Grrl Power – Dabbler’s Science Corner #2
Unplanned bonus comic! Except not really. This is an old vote incentive I did, and when I swapped it out with a new one, I never posted this anywhere, so I though posting it now right after a Harem heavy page would be good since anytime she shows up there are lots of questions about the particulars of her powers. There will be a regular Thursday page as well.
The other big trick Harem can do involving teleporting has to do with distance. She can always teleport to herself, meaning under the right conditions, her range is effectively unlimited. For example, if one of her is on the West Coast and one of her is on the East Coast, she can travel the distance. It that case she’s kind of not really teleporting, she’s un-teleporting in one location, and re-teleporting that version of her next to herself. Of course she couldn’t teleport back without herself as an anchor, but considering there’s up to 5 of her, she could keep herself in 4 different cities and pop the 5th back and forth between them.
There are still plenty more questions to be answered about Harem so maybe there’s enough material for another Science corner featuring her.
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Dude, great timing on this one, vote incentive or not.
I actually have been waiting for more of these Dabbler Science Corners, because seriously, they’re pretty awesome breaks in the action. I’m waiting for the series of them that break down Sydney’s skill tree.
I think we had this one before.
We did; check DaveB’s blurb.
Dave writes comments on his strips? (insert huge evil grin)
Hey, better than stripping in his comments!
Although, even then, I imagine a segment of the readership would be happy with that. ;-)
If she’s as strong as Anvil, why’s anvil rated as a “3” and Harem a “2” on the Strength bar?
My guess is statistics. How likely is it that at any given time Harem will have called in all her selves? Anvils power level is constant.
Well, Anvil’s power is consistent…Mostly. There is the factor of absorbing & storing of kinetic energy as an additional factor. That will have an effect, ya’ know.
As theslackerinitiative says, the star ratings are for typical usage. Most of the time Harem is 0 star strength (normal person). Very rarely would she be at the peak of 3. So 2 is actually taking the higher average, compared to the other option of 1.
1 body… = ***
2 bodies = **
3 bodies = **
4 bodies = *
5 bodies = _
As you can see, from the above list, the average is two stars (the ‘mode’ average to use the correct term, although it is also the median and mean average). So DaveB is perfectly correct.
Additionally, Anvil’s strength increases during battle, as was amply demonstrated with the “nose boop” incident, thus driving her average higher
She’s approximately as strong as “base” Anvil, but no where near as strong as “charged up” Anvil
If you’re repeating because you’re struggling to keep up to two a week, drop back down to one a week, or maybe alternate one a week, two a week. Better quality than quantity.
Nope, he is repeating because it is a page that we have been looking for but have been unable to find. So he is doing it as a favour to us. Given that he is keeping unwaveringly to his published schedule it actually meant a bit of extra work, rather than less.
Plus, do not forget that there is still the current vote incentive posted as well. Which is/will be gradually getting more detail, through the month.
Much appreciated DaveB, thank you.
I still think it makes more sense that if she reduces herself by one copy then she is left with a pile of stuff where that copy was standing, and if it was one of her customized copies she has to recustomize it.
I would vote for that option, because the reverse would be that she always arrived naked. But, fan service aside, that does get a tad inconvenient for every day usage. Let alone the implications of having to constantly buy new clothes. Because it would be inconvenient, or impossible, to recover the dropped ones for any long range reabsorbtions.
So doing it the way she does is a very practical arrangement. And perfectly logical too. Her body goes into some kind of stasis, along with whatever she is wearing. So when she comes out, she is still just as badly wounded, as she went in, for instance. It also explains why her tatoos and hair dyes etc persist.
Star Trek handles it exactly the same kind of way if transportees are put into a pattern buffer. When they go in or come out they are fully clothed. In fact, if she can teleport with clothes, it would be rather a stretch to say that they do not follow the same logic when she unteleports.
She can teleport with guns and clothes.
If she unteleports, she basicly teleports ‘to limbo’ (or wherever it is she goes between jumps) and doesn’t come back.
So everything she has with her goes along for the ride
This may hint to an interesting point: She can un-teleport with clothes and can re-create that body with clothes – this supports the limbo idea. But when she un-teleports she gets some energy from the “stored(?)” body – how does that fit to the limbo idea (srsly asking)?
