Grrl Power #1195 – Ratio matters
I paired the tallest guy on the team with the two shortest women (excluding Sydney) because the thought amused me, but I admit that I probably drew Ren a little big here. He’s actually shorter than Anvil, at 6’5″. Peggy is 5’4″ and Seneca is 5’5.” If they were standing, then I drew it about right, with them coming up to somewhere between his shoulders and chin, but sitting, half of that height difference would be lost. It still amuses me.
One thing I’ve almost definitely overlooked in the comic is that I really can’t imagine Seneca being where she is in her career without having at least one tattoo somewhere. I’m not sure I ever said what branch she came from before Maxima poached her, but I’m thinking she was a Green Beret? I just googled that, and at the time this page is going up, only four women have ever become GBs. Maybe in the Grrl-verse that number is a little bit higher, but it seems a little unlikely she would have up and jumped into a newly created branch after an achievement like that. Although Maxima is kind of impressive when you meet her for the first time, and also there’s a decent chance that meeting was also when Seneca first learned about supers. Also it’s entirely possible she was getting a lot of sexist flak from others in her squad/group/division, or whatever organizational unit makes sense for GBs. After all, if the military is good at one thing, it’s being a total boys’ club and also being terrible to female soldiers and totally dismissing their complaints of harassment and sexual assault. So maybe Seneca figured having a female commander who could kick literally anyone’s ass might be an improvement. Also the pay was a lot better.
My point is, she’d probably have at least some Army tattoo, something denoting her company/platoon/squad? A GB specific tattoo might not be in the cards, as being easily identified as such could be a poor idea? Maybe save that one for after you’re retired or at least promoted out of field work. Maybe she’s got a company tat on her butt?
Maxima seems surprised here that so far no one is freaking out about what’s happened (and if that bugs you, give it a few pages, I can only fit so much in each strip) but keep in mind, she didn’t exactly order people to sit with their lust buddies, but that’s exactly what’s happened. There isn’t anyone sitting on opposite sides of the auditorium glaring at anyone else. Actually, everyone seems to have a lingering case of the handsies. If she hadn’t called the base to this meeting, there would probably be a lot of cuddling going on right now – cuddling with a lot of post-coital “Wow I can’t believe we just did that.” and “What got into us?” and “Is this going to be awkward now?”
The fact is that immediately explaining what happened is probably keeping the overall anxiety levels down. Honestly, there’s probably quite a few people in the building that figured with their resident house succubus, they’re surprised something like this hadn’t happened sooner.
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.
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Prinrin from the previous comic got a much HIGHER ratio, but she probably had something like that potion Dabber gave Sydney.
Or Goblins are… stretchier.
Also, Seneca was poached from the 24th STS. (Air Force) It says that in her Who’s Who.
Thank you for the reminder! I’ll get a character page put up soon for her at https://grrlpowercomic.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Characters
Apparently only one female officer has passed through STS training and gotten the coveted red (Raspberry?) beret and this was in 2021, but I can easily see Seneca as having been the first to try and would have succeeded if not for the good-ole’-boys network.
Which is probably why Maxima poached her.
While there are not many women who’ve passed the Green Beret test, there are a surprising number of men who after getting out have “come out of the closet”, and even transitioned. They had tried to be the most macho around, but finally had the strength to admit what they’d been hiding/denying.
As for tattoos, Green Berets are often in places where “identifying marks” are A Bad Thing. According to the GB Vets around here, a whole lot of their job they wore no US symbols at all. All their tats came after getting out, and most are memorials to the lost
The number that have come out of the closet is still well below the statistical average for the rest of the population. As far as being transgender I can only recall 2 people from the US special operations community who’ve done so. One is Ryan McLaughlin who now goes by Alana and was a Green Beret, and caused controversy by becoming an MMA fighter in the women’s division and brutally KO’ing Celine Provost in a laughably one sided debut fight.
The other is former Navy Seal Chris Beck who got huge attention coming out as trans and calling himself Kristin, living that way for a decade. He’s now de-transitioned and says thinking he was trans ruined his life and he now counsels people to wait until they’re at least 25 to transition and to undergo much more thorough psychological screening and counseling about it, since he himself was offered hormones during his first visit.
What makes you think that’s all of them? Most retired military folks aren’t throwing themselves into the media, nevermind those who came out after years in the legally enforced closet.
I’m a retired medic, I was in when “don’t ask, don’t tell” ended and saw the results from that, deal with large veterans organizations, and unfortunately am at the largest VA hospital in the country pretty regularly. It’s just not something that is seen or talked about happening. I wasn’t SF but dealt with them a lot and have several retired or ex-SF guys over fairly often, and that community stays pretty tight even on the civilian side. This just isn’t really a thing.
And if another SEAL had transitioned you’d know about it. Those guys can’t take a crap without writing a book about it.
Not the new breed, anyway.
Seems like the teams are mostly composed of jackwagons looking to use the pin as a free pass to a cushy job after they get tired of playing soldier.
My two dealings with SpecWar vets were both bad. The first was a self-righteous bible thumper who spent years trying to estrange his wife and daughters from their grandparents, because her mom was a genuine Pagan. She also happened to be an ER Nurse, and when one of the girls wound up in the hospital she worked at, he had her banned from the ward.
Don’t worry, I managed to get through to the wife – we grew up together, our parents were stationed together – and between the two of us, we straightened his ass out.
The second guy was a doc at the hospital my mother wound up in a few years back. Refused to listen to a thing she or the nurses were telling him, and gave her a dose of penicillin, which her record showed – if he had read it – that she’s allergic to.
The police were nice enough not to arrest dad & me after we sent him to his own ER, and he got a new doc for mom. Very smart Indian lady. She let us know that he’d been this way pretty much as long as she’d known him. He doesn’t work there anymore.
…I really have no use for anyone on the Teams, anymore.
Greenside?
I can’t really comment on the rest of the stuff, but I watched that fight and… “brutally KO’ing Celine Provost in a laughably one sided debut fight”? Well, no. First of all, it wasn’t a KO — it was a tapout to a choke hold.
It was a match between a 5″ taller but 2lb lighter fighter with a 4.5″ longer reach (who was accordingly trying to keep at a distance and use that range advantage) against a smaller but sturdier fighter (who logically would want to get in close and make use of that more compact muscle, an approach which usually does tend to look rather brutal). https://youtu.be/3tFUEXDHIz8?t=780 to watch (that timestamp’s just before the fight, at the point I got those numbers from.
Until the end, neither dominated the fight, and in fact neither seemed particularly skilled (not terrible, but with a lot of room for improvement; there were many attempted strikes to little effect, as neither seemed certain how aggressive or defensive they should be). Given that it was a debut fight for one of them, while the other had a professional record of 1 loss and no wins, this maybe wasn’t an enormous surprise.
Certainly, the ex-SF fighter was more vicious than might be hoped for, but I’d personally suspect that to be more likely a consequence of MMA inexperience and perhaps military background than some sort of lingering “masculine brutality” or whatever, especially as I’ve known non-trans girls to be just as brutal in the right circumstances.
Out of curiosity, I checked a previous fight, between Celene Provost and Cornelia Holm, to see how it compared… and it turns out that fight between two non-trans women went pretty similarly to the later fight involving McLaughlin, except that Holm was more skilled, though less vicious, than McLaughlin, and it also ended with Provost tapping out (to an arm bar in this case). https://youtu.be/F6xuo4Kv7UQ if you want to see this one. It’s a lot quicker.
Oddly, direct-combat sports like boxing and MMA are the ones most likely to be able to accommodate trans women, because they tend to use body-weight as an equalizer already.
In other sports, such as swimming, bike-riding and rugby, we’ve got enough real-world evidence to show that transwomen do, in fact, retain much of their advantage over female-born opponents, especially if they transition after adolescence. Interestingly, the converse is less established; the hormone treatments given to transmen seem to have much more impact on athletic ability than those given to transwomen, so often they might be able to realistically compete in a men’s division if they were already top-tier in their sport of choice.
“Enough”
Citation needed.
So, why not establish better categories for fair competition in those other sports, rather than rely on sex? This would benefit everyone, men and women both, rather than trying to determine who’s a “real” man or woman. Plenty of natal men and women are androgynous enough that people might challenge their sex, and it’s already embarrassing enough to be outside the “idealized” sexual boundaries without people demanding you prove what you are.
> So, why not establish better categories for fair competition in those other sports, rather than rely on sex?
Excluding the obvious one, age, sex is the best category for fair competition in most sports. In most sports no other categories would even make sense.
On what basis do you make that claim? There is substantial variation in performance between individuals of the same sex. What makes competition “fair”?
On what basis do you challenge the claim? Give me an example of a category that would make sense to divide by in, say, soccer.
> There is substantial variation in performance between individuals of the same sex.
“Individuals of the same sex” does not have an obvious division. Sex does, and you’ll find a very consistent deeply understood difference based on fundamental features of the sexes, as opposed to simple statistic variation.
There may be a legitimate basis for separating competition by sex, but I’ve yet to see anyone support it with facts, instead of just resorting to things like “consistent deeply understood difference”, which is just an appeal to tradition and belief. It doesn’t matter how many people believe that there are important, fundamental differences between the sexes, or how long they’ve believed it. What are the facts? What is the actual basis for making separate categories in a competition? Why not separate by race or hair color or height or any other property? What makes a particular property relevant?
No, it’s an appeal to common knowledge. Humans go through puberty [citation needed], during which male and female bodies develop fundamentally differently [citation needed], with the male bodies being optimized for athletic ability [citation needed].
We understand fairly well how this works (hormones like testosterone), and we see that the result is a bimodal distribution with small overlap.
> Why not separate by race or hair color or height or any other property?
Why would we want to? In the case of sex there’s a clear answer: because otherwise there will be no women participating in competitive sports, and we don’t want that. (And if you don’t care about that, you should advocate for no divisions at all, which also neatly solves the trans topic.)
Did you even watch that fight? It went two rounds and she was loosing until she managed to get the MUCH taller woman with her insane reach onto the ground.
Wouldn’t say laughably one sided. Pretty boring fight, actually.
Actually, I ended up looking into this a bit more and… it’s even worse than that.
I don’t want to be nasty to either of them — I’m sure they’re trying their best, and I bear them no ill will — but… well, I found a site giving Celine Provost’s record:
https://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Celine-Provost-201863#!
She’s had four matches (two amateur, two professional). She has lost every one.
I can’t help feeling sorry for her, but it’s hard to deny that struggling for a win against Celine Provost isn’t all that very impressive.
…well, ok, I’m sure I personally would lose to any of them, but that’s not saying much.
If I recall correctly, GB are sort of the Seven Samurai of military branches, meaning their main job is not so much to be badass fighters (though that is almost baked in), but to help the communities they are stationed in learn how to use knowledge and equipment they bring with them and generally build bridges (metaphorical, but maybe some literal ones) so that when they leave, the locals know how to handle themselves if the local bandits were just waiting for the military personnel to leave before trying to go back to business as usual.
