Grrl Power #876 – Mercs and mayhem
So it looks like word of Maxima’s stunt with the Fel has spread. I guess I could leave you guys speculating as to why aliens want to kidnap and auction her off, but… I mean, come on. It’s that or some Ferengi wants to press his Latinum into her Gold. Ew.
Eeyuh. I just gave myself the willies.
You do have to admit, it’s pretty ballsy trying to capture someone who one-armed a battlecruiser. But “Fire Third Eye Demon Thing” whose race I have yet to name (see previous appearance of a different girl) is right. Someone out there would probably pay a lot to control/study/recruit Max.
I know I’ve already gone on at length about the economics of post scarcity societies where only energy, information and entertainment would be of much value, so when “FTEDT” says “billions” that’s just a convenient translation to benefit you guys. She’s really talking about lots of energon chips, dessert schematics for food replicators, and digital files for Game of Thrones, Dexter, True Blood and Heroes, all minus their finals seasons of course.
Ray sometimes has some semi-laudable aspects. If he didn’t, he’d never have anyone to regret making certain mistakes with him. He’s normally sleazy, usually an idiot, but sometimes he’s a hot idiot. Thus; mistakes. That usually only happens when he can keep his mouth shut for more than two minutes at a time, so it doesn’t happen often.
Take this scene for example. If Dabbler and Cora didn’t hear him mutter the “without cutting me in” line, his intervention with the mercs might seem… a little macho. Like, in a good way. But also aggravating, since he’s butting in on them doing their job. Well, on Dabbler doing her job, but Cora’s never said no to adding downrange ordnance to whatever Dabbler is shooting at. If they did hear him… we don’t know about Cora’s hearing, but we do know Dabbler has, well, huge ears. So, if they did hear him, then the “I’m disgusted with you and will you put on a shirt you heaving pile of man-beast fine but I’m only showering with you to conserve water so keep your hands mostly to yourself.” possibility opens up. As I said. Mistakes.
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Damn, this just gave me a “Heavy Metal” movie flashback… “STERN!?!?”
Calling Hanover Fists!
Yup, that is precisely who I was thinking of….but dont worry I’m sure someone ‘has an angle’.
Pretty sure he’ll get what’s coming to him.
Full marks, all around.
Hangin’s too good for him! BURNIN’S too good for him! HE OUGHTA BE TORN INTO LITTLE BITTY PIECES AND BURIED ALIIIIVE!
Your profile picture accents that comment perfectly.
Heh, I got that same vibe, except Hanover wasn’t a sleazeball businessman plus galaxy renowned pervert. Maybe a fusion of Stern plus the transformed Hanover…
But with that hairstyle, he’s clearly got some of Cutty Flam/Frankie in there.
Hahahaha, oh man. As if that cheap stasis beam could hold Maxima for long enough (assuming its not a temporal effect, then it might hold as long as it has energy).
And will you look at that, there IS a reason mr. sleasyhair is still alive….
It’s like the worst heist ever. No getaway driver. No plans for dealing with local enforcement despite, yanno… the entire group of people who punched eldrich horror borg army.
The beam is smarter than the folks wielding it. But they didn’t think to bring enough for everyone…
I thought she was talking to the getaway driver over comms.
I’m kinda wondering on the energy burn rate on that stasis gun. I mean it’s not like they could have tested it against the real Max now could they? We know that Max is afected by ‘weakness’ fields, just not that much. The kaiju fight ‘tractor’ beam was a sparkly gold/red combo.
Weakness fields don’t affect Maxima much because she is so very strong. But stasis is stasis. When there is no passage of time you don’t have any opportunity to apply your super strength.
except neither the comic or the blurb under it refers to it as a time manipulation device just a stasis device, of which there are many versions of in sci-fi, and the only place I ever see a time stopping version is in fantasy, and even then rarely and usually involving time distortion by the fae.
but no, it is usually a kinetic manipulator, enhanced gravity device, cellular metabolic slow down, or basically just a fancy version of a tractor beam which is basically hyper magnetism and gravity control.
That said even then, a lot of this is treating it like a magic wand; when its being presented as technology. Which means logically it has a range and force limit, a power source limitation. If this handheld device for instance couldn’t spread over and contain Ray’s ship (and yes smaller target more chance for focus on a small area), but given Maxima’s potential power and if like Syndrome’s zero point energy ring *which it looks a lot like*, Maxima is still able to think, internal functions still going, and hear and see, then she can potentially amp up her strength and so long as her internal power source is greater than the gun’s stress out its capacity.
Which given these criminals view her as valuable for her power, chances are they aren’t packing a micro-galaxy battery in that thing.
She beat the battery of the defences of a Fel ship.
That’s even to galactic standards to say it with Dabbler “dire edge”
You must not be reading the right kind of science fiction. Check out Larry Niven, he does stasis fields right. I’m sure that are others, but that’s the one that jumps to mind first.
And sure, just because words have meanings doesn’t have to mean that something called a stasis beam actually causes stasis. It could be the Ronco Stasis Beam™, which only slows time by 50% or whatever.
I guess not as I wasn’t actually familiar with that name until these comments.
I had to google it when someone else said it, as cringy as having your ancient civilization be slavers, I see where they are getting the idea from (I figured so many here were interpreting the stasis power from Breath of the Wild as time manipulation),
but yeah, it was coming across as odd to me to come to that conclusion and then everyone just run with it. As there are a lot of immobilizer rays and tractor beams that stop you cold if they hit you found throughout sci-if, paralyzer rays, ect… and no one assumes they manipulate time. So stuck out that a term I normally see used to mean (inactive or equilibrium) to be interpreted so frequently as time stopping.
weakness fields affect Max as much as they affect everyone else, she’s just so strong that even when affected by a weakness field she’ll still be able to smash down horrible monstrosities.
Eh. I think Mr. Purple was probably more attractive before the whole ‘look how big I am’ stunt. But each to their own I guess!
Other than the obvious scenario of the other team members freeing Max, I’m picturing Dr. Horrible’s “that’s not a GOOD sound” right before being decked by a golden fist (and then Max breaking into song).
WAaaaY ! !
So, A death beam……..
I really like this page! I went from cringing at the overly desperate sleazyness of Ray, to rooting for him as he saves Max! I hope he becomes a regular in the comic.
There is a high chance that this person is working for Ray to provoke exactly that response. Staging a conspicuous ‘kidnapping’ in the middle of a crowded, policed intersection is not something one does with anticipation of success. It’s something you do with anticipation of your employer tackling you, hauling you to their ship’s ‘brig’ and slipping you 50 n’pluots.
I think people that are saying this is all a setup are giving Ray too little/too much credit, because if that is what is doing then he is the best actor in the galaxy.
It is a crowded, policed intersection of a primitive, pre-fusion, no-space-flight-worth-of-the-name world. “What are they gonna do? Throw rocks at us!? Shoot us with ballistic weapons?” :-D
It is not like they don’t have reasons to feel overconfident, it is just that those reasons are wrong.
Anyone else suddenly hearing Reach Out by Cheap Trick?
Indeed!
Poor Hanover.
A trick involving an attack on high regarded military officer in their own country isn’t cheap
“I’ve hired you to help me start a war. It’s a prestigious line of work, with a long and glorious tradition.”
Hey it almost worked for Humperdink.
Not sure if it’s been asked already, but I’m wondering…
…What happens if the stasis-beam is blocked, at a location that’s so close to the the gun’s muzzle that the resulting “area-effect of immobility” includes the gun itself?
— Obviously, the effect is **NOT** triggered by the beam striking the molecules in the air itself, or else the effect would never even emerge from the gun. It must require striking an atomic structure that’s more solid than just a plasma, or a gas.
