Annotated 48-27
FB: Sadly, the Silver Centurion then came up in an umpire’s uniform to inform Frigg that her hit was out of bounds. She replied, “No, YOUR balls are foul.”
Annotations Every Day - Written by T Campbell & Flo Kahn - Illustrated by John & Jason Waltrip
Panel 4 is one of these things where there is clearly a lot of movement, but it’s pretty hard to make out how come that Frigg’s legs appear to be above her head if she was swinging her glowy hammer anticlockwise, and it was apparently not slowed down too much by the … thing that Taro fired.
Assuming that panel 3 shows her just before making contact, I’d expect her to spin around to her right and/or fall forward from the impact (except if she expected a huge impact and the thing was actually almost weightless, in which case she might be flying the other way, under her own power.
But really, it would have been fine to simply see her as a glowy something in the middle of the swing, a lot of special effects around the impact, and then see her lying on her back after the smoke clears because I can totally accept that that was a pretty exhausting move, physically and mentally. I mean, in her place, I would probably have forgotten to breathe for the last few seconds before hitting the thing.
Think that for a fraction of a moment, both the projectile and Frigg’s mace are at a standstill in their collision. Frigg had jumped forward to meet the projectile so when her mace stopped, her body spun upward as an axle. Straining, she pushes against her own momentum to add some more force to her swing which breaks the balance and changes the acceleration vector of the projectile.
Hmm… not doing it.
Ever seen a good match of volleyball? If you jump forward to catch a ball, you land on your face because it pushed you down.
If anything, she should be turning and falling in the opposite direction of where she’s pushing the mace, what with action=reaction, but it looks as if her legs were following the mace. Or she would be pulled in whatever direction the projectile was heading (if the mace’ momentum did not absorb most of the impact), but that is also not really what we’re seeing here.
I actually think it’s a little unfair to demand that a webcomic gets this kind of multi-body dynamic physics right (when good-old Jurassic Park got it horribly wrong, and superhero movies still do, regularly), but it still looks off to me. I don’t mind cartoony delayed-gravity scenes or similar if it goes with the tone of the work, but that would be misplaced in this scene. If we could see that Frigg’s swing had a kink in it at the point where the projectile connects, that would show the significance of the impact and make it hard for her to keep her balance. Or simply a huge coloured explosion during the clash, followed by Frigg lying on the floor and panting — no potentially-wrong physics there, and enough different ways to explain what happened that are perfectly compatible with the plot.
Even if the ball is carrying enough force to push you back?? That example looks even more obvious to me because it eliminates the axle from the equation. If you try to swat a volleyball that pushes back as hard as you can, you definitely will fall back on your butt. Now if that volleyball and you both applied godlike force like in this scene, I’d definitely could see your puny human body being swung around like a rag around the center of the collision. (That’s why, like Frigg, you’d also need godlike armor.)
The way I read it is her follow through was so powerful that she couldn’t control the mace after the hit and was pulled along after it
I love how she generates more armor as she runs, both because she needs it (she’s not an idiot, more armor=less immediate personal damage from playing ball) but also because this situation is probably one of the biggest physical (er, visible-to-others?) thing she’s defied and her power is responding to that. That’s honestly probably the only reason she could be that close to it and walk away winded but unharmed. Her general shield of “fuck off and fuck you specifically”
Yep. Especially interesting that she got this glowy armor shit when defeating her own god, but not battling with Ardaic, although that guy also stands a serious chance of beating her. But he’s “only” some righteous idiot who’s roughly on her own level. That cannon, on the other hand, is much easier to get proper mad at.
Player: Remember when I chose “Rises to the occasion” as a character quirk?
GM: Oh no.
Player: Oh yes, this is an occasion.