Grrl Power #1444 – Rest & Red Potions
Sydney definitely would have forgotten she was wearing holo-boobs before heading back. The question is, what did she have on under them? Well, the answer is, she did actually take off her shirt, but still had her bra on. Which she was okay with in the, let’s call it the sex positive environment of Cora’s ship. Appearing in the break room of Archon HQ would have been one of those moments she’d have nightmares about basically forever.
For those of you wondering though, she wouldn’t have appeared there. The last time she used the Aetherium Causeway, she invoked it to head back to Fracture Station. That was when they were fighting Vehemence in the quarry. She basically pushed the “take me to the last place the gate was open” button. But if she uses that same button now, the last place the gate was open was in the quarry, so she’d pop out there. That quarry isn’t so far from the base, but she’d need to fly a few dozen miles in just a bra and jeans to get to the base, which is probably another thing she’d have nightmares about. Although I guess she could wrap herself in the Lighthook, but then she’d get windshear all over her face while she flew since she wouldn’t be able to use the shield.
Healing potions are basically the most common drop in most video games (or plates with steaming hams on them, like the street thugs in Final Fight were on their way to thanksgiving dinner) because action games are a lot more exciting when they have lots of action, and that means that most players will take a lot of beatings along the way. But as soon as you slow down and think about what “healing” is, you realize it probably needs to be more complex than a think that just refills a healthbar. Unless you’re in a world where everyone is not a biological being, but some sort of mana construct, and “health” is more of a coherence field holding it all together, like in many LitRPG and cultivation novels, when they try to explain exactly how high level characters are so tough. As they rank up, their biology is more or less replaced with magic. I read one where a character realizes this to the point that he allows his head to get cut off in order to deliver a fatal blow against some high-ranked monster, knowing that he has more “lifeforce” than the damage decapitation conveys. He also happens to have monstrous regeneration, so decapitation is just a momentary inconvenience. For the high level characters in books like that, they really do just have hit points, and no vital areas like a brain or heart or kidneys.
But in the Grrl-verse, while there are things like cultivators, 99% of the population needs healing potions that affect living biology, which means you don’t want to take one that merely speeds up natural healing while you have a compound fracture or a barbed arrow still stuck in your back.
90% of Maxima’s disguise is holographic, but she does have nipple and crotch… pasties is the wrong word. It’s more like printed latex… okay, pasties might be appropriate, but it’s only like latex if latex was made from kevlar and carbon fiber and some kind of nano goo to make it comfortable and extraordinarily sticky. Those pasties are also covered by the hologram, so no one can see the seams. She also has a mask that’s stuck to her face in the same way, because chemical warfare it totally okay in the tournament. Want to make a bioweapon that has acid for blood and hope anyone attacking it gets a lung full of aerosolized acid? That’s totally okay. Want to make a warbot whose primary exhaust is mustard gas? Go for it. Maxima’s mucus membranes aren’t mucusy anymore, but honestly, why not have a mask that can filter out at least some nasty stuff and can also shield her non-mucous membraney eyes? She also has hearing protection, but that’s separate from the mask.
*****************
I found an audiobook series that I enjoyed, called “Mother of Learning.” It has nothing to do with mothers. Instead, it’s a magic academy novel mixed with, get this, Groundhog Day. The MC winds up having to live the same month over and over while he tries to figure out what the heck is going on. Doing a hundred pushups each day isn’t going to help him obviously, because his body is reset at the beginning of each loop, but his memories stay, including his accumulated magical knowledge, and since his mana pool is tied to his soul, that continues to develop as well. So obviously, he goes from not-especially-weak-but-certainly-not-exceptional to wildly OP over the course of the books. Well, OP compared to his fellow students, but the forces arrayed against him are still daunting. Anyway, if you have an Audible membership the first audiobook is free, so you can check it out and the only thing you have to spend on it is time. There’s 4 books, totaling about 100 hours of narration, so if you’re a long-haul trucker, you might enjoy filling time with this.
