The Right Thing 2016-05-23

[jwhouk]

Yeah, I discounted Suzi's activity and the Nu Gui.

However, Monica was killed twice (and revived twice) by Euryale... but would she regenerate if melted? Oh, unless she were in Hades when she became a popsicle, the regeneration would kick in well before.

See, that - and the shooting at the Egyptian market - are two I'd have to dispute. Monica was engaging in evasive maneuvers as they were shooting. The Euryale "freezings" were simply that - her being frozen.

[AmriloJim]

The freezings qualify as clinical death (loss of vitals) as well as brain death (cranium and contents turned into ice generate no EEG data). If she were merely frozen (going well below room temperature), then I'd agree, but your point is taken.

Three categories, then: Dead/dead/dead, Dead but got better, and Really?

[jwhouk]

MurderDeathKill, maybe?

(Bonus points - and a free chalupa - for anyone who gets that reference...)

[Warrl]

Deaths and Near-Deaths

Here are a few more...

Not good company 2015-05-14
Unnamed, by Suzi somewhere with... um... make a list

Standing her ground 2013-01-15
Monica, by Phix in the library with the claws - I guess that makes five times Monica's been killed

Let him go 2012-11-02
Martin Reynolds, by Suzi in Reynolds' apartment with... extreme thoroughness

Not like I was2012-12-11
Jane Doe (#2?). If you're including near deaths, I think this one counts... albeit from the other side.
Morning 2012-12-10
Jane Doe. ...and maybe this one too - this COULD be a flash-forward that comes after the next few pages, or it COULD be a different corpse

Done here 2011-05-13
Shelly, by herself (more or less, and unintentional) with the relic in the time forest

[TazManiac]

MurderDeathKill, maybe?

(Bonus points - and a free chalupa - for anyone who gets that reference...)

Taco, taco, taco, taco, Taco Belllllll...

(and three seashells to boot, to drive the dagger home...) <-- oops, I slipped up and morphed over to 'Meet Joe Black'...

[Catawampus]

My take on this is that the first two panels show a young Atsali and her mother, and that her mother is referring to Castela in the third panel.

One thing that I notice: Atsali's family apparently had a room for her to go to and “push the red button”. Presumably, then, it's some sort of a safe-room or pushing the red button would somehow protect Atsali, and Atsali had been instructed on its use. What sorts of things were going on in her family's life to lead them to include such a thing in their family room?

Another thing I notice: the doorway in the last panel appears to be different from the doorway in the penultimate panel (though this could just be due to the vagaries of drawn artwork). So the action in the last panel could be at Atsali's house, or at the place where Castela is being experimented on, or some other place altogether. If it is a totally different location, then a lot could have happened in between those two panels.

Also, we know that Cricket's family and clan (or whatever sort of organisation Fae use) took part in the raid to free Castela. And here we see what appears to be Atsali's mother deciding to do something about Castela, and having had some sort of working relationship with those who created Castela. This makes it likely that Queen Foxglove knew, or at least knew of, Atsali's parents and possibly even of their daughter.

Years later, Cricket's parents send their own wayward daughter to the very school that Atsali and Castela are attending. Coincidence?

And who in the world would A) have access to the paranormal world and B) want to draw from it to make weapons? Who would they use those weapons against? To fight paranormals or to outgun a normal military?

Lots of people probably have access to the paranormal world and would like to weaponise it. The Lanthian priests did both and made a chimera, though that didn't work out too great from their perspective. Law enforcement seems to have done something along that lines with vampires, judging from the FBI's hiring of Lily and Suzie and from Guidance's conversation with Georgette. Probably a good part of the MiB's job is to keep too much of that sort of thing from happening.

As for who they'd use it against: whomever they felt it would work against, I'd imagine. Many people wouldn't be too particular about such things after they'd managed to successfully make the weapons.

Castela was, we have been specifically told, created to be a weapon against the fae, and, i think, the lab where she was created was destroyed..

Well, Cricket said that she was seen as a potential threat to the paranormal world and could hurt Fae. That's not necessarily the same as meaning that she was made intentionally to specifically target Fae, or even that she was made initially as a weapon at all (though it could very well be that she was developed as some sort of an antiFae critter). The Fae move against the lab could have been more preventative rather than preemptive.

Well one thing for sure, the poor gun guy at the door is having a damn bad day.

Perhaps that's Atsali's dad come home, and that's just how his wife greets him at the door. Sort of a slightly more intense version of Hobbes meeting Calvin at the door after school.

I think this flashback may be dated to maybe 5 years or so before Castela was actually born/created. Atsali here appears to be around the same age at which she was portrayed in the "Little Atsali" strips back in 2013. . . .

She looked quite a bit older when Castela first arrived in the orphanage.

At a guess... in this flashback Atsali's around six or seven? Castela is created/born/sprouted and then orphaned/abandoned about five years later, when Atsali is eleven or twelve?

If that's correct, Atsali's mother (and perhaps her father) may have been part of the original research team which was working on an anti-fae hybrid, but may not have played a direct role in the actual creation of Castela.

