Grrl Power #802 – Sydney marks the spot
Really they should have just known to follow Sydney. All the good stuff happens to her. It’s like she has a luck field around her, only it’s an “Adventure Impetus Field.” I guess that should be added to her official unofficial list of powers.
Krona’s console says “Moonjump” BTW. That’s just the base mod that puts a 1/6th gravity effect on herself. Krona’s probably rocking about 94 pounds. 1/6th of that is like 16 pounds. That’s not a lot, but I’m not sure her legpower would get her up to the roof of the club. She has a multiplier on the Moonjump so she only weighs about 8 pounds now. That part is easy for her to code. The hard part was making it so she doesn’t blow away by the lightest breeze when she’s mid-jump. She had to make it so she weighs 1/12 normal to gravity, but retains her mass in respect to other forces of nature.
So yeah, her time-loop-sort-of-but-not-really kerfuffle notwithstanding, she’s actually a pretty good programmer.
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No shield? Didn’t she learn her lesson on that when the Blood Mage got her?
In entertainment there is a balance to be sought. Sydney could keep up her shield every minute that she is not in Archon HQ. She would then be utterly invulnerable. The story would thereby be utterly boring. And the visuals would be dull as they would always have Halo in a shiny bubble.
From Sydney’s perspective she does not want to live her life in a bubble. That happened to someone in real life and it isn’t fun, even though his problem was pretty much everything on the planet being dangerous for him, as opposed to being the target for innumerable supervillains. This way Sydney gets to spend much of her time feeling normal. Only resorting to bubbling up when she feels threatened or has to fly at high speed.
Plus do not forget that Sydney is not incapable even without the shield. Shadow Boxer was a stealth and melee specialist super, who managed to sneak up behind Halo and attempt to kill her by stabbing her. Yet Sydney caught a glimpse and reacted with overwhelming force.
A far more dramatic and emotionally satisfying scene than ‘bonk’ oh he can’t get through the force field, time to whack him with the tentacle or zap him with the PPO.
And so sure, she was going for an “orb free evening.” But when a probable kidnapping has occurred and her team of Archon supers plus Arc LIGHT support plus Council members are all deploying to investigate, putting up the force field is not just the smart thing to do, it is really stupid to not do that immediately.
And unless it was countermanded off-screen, she has been ordered by Max to keep her force field up pretty much constantly.
Sydney, you are a super now. You never get a day without your orbs. Or weird things happening around you. Or to you. Or just somewhere near your vicinity. Just listen to the big pink puddy cat.
That’s not because she is a super, that is because she is the Pro-antagonist. The real word is protagonist, but she is Pro level at Antagonizing everything. I do agree that she needs to put both hands in the bag and bubble up.
My only thought on her un-bubbled state would be if the shield muffled ambient noise levels and Sydney wanted to be able to hear faint noises in her vicinity, like someone being thrown through a wall.
Being thrown through a window is defenestration. Latin for wall is ‘murus’. I guess this makes it a demurustration.
Nah. Those are shards of wood and that is a brick wall. That would mean our Antagonistic Interloping Aranea (with apologies to Stan Lee) was just thrown through a boarded up window.
Going back to the previous page and you can just make out the outline of the old windows in the dark.
That would make this still a proper defenestration.
I’ve never thought of the root of that word before. Does this mean that if you got thrown in to a building through a window it would simply be fenestration? If people throw you back and forth through a window is it defenestration followed by refenestration?
Fenestration is an architecture term for the arrangement, proportion and design of windows and doors in a building. I would think infenestration would be getting thrown IN the building. Interestingly, the noun covers windows and doors, the verb is only for windows, so we also need a term for being thrown thru a door!
It’s infenestration. Had a little pokey around a few Etymology sites, and that was the commonly held opposite of defenestration. Though adfenestration came up but that mean being thrown AT a window, not through it.
As for being thrown out a door, that’s simply deportation (from porta meaning door/gate)
I always thought that “Owch!” covered that pretty comprehensively.
I didn’t see any wood on the windows, but the door looks like wood, so maybe it was the door Aranea got thrown through?
Page 801. Frame 9. There are two roughly square places, maybe 5:4, that have boards across them. The one on the viewers right has a body shape punched through it, and showing a couple vertical boards which ahd bridged the others. The one on the viewers left is partially out of frame. Can you really not see that? You might need a new monitor.
Noticed the beam, just figured it was a wall beam, seeing how it goes from the cross beam all the way to the floor
So if ‘murus’ is wall, our as-yet-unknown villain can now be considered… demure?
