Grrl Power #864 – Pushing HR to the limit
I’m trying to move things along here a bit. Don’t necessarily need to show every moment of Sydney going through superhero boot.
Fining Sydney $10K for getting 13 million likes would be a little like fining an oil company $100 million dollars for spilling a jillion tons of oil all over some national park. It’s like 29 hours worth of profit, and is in no way a deterrent. I googled what sort of money getting a shitload of hits gets you on Instagram, and apparently “taste makers” can make $10,000 for a million hits. Presumably those are for posts that directly promote something, I don’t really know, but it’s still pretty gross. Granted, at the time this comic takes place, it’s not quite 2020, and IG wasn’t as big, but we’re also dealing with comic time here so… it’s whatever time we want it to be, especially when it comes to technological development, but the takeaway is this: If Sydney posts a picture of Harem’s bra-clad cleavage, (and names the brand of bra) she can probably afford a new car. So… imagine how well Harem is doing with her own online efforts. She has unlimited access to Harem’s cleavage.
In case you were wondering, Sydney has a tablet computer on her head there in panel 6, which is supporting all the other stuff. I tend to draw these pages without much consideration for where the orbs would be floating, which is why they’re sometimes a little weirdly positioned if someone happens to be standing right behind her.
I’m sure some will want to point out that if she was asleep, the obs would power down and be rolling around on the floor, but they don’t do that right away. It’s at least 15 minutes before they go into screen saver mode.
Arc-SWAT is starting to put Sydney through some aerial dogfight basics. For a superhero team their size, they don’t have a whole lot of fliers. I guess Dabbler probably knows a flight spell – that seems unbelievably useful for an adventurer, especially one who presumably does a lot of spelunking and dungeoneering, but when it came time to draw that balloon ring paintball panel, I decided to add Cora to the mix instead. (I know, she’s like 9 pixels tall in the regular sized page, but trust me, that’s her) She can conjure up rocket legs, so she can fly at least as fast as Heatwave.
If you’re confused as to how her hard light legs could propel her through the air, obviously by themselves they can’t. She has access to the same teleport system that Dabbler does and can port little thrusters into her calves, and the hard light constructs just forms a framework around them. They also provide an optical chanel which wires them up to her meat interface so she can control them with a thought. Same thing when she replaces her hand with a boson nullifier or something else equally horrifying.
Speaking of Heatwave, I’m not sure what those balloon rings are made of. Certainly not rubber and helium, because Heatwave’s flight corona would definitely destroy those when she flew through them.
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Actuall, the hard light rig could fly without extra tech. Building something like a turbine engine should be within reach.
if they can produce enough kinetic force to maintain her standing and balance it shouldn’t be too much harder to expel enough kinetic force against the ground to jump, especially if they can also run.
speaking of HR and things Sydney is posting coming back to bite her. Has any of the higher brass gotten wind of her bringing alien food to Earth without checking it with any scientists for quarantine safety purposes and feeding it to a well known scientist yet?
If she made someone eat Graxz they will definitely get wind of it. Literately.
I thought she provided Neil deGrasse Tyson with the grakz sample specifically because he was a well-known scientist who would be as likely as anyone to know what other scientists would be appropriate to properly test it.
The defriending, of course, would come about because of what those scientists reported she had given him.
I mean, would NdGT actually consider *eating* grakz without testing it first? Oh, wait, yeah, probably.
Uh… it’s SYDNEY. She gave him the grakz because she loved the taste and wanted to share it with him. And he unfriended it because she failed to realize that maybe, just maybe, NdGT might not share her love of ultra-spicy foods. Notice how he unfriended her hours later… either after he’d finished cooling his mouth off, or after it finished coming out the other side.
Any scientist would go insane for the chance to put either the food or the container under a microscope. NdGT probably only had a few bites and studied the rest.
To be fair, NdGT did pretty well on the Hot Ones Hot Sauce challenge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da8-QfGemgo
I think HR has a lot more reason to be angry.
She’s posting inside pictures of military training and its trainees.
I don’t know or care what the US military has for surprising rules against leaking secret military information, but I’m sure that *posting pictures of actual training and weaponry* without permission of the entire chain of command is super illegal.
