[1475] Georgie

[Daedalus]

That's it, folks!

I really feel like panel 5 is foreshadowing, but for what, I know not!

Also, it's striking how grey the Court is compared to the Forest.

[Daedalus]

(bumping ahead of spam)

Tom Siddell, your board is sinking!

[Chancellor]

Ugh.

I'm curious what Parley's theoretical maximum distance is.

[sapientcoffee]

Clearly we're in the midst of the spambot mating ritual. Over 50 threads. Ick.

[Chancellor]

sapientcoffee

The mating calls evoke the sound of the meat blocks "Schloooorping" out of their tins.

[Gotolei]

It's been going on for almost a week at that, and it's only accelerating. Been extra fun in the IRC channel - the post-notifying bot's even been modified with a filtering function since it started up

--
Nice to see that they've been actively testing out the abilities. Wonder how far they can be pushed, and if they improve/strengthen with practice.

[Daedalus]

So...no discussion of the page today?

The totem is not glowing, which means either it just stopped doing so, or something else was glowing in Annie's hand a couple pages ago.

Or Annie was trying to incinerate it, I suppose.

We also heard of Parley's dad as a famous psychic. I wonder if he will ever get more than a passing reference.

[Gotolei]

Feb 13, 2015 8:24:21 GMT Daedalus said:

So...no discussion of the page today?

The totem is not glowing, which means either it just stopped doing so, or something else was glowing in Annie's hand a couple pages ago.

Just to throw some spec around: That may have been the totem transferring from the ether to the physical world?

Though she did have her hand closed in the panel before.. maybe "cooling off" or something.

[Chancellor]

I could see Parley Sr. showing up. A genuine psychic might have uses in the future.

[pasko]

I only have to say that I find "georgie" adorable.

[philman]

Couldn't she just, teleport lots of short distances one after the other and end up here?

[Daedalus]

Feb 13, 2015 8:45:39 GMT philman said:

Couldn't she just, teleport lots of short distances one after the other and end up here?

To be fair, we don't know how many short jumps she can do in sequence, or if she needs to know her destination well, or how much harder long jumps are than shorter ones. She probably could do it with Smitty influencing her luck, but he might have to be with her for that effect to work well.

[feraldog]

Feb 13, 2015 8:24:21 GMT Daedalus said:

So...no discussion of the page today?

The totem is not glowing, which means either it just stopped doing so, or something else was glowing in Annie's hand a couple pages ago.

Or Annie was trying to incinerate it, I suppose.

We also heard of Parley's dad as a famous psychic. I wonder if he will ever get more than a passing reference.

It could mark the death of the original bunny body.

[sidhekin]

Feb 13, 2015 8:52:56 GMT feraldog said:

Feb 13, 2015 8:24:21 GMT Daedalus said:

The totem is not glowing, which means either it just stopped doing so, or something else was glowing in Annie's hand a couple pages ago.

Or Annie was trying to incinerate it, I suppose.

It could mark the death of the original bunny body.

I like it. I don't believe it, but I like it.

[Jelly Jellybean]

Feb 13, 2015 8:00:24 GMT Daedalus said:

That's it, folks!
I really feel like panel 5 is foreshadowing, but for what, I know not!
Also, it's striking how grey the Court is compared to the Forest.

Feb 13, 2015 8:48:15 GMT Daedalus said:

Feb 13, 2015 8:45:39 GMT philman said:

Couldn't she just, teleport lots of short distances one after the other and end up here?

To be fair, we don't know how many short jumps she can do in sequence, or if she needs to know her destination well, or how much harder long jumps are than shorter ones. She probably could do it with Smitty influencing her luck, but he might have to be with her for that effect to work well.

"WAIT... ROCK!"

I haven't seen it directly referenced "in comic", but teleporting often comes with the risk of materializing in solid matter with fatal consequences.*  Without Smitty, Parley can repeatedly and accurately teleport very short distances, and she can accurately teleport to a familiar place within her range.  But Parley seems to understand that potential side effects of teleporting include death and she needs Smitty to help manage the risky jumps.

* As opposed to materializing in air, which is still matter so there's a little inconsistency to the meme.

[TBeholder]

Feb 13, 2015 8:08:47 GMT Chancellor said:

Ugh.

I'm curious what Parley's theoretical maximum distance is.

Theoretically, probably is either "unlimited" or along the lines of "high Earth orbit".
Practically, may depend at least on targetting (given the way they do it, this may change the problem to "Smitty's maximum range") and/or amount of jump juice (but hey, she's training).

Feb 13, 2015 8:45:39 GMT philman said:

Couldn't she just, teleport lots of short distances one after the other and end up here?

Obviously, but she probably would have to visit each transit point, at very least.

Feb 13, 2015 8:48:15 GMT Daedalus said:

To be fair, we don't know how many short jumps she can do in sequence

One word: "Unsichtbarhau".

[warrl]

Feb 13, 2015 8:48:15 GMT Daedalus said:

Feb 13, 2015 8:45:39 GMT philman said:

Couldn't she just, teleport lots of short distances one after the other and end up here?

