Grrl Power #1495 – Motivation
Yes, you can level up your superpowers by using them. Mostly though, you’re just getting better at using them, learning all the tricks and power stunts you can pull off, and well as learning finer control. But the actual power output, in the cases where such a thing can be measured, can be improved as well. That doesn’t mean in a decade or two, the whole team will be as powerful as Maxima, but they will be more powerful than they are now. But at some point, age will start to erode that fine control, and pushing their powers to their limits will cause their sciatica to flare up more and more. Super powers don’t stop aging. Well, unless your particular suite of powers actually does do that.
Hiro isn’t emasculated by having a woman boss, or by the fact that she’s a fair bit stronger than him. I mean, that’s what he tells himself, and he almost totally believes it. All his actions support that. He doesn’t go sulk in his room or make snippy comments or anything of the sort. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t mind beating Max at arm wrestling one day. Those hormonally motivated imperatives are hard to resist. Guys don’t mind carrying in the 40 pound bag of dog food or cat litter while the wife/girlfriend carries in the bag with the crackers and instant ramen, and we don’t mind getting tasked with getting down something from the high shelf in the kitchen, because all the testosterone swirling around in our brains is whispering to us, “This makes you a man…” So yeah, Hiro would like to be stronger than… well, anyone, if he could swing it. He just doesn’t scuff his feet and pout when Max does something out of his tier.
Speaking of FTL communication, I had 4 paragraphs written suggesting that FTL travel or communication might break something fundamental about the universe, as you’d be violating the physical limits of the rate of information propagation, but… I started posting too late and couldn’t articulate why I thought that might screw things up. Not that I’m remotely qualified to lecture meaningfully about advanced physics. It was just a thought I’ve been kicking around for a while, but I don’t think what I was writing was making enough sense to spark any sensible discussion. I’ll have to noodle on it and see if I can make it make sense. So in the meantime, just enjoy the page.
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. The NSFW version is finally up at Patreon. Plus a bonus pic.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
I don’t know about being nettles because max is stronger and a girl but I could certainly see being nettled by the fact she got performance enhancing space goo. The idea it doesn’t matter how naturally talented you are or how hard you work, if someone can just one up you with a spritz from magic space rock.
Kind of applies to all Supers really. By pure luck they get reality defying powers, peak human physique and seemingly are just naturally attractive as a result. Sydney had a whole crash put early on that exact topic didn’t she? Max is really just the extreme of all of this.
They do put in the work to take best advantage of their powers but they don’t have any of their powers due to that hard work, outside of the magic folks.
To quote Lex Luthor from All-Star Superman:
Lex: “It sickens me – that insipid boyish grin, that smug self-regard. Tell the truth – doesn’t his very EXISTENCE diminish you? Diminish us all? Can you imagine a better world, Kent? That’s all I’ve ever asked. In a world without Superman, the unattainable Lois Lane might have noticed good old Clark… pining away in the corner.”
Clark Kent: “You keep talking about me, but I’m here to interview you…”
Lex: “I’m just saying… a strapping farmboy with brains, integrity…. no discernable style of his own… You’re a prime catch for a cynical city girl.”
Clark Kent: “Er… why… why havent you filed an appeal -”
Lex: “But with HIM around, you’re a PARODY of a man. A DULLARD. A cripple. Next to Superman, even Lex Luthor’s greatness is overshadowed!!!”
Clark Kent: “Are… you trying to intimidate me?”
(pertinent part to this thread below)
Lex: “I’m trying to EDUCATE you. We ALL fall short of his sickening inhuman perfection. (makes a bicep) Feel that, Kent. Real muscle. Not the gift of alien biochemistry. The product of HARD WORK.”
—
A few minutes later after there was an attemped breakout by Parasite and Lex saves Kent a few times (and Clark saves them both a few more times without Lex noticing)
Lex stomps on an unconscious Parasite, then turns to Clark Kent.
Lex: “I’ve always liked you, Kent. You’re humble, honest, comically uncoordinated….. You’re human. In short, you’re everything that he’s not.”
One of the few Superman comics I quite like.
There are a lot of Superman comics that I like, but I’ve always been partial to Supergirl comics. Especially the Linda Danvers 80 comic run. But I also loved the New Earth Supergirl run (vol 5).
This is amazing and perfect here. I love the inversions, how it hits every topic we are discussing, and brings in the extreme end of the justified and unjustified reactions.
That’s why Lex with always be a Loser: where everyone else sees Soupcan as an Inspiration, and an Ideal, Loser just sees him as better than him, and that is why he hates Soupcan
No one believes they can do better than Soupcan, or even reach his level, but they still strive to simply be better than they are (and, yes, that does include villains)
Actually, at the end of All-Star Superman, Lex realizes his mistake, gives Dr. Leo Quintum his notes on how to basically save the world with all the cures and innovations he has discovered, after Superman sacrifices himself and flies into the sun to revitalize it. He winds up no longer resisting his death penalty sentence because he took Superman’s last words to him to heart.
Lex: “I saw everything! I saw how to save the world! I could have made everyone see! If it wasn’t for you, I could have saved the world!”
Superman: “If it had mattered to you, Luthor, you could have saved the world years ago.”
The reason for his change of perspective was because, for a little while, when he had Superman’s powers, he was able to see things the way that Superman saw everything, all the time. He didn’t want to accept it though until after Superman dies by sacrificing himself.
Nasthalthia (Nasty) Luthor: (wearing the most ridiculous sci-fi headgear ever to appear in a comic book) “Are you okay?”
Lex: “Better than okay. I can see the entire electromagnetic spectrum. And those… must be atoms. Little clouds of possibility. Einstein couldn’t connect the gravitational force to the other three but if he could have seen this…. it’s so obvious.
Nasthalthia: “Uncle Lex?”
Lex: The fundamental forces are yoked by CONSCIOUSNESS! Everything’s connected! Every…. one…. And… this is how he sees things. All the time. Every day…”
Nasthalthia: “I don’t know if I should be worried or mortified.”
Lex: “It’s a cruel joke… The mechanistic clockwork of reality… hinging on a person’s… impossible defiance of entropy. On life… And the clockwork doesn’t care! It’s like… like it’s all just … us… in here. Together.
…
Oh god… We’re all we’ve got.”
Nasthalthia: “You’re embarrassing me beyond therapy.”
Superman: “You’ll have to forgive him, Nasthalthia. He just figured out how everything works.”
Clark was a fundamentally good person before his powers kicked in. Once his powers came online in his late teens, they expanded his perspective but didn’t change who he already was.
To be fair, that’s largely because of the Kents raising him with good moral values. In some other Earths, Clark was definitely not a good person, like on Earth-3 and Earth-10(Ultraman killed the Kents and Overman was eaised by Adolf Hitler). And while Red Son Superman wasnt evil per se, he did a lot of evil things (including defending what was done to Bruce Batmankoff’s parents by Stalin) because he naively believed Stalin. When Stalin told him the truth about communism, Superman killed Stalin.
And on still other Earths, Superman’s inherent goodness snapped at a point of mo return where he became evil or a fascist tyrant, like Justice Lords Earth and Injustice Earth.
It’s a bit of an aside and I’m sorry, but every time I see someone say something like “what was done to Bruce Batmankoff’s parents by Stalin” my brain just shuts the fuck down. Bruce Batmankoff. Good fucking lord, is that a fan name or in universe? I’m not even sure I wanna know. “Conciousness is one of the fundamental forces holding the universe together” to “Bruce Batmankoff” in two comments.
Believe it may simply be Brucie’s Russki parents’ names weren’t revealed (like Soupcan’s adoptive parents)
Like already said, been years since saw the movie and certainly never read the comic so an’t remember if either names were ever mentioned
Nope, his last name in Red Son really was Batmankoff. :) :) :)
Really? That’s another movie have to rewatch, because that sounds like really shitty writing: instead of Bruce Wayneski (like that ice skating Canadian), they named him Bruce Batmankoff?
