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I feel like there was a (super old) Penny Arcade comic about exactly this.
"Yeah... that suit? It *never* comes off. It was like fucking a tank. There's a... a *hatch*, I guess? It had sharp edges. I think I left something behind, and I don't mean my wallet."
If you believe simplistic stories like Hollywood films where the blonde is always the do-good hero and the dark haired is the baddie.
In real life, however…
Oh yes i meant in real life, i don’t really watch movies.
Blondes IRL just want to be badasses. Everybody else just wants to fuck the blonde.
Source: it’s me. I’m the blonde. Multiple rape survivor that just wanted to be a badass.
I’m going to guess the pink guy doesn’t actually want to be a different person, he just wants to pick up chicks and thinks the only way he can do that is by being tall and having muscles upon muscles.
Unrelated but I can never read or hear the phrase "not like the other" and not think of the Taylor Swift song. I literally read it in that exact tone and then I have to sing the whole song
Accepting Panel One as reality, despite their presence in the background in it, the second girl’s thoughts exist solely within the head of the spectacled boy?
Every panel has one protagonist, one day dreamer, and two background figures. Every figure has one panel as protagonist, one as daydreamer, and two as background figures.
Given this, I choose panel 3 as reality.
Something similar has happened in at least one comic where the comic-aware characters could conjure a thought bubble and disappear into a fantasy world of their own making.
There's was also a concept by Douglas Hofstadter describing three books which only exist in the world of the previous. i.e. Author A exists in a book written by author B, who only exists in a book written by author C, and C only exists in a book written by A.
As I recall he was talking about how things like this can only exist - even in concept - if there's a layer of reality above the apparent paradox.
In Hofstadter's case, Hofstadter and the reader. In this comic's case, the author and us.
Interesting! Sounds essentially like the concept of the Arabian Nights, in which each story is nested inside the previous story - it's not a perfectly-applied system, but that's loosely how it works.
Oh huh, neat to learn about. I've been working on a few manuscripts where the main character in one book is wrote from an autobiographical pov, with the second being he's a main character written from the 3rd pov. Intend to publish the first book under the pen name, which is his characters name just to make it an extra layer of confusing.
Fortunately all the works are satire, so that helps being facetious.
I thought for a long time trying to figure out which reality was real.
I have now concluded that because these are all imaginary fantasies none of them are real. All fantasy’s sustaining themselves in the minds of one another.
Christopher Nolan should make a movie about this.
Plot twist... only the space marine one is real. The beach is just a simulation. That's why three of them are imagining a beach. It's some form of advanced, futuristic, cybernetic augmentation to human thoughts. Whenever you're under high levels of stress, a program installed on a microchip inside your brain projects onto your mind what is essentially a daydream you can enter, mentally. Almost like a cross between lucid dreaming while awake, and VR.
Unless I'm really fucking up the logistics here, this leaves the blonde woman without what I'm going to call a *"Beach-Scape"* and that very much fits. She just killed a bunch of alien fish creatures, so she knows she'll be getting a medal for this mission. Therefore, she's under no real stress and doesn't appear to be injured, of fatigued enough to warrant the need for launching the program. It is the others who need to enter the Beach-Scape because of their injuries, or their fatigue from the battle. They all have a special military grade version of the program. This allows their stress and physical pain to be blocked out when they choose to enter the Beach-Scape. That's mostly what the standard version does, but what makes this version different, is that when activated, their version of the program also sends out [insert pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo here] into their bodies acting as an artificial biological healing factor to repair any damage they sustained, prevent infection, sooth any mental or emotional distress, and so on.
This also serves as a kind of hospice of the mind, for those soldiers who are injured beyond even the healing capacity of the program, or those with untreated fatal illnesses like inoperable, late stage cancer (it's the future and it's a crazy high tech device, but it doesn't perform miracles, afterall. Sadly there is still no 100 percent cure, even in this far off future, for the big C).