»:roll•eyes:«
Maybe weird things only happen to her WHEN the orbs are out, and the orbs are the real protagonist, and Sydney their tool.
LOL! That may be one of the unknown powers of the orbs.
It’s a literal weirdness magnet?
The unknown orb in my book is now labeled “Troubleseeker” and is set to activate any time Sydney powers them up from full sleep mode. The longer the wait, the bigger the trouble. The whole reason they ended up on Earth is some poor schlob of an alien activated them after a 1000 year dry spell and they ported him to Earth to right under Sydney’s hand. He looked like a multi limbed crustacean and to him each orb is almost as big as he is. Fearing for his life, and not knowing about the forcefield orb, he panicked and ran–later picked up as an iddly rainbow colored 4 clawed lobster. He now enjoys retirement in a local aquarium…
Ah yes, the MacGuffin orb. Or, to go along with Lighthook, the Plot Hook.
I think this is the first time we’ve seen Sydney use an orb without having the unused ones in orbit around her head.
Looks like she just grabbed oue out of the old lady bag. Silly Sydney.
She grabbed the comm orb, presumably to send out the light bee. Then what they are looking for practically fell in her lap.
BLUE = Flight
Right.
Look at Sydney’s hand in panel five. She is reaching between two darker orbs for the yellow orb on the bottom.
But the effect being created is clearly flight. If she were sending out her holo-self there would be a second Sydney on the rooftop.
Honestly, she probably wasn’t really reaching for any particular orb. She was most likely just jamming her hand into the bag so she’d be in manual contact with the orbs, without caring which was where.
Also, no Sydney when LightBee is active, she has to stop and activate HoloHalo
Sydney would not be grabbing the Comm orb for the lightbee. She would be grabbing the Comm orb because she can see Succubi through walls with True Sight set to see magic.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-469-swat-o-gram/
Remember?
Except, she grabbed the Flight Orb for, well, flight, and using her own eyes to see with
She can only fondle one of her balls at a time, note how she is moving and her posture (unless you believe she can now leap a small building in a single bound)
Sydney has the bag over her shoulder. She can use two orbs.
No, look at Sydney’s palm, it stops at the blue ball
Huh, that is new. Solves some problems for being inconspicuous, too. She shouldn’t need to hold on to the bag either, just have it follow allong towed by the orbs. Bag of Holding!
Because having a bag floating along after you is inconspicuous.
In the very early days, she kept them in one of those over-the-shoulder, “document and poster storage tubes.” That was… relatively inconspicuous. for a while.
Hey, don’t make fun of Tubey! Sydney named the tube, so she probably still has it.
But, carrying around a poster tube on a night out might seem out-of-place as well.
In a comic book store? Not so much.
Mr Tubey wasn’t moving on his own though (well, not until the Bank Incident)
She needs to invest in the must-have accessory for any good adventurer, the bandolier.
(if this were the ’90s it would have to be pouches, lots of pouches.)
Fanny-pack of holding.
Fanny-Pack – As a Brit, that expression really puts a whole different slant on storage.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fanny
How-a-bout the “Fanny Hill” book pack?
Yeah that lead to some personal confusion when I had some… let us just say Adult British reading material… as a teenager
As does your usage of “pants” for that matter … Took me a while to catch on that “pants” were what we call “underwear” (“undies” “panties” “tighty whities” … “pants” applies to both sexes, yes?) … And given that to _us_ “pants” are what you call (I think) “trousers” … you can see where the problems come in.
What was the phrase? “Divided by a common language”?
Trust me, there are quite as many amusing/confusing examples going the other way.
Bumbag.
Cargo pants need to be Sydney’s fashion signature.
Have you heard? You can now get… cargo-socks!
Ok. She can use an orb if a) she is _holding_ it, or b) if she is in _contact_ with it?
If the latter, then stuffing them into a constraind space, such as a bag, then shoving her arm in … multiple, if not all, of the orbs would be in contact with her forearm at the same time. Does this mean she can use them all at the same time?
Maybe an outfit with “mounting points” for the orbs. Make it look like a belt … but the underside is open to the skin …
Established early on in the comic that contact has to be fingers or palms only. Taping them to her skin doesn’t do anything but make the orbs glow. They like to be in contact with her if we interpret “glowing brighter” as “they like this”.
She must never borrow Richard’s purse.
Erm, brichins, you seem to have a faulty element in your post. Do a “View Source” and you’ll see what I mean. The problem is, it’s propagating to the entire thread, and features of the forum have been disabled.
