Grrl Power #912 – Maximum trauma!
Well that seemed to have shut Sydney up.
There were a few comments on the previous page about how that guy’s arm will be useless now. You were correct.
So yeah. I expect some, heh, mixed reactions to today’s comic, from “He deserved that.” to lectures on how fantasy depictions of using horrific ordnance on criminals is probably bad and only just a little bit funny. Well, Sydney’s face there in panel six makes me laugh every time I look at it.
I went back and forth if I wanted to go through with it, but this is what I had planned from the beginning of this sequence. Remember way back in like page 194 where I was like “I don’t know how much gore I’m going to put in the comic” and then much later Sciona bisects Cooter because I thought it’d be funny? Good times. Still, this isn’t exactly new behavior for Cora.
BTW, That’s not a tentacle on Sydney’s shoulder. It’s a vertical selection of rib meat.
Check the vote incentive to see Sydney not naked. And then there’s the Patreon version.
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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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But Concretia…
What about her?
She can’t feel as much in her concrete body as a normal person, so while she felt a wet splash and can see the gore, she can’t really feel the intestines the same way that Sydney can. Not to mention the smell, and the potential taste of whatever bits and pieces hit her face (which could include the intestines and rectum).
Good point, doesn’t save her from the psychological though…
If you can do that much gore you can show total nudity just no erect anything. Really we in the US are barbarians an backwards about this. See gore and mutilation is taken better than a normal naked human body.
Cora might just discover the same thing that my Shadowrun players did. You can’t really question soup.
But you CAN question the flunkies by THREATENING to turn them into soup.
That depends on whether that round took out the flunkies too. It could have easily been a slash everything at this height that has enough force to pull the rest of the original target into the effect. Concretia isn’t flesh to be affected by it and Sydney is well below the target zone.
No you can’t question soup but when said soup was a troll that was about to turn one of your party members into soup. You make soup, quickly with what you have at hand. Mind you juicer nanites were nasty little mites, that is what this comic reminds me of a Renraku run gone really sideways.
i see you are all SIN-less of refined taste (that/IS/how/itworks) thanks smiling bandit
Could be worse. Could be like the time I had my runners fight a sewer elemental (a literal poo monster) and the mage ignited the sewer gas, caved in the entire street block, and had this one troll ejected from his apartment bathroom while still on the loo, lading on top of their Roadmaster armored vehicle, pants still down…aaaah I miss that particular campaign…
well… if the ‘squelch’ was not hidden behind the panel showing the guy saying ‘oops’… Haven’t you seen the movie ‘SAW’ ??
She didn’t soupify the two henchmen. They will be more willing to sing now that they see how far she is willing to go.
But probably know less.
This guy was a real weasel anyway, so Cora was just playing ‘Pop goes the weasel”.
I haven’t proofread the entire comments section. Has anyone suggested calling this ordnance the ‘Ginsu round’?
” haven’t proofread the entire comments section. Has anyone suggested calling this ordnance the ‘Ginsu round’?”
Ouch!!!
The Slap Chop Special.
No… just… No. Now I can’t get Vince out of my head saying, “You’re gonna love my nuts… and intestines and rib cage and…”
I like to have died laughing the first time I heard him say that… Two things that should never be put into proximity in a commercial… the phrases “You’re gonna love my nuts” and “Slap Chop.”
With regards to justification and use of overkill: Cora’s impression of the orbs is that they could be Nth-level artifacts; it’s not confirmed, but she is aware enough to know that letting them fall into nefarious hands would be bad news for more than just Earth. I’ve been getting the distinct impression that Cora effectively has a 00 designation, a licence to respond to threats to her person with lethal force. One has to wonder the state of intergalactic society that such individuals are not only tolerated, but celebrated (see mugger incident on Fracture Station)
she does not really feel like someone who is under anyones control. (like with a 00)
she is just freelance in a universe where alot of power is easy to fall into small groups of people.
I think the fact that she has a ship and crew, while the miscreants she killed did not, plus the fact that she has done a solid for the station sometime in the past, puts her above reproach. being the captain of your own ship would make you a sort of nobility, actually greater than nobility a sort of Royalty since you own your ship. that would carry a lot of weight.
I agree that there would likely be some sort of status associated with being a ship’s owner and/or captain – two roles not necessarily held by the same person. But how much status is gives would depend on details of the setting: how rare and/or expensive are ships of that class, and where does it fall in comparison to the range of ships commonly encountered?
Being owner and captain of an independently-trading Star Destroyer is one thing. With a crew in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, and many decks each measured in kilometres, it’s easily comparable to an entry-level kingdom. And at the other end of the scale is the man employed by Jovian MacBrayne to captain a freighter between Io and Europa, whose ‘kingdom’ consists of half a dozen crew and a medium-sized hold!
Errant Venture reference?
Not intentionally!
If it’s the Jovian MacBrayne freighter you’re referring to, I was thinking of a space equivalent to a coastal puffer like the Vital Spark. And having taken that inspiration (and since the owner of the fictional Vital Spark never actually got any page time or even a name!), it was only natural that the ubiquitous Caledonian MacBrayne ferry company would have got a foothold in the new territory.
From what we’ve seen, the Orbs let Sydney operate like a human-sized space ship. The only thing that’s keeping her from becoming truly OP is that Sydney only has two appendages to operate with. In the hands of a human, they are an interesting case study, but in the hands of an evil squid (of whom she probably knows 2 or 3) they would be truly frightening. So, while the level of force was excessive, there is an argument for it.
Right, the next most comparable situation would be kidnapping the military officer attending POTUS who is holding the “nuclear football”, and be in the act of hacksawing the handcuffed briefcase from said individual. Deal with the threat (by which I mean end it) first, worry about the conspiracy theory driving the act (if there is one) later. Preferably by doing so in a way that says “nobody else better ever try this again, ever, because this is what happens”. Cora is saving Sydney not only from THIS attempt, but future attempts. The man’s skeeviness is incidental, it’s a narrative device to make him “really” bad and “worth” killing…except that by threat level, he already was
Cora: “Now, just out of idle curiosity, is there anyone else here who might have a problem with my gender?”
=====OR=====
“Pop-Quiz time! Which choice is going to kill you sooner — (A)__Drop your weapons & accept arrest, or (B)__Run?”
“Here’s a hint: (A) means more paperwork for me, so I’m hoping for (B). If you leave me in any doubt at-all, then I’m assuming (B).”
#1 is nonsensically out of context.
#2 is topical but you’d have to phrase it differently:
Coy:
“Pop quiz! The topic is lifespan; yours. Do you A) Accept arrest or B) Flee? Three seconds! :)”
Direct:
“Pop quiz! Wanna live? You can either A) Accept arrest or B) Flee! My gun recommends A.”
Trickster:
“Pop quiz time! I got a gun and I think it likes you. What do you do? Accepting ~all~ answers.”
Sadist:
“Pop quiz! I’m gonna shoot until you’re all on the ground. Whole or not. True or false? *bang*”
I dunno how to fit the paperwork joke in there without it turning into a dragonball-z style conversation. Walls of text are generally a no-go for a comic unless it’s part of the plot, like Syd’s time-waster.
