Grrl Power #824 – Fist of the Sigma Octantis
Okay, a domino mask could protect someone’s identity, but not that centimeter wide “strip of tape” style. I see comics with characters wearing stuff like that, and I think it’s almost as bad as Superman’s disguise.
It can’t be any surprise to Sydney that she’s the featherest-weight puncher on the team.
I’m not sure how the same machine could register Sydney’s love tap but also not vaporize when Maxima punched it. I’m sure there are machines that can register incredible impacts, like stuff used for measuring car crashes, but Maxima can far exceed even that. Maybe a machine that measured impacts by volume of liquid displacement, but it’d have to be a lot more liquid than that little machine in the corner of the gym could have in it.
BTW I know Mantis Shrimps are known for their crazy punching, but they’re like six inches long, so that’s why they register down at the bottom. Maybe I should have used “Puppy” instead.
Instead of animals, my original chart listed sports like Karate, Boxer, but also had specific people on it like “Drago” and “Vegeta” and it seemed like a weird mix. An all fictional character one would have been amusing, but I wasn’t sure what to put down on the lower tiers. There aren’t a lot of characters famous for being weak punchers, though maybe “Aunt May” could have worked, but then who? Pillowhands McGee, who I just made up? I’m not sure if Kenshiro would slot in above a DBZ character or below. In terms of actual joules or footpounds, I guess he’s come in a lot lower than them, but arguably his punches are a jillion times more deadly.
God, if I was a woman named Jillian, my friends would be SO SICK of hearing me say “I’m a Jillian times (adverb/adjective)-er than you.”
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Definitely should have listed puppies. Puppies can lick anybody.
I bet Dabbler built that punching machine. After all it have Demon as second highest result.
You can’t have my tech. But making a machine you won’t be able to reverse-engineer or disassemble to register punches, so it can have Maxima and untrained featherweights on the same output? Sure, that’s fun.
Even still, I’m guessing that the ‘Maxima’ level was with Max not putting her everything into the punch.
It might be basic Maxima strength rather than everything into strength and everything else into flight for the run up.
Nah, it’s pretty easy to measure basically any level of strength if you do it right and Maxima’s Max level seems to be within this level.
Steps:
1. Seek a very remote area
2. Dig a deep nice cozy shelter(or if you’re a coward find the deepest mine you can find).
3. Buy a seismograph
4. Get Maxima in said shelter
5. Go away
6. Install said seismograph on an open surface
7. Let Maxima punch the ground
8. Get readings from said Seismograph.
Now, why I think Maxima doesn’t punch above earth quake level.
That time she punches Vehemence in this part to free herself the dirt thrown upwards was “just” 1.5 Sydney high, the surrounding city survived and even the parking lot mostly held, which means she is around earthquake level strong
It appears to be based on the Punch-o-meter that was used in Dragonball Z in the Tenkaichi Budokai arc. The one Vegeta totally trashed.
Tiger, Dragon, Demon is the classification of Mysterious Being power level in One Punch Man
Yeah? Notice how no one is at the Demon level?
Honestly, considering she doesn’t have the build of natural supers, they shouldn’t even bother teaching her offensive hand to hand. Teach her to dodge and get out of the way, so she can use her orbs or gun.
Regulations, no exemptions!
What if she gets into a fight with a similarly matched opponent? Some random girl who hacks or the like and doesn’t have physical ability. She will need every advantage possible. Always cover all your bases.
She already got in one basically-fistfight during the restaurant rumble. She did cheat by just beating him senseless with the orbs, but they have 100% proof that she can be exposed to straight melee combat.
Why? If she is unable to access her Orbs for any reason and needs to defend herself, what would she do? Curse them out until they run away in embarrassment?
She needs to be able to protect herself and teaching martial arts is the way to do this. We have seen a flashback of her “attempted mugging” to see that she could handle herself, but this would teach her more focus. And, with training, will come stronger hand to hand combat abilities.
” If she is unable to access her Orbs for any reason and needs to defend herself, what would she do? Curse them out until they run away in embarrassment?”
Share her lunch.
