Grrl Power #1194 – Assembly of shame
That awkward morning after. Except it’s not the morning after, it’s like, 30 minutes after. And everyone you work with is there, and they’ve all got sex hair and there’s more than one person with their shirt on inside out. At least no one is giving a presentation in their underwear.
Yes, I know there were already a few comments with the Hulk reference on the page with Math and Jabber getting down, but like, I’m not going to use it too? Yeah, you called it. Some people are asexual, some people are Math. And apparently Jabberwokky. Maybe to a lesser extent. Like all things, it’s a spectrum. If the average person’s sex drive is a 5, Jabber is an 8, Math is around 9.5. Succubi can’t really be measured on the human scale. It’s different for them. It’s obviously super high, but it’s also like hunger. They need to eat, and it affects not just their number, but the spectrum itself, and it if gets bad enough, it starts affecting the numbers of people around them. But that brings us back around to discussions of free will.
I know some people are finding this storyline a little squicky, which really wasn’t the intent. What Parfait did wasn’t malicious or even intentional – which doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences, but I certainly can’t guarantee this will all play out to everyone’s satisfaction. I mean, obviously nothing that starts of with a lust aura incident could possibly have a satisfactory conclusion for everyone. It’s just too serious of a topic for some people, for any number of reasons.
The whole comic is supposed to be that slice of life, lighter side of being a superhero. Obviously sometimes there have to be villains who do pretty terrible things, but I try not to dwell on that stuff. I just need enough to show “this person is bad and here’s a reason we have to stop them.” The comic isn’t and will never be “The Boys.” I watched a season of that and, honestly I found it to dark to be enjoyable. It certainly had its moments, but I had that uneasy feeling that, yeah, this is unfortunately what it would probably be like if Supers were real. There’d be this honeymoon period (assuming we didn’t instantly go the X-Men/hunt them all down route) but before long it’d be like how it seems every few weeks now some once beloved actor gets exposed as a pedo or domestic abuser or QANON conspiracy moron. I mean, it’s bad enough when someone is just a rich asshole, my utter lack of faith in humanity tells me that if there were people out there who “saved a thousand lives today” then some of them would absolutely be able to justify doing literally anything they wanted. Like what does it matter if my basement is waist deep in murdered cheerleaders? I kept a cruise ship from sinking and saved 5,000 people. Worse still, there would absolutely be people who would defend their favorite superhero’s predilection for cheerleader disposal because of “how much good they do.”
So, yeah. That’s not this comic.
The August vote incentive is up! Yeah I know it’s late, so hopefully I’ll manage to get some bonus (read: overdue) incentives up as I attempt to catch up.
Oh no! Sydney’s been injured! A Wampa may or may not have been involved, I’ll leave the exact nature of the incident up to you. It’s not relevant to the picture. And before you’re like “Dave, Bandaged Rei is one thing, but floating unconscious in a bacta tank is probably an even narrower fetish.” just check the picture out.
The Patreon version has nudes and variants, and a comic that reveals something interesting about the orbs.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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"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.
That is a VERY smug goblin.
The smuggest lmao!
We need a higher resolution of that self-indulgent smile
Came here to comment on that very same thing!
I enjoyed and found this story-line and in-comic life lesson entertaining. Parfait and Sydney have a nice dynamic. Don’t worry about it, Dave.
Honestly? Thank you for keeping it light. There’s been a trend in comics recently towards “dark for the sake of dark”. Between The Boys, the rather gruesome murder of all mutants on the planet in X-men, and whatever else, it’s nice to have a comic that I don’t have to fear.
The Boys was always intended to be absolutely and totally screwed up in the worst possible ways imaginable because that’s the only thing Garth Ennis is capable of doing. Remember, this is the guy who created Preacher. And Crossed, for the love of all that is unholy, just Crossed.
Honestly its like Ennis is stuck in the edgy teenager phase.
What’s the saying? Know your audience.
I think the issue here, is that while it is absolutely true that “realism doesn’t mean GrimDark,” it is also true that the real world is a place that includes some enormously fucked up things, and some people really, really do not want to engage with that.
Which is not a criticism. Self-care includes mental self-care, and that is good praxis, too.
My only grouse, to the extent that is a grouse, is that some people in that group go the step further of demonizing anyone who produces the content that engages those really, really fucked up parts of reality.
It’s interesting that there is at least a set of folks that do the demonizing or who gripe about how the morality of fictional characters but they keep coming back for another taste of the Kool-ade. I’ve been roaming the net since it was commercially available and have come across some of the enormously fucked up things. I take an academic interest in some pretty dark things but there is some stuff out there that is repulsive and I don’t go back because I know I don’t want that stuff in my head. there seems to be a group of people who like to go roll in a thing (I typed think at first and maybe that fits too) and then complain about how bad it stinks. Everybody needs a hobby , I guess.
He did good in 2000AD (the anthology comic, not the year)
Can’t remember offhand what stories he did, but do remember he started in that
Muzak Killer is a really funny Dredd story he wrote. Just a Pilgrim is quite good too. Can’t remember any other 2000ad stories.
Honestly, where are all the supposed tragic victims of rape the triggered pearl-clutchers raved about? I could hardly picture a group of people more in the throes of post-coital bliss. I only acknowledge a boyfriend justifiably worried about the consequences of his very public cheating.
Archon let go most of the “villains” in the Restaurant Rumble because they were under the influence of Terry’s violence aura. I imagine a similar arrangement will be worked out due to Parfait’s lust aura.
Mr. Amorphous: Honey, I was under the influence of that lust aura, so I cheated, because I sort of had too.
Heatwave: I know what you mean. Vance and I were working on a project in one of the work rooms when we just ended up all over each other. Honey, I just couldn’t help myself and I figure it was the same with you.
Mr. Amorphous: Yeah, that’s pretty much it was with us too. I think Jigawatt is attractive, but you are always my first and foremost.
Kevin’s aura. Not Terry’s.
You know the characters aren’t real right? Like Dave can draw them however he wants and make them say whatever he wants?
You remember that scene in Revenge of the Nerds where one of the characters disguises himself as a woman’s boyfriend and has sex with her while in disguise….and she’s totally okay with that later?
It’s amazing what you can make people be okay with when you’re either the director of the movie or the writer/artist of the webcomic.
As I said earlier, this arc is not likely to age well.
Sydney is notably not pictured. For everyone else, they may all be lucky that they didn’t end up doing things they’ll regret later when their inhibitions were lowered.
She is on the stage
What’s panel six?
John Ringo and Tom Kratman wrote a book where Waffen SS members were rejuvenated with alien technology to defend Europe against an invading horde of cannibalistic (and human eating) aliens because the modern population of Europe was far too woke to defend effectively…
There are a lot of books where rape happens and then a relationship happens…
The author writing something happened with particular consequences or lack thereof doesn’t mean that it’s the way things really would happen or is a good idea.
I could write a story where John Wayne got raped by a russian bodybuilder, loved the experience and became a spy for the USSR, would it have any bearing on how John Wayne would have reacted to being raped?
The real John Wayne would just tighten up and cut it off.
I would submit that that qualifies as Nazi apologetics. Really, anything that tries to make the SS into “the good guys,” by any means at all, is beyond the pale.
Why do you think the former leader of the Canadian Parliament resigned? “accidentally” giving a literal Schutzstaffel member national honors, because apparently nobody was smart enough (somehow) to remember that the people “fighting the Russians in WWII,” were the fucking Nazis!
…this still enrages me…
Oh you of limited imagination and nerd knowledge. I bet Sydney would be so disappointed with you. Typical Nazis are far from the worst that humanity can face when you open the sci-fi/fantasy and alternate-history bag of tricks.
To begin with, WWII only qualifies as a just and righteous struggle because the Western democracies were a part to it. The Nazi/Soviet clash was a textbook case of a fight between two totalitarian monsters and mass murderers that had somewhat different ideological paint, choices of victims, and killing M.O. but were otherwise basically indistinguishable in everything that matters. Their choices of ideological paint were based on different picks of oppressive, hateful, and murderous biological or social pseudoscience crap.
If at all possible, the best options would have been to wall off the Nazi/Commie clash and let the two monsters bleed each other out to exhaustion and collapse or a coup de grace by democracies, or fight both at once in a three-way struggle. At lthe very east, Patton was right and America should have wiped out Nazis and Commies in close sequence while it had a chance. Our timeline is far from the best possible solution to the problem of dealing with 20th century totalitarianism.
It is not so difficult to conceive and develop a sci-fi/fantasy situation where Nazis/Soviets/Maoists/Islamists are the lesser evil option. Just imagine a scenario where the alternative is between any of the totalitarian polities and an alien threat that wants to exterminate humanity or enslave it as cattle. If the totalitarians win, certain individuals and groups are screwed, living conditions are way worse than liberal democracy, but the vast majority survives, adapts and relatively thrives kinda like in premodern despotism, and gets a chance to ride out the new Dark Age. If the aliens win, humanity dies or faces a worse fate than Hitler or Stalin can realistically deliver.
Just thinking of the Grrlverse, I can easily identify at least two cases where typical reborn or surviving totalitarians would be the lesser evil alternative to alien threats: the Alari led by Sciona and the Fell. For all their flaws, Hitler or Stalin could not realistically turn all of humanity into slaves liable to become blood batteries or body donors on a whim. If the Fell win, humanity is basically dead.
