Grrl Power #1414 – Smaug, minus “a”
I may have mentioned this before, but for some reason, jokes about things being load-bearing always land with me. Probably because the only ones I’ve heard are absurdist. I think Brooklyn 99 did one about a balloon arch being load-bearing. Knees are, evolutionarily speaking, load-bearing. All bones are, really. Maybe not the skull, or the lower mandible. I suppose that depends on how you define “load.” But knees are inarguably load-bearing, so my little joke meets my own standard for being absurdist, therefore, I made myself laugh with this one.
Also, not to keep patting myself on the back, but “the most structurally reinforced of women’s knees” (which is an awkward sentence, but I think it’s grammatically correct?) also makes me laugh, because, yes, of course, there are such things as knee braces and in the advanced galaxy, powered armor, but the first thing my mind conjures is something like a woman wearing 6 pairs of pantyhose, or some kind of stocking and garter and flying buttress affair.
In some settings, dragon fire would be just some napalm-ish goo stored in a gland and it’s lit by the dragon clicking their teeth together when they have some flint stuck between their molars. That sort of biological dragon can account for the acid and chlorine breathers, but doesn’t allow for the kind that breath lightning or “cold.” In magical dragon settings, there’s probably more to the breath weapons than some goo in a gland. So dragons would probably have a name for it that sounds cool. Soulfire was the best I could come up with. Which probably happened at a Dragon council meeting, and the Red and Gold and Magma dragons were like “I guess “SoulFire” is the best we can come up with.” And all the other dragons who breathe cold or tornadoes or avalanches or starlight or whatever were all “No! It must be inclusive! EnergyForge!” “What are we? Dwarves?” “How about DragonCore!” “Ug, that sounds like an exercise trend for douchey nobles and High Elves.” “Okay, fine, SoulFire it is, but must we do intercaps?” “The Time Dragon says it will be easier to Duck Duck Go, whatever that means.”
Kobold Sydney vote incentive! Is finally done!
So… you know, check it out. Oh, and as usual, Patreon has a scales only version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
The bottom half of this page:
OH MY YES!
(Very well done – the smackiest smack that ever smacked.. I gotta keep that one in my back pocket).
Also, digging the Big G’s name. Gary would probably be pleased.
Well, the load bearing statement miiight be a stretch, and mainly cause he works on Dabbler’s crew. I’d believe the rest for sure. (And he’s still getting his ass kicked, and possibly rocked)
If you carefully take egg shells cut in half with no cracks visible chunks missing lay them on a towel so they don’t move they will hold up a hard copy book 4-6 will do. Try it
Would his ego also be considered loadbearing, or would that be the load his physique supports? XD
The term “Load-bearing” usually refers to something’s stability, not actual strength. The origin is the “Load-bearing Stone” what was commonly used in the medeival and renesance chatedrals and other archways. Technically the most important part, as it holds near the entire building’s weight by transmitting it the archway “legs” and through that the earth. And it represents stability instead of strength, because it does this work through precise placement – even a few millimeters can shift the weight in a way, what would result a slow movement of all the stones’s composition after some time (it can be years or mere days, depending on the mistake), with the entire building falling apart, potentially killing multiple human. And as these buildings usually were quite extravagant, the victims quite likely would be both important and numerous. Many of those buildings still stands, as they were made with such quality.
Addendum: sometimes I might hadn’t used the proper term for them, please forgive my english – it’s not my native language.
You are fundamentally correct, though the precision required is not quite that high.
Those stones (and it was stone, not brick) were deliberately oversized precisely to allow room for error as you describe.
However, mistakes in the level (or with the level ;)), or building on a foundation that had not quite settled, could easily lead to a leaning tower of Pisa scenario. And usually collapse of the structure.
(the other critical piece of stone masonry was, and is, the key stone. The heavy wedge shaped stone that ensures the arch is under constant pressure. Which in turns keeps the entire structure stable. That had to be a pretty precise fit as neither lime mortar or (later) portland cement, could be used to smooth over gaps.)