Ah! I thought I had more time till March. I’m bad at looking at dates apparently. The new one is underway. I should have a draft ready to go for the next Monday comic?
Here is Gaxgy’s painting Maxima promised him. Weird how he draws almost exactly like me.
I did try and do an oil painting version of this, by actually re-painting over the whole thing with brush-strokey brushes, but what I figured out is that most brushy oil paintings are kind of low detail. Sure, a skilled painter like Bob Ross or whoever can dab a brush down a canvas and make a great looking tree or a shed with shingles, but in trying to preserve the detail of my picture (eyelashes, reflections, etc) was that I had to keep making the brush smaller and smaller, and the end result was that honestly, it didn’t really look all that oil-painted. I’ll post that version over at Patreon, just for fun, but I kind of quit on it after getting mostly done with re-painting Max.
Patreon has a no-dragon-bikini version of of the picture as well, naturally.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
well another common type of healing potion are nanotech based, soyou can assume they will do the basic of realigning bones and such
Gotta make sure the nanos are programmed with your specific biology in mind though, or else the results could very swiftly go from ‘medicinal’ to ‘body horror’.
I thought there was a movie about this that I saw a long time ago, but it was actually an episode of Outer Limits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZlLuuoV5gw
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0667978/?ref_=ttep_ep_14
Also, as Albijoe paraphrased, a Doctor Who episode (or two, can’t remember if the reboots were self-contained or if they went for more than a single episode)
Are you my mommy? *Shudder*
My issue with this page is that there is no way Max didn’t know this potion was readily available for her use. The fact they possessed it would have absolutely been included with the risk mitigation sections of the pre-fight risk assessment / strategy meetings. She already knew about healing potions. (<- Also potential foreshadowing in that middle panel? What's the status of the dungeon back on earth?) Assuming it’s relatively fast-acting, I’m surprised she didn’t 1) test the potential side effects of this magical potion on her powers ahead of time, and 2) have one or more stashed in the same location as the magic-eating sword.
Oh so she got hurt like normal then? Oh well, it was fun to speculate though. Although, that doesn’t mean things wont happen later. Continue the speculation!
I would have been REAL awkward if the galactic government detected an atherium causeway again, right there, at the arena, and their cloaked spy probes around Earth picked one up opening on Earth at the exact same time
They jimmied the spy probes so it wouldn’t report stuff like that.
Not to mention the possibility that Nthaniel and his people might take notice…
Well, Nthaniel seems to be largely unconcerned. He finds the situation with the orbs amusing.
I got the vibe that he views Sydney as having his civilization’s equivalent of ancient kids toys, though he does recognize the seriousness it poses, the supers seem to concern him far more.
And Maxi scares him :P
Aww I hoping for send Nye to quickly travel back to Earth so everyone can see her new enhanced chest because she forgot that she had it
You mean, the holo-projectored enhanced chest? That only works while inside (or within range) of Cora’s ship?
Fairly sure Dirt (or even Fracture) would be outside of range
So actual magical Health Potions need to be precisely calibrated – for the requesting species I’m guessing? Or can they be generally calibrated for organic creatures in general? Would a Health Potion for a Human work on a species with completely different anatomy? I know Kora & Crew would have picked up a good few specifically for Max since she’s the one picking fights in the arena, but still curious….
Probably like in the older Spacetrawler webcomic. Scanned beforehand to be 90% compatible with human biology or some such.
But humans are relatively common as they have been out in space for at least centuries and there are differing breeds of them.
So wouldn’t it already be calibrated for humans and human adjacent beings?
Good question. We know that magical antitoxins are flexible enough to work against a broad range of poisons (p480), but different species seems like a higher bar to clear.
Except that, given that Max has a …… symbiote (possibly parasitic) attached to her that is thought to be possibly replacing her internals, wouldn’t that potion have a possibility of speeding up the process for the symbiote as well?
