Grrl Power #801 – The Heliotrope Lantern
Now, before Nathalie Hafner gets upset that her character is being used as a big dumb punching bag, she’ll have her moment. The character will. Aranea. I don’t know what Nathalie’s plans are. Aranea just got caught by surprise. Who could blame her? This is not a normal succubus power.
When someone has a growing mana reserve and no idea what to do with it, they can get creative. Normally nature would take its course, but YukiAkuma said one of Tamatha’s abilities was creating constructs so here we are.
Yuki didn’t say whether or not Tamatha was any good at insults, but I thought it’d be funny if she was especially bad at them.
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Captain Butt-Rope should have worn steel toed combat boots.
Uhm….they sorta are steel toed boots. At least they have metal claws…….
They don’t seem to have done her much good.
hit steel toes in the right place and it will still hurt like a mother. i konow i wear them for work. ;)
I confirm that comment! They protect your toes, but if the object falls on your arch… oh my!!!
They’re bad to wear as you stated drop some at the right angle and right spot you can quite literally chop your toes clean off due to the metal protection is not meant to protect from a heavy object like a iron girder that slipped its tie and drops 4 feet in the air and land on your foot, i’ve SEEN it happen its not like it happen everytime but it does happen.
This is… somewhat debunked. Yes, drop enough weight on a steel-toed boot, and the steel will fold severing your toes. BUT that same amount of weight would have crushed your toes to goo without the steel insert. A cleanly severed toe might even be re-attachable, but a pulped one is a lost cause.
In fact, it take FAR more force to fold a steel toed boot in to sever toes than to fully crush your toes, so your feet are always safer in steel-toes.
↑»:This:«↑
Not only that but the rest of the foot is mostly unprotected. You can (and I have) bang the rest of your foot with something heavy. Depending on how much of the anvil hit which part of the foot bones could be broken and ligaments torn.
And it’s entirely possible for a heavy object to strike the protected part hard enough to drive it into your foot and cause injury or even amputation.
It happened to a friend of mine. His day job was working at a golf course kitchen, and he picked up a temporary side gig helping family. His toe was chopped off with a pallet jack due to where it got him.
I know a friend-of-a-friend who can also confirm that even though the toe cap is made of steel, it is not invincible. He learned this with his first pair as a teenager, after having his slightly-older sibling run over his brand-new “inwencible!” boots with the car.
They lived close enough to a good ER that they got the boot cut off and pried loose in time to save everything, but he was in a cast for a couple months. And presumably gained a life-long appreciation for the practical concerns of material science.
My mother once backed a car up over my boot by accident. The cap held up (thankfully) but the tire passed just over it putting a great deal of pressure on the metatarsal bones. They didn’t break but it was seriously worrying for a moment and a really unpleasant sensation.
I don’t doubt any of these stories; sufficient force will by definition break anything after all, but it still really ought to be acknowledged that the steel toed boots were in those situations at least as good as shoes if not better. Any force that’ll cause a steel toe boot to fail will turn an unprotected foot to jelly, so don’t take these stories as reasons to *not* wear steel toed boots when appropriate.
Salient observation, Sir Scarf.
I worked in a warehousewhen I was far younger. Horseing around one day I got my foot run over by a forklift. I was wearing sneakers and the worse that happened was my big toe lost my big toenail but it grew back. My toe turned all the colors of the rainbow but it was basically bruised. Forklift are very heavy on purpose so I still believe if I’d had steel toes they would have curled over cutting into my foot. Because the force was relatively gradual and move across my toe quickly I recieved little damage. My toe was small compared to the tire footprint. Far less force was applied because my toe was flatter than a steel toe.
Didn’t I see you in the J-verse recently?
An anvil is a decent amount of mass, and it was dropped from a decent height. That’s assuming that Tamitha’s constructs have the same mass property as the real thing, and isn’t either higher or lower.
If the scissors will rally cut, the anvil will have real mass. Also, that force whip had a solid impact!
Which still wouldn’t have helped since the anvil fell on her instep, not her toes. Some styles of safety boots dohave a hard-plate guard built right in though.
I doubt that would help much against a falling anvil. Unless said anvil is of the cartoon kind, those only cause pain and humiliation but no real damage.
If the force of impact is sufficiently high then safety toed footwear can become a liability. The steel or aluminum cap can fold down against or through the toes. Would you rather have your toes crushed, or severed? Neither is appealing. Ow.
Severed is better because then there is a chance of getting your toes reattached. Nothing will save “crushed”.
That’s a myth. Mythbusters tested it and while it is *possible* to slice off toes like that, albeit barely, the steel toed boots were nowhere near a ‘liability’: without them, the foot would be turned to jelly long before the toe failed. You’re much safer with toe than without it, so there’s no situation in which you’re *worse* off wearing steel toe. Except fashionable situations of course.
