Grrl Power #749 – Autopilot
Peggy once mentioned to Sydney that after a while, one can zone out while exercising. This isn’t exactly what she meant. Sydney’s barely upright at this point. You know how some racetracks are in a loop, but they have that little “Q” tail on one end? Every time Sydney got to that she just kept running straight until she realized she was running on grass.
At the last minute, I decided to put those <> brackets on Cora and Dabbler’s conversation, and make it so they’re having a private conversation in an alien language. I don’t think it would matter how tired she is, Sydney would be annoyed by having to listen in on that sort of thing. Not that it would matter too much. She’s going to be plodding along super slow there, and Dabbler has a lot of endurance normally, and is also jogging on those digitigrade legs, which gives her a greater stride and a little more spring, so she’s blow past Sydney pretty quickly. Of course, Cora is straight up cheating. She can hit around 45 MPH on those treads. A light jog is practically her idle speed.
Call on meeeeeee | Grrl Power #749 – Autopilot https://t.co/s7C7MLSYoU #webcomic #superheroes pic.twitter.com/bNsTcG6sKj
— Dave Barrack (@grrlpowercomic) July 1, 2019
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Yeah, Sydney looks messed up.
Well, she rarely does things by halves. “Messed Up” would probably be an improvement on her current condition.
Until somebody drops a very large cup of coffee into her hands they are unlikely to get anything coherent out of Sydney.
Coffee brewed with ghost pepper seeds in it
Ghost peppers … Maybe she’s having a delayed reaction to that food she ate on the space nexus station. Or maybe it’s growing in her digestive tract. Evil alien parasites devouring her innards. She’ll never be able to taste spicy again!
Or she will turn into a Grax mutant. New spicy superpowers.
That actually sounds pretty good but wouldn’t the Brewing process kill the spicy flavor?
It doesn’t
Con confirm. I’ve not had actually hot ghost pepper coffee but I’ve certainly had some with a delightfully warming glow to it.
What do you mean? You can spice up coffee after roasting and capsaicin does withstand cooking very well.
Depends on the temperature, I guess; I’ve candied Thai hot peppers for ice cream, and quite a bit of the capsaicin evaporates away during the process. Makes the kitchen a fun place to be while you’re doing it, ventilation is essential!
both dairy and sugar mitigate the perception of piquancy (spiciness) Making ice cream out of them sounds like personal damnation for chilis.
I don’t know how the peppers feel about it, but Thai hot peppers are really very fruity once you get past the “Oh, my God! My mouth is on fire!” thing. Thinking I might try making a Thai hot pepper mead some time. The local meadery makes one with Carolina reapers, it isn’t half bad, but they’re more on the hot than fruity end of the scale.
I personally try to stay away from peppers that have to be harvested wearing rubber gloves, though.
That’s what pisses me off about peppers. They’re all so delicious, but I can barely handle Pepper (the non-chile spice), much less anything with cap in in. I wanna taste what I can smell!
Capcaicin is a pretty hearty organic chemical. It does not get broken down that much during digestion, with all those acids and enzymes, and is too large to get easily absorbed in the small intestine, so it tends to make it all through the digestive system intact and you can often feel it on the way out as it can be more concentrated going out than during the way in.
It is pretty resistant to denaturing due to thermal heat as well. When I am cooking with hot stuff, some may get in the air because the water boils which pushes through the pepper oil on top of it and throws little tiny hot droplets of capsaicin-laced oil/grease into the air and into your nose! Hot capsaicin just makes the effect worse as it is stimulating your nerve cells with actual heat as well as chemically simulated heat.
I must be a mutant, then. I love spicy food, though I have limits (eat Habaneros with respect, but no real problems. Eat Ghost Peppers *very* cautiously, a little a time)
And although I’ve often eaten food that was blisteringly, wait-for-eyes-to-stop-watering hot on the way in . . . I’ve never had it cause me problems on the way out.
Just as the entry can be trained to be tolerant of the simulated heat, so can the exit. Injuries in either one can allow the chemical to get noticed anyway, so you are not necessarily a mutant, your body is just well trained.
Ah, the internet, where commentary about a superhero web comic can turn into a discussion on brewing peppers in coffee and ice cream and everyone just rolls with it. XD
This forum can be very entertaining.
Pretty much the only one where I read most of the comments virtually every page, tbh…
And on an unrelated to heat/cooking/coffee subject, pickling doesn’t impact pepper heat at all either. I had a bumper crop of habs a few years back and pickled up a few bottles. At a family dinner the wife and I were hosting I opened a jar up, wondered aloud if the pickling would have reduced the heat, and ate one. The goggles, they do nothing!
Hab is just at the limit of my heat tolerance, and when I say that it’s in relation to what sane people do, which is to eat spicy food. Not just chow down on the peppers plain, or pickled as the case maybe. My three nephews and my niece from the same sister on the other hand are all huge spice fans, and chow down on peppers plain like they are potato chips. They got a laugh at watching my eyes water as I got through the impact of that hab.
