davebarrack
patreon
Grrl Power #1330 - Order of order operations
🕑 Added 2025-02-13 11:00:11 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome!
Sciona panicked just a little there. She's in a really good position and doesn't want to have to disappear and rebuild another power base. As a professional antagonist, that's the usual pattern. Build up a power base with some questionable yet never fully explained economics, get into a disagreement with local authorities, make some headway in a takeover bid for actual political power, then some young buck hero comes along and smashes it all, rinse and repeat, since the heroes are okay with gunning down 7,000 storm or shock troopers, but when they get a chance to finish of the main bad guy, they give some superlatively incongruous speech about how "that would make me as bad as you," as if they didn't already have a million gallons of blood on their hands. But it's okay. They were faceless goons.
Speaking of the economics of bad guys... Where did the First Order get their funding? Like, the Empire was smashed, and sure, maybe a few Star Destroyers got away and rendezvoused somewhere - I'm not sure if The Remnant forces are canon anymore with the new movies, but then they convert a planet into a multi barreled Death Star and then show up with a 40 KM long flying wing Star Destroyer, and... well, we can just forget the third one. The new movies weren't all that well written. I mean, in the second one, the rebels put out a call for help and no one shows up, and in the third movie, they put out a call for help and the whole galaxy shows up. To mention but one of many problems with those films. Like... okay? Did the use Space AM Radio the first time and Lando's "Moustaches are Cool" podcast the second time? And another thing - did the New Republic or whatever they were called have no navy whatsoever? The First Order blows up a few planets with their Starkiller Base and, like, what? The entire NR navy was in orbit for some reason at the time? That would be incredibly stupid, but the next movie the remnant of the NR, i.e. the Rebels are down to like 5 ships? The Star Wars-verse has tens of thousands of systems. In the 30 years since the Empire fell, the NR couldn't muster up a police/peacekeeping navy remotely the same size as the Empire managed in the same timespan since Palpatine took over? Those movies just get dumber the more I think about them.
Anyway, that's not my point. I always wonder when the bad guys show up with a massive army of goons, all with matching uniforms and usually a bunch of high-tech gear, I can't help wonder about the economics behind it all. How much did it cost to build the volcano lair with the retractable fake lake on top and the orbital vehicle that can swallow up other space modules? Couldn't all that money just be used to bribe a bunch of politicians to achieve those goals?
Yes, I KNOW. It's so the movie can happen. Or at least so the movie can be interesting. Watching a guy hand an envelope of money to a guy to get him to vote for Parliamentary Order 3281/b. It would be a bit of a slog to get through. Not that it couldn't be done interestingly I suppose. But it'd be a harder sell than showing Sean Connery swinging a crane hook into a guy's crotch, then the guy swings screaming off the catwalk and into garbage compactor and then Bond quips "I guesh he had Prinsh Albert in a Can." as his feathered-haired companion in a silver onsie with flared bell bottoms looks on in horror.
Comments
Reigys
I too wonder and hope this backfires hilariously
Reigys
After all we have seen that Anvil, for example, is in the area. So presumably someone might notice this oddity
Reigys
Really kinda hoping this amnesia thing backfires and Sydney's glasses have a log or something, or someone notices that all three of them suddenly seem to be on drugs or something. Lol. Either way, fun times Edit: also, Sydney REALLY needs to unlock an auto protective feature at some point. She really needs to be better at bringing that shield up in situations like this
Opus the Poet
Really vivid hallucinations.
Fogel
So, how is this going to backfire? My guess is that the memory wipe works perfectly. But Arc Dark is constantly monitoring for abnormalities in operator's mental state, so when Sydney suddenly claims to have never met this person that she did meet, and that will trigger several alarm bells to investigate Sciona.
Merle Blue
Huh. Now I want to see how well Clover could resist Sciona's body's powers.
Marc Vun Kannon
This is the superpower of Sciona's borrowed body, not magic. Possibly the unknown orb prevents poisoning.
Marc Vun Kannon
Four movies. The trilogy and Rogue One.