Don’t believe anyone is saying not to wear steel-capped boots (or boots at all), just that they are not as completely safe as they are made out to be
Just like a Kevlar-vest doesn’t protect from being hit in the side, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still wear the vest if you expect to end up being shot at (or stabbed)
^^THIS ^^
Same with wearing a seatbelt vs not wearing one. You’re safer in virtually every situation.
(Also, that “I got thrown clear of the car *because* I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt” bunk…? One of my friends was thrown out of her car WHILE wearing her seatbelt. Yes, I’m dead serious, she’s the woman who taught me to drive, and even had her seatbelt on while sitting in a parking lot. It was a very very bad car accident, and she’s still in litigation over the nearly brand-new, still under warranty tires disintegrating on the freeway in Montana…and still has several more surgeries to go. *sigh*)
Hope she gets better, at least able to function close to how she use to (surgeries sound serious business :( )
That sounds awful. :( Your friend might be interested in (or categorically opposed to) the story of the SR-71 pilot who survived being thrown from the disintegrating plane with his seatbelt intact (at Mach 3, on the edge of space).
“there’s no situation in which you’re *worse* off wearing steel toe” – Sir Scarf
In terms of a weight being dropped, perhaps, but there are some circumstances where a toecap (of whatever material) will cause an issue that a flexible shoe would not. Mostly those concern the rigidity and height of the cap, and the amount of clearance available above where your foot needs to go – not directly a safety problem, although there may be knock-on safety aspects. Examples include slot-type access steps, or foot pedals with guards.
Anvil landed behind the steel cap anyway. Toes fine but the rest of the foot? Ow.
There’s also the magical nature of the anvil construct to consider. Are we sure that regular steel toed boots would protect against a magical construct as opposed to a natural one?
Unless it’s a ghost anvil of pain, there would be a physical force component if it wants to inflict physical damage
Ghost Anvil of Pain is what happens if a necromancer defeats Anvil.
The Anvil of Pain!
Steel toed boots only protect the toes (it’s in their name)
You need to watch the episode of “Myth Busters” when they test steel-toed boots. *shudder*
Looks like the anvil hit her in the bridge of the foot, not the toes. I doubt there’s too many combat boots on the market that offer metatarsal protection, so good aim on Tamatha’s part.
I’m not sure about combat boots specifically, but there are certainly several options for work boots with such protection. I think most of them are free-plate protection rather than full-arch, though – they’ll spread the load to avoid cutting and point impact, but the load still has to go through the foot to reach the floor.
I guess that 3 times the armpits means 3 times the deodorant. So in a way Tamatha’s insult is appropriate, if not exactly up to Sydney’s standard of insult.
As Spinnerette once said, she used to buy a 1$ stick of deoderant a month, now she buys three. Not really breaking the bank there.
Fairly sure it was more than just one stick a month, one a week, spread over six pits, sounds closer to the mark
I mean supervigalanting around the block must make you sweat a lot
I’m sure Sydney can help train her in colorful insults.
Tamatha already has a mentor. There would be legal ramifications and other complications which would involve the entire mentor convocation. Things could get messy so it’s best to avoid it altogether.
Please no training a second Sydney nuclear verbal warfare device.
“So busy seeing if you COULD, you never stopped to think if you SHOULD” – Some passerby that looks vaigely like Jeff Goldblum.
They probably came out of her butt, seeing as how she’s a spider chick.
But not the cool, *TRADEMARKED* kind of spider chick, right?
Well, that does seem to be a Spinnerette reference.
Yeah, I loved Spinnerette.
Then, she had to go gay, as it was the cool thing to do, and sort of faded away…:-(
Spinnerette was cool for a long-ish while, but it did fade. Updates got more and more sporadic and more and more incoherent. Each update had less and less to do with the last, and more and more stuff was happening that was either just “out of the blue” on the introduction side, or just “vanished” with no resolution of important plot points on the other. I started to suspect the creator had departed the well-trod paths of sanity.
FWIW, though, I don’t think she did go gay. Her relationship with her partner was in place well before the strip’s decline into incoherence, and I don’t remember her ever being attracted to guys in the first place.
Well, there was that one guy, who ended up joining the National Guard…
To borrow a quote from Spinnerette “…my spinneret glands are at the base of my spine, not my butt.”
Close enough for the layman. Or someone looking for an insult to hurl, even if it’s just muttered under the breath whilst snipping away.
She has a lot to learn from Sydney.
So do most sailors.
And nuns, don’t forget nuns
[Guesticus]:
…not to mention, Nunjas!
#Yes_I_Know_That_I_Just_Did_Mention_Nunjas
#Always_Expect_Nunjas!
#And_Ninjas_Too!
;)
:P
:)
Honestly, I was not expecting nunjas.
Ahhhhhhh, the good old anvil to the foot attack. It is good to see that she isn’t defenseless. Her insult level…..not so much in an utterly cute kind of way.
Oh, and the villain shaped hole in the wall (I think it is a wall, at least) is also utterly classic! Kudos!
Honestly, thought that that was some weird Oriental symbol or something…
I thought it was a villain shaped splat up against the wall, but either is close enough.
