Grrl Power #1442 – Something, something, chicken dinner
Under normal circumstances, blowing up the thing that’s obviously the power source is a terrible idea. Under a severe time limit? Blowing it up may be the best option. It still might be a terrible idea, I’m just saying a time limit might eliminate other paths all together. Blowing it up might be the only option.
Maxima’s blue word bubble and slightly squareish text represents that her voice is disguised. I’m thinking Sovereign, but somehow feminine. Like, 1 octave higher, and her “I’s” have little hearts instead of dots. You can totally hear it in her voice!
If Bluce and Gail didn’t know Ixah can talk, I have to wonder what the sign up process for the tournament is. Like, presumably, the competitor or a representative has to fill out some kind of form, even if you don’t necessarily need to put your real information on it. They don’t care who’s competing, whether you’re the heir to a powerful dynasty or a secret science project or a member of an unknown species, but they still need to know what name to call you. I guess Cora taught Max to write “Ixah” in galactic standard, then she just stared menacingly while they tried to ask her questions, and eventually, they were like, “Fine, you’re entering late, so you’ll need to show you can hang in the Elimination Battle Royales, so go qualify for that by fighting a bunch of battle mechs with laser halberds and oh, you’ve already broken all of them. Okay, you’re good to go! Be at the transit pad at this time.”
Ah! I thought I had more time till March. I’m bad at looking at dates apparently. The new one is underway.
Here is Gaxgy’s painting Maxima promised him. Weird how he draws almost exactly like me.
I did try and do an oil painting version of this, by actually re-painting over the whole thing with brush-strokey brushes, but what I figured out is that most brushy oil paintings are kind of low detail. Sure, a skilled painter like Bob Ross or whoever can dab a brush down a canvas and make a great looking tree or a shed with shingles, but in trying to preserve the detail of my picture (eyelashes, reflections, etc) was that I had to keep making the brush smaller and smaller, and the end result was that honestly, it didn’t really look all that oil-painted. I’ll post that version over at Patreon, just for fun, but I kind of quit on it after getting mostly done with re-painting Max.
Patreon has a no-dragon-bikini version of of the picture as well, naturally.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
MMMMMM. Space Bacon. yummy.
It seems like Ixah made an enemy
at least it’s one who has a long road before becoming and kind of threat again.
Maxima chose the Lina Inverse solution to magical puzzles.
An always reliable solution
well that’s another series I have to re-watch
It is a rather quick way to deal with an obstacle when you’re very short on time and have starship-level artillery energy at your disposal.
and a great inspiration for my own sorceress character in her early days. Vampire castle, we don’t know anyone inside, we don’t care about the treasure, its just full of traps and minions, and the job is to stop this new evil from infecting the land; well…unleash high level spells from the outside and bring it and everyone inside down.
Also riddle goblins…just stab them, especially after seeing Lina’s most cruel and sadistic move (which she only did once that i know of), where she had a reverse spell on troll regeneration and then inflicted minor injuries which caused the inverted regeneration to make them implode. Quick, logical, takes care of the problem, and kind of sociopathic LoL.
i do believe Megumin in KonoSuba did the “unleash high spells from the outside” tactic, and ended up angering the otherwise inoffensive inhabitant
In all fairness that was target practice on a castle she thought was empty and as strong as “Explosion” is its small town level at best. Lina Inverse would be casting Dragon Slave which can annihilate a mountain, and my own sorceress Rhulan has a habit of casting equally destructive spells at structures when the intention is to remove them and anything inside them as a target.
Which again, I could see Lina casting less destructive spells if she is using a structure as target practice…or plans to loot it *Fireball* LoL.
Which side bar about Explosion being at that level, it is odd that 80s/90s-now, fantasy anime the magic has decreased in power while Shonen martial arts anime in that same time period the power levels have sky rocketed.
As wizards go up in level, the number of problems a Fireball can’t solve approaches zero.
Don’t knock it till you fry it!
Cheating can be fun!
Blowing up their power dumps
Will put them on the run!
Maxima got no time for Gordian knots.
Just like Alex :)
Darkness beyond twilight, Crimson beyond blood that flows
Buried in the stream of time is where your power grows
I pledge myself to conquer all the foes who stand before the mighty gift bestowed in my unworthy hand
Let the fools who stand before me be destroyed by the power you and I possess…
Then you’d be a fool to send an opponent who you have already recognized as powerful to them.