Marc Vun Kannon
Fortunately they only made 4 Star Wars movies.
Anton Schleef
I haven't watched the new Star Wars movies, and all you're doing is proving me right in refusing to watch them. I never expected them to be any good, or even fit in the existing continuity, since they were made AFTER Disney bought out Lucas Arts and gained the rights to Star Wars.
Jared Juetten
Betting that the Truesight orb will let her see that it's Sciona in disguise anyway. :D
eddi_TBH
A few of the Marvel comics (considered non-canon I think) show Palpatine building the backup fleets and borrowing the cloning technology to copy himself. A backup plan to the Empire falling. Our boy thought big.
eddi_TBH
Amateur night at ARC-Dark.
eddi_TBH
She nailed all three at one time. Even if she hurt her hand on Slam.
eddi_TBH
First time we have seen her stoned out of her gourd. Some people get that, "I know something you don't know" grin while their brain free falls through poly-dimensional space-time.
eddi_TBH
Mind control magic. The tripping out is a bonus.
eddi_TBH
Slam kept distracting me. Maybe that's what happened to Sciona. THE METEOR IS COMING! (300-foot-wide asteroid 2024 YR4 now has a 2.3 percent chance of hitting Earth on December 22, 2032) Duck you fools!
Eric Loken
I had similar thoughts with Captain America. Hydra got a magic cube, and...? So what? It was 1943, the Nazis were already on their back foot by then, they didn't have enough resources to build anything like the Hydra army, or the personnel for it even if they could (thus the 'children and old men' in the Volksgrenadier units). If they could build those forces in the first place they wouldn't have actually needed a magic cube. In fact other than making ray guns I'm not even sure what the magic cube was providing? They didn't need guns - their guns worked fine - they needed steel, aluminum, tungsten, rubber, petroleum, etc. etc. A long time ago - I was still a kid, so this is a LONG time ago - I ran a D&D game for my sister. Afterwards she asked me "why was the wizard wandering around in the dark?" The real answer to the question was "So you could use you infravision." But that's a stupid answer. I didn't have a game answer. That has stuck with me all these decades, you need to be able to answer these questions in your stories or games or whatever, or it doesn't make sense, and then it's just contrived b.s. Even if you never actually need to provide that answer, you need to have asked and answered it for yourself.
Tristan N Milner
Palpatine is alive due to cloning is from the Legends novels. It was dumb then, it was dumb in the movies.
Opus the Poet
I know someone like Sydney IRL, minus the powers. When she remembers to take her meds, she's wonderful. Unfortunately she has a memory like a strainer and the important stuff doesn't get caught in the mesh.
Opus the Poet
Yes it was/is.
Otoger
so the thing after the fall of the second death star was that there was a long hard fight against the remains of the empire and the first order who took Ilum (the planet were the energy crystals for Lightsabers and deathstar cannon come from) and is one of many expanded univers ideas were palpatine did a lot of super weapon reseach, same with the super size ship, and the money is because the grand moff who helped build it was one who had a lot of the empires money in the books about it was some good parts, still worse then extended universe even though they brought back Grand Admiral Thrawn but yes the 3 films are not good in any way really
akrasia
It's true, it is a sexy bunny but.
Twister
The sequels *never happened*.
Kevin Wright
That's because as I understand it, Rian Johnson took the second film's story in an interesting direction, but JJ Abrams wasn't interested in anything but rehashing one of the earlier films, twice. The third film in particular was disappointing. Like, major cop-out stuff.
Aclys
Alas, Sydney hasnt proven immune or resistant to magic in general and not to Sciona's spellcraft in particular given the first time they met. That said her powers of incidentally foiling the villain are still very much active and in play, case in point she's already making it difficult for Sciona to interrogate her.
