Grrl Power #1122 – Villain shaming
I, too, am disappointed in Varia’s… I don’t know, ethics? Honestly the very first draft of this scene in my head went down a very different way. I won’t say what that was, cause this probably isn’t the last time the two of them will cross paths. It was definitely very cool and/or funny. Okay, I hadn’t fully decided exactly what that outcome would be. When it does happen, the rule of cool and/or funny will likely be a factor, but there’s a chance it will be totally story driven. Not a huge chance, but a chance.
The original version of this page had Varia twist a bit which caused Jiggawatt’s dangling arm to swing forward, and Varia reached back and caught her wrist. But then my brain thought, “spankies!”
The January Vote Incentive is up! The new on is being worked on. Time for the quarterly fashion show that Anvil puts Maxima through. Can you detect the theme?
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Good on Vahriah!
Yes, she was tempted (panel two), butt (*giggle*) she was smart enough to not do it
While she wasn’t there for the Rumble, she still read the after-action report
I think she was tempted to find out when it was just “hey, wanna find out what happens?”, but when he brought up the kindred bit, it ruined it. If finding out what would happen meant accepting his premise that they share a bond over their powers, it’s not worth finding out to her.
he oversold it, he should have kept his mouth shut after the initial statement
And Jiggs’ butt is enough to get her added to the side-bar, butt Vahriah doesn’t :P
Jiggle-wot?
Her new butt-gestalt power is to cause html errors in web comics.
lol what does he sit on, on the last picture?
Just leaning against the wall in a squat
not even a proper squat either.
Not enough space for a proper squat…
It’s one of them leg exercises, note how his legs are straight with the feet under the knees rather than the butt
You’re talking about a Wall Sit, and they are actually quite difficult to maintain for any reasonable amount of time. I’m fairly certain that he was just shown half-way down to sliding towards sitting on the ground.
There isn’t room in that area for him to fully sit down, he isn’t a small guy, he’s just had the realization that he’s really screwed up and unless one of his “team members” come into the room, he’s going to jail. A fitting end game for a b-list super with attention issues. While I suspect he’s strong enough to work free, he’s in emotional shock and doesn’t care any more.
he can’t do squat in there.
I do love that Varia has apparently done the reading and knew to use an indirect to subdue him. His ultimate weakness is the “I’m not touching you” gambit.
The best thing to happen will be absolutely nothing when they touch.
Nah, the best would be if nothing seemed to happened and then Death Toll went “…What smells like Periwinkle?”
For Whom The Bell Tolls should totally become a “Good Guy” now, really want to see him and Varia team up now, and feel like he could have a Face-Turn-Heel after that “Why You Suck” Speech that Varia just slammed him with.
After all, it’s not like they don’t have a reformed villain on the team already.
Meh, I’d still shame her for not finding out. Hope it ends up with your reform and team-up.
If he became a hero that wouldn’t that be Heel-Turn-Face? Heels are the evil wrestlers and Faces are the good ones.
Idioms are idiotic, as a general rule. We tend to look down on people who don’t get them, but sometimes I wonder if we should actually be looking down on people who do?
Consider someone who’s broke versus someone who’s just gotten out of the shower. Which one of them exactly is all washed up? Why is that?
Heel-Face if he turns good.
Heel-Face Revolving Door if he switches back afterwards.
No, just… no
Ooh, do I sense a moment of introspection from FWTDT? Wouldn’t mind seeing ol’ Deathy getting redeemed somewhere down the line.
If he joins the team, every set battle will have a “Wonder Twins power — activate!” moment.
Varia has the power. Of the Ass-Grab!
Panel 8 shows her hand is more up on Jigg’s hip/sacrum, which a) is a bit less invasive and b) much more realistic if her belt was tightened properly. Also means that Jiggs isn’t mooning Perry, although he doesn’t seem to be giving the groping much consideration either way.
You can still see a little of her colour-coordinated panties, so it’s a quarter moon?