More or less the same utilitarian/pragmatic calculation applies in the Fatherland case of an alternate Cold War scenario between America and victorious Nazis. If the nukes fly, humanity is screwed. If the Cold War dynamic plays out to its likely conclusion, we ride out the crucible without excessive damage just like we did with the Commies. Too bad for the victimized groups, but they were screwed anyway and survival of civilization and the vast majority of humanity is more important.
I can also think of at least two popular and influential sci-fi or alt-history series where the Nazis and/or Commies get to be part of the lesser evil alternative to a worse threat than the usual totalitarians in an alliance of convenience with the real good guys of the Western democracies: Turtledove’s Worldwar/Colonization and Sterling’s Draka.
Turtledove & Sterling?
Hard pass, more apologia.
You’re also engaging in false equivalency, which is neither surprising, nor particularly interesting.
For starters, the only reason Nazi Germany invaded the USSR was because the Soviets had been quite thoroughly isolated by the so-called Western Powers. Stalin had, in fact, spent years trying to build an Alliance against the Nazis, but he was rejected flat out by the capitalist empires. They were hoping that the Nazis would destroy the Communists, and then be sufficiently satisfied – and spent – that they’d stop there. That isolation was why the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact was signed in the first place; the Soviets were trying to avoid being targeted by a new German conquest.
Of course, that isn’t how the fascist mind works, and certainly not the race-fascists, who had quite literally already drawn up plans for the invasion & administration of North America.
Once it was understood that literally nothing would stop the ambitions of the Nazis, for both total global conquest and the literal extermination of anyone they didn’t deem ‘Aryan,’ including possession of wealth, London & Washington finally understood what Moscow had been warning them of, and joined in Alliance.
How much could have been avoided, if this fallacious capitalist excuse of “they’re the same thing with different paint” hadn’t been conjured up in the first place? But no, no, that would be silly.
Every good capitalist knows, you can’t go letting your labor animals believe they’re your equals, and deserve the full value of their own labor. How else are you going to make a profit, if you aren’t alienating the animals from the fruit of their labor?
*sigh*
Look, you really seem to have this desire to pass yourself off as this sort of intellectual figure who is smarter & more knowledgeable than anyone else in the room. It’s classical narcissistic conservative b/s, and nobody is buying it. I for one – and far from the only one – have seen it before. I grew up watching it, in fact. My father was exactly like this, and he wound up divorced, alone, and largely unwelcome pretty much everywhere. He has no friends, and spends his time off reading Turtledove & watching old movies and television shows that reaffirm how right he is about everything, and how dumb/evil the rest of us are for disagreeing and pushing back on his patronizing b/s.
Don’t go down that road. It ends in loneliness & resentment.
I unfortunately do vibe with Dave on not being able to enjoy The Boys.
And glad to see this incident winding down.
I enjoy the show vastly more than the comic, specifically because some people in the show are still good, and want to do the right thing. And those who are corrupt and evil aren’t all the exact same baby eating shade of evil, they are all unique.
But I totally understand how it can be too dark for peoples escapism.
MATH!!!!
Does anyone else really want him to have a cool, reserved, and more badass-by-sheer-predictive-analysis megane trope older brother named ‘Numbers’?
You have to love the joke of Math and Jabber not noticing the lust aura, since apparently, their own natural libidos effectively masked it.
Someone dropped blue paint in the blue room in my blue house? Abadee abadaa, I didn’t notice.
Life goes on.
So where’s Arianna and what did she get up to during the “Lust Aura Incident”?
Arianna: Damn. Burned out the batteries!
That was Anvil. Arianna made a phone call.
Still going on possibly. She Did phone in a potential partner. Or asleep.
A group of supers like this? No way did everyone reach a suitable conclusion to their encounters. I imagine lust aura induced blue balls are far worse than normal. I imagine those people would be even more frustrated (pun intended) than Max about this situation.
The postures of the people on the stage are interesting. Max reads as “Alright people, let’s wrap this mess up.” Sydney reads as “I know the boss is pissed at me but I really don’t see what I did wrong.” Parfait seems to be the one who is the most acutely emotionally distressed. Dabblers body language is more difficult to read with the extra arms.
My sense is Dabbler is amused/pleased about this – you could see it in the prior comic – but also a good enough family member and natural problem-solver that right now she’s trying to comfort Parfait and/or keep the lust aura down with external magic of some kind.
I read Dabbler mainly as supporting her sister. Not a “you are so great” Support, more a “You messed up. But whatever, I am here for you” Support.
I think Dabbler’s extra pair of arms are letting her do two things at once with her body language –
One hand on Parfait’s shoulder – Comforting Parfait and giving her a connection to make sure she’s OK and there for her.
Other pair on her own hips – Making it clear that what happened here is unacceptable and there will be serious discussions about it later to make sure it never happens again.
Well, the hands on the hips with a straight back gives away some level of seriousness, while the other pair of hands suggests a try for a slight support – by my opinion. She knows, that this wasn’t intentional, so she wants to help her, yet still a serious topic, which shouldn’t be taken lightly. (Power control must be an important thing among a race, which is willingly stay in an ‘enslaved’ position. As previously was mentioned, there probably should be methods to solve the mana-leak problem without the necessity of involving a ‘master’ for the succubi, they just choose to not using it.)
I see Dabbler’s stance as, “Hey kiddo, you messed up, but this isn’t the end of the world.” with a strong undertone of “You come for my sister you go through me first.”
Dabbler is emotionally intelligent enough to understand how bad this could be, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to let them “burn” her sister… who is obviously pretty distressed about the situation.
In fairness, Sydney is probably expecting to get the standard finger-wag and the “Oh Sydney” speech which happens any time she does wacky hijinks.
As such, I kinda see her posture as being not too concerned over what’s going to happen.
Really? The extra arms don’t confuse me at all. I mean, any more than normal…
I see it as “You done fucked up, kid, but your big sister is here for you.”
The commentary makes me think of the controversy around Starfox for Marvel. His ‘feel good’ emotion controlling power had this explosion of people suddenly going on about how creepy and date-rapey he was to the point Marvel addressed it in a story if not several. Yet there weren’t any complaints when Moondragon mind controlled Thor and raped him.
That was 41 freakin’ years ago…
What does that have to do with anything?
Or is it okay of it is a female raping a male?
Talk about triple standards
I think the point being made is, “Times have changed.”
a) it’s over 40 years ago
b) she was tried for her crimes in Asgard and, iirc, her powers were limited by a magical device afterwards so there were consequences in universe
c) it’s a pretty common view amongst fandom what Moondragon is a pretty stuffed up character who’s got all sorts of problems, hell you don’t get heroes mind controlling an entire planet to prevent a war and looking to maintain that control all that often.
Omar, that’s who I didn’t recognize. I don’t think he’s ever actually been formally introduced.
He was introduced back during the meeting where he goaded Maxima to get an angry face picture for his collection (“You should all be wearing burqas!”). Then he was seen to be Digit’s supervisor in R&D later on.
That’s Omar? That’s why he is so big, thought it was not-George Lucas and was wondering why she was able to sit in his lap when she and nGL are the same height
Um, Dave, yes, you saved 5,000 people from that cruise ship that was sinking. I would certainly be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that as far as those people go, good job there.
But the cruise ship holds 200,000 *guests*, as well as an unspecified number of crew and hospitality staff. None of them were present on the cruise ship when the normal rescue team arrived, all of the life boats were still present, and while the cruise ship was sinking, they got there with over an hour left before it finally slipped under the waves. As such, I have some concerns. Just saying, so you know.
(Disclaimer: yes, I understand I’m replying to a hypothetical statement. I’m just taking it and running with it, also somewhat hypothetically.)
The food for the laser sharks have to come from somewhere.
Even the largest cruise ship in the world, “Wonder of the seas” has a maximum capacity of about 7,000. 5000 is probably a decent approximation for “everyone on board the average cruise ship”
“The Oasis class vessel is 236,857 gross tons and has a passenger capacity of 5,734 at double occupancy, but that goes up to 7,084 at maximum capacity.”
I think you got the numbers mixed up by mistake.
Does a cruise ship actually need 500 tons of gross weight per passenger? That seems way to huge to me.
Nah, that sounds about right. A bulk passenger cruiser wouldn’t need that much, but a luxury cruise vessel or aircraft carrier would have much larger tonnage/passenger ratio.
The one is crammed full of luxury accommodations and is trying NOT to feel crowded with 5000+ people on board, and the other is crammed full of military hardware with the huge crew as more of an afterthought.
Based on those numbers, assuming a nominal passenger count of 4,000 you’d have about 60 tons per passenger, or about 2 fully loaded semi trucks. Still a lot, but you have to count food and water for possibly a month per passenger, the fact that it’s basically a massive hotel with plumbing/electrical/sewage, and all of the entertainment spaces as well. Not necessarily that crazy.
for a comparison reference a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier has a displacement of 100,000 long tons (cant find gross tons on a quick search)
and there crew size ranges from 5000-5200, and are about the same length and width of a luxury cruse liner but are far shorter in height (except maybe the command deck)
a Nimitz-class carrier weighs about 99,000,000 kilograms (99,000 metric tons), but is able to float on water! The aircraft carrier is able to float on water because the bottom of the ship, the hull, is designed to displace a large amount of water.
https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/physical/density-effects/density-temperature-and-salinity/weird-science-floating-aircraft-carriers#:~:text=Even%20more%20impressive%2C%20a%20Nimitz,a%20large%20amount%20of%20water.
