind of maniac makes a habit of buzzing armed military vehicles? Even if you were utterly certain you could not possibly be harmed by anything these primitives could do, do you really NOT CARE AT ALL that you might set off an extermination war?
Then again, teenagers still “pilot” 2 tons death machines at high speeds, they do not make them. Also, adults under the influence also pilot death machines, sometimes going as far as 20 tons…. So… We are dealing with drunk Aliens or their kids…
Why not… both: drunk Alien kids :P
+2
I’m still waiting for you to make a viable argument, even assuming your “ALL” claim were literally true.
“I don’t understand what the alien pilots think they are doing” is just not an argument at all.
You have to import all kinds of cultural assumptions into the alien to make conclusions about what they are doing, and then you come to the conclusion that you don’t understand so THEY must be crazy (rather than you being ignorant of something about them) and so CONSEQUENTLY they must not exist.
Nope.
If you take the known characteristics of our current aircraft aircraft, compared with the known characteristics of that era’s aircraft, then add the observed characteristics of the UFOs, then you get a vehicle that is in very little potential danger from that era’s craft. The UFOs were never in any danger other than statistically insignificant chance of a major ooops accident. Which may have happened once or twice, since this is Murphy’s Planet…
Even assuming you had put together an argument based on your conclusions, here’s an anthropological analogy as a counter-argument: “Let’s buzz the natives with cheap and harmless drones to get them used to ignoring us.”
Once somebody puts some info on the internet, even if it’s deleted immediately, there’s somebody else, somewhere who has seen it & recorded it. There’s a lot of people in this word that have taylored “News Daemon” bot programs running constantly on the internet, searching specific websites and/or all websites searching entire geographical regions for everything or anything that’s newly posted. It doesn’t even take a hacker to run these programs.
Once the program has found something new, it automatically (& immediately) records a copy of the new info. What this means is that anything is posted on the internet, then it can always be posted again by somebody else at any time.
Is there such a thing as something that looks for posts that have been deleted?
Not sure how that would work.
Deleted but not shredded is easily recovered as it’s still there. If the hardware is accessible it can be acquired.
Other software like google the search engine often saves what’s basically a copy that’s available even if the page or site disappears. That’s fairly basic computing. Real tech guys can do better.
Yup. Steve Bannon was buying up all the unused time on Amazon’s cloud servers (it’s cheap that way) and crunching through the invisible Internet (which has fallen off the search engines) to find things like quotes from politicians made many years ago, and using those for attack ads. He’s still doing that, AFAIK. (Don’t bother asking how he affords it, he’s worth 50 mil +)
We’re talking meta-human/superheroes, though, so once they determined the source of the return of info, they can skip back to a checkpoint and remove the source. Ad infinitum. Again, it’s a comic, so the reality is whatever the author(s) want it to be.
The rule of interesting. If the proposed situation produces an interesting problem for the viewpoint characters, then it is a valid thing, and may appear. If it does not, it will never appear.
I would guess that Archon already has the Internet seeded with all sorts of weird rumors. That way if anything real happens to slip out it will be lost in the info-chaff.
“Fine. I’ll just wait for it to show up on Wikileaks.” Nothing like reminding Maxima about how things work in a way that is undeniable!
Do we get to see Sidney showing off her new speed to Max or is that going to happen/has already happened off screen?
Because I do not believe that Sidney would not want to win a race against Maxima…
Maybe that comes next
“Wait up Max! Let me show you how fast this puppy can fly now! Oh, forgot to mention upgrading the flight-orb as well!”
I REALLY HOPE SO :)
I really want to see if Sydney is faster than Max now, at least in raw speed (even if not in reaction time). Mach 16 is incredibly fast.
A lot faster than a speeding bullet. It’s faster than any earth-bound vehicle and any military jet in existence, and is roughly half as fast as the fastest Earth-based spaceship (Apollo 10) ever went while in space. It’s only about 5000 mph slower than the maximum speed of the space shuttle (also in space). And unlike the Apollo 10 and space shuttle, she can do Mach 16 within an atmosphere.
So I really want to see if she supplants Maxima as the ‘fastest flier.’
I also wonder, especially now that she opened a new series of pips on the Fly Orb, what the rest of the pips on that new line are for. In fact, I’m wondering if the aetherium causeway dot is not the only flight upgrade she got…. for all we know, the new line could be ‘Aetherium Causeway AND double or quadruple your filght speed again, since the new line seems to be more useful for space than on a planet, and sub-light engines would be a spaceship thing.
Mach 16 is around 12,000 mph. The Space Shuttle entered the atmosphere at 15,000 mph. It is officially listed as the fastest “aircraft” on record. So, just a bit faster than Mach 16.
Over Mach 19!
So…it went over 9000 (mph)?
Correct me if I am wrong but it didn’t stay at 15000 mph upon entering the atmosphere though, right? Entering at 15000 mph seems to imply that it was at that speed without an atmosphere, and once it enters the atmosphere air friction makes it have to slow down or burn up. Sydney doesn’t have that problem :)
The motion picture ‘The Lost Missile’ had a force field shielded unmanned vehicle doing 4000mph (Mach. 6.5?) at 25,000 feet. It burnt everything below it then smashed that with the shockwave.
Turbulence trail she would leave behind could be classified as WMD on its own, unless she flies in the upper stratosphere.
It did create quite the water displacement when she used it on Alari Prime.
My guess would be that the extra Dots on that line would reduce the time dilation experienced by FTL travel.
The line is maxed out.
Which opened up the Aetherium Causeway line.
My guess is that more nodes in the Causeway line will allow larger diameter causeways, until finally a planetary assault fleet could go through. On the other hand the Causeways might instead stay open longer, or become small doorsized openings usable from a planetary surface.
Which opened up a new line, The Causeway being the first node
Just for kicks I checked what number of Mach speed woudl mean Light speed… It depends on the medium, obviously , but in air its Mach 871,457… lel
While technically a wormhole isnt ‘light speed,’ if we were to consider what Sydney did to be ‘light speed travel,’ then Sydney went a LOT faster than Mach 871,457. She was about 700 light years from Earth. I’m not sure how far Alari Prime was from the Fracture, but I’m betting it was also more than 1 light year away. :)
Yeah, you’re supposed to tell her new powers. So tell her about (she probably already saw it) Howitzorb and Wormhole.