#1 Re-read panel four
Still doesn’t make sense, Panel 4 was after she had already a) used lethal ordnance and b) confirmed to him it was lethal. The cause and effect isn’t there.
He called her a bitch, showing his disdain to females, how is that nonsensical to what DMC_RUN said
Context in a visual medium is decided by the whole of the situation not merely the words spoken. The world itself is under the author’s control and therefore so too is every perspective and inference the reader can reasonably make. You are not just penning a short story; you are weaving a coherent WORLD. Which is why more complex contexts matter. You can’t discard the inner workings of the fictional world merely because the joke you just came up with is funny or tangentially relevant.
Going along with their insulting language means she’s focusing on the dead guy’s provocation rather than the mayhem she just caused. It dramatically weakens her momentum. Making yourself the weaker party after splatting someone over the entire room makes the speaker… questionable.
It’s just a petty insult; irrelevant to what happens a moment thereafter. Plus, guys call other guys bitches all the time – bastard simply doesn’t have the same oomph anymore. The result? You now have a questionable situation and a questionable conversation. This is a classic failure to contextualize and it leads to a lot of questions that the reader shouldn’t be asking at this point.
Like, she did this badass thing but is now focusing on the bad guy’s petty insult? She weakened her own momentum; that implies she wasn’t using it to intimidate, so, what was her real motivation? Does she suddenly have remorse for killing the bad guy? Is it misogynistic “weak female” emotionalism so common in modern fiction? Did she mistakenly pull the trigger? Or is she a loose cannon? Did she want to murder someone? Is she going to backstab ARC? Can ARC trust her and her judgement? These are all questions that would reasonably be asked by characters in-world and so the reader will be led to ask the same.
Writing coherent fiction over a long timespan is far more difficult than writers are often given credit.
In the Elfhome Series by Wen Spencer, there is a scene… The Oni had enslaved the Tengu for thousands of years and had inflicted every horrific torture known on them… including merging them magically with crows. There is a scene where a bunch of oni are captured and the main Character, Tinker, calls on the spiritual leader of the Tengu to conduct the interrogation. Jin, the leader of the Tengu tells the group… “Whoever talks, lives. I only need one of you to talk.”
Imagine being an Oni, captured by the people that your kind has inflicted torture on for thousands of years, knowing what your kind has done to them… and what horrors they are likely to inflict on you…
That girl needs therapy.
Not sure I can like this page but, I can understand measures were necessary. Sexist pig had a gun to her head, Cora is obviously not tooled for nonlethal and there was no time. Still, it would bother me less if Cora wasn’t outright, blatently enjoying such measures.
Not sure about the legality of this, but I know Maxima will not be happy. Then again, Max can’t quite complain of making messes with how she’s doing, and it was really necessary, or the look forward before the comic will become a time paradox, and no one wants that, nor to see Sydney badly hurt or worse.
I mean, not trying to prove Dave right but it does make me wonder if we are normalizing fantasy gore and violence in the US. I wasn’t shocked at this page, which is itself telling.
[Biblioholic93]:
My only quibble is that I’m genuinely unclear on whether Cora is “outright, blatantly enjoying such measures”, or just adopting a “ruthless, lethal persona”, as an intimidation tactic, to make the bad-guys stand-down WITHOUT further killing.
That’s my take too. She’s rolling Intimidate and that performance just gave her advantage.
You guys know cora MO right? This is the norm for her. She said dazz was being getting soft for not brutally murdering. The cop said that she was being lenient in that alley fight. Like 2 pages ago she asked out of confused wonder why maxima didn’t murder blatantly to finish off this skirmish. Cora is a sadist. Thought it’s important to note she is a sadist out of necessity. In space you can’t be naive. You must destroy others so they don’t come back for you.
Cora is not a sadist, she is a mercenary. Her experience is that you kill the enemy before they get the opportunity to kill you. Daddy was a clear threat to one of Cora’s friends, which to a mercenary is all the reason she needs to smear Daddy all over the place. This also has the advantage of clearly communicating to the late Daddy’s goons that it is in their best interest to stand down immediately.
That’s not what Cora did though – after she shot him, he had enough time to order his goons to attack or attack himself if he had another weapon or a power before he got sliced.
IF what Cora shot him with was on a manual trigger rather than a delay, then he had the chance to surrender and live, Cora was also still holding her weapon which gave her the advantage if one or both of the Goons decided to shoot back
Someone posed a link to the final shootout scene in “Fistful of Dollars” movie, the reason Clint won was because his weapon was aimed at the bad guy (all he had to do was pull the trigger), the bad guy still had to bring his rifle around to bear on Clint
But what was he doing INSTEAD of ordering his goons to fire? He was responding to her presence / intimidation attack.
She was in control of that whole back-and-forth, including the timing.
Sure, Boss Tartare could have done something surprising instead of responding to her comment. Predictably, he didn’t.
Then she didn’t have to kill him.
If you need to kill him before he gets a chance to kill you, do it. If not, don’t kill him at all.
Maxim 37. There is no overkill, just “open fire” and “reload”
Nope. A “sadist” enjoys inflicting pain. There’s no indication that “inflicting pain” is what Cora was enjoying there.
What Cora is, from our society’s point of view, is amoral or sociopathic. Since she was not raised in our culture, that designation is highly inaccurate, though.
Quite simply, in Hero RPG terms, Cora has no code against killing because she comes from a society/milieu that has no code against killing. Not killing people who seriously need to be killed is stupid. It leads to all kinds of bad stuff, so she doesn’t fall into that terrible habit, and she doesn’t have any reason to show remorse about killing someone like Boss Tartare.
My take: She doesn’t have anything less lethal, so her best option of non-lethal is to kill one in way intimidating enough she wouldn’t need to kill the rest.
I think she is also actively discouraging future attempts against Sydney — the Halo orbs, in the wrong hands, are extinction-level threats not just to Earth but all of the inhabited planets, colonies, and space stations of the galaxy. Just let that thought sink in.
It’s not just gore and violence, my friend. Fantasy sadism is on the news 24/7; of course we’re normalizing it. The constant riots being downplayed as “peaceful” (yeah, if you call murder peaceful), the advertisement of murders like Trayvon Martin, and rich billionaires getting away with whatever the fuck they want. Speaking of which, regardless of whether you like Trump – he obviously didn’t do most of the stuff they accused him of doing. They should have focused on his real crimes like quid pro quo among his cronies instead of some bullshit about Ukraine. Likewise, Trump himself was an asshole whenever he damn pleased. And all of that got airtime.
Trayvon Martin? He could have gone home, or gone about his business, but instead the boy assaulted an armed Hispanic security guard (effectively that). No tears there.
You’re in the wrong place. Breitbart is thataway. ——>
Amazing how far the narrative got twisted. “Going home” is literally what Martin was doing when he was attacked by the member of the neighborhood watch – who was not an official security guard, and had made a call to the police where they explicitly told him to NOT chase after the teenager walking through the neighborhood on his way home.