The PJs I knew never got one while in the Air force, one had a brand type burn mark he acidentaly picked up thanks to a drunk driver, but that was about it. One did talk about one of the guys he helped return to base that got a badge type destroyed by the stitches and reconstructive surgery on his arm.
ohhhhhh, the most wunnerful thing about gobbos, is gobbos are wunnerful things, their tops are made out of rubber, their bottoms ….um…
Also rubber.
“Their tops are made out of rubber, their bottoms constantly swing!”
I was about to post, “only the girls,” but then I had an idea.
What if Gobbo femboys?
Then I started questioning myself. X’D
bounce like springs?
Maybe Seneca has an ink allergy that makes it difficult for her to get tattoos.
Or, given her sugar addiction, she can’t be still long enough to get any ink done. When not in motion, she has a candy bar in hand.
Like me. Which i discovered AFTER I got two of them, when they took forever to heal up.
one of my tats, (first) right out of boot, is not visible. (next to junk). because the military was very anti tat at that time..
..also. i have thin skin, which means it is very hard to get a tattoo to set.. (i bleed it out)
There are those folks, myself included, who can appreciate a well done or interesting tattoo but have no desire to have one of their own. This may include Seneca.
Too many details ! Or not enough ?
depends on the setting, in some comics I read this isn’t near far enough. (that reminds me I wonder if there’s a new page on ______). in non-military professional settings? we are way too far. I’ll let those with more experience in other areas comment.
Just gotta say this group of incredibly hot super heroes is so open with their sexual activity I’m kind of shocked it took a powerful succubus in training, exuding a magical lust aura for something like this to happen. Like arguably some of the best looking, most desirable and charismatic people in the world spend most of their week together in a high pressure, very stressful job requiring tons of interpersonal communication and they’re just now crawling all over each other? Max is really good at her job.
Stress, work, awkward work place questions with a dash of questions if person A would be interested in person B or if they already had a thing. This is work so maybe not all of them share their personal lives… And if you are not a super then its a question of what a non-super would be able to compete against in a room full of supers.
Just look at the Sydney quote with her feeling out of place when she looks like a normal person verse every other highly attractive female super… The shower comment, when they went to the public reveal… Any moment really.
Also as a military force, there would be enough regulations to horribly stymie many relationships especially of different ranks.
Depending on things (like rank) Senca, Ren and Peggy would likely be encouraged to drop it, as would Jiggs and Mr Amorphus, maybe even Math and Jabber too.
Peggy is probably Seneca’s superior officer, so a romantic/sexual relationship would definitely be a no-no. Ren is a newly minted private, while Kesler is an officer, so that relationship would be strongly discouraged, even if she is not a direct superior of his.
I expect Mr. Amorphous will be trying to patch up his relationship with Heatwave and so Jigawatt is one-and-done. I wonder what Heatwave was up to. Who needs to be treated for third-degree burns down there?
Math is a civilian contractor so the rules for military personnel do not fully apply to him. Ng and he would be allowed to continue their relationship, but it may be discouraged if it interferes with their jobs.
Relationships up and down the direct chain of command are a bad idea, for lots of well-known reasons, so if any of these groupings stick, then some rearraingement of the chain might happen.
Probably easier to do with this sort of elite unit than breaking up couples.
Might be how we get Hiro out from under Max and into a parrallel command as well ;)
Given that every two years the Olympic Village gives Hedonism II a run for its money, you’re not wrong. Unlikely it’d all happen at once, though
I’m fine with Seneca not having Tattoos. I don’t know how common it is to get those in the military, but there’s gotta be some people who are not into permanently changing their skin.
Also Maxima is both awesome and hilarious in the way she’s dealing with a situation like that! She has always been giving me the impression that she’s everyone’s mom first and boss second. XD
I saw enough enough examples of how really ugly tats can become after 10-20 years during my Navy years to put me off ever wanting to have one. The distaste for them is so strong that they’re a complete sexual turnoff if I find a woman has them. Unfortunately many women are getting them these days.
What other adults choose to do with their own bodies is not “unfortunate,” it’s nobody else’s business.
Lol. So, if you’re competing in the Olympics, and you don’t medal, but someone you really dislike does medal…it would be false to say “well, that’s unfortunate [from my perspective]”? S/He doesn’t like tattoos. So from Hi/r perspective, tattoo popularity is unfortunate. The fact that the people getting the tattoos disagree…is irrelevant. S/He doesn’t like tattoos, but “unfortunately” for Hi/r, lots of people do like tattoos.
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Hi/r personal preferences are none of your business, wouldn’t you say? Put it this way: unadorned, tattoo-less skin is one of Hi/r “fetishes”. S/he is allowed to have kinks you think are weird, without seeking your approval.
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Xerxes Aragon: “I’m starving, but I hate avocado toast…unfortunately, all there is to eat is avocado toast!”
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You: “Avocado toast being popular is not “unfortunate,” other people’s dietary preferences are nobody else’s business.”
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Xerxes Aragon: “Wut?… I’m not allowed to say I wish there was some food I actually liked available, and I feel it’s unfortunate that there isn’t any?”
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Impartial observer: “that appears to be the meaning of a plain reading of the text. Your preferences are bad or wrong, because other people’s preferences are none of your business. Kinda crazy, but that’s what it says. Evidently if you don’t like Avocado, and you express that you feel it’s unfortunate that there are so many avocados, you’re being naughty by disliking something someone else likes.”
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Me: “S/he didn’t say ‘tattooed people must be punished!!1!’ or anything like that, just that S/he thinks it’s unfortunate (for Hi/r tattoos are so popular. What’s wrong with that?”
No, that’s a completely different premise you just introduced, as evidenced by the specified, entirely separate inanimate object, and is wholly distinct from the choice a person makes with regards to their own body & person.
His comment is clearly in terms of his own preferences, and his point of view, with explanations of what and why.
I see so many ugly and tasteless tats these days that I’m glad I’m not out there. Everything, in terms of placement, coloring or lack thereof, lack of ma (balance between positive and negative space), all speak to no esthetic taste at all. Then wait until they start getting wrinkly on top of it all.
If you honestly think it’s nobody else’s business, then don’t ever complain about spandex people in Walmart.
Most of us don’t complain about what others wear bc we have the freedom to look away. Those who actually complain out loud just sound like self centered weirdos to most, especially younger people.
I mean, if you wanted to put a more general label on what part of the military Seneca came from, you could just say she is formerly of the Naval Special Warefare Command (NSW), which is a fairly umbrella organization that oversees units like the Army Night Stalkers, US Special Operations Forces, the US Army Rangers, and, The Green Berets. Basically any unit you can think of being the tip of the American spear, NSW oversees, while groups like DEVGRU are the sneaky little punch dagger hidden up America’s sleeve. It would also open up a HUGE variety of specialist backgrounds for her as a character instead of limiting her to the scope of the GBs.
Just some food for thought
It varies a bit from branch to branch, and between corps & various specialties.
i agree with Maxima. It does bothers me, and when I thought people were still sitting with their…partners, I thought there was a lingering effect that will eventually fade out.
Seneca is not only ok with what happened, she’s clearly angling for a repeat. I’ve heard that guys like to imagine that they affect women that way….
so yes he’s ‘sorry’.
and we have confirmation, again, that the aura don’t care about your preference. Now I have something more recent than Dabbler’s intro to point to :p
Or she was just repressing.
There’s some evidence that most people are actually pan, and it’s only societal norms that make them think they’re straight.
Reminds me of Ready Player Two, where they have new VR Tech that is on the lvl of cyberpunk with direct brain interface, and the MC (Wade/Parcival) lived through tons of VR porn of different sexualities that he went from straight to pan.
Equality through being able to live through other persons live and be what you wanna be through that VR tech are part of the theme in that novel.
I’m generally unimpressed with the Ready Player “franchise,” but this is an idea that utterly intrigues me. Particularly if it can be combined with subjective time experience.
Imagine the possibilities for developing interpersonal understanding. Or just, you know, living a life. Hell, imagine the possibilities for the judicial system!
“Young Mister McHitlerson, you’ve been found guilty of assault & battery, and sexual assault, motivated by both your loudly proclaimed racism, and misogyny. You are sentenced to 3 consecutive Subjective Lifetimes, experiencing them as a person of the same sex, ethnicity, economic status, and gender as your victim. We’ll see you back in this Courtroom next week to review your progress. And the Court reminds you, Mister McHitlerson, that virtual suicide will only result in your sentence being extended. You are advised to cooperate if you want to be released in time for you birthday next month.”
So you drool at the thought of literal reeducation camps. Why am I not surprised? Maybe you can put “Gedankenvergewaltigung macht frei” on the gates to your “good citizen reeducation and correction camp”?
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Cruel and unusual are insufficient adjectives for a “sentence” that literally violates the integrity of your mind in order to change it. And anyone who thinks that sounds like a dandy idea… I don’t even know how to respond to that. It’s horrifying.
Scary times my friend, since Hilary Clinton just said in an interview we may need deprogramming centers.
Hillary Clinton desperately needs someone to tell her when she’s wrong, thoughtless, tone-deaf, and/or all of the above.
Literally her own worst enemy.
That said, they’re _are_ people in this country who have been turned into cultists, sometimes without there even being a deliberate attempt to do so. That might sound odd, but when some people become sufficiently alienated, withdrawn, despairing, and desperate, they can become cultishly fixated on a public figure. Parasocial relationships are a thing.
Setting aside Trump – who absolutely is following the strong-man cult formula – we can look at certain Hillary Clinton supporters, who will go into screeching hysterics if you level the _mildest_ criticism of her policy positions, or her campaign strategy choices. I’ve received death threats, and had a community college professor quietly threaten to remove me from her class for opining that the woman’s ignoring WI, MI, and PA was putting those previously solid blue strongholds in doubt.
Which is why I find her delightful lack of self-awareness in her choice of words so maddening.
All that being said, and disregarding her obliviousness, we _do_ have a problem with extreme political polarity, to the point that large chunks of the population are effectively living in separate realities, unable -or at least unwilling – to acknowledge any fact outside their own narrative bubble. That does, in fact, need to stop.
‘Parasocial relationships’ is a one-sided relationship, and has been a ‘thing’ ever since the first TV serial first aired (if not earlier)
It’s a not a new thing
Remember that psycho why shot Reagan? He was having a ‘parasocial relationship’ with Jodie Foster
Or that one who killed that girl from “My Sister Sam”
Exactly the thing, though it doesn’t need to go in that direction.
I know a guy who is so into the Quartering that he talks about the guy like they’re buddies. It’s always “we” and “us”. He talks about his videos as if they were being directed specifically at him, for him, personally.
And I knew young woman who – back in the 2016 campaign – literally hung on everything Bernie said, like it was Divine Gospel. Now, I like Bernie – generally – and appreciate his accomplishments, and his work…but if any criticism and she was right there trying to defend anything and everything. Hell I suggested that if Clinton had taken him as Veep, the whole mess would have been locked up & Trump locked out, and she started accusing me of “betraying the Revolution.”
_That_ is the kind of thing I mean.
We got people who genuinely are not connected to reality anymore. They _do_ need “deprogramming,” although there’s no denying that, in this climate, coming from Herself, that wasn’t the way to try saying it. I’d submit that just getting folks out of their bubbles and socializing more broadly would go a long way.
