Bobulus posted:

So, she's just totally forgotten about the professor guy already, huh?

Bobulus posted:

So, she's just totally forgotten about the professor guy already, huh?

sweeperbravo posted:

The professor is Patrick age 55, all times she saw him IRL were an illusion

Joe Slowboat posted:

Patrick being Gurwara would require either illusion powers or some seriously uncomfortable explanations for why Old Patrick looks less like a gangly white guy and more like, well, an extremely 'swarthy foreigner of inscrutable intent' type stock character. I can't remember if Guwara ever wore a fez, but every time I picture him one appears because he looks exactly like an off-brand Tintin character, which is not good.
I'd find it less annoying if there were more characters of color and foreigners in this comic but as it is he stands out; another time that stood out was the 'superhumans around the world!' sequence where every region got its own stereotypical style of character.

The fact that Gurwara, despite this, has a character design more engaging than anything else in this goddamn Clevscape is really quite damning.

Joe Slowboat posted:

Patrick being Gurwara would require either illusion powers or some seriously uncomfortable explanations for why Old Patrick looks less like a gangly white guy and more like, well, an extremely 'swarthy foreigner of inscrutable intent' type stock character. I can't remember if Guwara ever wore a fez, but every time I picture him one appears because he looks exactly like an off-brand Tintin character, which is not good.
I'd find it less annoying if there were more characters of color and foreigners in this comic but as it is he stands out; another time that stood out was the 'superhumans around the world!' sequence where every region got its own stereotypical style of character.

Zerilan posted:

Don't forget the segment in India where someone is treated as a god while the woman is on the run for the crime of saying he's biodynamic like the others with powers.

Zerilan posted:

Don't forget the segment in India where someone is treated as a god while the woman is on the run for the crime of saying he's biodynamic like the others with powers.

Nuebot posted:

Weren't his super powers turning blue so he looked like a literal hindu god or something? What a coincidence.

Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:

Joe Slowboat posted:

Which, like... run with it, say biodynamism is fundamentally a wild talents-style psychic phenomenon (Alison's is, I think, pretty explicitly a biopsychic field or some nonsense) and as a result tends to be shaped by the culture you're from. American mass culture says "Superman" and Indian mass culture says "Televised epic version of Ram."

Fister Roboto posted:

I'm the guy with the now shattered collarbone.

Joe Slowboat posted:

Even worse for me is the fact that the Chinese biodynamics are all Extremely Modern Yellow Peril suited Communist Party Higher-Up types who apparently run their entire society as the 'Ministry of Harmony' or something sufficiently 'Scary, Collectivist East Asians!'

Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:

post the loving comic when it's out, you useless shits



clev femevin proagevin shouldn't get page hits

Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:

i think we're remembering that bit differently

Joe Slowboat posted:

Wait I just realized
The bullets do the blue warping effect when they go through her clothes, including the end of her scarf
Then she falls out of her clothes, but clearly she can warp them through solid material
So logically she shouldn't have ended up naked
eish

quote:

For me, it began with Robert Paglino.

At the age of eight, he was my best and only friend. We were fellow outcasts, bound by complementary misfortune. Mine was developmental. His was genetic: an uncontrolled genotype that left him predisposed to nearsightedness, acne, and (as it later turned out) a susceptibility to narcotics. His parents had never had him optimized. Those few TwenCen relics who still believed in God also held that one shouldn't try to improve upon His handiwork. So although both of us could have been repaired, only one of us had been.

I arrived at the playground to find Pag the center of attention for some half-dozen kids, those lucky few in front punching him in the head, the others making do with taunts of mongrel and polly while waiting their turn. I watched him raise his arms, almost hesitantly, to ward off the worst of the blows. I could see into his head better than I could see into my own; he was scared that his attackers might think those hands were coming up to hit back, that they'd read it as an act of defiance and hurt him even more. Even then, at the tender age of eight and with half my mind gone, I was becoming a superlative observer.

But I didn't know what to do.

I hadn't seen much of Pag lately. I was pretty sure he'd been avoiding me. Still, when your best friend's in trouble you help out, right? Even if the odds are impossible—and how many eight-year-olds would go up against six bigger kids for a sandbox buddy?—at least you call for backup. Flag a sentry. Something.

I just stood there. I didn't even especially want to help him.

That didn't make sense. Even if he hadn't been my best friend, I should at least have empathized. I'd suffered less than Pag in the way of overt violence; my seizures tended to keep the other kids at a distance, scared them even as they incapacitated me. Still. I was no stranger to the taunts and insults, or the foot that appears from nowhere to trip you up en route from A to B. I knew how that felt.

Or I had, once.

But that part of me had been cut out along with the bad wiring. I was still working up the algorithms to get it back, still learning by observation. Pack animals always tear apart the weaklings in their midst. Every child knows that much instinctively. Maybe I should just let that process unfold, maybe I shouldn't try to mess with nature. Then again, Pag's parents hadn't messed with nature, and look what it got them: a son curled up in the dirt while a bunch of engineered superboys kicked in his ribs.

In the end, propaganda worked where empathy failed. Back then I didn't so much think as observe, didn't deduce so much as remember—and what I remembered was a thousand inspirational stories lauding anyone who ever stuck up for the underdog.

So I picked up a rock the size of my fist and hit two of Pag's assailants across the backs of their heads before anyone even knew I was in the game.

Flesh Forge posted:

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame lame lame lame pandering bullshit

Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:

Stuff

Flesh Forge posted:

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame lame lame lame pandering bullshit

Wouldn't it have been more interesting if he read the bully's mind and went "oh hey no wonder you're so hosed up" or better yet, saw BOTH their perspectives and brokered some kind of peace, backgrounding his eventual empire of

Flesh Forge posted:

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame lame lame lame pandering bullshit

Wouldn't it have been more interesting if he read the bully's mind and went "oh hey no wonder you're so hosed up" or better yet, saw BOTH their perspectives and brokered some kind of peace, backgrounding his eventual empire of

Flesh Forge posted:

I don't recognize this

Flesh Forge posted:

I don't recognize this and don't especially agree with where it goes about tiny children being all libertarian and poo poo but at least it goes somewhere bravely

Don't get me wrong, I like the way it's written and it's a cool vignette, I just blinked pretty hard at that one line about pack animals and little kids

quote:

Thankfully the glorious American justice system means the one rear end in a top hat who's using his position of societal power and cultural privilege to harass someone with all the lifelong damaging effects of systematically-accepted-bullying WILL be punished rather than the one jumping in her defense, right?

Right?

Right?

...right?