Suppose Max can do Mach 15. That still means Sydney can pass her and pull away at more than 700 mph difference. It would take just a few seconds to be way out of visual range. Plus, in less than a minute, Sydney could more than a hundred miles away from where she started, and totally lost. Since neither one is wearing their radios or GPS, Sydney would probably have to ask directions at a gas station, buy a map, and follow the roads home.
Pushing the shield orb through the atmosphere at Mach 16 will cause a hell of a plasma on the impact side. Won’t this emanate radiation in organic-matter-destroying wavelengths?
energy falls off at 2r³ from the source. but reentry heating is not primarily caused by atmospheric friction. Instead it is by the compressed shockwave at the front of the object. the energy is mostly heat and not energetic particles which are generated by ionizing radiation. Search for lighting anitmatter some time.
Did.
Ho-leeee bug. Scary.
I’m sure her shield protects from that.
The shield will always have a level of visual interference of her surroundings. What Sydney needs to do at high altitude (or low orbit) is to send out her Holo-Halo image on an EVA to get a direct view of sky and Earth without shield or even a helmet.
And pray she doesn’t accidentally Bee-port
If she has the shield around her real body, it’ll teleport with her but won’t obstruct her bee-sight.
She can’t have the Flight, Shield and Light-bee activated at the same time
Hadn’t considered her starting from the ground…
If she is in orbit, she doesn’t need the flight orb.
When Sydney has her shield up, Holi-Sydney also has a holo-shield. We saw that at the restaurant fight.
That makes me think that I assumed I could learn how ranks and the military work by reading, as time passes and Sydney blows through ranks like a kid in a coming-of-age manga on account of being so clever, resourceful, and possibly one of the most powerful beings on Earth. How mistaken I was! Not that I complain, your story is great. I just failed my “what direction will it go?” analysis
Well, superheroes can get the name Captain, but I doubt that Sydney can concentrate enough to gain the rank Captain.
Sydney is already a captain… of the Interstellar starship, Halo 1701-A
Rank = Knowledge, but also Rank = Responsibility. The higher your rank, the more peoples’ lives are relying on your decisions. Also, rank comes from time in service, record of achievement and knowledge. Even if you have been in the service for 10 years, you do not automatically become a sergeant, if you can’t show you are actually ready to do the job. Being in this service for only a couple of months (most of which was skipped due to her off-world/time travel excursion) during basic training (not yet completed) does not count for anything! Mind you, if she keeps showing combat competence, then when the time for promotion does come along, it is more likely that she will go up in rank, but that time is not yet.
Rank also comes from openings in a Military Occupational Specialty.
If a field is small and nobody higher up dies or retires then there will be no rank advancement no matter how competent or longserving the troop is.
A lateral move to another field (possibly requiring a transfer to another branch entirely) can be the only way to advance.
Maxi is grumbling because she knows Sydney is right about it showing up on wiki-leaks :P
It’s not a matter of ‘if’, it’s a simply a matter of ‘when’ :(
Something is quite wrong here with Sydney.
I mean, hello ? DaveB listed quite well the highlights of what she suffered through in a very short amount of time, enough to make any normal person go bat shit crazy or suffer some kind of burnout. While Sydney certainly is nowhere near “normal”, I still can’t fathom how someone with ADHS can actually “calm down” under those circumstances.
Or is it because she has ADHS and actually needs that level of crazy ? Or the other way around; could her case of ADHS be psychosomatic due to a lack of adrenaline ? You know, like some PTSD cases ? But don’t those usually need serious episode of stress, such as frontline experience during a war ?!
What was she up to as a kid, u know, beside mauling passerbys ?
most people with have an unconscious seriousness switch (the hyperfocus) . Being calm is one of the benefits. Others are being nearly immune to interruptions (from my own experience, I have phased out people at tines) , a heightened sense of expertise, reactions and/or knowledge etc.
Yeah for some people with ADHD they actually have an easier time focusing in stressfull situations (like just before a deadline), and their medicine are actually stimulants, so I guess it would make sense.
I’ve ADHD and while I haven’t been in anything remotely similar to Sydney’s situation, I tend to be one of the more stable ones in the family when serious crap happens.
And gods I can’t even begin to get into how right Codebracker is about deadline-type stress. So many papers during school literally finished at the last second(ok, well last 30 seconds for one) because I couldn’t focus worth anything on em prior.
Ditto. And it’s hard to trick yourself into faking stress.
Luckily, there’s another key to it having to do with intense interest. THAT is easier to fake, with a little NLP help.
I’ve worked with a lot of people that have the same problem. Gotta take those little steps until you build up a tolerance to focusing on boring stuff like schoolwork. I power failed high school cause I thought that I ‘work best under pressure’ but basically I only worked AT ALL under pressure
I graduated high school by reading all the material several times before each test. Homework? couldn’t do it at home, only at school while teacher went over other material. I read massive amounts of all kinds of books, so my classes sometimes covered stuff I had known for ages.
I don’t mean “skim” when I say “read”. I actually read encyclopedias, textbooks for classes I wasn’t taking, the entire fiction section of the high school library…I wasn’t diagnosed as ADHD until well into adulthood. Not until then did I understand all this.
That. And dictionaries.
The art of doing homework for another class while listening with 25% of your brain and then replaying the question in your head when the teacher calls on you, or looking at the board and answering whatever the question must have been… got me all the way through college.
I’ve found I read important stuff better in crowded places. The opposite of what you might think
Maybe Frix fixed her ADHD with his spacemagic medicine.
No buying off disadvantages when you’ve already spent the points on multipower upgrades.
+1 Internets for the Hero System Reference.
What about this would have made a normal person go crazy?
I think she’s still processing most of this as an interesting comic book plot, on some subconscious level it isn’t real yet.
I can confirm my son has AHDH, his medication is basically meth, and he actually calms down with a cup of coffee in him
No, bad Sydney, no switching of topic and triggering a scene change before we get to see Maxima learning you killed two space behemoths and upgraded to become an actual interstellar spaceship!
