Grrl Power #1182 – The dark, luxurious arts
Black honey with gold in it is totally something I can see being put on, I don’t know, upscale baklava. Maybe even the saffron, (a subtle earthy-sweet flavor profile with a tinge of bitterness on the tongue with delicate floral and honey notes), and the frankincense (an orange-lime taste.) The myrrh? Maybe not so much. It comes from the Arabic word “murr” for bitter. A tinge of bitterness is okay, especially if it’s swamped in sweet. If it tastes like you’re chewing on a non-chewable tylenol, then probably don’t eat it.
I like Sydney’s logic of “it didn’t say, so it probably doesn’t matter.” I mean, maybe? But more likely it’s like a recipe for fried eggs not mentioning that you need eggs because everyone knows you need eggs. But honey, to me, does seem like it might have that biological/possibly mana conductive property that occultists seem to get out of blood. But if “it came from a living thing” is the only requirement, then presumably any bodily fluid would work, as well as tree sap or grape juice. Presumably the material used, as Sydney posits, has some effect on the nature of the summoning, and you wouldn’t want to summon an Opulence Demon using diaper squeezings. Still, that’s a pretty wild swing for Sydney, going all in on those materials without asking anyone about it. I figure that’s like a… $2,500 to $3,000 summoning circle, minimum? I have no idea how far you could stretch an ounce of powdered gold mixed in with honey.
Oh, and if you’ve ever wondered why Sydney’s pop culture knowledge extends well beyond her generation, this is why. Honestly it’s a little hard to get kids born these days interested in proper, old-ass sci-fi. Some of it holds up, sure, but like O.G. Doctor Who? Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of solid writing, but so much of that stuff is shot like a stage play, with a long segments of dialog shot with minimal cuts, and the special effects are not so special anymore. Especially the chroma-keyed matting. Yikes. Some of that stuff looks like they cut out the matting elements with scissors made of static. That’s why Sydney Sr. knew to start Jr. off early on the classics so she didn’t grow up spoiled on made for streaming series that cost $58 million per episode. Imagine showing a kid who grows up on stuff like that something like the BBC’s I, Claudius. Fairly stellar performances across the board including Patrick Stewart, Brian Blessed and Derek Jacobi, but it’s basically a play with a camera aimed at the stage. Yes, the camera is fairly mobile, but you get my point. No “flying on a dragon” POV shots, armies of thousands massing for attack, or for that matter, backgrounds that aren’t literally theater backdrops.
The July vote incentive is finally up! There was a disagreement about digitigrade and plantigrade leg configurations. What better way to resolve it than a race?
And in the Patreon variant, what better way to resolve it than a nude race? You know, to eliminate uh… wind drag I guess?
.
.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
So, a fun fact. The Romans had a version of concrete that wouldn’t get corroded by salt water. Despite having the recipe for it, we could not figure out how to make it. It turns out, when the recipe called for water, it meant salt water. They didn’t bother specifying, because everybody knew you didn’t waste potable water on things like that.
Similarly, there are serving trays that have a spot for salt, a spot for pepper, and a spot for… something else. We don’t know what, because it was so mundane nobody bothered to talk about it. Possibly mustard, but we’re honestly not sure.
Some day, thousand of years from now, an archeologist will manage to successfully bake a 21st century cake, because they’ll have finally figured out that “eggs” specifically means “chicken eggs.”
Omg that’s hilarious! Love it!
I’m pretty sure you could bake a cake with other birds eggs. Taste might differ, though
there is actually a very interesting bit of history in the colonization of California about this very thing. There was a shortage on chickens, and a substitute was found on a nearby horribly craggy island where a certain species of bird lay their eggs. A cartel was formed around this for a time as they sold these eggs to bakers for exorbitant fees.
What about reptile eggs? At the reason we started using chicken eggs is because they were easy to obtain and prolific.
Maybe that’s why we don’t have dodo eggs anymore. They were eaten into Extinction.
