Grrl Power #765 – Home court advantage
So I guess Stalwart is a lefty? That or he’s pulling his punches because he doesn’t want to liquefy that thing he’s punching. Not because he’s concerned about the guy, but because liquid is less effective at knocking everything behind it ass over elbows. Actually, I just tend to draw people punching or holding guns or mysterious orbs in the hand closest the camera. But, considering Stalwart’s job, (punching stuff and taking hits for his teammates) it’s reasonable to assume that he’s some training as a boxer at least. Maybe a grappler too. In any case, his left hook isn’t something you want to get hit by if you can avoid it.
Okay, so, the Fel have ballistic shields, and those shields are also energy resistant. They don’t totally block energy attacks though. Well, below a certain level they do, but anything over a certain level starts breaking through. Using temperature as an easy scale, a 1,000 degree attack would be 95% blocked, at 5000 degrees, 80% would be blocked, 10,000 degrees and their shields would only be able to handle about 55% of it, etc. That’s what Cora was talking about when she said their shields could be overwhelmed. Heatwave doesn’t know any of this, but what she does know is that she has line of sight on a glowy thing on that guys hip. If it glows, she figures, it’s probably more important than something that doesn’t. Turns out she was right, and it was some kind of grenade. She doesn’t have to pour 10K Fahrenheit into a grenade to cook it off. It’s not a human made grenade full of TNT or whatever they stick in there these days, but it’s a fair bet that anything that’s designed to explode isn’t something you want to subject to a few thousand degrees if you can avoid it.
So, I missed this when I posted the last comic, but last Thursday was the 9th anniversary of Grrl Power! So, uh, woo! I thought it was 10, but that’s because I started working on the comic at least a year before I put anything up so I could get in the flow of things. Also I registered the domain like 7 or 8 months before the page went live as a way to goad myself into productivity. I guess it worked!
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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Come on Cora! You’ve seen Sydney in action and have been around long enough to have figured out that she’s the most junior member of the team and not very well trained yet. Why are you surprised that the rest of the team isn’t even breaking a sweat with the Fel grunts?
Probably a “Friend of Dabbler” exception. She does know what human baseline is… and supers are a current-generation thing, so… probably was expecting 4-5 badasses, and this is… more. Hell, Sydney’s not even an example of a super. She has god-tier artifact equipment.
Yes, anyone who had found the orbs would have become very, very powerful, though not everybody would have had Sydney’s creative approach to using them, which allows her to make the most of them. (On a side note: imagine if it had been MAXIMA who was diving there…)
I don’t think anyone not compatible with the orbs would have seen them.
Sydney wasn’t just lucky, she was screened and found worthy.
Her creativity was probably part of that.
How many applicants could the orbs really get though, considering that Sydney found them at the bottom of the ocean?
That’s my reaction: Probably the first time anybody has seen them since the previous user.
I doubt Sydney was that far of any tourist routes and doing a typical tourist activity, diving in relatively shallow water.
Well since the orbs appear to be activated by A.D.D. powers the chances of someone actively being a diver AND in that area are very slim.
Adventure sports are actually very attractive to us ADD types (myself included). Because different neurotransmitters are used in dangerous situations, the dangerous sports are relatively easy to focus on. Thus the extra appeal they have for those blessed with ADD.
Why do you think the orbs are activated by ADD powers? I havent seen anything where that was stated or even implied.
Read everything from the beginning to the first combat. The more distracted and panic ridden she gets the faster the orbs work on their objectives. Review every ding. You’ll see it also.
Sorry but I don’t see what you’re seeing. She’s used her powers regardless of if she’s distracted or focused. In when she was doing support for Hiro or Anvil, when she fought shadow boxer, when she fought Sciona, when she fought the Kaiju, when she fought the Mannekillers – none of those times seemed to involve A.D.D. And one time when her A.D.D. was happening with the super-mannekiller and she froze up while Pixel was being tossed around, that she was specifically NOT using the orbs at all, in fact. I think you’re just wrong that the orbs require A.D.D. to work.
Since Sidney made repeated mentions of “off the Keys…”, and was intentionally vague about it, I suspect she was diving near Cuba and thinks this is illegal.
Or, knowing Sydney, she was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be diving :)
I am formulating a hypothesis that NO ONE ELSE would have ever found those orbs except Sydney. No one would have seen them, been able to touch them, or anything. Considering the orbs seem to “not exist” in scans, it stands to reason they can also “not exist” visually and tactically as well unless certain criteria are met.
Here’s a theory; maybe the orbs DON’T exist, but are instead, Sydney’s manifestation of her abilities. Rather than actually having the same characteristics as a normal super, she identifies as a normal, even though she is the strongest one there. The orbs area simply a subconscious misdirection and a way of limiting herself with her powers, to keep herself from going on a Gillian producing power Trip…
that is one possibility yes. It might be inferred the form Dabbler took when she used her Beauty is in the eyes of the Beholder style glamor on Sydney was what Sydney would have looked like had she gone full Super.
-just picturing a Sailor Moon esque transformation sequence where the orbs one by one phase into her chest as she floats in the air, sparkle, sparkle, TRANSOOORM! and Sydney sees herself and “what the Hell?”
That…..actually would explain a lot. Like why the things seem to work on a video game inspired skill tree.
Nice theory, doesn’t explain how Math got hit by Sydney’s balls and then poked himself, or what happened to Shadow Crushednuts, or even Sci-frights ogre bone getting broken
And don’t forget what Kronachrome saw when she took a closer at Sydney’s balls
The first two things could be explained by a type of telekinesis (although Dabbler did already say that she ruled out psionics when she was trying to scan the orbs). The third thing about Kronacrome is probably the best refutation of Rhuen and JasonAW3’s theory, since Krona was able to see the mechanics behind the orbs, however briefly, and it awed her to all hell as being ‘God’s deep code.’ Which probably means whatever powers the orbs is either somewhat related to Krona’s powers, or Krona gets her powers in a roughly similar way that the orbs get their powers. That’s just a guess, though. I’ve made other guesses that the orbs are from another higher reality or brane, which is why they can’t be scanned very well by this universe’s abilities, unless you’re inherently capable of accessing /hacking the universe’s deep code like Krona can. Although the Squidwards saw something as well that made them want to attack with overwhelming force immediately, when they scanned them as well.
It’s possible that the Squids attacked because they saw something they couldn’t scan, and to most people that which is unknown is dangerous, and that which is dangerous needs be neutralised
That’s possible (several parts of the scan look like they showed blank data screens), but it did seem like overkill. They seemed to take GREAT interest after scanning it, and we see that there was some sort of ‘information’ during the scan on at least a few of the orbs (the one in her hand and one of the ones orbiting her which might be the ‘unknown’ orb) (panel 8)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-641-well-thats-probably-not-good/
Plus in the last panel, there’s data coming from ALL the orbs.
My main theory was that they are artifacts that could choose who could see and touch them to begin with so no one other than Sydney as a matter of choice would have ever found them; given they can defy all other logical scanning as a default it stands to reason they could also not be there by normal sight and tactile sense/physical interaction if they so chose or were set until detecting an appropriate host. Or they found her not the other way around.
I said the projection of her power is possible, but if they are then she’s not a super but something else. After all there can be other choices behind a setting’s default supers and supernatural creatures.
I think the orbs chose her. Like they waited for the night person to latch on to .
Supers are not a current generation thing.
Its just that they are now coming out into the light.
I thought there was something about how there are more of them than before, like they’re happening more often
Actually, she hasn’t seen Sydney in action: that alley-gang altercation was entirely Cora (Sydney was bundled up inside Mr Buble trying valiantly not to enjoy her Grakz for a second time)
And Syd’s reaction afterwards, about Archon trying to avoid killing whenever possible, may have given Cora the wrong idea. Sure, Archon tries to avoid killing enemies, but that doesn’t mean they’re not very, very good at it if necessary!