Additionally, since Max is part Nth Tech, how could you be sure that the potion even works the same way?
I get it. If Syd appears back on earth and has to requisition a doctor for Max ASAP, the ranking officers are very likely to order Max out of the tournament which would then lead to the more interesting subplot of Max telling her C.O. that he can’t order her to do anything.
But this “easy plot-fix Macguffin” feels like it’s ignoring 90% of everything that has been said about Max’s known/speculated biology at this point.
Either that or the next strip is going to feature Max going through a Hammer and Bolter Chaos level transformation.
There’s probably a non-zero chance the effect Max has is also going to be healed some by this potion. Meaning her first power up in who knows how long and also immediate terror realization that if this is what could happen to her what could happen to the rest of Earth’s heroes using that level of potion???
Think of it in terms of “If her minimum is 2 dots and her maximum is 5 dots what happens when she gains access to 6 dots?” She goes from being a ringer to being a pro in street ball. Dare I say it but what would happen if Jordan got a power up? Would every game suddenly become like Space Jam to him?
The other power up might just be her minimums go from 2 to 3 which is ALSO dangerous for everybody else.
Is that bit about the symbiote in-comic canon, DaveB Notes after a comic (and thus canon, but easily missed), or a favored theory by some measure of the fanbase? I ask because while I agree that it’s possible, I don’t think I’ve seen such language used in the strip at any point.
As a counter, from what I recall, it’s possible the fluid in the ‘geode’ was simply a chemical that reacted with the individual’s superion field (most likely by design, of course). Maybe some other person, similarly exposed, would’ve gotten different powers on their selection dial, or even not gotten the variable power-set at all.
I think the symbiote theory comes from Deus’ speculation that the geode “chose” Max.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-415-are-you-there-god-its-me-maxima/
(Panel 6)
To be able to choose implies some sort of sentience/sapience, which is not something inanimate rocks & fluids possess (normally – in the Grrlverse, who knows?).
It’s completely unproven in either direction, but I prefer to think of it as coincidence that Max got the geode open.
As Max points out in that page, Deus’ claim that it “chose” her is pure supposition/speculation.
Y’all are thinking of the Venom version of symbiotes.
I’m using the Real Life Science version of symbiotes which is also why I added the possibility of parasitic. For example, the human body contains trillions of symbiotes. We have gut bacteria that help us digest food, mites that live in our hair, skin bacteria that almost always help protect our epidermis (Fun fact: The movie Cabin Fever was based on a bacterial infection that Eli Roth got where the “bad” bacteria co-mingles with the “good” skin bacteria and somehow rewrites them to cause the little buggers to start munching on your epidermis.), etc.
As for if it’s been mentioned before, a number of times both in Dave’s notes and in the comic. As one example of when DaveB mentioned it in the notes:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1256-antici-pation/
As for the comic, the more compelling panel in #415 is Panel 5 where they’re saying that it’s a living part of her (and that it’s changing her blood) …… which is literally what a symbiote does to the host.
But, yeah, an actual symbiote doesn’t consciously “choose” it’s host. However, given the changes in Maxima since getting the “geode water” and the fact that it’s been established that it’s a living part of her classifies the organism as a symbiote.
Is it parasitic? (Once again, science definition. Not pop culture definition.) Unknown but probable. Much like the hair mites feed on the glandular substance in our hair, the “geode water” is most likely feeding on something. However, we don’t know that. It could have just converted Max’s body to be a comfortable home/incubation chamber.
As for it being Nth Tech, that seems to be speculation with the most recent bout of it caused by 1406. I admit that I didn’t add a proper “if” in my sentence but it seems to be the way the story is headed.
Technically, mammalian offspring are both parasitic and symbiotic
Even once you excise them from your body, they continue to feed on you for life
Thank you very much for expounding on the hypothesis.
