PaRARGdox 81
Let’s pause for some death and bickering: Sadly, not even first years are safe from the massacre.
We rejoin Ambrosia, Rochelle and Sioni and pick up from a mere minute after we last saw them on page 7.70.
Morgana was first introduced back on page 7.14 after which she was maimed in an explosion but saved by Ambrosia time-slipping. Looks like that isn’t an option this time.
This is the one page that was partially lost when my Mac had a melt down a few weeks ago… again, thank Mog for the backup or I would have lost a lot more.
Also, thanks for the comments – wow, we broke the 60 posts last update!
Patrons: Over on Patreon page 83 is now up…. 😎
Next update: Sunday November 29: One more week of once a week updates… then I expect to be back to twice a week!! Grimdark origin…!
Olaf can “fix” her…
I’m not exactly convinced Olaf can fix her best friend. Someone looking like her, sure …
I guess we’ll be exploring that in the future given how many characters Olaf has fixed (assuming Ambrosia doesn’t split the timeline).
Ah, like the Biblical story of Job.
“Thanks for helping me win that bet with Satan. Here’s a new family to replace the one I killed off.”
Previously I’ve wondered (and gushed) about the application of Ambrosia’s time slip power. But this page kinda brought another type of question to it. With this power, Ambrosia is particularly suited to see a lot of death. Technically not by much, it’s not like people are going to die more around her, but because of her power, she can time slip that means that she can see one person die, prevent their death, and get to see them die in another way in other circumstances. Most people only get to lose people their loved ones once.
So you kinda have to ask: how many times can you see your friends die before you’re completely desensitized to it?
I don’t think I envy her powers anymore.
That’s not even the worst that could happen.
Imagine seeing your loved one die. You go back 60 seconds to save them but you fail. You try again and again but no matter what you try you can’t save them, 60 seconds isn’t enough. All you can do is eventually give up and let them die. Their death (presumably) wouldn’t be your fault but I guarantee it would feel like you “let them die”
It’s not THAT bad. Remember that she needs MORE than 60 seconds to recharge. Therefore, she has limited numbers of tries, afterwards the loved one death will go outside her window.
And it’s not like she’s ONLY one who can see her friends die multiple times. I mean, sure, for most people it’s not literal – but you CAN experience situation where you THINK your friend is dead – they may even be clinically dead – and then them getting better multiple times.
So, most likely, instead of being completely desensitized, she will develop sort of delay. Similarly how you would not consider your friend dead while you are performing CPR on them (and that can be done for MORE than minute), she won’t feel like her friends are dead until they get out of her window to save.
So many dead characters. I continue to hope the black hole causes Ambrosia’s power to be able to take them back much further than a minute to fix this. It could still very easily be to the events of Bad Karma, since the scientists leaving Magellan is the catalyst that leads to this particular Rarg attack.
Don’t forget that the time slip is a mental projection. We don’t know Ambrosia’s circumstances that long ago. And too, there is a physical effect on her that could well be exacerbated by such a long slip. That said, it does look like you’d *have* to go back kinda far to fix all the problems caused by that chroner-related incident.
Hmmmmm … black hole itself does weird things with spacetime, it would be interesting alternative to making her powers stronger permanently.
And, no: while going back to Bad Karma would be only thing capable of cleaning up ALL problems, there are certainly things to do with shorter time slip. For example, she may not prevent the invasion but may prevent the power-nullifying device from working, which could allow magellan to deflect the invasion. There would still be deaths, but not so many.
I am thinking that if Ambrosia performs her time jump in the vicinity of an area of infinite red-shift and maximal time-dilation (the volume around a black hole), then her one minute slip could become a one day time slip.
Ambrosia: Thank you!
Olga Beh: Uh, you’re welcome? Maybe I could get dried and dressed first?
Morgana: Ambrosia! There you are! Stop annoying the second-year cadet and get your ass to training!
Ambrosia: Uhh.
Sun: What the hell was that about?
Olga: I have not idea, but her mental landscape just shifted, like she just acquired a huge amount of new memories.
Ambrosia: What the? Where am … Um, Morgana, we have to get to the Robomat!
Morgana: That’s what I have been saying for the last 15 minutes!
Ambrosia: Come on! We have to save a couple of idiots from themselves and then we have to find Epoch and let him know the Rarg are coming.
Even if she does not prevent the power nullification, she could reduce its efficiency.
Hour before invasion: people arm themselves with regular guns. They may be able to fight the Rarg infantry. Not as good, but it would do something.¨
4 hours before invasion: Some time further, and she can get some people succeptible to it into shielded areas, like Sister Superior was.
Day before invasion: and there can be several Surface-Space missiles prepared to shoot the Rarg down, as well as preparation for the invasion, should they fail. EMP hardened military gear and power suppresion fields for protection of powered individuals.
A week before invasion: the Jupiter mining operations can be stopped before the whole thing happens.
It’s moments like this where I start to wonder if Sioni’s secret super power is “Called It!” / “Ironic Foreshadowing.”
Sioni… DON’T PISS OFF THE TIME TRAVELER!!!
Sioni? Consider taking some empathy lessons and…
Shut.
UP.