Plus – and here I think may lie a special difficulty – when she un-teleports a body with clothes on, what about the energy of the clothes? And what about the shape of the worn clothes when the body who wears them is not there with them?
We know that super-powers can create energy, or draw it from somewhere else. See Maxima’s energy attack as an example. We know that, in duplicating herself, in the first place, Harem is capable of creating and/or controlling vast amounts of matter/energy (they are just different parts of the same equation). So we need not be too concerned that side-effects of her power also have apparent energy creation aspects too.
One possible explanation is the alternate dimension one I proposed, some time ago. That the extra Harem bodies are actually summoned from an alternate Earth. So there would be no energy required, to create the bodies. They already existed. It is just a matter of bringing them to the same location. And that is handled in the same way as she does her teleporting.
Similarly, using that theory, that ones put in storage are simply stuck in between those dimensions. As time is a property of the time-space continuum, anything removed from it would not be subject to time. So putting clothing into storage and then removing it would simply be moving an object out of our universe and then back into it, as opposed to creating it.
Even if Harem does not use the alternate Earth’s mechanism, the latter part is a good way of visualising other effects (such as her putting it in storage by taking it out of time-space via manipulating time*). Although energy does come into it (angular momentum through planetary rotation, altitude differences creating potential energy differences, body momentum and not least the actual energy implication involved in moving a body to a remote location), her basic power is one of moving things, rather than controlling energy.
Given that, I visualise that she unconsciously has, similarly to Anvil, a capacity to store or displace excess energies that are generated as unwanted side-effects of her teleportation. Then, later, uses the stored energy to offset a similar, but opposite unwanted effect. Or similarly diverting it, if she operates by that mechanism instead.
So if there is any energy involved in moving objects into and out of time-space (consult a theoretical physicist/mathematician on that one), she could either tap her battery for it, or shunt the energy to and from whatever, presumably extra-dimensional, sources she usually uses.
* It is not inconceivable that a teleporter could develop time-travel capabilities, given how time-space is linked. Whatever mechanism they are using to bypass the normal limits on physical travel (especially if able to teleport instantly, rather than being limited to the speed of light) may, if used in a different manner, be similarly able to move through time.
About teleporters developing time-travel, read Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series. The dragons can time-travel (they call it “Timing”). When it first comes up, a character (F’lar) says “History cannot be changed, only understood.” Time-travel is one of the key plot devices in several of the stories.
Her ability makes sense the way it is if it follows the Holographic Universe theory described in “The Holographic Universe” by Michael Talbot.
Aww, I wanna know who was doing the off camera ice assist and who belongs to the boot in panel 6. I don’t actually remember whether there are any item users besides Syd and Peggy, but it looks like the Boot is accompanied by a stick/staff of some kind. (Or sitting in a folding chair, they are wrasslin’ after all.)
Well, according to the dialogue, I’d have to guess that the boot belongs to Math…
The style looks like Maxima’s boots. Straps fastening them shut. As to who dunnit. Don’t leave out the other ladies as suspects. This is one wild bunch.
The icecream would be Sydney’s doing.
While that would be supremely in character for Sydney, somehow I doubt she’d just say “Ow my face” in reply to a punch from Harem.
Might be Dabbler.
It can’t be Dabbler, she is in shot. Plus she looks surprised, so it is unlikely to be a remote activity she is cybernetically controlling, for example.
I think the object just above the boot you mentioned is the second boot, it’s just that the part closest to the speech bubble is blue/ floor coloured.
Anvil leg discolouration panel 6.
No, she’s wearing pink gym shorts; for … reasons.
https://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/285/3/c/leela_vs_amy_by_kineticman-d30ls21.jpg
Oh, great! Keep going: https://www.futurama-madhouse.com/grabs/4acv07/407-24.jpg
More important question: how can she eat do much and not gain weight or increase her cup size? She looks like a C cup in a room of superheroic DD cups.
each of her active bodies needs to be fueled separately. remember this isn’t one person eating for 5.
Also, she seems to be pretty physically active. Must burn off a lot of calories.