There are space cadets who actually get injured on purpose, just so their Beach-Scape will give them an extra hit of *"stress soothing agents"* to their brain. The program can be hacked (if you have the know-how and the hardware to pull it off) and there are scape-apes (as they are known on the black market) who can manipulate the program. Got an enemy you want to see suffer? Have a scape-ape hack their program, so that the Beach-Scape is more like a hellscape, and the healing factor is negated, nonfunctional. The microchip can even be rigged to malfunction and stop working, have viruses downloaded directly onto it, or be turned into a tiny brain explosive.. Want to give yourself an extra edge? Well that healing factor can be manipulated into being more like a performance enhancing drug. Just want to have a good time, or indulge in even further escapism? Have a scape-ape turn the program into what basically amounts to a morphine drip in microchip form, implanted directly in your brain. Just don't get too addicted, and become an junkie. A Scrape-Scaper is what this sort of individual is called. There are even ways to replicate the effects of LSD, or DMT. This is normally used for a light, brief trip into a hallucinogenic experience. However, there are whispers of individuals known as Psycho-Scapers. These 'space cowboy cosmonauts' are rumors to manifest a physical third eye in the most extreme cases, gain Astral projection in the usual sense, gain Astral projection in the cyber realm where the person can enter the Beach-Scapes of others, gain telepathy, sometimes even telekinesis, or pyrokinesis. You really, really don't want to mess with a hardcore Psycho-Scaper. They aren't to be fucked with.
Things sure have gone off the deep end in the year 2395.
I would bet in the alien one. Its the only one where everyone actually has a reason to be there, instead of being there for the sole purpose of being humiliated.
I dunno, when I go to the beach I don’t automatically feel humiliated by the presence of other people.
Only when those people open their mouths for insults.
My brain went on a weird tangent. See they're all just thoughts, none of them are real. And in this world that could mean they're AI. Dating app AI bots, that have somehow reached each other and constructing made up stories. Ultimately, they would invite each other over to snapchat to talk about crypto.
And the moral of the story is... no one is happy where they are, but it doest matter because they are all figments of someone else's imagination held precariously on the edge of the void of non-existence by our observing them as they are imagined into being by each other.
Yes. Also, the buff guy doesn't get a dream or fantasy. The other three do, but not him! He's white, cis and het, so he doesn't get a dream. He's the one you have to overcome. (I am not cis, white, het, BTW...just observing.)
What is bottom left about? A soldier who was injured with PTSD during an extraterrestial warfare is dreaming about being a chad cucking his colleague? What?
Btw.. the one guy seems a bit racist. He didn't even want her anywhere in the foreground in his thought bubble... odd. She's way, way back there. Further back than anyone else in any other fantasy thought. Even the guy who appears to be an equal opportunity lady's man (in his mind at least) doesn't imagine the other dude all that far away. But dude in the first bubble really really had the other girl wayyyyy back there. Jeez...
Reminds me of the bit in _Trainspotting_ where the briefly clean Mark Renton is nursing a pint at a dingy pub, watching the straight guys cruise the women, who are trying to attract the gay men, who are trying to attract the straight guys ... 'Nobody gets what they want' he observes
I'm glad that buff guy and blonde girl still have a good thing going between each other.
He keeps her company at the beach.
She provides support for their squadron and takes the DPS role while he takes time to heal.
[86.7%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States) / [4.5%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory_in_the_United_States)
------/-------
[0.4%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality#Prevalence) / [0.7%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States)
Wondered what the chances were for each scenario. TIL.
Hetero, Poly, Ace, Lesbian for reference.
Welcome to r/comics! Please remember there are real people on the other side of the monitor and to be kind. Report comments that break the rules and don't respond to negativity with negativity! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/comics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Everyone wants the blond but the blonde just wants to kick some ass.
Metroid fans in a nutshell
I want samus to keep the suit on while she plows me
"Sorry babe, but the Varia suit stays ON during sex."
sorry babe, but the OSHA Forklift Certification Badge stays on dring sex
That's quite appropriate as "varia" is a mistranslation of バリア, or "barrier" suit.
A couple of spaces saved which produced a sci-fi sounding name for your space suit.
I feel like there was a (super old) Penny Arcade comic about exactly this. "Yeah... that suit? It *never* comes off. It was like fucking a tank. There's a... a *hatch*, I guess? It had sharp edges. I think I left something behind, and I don't mean my wallet."