I checked the Patreon hi-res. It is definitely a wooden slat wall, with definitely a villain shaped hole.
I actually admire the fact that a couple of the slats have fallen out as well, usually the impact sihouette (TVTropes warning!) leaves a perfect hole regardless of the material it’s left in.
Good combo of the cartoon trope and some real-world effects.
Dark world, more like dork world
I think there will be some interesting teaching moments between Tamatha and Sidney.
That insult is very similar to another situation from another fairly well known webcomic involving an eight-armed superheroine that is capable of producing webs.
Yes, but the person issuing the insult was a gravitationally challenged individual instead of a pint-sized succubus. And I wasn’t making a veiled insult to Greta’s girth. She really IS challenged by gravity, and gravity (mostly) loses.
Greta’s ability is based on her girth, and she is still one hot little Bavarian pastry (when had the chance of getting a figurine, hers was the number one choice for me)
You know this reminds me that we haven’t seen Sydney’s mouth fly off the handle in recent times. This needs to be rectified!
Agreed. It’s been ages since we’ve seen Sydney spew out a wall of creative swearing.
I thought she was going to when the grakz came back to bite her. Maybe she did, but we didn’t get any of it.
Yeah if it’s not going to add to the story beyond a single-panel chuckle off-screen is best. Like the scene in the bank with Mr. Amorphous. That was several panels of diatribe with reactions from the rest of the hostages. With the grakz she had only herself to blame.
[Opus the Poet]:
Now you’ve got me picturing individual shots of Cora & each member of her crew — each with their own reaction to Sydney’s swearing.
Why?
Because when she called Cora (on Pg.712), she hadn’t realized that she was speaking on a ship-wide channel, & that she’d neglected to CLOSE the channel afterwards.
—Hey!?!
Maybe THAT’S what Frix-&-Leon were sharing (on Pg.771), when we saw them talking!!!?!
Actually, I think the only times Sidney went on a swearing binge were immediately before, and during, the bank robbery. That means, basically, she has only had one tear in the entire strip. One would think she would have had several more since then. She is way over due for a spree.
Oh, she’s had plenty; they’ve just usually been confined to one panel. She had one when she rematched Math and he hit her with one of her own orbs, and at least one other fighting the alien kaiju.
When she challenged Math to try and get through her circling orbs to lay a hand on her, and Math scooted her foot over so she shin-cracked herself with her own orb, she went into a very creative swearing streak. He declared to have a “5th . . . no . . . 7th dan” black belt in cursing.
Of course, she’s also adept at Tongue Fu and Dragon (Pepper) Breath, as Mr. Amorphous learned. Sort of a Cursing Tiger, Halitosis Dragon style.
She have cartoony reality warping powers.
I think it’s more of a green lantern power
Looks more like the Violet Crystal power of love. Lust makes sense for a succubus, but I can see love being useful.
Not reality warping, mana constructs, just condensed mana in the shape of objects. So if you want to think of it scientifically, exotic particles condensing in temporary solid shapes.
That six armed demon hunter shaped hole is very cartoony. I admit that to assume that this means she have cartoon powers was a long shot.
Didn’t “Spinnerette” trash the “web comes out of her butt” thing, along with the “shoot webs from your wrists” in its early days? Spinney had a gland at the base of her spine, I think?
Just remember: Parker can’t shoot webbing from any part of himself, he created the wrist-slingers using his own chemically-created test-tube webbing so that he could produce webs, and putting them on his wrist was so he could control how and when to do so
And yes, Spinny has a gland at the base of her spine, just above her butt, the same place a tail would be
Unless my memory is worse that I suppose (which could be correct), at one point Peter COULD shoot web from his wrists. It kind of got ret-conned somehow and now his web is back to being separate from him.
Sounds like either an alternaverse, a “What If…?” or some experiment gone wrong (or right, depending of whose experiment it was)
And there have been some DOOZIES. Remember the time Parker tried to remove his spider powers, and instead grew 4 additional arms? Fun times!
That was pretty much just in the Raimi films I believe.
Or way back when he wore the symbiote from secret wars 1.
Yep. There was a story line called “the Other” where Peter Parker was dying from what seemed to be a degenerative disease. It turned out to be an imbalance between the spider and human parts of his being.
That is to say, the radioactive spider bite was just a catalyst, allowing him to become connected to a kind of spider-like conceptual entity that is involved with weaving the threads of fate and time (which is where he gets a “spider-sense” that warns him of impending danger). Because he’d ignored the spider aspect of his existence, it had eventually caused him to become imbalanced and effectively terminally ill. He appears to die, sheds an outer layer of skin, and ends up cocooned under the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Spider entity appears to him and explains that he can be reborn, but only if he accepts both parts of his existence. He agrees, and is reborn, but now has more and different powers than before, including organic webs, an ability to communicate with spiders, and an ability to sense things through his webbing, as well as an expanded ability to perceive extrasensory information via his “spider-sense.” (For instance, he picks up on the fact that the “Iron Spider” suit that Tony Stark designs for him is analyzing Spidey’s power and sending data to Stark because the theoretical, potential threat that invasion of privacy represents sets off his spider-sense.)
tl;dr: Comics are weird.