An anchor tag without an HREF target? Wonder how that is able to screw up anything other than itself.
The rendering engine (browser) is trying to find the target…
This is the time when the forum asolutely needs an edit button. Some mistakes can’t be fixed with an explanation.
Actually the rendering agent should cease looking for a target once it hits the close of the anchor tag. Also worth noting that an HREF is not required by the W3C RFCs as an anchor tag that is just a hyperlink target is also valid. Of course in this instance it lacks an ID as well so it can’t be a target. It sounds to me that it is your browser that is the problem since I’ve tried the page in both Chrome and Silk, and neither of those browsers had any problems dealing with this situation.
Actually, in brichins’ post there are two closed anchors: ‘LT a / rel=”…’ and a closing ‘LT/aGT’.
I also screwed up by placing an anchor ‘LTaGT’ with no closure in my reply post. You are quite correct saying anchors do not need HREFs, but OTOH you seem to have missed that brichins’ post contains two closed anchors but no opening anchor, and my post made things worse.
My two Mozilla browsers are still reasonably current (less than 5 years) but I will confess that IE11 could have done with some upgrades but Microsoft didn’t care any more. I don’t and won’t use anything Chromium-based as they are less secure than IE, and they don’t let you lift the hood for repairs.
<p>She must never borrow <a rel=”nofollow”>Richard’s purse</a>.</p>
<a rel=”nofollow”> opens the anchor tag and </a> closes it. Not sure what you mean by two closed anchors. I only see one anchor tag in brichins comment and it is properly opened and closed.
Just checked in Firefox as well. Still not seeing a problem. What browser are you using? Source definitely missing an HREF in the anchor tag, but all of my browsers are dealing with it without breaking anything else.
<p>She must never borrow <a rel=”nofollow”>Richard’s purse</a>.</p>
You must really never rely on el cheapo browsers based on QTWebkit. All my browsers’ “View Source” clearly show a slash (/) between the “a” and the “rel”. That’s the closure.
Chuck that snippet into W3C Unicorn as text input: the results are interesting.
Interesting. The original HTML from the server is <a / rel=”nofollow”>, but the (parsed) DOM view in Chrome (and others) correctly removes the stray /. This is invalid HTML, but that shouldn’t crash the rest of the page.
And the actual URL I added is not included at all. One more reason I want to rebuild the comments extension and include with a WYSIWYG editor like TinyMCE
…and I know I didn’t inject an extra italics tag above, only the one tag should’ve been italicized. I’m thinking there’s a parsing/sanitation bug happening.
Looks like you got it sorted. I’ll quit my dribbling now.
Man, it’s almost like she’s the protagonist or something.
THE CHOSEN ONE
A protagonist. OK the primary one, but she is not the only one. We do get to follow others, from time to time. Such as Maxima or Dabbler.
Personally I am looking forward to seeing a day in Peggy’s life. Or whichever other less pivotal character might tempt DaveB at some point.
Primary Protagonist Syndrome is a known condition.
You only need to reduce your weight while jumping, since things fall at the same speed (wind resistance not withstanding). So she could go light for a second or two then back to normal weight for the rest of the leap so as not to get blown away, if necessary. Brandon Sanderson did a good version of that in the Mistborn follow up series.
If she could reduce mass towards the end of a fall wind resistance would slow her right down and her impact energy would be next to nothing to. Basic featherfall spell, really.
Reduce her mass too much and she’d lose momentum. Puts,ahead ceiling on how far she could jump.
Things do not fall at the same rate unless all the gravity is the same. Since Krona has mucked with gravity and not mass she will fall like on the moon about 1.6m/s². Everything around her will still be falling at 9.8m/s²
True if she changed her local gravity, not her mass, then things like air resistance would not have changed.
If you don’t screw with gravity mid jump or alter things in a way that makes air resistance significant, by the time you’re back on ground level you will be moving at the same speed as liftoff.
Conservation of energy means your speed can be tied to height and height alone. Safe to say your legs can easily take the amount of momentum they give you so there’s no sense in worrying unless you’re going to land somewhere lower. Jumping onto a building will basically make the landing a lot softer.
So Krona has adjusted her local gravity to 1/6 that of Earth normal, to approximate the force of gravity on the surface of the moon.
The gravitational potential energy is normally Ep = mgh so she would be able to just six times higher than she normally could. If she could just 1 foot high under normal Earth gravity, now she could just 6 feet, a far cry from 10 or so feet needed to just jump up one story. If her mass remained the same, then wind shouldn’t be able to blow her around any more than under normal gravity.