That is exactly why I chose that situation as an example. It’s sickening how that played out.
Legally, technically, Trayvon was probably in the wrong, but there’s little question in my mind the killer wanted to shoot someone that day. Yet look at the news. All the spin and nonsensical theorizing led to these perverted sadistic takes; regardless of whether you sit on the left or right.
The left was focused on racism and retribution and subverting the legal process.
The right was focused on post-ex-facto justification as Breitbart guy up there so clearly elucidated.
People can’t look at these situations without attaching various ancillary/ulterior motives because it suits their religiously-held political positions. And the media is to blame for that. It’s fucking sickening.
I grew up with silver and golden age comics. I also watched night rider and A-team. the first comic death I ever saw was Roy Fokker in the Robotech series(not the original Japanese, the rebranded stuff that was imported.) it opened my eyes. why the hell did batman fight joker every other comic? how many people had his lack of finality gotten killed? I became disgusted with A-team and Night rider. Comics that swerve away from the natural consequences of the protagonist’s power, unless done very very well, disgust me. kill them all, let God sort them out.
I am adamantly opposed to Batman killing Joker or anyone else. Flat out: Batman should NEVER be asked to kill. Batman is performing a citizens arrest whenever he catches Joker. Yes, Joker should be killed – by lawfully appointed officials after being convicted in a fair and speedy trial. Where his “insanity” plea is tossed out on the grounds that he is in fact legally SANE; he’s a demented clown, but he’s a demented clown who is cognizant of his surroundings and actions.
If Gotham wants Joker dead, they can do it themselves. Don’t push the responsibility on Batman.
Uhmm.. you are forgetting any police officer acting on the numerous open warrants on Joker. And I don’t know about you, if I was too find myself facing down the Joker, if he so much as twitched or did anything but comply with my orders immediately, he would get shot. Not a LEO, but I did almost 15 years of work in the field, and have had to both pull my weapon and fire on an idiot, killing him. It was ruled as self defense, as he was 5 feet away from me with a weapon in his hand. Same goes for the Joker. And there is every reason to believe that his bag of tricks include many innocuous items that are very lethal. The guy has an acid spraying flower on his chest, he should always be considered armed and dangerous. Not saying shoot him on sight, but yeah, he’d get shot very dead if he did anything but slowly get on his face.
Batman exists and conducts his operations because the State is inept and corrupt and someone else is required to step in. But he /really isn’t/ conducting a citizen’s arrest. A citizen is identifiable and held accountable for their actions and the closest he’s ever been to doing that is the Adam West TV show.
He’s established himself as an extra-judicial private security force. He is in many ways a defacto state actor as a result of Gordon’s summoning of him to the GCPDHQ when faced with a problem (thus his being explicitly empowered/deputised as an actor of the State) yet he operates in such a fashion that consistently violates the chain of evidence and countless legal rights and does not participate as a witness in any form of trail.
When the Joker was just a wacky guy doing wacky stuff, beating the snot out of him and handing him back to the authorities… it was okay. But for the last 30 odd years, DC have turned him into this unrelenting death machine who keeps killing more and more people the majority of whom are civilians, keeps getting a free pass from the death chamber, and keeps escaping to do it again. It is utterly inexcusable at this point for the Joker to still be drawing breath. That the people of Gotham or whatever state it resides in haven’t put someone or something into power that overturns his ability to plead insanity. That no one at any stage in the cycle between one time Batman hands the guy over to the next hasn’t just pulled out a gun and ended him.
Which brings us back to Batman. He’s exerting a moral authority to explicitly set himself up as operating outside the strictures and bodies of the law because they are insufficient. To turn around and say those things are somehow perfectly fine when they permit the Joker’s currently incalculable kill count? When Bruce’s oath is that no other person should have to go through yet his refusal to permanently curtail the Joker ensures will continue to happen? That his insistence that the Joker can be cured and redeemed trumps the life of every single one of the maniac’s victims past and future? That is an absolute and unforgivable moral and ethical failing on Bruce’s part.
He doesn’t even have to kill the guy (though we as a society exterminate problematic animals for less). Even without recourse to everything available as the result of the wider superheroic universe Bruce resides in — like the prisons of Oa — he could simply just disappear Joker into his own black site deep in the bowels of the Earth, forever Bruce’s charge and goal to redeem without having to worry one iota about the inept and corrupt Arkham.
That’s an amazingly good point. If Bruce wants privatized justice as his duty then he should take it all the way. And, in the meantime, perhaps do more to clean up Gotham’s ridiculously poor justice and political systems. How long can the extrajudicial stay judicial? I think Batman has long proven he’s become a part of the problem.
Of course, a whole movie about fixing the legal system probably won’t get many viewers…
Well….that got really juicy.
I am ashamed. ^^
that was totally offal
He was a very bad person, but he had a lot of guts
He sure knew how to make a splash.
Cora doesn’t mince words, but she did mince him.
Cora took care of any im-puree-ities.
About whether the guy deserved it….
Here’s an obvious misogynist who has an attractive woman helpless and strapped down to a bed, wearing a shock collar no less, and takes obvious pleasure in torturing her and forcing submission.
I mean, we got no hard evidence, but inference from personality type says, in addition to forcing her to call him “daddy” what else do you think he’s forcing her to do?
There’s a small group of people for whom I think the death penalty is absolutely justified. Salsa Man makes the list for deliberate torture. But if he didn’t, I’d be willing to bet he also makes the list for forcible rape.
I have about half a quibble with Cora doing it the way she did, and that’s mainly that I’d be hard to convince she didn’t have nonlethal ordnance available. Even if Salsa Man deserves the death penalty, he deserves a day in court. That said, Syd is a federal officer held captive by an enemy combatant during an engagement and facing an immediate threat of execution. If lethal force is what you’ve got handy, there’s less blame in using it than not.
For the real “choice” pieces of trash like him, fast kills are a bad thing. It’s quick and painless. Nothing like the misery their victims went through.
They should feel a certain amount of slow pain before they die. Shoot them in the leg, several times. If you hit the right spot, they’ll simply bleed to death, which is a painful way to go.
Congrats, you’re just as bad as the sadists you want to hurt. When you openly enjoy the idea of torture-murder you make it clear any claims of “justice” are just flimsy excuses in service of finding an acceptable target. No one should believe Violent-Sodomy-Man has good motives, even if he only targets badguys.
Thank you for saying it. Torturing someone to death Is Very Wrong, torture itself Is Wrong, it doesn’t matter how long the torture is. If someone must die, for whatever heinous crime they committed, then be efficient about it and don’t make them suffer. It’s not worth the effort to do more than that.
Unless of course, you are the ‘right’ kind of people, and then no matter what you do, it is ‘right’ and ‘justified’ and perfectly legal. ‘It is not my fault because I am special!’
THAT is the problem with a lot of people these days. ‘I am special so the rules don’t apply to me’. Silly little things like stoplights, one way street signs and oncoming 18 wheeler traffic are irrelevant when you are so much more special than everyone else and have been told you are all your life. You need to focus on being social and being special instead of focusing on avoiding the fully loaded cement truck moving at 45 miles an hour you just pulled out in front of.
