Grrl Power #1398 – Princess popular
This is hardly Sydney’s fault. The holo-disguisinator on Cora’s ship really is more or less like a character selector in a video game. Pick your race, then customize the particulars. There are a lot of hairstyle options across the myriad races in the galaxy. Plenty of races have special customizations, like horns, scale patterns, etc. For the race Sydney picked (Mantellans, it comes up in a couple pages) you have to select “forehead jewel shape and color.” Probably clarity, purity, and whatever other things people care about gems. Also, they probably have a better name for that thing than “forehead jewel.” I just haven’t thought of it yet.
Now, there might have been an info box on the side of the selection UI thing that mentioned that the forehead jewel instills a significant sociological hierarchy among their race. And Sydney might have gotten distracted by all the pretty gems and not paid attention, cause she was busy picking out the coolest/prettiest one. It’s also possible that she also noticed that info box after she picked the best one, and went, “Eh. Whatever. What could the Mantellan population of Fracture Station be anyway? I didn’t see any the last time I was here, and not just cause DaveB hadn’t invented them yet.”
That’s why she knows the situation is about to… evolve.
So yeah, it’s her fault.
Ooh, look! A new vote incentive! And it’s updated with color!
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.
For all we know Sydney did follow custom and selected her own birth stone. Looked at the info box and thought, “Cool I’m a space princess.”
That sounds a lot like something she’d do.
Sydney’s a September baby?
…yeah, there’s no way I’m buying her as a Virgo.
If she was born in the last week of September, she’d be a Libra instead.
Oh yes Libra tracks. Not sure though, I think her birthday (range at least) was mentioned previously when she missed it while in space.
Given that she’s currently in space, would astronomy play out the same at all?
I imagine that in a spacefaring civilization, the word for “constellation” might shift meaning to “stars that are actually close to each other”, as implied by the references to “the constellation Kasterborous” in Doctor Who.
I am reasonably certain that any species at some points starts naming stars they can see (yes, I am shunning you Krikkiters), before realing that coming up with 100 x 10e15 unique names is a daunting task and resort to a numbering system instead.
So … yes … it plays out the same in space. And … no … it does not as each species will have its own unique names?
Well the symbolism of the gem is wisdom, nobility, divine favor, loyalty, truth, and trust… yeah… she totally screwed this one up. The cut doesn’t help either. She picked excessively expensive.
Attu the Watcher; “I see you included me!”
Should we be more worried that they also included a Xenomorph? Abomination Hulk? Or a Celestial Annihilator?
Abomination or a troll that was in a book series when I was younger. I refuse to say how much younger.
Huh. There’s a … lot of Mantellans on Fracture, huh?
I wonder what their deal is.
…
A xenomorph with a Pinkie Pie suitcase.
Really?
They were out of Fluttershy suitcases.
And they’re smoking a cigar…
“In space, no one will call you a brony.”
The cigar in the pharyngeal jaws is chef’s kiss.
And he’s got cool guy sunglasses too
That’s Jeri from a old Alien comic.
Looks more like a cigar-smoking xenomorph with a Pinkie Pie lunch box.
Ah, a fellow Venture Bros watcher.
IGNORE HIM
Nah, that is what Sydney should be saying…
Shouldn’t her boyfriend know this when he made the disguise?
This is all thoroughly explained in Dave’s commentary under the comic. Yes, it was known, which is why Sydney realizes there’s about to be a problem and is saying “run”.
And he is the disguise professional he vetoed the goblin, because ojer size could become a technical issue he could have vetoed the gem for disguise reasons.
Dave’s description at the bottom offers a potential alternate explanation, although it may not have been intentional.
“What could the Mantellan population of Fracture Station be anyway? I didn’t see any the last time I was here,”
Maybe they were quite rare on the station until recently, and Frix figured their chances of not running into any were pretty good.
… which then implies there’s a reason there are suddenly so many. Maybe they are refugees like the Alari? Maybe *very* much like the Alari, and the space Kaiju aren’t limited to Alar?
