Grrl Power #860 – Sydney shoots like old people drive
I’m not sure why Sydney didn’t know the time limit before she started the course. I guess Peggy wanted a “pure” run, just to see what would happen. Well, now we know. Honestly there are worse things than Sydney erring on the side of caution.
As far as Peggy snapping at Sydney, part of it is simply a Lieutenant losing patience with their celebrity recruit. There is also an understanding among her superiors to very gradually wean her of some of her more egregious behavior. Hopefully without her figuring what they’re doing.
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Better step it up Sydney you should know that they have higher standards than most video games
Playing solo on co-op mode on the legendary setting.
Each team member has there own solution.
Oh boy… this suddenly sounds like Peggy just sentenced herself to her own version of work hell.
It sure sounds like it to me!
Yeah Sydney is far from the ideal military and police recruit. Peggy and Maxima risk facepalm bruises from training Sydney.
Maxima risks causing hydrogen fusion via face palming oft times i believe…
You mean like Sokka?
Flight orb + FPS gamer + cheat glasses = course record. Eventually.
She has been using the gun two handed this entire time. Doesnt really have a spare hand for the flight orb
Just wait for the day when she forgets to drop the Force field orb before taking the shot. We’ve already seen the result of that….
She’ll get her revenge when she shows the video to the rest of the team.
I am sitting here trying to imagine who would come up with the cardboard cutout individual in the first panel ;)
That has to be modelled after a real person
John Travolta in Battlefield Earth, isn’t it?
That was the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen. They really should have framed it as a comedy instead of a legitimate sci-fi flick for all its obvious plotholes.
It’s been named the worst movie of all time. I saw it as a kid and even back then I thought it was over-the-top.
Wait, that was not a comedy? I thought it was more comedic than “Army of the Dead”. Th-that one was a comedy, wasn’t it?
How many SF films don’t have ‘obvious plotholes’?
Depends on what you consider obvious. It’s definitely bad if the SF film has plotholes which seems obvious to five year old.
Honestly, why aren’t there cutouts of the director and scriptwriters on live fire ranges?
That movie made Plan 9 look good…
I never saw the movie but the book was all right
People like to rubbish it because of Scientology, nothing more
Disagree, it is truly a bad movie, and this is coming from someone who read the book and enjoyed it.
Have seen way worse that get praised
And never said it was a great movie
About half of the original Star Trek movies were bad, and it got to the stage that ‘fans’ were pre-determining them based solely on the number (“This movie is number ‘x’? Then it will be bad because all other ‘x-number’ releases were bad. It’s not due to be released for three months? Doesn’t matter.”
I didn’t go see that movie specifically because it would have profited just the most recent inventor of a religion. Fuck all of those hucksters and snake oil salesmen, under whatever name they cloak themselves. Thetans, my ass.
It looks like Danny DeVito from ‘Twins’
Too tall
Standing on a crate.
NANI?!
?
“What?!” in Japanese. I presume Nezzy is making a joke based on Sydney’s expression in the last panel, but if it’s a specific reference instead of a general anime thing, I don’t know it.
What Sun Dog said. I thought this was the best gif of the ones I found: https://media.tenor.com/images/5be2b5cbe23139f794ab46eed383a7d5/tenor.gif
Give her some coffee, tell her the cutouts vandalised some of her favourite comic books and are holding all the spicy food for ransom. Observe from a safe distance.
Are you kidding? There is no such things as a safe distance in that circumstance, unless you are Achilles or maybe Maxima. Well, there is a safe distance, but you can’t observe anything from there without a telescope.
You could say Peggy is getting ‘triggered’
[insert rim-shot sound effect and/or gif]
https://i.imgur.com/sPwgpLj.gif
this one? https://i.imgur.com/sPwgpLj.gif
Seriously… Talking to an officer like that, I’m surprised she isn’t already making Sydney kiss the ground with push ups… Then again, I guess she probably wouldn’t get 5 push ups out of her before she collapsed and then they miss out on getting her through the course.
Training now… Punishment later ::EVIL::
Maybe to a captain/major (above that, they’re either self assured enough that they laugh it off or you spontaneously ignite on making direct eye contact long before you open your mouth). An OF-1 would do better to take the hit to their pride than be known for receiving jokes poorly.
“Make up your damned mind” is less a joke than it is blatant disrespect to a commissioned officer.
I’m pretty much putting Peggy’s tolerance to this down to the idea that they’re probably drilling her in the practical rather than the discipline to get her field worthy faster or catch up to the others thanks to her time skip.
I suppose the intonation is less clear when in writing and (usually) there’s a lot less tolerance when it comes from a recruit.
Meh. Given Peggy’s face on the previous channel, it’s pretty clear that there was a “failure to communicate”. Yes, this is an outrageous violation of proper military protocol, but at the same time, this “recruit” has previously soloed a situation where the splash damage would have made the LT into a smear (or less). Keep the mercenary rules in mind.