She knows she killed four of them (that’s why they’re in the sky).
I thought it was just two? The original one we saw and the cyclops one with the tractor beam. After that she ran away, applied her new upgrades, and fled the planet. Right now Max only knows she killed one and then three more showed up, and they went to the sky to discuss the power up, not that she killed two of the creatures.
It’s not even sure she killed the second one. Sure, she flew right through its head, but we don’t even know that’s where it kept its brain or any other vital organ. Given that she literally had to cut Squidward to pieces before it finally died, it’s quite possible that what she did to number two was only a flesh wound. Last time we saw it, it was still standing after all.
Wonder if Sydney will ever have any impact from the fact she killed an intelligent being? (Or maybe thousands of them, if those drones were manned.)
I think the first one was dismembered first because the slashing tentacles were also used defensively to block attacks against vital areas. They had to be removed before Sydney could hit critical parts of the Kaiju.
Cyclops got surprised by the sudden teleport. It’s dead, Jim.
She killed two of them. Squidward is DEFINITELY dead. Tractorbeamward is…. probably dead too, since she annihilated its head… and got xp for it in that she got TWO pips, instead of one. :) That sort of implies she probably killed it.
And she destroyed a ton of ships (she said 1000 but probably was just a generalization – she destroyed a lot of ships though) which got her another point as well.
As people keep getting ignored saying that we have no way of knowing if it’s head was vital, considering that that was where the tractor beam was originating from
Out-of-commissioned certainly, killed is debatable
She got two, not three (unless missed something)
I tend to assume it was probably killed because of how Sydney got two upgrade pips afterwards, which seems to correspond with killing two Kaiju. Plus Sydney said ‘and I got two of them’ to herself when she was talking about if she got an upgrade on Alari Prime (right before she got the orbs to give her an upgrade screen).
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-671-level-duhp/
She took two out, one confirmed permanently, one probably just for the duration (until it can be examined by the squid-doc)
My assumption is generally that if someone destroys your head, you’re dead.
Unless the squid-doc says otherwise. When in doubt, decapitation is death.
Although to be fair, Sydney did say that decapitation might slow her down. And I think there was once a chicken in RL that lived for years after its head was chopped off (too stupid to know it was supposed to be dead). So hey, anything’s possible :)
How many people do you know of, who have a giant tractor beam in their head?
Unless it was 2 points from overleveling. We know (and so does she) that she can’t level up until she “rests”. I’ve played RPGs and other games where I killed something so much higher level that I leveled twice off one kill.
Like in Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced, if higher level characters whittle something down (not that that happened here) and a low level (because of movement speed) deals the final HP, they get a huge amount of XP. The levels between Halo and planet-killers does seem to fit that level difference… until she figured out a cheat.
Yes: all we know is, the next time she sat down and activated her HUD, she had two points waiting for her, there is nothing to indicate that they both came at the same time, and more likely she simply levelled twice from two separate events (like, she did get enough points from the pilots she callously slaughtered, and then from Squiddly)
Well, this IS the pre-debrief, she’s still going to be quizzed in detail about the battle. I’m sure it will come up then.
And there’s no hiding the warp capacity, Cora is sure to mention it to Dabbler. Teleportation is the only new power she might have had a chance to keep secret.
I don’t know where anyone is getting “two” from. 3 pages ago (go back a few pages) Sydney says “Then when the other three landed” then Max demands she start spilling the beans immediately.
– Squidward shows up, fight, it dies with wreckage everywhere
– 3 more land at the same time
Two gigant mechathulu fights, but it was 4 of them total.
People are getting two as in ‘number of kaiju kills.’
First she destroyed a plethora of attack ships. That gave her the first of her 3 pips – which she used for level 5 speed on the fly orb (Mach 16).
Then she fought and killed Squidward Kaiju, utilizing the teleport feature of the comm orb. And celebrated by taunting its corpse. Probably where she got at least close to her second pip.
Then 3 more Kaiju beamed down – Tractorbeamward, Drippylavaheadward, and CthuluHornheadlookward.
Tractorbeamward caught Sydney in the tractor beam, while Drippylavaheadward aimed its lavahead beam at her and CthuluHornheadlookward aimed his laser horns at her.
Then Sydney teleported out of the tractor beam and right in front of Tractorbeamward’s eye and blasted a whole through its head, destroying its head. If Tractorbeamward’s head is not dead, it was at least enough to not only get her to the second and third pips. She tested out the Mach 16 and went to the other side of the planet where she spent her 2nd pip on the aetherium causeway dot level 1, and the center pie (which might get her more in tune with what the orbs do and how they work).
No one is saying she only faced two kaiju – Lord Viking was saying she KILLED two kaiju…. out of a total of four.
Pretty much this.
I think Sydney sums it up nicely in the first panel of this page (#671)
“Hopefully it’ll take them at least a few minutes to catch up.” Meaning one or more is still remaining to follow her.
“I got two of those huge things!” She killed two of the giant monster squid thingies. There is some debate if the cyclops one is truly dead, but at least Sydney thinks it is.
The next page has her in orbit and about to leave with no indication she went back first to fight the remaining ones on the surface. In the page I linked she even mentions that it would be too dangerous to keep fighting despite how quickly she is getting upgrades from it.
Yep. And whatever anyone can argue, we can be certain that there is at least two kaiju still alive :)
I’m going to go with the idea that tractorbeamward is dead though. Generally when someone’s head is destroyed, it’s a natural assumption to say its dead until otherwise notified that it isn’t.
Decapitation should not be an assumption of it still being alive, before proving otherwise. It should be an assumption that it’s dead until proven otherwise :) Usually the head’s where the brain is, and a brain tends to be useful in… yknow… living. :)
Honestly I don’t think flying through the brain is considered decapitation since the head itself is not necessarily missing even though the brain is partially if not completely destroyed
Unless the brain is located elsewhere
The Tractor-beam would take up too much head-space
It’s always good to go back and reread stories every now and then, great to read that authors get as much of a kick out of it (when they have the time to just relax) as the rest of us :D
Also, so they don’t forget where they are comming from
Just as long as they don’t re-do original art (art-errors is one thing, like Maxi’s rank, changing the art itself because they have had 5+ years of extra practice is, POO, wrong)
That would be entirely the choice of the artist.
