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Grrl Power #933 - Ding psychology
🕑 Added 2021-04-05 10:01:01 +0000 UTCThanks so much for your support! Like, seriously, you guys.
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This feels like a jarring transition to me, but the alternative was to stick with Maxima as she does a ton of paperwork and debriefs the team. That was definitely the only other option.
The answer to the question, "Why didn't the orbs give Sydney her level up sooner?" is because it amused me more to do it this way. Besides, now that Sydney seems to know how to pull up the skill web, maybe the orbs are content to wait to be prompted now.
I wanted Frost to call the guy a psychopath or even a sociopath, (instead of a "person with an extreme personality disorder") but apparently those aren't terms psychologists use a lot? "Antisocial Personality Disorder" utterly lacks the gravitas that "Psychopath" carries, so it's no wonder popular media sticks with the latter. I have to imagine when psychologists are off the clock if they let fly with more colorful descriptions to describe people, like a pressure valve.
Sydney does have mandated time with Frost, but this visit was by request, not her normally scheduled session, which is why she can pimpwalk out early.
Holy crap. I definitely should have changed the "Gender" select on the prior page to "Sex" select. Although then, I don't know what I would do about the symbols. Like, are the male and female symbols for sex or gender? I think when they were codified, the words sex and gender didn't have separate definitions. (I'm talking about like, ancient Greece, although I myself wasn't aware of the need to differentiate the terms prior to about ten years ago. I'd say my awareness of a thing is a pretty low bar, but I suspect I've also just described at least half of all Americans as well in this case.) Which leads me to my conundrum. If sex and gender don't mean the same thing, shouldn't we have different symbols for male sex and male gender? Really, the solution would have been to design about 30 different totally alien symbols, but since I was translating the text on the screens, it made sense to translate the gender icons. Also since I was running a little behind on the vote incentive, I had trouble justifying spending like two hours designing alien sex icons, which, now that I think about it would have probably been a lot of fun.
Comments
Eric Loken
"He is, what we call in psychiatry, a 'god-damned loon'." "Is that a technical term, doc?" "Yes, I apologize if it went over your head."
Andrew Foss
A quick "I just leveled, Doc, superior orders, BRB." would be my reply. So the question is, is she going to pick before Zeph and Max get input? (And did they sync their skill tree tracker with Syd's actual skill tree...)
Treyn
I want to paste the 'role playing experience' clip from Order of the Stick, but pictures aren't allowed. That and I can't quite spare the time to really search for it.
Burke
@Zip Zop: Well, she -could-.....but it's Sydney
Zip Zop
So she can go straight to sciops to get their help on leveling, right?
Stephen Gilberg
It's odd to think that this is what gives her PTSD when she's already been trapped alone on an alien world with enemy behemoths. Of course, she wasn't rendered helpless then.
Tom wilson
Some people say that when you start earning Prestige points and start playing the endgame content is when the real game begins...
Town Crier
Levelling up is fun, but I always hate reaching max level. Nowhere left to go. No way to improve. No joy left in the game.
Kenneth Winkelman
Sydney's gonna have her moment where she completely locks up in a high stress situation and it could potentially cost someone their life.
Otoger
yes, as the first one was after the "Show of Force" https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-181-power-up/
I think Sydney should get another level for choosing to pimpwalk out to The Humpty Dance...
Mark Nach
She has a high level of ADD. Basically she has the emotional attention span of a kitten with crinkle foil. The stessor will return, but she will have new experience and information available to her by then to help her though it. Basically she has put her terror on the back burner for a while so she can work with it at another time.
Mark Nach
Nice observation there. The idea that Nth level artifacts may have some form of sentience can make lots of interesting events possible.
Jacob Barboza
I forget, has she told anyone yet that she "level's up"?
Andrew
So she can +int and scared feelings go away? Problem solved, once and for all!
akrasia
Wouldn't it be weird if the orbs weren't evaluating Syd's experience or proficiency with the orbs, but her personal growth? Less of a "you can operate this adequately", and more of a "You are able to make better decisions".
Thisguy
Not the end of Sydney’s issues. The problems are still there, and will probably emerge later. But she can be distracted short term. And that visible achievement of getting stronger after a harrowing ordeal is probably good.
Scott McCarthy
Notes would be important for a therapist, so re-learning to write neatly might be needed.
Rens
Purely for reproduction, /probably/ not -- each addititional distinct partner required in the process increases its fragility, after all, and natural selection is not kind towards fragile things. That said, evolution isn't just survival of the fittest, but also survival of the /lucky/ -- dinosaurs were pretty damn fit for a very long time, but then an asteroid impact changed the biosphere and the rules for what was 'fit' changed drastically. ... And ultimately, it's always good to remember that we've currently only got /one/ sample set and biosphere to examine. What's going on Out There and how they arrange their reproduction and recreation may be literally beyond our comprehension. We don't know yet.
Marc Vun Kannon
She probably has to go to Maxima or some other person in charge to decide which upgrade to choose.
Martin Drkoš
Sidney needed a couple more XP from brooding to get the level up.
martin leske
is she even a real doctor if we can read her writing?
Damaged
Ah yes. When true happiness is just a ball of aluminium foil away.
Stan
Wonder if Sydney will pick the force field to upgrade to make her feel safer??
Knolden
Now. Alien life being what it is. Depending on species there might be more physical genders out there than male and female?
Michael Obert
Jingle keys worked for Adam West.
