Grrl Power #974 – Death by a thousand chips
I know what the title of the page is, and this isn’t technically chip damage, but Max is exploring the deterrent factor.
That or she’s just going to make him mad.
Vehemence’s line on this page makes me think of stuff like Klingons. They’re all “Rah Rah War!” and “Glory in battle!” but what they really mean is “Rah Rah Winning War” and “Glory in Victory!” They have to tell themselves its honorable to die in battle because the number one cause of death in Klingons has to be violence, but no one actually wants to die in battle, they want to win. (Until they get old and are worried about their legacy/place in Suto’vo’qor.)
I always think about that when I’m playing games like Doom and I’m chainsawing an imp in half. I’m like, you guys totally revel in chaos, violence and suffering. How is this not what you want? I’m helping you! And then I dance in its innards.
Vehemence gains power from getting beat up, but he then has to spend some of that to heal. He also gains power from just being near violence, and that doesn’t cost him anything. It doesn’t cost him to punch someone, but it does if he puts a few thousand joules behind it, so it’s a balancing act. Really, his biggest weapon is the violence aura. If he gets enough people in its area, then he garners a net positive, and as we saw with his first appearance, if its a bunch of super-powered violence, then it’s like he’s standing at the foot of the Hoover Dam with leads attached to his nipples.
In a good way.
There’s a kickstarter for Gold Digger Gold Bricks #3 and 4 out, which collect issues 51-100. These have been printed before but are now out of print, and this kickstarter is likely the last chance to ever get them. There’s also an option for hardbacks, which would be pretty cool since they’re some phat ass books. I think #4 is about 3″ thick.
I think quite a few of you are familiar with Gold Digger, but if you’re not, the short version is, what if Rick Sanchez and Indiana Jones were one person and that person was a nerdy girl and her sister was a were-cheetah and their other sister was a half-clone of them and their parents were a Weapons Master from another dimension and a Sorcerer Supreme and they constantly fought everything from time traveling dragons to living spells to the things that came before the dinosaurs to mechanized Leprechauns and one of them marries a guy who gets drafted into a government agency that honestly could probably take down Arc-SWAT… eh… I don’t know. It would be a hell of a fight. Also it’s funny. Anyway, that’s my synopsis of Gold Digger.
Honestly if not for Gold Digger, I don’t think I ever would have done Grrl Power. It was just about the only comic I read for nearly a decade after I lost interest in the constantly resetting storylines of Marvel and DC. I read plenty of manga, but they’re different because they’re usually shorter, contained stories, and not endless sprawling non-sequitur nonsense like the big three comics wind up turning into.
I digress. Check out the kickstarter, and if you pledge, there’s an add-on you can get that’s the first 100 issues in PDF form.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
Started on what I think will actually be the last chapter. I may split it into two if it goes long, but it will still be the final “act.” Doing a fight scene in a Tamer book that isn’t against dinosaurs involved coming up with a bunch of Eye-Q skills for everyone involved, and right now I’m stuck trying to figure those out. I mean, I could have Sam and the ladies klonk everyone on the head before the bad guys get a chance to break out their powers, but that probably doesn’t make for the most thrilling action scene.
August’s vote incentive is up! I know, that thumbnail isn’t so enticing, but I promise, the rest of the picture is worth it.
Nude version is up at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
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Somehow V. Looks like a different person here…. dunno why but the face seems kinda different
He kinda looks like a jacked-up Lex Luthor from Justice League Unlimited to me.
It’s the lips.
OMG thank you!! It was bothering me and I couldn’t pinpoint what about his appearance was different.
His eyes are bulging more and his lips are a bit more pronounced.
Yups, hopefully DaveB will fix that on the next page
Acts different too. He’s gone from a pretty smart dude that set up a huge super fight so he could get powered up enough to easily stand toe-to-toe with Maxima to just a meathead goon.
Different circumstances. Like, he still just…fought Maxima like this at the time too. And in this case, he is with strict deliberate limits on his day-release fight feeding. So it’s not like he has the ability to showcase mastermind manipulation.
I’d say he very definitely isn’t being just a meathead goon, as demonstrated by his initial slow approach and careful spacing.
She’s had weeks or months to think about tactics that will chip him down. He’s now seen two of them… and he has to come up with a plan to fight her and win, when he’s not allowed to use his powers and he’s never had to be tricky.
Seems to me, if he’s going to win a round, he’s gong to have to cheat somehow. SHe’s allowed to use her super powers, at some setting, so he should use some body power.
Of course, he might ask permission. He’s polite that way.
He already has what he wants – violence to feed him. This is a spar, so he can indulge. He doesn’t actually need to fight well here, so he isn’t trying hard.
And if he has a plan B to beat Maxima and escape, it makes sense to job a bit until he’s ready so he gets underestimated.
Although I’m assuming he’s gonna start playing smarter on the next page because he isn’t happy with what Maxima is doing right now. That’s been his thing the entire time – get dunked on, then come back stronger.
Yeah, why does ol’ V have lips now?
So we get a excuse to make lip puns:
Kevin usually keep a stiff upper lip but if you give him lip you better hope he feels balm today.
Pure pain inducers is one of my favourite ways to deal “damage” in Trpgs. Not just… Chop your nose or kick ya balls. But like literal pain inducers. A tetsubo that aplies all it’s damage as pain debuf but no real cut.
I wonder how would that work against Vehemence.
So, the ultimate against Vehemence would be a sticky area of effect corruption-type attack that isn’t violent at all, it just causes things to go the way of entropy… like time acceleration, but without the person noticing it.
There’s no violence at all, just an increasing degradation of the target.
psych damage is king against brawlers (though if V is powered up, he can likely keep a strong mind shield up)
Go for the emotional hurt.
Max: “I don’t care what the other women are saying. I don’t think you being bald makes you any less of a man.”
Is he even sexual? He might not even CARE about sex, just violence. An asexual violence seeking thrill addict.
Pretty sure he cares about sex.
That was literally step 2 on Sydney’s strategy which was used to defeat him, which heavily focused on bouncing boobs. :)
Dabblers hypnoboobs worked on Sydney who is straight, I don’t think we can derive Kevin’s sexuality from that.
I dunno.
At the very least, it would show that Kevin does have the capability to have sexual thoughts, even if it doesnt tell us what specific type of sexuality Kevin has.
If you can be hypnotized by succubus boobs without being into boobs, then natural sexuality isn’t required. And I believe asexuals do have the capability to find things nice-looking*, just they do not happen to sexual characteristics.
*Sexuality starts off that way, I remember when I first, at 13, looked at a girl’s chest and thought “hey, this looks really nice”.
I dunno, it’s called a lust aura for a reason. :) And when Dabbler was pushing her lust aura during Sydney’s interview, a few of them (Ariana and Sydney) resisted mainly be continually reminding themselves they were not lesbians. And Maxima, who is heterosexual from what we’ve seen in comic, didnt seem to need anything to resist the hypno-boobs except her natural anger towards Dabbler in general.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-101-what-else-would-you-do-with-two-invisible-arms/
I admit I’m also looking at this from a ‘energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from other energy’ thing, if tantric energy works like other energy works. Which is already diverging from how RL works since far as I know there are no tantric energy succubi manipulators in our world.
More the pity, alas.
I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be supporting your point – you’re arguing that asexuals would be immune, but you can’t derive that from looking at just the reaction “sexuals” like Sydney, Arianna and Maxima. You’d have to show that the effect can specifically latch onto an existing attraction to men and convert it, as opposed to simply conjuring the boob-attraction.
> I admit I’m also looking at this from a ‘energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from other energy’ thing, if tantric energy works like other energy works. Which is already diverging from how RL works since far as I know there are no tantric energy succubi manipulators in our world.
Yeah, tantric energy definitely doesn’t obey conservation of energy – there isn’t really a lot of physical energy in sexual arousal.
My response might not be as wordy as I ususlly am because I am on my phone.
1) I am not arguing that asexuals would be immune. Just that they might be a little less susceptible by constantly reminding themselves, like ariana and sydney did.
2) my main argument, which is probably a little flawed and just an educated guess, is that Vehemence is not asexual because he was pretty quickly entranced by the boobs, rather than a slow thing like with Sydney, who at least protested a little about her sexual orientation first. Ie, “seriously no homo but….”
3) how do we know that tantruc energy doesnt foolow the same laws as all other energy? You said “definitely so I am guessing you have some sort of airtight argument. If so let me know what that argument is, since I cant think of one. :). Serious, not mocking you. Whats the argument that tantric energy is definitely not following the same laws? Was an example somewhere in the comic that I missed?
Sorry for all the spelling errors – I am not a fan of virtual keyboards.
First of all, I think lust aura and hypnoboobs should be distinguished – I get the feeling these aren’t quite the same thing.
1. I don’t think you can compare a straight woman not wanting to be a lesbian with an asexual not wanting to be straight – there are very imbalanced cultural forces at play here. Also, an asexual will probably be slower to identify sexual attraction to begin with, due to lack of experience.
2. I’m not sure I’d agree, it took Dabbler several bounce to start capturing Kevin’s attention, and the bouncing is much more notable to begin with.
3. Tantric energy is renewable and takes very little biochemical energy compared to what it can output, and what little there is gets converted to heat – there is no energy unless a succubus is there to convert it, only an abstract concept that dissipates without trace. We could postulate some extradimensional energy reservoir, but that wouldn’t actually make a practical difference.
All I’m saying is it’s a decent bet that Vehemence has sexual thoughts, based on what we’ve seen, rather than no sexual thoughts at all.
And as for the tantric energy thing, Dabbler sort of implied that tantric energy (and all magical energy in fact) DOES work like other energy, back during the teaching lesson with the little succubus girl. ie, that it couldnt just appear out of nowhere. That it comes from somewhere. Which could mean it comes from being another type of energy as well.
I mean, I tend to agree – just the hypnoboobs aren’t good evidence.
I tried to check the scene you referred to but couldn’t find anything like it :(
Here ya go.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-813-metaphysics-101/
Panel #5.
It’s simplified, but apparently Dabbler is describing magic (metaphysics) as very similar to how physics works. Except instead of there being only four fundamental forces in the universe (Strong and Weak Nuclear Bonds, Electromagnetism, and Gravity), there’s actually a FIFTH fundamental force (The Thaumion Field). Which is basically another word for the aether (which actually USED to be considered a real thing in science until 1903 btw), the weave, the Force, or simply MAGIC.
And if it’s a fundamental force of the universe like the other four fundamental forces, then the implication is it will work like the other four fundamental forces, in that you can’t create it or destroy it. You can just change it. Which is apparently what magic users do when they dip into the thaumion field.
To use a non-Grrlpower example for a moment:
Disney’s Gargoyles, Gargoyles Season 2, episodes 44 and 45 – Gathering Part 1 and Part 2, actually had a great take on how magic is like science. Owen Burnett (David Xanatos’s assistant who was secretly Puck) gave Xanatos a tip on how magic works.
Owen says this:
Owen: “Everything has been built to my precise specifications, sir. There are two things to remember. One – energy is energy, whether generated from science OR sorcery.”
I’m not reading the scene like that.
Dabbler says that most entities cannot directly interface with the thaumion field, however violence can be generated by everyone.
There’s no mention of energy, and Dabbler’s visualization shows neither vehemic nor tantric as magic types.
It doesn’t seem like the thaumion field is energy, just like other fields aren’t energy. And no, the fundamenal forces aren’t conserved quantities.
I do expect you can change the thaumion field by putting in magical energy, which may or may not correspond to physical energy, however the generation of vehemic or tantric magical energy seems to be something separate.
“There’s no mention of energy, and Dabbler’s visualization shows neither vehemic nor tantric as magic types.”
I got it from the words ‘fundamental force.’ In normal physics, there are four fundamental forces that are the source of all energy in the universe. In the Grrlpower universe, there’s a fifth fundamental force for another type of energy – magic. If the laws of conservation are used in the first four fundamental forces, unless I’m told otherwise, I’d assume that the fifth fundamental force also meets those rules..
“I do expect you can change the thaumion field by putting in magical energy,”
That’s not how I read it at all. I read it as ‘there is a fifth fundamental force called the thaumion field, and you can tap INTO that to use magic. Not that you can change the thauminon field.
Also not sure what you mean by physical energy. Please explain? Because if you mean energy based on physics, I’m again stuck on the idea that Dabbler used the physics term “Fundamental force” to describe the thaumion field, as the same type of description is used for gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear forces, and weak nuclear forces. Like Owen said, “Energy is energy, whether from science or from sorcery.”
Uh, no, the fundamental forces aren’t related that closely to energy, there is certainly nothing in the definition that would allow for such an argument. There are no laws of conservation stated with regards to the fundamental forces.
(I’m also thinking Dabbler doesn’t actually use “fundamental force” to specifically mean fundamental interaction – it doesn’t fit with her diagram, which separates the thaumium field from bosons, the explanation was simplified for her audience, and she might not be that firm in the terminology of terran science.)
> I read it as ‘there is a fifth fundamental force called the thaumion field, and you can tap INTO that to use magic. Not that you can change the thauminon field.
If the thaumion field is like other fields, then changing it is how you do magic. Similar to how turning on a light switch changes the electromagnetic field, enchantments are made by shaping the thaumion field.
> Also not sure what you mean by physical energy. Please explain? Because if you mean energy based on physics
I mean energy as the concept in physics – and we don’t know how similar that is to magical energy.
We do know that vehemic energy can be creates from violence, without consuming the energy that went into the violence. We know that Vehemence’ magic is inefficient, but we’re not seeing the wasted energy released as heat. We know that Vehemence can use vehemic energy to create an aggression aura which gives him more vehemic energy back.
Maybe the energy is stored in the thaumium field and can be released by violence or sexuality, but then what happens if hypothetically more violence or sex happens than corresponding energy is stored in the thaumium field? And even then, in practical terms it doesn’t make a difference whether the energy is created from nothing or exchanged with the thaumion field. Then we would have a non-closed system where conservation of energy doesn’t hold.
Antarctic press will be printing a few extras for the webshop, but yeah, grab them while they’re hot. Because most of the leftover Gold Bricks from previous Kickstarters have already gone.
(I have all those already… ;-)
Don’t forget to snag some of their t-shirts for some extra Geek cred.
that is the point. Max does not need/want violence. she seems to be content to do other things. we don’t know what yet, maybe listen to Weird Al, play RPGs, fix a car (she does need a jack to raise a car- jack stands would still be helpful.), and flirt with someone attractive and available. this is not an exhaustive list.
Max is approaching this in a good way. LEO’s who live for the fight might make a few they don’t need to.
she can enjoy the challenge with out needing it.
I don’t understand how what she did wasn’t quite incredibly violent, either this strip or last strip. Is violence being defined as ‘if it doesn’t take much effort? Because if so, then would Peggy shooting him in the eye not be considered violent? Because it doesnt take Peggy much effort at her extreme level of sniping skill, but it was still considered quite violent. Because… well because it is.
It’s not that she isn’t fueling him. It’s that she’s doing her best to keep his net gain in the red. Rather than slugging it out with him, where each punch and block doesn’t do much and is meant to build up, which gives more power than he spends, she is making a lot of economical, high damage moves that need energy to spend
To use your example, Peggy shooting V is far less violent than someone punching him, so if he isn’t already bulletproof it’ll prob take more out of him to heal than it gives him.
“It’s not that she isn’t fueling him. It’s that she’s doing her best to keep his net gain in the red.”
I don’t see how this is going to keep his net gain in the red though, which is my point. It seems EXCEEDINGLY violent. The only thing I’ve seen that was minimally violent was actually what Hiro was doing with grappling. Or the tai chi idea that Vehemence had mentioned. The more it’s going to violently injure him, the more it seems like it’s MAJORLY violent. Again, just like how Peggy shooting him in the eye was incredibly violent even though it took little effort for her.
