Grrl Power #1416 – Hoard bunny
Many dragons have treasurephilia. A fetish for gold and trinkets and shiny, magic weapons and sometimes even nicely framed art or delicate glass figurines. Having a big hoard is a nesting instinct, as humanoid currency isn’t really a necessity for them. When you bring a lady dragon back to your place, make sure you sweep out all the goat and adventurer bones, straighten up the tapestries with the gold thread you pilfered from the castle you knocked over, and make sure you’ve got enough coins and gems for a nice rumpy-pumpy caldera. And if you have a few virginal maidens chained to the sacrifice posts for a post-coital snack, even better.
Of course, that’s how your more anti-social dragons do it. A few razorbacks slow cooking over a lazy magma fissure is nice as well.
Anyway, dangling a “gold” woman in front of a dragon like that, especially one that spends a lot of time in a humanoid form and can appreciate the particulars of the female humanoid form, is borderline irresponsible and/or funny, because Cora knows Maxima can vociferously dissuade Gaxgy if he “just has to have a little pinch.” Cora figured there was a 50/50 chance Gaxgy would either do this or stand in the back forcing down a Squee of monstrous proportions.
And yes, I am working on a picture of Maxima supining on a pile of gold. I hope to make it a vote incentive, it just depends on how it turns out.
Maxima knew she was going to un-disguise, and didn’t want to wear that white zentai suit under the hologram for the reveal. As long as she’s on the ship, she can do that. The suit is for off-ship infiltration, but the ship has projectors in corridors and rooms. They’re not enough to do the whole interior holo-deck style, but Cora is planning on that as an upgrade. Partially that’s for fun times when it’s just her and her hunky crew on board, but having the entire interior of the ship able to function as a holodeck would make hostile boarding actions really difficult. If the force-field part of that equation was strong enough to withstand blaster fire and acetylene torches, or whatever raiders might use to cut through security doors, you could keep pirates going in circles for hours before they started to guess something was up. Or just send them in a U back to the hull and shoot them all into space. Really, any boarding party would have to have full environmental suits, because venting the part of a ship that raiders were in would be SOP.
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.
I like it, though I will say the swap to sometimes having the more cartoon-y panels does stand out since it hasn’t been done extensively before. The one on this page with the noodle arms feels a little odd. Like they have sort of… an unusual level of detail? The bodies and faces mostly match up, but the arms are maybe a little overly simplified. A couple of cartoony clenched fists for Maxima might have made it seem less weird.
Gaxgy’s stump arms with finger nails/talons poking out of the elbows is actually kind of off-putting. At least Maxima has forearms, too, but she ends up looking like an amputee.
I’m actually glad that Dave’s doing more toon-esque stuff, because it’s simpler to draw. Comics have had this sort of ‘art creep’ where the images keep having to be more and more detailed (ever since the earliest days), and that’s part of the reason that I think they’ve gotten more expensive and smaller creators haven’t been able to break into the scene as easily. Webcomics did a lot to level the playing field as far as readership access goes, but there’s still a pressure for the artists to create ever more detailed works. This helps some artists and they quickly find a balance between quality and output, but for others (like Dave) it activates a ‘perfectionist’ instinct that slows production down significantly and can cause rapid burnout.
Again, I think it’s a great thing that Dave’s playing with his comic more. I honestly miss the flatter shading, even, of some of the earliest pages.
I can see what you mean. It’s too detailed to be a chibi but not detailed enough compared to his regular self, so it probably falls into some weird uncanny valley effect where it’s not too firmly in either side to be cute or serious.
This is Dave’s comic. He gets to draw it however the fuck he wants. if you don’t like it, draw your own . This is his passion project and he is one of the most consistent artits I read, with a huge archive and nary a missed day. Discussion’s on what is drawn are acceptable, How they are drawn from a stylistic stand point are 100% Dave. You get to STFU and tug it in the corner or whatever else makes you happy. You don’t get to make Dave unhappy about his art choices.
No need to jump all over people. I am sure that Dave is experienced enough to handle criticism and give it an appropriate amount of attention (somewhere between “oh yeah” and “eh”). I bet he hardly ever goes to bed crying about how he drew hands that day anymore (fingers amirite?) You may believe that I should also tug it in the corner, but as I am not a ships captain, I would find that difficult. My point being that we all comment here because we like the comic and we don’t want to limit the fandom. One day if it grows big enough we could have a GrrlPower movie and see Sidney lose her s**t on the big screen.