As far as animated Superman movies go, and as far as Alt Universe Superman storylines go, it’s admittedly one of the not-really-well-written ones imho. The animated movie is slightly better than the comic though.
That literally is Bruce’s last name in Red Son though. :) That’s the in-universe name for Bruce’s parents and Bruce in that storyline. Probably to explain why he’d call himself Batman when he didnt experience the whole ‘falling into a cave full of bats as a child’ trauma in Red Son.
Been an age since saw the movie
I honestly think the animated movie was better than the comic, although I liked both. Same with Superman/Batman: Apocalypse (which was based on The Girl from Krypton – although I liked the Superman/brainwashed Supergirl fight better in the comic) and Superman: Unbound (which was based on Superman: Brainiac).
I gotta ask, why do you keep calling him “soupcan”?
I thought it was some aggressive mobile spellchecker over-correcting, but you keep doing it, day after day.
And it’s frankly stupid at this point, if it’s intentional, it’s incredibly rude.
Just f’n say you don’t like Superman.
G does that to most characters or thing they don’t like (SmugD, Soupcan, etc). Also to places, like Earth, I think. It’s one of their idiosyncrasies.
it’s a pre-used epithet that has been used within comics as well, honestly, tho, I’d find it funnier applied to Iron Man
I agree, Soupcan as an insulting nickname is a lot more amusing applied to Iron Man, and I guess the classic for Superman was always ‘Stuporman’, originally from Mad Magazine, I believe.
Nah, Iron Man is “Tincan’
Superman becomes Soupcan because… what does the first three letters usually sound like?
And, if by ‘idiosyncrasies’ you mean ‘brain defect’, then yes, have trouble with saying names (can say them, it’s just not easy for me)
Most of them are not intended to be insulting, just a way for me to say them and for (most) people to still know who is being referred to
I’m surprised that your difficulty with *saying* names spills over into difficulty with *writing* them.
Sometimes, the brain overrides what the fingers want to write (or is it the other way around)
It’s why don’t use personal pronoun, it’s easier to just leave it out entirely than attempt to force the ‘correct’ spelling (and then have to either explain or endure attacks over it, and yes, have received personal attacks over the years about it, most people don’t care but still get the occasional attack)
I wasnt insulting you when I said it’s one of your idiosyncrasies.
An idiosyncrasy is a unique habit, strange behavior, or distinct feature that belongs to a specific person or thing. You’ve always used a lot of weird or semi-derisive slang names for people and places ever sicne I first started seeing you on the forum, to the point where I basically just consider it a Guesticules idiosyncrasy and no longer wonder why you say them. :)
Was just explaining what it was, not that anyone have ever cared (and usually got more attacks and insults over the explanation)
“Iron Can”?
I don’t get why some people don’t use characters’ proper names either, so it’d be best if I don’t try to put words inntheir mouths. I feel that in this context it is more clear to just use the name, after all there are so many stories and characters in comics these days that I’m totally unfamiliar with. If I wanted to show disdain for a character that wouldn’t require anything different. A fiction character has no feelings to insult, only the author or publisher has. If a disdainful nickname is just used in an attempt to look cool, not everyone is impressed.
Sorry me boy you like some others are missing my point, it’s the artificial nature not the random chance that I’m cracking on.
There have been hints that the powers themselves are artificial.
You mean SmugD ‘hinting’ he knows how to ‘activate’ them in others?
And the suggestion that the Superion field itself was both ‘encrypted’ and less than billions of years old – suggesting it was created rather than emerged naturally.
It’s been hinted that the Superion field was activated by the arrival of the Orbs, which would have been ~66 billion years ago. Or else that while the Superion field is theoretically everywhere in varying amounts, something to do with their arrival and/or presence started an evolutionary process within humans that eventually allowed them (and only them, so far) to tap into the Superion field.
Actually the Superion field would have to exist everywhere or else Max would have long since lost her powers so far from earth.
No, once activated it’s permanent, like with Marvel’s mutants and DC’s Kryptonauts and mutates (or what ever they call their naturally-born ‘enhanced’ people, like Catwoman, the ones who didn’t get their powers from magic {Cheetah} or Batsie dropping them into chemicals {Clayface})
For the record, DC’s blanket term for generic superhumans is “Metahumans”.
Obviously not applied to aliens or artificial beings like Red Tornado. BUt a “Mutant” or Mutate in Marvel, rather born with it or acquired later from experimentation or accident, radiation or whatever, it a Metahuman in DC comics.
That was it, thought mutates was DC as well
If they acquire it later, then they are Enhanced, like Captain America or Hulk
Guesticules:
In Marvel:
If you’re born with your powers and they activate (usually) at puberty, you’re a mutant.
If you gain your powers via some outside source (particle accelerator, radioactive waste splashing your eyes, radioactive spider, gamma rays, cosmic rays, Galactus, etc) then you’re a mutate.
If it’s a more minor form of just beyond peak human, from some sort of cocktail of chemicals or enhancement like that (one of the many Super Soldier serums out there, Black Panther plant, Extremis, magical curse/gift/etc, and so on) then you’re an Enhanced Human.
If it’s just purely from studying magic, then you’re a magi.
As for in DC:
Far as I can tell, they mostly just say anyone that has superpowers is a metahuman, regardless of if you’re born with them or gain them in an accident, or it’s magic. Zatanna, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Beast Boy, Terra, Swamp Thing, Fire, and the Spectre are all ‘metahumans’ despite having their powers from very different origins).
DC does also have Enhanced humans, though from a variety of different ways that have nothing to do with their genetics (Deathstroke, Cyborg, Cassandra Cain, Blue Beetle, Bumblebee, Harley Quinn after Poison Ivy gives her a dose of something, most human green lanterns except Jade and Alan Scott, Star Girl, Ras Al-Ghul, etc)
And of course … aliens.
And they have Peak human (for their age and sex) (most of the Bat Family except Cassandra, who’s enhanced via her weird training (even though they sometimes say she’s peak human as well instead of enhanced, but is definitely NOT a metahuman), Huntress, Lady Shiva, Vic Sage’s The Question, Richard Dragon, Adam Strange, Wildcat, Artemis, Green Arrow, Merlyn, Mercy Graves, etc)
If you’re a ‘mutant’ like Killer Croc, or a warlock like John Constantine, or got the powers from an accident like The Flash, they’re still going to call you a metahuman. Apparently all of them have a meta-gene (even the mages, who’s meta-gene just makes it easier for them to do magic). Apparently in DC, most people have a meta-gene, but in most cases it’s inactive unless you’re born with it on or something turns it on. :)
Much thankings to you for explaining it nicely :)
No problem. :)
Do you maybe mean millions of years ago?
66 billions of years ago neither the earth nor the universe was a thing to the best of our ability to estimate the age of the universe (at least in our world).
That part of her origin story is highly classified and kept secret though. Some of her closer friends and higher-ups might know about it, but definitely not everyone.
It’s also unclear how and how much it enhanced her. There was something somewhere that implied Maxima would have super powers anyway, just unknown how much the golden symbiote changed anything.
high chance the symbiot could be reason why her powers are dialable? like if she was going to get this level of power without the dailable shifting stuff. if thats possible case then symbiote gold thing was a limiter in a way or somthing like reality hat guy in slippers put the rock there or one of his kind from 9th dimention or what ever
That’s my theory regarding her powers. That she’d have a base version of these powers naturally (speed, strength, flight, energy beams) but the golden goo enhanced them and makes it possible to switch things up, also dumping a lot of stock in the pool to push her powers so far beyond what others can do.
You’d be surprised how mentally beneficial going to the gym can be. Kind why meditation and martial arts are so intertwined. You’ve never been in the gym on rep 30 and been thinking about the hole that was something and is nothing but nothing just, void. Look, I stink at the metaphysical/psychology mumbo jumbo. But trust me. Even on a short little 10k jog. You get in that zone and can think without thinking about thinking.