That said, I feel a lot of the same anxiety and animosities myself. I am literally afraid to stop anywhere in Arizona, because I half-expect some Bubba to try beating the shit out of me because I’m trans. I’ve told the company point blank, I refuse to set foot in Texas again. Had too many wing nuts literally carrying firearms next to me and talking about how much they want “somebody to try going to the wrong bathroom,” literally grinning about shooting them, and getting away with it.
_Something_ has got to be done, if we want to keep this as one country.
The question always comes down to who decides what “reality” is and thus who isn’t connected to it and needs to be deprogrammed? That’s why this has turned into a horror show some of the other times reeducation/deprogramming has been tried on large groups. The de-Nazification effort in Germany after WWII worked pretty well. The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative was a crime against humanity.
What level of consensus among the population or leadership would you accept as a determination that you need to be “deprogrammed” because being trans is deemed to be a disconnection from reality?
Naturally people tend to believe their views are correct and that they and people like them are the ones who are right, and it’s others that are wrong and need to change. If you create a system to force that change, you never know what the next target group will be.
@GruntDoc
Not quite.
The question actually comes down to, “How, if at all, does a given person’s “reality” impact anyone other than themselves?”
Nobody really cares if you think you’re Napoleon Bonaparte, as long as you have no real impact on others. But if you go trying to annex the Rhineland, that’s gonna create some problems. The same holds true to racist, sexist, ableist, or otherwise bigoted views of reality. You’re fine, right up until you try bringing that into contact with other people. That’s when we start asking consequentialist questions about your impact on other people.
Welp, I take exception with the term “reeducation,” as that implies they were ever educated to begin with.
(Ba-dum-tss)
Dude, chill the fuck out. I’m exaggerating a bit, and not suggesting anybody can, or should, be “fixed,” as that really is a violation of agency. I _do_ think that such a technology could be useful in mitigating a lot of the various strains of antisocial behavior & maladjustment across the board. Just as I might suggest that Bubba D. Whiteman would benefit from subjectively experiencing the life of, say, a single black mom in Oakland for a bit, I can say for an absolute _fact_ that there are quite literally millions of self-important, smug-ass yuppies that could do with a lesson about poor, rural living in Skunkbottom, Kansas. (Not areal place in KS that I know of)
I expect that a lot of our problems as a nation boil down to refusing to think outside our own experience, at the same time that we lock ourselves into echo chambers, where all we hear are confirmations of our own biases.
So, get’em out of a knot, quit assuming you already know everything, and try engaging in a good faith discussion.
Apart from this being horrible human rights abuse, hypocrisy (you mean to answer to sexual assault with mind rape? Okaayyy…), and cruel and unusual punishment (3 virtual life sentences for assault & battery, and sexual assault? talk about disproportionate), I can tell you that in at least a few cases it is going to backfire horribly.
Sure, there are a few that are going to change the way you like it, or have a mental collapse by feeling inexorably trapped once they realize they can’t get out of it with suicide.
However, chances are that at least in a few cases, the likes of McHitlerson hate every minute of it, learn to grit their teeth and bear the experience until it runs out, and come out of it with the hatred of 1000 suns against the regime that did this to them and everything it stands for, and the dedication to act upon it in a much more organized way.
You took a thug with bigotry issues and turned him into a fanatical and disciplined far-right terrorist/revolutionary. Next time he won’t beat up someone, he shall bomb a government building or a place where minorities gather. McHitlerson turned into McVeigh. Well done.
I’ll refer you to my response above.
And I’ll add the following:
I will immediately concede that there would be some who might come out galvanized, rather than learning to see the world through another set of experiences. I don’t think it would be as likely as you suspect. Human minds are remarkably adaptable, and when removed from their echo chamber of choice, and immersed in a broader world with different experiences, tend to learn & adapt, rather than anything else. Basically, most shitty behavior boils down to a failure of empathy, of the ability to imagine the experience of others as our own, particularly in the context of the consequences of our actions. It’s not a moral failure, or some object, external evil. And correcting it (remember that the point of punishment is to correct behavior) wouldn’t be about “reprogramming” Bubba to be Bernice, but rather to give him a set of experiences that allow him to relate to others enough that he just doesn’t do the harmful thing to Bernice, whatever it might be.
Call me an idealist, I suppose, as I can’t materially prove it, but I do believe that the majority of our social problems would pretty much evaporate if we learned to walk in other people’s shoes, and see ourselves through other people’s eyes.
Y’know, there was a DuckTales episode about that, back in the 90’s. ^_^
Probably why I think the idea has such potential.
It tends to be the case that travelling abroad cures the typical american of excessive jingoism and ‘shining city on the hill’ notions.
Education (as opposed to indoctrination with orthodoxy) tends to make people more open to other opinions and more willing to engage in discussion. Which is why the authoritarians hate the notion of eduction so much and seek to either eliiminate it or replace it with regurgitating ‘official’ opinions as facts. They don’t want other people’s children to go to college either (where they may encounter *gasp* forbidden knowledge)
And regarding the place name. It is likely not an existing town, but we are talking Kansas here, so it is not entirely inconceivable that it actually exists.
On top of what others have said, you’re falling into the same trap as so many before you, by declaring, “This extreme solution is not only the BEST, and indeed ONLY, solution, but it will never ever EVER be used against us!” When in reality EVERY SINGLE TIME civil rights abuses are permitted to be used against disliked minority groups, they are then used against the public in general, and against progressives on the left in particular.
You’re drooling at the thought of throwing misogynists into reeducation camps… and I’m trembling at the fear that you will ever get your way, because that WILL result in political dissidents being hurled into those same reeducation camps. You oppose building a pipeline? To the camp with you! You think police should be held accountable – off you go, while the media reports that you were an armed malcontent who resisted arrest and deserved immediate incarceration. Blow the whistle and provide evidence of how the reeducation camps are being abused – expect to hear your name being uttered in the same breath as “traitor” as you’re dragged away.
First of all, you’re raising a great point.
Second, since we’re playing “if I had it my way,” then you should recognize that I wouldn’t simply deploy this sort of tech in a vacuum. I’ve probably engaged the same media you have, and had the same thoughts. I’ll say it explicitly: any such technology would require a fundamental change to our entire society, restructuring the government around consensus-based democracy, rather than any majoritarian or minoritarian system, with carefully monitored and restrained courts, under full public scrutiny & full accountability.
I would not even trust myself to wield this kind of power alone.
Or at all, maybe. I’m a great analyst, but you’re not wrong in identifying my tendency towards certain extremes. Like most people with a Modernist inclination, I do believe some things can be objectively better or worse.
I’m highly doubtful any honest research would show that to be true. Human history is long enough that there would be societal examples.
Argument from personal incredulity isn’t terribly convincing.
Nor are extraordinary claims without supporting evidence.
Saying “there is some evidence,” isn’t an extraordinary claim.
There is “some evidence” for the theory of panspermia, that doesn’t mean I’m claiming it is undeniably and unequivocally correct.
Try asking them to give you a source.
The claim that there is the possibility that several thousand years of observed and recorded human behavior doesn’t actually reflect the reality of human norms is extraordinary, regardless of the level of likelihood of it being true that is expressed.
This claim is counter to the immense historical evidence and accepted current theory, which is what makes it extraordinary. The evidence, or lack thereof, that is presented to support the claim is irrelevant to whether a claim is considered extraordinary. That’s why there can be extraordinary claims that do turn out to be true, but are still correctly termed extraordinary claims.
The claim was not, “this thing exists,” it was, “there is some evidence that this thing exists.”
You’re deflecting to a point nobody is making, let along defending. A perfect Straw Man Fallacy.
The second sentence is used to corroborate the first, as if most people are pan then it is more likely Seneca was repressing. Saying “there’s some evidence” implies that the idea that “most people are pan” has been created and someone has gathered what they consider evidence to support this claim. Using the phrase “there’s some evidence” is a colloquial way of referencing that claim to help support that first sentence.
You want to dismiss this as a straw man because you know that claim can’t be substantiated, but you still want to be contrarian to anything or anyone that isn’t expressly on board with the pro-lgbt+ messaging.
———-
I can’t reply to the other thread so I’ll do so here.
Are you sure you want to use how a person’s “reality” affects others as the main determination? This absolutely comes back to a person accepting their own “reality” as the correct one, because you assume what constitutes negative impact on others is what you imagine it to be. The assertion that you can do and believe what you want as long as it isn’t affecting others is very literally the argument that has been made to prevent trans from using a different bathroom, competing in sports, accessing areas that would normally be off limits, etc.
Suppose, in the context of this argument, that it is deemed that a trans person is fine to believe they’re trans, dress and present as they want, and even get any surgical procedure they want, but that any attempt to do something they would not be able to do as their chromosonal sex would constitute a negative impact on others. The powers that be asked those consequentialist questions and decided that Leia Thomas needs reeducation/deprogramming/reality correction/ or whatever you want to call it because of the negative impact on other swimmers.
Is that ok, or did you only assume the people who demand traditional sex based separation would be the ones who’s behavior would count as a negative impact and have those questions posed?
With Seneca saying “it’s not *completely* out of the blue”, no, we don’t have confirmation at all.
Jesus fucking christ you will really deliberately misread and make up as much as you can to justify your outrage, won’t you?
Sydney was at ground-zero of the aura and had an actual succubus as a partner and didn’t succumb as she’s not lesbian or bi. So it seems like the aura cannot completely override preference.
It appears that the aura only lowers inhibitions. Like lowering them way way down, indistinguishable from the Marianna’s Trench low.
Exactly.
And frankly, as an actual bi woman, it’s really easy sometimes to be unsure if you’re attracted to someone or just think they’re really cool, especially if you lean more toward men (who are honestly, much more obvious in their attractions than women overall, which creates a feedback loop). And these characters are all pretty young! Some folks don’t meet someone of their gender who ticks their boxes until later.
Well, but she was aware of what was going on. That’s a HUGE advantage in resisting any kind of mind control.
If you’re unaware that you’re being subjected to a lust aura, you’ll actually think what you’re feeling is spontaneous and natural, and it will require a lot of capacity for objective self awareness to figure out that it isn’t.
Sydney’s Sydney and SHE knew exactly what was going on. Even than, she had to fight off the desire to have sex with Parfait despite being explicitly straight. Not sure why you thought you were disproving me.
…Where?
No seriously, where did Sydney have “to fight off the desire to have sex with Parfait despite being explicitly straight”? At no point does she either a) initiate anything sexual(in fact, when presented with to options to “resolve the situation”, she actively and deliberately goes for the least sexual, by her reckoning, choice asap), or b) look remotely comfortable or accepting of the situation, or like she isn’t rejecting it.
When the aura manifests, she is thinking about (even before she is aware of it) ways to “dehorny” (bucket of water, not sex, due to lack of interest in available parties). When Parfait tackles her, she pulls her off and fights back as best as she can without causing injury. When Parfait leans into her again, after a moment’s surprise, she gets her hand up to push her face away. Where did she express desire to sleep with Parfait?
Actually, quite the opposite. Seneca is *proving* the rule. She thought she was straight, but wasn’t 100% certain, and this event proved to her that she’s bi. It runs as a direct contrast to Sydney who *knew* she was straight and resisted and still knows she is straight.