It has flipped in the comics a few times. And also in the movies:
Spider-Man (McGuire) has webbing as an inherent power,
The Amazing Spider-Man (Garfield) has web shooters,
Civil war/Spider-Man: Homecoming, shooters again.
This video shows the history in other media (animation, foreign, etc):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIhvTdApWSo
Bit odd that the chick with six arms is being a bit racist/speciesist given the exact same questions could be leveled at her by someone in the general population assuming things.
The irony is pedipalpable.
Your dad wants his joke back.
My theory is she is a conspiracy nut who blames the Supernatural World for making her a Super that led to her being an outcast, and has a poor relationship with reality in general
I think what really sent her over the edge was when the Daily Trumpet published the front page headline “Aranea: Threat or Menace?”
No… It’s NOT “The Daily Trumpet”… It’s the Bloviation Station with their syndicated show “The Fear Zone!”
Yeah I never did consider preteens to be exactly sharp wits when it came to one liners. Still power of cartoon summoning of weapons and stuff seems pretty broken
I got the impression that the creation of objects out of her energy reserves is something that Tamatha hasn’t known how to do for very long, so instinctively she went for the Looney Tunes variety of weapons.
She probably watched a lot of old Warner Brothers cartoons (hopefully not Animaniacs, that could warp an impressionable young mind)
I know it warped mine. I wonder why she didn’t go for the noggin. If I learned one thing is that anvils and other very heavy objects are attracted to (coyote) brains.
Also Tabitha used “force push,” it was super effective.
Rather than a force-push, was thinking more that vocal power thingie from Dune
I doubt she was using The Weirding Module. She could kill with but a thought if she were!
She only has a limited amount of mass to work with – specifically, her mass.
She also loses motor control in direct proportion to how massive her constructs are – that is, she could create a construct with as much mass as herself… and promptly fall over because she has nothing left to control her own body.
That’s your idea! Until you have at least part of the truth, come back later.
I’m pretty sure Dave’s gonna go with the idea as presented by THE CHARACTER’S CREATOR, so YukiAkuma absolutely has “at least part of the truth”.
I mean, to be fair, I did completely make that up!
Years ago. When I made this character. ;)
Of course, motor control loss is not serious problem when already tied up.
That’s an interesting concept! Did you get into the weeds and specify what motor control is lost first, and what control will fail last? Involuntarily going last would be a life saver, so that she can still breathe and have a heartbeat with a Tamatha-massed construct at work.
Seems like she is a bit of a, to take a page from Leon when describing Hex, Discount Green Lantern. How complex can her constructs be? Scissors isn’t even really a complex item as they operate on the really simple properties of two sharp blades ‘manually.’ A small engine such as on a moped wouldn’t mass much but would still be fairly complex. I’ve done small engine repair and these engines are really pretty simple (one cylinder, a crankshaft and a valve is about it), but that’s on a scale that still includes pretty close tolerances and is far an away more complex than an anvil or a pair of scissors.
Honestly, I haven’t given it a ton of thought. Whichever is funniest is probably the best answer for what motor control goes first.
Complexity is limited by what she can accurately picture in her mind – and, given she has no mechanical or engineering knowledge to speak of, right now she’s pretty much limited to solid objects and the six simple machines.
So her skills are basically more Howard Jordan and Alan Scott then say Kyle Rayner or Jon Stewart right?
You mean, Hal Jordan?
Some of his constructs include fighter jets and helicopters
yeah apparently his actual name is Howard how is just his nickname. I remember it from a Batman Superman issue where Batman Superman arrived on a earth we’re pretty much everyone was fused with someone else from the Rogues gallery whether it was Friend or Foe Dick Grayson and Hal Jordan fuse to become Harold Grayson the night Lantern and of course Lex Luthor and the Joker fuse to become Lex Joker. Here is a link to the wiki https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Green_Lantern_(Hal_Jordan)
Okay seems that I was thinking of I believe it was just Matthew who is Howard Jordan his name is Harold. Also the thing about the ring is you don’t need to be ultra specific when it comes to how you make it house constructs generally take the form of something he knows well his subconscious feeling in the details so high-speed jet missiles boxing gloves those are all things he does though he rarely uses his ring to make a construct of a airplane. And when he does it tends to be Hollow Green Lantern rebirth as they were describing the different kinds of Wills that the Green Lantern’s have is stated that when Kyle Rayner made to construct he was constantly refining it and rebuilding it from a artistic point of view when Jon Stewart makes a construct however he designs and builds it from the inside out every nut and bolt he literally makes wherever he’s making as if he was building it out of real-world materials how a architect can make a space gun I don’t know but apparently he’s just good like that
Thought Stewart was a Viet Nam vet, he often constructs his old platoon (like Larf does with failed Orange Lanterns, they are not mindless drones, they actually are whoever they use to, just, they answer to Larf)
Didn’t know Hal’s real name was Howard (bet he got goosed a lot as a kid :P )
Tammy is only 14, and, unlike so many other similarly aged brat-snotters, she was brought up in a good home
Oh, and all she did was admit to having wings, not to being a demon, you racist jerk!
