Grrl Power #788 – Apologies to anyone named Agnes
So this is a weird page. When I wrote it, I was thinking that, as Krona suggested, Archon actually does have a sort of secret identity allowance of sorts. Not that members of Arc-SWAT are allowed to have a secret, second life, but they they would have access to temporary fake identities. I also figured that if cops and feds can place agents undercover, those covers, especially these days, can’t just be a fake driver’s license. It would have to have social media accounts, parental social media accounts with baby pictures, high school transcripts, tax records from their first part time job, the works.
So why not give the nation’s superheroes some fake I.D.s that are for all intents and purposes, real? I know, that’s overkill for getting into a nightclub. Especially considering someone in the comments of the previous page said that famous people going out to a club anonymously happens all the time. They just call ahead and make arrangements with the owners, who obviously pass that on to the bouncers.
There’s no way Harem wouldn’t know about that sort of thing, so it doesn’t really make sense she would go to the effort of procuring rock solid fake I.D.s for Sydney, and presumably the other members of Arc-SWAT. The only way I have to reconcile this is that a properly mocked up cover I.D. had long term uses. Sydney can keep it handy, as long as she has somewhere to stash the wig as well. Some eyebrow dye wouldn’t be out of order either, honestly. But a fake I.D. like that would be pretty useful for setting up an anonymous P.O. Box or ordering stuff on DoorDash without setting off a social media/paparazzi frenzy. Obviously if someone looked like Maxima, the gig would be up when she answered the door, and the guy with her avocado eggrolls and salted caramel cookies hands her the order.
The other big tidbit we learn on this page is that the Council’s Semper Vigilantis aren’t real big on procedural law. Yes, they have people placed in the FBI and Homeland, and while they sometimes bother with warrants, especially when human agents are watching, it’s not like a lot of what they do is going to wind up in human criminal or appellate court. They still appreciate things like chain of custody and obtaining actual evidence – any police/justice system that ignores basic stuff like that is just asking to be beset with corruption and tampering – they’re just not always beholden to all the particulars of human procedural law.
BTW: Sydney is supposed to be eating fried pickles, but my coloring made them kind of off-gray, it just looks like she’s eating some middling pumpernickel bread or something.
Edit: Forgot Pixel’s bell choker in panel 6.
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I would presume that ARCHON keeps real private identities for all their known field operatives. Otherwise, they’ll get swamped at every entertainment venue or function.
It’s a practical matter of morale, not a matter of sneaking past the law. Does the law about drinking age even apply to most supers in the practical sense? Can Achilles even get drunk? He’d be damaging brain cells, and he can’t do that.
Can Hiro or Maxima get a buzz from alcohol? How much would it take and how long would it last?
Could one Harem get drunk, and how much would it affect her actual mind? Being drunk is as much as state of mind as it is a physical matter. That’s just a total unknown.
Sydney is the exception to that rule – though it would be interesting if her green orb recognized alcohol as a poison, and immediately cleared out the “problem”. That could be rather disconcerting if it happened by accident.
Sydney is old enough, so it’s not an issue.
Though as a geek, she already has too many activities clamoring for her entertainment budget so until the income windfall from becoming an Arc Swat superhero I would imagine that drinking didn’t get budgeted any more often than a Kobe Steak at a good Japanese restaurant.
Harem shares one mind and pain or pleasure experienced by one body is felt by all. Presumably there is some sort of averaging affect because only one brain is being mildly poisoned, but there would be a bit of carry-over.
On the other hand, she’s had something like 50 years of experience, presumably including drinking. If that drinking is spread out over all the bodies, she’d have a lot of experience dealing with drinking with much less of the deleterious effects on her liver since those effects would be spread out.
I’d guess Harem’s effects would be kind of mixed.
All of the bodies would suffer from impaired cognitive function and coordination to a degree determined by the averaging of the drunkenness of her bodies. However, the overall effect of that coordination loss on the less drunk of those bodies would be less than one might expect. The body that was actually drunk would have more coordination loss than the averaging would suggest, but less than a normal drunk might have.
But it gets complicated, because that coordination difference between her bodies would be very disorienting itself. Because of this additional disorientation, it’s possible that she’d actually lose more motor control than a normal person would – she’d need a *different* amount of correction for her inebriation for each level of intoxication her bodies had. While experience could counteract that some, just like with normal coordination loss, it could be a harder learning curve than it is for a non-super.
Of course, all she has to do is keep one of her selves 100% alcohol free, and de-teleport the others to be stone-cold sober…but while she’ll be stronger, she’ll be half-blinded by the lack of excess stimuli. (no literal headache, but it’s a pain in the assets)
From the big rumble at the steakhouse we learned that speedsters are known to throw off the effects of drugs fast due to their rapid metabolism. No mention was made of supers in general having faster recovery or slower onset of effects of poisons. And yes, alcohol is a metabolic poison to humans. Supers are humans, so they presumably can get drunk from the same amount of alcohol per their body mass as anyone else, barring added resistance to poisons being a part of their power set.
And we’ve seen Maxima hitting the keg, although (and from memory) it didn’t appear as though she was drunk.
I’d alos assume that speedsters get drunk super-fast because of their increased metabolism. It might not last a hell of a long time but as soon as they down a glass of whiskey, he’s drunk as hell.
If they shotgun the drink yeah.
If they just sip it they might completely process each sip before taking another making it appear that they have an unexhaustable tolerance.
That also depends on the alcohol content of the drink compared to their personal alcohol tolerance, if the alcohol in the individual glass isn’t enough to make them drunk alone then the same principle applies as with sipping, they’d process/metabolize it before they got another in them. Although that analysis does bring up the question of if a bunch of speedsters drank a bunch of high alcohol content beverages in speedster time, would their metabolisms still be too fast, or would it wind up being equivalent to a bunch of normies drinking a bunch of normal alcohol in regular time?