I find it very odd that you put “naturally talented” and “how hard you work” together when “naturally talented” is so much closer to “randomly selected for super powers” than to working hard.
Well that’s because you’re focusing on the wrong part, my comment wasn’t about a random selection it was about the performance enhancing super sauce. That both raw talent and hard work are eclipsed and made obsolete in the face of unobtanium.
I seriously don’t understand men who feel emasculated by strong women. Would I like being stronger than others? Sure. But not “and stronger than women in particular”.
It’s all tied to identity and culture, their culture builds an idea of what their identity should be (i.e. the strong protector/provider) and a physically stronger/more successful woman undermines that.
Honestly I struggle to understand the mindset, but I can see how it develops.
I’m sure there’s a similar version in female-dominated societies. The idea a male could be tougher/stronger when they’re brought up to think males weak and inferior would generate similar reactions. It’s not uncommon in science-fiction even SatAM cartoons to have the powerful male protagonist like He-Man end up in a female-dominated society and having to deal with the locals looking down on the protagonist for being male and having to teach them about equality.
“I’m sure there’s a similar version in female-dominated societies.”
There definitely is. Look up stuff about spotted hyenas.
There are few female dominated societies from human history. Matri-linear, sure, but that is hardly a guarantee that women are regarded any better than cattle in such societies.
Matriarchies, or whatever relatively close facsimile of it existed, acknowledged that men where physically stronger. They just, according to myth (which all we really have), used divine justifications to keep women in a position of power. This is not a stable basis for a society and eventually this order will get overthrown. For the same reason and through the same mechanism that the priest-kings of the earliest civilisations were all eventually replaced by general-kings. If a priest needs an army then sooner or later the commander of that army decides there is no reason to give back power after the war ends. They simply put a sword to the priest-king’s throat and give them the option to die or to proclaim the general the new god-ordained ultimate ruler.
And any matriarchal religion that keeps priestesses (or women) on top will sooner or later be superseded by a male dominated religion that unites the physical strength and the presumed divine right to rule, especially over women (and the pesky fact that the paternity is never as certain as is the maternity).
I would go further than just a ‘society’ because humans, no matter what society they’re in, are still going to be abiding by certain basic facts of evolutionary biology (unless you get into mythological stuff and comic book stuff like Amazons and whatnot). I think the best correlation to ‘female dominated societies’ would instead by other animal species where the females are stronger (not just larger). Like spotted hyena, most spiders, or certain birds of prey. I’d say anglerfish too but that sexual dimorphism is so extreme that for a long time scientists did not even realize the male and female of the species were the same species. It’s also easier to make a comparison like that analogous to alien species or the occasional superheroine (Kryptonians, Amazons, etc) if you go beyond just ‘other cultural societies’ and move into ‘other species.’
I think it’s probably just a byproduct of evolutionary biology in humans of several million years. Biologically, for humans, males ARE stronger. Not only occasionally stronger, or ‘stronger most of the time.’ They are stronger almost ALL of the time because of biological differneces in hormines, muscle mass, body composition and especially testosterone. Even without exercise or muscularity in a man, the overwhelming majority of human men are physically going to be stronger than even very athletic and fit human women. Men have much higher levels of fast-twitch muscle fibers, larger muscle fibers, significantly greater bone density, skeletal design, etc. The ‘average’ adult female’s upper body is only about 50 to, at most, 60% of an average man, while he lower body is closer to 60-70% of a man’s strength. And that’s before puberty generally (I think the testosterone levels increase 20-30-fold during puberty, and another 15 times higher by age 18.
So that that, extrapolate several hundred-thousand years (perhaps millions of years) of biological anthropology, and it makes sense why many men would feel ’emasculated’ by a much physically stronger woman. Mainly because it goes against basic biology of the human species.
But evolutionary biology never had to deal with space geode water or (in real life) the superion gene. :)
If we were another species, like spotted hyenas, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, praying mantises, most spiders, or orcas, the reverse sexual dimorphism would mean women would expect to be stronger than the men instead.
I feel like in modern times it has less to do with biology and more to do with societal pressure. Subconscious reaffirmation of traditional gender roles in all media we consume, political or religious ideology, all reinforcing centuries old biases. I’m no expert on any of this by the way and I’m sure biological factors also subconsciously influenced the development of all this anyway, but I’m also sure just being told from birth “men are supposed to be stronger” from almost everything around you probably has a huge impact.
There’s a decent amount of overlap between mass and strength in genders, but it really is slighted pretty heavily male – its just not particularly relevant to our actual roles anymore, but its bound up into our psychological biochemistry just enough to make it very hard for some people to let go of (of any gender).
The hysterics raised around these differences is relatively absurd given that tech has nullified most of them anyway. The average hulking male is going to end up sitting behind a desk anyway, and if a woman does end up on a battlefield, her rifle doesnt shoot slower – and they do classically have a small edge in endurance and pain tolerance by most accounts.
“if a woman does end up on a battlefield, her rifle doesnt shoot slower –”
Actually, on average, her rifle does shoot slower and less accurately, at least in most battles. Not because of the rifle itself (rifles do not give a crap if you’re a man or woman), but because of certain biological differences between men and women, especially when it comes to fast-twitch muscle fibers. While men and women both perform in indoor rifle competitions with pretty much equal accuracy (for different reasons – women have a lower center of gravity and lower body mass on average, which helps with equilibrium control, while men have mor fast-twitch muscle fibers), actual wartime shooting lends to very different results.
The problem is that war tends to not be the same as an indoor rifle competition, and while there may be the occasional phenom like Peggy or Seneca in real life (the majority of whom came from the Central Women’s Sniper Training School in the Soviet Union during WW2, such as Lyudmila “Lady Death” Pavlichenko – 309 kills, Natalya Kovshova – 167 kills, Nina Petrova – 122 kills, Aliya Moldagulova – 91 kills, and Nina Lobkovskaya – 89 kills), it’s the exception rather than the rule. Even then, the top male snipers still had significantly higher kill counts – Simo “The White Death” Hayha – 500 kills in less than 100 days, didnt even use a scope, just iron sights, Mathaus Hetzenauer – 345 kills, Vasily Zaytsev – 225 kills (including 11 enemy snipers), Chris Kyle – 160 confirmed kills, Adelbert Waldron – 109 confirmed kills in just 8 months, and Carlos Hathcock – 93 confirmed kills and created the modern US Marine Corps Sniper School.) It should also be mentioned that being a sniper plays on the areas where men and woman have the closest equality since usually it’s targets of opportunity, and usually not moving fast, or might be static targets.
Again, not Peggy, who is beyond the best of the best, being able to take out a moving vehicle, while she’s pinned under a burning helicopter, while she’s upside-down and under fire. Not quite Simo Hayha, the white death, aka the Munchkin of Doom. But Simo also wasn’t firing on a moving target like Peggy was.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Z9tpHhZ46fo
1) Muscle mass and power – higher levels of testosterone causes most men to develop greater skeletal muscle mass (and the aforementioned fast-twitch muscle fibers which I’ve said a few times). This provides more upper-body strength and stamina.
2) Dynamic qualities – When dealing with moving targets and rapid-fire pistols, it requires quick adjustments, for which men tend to have a biological advantage (see #1 above). It’s been shown that there’s a difference in experiments of static firing ranges and ones where the target is moving, such as in skeet and trap shooting and rapid-pistol fire shooting/quick draw shooting.
3) Recoil and pace – something I should have mentioned also in #1 – The greater muscle bolume and larger body size help absorb and recover from firearm recoil faster, allowing for a faster overall shooting pace and adjustment to shoot moving targets.
Evolutionary biology also never had to deal with guns, which leveled that playing field real quick. Introduced a huge host of other intractable problems, but in cases of true hostility the difference between the classic ‘big hulking male’ and everyone else is close to moot once they are involved. Ironically the place this makes the biggest difference isn’t on the street, but in war, where everyone truly IS carrying one.
Probably that instinctual feeling of failing to be a protector.
