Grrl Power #494 – Phenomenal cosmic power! Itty bitty… well, she’s short anyway
Krona’s in that weird category where she has quite a bit of power, but it has to be applied. It’s not raw power like Maxima, and for Krona to do anything more than hit snooze on a bladder, she has learn its properties and how to edit them. This implies, at least for her, that the universe operates on more of an object oriented model. It’s far easier to edit an existing property than it is to create things from whole cloth. Making more of something extant falls somewhere in between.
And Pixel sort of raises more questions about the nature of supers than she answers, but at least it explains why she’s pushing seven feet and the extra real estate. Tracts of land wise. Yeah, I think about stuff like that. I didn’t just draw her with big boobs for no reason. There was a reason.
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Check out Wearing the Cape: Team-Ups & Crossovers. Sydney’s first Crossover! I’ve made a dedicated blog post for it, please comment there.
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• Possibly Pixel’s super power can be transmitted along with her lycanthropy.
• Archon could form a unit, let us call them the Pink Jaguars, of laser-clawed super were troops!
• Pixel may not be alone in having a super power linked to her lycanthropic form.
• Flight is probably the most common super power that people dream of having. Often literally.
• We have seen that flight is a reasonably common super power in the Grrlverse.
• Archon should hunt for any weres with super flight, so they can form a flying squad.
• In the Grrlverse any mammal can become a were.
• Maybe pigs can fly!
Okay, see…Now I just want a spin off of that.
Oo, what do you think happens if Pixel infects an existing super? They just get a were-claw upgrade? Imagine Sydney with fur and laser claws…She’d be petting her own fur and then accidentally burning herself….Hm. Would the orbs work through fur? It’d be part of her, technically…So maybe the Orbs would work through fur, as it’s organic….But then, maybe it’s a palm specific trigger, so no dice.
Heh, in light of what the transformation did to Pixel’s chest, I got the wrong idea of “orbs” for a moment there.
I suppose grabbing Pixel’s orbs would net similar results as trying to grab Sydney’s balls…
Grabbing someone’s orbs or balls without express consent could result in you having to retain a lawyer at considerable expense.
More likely a team of micro-surgery experts and a panel of every sort of orthopaedic specialists – the toe bone is connected to the ankle bone…Oh, I got bits left over.
*Lots* of bits left over, I think. It’d be like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle… that some put through a blender.
I would hope there’s some kind of safety like on WW2 bombers that had interrupters on the gun turrets to keep from accidentally shooting off the planes tail…
And to stop the WW1 fighters from shooting off their own propeller :P
I thought about that after I posted…
Cool fact the WWI guns were actually linked with the motor shaft so you could fire THROUGH the propeller without hitting it, if i remember correctly.
Nope. At least not most. Twin mounts right in front of the cockpit. See here for more details.
Ah, poop. I read your post wrong Dragonflight, I thought you meant gun mounted to fire through the center of the propeller, not linked to the shaft. My bad.
Actually there were a bunch of weird aircraft engine/machine gun combo’s from the 1920’s and 30’s where the engine directly drove the machine gun’s mechanism. Not a success, the rate of fire changed with the engine speed and the rate of fire was waaaay too high at one bang per revolution.
Some WW II aircraft as well. Like the Japanese Zero.
Flying pigs? Yeah sure, and after that maybe they’ll get the power to shoot webs and walk on walls.
Now, now, be careful…You’re getting close to copyright infringement territory against Peter Porker.
Flying German shepherds dropping Lazer cats on enemies. I think I need this…
1. It wouldn’t be called Lycanthropy cause she’s a leopard.
2. Assuming it’s biological, any attempt to do so by her claws would be cauterized by the heat/destruction of their laser-y nature, so transference would have to be quite deliberate.
*jaguar (my bad)
Xenothropy.
Naw, we went over this topic back when Sydney first met Gregor & for a number of pages after. While Xenothropy and Zoothropy have been mentioned as alternatives, there’s also some scholarly works that use Therianthropy as more accurate. Even though DaveB has outright said that only mammals can be weres in his Grrlverse, the term Therianthropy is the blanket term that covers ALL species of supernatural shapeshifters.
Actually, theriomorphy.
1. Lycanthropy is by far the most common term used, for the purpose (along with ‘were’). I go by usage, rather than apply a made up word (e.g. theriomorphy or xenothropy) in little or no usage respectively. And the nearest dictionary defined word applies to changing into animals with spells, which would be inaccurate.
Language evolves. A great many words we use today had different meanings in antiquity. Get used to it.
2. We can see that Pixel is able to turn the lasers off, just by looking at her. Plus we know that it is easy to contaminate blood transfusions, to transmit lycanthropy that way. It is how Katrina became a were bunny.
We have seen that? I must have been sleeping. Note that Sydney doesn’t count, as her orbs are super-science and not actual superpowers. She missed out on the heroic physique, for example*. So, Maxima, Heatwave, and Super Hiro amongst the heroes. Jiggawatt can’t fly, per se, even though she can move fast in her lightning bolt form. A few of the villains but I don’t think anything like a majority or even a significant minority.
* So did Krona. I don’t recall if we’ve been told why yet, just that for some reason she isn’t a superhero. Enough “magic user adjacent” to not count as a superhero? Most (all?) of the magic users we’ve seen seem to share the superheroic physique. As do most (again, all?) of the vampires and were
wolveswhatevers. Just look at Ravven (unknown), Ingsol (vampire), Gunnhildr (vampire), Elsbeth (magic user), and Gregor (werewolf) and tell me they don’t share the “superhero physique” that comes with superpowers as a rule according to the author.Galt is an exception on the magic user side. Any others?
