Grrl Power #1420 – Arrangements and departures
“But Gaxgy is still in my line of sight, so your cynical key-jangling attempt failed!”
“But what about the next thing that distracts you?”
“Shoot! You got me there! What were we talking about?”
I’m sure many of you know this, but I’ll put it here anyway, because it’s relevant. When tigers and lions bang, their offspring is either a tigon or a liger. You get a liger when a male lion breeds with a female tiger, and a tigon is from a male tiger and a female lion. Now, genetically, a half one species and half another species would be the same, regardless of the gender of the parents, but in the case of these big cats, the female lion carries the gene that inhibits growth, and in tigers, it’s the male that carries that gene. So when both parents pass that gene on to the offspring, you get a mini tigon, and when neither parent has it, you get a liger, which is basically an Andre the Giant Cat. I’m saying they basically have gigantism. It’s not exactly like gigantism, but it might as well be.
We don’t know what the case is with Jotnar and gobbos, because besides not knowing which of Javelina’s grandparents were which gender, I don’t even know if that’s a thing with humanoids. Well, I suppose no one does, because there’s only one species of humanoids on Earth currently. I mean, IRL. In the Grrl-verse, that’s something which could actually be tested. Of course, in the past, we interbred with neanderthals. I’d say we were too closely related to have some weird inter-species “who’s got the growth limiting gene,” but it’s not like lions and tigers are wildly different either. For sure they share a common ancestor, just like humans and neanderthals.
Oh, and Happy whatever you’re doing today. Probably but not limited to Christmas.
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.
Heck, the interbreeding with neanderthals might well have carried a size-setting gene for the brain in the same fashion as ligers.
Homo neanderthalis, on average, had larger brains than homo sapiens doe
Homo neanderthalis, on average, had larger brains than homo sapiens does.
Well, that explains quite a bit about us, anyway.
Merry christmas and…….. wont max’s boyfriend have a few objections to the whole painting bit lol, Well, i suppose since shes not even bothered to tell him who she is…… one more lie of omission or two wont hurt
Max boyfriend thinks she is a model. He should be ok with her doing some modeling.
stunt driver isnt it? she just looks like a model
Stuntwoman, not stunt driver.
But for someone who looks like Maxima, if she has NOT done some modelling that would be the surprise.
Some professional photographer took some pictures of Maxima once right? Or did that just happen in my head?
Yes for Archon
Here are the links btw:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-333-my-golden-angel-of-destruction-is-the-centerfold/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-334-make-down/
Thank you.
Right, stuntwoman. I got that flipped in my head.
Still working in front of a camera.
Why would she not tell him? Other than the fac… oh, another Anti-Maxer
You almost got me
ok…. what is an anti-maxer lol? she is one of my favorite heroines in comics, and i mostly enjoy her writing, but…… Bikini posing for a very thirsty dude, while supposedly in a relationship? Come on, were allowed to point out hypocrisy, is anti-maxer really a thing around here lol? been reading for years but dont really follow the comments, and this one has blown up.
Anti-Maxer’s are those who are, well, anti Maxi: nothing she does is ever good
And, what hypocrisy? For a start, we don’t know what the arrangement is, and even if she did agree to pose in bikini, that is her choice
How is posing for painting, whether she is or isn’t in a relationship, a bad thing?
Well its not just posing for a painting, its posing for a painting for a rabid horndog who wants her nude and on his “treasure horde” Its ok to be uncomfortable with a situation like that in a relationship lol. Communication is important, but max has yet to tell the guy who she is, and its doubtful shes going to tell him that shes posing nude for random intergalatic thirsty dudes, or w/e the deal is. So yes, a very “healthy” relationship, on the other hand if its only about the benefits then w/e… Max is exemplifying the patriarchal mindset to a tee, and its honestly pretty funny.
Max has no patience for that patriarchal bullshit
Has fuckall to do with the patriarchy. It has to do with respect for the other person. Clearly, something you’ve never provided.
Course, ppl with this braindead mentality is why ppl are checking out of dating modern women. Modern *western* women. Passport bros, MGTOW, Sigmas, all of it is because of this bullshit. Then they demand men be traditional providers, while providing nothing but a drain on their wallet and peace.
Yup. I’m sure that guy will feel maximal respect when he finds out he’s been nothing but lied to.
TIL MGOW. shrug.
Is there a group for “like women but also like myself and not interested in dramatic crap”?
What even does ‘MGOW’ stand for? Some made-up bullshit that makes them feel superior?
MGTOW – “Men Going Their Own Way”, otherwise known as “Incels Taking Their Balls And Going Home”.