Like why don’t we use ostrich eggs? Is it because they’re rare? Or does it have to do with how long it takes to raise ostriches and the yield you get from the eggs.
Frankly I’d hate to have to have a recipe that relied on dragon eggs for instance. They’re VERY touchy about that.
“Maybe that’s why we don’t have dodo eggs anymore. They were eaten into Extinction.”
I think dodos went extinct mainly because the rats from human ships would eat all the dodo eggs, which were on the ground since dodos did not make nests in trees.
“Like why don’t we use ostrich eggs? Is it because they’re rare?”
They’re not rare. There are ostrich farms, in fact. We don’t use ostrich eggs because the shells are incredibly hard to get through. You usually need a drill. Also, one ostrich egg is about the equivalent amount of food as 24 chicken eggs and most people are not going to eat that much in one sitting. :) They also taste a little sweeter than chicken eggs.
“Frankly I’d hate to have to have a recipe that relied on dragon eggs for instance.”
Long as it’s unfertilized you should be okay. :) From what I saw on Reign of Fire, there’s only one male dragon so chances are you’ll be able to get an unfertilized one assuming the female dragon doesn’t burn you to a crisp.
Dodo’s were slow, dull-witted, and rather trusting. Just like the buffalo. Only more so, so yes, there were several reasons they went extinct, mostly due to stupid humans killing them for food and fun. It wasn’t the USA however, it was island tribes long before any explorers landed.
They brought pests, disease, and weapons and the Dodo wasn’t able to adapt in time to save themselves. Before then, they didn’t have any predators, so slow birth rates was a factor too.
By time “white man” (The Spanish I think?) found them, their population was already low so it didn’t take much to finish them off.
These were listed on a plaque in the Chicago Museum of Natural history. We took are kids there in the mid 90s, I don’t know what the updates were since.
We don’t use ostrich eggs because of the costs associated with raising and keeping the ostrich. I’ve had an ostrich egg omelette it was an enormous quantity but 24 chicken egg seems over selling it. The turnaround time would be absurd. Chickens lay a lot of eggs very often. If we had to farm hundreds of millions of ostriches it would be a logistical nightmare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qSEo6tKG5A
4-6 people from ONE EGG. figure 2 chicken eggs a person. (3 egg omelets are considered largish) 8-12 chicken eggs per ostrich. if we go with three its 12-18. 24 chicken eggs per ostrich egg, maybe if you used the small ones. one counterpoint- volume goes up at the cube of linear dimensions. if I wasn’t so tired… (moving my son) I’d make some kind of pun so I could draft the ninjas cuz we ain’t done yet, though Pander would doubtless send them to late to be useful. but someone else could google the relative volumes and see if that math is better related to the 24 to 1 thing.
There’s an Sci-Fi story somewhere… Ugly Chickens….
go disturb chickens in later Zelda games. I’ll sleep a safe distance away…..
There’s a Larry Niven short story. It was part of a collection called Flight of the Unicorn. The ostrich’s ancestor turned out to be something else, way back in the past.
I’ve had turkey egg scrambled eggs. I don’t suggest it. I mean I do for the experience, but you won’t like it. VERY different in texture and flavor.
I like turkey eggs, goose eggs, duck eggs, guinea eggs, and quail eggs. MMM, EGGS. I once had alligator eggs from a farm, they tasted kind of fishy.
When they first started making cake mixes people wouldn’t buy because they thought they were low quality. But when they eggs to the added ingredients the sales went up.
The version of this that I’ve heard (and maybe this is what you meant? I think maybe a word or two of your text got dropped) was that the original mixes included powdered eggs, all you had to do was add water and apply heat. And they didn’t sell very well. But then they left out the eggs so you had to add them yourself when making the cake, and suddenly it became popular. People baking cakes liked feeling more involved. Otherwise why not just go buy a whole cake?
