Grrl Power #854 – Crazy (clinically manic) climber
Based on some of the comments, I think some people would have liked to have seen at least one more poker page in order to determine if Sydney is actually good at poker or if she’s a disaster. I kind of like leaving it ambiguous, but I think it’s fair to say that her skill at the game is “capricious.”
People in cubicles don’t generally get sprayed with water 4 stories off the ground. But they sometimes have to use Excel, so it’s a wash. Excel, BTW, isn’t so bad by itself. The problem with Excel, is that you eventually have to use Excel files made by other people. Other people and their VLOOKUPs that used to work three versions ago, but something broke and now they do all that stuff by hand and I just killed myself thinking about it.
Note that Jabber and Sydney don’t have safety lines, because, well, Jabber’s a super, and a lot of things have to go wrong for her to get hurt on that climbing tower. Sydney obviously has the Fly Ball. It’s not like she couldn’t slip and crack her jaw on a grip below her and knock herself out, but there’s water at the bottom of the tower. Yes, she might wang herself on one of those pipes sticking out of the wall as well. She really probably should have a safety line.
This is the beginner side, BTW. All of those hand grips are pretty meaty. I’ve only tried rock wall climbing a few times, but some of the grips the have on the advanced walls don’t even look like grips. They’re like lumps on the wall you have use walnut crushing grip strength on, or a little lip you have to stick two fingertips under, then use near superhuman hook powers to hold yourself in place for a half a second while you grab another ledge the thickness of a magazine. And not a beefy magazine, either like Vogue back in its heyday. More like an issue of “Extremely Thin Magazine Aficionado.”
Jabber, BTW, is using Squirrel-Monkey Fu on this page. Her power is more about what she thinks a martial arts style should be rather than what it actually is or if it even exists. In a way, she’s a little like Maxima. In that Max has a power pool she can draw from, Jabber has a pool of powers she can grab and use so long as she can justify them under some sort of loose theme. She isn’t consciously aware of a list of powers she uses, it’s all instinctual.
Someone needs to sit her down and get her to play a Dragon Ball Z video game.
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well, to be honest, i cant do wall climbing even if my life depends on it, my arm strength is way too weak
My problem is the weight part of the power-to-weight-ratio.
And I have a fear of heights.
Same but on the beginner walls I’m never lifting with my arms, those are just to hold myself close to the wall, my legs do all the work.
On the more advanced walls there are spots were you need to pull yourself up with your arms and that I can’t do, just too much weight.
Same, I’m just not built for rock climbing no matter how much I tone my arms or work on staying tucked in and using my legs. Not that I’m in prime shape any more, but my climber friends are all wiry and top out at 150 lbs, aside from one 6’4″ guy that’s 170-ish. I’m built more for football and wrestling; even when I turned 20 and was in my college sports prime I was over 220 lb*. That extra 50-75 lb is just too much for dangling from one’s fingertips for hours, and my big paws just don’t fit on the tiny finger grips either.
*As an aside, BMI calcs are a population metric and not a good measure of individual health. They’re total BS for us big-boned folks. Even with my >90th-percentile height and a single-digit body fat percentage, I fell in the ‘morbidly obese’ range as a state-level athlete. Makes it fun finding health/life insurance, any companies that don’t look at blood work and other metrics won’t even talk to me.
Sing the BMI woes, brother- I come out at obese, and while I could stand to lose a few pounds, I used to have leg day every day I went to work. I freaking have the thighs of an off-season body builder.
I got just so many carts at a time the first grocery store I worked at- like half or more of the store’s total stock at times- 20+ shopping carts. That much metal is HEAVY.
The only good use the thing has these days is diagnosing Anorexia, because anything that can call an actual body builder morbidly obese is effing bullshit.
Yeah, I don’t know how true it is, but: a story i heard when i was in the Navy, was that waaayyy back when they were doing up the charts for the first time, they supposedly went to some town in Maine or some place like that, that has a stereotypical tall and skinny population (and mostly white folks as well) and took neck, waist, height, and weight measurements for the WHOLE TOWN and based their BMI charts for EVERYBODY EVERYWHERE off of that ONE skinny-as-frell town…. thus, even back then, the results were skewed towards skinny lightweight people and not the average that actually existed back then… i DO realize that with the ever-expanding waistline of today’s population that we’re all going to end up on the morbidly obese side of the chart no matter what if that is ALL they go by, but i also agree the charts need updating as well.
BMI as a quadratic formula breaks down with people too far into the outer ranges of height. It also doesn’t concern it self at all with body types. Even with the same body fat and relative musculature some people are just a lot wider then others and will be heavier.
In high school I was 120 lbs at 5’7″ but my wide hips put me in size 10-12 jeans, jeans for “large” girls. You could see my ribcage for chrissake, but cuz I’m just a wide person… Course, than I went and hurt myself doing sports and crap and I’m definitely overweight, my knees and hips are both shot so exercising sucks now. I’d kill to go hiking again if my knee didn’t randomly give out on me.
I think that skinny town sounds like an urban myth.
The reality is that “normal” weight is no longer normal for modern Americans. if you observe them in real life, most are too heavy for good health. A high proportion are obese.
Because they are surrounded by heavy people, they no longer have a clear basis for comparison. They accept the new norm as correct.
The life expectancy of ordinary US citizens is starting to go down. There are several reasons for it, such as lack of access to medical treatment. But one factor is the unhealthy level of weight, due to bad food and poor eating habits
Well, I’m honestly obese at this point, but the truth is, neither me nor my brother had “good” BMIs even when we were in college. And he was on the football team, and I was doing gymnastics. Neither of us have “waists”, we were built like tanks even when we weren’t fat.