I know I am old and stupid, but I prefer being ALIVE to being SPECIAL. Silly that.
Morality aside- Torture is really only used by amateurs anyway. It is useless for anything other than hurting people because you CAN. There are much reliable ways to break people or get information than hurting them so badly that they will say anything to get the pain to stop. (That leaves aside the potential of killing the subject and losing all of your effort.)
The problem with a society condoning torture — as did Nazi Germany — is that what you end up doing is giving power to the kind of people who are willing to torture.
It’s that simple.
Yes, trash like ‘Daddy’ deserves only enough attention paid to them as it takes to pull the trigger and turn on the wet-vacuum cleaner
Spend time ‘torturing’ them is affording more time that they don’t deserve
Yeah, that was kind of my thought too, but I didn’t actually come out and say it. I certainly should have, especially after mentioning that I view torture as an evidence of irredeemable evil.
If you take joy from inflicting pain on another – NO MATTER WHAT that other has done – that’s a bad thing.
If you inflict pain for the sake of that joy – that’s doing evil.
No matter how deeply awful someone’s crimes have been, no matter what further deeply awful crimes they plan – their death ends that whether it’s quick and painless or slow and obscene. A quick bullet through the head does as much good as any method, and a long slow torture session satisfying your inner demons adds no good and quite a lot of evil.
I wouldn’t take joy from inflicting pain on another. I still think he would deserve it, so he should be thankful he got quick death.
You can’t choose what you’re taking joy from. As long as you’re not acting on it, it’s fine.
When it comes to inflicting pain, I’m gonna insist on excepting consensual(!) BDSM.
Other than that, you’re right.
I know a little about that.
My younger sister has a personality disorder. For much of her life, she got joy from hurting people emotionally and it was always ‘for our own good’ since she had to be in control.
If there is a better definition of emotional torture than having to live with her for so long, i don’t know what it might be and I DO NOT want to find out.
Physically? There is a very thin line between discipline and abuse. Between toughing and torture. That line can be hard to see, but it does exist and when it is crossed, things get bad.
And difference is, when finding that line, do you stop and keep it below the line? or do you continue past the line?
As someone who has been tortured, I assure you that is EMPHATICALLY NOT the proper way to distinguish between toughing and torture. There’s a feature of human psychology called the “normalization bias” which does what it says – it normalizes how you feel about things.
It started as a few groundings for my bad behavior as a seven-year-old child. By the time I was fifteen I’d become much better behaved, but regardless, my parents had moved onto literal waterboarding and then later that month breaking my ribs and spine simply because I was crying too much. Who the fuck wouldn’t cry?
You can reliably determine discipline from abuse by measuring your response to one person against your response to another. If you treat, say, a child (basically anyone disadvantaged to you, whether it be socially, economically, physically, etc.) with greater chutzpah than you would a more equal friend or colleague, and they haven’t consented [[[ without coercion ]]], then it’s abuse. Every time.
It’s the power dynamic. That’s why consent matters as much as it does. It gives power to the otherwise presupposed victim. And you can’t measure a power dynamic by relying on your own personal feelings. If humans could, the world would already be a far better place.
Or maybe you can talk about what a man deserves, and not actually enjoy it. You made an assumption that I enjoyed such violence when I simply said what he deserved. If anything, I feel that violence in books and the like doesn’t properly portray what it does to the human psyche. They gloss over the real lasting damage, to everyone who sees such violence.
At least in this comic we saw a perfectly natural reaction from Sydney on what most people would be thinking if they saw such levels of graphic violence.
Maybe they deserve it, but no human can carry out such acts without becoming like the one the punish. It’s a feature of human neurology. Human memories “replay” events as though they are actually happening. So, when a person tortures someone to death, in the future seeing someone who looks like the person they tortured to death will make them feel like they didn’t “finish the job.” Yes, really.
The reason functional societies are so fractious and yet strictly moralistic is because the human mind is chock-full of biases that will cause the society itself to fail if said biases are not managed properly… Supposedly, the man who invented the Brazen Bull was himself tortured with the Brazen Bull after lauding the many “benefits” of such a torture process. It’s not irony. It’s what he deserved for having such a cruel mind.
Here’s the thing about Cora’s actions.
WE (the readers) all know that Salsa Man deserves it (and probably more), but from what we’ve seen, all Cora knows is that he’s holding a gun to Sydney and maybe drugged her. Further, given Cora’s access to, almost literal, magical levels of technology, having a “stun” option isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Cora’s threshold for lethal escalation is rather low.
Still, for all she knew, Salsa Man may have been a super so she was “loaded for bear”.
We forget here, though, that Cora had some info from the glasses. Perhaps she knows more of what was going on that just what little happened since she got there?
Why do I get the feeling we may be seeing earthworm Jim’s brother again.
Just because Cora has access to “stun” technology doesn’t mean she actually HAD that technology with her.
She interchanges her hands and weapons at will and instantaneously via teleport, just like Dabbler’s weapon set – Cora ‘has’ her entire arsenal with her at all times.
By whatever subvocal means Sydney alerted Cora, Sydney would have been able to provide additional info. If the bad guys weren’t aware of how she did it, neither would we, the audience, due to it being subvocal/inaudible/inobvious.
“Here’s an obvious misogynist who has an attractive woman helpless and strapped down to a bed, wearing a shock collar no less, and takes obvious pleasure in torturing her and forcing submission.”
He was pretty clearly misogynistic from the whole ‘making her call him daddy’ part, but I’m pretty sure he’d have done the same thing if it was a man (except instead of calling him daddy he’s probably have made a man call him ‘sir’ or ‘master’ or something – the guy clearly had a power trip mentality). But I think the whole torturing thing is just because this guy is a sadist who likes inflicting pain or death on others (especially judging on how he so quickly went to ‘kill Sydney’) and how he used the electrocution collar on Concretia for absolutely no good reason other than to be sadistic.
“I mean, we got no hard evidence, but inference from personality type says, in addition to forcing her to call him “daddy” what else do you think he’s forcing her to do?”
I think it was more about him liking having power over a super, or over other people in general, more than that she was a woman. But who knows – maybe he does ONLY torture women. I just doubt a guy like that limited himself to just hurting women. We didnt know Chunky McSalsa for very long. We just knew he was a bad dude.
“There’s a small group of people for whom I think the death penalty is absolutely justified. Salsa Man makes the list for deliberate torture. But if he didn’t, I’d be willing to bet he also makes the list for forcible rape.”
I don’t like the idea of deliberate torture for anyone, and doubly so for forcible rape. Like Rob Schneider’s character said in Big Stan when he said no more raping people in prison, even to the rapists (after briefly thinking ‘sure, fine for the rapists and the molestors) – that it sends a bad message. Although it was funny how he originally went back and forth on the rules on that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXVbC5dyG3o
Death penalty’s fine though. Long as it’s not meant to be torturous. You don’t want to become the enemy you oppose, and it’s always a slippery slope. I agree with Alexis and Cloala on that.
