Grrl Power #806 – Spider vs. cat
I joke in the stinger, but Pixel probably really should have identified herself as a federal agent. That could complicate things to some degree, depending on how The Veil handles Pixel’s appearance here. It’s one thing to make her look human to another human when she’s just standing there having a smoke. It’s another when she’s attacking a self proclaimed demon hunter with her laser claws.
Of course, Archon could easily claim that turning into a giant pink jaguar hybrid is Pixel’s superpower instead of admitting to anything supernatural, but they’ve been careful not to directly deny stuff they plan on talking about later.
Still, Pixel saw Sydney zonked on the ground, and got kind of mad. She’s not a fan of Sydney’s aloofness in the field, but she still likes her personally. Plus, she is kind of Maxima’s favorite fixer upper project as well as being Archon’s PR golden child. At least when she’s not sticking her foot in her mouth in front of a camera.
BTW if you couldn’t tell, Aranea is stronger than she looks.
Oh, and Sydney’s blue word bubble, that’s just explaining what’s she’s writing in cursive with the lighthook off panel.
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Wow, impressed twice – heard the soft landing then proportional strength of a spider…
Also Spider Grenade – here’s hoping she’s fast with the book…
But is the grenade holy? If anyone would try to get one of those, it’s her.
What’s all the shiny rays coming from on the second to last panel anyway?
Those would be motion lines, implying speed.
Those motion lines usually indicate an object and direction. These are more like warp speed travel lines maybe? …unless, as Gorblimey suggests, she’s following the grenade.
She seems to be flipping away from the grenade as she tosses it.
Did you notice that Halo’s thought seemed to have been displayed on her whip?
It is if Brother Maynard provided it.
First, thou shalt take out the holy pin. Then, thou shalt count to three. No more, no less.
Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.
One… two… five!
Three, sir!
Three! (throws Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch)
It doesn’t look to be a Fabergé egg. :-p
Ah but to use The Holy Hand Grenade, one must count to three….
Perhaps she can send the grenade elsewhere with a spell before it detonates.
Aranea needs to, being vertically inverted and flying toward the explosion point… I’m not sure she meant to let go of the grenade.
She’s going in the opposite direction to the flashbangboom
She is doing a backflip away while throwing the grenade at her enemies. Standard acrobat combat procedure stuff.
I meant Elspbeth, the High Mage’s apprentice with the cursed book.
She won’t have time to pull anything out of the book but she could send the grenade over the edge of a building with a cantrip.
Unless Krona arrives and disarms the grenade as usual. That seems to be Krona’s signature move.
Or with a flip of a hand. Just because you have a magic book doesn’t mean the arms don’t work.
Grabbing an almost certainly armed grenade does not seem like a survival tactic. Dropping behind the concrete/brick wall seems like the thing to do.
↑This↑
Or, simply drop back down herself
If she drops the grenade over the side, it could potentially hurt more people than simply letting it detonate on the roof
Wouldn’t it probably be one or two in the morning?
The comic book emporium probably closes at 9:00 PM on a Wednesday (the day Sydney’s comics are delivered) and if she had arranged in advance with Joel and the other two owners then she could get on her way in ten minutes. Assuming that the club is really close to the comic book store Sydney and Olivia could arrive and park and be inside by 10:00.
But it has to be at least three hours later with all that was going on and the light meal.
And the people inside the buildings? Next to windows? That might get blown in by, say, an exploding grenade?
They will have slightly more protection from the roof and the parapet than if it exploding right outside their window. Hopefully most of the force will go up (not so lucky for those still on the roof, butt they are Archon and bad girl)
Open the book to Bomb-Proof Shelter and place it over the grenade. I’ll bet there are many entries that’d work, but that’s the first one I thought of.
Or open the book and slam it down onto the grenade in order to add it to her… spell list?
As an apparently cursed magical artifact, it’s probably sufficiently proof against damage to use it as a shield. Almost all cursed magical artifacts seem to be close to indestructible.
I guess that’s because otherwise somebody would have already destroyed them?
A book is not that sufficiently large to use as a shield, and we don’t know how she adds things to it, or how much prep time is required, or, well, anything about how it actually works
Sure it’s large enough.
It isn’t the size on the outside that matters.
It’s that the inside will shunt the damage extradimensionally.
That’s what I was thinking.
Have any of you played a gameboy game called “Avalon Code”? I’m wondering if her book is based on that one. If so, then she can copy or steal whatever it is she hits and alter its traits- if she hits a person then they won’t be aware of or remember being hit (no damage).
It’s hard to imagine deploying a grenade of that size for any reason other than to cover a quick exit from the scene. From Aranea’s point of view that would probably be a good plan. Aranea may have some natural resistance or her mask may provide protection but the average crowd control/tear gas grenade is not something that you want to be within 20-30 feet of when it goes off. I wouldn’t want to be in Beth’s shoes, or thigh high boots in this case. She is going to get coated with what ever is in the grenade.
