Grrl Power #1417 – Some peers are more equal than others
Cora means Max could take on everyone physically, but a like any good adventuring parties, quite a few of them have indirect powers, or things like crowd control debufs, or can turn into mist, or just cast crazy ritual magic with all kinds of oddball effects. Even so, Max’s speed could probably mitigate most all of that. Cora wasn’t doing a deep tactical analysis, just trying to get everyone to understand why she has confidence in her scheme.
I’m sure I’ve heard the name Destra somewhere, but I can’t pluck it from the pinkish-gray folds I keep most of my stuff in. It’s probably an evil My Little Pony or a Rule 34 G.I. Joe’s Destro in an adult gender-swapped comic I definitely accidentally stumbled across a decade ago. You know how the internet is, always throwing those Rule 34 adult comics at you. I guess I don’t have to specify “adult” if it’s Rule 34. Anyway, Destra is the big demon chick. I’m sure most of you would have guessed that. Celestabelle is obviously the angel girl with the guitar, and Destra doesn’t really sound like a Valkyrie’s name. I guess the blue demon chick could have been Destra, but Destra is a brawler’s name. Blue looks more like a, uh… I don’t know, alchemist? Or maybe someone with a bunch of wands strapped to the small of her back. Javelina could be the Valkyrie, if it was pronounced with a hard “J,” but in this case it’s pronounced as an “H.” I guess her half-orc side is Hispanic. Or, some other nationality tied to a language that pronounces J’s as H’s. Like who the heck knows what Undercommon sounds like? I always assumed it involved a lot of consonants and that “hock a loogie” sound that some Middle-Eastern languages have. I guess that would also be a consonant? But maybe Undercommon is a romance language that sounds closer to Castillian Spanish than someone cursing in German cause they just slammed a door on their thumb.
Probably everyone in that room thinks they could eek out a victory against everyone else, maybe assuming favorable conditions. That doesn’t mean they don’t recognize Gaxgy as probably the biggest threat physically, and are over him reminding everyone about it. Modesty is his dump skill.
Javelina lacks that particular adventurer confidence, even though she’s smart and a curiously powerful mage. She’s one of those adventurers because she repeatedly finds herself in the position of being able to help, but is far from an adrenaline junkie.
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.
Such name discrimination! Now I kind of want the big demon chick to be named Tiffany or something lmao.
I’m reminded of Varia mocking overdone theme names (p323 margin sketch).
Hi Steve! Fancy meeting you here. :-) *waves*
*waves* I’d been vaguely aware to the comic for a while and gotten into reading it through and following it a few months ago.
So apparently Tiffany is actually a really old name, going back to ~1200s Europe, and was mostly ignored until the ’60s revival in popularity.
Also, I read like 5 books of a modern fantasy series before I realized that the name of one of the dragons (in the TVtropes sense) “Tiphaine D’Ath” is probably pronounced “Tiffany”.
Heh, reminds me of the main character from Exiern :)
Have to bump CPG Grey for this incredibly specific deepdive into the name Tiffany:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LMr5XTgeyI
Please just let Max punch out the carnalsaurus so he’ll shut up… =_=
That might just make the thirsting worse
Yeah, but he’ll be quiet. And maybe the team can leave the station before he wakes up again.
I though that was how this gonna be.
Gaxgy take a step too far, Max unleashing a knock out and everybody on board after seeing the one hit K.O.
She might just fall back to her “de-escalation” techniques she developed to counter Kevin, and leave Gaxgy frustrated since he was defeated without an actual display of violence.
All Max needs to do is take her one finger and thumb, lift Gaxgy by a horn, fly around, and drop him to the floor. He masses more than anyone in the room so that simple act would give the rest pause. Or just have googly eyes and tag everyone in the room with one before anyone knows it.
See this is where a firm handshake lowers the chances of a brawl. All Max had to do was alter her pool and shake Gaxgy’s hand. There is a reason for some rituals deemed patriarchal.
but a setup for action before the big fight has it’s own rules.