I find quite likely that she DID OK’ed the pictures with someone who knows what parts of base is secret, perhaps specifically with Arianna, but NOT with HR. Remember this is not her personal activity, this is official popularization.
Wouldn’t Ariana tell her to call HR for permission if she came with these pictures.
Arianna would check her sales forecast spreadsheet, check the regs, then check the spreadsheet again, then tell Sydney “Sure.” Arianna *might* check whether Heatwave ever posted sideboob shots first.
But Harem’s bra? Not relevant.
You can buy videos of this kind of training, I’ve got one of my stint in the Air Force. They don’t usually care about basic training, because nearly every part of it is simply to increase physical fitness or general knowledge (discounting that you would get in trouble for having a phone when you’re not supposed to). Now taking pictures of your follow on training can get you in major trouble (or captain trouble depending).
Thanks.
Is three dimensional paintball also in this category.
Paintball seems like a pretty common basic training to me, but three dimensional paintball is pretty uncommon(normal people need an aircraft to fly).
The phone problem can be fixed by asking your trainer if you can take a picture.
If it is really so unproblematic as you present. Most trainers won’t have a problem with it.
3 dimensional paint ball… no that’s not going to be classified. the air tactics briefings and who’s teaching them? buddy boy check you phones at the door. you will be provided with note-taking equipment by HR if required, courtesy of leontech, do not load the presentation materials on any device not owned and provided by Archon.
also, some of the observers and ‘support’ people evaluating the system, they were never here, that was just cardboard cutouts we put in to scare you Sydney.
by the way you do know that many seekers use IR sensors right?
The paint ball part is not common, at least not in the Air Force. We aren’t really expected to get in firefights. Also, removing access to the outside world is more about breaking the trainee so you can build them back up. But as this is a special case in a special department, they’ll likely be a bit lax, especially with still photos. Can’t get too much info from one still. Like palmvos said though, the actual maneuvers and trainers are going to be sensitive info.
I’m going to propose some materials to make your rings of:
some lighter than air aeorgel,
Anything heath resistant enough, because they’re standing on poles,
steel(or anything else strong and usefull for avoiding gasous flow) with a semi-vacuuum inside to corrigate for the weight.
Anyone else with suggestions, feel free.
Diamond lattice aerogel containing vacuum.
Actually, remarkably flammable. Remember, diamond is just carbon.
Flammable if you get it to the ignition temperature for diamond. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 900C.
If the concern is that Heatwave may ignite the rings, you tell her that passing requires her not to ignite the rings, and let her work out a solution.
For example, she does the heat aura to fly, builds up momentum, then turns it off to glide through the rings. Flame on! on the far side, to resume flying.
Which would also be helping her train her abilities, for a situation that requires her not to blow up the people she is intending to rescue
Simply use hydrogen instead of helium.
A locker room pic like that would result in more than a $10,000 fine.
They are still a Military branch. More like an Article 15 (or whichever specific article this falls under) and potentially have pay reduced by 2/3rds for several months and possible time in a “brig” (or their equivalent of jail). She would be “painting rocks” for 6 or more months (ie pointless and repetitive task).
Heck, even a “first offense” warning would be much more than just a $10,000 fine.
I doubt theyd send their mvp celebrity extremely public face very recently civilian Superhero who has saved the teams lives multiple times within a week to the brig for the crime of showing off peoples boobies with their permission.
Heatwave looks surprised there, she probably didn’t consent to that.
Maybe not to the photo being taken at the time but Halo has been around long enough to know not to annoy her and not expect an attempt at revenge. I’m guessing she was talked into allowing Halo to post the image after it was taken.
I’m willing to bet that if heatwave said ‘don’t post that on the internet’ Sydney wouldnt post it on the internet. She’s not outright malicious, unless you’re a 1000 foot kaiju trying to murder her.
And I don’t think Heatwave is going to try to ‘cancel’ Sydney or ARCHON. But H.R. would usually look at a worst case scenario and take it as an absolute certainty anyway.
Okay I guess Heatwave didnt even know if Sydney is wanting to go apologize to her just in case.