Eh, metabolism doesn’t work that way. If that one shot isn’t going to get you drunk due to your body weight and tolerance, it isn’t going to get you drunk period, no matter how fast your bloodstream/metabolism is running.
Where metabolism comes into it is when the speedster settles in to a session of drinking. Then it might be a race condition between a faster onset due to the higher metabolism against a faster recovery also due to the faster metabolism. So say a person could handle 4 shots done rapidly before becoming tipsy ~15 minutes after the last shot was taken. But 3 hours later they are under the BAC level for driving. Then their superpower kicks in due to the lightning bolt striking the vat of chemicals, or whatever. Those 4 shots might get them tipsy in just 5 minutes, but they would be under the BAC for driving in 1 hour.
Let’s call the green orb “Sobriety Ball” Also, DaveB forgot Pixel’s bell choker in #786 panel 1.
Sydney can use the air ball to increase her O2 supply. This should allow her to metabolize alcohol faster, but I’m not sure that would warrant it being called “The sobriety ball.” Faster is a relative term, the atmosphere is already ~21% O2, and breathing 100% O2 is it’s own hazard and should be avoided.
Blending in a few more % O2 would speed her alcohol metabolism a bit, and it would also help her in PT.
With regard to the fried pickles, they are usually covered in breading and fried to a nice golden brown. It looks like Dave colored the nachos with the same tool.
Maybe Harem used a fully capable ID as a sort of hint/mini training to show her the capabilities of ARC without it being a full blown lesson. Sydney is known for making fun of, and disregarding strict education, but if they show things off in ways like this bit by bit they can reveal all sorts of little tips and tricks to her without her even “realizing” it. Plus, it will likely make her ability to ‘brain blast’ a series of ideas into a plan (Jimmy Neutron style) much better if all of her ideas didn’t come from a stuffy board room.
Today I learned that fried pickles are a thing :). (I’m Australian)
Batter-dipped fried candy bars (as well as ice cream, and Twinkies), chicken-fried steak, steak fries (that aren’t fried steak), chicken-fried chicken (for some reason different from regular fried chicken), fried onions, batter-dipped turkey fries (which are a very specific part of a turkey) and Rocky Mountain oysters (which are definitely not oysters), and tempura-battered fried sushi are also things. :-D (Source: I’m American)
For those outside the US, chicken fried steak and chicken are a method of preparing schnitzel with a spice mix in the breading that is specific to the southern US, and then usually topped with sausage gravy.
Much like Scottish and Japanese food, much of southern food in the US sounds like it was made on a dare. :)
Chicken fried steak is awesome though.
Well, to be fair, come of the Nordic food sounds like it was made in an attempt to kill somebody. Because a dare wouldn’t be enough to get me to eat Surströmming.
But you’d eat the lutefisk, right? >_<
Can confirm that fried candy bars are delicious.
Mmmmmm Lutefisk!!! :D
Codfish Pickled in Lye. Ewwwwww.
(I grew up in a little town called “Petersburg” in southeast Alaska (Think Seattle, but more rain) that calls itself “Little Norway” (Because it was founded by a Norwegian and is in a Fjord) so I’ve tried Lutefisk.
I would not eat it again. Ever.
I’d try it, anyway.
The only drawback to Scandinavian food is that it’s, well, awfully pale. Pale cheeses, pale fish, pale breads, pale soups, pale sauces, pale…
Tasty, but you have to be able to appreciate subtle flavors to know it. There’s not much in the way of super boldness*.
(*Lutefisk is always an exception, especially if you don’t soak it long enough with frequent enough chances of water.)
Don’t forget hákarl, which is fermented Greenland Basking Shark flesh cooked, ceviche-like, by the urea stored in the flesh, as it expresses out while the shark flesh hangs in a curing shed so funky, the flies won’t go near it.
One wonders how desperate the first person was who discovered that was (to stretch the term) edible — especially since eating the flesh without removing the urea and trimethylamine oxide via fermentation can poison you.
Starvation is a hell of an inspiration.
Pretty sure anyone starving can eat something that isnt spoiled buried shark that would be a LOT easier to find :)
so is boredom and wanting to spice things up for something different than the same exact tasting meal every single day.
A lot of colorful dishes result from those with little trying to make things more palatable. After all do you think the process to the invention of a cake recipe was any where near a smooth and logical sequence?
People eating Surströmming
Probably NSFW. Or if you are eating anything yourself. Or really, at any time it all it is probably not safe to watch. Or listen to. Just burn it with fire.
I thought I’d smelled a really stinky food when my Vietnamese girlfriend brought some durian into my apartment “for me to try.” Yeah, she knew what she was doing! After I opened the package it stank up my two bedroom apartment rapidly. I did taste it, because I’m not afraid to experiment, and the taste isn’t awful. The texture leaves a lot to be desired, and the aroma made me pitch it down the trash chute of my condo after that one try.
But yeah, although durian has a really overpowering aroma, it never came even close to making me retch or vomit.
Yeah, Durian isn’t so bad as long as you make a point of breathing through your mouth while eating it. The flavor is OK, it’s just that it smells like rotting garlic.
My co-worker, who I shared some with once, was of the opinion that God created the exterior of the durian as a warning, and it would be wrong for him to not respect that warning.
My wife Introduced me to “stinky tofu” (臭豆腐) once, but the only time I can eat it is when I have a cold. The only way I can describe it that it smells like human shit. Tasty, but I can’t even walk by places that are selling it (it’s Hong Kong street food).
Let’s not also forget deep fried butter…
I still don’t get how you can deep fry stuff like ice cream or BUTTER.
Ice cream is tricky, but the outermost cooked batter seals and provides an insulating layer. If you time it right, you get cooked dough, a thin layer of melted cream, and a mostly-solid block of ice cream in the middle.