Nobody’s ever managed to make a powdered egg that’s both shelf-stable and appetizing. Even today, there are cake (and other baked-goods) mixes that only need water and oil, but the results are far worse than those that need water, oil, and eggs.
I dont mind egg beaters. Not as good as normal eggs but not bad either.
Around where I live, we have sponge cake recipes that everyone knows are best made with duck eggs. _Usually_ you’ll use chook eggs, because that’s what you can get, but if we have duck eggs we use those in preference.
Probably that hideous fermented fish gut paste they were fond of. Similar to Philippine “bagoóng”. (My wife has a jar in the fridge, I’m not sure why, it’s so salty it can’t spoil, and if it did spoil, how would you know?
You’re taking about garum. Many Southeast Asian fish sauces are pretty close to it, actually.
So how many people know what garum is from watching Tasting History?
The reason no one knows what the third shaker held is because it was different for different castor sets.
Bill Bryson, in “At Home,” talks about the third shaker as if it was as standard as salt and pepper alone are today, but that wasn’t the case. Castor sets could have three, four, or even more shakers, bottles, and jars in them, and not all of the three-object sets were the same. Many didn’t have a third shaker, but a bottle for liquid, or a short jar with a spoon. Different castors might even be used for different meals throughout the day, so you could have a breakfast castor, a lunch castor, a tea castor, and a supper castor.
Mustard was kept in one of the jars with a spoon, not a shaker, as was sugar, and also nutmeg. The shakers might contain paprika or cumin. In fact, the vast majority of three-object sets used the jar/spoon for the third item, not a shaker. If you look online for antique castors, you’ll have a hell of a time finding one that has three shakers unless it has five or more items, and I’ve never seen one that was just three shakers.
Yeah, I’ve heard about the salt water resistant concrete before too. Everyone knew that you used salt water, so they only needed to write down HOW MUCH you needed, why bother specifying salt water? EVERYONE knows, right? Who doesn’t?
…Except for their future ancestors…
I’d love to see future generations attempt scrambled eggs or something like that…. using things like emu eggs, ostrich eggs, seagull eggs, crocodile eggs, maybe even various types of fish eggs…
All because modern recipes just ask for eggs. No specific types, just eggs. Or milk, milk can come from a variety of sources, apparently some not even animal…
I worked on an offshore vessel and we’d get in a dozen cartons of eggs at a time. Nowhere on the carton does it specify that they’re chicken eggs. Only, the logo on the box depicts our state bird, which happens to be the black swan (Western Australia). That would confuse archaeologists.
The word you wanted was descendants -we are not the ancestors of romans unless you have a time machine you’re not telling us about.
They also had to figure out that “ash” meant volcanic ash in the concrete recipe.
Not Ketchup?
It’s garum, in all likelihood. Romans put that stuff on or in basically EVERYTHING.
For context, Garum is a fermented fish sauce. Sort of like a western version of soy sauce if it was made out of fish instead of soybeans.
Worchestershire sauce! (yup, it’s got fish in there!)
imagine their face when they finally understand that “add 3 eggs” actually means “add the content of 3 eggs” and the shell should be discarded…
Why not just watch a YouTube video of it
It’s probably their fish sauce. Romans were big on fish sauce.
Garum or possibly oil.
Garum, I’d wager.
Maybe semi-half-sister?
1/3 sister?
I think Dabbler mentioned that the Succubus genes tend to be superior and dominate over the genes of the other two genetic contributors so maybe still half or possibly even more than half.
If I remember correctly, it sounded like mother Succubi had some say in what qualities from the father carried over- and thats before getting into 1 how sucubi have a triple helix genetic structure, and 2 that dabbler’s other parent was a doppleganger, which have their own set up where they change genders to reproduce- getting “inpregnated” that is taking in genes from a partner as a female and then actually impregnating someone as a male, using genetic information created from the previous coupling.
Succubi have more genetic information per length of their genetic code then most species with a double helix structure, and doppelgangers have less. And both have surprising control over what traits carry over from their partners.