Cancel culture doesn’t care about how much good someone has done, they only care about that one stupid post. 15 years from now someone will resurrect this pic to demand that Syd not receive a Nobel for helping Earth terraform and colonize Mars.
sideboob =/= boob
Maximum penalty for an Article 15 is 2 months 1/2 pay, 45 days restriction, and 45 days extra duty at a battalion level Article 15 which is the highest level, past that it becomes a court martial. The 2 months half pay can really suck if you are stateside, but not much of a concern in Iraq, the 45/45 SUCKS because your chain of command is only required to give you a minimum of 4 HOURS of sleep a day, so if they can find enough things to keep you busy it can really be a pain.
I assume the balloons are kevlar balls and someone’s holding them up with TK. There’s somebody around with an appropriate powerset, right?
You can see the strings holding them down, just regular helium balloons tied to a wire ring (judging by the bottom half maintaining position).
They explicitly are not. That’s literally the one thing DaveB said they weren’t.
For each time wholly after an artproduct piece is complete, for each person, that person is not the author. That a person descended from the author not authorizes that person.
The person who evolved from the author and artist is the author and artist for all ownership and authorship purposes, regardless of whether all his/her cells have regenerated, with or without a new face, and is the authority on the art.
Only for {\sl some} ownership or authorship purposes. Don’t call yourself pedantic and state a falsity.
You may have replied to the wrong comment: don’t see what any of that has to do with what the balloons may or may not be made of
I’m going with Jiggawatt. Magnetism is the other side of electricity, so Jiggs simply EM’d the steel wire rings to be pushed up by the Earth’s EM field, so they need a couple of strings and rocks to hold them in place. Set and forget simples, yes?
Not that simple. Real magnets and electromagnetism do not work like Magneto’s metallic kinesis. You would vaporize the rings before getting a significant magnetic effect and if a significant field was produced it would yeet the ring to the nearest pole(north in this case) to neutralize its flux disturbance.
On the other hand, the lower half of each balloon could be negatively magnetic, and a plate on the ground could be negatively magnetic, achieving the desired effect.
More likely, though, they are just balloons made of Kevlar/Q-vex that is made heat resistant by Iron Cloth (a.k.a. Ashley, the guy with the fashion ninja assistants here https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-316-couture-cammies/).
I was mostly referring to the rings and tethers, which aren’t dependent on the balloon construction so long as they’re bouyant. But yes, rubber balloons wouldn’t hold up well – although a mylar balloon should be able to handle several hundred degrees just fine, especially in short intervals. We don’t know much about Heatwave’s flight corona, but if it’s hotter than that she’d be endangering the rest of the team as well as the balloons.
Why should we believe what DaveB said about it?
Be… cause He’s the author and He knows what they are (or are not)?
They banned selfies in the locker room, but said nothing about the showers or the mud pit on the obstacle course. Exact words probably aren’t enough to hold off ARC-Law if Sydney tries to post more indecent selfies, though.
Notice if you would, that in each of her drowsy in the seats moments that you can see Harem in the bottom corner… Obviously doing a Selfie shot of Sydney’s fight with boredom. Likely outside of a few that she did herself, most seem to have been taken by other members of Arc Swat and probably shown to Sydney who made it into a montage.
The video monitor in frame 8 shows frames 3, 5 immediate.
Indeed, and the problematic photo was taken by somebody else, you can see her phone AND both of her hands.
No, that’s one of the few that is an actual selfie. Mirror selfies are like that – you see both hands and the camera.
I see Sydney finally figured out how to do a braid(Or asked someone to do it for her). Who else remembers that one page where she tried but just gave up and did a regular ponytail instead?
It’s also kinda crazy how different she looks when she doesn’t have her bangs framing her face.
Am I the only one to notice she’s asleep in at least one picture and holding her phone right way around in another?
The “holding her phone” one is probably photo of mirror. The “she’s asleep” one is taken by Harem.
Actually, the only one that looks like it was taken by her is the last one. And the locker one, if we assume there is a mirror. You can see harem’s face poking out in all the pictures from the lecture, she is clearly posing for the first one and she is too far from the camera in the climbing one to be a selfie
While the boobies pic would be high on my list of favorites and I would definitely be following Sydney on Instagram if I lived in her universe, I really do love panel 1 with her proud smile on the firing range.