The aura makes you more amenable to activities you’d be willing to do in the right conditions, by activating one of those conditions, but does not rewrite your mind/preferences, nor cause that condition if you cannot achieve it, through any evidence the comic has shown so far. Sydney does not have a “right condition” for homosexual relations, so the aura did not work on her, meanwhile Seneca does, and hadn’t realised.
Now, Dabbler’s beholder illusion overpowers preferences, and that is a big concern, but that is because it is designed to do that, and could theoretically be applied to anything, unlike the aura.
The aura WAS working on her though. Unlike the others though, she knew her feelings were entirely artificial.
Dabbler’s “beholder” illusion had nothing to do with what was going on, it just makes her a super hot human.
Hence her “toning it down” yet not changing appearance IE that wasn’t what she was toning down. Also note that Dabbler’s text was PINK.
Working on her how? By making her horny? Yes, that is what is does. By making her attracted to Parfait? No. There is no indication that she was expressing attraction to Parfait(see my response to your comment above).
That said, let’s address Dabbler’s intro, which you like to flaunt as the aura effect. Page 100. In the author’s comment, Dave notes, rather clearly, that Dabbler was using a “I’m the sexiest thing you can imagine” spell. It may be enhanced be the lust aura, but it is not the lust aura by itself.
But if that’s not enough Harem mentions it two pages later in “grrl-power-extra-harem-tangent-1”, “She’s doing her beholder spell”.(also, after she dials it down, the *camera* focuses on shots highlighting her boobs, further indicting the beholder effect). Then Dabbler mentions she was using in 106. In fact, by her wording there, her lust aura was *secondary*. “[She] was not only doing [her] beholder spell, [she] was pushing [her] lust aura.” And… lo’ and behold, she spells out what her aura does “And you. Got. Horny.”
Toning it down wasn’t “tone the aura down” it was “tone *everything* down”.
What was causing the “I am not a lesbian bit” was likely a combination of both elements (beholder spell and lust aura (and the “I’m the sexiest thing you can imagine” spell, if it is separate from beholder)), in some form of… transitive(ish) logic (A = B, B = C, therefore A = C). “I cannot take my off of her due to a spell, unbeknownst to me” “I am horny, due to a spell, unbeknownst to me” “Am I horny because of this body I cannot take my eyes off of?”. It’s not as simple as “Lust Aura equals lusting for user”
Why do I feel so certain about this? Two reasons:
1) Dave mentions in the comments for 196(page 2) that “Asexuality would probably be a good defense against most of [Dabbler’s] manipulations. It’d be like fire resistance. If you were 50% asexual it’d be half as effective (since sexuality is a spectrum after all)”, implying that if you were fully ace, you’d be fully resistant to her. Implying that there are limits to her abilities where she cannot install interests that are not there at all. Certainly she could make your body react, but if you are sex repulsed, you are not going to suddenly throw yourself into congress.
2) Even if you wanted to argue that it was all the aura, *no one* acted on it at all. It was “maxed out” yet not a person was “fighting off the desire to have sex with” Dabbler. Some were considering it, other were going “I’m not into that, I’m not”, but none where moving toward her or taking off clothes or breaking their illusions or anything to make themselves more accessible to her. And ditto for Parfait.
You keep pushing the idea that the aura was driving Sydney to have sex with Parfait, but it was not. It wasn’t even driving her to have sex at all. Only be excited enough for sex or sexual pleasure. Why can I say that? Because, even ignoring the people who chose non-sapient sexual aids, no one sought out Parfait. Not a one. You argue that Sydney was being made to desire sex with Parfait, an unpracticed, amateur, un-leveled succubus, but if her aura was so powerful in such an immature state, why the heck was (experienced, skilled, powerful) Dabbler’s aura not achieving these things when she was pushing it? And equally importantly, why would it only be making Sydney want to sleep with Parfait? You’re talking Dabbler making the people in the room want to sleep with her in her intro, but if the aura is the same, then everyone in Parfait’s aura should have wanted *her*, not other people.
A much simpler explanation than “oh, it’s variable, the aura can target people differently” or “it’s distance, the effect changes if she’s not close” is “‘Attention on me’, and ‘feel horny’ are effects of separate powers (which in combination have interesting results)”.
P.S. You also keep pushing that pink text is indicative of the aura. It could be. It’s possible, indeed. But it could also be indicative of the beholder spell or any subtle magic (as blue is of active spells). There is no indication that she isn’t using things other than the aura.
> The aura makes you more amenable to activities you’d be willing to do in the right conditions, by activating one of those conditions, but does not rewrite your mind/preferences
False. Dabbler’s aura worked on Sydney. But Sydney knew about Parfait’s aura and was able to consciously resist. We also see that after Dabbler’s aura was turned off, Sydney (and Arianna) were reacting much differently.
I guess the difference is that Seneca was really bi, and after the aura wore off, she thought “well it was still fun, let’s do it again sometime.”
So I deconstructed things more in my reply to Emma, but I’ll reply here as well to let you know, and gives cole’s notes in case it takes longer than this comment to be approved.
Yes, Dabbler’s aura did work on Sydney. I’ve never objected to that. What I did object to was Emma’s made up description of *what the aura does*. Dabbler says it best in 106 “I was pushing my lust aura. And you. Got. Horny.” The aura makes you horny. That’s what it does.
However, also, “When I came in I was […] doing my beholder spell”. Her beholder spell which in “extra-harem-tangent-1” is described such that Harem “literally cannot stop staring at her cleavage”. Not “She using her aura and I cannot stop staring”, her spell. When she tones things down, she tones *both* down.
The commentary to page #101 describes “not a lesbian” as aftereffects of the lust aura. That makes me believe the lust aura makes one horny for people on otherwise wouldn’t be.
I see two ways to resolve this with the comments you found
a) DaveB decided after page #101 to split up was was previously called lust aura into two different things.
b) He subscribes to some sort of vector model of sexuality where orientation is direction and (a-)sexuality is magnitude.
With regards to a), it should be noted that if the distinction isn’t that clear, maybe Parfait wasn’t properly distinguishing it either. She was failing to keep her magic in check, her magic does include making herself attractive, and she did want to seduce Sydney.
Good research, by the way. You definitely did your homework.
Though I did not mention it, I had read 101’s commentary as well, and, while I came to a different conclusion about its meaning(one I did not consider worth mentioning as it didn’t add much to my version, but which I will explain below), I can appreciate how you came to the conclusion you did.
As before, my version off events depends on applications of both lust aura and spell(s, depending on whether “beholder”, “I’m the sexiest: and any other elements are one or multiple spells) working in tandem. Keeping that in mind, the way I interpreted the commentary is as follows:
“This page shows the lingering effects of Dabbler’s ‘lust aura’ enhanced entrance.” What I noted here was the word “enhanced”. Enhanced to me means that it was not the sole contributor to what happened, otherwise it would have been simpler to say “”lingering effects of Dabbler’s ‘lust aura’.” Basically, by adding the other two words, it implies that more is at play. Now, that *could* just be the way she entered, but that seems so minor that I’d still attribute everything to the aura in his position (though, tbf, I am not he).
Were it just that bit, I’d be inclined to agree with your reading, but he goes on. “[…]On a scale of ‘Girl Lookit that Body’ to ‘Insta-Orgy’ this was about ‘6 Jello Shots.'” This is the part that led me to both believe it did not counter my reasoning, and that mentioning it would add nothing.
While “Girl Lookit that Body” could be described as “Look at Dabbler’s body”, the follow up isn’t “Take me now!” or “Head over heels for you” it’s “Insta-Orgy”, which suggests multiple partners, some or all of which may not be Dabbler. In fact, it would be expected that, if not for Dabbler having stamina designed for act, most would not end up with her. Since I was already arguing that the aura made you, or rather everyone, horny and presumably an orgy would be a result of a room full of people both horny and willing(the later requirement was missing, as it was for Sydney, with Parfait), I deemed it added nothing.
All that being said, I absolutely agree that either of your scenarios are possible, though I feel that if anything, a) at least would be an argument in my position’s favor (if he did decide to split functionalities in post, that should still apply now, when Parfait is involved, more than 1000 pages later.)
Thank you for your comment on my research, btw. A fair bit was from memory and then going back to check, but yeah, doing this kind of thing is sort of a hobby. I really enjoy deconstructing media and getting into the nitty-gritty(I also really love debate(too much), in case that was somehow not clear xD). That said, I know that that level of analysis isn’t really for everyone. I appreciate that you worked to return the favor, and presented your own hypotheses, as well as your tone. I was a bit iffy on your first comment, and I know I can be grating, so I was worried about how things might devolve, but this second one really shows that you are just thinking things through as well, and that you have your reasoning.
As a final added bit to this, I found something “new” during my research today. Something I’d missed/glossed over before. I was looking for the scene with the nun-succubus that appeared when Dabbler was talking about diet(312, though irrelevant here), because I thought it might mention things about using aura to encourage(it didn’t), and I accidentally overshot(a lot). Long story short, I found page 794. Story a bit longer, the page features a pink text bubble(courtesy of Decollete), a “hypno voice” as described by Dave. Now, the bubble is not the same as the bubble either in Dabbler’s intro, or at the press conference(153, which is, admittedly, to me, is a bigger indicator that aura and bubble are related then page 100), but it could be art evolution, differences between Dabbler and Decollete and/or differences in the function.
In the intro, Dabbler’s speech bubble is pink, and there are hearts on the following panels, in the conference, the bubble is the same color, bur the heart surround the bubble, rather than shots of Dabbler. In the Decollete page, the bubble has a weave of lines around it as well as hearts, and is of a paler shade. It is distinctly noted, as I said, as a hypno voice. This implies that pink bubbles is not indicative of lust aura, or at least not only lust aura(unless the difference in shade is supposed to indicate that they are wildly different, but that seems… tenuous). My impression is that it is a user/personality difference indicator, rather than a power-nature difference indicator (though it could also be art evolution, 53 pages between the first two bubbles and there were differences, 641 for the third reasonably could cause more).
I’m not going to pretend there is conclusive evidence that those bubbles were for the same thing, but I did want to highlight it, because even if they aren’t, they are indicative at least that pink doesn’t (either “always” or “at all”) mean aura.
I did some more of my own research, and on page 3 of the comments to #215, DaveB describes: “Well, there’s her glamor, which is just a disguise, then there’s her Beholder spell, which shows an idealized woman to the viewer, then there’s her lust aura.”
If that’s the full description of the Beholder Spell, just “an idealized woman” wouldn’t give a true straight woman the hots for her (might make her jealous), and the lust aura is what gets over sexual orientation.
I’ve got to admit, my b) was kinda a red herring here, since the asexuality comment mentioned “most of [Dabbler’s] manipulations” instead of the lust aura specifically. It’s definitely true given all the WoG we have, but it doesn’t have an impact on our theory of Succubus sex magic, or which effects Parfait was using.
> What I noted here was the word “enhanced”. Enhanced to me means that it was not the sole contributor to what happened, otherwise it would have been simpler to say “”lingering effects of Dabbler’s ‘lust aura’.” Basically, by adding the other two words, it implies that more is at play.