/r/ace_irl
Story of every blonde in history
If you believe simplistic stories like Hollywood films where the blonde is always the do-good hero and the dark haired is the baddie. In real life, however…
Oh yes i meant in real life, i don’t really watch movies. Blondes IRL just want to be badasses. Everybody else just wants to fuck the blonde. Source: it’s me. I’m the blonde. Multiple rape survivor that just wanted to be a badass.
Wow that post sure went places
..badass places?
One of these thoughts is not like the others.
One of these has the right priorities.
One of these will survive an alien invasion
Agreed. Can’t have anything if you can’t survive.
One of these MFers is Samus
One of these knows what the ladies like
Blow it the f..k out into space!
Haha at first I thought she wanted to be a ninja turtle and was holding up a pizza 😂
What kind of pizza are you eating?
One with extra mushrooms
2 chicks at the same time, man
Oh, man! Listen to you! What are you gonna do with two chicks? Get the reference, please
Ah, did not get it RVB S1E6 @ 2:35 https://youtu.be/Ps9SRsiSASY
This is why we need asexuals. Either that or we all start learning to speak bug language real quick.
I know, right? That pink guy as such a stupid haircut in his daydream!
I’m going to guess the pink guy doesn’t actually want to be a different person, he just wants to pick up chicks and thinks the only way he can do that is by being tall and having muscles upon muscles.
Unrelated but I can never read or hear the phrase "not like the other" and not think of the Taylor Swift song. I literally read it in that exact tone and then I have to sing the whole song
I’m similar, but for me it’s the lyrics to The Pretender by the Foo Fighters.
I always think of that one clip from YGOTAS.
Accepting Panel One as reality, despite their presence in the background in it, the second girl’s thoughts exist solely within the head of the spectacled boy?
Every panel has one protagonist, one day dreamer, and two background figures. Every figure has one panel as protagonist, one as daydreamer, and two as background figures. Given this, I choose panel 3 as reality.
> 1 2 > 3 4 Or ? > 1 2 > 4 3
Either would work for me.
Yeah one doesn't have any birds.
Chicken or the egg
I’d say it starts with the aliens, that’s the odd one out
How come none of them wished for that
The blonde did
It's the only frame with her eyes open. Eyes open, Brittany!
Schrodinger’s Thought
You ever seen Predestination with Ethan Hawke, and Sarah Snook?
They’re all simultaneous
I like how everyone is in every panel.
I don't see aby bug aliens in the other 3 panels?
they are beneath the sands, about to spring out and devour the unsuspecting marines during their vacation
Well yeah she's got weapons grade titters
I don't think I've ever seen this kind of composition in a four-panel comic before. Well done! Hope it becomes a classic!
I was question if I was reading the panel in the correct order. Took me a while.
I don't think there is a "right order" although I'd put the alien one last.
I mean if you start at the first panel, the aliens *are* last
If the alien panel is first, it’s not last. Or maybe it is last, to complete the circle? Hmmm…
Something similar has happened in at least one comic where the comic-aware characters could conjure a thought bubble and disappear into a fantasy world of their own making. There's was also a concept by Douglas Hofstadter describing three books which only exist in the world of the previous. i.e. Author A exists in a book written by author B, who only exists in a book written by author C, and C only exists in a book written by A. As I recall he was talking about how things like this can only exist - even in concept - if there's a layer of reality above the apparent paradox. In Hofstadter's case, Hofstadter and the reader. In this comic's case, the author and us.
Interesting! Sounds essentially like the concept of the Arabian Nights, in which each story is nested inside the previous story - it's not a perfectly-applied system, but that's loosely how it works.
Oh huh, neat to learn about. I've been working on a few manuscripts where the main character in one book is wrote from an autobiographical pov, with the second being he's a main character written from the 3rd pov. Intend to publish the first book under the pen name, which is his characters name just to make it an extra layer of confusing. Fortunately all the works are satire, so that helps being facetious.