“where each punch and block doesn’t do much and is meant to build up,”
I’m honestly confused about what people think ‘violence’ means. Violence means ‘behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.’
What Maxima is doing is DEFINITELY intended to MASSIVELY hurt Vehemence, and also damage him. It’s VERY violent. If you’re going to hurt someone grievously by physically attacking them…. that’s violent. Especially what she’s been doing.
“which gives more power than he spends, she is making a lot of economical, high damage moves that need energy to spend”
I’m not sure how the amount of effort she puts into it makes any difference on how violent she is. Again, like my example with Peggy shooting him in the eye. When she shot him in the eye, it was EXCEEDINGLY violent. She intended to grievously hurt him. That’s violence.
“Peggy shooting V is far less violent than someone punching him”
1) Shooting him in the first eye actually caused him a LOT of violence, and was more violent than when Vektor TK’ed a car into him if we’re going to base it on damage done. HE had a grievous injury for a while until he ‘re-healed’ his eye. He didnt even blink when Vektor hit the car into him.
2) Violence is actually based on the intent and attempt to do violence to another. Although actually DOING the damage like Maxima is doing definitely shows a lot of intent. So again, I have no idea why this isnt considered to be as violent.
Yes, but Max is minimizing the violence while causing the maximum amount of pain with each small injury. He does get fuel from that but it’s sufficient to keep him from adding to the violence by preventing him from counter-attacking each time. Plus, he has to expend energy to heal the damage & eliminate the pain…Overall, it’s forcing him to take a net loss in how much useful energy he gets & prevents him from escalating the violence.
Before I post this, I’m hoping this doesnt come off as naggy but I’m incredibly confused and just need an answer that makes sense, given what we already have seen with Vehemence in the past.
“Yes, but Max is minimizing the violence”
How? How is this MINIMIZING the violence compared to, say, grappling or tai chi or brazilian jiujitsu. This is not minimizing any violence, this is MAXIMIZING violence for the least amount of effort, in fact.
I don’t get where what she is doing is not incredibly violent or why people are trying to argue it’s not. There’s a geyser of blood that comes out of his nose. Her fingers pierce into his wrist then separate his bones. How… how for the love of god is this going to be considered minimum violence?
Seriously, am I missing something here?
I’m honestly thinking this will be something that backfires on Maxima to make this make more sense to me. Not that what she’s doing isnt very cool, because it is. But it’s also incredibly violent.
“He does get fuel from that but it’s sufficient to keep him from adding to the violence by preventing him from counter-attacking each time.”
I honestly and truly need to understand what you consider ‘violence’ to mean. I’m not even trying to make a joke, I seriously don’t know what people are thinking violence means. I know what the definition of violence is, but not what people arguing that this is minimally violent think violence is. Please explain, thanks in advance.
“Plus, he has to expend energy to heal the damage & eliminate the pain”
But Maxima has TRIED that in the past fight. When she blew off his arm, for example. Or when Peggy shot his eye out with her first shot. Or when Maxima punched him so hard that he concaved in. Or when she ground that concrete pedestal into him into the ground like she was, to quote Maxima, “grinding pepper.”
She’s tried the law of diminishing returns and it did not work before. So the only reason it could work now is because he’s not powered up by a 30 person fight. But it’s going to:
1) Work MUCH worse than just using grappling or stuff involving holds and joint-locks.
2) Work about the same as doing any other thing she could do, including blowing his arm off again, which again would not take any more effort (for Maxima) than what she just did in the past two pages, when Vehemence isnt insanely powered up already.
Not to mention, Vehemence has had a history of fighting despite pain. He’s been doing that this entire time, not healing himself up while he’s been getting his face planted into the ground by Mathias, or being thrown into cliff faces by Blulk (I will call him Blulk until Ren has a better name). The person who was using the smartest technique, in fact, was Hiro.
The last time Vehemence was in a state where he actually took a net LOSS vs what he was gaining from violence was when he was being strangled by the lighthook which was preventing him from healing his crushed trachea, while simultaneously being tackled by 15 supers, while also simultaneously being violently drowned in water. I don’t see that happening from this, since I am pretty sure re-healing an eye or fighting despite having a broken nose is something Maxima has also done.
The main thing that I see as a strategy against Kevin (other than negotiating with him about how much easier it is for him to get a healthy dose of violence whenever he wants by working WITH ARCHON on these training exercises) is to do two of the things Maxima had been trying to do but couldnt because Kevin was too powerful last time – getting him off the ground and into space, since he can’t fly, or literally blasting his head off with a plasma blast, before he’s powerful enough to be regrowing arms (or just ashing his entire head).
“Ithink the key to Max’s reduction of vehement energy here is that the amount of ‘violence’ is directly tied to the amount of physical action; energy expended or ‘work’ in the physics definition. Which normally correlates directly with the amount of destruction / suffering caused – but not always.”
Sorry but that literally doesnt make any sense to me, and isnt in line with what violence means at all. Violence has nothing to do with the amount of effort put into it. Like I said with the example of peggy shooting Vehemence’s eye out, that was VIOLENT… but it didnt take any real effort for someone of Peggy’s skill. Or a person who calmly walks into a nightclub with a machine gun then mows down a bunch of people…. I’d think that was violence, even if all that was involved was squeezing a trigger and moving the gun around.
“the same amount of contact and pressure could just be an acupressure treatment, which is totally non-violent (and even the opposite of violence).”
1) Jamming your fingers into a person’s arm and wrenching their bones apart, and then chopping their nose to smash it and send a geyser of blood spurting out is not even REMOTELY the same as accupuncture. Nor is it pressure points even. It’s not even on the same planet of similarity.
2) In fact, with accupuncture, the pins are extremely sharp specificially to cause LESS pain, not more, and isnt jabbed deep into the skin even.
3) The intent is also completely different. Accupuncture is specifically meant to help, just like surgery is specifically meant to help. What Maxima is doing is SPECIFICALLY meant to hurt. She literally said last strip this was meant to hurt.
I am EXTREMELY confused why people are trying to argue that pain is separate from violence, when I’ve repeatedly given the definition of violence, which ALWAYS seems to include the words ‘intent to cause physical pain or damage.’ Or they are trying to say that Vehemence’s powers are not based on violence, but on anger. Or on effort. Or something else that is NOT violence, which seems to just be their headcanon trying to reconcile something that doesnt really seem to make sense, even if it’s very cool to watch. Which I admit it is. So if people want to just argue ‘rule of cool’ then okay – but it’s still a plot hole unless in future strips this seems to backfire on Maxima.
‘As others have stated, the level of pain created is not tied to the level of violence/work.”
The level of pain is most DEFINITELY tied to the level of violence. Again, no one has been able to explain how violence and pain are not connected, when every definition of violence includes ‘intent to cause physical pain or damage’
“Doesn’t take much effort to shove flaming bamboo under fingernails, so it’s not any more ‘violent’ for Kevin’s purposes than a hard poke with a knitting needle.”
What the…. YES – shoving flaming bamboo under fingernails is INSANELY violent! A lot more so than ‘poking’ someone with a knitting needle. Dafuq?
Scenario 1: I punch you in the shoulder. I’m a 118 lb woman who spends most of my time in a non-physical activity of arguing with people over patents, so it’s just going to smart a little, not hurt a lot. It’s a little violent.
Scenario 2: I take a sword and go all Ninja 3 the Domination on you (like the ninja hit squad is supposed to do when you make bad puns but never does because they suck and I want my money back) and with one deft move I slice off your arm. It hurts a ton, and is VERY VIOLENT.
They’re not identical in how violent they are because the amount of pain and damage are MASSIVELY different.
Is the measure of violence dependent on the attack, or the consequence? Is a 5000 newton punch inherently more violent than a 3000 newton punch? What if the 5000 newton punch misses, but the 3000 newton punch hits? Does it matter what it hits? If it hits wood, and shatters the wood, is that more or less violent than ineffectively hitting concrete?
If you’re going to criticize people for their definition of violence… maybe don’t play so fast and loose with it yourself. Offer up a consistent definition that allows other people to come to the same conclusions about how violent a particular event is. How do force, damage, pain, and intent play into this formula? Which are relevant, and how much, and which are not? Are there other factors?
“Is the measure of violence dependent on the attack, or the consequence?”
Both… BUT… since violence means intent to inflict physical pain, injury, harm, or damage, the lion’s share of it is mostly based on the consequence which is where the ‘physical pain, injury, harm, or damage’ comes in.
If a baby hits you, it’s pretty minimally violent. Mainly because the baby is not causing you even any discomfort, let alone physical pain, injury, harm, or damage.’ And that’s before you even take into account that there’s no intent usually.
“Is a 5000 newton punch inherently more violent than a 3000 newton punch?”
Yes, if it causes more pain/damage/harm/injury.
“Does it matter what it hits?”
Yes. Hitting a wall will cause damage, so it’s violent, but hitting a person causes damage, pain, harm and sometimes injury, so it’s more violent.
“If it hits wood, and shatters the wood, is that more or less violent than ineffectively hitting concrete?”
I have no idea what you just said here.
“If you’re going to criticize people for their definition of violence… ”
Every person does not get their own ‘definition of violence’ – there’s a literal, objective definition of violence. I’ve given it several times. I did not just make it up as it suits me. You can look it up yourself even.
“maybe don’t play so fast and loose with it yourself. ”
How on earth am I playing fast and loose with the definition of violence? I’m using the literal definition. How is using the objective dictionary definition of ‘violence’ able be termed ‘playing fast and loose.’
“Offer up a consistent definition”
…. that’s what I’ve been literally doing in every post where I mention the definition of violence, Torabi.
vi·o·lence
/ˈvī(ə)ləns/
noun
behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
Or from the WHO’s Violence Prevention Alliance’s official definition of violence which is accepted by most of the world, as used in the World Report on Violence and Health:
“the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.”
https://www.who.int/violenceprevention/approach/definition/en/
How am I anything BUT consistent on this???
“that allows other people to come to the same conclusions about how violent a particular event is.”
*POINTS TO THE LITERAL DEFINITION OF VIOLENCE*
“How do force, damage, pain, and intent play into this formula? Which are relevant, and how much, and which are not? Are there other factors?”
I again direct you to the literal definition of violence, Torabi. :)
You’ve contradicted yourself. If the difference was inherent, then it wouldn’t be dependent on how much pain/damage/harm/injury it inflicted.
I’m asking if the target being damaged affects how violent the action is. If you hit concrete with the same amount of force as you hit wood, the wood will take more damage. Is the action more violent as a result, or is the violence of the attack the same, because the amount of force is the same?
You consistently trot out the same set of words to define violence, without understanding that different people can interpret those words differently, and come to different conclusions. I’ve asked questions in an attempt to draw out your interpretation, but the important thing to realize is that someone using the same words to define violence may still answer those questions differently, because the definition you’ve provided doesn’t contain enough detail.
“You’ve contradicted yourself. If the difference was inherent, then it wouldn’t be dependent on how much pain/damage/harm/injury it inflicted.”
Torabi, you really have to stop pronouncing that I’ve contradicted myself when I haven’t. You’re just not reading what I’m writing. I mean no offense but just stating it does not make it so. You have to actually back up what you’re saying, not just try to ‘pwn me’ which is what it feels like you’re trying to do sometimes.
The idea of 5000 newtons of force is greater than 3000 newtons of force IS inherent. Because 5000 is a greater number than 3000. In other words, extremely basic MATH. There is nothing I’ve said at all that contradicts that bigger numbers are bigger than smaller numbers. That’s an inherent truth of math that even young children understand. Two is greater than one. Four is greater than two. 5000 is greater than 3000.
“I’m asking if the target being damaged affects how violent the action is.”
Depends. If you’re comparing violence to an inanimate object vs violence to a person, it can be argued that violence to a person is MORE violent than violence to an inanimate object. Why? Because an inanimate object can be damaged or harmed, but cannot also be hurt (feel physical pain) or injured. Violence to an inanimate object meets two of the criteria for violence, so yes, it’s violent. Violence against a person (or an animal) has the possibility of meeting all four criteria, so you could argue that violence against a person is more violent than violence against a block of wood.
On the other hand, you could also argue that the amount of criteria that are met for violence does not matter, as long as at least one of those criteria are met, in which case it’s more about the intentional infliction than the amount of pain/injury/damage/harm done. I tend to think the former makes more sense in real life, but the latter could work as well. Especially if violence is viewed in a unitarian sense.
If you mean is violence against a block of wood more violent than violence against a block of concrete, then again there are a couple of possible answers that I can think of.
1) Yes – violence would be greater depending on how much damage is done to the object, and since a block of wood is likely to be more damaged by the same force (exertion of mass times acceleration, if you want to use the physics definition, despite people are usually describing it more as effort in the comments), the damage to one is going to be greater than the damage to the other.
2) No – assuming you’re viewing violence as a unitarian concept, then it doesnt really matter which is getting more damaged, because violence is violence as long as there’s some damage done, and the damage was inflicted intentionally.
“You consistently trot out the same set of words to define violence”
Yes, I use consistent definitions. Which you’ve already accused me of NOT using before. You’ve argued that I’m not consistent so I’m wrong. And now you’re arguing that I’m wrong BECAUSE i’m consistent.
“without understanding that different people can interpret those words differently”
If a person is trying to describe a mouse, but uses the definition for an elephant, I’m not going to just assume that a mouse is the same as an elephant. :) People might interpret words differently, but a lot of the time, it’s because they don’t understand the meaning of the words that they’re using. That’s why consistency in definitions is useful when arguing pretty much anything. Consistency in definitions makes it more likely that the rest of your reasoning will also be consistent.
” I’ve asked questions in an attempt to draw out your interpretation,”
And I’ve responded with VERY lengthy posts that go into detail so you can understand what the actual meaning of certain words. Yknow, so that when you’re arguing something, what you’re arguing will make sense to me, since (as you said) I put a lot of emphasis on the definition of words (and laws, which are a collection of words).
“but the important thing to realize is that someone using the same words to define violence may still answer those questions differently, because the definition you’ve provided doesn’t contain enough detail.”
Seriously, have you bothered to read the definition given? I’m not trying to sound snarky or anything like that. I just don’t know how you can make certain statements you make if you actually bothered to read the definitions that I keep repeating (consistently, as you pointed out). It almost feels like you’re just glossing over what I write and picking out a few parts, and ignoring the rest.
If you don’t respond directly to anything else I’ve written, respond to this. READ the definition given. Tell me what you think that definition means AS WRITTEN.
I have no idea why I said pronouncing when I was trying to say proclaiming btw.
Replace pronouncing with proclaiming. I am so embarrassed at that mistake.
(although a good example of how I take what words I use seriously, because saying pronouncing instead of proclaiming makes my sentence sound really dumb)
I didn’t mean that what you said now contradicted something you said earlier. It appears that you ignored the word “inherent” in my question, or did not understand its significance. I don’t know how to explain the problem any more than if you had said “black is white”. I mean, what kind of response do you give to that, other than “no, that’s contradictory”?
So what you’re saying is that there are multiple different possible interpretations, multiple possible ways of measuring violence that do not lead to the same value, that all fit under the definition of violence you continue to turn to? That’s why I’m saying that your definition is either insufficiently detailed, or that you’re not assigning a consistent meaning to it.
The definition you’ve provided only gives guidance on determining whether or not an action is violent at all. It provides no guidance on determining how violent an action is, or in comparing whether one action is more or less violent than another. Given that, perhaps it’s not surprising you would come up with your bizarre unitarian theory of violence.
You keep pointing to guns as a counterexample and saying they “didn’t take any real effort”, but I think you’re missing my point about physical energy. Sure, squeezing a trigger is a tiny action, but the resulting explosion imparts an awful lot of energy to the projectile, which is what creates the violent results on impact.
A professional boxer hits about as hard as a handgun as far as energy imparted; a sniper round can have 2-3x that force. So the violence from Peggy’s shot is related to the energy of 3 pro-level punches directly to the eyeball, not that of her finger twitch creating the chain of events. Just like Wile E. Coyote gets squished by the boulder falling from the cliff, not the stick that was propping it up.