Not really instinctual. In hunter-gatherer societies male and female roles are pretty interchangeable.
I think it is actually pretty instinctual, and male and female roles in hunter-gatherer societies are not nearly as interchangeable as modern day humans might think. As humans we like to sometimes thing we are divorced from instinct and are higher-evolved, but we are still animals when it comes right down to it, and hundreds of thousands of years (or even millions of years) of evolution are not exactly things which are that easy to shake off instincts which kept our ancestors alive and reproducing.
Even in hunter-gatherer societies (at least based on what anthropologists have viewed in the few remaining modern hunter-gatherer societies, and archaeological remains), women usually would not be the primary hunters, for a pretty logical reason. If you lose a lot of men in a hunt, the group can still survive since one man can copulate with many women. If you lose a lot of women in a hunt, the group will likely perish or be absorbed into another group. Since one woman cannot easily reproduce with many men. Mainly because of that whole way birth lays up a person for 9 months, and usually a little longer post-birth for nursing and whatnot.
That being said, women did (and do) hunt as well, but usually men focused on tracking and hunting large or medium-to-large game, while women hunted small game, set traps, fished, engaged in net-hunting, and foraged. Childcare and mobility were (are?) often the biggest limiting factors for women hunting, not necessarily capability. Plus in many animal species (at least many non-primate animal species), the females are the primary hunters, not the males (lions, orcas, mosquitos, certain other insects tend to be female hunters; chimpanzees, wolves, and humans tend to be male hunters) Also many animal species, especially solitary ones, like non-lion big cats (leopards, tigers, jaguars, cheetahs, etc), most birds of prey (eagles, falcons, owls, hawks) and bears, it tends to be pretty equally distributed, UNLESS the female has offspring, in which case the females do a LOT more hunting than the males… plus in those species, except for with bears, jaguars, and tigers, the females also tend to be significantly larger and often stronger than the males).
Hahahahahaha!!!!!
You actually believe that? Do some reading that hasn’t been poisoned by the post-post-modernist garbage.
Men hunted. Women gathered. We still do. Assuming you’re male, don’t even try to argue that you shop like women do.
It seems more likely to be societal to me. In more equal societies like the nordics, a strong woman is classically considered attractive and not remotely emasculating.
If anything, if you manage to date one it just shows that you have impressive pull to be able to attract an impressive woman.
“had 4 paragraphs written suggesting that FTL travel or communication might break something fundamental about the universe, as you’d be violating the physical limits of the rate of information propagation”
I recall reading a paper some years back on this topic. Essentially, FTL=time travel, and once you have any path that a quantum wave can travel and arrive at its starting point at the same time it left, you get recirculating waves that keep building up. Sort of like the feedback squeal if your microphone can ‘hear’ the output of the speaker too well.
That’s why all the simulations of wormholes pinch shut before anything can cross them unless you invoke unphysical things like negative energy: Quantum feedback squeal. (It’s actually “quantum back-reaction”, but I think “feedback squeal” is easier to understand.)
Any situation that lets you go faster than the speed of light results in this.
It’s the most common One Big Lie in science fiction by far, to the point where it more often than not gets a free pass alongside a more story/setting specific Big Lie. Stories stand out more these days when they *don’t* have FTL, such as The Expanse.
Technically speaking, the Expanse does have FTL. Well… okay they DO have it and don’t – they eventually have wormholes. They call it Superluminal Interstellar Travel (S.I.T.) and it only occurs after the first season ends due to the Proto-molecule. It’s just not something created by humanity – it’s from the alien Ring-Gates in the Slow Zone, which are basically Einstein-Rosen bridges that humans can’t figure out how they work, since they are otherwise mainly using sub-light travel and the Epstein Drive, both of which are subject to conventional G-forces.
Humans don’t discover actual FTL until 1000 years later, which does not rely on the Protomolecule or the Ring Gates (which force humanity to have to confront the Dark Gods (Ring Entitities).
The speed of light is absolute, and cannot be reached by anything that has mass, because otherwise it would be possible for effect to be happen before it is caused.
The universe would not like that to be possible.
And neither would we.
Speed of sound is constant. NOT. also lot does not travel at a constant and that limit is just a guideline. You just step around it. First the maths, then just fob the doing part off on the engineers and materials people.
The speed of light is a constant. It always travels at the same speed. Sometimes it just has to take a longer path, so it looks like it took longer.
The speed of light is absolutely nothing like the speed of sound.
The speed of light in a “vacuum” is a constant and according to current theories can never exceed that. However, in other mediums, light can be slowed below that value and, in those mediums, things can sometimes exceed the speed of light in said medium. This is what causes Cherenkov radiation.
You’re very correct on all counts. But I’m pretty sure that when people usually refer to the speed of light (especially in context of this current thread), they’re talking about the speed of light in a vacuum in order to give some sort of ‘top speed limit for the universe.’
For a given material at a specified pressure and temperature, the speed of sound is a constant. The reason this doesn’t lead to special relativity the way the speed of light does is that the speed of sound is relative to the material the sound is traveling in. In the late 19th century, the conventional wisdom was that, like every kind of wave before it, light was a wave in a medium (the luminiferous ether). A series of experiments ruled out every theory proposed on how the luminiferous ether interacted with ordinary matter, leading to the conclusion that it didn’t exist. That created a crisis as physics could not explain how light could have a constant speed in vacuum with no underlying medium (that would specify what that speed was relative to). Special relativity was the solution to that crisis.
According to physicists like Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawkings, and Brian Cox, the idea that ‘nothing is faster than the speed of light’ is just that. “Nothing” is faster than speed of light. IE, one thing is faster than the speed of light, and that’s ‘nothing.’ Empty space itself (the vacuum of the universe and the expansion of the cosmos itself) IS faster than the speed of light
While Einstein’s Special Relativity states that physical objects with mass and usable information cannot locally travel faster than light in a vacuum, Kaku points out a few specific phenomena and cosmic concepts that effectively bypass or break this conventional speed limit. Most notably, empty space has no mass or material substance, meaning it can stretch and expand MUCH faster than light without violating the laws of physics. This happened during the Big Bang’s ‘inflationary epoch’ – the brief period of extreme, exponential expansion in the early universe, lasting from about 10 to the -36th seconds to 10 to the -32nd seconds after the Big Bang, where the universe grew in size by a factor of between 10 to the 28th power and 10 to the 50th power in a fraction of a second. That would be impossible if it was limited to the speed of light. Also I’m pretty sure at that point in time, photons did not yet exist – they didnt start existing until after the inflationary epoch ended, after inflation ended and that energy converted into particles and radiation (ie, the reheating period)
I remember watching this on Nova when I was younger :) I think Michio Kaku also talked about something called an Alcubierre Warp Drive which was a theoretical possibility to go FTL, although that would require negative energy density or negative mass. Which… no one can prove actually exists. So that’s a little hiccup in the theory. Plus the whole causality violations problem that might occur. But the first part that I just mentioned is not just science fiction – it’s consistent with the timeline of the universe. :)
It’s kind of arguable. The expansion of space can cause two points to get further apart at a rate higher than the speed of light, but that doesn’t mean space is moving faster than the speed of light, it’s just stretching, and the cumulative stretch adds up without ever locally violating the speed limit. It still doesn’t let you get from point A to point B faster than light could.
I think the Alcubierre warp is under-theorized, it’s basically some semi-realistic math applied to Star Trek’s warp drive, and requires some questionable assumptions, of which negative energy is only one. We already know that gravity waves propagate at the same speed as light, which is a really strong hint that space warps can’t actually beat light speed, because they’re just complicated gravity waves.
But, hey, we’ve only really been doing physics for a couple millennia, and on a high level for a century or two, so who knows what we’ll figure out in the next million years?
“ut that doesn’t mean space is moving faster than the speed of light, it’s just stretching, and the cumulative stretch adds up without ever locally violating the speed limit. It still doesn’t let you get from point A to point B faster than light could.”