Sioni, you really need to work on that foot in mouth syndrom of yours
I just noticed something on the cast page. You have Jaycee’s class as the class of 2014, and Brelvis’s and Oldga’s class as 2016. You skipped 2015…Now, if you figure a fall to spring school year, like we have in the US, and a 6 year curriculum, which has already been established, then it is Jaycee’s class and those classes before hers that are incorrect. With a commencement year of 2009, Jaycee’s class should be the class of 2015. If that is correct then bumping up the Graduation year on all classes from Jaycee’s and before by 1 year, should fit with established cannon. If it is spring to fall, then the class of 2016 should be 2015, and so on…
And I just realized, I am using northern hemisphere seasons, reverse spring and fall in my post for southern hemisphere seasons…
That’s a typo I need to fix…! Thanks for the head’s up!
can ambrosia time slip in her past self right after a time slip or does a full minute have to pass before she can slip back again because if she can just keep slipping back she could maybe slip back further and further.
Nope, she requires a recharge period equivalent to the time slip… 10 second slip = 10 second recharge… 60 second slip = 60 second recharge.
Rochelle’s face in the last panel: Scioni, _I’d_ let you die, right now. Stop being a douche.
I read it as “Ah shit, there goes all possibility of semi-rational planning and discussion for the next 5 minutes.
At this point, I think we have to assume that many of the deaths we’re seeing in PaRARGdox are ‘real’ deaths, as in, they won’t ‘miraculously’ come back to life at the end of the story. Magellan is going to have to deal with the decapitation of its leadership hierarchy, forcing others (Go!Anna?) to step into and fill bigger shoes than they’re comfortable with. Charisma will have to deal with the death of her father. And everyone’s going to have to deal with whatever Olaf’s doing to the dead – I suspect that going to be a huge storyline at some point in the future.
I’m happy to see it. I love authors who aren’t afraid to kill off characters their readers fall in love with (yes, I’m a GRRM fan). It makes the world feel real to me, gives the characters more emotional depth. It’s all the more special for happening in a superhero universe – superheroes are defined by comic books, and comic books are defined by the fact that some heroes Can’t Be Allowed To Die, since they’re so popular that their perma-deaths would tank sales.
While I do think Ambrosia’s powers are going to help roll back the clock on a lot of the deaths, it would be interesting if some of them can’t be avoided, like they’re fixed points in time that HAVE to occur no matter what. So even though she tries her hardest, some of the deaths like Epoch’s, Freya’s, etc just CANNOT be undone and she has to realize that while she can save the entire world, some of the superheroes will still need to die and be sacrificed for that to occur.
This is why time travel is a difficult and dangerous tool for story writers to use – while it can be a great tool to explore a character’s history and emotional landscape, it can threaten to destroy the entire logical structure of a story. How can you sustain dramatic tension when the character can just ‘go back and try again’ if he fails? How is anything permanent when the past can be changed? To use my previous example, the complexity of the DrWho universe can be understood as 50+ years of writers trying to plug up holes torn open by the ubiquity of time travelers in the universe. It creates wonky, patched-up universes that manage to function only through mystic hand-waving and obfuscation.
A strong story should not rely on time travel to achieve dramatic resolution. If time travel occurs at all, it works best as a cataclysm that the heroes must overcome (like in Bad Karma). Using Ambrosia as a Deus Ex Machina would ruin a lot of good storytelling this tragedy makes possible.
If Freya stays dead, I think the result is that many characters will not reach their full potential – as heroes or as humans. Tom Bass will go downhill, might be larger potential for story there than in a happy life for him. Crucially, both Annie and Kaycee will be negatively impacted and I don’t think it enables any better stories.
For sure stories that are full of success and devoid of death are not very realistic, but neither are the opposite. And with the current death toll, adding in the people who just won’t go on after these deaths, I see a ridiculously dark future for Magellan Academy. Comprised by a handful of battered, harrowed, goes-on-through-anything people this won’t be a setting for any positive stories at all. Maybe we’d get to follow some characters that went somewhere else, maybe 10 years into the future the Academy will be a much different and once again interesting place, but I really don’t think the rebuild process will be anything other than one-dimensional darkness and toil. Which doesn’t make for good stories, in my opinion.
I think we need a reasonable number of characters with a good amount of empathy and at least a couple that can provide some comedy to not only survive but also stay in the academy, for the stories from the academy to be what I’d consider good, multi-faceted stories. But to also keep the realness, I think most such people would drop out.
At any rate, for there to be a Magellanverse at all after this story, the whole planet-imploding extinction event needs to be reverted – so the question is merely how far back does it revert, how many of the dead are saved? If I were to take a guess: initially everyone, but there will be conscious sacrifices on the re-do of the Rarg attack.
I’ll be expecting your script in my Inbox by the end of the week 😅
Seriously though, it seems like the current story is kinda forced to go in a path something like this. We don’t expect *everyone* to die, but there’s a narrative disconnect if all the casualties are negated by deus ex machina
‘Not a hoax! Not a dream! In this story, EVERYONE DIES!!’
Too many discordant storylines converging here 😐
Looks like Morgana is dead…!
Yeah, but maybe she won’t stay that way. I hope not, cause I still got hopes pinned on her participating in a future arc.
Am I the only one thinking that Ambrosia can use her power to kick Scioni in the nuts a hundred times without anyone knowing?
lol – I’m reminded of many scenes in movies/TV where it seems someone is doing something crazy only for it to be revealed they were imagining it. Ambrosia doesn’t have to imagine it!
Ah! The old fantasy-without-fulfilment thing! I wonder what the actual Trope name for it is . . .
The most memorable one I can remember (probably because I think it’s the first time I ever saw it) was in that Schwarzenegger flick True Lies where it looks like Arnie is beating up the guy pretending to be a spy to put the moves on Jamie Lee Curtis (Arnie’s ‘wife’)… but no, it’s all a fantasy Arnie is having while the guy is talking.
It is the Indulgent Fantasy Segue… 🙂
Danke!