Gross tonnage is actually a measure of volume, not weight.
I may have over-reacted Dave, sorry. But I have seen the dirty underbelly of city life, and the harm people do. No one in Archon should feel bad, embarrassed for sure, but not bad. Everyone was blind-sided by it and it looks like Dabs is still consoling Parfait about it. Sydney needs to learn more about succubi and to stop slut-shaming Dabs. It is their nature, and she needs to understand it better. That’s like slut-shaming mice, just because 4 mice can become 400 in a few months!
Arclight should feel bad. They’ve known about aura effects at least as long as Dabbler has been around, and didn’t even set up an alarm to warn people, let alone any direct countermeasures.
>and to stop slut-shaming Dabs
To be fair, she came to do a lot less of that in recent times, once she befriended multiple succubae (and got a lot curious about their nature and lifestyle), got her v-card punched, got in a long-distance relationship with a hunky, poly alien and interested in polyamory herself, and picked Dabs as a source of useful advice and equipment about easing the aformentioned interspecies sex.
If anything, the undisputed cast queen of feminist prudery and slut-shaming stays Max.
Very true, I just keep remembering her reaction to her learning that Dabs and her are “Eskimo sisters” and I agree, Max does need to lighten up, maybe that’s the lesson to her from all this. Arclight should been prepared for this, granted Dabbler isn’t a high risk, but now that the cats out of the bag, it will be from others. I’m sure there’s many more than just succubi that have that ability.
Very true, I just keep remembering her reaction to her learning that Dabs and her are “Eskimo sisters”
> True, but to be fair, it occurred soon after Syd returned to Earth, when she had just got together with Frix. Her sexual evolution was still in her early stages. A more recent version did not mind asking Dabs for help about getting fully ‘compatible’ with him. Therefore, I think her current reaction to the same issue would be somewhat more subdued (for Syd’s standards, that is).
Max’s issue is the way men (boys) have treated her her entire life, my wife had the same issue, even from other girls in high school (Calling her slut, whore, moo milkers, you name it) so Max is a feminist because of it. So being strict and more than ready to pick a fight over certain terms and innuendos. Sydney is a bit backward, her ADHD isn’t helping that, but she has come a long way. Parfait was pretty much trying to make her bi, and Sydney wasn’t having it, that was really my only issue with this story line. Parfait didn’t know it was a thing on Earth, but maybe now she will.
It is very specifically not known whether Sydney had a V card at the beginning of the storyline.
I just saw it rereading through some pages, but now I’m struggling to find it again, but DaveB did say in one of the author blurbs that she’s had multiple boyfriends. That doesn’t necessarily mean she’d lost her virginity before a certain Woof, but I think there’s been a few hints that way.
Admittedly so, although the large difference in her overall easiness of facing and discussing sexual topics before and after meeting Frix hinted to me this might be the case. Even if she actually had given up her card already, it was a quantum leap in term of attitude about these topics, although admittedly far from the 180° turn that say Max becoming a sex-positive feminist and proud of her super body would be. In all likelihood, Syd losing her card before the beginning of the story would have been the likely case of her meeting a fellow nerd that revved her engines and took a fancy to her type before she found the orbs. She has a fancy for Leon’s type, so far from especially unlikely.
And not a single gay pairing…
And Dave isn’t obligated to put one in.
Of course not, girl on girl is hot. Guy on guy is ewwwww! /s
Yeah that is pretty sad. Just think of Peggy getting pu55y blocked T_T.
just search your gay porn elsewhere then
Panel 5?
When most people say gay they tend to think Male on male while Female on Female is Lesbian
That We Know Of!
It would be strange since no-one so far has been established as gay. Do you want actual characters or just a token gesture. If the second, which character could stereotypically be gay, the super tailor? /s
Its always nice to have representation, but I’d prefer it occurs naturally rather than forced.
There was a fair amount of speculation that Shawn was gay in the comments of page 268, but I don’t believe that was ever confirmed, and I can’t think of any other characters that might be gay off the top of my head.
Normally this would be the most awkward company meeting ever. In the case of ARC I’m guessing it probably barely breaks into the top 5.
Anything that involves supernaturally manipulating peoples’ wills can be pretty dicey. For a lot of us, our personal autonomy is the foundation on which life’s meaning is built.
But honestly, I kind of like that it gets brought up. That’s part of the point of sci-fi and fantasy, to examine real world circumstances with the extra perspective of looking at something made up. Grrl Power is a fun and light hearted sort of thing, I’m not going to treat *the comic* like it did something bad including this subject; in fact, I like that I got the chance to do a bit of philosophizing, so don’t think I’m being strident with the following musings.
So, sure, we’re made of meat, subject to meat failings. Being low on sleep, getting hangry, being in pain. Lots of things affect our decision processes. It’s downright silly to pretend otherwise. But that’s part of why we agree that intentionally depriving somebody of food or sleep or causing them pain is bad. Pain isn’t bad on its own; look at BDSM, martial arts competitions, or even just hard exercise, all cases where people choose or even prefer pain. Pain is bad entirely [when/because] it interferes with our freedom.
So clearly intent is a big part of it, but it’s not everything. Think of like, storing nuclear waste. I didn’t *mean* to dump a bunch of nuclear waste into the city’s water supply, so clearly we shouldn’t treat that so seriously, right? Recklessness with something dangerous is also a moral fault.
Yeah, it’s a fraught subject – but also one that comes up all the time in the real world, in a rather less fantastic form.
Namely social situations where people let the alcohol get out of hand and things get a bit crazy – a pretty common event, with all sorts of potential social, moral, or even legal ramifications depending on the details of what actually happened.
But IMO fiction should never avoid discussing topics that afflict us in the real world, especially one as common as the sort this situation is paralleling. It can be part of how we engage with topics in a safer or more reflective way than running into it face first in the real world and lets us consider the consequences in a more controlled manner – and of course, taking a close up look at human frailties and foibles in action can often be quite funny in the proper context.
Regarding this page in particular, I imagine that this sort of meeting is probably not all that different than what a group of young soldiers might encounter facing a CO the evening after a particularly ill-considered party on leave that got out of hand – though in this case it really isn’t their own fault. But it’s still the CO’s job to try to clean up the aftermath and deal with any ramifications that could harm the morale of the unit, and help them avoid such, uh, incidents in the future.
Indeed. The great power of fiction is that it allows us to recontextualize real-world topics, to cast the familiar into unfamiliar terms, so that we can examine them without resorting to our ingrained preconceptions. We can pull apart related concepts that seem inseparable in the real world, and get down into not only what the subconscious rules we live by are, but why.
Honestly though, I literally can’t see any way to resolve this that’s actually satisfying – either the situation isn’t treated as seriously as it should be, which would make me sad, or it is, and that ruins the tone of the comic overall.
By which I mean, this is something that realistically*should* have serious consequences – statistically you’d expect at least one person, if not multiple, to be pretty seriously traumatized by being mentally influenced into having sex, simply based off the fact that 1 in 4 women are rape survivors and ignoring any other factors. However, this comic is light-hearted fun, not only would dealing with those consequences not fit, it doesn’t even really have the tools to handle a discussion like that.
Simply having everyone dismiss it and move past it with no lasting problems, however, as this page certainly seems to imply is happening, is just making light of and minimizing the whole idea of sexual assault. Much more fitting for the tone of the comic, but deeply disappointing.
The closest situation I can think of is if the fight with Vehemence had actually resulted in multiple murders by the people affected by the violence aura, but the comic had the aftermath of the fight still play out exactly the same.
Like I said, I just can’t see any ending for this storyline that leaves me even remotely satisfied. Hopefully the author is able to surprise me, but I doubt it.
>By which I mean, this is something that realistically*should* have serious consequences – statistically you’d expect at least one person, if not multiple, to be pretty seriously traumatized by being mentally influenced into having sex, simply based off the fact that 1 in 4 women are rape survivors and ignoring any other factors. However, this comic is light-hearted fun, not only would dealing with those consequences not fit, it doesn’t even really have the tools to handle a discussion like that.
Let’s not taint and derail this discussion by quoting one of the most questionable, politically motivated, and mass-hysteria/moral-panic claims of the radical feminist movement. Moreover, powerful female superhumans would be the least likely or justified women in the world to be worried about being sexually assaulted, raped, or even being disrespected by puny human males. Therefore, that wild-eyed claim would be irrelevant for this group even if it were a fact for the general population, instead of massaged and cherrypicked data to fit the radical feminist narrative that the modern developed world is a hellhole saturated with misogynistic violence.
>Simply having everyone dismiss it and move past it with no lasting problems, however, as this page certainly seems to imply is happening, is just making light of and minimizing the whole idea of sexual assault. Much more fitting for the tone of the comic, but deeply disappointing.
Abject poverty and famine have been widespread problems throughout history and far from gone in the modern world. This does not mean I enjoy or tolerate being forcefully reminded of them any time I eat a decent meal or make a purchase. Pretty much the same way, I do not enjoy or tolerate being forcefully reminded of rape and sexual assault any time I wish to enjoy erotic fiction that concerns imaginary people in imaginary situations or professionals being paid to act scenarios. The same standard applies when I wish to enjoy action-adventure fiction with lots of cinematic violence in it without worrying about the RL consequences of violence.
