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Wil and Penelope.

4 (6.3%)

Pizza Girl!

11 (17.5%)

Dora and Tai.

13 (20.6%)

Dora and Tai bring along Raven (as a chaperone).

14 (22.2%)

Sven crashes the party.

2 (3.2%)

Gabby's older brother... DALE.

12 (19%)

Cosette's roommate Luna.

1 (1.6%)

Emily's AnthroPC.

0 (0%)

Some yet-unknown character.

2 (3.2%)

Space Station makes a holo-visit!

2 (3.2%)

Enough partygoers! GIT 'ER ON!

2 (3.2%)

Total Members Voted: 61

[WAYF]

A stealthed flying machine? I dunno, Hanners. I just can't see it.

Thank you for giving me an excuse to use this:

Wait, isn't that the thingsonmyhead guy? HE SPEAKS?

You only know Paul Saunders as the guy who does/used to do ThingsOnMyHead?
HOKAY. Power of viral videos, apparently.
The guy in the referee uniform is Paul Saunders, and he along with his friend Graham Stark have a comedy video website called LoadingReadyRun, which is really amazing. They do all kinds of stuff, including their own sketch comedy videos, MST3K-style video game cutscene analysis, gaming news for Penny Arcade TV, and a panel discussion of weird news (which is where the gif is from).

Incidentally, ThingsOnMyHead was part of a plan for each LoadingReadyRun crew member to do their own brand of fake viral video (partly as a parody, partly to draw traffic to their website). ThingsOnMyHead seems to have been far and away the most popular.
So yes, the guy from ThingsOnMyHead does speak. A lot.

I also have gifs of strike 2 and 3 on hand, in case DSL feels like being funny again (and knowing DSL...)

Must.. not... derail thread...
Is Emily's house just out in the middle of nowhere? I don't really know what my perception of the geography of the QC-verse should be like.

[Akima]

5. P.S. Edit Add: And because it will probably be asked, Wonder Woman's invisible plane, through most of its incarnations through the decades, was capable of silent flight and VTOL.

I was thinking invisible solar-powered dirigible to deal with the lack of noise and downwash from rotors or VTOL jets. I was assuming no flying-saucer-style reactionless propulsion, because, you know, those pesky laws of physics and all that. A glitch in the stealth-field caused by lowering Hanners through the interface is the obvious explanation for the blue streak along the waterfront.

Presumably Hanners wears some sort of body-suit in her role as Wonder Woman?

[pwhodges]

Hanners is not Pizza girl!

[jwhouk]

Let's get the party STARTED! What's next?

Swimming and food and games and... uhm, yeah.    4 (8.2%)
Didn't you guys hear? It was supposed to be a costume party!    0 (0%)
Gabby openly wonders why Tai and Dora aren't there yet.    6 (12.2%)
Claire shows up - with her stupid brother in tow. ("I thought Hannelore would be here!")    1 (2%)
Meanwhile, Tai and Dora are stuck on the side of the road. Literally. (Tai wasn't paying attention...)    5 (10.2%)
Sven shows up.    1 (2%)
DALE shows up.    9 (18.4%)
Sven and Dale fight over Marigold!    3 (6.1%)
Marigold fights over the vintage copy of Super Mario World 2!    5 (10.2%)
Emily doesn't mention what she added to the punch.    5 (10.2%)
Elephants! Dragons! Hee eheeheheheheeeee!    0 (0%)
The snacks include Waffles, Spathe Ham - and BANANA SMOOTHIES!    1 (2%)
Someone give Jeph another piece of Nicorette or something.    2 (4.1%)
Seriously - if he has to draw 1,000 bonercats to stop smoking, DO EEEETTT!!!!    7 (14.3%)

Total Members Voted: 49[/i]

[jwhouk]

Hanners is not Pizza girl!

...But, but... but RANDY says she IS!

[Marchbanks]

Hanners is not Pizza girl!

...But, but... but RANDY says she IS!

No, no . . . Randy said Penelope is Pizza Girl, which is what Faye has contended all along anyway.

[Method of Madness]

No, that's Hanners in the final panel.

[WAYF]

To be fair, even at the time, only Akima actually noticed that it was Hannelore, not Penelope if I remember correctly.

[ponderch3rry]

That background pattern is making me cross-eyed 

[Method of Madness]

It's pretty obvious that it's Hanners from the hair. That being said, there's a chance I didn't realize it at the time, so fair enough.

[Akima]

Penelope wouldn't need the wig. Short-haired Hanners would.

[JohnTheWysard]

And yes, I do believe that was an invisible helicopter or plane of some kind.

Or a Hindu fakir's ropeclimbing trick... in reverse.