If I'd just gone through the trouble of removing a dangerous living weapon from a lab, I wouldn't immediately drop it off in an orphanage to run around loose with the kids there. There would likely have been a bit of an interval to make sure that Castela could socialise safely and wasn't going to go wild and kill everybody around her or anything unfortunate such as that. Castela might have been kept by the Fae for a while, or cared for by Mr. Meadows in seclusion. So if Atsali was orphaned when Castela was taken, then Atsali could have been at the orphanage several years before Castela was presented to her.

And I wonder if there was any particular reason why the two kids were put together in the orphanage? Was Atsali taking care of Castela intentional on somebody's part? And was Thana part of the whole thing, too, known by her or not?

What? She couldn't have just knocked him out? If she's that powerful and quick enough to grab the gun. Maybe Paul's going for ratings.

Or she's a very annoyed predator.

In this kind of (apparent) situation, you don't actually need complete silence . . . just to suppress the crack of the shot enough that bystanders don't recognize it as a shot. "Huh . . . what was that? . . . someone must have dropped something."

[/quote]

There's another important reason why suppressors are often used that isn't so commonly referred to. If you're ever in a firefight in a small enclosed space (especially with automatic weapons), your conversation afterward is likely to go something along the lines of, “HUH? WHAT? SPEAK UP! HUH?!?”. Having suppressors on your weapons helps alleviate that problem. They can be less about stealth and more about not leaving yourself dazed and deafened.

[FreeFlier]

. . .

In this kind of (apparent) situation, you don't actually need complete silence . . . just to suppress the crack of the shot enough that bystanders don't recognize it as a shot. "Huh . . . what was that? . . . someone must have dropped something."

There's another important reason why suppressors are often used that isn't so commonly referred to. If you're ever in a firefight in a small enclosed space (especially with automatic weapons), your conversation afterward is likely to go something along the lines of, “HUH? WHAT? SPEAK UP! HUH?!?”. Having suppressors on your weapons helps alleviate that problem. They can be less about stealth and more about not leaving yourself dazed and deafened.

And another: suppressors work by cooling the hot gases of the shot down . . . this also means that the gases are normally cooled below the ignition temperature of many flammable gases. This is why SWAT teams raiding drug labs normally use suppressed weapons, since drub labs frequently have significant quantities of flammable gases (and other less pleasant things) in their internal atmospheres.

Not sure if this lab - or wherever they are - would be the same . . . probably not, actually, but it's not a bad idea to be safe.

--FreeFlier

[AnotherFairportfan]

Actually, the cooling of the gases is a side-effect of the suppressor's action it allows the gases to expand in a close environment so that they have been decelerated to near or below the speed of sound.

That's what an explosion is - gases moving faster than the speed of sound in the medium - which is why black powder doesn't explode - "detonate" - it just "deflagrates", or burns very fast and produces huge volumes of gas. Black powder has ro be confined to have an "explosive" effect by building up pressure. Unconfined black powder - say a pile of it on a rock - flashes but doesn't explode. A stick of dynamite explodes whether confined or not.

Anyway, a suppressor is basically like a car's muffler (which is, in fact, called a "silencer" in countries that speak English, as opposed to USAian) - it's either a perforated cylinder about the size of the gun bore inside a larger cylinder packed with sound absorbent material - think "glasspack" automotive mufflers - or an empty cylinder with a series of baffles forming chambers that the gas can expand into to lower its velocity.

The larger the device is in relation to the gun's bore - and the longer it is - the more efficient it will be.

===============

Anyway, when a gas expands (all other things being more less constant) it becomes cooler.

[Atomic]

Oh! Something I didn't even think about until just now...

The sides and especially the armpits are very difficult to protect with anything solid. This is bad because there is a major blood vessel there. So, she could have gone in from the side. That guy would be dead from an injury like that in a VERY short time.

Yes - exactly the attack I was trying to describe.

[Alkarii]

Yeah... You posted as I was trying to type. My phone is acting up again. It keeps thinking I'm sliding my fingers across the keypad, and screwing up what I'm trying to type. So posts take much longer than I'd like.

[Sgt. Howard]

Actually, the cooling of the gases is a side-effect of the suppressor's action it allows the gases to expand in a close environment so that they have been decelerated to near or below the speed of sound.

That's what an explosion is - gases moving faster than the speed of sound in the medium - which is why black powder doesn't explode - "detonate" - it just "deflagrates", or burns very fast and produces huge volumes of gas. Black powder has ro be confined to have an "explosive" effect by building up pressure. Unconfined black powder - say a pile of it on a rock - flashes but doesn't explode. A stick of dynamite explodes whether confined or not.

Anyway, a suppressor is basically like a car's muffler (which is, in fact, called a "silencer" in countries that speak English, as opposed to USAian) - it's either a perforated cylinder about the size of the gun bore inside a larger cylinder packed with sound absorbent material - think "glasspack" automotive mufflers - or an empty cylinder with a series of baffles forming chambers that the gas can expand into to lower its velocity.

