PS238 by Aaron Williams

Ps238: The School for Metaprodigy Children
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2018-06-26
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2018-06-26

Jun27
by Aaron on 2018-06-27 at 12:35 am
Issue: Ps238 Volume 11

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Discussion (66) ¬

  1. xel unknown
    2018-06-27, 12:50 am | # | Reply

    Heh, love this argument over an open coms…

  2. LokiTheDarkGod
    2018-06-27, 1:24 am | # | Reply

    I love her reaction to the kids quarrel.

  3. Leapfaith
    2018-06-27, 1:31 am | # | Reply

    I really like Gravpulse! I hope she finds better things to do that are part of the PS238 storyline in the future.

  4. Jesse
    2018-06-27, 3:43 am | # | Reply

    I love Curtis, but I’m not sure I’d trust him with *any* dangerous equipment.

    • Jesse
      2018-06-27, 3:45 am | # | Reply

      Cecil, I mean. Oops.

    • Sabreur
      2018-06-27, 6:02 am | # | Reply

      True, but this is a kid who managed to get an eldritch horror cloak on his own. Giving him dangerous devices might be the *safter* option, all things considered.

      • Simon
        2018-06-27, 6:33 am | # | Reply

        Yep… if you don’t give him dangerous stuff to play with, he’ll find his own. And he’s *good* at finding dangerous stuff.

        • Flushmaster
          2018-06-27, 4:24 pm | # | Reply

          Also, the Revenant tends to have a “learn by doing” approach to teaching things like swinging from grapple lines, flying a jet, etc, so I see Cecil getting some new gadgets pretty soon. Probably not exactly like Moon Shadow’s though, in order to maintain brand recognition between heroes. I can easily imagine Cecil flinging around classic flying saucer shuriken with various tech built into them.

  5. Jacen
    2018-06-27, 7:50 am | # | Reply

    Ok, so he wasn’t out the window quite yet. My mistake.

    Not that it was very hard to distract the guard and get out, mind you…..

    • Nobody
      2018-06-28, 6:51 pm | # | Reply

      8714 Ambonnay Drive

  6. Segev
    2018-06-27, 10:02 am | # | Reply

    Note that Cecil has admitted to still being IN the vent. “He wasn’t; I am.” So Cecil hasn’t escaped and has – barring lying – revealed where to look for him.

    • Rockphed
      2018-06-27, 10:41 am | # | Reply

      She isn’t being paid enough to go after either of the kids at this point. Also, the whole conversation is confusing if you don’t already know who Cecil and Moonshadow are.

      • Faust
        2018-07-06, 10:22 am | # | Reply

        Also she has been told to guard the vent so she shouldn’t chase either of them but should really pass on the new information.

    • Veritas
      2018-06-27, 1:07 pm | # | Reply

      Cecil has a shrink ray. Whatever measures Pistonic might try to put in place, thinking he’s “packed in there like a one-person mosh pit”, might well not be enough to actually constrain him.

      • Flushmaster
        2018-06-27, 4:34 pm | # | Reply

        It took me a minute to work out what just happened, and I know all the characters so Gravpulse is probably a bit confused, thus explaining her apparent “screw this, I quit” decision. When I realized that it was Cecil’s coat that was seen disappearing into the vent, not Moon Shadow’s cape, it made more sense.

    • Faust
      2018-06-27, 8:42 pm | # | Reply

      He can still go invisible to escape if he wanted to.

      • CCC
        2018-06-28, 3:53 am | # | Reply

        No, he can’t. His cloaking device is in the locker; he’d need to escape before he can get it back.

  7. Zech Judy
    2018-06-27, 10:39 am | # | Reply

    Pray that Cecil never meets the Von Foggs. His gadget-lust would doom him to pawn-hood.

    • Rockphed
      2018-06-27, 10:42 am | # | Reply

      I foresee Cecil having to submit a report titled “why I thought it necessary to shrink half a zeppelin-city to foil a plot to conquer the world”.

  8. Rockphed
    2018-06-27, 10:45 am | # | Reply

    I know it is unlikely to get adressed, but I think “cell phone cable-cutting boomerangs” is confusing. Swapping it around to be “cable-cutting cell phone boomerangs” feels slightly less confusing. Alternatively, putting a comma after phone, so “cell phone, cable-cutting boomerangs”.

    • Veritas
      2018-06-27, 5:09 pm | # | Reply

      That would probably be a clearer way to write it, but this is not only dialog, but a kid’s dialog. Even more than most people, kids don’t always pause to think of the clearest way to say something.