Wow
Why has mentioning Greek letters become one of the diagnostic signs of asshole-hood? Seriously, if you’re gonna be an asshole can you please at least try to be an ORIGINAL asshole? No need to pick any of those prepackaged lines of drivel when you can make up your own.
Seriously, having the same drivel as other assholes doesn’t make you look any less like an asshole. There’s no credit or credibility in your lack of originality. It doesn’t make you look any better than if you came up with some completely out-of-pocket incomprehensible drivel on your own. And if you’re a spokesperson for a supposed community other assholes, that actually doesn’t confer any of the of dignity or credibility that being a spokesperson usually would.
Yeah, you think Max needs a permission slip from her sorta-boyfriend-just started dating to pose for a painting? That’s patriarchal bullshit.
Yeah, the only person Maxi needs to get permission from… is herself
“We don’t know what the case is with Jotnar and gobbos, because besides not knowing which of Javelina’s grandparents were which gender, I don’t even know if that’s a thing with humanoids.”
Between genetic engineering, binary cloning and literal tripple-helix species like Succubi and Shape Shifters, interbreeding can work out.
I had a thought of a advertisement:
“Life finds a way.
Dr. Life crosspecies fertility and binary cloning.”
Question I’ve got to ask. Who was the mom? The answer brings up more questions depending on the answer.
If mom’s Jotan : How long was it until she noticed she was pregnant? Because I’ve known 4 women who didn’t know they where pregnant until they went into labor.
If quarter goblin : Cesarian? And a whole lot of health related questions.
I believe Goblins have especially high internal Navier-Lamé elastodynamic ratios (link1, link2), so it could have gone either way.
So, she’s just a quarter each. Her goblin grandparent and her jötnar grandparent don’t have to be the parents of the same child in this scenario.
Just like you can have a half-elf and half-satyr brothers, with no elf blood in the satyr
nobody notices how we got key jangled into forgetting about asking what the deal is! (to be revealed in 257 pages)
We’ll find out when the painting is a vote incentive.
So about the same time frame
Some things are worth waiting for…
And some things are probably for February group times.
Thank you Cora.
Might have to do with the fact that he is a dragon and the dungeon wont be able to produce dragon scales so he can give them to Archon
I never really thought about it before, but it occurs to me that Sydney’s orbs spinning around her head all the time are very Christmas-y.
Peace in the universe, and goodwill to all you sentients out there (except for the fun fighting parts we are currently eagerly anticipating, and the mean and nasty opponents who will surely deserve whatever unpleasant fate Max is about to deliver upon them).
I reeeeally miss a “like” button this time.
Christmas-y yes… Never mind most of them can be rather deadly if mis-handled by a quirky, excitable user….
Sounds like Christmas to me
Yes. Hopefully Sydney doesn’t meet a “cat” alien.
By which I mean an alien whose instinctive reaction is the same as most housecats when confronted with shiny moving objects, and who doesn’t suppress those instincts.
Remember the comment during the Senegal sidequest about the highly conspicuous “Caucasian Christmas Tree”.
Merry Christmas to everyone!
Are you sure?
I read that the female lion carries the gene that inhibits growth and the male lion carries the gene that encourages growth. So in lions it cancels it out and in the mix it results in the big liger and small tigron.
I would argue that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens were more genetically related than modern-day tigers and lions. All ligers and tions have such low fertility as to be considered completely infertile. Since modern-day Homo Sapiens Sapiens show some possibility of Neanderthal DNA, their crossbred progeny must have been more fertile (more plentiful seems unlikely due to lack of archeological evidence). Since fertility of hybrids tends to be a result of genetic closeness, Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens were most likely more closely related than modern-day tigers and lions. It would have been more similar to an Indian and Siberian tiger.
I believe that current thought is that modern humans, Neanderthals, and the recently identified Denisovans are all considered just different subspecies – we’re all still H. Sapiens something-or-other.
It’s interesting that although as far as we know all the hominids originated in Africa, the purest H. S. Sapiens these days are the ones with predominantly sub-Saharan ancestry – the rest of us all test out with a small percentage of Neanderthal and/or Denisovan ancestry.
We didn’t wipe them out as much as just absorbed them. Who needs Succubus genetics? Humans will breed with *anything* even remotely compatible. And multiply like yeast given available resources.
I remember reading that Ligers and Tigons are only considered different species because they generally don’t interbreed, and the reason for that is not because they are all sterile, but because there are so few that there are not enough to reproduce fertile young (which keeps them from being considered stable species). Meanwhile, Neanderthalis and Sapiens were also different species, but were considered ‘sister species’ and were able to still produce offspring about 1-4% of the time (and that miniscule amount of interbreeding got highlighted during one of the human bottlenecks (Toba Catastrophe Event and Neolithic Y-Chromosome Bottleneck) that happened when the total amount of humans left on the planet was reduced to about 10,000, which happened 74,000 years ago and 7,000 years ago, respectively.