You can get a similar effect by wrapping a hot crepe or pancake around an ice cream sandwich, but it’s really not the same.
It sound disturbingly tasty.
You freeze it before battering it, and count on it not thawing until the shell is set.
I’m not really keen on that sort of thing, but I did try a deep fried oreo at a faire once, and it actually was pretty good. And I say that as somebody who’s not really into sweets all that much. They are much better deep fried than out of the box, if you eat them warm.
I love how I can always learn new things here. :)
Ice cream needs to be frozen for a proper fry. I’m not talking about your standard freezer cold, either. Maybe by some dry ice if you don’t have access to anything colder.
I can make scotch eggs with a soft boiled egg and still have it come out with a semi-liquid center. The sausage layer needs to be fairly thin, and the eggs refrigerated. I’ll be bringing some to my sister’s place for Thanksgiving Day, along with several other things to fry up as appetizers: Mushrooms, zucchini, onions (bloomin’ style), and mozzarella. I’m on the fence about making French fries… I mean, they would go over well but the prep is a bit of a pain and there’s a lot going on already.
I seriously wonder about the first person who ate ice cream and said “this is really good, but you know what would make it better? If I freeze it, then figure a way to coat it and fry it so it fries before it melts.” And dammit if it probably doesn’t taste great somehow, because a lot of stuff that’s deep fried tastes great.
And with the person who first decided to deep fry butter? I think I’d cross the street when they walked down the road. :) Like they were eating a stick of butter or something, and thought ‘this is an unhealthy habit I’m doing, but I think I can top it.’ Then again, I once drank ‘butter soda’ (it was from a specialty shop and I bought it mainly out of fascination, then curiosity made me drink it – it was awful) so maybe I shouldnt cast dispersions. :)
I’ve had “butter coffee.” I’m not sure if that was the exact name, but that was essentially the ingredient list. I think it was some kind of cultural drink, but I do not recall which culture and since I don’t intend to repeat the experience I do not care to try to learn more about it either. It wasn’t horrible, just not very good. I take my coffee black, so that might be a part of the issue.
They’re commonly called frickles.
In the nineteen seventies they were called Pickolos.
American cuisine will happily batter and fry literally anything that will hold breading, including just actual breading, and then serve it at bars or fairs.
Deep fried pickles are actually pretty good though.
ever try kool-aid pickles?
No, and I feel like I should report you to Homeland Security or something for even using the words ‘Kool Aid Pickles’ in a sentence.
I would have thought that Sydney would go for the Jalapeño Poppers.
She did, then the restaurant blew up (the two incidents were not related… or weren’t they? >.> )
Never heard of Jalapeño Poppers. Thank you for the heads-up. Gonna try them soon.
Spend enough time around Americans and you’ll learn there’s nothing we won’t fry.
Dr Pepper
No – really.
I hate to say…but the idea of fried pickles to me is kinda revolting. Like seeing all those bagged giant pickles at Magic Mountain when I worked there. Seeing people jistsucking away at the brine in a bag and the smell…ugh…but don’t get me started on how delish a goodClausen deli sweet pickle is….mmmmm yeah…
Darn it how do i edit my post? Stupid cell phone borked my post!
You can’t.
Since I don’t like pickles in general, fried pickles are generally not my favorite thing. Unfortunately, one of my actual favorite things, fried zucchini, turns out to be rather regional to the West Coast of the USA and isn’t generally available where I live now in the midwest. Fried pickles are usually the closest thing I can find to fried zucchini, so if I’m really craving, I try to choke past the pickle juice flavor.
Fried zucchini is my favorite side dish at Ruby Tuesday when I have the Cajun Ribeye. I live in Prince George, Virginia.
Even though I am from the prairie rather than the south, my favorite is fried Okra (although I like all the fried squashes too)
I’m in Alabama, family here for generations, and my family has been frying zucchini for as long as I can remember, probably since it was first introduced here as a food.
My Wife loves getting Fried Zucchini when we go out to eat, and we are in south eastern Wisconsin.
Tis a strange and wonderful surprise to find someone from my hometown out in the wild! I do feel sorry for you having to work at Six Stabs Tragic Fountain though
I don’t think you need 99% of any of the identifying paperwork you stated, Dave. Seriously, just think for one second. How many people do you know the faces of, but you don’t even know what their name is? You aren’t going to say “My name is Dave and to prove that’s really my name here is X paperwork.” That just says you AREN’T who you say. It’s going much farther than you have to for no reason- like when the crew of the Firefly got mad at Jayne for saying more of his prepared spiel than was needed. No natural flow, no believability.
I mean, if you’re in a legit undercover scenario it would be useful to have. You wouldn’t introduce yourself with every piece of ID you have but most people do have more than one. And if you’re in a position that might get you more scrutiny that is typical (like if you were infiltrating a mafia organization or some such) then having a paper/digital trail would probably be necessary to successfully fake a life.
I wonder if creating undercover agents’ fake social media profiles is a job unto itself or if the agent themselves is expected to do it?
Turns out the top mi5 exec had a very stern talking to as his entire family facebooked their overseas trip locations for the entire time they were away providing too large a security risk to his agents watching over him.
I’m confused, his family was with him while he was working? Or he just had a couple agents watching over him while he was on vacation with his family?
Probably the latter. At that sort of level, the security protection is 24/7 and doesn’t stop for holidays.
I assume the entire cat fishing show it’s simply a way for government agencies to legitimately hire people whose primary skill is the creation of fake identities
Only if Vetinari was running the government.
…Yeah, it would be nice if he was.
There’s also a good chance that the social security number on “Agnes Tuttle” card is just a random string of numbers in the correct format to be believeable, because no club/bar/hotel/pub bouncer is going to bother looking that up and almost no reasonable scenario where anyone else would either.
