Grrl Power #768 – Late to the party
I done goofed.
I have to own it. The very first draft of this page had Sydney saying something slightly more innocuous like “When did this happen!?” or whatever. Then at some point while I was drawing it I decided to do the change up gag where someone overreacts to the wrong thing. I don’t know the name of the trope off the top of my head.
Here’s the problem. This whole scene started with Sydney watching the press conference from the firing range. She’s a flake, but that’s just too flaky, even for her. But I just forgot about that page while I was writing/drawing this one.
I realized this sometime Wednesday and I could have fixed it, but I thought just to mix it up, it’d be fun if you guys wanted to pitch some lines for Sydney that hopefully make more sense. I’ll update the comic with the best one.
Whatever else happens with this page, I’m positive I drew either the Interdictor or Archon HQ at the wrong scale. I think the building is way too small. Cora said the ship was 160 meters long, but that seems super small now, even if she meant the body of the ship and not including the gun/gravity sled nacelles at the front.
Michael-Scott Earle’s website is up and all his previously published books are available. Check them out if you haven’t! Also sign up for his mailing list to get a heads up on kickstarters for new books. I think first up will be the next Tamer book, then hopefully a Star Justice. I’m gonna pledge irresponsibly on that one, cause I want me like 50 more Star Justice novels.
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“The press conference was live?!?! And I was not invited?!?”
I think she was thinking of how the last press conference she attended involved a power demonstration that ended with Max turning a tank into a mushroom cloud.
I’m not sure if this has already been stated in one of the other 400+ comments, but given her propensity to do things that are purposely similar to comics and such, I think it makes perfect sense for her to have this reaction just to get a rise out of her passenger. :)
Just for kicks, how much carnage did the Fel ship cause in the NEO satellite belt?
As in The Truth Behind ESA & SpaceX’s Close Encounter?
Given there must be, what, at least two GPS constellations and how many Earth Observation and general Comms constellations? Plus dead satellites and a couple of Space Stations?
I appreciate that maybe the Galactic Community may not want Earth at this early non-FTL stage, but I can think of several Earth communities wanting some reparations for this act of destructive vandalism. Something along the lines of bombing the Fel back to the Stone Age given that grounding them on their home planet may well be simply impossible?
It’s not that bad, yet.
Not all satelites are in equatorial orbit (and they would not bother a ship there that was dropping down on the north american continent) but assume a very generous 10,000 satelites in the orbit you are cutting through and give them a 20m. That’s a 200km of satelites if put in a single line. At 500km height the earth’s orbit is approximately 45,000km. The satelites cover 0.45% of that orbit (and in reality more likely a factor 10 less than that percentage).
The odds of a ship cutting through that exact orbit hitting a satelite are neglicible (unless they go out of their way to hit something).
The risk of a collasion goes way up when moving a new satelite into that orbit as it is not yet moving as fast as the ones in stable orbit. The later move at 8 km/s and will overtake a rockeet moving (but accellerating) at, say, half that speed very quickly. As in those 10.000 satelites would be only half a second between each other at orbital speed.
That is a satelite would pass through a fixed point in their collective orbit every half second(*). Which is why nobody is ever going to put 10,000 satelites in exactly the same orbit. You could stagger the satelities in different altitudes, 1 km apart allowing hundreds of thousands of satelities and never run a risk of them collapsing. And of course most satelites in lower orbits neither need nor want to be in an equatorial orbit (but you will still want to stagger them in different altitudes because those orbits will otherwise cross each other)
(* This is also how you would construct an orbital ring: get those 10,000 satelites in orbit, put 4.5km of tube between each to connect them in a ring (that still flies at orbital speed around the planet). Then fill the tube with small ferromagnetic ball bearings and then gradually slow than the satelites and tube while simultaneously speeding up the ball bearings. Using linear induction to control the speed of the ball bearings and magnetic repulsion to keep the whole things stable(ish) when the speed difference gets to be 8 km/s. At that point you have 10,000 satelites in a stationary position above earth held up there by a magnetic ring circling the earth at over 8 km/s. After that you could fly a plane, with a modest rocket strapped onto it, up there for cargo and passengers, or you could simply throw down a (graphene wire) cable down and ride an elevator car up and down.)