Actually, we don’t know WHAT the hell the orbs are. Science, magick, both, something else…
Considering that neither magick or Dabbler’s Super Science can even SEE the bloody things, I’d be going with “Something else”
Regardless, they are not superpowers…
There were a few in the first big fight, including one refereed to as “Budget Halo”
Indeed, thank you. Combine those with the ones that Oberon listed, then contrast that to other powers.
• Sonic absorption (1)
• Kinetic absorption & redirection (1)
• Giant size (1)
• Transformation into concrete etc (1)
The list would go on for quite a long time with (1). Then we get to a few where we could assume similar powers, such as the fiery villain, in the car park fight, who probably overlaps Heatwave in one or more powers. Both Maxima and Mach the Blade have super speed. Technically Math is not a super, despite having a comparable reaction speed rating, so we cannot add him to the list.
Ultimately you reach the most common powers, such as super strength and super toughness. Which have numerous examples. Flight is not as common as those mind, but I did not claim it to be. I only indicated that it was ‘reasonably common’.
As an aside, finding a flying lycanthrope should be a lot easier than a super strong or tough one, as the former would stand out much more easily. Whereas even baseline carnivorous lycanthropes are likely all a lot stronger and tougher than humans.
Taking Clover as an example. Note that honey badgers have a badass reputation because they are willing to fight anything. But they are not actually very big, or strong, when compared to apex predators (or even a lot of the herbivores they share their environment with).
Although, to give the honey badger its due, it is a burrowing mammal, so pound for pound its arm strength is probably up there with the predators. But it would not win a tug of war against a lion or a hippo.
Krona’s lack of…. superhero upgrade is probably a personal choice. she can after all hack reality
while a full body mod might not be worth it on someone else. for her, learning how to modify herself is just smart. disguises, healing ect.
this begs the question, did she always look like this? or is her current look just that, her “current” look?
If she were to revert to her birth form, she would be a 52 year old Latino guy, with a big beer belly.
Possibly.
*wags tail cheekily*
So does that mean there probably is one poor sod who actually has the power of flight, but only when he’s asleep?
Probably. Just like Bruce Banner (even though Hulk can’t fly, he can jump really good), I’d bet he wakes up in some of the strangest places…
imagine the feeling when he falls while rock climbing and realises on the way down he could save himself just by “falling” asleep – but he’s pumping way too much adrenaline to snooze.
That’s me. It is one of the joys of lucid dreaming. In my world, I can fly. Amongst other things.
just keep in mind (and hate to rain on your parade) that it’s already been explained that in the grrl-verse lycanthrpy isn’t copy-paste of the lycanthropy. The type of animal you “were” into is based on the individual. Thus why there be were-buns.
It’s been said to be a bit of both, actually. There is genetic varience in the were form you recieve but it generally at least related to the one you recieved it from.
Usually, the were-antelope in a were-lion/tiger family analogy IS possible.
Nope, you have the wrong idea, I am afraid. It is not based on the person’s personality, for example. Dave gave us a breakdown of the numbers. The vast majority of weres will be of the same type as the one who infected them (be that by bite, blood transfusion or birth).
Where they are of a different type, it is likely to be a very closely related species. Although it can jump even further, the odds of that happening get rarer, the less closely related the species are.
So most of the unit would indeed be mostly composed of were-jaguars.* But there might be the odd lion, tiger or leopard amongst their ranks. The bigger the unit, the more likely there might be more than one. Although it would have to get into army sized units (rather than, say a city SWAT team) before you are likely to have a more distant type of were animal,** on the payroll.
Although, of course, once you get a variant animal, you can choose to use that type, for further transmission, if it has advantages the jaguar lacks.
* Presumably with a few of them being blonde or red furred, depending on the hair colour of the individual in human form.
** Interestingly the most closely related species are actually extinct ones. Which Dave has indicated are not likely to occur. Maybe because the magic needs to find living examples of the DNA, if it makes such a jump. Although if the DNA is carried in the normal way, then recently extinct species may still have samples of their genes unexpressed in the were population.
I think it more likely that Pixel’s power is independent of her lycanthropy. Were it me, I’d have her super-powers being something like “turn claws into laser claws”, or something along those lines. Much like the latent Conduits in the Infamous series, the super-power is useless unless a certain set of conditions are met, but if they ARE met, she becomes just as much a super as anybody else.
It is entirely possible that most of humanity has one kind of super-power or another, and that they simply have never found themselves in a set of circumstances that would allow them to activate or use their powers, because the right pre-conditions have never been met.
Just as an example, one could have the ability to navigate flawlessly where-ever one might be, but unless they were suddenly transported to, say, Alpha Centauri, nobody would ever know that they had said super-power–all it would show up as would be a good sense of direction.
Likewise, the power to fly any aircraft in the world would never appear unless one was crazy enough to get into a helicopter without lessons. If one assumes that each power would be unique, there could easily be billions of potential superpowers out there, that cannot be accessed.
Except her human form clearly doesn’t match the normal super template.
Honestly, the convergence of Pixel’s “therianthropy” – I guess is the right term – with her Super status raises a good number of interesting questions, not the least of which is whether the super status is as communicable as the therianthropy on which it is based. And while we can speculate on that, it’s really the kind of thing that would require experimentation to reach a provisional conclusion. On a more conceptual level this also begs the question of what degree of overlap naturally exists between the magical and super categories. Tangentially this also begs the question of how well the respective powers mesh with one another (Laser claws, for instance, are a great complement for a werejaguar. Flight, however, would seem out of place on a werebadger). And that’s probably just scratching the surface.
You would do much more than just scratch the surface, if you used laser claws.
*jauntily swishes tail*
Not if you had a very light touch. :P
There are some were-forms that gain the power of flight, but only if they are were-squirrels. (And only if they can find a were-moose to help get them airborne)
Flying squad?
So a Super-Sweeney??
Bonus points for recognising the reference.
Yay, I win points!
Minions, build me a swimming pool. A big one, for me to put all my points into, and go swimming in them!