It’s fine, my art has always been all over the place, in part because I enjoy so many different art styles that I’ll tend to ape one or another for a few weeks before deciding I like another one better for a few weeks. I think it’s left me in a bit of a limbo, art style-wise. I never felt I had an identifiable style, but some people have said they can recognize my art easily enough, and it’s probably because of some aspect of the art that I don’t even think about much, like clavicles or ears.
You’re fine, I always thought that showing extreme emotion using anime-style characters was funny, and you do it well. To be honest, I’d like to paint a nude Max on a pile of gold ;)
Who wouldn’t?
Now living to tell the tale is another matter lol.
Yeah try some new things. More fun for you and us I think.
It’s definitely in je ne sais quoi territory. Personally, I think the scene setting has a lot to do with it. GP uses some classic comic book *framing* for the panels and “camera” angles, but the way characters are detailed is different, especially with regard to lighting. Even that chibi panel has the shadows where they would be on their regular models, which I don’t think I’ve EVER seen an artist do.
For me, it’s shading, detail, and realism. I can think of only one comic artist who puts in a similar level of effort as you, but their colors tend towards light and fun (think Your Name), while yours are more saturated and grounded. They also tend to put more effort into their backgrounds, while you put more into your characters.
Taking a panel or page of your work to play around for the sake of whimsy is always good.
Speaking of whimsy, that nude of Maxima on a pile of gold sounds like a REALLY good incentive idea.
That is some WILD incel white knight energy right there its a public space people can voice opinions about the art all they want. It is a new change and it is not to everyone’s liking. Everyone was polite until you came along.
Whoa look at that sudden burst of edgelord incel energy. Why give off that stink, wamper? Was anybody namecalling before you came along, or was that your special addition to the convo?
The page is great, love the reveal. Gax-gy is a funny character. I have no issue with the sd panel.
Did you not read what Just_IDD posted?
Or maybe you are Just_IDD…
Dude, calm the smeg down, or you’re probably going to end up with a heart attack at a young age…
It’s weird to me how every time DaveB does something cartoony, people act extremely confused and surprised in the comments. I would think the general readership would be used to it by now, but apparently some people either haven’t read the archive, have the memory of goldfish, or… they just really aren’t paying attention. Visual exaggeration has been a staple of the comic from pretty much the beginning, with all the weird faces Sydney makes. He plays with different styles, and I have no reason to believe we’ve seen the end of that. Some of the simpler pages are glorious and hilarious.
We know at least one of those hoard proposals came from Deus. Even tongue in cheek.
Deus would hoard her all to himself if he could
Perhaps Deus is a dragon is human disguise.
Well, we know that Deus has some artistic skill, albeit in drawing rather than painting…
lmao of course the dragon is going apeshit over the gold woman XD
you mean lizardshit, right?
Naa, Dragonshit..
Fewmets
Well, now we know what the next vote incentive is going to be, and I must say I am looking forward to it.
Poor Gaxgy, he’s a thespian who has found his muse, but she’s not interested in inspiring him.
TBH, it’s not a choice Maxima has. Gaxgy is inspired regardless of Max’s opinion. So Muse yes, with extra points for angst and longing. Model, not on your life.
“but having the entire interior of the ship able to function as a holodeck would make hostile boarding actions really difficult.”
My group in Traveler, the role playing game, had our ship kitted out like that. And, yes, it made hostile boarding actions really difficult, when you could stand behind a wall that wasn’t really there, and ambush people, who were never, ever going to find their way to anyplace important on the ship.
Illusion magic is rediculous when you start using it intelligently.
I feel like something that needs mentioning is the part where you can conjure an endless army of holographic guards as well. If the holograms include forcefields the holographic guards are functionally real guards.
Manifest restrains already on all the boarders and then ziptie their arms to their legs. Or create iron maidens around all of them that shrink every time they move. Or if the forcefield technology allows, create forcefields through their arms and legs and offer to reattach the limbs if they behave. Forcefield through the neck if they decline.
Of course, if this sort of thing becomes at all common, countermeasures become routine for boarding parties. If you can generate holographic illusions, you can defeat them with sensor fusion. If you can generate forcefields, you can carry equipment to locally cancel them.
Then it just becomes a war of who has more power, where the home field advantage will generally prevail.
Honestly, it never made sense in STNG that the Borg could transport onto a federation ship, and not get immediately vaporized by unauthorized transport denial systems. They’re military ships, developing countermeasures once you know an attack is feasible is SOP.
