Grrl Power #859 – Tumbelina
Sydney has reigned in her worst instincts, but it’s still going to be a long day for her and Peggy. At least Sydney didn’t attempt her dive roll with her gun in her hand. She’s smart enough… well, she’s smart enough to know that’s a dumb move without having to worry that Peggy would make her do about a thousand burpees for a stunt like that. For the record, Sydney would do about 19 of those before she threw up.
Admittedly, this is a little premature for Sydney to be running this course, but there are reasons Arc-SWAT is trying to get her up to speed so quickly. Not the least of which is that she’s repeatedly proven herself to be indispensable in the field.
I meant to put little paintball splats all over this course, but I forgot. No reason they can’t use the course for multiple things, as long as no one double books. I guess if it’s a live fire course they have to replace all the plywood in there every so often, so Sydney gets to break in the new build.
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One of these days take me is going to learn to take these tests seriously the first time around.
is “take me” syds twitch star name?
No, that’s Dabbler.
Dabbler’s middle name.
I’m reasonably sure Dabbler streams on a different platform than Twitch. One without those pesky rules about NSFW content. That encourages such content.
Which begs the question, does that whole “I look exactly like the woman you’ve always dreamed of” thing work over webcam?
Given Dabbler’s whole schtick is a mix of magic, technomancy, and being lightyears ahead of the current world’s tech while also having a brain capable of keeping up with a little of everything, even if it isn’t, I bet you she can fake it so each computer pulses the effect outward anyway.
I’m sure she can, but applying her supertech to override the functioning of every computer in the world is probably more invasive than she’s currently willing to be. If she’s sending her stream over the standard Earth computer system, I’m sure she would only do things that that computer system is normally capable of transmitting.
is it really a need for super tech or knowing if succu-glam works when broadcast over a network?
i can see more advanced computer systems treating that like signal interference or alerting some foundation MTF about another digital memetic cognitohazard.
Maybe not exactly in the way you’re thinking of, but she would probably use one of her ‘default skins’ for webcam work, must like she did when she was on camera during the introduction press conference.
I think a far more appropriate question is: Can she feed across the Internet?
‘Cause if she can’t, there’d be very little point in her wasting time being a cam girl. And there’s got to be some kind of distance limit on her being able to feed off of horny people, or she would never have to feed at all because she’d be constantly full if the distance limit was anything as large as “the planet I’m on.”
this went a different way from a possible joke about auto-corrent
Yes it did. You’d almost think that autocorrect has its own sense of humor. Especially since it turns Sydney into what it did ( this time I tried to make it into sent me but I caught it in time)
Humming Mission Impossible. You mean ‘again’ right?
=^_^=
DaveB did caveat it with ‘the whole time’.. so she may have been humming it part of the time
Jus’ gonna leave this here…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km40jvV5lhM
Great scene from a brilliant movie
whats funny when he holds the note if look at the ruins or the art its two faces and fingers stareing and pointing at kronk. never noticed it firs ttime watching it long time ago XD
I’ve got thePolice Academy theme going through my head. “Tackleberry!!”
Oh My God! Wow! Just………………….Wow! This was awesome! I know a few rangemasters who would have just lost it! Or fell over laughing!
Any rangemaster worth his salt would already be well aware of Sydney & be prepared on how to deal with her. (Well because it’s a unit’s Rangemaster not one that has random customers coming in.) Losing it & full blasting Sydney would have made her shut down & then nothing gets done.
I’m glad she can consciously control those orbs, because doing a tuck-and-roll with them circling her, and not being able to get them out of her way, would feel like a drive-by shiatsu massage.
So far, the Orbs have been staying out of the way on a more-or-less subconscious level most of the time but Sydney’s conscious/reflexive thoughts overrides it.
Thank you. I had meant to say subconsciously. I blame staying up too damn late. I was using my computer, so I can’t even blame autocorrect.
* Adds “Drive-By Shiatsu to list of band names *
Thumbs up emoji
may I also suggest ‘Tactical Kittens’ ?
Doesn’t the military believe in live-fire walk-throughs as a prerequisite?
Uhhh. OK, this is a comic. Who needs prepping?
It’s a kind of training they get, but that doesn’t mean one should skip training their recruits in running without being shot at. Even people in the military aren’t being shot 24/7, it’s just that *part* of their work involves being shot at, so they get trained
Also you don’t get more live fire training then flying at mach 5 from city destroying explosions on a genocide planet
A FUBAR’d field mission is not training, and therefore cannot be considered “live fire training”.