“Even if Salsa Man deserves the death penalty, he deserves a day in court. That said, Syd is a federal officer held captive by an enemy combatant during an engagement and facing an immediate threat of execution. If lethal force is what you’ve got handy, there’s less blame in using it than not.”
Yes, if Cora was an actual police officer, she would have been justified in killing Mr. Splattered-Around-The-Room. Although obviously not in the method of his death. But police are trained to shoot center mass to kill – you shouldn’t point a gun at anyone unless you’re prepared to kill them, and Cora shooting him was an obvious example of ‘defense of others.’ (ie, Sydney, who he was about to shoot with an announced intent to murder her). The excessiveness of the level of violence of the killing would be a problem obviously, but she’s an alien. Not sure if they’d actually be able to hold her on anything unless the Council wanted to with some treaty with the US (the only current on-the-books agreements available with aliens in the Grrlpower universe).
KentDA: “They should feel a certain amount of slow pain before they die.”
It’s probably usually not a good thing to try to compete with a sadistic criminal about if you can be more sadistic. Tends to be soul-destroying if nothing else. Fast kills are just fine. You’re getting rid of the threat (someone about to murder Sydney) – no need to show that you like inflicting the same level of pain or more.
Death penalties should always be carried out as quickly as possible (the actual ‘to death’ part), the amount of pain inflicted in the process is debatable (same with whether you gained enjoyment out of it… enjoyment or satisfaction)
Well it’s not LEGALLY debatable about the amount of pain inflicted, at least in the US. That’s why lethal injection was created – as a method of minimizing the idea of execution being ‘cruel’ (SCOTUS heard many arguments about this, although they’ve consistently held that the death penalty itself is NOT cruel and unusual punishment unless it’s execution of mentally retarded people or people who were under 18 at the time of the crime being committed).
The concept being it’s relatively painless compared to previously used methods of execution like electrocution, gas, or firing squad (Utah and Oklahoma still lets you have the option to choose a firing squad; Arizona, California, Maryland, Mississippi, Missoouri, and Wyoming still allow gas to be used IF lethal injection cannot be used; and Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky still allow electricution if lethal injection cannot be used).
Basically because of the 8th Amendment. Inflicting any more pain than necessary to kill the criminal is usually considered cruel and unusual punishment.
Labeling it “cruel and unusual” just because the perp was under 18 is a classic example of SCOTUS legislating from the bench. Iirc, they used international public opinion as part of their justification, and polls of the direction that US public opinion might be moving. Also, the fact that it was “unusual” (ie rare) was based partly on the fact that SCOTUS had been blocking executions for decades.
“Labeling it “cruel and unusual” just because the perp was under 18 is a classic example of SCOTUS legislating from the bench.”
I’m just telling what the law is, rather than when the Supreme Court has legislated from the bench (which they unfortunately do quite often, and have for the past 50 years). It was also a pretty minor part of what I was talking about in my post – I was just adding it so no one else, like perhaps Oberon, saying “You’re not a lawyer pander, you fake lawyer! It’s still considered cruel and unusual punishment if the death penalty is given to someone under 18!”) :)
The main point of my post was that the current death penalty in the US is based on minimizing the amount of pain inflicted during execution to make mesh as well as possible to not being ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ as possible.
And being blown up is… probably painful. But might not be if it happens fast enough before the nerves have time to transmit the pain. But I don’t know – I havent been instantaneously blown up, fortunately.
When individual body parts are severed the brain initially shuts off all feeling because of the sudden overload. It can’t interpret the data it’s being sent and therefore ignores everything.
The effect is often attributed to adrenaline but in fact such severe wounds typically don’t hurt from the onset. Which means that’s not enough time for adrenaline to take effect. Only after the mind realizes “holy f I’m missing X” does it start to hurt like hell. Which is because higher order cognitive processes finally kick in and properly sort out the garbage signals the brain was receiving until that point. That’s moreso when adrenaline starts to do its job.
Notably, when a person takes a severe enough injury, the amount of garbage nervous responses is so high that it dulls their entire cognition. This can slow down the pain response even more. This is why people can sometimes do amazing things like walk a mile with an utterly shattered leg bone. They were mentally unable to conceptualize the injury, thus their proprioception (sense of bodily function) continued to act as though there was no injury.
An exploded human therefore cannot feel pain because the mind had no time to interpret those signals. Whether the nerves send the signals or not is a moot point.
The human brain is very interesting.
Death penalties are final. Murdering someone through the power of the state means the state needs to be extremely careful to ensure that there is no mistake in the assessment of the penalty. Three of the recent people executed by the USA were arguably ineligible for that penalty, two of them based on the inability to conceptualize right and wrong, the third because evidence suggests he was innocent and incompetently represented because of his race.
I completely agree with everything you said.
But still think in this case, I’m not broken up about the bad guy dying since he was about to murder Sydney. So it wasnt a death penalty execution here as much as it was killing in self defense/defense of others (in this case others being Sydney).
It’s the method of death that’s problematic (legally and morally), although it happened so fast he may not have felt a thing after the initial shot. Nerves take a little time to transmit pain after all, and he went from wounded to spackle faster than he could say ‘oops’ :)
There is no indication that he would have felt anything at all, with an instantaneous dissolution like that. The “he”, presumably the brain, would have been in tiny chunks before any nerve impulses could arrive from the nearest severed spot. Spots farther away, the nerve impulses would never have a path to arrive from.
True. Probably was too fast to feel anything. Not sure if courts would consider that to still be cruel and unusual punishment, but a scientist could probably be able to say he didnt feel anything before it happened.
Wasn’t actually considering legally or state
Yeah I sort of put everything through a legality filter at one point or another :)
I’m not sure this was particularly painful, looks like he got disassembled so fast he hardly had time to feel anything. Especially given that his spinal cord was probably severed at multiple points, rendering him incapable of feeling anything below the neck anyway. A center of mass shot with a regular firearm would probably have hurt more, just because you’d have time to feel it before dying.
It was messy and intimidating for anybody not shot, but not a torture killing.
True. He didnt even get to finish the word oops before he went from ‘slightly injured’ to ‘new paint job of the room.’
I simply hope that he does not haunt the building, as that would certainly amount to torture, of the tenants.
A very justifiable concern, indeed.
I don’t know about New York but in some states it is actually a legal concern to disclose to potential buyers of a property if past residents experienced haunting activity. Also if any violent crimes such as murder (of any type) occurred on the property.
It’s not fraud in New York to not disclose if a property had a murder in it.
It’s called ‘stigmatized property’ and I think it’s only required to give notice in 4 or so states with another 5 where it’s ‘iffy.’ The rest it doesn’t matter. No idea at all if hauntings require notice though but I doubt it in most states.
You can’t lie about it in any state though. That’s fraud in any state if you lie about if someone was murdered or committed suicide or if there were hauntings and you say there wasn’t.
Looking into it I found a funny one. Apparently in New York state its backwards, it is illegal to claim a property is haunted for the purpose of selling it *which apparently some people want haunted locations as a way to attract tourists* but it isn’t. Stating the sale can be rescinded.