I now understand it has a stronger basis than I gave it credit, for which I apologise.
However, I will continue to disagree with it until more compelling evidence is forthcoming.
Yeah, I don’t remember any mention of any symbiotic relationships in this comic at all…
We *do* know that Young Max handled the geode after God knows how many people, yet it cracked open & spilled fluid over her for some reason. Next thing we know, Max’s skin is pealing off like she has sunburn, revealing golden skin underneath. Doctors don’t know what to make of her changing physiology, since her upgraded parts weren’t reacting to anything they did…
There’s never been any mention of symbiots or Max being connected to Nth Technology except through Sydney…
It’s me or this was posted almost an hour early?
I wonder what kind of healing potion Dabbler would have develop because she likes to much making her own things.
I’m guessing you’re from Europe, or outside the USA at least? The USA does the daylight savings time switch at a different date than most of Europe (not sure if it is synchronized for the whole of Europe or the rest of the world either). So for a few weeks each year the comic will seem to have posted an hour early or late for anyone outside the USA.
As a programmer, DO NOT get me started on timezones.
Here’s a fun link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY
Did Dave intend to have Sydney spout some broken Japanese (and with an awful kunrei transcription on top of that) ?
Because I can’t figure out what kuorichi could mean.
It’s Sydney. Her Japanese is probably from manga osmosis so her “Please enjoy this delicious beverage.” is essentially in “Engrish”.
Google translate gave me “Please enjoy my Qualiland”. I’ll go with your engrish explanation, it works!
noice! i fiddled with the input based on the output and i came up with “watashi no kuoriti o tanoshind kudsai” or if you prefer- I’m looking forward to the qualities of the district festival.
It appears to be クオリティ, “quality”. No idea what it might refer to, though.
It’s something like Please enjoy my quality, or my goodness. I dunno, my Japanese is pretty crap but I don’t think this is quite right or meant to be. Just Sydney doing Sydney things and an excuse to have her fall over while bowing.
Sydney isn’t 100% sure of what she’s saying. She thinks it’s something like “Please enjoy this high quality!” But “Watashi” is “I” and “no” makes it possessive, so she’s saying
[Watashi no] = My
[kuoriti] = quality
[o] = designates the word or phrase preceding it as the Object of the sentence – no direct translation in English
[tanoshinde] = enjoy (or “have fun” or “have a great time”)
[kudasai] = please
So she’s really saying “Please enjoy my quality!” which is intentionally slightly Engrish on my part.
I can read, write, and speak Japanese as I spent the first half of my childhood in Japan.
Romaji is… janky at best. But that said, the way you intended it, when read outloud, and with the context in which it happened is EXACTLY how it reads… an American girl trying her best to speak Japanese and be polite about it, and fumbling slightly.
If this happened for real in Japan, people would be, well, quite surprised and she’d be showered with praise, and nobody would correct her despite the fact that she didn’t get it exactly right, but it was at least understandable.
Cuz nobody would want to discourage her from trying and learning more.
Also kudos for not having her say “atashi”. That would be extraordinarily inappropriate in this situation… like Dabbler level inappropriate, but it’s what I see a lot of western female anime fans using instead of “watashi” in all circumstances. Though whether Maxima would know that “atashi” is basically a babytalk version of “watashi” most frequently used by girls trying to be cute with their boyfriends is another story. I bet Dabbler would have had a giggle fit though.
While I haven’t checked out the audio book of Mother of Learning, I heartily endorse the book in general, since it’s one of my favorite re-reads that I go back to every now and then.
Wouldn’t Sydney’s featherfall have prevented her from falling over the couch like that?
I doubt that works if part of you is still on the ground/couch/floor. Would seem to be a reasonable default.
That or her orbs are enjoying watching her fall over due to massive boobs since we seen they are sentient enough to be amused at her antics
Or they’re just jealous that she’s enjoying her new “orbs” and ignoring them. Especially after the FlyBall just got BlueOrbed by a Health Botion
Her Center of Gravity fell at a constant one meter per second.