So Dabbler has 3 parents genetically, the person her doppelganger parent got genetic info from, said doppelganger, and her succubus mom. Syndy is summoning Dabbler’s half sister, different dad, same mom, the fractions don’t get more complicated unless it turns out she ALSO had the same Doppelganger invovled, or the same person the doppelganger got genes from.
Unless you are just going by the whole triple helix, thing in which case yes 1/3rd sister but half sister tends to refere to how many parents they share more then how much of their genes were donated per person.
If we’re still thinking Romans, the third spot might be for garum, a fermented fish sauce.
It’s also possible it was just oil. Butter wasn’t a big thing at the time and much of the Mediterranean would poor olive oil on their food. In fact a lot of them still do.
Pour, not poor.
Blood, honey, and wine all make great biological components for magic stuff, from a symbolic perspective.
As Sisko said, “BRAG ALL YOU WANT, BUT DON’T GET BETWEEN ME AND THE BLOODWINE (and honey)!”
Honey is noteable for being basically nonperishable effectively FOREVER if you store it right. I think they found honey in the Great Pyramids and the stuff was still good.
Barring whatever nonsense a specialist like the last bloodmage we saw can do- ie specifically life draining and magic having to do with the traits of those whose blood it was- like that superpower copying thing.
It does give the ammusing image of someone doing a blood magic healing spell with honey instead, honey is a decent wound dressing since it absorbs moisture and kills microorganisms that way so that would be fitting.
I really look forward to seing Dabbler’s sister again, she is adorable.
Have you even seen or heard about the harvesting of Saffron?
To start with, it has to be done by hand, as we have no mechanical technology that’s up to the task.
It’s basically just one tiny portion inside the flower, which I believe is the stigmas. There’s not many in there, and one flower yields about 30 milligrams when fresh, or around 7 milligram when dried. (You’re always going to get dried, unless you live where it’s farmed, and you probably have to know the farmer too.)
Each kilogram of fresh Saffron, after drying and whatever else they do to turn it into a marketable spice, will net you about 13 grams. Just a measly 13 grams out of 1000 grams of fresh stigmas!
No wonder the stuff goes for around $5,000+ per kilo.
As to the honey things, and it being a good blood substitute, that totally makes sense. Using other other bodily fluids really doens’t in most cases. To start with, waste products (one example would be urine), is definitely not a good idea, it’s a waste product the body is trying to get rid of.
Honey on the other hand is made with a base of pollen, part of the reproductive process of plants, a “source of life”.
Second, it’s made and used by the bees to preserve their lives as it’s their stored food source for when their normal ones aren’t available, like in winter.
Third, honey just doesn’t really spoil all that easily. It has so much sugar, most things that could cause it to spoil can’t infest it. Second, later on, with an accumulation of water moisture causing it to fall below the sugar concentrations that it could now be infested, it releases or creates (maybe both?) various antibiotics!
Honey just keeps going in the shelf life marathon like nothing else!
Honey really is a symbol of life, and so with the weird way magic likes things to be representative of the properties being sought after, it seems it would be really good for a friendly summoning, no world devouring apocalypse beasts though, they probably wouldn’t like something so “pure”. :p
FYI there’s another problem, and it’s that the ground saffron grows on is very specific and limited, and is being sold off for housing now. They also pay the collectors of the stuff a pittance, despite it being more valuable by ounce than gold.
Sounds a bit like this story that uses the importance of owning the right soil for maple trees to grow as a plot hook.
For summoning a succubus she is using the liquid from the wrong type of honey pot.
Sorry children.
I can’t be the only one that heard Uncle Roger in my head on that second line…..
i just found out that Milk should work for a Blood substitute too
Milk has blood in it…. Not a lot but it’s there….. sorry
Not if it’s nut-juice
That’s a poor turn of phrase if you are talking about analoguous componants to bodily fluids.
the euphemism is strong with this post. salty even.
Yes- Milk is, like blood, and important magical ingredient.
