Grrl Power #1405 – Gooch joke redux
This guy is supposed to sound a little vague, cause, well… his thought processes aren’t human. I dunno if there’s a word for “more than sapient,” but he would qualify. What I mean is that his thinking is as much “supercomputer/ten trillion simultaneous streams of consciousness/thought processes” as he is an organic brain with… you know, emotions and hobbies and that other stuff that makes someone interesting. Or maybe boring, depending on the hobbies.
I have say, writing something other than fairly casual dialog is a real challenge for my particular skill set. I will say this though, those word bubble stacks he’s speaking, with two or three different colored words per bubble, he’s actually saying a single word that encompasses all those concepts. “How/When/Why” is a specific comprehensive interrogative, and his language has other words that mean “Who/What/How” or “Which/How Much/Whom.” You get the idea. It makes for a thick dictionary, but he’s the kind of guy who appreciates that sort of lexical precision.
But like I said, he’s not just a space android. He can appreciate a good gooch joke.
The Sydney Kobold vote incentive is nearly done. I know it’s been sitting idle for a while, but in the last three weeks, my wife discovered what sciatica is… and then more recently discovered that sometimes the early stages of shingles looks a lot like sciatica. That one’s still up in the air. So I’m going to go get caught up on a bunch of vaccines before the current unimaginably idiotic and embarrassing administration outlaws vaccines, medicine, and science entirely, because maybe-shingles doesn’t look like much fun.
Also, I went to 3 different dentists and ultimately got a cracked molar pulled. It really sucked to bite down on something just a little bit wrong, and that little crack… expanded for like a quarter of a second before springing back. Like, lose vision in one eye for a second levels of suck. Yeah, so I only put up with that for about three years before finally having to deal with it because the last time it happened the pain didn’t go away. I’m proactive like that. Pro-tip. If you have a raw nerve in your mouth, don’t go to a concert and stand six feet from a speaker the size of a washing machine that vibrates your bone marrow. That doesn’t mix well with inflamed tissue. Directly related to that revelation, I learned that Tramadol has basically no effect on me. Fun times.
Also, I put my mom into memory care, which if you’re not familiar with it, is like elderly assisted living for people with moderate to advanced dementia. I’ve never gone into specifics about my mom’s situation, cause, medical stuff is private and I don’t like turning my posts into agony aunts, but dementia is the primary reason I had to upend my life after my dad passed. My mom just wasn’t capable of taking care of herself, and over the last year, she got to the point that I was worried that maybe not putting her into professional care was doing her more harm? I don’t know, I’ve never had to navigate this before and I don’t know if there’s even a reliable roadmap for this sort of thing anyway.
SO. I have been busy outside of working on the comic. I know I’ve said this before, but hopefully things will start smoothing out and I’ll get back on track with the vote incentives. Maybe I’ll even write Tamer: Enhancer 3, hah hah. To be clear, I’d love to, but the vote incentives take priority.
Ooh, look! A new vote incentive! And it’s updated with color!
Well, in progress, obviously. I have another one that’s actually a bit further along, but everyone was all, “Sydney Kobold vote incentive!” So I switched to this one. Plus the other one was a multi-character picture so it will actually take me longer to finish. I hope to have an update for this one each week, so stay tuned. There is a slightly higher res version on Patreon.
By the way, this gunmetal blue-ish background and teal pencils are how I draw the comic. I set it up this way so I don’t have to spend all day staring into a bright white blank page.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Well at least they have some form of sense of humor..
A sense of humor, and (despite having clearly already learned so much about how the universe works) a sense of wonder.
Reminds me of The Board from Control…
Definitely, though a character from https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/86852/infernal-investigations came to mind first. (I won’t spoil, it’s a great story)
…it sounds almost like she was retroactively bridged onto this supremely advanced artifact simply because she makes/made/will make this guy laugh.
Which is only because she has will have done it already.
…fourth-dimensional verbs are a *pain*. I assume that this guy knows how it all works out, without messing with his own future/past/existence, though.
Well, he has a Matrioska Brain with which to compile the Deep Code and run it without errors…
But can it run Doom?
It not only can run Doom, but also mooD, oDmo, omDo, oDom and omoD. But it doesn’t want to run Domo, Arigato.
Dammit. Where’s the like button?!
Ahh but does it do Taco?
It’s our fault that our puny brains can’tn’t conceive of proper fourth-dimensional language on sufficiently large scale for it to be common. If we could, we already would, except whens we wouldn’t.
As Doctor Who has said in various ways throughout the years, English just doesn’t have the right tenses for future events you have already done.
Only because they intentionally obfuscate it for humorous effect. “Will have done [X]” is perfectly standard English and covers the concept.
