Comic for Monday, September 4th
Sep04
Stupid physics having rules and things. Those things have no place in the world of Naomis. As per usual, I’m not convinced that Naomi knows what the “normal” way of anything is.
Character page hasn’t made too much progress yet, sorry. Meant to get around to that.
Lost some time playing too much of the new x-com, figured you guys should at least get something out of my misspent time, so I drew this (link) š
Minus Years and Buffer updates on Patreon should be up tomorrow; sorry we’re running a little late there, but fortunately I have Monday off to catch up on these things.
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“Physics, you are on my list of ‘things to be punched.'”
Hahahaha Naomi is the best sometimes. “bounce” lol. She has no idea what the world is like for normal people does she? Like a day ago she was shot and now she’s like “bah, I just fell off a building w/e” lol.
By my estimation, if something doesn’t go “splat”, it either goes “crunch” or “bounce”, and Naomi doesn’t really weigh enough to leave a creator in the road just from falling I reckon. š
“Stupid physics” lol.
The best part is how she seems to think physics exists to vex her as some sort of personal demon she has to overcome, not literally the logic behind how everything in the world is supposed to work.
I mean… basically… š Physics is a villain that sends out it’s henchmen like gravity to pick on poor Naomi š
Running up the wall.
A suggestion I always love hearing.
Though I’d actually think it could work, here…..
The challenge is that just making herself stronger is not quite enough. I have no doubt she could climb the wall, or even jump a significant way up, but if she can actually run up the wall it means that her magic allows her to do more than just make herself stronger.
That said, based on the trailing thought bubble at the end, she seems to be aware of that, so it is a pretty reasonable guess that she can do things like directly alter her own velocity or acceleration to some extent.
We have seen mages that can how gravity interacts with an object. She would only need to alter that a little tiny bit to let her run up the wall, just giving her enough of a force to not be flung off the wall by pushing against it to run.
My guess is that she can alter her acceleration somewhat. She at least knows how to try to fly (presumably). From other pages, the hard part of flying is not the first step of getting airborne, it is the step of continuing the flight. So as long as she can cancel or reverse her away from the wall acceleration a few times, she could probably make it up the wall.
Well, the last panel makes me suspect she succeeds. Also the part where she is Naomi, and Naomi does what a Naomi wants, physics be damned.
More Naomi Logic: “Reality is what I say it is.”
More will be. Or should be. Then again if they had a physical body I’m pretty sure everything would be afraid of getting punched my Naomi…
she is her own infinite improbability generator
Before you can do anything, except by accident, you must first believe that anything is possible.
Naomi is just taking that to the next level.
How does that statement go? “I reject your reality, and substitute my own”?
Never assume Naomi is out of the fight. I mean it. Never. Just literally crushed her beating heart? Probably going to make one of magic and keep going.
Ironically she is sort of like the red constructs. You have to take her all the way out in one shot or just make trouble for yourself. Her regeneration is not really on the same level as Rovak or someone, so if you actually get a fatal or crippling hit you can maybe stop her, but anything short of that is more likely just to piss her off.
Even being shot through the shoulder only stopped her because she realized the situation was getting out of hand, not because she could not keep fighting, and in fact she ended up still going for quite awhile.
I don’t know if that’s exactly how i’d put it. Naomi does not actually heal instantly, she just shrugs off most of the pain, doesn’t really flinch, and is hard to actually hurt, but you could bring her down with enough damage that basically she just stopped working probably. She reminds me of a pewterarm from Sanderson’s Mistborn world if anyone has read that (probably a lot among the readers of this comic, gloriously similar world building styles).
Rovak is more like the constructs (or like a bloodmaker from the above series). The hit has to kill to shut off his regeneration, and even then he jsut does his reboot shtick. Probably have to shoot him in the brain if that even works (or disintegrate him).
I think the only way to kill Rovak is to completely destroy his body on a cellular level so there is nothing to grow back from and even then I don’t think it would be a permanent solution.
I’m curious what would happen if Rovak (well any I-code I guess) were say, impaled on a large steal I-beam. It is possible that having a large amount of metal (or possibly something harder to affect with magic) in the way would impair his regeneration/reset, though I wouldn’t bet on it.
On the subject of Rovak and his (repeated) death (or lack thereof), probably a comparatively easy way to kill him would be to just drop the whole ceiling on him when deep enough underground. It could easily happen such that even in the likely event he survives getting crushed, he now is trapped under an unreasonable amount dirt/mud/stone/whatever. While it has been shown (twice) that a competent mage (Tyler) can (with effort) block such an attack, Rovak’s specialty is not exactly ideal for countering it, as explosions would only exacerbate the collapse. Especially if it happened in an area where there was less space to maneuver in, and less time to react before being buried (though his speed is impressive).
(Guess that was a bit more morbid then the usual speculation)
I suspect that in the event of a large object still in the wound, Rovak wouldn’t die, but wouldn’t fully heal until he got it out of the wound.
Also, it’s Rovak, he could just blow chunks of it up to make it so he can pull it out himself or his regeneration can push it out.
As for collapsing an underground chamber onto him … I think it’d just be simpler and easier to take him out with a (very) high-caliber sniper shot from a distance, possibly more than one, preferably at least one to the head/brain, as that would likely incapacitate him long enough to take more serious measures – which would be somewhat gruesome.
Also, decapitation and/or massively overwhelming and excessive trauma to the brain probably works reasonably well. I mean, decapitation usually works on just about anything/everything. And trashing nearly all of the brain is probably effectively just as good, but if it isn’t, it probably takes a while to recover from, even for Rovak.
For most plans which oppose him, the goal should be “get him out of the picture,” not necessarily “kill him” (as there’s little added utility for a lot of added difficulty to an already difficult task).
Trapping him deep underground (or in any number of other traps that lead to immobilization – can you teleport people to space effectively?) would seem to be an optimal strategy.
Perhaps for optimal “getting Rovak out of the way”: first seal him in rock by trapping him underground and filling in the gaps with lava/metal/etc. afterwards, then launch some sufficiently-large-to-hold-him-for-a-length-of-time chunk of rock containing him into space. I’d imagine that would make it difficult for him to get back.
If you really want to kill him, at that point, “throw him into the sun” could be an option, actually.
This is the most excellent, bestest page of all the pages you have done.
Gravity must have a hate-on for half of your characters.
Gravity is in the corner nursing a beer, mumbling about being ignored.
And physics, aka, solid ground, is weeping to the bartender about how people just pay him no heed.
Haha š
I mean, well, she did still fall, much to her annoyance. Now Ila and Kally… those two drive gravity over the edge… š
Physics though, yeah, it has a rough life around these parts š