I must have missed this earlier so thanks for the repeat. And some of us appreciate the C cup, yeah. ;)
It was part of the vote incentive. You need to vote more often, to see some of DaveB’s other art.
yup saw this one when you posted it the first time but still cool and very informative for people who want answers because they cant keep it in mind that this is a comic lol
Comic? DaveB is channelling another dimension. Like Tolkien did with Middle Earth. Sooner or later, I shall perfect my technique and find Sydney’s world! :-D
Hmm, this begs the question as to whether or not she can teleport to a place currently observed by one of her multiples. If not, then it implies that she has to see more than her destination but her route as well.
It was my impression that because of the way her brains are entangled, there is only one consciousness. She either see’s something or doesn’t, no matter which pair of eyes sees it. It is similar to how you can feel things with both your left and right hand but still know which one is feeling it.
They are all her, so it does not matter which one can see it. And the fact that she can teleport to a familiar place 100s of miles away, such as her home, means that she is not having to see the route, only the destination.
And that helps explain (for those still grasping at understanding) how she can reach her destination instead of space
She teleported into a closed ambulance with only video surveillance of the inside and outside (Bank robbery event) to work with.
Harem: the ultimate assassin/terrorist.
So we know she can make coppies of herself and everything she teleports, either destroying the original or keeping the original around, yet quantumly entangled with the other versons of itself (one mind, multiple boddies) to be kept or destroyed at a later time.
A simple application would be to fire a teleported bullet out of a gun that was modified after being teleported. Afterwards just un-teleport both and the new versons and the things ceace to exist. A non-existing bullet from a gun that never existed in the first place.
A more complicated application would be to grab onto Maxima and teleport, destroying the original, and then later destroying the copy. No more Maxima.
She, or her buddy, would also make the perfect suicide bomber, one that doesn’t die after suiciding and with a bomb that, after being un-teleported after the explosion, will leave no residue or component evidence.
Heck, even if she can’t destroy both the original and the copy, she would still be the perfect kidnapper. First you teleport someone away quietly while everyone assumes that they are still there (because you can still see them there) then she destroys the original to be left with only the one she carried off.
And lets not even forget the infamous forgery scandal with the disappearing evidence. Also fun to do with very expensive pieces of technology (like laptops and video game systems).
And then there is the high financial crimes she is capable of, knowing exactly what is going on in multiple markets and being able to react to them instantly in each of the others has some frightening applications. Harem has no trouble paying for 5 meals at once because she is filthy rich, and that is before she starts either breaking the law or doing things that the laws are not designed to prohibit.
And even then there begins to be questions about what happens after time when the atoms that were once part of the teleported body are lost for others (cell reproduction and replacement, yo) and with all the modifications. Does the ink from her body-specific tatoos just fall to the ground when she un-teleports? What about the cells in her body that were created after the initial seperation (it could be a bloody mess left behind). And, just as importantly, what happens to those atoms that were once part of her body but have fallen away and are part of other things now? Could you grow a plant fertalized with her dead skin cells and hair, feed the plant to someone, than unteleport those parts of the plant (that are now part of the person who ate the plant) in order to cause catestrophic internal bleeding, internal tissue loss, and other not-so-nice things?
I guess we just have to call a “mystery science theater” on this one.
You are making a slightly incorrect assumption, in my opinion. Things which are unteleported are not destroyed, they are put into storage. A limited capacity storage.* So the more things she put in there, to dispose of incriminating evidence, the less her future capacity becomes.
Although, technically, she is disintegrating her original body, when she teleports, and creating a new one at the arrival point, she has not, as far as we know, managed to isolate the disintegration part. And that is just a manner of describing what she is doing. There may not actually be an act of disintegration. She could just be folding space, rather than using the Star Trek destroy and rebuild technique.
Even though she obviously has managed to do the reverse, namely not disintegrating. Which is how she copies herself. But, again, plenty of ways she might be doing it even with no destruction of body being involved.
* We do not know the nature of the storage. It may be like the pattern buffer in Star Trek, or it may not. Whatever it is though, we know that things that come out are in exactly the same state as when they went in.
Which is actually were I assumed you were initially going with the unteleporting of the bullet. Because, if she could capture a bullet in mid-flight, and chose to retain it’s momentum on releasing it from storage, she could fire a bullet without a gun. Which is handy in as much as not taking up much of her storage capacity. But deeper than that, if the gun remained in the possession of an enemy, forensic analysis would match it to his weapon. Thus she could frame an enemy, for killing a head of state, for instance.