“You guys filled in the rooftop pool while I was away?!”
This was the best page in like three years of this comic.
Nope. Page #666 was only a year ago, and is more assume by far.
AWESOME!!!
Damned spell check bit me again.
Wow the art style has changed since that page! I prefer the current look.
“That’s way bigger than a car frame!”
“My gun is cheating on me with Goose”
“Goose! That’s my gun! No fair!”
“They had a party without me?!”
“Hey, I was specifically told the minigun was only for comedic effect!“
They didn’t tell me my favorite churo truck would be here?
*They didn’t tell me my favorite churro truck would be here!
“Oh my god… are those space ninjas? Why didn’t I expect space ninjas?!”
7 pages,
so going to re-state vote to leave joke as is.
No offense but the majority of the suggestions have been either very esoteric references or things pointing out flaws in the art, or simply not as funny as the joke in the comic now; which is both the classic, upset about the wrong thing, and also in-universe reference as she had been at; despite only being a new recruit at the previous press conference; and even got interviewed at the bank. So in-comic is a nice jab at a possible expectation she might have developed.
i feel the joke is well enough as is, though i feel like it would fit better as a sarcastic comment
For all of us who spent years of our lives getting up in the the dark and then standing in formation waiting for it to get light enough to start the morning PT run the jokes about the Fel ship not destroying the track (and maybe the obstacle course just past it) are funnier. That isn’t that obscure.
Ohhh, how about this.
“Just 50 feet over and it would have taken out the track! Wait, the fire won’t be out before morning. Does this mean that PT is canceled for the week?”
Peggy then says a snarky comeback “No, PT will be modified to cleanup duty.”
How About
“But I Suck at Cleaning up!!”
“They had an alien invasion without me?!”
Two hours! We were gone two (insert string of profanity) hours!
How about:’An alien invasion and they didn’t call me? Am I being phased out already!?’
“Hostile aliens show up and they couldn’t even blow up the track?!”
@Dave – Staying in character, Sidney, seeing two ships down and one going down in flames before she even arrived, would probably scream “They took all my xp!”
Daniel here. Something that’s been bothering me each time I see a “they could reverse engineer FTL Tech/it’ll be way too advanced to comprehend HOW the pieces are made” debate, yet haven’t had the chance to say…
Yes, there is a very good chance the technology involved would be too far outside traditional Human thinking for Engineers to comprehend. However…
This is a world with Supers. With Super Powers…
We have seen Supers who can throw electricity. Others that are able to create portals. Super strength seems to be a common occurrence. I’m certain they’re heaps more powers we are are yet to see…
So if we find a Super with the power to do something along the lines of “can mentality interact with technology” or “can analyze and reshape material via physical contact Alchemy style”, that would greatly increase the chances of figuring out how the Alien technology really works…
I’ll admit, my brain has already come up an Original Character with the Power to mentally interact with technology. No FTL technology for him, but he does still have a few toys he shouldn’t have…
You have a good point there, it is fiction.
Yeah, they probably have supers like that around, and under heavy guard I’d bet.
But I’d bet there are severe limits to what those technomancers can do.
Copying is probably limited to a certain resolution level, and to materials on hand. As to materials, the aliens have access to stuff Earth doesn’t, and some special materials have to be made by special means that affect them on the atomic level.
Blueprinting is likely limited by comprehension of the physics and other sciences involved. This could likely go way past conventional knowledge, but would still has roadblocks. For example, an engineer from the early age of the transistor might be able to understand many of our microcircuits, since they are basically a whole array of tiny transistors. But a quantum processor would probably be a bunch of question marks. Of course, knowing how something works and what it is, still doesn’t give you the capability to manufacture it. After all, transistor guy likely doesn’t know anything about photo-lithography, and understanding the microchip doesn’t really have any clues in it as to how it was made. So he’d probably be completely unable to recreate a microchip, but he could probably use it in something else.