That story sounds apocryphal, but it is true that people with body builder type physiques fall out of the system and that the military, which is not known for it’s capacity to handle outliers, has a hard time not punishing those people for supposedly being too fat. Body builders are gigged for being outside the system as too fat, when the opposite it the truth: They have very little body fat.
According to my family doctor, surplus muscle is nearly as dangerous as surplus fat.
She says the life expectancy of body builders is far less than the life expectancy of people who exercise for simple fitness. In effect, she says muscle bulk for its own sake is unhealthy.
In part, this is because many people take growth substances to boost muscle and weight. In other words, you’re competing with people who are drugging themselves big. It’s also because the body can be strained, trying to maintain an unnaural musclature.
If she’s right, BMI is less crazy than you think in relation to muscley people – it may be a warning of an abused body.
NOTE – I stress that many body builders are very healthy people. But this is not true of the group generally, according to my doctor.
Body Builders, during competition, are the unhealthiest and weakest they could possibly be
Conversely, Weight Trainers (Worlds Strongest Wo/Man) are actually far healthier, even though they look triple the size
The Worlds Weakest Strongman could powerlift Mr Universe, before snapping him in half
Training for muscle definition is much different than raw strength training, though I think the comparisions here are a bit superlative.
As for excess muscle, yes bulking up like crazy is also unhealthy, but people with a heavier natural build and even a moderate amount of lean muscle can still have a very high BMI. I’m not an athlete anymore, but I’m fairly trim still even though BMI says I’d have to lose 50+ lbs to get down to the “normal” range. I haven’t weighed that much since I was 17 and still 2″ from my full height, and exercising more actually just increases my weight now as I tone/build up muscle again. Barring a leg amputation or major extended illness, I’ll never be anywhere close to that ‘average healthy’ number, yet still have fine health by all other clinical measures.
BMI is just not a good tool on the individual level, as researchers have confirmed, over and over again, it’s just a convenient starting point for statistical purposes.
I’m with you there. Even if I got in peak shape, that shape would be able to dig a pathway through the mountain faster than it could climb it.
It’s leg strength.
What happens if jabber watches one-punch man….
You’ll probably learn better habits in that case. Most of the muscle work if you’re skillful should be done by your legs. The main requirement for arm strength is grip strength; most of the time if you’re doing it right your arms should be used as anchors, not the driving force. But people with a lot of upper body strength often learn bad habits early on, and come to depend on their arms too much to pull themselves up the wall, when they should be learning foot technique.
Apologies, that was meant for the post above yours.
if you can everything with your arms it doesn’t matter.
Probably nothing. Saitama doesn’t claim what he’s doing is martial arts. And when he’s training Genos, he doesn’t talk about anything I’d associate with martial arts – more like Grade School athletics. Now there are several martial artists in the comic (Garo / Garou being the one with the most page count, I think)… but you’re risking exposing her to some really STRANGE combat styles (like the convict whose name escapes me right now – he generally winds up fighting naked or only wearing a ball and chain).
I think I’d start her off on Kengan Ashura first. Just to see if non-animal based super martial arts worked AT ALL…
She also might explode if she went for Spirit Bomb or some other techniques – not sure even a super HUMAN could stand the stresses involved. After all, a Saiyan 7-year-old is way more durable than humans who’ve practiced martial arts for decades.
Puri Puri Prisoner.
Blast has a few pages, too.
What about playing Street Fighter?
Blanka, Dhalsim, E. Honda, Chun Li. There’s probably something there.
Just don’t let her play Kirby’s Dreamland.
Or Darkness.
Definitely let her play Overlord 2: Raising Hell.
Demand she watches Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, especially before training alongside Sydney.
Probably better to have her watch a bunch of old cheesy martial-arts flics, like “Buddha’s Palm” and “Tiger vs. Crane”. I mean, most real-world martial arts that are named after animals are only loosely themed anyways. Jabber’s just short-cutting a couple centuries of tradition is all.
Crusader Style worked just fine.
I doubt watching OPM would do much. Her max power is still probably capped, even if what kind of abilities she can access is varied. She might pick up some shockwave punch and after-image techniques, but her damage potential wouldn’t increase significantly.
DO YOU SEE MY NAME
This is BLASPHEMY
Not having a safety line is a VERY big no-no when climbing, unless it’s bouldering and that is with a very thick matress to fall on and not climbing very high.
You can get very, very seriously injured in this setup: pipes sticking out that you can hit (bruises, breaking bones, concussion, …), maybe even get a limb stuck behind (dislocation, …).
Even with ropes accidents happen if you’re not careful (as I have experienced myself).
As I climber not seeing them on a line is disturbing.
I was thinking the same.
Even if Sydney can fly… well, a thing I thought from since the comic started, a weakness of Sidney is that she must grab the orbs. What if she go for one and it slip because it is wet?
An easy way to neutralize Halo would be to spray the orbs (or her hands) with WD40 (or the less effective alternative of superglue that would stop her from swapping orbs.) before he can raise her shield.
The orbs are telekineticaly controlled. It’d be really hard for it to slip out of her grasp.
I don’t think the orbs can slip out of Sydney’s hands. She can control their orbit mentally to the extent that she’s actually hit people with them as hard as a decent punch with willpower alone. So long as Sydney can open her hand at all, she can probably direct the fly orb into it. She’s used her orbs while completely paralyzed even, and fairly recently at that.
All that said, it’s still not sufficient justification to not have a safety line, but WD40 wouldn’t do shit to Sydney, nothing says she has to grip them hard. Even supertech friction-erasing nano-spray or whatever wouldn’t stop her from just levitating the orbs straight into her palms.