No, this is a government cover grade false identity card.
The Social security number will have been constructed to match the time and place her cover was supposed to have been born.
Texas drivers licenses and State Identification Cards do not display social security numbers anyway
Also, many states now include barcodes on their drivers’ licenses – the person checking IDs has a scanner, which both perform a basic validity checksum test and ping a state system.
Texas locenses have both a bar code and a magnetic strip.
Since. The RFID technology is turning out to be such a debacle they probably won’t be getting that.
What’s happening in panel 6? I don’t get it.
I believe Sydney ducked out of Krona’s soundproofing to the dancefloor to ask Pixel about the fake ID situation.
Ooh, thanks for clarifying. The panel to the left and right seemed like they were immediately linked in time, so I didn’t realize panel 6 was supposed to be linking them. I thought instead it was cutting away to some other people doing some other thing at the same time.
That got me, too.
It… was explained, several times, on the first page
That got me too, I had no idea what was happening. It looked (looks) like an out of place panel. Also Guesticus first page? What first page? There’s only one page of comments and this is the first time I’ve seen this question.
Just noticed the ID photo matches the expression in panel 2. New theory – the team has magic IDs with photos that update in realtime every few minutes to match the bearer’s current look.
The system is realistic enough that the update we see managed to pick an awkward expression, just like the unsung heroes at the DMV do. Sub-theory – the Veil messes with a portion of all DMV photos to sow doubt about how well people should match their photos anyways.
Oh, man, you’ have to check my ID? Crap. Um, OK, so I gotta make this face, so I’ll match the ID. It’s not you, I was just drunk at the DMV. Ok, here goes, here’s what it looks like:
*face*
*holds out ID that’s updated in real time to the obnoxious expression being made*
Curiously, if you get a passport photo taken, in the US, if you smile they have to take it over. Apparently people so seldom are smiling when dealing with the TSA that the photos are considered more recognizable if you’re frowning.
I believe that’s an international standard now because it’s more to do with how facial recognition software used at airports/borders work. The software has a harder time matching smiling faces with non-smiling faces and most people don’t smile when going through customs.
If I flew anymore, I would always smile now.
That’s true for Germany, too: You MUST not smile for the photo – so now the photos look so dead serious that I can’t stop myself from grinning inanely whenever I hand the IDs over :D
@Tgape oh man, you could have so much fun with that. At least, for given values of “fun” while being detained…
I’m just going to presume that Archon (maybe specifically Arc-Light or Arc-Dark) has a complete fake identity including disguise, License/I.D. Social security accounts, Etc ready to go for its supers to facilitate a sudden need for it in the field… not to get them into night clubs privately… especially not if they’re under the drinking age (insert Maxima glare here).
I guess Harem did note that she’s somewhere in her 50’s from an accumulate experience/living point of view as opposed to body chronology if someone is concerned.
Also presuming that Harrm has quick and easy access to the alternate identities so she can fetch and apply them fast for any team member.
Really, her age is probably excuse enough that she went with this as opposed to calling ahead: “Hey! Famous people inbound anonymously, one of us is underage but we’re famous so…”
As Harem said somewhere, if you add up all the time that she’s existed in all those bodies, she’s almost reached retirement age!
Well at least now she has something to sneak her code word in with: Hair/wig colour preferences.
Also if you Really want to F with the ID photo shop go in with a clear coat of retro-reflective skin cream and be like ‘No sir or maam this is prescribed to me, I Have to wear this or I break out in hives.’
… why WOULD people smile when going through customs? There’s nothing funny about it.
To screw with their facial recognition software.
Or.
For the same reason I am extra bright and cheerful on a frozen winter morning around people who always act miserable and grumpy anyway.
I will hammer their grumpy on the head with my happy cheerful because I can.
And because I am a morning person and I actually like winter.
*hands you a squeaky inflatable mallet with ‘be happy!’ printed on it
+1 (⌒_⌒)
what was that weird thing in the second to last panel?
also like the comic but definitely did not like the coloring.
looks like someone else’s comic
It is a way of realistically conveying how a darkened, noisy, dance floor feels to those of us who do not feel at home on them. It is meant to be discordant, to fit the theme of the page. Initially Sydney is in a booth which she has chosen in the hope that it will be quieter than the rest of the club. Which has been further enhanced by Krona to improve the sound insulation.
Hence, if you follow the dialogue in the panel prior to that, when Sydney leaves that tranquil spot, to make inquiries, she is bombarded by the sounds (she is so deafened that we cannot even hear her speak, it would take someone with superhuman senses to make it out) and sunk in the gloom. The author is taking us on Sydney’s sensory journey, which she like you did not like.
The purpose of which was to consult with Pixel, the results of which she discloses in the final panel.
Fake social media accounts or not, there’s no way Sydney will be able to introduce herself as Agnes Tuttle without making several Freudian slips.
Maybe she should also prepare some Freudian slippers and dressing gowns too?
“flout” The word is “flout”. “Flaunt” means to “displace for everyone to see”.
and Moot used to mean something of great importance.
I know flout still has meaning, only because its not used in everyday speech as far as I have ever seen it used except by that one character you aren’t meant to like because they show off their supposed self important intelligence by correcting the grammar and vernacular of everyone around them.
“Excuse me sir, I do believe you meant to say, “I have eaten today”, “I have ate” is gramattically incorrect”
“Excuse me I don’t care that everyone uses terms such as flaunting the law in everyday speech, it isn’t correct and I am going to interrupt your conversation to inform you of…hey…why are you dragging me into the parkinglot, this just proves I am of greater intelligence OW! Every blow to my skull proves my point you inferior nobodies I randomly interrupted!”