There are a lot of Sydney’s Tzerki race around them, eleven at least that I noticed. I expect there are a lot more.
I see 13, 3 of which on the roof behind them.
Did Frix used AI to make Sydney’s disguise? “Hey, AlienGPT, come up with a disguise for my precious princess of a girlfriend”
Sydney saying “Ok, funny story…” says she knew and still wanted to be a princess, Frix just went along with it. But yes, RUN!
Must be using space spandex, to get those big hands through those pipe stem sleeves…
It’s space clothes, could be that a fabricator sprays it onto them every morning, or that the whole thing shrinks down after you put it on, like Spiderman’s Homecoming suit. Could even be that the outfit is held together by nano zippers, so it could be unzipped to wear around inconvenient body parts.
Or maybe those limbs aren’t solid mass, they’re just covered with very poofy fur, under which they’re much more slender.
I note the Mantellan/Mole person popping up through the ground in the bottom spread page. Seriously? They are allowed to tunnel through the Fracture ‘Space station’? Seems a bit ‘iffy’ to me!
Not if that’s an official maintenance shaft or somesuch, or if he’s doing work underground on the station’s infrastructure.
That said, popping up like that would admittedly still be mighty unprofessional.
Fracture is a Dyson sphere. It’s ridiculously huge, the size of a planetary orbit around its star. Plenty of room to have a layer of dirt and rock to serve as a “traffic lane” for burrowing species. :D
Agree FS is ridiculously huge. The curvature of the Earth is so large that most humans can’t accurately imagine it, and comparing the earth’s curvature to that of a Dyson sphere would be like comparing a 1.4m sphere to the radius of the earth. Assuming a Dyson sphere roughly the diameter of Mercury’s orbit around a much smaller star than the Sun. So yeah, while 100% manufactured, definitely not solid metal. Some sort of bulk material for fill, insulation, leveling, softer walking, etc. on the surface would be reasonable. It could even be “dirt” assuming no weather/rain to generate mud.
But still, allowing the digging of tunnels right below a major pedestrian street, shallow enough that someone below ground could hear what the guy said over the general noise of the crowd, would be a massive safety hazard.
Best explanation (other than Dave thought it looked cool) goes to NLGS. The guy was in a shallow maintenance tunnel that was strong enough to handle traffic. He heard the exclamation and was strong enough or had tools to break through the top and dig to the surface.
IIRC correctly Dave has said Fracture Station is around a neutron star, so very small indeed. Assuming approximately a solar mass neutron star, you’d experience natural Earth-like gravity if the sphere were a little over 1,000,000 km in radius. The challenge would be engineering it not to collapse.
She did go and ask how the station didn’t collapse into the star, something about pasio gravity plating to prevent that.
My calculation gives me about 3,700,000 km radius, but same ballpark. It’d be an area about 330,000 times that of Earth (or over a million times the *land* area of earth), and that’s not allowing for the fact that it’s presumably multiple levels. Making it not collapse is one of those things that needs handwavy physics unknown to our science, but then so does FTL travel.
Orr the streets don’t depend the same way our streets do on the the ground below.
Bridge like constructions could allow for perfectly tunnable pavements with earth tech, but I’m certain forcefields and artificial gravity allow for a lot more creative interpretations.
I love that DaveB’s actions are now a confirmed part of Sydney’s thought process.
Is Dave on a Marvel kick right now? Specifically Power Pack?
I know the Kymellians and Zn’rx are making more appearances in the cosmic side of Marvel, but they’re still pretty obscure.
Also, a Watcher, Ch’od of the Starjammers, and what appears to be a very small Celestial, and an oddly-clothed cyberman
XEnomorph, Uatu of Marvel fame, The abomination from Marvel, My little pony one the lunch box and lots of other easter eggs in that drawing.
Not the Abomination – it’s Ch’od from the Starjammers – still Marvel, though.
This feels like what it would look like if a bunch of halfling urchin rogues spot an unprotected trading caravan crossing the city.