Well, a high explosive grenade that size would do a lot of damage.
Open the book to Bomb Disposal.
Or Portable Hole.
Glad to see that Sydney is bubbled up now.
Aranea’s not only stronger than she looks, but apparently she’s faster as well. She’d have to be in order to dodge Pixel’s attack and get in that triple counter punch.
Maybe she has a spider sense?
Or at least her visor does
Looks to me like she wasn’t able to get her visor back on until she was finished dealing with Pixel.
It ain’t necessarily so… (Thank you Mr Gershwin)
Areana has the element of surprise. She knows that Pixel must turn to face her and the only question is which direction. Areana can be reasonably certain Pixel will not explode upwards, nor is she likely to drop and sweep (which would have been my reaction).
So all she has to do is watch for Pixel’s strike. Fisting the wrist is do-able if you have Spider-senses, I’d be looking for a throw there, but only if there’s no opportunity to drop and sweep.
Pixel’s undoing is her size supremacy. I do know very large people who have mastered fu, but they’re in the smart and educated minority.
Being bigger is usually a pretty big advantage though. I think Areana was just surprisingly strong despite her appearence.
Being bigger, one tends to get lazy, because one tends to rely on brute strength (when shear size doesn’t intimidate first)
It’s probably what happened with Ms. Discipline-The-Troops against Sci-fright
That’s movie logic.
There are quite a lot of big, competent fighters.
Size mattering is the entire reason weight classes exist in the UFC.
Yeah, because the big guys don’t like getting shown up by the ‘runts’
You do realise that UFC is staged, right? They all are (you didn’t think boxing was real, did you?)
Probably to the same extent as WWF :P
In professional wrestling, kayfabe (pronounced KEI-feib; IPA: ) refers to the portrayal of events within the industry as real, that is the portrayal of professional wrestling as not staged or work. Referring to events as kayfabe means that they are worked events, and/or part of a wrestling storyline.
See fex The One and Only starring Henry Winkler.
There is also a storyline in Menage a 3 webcomic that covers it.
Everyone knows ‘professional’ wrestling is fake, it always has been, and by ‘fake’ mean the outcome of the matches, they are not called ‘storylines’ for nothing
Most times, the action is real, well, as real a movie stunts, which means things can go wrong, sometimes seriously wrong, and it’s why a lot of it has been toned the fuck way down to lessen the risks
And speaking of risks, learning how badly some of them get hurt and then get no proper care because of how one-sided the employment contracts are for the ‘independent contractors’ took pretty any remaining fun out of it for me.
Yeah, no: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aaehn1aY8Ig
Skill matters a lot, but sheer brute strength and severe weight/size advantage wielded by a competent person is pretty decisive.
“because the big guys don’t like getting shown up by the ‘runts’”
What? Where are you getting this from?
It’s a fucking joke dude
Butt cereally, the little guys can, literally, run rings around the big guys: you can’t hit what you can’t see
Wait wait wait, was that clip supposed to support you? Or me? Because it sure looked to me like the little guy kicked the big guys arse!
Emphasis on ‘competent’ person: which, again, reinforces the point that most big guys rely on their brute strength rather than skill
Ever seen a luchador match with a big guy? You expect someone like Rey Mysterio to do things from the top ropes, butt there have been plenty of big guys who have done it as well:- Dead Man Walking (the Top Rope) & Air Deadman (please let these work)
It was a friendly spar for giggles between 2 people of widely separated weight classes, with neither really giving more than 50% at any given point. At that size, a giant grappling over a smaller guy (and he did have a suitable lock a couple times) simply needs to drop his legs back and fall to bring him down. And even with someone fast and strong enough to twist free, there’s a big risk of serious injury from someone that much bigger falling on you.
Compare that to this clip of Andre the Giant ‘wrestling’ someone in his weight class in 1968. Even with the basic choreography, just look at how much faster they are moving.
I’m not sure if you and I watched the same video. Even when play fighting the mountain mostly shrugged off his hits and got in a lot of grapples.
And yet, who was the one who was brought down…?
The guy who was grappled at various times, the mountain letting him go so things could continue?
Quite correct. Size Does Matter.
OTOH, large people tend to be slower, simply due to moving all that mass around. So us midgets need to practice speed, and sheer nastiness. On a drop-and-sweep my personal pref would be to remove the knee-caps before rolling as far out as possible. Just in case the enemy is trained up in fu.
That is also fictional logic. (Surprising coming from someone who apparently actually fights.)
Life isn’t a video game. Big =/= slow and easily dodged. At best it just means they might tire themselves out quicker. (And that’s just assuming they haven’t gone through stamina training either.)
It’s amazing how truth is so much more entertaining than fiction.
Not all (really) big people are slow behemoths. Not all midgets can keep up with Speedy Gonzalez. Some do enduro and/or strength, some don’t.
Big just means small must move smarter. Small means big needs to plan ahead a bit.