New Jersey apparently they have to tell you, but only if asked. Which seems to be the consensus even if not required legally to only disclose such information if specifically asked and like any feature of a property not lie about it. Checking with a real estate agent it comes more down to the reputation of the realtors than anything else to be upfront with buyers and sellers. Although like many things, don’t tell if not asked if it doesn’t affect the physical property its self unless required by law.
good luck serving her with papers. she’s got a space ship that flys to other solar systems the way we drive to another state. Just the power requirements put her as the premier power on Earth. I think she could claim “diplomatic immunity ” walk away and no one would say a thing.
Yeah, the thing about that… if you claim diplomatic immunity, that makes your actions representative of your government. Which can then choose to revoke said immunity because they don’t want to deal with the headaches caused by your indiscretions. And that assumes Cora actually holds any such status with any galactic organizations.
Of course she can choose to fly away in her ship. In which case she had best never, ever, ever return to Earth, or she’ll be arrested/attacked on sight.
Take the superpowers out of the equation, and you have a mercenary (?) who has essentially snatched the military officer who is normally within arms reach of the POTUS at all times, the one holding the “NUCLEAR FOOTBALL”. The merc (would be terrorist) has a gun to the head of the officer and with his other hand is hacksawing the handcuffs of the “football” briefcase. You don’t play nice with people trying to make themselves an extinction-level threat. You make THEM extinct. His skeeviness is purely incidental. And anyone else who gets the same bright idea to go after Sydney directly (because compared to other supers, she is squishy) needs to be discouraged in the strongest possible terms. Cora did that discouraging, and I commend her cunning and canniness.
Was she right to murder splatter him all over everyone and everything?.
Well.
Was she in a position where she could “easily” neutralize all of them and make sure Sydney is safe.
I would normally say yes, since she should have many ways to incapacitate them and secure Sydney.
In this case, what she did was extremely wrong.
But. As defence she is on an alien world where supers are apparently able to do mindboggling things and could survive or shrug off most non lethal of her armament.
In this case, she has a good argument for going ham.
But. Then she took the time to chat with them instead of taking every single one of them out as fast as possible, in order to save Sydney.
Which brings us back to, She was very wrong doing this, since she had the time to chat up her targets.
plus sydnets clothes are never gonna wash out these stains. that is the worse crime here.
(sydneys poor mind: WHAHGFDAJUAFGARGLEFARGLFEE)
No worries about the clothes. You would not BELIEVE what gets washed out of combat uniforms without leaving a stain. Or maybe you would but would just rather not think about it.
Can confirm.
Also?
I think we just found out what those “horrifying new armaments” Slyv was picking up on Fracture were.
Are we sure that wasnt her normal armaments? Judging from what she did to the would-be muggers on Fracture and what she told the space cops :)
I’m inclined to think this wasn’t a new round, she wouldn’t fire off untried ordnance with a splash radius right next to one of her friends. …probably. :(
Well, that was a little while ago, now. They likely had time to test everything.
Wait, on one hand, you are saying what she did was too much, and on the very same hand you are saying she should have done more? o_O
More that ‘Cora should have made up her mind whether she was going for kill or capture, not messed around with delayed-action grandstanding’.
There are good arguments to justify going in hard and fast, taking the goons down before they can react. There are also good arguments for giving them the opportunity to surrender, not least the potential for interrogation. The armchair brigade can argue all they like about which course of action is better, with the benefit of hindsight and universal information, while the (wo)man on the spot has to make the choice alone.
But whichever option is chosen (and that may be different across the group), it should be committed to strongly. If you’re allowing the opportunity to surrender, make the offer and the conditions immediately clear. If you’re taking them down anyway, do it quickly and be sure. Concretia and the two secondary goons are firmly in the ‘opportunity to surrender’ scenario, but ‘Daddy’ isn’t in either – the mincer round gave him time to react and potentially kill his hostage, without allowing a potential capture to justify that delay.
Again, it comes down to: was it a delayed round? or a manual trigger round?
“Gave him time to..” followed by things that he did not, in fact, do.
Cora controlled the attention of everyone in the room. There is no indication that anything whatsoever happened in that room that Cora did not plan.
Boss Tartare was a talky control freak. She disarmed him, then grabbed his attention by physical movement plus personal allure plus conversation plus a mystery. By the time the mystery became clear, he was dead, and everyone else was thoroughly stunned and cowed.
Pretending there was a tactical error there is simply importing assumptions into the universe to support personal ethical preferences.
Cora handled it like a boss.
A sociopathic boss with no reverence for human life in general, but a clear reverence for the life of her friends.
More like she takes a huge risk and gets lucky. Cora is an alien who knows little about local culture and its effects on psychology. Using a plan that relies on her understanding thereof is reckless. And especially trusting you can introduce yourself by opening fire and not get greeted by return fire before you can get any words out is very risky.
Even if we assume she knows exactly what she was doing, she takes that risk for no benefit. That’s obviously suboptimal tactics.
I believe it’s much more plausible that she wanted to look him in the eyes while she killed him, and trusted she’d be quick enough on the draw to stop them when they tried anything. Only then there’s no need to commit to killing him, he could be arrested and interrogated instead. It wasn’t a tactical decision, she wanted to indulge.
Remember that Cora is friends with a literal demon. If that tactic works for cowing demons into submission, you can be pretty damn sure it’ll work with virtually any other race.
Well if you’re going to be Pedantic…
Change my “gave him time to” for “gave him the opportunity to”, if you like. The opportunity was there, whether he used it or not. In this case, ARC were lucky, as his reaction was to shout at Cora. If his reaction had instead been to shoot Sydney and rid himself of a complication, he would have been able to do so well before the mincer round detonated.
Guesticus makes a valid point, that we don’t know for sure whether the mincer round was on a deterministic timer or a deliberate trigger. If a timer, it was a deliberate first-shot kill – so why not use a round with immediate detonation, or a conventional inert round through a more vital bit of anatomy? A deliberate trigger implies that he could have surrendered and lived, but Cora’s actions aren’t those of someone inviting surrender. If that was her objective, she could make the threat far clearer and compliance more likely by aiming the gun at his vitals. The trigger mechanism for her gun is unlikely to be appreciably slower than that for the mincer, when both are activated by the same interface.
Maybe Cora has some insight into the psychology of this person she’s never met before, to know for sure that her showing off isn’t going to get Sydney shot. Or maybe she’s just gambling with Sydney’s life. But whether her objective is to eliminate the threat or to secure a prisoner for interrogation, it would be better and faster served with conventional rounds.
well i was saying she went straight for lethal.
where as she might have been able to simply incapacitate them all. like shooting them in their limbs and turning concretia to dust over and over.
but she went for the “splatter” one guy and make the others go “ok fuck that shit, im out” (i think)
This would make the other guys with guns pause or panic, but Concretia is basically not able to die and could cause alot of damage to sydney before she can do anything to save her.