And just wait till Cora sees Maxi in action!
Also of note is Sydney herself hasn’t seen most of them in life and death action. She is a recruit and mostly been with the other recruits; these others are seasoned soldiers and mercenaries brought together for this team. Chances are several of them have a (kill count) under their belts and massive amounts of property damage.
Sydney has a pretty high kill count considering she’s a recruit, primarily because of the squidwards. Two kaiju (please no one start arguing again about if they were killed or not), and the thousand or so ships/fighters she destroyed.
And while she did not kill anyone in the restaurant parking lot, she did pretty much win the fights against multiple supers there as well from strategy alone (plus she did beat about 3 other supers in actual fights, and aided in defeating 2 more other than Death Toll and Vehemence).
Well how much did she see. That fight was off screen and in an unrban enviomnet where syd most likely did not bring out the PPO. Most likely just wacked guys with lighthook.. Now it whould be funny for Syd to fly up to the doors of the ship put the PPO into shotgun mode and see what happens..
So how about those throat mic collars?
Probably didn’t have time to put them on.
Should be wearing them whenever they’re on duty, then again maybe they aren’t and these two are at the front because they were leaving work and so were outside.
In the restaurant fight Harem was able to do point delivery of items to specific people, and sometimes even stow them in the correct place.
What we DON’T need in this fight are any of the generation 1 tactical glasses from the last fight. Those got broken or knocked off in no time. They have had over two months since then to do upgrades. Maybe now we have “War Specs: The Next Generation”.
in this instance it is less then a minute after the ship “Landed” so Harem is likely porting off to get equipment now. that or she is watching from Deuse’s office recovering from a “session”
She can do both at the same time!
depends on how many Deuse was “Entertaining”
Yeah, I forgot to put them in. Haven’t drawn them in the comic for quite a few pages.
First rule of Sci-Fi, Dont mess with the Humans
Human-written sci-fi. It probably goes a bit differently if it’s other civilizations writing it.
Dude! This world probably has vampire romance fanfic by and for vamps… and it might end VERY differently too.
Detailed ten-page scenes where the couple enjoys an afternoon walk, while eating garlic bread, and making faces at their reflections in the shop windows. You know, a kinky threesome.
Humans by our current nature are homicidal xenophobic monkeys, we have problems dealing with out own species let alone someone else. All that aggression pointed at someone else other than ourselves. I pity the race that meets us before we get past this, they will be in for one hell of a fight if we are out of the bottom of the bucket. Bucket is lving on the surface of a planet it is easy to drop rocks in a bucket.
Star Trek has a neat take on that, where humans are all “passed that”… until pushed. And when they’re pushed the Klingons both love them and are scared of them.
Quark to Nog:
“Let me tell you something about Hu-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people…. as long as their bellies are full and their holo-suites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people… will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don’t believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes.”
“Humans by our current nature are homicidal xenophobic monkeys” ??? — Citation needed–
We are of course apes, not monkeys. At least, where I live
I don’t think most of us are homicidal. Not where I live
I don’t think most of us are xenophobic. Not where I live.
Maybe you need to meet with a wider selection of humans?
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”
I personally believe most people are good by nature, but a review of our recorded history as a species is full of war and atrocity (against both ourselves and ‘lesser’ life forms), and a bit less full of cooperation and enlightenment. Probably not the majority of us are “homicidal xenophobic monkeys” by any means, but hardly few enough to be anomalous.
Our history is constantly marked by those but the fact that we have a large collective of collectives that requires the vast majority of us to cooperate for it them to function shows that we’re cooperating more often than not.
People tend to cooperate only as long as it is personally beneficial for them
Nah, more like people tend to stop cooperating when it is a personal loss for them, and start cooperating when it is benificial. When it is neither it is mostly a case of habit. If someone has a psychopathy the habit of cooperation can be very much less prevalent, which tends to weaken it, but in general cooperation is good for society, which tends to strengthen it.
With the caveat that humans are rather good at broadly redefining ‘personally beneficial’ on the fly.
Zack Tilly!
Humans are not that much more homicidal than many other apex predators are. And even some non-apex predators. Polar bears are psychopaths, despite what the Coca Cola commercials tell you. So are chickens. And don’t get me started on ducks. Or squirrels (and I’m not even talking Rick and Morty stuff, I mean real life). Hyenas are far more horrible than humans as part of their basic societal structure too.:) Honestly, as far as cooperation goes, humans are remarkably successful at it among the creatures in the animal kingdom, despite the fact that the ‘law of the jungle’ tends to favor an ‘everyone for themselves’ far more ruthless attitude. Which I think I brought up during the ‘religion’ discussion a few strips ago. Cooperation isnt something that naturally occurs in most of the animal kingdom outside of animals that hunt in packs (and even with animals that hunt in packs, it’s usually only limited to hunting, not the rest of their society (again, case in point – hyenas) or hive mind type animals (ie, ants) – who do not actually ‘think’ when they cooperate on a task.
Oh, also dolphins, lions, and chimpanzees also tend to be unspeakably brutal in their ‘societies’ as well, when outside of human captivity. Dolphins regularly kill each other for no reason – sometimes for sport. They especially regularly brutalize baby porpoises for seemingly no reason other than for fun. And dolphins, lions, and chimpanzees regularly engage in infanticide. Chimpanzees can be so psychopathic in the wild that neurobiologists use chimpanzees as the general model for animal psychopathy in behavioral research, and some scientists believe that the gene for psychopathy is VERY prevalent in chimps.
Well, given that apes, last I checked, are still monkeys, we can’t argue this one.
Homicidal and Xenophobic are probably not applicable to most individuals by their own nature, but a certain portion of humans has a preference of following strong leading figures and many more tend to go with that kind of flow.
Many of these strong leading figures actively look for or create conflict to cement their position (it’s kind of easy to stay in charge when there’s a perceived us vs them situation, and many will overlook that it’s self-created).
We have a common ancestor, we are not, nor ever were monkeys.
Apes and Monkeys are both primates, but an ape is no more a monkey than a monkey is a lemur.
generations of cartoons and bad comedies not being able to tell the difference has lead to this needless confusion.
First rule of combat… do some recon first. Direct assault is fine if you KNOW you way above your opponent. Hitting a pre-FTL may seem that way but FTL may not be the defining tech in a battle.
For instance what if the USA had few vehicle mounted Maser units in side that field..
Or for that matter given the tech description of the enemy shields Themoberric weapons are in the 5000 Deg class as well and with over pressure it will either pass though the shield due to being wide frontage or push the shield and the wearer a good distance. ( US issue XM-1060, Mk153 SMAW for infantry) the AGM-114N Hellfire II for light vehicles.
W.P. Grenades (5000F) are going to put 20% (1000 F) through the shield. Napalm (1800F) will put 8% of energy so 144F (not instantly lethal but not fun)
Its not likely that the US is going to send only M-4 carbines GPMG to first contact situation.
Despite every sci fi setting ever jumping on the laser guns bandwagon, a bullet is a still a bullet, and if you are alive putting high velocity holes in you is probably bad for your health.
Its easy to forget but Kinetic energy is still *energy*, thanks to the laws of thermodynamics your futuristic energy shields will have a limit to the amount of energy they can absorb, and I’ve got a weapon with full auto.
Come get some.
i’m a fan of a similar approach… though in my case i prefer a semi auto shotgun. slug for the armoured types, birdshot for the soft or shielded targets. have fifty high-velocity projectiles granting their energy to your shields at once, twenty times a minute. hope you’ve got feedback buffers!