Syddles needs to learn “berserker mode” and how to imitate an enraged windmill. Add some upper and lower body strengthening, it is actually an effective defense especially against a single attacker, or a small group of disorganised thugs. (Remembering that against “many” all she needs to do is create a hole to run through…)
THEN she can ask Math for up-training :)
Considering HER cursing, it might work.
There’s a lot of reason to do it. For one, if you know how to fight, you can anticipate how someone else is going to fight you and use that to your advantage. Sydney has the added power of being about incorperate her orbs into a fighting style. While her punch might be a monkey fart in power, we’ve already seen that her hitting someone with the orb has some considerable power to it.
So it’s less ‘here’s a tool set you’re likely to use yourself’ and more ‘here’s how other people are likely to use that toolset’. It’s like any game that involves different characters/classes. Sure, you have your main, but if you really want to do well you should at least play ever other class to understand what they do so you can counter.
Main reason i think people in WoW who think a class sucks or is overpowered are idiots.
Every Expansion i’ve watched every class and talent specialization beat up every other class and talent specialization. As said above, all it takes is knowing what you’re capable, and what they’re capable of.
Not just WoW, every game that has more than one class or talent, and that’s why most of them keep ‘breaking’: idiots keep saying suchandsuch is the best and needs to be nerfed and soandso is the worst and needs a boost (or suchandsuch is best and don’t you dare touch it, and soandso is the worst and no one should ever play it andtheonewhoplayedsoandsolastweekandbeatsuchandsuchcheated!), and then the DEVs try and ‘tweak’ things which just fucks everything else up in new ways
I agree, she should have her own liliput scale evade and escape course, with the rest of the team trying to tag her as she runs through.
Math isn’t a super, he’s just an extremely well skilled fighter. I think that any degree of training would be better than absolutely nothing for somebody who’s out in the field.
There are tons of martial arts that help on dodging. Airbending was based on Ba gua zhang. Focus it on with some decent parry like movement and you can throw people with minimal force.
Sydney may have plenty of other options that can do more damage than hand-to-hand, but that can also be an argument in its favour. Known and visible weapons may be good at what they do, but they’re also a good distraction – an opponent too focused on countering the flying orbs may leave themselves open to a punch.
Has Wreck-It Ralph come out yet in this universe? What would be funny is if Mantis Shrimp was taken off, bunny slid up one, and “Fix-It Felix’s Hammer” was the level Sydney reached.
I don’t get the reference so that’d not work for a comic. Not all references need to be relatable but they do need to be relevant enough when related to the plot.
the Ref is the fact that Fix-It Felix’s hammer actually HEALS things when he hits stuff with it… which isn’t very helpful when he tries to break out of a prison cell XD
Its a Disney animated film.
Probability is enough people would get the reference. Nothing is universal, but Disney is pretty close.
Background:
Fix-It Felix is a video game character in the film Wreck-It Ralph. His magic hammer can restore anything that’s damage. His tag line is “I can fix it!” while Ralph’s is “I’m gonna wreck it!”
Scene:
Felix is jailed in a different game. He manages to bend a bar. Whispered “what does he say, what does he say…” Pulls out his hammer, flexes like Ralph: “I’m gonna wreck it,” then hits the bad bar with his hammer. Video game blip effects, the bar is fixed and every bar is doubled in width. “Why do I fix everything I touch?!”
Hey, the Clark Kent disguise is more effective (and has more to it) than you think. Plenty of people have proven that just a pair of glasses can fool the average observer. Plus, as several other Justice Leaguers have discussed about Superman, he also slouches/compresses his spine to appear shorter, wears clothing two sizes too big and raises his voice an octave while going around as Clark. Other minor stuff like his hair also can add to the effect.
The personality he displays as Clark comes into it a lot too- there has been instances of people seeing him without glasses and commenting on him looking “a lot like Superman” but assuming it couldn’t be him because he’s too much of a coward / pacifist / etc.
There’s the personality of the viewer, too. At one point while Lex Luthor was President, he had a flunky in the NSA do extensive research on Superman — flight patterns, sonic booms, response times, etc. Also had him run facial recognition, and a slew of other things. Nothing like using presidential powers to pursue a vendetta against your personal enemies.