English is an awful language in which I doubt half the people who speak it even use a quarter of the words, and repeat how others use them, but that is how a dynamic language is. I have heard people saying “flaunting the law” in the real world; the only time I have ever seen this corrected was by that individual who likes to point out things like Killer Whales aren’t really whales and the annoyingly overdone Iceland is green and Greenland is icy bit.
Now if you are writing a thesis, then by all means get out the dictionary and the thesaurus because Professors are always sticks up their asses on diction. But if you are writing dialogue in a script and want a character to sound like an everyday person you will actually meet; then mis-using words, adding extra letters and syllabels which may make it another word but is how it rolls off the tongue in general conversation (which is what happens with flaunting, most words like this have -ing at the end and pronunciation, especially in America gears more towards au than ou.
You will also flubbing words, pausing when speaking because they forgot a word, say the wrong word in its place. Deus’ most human moment was catching himself almost doing that and joking about it.
It doesn’t make a character dumb to talk in a manner different than the surrounding descriptive sentences.
PS: Yes this a knee jerk reaction for me, had one of those English teachers in College who apparently HATED Mark Twain and couldn’t stand dialogue sounding like real speech and insisted we get out a thesaurus; has made me hate thesaurus junkies since. Really pissed him off when I caught him flubbing his own words in class and pointed THERE, THAT IS HOW PEOPLE TALK.
Complete Agrecian from me
People who use the wrong word should have the humidity to admit it.
So long as you loudly called that professor out when he made the same mistakes that he got bent out of shape over other people making. XD
On the flip side (a term itself archaic in an age where fewer and fewer remember EPs, LPs, singles, or cassettes that could be flipped over in the player to access different content):
Using the wrong word can make a character (or person in real-life conversation or writing) look uneducated, foolish, or ignorant. And the type of character who argues against proper terms and grammar can be as irritating as an example of anti-intellectualism or willful ignorance as a stickler for specificity can be as an example of missing a broader point or lacking a sense of social grace.
Can I give pacific examples of how strordinarily retating it can be when a body is liberately ignant? Passably. :-)
Tl;dr: Cool Hwip.
True.
There are much stronger cases of actual anti-intellectualism around.
The promotion of anti-intellectualism seems to be endemic at boardgame geek now.
Some of the people there go pretty far.
true, and had I not been on here when tired I’d have just ignored it, instead of giving into knee jerk reactions to grammar police.
I think my point was if you listen to people speak you here more of a “FlAWNting” and less of a “FlOWTing” sound, even if they spell it right; its like the case of writing the wrong word but pronounced the same or nearly so and the other person just says, “Yeah, that’s what I said”, the difficulty of written vs spoken and trying to make written look like spoken.
What you’re describing isn’t endemic of English. Most speakers of most languages never use more than 20 to 30% of the words. When conveying your meaning takes just a few words, knowing more just isn’t necessary.
But there’s a big difference between ‘not using all the words’ and ‘using the words wrongly’. Using lots of words doesn’t mean you use them all correctly; neither does concentrating on a smaller vocabulary.
Given the makeover, complete with missing glasses, she should be glad she didn’t end up as Agnes Gooch.
Or worse, Graham Gooch :P
Or worse, expelled.
Quite frankly, anyone who orders avocado eggrolls and salted caramel cookies deserves everything they get right down to the avocado eggrolls and salted caramel cookies.
What is wrong with salted caramel? Other than it’s fucking everywhere
Just the combination of them with the Awful Green Stuff from Outer Space. Like, say, peanut butter and KY jelly sandwiches.
Just because it’s called ‘jelly’, you should NOT eating KY Jelly, ever!
Personally refuse to eat avocado’s, the oil is okay, use it all the time when frying chops and other meats (when we run out of lemon oil or EVOO)
Avocado oil has a very high smoke point – ideal for popcorn!
And… that cat’s been belled :D
At least ‘Tuttle’ is a better surname than ‘Moorehead’ :P
Great actress by the way (and no, not a porn actress)
RIP!!!
Samantha’s mother?!?
Yups, that’s the witch :P
Can someone please explain what happened in panel 6 and 7? Mostly 6 and how it’s at all relevant?
It has been explained, several times, including on this page
Panel five has Sydney saying she should ask about Archon’s Secret Identity policy, panel six is her talking to Pixelicious about it
GOTTA point out something ; when going thru Customs at the border
( my experience was crossing into canada) -> they *WILL* search your car & clothing
they *WILL* check your background and social media,
and if you’re carrying a smart phone they’ll check that also ;
–> if they’re still suspicious they’ll check your fingerprints and eye/retina scans
and maybe even do a saliva/mouth swab for DNA.
AN undercover agent that goes thru all that is going to get *blown*
the next time he hits the customs with a different ID that doesn’t match
the bio-metrics of what’s on file the 1st time around.
so, undercover agents are having a much worse time of it in the customs world nowadays.
Er, what? No. What are you on? Or which border agent did you piss off enough to get them to go that far?
I travel to Canada bi-weekly (every other week). Often I’m crossing twice (or even four times) occasionally with a canadian national with me. Crossing the border is basically:
1. Produce ID (Passport)
2. “Where are you from?” (Country, State/Provence, Town)
3. “Where do you work?”
4. “Where are you going/Who are you meeting?”
5. “How do you know this person?”
6. “How long is your stay/How long was your stay?”
7. “Do you have anything to declare?”
In three years of doing this I’ve had my car searched three times (twice by candian border patrol, once by the US), and only once have I had to empty my pockets/take off my coat. I’ve also been the Japan via plane.