For instance, A Girl and Her Fed — the original art was … not really good. But the good Otter is a writer more than a comics artist … she’s improved, and she’s gone back to fix some of the worst early stuff, also fixing bad writing in the process, because you learn both things.
Seriously, it’s the artist’s choice whether or not to redo, not yours or mine.
Of course it’s the fucking creators choice, was just saying Personal Opinion Only that it is good to see where one came from, and to show other wannabe artists that they don’t have to be perfect to make a start
Look at “TMI”, or a dozen others who are still around ten plus years later
Like said: fix art-errors and plot-holes, don’t ‘tidy up’ your initial work
On one of Bruce Dickinson’s “Best Of” albums, near the end he talks about each track and mentions including his very first track (before he even joined Samson, long before Maiden) to show how rough and bad he was in the beginning and added it was so others can hear it and go “I can sing better than that!” (his words)
Sydney, Sydney, Sydney it doesn’t matter how right you guess on this stuff it will always be denied until there is no way to left to deny it. Even so you have to admit that teleportation is a pretty nifty power one that she thought you had initially.
Sydney is asking about Sciona???
That question may be the lead-up line to the statement “… because I’ve got a ship load of her people parked back at headquarters.”
What will Maxima have to say about that???
Also, Sydney’s definitely going to take this opportunity to show off the new speed upgrade to Max.
… not really to show her what it can do. It’s just that the sun’s coming up and Max is shiny.
Considering Julian Assange is currently staring down the barrel of something like twenty espionage charges in the US, I don’t think WikiLeaks will be posting much of anything anymore. Because apparently when you help someone crack into a Pentagon database to steal classified intel, that makes certain people in the Department of Defense a little testy. A tad miffed, one might say.
Department of Defence, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, NSA, CIA, White House (especially the Oval Office), etc. The list goes on.
Yes, the attempt to crack a password hash for Manning, if Assange did so, would have been a crime in itself, not an act of journalism. The fact that the attempt was unsuccessful does not change the fact that it constituted an illegal act in furtherance of a crime … of which someone else is already convicted. This part makes the only distinction I see between Assange and a regular journalist.
He shouldn’t be prosecuted for the leaks, and they should not add any multipliers for the effects of the leak itself, but the first amendment doesn’t protect the hacking.
” Because apparently when you help someone crack into a Pentagon database to steal classified intel,”
Total BS, theren ios no evidence to p[rove that, Chelsea, had clearance to see that data,
The public claim is that Assange attempted (and failed) to crack a password hash in order to allow Manning to use someone else’s id for the download. I have no idea whether it factually occurred, but if it did, then it would constitute a direct crime that would be chargeable without regard to the first amendment journalism protections.
The question of how the prosecution could establish that Assange personally did that (or personally acted to further that attempt) is a matter of evidence, not law. If I were on the jury, the prosecution might have difficulty establishing it to my satisfaction “beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.” After all, the various intelligence agencies have people on their staff who could fake any level of electronic evidence desired, and they have the method, motive and opportunity to do so. Since the alleged hash crack failed, a false attempt could be inserted into the electronic records and there would be no possible contradiction in terms of what actually happened. I would probably require witnessing Manning’s uncoerced testimony on the subject, which would of course not be forthcoming. Unfortunately, more juries are probably not as simultaneously informed and skeptical as I am.
“If I were on the jury, the prosecution might have difficulty establishing it to my satisfaction “beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.” After all, the various intelligence agencies have people on their staff who could fake any level of electronic evidence desired, and they have the method, motive and opportunity to do so. Since the alleged hash crack failed, a false attempt could be inserted into the electronic records and there would be no possible contradiction in terms of what actually happened.”
+1
I’ll muddy the water even more.
If Wikileaks posted any real harmful information (and I’m not talking about political harm – all the agencies are pretty much insulated against public opinion really and only Congress/the Administration gets the backlash) about US capabilities or anything that compromises US operations/abilities, do you really think that the people responsible or seen as responsible would still be there? I’m talking about all these theories about how powerful the “Shadow government” really is, and what it is capable of. Let’s run with what the fake-ass Q people post and propagate as truth (which could be the CIA fucking with people, you never know).
If Julian or Chelsea were really a threat to security and gave anything away that was really bad, neither of them would be here. Neither would Snowden. The reality is if someone gave any really serious information that really compromised anything important, every nation’s intelligence agency would be gunning to remove them. Or lock them away for eternity with no hope of ever being found. Here’s an interesting fact – there was a spy case back in the 70’s where apparently a US military officer went to the Russians with what was believed to be the launch codes of our nukes. He disappeared almost instantly – the Russians basically eliminated him on the spot, because if that guy was that untrustworthy with that kind of information, he was a danger to EVERYONE not just the US. So if the past few leaks were really damaging to our safety, if the US didn’t make them disappear, another country would have done it. The UK would have done it. The Russians would have done it.
And if you believe in a Shadow Government, the US would have done it. Day one. Most likely Day minus one.
But they haven’t. And they won’t. Because the only damage Wikilinks is doing is creating splash damage to government officials, not the military or our security.
While that argument is reasonable, it’s not dispositive.
Once the data is out, there’s limited utility in killing or “disappearing” the perpetrator, and more utility in establishing that such perps shall not prosper. In the case of Assange, he spent some number of years in an embassy to avoid a potential 5-years sentence… which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, in retrospect. Presumably, that was due to the fear of further charges or extralegal rendering.
Consider all the stuff he’s been through, and ask yourself which makes a better “head on a pike”… a disappearance (which might be interpreted as getting away with it), a normal trial (which he very well may win), or a few years of public discomfort trying to avoid the trial?
I’d say that the deterrent value of what happened to him is at least as valuable as any of the alternatives, even if he wins the criminal case.
Assange hid in the embassy not just to avoid that whole WikiLeaks shit, butt to avoid going to Scandinavia to face rape charges
You’re assuming that Russia thinks along the lines of political fallout.
Again, Russia would have killed Julian if he was a real threat. He’s not – he’s basically just causing splash damage to various political figures who are technically replaceable (and usually do get replaced regularly). If he were to publish something critically damaging to any nation, something that proved he could be a threat to Russia later on, he would have died of some sort of accident long ago.