As Digimedes already spotted: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and united we are stronger than when we stand apart.”
Please ignore the above; I was replying to someone and things went wrong.
It happens :)
And the quote is (paraphrased from the evil overlord’s handbook) The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. But it can be a temporary ally.
You are entirely right about the ‘together we are stronger’ part (if you can cut back on the backstabbery)
“United we stand / Divided YOU fall”
__ “Bucky O’Hare”: Tri-Bot
I like how the 70 Maxims of Schlock Mercenary fame says it. Not quite the same in meaning and far more paranoid but. “The Enemy of my Enemy is my Enemy’s Enemy. No more. No less.”
That is the US military standard: don’t try to respond to the problem, remove it.
It can’t stand in your way if it’s in pieces.
In the novel Phule’s Company by Robert Aspirin, the corp set a speed record for the obstacle course by blowing up all the obstacles.
That’s every military standard, at least, the ones that want to be successful
Sometimes, the only response is to remove it
Funny how it didn’t work in Afghanistan, or Vietnam.
Those both had the same problem, leaders (at all levels: military and civilian) limited our ability to execute… smh lol I have about 4 pages of opinions on my time in that armpit country… being afraid of a repeat of the Marshal plan is annoying yeah it was expensive in time and resources but Japan and Germany are great places now… the Marshal plan worked…
The big problem with Afghanistan was that the problem was not military in nature. Any more than it’s a military problem to birth a child.
Vietnam would have been entirely possible to keep afloat with selling them arms. But Congress changed hands and the new government was completely uninterested in keeping their agreement to sell them same.
Neither problem was solvable using the US military, at least not in any manner that said military would held still for. There are some military forces on Earth that would be OK with scorched earth tactics (as in “completely depopulate this area”), but I don’t think the US military does that.
What are you talking about? We won in Vietnam.
And Afghanistan was won, then given up by weak politicians.
“Won” means what?
Our intervention into Afghan politics did not create a government that the population supported, at least not enough to die for. The Taliban had people willing to die for it. We succeeded in killing a lot of them, and in the process, recruiting for them. Eventually Trump decided to withdraw, leaving 2500 troops on the ground when he left office with the no-doubt-coincidental-and-not-at-all-intended result of leaving Biden to decide whether to send in reinforcements to continue the fatal farce, or grasp the nettle and complete the withdrawal.
Vietnam? The French got bloodied enough to figure out that the peasants there really didn’t want to be ruled by Europeans, but our American leaders of both parties didn’t want to be seen as losers. Propping up an unpopular government cost only money and lives, which is acceptable to too many officeholders; when Nixon and Ford finally called it quits, arms shipments could only delay the inevitable.
But who knows? maybe weaker countries will one day learn to love us if we bomb them enough.
“People like to drive their rulers out. They object when others do it for them.”
“People like to drive their rulers out. They object when others do it for them.”
+1 Insightful
That’s because they either weren’t allowed to remove it (because of back-home whiners), or because their ‘leaders’ forced a complete withdrawal (leaving behind so many of their own troops to an uncertain fate and limited future)
So, yeah, the failure in both cases wasn’t due to the military
So Ixah can talk. I wonder what else she’ll say.
Perhaps : “To any who would turn people into weapons: Don’t.”
Suitably cryptic, doesn’t point back at Earth, memorable, and suitable to be interpreted as anything from a cautionary to a warning to a threat. Delivering a line like that after winning the tournament might alter the course of galactic society for centuries. Or not. Or maybe just for a few days.
Also suitable for nerds and philosphers to debate for decades and speculate about and wonder, among other things, whether it reveals anything about her or where she came from. That effect would probably last longer than the effect of any cautionary, warning, or threat.
So says a living weapon…
“Fuck yo’ couch, and all points between.”
Take 2:
“Domain Expansion: Unlimited Military Budget”
“Domain Expansion: I Am The Military Budget.”
So… How much did Deus win?
Given that he (and “Isabella”) didn’t appreciably move between seeing “Ixah” and her being set to the Fae Realm, probably nothing. At least yet, but the odds will shift after this performance.