— My guess is that something inside the gun must be in motion, in order to create a semi-stable “energy-pattern” which can then emerge from the gun. Striking a liquid-or-solid would disrupt the pattern, which then collapses into a more stable state, & during the transition between states there is an area-effect that robs all available matter of almost-all of the kinetic energy. (100% efficiency =”Absolute Zero”, which is impossible) To keep the victim trapped, just continue to “leech”-away their kinetic energy.
— This achieves our desired result **WITHOUT** the need to screw-around with “TIME” itself.
— This also justifies the constant operation of the weapon, as opposed to the alternative version seen in some comics/cartoons, where a single-shot freezes the target.
— My initial thought is:
1)__the area-effect would interrupt the weapon’s ability to function
2)__this would cause the beam to end
3)__with no more beam, there’s no longer anything blocking the weapon’s operation
4)__this would then allow the beam to resume
I picture this as being an insanely-fast “STROBE”-effect, within which matter would still be able to move, but only at a frustratingly-slow pace.
1) The cheap way would be sending a repeating pulse of light to the muzzle. No return pulse, shut off the stasis.
2) The modern Earth way would be something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKXztwtXaGo No idea how they do it in space.
3) Stuff in motion is the 1960s way. Regular ol’ humans are already past that stage of technological development. Most electronic hardware is already solid state. Heck, there’s actual particle guns and laser guns being tested or in one case actually used (V-MADS – supposedly non-lethal, but let’s be honest, it’s the military…). If the stasis field deals with quantum mechanics its driver is definitely solid state.
4) Just use Flux Pinning. No need for leeching kinetic energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GY4m022tgo
Strobe Effect? There’s really no point doing it that way.
Ugh… Chronolocking someone while maintaining their position in space-time frame requires a constant “Drag” field generated externally by a device. Chronolocking would occur instantly; and be divorced from inertia…… Aka it would be frozen in Space as well as time…… Which would appear to us as taking off at 1/2 the Speed of light. The gun is a tractor field keeping her moving with the planet.
Maybe it works like Syndrome’s stasis field in the Incredibles. :)
ON_A_SEPARATE_NOTE:
I’m not sure if this is a “misteak”-or-not, but I must point-out that in the 2nd-to-last panel, there’s no sign of the stasis-beam still being in operation.
If this is an oversight, then it’s worth correcting.
if, however, this indicates that the “FTEDT”-alien was distracted-enough to ease her finger off the trigger, then Max may very-well be primed-&-ready to exact severe retribution, indeed!
It’s vaguely possible that the beam is obscured by Ray’s tail.
That is not Ray’s tail, that is Garamm’s.
Ray is purple, the one with the tail is green.
Ah, I was confused by the large cloak. I thought that the tussle was Ray+Stasis!Maxima, not Garamm+Ray.
I also thought that “Garamm!” was an expletive and/or interjection, and was giving kudos to the author for following a part of my critique of his Tamer fan fiction by having people from different cultures/worlds use different expletives/interjections in order to help establish them as being truly alien and different. Kudos retracted.
Love the Firefly call out.
Well, it would have been if it had been spelled “gorram.” I’m not sure where “garamm” comes from.
Somewhere in Masala, I think.
+1
A_QUESTION_FOR_THE_AUTHOR:
How much has been decided, about Ray’s backstory?
In terms of his behavior, is he an “outlier”, or is he typical for his species?
Foe example, if his kind usually exuded a pheromone that was exceptionally powerful, but only towards the females of his species, it might explain his lack of quality pickup-lines.
(I assume here that the females of his species are far less amorous than the males, unless properly approached)
The LACK of any ability to successfully sweet-talk a female would then imply that there’s no evolutionary **NEED** for this skill, & the less-powerful a male’s pheromones, the more-effective their “dialog” would need to be, to “take-up the slack”.
Or the females of his species are all “M.” Can’t forget that.
They are all Judi Dench (or possibly Ralph Fiennes if you are a philistine)? How would that even work? Mass cloning?
what i find hilarious is they’re going after max…and yet sydney did what she did, and then some
As it come with fame and paradox points, if there is no witness for your deeds, there won’t be consequences.
Agreed. Max had the two alien cops to report on her actions. Not to mention that when you sell your downed Fel carrier for salvage you probably have to fill out a lot of forms.
Sydney had only the kaiju as witnesses, and since they suffered a humiliating defeat they probably aren’t talking about it much.
Hey what traffic cop in a lambo would admit to pulling over a moped…. kinda the same thing really.
I get the feeling she’s either going to cut the gun in half or cut the user of the stasis gun in half.
I think they are looking at Max and her figure and badass lookingness and ‘assuming’ she is the one who did the deed. Halo doesn’t exactly look like someone who could take down a badass battleship of a fearsome species. So the nabbed the wrong target, assuming thats the reason they want her and part of her value. On the other hand, they could be basing her value soly based on how badass she looks and her potential assumed capabilities. In either case, attempting such a stunt, out in the open in-front of the planet’s known authorities. They must not think much of the rest of the team, which is their mistake.
i thought Maxima took down the battleship that came to Earth? in full view of everyone; a different battleship, and besides Syd fought squid ship monstrosities
i was right, Grll Power #767, Maxima downs the alien spaceship attacking Earth
I actually thought they were going to direct her at Sydney, would have pulled some ADD-fueled move and flipped that guy over by his lower lip….
I was thinking that, in this scene, Sydney maywell intervene, and some of the aliens may suspect that her orbs are Nth tech, and switch to her as the primary target, or open Earth up to even worse hunting parties.
Unlike what Max did, The Mighty Halo left no witnesses. So they have no reason to try.
Now, that’s not true. She left without killing off all the squidwards. She leveled up, reached a point where she figured that if she kept grinding she’d eventually run out of luck, and ran.
The squidwards at least were witnesses.
I’ll bet this isn’t even his Final Form!
If DaveB drags this fight out to 58 episodes, I’m gonna go read reruns of Peanuts.
I think it took the better part of a year to do the steakhouse fight.
Well, he did the transformation sequence and attacked in a single comic. That beats Goku by about a dozen episodes. Goku would still be radiating righteous indignation hard enough to light up the atmosphere over the idea of someone using a stasis weapon to steal a person, but it would take an entire episode for Goku to realize what was going on and that Max wasn’t a willing participant.
Or to translate it with Dave’s words.
That’s like C- on the dragon ball Z scale.
Peanuts-ball Z, all the Peanuts charavters, but with a Dragonball-Z bent. Lucy would prolly end up being Vegeta…
So many reasons, results and reactions to the motivation behind the attack
and so many intricate dissections of the mechanisms used and their plausibilities
and the detailed postulations on the retribution yet to come
Makes me wonder if I’m the only one that saw the assailant say “get the stasis poo ready” ?
That’s some serious sh*t right there…
I saw it too, but don’t know what to make of it.
They came there with Ray, so apparently they think they need help for interplanetary travel, but have a stasis pod themselves. What?
My current explanation is that for opening portals/wormholes you need two sides influencing at the same time and they’re thus building said wormhole on the right location.
So the post scarcity society would still have a currency. Most likely something similar to bit coin and backed by those energon chips (Or backed by society faith in the currency). So you could go to a space bank at any time and exchange your ‘bitcoin galactic edition’ for energon chips, probably digitally and almost instantly, though probably for a fee if you want to get a battery to ‘hold it’. The reason it would have currency is the fact people wouldn’t spend time trading specific things, like an episode of Game Of Throwns for firefly, ect. Aka the society wouldn’t of de-evolved into a barter system.