I get that reference, Radioactive Man.
Worked at one time at a Vlasics plant. We kept a jar of “sweet peppers” on the break room table; They were actually pickled Habenaros.
Ah, factory humor…
Definitely love Cora and her lamia form!
Sometimes hearing something incoherent while somebody with acute stress disorder can be quite helpful, too. There are times when one can have thoughts that one can’t convey in words properly. Usually, in my experience, when someone is coherent, they will mostly verbally lock up attempting to convey the thing, and you get basically nothing out of them. When they’re incoherent, however, they at least utter something, conveying more of a sense of whatever than one would get from them normally.
Of course, my experience with this is of bad dreams which did not have, as far as I’m aware, any basis in reality. I think the principle could still apply, but I’m not certain, having not been there nor studied psychology properly.
I’m a firm believer that the human hardware transmits as much or more on the sonic carrier wave as it does on the verbal modulation.
I’m not just talking about hodoring around here, either.
I believe that full experiential sensory perceptions transfer in the sonics… so just listening to the babble, you will receive some of what they are babbling about.
(This theory explains a lot of odd human metaphysical phenomena without requiring magic or metaphysics.)
Sometimes, you can learn more, from what they don’t say.
VOTE
INCENTIVISE
…. well, at least a psychiatrist should be able to feel sympathy and/or empathy for “I can’t keep my eyes open for this session because of trauma-nightmares”.
She must get something out of it or it’d be nearly impossible for her to stay in shape. I’d think it’d be hard to do enough sit-ups to count as cardio.
Maybe her holographic limbs have a back-up generator that burns bio-electrical energy so she can run them for short bursts off of body fat if she runs out of fusion cells or whatever they normally use?
Alien medical tech might mean that she just plain doesn’t need to exercise.
I just assumed that she has medical nano inside her that takes care of all this.
Well. Even if there weren’t advancements in muscle and body fat control within her top medicine range, There are excercises for that. And that does not even count her alien biology. Se can work in stupidly convinient ways.
I don’t think maintaning a perfect body weight is going to be a problem in a super advanced space society. I would expect everybody to have an AI nutritionist assistant, as well as the existance of freely setable calories food types.
She could be a species that lived on a “death world” that evolved in such a way that every one ended up a “perfect” physical specimen. That way you could still end up with birth defects that genetic engineering would have cured.
Similar to Earth itself.
The only real muscles she has to work out are abs, pectorals, shoulders, neck?, etc. Wouldn’t those muscles not be affected much by running in the first place? Stuff like situps and those exercise machines would be actual exercise for her.
IIRC, she has at least the nubs of her former limbs, so she likely has the muscles attached to them. There are quite a few ways to exercise with just nubs, that can keep you in top shape.
She never had any limbs.
As I learned after having a ruptured disk, if you’re not using your abs and your erector spinea when you run, you’re doing it wrong.
Admittedly, if you’re just doing it wrong when you’re running, you’ll probably not get my issue, caused by low grade doing it wrong for about 45 years or so. Sitting, standing, laying down, picking things up, you name it. I mean, I did lift with my knees, not my back, except that’s not exactly how you should lift, because there’s this unstated step of reinforcing your spine with your erector spinae and balancing that with your abs that people just don’t talk about. (It’s sort of covered implicitly in standing up straight and tall, except that doesn’t really explain how one should modify when one is by the nature of ones required actions not standing up straight and tall.)
She also doesn’t have as much body space to store fat, and she doesn’t have as much blood to store sugar. She should feel full slightly faster and burn fat with a proportional amount of exercise
Actually I think she’s just tagging along so that she can chit chat with Dabs.
Since you know, she’s not a part of Archon and no one can make her do PT.
Technicaly neither is Dabs. Shes a Consultant after all.
shes just running for the view of the smexy butts.
Her benny is talk time with her friend, face to face.
She has a tentacle closet. And a hot crew.
I’m sure she finds a way to burn off energy and tone muscles.
I always imagined alien talk sounding like Dutch played backwards.
Like German, but sexy?
So every other sentence ends with “ed koob koob koob”? Oh, sorry that’s Swedish, my bad. :-)
Kermit – “I didn’t know you spoke Swedish, Miss Duncan”
Sandi Duncan – “That’s not Swedish, that’s Mock-Swedish.” (turns to explain Kermit’s mistake to the Swedish Chef and they both laugh uproariously.)
Some time ago, I was a marathon runner. In the ten top of my city.
I had a personal accident that made me insomniac.
I KNOW that face. Proportonaly hard exercise and virtually 0 sleep are a demolition team agains your very existence.
Jabberwocky has my back tattoo!
Oh no. Jabberwocky stole your tattoo. When have you last checked that you still have it?
I mean, it’s on your back. You can’t see it!