I sometimes wonder why the standard countermeasure on spaceships isn’t “if no authorised crew are there, set gravity in the encroached area to toggle between 10g and -10g on a 2-second cycle, with a random change of direction between X,Y and Z-axes every 9 seconds”.
I expect it’s because the walls can’t take those kinds of repeated impacts.
It would be far easier (lower technology required) to alternate between pressurizing and evacuating the space, or filling it with inert gas. As far as why they wouldn’t have something like my or your suggestion as a “standard countermeasure”, because those actions significantly change the controlled environment and would most likely be overkill to deal with an intruder. Think about dealing with the aftermath of that.
In Schlock Mercenary, thanks to their equivalent of the transporter technology (known as the teraport), one effective way to destroy an enemy vessel is to shut down their Teraport Area Denial system (the tricky part) and then just teraport a warhead aboard (easy). Or maybe just teraport the crew into space.
Also, relating to the gravity manipulation suggested in other replies: with their technology, it’s entirely possible to scale up local gravity and crush invaders into paste. Obviously, boarding strategies were to be used extremely selectively… but, if you can pull it off, you can get access to the TAD system and then just win.
Schlock mercenary is often a source of delightful inspiration.
I mean, being unstoppably more technologically advanced is the Borg’s premise. Hostile transporter countermeasures probably worked once. As in, a singular time. At some point in the now-distant past. And then they stopped working forever.
Well, ships do have a countermeasure: transporters don’t work through shields (unless you can match frequency with them, which apparently requires you to already have access to their ship like Geordi’s bugged VISOR in “ST:Generations”).
“Or create iron maidens around all of them that shrink every time they move.”
I understand that House Liglalathane was working on that for their “new and improved” nanny disks before that little “bombed back to the Stone Age” setback.
(https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-909-making-soup-and-having-kids/)
in one of the post-return voyager novels, there is a ship in a fleet sent back to the delta quadrant that had holodeck tech all through the ship. it was a medical ship where the the Doctor got assigned, with a mostly holographic crew. it also had a counter-boarding program which involved creating holographic security officers of the toughest and most combative species the federation knew about.. Jemhadar, Klingons, Gorn, etc. which could materialize at a command, including functional replicated phasers.
Awwww I was hoping on a wicked montage episode xD
If only you’d left ot the “naked”-part, dragon dude, you might’ve had a ghost of a chance.
Offering to strip down yourself is just double-tapping your chances.
Dragons are not known for being subtle.
Not true! When they set out to be subtle, they can be overwhelmingly, totally over the top, gobsmackingly subtle.
It’s just that it seldom occurs to them to do it, because they’re usually in situations where there’s no need for it. Why cunningly mislead the adventurer you can just vaporize?
Now I’m visualizing a sitcom plot where Gaxgy convinced Max to pose clothed (maybe clothed a bit more scantily than usual, but clothed) on top of a pile of gold and then painted her nude using his imagination to fill in the hidden details. I’m guessing that the punch (pardon the pun) line might be funnier if the consequences of Max seeing the final result were represented by sound-effect onomatopoeia from offscreen…
Her reaction was “no”, but again her body language was saying something rather different. IMHE woman don’t arch their backs like that when they are objecting to being objectified.
When a man thrusts their chest out, it’s a sign of dominance, butt when a woman does it it’s sexual?
Okay, raise your hand if you saw this coming.
…Clearly that was a bad request. All right, raise your hand if you didn’t see this coming.
– Really, any boarding party would have to have full environmental suits, because venting the part of a ship that raiders were in would be SOP.
In any game that lets you, it is. Even if your own people are in there. (FTL is a good game)
I think Gygax just ruined his chances.
Well, all dragons have “treasurephilia”(*) and it’s the gold and jewels that tickle their fancy, art and magical items less so. (**)
I’d also say that they dislike paper money (flammable!) and electronic credit. Both are based on trust, which dragons notoriously lack. They want solid assets, not credit.
(*)Excepting few deviants whom other dragons look down on like we look down on r*pists and p*dos.
(**)Jewelry is …less appreciated. Oh, cut gems and artistically forged gold are better than uncut gems and bullion gold, but value added is kinda …meh.
I do believe the term you are looking for isn’t treasurephilia but plutomania.
Isn’t that when you get unreasonably angry that it’s not a planet anymore?
Plutomania is an overwhelming greed connected to money and/or valuable items like gold jewelry or golden women.
Also I realize now that I am not sleep deprived how bad that last part can come off, so before anyone says anything, for someone with plutomania objectifying people would not be a hard sell if any value could be gained from it.
That would probably plutoragia.