Part of the US’s long game is to let Russia do some of the wet works in the background for them. Why go to the Middle East to combat ISIS when you can just let Russia do most of the fighting for you? And they did, and they’re still doing it.
Chelsea had access as part of her job. It was given to her so she could do her job.
Have to wonder – how would Maxima get on with other fictional superheroes with earth military backgrounds?
Examples from Marvel that I can think of:
Captain America
Falcon
Red hulk
Nick fury
Captain marvel
Wolverine (technically)
Examples from DC:
Captain Atom
Major Force
Hal Jordan (if you count the air force ;-) )
John Stewart
Most of these she could probably work alongside with mutual respect, excepting of course Major Force, and possibly hal jordan. I can also see a bit of a personality clash with Red Hulk, complicated somewhat by his ranking as a general. But less of one than he has with most superhero types.
John Stewart’s ability to make people laugh while informing them of serious problems is a sort of super power. Should have had him take on Thanos.
I think you mean Jon Stewart. I’m talking about the green lantern and, post-retcon, ex-Marine.
Pretty sure he was kidding you about the typo in the initial post… :D
I think she would be able to work with all of them but she wouldn’t like to work with some of them. She wouldn’t like Red Hulk because he is an asshole but he is also a general, so complicated. Fury is an annoying Spook with to many secrets. Wolverine would probably enrage her inner feminist. Major Force and the green lanterns are arguably traitors. I don’t think that would go over well.
There’s also War Machine.
How about Proc and “The Awesomes”, I’m sure she’d love Perfect Man
What about Batwoman? She was a Marine before she was kicked out for being gay. Unless you were talking only people with superpowers.
ARC-Swat has Math. Batfolk are valid.
It wasn’t a comprehensive list of every super in the Marvel and DC catalogue, that could go for several pages
Notice they didn’t include Frank Castle? Or Wade Wilson?
That got repealed in 2010, so at some point it will have to be retconning as a character background, because everyone in comics are late 20’s/early 30’s forever.
Kicked out due to a false claim of sexually harassing a female subordinate?
More likely, kicked out for rebuffing the unwanted attentions of a male ranking officer (almost typed ‘superior’ butt anyone who uses their position to force another to do something they don’t want is hardly ‘superior’)
I am surprised that this kind of information would still be withheld since Sydney already is in the know about the existence of both the magic world and aliens.
She was given access to that knowledge because of her truesight ability, but that doesn’t mean they’re gonna just hand her TS+ information about their safeguards against superhuman intrusion. She has to earn that trust first.
In the military you have an over-all level of clearance which limits what information you can be trusted with, but you still have to have a “need to know” to access any specific information. Simply having high clearence doesn’t mean you get to browse the library.
Sydney was read in on the veil because she had the ability to see through it and needed to be told that ARC already knew about it and she was supposed to keep quiet.
Sydney doesn’t at this time have any need to know what the standing protocol is for dealing with a rouge ARCSwat member in general, or Maxima specifically, as Sydney won’t be commanding the response if that happens so her superiors can brief her on whatever role she might play in it, and she’s new enough that her power set probably wasn’t included in any of the specific contingencies so she won’t have any independant actions she has to take without being told what to do via the normal chain of command.
She’s also very new.
Confidence that she isn’t infiltrating ARC is high enough to hire her but not high enough to trust her with the plan for taking down ARC’s strongest personell.
Sydney’s utter and total lack of faith in government security protocols is amusing…and understandable. After all, how’s the saying go.. three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead?
“Shiver my timbers, shiver my sails
Dead men tell no tales”
Nuff said.
And stamping it secret is a get out of jail free card.
“As soon as God crapped out the third caveman, a conspiracy was hatched against one of them.” — Colonel Hunter Gathers, Venture Brothers
I’m surprised that Sydney hasn’t suggested a race yet…
I am personally glad that Sydney has shown no race-ist tendencies.
(Two high altitude high Mach signatures would definitely cause a scramble at NORAD)
O_o
+1
(No. DUH!! : roll•eyes :)
Hi. i don’t know if it is inappropriate to post this here. If so, I apologize. But I wanted to let people know about something that is happening. A good person is being completely shafted. If you surf over to RHJuniors web site
(http://www.rhjunior.com/) ( creator of awesome webcomic Tales of the Questor) you can read about it your self.
If you can help, even if only w some advice, plz do.
P.S: I would have included a link, but I never learned how to do stuff like that.
well, what do you know the link thing worked.
You can learn more directly here: https://www.patreon.com/Jrileymc/posts
Dave, have you ever thought about doing text based scenes for some of the stuff you want to flesh out but isn’t necessarily fun to draw (i.e., entertaining for us or easy for you)? You have such a rich world which I can tell you have been thinking of for a LOOOONG time. It would be nice to know some of those details (for those who are interested) and those who are not can just look at the pretty pictures.
There has been one crossover novel with the Wearing The Cape series so far.
A. Haukness was specifically asking for text scenes, so I answered the question.
B. I am an on omnimedia consumer. I like Books, comics, movies, and audio dramas.
I tend to skip those, when I read a a comic I want to read the comic, not text.
even Superman has to buy groceries…Sydney is wild, ADHD and possibly high functioning Schizophrenic, but nobody is like that 24/7…you got to put some normal stuff in to move the story along and keep things cognizant.
High-functioning autistic, maybe, but Sydney has not shown any symptoms of schizophrenia that I have seen.
I doubt an autism diagnosis anywhere on the spectrum. Even with “high-functioning” or “Asperger’s” she doesn’t seem to display any significant social communication or interaction issues in line with such a diagnosis, in my opinion. Nor does she have the restrictive or repetitive behavior symptoms that would still be present in some form. She may be socially awkward, but not to the extent that it’s an impairment. She adapts well enough to change, especially in the short time that she’s had. Her interests aren’t focused enough to be considered narrow (her geek culture knowledge IS extensive, but broad enough to not trip ASD concerns).