More Dakka is actually a pretty effective strategy, and Sydney has already speculated aloud about the DPS of her PPO upgrades…
Sometimes its not the raw power of a shield but how fast that it can regenerate that matters. That and any electrical system can simply be overloaded, which in turns makes that shield less useful. A good buffer system to handle spikes of energy drain would be critical for any decent energy shield.
Total output of the system will be the most likely limiting factor.
Portable, high energy, power sources are pretty much impossible at our tech level. Batteries are *heavy*.
Until the tech exists to do something crazy like shrink actual power generators, instead of just storage devices down to a size that can be carried in a pocket stuff like energy shields won’t work.
That is one of the things I liked about the Star Gate franchise, they used fire arms against energy weapons. Wasn’t there a Star Trek movie where the borg drone’s personal shields didn’t shield against kinetic attacks and Picard went to town with a holographic Thompson 45.
https://i.imgur.com/bpbsz.gif
Yes, Star Trek: First Contact. The borg shields are for energy weapons, and they are not equipped with kinetic-based shields so bullets killed them rather easily. Sort of like how the Replicators in Stargate SG-1 are virtually immune to energy weapons of the Go’a’uld and the Asgard, but P-90s can mow most Replicators down (except the advanced ones and the Pegasus galaxy ones).
People don’t realize that while, yes a bullet can do a lot of damage and it’s generally not good to get hit by one, it’s real purpose is to transfer the kinetic energy into the body mass that it hit. A bullet hole? Small and RELATIVELY little damage. The kinetic shock wave from a bullet, tearing and shredding a body and THEN we talk about FMJ or Hollow points? No bueno for anyone.
The faster and more effectively the kinetic energy can be transferred from bullet to body, the higher the damage it does. Sure, it’s “just a flesh wound”, but then it’s also traumatized your lungs, kidneys, heart, spleen….Oh, and then there’s the hole in your body and the blood loss to deal with.
Lot of very bright people, over a great deal of time, have worked hard to make weapons good at what they do.
DannyBoyO1, you mean like Twilight?
after all Humans are a apex predator from a “Death World”.
and the sSupers from that pool are very deadly indeed.
That’s just human exceptionalism, IMO. You basically need to be an apex predator to make it out of your planet’s gravity well & out of your star system.
Apex scavenger. Not predator. We have more in common with raccoons than we do with wolves.
We have excellent mutualism with wolves. At least the kind with Downs syndrome that act overly friendly.
Wolves and horses were the only ones able to keep up with us.
Humans are not, and have never been, remotely scavengers when it comes to hunting. We’ve always been primarily persistence predators. We might sometimes engage in ambush predation or using the environment and traps as well (humans are actually surprisingly fast in extended chases, rather than in short bursts), but primitive human strength was simply in outlasting the prey until they collapse of exhaustion or are too tired to keep running away from us.
The only other species that are capable of keeping up with us in our hunting methods are wolves, which is why it was so easy to domesticate them. They pretty much self-domesticated themselves so they could hunt WITH us. Seriously, not making this up :)
I think humans being held back due to a lack of star travel tech is less prime directive and WAY more lazy quarantine. Especially with displays like this. “They tore through our power armor… in their underwear.”
And this isn’t even the most powerful. Or the weirdest. And that’s not even getting into the magic using undead.
Supers are a recent generation, mystery thing.
Other civilizations have magic and technology leagues above what Earth has.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-143-conferring-with-the-press/
They are not that new, and have been connected to the American presidency at least as far back as the Civil War.
New and “widely known” then. The Twilight Council made it clear that they very much covered them by accident.
President Lincoln, kade some of them, a force.
Well, I guess that’s pretty solid evidence that Supers only come from Earth, despite humanity having spread pretty far.
Which loops back to the beginning of the comic where it was mentioned that no one knows what causes them. Because seriously what is up with that?
It all goes back to the 1930s when a Kryptionian escape pod made its way to Earth along with with an accompanying shower of green glowing rocks. Some of those rocks burned up in the atmosphere. The dust seeded the environment with a low level of radiation that induced targeted mutations in the DNA of humans, leading to the current generation of supers. Though I am not sure why we aren’t also seeing things super hedgehogs and super bandicoots.
Since the targeted mutations result in glorified archetypical humans, how do you know we aren’t?
One of those meteors hit Robert Townsend.
It will take a few thousand more years if Sonic’s backstory is to be believed.
More likely to happen in a Superman/TMNT crossover. Ooze gives the animals humanoid traits, Kryptonite for the meta powers.
Earth seems to be prone to give random people super powers or have people be born with powers. In space, someone might find an artifact that lets them blow up a planet or something, but on Earth that seems to happen everyday. Also, it seems that Cora is really surprised with supers in general. Which might be evidence pointing to supers are made by something on Earth? Or something to that extent??? Like Earth has some greater purpose or something? Maybe it has something to do with the Nth that were mentioned a while back. Foreclaimer esc civilization made Earth for some purpose and etc etc.
My theory is that the Nth found it kind of boring having reached the peak of science, magic, technology, and decided to do it all over again from the beginning, and Earth is where they’re doing it. Which is why they’re nowhere to be seen for the most part.
Only, they decided to spice things up a bit, threw in vampires, lycantropes, supers, you name it, just for fun.
The boring humans are all NPCs so far as the Nth are concerned, but the Nth themselves get born, (With wiped memories, natch, no “cheating”.) as something fun, live an interesting life in a ‘primitive’ civilization, then “die” and party a bit in the “afterlife” before doing it all again. That’s why the supers are so good looking, who designs their character to be ugly?
Sydney ought to be an NPC, but stumbled across a set of orbs somebody dropped when the screwed up majorly on arriving for the party. And the orbs let her use them because they recognize her as related to the Nth.
Really interesting fanfic theory, although I doubt it’s what happened in story canon :)
Well that’s pretty much the premise in my series, how you get like six different human worlds operating under different types of magic, different combinations of monster classes, and infinite supply of Earths of various timelines that have had various interference occurring at various points in their timeline to see what happens; even including selling different Earths to each other for their own uses, experiments, and games.
Its not an unheard of premise to make alternate timelines and see what happens for cosmic level and ultra tech beings *throw the stone and see how the ripples go*
There wasn’t a Superman/TMNT crossover, but there was a Batman/TMNT crossover :)
They didn’t say there was a Soupcan crossover
They said in a crossover, not in the crossover
I just want any excuse to bring up that there was a real Batman/TMNT crossover.
Yups, have actually ordered the DVD (still have nothing to play it on :( , got quite a pile of DVD’s to watch when we do :P )
It’s a pretty good cartoon adaptation honestly. Although it doesn’t have Splinter in it, and the comic does.
This lack of Splinter you speak of…which means no Bat-Man interacting with Splinter…actually diminishes my wanting to see this by a substantial amount. I likely still will at some point, just no longer on a priority list. Yes it is that important, it would have been like if when Batman crossed over with Scooby Doo he hadn’t interacted with Shaggy.
When have we ever seen Scooby without his life-partner, Shaggy?
and when has there ever been a Ninja turtles adaptation without Splinter?
Having Bat-Man, the world’s greatest detective and basically thematic ninja actually meet Splinter who is basically Old Man Bat-Man but a rat with four Robins he is training would be awesome.
Haven’t seen the movie yet, so don’t know if Splinter may show up at the start or the end like his only appearance in the ‘Turtles in Feudal Japan’ movie
The point was, there have been movies where Splinter has had very little screentime, whereas Scooby is never without Shaggy (if you had mentioned one of the others, might have had more of an analorgy)
It still really is a decent animated movie. I just wish it had Splinter in it since that’s how, in the comics, Batman and the Turtles stopped fighting. When Splinter got involved and talked both sides down.