*points nose to desired spot*
Is it possible that Pixel’s powers were activated by her were-form? She does not normally have the super hero physique. It maybe possible that when she was turned her powers were activated.
Supers even when not using their powers have the great appearance that’s standard. Therefore I’d assume (uh-hu) that her were form only is a super and is probably a greatly above average were form.
Maybe there is a minimum height requirement?
Which could explain why many do not develop powers until they reach adolescence. We do not know if Maxima’s transformation occurred the following morning, after her exposure to the meteor juice. Perhaps she had to grow another inch or two, before she qualified. ;-)
I can even think up a reasonable explanation. The energy that transmits the power necessary to fuel all these super abilities is ever present around us, but to access it you need something akin to an arial. Too small and you cannot pick up the ‘super frequency’ and draw upon the power source.
So supers are more common among painters who work on ladders a lot?
Werepig.
Dire werepig.
Super dire werepig.
*Imagines a Superman skyward fist, followed by a gust of wind and loud oinking*
Google ‘Power Pig’ (Orson’s farm)
Hey Dave, I had some questions for you regarding the changeover in Washington D.C. tomorrow.
Will you still be able to use your last name?
Will any fights in the comic against invading aliens have to be changed to those across the Rio Grande?
(If this breaks the ‘no politics’ rules, I apologize.)
Um…
a) I’m pretty sure there are a lot of ‘Barack’s out there…
b) If he changes to Dave Trump, I’m outta here.
Just think about it. Krona could have totally defeated Vehemence using tricks like this.
“I will crush you”. “No, you need to pee”.
“Feel my Aggro Aura”. “Now it is a Gandhi Aura”
Yeah, I feel like the “bought you half an hour” thing was to suggest there are limits, otherwise anything could be solved instantly
I bet advanced magic uses firewalls and self repairing metamorphic code and convoluted encryption and that there are parts of reality she can’t interpret the base code of and other stuff like that.
I hope it wouldn’t reflect the Gandhi that appears in the Civilization games…As soon as that guy learns Diplomacy, he’ll try to nuke you back to the Stone Age on a whim…
Heh. That’s due to a bug that they never fixed, though. It’s what programmers call a “roll-under”… where a one-byte integer value drops below 0, and wraps around to 255.
Yeah, in the FIRST game it was an entertaining bug. They’ve been doing it on purpose since. Thus, it is now an Easter Egg.
I was aware of the bug/intentional coding, from I don’t know when (probably not CIV I). I always just hand-waved it as a demonstration of the adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Gandhi never had any real power, so it was easy (for some value of…) for him to use non-violent measures. Give Gandhi a nuke, however…
People make this mistake of thinking he was a pacifist, but he wasn’t. He did however understand the British mindset, and how to manipulate their rather large guilt complex. He merely fought his war by other means…
Yeah the Ghost People in FO:NV Dead Money is another example. They were SUPPOSED to have a perception stat of like 1 (supposed to be able to sneak around them easily). Instead it’s 0 which the game somehow interprets as basically INFINITE perception (so they always find you even with max sneak and Stealth Boy activated).
oh, no, that’s not infinite perception. haven’t you ever noticed that no matter where you are, stupid people show up? that’s just the perversity of the universe.
So ghosts see you. A bit more worrying than the other way around, if they are able to do you harm.
If Krona can Hack Bladders, can she hank any other party of the body?
Just wondering because it reminds me of a power I came up with back when I was playing City of Heroes, “Body control (theirs not yours). Admittedly it would be more suited to a villain, picture the scene you’ve just robbed the bank and this goody two shoes in a spandex one-peace tries to stop you, so what do you do fiddle around with his sphincter and his bladder, now does he try to stop you and run the risk of a potentially embarrassing accident (or two), or does he deal with the potentially embarrassing accident before it becomes an embarrassing accident and run the risk of you getting away.
Some guys may ask her for a extension.
Jean Grey did that to some guys attacking the mansion once. Everything they ate went UP and DOWN. I leave it to you to picture what that means to a guy in an air-tight environmental suit.
To quote Crow T. Robot in MST3K’s episode 902: The Phantom Planet:
“Turns out it’s not funny at all when you fart in a spacesuit…”
Okay, this got a laugh from me
Krona, that’s pretty invasive and f***ed up. Not cool.
As with all such things it is down to how the individual involved takes it. As Sydney was fine with it, then it is no biggie. But Krona will need to learn how to respect boundaries, as you are right that a lot of people would find that to be totally unacceptable.
Mind you if someone is suffering from, say, severe constipation, they would be likely to request help, rather than suffer the pain. In this case preventing a rookie from needing to find somewhere to relieve herself actually had an operational benefit. More than one operation will have failed due to a team member being picked off when alone, or simply not being with the team when hostilities kicked off.
Not that is an excuse for failing to get Sydney’s permission. However it would have lessened the comedic potential, going down that route. So rule of funny applies (for those who did not find it too odd to be amusing).
Personally I’m not wild about Krona’s power. This is a comic which at least pretends to say “here are the rules”, and Krona is a character whose very existence means there are no rules.
She can be the immediate and simple solution to any problem – or not – based on nothing more than convenience to the plot. Why not just call her “Deus Ex Machina” and be done with it?
Because that’s true of every single character in everything ever… assuming you ignore the limits Dave just pointed to Krona having in the commentary below the comic.
And I quote: “Krona’s in that weird category where she has quite a bit of power, but it has to be applied. It’s not raw power like Maxima, and for Krona to do anything more than hit snooze on a bladder, she has learn its properties and how to edit them.”
Which means she could only be used to solve problems she has an in depth understanding of the mechanics of already. And yes, Dave could just say “oh yeah she totally looked that up online last week just out of curiosity and it just happened to be useful shortly after” but every author ever could do the same thing with any other character.
