Grrl Power #1183 – Smng
I guess Parfait has her “Auto Reply to Summoning Requests” set to “Automatically Accept.” In her defense, she’s just getting her career as a professional Succubus started, and her Summoning Rolodex has like 4 names at the moment?
All those sigils that cause the candles to blow out and the wind to pick up and black smoke to pour from the edges of the circle and cackling before the flame wreathed hand breaks through the dimensional bulwark are just designed to promote theatrics. Gotta maintain the mystery and make sure the mortals continue to fear and revere the unknown and all that.
I’ve long liked the idea that most magic that happens in popular media is the result of people cobbling together ancient texts in order to cast a single spell or summon an entity and everything inevitably goes wrong – aren’t caused by malicious intent of the magic itself or the things being summoned… well, okay, sometimes it’s the fault of the things being summoned – but most of that stuff is because the people in those movies don’t really know anything about magic despite their 40 year quest to unlock its secrets. It’s like someone trying to code a computer program but all they have is snippets of code that were written in ancient Sumerian. They don’t know what each snippet is supposed to do, but if you string enough of them together, maybe you can get something to happen, even if that thing is a OS crash or it makes the USB port that connects the keyboard to the computer to stop working. But the magical script kiddies are pretty sure someone 5000 years ago used “Sumerian++” to create solid gold out of thin air and also made them irresistible to women, (ignoring the fact that having a mountain of gold is not, in and of itself, a huge turn off) so it’s worth trying, even if the last guy who tried it lost the blue channel on his monitor and also his bones were replaced with fire ants.
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?
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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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well, it has been a while… i am a little surprised to see a web comic using row 4 again, but then, this is one of the few places i would expect to see tengwar…
*ahem*
má istal quet’Eldarian?
it has been a while…
i find it funny that “Le” is used. unless that is supposed to be “L” with an accent. dots and dipths are pretty similar to vowels. “Na” or in quenya “of/belonging to” makes sense as part of a mana condensation sequence.
CALLED IT! Heh… Robin Williams’ Genie might of done it first, but Parfait adds a certain charm(?) to it! And she looks a hell a lot better than ole big blue boy. Now Sydney will blush and hide her face/eyes until Parfait can conjure some clothes. And Gwen will try to not die laughing…
Look at Gwen’s face in the last panel, she was expecting something. Probably why she made Sydney enter the circle instead of doing that part herself.
The person inside the circle is the summoner, and therefore, nominally, the one in control of the summoned entity. Gwen may have powered the circle, but Sydney is the summoner.
To be fair, Dave re-used Gwen’s pose (or reference image) from the previous page.
Which (the re-using part) I am totally okay with as it allows him to produce these pages twice a week instead of once every two weeks.
The first time *I* saw that gag was from a Warner Brother’s cartoon called “A-Lad-In his Lamp”.
It came out in 1948 (!)
And now you can see it too…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZdTrMrmsT8
Genie might have done it first, but he didn’t do it best.
far from it, its an old gag. Even older than people may know.
The lord of the manor is indisposed. It was a weird fear that while one was bathing THAT would be the time when an unexpected guest would come knocking at the door. It was considered in poor showing for the lord of the manor to not welcome guests himself.
this gag would be passed down as “things our grandpa was afraid of” and onto cartoons, and translate over to the *getting a phone call while in the tub or shower gag*, etc…
keeping this gag fresh has changed its tone from *oh no how am I going to great a vistor like this* to *oh no I am being inconvenienced while bathing*,
Gwen seems to have had a significant upgrade from somewhere. I remember as being somebody’s assistant / researcher, not much more than a self-taught novice at magic with few real abilities but here she has a big office and seems to be doing some fairly advanced magic?
See the Who’s Who sidebar – she’s assistant to Zephan, head of ArcLight. She is considered a novice, but given this is the nation’s premier (only?) official magic organization there’s got to be a pretty high bar to entry. We don’t know how long she’s been learning magic, but the team has been public and official for around 6 months now, so she’s at least got that much training at practice under Zephan’s guidance.
Whereas Sydney has zilch, so even if Gwen has no more than that 6 months she’s still far ahead of Sydney. In fact, that might make her a far less intimidating option to approach for help than experts like Zephan or Dabbler.