Were we ever told that they were only put into storage and that they couldn’t be destroyed as well? If her clothes go with her than that means she has a version of Dabbler’s hammerspace and possibly that her clothes are all teleport-coppied as well (which would reduce her carying capacity by the entire amount of coppied clothes she has, unless she also keeps the possibly teli-coppied clothes in that hammerspace (it gets complicated quickly)). Knowing Herem, she probably wouldn’t have too much issue with having to dress herself from naked whenever she comes out of that hammerspace (assuming it is a hammerspace), but if her clothes don’t go than the same would be most likely true of her tats and possibly other modifications.
She needed more porting capacity which is why she was un-porting herself. I was working on the assumption of an actual destruction of the copy, but if it is just a storage than that opens up a lot of other things she could do and makes her a lot more sneaky when she does it. You already mentioned the porting bullett (which was an application I hadn’t even thought of). The aforementioned assassination attempt (by un-porting out someone’s insides) could still take place, but afterwards the parts could be replaced causing it to look like the person bled out and died for no reason. That would also make her the ultimate mule: un-port one of her carying something, walk another of her into the building or other secure location, re-port the copy along with the item.
Either way, one thing is for certain, the possibilities could get complicated quickly. Arklight (and possibly arkdark) would have their hands full just keeping up with her. And trying to stop her, short of magic or the like? Completely impossible.
I’m not sure where it was said, but it’s been established that she can’t teleport other living things. Which is why her first job during the supervillain attack was an equipment run and Hiro was the one put in charge of making sure that the civvies got out safe.
Harem’s weight limit, when ‘porting, is 25-50 lbs. This restricts her to only taking small children and babies as ride-alongs.
Herem’s weight limit includes “her me”, which is the point of un-teleporting herself (specifically so that she can carry more). That said, there are a lot of guns, bombs, bullets, technology, money, etc,etc, etc, that could still fit within that weight limit. And that does nothing for the many other things she could do.
Dave: On the vote incentive, 10 plates to a side should be 900lbs + the weight of the bar (probably a 55lb given the wieght in question, but I dunno bout the screwy reinforcement you have, maybe a 45+10 or 20 pounds for the reinforcement?), not 800lb. Unless you meant it was 800lb a plate or something physics defying like that.
You can find an in-depth discussion of that here.
I’m afraid it doesn’t answer my quesiton much, if the plate is 800lbs, dabbler must be the one providing it (back of the envelope, if you made a 2″ thick plate from solid tungsten and wasted the minimum possible space you’re looking at ~250lbs, and 5000$, a plate, though Arc might foot the bill for her), if not per plate the weight makes little sense, where did 80 lb (if its per side) or 40 lb (total) plates come from, Arc might foot for special tungsten plates but if Iron works they’d use off the shelf 100 or 45 lb plates
Not sure what you are getting at, in the invotive discussion, someone posted a real-life picture of a guy lifting what appears to be more weights (and you can get 800lb weights)
You can get 800 lb weights, but they wouldn’t be that small, they’d be…about 16 inches wide if steel.
Well, a plate of 25 inches diameter and 2.35 inches thick made out of Tungsten (0.70 lb/in3) would weigh 807.5 lbs, and since Anvil is 79 inches tall those plate could easly have those measures.
The total cost is a very good point indeed.
They aren’t higher diameter than the normal 450mm, she wouldn’t be folded in half if the bar was higher off the ground.
I doubt anything about Anvil are standard.
She is 79 inches tall. An average leg (knee to ankle) is around 25% of that, ie around 20 inches.
If you extend the perspective lines the bar is around her middle leg, what means at least 10 inches from the floor (even without boots), so the drawn plates are above 500 mm diameter.
Hmmm… What if one of her went up into orbit? Would Harem still be able to shift between the two locations that far apart? NASA would pay a lot to study this question…
While it would be essentially impossible for brains that constantly interacts with a body and environment to stay entangled, in our world a least. Distance won’t effect entanglement so she will still have a single consciousness and can still teleport to anything seen by any of her 5 pairs of eyes.
Reading the exact terminology Dabbler uses she says that the “meat is quantumly interconnected”. One way to interpret that is that all the brains are locked in a quantumly entangled state. Which would have the impossible result you mention.
However the other way is that there are quantum connections between the brains. So it is not the brains themselves that are quantum linked, but either parts of the brain or some of the connectors between parts of the brain which are quantumly linked. Which would solve the problem of the five bodies and brains conducting different operations, but sharing information.