Survivable but not face-plant proof.
When she first discovered it (p946), the feather fall apparently kicked in after she fell normally for a few feet.
Is that Azarinth Healer that Dave referenced in the commentary? It sounds familiar, with how the MC’s entire fighting style is based around using their ludicrous health and regeneration to tank enemy attacks and fuel their own attacks with health-to-mana sacrifice abilities.
Azarinth Healer is completely different. Mother of Learning is also from Royal Road, however.
I meant this bit:
“I read one where a character realizes this to the point that he allows his head to get cut off in order to deliver a fatal blow against some high-ranked monster, knowing that he has more “lifeforce” than the damage decapitation conveys. He also happens to have monstrous regeneration, so decapitation is just a momentary inconvenience. For the high level characters in books like that, they really do just have hit points, and no vital areas like a brain or heart or kidneys.”
Im pretty sure there is one, if not multiple, times Ilea does exactly this move or something very similar.
I’m pretty sure he’s talking about He Who Fights With Monters. Jason Asano has done that for shock value a couple of times.
I’m pretty sure DaveB is talking about He Who Fights with Monsters. Jason Asano has done that several times for shock value.
Id forgotten about that one, and since the character in question is ‘he’ I’m inclined to think you are right.
Mother of Learning is pretty good. I read the web serial.
I’m also enjoying the author’s ongoing work, Zenith of Sorcery, but it only updates once per month, so it’ll take years to complete.
Real MoL fan here, too! It’s been some time since 2018, so I should give it a reread.
I’ve always lived here in the US where the ambulances were owned by the municipalities and free for the residents of those communities.
That is not how ambulances currently work in the U.S. Without insurance, and ambulance ride will likely cost you north of $1,000
If you’ve only lived in locations in the US where ambulance rides are free and covered by the municipal taxpayers then you are lucky. In all the urban locations where I’ve lived (multiple mid-sized to large cities in the southeastern US) there are municipality-owned first responder ambulances that work together with police and fire services. They are supported by the taxpayers, but if you take a ride you will receive a bill. A very large bill if you don’t have insurance. There are also many private medical-transport companies that operate non-emergency ambulances for profit.
And the above is only in urban areas which lean more liberal. In rural areas of “red” states, like where most of my relatives live, ambulance services are almost all private. You’d better absolutely need that ambulance before you call.
So how long until Max ask why Sydney has big boobs and everyone is topless?
Unneccesary,. It is Cora’s ship and… it is Cora’s ship.
Not so much why but when did your boobs get so big? Max knows Sydney well enough by now to know that Sydney could come up with forty-eleven reasons but most of them boil down to “because I could”.
Maybe she thinks that asking Sydney to explain something will make her head hurt worse than her ribcage.
Max would be able to puzzle it out in about 3 seconds and has no need to ask. If she’d gotten even a single report of Sydney’s behaviour in the showers, she’d understand the bra as well.
Alright. Makes sense, I guess.
Shame, though; I would have liked to see the doctor again.
Ah I spy a OUAT reference, if I’m not mistaken. In particular, a certain rumple of a guy.
So, that suit also covered up how much effort Max had to put in.
From an outsider perspective, and to us readers at the time, it looked like Max was effortlessly wiping the floor with them.
But inside the suit she was probably sweating, bleeding, and bruised.
Glad you found and enjoyed Mother of Learning!
If you are still craving more in the same vein of timeloop I would recommend The Years of Apocalypse.
It is very clearly directly inspired by Mother of Learning, but after the initial arc it begins to find its own stride pretty quickly and becomes its own kind of epic. Not sure if it is available as an audiobook yet hwoever, mostly Royalroad for now.
Oh man, I need to go back and finish that. I quite enjoyed it at the time. I’m currently reading Lord of Mysteries, which is somewhat different but surprisingly good so far.
“Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” —Arthur C. Clarke.
“Any magic sufficiently analyzed is indistinguishable from science” – Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.”
“Any sufficient advanced technology is a religion waiting to happen.”
magic, science, we can combine them with steam!! (any Steampunk)
FOR SCIENCE!!!
(Girl Genius)
“Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don’t understand it.” -Florence Ambrose, Freefall
@DaveB please add a footnote with a translation if you use foreign languages that don’t play well with automated translation. It’s pretty much impossible to get anything better out of Google Translate than “Please enjoy my quality”.
It’s alright if it’s French or German for example, but once you start using cyrillic alphabet or a phonetic spelling of an asian language it’s just obnoxious to readers.
Nothing plays well with automated translation.
Holy Ghost -> Bubbly Spirit -> Champaign.
There’s an account on BlueSky that runs the text of MtG cards repeatedly through Google translate. The result is occasionally hilarious.
that could be fun to do with Cards against Humanity
Google Translate on my phone reads it as “I hope you enjoy my work!” On the other hand, when I had it read the original text, it spelled out half the words. When I copied the text, translated it to english, copied the english translation, and translated it back in to Japanese it (inevitably) came out different: “Watashi no sakuhin o tanoshinde itadakereba saiwaidesu” I have no idea what I thought would happen lol
As others have mentioned, I thought it was some kind of bad translation, though Sydney can be weirdly dedicated.
Going by what DaveB said above in a reply, that is exactly what Sydney says
Please to be noting, that this is meant to be Sydney who is saying it, not a native speaker (who actually knows what they are saying)
Predictably. The most dificult fight is not the world-ending boss, but an optional arena fight event.
So, the suit doesn’t cover everything, and she had a detachable mask to cover her face
Makes sense, and much more convenient
One of the superpowers in my games is Grit, which treats the body as one hit point target. No vital points. Goes great with Regeneration.
weird… my pet slime makes the ‘expensive’ health potions constantly and my dimensional hole is running out of room to store them.
Without the mask, Max kinda looks like the Evil Queen…
It’s a powerful look, at least.
Immature of me, I know, but I’m genuinely hoping Sydney keeps the holo-honkers for now on
Given the medical tech available to Cora she could probably have the real thing using cloned tissue. Since this is Sydney she would probably talk herself out of it. Besides, there are enough boob expansion comics out there if that is your thing.
At least Max knows a bit more as to what to expect in these tourney fights, and Sydney is as clumsy as ever lol. Feather-fall did have an effect or she’d be sporting a red mark on her face/forehead. My wife used to complain about being “top heavy,” but Sydney only just got those holo-boobs and was just getting used to them. My wife, poor girl, had her first bra at 12, by time we got together I had to take her to get her first one that didn’t make her look like a fabric failure wasn’t about to happen lol.(She was a healthy “C” and was stuffing them in a “B”) Luckily for her, I grew up with 2 sisters and knew some of that stuff, mainly because I’d be standing by, awkwardly, while they were shopping.
One of the standard interpretations of HP is that, rather than measuring your ability to tank actual wounds, it measures your ability to roll with the punches and turn what would be wounds into grazes and bruises, with actual meaningful wounds only coming after your HP gets low enough. D&D 4th edition had the concept of “bloodied” – when you get dropped below half your HP, they finally manage to draw blood.
3E D&D had the related concept of a coup de grace – if an opponent is incapacitated or unconscious in a way that prevents them from being able to mitigate incoming damage, then, regardless of their remaining HP, you can straight-up kill them rather than having to whittle them down over dozens of attacks.
So in this model, healing doesn’t mean setting bones, etc; it means recovering from bruises, strained muscles, small cuts, etc.
On another note, Mother of Learning is great – I read it on Royal Road, starting maybe 3/4 of the way through its initial release, and re-read it a year or two back. I’m currently following Zenith of Sorcery (the author’s new story) which I’m not sure is as good, but that could be the slow pace of serialisation handicapping it.