The NSA dude comes back with a huge dossier backing up his conclusion that Superman’s most common points of origin other than the Justice League’s facilities are the Daily Planet and the building Clark Kent lives in, and that the best facial recognition match (to a 90+% certainty) was Clark Kent. Luthor refused to accept the idea that someone with godlike power would lower himself to work as a reporter, even as a disguise. After all, if Luthor had that power, he’d use to lord over everyone and terrify or eliminate any opposition, so of course, Superman would, too . . . right?
That’s what makes Lois Lane the real threat to his secret identity: she’s around Clark often enough to see through the veneer, and his drive to compete with her as a reporter (even given that she doesn’t know he’s gone so far as to kind of cheat when he scoops her on Superman stories) shows he’s not the timid milquetoast he puts forward as part of his disguise. She’s often depicted as strongly suspecting he might be Superman, but never able to actually prove it. After all, she’s ranged from being a fierce local investigative reporter/muckraker to a world-acclaimed investigative journalist — if she never suspected, it’d be completely implausible, but not pushing the issue when she can’t out-and-out prove it is in character, too.
yeah people always give Superman slag for his disguise but considering you and Magraal said, add in changes to hair, the fact as Superman he is usually moving fast and hovering above people (change in perspective), and the later addition of changing his voice its actually not that bad of a disguise, people would have to know him personally; likely even fooling co-workers with little problem. Hell, I’ve not recognized co-workers out of uniform before because the uniform changed their outline, has a hat, and their hair was tied back or tucked away while in uniform.
So really the people who figure out he is Superman are the ones who make sense to, the people around him the most.
However the 1980’s He-man has no excuses, all he does is change his voice and get a slight tan. He also had no reason to even have a secret identity…not put loved one’s in danger? He and his family are high profile targets to begin with, the secret identity bit was more a liability at times than an asset as he had to sneak away or his alter ego was deemed untrustworthy because of that so not brought along on crucial missions having to catch up later as He-man when the inevitable attack happened. Add in everyone had crystal balls and scrying pools watching each other and the fact he was never caught made no sense (why I give high praise for that being how Adora was discovered by Shadow Weaver in the Netflix She-ra; and discarding the secret identity thing completely).
For He-Man, I refer you to this excellent twitter thread on why his secret identity holds up: https://twitter.com/alexandraerin/status/1057346901203410944
It was still a liability and not an asset. Not changing in battle right when needed, making his alter-ego look like an untrustworthy coward to the very people he needed to be around to protect and was around all the time otherwise. Really, I am going back and marathoning this show and stuff like that is sticking out…also how sadly quickly the Sorceress suffered the Warf effect; but that’s something else.
He had a secret identity only because that’s what was expected of super-heroes at the time the show was made. Even in-universe when brought up it came across as a bad excuse; especially as they were often kidnapped anyway and Prince Adam told to tell He-man if he wants them back to show up…defeating the entire point of “if anyone finds out your family and friends will be in danger”…again, high profile targets in a war/evil terrorists situation anyway.
Dc got fed up with all the flack they got for Supes glasses trick, back in the 70s, So one of the writers gave him a pair of “magic” glasses that use a psionic wave to cause anyone looking at him to see someone else.
So Clark looks like Keanu Reeves to Lois, and Patric Stuart to Jimmy, Morgan Freeman to Lex Luthor, and so on. As long as he answers to Clark Kent, no one questions how he looks because no one cares.
If he describes himself the glasses alter their perception and memory’s, so they think he has always looked that way even if he used to look totally different to them before his description.
.
Now I am not a big DC fan and this is way more information on a hero I don’t care about then I ever wanted. and it is just scratching the surface of my useless knowledge. My point is I could be wrong on how they work but they are a thing in the DCU that blue boy uses.
No, that sounds about right
Read something somewhere how every looks like about a dozen (or more) different ways depending on how others (including yourself) see you: one persona could see you as tall and muscular while the person next to them could view you as short and skinny, and they would both be correct based on their perceptions (the first one could be shorter and a couch potato while the other one could be taller and be a professional boxer)
One of the BEST things about the original Superman movies was how well Christopher Reeve sold this idea. Basically, as long as you could accept that Superman was as good at acting as Christopher Reeve, you could believe that nobody would guess they were the same guy.
