Grrl Power #1393 – From the mouth of privates
A large portion of Stygans are martially obsessed – they’re not totally a monoculture like Klingons or Ferengi, but the ones that aren’t are like an Asian guy in the 80’s. Everyone just assumes he knows kung fu.
Maxima’s not wrong, that a Stygan turning down a duel would be notable, especially one wearing an armored cuirass in public – but it’s not like there’s never been a Stygan that’s gone out on the town looking to get some dinner, dancing, dating and dueling in, and wound up eating a fermented Brax roe burrito and discovered that his sphincters are sequentially and rapidly losing their own duels with his meal. Saying “I’d love to duel but my butt is about to dishonor me all over the dance floor.” is a perfectly acceptable response. No one wants to experience Saturday Night Dengue Fever in the middle of a grapple.
Yeah, there are Stygan dickheads who will look for non-martial edges to bolster their own egos, but it’s really martial reputation that most of them are after, and some guy who squirts Visine into his opponent’s water bottle with wind up being ridiculed and shunned, not lauded for his prowess. I mean… usually. There are always little echo chamber cliques of cult-of-personality sycophants, but they are thankfully few and far between in Stygan society.
I realize while reading the page just before posting it, but in Panel 5, Samketh (the mouthy punk) is supposed to be implying that him talking during the duel up to this point was his attempt to distract Max/Egoma with banter, but unless you happen to have my brain, (and I suspect very few people do) I’m not sure that’s at all clear. I think it reads more like he’s implying that Max was the one being chatty, except that doesn’t make sense as the only thing she said since the duel started was “Give me back my funnel cake,” and that wasn’t even directed at him.
And by the way, “Egoma” is my attempt to extend the naming convention I used with the alien mercenaries that attacked the team in New York. They were all anagrams of Greek letters. Egoma is obviously Omega, Detla… I hope I don’t have to tell you what letter that is. Lapha is Alpha. Garamm is… Well, it’s Gamma, only I somehow managed to stick an “R” in there cause sometimes me not brain good. I probably can’t run with that scheme for too much longer because a lot of Greek letters have very short names. I mean, “Rho” can only become “Roh” or “Hor,” probably not the best name. Or “Ohr,” or “Orh.”
Ooh, look! A new vote incentive! And it’s updated with color!
Well, in progress, obviously. I have another one that’s actually a bit further along, but everyone was all, “Sydney Kobold vote incentive!” So I switched to this one. Plus the other one was a multi-character picture so it will actually take me longer to finish. I hope to have an update for this one each week, so stay tuned. There is a slightly higher res version on Patreon.
By the way, this gunmetal blue-ish background and teal pencils are how I draw the comic. I set it up this way so I don’t have to spend all day staring into a bright white blank page.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Or it could become Hro.
I’m thinking Hro would be a grizzled old veteran, well past his prime but with a lot to teach a young punk like Samketh…
Hro sounds very old English as in the middleages there was amassive shift in spelling and pronunciation, so a word like Horse used to be spelled Hros (with the ‘H’ probably being guttural).
Some languages still maintain this with their word for Horse being some variation of Russ.
Makes me think of Hrothgar.
I actually went into martial arts specifically to learn kip-ups, only to find that the instructor wasn’t interested in teaching them. (And then accidentally sprained BOTH wrists at the same time, cutting my martial arts career short.)
He actually preferred that, if you were knocked down, you went straight into a backflip, to gain some distance while getting back on your feet. If you did a kip up, you were likely to just be knocked down again before you had your footing. It’s just a showy move.
Which ironically makes it appropriate for this guy!
What’s the difference between a backflip and a roll?
A back-flip you extend your body, a roll you are tucked in and land in a crouch. My martial arts time ended when I broke my back and dislocated my hip and shoulder in ’83. Couldn’t extend them with out having to reset the joint and lost a 1/3 of the lower back flexibility. That and the nerve damage prevented me from training. I buy only metal canes however ;)
You can always go with names like ‘Ugh’ and ‘Urm’ for the real stone-age types …
We need more kobolds… I know a guy who knows a guy…
Captain Fang from YAFGC?
I’m pretty sure those bodyguards are enjoying this a little more than they would be comfortable admitting in public.
If you really want incessant banter, fight Spiderman.
That’s banter done right as you need a proper degree in smack talk in order to do it like Spider-Man.
Akin to how Jacky Chan is so skilled at martial arts he can make it loop around to being comical.
This guy lacks both.
Huh, as far as the intent of panel 5 goes, my brain read it as “This won’t stop me. I’m used to getting tripped… just more verbally than physically.”
Exactly what I thought.
I read it as “I’m not making a fool of myself with this incessant yammering — it’s part of my *strategy*!” (like when a cat acts like “I *meant* to miss that jump”).
Just so people know, putting Visine in someone’s water can *kill* them. It’s not a laxative. It’s a potent poison, if ingested.
(reacting to Dave’s note below the comic)
How many points in this duel?
Some honor duels I have read about went to five points. If so? This is going to be a VERY long day for that brat.
Come to think of it, even if it is three, this is going to be very embarrassing for him.
So would it be more humiliating for Egoma to bring him down with a leg sweep five times, even though he knows its coming but just can’t stop it, or score five different ways so he’s always fighting the last war? The latter is more narratively interesting…
I wanna give Sydney scriches
“Tzerki” sounds an awful lot like “Meteor” in Drac.
“Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.”
– Robert Heinlein, “Tunnel In the Sky”
I’ve met my share of cocky punks like this kid, know a little about sparing and think they are a master. I was a body builder before I took up the art so when someone got cocky I’d grab them by the neck and lift them up, I had to laugh when their eyes went wide. More so if they were taller than me.