Is that a Zn’rx (Snark) from the Marvel Power Pack comic? Wow, I’m feeling old, since I collected that series when it first came out.
Yes, Sydney, you should run. It’ll be good practice for the laps waiting for you when you get home…
“Also, they probably have a better name for that thing than “forehead jewel.””
bindi pottu,tikka, tilakam and sindoor have been the names for centuries in various languages by Hindus.
Man, imagine getting called out for your dirty thoughts by literally getting a SIN DOOR slapped on your forehead.
Sounds like something from a Psychonauts porn parody.
At least this gives a good explanation for why Egoma, a legendary-level clanless Stygan, is hanging around with and was willing to pause a fight to speak with a little Mantellan like Tzerki. Egoma can be the head of personal security for the “Sapphire Star Princess”.
Dang it, now I want to read a spinoff about an AU where this is the case…
Sydney forgot to take into account comic book rules. Especially since she’s used them to put forth theories before.
When something is incredibly low chance of happening, it’s almost guaranteed to happen. At the most ironic or inconvenient time.
Tho now I’m imagining Sydney having unknowingly having picked identical looks to an actual royal. Not just ‘gem cut’. Hilarious mix up of who is who later on. (Probably not the best time for her later on, tho.)
Or even crazier idea. Sydney turns out to have actually been a Mantellan all along. Dave’s just throwing us off about when he created them as a red herring. Besides, could just as easily be ‘Sydney’s true form hasn’t been decided yet as it’s not relevant right now’. She tries to prove that it’s a mistaken identity thing, but the original human disguise gets removed at the same time as the holo one. Whoops.
Well, we did see (a different) original disguise removed when Frix delivered that “luv you just the way you are” message.
Okay then this alien is 100% traditional kobolds, specifically the mineing type.
Nope, they already established actual kobolds exist. There are mole people!
In addition to the star princess cut, there’s a variety of sapphire called a star sapphire, which has needle-shaped rutile inclusions (rutile is mainly titanium dioxide; sapphires are aluminum oxide) that cause light to refract to form a six-rayed star to show on the surface (asterism). Rubies, emeralds, topaz (eight rays), and garnets (four or six rays) all can display asterism.
Since Cora’s tech seems generally in line with what’s for sale at Fracture Station, does this reaction make sense? If anyone can conceivably look like anyone else, would much weight be given to any purely visual status indicator?
Cora’s tech is better. Her crew has used it for roguery at this level before. I got the impression FS level disguise tech is like a really good plastic plant. It’s good at a distance, or without careful examination.
The same tech was used by aliens to seamlessly live on Earth, before the Alari immigrants sort of dropped the masquerade, as shown when the crew ran into some “Aliens among us” much earlier in the plot, while… dancing, I think I recall. For that to work, the tech available for simple tourism had to be sophisticated enough to withstand long term close up scrutiny (I seem to recall one of the Aliens was looking for a hookup, but it’s been long enough that I may be misremembering and I’d struggle to locate the relevant comic without an archive crawl).
Perhaps Alien tourists have much better tech than what’s available on Fracture Station, but in that case Deus would likely have bartered with them, rather than choosing to come to Fracture for his shopping trip.
Maybe Mantellans are much more badass than they look, and nobody (else) is crazy enough to upset (or excite?) them by pretending to be Mantellen royalty.
a. no in the twilight council storyline it’s mentioned the veil was used for this and made with that earth a significant more attractive tourist destination.
b. Frix explicitly mentions when discussing disguising methods that they have the gear for “advanced infiltration”.
c. Just because your gear is sufficient to fool humans with no expectation of being fooled doesn’t mean it fools a specy with a completely different sensorium and knowledge of market standard imitation.
d. Also just, because you can do something doesn’t mean people expect others to do it.
Further It could be illegal in fracture station to holo bod this particular type of gem(or in general), it could be considered tacky, the chance of getting kidnapped could be too high and as such wearing this gem is restricted by the ability to secure oneself instead of gem cost, daily glowbod maintenance is just too much work, having advanced travel gear is rare and the disguises used on visits to low tech worlds are thus either rented or owned as a hobby object like parachuting gear, etc.