I’m not reading it like this. “Lust aura enhanced entrance” appear to mean that her entrance was enhanced by the lust aura. The entrance without the aura would just be attractive woman (magically constructed to be maximally so, admitted), seductive swagger, bedroom voice. The entrance is what happened, the lust aura is what gave it the oomph to straight women.
> I really enjoy deconstructing media and getting into the nitty-gritty(I also really love debate(too much), in case that was somehow not clear xD).
I believe you’ve found a kindred soul, because that sounds just like me. :) After the rocky start, I’m really enjoying this discussion.
It was partially on me as well, because I came in expecting to just set someone else straight on the facts, only to find out your research was better than mine.
On the speech bubbles, I have a competing hypotheses: I think that the Hypno-voice is specifically only the lined bubbles, and without that it just signifies the presence of magical lust (aura.) Contrast Decollete giving a suggestion with Dabbler and Parfait doing nothing of the sort. They’re pink hearty bubbles just show the presence of a lust effect.
Hrm well these points are a fair bit harder to address. And well researched. Not sure how much/what research you did to turn it up, but 215 was not something that had popped up in any of my searches, so well found.
I am interested that Beholder here is described as “idealized woman” because that runs conflict to the statements from Harem I highlighted before. It does indicate that maybe Harem is an unreliable narrator. Or that there are two different “beholder” spells. Or that Dave changed things/forgot things.
The whole comment is interesting, actually. “Well, there’s her glamor, which is just a disguise, then there’s her Beholder spell, which shows an idealized woman to the viewer” Is interesting, because she was clearly glamored to show everyone Sydney’s ideal from the start(and then she later did the General’s), but… the comment “As we see her entering on this page, she’s deploying a simple ‘I’m the sexiest thing you can imagine’ spell.”, seemed to indicate more.
I mean “sexiest thing you can imagine” and “ideal” *could* be synonymous, but I definitely read those as different things, both because “ideal” to me projects “comfort” (e.g. in this case sexiest would be so alluring that prolonged exposure would be uncomfortable, both in a “this is over the top” and a “this is intimidating” way) and because “sexiest thing you can imagine” appeared to be exactly what was being shown(/mentioned in the extra). So sexy you can’t take your eyes off her.
“Usually her glamor is constructed from a low key version of her beholder spell” Now this is the real interesting part, to me, at least. There are three ways I can read this:
1)One way favors your way of thinking, which is that Dabbler did Sydney’s beholder outside the room, then swapped to her glamour of the same thing, then entered, lust aura blaring. In this version, beholder and “I’m the sexiest” are one thing, “I’m the sexiest” just being an alternate way of saying “ideal”. This seems a reasonable assumption, and I lack any references I could use(without more research, and, unfortunately my ADHD seems to be kicking in today, because I’m having a hard time staying on task today).
2) In this version, beholder and “I’m the sexiest” are one thing, but “I’m the sexiest” is separate from “ideal”. Basically, the visuals are based on “Ideal” but there is also a… “force” that says “No really, I AM the sexiest thing you can imagine.”. In this version, when Dabbler “Dials it down”, she swaps to her glamour, which doesn’t have the “force” at the same time as she lowers her aura. This is what I’d like likely lean to now.
3) In this version, she has a “sexiest”(in a can’t take my eyes off her sense, which Dabbler would’ve “mistakenly” called beholder) spell, the “aura” and and “beholder”/”glamor’. Three(or more) separate parts, as I initially suggested. In this version, I guess “low key” would either denote the “one target” version, or “a bit less ‘perfect'” (or maybe “I’m no longer targeting a person”). At this point, while not impossible, it seems like a stretch.
“When Dabbler showed up in the ballroom during Sydney’s interview, she was pushing the lust aura just to jazz up her entrance.” Seems to lend further credence to what you’ve argued. Though in a non-other-possibility eliminating way.
On to the rest of your comment!
“I’m not reading it like this.” Fair. Straight up, there are many ways to read this due to the many flaws of the English(or really, any) language, and both seeing it differently, and not seeing it how I did are entirely reasonable. I write a lot of material in my spare time featuring character who deliberately speak the truth, but in ways that make them lies, so I’m likely predisposed to reading too much into what people say. I admit that your interpretation is at least as likely as mine, though I do not feel that mine is unreasonable considering the other research we’ve done. That said, those extra words really do feel unnecessary if the aura was the only thing causing people to give Dabbler that level of attention. I know that, hot or not, horny or not, my attention drifts pretty quick from someone’s figure. (though that’s likely saying more about me than anything)
“I believe you’ve found a kindred soul, because that sounds just like me. :) After the rocky start, I’m really enjoying this discussion.” I’m glad! It’s really hard at times, diving full force into something when other parties are not game for it, and I’m not going to pretend I don’t know I alienate some people with that habit, but it is genuinely not malicious. I just prefer to be proven wrong by someone who has done their research, than drop a conversation early.
I’m glad when I’m *proven wrong*, as long as it stands up(and, it should be said, even if you haven’t, in my eyes, proven me wrong, you’ve definitely shown me a myriad of possibilities that I was too quick to dismiss, and you researched well enough to incline me to support their validity as theories!).
“It was partially on me as well, because I came in expecting to just set someone else straight on the facts, only to find out your research was better than mine.” I’ve been guilty of this before as well. I try not to be, which is part of why I was able to reference so many things from the start, but it has happened. I’m grateful though, that you are, unlike many(I am in– or at least was, life interferes –many comic fan communities), someone who does not go mum when a counter argument is presented. The fact that you did more research and built stronger arguments is admirable.
“On the speech bubbles[…] I think that the Hypno-voice is specifically only the lined bubbles, and without that it just signifies the presence of magical lust (aura.) Contrast Decollete giving a suggestion with Dabbler and Parfait doing nothing of the sort. They’re pink hearty bubbles just show the presence of a lust effect.” It certainly is possible. Format could be specific to nature. I listed my assumptions above, so I won’t delve back into that, but as far as hypno-voice goes, I just assumed the difference would be that Dabbler was using it indirectly, while Decollete was using a direct application. Basically, in Decollete’s case, you follow her words, in Dabbler’s you merely hold onto them. It’s just another part of the magic.
On a related note, however, I somehow forgot the a month ago, page 1189 featured pink and hearts again. I don’t know how I forgot, since when the page released, the first thing I did was go compare her bubbles to Dabbler’s and Decollete’s(trying, funny enough to determine if the changes were art evolution, differences in effect of based on the speaker(unfortunately, we’d need multiple of them in the same scene or DaveB to tell us, I think)) *and* I subsequently looked at the page while debating Emma. Thing is, the page isn’t interesting in and of itself, it’s interesting because of 1192. By itself, 1189 basically seems to indicate one of two things, neither of which are what I’ve been saying:
1) The same thing you’ve been saying. Pink means aura. As Parfait looses more and more control, her aura ramps up, and her bubble goes pink in tandem.
2) It’s literally just a tone indicator and everyone, including me, has been blowing it out of the water. I doubt that Parfait is using any lust spells at that point, so if it’s not aura, that seems the most likely next contender. The rather obvious flaw with this proposition is that we’ve seen a lot of fliting and sex talk during this comic and(that I can recall), it has only come up with Succubi. The only counter I can come up with for that is… maybe it’s a tone that only succubi can nail, even if it isn’t magic.
That said, that is where 1192 comes in. Now, I’m not going to pretend this couldn’t just be an artist error, because it really, really, *really* could be, but 1192 features no pink, no hearts. This is significant because I don’t thing Parfait would(could, actually), reel in her aura prior to the eye lick. Heck. We can reasonably believe that she hasn’t because on the next page Sydney asks her to “put that aura away” and Parfait responds that she can’t. That means that the aura is on for the whole of those two pages, but that the bubbles remain untouched not pink.
Every other instance, it could be argued that “pink” and “aura” were synonymous, despite my objections that they are not, but in this instance, they are quite separate. As before, it could be an art error(think how many times DaveB admitted to forgetting the orbs), but it could also be intentional. If it is intentional, it lends validity to the second point above, or the hypno voice thing.
This comment is plenty long, so I’ll end it here, but, yeah, that just occurred to me. Thank you once again for your responses so far!
> I am interested that Beholder here is described as “idealized woman” because that runs conflict to the statements from Harem I highlighted before. It does indicate that maybe Harem is an unreliable narrator.
I mean, would we expect Harem to be fully informed about the details here? It seems very plausible that she’d confuse beholder spell and hypno boobs.
> and, it should be said, even if you haven’t, in my eyes, proven me wrong, you’ve definitely shown me a myriad of possibilities that I was too quick to dismiss
This, again, is mirrored. I think we’re currently agreeing that the evidence is ambiguous and are both aware our respective preferred theories are on uncertain ground.
We definitely both came away knowing more than before, which is, in my mind, the best outcome to a discussion one could wish for.
> 2) It’s literally just a tone indicator and everyone, including me, has been blowing it out of the water. I doubt that Parfait is using any lust spells at that point, so if it’s not aura, that seems the most likely next contender. The rather obvious flaw with this proposition is that we’ve seen a lot of fliting and sex talk during this comic and(that I can recall), it has only come up with Succubi. The only counter I can come up with for that is… maybe it’s a tone that only succubi can nail, even if it isn’t magic.
I think that’s actually most likely, considering how Parfait had colored heart bubbles several panels before she said she was starting to lose control of the aura. It was my original belief until I looked up page 794, even.
The only thing speaking against it would be panel 2 on 1192, which seems like it would be said lustily, but that’s a plausible artist error.
Not much to say here. I pretty much agree with everything you said. ^^
About “The only thing speaking against it would be panel 2 on 1192”, yeah, I figure it might be an error as well. But also, if it was pink, I’d’ve been more likely to think that it was an aura indicator, and the Sydney’s lick dialed the aura back. *shrug*
I guess at this point we’ve reached the end of what we can decipher without more info from DaveB. (at least, I can’t think of anything more.) If so, I just wanted to say that it has been a genuine pleasure talking with you, and I am grateful to your effort in this conversation, as well as your patience and flexibility as it developed. It’s really not something that I see enough of!
I don’t get active much nowadays unless a page draws my attention towards the comments AND I see a comment worth responding to, but it would be nice to cross paths again! Many thanks!
You’re arguing with certainty about what a magic ability does and doesn’t do in a fictional comic, when the author has not specified that. The aura can do what DaveB says it can do and how it achieves that. What you’re doing is saying the way you want it to be must be the way it actually is, because you want it to validate a personal belief.
“You’re arguing with certainty about what a magic ability does and doesn’t do in a fictional comic” I am indeed. As is everyone else at this (figurative) table. The difference is “when the author has not specified that” is only partially accurate, and I am referencing things indicated by author’s comments and character’s words(which’ll appear in my responses, once approved), while others are inferring from what they see and making *bold* claim without providing solid evidence to back it up(and if they do provide solid evidence, rather than hypothesis, I’ll change my tune, as I did last time someone provided evidence that I missed).
“The aura can do what DaveB says it can do and how it achieves that.” Absolutely. And if he says(not just implies) that the aura does the things people are asserting without evidence, I’ll accept that. In absence of that, I’ll take what Dave’s characters (who know more about their world than us, but less than Dave himself), words(which I quote in responses to the people above you), and what little I can glean from things Dave said in comments and author’s comments.