That moment in Lois Lane’s apartment when he takes the glasses off and straightens, and he’s just suddenly Superman… and then the moment passes and he puts the glasses back on, and just… shrinks back into being Clark Kent again. Christopher Reeve was fantastic in that role.
I’m assuming you’re talking about baby bunnies. Adult rabbits actually have a pretty nasty punch (and we won’t talk about what happens when their hind legs get involved).
Aw, now I’m sad that Ivan Drago isn’t on the scale. Between “Bear” and “Bull”, maybe.
Seems she doesn’t know the application of those principles very well…
Was it the bunny rating that gave it away, or her throwing a roundhouse at a flat surface?
Both? i mean, she probably assumed that that was simply the strongest way to throw a punch, and never really paid what little attention she has to the target.
I mean, she has been shown to be a fair bit stronger than her build would suggest, but… she’s being compared to, at the very least, highly trained veterans.
Lifting strength is not the same as punching force
For me, the left arm can lift quite a bit (as can the right), it just can’t land a punch if it tried. There’s just something wrong with the musculature (or ligaments or whatever) that prevents that arm from throwing a punch or anything else. It has full range of motion, just lacks the ability to throw
Well, there’s your problem right there. You’re thinking about the arms, and not the rest of your body. Your punching power should come from your lower body. A few good visualization exercises to try:
One, think of pushing a car up a hill. Driving off your legs, pushing, using all your power and with your arms simply channeling the power from your legs and torso.
Two, try hitting the target (heavy bag or whatever) with your shoulders. Sink your weight into the blow, focusing on good footwork, and SLAM that target with your shoulder. Then try doing it with your elbow – the same movement, only with your bent arm extended so that you hit with the elbow. THEN try doing it with your fist… and feel how the power is coming from the strength of your legs and torso, and the mass of your body being driven into the blow.
Three, go on youtube and check out videos on the subject… trust me, it’s not your arm musculature. It’s the hips and legs.
No, can lift and do most other things with the left arm, throwing and punching is literally not possible
It’s not about not having any power behind it, it can not perform that motion at all, not even using visualizationing
Picture in your head, throwing a ball, you can see that clearly with either arm, right?
Not for me with the left. Can do that with the right only, not even ‘mentally flipping’ the action will allow the left to do it
Which is really odd seeing how it’s the right shoulder that always feels like it will self-dislocate every time yawn ‘wrong’
The point of thin domino masks and such- glasses too- is basically just to throw off the brain’s automatic recognition protocols, especially as encounters rarely involved people carefully analyzing someone’s face.
Minor stuff works much better than one might expect. Though of course it won’t work long term or if there’s video/pictures for actual comparison.
I did love the line Carol Ferris had in the Green Lantern movie, though: “I’ve known you my whole life! I’ve seen you naked! You don’t think I would recognize you, because I can’t see your cheekbones?” (To be fair, the rest of his outfit was a skintight sheath made of solidified willpower, so seeing him naked would be a decent reference point.)
The problem is, if the mask is too thin it might as well not even be there, and it might actually do the opposite by drawing the attention so the observer looks closer to see why they are wearing a thing strip of tape around their eyes
Oddly enough, the most recognisable parts of the face are everything below the eyes, plus the hairline. That’s why all the best “good vs evil” films have the bad guys wearing a hat with a kerchief covering the nose and jawline. When these people are bovvering you, you’ll never remember the eye colour/s.
I know you’ve explained why Mantis Shrimp is so low on the scale, but one of those little critters has a punch that registers as 1500 newtons (One newton is the force needed to accelerate one kilogram of mass at the rate of one metre per second squared in the direction of the applied force), so a mantis shrimp punch is equal to the force required to accelerate 1.5 TONS a metre in a second per second.
A bull hits at about 4 tons.
“Let me explain why you’re correct in a deceptive manner so it seems like I’m contradicting you.”
-AlyxVixen
“Let me inaccurately represent what you said in quotes and attribute it to you, so it has a false equivalence with what you actually said.”