As has been continuously noted, our “recruit” is not, and will never be, proper military. She just does not have it in her. So her command chain has to work with her with that in mind. A sharp reproof by itself is “fair”. Sadistic punishment & she might just decide to take an interstellar holiday.
Remember, Sydney is (supposed to be) part of a team, as such, she has to learn teamwork, and to ensure the ‘splash damage’ that would ‘smearify’ Pegs doesn’t come from her
Oh, I agree ENTIRELY about that. But most teams don’t operate on the “salute proper & NOW or spend two months in jail” principle. That’s a military thing–and for good cause. But high-performing teams, even in the military, don’t operate on that principle. She’s not a draftee.
Archon seems to be a casually military org. As in yes they are military, but that is more because its an easier slot for them to be put into. I guess it also means they can bring down a bigger hammer on problem recruits. But from what we’ve seen they aren’t MILITARY, as in codified, regimented, and ordered down to the tiniest of letters.
They’re military because most of the operatives were already military, and it’s easier to move them from one branch to another than to muster them out and hope that they report for civillian duty…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-148-just-say-it-its-about-presence/
Third image…
They probably have a lot of patience with Sydney for practical reasons. She will never have the ideal personality for a soldier or cop but since they prefer that she works for them instead of someone else (like Deus) they will not risk driving her away with too tough training.
they just have to pull out an old trick and ask her how quickly batman would get through this course, she’ll try for the best time then.
Yes, but remember what happened last time Peggy overused the Bat.
Fact is, they’re also loosely military because they can’t exactly be picky with recruits. After all, Supers are going to be from all walks of life, which is why they have the special forces folks on staff to “pick up the slack” as it were..
Sydney would reply with a counter-argument that Batman doesn’t use guns. She would then complete the course with her sack of cupcakes shouting Batarang! every time she threw one at a target.
Yeah, the whole scenario is sketchy at best. Since when do an Lt and a Seneca (I have no idea what her rank is, if she is even military, and she isn’t on the Cast page despite being a fairly common if minor character) waste their time with a single recruit? Best I can guess is that everyone else went through this course while Sydney was out of time, but still this is a colossal waste of resources. Since this looks like a standard course maybe they could have arranged for Sydney to be worked in with a local Army unit or something. Where her mouth would certainly would not be tolerated.
But anyway, any NCO present would have jumped in with such an immediate quickness making themselves appear to be a super speedster and had Sydney on the deck until she puked. And then she’d still have to pass the course after that.
Hoka-a-ayyy. Perhaps the training aid in her specs needs to go. Problem with training aids is they take valuable time, and train the user to rely on them rather than developing muscle memory which acts faster and more accurately.
I wonder if anybody in ARC is smart enough — they don’t need to have knowlege of Cora’s upgrades — to simply tell Syddles there is no need for her to wear sight correction specs if she’s not reading a book?
Is she short or far sighted? Had a recruit in military training who couldnt clearly see the papercutoutguys from 25 without his glasses….
She drove while wearing her glasses, so I am thinking she is near-sighted. A lot of her choices also appear to be short-sighted, but that is something else.
Blog: She really only needs them for reading anyway.
For the record: italic in bold.
To paraphrase Kevyn Adreasyn: “She’s blind without her glasses” – meaning, she can’t read her space sexts, auto-track her gun’s ammo, or see into the infrared without them. Practically blind.
This comic, BTW.
A comic which just ended, today.
There are a few comics which will always be remembered.
Damn, already? I though there will be at least two weeks of more epilogues.
Not being able to read your instruments has it’s own danger. As has being focused on the traffic lights back there instead of the ones in front of you.
The question here is whether or not she’s actively learning the position of her hands and the gun to make the circle appear where it needs to be, or if she’s just going “dot on target, flip the bang switch”. And given Sydney, it’s hard to tell if she’s taking that into account or not.
But real talk? WHERE IS THE HEARING PROTECTION!? THIS IS A LIVE FIRE EXERCISE!
If you look closely at panel four (the only panel where we can clearly see her ears), it looks like there is something inside it (and no, not a light from the other side :P )
Inside the ear? Or the glint at the top of the left-hand lens?
In the ear (unless she got that part of her ear pierced)
Like said, you have to look closely
I sincerely DO NOT want that part of my ear pierced!
It’s not really any different than the normal part, it’s just grizzle, give it a good squeeze
Most people barely even know they have it, or pay much attention to it
Yeah, people get piercings all over their ears.
https://s3.r29static.com/bin/entry/e57/504,289,1250,1500/720×864,85/1781907/image.webp
You do know they recommend *double* hearing protection with firearms, right? That is, insertable ear plugs AND the over-ear muffs. Just because they’re so freaking loud.
