Grrl Power #981 – Victory pose
Ever since being given this opportunity, Vehemence has been legitimately going back and forth as to whether or not he was going to behave. After being handed such a one sided defeat, and seeing Sydney in such a good mood while she clowns on him, he figured he’d have to be a real bad guy to ruin her fun.
I am entirely enamored by the idea of horrific monsters/aliens/whatever holding mundane jobs. Like something that looks like it should be called a “Flesh Ripper” working at a box office or asking if you want fries with that. Or something that looks like an anthropomorphic spider that’s wearing stitched together human faces stretched partially over its own face working as a wedding planner. It isn’t wearing human remains on its face, I’m suggesting it has some fungal growth on its carapace that just happens to look like bits of person.
It’s even better if that thing’s boss looks like an extra from My Little Pony.
A few people were wondering how Sydney will get him back into the portal since she can only use two orbs at a time. Well, the lighthook can extend pretty far, so she could have just tossed him back towards the portal while extending it as she pushed. It would get her going pretty fast in the other direction by the time she overcame his velocity and mass, but it would work. It would work even better if she flew back toward the portal, then grabbed him and tugged, then stopped, flew back some more, tugged, etc. And some people suggested she could just body check him with the shield.
So just assume some combination of those.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
Worked a bit on the final fight. Some fights in books are there to either establish something about one of the characters, like they’re especially good at fighting or they’re a coward or something, or the fight drops something in the character’s lap, like a bunch of bandit’s equipment, or he’s rescuing someone who helps them out later or joins the party. Unless the fight is a setup to establish a character’s fighting chops, (think of the punks who corner Van Damme/Chuck Norris/a modern equivalent which I’m having trouble thinking of so I’ll just say John Wick – at the beginning of any movie they’re in) then usually the fight is going to be fairly close, right? Like, the author wants there to be some tension and usually doesn’t want his character to limp away missing a limb, but he also doesn’t want them to just drop kick the opposition into the sun because that would get boring – unless the whole thing is some spoof, commentary, or comedy like OnePunch.
So Sam and crew need to knock some heads and also take their lumps in the process.
Interestingly, Victor in the original Tamer books pretty much never gets hit. That is explained to a degree in the later books, but it also kind of goes against everything I just wrote. Still, Sam isn’t Victor, but he’s got a few advantages Victor doesn’t.
September’s vote incentive is up! It’s been over a year since Max was featured in one of these, so I figured it was time to revisit.
If you just popped by to see it right when it went up, you might have missed the update. Her nipples were a touch high in the first version, and if you poke through the comments there, you can see the reference I used, only that model’s boobs were about 3 cup sizes smaller. Anyway, I flew her nipples south for the winter and updated the relevant pics.
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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Earth is going to get a request that they stop messing around like this, in other news let us now discuss whether or not they should have flagged it the first time Sydney showed up.
They shouldn’t, as she came from the Alari homeworld the first time.
Second time during the interview might have been 2 short portals [one to travel there, the other to travel back] that didn’t grant enough time for the scanners to locate the direction before disappearing and leaving no trace [confirmed by Cora when we first meet her].
This portal would have been kept open while Vehemence made his choice, which might have been long enough to scan in comparison to the previous, seen, time.
And they were probably looking for it this rime.
You know what they say, once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. But this is the third time.
Agreed, after 2 incidents (probably 3 open/close events) in a few days of rare tech, at an unheard-of size, I think you’d leave your aether scanner on full time for a few months.
Given the amount and variety of traffic that comes and goes it would make sense that there would be some sort of system for detecting portals, wormholes, warps etc. if for no other reason than traffic control. There is probably a protocol for such things. All orbiting space craft enter orbit in a clockwise pattern and no warp jumps within a 10 light second radius sort of thing. Sydney porting in and out should show up on their traffic control like a 747 suddenly appearing on final approach into Heathrow.
I was thinking “like a man in a yard chair hoisted by an assortment of weather balloons appearing near LAX airport.”