Umm, why would they get a walk-through, where they find out where the targets are before hand?
Part of these courses is the unexpected: they don’t know which target is going to pop up, or where, just like in a real life situation
Oui, I didn’t explain myself properly. It looks as though Syddles doesn’t actually know what she’s supposed to do.
Go through the course, shoot the bad people, do not shoot the non-bad people?
She’s knows what she supposed to do, she’s just being, well, Sydney (that lesson Pegs taught her while playing that vidya game did a number on her)
there is a lot more to tactically clearing a room then that or what she learned in that video game is not it. there is a lot of training that goes into it before you get to timed trials like this.
everything Syd did after entering the room is against all training she would have gotten (including the lack of safety gear) this is beyond Syd being Syd and closer to a complete farce.
Maybe not the military, but competition shooters do get a walkthrough so they know where the points and targets are so they can best plan out their steps.
This is not a competition, ie: game. You don’t get to train for where the enemy is going to pop out.
Not quite the same as the lowcrawling under tracer fire at Ft. Dix, but similar in some respects.
Peggy runs her hand down her face over Sydney’s antics,after that Peggy should suggest to Maxima thar Sydney should be assigned to kitchen duty instead…..
Maybe she isn’t doing that right now because the cupcakes taste bland or something… Seriously though… biggest mistake EVAR to put Sydney on kitchen duty… unless you’re punishing the rest of the team with her face burning cooking.
That would be a serious mistake. After all, Sydney may still have some leftover Grakz from the space station she could use to spice up dinner…
Or she could go get more.
I think some of her recipes would be considered acts of war, and violate several of the Geneva conventions.
1. The Bundt Bomb of Burning.
2. +3 Cupcakes of Colon Cleansing. With Grakz Ganache
3. Ramen of Rectal ruin
4. Pasta of Pure Pain With a Bear Spray foam garnish.
What’ve you guys got?
Shit the Bed
I’m tempted to put in a review on a website like that. It would read something like: “Even a small amount nearly dissolved my entire digestive tract, from mouth to nether-end, so I can’t consume any more without severe risk. However, I did find it useful for cleaning out all of the black slime mold that used to be growing in my sink drains.”
“Unfortunately, while it killed the mold, it also dissolved the drains. And the rest of the plumbing.”
“This critic recommends replacing Ms. Scoville’s cooking ingredients with something safer for human consumption, like chlorine triflouride.”
My wife hailed from KL and Melaka. She found this sambal, which you took a large-ish drop, about the size of a small pea, on the side of the plate, which would spice the entire dish. Nobody we knew survived a “large” helping… To put it in focus, I usually have a good dessert-spoon of pickled jalapenos on my plate.
The wife’s fu was extraordinary, I cannot find this sambal in the shops, and I know she did not make it herself. But I do know the major — only? — ingredient was Thai Birdseye chili.
Stupid question, Why doesn’t she just use her telepresence orb to teleport from cover to cover safely?
Mostly because she has to react correctly to actual and perceived threats. She’s not being shot at, but she does need to shoot at baddies while ignoring the good guys.
I would have expected a dry run just to get familiarised with the set up, but OTOH we never get dropped in the poo we know, it’s always someone else’s. And the difference between shooting up Vogons on an alien (Alari) planet and doing this live fire is that on the Alar planet there were no friends. You cannot afford to shoot too many of your friends.
Most likely, the point of this exercise is to NOT use her powers. It’s meant to test gun discipline, after all.
I’m looking forward to the advanced course where she gets to train using the orbs (she needs to train with them more than with a gun, but I can understand why they’re starting her small)
That course will need to be slightly more remote though…
Is Peggy even cleared to know about her telepresence orb?
Probably.
Does Sydney know it?
I don’t remember Peggy being included in scenes with Sydney where it was brought up so probably not.
Also what gorblimey and Deanatay said.
I don’t recall whether there’s a clear statement anywhere of what’s “classified” to the press/public vs what the core Archon field teams are read in on.
Either way, Sydney needs to learn the same basics of movement and tactics that the rest of the team has, in order to collaborate with them effectively. Her having non-standard tools available in the field should be an addition to the team tactics and instincts, not a replacement for them.
also- if she uses it in the field very much.. it isn’t a secret anymore. also- if she knows how to do it without the balls then she can probably see how to do it with the balls. that… came out worse that it should have.
Your comment just summoned Dabbler.