They are not “that” loud… When my inear protection fell out (unisize dont sit well in my ears) during liveround shooting in training just when the heavy machinegun nest arround 10 meters to my left started shooting , i only was deafened to a degree i didnt hear the command to fall back 15 min later ( even though other ear was still protected but the ring was to loud…) since it was a night training i didnt see the others move either, so they only found out i was misding arround a half hor or more later and started a search party
Yeah, I forgot about the hearing protection this time around. :/
The artwork’s good now. At least to my iggerent maleducated eyes. :)
Just have her remove some high tech ear plug when it’s over. Problem solved.
And a few tattoos on Peggy.
Before readind the undertext, i thought sidney was just so focussed on the run that she forgot that the limit was 4 min.
Well i wonder how long she goes with it until she tries to end the training session by vaporizing the course with her (P)article (P)rojector (C)annon eh i mean the (P)ew (P)ew (O)rb.
Waaait a second here… since when is Peggy a lieutenant? Last I recall, she was a non-com.
I think you’re misremembering… she’s been a lieutenant since the beginning, and if you look at her first appearance in #108, Maxima’s phone identifies her as “1LT Kessler”.
Sydney is still a recruit. ALL members of Arc outrank her!
Assuming there are no new recruits.
Jabberwalky is a newer recruit than Sydney, but she got training during the time that Sydney literally did not exist. So Sydney is still the recruit with the least completed training.
Maybe during their time in the Air Force,Peggy and Maxima never rose beyond the rank of airman and spent thier tour of the Middle East on kitchen duty!?
NCO’s in most Air Forces (as in all I can think of, but I may have missed a few) are the ground crew while the commissioned officers are the pilots. Peggy is a highly skilled pilot so should be an officer. 1st LT makes sense, but she might be promoted to Captain soon.
Yes in french armée de l’air -air force- all pilot are at least NATO OF-1 in ALAT (French ( land) Army Light Aviation) it’s the same for helicopter pilot,same for marine nationale -french navy-
Not all military pilots are officers. The U.S. army had chopper pilots who were warrant officers, and in WWII, there were flight officers, who were non commissioned pilots. There are also flight sergeants, who were non commissioned pilots, I think the brits still have non-officer pilots, called master pilots. And currently, the U.S. Air Force has non commissioned pilots flying drones.
Technically, are drone operators even really ‘pilots’?
That would mean, a ten year old kid with an RC plane is a ‘pilot’
Have you ever worked with a drone desing team and seen the complexity of this unmaned vehicle I don’t speak of lessiure drone …
I’ve worked with a Dassault nEUROn conceptor and it’s rocket science…
Yes, they are operating a flying craft, ergo pilot. It requires an FAA permit, even for the really small or simple to fly models, and many states have an additional license (or did when I last checked a few years ago).
What about the RC cars or boats you can buy from the local X-Mart store?
RC cars not so much, but don’t let any US law enforcement catch you playing with RC boats on a public waterway, especially within 100 miles of the coast…
Yes, a lovely example of exaggerating a risk and then creating a whole new level of bureaucracy to manage it. Doing something for the sake of having been seen to do something.
Exaggerated? Some people don’t think so…
And yet, where is that fleet of crashed airliners. Seriously though, the question is not could it happen, it should be how likely is to happen. The peak level of risk has already passed. Not because of regulation but because the fad has largely waned. I’m not a huge fan of drones myself but I am more familiar than the average person. People who stick with them past the first blush of annoying their neighbors until they lose it in the weeds tend to fall into two groups. Recreation drone fliers who flying closed courses and racing. All the real fun happens below 50 ft altitude. Then there are the pros. these are the people who are using them to make money. Once you fire up a transmitter for commercial purposes you are covered under the FCC. I don’t have a problem with regulating the pros. It is similar to the distinction made between private and professional pilots. As someone who doesn’t get to fly as often as I would like, I worry more about a bird strike.
Gesticus- As to the question of “is a drone pilot really a pilot?”, the answer is yes but it depends. The word “drone” has become over applied and refers to anything from the toy quad copters you can buy at the toy store up through racing quads costing hundreds of dollars, multicopters carrying $40.000 cameras all the way up to multi million dollar military equipment. By the strictest definition a 10 year old child controlling a toy with a cell phone is piloting something. Little skill is involved. At the other far end of the spectrum the operator of a military drone is a pilot in every sense. They manage the aircraft from takeoff to touchdown and exercise all the same skills of a pilot seated in the aircraft and do so at one remove so they don’t have the advantage of the “seat of the pants feel”. With the large scale remotely piloted aircraft the benefit is not that they are easy to fly but that there are operational advantages to leaving the pilot on the ground.
Peggy is a First Lieutenant. It says so right in her bio data in the cast section.
Panel 8 is just absolute pure perfection. I can FEEL peggys thoughts.
But I feel I have to side with Sydney here – apparently Peggy wasn’t very clear what Sydney is supposed to do here.
To paraphrase Sun Tzu: If the soldier does not understand the orders the general is at fault.
This is also why your Sarge tends to be the better teacher. the LT decides what you do. The Sarge tells you how to do it.
