Ah, yep, I see it now. Could well be poo, but it’s a different shade, and would seem to suggest it’s also on her kid’s feet - I’d guess it’s from the mess in the two panels prior.

Her head is to the left; that’s her bum with poo. Her legs are folded up in a diaper change position.

Maybe - but the marketing that won’t affect you isn’t what you need to worry about. It’s the parts that do still work on you need to be careful of - and if you assume nothing will ever work on you, you won’t even notice when something does take. Whether that’s buying a trinket that doesn’t actually make you happy, or joining a group that turns out to be a cult.

Always better to assume you can be manipulated, and check in with yourself periodically.

This… strikes me more as self-aggrandizing than informative.

Yes, many technical folks are put off by certain marketing tricks. Good marketers just use different techniques when targeting people in this market, when they bother to at all.

We’re not immune to manipulation; and thinking that we are makes us more susceptible to it.

The regime struggles to operate coherently, but certain elements of the regime are certainly capable of this sort of thing.

For instance, Vance has invested in the “AcreTrader” app, which is designed to take advantage of exactly this situation.

Oh, that’s why they destroyed it

Half the internet can be wrong.

The question was, would you defend that?

Ah… Would reporting them rather than blocking be more appropriate, then? I recognize reporting isn’t always effective, but the right answer seems to be getting the community to police it rather than hiding your commentary from them.

And I recognize I’m speaking from a dearth of experience, here - this isn’t something I’ve dealt with, so I’m genuinely asking!

I have used gurps but prefered the hero system. FYI if its still running champions online uses it somewhat. It does not exactly have a variable power pool but it does have a freeform that can dip into various power sets and you might like to know that power armor is a pretty cool one. My favorite character was power armor.

I’ve heard about the Hero system off and on for a while now, I might need to look into it.

Anyway I think you have it right in the last paragraph. Someone mentioned colossus and I said power man would fit better I think but I think wolverine without the adamantine might work. Be a lot easier to knock him out then. Was trying to avoid multiple powers though like claws and healing or natural camo, prehensile tail, and teleportation. I figure powers based around an animal are still sorta one thing maybe. Much of this post was to hear from folks without the answers like. I can do this one little thing and here is how it would make me invicible. I wanted people to think along the lines of superpowers but not an I win at everything power.

Sounds like you’re looking for unified power sets for street-level superheroes? Multiple powers allowed as long as they’re thematically tied together?

I have heard someone talk about a power a bit like one of yours. don’t suppose you sold comics somewhere between high school and college?

Hah, no, sorry! Don’t have the disposition to be in sales, and didn’t really get into comics much until college. Still not a huge collector, just like superheroics in general :p

Here’s one I’m still struggling to figure out where to place power-wise: a tinkerer/gadgeteer type who makes custom super suits, gear, and vehicles for other supers, specializing in things that work with or enhance their existing abilities. The kind of guy who might have made Cap’s shield, Spidey’s webslingers, and the Incredimobile.

In the field he leads a squad of mildly enhanced people, all using his gear and vehicles. He rarely engages directly, instead directing his squad in battle. In a pinch, he can also enable “enhanced features” of the gear remotely - things that were in the manuals, if people would only read them! (Though they might not have existed before they were needed, on a meta-game level)

How do you scale the power level of a support/buffing character? By the squad size, by how big of buffs they can grant?

Are walls a barrier? And what happens if you, say, path through a tunnel; but it collapses while you’re shifting?

Can you teleport someplace you’ve never seen? Or to a place you’re seeing in a picture? Or a live camera view?

Hah, you mention game-like balance - I suspect you might enjoy crafting superheroes in GURPS! It has built-in costs for all kinds of abilities, based on their utility. And you can get a discount on the price if you attach certain limitations to them, as well as get a point refund for taking on limitations yourself.

I’m not clear just how powerful gets into OP territory; what’s the baseline? Superman is presumably too far; are the rank-and-file X-Men okay? Wolverine, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, but not Professor Xavier? Where do Spider-man and Batman come in on the scale? I assume Green Arrow’s fine, but Green Lantern’s on the OP side, I’m guessing?

I’ve actually got a few superhero designs kicking around for a side project, lets see how they rate! One has the ability to touch a machine, and possess it. While possessing it, they can also make extensive physical alterations to it - think making a car into a Transformers-style robot and controlling it, or a motorcycle into powered armor while you’re riding it. This also makes conventional hacking pretty easy (when done in person) - when you are the system, you decide who’s allowed to do what! The limiting factor is the size of the target - a car is easy, a locomotive or helicopter causes some strain, a container ship would need a plot device or macguffin before it could happen!

Another has a limited form of telekinesis - they can push and pull on things, or force them to remain at a set distance; but can’t apply “lateral” force to them (no lifting unless they’re above or below the target). Trick is, the same force applies to them - so if they push on the ground, they launch themselves; if they target a street light while falling, they can maintain a certain range and swing! For the cool factor, have this force be carried by colored beams; emitted typically from the hands, but potentially from anywhere on the body. A similar force inside their body lets them shrug off high G forces and blunt force (or any?) trauma. Finally, faster reflexes would help them zip about in a more Spider-man style.

I’m also always a sucker for an iron-man style tinkerer. But I’m not sure how that doesn’t eventually scale to OP levels…

(edit) missed the well-equipped soldier benchmark - sounds like Cyclops and Nightcrawler maybe, Wolverine’s healing might already be too much. Car-transformer needs a large machine to do big stuff, so that might still be in the soldier’s neighborhood? Not sure about the tractor beam power though. And the tinkerer is… basically a super-equipped non-soldier? :D

Yeah, my dating site knowledge is decades out of date! I wouldn’t rule it out completely, but I’d ask around online or in person for current advice.