He reminds me, in a way, of Griffin the Arcanan from Men in Black 3… basically with Griffin being able to see all possible timelines simultaneously and not really being able to know which one will take form until certain aspects of that specific line fall into place. And with that comes the ability to see backward in time as well.
Essentially, he’s a fourth dimensional being rather than a third dimensional one like we are. (I.e. humans can alter and see aspects of first through third dimension, but not fourth dimension of time. Griffin, and this alien, can alter fourth dimension even if it’s just to be able to see potential timelines and rewind them… all humans can do is go along for the ride and try to guess what might happen.)
Most hyu-mons don’t even know they are on a ride… until they get off of it
If he is from the place the orbs come from, does that mean the unknown orb does time?
When dealing with an incomprehensibly superior lifeform, it deciding that you are amusing enough to let you keep on doing what you do, and being capable of understanding and appreciating your jokes, is about the best outcome you can hope for. Especially if you can’t perceive its existence.
The theory that Sid has a superpower that let her interface with the orbs is gaining some traction, it seems…
She would be hotter if she was a super. Having a super figure comes part and parcel with powers in this setting, canonically.
Tastes will differ, I’m sure.
Impossible Turtle-Neck Dude knows a good joke when he hears one. So at the least he can’t be ALL bad.
Neat trick with the surroundings though.
Is She/He/They/It talking to the Orbs? Asking them how and why they connected to Sydney despite security protocols, and we’re not hearing the Orbs’ response of “yeah we know we aren’t supposed to do that but you don’t understand, she’s really really funny, trust us”
The Nth might be communicating with the orbs, for all we know. It’s an interesting thought!
‘Exception’. ‘Contribution’.
Maybe Sidney has an unnoticed power that allowed her to bypass the protocols, or the orbs suffered some damage from impacting prehistoric Earth, and Sidney somehow helps them ‘patch’ the damage.
Given that the orbs orbited both Sidney and Varia when they held hands (oh my, the lewdness!), I’m tempted to assume the presence of an unsuspected power. Maybe Sidney is some flavour of technopath? Or a unique empath whose frequency happens to resonate with Nth tech?
Only the future will tell.
Remember when they were studying the orbs’ skill tree, they noticed a bunch of lines trailing off into nowhere around the edges (some theories floated at the time were that those lines either allowed the orbs to connect to Sydney, or connected to another set of orbs somewhere, but nothing was ever confirmed). Possibly they could be an indicator of some damage sustained, there’s something missing that should be there?
Remember that supers get “perfect” bodies as a part of being able to tap into the Superion Field, so I’m leaning more towards the idea that the orbs are damaged or incomplete in some way than the idea that Sydney is a super without realising it.
I’m also getting that the Nth Guy / Mushroom Head is communicating with the Orbs in the first panels.
Mushroom Head: When/How/Why did you bond with this being?
Orbs: [Answer we don’t see]
M H: What about the security protocols?
Orbs: [Answer we don’t see]
M H: Clarify the exception.
Orbs: [Answer we don’t see]
M H: How is she contributing?
Orbs: [Answer we don’t see]
M H: She’s…. AMUSING??? These answers are insufficient… I need more data [rewinds time].
I like your translation better than mine.
image 1: “query.statusCausality (self.interface_compatibility) == linked_subject”
image 2: “status.entertainment == True
image 3: “statusCausality(justification_threshold(entertainment)) == False
image 6: “exceptional event error: justification_threshold(entertainment) critical stack overlow”
Amusing was probably from the lightwhip… because of her choice of original name.
As much as we would like Sydney to be a Super, she doesn’t have the two distinguishing features that an adult female super would have in that reality.
I suspect that the “exception” is that she was, is, will be, “useful” and “contribute”.
And that the orbs broke the rules to attach to her because of that.
… I also suspect that after she has acomplished, that ‘guy” might show up again.
yeah, I got that impression as well..
Now headcanon for me: The Orbs picked Sydney because they were bored off their socks, foresaw the slapstick potential of pairing up with her, and decided to go on a Road trip.
Also, seems like fart jokes are still a Thing , even for multuidimensional mysterious beings and their self-aware tools.
The more you know….
We let you steal Nth Level Technology because you are funny.
Makes perfect sense
By his standards the orbs are so out of date and worthless they’re not worth any effort to get back. Humans throw bread to birds to be amused even if we’re not supposed to.
Nah. Nth Level Technology stole Sydney
That’s definitely a cool idea, one word encompassing multiple meanings that way.
Also, it seems like he’s questioning why Sydney was chosen by the spheres and is coming to the conclusion that she’s… amusing. If it really turns out that’s why, I wonder how she’ll feel about it.
He is worried about Sydney having the Orbs.
But decided to “let her cook” because it is fun.