Note: I’m speaking from my over a decade of experience working with people considered to have a diagnosis on the ASD spectrum, as well as my education and training in the field. I’m a licensing exam away from being considered qualified to make such diagnoses professionally. I see why one might think ASD, but there’s not enough there to really assign such a label. A tomboyish geek with ADHD thrust into a new social and professional circle and still learning the ropes, sure, but Autism I would have to disagree with. That said, feel free to disagree. It’s an opinion.
Schizophrenia is hearing sounds & seeing things that aren’t there. (Usually a group of people saying awful things, if you grew up in a Western culture; if you grew up in an Eastern one, the things said by the people tend to be more positive/encouraging. It’s a weird but well-documented cultural difference phenomenon.) That’s definitely not Sydney. The best example of a character who suffered from schizophrenia in a webcomic was the character Jin, one of the 3 Chimaera golems in Wapsi Square who eventually had her condition cured. (This was apparently only possible because she was a golem at the time; had she still been a human, it wouldn’t have worked the same.)
Schizophrenia is certainly not Multiple Personality Disorder (the most common mistaken assumption about schizophrenia), and Sydney doesn’t suffer from this. The closest in Grrl Power to anyone who could’ve suffered from it are two possible candidates. The first is Harem during the brief temporal doubling event, but even then, it was still just one soul, one mind, if one mind/soul occupying ten bodies instead of the usual five. All of them were collectively one entity: Daphne Deshantis.
The second possibility is the Wyrmil/Cooter fusion. This might count even closer, except for the fact that Multiple Personality Disorder is (as far as we one) ONE soul within ONE body exhibiting multiple personalities/minds. Wyrmil/Cooter is literally two bodies & two minds fused into one. The last we saw of them was them blorping off/slithering into the sewers right after Sciona scythed into them, with her literally ripping out the brane ripper. Sydney is one soul, one mind, one body, so she definitely doesn’t count even under the mistaken-(and-highly-incorrect)-version of “schizophrenia” that most people mess up over.
Autistic…can’t say for sure. Definitely high-functioning if she is, but this one is iffy because the lowered social situation awareness that often accompanies many of the flavors of Autism Spectrum Disorder is similar to the hyperfocus of ADHD, wherein you just don’t slow down long enough to pay attention to anything around you.
You assume he does. ?
She’s coming in enlisted? I’m a little surprised they wouldn’t commission the higher level supers directly out of training.
When she gets out of training, she may find out. At the moment her title is still “recruit”.
On the third page she’s addressed as “Corporal”.
Everything since then has been a very long flashback. So, yes. She’s coming in enlisted.
DaveB has also admitted he didn’t really understand rank back when he started writing this and has been assisted in learning more through the comments of people here. I’m surprised that those pages haven’t been refreshed and the rank in that comic adjusted. As a result i don’t think it is fair to hold that CPL rank as set in stone.
After I found out Anvil’s rank is Corporal, I went back, reread the scene, and thought Max was “lightly chiding” Anvil for joking about the “big guns” having arrived. You know, lighthearted at most, aka “don’t give Sydney too much of a swelled head; she only has 7 orbs and doesn’t need to make room for an 8th in their orbit.”
Corporal? Isn’t Anvil a Sergeant? o_O
Okay, just checked the Cast page, and we are both wrong: Anvil is a 1st Lieutenant, Harem is a Corporal (somehow)
It’s MUCH easier to give rank than to take it away. Rank serves multiple functions, but the biggie is pay. Arcon is on its own pay scale, so there is no requirement to give rank for that. So that frees them up to base it on things that are important to the service. The big thing to remember is that NCOs and up can basically boss around ANYONE of lesser rank. Which means that you don’t give NCO or higher rank to someone until you are confident they won’t abuse that. Which appears to rule out most of the team right now…
Well, you also restrict rank due to chain of command. Who is trusted to support and lead a group of people underneath them. If they give Sydney a commission, she’ll be in charge of a bunch of people. It’s fair that with no military experience that she would be fairly low ranked until she is given command of a strong team. And then after that, commissioned.
I mean, that’s how they normally do it. They don’t give recruits real rank until they pass the tests and graduate from basic/school.
To be fair, Sydney has shown all of those qualities. Day one, the fight at the restaurant. When Maxima was disabled, Sydney took control, set up a complicated but effective plan that saved her commanding officer’s life. Not only did she issue orders to people who were her military superiors, but also to people with much more experience using their powers. Both credit and responsibility for everything there. She likes acting goofy, especially when she is off her meds, Festiva shown herself both trustworthy, especially keeping the Supernatural and alien secrets when most nerds would immediately start Plastering pictures and stories all over the internet, and a competent leader. Fast Track her into the officer training program, but certainly enough he will rise in the enlisted ranks rather quickly once truly finishes basic training.
Experience trumps everything else. You have to PROVE yourself repeatedly. One instance is a medal. Five or six instances is a commission without the training. As Maxima is her commanding officer, Maxima would have to do the groundwork to get Sydney a commission, and that would require absolute trust and confidence on Maxima’s part.
The other problem Sydney would have with rising through the ranks is there is a lot of politics involved. You don’t become a Major strictly from popularity and a few successes. You become a Major by doing your job over years of establishing rapport with other commands and higher-ups. It’s about connections and communications. If Sydney would ever want to be above Major, that would probably mean moving out of the limelight and into the command post, which I don’t see her wanting that.
I wouldn’t make Sydney an officer just from her power level and her actions alone. She’d have to put the time in, like all officers, to make the connections and understand the mental and political acrobatics you have to perform when you’re doing the job.
If they absolutely had to have a rank, they’d probably all be warrant officers given the specialized nature of their abilities. It doesn’t make sense to organize them into anything larger than fire teams, so there’s not a huge demand for Lts or Capts. Maxima’s rank of LtCol works since she’s in charge of a squadron, but other officers are going to be largely superfluous.
Agreed. If anything, you’d probably make the non-supers police force mostly non-commissioned up to Sergeant, then push the senior NCO-ship on small squad leader supers. And then make the middle management type supers all warrant officers, because they would probably operate in various theaters with great autonomy.