In the Odyssey, when preforming the feat of necromancy to call spirits from Hades to consult with. they use Blood and Milk.
Gwen sure looks like a super.
See now I’m curious as to what the total cost for this sigil was.
Saffron’s so pricey because you only get 3 anther (I think) per flower, and I think it’s one flower per plant?
You don’t have to be raised on older entertainment to appreciate it, nor do modern techniques automatically surpass old ones. I’m “only” 57 but I’d still rather read pulp magazines from the 30s and 40s than any periodical published today, many of the best movies ever made came out in the 1940s and 50s and I’m not fool enough to think otherwise, and anything that incorporates CGI when practical effects or hand-drawn animation could have been used instead isn’t getting my butt in a theater seat.
Sydney is about to discover the magic orb? Or a function of the orb that makes transport portals which will notify her another portal type has been recorded for reuse?
For a second there I thought she was going to summon a demon with glitter glue
Glitter is a hellish substance of chaos and evil, so it actually would be appropriate for summoning demons.
Carson and Doctor Who up to the cancellation in the 80s I get, but aren’t the original Scooby Doos still resyndicated. Like the 3 Stooges were (and I imagine still are)? That last one didn’t seem like it was worth mentioning.
I think the original series still shows up on Boomerang.
Hmm, interesting examples there. See, I saw I, Claudius as an adult and really liked it, but OG Doctor Who, yeah…, I struggle with it a bit.
Yeah I started catching Doctor who on TV when Tom Baker was was the doctor. Then I kind of followed it all the way up to the seventh doctor and I was like well now what? So I started watching them all the way from the beginning. You know the black and white editions?
At the timein the US, you got to consider that science fiction on broadcast TV was extraordinarily scarce. If you’re a science fiction consumer, you tended to watch everything that was remotely science fiction. That and tons of books. And yes there are tapes for it but consider that companies that sold VHS tapes (Suncoast,media play,etc) wasn’t really putting out episodes of Doctor who. And if it was it was like really expensive to have that many episodes.
Frankly I can see why people who’ve seen the new Doctor who 2005+ have a hard time going back to the original first eight doctors. At some point I was like well I’m curious what it looks like. And again it helped that the broadcast TV started showing episodes of Doctor who all the way from the beginning.
I kind of ran into that with 2001 a space Odyssey. When it first came out in theaters it was extraordinarily cool. Now after watching a lot of science fiction like Star Trek and particularly Star wars, Going back to watch the original 2001 is almost painfully boring.
Also have to understand that a lot of the early Doctor Who episodes were lost or destroyed due to reusing the tapes (some ‘lost’ episodes have been found in places like Africa)
She forgot the cocaine…
that makes the summons go FASTER.
no, That would be Speed.
I’d forgotten how rich Sydney has suddenly become. My first reaction to this was “sweet black fucking sabbath that’s so wasteful”
I’m thinking this was a good chance for her to have a little spending spree on an new hobby while still being relatively responsible. Plus maybe showing off a little for a new friend.
Hm. I have to wonder… how this is going to react with her Aether Causeway Generator Orb?
Why should it? She’s not fondling her balls while she’s doing this
A pondering,
If Sidney goes to the demon realm, yeah the opposite of what she is trying here,
but if she did, would it be added to the log of the flight orb and thus just as she can use the Aethereum Causeway to gate to Fracture Station at any time would she then be able to gate to the demon realm at any time, bypassing all the magical components normally needed to do so?
With the honey base and good mixing, you honestly wouldn’t need more than a few grams of powdered gold to get a good gold color to it.
More to the point, who’s going to clean it out of what appears to be a carpet?
It’s just like any other glitter, you never get it ALL out. No matter how hard you try….
“Glitter, the STD of the craft world.”
Hey DaveB have you ever read “Tinker” by Wen Spencer.
That’s not completely correct. The first cake mixes had all the ingredients powdered and mixed in. People didn’t get satisfaction making them until some ingredients like eggs were added and they had to mix them in with the water and oil before baking.