I’ve another idea get medieval , with a variant :
When knights threw one of their gauntlets to the ground in front of someone, it meant they were challenging them to combat.
Trow it to the face , an hourglass gaunlet is about 750 grams 1,56 lbs if it is throw violently it would hurt badly ..
A strong thrower could with some practice frature the jaw.
Forget medieval, let’s get primal.
First to knap flint, weave rope, find a femur and assemble an axe wins.
That’s already pretty advanced for Primal :)
How about: First to eat mammoth wins
This seems more like a smash cut to Maxima standing atop the bodies of everyone else in various states of defeat… With Gaxy on the bottom, signaling he got KO’d first.
Yes, the “Challenge Ego” action would need a crit roll to succeed (these guys have armor and resistance against social attacks) and Cora didn’t make it.
Closer to a crit fail, really.
Don’t forget that Cora is herself a high level adventurer of the manager type in her own terrain implying a pretty serious charisma boost.
I would swear we’ve seen Javelina (and even heard her name) before this scene on the ship.
But where/when?
Seems to be a common(ish) name for cute greenies :)
Fairly sure have also seen it used somewhere else, and probably not in this webic
Petition for the woman in the hat to get her own spin-off series.
I am curious about what her deal is…
Anyone else thinking ‘vampire who went into space to avoid sunlight’?
Wasn’t there a pic of various vigilantes early in the comic that sort of looked like her?
The super vigilante cameos on page 366 include Giant Girl (giantgirladventures.com), who wears a in the cameo pic hat but otherwise doesn’t look particularly like this character as far as I see.
^a hat
Working on the fandom wiki page (grrlpowercomic.fandom.com) has got me to the point where I can find a lot of references off the top of my head, but reminded my that my brain tends to get ahead of my typing fingers…
As for Javelina (which I thought was pronounced with a hard J), “Avelina” is a girl’s name. There was a girl in my high school called that. Italian origin. Cheerleader type.
So maybe that’s the Spanish version?
She’s very obviously NOT the cheerleader here. She’s the brain. Possibly the ONLY one in the room. I expect her to go “Can I bet against my team against her?” I also expect Cora to say “No bet… unless you think your team would be first to fall?” What people are very obviously missing here though is Cora is willing to bet against Gaxgy. There are probably people who WANT to see Gaxgy eat humble pie. Anyways… back to the naming…
Javelina would more or less sound as Hav L ina. It’s the jawline and teeth combo. Hard J’s are very hard to say with two sticks to the side of your mouth. The name would be south american but not necessarily Hispanic. It could be Portuguese or a less common linguistic origin picked up because the Mayan’s (and their 30 freaking language theft spree) actually did meet aliens and it just left the planet anyway. However this would also give Javelina the possibility of being a spicy latina and thus EXACTLY FIT with Dabbler’s mentality. We may never know the exact origin of the name, but it’s probably a very safe bet to just go with the meme guy. “It was aliens”
Um, when I heard the name Javelina, I immediately thought of a scourge of the southwest – well, really more of a pest than a scourge, but they can do awful property damage if you’re the sort that values golf courses, lawns and gardens. They rip the hell out of the ground looking for things to eat.
I’ll just leave this here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelina
:D
I immediately thought it might end up becoming Digit’s nickname if she keeps having harpoon misadventures.
Sounds like a saturday morning cartoon. “The Drastic Harpoon Misadventures of Digit’s Widgets.
We have javelinas and feral hogs where I live. Of the two I’d take the javelinas. At least they are native and don’t double their numbers three times a year. I could be biased since the hogs just landscaped my front yard.
Yah, no contest. Feral hogs are also way more dangerous than Javelinas.
You can shoot either one and try to cook them, but I find the flavor of Javelina not very appealing, and the flavor of feral hogs depends on what they’ve been eating. Either way you have to barbecue them as opposed to anything else, because if you do anything else, both are tough and stringy.