I mean, she’s not that large, and the aetherium causeway she opens is relative to her size. But it’s still a danger to travel from/to Fracture Station. I’d guess that most likely the orbs are opening it somewhere outside the shipping lanes, but that’s not something that Sydney knows how to control, that she knows to control, or that the orbs will continue doing so. As little as Sydney knows about it, the Fracture Station authorities know even less about what will and won’t happen regarding this anomaly. (I mean, they know it’s an aetherium causeway, but they don’t know it’s the orbs doing it, or even that it’s Nth generation tech doing it.)
The bookmark is not the Fracture Station. It’s specific location above it. It will remain same (as much as a point in space can remain same) no matter how many times she will use it.
That is unless the aethereum causeway is essentially always Nth-level tech – certainly seems to be incredibly rare – not just that it would happen/open so close to the station, but that the appearance of it indicates the likelihood of a new “player”
Aethereum causeways may not be common at all. STC (Space Traffic Control) apparently know(s) how to use sensors of some sort to track where the other side is connected to, but if the space inside is essentially normal and simply enables sensors to travel to the end, “look around” and “report back” what space is on the other side, then the sensors sound merely advanced by Earth standards – not necessarily Nth-Level themselves
that said…. there must be something special about the causeway, because he’s apparently being pushed into it, but the air pressure on the other side would be immense. Maybe she can control things once they’re in there… who knows
Looks like Sean Connery’s outfit from Zardoz in the screen wiyhthe four-armed newscaster.
Or the DC character Vartox.
Who is for legal reasons in no way similar to Zed, the main character of Zardoz. And of course, for similar reasons, his voice acting in an animated appearance would never in any way sound vaguely Scottish. Of course.
The version from the Supergirl TV show seems to be confused with the Persuader from the Legion of Super-Heroes antagonist group the Fatal Five (has an axe that can cut even invulnerable people and a gruff, gravely voice like the DC animated Persuader), so he doesn’t really count.
The Vartox from the Power Girl comics is the best.
Hmmm…The Vartox I know of is a character from old Superman comics. I had to look at the hi-res page on Patreon but I definitely do see the resemblance. Vartox didn’t have green skin & the outfit is a bit different (somewhat reminds me of Vartox’s outfit), but his facial features are very close.
https://superman.fandom.com/wiki/Vartox (published 1974…Yes, I am that old)
There was two different times that this Superman comic had a short series with a story-arc with him in it. Heck, Vartox & Lana Lang were about to get married in one of the stories!
Zardoz!
Looks like a green man version of Zed from Zardoz.
The four armed lady also has six breasts. I bet she is a Precog/Seer, after all, forewarned is four armed.
Booooo! Bad pun.
Yes. More bad puns.
There’s nothing wrong with her buns!
Sweet, sweet buns.
also hot cross puns
6? I only see 2 with a stripped shirt covering them. If each stripe is supposed to be a pair of boobs then she has 8.
I’m pretty sure Jean Luc Picard would have something to say about this.
6 or 8 does not matter, we have confirmation of boobs.
There. Are. FOUR. Headlights!
Also we need more votes if we’re only number 3 on Top Web Comics, I want us back to our number one spot people.
VOTE
So, we’re assuming the portal, once created, stays open for a bit even after she lets go of the fly orb? Because she needs the shield orb in her hand at all times, in space.
I still think it would have been funny if he’d come back as a bug splat on her ‘windshield’.
Or tied up like Mad Max in Fury Road.
I would kind of like Mad Max to travel down Furry Road.
I’m picturing a lot of new zombie roadkill themed Fursonas.
I imagine they would be ‘Crossed’ style zombies.
well, almost. :)
Animal Crossings the Movie.
It’s also possible that with the latest pip, she can will the causeway to stay open after she lets go of the orb.
Maybe it stays open until the passengers/cargo are more than 10 meters away.
This also allows a fast ‘undo’ for erroneous or unsuitable destinations.
Hopefully this is a privilege only granted to users and it won’t stay open for pursuers.
Nice to see Morbo from Futurama still getting work!
But where is his co-anchor Linda? There are humans running around the galaxy, so she could be there.
About 950 years too early for her to be running around.
Morbo says tremble, puny earthlings! One day my race will destroy you all!
And now we know that they were trying to find the location of the Aetherium Causeway all the time, and have determined it came from Earth [based on the new reports in the background]. I guess this is the start of the new main storyline.
