Grrl Power #727 – A timely prank
There’s been a lot of speculation, and this finally confirms it. Time travel! This is why when the team arrived on Alari Prime, Harem got discombobulated, because suddenly there were twice as many of her, and half of her knew the date was different. This helped the team immensely though, as they knew exactly when in time Sydney was. Past Harem also instantly knew everything that had happened in the intervening time. Since she only has one mind between all her bodies, the two versions of her integrated into a new single mind with the added memories. Her ability to recall those memories, however, is somewhat limited. They’re all there, but they don’t just burst forth unbidden. Most memories need some context. She sat down and tried to sort of remember everything in order, but a lot of the samey daily minutia got lost in the kaleidoscope of monotony that is modern life. The big events, however, were a lot easier to pull up. In the last 2 months, the team has gained a bit of a reputation for being exactly where they needed to be to prevent major crimes and disasters. If anyone is speculating that Archon has a psychic, they’re okay with people believing it.
So they were thrown 51 days into the future, and it took Sydney 2 days to make it home, most of which was spent on Cora’s ship. That’s not too bad considering she had no idea where she was. It’s lucky Cora got a lock on her when she jumped from the Alari homeworld to Fracture Station.
If most of Sydney’s friends are around her age, most of them would probably still be alive after 57 years. So, typical overreaction from her really. The reason Harem went with 57 years instead of 53 years, is 57 is the length of time Ripley was lost in space between Alien & Aliens. As for why I chose 53 days instead of 57… I don’t know, probably I thought it’d be too on the nose to homage Aliens that hard.
Moving update: Jeeze, I though preparing a house for sale was took a lot of time, but showing a house… geeze. All weekend it was every other hour, pack up and go for a walk or do some errands while a realtor walks strangers though the place. Not conducive to working on a comic. :/ You’re supposed to let the realtor do the selling, which is probably a good idea. I tend to overshare. “That’s where the cat threw up last week. I stepped right in it. That’s the problem with having cat-barf colored carpet. I guess it depends on what you’re feeding the cat really. Oh, and also there’s a hellmouth under the porch.”
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Please note that the time difference that the portal was ‘ahead’ of earth normal was approx 51 days ( we don’t know exactly how many days passed from when Harem left Alari and Sydney returned. Eg the time Sydney fought the Kaiju, the time spent on Fracture and the time it actually took for Cora to return Syd to Earth.
Harem might gain abilities since she now has experienced a about 51 days time difference. If she could duplicate that in her ‘mind’ she might gain the power of ‘time sight’
In some ways we might all be experiencing time the ‘wrong way’ typically we experience time from the past to ‘now’. consider that she has already experienced this same effect on a much smaller scale (when she joins selves) even if she merged two of her selves from opposite sides of the planet, the time difference would be very small ( not mush memory data to assimilate)
she got thrown for a loop when they went to Alari because she had to assimilate 51 days of info all at once. Also she could not know when Syd returns because for her it has not happened yet.When Harem returned to earth via the portal she would be able to figure out much time the portal was shifted forward since the future self she ‘linked’ to would have known the date.
Whoops small error. It was a 51 day time jump, per DaveB’s comments. So two days to fight the Kaiju, kanoodle on Fracture and return to earth.
man I wish could edit sometimes.
What will bake your noodle is this. When Max and the rest of them went back thru the portal, does Sydney exist? In the ‘here and now’ for them Sydney is nowhere in space or time.
Well, spacetime is just a big 4-dimensional manifold, so Sydney would exist somewhere in it, even if she didn’t exist at *this* moment. That’s like drawing a line on a paper and saying that a dot outside the line exists on the paper, but not on the line.
Which is doable since the Blood Gate was magic, instead of technologically applied physics.
Keep your genre conventions straight people.
The superhero genre uses the tropes of science fiction yes.
The superhero genre also uses the tropes of fantasy at the same time.
So.
We can say that something like the third law of physics applies…unless overruled by magic.
We get Ironman, but also Doctor Fate.
Sciona! I have come to bargain!
I studied physics and have never heard of the “third law of physics” third law of thermal dynamics and third law of motion sure… There are other third laws but… Never heard of the third law of physics
“Let me back up a couple months.” – Sydney “Halo” Scoville, Jr.