Still, either one is a good choice if you’re hungry and poor.
Now that I think of it, Javelina are a little worse than a mere pest, because they have sharp tusks and a bad attitude. If someone corners them and they panic, herds of a dozen or more have been known to actually maim or kill people.
So they always deserve a bit of a caution when you go to either shoot the pests or drive them off your land. It’s a good idea to take a gun for self-defense even if you don’t actually plan to kill them.
Here’s hoping the next “vote incentive” is Maxima and n a platinum bikini stop a pile of treasure
I’m kinda wanting to request putting Destra in there beside her…
I’d rather see her in standard issue riot gear with her boot on the head of the dragon guy, with him knocked out cold by one of her punches.
Why not both?
and dragon guy in said bikini XD
Adorkelina has a lovely “Gods!! You just *had* to push the Musclebrain Red Button, did you?!!” look…..
I’m surprised nobody has made a joke about Maxima’s gaze being very “neuron activation” XD
For a dragon chalenging higt-tier adventuers is an occupational hazard but it’s also the primary cause of death …
If he chalenge Maxima the female equivalent of superman , without being in the same league as Dr Manhathan , he will be outclassed as a toodler vs a légionnaire ( Roman or French one ).
Javelina seems pretty reasonable and unlike many of the portrayed female adventurers imune to testosterone poisoning .
Now introduce The Mighty Halo and say SHE can take everyone in the room simultaneously.
But seriously… They’re trusted, but are they “She wields N-tech” trusted?
Maybe Cora shouldn’t mention that.
Re: vote incentive. Wow, Sydney has really packed on some muscle. It looks great on her.
Isn’t it it just the hologram disguise though?
Yes
Something i feel have to be pointed out.
Maxima exploiting that she is an order of magnitude stronger than Gaxgy, to impose her will on the room.
Is basically EVERYTHING she is railing against as a feminist, just inverted.
Hitting someone, or physically bullying them, does NOT get more acceptable just because the one doing it is a pretty girl. So far Gaxgy has not done much besides being arrogant. And very much into Max. That though, is not a crime.
And if Max cant control herself in the face of that, she needs to be sat down for anger management classes.
One would think though, that it was just the thing to say in a room full of high powered adventures Cora.
As it distracted everyone.
It goes against her law enforcement training, not her principles.
Gaxgy has gone a lot further than just being annoying.
He didn’t take no for an answer, while she was under societal convention to listen to him. Placing it in the same category as a manager sending racy texts to subordinates after a request not to do that, which fits nicely in the sexual harassment category.
Also he challenged her to a duel, so physical violence is easier to explain away.
On your last point you’re right.
As long they do their fighting in the secure battle rooms and survive as suggested by the disembodied voice I do agree, this is a great solution.
And something I feel have to point out is that Max haven’t actually done something yet.
She, uh, didn’t do that though.
All Max has done to dragon boy is refuse to fight him, refuse to be his model, and clench her fist in response to his continued prodding.
Which is more than enough to get the anti-Maxi Brigade started
Largely speaking modern sematic languages (basically what you meant by Middle-Eastern languages) tend to have simpler vowels. I can think of a few options for what you called “hock a loogie” sound and all of them are consonants.
Perhaps Destra has a twin named Sinesrtra, who just happens to have a dislike for glowing jewelry
If Gaxgy wants to paint her in a bikini or less, he’ll just have to imagine it, like most of the rest of us.
Gaxgy can wear a bikini all he wants while painting a picture of Max from imagination while he is all alone.
Or subscribe to the Patreon!
-Yawn- 3rd “Max is greatest” speech.
Are we projecting pride go before a downfall a lot here?
Or since it’s in the comments to, so it’s Daves girlfriend/self insert hero who can’t be defeated ever?
What’s the vote peeps?
She lost to Kevin, Henchwench and arguably the alien mercenaries.
Arc Swat won these fights, but she couldn’t on her own, she needed help.
She can and has been defeated.