Of course, it would still freak out physicists in our world, because then there would be information travelling instantly, potentially faster than light. Which would violate some absolute law they are convinced exists. But they don’t really understand everything about quantum mechanics, themselves, so we need not be too concerned about that.
*physicist nose boop*
If the distance really is infinite this would also mean she could be awesome if they ever mount a manned mission to Mars. Just send one of the clones with them and they would basically have infinite supplies.
If there is a range limit though I wonder what would happen if the clone on the rocket gets out of range of the other four Harems, lets hope for her she will just despawn.
Yea, I had speculated on how she could teleport to other stars, with the aid of a telescope capable of seeing planets around them. Which, ironically enough, we will be able to do soon/a>. But that was without access to this comic.
If you have a look at the second to last panel, above, you will see that she cannot even reach the Moon.
being geeky, part of the problem is light cone… assuming she uses a telescope to see ay, the surface of mars, she is not seeing the destination between 4 and 24 minutes ago, depending on current orbit.
..it’s pretty much suicide.
will now note that the people who did portal 2 knew this, lol..
Which raises the interesting question: How long do Harem’s teleports take? If she can teleport faster than light, she can essentially time-travel. Of course, on Earth’s surface in the distances she’s been seen to teleport ‘lightspeed’ and ‘instantaneous’ are basically synonyms for practical purposes. (It’s already a problem with her, actually, as her consciousness breaks lightspeed propagation…)
But if she were to try to teleport to Mars, she’d be teleporting to a location that may change significantly during the time she teleports. Figure out where she’s going, and you could set up some interesting traps.
Judging by the “Pain reaction” comic and page 76, I’d assume the teleporting takes less than a second, and may even be instantaneous, but that might depend on distance and if the required body is currently “active”; shorter distances might be faster.
Farmer-girl Harem teleports away from Max and manages to talk instantly while the original body is still being “disassembled” and the new one “re-assembled”. Co-ed Harem does the same before she gets punched in the face by Sydney a few comics later.
The distances involved in those teleports make anything even close to lightspeed appear instantaneous to the naked eye. At lightspeed she could teleport to the other side of the earth in 0.05 seconds – that’s about the amount of time it takes to show one frame of a movie. It’s literally margin of error to our senses – you’d edit it out. Considering all of her bodies are probably in the same city at the moment, the time would be significantly shorter.
Yep, the speed of light can really mess up a person’s “depth perception,” can’t it? For example, when you see the first point of the sun peek up over the horizon, you’re looking at a sunrise that’s already 8 minutes old…Indeed, simply looking at a person standing in front of you, you’re still seeing how they *were* just a few picoseconds ago. In essence, you’re literally looking into history & that’s the *only* way you can see anything at all.
That’s one of the tricks that must be accounted for when thinking about time travel…By whatever means you use to travel through time, you also have to account for travel through space as well. Otherwise, just a shift in time for just a few seconds worth, the planet itself will just move right out from under you (or maybe right *through* you, if you started your time travel exactly at the time of sunset).
So if Harem tried to ‘port to the moon, for example, she’d have to be able to see her landing zone in pretty much “real time,” even over that expanse of distance.
Logopolitan Block Transfer Calculus?! She really is a Jill-of-All-Trades; or a Time Lord (some Galifrayens can do that too). Though one is driven to wonder why a succubus needs / wants to overwrite sections of reality on the planetary scale…?!
EnderDDT: I think you missed an earlier comment about Harem’s weight limitations with her teleport. Even if she was reduced to a single self, there’s no way she could teleport something as massive as Maxima. AND, since she specifically talked about the weight limit effecting things she could carry with her, that implies that ONLY SHE can be de-rezed in transit. If I’m wrong about this, it means that everything which goes with her gets de-rezed but is automatically recreated on the other end (isn’t teleportation by quantum entanglement FUN).
Still… Sidney is nice and slender, so her mass wouldn’t be an issue… attempting to de-rez her would make an interesting experiment! Plus, Harem could recreate her self that would doubtless be annihilated by the Orbs in the attempt.
Do whatever laboratory experiments you want with the traitor Harem. But leave poor Sydney out of it! She has a phobia of being experimented on in government labs. Plus she is far to cute to consider killing off.