It’s not quite that simple, because her takeoff velocity with be changed, since she’ll be accelerating faster with less mass and so her legs would being applying force for less total time. So probably even less than a 6x jump.
However she could easily make other adjustments (kick speed, non-linear elasticity of her shoe soles, etc) part of the macro, so no need to drill into the exact physics of only adjusting weight and not mass.
Only if you are landing at the same level you launched from. Go from low to high and you’ll naturally land more softly.
Reminds me of Gee from eighties Power Pack comics who used to do something similar.
She just needs to reducer her gravitational mass while keeping her inertial mass constant. Just because always observe them the same does not mean they need to be
This was only true in classical mechanics. GR requires them to be equivalent.
Krona presumably just kept iterating until she got results she was happy with. With hilarious results beforehand. Since she can reset things consequences are optional.
I think you just found out why there was a time discrepancy.
Is the Debris Hazzard Zone the Hazzard that you’ll have to draw Debris around Sydney a lot?
What happened to the rainbow that trails Sydney when she flies? Is that somehow muted by keeping the orbs in a bag?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-438-umbrageous-rendezvous/
Presumably so, since the trails come from the glowing orbs, and covering them would mask the glow.
Think of the glow trails to represent speed. the faster she goes the longer the trail … the slower … the shorter.
Like the mouse pointer trails (for those that use them) on your pc.
That rainbow is the trace of each of the orbs following her as she flies. The orbs in the bag can’t be seen so they leave no trace. The trace for the one in her hand would be obscured by her body.
Actually, your physics here are solid.
If all she’s messing around with is gravity, then that will only affect her WEIGHT. Weight, put simply, is the force exerted on an object/person due to the acceleration of gravity. So right now, she is only affecting the effective attractive force between her and the earth. If she isn’t affecting her mass, then wind will have a negligible effect on her; At that point, the force on her will be dependent on both the windspeed and her overall surface area. But because her mass didn’t change, the acceleration possible due to said force will be relatively low.
What he said. Weight and mass are separate things (related, but separate). Decreasing gravity without affecting mass should be the default. Now if she was decreasing her drag coefficient at the same time, that would be tricky.
Thought she ‘messed’ with her weight, not gravity nor mass (just ask that guy on youtube about the difference between a kilo of feathers, and a kilo of steel)
Sydney found that demon hunter when Tamatha shoved her out the building…
Is that pink fake hair thing glued to her skull ? because flying/”jump good” in that position will take off pretty much any type of wig i ever had the “pleasure” of trying…
It’s quite possibly something that Iron Cloth came up with.
Pulling it off improperly would likely pull Sydney’s hair out.
That or it’s very much a helmet right now.
So … back to the “hair helmet” styles ?
They’re fashionable with all the more fragile heroes.
Like Astra after getting a skull fracture from getting sucker punched?
Good example.
Nah, put Sydney’s hair in a good tight ponytail-banded hairbun, pop the wig on, and secure it with bobbypins. Enough bobbypins can keep it on her head even if she’s jumping all over the place.
Not sure if this is where you were going with the quotes, but Sydney jump real good.
When she’s first demonstrating her fly ball in front of the Gen. Faulk, Max, et. al., Sydney does a 360 degree rotation centered on the orb. Her hair retains its orientation in relation to Sydney, instead of to gravity. Later, when she’s floating in space outside the space-mega-mall, her hair is floating around her, but previous to that, when she’s floating in low orbit above Sciona’s world, it’s acting like there’s normal gravity. Apparently, the fly ball creates a localized gravity/inertia based on the user’s expectations or preferences (it would have to negate inertial effects somewhat just to keep Sydney from turning herself into Sydney-paste when she kicked in the new gear after the first speed upgrade, really, since it made Mach 4 look like nothing, comparatively). Nth level tech . . . really user-friendly.
Self-correction: On re-checking page 676, Sydney’s hair starts floating when she lets go of the fly ball so she can use her phone to take a picture of the Fracture Station. So, no fly ball active seems to equal no personalized gravity.
Gosh, it’s sort of like Sydney’s the main character and has all the fun stuff written specifically to happen around her! ;)
Don’t be ridiculous.
Or to her, or to her friends, or just somewhere near enough to affect her. The Protagonist Code of WTF?
Gravity and mass are different things. If Krona makes it so that only 1/6 or 1/12 of the Earth gravity affects her, she would still have the same mass, which means that everything other than gravity affects her the same way as before. So, she would not be gone with the wind, it would only slightly alter her trajectory.