None of those were losses
Kev fought her to a draw (before Sydney sacrificed her safety by cutting him off from the source of his power)
Henchwench dumped her in the ocean before running back to her own apartment
The mercs could barely slow her down
So, please, tell the class how she was defeated?
‘Beaten’ is not the same ‘defeated’ (even Les has been ‘beaten’, when he had the building fall on him)
Some years ago, when I first ran across Rule 34, I decided to test it. I typed in “My Little Pony” porn, hit “enter,” and immediately regretted it. Later, someone told me that that had been an EASY one…
Destra = fortnite
a youtuber does a lot of fortnite content
I am getting a feeling the next vote incentive is Hoard Gravure Maxima
Undercommon is actually a large category of languages, each spoken in its own cavern area and bleeding across into patois and creoles in the tunnels between caverns. And they sound like the various Australian Indigenous languages, because they’re in a land down under.
i love how the “orc” lady is just like “oh nyo”
What’s going on with Gaxgy’s arm in that last panel? It kindof looks chibi-ish, but nothing else in the panel (including his body) is.
If you look at Javelina slapping her head on the left, she’s also drawn chibi, presumably to offer contrast and save time.
Same as how he was drawn last page
That is the back of his bent right arm. That little brown spike on his elbow has been seen before; Sydney was picking at it a couple of pages back. His forearm is blocking our view of the rest of his arm.
Actually, that is his whole left arm, that little brown spike is one of his fingernails (claws?)
He is facing the ‘camera’ (note the apron as seen in the previous panel), also to be noting that Cora is still on his left and the polite queue is forming from that side
It is a little confusing seeing how he has been chibi’d but no one else has
Let’s get a bunch of crazy, rich, powerful people in a room to hedge a bet worth a planet and kick the hornets nest. What could possibly go wrong? At least they have the safety net of explosive decompression. The fact that the meeting had to take place in space should have been ringing alarms in the first place.
That throat-clearing / “H in the back of the throat” sound? It’s not just Hebrew and Arabic that have it. It is prominently present in some of the Teutonic languages (e.g. German, Dutch, Swedish), European dialects of Spanish, and likely in at least some of the Spanish-adjacent European languages, but I haven’t heard enough of any of them to know for sure.
Thank you! I wanted to point this out too. I’m pretty sure the “voiced velar fricative” is actually more common than not. Old and Middle English had it! It’s preserved in Scots! Just one way among many that Modern English is an unusual language.
As for the nominative determinism, I basically assume all high tier adventurers picked their own name at some point. Or maybe come from magical worlds where names were literally based on prophetic visions.
Gaxgy is indeed seriously underplaying Cora’s knowledge of the skills and power of everyone else in the room. Nobody is taking her seriously at all… which should tell you just how powerful these adventurers are, how confident they are in themselves, and the fact that they can’t believe how powerful Max really is, so they are disregarding it reflexively.
To build on that and his reply…
“So, Gaxgy, you could take on a team of yourself, me, and everyone else but Max in the room? You against yourself AND everyone else?”
He seems to have forgotten he’s one of ‘everyone else in the room’, and so is Cora.
He will detail this in his autobiography “The Great Gaxgy” ghost written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. On sale soon…
I mean, if the goal was to serve as a distraction to stop overly flirty dragon boy from getting stomped into gold foil, it was super effective.
To be fair, this fight has to happen.
Bookies are not going to give 1000 to 1 odds on a complete unknown. And if she enters as something that has no business being in the unlimited class they are going to smell a big, and soon to be very violent, rat.
So, while Cora presented this as a certain win, she is still is still asking them to put up, say a tenth of the price of a luxury starship, or a tenth of the cost of a rebellion (wars in our time on earth run in the 10 billion per month).
These adventurers are obviously succesful, and their stake in the starforge must have made them richer than common for adventurers, but Cora is still asking for a lot of money and they are going to want to know if Maxima can deliver on the promises or not.
Video can be easily faked so their most trusted yardstick is …. themselves.
