Grrl Power #1072 - Guard Dood Dee Duty
Added 2022-08-04 10:00:05 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome!
So what we know about Goon Squad, AKA Ted, so far. He seems to know what happened to his clones at least after they die, but they don't seem to have any telepathic link between them. The "dress up in the enemy's armor ploy" certainly wouldn't have worked if they did. It was a risky plan without knowing that beforehand. Of course, since it's not revealed who's in the stolen armor there, we don't know if they've even figured out if this guy is a bunch of dupes. Presumably if you can knock a Goon Squad out without killing or otherwise grievously injuring him, you can loot him without him dissolving into a bunch of... sixlets? (Sixlets are good if you've never had them. They're like Whoppers, i.e. malted milk, but instead of being covered in waxy chocolate, they're covered in a candy shell like M&M's.)
But, at least the bad guys are dumb enough to contravene the #1 rule on the Evil Overlords No No list. (Warning, TV Tropes link/rabbit hole.)
Oh yeah, and about that PB & Mayo sandwich mentioned in the stinger. My dad did actually used to eat those. Not a lot, as far as I'm aware, but for sure it happened at least once which was enough to really gross me out. The whole sign-countersign thing is a good idea, and people always seem to forget about it in movies and shows when they know full well they're up against a shapeshifter, but I'd think you'd have to update your passwords on a pretty regular basis, and you'd also have to be careful not to pick something easy to guess. Even the famous "Lightning - Flash" one is in the realm of guessable. Sure, most people would start with "Thunder" but that's too obvious, so instead maybe they'd go with "Crash" or "Boom" or "Very very frightening" or something. If I was making up the countersigns, it'd be "Lightning - Hasenpfeffer" or "Marianas" or "Existentialism."
Comments
Well, no comments on the strip itself, but I do have a couple of comments on your post below it. That Evil Overlord list makes from some interesting reading, but it needs some re-organizing. The point about just having the five-year-old advisor needs to be in the top 5, and the rest of the ones involving said advisor need to be in the top 10. Also, there should be one about hiring a new five-year-old advisor when the current one reaches 10-years-old, though that one could be in just the top 15 or 20. Lastly, the current item 84 shouldn't be about having prisoners guarded by guards who are the same gender, but about having prisoners guarded by guards who aren't romantically interested in the gender they are guarding. Not every guard is heterosexual, and I have seen a few works where the homosexual guard ended up being just as much of a liability. As for your sign-countersign thing.............they need to be an easy association to make so that they are relatively easy for operatives in the field to remember. Further, the more generic the trooper that will need to know it the easier it needs to be to remember. However, this doesn't mean it needs to be that easy to guess. For something a tad more modern day using 'Lightning' as the sign I feel a good countersign would be 'Does the Work'. Sure, it's still a guessable pop-culture reference, but it's also just old enough that it won't be a connection most people would make while so long as you ensure all of your troopers have listened to the song a few times the connection is easy to make and remember. Anything notably more complicated is only practical for spies and special forces who need to have a higher baseline mental ability in the first place. A 'Goon Squad' isn't going to be typically known for being mental giants, and are rarely rewarded for it if they are.
Anton Schleef
2022-08-05 17:52:34 +0000 UTC*Nod* - Didn't think Lightning and Flash was right. I was just using what Dave mentioned in his commentary, that's what I get for not double checking it myself.
Eric Loken
2022-08-05 08:38:25 +0000 UTCThe American sign/countersign was 'Flash" and 'Thunder'.
Ray
2022-08-04 23:13:26 +0000 UTCThe other thing about sign and countersigns is that they have to be something that is easy to remember, and easy to say. If the airborne in Normandy had used Hassenpfeffer and Bandersnatch, I bet a lot of them would have gotten it confused. I also don't think Lightning - Flash was meant to be infallible, just a quick way to identify each other - and avoid friendly fire - in what turned out to be a VERY confusing situation (the American airborne divisions were scattered all over Hell's half acre and had to make ad hoc units until they were able to properly rendezvous and reorganize).
Eric Loken
2022-08-04 19:29:50 +0000 UTC