“What you’re doing is saying the way you want it to be must be the way it actually is, because you want it to validate a personal belief.” Actually… no. What I’m doing is saying that the things for which they failed to provide evidence to support, have much better explanations. Personal beliefs nothing. This is fiction and those only come in as far as what the fiction is or isn’t promoting, not how things work in the world.
I’m referencing things that have actually been said, versus what is indicated through the limited form of pictures that may or may not convey what Dave wants us to receive(and he has indicated multiple times over the years that he is unhappy with how unclear some things are).
I see there are still lingering effects.
:V
And yeah, very lucky there weren’t any complex situations here that got screwed by a lust nuke.
Could have been a lot worse under different circumstances.
That’s not Heatwave wrapping herself around Mr. Amorphous on the previous page.
First – I’m 6’5″ and my wife is 5’5″. I can personally vouch for your height estimate. She comes up to about an inch under my chin. I have been known to joke that we can use the mirror in the bathroom at the same time with her doing her hair and me brushing my beard.
Second – As young a succubus as Parfait is (comparatively)… her lust aura would most likely be strongest at “Ground Zero” (being her personally and whoever she’s in direct contact with) and weaken further away so that it becomes less of a “Lust Aura” and more of a “Man, everyone’s inhibitions have suddenly left the building.. gotten in the car… and driven to another state… Aura”. Instead of inspiring full on lust like a full-fledged Succubus where people are waking up next to Fat Bastard, Jocelyn Wildenstein, or a barnyard animal… she just has a severe inhibitions dampener and it effectively gets people doing things they really wanted to do with people they wanted doing it to them because they’re not scared to ask for what they wanted.
This last one would be especially true if Parfait’s Master (Tom? Tim?) is smart enough (and it seems like he actually is is) to allow Parfait access to his mana but put a “flow regulator” on it to not let her pull as much until she has more control over her powers. (It’s like the difference between buying her a 1995 Toyota Corolla to learn to drive in before getting her that 2023 Porsche 911 convertible she really wants until she’s actually skilled and responsible behind the wheel.)
Dude apologized for being too well equipped, after a threesome, where all his coworkers heard what was said and can’t claim he made it up. He is living the dream.
Bear in mind that not everyone likes the idea of a massive tool splitting them open. Some DO like it, others don’t. But yeah, those who do like it now know where to get the XXL package.
Wouldn’t that be any super male team member though?
On a related note, it would have been nice to see a M/M or M/M/F team up
Well, yeah. He’s a male super. Just like how most super women need anti-gravity bras super man generally require reinforced underwear to contain the goods. Just ask Hiro.
Incorrect my friend, if a super lady is super tough, she wouldn’t need a bra at all, because a few pounds of flesh bouncing around wouldn’t be able to pull her skin hard enough to hurt or stretch. Super boobs are perky boobs, no matter how big they are.
That would have been a good time for Detla to have an alien cultural question and pipe up to ask why he’d apologize.
Pretty sure that “alien culture” wouldn’t preclude a basic grasp of volume and elasticity.
With a succubus on the team and the amount of perfect bodies, not to mention the shower room sheeningans that Sidney saw/suffered through I suspect there was a betting pool on “when will we have a succubus-oriented orgy”.
Could that be the cause of Hiros looking in #1194? “Damn, how could he/she make the bet so exactly?”
Is Max hinting at Archon adopting their own version of “don’t ask,don’t tell”?!?
How on earth did you come to that conclusion?
Tats are nowhere near universal in the ‘real life’ military. I know that during my 26-year career, I was fortunate that the few times I was drunk enough to think a tattoo was a good idea, I was in a place where I was too drunk to get a tat.
As far as the new Bang-Buddies go, they appear to be dealing with it fairly well. I would suggest that no one was forced into something they didn’t want, the ‘Lust Aura’ simply gave them the push they needed to get started.
One thing though, from the perspective of the ‘real-life’ military, having your CO comment on your sexual preferences is throwing all kinds of red flags. I understand that ARC-SWAT is hardly all that ‘military’ an organization, but damn Max, stay in your lane.
Perhaps it’s a delicate way of raising the question of whether the lust aura caused people to do stuff they wouldn’t voluntarily do, rather that just lowering inhibitions to zero.
Max might be trying to find out if folks had their orientation moved by this.
Dave says, “Hang out”. We’ve seen one rueful face so far… and Heatwave has been demurely off screen. There are fireballs incoming.
Yeah that should’ve been written a little differently, military or not she’s still the boss! She shouldn’t assume anything about her subordinates.
Not all military get tattoos. So her missing one or having one in a less seen area, isn’t out of the question.
It’s a delicate matter but I don’t think it’s entirely outside her remit in this specific circumstance, since she’s figuring out how much influence Parfait’s aura exerted over her team.
My comment was based on Seneca not having any tattoos in the writer comments.
I concur with Alex and others. Seneca not having tattoo’s is a good thing. Not everyone that joins has limited thoughts on their future. Perhaps she never found anything she wanted permanently etched onto her skin? Perhaps, like some, she never wanted to be easily identifiable as a member of ANY organization where enemies would see it and kill her? Perhaps she wanted to go into intelligence work? Maybe she doesn’t want to sit around and get poked by needles over and over? For whatever reason, yeah, she doesn’t need a tattoo of any sort.
I’ll freely admit that I’m old, but when I was growing up, I was taught that only trashy people get tattoos. And I have to consciously set that idea aside when I see a tattoo on a person.
I’m also phobic about needles.
So there’s no way I’d let the societal pressure of military service talk me into getting a tattoo. It’s just not in me…or on me.
There’s all kinds of attitudes in the world toward tats so it’s okay to show some diversity.
I got over being phobic about needles when I went through chemo, and that “not a step” tattoo for my shoulder would be a real hoot, but I’ve seen too many elderly people who got tattoos when they were younger to not realize that it’s not going to look pretty down the road.
I no longer curl up into a ball for an hour after getting a finger stick to test my blood sugar. But that’s as close as I’ve managed to come to being no longer phobic about needles.
All you really have to do to drive me up the wall is to put me alone in an office which has a sharps bucket.
Yeah, I took some med courses in college. You would not believe how scarred and blood stained the desks were in the classroom where I took cardiac hemodynamics, and we had to do our own finger sticks. It looked like there had been a mumbletypeg tournament in there!
Took a dozen tries before you managed to not flinch out of the way, and then you’d sink it to the bone and bleed like a stuck pig.
Meanwhile, I’m remembering my time in Corpsman School at Great Mistakes.
We literally had contests to see not only who was the best vampire, but who could draw the most tubes from themselves, without rupturing a vein or otherwise inflicting self-injuries.
I work at a plasma collection center, am formerly a clown, formerly wore a badge, and tell increasingly prolific puns. One would think I live to trigger phobias in people.
Army SF are less seek and destroy and more 5th columnist types, and unless they had a tat from some earlier unit most of them do not have tats that would identify them as such at least while active, since a large part of their job is to long term survive and blend in to the indigenous population of different areas behind the lines.
This is probably a dumb question but is this still all a flash back from issue 4? At the end she says, “Let’s go back a few months” and it seems like a lot more time has gone by since the start of the series but I’m just not sure. Thanks
Remember we had a 57-day time skip when Sydney got stranded
We’re not done with the flashback until Sydles makes corporal.
Dave mentioned in the strip that we were looking back “a few months” and you can figure that’s LONG past that, she was gone for 52 days during the space incident alone. IDK how long her training was, but for draftees it was a least 6-8 weeks. so I think we can safely assume this is real time.
I think DaveB mentioned somewhere that he dropped the flashback thing. Just insert a imaginary picture of Sidney saying “And thats where we are now” whereever you like. And just go on from there.
Just assume that DaveB hasn’t gotten around to retconning “a few months” to “a couple of years”.
That’s one group who seems fine with it all, and Math and Jabber likely won’t raise an issue either. They seemed so out of the loop of anything out of the ordinary having happened it might not even be the first time their sparring session ended like that.
I was active duty Navy for 20 years and have zero tattoos. Some people just find them repulsive.
It’s a recent thing I believe, I was 4-F, they wouldn’t take me in ’77 due to an excessive spinal curve, my father was in the service in the Korean war 2 yrs. I knew several guys from the Vietnam war, I only met one guy that had a tattoo, and he was a Marine.
However, both my sons’ have them, my eldest has sleeves on both arms, my youngest has one on his left calf, and started one on his right shoulder to elbow. It’s going to be 4 color like Peggy’s, but of a skull and a dragon. He’s saving up to get the shading and the first color done now.
Tattooing has been around for centuries, it became socially looked down on during the 50s due to street gangs and hookers having them. Unfairly I might add… I don’t have any simply because of my needle phobia.
Maxima’s going to need to emphasize that while there won’t be any discipline for breaking them in this instance, fraternization rules are in effect going forward.
They are effectively unenforceable.
The fact is, Uncle Sugar can’t afford to lose any of these people, and at a _minimum_ we know there is one person who has enough money to hire them at commensurate – if not higher – pay, along with fronting the lawyers necessary to get them loose from Archon.
And that’s to say nothing of other Nation-States.
Very true, and it is the same reason why Max can afford to go only so far in enforcing standard military discpline.
I am ready to bet she cannot afford to do anything of the sort, for the same reasons why she cannot afford to enforce too much of the standard military discipline about other issues. Dealing some punishment training here and there when people really cross a line is the effective extent of her authority. Too many people in and out of this room would take it as an abuse of power and quit.
Provided they don’t break up because of this incident, Amorphous and Heatwave would not tolerate it, and neither would Math and Jabberwokky. The three people featured here apparently can’t wait to go for another round. I am fairly sure Dabs and Harem would not tolerate it, for various reasons. After getting this taste, Jiggawatt would not stand for it.
These are not your typical office drones. They among the most powerful people on Earth (and beyond), with their abilities incredibly in demand. Yeah, Uncle Sam gives them a pretty good deal, but there other agents that can do the same. Heck, Max in all evidence can’t afford to force Harem to break up with Deus, no matter how much she dislikes it, for justifiable security and less justifiable feminist prudery and jealousy reasons.
Max may have a serious portion of her identity tied up in being a US military woman, but I ready to bet few others share her level of dedication and willingness to sacrifice for the cause. Do you really expect that the same people that do strip poker and have sex-comedy sorority shenanigans in the showers would stand for “no sex in the ranks, we are the military”? Tell me another.
If Max tries to do anything of this sort, the most likely outcome is Deus makes a few calls advertising he offers equivalent benefits plus no anti-fraternization rules or other unnecessary discipline crap, and the vast majority of the Archon superteam quits and joins the Gaitlyn one. Well done, Golden Prude.
Bet the other girls on the team are going to be a mite bit curious now. XP
6,5 to 5,4 isn’t even that exotic sice difference.
We have several couples in that league at work.
The biggest difference we have here i think would be a 2,08meter Guy (close to7.0feet) and his 1.62m Wife (5.38ft.)