(and I imagine being adventurers they are spoiling for a fight)
For a single fight the bookies won’t, but for a championship they will.
Even the when I searched this 1 to 210 is the lowest I could find for the most likely champion.
Most peoples will look at Max and just see a super model, only those that has seen the true Max would know better. It doesn’t need to be a fight per-say, just a clear show of force that doesn’t damage the ship or the bystanders. And as she said to Peggy when Sydney tried to lift that mini-gun, she “forgets that things have weight” so doing something minor like stopping Gaxgy’s punch without moving or grab his horn with a couple of fingers and fly him around the room.
FYI, it’s per se, not per-say. Just assuming you don’t know that, not a critique. The sound is identical.
Battle Sister? Skill and Fury!?! FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!
Celestabelle? Celestabelle Abethabelle? Of the Gravity Falls-adjacent fairy realm Abethabelles?
Dabbler can and has fought Maxima to a standstill, even with Maxima’s superspeed, so its not out of the realm of possibility that others might be able to also. Just not physically.
I’d forgotten about that. So Dabbler fought Max to a standstill, and Kevin fought her to a loss. Kevin was another super, and I think we’re assuming there won’t be any other supers in this fight (I don’t agree, but let’s go with that for a bit). Also while Kevin could dominate a mass brawl, he’d have difficulty getting spun up to full power during 1-on-1 bracket fights.
But Dabbler isn’t of earth. Unless we think Max was holding back while fighting Dabbler (possibly?), or else Max’s power and/or skill with that power has grown a lot since that fight, that means Dabbler could win one of these “unlimited class” battles if Max can.
I don’t think Max is thinking this all the way through.
Dabbler fought Max to a defensive standstill WHILE she had an utterly full load of tantric power… which was being depleted as they fought, but was enough for her to block Maxima and not be overwhelmed in time for there to be some communication. You can assume that in any battle of endurance Maxima will clean her clock as her tech supplies, magic, and tantric power all run out, and Maxima just keeps on going.
So Dab managed to defend against/parry Max. That’s far from ‘beating’ her.
Tho we don’t know the true power of these people, either.
Do superpowers have an endurance stat? I suspect Max does actually get tired.
Though the whole “fighting (super who turns into a sandstorm) for days” means the pool is pretty big.
If they don’t get tired, do they even need to sleep? Or is that habit?
I think Dabbler’s fight with Max to a draw was probably due to Dabbler’s extensive use of magic and ultratech gadgets. Depending on how far back this was it’s possible Max wasn’t read in on the magic races on Earth. Even if she was, magic has an extensive bunch of unique effects.
Dabbler likely has a pretty deep pool of stuff that is effectively unique. She kept pulling those out, expecting them to end the fight, and Max kept tanking them, but getting hammered each time because how do you prepare for the utterly unexpected?
Can Max punch her way out of a force cube for instance?
Though Dabbler would pretty much be required to have something to allow her to match Max’s superspeed. And she pulled it out right away. Otherwise it’s pretty much game over on the first move.
Gaxgy likely doesn’t have something like that, which is why Cora is so confident that he can’t beat her. Max can dump enough in speed to make him effectively a statue and still have enough left in strength to toss him around and feel the blows. And he hasn’t invested in collecting oddball useful magic items to use.
Where is this ‘Kevin fought her to a loss’ nonsense coming from? Yes, Kev broke her nose, no, Kev did not beat her (at best, it was another standstill before Sydney cut him off from his source of power)
I’d say he was going to beat her if things continued at they were being described. At this point Maxima had needed to put everything in her “defense stat”, and could not do anything else but survive, while being pinned to the ground. At this point I suppose it would have been a question of who runs out of strength first, and I don’t think we have info about how this could have turned out. But in any case, Maxima was clearly being described as being on the losing end of the fight, at that time, while Vehemence was on the winning end.
I wonder how long Kevin would have been able to keep that up.