Also did wonder if Vehemence was planning on going rogue to begin with or decided to do it during. Sounds like a back and fourth, but surprised he decided to behave due to Halo having fun instead of the clear and present danger that they can cause without much trouble if he steps out of line. Even without the charge, he knows Maxima could push him into the portal at this power from the original battle.
I assume the reports are just because Earth is new to the galaxy and according to those headlines a Planet in disarray.
I can understand that thinking, but as one of the headlines mentions the Fel Supercarrier being one-shot, I feel this was more of displaying the information they have for the planet at the other side of the causeway.
The Fel Supercarrier was destroyed in what I assume to be at least a month in the comic before the attempted kidnapping of Maxima. It feels a bit out of sorts to be on the news along with another station talking about talks breaking down when those talks wouldn’t have happened, if both stations are broadcasting now.
Yeah, because it’s not like they’d have the technology to bring up a variety of news stories about a given planet, some more current than others. Why, that would require some form of high-density information storage and a sort of “search algorithm”, if you will.
Who said the peace talks were with off-worlders?
We don’t know whether that was
“Yeah…[we tracked the origin and it’s that same crazy Earth planet]”
or
“yeah…[we need to know that, since it might be another crazy place like that crazy Earth planet]”
Hooray for plot advancement and the heroes’ reckless actions leading to logical consequences!
They’ll have to send someone to Earth, preferably someone who has been there, like…
Ooo, I don’t know….
Ray Cosmos?
They already did, remember? They had that one alien who was a member of the Twilight council. And Sydney got back there was a single pain / scene of him listening to the UN bicker with itself and rolling his eyes.
Vehemence may want to have a good fight, and he definitely seems ‘villainous’ at times… but he’s not enough of a bastard to ruin Sydney’s fun.
He may be a dangerous supervillain but he doesn’t seem like a petty asshole.
This object lesson. No matter how hard you hit, how hard you can take it.
Least obvious opponent has the potential to kick your can across the galaxy!
Officer Derpbird should dit on private Xenomorphmouth’s shoulder.
In my mind he sounds like Barney Fife.
The positioning of those six eyes would be absolute hell on any vision aside from straight, lol.
I also find it a bit funny that a mutant xenomorph is taking orders from a googly eyed chicken…
Perhaps it’s a Psycho Chicken (run run run awaaaay) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnBlst3T7bY
There exist people who can handle seeing from both eyes even though they’re not focused on the same things. I’m not particularly good at it, but I’ve known some walleyed people who seemed to be perfectly comfortable with doing this, as demonstrated by their uncanny scores at various video games that required one to both pay attention to combat and some other thing at the same time.
My cousin took a biology class where the professor had bimonocular vision. She had complete control over the movement and focus of each eye. She would look into the microscope with one eye and use the other to sketch what she was seeing. She used to practice by reading two books simultaneously.
I can move my eyes independent of each other like a chameleon. It really freaks people out when I look both right and left at the same time.
I once got hypnotized by boobs at school and upon being reminded of the location of the girls face, look up with one eye and replied “Sorry, I can do both.” I only got beat half to death by her brother.
Some people even make a career out of being able to look in multiple directions as once.
“Damn your eyes!”
“Too late.”
My assumption was that this would link to info about Harem. Marty’s good too, though.
I’m not sure those are eyes. I think its eye(s?) are under that visor on the top of his head. Those things on the sides of his head – scent pits, maybe? He’s kinda cobra-like.
They might just be eye-spots, to ward off predators!
That first “intelligence” screen would seem to be at odd with the Hitchhiker’s Guide’s “Mostly Harmless.” Mind you, most of humanity would be harmless. There a few dozen that are anything but!
To be fair, Ford Prefect’s original draft of Earth was a lot longer. It was just edited down by the publisher a lot. :)
No, “Mostly Harmless” is still a decent description of Earth. It’s a quantity vs. quality thing. “Mostly Harmless” tells you that most of the things and people aren’t dangerous. Which is reasonably true as far as it goes.
But it gives you no indication *HOW* dangerous the exceptions to the rule might be. And in this comic, Earth has some really exceptionally dangerous exceptions.
Either Morbo the News-monster is older than he looks by the year 3000, all his species look the same to puny Earth senses, or he looks just like his great-great-great-whatever grandfather.