Well, it might be safer to say thay she has to learn the properties of anything she doesn’t want to kill. After all, it’s EASY to kill a computer, not so easy to program it — but you can do both with software.
There was an old ANSI bomb a few decades ago, before the days of Plug & Play, that remapped your enter key to the command that tells your hard drive that the platter is as thin as a sheet of paper. The next time you hit enter it physically destroyed your hard drive.
Krona could probably do something like that to someone with a little study. But with no study at all, imagine a computer hooked up to 480 volt 3-phase current instead of 120 volt residential. If it has a fuse, that fuse goes bye-bye. If it doesn’t have one, the entire computer dies rather permanently.
Common cause of spectacular computer death in large buildings – some lazy drill wielder with a corded masonry drill hits the 3 phase power conduit in the wall which then sends 415 volts down the earth or neutral of the tool’s power cord, frying almost everything with circuit boards on the same line. Expensive. Most work sites now demand cordless masonry tools for some reason.
The perfect example of this is something we’ve seen her do: Defuse grenades. So are we to assume that Krona has an in-depth understanding of grenades, has learned their ‘properties’ (whatever that means) and can only use her reality manipulation on them because of that knowledge?
Or does her understanding of their ‘properties’ only need to be as trivial as “Hmmm, grenades go boom. I’ll make them not able to go boom.” BIP. BIP. BIP. “There, no more boom!”
Dave has provided some few words about Krona’s powers. But those words do not limit him in any way in any future comic strip where Krona uses her powers for anything at all. There is simply nothing concrete or rule-like about those words which might serve to tie Krona’s powers down to any reader-understood set of capabilities and limitations.
Well it is not necessary for the readers to have an exact definition. It is up to the author to maintain the right balance between the various elements. Keeping an appropriate sense of peril, the joy of overcoming a tricky problem, in a cunning way, and so on.
Should Dave wish to create a tough situation for Krona, he need merely indicate that the elements involved are unknown to her, and she cannot interfere with them directly. Whereas if he wants readers to feel ‘this is an awesome power’, he can have her face heavy opposition, but armed with familiar weapons.
Although the grenades had custom payloads, their principles of operation are very simple. As a Vi she will have combat experience, so it is wholly reasonable that she knows how grenades work. Along with rifles and shot guns. Machine guns and sub-machine guns, especially of an unfamiliar type, may be too complex for her to do anything fancy.
But, as stated by Bergmsn above, if all you want to do is stop something from working, even an untrained person can throw a spanner into the works. Of course the more complex the machine the harder it is to make sure that it just stops working, as opposed to causing a dangerous malfunction, such as an explosion, which could cause widespread harm.
I’d disagree. Once you have a basic understanding of how a firearm works, any firearm, the same basic principles still apply regardless of how complex the weapon might become. If Krona knows how any firearm works and has been told that they all share some common characteristics, then regardless of what specific firearm some mook is carrying it should be a simple matter of: BIP. BIP. BIP. “There, now it has no firing pin.”
Krona differs in kind, not just degree, from other characters, in my view.
Think about Sydney’s light hook, for example. We’ve seen it in action, she can hold things, lift things, it’s about 20 feet long, we know those sorts of details. If someone locks her behind bars but leaves the keys on the wall we’d think “hey, I know how she’ll escape!” If instead she’s locked behind a brick wall, but it turns out the light hook will go through walls, well, yeah, ok, seems plausible. But if she’s standing beside a car that is out of gas and she connects one end of the light hook to the sun and the other to the vehicle and now, wham, it’s solar-powered, we would rightly think “what the hell?”
If it turned out the light hook could be the solution to any problem, then there could no longer be dramatic tension. We wouldn’t know *how* she’d solve problems with it, but without rules it could always be the answer.
That’s what Krona’s power is. You want to say “there are rules”, but really those rules impose no limitations. She can take water from a bladder, so seemingly she could kill anyone by removing the water content from their brain. She could constrain virtually anyone by changing their sleeves to ropes tying them up, the way she can change underwear. She can change hair colours – why not seal someone’s eyes shut? She can disarm grenades in midflight, so she can probably disable pretty much any machine instantly – or make a car solar-powered. And that’s just analogizing to the things we have seen her do. If she can “hack reality” then there is no inherent reason she can’t do anything at all – time travel, faster than light travel, change gravity locally. She’s Doctor Manhattan.
The only thing preventing her from doing any of these things, all of which are consistent with what we know of her power, is narrative convenience. That’s quite different from not letting Sydney’s light hook suddenly and out of nowhere be a source of solar power.
Did she remove water from the bladder, or did she simply put a buffer on the “hey I’m full” signal from the bladder?
She did say it was “like hitting snooze” which doesn’t imply the problem is *resolved,* simply put off. Like hitting the snooze on your alarm clock, it’s going to go off again later.
As for making a car solar powered, no. That would require wholesale addition and subtraction of parts. It’s been stated multiple times that she doesn’t pull things out of thin air, that her power is predominantly property manipulation.
Disabling a machine by, say, editing the onboard battery voltage from 1.5V down to .3V is a simple edit of a property: the voltage. No physical parts changed, nothing was removed, in this case nothing even really moved. All she would have to understand here is the principles of voltage and, perhaps, how normal electronics use battery power.
Similar for the grenades. All explosives need a detonator of some sort, just edit a little space or a broken part in them. I’m not actually personally familiar with the internal workings of modern grenades, so I don’t have specific terms.
But making a normally fuel fired car run on sunlight isn’t as simple as editing the “FuelType” variable from “gasoline” to “sunshine.” The two are fundamentally different sets of mechanical parts, that aren’t simple modifications of each other. You would have to create out of nothing a set of parts, batteries, motors, cables, panels, etc.
NOW, I figure with enough of a chemistry background she could probably edit a hydrocarbon laden liquid into gasoline, but that’s complex and would probably not be worth it when you have a teleporter or flyer around.