According to the cast page she was a freelance consultant prior to joining ARC. AS such she had some innate ability, probably enough to figure out that there was a lot that she didn’t know. That already puts her way ahead of the average person on the street. One way to look at “novice” is that she may have a lot of skills but doesn’t yet have the ability to get by without the resources of a master practitioner such as Zephan. She hasn’t yet reached a level of skill where she is ready to go out on her own as a journeyman (journeyperson?) practitioner. As an aside I wonder, as the assistant to the head of ARC’s intelligence wing, how much spycraft has she picked up along the way?
Ssomoene doesn’t have “Summon waiting” or a “Summon answering machine”
You are FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH in the queue. Your call is important to use, please be patient while we attend to other calls. Approximate wait: 45 years.
If you are calling for hentai, press 1.
If you are calling for group sex, press 2…
…twelve thousand other options….
If you are calling for a quickie, press 0 and an operator will be right on you.
“Hello, and welcome to ThorPrayer! To continue in Common, chant ‘one’ now!”
For some reason this comment reminded me of “Oversummoned overpowered and over it”.
Well at least someone wasn’t in the middle of her. That would suck.
Last orb’s a mana battery or related to spells somehow. Place your bets!
“Hold it – I have to take that call…”
More like,”This call has to take me…”
I wonder if your amount of Mana is a fixed quantity, or if you can expand and grow it.
If you’re exercising it, and pushing it, it’s usually constantly growing but only marginally, not by orders of magnitude.
Consider it like any other muscle. (Metaphorically)
Now you’ve got me thinking of body building supplements, “Mana Milk” or something.
Moana, Mo’ Mana, buy a Mana Banana, straight from the Bahamas.
Maybe I’m mis-remembering but wasn’t Parfait a little “less endowed” the last time we saw her?
She is definitely a crowd pleaser in today’s ensemble
Some of that is soap suds.
when last we saw her she had most of her arm down her cleavage
i think the only difference is her dress was supporting her somewhat last time
She’s a succubus, they don’t hit puberty… They explode through it!
Nope, first encounter with Parfait was with accidental boob hypnosis
She definitely looks a bit more solid than the lat time we saw her!
You know, there are plenty of people who call themselves programmers and are just putting together snippets of code found on stackoverflow … and those are NOT ancient.
Which causes problems all the time(high level access to john doe, unmaintainable code, crashing software), so it’s still a functional comparison.
ART ERROR: Gwen’s fishnet stockings are missing in the last panel!
Maybe that’s a side effect of Parfait summoning. Whenever she ‘poit’s in someone nearby loses one article of clothing?
Losing one’s pants does tend to happen around succubi, but I doubt the effect would be quite this sudden and so easily bypass whatever personal wards Gwen may be running.
It might be funnier if the art error was Sydney still having her pants. Parfait has her arm in almost the perfect censor position.
how does one use spoilers?
In other dirty but hopefully safe to post thoughts, imagine if Honey was described as as made by bees by drinking the sexual fluids of plants (Nectar) and mixing it with their spit like some sort of aftermath of inter-species cunnilingus. Given the amount of bees needed to make one ounce (not at once so not an orgy) and that they were summoning Parfait the results track.
It would be expected of some succubi to sneak in a spell of cloth disintegration in the summoning spell but Parfait seem to nice to do something like that.
Honestly, if I were a succubus responding to calls like that, I’d have my summon circle route me through the bath specifically so I had an excuse to show up wearing nothin but bubbles. That takes care of hygiene and a snack all in one swell foop.
“Parfait” is french for Perfect.
And a tasty dessert.
which you can make with slightly stale muffins/cupcakes and some jam or blended fruit and yogurt
The answer is C. It is always C.
Parfait. Is. A. Succubus.
Other Commenters are speaking as if this is an accidental look on Parfait’s part. I don’t believe this. She’s a beginner and she been practicing for months to make totally sure that this is *exactly* how she shows up when she is summoned. Bugs Bunny genie did it. Disneyaladdin’s genie did it. It’s the classic.
Sydney is gonna feel silly when Gwen finally gets around to it and she realizes then her Cora-glasses already have the ability to see mana. Because why wouldn’t they? She didn’t notice it on the headsup when looking at her person before because:
My prediction is she doesn’t have any.
As the idea was brought up the end result will probably be either low to none or incredibly high.
We already know her truesight can see magic, presumably it can measure manna levels, too. She just hasn’t looked at herself using it.
When DaveB’s under-the-comic blurb mentions that summoning spells (especially for demons) don’t have a warning or notice feature for the being on the other end, there’s a fairly logical reason for it. Most demons hate to be summoned because most cases also include being tied to obey the summoner. If they had a “head’s up” they could prepare some kind of surprise response when they arrive…A nasty surprise.
naturally.