On the other hand, if Krona makes her mass 6-12 times smaller, then yeah, it would have the same effect with gravity, but wind would be a problem.
It’d be more like “demuration”.
“de- + fenestr… + -ation”
“de- + mur… + -ation”
(Failing to properly identify where pieces of a word came from when constructing something else on the same pattern is a bit of a pet peeve of mine… but at least you didn’t do something like mistaking the “man” in “manual” for an English word like some fanfiction authors I’ve seen.)
So are “demure” and “wall flower” related?
It looks to be from French.
ME demur < de- (prob. intens.) + mur < OFr mëur, ripe, mature < L maturus, mature
But it is why a painting on a wall is called a mural.
So “demure” basically means “unripe”? Which makes it a fancy version of “barely legal”? Yeah, that’s not disturbing at all. shudder
“The word comes from the New Latin[3] de- (out of or away from) and fenestra (window or opening)”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestration
No, that interpretation’s all you. It’s closer ‘immature’ with special emphasis on sociability. So ‘reserved’ or ‘shy’
It… was a joke, or supposed to be one
Heh, seems like I was not the only one to go down this mental rabbit hole.
*licks lips and looks up rabbit stew recipes*
Wouldn’t using the Light Bee/HoloClone let her investigate quicker?
Like when she was at the warehouse.
Hmmmm….
There’s no way to tell that that’s not what she’s doing.
The fastest way for her to investigate in this case is True Sight.
Succubi are magical, and even when not using spells or auras their bodies generally course with at least residual tantric magical energy. As has been established here
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-469-swat-o-gram/
Sydney would be able to see Tamatha through walls by switching the True sight to see magical energy.
+1
Actually…. Her dotted trail IS implying that she is Light Bee Orbing.
No shield required… She’s intangible.
No it’s not, the dotted trail is simply showing her path, LightBeeing is just the Light Bee, no Sydney unless she stops (she can’t see anything while using the Light Bee, just a general awareness of objects around her)
Small problem, (literally). Pixel’s head to body ration in panel two seems to be a little off to me.
Maybe, butt it is consistent with how she was portrayed in the past (and yes, some big cats’ heads are proportionally smaller, ever seen a cheetah {they are leopards with ‘tears’})
‘Its like she has a luck field around her’
Define ‘luck’. Its more of a ‘may you live a interesting life’ curse.
We’ve seen that her shield will flatten on the bottom to conform to the terrain, I wonder what would happen if she stood on a prone captive? Would it form an extremely snug vacuum sealed blanket over them pinning them in place?
I had thought that it was including the terrain — that is, it forms a sphere, and if that includes solid ground, that portion of solid ground inside the sphere is included in the bubble. It seems to have a context-aware system that, for instance, lets light and sound through, but not harmful radiation or light levels or harmful shock-waves (sound is basically a shock-wave itself). It doesn’t let air in or out, but it’s aware that one of the other spheres is an atmosphere generator, even if the user isn’t aware — in other words, it would expect the user to refresh the air, and therefore wouldn’t pass gasses (no pun intended).
Given that adding “wedges” to the center of the skill tree seems to increase Sydney’s awareness of what the spheres do, I’d imagine that their ability to sync with and interpret her intentions may be tied to how integrated they are with her mind, which that center wheel of wedges represents. The air generator flew into her hand when she was stuck underwater and disconnected from her scuba gear, and arranged itself in her hand so that the air generating function activated, which seems to indicate that they have some level of AI or expert system. She had no idea that the green sphere made air, and it had to know what gasses she needed to breathe and in what proportion, after all.
Seems an opportune moment for Rover from The Prisoner to do a little smothering……
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/45/08/10/4508105c51bbed4ad73f2dd3c7437b30.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d0/Rover_%28The_Prisoner%29.jpg/250px-Rover_%28The_Prisoner%29.jpg
Those pictures bring back some unpleasant memories.
What’s it say on Krona’s virtual coding deck? “MOON JUMU?” There’s probably a double sized version somewhere I could pay to see, but I’m broke. XD
One good rule of this comic is “when unsure about the page, read the author’s comments”.
Funny, when I zoom the webpage, it says MOON JUMP. The P is distorted but enough is there to extrapolate the letter.
In context, that makes perfect sense. I tried to blow up the image, but it didn’t help.
And, as usual, I never think to check the author’s comments. It is as inevitable as me spelling ‘definetly’ wrong.
Is Sydney getting used to taking orders?
Pixels use of the term “recruit” probably reminded her that she is a low ranker in a military organization. That plus reminding Sydney that the safety of a teenager was at stake made her realize that her desire to not use the orbs was a pretty petty concern under the current situation.