From what I understand, the orbs are to a degree instinctual. When she was panicking in the under water pool exercise, the life-support orb put itself into her hand, eve though she had no idea what it did at that point in time. I am (almost) certain, if something bad happens, the right orb will sort things out (providing she is conscious?). Maybe the final unknown is a medic orb, or life support has medical life support systems?
I doubt that sweaty or (WD-40) oily hands would affect Sidney’s ballcontact…..
Then again, the wear and tear resistant spray-on Isolating Skin (©, ™) “breathing, yet isolating”
we developed for Rogue will probably have interesting effects.
Note that the ‘Air Ball’ is the only orb that has the single double-lined option selected on it. I suspect this is what caused the Air Ball to leap to her hand in the pool – a ‘come when needed’ feature. I don’t think the other orbs would respond in this way, until their corresponding pips are selected with a future upgrade.
True, I didn’t consider that. Although, that pip is not double lined, it’s incapsulated, like all the pips and lines that connect two or more balls together. The double lines are at the end of brances, with the exception of the Pew-Pew ball, Air Generator and the Unknown, which don’t have a double lined pip connection.
The orbs can’t get wet. They don’t really exist.
Or spray the orbs in quick-dry paint, so that they count as “not in contact with skin”.
Similar to her Gloves issues. (Hmm, is it fingers or palms? Would an orb work with Fingerless gloves?)
Yep, I really hope next scene is Maxima/Peggy shouting their lungs off to them for doing that without proper safety gear.
In the last instance, the idea of basic training is to prepare them for when they are powerless…
But as shown in the very beginning of this comic, Wolverine can’t show off his regenerative powers without previously getting hurt… So I suppose this is a way to show off their powers.
After all the guy at the bottom IS using safety gear.
I’m guessing max or another fast flyer is hovering out of range to catch anyone who falls and doesn’t manage to catch themselves in whatever way, that’s what I’d do. Max is plenty fast enough to assess if Sidney is going to catch herself and come in in time to catch her milliseconds before she hits something in a dangerous way, and that means they have a chance to make Sidney react and see what she does, and only rescue her if she needs it.
They have a super-powered doctor and possibly speedsters. It might be advantageous to ensure that the supers learn to activate their powers in an emergency rather than expect a safety net. If you need to learn to use your powers the hard way, best to do so during training.
One could potentially argue that their abilities make climbing without gear safer for them than climbing with gear would be for a non-powered individual. In which case, even if gear would make it safer, this is not an unreasonable risk.
Still, the climbing gear is probably a good idea. That said, safety rules weren’t written with supers in mind, like how Max can catch a bullet.
Agreed. Halo should be using safety gear. The only way climbing like this could possibly be made safe. Is if Maxima, or another flying speedster, is flying overwatch / safety-man / catcher.
In fact, the only way this scene didn’t break my suspension of disbelief. Is by assuming Maxima is right there, hovering just out of frame. She’s that far away because she doesn’t want to get wet if she doesn’t actually have to catch someone.
We know her orbs are mentally controlled and instinctive, to a degree. Flight would probably end up catching her before she fell any real distance.
Okay, it did take me a while, but:
That bloke at the bottom is a fatal waiting to happen.
Anybody notice his “safety harness” is missing the upper body webbing? The anchor point is supposed to be one-third down from his shoulders, to suspend him nearly horizontal and spread the load equally between his upper thighs and his shoulders.
Anchor Safe
This setup though, will ensure his nose and teeth make maximum contact with his knees, with the severe risk of breaking one or both patellas. He also runs a high risk of abdominal rupture/hernia… Possibly spinal injury. Ah yes: head down? Cranial damage on rocks/floor.
And very likely also a popped scrotum :(
I wouldn’t say so. He appears to be wearing a fairly standard harness for rock climbing, as very distinct from the rope-access work gear you appear to be thinking of. The access gear is designed to be the occupant’s main support for hours on the end of a rope, while they work on something with both hands and full attention, hence the additional anchorage points and higher attachment on the body. The climbing harness is designed to be a failsafe in case of falls but otherwise to minimise its impact on the wearer’s mobility, as hampering dexterity is a good way to increase the chances of a fall.
From first-hand experience, it is easy and even comfortable to sit in a three-loop climbing harness for at least several minutes. I haven’t taken a significant fall myself, apart from deliberate abseils, but from second-hand experience the harness is not the source of the discomfort in a fall, and never the type of injuries listed. (The one potential exception being the last gender-specific one, if the wearer is enough of an idiot not to tighten the leg loops properly when he puts the harness on and catches unlucky in what ends up where – and in that case it’s his own stupid fault, because he will be ignoring what he was repeatedly taught.)
Having said which, whoever is belaying him needs to pay attention. There should be a bit of slack in a top-rope to allow freedom of movement, but not that much – half to one metre drop, not two. (Not worth changing, DaveB; it may not be textbook but it isn’t uncommon either.) It’s true that a lead climber will often take a longer drop, especially if there aren’t any decent places to site gear for a while, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea if it’s avoidable.
Glad to see the author already commented on the lack of safety gear. For reference, climbing above a pool of deep water without other protective gear (beyond a helmet, which Sydney really should have, as should any other participants without super damage resistant heads) is usually called “deep water soloing”. But usually you do it on a slope with an overhang, so that you don’t “wang something on the way down”.
Incidentally, Sydney’s skinny build is very suited to climbing, especially if she tones up a bit. It’s primarily about mental attitude and skill, and after that it’s about power to weight ratio, not total muscle power (plus core strength, balance, and flexibility).