“You keep pointing to guns as a counterexample and saying they “didn’t take any real effort”, but I think you’re missing my point about physical energy.”
I do understand your point. It’s just when defining ‘violence’ – there are two parts. Intentional infliction and the result of pain, injury,harm and/or damage. Basically the ultimate cause and the ultimate effect. Anything in between is not intent – it’s just a force mutiplier from the initial force which did not actually take any effort on the part of the person who is doing the intentional inflicting.
In short, a gun cannot have intent, so a gun cannot be violent unless it’s being used or set into motion by a person in some way. Because people have intent, and inanimate objects do not.
“A professional boxer hits about as hard as a handgun as far as energy imparted; a sniper round can have 2-3x that force.”
I’m not sure that’s accurate, but I’m also not very knowledgeable on firearms so I’ll accept the premise. But what I can’t really accept is saying that the gun itself has intent in the same way that a boxer has intent. You can’t compare the boxer to the gun, in the same way you can’t compare the sniper to the boxing glove. You compare the boxer to the sniper, because those are the actors in the scenario that have intent.
A .50 BMG round like Peggy’s is much more powerful than any handgun, 5x the energy of the biggest revolver rounds like .500 Magnum, and more like 20x to 100x of more commonly used handgun calibers.
I meant to compare the boxing glove to the bullet, in that both are the instrument of its wielder’s intent (as well as compare the energy levels of the results, not the initiating event). A bullet, a boxing glove, a sword, or a remotely-triggered ICBM all act out the intent of the person to cause harm, even though those objects have no will of their own. “Force multiplier” is exactly the right term – a person is using an object to transfer, magnify, concentrate, or otherwise apply force and cause harm more effectively than if it was done directly with only their own body.
So for vehemic purposes, Peggy’s will applied to the sniper round counts just as much as Max’s fist applied directly, even though Peggy needed much less of her own physical effort to convert and apply the force originally stored chemically in the gunpowder.
Max is similarly applying minimal physical effort in this fight for maximum results, causing minimal physical action/damage (and thus creating minimal V-energy) concentrated on the most sensitive areas
“I meant to compare the boxing glove to the bullet, in that both are the instrument of its wielder’s intent”
Yes but neither of those HAVE intent. If you remove the person from the action to use it in some way, they cant do anything. But if you remove the boxing glove or the gun, the person can still do something. So not sure how a gun or a boxing glove can be considered as counting in the ‘intent’ part of the definition of violence.
I understand what you’re saying, btw, but I’m just having difficulty giving that sort of responsibility to an inanimate object being on the acting end, rather than the receiving end, when it comes to the violence definition, because of that ‘intent’ language.
Pander: Nobody’s suggesting that tools have intent, or that they need to have intent, or that them not having intent makes actions using them less violent. Except for maybe you.
What they’re saying is that the person’s intent is transferred through the tool, and that the energy produced or amplified by using the tool is a component of the resulting violence. Or put another way, that the intent and force in a particular act of violence can come from separate entities.
You’re not steelmanning other people’s positions. You’re not even strawmanning them. You’re arguing against completely bizarre things that nobody said.
Because she’s obviously wants to test out a new fighting style.
She already knows she could over power and grapple V but that’s more a stalling tactic than anything else.
I agree about that.
I just don’t understand why she’d think this would be effective unless Vehemence’s powers work in a much different way than we’d think (ie, intensity of violence doesnt matter as much as the individual instances of violence matters, so long as it’s powerful enough to cause ‘pain, injury, harm, or damage’ in order to actually BE ‘violence’).
Well, it is a test. I guess we’ll find out if his power works the way Max thinks it does.
Yep, if it winds up working, then either Vehemence views violence different than most people do, or it’s just going to be a handwavium Word of God thing despite the logical hole (which does admittedly happen a lot in superhero stories and audiences usually just go with a suspension of disbelief in order to enjoy it anyway, like Independence Day where they can make a computer virus that can break down a completely alien computer language).
If it doesn’t work, then there’s no logic hole, Maxima will have made the situation a little worse, and we’ll see what happens next. :)
Either way, should be fun to read (although the first way would be much more frustrating for me, personally, if it’s a Word of God thing without a good rationale, since this comic is very heavily invested on a semi-‘realistic’ take on superpowers when it comes to strategy and results.).
Here’s the thing, vehemence is like a violence succubus, right? I think that the method of delivery is as important as the result.
Like, I would assume a succubus gets way more out of a proper make out session than they would, say, a chemically induced orgasm, even though the latter reaches greater heights of pleasure.
It’s hard to say because there’s no real world analogue.
But o think the relevant thing is you’re looking at violence based on the result.
Whereas I am looking at violence more in that vein. As the metaphysical energy put out by doing a violent act.
This is complicated by the fact that unlike lust, sex, or pleasure, violence is a far broader category, and thus the line is harder to pin down
But given that this is a “thematic demon” kind of power and not a “rules of reality” kind of power, I imagine that “the energy one puts into their sin” is more relevant to it if that makes sense
Pain and violence are tangentially related. Haemorrhoids are very painful but not violent. The surface of the sun is immensely violent without attacking anyone.
That said Max is being more violent than is strictly required from someone as strong as her. She could have lifted him while twisting his ear, like a schoolteacher. To be honest that would have been more in character if you ask me. But hey, how often can she indulge? He can take it. And he DID try to kill her.
“Haemorrhoids are very painful but not violent.”
If I somehow reached into your body and yanked something out to make it simulate a hemorrhoid, I think that would be pretty damn violent actually. :)
“That said Max is being more violent than is strictly required from someone as strong as her.”
“She could have lifted him while twisting his ear, like a schoolteacher.”
Yes, and that would have been very MINIMALLY violent. What’ she’s been doing here is NOT minimally violent.
“He can take it. And he DID try to kill her.”
Oh he definitely deserves it. I’m the one who keeps arguing that Kevin is NOT a good person whatsoever. I’m just arguing that what she’s doing is actually EXCEEDINGLY violent, not minimally violent.
“Pain and violence are tangentially related.”
No they’re actually quite directly related. It’s literally in the definition of ‘violence.’
Violence – behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
Definition of hurt (verb) – cause physical pain, harm, or injury to.
She has put too much salt in the soup.
She’s min-Maxing how much damage can she do with the least amount of violence.
(See what I did there?)
When you think of a violent person, you usually include a lot of excess energy, emotional and physical, not the calm of a monk doing tai chi. Apparently, it’s that excess force that he taps.
She’s not eliminating the violence, just turning down the volume relative to the amount of harm to the body Kevin has to fix.
“(See what I did there?)”
Yes, it was a very clever pun. Ninja hit squad en route. :)
“When you think of a violent person, you usually include a lot of excess energy, emotional and physical, not the calm of a monk doing tai chi.”
1) What maxima did was definitely not tai chi. She specifically stated it was meant to hurt a LOT, in fact, and it was definitely violent.
2) When I think of a violent person, I think ‘someone who intentionally inflicts injury, harm, or pain on another person or thing. If someone walked into a nightclub or school or something with a machine gun and calmly fired at everyone inside full auto, I’d say they were a violent sociopath. Calmly inflicting horrible pain on anotehr person with intent to do so does not make the action less violent on its own.
“She’s not eliminating the violence, just turning down the volume relative to the amount of harm to the body Kevin has to fix.”
I still don’t understand how that gives Kevin less juice to feed off of. It’s just as violent, if not moreso, than Peggy shooting him in the eye, with just as little effort on Maxima’s part due to her amazing strength as it was effortless for Peggy with her amazing skill as a sniper. The intent is still to create violence, and the result is to infilct injury violently.
Maxima is deploying her military-grade game with maximum detachment. Maximum effective violence, no anger involved.
And between her superspeed and superstrength she can outpace and outcool V. easily. As long as V. can’t pick up on vitamin V elsewhere, he’ll lose.
And never *ever* forget Maxima is Military, capable of literally nuking the hell out of whatever needs nuking and that she has done so in the past.
She is not nice and fluffy. But then again, V even less so…
“Maximum effective violence, no anger involved.”
Yes, but Kevin doesn’t feed off of anger – he feeds off of violence. And like you said, maximum effective violence. That means maximum effective Vitamin V juice. It’s just not as fun for him apparently, but it’s going to be SUPER effective FOR Vehemence to get very powerful, very quickly. Which seems like a BAD strategy in dealing with him compared to grappling or redirecting his strength and relying mainly on deflection and holds and choke-outs (ie, tai chi, greco wrestling, brazilian jiujitsu, etc)
“And between her superspeed and superstrength she can outpace and outcool V.”
But again, this is ignoring where Vehemence gets his power from. He doesnt get his power from anger. He gets it from violence.
“As long as V. can’t pick up on vitamin V elsewhere, he’ll lose.”
Aside from the fact that Vitamin V stands for Violence, which he would definitely be getting a lot of from this, even if Maxima is super-chill and relaxed while beating the hell out of him (Math seemed pretty calm when he was doing the same thing, he didnt even bother taking his hands out of his pockets), there’s also the fact that Vehemence also gets his power from HIM being violent against others, as he stated during the restaurant fight.
“And never *ever* forget Maxima is Military, capable of literally nuking the hell out of whatever needs nuking and that she has done so in the past.”
I havent. I’m just not sure how that applies here. Maxima’s already blown up Kevin’s arm in the past and it only made him stronger. Once Kevin goes past a certain level, he’s pretty hard to stop. The best strategy is to not let him GET to that level in the first place, as Kevin himself said towards the end of the restaurant fight when he was about to murder Maxima.
Ummm… nope?
The whole point about this thing called “violence” in engerlish is that it has a psychic/psychological component. All the things in our mind and body that triggers “fight or flight”.
V powers up through that, not unlike Dabbler and her succubus ways. I believe there’s a comic or two where it was exactly Dabbler who recognised the mechanism of his powers..
Cut out that opponent through training and detachment, and a fight becomes mere applied physics. And V can’t feed on that, becaus else he’d be able to get his vitamin V from even brownian motion. Which he evidently does not..
I think V’s powered by the combination of intent and damage done, since we have no evidence that he could power up from non-human events like natural disasters. Someone could be very angry but take no physical action, or do a lot of damage to someone/something completely on accident, and neither would power him up. Max definitely meant to cause pain, but did only a teensy tiny amount of damage in an absolute physical sense. She just did it with a lot of leverage by choosing the location wisely.
That depends on whether you consider word of god to be evidence.
No um… I actually still want it to make sense, even if word of god is involved. Just like I want it to make sense why Rey in Star Wars is able to do things with the Force that she never heard of being possible before, with no training or even knowledge of its existnece, regardless of what Rian Johnson would say is his ‘word of god.’
This comic tends to be very into ‘it’s not word of god, it’s because it makes sense from a logical standpoint’ in deconstructing how superpowers work. With the glaring exception of Hench Wench, which I’ve already gone on diatribes about after Arianna’s pretty awesome legal maneuver didnt actually work. But I chalk Hench Wench up to DaveB wanting to give a patron their money’s worth by letting their character go free, I guess.
Maybe DaveB could have some sort of Dabbler’s Science Corner to explain it?
The ONLY explanation I can fathom if this actually does work would be that Vehemence’s powers are not from violence, but are instead from anger and rage. Like the Hulk or something, but not just his own anger and rage, anyone’s anger and rage.
But THAT would go against what we’ve been SPECIFICALLY told already, both ‘word of god’ and in the comic itself multiple times.
It seems more like you want to have an argument with people over the definition of the word ‘violence’ than you want to determine whether or not there’s any consistency within the comic as to how Kevin’s powers are portrayed. I’ve already laid out my argument on the subject.
How much does it matter if the author or readers are defining the word ‘violence’ differently than you do? I find it a little weird, since I think choking someone out is violent, but the tone suggests that this understanding of the concept is common in comic books. That not being my area of expertise, I focus more on internal consistency than external accuracy.
Ignore the words. Focus on cause and effect, what works and what does not. Can you build a consistent model that explains the data? If so, then it’s a relatively minor quibble that people are using a word wrong. If not, then the definition of a word is hardly the problem at hand.
“It seems more like you want to have an argument with people over the definition of the word ‘violence’ than you want to determine whether or not there’s any consistency within the comic”
Um… no. I’m arguing about the definition of violence because people are trying to describe what she’s doing as not being violent, or being minimally violent. So I point to the definition of violence to show that what she is doing is, in fact, quite violent. Although I’m still astounded that I’d have to go into so much detail to convince anyone that jamming your fingers into the underside of someone’s wrist to the point where the other side of the wrist bulges out, then spreading your fingers like a ‘jaws of life’ to break the joints/tendons/bones in the arm is not EXTREMELY VIOLENT.
“as to how Kevin’s powers are portrayed.”
Actually the majority of my argument is based on how this strategy would NOT work, based on how Kevin’s powers are portrayed. By Kevin himself. Which I’ve already shown in other posts, with links to where Kevin himself describes how his powers work.
“I’ve already laid out my argument on the subject.”
Yes and I’ve refuted it, although most of your argument was that I was not being consistent, although I was and I went into detail on how I’m being extreeeemely consistent. :)
“How much does it matter if the author or readers are defining the word ‘violence’ differently than you do? ”
1) Because we’re comic book nerds, and this is what we do.
2) Because words have actual definitions, and if a strategy is going to be based on what that word is, it helps to know the definition of that word to know if the strategy should be likely to work for the reasons you’re giving on WHY you’re using the strategy.
3) I am not defining ‘violence.’ Violence already has a very clear and consistent and accepted definition. I did not decide to start writing and think ‘hm…. this word ‘violence’ is nebulous, so I will give my definition, as I am Pander Miriam-Webster or something.
“Ignore the words. Focus on cause and effect,”
… the words literally incorporate the cause and effect. To describe the cause and effect that make something ‘violent’ you need to use words.
“If so, then it’s a relatively minor quibble that people are using a word wrong.”
1) I don’t think it’s a minor quibble to say that jamming two fingers into someone’s underside of their wrist, to the point where it bulges out the other side, then spreading those fingers much like the Jaws of Life do to a car door, breaking the tendons, joints, and possibly bones of that wrist is ‘extremely violent.’ Nor do I think it’s a minor quibble to say that smashing someone in the nose to shatter the cartilage of the nose and cause a geyser of blood to spurt out is similarly…. pretty dang violent. i don’t understand why you (and some others) don’t think that as well, which leads to my confusion.
2) It’s a comic book argument where fans of the story are invested in figuring out how things work in universe. There shall be quibbles…. although I consider this quibble to be more of a ‘this doesnt make sense in light of the in-universe canon rules’ set forth for Vehemence than a ‘minor’ quibble. If the word in question is the central word surrounding the power being discussed, then I don’t see how it’s ‘minor’ as far as the argument goes. Mainly because this comic tends to NOT handwave off how powers work – it goes into detail on it, in fact. One of the things I love about Grrlpower, actually.
The thing is, Vehemence’s powers most likely aren’t semantic. Saying that he gains power from violence is a description of his powers, not a definition.
Imagine that Merriam-Webster put out a new dictionary, in which the definition of violence was drastically different. If his powers were semantic, then his powers would change in response to the dictionary definition of violence changing. I’m suggesting that his powers are not dependent on the dictionary definition of violence. They work a certain way, and saying that he’s powered by violence is simply a concise, but not perfectly accurate, way of describing them.
Rather than fixating on the word violence, the scientific approach would be to observe what works and what does not. Which is what Maxima is doing, trying to understand the exact mechanism of his powers through experimentation. It doesn’t really matter whether a particular action is more or less violent, what matters is how much vehemic energy he gets from it.
That said, given the existence of a measurable unit of violence in their universe, they could presumably define violence in terms of how much vehemic energy an action contains or produces, which may not map completely to how it’s defined in our universe.