Basically, Krona is like MacGyver but doesn’t have to waste time scrounging around for materials to do the jury-rigging. Just like MacGyver though, she has to know what she’s doing before she can do it.
There’s already a person named Deus X Machina. You know. Deus.
Depends on how much like programming Krona’s power is. Or rather property editing. One of the biggest issues would execution time. Try firing up RegEdit, a memory editor like CheatEngine, or the like and QUICKLY change things (without crashing your system). Most “fast” edits of those kinds are pre-prepared automated action (Batch files, shell sctrips, etc).
At a certain level she’s got “The Batman Power”. Her power is directly related to her pre-preparedness. So far her demonstrated hacks fall into a few general categories: Prank (hair color change , undergarment alteration), Comfort (Bladder control – also possible prank), Self Defense (disassembling ordinance). All of which are things she’d have prepared or used already. And yes over time her library of quick hacks will grow.
Give Batman enough time, and with his super power of “world’s greatest detective” he can also essentially hack reality. Even when he losses his money. Krona is Magic Batman (don’t tell Sydney).
Note to people : Seriously don’t screw with RegEdit unless you have a system restore point and know what you’re doing.
I’d say Krona’s power is less opaque than your bog standard memory editor. She clearly has labeled concept bubbles and relationship trees with value sliders. If she has cut-and-paste capability it would be trivially easy for her to steal another super’s powers. Without that it would only be a bit more work.
Don’t think she could really STEAL a power. Maybe “deactivate” for a short time, but I’d be guessing that the biological processes involved would be too complex for more than that without autopsy-level study, which would seem to make the question rather moot.
Yeah, I think she has a bunch of macros… pre-written scripts for stuff she does often or needs to do quickly. If she’s capable of more complex stuff, it’s probably much slower… like any programmer, she first needs to figure out how to do it, and I suspect that when it comes to hacking reality, the APIs aren’t documented.
Macros for disarming a custom job grenade?
It’s still a chemical reaction, however custom the grenade is.
Because the comic already has a Deus at Machina.
That can be a pitfall for any sufficiently versatile character, including Sydney or Dabbler. Typically you don’t want the solution to be something obvious to either the characters or the audience, and the more options they have, the harder it is to justify why the easy solutions can’t be used.
These types of characters can be written well, but compared to characters with narrower ability sets it’s far more difficult to set up situations that avoid the audience wondering “why didn’t they just do (whatever)?” about a dozen different things.
People throw the ‘Deus ex Machina’ term around too easily and in the wrong context.
I mentioned something like this before in another strip through in regards to Maxima.
Krona is not a deus ex machina. Just having a very powerful character in a work of fiction does not make anything done by them deus ex machina.
A deus ex machina is when something or someone from outside the normal story narrative effortlessly fixes an impossibly to solve scenario.
Krona is introduced and is a named character within the story: Not a deus ex machina.
Krona’s abilities have limits (implied in comic and pretty much stated by Dave in comments: Not a deus ex machina.
Krona’s actions so far have not exceeded anything that couldn’t also be done by others through mundane or magical means: Not a deus ex machina.
if however Dave had thrown in Krona at the last second to turn a loose into a win without doing any groundwork. then yes, it would have been.
Yes, but he hadn’t, so no, it isn’t
Krona is very powerful within her capabilities, but she’s hardly a case of ‘no rules’. The unusual bit is that in her case, the limitations are internal: they’re defined less in terms of what she can do, more of what she understands how to do.
Stopping a grenade or other firearm is relatively easy. It doesn’t take much understanding of the mechanism, just the ability to switch
charge="cordite"
tocharge="plasticine"
.Granting an extension on a bladder alarm is probably similar: changing
alarm=70%
to <alarm=90%, without needing to mess about with the matter balance of the universe.The example given elsewhere of sealing someone’s eyes shut would be a significant physical transformation on a complex system and would therefore probably require specialist medical training. But a tweak to change the response peaks of the retina would probably be easier, and would certainly buy plenty of time even if the subject could eventually compensate. For instance,
ABS_Peak_Rhod_L=560nm
toABR_Peak_Rhod_L=280nm
could switch certain cells’ response peak from a moderate red to the near ultraviolet – in a range absorbed by the cornea before it reaches the retina to register.“Wait, how do you know how to do it and the half hour thing?”
“I have an itty bitty bladder.”
So, Pixel has a human, hybrid, and animal form. She should hang out with Grace from EGS.
Yasssssss
I support this idea.
I would be willing to Patreon that idea (up to five bucks)
We don’t know if she has an animal form yet
I quote the second panel “But, uniquely, only in her hybrid and animal forms”.
So, yes, we do know that she has an animal form.
Not sure why forgot that, twice :(
Since reality hacking is a rather extreme ability, and people are already going to extremes on proposed scenarios with it, I am going to postulate that to keep the comic within the realms of suspended disbelief, DaveB is going to have to set a limiter on Krona’s power. I would theorize that the easiest, and most common sense, would be 1) Distance = line of sight. Sure she can hack your internal organs, but she has to be able to see your external to do it. 2) Time limit. OK, she can hack anything she can see and understand, but the effects wear off after half an hour. This keeps her powerful, but not Deus ex Machina powerful.
He already did put a limiter on it. It’s in the commentary below the comic.
The way I read it, that’s not really a limiter. More of an overall description and an explanation that some things are harder than others (creating from scratch is harder than modifying existing), rather than limits to how much, how far and for how long.
I already had a rant on why the term Deus ex Machina does not apply to Krona just above so I won’t repeat that again.
As to the limits. Aside that DaveB probably already has set limits on her powers but just hasn’t revealed them yet there is that she is a reality HACKER, not a reality WARPER. The difference: Krona is seemingly bound by the limits of reality. “It’s far easier to edit an existing property than it is to create things from whole cloth.” To me that sounds like: “She can easily turn your red sweater into a blue one, but it is a lot harder to turn wool into a sweater.”