— Denied
Wanted to mention this too, they punch crazy hard with the energy of about a bullet (yep, 1500 N). They are tiny though – a pro boxer hits at about 5000 N, and some martial artists can kick at 9000 N.
It’s probably about in the right place though – everything above it just has a ton more mass to put behind a hit.
You can tell who which marine zoologists are working with mantis shrimp. They are the ones with all the little bruises on their hands and forearms. Mantis shrimp have the fastest hit in the animal kingdom, but the can’t put much mass behind it, so on something as large as humans, it causes only minor damage. Given a chance to fight, it is enough to dissuade their major predators too.
You can see similar injuries on marine zoologists who work with pistol shrimp for similar reasons, but they are getting hit with cavitation bubbles instead, with sound pressures of over 200 dB. The pistol shrimp is so named because it shoots bubbles of vacuum at their prey and potential predictors, but because they and their bubbles are so small, the level of injury on humans is minor.
The machine would survive the same way that the ambulance stayed intact when Maxima lifted it. She’d just extend her “field” around it.
Jabberwokky has been my favourite character since the vote incentive. I like seeing more of her!
What? I want to see that. Too bad I’m terrible about uploading old incentives to DeviantArt. I need to find a weekend to do that.
Seriously though, I don’t recall a Jabber incentive.
I believe she was at the bar with the other female heroes/supers
check your FB messenger for the GP comic page. I sent it to you there.
There was, showing her with a black eye, file name “jabber01.jpg”
It was either an invotive or you added it as linkage like the MixedMartianArtist image last page, round about fourth of July last year
I don’t know how to send you the file but I had her as my phone background for a while. Is the one with a black eye.
I wonder where a orb strike or a light hook punch would end up..
“Sigma Octantis”. Hee.
Can you (or DaveB) explain this?
I know Sigma Octantis is the formal name for the Southern Pole Star – the opposite of Polaris. What’s that got to do with punching?
Or is there some other nerd reference?
Fist of the South Star, the opposite of Fist of the North Star?
Ladies, Gentlemen, and/or Neither! We have ourselves a winner!
Right, so it’s a nerd reference.
Obviously, it’s one for pretentious nerds who don’t like explaining things. I guess it makes them feel important.
Sorry I just now checked to see if there were any comments but someone had beat me to the explanation. If you don’t like Easter eggs maybe this is not the comic for you.
You do realise this is not an Easter Egg? It’s a nerd (or geek) reference which is a different thing.
Read the famous blog Five Geek Social Fallacies. I think it dates back to 2003, although it’s been reblogged and quoted frequently.
A relevant quote from it is – “I don’t know that RPGs and comics would be more popular if there were fewer trolls who smell of cheese hassling the new blood, but I’m sure it couldn’t hurt.”
No one is being a gate keeper about it. But you are being defensive about it and insulting “oh its a nerd reference” which makes no one want to help you.
it goes both ways.
PS: Not victim blaming, already had this annoying conversation over at EGS recently with the Diane talk about defining nerd and the use of labels. Which I suggest checking out as it applies here.
Gate keepers are assholes, but it doesn’t help you either to lash out at anyone who explains something like you think its below you to have gotten it.
I think this is unreasonable. Sigma Octantis is a scientific term for a well-known star, and I was curious to know how the term was being used. If it does not mean a star, then it is an obscure reference to something known to a smaller group of people – obviously players of a particular game.
I asked a question, which the majority of people here can’t answer. I got no proper response.
That’s insulting. If you know the answer, you are choosing to put yourself into the “nerd reference” group by refusing to answer. It’s the kind of thing which drives people away from comics like this, as they find it an unfriendly space – for some it looks like an unsafe space.
That’s what the quote from Five Geek Social Fallacies is pointing to. It’s how you drive away people from your favourite game or comic.
And the author of FGSF was right. It’s a form of trolling, whatever euphemism you like to apply to it.
Okay, yomikoma was being insulting to you. I see that.
but the person going by the name “Perhaps” wasn’t.
the thing is, while maybe its become less known to younger generations; don’t know your demographic. Fist of the North Star was an anime, the forerunner to most modern fighting anime that a lot of those reference and take inspiration from.