Given how tamed and well-behaved Vehemence seems to be in this sequence, I wonder how long it shall take before Archon gives him the same criminal-reformation-program deal that Detla and Jabberwokky got and he is drafted in the team. He seems ripe for it if you ask my opinion. Letting him rot in his cell stoned to the gills any more seems a total waste of good heavy-hitter potential.
I figure there will be a total invasion where the good guys are overwhelmed and then in the middle of the absolute chaos they drop Vehemence. After that he joins the team.
Nah, he’s a prisoner forever and let’s be real so is Jabberwocky. It’s not like there’s a time limit on her “reformation program”
Unlike Jabberwocky though he’s not gonna be allowed to join the team, he’s too powerful.
If this was the real world, you’d probably be right. But this isn’t the real world. It’s one with superheroes. I think Michael’s grasp on the genre is pretty good.
But ultimately, only time will tell. It doesn’t feel like it’s helpful to decide what will happen in this comic based on our bad experiences in the real world, especially if it sours our enjoyment of the comic.
This sequence shows Max and/or Sydney (and Dabbler, by extension) can contain him if need be without excessive difficulty. If they can trust Dabbler as a team member so they can Vehemence.
Juggernaut has been on the X-Men and Dr Doom is apparently a Gourdian of the Galaxy now, superhero settings don’t always make sense
I could see Jabberwocky becoming genuinely invested in the team whereas Vehemence might join the team but he would always be available for a betrayal/return to evil story line line somewhere down the road. You could really stir things up by shipping he and Sydney in the meantime.
I could see Vehemence being open to the idea of a face-heel re-turn at some point, but only if the payoff from it was sufficiently better than what he’d be getting as a (probationary?) member of ARC. Available in storyteller’s terms, more than in-universe terms. He’s a brawler, and he’s not necessarily all that ‘Good’, but he’s pragmatic enough not to turn down a steady diet of square meals just for a few feasts.
Only 180 currencies? I thought it would be more.
Yeah and that’s just the ones officially traded.
I’d think trading thousands of currencies on the galactic scale would be hugely problematic. They probably keep it to the bare minimum. 180 seems like a reasonable number to me, assuming that they’re trying to keep it down as much as feasible without having a single government imposing a universal currency. Not that a galactic empire would be able to get it down to one, mind you, just that it could probably reduce it to well below 180.
As far as currencies in the galaxy, I’d guess it would be vastly more. Non-galactic currencies might not be useful for buying galactic goods directly, but I’d think most trade on individual planets would be on those individual planets, not with the galaxy at large. After all, for anyone besides Sydney, getting from the surface to space is still an expensive proposition, even if they have vessels that can manage it with grace.
… I should double-check the comic before I post crap more often.
Cannot believe syd was confident enough to actually swap hands with the shield orb in deep space!
She did not actually, she swapped between the fly orb and the lighthook
Couldn’t have, 6 orbs above head in previous page, shield up, hand holding book, orb in left hand.
You are right that the blue orb went from the right hand to the left. However, there are only 4 orbs visible above her head in each picture. Presumably, the fifth is behind her hair.
They are all shown in both pages, the unknown orb which is orangish with white shining on her hair with a tiny bit of the sphere in the picture between purple and green……or she suddenly became a conehead, then the unknown orb in the current page is between yellow and green in the first panel. I respect the hell out of an artist with that attention to detail and continuity……but it raises another in point, didn’t she get passive buffs in a recent upgrade? Is the shield passive now?
Now every single villain will be looking for anti-causeway kryptonite soon enough, otherwise they’ll have to tie up sydney’s love interest and broadcast an evil scheme on all channels.
Good luck with that, villains. Frix is more than capable of rescuing himself. (Now, I can see Sydney maybe wanting to tie up her love interest, and she has just the orb for the job… but that’s one comic we’ll never see, unless it’s a vote incentive…)
Morbo moved up to the network news.
He is not just killing it. He DESTROYS THE NEWS.
Pick option 2 because you’re getting it anyway.
You are effectively Guantanamo’d. They’re NEVER letting you go and you’re life will consist of your cell and that playing target dummy in that quarry.
