Grrl Power #1496 – Colosseum and feelum
I learned what “hoi polloi” meant while writing this page. Like Sydney, I thought it meant the upper crust. I’ve learned to double check that stuff while writing. Most of the time. I’m sure everyone has a few words they’ve incorrectly surmised the meaning of. I vaguely recall way back in middle-school, I thought “vague” meant “specific” or something. But it wasn’t for very long. I’d read it in a comic or a book and it got clarified after a few weeks.
Then there was the time I learned the word “voluptuous.” I didn’t learn it incorrectly. That was one of those times where you learn a new word, and suddenly you hear it everywhere. AKA the frequency illusion, or the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. “Ooh, that milkshake is voluptuous.” or “That hourglass is voluptuous.” Etc. Actually I don’t think I was suddenly hearing the word in commercials or casual conversations. I was reading a ton of Piers Anthony, and I think voluptuous is the only word that dude ever used to describe women. Except for when Chameleon was smart.
The holo-stadium will let people feel the impacts and the waves of heat and all that, or a safe range thereof. And they don’t just have subwoofers in every seat, it’s all advanced force-field holodeck stuff. And as Cora says, audience participation can add to a cool action/sporting/bloodsport event. Plus they have 2,000 kinds of beer, popcorn, something that is a lot like popcorn but is made from some other corn-like plant, pretzels, slightly stale nachos with cheese that turns back into window caulking when it cools, chili dogs and fried cheese. Granted the cheese mostly doesn’t come from Sol-3 bovines, though there are some domesticated herds grazing places other than Earth, but it’s usually a bit expensive. A lot of species can eat a lot of food from other planets if they take some enzyme supplements. Basically the “Lactaid” type section of the space pharmacy is quite large.
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. The NSFW version is finally up at Patreon. Plus a bonus pic.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Watching a game in the sci fi Terra bowl with a gaggle of hot alien babes wearing shirts that feel vacuum sealed to them would make for a hell of a day. With merch and food on demand you could go for a right bender. How great would it be if instead of a fight it was just something like galactic hockey or astro futbol.
I’m interested in how exactly they would get someone like “Ixah’s” contact information or any realistic way of paying a mysterious, omnipowerful being that showed up randomly to this competition. Maybe they all have fill out galactic standard banking information as part of the sign up forms? Are there signup forms? For that matter what would something like Kaboomoid or Eat Chicken need currency for? Am I thinking too much about this? All I’m saying is generating spontaneous merchandise for the popular fighters in this thing is definitely a scam. You can’t convince me it’s not.
Presumably through whatever registration forms were required to enter. I doubt you could just walk in day of and get into a fight.
you have space age 3D printers and scanners and computer systems that can probably extrapolate from the combat footage
the contract for entering the competition almost certainly involves some kind of merchandizing/likeness use conditions that also stipulates the revenue split and sublicensing for such
so anything sold on site? you can bet thats legit according to those contracts – there probably isnt a detailed sign-off on each individual product, but basically anyone selling on site has listings and those get cross referenced to those contractees and will get the appropriate split… thats trivialy easy to automate
and with the level of security they are likely to have? unlicensed sellers arent going to survive long enough to take their money home… hell with how easy this kind of system can be made, its probably more effort to try and sneak in than it is to get some printer inputs, sign up for a booth and just sell a bunch of on-demand printed plushies of contestants
Quite a few of the fighters have sponsors or patrons, individual’s, groups or comglomerates providing backing and support to the fighters they have found or (in Eat Chicken’s case) created.
The percentage of the merchandising probably gets handled by the patronage/sponsorship, like Cora’s group of captains.
I doubt any merchandiser would want to make them unhappy, let alone angry.
Either Cora or Dave explained a while back that yes, there were tons of legal forms to fill out. In Ixah/Max’s case, and probably most sapient entrants, this was done through hired legal representatives. This would have included entry fees, non-disclosures, a stack of liability waivers a meter thick, banking information for payments on win and a percentage of merchandise sales, etc. And she did have to somehow that she was a worthy contestant through a tryout or demonstration of strength/toughness; she didn’t just show up randomly and find herself in an arena.
I don’t know whether Kaboomoid is sapient or not, but if so surely there’s something he wants that could be exchanged for currency. I said “is” because I believe it’s still alive. Eat Chicken, Rambo Barney, and the Giant Robot (all not alive) and other non-sapient or remotely piloted entrants would have the paperwork handled by and winnings delivered to whoever created and/or will be piloting them.
Few months (or maybe even a year or 2 even) back that was all the rage on TikTok and other social media with the word “demure”. Suddenly 9 out of 10 videos used that word to (falsely) describe themselves.
Sydney, why are you two doing “as-you-know” exposition?
I think going to the stadium for the experience of crowds roaring and overprized food and bad drinks is a little half-assed if you’re going to sit in a private box and order stuff from the vendors.
~~It’s called the class traitor experience~~
Hard to be a traitor when you belong to no class. Because nobody puts your sorry butt in a box but yourself, those who claim otherwise are lying dirtbag bolsheviks/randian symps. ;) (there got my dose of old experienced hench in for the day.)
p.s. I may be a species traitor though… I’ll save an animal before a human.
Is Sidney still disguised as an alien princess? Will it come back to haunt her when they open the door for the food delivery and find the delivery boy is one of “Her” people?
I thought about that too but comparing the 2 disguises, her head gem used to be a diamond shape but now its round so im guessing that fixes the issue
lol,, not sure max would approve of the shirt made ” in her image” displayed in this page!
Here’s a word for you, to go with voluptuous. Pulchritude. Sometimes called the ugliest word for “beauty.”
Maybe contestants can pay an entry fee OR sign away promotional rights.
Hopefully they can keep any income in excess of the fees or at least a percentage.
Sydney looks so cuddly. A welcome contrast to literally everyone else on the crew.
Re what words mean: “We might note in this connection the changed meaning of the term ‘original’. Its old meaning was ‘closest to divine inspiration; closest to the fount, to the well-spring, to the original, or to the source’. The modern meaning is quite different.” —The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
*Ahem. ‘Moooiiiisssstt’
Illustrating blanks or lack of interest concerning what a character knows is basic but always nice to see.
Sydney is so deep into nerd culture that she doesn’t really know or care that her own planet has set-ups exactly like this, just minus the holograms.
Without my “old man glasses” tm on. That last frame reads very differently… because the ‘I’ blends into the frame and it becomes ‘Hoi Pollo’ and that has some interesting connotations that blends well with certain Pacific Island cultures. As in “aww Meatloaf for dinner again?” 8^)> Ahhhh, hahahahahahahahahaha! (Oww, my liver. I’m getting too old to do the hench laugh. oww.) worst, forgot to clean glasses before sleep.
Had to go back a few pages to realize the pink girl is Harem in disguise, and that only because she’s wearing the same shirt. :)
I like the touch that cora is already wearing Ixah merchandise, as she’s talking about how the merchandising works for this contests. It’s a little subtle details like that really show how much work goes into this story!