My suffering from being denied my preferred entertainment would not lessen or remedy real-world suffering in any way. Having a taste for sex and violence in fiction is not going to make me start to rape, murder, pillage, and burn any time soon. For that matter, overwhelming evidence shows nobody does bad stuff in RL just because they watched or read it in fiction. It is an endless source and focus of moral panic about all kinds of fiction, but it is utterly false. Anybody that does so was going to do it anyway.
There seems to be a high correlation between people who enjoy certain fiction, and people who are dismissive of real-world problems. And that leads to policy that hurts real-world people. Whether or not you go on to rape someone, you still create an environment that makes other people feel more comfortable following through on their impulses.
>Whether or not you go on to rape someone, you still create an environment that makes other people feel more comfortable following through on their impulses.
The supporters of repressive and pro-censorship moral panic waves have been making this kind of claims for centuries, but they always fail to show any genuine evidence. On the contrary, there is overwhelming evidence that nobody acts on a criminal or violent impulse that they would not already be prone to indulge for their own reasons in the first place, and fiction plays no role in the causation of their acts.
>There seems to be a high correlation between people who enjoy certain fiction, and people who are dismissive of real-world problems. And that leads to policy that hurts real-world people.
I would fiercely oppose the agenda of the moral-panic supporters for reasons that go much beyond and are largely independent from my love of certain kinds of fiction. The fact they also threaten my access to it only stokes the fires of my motivation and certainly is not doing anything good to persuade me to their viewpoint.
So you don’t think punishment has any deterrent factor. Or that the cultural attitudes around an action are going to have any influence on whether or not people feel comfortable or safe doing it.
People sitting around saying that rape isn’t all that serious and doesn’t really happen and all these violations of consent aren’t really rape and the victim’s really to blame create an environment in which rapists feel like they can get away with rape, and victims feel like it’s not worth reporting because they won’t be taken seriously, or question whether they really were raped or not, or if it really was their fault.
And yet, weirdly enough, the people most commonly engaging in rape apologia are also the most likely to insist we have ban and burn queer literature & media, lest it somehow infect the poor, innocent, empty sponges that are the children.
Gormless eejits…
As much as I occasionally appreciate conservatives as an ally of convenience against pc/sjw culture, I have almost nothing but scorn and loathing for the latest far-right incarnation of the anti-LGBT movement (see below for a personal caveat).
Censorship almost always does a lot of harm for no appreciable good. That movement is based on ridiculous and damaging falsehoods about the nature of LGBT people. Peddling authoritarianism, lies, ignorance, and pursuing gratuitous suffering and waste, ultimately and considerably harm pretty much everyone. These facts settle the issue and are much more damning in my book than any potential concern about equality, diversity, or representation of minorities, which I typically care little about and may even dislike for personal reasons.
If the conservatives actually wanted to do something worthwhile to curb the real excesses and damage of pc/sjw culture, they should focus on supporting efforts to limit the ability of sjw (cyber)mobs to bully, harass, deplatform, slience, and ruin the livelihood of their opponents, either directly or through applying pressure to spineless/opportunistic corporate actors. This would basically entail reinforcing freedom of thought, speech, and association protections and extending them to private actors, access to net and other essential services, the job sphere, etc as well as treating the freedom to dislike and discriminate anyone for any reason in non-violent ways and in one’s private sphere like the human right it is. Since conservatives dally with authoritarianism and are servants to corporate interests, sadly I do not expect this to happen any time soon.
The reasons for origin and perpetuation of LGBT people in humanity are a complex puzzle about a niche of human nature. I welcome any insight by science in this regard. However, it surely does not happen through grooming and indoctrination. Spreading conspiracy theory falsehoods and acting accordindlgy about this issue is as wrong and damaging as any other typical conspiracy stuff. The notion that people are tabula rasa and can be indefinitely and effectively molded by cultural influence and pressure about anything is wrong and damaging regardless of whether it gets used by far-right or far-left actors.
Having said that, I have a serious interest of comfort boundaries in having personal exposure to certain queer stuff (overt effeminacy, drag stuff, serious sexual ambiguity, explicit male/male stuff, etc.) minimized. I certainly live better if according to my notice all LGB people more or less look and act straight (tomboys, action girls, and g/g stuff are welcome), drag queens do not exist, any trans person is able and willing to do a decent and effective effort to pass as their preferred gender (in my ideal world, everyone is a shapeshifter), gay men do everything intimate off-screen, etc. Therefore, please do not expect me not to cheer if and when these limitations somehow occur all the time in my bubble for any reason. I selfishly prioritize my own comfort zone about this issue. Apart from this, live and let live, out of sight out of mind, pursuit of happiness, and so on.
That’s a long way to go just to say, “I like Nazis better than Queer people,” dude.
I mean really, very impressive. That’s some Daily Wire level bullshitery. It’s like if Peterson and Walsh had a lovechild that was born with its head so far up its own ass that its little brain was perpetually marinating in its own farts.
Like, wow, man…
Huh? To begin with, I could not make up any of the references you make at first glance. America is not the world, or even the developed world. After a few quick and cursory wiki checks, ok, some stuff to support and some to oppose for Peterson, little to like about Walsh, did not care about checking the rest of the Daily Wire stuff. I concede a closeness about some of my ideas and at least part of the Intellectual Dark Web at first glance, but in this sad times of polarization I’d probably have to cherrypick all the way to stay safe.
Much more importantly, where did you read in my argument that I side with MAGAs (I suppose that’s what the Nazi reference means) or their Euro equivalents on this and several other issues, such as defending democracy, the environment, a facts-based world, secularism, reproductive freedom, a functional welfare state, European unity, etc.?
I am willing to be at least a conditional ally of convenience of the sane left on these issues, for my own reasons. I just ask to do my part in a common struggle according to my own values, goals, and ideals and not the pc/sjw ones I dismiss or loathe, and be left free to oppose real woke excesses and abuses about other issues.
About the specific issue at hand, I just add a wish to have my preference respected as far as possible about not getting certain queer stuff that honestly disgusts me thrown in my face. Is really that necessary to approve sjw cyberbullying or hug and kiss a drag queen in order to oppose book banning or support effective transgender care?
Nope, this cannot be. Since I cannot and would not subscribe your purity test and worship to the altar of your ideology, I am singled out as an enemy to be fought no matter what. Buddy, even Stalin got to be more pragmatic then this in 1941-45. This is exactly how and why the historical far left always failed by democratic means, and its sjw reincarnation is doomed to fail again unless it fulfils its potential to be the second coming of Leninism-Stalinism-Maoism. Come on, see how many elections a left dominated by the sjw faction can win with that purity-obsessed attitude and agenda.
My regret about this is a genuine polarization between a right-wing dominated by Christofascists and climate deniers and a left-wing too much influenced by identity fanatics tends to leave me a centrist without a party. Opposing a triumph of the woke left or the alt-right equally feels like an existential issue to me. The difference between the twin Demolition Man and Gilead nightmares is meaningless to me. Only saving the planet reads as even more important.
@Irioth
*sigh*
Jesus H. Christ, you really do remind me of my father.
When I was 13, well after my parent’s divorce, I briefly went to live with my father. Mom had been given custody, but owing to a multitude of my own various mental health & social issues, it was decided I should go live with him instead.
It was the 90’s, and my adolescence was difficult.
This decision came right as he was getting out of the Navy, and so we found ourselves on a long road trip to Cincinnati, from Oakland. Near the end of that trip, I was feeling just barely comfortable & confident enough to try talking to him about part of my problems at home. Again, this was the early 90’s, and I didn’t really have the knowledge or language to understand my being trans, let alone express it. I went at it anyway, tho, trying to approach things by bringing up the DADT policy Bill Clinton had just established. I never got to my point, because he went on an hour long screed, which was effectively him repeatedly saying, “I got nothing against gays, I just don’t want them around me.” And then he asked me, “Are you a f*gg*t, son?”
Naturally I denied it, which seemed to satisfy him at the time.
Now, as to why I’msharing this with you… The people who tend to say these things, believe that all they are doing is making a clear, concise case abut their right to free association. What they fail to understand, is that – given the history of violence, discrimination, and outright murder – it comes across as:
“I don’t want to personally exterminate this class of human being, I just want to live in a world where I don’t ever encounter one, or have to acknowledge that they exist.”
This, of course bad enough, because it directly implies that we have, in their eyes, no right to exist in public. It gets even worse, however, when you take a moment to think about how this “reasonable” position based on free association then gets interpreted by those groups who _are_ specifically looking to exterminate us:
“I don’t care what you do with ‘those people’.”
And _that_ is where your airy, above-it-all, oh-so-reasonable opinion becomes a serious fucking problem. Because quite aside from the fact that you’re a hypocrite for explicitly demanding queer people not be “queer in public” while not making a similar demand of straight people, the fact that you are saying this crap, _directly_ _encourages_ that segment of the population that wants to victimize us, and even literally exterminate us, simply for _existing_.
It is quite literally no different that the way “moderate” religious groups wind up providing cover & recruitment for the fundamentalists & extremists.