Just imagine you’re some demon crawling through the branches of the dark Yggdrasil, minding your own business when you are taken from the shadowy warm embrace of your world to the colder yet brighter world of humans where the mana is so thin its hard to “breathe” properly and they want to sick you on magic users to “feed” on their mana, binding you to a contract with the terms of payment being your release once the “job” is complete.
Imagine if you could get a heads up, prepare, set your terms, or quickly grab something that might undo their magic circle like a bucket of water…or a gun.
Even for higher demons and eldritch this has to be annoying, beings that can split their focus via subconscious networks or having a very different kind of mind *like a sapient root network with each tree being a different body popping up in different worlds*, but even then imagine you are minding your own business sitting there at a castle meeting and some yahoo kid who got their hands on some magic summoning cards and too much wealth keeps sacrificing the gems needed to keep summoning some talking demon mask tentacle part of you over and over again, even though its like a character in a dream you still know its there and happening, so you just hear this in the back of your head like a distant whisper and glimpses of it when you blink despite most your focus in your main body…a good reason to track down every spell and item in the multiverse you once thought was a good idea to spread around and either round them up or destroy them. If such a being got a heads up on these spells being cast they could probably just cut it off if they wanted to.
it brings to mind the anime Slayers. The Lord of Nightmares is aware every time a spell that calls upon her power is used *my power is mind, my mind is my power*. So that does make one wander if one of the parts of Shabranigdo is aware every time the Dragon Slave is cast, like does he at least feel it when someone calls upon power from him?
Hmm, perhaps Parfait may consider handing out a telecommunication spell or orb or card or whatever instead a spell to summon her. Seems like it was doomed to hijinks.
Thought that that was what she had given Sydney, but Sydney being Sydney screwed it up
I’m pretty sure Parfait is going to demonstrate how the card is supposed to work. But it can’t be too obvious, because Gwen would have noticed it on the card.
Like, “Oh, yeah, this little dot down here. if you put drop of blood on it, it will call her.”
Did Gwen actually examine the card itself?
We see Sydney holding it at one point, but did she let Gwen examine it though?
I’m reminded of the summoning orb Roy’s girlfriend gave him in order of the stick.. which required him to have abilities he didn’t have (and she didn’t know he lacked) to use.
I’d forgotten that incident, ended up being a major plot pivot for the whole party since he had an urgent need that wasn’t met.
Parfait vote incentive please?
I would think this page counts as such?
Okay, “more” Parfait vote incentive, please?
Figures. If you call up a succubus, she sends nudes… *badum-tssssh*
at least she wasn’t bathing in noodles!
She doesn’t just send nudes, we can see in the last panel she stole Gwen’s fishnets as part of the material components. I’m betting Sydney’s missing her undies too.
oh god she is going to fall onto the honey and spices, right after she was just cleaning up.
Considering her normal outfit is basically SMOKE in the form of a dress, getting body paint made of honey, spices and gold would not only be the more expensive ensemble, but arguably a more substantial one. She would still be wearing more than Cora, and often Dabbler.
I wonder if Parfait can float, genie heritage and all, because then she would avoid that, until someone pointed it out and then she would fall due to her adorable clutziness.
>> getting body paint made of honey, spices and gold
So really exotic and expensive stripper glitter basically.
Succubus, come forth!
Fairly sure she wants to cum first…
Those are very primate looking feet on Parfait. I thought she had cloven feet. Or is that part of her glamour?
Dabbler has cloven feet.
Succubi in this universe have variable biology, selectively dominant and parasitic genetics and all that.
Hmm, that IS an interesting question and could be one of the reasons the orbs latched on. I don’t see how any Gamer worth their salt would NOT follow up on Mana testing…
Aww yeah! This is now my favorite page… since the *last* time we saw Parfait! <3
I vote that she did indeed take Gwen's fishnet stockings (and Sydney's underwear) on purpose… and her 'surprised while bathing' here is just as purposeful.
So, I’m guessing that’s what the last orb does. Magic.
Greeeat now she’ll be covered in gold dust glitter goo. She’ll never be able to get rid of the stuff.
I think this qualifies as an “Oops” moment.
This reminds me the old Bugs Bunny cartoon
So would-be mages are script kiddies? Makes sense.
Or rather, would-be script kiddies from a thousand years and two apocalypses from now who have a random 5% of an archive of scripts.