It doesn’t say she can just create a fireball out of nothing, that would be magic and that also exists in the comic setting.
Your theory doesn’t seem to hold true in the example of predictive text heads-up display goggles.
Granny panties and thongs both exist, it’s easy to understand hacking one into the other. A live grenade and a dud both exist, another thing easy to understand in the context of hacking one thing into another. A full bladder and a not-so-full bladder, ditto.
But a pair of predictive text heads-up display goggles? What do you draw on to add those properties to a pair of mundane goggles, when the end result does not exist in any form at all? Heads-up displays exist, sure, but not time traveling heads up displays that can show you what someone is going to say before they say it.
… maybe the goggles were a gift from a magic user just like Sydney’s new magical hairband?
Alright, I’ll concede on the goggles, those seem more complex than changing some properties on an existing goggle (though an already existing goggle was probably used as base for whatever modifications she made to it).
I still don’t buy in to all the godlike things people are coming up with that Krona supposedly could do.
I’d agree that Dave is probably not intending for Krona to be the first power 10 character in the comic. Although it’s amusing to me that his main character just said that she might be in this very comic.
It’s just that without any real limitations described, and his author’s comments in this comic do not count as such at all for reasons I’ve detailed in other posts, it’s too easy for people to come up with things she might be able to do which are completely OP. Especially with the issue of the goggles left unresolved. If they are explained away as being something that she was given or found, as you suggest, that would go a long way towards limiting the speculations. Until that time, the flood gates have been opened, and speculations will go on until they are closed
So she’s a were, a super, AND has the scanny-vision thing we saw back in her first appearance?
Wow.
She doesn’t have scanny vision. That’s a different super in Arc-Light
That explains my confusion. Long enough ago I’d gotten to the conflated in my memory. Thank you.
That was one of the magic-users, actually. Gwen. She basically just cast Detect Magic.
Nope. That was “Specs” Gwen and Dabbler were in the room, but were not the one looking at the orbs.
Gwen & Dabbler both tried to analyze Sydney’s orbs earlier, but while natural, organic vision could see them & they can be photographed (the orbs themselves show up on the TV News cameras), nothing mechanical or magical could detect any special properties (for analysis) or even a presence (when they’re inside Mr. Tubey).
It wasn’t that the orbs are “undetectable,” it’s that they defy any analysis & examination beyond what can actually be seen visually. Even Specs confirmed that anything other than the usual Visible Spectrum doesn’t help analysis.
For example, neither the TV cameras nor Dabbler’s cyber-eye could pick up Sydney’s “Level Up Diagram,” Gwen could not even detect the presence of the orbs when they were out of immediate sight-range, nor could they detect any of the symbols that DaveB has occasionally drawn on them (for our benefit, no doubt) when Sydney’s choosing a specific power. Dabbler’s cyber-eye can see the orbs themselves & even see the glow they emit when in use, but can’t discern where the source of the glow comes from.
So… Any chance of the cast page getting an update?
BWA-HA-HA-HA!! *snort* Yea, right!
Well, there IS the Grrl Power Wiki that includes a link to its own Cast Listing.
Now if only DaveB could link it from his comic pages, we’d be all set…
(Hint, Hint)
There’s a few different things going through my mind on this particular panel:
A) It looks like Pixel is wearing a bell on her choker.
B) Does the Veil not work on Pixel’s hybrid form because she’s also a Super? Or *does* it actually work and she appears normal to mundane people, with the rest able to see her real form due to some selective ability of the Veil?
C) The Superhero Physique. I’ve loved the parody that it is, and the fact that it’s acknowledged in-world as an unknown factor of being a Super. What occurred to me from your comment, is the Physique factor, both for men and women. For the most part, it’s been fairly consistent, with similar body shapes, bust sizes, and musculature, but there’s been a few exceptions. Anvil is far more muscular than Heatwave, for instance, Vehemence looked to have a larger build too even while not powered-up.
Could it be something subconscious on what the person feels is the ideal body shape that determines what they look like? Different cultures have different ideals, some being drastically different (like some African cultures that consider overweight women to be very desirable, for instance).
D) I missed Sydney’s… circular… motion in the first panel. Is she trying to figure out why Krona doesn’t have the typical size of other powered individual, or perhaps hinting that maybe she’d like to increase her own, “land holdings”.
A) She is, and always has been. But, it doesn’t have a clapper inside so it doesn’t actually make any noise.
B)The veil should work on Pixel’s hybrid form just fine, but everyone present is already “in the know” and was there for the change. Kinda hard to hide that.
C) There is no such thing as a single “ideal body type”. Anvil and Vehemence are both high strength/power types, therefore the ideal body for them is going to be larger and support more musculature. Hiro, for example, is an “all rounder” with a trimmer physique to support more speed and agility to go along with his strength. Heatwave is exclusively a ‘super power user” and distance fighter, so her ideal is a lot slimmer and less muscled up than the rest.
D) She’s apparently asking (without words) why Pixel went from a B cup to and E cup. For once she is controlling her “speak first, think later” impulse.
Did anyone else notice the hacking interface has same colors in order as Sydnys orbs
Well hell, NOW I do….
For some reason, I’m betting that the one thing Krona can’t hack at all are Sydney’s orbs. Maybe because they’re not from this universe, and Krona can only hack things in this universe.
‘only’ hack things in this universe. So limiting. Heh.
Yeah, that’s like having super speed, strength, flight, invulnerability, x-ray vision, heat vision, the ability to breath in space (or just the ability to not need to breath at all), and any other powers the writer needs at the time.
But you can be hurt by a chunk of rock from a planet that exploded a few light years away. So very limiting!