Also, nice pun! :)
Not sure an example in a higth techological environement is Lofwyr in Shadowrun a Great Western Dragon. His scale coloration is gold. He is primarily known for being the solitary owner of Saeder-Krupp and thus the wealthiest individual on Earth. His main residence is located within Saeder-Krupp arcology in Essen, Germany.
Saeder-Krupp is the largest corporation in the world of Shadowrun …
His plots and actions that inspired the saying: “Never deal with a Dragon”.
Yes he is more ruthless than Saburo Arasaka and packs more firepower – he is a great dragon and a powerfull mage – than Adam Smasher.
For size it’s a 30 m long creature with 50 m wingspan , his ability to fly is of magic origin, and he is tougher than an Leopard MBT.
Hey, hey, dude! No crossing the streams of Cyberpunk and Shadowrun!
Why in term of bigotry and racism Saburo Arasaka is comparable to Lofwyr specism
(if you’re not a great dragon you’re without any importance )…
But one of the most (in)famous Dragon of the world of Sahdowrun is a fictional exemple of a dragon in hi-tech setting.
Lofwyr vs a cyberzombie* will be a one sidded massacre…
*Shadowrun full borgs…loaded for a Juggernaut (Dasypus praegrandis) an awakened cousin of the mundane armadillo, it is physically a match for the common armadillo, however at a much grander scale. Measuring at more than 14 meters from head to tail with some individuals measuring at over 20 meters.
The problem with boarding parties is not that you need environment suits, but when is it actually safe to take them off?
You’d basically have to capture the ship, then dump and reload all software from known good sources you carried aboard yourself. After careful examination of the hardware.
This to prevent a logic bomb from e.g. opening all the airlock doors 100 hours after an ownership change.
If there’s force field technology available, there must be some portable devices to prevent the defenders from arbitrarily manifesting fields in the vicinity of the boarding party. Otherwise I don’t think you could get anyone to be a boarder.
If not, the standard procedure would be to stand off and blow the ship up rather than taking a surrender. If you’re after cargo you can gather any that survives the blast.
No, it’s not as fun to game, but it’s about the only reasonable tactic that doesn’t result in unacceptable (to you) casualties among your boarding parties.
It also means you don’t really have pirates. You may have some privateers, though that’s a marginal career if they’re relying on the sale of small amounts of cargo, and they can’t reuse any captured ships.
Incentives matter.
You gotta give him props for trying!
Paint me like one of your french dragons.
One meaning for un dragon in french is a terrible, cantankerous, and brutal woman.
It could apply to an angered Maxima … if you press the rigth berzerk button.
another definion of un dragon is a soldier of a cavalry corps created in the 16th century to fight on foot or on horseback.
and another a type of culverin in use until the end of the 16th century.
What did you want ?
I thought altering the quote from Titanic to fit this situation would be funny?
As a french native speaker I find funny to quote some of the definition of un dragon in french , in french it aslo the scaly thing but not only .
And another funny thing une dragonne means mainly a wrist strap or an hand strap in french.
Askin this you could have a painting of :
Case one an angry maxima
Case two a mounted soldier a Dragoon – in french Dragoon is written Dragon-
Case three a small early smooth barreled canon
Thank you for the laugh generated by this comic and your comments, I sorely needed cheering up today
She’s still covered in a holographic “disguise”, even if it’s now a hologram of herself, right?
right, cause she is wearing that holosuit we saw in the other page under the disguise, she wouldn’t look like that if she just turned off the hologram
This was addressed by Dave in the commentary. The holosuit was only for when she was off the ship. For the big reveal here, she had on normal clothes and was in an area with sufficient external projectors to cover her.
Draconic Neuron Activation
Thesaurophilia
Gayxg is the type of person to cause HR departments to offer sacrifices and prayers to the old gods in the hopes that they will help keep him in line.
Has anyone seen my no-horny bat? I need it, for reasons…
“no horny”? in THIS crew? that’s sacrilegious
yeah- pretty sure the “No Horny Bat” on this ship is perma-lubed.
Last time I seen it, it was hanging up next to the forget-me-stick and the shut-up stick lol.
This made me laugh a little extra hard as an ex art model. I have literally had artists ask if they should paint nude to help me “feel more comfortable.” And no. No that would not help with my comfort. Not even a little. Thank you. No matter how cute you are.
That measure of unprofessionalism would prompt me to walk.
I have. Walked away from similar ‘proposals’ I mean.
