Grrl Power #1232 – Crisis partially nipped
Lots of speculation on the previous pages, and quite a few of you called this outcome. This was broadly hinted at in the bonus comic for the Sydney Surrogate NSFW post a few months back. While canon, I’m not actually sure where in the timeline those events occur. Probably not too far in the future I guess, but we’ll have to see. Also the fact that Lapha isn’t totally suppressing Sydney was foreshadowed when she had to jump onto Garamm’s head after the Times Square battle. They seemed to cohabitate rather seamlessly. It’s unclear if totally dominating a host is something Lapha’s species can do and she’s just bad at it, or the effect is different with each species and/or individual they attempt it with.
The new vote incentive is up! Crimson and Scarlett have a present for Ingsol!
It’s them, they’re the present. They’ve decided that “Sire-versaries” are a thing and Ingsol has to be convinced this is a good idea each time. Everyone thinks his pair of names-that-are-synonyms-with-red sirelings who are both women and who were both turned in that age range that ensure peak hotness means he’s a dirty old man, but he actually isn’t. It just worked out that way. And don’t forget that while it looks like there’s a 25 year age gap between the girls and him, it’s actually much worse, as he is 700 years old, while Scarlett is something like 180 and Crimson is only 40. But at the same time it’s meaningless as they were both fully adults when they got turned, so it’s all copacetic.
As usual, Patreon has the pair of them in various states of undress.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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This page was a major let-down on how quick it went from the cliff-hanger of Lapha being in control to Sydney ain’t going anywhere (unfortunately), two maybe three panels?
Hopefully DaveB can make up for this by giving us at least a full page of Sydney arguing with Lapha while everyone else comfortably watches (from a safe distance) while eating snacks :)
We all called it though, and it was flat out stated (in the blurb not the comic granted) that her species can’t easily out right control a host body with their own mind,
and despite all the people trying to argue Lapha’s plans, its pretty clear she isn’t really great on planning out her attack strategies and more an opportunist and quick to act type.
Heck she didn’t even try to wait till she was alone with Sidney, what was her plan even going into this…pretend to be part of the college friends group and just hope during the confrontation she’d be able to sneak away and be alone with a super, hop bodies, assume she can just control a terran and…what is her exit here…loeave the group’s friend’s biofram body behind and leave with them back through the portal in a hijacked body like that wouldn’t be suspicious.
its like last time, the mercenaries had no way of knowing Maxima (who they were targeting) would show up where the tour bus they came to Earth landed, rather than sneaking to Earth in their own craft closer to the target’s location and then what…hoping they could sneak her back onto the tour bus or its life boat *which clearly wouldn’t have fit that whole team that showed up*, and just instead put a stasis pod in the overhead compartment or hijack the tour bus to leave…
she has that compulsive a moral outlaw feel to her. Its like a wild west where they see a bounty is in a bar with fifty of their men and think they can run in there, throw a rope on them, and run out and get rich no problem.
Better than stated, previously shown in the comic when we saw Lapha copiloting Garamm’s body and having conversations with him.
That by itself would have been inconclusive – Garamm was Lapha’s ally after all and she could have chosen to play nice. After all, he’s already doing what she wants, and she wouldn’t want to burn any bridges with her last remaining crew member.
I love how Parfait’s look goes from surprise and fear (panel 1) to shock and WTF (panel 9) lol! Now Max can show up with a THUNK and a heavy glove to yank off Lapha off Sydney’s head and onto Tendi’s body that’s also been sleepy-time shot.
LTLFTC
Now that this is out of the way, I keep learning things from this comic that I never expected (interesting new curses for example)…
Love it.
LTLFTC?
Is it weird that I first read “lit” as “literary”?
Whether she can or can’t suppress someone’s mind when she jacks their body, Sydney’s mind/brain isn’t exactly normal, and probably has enough twists, dead ends, and “surprise features” that even a galaxy class telepath would have trouble going past the jacket cover of that mental book.
Anti Demon Head Displacement!
Body Control is a nice power, but for the orbs you need Mind Control.
Nothing can control Sydney’s mind! Not even her!
…I still say grab the taser. Syd can relax and take the backseat by getting the methane menace hogtied and begloved.
There’s a risk that a taser only takes out Sydney and leaves Lapha in sole control.
I’m still slightly confused- are the orbs themselves avoiding Lapha or if Sydney is managing to command them mentally despite not being in control of her physical body.
Should be the latter, the orbs never before appeared to act of their own volition, and after dodging she says “the orbs only obey me” as opposed to “looks like they don’t like you”.