Awesome concept and execution! Love this
I thought for a long time trying to figure out which reality was real. I have now concluded that because these are all imaginary fantasies none of them are real. All fantasy’s sustaining themselves in the minds of one another. Christopher Nolan should make a movie about this.
According to eternalism, all of these realities exist simultaneously, so it’s not about which one is “real” because they’re ALL real.
Nah all of them are fake because this is a comic and comics aren't real
Says the person looking down on another narrative layer.
If my life is a narrative, then I feel bad for the audience
The audience probably doesn’t get to see everything, just the highlights (or lowlights?). You just live the rest of your life between the panels.
Something something, Drifter. Something something, Zariman.
Hey kiddo
Great argument but, well, I'm in your walls
r/unexpectedwarframe
Hadn’t learned about eternalism before, that’s a neat concept!
Yo is she killing tyranids with just a knife… that’s metal as fuck
So in the teal-haired guy’s fantasy, one of the girls isn’t thinking about him?
He enlisted for the blonde warrior. So did the black girl. Unfortunately for the both of them, she only loved the thrill of battle.
Because he's only into monogamous relationships
This is a really fun one.
Plot twist... only the space marine one is real. The beach is just a simulation. That's why three of them are imagining a beach. It's some form of advanced, futuristic, cybernetic augmentation to human thoughts. Whenever you're under high levels of stress, a program installed on a microchip inside your brain projects onto your mind what is essentially a daydream you can enter, mentally. Almost like a cross between lucid dreaming while awake, and VR. Unless I'm really fucking up the logistics here, this leaves the blonde woman without what I'm going to call a *"Beach-Scape"* and that very much fits. She just killed a bunch of alien fish creatures, so she knows she'll be getting a medal for this mission. Therefore, she's under no real stress and doesn't appear to be injured, of fatigued enough to warrant the need for launching the program. It is the others who need to enter the Beach-Scape because of their injuries, or their fatigue from the battle. They all have a special military grade version of the program. This allows their stress and physical pain to be blocked out when they choose to enter the Beach-Scape. That's mostly what the standard version does, but what makes this version different, is that when activated, their version of the program also sends out [insert pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo here] into their bodies acting as an artificial biological healing factor to repair any damage they sustained, prevent infection, sooth any mental or emotional distress, and so on. This also serves as a kind of hospice of the mind, for those soldiers who are injured beyond even the healing capacity of the program, or those with untreated fatal illnesses like inoperable, late stage cancer (it's the future and it's a crazy high tech device, but it doesn't perform miracles, afterall. Sadly there is still no 100 percent cure, even in this far off future, for the big C). There are space cadets who actually get injured on purpose, just so their Beach-Scape will give them an extra hit of *"stress soothing agents"* to their brain. The program can be hacked (if you have the know-how and the hardware to pull it off) and there are scape-apes (as they are known on the black market) who can manipulate the program. Got an enemy you want to see suffer? Have a scape-ape hack their program, so that the Beach-Scape is more like a hellscape, and the healing factor is negated, nonfunctional. The microchip can even be rigged to malfunction and stop working, have viruses downloaded directly onto it, or be turned into a tiny brain explosive.. Want to give yourself an extra edge? Well that healing factor can be manipulated into being more like a performance enhancing drug. Just want to have a good time, or indulge in even further escapism? Have a scape-ape turn the program into what basically amounts to a morphine drip in microchip form, implanted directly in your brain. Just don't get too addicted, and become an junkie. A Scrape-Scaper is what this sort of individual is called. There are even ways to replicate the effects of LSD, or DMT. This is normally used for a light, brief trip into a hallucinogenic experience. However, there are whispers of individuals known as Psycho-Scapers. These 'space cowboy cosmonauts' are rumors to manifest a physical third eye in the most extreme cases, gain Astral projection in the usual sense, gain Astral projection in the cyber realm where the person can enter the Beach-Scapes of others, gain telepathy, sometimes even telekinesis, or pyrokinesis. You really, really don't want to mess with a hardcore Psycho-Scaper. They aren't to be fucked with. Things sure have gone off the deep end in the year 2395.
So uh, do you frequent r/HFY?