A few mirrors solve that problem nicely. As does a modern cell phone.
Technically Cora isn’t cheating as she doesn’t even need to be on the track: She’s not a member of Archon nor the team so nothing says she has to exercise. She’s only “running” to socialize with Dabbler.
About that “Q tail” on racetracks…that’s the starting lane for the 100m sprint. You set up your starting blocks in that section. I know you’re just saying how tired Sydney is, but to be able to run off of that in the first place, she’d have to be going the wrong way around the track. As drawn, she’s going the correct direction.
She’s American, she’s probably running the wrong way on instinct (like driving on the left :P) and yes, can clearly see which way they are running with the shadow group in the background (clearly Rich Cliffards is hidden behind Cora :P)
She’s so tired that she somehow ends up going in the wrong direction.
Some PT tracks will alternate which direction the runners are to go, theoretically so you even out the exercise on each leg through the turns. No idea how much merit there is to that, but it is a thing I’ve seen at most of the running tracks on base I’ve been to.
Actually, the google satellite shot I took that snippet from had the sprinting track on the bottom and the top of the “right” side of the track, (the east side I should say) so I guess I should have screenshot that.
https://tulsahurricane.com/images/2015/4/10/tuls-soccer-track-stadium.jpg
I think this is what your refering to,
Hmm… is any psychiatrist on earth really going to be able to help with this? I mean, they can help her cope to an extent, but they can’t really identify or even really sanely acknowledge in their own minds that yes in deed you did in fact kill a few apocalypse grade alien beings and their is a good chance that entire legions of questionable beings may in fact be looking for you thanks to the things that give you power. If you said this to most shrinks, they’d say you were having delusions and I can seriously see that particular report being handed and discussed with Max after this. I can also imagine the reaction that the room would get when Max in fact stated that she wasn’t lying or hallucinating and that it actually went down. Let’s remember, a short while ago for them aliens were little more than a conspiracy theory let alone having to do battle with some that can and did wipe a planet.
I would expect the psychiatrist to have been briefed beforehand as to what they know happened. He’s bound to be working for Archon directly anyhow, for security reasons.
I would have expected her to be assigned to R&R after such an experience.
Given the non-combat staff we’ve seen so far, it’s bound to be an Empath of sorts too.
The ability to passively feel the emotions of the patient would already be a big help here, but if it’s an active Empath that can use some form of calming power on the patient, it would be even better to get the ball rolling in the first place.
honestly at this point I fully expect the psychologist on call to be one of the “Good” Alari
hmmm
I wonder who/what some people think it might be. heck for all we know given the Chief legal counsel is also there PR rep, there financial adviser may very well also be there staff psychologist.
People who administer verbal therapy are psychologists. They can help.
Psychiatrists prescribe drugs. Seroquel or another antipsychotic would give Sydney the dreamless sleep her body needs.
When I was having flashbacks I would be awake three or four days, then manage a couple of hours of sleep and then up for another three or four days. Seroquel would put me out for sixteen hours per day.
Agree with all of the above, and to be honest WHAT she has been through doesn;t actually matter in some ways. She’s still human, and what she needs is help coming to terms with experiences far outside her norm, that forced her into extreme danger, into a situation where she has to kill other possily sentitent beings, involuntary extreme isolation, and the very real possibility that she would never see her home or loved ones again. That she could die, alone and scared. That no matter what she did and how she fought, it might not be enough.
These things already happen today – warfare, natural disasters, simply getting lost in the wilderness, being shot at. They are experiences that can be beyond the bounds of what someone can cope with, and they may need help with that. Sometimes, as Doctor Phogg says, it may be as simple as someone who really listens to you while you talk and get your thoughts in order, or you may need more help. The experiences she went through may be unprecendented on a histrocial level, but on a personal one people have been facing the worst day of their lives for as long as there have been people, and we have learned a lot about dealing with the aftermath.
Not that there is not more to learn, of course. People are rarely just one thing or the other, after all.
(Note: I am not & do not claim to be any shape of mental or emotional health specialist.)
That’s what I’ve been saying, but no one seems to listen.
Sydney Scoville “Halo” Jr. is talking to a psychologist. Not psychiatrist.
Sydney works for Archon, not the SCP Foundation.
SCP would have her talk to a psychiatrist. How else do they get proper dosage for their constant use of retcon-quality amnesiacs and other meds designed to make you think that everything you experienced was not just fake, but you’re irrevocably insane because of what you see, when the Foundation knows full well it’s all true?
I’m hoping that no one from Archon is talking to her. They aren’t qualified. Someone from the Council though, should be. Still, their xeno population is more bound to telling the galactic police about her level 6 items and what she did with it than HIPAA.
I would disagree that no one from archon is qualified, although that is not to say that non-humans could not also help. My perspective is that while the circumstances of what happened to her are new for humanity, her reaction is not. Likewise the methods for treatment & aid that. Grief, pain and events that feel entirely too huge in ways that do not always have much to do with their physical scale are a very ancient part of the human experience.