That’s just some viewpoints to show that even a fantastic super power that deals with tech isn’t going to be a god power type thing, but still really useful.
Of course, we are talking supers comic genre, so anything goes if the creator wants it to. ;)
“Materials on hand” is itself dependent on resolution. Am I limited to reshaping what I can obtain in bulk (specific metals/ceramics/plastics/etc.)? Or can I work at atomic scale to fine-tune the chemical composition and microstructure of the material, as long as I’ve got enough of the right types of atom coming from somewhere? Maybe I can go a step further and swap subatomic particles around, to transmute the atoms I have in excess into ones I want to use!
Someone with more in-depth knowledge of the technology may be able to clarify, but Transistor Man* may still be able to build something akin to the microchip using his own era’s components. It’ll be much larger and slower, naturally, but the circuit should still be viable at breadboard scale.
*If Transistor Man isn’t already a member of Arc-Sparq, then it’s time to get recruiting.
How about.
“They got to cut a ship in half without me?!?!”
Maybe a bit obvious though.
Ohhh, how about this.
“Just 50 feet over and it would have taken out the track! Wait, the fire won’t be out before morning. Does this mean that PT is canceled for the week?”
Peggy then says a snarky comeback “No, PT will be modified to cleanup duty.”
Interesting tattoo on Peggy’s left elbow in that last panel. Was there some thought put into that particular choice or was it just picked because it looked badass?
“I Missed a Zerg Rush?!”
“I thought I was the big gun!”
OKAY – given that she was JUST at a shooting range, AND that she was excited just to get to shoot at tanks and car frames and things, I think it is a given that, with that expression, the first words out of her mouth are going to be “You got to shoot up an evil spaceship WITHOUT ME! CALL A GIRL NEXT TIME!” (she’s of course going to assume it’s evil, either because it has an OBVIOUSLY evil paint job (trope recognition) or just that Maxima wouldn’t have been shooting at it, if they weren’t bad guys)
They did call. The fight was just too quick.
“Is that a free vegan snack bar?!”
Looking at watch- “We missed lunch time?!”
Just occurred to me looking at the smoldering battlefield shot:
“They had a barbecue party without me!?”
Although Sidney being a vegan makes it a bit of a stretch.
“Is the furry okay?!”
“Those tabs have expired!”
My car!!
Good one!
The problema with many answers is that they don’t justify Peggy’s face palm (and speaking of face palm, it litteraly just come to me that Peggy have a peg leg. D’oh!)
When Daenerys can ‘somehow forget the Iron Fleet’ Sidney can easily forget anything…
“They had an alien super brawl without me?!”
Ideas:
“They finished without me!”
or
“Holy Tool Belt Batman!”
Peggy, with the, “That’s your takeaway on this?” facepalm.
To keep it about the press conference, and imply that Sidney was a little miffed about not being allowed to participate in this press conference (because Arianna wanted control of this one…); how about this statement:
“See Peggy, this is what happens when you have a Press Conference without me.”
Though as I think about it now… that might not match her facial expression.
TBH…I find Sydney’s blargh over them having a press conference without her is relatable. As someone with ADHD, I can be told something important, even comment on it, and yet x number of minutes later, I’ll have completely forgotten it. (Particularly if my meds were taken only recently, and haven’t fully kicked in.)
I thought of this way too late, but I wanted to add it to the list anyway.
“We just won a battle against attacking aliens?! This calls for some delicious Hostess Fruit Pies!”
Well, if you don’t mind a bit of fourth wall nonsense –
“WHAT! The plot advanced without me!”
Wonder if that update’s ever gonna happen, lol
I guarantee, its 100% possible for her to forget the conference. ADHD really fucks with your mind