They are probably slouched in the seats because they can’t sit straight right now… Seneca did say she would be walking crooked…
If she had her cervix hammered repeatedly then sitting upright is not fun for her either right now.
This “Incident” is shaping up to be just the doctor(?), ordered for a lot of folks in ARC.
I never noticed that before and asked a friend who is in the military and she said that tattoos are a personal choice and alot of the women she serves with avoid them out of sheer spite of the guys that all but demand you have to have them. not sure if it’s the same for others but at least for her she’s inkless just to be spiteful.
I imagine Doctor Chevy is going to be called on more than Doctor Frost to deal with the consequences of Parfait’s “distraction.”
Doctor Chevy: Okay, that takes care of your injuries. Are you on birth control? Do you need a morning-after pill?
Prinprin: Nah, goblin genetics are nowhere close enough to human for me to worry about that.
I was about to say that Morning After Pills would be on the same table
as the coffee and donuts for when the meeting ends.
Still…. everyone should get a checkup soon and at regular intervals.
Also….. The Normies will also need to be looked after.
(In a severe/special case memory adjustment might be needed.)
Well, thats a very blunt comment at the end! Damn…
Judging from the looks on their faces on the previous page, I think Max is barking up the wrong tree, and few if not none are going to have complaints.
One rueful look on Jigga’s arm. Heatwave nowhere to be seen. We’re seeing the happy side first.
5’4″ isn’t ‘short’, it’s ‘average’ and I have to deal with 4’10” on a daily basis ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_country
Maybe it’s different for ‘supers’ but my mother was 4’11” and my father was 6’4″, one grandmother was 4’8″ and the other was 6’1″
I’m glad hubby put me onto this one, it took me a whole afternoon to read it all but that’s a day I don’t mind using up.
The ‘average’ height for a woman in the US is even less at 5′ 3.5″ it’s just that most ‘celebrities’ are usually taller than average, or at least the camera angle makes them look tall, and people have been convinced that they’re what you should look like :)
With regard to the characters height, Ren is a super while Seneca and Peggy are regular humans who are just very skilled at what they do. Supers are described in this universe as having amazing physiques as their baseline and Ren according to his bio is perhaps taller that the average super. So yeah, they aren’t short, they are just short compared to Ren. The Wikipedia reference has me wondering, since supers usually have an idealized physique, will a super person from a country with relatively short people have a physique that is exemplary with regard to their local population or with all of humanity in general.
I knew a pair of filipina twins at one time, 4′ even. Everybody called them “the Barbies”. They made my wife, at 5′ even, look big.
If you saw them in isolation they looked like perfectly normally proportioned women, though. They did have trouble buying fashionable adult looking clothing…
If I was cute & 4’ tall, I probably wouldn’t bother trying to find “fashionable adult-looking clothing.” X’D
I’d be looking for animal-themed onesies
Omg YEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!!
*dresses up as a shark, pretends to be Nimona*
*hypersonic squee-ing*
We have been told that supers tend towards tall and perfect bodies.
For some reason that I’m sure will be explained and isn’t just “Dave likes drawing people he thinks are sexy”
Available hints suggest that being able to tap the Superion field gives you a perfect body and the urge to flaunt it.
My theory is that the Nth are using Earth as a playground for role playing. You roll up a character, get born into that body with suppressed memories, and role play a super hero or villain. The rest of us are just NPCs.
The number of supers is climbing because the game has become popular.
Naturally everybody wants a high Charisma stat…
An interesting and plausible theory. I just wonder, mages & supernaturals often approximate the power level of supers, are more plentiful and less localized, and the Thaumion and Psion fields in all evidence came earlier than the Superion one on a geological scale. Does it mean that magic is in the original game, and superpowers in the DLC?
I don’t know who you play RPGs with, but most of my friend group cannot dump Charisma fast enough despite whatever game I put them in. The only common exception I’ve seen is when they can play multiple characters, at which point one player will make one Super Charisma character and do everything in their power to never put them in a non-Charisma central situation.
I had a character in a Super RPG that had the “cursed with beauty” disadvantage. He was a male model in his secret identity, and known to have changed people’s sexual orientation to bisexual from either end in his favor just by existing. He loves to assume his Super Identity so he stops being sexually harassed by hordes of men and women as he has his face completely hidden by a full-face helmet and face shield. He’s a Speedster so everyone assumes it’s to protect his face from the wind rather than to protect his body from horny people he doesn’t want to be with.
My impression from how it was discussed early on in the comic is that it was mostly lampshade hanging, pointing out that most superheroes in most comics have the same limited range of body types. But DaveB does seem to enjoy delving into the topics he’s interested in, and try to come up with semi-plausible explanations or solutions, so we’ll see!
So I’ve had more of a thought that Bisexuality is actually more of an expected norm and that straightness is really effected/limited more by social constraints. Especially what’s been seen in history and with current animal studies. The biggest push toward straightness affected by religion and their edicts. Have (what we call) the pagan gods as your go-tos? Freer society for sexuality. Abrahamic takeover? Control and limitation. The religion bases a lot on controls and limitation yelling what you _can’t_ do. And then folks take it to even higher extremes. Can’t have your followers be too free. So Sexuality is made more evil and “only for M-F procreation”.
The Lust aura makes folks horny, sure…but it also turns off the learned societal inhibitions allowing these shifts to happen.
That said, While future “restrictions” can be explained away as “necessary” for a good army/military “control”… I still feel there’s a lot of anti-cohabitation anxiety in Maxima’s makeup that’s a drive. And could make for a bigger negative effect in a “smaller” group. Small hidden resentments that linger. But that may be too big of a subject inclusion for here and for the main story.
I don’t think you should be quite that optimistic about pagan societies. In ancient Greece, for example, particularly Athens, man-boy sex was considered perfectly normal. But two of the nastiest epithets, eurypygon (wide [open] arse) and katapygon (down arse), were used for adult men who played catcher rather than pitcher. It seems as if the Greeks divided sex roles into dominant (free men) and subordinate (women, slaves, and boys)—and a man who appeared subordinate was despised. Pagan societies were unfree about sex in a different way than Christian ones, but that didn’t make them free.
So Peggy and Seneca got consensually dick punched in the cervix?
Well, I mean, no. The cervix isn’t located at the back of the vagina, it’s a bit more up. That’d only work if he had a dick that bent 90 degrees at the end.
They got consensually dick punched in the pelvic floor.
Obvs :P
Ah, You might check the anatomy again, unless you’ve been strictly anal, there is only one way to go in there, and it’s to the cervix, it’s angled back yes, and we are angled that way as well. If it was the way you say, NO ONE WOULD GET PREGNANT. The vagina ends at the cervix, period. The cervix is the opening to the uterus, it’s a bell shaped thing that goes into the vagina and allows sperm to enter the uterus, also what has to open up 10cm to allow the baby’s head to come out.
LOL oh yeah, anytime a lady yells “harder” and then walks around holding her stomach the day after will attest to it. There were some European woman that would have it dilated so they could handle the “long john” guys, rather have it mistreated like that, but it also doubles the likelihood of miscarriages.
I may be remembering wrongly, but wasn’t Peggy explicvlty gay rather than bi?
Eh, if everyone’s happy, then it’s their business really.
Nope, Sydney and her discuss the issue in #117 while chatting at lunch and she makes it clear she is bi. Sdyney gets curious since Peggy has a few stereotypical lesbian traits but enjoyed the beefcake spectacle of shirtless male supers. Peggy tells that for her it is more about the person than their gender, agrees it is nice to have an additional dating pool, and once in a while hormones makes her go boy-crazy.
Just my faulty recollection, then. Curse you, advancing years! (waggles fist in impotent rage)
If you’re that old it would have to be impotent rage.
I think what everyone is actually worried about, @DaveB, is what’s going to happen between Mr. A & Brooke.
That’s the one committed relationship that was on the table, and right now it looks like that could be in serious danger, not to mention the potential consequences between Brooke and Jiggs.
Girl is known to be hypersensitive where he is concerned.
Not very subtle art critique, sorry: You need to work on your guys faces, especially the eyes. The earlier artwork actually looks much better.
What is wrong with the eyes? You talking about his pupils dilating hearing what Sen is saying? Or something else?
This sketches me right the fuck out. It’s an AOE date rape drug who no one in the room other than the two literal demons can measure with any level of accuracy.
And none of those affected, seem to give a shit
The only one seemingly regretting what happened is Morph, and that’s because the one he hooked up with was not his wife slash girlfriend
Bro, why are you so fuckin aggro at anyone who finds it uncomfortable? They’re allowed their opinion
Main Character syndrome.
“I’m not bothered by this, therefore nobody else can be.”
Nice then, to have a friendly demon who can explain exactly what happened, and how much people’s own attitudes or preferences were overridden, or their inhibitions suppressed. Hopefully DaveB, through Dabbler, can put some of that speculation to rest in some upcoming pages.
I think that is a little bit of an exaggeration, but yes, there need to be explanations, answers, an various forms of follow up and after care.
Referring to it as a sort of mass-drugging is actually a pretty good approach, in a way. Essentially, we can regard this as something like a hazmat spill, and the effects as a type of accidental poisoning. Risks and consequences need to be evaluated, and new protocols developed and implemented.
Max isn’t a prude, but she wants to make sure no one is upset about the incident. I highly doubt it, you can’t have a group of beautiful living and working together for any length of time and not have at the very least causal hook-ups. The only one that might be put off is Heatwave, since she’s not the brightest bulb, Mr. Amorphous might have to explain things in detail later about that.
Max’s biggest issue is the fact that everyone was effected by it and were “taking care of the urges” while on duty. Archon is a “para-military” organization, not a real one, most of the members have rank only to make the one’s that are military happy. And the command structure works better in the field.
Parfait will be talked at and restricted on the times of visiting, but she won’t be allowed on base for a bit I’ll bet due to the disruption she caused. And to get the higher-ups to calm down (and get over the jealousy). ;)
Yea, Max so far is acting reasonably on the issue, and the security concerns she acts upon are genuine. However, we have seen plenty of evidence elsewhere she is the sex-negative feminist kind of prude with lots of body issues about her perfect physique. I am also ready to bet she is feeling some serious jealously seeing Hiro has hooked up with another hot woman who is all over him. So her feelings on this issue probably are not so pure.
I hope we shall also see her show some contrition for screwing up and leaving Archon w/o mental-manipulation aura protections despite getting a big warning from the battle with V; she shares the blame with Sydney, Parfait, and Gwen)
Clear boundaries & a preference not be treated like a sex object is hardly prudishness.
Max being a prude, feminist bore is a consistent part of her charactrization and it often goes beyond setting boundaries for herself in a reasonable way. I can think of at least a couple situations when she abused her authority to impose her foibles on others or came close to.
When Jabberwokky found herself under Dabs’ persistent love charm, Dabs gave two options to treat her. A sex session with a succubus would almost surely exhaust the charm. Otherwise, she would have to research for an alternative magical solution. Max summarily and immediately vetoed the former option without discussion or justification.
We know that treatment was necessary to remove the locked-in charm, the sexual option was the best (safe, quickest, easiest, most reliable) option, Jabs in her right mind would almost surely choose it according to everything we know about her, she was expressing enthusiastic consent atm (not valid, but evidence she would not suffer or be traumatized), sex with a succubus is safe apart perhaps from some exhaustion and perhaps a need to apply the memory-clouding spell.