They aren’t in the same order. Krona’s interface is a straight-forward rainbow, Sydney’s green and yellow orbs are switched, and the purple is in the wrong spot for her orbs to be a rainbow.
Also, both colour sets are just a seven colour rainbow.
I suspect that Krona’s got a MAJOR disadvantage we haven’t seen yet. Something like “explodes in contact with rain” level of dis-ad.
No DM would ever give her points for that “disadvantage.” BIP. BIP. BIP. “Well, what do you know? Yet another sunny day without a cloud in the sky!”
DM: maybe but it WAS midnight.
“Pixel”: well, yes, but now the base is at the North Pole
DM: thank you, now i get to bring in my ‘Evil Santa’ character
(every other player): *GrOaN*
BIP. BIP. BIP. You mean your ‘Good Santa’ character.
Krona’s Powers remind me more and more of the magic system in the web comic “Unsounded”. Shifting aspects of reality, borrowing and reshaping them to create all kinds of spells or artifacts.
I think it’s more likely that she started experimenting and did something big that backfired badly. Now she adjusts reality so that it conforms to her wishes…
This has probably already been talked about but, has anyone else noticed that Sydney’s orbs and the panels in Krona’s interface match in their color and number?
I’m sorry, but Krona is probably the coolest character I’ve ever seen in a comic. A ‘reality hacker’ has sooooo much story potential to it that it actually makes my writer’s mind have a braingasm.
I wonder what the nature of Krona’s powers are? There seem to be ‘techy’ accoutrements she expresses it through, so is the power itself tech-based? Or does it simply allow her to ‘manage’ a power that’s innate to herself? If tech-based, did she make it herself, or was it made for her? How much knowledge and training are needed to effectively use her abilities? What’s her education level? How long has she been using this stuff?
Heck, how OLD is she? If she can hack bodies, she could totally stay as young-looking and healthy as she wishes – she could easily be VERY old…
I think the best term is probably “Magitech.” A fusion of magic and technology. Her abilities may be magically based but routed through technology as a way to control it.
Reason I ask is – if it tech-based, then it could be stolen, or duplicated.
Would Krona be able to hack Sydney’s balls? Make it so she can use more than two at a time or won’t have to actually hold them in hand? Also, would she be able to hack it so that it displays the level up screen (and possible explanation of what they do)? Could she steal the balls for herself by hacking them so they aren’t bonded to Sydney? Have all these questions already been asked and answered? Inquiring minds want to know.
All I know is that I don’t want you to call them “Sydney’s balls” ever again.
I don’t really have any problems with references to “Sydney’s Balls,” but since Abiblioop associated them with the word “hacking”…NOW I’ve got a problem with it.
It is currently unknown but, since nothing else can detect their existance, it is theorised that the orbs are too much of an unknown for Krona to affect.
I very much hope she tries it in continuity so we can get this answered.
And I stand by both my naming conventions and action oriented verbiage. It’s not like Krona is Butcher Pete. 8^p
Since DaveB has stated that she has to have an understanding of what she’s trying to hack, I’d say Sydney’s Balls are unhackable, since nobody understands them.
And yet again, the word “understanding” is so vague as to be completely worthless in defining limits or setting down rules for Krona’s powers.
Krona: “What’s to understand? It’s a purple sphere that creates a force field.” BIP. BIP. BIP. “There. Now it’s a purple sphere that creates a force field and converts CO2 into O2. You’re welcome!”
I’d say she’d need more knowledge of the how as compared to the what.
And that’s a fair assumption. But it is an assumption, and others might rationally arrive at varying assumptions from yours after reading the same words.
All I’m trying to point out is that Dave’s comments about Krona’s power limitations are so loosely phrased as to be literally meaningless. Any two people can read them in different ways, and all the readers are left with is speculation and guesswork. Which is all we had before Dave made his comments. Do you see what I mean?
Why is Sydney crouching down? If she has to pee, that would make it worse.
Crouching Sydney, hidden bladder.
Well, that is how women normally do it – maybe it’s a reflex for her?
I, for one, am very interested in the reason for her great tracts of land.
I want Krona to have a look at Sydneys unknown orbs…. And maybe at her skill tree? Could krona hack Sydneys skill tree?
I’m like 80% sure what Pixel just did was an invasion of privacy right there
“I didn’t just draw her with big boobs for no reason. There was a reason.”
Bullshit, the only reason was ‘because’ :D
Because is a perfectly valid reason. 8^D
I still think that krona could punch up a user manual for the amazeballs.
So does this mean it’s canon that people with multiple forms are only supers in one of them? Could we perhaps see a vampire with a superspeed mind who can avoid any punch (even Maxima’s) by turning into bats with their insane reflexes but is easily thwarted by preventing said bats’ reformation as the bats are really quite stupid?
If so, this would make supers becoming weres far less of an appealing prospect, though it could, perhaps, be interesting for them to discover what kind of body their genetics would have produced without the added superness.
It is too soon to say I think that people with multiple forms are only super in one of them, but they do say Pixel is unique in that she is a super in her were and animal forms but not her human form.
I wondered if Pixel might also have laserclaws as a human but is lacking the retractable claws in human form to activate them and therefor can’t use them. But that doesn’t explain why she doesn’t have the super physique.
You know, if she really wanted to, Krona could probably hack the planet.
+1 internet for the reference. :P
Allusion? is that a word?
If you’re asking where it’s from, it comes from the movie The Core, wherein as a side point, a brilliant hacker is supposed to hack the internet. All of it.
Nope, it’s from the movie Hackers. Which had, among other things, a cool soundtrack, lots of geekspeak, Penn Jillete as an IT guy, a pre-Shaggy Matthew Lillard, Jonny Lee Miller with a dumb haircut, an evil virus-crafter played by the white guy who played the Indian guy in Short Circuit, and then-20-year-old Angelina Jolie’s first major film role (and also brief glimpses of her tits).