Minor note: the helmet recommendation is very context dependent. I’d wear one if deepwater soloing, or if climbing or belaying outdoors, but there are paradoxical safety downsides if rope climbing on an indoor wall, and it’s not really necessary if bouldering.
I directly identify with the hoard of mismatched screws (and associated other fasteners, tie downs and adhesives). All neatly kept in a standard-issue military toolbag that I ‘appropriated’ (aka rescued from the trash). XD Hey, just had to clean out a few years of caked-on tar and it was good as old!
Yeah, I identify as an advanced hoarder in that most of my screws are sorted into little bins.
I use old peanut butter jars myself, they’re free and transparent (after de-labeling). Or re-use the empty packages if I acquire some in a particularly solid container. It’s saved me many a trip to the hardware store – if I did more projects I’d get some bin organizers though.
Max appears to be wearing a thong in the vote incentive, so maybe she didn’t find it as uncomfortable as she claimed.
“Someone needs to sit her down and get her to play a Dragon Ball Z video game.”
Video games? Maybe. The Anime? Definitely not! .
“Hang on while I grimace like I’m extremely constipated for 30 minutes then I’ll do one move that’ll vaporise everything for a 20 mile radius”
‘… Lets call that plan B.’
Lol, constipated, made my day.
Sydney OWNS A COMIC SHOP.
Without fail she will be handing over copies of One Punch Man, My Hero Acadamia, DBZ… the mind boggles at what may come of this sudden broship between the two newest recruits.
What would Jabberwokkey do after watching Avatar: The Last Airbender (the cartoons, not the movie)?
Those are real world martial arts styles, so she’d learn them, but not bending.
However, since her power works on “what she thinks a martial arts style should do, rather than what it actually is or if it even exists”, then …
30 minutes? You must mean 30 episodes…
This feels such a waste of time on Sydney’s training. Chances are she is not going to win fights by manual climbing, and running around lapses etc she is commanded to do.
Considering her power set can expand seriously with orb training, giving tools noone has in the team, she should be on 95% orb training against different supers, or Varia and 5% of basic stuff for survival etc. And since Maxima has tactical sense, this should be obvious. Instead we see her run around circles, climb walls, crawl etc. Sure thats good for a normal human soldier, but for her it feels a waste of time.
A little orb training could at least find out if she can gather xp from safe training with friendlies (probably yes considering tank incident). Also from training perspective finding out what 7th orb is for should be on a really high priority.
I am not saying this is useless, I am just saying that the orbs get her much better results/time effort.
Eh, physical training of this kind teaches physical and mental endurance that should synergise nicely with her orb skills in a combat situation.
And if she ever runs into someone with a power that lets them shut down her orbs, or somehow depletes whatever power source they have, she and her team would be miles better off for some general physical and combat training.
Overall, I’d agree that orb training and research should be a significant chunk of what she does with her training time. Maybe 50 or 60%, though, rather than 95%.
I can live with 60-40%, due to the mental endurance mentioned.
However I feel whatever training she makes here she is anyways dead weight in a super fight, she should runaway/hide probably.
Without the orbs*
I wouldn’t say she’s dead weight, but she’s the definition of a glass cannon and needs to act accordingly. Training can help with that, giving her a skill set that’s kept a lot of mere mortals alive in dire circumstances. Besides which, seeing her being ordered around adds a good bit of comic relief to the story.
She is not a glass cannon without the orbs. She is a very clever glass that might outsmart the enemy, but definately not cannon. Glass cannons in games do serious damage, I do not count knee in groin a serious damage :).
And yes indeed she can be funny in these situations.
She’s a comic hero glass cannon, which means she does risky heroic things and is protected by the Rule of Funny and the Rule of Hero. As well as her shield, which is practically impenetrable. She is a glass cannon wrapped in ballistic gel.
If it wasn’t for her ADHD, she’d be commander/group leader material (or maybe she’d be that exactly because of her ADHD?), or at the very least field tactical advisor. Her trope saviness has several times over already saved her team’s hide, starting with the battle against For-Whom-The-Bell-Tolls and Vehemence and ending with the escape from the Alari homeworld.
And she managed to not only keep herself alive but also kill two World-Destroyer level Kaiju and level up at least three dots on her orbs in a solo situation nobody in ARC was trained and prepared for, least of all her.
Physically, she will never be frontline material, the only thing keeping her alive in the ranks are the orbs. But once they manage to get a lid on her ADHD, or mannage to weaponise it, she will climb the officer ranks like she was born for command.
Sure, it would have hepled a lot if she had had the idea of slapping a tracking spell on a stone to find Corona’s hideout when they were still in the Vault, but I assume, she only didn’t suggest it back then because she didn’t know it would be possible. She most likely assumed, if it was possible, Dabbler would have done so.
It’s not “for Whom the bell tolls” It’s “Periwinkle buttsniffer!”
It’s “For Whom The Death Tolls”, thank you (Periwinkle Butt-Sniffer is also acceptable).
The original phrase is “For whom the bells tolls” (only had to look up a quote, learnt that poem long long ago)
Running away is greatly aided by physical fitness, too. The more she trains, the easier she can get herself to safety in case of orb failure.
There’s no such thing as “physical exercise is wasted on …”. Every piece of evidence points strongly to “brain power is dependent on cuningly contrived body exercise”. Age is not important. Adults and kids get equal benefit. Even supers could profit — after all, super powers do not always include the brain. And well-chosen workouts also go to improving teamwork.
Basic physical condition in the morning isn’t a waste of time. Powers can be nullified or circumvented, which has happened to various characters before already.
Alright, as stated: “I am _not_ saying this is useless, I am just saying that the orbs get her much better results/time effort.