Honestly those gold trinkets would of cost ‘energon’ chips to create in the replicator, and probably the purchase of a data file for it’s looks and transformation of energy into that specific element, which is pretty dense. (I would argue that the energy needed to make matter directly from energy would be way to cost prohibitive to exist, as it’s easier to just mine the junk, and the replicator would be more like super advanced 3d printing that needs element dust to do things, but that’s a different issue that can be talked about later. Maybe replicators requiring mass are used for mass production in factories as it’s cheaper that way, and household/ship ones are energy based only)
In fact, pure gold would actually be fairly expensive to replicate, as if you are converting directly from pure energy, your two constraints would be the end mass, and end complexity. I imagine most things are made from Super low mass designs, and entire companies spend years just to shave off a gram from the design of a popular product. You could make cheaper gold by making the interior mostly filled with helium (a cheep, light element), though the humans will be angry once they realize the gold they were given doesn’t have much mass, and isn’t worth as much melted down and sold.
End complexity would be both a factor of how fine a resolution the replicator can create, and how much it costs to design the product. Assuming a good enough replicator, it would mostly be an engineering cost, and you’d pay each time you replicate the item. Though free versions would exist I imagine, but are higher mass and less ‘good’, thus cost more energon to create.
In this kind of setup, replicated food would be very ‘airy’ I would imagine, with food replication engineers designing low mass ‘food’ that still taste good and has good texture, with all the nutrients needed. Actual food may be created, but only the rich would use their ‘energon’ credits to create such massive things. So actual grown/normally shipped food would have a place in the market as an in between, and with more unique flavors and diversity.
Heh. Yay future post-scarcity economics!
Also TLDR: Currency would exist, backed by energon/energy power plants or society faith. Gold would be easy to obtain but be fairly expensive to create due to it’s high mass.
Actually if you have matter transporters/replicators you have already solved the mass to energy problem.
Your replicator would be making products out of energy probably derived from mass obtained from waste products.Imagine it, everything would be inherently 100% recyclable, garbage, bio/hazardous/radioactive waste would just be “converted” into new products or clean water ect. The actual energy involved would be massive though, but you could turn any mass to energy any way.
Matter transporters/replicators don’t actually solved it sadly. Due to the fact that 100% efficiency in any thing is impossible. You can take the mass energy of the object (1 gram = 1 x10^13 jouls), and then apply 1 gram of anti-matter, and end up at 2×10^13 jouls of energy, but no anti-matter or matter left. NOTE: That assumes you have the exact anti-matter opposite of the thing you are recycling. For composites/objects that is almost impossible, and if possible it will be Very far off from 100% efficiency. For example normal iron will not react well with antimatter air in a one to one fashion. You would need antimatter iron.
After that it takes work and energy to do the combination, contain it, and harvest it, and then store it, none of which can be free. Then you have to have a system re-create the matter object by condensing the energy via super science back into matter, which also can’t be free.
Even in star trek the energy isn’t 100% efficient or fully recyclable. Every transport requires extra energy from the warp core to do, as can be seen by all the episodes where the warp core is off line and transports don’t work. They also can’t use that system to recycle energy back into their warp core, as can be seen by every voyager episode where they were almost out, or out of energy, and didn’t start pushing random furniture into the warp core. (Or asteroids or enemy ships. You know). That’s why they are always hunting for deuterium, as it can probably be assumed that one element can be more efficiently combined into energy at closer to 100% ratio then otherwise.
Note: Recycling trash into anti-matter is probably still performed, but at massive stellar refineries that harvest the energy of the star they are orbiting, so they can afford to have a very low efficiency of transformations.
Now if this universe did achieve 100% efficiency, and had infinite energy/mass to do what they want with via magic, then energy is no longer a limiting resource either, only information. If it’s not infinite/100% efficient, (and likely is far from it else everyone would have their own space ships already) then energy does matter, then the mass of the thing being made does matter, and so see point in previous post.
TLDR: Nothing is 100% efficient, far from it, even in star trek universe, which is why they need deuterium and don’t recycle desk chairs in emergencies via the transporter system. Which means energy is a limiting resource, and thus see my previous post.
Actually, any (Electrically neutral!) antimatter is going to properly react with any matter, eventually, if contained and allowed to go to completion. But short of completion, it gets… complicated.
Only electrons and positrons annihilate cleanly into gamma rays. For the rest you get all sorts of complicated reactions which only resolve to gamma rays and neutrinos in the end, after everything decays. In between it’s just a billion degree mess expanding at nearly the speed of light.
Which is actually kind of nice, because in theory you could magnetically collimate and direct most of the mess before it became gamma rays, into a beam or rocket exhaust. Whereas if it went directly to gamma rays, those are pretty hard to reflect.
Janeway ordered her birthday watch to be recycled because they needed the power. They could push all the random furniture
or broken bits into be recycled, the only reason they don’t is because it would break the story.
Yes, the whole “energy rationing” thing was ludicrous.
If there was any energy cost, it would be in the alteration, not in the mass itself. Thus, recycling the watch was a waste of energy itself.
recycling the watch also recycled the time the watch had registered, so they rewound to having the energy from before the watch was created
that..
that’s not how any of that works…
this is one reason the Voyager series was looked down on, sub-par writing. There is quasi-science, pseud-science and then there is “a wizard did it”.
That depends entirely on the “set dressing” or brand of “unobtanium” that the transmitter/replicator uses.
Assuming that the only way to break down and transmit matter is to match it bit by bit with antimatter is a really brute force solution.
If you have the ability to scan the object deeply enough to do the anti-matter particle matching, then you don’t need to destroy the original.
Clearly, you need to learn at least five other versions of sci-fi handwaving.
I’ve always been leery of the ‘post-scarcity’ term, I usually prefer ‘post-labor’ because things still have limits, it’s just the limits are determined by access to raw materials and robot/replicator manufacturing time. The purpose of money is to throttle resource expenditure after all, so while some degree of post labor could be ‘you can have infinite x, as long as you don’t consume more than x/day’ or other variants of ‘too cheap to meter’.
I’d expect that a decent amount of the money would be in either energon chips, or possibly in fabber/replicator time chits, so you can have access to the fabrication facility for a certain amount of time. Depending on what’s needed, it might be easier to have a few big honkin’ steel fabrication machines that make standardized pieces of equipment over the high precision units that assemble things atom by atom. Again, we’re pretty much just guessing at what’s going on, an army of high precision units would have the advantage that they could, theoretically, do everything a cheaper unit could do in case of demand surge.
I want to say that CGP Grey did a video on the difficulties of a post labor society, namely that an ‘art based economy’ doesn’t make sense, and suggested UBI or variants there of. Anyway, I’d expect there’s a mix of either different currencies that can be spent on basic necessities or more advanced systems. We also know that Cora is not from a post-scarcity society, she had the cheapo models for her limbs instead of the fun hardlight units (although I can’t recall if that was available or Dabbler-tech). Your UBI tokens could likely be spent on ‘high protein nutri-paste! Now with 10% more taste!’ or other life sustaining items, but you probably can’t show up to a space battleship emporium and put down a sack of them.
We also know there’s psychotic hive minds out there, so it’s also possible that there’s a political variant of currency that Cora has a small pile she can swim in when she so desires. Doing things that helps a bunch might be usable. Hm, we also know that the… Alari were refugees, and weren’t simply dumped into the UBI database, so it’s hard to tell with that. The kind of resources it takes to support something the size and population of Fracture station would far out stripe the cost of a few hundred refugees, most likely either political issues (being expansionist shitbags) or other legal issues about adding them.
The purpose of money is not to throttle resource expenditure. Money assigns a common value to those resources, thus unthrottling by removing trade barriers. We don’t (usually) blow through gold even in a cashless society because that’s stupid and gold is rare.
In that same vein, UBI is an incredibly bad idea. I can explain why UBI is bad, but only if you want me to. It will take a bit of expounding.