Yup, in my 20 years in the army, the officers organized the training, and taught some modules, usually associated with military law or doctrine, MCpls, Sgts, and WOs did all the hands on training.
My Dad spent most of the War as a CMS in the Pioneers. Most of his job was more or less to be a headmaster of a military academy, in addition to “troop welfare”. As such, while he didn’t normally take classes, it was his responsibility to make sure everyone received their “academic” training, which did normally include the sort of thing Syddles is getting now. He was also responsible for ensuring the training was conducted to British Army standards.
Peggy would have been reporting and responsible to him…
(&^%(&^ dyslexia :[ CSM. Grrrrnf :[
That face!, I have made that face. In my case it was teaching someone to use an electronic medical record. At least Sydney doesn’t have 40 years of experience to overcome.
I once spent 90 minutes of a 4-hour tech support call teaching someone to right click and drag. Anyone with customer service scars has made that face often.
Seneca in panel 8 – so hilarious, she forgot to be eating something.
If the soldiers do not understand the general _the first time_, it is the generals fault.
The second time, you blame the officers–and execute them.
It’s like how, if a sports team loses a game, blame the coach (and sack them), if they win, praise the players (and sack the coach)
Read the Art of War. It’s short, and a very worthy read. Then you’ll understand what we’re talking about.
“wean” off some of her more egregious behaviour? Hm, I wonder if that is one of those things that will turn out to be a mistake?
This screams that Sydney was only on the firing range and was not taught sweep and clear. Hence her habit of always returning her sidearm to safety and holstering it. Range rules, not field.
Agree, why would Peggy expect field behavior from someone who was so aggressively thought range behavior?
Also, I can relate. First time I held a gun, I spent 30 mins learning all the ways I could trigger the safety on and off before even leaving the desk and going into the range. My Instructor was thorough
Figured I should give more details. Trigger it on/off either intentionally or accidentally, by good and bad grabbing of the gun.
Field experience of fighting Kaiju, evading orbital bombardment and elimination of swarm ships. That’s before you consider the field missions she has been on.
I really don’t believe her gun behaviour is slowing her down very much, if at all. She seems to be spending too much time on “sneaking up”.
She might be taking too long ensuring the gun is ‘safe’ before moving on as well
This is what you get when you have someone who understands the practice but not the principles behind it. Sydney has over-learned the safety practice. That’s not a bad thing given her tendency to flail about but as noted above it reflects primarily range training. People have cited the Kaiju experience which was very intense but we are seeing that she really still has not had all that much training. These previous, intense experiences may work against her as she could have picked up strongly reinforced bad habits that will now have to be trained away.
That right panel on the middle row… I can just feel Peggy slowly losing her mind as she watches ten minutes of that. XD
Is it wrong that I take honor in the fact that I’ve caused an instructor to make that exact face that Peggy has in pannell 8?
Only different between Sydney and I, I was actually TRYING to cause it.
Thinking back on it though, I’m not sure the $40 I won was worth it.
Hey, at least she’s learned gun safety. The importance of that should not be underestimated.
Ditto.
Already, Pegs is wondering if she could permanently transfer to Cora’s ship :D
Or Peggy is wondering if she could permanently transfer Sydney to Cora’s ship.
I’m sure Sydney would not object to snuggle range for ?Frix? I think it was? I’m terrible for names, just ask my kids and wife.
I was assuming that Sydney was told about the time limit and how short it was and instantly forgot.
Sounds about right :P
Sydney was told about the time limit and instantly forgot how long it was. She is aware there is time limit. She just forgot how short.
Peggy is absolutely being a fool her, and “make up your dam mind” is a perfectly valid response.
At least when your instructor suddenly begins to complain about you doing things.
EXACTLY AS SHE TOLD YOU TO.
I am losing a lot of respect for Peggy’s ability as a teacher.
Sydney is a handful, but in this case its Peggy who failed miserably.
Correct procedure had been to congratulate Sydney on completing the run.
And then tell her about the safety precations she is allowed to skip during an emergency.
Rule of Comic.
In Peggy’s defense, she’s also an LT, not a Sarge.
I agree.
Sydney is actually acting very reasonably. She doesn’t have much training when it comes to using firearms. Compared to the rest, she’s just an ordinary human.
Meaning she could get shot or (more likely) accidentally shoot herself while running. Putting on the safety after every defeated enemy makes absolute sense.
The next step would be explaining her, that she should handle this course like a DnD-Encounter. As long as you are inside the encounter, the safety stays off because removing the safety loses you a turn every time you do it. Which gives the enemy more possibilities to attack you.
And Peggy just became Mr Meeseeks from Rick and Morty.
Peggy makes a awesome facepalm in panel 8.
In this case Sydney is doing almost everything right. Her only 2 flaws are treating each target as a separate engagement, and not slicing the pie in order to clear the room. Militaries and competitors train to put the weapon on safe any time they are not actively aiming down the sights, and to reholster between engagements/stages. So Sydney’s time in this case is poor training on room clearing tactics, and a poor briefing about how to interpret the situation.