I think only her ability to see through illusion is classified
Telepresence (seeing/hearing) I’m not sure on; bypassing illusions (truesight) definitely is. Teleportation to the telepresence location is fairly new, I don’t think it’s been addressed other than Sydney ruminating on whether to hide things from Max in case she* ever turns evil.
* she = Max, but you know what either way works.
Irregarding whether Max shared about Sydney’s teleball-portation, wasn’t Sydney impressed that Max would not?
If she wanted to be true to her Earth bound combat technique she would shield bubble and walk the course dispensing justice with the tentacle orb.
She could be tactical with her tele presence. She could even trump Peggy.
Without first then with later?
Baseline score needed to show improvement?
She can teleport now, she needs to get into the habit of not manually going between cover when she can skip the riskiest step, or at the very least use shield whilst moving.
Teleport is classified way above everyone present.
Target pops up
Sydney is startled
Sydney shoots like crazy
Sydney didn’t drop the shield
Medics!
Nobody’s shooting at Syddles. She doesn’t have to hide. All she has to do is walk calmly and alertly through the streets and react to various incidents. Some of which will require her to shoot a bad person.
Simples, yes?
CoD4 Killhouse, good times. Though ARK will probably hold back on the RPGs.
Also, apart from the things that are impossible in the game (combat roll, peeking above the wall without standing up completely), this might be very close to how I can end up playing. Which is typically followed by accusations of camping because I tend to hear when people are about to run around a corner, so chances are I can get them.
Why doesn’t she zip through with the light bee and then tp herself to behind the pop up targets where she shoots them.
Be… cause that would be the same as using her Fly-ball to scale the Tower: totally defeating the purpose of the lesson
The lightbee is classified and not everyone present is cleared to know about it.
Also she needs to learn to do this the old fashioned way just in case she’s in a situation you CAN’T use the lightbee.
How long before that command post gets filled with other Archonites? Or maybe they will be watching it streamed to the common lounge, kinda like what happened during the Bank Siege, shortly followed by a betting pool being started up :D
They’ll all be up there watching soon enough… and eating cupcakes
I think Peggy should cut her some slack on this one. Sydney’s actually more focused on this than I would’ve expected!
Batman would take this seriously, Sydney can do no less. Albeit with some (inappropriate) flair.
that’s a very good point: when Maxima pointed out the importance of not flipping out when she has such mind-boggling firepower at hand, likening it to something that happened in the Spiderman universe, i forget what exactly, Sydney sobered right up
Spidey broke Gwen’s neck. Stopping her fall too fast with webbing.
Allegedly, or Goblin snapped her neck before he dropped her
Your choice, but Maxi’s going with the live fall and the dead stop. Of course, she could be just twisting the knife a bit to get through to Syddles… But I don’t like reading too much into these things.
Was going from what happened in the comic, some speculated that Goblin had already killed her before dropping her, knowing that Petey would be traumatized by it and blame himself
Actually, it was Gerry Conway, who, it sems, had never liked her.
Peggy wants that new foot just so she can feel it when she puts her boot up Sydney’s arse.
Eh, the prosthesis may actually be easier to clean.
After Peggy’s extracted it, I mean. From Sydney’s arse.
Or she could use her old prosthesis to spank Sydney with. It’s a more efficient way of kicking ass.
Peggy uses her old foot as the last task she uses it for, just before having the new one attached & grafted. That way, Peggy could leave the old one up Sydney’s arse without any inconvenience.
She might get chemical burns on her new foot, this is Sydney after all.
Since this is a super headquarter they probably have a super janitor. With all the shenanigans going on here all the time it would take a super janitor to keep it tidy. Some paintball stains would be among the easier stains to remove.
He quit, after having to clean a boot print off of the ceiling one time too many :P
or he kept muttering under his breath about ‘boot camp’ once too often
Oh, come on, any mother with healthy teen aged boys has dealt with foot prints on the ceiling, right? They’re not that unusual. Though me and my brother weren’t allowed to wear boots indoors.
Reined in*
Once Peggy has seen her test fire the pop on multishot instead of lase-in-general-direction, a la the tank shearing demo from the press conference Sydney will get her pass. And then she will be scolded for reaching for flyball with her right –assumes she is right handed shooter– and reaching for the gun at all where pop is appropriate response.
No, she wants the shield-ball to be the consistent hand. Everything else switches around in the right hand.
Pardon, spellcheck went all out on ppo.