So we all agree that physical training is handy, but why is it so much more in amount compared to orb training?
because its funnier and easier to draw. orb training in most cases would be boring to watch. fly here- do this, shield here. solve this made up problem in a bomb range (safety first) for the 5th time. faster now. i want you using the shield, the lighthook, and the fly ball in a warehouse while 8 pro paint ballers try to bruise you. (ok that one would be expensive)
Also because, as stated above, she needs some stamina for any protracted engagement. Doesn’t really matter how much firepower she can lay down if she can’t hold onto an orb and stay focused for more than 10 minutes.
Plus it’s not just about the physical conditioning, some of the major benefit of the regular group training is camaraderie and unit cohesion. As well as keeping them all out of idle trouble (like illicit poker games) day to day.
Assuming $80 a box for tournament grade paint (standard price outside events) a 5 man team would generally have $200-300 in at the starting box. This number is actually significantly decreased from early 2000s due to trends in ramping rules. (No more egos in semi-uncapped) with this also came a departure from more efficient poppet to smoother spool valves markers)
plus the fee to hire them. though its possible some of the support staff could be good enough. arianna might find shooting paint-balls at halo cathartic. the paintball arena run would be a good way to stress halo’s multitasking without having to destroy city blocks (PPO)
Fee nothing – I’d pay good money to go paintballing with supers, especially if there was a guarantee that they wouldn’t be allowed to hurt me if I managed to peg them enough time to make them angry. Probably plenty of military types on payroll already that would play for fun anyways – maybe even the entire organization on a rotation so the shooters take turns out on the course too.
Yeah, let’s see how good Leon really is in a ‘real world’ shooting range (as opposed to the safety of a computer game, that he probably hacked and is cheating at anyway)
Because without her balls floating around her head, she is a normal (relatively speaking) nerdette who use to combust in redirected sunlight
Sydney is not a Super, she just has God-tier tech
I suspect that Sydney is a *lot* stronger than she looks, based on some of the things that she’s done.
Physically? Or Mentally? :thinking:
And with or without her floating balls?
Exercise is certainly important for her – just generally a good thing.
However, I think people are missing another aspect of this. Sydney’s “in the Army now” as the old song wentm and is being trained to obey orders.
That’s why recruits are often put through hell for a while. When the Sergeant says we’re going to fight, we fight, without discussing the pros and cons, because we’re trained to react to orders – NOW!
I read recently that Steven Spielberg made the principal cast of Saving Private Ryan go through a grueling boot camp—hiking in the rain, sleeping wet in 35-degree conditions, the works. Tom Hanks had to talk the rest of the cast out of quitting and checking into a hotel.
Only one actor was excluded—Matt Damon, Private Ryan himself. Spielberg’s master plan was to create real resentment to mimic what the soldiers would feel in their quest to rescue this man. And it worked.
So say what you will about personal gifts and utility, but nothing bonds groups or divides them like shared experiences or the perception of unfairness.
While I agree with Marta about thus being an odd choice for super training, and tgey really should be focusing on her orb using powers, they might be trying to also instill inSydney a sense of discipline and patience before getting to Orb training. So I can see an argument for this, since “the whole point of the training is the leashing” to quote General Faulk.
It’s also to give the non-super some basic (in Sydney’s case, very basic) strength and endurance
I think you might be missing two significant factors. First is that being generally healthy is a good confidence boost because being in shape means she can ignore minor injuries better and keep going. Second is stamina. Need to stay awake for 36 hours? Finish bootcamp and you are ready to do that without caffeine.
But then get out of boot and have regular 12-16hr work days and quickly reform caffeine dependency
Okay, you convinced me. Team building, general endurance, no democracy mentality, … all sounds fair and logical points that I did not include in my earlier goal function that much.
Private Ryan soldier story sounds fun :).
Maybe I am just hell curious on what powers she will aquire yet (or has from last orb).
Ok.
When, which one is it? Is it a waste of time, or is it not useless? Because it really can’t be both. So all you’ve managed to do is make a post where you contradict yourself and failed to provide a supporting thesis to any of your various positions. Congratulations!
Sorry for summing up my general feeling about training % as not consistent for you, in my defense this is not my mother tongue, and I don’t have a too good wording skill in my mother tongue that much either.
What I tried to say is this, just is hard cause we have only a few points on the skilling up, so hard to guestimate the exact results but compare:
say she makes 5 day of orb training and gets skill teleportation or skill etherium way or faster speed? … or who knows whatever but high tech stuff that _abbissimally few_ other people can imitate or get
now compare that with
5 day of physical training which results in she can lift 10kilo more, she can run for 10min longer, smoother teamwork, willpower mindset (these stuff don’t come from 5day though but on longer run I guess)
Hard to compare it those gains, but still stargate vs whatever you can get from 5 day human empowering feels “waste” of time on the human stuff. And as stated above I am good with 60-40% (orb-human), but as of now we are around 20-80%.
I’ll grant that Sydney’s training regimen isn’t necessarily the optimal for her power set. Working against that is the military concept that all recruits are the same, and that hammering them into uniformity is the best way to build an army.
Sydney is running because all recruits run. Sydney is climbing a fake rock wall because all recruits do that in Archon. In Basic I did rappelling and a pile of other crap that I’d not need to do if I were to MOS into nursing or intelligence or artillery or whatever. Basic training is Basic. Everyone gets the same routine, both because the army (or Archon) can’t be fussed about designing a specialized routine for each soldier/super, and because a general training program provides the general training that every recruit needs.