Let’s hope not. As of this sequence, he seems as fitting an addition to the team as Detla and Jabberwokky, and as valuable as Max, Sydney, Dabbler, and Hiro. Letting him rot in his cell stoned to the gills anymore seems a criminal waste of superhuman potential, and would fulfil no discernible good for Archon or humanity. This sequence strongly suggests he is rehabilitated enough to belong in the team.
It’s funny how actions have consequences, isn’t it?
Maybe he should have thought of that before the attempted murder.
You seem… bitter. I’m curious what you’re basing your predictions on, given the overall tone of the comic.
According to EU it’s 195 countries -193 member Sates , 2 countries that are non-member observer states: the Holy See and the State of Palestine –
But Taiwan – the United Nations considers it represented by the People’s Republic of China – and The Cook Islands and Niue _both states in free association with New Zealand which are members of several UN specialized agencies and have been recognized “full treaty-making capacity”, but are neither member states nor non-member observer states.-
For currencies 19 countries use the euro (€) -1 € is about 11.17 US$ or 1.50 Canadian $-.
It’s pretty exact for the currencies and countries…
For langages it had a bias the top 10 is by number of Speaker – first or second langage –
1 English
2 Mandarin Chinesse – first native langage –
3 Hindi
4 Spanish – more accurately Castellano, Basques and Catalonians are admant about this –
5 Standard Arabic – second langage for many Muslims –
6 Bengali – in India –
7 French – 2nd colonial empire in the 19th and first half of 20th century usefull in Africa –
8 Russian
9 Portuguese – Brazil is the largest portugese speaking nation –
10 Indonesian
To get 2000 languages, you have to have a different definition than the one Earth uses. You know, like, there’s English, and then there’s whatever they speak in Liverpool, and whatever they speak in Glasgow, and whatever they speak in Aberdeen. (The last one, I sat beside a family on a train in Scotland for four hours and by the end I was ALMOST certain that they were speaking English words and not Dutch.)
I saw an estimate of 3,000, not counting dialects, from a ’50s source. Now I’ve seen counts higher than 7,000 for 2021. (Hey, that’s proportional to the population increase.)
This site says about 7100. https://www.theintrepidguide.com/how-many-languages-are-there-in-the-world/
It’s a long-tail phenomenon, with 150-200 languages with more than 1M speakers, 700 with more than 100K, and so on. If I’ve guessed the curve right… using North American native languages to form the low end of the curve, it looks like about 1 in 20 of the rest has 10k or more speakers.
Thus, the alien estimate probably uses about 1k speakers as the breaking point for what is a language. Or, alternately, it groups all the related languages together and just counts the truly different ones.
‘ej, HeghtaHvIS Qo’noS Ta’, Qo’noSnganpu’ je vIraDta’bogh, qeylIS vItlhob.:)
I’m simultaneously disappointed that no one got what this was, and also full of pride that my nerd cred is officially back up on high if I’m the only one who knows what this means.
Knew it was Klingon, but I’m still working on common Terran languages so I have no idea what the translation would be.
They could also be counting the languages of significant populations of non-Terran residents who’ve moved here permanently. Those languages wouldn’t show up on any of our databases, since they were trying to blend in, and many of them probably still are.
I think you meant UN not EU.
Yep, showing off that kind of tech is stupid. Dabbler is right there – how is she not screaming at them?
Maybe she doesn’t realize Sydney chose the Fracture as the destination.
Because she’s looking forward to the resulting entertainment that is on it’s way? She’s not exactly a model soldier and dedicated fan of subtlety you know.
I have a number of theories,
one being neither Sydney nor Cora had told Dabbler about it, so this is her first time seeing Sydney can do this and will appropriately freak out next page. (also goes with theory Sydney forgot to tell anyone what Cora told her or just forgot…ADHD it happens, even with important information.
or Dabbler knows, says nothing, assuming she might be able to meet the Orb’s makers if Sydney draws enough attention to herself, showing she found them and the Orbs’ maker take notice and come to retrieve them to keep them out of Xevoarchy (a lower civilization by comparison) hands…or this but Dabbler believes Sydney IS one of these advanced beings and is just playing around on Earth playing superhero. Like a bored Q or those higher dimension beings that show up from time to time in comic books to play at being a superhero or bug the heroes.