It falls into the same vein of genre precursors like (Ghost in the Shell), (Akira), (Yu Yu Hakusho), (Slayers), (Tenchi Muyo), and (Ranma 1/2) among others.
A lot of older people know it because it was one of the big surprisingly violent and mature anime sold as part of the big early cult following anime essential collections along side (Akira), (Ghost in the Shell), (Demon City Shinjuku), (Vampire Hunter D) and (3X3 Eyes).
Basically, Fist of the North Star
is what more or less…like MORE, inspired anime like
Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventure, much like how Ranma 1/2 inspired so many harem anime,
Sydney needs to use her orbs to hit the machine at full force on the next page. Possibly as an excuse why she doesn’t need to learn to punch, since she effectively has seven “Fists” with more reach and force than her own puny real fists.
No. No excuses. crawl before walk before run.
Learn to fall.
learn to punch. learn to parry. learn to sidestep. learn to do all three.
Learn to dodge. learn to jump. learn to kick. learn to do all three.
Learn to parry. then disarm. then grapple/takedown (job specific)
THEN take what you learned and figure out how to use orbs (multiple melee capable multi-tools that cant be disarmed (unless syd’s arms are actually removed) from their person) as perhaps the ultimate force multiplier (even without power use) for Hand2Hand shenanigans.
Actually, she could probably still manipulate the orbs if her arms were removed…she just couldn’t use their normal abilities.
She would then have to figure out how to pass the orbs to someone else unless Dabbler could clone her some new arms.
Looks like American Dad beat you to it.
https://americandad.fandom.com/wiki/Pillow_Hands_McGraw
Hah hah, I wonder if that’s just a coincidence or cryptomnesia.
A long time ago when making a Super Hero team called “The Rejects” I also made a guy called “Pillow Fists” he inflated his fists up but they became like soft nerf material and he also had regular out of shape human strength so he couldn’t really do damage with them; but they were bullet proof so could be used as a shield so not completely useless.
and I was thinking I had lost his character sheet, but, it seems it was one of the ones two years ago I managed to recover from an old flash drive and put on Deviant art for safe keeping.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Super-Hero-Pillow-Fist-723412652
The Aquarian in Marvel comics had something similar going on: he had an energy-nullifying/absorbing field that negated every force over a certain limit. He could expand and retract the field somewhat, but he couldn’t shut it off. He couldn’t move faster than a brisk walk, and couldn’t throw a punch, because that level of acceleration wouldn’t work inside the field, and he himself was always inside the field. He could grapple just about anyone, assuming he got close enough, though, because no one’s superhuman strength worked inside the field (including his — he originally had superhuman powers based on solar energy fueling his strength (he was sort of “what would Superman be like if he was raised by the ship’s computer and emerged as an adult”). The maximum amount of force anyone could apply was exactly equal, assuming they could reach that really low level. He couldn’t be hurt by a fall, either, since his maximum acceleration was way below terminal velocity — he could fall from orbit and never go faster than a brisk walk the whole trip down.
this would be what season 2 or 3 Steven Universe equivalent?
I can guess the Punch-o-matic would use a force field fronted with a hard-light hologram target, measuring the drain on the force field per punch. -Maybe with a piece of Chobham armor in the back in case the field fails? Most of the punch’s force would (hopefully) be dissipated by the time it contacts the metal.
This is excellent superhero physics engineering thinking!
Looks like Sydney might be useless as a fighter…or I could be wrong!?
Hence the reason for her training, even Rocky had to start from the bottom (ever heard how his first attempt at baking turned out? the village is still abandoned :P )
You really don’t want to strike with your knuckles. The bones in the hand are very small and fragile. That’s what a boxer’s fracture is: when you punch with your knuckles too hard and one of them splits down the middle.
Strike with the heel of your palm. It’s got a big, long forearm bone and cushioning to protect you.
Actually the rule of fist is: Hard onto soft, soft onto hard.
The second half of the rule is what the boxing glove delivers to the pugilist, and is the basic priniple of many fighting schools like Jiu-jutsu and Aikido.
The first half is usually emplyed by experienced practioners, as for example, a fist of some description to the throat, or a foot to the groin.