It’s definitely a case of the six-armed pot discussing the chromatic hue of the winged kettle, as it were. She’s not completely wrong, since Tamatha actually is a demon, but she seems to be more right in the sense of “even a stopped clock is right twice a day” than right in the sense of “arriving at the correct answer via evidence-based deduction.”
»:smirk:« ↑»:This !:«↑
Be thankful that Tamatha had her clothes on,otherwise we’ll be treated to an underage, naked succubus…..!!!
Why are you imagining a naked 14 year old girl in bondage? o_O
Ugh! You is right..erase that thought!!!
Because it’s already a 14 year old in bondage? Who was at a nightclub (where minors are legally not permitted to enter) when she was introduced? Who has been kidnapped by someone with CLEARLY nefarious intentions? Tamatha being stripped but otherwise left unharmed would be one of the best-case scenarios, at this point. This is a “it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again” situation…
Tabatha kicking the shit out of her captor would be the best case scenario.
Tabatha not being stripped and otherwise left unharmed would be a decent second best case.
Tabatha being stripped is pretty far down the list of “best case” scenarios…
* Tamatha. Damn muscle memory, Tamatha is an odd word to type…
Just remember, Tammy (see? much easier to try and remember :P) is a 14 year-old untrained girl (emphasis on the ‘untrained’ part, not the age or the gender), so her kicking the shit out of anyone is the stuff of fairy dreams, let alone a six-armed adult
So yes, in this scenario, being stripped but otherwise untouched is the best case (remember, also, this is about the best possible case for a similar situation, specially in some ‘less-savoury’ webics)
A 14 year-old untrained girl – with superpowers. We already got a glimpse of what her kicking the shit out of a six-armed adult would look like last page.
Also, her being untrained is conjecture. For all we know she has been doing martial arts for years. Also, she’s not human, and we don’t actually know what kind of physical prowess succubi typically have (Dabbler has some super strength but is very much atypical.)
Also, given the kind of combat ability Sydney has been shown to have early in the comic, Grrl Power might be a fairy dream by your standards.
*this page
Well I’ve always known that you were a sick motherfucker, but thanks for making it clear for everyone else, I guess.
Awww, she just needs some Assassins Creed training… and maybe a bit of internet trash talk 101
So maybe this is the REAL reason she’s Halo’s Biggest Fan.
Is that Mehrunes’ Razor on panel 8?
Nah, Mehrune’s Razor has more pronounced quillons and a different pommel.
Okay, I did not know that each section of the crossguard had its own name. Then again, that makes sense when it’s the most versatile weapon in existence for like 5,000 years.
Just for comparison, a paper clip has 7 parts. Each one has a unique name.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.uncyclomedia.co%2Funcyclopedia%2Fen%2F2%2F24%2FPaperclip.gif&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fen.uncyclopedia.co%2Fwiki%2FPaper_clip&docid=RSh2iG5eLWxxkM&tbnid=ue-Na_PtgjJEWM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwijisqAyt7mAhXGaM0KHT_HAfEQMwhQKAAwAA..i&w=400&h=240&client=firefox-b-1-d&bih=942&biw=1920&q=Parts%20of%20a%20paper%20clip&ved=0ahUKEwijisqAyt7mAhXGaM0KHT_HAfEQMwhQKAAwAA&iact=mrc&uact=8
Please excuse this botched attempt to post a link. The post below is better.
Just for comparison, a paper clip has 7 parts.
You sure? Fairly sure a paper clip is just one straight piece of metal that has been bent into and odd shape (can also get some plastic ones bent in an even odder shape)
Okay, had a look at that link, and that looks like some knob decided to give it random names (cereally? Abbot and Costello? M Bison? o_O)
You might note that the link is to a site which claims to be parodied by Wikipedia – I’ll let you sort that out mentally.
Although to be fair, paperclip manufacturing does have a long history and are an interesting example of the gradual development of the industrial age. Since their invention, they have been used in many unexpected ways, some of which were not as helpful as intended.
And some AI theorists propose that rogue paperclip production could result in the total collapse of the known universe (which you can try yourself, although since this is the Internet you may prefer to end it all with kittens instead).
Oh, didn’t really look at where the link came from
Ugh – enough weight on top of steel-toed boots (like say from an anvil or dropped girder), and the steel will separate from the leather and bend down right through the tender meat underneath it [shudder]
Yups, turn the steel-cap into a guillotine
While technically true, it was determined on mythbusters that anything heavy enough to bend the steel cap like that would have utterly destroyed your foot in the first place. Like, pancake flat, nothing left to salvage.