He was burning vehemence to power his strength and toughness, and it’s a thing that gets used up. If it were just one on one, and they’re just sitting there pinning and being pinned, I doubt he’s getting enough new vehemence off her to keep it up.
In that fight, he was getting new vehemence from the attempts of the rest of the team to free Max and defeat Kevin. Which is how the fight ended, when they stopped pounding on him and started doing things that weren’t violent but still required him to burn power.
Yes, he has to burn power, otherwise he’d already be unstoppable from any other fights he had ever been in.
Episode 274 (maybe start with 273), very first “super brawl”, quite some time after the broken nose. I replied a few episodes ago with a direct link but it took a few days to appear so you may have missed it.
In 274 Kevin is already more powerful than Max. She’s pinned on the ground, getting electrocuted, all of her power dumped into shield just to stay alive. He straight up says he has to kill her because she’s too powerful when he’s in his “normal” state.
And in the next episode he activates his “violence aura” to re-start the brawl around him and get even more powerful. In #279 she admits (in her head) she has lost and it’s only a matter of time until she’s dead (cue Sydney stepping in to save her skin). There are multiple reporters in the area, so this is all on camera. At least everything up to #274 is on camera; I believe the camera operators join in the brawl once the aura is activated in the following episodes.
He’s eventually defeated by Sydney’s ADHD brain being resistant (not immune) to the violence aura, getting distracted by Dabbler’s Hypno-boobs, and teamwork. But just looking at him vs. Max, Max lost that fight.
Granted, he needed the violence of the full brawl to get spun up to full power, so Max would win a direct 1-vs-1 now. Especially after she has had time to think about strategies to counter that specific Power. Will she have that time luxury during the tournament? Will she know every capability of her opponents, or will they have hidden strengths to be revealed only as needed?
I’m also aware that Maxima is a main character in a comic strip and has the benefit of the greatest Power of all time, Plot Armor. But looking at this based on logic and the information we have, this doesn’t look like the guaranteed-win cake walk Cora is trying to sell.
Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I’ll point out that Max has an energy blast that can take out starships. I can easily see her raw speed and strength not being enough for every opponent, but when you combine it with supersonic flight and main-gun ranged attacks, it starts to seem like Cora likely knows what she’s talking about. Especially since Cora is familiar with this contest and aware of the abilities of the regulars.
Agreed, and a few panels before 274 she blew off his arm… which he instantly re-grew. If she had gone for the head he would probably be dead, but she was still in “don’t kill, make him surrender” mode. Even Kevin stated she could defeat him in a direct 1-on-1 fight, especially now that she knows his power and she knows to go lethal before he’s able to power-up.
But my argument still stands. He was eventually able to get to a point where he was stronger than her. Dabbler was able to fight her to a standstill simply by engorging on tantric energy just before. Why are we so sure that no other entity in a galaxywide, no-holds, no rules, unlimited-class tournament would be stronger than she is?
Good point, we know Dabs was pumped up by that horse man, but a group of ten standard Dabblers working as a party should be enough to keep her down.
Am I the only person who saw Javelina in the last frame, and thought (from her pose), “Oh, boy. She’s putting her hair up in a ponytail. Everyone else is posturing, she’s getting Readied!”
I thought she was clutching her head, thinking “Oh boy, here we go again…”
Yeah thats what i thought too
Oh oh oh PLEASE oh please let us get a battle scene of all of those adventurers vs Maxima in the station’s battle rooms.
Could take turns showing off their abilities one after another as a demonstration before they all get rolled by super speed. I Need this in my life and it’s been so long since we had a proper long term battle segment~
Would be nice, but that could lead to several weeks of side-story before we return to the main purpose of this space trek
And we all know how some readers view those :P
Looks like Javelina is the tech/tactical/research person on the crew.
Ooh that sounds like a logical and horrible position in an adventurers guild.
For Javelina specifically.
Author commentary tells us she is a pretty serious mage and just doesn’t like confrontations of this kind.