Agreed, but not here, please.
He brought up UBI – a political idea – and I do not see you chastising him for that. You are telling me to be quiet when I state that I will explain economics. Ergo, you are attacking me for stating facts and educating. Not for political reasons. You are attacking me for educating. That is all. Fuck off.
I am likely getting into the conversation late, but a post scarcity society is not possible. Greed is simply infinite. We have been getting richer the past few centuries and so the idea we might be able to have all our desires satisfied looked more reasonable, but as our riches grew, so did our desires and we stayed just as far from satisfaction as ever.
The story of the off-shore factory applies here. A company decided to avoid the high costs of the 1st world, and put up a factory in a 3rd world country. worked fine for awhile. Then the workers stopped showing up. Why? The workers said everything was fine. In fact they had all the money they needed. They would be back in a month of so when they finally needed more. Well, getting new workers, who would do the same thing, was not a solution, so they barnstormed for some time. Then on Friday, they gave every worker a mail order catalog. On Monday, every worker was back on the job first thing in the morning.
Our views of space society have shown it to be a scarcity society. Much richer than us presumably, but still buying and selling, and wanting more. Be lots of differences, but nothing we couldn’t get used to.
It’s possible. It just requires a different mindset. People once openly enslaved other humans. Times change. I mean, we still do the whole slavery thing, it’s just not an open practice anymore. Give it a few hundred years and that’ll be entirely gone. Humans aren’t efficient at anything; they’re a jack of all trades master of none. Build a few robots and suddenly your factory is putting out 1000x more product at a fraction of the cost. We can’t do that for everything because our robots are undeveloped. Hence, slaves.
One needs only look at the history of the “legend” of El Dorado to see that “enough” isn’t a thing. If your people are greedy enough they will continue to look for MORE (even when it hurts their own economy) because of Greed.
-for those that don’t know, there never was a mythical El Dorado, a Spanish gold hunter made up the term, and it went nuts as people found lakes and cities full of gold and continued to ransack everyone and everywhere they could, believing that the next “infinite city of gold” must be somewhere.
Do you know why such a legend exists? Let me ask you this: What about the Oregon Trail? California Gold Rush? The Alaskan Gold Rush? Texas “Black Gold” etc. Look at the historical context. These events always coincided with… A political threat! (the Oregon Trail was established circa 1811 and then you have the War of 1812… Yep) Essentially, these were nothing more than excuses to move human capital to where the government needed people to support military actions. Citizens of a nation moving within that nation to where they’re needed without even a declaration from the government… How convenient, eh?
The exploration of the “new world” was not a random thing people just decided to do one day, it was because the new world was a place to establish forts and strongholds, then grow your forces unimpeded while defending on the homefront. Yes, resources were a thing, but most resources back then were in the old world. It’s important to remember that the investment to build infrastructure usually isn’t worth it when the technology level is so low that colonies and ships get wiped out. Militarily, however, the tactic is very useful. For basically every nation except England this strategy did work in their favor. England at that point controlled over half of the known world. Settling new lands was basically a requirement to take England down – and it worked. Since then, America and other nations have continued this tradition of uprooting locals and establishing military bases for the purpose of offsetting nearby military powers.
Take a look at Iran. Where is Afganistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Armenia on a map? Yup. That’s why there’s so much military action there. Then when Turkey became a contested ally among Russia and the U.S. Why did Russia attack Georgia, Syria, and help collapse the Greek economy? Yup. Seeing the pattern, now?
And these latter wars all led to refugees, which, ding ding ding, is just like the gold rushes. Except refugees weaken the military power of nearby nations, rather than strengthen it.
As an aside, the U.S. is currently moving people within its own borders via state tax laws and land zoning. Northeast & California where population density is high = uber high taxes and bad infrastructure, other less dense parts of the nation = less taxes and good infrastructure. It’s intentional.
You can’t just look at the surface of these events and label it “greed.” The reasons things happen are more complex than a single human emotion.
Good story… but without an actual location, date, company name, that’s all it is.
Up until the catalog, it describes a few maquiladoras in Mexico.
Indeed, I was coming on right now to make this point as well.
Post labor/scarcity, does not mean post currency.
Even if its not based on anything physical like gold, energon, dark matter, bliss chips, or whatever.
So long as the people ascribe a value to the possibly just awarded abstract points through a galactic encoded bank system, then it will have value to them. Which sounds dumb, but its not impossible, or even unique, heck look at any video game with in-game currency; even if it can’t run out, you still have to go through certain hoops to get it, and use it buy things. An “award” system that isn’t easily counterfeited and is agreed upon by the larger sum to have value is all it takes.
Yes, it does. Post scarcity means there’s no need for an intermediary currency because barter can always take place without said intermediary. The point of currency is to facilitate trade where either side cannot agree on a barter trade. The whole point of post-scarcity is that there’s always enough resources, which means trade can always be facilitated. It’s likely this would be done to save time, such as one side produces one thing, another produces another thing, then they exchange some part of their products.
Post-labor, yes, you are correct on that front, since it does not automatically mean post-scarcity.
I will add, however, you seem to be supporting the rationale behind cryptocurrency mining, which is just a massive ponzi scheme. Please don’t.
No it doesn’t because that requires a different mental state. Clearly there are mercenaries, soldiers, salesmen of goods who have access to the means to produce goods from the unlimited resource. Tour guides, retailers, entertainers, ect… Post scarcity and post labor does not create automatically a society whose people don’t want rewarded for their services. Unlimited means to produce goods does not eliminate the services aspect of commerce.
PS I don’t know what cryptocurrency is I was referring to faith based economy. Which most modern economies aee to some degree where the money in cir exceeds the physical material backing it, so it has value because the society all agree it has value as it simply represents the commerce value of that nation.
to make this point more clearly now that I am on a PC and not my phone.
For one it is unlikely any of these civilizations are 100% post labor or scarcity given the different levels of civilization and technology.
Even if they are close to or past 100% post labor all that means is they no longer need to manually manufacture materials, so no people on assembly lines or needing to be in a shop making things by hand.
-however that doesn’t mean there aren’t anyway, home crafted artisans, chefs, and the like could still have a demand for that “hand made” touch, synthetic vs authentic even if some higher up civilizations do it as a novelty. If there is a demand then there is someone to supply, and their effort requires compensation.
As well as any maintenance workers, programmers, designers, and various potential corporate/government control personnel over the machinery and its distribution. Which depending on the civilization could be government given or have commerce (control over the supply of replicators of various types and scales from tiny 3-D printer type stuff to larger more complex units that create and refine sheets of metal).
which brings us to post scarcity, which depends on either access to materials over so many worlds there is no risk of running out, or the above levels of replicators able to refine and produce such resources. This only means the raw resources won’t run out. Not that individuals won’t still expect compensation for shipping, aesthetic changes *crafts, designs, art, ect…*, reconfiguring those resources to more usable materials or shapes at their own facilities, including various qualities there of. As well we add as we have seen in this comic people working food stands and such, law enforcement, retail workers, managers, ect… not to mention agriculture. While it can be done, and some societies likely would resort to tube grown protein, some of that may come down to culture, so garden planets may still be a thing and the promotion of not being a mechanical butcher of trapped animals but people actually tending to them; as well as your hunter types, ect… I could go on and I haven’t even touched on the entertainment industries.
even with all the raw materials readily available, and no need to make anything by hand you are still likely in anything other than *we are the people who lie in pods all day in a state of living death* to have individuals who want to be creative, or else have a need to enforce, produce, and consume. In short, a lack of people in the industrial sector does not mean a lack of people in the service sector. So a society still going may still see a need for currency so they aren’t bartering their services (I helped you so you have to help me, is not a good set up, a…I watched over and took orders so there was a person behind the counter to help customers being paid the agreed upon currency of the society to be spent on other services or specialized goods is far more useful.