They went through a ton of fake feet in that episode. One of the better ones IMHO
I can testify to that. While I was in the Marine Corp a mechanic in my squadron had his foot (well, half his foot) removed that way. A UH-1N transmission (the part that transfers the power from the two engines to the main rotor) was being lifted by a crane. The chain broke and dropped it on his foot. Fortunately for him it fell away from him after crushing his foot. Otherwise it would have killed him. Stupid accident, really.
For people with Civilian vocabularies, I’d like to clarify that “UH-1N” is the Marines’ way of pronouncing “Big utility Helicopter with twin turbine engines that most people mistake for jets because of the way their exhaust is pointed backward.”
Also known as the Huey helicopter. And the flying tadpole that beats the air into submission for lift. Mind you my experiences with them was over 4 decades ago.
Yes, I am old.
The anvil was strategically (will give her the benefit of the doubt/think positive) aimed to miss the steel toe portion of the steel toed boot, so yeah, thats gonna hurt like a mofo.
Mystery vigilante has a lot of not very repressed anger. Supers are public now, but unless she can make all those arms disappear on command she has had a very isolated life that has left her with ‘issues’. She may well connect the world hidden behind the veil, which she can apparently see through to some extent, to her nature.
Technically, it’s tactically aimed. Strategy is the setting of goals (hurt the Bad Girl, escape). Tactics is chosing and applying the means (anvil to foot, force whip, scissors). Logistics is supply and transport (creating object out of Mana force). All three were effective here, leading to a positive result. The trash talk, less effective but very cute!
I think the kidnapper, needs rescuing now. :)
Today’s bondage play is Succubus approved.
Somebody has been watching too many Roadrunner cartoons…!!!
Hal Jordan would be proud.
i’s say more Carol Ferris that was clearly a VIOLET construct (plus Carrol is a star sapphire and they draw power from love bit closer to lust then Will is)
I wish I had enough money to afford a Patreon Cameo.
I wasn’t very good at slinging insults or cursing at Tamatha’s age either. It’s kind of embarrassing trying to do it and not getting the right words out.
Vocabulary of that type requires experience and education. I had the education but not the experience at 14. My vocabulary was more oriented to technical matters like electronics and motor vehicles.
i’m thinking the veil must consider this woman a Super if she needs he mask to see through it
Question is does hold your stomped foot in more hands feel better? And how quickly will this nasty spider beeotch face Sydney and friends? Just her insults should stun her completely.
Holding! Edit funtion please!
Question: does holding your smooshed foot with one hand (or two) make it feel better? Specially when it is still encased in leather and pain
“They do not come out of my butt! Spider People have a glanda at the base of their backbone!” – Spinerette.
And it makes it really hard to aim at your target.
The Venture Brothers had a spider-themed character with the same anatomical ability.
https://venturebrothers.fandom.com/wiki/Brown_Widow
An early issue of Spinnerette had Spinny attempting to hit something with her webbing, it… took a lot longer, and more webbing, than she expected
Holding! Edit funtion please!
No edit funtion please. It’s more fun this way.
“Edit buttons? We don’t need no stinkin’ edit buttons!”
It looks to me that we have a new inductee to the Violet Lantern/ Star Sapphire corps. They run on the “Power of Love”* which is appropriate for a succubus. (as is the average Star Sapphire outfit)
* (I wonder if she was listening to Huey Lewis on her headphones back in the bar?)
“For Hearts Long Lost And Full of Fright,
For Those Alone In Blackest Night,
Accept Our Ring and Join Our Fight
— Love Conquers All — With Violet Light! ”
—Star Sapphire Corps Oath
Nahhh… she’ll be a WUPER!… from the comic Erma…
It wasn’t until you said this that I realized she had six arms. I thought it was the comic convention of showing a limb in multiple positions to show movement.
So let’s talk about this ability!
This is something Tamatha figured out how to do herself. It is thusly very inefficient and probably inadvisable to do in a real fight against a competent mage.
Essentially, Tammy is externalising her ‘animating force’ – you could call it a component of her soul – to manifest corporeal objects. She has a strict limit on how much mass she can conjure up, and every bit of energy she uses for constructs is a bit of energy she can’t use for its proper function. So, the more stuff she makes, the less she can move her own body.
Theoretically, she could kill herself doing this, but she’d pass out first and the spell would promptly collapse so she’d be fine.
Hmm, perhaps she has some potential with training.
Here I have linked to the beginning guide to spirit summoning for one of my more complex series (Celestial Summoner), the first type of summoning discussed after the intro is “Manifestation”
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Types-of-Summoned-Spirits-intro-675973749
but as that link is the whole page, a copy and paste of the pertinent information:
Manifestations:
We begin with Manifestations: Also known as “False Spirits”, or “Projections”. These summoned things are made from the spirit of the summoner themselves, crafted and manifested by the summoner’s will and focus. Like all the groups of summoning this can in all three of the types to be spoken of range from very simple to very complex depending on the degree of training. Some schools of this art (and it is more art than anything else) will list the Controlled and Autonomous before Inanimate due to how much simpler the basics are between them, however we are looking at the three types as a whole.