Added to her list of powers/traits? If “Weird Magnet” isn’t on her character sheet already, the DM is slipping.
I think we may have figured out what that last orb does…? XDDD
Dave, the moonjump thing isn’t that hard… Reducing the effect of gravity on you changes what you weigh but not your mass. Weight and mass aren’t the same thing.
Imagine you’re in a Zero G gym. That 500lb weight is still going to have 500lb of inertia. You’ll still have the inertia you have. The air conditioner is still blowing the same force of air. It’ll still be just as difficult for the air conditioning to blow you around and for you to move that 500lb dumbell.
The difference is that they only thing stopping you when you jump off a surface is air resistance or hitting an immovable object.
So if Krona just changed gravity for herself she wouldn’t need to code it so she wouldn’t blow away. All that’d happen is less effect of gravity, so higher jumps, slower falls, and to someone trying to pick her up pretty move her, she’d still have all of her inertia. They’d just notice she feels lighter because she isn’t pulling down on their arms as much, but she’s still just as hard to move.
So… what he said in his note? Also, weight in space is a fun way to prank people unless they’ve already done the math.
No, what he said in his note is that Krona has extra code to keep herself from blowing away in a breeze. I’m saying it’d be unnecessary if all she’s doing is manipulating the amount that gravity affects her… Lowering the effect gravity has on her doesn’t change her inertial mass, just her weight, and therefore she wouldn’t blow away in a breeze. This means the extra code redundant as heck.
Dave’s note says
which is exactly what you’re saying. Doing so was “the hard part”, no extra anti-wind code is implied; rather, he specifically says she avoided that.
So you’re just going to simultaneously acknowledge and ignore “The hard part was making it so she doesn’t blow away by the lightest breeze when she’s mid-jump.”
You do realize that means that EXTRA EFFORT had to be put into making it do that, when that should be already there, since all that’s being changed is the amount gravity affects her, not her actual mass and inertia.
Another way of putting what I’m trying to say here is… imagine a train in Earth gravity. It’s 100 cars long, each car weighs 16 tons…
Now, put it on wheels that have absolutely 0 friction. Can you push it around like it has no mass nothing? No… It still has the same mass it had. It’s still going to take a lot of energy to push it along the tracks…
Now put the same train on the moon. Is it going to take any less energy for you to push? No… Because the “downward” acceleration of gravity has nothing to do with the fact that the train has all that inertia that has to be overcome just to budge it.
Can a human push such a train? Sure, especially with the perfectly frictionless wheels… it’s just going to take a LONG time to get it moving, because you have to just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to put enough force into it to get it moving at a noticeable speed.
»:THIS !:«
For better or worse, within the context of General Relativity — which is likely wrong, given FTL travel — gravitational; mass and inertial mass are exactly the same thing, just as gravity and acceleration are basically the same thing. She’s turning down her gravitational mass, jumping normally, but she just keeps rising.
While yes gravitational mass and inertial mass are *basically* the same thing, we aren’t talking about Krona changing her gravitational mass, but rather changing the acceleration parameter that is exerted upon her by Earth’s gravity. That is instead of 9.81m/s^2 it becomes 1/12th of that. Changing that value doesn’t change her inertia, and as such she shouldn’t have to worry about being blown away.
If Krona’s just affecting the force of gravity she experiences, then she’ll put approximately the same amount of energy into the jump. By conservation of energy, trading kinetic for gravitational potential energy, if she’s multiplied gravity by 1/6, she’ll jump 6 times the height. To clear 20 feet for a two-storey roof-top under 1/6 gravity, she’d need to be able to jump more than 3 feet up under normal circumstances – not counting the extra foot or two she could get by bending her legs. So she’d need to at least be able to jump high enough to see over an open garage roller door.
At 12x jump height, she just needs to be able to jump high enough to bring her eye-level up to around Maxima’s eye-level.
So, yeah, the maths roughly checks out.
The situation is somewhat improved over that; Just like the first 1g of thrust of a rocket is wasted negating gravity, and does squat to add to your speed, the muscular tension you use to oppose your own weight is unavailable to do work to throw you upwards during a jump; The jump relies entirely on the force you can apply *in excess of* your own weight.
Say that Krona can reasonably apply 2x her weight in force, (we’re assuming she’s fairly athletic.) that leaves 1x body weight of excess force for leaping in 1g. But in 1/6th g, she’s got 1.83 or so times her bodyweight of excess force available. So she can jump 11 times higher, not 6 times higher.