To be fair, we don't know how many short jumps she can do in sequence, or if she needs to know her destination well, or how much harder long jumps are than shorter ones. She probably could do it with Smitty influencing her luck, but he might have to be with her for that effect to work well.

Well, it appears that she can teleport to "near Andrew" without knowing where Andrew is... if he's in range.

However, it's likely (not definite) that she needs SOME sort of "anchor" that she knows, at her destination. (It doesn't have to be a person: the first time she teleported it was to her bedroom; then when she accidentally cut Robot in half, she was able to take the pieces to Katrina's shop which was presumably vacant at the time. Usually, though, the teleports we've seen have been to near some specific person.)

It's also possible that there's a limit on total distance teleported in X amount of time. So anything over that limit she can't do in one jump, and also can't do in multiple jumps one right after another. It would be inconvenient if it's a daily limit: for long-distance travel, teleporting would be significantly slower than air travel and possibly slower than car or train.

[dliessmgg]

Slightly off-topic, but due to the order in which I read webcomics I was slightly amused by the title of today's Questionable Content.

[ctso74]

Feb 13, 2015 12:16:13 GMT Jelly Jellybean said:

I haven't seen it directly referenced "in comic", but teleporting often comes with the risk of materializing in solid matter with fatal consequences.*  Without Smitty, Parley can repeatedly and accurately teleport very short distances, and she can accurately teleport to a familiar place within her range.  But Parley seems to understand that potential side effects of teleporting include death and she needs Smitty to help manage the risky jumps.

* As opposed to materializing in air, which is still matter so there's a little inconsistency to the meme.

Also, she might get her altitude wrong and end up plummeting from the sky. Is inertia canceled out when she teleports? If not, she'd have to materialize upside-down to continue her "fall" upwards, or risk going splat. That would not a good Valentine's Day for Eyebrows.



It would be funny, if George Sr. was using his psychic ability to keep her from teleporting to Andrew.
George Sr: "Not my son!... I mean, not my daughter!"

[TBeholder]

Yet another thought that should have appeared in the previous thread, but is still relevant now: Smitty and wooden puzzles is a questionable mix.

[Daedalus]

philman TBeholder warrl Jelly Jellybean ctso74 et al: my opinion on Parley's teleportation is that she has a certain amount of "total distance" she can travel before she gets tired. So she can make a series of very short jumps (like the unsichtbarhau) or a couple long ones (like her jumping to Kat's workshop). The maximum distance we've seen her go is perhaps a couple miles through the Court, and it would make sense if she can't go ludicrous distances. I mean, hell, if she could go unlimited distances, she's essentially unstoppable.

One thing that we have not explored is what happens if she stretches her limits. Would it just fail, or would she telefrag herself, or would she lose accuracy and teleport into a wall? Regardless, it would probably be bad. We don't know how her teleportation works - we have no evidence that it works by "swap porting", so it's probably of the more normal "can displace gasses but not solids" variety. It appears her inertia is not canceled (relative to the Earth's surface) because she can swing then teleport in order to unsichtbarhau (or so I interpreted).

Furthermore, how does she decide what she carries with her? It's not limited to organic materials (because she can carry clothes, weapons, and robots), and presumably it's not proximity (because she doesn't carry a portion of land with her). It could be that the "default" is porting just herself and whatever she is carrying, and she can expand it manually. But if someone grabs onto her and she jumps, would she carry them accidentally? In particular, could someone thwart the unsichtbarhau by catching her blade...somehow?

The one thing I've always wondered about is the page with Jones and the party hat. Bonus pages generally are not plot-important, but it's the only evidence that she can teleport objects independently from herself (unless she ported in very briefly, dropped it, then left - but then Jones wouldn't have assumed Smitty was involved). Could she, for example, touch someone and push them elsewhere? Could she teleport them into the air? Even if she had to hold onto them to do so, she could always let go and jump back.

We've also never seen any psychic powers from Parley (I assume teleportation does not count as psychic). Her father can obviously fail on such insignificant things such as gender, but he probably was right about something this large. I wonder if Parley will develop psychic powers in the future.

[zbeeblebrox]

I'm going to just assume Andrew is wearing a onesie under his hoodie and leave it at that.

[ctso74]

Feb 13, 2015 22:16:08 GMT Daedalus said:

We've also never seen any psychic powers from Parley (I assume teleportation does not count as psychic). Her father can obviously fail on such insignificant things such as gender, but he probably was right about something this large. I wonder if Parley will develop psychic powers in the future.

Maybe, George Sr. actually got the sex right, but erred on the generation. A grandson, with the correct mix of George's and Andrew's abilities, could be quite powerful.

[Sauzels]

Feb 13, 2015 16:36:33 GMT warrl said:

However, it's likely (not definite) that she needs SOME sort of "anchor" that she knows, at her destination. (It doesn't have to be a person: the first time she teleported it was to her bedroom; then when she accidentally cut Robot in half, she was able to take the pieces to Katrina's shop which was presumably vacant at the time. Usually, though, the teleports we've seen have been to near some specific person.)

gunnerkrigg.com/?p=967
"I don't know the area, but Andy will make sure we get there."
So if Smitty's there, she only needs a sort of general idea of where to go. If she thinks about him, though, then she can get there just fine too (romantic movie, Jan & Cookie). But every teleport we've seen her do has had him at at least one of the endpoints.

