Grrl Power #1508 – Laces out!
I’ve been working from home for the past 15 years, drawing this lovely comic for you guys, and I haven’t had to deal with rush hour traffic in all that time, (outside of some poorly timed errands and whatnot) but I still firmly believe that people who drive down to the end of the merge lane when everyone else has already merged then forcibly nose their way in, thereby causing 80% of the actual traffic, deserve their own holocaust.
If you’re a geologist, and have opinions on what a cored out section of igneous mountainside should look like, or have other observations on the physics of what’s happening on this page, well, now is your time to shine. Why Maxima decided on this approach vs just a really huge energy beam, who knows? Despite all the energy blast variations she can do, maybe her super petajoule shield buster beam always looks like the one she used on the Fel carrier, and the galaxy knows what that looks like. Also this does have its own cool factor to it. And despite probably being the first weapon* ever used, throwing a rock can still be an effective tactic against high-tech opponents, an archmage, a demon, a whole army, or even a Death Star. It’s just a matter of scale, and/or velocity. Okay, the archmage would probably have the best chance against that sort of thing, but the nice thing about rocks is that they come in all sorts of sizes, and they’re just laying around for free. A boulder the size of a house? Probably not a game-ender on the archmage. If you can throw an entire mountain? That would certainly scale the defensive mana expenditure at the least.
*Like a tool based weapon, not claws or teeth or an aggressive pseudopod.
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.
Wasn’t her first tool based weapon. She used a pillar against vehemance during their first fight iirc (Can’t check. When I try to find the comic I get a weird ‘blocked by site user for too many page not found errors’).
Also, she could be using the rock as further cover for her identity, since one of her first rules to sydney was also “Don’t throw a car at people. If you are strong enough to throw it, your punch will likely do more damage than the car will.”
I think Dave mean ” the first weapon used by humans (in general)”, not specifically by Maxima.
To be fair, I bet that rock works much better as a thrown weapon than a car.
Wouldn’t “kill all sapients” technically include any conscious, thinking artificial intelligence like Ultron for example?
People who try to nose in at the very last stretch where merging is even possible without going off the road aren’t actually saving themselves any time because while the people at the back of the merge lane might be a few minutes behind the people at the front of it at that time, when you get to where the traffic lightens up, the people at the back end up only a few seconds behind the people at the front. And once you realize this, heavy traffic becomes just an inevitability that must be waited out.
The only people who should be impatient are people with air cooled vehicles like older motorcycles, and that’s only because their engine could overheat since moving = airflow and airflow is how those engines cool.
Funnily enough, but its been studied and the most efficient method is the zipper merge at or near the last point. This means both lanes need to work together, with the ones in lane giving proper room and the ones doing the merging do so quickly and safely. Everyone merging early, back from the obstruction, actually causes slower traffic.
THIS! This this this! Traffic engineers know where to set the merge point. The people causing the backup are the ones who aren’t leaving space refuse to let somebody in who has “overlap” at the merge point.
Partly there’s a sense that “MY lane is continuing and YOUR lane is going away,” when mathematically it’s simply that two lanes must become one.
Anecdotally, people complain about NYC traffic all the time, but the most perfect zipper merge I’ve ever witnessed was on the BQE a couple decades ago.
A classic trope is the highly technological advanced entity with extensive shielding against energy attacks being totally unprepared against something as basic as a thrown rock. Exhibit #1701: Picard wasting some Borg drones using a Tommy gun.
The trope name is “Rock beats Laser”, for anybody who’s interested. And yes, this is common enough to have a whole named trope around it.
So does that mean Gail would hate DaveB? It sounds like he’s saying he hates when someone zipper merges when no one else did.
Indeed, Dave DO NOT know how to drive properly : The merge is supposed to happen at the very end for safety and efficiency reason. And the actual congestion is worsened by the idiot who do not use both lanes prior to the merge.
I’m not sure what Maxah is doing here but it looks cool.
Did Maxima just launch The Drill That Will Pierce the Heavens?
Giga
Drill
BREAKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
Only when excessive shouting and huge red sunglasses are involved.
Looks like Disastar is about to get zipper merge’d.
Weirdly enough, merging late is actually optimal, and if everyone just formed staggered lines in both lanes and merged at the last second, traffic flow would be better. There’s a weird effect where drivers will happily run millimeters from the car in front for a short while, and will gradually open the gap up over time. If everyone merged at the end, that region of highly compressed, dense traffic would run through the restricted section of road at a higher rate (not higher mph, flow velocity, just higher cars per hour, more akin to mass flow). If everyone merges early, the string of cars decompresses and you end up with a low density flow through the restriction.
Looks like a hunk of igneous rock to me. Pretty solid, so I presume they’re on or near a volcano that doesn’t have a lot of gas in the lava flows.
I used to do a good bit of practical field geology. Someday, I’m going to have to write down all the stuff I’ve learned to do over the last 70 years.
And so they gang up on the big guy as the action proceeds, and Ixah fashions a giant bullet and throws a fast spiral…
…at who? We don’t know yet, do we? We haven’t seen Maxima’s pregame research, and she knows how to line up her targets. :)
Imo rubbernecking and passing stacked up traffic via an open merged lane are two of the most obnoxious driver behaviors.
Although once traffic has slowed to a crawl rubbernecking isn’t as dangerous and becomes hard to resist, it is still usually done to check out an accident on the OPPOSITE side of the freeway! It’s “distracted driving”.
But, again imo, people who pass hundreds of cars to be let into the through lane by the good will of others where there’s no more road for them are doing it because they think they are being smart, so they deserve to go before everyone else.
Therefore I question the sapience of rude, unsafe drivers.
There was a song called “Transfusion”, that ended with this final line:
“Barnyard drivers come in two classes,
Rude road hogs and speeding jackasses.
So remember to slow down todaaaay!”
Not that it matters much but actually the first weapon was a NON-thrown rock.
No no no.
People that don’t use the full road before merging are extending the delays. The government even puts up signs saying to use both lanes and merge in turn. And people that block both lanes to stop that should be shot.
Gail… as someone who lives in a state that has NOTORIOUSLY bad drivers… You have no idea how much that last comment made my day. That among other things I mean.
I mean the archmage would likely teleport out of the way of the mountain.
In this case and at these scales of durability, will the thrown rock due to its relatively low speed and density compared to a the metamaterials of a sci-fi spacecraft not be more like throwing a compact dustbunny at a an armored knight?
Kind of like when Superman smashes General Zod into the ground or throws a car at him – he’s effectively hitting him with the durability equivalent of a soft foam mattress or maybe even some highly compressible liquid sponge.
Her fist seems like it would be a much better piercing weapon?
But that would require getting in close, which is always risky. Maybe she’s just playing for time while avoiding risks with plausible deniability as the other competitors will likely take down the Sinistsr given enough time.