Yes and no? the specific rule is not that nothing in the universe can travel faster than light. However, that does not include thins that are not bound by the rules of objects moving through space. This is actually rather widely accepted in scientific circles.
1) While no object inside space can travel faster than light, spacetime itself can expand at whatever speed it wants. Not only during the Inflationary Epoch, but even today, galaxies that are extremely far away from us are receding from us FASTER than the speed of light. It’s not the objects that are moving at high speeds – it’s the space itself.
2) shadows and laser spots (non-physical things) – you CAN make a ‘thing’ (by the broadest sense of the word ‘thing’) move fater than light of that thing does not carry actual energy or information. For example, there’s something called the Laser Pointer Experiment. Imagine you have a powerful laser pointer and aim it at the surface of the moon. If you flick your wrist quickly, the red dot on the Moon’s surface will technically move across the landscape FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT. Why? Because the dot isnt a single physical object travelling across the Moon. It’s a succesion of individual photons arriving at different spots. Because no SINGLE photon is travelling faster than light, and you cannot use the moving dot to send a signal from one side of the Moon to the other faster than light, no physical laws are broken while the red dot winds up travelling faster than the speed of light. I can explain the actual math behind it but it seems a bit much for a webcomic forum board. :)
3) Quantum Entanglement – no information transfer. When two particles become ‘entangled,’ measuring the state of one INSTANTLY determines the state of the other, even if separated by light-years. Instantaneous means it’s infinitely faster than the speed of light. Einstein called it ‘spooky action at a distance.’ But since the correlation happens instantly, it cannot be used to send communication or data faster than light.
Unless you’re Harem, I guess. :)
Also to decode what the entangle particle means, you’d still have to send a traditional message to the observer on the other side, and those methods WOULD be limited by the speed of light.
In any case, the vacuum of space itself IS moving faster than the speed of light. That’s sort of the point. OBJECTS and data cannot. The vacuum of space is neither of those things, and it sort of would HAVE to have been moving faster than the speed of light during the inflationary epoch. There’s no other way it could have happened for the inflationary epoch to make actual sense. The speed of the expansion itself IS still a speed, and it blows way past the speed of light. I just liked how Michio Kaku put it, that ‘yes, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. The vacuum of space is ‘nothing.’ And it travels faster than the speed of light.”
The whole twist on words just really appeals to me as a lawyer. :)
“I think the Alcubierre warp is under-theorized, it’s basically some semi-realistic math applied to Star Trek’s warp drive, and requires some questionable assumptions, of which negative energy is only one.”
A working Alcubierre drive requires the following.
The main thing is negative energy, which we can’t even say for sure actually exists or can exist. The second requirement is massive energy costs. Star Trek basically just uses matter-antimatter collisions to satisfy this requirement, while the Romulans use a singularity of a black hole to satisfy the same requirement. Normally, the amount of energy needed to power an actual Alcubierre drive would be roughly the total mass-energy of entire planets or even stars, although most modern scientists say it might be even less than a planet’s mass-energy total after looking at the math involved.
The last thing is causality and control. Basically scientists cannot figure out how a crew INSIDE the warp bubble could steer, decelerate, or send signals outside the bubble safely, as the front edge of the warp boundary would involve extreme tidal forces and geometric hurdles.
The reason that Star Trek’s warp drive is not the Alcubierre Warp Drive is because Star Trek only bothers dealing with one of the three requirements, and not even the most important one (the exotic matter requirement which requires a working Alcubierre drive to have a region of negative energy density). It ONLY deals with the energy requirements (for which they use antimatter, as previously mentioned). Although original Trek did sometimes act like Dilithium Crystals were the exotic matter. Mainly because the writers did not understand what exotic matter means and thought it just meant ‘stuff which is really hard to find’)
Michio Kaku did have a little interview where he did say that, basically, wormholes are probably the most likely way that humans will ever achieve superluminal speeds (ie, wormholes). Which is why The Expanse used that as the explanation, since The Expanse was a very hard science fiction-based show that tried to tie itself to real physics or at least real theoretical physics as often as possible.
“We already know that gravity waves propagate at the same speed as light, which is a really strong hint that space warps can’t actually beat light speed, because they’re just complicated gravity waves.”
Space Warp bubbles are not the same thing as just gravity waves though. Think of it more like how black holes work. Black holes ALSO work on gravity, but the reason that light cannot escape the gravity of a black hole is not because gravity itself is faster than light (like you said, they’re both the same speed), but because a black hole’s gravitational field is already permanently baked into the warped shape of the spacetime outside the event horizon, meaning no faster-than-light signals are required to keep it pulling on objects. Basically the same concept as a warp bubble. Which is probably why Star Trek made up the thing about Romulan ships using a black hole singularity for their warp cores (as opposed to many other species).
“But, hey, we’ve only really been doing physics for a couple millennia, and on a high level for a century or two, so who knows what we’ll figure out in the next million years?”
One can only hope. :)
The Alcubierre Warp Drive is the mathematical proof of the Star Trek universe’s warp drive, which itself was a theory based on either General or Specific Relativity, I cannot remember which, that said space itself (“nothing”) can in fact travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. The more we try to figure out dark energy, the more we seem to think that it’s true.
So, you localize spacetime around a craft and move that spacetime as fast as you want.
But as you say, the Alcubierre drive requires negative energy or other exotic forms of matter that don’t exist. Another scientist believes he figured it out without negative energy but it requires the craft to return to the place it started with no breaks.
PBS Spacetime: The best Youtube series you’ll love to not understand.
If you look at the math in detail, an object with mass can go faster than light, or it can go slower than light, but it cannot go *at* the speed of light, or cross between FTL and STL. (There are some other caveats around the FTL solutions to relativistic motion that mean most physicists don’t believe FTL travel is actually possible.)
However, classic “moving really fast” isn’t the only way to get time travel out of general relativity. Any spacetime configuration that lets you move out of your forward light cone (such as a wormhole) has the potential for creating closed timelike curves (or, in common terms, “time travel”.)
“If you look at the math in detail, an object with mass can go faster than light, or it can go slower than light”
I’ve never heard that. I don’t think that’s accurate, since gravity, for example, can move at the speed of light. But I could be wrong. I mean it happened once to me in 1994. On a Tuesday I think.
Gravity isn’t an object with mass. Scientists are still working out what exactly the fundamental nature of gravity is, but it’s not that.
Gravity has a speed (the speed of light) because it propagates as a wave through the fabric of spacetime, not because it is a moving object.
Gravity does ‘move,’ insofar as it creates a pull between different objects with mass, and also (according to Einstein, at least) creates a pull on the curvature of spacetime, and that pull has a top possible speed, which happens to be the speed of light (which was figured out via astronomical observations, since it’s impossible to measure it in a laboratory, given how the gravitational interactions are too weak in a controlled lab). As far as measuring the ‘speed of gravity’ is concerned, ‘mass’ would be involved because, at least in a Newtonian sense, gravity comes from mass, and is linearly proportional to it. Also, gravitational WAVES have mass. If they did not, then gravitational waves would not be able to interact with other objects.
In other words, gravity does not ‘have mass’ but mass is the primary property that creates gravity. According to Einstein’s ‘Inertial and Gravitational Mass,’ mass determines how strongly an object reacts to gravity and how much gravity it creates, but the force itself is a separate physical interaction. The MOST pull that gravity can pull an object at is the speed of light.
https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/grav_speed.html
“The speed of light is absolute, and cannot be reached by anything that has mass”
I never have mass because I’m not Catholic.
Where’s my spaceship???
The delay could be explained against the FTL communications simply by the fact of needing multiple relays like you said. I’m not much on astrophysics, but I studied electronics and each relay in the chain would need to receive the signal, correct for static and cosmic interference (assuming that’s a thing these FTL relays can do), boost the power a bit, and then transmit it again. Now while each of these tasks are lightning fast by human perception, to a computer they still take time and that time adds up with each relay needed.
