Grrl Power #768 – Late to the party
I done goofed.
I have to own it. The very first draft of this page had Sydney saying something slightly more innocuous like “When did this happen!?” or whatever. Then at some point while I was drawing it I decided to do the change up gag where someone overreacts to the wrong thing. I don’t know the name of the trope off the top of my head.
Here’s the problem. This whole scene started with Sydney watching the press conference from the firing range. She’s a flake, but that’s just too flaky, even for her. But I just forgot about that page while I was writing/drawing this one.
I realized this sometime Wednesday and I could have fixed it, but I thought just to mix it up, it’d be fun if you guys wanted to pitch some lines for Sydney that hopefully make more sense. I’ll update the comic with the best one.
Whatever else happens with this page, I’m positive I drew either the Interdictor or Archon HQ at the wrong scale. I think the building is way too small. Cora said the ship was 160 meters long, but that seems super small now, even if she meant the body of the ship and not including the gun/gravity sled nacelles at the front.
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She should say:
Maxima started a forest fire?!”
Cora’s ship relocating or moving up so she scan for more enemies or maybe so she can deploy weapons if needed?
Or did Max scare her off planet?
Max’s phone is gonna be ringing off the hook, so to speak. “Yes Mr President, it was an invasion…a failed one. Doing clean up and forensics now…you want a what?”
I think it’s just sitting on the grass beside the Archon building. If you look at the shadow it looks to be close to the ground.
“I am NOT cleaning that up”.
“So that’s how it’s supposed to be drawn!”
Hah hah, that’d be a sort of funny callback, but Sydney was had been talking about the bottom of the ship.
I would like Sydney to say something like “They had an Avengers fight WITHOUT ME?”
“someone else got to ruin a press conference!?”
Initially i would have said
“And Maxima was worried I would ruin the press conference”
But that doesn’t match the expression
How about: “My Experience Points! My UBER LOOTZ! How could you go on a raid without me?”
Hmm. You know… tactically, the team really should make sure that Sydney participates in every fight they get involved in, since she literally levels up on occasion.
One thing that bugs me is that everyone in the comments assumes she is “leveling up” and her abilities will get more powerful.
It could just as easily be (so far anyway) access to more features and control as she trains rather than the orbs getting more powerful.
The difference is subtle but the orbs should not increase in power even if they let her do things that she couldn’t do earlier.
e.g. With something like Mr Bubble the squidwad’s first blast taxed it to near its limits. There is no reason it would not be at maximum strength from the start. Unlocking ‘points’ through training could give her more control and more options, but why would you ever limit the maximum strength of a safety feature?
The PPO, Florb, yes with training more options and more power/speed but it’s inherent from the start that those abilities are there just not accessible until trained.
When she tried to lift Max and clocked the Hentorb at 16 tons, that shouldn’t increase. A level up might give her multiple weaker tentacles, or the ability to stretch it further with less strength.
Similarly she got the teleport ability fairly easily, all she had to do was demonstrate ability to control the lightbee and select it as the next training option.
It’s the difference between a super-hero story where she is learning her abilities and a novelized video game.
That’s my two cents anyway. :)
Im picturing Sydney asking
“Since when do we have TWO helipads?”
+1 for this. Though I’m sure she’s flown into the building more often than she’s walked into it.
“They have Go’a’uld?”
“They had a major fight scene without me? But I’m the main protagonist!”
Sydney: “The building has left and right wings, as well as A and B helipads on the top. Oh my god! What happens if I enter the Konami code on the roof?!”
“You don’t have an ‘H’ on heli pads??!”
“Only five news vans?!?”
“That’s where I put up my garden gnomes!!”
“You can choose any color and then you decide to paint your starship BROWN?!?”
“I never noticed we had a forest next door!”
The world is not ready for what happens when the Gnomes go missing…
They had a boss fight without me?
Hmm… I know it’s been a while since we really saw her, but doesnt Peggy have facial scars?
yes, but they’re also on the side of her face not in focus.
Iirc she had one across the bridge of her nose. That said, minor detail and I am actually surprised I even thought of it.
Whoops! Yep, that’s another thing to fix.
“They fired the big gun without me!”
“omg…
WHERE’S MY CAR!?!”
“I missed a level-up?”
Sydney:”They call that a Fel spaceship? More like ‘fallen’. Am I right?”
I wonder if Halo has tested the max range of her teleport yet, and also what happens to stuff inside Mr. Bubble when she teleports
The trope is Comically Missing the Point
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComicallyMissingThePoint
Depending on, it could be Failed a Spot Check
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FailedASpotCheck
That’s the intent, but the problem is Sydney KNEW about the press conference already, since she saw it on TV in the beginning of the storyline. Hence why DaveB is asking for suggestions on what to replace her line with, which would also involve her missing the point, since that’s the joke :).
“YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! Damn you! I missed all those experience points!”