I think the evidence in the comic suggests that the amount of pain caused has little to no bearing on the amount of vehemic energy produced, and that things like physical force or energy such as heat, or the amount of damage caused in terms of displacement are the predominant factors. In that respect, he is similar to Anvil or Hiro, in that he absorbs the energy from an attack, but he has a much broader variety of attacks he can absorb, and doesn’t even have to be the target of the attack.
“The thing is, Vehemence’s powers most likely aren’t semantic.”
I have to admit I don’t understand how your mind works when it comes to reading things when you say things like that. DaveB is telling a story about people with superpowers. That’s going to involve him describing the superpowers, at least a bit. And he’s already shown that he likes making sure that the powers are relatively well-explained.
“Saying that he gains power from violence is a description of his powers, not a definition”
See this is another reason I don’t understand how your mind works when it comes to reading stuff. Saying that he gains powers from violence is a description of his powers…. yes.
Then you need to actually understand what the words in that description MEAN. And the most pertinent word in that description is ‘violence.’ So you need to know what ‘violence’ means. You need to know the definition of ‘violence’ or the description is not very good.
If I said I own an object, and i’m trying to describe that object to someone who has never seen the object, and I tell them ‘the object weighs 3 stones, so be careful when picking it up’ the first thing that you should probably want to know is what the hell a ‘stone’ means when it comes to units of weight. For which you’d need to know the definition of ‘stone’ when it comes to units of weight.
1 stone = 14 pounds = 6.35 kg
If I don’t give you that DEFINITION, then the description ‘this weighs 3 stone’ is MEANINGLESS to you. It could mean anything, because there are a lot of sizes and weights of stones and good luck on guessing what I mean when I say ‘stone.’
Same with violence. If you don’t give the definition of violence, then you’re going to get a very confusing description, especially if you’re trying to plan STRATEGIES around that description that make any sense.
“Imagine that Merriam-Webster put out a new dictionary, in which the definition of violence was drastically different”
But it DOESNT. Trying to change the universe in order to make your unique definition of a word makes sense is not the rational way to do something when planning a strategy. You need to actually use the definitions, as they exist, if you’re going to build a strategy or plan around that word. If you have to create an alternate world where violence means something different than it does in this world, then you should probably consider that maybe you definition of the word is incorrect and a strategy based on that definition does not apply to the current situation’s strategy.
“Rather than fixating on the word violence, the scientific approach would be to observe what works and what does not. ”
Fixating on the word violence, when the description of Vehemence’s powers is that it’s powered by violence? The scientific approach would be ‘what does violence mean.’ And we literally know what violence means, because there’s a whole branch of science called linguistics which describes what violence means. And that’s where definitions come into play.
Look, I’m assuming you use language for the same reason most people use language. To try to explain something you’re thinking to other people. If you can’t even use the definition though in the first place, then you’re not going to be able to describe that thing to other people, let alone make strategies for dealing with it. It’s like my example with ‘stones’ If I say something weighs ‘3 stone’ and I look up that 3 stone = 14 lbs, then I know that the object weighs 42 lbs, and that stone is a unit of weight that corresponds to lbs as 1 to 14. What you’re suggesting, however, is that if I don’t know what a stone means for weight, that instead of looking up the definition, I should just start randomly experimenting to figure out what a stone weighs, what type of stone you’re talking about, how big a stone, perhaps ignoring the whole ‘3 stones’ entirely and just weighing the object myself, when I already have access to the actual definition of ‘stone.’
“Which is what Maxima is doing, trying to understand the exact mechanism of his powers through experimentation. It doesn’t really matter whether a particular action is more or less violent, what matters is how much vehemic energy he gets from it.”
So now what you are saying is what I suggested. That Vehemence sees violence as a unitarian scale, where the amount of violence is irrelevant, and it just matters about individual INSTANCES of violence.
Seriously I think you need to read some of my posts more closely because I have about 5 posts that go into detail on exactly that, and how that’s the only way I can think of where Maxima’s strategy would be effective.
We literally are agreeing on this now.
I’m going to take this as a win because we came to an agreement. You think that Vehemence’s powers work based on a unitarian scale. In which case Maxima’s strategy DOES make sense.
If it’s not, however, then Maxima’s strategy is going to fail and just make him more powerful, like it did at the restaurant fight.
“I think the evidence in the comic suggests that the amount of pain caused has little to no bearing on the amount of vehemic energy produced”
I wouldnt say theres a lot of evidence that suggests that, but there’s no evidence that does NOT suggest it (except for his fixation on it being a super brawl instead of just any brawl of a similar size, maybe).
Again, you’re describing unitarian concepts in regard to violence. You’re describing an argument I’ve made several times in detail elsewhere on the comments page as a way that Maxima’s strategy would actually work.
Soooooo we agree. Great. :)
I don’t really, expect you, or anyone else, to understand how my mind works. Admittedly, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for me to even try to communicate under the circumstances, but what else am I going to do?
What if Vehemence had lied about being powered by violence? Would you sit here complaining that you’d been lied to by a character in a comic? It just seems like you’re overly fixated on how a work of fiction isn’t complying with your understanding of the world.
First, that was a hypothetical, to help distinguish between the idea of Vehemence’s power being dependent on the definition of the word “violence” versus just being described by the word.
Second… This is a work of fiction. Set in an alternate world. It’s kind of in the premise. Describing things that don’t exist in our world using words that do is sometimes going to require some stretching. The alternative is to make up new words, but you still need a way to communicate the meaning of those new words to the audience.
I absolutely do not think Vehemence’s powers work on a unitarian scale. If I’m understanding the theory correctly, it would mean that for all instances of violence, where V is the amount of vehemic energy produced, V = 1. The only other theory you seem inclined to accept is something like V = F + D + P, or V = F * D * P, where F is force, D is damage, and P is pain. What other people, including myself, are suggesting, is that the formula is more complicated, and that the terms don’t necessarily have equal weight. Something like V = F * 0.5D + 0.1P.
I don’t think anybody has suggested that what Maxima did was not violent at all. Just that it may produce less vehemic energy than other attacks, while providing an equal deterrent, or costing Vehemence more energy to counter. A fundamental part of most combat strategies is to make your opponent consume their resources faster than you do.
“The whole point about this thing called “violence” in engerlish is that it has a psychic/psychological component. All the things in our mind and body that triggers “fight or flight”.”
Um… no. The point of violence is that it is ‘an action that is intended to cause physical pain or harm to someone or something.’ It’s…literally the definition of violence. It isnt about psychic or psychological components, aside from intent being something that needs to be present.
Maxima is intending to cause this pain. Grievous levels of pain. Grievous levels of very violent and gruesome pain.
“All the things in our mind and body that triggers “fight or flight”.”
I think you’re confusing ‘survival instinct’ with ‘violence’ maybe? But moot point, since I’m not sure how the fight or flight instinct is involved in what’s confusing me about what’s happening here anyway.
“Cut out that opponent through training and detachment, and a fight becomes mere applied physics.”
Um…. no. That doesnt make sense to me. Being detached does not make you not violent. There are many serial killers who kill their victim with a sense of detachment and a complete lack of sympathy. Yet they still might kill them in ways that are definitely considered violent, like stabbing them repeatedly.
“And V can’t feed on that, becaus else he’d be able to get his vitamin V from even brownian motion. Which he evidently does not.”
I can’t really argue this until I know what you mean by ‘Brownian Motion.’ Because google tells me brownian motion means ‘any of various physical phenomena in which some quantity is constantly undergoing small, random fluctuations.’ Which has nothing to do with what we’re seeing here.
On a standpoint of potential violence, what maxima are doing is FAR more painful than actually violent. Sure it’s no pacifist move, but considering just backhanding him would make Vehemence go in the positive, this gives maximum pain for minimum gain. This means Vehemence have to burn his vitamin V stores to heal from it rather than generating excess. It’s basically like stubbing your toe on a corner or stepping on a Lego. Hurts like hell, but doesn’t really hurt you.
I just don’t understand what a lot of people here are thinking ‘violence’ means? Because this HAS been absurdly violent attacks.
Look, I understand wanting to back this. Really I do. But I’m confused because this IS violent. It’s different than naturally getting a hemmorhoid, or accidentally stepping on a LEGO and hurting yourself. The hemorrhoid and the LEGO piece are not examples of any sort of intent to cause injury. That’s like saying that someone getting allergies has had violence inflicted upon them because now they have red, itchy eyes. That’s different than someone giving you red eyes by ramming their fingers into your eyes like the Immortal does to Omni-Man in Invincible. :)
It just doesnt make sense to me, hence my confusion (because I’m cursed with understanding the definition of different words:) ), unless this is all going to horribly backfire on Maxima… which it might. :)
“Hurts like hell, but doesn’t really hurt you.”
I’m relatively certain that ramming your fingers into another person’s arm and separating their bones apart DOES hurt that person. I’m also relatively certain that shattering a person’s nose hurts that person as well.
Not to mention you just wrote ‘hurts like hell, but doesnt really hurt you.’ If it doesnt really hurt you, then it doesnt ‘hurt like hell.’ It just ‘like hell.’ :)
I think it completely depends on the definition of violence you use. If you remember when V was monologuing about how he was getting stronger with every punch thrown, and every bone broken when he was pinning down Maxima, that seems to indicate that he specifically gets stronger when a someone imparts force upon another, resulting in a transfer of energy to that person.
We do know that the amount of force directly affects the amount of energy he gains, as he indicated that super fights really charged him up. We don’t necessarily know the correlation between how much damage is done and his energy though, since it would stand to reason that it would take an increased amount of force for a super to deal damage to another, so it seems likely that he is juiced up by violent force measured from an absolute perspective, rather than relative to how the damage is perceived by the opponents (which coincidentally would explain why he seems to net positive when being used as a punching bag, since a lot of energy is being used, but not a whole lot of damage is being done).
So the end point I’m making is, if V’s energy is primarily impacted by amount of energy imparted upon the target of a violent act, it would make sense then to keep him negative by inflicting the maximum amount of damage/pain with the minimum amount of energy. Depending on how resilient the foe, can impart quite a lot of energy into their torso without taking them down (both in individual punches, or in repeated blow), but with a lot less energy comparatively, you can break someone’s nose, arm, leg, etc. by decreasing the surface area of the impact to increase the local damage, or just by focusing to ensure that each attack has a purpose and that little energy is wasted.
“I think it completely depends on the definition of violence you use.”
I’m using the definition of violence which is… literally the definition of violence.
1) behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
2) the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.
“If you remember when V was monologuing about how he was getting stronger with every punch thrown,”
Yes, because that is violence.
“and every bone broken”
Yes, because that, too, is violence.
“that seems to indicate that he specifically gets stronger when a someone imparts force upon another,”
Yes, that is what Maxima is doing right now. It’s VIOLENCE. It’s a lot of violence. It’s very grievous violence.
“We do know that the amount of force directly affects the amount of energy he gains, as he indicated that super fights really charged him up.”
Yes. And having the world’s most powerful super ram her fingers into your wrist and separate your bones in your arm, before smashing your nose to cause a geyser of blood to spray out, shattering the cartilage in the nose…. is extremely violent.
“We don’t necessarily know the correlation between how much damage is done and his energy though”
No, but we do know what violence means, and when one thing is more violent than another thing. Me punching you and causing little damage because I’m not particularly strong vs me stabbing you with a kitchen is going to be a pretty significant difference in violence, because the latter inflicts a lot more pain and inflicts a lot more damage.
So in the absence of, say, a Dabbler’s Science Corner to have our comic nerd argument have an explanation (I say that with love since I am a comic nerd as well), I’m having to go by the definition of violence plus how Vehemence’s powers have already been described multiple times in the comic.
There’s a second comic I read, although this one is my FAVORITE. The other comic I read regularly is called Goblins – Life Through Their Eyes. There’s a character in that comic called MinMax. Minmax is not intelligent, but he’s a very good fighter and very tough and whatnot. At one point in the comic, him and some of the goblins he finds himself adventuring with get tangled up in a trap of vines that tighten when you struggle. The more you struggle, the tighter and more secure the vines ensnare you
Minmax’s solution to this was to STRUGGLE EVEN HARDER.
And when that didnt work, his solution was STRUGGLE REALLY REALLY REALLY MUCH HARDER!’
And then to STRUGGLE EVEN MORE LIKE MAXIMUM STRUGGLING.
Needless to say, Minmax couldnt get out of the trap. Maxima’s plan of attack seems very similar to Minmax’s plan of attack.
(the way the group did get out of the trap was one of the goblins was also an escape artist and was able to relax completly and just slip out of it, because you don’t attack something where it’s strong, you go for whatever its weak point is, and the weak point for the vines was to relax).
Maxima’s solution seems to be to just try to be maximum violence with minimum effort, which does not change that it’s MAXIMUM VIOLENCE because she doesnt seem to be able to realize that pain and violence are definitionally linked together. Rather than using something like Tai Chi or grappling or jiujitsu with arm locks and similar stuff. They wouldnt cause intentional pain, except when he’s trying to break free of the lock or hold and therefore, Vehemence could not get a lot of juice from that, compared to direct attacks.
Every argument I’ve heard about why this plan of Maxima’s is a good one just makes no sense to me from a consistency standpoint of what we know about Vehemence and his powers. Mind you, I love the comic. But it’s a big inconsistency if it actually winds up working. Which for all I know it might not because we’re only partway into this story arc.
“So the end point I’m making is, if V’s energy is primarily impacted by amount of energy imparted upon the target of a violent act, it would make sense then to keep him negative by inflicting the maximum amount of damage/pain with the minimum amount of energy.”
Again, please explain why that wasn’t the case with Peggy shooting him in the eye then? That was very violent, with almost no extreme effort on Peggy’s part due to her incredible skill at sniping. Peggy is just insanely good at using firearms because she’s probably one of the best on the planet, just like most non-supers who manage to make it onto ARC-SWAT, like Goose or Sean or Zeneca. Or even non-Arc-swat non-supers members being some of the best at what they do on the planet, like Ariana or Leon or Zephon.
But I digress.
My point is it’s not about effort, it’s about intent and the amount of pain, harm, or injury that results. That’s what violence literally is. Mike Tyson could effortlessly pound me into an adorable red paste I’m sure, but I wouldnt call it ‘not violent’ just because it took a heavyweight champion of the world no effort whatsoever to beat up a 118lb I.P. attorney.
I had thought we had a conversation about prescriptivism and descriptivism, but I can’t find one, searching the comments. Anyway, while there are languages with a governing body that has nominally has the authority to dictate the definitions of words, English is not one of them. Words mean whatever the people using them want them to mean. If they are to be of any long-term value for communication, those meanings should be stable, or we risk being unable to correctly understand any records using them. So while I’m a fan of prescriptivism, it’s not realistic. The only control we have over how other people use language is how we use it ourselves. Well, that, and chastising them for disagreeing with us. But that’s all it is.
All that aside, the definition of violence you keep turning to doesn’t support your position all on its own. It’s just a series of words, and you’re imbuing them with meaning derived from your own interpretation of those words. Particularly when you don’t rigorously distinguish between the words you use, trading them out on a whim. People have repeatedly attempting to offer explanations in terms of physics, of the force imparted or the energy involved, and you keep getting them conflated with “effort” or “skill”, despite people not using those words.
As I said in another comment, while injury and pain frequently accompany each other, the relationship is not absolute. It is possible to cause pain without causing injury, and vice-versa. So which is it that determines whether an act is violent? Considering that violent actions may not even target a sentient being capable of experiencing pain, I’m not inclined to give a great deal of consideration to pain as a factor in violence.
“Well, that, and chastising them for disagreeing with us.”
I think you’re reading a bit too much of my argument into it, as if you think I’m taking it personally. I’m not chastising. I’m arguing, and explaining my reasoning for my argument. I mean… I could chastise were I so inclined :), but reasoned arguments based on actual definitions tends to work better in the long run.
“All that aside, the definition of violence you keep turning to doesn’t support your position all on its own.”