We’re nearly caught up. That’s when we find out that Dave Barrack is the biggest troll there is, because Sydney dies (again but for real this time) on the page following this one:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-4/
“Yeah so Halo died. Sorry guys.” Dave says. “Just moving and all is seriously taking up all my time, and I have to cut out everything except that and my husbandly duties.” Then we also find out he isn’t moving, and has just been telling us about moving so we don’t ask pointed questions.
What I want to see is Sydney reach the date in page 4 and suddenly see herself and surroundings in the old flat 2D style again. This results in her breaking the 4th wall to the audience while wearing a Deadpool mask and complaining about the artwork.
Uh…where do you see Sidney dying for real?
The next page, panel 1: Establishing shot of the Mars warehouse. Voiceover: “Here is where I died”
Panel 2: Sciona stabbing Sydney to death.
Panel 3: Krona crying. Voice bubble: “I thought my checkpoint would revive Halo!”
Panel 4 onwards: repeats sequence of previous page. Voiceover “now I just repeat this one day eternally, as hologram. The final memorial provided courtesy of the brown mystery orb. My friends are kind enough to react to my presence as if I were still real”
Under comic image: Holographic Sydney crying, alone in her holographic car.
This is the next page. It contains nothing like you say.
It was a joke, puppy jokes have a tendency not to translate well into hyu-mon :P
Probably already commented but…
Xuriel was not tagged.
That’s probably the funniest face Sydney’s ever made.
Which one? o_O
Love Dabbler’s Asian granny face.
I only noticed in this comic, Dabbler only has 3 fingers. As for 57+21=78, I’ll br fortunate, if I live that long. I have Emphysema, a fatal disease. So, everyday is a blessing.
She has twelve fingers and four thumbs.
Well The university in Tel Aviv claims they have 3d printed a heart. Now we will see how soon this tech hits the market – Lungs might not be far way. Uses Patients own cells.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/3d-printed-artificial-heart-patient-cells-tel-aviv-university-researchers/
*crosses claws for Sasha Whitefur*
Thanks, Yorp! :*)
Syd’s mission debrief will be epic, if only for the reactions.
Sort of called it about the memory. Dang, I missed Daphne.
Well done.
Although the other leading alternative (namely travelling to an alternative universe) is still on the cards. Simply because it is one of two leading options which makes time travel work in practice
One is that a paradox can never happen, to significantly change past events, because anything which might do that will be blocked by some means (otherwise those events could not have taken place). So, if attempting to go back and kill your grandfather, you might have a house fall on you, the time machine break or the stress might cause you to have a heart attack.
The other alternative is that any potential paradox simply spawns an alternative universe. So when you time travel to “your own past”, you are actually travelling to an otherwise identical universe, at said point in its past (as opposed to your own past). So you can safely kill the grandfather of the person who would otherwise eventually have someone like you as a decedent. Then that universe would play out with a different version of events, where there is no “you” (other than the “time traveller” you).
However the only difference, in the universe that you departed from, would be that you had left it, in a “time machine” and never returned. Should you return to your original time, you would either come back to the unchanged version of your original timeline (complete with either a living grandfather or at least one who lived long enough to father your parent) or to the alternate Earth “present day” where his absence changed events.
Maxima and Dabbler would find it difficult, if not impossible, to tell whether their “time travelling” was due to travelling to a near identical alternate Universe.
There’s another version in play. It’s not a paradox as long as there is never a way to travel back in time to affect events that happened before you left.
Even though a closed timelike loop existed (someone moving fast enough from Earth COULD have arrived while the door was still open) it was still not, in practice, causality-impaired.
We see the universe might have some protection, in fact, by the fact that Cora’s ship was “accidentally” delayed from arriving while the gate was open. And we know that time gates don’t happen often, because they were surprised by the delay…
So wait if they moved through time as long as space then doesnt that mean that if for all of went through the portal went 53 days into the future. Doesn’t that mean if they came back through the portal then they effectively time traveled. Then the actual problem xuriel had was that if they opened a normal blood gate (as the gate used was haphazardly interrupted) they would have appeared 53 days in the alari homeworlds past or the teams present. Changing that future too much would adversely affect the sydney that was left behind. So by letting the alari meet their fate they save sydney.
