Grrl Power #1415 – Catered scheme
I wanted there to be more crews present, but I ran out of space and time to draw them. Also, there really should have been a few more aliens and sci-fi looking people in the mix, but no, I just drew your basic fantasy menagerie. Cora’s crew is 4/5th aliens at least. I guess the mostly alien crews were off doing adventuring stuff. It’s not like Cora’s arrival had been announced before hand.
I figure in a galaxy spanning economy, a modestly successful bit of entertainment, like a webcomic or an indie novel could potentially make a mint, because the potential audience size could be in the trillions. I’m pretty sure I’ve posted before about how cultural tropes across many species would be a pretty huge filter for pop-culture. Like, the Cardassians probably wouldn’t be into J or K-pop, but they might really eat up Russian poetry and philosophy, what with their mutual predilection for bleak overtones. There’s always subcultures within each society, even Star Trek-esque monocultures. So the total consumer population would always be a slim fraction of the actual number, but still, if you’re starting with a trillion, as a nice round number for easy math here, if you can sell your indie movie or pop-single to 1/1,000th of 1/1000/th of the population, you’re still making a million sales. And in the post-scarcity parts of the galaxy, entertainment is one of the economic pillars.
All this is to say, the Unlimited Class Battle Arena has a lot more than a million people pay-per-viewing, and the gambling can get pretty out of control. I mean, there’s the official gambling channels, then there’s the underground stuff. If they really do have a ringer in Maxima, they could all buy a fleet of ships. The thing is, a lot of people have tried to put what they consider a sure thing into the Unlimited Class Battle Arena, but it’s the Unlimited Class Battle Arena. So sometimes entrants do indeed sweep the field, but mostly audiences get an over the top event that would make Michael Bay erection to death, and bookies laugh all the way to the bank.
Kobold Sydney vote incentive! Is finally done!
So… you know, check it out. Oh, and as usual, Patreon has a scales only version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Woof adolescent training film: “You will have hair growing in unexpected places. VERY unexpected places.
time for a super commercial
Blade inspired fashion even in deep space.
What?! No Wolfman?!
So, is this about to be a video of Max, or a video of Egoma they filmed specifically to maintain deniability?
Likely it will the video of Maxima one-shotting that Fel battle cruiser.
Possibly with the ‘Maximum power? Muah hah hah’ spliced in.
Again, Egoma is NOT the disguise Maxi will be using in the Battle Royale (with cheese)
Somehow the orc’s glasses are the most adorable thing ever.
You misspelled adorable but I agree she should meet Sydney I think they’d get a long like a house on fire. Both seem to have similar tastes in men and both are similar in body type.
Arrgh!!!! Stupid self-correct I said ADORKABLE NOT ADORABLE sorry but the more they try to “help” the worse it gets. It gets me very angry yes very angry! So angry I want to hear an earth shattering Ka-Boom! But as an intelligent life form I’m quite aware it was my fault.
She looks like a tall goblin to me, or maybe a short troll (because of the teeth)
In the next episode of Grrl Power…
Cora shows video of Maxima taking down a ship.
Crew ask what that has to do with anything.
Max shows her real appearance and everything clicks.
Oh good, bee…cause… Yeah, I’m not proud. I needed the money and the new guy I’m henching for. Yeah, a bit of a prude.
Is it just me, or does the guy in panel 2 look a lot like Anakin Skywalker?
This is a very odd group, honestly half of them look they’ve crossed over from a DnD campaign set in space.
Typo first bubble you’ve here should be you’re
Feel free to delete this comment
Holy shit, all of Cora’s friends look like romantasy protagonists.
Yeeaah. Valkyrie and Madam Pike (‘Girl’ feels right out) are a tight adventuring partnership giving off Xena/Gabbie vibes, but nobody’s sure; Daywalker and VampMage are a couple, although Little Miss Schemer and the Self-Aiming Breacher Round have this weird, complicated thing going on with them that started up when LMS/SABR was still acting as said couple’s official Infernal handlers/case officers; and Professor Orc just likes brooding abs.