Krona’s limitation (in addition to needing to learn / design a “power” ahead of time) is small level of changes. Hack the planet, but only one shovel full at a time. The trick is to find where small changes will have a large impact. Leverage.
Now just hold on for one DANG second! Even “hitting a snooze button” would still require some understanding of underlying mechanisms!!! For example, is she activating the alpha-1 adrenoreceptors to promote contraction and tightening of the sphincter while also activating the beta adrenoreceptors to relax the bladder proper? Or maybe she’s utilizing muscarinic antagonists (like mechanism of action of solifenacin)? Or maybe she’s using a more indirect method like activating the RAAS system?
(I mean, this IS the age of the internet, so she could easily Google “urinary incontinence drugs”, and just use that knowledge).
Ironically, I’d be more inclined to believe that she has the ability to make the urine cease to exist than her being able to do fine-tune editing (like “snooze” urinary urge). Should be easier to make something macro disappear than selectively will into existence signalling molecules at the right concentration in exactly the right place or selectively activate certain receptors in a selective area…
It’s just a “dematerialize urine” spell — with a 30 minute duration. In half an hour Sydney will *really* need a bathroom.
Harem will have to teleport her in a change of pants, and some wet wipes and maybe tissue.
and socks.
But… but… that could actually be even worse than complete dematerialization… Basically, if the urine disappears for 30 minutes, and more is created… and all that matter sudden rematerializes, we’re looking at potential bladder rupture for sudden force at worst, and urinal reflux (and potential resulting nephritis) at best. This is, of course, assuming that the rematerialization still occurs within the bladder (the question of rematerialization localization is also a complex questions considering the spatial dimensions (both absolute) and general plasticity of internal organs with relation to the abdominal wall)
As a female, Krona probably had at some time desired to hack her own bladder when she found herself busy with something else. At some point, she probably did the biological research from medical studies that discovered how & why a bladder will send its “I’m full” signals to the brain.
Once she understood it, then she could “reset” that trigger. Granted, it would be best to make it only temporary (oh, half an hour, say?) so that she could relieve herself when more convenient, but not with that sense of urgency the whole time.
Dunknow if its just me but pixel looks like a really buff man in that fourth pannel. Awesome power, tho.
I don’t know why but I hope the Team Runt arc goes on for a while. I am really enjoying the interactions of Halo, Pixelicious & Kronachrome. :P
HHhhhhhmmmmmm…….. a whole roster of hot supermodel type women & its the short nerdy girls I am enjoying the most, go figure?
That doesn’t really seem too far-fetched. With all of the media that we’re bombarded with on a daily basis, everybody puts up the “human physical ideal” so much that it’s like they’re trying to choke us with it. As DaveB seems to have “scaled back” on the “human ideal” for this part of the story arc, it might seem like a breath-of-fresh-air by comparison.
Then again, there’s already a number of people here (myself included) that like Sydney just the way she is, petite, skinny (until all of that military PT exercise starts hardening her up a bit) & ADHD.
:)
Not sure how Maxima will react to Sydney’s remark to Krona.
That’s why she said not to tell Maxi
Just like when Sydney made Peggy promise not to tell Bob Kane how she blasphemed the holy name of Batman, even though she was under extreme duress.
I’m reasonably certain that that’s the first time in the history of the universe that someone has asked: “Did you just hack my bladder?”. So kudos on that. :P
I suspect that line has been used, in the context of really messed up critical hit charts for a table top RPG. I know for a fact that the worlds worse RPG , (FATAL) has bladder as a possible critical hit, I suspect that ArmsLaw might have it as well.
Of course that’s hack as in hack and slash with sharp bits of steel, not hack as in computers.
Also the RPG Bureau 13, Stalking the Night Fantastic has the bladder as a hit location. Subdivided I believe. It is pretty nuts & they chart blow through also. & it has shapeshifters among other paranormal stuff.
Well, the GURPS game has “Groin” listed on the Hit Location Chart. That’s not specifically “Bladder,” but so close as to be…discomforting.
Not the only one. Battlelords of the 23rd Century has “Groin” on the critical hit tables.
In fact, I remember back in college, I was running the game, and one of my players was playing a Ram Python (think “giant, super-strong, near-sighted, kinda dumb, reptile thing”). His weapons had been damaged, so he was reduced to just his natural attacks (claw, claw, bite).
On the bite, he got a critical hit. On the critical hit table, he got “Groin, removed.” Since I plan to go to bed soon, I am going to willfully ignore the implications of that, or I will never get to sleep.
I love the authenticity of Sydney being so excited she pees. Brings back Beatles documentaries where they talked about piss from excited teenage girls running down the aisles as they performed.
Yes, rivers of ‘urine’, sure >_>
Is this close enough?
Well, maybe not…You weren’t talking about “crying,” precisely.
I didn’t just draw her with big boobs for no reason. There was a reason.
Excuse me but can’t big boobs have there own reason? As in, I didn’t just draw her with big boobs for NO reason, the reason is I wanted big boobs.
That works for me.
If you want more reasons, that’s fine with me too…
Considering page 138, I’d be surprised if Sydney doesn’t ask if a person’s “measurements” can be messed with.
It just hasn’t occurred to her…yet…
Aww man, I didn’t even realize it until now, but Halo’s wearing a Halo shirt!
Wow, how did you not notice that?
shes had it for the last ~30 strips.
It’s been her work shirt basically forever.
How about this: She’s a feline superhero with laser claws… Who somehow contracted, uh, human-thropy. Which inconveniently disables her normal power because it changes her claws away.
You should make a whole side comic starring Krona as she goes through life hacking her way out of problems. I would read that.
i think there’s already a thing like that.
try Spongebob
(kidding)
Go leiger zero! STRIKE LASER CLAW!