You very definitely have a free to free association. That right does not extend to public spaces, or places of business. If being around people who freely express their personalities, their individuality, in ways that do not harm others upsets you, then stay. The. Fuck. Home.
>So you don’t think punishment has any deterrent factor. Or that the cultural attitudes around an action are going to have any influence on whether or not people feel comfortable or safe doing it.
People have been trying to be tough on crime and demonize it since the dawn of civilization. Overwhelming evidence from history shows that people tend to drastically overrate the deterrent factor of punishment on crime past a point, no matter how draconian, inflexible, and cruel it gets. Serious felonies got punished with generous and widespread use of the death penalty and horrific means of torture in premodern societies, and this utterly failed to compress crime rates below levels higher than the modern age.
Take modern America as another example: Prohibitionism, War on Drugs, the last few decades of making the criminal law system harsher and harsher, and warehousing ever-greater amounts of people for ever-greater periods. How well have they worked?
The death penalty for rape was once in the books, and how well did it work to make it less frequent than today? Modern America is getting pretty close to make convicted sexual offenders lifetime pariahs, and how well is it working?
As it concerns attempting to stomp out crime through propaganda, you can hardly go further than the past and present totalitarian and theocratic states. How well they succeeded to compress crime rates below the levels of modern democracies?
Fact is, crime rates change, if at all, according to a mix of complex factors that are largely resilient to excessively forceful and one-sided approaches. Human propensity for it cannot realistically be compressed past a point. Punishment and propaganda hit rapidly diminishing returns and quickly increasing side effects beyond that. We can endlessly optimize and tinker around the edges, but in all likelihood the dream of eradicating crime or making it negligible is going to stay the chimera it was throughout history. The modern world got more favorable conditions to lessen it more than the past, but in all evidence we are fairly close to the wall.
This has been the case for serious/violent crime across history, there is no good reason why sexual violation could or should be any different. Sure, we can do better forensic analysis and approximate response levels of the criminal justice system to the ones for other crimes of equivalent severity. It shall halp, but nothing is a magic bullet. Bring back the death penalty for rape, see if it worked better than the death penalty for murder. Endlessly hit people with the notion it is worse than death, see if it works any better than the universal and civilization-long futile effort to persuade everyone away from murder and robbery.
>People sitting around saying that rape isn’t all that serious and doesn’t really happen and all these violations of consent aren’t really rape and the victim’s really to blame create an environment in which rapists feel like they can get away with rape
The eternal human illusion that people do crime only because they are confident they can get away with it, or their social circle is approving them for that, and you can make it go away if you demonize it hard enough and make it enough of a moral panic about it. Censorship and criminalization of ideas is another tool that does not really work past a point and creates a lot of harmful side effects, just like draconian punishment and propaganda.
>the victim’s really to blame
It is a relatively rare case that victims of crime put themselves at serious risk through their own bad choices. People should never be blamed for their own misfortune. However, modern culture’s notion that it is OK to infantilize people by taking away the responsibility for their own dumb and irresponsible choices does a lot of harm to society in several ways. In no way the victim’s bad choice removes or lessens the responsibility of the author if it is a human agent. However, people can easily be the co-authors of their own misfortune if they try hard enough. This is and should be true for sexual violation as much as for all the other similar contingencies, no more and no less. Crminals are not going to go away any time soon.
>question whether they really were raped or not
If the supposeed victim themselves has genuine reason to doubt whether it occurred, then in all likelihood an inevitable reasonable doubt exists it occurred at all or it fits the definition of the crime. It seems in a civilized society’s best interest to err on the side of not getting the criminal law system and related retribution apparati involved, and try settling the issue through other means. The other way, witch hunts occur and innocents suffer.
> Let’s not taint and derail this discussion […]
…is what you’re saying as you make a point of derailing the discussion, then offering rape apologia.
The most obvious issue with what you’re saying on even a basic level is that there’s a lot of staff in the building who are not supers, and who be unusually at risk of finding themselves in an interaction with an overly horny, uninhibited super.
It seems I need to stress again the fact that this event happened during a quiet evening/night shift. Hence the normie staff in the building is going to be at minimal levels, a few guards, a few maintenance technicans for critical equipment and infrastructure, and little else.
In all evidence, this was not a sex zombie event. From everything we saw, nobody was willing to pursue a hookup with people they were not interested in. Nothing is impossible, but the chances of a horny super being interested in mating with a normie staff member way lower than super levels of attractiveness seem exceedingly low.
For that matter, if the unlikely contingency occurred, the chances of a horny staff member enthusiastically welcoming the opportunity to hookup with a ’10’, pornstar body, celebrity seem exceedingly high, as well the ones of them fondly cherishing the memory with a big smile afterwards.
If anything, the scenario of horny staff turned into groupies and trying to tear clothes off supers seems much more plausible than the opposite.
Not giving in to the wild claims of moral-panic, mass-hysteria, and witch-hunt supporters is no apologia. It is caring for facts, justice, pragmatism, and civility. Violent criminals do exist and shall stay with us for the foreseeable future, we can only contain the damage they do, but seeing them lurking around every nook and cranny of the modern developed world is a widely different issue. Censorship, draconian and indiscriminate repression, and making the criminal law system (and worse, mob justice) barbaric and bloodthirsty never really worked to curb crime, they only increased the overall suffering.
You really need to learn to take an L gracefully.
Literally nobody is going to take your side on rape apologetics, or the fact that you have repeatedly announced you get off to it.
> You really need to learn to take an L gracefully.
In a discussion? Admittedly and honestly, far from my strong suit. Comes with being a fierce individualist, willful, and passionate about my opinions. Being the bearer of unpopular opinions never fazed me and I am accustomed to it. It is much more likely I give up because I perceive the futility of further discussion, I get exhausted or distracted, or hopefully the discussion finds an angle I can relate with.
Describing my preferences and ideals as relevant to the issue at hand as ‘rape apologetics’ is one of the worst ways to make me give up, it just makes me more defensive, hostile, combative, and defiant. The same things would happen if one uses any other of the typical negative labels that the woke culture frequently uses about other issues. If the followers of that culture wish to have any hope of getting me as an ally of convenience about certain topics, they’d better focus on the issue at hand through the lens of values I actually cherish, such as freedom, autonomy, pragmatism, self-realization, facts, merit, and minimization of unnecessary suffering and waste. E.g., I can certainly relate and sympathize to the ideal of improving validity and usage of consent through the lens of personal choice and autonomy.
On the other hand, trying to push me to care much for values I care little or even scorn or distrust such as equality, sentimentalism, or security at the expense of liberty inevitably drives me to become an enemy. To make a few typical examples, I am a staunch supporter of reproductive freedom and shudder at the horror of forced birth. My libertarian ideals do not blind me to the vast pragmatic benefits of having a functional welfare state, protecting the environment, or preserving democracy as the least flawed method until the blessed day when technology makes anarchy feasible, and so on.
>the fact that you have repeatedly announced you get off to it.
Believe it or not, real rape porn (or sadism for that matter) as I understand it is not a kink of mine. I find it sad, boring, distasteful, unappealing, and pointless. My actual preference as related to these issues is victory of horniness, triumph of the opposite of chastity, and destruction of prudery. Sluttiness in a positive and non-gendered sense, if you wish. In this regard, I enormously appreciated the fact that the recent plot arc yielded an explosion of horniness and its fulfillment through means that got everyone (let’s put Syd aside for simplicity) enthusiastically participating, fulfilling impulses that existed within them, and left them happy and satisfied. That it happened through the plot device of an impersonal (after Parf lost control) and accidental lust-aura effect influencing people’s minds is the fictional universe taking a turn for the right. Throughout this mini-arc, I hoped that the incident would turn into a horniness flare and happy orgy, and I am happy my expectations got fulfilled. I did not get the full deal of Sydney x Parfait x Frix ship, but you can’t have anything.
In sexual and political matters, dominance for its own sake does not appeal to me. I refuse to be a slave, and I am not interested in being a master. E.g., I perceive the typical Evil Overlord fantasy of ruling others as pointless. On the other hand, a cherished power fantasy of mine is godlike mastery over reality, freedom from the chains of nature, society, and mortality, and effortless victory over one’s opponents, be through force or smarts. In this regard, I can totally relate to and sympathize with Max when she gets in her ‘Goddess of Ash’ moments, or with Deus when he gets smug about his successes. That is the kind of power I admire and crave in a vicarious sense, not having slaves or holding down an unwilling sexual partner. In this regard, I can certainly admire Deus, Dabbler, and Décolleté for embodying the dream of being sex gods, being empowered by it, and creating a lot of fun for themselves and their partners.
Chuunibyou…
Why is Truck-Kun taking so long? ;-P
I’m here to engage in needless wordplay and mock stupid people. There are no puns in this comment.
It’s not particularly stated exactly how strong the aura was, none of the supers present seem particularly unhappy. The aura itself was also weak enough that, while people got the “urge” they weren’t rutting out in the hallways – aside from Math/Jabber who are outliers and were already worked up. So, it seems like all were willing parties due to increased desire, not lowered inhibition.
Yes, there is debate about how unethical it may be to induce artificial emotions in others especially without prior consent, but it isn’t anywhere close the strength or lasting effect as brainwashing or when Jabberwokky got zapped by Dabbler (which itself was not treated that harshly).