And everyone just happened to be lounging around on the station in full adventuring costumes and makeup. Errr…. I mean “battle uniforms”. Everyone except Brooding Abs who was either in the middle of washing clothes or else Professor Orc hid all his shirts again.
Which actually could have a canon explanation… the crews present are the ones on duty or on call to protect the station, and therefore are always battle-ready while there. So throw in a brief time-skip to give Gaxgy time to prepare the meal and everyone else time to jump in the shower or touch-up makup, and we have the photo op here. Could also explain the lack of aliens; maybe they needed more time to get dressed.
True, there would be trillions of media consumers, but also billions of media producers. You would need to be the best of the best for all of those trillions to notice you, not just your homeworld. Even here on Earth – India has a relatively large film industry, but how many Indian movies have you heard of?
Yeah, the lottery has a much bigger jackpot, but the odds are proportionately worse.
Yeah, they’re definitely all just reskinned humans and humanoidish (Gaxgy) aliens. Heck, there’s even just a white guy and a black guy in there, presumably picked up from an orphanage while some aliens were cruising around abducting people, and they forgot to bring them back. Gonna need some more floating gas clouds, space centipedes, and what-not.
Flashback to the FEL super carier takedown?
So it’s maxima going to keep the disguise in the arena? Because unless she has some sort of really good shielding it’s going to get dexterity in the fight.
It was proven that it took Kevin at nearly full power to break her nose. Max badly misjudged his level, I’m sure she learned that lesson. NEVER underestimate you’re opponents. Everyone in the room will gasp in shock, trust me. They are underestimating her right now!
You may be off by a factor trillion.
In a single solar system …
Dyson swarms are kind of insane in scope.
And once you get to star-lifting(*) you can get enough raw materials to build any number of planets you care to add to your swarm. Or the one two solar systems over.
(* which is what Cora e.a. are doing here if not yet on a scale fitting for a kardeshev 2 society)
(Assume typo at the beginning of the speech: «you’ve here»?)
Instead of the clatter of a 16mm projector, I want to hear the THX “THOOOOMMMMM!!!”.
The Netflix “DumDum!”
What used to start 16mm films? VHS tapes? DVDs? Is there a current day Trope? Is there a future Trope?
“Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow”‘s intro went on and on before it got to the dirigible.
VHS tapes was generally the FBI warning
For 16mm I remember the chicka-chicka-chicka of the projector starting of and then the boop-boop-boop of the sound synchronization. Before theaters all went to digital projectors 35mm film did the same thing it was just trimmed off when the film went from the can to the projector.
As an aside I’m not a fan of THX. It always just came across as an excuse to crank the sound effects up way too loud.
Yes, I am old. Thankyou for noticing, now get off my lawn.
I expected Darth Revan to show up on the Star Forge, not Anakin Skywalker.
She needs to be clearer… are we talking buying one top-of-the-line starship total, or per each person in the room who takes advantage of the gambling opportunity? And is that a top-of-the-line starship if you play it safe and only bet what you can afford to lose, or a top-of-the-line starship if you go for broke with everything you own?
Cora did say depending on how much they are willing to put in. The bigger the bet, the bigger the pay-out. My grand father used to go to the horse races and never bet more than $5, He just liked to get the feeling of winning without killing his wallet. The most he ever won was $50.
I think I have found a new cutie to fawn over… panel 4, enough said.
What about tall and horny?
Since they all have some kind of stake in a star forge, the amount they’ve got available to put up is going to be astronomical (heh). I think there’s a limit on how much they can bet, even in a galaxy-wide market, without skewing the odds on an unknown rookie. Bet too much and people will figure out what’s going on and that only has bad outcomes.
Just do what others do with crowds you can’t be bothered drawing: say they are off camera :)
It took me a few seconds to see the ‘3’ on the screen…
Aliens/extraterrestrials use school.film countdowns..?