Vehemence’s powers are specifically based on violence. So yes, you probably should know what ‘violence’ means if you’re going to argue about a strategy on how his powers work and how to counter them.
“As I said in another comment,”
I answered this in two of your other comments. I’d rather not repeat it a third time, so I direct you to your other comments where I responded. :) It’ll keep the length of my posts down, which is already difficult for me to do. :)
“Considering that violent actions may not even target a sentient being capable of experiencing pain, I’m not inclined to give a great deal of consideration to pain as a factor in violence.”
Please Torabi, I beg of you to read the definition of violence. I’ve written it now a bazillion times. Okay, more like a dozen but still….
It’s not just pain. It’s ‘physical pain, harm, injury, or damage.’ Some of those do not require sentience on the part of the thing having violence inflicted upon it. Others do. Because it’s a pretty all-encompassing definition if you read it.
firing a gun is theoretically more violent than throwing a punch, I would say. (Perhaps more than theoretically, as well)
And Chunky McSalsa would agree as well, even if Cora didnt really use much effort when firing her gun. :)
I’m with Pander here, I’d call this quite violent. However, I don’t think we can conclude that with certainty from the words used – maybe Vehemence is just speaking imprecisely when describing his own power, or even mistaken about the details. I think it makes sense to wait and see.
In the end, it doesn’t necessarily matter, because Maxima is going for deterrence. Even if he ends up in the positive, he has to ask himself whether it’s enough to be worth the pain. She’s basically telling him “if you try to go after me again for real, you will not enjoy it.” Which is important, because he has been looking forward to this fight on the last page. This means he has an incentive to go criminal and take on Archon again, which Maxima doesn’t want.
I’m not sure doing it like this has been fully though out. V can improve his bones and so forth and maybe make himself immune or much harder to injured.
Maxima is playing with fire here. Pain may slow him down but it will not stop him.
But pain without V-juice removes his primary reason for fighting. Yes, he could level himself up now that he’s boosted, but Max is driving home a point in his very first outside break. He can be stopped, without that much effort, and he shouldn’t get any ideas about using the sparring sessions as a path to breaking out. Or any other method, for that matter.
But… I don’t see why there WOULDNT be V-juice here.
Which is why she’s doing it while he’s in orange mode and not in red mode, in orange Maxima can kill him if she doesn’t try to makes him surrender
I probably missed it but what does “Spontaneous Tumbleweed callback” mean? Was something missing like a panel taken out that was changed last minute? Inquiring minds want to know, y’know?
Call back to the first fight with Vehemence. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-257-lets-get-ready-to-rubbllllllle/
Well, Sydney first thought about it during the press conference but it was during the massive fight scene when she’d finally figured out how to do it.
He can, but he’ll need to burn charge to do so. And with Maxima focusing on causing pain rather than necessarily causing damage, she’s avoiding (as far as possible) giving him any more charge. The theory presumably being that if she can keep him spending more to rebuild than she’s giving him, then his charge level can be brought down in a relatively slow and controlled manner.
Of course, how well this theory would hold in a ‘real’ fight where Vehemence was free to employ his Aggro Aura is a separate question. We saw at the Restaurant Rumble that the Aura was capable of bypassing inhibitions, so I suspect at the least Maxima would have a much harder time maintaining focus.
There’s a line in Star Trek (probably DS9, from Martok) about there being nothing more honourable for Klingons than winning.
It was said in reference to some Klingons who were fighting “dishonourably”, and their justification for it.
That said, Martok still thinks there’s honor in not giving up despite getting your ass kicked.
Remember the ep with the Jem’Hadar First who yields to Worf: “I.. yield. I cannot defeat this Klingon. All i can do.. Is kill him. And that no longer holds my interest.”
Martok literally told Worf BEFORE that fight that Honor had been satisfied. Granted, that’s also because Worf’d fought like seven Jem’Hadar already.
Pretty sure that was Worf, in “The Way of the Warrior”, when someone on the crew remarked about victory being dishonorable.
https://www.st-minutiae.com/resources/scripts/474.txt
I thought a popular line for Klingons to say is ‘Today is a good day to die.’ Which…. doesnt really mean winning. It more means if you’re going to lose, lose with your honor intact when you die.
Pretty much like part of the code of the Bushido – Courage, Mercy (Mercy Killing does seem to be baked into the Klingon culture), Respect, Honesty, Honor, Loyalty, and Justice. Okay. Klingons don’t seem to be big on Justice actually, except some like Worf and Martok, who do seem to be the pinnacle of what it means to be an uncorrupted Klingon. Especially Worf. Worf pretty much follows the code of Bushido to the hilt.
Worf almost every episode where he’s in a battle is going to yell ‘Today is a good day to die’ – and if he doesnt some other Klingon is gonna. :) That whole ‘nothing is more honorable than winning’ doesnt actually sound very klingon-ish, because cheating will help you win very often, if you don’t get caught. But it’s not honorable.
Which doesnt matter to some klingons, since some klingons do definitely cheat and just say ‘honor’ matters to them, right before they do something downright dishonorable. But that’s more a corruption from the ideal I’d think. :) Like Gowron’s dishonorable actions during the Dominion War because of jealousy of how other klingons were inspired by Martok, not Gowron.
I’m a little confused how this is minimum juice of violence, since what she did before, last strip, seemed to be absurdly painful and violent, and what she did now with the breaking his nose also seemed quite violent.
I mean…. when Peggy shot him in the eye, that’s also ‘maximum deterrent’ but that was also quite violent as well. I’m just not sure why this would be considered minimum juice, ie, minimum violence, when if someone shatters a person’s nose with a chop to the face, that seems to me to be QUITE violent, even if it didnt take much effort on Maxima’s part.
I’d assume most things don’t take much effort on Maxima’s part, strength-wise. This is the woman who forgets things have weight, after all.
I wouldn’t mind if Maxima got a bit too arrogant for once. It would be in character for her I think.
The last time she fought Vicki, she tore off his arm but he nearly killed her in retaliation. She’s clearly learned from that encounter and I doubt she’ll make the same mistake again. He, on the other hand, might consider backing off from this fight before she causes internal bleeding, brain damage or permanent injury…like castration.
She did a lot of other stuff BEFORE blowing off his arm btw. A lot of stuff that was actually on a building-up scale of violence, starting a LOT lower than the arm being blown off. Because with the arm, she had the idea that ‘there has to be a point of diminishing returns.’
There wasn’t, though. Possibly because by that point, he was already insanely powerful.
Oh definitely. I completely agree with you that it’s in Maxima’s character to get arrogant. She’s quite frequently arrogant (although I actually like that about her – it makes her more realistic in her attitude, given her extreme power level).
That doesnt change my confusion of why she’d think this was not going to make him a lot more powerful. :)
Painful, but Vehemence took very little damage from an objective view point; just a small bone fracture that probably took 2 seconds to heal.
The violence needed to *really* ramp him up is clearly of the incredibly destructive and over-the-top kind.
I’m guessing you’ve never had your nose broken from someone punching it. :)
I’m just saying this seems EXTREMELY violent. Sorry, I’m not convinced by people saying that shattering a person’s nose, or ramming your fingers INTO someone’s arm then savagely pulling apart the inside bones is incredible levels of violence. :)
For someone with super regeneration, a broken nose simply that big of a deal aside from disorientation it causes.
There was no savagery involved in breaking his arm, there was very little force applied either (other than the initial insertion of the fingers between the bones)
“There was no savagery involved in breaking his arm,”
How does ‘savagery’ get involved in this, aside from showing that there was intent to cause the harm? Which there WAS. So yes, there was savagery, if you’re going to argue from that stance.
If I break someone’s arm and I’m very calm and methodical about it, that doesnt make it suddenly less violent. It just means I’m more sociopathic.
Steven Seagal tends to have the same facial expression for everything, including snapping people’s arms like kindle. Aside from him being a bad actor, his characters are also quite violent.
“there was very little force applied either (other than the initial insertion of the fingers between the bones)”
There was a HUGE amount of force applied! Even if it’s effortless for Maxima. Maxima’s just insanely strong compared to Vehemence right now.
dafuq G?
In addition to shoving fingers through his skin, which at this point was probably hella-tough, Maxima separated/broke his forearm bones. A normal human bone requires about 5000 newtons of force to break, and Vehemence at this point is WELL above ‘normal human’ level. Maxima’s fingers were basically like the jaws of life opening a stuck car door, or a ribcage spreader being put somewhere it definitely should NOT be placed.
You were the one to mention ‘savagely’
What Maxi used was leverage using her fingers to pry apart his bones, she didn’t expand her fingers, she simply rotated them, so nothing like jaws of life or a ribcage spreader
“You were the one to mention ‘savagely’”
I concede that point. :) I wrote that to describe that Maxima had intent to cause grievous pain and harm to Vehemence. So yes, you’re right. I did say savagely. Then I immediately forgot that I wrote savagely. I apologize there. I did remain consistent though, because I did say that savagely works in showing Maxima’s INTENT to cause grievous pain and injury (ie, VIOLENCE). Sort of like how Peggy could have shot Vehemence anywhere with anti-materiel ordinance, but she chose to shoot him in the EYE.
‘What Maxi used was leverage using her fingers to pry apart his bones,”
Do you really not think that was violent? Do you remember when Cora shot Chunky McSplatterpants and he exploded into salsa all over the room and all over Sydney? And how that was very violent? Cora used less ‘leverage’ or effort than Maxima did here for an even more violent result. I’m not sure why you’re arguing that the method by which Maxima was inflicting grievous pain is an act of excruciating violence. Would you argue that what Cora did was not also excruciatingly violent? (even though what Cora did was legally mitigated by being Defense of Others)
“she didn’t expand her fingers, she simply rotated them,”
No, she spread her fingers apart to pry his radius and ulna bones apart THEN rotated them, judgingf rom the diagram. And she did seem to break the bone. With her fingers. There was even an onomatopoeia of ‘CRIK!’
Which actually seems even MORE violent because she didnt just break the bone, she didnt just stab him in the underside of the lower arm with her fingers jabbing into him, she then ALSO rotated her fingers around AFTER that. That’s… actually even more gruesome than a ribcage spreader. That’s like using a ribage spreader then twisting the ribcage spreader around to cause even MORE pain.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-973-ulna-you-di-int/
Panels 4, 5, and 6.
Panel 4 – using superspeed to jam her fingers into the underside of his wrist
Panel 5 – her fingers pierce into his arm so deep that everything bulges on the OTHER SIDE OF HIS ARM with the delightful onomatopoeia of ‘CHUNK!’
Panel 6 – Her fingers spread apart, separating his ulna from his radius, which breaks the ulna and radius, then rotates her fingers in order to cause even more pain AND damage, much like if you stab someone with a knife then TWIST the knife. The twisting didnt break the bones because that’s not how bones are positioned in the arm, but the spreading would have been the cause of the breakage. The rotation would just be further violence.
Which like I said, would just make him stronger.
God that must have hurt.
Aagh. Ow.
Violence. Fight. Hit. Hurt. Violate. Struggle. Win. Lose. Enforce. Subjugate.
At school, we were forbidden to to fight with each other. We would be ordered into the boxing ring to sort our differences. Sometimes the excutions were public. Only sanctioned fighting was permitted.
Boxing. Gridiron. Youse do know both sports were originally armour-free. Bareknuckle. But when unprotected extremities are used to batter unprotected bodyparts, the sport doesn’t last long. So fists got padded gloves and shouders got padded cuirasses. And laws were introduced to prevent the use of hard and heavy inserts. So the combat could last longer, and feed the blood lust.
As a young adult I was introduced to a new concept: “Fighting Is For Losers”. Even if you win, you still lose if there is any hint of equality in the struggle. And my new best friends made sure I was fully equipped to be very unreasonably unequally superior in any physical contest, which meant all schoolboy thoughts of “fair play” and “honourable combat” were to be left where they belonged, on the schoolyard. As far as my mentors were concerned, the best way to win any contest was to inflict maximum damage from the rear, in an ambush. Then convey a message, in person, that (in the words of young Ender) “The next time I will hurt you.”
What Maxi was doing was simple education. Vehemence is an opponent who must be defeated early, or be the unltimate fightwinner in any episode, and thus become ultimately The Biggest Loser. He must learn that his future depends on his acceptance of a new regime of dietary self-discipline. Maxi absolutely must not use violence on Vehemence, lest she overfeed him. Vehemence must learn that “Fighting Is For Losers”.
By the way. I have long preached that the best thing the various Boxing Commissions around the world can do would be to return to bareknuckle days and criminally prosecute any protected-fist bouts. Fairly obviously, the sport of boxing would be prohibited for minors (in Australia that’s under 18yo). The blood-lust in any civilised crowd is sickening in its intensity. Just watch the Dads and Mums attending their kids’ sports competitions. And getting stuck into other Dads and Mums.
Maxi was not violent in dealing with Kevin. Merely teaching a short and memorable lesson.
” It wasn’t a fight. A fight has two people. I beat the snot out of him with a chair”- me to the principle in fourth grade.
“Boxing. Gridiron. Youse do know both sports were originally armour-free. Bareknuckle. But when unprotected extremities are used to batter unprotected bodyparts, the sport doesn’t last long. So fists got padded gloves and shouders got padded cuirasses. And laws were introduced to prevent the use of hard and heavy inserts. So the combat could last longer, and feed the blood lust.”
Actually, without padding boxing was safer *and the fights were longer*. Unpadded knuckles mean that fighters have to pull their punches because they don’t want to hurt themselves too much.
If you want to talk about history, study it first.
“*and the fights were longer*”. Some undoubtedly were. We’re talking about an era when rules were only slowly being formed, and the 10 3-minute rounds was not yet even contemplated. Add to this that most pugilism was in the farming villages, not too far from the dog-pits, and very few fighters could afford to not work on the days following the fights. And you REALLY didn’t want the village “doctor” trying to fix you. Or having to travel to a larger town where a barber could see to your teeth.
The average fight might go for 5 or 6 minutes, with no break. At some stage one of the pair would decide to throw the contest and go down. We need to remember that boxing also involved head-butting, kicking, low and (to our senses) foul punching, even biting.
The only place you’d likely see a half-hour or longer was in the cities where the big money was. And the fighters themselves didn’t have to rely on their day-jobs: boxing was their primary occupation, and the crowd paid the bills.
Fighting is not just for losers, it’s childish. I kinda understood that I had gained that mindset at some point, but it was really driven home a couple weeks ago when someone decided to square up and try to intimidate me. I had to make a conscious effort not to roll my eyes at the idiot. I almost told him that he wasn’t one of the three of four men I’ve met who could actually intimidate me, but I figured that would make the fight – which I’ve no interest in having even if I’m not scared of the dumbass – inevitable.
“Bareknuckle. But when unprotected extremities are used to batter unprotected bodyparts, the sport doesn’t last long. So fists got padded gloves and shouders got padded cuirasses.”
Pauldrons. Shoulders get pauldrons. Cuirasses go on your torso.
So gridiron players got pauldrons *and* cuirasses :) Thank you.
Oh. And later they got skidlids, like motorcyclists :)
I think he mostly powers up from the emotional aspect of violence, though. You could punch him all you liked, and if it was nothing personal, you were just viewing it as a form of deep muscle massage, it would do nothing for him.
“I think he mostly powers up from the emotional aspect of violence, though.”
Maybe. But it would be different than how both he and Dabbler described his power during the restaurant fight in that case. And if it’s from the INTENT to cause pain (which IS part of the definition of violence) then…. welll…. Maxima’s doing that right now, regardless of how much effort she’s needing to put into doing so successfully (see my example about Peggy being able to shoot him in the eye).
I don’t think so – Archon were essentially cops trying to subdue him, that’s not very personal, and he was still gaining at the restaurant rumble. Even the brawl beforehand was mostly supers just trying out their powers – these guys were having fun seeing what they could do more than trying to hurt the others.