[Ph2]

Soon there will be a plot twist: Emily is Pizza Girl.

[Kugai]

I have just received a message from the Klingon High Council

They want their Cloaking Device back.

[Blackjoker]

That is awesome, also is it me or does Hannelore seem to be drawn differently. And as I didn't mention it before, Marigolds "I like Videogames"  was friggin adorkable.

[Soulsynger]

[ ... ] adorkable.

Best. Word. Ever.

[HiFranc]

The one thing I noticed about the lake is that Hanners doesn't seem to have a reflection.  Should the gang start breaking out the garlic?

[Soulsynger]

The one thing I noticed about the lake is that Hanners doesn't seem to have a reflection.  [ ... ]

That seems to be due to perspective. Her reflection would be in front of the jetty from this comic's point of view.
... but if not. God help us. Space science vampires! °O

[Sidhekin]

Good explanation.  Except for the niggling detail that the reflection is otherwise perfectly void of perspective.

(Still not complaining.  Just observing.)

[cesariojpn]

Is it just my computer, or is the image not loading properly? Gabby looks weird in the color wash, and the thing above Hanners flashes for a second and disappears.

[Soulsynger]

How can there be a gif-gag if it's a jpg? oO

Good explanation.  Except for the niggling detail that the reflection is otherwise perfectly void of perspective.
[ ... ]

In that case they're all vampires and this strip has turned into Eerie Questionable Cuties.

[CrowFairy]

Soulsynger: Watch the bottom panel. It's an animated gag.

And you're seeing it correctly, cesariojpn. The news post says this:

All that awful compression just for a really subtle animated gif gag, oh well

I managed to get a screenshot of when the vehicle flashes in. So I did a crude outline of it for anyone who can't really see it.

[Soulsynger]

Soulsynger: Watch the bottom panel. It's an animated gag.
[ ... ]

Oh, I've seen it. But that wasn't the question...

For me it's just permanently visible now.
And this is the url for today's comic's file. Which is .jpg. °O

[Sidhekin]

TwitterJeph explains: "That turned out awful, just uploaded a non-animated version as well"

[Method of Madness]

As well, meaning the animated version is also uploaded? I can't find it.

[idontunderstand]

Same here, I was late to the animated-gif party it seems.. 

Also, Marten groping Gabby in the second panel. And she's like "aw come on".

[pwhodges]

The gif is still there.

[idontunderstand]

Huh. Thanks. Doesn't look that bad.

[Throg]

Mmf. QC never (blatantly) broke the laws of physics before, so I'm gonna go with Akima's handwaving post. A VTOL / hovercraft / helicopter would have screaming downwash, and the surface of the lake is like a sheet of glass, not to mention Gabby, Marten, Faye standing right there. The idea of a cloaked airship is much better than trying to swallow reactionless drives or something.

Is more-or-less perfect optic camo a theoretical possibility? Maybe. Getting close in the real world, and QC is quite a bit more advanced. 

pwhodges, thanks for the gif. Actually wasn't supposed to be completely perfect optic camo.

[Carl-E]

Well, after all, nobody's perfect...

[Mr_Rose]

Near-perfect optical camo is possible assuming you're OK with not being able to see out (this is one of the things I really liked about the original Doom; the invisible demons and the invisibility ring still had their/your eyes visible so you could see) either. And silent is relatively easy if you have big enough speakers to put out the inverted form of the engine noise–which can be pretty damn quiet anyway if you use low turbulence ducted fans.

As for downdraft, that's directly proportional to the weight of the vessel and the more you can spread it out the less it will be felt by someone underneath. A low mass with a proportionately large rotor could produce a vehicle with a downdraft that could be perceived as a breeze.

[pwhodges]

Also, Marten groping Gabby in the second panel.

There have been other strips where Marten swinging his arm while walking has been open to misinterpretation.

[bainidhe_dub]

Hey wait, the invisible dirigible is a HannerMOM project?

[jwhouk]

Of course it would be a HannerMom project. It's a stealth blimp.

I'm not exactly sure, but I'd assume the little "dip" on the left of the bottom panel is a tailfin/stabilizer, and the little bulge right above Hannelore is the gondola. This being a ECT vehicle, it of course has an AI driving.

And just recall the "Vanish" from Die Another Day. Micro-lenses weaved into a blimp covering could theoretically hide itself by using cameras and tiny LCD's to show the other side of the blimp.

[J]

5. P.S. Edit Add: And because it will probably be asked, Wonder Woman's invisible plane, through most of its incarnations through the decades, was capable of silent flight and VTOL.

I was thinking invisible solar-powered dirigible to deal with the lack of noise and downwash from rotors or VTOL jets. I was assuming no flying-saucer-style reactionless propulsion, because, you know, those pesky laws of physics and all that. A glitch in the stealth-field caused by lowering Hanners through the interface is the obvious explanation for the blue streak along the waterfront.