The border agents have absolutely no reason to do a background check (and I’ve literally never seen nor heard of them searching social media) unless there is a problem with your passport. There is absolutely no reason to do a DNA swab ever (at least going to and from canada as a US national).
you are grossly overestimating how many people get stopped/searched, and underestimating the sheer number of people crossing at a border. As long as your ID is valid (Modern Passports have a RFID and special material built into the booklet cover (There is a warning not to bend the booklet or expose it to extreme temperatures in the back), as well as a holographic watermark that’s different on each page. Canadian passports are of similar construction, though the interior is naturally completely different and the wording is
“The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada requests, in the name of Her Majesty the Queen, all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely, without delay or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.”
rather than
“The Secretary of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it concern to permit the citizen/national of the United states named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.”
Maybe you just don’t look suspicious. From what I’ve heard and experienced over border patrol are these guys ridiculisly under staffed for their job, so they only check the really suspicious cases, so for example dutch man going to the US(drug search and/or background check), visitor with the nationality that has last preformed a military/terrorist action towards the country and/or its closet ally’s, bearers of suspicious goods(mates of me got scanned on drugs after the metal detector went off), people who act stressed and suspicious and people the system warns for(fleeing criminals).
Warning the experience part is very small, since I’m a post cold war european who has never been outside the Schengen pact country’s(open borders).
Yes, people who look “normal” or “middle class” and don’t talk with “a funny accent” rarely get stopped at borders. If they are, it is usually just a random check, to keep people honest.
They are puzzled why other people keep complaining about border/immigration/customs authorities. It may be rational behaviour for these authorities to focus on non-standard people, but often looks discriminatory.
Long ago when the world was young, I traveled to Greece with friends. Passing through several customs checks, we quickly learned that John (dark-haired, black beard, looked Middle Eastern) was being profiled as suspicious every time. So, we filled our cases with things that customs men seize, and walked through while they body searched John.
You have zero experience with the TSA.
None.
Only made up Hollywood depictions of air travel.
In the real world, however.
They will most likely stop a arthritic who is half deaf and has trouble walking. Watching this I always suspect they are making bets as to whether they can make him fall over. Or a woman three or four years out of college trying to get her two toddlers to stay right next to her.
That is the reality of it.
What a strange thing to say. I believe we have not met, so you can have no knowledge of my travel experience.
I note your nickname. I belong to a family which travels. At the last count, we had scored the majority of UN countries, and we continue to add to the total each year. Travel to the USA is routine stuff.
I was on vacation with my wife on 9/11, 2001. It was an east cost trip with a few different destinations done by car. 9/11 occurred while we were in Bar Harbor, ME. We went to our next stop, an empty B&B barbecue of 9/11, and then into Canada. Getting in was no issue, just show my driver’s license and her passport and done. Getting out was only slightly different. We had to get out of the car while they poked about a bit, including popping the trunk. Not really much of a search, the trunk was packed and they didn’t take anything out. One remarked at something really perfumed that the wife had bought, some bath soaps IIRC. Then on our way.
But anyway this was all just days after 9/11, with at least one of the terrorists already having been identified as coming in from Canada. I was fairly amazed that the border crossings both into and out of Canada and the US seemed to be no different than any other trip we’d made.
Dude I do not want to travel with you! I travel often and have done so for almost 40 years. Canadian, American, Bahamian; customs, immigration, border… they are busy, sometimes overworked, sometimes dealing with assholes who don’t understand that clearing customs is not the time to get loud and belligerent. Smile, be polite, say sir/ma’am (like your mother should have taught you when you were 5 years old.) If you’re at Toronto/Pearson give yourself lots of extra time cause it’s the suckiest airport in Canada. Newark is about the same on the suckiest scale. Nassau is cool as long as you don’t arrive with a 747 from London with 200 drunk and jet lagged Englishmen! Driving across the border can be a log jam of traffic, but again smile and be polite. Border crossing agents don’t have time to fuck with you, unless you give them reason.
Very good explanation: the agents are usually there for hours on end dealing with arseholes, don’t give them an excuse to go proctologist on yours
Hang on, is Sydney both nearsighted *and* farsighted? Must be progressive lenses, no wonder she doesn’t do contacts.
You can be nearsighted to the point that you still need glasses to read more than 2 or 3 inches from your face, especially with the small text on an ID, like I am. You can also be so nearsighted that you can’t see clearly at all, because your focal point is so close to your eyes, it’s too close for the human eye to focus on it, like my sister.
Could one of yall help me out? I don’t understand the last three panels as a sequence. I get what the first and last are doing but I don’t get how the middle one results in Sydney knowing these things that as far as I can tell aren’t on that ID, and as far as I know wouldn’t/couldn’t be on an ID.
The left person in the middle panel could be Sydney, could; but the right person can’t be Krona, hair’s different, shirt’s different, choker, also doesn’t match for anybody else I know about. My assumption is these are just some randos in the club for punctuation?
I feel like I’m missing everything here, teach me how to dougie comments senpai
Pixel, she went to go ask Pixel, that’s Pixel.
Yup. As corroborated by the author’s comment under “Edit”, in his blog above. The grey tone used in that panel does make it hard to interpret (albeit that it nicely compliments the theme of ‘communicating in this noisy dark club is hard to do), as their hair colours are the easiest aid in identification. But we can eliminate it being Krona, by comparing her to the other panels. Likewise the other attendees we saw earlier:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-786-temptress-of-fate/
But Krona does fit, once the rest are discounted.
You meant Pixelicious fits, even before adding her collar, because Kronachrome has the twin hair-handles :P
Some of us have been telling people what panel six was about since the page first went up
You may haz a Yorpie Snack!
Should we fear a heel turn by harem?
Only if she’s wearing stiletto’s on cobbles, in winter
She is already well along that path, providing classified or at least insider information about Archon business to Deus.
Right now she is in the “paid by both sides so no reason to really break with either” phase of her treachery.