Also you would definitely want to do the cosmic static correction at EVERY relay instead of just the final destination because much, like the example of a feedback loop, that would compound over time.
FTL communications us one of those finicky issues. Quantum Entanglement exists. Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” is real and demonstrable.
So the only real issue about how fast information can propagate is if you paid the premium fees like Deus and Tommy who are watching Maxima’s fights LIVE and not on the basic space cable broadcast delay like the rest of ARCHON. After all, Harem isn’t in the group shot because she’s already perceived this.
Quantum entanglement cannot be used to transmit information.
“Quantum Entanglement exists. Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” is real and demonstrable.”
Yes, but you can’t transmit data via quantum entanglement without using a normal transmission method, and those methods WOULD be bound by the speed of light.
Which is actually why using the Harem for communications stuff is GREAT. Her brains are quantum entangled, so that is instantaneous, but it actually takes time for her to actually relay the information. So… DaveB did a pretty good explanation of quantum entanglement when he explained that. :)
When Sydney and company got sucked to the Alari homeworld nearly two months in the future, Daphne was getting crippling migraine feedback from that.
Magic exists in the GrrlVerse. Superluminal travel exists. Wormholes and Ætherium causeways exist.Time travel (of a sort) exists. That it only takes seconds for Harem A to communicate to Max a situation Harem B is experiencing on Earth is just another way of putting information violating speed-of-light-causality over a barrel.
“When Sydney and company got sucked to the Alari homeworld nearly two months in the future, Daphne was getting crippling migraine feedback from that.”
I think she was having the crippling migraine feedback because there were MORE of her than she was used to there being.
And yeah, obviously in the Grrlpower universe, they discovered some method by which the physical universe is not the only way to transmit data, given there are several other fields interlapping and touching on each other, which is why stuff like magic and superpowrs can apparently exist in the universe.
“That it only takes seconds for Harem A to communicate to Max a situation Harem B is experiencing on Earth is just another way of putting information violating speed-of-light-causality over a barrel.”
Harem literally explained previously in the comics that, according to Dabbler, her minds are quantum-entangled which is why it’s all instantaneous for her. However, in order to communicate this information/data, it does take time. The funny thing is that DaveB’s explanation about Harem literally gives a practical scientific reason why it would work – ie, the aforementioned ‘quantum entanglement’ which is one of the few methods by which FTL is theoretically possible, at least based on physics in the RL universe.
What’s really interesting is the potential for Dabbler to have sent a message to the Xevoarchy after returning from the portal, reporting the destruction of the Alari homeworld before it happened.
Also it’s really weird that the Alari became homeless refugees after losing their homeworld – are they not an interplanetary species? Do they not have colonies in the thousands outside of their homeworld, especially if they are expansionistic dicks?
Or were those Alari refugees from the home system rejected by their own homeworld?
By their own colonies* I mean.
Which honestly wouldn’t be surprising, giving that they are also shown to be dicks to each other.
I can’t imagine they’re very kind to even their own refugees and it doesn’t seem unlikely that the homeworld going bust was seen as an opportunity by the colonies who might have been considered second class citizens meant for exploitation by the homeworld until now.
To expand upon why FTL=time travel, basically everything is always moving at the same speed, it’s just that the vast, vast, VAST majority of that speed is oriented along the time axis. This is the reason for relativistic time dilation; as you apply more of your “stock” of speed to movement along the spatial axes, less of that speed is being applied to motion through time. From an external reference frame anyway. Because there is no universal preferred reference frame, you always experience yourself moving through time at the same rate, which effectively means the time axis of your reference frame has been rendered non-parallel to the time axis of other reference frames, so traveling faster than light in a direction which, to you, is a normal spatial dimension, would appear to them as traveling partially along their time axis, possibly backwards.
You can set up some fun examples of that using interactive Minkowski diagrams, a few versions of which are available online.
It has been observed that the decay of radioactive nuclei ‘slows down’ when they are accelerated to velocities close to lightspeed. Since our standard of time measurement is radioactive decay ie atomic clocks, it is generally assumed that time is ‘dilating’.
There once was a Miss Bright,
Whose speed was faster than light.
She traveled one day, in a relative way.
And returned the previous night. – Sorry, I’ve forgotten the author.
Google says A.H. Reginald Buller
I absolutely love that limerick and just saved it on my computer.
As a reward I am giving you a ‘Get Out of Ninja Assassination’ card. One use only, non-transferrable. Congratulations.
And oblig. because nobody has quoted it yet:
There was a young lady named Bright
whose speed was much faster than light
She took off one day
in a relative way
and returned on the previous night.
Always enjoy seeing Kenya!
A hard woman is good to find.
Supers working out and getting stronger, that was a plot thingy for She-Hulk a couple of years ago, where it was useless for She-Hulk to train, but as Jennifer Walters it was very useful, because the hulk form was a force multiplier.
Before training she went up to fight a guy with an infinity gem and lost badly, and after training that guy wasn’t allowed to use the infinity gem and the fight was about as unfair in the other direction.
It also ended up with a She-Hulk being “too strong” and remarkably bulked up, but cute.
That issue was published 21 years ago, to be exact. I would look up the issue number, but I have to go collapse into a pile of dust now.
I thought the Thing from the Fantastic Four started weight training post-powers first. But since I’m unknowledgable, I’m looking forward to the explanation on how I’m wrong.
To be honest, i have no idea who did what first, Ben Grimm or Jen Walters.
Let’s say i’m much more of a target demographic for the latter one (similar to Power Girl) than being marketable for a guy who can pose as a living rock.
Thats when She-Hulk had to start wearing the Jupiter Suit to keep her strength in check. Until she got beaten up by a Power Infinity Gem fueled Titania. Sensational She-Hulk was a fun comic run. :)
Yup, need to hit. The gym… all day may(SNOKSNORTSNOT). Oh dang dave, muy vato. ROTFMLAO MUWAHAHAHAHAWAHAHAHAHA! Stop it, ya got me going like oahhhahahahahahHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. like one of my employers, I’m a professional unionized hench, this keeps up. (dramatic and totally obviously not fake shudder) This keeps up, I’ll be cackling and that leads to super villain town. I’m too old to start doing that. Now to go feed the new boss’s venus flytraps……2 chickens each ‘flower’ uhg, my back.
I imagine that Hiro is smart enough to be aware that testosterone poisoning makes you stupid. Recall how “Bro-Heim” got transparently manipulated by Sydney into giving up a golden opportunity to escape at the tail end of the steakhouse fight. (That may not be the best example, given that from the look of things Bro-Heim was not too bright to begin with.)
“I imagine that Hiro is smart enough to be aware that testosterone poisoning makes you stupid.”
Testosterone poisoning?
“Recall how “Bro-Heim” got transparently manipulated by Sydney into giving up a golden opportunity to escape at the tail end of the steakhouse fight”
Pretty sure that guy was stupid from the get-go, like you mentioned. :) :) :) Although I think most of them wound up being let go free because they were all being influenced by Vehemence’s violence aura against their will. Even the ringleaders like Vektor and Opal, although they were detained because they had outstanding warrants already (and so did Jabberwokky I believe).
The FTL communication paradox is(mostly) only a problem for when there’s relative motion.between the parties. You could solve this by introducing a delay that grows with the relative motion of the two parties (FTL nodes) then it’s just a matter of buffering messages or changing relative velocity for instant communication.
Or you could agree that just because it is faster than light, it does not automatically become instanteneous.
At c an object that is 1 ly away has a communications lag of 2 years.
At 2c your signals move at 600000 km/s and your communications lag is reduced to a single year.
It all depends on how you break the laws of physics.
At plain faster than light m/s your lag reduces proportionally with your overspeed. (and given the size of even a local star cluster, it does not make much of a diffierence in what c-as-highest-possible speed restricts your space empire to)
If you have a wormhole then the speed is determined by the distance for you to the wormhold plus the wormhole to your destination plus how much distance the wormhole factored out between entrance and exit.