Presumably Hanners wears some sort of body-suit in her role as Wonder Woman?

quantum levitation?

according to this guy, the superconducting layer on that 3" disk is half a micron thick & will support 70,000x it's own weight. he goes on to say that the same 3"disk, with a 2mm layer would support up to 1000kg.

so then the question is: would it be possible, given a sufficient quantity of the superconductor, to achieve the same locking effect on a larger scale, using the earth's natural magnetic field?


also: and just for the coolness

[idontunderstand]

Also, Marten groping Gabby in the second panel.

There have been other strips where Marten swinging his arm while walking has been open to misinterpretation.

Hehe. Does this mean you've got more examples of Marten's sneaky tendencies?

[pwhodges]

This one isn't the one I was thinking of, but shows the same effect.

[Border Reiver]

Didn't think of Marten's arm placement - I was just wondering where Hanner-Mom got the Thunderhawk from.

Unless she's got something on the Fabricator General....

[ink slinger]

Is Emily's house just out in the middle of nowhere?

It's her parents' lake house (i.e., a fancy cottage) so, yes, it likely is in the middle of nowhere.

[cesariojpn]

The gif is still there.

Nope, still not getting it to work.

[pwhodges]

Then I can't help; the link I gave is still good.  Try using a different browser or something.

[Wintercode]

Maybe I'm stupid, but I just noticed that the character's hair is done in 3D with with flat 2d outline. And once I've noticed it, it was difficult to ignore.

And this is shaping up to be a long arc, we're ten strips in and the it is still buildup (or maybe the buildup IS the arc? /wildtheory) what with everyone coming and preparing for the party and not even all the main characters are still there. I'm guessing this arc will last untill sometime in November.

Today's strip is merely continuation of the previous one's so it doesn't resolve any questions, but if I had to guess, I'd wager on Marten getting/attempting to get a girl as a likely part of this arc. He is closest thing to a main character we have and both of the previous girls, namely Lt. Potter who outright rejected him and Padma which ended the way it ended, were unsuccessful and short-lived. As for likely girl, we may get completely new character (maybe one of friends Emily invited since this is her party?) or, though I don't want to break the rules and ship anyone, one of the existing characters. Though Marten and dating is at an odd place, both of the girls he would be most likely to end up with are in happy relationships and it's difficult to impossible to pair him with anyone else from the established female characters, so maybe the whole "Marten will never be happy" (I'm paraphrasing) is true.

One thing, today's strip does nothing to advance the plot and it certainly doesn't narrow any of the possibilities of what may happen in the arc. I mean I like random gag strips and Hannelore would probably be my favorite character if I had to choose but I'm curious to see what will happen with the arc.

Is Emily's house just out in the middle of nowhere?

From what I can tell, it's in the middle of nowhere in a sense that it is in forest well off the beaten path but there are clearly houses on the lake so there may be people in them. Those are all vacation houses so they are obviously empty for most of the year but it isn't impossible for few of them to have people.

[Akima]

Of course it would be a HannerMom project. It's a stealth blimp.

Yes! Blimp or rigid, a stealth airship is just the sort of thing that would appeal to a Bond-villain-esque corporate overlady. And of course it would be run by an AI.

Quantum levitation? As far as I am aware, the floating disks in these demonstrations always hover over the pole(s) of the magnet(s) as a consequence of the Meissner Effect. The Earth's magnetic field has its poles at the North and South magnetic poles, so I suspect that, even if all the practical problems of engineering a self-contained superconducting hover-ship were solved, you might well find you could only hover over Northern Canada or just off the coast of Antarctica, areas possibly of little interest to a super-villain. The intensity of the Earth's magnetic field varies, being strongest over the magnetic poles and weakest at the equator. At its strongest, it is roughly 1/200th of the strength of a fridge-magnet at around 65µT, or much less that one millionth of of the strength of the neodymium magnets I'll bet these demos use.
Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, and I have not studied physics since high-school.

[ponderch3rry]

Still no hello for Gabby 

[Redball]

Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, and I have not studied physics since high-school.

Akima the Eidetic has a ring and a rhythm to it.

[iduguphergrave]

Still no hello for Gabby 

I really doubt it bothers someone who doesn't believe in altruism.

[Gregorio]

Plot prediction: Marten drowns and Faye takes her top off.

[PthariensFlame]

Plot prediction: Marten drowns and Faye takes her top off.

In the reverse order, and for good reason.

[Kugai]

Don't make HannerMom mad

[Method of Madness]

She'll find out where you do your shopping, buy the entire mall, and burn it out of spite.