Yes, somebody could fake the star sapphire — in fact, Sydney did just that — but that just changes the problem to “Hey! We found a princess!” to “Hey! We found somebody impersonating a princess!” Either way, she’s in trouble.
Nice touch with her ears going from perked up to laid flat when she says they should run, it’s the little things that count.
Huh, so it wasn’t Dabbler who was the space princess…
Sydney does have an affinity for head accessories of unusual power. I imagine her full crown might cause an intergalactic incident. If vanity hasn’t already. God I love this comic’s sense of timing.
On naming the Forehead Jewels, They seem to be culturally similar to a Bindi, with the added implication of social status?
The question is, is the forehead jewel something you purchase, or is it a natural growth, which would explain why growing a star sapphire is so rare and sought after?
My guess it’s either a natural growth (as having it makes “Tzerki” the equivalent of Mantellan royalty, and royalty tends to run in families) or awarded for very specific achievements.
If there were a sound effect for the Mantellans noticing Sydney it would be, ” Tink. Tink, tink. Tinktinktinktinktinktinktink.
For the total cover this is actually good news.
Why has nobody noticed Egoma before if she is of such legendary skill, because she is the personal guard of some royal and part pf tge security of said royal is staying secret.
she’s incognito ie. on special assignment just pretending to be ronin
I like the Dr. Doofenshmirtz reference in your After Thoughts…
Mostly, I think I’m just kind of annoyed that the little putz who noticed the “sapphire gem cut” just blurted it out loud, so loud everyone within a several kilometer wide area apparently heard it over the noise that fracture station generates.
What is this fool, a child? (I know, I know, rule of comedy.)
Maybe the Mantellan royal family is just really popular with their people.
His reaction could be like how in “Coming to America”, that one Zamundan ex-pat was so stoked to meet his homeland’s crown prince, the movie’s MC.
Alternatively, royals could be excessively rare / have a very specific role in Mantellan society, justifying this kind of excitement because the common Mantellans could never imagine they’d meet a “genuine star sapphire princess” out here in the armpit of interstellar space, rather than on the homeworld(s).
In that case, if he’d kept his mouth shut, his own people would have been royally pissed with him if “Tzerki” was revealed to be a princess later on.
It would be funny if Sydney voiced the same complaint about somebody (else) just blurting something out without thinking. ;)
There’s a Watcher watching us. So now we know who watches the Watchers.
Is that a The Grand Galactic Inquisitor i spot in the background? I am pretty sure it is!
Honest question: wouldn’t the cosmopolitan space types be sufficiently accustomed to similarities between cultures that most would be more likely to say, “huh, that looks like a sapphire star princess,” without reading too much into it?
“Hey, that gal looks like a sapphire star princess. Wait until I get back home and tell everyone I saw an alien with a gem in their forehead that made them look almost like a sapphire star princess!”
Maybe Mantellans are considered strictly working-class outside their own planets, and most people don’t really care about their culture.
Maybe Mantellans are normally very secretive about their royalty (when not surprised to spot out in the wild, as it were), and haven’t shared details with very many people.
Multiple things:
a. she doesn’t only wear the gem she also looks exactly(advanced infiltration gear) like one of his specy/race.
b. These gems can still be rare and thus only used by rich and important people placinh a significant burden on the ease of cultural collision.
c. By Dave’s commentary it’s a star princess cut gem meaning that it’s exceptionallity stems from its presumed creator meaning that cultural clashes are in this case centrally managed by said creator(through press releases and such)
d. even if there is a different culture of exactly the same mole people that just casually wears precious gems whpse gem supplier is tightly lipped somewhere in the galaxy with ftl capabilities it doesn’t necessarily mean he has considered the possibility humans in cities can also be surprised to find out about parralel communitcommunityies.
So not only are they in the crowd, but one popped out from underground and more happened to be lurking on the rooftops behind her? Okay, yeah, sure, why not?