I agree. I am not talking about the civilizations in the comic, I’m talking about actual post-scarcity. There’s no need for intermediary currency in an actual post-scarcity society. In a post-scarcity society money will become worthless since faith is a less reliable commodity than time. And time, of course, is what it would take to make those things with the handmade touch. Hence faith goes out the window and time becomes the currency via barter.
Referring to the crypto comment:
heck look at any video game with in-game currency; even if it can’t run out, you still have to go through certain hoops to get it, and use it buy things. An “award” system that isn’t easily counterfeited and is agreed upon by the larger sum to have value is all it takes.
This is how cryptocurrency works. It is, however, a massive ponzi scheme. Faith in the national tax base is replaced by faith in an algorithm. Of course, both are used to turn time into money. But there’s a catch: the type of time algorithms consume isn’t human time, it’s algorithmic time, which decays as the currency expands. So… Cryptocurrencies ONLY reward the founders. Only. The pittance granted to later entries is just used to expand the currency and these later entrants become loss leaders. There is no viable reward for anyone who isn’t on the ground floor. Which makes it a ponzi. Mathematically, anyway.
Cryptocurrency is not a ponzi scheme. Well, it can be, but that just gets in the way of its real use, which is to replace that green paper in your wallet. You use it in the same way, by using it to buy or sell stuff, without the drawbacks of government money, which is run by people who are incompetent or crooked or both. It is not an investment. Eventually, it will become worthless, tho you can only guess whether that will be tomorrow or several centuries from now. If you invest, you will someday lose your money. But if you spend your cryptocurrency, that is unimportant. You made a profit by trading [as did the guy you traded with, which is why you both traded]. Your trading partner spends the cryptocurrency in another trade, and then it is spent in another and another, each time with benefit to both parties. Do that enough times and everybody benefits, and the original money used to make the cryptocurrency becomes trivial and its loss when the cryptocurrency goes bust still leaves society way better off.
A real world [tho technically non-crypto] case was the Soviet Union just after it was established. Being economic nut cases, the commies tried to run the currency by printing press. So it wasn’t long before the ignorant masses noticed and 100 commie rubles could barely buy what 1 czar ruble bought. Tho the czar ruble was worthless, it was still worth a ruble if you could find someone else to take it, and since everybody knew somebody who would, everybody would take it, and it still bought 1 rubles worth of stuff. Certainly far preferable to a commie ruble that was only going to buy half as much tomorrow, and half that the next day, and …. Since bullets are expensive, and firing squads also insist on being paid in money that isn’t vanishing before their eyes, there wasn’t much the commies could do…, until somebody got the idea of printing counterfeit czar rubles, and the real ones also suffered from super inflation.
Crypto and other currencies prosper when their amount stays stable, neither greatly increasing or decreasing in value. In countries where the government has done a particularly bad job with the currency, they threaten to replace the official currency. they can be highly beneficial to society.
I get what you’re thinking but economics is a very complex subject. Fiat currency is backed by the tax base of a nation while cryptocurrency is backed by algorithmic complexity.
That is, fiat is backed by a nation’s productivity and thus rises and falls with that nation’s productivity. It serves to drive the nation to become more productive. Cryptocurrency is backed by an algorithm. Depending on the format, its rise and fall is not always dictated by the algorithm itself, however, the act of “mining” is a defacto ponzi scheme.
Every single crypto which uses mining (or commodity backing, a la the Petrodollar) is hence a ponzi scheme. This is because the backing can be held by a single party or a consortium and hence serves to benefit the holders of that initial backing at the expense of later joinees. I do not know of a single crypto which operates outside of this format. And that’s really sad, because I know there’s a lot of cryptos out there.
Anyway, cryptos are divorced from productivity and therefore allow unchecked price manipulation. This is actually why silver/gold backed currencies were discontinued in favor of fiat. So, going back to that system under the guise of a “futuristic cryptocurrency” would be absolutely catastrophic.
a very utopian mindset, which I don’t have faith any predatory species could become even with all their needs met.
the currency we have is often not backed by anything solid, I virtually never see physical cash unless I take some out at an ATM. A job deposits money electronically via a banking system, that just subtracts the numbers from their “value” and adds numbers to my account’s “value” with an encrypted password protected or whatever system via the bank that their value was decreased and mine increased by that sum (minus taxes, but keeping simple to two parties here), on their behalf as reward for my services.
No physical material was ever exchanged, yet it is understood that this account balance has a value which is used to purchase goods and reward services.
Heck it costs more to make a penny than the penny is worth, what we are talking about is an abstract faith based reward system. While I can and have imagined societies that don’t have currency; those same societies do engage in other civilizations that do, and utilize this abstract concept even when not internally using it. But at the same time I imagine such a civilization to no longer need currency isn’t just post scarcity it is post government rule as well…post society…operating either only at an individual level or family unit; unless producing something else…but much in the same manner as people creating video games with their own imagined societies and internal currency.
A sad reality is even the faith based economies still suffer from trade exchanges depending on how trustworthy to pay their debt a country is. Of course in a society not needing labor and/or not in need of raw materials; this does not remove the concept of faith based on supplying those or the means to produce them. Logically you can’t get something from nothing, so there has to be a service in place to continue supplying those resources from somewhere and the means to manufacture them.
But as a note: I am primarily talking about the species in this comic as this is based on the blurb under the comic discussing currency and exchanges in a post scarcity society; although we can argue that none of these aliens we’ve seen so far really come across as above a 1.5 on the civilization scale anyway so chances are they really aren’t, and would make since as a means to stabilize and unite in the Xevoarchy exchange rates between their currencies based on this same faith based economic model. and not about glowing squids who don’t need or want anything so just float around in their light world watching lower worlds like tv shows *as a note time would also not be a commodity in such a society as life is also post scarcity*…which does beg the question if a society really can be post *needing something and a way to trade for it without barter* without also being immortal and thus time and effort also not being a resource that can be used up.
I don’t have that faith either, but I am hopeful that intellect will prevail after humanity has repeatedly suffered the same setbacks over and over via their basal foolishness.
What most people don’t understand about fiat is that, despite the name, it is backed by something solid. All national fiat currencies are backed by the tax base of the nation. I discussed this with a Federal Reserve Board Member (yes, really) so I’m pretty sure this is the correct interpretation.
And I believe you are correct; post-scarcity requires immortality. I’ve gone over this with a few friends of mine and was not able to find another solution.
That does not follow. YOU need money to keep score. There’s no point in bartering if nothing has any actual value… and if nothing has any value, then humans will achieve a very deep personal depression.
Nothing will stop humans from seeking status. (The vast majority of American politics right now, on both sides, is about social status, and has very little to do with the particular values being signaled or complaints being logged.
If that were true then nothing would’ve been traded before the advent of money. Money, however, is a very recent invention. Value, on the other hand, was invented long before money.
If I need a cow today and all I’ve got a gold brick, the market rate of the gold doesn’t really matter, unless I for some reason can’t obtain more gold. That’s scarcity. The value I provide is the smelting of the gold. The value the farmer provides is the growth of the calf into a cow. Both take time. Even post-scarcity there’s not much you can do about time. Even if both parties are just generating gold or cows from raw energy, presumably it’d still take time.
Until a society is beyond even the need for time and thus trading becomes redundant, time will always be a limiting factor.
I agree with your points about human nature but… it’s pointless. Having more is only valuable when more is of value. Post-scarcity will either come along and destroy human values and create them anew, or humans will use post-scarcity to destroy eachother. There is no middle ground.
Well, unless humans all agree to waffle around achieving nothing for a millennia like during the dark ages… Hah, right, because politicians won’t want more! It’s that very greed that pushes us toward the inevitable destruction of our own values.