Look at Peggy’s reaction when she found Sydney hiding under her covers. The one thing she was not was surprised, and if Halo had not asked for help it is a sure bet that Peggy would have arranged it anyway.
Presumably the psychologist would work for Archon, but be cleared at the highest levels; a psychologist who isn’t cleared to hear about what’s troubling you isn’t much use. For the same reason, I’d assume it’s not someone from the Council, since some people who might go for counseling via Archon wouldn’t even be cleared to know the Council exists (never mind the potential for security leaks or differences of agenda between Archon and the Council).
I wouldn’t envy the burden carried by that psychologist — to do their job correctly and well, they’d have to know things most people would prefer to remain in blissful ignorance about. And who, in turn, could they go to for counseling? Anyone they could unburden to they’d just be loading down with the same burden that’s causing them unease in the first place.
Side Note: For an interesting take on a character in a similarly distressing situation, I’d recommend the movie The President’s Analyst (1967). It stars James Coburn as Dr. Sidney Schaefer, the President of the United States’ top-secret personal psychoanalyst, and the more sessions he has with the President, the more he starts to fray around the edges. The audience never sees inside the sessions, so what mind-bending information or behavior causes Dr. Schaefer to begin to lose his grip is left to the viewer’s imagination. You just see Dr. Schaefer’s facial expression on leaving the President’s session change from thoughtful to concerned to bewildered to worried, then to frankly terrified. When he tries to quit the job, every intelligence agency, and a host of other interests, decide to try to capture him to wring out the secrets he’s privy to, and the movie gets fairly trippy.
Sidney you say? Lol.
The therapy office I used to get treated at has weekly meetings, which I complained about because it took a few minutes off my therapy time if the meeting went too long (bus pick up at 6 am, therapy 10a-11a, bus pickup at 12p not picked up till 4p so a couple minutes very mattered to me as it was).
My therapist let me know, when I asked, what the meetings even were. They were for the therapists and psychologists to talk to each other about the trauma they were absorbing from their clients. Once I knew that, I thought of The Ice King saying “you forgot your floaties”. That meeting was a floaty. I stopped complaining, and made sure each office I went to after that had a similar thing, to make sure the therapists don’t get destroyed mentally from what they’re being paid to hear.
I think my brain shut off there for a minute. Here’s the schedule in TL;DR format:
Picked up from home: 06:00
Therapists downtime meeting: 09:00 – 10:00
Therapy: 10:00 – 11:00
Picked up from therapy: 12:00
Arrive home: 16:00
I figure she uses her legs to jog most of the time but the snake treads make talking about the details of last night easier without getting short of breath, biting ones tongue, etc.
I think, given that her legs or the snake tail are both just ‘hard light,’ that Cora isn’t going to get short of breath or have her breathing impacted in any way by running. Not unless the machinery for her light emitter somehow draws its power from her body, but that would seem like a hugely impractical drawback. And even if that were so she might just get tired without the same physical effects such as breathing hard, sweating, etc.
But biting ones tongue just because you’re running and talking at the same time? That’s a new one on me. I’m going to guess that you were not ever military, because calling cadence while running is something that is pretty constantly done, and I don’t recall a single occurrence of tongue biting ever happening.
Given how the flesh and blood portion of Cora is just casually standing there talking to Dabbler, I’d say her hard light construct is doing all of the work and she’s just along for the ride.
The only problem I have with this page, is that Dabblers sports bra wouldn’t support a damn thing. She would need a High-Impact sports bra at least for jogging and with straps that loose, her tits would be flopping everywhere.
Um, this is Dabbles we’re talking about…..
That’s the WHOLE IDEA.
Dabbler probably has some sort of high-tech support system, but still uses magic illusion to emulate a firm bounce/jiggle to titillate the other runners.
From her alien heritage, Dabbler has a set of shoulders above her breasts and a set of shoulders below her breasts — the whole skeleton and muscular system in that area is pretty far off the human standard. Maybe her lower shoulders are attached to a secondary clavicle that acts like a calcium based underwire bra?
Then, from her succubus side she has “muscles human women don’t have.” Her reference to Sydney was probably more in relation to muscles that would be better served by Kegel exercises than track and field, but it wouldn’t be surprising if all her muscles and nerves in the areas of primary and secondary sex characteristics were enhanced by her specific type of demonic heritage.
“Normal” operation of human breasts hardly even applies to human supers — with Dabbler, “normal” goes right out the window and lands in a bag of holding that promptly falls into a portable hole.
Dabbler herself just said it best, “I’m literally built for this…”
I suspect her hypnoboobs are quite capable of remaining bouncy and perky no matter what sort of abuse they get put through.
also Dabler has “over 160 years” on Sydney.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-636-promises-promises/
Clearly simple “Human” Ageing does not affect her appearance, simple gravity would have started altering her appearance as it is. and even then that is also assuming that her looks are not illusion enhanced,
You missed it by one. Dabbler mentions her age on page 637. 636 is Sciona’s “Kneel before Zod!” moment.