Time to get some contacts Sidney, unless numerous astigmatisms make that near useless,. Harem has a good for styles that work for you. I was just expecting a message or name on the front of the black top. Cartoonist, you thought Agnes was a name failure? I was more worried that the turtles of the world were going to rise up against Miss Tuttle!
Why not hack her eyeballs to work perfectly? The answer is literally feet away.
Pride, not wanting to owe a favor, not wanting to pressure a new friend into something they might not feel comfortable with. We saw she hacks stuff, and so far only been inanimate objects with one glitch already occurring when targeting people directly (not manipulating time but resetting people with memory loss except for the one that triggered it, even Krona’s memory got over-written); which adds to not 100% knowing how her powers work and what is actually happening when she used them. After all its one thing to dismantle relatively simple machines, move objects, or divert sound waves, biology is a complex network practically built to collapse at the slightest change
for all she knows fixing someone’s eyes could end up screwing up some nerves in the brain and suddenly, oops Sydney’s brain is translating touch as taste.
Except that fixing the eyes is actually really easy. You just reshape the lens a bit.
And therein lies the path to blindness. Until Krona has proven to Sydney that she has anatomy and surgical knowledge equivalent to a top eye surgeon, she should decline any ‘simple’ fix that a non-medical person may offer. Having god-like powers does not equate to having the wisdom to make ‘simple’ corrections without the risk of some complication. At the least she should have the primitive level of knowledge that the rest of society uses, when undertaking such.
its not a piece of plastic, it is living tissue connected to other living tissue, and several layers of it, mess up even one small bit and she’s blind, can’t see in air but suddenly can see perfectly underwater, everything is way too zoomed in, zoomed out, refracting the light weird, ect…
this is a simplified diagram, zoom in on any area and you have tons of nerves and specialized cellular structures.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Schematic_diagram_of_the_human_eye_en.svg/1200px-Schematic_diagram_of_the_human_eye_en.svg.png
https://www.onlinebiologynotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/eye-anatomy-700×635-678×381.jpg
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kishore_Cholkar/publication/227859518/figure/fig1/AS:393742247841801@1470886875635/Fig-1-Structure-of-human-eye.png
compared to taking apart an explosive shell, which she had to bring up an image of and manually on her hacker screen move about the parts, the human eye is a billion times more complicated and unless she can zoom in and knows the function of every single part, how it relates, and move them about without severing, twisting, or otherwise damaging the surrounding tissue.
Makes you appreciate eye repair doctors a lot more. But the key is KNOWING what you are doing. Its one thing to hack and see a pic to move stuff around, another to know what it is you are looking at. She no doubt has experimented with things like noise, clothing, and per her job munitions. Surgical knowledge of the eyeball I doubt.
forgot one:
structure of the lens its self
http://www.abc.net.au/science/drkarl/img/4253961/lens.jpg
When a doctor tells you something is a simple procedure they usually mean to them, with training and experience; and also its a way to put you at ease.
Rhuen, she did hack Sydney’s bladder that one time too. So there’s at least a little biological knowledge there :)
with a side affect if I recal correctly of when it wore off of being even worse than before needing to go.
I’d thought, from how it was presented, that that was primarily a case of hacking the signalling rather than the organ itself. The tank was still full, but the gauge was temporarily disconnected. It’s a lot easier to block signalling like that than it is to retune an optical system.
When Sydney put the wig on, where did her bangs go?
‘Appearances’ are not ‘optics’. ( Don’t get me started on ‘effect/affect’ or ‘impact’. )
inside the wig cap.
Wigs don’t just sit on your head, they have a little elastic net part, and really you are supposed to wear a hair net under the wig to keep your hair out of the way completely.
↓Look at what Daphne/Harem was doing to (the 2nd image of)Sydney in panel-4. ↓
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-787-going-outcognito/
(ಥ﹏ಥ)
I can understand why this forum isn’t allowing us to ^edit^ posts (^after^ posting them).
But shouldn’t we at ^least^ be able to ^preview^ our posts (to see what they’d look like ^after^ posting) while we’re ^still^able^ to make edits?
(눈_눈)
DaveB does all his own tech work, and is understandably wary of making any significant changes to the forum, as there is the risk that such might loose the existing comments. Given that would be many many thousands of hours worth of insight and debate, I am with him on that one.
But, yea, it would be nice. Just not likely to happen as Dave spends pretty much all his time working on the comic itself. Not leaving the necessary time to do cosmetic changes to the comments safely.
Editing comments is trickier than it sounds; it could be done on a temp (5 minute?) basis within the same session, but anything after that requires persistent logins and security. Honestly not worth it for the occasional, readily-understood typo we usually see.
A post preview on the other hand (a la Stack Overflow answer previews) would be fantastic. It’s also a touch tricky since it has to either be done in the browser in JS, or make (repeated) AJAX requests for the server to parse a draft comment without actually storing it, injecting the result back into the page. I suspect the existing parser is server side, so the second option would be easier but uses more bandwidth and CPU on the host.
If I ever get time to finish updating (rewriting) the source of the ‘official’ comment highlighter (linked in the sidebar, and has been broken for years, at least for me), I plan to add a “preview post” feature. Along with a couple other tweaks. If DaveB ever wants to incorporate such features, I’d be more than happy to help integrate them.
You are correct that ‘appearances’ are not ‘optics’. The political use of the term ‘optics’, however, is not synonymous with ‘appearances’, and is used correctly here.
Optics generally is a nuance referring to not being caught on camera.
During the ’90 to ’91 war in the Persian Gulf the Tow company I was with came across several bodies in the sand and (after cresting a gentle rise in the ground) found a group of infantrymen about a hundred and twenty yards away silhouetted against a burning tank. They were chopping on a big wooden crate with a mattock.