Yeah, if Cora had gone with the ‘dust Cree over and over’, that could have potentially turned one ‘reluctant villain considering switching teams’ into a committed anti-Archon villain determined to make them pay because they have shown they are no different than Daddy Drywall
She went ‘straight for lethal’ on the one that needed to be lethalized, she’s probably been listening in on Sydney’s glasses the whole time
it’s very very difficult to shoot someone in their limbs from any distance greater than 5ft. also lots of big veins and arteries in those limbs. really easy to bleed out
We don’t know if she can “easily” incapacitate them, or even if she might be able to. I’d like to point out that she’s an experienced combatant and walked in on a scene where she saw one person trying to point a gun at Sydney’s head and the others restraining him from doing that. Since the other two are trying to prevent murder and aren’t an immediate threat to Sydney she doesn’t indiscriminately murder every hostile in that room with her murder splode bullets.
Counteragrument: Cora neutralized the only immediate threat to Sydney, once the murder sploder bullet landed he couldn’t use his dominant side arm to threaten Sydney with his gun. At that point she is confident she can react to any threat that suddenly appears so there’s no danger to Sydney.
Using a munition with a time delay before killing is not what I would suggest but she targeted the point on his body that disables his arm so the delay didn’t matter.
Damit Corra, stop traumatizing Sydney with your ordonance. And littering with your enemies!
This is like Fracture station all over again:
(Forgot the link)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-695-ordnance-schmordnance/
Well, at least Cora didn’t use the ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ face-melting round.
What I’d really like to know is why they’re still using old-timey (if very beautiful-looking) syringes.
Like, why not just use those disposable, sterile nonpyrogenic syringes, lol?
For that matter, why are they injecting her? Just put in an IV and put the medication on a drip and titrate to effect, lol.
The guy is wearing a suit and matching mask, and lambskin gloves. Why’s he using those old-timey syringes?
Style.
IV’s take too long to set up in the field, when you want instant results. If they had her captured in a secure location, sure, they’d have her on an IV.
Hey, if you like those go to a veterinary supply place. There are plastic ones available now but you can still get these beautiful-looking glass syringes. You’re looking there at about a 30cc size, which is typical for horses & cattle. (If you get one marked “one ounce” you’re looking at an antique.)
You can also get needles for them, but they start at 0 gauge and only get bigger from there. People don’t like them because the tips look too much like the ends of pipes.
I also feel sorry for Sydney there. Better scrape what little blood you have left and send it to get tested for blood-borne diseases. Looks like she got some in her eye and other mucosal surfaces. Or, I guess just use alien technology to make sure you don’t catch anything, lol.
Oh, and since this is fantasy, no werewolf/vampire pathogen whatever causes that, or space AIDS or whatever, lol.
It’s ok. Sydney has access to Frix.
Captain Salsa needs an entry on the “Who’s Who?” sidebar.
No, no he doesn’t: for one thing, he hasn’t been named (which is usually the first priority in being added), more importantly, he gone, and he won’t be back once they sterilise that room and burn the clothes
He doesn’t even deserve to be named during the
interrogationsinterviews with Cree and the surviving Goons, at least not on-screenThe good news is, Sydney has access to a counselor in canon already so at least she’ll get therapy for this.
Oh that’s right, we may get to see Dr Frost trying to wrangle Sydney again! I suspect Syd will be slightly more cooperative (though no less difficult) this time around.
Well, it’s not like this is the first time Sydney has been drenched in blood. And bonus, it’s only one person’s blood, not at least 2 dozen different species… https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-580-the-glamorous-life-of-the-superheroine/
So Cora saw that the bad dude just slapped Sydney and then was announcing he was going to shoot her – so she stopped him with the first weapon she had in hand. As someone else already pointed out above, that weapon could have been prepared for temporarily disabling Concretia’s golem – mostly for show, since the bad dude was controlling her.
Actually I’m more worried that Sydney’s right knee got tangented by the blast right over the kneecap. Looks like she was too close to it.
that is a severed ear sitting on her knee
Fairly sure that that is her left knee (note the lack of camo-pattern under her hand indicating that that is the ‘arm’ of the concrete chair she is in)
Core has a teleporting multitool socket for hands – every single one of her weapons is equally and immediately “at hand”, so the argument that she was forced to use that weapon doesn’t hold up.
Seeing ALOT of discussion about Cora’s motives, her doing a one-liner, taking apparent joy in killing a guy, tons of excuses, trying to justify it, taking her past actions and attitude into account, and legal talk and so on.
However there is a very easy explanation for her, (not an excuse) but an explanation, how she can still be a good guy yet have this attitude and approach, and its very simple.
Cora is
A cyberpunk space outlaw Action Hero.
I find it interesting that she hit him on the shoulder with a weapon FAR less powerful than the one she used on Fracture Station. A couple of reasons I can think of offhand-
1) Sydney is helpless at the moment with her orbs contained and Cora’s arm cannon does insane damage with a certain amount of splash damage. Sydney was likely in the blast zone, so no using that or other heavy ordnance. People who have never been around explosions tend to ignore that what kills you is usually the blast, not shrapnel. (I have worked around blasting zones and I talked with a lot of veterans)
2) As others have said, Cora was likely armed for Concretia as the only clear super present. The golem was was the most dangerous being there. (At least until Cora showed herself, that is) Who knows WHAT that round would have done to concrete. But then the idiot pointed his weapon at Sydney and all bets were off. Cora likely didn’t think she had time to switch ammo loads or weapons. You use what you have in such a case. Milliseconds matter and no matter how fast she can switch loads, it would take time.
3) Cora is NOT a psychopath or sociopath. She is a professional who has done a lot of dangerous jobs, so she carries weaponry suited for said dangerous jobs. She may err on the side of overkill, but frankly? The fool pointed a gun at a hostage. Do that around SWAT and you are dead. (Just not as messy as Cora makes things)
I am looking forward to seeing Concretia’s reaction to this and to seeing how Cora explains the mess.
Exact timing of Cora’s entrance unknown, but I can’t imagine Cora watching Sydney get hit, and then remaining quiet and watching while a gun was pulled and they fought over whether it was going to get used. And while she may have been loading for Concretia initially, she explicitly says that she picked lethal rounds in advance.
Lethal for Concretia’s golem form or lethal for squishy humans?
If she had a weapon in hand for Concretia when the thug pointed the gun at Sydney… Well.. yeah. ‘Oops’.
That round isn’t great against Concretia either. High-powered slugs work as good as anything against Concretia(temporarily disable her), and the blender has that awkward delay.
Also her gun is multi-barreled, so she really has no excuse.
I don’t believe she’s a psychopath, sociopath or a sadist, as some have suggested. She’s simply used to a situations that involve much higher levels of violence than people on earth are accustomed to, so her tactics seem perfectly reasonable from her perspective.
For all we know, she’s come across cults and cthonian monsters before and the blender round was the most effective thing to use. Saw these dudes with their creepy cult outfits and was like “Wait, I’ve seen this before, I’m not taking any chances.” XD
“Sociopath: n. a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.”
Pretty sure her habit of casually and brutally murdering people she could’ve easily subdued and handed to the authorities counts as antisocial behavior, and she certain has shown no remorse about it. Seeing a lot of violence does not authorize her to participate in it herself, nor to act as judge, jury, and executioner.