The fights on the previous pages were sparrings, no one was angry or wanting to hurt. Ren wasn’t into it, Hiro was treating it more as sports …
Maxima is absolutely trying to inflict harm here, I don’t think her being calm and collected about it makes a difference.
Perhaps it is all in the definition of “violence”.
For Kevin’s purpose, the definition is “whatever feeds Kevin”. Max seems to have figured out that it is something like “physical force intended to inflict damage”. The “intent” element seems odd to us materialists, but remember this is a universe with a thaumic field so intent can affect the transfer of energy (just as Dabbler is powered by lust or something – the same touch may be nourishing to her or “meh!” depending on intent).
If he is the violence version of a lust feeder like a succubus then it is one part the physical action and a bigger part the emotional burst related to it. Like like Dabbler said she can’t get a net gain from masturbating so her personal pleasure is just a bonus *like with anyone normal*, she has to feed off the outpouring of others in the act. So this is the equivalent if Dabbler was with someone who remained calm, wasn’t being turned on, yet knew how to hit the erogenous zones with ease on her. She may get off, but she’s getting very little meal out of the experience.
Vehemence has it worse, the calm fighter who knows how to inflict the most pain without getting themselves worked up, and over a very small amount of time and contact; is also requiring him to spend the energy healing so no real net gain.
its not that different from fighting someone who absorbs kinetic energy so you aim for their eyes, genitals, or other sensitive spots so you can exert the least kinetic impact for the most pain caused to stop them.
I was talking about this a few strips ago, the point of diminishing returns, only Maxima is exploiting the low end, forcing him to spend more than he is gaining before he gets up to a higher power class.
These same techniques can also be applied to other tank/brawler types even more effectively.
The way I’m understanding it. There’s a different between injury/damage and violence. The main difference is, at least in this situation, for V to feed off of it, he needs the emotional component. It’s not so much the physical act giving him juice, but the intention and emotion behind the act that’s giving him the juice.
If they sent a bunch of AI against him, I’d suspect he might get overwhelmed by them since there’s no emotion behind the attacks, just calculations.
“The way I’m understanding it. There’s a different between injury/damage and violence”
It’s literally in the definition of violence.:) Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Or more specifically, “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.”
I think for vehemic purposes, Violence = Malice * Damage, just like Work = Force * Distance. Remove a component of either, and nothing happens. Just like a bulldozer pushing a 10-ton boulder only a nanometer does practically no Work in spite of the large amount of force exerted, if we assign Max 100 malice and 0.01 damage, that gives V only 1 point of vehemence which still causing a lot of pain.
“I think for vehemic purposes, Violence = Malice * Damage”
I’m going to steelman your argument, even though I think it’s a bit flawed. Let us assume that you are absolutely correct and, for vehemic purposes, violence means malice x damage.
Malice is defined as:
1) the intention or desire to do evil
2) wrongful intention, especially as increasing the guilt of certain offenses.
If this was the case, then what happened during the restaurant fight simply COULDNT have happened, because the superheroes were not intending to do evil – it would not have made Vehemence stronger. If anything, they were doing the OPPOSITE of doing evil, they were trying to do good by stopping the people who were doing evil, including Vehemence himself.
But wait, there is another definition of malice. The biblical definition! Which is almost synonymous with the definition of violence already.
Malice – the desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on others.
Well… in that case, what Maxima is doing here IS STILL Maximum Violence, because she’s definitely WANTING to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on others – namely Vehemence. How do we know this? Because she outright said so, so we know she has the desire. And because we saw what she actually did, which definitely inflicted injury, harm, and suffering.
“Just like a bulldozer pushing a 10-ton boulder only a nanometer does practically no Work in spite of the large amount of force exerted”
No offense, you know I love ya even when I’m sending ninja hit teams after ya, but I don’t think you know what malice means either. Malice has nothing to do with effort, nor does it have anything to do with the result. Malice is about intent. Usually evil intent, unless you’re talking the biblical definition, which would just be intent to cause damage/harm, just like the definition of violence.
No, malice is typically defined as the intent to do harm. Which Max and the others definitely intended to do.
The technical definition includes the word “evil” but I doubt that’s what the other commentor meant.
Why do people think I’m making up definitions when they can literally just google it for themselves. While they are making up definitions themselves instead.
“No, malice is typically defined as the intent to do harm”
You really need to read my entire post, because I literally address that, when I said:
The biblical definition! Which is almost synonymous with the definition of violence already.
Malice – the desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on others.
At which point I show why that doesnt work as well.
“The technical definition includes the word “evil” but I doubt that’s what the other commentor meant.”
Seriously, read my 4th through 8th paragraphs. I actually already responded to and refuted this.
Well, then I’d have to argue that Max isn’t doing maximum violence.
She’s not hitting nearly as hard as she did in their first fight, nor causing as much injury. Because she thinks V’s power scales more with injury and destruction, rather than pain.
“Well, then I’d have to argue that Max isn’t doing maximum violence.”
I’d thnk, if she’s not doing the maximum violence from this move, she’s getting pretty darned close. The only way it could be more violent would be if her fingers poked out the other side of his arm then she moved her fingers THROUGH the bones, instead of back out where she poked in. But something that Guesticules pointed out to me becomes more apparent here.
Maxima did not JUST impale his arm with her fingers then spread his bones out to break them.
She ALSO rotated her fingers AFTER breaking his radius and ulna in his arm. That’s like twisting a knife after you’ve already stabbed a vital organ, but for bones. If anything, that makes it even more violent.
“She’s not hitting nearly as hard as she did in their first fight, nor causing as much injury”
Vehemence was also a LOT more powerful in that fight, and if she was using that level of strength, she might wind up just killing him BEFORE he can heal it. The only reason Vehemence was surviving Maxima’s hits before is he was a LOT more powered up to a point where he was, by his own words, more powerful than he’d ever been before, with power to burn to make up new powers on the fly.
What Maxima is doing here might be the MOST malicious thing possible, but it’s malicious.
So I think we actually both agree on that.
We just disagree on if this is a good idea. I think it’s a REALLY BAD IDEA. Especially if she thinks V’s power scales with injury and destruction, because what she is doing IS injury AND pain. And either of those alone is violence.
Plus in the restaurant fight, they were constantly using attacks which cause pain. Heck, Maxima tried to stomp his cojones into paste. After she hit him with the pillar, she started to GRIND the pillar on him ‘like grinding pepper’ (her words not mine) – that’s to cause pain on top of injury.
‘Malice’ was probably the wrong word, perhaps ‘intent to harm’ or ‘intent to do damage’ would be more accurate, but I was looking for a good shorthand definition rather than checking other usages of ‘malice’ (like the legal one of causing harm without justification).
I think a perfectly consistent Theory of Vehemic Energy is going to be hard to come by given that the rules of cartoon physics / superpowers don’t always apply consistently. Although I must admit a certain amount of sympathetic entertainment in seeing how deeply the urge has gripped you to find one. :)
“‘Malice’ was probably the wrong word, perhaps ‘intent to harm’ or ‘intent to do damage’ would be more accurate, but I was looking for a good shorthand definition rather than checking other usages of ‘malice’ (like the legal one of causing harm without justification).”
Fair enough! But just to remind you, the legal definition is taken almost verbatim from the biblical definition. Literally the same wording even “a party’s intent to do injury do another party” as in ‘with malice aforethought’
Which I pretty much already discussed as well.
“I think a perfectly consistent Theory of Vehemic Energy is going to be hard to come by”
Yes but that’s part of the fun of a comic nerd argument, isnt it? It’s almost like … half of the Quora questions out there. :)
“Although I must admit a certain amount of sympathetic entertainment in seeing how deeply the urge has gripped you to find one. :)”
I prefer this xkcd strip to describe my feelings on the subject :)
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png
Yeah. I think the last couple of comics were really dumb.
what Max has done so far has been insanely violent.
And for that matter. Done at a part where the strength difference means she could easily just Put Vehemence in a lock. This crap are unlikely to work on an opponent at her own level (currently we can see Vehemence is on about Hiro’s tier).
It just makes her come across as petty, mean or sadistic.
Sadistic yes, Violent, not actually.
She’s specifically showing how precise at causing PAIN with a minimum she is in case Vehemence gets any ideas again, showing she’s learned since their last bout.
Sadism is the deriving of pleasure from inflicting pain or suffering on others.
Violence is the intentional hurting (infliction of physical pain), damaging, injuring, or harming of another person or thing.
Pain is the common factor in both words. Sadism, at least in this particular example, would be deriving pleasure from inflicting violence upon Vehemence, since Maxima is the one directly applying the pain, which is violent.
Just because it doesnt take a lot of effort for her to inflict pain does not suddenly make it not violence.
It’s a good way to combat supers that get their energy from violence: keep the violence as low/short as possible so that they get not that much energy from is and try to make sure that the energy they need to expend is higher than what they gain. That way you can fight them but still beat them.
If this way of fighting can get Vehemence to a lower power-level than at the beginning of the fight with Maxima, it’s proven to be a good/effective way to fight his type of supers and beat them.
That is probably also why she starts fighting him when he’s already been charged a bit: so that he has energy left to hal himself so that the wounds she inflicts aren’t permanent and she can measure a powering down.
> what Max has done so far has been insanely violent.
Depends entirely on the definition of ‘violence’ that his powers care about, and I suspect that is exactly what she’s testing right now.
* She learned in the last fight that big ‘swing for the fences’ punches count as violence and power him up, so she’s avoiding those.
* She knows that she could grapple him and hold him down *at his current power level* but that won’t do the job if he’s already powered up when she arrives on the scene, and it might not do the job even now if he were allowed to use his more esoteric powers, like the aggro field.
She’s testing two things:
1. Can pain be used to interrupt his fighting for a few seconds and distract him such that he can’t use esoteric powers?
2. Do nerve strikes and other high pain, low damage attacks result in him powering up?
If the answers are ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ respectively then if she ever has to fight him when he’s already powered up she could try simply using pain attacks to keep him occupied until he runs out of juice, powers down, and can be contained.
Basically, she’s looking for a way to NOT have to kill him if she ever gets into a serious fight with him again.
If she ever has to fight him … or someone like him.
Right now they have a modus vivendi. It could even develop into a job for him. He’d like being a hand-to-hand combat dummy.
But other vehemic-power entities may be out there, or other foes that you lose to by punching harder. This is really a research situation….and a challenge that she enjoys.
For what it’s worth, Klingons actually get sexually aroused by fighting. So while they prefer winning, and many of them get darn sneaky about it when they get old, the young and stupid ones are just fine about losing, too. As long as they get to roar and hit things, they are pretty good. It’s why a Klingon wedding night isn’t considered valid unless bones get broken :)
(This is also why it’s often the old and scary Klingons in charge, they have lived long enough to learn how to fight and win.)
This is actually pretty smart.
How did you fight someone that gets stronger as they fight? (Especially getting stronger when they get injured.)
Cause as much pain as possible while inflicting minimal damage.
If Max tried the regular slug out moves that sent V hurtling through walls and stuff, he’d have probably jumped a level in power by now.
Now I want to see Vehemence standing at the foot of the Hoover Dam with leads attached to his nipples.
Because you know art and shit.
“In a good way.”
Actually, this image reminds me of Multiple Santa from The Tick:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WV_HHzTIko
“Turn it on! It’s time for me to get my JOLLIES!!”
Yes, yes. We all know Max is the ultimate badass. She’s also extremely arrogant and boring in just just how much fun she isn’t compared to the rest of the cast. Can we move it along please, or do we have another half dozen pages of Max’s golden epeen waving around? All you’re doing here is making us start to root for the bad guy with how easily she’s dismantling him.
Her moves so far have been clever, in that most if not all of us readers did not predict them.
Not everyone enjoys that sort of thing but for some of us, it is hilarious.
So maybe your tamer fight starts off with some stealthy takedown, but one of the bad guys can create smells (smelling salts) and another can create and control wind. Not a huge deal individually, but together? Or a healer. Or a necromancer. Let’s Sam & Co be smart and badges, but still makes for an interesting fight.
Badges -> bad ass.
Stupid autocorrect.
We don’t need no stinking badges!
What about badgers?
You are a fan of UHF I see!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx6TBrfCW54
Oof… Maxima is not holding back even though she is holding back… It makes sense I swear!!!!
Maxima’s necklace seems to have disappeared between pages.
Print quality on the Gold Bricks I have kind of sucked, with pages out of order, ink printing on your fingers, that sort of thing. Wouldn’t mind replacing them if the price is right. I could pass them on to my son when he’s older.
Gold Digger is one amazing story, that’s for sure. It’s gotten enormously elaborate and convoluted, with time travel and what have you, but the story telling rocks, as does the art. Just wish his attempts at an animated movie had succeeded, I would totally have watched it.
I understand what Maxima is doing here, but at some point we’re going to find that V has a counter for this tactic.
Maybe one he’s not supposed to use under the rules, like using his aggression aura to cause her to lose her temper?
I’d think nipples hooked up to the Hoover Dam would be more Dabblers speed.
For pain with very little damage, splinters under the fingernails and push…
Got down to panel nine and the first thing that popped into my mind was ZZ Top’s “She Got Legs” and Max sure knows how to use them.
As others have said, I’m not sure that this or the last page makes much sense.
Max’s previous move involved driving her fingers through V’s wrist, something which would, by itself, be considered exceptionally violent. Here she’s hitting him extremely hard. The force required can be inferred from the fact that V can usually tank gun fire without feeling it (although that could have been when he was at a different hue, so perhaps he’s weaker now (although if that’s the case, it raises real questions as to what Max is doing here)). Putting V in a “boring” grapple hold such that he couldn’t fight, evading / redirecting his attacks such that they didn’t hit anything, using illusion / hypnosis to neutralize him? Those wouldn’t be violent. But this appears to be Max doing violent things and then they don’t count as violence because she says so (author fiat).
I think you are taking the concept of “painful” and assuming that it must also be ‘violence’
Here we see Max doing their level best to Not engage Kevin on any meaningful level.
She is literally trying to put in the minimum effort needed to do this fight.
Physically and emotionally (baring pride) No wild swings. no emotional outbursts.
Dodges that have so much economy of movement hitting Max is like nailing Jello to a wall.
Normally a big bruiser like Kevin over comes this sort of thing with maximum overkill.
(to extend the metaphor) If you Throw enough Nails at the Jello eventually the Jello will stick to the wall.
Kevin would expend a very energetic barrage of fisticuffs in Max’s general direction
sure some (most) will miss but eventually that combination will get through the defense.
So Max responds with VERY Painful “combo breakers” early and often to prevent Kevin from building up momentum physically or emotionally.
Kevin is putting in effort max is not. and THAT is what is “taking the fun out of it”
Think of what the equivalent would be for dabbler. Maxima isn’t getting into it and the “fight” is purely one sided. Think of dabbler trying to feed on whatever the equivalent would be. Sure, you could call it sex but it wouldn’t be erotic or tantric.
You are qualifying violence just by the damage inflicted, when the more accurate qualifier would be the brutality, the passion, the mindless desire to hurt the other person.
Can’t he crank up his aura so she’s too mad to fight like this?
Maxima: “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
That seems as if it’d be a very bad move.
He’s capable of using his aura, but it would violate the terms of his ‘parole’. No esoteric effects allowed here. If he broke that rule, I imagine we’d find out what passive containment measures they’ve come up with to take him down.
I would assume his “parole” doesn’t include allowing himself to be tortured like is basically happening to him right now. It stopped being sparring a comic ago, and his healing powers don’t change that.
That aside, ok no aura. Fight super defensively, he needs to make her hit him properly.
Well, he’s not complaining.
Yes, he is feeling pain but no, he does not seem to mind. This is a thing that people do when they play rough sports.
At most, he’s annoyed that his methods are not working but that’s the challenge he accepted.