On a personal note, some really nice friendly hard blokes decided one day last century that I needed training. Their business was “recovery”. I was a kind of… pet. And I learned what needed to be learnt, and we had a very warm relationship. I never fought a fight. Only losers fight. Winners inflict so much damage that equality ceases to exist and the offenders understand they should mend their ways.
Fiction needs fights so we are entertained by King Arthur cutting pieces off the Black Knight.
And the reverse is also true. Being small doesn’t automatically equal quick or graceful either.
The proportional speed and strenght of a spider perhaps.
Do we really want to get into the scaling exercise here? You know, how your height goes up linearly, your strength goes up as a quadratic (squared) because strength is set by the cross-sectional area of your muscles, but your mass goes up by the cube. A spider a foot tall would not be able to walk or even breathe! At 5 feet tall, it would be crushed by its own mass.
Next time I’m playing a video game with giant spiders, I’ll tell them that … and watch them die of realization. LOL
Another good point: tell dragons they can’t possibly fly with wings that small. Unless they are using magic … which they usually do … in fact, aren’t those giant spiders magical mutants?
The explanation I like for flying dragons is they have a hydrogen gas bag in their central cavity. It lightens the load and it can act as the fuel for fire-breath! No ghost peppers needed.
Unless it had radioactive blood, of course. I have it on good authority (Grade B movies AND comic books!) that radiation negates scaling laws.
Of course she’s stronger than she looks. A person with merely human strength wouldn’t be able to do those backflips, and the fall would have put them in the hospital. Well, except for Achilles, who’s no stronger than human but could fall from orbit and not be hurt.
Tanya Huff used that logic in her book The Long Hot Summoning, when the MC realized the shells shouldn’t be able to contain the mass and they all exploded. The world they were in was sensitive to people’s beliefs.
Methinks the whole team might need a refresher course. Aranea will still probably be going to jail now, though. I highly doubt she has any authority to be doing what she has been up-to now.
Of course not, she’s a demon hunter vigalantee
Yeah. She assaults and abducts a teenager, then attacks someone (using possibly illegal narcotics) who she belatedly realises is a federal agent, then gets into a fight with that agent’s companions. She’s gonna get her picture on the Post Office wall for sure.
Considering the level of force she is using despite knowing she is going against Archon, she may be going out “In Traction.”
She believes Archon is in league with The Darkness, and thus, just as evil slash corrupt
I mean, she’s not wrong. She’s just fantasy-racist.
Nah.
She is just unaware that supernatural creatures began brutally self taming themselves three thousand years ago. The job she thinks needs done was necessary but (as Ingy explained at the Twilight Council Meeting) it’s already largely been done, and Semper Vigilantis is maintaining it.
It’ll be fun if she learns that Archon is literally in bed with Semper Vigilantis.
Literally? Did I missed some valentine topweb voting incentive?
Krona is a VI and is in a relationship with Leon, ARC-SWAT’s resident hacker.
Archon has Dabbler. Even if Decollette is not a SV herself, the existence of numerous Succubi on Earth makes it a fair chance that at least one has joined up. Metaphorically ‘in bed’ is certainly on the cards, although literally in a bed depends on the tastes of the individuals involved.
Does she Believe In A Thing Called Love?
“Can’t explain all the feelings that you’re making me feel
My heart’s in overdrive and you’re behind the steering wheel”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKjZuykKY1I
If your music doesn’t have guitar solos that kill alien squids, what are you even doing with your life?
That’s… somebody else pretending to be monty python pretending to be a rock band pretending to… i give up.
They actually were (are?) a rock band
It was the early 00’s, lot of weird and stupid shit was being produced back then (prefer that to what is being vomited into peoples’ ears today)
in fairness, I think ARC-Light’s too used to being covert ops, which is probably why they didn’t immediately identify themselves as federal agents. Remember ARC-SWAT’s the only publicly announced team. Also should be noted the Alari and the TC’s Alien Rep are public now as well, even if the TC itself isn’t, as has been shown earlier.
Arc Light is investigations. Arc Dark is covert operations.
She may well have the authority granted to her by a governmental body that doesn’t know about the Veil. She could be a special task force of the State Police. Or maybe she is a Vatican sanctioned demon hunter, they could claim it as a religious matter
In which case she might have literal diplomatic immunity. Handy for a demon-murdering vigilante.
So Aranea’s punch is an automatic 3 hit combo?
But yeah, smart move to do the shield+lighthook combo Sydney, she’s basically invulnerable and can hit stuff outside
> So Aranea’s punch is an automatic 3 hit combo?
Yeah, three or more hits:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/95/c0/ea/95c0ea8bb6a779e45198a401b0b8ad45.gif
Maybe this has been asked before, but is there some reason Sydney can’t use the comm ball to appear to them as a hologram-thing (telepresence)? Does she need her fingers to press a virtual button on the orb to do that?
She’d appear as a hologram laying face down and unable to talk so it wouldn’t be much of an advantage other than being able to see.