Lacking evidence either way, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume, based on how the comic normally portrays things, that everybody who actually hooked up with someone else is, if not completely fine with it, at least not traumatized or violated.
Ugh, I’m sick of all these wannabee philosophy students writing their thesis in the comments section.
And what kind of discussion would you rather see in the comments section? Something utterly devoid of thought or meaning?
Why read or participate in a discussion that does not interest you? Why does it offend you for people to have an intelligent conversation?
Stop reading the comments.
Problem solved.
but, what if they stopped before reading yours? ;}
Technically speaking Parfait did not mind control anybody. What she did was /drastically/ reducing inhibitions.
That said, if we were talking about real human beings there would be legal consequences (for what amounts to get a lot of people quite drunk without their informed consent). Of course these are not actual people so they do not have agency.
It boils down to what Dave wrote and how he presented things from within the story. Where he made it clear that Parfait lost control over her abilities and had no intention to do any of the things she did. Other than getting way past kissing Sydney, and that because she honestly did not understand the difference between hanging out with a girl and making out with a girl. To her biology, education and culture the second is just a natural part of the first. If you really like somebody of course having naked time with them is part of that.
(the whole arc skirts being a Themian argument, but never quite crosses over into one.)
Has there ever been any explanation why Dabbler has the extra arms and plantigrade(&) legs? I see her sister Parfait is more conventional!
Technically yes?
In one comic she was talking about how having extra appendages (too a point) was evolutionary advantageous. Thus why most aliens look Humanoid, and why she has a humanoid appearance. Then much later down the line. Was stating how Succubi were all made from a miss match, Frankenstein-esque Sex Doll Undead created by the Mad Scientists of the Magic world.
So pretty much assuming that she is the way she is, because of genetics, and she just wound up with the more wonky of the two sides genetic code.
They’re only half-sisters. They share the same mother, but Parfait’s father is half-efreet, half-djinn, while Xuriel’s is part doppelganger.
You forgot her tail and extra set of bewbies
Heya. Sexual assault survivor here, for the sake of transparency.
I don’t think this is poorly handled. It could be, but… we don’t know that yet. I can totally understand if someone who’s had an experience similar to mine might find it uncomfortable, but… it’s not something you can evade indefinitely, and seeing it handled WELL can be as healing as seeing it handled poorly can be harmful.
While this is certainly a grey area, I wouldn’t call it obvious sexual assault either. People get horny sometimes. No one here did anything they wouldn’t do under those circumstances… in fact, we have several panels of people who were clearly and obviously still in control.
Sydney was at ground zero and said no. Gwen took the time to close the door, then take care of herself. Arianna contacted her partner instead of seeking immediate… erm… help. Math didn’t even notice anything was different… and behaved with exactly the same amount of propriety and impropriety as normal.
Which seems to imply to me that the succubus isn’t capable of inflicting anything the person doesn’t normally experience anyway… she just got it to happen for everyone in the area at the same time. That could still feel like a violation to many (making me feel anything – even something normal… even something positive, like, say, warm or happy – could feel like a violation because I’m being MADE to feel it)… so it’s still a grey area…
But you’re also still handling it well so far.
And there’s no reason for me to think you won’t continue to handle it well. You’ve been in this same grey area before, several times over… and done well. This is no different than Dabbler’s magic on the disguise-necklace ramping people up around Max… just… more people are being affected, at once, and we know their names.
So… yeah. You’re fine by me.
Yep. Different people are going to feel differently about the same things. That’s normal. Some people will feel this is handled well, others will feel that it’s handled poorly, none of their perspectives invalidates the others, none of them are objectively right. Any given work is going to cater to different people, so it’s good that there’s a lot of different art out there. People will gravitate towards what’s good for them, and away from what isn’t.
I know I keep saying this, but that’s on Archon for not setting up protections against aura-based attacks.
They got caught with their pants down against a threat they’ve already had to deal with several times.
So…
I’m trying to read the emblem behind Max, and the only word I understand is “CUM.”
I don’t know if the Latin has been corrected, but it’s supposed to translate to English as “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”.
“cum amplus potens”, I think. “With Great power…”
Yeah. Like a lot of people already wrote down. Don’t stress about it, and this story line. Haven’t really seen anyone go for their pitchforks or rallyup the SJW PC brigade over it. This arc, like most of the others is good, and honestly was looking forward to Parfait and Halo hanging out, and one of the speed bumps / major cultural misunderstandings that’d naturally happen between a Succubi Young Adult, and a Human Young Adult, is anything regarding sex stuff.
But if Sydney and her can work through this speed bump. Then I can see their friendship being adorable. Especially since it quite literally was outside of Parfait’s control and had absolutely 0 malice behind it. It’d be like blaming a human for their stomach growling because they were starving.
ಠ_ಠ Oh, of course it’s an absolute nothingburger for the characters. You called out Math, but apparently EVERYONE is Math.
“Had sex. Don’t care.”
Blargh, at least have a COUPLE people that are really bothered by it. Like, actually bothered, not a quick finger-wagging.
There’s a lot of side-eyeing going on. When the afterglow wears off, that’s when you’ll have people ducking into rooms to avoid passing someone in the hallway.
Looking for a little more than that. I’m talking about consent, pregnancy and it’s consequences, sexual preferences (because we know the aura doesn’t care), etc.
At least gimme one of the normies, like the one in the booth, being pissed off “While you’re all blushing about sleeping with a 10/10, I BLEW THE $%&#ING JANITOR!”
“aura doenst care” thats not how the Aura works, it emphasizes whats already there. It didnt make people randomly hook up, all indications point out that it increased their passions and removed inhibitions to hook up with people they were already interested in. Multiple examples point this out in different ways, and it can be extrapolated that the other cases were the same.
“thats not how the Aura works,”
Go back to when we met Dabbler.
Aura. Doesn’t. Care.
As you are fond of reminding me, it failed to make Sydney accept Parfait’s advances, despite being at ground zero of the event. No other hookup we know of apparently drove people to cross their orientation boundaries. Aura behavior at Dabs’ first appearance shows that when pushed at high levels it is capable of reminding straight women (and presumably gay men) that a potential alternative exists. Although that seems the bare minimum for a race of literal sex demons.
If anything, the succubus sex-related power that seems truly able to ignore orientation boundaries is the hypno-boobs. It works equally well on anyone that is able to feel humanlike sexual urges regardless of gender and orientation. That is the mental manipulation power in the succubus arsenal that fits the notion of true mind control, although its applications are quite specialized. It just gets people stunned (but aware) for a while.
For the love of accuracy and on second thoughts, according to Dabs she (and presumably Decollete) would be able to match Vehemence’s power level at his best if she would tap an orgy equivalent of the restaurant battle. Tantric and vehemic auras seem to work the same way apart from their different focus, and V was able to force people to fight their allies and friends back then. Therefore, a succubus with sufficient juice would be able to deploy genuine sexual mind control that would override normal orientations and preferences. However, in all evidence that was well beyond Parfait’s reach in the recent incident. A handful hookups is not quite the same in size and intensity as the restaurant battle, and her finesse is not quite the same of an adult and expert succubus.
“No other hookup we know of apparently drove people to cross their orientation boundaries.”
Well, that aged like milk.
> pregnancy and it’s consequences,
For the Universe’s sake, this is 2011-2012 (in story time), and the morning-after pill is a thing within easy reach for a federal employee in an urban area. Unless one has serious hangups about using it (and my bet is these types most likely don’t end up working at Archon), this is a non-issue for the aftermath of this event.
>sexual preferences (because we know the aura doesn’t care)
As Tjk said, in all evidence the aura emphasized and unleashed what was already there.
>At least gimme one of the normies
From what we know, this event took place during a quiet evening/night shift. Apart from a few guards and maintenance staff for critical equipment and infrastructure, there is little justification for lots of normie personnel being on-duty at Archon HQ at the time.
“As Tjk said, in all evidence the aura emphasized and unleashed what was already there.”
You spent 3+ comics insisting Sydney is Bi despite all evidence to the contrary. Hush.
I did not deem such evidence conclusive (esp. since it was not recent) until I witnessed her reaction to Parfait’s actions to the end. For the record, I argued that Syd could be a *latent* bi according to certain hints I perceived. Apparently I was mistaken. Oh well. Admittedly I was influenced by my liking of the Syd x Frix x Parf x Leon x Krona ship. By the way, that polycule remains a distinct possibility for the future, although it shall need
to be a strict hetero one.
Like Tjk said, people only hooked up with others they were already into. That’s why Max didnt jump Dabbler despite clearly feeling affected, and why Sydney was able to stop things from going farther than a “jiggle curious straight girl” would go. And then there are those who chose to take care of things on their own. Everyone got super lusty but not hypnotized.
We have Amorphous that is justifiably worried about how his very public cheating is going to affect his relationship with Heatwave, who was shown to be jealous in the past. If you ask my opinion, Hiro is also concerned to some degree about how this event is going to affect the “quasi/maybe/hopefully” thing he has with Max.
Speaking of Max, she is justifiably concerned about how this event revealed serious security risks and failures for the team (notwithstanding the fact that at least part of the fiasco is also her own fault for failing to take the proper steps). However, I am also ready to bet this explosion of carefree casual sex offends her feminist prudery on a personal level and she feels somewhat jealous about Hiro being part of it.