If you have a stargate then that distance between entrance and exit is zero (or near enough on galactic scale)
If you have a “Peace War” style of stasis bubble then you can travel anywhere you want without experiencing any time (or inertia), but you likely cannot have a functioning society…
Star Trek lives in option 1, meaning that it would not actually work unless the warp scale is exponential (with a well above 2 base value). Star Wars lives in a sort-of option 2. Maxima lives in a mix of options 1, 2 and 3 apparently :)
Fictional FTL communications: each relay opens an atomic-sized wormhole to the next relay to pass the info. Data passes from relay to relay like data packets through the internet.
That does seem like one of the few consistent ways that FTL communication would be able to work :)
I imagine this competition has proven very beneficial for Maxima at this point. She just couldn’t get the kind of workout on Earth to train and improve herself like she’s getting now, kind of like how one version of Superman in fighting his alternate universe evil counterpart wins because evil him simply killed all his opponents but good Superman had more practice and training at super-fights because he doesn’t (of course there’s the issue that many if not most of those top-tier villains good Superman doesn’t kill generally have body counts that increase each time they return, certainly none of evil Superman’s opponents bothered anyone else ever again).
Except for Superman vs Injustice Superman, where Injustice Supermsn was still kicking Superman’s butt because Superman is do used to instinctively holding back but Injustice Superman gave that up so long ago that he doesnt even need to think about ‘not holding back anymore.’ It definitely did work for Superman against Ultraman though.
Who’s that sticking their arm up behind Anvil who isn’t in the cast list? Harem? They presumably can’t see the TV…
[Also, is the leftmost speech balloon in the panel meant to relate to someone off-panel? Hiro presumably isn’t answering himself…]
Red hair… could be Heatwave?
After Pander’s post, I’m inclined to agree it’s Heatwave, but we can’t see her hair. The red hair we see is Anvil’s hair in front of her.
Judging from the hip/body curve, it’s a woman, and judging from the skin tone, it’s not Jiggawatt or Varia. It’s probably also not X, Dr. Frost, Gwen, or Arianna, because of the style of outfit she’s in. Probably not Chimyriad. Despite being short, she’s still too tall to be Pixel. Probably a member of ARC-SWAT, given the other people in the image, so probably not Specs. It can’t be Digit or Sydney, since they’re with Maxima.
So that leaves either Heatwave or Jabberwokky (or one of the Harems other than blondie) who would fit the profile.
And since she’s standing next to Mr. Amorphous, I’m betting it’s Heatwave.
Judging by the shorts, probably Jabs
Very possible. If it’s not Heatwave, then it’s Jabberwokky.
I mainly went with Heatwave because (1) the unknown woman is next to Mr. Amorphous and Achilles (and they tend to group together), (2) I can’t really tell how much muscletone is in her leg – Jabberwokky has more feminine musculature than Heatwave, and (3) Math isnt in the group image (which I found odd since I’d expect he’d like to watch an all-out fight like that. So my best guess was that’s Heatwave, and Jabberwokky is off with Math somewhere, either fighting, having sex, or both.
But guessing Jabberwokky based on the shorts is definitely a good guess, given we’ve see Jabberwokky in shorts like that before. I just wasn’t sure if those were like… standard ARCSWAT training shorts or something.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-823-vantablackbelt/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-824-fist-of-the-sigma-octantis/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-825-punch-practice/
Oh yeah, the obvious woman would be Brooke, just don’t recall her wearing short-shorts, and Jabs does like working out
Also remember: DaveB doesn’t like doing large groupshots, and has stated that if you don’t see them, then they are simply off-screen but still there (unless stated to be elsewhere)
To be fair, there are ways to get ‘Faster Than Light’ travel without actually breaking the speed limit. Wormholes, for example, manipulate space itself, so you don’t change the speed; you simply change the distance travelled.
Another popular explanation is some type of extra-dimensional travel, where you momentarily hop out of our universe/dimension into another where the rules of physics are slightly different, use those properties to travel as you wish, and then jump back.
Of course, the idea of something in our world actually SURVIVING in a different dimension with wonky physics is even more ridiculous than FTL if you stop and actually think about it, but it works for Suspenion of Disbelief for most people.
I mean, that’s how the Star Trek warp works – while the engines push them into a sub-universe where a) the speed/inertia thing doesn’t happen and 2) either the speed of light isn’t a barrier or distances are way shorter, and meanwhile they also form (or yank with them) a “bubble” of realspace so they don’t all suddenly die of a case of the-physics-is-inimical-to-human-life-itis.
(I’ve RP’d a mad scientist on the Internet. I have much experience in the use of Bullshit Physics. :D )
I prefer the Futurama reasoning for FTL speeds. :)
1) The speed limit of the universe was officially raised centuries prior, in 2208, allowing ships to move at incredible speeds without breaking the laws of physics. I see no problem with using bureaucracy to fix this concrete law of physics. :) I went over this with Hermes and he agrees with me, despite his being a fictional character.
2) The spaceship itself does not actually move through space at these impossible velocities; rather, the dark matter engine moves the universe around a stationary spacecraft. Y’know, since space itself does not have to have a limit of the speed of light. :)
Which part of the fight was this? Is it the moment she knocked the peak off & exposed Mt.Atrocitous’ brain?
That was my best guess.
Judging by the crystals, looks like it
There has actually been some physics experiments around using quantum entanglement to bypass the speed of light information transfer limit – successfully. Turns out if you split a beam of light, send it two different directions, and at endpoint A impose polarization, then you can read that polarization off at endpoint B as well, bypassing the propogation of information limit… provided you have the rig meet a plethora of requirements that are decidedly impractical for actual use.
That’s a common misunderstanding. You can’t “impose polarization”, but you can test the polarization of the photons at each end and they’ll both give a random answer, 50/50. Because it’s random there’s no way to use this to send information, but if you compare the answers later you’ll find they match.
Quick primer on why you can only have two of relativity, FTL and strict causality.
Under relativity, consider two events A, at point p and time t, and A’ at point p’ and time t’. Now, if the light from event A arrives at point p’ *before* time t’, we can definitively say that event A happens before event A’. In this case, and the reverse, we sat that events A and A’ are “time-like separated”. However, since the speed of light is finite, it is possible to have the case where the light from event A arrives at point p’ after time t’, while the light from A’ arrives at point p after time t. In this case we cannot definitively say whether event A happens before or after event A’, or if they happened at the same time. In fact there are reference frames in which each of those three possibilities are true. In this case, we say the two events are “space-like separated”.
Let us introduce FTL. Through some unspecified means (what it is is irrelevant), something, be it a ship or simply some information, is able to Depart from point p at time t and Arrive at point p’ at time t’, and D and A are space-like separated, so the light from D arrives at p’ after t’. As before, this means we *cannot* definitively saying whether the Departure happened before the Arrival, or vice versa, and there are reference frames in which each is true.
Now let us posit an observer O who is at point p’ at time t’, and O is in a reference frame where D happens *after* A. Let O use our FTL to travel to point p. If we’ve chosen the right reference frame, O will arrive at point p *before* t, and Departure. Thus we have a causal loop.
So to maintain consistency, you have to either abandon FTL, abandon strict causality and allow causal loops, or abandon relatively (usually be allowing a preferred reference frame)..
A good presentation of the trilemma.
I will note that the preferred reference frame would only apply to the (new) FTL physics, so that could be consistent with physics as observed today. The cosmic microwave background (CMB) rest frame (or more formally, the inertial frame in which the CMB Doppler dipole moment is zero) is the most obvious candidate.
The alternative censor allowing FTL but preventing causal loops was alluded to by Brett Bellmore above. Empty space isn’t really empty, but is filled with virtual particles (see the Casimir effect for an experimental demonstration). A simplified way to think about this is that the universe allows a small amount of energy to be borrowed for a small amount of time as long as the product of the two is less that the Planck constant. Any combination of FTL and non-FTL travel that allows a causal loop would also allow an infinity of virtual particles (and infinite mass) to traverse that loop, which will collapse the wormhole/cause the FTL drive not to engage/etc. , preventing the loop.