Still, can’t beat Harem’s freckled cleavage. :)
Who wants to beat them? I want to care for them! Pamper them!
There’s a huge difference between having an innate superpower (or any other source, such as an Nth tech orb) accelerate every piece of a human body at the same rate at the same time, and strapping rockets to the legs of a human. Cora would break her made-of-light legs, fold at the waist, snap her neck, and probably pass out due to the acceleration of the rockets, since it isn’t applied evenly to her entire body. Pilots of fast, maneuverable planes wear special suits made to literally squeeze the pooled blood caused by rapid acceleration and maneuvers out of their extremities in an effort to try to keep some of it in their brains where it is needed to maintain consciousness and life.
Cora does have a cybernetically reinforced spine. Plus the linkage to her shoulders and hips. She had physical, cybernetic limbs for some time before she upgraded herself to the hard light rig, so she’s considerably studier than a typical human.
I think back when Cora was running on the track with Dabbler, they were talking specifically about how she’s a lot more resilient than normal humans are (probably in regards to being able to handle having sex with Hiro where she wants him to be rougher).
Found it.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-749-autopilot/
Cora: “It’s a good thing I have hard light limbs and a cybernetically reinforced spine, cause he’s pretty damned strong. Of course I still had to encourage him not to treat me like a porcelain doll.”
“There’s a huge difference between having an innate superpower [..] accelerate every piece of a human body at the same rate at the same time, and strapping rockets to the legs of a human.” – Oberon
And there’s a huge difference between strapping rockets to the legs of a Baseline Human, and having an experienced user of hard-light limbs such as Cora design ‘limbs’ that can integrate rockets. We know from her time on the Fracture that Cora’s projection is not limited to humanoid limbs, and we know from her costuming shenanigans that it can cover her torso as well as adding limbs; it’s reasonable to extrapolate that it can all be ‘hard’ light if necessary and that humanoid joints are not obligatory. She can effectively secure as much of her head and torso as necessary into a rigid flying body, and may well be able to use the projection to apply pressure to counter blood inertia – not to mention having no limbs in which the blood can accumulate far from the heart.
The rings are definitely made of candy. I’ve seen those at the store.
Dave B I know how those balls are staying up in the flight training.
They have access to all sorts of supers right? Why not the Jim the JUGGLER he can keep over a 100 balls in the air at a time…mostly because of TK power…which are limited to …balls for some reason/ He’s used to set up obstacle courses and such. Jugs is also popular at parades, balloon festivals and wet tshirt contests.
He’s also the dodgeball champion of Texarkana = which lead to his recruitment.
He works with a geomancer who’s the course grounds keeper (sets up mud pits, sand boxes, trims hedges etc) Geo-George he likes to be called. Don’t step in his azaleas and if you want to hear a rant ask him about war with fire ants.
George is also a random walking ground alarm system which lets him fell anything approaching from underground. He jus has to be in contact with the ground.
George’s wife runs the lost and found. You wouldn’t believe the things and bts George finds.
Jim and George look like your atypical govt worker/contractor…albeit on the high end of looks, but older. They were “recruited” for studies on supers when they started to appear more and more and military noticed that there were “oddities” a ways back and tried to find links…
Jim would soo get along with MATH – Jim loves watching supers do his ball courses. Jim’s heard all the ball jokes ever. Dabbler made him write them down for her. Jim can fly on a ball if he wants, but prefers to roll instead. He can’t control Syd’s balls…he tried nothing there for him to TK.
HOw many other minor-supers (Class B/C supers) are there in ARC? On what jobs or which section?
Anyone think Tentacle dude got a job in the mail room?
This pleases me
I think we’d mentioned ‘Haz’ Matt the janitor a while back. Very nearly as everything-resistant as Achilles*, but without the show-off temperament. Happy to stay in the background, keeping his building clean and tidy, equally at home mopping up spilled lemonade or disposing of a kitchen meltdown at Fusion.