But I’m just saying Batman vs TMNT was a decent enough movie, and I’d recommend it.
I’m not sure about the hedgehogs, but the bandicoots all crashed.
Maybe it requires spapience sentience combination.
Probably for the same reason you never see zombie animals
…becuase their smarter than we are in select scenarios.
How does that stop animals from becoming zombies? o_O
they stay away from things that seem off or don’t smell right. we investigate or worse “poke it.
then there is for animals child is injured or the like “f it” im gone.
Animals still die, or get eaten by zombies
Remember, in that crappy “Walking Dead” show, people didn’t have to be bit to ‘turn’, they just had to die, and we saw at least four animals get bit (two horses, a deer and a tiger)
And what about pets? The ones who probably would stay by their ‘owner’ when they suddenly fall over and die
In the Walking Dead, the zombie pathogen, which is apparently throughout the atmosphere by year 2 so all people are infected, is human-specific, so no, it doesn’t affect any animals other than humans.
In other scenarios, like The Last of Us, certain animals get infected (insects and humans – since the premise is the fungus-borne infection does a species jump from arthropods to humans with a partial stop at capuchin monkeys, who can pass along the infection via a bite without themselves succumbing to the infection), others are carriers (non-human primates like monkeys), and still others see, to not get infected in any way and are not carriers (horses, rats).
Then there’s Resident Evil, where bears, horses, birds, and dogs apparently can be zombified as well as humans.
And of course Pet Sematary, where ONLY animals are zombified.
Okay, didn’t know they stated it was human-specific, it’s still odd that there are virtually no animals at all around, apart from the four mentioned
Yeah, I think the guy at the CDC mentioned it was human-specific. Or at least that was mentioned in the comic. Not sure if it was mentioned in the TV show but the TV show is based on the comic.
Oh also the reasoning behind why there arent many animals around is because zombies are not picky about who or what they attack and eat en masse with thousands of millions of pain-ignoring bodies, and animals tend to not be as capable of erecting barricades.
Like I’ve mentioned elsewhere, ancient humans are predation predators because they can simply outlast the animals they hunt, while the animals being hunted tend to have short bursts of speed but not high long-term endurance and stamina. And nothing has more long-term endurance and stamina than a zombie that never tires and never stops moving after the prey.
So most animals can only survive in a zombie apocalypse by hiding or getting to an area that the zombies cannot reach them.
unless you play Resident Evil, or watch Zoomies, Zombeaver, or others where that is the focus.
But I am guessing super humans but not super animals is generally selective; in the context of this series the supers thing could likely be an outside influence causing them that focuses on humans.
Human zombies but no animals in most zombie settings is easily explained as a human specific virus or parasite.
Or the writers not clever enough to depict zominals
Easy enough to do human zombies: just find a few amputees, cover them in makeup and there you go, not so easy to do that with animals (who are typically more intelligent than humans to put up with that crap, or at least have more dignity :P )
It is worth noting as evidenced by shows like (Face off) that zombie make up has become an early to learn application for make up artists. So plenty to hire and extras are cheap.
But animals aren’t easy to apply good zombie make up to, so you end up either with a joke, relying on expensive puppets or CGI.
Oh man, I just had the most horrible mental image of a zombie Jar-Jar reality show.
Re-animator had zombie cats, and Pet Sematary had zombie everythings. :)
You havent played many Resident Evil games, have you :)
Also ‘The Last Man on Earth’ had zombie animals as well. Poor Will Smith had to kill his dog when it got infected as it started to turn into one of the infected ‘zombies.’
Wasn’t really counting the doggies from RE as being zominals, more mutations
Only saw the Smith movie once, so don’t recall what happened with his doggie (don’t tell Yorp, could have been a cousin)
The doggie got scratched by one of the zombie creatures and it started to zombify as well…. so Will Smith… um…. oke-bray its eck-nay. I’m pretty sure Yorpie doesn’t know pig latin, since he’s a dog, not a pig.
Sounds like you’re referring to I Am Legend? He didn’t eak-bray her eck-nay, he gave her some unspeakable cuddles. So many cuddles she just couldn’t stand it anymore.
Which, while being an audience-friendly way to handle an onscreen character
deathretirement to a farm upstate, almost always ruins my suspension of disbelief and pulls me out of the film, because the exact same maneuver performed on a plot-armored character (or in real life) merely knocks them out. Same goes for pretty much any weapon injury, especially in scenes where many people incur the same injury and immediately retire, except the one who still has a monologue to deliver or plotline to complete.Sorry you’re right. I’m thinking of I Am Legend. No idea why I said The Last Man on Earth, which is a TV show about a disease that kills off…. almost everything on Earth except a few people, a dog, a cow, and some insects. Totally different besides the apocalyptic part – one’s a TV show, one’s a movie. One’s an action survival horror, one’s a comedy. One stars Will Smith. One stars Will Forte. AHHHH
THATS WHY I MADE THE MISTAKE. Will. :)
Anyway my bad. Thanks for the correction.
Hadn’t even realised you said the wrong title, still knew which Smith movie you were referring to though
Either way they’re based on The Omega Man.
Charlton “Damn Dirty Ape” Heston :D
True, true :)
Goo isn’t easy to wash out of a shirt and tie.
Cultures always push their misconceptions onto other cultures. In the aftermath of this fight the Fell high command will be reviewing video of this fight. “Look at that insignificant human taking down our soldiers! All our reports said they are weak. There must be some weapon giving him the ability to repel our forces. There! Around his neck! That cloth must be some power amplifier to enhance his combat abilities.”
And in the next fight all the Fel soldiers come out of their landing ships wearing ties.
Not too far off from how that actually started. Croatian mercenaries wore strips of cloth elaborately tied around their necks into battle and the French commanders thought it looked cool, so they started wearing them and brought it back with them to civilian life.
And the rest is neck torture history.
That’s bowties (and their ancestor, the cravat). Neckties are napkins.
Nah, cravat’s are bigger than neckties, so the cravat is the napkin, neckties are nooses people willingly put around their own necks
The grenade part is actually a bit off. For example C4 doesn’t explode with heat but will detonate with a shockwave from another explosion. There are also sodium based explosives that only work when exposed to water.
I know Dave said it was a grenade but I think it would be better, storywise, if it was a generator for their personal shield. Batteries go “boom” too when they get too hot.
I was kinda thinking that, but given that my knowledge of explosives is mostly limited to pop culture plus more in-depth knowledge of some of the more interesting-but-not-at-all-appropriate-for-weapons stuff like azidoazideazide (https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/01/09/things_i_wont_work_with_azidoazide_azides_more_or_less) so I wasn’t terribly confident that my knowledge of the subject is actually accurate.
I laughed way too much reading that…
I may have a Mad Scientist problem.
I think his blog post actually leaves off the most interesting part of azidoazide azide experiments: The list of things known to make it explode. It includes, among other things:
Being put in a spectrometer
Closing the spectrometer
Turning the spectrometer on
Contact with moisture
Contact with dessicants
Contact with light generated by a 60w bulb
Nothing at all (it was sitting in a dark, climate controlled and airtight cabinet and spontaneously exploded. One YouTube video I saw on the subject theorized that someone in the next room said something mean about it).
Anyway if you liked that post you should look through more of his “Things I Won’t Work With” posts. I particularly like the one regarding FOOF.
“This stuff will explode if you look at it funny.”
“How does it know you’re looking?”
“It knows.”
Check out this one.
I must have it!
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time
I KNEW that you were talking about chlorine trifluoride, the second I saw the word ‘sand.’ That stuff is amazing, in a very special way that includes the phrase ‘run away, gibbering in terror.’