How far are they from the tower? I’m sure Sydney appearing face down and unable to talk in lightbee format would instantly get a full swarm response from the team.
The old body doesn’t have to be doing what the new body does, so it’s not a given.
Yes, yes it does, or at least Holo-Halo mimics Real!Halo
BUT she could teleport!
If she can press the correct button, and has the time to move the LightBee
Sydney could possibly swap Lighthook for Telepresence if she wants to watch.
Yes…finally the force field.
Having a Werejaguar fall on someone sounds not quite fatal, give or take 2 ‘not quite’.
Hey! This means she’s using two Orbs!
Come on Sydney! Your comball projection would let you see and speak!
To those not familiar with the Holo-Halo function:
It makes a holographic representation of Sydney in a designated location that exactly mimics what Sydney is doing and remotely projects what she is saying. It also feeds back what the remote is seeing and hearing.
Therefore: We would have a projection of Sydney lying on the ground and not moving or saying anything. It is also physically oriented in the same direction as the original and can’t move any closer or farther unless the holo-emitter is repositioned. The most she could accomplish is seeing behind her real body by sending the emitter to her rear, who would have a stationary view of whatever was between it and Sydney’s own rear.
P.S. we found in the restaurant rumble that the shield image is also projected. I don’t know about the sky noodle.
Can’t turn your head? Just wrap yourself in lighthook and get up – you’ll look like a Michelin Man, but it should work.
But it’s established that she can’t use the light hook inside the force field. (Almost certainly not the PPO, either!) That would be like the Enterprise using its tractor beams to move things down the hallways inside the ship.
Syd has been shown using the PPO from inside her shield multiple times.
From inside, not in inside
She can’t use the PPO (and the Tentacle?) on anything inside the shield (yet) having the shield up and shooting out works just fine.
But she has to physically point the PPO.
To rephrase what others are trying to say: Sydney cannot use the PPO or the Lighthook to affect anything inside her shield bubble. She can USE them while bubbled up, but their effects manifest OUTSIDE the shield.
Example of Sydney using the PPO and the shield at the same time.
Not without dropping her shield.
Hey alright. A fight.
Wouldn’t three arm punches actually be weaker than a single armed punch? I mean all the damage comes from the force, and the only extra mass behind the punch is from the extra arms themselves. And you are spreading that over three seperate impact points instead of a single one.
I would be surprised if she doesn’t have super strength, but still…
This is exactly what I was thinking. Maybe she doesn’t want to permanently damage Pixel?
Knowing lycans it’s unlikely she CAN permanently damage Pixel with punches. Stunning attacks are more likely to give you time than damage attacks.
How is one devastating punch weaker than three of the same strength?
Pretty common mistake made by people who don’t know how to punch – thinking that the strength of a punch comes mainly from the arm.
the strength of a punch comes directly from which types of fermented fruits are in it, and in what quantities :)
Good stuff – https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/cape-fear-punch-recipe-1917913
Hitting at same time, probably. I imagine it like three punches in rapid succession.
So, a bargain basement chestnut fist?
“Well black ops” are illegal by definition, as far as the law is concerned everyone involved government agent or not is a criminal. So pressing charges would need them to lie under oath, falsify evidence, and discredit her testimony. You car t have secret police enforcing secret laws on the public with secret trials, unless you live in China.
How are the actions of Sydney or any of the other Archon personnel “Black Ops”? They were out for a night of fun when they responded to an emergency situation. Searching for a kidnapped child and then defending themselves when they come under attack by the perp is hardly illegal activities on their part. Captain Rope Butt on the other hand is very much in legal jeopardy because she started this whole mess by the aforementioned kidnapping of a minor.
My guess is that ‘kidnapping’ would specifically involve the taking of a human. If she can prove the one taken is not, then the most she could be charged with is theft.
The public discovery of other sapient life both on and off Earth is going to complicate the legal system. The inclusion of Dabbler as a member/independent contractor of Archon means that the US government has already defined some legal standing for non-humans. The ‘Council’ has also existed for centuries. They must have signed some treaties between them and humans at some point.
Which she then compounded with aggravated assault on Sydney, who is most assuredly human. Not sure if it counts as assault on a Federal agent since Sydney didn’t identify herself, but injecting someone with a paralytic is most definitely a major felony.
I highly doubt that the laws were specifically written to exclude sapient non-humans from being the victims of violent crimes. Most laws use words like person or individual, not human specifically. If the laws were rewritten after the reveal of the aliens, there’s no way they would have been written to specify that only humans can be kidnapped. If nothing else, that would have been hugely controversial and taken a very long time. There’s simply not enough time for laws like that to have been passed, even if there was political support for such a thing.
I highly doubt that the laws were not written to cover humans only and it is likely that the laws by default excluded other life under the assumption that it was not intelligent.
The council works with and is protected by the federal government.
So I find them not being considered people worthy of legal protection to be very unlikely.
In the United States it is not legal to have secret laws with secret enforcement.
Such laws fail constitutional muster.