They would only be ‘flopping everywhere’ if they droopy granny-tits (you know, the kind that hang down below her knees?)
As it is, they are bouncing, which explains why the right strap looks like it does
No. All breasts bounce no matter size or firmness. Especially in heavier workout and running. The bouncing may look small but even that causes an effect that can damage the tissue of them, nor is it comfortable when you’re running.
It’s why most women wears sport bras (and they all should) during exercise. Bigger breasts and more intense exercise requires firmer sport bras that really stops any jiggling to occur.
But for the topic of Dabbler I’m on the same thought as Town Crier. It’s likely some illusion while she has some magic/tech support, or the fact that she is alien.
There is a difference between ‘bouncing’ (which they are, even said that they are), and ‘flopping everywhere’
Lol, no. Breasts large or small (an A cup might get away with it) require quite a bit of restriction in order to not be a huge hindrance during activities such as running. Sports bras aren’t just a fashion statement, they are purpose built to try to reduce motion while also not restricting breathing.
I guess magical succubus boobs don’t work like human ones.
Human: “If I run around this track every day I will improve my physical fitness”
Dabbler: “If I run around this track every day people staring at my literally hypnotic bouncing breasts will give me breakfast”
more like a cup of coffee before breakfast to her
Yeah I don’t think anyone’s going to get in useful information out of Sydney anytime soon. Honestly I’m waiting for a Halo to just following her laughing her to start snoozing
Honestly thought she was going to pass out at this point, that might not be a bad thing. That or she should have Dabbler or Cora’s medical staff give Sydney a “checkup”.
It is not cheating, if there is no point in the exercise to begin with; the same it would not be cheating for Sidney to use her globes, since there is no point in killing her with useless military training…
1:Sydney might be deprived of her spheres.
2: training without the spheres can enhance her use OF the spheres e.g. cardio can help with oxygen use, allowing her to stay in the Impenetrabubble longer while using her free hand for a non-Life Support sphere.
3: part of the point of the training is the activity of training itself to build comradery.
The orb’s are why Sydney has super-abilities.
Also those spheres are literally tethered to her by a very short leash, and she still controls them even if she cant hold them. short of putting them in a cushioned safe welded to a jeep that follows her around shes not going anyplace there not. see https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-66-hero-baiting/ where the Orbs literaly no sell Maxima useing them as a leash against Sydney, and the following page where Sydney is able to get the orb case away from her.
Given the situation she is supposed to be in as a member of arcon, in particular as the most powerful and flexible member of arcon, the moment she loose the ability to use her orb any kind of physical training wouldn’t make any difference, especially if you consider what kind of this would be, given what we know about the orbs (i.e. either dead, incapacitated or without the use of the hands). She clearly needs training, but not this training; she needs to be physically feet, she doesn’t need to run a marathon. The same way you don’t train marines to run on their hands in the event they loose their legs, the same way there is no use in training a super for normal combat in the event they loose their powers, since they would be useless for their roles anyway.
She also already has more then enough training (and more than they will ever give her) about breathing and air usage, since she is a scuba diver.
Also, also, mixed super power training would build camaraderie much better then barfing on the track: this one is just my opinion, though.
Part of the purpose of military training is to instill discipline. It isn’t just about pure physical improvement. And discipline is something Sydney could use a fair bit of.
The reason why military training instill “discipline” is because you are able to coerce people into degrading themselves until they lose the willpower to disobey orders and punish who doesn’t comply. Sidney is one of the most powerful being in the world, if not THE most powerful: the only things that keep her obeying orders are her civic sense and the imprinting to obey hierarchy she received since she was born. Since they don’t have any means to coerce and punish her (unless you don’t want to resort to blackmail and using hostages) and they definitely want her on their team, they should probably try to not disgruntle her too much. Just my two cent.
You might want to re-read that. “Useless military training.” She’s in the military now. She needs this. She needed three months of this two months ago.
Lack of stamina kills. Period.
Lack of stamina kills normal soldiers in normal combat situation; she is not a normal soldier and she will not operate in normal environments. She needs training, but this is not the training she needs.
In normal military you can afford to run people to the breaking point because either they can’t leave or you don’t care that much if they leave: note how neither of this points apply to Sidney. Instead of the generic marine training they should employ something more appealing and targeted specifically for her. She just needs to be physically fit, being able to run a marathon is neither a necessity nor a priority for her.
Dabbler’s arm swings are in sync with her legs, the left arms pulling back while she’s pushing with her left leg while the right arms and leg are all moving forward. This is normally reversed, with the arms on the left moving forward as the left leg is moving back, and vice versa. Evidence of her alien biology or of Dave working without a photographic reference of a person running? YOU DECIDE!