*Maybe even more everything-resistant. A lot of the things Achilles has tested himself against, Matt took one look and walked away.
Which if true means that a $10k fine just means that her new car will be slightly less luxurious after the HR fine. It also means that the HR threat is either not really intended to stop this behavior, since the fine just doesn’t cut it as a disincentive, or that HR has limits on their penalties which were not very carefully thought out when they were codified.
Sounds more likely that the punishment is being formally warned and put on notice for any future infractions (and having it added to her classified records) than any monetary fine
my headcannon on this is that there was an investigation that included interviewing the participants. HR found out that it was permitted and even posed. because sydney’s the protagonist we saw her disciplinary action. the other girls were each warned that this is not to be repeated.
remember that this is the work place with the ‘unofficial’ tit for tat photo policy. which Sydney is benefiting from, but not contributing to.
Blondini looks like she is posing in the locker room (or at least photo-boobing), Brooke looks like she was unaware of what Sydney was doing until she heard the camera *click*
Was mostly commenting on why she was being fined such a low amount
Obviously, the rings were provided by Dabbler, acquired much earlier in her life…which also explains why Cora is so at-ease in flying around them. (And if Dabbler & Cora both are familiar with them, we’re quite sure that aerial combat isn’t the only use to which they’ve been put!)
Finally figured out that it was her Orbs refelecting off her glasses giving her the overlycute looking blush.
BUT. I thought it was said back in #103 where Dabbler is getting her results from scanning the Orbs that they were ‘Glowing, We can see the glow but I can’t detect the light coming off them.”
My sciency brain of limited yet selective information that may be true or false says.
If the Orbs themselves do not project the infra-eh that is possible to be detected coming off them. then they would be in fact invisible to things like camera’s, reflections and a few other things. While the Camera would be fine as its been well established that they can be recorded. I 100% am not a fan of the reflection… At least at how obviously there they are since the poker game of #853
magic can’t detect the light, so it simply imaginary light that was crafted to camouflage its self as regular light by producing localized reflection points and relative reactions in light sensory such as organic eyes and mechanical devices. Only through extraordinary means could it be picked up there was something unusual, possibly related to the anti-magic nature we have seen displayed, not just in detecting them but also that the bubble can even block magical influence. This may be an innate function implying a need to counter magic more than anything else by their creators, but also a desire to not make them stand out as anything but magic to an unknowing party (less advanced civilizations).
-basically, added the effects to make them not stand out as much. Things without reflections, shadows, and such tend to draw unwanted attention even when believed to be magic in nature.
To put all your minds at rest about how the rings are being held in place, here is the answer:
A wizard did it. (or the Archon equivalent of whoever can cast Wingardium Leviosa)
Good to hear that things will be moving on soon, no offense, but there is really no need to paint out something that should really be a training montage.
How would Sydney look with the French built FAMAS G2?
If you’re not familiar with it,just Google it or try Wikipedia.
Since Cora is still there, this means Frixx is too. And that Sydney is “dating” him when she gets the chance yes?
Selfies that didn’t make the LEON filter should be a special page
Sydney curled up -literally, in her pup’s arms. Sydney trying to cover camera when Frixx takes her picture after…just see face a leg and some arms…balls are flying strategically to block viewer’s sight of naughty bits.
Frixx under the poster of the dogs playing poker, grinning, but holding up a pile of women’s clothing he won in one hand.
Reaction shot of the face of the girls at the table when Frixx lost his short the next poker night.
Then Frixx’s shot of their faces when they stare at Sydney who’s blushing and grinning like the Coyote that got the Road Runner, the cat who got the mouse, the doogie who got the cheese treat etc.
Sydney’s comic shot hosting a Furry Day just so Frixx can visit openly. Sydney buried under/inbetween Frixx and half a dozen furries.
Frixx trying to eat cotton candy (Funniest thing you can get a doggo to do next to caramel and or PB)
Sydney catching Frixx watching a Dog Grooming show on cable or dog show contest. We can see Frixx blush.
This does make me wonder how much the average pay check is in Arcswat. Kind of hard to put a pin on that one anyway. Pretty sure Harem would skew the numbers kind of hard with her having at least one of her on duty at all times. Rank could also prove interesting as far as pay grade goes too. Sydney is clearly making bank, but imagine how much Max must make… or try to anyway.