Aclys
Hey now, the prequel movies got us the clone wars cartoon. That alone makes them worth acknowledging. The disney sequels are ass though for all the reasons Dave mentioned and more besides. The prequels where not the best, but at least they had a plot and theme running through all 3 and they made sense in the grand scheme of things. There was no plot or even a plan that stretched beyond each individual movie and the 3rd one was basically an utter clunkfest of a poor bastard trying to cludge together something resembling a resolution to two movies that simply dont go together at all.
Hugh Eckert
The meteor!
IvyReed
Here's hoping one of Sydney's magic eight balls has a cure for... whatever it is that Sciona's thing is. Chemically induced amnesia?
Raymond Dannelly
Rookie move on Sciona's part, but regular professionals are way more predictable.
Person
Even if Syd isn't playing along, her glasses are going to translate what she said and that it was Alar. Wanna bet there's a log? Wanna bet Dabbler has alerts sent to her when those glasses translate certain languages? Wanna bet there's going to be a Succ off in Sciona's near future? One she may actually win?
Madcat6204
The important thing to understand about Star Wars is that there were only three movies. Plus a bunch of books and a few games, but only three movies.
Mark Magagna
Possibly not actual experience. It's not like being high has never been described in media before after all, and she has seen/read/heard *all* the media.
Mark Magagna
The orbs don't communicate in any known language. Dabbler had tentative thoughts about the upgrade diagram based on her knowledge, but even she can't read it. Sydney as far as I know isn't even bilingual. She's guessing and experimenting when she does stuff with the orbs. Luckily they're intelligent (or have a really good interface) and have enormous safety rails, so she doesn't (for instance) accidently bring some portion of the Earth with her when she gates off to that space station. If this feature does exist, it's likely in some unknown language and if she's lucky she can ask Dabbler about it. The glasses having a record function is more likely. They already have real-time translation and subtitling after all.
Playwars
Oh. Oh no. She's made Sidney high ! Run for your lives !
Person
Tripping balls plus yellow orb alternate viewing modes equals?
Person
You may recall her reaction to the "truth serum" from douche-bags-r-us caused an unusual reaction to Syd's ADHD brain. I'm guessing this is similar. I'm also guessing this isn't the first time she's been this high, she RECOGNIZED that she was high. That speaks to experience.
Tim Starliper
This is the correct answer.
ValsheaM
I am deeply suspicious of the smirk on Sydney's face. Is she just playing along?
Town Crier
I wonder if one of Sydney's orbs might have an auto-protect for situations just like this. After a 24 hour delay, one of Sydney's orbs starts blinking. She grabs it and says "What is it boy? Did Timmy fall down the well again?" The orb: "Do you wish to review the saved memory at this time? [YES] [NO]" Sydney touches [YES], then watches the memory from her POV. Orb: "Do you wish to re-install protected memory at this time? [YES] [NO]"
Michael Obert
Sciona's Stooge Fu needs work; nyuk nyuk
Slaygor
I wonder if Sydney (Or someone else with access) had her glasses on record.
Marc Vun Kannon
At least Sydney did mention Sciona to the others, and it doesn't look like her touch has the same effect on them.
Marc Vun Kannon
Fortunately they only made 4 Star Wars movies in my universe.
Dwaz
All those things happened because the people who were making the films didn't care so the writers put zero effort into such bourgeois things as "logic" or "continuity".
Torabi
They sure didn't run very far. They're really bad at this stealth / hiding thing!
Magraal
The Force Awakens was pretty average overall but introduced some interesting story elements (mostly Snoke) so it was ok, but then The Last Jedi was *so bad* I didn't even bother to see the third movie. It takes a monumental level of idiocy to thoroughly destroy the biggest movie franchise (up til that point) in the history of cinema.
3of4
The First Order got the funding from the same Somehow that returned Palpatine...
Matthew Dodgen
This should be interesting. Sydney on essentially drugs... What could possibly go wrong. π€π π₯π₯
Steve Ronuken
No pockets, so she has to improvise with the phone. Convenient
Michael O'Driscoll
Unfortunately none of them are every truly prepaid for sydney
Andrew Denton
I love that your bad guys are three dimensional. They react to situations as people would, not as stock characters.