I notice we haven’t seen Sydney fight Kevin yet. She has learned a lot, and had a lot of experience in the field since that first fight. It could be that they are saving her as a way to exhaust Vehemence at the end. Letting him expend energy against her dang near invulnerable shield. Sydney had the power in that first fight to probably end Kevin right then with the PPO, but she had been ordered not to use it. She still wouldn’t use it in a training fight like this, as this isn’t a lethal force moment, but that dies mean she could get creative.
Sydney is still a very squishy norm: if Kev managed to lay a hit on her, well, let’s say it won’t be pleasant
If someone like Hiro can get bruised, what do you think would happen to Sydney?
One-on-one Sydney versus Kevin would be incredibly boring. There are three possible outcomes:
1. Sydney keeps her shield up, and Kevin isn’t powered up enough to overcome the lighthook. Sydney hog-ties him as soon as he gets close enough. Fight over, Sydney wins.
2. Sydney keeps her shield up, and Kevin is powered up enough to overcome the lighthook. Sydney can’t harm Kevin without resorting to lethal force; Kevin can’t harm Sydney. Draw.
3. Sydney drops her shield. Kevin incapacitates her in some non-lethal way (probably by picking her up by the hands).
Fight over, Kevin wins.
The parking-lot fight was interesting because Sydney had an entire team-worth of non-lethal options to work with. In a one-on-one fight, those aren’t available.
https://i.imgur.com/p41JDkd.png
disappointed if someone doesnt save this face he makes on their album thing with maxima…
I’m all for training with V, but is V even a match for her here? I said before, I was ok with this because it would teach him how to fight better but, if she’s way above his power class to the point where she’s way faster and stronger than him, she’s just gonna run through him which means that it might go a bit beyond training and more of an excuse to cause a dude shit ton of pain. We get it Max, you’re strong.
I think Vehemence might be holding back. It would be in his character.
Nah, Maxima is definitely stronger than him here.
He was beating her when he had a 30 super brawl already having powered him up, combined with Maxima having beaten the hell out of him quite violently, plus Peggy having shot his eye with an anti-materiel firing rifle, plus Stalwart having stomped on his foot with the weight of a space shuttle, plus Anvil having slammed him MULTIPLE times.
With all that combined, then he was beating her. Right now Maxima’s just showing how tough she is, most likely because one of Maxima’s character flaws IS that she’s arrogant. That’s not actually an insult though. I look for that in my favorite heroes.
But that’s cool. Flawed heroes make for fun to read heroes. Especially when their flaws involve their personalities working against their success in some social area. Wolverine. Tony Stark. Monet St. Croix (“M”). Wonder Woman. Supergirl (both Kara Zor-El and Linda Danvers versions). Hulk. Batman. The Boys. John Constantine. Spider-Man. It means they have obstacles that get in their own way, that come from within their own personalities. ie, it’s not something that they can just punch away – it’s literally part of who they are.
Hulk – anger issues of course. But also in the 616 universe, Hulk will not kill, because Banner will not kill, and whether Hulk likes it or not, Banner IS Hulk
Supergirl – major case of survivors guilt and sometimes living in the shadow of her boy scout cousin. Not to mention an internal lack of purpose since she was originally sent to Earth to raise and protect Kal-El.
Wonder Woman – Despite actually being one of the most noble heroes in DC, she’s a bit of a hypocrite, which was pointed out in the first animated movie, as are most Amazons for shunning men entirely, and treating all men as evil. Basically the same thing Amazons would fault a man for doing to look down on all women as mysogyny. Diana tends to rise above that because of her meeting with people like Steve Trevor, Superman, and Batman, but it’s still often lingering there. Also Wonder Woman is, by her own admission sometimes, very arrogant, like Maxima is. Only when she has to deal with someone even more arrogant about their abilities, like Batman, does that tend to slip.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-498815fd30aa3ea8ed035e4dcc6f6680.webp
Wolverine and Tony Stark – both very arrogant. Both frequently drunk. :) Both think they’re the best at what they do.
Batman – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and, frankly, Batman is nuts to the point where it’s almost impossible for him to have actual ‘friends.’ He has acquaintances. He has colleagues. When he finally realizes he sees someone as his friend, it usually is difficult for him to adjust to that, like with Superman. Or when he actually falls in love with someone (ie, Catwoman, Talia al Ghul, and in some instances Wonder Woman), that also frequently throws him for a loop because it gets in the way of The Mission and the promise he made to his parents. Because he simply never intended to be HAPPY. Almost like he doesnt have a choice BUT to be Batman because of his psychological problems.
https://youtu.be/TjAFbEP0wK4?t=53
John Constantine from DC and most of The Boys from ‘The Boys’ are just complete a-holes. But you gotta love them anyway.
Monet is incredibly arrogant to an absurd degree. And what’s more infuriating to her teammates is she’s usually correct, and has a lot of good reasons for being arrogant that she will readily explain in detail. While insulting you in the process.
Spider-Man – who is one of the most humble and noble heroes in Marvel, even according to true blue boy scouts like Captain America, has a TERRIBLY self-deprecating view of himself, insults himself constantly, self-sabotages his relationships frequently, and is often actually very scared when he’s fighting waaay above his weight class. What makes him especially heroic is he doesnt give up even when he should be completely outclasses. He also has massive guilt because he blames himself for his uncle’s death.
—
Perfect heroes are boring. It’s why people don’t like Mary Sues/Gary Stus in general. It’s why the Hero’s Journey steps tend to require ‘meeting the mentor,’ ‘crossing the threshold,’ ‘tests,’ ‘ordeals,’ etc. If the hero was perfect, then we’d be reading ‘the Adventures of God-Man’ – where every adventure was finished in one page, if that. :)
http://lost.co.nz/library/godman/strips/01-The_Threat_of_the_Purple_Beetle.html
He IS holding back. He’s not allowed to use his biggest power, his aura. Maxima is so proud that she’s figured out a way to hurt him without giving him power but it’s only working because hitting and getting hit is the only way he’s allowed to GET power.
Pretty sure he’d smack her around pretty easy too if she was hogtied.
Okay that’s actually true. He is holding back in that he’s not using non-physical powers like a violence aura to make others fight, which would power him up, or other things which let him pull powers out of the wazoo like he was before.
I think the OP meant he was holding back on his physical capabilities though.
She’s neither faster nor stronger than him here. It just looks that way because she is now applying much more skill and technique to her combat and not relying on strength at all. I said before that Taichi is best suited for Maxima and now I’m convinced, it’s enough to make her OP.
Lets say it takes you about a second to punch someone (haymaker style), but with a boxers jab it’ll take you half that time. She’s not having to do as much moving,
The “barely deflect” is a misunderstanding of what’s happening here. There is no “force” being applied on the opponent here, the hand connects sure but all of the movement is silk reeling from then on, the left hand rotates, the right hip snaps forward and the right hand just follows the movement, striking in this case the nose and breaking his posture. There’s very little force in the hand it’s all from the hip and spiraling motion up from the ankle. She immediately draws back transferring her weight to her left leg and delivers the tap to the joint, V drops like a sack of spuds because he’s top heavy at that point. Minimum effort, maximum force.
They’re doing this because V needs violence to live. He’d starve without this little gauntlet of brawling, lopsided or not.
you know i think we need a pin of Kevin standing at the foot of the hoover dam with jump cables on his nips. Just because its been mentioned.
Nice to see some advertising for Gold Digger, such a great comic (although sometimes the homages/parodies to existing things is a bit over the top).
Poke his eyes out. It’s more slapstick humor than violence, and it takes loads of vitamin V to regenerate!
OMG she is going to hand him a pair of scissors and tell him not to go run with it!!!!
It’s not violence if he does it to himself!!!
Okay I’m convinced, someone has been looking at Taichi Sanshou…
Well, in Doom, many of the demons of Hell did start worshipping the “Doom Slayer,” so, clearly, you are doing something they like, even if they’d rather you do it to somebody else.
Yes, Maxi is still doing violence to Kev, but (and this is the important part), she is doing greater pain (and damage) then the violence behind it, which is causing Kev to use up what reserves he already had to heal the damage because the violence he is getting from Maxi ain’t enough
So this is actually defeating the point of this sparring. They’re trying to ‘feed’ him vitamin v so he doesn’t starve. Max is fighting in a way that in theory burns more than he gets.
Max gets to lightly pressure test her strategy to take down Vehemence. That’s useful for her and the team. Vehemence is getting nothing out of it at this point and would be well within his rights to ask to stop.
No, right now, Maxi is showing Kev that they have ways of stopping him without killing him
He has already had his V-meal
Her strategy is super effective…
…because he’s forbidden to use his aura to piss everyone off and power up. Frankly I want Maxima to lose, I’d love to watch her lose. He ego is supposed to be her biggest character flaw but it almost never bites her in the ass.
Says you, Vivian. I’m finding this very funny indeed.
I just had a thought.
If Kevin’s not getting enough vitamin V in prison, then we need to get whoever set up that prison to overhaul the entire US prison system. Seriously. US Prisons are, by all accounts, incredibly violent places.
He was kept in isolation, that’s not scalable. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-363-where-are-they-now/
I just noticed something…why does he have two flesh arms? After Max blew his arm off he regenerated a cyberarm.
it turned back to flesh when his power level dropped back down
What I wanna know is how his arm is working. at very least he should have squeezed his wrist until it popped back in, then spent a few seconds of super juice healing
There’s enough of a break in the action between the previous page and this one to accommodate at least that minimum ‘first aid’ version of healing.
Ok, i’ll have to go back and look, but wasn’t ‘Needing to regenerate’ on the list of things that ‘Makes Me Stronger’? I feel like it was,
Yep, page 272
Yup. But quantity will surely matter. Regenerating a whole limb, lots of V-juice. Fixing a broken nose, not a lot.
V “-TO THE DEATH!!”
Max “No! -To the pain!”
*starts looking around for ROUSs*
Rodents Of Unusual Size?
*pfft*
I don’t think they actually exist.
Capybara would like to have word with you…
I’m quoting the movie, G. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYHg8vJSz-Q
*psst*
Did you hear that they are doing a remake?
*blink blink*
They can’t do a good remake because Andre the Giant is deceased.
I’ll send a few ninja hit squads out to Hollywood to explain why this is a bad idea.
What about the guy who played Andre in “Young Rock”?
They could get Big Show to play the role, or, seeing how they are on such a kick to replace white actors with POC, Bronson Reed
No one can replace Andre the Giant in my mind, sorry. :)
Besides, remakes of movies are almost always worse than the original, especially when the original was really good, let alone a classic or a movie that gained cult classic status. With the exception maybe of Mad Max, because Mad Max: Fury Road was better than the original Mad Max IMHO.
My view of remakes is only make a remake of a movie if the original was not very good, or was good but had a lot of flaws where the remake would make it better. The Princess Bride is perfect as is.
Plus I think the nostalgia factor would work against a new movie, especially in light with the bombs we’ve seen from other remake attempts of popular 80s and 90s movies (including live action from cartoon remakes as well) in the last 10 years.
Dredd
Total Recall
Ghostbusters 2016
Hellboy
Conan the Barbarian
The Karate Kid
Robocop
Evil Dead
The Lion King
Mulan
Beauty and the Beast
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
When studios try to make a remake of a movie with an existing fanbase that have very fond memories of the original from their childhood, they tend to not see the point in remaking what was already a great movie when they can just watch the original again. Plus it just seems like a lazy cash grab and at this point a lot of people are already wary of it.
Cary Elwes (Westley) had the perfect response to the idea of a Princess Bride remake.
That REALLY IS a perfect response!!!!!!!
HER: “Do you seriously believe that every opponent will fight with a style that gives you maximum benefit? They’re trying to DEFEAT you – not to FEED you! They’ll try to employ the maximum unpleasant result, ideally with minimum effort. Their goal is for you to FLEE, or to FALL, or to DIE — depending on the opponent.”
HIM: “You’re saying that my previous experiences have ‘spoiled’ me, to expect a certain outcome?”
HER: “I’m saying that you may very-well be ‘upgrading’, to a more sophisticated, a more … ‘nuanced’ … level of opponents.”
This must be a technique which works for Anvil too. Impart minimum kinetic energy, with maximum damage. Plus, unlike Vehemence, Anvil cannot regenerate.
So let us hope that Anvil never has to fight Vehemence, now that he has been taught this fighting style!
Let’s get obscure with DaveB’s lt text at the bottom of the page:
“Bunny, Ball-ball!”
So, all this talk about violence vs pain, it wouldn’t surprise me if Kevin had a ‘battle mode’ spell that he sets up when he’s getting ready to actually fight a protracted battle which included a pain suppressor but it might have a long or high energy start up time. I know if I had Kevin’s powers, I’d have a shitload of automatic and deadman spells set up before I went into a fight against someone like Maxima.
That said, I do think the ‘maximum pain, minimum violence’ is the key to this. Simply put, even if Kevin could do a free energy device setup where he can heal any damage and still wind up in the positive magic wise (he had a hell of charge built up last time we saw him fight), the shear amount of pain that Max is inflicting and forcing him to stop and heal while being effectively stuck with nothing but his passive defenses, that would cripple his fighting ‘style’.
“That said, I do think the ‘maximum pain, minimum violence’ is the key to this”
I don’t understand how you CAN inflict maximum pain without it being very high violence. At least not in hand-to-hand fighting, except for using grappling and holds where it would be painful to try to get OUT of the hold, but not painful if you just submit and give up.
Seriously is it just me thinking this? A bunch of people are saying that what Maxima is doing is not very, very violent, despite the geyser of blood that just came out of Kevin’s nose, or what she did with his forearm, as if violence is dependent on if it’s difficult or not to inflict, or dependent on anger being present or something, like Kevin feeds off of anger instead of violence.
Mind you I am enjoying the storyline and this arc – I just am assuming this is going to go horribly wrong because it’s going to power him up a lot.
It’s possible to inflict a great deal of pain without causing damage or injury. It’s also possible for someone to be horribly injured, and yet feel no pain.
The actions of the characters, as well as Sydney’s claim that “When someone tells you they get stronger from being attacked, you choke them out.“, suggest that the in-universe definition of violence correlates more strongly with either injury or the amount of energy in the attack than with the amount of pain felt. Kevin’s power is in some ways a broader superset of Kenya’s. He absorbs some sort of energy, but it doesn’t necessarily require violent intent — that just makes it better. My question would be whether it’s keyed primarily off the amount of energy contained in the attack, or the amount of damage it does. For instance, if a bomb goes off in outer space, is that as “violent” as a bomb of equal power leveling a city block?
I think it’s more about the force involved – otherwise there would be no point in fighting supers, who hit harder but also are more resistant. Hiro and Chestplate guy trading blows wouldn’t be better than regular guys trading blows, and he’d be much better off going to a soccer riot.
Of course, it could be influenced by both, and non-linear to boot.
He also says that super violence is better (ie more bang per buck) than regular violence. I personally took that as a meta power thing where he’s himself a super so his powers are more efficient with other supers.
Hiro and Anvil trading blows in theory has as much emotional component as any other two people, the difference being as Voyager said they’re doing it with more force and they’re both supers.
I’d be interested if a Harem member and Heatwave having a purely physical altercation would generate more vitamin v than any other random two women in a fist fight.
> He also says that super violence is better (ie more bang per buck) than regular violence.
I could find that scene, can you give me a ref?
In any case, looking how quickly Maxima leveled him last time, I’m still thinking force matters (it could be the property destruction, but property destruction is probably less nutritious if at all.)
Whoops, that was me misremembering page266 where he says the parking lot brawl juiced him lore than the la race riots. Q few pages later his pants explode and he apologizes saying he’s never grown bigger before.
“It’s possible to inflict a great deal of pain without causing damage or injury. It’s also possible for someone to be horribly injured, and yet feel no pain.”
You’re again ignoring what it means to be violent. It has nothing to do wit comparing ‘pain’ with ‘injury’ – Pain and injury are two examples of violence. It doesnt mean if you have one or not the other, there’s no violence. It’s if you have ANY of those choices, it’s violence.