You sure about the dates and the population numbers?
7000 years ago would be not that far away from when they believe the pyramids started being built
Yes, I’m correct about the population numbers.
Google the Neolithic Y-Chromosome Bottleneck if you don’t believe me :)
There was also a huge bottlneck about 813,000 years ago which reduced the total amount of humans on Earth to under 1,300 individuals for about 100,000 years, but that predates Homo Sapiens so I didnt mention that one.
(I’m also correct about the dates btw. If I want to get technical, it was actually between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago, but I went with the more distant date)
Damn, the Egyptians bred like rabbits then: to have as many slaves as they needed to ‘build’ the pyramids in such a short time, not to mention the Chinese building the Great Wall
Y‑chromosome bottlenecks do not necessarily require a population crash. What they reflect is a collapse in **male lineage diversity**, not a collapse in the number of living people.
During the Neolithic bottleneck, many Y‑lineages disappeared because only a small subset of men were fathering most of the next generation. This pattern can emerge from social structures like patrilineal clans, inter‑group conflict, or hierarchical systems where a few dominant male groups outcompete others. Crucially, none of this requires a dramatic reduction in the total number of men or women. The population can remain large and even continue growing while the diversity of Y‑chromosomes shrinks.
This is why the bottleneck leaves no archaeological signature of depopulation. Female genetic diversity remains high, autosomal diversity remains high, and settlement patterns show steady or increasing population density. What changed was **who** was reproducing, not **how many** people existed. You can imagine a region with 10,000 men where only a few clans’ male descendants persist over time. In a few centuries, most Y‑lineages vanish, yet the region still has thousands of people.
By the time Egypt began building pyramids around 2700–2500 BCE, the Nile Valley supported a population in the millions. Agricultural surplus, centralized administration, and seasonal labor cycles made it entirely feasible to mobilize tens of thousands of workers. The Y‑chromosome bottleneck does not conflict with this at all, because it never implied a shortage of people. It simply meant that many of the men alive during that era descended from a narrower set of paternal lines. The society still had more than enough population, organization, and resources to undertake monumental construction on the scale of the pyramids.
No, it’s not about TOTAL population, it’s about number of different Y genes. So, if you have a small number of successful polygamous men, crowding out the vast majority of male Y genes, you get a bottleneck.
It’s hypothesized to have been from warring patrilineal clans, where the women outmarried and the men remained in the same clan, becoming closer and closer related.
When clan A wipes out clan B, the B clan’s Y gene disappears… but all the X-carried genes had been shared by women marrying into clan A or clans C thru E.
The total population doesn’t necessarily change at all.
Or when clan A attacks clan B, they either kill or neuter the men of clan B, keeping women alive and soon pregnant.
Pander was talking about total population, not just the breeders, which is why questioned her on the numbers
Guys, it’s literally CALLED THE ‘Neolithic Y-Chromosome Bottleneck Event.’ It’s an actual thing that happened between 5000 and 7000 years ago, and it was widespread enough that it had a dramatic effect on the worldwide population of humans at the time.
I’m not making this up. Just google it.
Or here – this is a good science video on it as well. It killed about 95% of all men in the known world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoFQjAHsWE8
The Egyptians built the pyramids between 2630 BC and 2580 BC (with the last one completed in 2504 BC), mostly during the 4th Dynasty during the Old Kingdom period. The Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck happened between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago (between 4975BC and 2975BC). The pyramids were built hundreds (possibly thousands) of years after that bottleneck period ended. ie, many generations afterwards.
Oh, also the Great Wall of China wasn’t even started until 700 BC (as a series of fortifications) and wasnt actually started as an actual wall until 220BC (under the first Emperor Qin Shi Huang), and it wasnt completed until the end of the Ming Dynasty (1644AD). ie, The wall was not even in its absolute earliest stages until several thousand years after the Neolithic Y-Chromosome Bottleneck Event
They had found viable DNA of Neanderthals and found it in many of the people of Europe and Asia. Even traces of their DNA in many of the older families that immigrated over the hundreds of years. Interbreeding was more common than first thought, although the Neo’s were more like the great apes, their breeding cycles were limited to a narrow span of the female cycles while the Cro’s were fertile about 70% of the time. Or at least that’s the theory… Anthropologist’s theories are like the wind, changes often. Like the idea that dino’s had hippo skin without feathers.