When there’s a definite right way to do something and a wrong way to do something, people recognize the difference between them because people have done the wrong way and found it doesn’t work as well.
In this case, as one of the people who has done it both the right way and the wrong way, I can tell you the difference isn’t really that much, at least for humans running through air. Running through water, absolutely.
However, having noted the density of the surrounding medium variable is what can really break that style of running, and noting that Dabbler’s considerably stronger than an average human, it probably makes even less difference for her.
ACKSHUWALLY…
I’m told that Olympic level marathon runners run that way. And we know that she has Olympic level endurance…..
Also, the spinal twist to do the usual way is a lot more strain if you have a second set of shoulders half way up. For a terran skeleton.
Okay, I recognize 3 (well 4 if you count Syd) in the bath panel. The one taking the water into her mouth is the lovely Bostonian Latina, I see Heatwave in the back as well as Anvil (can’t mistake that hair skin combo), so who is the young lady with the tiger tattoo on her back? I mean I should recognize her based on hair alone, but I am drawing a blank.
I then go to the part where it says who is on the page and now I feel like an idiot.
The woman with the tattoo on her back is Jabberwocky
I’m surprised she’s allowed unsupervised (and apparently unaffected) surrounded by naked superwomen.
Why? It is only Dabbles she is not allowed to be in the same room with, and that was two months ago
Agreed. Plus, even if she was a lesbian (instead of bisexual “at that one party . . . well, most parties), the simple expectation is that she’d act with like an adult person with some sense of decorum while showering. Peggy and Harem are bisexual, and no one worries about their being in the shower.
I don’t think it’s been shown explicitly, but it seems like the whammy Dabbler put on her has been slowly wearing off. She wasn’t freaking out, ranting or drooling while watching Dabbler make cookies, which is a notable achievement even without the whammy. The ropes were a precaution. Maybe 80% precaution, 20% Jabberwocky may have said “You totally need to tie me up . . . as a precaution. Yeah, that’s why.”
She only has a problem around Dabbler with the love spell. And for all we know, Dabbler might have fixed that since for them it’s been 2 months now.
What’s eating at Sydney or was it something that Sydney ate???
Her first case of PTSD unfortunately, hence the visit to the psych.
According to the APA:
It is a bit early to be throwing around the diagnosis of PTSD.
There is another condition – Acute Stress Disorder
Either way, these are medical conditions. Nobody has diagnosed either in Sydney’s case.
+5
Grax return with a vengeance.
Temporal jet lag. ;-P
Cora’s still getting an abdominal/back/balancing workout, though if she had legs and not treads, she’d get much better exercise for her core…
Also, when did ARCHON transport the Hogwarts Headmaster’s study to ARCHON’s very American office building?
(srsly, that office looks waaay too Professor Dumbledore’s office-ish, lol…I love it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a huge space that looks bigger than their interrogation ballroom!)
The room looks like what college libraries looked like at long established schools when I was growing up.
Harry Potter stories and movie sets just added faux occult elements to historic furniture and architectural styles.
Wait… is that Varia drinking the shower water? Her hair looks darker. …Maybe because it’s wet.
Still, drinking shower water is not usually considered that great of an idea, though it probably won’t kill you.
I’m glad I’m not the only one bothered by that. In addition to the questionable potability of the water, the temperature would either be weirdly hot to drink or uncomfortably cold to be showering in.
Potability of the water isn’t an issue in America. Showers and faucets all feed from the same totally drinkable source. I know that in some countries this isn’t necessarily true, so whether it bothers you are not probably depends on what the situation is where you live.
Welll… The United States of America anyway. : roll•eyes :
And most ^likely^ Canada as well.
Well that depends on where you live :P My shower water is the same as my tap water which is goo and I’d assume Archon gets clean water. Although if she is thirsty then taking it from the tap is probably easier…and less warm.
Which is good* That D magically disappeared on posting.
Well, maybe she’s not drinking it exactly. Sometimes when I get up in the morning and shower first thing, I will gargle with the hot water, or swish it around in my mouth a few times because I have that nasty AM mouth feeling.
Ha! You have to be careful with a one night stand with a Super. You might end up with an Earth Shattering KaBoom!
Apocalypse by snu snu.
X’-DDD
+2
It kind of bugs me that Kenya isn’t towering over the shower head.
I would imagine they have some extra tall shower heads as supers are taller and they have the resources to just rebuild the showers.
am i the only one hoping the therapist is Dr. jessica yamada?
Assuming you are thinking of the same Dr. Yamada I am, then yes you are. As other aspects of that universe include multiversal destruction & genocides, EndBringers, Teacher and implanted nose bombs that liquify you if you are lucky, and turn you into a living MC Escher painting if you are not. Also Gray Boy. Don;t misunderstand me – I really enjoy that series and am actually re-reading the first one now, but it is not a shiny happy place.
