Grrl Power #1389 – On Fracture Station they’re called warp cakes
I want a funnel cake. I don’t think I’ve had one since some visit to a Ren Faire like… 15-20 years ago? Yeah, I know they’re basically just powdered sugar donuts, but still.
I seriously considered making Digit’s disguise some sort of brass steampunk robot looking thing, but then I realized I’d have to draw robot parts from a bunch of different angles and I keep messing up the shape of Maxima’s pauldrons every time her arm position changes, so I went with, uh… I guess she looks like a quest giver from a “dungeon filled with erotic traps” RPG/Platformer/Visual Novel.
In a lot of ways, her glowbod is the best disguise of the bunch. Given that they have the limitation that they need to be roughly the same dimensions, a proper disguise shouldn’t reflect the personality of the person wearing it. Maxima definitely didn’t disguise herself as a doe-eyed innocent in a flower-print dress and clicky kitten heels. No, she went for bad-ass looking space samurai klingon in a leather vest and combat boots. Honestly, it barely qualifies as a disguise, though Max does make a fairly feeble pitch in the mini comic as to why it will throw everyone off the scent. Sydney’s went with big-eyed, small-chested and cute looking. Again, not much of a stretch. Harem… well, I guess she doesn’t have so strong a personality that dressing up as sexy “generic” space babe has much chance of giving her away.
Whereas Digit went from obliviously sexy, naïve, dimwit-savant tinkerer to intentionally sultry, mysterious shadowy figure. Did she execute the assignment parameters better than anyone else on purpose? Or did she hit “random” a bunch of times and thought the hood that hid her eyes looked cool?
Yes, she definitely did do that.
My favorite warp speed effect in sci-fi is Star Wars. I love the starfield pre-streak from inside the cockpit, then the ship leaps ahead of the camera – even if the pre-streak doesn’t actually make sense, because it implies that the ship is suddenly moving so fast that all the visible stars are smeared, but half the stars in any given starfield could be thousands of light years away. Whatever, we can hand-wave that easily enough by just saying that the hyperspace bubble forming over the ship that causes that streaking effect.
The reason I mention it is the other part of the Star Wars warp effect I love is when they drop out of warp, and it shows the destination racing up as they decelerate. The actual ridiculous part of that is most of the time when they show someone coming out of hyperspace, they also show someone reaching up to a console and manually throttling back the hyperspace doodad. Then they come out of hyperspace maybe a thousand miles above the surface of a planet? What if that dude had waited 0.00001 seconds to do that? They would have left hyperspace halfway though the other side of that planet. There’s no way that would be a manual operation. Yes, there would be a manual control in case a computer messed up or something, obviously, but I mean if acceleration and deceleration to and from thousands to tens of thousands of times the speed of light happens in a matter of seconds (I looked up hyperspace travel speeds in Star Wars, in case you’re wondering – none of this “fifty times the speed of light” nonsense in Star Wars), and you plan on exiting hyperspace into high orbit of a planet, you had better have your exit scheduled to the femtosecond.
Anyway, I imply that the Grrl-verse warp speed is similar, at least for Cora’s ship, with panels 3 and 4. But it’s definitely controlled by a computer. No feeble organic reaching an arm with pulsing blood and creaky joints and who knows what conditions their nerve dendrites are in or whether they’ve digested enough sodium that day to achieve optimal neurotransission? Or if they’re just looking at a girlie magazine and miss the hyperspace exit lane entirely. Or a boy-ee magazine even.
Nope! Computers all around.
Ooh, look! A new vote incentive!
Well, in progress, obviously. I have another one that’s actually a bit further along, but everyone was all, “Sydney Kobold vote incentive!” So I switched to this one. Plus the other one was a multi-character picture so it will actually take me longer to finish. I hope to have an update for this one each week, so stay tuned. There is a slightly higher res version on Patreon.
By the way, this gunmetal blue-ish background and teal pencils are how I draw the comic. I set it up this way so I don’t have to spend all day staring into a bright white blank page.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Looks like he’s got two others that appear to be guards along with whatever family member, high ranker or personal assistant next to him.
Naturally this will setup for the dweeb to be humiliated and likely garner Maxima and her team a lot more attention and interferrence as they approach the tournaments than they’d like.
But honestly, I can’t help but think of this kid as some rich daddy’s boy with his daddy’s guards and staff to back him up and try to keep or enforce the family/clan honor.
Glad someone smarter noticed the golden-duo in the back as well :)
Most times, daddy’s guards don’t care what happens to spoiled fruit of the loom… as long as the fallout doesn’t fall on them (but that’s still not until after whatever happens to SFotL happens)
Mostly you only see the ‘deceleration’ lever on the Falcon, and I figure it’s one of those custom modifications because it’s a smuggler ship. Probably need to turn the thing off manually to keep it from tearing itself out of the ship.
“A random guy appears.
Random guy wants to do battle and/or get in your pants.”
At least he is handsome and shirtless.
She’s in a public location. I assume lots of other random guys appeared.
The problem is Max picked a common warrior species, ran into others of her “kind”, and she’s missed some of the social cues that would have prevented combat.
*shrug* Just tell them you’re not actually a Stygan. Only been a few comics since we established holo-disguises, “piloted avatar frames”, and bio-mods aren’t rare.
Ahh, but they’re an honor-based society. Imitating a Stygian might be considered horribly offensive…
Yup, they should have asked Detla.
(Maybe they did?)
Oh Heck Yes Funnel Cakes
Clanless? What’s a clan? I grew up on a dark planet, was raised by locals. Was always taught to be polite, only fight to protect those I love and to hold the line…Ma and Pa Kent taught me well. You seem confused. Like you think honor matters more than those you protect. p.s. power outage at hideout, also all new system and things didn’t transfer properly. May revive old one to transfer by USB protocol 8.
Let me guess: Sammy likes going around picking fights with only clanless or those deemed weaker, because when they do beat his arse with his own inflated codpiece the guards make sure no one (specially daddy) finds out
“I’m not currently interested in humiliating you in front of your entourage.”