      • Russell White
        2018-06-28, 4:29 am | # | Reply

        I’d go with “cable-cutting, cell-phone, boomerang”….simply putting the most important descriptors at the end…it’s a boomerang first, a cell phone second, and a cable cutting device last

    • Guilty
      2018-06-27, 8:46 pm | # | Reply

      Yeah, my first thought before reading the full line was ‘Cell phones don’t have cables’

      • Rockphed
        2018-06-30, 3:53 pm | # | Reply

        As was mine (hence the comment). The best solution is probably putting in a comma. They are, after all, cell phone boomerangs and cable-cutting boomerangs, so a comma between the two adjectives nicely separate the equivalent adjectives.

    • wardenrt66
      2018-06-28, 1:15 am | # | Reply

      We need a catchier name for them. “In English, adjectives go in this order: Opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose-noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. (Mark Forsyth)” I would write it ‘cellphone cable-cutting boomerang’. But I would also bet that they also can be used as a tracking device and a listening bug. So really, describing them by what they do isn’t optimal; we should have a simpler name for them … but ‘crescent dart’ is already taken. Maybe ‘moon dart”?

      • CCC
        2018-06-28, 3:55 am | # | Reply

        “A lovely old little French green rectangular silver whittling knife” sounds perfectly sensible to me, apart from the slight ambiguity around whether ‘silver’ is a colour or a material.

        • =Tamar
          2018-07-01, 11:59 am | # | Reply

          It might be “French silver”, as in “silver alloyed according to French standards” – which in the case of a knife, might be the lower of the two French standards for copper content in silver alloys.

      • TBeholder
        2018-06-30, 8:08 pm | # | Reply

        He’s obviously wrong. The knife would only need to not be silver. 😄

      • Kytross
        2018-07-01, 2:35 pm | # | Reply

        It should read cable cutting boomerang cellphone. It is either a “boomerang cellphone” or a “cellphone boomerang.” Those are it’s two functions, and without a proper name, the function defines the object. Their word placement is interchangeable/irrelevant.

        The adjective is ‘cable cutting.” “Cable cutting” modifies boomerang so they should be next to each other for clarity.

        What kind of boomerang cellphone is it? It’s a cable cutting boomerang cellphone.

    • Robert Haynie
      2018-07-02, 1:19 am | # | Reply

      Just call it a Shadowrang. It’s going to happen anyhow.

  9. Ed Rhodes
    2018-06-27, 6:38 pm | # | Reply

    OK, Cecil. When Moon Shadow gets his eldritch horror coat and a shrink ray, then you can complain because HE has high tech boomerangs and you don’t!

    • Nealithi
      2018-06-27, 7:32 pm | # | Reply

      Okay comparison.
      Moon Shadow: Magno-grapple gun. Utility belt with smoke bombs and cell capable throwing discs.
      Agent Cecil: Eldritch long coat, shrink ray, alien captain’s chair with computer hookups, cloaking device. And an actual super power.

      Thinking if he stands for equality then Moon Shadow needs more toys.

    • Psiberkiwi
      2018-06-28, 7:29 am | # | Reply

      Don’t forget the ‘pet’ starship…

    • Sweeper
      2018-06-28, 8:15 am | # | Reply

      Greener Grass Syndrome that every kid has, I suppose. Doesn’t matter how cool your stuff is compared to the other kid’s, if they have something you don’t, life is just not fair.

      • TemperaryObsessor
        2018-06-28, 10:45 am | # | Reply

        Yup although a part of it might be that R only gave him the shrink ray and a cell phone and everything else he took for himself.

        • Ed Rhodes
          2018-06-28, 1:33 pm | # | Reply

          And Tyler gave him a cloaking device. Tyler doesn’t have a cloaking device!

          • TemperaryObsessor
            2018-07-02, 9:56 am | #

            If I remember correctly Vance the ship that came with the cool chair he stole gave him a cloaking device Tyler was the messenger.

  10. LeapFaith
    2018-06-28, 2:18 am | # | Reply

    I think they should be called, “Moonerangs!” Yes, I definitely think Moon Shadow throws Moonerangs, or maybe Moon-erangs. But I can see his classmates deciding to call them, “Shadowrangs,” or even “Soul-Slivers” (since Moon Shadow has the power to see the guilt in your soul, naturally!). Also, I can imagine an argument (or several) breaking out at the next recess about what they are called.