Given that they had nearly two months of lead time, how exactly was Cora still so late that she only barely caught Sydney’s trail?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-674-space-cavalry/
They were a bit late.
Their encounter with the Fel altered their angle of departure.
If the angle of departure changes the time of arrival, that suggests that, maybe, Cora and company traveled into the FUTURE as well as across space. Given that Cora’s ship has to “warp space”, or what ever, to travel FTL, it would not be out of the question that it could time travel as well.
Whilst possible, that is not the only reading. A navigational error can delay any trip, even using conventional travel. A non-optimised angle of departure certainly would have that problem, if having to arrive at a specific point at an exact time.
In this reading, “Local relative time” would be pertinent, as the briefing may indicate that (for example):
And here I was, just thinking Cora’s ship took a 53 day trip in 2 days due to FTL propulsion.
Oh wait, that doesn’t explain the time difference… it just means they would be home in 2 days instead of 53.
Wait, that doesn’t explain the difference in time. Silly old me
Try #3:
That wouldn’t account for the time difference, though… silly me.
oh wait, that doesn’t account for the time difference.
sweet jeebas!!! Now it’s all 4 replies visible, all of a sudden.
@daveB, can you please remove the last 4 (including this fifth one)
Soooo…. it took Vale almost 2 months to take the artifact from the mountain rubble to Duex’s teleporter machine so they could plug it in and turn it on? Because it seemed like all she did was hop on a plane, fly over there, and then off they went.
Or does his machine also time travel into the future when it uses the artifact so they showed up on Fracture at the same time as Sydney? (And if he knows that, I’m assuming he would work out better uses for it than shopping for alien tech, as good a use as that may be.)
The machine wasn’t built yet and the power source wasn’t complete when Vale took the Skybreaker to Deus.
Thus by the time Deus makes his trip Sydney happens to be there.
Remember he has access to Metas so putting it together in less than 2 months is very doable!
Dave was purposely keeping the timeline indeterminable, until this reveal. That is the beauty of a montage. Its timeline is constructed by the expectations of the reader, as opposed to being explicitly revealed. If you reread the sequence I bet that everything will fit exactly with our new expectations. Simply because Dave plans such things in advance, and therefore the small details are consistent with that.
We have seen such things in the past, such as when examining how the orbs work. Any scene where the tentacle is out and we see the tentacle orb close enough to make out details, the mini tentacle normally in it is absent. Likewise when Sydney is using the PPO or the lightbee from the Truesight orb. Only the latter was made a point of, but Dave kept the continuity with all the others, even though it was not a plot point.
Just fifty three days?
Man I’ve been expecting it to turn out to be a couple years, so the comic could now be “current” with things like the new president and stuff like that.
Pop cultural and political references always make comics and novels look dated when reread later from a vantage point which benefits from hindsight. Avoiding those things to a large degree helps make a story relatable to new readers in the future.
Thus if you are a young writer with plans on enticing new readers into the same shared world over a long period then keeping your storyverse tethered to the real world produces a net negative.
Also, asuming the US does not repeat that stupidity, SciFi writers in general might ignore Nr. 54. Except for maybe “stuff that happened because of his bumbling” He should be pretty good for that.
Lowest minority unemployment ever. Yes, we certainly don’t want anymore of that sort of bumbling.
Something you can thank the previous guy for, not the guy who came in right at the very end of that decline then tried to take all the credit for it without doing a single thing to cause it.
Suffice it to say that the difference in politics, between the two regimes, is divisive enough that we are best off not debating it deeper here. Current politics is the one area that the author requests that we do not delve into in the comments board.
Which is why, in answer to the initial post, in this thread, that I think the author wisely chose to avoid synchronising the comic with the present day. Especially as the timelines would radically diverge with both superheroes coming out and aliens landing on Earth! Whilst the present guy may have still gotten in, there are other options. For instance he may have seen business opportunities which could have kept him from even considering running for office, in the first place. Likewise the election was very closely contested. Even a small change in history might have caused it to tip the other way.