Untucking the shirt to grab the lower back would have been much better for realism I think. The booty these girls have would make pulling a tightened belt down hard enough without the other side being pinned to Xochil’s shoulder.
Xochil’s hand does definitely appear to be down Azarin’s pants however, and Dave’s comment of “Spankies!” seems to confirm this. The probability of her having just sexually assaulted her unconcious coworker does negatively affect Varia’s otherwise fantastically badass hero moment.
“Look, we talked about this:
If you get knocked out, I carry you and I need your power for the mission or self defense, I might have to grab you wherever I can get my hand.”
Ahah, FWtDT shows his true weakness – crushing verbal ownage. Feel kinda bad for him, honestly. Though I can’t say Varia is wrong, either. If the dude really wanted to find out what that gestalt was, he should have just signed up with ARCHON. :/
I think he kind of showed he had that weakness when he tried to name himself. It’s certainly a name for someone who both thinks too much and not enough, which is I think the sort of person who is most vulnerable to crushing verbal ownage.
Did he know about Varia when he was given the option to sign up with Archon?
I’m beginning to thing FWTDT is a professor of some sort. With the verbose moniker, his quest to see how his powers react to others just for the sake of seeing what happens, etc.
Varia! You get back there and touch that man! … no wait that came out wrong.
F**k i wanted to see what would happen :( Bom? Deus ex machina? Romance? Sweaty palm shacke?
I was under the assumption that by his hood n mask fashion he was already part of this cabal when he joined in The Rumble. Tho her point stands.
Relating to this, anyone here familiar with Epithet Erased?
It’s amazing how few people realize that saying nothing if often an option, and sometimes the correct option. PBS should’ve kept his mouth shut and let Varia’s curiosity do the work.
awww – feels like i’m the only one here for the *spankies* !! MOAR ;)
I’d be there with you, but Azarin appears to be pretty badly concussed. It isn’t healthy to be knocked out at all, and if she’s been unconscious for that long Doc is going to have her work cut out for her. Right now I’m just hoping that she’s ok.
One of the great limitations of Nemesis power, cannot counter indirect actions that inhibit movement. A geokinetic making rock barriers around them , magnekinetic doing this , and others able to create physical barriers. It’s like those characters with full immortality or invulnerability but no other powers so you just restrain them and it’s a surprise to them because they expected a fight to the death, not shoved into a box.
Like Achilles; You don’t try to punch him out, you just chain a ship’s anchor to him and toss him in the ocean, and he’s stuck waiting for the chain to rust away.
Huh. I didn’t realize that “magnet” was an onomatopoeia.
Hg
TVTropes calls it an “unsound effect”: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnsoundEffect
Was trying to think of something meaningful to say about FWTDT showing some humanity, and how comics (and sci fi) are a great medium to discuss social and psychological topics, but instead my inner musician just keeps insisting that everybody wants to be loved.
Proposition: Varia & Periwinkle Butt Sniffer touch hands.
Suggestion: All-Might reference (My Hero Academia).
I have to say, I very much enjoyed this scene. I especially love the sense of *shame* that seemed to come out of the Nemesis guy, as if her words hit far far harder than any previous foe’s attacks had done. And that was the perfect calling out on her part.
I’m not at all disappointed by Varia’s ethics. I find this to be an incredibly satisfying page.
Not disappointed by the ethics at all, but saddened by the lost opportunity to witness something potentially historic.
A repeating character has introduced the idea so there is a good possibility that it will happen somewhere down the line. There is a possibility for working a long term side story out of this.
I am very proud of Varia…and very proud of DaveB for allowing her to do what her character / nature commanded her to do. It’s not always easy to let your characters do what THEY want rather than what you, as the author, want them to do…but sometimes if you don’t do it, that breaks their character in irretrievable ways. (That is, once published.)
Well put.
That was straight up a tease, David. Not cool…
well this is a comic strip so this was a strip tease?
its about time we exposed a naked pun.