[goldenknots]

Off topic, but do we have any options when it comes to spam in the forum?

(Also, this means there will be at least one more recent thread than the spams...)

[eyemyself]

I suspect Smitty helps with both range and accuracy. I also suspect Parley's ability can be honed with practice and exercise and that Smitty's natural inclination towards inventiveness and experiment will help her keep pushing the envelope of what she can do.

I am curious about heredity and abilities in the Gunnerverse. Annie's abilities seem to follow directly from her mother's for the most part, which makes sense given what we know about Gunnerverse fire elementals. Kat's mom has powerful etheric abilities, however, Kat seems to lack any etheric aptitude - as does her father. Both her parents are technically gifted, though and we know she is off the charts in that regard. Parley's dad is a powerful psychic and the general assumption was that she would have SOME ability as a result, however, her teleportation skills, while impressive, seem unrelated to her father's predictive abilities. We don't know much about Jack's dad other than that he was derisive of those with etheric talents in his youth, but Jack has etheric aptitude which may be inate or may be a result of his time in Zimmyham and the resulting spider infestation.

Who else do we have family history for? I wonder if hollow fairies have offspring and what sorts of powers result if they do?

[Jelly Jellybean]

Feb 14, 2015 16:29:59 GMT eyemyself said:

I wonder if hollow fairies have offspring and what sorts of powers result if they do?

Their offspring have hair that goes up!  Beyond that, Winsbury hasn't manifested any powers, that we know of, yet.  

[Jelly Jellybean]

Feb 13, 2015 20:59:56 GMT ctso74 said:

Also, she might get her altitude wrong and end up plummeting from the sky. Is inertia canceled out when she teleports?

I believe Terry Pratchett had teleportation in some of his Disc World books that included conservation of energy and momentum through the jump.  The hypothetical results were humous and potentially fatal.  That may also be an explanation for Parley's range limitation.  The longer the jump, the greater the difference between her own energy/momentum (acquired from her departure point) and the energy/momentum at her destination.  And the bigger jolt upon arrival, the greater chance of injury, up to and including death.  But I think this problem would only occur when teleporting to different latitudes and/or altitudes.  If this was the only issue, then Parley should be able to teleport freely to different longitudes. 

[warrl]

Feb 14, 2015 18:52:41 GMT Jelly Jellybean said:

Feb 13, 2015 20:59:56 GMT ctso74 said:

Also, she might get her altitude wrong and end up plummeting from the sky. Is inertia canceled out when she teleports?

I believe Terry Pratchett had teleportation in some of his Disc World books that included conservation of energy and momentum through the jump.  The hypothetical results were humous and potentially fatal.  That may also be an explanation for Parley's range limitation.  The longer the jump, the greater the difference between her own energy/momentum (acquired from her departure point) and the energy/momentum at her destination.  And the bigger jolt upon arrival, the greater chance of injury, up to and including death.  But I think this problem would only occur when teleporting to different latitudes and/or altitudes.  If this was the only issue, then Parley should be able to teleport freely to different longitudes.

Not really. If she teleports due north-south, she would be moving at the wrong speed for her destination but in the right direction.

If she teleports due east-west, she's moving the wrong direction.

At one sort of extreme, where she starts at a point on the equator and teleports 180 degrees - to the opposite side of the planet - she is moving, relative to the ground, approximately 2000 miles per hour.

At a different sort of extreme, where she teleports only 90 degrees, she's lacking 1000 MPH of horizontal motion but is either shooting up into the air at 1000 MPH or attempting to tunnel into the ground at the same speed.

Obviously, any of these would be hazardous to her health.

This also means that a series of high-altitude teleports wouldn't fix the problem. Either wind resistance or lack of air would be an issue in their own right, and she wouldn't be normalizing her momentum relative to the ground below her.

If conservation of momentum is an issue, she *needs* a series of short (definition: to be determined) jumps at ground level. An exception being that she could (possibly) go due north-south a quite substantial distance *provided* that she crosses the equator and that her start and end points are approximately equidistant from the equator.

(Of course, even if that's an issue, it isn't necessarily the only issue.)

[keef]

Feb 14, 2015 16:29:59 GMT eyemyself said:

Annie's abilities seem to follow directly from her mother's for the most part, which makes sense given what we know about Gunnerverse fire elementals.

Maybe Annie and Surma are genetically just human, the fire elemental is an immortal unchanging extra. Based on this.

Jack has etheric aptitude which may be inate or may be a result of his time in Zimmyham and the resulting spider infestation.

Here

Feb 14, 2015 18:52:41 GMT Jelly Jellybean said:

Feb 13, 2015 20:59:56 GMT ctso74 said:

Also, she might get her altitude wrong and end up plummeting from the sky. Is inertia canceled out when she teleports?

I believe Terry Pratchett had teleportation in some of his Disc World books that included conservation of energy and momentum through the jump.

Interesting Times?