You are way overthinking things. The Grrlverse is no more post scarcity than was the Star Trek universe. Despite references to people no longer using money, there were plenty of episodes which showed people, even Federation citizens, living in poverty or wealth, using currency to do things such as gamble or purchase stuff, etc.
Deus bought (or traded for if you like, the distinction is meaningless) his illicit alien tech, and Sydney had the first FTEDT buy her her third (or fourth? I lost track) bowl of alien spicy noodles, which means by definition that the culture uses some form of currency to make purchases, or at least recognizes that there are things which are unavailable to some people to the point that they are willing to exchange things of value to acquire them.
Starfleet having to bid on things to get stuff with other alien species, or even to get stuff from other HUMANS (in the form of services) always made me think Starfleet was really dumb for abandoning fiat currency. Basically what they do now, to paraphrase Rick and Morty is just money “with extra steps.” :)
Even Star Trek was not actually post scarcity. This was shown pretty clearly in Deep Space Nine between Jake and Nog.
Jake: “C’mon Nog!”
Nog: “No!”
Jake: “Why not?”
Nog: “It’s my money, Jake. If you want to bid at the auction, use your OWN money.”
Jake: “I’m human! I don’t HAVE any money!”
Nog: “It’s not my fault your species decided to abandon currency-based economics, in favor of some ‘philosophy of self-enhancement.’
Jake: “Hey… watch it. There’s nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity!”
Nog: “What does that MEAN exactly?”
Jake: “It means…. it means we don’t need money.”
Nog: “Oh. Well… if you don’t need money, then you certainly don’t need MINE.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx5I7uEEEYo
So even in Star Trek, it’s not post scarcity. Only on Earth it is. And if you want to buy a baseball for your father that’s in the hands of an alien, or do any trading with someone who isnt human, or get anything from a human that does not want to give you whatever they have that you want from them, you better have money or some sort of barter… which is basically still a form of barter. Which is a primitive form of ‘money’ even if it’s not fiat currency.
Plus Starfleet has had to use other things as ‘money’ with other alien species before, like 1 gram of biomemnetic gel for information, or whatever Vash steals stuff to get paid for (and she’s human).
Hey Not to be THAT guy, but have dabblers arms always been green? Panel 2 looks a bit odd.
Never Mind, she was wearing gloves, I’m an idiot.
wonder if the trinket is like a magic or high tech version of Bane’s venom rig.
So thought, if Sydney flew/ran over there and put her shield up around herself and Maxima precedence suggests it would cut off the stasis beam and free Maxima.
Also, this makes two story arcs in a row showing that the heavy hitters can be paralyzed. Sydney with a paralysis drug stabbed to her foot and now Maxima by a stasis beam…although I suspect Maxima if the beam doesn’t cut off consciousness could up her strength and breath out of the stasis beam like so many S-class supers have done in comics.
I am chuffed, as I called this way back in the comments for https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-869-standard-suck-deviation/
Ouch! I just broke my arm, patting myself on the back. My next prognostication: the spies didn’t consider what ELSE Earth might have on hand. Hilarity ensues.
Hmmmm. Same species as the one doing the recording of Halo at the Grakz food counter.
Why do i get a vibe of “the galaxies funniest holovids – Earthian edition?” You’ve been pranked!
Would be a perfect time to do it without serious repercussions from the xenoarchy. Perfect test of how ready we are based on our “measured response”
It looks like humanity will not totally dominate this corner of the galaxy, if a random starship captain can pop some technomagic and go toe to toe with someone equipped to take out a Fel battlecruiser destroying super.
it has a very sniper ring could have killed Goku vibe. I am kinda hoping she can pull a Superman and power through it, walking up the beam and crushing the gun. While on the other hand for story purposes I also hope she can’t and needs help from Sydney’s shield or another team member getting the gun away. Both would serve a narrative purpose.
This dude suddenly reminds me of the Heavy Metal movie if one were to combine both Captain Sternn and Hanover Fiste into a single person. I mean… damn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D13KjR_Xvc
See, this right here is why you need sensible laws and regulations controlling who comes into the country.
She could have smuggled a bomb in since she did not have to go through any security checks.
All I ask is a travel checkpoint for alien tourists. Fines and/or jail time for failing to go through boarder control.
Just say no to illegal aliens.
You are talking actual aliens. If they want to do harm they don’t need to come to your planet, and would be far safer not being on the planet when they do harm to it. Hang around somewhere outside the orbit of Saturn and aim a fistful of pea sized chunks of uranium at the earth and accelerate it to half a c. Would make your hypothetical bomb look like a moth fart.
Yes, but orbital bombardment would also destroy the ecosystem.
What I am more concerned about would be regular criminal’s, coming in and kidnapping people (like in today’s comic). Or many other crimes that ordinary humanoids commit.
That Sphere world thing Sydney was trapped on had a customs/security check. Heck, even the US/Canada boarder is more secure than Earth is right now.
Who needs lumps of uranium? There is a better way. “ When you are going as fast as these warrior attorney-drones are going, you can use little cones of tin-foil as weapons. Technically, a non-exploding missile is a sabot, but at these speeds, these cee-sabots would explode pretty impressively.“
Agreed. Holding the high ground has been an advantage in warfare since the invention of the spear*, and being on a planet you are down in a gravity well and very much at a disadvantage to anyone who is in the space above you.
.
.
* Just ask Anakin!
Ah yes, I have the high ground. The scene where we learned either Anakin is profoundly stupid with the several tactics he could have gone with; or that lava is immune to the force (but large boulders aren’t as seen in other movies)…so will the force also not work on other liquids and semi-solids. Could I defend myself from the Force with a wall of jello
its a badly made scene and that one point stood out…as do many points where the writers can’t seem to decide I the force works like telekinesis or not at all and isn’t an option for some reason.
Male power fantasy =/= female sexual fantasy
ie: yech
See: shortpacked “false equivalence” for elaboration https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/false-equivalence
Not for most women, anyway. But that kind of “incredible bulk with no fat” body is an ideal a lot of men have for themselves (as you say, male power fantasy) that is hard to reach, for those not coming into it by genetic luck, in the same way as the “skinny with huge boobs” body type ideal that a lot of women have for themselves.
Anyway, as something both valued and hard to attain, a lot of people who hold these ideals have never experienced them and think that attaining their body ideal (whichever it happens to be) will solve their problems.
While I don’t doubt that there are a *few* of the female persuasion (maybe one in thirty?) who’d go all weak in the knees when they see this … This dude has problems that achieving a body type ideal will not solve, even for the minority who *do* find that body type ideal. … and actually those few are already probably off drooling over Hiro or Stalwart, so they’re not even around to see this.
But if they were here and *did* have a reaction to this “flex” here, they’d just as quickly fall *out* of lust with this guy after being near his smarm and slime for about ten seconds. Because whatever he’s got elsewhere his main problem is between his ears.
And to counter that, your female sexual fantasy =/= everyone else’s female sexual fantasy. Evidence, at very least, by the fact that body builders, even ones at the extreme end of the sport, still date. XD Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you that huge bulky and veiny isn’t attractive, and I feel similarly about female body builders who go to the extremes – but that’s just us. Cora apparently likes ’em big, especially given her crew. Dabbler apparently likes ’em big, becuause big = lots of tasty tantric energy to consume.
tl;dr just because it isnt true for everybody doesnt mean it isn’t true for enough people to be a valid observation.