When it became clear that the ‘artist’ had different (and wildly inappropriate) ideas and plans for what professional modelling for a painter or photographer entailed.
That was before, of course, that it became easy to have an initial video conference with a prospective client.
Well, just hypothetically imagining such a scenario had Maxima grumbling “they’ll never find the body” if it came to pass…
Dude had a chance, until he got too eager and blew it. XD
Failed his Will Power savingthrow.
Nothing to do with the situation, but it just occured to me that I really hope his family name is “Ryga”.
I think I may know what the next vote incentive is…….
Now do that for Sydney.
One of the Alien guys: “She’s….. Perfect!”
Whelp, I guess the dragon’s hoarding gold tendencies still extend to their kin with two legs as well. I am rather interested in what he’s calling a hoard though.
To be fair for the dragon… This is probably the literal girl of his dreams he never thought he would see in reality.
Losing composure would make sense akin to some people finding out cute anime cat girls are real… Rather than TTS Warhammer grim dark felinids.
anime cat girl, Displacer Beast version
Two people who are absolutely on that list:
1: Deus. He absolutely has a treasure hoard.
2: Dabbler. She is just like that.
You know Deus has worked out a practical way to do the Scrooge McDuck treasure swimming. Just to prove he can.
He runs the treasury of a country, he could just make a soft currency.
you do perhaps realize that Scrooge McDuck’s treasure swimming is a pun based superpower, right? He’s swimming in liquid assets.
I’ll be honest, I almost feel like Gaxgy would be a better long- or possibly mid-term match for Max than either Hiro or Deus. Hiro’s got that ‘dating a coworker’ issue, and Deus is a supervillain.
Dragon would be an interesting fling for her, at least.
Also, CALLED IT!
You do remember she actually does have a boyfriend that isn’t either of those two, right? ;)
Granted, it’s been a while since we last saw Rowen.
If I had a nickle for everyone “it’s been a while since we last saw”…
Bear in mind, we’re STILL not caught up to where it all began. It’s been over 15 years and we’ve still been in a flashback since page 5… and according to page 4, it was only “a few months” prior the flashback starts.
And as far as I know, Anvil hasn’t been read in on the squidward situation yet, and she’s still a private, not a corporal, so…
Honestly I wouldn’t mind if Dave went and edited those pages to square things a bit “let me back up a few years” and “private” instead of “corporal” or some thing under corporal…
… Anvil is a sergeant
Putting a golden woman in front of a dragon may not have been the best way to get said dragon to ease off and calm down about romantic prospects with said woman XD
Wasn’t it established in an earlier comic that gold isn’t worth very much to the rest of the galaxy, because of its commonality?
Yes, but dragon gold hoarding instincts don’t care about intergalactic value. XD
Perhaps the kind of gold Gaxgy desire is gold pressed latinum.
Okay… so Javelina is the crew member who earned their position while fully clothed. Probably the reason why Sydney has glasses that do so much. I expect them to get on like thieves or Kenders. Possibly both at the same time.
Oh my God, he’s adorably dorky!
Ahaha, this is now officially my favorite comic – I ship Gaxgy and Max so hard! Best new character ever, I totally want to see them go on a date, so much potential, the names are even cute together. Ultimate power couple (heheh). Yes, you’d think he ruined his chances, but he just has to come back with a little bit of humor and modesty, she can put up with Halo’s lack of filters and actually laugh sometimes… yes, she can still date the wimpy human dudes, but Gaxgy is a perfect match for her in so many ways. Please save her life from some hyperintelligent transdimensional mice, Gaxgy, listen to her, respect her, and someday, maybe….
I also have a “hoard of gold”… ok so it’s only an ounce but that counts right?
After reading the caption I can only think of DBZA Frezia. Max putting a number after pickup lines would be funny. Dabber putting an exponent would put people who caught on in stitches. That or it would get impressive reaction faces. Much like the Brendon Lee mulligan true facts on grant anthony part two. A little too much sharing for everyone involved.
I’m confused. I thought Max’s absence from Earth was supposed to be strictly 100% tip top sikrit? Now a buncha pipple know and how can they know they’re all trustworthy?
They are gathered here specifically because they are trustworthy. It’s not just a collection of random people.
Ohhh. Max isn’t the main secret.
It’s Sydney! The N Tech Orbs would draw too much attention.
They are a secret that Cora may not want to share with the team.
Thank you for portraying a gold dragon right.
Because I started chuckling out loud while watching this.
I’m kinda mad at myself for not predicting this reaction.
“Vent whatever room the boarders are in” I see you’ve played FTL before