Harem is not a traitor until proven, for now, she is just someone having fun and messing with the Arch-stickinthemud-funpolice-partypoopers
We really don’t know. For that matter we don’t know how heavy maxima is either (though depending on some definitions of “weight” this would make all strongarms immune to teleportation). and…
yeah…
I’m going to just stop here, because we obviously don’t have the information necessary to speculate much further. It is fun to think about, though. The devil’s in the details, afterall.
Ultimate keep-away indeed. Harem could be a perfect containment system for very dangerous things, provided they fall within her carry limit. A small bomb, a vial of McGuffin poison, whatever. She could grab it and unport with it, and it just doesn’t exist until she calls up that body again.
Of course, that solution relies on Harem being trusted with the dangerous item….
Wait, so… if she teleports herself somewhere far away (like the farm), could she just “unteleport” that body? Then she can teleport it somewhere new…
why would unteleporting depend on a bodies location?
I can see what you are driving at. Namely that if there is nothing in sight of the farm, that is useful to teleport to, then she could be unteleported and, when re-created at whatever location another body is at, then teleport to somewhere in sight of that body.
But, provided she is within her normal range limits, she does not need to do that at all. Remember that she is present in five different locations simultaneously. Provided any of them are in sight of the destination she wants, the body at the farm can teleport directly to it. Without the intermediate step of de-teleporting.
It is only if she is beyond maximum range that she needs to unteleport, as a work around, to get back to another body. But, in such circumstances, you are perfectly correct in saying that she can do that and then reform the body by teleporting it, in the normal fashion.
I assume that, in the last panel, co-ed was the only body “active” since she needed to take the cab. As Dave said in his comments, Harem can teleport to herself, so unless she was on her lonesome (or maybe her other bodies were not where she needed to go), she wouldn’t need a cab.
Ah, thank you. I hadn’t thought of that, since she doesn’t like having only one body, I think I blocked that option out of my head.
Dabbler’s idea of science involves syringes of heroin and angry crazed weasels.
This is not good.
Hey, she is part demon. You should expect her to have an alien perspective on things.
Yeah, well…Even “rubber science” can stretch so far before it snaps. However, it should also be pointed out that the Quantum Sciences, by definition, can be stretched in *any/all* direction(s).
If monkey is going to have any taxonomic value we would have to say that apes are monkeys as Apes are descended from oldworld monkeys after oldworld monkeys and new world monkeys split off.
Ape has killed ape!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS2-4i3UAMw
Still have all the originals (including the original panel 9 :P)
Don’t loose them. The Tate Modern will want them someday.
The question is, what exactly causes the range limit? Is it because she can only correct for a certain amount of momentum difference between her departure and arrival points? If she teleported from an airliner flying over her farm, would she arrive on the ground moving hundreds of miles an hour, or standing still?
From the results, it appears to not be a range limitation, but a detail limitation. Mostly. She needs to know the area she’s teleporting to with some degree of detail – anything in sight is basically known well enough, as is places she’s familiar with.
There’s probably some space-time compensation going on as well: She’s compensating for the distance she travels, meaning that she has to have a good idea of exactly what that distance is and how it’ll affect her. This being done on an instinct level, numbers don’t help – she needs to sense it. (So telescopes mess it up, as they don’t give her that sense. If she can get the sense otherwise she’s fine, but it explains her not being able to teleport to the moon – she doesn’t have a good enough sense of the distance, even if she can get a good enough picture of the destination.)
So basically, you’re saying it works just like Goku’s Instant Transmission.
Nah, Goku has to sense a Ki source (a living being) at the location he’s teleporting to. This is why he had to take cell to Kai’s planet instead of the dark side of the moon or deep space.
I am guessing that it is an energy limit. She probably burns a lot of calories ‘porting long distances. Anne McCaffrey’s “Pegasus” series had a scene wherein a man moved material manually versus a man using telekinesis. The telekinesis was faster and more efficient, but the the calorie burn was the same, or higher, for the telekinesis. So, ‘porting over long distances would probably burn calories similar to sprinting that distance, thus the reason for Harem’s need to eat 5+ times as much as the next person, and the reason for her fit physique. This also allows the possibility that she might become more efficient at ‘porting in the future as she improves her technique with practice and experience.