Pop = ppo above
you just weren’t hip enough :}
“Control! Control! You must learn Control!”
~Yoda, instructing Luke on Dagobah
Lacking much in control, Sydney is. Self control, that is. Hilariously so.
Peggy points out something that pretty much anyone in the military learns eventually: “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.”
19 burpees before puking? That’s… pretty good, for someone who’s only started the training montage relatively recently. Seriously, it’s not just “as tough as pushups and squats together.” By making each rep into a full body, “down to the floor and back up again” series of movements like that, you’re really increasing the demands on the cardiovascular system. Your muscles might not find it too demanding (at first), but you’re going to find yourself getting winded as if you were doing sprints (at which point your muscles ARE going to feel the demands, because they’re not getting as much oxygen).
Being winded isn’t all about {\sl wind}. It’s a general term for depletion due to exertion. Even if he’s breathing well, he’ll still become winded if he’s yet not inured to such anatomical intensity, because he’s exerting so much more than usual. In such unusual intensity, he might forget to breathe. Here’s a suggestion for a neophyte to have (less un-) enjoyable burpee sessions: disregard external timing; do each so slowly that you can pay attention to each detail of what you’re doing. And for fitness’ sake {\sl breathe!}
Yeah, Sydney is still working on the concept of “looks cool, it must be practical”. It took me a long time to cotton on to the idea that if your feet aren’t on the ground, you are slowing down. Unless you are rappelling. She will get better but I suspect that Sydney will always struggle with dull but effective vs dang! that looks cool.
She does remember the comm ball right? She could use the projection to see!
Is it just me, or has the art style changed again?
it changes like every other comic
Because most artists are human and make mistakes, or try something new
Would you say she dodge rolled ( enter the gungen is a GREAT game tho)
“Admittedly, this is a little premature for Sydney to be running this course, but there are reasons Arc-SWAT is trying to get her up to speed so quickly. Not the least of which is that she’s repeatedly proven herself to be indispensable in the field.”
I like this reasoning. It makes me feel like I’m reading about a real organization. I’d love to see this mentioned in passing by one of the characters so it’s not a detail lost to most readers.
Peggy’s tattoos are missing.
Plausible foil for undamaged plywood and missing paintballs. The majority of their training is with airsoft guns…and they just swept.
If this were a real live fire situation, each of those “peeks” could’ve been a head shot (plus one shot to the hand/foot).
Yeah, it’s kinda obvious that Sydney shouldn’t be here yet, BUT… Because of the cover-story used by the bosses about her “going away for some advanced training” (i think it was) then they have to rush her ACTUAL training to JUST get her to the same place the REST of the recruits are at currently… THEN they can all CONTINUE they’re training together…
That girl next to Peggy?
I had to zoom in to see that no she wasn’t flipping Sydney the Bird. That’s just her ear above her fist!
Is Seneca.
Next up on American Gladiators: Sydney runs the Eliminator against Blaze, Ice, and Lace!
how about putting her in the special needs class, preferably far away from everyone else, in a soundproof room
the way I was taught to do burpees was like this lets say you are doing 5 you do 5 then 4 then 3 then 2 the 1, so 15. you saying she could do 19 means she could do 190, you have to be a beast to do that many..
Huh… Some of the new art changes are kinda weird. Like… Peggy kinda looks more like Math now?
I’d settle for Math looking like Math. It can be hard watching characters go through such drastic visual changes. Even if the quality is overall better, some of the charm of the older art is lost.
“At least she’s not humming the Mission Impossible theme the whole time”
AND WHY NOT??
Because Sydney being Sydney… forgot
Tactical are gonna tactic.
They hope that training will give her a level during a noncombat situation, don’t they.
Nope, they are hoping she will learn a smidge of discipline (not working so far)
Pedant here: Shouldn’t it be reined in, as in horses? Not that I’m equating Sydney to a horse; far from it. She’s a brave, confident person, mastering life skills in her own inimitable* way, and making the world a better place for it.
*So good or unusual as to be impossible to copy, unique (Oxford English Dictionary)
Yep. Reined in, as in pulling the horse’s head in with the reins so it doesn’t take off at full speed. That’s where the expression comes from.
That getting your foot caught in a corner is exactly some kinda shit I’d do in one of these courses and it wouldn’t be because I was trying to do tactical rolls. If they ever make a movie about my life, it’ll probably be called ‘The Comedy Of Errors’, and I’ll no doubt be played by a b-lister comedic actor that people love to hate. XD