Dabs had no real conflict of interest in the issue: she applied the charm as a non-lethal combat move to neutralize and capture an enemy and it failed to expire on its own against her expectations. Moreover, she never lacks willing sexual partners and tantric ‘donors’, and had no special urge to bed Jabberwokky.
Max was abusing her authority and withholding treatment from a patient unable to express valid consent (which however could be inferred w/o difficulty) in a medical situation against professional advice and the patient’s best interest and likely wishes. In all evidence she did so to impose her prude foibles on the situation and White Knight for Jabberwokky’s chastity. She was acting not really different from what religious zealots do in similar situations. Doing it in the name of sex-negative feminism makes it no better.
In another case, Max and Harem were discussing the latter having an affair with Deus in the context of being a double agent. Max kept harping and expressing passive-aggressive and patronizing ‘concern’ about female spies being exploited in honeypot missions, despite Harem being at ease with the situation. Harem lost patience and angrily told her to back off. Her CO had no business in her dating choices, she had the libido of five young, healthy women to satisfy, and she was very happy to have the handsome, charismatic, genius, sex-god billionaire as a lover. Admittedly hard to tell in this case if Max was acting prude, being jealous, or a mix of both, but she was exceeding her authority again.
Our knowledge about whether or not Jabberwocky would consent is irrelevant to the characters’ actions. What matters is whether Max and Dabbler knew that she would consent to such treatment, and given the situation, Jabber could not give valid consent. She was clearly experiencing internal conflict over the situation, saying things like “Kiss me! No, I hate you!! But definitely kiss me!” and “I want to punch her in the mouth and then kiss it all better!” That doesn’t sound like someone in their right mind.
The exact point I was about to raise.
Thank you.
See my answer above. It was a medical issue, not a sexual one, so different rules for acting out of necessity without the subject being able to express consent or dissent apply. Max did wrong to Jabberwokky by withholding the best treatment from her, against her likely wishes. Guidelines exist for those situations, you do not just leave a person without necessary treatment b/c they are unable to express consent or left written instructions.
Jabbs was only affected when she was in the same room as Dabbles, and Maxi only restricted the two to not be alone in the same room
That was earlier, when they still expected the charm would fade on its own. Later when they realized this a fluke occurred and was not the case, they inquired Dabs for options. She told them one sure-fire method was sex with a succubus. Jabberwokky said ‘yes, let’s do that’ but Max vetoed it. Otherwise, Dabs would have research for an alternative fix.
That was when Max crossed a line and abused her power by withholding the best treatment option from a patient against her likely wishes in a medical situation to enforce her prude foibles.
At the very least, if she did not trust charmed Jabs’ judgement in the situation and thought they did not know enough about her, she should have asked a judge and run a background check on Jabberwokky to assess her likely opinion about getting medical sex.
Nowsadays, of course, things in the same situation (say if Jabs was charmed by a hostile succubus and the same fluke occurred) would be easier since they would know that Jabberwokky in her right mind would almost surely choose the medical sex option, and her charmed consent reflects her will in a normal state of mind.
Okay, Jabbs was clearly not in her right mind, and yet you want to ignore that and call Maxi a ‘prude’ and for ‘abusing her power’ by having Dabbles find a non-sexual cure? o_O
Seriously?
(meant to answer to Guesticules’ last comment)
According to my ethical compass, the priority here is to provide Jabbs the quickest, easiest, most effective, and demonstrably safe treatment, rather than delaying her recovery and relying on the uncertainty of finding an alternative cure for the sake of prudery. The fact that one option is sexual is irrelevant here because the situation is medical and rules for medical, not sexual, consent apply here.
They establish that if the patient is unable to provide a valid consent either way and left no instructions, you need to act in their best interest (in terms of health, not chastity) or choose what the patient would would likely want. Everything we know about Jabs points to the fact she would choose the medical sex option. In my book, sex is not special or sacred, and chastity less important than health, unless chooses to, and I am sure Jabs would agree with me.
I think it likely that most people would agree that your ethical compass is very much broken. I would question whether it’s a compass at all. Are you certain it’s not a clock? An art deco piece? Maybe even an elephant.
You cannot be sure that Jabberwocky would agree with you on anything, and your belief that you can know another person’s thoughts or desires is at the very heart of this problem.
I’ll try to explain my point further why I think Max did wrong to Jabberwokky back then. To begin with, when Dabbler proposed the succubus-sex solution to remove the locked charm, Jabberwokky was present and listening. She did not show any opposition or inner conflict, rather uttered an unequivocal ‘yes, let’s do that’. Again, her judgement was impaired to express a valid consent, but nonetheless her opinion on the issue deserve ssome weight. Especially so since according to everything we know about her, and what Archon knew or could learn with a background check, a jabberwokky in her right mind would almost surely give the same answer.
You see the situation at the time was the magical equivalent of a medical one, so rules for medical consent, or its replacement if the patient is able to express one, are relevant. Rules for sexual consent were irrelevant since this happened to be a medical situation that touched the sexual part of the body, but a medical issue nonetheless. If the patient is unable to express consent or dissent, and they left no previous instructions, then you need to figure a) the patient’s best interest b) what the patient would likely want to happen.
About the first issue, the charm had gotten locked and in all evidence not going to expire on its own. Jabs needed treatment to recover her right mind. According to Dabs’ professional advice, the best option (safe, quickest, easiest, most effective and reliable) was succubus sex, NOT having her chastity preserved and having to research for an alternative thaumaturigical fix. That Dabs eventually succeeded to research an alternative solution is irrelevant. Looking for a more uncertain and difficult solution in the absence of the patient’s express dissent is not in their best interest.
About the second issue, according to everything one might know or discover with some effort about Jabs, she would almost surely choose the sex-succubus option if able to do so, according to her mindset and personality (bi, unchaste, promiscous, single, relaxed attitude about sexual issues, very likely to prefer the most effective solution rather than the chaste one, not specifically opposed to getting intimate with a succubus or Dabs specifically). Moreover, nothing indicated she would find the experience unpleasant, traumatic, or to be regretted.
Max abused her authority and did wrong to Jabberwokky since she withheld the best treatment from her, and acted against her likely preferences, in all evidence for no better reasons than to impose her own well-known prudish foibles and sex-negative ideology on the situation.
You seem really eager to find a scenario in which treating another person’s consent, or ability to consent, as irrelevant, is not only morally acceptable, but morally obligatory.
Dabbler’s expert opinion was that her “charm would probably slip right off her” if she exhausted Jazza’s tantric energy. That is not a confident statement that it was the best option.
This was not remotely a “medical” situation. There was no indication that Jazza was at any risk of any permanent harm. We also knew little about her, and there’s little Archon could have found with a background check that would be relevant. We did not, and still do not, know that she is “unchaste” or “promiscuous”, and even if we did, that’s irrelevant. It does not matter how promiscuous someone is, you cannot assume that they would consent to anything.
Yes, we know, “didn’t matter, had sex,” is your whole modus operandi.
I have to admit, it’s a bit comforting, in a gross way, to know some things really are simple and predictable.
In this specific case, I am outraged that a patient in need of care and unable to express consent to the procedure was deprived of the best treatment available, against her best interest and likely wishes, because the person in charge deemed her own ideological and prudish foibles more important than the patient’s welfare, and wrongly applied the rules for sexual consent.
As I see it, it could have been any other medical procedure, or if you wish an hypothetical ‘blue balls/vulva syndrome’ that was not going to go away on its own, left the patient unconscious or in a mentally impaired state akin to being drunk or high, and had application of masturbation as the best treatment available. In that situation, the ethical thing to do, unless the patient had left instructions to the contrary, would be for some profressional to don surgical gloves and do what is necessary.
As for Max’s perceived prudishness, particularly given her military background and ARC’s at least paramilitary organization structure, she is in the position of trying to maintain a semblance of discipline regardless of her own feelings on the matter. It ends up becoming a part of her public persona. Having been a manager in a relatively large organization in a small community it freaks people out when you break from that perception. The pressure of peoples perceptions is strong enough that it will eventually incorporate into your day to day behavior. I get the impression that Anvil has known Max long and well enough to see her let her hair down but for most of ARC’s membership she is their hard ass boss.
Meh.
Not that hard ass, honestly.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. If I had had a commander like Max, I might still be in uniform today.
Why are you putting all the blame on Maxi? She’s not even the one in charge, Faulke is
And if anyone should be responsible for the anti-mental-manipulation shields, it should be Arc-Light, or at least the mages like Mr Gault and Gwen
You have a point. Let’s say the Archon chain of command in charge of thaumaturgical defenses shares the blame for this fiasco.
There have been a few bits throughout the comic that haven’t exactly been to my taste, but think this is where I drop it. This sort of story just makes me uncomfortable. Just personal preference. Good luck with it going forward Dave, I enjoyed most of it and was routinely impressed by your artwork.
For what it’s worth, this last arc has been making me recommend the comic to more people. Dave, don’t ever let people stop you from doing what you enjoy, some of us actually like a little sexy fun in our webcomics now and then.
Which is why you always carry roofies…
Not a pearl clutcher so must be a rapist. Yup, people like you are why I felt the need to finally speak up in comments. I knew I’d get pounced on and I think most other people do which is why they’re keeping quiet while the vocal minority rages. The only difference is I really don’t give a damn what you think because I’m not some deranged lunatic who equates some hijinx with succubus-induced horny-aura with glorifying rape or whatever.
And if anyone thinks this response is overkill, I’d like you to actually look at what Mad Hamish said and actually think for a moment if it’s incendiary/escalatory.
Ah, so you do actually understand there’s a difference between people freely consenting to sex and somebody being forced into it
That’s good to know, now you just need to understand that just because you’re fine with reading something in a comic doesn’t mean that everybody else has to be.
And that doesn’t make them pearl clutchers or deranged lunatics
Yeah let’s just go ahead and try to act like you didn’t just accuse me of being a rapist.
Yes, my comment was meant to be read 100% literally and was in no way intended to be snark pointing out – as has been repeatedly written in the comics by various people – the issue isn’t sex, it’s whether people were able to freely consent to sex under the influence of the lust aura…
Buy a freaking clue.
…and Ren now has a superhero name.
And the best part is that it refers to exactly what you THINK it refers to.
What will happen to Parfait,will Dabbler lecture her or something(hopefully in a calm, dignified manner)?!?
.. considering its dabbler. It would somehow sound like a lecture with Maxima listening in, while actually being a teaching lesson on how to manage the effect of the aura better instead of not at all
Yeah, I suspect losing control of yourself like that is a big no-no to succubi.
That and Parfait is eighteen years old in human terms…!
Given that the place she’s from is not a “place” per se but an entirely different continuum of reality, I don’t even know if the rate of the passage of time is comparable or whether the ratio of time flow is constant. Especially given how long some of her kith apparently live.
She could very easily be in the “she’s eighteen but it took her sixty Earth years to get that way” club.
No, it was stated that she was 18 in Earth years
Daphne is 18 or 19, but she has had as much real-time life experience as someone in their fifties