Absolutely, some people are attracted to very muscular people, though I’d argue that unless it’s a fetish, there’s far more factors- like personality, commonality, status- than the way someone looks (probably more so for women imo), cos y’know, bodybuilders are people too :P
However, Cora and dabbled are not people with agency and independent thoughts and tastes. They were written to say *this particular line* in *this particular framing*. The author *intentionally* chose to include it over anything else. Textually nearly every “hot” character is stacked af with 0% body fat (which irl would result in low bone density, fatigue, fucked up reproductive system and demolished your libido).
When the disgusting garbage heap of inflaming pig shit with no sexual charm whatsoever turns into LEGITIMATE BODY HORROR and not one but two characters are intentionally written to find that appealing, it says more about the author and what he *thinks* women find attractive.
Keep in mind that Dabbler has notoriously low standards for attractiveness, and Cora doesn’t seem very far behind.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-184-battling-the-future-with-rocks/
“You find stairs arousing”
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and an oversexed stereotype character is just an oversexed stereotype character.
I enjoy the comic greatly, but it makes certain assumptions about what’s attractive – to males as well as females.
On the male side, I like real women. I know they come in billions of shapes and sizes. Sydney and Peggy are not very tall, but they are nearer to realistic people. I would far prefer to date one of those two than the Archon gaggle of ladies busting out all over the place.
Aaannd the Morons completely ignore all the rest of Maxi’s team.
That’s going to come back to bite them in the ass when Sydney whips out the Lighthook or the Pew Pew Orb.
RE: Billions, I just assumed you took the Stellaris route of Energy literally being Money.
Both my wife and I don’t think he’s hot when he does that.
It’s always comfortable to be in agreement with your wife
And it’s even more important to be in agreement with your wife’s wife. Otherwise, I’m beside myself in confusion.
Both my wife and I don’t think he’s hot when he does that. In fact, we think it’s kinda “ewww…”
For a brief idea on what us women find hot, David Willis has it down much better:
https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/false-equivalence
Both your wife and you don’t represent the sum totality of people who find men attractive.
As someone who has suffered through enough *who’s hot and who’s not* gurl talks I can confirm that the sum total of the male attracted women I know do not find super muscular guys sexy (and I would 100% call this guy borderline body horror). The only people i know who were specifically sexually attracted to this were two masc4masc gay guys with body dysmorphia EDs who were in a lovingly unhealthy relationship.
Now I am curious, sigurther, why is this the hill you want to die on?
(Also, high fives for reference samesies, harmony!!)
Hey, easily countered with my own anecdotal evidence. If the women on my social media timeline is anything to be accounted for, then yes, heterosexual women by and large do like large muscly guys. Tit for tat, eh? Pun somewhat intended.
Hills worth dying on? Hardly. This topic isn’t a hill, and being ‘wrong’ in a discussion on some random webcomic forum isn’t remotely high stakes enough to be a valid use for that phrase.
Yeah, I love a pretty turn of phrase, but maybe it was a bit heavy for a light subject, but I am genuinely curious about your pov, and what makes you so going ho on it. Like, I’m big into media studies particularly through a sociological lenses and although I follow that comics require some suspension of belief (I can fully buy Sydney blitzing a planet) having not one, but two characters find this chauvinistic dick wad repulsive one moment and sexy when he goes body horror, really kills it for me.
I would also consider your “anecdotal evidence” to be an assumption about people’s sexual preferences, so not the same as actually talking to someone about what they find physically attractive. Like, literally this morning my gf was cutting bunch of her (20s) daughter’s friend’s hair (and mine) and the convo went to one of their dates, and what they found sexually appealing. Unsurprising to me the turn on for 4/5 women was: smells nice, dresses well, kind eyes, lean (preferably, but one was more into cuddly bear types), and tall (in the case of my gf and her daughter who are both pushing 7ft themselves)…
Seeing the the pictures of men that women like *also* are often muscled, I could see how you might think that. But honestly, it’s more of a “They’re hot… oh, they also have some muscles. Sure, that’s a neutral, doesn’t hurt it as long as they’re not in ‘ew’ territory with ’em.”
What makes the models is…
1. They’re *healthy*. Muscles don’t hurt that, but being unhealthy isn’t a turn on, healthy is. You don’t neeed massive muscles to be health. Case in point: Boy Bands. A lot get it down near perfectly. Too-chiseled abs can be creepy, but just slightly edged is about perfect.
2. Confidence. Seriously, this is a big one. This is the hottest part about most male models.
3. Sexy un-dominating poses. Too many guys confuse ‘tough’ for ‘sexy’ with guys’ looks. Tough poses are ‘aggressive’, sexy poses are ‘available if you want me, but I don’t care, really’.
4. A sense of style. White t-shirt and jeans, unless just worn right, are pretty meh. Stand out, flaunt those peacock feathers. Maybe some tasteful makeup…
5. Some degree of social skill mixed with some degree of overcoming social norms: a rich & powerful who can make his own rules, or a stylish thief who can escape the law, or a nerd who can run circles (figuratively) around school jocks, or a slippery rebel who can oppose a tyrant, etc.
6. Skill. Skill is sexy. Throwing that out there.
Probably, the best ideal I personally can come up with, visually, is MTG’s “Oko, thief of crowns” card.
https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/indus/mtg-oko-thief-of-crowns/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=5b6447c7d84602957b715ba3251bc3ded776397f-1600646455-0-ASh0dcFmmyt-gKyXDz0GMzWAEldBieyluIWj0EVqrONdQM_T7l8tulP14y9ckCx-NuOYu601Ch-_mj4DdLKhNmVIRnDjlZ4a4zup3d1_UTe07rGAYZpc81vkLC9D0Xl5FF8BI0E0KSGBfrkINyMAaOigf5iIhHaJaXs6niiGoImwgyI6yJbNRa-xUPN8XSsv26YKQS9xsj_qFCVIlmnjTr0QsDLWVCs0rwAiIKrjDJNPraPom63wvOxQWbsB8DanJ2NrIJ0ccmcTQNXlMf1QXJMYh6S-cFEQjXe46iogmHMSU8JIBxyWZ2IlrlTTMbPMo7-joAJFO_kTTqxnqmpUuSvfojygKmjdU6oSqvrXL9ZVX5nke1V0-CNXd6Zrg3Qbqg
Oooh, yeah, skill is super underrated. Doesn’t need to be anything flash, either. Playing music, art, building, gardening, something physical (for me it’s fire spinning), cooking, writing…
Healthy, too. Underrated/confused with other things like strength. Healthy skin, hair, nails, teeth… that also comes with hygiene, style and personal maintenance. Hands are big for me, (cos I’m very tactile and touch is intimate) so over grown, cracked or dirty nails are bit of a turn off… even though I /constantly/ have paint and clay under mine lol.
Yessshhh, I love Willis’s work! :)
This was the reaction to Maxima’s powerset? Wait till they get a showing of Sydney’s. One easy subtle solution would be to lighthook the trigger/trigger finger, LOUD solution would be to intervene the beam with the shield of ‘Nope’.
Everyone commenting he looks like Hanover from Heavy Metal while the first thing that came to my mind with the hair and smile was Bane Venom Joker from Arkham Asylum.
My brain went to the league of extraordinary gentlemen’s (film) hulked-up hyde, but I definitely see the BVJ grin.
Looks like Dink is not just the BANE of the two in the peanut gallery.
Somebody help me–who’s the giant rat who’s tackling the giant RAT FINK (Ray Cosmos)? Is he one of Sydney’s team mates? A passenger from the ship of alien tourists? Someone completely unassociated with that ship, but who’s also not someone we’ve seen in previous installments? The illustrious author has me perplexed and twitching!
I think it’s name is Garamm, but not sure. Seems to be the flame ladys meat shield.
so hes a combination of captain sternn and hanover fiste.
Strip #869 Syd: I was right. Arc-SWAT is here to stop inherently dangerous alien criminals.