Commissions are really for the people who act like Senior Managers, Directors or Vice-Presidents in a corporation. Everything from 2nd Lt (O-1) to Colonel (O-6). Once you get your full bird, you are on the cusp of what is called C-level management. Brigadier General (O-7) to Lt. General (O-9) are everything but the CEO/President. Four Stars (or just General at this stage) is the military CEO (unless you’re Army, in which you have a five-star General of the Army).
This is just INSIDE the military itself, not the civilian positions (because Secretary of your Branch is in charge of the entire branch with their counter-parts at the Pentagon, and then there’s the Secretary of Defense, which is in charge of all the branches, and they report to the Administration). It really gets political above Lt Colonel, so if they aren’t capable of being political, they usually fade out right at Colonel and go no further. I made Major in the Air Force before I phased out, because holy cow did it get cut throat going upward. I even had an exercise where everyone above me is gone and I’m now the big bird (and it is agonizing to be thrust into that position without earning recognition).
So if anything, if Sydney gets a commission, she’ll be 1st Lt at the most for a very long time. Once she gets experience and shows a lot of leadership success, then she may make Captain or Major. But probably never where Max is, because that is a very stressful position with a lot of politics going on around you and you can’t be distracted easily or people will die/your organization will fall apart.
Dave, I’m impressed. Seriously. The last few months, the amount of *character* in your cast has really, really blown me away.
Like I said – it’s been constant improvement for the last few dozen pages – but I have to give a particular shout out to the first one that made me stop and go “woah” and really stare at someone’s face for a minute… $740, panel 3. I genuinely felt like I could ‘see’ Max. Like. See the girl under the gold, a bit of who she was before she got splashed with geode… and I just felt like it was a face I could study, not just see, you know?
And that’s not something you get in a lot in this format. Hell. It’s not something you get a lot in most drawn formats, much less serials.
And although that frame is still the best, IMO, it’s something I’m starting to see in almost every page, for the last couple dozen pages. Way more emotion, clarity, and… well… character.
Just wanted to recognize the work/skill/talent. You, sir, are full of rocks.
Speaking of Sydney’s rank, given recent events would there be a protocol in place for promoting her to private without finishing her training? Or at least put her on a fast track? I mean she CLEARLY doesn’t need any more combat training.
Not everything will involve giant kaiju battles.
She still has certain skills and impulsive tendencies people need to worry about.
Not until she has proven herself comfy and trustworthy cleaning conventional firearm that she knows all of the official and formal protocol for stances, marching, saluting, and addressing superiors. That one is going to be a massive undertaking for Sydney. Simply because she was such an informal and Casual person oh, and she tends to think of the team as friends rather than a hierarchy. I’m not saying they can’t be both, I’m just saying she doesn’t really get the implications of orders and military command yet.
There is never, ever a point where more combat training is needed.
It is an impossibility both because new things always come up and because basic combat abilities atrophy when not used.
you meant “not needed”
Correct.
I hate posting from my phone.
But not enough to lug a tablet with me when I am away from the house.
Fun problem: If you’ve signed the paperwork for access to classified information you are forbidden from reading classified information that you are not cleared for no matter where it is, even if it ended up on a public website. And you are definitely not allowed to tell anyone even if it’s public.
Never lift a cover on a pile of papers that has a higher clearance than you are cleared for. That’s the rule.
Also, never create a pile of papers without a cover on them that states what clearance they are. On top AND on bottom. On every page. If you don’t, you are to blame for someone else reading something they shouldn’t. Understanding the rules is protecting everyone around you, especially the civilians.
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>>This space intentionally left blank.<<
I gigglesnorted. Three times.
I’ve slowly discovered that the phrase “knowledge is power” is more accurately “knowledge is legal liability, and sometimes power”.
Remember kids, plausible deny-ability is one of the main tools for getting out from under a bus somebody pushed you under
Wikileaks exist because of humans, nothing directly related to hacking. Many hacks that lead to compromise are human intelligence failures, and usually on the process side of the equation being violated often actively circumvented by a human wanting something to be easier or feeling that those in power are not being responsible with the information they control.
Part of the problem with human intelligence is that everyone has emotions. And if you understand emotions, you’ll know that people will give into them when they are at their lowest point. Wiki-leaks is a result of: 1. People who feel like there’s too much secrecy; 2. People who want to cash in on those feelings of too much secrecy; and 3. People who will hit the bottom of their emotional tolerance when dealing with the emotional baggage and just give information away. The problem was that two large scale theaters of war wore on the third group of peoples’ spirit and the first group of people were begging to get information that would validate their emotions. The second group jumped at the opportunity to become famous and rich in the process (even though now they are paying the price).
It is very important to remember that while Manning’s leak is definitely the most famous, it certainly is not the only one and it may (or may not) be the biggest amount of leaked information but the aggregate of all information to be found on wikilieaks far surpasses what Manning leaked.
Even most of the information Manning leaked had little to nothing to do with the military but rather with the diplomatic corps and the various spy agencies, especially their less ethical and illegal operations.
And of course the majority of information has nothing to do with the USA.
Until Manning the USA really liked wikileaks because they published all kinds of information its own spies couldn’t uncover (and it did not care about all the evidence of corporate misbehaviour that made up the bulk of the wikileaks).
It was only after Manning that the USA government suddenly became super vicious (and super villainous) towards wikileaks (the leak revealed that the USA had been supervillainous all along)
Exactly. Had the leaks been anything military or nation threatening, every government would have been after Wikileaks, not just the US. Same for Snowden. All he did was try to raise awareness that some of our intelligence agencies are sloppy and easy to abuse politically. All these leaks had backlash on the political bodies more than the actual community. Immediately after all these embarrassing leaks, the politicians reacted. They started changing the intel community – and rightly so – to improve their transparency. And to some degree, their responsibility to protect the country (and not just hoard information). The Republicans initiated it (they had the most to lose) and the Democrats supported it (they also had something to lose). Since then, it’s been pretty consistent.
Which is good. The problem we have now is that for some people it’s not enough. They want to basically find something that isn’t there, and that often leads to problematic activity. Wikileaks fame was not sustainable, and the ones who were benefiting (which was no longer the public) became desperate. So a lot of misinformation was created and released, using previous formats of data leaks to make it seem legit. That data went out (not always right out in the public eye, but in channels that fed 4Chan, for example). Which lead to the formation of a lot of weird and wrongly informed groups such as Q.