I wonder if Syddles has ever learnt how to observe everything quickly, and assess risks quickly? Most of us certainly take our time about it if the subject or environment is strange, we don’t know automatically what we should look for. And it’s not something you can pick up in a classroom. You get it by doing the simulator over and over and over again.
Pedant alert!!!
On most semi-auto pistols, the lever Sydney is flipping would be the disassembly lever. The safety is usually back where it can be operated with the thumb of the trigger hand (which is why it’s called a “thumb safety”).
On first look, I was expecting the pistol to fall apart when Sydeny holstered it.
It’s an FN-57 USG Mk2, they do have a manual safety as shown.
All pistols I’ve handled require some pressure on the slide before the disassembly lever will release for removal, and therefore couldn’t be operated one-handed like this. Not that I’ve handled that many, but it’s an important safety feature design for exactly that reason – even the possibility of coming apart while being fired would be a Bad Thing.
I wish more people training with firearms were that cautious. In my experience there is a period of time where a person is now comfortable handling a firearm but forgets that it can still accidentally kill someone.
As for the non regimented military style of Ark it actually makes perfect sense if you think of it like this; EVERY MEMBER HAS SUPER POWERS! Just think of the practicality of it. Rich people behave totally differently than the other 99% of the population. Superhumans would be similar.
Also a big part of being regimented is that the people are exchangeable. Supers are by definition not.
Umm, not every member has Super Powers: two thirds on this page don’t (technically, three thirds if you count Sydney only having power from her balls)
I’m just waiting for Sydney to go “Y’know what? Fine, you want a speed run, I’ll give you a speed run,” grab the flight and shield balls and just plow over all the “perp” cutouts.
Peggy: “This is a SHOOTING course!”
Sydney: “Accuracy, Seriousness, Speed. Pick 2”
Peggy: “Goof off all you want, just do it in under four minutes!!”
Song in Sydney’s head (sung to “Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes”;
“Shoot, safety, holster gun. HOLSTER GUN!
Shoot, safety, holster gun. HOLSTER GUN!
And no more Manix Rolls, just keep it serious and run.
Shoot, safety, holster gun. HOLSTER GUN!”
Part of the reason Sydney is miffed at Peggy, is that Sydney worked really hard on this mnemonic.
Seriously, that’s a Gigglesnort. Not quite a Muttley LOL, but a good Gigglesnort.
Sydney has very obviously not been taught proper clearing techniques. Even I, a civilian from safe and comparatively firearm-less Canada, can see that. That’s the instructor’s fault, not the student’s. She’s definitely got her safety protocols down though, so good on Peggy for at least drilling that into our favorite ADHD superhero.
This is why I never served in the military, I have no desire to obey orders simply because of the chain of command.
oh my, that’s curious. way too much safety! oh my 10 minutes is way too long Peggy is in her way to get a stress ulcer.
Yeah, this seems like a pretty clear case of poor instructions on the parameters of what is being tested (and more importantly what is NOT being tested). This is more on Peggy than on Sydney.
As i’ve mentioned previously, this is also why LTs tend to make crappy teachers. There’s a reason why Sargeants are Drill Instructors, after all. LT or other officer decides the what, Sarge makes sure the troops know how (or takes the LT aside and talks some sense into them if they’re being a jackass, but that’s another thing entirely).
Good GOD, requiring 4 minute speed drills practically right on the heels of picking up a pistol for the first time? That’s Keanu Reeves-level skill demand! Gotta walk before you can run! I think Archon is too accustomed to “perfect physical specimen” supers, and are forgetting about the mere humans. In Army Basic, I had a little trouble locking a good sight picture in until the actual qualification test (I learned later my platoon’s lead drill sgt. “Mr. Basic Rifle Marksmanship” was privately a bit concerned about me), at which point I shot friggin Expert (36/40), and routinely qualified right on the bubble between Sharpshooter and Expert for the rest of my military career. Plus expert on Ma Deuce, in Germany.
Archon is too used to perfect physical specimen that have prior military experience I think.
Well with all the laughing, Seneca exercised her way out of the cupcakes.
Sydney should tell them that she is done with the ‘tutorial’ and grab the flyball in her left hand. Control the shield ball and Image projector ball on either side of the gun, with PPO under the grip and order them to mimic her hand movement but hold steady on each shot. Should easily get to four minutes.
Or possibly mutter, same targets before outline optimum movements, repeat. Go. And you run and gun the course.
The last line was meant to be verbal control to her glasses to display the movements she would follow like a visual GPS overlay. “And THEN run and gun the course” (Schtupid Spellwrecker)
Yeah, I’d like to think Sydney is smart enough to realize she doesn’t have to act the soldier as much as they want, as they want her.
“I am your superior officer.” is something I would be very meh to. She”s been her own boss and not the military type, so she’d likely be the same way.