I read that too. Half the time and twice the calories.
I guess that cabbie’s super power is that he’s a time-traveller from the ’40s.
Talking about nose boops, did anyone else notice that our final rival, in the recent competition did a nose boop
?
Although it could be a coincidence, personally I take that to be a very sweet, and sportsmanlike, homage to Anvil’s nose boop, which took place during the period the competition was running.
Nice :)
Am I the first person to point out that Harem is totally wearing Leela’s wrestling outfit from the saddest episode of Futurama?
Well spotted. However you are not the first, given that the author actually mentioned it himself, by virtue of posting a link to an image of it, in the thread above.
I love these comics. They are awesome and I love th efact that it tries to explain things scientifically. And speaking of which. I might have missed it, but where is Dabbler’s Science Corner 1? Also, whay are all the supers so damn good looking? Is it a genetic quirk attributed to them having powers?
Dabbler’s Science Corner #1
As to the looks, yes. That was discussed in-comic, in the changing-room scene. Issue #138. They are not sure why, but all natural heroes (as opposed to those who get their powers from other sources, such as Halo’s orbs), come with a great physique and good looks as part of the package.
Sydney just lucks out and happens to be a good looking normal person.
“Good looking”? You dear puppy (what happened to your Gravvy anyway?) are understating things: Sydney is fantabulously great looking! And the most approachable (at least until you stand right beside her and stare at her sideways, then you get globbered by 1-7 flying defenders, plus a few pepper-bees :P)
Dave, you might wanna have a word with Harem. I think she’s been voting for Two Kinds. That’s the only reason I can figure why their numbers are roughly triple what yours are. Still, second place is not a bad place to be in the rankings. Congrats!
There have been many discusions on several webics about how TwoKinds has such a large number of votes
Once I ran a statistic analisis on several comics in TWC. “Two Kinds” showed a distribution of votes pretty similar to the average.
I can’t say the same about two other comics which had a far strange behavior .
Nonetheless I must admit that I used very few samples, so the relevance is relative.
It surely wasn’t Arianna who picked her hero name.
Dave, Just want to point out here (since I haven’t found your email on the site anywhere) that your RSS feed is broken. It contains only
Otherwise, great work as always :)
Dave, Just want to point out here (since I haven’t found your email on the site anywhere) that your RSS feed is broken. It contains only
(Hoping those html tags will show up)
Otherwise, great work as always :)
If she unteleports with a watch on, will it show time change when she comes back? iDo her bodies age at different rates?
Interesting point. The watch will be out of synch by however long that body was in storage. No body ages whilst in storage. So if any one spends more time packed away than the others, then it will be of lower apparent age.
And, yes, in answer to the unspoken follow-on question, she is potentially immortal. Depending on whether she has reached her limit of copies. And/or whether she can replace any that die, or become infirm. Provided she always chooses to copy a young version, that she keeps in storage most of the time.
Not that big of a deal these days as one can purchase watches that auto-synch with the nuculer clock.
Excellent timing DavidB, just what I was looking for. Feel free to insert them to explicate elements of the stories as time goes on.
This answers my Harem questions. Hopefully Dabbler’s Science Corner will cover something about Dabby herself next time.
That is highly Classified, so high that if she told you, you wold be dead before you had the chance to go “Huh, didn’t know that!”
I want to point out the text on the blackboard on panel 4. Not that in a comic world the details care too much but since it is there…
I am taking it as follow:
(25 pounds = 11.3 kg)
1- “~ 25 – 50 lbs” is the range of how much she can “carry on” beside herself, being 25 with 5 bodies and 50 with 1 body.
2- Each body can carry the same weight independently. For example: with 5 bodies each one can carry 25 lbs.
3- The “~ 25%” means “around”, say, “20% to 30%”, and then her weight increases like 33% from 5 to 1 bodies. Ie with 5 bodies each one weighs 125 lbs and can carry 25 lbs (20%), and with 1 body it weighs 167 lbs and can carry 50 lbs (30%). The word “slightly” comes to be an understatment (42 lbs).
PS: each time she dismiss a body her weight increses 10.5 lbs and the “carry on” mass increses 6.27 lbs.
I had a character like this in a “Mutants & Masterminds” campaign, except he had one more copy. His hero name was “Six of One”.
So his evil alternate universe version was “Half Dozen Of the Other”?