…although I will grant you that a conversation between Halo and the Simurgh could be fascinating to watch.
Whoops, hit post instead of the email me tick-box – curse you, lack of comment edit facility! (*shakes fist at the sky*).
..now I can’t recall what my closing statement was – something about how you are a cruel, cruel person for wanting to inflict all that drama on our hapless heroes as things get inevitably far worse every time they seem to get better, or something.
…I’m far to terrified of the thought of the force of primal chaos that Halo might become after talking to the Simurgh, though. Eek.
Time for another shower scene with the superheroines. We haven’t had one in months.
I’m kind of surprised they don’t have her put the orbs into Tubey when she’s exercising. No chance of her sneaking in a flight assist if the orbs are sealed away.
Also, mystery orb turns out to be medicball, with psych functions?
I’d think not. An orb that heals is one thing, but for a story to have any chance at exploring the psychological impacts of character actions having a “fix my mind” easy button is a non-starter.
Dabbler says “I’m literally built for this, male”. Succubi: a created race, tailored, or just evolved extremely specifically? (Although if created or tailored, they don’t seem to object much).
Even if somebody created you in that way, that is still the way you are.
you spelled bruh wrong in syds speech bubbles.
/joke
And I’ve finally caught up! \o/
Stopped reading sometime in 201, were Dabbler’s zoinking of the Barberian was the topic, aswell as her very fashionable keyhole sweater. A bit amusing that my return is to a page of Dabbler being Dabbler.
Took some days to catch up with a little bit of reading every day.
every day is dabbler day
Sydney may need a break. Could be she needs to go home to visit her family; that always makes me appreciate work more…
I just wanted an Expy, not a full-on crossover…
Thats a very well defined collarbone, Sydney is already starting to get into shape, after only running laps, what, 3 times?
She was pretty skinny before too. She had no muscles but didn’t have much fat either.
Is this the shrink she was talking about seeing earlier? That’s what people seem to be assuming but from the look of the place I thought of Zeph or whatever the name of their in-house wizard guy was.
He’s a wizard, Madock :P
Don’t believe anything has been mentioned about him being a shrink (then again, nothing has been said that he isn’t…)
The only career he’s mentioned was Demonologist, when he was in the boardroom meeting with Sydney, and Dabbler walked in with her Dabbler-ness cranked up to 11 (well, probably 3.5, really, but 11 by human standards) (page 101). The General was reminding himself to “keep the pen out of the company (ink) well,” most of the women were thinking “not a lesbian . . . not a lesbian” (except Harem, ‘course). Zeph was thinking “I am a Demonologist after all. I’d be neglecting my duties if I didn’t offer to study her further.”
A few pages earlier, though, he reacts to finding out about Sydney being on Adderall for ADHD with “At the risk of sounding unprofessional, perhaps she should look into increasing the dose a little?” If his profession (or at least one of them — who knows how many degrees he might hold in various fields?) doesn’t involve medicine or psychiatry in some way, that comment would just be a bit snarky (like Max’s reacting with “Zephan, that’s called meth, they don’t write prescriptions for that”), but not “unprofessional.”
So, I’d say the possibility of Zeph having some professional experience with medicine or psychiatry would be a “maybe.”
Yes. I’m wondering if she went to see the wizard for some reason and this is not actually the psychiatric visit at all.
Is Dabbler coming out of the closet?
She can’t even conceive of being in a closet, it’s a literally alien concept to her.
I mean as an alien. She is outdoors looking like herself.
Officially, that’s a “battle form” that she can shift into at will. As officially (and unofficially) it’s the form she’s most liable to be fighting in, it’s an easy PR spin to say she’s exercising in it because that’s the form that she needs to keep in peak condition.
With that said, recent events have also seen Alari refugees and Cora’s crew taxing Sydney right into a press conference, so the alien side of the masquerade has been thoroughly broken. Whether or not that means that the official story for Dabbler has needed adjustment remains to be seen.
Regardless, I wouldn’t read too much into the fact that Dabbler’s going au naturel.
Yeah, on the issue of whether or not aliens exist (and whether there are any on Earth, as Cora said: “The genitals have been unveiled.”
Now, whether Archon has come clean (insert Dabbler’s joke about phrasing here (insert Dabbler’s meta-joke about insertion here)) about Dabbler’s “battle form” being a cover story? That’s a different set of genitals, I suppose.
She likely would spend hours frequently in the tentacle closet. Just watch her get food and drink leaving the closet occasionally.
As far as Cora’s speed, does “hard light” actually have mass? Or, alternatively, can it be turned on and off extremely quickly, meaning that the tread doesn’t have to loop around? Those factors are what limits the speed of the tread. Without those limits, the only thing stopping her from hitting LUDICROUS SPEED and going plaid would be wind resistance and actual motive power.
Since light has no mass, which is why it can only move at the speed of light, therefore that is doubtful.