Violence = the intentional infliction of physical pain (hurting someone), damage, injury, OR harm to another person or thing.
It’s not saying ‘if you arent in pain, but are damaged, then it’s not violence.
It’s not saying ‘if you are not damaged,but are in pain, then it’s not violence.
Intentional Pain, Damage, Injury, and Harm on another person or thing are the four examples of what violence IS. It’s not an ‘all of them need to be present’ thing.
If I start electrocuting you with a low enough voltage to cause you massive pain and harm but don’t actually cause any noticeable damage to your body, it’s sitll violence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t18EX-D-Kco
That’s violence still. Even though it’s taking little effort on the part of the torturer. Even though it’s not causing noticeable damage to Rambo’s body, but excruciating pain.
My intuition is that when most people use the word violence, they would consider it to be a distinct category from psychological violence. Or rather, they use ‘violence’ as a shorthand for ‘physical violence’, and would recognize that physical violence and psychological violence are both subsets of ‘violence’ if questioned but wouldn’t normally think of it that way.
Inflicting pain usually requires physical violence, but if you could magically cause someone to experience pain, I don’t think most people would consider it violence. Admittedly, my understanding of the word ‘violent’ comes from the often nonsensical distinctions people have made about whether a particular video game is ‘violent’ or ‘non-violent’, which usually translates as ‘gory’ or ‘realistic violence’. It’s incorrect, but it is common usage.
“My intuition is that when most people use the word violence, they would consider it to be a distinct category from psychological violence. Or rather, they use ‘violence’ as a shorthand for ‘physical violence’,”
Yes, that would be why I’ve been using the definition for violence, which is ‘physical pain’ – not psychological pain. That’s why psychological violence has to have the qualifying word’ psychological’ before it. If you just say ‘violence’ it means physical damage/pain/injury/harm of some sort has occurred, not emotional or psychological.
“Inflicting pain usually requires physical violence, but if you could magically cause someone to experience pain, I don’t think most people would consider it violence.”
I will grant that would be a harder sell, since the dictionary and linguistics does not take ‘magic’ and other imaginary causes into account when determining most definitions.
But again, you’d be having to remake reality in order to make a different definition work then. If you have to remake reality to make a definition work or a current definition not work, then I’d like to suggest that the problem is not the definition, but the stance that requires a reworking of reality itself. :)
“Admittedly, my understanding of the word ‘violent’ comes from the often nonsensical distinctions people have made about whether a particular video game is ‘violent’ or ‘non-violent’”
When they say this game has violence, they’re usually actually saying ‘this game shows depictions OF violence.’ Not that playing the game is itself violence, or that what is happening in the game is literally violence, rather than just a depiction of what would be violence if it was happening in real life.
Good example though.
Back in the 80’s or 90’s, when people were really concerned about whether video games would make children violent, there were some arbitrary distinctions made about how violent a particular game was, based on whether the violence was gory, or whether the target of the violence was human or not. The wikipedia article on “nonviolent video game” contains some examples of this, and my first Google search result for “non-violent video games” contains this note:
“I don’t understand how you CAN inflict maximum pain without it being very high violence.” – Pander
As I understand it, Maxima’s strategy isn’t running on a theory of ‘pain without violence’. It’s running on ‘maximum pain for a given amount of (physical) energy input’, and assuming that Vehemence’s charge comes largely from the energy expended against him.
The arm split on the previous page involved a very focused application of force for efficient and painful damage; a conventional punch of the same energy may do a similar amount of actual damage, but probably not in as painful a fashion. Similarly with the nose-breaker on this page: she’s not going for a solid centre-mass muscle target, but for a part that can move and break and hurt the far greater concentration of nerves. Even if Vehemence does get some extra charge from the added intent, it comes at a far higher price of pain than he’s used to paying for it; she may not be able to stop him getting charge, but she may be banking on making him not want to get a charge that way while giving him no other choice..
“As I understand it, Maxima’s strategy isn’t running on a theory of ‘pain without violence’. It’s running on ‘maximum pain for a given amount of (physical) energy input’, and assuming that Vehemence’s charge comes largely from the energy expended against him.”
Right. And I don’t see how what Maxima is doing in ANY WAY works as pain without violence, because the intentional infliction of physical pain IS violence. And what Maxima is doing is inflicting physical pain, intentionally. So it’s VERY violent.
The only way I can possibly see it working is if Vehemence’s violence-o-meter doesnt work like either we, or Maxima, think it works. ie, that it doesnt matter the LEVEL of violence (pain/harm/damage/injury), as long as there IS pain/harm/damage/injury. Which would THEN mean Maxima’s plan would work, but not for the reasons she thinks it would work.
Everything we’ve seen in the restaurant fight tells us that what she’s doing right now would be powering him up a LOT more than he needs to heal, even if she’s not putting a lot of effort into it with a few targeted, insanely violent strikes, unless the level of violence doesnt matter as much as the amount of times she is violent matters.
I’m not sure you caught my meaning; maybe I didn’t make it properly clear.
In my interpretation, ARC’s current theory is that Vehemence gets his charge from the energy expended rather than (or at least more than) from the pain experienced. That although they are both potential components in the dictionary definition of ‘violence’, one of them converts to charge far more efficiently than the other. Repairing damage expends charge, so if they can cause maximum damage for minimum energy expenditure (assuming pain to be a minor charging factor at best) they can whittle him back down to a more manageable level.
This would be supported by Vehemence’s apparent preference for Super fights over Baseline-only ones as a source of second-hand charge. Not just because most Supers can expend far more energy than a Baseline Human, but also because many of them have enhanced durability; higher durability means fewer and lesser injuries, means less pain caused. If pain was an equal source of charge, then a fight between squishy Baseline Humans could make up through that route what it lacks in energy expenditure.
As a separate tactical exercise, which would work well with said theory but need not depend on it, Maxima is testing a potential way to encourage Vehemence to break off a fight. He is not yet charged to the point that he no longer feels pain, if that point exists, and he evidently doesn’t like the experience. Even if his Power treats ‘infliction of pain’ (per se) as a source of charge alongside ‘application of force’ (per se), the former has a discouraging effect which the latter lacks. It may be impossible to fully separate one from the other, but different modes of attack will have significantly different effect distributions. So Maxima is concentrating on attacks with the highest return of pain per energy input, to swing the balance as far towards discouragement as she can.
In short, it’s not about ‘pain without violence’. Violence, as you note, has several potential components including pain – but they need not be equal, either in intensity applied or in value received. Your focus has been on the sum of those components, whereas I believe the relative distribution between them may be the more important factor.
My interpretation of ARC’s theory may or may not be correct. The theory itself may or may not be correct. Maybe we’ll find out the answers to one or both of those potentials over the coming pages.
I’m sure we’ll know one way or other – a scene change either with or without an answer – in plenty of time for DaveB to build up to something big for Page 1000 at the end of November.
Okay so… I’m not going to quote every part of your post because my posts are getting insanely long but it seems like you’re actually agreeing with me that they’re thinking that Vehemence’s powes work by quantifying violence as a unitarian scale of measurement rather than based on the intensity of the violent acts. Where it doesnt actually matter how MUCH violence there is, as long as it registers to Vehemence as violence (ie, pain/harm/damage/injury). So instead of wailing on him a lot, she just does the most violence with the least amount of violent individual acts.
Which like I said elsewhere would be the only way I could think that Maxima’s strategy would make sense.
I’m not taking the ‘unitarian’ view of violence, and I’m honestly not sure how you got that from my posts. I think the evidence/dialogue does show that Vehemence gets more/better charge from some violent events than he does from others, although I don’t have specific citations on hand for it.
You’re getting hung up on the components listed in the dictionary definition of ‘violence’, and assuming that all of them are of equal value in terms of giving Vehemence charge. Three of them are near-synonymous and can probably be taken as near-equal, but pain is the odd one out in that regard.
Let’s take this back a step.
For the sake of a hypothetical, let’s say that it’s only the act of causing damage that gives Vehemence charge. Those would be described as violent acts, because they meet one of the four criteria. An act may be violent according to one of the other criteria without meeting this one, but if the speaker isn’t being overly fussy at the time they are unlikely to draw this to attention. In this scenario an act which charges Vehemence is a violent act, i.e. he gets charge from violence, but not all violent acts charge Vehemence. This scenario, or one similar to it, appears to be what ARC are basing their strategy on.
Now let’s compare some example actions. Action A causes 1 point of pain, 1 of harm, 6 of damage, and 1 of injury (9 total). Action B causes 4 pain, 1 harm, 4 damage, 1 injury (10 total). Action C causes 3 pain, 1 harm, 1 damage, 1 injury (6 total). Thin-air numbers, the relative distribution is more important than the absolute values.
If the damage-only hypothesis above is correct, Vehemence would get more charge-per-action from A (6 damage) than from B (4) or C (1).
If Vehemence gains charge from the total violence across all four dictionary criteria, he would get more charge-per-action from B (10 total) than from A (9) or C (6).
Regardless of whether or not pain contributes to charging Vehemence, it also acts to demoralise him and ‘take the fun out of fighting’. Action type C would create the most discouragement for the least potential charge, but these tend to be the hardest to administer to an active opponent. So Maxima is focusing on type B: risking a slightly higher charge rate in order to get a much higher demoralisation rate. Contrast this to most fights, the Restaurant Rumble among them, in which combatants tend to focus on type A and the flood of charge compensates for the relatively minor pain.
I hope this is clearer. If we keep going at this rate, DaveB may run out of page space!
“I’m not taking the ‘unitarian’ view of violence, and I’m honestly not sure how you got that from my posts.”
Because you said this:
Scott’s Folly: “Violence, as you note, has several potential components including pain – but they need not be equal, either in intensity applied or in value received. Your focus has been on the sum of those components, whereas I believe the relative distribution between them may be the more important factor.”
“For the sake of a hypothetical, let’s say that it’s only the act of causing damage that gives Vehemence charge.”
Your hypothetical does seem to use a unitarian concept of violence as the basis for how Vehemence is powered by violence, which is sort of my point. You just expand on it a little to say that violence has a point scale of 1 to 4. Each act of violence has at least a base scale of 1 for each individual instance of violence, regardless of the type of violence. However, then if the violene meets certain criteria (ie, it’s not only pain, but pain and injury, then that’s a score of 2. Or it’s not only pain and injury, but pain and injury and harm (once we define what we mean by harm as different than injury, which might mean ‘life threatening’ perhaps) then it’s a 3. And if it has all four elements, then it’s a 4 dose of violence.
It’s still unitarian concepts of violence when you get down to the most basic understanding of it though.
“I hope this is clearer. If we keep going at this rate, DaveB may run out of page space!”
Space on the internet is fortunately cheap. :)
“Because you said this” – Pander
You see, it’s that same paragraph that I thought made it clear that I do not take the ‘unitarian’ view!
Am I right in interpreting your ‘unitarian’ violence as a binary state – an act is either violent or it is not, and the degree or form of violence does not matter? While that definition may be technically accurate, I do not consider it sufficient. It’s like saying that an object is either moving or not moving: technically true, but the speed and direction of the motion are crucial factors.
Point spreads was evidently a bad idea for illustrating how different actions may be violent in different ways. It’s too easy to take them as additive categories within the same variable, rather than mutually orthogonal components. Perhaps if we take the analogy to spatial directions instead?
High-school maths: it is possible to define a line using the three axes of space independently. The distance between its ends when measured parallel to the x axis (East/West) is completely unrelated to the distance when measured parallel to the y axis (North/South) or z axis (Up/Down). Most lines involve a bit of each, in varying degree, but a line parallel to one axis would have essentially no component in either of the others (e.g. vertically Up: the top being directly above the bottom, there is no N/S or E/W tilt). In this analogy, the degree of violence determines the length of the line but not its direction.
ARC’s apparent strategy, translated into this analogy, assumes that the x axis is what charges Vehemence, the y axis is what causes him pain, and the z axis is what causes damage that he would then have to spend charge in repairing. Two actions which are equally violent would translate to lines of equal length, but not necessarily of equal direction: they will have differing ratios of charge, pain, and repair cost. If Maxima can keep the ‘direction’ of her attacks away from the ‘charge’ axis and close to the ‘pain’ and/or ‘repair’ axes, then she can discourage and discharge Vehemence.
Even if ARC are wrong and it is the ‘length of the line’ which charges Vehemence, the focus on pain and repair cost still maximises the discouragement and discharge factors. His net gain of charge will be reduced, and the change of tactics will still “take the fun out of fighting”.
“Am I right in interpreting your ‘unitarian’ violence as a binary state – an act is either violent or it is not, and the degree or form of violence does not matter?”
Yes. Although there WAS someone else who mentioned something that could be used on top of that unitarian base view. That you give each individual action a rating of 1 to 4, based on how many of the resulting actions happen from the intentional infliction (pain, damage, injury, and harm) It’s still a unitarian concept of violence, much like…. binary is ‘on’ or ‘off’ but you can use something like hexadecimals and computer languages which still have binary as the base language in a computer, but the computer doesn’t use a concept of ‘this is VERY 1, and this other thing is only a little 1’
“While that definition may be technically accurate, I do not consider it sufficient.”
Remember that the only reason I was using this whole theory was I reasoned it was the only way Maxima’s strategy would work well against Vehemence. If this is not how Vehemence’s powers work, then Maxima’s strategy would NOT work well. Which it wouldnt, especially if Vehemence doesnt bother to heal every little injury and suppress every bit of pain each time.
“ARC’s apparent strategy, translated into this analogy, assumes that the x axis is what charges Vehemence, the y axis is what causes him pain, and the z axis is what causes damage that he would then have to spend charge in repairing.”
I’m unclear of what you mean by this, so I can’t really respond to it, because the examples you gave for y axis and z axis are already incorporated INTO the example you gave for x axis.
“you give each individual action a rating of 1 to 4, based on how many of the resulting actions happen from the intentional infliction (pain, damage, injury, and harm)” – Pander
OK, that’s where the misunderstanding was coming from. Those were not meant as counts of how many of the ‘components of pain’ were present, they were intended as the relative intensity of each individual component. My mistake for picking values and a format that could support either interpretation.
Adapting the examples from my previous post to a format which may be a bit clearer. Each component has an intensity score reflecting how efficiently the energy applied goes into each component. I’ve quite arbitrarily picked a range from 0 to 5 for each component, for a total intensity score between 0/20 and 20/20:
Action…….A………B……..C
Pain……..1/5……3/5…..2/5
Harm…….1/5……1/5…..0/5
Damage..4/5……3/5…..0/5
Injury……1/5……1/5…..1/5
Total…….7/20….8/20….3/20
Conceptually, action A is your standard brawler brute-force smash, action B is Maxima’s targeted demolition strikes, and action C is something like a pressure-point pinch. Completely thin-air numbers, purely chosen to illustrate the difference between hypotheses.
Hypothesis X, unitarian violence: any violent act, of whatever type or intensity, gives Vehemence the same amount of charge. Under this hypothesis, it doesn’t matter what type of action you use. (And if Vehemence gets talking to whoever invented the idea of ‘microaggressions’, there would be no stopping him!)
Hypothesis Y, the apparent ARC hypothesis: only the Damage intensity (0/5-5/5) gives Vehemence charge, and the Pain intensity (0/5-5/5) acts as a deterrent. Under this hypothesis, action C is preferred: it doesn’t charge Vehemence, and it does drive the deterrent. Maxima is using action B (similar amounts of charge and deterrence) instead of C because [i] the Pain/deterrent intensity is greater and [ii] action C is much harder to deliver to an active opponent.
Hypothesis Z, the default assumption: Vehemence gains charge according to the total intensity (0/20-20/20), and the Pain intensity (0/5-5/5) also acts as a deterrent. Similar reasoning and conclusions to hypothesis Y, with action C still providing some charge.
Apologies for the delayed reply. The back end of the week has the busy evenings!