    • Faust
      2018-06-30, 1:04 pm | # | Reply

      It gets more complex if you add he can converse through them.

      How collectible will those be. Everyone has his business cards but those are rare.

    • TBeholder
      2018-06-30, 8:41 pm | # | Reply

      “Moonerangs” sounds silly enough to most likely win.

  11. Flqr
    2018-06-28, 11:43 pm | # | Reply

    Is it wrong of me to dislike Cecil more than about anyone else in the cast? The boy is entitled, selfish, prejudiced and greedy. Damn.

    • Segev
      2018-06-29, 10:32 am | # | Reply

      He’s a kid. He wants cool stuff. His sense of “fair” is centered around whether others have stuff he wants and he doesn’t. And he’s learning basic pattern recognition while having an extra sense that gives him a category he can easily identify that others cannot.

      He’s not actually prejudiced at all. He jumps to conclusions based on fictional tropes, but that’s not nearly the same thing. Once he learned the “aliens” weren’t a unified body out to take over the world, he stopped prejudging all metahumans based on the fact that he could “tell they were part of the alien conspiracy.”

      If anything, he thinks a lot of metahuman stuff is cool. Which, again, isn’t prejudice; it’s preference. There is a difference.

      • Flqr
        2018-06-30, 6:12 am | # | Reply

        Meh, he may be a kid, but considering most of the cast is composed of kids, and that they are all more likeable, I say this is not an excuse. When your greed (“others have stuff he wants”) is worse than Zodon, and you’re less likely to see reason than von fogg, there’s a problem.

        As for prejudice, it’s exactly “jumping to conclusions”, he’s like that with girls, lately. And no, “kids” aren’t like that, only him is like tha among the cast.

        • Marie
          2018-06-30, 10:37 am | # | Reply

          I think this is an unusually whiney moment for him. He does have more stuff than Tyler already. (and doesn’t have soul-crushing parents) So he is way ahead with having a power AND gadgets.

          • Gene
            2018-06-30, 10:26 pm | #

            I do not remember meeting Cecil’s Parents, and as a kid he has learning to do as he grows up.

          • TemperaryObsessor
            2018-07-12, 7:48 am | #

            R got their permission for something before testing if Cecil had the ability to sense super powers. He also offered to help Cecil with his alien delusions which they were grateful for.

        • Segev
          2018-07-06, 10:35 am | # | Reply

          I think you’re just showing your personal dislike of him, and inventing reasons to dislike him, Flqr. He’s not exhibiting any unusual amount of greed. Note how he’s not in any way trying to take them from Tyler; he’s just complaining that he doesn’t have his own. Zodon would try to take what he wants. Von Fogg would, as well. I don’t know where you get the “less reasonable than von Fogg” business; that seems like your personal distaste for the character coloring your perceptions.

          Zodon is a difficult one to use as a metric, because his greed is untempered by a respect for others’ property, but at the same time, he has generous urges he actively tries to pretend don’t exist and find excuses to indulge by claiming they’re selfish. Zodon’s self-image is wrapped up in being a villain, but his core nature is actually closer to Tyler or Julie’s.

          Cecil is hardly exhibiting a level of greed even remotely comparable to what Zodon regularly is shown to be doing, however. Zodon steals, often with a great deal of effort. Cecil, at worst, scavenges things that were already going to be “unclaimed property.” He doesn’t go out of his way to make them such, either, though he’s not above looting his conquests when said conquests made themselves valid targets.

          In all, I think you just dislike his schtick as a conspiracy theorist and super-geeky kid. Or something about his personality and character. Because your accusations against him are not objectively accurate.

    • Kytross
      2018-07-01, 2:46 pm | # | Reply

      I think his background justifies his attitude. He’s a single kid who spent most of his life with no one who took him seriously. Especially not his parents. Before the supers came to town he had one friend, Alex, and Alex was humoring him about his conspiracy theories, the most important thing in Cecil’s world.

      He’s a loner. He’s got poor social skills. Cecil does not fit in.

      I also think his complaining about not having weapon parity with Tyler is also about fitting in. He wants to be an equal, he wants to be included. For the first time in his life he has friends and they take him seriously. I think he would do nearly anything to keep that going on.

      But he’s growing. We’ve seen him be selfless and put his wants aside for the mission. He’s making new friends. Like the Flea, and now Ron.

      The group we saw playing video games were all outcasts. Ron, who lost his powers. Tyler, who never had powers. Cecil and Flea are the kids who don’t fit in anywhere. The difference is, Flea doesn’t want to fit in, Cecil doesn’t know how to fit in. But those kids hanging out together is going to be good for all of them.