Strip #869 Syd again: Yea… but the crime is kidnapping an Arc-SWAT member. They couldn’t commit the crime unless we came here.
Strip #869 Syd: Yes. But that doesn’t make me wrong. They are still criminals but they just didn’t commit any crimes. Score 1 for me. Also she lied about her voucher (maybe) which is totes a crime (maybe).
Yerp, that’s EXACTLY the scene from the movie – albeit he’s blue instead of pink(ish).
What’s-his-name, the violence-powered guy, would be telling Ray “Stop stealing my schtick!” (if he weren’t so stoned in his prison cell.)
Weird, I swear I saw a reference to a light novel titled Upon A Savage Shore in the comments here in the last few days but can’t find it now. While I haven’t read too many chapters of it it’s giving me a great bit of entertainment with the storytelling and cultural issues between the human and alien feline characters. If it’s not here I need to find where because it totally deserves some support.
I think it was in the author’s notes, not the comments. Or at least that kind of human/alien harem crap is what the author likes to read: Human male (of course) happens to be completely sexually compatible with various alien females, and each find the other attractive despite not even being the same species.
Sydney is gonna be soo angry with that lady
A pondering, I get they want Maxima because she is so powerful but…do they think she is an android or something? Because logically they don’t know the source of her power or any way to prevent her from using it other than a stasis beam it seems. So what reason would anyone “bidding” have to believe that this individual powerful enough to take down a Fel battle cruiser (which the typical ships have a hard time using), isn’t going to turn on them the second out of stasis and reduce them and their ships and weapons to scrap and ash?
Logically someone should be wanting to hire her, conscript her for space police, or something along those lines. I mean the only other thing I can really think of I guess would be someone trying to dissect her and figure out where her power comes from while in stasis…which I may have just answered my own question.
But yeah, aside from the Skrull plan of (learn and copy super powers), there isn’t any other scenario they should expect should she escape stasis.
In a setting which combines both high tech/aliens/magic/super powers/the supernatural, there can always be the instant introduction of a mind control necklace/alien pheromones/psi power/vampire hypnosis or whatever the author decides to pull out of his ass in order to make the plot slightly less full of holes. This has been a truism for comic books for many decades.
true, and I can easily pick off a dozen examples of VERY POWERFUL characters being mind controlled from gladiator fights, to forced henchmen for a villain, to a porn shoot featuring Superman (not joking), and many more…in fact its the central gimmick of a number of villains.
I don’t think he’s going to go the mind control route. First off, that’s a cop-out as you’ve mentioned. Second, this world seems to have very established power rules, such as the Malum, Lust, etc. powers. Krona, for example, has very hard limits on what she can do despite being a reality warper. Maxima likewise follows this law of power entropy even if her limit is higher than most.
So I believe Sydney is our MC specifically because she breaks those established boundaries by being able to “level up.” She’s already on par or surpasses Maxima and most of her skill tree isn’t even filled out.
You are welcome to hold that opinion, I guess.
Mine differs.
Well, that’s fair enough when talking about energy beings living beyond our plane of existence, but I’m talking about the civilizations in the comic in this case. They all seem to either have a hard power cap or deficits which prevent their power growth from being maintained indefinitely. Except Sydney.
Butting in and succeeding might earn you some points with the ladies, but panel 10 makes it look to me as though he did his soliloquy and then was immediately tossed away by TFEDT. That’s just a guess, because it doesn’t look like she laid an appendage on him, but why else would he be doing an exit, stage right? Maybe he grabbed Maxima, and wasn’t just knocked into her? Of course he grabbed Maxima, what else would a galaxy-renowned perv do when Our Hero is immobilized in a stasis beam? He gets to play hero and cop a few free feels all at the same time.
Well, he did accomplish one thing, because in panel 10 I no longer see the beam going from TFEDT to Maxima, and when you yell “I’ve got her in the stasis beam” it is pretty much a tell that no beam means no stasis. Although I guess Ray’s tail could be obscuring it.
I still want a BLURZZLRLR
I…. I can’t be the only one that wanted to know what their plan was for the other end…
Like I mean… Even if they put a restraining bolt on her like Thor Ragnarok. I feel that wouldn’t even tickle her much due to her skin. Brainwash? Drugs…. would drugs work on her system, like wasn’t there somewhere saying that even booze has a weak effect on her…
I really want to know their plan. They only caught her cause she was preoccupied and not expecting anyone to be dumb enough to do that amongst all the rest of ARC being there and like….
Everything is better when it’s cyber! Which means that when you call something alien tech you don’t have to explain it much. It just works. Thor is the god of thunder. He was controlled by an alien device which administered electric shocks*. It worked because it’s alien!tech. There’s no need to explain how that small device manages to have enough power to overcome the abilities of a literal god who can shrug off bullets, get tossed through a building without a scratch, get zapped by death rays and punched by the Hulk and live to tell the tale. It’s alien!tech, it just works because the writer says it does. Maxima could be restrained by anything alien enough that the author just says it works and doesn’t have to explain how or why.
.
* And yeah, I don’t think they ever said exactly how it was subduing him, but the visuals were very much the Hollywood go to for “that guy just got an electric shock.”
Yeah, lame. I hope we get a better explanation than BLURZZLRLR
I don’t remember how they worked in the comics, but in the Planet Hulk animated movie they injected nanites or something into the bloodstream that could be used to weaken, induce sleep, or kill the person.
Maybe it was a poison injector.
but movies are what they are and focus on a visual spectacle, but yeah they could have tried to make it look like something other than a taser with clearly electric sparks.
Their plan is put her in a stasis pod, sell her to the highest bidder and then fly the farther away possible before the pod is opened. Anything else is not their problem.
Interesting point, zero point TK field as a defensive means versus an external origin stasis beam, not an AOF which may penetrate the field. This may be something she can fight if the field isn’t ignored by the beam.
Cosmos’s dial up a Hero device.
Does anyone think that that’s what DEUS bought some of on the Fracture?
Or will Deus see this fight and pass on a bet initially (V bets Max cleans everyone’s clock and shoves them into a NY Dumpster and then throws it into orbit. Deus denies wanting to bet until last panel…when he asks for odds.)
-pass on bet…and focuses entirely on the cloak that Cosmos used. “I NEED THAT! DUN DUN DUN DE DUN DUN! I’d be sooo imperial.” (look behind him and we see his megacastle/abode in Africa /filled with alien and local babes of course).
Dial up a Hero… what’s the cost and side effects after? Imagine if that worked on our eternal 80’s boy. No more being knocked around for comedy’s sake alone.
Now imagine HALO wearing it…how would she grow and bulk out? (And you know Cosmos would say something offensive get hammered and then his twitching body would mutter “I bet it does nothing for her boobs!”)
So Alien tech in view since they landed. Which are the govt gonna want NOW. Which are the ciminals looking at and thinking. “That. That would make my life of crime easier…” /Not thinking that Hey. Use that Tech and local Supers come a calling. Fast/
Which mega billionaires are dissecting the aliens for potential employees with their eyes…That one can take liquid osmium temps? I wonder how he’s with radiation. Chernobyl is gonna be a gold mine!
Which Hero Local is gonna come home from this entire encounter with a new BF/GF to meet the parents.
THese questions and more NEXT on WHEN THE HALO SPINS…
Is that device a BEN 10 thing? Or does it just JUICE up your natural physique and size for a bit? What’s the cost?
I think that thing is hiding his true form. He looks a lot like a demon when he’s in that form whereas he looked like a purple human previously.
It is my experience with the genre such devices always have some side effects or addiction factor (save magic power up rings or potions where its the central character(s)), despite the setting having heroes who got their powers through artificial means like super soldier serums and lab accidents; but this is because this temporary super powers storyline is usually a drug PSA.