1: Inanimate: In simplest terms the summoner crafts spiritual power into the shape of an inanimate object. Some as simple as ghostly illusions, clear up to those who have managed to produce entire structures that seem as real as anything else at first glance. Some even using this as a weapon in some forms of sorcery by using spells designed to craft objects such as boulders into the air, or focus the spiritual force into basic forces like wind or fire. However unlike other forms of sorcery these tend to be more whole, and if not made physical are harmless. More often used as “illusions” than anything else, as attack spells tend to be easier and take less mana than summoning a manifestation of the thing solidly.
2: Controlled: These like the Inanimate range in complexity, from simple orbs to ghostly copies of the summoner, and even making something that looks alive. These manifestations of the summoner’s energy are controlled directly by the summoner. Often called “Astral Projection” or remote viewing orbs, and so forth. However a complex Controlled form runs the danger of becoming an unintentional Autonomous Spirit with unintended programming.
3: Autonomous Spirit: Not a true spirit, and in fact the very thing that has turned off many kingdoms from spirit summoning. A summoner attempts to create a spirit from their own energy and psyche, this takes careful practice and concentration. Giving them basic and simple commands and duties is best. Such as fake animals or people to be used as details for an Inanimate type structure. Decoys that simply attack or move following the leader like a slightly more complex “Controlled”. However mess up on this and a “Tulpa” may result, essentially a bag of your negative emotions and basic primitive responses with enough semblance of a living being to fool most into thinking that it is alive rather than a simple responsive program. That is how the Autonomous spirits work, they are you the summoner’s shadows, ghosts, and creations. If you insert unstable elements rather intentional or not, it makes them unstable. They may speak and lash out, but seldom have much in the way of memory. Many “ghosts” found in the real world have been determined to be these created by latent summoners whose power bursts at the time of death or during strong emotional moments creating a “seed” of one of these that grows in time in an area. But and it must be stressed again, these are not alive, they are not even “wild”, they are simple responses with limited memory and act on the single emotion or duty imprinted on them. In essence they are the spiritual equivalent of a golem or robot.
Well, BESIDES passing out in the middle of a combat situation, potentially, she’d be fine.
I’ve heard of the concept of three mystic energies. All living creatures possess animus, or life energy, which animates them and drives them to survive and reproduce. Sufficiently complex creatures gain spirit energy, which gives them emotions and personality. Only humans (and some other creatures, some say) have soul energy, which grants them self-awareness and the ability to use magic. The first two energies can be spent and replenished through natural processes, but soul energy doesn’t replenish, so using it is considered blasphemous.
(Don’t ask me where I got this, I don’t remember.)
Those “energies”, are purely fabricated. They is no evidence to support them.
Yeah, that’s why I used the word ‘mystic’, in the first sentence, even. We’re discussing magical tropes here.
Tradeoffs are part and parcel of life. It might take a lot of effort/energy/soul substance to manifest an anvil, but it can do what Tamatha, being tied up, can’t do physically: actually strike her enemy.
When you think about it, throwing a stone at someone takes at least as much effort as punching them, is quite likely to miss, and probably won’t even do as much damage. But it has one huge advantage: it keeps you out of range of their retaliation.
Any remote attack is an enormous advantage. Achilles, for example, in this situation, would be powerless. Invulnerable, sure, but unable to counterattack.
There is a trope in fiction that limited abilities have certain areas in which they shine. I read a story once (possibly by Larry Niven, can’t remember the title) about a guy who had a very limited form of telekinesis. He lost an arm in some kind of accident, and the parts of his brain that controlled the arm, rather than atrophying, latched onto his latent psi abilities and manifested as a phantom arm. It had exactly the same range and strength as his real arm.
“Why even bother?” you might ask. Except – the phantom arm, being incorporeal (and essentially imaginary), could do things like reach through a locked door to undo the latch, reach into someone’s chest to squeeze their heart, even reach through a Skype screen to touch someone on another continent.
Everything that anybody does detracts from their ability to do anything else, whether it uses energy, money, or just time. Having more options can hardly be called a disadvantage.
Stan Lee said when he created the X-men the idea was to create super-heroes who had powers comparable to more typical superheroes but each had a draw back and/or limitation. A flyer who needs physical wings for example. Later on giving us ideas to work around like Storm, a character with god like powers but is herself still physically mortal and powers that are hard to aim. Or Gambit, he can make explosives but only wield them as far as he can throw them, and they will explode in seconds after he lets go so no timed explosives to take down big structures without risk of the structure collapsing on his own head.