Judging from their body language and what we know about their characters, Sydney is pissed off about having screwed up but also defensive about her actions; Parfait is dejected about a terribly humiliating loss of control for a teen succubus-in-training; Dabbler is worried about the aftermath but also supportive and defensive of her beloved little sister, come what may.
About everyone and everything else, however, yeah, you are going to find a lot of post-coital bliss and not much of being bothered from having participated in an orgy event. Once this event settles into memory and the inevitable awkwardness sets in but also quickly wears off, chances are it is going to be remembered fondly and/or be laughed off. And it makes sense for this main cast.
As others (including yours truly) have argued in this discussion, there are people who regard sex as a pleasurable body function and activity that is good and to be enjoyed for its own sake. They are refractory to the opposite viewpoint of regarding it as special, sacred, and only good in specific circumstances. There are reasons why this mindset is going to be overrepresented and the opposite one underrepresented (except by Max, due to her own personal hangups) in this group.
We saw in the past the normal/background horniness level tends to be rather high in this team in comparison to average humans. This is coherent with being a group of youthful people with optimal fitness, ideal pornstar bodies, a physically active and challenging lifestyle, wealth, fame, and being the object of desire for millions. The obvious comparison here is with the lifestyle conditions of an Olympic village, where famously hormones run high. Another obvious comparison is with the promiscuous lifestyle of famous actors and musicians.
Moreover, we got hints in the past that being living batteries of Superion energies, in addition to gifting supers with ideal athletic/pornstar bodies, also tends to make them proud of them and eager to flaunt them. This is may be its own innate urge or a frequent natural reaction of many humans being blessed with similar circumstances. We have Max as the example of what happens when personal issues overrule this urge, but it fits she is the exception. Exhibitionism and horniness typically go hand-in-hand.
Moreover, powerful supers are inevitably going to be the people on earth that are least justified about worrying to be disrespected by puny humans if they indulge in carnal urges. Not to mention that advanced alien and supernatural societies as a rule seem to be positively less prude than Terran cultures (and proud of it) or neutral about sexual issues and focused on different concerns. This inevitably matters as it concerns supers’ exposition to cultural osmosis.
I’d say that all of the people who had sex that day were bothered. Quite well bothered indeed.
.
.
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It kind of puts a different spin on Winnie the Pooh’s catch phrase, ”Oh, bother!”, doesn’t it?
That’s one extremely satisfied and pleased with herself goblin.
Her: Yeah I rocked the feck out of his world.
Him: yes. Yes she did.
Her: I’m going to do it again you know.
Him: I certainly hope so.
Yeah about the boys, it seems realistic when you realize some logical errors in world building. If Vought actually existed they probably use it for medical science rather that make super powered celebrities. Because, making the next wonder drug is more profitable and less unpredictable than dealing super powered celebrities.
On the Parfait, wrote a slightly lengthy thing on page 2 of comments last comic based on all the bits and pieces you gave us about Succubi over the years in this comic, including right before this all happened, so it makes sense from a non-human supernaturally charged perspective.
Granted when it comes to orange-blue morality and the Mental Uncanny Valley coming from non-human sapients I’ve been playing with the various possibilities for some time for character and creature/alien species ideas.
On the other thing, The Boys, yeah I couldn’t get into it either, I believe the term is called “Darkness Induced Apathy”
It is where regardless of the world building, story, or anything else that may draw an audience in you personally *it is a subjective effect but one can see patterns across audiences who don’t like certain shows* cannot get into a show because you just don’t like any of the characters or find them all so awful of individuals personality wise that you really couldn’t care less about the story.
This tends to divide between people who watch a show for the characters *want to follow the adventures of a protagonist( vs those who enjoy drama for drama’s sake. Speaking of mental uncanny valley this can be between individuals right here, comedy or serious, or anything in between we all usually have that point where it stops being enjoyable to us personally, sometimes because we project real world or our own experiences onto the scenario rather than take what is presented as is (although that too can be bad even in context) *and thus the debates between people who think each other are being too sensitive without realizing there is no clear line and everyone has a limit to different subject matters.
But on the personalities of the characters I kind of lump it into the same group as “anyone can die” type series. I have to get invested into a protagonist, I want to follow their adventure, if I don’t like them or anyone else around or they and anyone else can just die and the story now follows someone else, it just doesn’t appeal to me.
The Boys, Family Guy, American Dad, South Park.
*make no mistake I have no problems with crass humor, I enjoyed Furutama, Disenchantment, Harley Quinn, etc…*
Its just The Boys felt like spiteful fanfic and those other three was just “every single character is a sociopathic asshole* like there was no one to play off of and a total lack of character development that stuck long enough to matter. But again, subjective.
Heck I’ve written things (especially during my twenties and early thirties) that I look back on now and i know they are squicky, but even then I wouldn’t want these things to happen to a real person or think it would be a good thing regardless of how I wrote it. Which is to say “fantastical rape” AKA: Most tentacles and vampire erotica. Even some of the more popular stuff hits that *if this really happened it would be very iffy at best and condemned as abhorrent by a fair chunk of people*. Like the characters who *turn* people and thus alter their way of thinking, vampires, living dolls, various eldritch transformed individuals, etc…
-Oh my organic robot slime pet ate some of my “dirty tissues” and is evolving into a slime girl with the hots for me.
(so many things you can deconstruct in that)
But its not that kind of story to be taken seriously, its a set up for the described visuals.
problem is you try to please everyone, then you please no one. But yeah these topics can turn into walking on egg shells real quick depending on who you are talking to,
Hadn’t heard the term “Darkness Induced Apathy” but yeah, I think that would pretty clearly sum up my reaction to The Boys.
I thought it was interesting, even cool at points. Pretty well written and produced, etc. It’s just, there was really almost no-one to root for or invest yourself in as a character. They were pretty much all either scumbags, morally vacant, with one or two ‘good’ characters who seemed to exist in the story only to be ground into moral paste over the course of the season – this last bit may or may not happen, but it was certainly the flag I was seeing wave in the first few episodes.
I have a very hard time getting into anything like that. Maybe at movie length – but not a series.
I actually had the same response to BSG – not because everyone was evil scum, but because the doppelganger aspect of the show made it clear that in all likelihood anyone you got invested in was just going to turn out to be a personality-wiped time bomb sooner or later anyway, so why bother to make the investment in the characters?
TV Tropes calls it something else, although acknowledges other terms at the bottom, although “Darkness Induced Audience Apathy” seems to come up the most in google searches *personally think the word audience in that is redundant given the context*.
Now this page I would say can’t be a complete list of examples, because it is a subjective trope, however the examples it gives fall under the large audience reactions, or had the most backlash falling under this category, to the point it affected the show or studios had to take notice.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TooBleakStoppedCaring
The Boys IS spiteful fanfic. Ennis hates the general idea and concept of superheroes in general. That’s literally his entire motivation for creating The Boys. Then combine that hatred with how completely and totally screwed in the head he is in general (he created Crossed). It’s really just that simple
Not gonna lie…Jabs and Math make for an adorable couple for some reason. And the vote incentive…alas, I was right. But it’s a good one with the bubbles too!
Not gonna lie…Jabs and Math make for an adorable couple for some reason.
It is the vicarious satisfaction you get when you witness a potential couple that are perfect for each other actually ending up together. An heartwarming confirmation that the universe makes sense and all shall turn out well in the end.
Thank you. Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t hook up sooner. They just seem… right, together.
Wouldn’t it be hilarious if their scene didn’t actually take place at the HQ at all, and the timing was just a funny coincidence.
Honestly, if Jabbs and Math end up becoming a couple, I’m going to be really happy no matter what. I’d even say that it seems most people are happy and better-off from the looks of things. So everything will likely be alright.
Where’s Arianna? And Coco? Or didn’t anyone really want to check?
I think it’s good that you’re aware and cautious of the issues, Dave. That probably helps.
Mental manipulation and mind control are dicey areas to write about. Where they really become problematic is usually when the story doesn’t address that, or it’s brushed off/downplayed, or even treated as justifed and righteous. It doesn’t look like any of that is the case here.
It’s not something that has been played for laughs (at least, not the lust aura itself) and the humour (and cheesecake) is in line with the rest of the comic. So it doesn’t feel like you did it just for the sake of your own jollies.
And I can easily see Sydney licking Parfait’s eyeball to get her attention in any other context because anything else would probably excite her rather than distract her.
So… yeah. I’m a white dude myself so rape isn’t exactly a major fear or risk in my life generally, but I try to be conscious of others and issues… and I can see how this would be squicky, but I don’t think it’s gone _bad_ so far…
The assembled cast of characters all seem remarkably satiated and cool with what went down. I’ve no doubt that someone has a bug up their butt about last couple of pages and is just waiting to launch themselves into fiery rant about it.
I’m not seeing a lot of regret in this group, so at the very least we can probably say nobody did something with someone they wouldn’t have wanted to, so that helps. Also, I could TOTALLY see something like this happening in the Watch Tower on Justice League…actually since I re-watched the entire series on Netflix about 2 weeks ago I can make an argument about something like this actually happening “off screen” in that canon…
For some it was nice. Others it was awkward. Even then there probably isn’t a lot on their dating scenes due to half trying not to draw attention before Super Powers became a public thing and the other half is the legal work place awkwardness of not wanting to date and deal with a bad fallout… To then having enjoyed a nice night with little issue besides a morning meeting and being more open to the idea of dating one another when they normally wouldn’t have attempted it seeing some reaction or shared interest (or lust) from both parties.