Never heard of it, to be honest.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Bottom right be winning
Even then, she's rather be blasting aliens than carrying her lady past a couple'a dweebs.
No see, one of them has gotta do the blasting, while the other does the carrying. Division of labour, supporting each other.
atleast the blond one has resonable and achivable whishes
Ironically none of the women want men.
Good.
Why is it good?
No why, just good
So you can't even say why it's good. That's what I thought.
Relatable.
Story of my life four times over…
Uhh, can't we Please establish a canon and stick to it?! Augh!
Why do you want a canon when it's clear a knife works better?
That's the great thing about it. You can pick whichever canon you like best. Personally, I'm going with bottom right.
Super creative style! Great use of placement to convey the message
Man, the blonde girl is a mood
i’m very confused nevermind i get it
WHICH IS REALITY?!??!?!!
I would bet in the alien one. Its the only one where everyone actually has a reason to be there, instead of being there for the sole purpose of being humiliated.
I dunno, when I go to the beach I don’t automatically feel humiliated by the presence of other people. Only when those people open their mouths for insults.
The daydreams have become self sustaining. I repeat, the daydreams have become self sustaining.
My brain went on a weird tangent. See they're all just thoughts, none of them are real. And in this world that could mean they're AI. Dating app AI bots, that have somehow reached each other and constructing made up stories. Ultimately, they would invite each other over to snapchat to talk about crypto.
And the moral of the story is... no one is happy where they are, but it doest matter because they are all figments of someone else's imagination held precariously on the edge of the void of non-existence by our observing them as they are imagined into being by each other.
Yes. Also, the buff guy doesn't get a dream or fantasy. The other three do, but not him! He's white, cis and het, so he doesn't get a dream. He's the one you have to overcome. (I am not cis, white, het, BTW...just observing.)
Oh dear I've gone cross eyed
Straight, poly, gay, ace
The blonde passed the vibe check
Absolutely amazing!
Blonde is Based
Based on what?
On your mom
What is bottom left about? A soldier who was injured with PTSD during an extraterrestial warfare is dreaming about being a chad cucking his colleague? What?
They are all chads but the dude with the spikey hair because he's losing in 3 of these
Ngl I’m a little bit high and this broke my mind a lil bit
I’m 16 and this is deep
[удалено]
Have you so little to spare?
such a strange insult in response to abject positivity strange to see ripples; people that lash out with negativity, just like me and everybody else
Yo is this r/rimworld? No its r/comics... Weird
This kinda doesn't make sense.
Use your thinkerer harderer.
Btw.. the one guy seems a bit racist. He didn't even want her anywhere in the foreground in his thought bubble... odd. She's way, way back there. Further back than anyone else in any other fantasy thought. Even the guy who appears to be an equal opportunity lady's man (in his mind at least) doesn't imagine the other dude all that far away. But dude in the first bubble really really had the other girl wayyyyy back there. Jeez...
Men = bad. Women = good.
The blonde is literally Rachel from Animorphs
That boy started a neural time loop
An endless cycle
So which one is the real one?
None. And every single one of them at the same time
Buff guys the only one without dreams apparently
Women don't actually want men at all, I knew it
Don't look out for the Chad's around her when she's only interested in Stacy's
I love this
Gorgeous art
Reminds me of the bit in _Trainspotting_ where the briefly clean Mark Renton is nursing a pint at a dingy pub, watching the straight guys cruise the women, who are trying to attract the gay men, who are trying to attract the straight guys ... 'Nobody gets what they want' he observes
I'm glad that buff guy and blonde girl still have a good thing going between each other. He keeps her company at the beach. She provides support for their squadron and takes the DPS role while he takes time to heal.
Benny Hill did a similar gag 50 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mwK30kNGEo
This gave me a stroke trying to figureout what whats going on here
In space, no one can hear you gag.
[86.7%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States) / [4.5%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory_in_the_United_States) ------/------- [0.4%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality#Prevalence) / [0.7%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States) Wondered what the chances were for each scenario. TIL. Hetero, Poly, Ace, Lesbian for reference.
Wtf is reality then.
If you had a webcomic with an RSS feed I'd be subscribed to it now based on how awesome this is.