The Nazis experimented with it as a terror weapon during WWII, but luckily never got it as far as actual application. I guess the delivery system was a little unreliable.
But now we can make rail guns.
Are you a spark? I only ask for SCIENCE!
That’s Spark, with a capital S FOR SCIENCE to you, minion!! *speaks in wobbly dialogue box lines, starts humming a counterpoint heterodynic melody…*
Vell, hy see hyu iz a lady ov taste!
Comon, boyz, de lady iz vorkink! Push dem BECK!
A crossover between Grrl Power and Girl Genius sounds like a winning concept. Call it Power Genius or something. Sydney meets Agatha and create SCIENCE, MADNESS and NERDITY.
The idea of a Spark and the orbs just being on the same planet is absolutely terrifying – adding Sydney and Agatha to that scenario is unthinkable.
Please add links to any fanfic immediately.
Brichins, while the idea IS terrifying, its also one of those ideas that would be 50 shades of awesome.
I mean, imagine Agatha and Dabbler talking about technology. Just the interactions between “heroes” alone would be worth the inevitable chaos.
Just don’t let Klaus get his hands on anybody. Or give Lucrezia a way to get to Earth.
We already have Sciona, so we don’t need Lucrezia.
TLDR… What about at very low temperatures? Is it still ridiculously unstable?
Sometimes I like to imagine a tanker truck of HP Photo Magenta.
I’ll add a Mole of azidoazide azide to my wish list.
As long as it’s not endochronic…
A C4 charge is bound to have a detonator, and THAT will definitely go off if you cook it…
it may burn.. which may start the C4 to burn.. no fun but its used for cooking fuel in the field at times
C4 detonates with shockwaves. So shooting it hitting it or throwing it hard enough can set it off but no amount of heat can.
So, I definitely shouldn’t whack high explosives with a hammer? Especially in real life?
How exactly is the grenade thing off? What exactly is the explosive component of this grenade? Should not assume it is an Earth based material like C4, with it being alien and all.
Perhaps it was an ammunition storage container for antimatter bullets.
Generally speaking any explosive that is easy to set off – say by setting it on fire – is going to be less favored for weapon use than more stable compounds. This is why dynamite was only ever used in the construction industry and why despite its famed potential to go boom no one has ever tried to weaponize nitroglycerin or rocket fuel.
And what’s interesting is that Dynamite (or rather, TNT) is the SAFE option. Before that, Nytroglycerine WAS the standard mining explosive, and people died all the time because of how unstable it is. So when TNT was invented, creating an explosive that DIDN’T go off when you bumped it, but only when it was lit on fire, everything became safer. And Alfred Nobel got his fortune.
Dynamite was nitroglycerine absorbed into diatomaceous earth. The diatomaceous earth made it stable against impacts, but it had a tendency to “sweat” in storage, releasing pure nitroglycerine, making old Dynamite dangerous.
TNT, “TriNitroTolulene” is something else, a relatively insensitive explosive, quite difficult to set off. It’s still used.
It really depends out of what you make the explosive. If you do not care for handler safety (because you use drones), you can use the more dangerous stuff. Like some of the stuff from this list:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckSoDW2-wrc
And of course in the end all explosives are really just about releasing a lot of heat energy in a very short time. So there is always some way to shortcircuit this.
Plus if you got energy shields (and disposeable drones), you might not care that much if it can detonate on heat.
Actually, if you put C4 into even a campfire, and then make the mistake of trying to stomp out the campfire, you will lose a foot or possibly a leg. Heat may not set C4 off, but it is a HELL of a sensitizer for subsequent impact… and there WAS a subsequent impact very close by.
How do I know this? In the Marines it was not uncommon to use a pinch of C4 as fuel for a small cook fire; everyone knew you NEVER, EVER stomped those puppies out.
So most of you are talking about explosive compound 4 and how for that situation the detonator uses a shock wave to create the required conditions to release its energy properly but you also have pressure vessel type explosives for which you only need to burn the fuel fast enough to brittle fracture a large majority of the casing. And yet a third option if you add enough energy to a point You should cause ionization of the material which should destabilize the surrounding chemicals if you don’t purely ionize the mass directly.
I’m left handed and I was always taught to lead from the left and send power from the right.
That’s ’cause you were taught by/like a Rightie. Generally speaking, you use your off-hand for jabs and speed, and power comes from your dominant hand.
Or at least, that’s what I’ve been lead to believe.
Odd. We humans are slightly asymmetric, and the off hand is the one used for heavy lifting. One would assume that was also the one for a power punch. Perhaps power punches come from the faster, more dexterous hand?
If you use one of your arms significantly more than the other you can become noticeably asymmetric.
In the mid eighties I was stationed at Keesler AFB in Biloxi. A friend of mine had an eight foot cast net and we went shrimping on the back bay three days a week. I would throw the net, he would untangle it and peel our catch. We would fish until the we had a small ice chest full of shrimp and maybe a few mullet.
By the time I left my left arm and shoulder were noticeably larger than my right.
Handedness has more to do with dexterity than strength. It’s the nimble, agile tasks – like writing – that you’re better at with your dominant hand.
Thus, any time you need to do something dextrous with one hand – such as unlocking and opening a door – while carrying something heavy in the other hand, you’ll have more success having your dominant hand deal with the door.
And if you do that sort of thing regularly, you’ll eventually find that your stronger hand and your stronger arm are on opposite sides of your body.
Energy is energy. Whether it is kinetic or electromagnetic. But the author specifically mentioned heat which is kinetic. So throw a piece of metal out of a tube fast enough or make the projectile large enough and you’ll get to the same sort of numbers. And, besides, directed energy weapons generally work by being converted to heat in their target so, back to kinetic energy.
Also, what is your shield anchored to? If a 3 ton SUV hits your shield, that momentum doesn’t magically vanish. I would imagine the momentum would be transferred to the shield generator itself. So, unless it weighs far more than three tons by, say, being anchored to the planet with significant bolts, it’s going flying or will be torn off the moorings.
Forces on the shield transferring directly to the shield generator would make it utterly useless – a single average human could take it down in one punch, as the force would be directly channeled into the shield generator’s delicate internals.
One presumes that most force field applications either somehow convert most impacts or other offensive efforts into a thermal analog and store it to a certain capacity, later diffusing it into the environment through normal entropic natures , or generates an equivalent ‘force’ in a opposite vector to negate the thing being defended against.
both options have advantages and drawbacks.
Potentially, the energy is converted into electrical charge that is then used to generate the field that absorbs incoming energy.
Shield energy renewal (not 100% perfect, since it would still need a “small” battery or other energy source to control & convert, and energy is always imprfectly converted), and/or empowering thermally charged (or other EM spectrum) weaponry for return fire.
The desc. is pretty much from dune. its a Resistance field like water, move your hand slow the water moves .. slap the water.. well it stings hit the water at 200Mph its not a good day at all.
It IS possible the momentum hitting the shield is applied to EVERYTHING inside the shield – like, shields sharing some similarities with inertial dampening fields. Or, the shield simply deforms a little.
one would assume a shield designed to handle kinetic weapons would probably either redirect and cast off the kinetic energy (think flowing around a wedge or parrying a much heavier sword that you lack the strength to block) or absorb and redistribute it over a greater area, and/or a greater amount of time, (think bellyflopping onto a beanbag chair vs belly flopping onto the floor, or slapping a water balloon vs slapping a brick) and a good one would redirect the absorbed energy and use it to power the shield, using it to power the shield.