I can completely understand Syd’s snippy attitude with Peggy in this situation… She’s being trained by military (or ex-military depending on how you want to look at it) to a seemingly military standard. The old adage Crawl, Walk, Run is learned muscle memory in the military as you are usually instructed, walked through, dry fired, then live fired on just about every course like this. That, plus the fact that safety is literally beaten into you on a regular basis it’s easy to see why Syd is overcautious. “There is such a thing as too much safety!” Said no range officer ever… well, at least not until Peggy.
Outside of Dabbler, Peggy is probably the closest to a friend that Sydney has in ARC-SWAT. Peggy has made the mistake of letting Sydney get maybe too familiar at times. Max too for that matter.
Still, it’s not a good idea to back talk your superior officer that way Syd.
Well, no. In many “Special Ops” cadres, rank is considered as practised irrelevance. Most members have the same skills and endurance, or their special skills are complementary to others’ skills, so rank becomes unimportant.
As others have mentioned, Pegs is probably under some pressure to bring Syddles up to the group skill/performance level. By herself.
It’s not just special ops. In my shop in the Air Force, you counted stripes to see who made coffee, and who filled out paperwork. When there was work to be done you all just did it. And if and E-6 slipped up on something that an E-4 caught, good for the E-4.
Basically, we were a team. And good teams don’t rely on rank. They rely on expertise and respect.
In the case of Special Ops, deference to rank is also limited by the fact that it identifies those of higher rank. Great on the parade ground, but a potential mission-killer when deployed to somewhere that may have snipers waiting for a high-value target.
Or maybe, just maybe they should realize that Sydney is not exactly the type of person that would do well in a military environment. Maybe they’ll figure out that Sydney here just isn’t worth the hassle and honorably discharge her.
Actually, what they should do, for the safety of the public, is lock her in a deep dark hole where she can’t harm anybody. She obviously can’t handle the responsibility on a simple handgun much less artifacts of unknown and terrifying power. She is a clear and present danger to all around her.
And Max should be put in a similar hole right beside her. I don’t think entities that can destroy the entire Earth at a whim should be allowed to walk free.
Sydney would be able to get from that deep dark hole probably faster than through this course. Max DEFINITELY and she can do the course faster. That’s not an option they could really choose.
Put gloves on Sydney and she’s useless. Also, by “deep dark hole” I’m referring to a room in that is designed to detain them. According to Max, ARC-SWAT has ways of dealing with her (she was probably lying just to shut Sydney up though.) So, as far as I’m concerned, they need to deal with her pre-emptively in case she decides to become a problem.
Her “freedom” isn’t worth the lives that are lost because of ARC-SWAT’s unwillingness to act. No individual should have the power to destroy a planet.
Tell that to the planet-destroying aliens that recently paid a visit.
You’ve demonstrated the wail of the quavering masses. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-177-one-step-forward-two-steps-back/
Meanwhile, in a world with multiple entities exist with known propensities to knowingly, willing wipe out all life on the planet. Your response is to lock up those entities with the capability to stop them. Interesting idea. Remind me to never put you in a position of being responsible for anything.
Classic “overlectured undertaught”
Yes, applying the safety catch and holster drill is important, but not to the extent that it costs you your life, contact is contact and during the time it takes to draw and ready a sidearm, an enemy within 10 yards will be hands on, stab or slash you if they have an edged weapon and shoot you multiple times if they’re armed with a firearm.
If you expect engagement, be prepared to engage.
Drills will save your life but they can also cost you it too.
There are documented cases of Officers being shot in an exchange with empty brass in their hand because they’re so used to dropping it in a bucket during a reload.
That’s not so much of a problem nowadays, assuming you have an instructor that didn’t learn by watching youtube, but it did exist.
I was even taught in the military to always put an empty magazine back in the pouch and secure it before reloading a full one into the weapon and if you didn’t, punishment was swift, bad drills all around and I’d laugh at anyone who suggested it today.
The last Department I served in did surprisingly finally see the logic in dropping empty magazines during training both to speed up reload and because you had no loose rounds to refill them with anyway. Originally, the beancounters were more concerned about the potential cost of damaging magazines by dropping them but eventually common sense won out and the drills were adjusted.
We were however, supposed to drop brass in the bucket when we used revolvers and go through some other ludicrous drills virtually all of the instructors ignored.
Interesting to note that Sydney is aiming for the ‘bad guy’s’ weapon in the first frame…that’s well documented as well, your mind subconsciously perceives the weapon as the threat and aims for that instead of centre of mass. That works, but only if you hit the weapon which is pretty unlikely, the only good thing is that often the weapon will be in front of the centre of mass so a miss isn’t as critical ;)
All in all a good depiction of what not to do in an actual engagement, but I’ll agree with others, she has powers, she should use them, which I think would be the next logical progression in training, a combination although she could likely end any scenario involving the type of target shown with her shield and lighthook.
Most of the ‘supers’ wouldn’t need to resort to a sidearm except under some pretty extenuating circumstances but it’s better to know how something works than try to figure it out while you’re trying to use it.