So such laws would lack an accountability arm for people who do not have sufficient information as to the nature of the supernatural, and would more accomodations like quarantine zones and secure transportation…and Archon working with Semper Vigilantis.
My guess is that if Aranea doesn’t kill or maim anyone permanently she eventually winds up working with one or the other. Now that Earth has been drawn to the attention of the Galactic civilizations at large every trainable entity will be needed to protect.
“In the United States it is not legal to have secret laws with secret enforcement.
Such laws fail constitutional muster.”
In our world where Government doesn’t house entire secret races of sentient beings, maybe not.
But in Grrlverse it makes sense that they would have laws, or laws ready to go after they’re revealed, to make sure they’re treated fairly.
“My guess is that if Aranea doesn’t kill or maim anyone permanently she eventually winds up working with one or the other. Now that Earth has been drawn to the attention of the Galactic civilizations at large every trainable entity will be needed to protect.”
You seem to be way overestimating how valuable Aranea here is.
She’s fast, strong, and sneaky; but those are not really exceptional traits in the supernatural or super world. The Council deals with most dissenters by killing them already and Archon, as far as we saw, recruited 1-2 exceptional and cooperative Supers out of the dozens from that first brawl.
Also: Nobody yet knows about Supers being outed to the galactic community, so that’s not a reason to recruit her either. (And I don’t see how she’d help either.)
Given that corporations pass as “people” in our world, I can’t see that any provably sentient being wouldn’t be “people” as well.
Might not be secret laws. Let’s look again on the “human” versus “person” … clever wording of law can change how they apply on supernatural without revealing it’s existence. Laws which are supposed to protect differently-colored people may be written in way they protect lycanthropes as well.
I had brought this up a page or two back and gotten ‘person’d down as well. To be fair, given that the government has known about a whole lotta things they haven’t shared with the public, but germane to the conversation supers, supernaturals, and aliens, there has probably been a push on the federal level for their laws to broad stroke protections for the day when each is inevitably revealed.
Still gonna be a big ole can of worms as to what qualifies as sentience, though, especially on the AI/construct front.
I want to see story about a law suit brought by the heirs of a wealthy person turned into a vampire. They argue that he is technically ‘dead’ and they are entitled to his estate.
He can remedy that ‘problem’: simply convert the heirs that he likes, and they eat the stupid ones
I don’t think so. The Veil will have her look normal for all intends and purposes so she would be human for anyone not excluded, so she should have all the normal people documents. I doubt that that question will ever come up. Besides Aliens are out, so it’s only a question of time until there is a law or court decision that states something like “All sapients are people.”
Would depend on the state statute, whether it said “human” or “person”.
More usually “person”, as in Texas statute…
Sec. 20.03. KIDNAPPING. (a) A person commits an offense if he intentionally or knowingly abducts another person.
…in which case you wouldn’t have to prove whether a succubus was human. (That defense might help you in an insanity plea, depending on venue.)
In the US, the law heavily favors the term “person”. A legal “person” is any entity that can appeal to the courts, specifically for contract enforcement. Corporations are legal “persons” so that we can sue them.
Note that we also have animals as officers (K-9s), and recently, a chimpanzee was granted human rights by a US district court.
Questions of personhood have mostly been handled by the courts, not the legislature.
But as it relates to SV, I think that there is an excellent chance that it is a treaty, not a set of laws, at play. Think of SV like some sort of Indian tribe, only with even more autonomy.
More importantly, understand that prior to WWI, treaties WERE secret. The Senate left publicizing of treaties to the President.
If that is the case, then there would likely be a rendition hearing to SV. (cold sweat ensues)
Thanks to the veil, Tamatha is fully human as far as any muggle court can tell. A defense that relies upon claiming that this 14 year old child is somehow an evil dæmon is only going to help if you are trying an insanity defense.
Tell that to the US with their rendition programs, FISA courts and parallel construction. Besides that wasn’t a black ops at most it’s undercover.
They weren’t even undercover, they were off-duty
Umm, Archon isn’t ‘secret police’, or did you miss that whole press conference when Sydney joined? o_O
ARC-Light are a covert branch, though. they only publicly announced ARC-SWAT at that press conference, remember.
ARC-Light is investigative, not covert. ARC-Dark is the covert branch.
Finally, shield’s up! Now use the fly ball and get into the melee Sydney!
Remember that a moving shield is an offensive weapon too!
PS don’t crush her to a pulp, Arc-Light will want to talk to her.
Again, what is Sydney doing with the light hook.
Option A: Fly ball, basically get herself away, and with shield make her a dangerous flying round object in combat.
Option B: the yellow ball, she can SEE everything, teleport and make projections of herself.
You’re making unwarranted assumptions about what Sydney can accomplish while paralyzed. If she moved herself off the ground the orbs would likely fall out of her hands, and holo-Sydney by all evidence thus far is limited to the actions and postures of the real Sydney. She could get a view with it, sure, but would have to give up either the shield or the Lighthook to do so, and neither is a good trade right now.