Still very unclear on why they would bring a super with such obscene strategic value and such incredibly unreliable tactical value to a tactical mission like this (compared to an unpowered but highly trained and well equipped soldier).
This entire time she’s one mook with a gun away from being perforated with bullets, just like any other well trained military.
Did they really need someone who could make portals badly enough to risk such a strategic asset on a tactical strike that could probably have been done with almost any other hero with more tactical value than the person who doesn’t have any power to survive being shot 99% of the time?
She’s there because the only way in was Harem or Jiggawatt, and when she touches Harem she teleports, too. Also she’s a trained soldier.
Sure but she’s also a strategic asset that is incredibly fragile in the field, as fragile as any ordinary infantryman.
You could just settle for not bringing in a 3rd person, or get another teleporter involved. The code lady might do it.
The people in those cages were nowhere near as valuable as the lady with all the powers. Their rescue is a nice sunday story. She is single-handedly an advantage comparable with a well-developed industrial sector.
A field asset too valuable to ever put in the field is just a white elephant, no point in keeping all that potential on payroll if you’ll never try to actualize it.
Random gestalting aside though, even “powerless” Varia is still a super and a team member, with the boosted baseline strength and military infiltration training. As mentioned, she’s also the only other team member who can be teleported in – and since she was supposed to stick with Harem, back out again instantly. So there’s not many downsides to sending her in, and some great tactical potential if she were able to gestalt a way out (as indeed happened).
Nitpick: I don’t think supers have boosted baseline strength – what they have is more muscles, but most of the women don’t have that much more muscle mass.
Death “Tool” might of been more effective if he had training on how to strategically use his power, but like when he was first shown he felt he was powerful and could handle any super. Which shows just how stupid and childish he is! A bully that expects his strength to carry him through any fight he gets himself into. But there’s always someone faster, smarter, or stronger than him. Like when Sydney noticed he wasn’t attacking, only reacting to any attacks sent at him, he became easy.
I wanna like “Death Tool”, but it’s too much like “Deadpool”, and that’s giving him too much credit.
For Whom The Cookie Crumbles (TollHouse)
It started as a typo and I thought: “eeh why not” and added the quotes :) But I agree he’s not worthy to be the dog turd under Deadpool’s boot lol
I mean … he became easy for a team that vastly outnumbers him.
Also, his motivation seems to mostly be to try out his powers with different opponents, that changes any strategic calculus one could criticize him for.
He could have done like Math did, and join Archon
He would of made a good sparing partner, teach the troops how to deal with someone like him. Not Sydney of course, she had him pegged, quick.
Max would of had to burn him to overpower his power, that was a mercy as much as anything. Better to knock him out with several different attacks than an ash pile Max would of had to report and Arianna having to down-play it in the press.
by that same argument why bring Harem or Jiggawatt?
both of there powersets don’t protect them from bullets either (unless Jiggawatt can react at the speed of lightning which from memory is pretty comparable to most small arms fire muzzle velocities making it an possibility to dodge a fired bullet, but that’s only a speculation on a possible power of hers that has no evidence supporting it)
all three have baseline human bodies (except for parts of Harems brain being quantumly entangled between her bodies, but that ain’t stopping a bullet)
I’m with Opus the Poet on this one: those three were chosen is because it’s a stealth mission, and those are the only three capable of teleporting in (not counting members who are stuck in Africa). It wasn’t a question of “who is bulletproof”, it was a question of “who has powers that can get them inside without smashing through the front door”.
As for why they need stealth, see https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1107-tube-of-doom panel 1, which describes the things the stealth team hoped to accomplish before the bulletproof members made a bull-in-a-china-shop entrance.
I got the impression Harem could recreate a killed body and Jiggawatt turn into lightning if injured, but at least Jiggawatt is only a tactically valuable super rather than a strategically valuable one. If she dies, she could be replaced by the next person who is fast and shoots energy blasts.
If they don’t have some way to resist those things they should absolutely not have been used for this mission either.