So the shield would somehow have to act as a propulsive device to counteract the momentum of impact. It’s both a source of propulsion and a defensive shield. Doing so would consume as much energy as it absorbed to negate the momentum with a propulsive force, assuming 100% efficiency – which is impossible -, as well as consume the same amount of energy as the impactor delivers to stop the impactor. In other words, assuming a ludicrous 100% efficiency of all systems involved, a shield would have to expend at least twice the amount of energy delivered by an impactor to stop the projectile and negate the imparted momentum. And the faster you stop a projectile, the more work you need to perform to stop the projectile. Any redirection, may add to the energy required to deflect the projectile far enough and fast enough to offer protection.
Which comes to the comparison to water. Water slows objects through drag. The transfer of momentum into individual molecules, as well as energy lost in turbulence including, above the speed of sound in water, the creation of cavitation, as well as shockwave formation.
Long story short: shields in any sci fi setting is unrealistic. You may resume your suspension of disbelief. :D
If by slaughtered you mean heatwave losses another toe . . .
God I love this comic. Need some Alan Silvestri Avengers-style music playing right now during this! For the love of Stan, you gotta come to NYCC at some point PLEASE!
Fel Artifact of Unspeakable Cuddles. The thing they want back. Why? What does it do?
(moment to conjecture)
What a great name for a device that literally seduces an entire planet into joining the Fel.
(And not necessarily in a NICE way.)
PLOT TWIST!!
It is really just a cuddle-provider of impeccable quality and effectiveness. The Fel hates even idea of its existence because they are so drenched in stygian energy that even the mere notion of cuddles incurs inexpressible suffering on them, much less actually realized cuddles of such magnitude The Unspeakable Cuddler could provide.
I think this is the first time since the restaurant fight a male character has got to do something cool.
I don’t know, I think the guys were cool in the mountain fight against Cora.
Frix: I thought that bath time sexy shenanigans with Sydney was pretty cool.
Sciona…
To be fair, the comic IS called Grrl Power. If you’re here because you want to see the guys kick all the ass, you may be reading the wrong comic.
On the other hand, there’s not a girl to be found in the comic either ;)
yes there is: the young Alari Refugee female that was standing next to Slyv when he was telling Cora about the Unspeakable Cuddler… even though she is an Non-Human, she still qualifies as a “Girl”…
Well this is going to be interesting. I guess there is a lot to look forward to here, Dabbler can pull on her lethal weapons inventory, Hiro Anvil and Stalwart can play wack-a-fel, and Max can point her finger at the big ship in the sky.
No! Don’t let Maxima vaporise the carrier!
If there’s one thing XCOM has taught me, that thing is worth a SHEDLOAD of reverse-engineer-your-way-to-spacetravel research!
We can’t have Galytn/Deus have the monopoly on that tech from the refugee transport!
Well-said!
But the Fel are mentioned to be corrupted by Stygian energy (whatever that is). The ship might be dangerously irradiated. Might be unsafe to mess with it. We don’t even know if this Stygian energy stuff can be blocked by standard rad-protection gear.
> It might be dangerously irradiated …
… so lets explode it into dust and spread all the corrupting energy all over the atmosphere!
ye-e-e-e-e-s… That certainly would open the door for awesome zombie-apocalypse-style plots… lets not do that!
This also feels like an opportune moment to remind everyone on the official stance of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, on spreading radioactivity in the atmosphere to “solve” problems: “Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”
(granted, that (epic) advice is in the context of “solving” hurricanes, but I personally feel that it translates well to this situation..)
So just throw into the Sun. That is a popular solution to many problems.
Just to be on the safe side. Throw it into some other sun.
I would have said ‘somebody else’s sun’ because that is the way to repurpose the saying, but that would be a poor way to introduce oneself the the galactic community you only just learned the existence of.
Okay, let’s use a black hole for super villain disposal then.
I’d wager – on basis of vehemic energy being the power of strife, and the tantric energy being the power of lust – that stygian energy is a power of dread, term originating from the name of river Styx in Hell. So – hellish torment, inflicting pain, causing suffering, overall dreariness and bleakness on less intense level… All the funny things, in short.
The artifact in question may as well be one of the Lemarchand’s Puzzleboxes.
Stygian energy would most likely be a power of death. So the more death that happens, the more powerful they get. At least, that’s my guess?
One would hope not, given that the sage advice was “kill them quickly and move on”
Good point. But still could be an effective strategy if you kill them quick enough, before they can power up to use the energy they get from the additional death? Or maybe they get energy from when THEY kill? I dunno. It was just a guess, although you blew a pretty big hole in my theory :)
Sage advice is not always worth the price, just saying. It wouldn’t be the first time that the answer that “everybody” knows is, in fact, completely wrong.
I suggest using Hostess Fruit Pies instead. Nobody can resist the real fruit filling! Well, except vegans, because apparently they’re not entirely made of fruit.
or its the same power source as Necrokinesis and is the essence of the World of the Dead, type force…kinda like a killing spell like Thwack or just the essence of the land of the dead like Danny Phantom’s power source.
Well, power from death was my first to go guess, tbh – but I discarded it due to such things being firmly associated with the root “necro” in collective cultural pool. A bit of meta reasoning, but if author drags out something more exotic than “necro” (or “thanato” for more subtle ones, I guess), it usually means some broader/more nuanced theme than just “death”.
Styg- also has to do with death, just like thanto- and necro-. Which is why it’s called the River Styx (which Stygian relates to).
But yeah it probably means something broader. It was just a guess :)
No love for Phlegeton and Acheron, eh?
I guess Cocytus and Lethe are in middle position, stuck somewhere between Styx and Phlegeton, primarily due to waters from Lethe gaining memetic status some years ago, and Cocytus being often mentioned in connection to certain morning star.
And literally no one mentions Eridanos, like ever, probably due to there being a slightly less non-mythical one, muddling the waters.
As for Stygian – a curious corruption of original meaning seems to be due to efforts of one Robert Howard, and his epigones in particular.
Well, at least in my association pool snake-cults of Stygia pop up way before the Virgil and company, so… A bias is a bias, of course, of course.
Either way, all the posh talk aside due to utter irrelevancy, we shall see the thing in question explained one way or another soon enough.
That being said rad protection gear doesn’t block radiation it prevents you from getting contaminated with radioactive isotopes which will continue to irradiate you. Or in the case of radioactive gasses like activated iodine you take effectively salt tablets to saturate your thyroid so there is no room for the activated stuff and you breath it back out. Actually two of the higher exposure jobs in the us if I remember right are astronauts/pilots and workers at a specific subway ticket counter in NYC because the quartz it is slightly heavier than normal with radioactive traces. But in general you get more exposure from long term low environment than high sources in most scenarios as long as you don’t get it inside you. which fyi tobacco naturally contains pulonium which emits alpha particles. While alphas are not normally a concern because they are so reactive that they all get stopped in the outer dead layers of skin, your lungs do not get the same shielding effect and take the reaction full on.
the more you know because knowledge is power.
Happy Ninth Anniversary, Grrl Power and DaveB! I have enjoyed this comic for the last nine years and hope to enjoy it for nine more (if not longer!). Also, it’s been a pleasure geeking out with my fellow readers over the minute of super powers, sci fi and horror/fantasy elements in the comments section, even if we don’t always agree. XD
Faceless army that needs to be killed, gloves off.
Is a good opportunity to show the audience (in and out of universe) what the heavy hitters and seasoned soldiers on the team can really do; seeing as how previously they had to hold back so as to not kill anyone.
*thinks*
What if the reason there are so many superheroes on Earth, is because the Orbs are there?
mind = blown
Good theory. I like.
Or at least a common cause; Earth is some Nth tech repository and some of it leaked and made supers.
I was going to post that modern explosives used in grenades don’t cook off. Then I checked my facts. I was incorrect.