I wouldn’t want to use the heel of my hand to a jaw-bone (as this is an upwards or horizontal strike) for the risk of breaking the distal ends of my radius or ulna. However, the front base of the nose is a very good target.
“Understanding the principles behind…”
Unless, of course, you’re just having a hard time understanding the principals talking behind a punch, because, let’s be honest, it’s hard to pay attention or understand anything when you’re about to eat a knuckle sandwich.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/principal
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/principle
I’m actually impressed by how well you show how bad Sydney’s punching form is. Panel 7 makes it pretty clear that while she might know martial arts movie theory, in practice she has no CLUE what she’s doing.
If she punches like that she’s going to have all the kick of a day old bunny.
I was the TA for a self defense course in college, and I had to deal with a 6 foot 5, muscle bound jock who thought that was how to punch properly. He was sparring with his 5 foot 2 girlfriend, who was having some small difficulty trying to parry his incredibly weak and slow punches… although to be honest, I think she was just trying to shield his fragile male ego. He was trying to punch just like Sydney is in panel 7 (ie, huge telegraphed circular swings with no power), and couldn’t understand why I was telling him he was doing it wrong. It was “working” ie, his tiny girlfriend who had just as much training as him couldn’t ‘quite’ stop his punches, so obviously he was doing it right, so why was I telling him to do it differently?
So the instructor told me to demonstrate the proper form. I walked up to him, and let him swing at me, casually swatted his arm aside with the back of my left wrist and threw six jabs into his center mass before he could recover. I pulled them, naturally, but he got the point almost immediately, and started taking our instruction seriously.
His girlfriend still learned how to punch properly first, but at least he did learn it.
She had the advantage of not having to unlearn “stupid fu”
Just so long as DaveB realizes female physiology requires a different stance for proper punching than male physiology.
I highly recommend everyone pick up a copy of Tobi Beck’s “The Armored Rose” for understanding the literal physiological differences in how hips and thighbones socket together, centers of gravity/mass, and especially how the male vs female hand makes a fist & punches without breaking the bones in the hand. Guys need to punch with the first two knuckles or they’ll hurt their hands. Gals, however, need to punch with the pinky & ring finger knuckles, or we’ll break our hands. (I nearly failed karate class because the teacher insisted I was “punching wrong” because he wanted me to do it in the way a guy does it, and that style was literally microfracturing the bones in my hands.)
Seriously, get a copy of “The Armored Rose” by Tobi Beck. She’s got great photographs illustrating all the differences, plus flip-book photos in certain sections to help demonstrate proper sword combat techniques for female physiology.
(It’s not meant to be a gender-segregation or stereotypical-gender-roles thing, here; this book is simply great for anyone with physiology which leans more typical female than male–your gender is one thing, but how your femur sockets into your pelvic bone is another, and can seriously either give freedom to the power in your punches, or rob you of half their impact before your fist even reaches your target. Know the difference and train appropriately for your physiology!)
(Okay, so it IS stereotypical-female in that it addresses a lot of the psychological difficulties of females wanting to fight, including going up against a lifetime of cultural bs saying we can’t, we shouldn’t, we’re bad if we even so much as try…but the physiology parts are vital to grasp for artists to depict when doing a montage displaying proper fighting forms. For male martial artists, this might look like “You’re teaching them advanced techniques first, not the basics??” because, yeah, some of those “advanced (for men)” techniques are *easier* for women than men…and it’s the “basics for men” that are physically more difficult for women to master, because physiology gets in the way–seriously, the whole thighbone-in-hip-socket thing is a huge part of it, I ain’t kidding about that being a major concern.)
One: I’m impressed; and
Two: Thank you.
There may be some interest in https://www.reddit.com/r/armoredwomen/, a subreddit fcused on realistic women’s armor. A mix of artwork and real-world pieces, with discussions on effective design and ergonomics.
I would think Maxima on a punching machine would be like Vegeta of DBZ was….just punch the entire machine into the next state….
It just occurred to me that Sydney has the same basic hairstyle as All Might.