Alternatively, on the other paw, he may have seized the opportunity of rallying humans against alien immigration, illegal aliens and other fears the populace may have, in order to win a landslide victory and radically improve his political power.
Should Dave have chosen to explore such possibilities it could have incited a lot of political acrimony either way. So far safer to keep the padding of a few years history.
The one exception being the scene in which Sydney interrupts a briefing with ‘The Prez‘ and colleagues, in the shape of Barack Obama et al. But even there, the relevance is primarily to the positions rather than their occupants; DaveB used the people who held the respective posts at the time of writing, because it’s a visual medium and you have to draw someone, but the pages would work as well with just about anyone else in those roles. (That’s lampshaded by breaking the Who’s Who rules to put Obama in the sidebar despite not being named on-panel; it confirms to the future reader that, for purposes of this scene at least, the position of President wears this face.)
Babbling on about any politician, entertainer, celebrity, or athlete seems quint, irrelevant, and a drag on the story from a perspective of thirty years down the road. Things that seem important to this group or that group right now will be considered useless babble in the not too distant future.
I read a lot of books written in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties. Authors just check full of cultural references are unreadable, however.
That has been a constant in literature to be enjoyed (as opposed to historical narratives) for centuries.
Yep. Same thing that the ST:TNG writers couldn’t help but do. Global warming in two minutes? Sure. Grandstanding about AIDS from a 1997 Democrat viewpoint? Sure.
Just once I’d like to see a future-based show doing that serious pontificating and intentionally (on the part of the writers) getting the history wrong, the way you’d expect two centuries of knowledge drift to do.
They are not unreadable, as long as you remember the time period in which they are set, and don’t try and put ‘modern’ ideals onto a previous time
It’s not just about putting ‘modern’ ideals into a previous time (which a lot of people seem obsessed with doing though) but it’s about understanding references. I remember just from the books we had as required reading in high school that there would be mentions to specific products that I’ve never heard of, and I’m left wondering what the hell they are talking about. If I were reading something less timeless or that didn’t come with a glossary of time period terms, a story from the 30’s that put in as many references as most modern tales do would leave me completely in the dust.
45. We’re a ways from 54…if ever. :(
God damn 54. Man sydneys been away for so long. All her friends have kids now.
Well that’s why most fictional universes have a made up person as prominent politicians instead of a real person. It’s a lot easier to have Jolly Jonah Jameson be mayor of New York than try to have the current actual mayor in office and then have to retcon it later when the timeline doesn’t sync up.
That would require a time jump on the order of 8 years.
No from 45 to 54 is a total of 36 years (im counting donalds 2 years because sydney hadnt lived those years yet.) assuming each president only did 4 years. Assuming no one is assassinated or impeached that would be the minimum of years it would take to get to that president number 54. If everybody did 2 terms then by the time it would be 72 years.
Honestly, I was really hoping to see a gag where they mention the new president. Like you see one of her friends have some exasperated and panicky look on her face practically screaming about how Trump is the new President, and Sydney is all laid back like “Eh? So what’s the big deal? I kinda liked him in The Apprentice.” since the last confirmed date we had for her was way back in 2012, so she would have never seen all the build-up in the media painting his character for the last four years.
OK the ‘time since story started’ has now become complex enough that I do not have enough paws to track it anymore!
To make it even worse: The story started in the future, as the story is Sydney telling her story.
I don’t think the story has even caught up with her a “couple of months” in the future. I think the story has only progressed 1 or 2 weeks.
Correction, Sydney’s time line has only progressed 1 or 2 weeks. With the 51 day jump, the over all story has, approximately, caught up with, or even passed, the “couple of months”.
“couple of months”
define “couple of”
I’d like a couple of sugar packets.
Customer 1: I only meant 2
Customer 2: Gets a handul.
“couple” is a practically useless term for Americans, it has become their subjective term for what they consider a small number. I have even said to someone, it was only a couple of days ago, only to be reminded the event happened three months ago; but thanks to work and projects I only personally registered some of that time so thought of it as “a couple of days ago”.
let’s make certain that the terms are policed, just a little:
couple: two, that’s it
a few: 3 to 4
some: 5 to 6
a bunch: 6 to 8
a handful: 8 to 10
a slew: 10 to 20, or as many as you can stuff into a purse without being noticed
I’d switch your “some” and “handful”. By the way, “some” means “more than none and less than a majority”. If there are a million of something, “some” means anything from a few to half a million, but not more than that. More than that is “most”.