Your math is closer, but bear in mind that she still has the same amount of inertia that must be overcome. It’s just she has to overcome less gravity. It’s like… pushing a 16 ton boulder up a hill in moon gravity takes almost as much strength as it does pushing it up the same hill in Earth gravity. It’s just going to tumble down the hill slower should you lose traction.
If this group winds up making an arrest, they may need to figure out how to come up with 3 pairs of handcuffs.
Decollete may have some in her private office for, um, ‘personal’ use.
Elspbeth has pink furry handcuffs in her book.
And Pixel probably has a full set of furry shackles and chains.
Err, for nights of the full moon. To protect were bunnies. Yea … that.
I don’t know about that. As I recall, Elly said “Don’t judge me! YOU like to be spanked!” I wondered how Pixel and Elly had shared these tidbits. Thinking about it made me smile.
And may also have some rope, which should (with a bit of skill) be sufficient for as many of Aranea’s limbs as required. Her arms appear to be fairly Baseline Human, apart from some presumably interesting jointwork at the shoulders, so there wouldn’t be the same concerns of excessive strength or hidden blades that there were with the drones that attacked the Council.
Nah. Sydney has her Hentai Tentacle Orb. They’re good to go.
Have we established where the folks in mufti have their communicators stashed? I thought those were a feature of the collars… Not complaining, just wondering whether there’s any risk if, say, losing the Smart Earring or whatever.
On the other paw it could just be Sydney being Sydney, and not actually having any means of communicating other than her orbs, her mobile phone or shouting loudly.
The second I saw the word ‘mufti’, Mentok the Mind Taker immediately came to mind.
And probably took it.
Sydney has this for sure:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeirdnessMagnet
(Warning: TV Tropes Link. Danger of spending hours following interesting, but relatively useless web pages!)
The orbs are definitely Clingy MacGuffins.
At least it turned out to be the ‘omnitrix’ variety that gave her a defined set of cool powers on demand.
The kind Maxima got stuck with (pun intended) was the alien symbiote that permanently bonded to her. Luckily it was not the insane black goopy kind that messes with the host’s head.
How do we know the Golden Shower didn’t mess with Maxi’s head?
We don’t know what teen Maxi’s goals or future plans were, she might have wanted to be a stand-up comedian, or a lawyer, or the town drunk (or all three at once)
The villains fly low. I think there is going to be pain.
@Loxmyth: That was the first thing I picked up on… Sydney is not wearing her choker/communicator… figures it would be the 63rd out of 65 comments. I would have posted right away but took time to read through the comments to see if it had been brought up yet. She’s touching her ear as she speaks… so maybe she got an ear bug or something similar to what Astra wears in the wearing the cape series of books.
Speaking of which… Arc-Swat and Sydney have made it into the Wearing the Cape books… When will Astra make it into the Grrrl Power Comic? That would be seriously fun. Imagine her on this incognito night out with the gang…
As much as we would like to see that, there’s too much of a time difference.
Nothing stopping a reference, as if Sydney could ever find an opportunity to watch TV.
Maybe Astra could cameo in one of the comics at the Comic Shop? “Coming Soon to FOX”?
I know MGH is reading this:
Have The Mighty Halo visit ASTRA in an Omega Night/Christmas Carol sized story.
Sydney and I share a trait, cops used to call me an “Idiot Magnet” because people did stupid stuff around me in full view of the cops that used to follow me around after they discovered this. I was partially responsible for a rise in DUI arrests in 3 towns along my home-bound commute because of this.
Interesting. I have a similar talent that we call the ‘ummm’ effect. If I think of a place to eat before going, a large crowd will beat us there. If I am not told where, they show up just after I do know. Sort of broadcast telepathy really. It has even worked to do a Scott Pilgrim move and think hard about one place as we pass it while continuing on to another. It has literally caused traffic jams. For a while the local Subway gave me a free cookie for every 10 persons that showed up out of nowhere when I got on line. One damn 3 cookie day later they stopped it.
Just because you are a good programmer it doesn’t mean you are immune to getting caught by surprises in how your program really works.
My go-to example is from Kerbal Space Program, where an update to the code for how radios work caused everyone’s craft to overheat during reentry. “Reality” makes a patched-conic rocket simulator look like “Hello World”.
Or “Hello world I am a living firework here to shower you with sparks and fire as I shoot across the sky!”