“Amoeba SMAAAAAAAASH!!!!”
and now I’m imagining a t-shirt with Porky Pig on it in glasses, and the phrase: amoeba amoeba amoeba…that’s science folks
It may not be popular in the p.c. world, but yeah Syd, mass matters. 210lb MMA dude against 180lb mma dude (all other factors being equal) will win. Same 210lb dude against a 147lb woman, not a contest. I would be interested in Maxima’s mass. I’m guessing it’s higher than anyone else on the team, unless Stalwart is using his power.
The important note there is all other factors being equal. Most of the time that will not be true. And if you know how to fight someone of a higher weight class you can actually exploit a lot of the weaknesses in the different fighting styles.
Mass still matters, even in weightlessness
Size Does Matter
Sure, but put up any of them against a five pound skragan eviscera squirrel…
Wow, Jabber’s domino mask disguise in the flashback is Clark Kent level.
It feels weird not having the demon member of the team in the demon part of the scale.
I would very much like to know who each of those notches in the machine are for.
Math is actually the Mantis Shrimp. He’s so good at finesse, nobody’s realized that his raw force is amazingly low. I THINK I’m kidding.
Dude shoved a rock person a few dozen feet through a brick wall. You’re VERY kidding.
that’s easier to do than you think if you can apply enough inertia and get them frictionless (off the ground) then its a matter of weight, inertia, and their resistance vs the resistance of the wall. Its not like he picked the person up and threw them or pushed them despite being planted into the asphalt.
Manyis shrimp cause a small explosion of heat when punching. They crack shells rather easily. Also its not something a magic spell couldnt disperse the punch.
I suspect the “Maxima” score isn’t to indicate someone is as strong as her, but rather you’ve pegged the machine and now Maxima is going to “test” you…
Mantis Shrimp may be small, but but even their little love taps can and does shatter normal aquariums, and even some of the really tough ones that marine biologists have for studying various specimens have been busted by those little power punchers! (Their strike causes a flash of light and a vacuum bubble for physics sake!)
Actual heavy-weight force gauges actually use solid pieces of metal to measure the force.
It’s basically a block of a conductive material of your choice, with a slit cut into it the length of the pushy place (where the load is going to go). ANY flexion in the material, even if you can’t see it, will change how the conductivity of the chunk works, and that can be measured. You can get incredibly precise measurements with that, and they’re pretty darn durable, because they’re just single chunks of metal.
Load Cells, I think they’re called.
But yeah, you could use one of those pretty well.
Maybe someone has said it already but handguns are also roughly 6 inches long?
Mantis Shrimp pack the punch of bullets, dude! Doesn’t matter their size, they will put a hole in you! It should be at least above Mustang. No other animal is going to hit you as hard relative to its weight class.
The chart isn’t relative to weight class though.
DaveB, the Mantis Shrimp rating HAS to be moved up next to Dragon rating.
Do not be fooled by the size of the mantis shrimp. They are DEADLY punchers. They literally punch as hard as a .22 caliber pistol. Most aquariums cannot afford to buy tanks that are built thick enough to prevent those bastards from punch-cracking the glass. They are WAY more dangerous than wolves, bears, bulls, and tigers…strictly when it comes to punching.
For all else, yeah, they’re slightly above kittens, but NOT when it comes to punching, and that’s clearly a Punch-O-Meter.
Simple way to build something like that would be a telescoping system with different springs, each with their own sensor, essentially creating a piecewise resistance function.
There is The Sloth’s Sin of Laziness King or, Harlequin who is a weak puncher.
Good. Now register the ‘homerun’ eunuch clacker while you’re there.
Don’t feel bad, Sydney. You got the upper end of the bunny field.
Kenshiro doesn’t really punch hard often. He’s moving his arms pretty darn fast, yes, but he just pokes your chi meridian pressure point things in the right order and your body is forced to make itself explode. Hokuto Shinken is the art of the Konami Code.
Rabbits actually have a pretty good kick…
See where-hare as an example.
Cat Burglar Nami has a weak punch. That’s why she uses climate.
or a similar name…
Navi the fairy from Zelda. That’s a very weak punch.
But I’m wondering why Dabbler, who would have one of those purple arrows, isn’t ranked Demon.