So, if “Two fisted his he whose cause is just, but four fisted is he who gets his blow in fust”, does that mean Aranea is now twelve fisted?
Only if you supply the lube, and ask nicely
Just wondering now… if extraterrestrial sentient life is common knowledge now, are they still protected by the veil?
ET’s are now common knowledge. Supernaturals are not. The veil masks the supernaturals.
it also should be noted that it might depend on species as well. We’ve got the Alari and the council’s alien rep who went public. That doesn’t mean EVERY extra-terrestrial life form is going to be outed, camouflage tech notwithstanding.
The Veil giving automatic camouflage to extraterrestrials was a large part of why tourists would come to Earth, remember? So if it’s gone there isn’t likely to be very much personal camouflage tech among the ones already here.
Except the fact you’re forgetting that that veil covers people BY SPECIES.
which means anyone who ISN’T Alari or the TC rep’s species is fine.
I didn’t say anything about whether or not everyone would be revealed. Rather, they probably don’t have their own personal camouflage since they came to Earth knowing that the Veil would do that for them.
a fair amount of them might’ve regardless anyways. mean, the TC fully admits the Veil isn’t perfect, plus given the Veil recently got damaged, there’d actually probably be a push FOR said camo tech (it’s been roughly two months since said attack).
So.. yeah.
I wonder if Sydney can pull a Baron Munchausen and lift or animate herself with her own lighthook.
Risky ‘cos she needs to drop the shield but potentially useful if she needs the sight… I guess other options would be the Comm ball since her copy can see (I’m presuming she can face it any way she wants) or just use the other orbs to try and push her head around or even lift herself up if she can manoeuvre them REALLY well.
Is Sydney using the orbs by resting them on her hands? If she can’t grip them then using the lighthook or flight orb to mover herself might just cause them to lose contact as she moves and drop herself.
I was actually suggesting she use the other orbs themselves to push her head around or even try and lift her body… no idea what the flight orb would do but it’s a really good idea AND question. I mean, we know it doesn’t impact her gravity because her hair stays where it should but does that indicate it’s all gravity based and would simply orient her body flopping in a certain direction, does it grip some central part of her that her limp body would flop from or does it control her entire body in detail to the extent she could use it to swing her arms harder and faster in a pinch while moving her legs to a better position?
Note that many of those questions might still be questions for Sydney as well … and this is not best time for experimenting.
Who can predict the outcome of this skirmish?!?!?
I predict Krona wins.
I’m guessing Varia jumps in to really finish the opponent off… if she gets close enough to Pixel to become a were-tigress.
Varia doesn’t have a movement ability that we have seen. She’s kind of a specialized mostly combat unit. I’m thinking she went home with the guy who turned her into metal for the night.
Uh, it seems she CAN turn her head – in last weeks strip, she was looking to her right, now Sydney is looking to her left. Also the wig changed to her other side. :)
While some of the ideas for her other balls might work, some would require pressing buttons, which she can’t do currently. Teleport f.e. requires pressing a button iirc.
Should we tell DaveB?
Well, shoot, you’re correct.
….it was aliens! Yeah!
Thank you, was going to comment on that, butt always read the comments first (in case someone else mentioned it first)
The fix is relatively easy. She’s only bass-akwards in the one frame – swap it left to right and fix the text.
… No, she was facing to her right, with the wig on her left, she is now facing to her left, with the wig on the right
Note that she is still holding the MolestOrb in her right hand
Do you just disagree with everything I post? As Dan Akroyd would say, “Guesticus you ignorant slut, read the post.”
Swap it right to left (a mirror image horizontal swap), then fix the text (which would also be mirrored/backwards.)
All that would possibly do, is switch her orientation: the MolestOrb, at the moment, is in her right hand, your suggestion (if it worked) would have it in the left hand
Her head is facing the wrong way, and the wig is on the wrong side of where it was
Her body is in the same position as it was, her head (and the wig) have moved, nothing else has
Please, someone smart and able to use MSPaint, follow Gary‘s directions and prove. me. wrong!
Double dog sweaty balls dare you! Prove. Me. WRONG!
In MSPaint, the command is ROTATE/FLIP HORIZONTAL.
Sydney’s head is now to the left.
Sydney is facing away, consistent with the previously shown orientation.
The wig is behind her, towards us, consistent with the previously shown orientation.
An orb is in her nearest to us hand (left) which might not be consistent with the previously shown orientation but f*ck it, it’s in/on a hand and she can swap them at will.
Also the other orbs are just plain AWOL.
Just went back a couple pages (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-804-the-hero-we-read/) and you are correct, Sydney is on her back with the MolestOrb in her left hand
Actually asked for someone to provide an image of what you are suggesting
I made an image myself, but I can’t think how or where to post it so I can link it here. It looks like what I described – I was looking at it when I described it.
That’s actually the forcefield orb on this page in her right hand. The molestorb was in her right hand 2 pages ago.