Honestly taking this place without activating the self destructs is simply not important enough to expose either Harem or Varia to even single-digit percentage risk of them dying, probably not even a fraction of a percent.
Where would you get that impression? Harem doesn’t know what would happen if one of her dies, and she’s in no damn hurry to ever find out
Hmm, maybe it’s better if they never get deployed, ever, because anything could happen, like getting hit by a bus crossing the street
Also thinking that Belltoll here really should get a gun.
Someone who is invulnerable but otherwise harmless is pretty easy to beat.
Someone who is invulnerable and brings a decently powerful handgun is a danger to anyone who can’t survive being shto by said gun, which is surprisingly many in this tactical strike team.
It appears like his power doesn’t work if he attacks first. If he shoots at people and they shoot back, he dies.
This also assumes he’s willing to kill people – and he doesn’t appear that vicious or determined.
Have we seen any evidence of this? I might be misremembering.
Of course even if that would disable his power he might still threaten to do it anyway and just accept his power taking a nap for a bit. The threat that he might do it would make him much harder to ignore.
You could also bring other weapons.
If his power worked if he attacked first, he could have just gone punching people at the brawl. Instead he stood passively while ArcSWAT had a laugh at him and then unhurriedly discussed how to beat him.
That Vote Incentive would make for a very ironic Halloween Costume.
I’ve seen this at a con. https://www.by-the-sword.com/p-6595-the-treasure-map-hard-leather-corset-39-5000.aspx
I still think she did the right thing from a CBA/tactics analysis, nevermind the your a bad person reason (which is there too). She just found out that she can give the other person powers when she touches them. Even if that’s one in a thousand (probably higher than that, with supers at least), even that small chance combined with giving FWtDT something he can use incapacitate is not worth the risk.
Though interesting thought. I forget. Has it been said whether Varia can touch more than one person for multiple powers. And if so, an interesting question to learn the answer to is whether FWtBT could counter all the powers from her, as a single person herself, or only one power set?
The word you’re looking for is “integrity” Dave
When this rescue mission gets made into an episode in the eventual G.P. animated series, the music playing as she walks away will have to be ‘Can’t Touch This”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo
Am I misreading the body language there or did that actually hit home and make him rethink his behavior? He seems depressed and ashamed, as he ought to be. Or maybe I’m just projecting a desire to see more villains who are capable of introspection when you confront them about what they’re doing.
Given that Varia’s other ability is to tell if people are related and (as others have pointed out) she doesn’t know who her father is, there could be another reason for that to hit home that hard. Even if we discard the tired “Varia, I am your Father” trope, he could be her half-brother (same wandering dad, different mother). All baseless speculation of course, but FUN baseless speculation nonetheless!
He’s a man-child, he just hit on a pretty girl and she told him, in great detail, why it’ll never happen. Not quite what happened but it fits the situation.
Mentally he’s about 15-16, and wants to prove himself to the world. And just got told why and how it’s bad. Being a super is easy, being a super hero is VERY hard.
My read is he’d fantasized they’d have a lot in common due to their power sets, and has been looking forward to this for months. Possibly layered on top of an adolescent crush / ego as you mentioned, but even if he’s reasonably emotionally mature this has gotta sting.
While we only just met FWtDT, he’s known about (and been dealing with) his powers since adolescence or younger, so years of expectations and having a hidden (and very extensive) power shading every real and potential relationship. So quite possibly, after years of imagining any relationship where his powers were both known and accepted, the revelation of others supers was a dream come true, and Varia in particular would seem like a perfect match who could understand what he’d been living with for decades. On paper, his perfect counterpart – and she not only rejected him now, but slammed the door on any future possibilities. Even if he was just picturing something platonic, quite a blow.
With his power he must of spent a lot of time getting into normal fights until he got bored with it and wanted to try taking on supers.
