I agree with Scarlet that she has to read the book, however i’d use the oldfashioned method of ‘read it in the shop itself’, and to avoid pesky shopkeepers being too nosy, befriend the shopkeeper and pretend to be interested in random books ‘nothing weird’. Or get a side gig working there, and hide the book behind the counter for reading it.
Done the ‘read it in shop without buying it’ method many times myself.
Having read a few “The Weapons of (time period).” it’d do her better to learn what weapons Grondor has, then it would to read a listing of what weapons Arcadia had. Even if there’s pictures. As for what crazy idea Scarlet has, I hope she has enough control to keep fire out of the plan. The secret weapons book is an untested trove. It might have nothing useful in it. It might be a book on the matters of the secret weapons that no-one believes that Arcadia had, and the psychic mountain goats that made them possible. Ancient persuasion techniques either involve hypnotic gemstones, or pressure points like jamming someone’s arm behind them.
That sounds very silly. Does she really think the local government / military hasn’t considered any of this yet? Finding not-yet-used military weapons info during an ongoing war, in a book that everyone can buy, is not likely. She should better consider a stealth mission to Milik with her friends than thinking so big-scale.
First, this appears to be an antique and curio shop, rather than a book shop, so that book in the window may be the only extant copy of the work, meaning while anyone could buy it, not everyone could, and few may be aware of it.
Second, did anyone during the first and second world wars evaluate the death ray and other warfare inventions of Archimedes or the weapons of Alexander the Great’s army, or other ancient warrior civilizations? Or even a method to avoid jamming of torpedo guidance systems that happened to be invented by a movie star? (That last was evaluated and accepted, then ignored until the inventors of Wi-Fi needed a collision avoidance mechanism.)
So doing her own research and not assuming that someone else has already checked that book out for useful ideas, seems eminently sensible to me.
Your point is well-made, though the context here is a little different, since we know the older civilizations here were more advanced than the modern day. Maybe it’s more like Anglo-Saxon kings not bothering to learn how to build with stone like the Romans did, or develop more advanced siege weaponry like the Romans had.
Poyntre
The problem is the anglo-saxons kings (to call them some way) had not the resources, nor the production lines, nor the capacity, nor the money, nor the expertise, nor the complex society Romans had. They weren’t stupids, they had to play with quite different rules. Romans went to hell when they found themselves in the very same place mediaeval kings were (collapse, it is called). Many bullshit are said about plagiarism, tech theft, copycatting and the like, but if Portugal wants to build nuclear subs or Poland wants to make fifth generation fighters, they can’t, simply they can’t gather the necessary pieces, not even put them together in the right way. Only a handful countries (or group of) can do that. Size matters.
BTW, Archimedes’ mirrors story is a myth. And even greek fire, which was revolutionary for its age, was extremely dangerous, killing its users many times. There is a myth that middle ages weapons, for instance, were primitive and they could have been defeated by easily substantially improved weapons or revolutionary ones. They weren’t. They were very expensive, complex, needed very well trained soldiers and very effective, true “secret weapons” like long bows could not be replicated by countries with lesser human or material resources, and paid the price.
“You don’t need to see my identification.”
“…I don’t need to see your identification!”
“This isn’t the book you’re looking for.”
“…This isn’t the book I’m looking for!”
“I can have the book for free.”
“…You can have the book for free!”
“Move along.”
“…Move along! Move along!”
Let’s hope this old trick from a book doesn’t end up with another stay in a detention cell because as we’ve seen her peoples skill are something else. I kinda wonder if by now she’d be old enough to simply earn money and safe up? One of the potential employers she talked to after Tibors accident said ‘If you were two or three years older …’ which is the case by now.
Well, depends on the skill of the relative skills of child and adult. Tibor strikes me as a minimum wage kind of guy (if there is such a thing on Laravel) and Scarlet has some very unusual skills that’d pay good money in the right job. Not that I expect this to happen because this definetly isn’t the “Adventures of Scarlet the math clerk and the machine of eternal tabulation”. Also she has been with Tibor for more then half of her live now and for HIM honest work was apparently more like a last resort.
Scarlet hadn’t really demonstrated her persuasive skills in front of a group of people. Now, with one person… I hope they don’t involve firearms, threats and torture. 🤔
By the way, Scarlet has had the same green hat and scarf for four years, since SFOS020.
Also, I love Scarlett’s facial expressions in panels 2, 4, and 6, as well as Tibor’s in panel 6! 😁
Oh, you mean she could try the one from https://www.sandraandwoo.com/scarlet/comic/a-sky-full-of-stars-014/ ? I doubt that’d go smoothly. As for outfits, she has several to he reading pages at the beginning show this pretty nicely. Possibly there is a particuar one she likes most? Of course occasionally she needs a new hat or the skarf is worn through but the outfit stays.😁
19 thoughts on “Machine Girl 018”
CE
I agree with Scarlet that she has to read the book, however i’d use the oldfashioned method of ‘read it in the shop itself’, and to avoid pesky shopkeepers being too nosy, befriend the shopkeeper and pretend to be interested in random books ‘nothing weird’. Or get a side gig working there, and hide the book behind the counter for reading it.
Done the ‘read it in shop without buying it’ method many times myself.
Jude
Did the method you use work on every shopkeeper? Surely you came across some that weren’t so friendly or wanting to be sociable.
CE
Eh those are more the exception than the norm
ToBeFree
😂
Ancient persuasion technique, yeah sure. That’s absolutely going to work. As well as her attempts to persuade the people at the market.