Furthermore, the wig is in a different location entirely from what it was originally (was above her head, now it’s behind her head) and the big honkin bag is gone.
Basically DaveB just really fucked up drawing Sydney in this page.
shes awfully well-armed, and as for the vale question I’m guessing since she’s probably some kind of Arachne or some other multi-limbed mythological being the vale has no effect
if she is a mythical being, she’s actually more likely a Gegenees. they’re a race of six-armed beings the Argonauts ran into and fought in Greek mythology (one of their lesser known adventures, but those guys seriously did everything.)
If we are taking name suggestions, I go with ‘Shiva-rachnid’.
Her name I Aranea, thats already established.
What she actually is has not been revealed yet.
Meanwhile it appeared to me that Sydney has a super good handwriting with the lighthook, especially since she can’t see what she wrote. I mean if I tried to write something on paper with my eyes closed, it would probably turn out unreadable. On the other hand, I can imagine a word written in the air just fine and it looks good…
Most likely she can manipulate its shape with her mind. So she just needs to imagine what the writing looks like while engaging the orb.
Where are the other orbs(panel 7)? They were rotating over Sydney head 2 pages back.
Inside her clothes—she will animate herself with them like a creepy puppet.
Who is that new finger waggler?
Beth isn’t new, she has been around since the Council Chamber Collapse
yep, she’s the gal who pulled the Assault rifle out of that book.
And she is High Mage Gault’s apprentice.
We seldom see her do anything actually magic.
After Gault got drained of his mana by the blood golems he told her not to use magic so she pulled out an automatic shotgun from inside that book and went to town.
Wow, Octogal is really quite skilled.
I think maybe “aloof” doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Yeah, I’m not sure what word he’s going for either. The best I can think of is “blithe,” but it doesn’t quite work. Frivolous? Laissez-faire? Nonchalant? Casual? Flippant? Glib? Eccentric? Idiosyncratic? It’s driving me crazy; I know there’s a word.
Sydney is flouting the standard rules of military protocol. Therefore, DaveB using this as a plot point is a floutation device.
Groan…
Another meaning for “aloof” is “separated from”, as in “Holding herself aloof from the fracas.”
Lackadaisical.
buzzed, drunk, inebriated and now drugged, unable to hold anything aloof from anything else.
We already have aliens, supers, and whatever Dabbler is running around in the public eye. Skepticism about the supernatural seems kind of unlikely at this point. But we can’t rely on the public to be rational…
Cyborgs!
Don’t forget Cyborgs.
Cora has cool high tech hard light projecting cyberware.
Correction, we have the Alari and whatever the Council rep’s species are. NOT all aliens. And Dabbler is PART Alien, a fairly large amount of her genetic makeup is still classified.
Also, Cyborgs weren’t by the Veil to being with. We already HAVE them, look at people with pacemakers or artificial limbs.
Maybe this has been asked before, but is there some reason Sydney can’t use the comm ball to appear to them as a hologram-thing (telepresence)? Does she need her fingers to press a virtual button on the orb to do that?
The telepresence orb only projects an image of how she is at the time. Which means it’ll just make an image of her lying there. Again. Because she can’t move. Or talk.
Seriously, everyone who’s asked that needs to actually re-read the pages showing it where it does EXACTLY what Sydney happens to be doing at the time. It’s a Telepresence Orb, not an “Astral Projection” Orb (though that might be a possible upgrade).
The problem with that theory is that if she is doing what she is doing on the other end of the telepresence “rope” she could be fighting air and even could fall off the roof.
I went back and verified that against the first demo. Obviously, when she gets to spend a point on upgrade, that will change.
Thank you for explaining panel seven, thought that was just Sydney thinking butt couldn’t understand the Molestorb tails
All Beth has to do, is drop back down (hopefully catching her grapple line on the way)
Is the reason she is not listed in the Who’s Who because this is her [spoiler]last live appearance?
Why doesn’t Sydney use the hook To turn her head instead of writing it out?
She would have to drop the force field.
Bad idea.
At the current moment, sh is using both, at the same time.
And she can’t use the MolestOrb while she’s inside Mr Buble
Iirc, it can work either inside or outside, but she’d have to drop it to switch.
No, Molestorb cannot work on the inside, or she would have used it on Kevin
Actually I think Dal may be right – during the fight she tried to manifest the lighthook inside the shield, but it popped outside. We have no data on what would happen if the lighthook was already in play and she popped Mr Bubble up around it, but I can’t think of any reason that would shut it down or displace it.
I’m not sure that that incident’s sufficient for proof.
Sure, we have Sydney’s own words on the page, but those are the words of someone speaking to a deadly adversary in the middle of a fight, just before she executes an effective and complex distraction plan that relies on having the subject’s unguarded attention. By pretending that ‘Plan A’ had just been derailed and that she was improvising blind, Sydney turns Vehemence’s attitude from caution at an adversary with an evident plan, to curiosity about the what she would no instead. He already knew that being inside the Shield would protect him against any conventional or aura effects, Sydney’s ‘admission’ reassured him against physical assault, which left his guard down against the actual distraction using Dabbler’s purely perception-based abilities.