The larger the device is in relation to the gun's bore - and the longer it is - the more efficient it will be.

===============

.

You're thinking of smokeless- Black will explode without confinement. Smokeless will sizzle rather rapidly.

DYK- Silencers wear out after a surprisingly low number of rounds? The better ones have replaceable baffles.

Anyway, when a gas expands (all other things being more less constant) it becomes cooler

[illiad]

Yeah, I discounted Suzi's activity and the Nu Gui.

However, Monica was killed twice (and revived twice) by Euryale... but would she regenerate if melted? Oh, unless she were in Hades when she became a popsicle, the regeneration would kick in well before.

Your definition of 'kill' is highly lacking... If so, lots of surgeons are 'killing' people every day, and reviving them soon after....

Also, AFAIR, this was before she (fully?)became the jaguar girl...

I think it is Euryale's sister that could turn people to stone... another story says that the stones figures were not dead, just unable to move, while able to see and hear...

[jwhouk]

My argument is this: Monica wasn't "killed" by Euryale's stares. The last one on the island, though, pushed her over the edge for her Jaguar Girl powers, which resulted in her "out of body" experience. Even then, she wasn't "dead" (as both Shel and Bud saw her "ethereal" form).

Now, when Bud did like Extreme and Hole-Hearted Monica...

[AmriloJim]

Points taken, gentlemen.

[Dave]

That's what an explosion is - gases moving faster than the speed of sound in the medium - which is why black powder doesn't explode - "detonate" - it just "deflagrates", or burns very fast and produces huge volumes of gas.

You're thinking of smokeless- Black will explode without confinement. Smokeless will sizzle rather rapidly.

I think AnotherFairportfan's definitions are still valid.

Black powder burns (deflagrates), and it can burn fast even if unconfined... "explode" if you wish. However, the speed of the flame front is less than the speed of sound... there's no supersonic shock wave created. It's a "low explosive". The same is true of smokeless powder. Confining either creates a more violent explosion, by allowing the deflagration to build up pressure inside the container before the container bursts.

High explosives create a detonation wave which travels faster than the speed of sound... a supersonic shock wave propagates through the material as it goes boom.

There are quite a few materials which will both burn (slowly) and detonate (violently) - flame is not sufficient to trigger detonation. I've heard all kinds of stories of people cooking their rations over a flaming lump of C-4.

[Sgt. Howard]

Cooking with C-4... use exactly as much as is needed, no more, and don't stomp it out!

[AnotherFairportfan]

However, the bases used to create smokeless powders- guncotton and nitroglycerine, at least originally - can really go bang even when unconfined.

The original discovery of the shaped charge principle resulted from testing a new safe design with explosives - a disk of pressed guncotton was stuck to the side of the safe and detonated. It had the logo of the explosives manufacturing company stamped into one side - the side that was falt against the safe.

When the smoke cleared, there was a mirror image of the logo stamped into the solid steel.

============

If black powder truly exploded when unconfined, the earliest rockets would have gone "bang" instead of "whoosh". Bertrand Brinley in his "Model Rocket Manual for Amateurs" made the point that a rocket is a bomb with a hole in one end. (Or was it John W Campbell jr after the Challenger explosion?)

[FreeFlier]

When I burned IMR 4895 (specific smokeless smallarms propellant, aka smokeless powder), it didn't burn all that briskly . . . 110 grains or so took between five and ten seconds, and burned with a clear yellow flame.

Smokeless smallarms propellant can be made to detonate, but it's quite difficult.


And the approved method of destroying most high explosives is to burn them.

Granted, there is a risk that it will detonate - usually in mass - while burning, which is why it is always done in a safe area.

Except for water gels . . . water gels will only detonate if subjected to a shock wave of sufficient velocity and energy. This is one of the reasons that water gels have displaced dynamite except for specialist uses . . . the other being that water gels become less sensitive as they age, eventually becoming incapable of detonation. (Dynamite is exactly the opposite.)

--FreeFlier

[Typeminer]

Two weeks ago, my brother had a cardiac incident while visiting here, and the local hospital pumped him quite full of nitroglycerin before deciding on angioplasty.

Afterward, I pointed out that the doctors were confident in their treatment.

Otherwise, they'd have used C4.

That cheered him up.

(He's doing quite well, thanks; catheterization up from the wrist to implant stents, and he was out in 4 days, back to work at light duty in 9. Would have been a double bypass not that long ago.)

[Sgt. Howard]

Two weeks ago, my brother had a cardiac incident while visiting here, and the local hospital pumped him quite full of nitroglycerin before deciding on angioplasty.

Afterward, I pointed out that the doctors were confident in their treatment.

Otherwise, they'd have used C4.

That cheered him up.

(He's doing quite well, thanks; catheterization up from the wrist to implant stents, and he was out in 4 days, back to work at light duty in 9. Would have been a double bypass not that long ago.)

Glad to hear it