Harem’s is an interesting case. Do you only pay Daphne, give the 4 clones are ummm… disposable… or do you pay for each uniform? Myself, I’d say Daphne gets a pay-cheque, and the clones get treated like her “children”.
I think that one also boils down to required gov materials allocated to her. If she’s expected to use any more than one of her on duty or otherwise related to duty, then the argument can be made that they’re also working personnel that require their own pay. Case in point, the rock’em sock’em restaurant. The entire thing could get pretty murky real quick. Pretty sure they’d have to have worked out a contract with terms just for her.
Okay, I don’t *think* I saw anyone mention this, but the locker room ‘selfie,’ at first I thought it was a mirror shot, but then realized that it was in front of wooden lockers, so probably not in front of a mirror, my question is, since Sydney’s phone is in the picture, who took the shot? I’m guessing another Harem and the look on blonde Harem’s face is an act.
Also, while Sydney is impulsive, and may have gotten a side-boob shot of Heatwave, she is genuinely a nice person and would not have posted a picture like that without her (Heatwave’s) permission… Or Harem’s for that matter.
As far as the $100 million dollar fine on an oil company comment in Dave’s A/Ns, I would think that the company would be more upset with the loss of that much oil than the fine.
The mirror is in front of Sydney, not the other way around
I see Sydney finally got her hair in a decent French braid. also you drew her without the bang and did a really good job of not giving her a circular monkey face. good job +1
… Now I wonder what a smash cut of Max’s work week looks like.
The pigtails silhouette in the first panel…
Dare I guess that this is a reference to Cornelia “Fizzy” Fizzlesprocket from ELLC ?
Just google “Fizzy ELLC” and you will see how I got the idea. It’s pretty much a fantasy-novel equivalent to this comic, too.
Somehow I doubt that and point toward the more socially prominent iconic character disaster of a portrayal in a recent movie or film. At least not as much of a dumpster fire as the male leads reinterpretation by a wset of writers and directors in later stages of cerebrocortical degeneration.
I never heard of an iconic character called “Disaster”? Hm, qwanting reveals that some movie “Disaster” was made in 2008, that’s not recent.
Also, I’m rather certain that the silhouette in the first panel is a female, not a male. Or, you mean that “Disaster” was a male character and rewritten to be female?
SO! I just had a thought about Harem. When she unteleported the body with the broken arm, her clothes went with her. Can Harem “unteleport” objects that she’s carrying and pop back in without them? Does she always pop back in exactly as she popped out or can she ‘drop’ something? Also, it seemed to be implied that when Harem was on the wrong side of the portal that there was one more Harem (reference to “too many of me”) but this never got mentioned again. Has she leveled up?
Also! if she is carrying something and unteleports, what happens to it.? Do clocks keep ticking, or would her watch need to be reset if she was unteleported for more than a couple seconds? does a GPS continue working, and if so, where does it show itself
She can’t reappear without stuff she left with. She re-exists exactly as she was. Clocks stop running, GPS don’t work. An unteleported Harem doesn’t exist as far as anyone can tell. It seems to enter some kind of limbo and exists only as potential.
aaaaaaaaaaaaand the “too many of me?”
That was referring to the fact that the portal transported the team in time as well as space. By going through the portal to Alar, one instance of Harem also went forward most of two months. She therefore had ‘too many’ instances active at once for the length of the visit – five on Terra that came forward the long way, plus one on Alar that took a short-cut. It was never really covered on panel, but DaveB‘s commentary on the page of the reveal gave the explanation. (Note to DaveB: if/when this gets tidies up for hard-copy publication, new readers would probably appreciate somehow having the explanation on-page to avoid this sort of confusion. Somehow. Tricky, I know, when the art is sized to fit the page.)
thanks for that.
You’ve gotta love Sydney’s disarming P90… I mean, disarming personality.
Who am I kidding? You’ve gotta love both!
Hey, whatever happened to Vance, the guy who is(n’t) made of a bazillion spiders?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-331-my-god-its-full-of-spiders/