Back in the day, they did not know the precise structural strengths of materials like we do today, just the rough ideas on strength, so lots of over-engineering just to be sure. In some cases, one of the flaws of being too precise with our engineering in the modern era.
Heh, always believed the key stone (not the cops :P ) and the load-bearing stone were the same stone
And Pisa is a prime example of just how important that stone (stones?) are: yes, Pisa is leaning, but any other building would have simply collapsed already
Really, “load bearing” just distinguishes structural components that are actually carrying a load, from structural components you can safely cut through or remove. Like, a house may have a roof and ceiling entirely supported by trusses, in which case the exterior walls are load bearing, but the interior walls aren’t.
May I suggest “Ur-Breath”?
Ur is a prefix meaning “the one that was before all those and has solely their common traits”.
As far as a name for the source of all dragon breath weapons, this sound more mystical than B.U.C.A.
And less celestial than SOULfire, IMO.
What is Sydney picking at in the last panel?
I think she’s just touching his elbow spike to see how pointy it is.
“I think she’s just touching his elbow spike to see how pointy it is.”
And no knees are buckled. Gaxgy may need to lay off his own promotional literature.
FUN FACT: In the who’s-who on this page, Sydney ditched the disguise she wore in the last page.
I imagine that different types of dragons/dragonborn/dragonkin have similar but slightly different names for their ‘core’ or ‘magical center’ or whatever it is. Fire breathers use SoulFire, ice breathers use HeartFrost, lightning breathers use StormSpirit, etcetera etcetera. When meeting in groups they probably have some sort of ubiquitous and semi-scientific term like Mana Engine, but they don’t think that sounds nearly epic enough to use when talking to non-dragons.
Intercaps! Always mildly wondered if there was a term for it – there always is – and here we are. Thanks!
I’ve also seen it referred to as CamelCase (although that doesn’t require the first letter to be capital (so, potentially, camelCase)). Programmers often use this as a way to put multiple words in a spaceless variable name.
In the case of variable names, I find it helps with making the individual words in the name more readable.
Also a good idea when using #tags because it helps not just readers but screenreaders (for the bilnd)
So, are they close to an uninhabited planet?
Not so Gaxgy won’t have an audience to his thumpering, but so Maxi doesn’t have to worry about structural damage (and not just to his ego)
“Tzerki”: Must be nice to be underestimated.
“Esoma”: It HAS been a while. You should be used to it, though.
“Tzerki”: *opens mouth, raises finger* …
“Tzerki”: *closes mouth, lowers finger* Fair.
Ironically, cold is the EASIEST/most practical. The only issue is the pressures.
But it could easily work the same way as how you can get frostbite and flash freeze things by simply turning an aerosol can upside down while you use it (like any canned air for cleaning keyboards).
Anything that’s a gas at room temperature that’s kept in a liquid state due to chemical or pressure based reasons gets INSANELY cold the instant it’s exposed to open air to allow it to evaporate. Even the gas itself can do so. Sudden, intense changes in pressure change temperature accordingly. In fact, one old method of firestarting was basically a device where you put in tinder and then VERY quickly compress the air in the chamber the cylinder is in.
Hypothetically, chemicals that swiftly engaged in an ENDOthermic reaction on contact with stuff would work as well.
If you think skulls can’t be load bearing, you’ve never seen those women carrying a hundred pound jar of water on their heads. They don’t bear loads all of the time, but they do still bear load. If you want non-loadbearing bones, look at the ear bones or the hyoid.
As for cold breath, you only need extreme pressure, or something unstable that has a highly energetic endothermic reaction. With life doing what life does, you probably have both at the same time, something that expands enormously while also sucking in existing heat to fuel the reaction.
His “I’m a super badass rant” is somewhat underscored by the fact that he’s a caterer.
I do have to say his smile also works on a *cough* selected range of men too…