I shall seal this indescribably powerful enemy in with all my valuables and things I care about.
Yup that was certainly a brilliant plan on her part. Apparently, she was the Fey Lord in charge of that realm.
Or was, depends on how much is left and in what condition
Honestly, there’s a reason they hold these events on barren rocks with nothing important anywhere near them. Any single one of the competitors we’ve seen could have just as easily started wrecking the realm, and may have caused even more damage than the one who went straight for the castle. This is what those in military strategy circles call “a really dumb move.”
I am actually feel sad for the faerie. She had a clever tactic that theorethically could work in very powerful individuals.
Lol no. This plan was stupid as hell. Sure it wins her the round but risks her domain. She should have made the gate throw the enemy into a *rivals* domain.
Its only clever against normal opponents, trapping the knight or wizard who wandered into your forest un-invited to come slay you or get in the way of your plans, sure your minions, puzzle masters, and realm could stop them. But this was a high level combatants battle royal tournament round. Against opponents of unknown origin that have expressed power capable of knocking down kaiju and war machines. This would be like Calypso trying to trap Vegeta on her island and being surprised he blew up the island.
Yes, she vastly underestimated the level of play here.
Two of the combatants would’ve accidentally stepped on the castle and got sent back immediately upon arrival. The rest have some means to flatten the castle. Anyone it could work on would’ve been speed blitzed right at the beginning.
It never was going to work.
Don’t be. She had mentioned the “queen of snow and woe”, what refers to the Unseelie Court’s ruler. They are the “less nice” fairy folk…
Ya this Fairy Lord has no right to be upset about trying to win this by banishing someone to the place she keeps her stuff. That’s like stealing a bomb and throwing it into your house set to explode. Of course your house if going up in flames.
Just had a thought.
The sign of a good book is one you plan to read again someday.
The sign of a great book is one you immediately start rereading as soon as you finish.
Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder. The entire series is great, but the first she put her heart and soul into.
Magics Pawn by Mercedes Lackey is another I would recommend.
So that’s why she couldn’t win by default. Also a really stupid tactic. She deserved that for thinking that was ever a viable means of dealing with anyone in this arena.
I mean, while the fact that blowing up the power source resulted in the gate reopening rather than ceasing ability to function completely was dumb…
(and the fact that Max didn’t worry about what would happen to the realm while she was in it/herself if the portal didn’t reopen/what might happen to any innocent creatures living there– because she had no way of knowing if it was powering a puppy orphanage or something –as a result of her actions, was questionable at best)
the tactic is hardly stupid considering the level of the other participants. UMBRage or Gray Anatomy clearly couldn’t field the power Max can. meaning they’d be too slow and would Kill-Seven recognise the power lines or be able target them fast enough? At later levels, it might be a risk, but at this one, only Max was likely strong enough(not that Nightwing knew that), fast enough, and apparently capable of detecting lines of power enough(her magic eating sword, maybe?) to devise and attempt the strategy in time(and that’s before considering whether time was faster or slower in that realm).
Not to mention, clearly Nightwing couldn’t deal with Max normally, so it was also intelligent by that perspective. A trap which might fail is smarter than a fight that won’t succeed.
Let’s be fair here – even if the gate hadn’t reopened with the castle destroyed… her castle, with “centuries of trophies and artifacts” would have been destroyed either way, and her realm apparently destabilized to the point of potentially collapsing into de facto nothingness.
So, in that scenario… yeah, it might have finished “Ixah”, but it would have been a very, VERY pyrrhic victory.
Pyrric, maybe. But that doesn’t mean stupid.
The point is that for 6 of 7 remaining combatants, her course of action was viable(at least for the length of 30 seconds), and Max had intentionally been really underplaying what she could do prior to being transported, in counter to the comment to which I was replying’s statements.
I’m wondering how long it will be, before Maxima realizes “hey, I’m an immensely-powerful being. Why am I taking orders from these losers?” and just become Empress of Earth.
Maxima seems to be in this weird position where, by the standards of space-faring civilisations with super advanced tech and multitudinous powerful magics and powers, she is among the cream of the crop, but of Earthlings, without abusing her flight and scarring the planet or something, 2-3 people have shown themselves to be capable of being some kind of threat to her.