So it isn’t the WMD known as glitter. It’s merely the next worst thing.
I see Halo has become comfortable with how rich she is.
Wow! “Carnac the Magnificent”! It took me a moment to recognize the reference even though I was 34 when he retired and an avid watcher of the of The Tonight Show.
How old is Gwen? Seems odd that she would call out Sydney for a dated reference, considering she immediately knew it was Carson. I was born late ‘80s but I used to watch and also recognized the Carnac bit myself.
Minor art continuity critique: in panel two, Gwen’s legging-net texture continues all the way up under dress’s side laces, rather than stopping at her hips as it does elsewhere.
*obscure candy chain* “Are you sure we have everything in stock for this savory hard candy flavor?” “I think so.” POOF “Well… it’s an 8 legged crustacean named Candyland” “how do you know that?” “It’s wearing a t-shirt.. and a Detroit Tigers baseball hat with twin bear cans and a straw”
I meant beer cans. but bear cans sounds sillier
A giant crab carrying a pair of pet bears on either side of its head.
*giggles and sings the word ‘Shiny’ just loud enough for you to hear it*
and no one saw anything out of the ordinary. they were busy trying to find the gorilla.
I think you’re badly underestimating the power of good writing and performances.
Being a good wizard depends heavily on the preparations and knowledge, and it’s true for both, that quality has a price – not always money, but still can cost pretty much.
As for exposure to older media, I am always surprised how many older people are surprised I know about tv shows from the 60s and so when its like…I have older relatives who bought shows, recorded things off television, and its not like movies were the only things to make it to VHS tapes, my known about Beanie and Cecil is no weirder than having seen the 1933 Alice in Wonderland.
heck, especially NOW, with the internet and people sharing all these old medias from around the world. One just has to have the time and curiosity to hunt them down and watch them.
Honestly, with the new fad among the streaming services to vault a good portion of their IPs after the initial run, I think ~newer~ media is much more likely to disappear from the public consciousness.
And of course, Carson and such came about during a time of limited choices–I doubt ANY television IP will ever make quite such a universal dominance in the public mind (and thus, remain beloved decades after being off the air) in the future. The market is simply too fragmented.
But the older stuff has a tendency to be shared intergenerationally.
I look at Halo’s logo on her shirt and see Quake 2 logo instead, is that normal?
Apparently normal to people who don’t read the comic… or the comments
Interesting thing about gold. It’s not technically poisonous, but if you eat it it will rip microscopic holes in your kidneys.
Black honey, meh. Acacia honey (it isn’t, but the French named it, so – – – ) now that’s the stuff. I used to get that and my father would eat it all day. Even people who don’t like honey like acacia honey. And that’s why it’s so expensive.
PS – it comes from Black Locust trees, not Acacia trees. IOW, false Acacia. Meh. The old farm had hundreds of them, and the bees absolutely loved them when they were blooming. It was a constant dull roar under the fence rows in the spring.
Of course Dabbler is just going to giver her Parfait’s phone number right?
Parf gave it to Sydney when they parted (the card was still warn because she pulled it from between her breasts)
Jeez, Sydney…you summon a girl like that, they’re might get the wrong idea(s).
Please continue.
Would any CGI dragon satisfy after witnessing the power and majesty of BRIAN BLESSED!?! ACTORRR!!!
Wait a sec… Honey as a substitute for blood? That explains why French kings declared that only they could use honey!
What does “bee but” have in relation to honey ? Bees produce honey by regurgitating partially digested nectar. So honey is technically bee vomit, not bee poo…
Damn. I was really hoping we’d never see Parfait again. She’s hands-down the most annoying character of the series, and the only one so far that I strongly dislike.
I liked the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where it turned out that the bodily fluid needed to fix a problem wasn’t blood but tears,
Leveraging a blend of creative thinking and data-driven insights, I specialize in developing and executing result-oriented marketing campaigns