As always, someone else’s opinion and experience may vary, different people were taught in different ways.
As an aside, virtually no revolvers and increasingly a lot of autos, including the one I was issued, don’t even have safety catches…that’s one less way to get you killed while yanking on the triger of something that’s been ‘made safe’…for the enemy.
Then again, there have been departments that demanded safeties be retrofitted to revolvers…for no apparent reason other than they think it might save them a lawsuit from a criminal without considering the family of any Officer killed because of one might sue…not to mention picking up medical and other bills.
well as an officer sign up to be a sacrificial lamb and the word “criminals” get thrown around a way to much as a way dehumanize citizens those officer are meant to protect.
Oh, so you think that officers are supposed to protect citizens who are in the act of killing them (ie: sacrificial lamb)?
Go live by yourself someplace. Far, far away from people.
the insanity of you post is just great lol
i mean literally equating people to terrorists is a classic unrealistic fear rasterization. what’s next everyone is a Russian spy so you talk in code all the time? what about you expect everyone to have a nuke on hand so just destroy the world.
now of the two of us I’m not the paranoid delusional the wants to hurt people they’re afraid of. so there is nothing to gain form me living “far away” form people keeping you away from people on the other hands saves peoples lives ( both in quality and length of live)
If you think the safety is there to protect “the enemy” you probably consider everybody you meet a potential enemy. And then it makes sense to protect people from you.
“… demanded safeties be retrofitted to revolvers …”
Mostly to stop poorly trained officers from shooting their own feet. It’s roughly equivalent to iggerent “hunters” destroying themselves by remorselessly clutching their artillery while the climb over a fence… Putting the guns down (with safety ON) and pushing them under the fence is apparently too difficult.
Sure. Because we hunt with AK-47s.
There are lots of ways to safely cross a fence with a weapon. None of them involve dragging them in the dirt. You know–that stuff that might just have a root or something to snag the “safety” and then the trigger.
Go back to hunter’s safety–if you ever went in the first place.
Sure. Because dragging a firearm through the dirt NEVER caught the weapon on anything, causing the safety to unsafety.
Go back to hunter’s safety, assuming you ever went. You obviously missed the point of the training.
Because nothing bad EVER happened when pushing weapons on the ground.
Go back to hunter’s safety (assuming you ever went). You obviously missed the point.
Bit of the pork-chop there cobber?
Bit of forgetting the 1-hour delay that sometimes happens to our posts. \o/
Peggy does deserve a little slack here. While she was on vacation Seneca was in charge of Sydney’s training. Peggy has been shown to be good at what I’d call “Translation”. In this case, taking military tactics & jargon & putting them into things Sydney herself, with her nerd & pop culture mindset, can understand. But Peggy doesn’t know what happened while she’s gone. Hence not knowing Sydney doesn’t know each course has it’s own time requirement. They are used to it so it’s oversight that no one ever bothered to tell Sydney & Peggy wouldn’t know that they hadn’t.
Sydney is a celebrity recruit, but one of the good case ones. She’s not doing anything out of malice or a sense of superiority. She honestly doesn’t know any better, but does have a sincere desire to learn & improve. She has been her own boss for who knows how many years so of course she’s gonna have an adjustment time of someone being able to command her. She knows her short comings & is working to deal with them in this vastly new environment, but on the other hand everyone else has shown to underestimate her due to those & at times talk down to her.
I think what the rest of Archon has forgotten, or never realized, is that Sydney could easily take one the rest of them & win. Not only win, but embarrassingly so & giving Maxima & Dabble a VERY hard go of it. Sure she looks a bit underwhelming with the obstacle course & gun drill, but she has zero life experience with those. What she has those she has proven to have in spades & what real combat commanders would sell their soul for over someone that has mastered all the drills: the ability to think & adapt under extreme pressure in the field. FWTBT, Kevin & being stranded.
I’m pretty sure if Max wanted to take out Sydney, it wouldn’t take any real time or effort. With her super speed and strength, she could kill most in not all of ARC-SWAT (okay, not Achillies) before anybody realized what was going on. And yes, that includes Dabbler and Sydney.
Sydney does not have the reflexes to grab on to her shield-orb before Max could decapitate her. Hell, I’m pretty sure Dabbler could easily kill Sydney if she wanted to as well. Sydney is too weak, stupid, slow, and depended on her orbs to stand a chance against most Supers.
Now that I think about it, Math, Jiggawatt, Heatwave, Hiro, Harem all have ways to drop Sydney without much effort on their part. Hell, anybody with any sort of competency with a firearm could do so with ease.
You are proposing scenario in which Max / Dabbler have initiative. Imagine it other way: what could Sydney do if SHE has initiative? Well, kill most if not all of ARC-SWAT AT ONCE, with one hit of her pew-pew orb.
First of all, yes I’m giving them initiative because that’s the most likely scenario.