I’m tempted to comment “once again, ethics get in the way of fun,” but in this case they also justify some butt-grabbing, so I’m OK with that :P
Sad thing for Buttsniffer is? He just committed an act of aggression to a federal agent with witnesses. Not a thing you do if you had any hope of serving with any branch of the government. Not even a mail carrier. So even if he has a change of heart and asks to join he still has to go to court and serve time for the crime. And have a federal charge on his record. Assault and battery on a private citizen is a class D federal crime (last I heard), but to do it to a federal agent it’s either a class C or B, with much stiffer jail time.
Nah it’s still conceivable that he could turn over a new leaf after some lengthy self reflection.
Maybe as part of a parole deal, like theyve done with Jabberwokky or like whatever is going on with Detla.
True as far as we know he hasn’t killed or seriously hurt anyone. It really depends on how well he behaves himself during the Q&A after the arrest. Co-operation goes a long way with cops.
They have serious incentive to parole him too, his power could be incredible for stopping villains.
He’d be even better than Achilles, who can’t be hurt but is also easy to toss aside or bury. Actually countering powers would be way more effective than just being unaffected by them.
While their power sets are similar, their power tactics are almost diametrically opposed.
Varia’s gestalt is complimentary – as a result, she works better in groups, where she can have the flexibility of several possible powers. FWTDT’s gestalt is oppositional – he works better alone, preferably fighting one-on-one. Because his power is purely defensive, he tends to see every encounter as an attack. I’ll bet he tends to drive people away before they can get to know him. I’ll bet he’s very lonely.
That recasts this last scene a bit for me. Perry – imma call him Perry, it’s short – joined these guys because they flatter his ego, and promise to make him rich and powerful. He has no real friends among them, though. And then, he sees this girl – outgoing, friendly, touching everyone she meets. And she has powers kinda like his! Maybe, he thinks, she’ll understand. And so, literally, he reaches out. He’s not good at it – comes across as a bit creepy. And, she… well, responded as you’d expect. Sorry, Perry. Maybe next time, try without the skull mask?
“Varia’s gestalt is complimentary – as a result, she works better in groups, where she can have the flexibility of several possible powers. FWTDT’s gestalt is oppositional – he works better alone, preferably fighting one-on-one. Because his power is purely defensive, he tends to see every encounter as an attack. I’ll bet he tends to drive people away before they can get to know him. I’ll bet he’s very lonely.”
I think this is an absolutely brilliant take on casting Peri as a sympathetic villain with a potential heel-face turn.
I get the feeling that FHTDT is going to be in trouble with his new bosses ,he has alienated a ARCHON member and also kind of pointed out to them his only use is as a defensive member at best and even only if he is attacked directly. They may be thinking’why is it worth keeping him around ?’
That was a trap.
For Whom’s powers to defeat yours don’t work if your not using them on him. Varia has to touch him to gain powers.
Yeah Varia may gain an interesting power set, but Toll’s powerset would grant him the power to defeat her.
what can be said about veras rebuffing of for whom except. Emotional Damage *throw slipper*
That level of power has triggers and gateways for a reason. If they unlocked it all at once, it’d likely burn them both out in short order. Even Maxima has limits, with the variable power allocation, and her body has been highly modified; Varia and FWTDT are still human, as much as supers are, and would likely turn to cinders from overload.
So at this point I’m more concerned about Jiggawat. She took a really nasty head slam into concrete, and is STILL unconscious. Serious TBI concern. I suspect she’s looking at another long term consequence. Possibly people will start calling her Worf if nothing else.
{ vote incentive} Awwww, Dave, you totally missed out by not making her pants a pair of shorts that also looked like a treasure chest! (but it would have been pirate treasure [booty])
Nah, the top should have been the lid, with the pants being the base, with the padlock in her navel :)
Then you need a Dabbler in a pirate outfit in the backround
Did Varia just get a new power by getting a good grip of Jiggawatt’s booty?
Noice!
Nope, that’s the power she gets from Jiggs, as seen when they were doing roadwork after the RUmble
She’s talking mighty clear right now. Give us the accent! :D