My wife and I have different meanings for the word “several”. For me, 5-10 is several. For her, 20+.
I prefer “pawful”.
No, couple, explicitly, means 2.
Its supposed to, doesn’t mean everyone who says it means it that way.
Like if someone asked you to hand them a couple of napkins would you hand them only two squares?
I have this annoying thing to always say something happened “the other day” even when it was over a year ago. It’s a habit tic I have.
I can say, even though you’re stressed by moving, I’m loving the art direction. Harem looks great.
There are a lot of things I could say about this page, but I’ll just stick to one for now…
Dabbler hugging Sydney is very cute, and makes me smile.
That is all.
:-)
I’d just like to comment on the type of hug Dabbler is giving. To a horned species/race that has to be a sign of trust or love, because with just a twist of the head someone’s face could get ripped up pretty bad.
For Dabbler, won’t anything be a sign of love
For Achilles, will ANYTHING be a sign?
Achilles I believe still feels things, he just doesn’t register pain as he receives no damage.
I have questioned the logistics of this, but its a superhero story. So the old “pleasure and pain are the same sensation at different intensities and/or based on the mental good or negative physical consequences criteria. But again…unique physiology and all that.
Check out Dabbler’s school (a single panel, a long time ago, where we had a flashback to that*), and you will see that there were many different types of demon that she grew up with. A number of which did have horns (but not all of which would be problematic with such a hug). Plus we know, from various commentaries, by Dave, that Succubi are widespread across the galaxy. So they will be cosmopolitan enough that they will not fret about the anatomy of species not currently present.
But it is a very intimate hug, and your observation is correct to a degree regarding the horns. So it is indeed fairly telling.
* Confirmed by DaveB as being canon, rather than Sydney’s imagined version.
Daniel here. Seems a few people are still confused about the timeline for all this happening, so I’ll lay it out simply as I can for everyone’ benefit, including Screwballs…
53 DAYS AGO-
Sydney & team attack Badass Girl Blue’s hideout. They prevent the portal being opened properly, causing it to malfunction and link to the right place, BUT 51 DAYS IN THE FUTURE!! While the rest of the team make it back through the portal & return to THIS POINT, Sydney is stuck in the future. Harem has returned with essentially a list of events yet to happen in her head. She has to sort them out to make sense, but along with Dabbler uses that info to prevent unwanted events happening & calculate WHEN Sydney gets left behind…
53-2 DAYS AGO-
The team use Harem’s knowledge to prevent trouble almost before it starts, earning them a scary reputation to go against. The Alari Homeworld is attacked, with most of their people seemingly wiped out, however some escape in a colonization ship, some by bartering a ride to the Fracture and a final few by storing themselves in soul batteries…
2 DAYS AGO-
THIS is where Sydney & the team arrive on the other side of the portal!! The rest of the team escape through the portal, returning to where they started. However Sydney is stranded here, forced to battle grunt fighter swarms before facing Kaiju Squidward & killing it, then faced with 3 more Kaiju which work together. She blasts through the face & head of 1 (doubt it killed it, it was still flailing it’s limbs as she left) then uses her new upgrades to speed off then head into orbit.
AT THIS POINT Cora & crew show up, launch probes & detect Sydney as she flies through a tunnel thing (forgot name :P ) & gets to The Fracture. Sydney stumbles across the Alari Refugees, enjoys some interstellar food, is found by Cora, gives a dog-alien a bone, picks up the Refugees then heads for Earth…
ROUGHLY 2 DAYS AGO TILL NOW-
This is ROUGHLY how long the trip took in realtime, outside Cora’s ship, for Cora’s ship to get from the Fracture to Earth. Please note I said ROUGHLY, since we don’t know exactly how long Sydney was on the Fracture…
So, this is the timeline for those still confused. I’m pretty damn good at working out timelines of events, I tend to create my own convoluted timelines in my head so I should be :P. Mind you, if Mr DaveB could confirm or correct my timeline here, I would be honoured…
I would say this is, pretty much, dead on!
