Grrl Power #1444 – Rest & Red Potions
Sydney definitely would have forgotten she was wearing holo-boobs before heading back. The question is, what did she have on under them? Well, the answer is, she did actually take off her shirt, but still had her bra on. Which she was okay with in the, let’s call it the sex positive environment of Cora’s ship. Appearing in the break room of Archon HQ would have been one of those moments she’d have nightmares about basically forever.
For those of you wondering though, she wouldn’t have appeared there. The last time she used the Aetherium Causeway, she invoked it to head back to Fracture Station. That was when they were fighting Vehemence in the quarry. She basically pushed the “take me to the last place the gate was open” button. But if she uses that same button now, the last place the gate was open was in the quarry, so she’d pop out there. That quarry isn’t so far from the base, but she’d need to fly a few dozen miles in just a bra and jeans to get to the base, which is probably another thing she’d have nightmares about. Although I guess she could wrap herself in the Lighthook, but then she’d get windshear all over her face while she flew since she wouldn’t be able to use the shield.
Healing potions are basically the most common drop in most video games (or plates with steaming hams on them, like the street thugs in Final Fight were on their way to thanksgiving dinner) because action games are a lot more exciting when they have lots of action, and that means that most players will take a lot of beatings along the way. But as soon as you slow down and think about what “healing” is, you realize it probably needs to be more complex than a think that just refills a healthbar. Unless you’re in a world where everyone is not a biological being, but some sort of mana construct, and “health” is more of a coherence field holding it all together, like in many LitRPG and cultivation novels, when they try to explain exactly how high level characters are so tough. As they rank up, their biology is more or less replaced with magic. I read one where a character realizes this to the point that he allows his head to get cut off in order to deliver a fatal blow against some high-ranked monster, knowing that he has more “lifeforce” than the damage decapitation conveys. He also happens to have monstrous regeneration, so decapitation is just a momentary inconvenience. For the high level characters in books like that, they really do just have hit points, and no vital areas like a brain or heart or kidneys.
But in the Grrl-verse, while there are things like cultivators, 99% of the population needs healing potions that affect living biology, which means you don’t want to take one that merely speeds up natural healing while you have a compound fracture or a barbed arrow still stuck in your back.
90% of Maxima’s disguise is holographic, but she does have nipple and crotch… pasties is the wrong word. It’s more like printed latex… okay, pasties might be appropriate, but it’s only like latex if latex was made from kevlar and carbon fiber and some kind of nano goo to make it comfortable and extraordinarily sticky. Those pasties are also covered by the hologram, so no one can see the seams. She also has a mask that’s stuck to her face in the same way, because chemical warfare it totally okay in the tournament. Want to make a bioweapon that has acid for blood and hope anyone attacking it gets a lung full of aerosolized acid? That’s totally okay. Want to make a warbot whose primary exhaust is mustard gas? Go for it. Maxima’s mucus membranes aren’t mucusy anymore, but honestly, why not have a mask that can filter out at least some nasty stuff and can also shield her non-mucous membraney eyes? She also has hearing protection, but that’s separate from the mask.
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I found an audiobook series that I enjoyed, called “Mother of Learning.” It has nothing to do with mothers. Instead, it’s a magic academy novel mixed with, get this, Groundhog Day. The MC winds up having to live the same month over and over while he tries to figure out what the heck is going on. Doing a hundred pushups each day isn’t going to help him obviously, because his body is reset at the beginning of each loop, but his memories stay, including his accumulated magical knowledge, and since his mana pool is tied to his soul, that continues to develop as well. So obviously, he goes from not-especially-weak-but-certainly-not-exceptional to wildly OP over the course of the books. Well, OP compared to his fellow students, but the forces arrayed against him are still daunting. Anyway, if you have an Audible membership the first audiobook is free, so you can check it out and the only thing you have to spend on it is time. There’s 4 books, totaling about 100 hours of narration, so if you’re a long-haul trucker, you might enjoy filling time with this.
Ah! I thought I had more time till March. I’m bad at looking at dates apparently. The new one is underway. I should have a draft ready to go for the next Monday comic?
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.
well another common type of healing potion are nanotech based, soyou can assume they will do the basic of realigning bones and such
Oh so she got hurt like normal then? Oh well, it was fun to speculate though. Although, that doesn’t mean things wont happen later. Continue the speculation!
I would have been REAL awkward if the galactic government detected an atherium causeway again, right there, at the arena, and their cloaked spy probes around Earth picked one up opening on Earth at the exact same time
Aww I hoping for send Nye to quickly travel back to Earth so everyone can see her new enhanced chest because she forgot that she had it
So actual magical Health Potions need to be precisely calibrated – for the requesting species I’m guessing? Or can they be generally calibrated for organic creatures in general? Would a Health Potion for a Human work on a species with completely different anatomy? I know Kora & Crew would have picked up a good few specifically for Max since she’s the one picking fights in the arena, but still curious….
Probably like in the older Spacetrawler webcomic. Scanned beforehand to be 90% compatible with human biology or some such.
It’s me or this was posted almost an hour early?
I wonder what kind of healing potion Dabbler would have develop because she likes to much making her own things.
I’m guessing you’re from Europe, or outside the USA at least? The USA does the daylight savings time switch at a different date than most of Europe (not sure if it is synchronized for the whole of Europe or the rest of the world either). So for a few weeks each year the comic will seem to have posted an hour early or late for anyone outside the USA.
Did Dave intend to have Sydney spout some broken Japanese (and with an awful kunrei transcription on top of that) ?
Because I can’t figure out what kuorichi could mean.
It’s Sydney. Her Japanese is probably from manga osmosis so her “Please enjoy this delicious beverage.” is essentially in “Engrish”.
Google translate gave me “Please enjoy my Qualiland”. I’ll go with your engrish explanation, it works!
It appears to be クオリティ, “quality”. No idea what it might refer to, though.
While I haven’t checked out the audio book of Mother of Learning, I heartily endorse the book in general, since it’s one of my favorite re-reads that I go back to every now and then.
Wouldn’t Sydney’s featherfall have prevented her from falling over the couch like that?
I doubt that works if part of you is still on the ground/couch/floor. Would seem to be a reasonable default.
Her Center of Gravity fell at a constant one meter per second.
Survivable but not face-plant proof.
Is that Azarinth Healer that Dave referenced in the commentary? It sounds familiar, with how the MC’s entire fighting style is based around using their ludicrous health and regeneration to tank enemy attacks and fuel their own attacks with health-to-mana sacrifice abilities.
Mother of Learning is pretty good. I read the web serial.
I’m also enjoying the author’s ongoing work, Zenith of Sorcery, but it only updates once per month, so it’ll take years to complete.
I’ve always lived here in the US where the ambulances were owned by the municipalities and free for the residents of those communities.
So how long until Max ask why Sydney has big boobs and everyone is topless?
Alright. Makes sense, I guess.
Shame, though; I would have liked to see the doctor again.
Ah I spy a OUAT reference, if I’m not mistaken. In particular, a certain rumple of a guy.
So, that suit also covered up how much effort Max had to put in.
From an outsider perspective, and to us readers at the time, it looked like Max was effortlessly wiping the floor with them.
But inside the suit she was probably sweating, bleeding, and bruised.
Glad you found and enjoyed Mother of Learning!
If you are still craving more in the same vein of timeloop I would recommend The Years of Apocalypse.
It is very clearly directly inspired by Mother of Learning, but after the initial arc it begins to find its own stride pretty quickly and becomes its own kind of epic. Not sure if it is available as an audiobook yet hwoever, mostly Royalroad for now.