Look at it this way, if you’re still in doubt: There is no way to claim that building running endurance or body strength (weight lifting, rock climbing, etc.) is actually harmful to the recruit. The argument that other training would be more beneficial is speculative at best, and fails catastrophically once some super dies in the field because they lacked the endurance to carry on.
Even the medics and the support staff have to go through basic training and do general fitness
When you specialize out of the bang-bang club, you get specialized training in your new path, and yet, you still do the same general fitness and ‘range work as the career grunts
It’s not because they “can’t be fussed about designing a specialized routine”, it’s because the ‘basic training’ is the base training every member has to maintain, even if they are not front-line combat
And let’s not forget Syddles is being paid (for her) an unimaginably high salary. At that level, the piper calls the tune. No-one is actually forcing her to stay and enjoy the perks…
Sydney is CLUMSY! This and other ability focused training that pushes her way way way out of her comfort zone while working her body kinistesia, is exactly what she needs to be effective.
The more pointless routines the characters have, the more believable it is that they’re in the military. The author is simply establishing internal consistency.
Excel is also far worse if you are not using english as your primary language because they somewhat decided to translate the function names. so if you need to do some complicated stuff, you can’t really look it up online as all the exemple will be in english, and will just not work. It also won’t recognize different locale for numbers format (IE, “1,123.46” vs “1 123,46” ) because it was apparently too complicated to store the file global number format in the header. That’s super if you work with intl customers.
Oddly enough, Microsoft wrote Excel for the Apple Mac, as Steve had no spreadsheet at the time. You’d think M$ would have kept the quality up when porting to Windoze…
I use 123, very legacy but can easily improvise to do true pivot-points. If truth be told, there’s been no radical need for improvements since 1999, just like word processors. Some are just designed better than others, that’s all. For example, 123 does reflect locales in every way that matters.
I blame the bean-counters, they never stay put longer than the current contract — which is always less than 5 years.
Pivot-points ==> Pivot tables.
Low on caffeine.
There’s an old joke about job interviews for law firms that goes like this:
Interviewer: “Okay, how are you with Excel?”
Interviewee: “I hate Excel.”
Interviewer: “So you’re an experienced Excel user, good.”
What do you mean “somewhat”? Did they decide to translate them or not?
Hmm, I wonder… when the glasses were fabed, did Kora perhaps… add in a “remote recording” function?
And an anti-fog function, that way Sidney would wear them in the communal showers…
Or while wearing a mask during a covid-19 pandemic.
My glasses fog up a lot due to the mask…
Be safe! Socially distance! Wear your mask! Vote against Trump!
I don’t understand the last panel. I get the pieces but don’t know what stereotype ties them together.
Being male.
Oh, okay. Mom’s the tinkerer in my family so I didn’t pick up on that. It’s a stereotype that completely passed me by.
Yes, it’s a male stereotype. If the page was about a similar female stereotype, we’d have burned down the page by now. ;-)
I do collect odd nails and screws etc. On the day I need one, I’ve got it. I don’t have to drive to a store to buy a pack of 12 – when I need just one.
But, like your Mom, my sister-in-law has more tools and collects far more bits than I do. She’s also more competent at using them than I am. This is her stereotype.
What I find interesting is that even she doesn’t think of herself as the handy one, and was surprised when I said I learned basic plumbing and wiring and such from her. I had to remind her it wasn’t Dad’s workshop in the garage.
That was my family as well, my husband had silk hands and never touched a power tool, if something needed to be fixed or installed in the house that was me. And I’m tallish for a woman, we were the same height lol. I get asked by women all the time to get stuff off the top shelf at grocery stores for them, guess I’m less intimidating than asking a man. I didn’t get the reference until I read this here, I was trying to think what superhero in a comic did that…. ironman? lol
Mom would use Dad and us for the heavy lifting, but she was the planner and technician. I like to say that Dad taught me how to swing a hammer, Mom taught me how to build stuff with it. Personally I attribute it to her having a part-time job and so being the main person at home when we lived in the middle of nowhere; you want some idea of basic repairs and diagnostics when getting a repairman out means they have a 90-minute round trip from Santa Fe. And since it’d save them a trip they were happy to show her/us what was going on and how to tell basic repairs apart from something that *needed* a professional.
I think she’d have a tinkering mind regardless, but that home definitely supported it.
So, Does Sidney actually like the rainstorm system? because what she say sound like a heck of a reward to me. :-P
What if Jabberwocky slipped back into her old habits…!?
Dunno ’bout old habits, but has anyone noticed her boobs are totally immune to gravity? I know at least a dozen sheilas would cheerfully commit murder to get a bra with that degree of restraint!
Fairly sure most of that is due to the bra she’s wearing, just like when Maxi left her footprint on the ceiling
Superhero bodies rarely work like standard human bodies. Just look at a Rob Liefeld comic for example.
I wonder how Halo and the others would look in a Liefeldan style?
Its nice to see that Sydney is keeping her high shelf esteem
I see what you put there!
So, Sydney is relying for safety, on powers which she does not in fact, know will work?
Not sure what you are refering to there. She knows in fact that her fly orb works and is quite profficient in its use.
Panel 8 – “hope my powers work with these calluses”
An unofficial superpower of Sidney’s is supersnark.
Hey! You never know when you might need just one 5 and 5/16″ screw that needs a triangular security bit.
I may not know when I’ll need that screw… but you won’t catch me off-guard!… I’ve got the set of SCREWDRIVERS for those, AND practically every OTHER type of screw out there, already!
but do you have an Atari joystick in your bits and pieces bin, and does it work?
Well, one of the switches is broken (believe it is the left side), otherwise, it still works
It’s still totally usable though, and you may need the parts to fix another of the controllers in that bin when you find a good retro game for the console gathering dust in the basement.