*if she believes the later she’d likely have to think Sydney is either a restricted avatar or a really good actor.
Because it’s already been shown and detected. This was obviously a planned move to use on Vehemence.
Never mind the rest of the galaxy. There’s something here on Earth that took out a being that knew what it was doing with the orbs.
Are you referring to Sydney’s unknown predecessor?
Because we have exactly zero information about that being, besides that they surrendered the orbs, willingly or unwillingly, at some point prior to Sydney taking possession of/becoming possessed by them. No idea even of how long ago that happened, nor of its nature.
For that matter, we don’t actually know if there was a predecessor. Orbs could have popped into existence 10 seconds before Sydney found them. Nothing in the comic so far to refute that possibility.
We can make some reasonable guesses based on information we have (assuming all of it is true).
1: The orbs were found in a coral reef, in such a way that they could be picked up. That indicates that their arrival there was relatively recent – the coral hadn’t grown over, caged, or at the very least obscured them.
2: When Sidney first used the Causeway function, the “last destination” (Earth) was glitchy and presumed to be hazardous to use. That makes me think that the last owner of the orbs had an unfortunate accident when they went to Earth, probably involving the Causeway.
The orbs aren’t normal items, so it might not be possible for the coral to do that. They could have been there forever.
I think the ‘glitchy’ tab for Earth might be because if she’d used it she’d have arrived before leaving.
Temporal paradoxes are nasty. Vissier proved that a closed timelike curve becomes a ‘white hole’ releasing theoretically-infinite amounts of energy into the universe. Turns out breaking causality also breaks the law of conservation of mass/energy. Presumably just until the cataclysm destroys the portals/wormholes/whatever that have closed a timelike curve.
It has also been speculated that the reason that the orb reference was glitchy was because of the Veil. The Veil was deployed on Earth to hide Earth native non-humans.
It could also be that the fuzzy reference was due to the previous owner of the or being injured etc unless lost control or relinquish the orbs. We’re still not sure of the previous owner of the orbs is alive or dead either.
Maybe the previous owner of the orbs ascended.
Correction. About the Veil. It was designed to hide people who came to Earth as well. At this point we’re still not sure how many of the species that it hides are native to Earth and not just adopted.
For instance the succubi are definitely an adopted species covered by the Veil
The previous user of Sydney’s Orbs forgot to account for an inconsistent space-time anomaly when they were first traveling to Earth. They were going to arrive safely in orbit, instead they materialized inside solid rock (well, a coral reef). The Bermuda Triangle is a harsh and fickle mistress.
maybe the Bermuda Triangle was caused by the orbs being there/arriving there, but then they drifted to where sydney found them?
We don’t actually know how Sydney got the orbs. We just know that she was a terrible liar when she said she found them while scuba diving in the Florida keys.
Eh, the Lantern Ring theory or lost artifact of the fallen hero of old, honestly given the comedic tone I give those low odds.
However,
I am still banking on the dropped toy theory.
that some higher dimensional beings were visiting Earth and their child had the orbs as a toy but accidentally left them behind when they went home. Rather than return for them the child or their parents just bought a new set at their local trans-dimensional toy store.
Sydney comes along, finds them later.
My headcanon is that, after a long and illustrious career, Sydney finally unlocks the final pip on the flight orb, travels back in time, and leaves them there for herself. They exist only in the time loop thus created.
Mighty Max scenario?
My headcanon is they’re an Nth Egg.
The purpose of the leveling system is to get the user’s soul accustomed to the increasing complexity of their transcendent nature. As a kind of prize for being the vessel for the nascent god-thing, the user gets brought along instead of being the eggshell that cracks open and is left behind, broken, in the birth process.
So the feeling of Touching a Star that Sydney had? That wasn’t just an encounter with the raw power of the orbs, but the still-developing CONSCIOUSNESS of the baby Nth she’s in symbiosis with.
If the host dies, the egg just waits longer. If an Nth is truly immortal and the egg is as well, this is no less effective for producing young than having a billion kids and hoping some of them survive the spawning process. So maybe Sydney’s the first host and maybe not. Wouldn’t matter.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Or perhaps she’s not the vessel for a nascent Nth, she is the nascent Nth.