We have no information at all which pins down the exact time of the attack on Alari.
We know that it was after Sciona was in contact two days before the gate incident, and that the world was devastated by the time Arc-Swat chases Sciona down.
The attack could have begun just after Sciona talked to her people on Gate minus two or it could have begun four days before where we are now as orbital bombardment followed by dozens or hundreds of kaiju devastate a world very quickly.
It’s thus possible that the Alari could have carried out evacuations for a month or more.
Nowhere near enough time to save the majority of the population, but enough time to save a lot. Also enough time for a civil war fighting over who gets to leave and to settle scores among themselves.
*nods*
The “Portal” jumped 51 days into the future. I am surprised no one has made a connection to Area 51 yet.
They were in the wrong part of the country. But nice observation regardless. Especially with distances being less of an issue, where portals are concerned.
I want to buy this comic in print :) Where can I buy them in print
You need to travel 57 days/weeks/months/years into the future and pop down to your local bookstore/amazon outlet/lunar mall.
DaveB has had a stab at converting the comic to paper format, but keeps getting distracted with keeping the online comic publishing schedule on time. Bearing in mind that Girl Genius, a similar online comic in terms of quality, complexity and publishing schedules (3 per week instead of 2, admittedly) has a team of 3 full time staff.
So he has to balance things like expanding the cast list against other options, for his scarce spare time, such as expanding the cast list or having a holiday.
Actually thinking about it, as she earned the nickname of big guns from Anvil back on page 4 this could very well tie the whole thing back to it as she earned that from blowing away the Kaiju, meaning the flashback has finally caught up to the present and may also be the reason she was promoted to corporal. Given that she was holding her own (mostly) against world killers and up till warp drive had the choice of either fight or die with almost no live combat experience she seriously deserved it.
Have to say though 8 and a half years has to be the longest flashback in comic history lol
wow… right
Possibly. The flash-forwards (as Dave prefers to call it) did say “let me back up a few months”. If we approximate that one month had elapsed prior to this (or insert appropriate time for anyone who is still able to accurately keep track of it) then this brings the total up to about three months, which is a reasonable match for the dialogue.
Actually I gotta say the most interesting detail on this page for me is the orbs, dabbler hugged Sydney and the way they’re drawn makes me think the orbs shifted and adjusted their orbit to account for that.
Makes me think what if they weren’t once used by a race with more than two hands what if they were used by for example 2 pilots sitting back to back ?
Interesting idea!
Well spotted!
Therefore the orbs like Dabbler more than Maxima. ;-) When Sydney was clinging on to Maxima’s leg (in her vertigo induced panic) the orbs changed their plane of inclination, in order to avoid orbiting Maxima.
Mind you, in order to do that here, they would have to change to an almost vertical plane, which would look very odd. So perhaps we should not read too much into it. :-D
Of course they still only love Sydney and Varia. No shipping them with Dabbler!
The orbs do what Sydney wants them to do.
They are great for bonking heads.
Ah.
The “What I’m reading” box is back.
As much as this is amazing information in the description, I feel that its kinda messed up to put so much lore into the description that is usually reserved for funny little mentions and real life talks…basically either that information might not be seen by people that are only reading the comic, or it is a spoiler for upcoming pages.
All This talk of Sidney dying; anyone have a source for that?
Wait… so there was ACTUAL time travel involved?
Oh.
I thought you were being super sciency-nerdy with utilizing time dilation relativistic velocity effects…
Panel 1: Dabbler hugs are the best hugs!
My theory…Jossed. Maybe. Mostly.
I still want to know why a flesh-toned Cora has a different facial structure than her usual blue-tone.
Although, probably not so much time travel as time dilation….They did travel at ftl speed, which means that time travels slower for them than for people on earth…it is conceivable that there was a 30:1 time dilation at work here.
Just want to iterate how this is one of my favorite shots of Dabbler, in panel 1. The joy of a friend back home, safe and sound.
I can practically hear her purring.
“Oh, and also there’s a hellmouth under the porch.”
Maybe be cautious if that makes the buyer offer higher.