Oh wait, Sydney already used that one on the Alari homeworld. (#640)
I first read that as ‘the Atari homeworld’ without coffee in my system.
Well, that was a planet where she fought off a group of Space Invaders.
I’m Late to the Alien Invasion Party!
“Hey, who double parked me???”
“They ENDED the press conference without me?”
I would expect something like “Why didn’t I get to cut a space ship in half?!”
Peggy could just tell her that’s reserved for when she gets ALL the shots on the target.
Maybe Dave could have left the speech bubble for Sydney blank and then said for the readers to fill it in.
—-Sydney—-
“OH NO! They Followed Me!”
“They only left us the adds?”
Syd – “Cora really hates someone trying to take her parking place. Hey where’s my car!”
Okay, maybe a 20MM instead of the fifty.
MK44 Bushmaster.
I vote for keeping the original line. It would be TOTALLY in character for Sydney to forget about a news conference that SHE HAD BEEN WATCHING.
The fact that she had stopped watching long enough to try to cut a car in half with her gun indicates that, at that moment, her mind was full of thoughts of gun dakka and she wasn’t devoting much brain power to anything else. Her ADHD-afflicted brain was just going “Guns! Guns! Guns!” and forgot that she watched and even commented on the news broadcast.
Yeah, it’s not impossible that she could have forgotten. Anyone who’s walked into a room and forgotten what they went in there for has experienced this to some degree. My on ADHD is bad enough that I could actually see this happening, though I’d probably remember the press conference halfway though the sentence.
After some thought I’m changing my vote. The main reason is because I’ve decided that clarity is more important than humor (IMO). At this point, I didn’t realize the battle was over already, so the next page took me by surprize a bit. So: “The Battle’s OVER? But I need the XP!” – or something similar.
Not a dialog suggestion:
I hope no one shoots at the Space Cops.
Sydney.
“What happened to my pool!?”
“I was gone and they had a fight/space invasion/major battle without me?
But really, I agree with what others said, keep the line and in the next comic have Peggy say somethin like “Yes, sidney, you even watched it on Tv at the firing range” “oh, right. my ADHD meds must be running off. Hey, they fought an alien spaceship, cool.”
(ADHD come with memory problems, right?)
BAH! All of you have seriously missed the target. This is Sydney, who has had a seriously BIG adventure recently.
She is not going to give a rip about the alien battle. As far as she is concerned, it is little more than a training exercise, which is to be avoided.
She is not going to give a rip about the press conference, as she already made a glorious debacle of that earlier.
No, dear readers, Sydney’s priorities are currently skewed towards daily survival at this time. Observe:
“SKEKSIS BALLS!!! DID CUPPS AND FUSION SURVIVE?!? I NEED MY FIX!!!”
*cue mike drop*
But those guys are MY archnemesis!
So when did ARC repaint their Helipads black with “A” and “B” on them from the 2 white ones with “H”s from this comic? https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-74-adrenaline-junkie/
Hah hah, whoops. I guess they got repainted by this page, but they still said H on them:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-351-vertigyaah/
Also did the building rotate 90° relative to the front steps?
In 74 the long roof is pointed at the front steps and here it’s perpendicular to them.
Also the long roof goes to points instead of flat sides. And all the rooftop stuff (pool, garden, patio) are gone. Did they have to re-build the building in the last 2 months?
During the two months Sydney was gone, you would not *believe* the number of helicopter crashes they had because the pilots couldn’t figure out which helipad was the A pad and which was the B pad.
It is all part of the new security system. To ensure that the incoming helicopter has the correct clearance, it has to go through a specific set of maneuvers. When they reach the building they first have to fly up, then down, then left, then right, then touch the B pad, then finally land on the A pad. This unlocks the roof door to let them in.
Love it. The refrigerator-logic part of my security sense is horrified at something so publicly visible and easily cracked, but I still love the idea of Leon doing this at least once as a prank.
What happened to my D&D die?
Sydney: “Dammit Max” (or other suitable low-grade Sydney-esque expletive)
Then, a few comics later, in the background of an establishing shot there’s a whiteboard with “Press Conference Odds” written on it and a peculiar visible “Maxima Foils Alien Invasion” option. In the mid-ground, Sydney is handing a lump of cash to the “spiders” guy.
I had to do some googling, but 160 meters is about 175 yards, or about the same as a 35 story building. I found a 160 meter cruise ship and here is a picture of the two of them together – https://i.imgur.com/PAqjTAB.jpg Coras ship is about 3 of them wide, without the wings. For a ship with such a small crew, i think 160 meters is HUGE.
Well Cora did mention that there was a lot of empty empty crew space after they automated most of the sip so they converted part of it into a pool deck. And a tentacle closet.
Ship, not sip
Holly #$&$x! balls, what a mess. Well I’m sure as #_#&$ not cleaning that up!
Simple: “What did I miss????”