Secondly, who is Sydney hitting with her PPO? I highly doubt that she could hit a human sized moving target with that thing. She has yet to show any real tactical awareness and ARC-SWAT is full of folks with levels of training and expertise that Sydney does not have the capability of understanding! Yet, you think she could hit anybody with a telegraphed attack like the PPO? It would be liking trying to hit a duck mid-flight with a Cruise Missile!
Plus, you are assuming that a direct hit from the PPO would do anything to Max. Heck depending on the nature of the energy of the orb, it might not do anything to someone like Heatwave or Jiggawatt.
She doesn’t have the speed or intelligence to be able to even consider a sneak attack. She would have, at best, a single shot, which might take out a couple of folks (if she’s lucky) and then what? She’s just going to be sitting there, one hand around the PPO, and one around her shield orb. Any of the other supers should be able to effortlessly dodge any future attacks, so they just need to wait it out. Eventually she will become tired and/or dehydrated, and then she’s down for the count.
Sure, someone with an actual skillset may be able use those orbs effectively to wreck untold havok upon the world. But Sydney isn’t one of those people.
I agree that *right now*, the PPO probably isn’t capable of much more than smoking the ARCCON building. I also think it’s pretty clear that this is going to change. Likewise, while *at the moment*, Sydney’s tactical skill is *comical*, that is also going to change. What’s more, Sydney has demonstrated a tremendous skill in out-of-the-box problem solving that means she is going to be a really slippery opponent.
As for “who goes first”, I think you are missing the point. I assume that Maxima, at least, as some sort of Fortress of Solicitude. Once Sydney realized the importance of having one, she’s going to set one up, too. Except that it will be at least a few light-years away. “Who goes first” is one of those games where crazy thoughts have to turn into fears into suspicions into certainties into determinations to act. Are you seriously arguing that Sydney is less likely to go through that process more slowly than others?
Certainly, there are quite a few members of ARC-SWAT that could take out Sydney unawares. But we really don’t know just how strong the PPO really is, nor what the defensive limits of the various supers are. Until we have that, we really cannot say just how much havoc Sydney can inflict.
What we HAVE seen is Sydney taking out an extinction-level threat. By herself. So, yeah. Initiative is going to matter. A lot.
Yes, extinction-level threat in the form of skyscraper sized entities. Let’s see her use that orb to take out something human sized. Again, Cruise Missile vs. Duck in flight.
Also, sure, we don’t know what her future potential is. But, my argument is based fully on what we know of her mental capabilities right now. Sure, she is “Dangerously Genre Savvy” and that has served her well. But, in how many situations is that going to work? (Answer: As many as the author allows. Her plot armor is unbreakable.) But this “out of the box” quick thinking only works if you can survive long enough to implement it.
Yes, I do agree there are others in ARC-SWAT who aren’t as intelligent as Sydney. She’s probably a bit above average. But, I do think that there are plenty there, especially ones with proper military training, who are always going to superior to her in the realm of tactics.
Here is my question: Give her all the initiative you want, is there any situation where Sydney can do ANYTHING to Max? There is no reason to believe that the PPO would do any actual damage to a base Max, much less one where her Armor is boosted. Keep in mind that Max is fully aware of Sydney’s powers (at least as aware as Sydney is,) whereas most of Max’s abilities seem to be classified and way above what Sydney “needs to know.” So that is an additional critical advantage for Max.
Hell, there is no reason to believe there is anybody on the planet who can counter Max. I honestly believe she could have easily taken out Vehemence one-on-one. She is the “Grrl Power” equivalent of Superman. Which is why she’s easily my least favorite hero in this comic.
you do understand Syd is the main character with literal god level super right?
Sdy is literally made to counter max, hell by the logic of comics its its almost a certain that the orb makers were the ones responsible for supers and the ones that made the geode that gave max her powers.
even leaving that aside we have no clue how sdy’s powers would effect Max as as we know next to nothing about either power set at this point. right now tho Sdy could easily dump max on on another planet and lever her there
I keep forgetting about Syd’s most dangerous attack. With it, she can take everything up to, and almost certainly including, unarmor-boosted Max. Maybe more than that.
The attack? Ballistic forcefield. If I’ve got this correct, she can do Mach-16 at ground level. As I understand it, the molecules at “point” are going to be accelerated 20-50x perpendicular to the direction of travel. That’s plasma moving at Mach-320 at the low end. That’s enough to really, REALLY wreck almost anything’s day.
Of course that’s silly physics. There is no way to experiment to see what would actually occur. I guess the in-comic characters could figure it out.
Pretty sure the next page will show us WHY Peggy didn’t tell Sydney it was a 4 minute run.
Too focused on safety this page. Too focused on time the next -> Course record, Sydney Style.
number 8 panel Peggy’s face is just amazing right there.
Play “Doom” or “Fallout” theme music over the PA and see if that speeds her up…
I think it’s safest to not risk Sydney unleashing her inner Doomguy.