I somehow get the feeling they they have someone like Maxima or another super with super speed and flight on rescue duty for this thing. Because that’s the only way I can see them doing this without safety lines. Be a hell of a way for them to love what has been clearly a supremely valuable asset over a simple accident, which has like wise already been determined to still happen to supers.
Assuming love -> lose.
They are probably taking turns in such a way that Super Hiro, Maxima, and even Sydney among others are stationed at the bottom to catch people who fall, both with safety lines or not. They do need to practice their ‘catch on the fly’ skills for rescue situations, right. Team building and trust exercise all in one go. As Dave noted, the pool is probably right below them and likely nets to the side to funnel them back to the pool. But none of that is on camera, just the tower and the heroes going at it –and you bet Arianna is selling the ppv version of Super Hero Training Camp from said video streams.
Pool isn’t as a great a pre-caution as you think. Water doesn’t compress. There’s a point where hitting water is worse than hitting ground because at least the ground will compress. How you hit it affects it as well (like a belly flop) but if you’re out cold, you don’t really have control on that.
Don’t get me wrong, there are reasons to not have guild wires. For example, the guys that do service/change the bulbs on sky scrapers? They don’t wear them. It’s been proven they’re more of a detriment than a safety feature in that situation. Given the leaping that Jabber is doing, that would clearly be the case for her. Less so for sydney. Of course, given what’s happening, I’m shocked that sydney isn’t arguing that she should just get to use her fly orb since Jabber is using her powers.
Jabbs may be using her powers (or maybe not), what she is doing is climbing the wall (wo)manually
No she definitely is using her powers. DaveB specifically said so.
I like that Jabber is fitting rather well (especially with Sydney), taking into account that she started kind of as a villain.
Kind of? She’s robbing a bank in one flashback if I remember correctly… admittedly, it appears to be just so she can get into a fight with the constabulary!
I thought Vehemence used his powers to “push” the villains to attack the heroes (although it was hinted that some didn’t need that push in the 1st place).
Somewhere between panel 6 and panel 7 we missed a beautiful pirouette. In #6 Jabber is ascending with her left shoulder toward the wall. In #7 she’s inverted with her right shoulder toward the wall.
And she’s getting AMAZING traction on wet metal pipes with bare skin…since at least the last motion in panel 6 has to have been a handspring.
“Gecko style!”
‘Gecko-Roaming Wrestling’? :D
tbh the mere fact she can actually do this already puts her way ahead of most city-dwelling civilians. I know I can’t even do normal rock climbing properly because of my abysmal grip strength.
I was going to say water at the bottom’s not that helpful, but then I realized they’re not all that high up. The fall would easily be short enough that water would be sufficient. Of course if some klutz *coughlikeSydneycough* manages to knock themselves out on the way down it still isn’t terribly helpful.
And that quip about random screws and high shelves…um…Scuze me why I go move that jar of screws from the top shelf to a drawer or something.
Now that we have a bit more of Jabawocky’s personality I like her, at least a lot more than she was just screaming ” STYLE!”
How do you get to see the ‘Vote Incentive’ picture?
Whenever I’ve clicked on one all it tells me is that my vote is registered. It’s never, not once, shown me the picture.
do you possibly have an ad-blocker installed? that’s about the only thing “I” can think of. though i don’t know if it is considered something that would ordinarily BE blocked by the blocker…
Dave, I would actually think a better upgrade for Jabberwonky is watching Teen Titans.
Beast Boy wondered if he could only turn into Earth animals, and after seeing an alien animal, he learned he could do that too. Think about the animal spirit forms she could learn that way.
So, let Jabber watch Avatar?
“Sabre-tooth Moose Lion Style!”
… thinking about it, we haven’t seen/heard of the Periwinkle Butt Sniffer for quite some time. The other parking lot guys we have seen since, for the most part. Most of them working for Deus.
You know, I’d like to see a page where an actual spec ops unit (Delta/SEALs/PJs) shows up to use Archon’s training equipment. Archon obviously overspends on equipment because their budget to personnel ratio is skewed, and the military branches will share when things are clearly overlapped.
+1. Especially given some of the debates raging on social media right now about defunding US law enforcement and the ridiculous amounts the US military spends on equipment (which is often sold as surplus to the police a short time later).
Sydney runs into Jabberwocky at the bar that night.
Jabber is a bit buzzed as are the other gals with her.
Sydney whispers to Olivia to back her up.
Sydney starts to tell Jabber about MLP and maybe she should try to channel them ponies for new powers and Fu!
Maybe she’ll even get a beauty mark/power mark.
S “So that’s the MLP in a nutshell.”
J “Got it…I think…”
S “Their only weakness is Rule #34 and Hentai…”
O “Isn’t that everyone’s?”
J “Why do you think I drink?”
S “Oh…you found dabbler’s closet.”
J “No,I can’t find it again.”
O “That’s…unexpected…”
MLP or FiM?
And, would Olive know about Dabbles? Let alone her ‘Closet’?
Who is the one Jabbs almost knocked off?
And are they not holding on to anything? Their right hand is reaching above, and it doesn’t look like their left is touching anything, specially with the way Jabbs got between them and the wall…
Becoming overly reliant on safety gear (helmets and ropes) when ‘rock climbing’ is not good in the long run: you start to get sloppy, and make mistakes because in the back of your mind you know you are safe
Oh, for a certain value of safe; i.e.; not dead, you’re absolutely right. Having taken a fall of about 15 feet with safety gear while climbing at Pinnacles National Monument, I have to say that the stop when the rope takes the load and goes ‘whummmm’ will instill a very healthy respect for gravity and it’s consequences. The fall was not caused by sloppiness, but by the unhappy circumstance of having what looked like a solid handhold pop out of the wall when grabbed and weight committed to it.