It is also a balancing act, make the power too useless except in one very specific circumstance, especially if the setting works against it (tech diver in a fantasy world, El-Hazard), and they need a lot of other traits to make up for it. Or too convoluted that the audience has a hard time following like someone with god like powers but only if they are outside and the temperature is between 70F and 120F, can only use rain and lighting when clouds are present, can’t use wind while inside a building, can only cause earthquakes if in direct skin contact with the ground, levitate only 20 feet, but off of a surface, ect….. make a long list of weird limitations and you can throw yourself through a loop trying to write them; or the audience just loses interest and goes to a power fantasy character like “now this is a hero, see how their morality chains are what limits them, not a laundry list of power rules”.
So yeah, a cool power, but some physical and mental drawbacks is a good way to draw that line.
That sounds a little like like Mirage from the New Mutants though that person had like five other code names that they went through
Have you read any of Orson Scott Card’s The Lost Gate series? In it the ‘gods’ (currently greatly reduced in power ancestors of the actual mythological gods of several pantheons) can manifest a ‘clant,’ which is a kind of small simulacrum or golem powered by their will. It can do some fairly simple things that you might expect of such a manifestation, like open a door or window, carry a light object, dance a jig, etc.
Your description:
evoked that set of novels for me fairly strongly.
It’s a good thing that Aranea isn’t as professional as she could have been, in dealing with the poor succubus girl she captured thanks to her horribly neglectful adult guardian. If she were a proper demon hunter she would now be putting bullets into the dangling demon from a safe distance.
I was just mentioning this in the last update of Miss Melee, Evil Overlord Handbook says if you have the hero(es) unconscious kill them immediately instead of building a complex killing machine to do it in a dramatic fashion.
Pretty sure given the just last page her intention was to target the weakest she could find to interrogate her for information regarding the more powerful succubus running the club and the secret “demonic” society she has heard about it. Unless you know necromancy you can’t interrogate a corpse.
Now if she were a professional monster hunter, which this world having the government working with a council of them would be counter intuitive so no SCP, Paranormal Control Agency, Society Against the Darkness, Department for…whatever that one from Hellboy was called, ect… but they’d capture, contain in a specialized magic and tech built cell, and THEN interrogate from the other side of a protective barrier…or via an intercom and possibly not be in the same building if a considerable threat is possible.
Aww, how cuuute! She’s trying to mimic her idol, Halo, by swearing creatively!
She… needs to practice more.
She also forgot the ‘Meep! Meep!”. (but that part may not have been made public)
Wait, why does it look like there’s daylight outside the villain-hole?
An excellent point.
Also, why is the hole upside down, when Aranea was last seen right side up?
Daylight isn’t purple.
I think that its intended to convey how dark it is in the space between the ceiling of the restrooms and the floor of the mezzanine. It should also be stuffy hot as there wouldn’t be any airconditioning vents.
Both the characters can probably see in lowlight and have a pretty good tolerance for temperature extremes.
Who says that this is taking place in the rafters of the nightclub building?, also, who says this is taking place at night a few minutes/seconds after her kidnapping itt would take a bit longer than that just to tie her up in that fashon, let alone do it in a place that wouldn’t be noticed, personally, i’ll bet that whatever knocked Tamatha for a loop needed time to wear off, and it just happens to be daylight hours when that happens, since it would be extremely foolish to try and interrogate your kidnapped victim in the same location as from where you did the kidnapping in the first place…
> who says this is taking place at night
The author, apparently. ;-)
Remember when they spliced spider DNA onto a goat? The goat lactated silk, so apparently that’s where it come out of a real silk producing mammal. Just food for thought…
I read that article. The reason the goat lactated silk is because the scientists spliced the gene into the set of genes FOR production of milk. So it has little bearing on where silk should come from on a mammal.
Just some food for thought…
The goats didn’t lactate silk. They spliced in the gene that contained the instructions to make same protein used by spiders in their silk into the goats mammary glands. Apparently mammary glands (of just about any mammal) are able to make just about any kind of protein given the raw materials. Baby goats could still feed and be none the wiser. However they could run the silk protein containing goat milk though machines to extract it and use it to make spider silk.
The project was scrapped and the goats were killed (partially due to public outcry). It’s far easier and more cost effective to create a bacteria that can make the protein than use goats these days anyway same way they make some insulin.
Most silk actually comes from the larva of a moth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombyx_mori
Guess no one told the spiders that…
well that is true the first time I remember Peter having organic cribs at least in the comics since I started receiving them was in the storyline spider-man disassembled after he got kissed by the insect queen and mutated to the giant spider than that spider had a seizure and Peter and his human body climbed out of it. it was during this time with spider-man with Sean being able to speak to/ see through the eyes of spiders though I think it may have happened and some of the storyline before I was born as well
Sigh… Pedants are just no fun.
Even a lot fun is no fun. If you are honest.
I was hoping for more Lady Deathstrike and less spiderette. but whatever.
Probably not best to kidnap a succubus AFTER she has eaten.
There is a good time to kidnap a succubus? Just asking……….. Mind you with a succubus a kidnapping could, if you play your cards right, could be considered to be foreplay, but still……