As someone whose grandmother has been in an elderly care facility with dementia-like symptoms since February last year, I can sympathize with your plight regarding putting your own mother in a care facility. My grandmother turned 92 last April, but she has been problematic for years before she was moved to the facility. She’s had a small stroke, maybe multiples, and she doesn’t remember anything. Like, just last Saturday, when we gathered with the family for pie and to visit the dead at the local graveyard, she even forgot she had a slice of pie on her plate she was actively eating from and grabbed a second slice and put it in her mouth.
If it’s any consolation, for 99% of elderly with mental health issues, assisted living facilities and care facilities are the best solution. You don’t want to end up in a situation where an elderly woman with no relatives living with her falls, breaks her hip and is lying there for over day with no way to call for help. Trust me, I’ve been there, it’s devastating, both for her and for the family.
Yes, All the been theres with regard to Dave’s personal comment. We wish that our parents could be independent forever but it seldom works that way. My family was lucky in that her long time best friend was in the same facility. Dental problems and sciatica both suck. The one thought I would share with everyone is; no matter how you feel about the vaccine controversies, get the shingles vaccine. My sister has informed me that she would rather repeat her entire breast cancer treatment including the double mastectomy than have another attack of shingles.
Only Sydney would be able to make an advanced alien android laugh.
I don’t know what’s going on here but it feels like this new guy is talking to the orbs themselves and the reason they’ve linked to Sydney this long is because she’s fun to be around.
“Insufficient.”
Translation: I gotta hear that part again!
I cracked a back molar eating macaroni during the covid shutdown. Waited until last year to get it removed because until then the discomfort was basically none. So glad I spent the extra money on getting knocked out for it. Didn’t wanna hear and feel the vibrations while having my mouth pulled open…
Now any minor tooth or jaw pain makes me panic, but I got to know the joys of mashed potatoes made with chicken or beef broth!
… it’s just possible your macaroni needed to be cooked a bit longer…
Teeth can crack from just about anything, even soft things. Hell, the soft things might actually crack things more easily because they’re slightly stickier and can wedge themselves inside cracks more easily.
Soft sticky things are a bad idea if you are overdue for dental work – a few years ago I bit the end of a small caramel fudge bar, when I took it out of my mouth one of my crowns came with it.
Would you look at that, super advanced space wizards are not immune to Sydney’s antics, who would’ve guessed.
It’s interesting that not even they seem to know how Sydney got the orbs (workin?).
It’s a match made in heaven. Her balls think she’s funny… and she thinks balls are funny! (Because they objectively are)
From a professional who’s worked with dementia as part of the job. Absolutely the right call once personal care becomes an issue. You Cannot be there 24/7. They can.
Peace of mind that the stove won’t be left on, bad times with people at the door, being found in degrading preventable conditions, or no help notification for a fall and broken hip.
Brainiac 5?
12th level intellect
Learnt about ‘memory care’ on the show “Fire Country”
At the start of September, mum had ‘Rapid Onset Dementia’: one second she was standing at the door waiting to go out, the next… basically she was gone. Fortunately for her, it was caused by a urinary infection and she was only in the hospital for a month and she’s been home since the start of October recovering
‘Normal’ dementia is bad enough, but at least you have time to prepare, ROD is worse because there is no warnings and no way to prepare
The UTI/dementia thing seems to be a real kettle of fish. On the one hand if you are predisposed to or have dementia but it is in its very early phases a UTI can provoke a worsening of symptoms of the dementia. On the other hand there is a line of thought that a UTI can provoke the symptoms on its own. The dangerous thing about UTIs is that they can be a sort of slow burn infection that doesn’t have a lot of outward symptoms. A person may not have a lot of fever for instance and other symptoms are mild until they aren’t. A UTI can become a kidney infection which is when things get serious. A kidney infection is serious enough in its own right but if kidneys aren’t working then the body’s electrolytes get out of whack and that can cause dementia like symptoms. That’s really just the tip of that particular iceberg. Dad told my brother about Mom’s dementia when she was in her 60’s. Mom’s dementia was pretty mild, primarily short term memory loss. As the years progressed and even after she entered an assisted care facility we learned that UTIs were something to we really needed to be mindful of. People have a lot of reasons for not wanting to talk about having a UTI or may not recognize the symptoms which contributes to the perception of it being “all of a sudden”.
So – incredible intellect from the nth dimension … sounds like a guy who could get incredibly bored. Ignoring EVERYTHING else about Sydney – she is funny, amusing and endlessly entertaining.
just curious if someone with their brain outside their body instead of inside would have outellect instead of intellect.
There is a word for “more than sapient.” It is “transapient.” The word was coined by Hugo de Garis in the 1990s and has been used a lot in the “Orion’s Arm” shared world building science fiction project.