Hit points can’t be purely physical. There’s no way it takes more smacking to kill a rhino than a human, even if the human is an 11th level fighter.
My first encounter with this was when it was pointed out in an article in Dragon magazine. I’m pretty sure they were talking about AD&D, so 1st edition.
Also, there has to be a magical component, even for so-called “non-magic” classes and beings. “save for no damage” makes no sense otherwise.
“There’s no way it takes more smacking to kill a rhino than a human, even if the human is an 11th level fighter.”
Yes way, actually, because an 11th level fighter is far from a normal human anymore. Levels aren’t just things normal folks get and as you climb, they represent far more than just competency.
I got “Please enjoy my amateur-level work.” Which sounds like what a girl would say to a boy when she is handing him something she made, drink or desert, in anime. The Subs never give a noncontextual translation. (Except War on Geminar. The Subs there are so crazy I prefer the Dubed version.)
How much does an ambulance ride cost?
Depending on where in the states you are, anywhere from $0 to $8,000+. :/ So, not a very good reference for how much a potion costs, and I kind of feel like making a comment about “Americans using anything but the metric system,” but that doesn’t apply to currency, so… *shrug*
So here’s the rough Breakdown:
1) Ambulance services are their own entities. Like DaleO mentioned up stream, some of them are Municipal, and therefore low-cost to free as Tax-payer funded. But a growing number are for-profit Corporate Entities.
2) Insurance is contracted with Health Providers. This means that just because the Emergency Room you’re being dropped at is contracted, the Ambulance, as a separate company, may not be.
3) Emergency coverage for most insurances is based on “immediate need.” For an ambulance, this would mean both “you had a reasonable case for needing a doctor” *AND* “you had no other way to get there” *AND* “this couldn’t have waited”
4) One of the things they’re going to use to make this decision is “What the Ambulance People wrote about your condition”. Keeping in mind that if you write this up as “needed” the insurance is going to pay you 1/10th, or less, of what you want to charge. But if you write it up as “could have waited” you can then bill me for 100% of the cost.
5) They bill you both for SHOWING UP, and for TAKING YOU ELSEWHERE. Now, see the point about “Medically Necessary” and keep in mind that anyone can call them for you…
I’m not saying All, or even most, EMTs are crooked, but there are enough managers and paperwork pushers who find that sort of thing “Acceptable” that it’s become a problem.
Still here? So my experience with this is two fold. On the one side my wife is now a “Concierge” phone worker for an insurance provider with Medicare contracts. She spends a lot of time trying to explain this to people, especially senior citizens, who ended up on the wrong side of this industry. But before that she was an Epileptic, mostly Absence Seizures but occasionally she’d get a Grand Mal — those kind you see on TV where they fall to the ground, shake violently, foam at the mouth, the whole 9 yards. When it happens, let me tell you, it’s freaking terrifying. But by the time the Ambulance gets there? It’s over, and the patient is getting back to normal. So yeah, when the call went out they were thrashing like a fish out of water, but when the EMTs got there they were just exhausted, kind of spaced out, and generally scared and annoyed. Guess how THAT gets written up, even if Permanent Brain Damage is potentially occurring. So yeah, I’ve got experience, and I’m not warm and fuzzy about the industry.
The cost of that potion is going to be considerably more than an Ambulance ride, or even the Ambulance. Considering what was said, it would likely cost as much as the surgeries to heal Maxims to begin with.
Aww. I thought she was finally going to get to try out her remaining mystery orb.
Will the heal potion treat Max’s powers as something that needs to be cured to restore her back to her baseline state? Or did the power acquisition reset the baseline?
A reset baseline seems a lot more likely. Both for continued plot reasons and because it’s unlikely that the store-bought healing potion can overpower the combo of the possibly-Nth-origin superpowers and the possibly-Nth-origin geode boost.