The only examples we have seen of her ‘habit of casually and brutally murdering people’ has been the muggers on Fracture and Daddy Drywall
And remember, the only ‘crime’ Officer Blue could charge her with, was littering, which says a damn lot about that societies norms
(had had a longer comment to post, but having problems with the damn ads on this page which caused the browser to refresh, and this was all could remember :( )
If you go to the DSM, you will find that you missed one of the most important criteria for diagnosing someone with any personality disorder, including those that are called “sociopaths”.
“An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior the deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture.”
She is a well adjusted member of her own culture, which doesn’t hold the lives of sociopathic miscreants like Boss Salsa in any special regard. (Yes, he fits the diagnosis.)
From the point of view of American society, she is a sociopath with no remorse for killing people.
However, she is a well adjusted and highly respected member of her own society, so she probably would not pass the technical criteria for sociopath.
Talk of the ear on Sydney’s knee reminds me of a resent couple pages of Exiern where the main character was walking about with an eyeball and an ear of some arsehole they had splattered on them
Sydney’s eye twitching was a nice touch. lol
On one hand I find using bigotry as a sign of “this person is evil” as incredibly lazy, and encouraging of terrible world views. Good people, even heroic people, can be sexist, bad people, even supervillains, can be completely accepting of all colors and sexes. There’s really very little correlation either way.
On the other hand, hoo boy does it work. We had someone who wanted to kill all the main cast and take over the world, and nobody complained about him being taken alive. But this mildly annoying low-level threat? Everyone is cheering at his bloody demise. More disturbing to me than the actual gore lol.
I think people were more happy he died because he was literally about to shoot and murder Sydney, but yes – being happy that someone died for being misogynistic alone would be disturbing.
Also Maxima did try to kill Vehemence and blew his arm off even. And if he had not surrendered, she was going to do the same thing to his head. After he was already captured and weakening.
And Sciona had her leg blown off by a railgun, and the main reason they didnt pursue it further was because they wound up getting teleported to Alari prime, where they wound up having to run away from a skyscraper-sized kaiju using death beams. Remember, Sciona had already had most of her head chopped off and it didnt take.
Oh also Maxima had also tried to incinerate Sciona with a blast that was able to destroy a bridge (although she managed to do a quick patchwork before it collapsed fully). They werent really holding back with Sciona either, but she was also a much bigger threat.
But still… if the guy had not been about to murder Sydney, he probably would still be alive right now, even with being misogynistic with the whole Concretia thing.
When all is said and done:
1. Grrl Power is a comic; more specifically, a webcomic.
2. Comics routinely have both heroes and villains destroy people, cities, even the occasional planet or universe.
3. I don’t read comics to see their strict adherence to Judeo-Christian moral codes or the US rules of law. I want to be entertained.
4. Last comic, I said I’d be perfectly happy if DaveB just re-ran https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-695-ordnance-schmordnance/ , updated for NYC cops instead of Fracture cops.
5. This was Close Enough.
1. I generally don’t use the ‘this is a comic’ as a part of my arguments, because even comics and other fictional worlds have to be consistent with that world’s rules in order to be enjoyable to the audience.
2. Grrlpower tends to take a very ‘close to real life, but with the mcguffin that superpowers exist’ in its logic. It’s very trope-savvy, so that probably isnt a very good argument either honestly. Like when Maxima was explaining the ‘quick cliffnotes’ of rules on being a superhero in a superhero fight. Or most of Sydney’s questions that she asks the superheroes about superhero fights in general.
3. When I read comics, I use whatever moral and legal guidelines are shown to be a thing within that universe. The Grrlpower universe’s moral and legal guidelines seem to be very close to RL ones, with the exception of alien civilization guidelines. I want to be entertained as well, but I always want it to be consistent with the rules that have been set up in the comic’s fictional world itself.
4. On Fracture station, Cora did not get in trouble because, as the space cops said, she has “special status on Fracture Station” due to her having saved the station from annihilation on multiple occasions, apparently. So she got away with doing things that other people would have gotten arrested for, even if she wouldnt have been sent to the warp mines along with the muggers. :)
5. I enjoyed it but the point that masterofbones was bringing up is a fair point and shouldnt be so easily dismissed. It does get disturbing when people cheer on excessive gore if there’s a question as to whether the person deserved that amount of gore, because life tends to follow art. Again though, I like the comic and I tend to view this as ‘Cora saved Sydney from being murdered’ rather than ‘Cora used torturous methods of murder on a guy who was a misogynist and made a woman call him daddy.’
The former makes Cora more justified, the latter is more of a literary device used to make people hate the bad guy and show in a very surface-level way that he’s a bad person (there’s a cultural zeitgheist thing going on with violence against women in general, plus the daddy thing brought up sexual connotations even if they didnt actually happen).
He wasn’t a low-level threat. By taking the orbs from Sydney, he becomes an extinction-level threat. For the entire inhabited universe. He absolutely had to be stopped. Cora’s methods have the side benefit of discouraging future attempts.
*winces* poor, poor Sydney.
She’s definitely going to need, at absolute minimum, a shower,a hug and a few months/years of therapy after this :(
The big question I have, is if Cora is making follow up shots, or is giving the others a chance to surrender?
I CAN see this being arguable as genuinely justified considering he was Literally in the middle of attempting murder-
And I sure as FUCK know that if I was one of the others, I’d be desperately eager to surrender right now-
I’d be kneeling and begging to be allowed to cuff and stun myself-if I wasn’t vomiting convulsively, I mean
Perverted psycho guy was a completely legitimate target for lethal force- the others will tell us a lot about Cora’s self-control/discipline..
man, that evil guy sure gave her an EARful.
(panel 8)
Cora- poster child for the level above “there’s no kill like overkill.”
I know I’m probably an outlier here, but I actually would’ve liked to have seen panel 4 at the point it became panel 5.
Hey, watch enough movies like Hellraiser and Silent Hill and you get numb to fantasy violence and gore.
The real thing still bugs me tho.
There is no smell and feel in a movie or comic.
At least… Not yet. They tried smells in movies once and it didn’t work very well.
He he. A suitable end for anyone hurting Halo! Especially combined with the heinous threat of memory wiping!
Don’t do it to yourself Sydney, the cure is worse than the memory!
Daddy guy most likely deserved death since he clearly was about to murder Sydney and to be so casual about murdering another person is a likely indicator that he done similar actions in the past. The only problem I have with this is poor Sydney getting a face full of the wrong kind of human bukkake. Maxi will probably let the guy death go since she woulda probably had Mach 5 him through the wall if she realized what he did/planned to do. Then again daveb could always give the guy a regeneration ability in the next page.
Lets be honest even if there was no distress call, they gave Sydney an assignment to hide the box…and she didnt check in. there was bound to be some explosive ordinance coming their way
unsee juice: big inject
…
That’s one hell of a “parting gift”.
“Part of him’s here, part of him’s there and one part of him is waaay over there… staining the wall.”
Partial dose, Syd. Partial Dose.