But yes certain rules, guidelines, and explanations or warning may be needed when dealing with super powers or non-earth based morality system people to ensure that a much worse accident doesn’t happen in the future.
@daveB it looks like you forgot harem in the character list under the comic. Isn’t that her in the penultimate panel? Also Heatwave will be upset with Mr. A.
only characters with speaking parts go there
Now I want to see someone write a story where the Cheerleaders are the evil overlords, or a different story where the bad guys aren’t attacking the cheerleaders, but either the football players, or the chess club?
Of course I’m sure the “reversed trope” content is out there already. The cheerleader bank robbing movie comes to mind, though I never saw it. It’s just fun to try to flip the tropes from time to time.
chess club cheerleaders, but they’re the same size as the pieces, and the pieces are the ‘jocks’
PRINRIN!!!! OUR GOBBY INVENTOR MAKES ANOTHER APPEARANCE!!! YAY!!
“I know some people are finding this storyline a little squicky, which really wasn’t the intent. What Parfait did wasn’t malicious or even intentional – which doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences, but I certainly can’t guarantee this will all play out to everyone’s satisfaction.”
The problem is, ‘non-malicious’ and ‘unintentional’ don’t really make all that much of a difference. If – for example – Sydney is involved in an incident where use of her powers (or good ol’ fashioned munitions) results in a civilian fatality, even if it was not done maliciously or intentionally, that’s not really something that can be handled in a lighthearted manner without severe mood whiplash. This is the same case: even if we set aside the peripheral ‘lust aura’ effects entirely, and even with the ‘succubi need sex to live’ hunger analogy, this is akin to a lighthearted plotline where a character gets sudden hunger pangs because they just watched a bunch of cookery shows and bites off part of another characters face, whilst that other character begs them to stop eating them.
I really don’t agree with the analogy at the end. This is more like Sydney’s PPO going off because she got startled, despite her never intending to even use it and getting someone hurt/killed. The intend to use the power at all makes an important difference. Parfait didn’t intend to use her aura either, but a strong emotion when thinking about obeying her master triggered it anyway.
The “need to eat” thing wasn’t really a factor in how any of this happened. It’s a magical ability that she got fairly recently going out of control. Of course this still isn’ta good thing and preventative measures need to be taken, but blaming Parfait for loosing control of her aura (which then also affected herself) makes about as much sense as blaming a 2 year old for dropping something because they are not that good at controlling their hands yet. Even if the thing they dropped somehow gets someone else hurt.
>This is the same case: even if we set aside the peripheral ‘lust aura’ effects entirely, and even with the ‘succubi need sex to live’ hunger analogy, this is akin to a lighthearted plotline where a character gets sudden hunger pangs because they just watched a bunch of cookery shows and bites off part of another characters face, whilst that other character begs them to stop eating them.
This analogy tends to fall apart since there are a lot of people that deem getting involved in or being propositioned for casual sex (even if the latter is unwelcome at the time) not the end of the world or a justification for long-term trauma. Being the subject of attempted cannibalism is much scarier and more threatening and damaging for almost everyone. In the end, humans are built for having sex and avoid being eaten if at all possible.
Being involved with, or propositioned for casual sex is one thing
Being drugged by somebody who wants to do it to you is another
Being influenced by a magical aura seems likely to be much closer to being drugged than it is being propositioned.
Although we don’t know the level of compulsion we do know
– Amorpous hooked up despite him being in a relationship
– Sydney was topless and making out with a demon despite her being straight
That seems to be some evidence against the idea that it’s equivalent to being propositioned.
Being influenced by a magical aura seems likely to be much closer to being drugged than it is being propositioned.
Admittedly so. The closest thing to the lust aura getting out of control seems a psychoactive substance being accidentally released to a group that heightens libido and lowers inhibitions. However, the vast majority of the people affected got together with people they were interested in and who were affected the same way. Moreover, they seem to react to the experience positively.
>Although we don’t know the level of compulsion we do know
Evidence seems to point to the standard of pushing subjects to act on sexual impulses that were already lurking in their minds.
– Amorpous hooked up despite him being in a relationship.
We do not know how he registers on the fidelity index (back then in the bank incident, Brooke found the possibility of him making out with another woman believable) but someone falling to the tempation of cheating occurs all the time everywhere without any need for drugs or lust auras.
– Sydney was topless and making out with a demon despite her being straight
She was probably surprised by escalation of the event at the beginning. She knew that Parf had lost control of her lust aura and was being affected by it. In all likelihood, once she got hold of herself, she cared about her friend
more than integrity of her personal space and was reluctant to use too forceful means if possible. When Parf understood Syd was not interested in g/g stuff but told Syd she still needed some tantric energy to recover control of her aura, Syd offered the compromise solution of finding a willing partner.
The big kicker is that Sydney was completely unambiguous in expressing that she wanted Parfait to stop. The first words we hear from her after Parfait goes for a kiss is “wait, Parfait, wait, stop!” (Parfait does not stop), physically attempting to pull Parfait off of her (Parfait does not stop), an attempt at minimally violent de-escalation – the eyeball licking – followed by further explaining to Parfait why she wants her to stop. Parfait then declares that Sydney was ‘not fighting’, deflects when Sydney explains that when she said ‘stop’ she means ‘stop’, and then physically advances on Sydney again in an attempt to continue.
That’s such a textbook depiction of sexual assault that it’s hard to imagine missing it.
I have a more benign reading of the scene than yours because we see that there was a huge cultural misunderstanding (and lack of proper precautions) at the heart of it all.
Parf is listening and struggling to understand and comply with her friend’s wishes, but Syd is giving her notions (friendship without benefits, people not being up to sex anytime by default) that are as unfamiliar to her as the one that cannibalism is OK in certain circumstances would be for most humans.
No matter how much succubi are smart, you cannot realistically expect she will be able to internalize and apply it perfectly and instantly in verbal and body language the moment Syd utters the magical words ‘no’ and ‘stop’. The time when proto-succubi were robotlike flesh golems is lost past. However, Parf is listening and trying to comply. The fact she is able and willing to do so while still in the throes of her runaway list aura is remarkable and commendable. It means she puts the wishes and welfare of her friend above her own compelling bodily and metaphysical needs. That is far from the typical behavior of a genuine author of a sexual assault.
In turn, Sydney is admirable and commendable in this scene since she prioritizes the welfare of her friend over the integrity of her personal space and a few patches of skin. So she uses the least forceful means feasible to bring Parf back to her senses, takes effort to explain things to her, and tries to find a compromise abour the tantric energy need issue. She shows her friend is more important to her than a few stolen kisses and gropes, and that is a good thing.
The fact Parf reaches again to Syd towards the end comes from the fact she acknowledges she is unable to shut down the aura (as Syd isc asking her to do) without more tantric juice than she has or a little making out with an unwilling Syd and ambient energy from the rest of the building can give her. Therefore, she instinctively starts to reach for the closest and most reliable potential source of tantric energy, i.e. Sydney.
However, In all likelihood, Parf was entirely open-minded to the alternative solution of finding her a willing donor of tantric juice. I actually regret Dave did not find the means of adding an extra panel to the sequence to the effect of Parf withdrawing and saying “Ok Sydney, let’s do that. Lead the way, please”, since it would have put the issue beyond any doubt. However I am 100% persuaded that was the intent of the character and the author. I would have fancied that more than Syd making a not-so-original punch to the joke of Max breaking in like a typical clam-jamming parent.
Wait, where’s Arianna?
writing memos, getting herself put back together, paying Leon to erase any unprofessional words which may not have been recorded by security, and/or catching her breath.
The who’s who on the side needs to be longer. We already know who those four are. We need that panel for the rest of the room.
“The whole comic is supposed to be that slice of life, lighter side of being a superhero. Obviously sometimes there have to be villains who do pretty terrible things, but I try not to dwell on that stuff. I just need enough to show “this person is bad and here’s a reason we have to stop them.” The comic isn’t and will never be “The Boys.” I watched a season of that and, honestly I found it to dark to be enjoyable. It certainly had its moments, but I had that uneasy feeling that, yeah, this is unfortunately what it would probably be like if Supers were real. There’d be this honeymoon period (assuming we didn’t instantly go the X-Men/hunt them all down route) but before long it’d be like how it seems every few weeks now some once beloved actor gets exposed as a pedo or domestic abuser or QANON conspiracy moron. I mean, it’s bad enough when someone is just a rich asshole, my utter lack of faith in humanity tells me that if there were people out there who “saved a thousand lives today” then some of them would absolutely be able to justify doing literally anything they wanted. Like what does it matter if my basement is waist deep in murdered cheerleaders? I kept a cruise ship from sinking and saved 5,000 people. Worse still, there would absolutely be people who would defend their favorite superhero’s predilection for cheerleader disposal because of “how much good they do.”
So, yeah. That’s not this comic.”
I tuned out of the Boys part way through season one. Because yeah, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and super powers corrupt superbly. 97% chance the Boys would be exactly what supers would be like IRL. And that’s why I love this comic so. It takes the serious topics with whimsy. The world needs more whimsy.
Hats off to you sir. Good job.