That makes the unavoidable question of “who is the father?” all the more complicated when one (or many..) Harems get pregnant… I guess if there are two simultaneous pregnancies it is better to do a paternity test only after birth since the chances of swaps are what they are… LOL…
Shame that the only bit of real world science here is wrong.
If you are 6 feet tall and standing right at sea level, then your eyes are about 5 and a half feet above the surface. The distance to the horizon is: √(5.5 / 0.5736) which is about 3 miles not 17.
Harem would have to be standing on something about 284 feet tall to have the horizon 17 miles away
All the math at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon
Well, 3 miles is the theoric straight visual, with a spherical Earth without atmosphere. The actual distance can vary widely, specially over the sea.
I think “17 miles” is the distance from which you can see an average lighthouse from sea. Maybe in nautical miles.
Five bodies are as strong each as a normal person. Four bodies are twice as strong each. It apparently doubles by reducing the number of bodies by 1 until 1 body is 16 times as strong.
This implies that she is *not* holding a body in reserve (which I still think is a really good idea–bring the body out when she’s 80 years old and she can double her lifespan, plus a child body would be really useful as a teleporting spy)–it would make a lot more sense that 5 bodies are as strong as a normal person when her maximum is 5, rather than when her maximum is 6. It also implies that if she ever gets the ability to create another body, she should immediately know it–because suddenly the 5 bodies will be 5 out of 6 and have double strength.
Also, if the energy of the dematerialized body is distributed among the other bodies, *and* she dematerializes her body *including everything she’s carrying*, does that mean she can increase the energy available to the other bodies by dematerializing while carrying a large weight?
It has not to my knowledge been stated that she gained all five bodies at one time. Perhaps she gets an additional “body” every 5 years (starting with 1) or so and at 80 years old she will have 17 bods to work with…
That doesn’t work. The fact that all of her current bodies are the same age implies that when she got the newest one it started at the same age as the previously existing ones. Which means that at age 80 any new bodies she gets are going to start out aged 80.
DaveB stated: “She got her first dupe at 8, second at 9, third at 11, fourth at 14.”
One question – is 5 the absolute limit? Or could she do 6 or more if the need arose? Presumably, if she went for 6, each would half of her strength when just doing 5, so she’d be pretty weak, but there could be times when it might come in handy. (Likewise, going for 7, each would be at 1/4 strength, and could barely support their own weight, so you don’t want to spread yourself TOO thin…) Just thinking 6 makes more sense in terms of quantumness, due to the 6 possible states of a quark, but that might be reading too much into it.
Honestly, there are very few situations, even superhero situations, where I wouldn’t rather have five regular bodies all under my control than one strong body. A strong body just allows you to apply more kinetic energy, and kinetic energy is easy to get from other sources—guns, explosives, whatever. Being able to be in five places at once, on top of being able to teleport? Infinitely more useful. I absolutely get why Harem would rather stay split most of the time.
Yep, breaking the action economy is where it’s at ;)
The main issue to having 5 different bodies is getting confused between them, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue… presumably because each comes with its own brain, even if there is entanglement.
here’s a few questions for dabbler about Harem.
1…….Which Harem is Harem Prime.(is there a Harem Prime or does she just choose a “self ” if she recalls 4 selves
2…….can multiple Harems Teleport simultaneously
3…..is it possible for harem to accidentally recall herself out of existence if she became confused.
1.- DaveB stated: “Daphne herself is not sure which one is the original” … but … “the unmodified one is the “original” as far as she’s aware”
How do people find all these extra pages? They’re not in the archives, and I can’t find a quick reference to them.
There is none. If you want to keep track of ongoing comments on the vote incentive pages, you need to put a check in the “Email me when new comments are added to this thread” box. I also do that for the main comic comments. After a comic has been up for a couple of days, so my inbox does not get hit by the initial flood.
Likewise you can bookmark those pages, which apparently some folks do. Or, if you can remember, or figure out part the title, you can enter a Google search. For instance:
site: http://www.grrlpowercomic.com valentine
site: http://www.grrlpowercomic.com november vote
Or a simplified search format:
Grrlpowercomic.com vote
1. Nobody knows anymore (even Harem)
2.They were in the previous comic.
3. No because she can feel when the other bodies are in stasis/”un-teed”.