Doesn’t matter where the motivation comes from, as long as the motivated actually use it to improve themselves
And knowing this lot, they will: not because any of them believe they have a chance of matching Maxi, but simply because they want to improve themselves
Hmm… Now how can Achiles’ power improve)
It’s already in the, I don’t age and can’t die from anything category. So how would it work?
Just because you haven’t seen an upper limit, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. But if you keep exercising it to get closer to some theoretical maximum then you may not notice?
Let’s say Achiles can eat anti-matter; hot garbage OP but sure why not. How would he be able to detect that he was increasing towards the ability to eat a macroscopic kugelblitz or other singularity inducing phenomena? Personal experience with black holes from his youth? The availability of technology to use to determine it instead of be put to other uses? The availability of some type of divination that also jumped its own opportunity cost(s)?
As long as Maxima is at the ‘top’ of the curve, Achiles may never know. If Maxima can’t harm him in anyway (focusing her durability to its near maximum and then slashing a finger nail at something that doesn’t rim because he has clipped fingernails and a hair style as fast as her left over speed allows, pressing on both sides of his rib cage with strength maxed, etc.) and she’s more dangerous than basically every known weapon by ‘polite’ galactic society, then everyone would just think of him as invulnerable. Even though it wasn’t perfect.
I think the suggestion’s been that (1) Achilles isn’t invulnerable as such, he’s *unchanging* (well, except for forming memories, I guess). You can’t poke a hole in him because that would alter his bodyl and (2) he’s not a super, it’s a magic thing.
You brought up something very interesting. Achilles DOES form memories. Which requires building new neural pathways in the brain that did not previously exist. So he’s not completely unchanging. At the same time, I am assuming his hair does not grow anymore or that would be a real problem since he can no longer cut his hair. That WOULD be ‘unchanging’ instead of just undamageable. So either there is a flaw or his invulnerability of being unchanging has a limit as far as his brain in concerned with making additional neurons/synaptic pathways, etc.
I think we need another episode of Dabbler’s Science Corner.
He could develop his ability to go from unchanging to being able to allow change at will. He’s not completely unchanging after all, or he wouldn’t be able to form new memories.
Maybe he could gain the ability to temporarily withdraw the Unchanging nature from part of his hair, allowing it to be cut, and then the hair is either normal hair or can be braided to make Unchanging strings.
Cue not queue. Sorry not sorry.
Yesterday’s comic had Que instead of Cue, as well. Maybe he’s just cycling through similar words as a joke?
Q next week’s comic where he just uses, well….
Previous panel: The hell did you do to Gellen?
Next panel: Earlier – BWABOOM
Hyper Pulse Generator for the FTL comms ;)
As to your information propagation thing: if FTL is possible, then it bypasses normal information propagation limits.
The delay is *obviously* because even though the relays are FTL, it’s still a radio signal. Duh.
Well, as I often say, while men are generally going to be stronger physically, just how it is, this doesn’t mean there aren’t women who are stronger than some men, which is things I think gets forgotten.
Superpowers however are the thing that really stops this from being a case. See a well trained 5’2 woman go up against 6′ tall well trained men, and you really aren’t going to believe she’s taking them out, especially if it’s many men in numbers, with just physicality. That changes with super powers and it becomes believable.
Though, then super power vs super power will still have bad writing to let whoever win :p
General relativity has a direction of time in it, so FTL comms, if such a thing existed, would not risk violating causality.
Remember that General Relativity is only a theory. Only the most well-tested theory we have that keeps getting proven right over and over again, but still a theory. It’s our understanding of how the cosmos works based upon our understanding and repeated observations.
Causality plays by its own rules.
@DaveB on the FTL thing, the latency occurs when the device receives whatever data and slows it down to assemble and act on the data. In the mid 2000’s a Wall Street Stock Market related service provider leased a part of MCI’s being decommissioned microwave telecommunications relay network to create a NYC to Chicago point to point link. Because the middle points were simply passing the traffic through rather than examining them for routing, the latency was less than passing the same traffic through the internet over fiber.
Microwave radio transmission is slightly below speed of light in fiber, but the stacked latencies of all the intervening hops carrying a multitude of different traffic were greater enough to more than nullify that advantage for those firms. I do not remeber exact numbers, but it was like 0.2 seconds faster in each direction.
Oh, people wondering about where Brooke is: who do you think is saying the first “Yup”? Can’t be Hiro, seeing how he was the one asking the question, so it has to be someone behind him
I would like to point out that the way biology works, a subspecies with as efficient standard body optimization as Grrlverse supers would necessarily get serious longevity benefits as well. This might range from a 120-150 years lifespan, to several centuries, to functional immortality depending on the details of the system. This for the same biological reasons why supers with a healing factor typically are long-lived in the genre. Supers in this setting all but surely do not have normal human aging and lifespan.
I’m kind of confused as to what exactly is going on here. Is this meant to be MORE of the tournament that we just saw Maxima finish up, with the delay being enough so that the ‘live’ to the rest of the team footage is only now getting to them? And presumably it’s going to go into other stuff, and not just be ‘oh hey, here’s some more combat scenes that got missed beforehand’.
It’s obviously not the next part of the tournament, because ‘moments earlier’ is Maxima doing the prepwork on watching her opponents, at least by my understanding. Outside of a ‘whoops, skipped a page’.
Yes, this is delayed (due to relay speeds) coverage of the last round (the one getting dusted is the Living Mountain)
“Speaking of FTL communication, I had 4 paragraphs written suggesting that FTL travel or communication might break something fundamental about the universe, as you’d be violating the physical limits of the rate of information propagation”
I was talking with a scientist guy who knows physics. I thought I had a workaround for something happening faster than light.
I’m in orbit around Earth. He’s in orbit around Alpha Centauri. I poke him with my stick which is 4.34 light years long. So instant faster than light information getting to him: that I just poked him with a stick.
He told me that it doesn’t work like that. The stick would actually compress along the length of it so that the information, and feeling the poke, wouldn’t travel faster than the speed of light. He then threatened to show me the math.
I declined the offer to look at the math. But I did look up the physics information about that problem to the best of my ability (this was back in the mid-90’s when I first got on the internet) and it seemed that he was right.
But i would still like to do a practical test to make sure the theory works like they say it does.
Methinks you just want to poke the annoying science guy with a stick! And who can blame you? Annoying people need information.
After looking again 3 or 4 times at the final panel, Hiro isn’t the only one annoyed by the distant Maxima goalpost’s moving further away. Anvil’s expression is almost the same, and Mr. Amorphous feels even more outclassed. So it isn’t about Hiro feeling let down by his testosterone and power level, but maybe that Seneca and Peggy can see how the others are feeling.
It might also be in the back of Hiro’s mind that he will NEVER have a shot at being with Maxima. First there are the nonfraternization reg’s, then she gets a normal boyfriend, and now we see how much she’s been holding back.
“Super powers don’t stop aging. Well, unless your particular suite of powers actually does do that.”
Is Achilles immune to aging?
What about being drained of tantric energy by a Succubus?
Or tired out by one?
“I had 4 paragraphs written suggesting that FTL travel or communication might break something fundamental about the universe, as you’d be violating the physical limits of the rate of information propagation”
Since information is clearly traveling faster then light in that universe, clearly nothing about the worlds physics is broken.
You do get to do a funny thing however, by using lightspeed lag.
Fly a probe out 50 lightyears and point it at earth. You get the light and EM emissions form 50 years ago.
While you loose a lot to the cube-square law, you can still get something by just going far enoguh away and living with the lag.
If the Xenoarchy placed a second set of sattelites 1 light day out from earth (about as far as Voyager 1 is out), they would have seen the sabotage of their Geostationary sattelites within a day.
And looking for a stealthy satellite in a 1 light day radius makes the proverbial “needle in a haystack” seem reasonable.