I like CE’s ideas but I’m afraid that’s not what she has in mind. It’s just what she _should_ have in mind instead.
BlueishMage
I, on the other hand, do want to know!
Graybeard
Any bets on whether there’s a picture of the Machine in the book?
Vicious Sand
Having read a few “The Weapons of (time period).” it’d do her better to learn what weapons Grondor has, then it would to read a listing of what weapons Arcadia had. Even if there’s pictures. As for what crazy idea Scarlet has, I hope she has enough control to keep fire out of the plan. The secret weapons book is an untested trove. It might have nothing useful in it. It might be a book on the matters of the secret weapons that no-one believes that Arcadia had, and the psychic mountain goats that made them possible. Ancient persuasion techniques either involve hypnotic gemstones, or pressure points like jamming someone’s arm behind them.
Treziac
Pretty sure Planet Protector will be involved both in “persuasion technique” and in the book
NaN
That sounds very silly. Does she really think the local government / military hasn’t considered any of this yet? Finding not-yet-used military weapons info during an ongoing war, in a book that everyone can buy, is not likely. She should better consider a stealth mission to Milik with her friends than thinking so big-scale.
Old Brit
First, this appears to be an antique and curio shop, rather than a book shop, so that book in the window may be the only extant copy of the work, meaning while anyone could buy it, not everyone could, and few may be aware of it.
Second, did anyone during the first and second world wars evaluate the death ray and other warfare inventions of Archimedes or the weapons of Alexander the Great’s army, or other ancient warrior civilizations? Or even a method to avoid jamming of torpedo guidance systems that happened to be invented by a movie star? (That last was evaluated and accepted, then ignored until the inventors of Wi-Fi needed a collision avoidance mechanism.)
So doing her own research and not assuming that someone else has already checked that book out for useful ideas, seems eminently sensible to me.
ME
Your point is well-made, though the context here is a little different, since we know the older civilizations here were more advanced than the modern day. Maybe it’s more like Anglo-Saxon kings not bothering to learn how to build with stone like the Romans did, or develop more advanced siege weaponry like the Romans had.
Poyntre
The problem is the anglo-saxons kings (to call them some way) had not the resources, nor the production lines, nor the capacity, nor the money, nor the expertise, nor the complex society Romans had. They weren’t stupids, they had to play with quite different rules. Romans went to hell when they found themselves in the very same place mediaeval kings were (collapse, it is called). Many bullshit are said about plagiarism, tech theft, copycatting and the like, but if Portugal wants to build nuclear subs or Poland wants to make fifth generation fighters, they can’t, simply they can’t gather the necessary pieces, not even put them together in the right way. Only a handful countries (or group of) can do that. Size matters.
I remember a Swiss colonel, who, after knowing about nuclear weapons said (more or less literally) “it is that easy!”. It was. A hemorrhage of money, corruption and a meltdown inside a mountain (fortunately Switzerland has a lot).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucens_reactor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
I don’t know what Scarlet has in mind, but she understands all this crystal clear.
https://www.sandraandwoo.com/scarlet/comic/a-sky-full-of-stars-075/
BTW, Archimedes’ mirrors story is a myth. And even greek fire, which was revolutionary for its age, was extremely dangerous, killing its users many times. There is a myth that middle ages weapons, for instance, were primitive and they could have been defeated by easily substantially improved weapons or revolutionary ones. They weren’t. They were very expensive, complex, needed very well trained soldiers and very effective, true “secret weapons” like long bows could not be replicated by countries with lesser human or material resources, and paid the price.
ToBeFree
Oooh, she might learn how the gun she found earlier actually works!
MegaJar
Ancient persuasion technique, eh?
“You don’t need to see my identification.”
“…I don’t need to see your identification!”
“This isn’t the book you’re looking for.”
“…This isn’t the book I’m looking for!”
“I can have the book for free.”
“…You can have the book for free!”
“Move along.”
“…Move along! Move along!”
'phoon
Let’s hope this old trick from a book doesn’t end up with another stay in a detention cell because as we’ve seen her peoples skill are something else. I kinda wonder if by now she’d be old enough to simply earn money and safe up? One of the potential employers she talked to after Tibors accident said ‘If you were two or three years older …’ which is the case by now.
ToBeFree
A child doesn’t “earn money and safe up” to an amount exceeding their parent’s monthly income in any reasonable amount of time.
'phoon
Well, depends on the skill of the relative skills of child and adult. Tibor strikes me as a minimum wage kind of guy (if there is such a thing on Laravel) and Scarlet has some very unusual skills that’d pay good money in the right job. Not that I expect this to happen because this definetly isn’t the “Adventures of Scarlet the math clerk and the machine of eternal tabulation”. Also she has been with Tibor for more then half of her live now and for HIM honest work was apparently more like a last resort.
Hegel-Marx
Scarlet hadn’t really demonstrated her persuasive skills in front of a group of people. Now, with one person… I hope they don’t involve firearms, threats and torture. 🤔
By the way, Scarlet has had the same green hat and scarf for four years, since SFOS020.
Also, I love Scarlett’s facial expressions in panels 2, 4, and 6, as well as Tibor’s in panel 6! 😁
'phoon
Oh, you mean she could try the one from https://www.sandraandwoo.com/scarlet/comic/a-sky-full-of-stars-014/ ? I doubt that’d go smoothly. As for outfits, she has several to he reading pages at the beginning show this pretty nicely. Possibly there is a particuar one she likes most? Of course occasionally she needs a new hat or the skarf is worn through but the outfit stays.😁
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