That isn’t a very good word. The trans prefix denotes going across something, not surpassing something. Transapient, parsing it by historical usage, would imply that sapience has a center and that the transapient person’s sapience extends through the center rather than strictly being above or below or in the middle. If you were going to coin a term that was linguistically faithful, it’d be something like suprasapient.
Science fiction also gives us the words “Sophont” as a word for human-level intelligence (as opposed to including say Dolphins or great apes), and superturing and hyperturing for superintelligences of different grades.
They have a sense of humor, at least.
Hopefully it never strays into the “I enjoy human suffering” kind.
Ugh, I was getting flashbacks reading about your tooth issue. I had something sort of similar. I had a molar that literally split and the dentist patched it up by recreating the missing fourth out of amalgam. Worked fine for a few years but then THAT broke off and I didn’t have the money or insurance to get it fixed at the time and so I had a literal hole in the tooth for a few years which eventually ended up infected as an abscess. Even slightly biting down on that tooth would literally make me jump off the ground and curse, loudly.
It got so painful I was having trouble sleeping, and packing OraGel into the hole was barely doing anything. So I had to find a dental college that did reduced cost work in exchange for letting the final year students get actual real world practice. Because the split went below the gumline and the crown would rub up against my jawbone, it complicated the work. All combined I spent over 24 hours in dentist chairs over a few month period, the work being done in stages from the root canal, to the removal of some jaw bone so the crown wouldn’t rub and cause bone reabsorption. I also had so many anesthetic shots I lost count. But I discovered a “fun” thing about my physiology. I metabolize anesthetics in 45 minutes on the dot. I discovered this when it ran out mid-root canal. I nearly came off the chair. This happened three times in total. I started watching the clock like a hawk.
With my dentist, I have to only grunt and vaguely wave my hand and he numbs me up again.
If you are ever looking for a dentist and one isn’t taking patients because of too many customers, ask them who they use. A dentist wont use a crappy dentist.
Does no one else notice the hulking behemoth in the space gas mask standing behind Sydney and Harem in the middle of panel three, or is it just me?
He was just one of the crowd watching Maxi clean clocks
That was just one of the other onlookers/references during Max’s Stygan duel. We’re seeing him here in flashback as Mr. Nth rewinds along Sydney’s timeline to see what she’s been up to. He’s isn’t and hasn’t been present on the ship.
If he keeps going back in time will he see Sydney’s private moments and blush or download for future analysis? “That should not fit.”
Or will he summon 4rth dimensional popcorn for the giant squid battle?
Will he share highlights with others in the gestalt?
Will her history create a new fanclub?
What benefits would this bring her?
Will he/they unlock the last orb for her or leave it to fate?
If he can go backwards for viewing, can he fast forward and help her anticipate bad endings?
All for the potential of more giggles and entertainment?
Hmm. The Calamarians did seem to have a hate-on for the Nth.
If this Nth sees Sydney fighting them, maybe it’ll be another argument in favour of letting her keep the orbs.
or the squid bots were his race and they reacted on security protocol to balance universe aka wacked the over powering race. then saw nth tech on a non nth lifeform and thus exerminate. OR the orb maker and his tools is sort of a green lantern thing when he was younger or his father or somthing
I am getting a Doctor / Tardis vibe here now.
The Tardis stole the Doctor –
The Orbs stole Sydney.
Where did Sydney’s glasses go in panel 1?
Sorry to hear about your stress with your mom’s health and wellbeing. I am sure if she could be asked while she is fully in the moment that she trusts your decisions about getting the best care for her.
That being said, the sombrero de charro gentleman that lives within the slide scale of reality seems to be a jolly old soul! Hopefully he and Santa are good buddies!!
I think you’ve done what is best. Trained medical staff know what to do.
It’s confirmed. Syd is a Warlock. And she’s about to meet her Patron.
Once a civilization has advanced to a certain point, the only thing left of value is surprise and entertainment.
if its a 4th dimensional being… maybe those are his toys and he loses them in the future on the past
Jeeze. In the last 3 weeks you’ve been speedrunning all the worst things that have happened to me in the last 30 years. You have my condolences on all of it.
Seeing how this being operates, it’s now really easy to explain how they’re cloaking their presence. They’re just wrapping the timestream around themselves and/or remaining slightly out of phase with the current timestream.
Kyle Rayner did something similar when he first became Ion so he could remain invisible when observing people.
>> “How/When/Why” is a specific comprehensive interrogative, and his language has other words that mean
>> “Who/What/How” or “Which/How Much/Whom.” You get the idea.
Yeah, so do we….
So what you meant was he basically said “WTF?”
SPOILER: The mushroom head is just a hi-tech space VR helmet, and under it, he is Rick Astley
Feels like the Nth guy here is questioning why the Orbs have “pair bridge/interfaced” with Sydney and discovered the reason is… its funny.
that joke is funny in every dimension