I like this concept. I have played with the idea myself but never really used it to its full potential. Basically a species that if they reproduced in their natural state their offspring start off with god like power (think the Q from Star Trek Voyager), but if they take on physical forms first their offspring while their spirit is the offspring of the parents’ true forms is limited to only the power level of a normal soul and their starting body is physical and limited by biology. Avatar born, so they get to grow up with the limitations, grow into their powers, and learn what its like for the life forms they will interact with later.
as opposed to those born into such power that they have little to no regard for “lower life forms” until they spend some time as avatars/incarnations, or have some epiphany moment *if ever*.
-think like when Q was turned human only done as a cultural norm for their children.
Consider a race of God-like energy beings that reproduces by transforming members of other races into God-like energy beings. This fulfills all the requirements of ‘reproduction’ as commonly understood. Maybe Syd picked up their ‘egg’ – and it filled in a bunch of low-order pips as things that this mind is already capable of handling – and she is now in the process of being transformed into one of them – with more orb pips opening as her mind and competence expand.
so like a cosmic parasite, Cosmic Assimilator, or celestial zombies?
I could see a Superman vs Lantern corp discussion there (Chosen? This is conscription!)
cosmic beings (we have chosen you to become one of us)
person: you didn’t ask, you just decided for me, and now I have to be one of you and know and feel things I shouldn’t…
-going to stop there, a very real possibility that would look like parasitism, erasure of personality, or brainwashing; is the very real possibility of someone ascending going through Kaguya syndrome.
which if forced on someone is a real dick move. Its one thing to accept and seek out ascension knowing this could happen, its another for giant space wasps to lay eggs in your soul.
Why would you assume the Nth tech is so clumsy? It didn’t picked Sydney randomly, it CHOOSE her, and it’s going to modify her mind in so subtle way Sydney would never feel violated or forced into anything …
to be clear I don’t think this is the outcome; I was responding to Bear’s speculation.
I am still betting the orbs will turn out to be a Nth level being’s toy that got left behind on Earth.
nut yeah, I was thinking 3rd tier not Nth, never heard of something above an ascended class altering someone into one of them with drastic mental changes.
Related idea to yours, what if the unknown orb is the crew member sleeping chamber (captain’s chamber), and the Nth level being has been in there the whole time sleeping (or observing) *funnier if sleeping*.
conversely Sydney still could be the Nth level being and the unknown orb be a back up/escape pod and Sydney’s true higher self form is asleep in there so her consciousness is more like a dream or avatar restricted to only have the memories she accumulates while alive.
A new foe to vanquish!?
I’m reminded of a quote from the end of Arthur C Clarke’s short story, Rescue Party.
“We had better be polite to them. After all, we only outnumber them about a thousand million to one.”
There is also Alan Dean Foster’s “With Friends Like These…” short story, with the last lines:
The Professor turned old eyes on him. They held irony, and they held musing.
“What,” he said, “are we going to do with them when there are no more Yops?”
(The cover art for that short story collection also ended up as the cover art for GURPS Aliens)
Great to see Sydney in action as main character. Yes, dear, I know other people said this.
I just love to see a normal looking person, wearing glasses, below average height, normal bust – wreaking havoc on the super monsters.
Only 128km from Sydney to the station ? Even if it is only the size of a small planet the scale seems off . The international Space station is in an orbit 350km above the Earth and looking down the Earth fills most of the view.
You are assuming that their ‘km’ is the equivalent of Earth’s kilometers.
klaatu miles!
I think the narrative text can be relied on to use Earth units for us 4th-wall readers. That panel apparently has a really narrow field of view from a long distance away.
Roughly, very very roughly
It’s just a very wide aperture camera perspective, ‘kay? Think ‘fisheye lens’ and you’ll understand why Syd looks that big.
The Xevoarch should know about this… but does he really? Given how they are monitoring Earth and are “Yeah… this place is a ish show, obviously.”
When you add Aetherium Causeway, which is a pretty big deal to begin with, to we didn’t register a whomping huge ship along with it and you have a reason for alarm.
Actually this raises some interesting questions about the galactic state of aether tech. Causeways obviously aren’t unheard of, just uncommon, but apparently they’re still pretty hard to make. Power requirements usually scale exponentially with size, so maybe it generally takes a ship-sized generator to make a person-sized portal – in which case it wouldn’t be uncommon to send only small objects through, and 2 people being spaced then retrieved wouldn’t be that notable.