Given the health benefits of exercise, lacking limbs must be terrible for keeping in shape. I doubt hard light limbs can get the blood pumping.
I think the sexy maliens in her crew are how she gets her blood pumping.
Amusing american miscoception about french langage:
exemple1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwLP7XjALj8
Kepi Blanc
exemple 2: French national anthem la Marseillaise is originaly “Chant de guerre pour l’Armée du Rhin” (“War Song for the Rhine Army”). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K1q9Ntcr5g
Pretty agressive no ?
First verse:
Let’s go children of the fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny’s
Bloody flag is raised! (repeat)
In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!
Refrain:
Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your battalions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!
2nd verse:
This horde of slaves, traitors, plotting kings,
What do they want?
For whom these vile shackles,
These long-prepared irons? (repeat)
Frenchmen, for us, oh! what an insult!
What emotions that must excite!
It is us that they dare to consider
Returning to ancient slavery!
3nd verse:
What! These foreign troops
Would make laws in our home!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would bring down our proud warriors! (repeat)
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brows would bend beneath the yoke!
Vile despots would become
The masters of our fate!
4th verse:
Tremble, tyrants! and you, traitors,
The disgrace of all groups,
Tremble! Your parricidal plans
Will finally pay the price! (repeat)
Everyone is a soldier to fight you,
If they fall, our young heros,
France will make more,
Ready to battle you!
5th verse:
Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Bear or hold back your blows!
Spare these sad victims,
Regretfully arming against us. (repeat)
But not these bloodthirsty despots,
But not these accomplices of Bouillé,
All of these animals who, without pity,
Tear their mother’s breast to pieces!
6th verse:
Sacred love of France,
Lead, support our avenging arms!
Liberty, beloved Liberty,
Fight with your defenders! (repeat)
Under our flags, let victory
Hasten to your manly tones!
May your dying enemies
See your triumph and our glory!
7th verse:
We will enter the pit
When our elders are no longer there;
There, we will find their dust
And the traces of their virtues. (repeat)
Much less eager to outlive them
Than to share their casket,
We will have the sublime pride
Of avenging them or following them!
Other nations have an anthem singing about how beautiful the land is or how free they are or something like that. The French have a “Come at us, we will kill you all!”
France got a bad rep after World War II, because when Hitler’s army reached their border, they just rolled over.
They don’t deserve it. The reason they rolled over was because they’d already lost their military, in combat, helping defend other nations. There was basically nothing left to fight with. Most folks don’t hear about that aspect.
France has a longstanding tradition of winning battles but losing wars. It’s why France was regarded as the preeminent military power for several centuries, and why we’ve got jokes about Googling “French Military Victories”.
Heck they were such a big deal that many military terms are still the French words rather than the English one.
eg: materiel, rendezvous
I’m thinking of three things with this page.
1: Yes, Cora is getting a workout. Her core muscles are being engaged by the act of running. Her hard light limbs are attached to an organic torso, and it doesn’t matter if your arm is strong enough to pick up a car if your torso can’t hold it. This is why the “olympic lifts” (i.e. deadlifts, squats, snatches, clean and press) are considered to be excellent for conditioning the core muscles in addition to the limbs.
2: Sydney should indeed be talking to a therapist. Mental health is as important as physical health. Any condition that impedes your ability to perform (and can even lead to your premature death) qualifies as a debilitating and potentially fatal illness. Depression and PTSD both qualify. (Mentioning depression even though Sydney doesn’t have it, just in case someone reads this and IS suffering from depression)
3: Therapists remind me of the big speech by the Dean in “Patch Adams,” the film that pissed off the real life Doctor Adams (because he agreed with the Dean and felt the movie portrayed him as a goofball who didn’t believe in real medicine). Specifically, the speech where he says, “We have an oath. “Do no harm.” That carries with it the power to do harm. Our patients trust us.”
Yeah, personally have a problem with that “Do no harm” bit: far too many doctors take that literally and at face value and will keep patients alive and in pain because they misinterpret that “do no harm” crap
Keeping someone alive, who is in extreme pain (physical or mental), is doing harm, not letting them die when dying would end their pain, is doing harm, saving a patients life only to force them onto hard drugs that they end up being addicted to, is doing harm
“Survival is insufficient.” – Emergency Medical Hologram
Sydney clearly needs an espresso IV Drip, Stat!
I can’t tell if Varia looks overly suggestive, or if she looks like she’s belting out the most epic metal scream known to man.
She looks like she’s drinking the shower water to me. Sometimes, when you’re that thirsty and dehydrated after a heavy workout… you don’t want to take the time to differentiate between drinking water and bathing water. “Tap water’s good enough, and I’m too thirsty to care about it being hot!”
Plus, she might have some powers that let her turn any ingested water into potable water (like not all the time power, but one she can grab by bumping into someone for half a second. She already has it logged!)