And you can’t afford to be sloppy with the fall-arresters either. Western Power (our State electrical infrastructure group) has a training video of a bloke who popped his scrotum because the harness wasn’t properly (read “snugly”) adjusted. This fall-arrester has thigh straps…
Excel… you amateurs. that’s easy to fix. try making a change to a 6 month old 3D cad model with about 60 features. especially one made by a 3d cad beginner with delusions of grandeur. even if its a file you yourself created its still going to be tricky.
I’ll see your CAD model and raise you Civil3D grading / utility / transportation models for 24 miles of freeway expansion through a populated area*, 3 years into the project. ;)
Excel can do some crazy complex stuff though actually, once you start really leveraging the advanced features. Excel runs the world – my favorite description is “the 2nd-best tool for everything“. And it does even more if you start programming it – which, to be clear, no one should. At least move to Access, but life is so much better with a “real” database and programming framework.
* I did drafting and project management on the utility / coordination team, generating construction drawings for a handful of main contractors (and uncounted subcontractors), a dozen cities, and 70+ utility entities.
People who use Excel to create databases should be taken out and shot. A vlookup to make data entry convenient is one thing, but when you start creating multiple tables and linking them, THAT IS A DATABASE, use the right tool!
Does anybody remember “Microsoft Works”? Or do you want to never ever ever be reminded of it again?
I still have a copy of it, also Windows For work Groups.
Are you a masochist or sump’n?
What the HELL am I seeing
That’s not even a particularly complex project! Just picked an image from a quick search, but it looks like the site layout for a school, I think? If a model is set up right, each line color/pattern represents something different, often with each object also having elevation and meta-data that ties into the system design tools. Interpreting it is definitely an acquired skill, it takes several years to become a good drafter. :D
In that picture, I see topographic lines (pink & green w/green labels), driveway and parking lot curbs (red, lime, purple, white labels), storm drain center lines and catch basins (medium green), parking stall striping (white), basketball court striping (yellow)… I’m actually spotting some errors as I look more, like the wheelchair ramps being in 2 different colors. That implies they’re on different model layers, which can break the automated tools like generating quantities or adjusting surfaces to connect smoothly (e.g. curb edge connection to parking lot edge, or asphalt sloping to the drain edges).
For that giant project I mentioned, we had about a dozen master files for 1-2 mile sections of the project, since it was far too big to work with in a single file even with cutting-edge drafting rigs (even if that didn’t restrict editing to one person at a time). Each of those master files in turn referenced 6-8 main drawings for different pieces (utility, groundwork, parcels and easements, etc) that in turn imported other pieces, so that multiple people could work on any given section at the same time. Printing the entire thing at a readable scale would have a) killed several trees and b) been impossible to build from. I think we limited it to something like 1 mile and 8-20 major feature layers at a time, and even that was about a hundred 24×36 sheets. Everyone stayed digital as much as possible.
please tell me they used layers on that. if they didn’t its got to be a human rights violation of some kind.
Around 400-500 layers I think, although about 1/3 of those were for layout/label styles or auto-generated tool layers (grading, cross sections, profile segments). I never actually counted across all the drawing tiers.
Honestly, the VLOOKUPs would still work if people would STOP EDITING THE MASTER FILE!!
AMEN! People screwing with the layout of main file everyone and everything else references have a special place reserved in Phil’s domain.
could you try the html link again? all i get is just some different colored text, no link at all… working or not…
https://dilbert.fandom.com/wiki/Phil,_the_Prince_of_Insufficient_Light
Just swap out those old VLOOKUPs for INDEX MATCHes and people will have to work MUCH harder to break them!
The REAL question is how many multi head screwdrivers does Sydney own?
No the question is, how many sets of screwdriver bits does she own?
No, the question is (see my comment)
Why would she need the screws
But why should she practice her climbing when she can just fly
For the times she can’t use them?
I was expecting the final poker page to be Maxima coming in unexpectedly, asking “are you playing strip poker?!”
Everyone in their underwear: “Uuuuhhhhh…”
Sydney: “Pfft, you think *I* would play STRIP POKER? This is regular poker. Super poker. Hey–*tangent involving supers cheating in Vegas or actual super-people poker tournament where cheating is encouraged*”
Question: do the orbs grip Sydney back? Or is it down to her hand strength? Because if the latter this is a GREAT exercise for her, being able to grip things when wet and slippery. It would be a shame if she could be defeated by someone dumping oil on her hands.
Jabberwocky, Sydney owns a comic book store, if she ever tried to sit in a cubicle she’d burst into flames from pent-up energy.
Sydneys technique is WAY off. She’s doing what is affectionately known as T-Rexing in the circles I’m in. Her resting position has bended arms, this Means that she’s holding herself with her muscles, which will tire her out extremely quickly.
Some of the experts should point this out, since it’s a habit that’s rather easy to break, and she won’t reach the top with her current style.
Someone really fit might make it, but… Sydney.
This training course brought to you by the people who built the rumble room for Robot Jox.
Ah yes the murder jungle gym scene from that great film.
Love the water effects, the overall ambiance and Sydney’s look, in the final panel.
If all the physical powered people like jabberwocky get to use their powers to climb the wall, sydney reall should get to use one of her powers too. Doesnt even have to be flight. Could be the lighthook.
the light hook could be used to enhance her climbing and force the physical supers to focus on technique. having a semi out of shape comic book store co-owner hanging off them would slow most of them down.
Wow, Sydney’s certainly learning to stop pulling her punches.