We already have evidence that Sydney is willing to keep the full extent of her abilities secret so as not to tip off a potential adversary. That doesn’t just include keeping certain abilities Classified from those outside of ARC, but also her hedges against the purely hypothetical Dark Maxima scenario. It’s a very short step from “don’t tell unknowns everything I can do” to “give adversaries misleading information”, and both involve simply abstaining from using certain aspects of her abilities until she really needs that element of surprise.
EDIT: in second paragraph, sixth line, should read “curiosity about what she would do instead.”
Maybe she did, since she was facing the other way a couple pages back
Everyone seems to be concentrating on Sydney, but don’t forget that Tamatha is both free and very angry at the moment.
And is also a fourteen year old kid with some very irresponsible adult guardians. You’re expecting a bit much from her.
Where was it shown that Tammy was free? o_O
The last we say, Tamatha was trying to free herself. Whether she has doen it by now is not known.
Yes, trying to free herself, we have no idea if her purple scissors were able to cut the butt-rope
Hey guys, What’s goin’ on?
We haven’t seen her free, the scissors had failed to cut the bindings earlier.
Using her power is draining and she hasn’t practiced much with it yet.
She is fourteen. If she did get free the most helpful thing she could do would be to get away and call her mentor.
Failed? I think we saw them before she tried them.
She was still working on it, as we changed views.
Is Pixel going to wind up as the Worf equivalent?
Belay that order Pixel.
“Of course, Archon could easily claim that turning into a giant pink jaguar hybrid is Pixel’s superpower instead of admitting to anything supernatural, but they’ve been careful not to directly deny stuff they plan on talking about later.”
See, that’s where careful word choice comes in.
“Can you explain the giant pink jaguar?”
“That was one of our operatives. She has the ability to transform into…well, a giant pink jaguar.”
“Like a werewolf?”
“I can see why you might think that, but obviously she’s not a werewolf. If I were to draw comparison to anything, I’d say she probably has far more overlap with an Animagus from Harry Potter than she does the Wolfman”
*post-Veil reveal*
“You said she wasn’t supernatural”
“I said she wasn’t a werewolf“
Exactly. Tell the truth, but don’t try to tell the whole truth.
“Governments lie. Get over it.”
So, when is Sidney going to realize, that she can use the lighthook to turn her head?
Lighthook can’t manifest inside the shield.
She already did
“aloofness in the field”? I’ve rarely seen Sydney act aloof, either on the field or off it. What do you mean?
I do not think that word means what he thinks it means. Aloofness describes personal distance.
Sydney does tend to stand off and think about tactics, rather than mix it up. Which is why the team beat Vehemence.
Of course, Max TOLD her to do that.
Claiming that turning into a giant pink jaguar hybrid is Pixel’s superpower isn’t technically a denial… depending on how you phrased it…
After all, it’s not a stretch to say all werewolves are simply humans who have the superpower of having a superstrong wolf form they can turn into…
More importantly, Pixel’s wereform looks more like a superhero thing than a werewolf thing, so it’s better deniability. She IS a mutant, technically. One doesn’t have to specify that the mutant part is only the laser claws and maybe the color.
Would announcing yourself do any good in this situation since THE MIGHTY HALO has made her presence known, and thereby the statement of being a federal agent should be just about the same, but probably not a legal president (sp) yet. And why hasn’t Specs called in to Archon anyway?
He may be doing that while this is going on. This has not been going on for very long, there, probably, has not been time for Archon to respond.
To help you out, it is “precedent”. :-)
Sydney needs to use the telepresence or flight orbs.
Shield always, and Flight to open an aether gate in front of the demon hunter, then fly into it keeping the hunter stuck to but outside the shield. Then another gate while on graveworld to go back home.
By herself.
Neither of which would do a fucking thing because telepresence only shows how she is at the time, and the flight orb would fall off her @#$%ing hand because she can’t grip it due to being paralyzed.
JFC, you guys. Re-read the comic and actually realize how they work.
Missed a great moment for a call back here, Dave. Sydney should have said
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-227-arianna-uses-spin/
“Hey, is something happening? It sounds like something is happening.”
I’m just… Did Aranea NOT hear Maxima’s comment about vigilantes either joining Archon or getting thrown in jail??
Probably just self-delusion and arrogance. “To anyone but me” she thinks. “I’m special! Everyone else gets beaten up or killed because they’re not me.”
Every criminal assumes either the laws don’t apply, or they will not be caught.
Well said, Poet Man.
It would be very possible.
Many people live their lives doing whatever they do and only bits and pieces of the world around them filter in.
And some people don’t watch the Fake News
Some people don’t even have television or radio.
They may live remotely, be poor, work 112 hours a week, or have other activities which take up all of the time which other people fill with electronic media consumption.
Zack Tilly