While it may take some teamwork/effort, it seems humanity, though the use of superpowers, have the means to rally and beat her unless she starts nuking cities.
Also, she seems to really believe in the system and have some level of empathy, so there’s that.
At this point there’s “all my friends would hate me if I did that”.
And I have to think there’s a “tiger team”, of supers who Archon has at best no contact with, and at worst is rivals with. the idea being that you can use the two teams to control each other. At least that seems to work with rival military forces…
The difficulty with that solution of course is whether you have some other super or combination that can reliably take Max down. There are some powers that could do it – for instance a time traveler, especially in conjunction with an illusionist, or a duplicator. She can work very fast, but can only be in one place at a time, and she doesn’t get a “do over” if she’s mistaken about where the point of decision is in a crisis.
What would she gain by doing so?
She takes orders because she believes in the system. Deus may yet convince her that it’s fundamentally defective — that’s almost certainly one of his goals. But she has enough on her hands just wrangling a team of supers. Why would she want to rule the world?
She could change policy, but that doesn’t change people, and ultimately it’s people’s motivations and beliefs that matter, even more than their actions.
So, now, in addition to the title of “Destroyer of Mosques”, Maxima upped it to “Eradicator of the Fey Realms”
I feel a little like Maxima should have ‘marble shot ‘ the fairy back to her realm….
Or, sling shot her using her (Sara’s) own panties as the sling :P
Butt that’s more of a Dabbles kinda move ;)
Oh good, the pixie gets to live… And gets to spend the next 5 centuries rebuilding.
Did Maxima just… genocide the capital of a faerie dimension???
I know right, killing who knows how many sentient thinking beings just to win a tournament is kind of super f evil. Like were there like pregnant women, children or even infants in there(not that just men and women arent important)?? Is it the fault of the fairy that sent her there abso-fuckin-lutely but still.
It is possible that during the time between getting portaled and the almost end of the tournament Max evacuated everyone from the blast radius, we dont know the time that passe.(also possibility of time dilation is there) so¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s a beautifully brushed smoldering crater in panel 2. 10/10
Hmmm. I wonder if Max is the new mistress of a fey realm.
They just had a duly called, formal duel where the former mistress accepted the challenge, put her realm in play, got beaten soundly, and acknowledged the defeat by yelling “I yield!” three times in a row.
Does that, or does that not, invoke some kind of bizarre fairyland law about putting a realm up in a high-stakes bet?
This is pure speculation. I wouldn’t think twice about it if “I yield!” had been called once, or twice, or four times. But three … that’s a ‘Very Significant Figure” in legends about fairies and magic.
How would we know?
One supposed magical effect of a new lord (or lady) would be that the land begins to reflect the physical attributes or ‘stigma’ of its ruler. And Max has unusual physical attributes. I wonder how the land would begin to reflect that.
Could Sydney’s Ætherium causeway handle travel to and from a fey realm? The causeway seems to be the ‘ne plus ultra’ of transportation abilities according to galactic society. Where can’t it go?
And if it can’t go back and forth to fey realms now, what happens if Syd spends her next upgrade pip on it?
I think it likely can, but as far as we know, Sydney has yet to use it to travel anywhere the orbs haven’t already been first. Cora and her crew helped her decipher the interface, and gave her some “stellar landmarks” to help her navigate, but finding any fey realm, let alone a particular one, is likely going to require more information than she currently has. She’s got friends who might be able to help her navigate, and is “famously gregarious”, so she could probably make a few more with the necessary knowledge in short order.
People in the comments really blaming Max for destroying the fairy’s collection…
Let’s say you own a china shop. And there’s a bull run being done on your street and you enter the competition. The bull is right on you and you, thinking you’re going to be clever, trick the bull into entering your china shop, and you slam the door. You don’t get to play victim when the bull makes a mess of your china shop.
“By the Queen of Wind and Woe’s Icy tits!” Just has me laughing. Love it.
Ahh yes the downside of putting your home base of the game board. Shame about that but she was the one that bound her maneuver around something she couldn’t afford to lose.
Int 18 Move, clever and leveraging the rules to get a powerful foe out of the ring and time her out.
Wis 8 move, not realizing that putting her THERE was going to cost you, regardless if the trick worked or not.
Sounds like a fey lord to me!