Modern grenades still use TNT as their explosive. TNT cooks off at 227C. However, if you mix TNT with RDX, or just used RDX to begin with, the most you will do is set it on fire. It wont explode. It might burn a bit better than say… wood. But no real concussive force to it. You have to use pressure to get detonation from RDX, not just heat. And RDX is more energetic than TNT, once detonated.
I’d argue it’s reasonable to think aliens capable of building FTL capable space-ships would have something even better than RDX. So I might have been wrong about modern grenades… but I think my ultimate point still stands.
Everyone who has used the “it just burns” argument is thinking of the explosive in open air, not in a container. In a container, the rise in pressure from the heat will act as that shock everyone says will cause the stuff to SPLODE! Put a grenade in a campfire, and I assure you it will not simply toast the marshmallows more efficiently.
put a grenade in a fire and its blasting cap will be set off not the C4.
there is no way a fire will make the supersonic shock wave needed to set off C4 no matter what container you put it in. the blasting cap going off because of the heat on the other hand will set off any un-burnt c4 just fine.
I’m not an explosives expert, but I do not think a grenade has C4 in it. A grenade (at least, a fragmentation grenade) has gunpowder or other explosive material in it, which CAN explode from heat.
Googled to make sure I was right on that. I seem to be correct.
227C<1000-2000C
heating it up a order of magnitude past the "burn" point would likely destabilize it past it's design specs.
I'm no chemist but I'd bet on BOOOM
Stalwart! And Heatwave! It’s good to see those characters again.
I have no idea why, but I really really like the character of Stalwart.
Might be time to offer Kevin a plea deal and let him outta the box?
Yikes! Kevin is a dangerous obsessive personality, though. It’s hard to guess what he would do with an alien invasion. And that’s once he sobered up.
I don’t think things are that drastic yet, depends how big of an army this ship has but I see no reason why the team couldn’t fight them that Kevin would help with.
No. That makes about as much sense as the plot of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom to use dinosaurs that target based on laser pointers as military weapons. It only makes things messier and less controlled. If Kevin got free, and into a warzone like that, he’d wind up being even more dangerous, and would probably kill both Maxima and Sydney, who were the main threats to him from the first fight. Possibly Dabbler too, since she was able to distract him, and Kevin learns from his mistakes with new counters. Plus he’s a psychopath who hurts people because he likes to hurt people. He does not hurt people in order to cause peace. He’d very likely just let the Fel keep doing what they’re doing because it just would keep making him stronger.
No, Kev is a sociopath: he knows when not to kill (like when he and Holo Halo had that chat, he hoped she wouldn’t be hurt, or die, or whatever)
He hurts people who are a direct threat to himself, or a potential threat (or could have killed Vektor, butt he only cracked a few ribs, and then told Maxi about the ribs)
Yeah I know. Sociopath, not psychopath. My mistake. I mention this in another post elsewhere that I was wrong in calling him a psychopath when he’s clearly actually a sociopath.
> It might be dangerously irradiated …
… so lets explode it into dust and spread all the corrupting energy all over the atmosphere!
ye-e-e-e-e-s… That certainly would open the door for awesome zombie-apocalypse-style plots… lets not do that!
This also feels like an opportune moment to remind everyone on the official stance of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, on spreading radioactivity in the atmosphere to “solve” problems: “Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”
(granted, that advice was in the context of “solving” hurricanes, but I personally feel that it translates well to this situation..)
oops, this was supposed to be a reply to KromactheRave above..
I know I am a nerd, but I still want the Sydney to debut into the battle with the PPO yelling “Kame -Hame -HA!
I say you are in good company in this forum.
Okay, so maybe pointing (at radioactive ships) is just rude in this case.
How about Max pushes it out into the mesosphere and then tosses it into the sun?
Or has that move been trademarked already?
Don’t throw away the piñata until you have finished checking for candy inside.
“Pillage, then burn.”
“Rape the women, not the livestock!”
POISON THE HOUSES, BURN THE WOMEN, RAPE THE WATER!!!
“Conan uses Splash, its not very effective”
This reminds me of the Three Amigos with Chevy Chase (Dusty Bottoms) and El Guapo.
El Guapo: Oh-ho, you
Dusty Bottoms: Jose!
(bandidos cheer)
El Guapo: Together we…
Dusty Bottoms: Burned the village!
(bandidos cheer)
El Guapo: And, uh…
Dusty Bottoms: raped de horses
(banditos cheer)
El Guapo: And we
Dusty Bottoms: Rode off on the women!
(banditos cheer but quietly)
El Guapo: And uh…
Dusty Bottoms: Plundered!
El Guapo: Plundered! And uh…
Dusty Bottoms: Pruned!
El Guapo: ….pruned…the, uh..
Dusty Bottoms: Hedges!
El Guapo: hedges of….
Dusty Bottoms: Many small villages!
El Guapo: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU!?!?!
It has been 9 years? Where has the time gone? And we are still in the introductory flashback…..
Well 9 years our time. About 4 months in universe.
Typo, shield’s should be shields. Sorry, can’t help noticing that type of thing.
And this is before Halo and Maxima unleash the heavy firepower.
Sydney blasted the F out of those big aliens before, I bet she could probably make this ship have a really bad day. Max and her both? Ouch.
Buuuut… do they want to blow it up inside the atmosphere and close to the ground near a friendly populated area? Probably not.
The most common statement by [strike]Black Hulk[/strike] Reflex would be “Oops, you missed!” to go with Halo’s “Can’t Touch This!”
You need to use < and > brackets instead of square brackets to get
funny effects[spoiler]Except for spoilers[/spoilers]
Italics
Bold
Underline
Strikethrough with ‘s’Strikethrough with ‘strike’Still can’t brain out how to make underline work – outside from copypasting text from external generators.
A pity, that…
Yeah, _Underline_ is one that has never worked here
Testing whether the html u tag works…?
I eventually plan to add some tag formatting tools to my comments extension for this site; so far it hasn’t gathered a lot of interest though. Considering forking the broken ‘official’ one in the sidebar and working from there instead of building from scratch.
The old comments use to show some of the tags, doesn’t show them now :(
Actually, the _underscore_ is used in Discord for Italics
Am I the only one who just noticed the similarities between the ‘mindless golem’ and these guys?
It’s almost as if they were designed by the same artist…
Yeah… but Sydney doesn’t look like these guys. The only guys that look like these guys are these guys and one other guy.
Need my sweetie, Anvil to enter the fray!
100 to 1 odds the Major is NOT gonna lose his teeshirt, 100 to 1 odds! Any takers, any takers! Stalward gets his shirt mussed up, 5 to 1, any takers!
Tshirts are meant to be destroyed, suits are meant to be stained.
Okay so for the last few pages a few individuals such as myself and Pander have been repeatedly informing people that the Fel and the squidwards are not the same, that it was telegraphed pretty clearly that the Fel were after Cora and would be something she and Dabbler would recognize.
So getting good clear looks at these guys.
Either
A: The squidwards are Fel, but are totally new apocalypse class weapons no one knew about yet and Alar was their debut attack
B: The squidwards are something old that wasn’t around and the Fel are descended from or based on them
C: (which can encompass B somewhat), Stygian Energy corruption just has a certain look to it on a life form and both the Fel and squidwards use Stygian energy.
C’s more of a possibility than A or B, since the Fel are apparently not a single species – they are a collective of different species.
I’m still of the opinion, due to how clearly telegraphed it’s been by DaveB (as you’ve also repeatedly stated) that the Fel have nothing to do with the Squidward Kaiju.