I will say, though, that my sister helped me revise my profile after I set it up. And it helped a lot - as I said, I found my wife that way. Originally I just had a kind of generic head shot of myself. At my sister’s suggestion, I added a few pictures of me being goofy, and changed my profile information. My wife still remembers the pictures - one of the added ones was of me trying to ride a kid’s Big Wheel, and the other was of me wearing a cereal box on my head while I excitedly opened something. My wife tells me that they definitely helped me stand out - women get a huge amount of thirsty messages, and looking like a fun person instead of DudeBro3327 can make a big difference! It’s fuzzy now, but I’m pretty sure that after that I started actually getting responses.

I’m not saying that same process would work for you; but someone who knows you well and has some idea what women will respond positively to could probably help you out a lot.

I don’t doubt that a guy can be a good wingman - but it seems like they’d have a harder time, because now it’s two guys trying to loop her in. A mixed gender pair seems like it’d be much less intimidating.

As for finding someone neurodivergent - someone like that would probably compliment you well, but they’re not the only possibility. Keep in mind that anyone who has a loved one who is neurodivergent will also likely already know how to interact comfortably with you, and a subset of those might compliment your personality as well in ways you might not expect. There are also more neurotypical people who just get along well with a lot of people, and they can be an unexpectedly strong match for you too.

What I would suggest is just practice making small talk, and maybe finding social groups you can join (clubs, friendly meetups, etc.) that are mixed-gender. The idea is to practice making acquaintances and casual friends, so you can figure out what works for you socially. Once you’re comfortable with that - reassess. You might try a dating website or app, or maybe one or a few members of your new social circles might have other ideas. If you want to think of it as a numbers game, look at ways of increasing your exposure - that means talking to more people, and being around people. And even if someone isn’t a good match for you, chat them up anyway! They might still be a good friend (or even winglady!), and at the very least, it’s a chance to practice chatting.

I remember when I was still on dating sites, there was this one girl who kept seeming interested in me, but whenever I’d try to set something up, she’d cancel. After a few times of this, I figured there was something else going on; and from other context clues, I decided she probably liked the attention I was giving her but didn’t want to commit to anything more for whatever reason. Normally I’d just move on - but instead, I started flirting more without trying to actually set up a date. And she responded well to this! So, we spent a fair bit of time flirting outrageously. I got to figure out how I flirt, she got the safe attention that she craved. We would have been a terrible match, but we both benefited from where we ended up. Point being, you can play to the numbers; but if you make yourself available, you can also find people you didn’t know were options.

It is, but putting a hot thing next to other cold things also warms them, and can allow bacterial growth to start if it’s a large enough heat source. Letting it cool some first avoids that.

I was in a similar spot - hated that I was so poorly skilled socially, felt like I couldn’t read a lot of social signals (I suspect I’m somewhere on the autistic spectrum), and hated that I felt like I was destined to be alone.

Couple of things helped me with this. First, I researched how flirting works. As in, I started reading research papers about it online. This was a few decades back, so I’m afraid I don’t have my notes anymore (and they’d probably be a little out of date now anyway); but I do remember that I got comfortable enough I could start experimenting with conversational approaches.

Next step was to practice. Any time I ended up in a socially comfortable setting with someone I didn’t know, I’d try to do some small talk. Keep it low stakes, try it out on people you don’t expect to see again, and see if you can get them to chat a bit. If it works, great! You’ve found a process that might work with others, and brightened someone’s day! If not, well, they’re not likely to remember you in two hours anyway.

After that, I started looking at online dating sites, and would practice the same process that I found worked for me - lighthearted jokes and expressing an interest in whatever they brought up, or what was on their profile; and following up with conversation about that. I have no idea if the same thing would work these days; I understand that the dating sites I used back then have gone downhill since. In my case, I had several first dates, ended up hitting it off with someone, and now we have two kids together!

I think the main thing is, to echo blarghly, see if you can get yourself comfortable interacting with people platonically. It’s likely something you’ll need to practice, and like anything else, it will be uncomfortable at first. Think of it as developing social muscles - it’s painful and intimidating, but if you stick with it, you’ll be able to do more and more with it.

(You mentioned you’re interested in speaking with women - if you’re a man, you might have an easier time if you know another woman who’s up for playing wingman for you. A man who’s already comfortably hanging out with a woman has a very different social profile from a “lone wolf”!)

Just went through this with both kids… The word “need” always implies a goal. “I need x (to do y)”. Without context, the goal is generally either survival, or more often, comfort: “I need a drink.” “I need a break.”

When you’re speaking in the context of doing something, as superglue was, that becomes the implied goal. “I need those recommendations to automatically populate (in order for my wife to be comfortable using this)” is a perfectly valid use of the word “need”.

While I understand it doesn’t quite fit the scenario, it does strike me as a good way to preserve “lost information” in a similar situation. Pair that with a solar charger (or even improvise something like a pedal charger), and you’re pretty set for a lot of basic information people would struggle to reconstruct.

Lol, should have Googled it first after all!

Here I was hoping I could get someone excited to geek out about how all these new-to-me systems play together!

Lol, you’re welcome to it! And it’s always fun to see your comics!

Not sure I would either, but I can at least understand that some people don’t want the emotional load of anger.

Still, why aren’t they at least trying to make sure this guy stays off the road?!