If anything, it seems more likely that she’d find out that the potion just doesn’t work right, because it’s calibrated for normal(ish) humans, and Max is too far from human baseline. Though I suppose we know so little about the weirdness that her powers represent that anything could happen.
So I was partially right that at least some of the damage she got was from UMBRage. She just powered through the pain… like a boss.
Okay, so I know that ‘Watashi no kuoriti o tanoshinde kudasai!’ roughly translates to ‘I hope you enjoy my work!’ or ‘I hope you have fun!’ but I’m pretty sure Sydney does not actually know japanese, so it’s probably from an anime. Could anyone tell me what she’s referencing? Thanks in advance.
Sydney’s been to Japan (p378), so she probably picked up a few bits and pieces, but it’s more likely that she’s quoting a line from anime.
I just know how hard it is to learn japanese, and I can’t imagine Sydney having the patience to do so (although I can totally see her learning Klingon), but I can definitely see her memorizing a bunch of key words and phases from anime.
Most likely it is simply Sydney attempting to string a couple Japanese words together into what she believes to be a cool phrase… but being Sydney, she doesn’t do it very well :P
I read Mother of Learning back when it was just wrapping up. It’s a good serial! It’s not The Wandering Inn, but that can be an extremely daunting read. Just saw it has an audiobook now! I’m defo gonna listen for my reread of it. I love a good timeloop, and this one is done very well.
Okay but if Sydney did go to Earth topless…
“Citizen! I require a replacement shirt! I lost mine in a fight against… alien holograms!” And then montage of her critiquing every shirt they own, roasting their taste in bands, etc.
After a rather too long stretch of time has passed, 90 minutes or so, Sidney will realize that citizens are deliberately bringing her unappealing shirts. This will be evidenced by the long line, the person on a chase lounge under an umbrella collecting admission and the sign advertising “Half Naked Girl Will Diss Your Favorite Shirt, $5”
I wonder how many of us non-japanese speakers dived into the translator programs and then has a “wtf!?”-moment at the last word. :D
Why I stick to healing spells. I have had health potions come up, but as something healing guilds have to make and the ones everyday adventurers can make require alchemy knowledge and are only healing accelerants, and don’t work the same on every species. Which was really more the limit (different spells and mixes of potions needed for different species) along with healing spells not from a divine source requiring visualization and intimate knowledge of the anatomy of what is being healed, which makes shallow cuts and bruising the easiest thing to heal. Along with a scanning spell to get the blood types and tissue and everything correct and not just making a bio-prosthetic.
Funny enough cure spells are simpler in my world as venom and poison just requires scanning their bio signature and creating a neutralizing spell for the simple organic structure, same with diseases, it’s really less a healing spell and more a killing spell aimed at those specific simple organisms which with their simpler structures and usually lack of mana resistance can be easily targeted by an instant death spell without risking targeting the patient’s cells (usually).
Mother of Learning is one of my favorite progression fantasy web serials, from long before the whole genre blew up with Royal Road etc.
The title comes from a Latin proverb that’s a little more popular in other countries (the author is Czech or something): “Repetitio est mater studiorum,” ie, “Repetition is the mother of learning.”
A pro-tip for anybody that goes to read it (it’s still free online), in the author’s language, ‘c’ is pronounced like ‘ts’, so the big main city Cyoria is pronounce Tsioria, and the major side character Zach’s name is said “Zatch”. And ‘X’ is a bit like ‘k’.
To save others the effort of searching:
https://www.fictionpress.com/s/2961893/1/Mother-of-Learning
Also a wiki:
https://mother-of-learning.fandom.com/wiki/Mother_of_Learning_Wiki
Isn’t Max (and everyone else in earshot) wearing a DaveB Universal Babbelfish? So whatever abomination of mangled Japanese Sydney just used, everyone got the translation?