Still think as implausible as it might be to have a Slayers Gaav and Phibrizo situation. A Fel wizard tries to use a spell…and nothing happens; to discover a mural on the artifact Cora has of the Fel’s Stygian gods and Sydney looks at it confused and is, “Um…I killed this guy…and this guy too”.
I have no idea what Gaav and Phibrizo means :)
Gaav the Demon Dragon King,
-in Slayers there is a powerful attack spell called “Gaav Flare”, however during the events of Slayers Next Gaav was killed by Hellmaster Phibrizo during their internal fighting, so after that spells that drew power from this demon king stopped working. Gaav Flare for example could not longer be cast.
Phibrizo was another demon lord, Hellmaster Phibrizo, he was killed by The Lord of Nightmares while she (LON) was possessing the main character Lina Inverse.
So all barriers, spells, and cursed items ect…that drew power from those two all stopped working.
The scenario being if the kaiju were the (alien gods) like Cthulhu sort of situation and Sydney killed two of them, then it would be funny if like Slayers any spells that drew power from those individuals stopped working as well. Basically kill a god anything from that god ceases to have a power source.
Dabbler has reportedly killed gods before, and in a setting like this what would a god be but a powerful being, worshipped by those beneath it that can extend its powers as a “blessing” for spells and items. They’d have to be very powerful to pull such a thing off, or have their own powersource like extra-dimensional conversion or whatnot; but it is a thing in sci-fi-fantasy
I only watched a couple of episodes of Slayers and one OVA so that explains why the reference went over my head. The only name I remember from Slayers is Lina Inverse. :) Thanks for explaining.
You need to check the definition of “apex predator”. An apex predator is one with no natural predators in its home range. Note the qualifier “natural”. Humans are apex* predators.
Scavengers? Don’t make me laugh. Name one place in the last 10000 years where humans wait for something else to kill in order to eat as a significant part of our diet. Large predators become nocturnal when we come around. In many places, our young used to take out the baddest (non-human) creature around to prove their manhood.
Okay, most definitely replied to this earlier
Thank you (again), for making this post
I just can’t wait until Max gets into the fight. I think Cora is in for a Rude awakening about how Dangerous Dabbler’s friends are. Heck, Sydney opening up with her blaster could be spectacular as well.
Nope… MAX will open up with the firepower… and she’ll order Halo to put up Mr. Bubble… aka the Shield… and since she has upgraded the shield at least once from the first Squidwierd Kaiju attack (where it went into the red that being an imminent failure warning i’d assume) NOW her shield won’t be bothered by this “lesser” attack in the slightest…
Looks like just a training exercise, to them ;-)
I would so love to see this fight animated…
Not even looking to see if anyone else had this comment.
Great to see Heatwave getting to strut her stuff instead of being an airhead buttmonkey.
Being one is not exclusive of the other :P
Just look at Sydney
She may be an airhead buttmonkey, but the fact she’s considered “combat ready” by her superiors does imply that she’s competent in a fight.
Just remember, don’t use too many explosives during your repelling of the alien invasion. Dr. Vhalen would be most distressed if you were unable to bring her back appropriate samples for reverse-engineering.
Actually… that brings up a REALLY sticky point with the galactic civilization at large. What happens if/when Humanity reverse-engineers whatever doodads they scavenge from this mess? Will they be permitted to act as an independent member of the larger galactic civilization as a whole, or will they be considered to have ‘cheated’ by bootstrapping themselves and denied application?
Both scenarios are equally terrifying, to be honest.
Permitting humans to mix with galactic civilizations? That’s gonna cause a few ripples, both on Earth and abroad. We haven’t advanced our political and social sciences to match our ‘hard’ sciences yet, and are woefully unprepared for stepping into a larger pond.
Having said that, denying Humans access is, bar none, the ONE way to ensure that Humans *ARE* going to end up busting on the scene, and aren’t going to be happy about being ‘repressed’. And are going to be expressing that displeasure in a very unfriendly manner. Do you want Space Marines shouting ‘FOR THE EMPRAH!’? Because this is how you get Space Marines shouting ‘FOR THE EMPRAH!’.
It is not like being kept out of the UN because some jerk race feels like throwing its weight around
As per Cora’s explanation, it is indeed a matter of the other races not caring one way or another about us. If we kill ourselves off then we will be just another statistic (unless we do it in a really unique way, then we will be the posthumous butt of the jokes of late night show hosts …)
But if we manage to develop world destroying power and manage to use it to get into space instead of cracking our planet in two, well, welcome to the greater galaxy species 14893, soon to be replace as the latest species to get past that hurdle by species 14894.
The bottleneck is not the being accepted by the rest of the galactic species, but in the surviving long enough to become responsible with as much power as ftl requires (and creates).
They will not help us getting there but Cora broadly hinted that they will not hinder us either, and even protect us from species already at that stage, up to a point.
The irony.
Just after Cora says we won’t get galactic help to get off planet … we beat alien invaders and backward engineer their tech to get off planet.
I’m guessing it’s not the first time such a thing happened. The galactic community just sighs at the stupidity of the invading species, and hopes for the best from the new neighbors.
Not sure if still canon, but wasn’t this stated once how the Saiyans got off their planet.
They beat up another species and stole their tech to get off world. Granted given talk in Super I think this was retconned or was a non-canon source.
But it would be funny, aliens invade a planet of Hulks, He-mans, She-ras, Supermans, and Supergirls. Their advanced technological weapons and armor might as well be squirt guns and tissue paper; and then boom; space has some new neighbors.
Is that a sneaky X-com reference i see there?
I have to wonder if now would be a good time to have a conversation that starts with “So, how would you like a job?” with Vehemence…..
No, he’s a sociopath.
I don’t think he’s a sociopath, if he was, he wouldn’t have told Maxima about Vectors broken ribs, since he wouldn’t have cared less about him… but because he DID tell her, in my mind that means he cares at least somewhat about the well-being of others….
as for using him in this, nope he’d become too unstoppable afterwards… then there’s no way they’ll be able to contain him afterwards for sure..
Sociopath is not the same as a psychopath
A sociopath is capable of showing compassion, specially to someone they have worked with (even if it was them who broke their ribs… )
Hey, we are not perfect :shrug:
I mentioned Kevin is a psychopath before, but upon reflection, Duh is right and I am wrong.
He’s a sociopath, not a psychopath. Also, Vehemence telling Maxima about Vector’s broken ribs seemed to just be a ‘matter of fact’ statement, not because he actually gave a crap about Vector’s health.
He manipulated a bunch of supers into destroying a restaurant full of civilian staff to satisfy his ego.
He is absolutely a sociopath.
Yeah, you’re right. He’s a sociopath. He clearly does NOT care about causing other people pain, except for that it gives him more power. Any ‘concern’ he’s ever shown has been just as a ‘matter of fact’ statement. The closest he’s ever come to even a semblance of caring was hoping that Sydney does not die in the big fight. But I doubt he would have been all that broken up if she did, except for the fact that dead people can’t make him stronger. But now that Sydney has been shown to be capable of beating him, he’d probably kill her quickly to take her out of the equation.
Sorry, bit off topic, but I’ve been getting this popup from Eset warning me about piperka.net being blacklisted every time I come to this page. Looks like it’s just a link at the bottom? When I try to go there it says “The web page is on the list of websites with potentially dangerous content”.
Anyway, just thought I’d mention it so that maybe word will get to them. :)
This would be a great time for the “I don’t think this word means what you think it means.” line. However you do have to have a lot of faith in your team for it to work well.
If you mean ‘slaughter’, yes, yes it does, Cora just had no idea who she was dealing with (probably the only htu-mons she has interacted with, have been other Space Monkeys twenty generations removed from their ancestral Dirt Monkey relatives)
Time for the lost tribes to visit home and try the superpower lottery. hehe