Clearly Cora wasn’t fast enough with the “Fucking perhaps” response quip needed to DE-escalate the gauntlet thrown side effect…
Just wondering, how is Maxima’s hair shorter now? IT doesnt look like it’s in a bun or ponytail or something (like it was in Galytn, or how it was on her ‘date’ with Deus). Normally her hair has been shown as much longer.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-955-worlds-greatest-gilded-glamazon/
So I’m thinking it’s one of three things.
1) She went to the Barberian before she went on the trip and made sure that her armor level was low enough.
2) Artist error? (I somehow don’t think it’s this though, since her hair is that length in EVERY panel on this comic, andi t’s been this short for the entire space-trip also, except when she was in disguise – and that was holographic hair).
3) Cora’s ship has super-powered hair-styling equipment?
Any other ideas?
There is a confirmed super barber with diamond scissors on file for Argon.
He was roped in the Vehemence fight.
He has as far as we know the standard male super powers of this comic.
Low invulnerability and mediocre super strength.
Yes that would be the “Barberian” that I mentioned. I was just wondering if there were any other possible explanations.
Also I just noticed that it ‘sort of’ looks like her hair might be tied in a knot? Or am I seeing that wrong because in some past images on the ship it wasnt but was still short.
Never mind. In the past on the ship its always been in a bun or ponytail actually. I just rechecked and in only one panel was it short without explanation, probably because of the positioning of her head.
The only thing worse than a room full of egos, is a room full of justified egos.
Its actually one of the reasons I made a rule for myself some time back to never have all Seven of the Seven Sisters of Sorcery in the same room together, aside from the fact any one of them is also a walking Deus Ex Machina waiting to happen unless given restrictions for that particular story (something I had done for years and then went too far with for a time, but I digress),
the other reason though is because my type of writing muse is the one where the take over the story and “write themselves”, something I know doesn’t make sense to anyone who doesn’t also write like that from time to time. But I really didn’t want to write a seven way discussion/argument between seven individuals who are used to being the strongest person in the room, usually in a position of authority either regally, magically, intellectually, or by being in some terrifying form like a dragon or demon, and them also being sisters is just a LONG argument of posturing as their egos try not to trip over each other. As a note I have actually had all seven in one place, but both times I remember doing it, it was a “I’m just blowing up this setting” kind of reasoning to move on to another story.
Same issue when writing for strong adventurers, get too many party members, if they are all high level you need to justify them together, and justify who is in charge.
Another thought here is, this kind of situation also feels like a power scalers triggering issue. I mean when its your own original characters, especially if new, not as big an issue, but I have seen it in these comments a few times, where power scalers want details and will argue who beats who in a fight, and tend to focus on raw power over martial skills or experience, and then it goes into circles of discussion. and honestly I kind of have felt at times like I copted out when this came up because I intentionally made a few at the top who just cancel each other out; or its entirely situational, and “define beating” like you can beat someone by making their plans fail even if a 1v1 would end badly or stale mate on you.
In real life groups of impressive people tend to be led by has-beens with leadership skills.
football trainers, managers of white collar departments, special forces and universities,
An interesting point, in real life people lose physical strength, even if the muscle memory is there you can’t (or shouldn’t…learned that the hard way trying a martial arts move I knew twenty years ago after not going any proper exercises for the longest time…let’s say the follow through was…uncomfortable to say the least),
but you remember, the tactics, the training, the exercises, etc…
however you rarely see this in fiction, and in fact even when it feels like an anime for example is having the wise old mentor or leader of an adventurer’s guild or something be an ex-adventurer or ex-soldier and getting up there in years they will eventually reveal this leader is despite not going on adventures for years still a powerhouse and capable of taking down anyone (except maybe the main protagonist and/or the main villain *especially if they play the old mentor get’s axed by the villain to get the protagonist to focus on the main quest trope*). but I see that trope dying off a bit and the old mentors hanging around but ending up more powerful than everyone except the one or two main characters…and again the main villain as you need the protagonist to be the one take them out.