The crate probably held survival gear for the tank crew, and it was necessary to remove weapons and ammunition inside the crate before moving forward. The bodies had been dragged a ridiculous distance in an odd direction because it had been decided that keeping dead bodies off camera from press covering the war was to have a high priority. I suspect that they often sent graves registration personnel in to remove the dead before they sent explosive ordnance in to remove boobytraps and explosives.
It never made sense to me. Who could really have been fooled after looking at the vehicles and buildings? It was what wars always are.
Reactionary emotional response by journalists possibly having an anti-war protesting influence in the states. Seeing faces to the destruction, human bodies, triggers a real emotional response as opposed to just destroyed inanimate objects which people are jaded to thanks in part to entertainment venues displaying such on a regular basis.
They may (know) death is occurring, but without seeing it first hand they can retain a level of cognitive dissidence to the loss of human life easier despite knowing it has to be occuring. It is a nasty tactic to use on one’s own people, but it is the war agenda.
Not a response by the journalists, most of them would have already been in conflict zones, well, the professional journo’s anyway
It’s the armchair (some literally the size of an armchair) critics back home who now have up-to-minute live-coverage for them to complain and protest about (anonymously online, because half of them haven’t left their bedroom in years), the “we want revenge for 9/11, but we don’t want to know how you do it” crowd
In the Vietnam War, it was all shown on TV news, and it sparked outrage and protests. Which led to such things a s Kent State, look it up,.
I took a second look at the Photo I.D. it even comes with an ‘Ugly Picture’ one eye shut the other bugging out, Very Official and I think the address state is Tx. (Texas?)
We are closing in on Sydney. Ahem, in an abstract interest, sort of way. Totally not in a stalker sense!
On names used in fiction, I once was stopped in the middle of a story in Asimov’s Science Fiction by running into a character with my pre-death name, the one I used before I became Opus the Poet. It is quite jarring to find oneself in a work of fiction.
Yup.
*nods sagely*
I like how you said that, Poet.
I don’t use my offline name anymore, either.
Of course, I’m getting it changed anyway. Once I change my last name, my full legal name translated into English will be (yes changing some words due to older languages lacking specificity and making it flow better but keeping the literal descriptions and spirit) “I am your friend from the mountains by the sea”.
Poor Sydney, falling into keeping bad company!
Come back to the light!
*stretches paw out*
In fact fly over to the UK, you are both of legal drinking age over here.
“flaunting local drinking age”
Why would anyone be flaunting a drinking age? That’s not illegal anyway. Maybe Krona meant “flouting local drinking age”. ;)
Aren’t club staff trained to spot fake IDs !?
It’s hard to spot a fake ID when that ID is a real ID issued by a real government agency using real ID printing equipment and the only thing fake on it is the information. It’s not a “fake ID” so much as it is a real ID with incorrect information. Club staff wouldn’t be able to tell the difference with the casual checks they make on your in.
Maybe after the third “Mr McLovin” passes by, they might get a little suspicious…
There again when it literally reads “SECRET ID ONLY COPS AND BARTENDERS KNOW ABOUT”, perhaps they should be suspicious?
Mind you I am not an American police dog, nor a bartender, perhaps I should consult with my handler on this one?
↑ This! ↑
The next scene, Sydney taking a very drunk Olivia home…!
Olivia is a padawan learning the ways of the Geek.
But she is also an accomplished Gym rat and likely not only knows her tolerance but probably is tallying up the calories of every drink and every appetizer served and can give a running total of what it is going to take to burn off the calories from this escapade.
She would probably get along with Peggy.
Oh yes, would like to see Olive and Peg ‘get along’ :D
The thing with ‘fake’ I.D.’s, you don’t want them to stand out, because even if the bouncer let’s you in, they will remember you, and that will be a good thing and a bad thing: good, because if you get into trouble they might help you, if you are the one causing the trouble, they know your face
A good fake is one that is slightly embarrassing butt realistic, the kind that no one would believe you actually willingly chose, like… Agnes Tuttle
Or, go with a near-famous name, like Michael G. Fox, you can then act grumpy because you have had to live with the comparison all your life (like someone mentioned earlier about the real Bartholomew Simpson)
J
That’s why said near-famous, genius
I’m not getting the Agnes Tuttle bit. I understand that it is a rather pedestrian name. But why does Sydney so dislike it? Is there a literary or historical reference I am missing? Cause all I can find on search is a bazillion genealogy references.
That’s… probably Sydney’s gripe: it’s too ‘pedestrian’, nothing ‘cool’ or ‘exciting’ about it, which… is entirely the point of SuperHero Secret Identities
Generational. Agnes isn’t seen often in Sydney’s age group, so it can be perceived as an “old lady name”.
Certain names get more popular in this or that generation, so when you see someone with it who isn’t part of that other generation it stands out to you.
-unlike some names that just seem to never go away, or depend on where you live to be more common like seeing a ton of Josh’s in the mid-west and closer to the east coast, but not as many when you travel out west in the USA.
Getting here merely 5 hours after the comic posts & we’re already about half-way through page 2 of the comments?
Hate to say it, but there’s just no way I can read everything, regardless of how insightful or hilarious it may be.
“Honey, ain’t nobody got time for that.”
~Whoever that woman was in that meme
This page if from last Thursday, 3 days ago. The new page will be tomorrow.
MidnightDStroyer is a long time commentator, no way would he have gotten the comic release date wrong. Clearly we must have been sucked into a time-warp thingy!
We must set time right, by reversing that, using the ancient spell:
It’s just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right
With your hands on your hips
You bring your knees in tight
But it’s the pelvic thrust
That really drives you insane
Let’s do the time-warp again
Well Hot Patootie Bless My Soul!
“Hate to say it, but there’s just no way I can read everything, regardless of how insightful or hilarious it may be.
“Honey, ain’t nobody got time for that.”
~Whoever that woman was in that meme”
I do, as I am disabled, and on a small military pension.