Funny thing about Q and Q-like entities – like Bitcoin, it was created pseudo-anonymously. So a few snake oil salesmen who claim to have been “high up” in various intelligence agencies (they were members of the community at one time, but are trying to cash in on their credentials) all stepped forward to say they are somehow involved in the revelations in Q. If you ever take a long look at Q and the cryptic messages released, it is a lot like horoscopes. By staying large obscure and vague, they can be translated into any event that happens in the world.
And also, though, often they are spot on, because if they weren’t, the overall feature wouldn’t work.
Like I said, some of their predictions are so vague and open to wide interpretation that they can apply to any activity or political event that happens.
Q is a bunch of snake oil salesmen who can read into enough situations to know how to write weird and obscure haiku that look like accurate predictions, but could be applied to any situation. Which has led to a lot of Q followers to argue repeatedly about what prediction applied to which event. I know a guy whose last name is Knox who is so full of shit that he intentionally misleads people on Q forums, but he has absolutely no inside information. He does it primarily to fuck with people, and he has access to make posts as Q on Chan boards all the time.
See, in theory I’m okay with WikiLeaks based on it generalized goals, but once the people in charge of WikiLeaks started making the decision of what they would and wouldn’t release based on whatever outcome they wanted to see, then the site essentially lost its way
I wonder if there are people inside WikiLeaks secretly posting any ‘unapproved’ info to someplace else.
A “WikiLeaks Leaks” as it were?
O_o ?
I don’t understand why Sydney was worried about Dark Maxima, or how that relates to not telling her about the power. Does she mean she was afraid of Max knowing about her power in the event she became evil later?
yeah Syd is worried about what would happen if say Deux the geode half he has to mess with Max’s head and trun her evil. Max is already the strongest known hero and she knows all of her team mates strengths and weaknesses.
Syd thought having a ace up her sleeve/ power Max didn’t know about would be a good thing to have. (we as readers know its a good idea too.)
This isn’t true. things spider the internet, but if i put up a web page as a branch on an existing site. With the proper permissions.No spider will traverse the special content because the linking isn’t there for It to follow. I did this to hide work submitted content that was too large to be handled by then existing processes. i then provide the project manager a direct link to download the extra content. Even knowing about the storage repository wouldn’t have allowed any project manager to see other project content, once again file and directory permissions were properly set. This is completely transparent to any other users of the site.
Spiders are only useful if the content is actively linked to a known source of information. In fact i could leave the data there and simply set permissions to disallow reading of the data. Now obviously a superuser of that system could read the information if they knew where to look for it, and getting physical access trumps nearly all permission restrictions, however if proper security controls are exercised the only people who can leak the data are those directly a party to it. Which brings me back to my other comment today that all information leaks are process failures created by humans or actively generated by humans to subvert the process. They are all trust violations.
It was long ago pointed out that there is a usability relationship between security and accessibility. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other. Where you set the slider along that bar is what needs to be determined for each piece of information you are protecting. But any protection scheme can be subverted by hum-int failures.
Ugh just realized my commentss are not linking because JavaScript is disabled.
Just wanted to say, the backgrounds of these panels are awesome! And the facial lighting effects are gorgeous!
Shiny!
“A background which has served me and the team well, I might remind you.”
Max sure dropped THAT conversational thread like the proverbial hot-rock…
That’s her superpower.
Genre savvy.
That plus the Ntech Orbs of Power.
You binge-read your own comic.
I think I love you.
Man, I clicked that link back to #103, and remembered how much I miss your old artstyle. Not that I dislike the new one- the shading’s cool- I’ve just always liked that sort of slightly simpler style. Personal preference. It’s the sort of style I’m trying to teach myself rn.
(Got any beginners tips besides “practice” btw?)
“We have… safeguards”
I understand but if I was Sydney I’d take that as a sign that I should keep a strong power that even Maxima doesn’t know about in reserve. Pretty sure Maxima would not be above killing her, I still remember the not-so-subtle suggestion that the gold-making guy would be assassinated if he wasn’t super careful.
We have… people with a very particular set of skills. Skills they have acquired over a very long career.
Such a secret could wind up getting her team hurt during a mission.
Not that such an assasination could possibly be anything more than a useless gesture at this point.
Absolutely gorgeous page. All the features of the previous page, with Maxima and the background looking just as good. But Dave has also managed to capture Sydney’s expressions really well. Bravo!
‘Relapse’ and ‘Sydney’! From the Author! In the same paragraph!
*Heats up popcorn butter at the other side of the universe. This is gonna be gooood.
Is it kind of weird I’m hoping that Sydney eventually gets something somewhere to them Macross shield overload that accidentally wiped out the Ontario quadrant in the original American series. Some sort of accidental synergy between the PPO and the shield system
the shockwave from Littleboy (the Hiroshima nuclear bomb) was 5psi. It was detonated at 1,968 ± 50 feet. For comparison the strongest ever supersonic shockwave measured was 1psi caused by F-4 flying just above Mach 1 at an altitude of 100ft. Remember, both are in addition to the 1psi of our natural earth atmosphere at sea level. Still… momentarily being exposed to 2psi of pressure was not enough to injure researchers on the ground (at least according to the US Air Force… you never know when the military is involved).
So somewhere between 2psi and 5psi we go from “no injury” to “hiroshima”. ::grimace:: yeah… hyper sonic at sky-scraper height might just be a very very bad idea.
between 1psi and 5psi*
Most of the damage from Hiroshima was due to the firestorm; Japanese construction of that era was very flammable. Not that 5psi of overpressure is anything to laugh at for buildings, it’s about three tons per square yard.
Not to be snarky, but the actual pressure at sea level is approximately 14.5 PSIA. So the damage come from the overpressure of 1- 5 psi. Or from 23,000-115,000 pounds of force on an 8×20 ft wall.
Sorry, didn’t see Brett Bellmore’s math :(
“That’s what I do. I Rank, and I Know Things.”
“That’s what I do. I super and I know things.”
– Tyrion, the Drinkomancer
Thought what he did was drink and throw things…
Grrl Power #743: What Ever Happened To Sciona. Anyway.