      • TemperaryObsessor
        2018-07-02, 10:19 am | # | Reply

        Cecil also found out that Tyler pretended to believe him and let him in on stuff in order to keep him in the dark and R took Tyler’s lies and ran with them, essentially using him as an operative while keeping him in the dark until his fear of aliens drove him crazy.
        Cecil later found out all the “trust” that Tyler and R placed in him was lie to keep him placated. I think that might make Cecil wonder if every little thing is proof that they are still keeping stuff from him.

        • TBeholder
          2018-07-02, 10:10 pm | # | Reply

          Cecil is no stranger to paranoia, indeed. 😁

    • Stephen Bierce
      2018-07-02, 11:09 am | # | Reply

      I think Cecil is overdue for a visit to the Castle’s Hall of Mirrors (as seen in “Time After Tyler”). Maybe that can be arranged.

      • Nightmask
        2018-07-05, 11:05 pm | # | Reply

        I can’t even begin to imagine what Cecil’s alternates would be like (we never see that any exist in the universes Tyler viewed, and evil Tyler that we see first would have never been friends with a ‘normal’ like Cecil in his universe if he does exist).

        • Stephen Bierce
          2018-07-07, 12:51 am | # | Reply

          Who says that the continuua the mirrors display have to be the same ones every time? Number of the Beast.

          • Nightmask
            2018-07-09, 12:15 am | #

            Well certainly I never said that, I simply pointed out that we never saw what any of his counterparts (if they existed) are like in the three universes Tyler viewed. Although we can assume that in the last universe he’d be the same as all of humanity since they’re effectively drones of the group mind Ultimate Tyler created but can never be part of.

  12. andrewhopkins2004
    2018-07-01, 8:32 pm | # | Reply

    What kind of boomerang cellphone is it? It’s a cable cutting boomerang cellphone.

    But is it.?…How do we know that it isn’t an electric stunning,cable cutting,exploding,moon shaped boomerang cellphone.?

  13. TBeholder
    2018-07-02, 10:15 pm | # | Reply

    She didn’t even react on name-dropping Revenant.
    Or decided it only confirms that all this can only end in headache.

  14. Wanderer
    2018-07-03, 3:25 am | # | Reply

    Alternatively, naming Revenant as an associate may be why “I’m not getting paid enough” comes into play. He evidentially give major leaguers headaches; someone who sees herself as a minor leaguer could well react by opting out on the basis of no winning against him.

    • Andrew_C
      2018-07-05, 6:12 am | # | Reply

      Just had a thought. Revenant is more skilled, versatile and competent than 95% of the supers out there (and 99% of the so called superheroes), who just skate by on sheer power. That must drive supremacists like the Powers nuts and be the real reason why so many hate and fear him.

      • TemperaryObsessor
        2018-07-06, 9:39 pm | # | Reply

        If he didn’t succeed so hard they might actually like him in a he Daaww he thinks he’s people way. Or they may still hate him but to a lesser extent. Also if he actually looked up to them instead of disliking them.

  15. Rens
    2018-07-04, 9:49 am | # | Reply

    “Tricked by two twelve-year-olds” isn’t going to look great on your resume either, lady…

    • Rockphed
      2018-07-08, 3:37 pm | # | Reply

      I’m pretty sure that the main cast is in the 8 – 10 range. They are still in elementary school, which typically runs to grade 5, where kids might be 12, but probably are no more than 11. Also, when 84 and pre-Toby end up in the street, 84 mentions that juvenile heroes used to wait until they were really old, like 13 before they started working in public. An 8 – 10 year-old might think that 13 year-olds are really old, but a 12 year old will not.

      • Nobody
        2018-07-10, 9:32 am | # | Reply

        8714 Ambonnay Drive

      • TxGator
        2018-07-11, 11:54 am | # | Reply

        True. But how much time has passed in the comic since then? The impression I’m getting is that the kids are no long 8-10 year olds. That some of them are closing in on the preteen years.

  16. Nobody
    2018-07-10, 9:36 am | # | Reply

    8714 Ambonnay Drive

  17. Nobody
    2018-07-10, 9:17 pm | # | Reply

    What is going on? Why are my posts being replaced with gibberish?

    • Rockphed
      2018-07-12, 10:58 pm | # | Reply

      I was about to ask why you were giving us directions to a place in Tennessee, but since you don’t know I suppose there isn’t much point.

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