On the other hand if causeways are only ever used to move battleships or larger, or only for dire emergencies due to sacrificing a planet or whatever, then yes a teensy person-sized one would definitely raise eye
browshoods.He’d make for a good “Ace in the hole” for some future crisis. Drop him in the pot, he powers up, does enough to help out so that he earns some trust or maybe just a moment’s inattention and then he pulls a Kaiser Soze.
Probably would take something out of the larger (beyond Earth) universe to put him in such a situation, so his exodus could easily be a stolen spaceship or the like, allowing him to stay out of ARC’s reach until he can be a useful plot point again.
That post was supposed to be a reply to an above thread. Not sure how I “missed”
This forum does trolly things like that sometimes. It’s part of it’s unique charm.
Or maybe he escapes and then suddenly show up when the heroes face their darkest hour, saves the world, thank the heroes for the fun and violence and leaves without a trace.
Vehemence is definitely the guy they want on their side in an outright alien invasion of earth.
The only issue is that a massive war may amp him so much that he’d basically be totally out of control.
LMAO! Saw Morbo look a like… first thought was him doing a news thing on Texas… “WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!”
Funny you mentioned MLP i was thinking Halo pulled what Rainbow Dashin the last MLP movie and alerted someone with her display
Anti climatic, but Halo and Maxima tend to make things that way.
Nine weeks to the big 999th.
You say that and then suddenly [HIATUS].
*Crosses fingers, crosses toes, crosses heart, crosses everything else, double crosses, triple crosses, spots ninja hit squad, crosses street and runs like hell.*
*shakes fist* Don’t taunt Murphy like that!
Only 128km? That is very close…or Fractral is very small…
If that ‘km’ is even Earth kilometers, keep in mind that Fracture Station is “about the size of the moon”. I don’t have the link handy, but it was one of the first comics featuring fracture station. I can’t remember if it was the first or second. That “about” means it could be a bit smaller.
It’s small enough that you can make out surface details instead of a grey wash when at the distance Sydney appears at – 128km is a reasonable estimate for that distance. After all, artificial structures with advanced sci-fi tech do not need to be the size of a planet to have surface gravity and an atmosphere, and an artificial space station the size of a planet would be a giant (literally) pain to do any kind of maintenance on. Babylon 5 is big enough to be a “city in space”, and if you appeared 128km away from it, it’d barely be more than a dot at only ~8.45km in length.
Of course, what ARCHON doesn’t know is that the next time they leave Vehemence stranded in Space he’ll just respond with “Ka-spacesuit”.
DAVE! Regarding horrified monsters doing mundane things, I recommend you following anime/manga/novels:
The devil is a part-timer
https://global.bookwalker.jp/series/75706/the-devil-is-a-part-timer-manga/
Overlord
https://www.crunchyroll.com/overlord
How does Overlord qualify? Maybe Monster Girl Doctor, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, Ancient Magus Bride; or something, but Overlord is an Isekai where a guy enters a world as a sociopathic undead overlord and goes further and further off the deep end as they butcher and take advantage of a much lower level world as they realize how defenseless much of that world really is to them.
but yeah
Ancient Asian Proverb says: The Wise Man does not do anything to annoy someone who can lob you into the Sun in under a second. (I don’t know WHICH proverb, exactly, but I’m sure there IS one somewhere!)
Interesting to see the portal does not allow air to travel through it, making it safe for atmospheric usage.
Pretty plowerful tech, here. (Although this is kind of the point.)
We see that in the shuttle bays of both Star Wars and Star Trek.
A gas impermeable force field that spacecraft can just pass through.
This implies you could walk through it in a spacesuit.
Of course, Maxima could do much the same thing to him. He’d be totally helpless if she just went pure speed, and took him into orbit – either by punches or blasts. But it’s a much better ego blow to have Halo do it casually….
Sydney is pleased, but sticky.
Dave, I really, really prefer this style of art over the 3D stuff you did for the past couple of years. It’s SO much better.
With regard to the artwork, the highlighting around the backlit characters looks really good.