Syndey has weaponized the orbs against Math. And actually landed a hit.
So she has full mental control over their flightpath.
There’s a risk that a taser only takes out Sydney and leaves Lapha in sole control.
Keep your arms and hands inside the car, kiddo, Welcome to Scoville-vania, the scariest dark-ride ever! Hang on princess! It’s gonna be a bumpy ride!… :3
You know, Sydney used the orbs as (accidental) weapons against Math.
So, she can totally beat herself up!
If not, I guess it is time from someone to get the Aeolith tweezers.
Yeah, this is about what I expected.
I’ve always really been “icked” by possession powers.
Simply being, consent is already a big deal to me, as for nearly anyone with a modern sense of moral values. And when it comes down to it, I see few powers that inherently violate consent so consistently or intensely as possession powers.
So, basically, Lapha is a walking consent violation, and she doesn’t even try to mitigate it, but excacerbates it.
I want to see her destroyed. Hard and with extreme prejudice.
It’s not just Lapha though — it’s her entire species. Do they all deserve to be destroyed, just because of their nature as “parasites”? Or could their abilities be used in socially healthy ways as well as horribly violating ones?
They apparently dealt with the conflict inherent in their natures by creating artificial bodies to control, so that they’re not violating an individual person. But I wonder if they could possess non-intelligent creatures as well, and might have do so earlier in their history. Or, someone might voluntarily choose to allow one to cohabitate with them, to have access to their knowledge and skills. Imagine if the social roles were reversed, and the Ætholiths were treated more like equipment, something people would trade out for different tasks.
How do you feel about the Trill Symbiotes?
Let’s face it, we all know how Sydney thinks. Lapha ain’t getting out of this without serious mental trauma.
I mean, to be fair, body-jacking I suspect would be pretty traumatic. So Sydney’s got full ethical reign to go tit for tat here.
We rarely see Harem using her teleportation and multitasking, and I think that’s a shame.
There should totally have been a Harem popping in behind Sydney/Lapha and shooting her up with one of those handy dandy knock out doohickies they used back in the big fight way early on. How do you deal with a person who has an all powerful shield? Get inside it before it goes up and KO them, that’s how.
But then, we saw a Harem shooting at Sciona just before she opened up her portal to Alar and her bullets bouncing off the wings in shield mode. There shoulda been at least three of her there catching Sciona in a crossfire.
POWER STUNTS. Harem’s still relatively low level,meaning she may not have fully integrated exactly how much (and how broken) her power really is. Think of it this way; we in the audience are largely gamers, and Harem just…isn’t.
Considering her ability to multitask and learn simultaneously I think we need to add the phrase ” that we know off” to any list of skills we think she might not have yet.
You’re assuming that she’s not already multitasking — that each of her bodies isn’t already occupied doing something she thinks is important. Archon isn’t necessarily her top priority. It’s actually a little surprising that she’s a hero at all, rather than a criminal.
here im wondering if Sidney’s various mental status effects are contagious.
Parfait’s Not collared in this comic, artist slip up or important foreshadowing?
Probably option 1.
She’s been on-off missing the collar for a while, for example in #1226 she has it in panel 6 but misses it in other panels.
This is also potentially another piece of my “Sydney Isn’t Philosophically Human Anymore” idea. There are a lot of traits of “Human” that we don’t necessarily put on the list that don’t fit her, At All, due to how being tethered to the orbs impacts her. For instance her relationship with gravity.
The threat, here, is if control of the orbs is a skill, like a psychic muscle, that Sydney worked up over time. If so, and thus the “they know you’re a fake” is entirely a bluff, the “pulling the joystick” is especially apt; There’s a bunch of other buttons around her, and just because Lapha doesn’t know what they do (and perhaps are so unfamiliar she doesn’t even recognize them as buttons) doesn’t mean she doesn’t technically have access to them. If that’s how it works, then Lapha could GET dangerous if she were able to get enough time in the body.
In terms of THIS body-heist it’s not an issue, because she’s done the heist equivalent of yelling “so long, suckers!” at the cops BEFORE getting the helicopter started, but it’s still a potential risk for the future. We could end up getting a vulnerable, scared “She wasn’t powerless. If she knew how, she could have stolen everything” speech to Maxima in a chapter epilogue.
Worth noting, Sydney could REALLY screw with Lapha… because the orbs and her are bound and have a maximum distance they can seperate, AND Sydney still has telepathic control of them. That means Sydney could yank her body around using the orbs when Lapha is screwing around…
Kind of curious how Lapha would feel being effectively body-jacked while body-jacking.