Better or worse than “Hello world … <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/198068-another-thing-that-got-forgotten-was-the-fact-that-against"I wonder if it will be friends with me?“
How would her earlier mistake constitute her as a bad programmer? Not only do you have to test code to see if it works out ,but time is a very difficult process to compute. Specially when you dont know how to faction in multi quantum entangled brains.
It constituted a “kerfuffle” rather than being a bad programmer. Krona’s core problem was actually misunderstanding the fundamental nature of her power. She thought that she had control over time itself. So, no matter if her subsequent programming was perfect*
* Let us assume so, as that is intrinsic to her power, and she is ranked very highly in the Twilight Council (presumably for the reason that she is very effective with her power, desite
It was just one out of scope variable that turned out to be global instead of locally defined.
Yet not knowing that meant Crona was under the impression that she could control time. And Archon were basing their assessment of her danger on Crona’s own description of her powers. Likewise the consequences of her being inept and/or reckless in controlling those. Which were … more than global!
Has anyone commented yet on how Sydney said “…and presumably the orbs”…?
Sydney’s a spazz when it comes to her ADHD affecting her attention span, and how her geekery affects her social skills etc, but she IS pretty darn smart in many other ways…and that just told us she IS aware the orbs are possibly Capable Of Detecting Time Anomalies™ (which is pretty highly advanced stuff, since most stuff in the universe travels linearly through time, unable to escape the flow of it).
When she found the hypertunnel thingy, and she saw the fuzzed-out planet on the presumed “previously visited” display/list that *might* have been Earth…pretty sure it was fuzzed like that because of the time jump and/or Tear In The Universe™…and yes, the Tear in the Universe would count when it comes to temporal awareness, because the universe isn’t just 3 dimensions, but 4+ dimensions…and if you put a hole in that, you definitely have to put a hole in time as well as in line, square, & cube.
Umm, no, Sydney was simply stating that, as far as herself and her balls were concerned, they still never missed a day (it’s not their fault the rest of the universe went the long way through time :P )
There is a horriblejoke about the MolestOrb on her day off and “orbless days don’t exist”
or a good one I guess if Syds into that
So now what would Sydney say when the others come to her location? Hopefully Pixel would ask if she’s found the underage succubus!?
“Look what fell from the sky! Maybe it’s connected to Tammy’s disappearance? Nah, that’s just ridiculous, let’s ignore her and head to another building across town!”
Ooh ooh, Sydney has the opportunity to coin a new word! If she saw someone being thrown out a window she could say “I just witnessed a defenestration” (Yup, actual word that just means that very specific thing). But, in this case, the person was thrown through the wall.
“What’s the police code for ‘demuristration’ in progress?”
The wall is now defaced. Use whatever code covers graffiti. :)
There’ve been discussions/arguments about what Aranea was actually thrown through. It might have been a wall, but there’s evidence suggesting it was a window that lacked any glass and had been boarded up.
Same code applies.
All Sydney need do is cradle the unknown arachna-woman in the mole… er, telekinetic pseudopod (what did she end up calling it?) and levitate to and through the hole in the boards, calling “Tammy! You in here?” and listening for the “YES! But watch out for my kidnapoh you caught her. Good. Can you help me get out of her butt-rope?”
She calls it the Lighthook.
Wait… why does Pixel get to call Sydney “Recruit”? Hasn’t Sydney been part of Archon longer? I thought Pixel was a recent-recruit from the Twilight Council.
Pixel is a Vi, on loan to / working with Archon but technically under the Council’s authority. We don’t know how long she’s been a Vi, but certainly longer than Sydney’s been in Archon, and was the leader of their team during the Wars factory incident.
Can’t recall if we know her rank, but it’s definitely higher than Sydney’s, and ‘Recruit’ is her current rank and an appropriate title to remind her that she is now on duty.
No, Pixel is Arc Light, Krona is Semper Vigilantis.
Review the Twilight Council fight.
Actually that fight is what threw me off, since she walks in with some Council resources, but looking back you’re right, she was introduced earlier at the Archon base, specifically as Arc-Light.
Technically Sydney is still a recruit who hasn’t finished her training yet.
And she continually demonstrates this through the choices that she makes and the things she says.
Why does Specs get a “Who’s Who” entry, butt Beth doesn’t?
Given that Specs doesn’t have any dialogue on this page, I’m going to guess that it’s because she’s at least directly mentioned in dialogue. (And present in the scene. I doubt someone who’s mentioned but not present would be given an entry.)
Wait – where are her orbs there? And she’s not holding her bag ?
Her bag is visible in panel two, and the strap is visible in panels six through nine
Her bag is over her shoulder. Look at the frame where Pixel lands carrying Sydney.