Max has agreed to let someone use her body for their own enjoyment/entertainment. While I think that would make an excellent vote incentive panel, it feels out of character in a “…of course you are my dear, we’re just negotiating on price” kind of way.
…hot as f*** though.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the painting is going to include a lot more clothing than Gaxgy would have preferred, for both of them.
My two cents is that it will be at a minimum a sexy portrait, probably not nude except in a what if patreon version vote incentive, and the deal is she gets a copy to give to her boyfriend when she decides to reveal who she really is. Also gets to taunt Deus with knowledge that a risque painting of her on a dragon’s hoard exists and all of his money wouldn’t be enough to buy it.
Something tells me that if Deus is not already lurking in the background, he most certainly will ..arrange.. for something a dragon(oid0 cannot resist, and get a copy.
And would make *very* sure Max would not know he has it…
If this comic were less optimistic about people, I could see Earth becoming a source for galactic mercenaries as way of getting currency to get a leg up on tech.
We may still see this.
Now that I’m thinking about it, what *did* Deus use for exchange with all that tech he bought on the station? I doubt it was services of the supers he employs, since the conversation implied this was a quick transaction with no possibility of future interaction. You generally don’t try to rip someone off if you’re planning to still be getting stuff from him a year from now.
Did he manage to get an enormous amount of gold through the gate? Or something similar that he had somehow managed to suss out that’s still rare and valued among the space people?
Blessed Yule to you all, merry we meet, anon we part!
Hey for something strictly transactional, I’d bet she just commissioned a second copy of the painting for her boyfriend, hahaha. For WHEN, not if, he ever learns about who she is.
And she’s got the thing installed with a self immolation techno-spell if he ever so much as lets another sentient lay EYES on the thing, intent wise or quantum entanglement observation style or something.
Well, hopefully. She already expressed worry about these things when they had that photoshoot, that in a world of teleporters and people who can talk to wood and stuff, things are almost certainly bound to get out and about.
… What is a Jotnar?
Presumably something tall. My guess is what Norse himans wiuld call a Jotunn.
In Gems Of War the character King Jotnar is a giant, so there’s a clue.
Jötnar is the plural of Jötunn, giants typically with similar power to the norse gods.
Ligers are BIG KITTEHS. Like, Maximum Chungus. I remember seeing one on Leno. Little hard to express just how big they are, but if you put Andre the Giant next to a football quarterback, you’re in the neighborhood.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDHLwF1hpeD/
My specialty is physics, not biology, but I do remember one person saying we’re more retrovirus than neanderthal. (5-8% vs 2%)
“So when both parents pass that gene on to the offspring, you get a mini tigon, and when neither parent has it, you get a liger, which is basically an Andre the Giant Cat.” -Dave… either way…. its a ginger cat. now, i think we all have seen enough of the internet to know about how ginger cats operate.
Haha, awesome. I actually have a half-giant character who is (large) human sized- although I decided that “half-giant” in this setting doesn’t mean half giant half human, it means they were born a twin, which for giants means the same amount of mass was divided in two, so each twin is half the size they would normally be, IE large human sized.
I also have a character who is half sphinx, half rakshasa, so their cat-form is a liger.
It’s fun thinking about such combinations, and whether you’re going with a genetic model or something more mythic that can work however you want it to.
I had a campaign where a small tribe of orcs was known to live in the woods, not far from a small village. There was sort of a peace treaty going on with veggies swapped for game meat. The dude who did the negotiating spoke fluent orcish. What nobody knew was that his parents were half orcs and he had a full orc brother and two half orc sisters! :D
Wasnt there a British TV show where one of the characters was the son of a giant and a dwarf or gnome or something, so he was just a normal sized guy?
You are thinking, maybe, of ‘Carrot’ from the Discworld series (believe he was just adopted by some dwarves, so not technically or biologically a dwarf)
Could be completely wrong of course (usually am)
No that’s not who I’m thinking of. It was about some guy who worked in an office who somehow got transported to a fantasy world and spent most of his time in a fantasy pub. I just don’t remember the name of the show.
Please, sounds interesting
I just remembered what the show was called. Zapped. It’s about a british office worker who gets a magical amulet in the mail that transports him to this fantasy world called Munty. Came out about 10 years ago.
I thought it was hilarious.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6038226/
That… does look like it would be fun :)
A quick google search confirms what I thought I recalled from a show (either online or TV.)
Neanderthal-human hybrid genetics may have been fatal for male hybrids born to human mothers. It was considered to be one reason the male Neanderthal Y chromosome didn’t survive. (I think I got that right.)
This is Haldane’s Rule. In any interspecies hybrid, if fertility among offspring is limited the offspring whose sex chromosomes match (which is to say the XX females) are the ones most likely to remain fertile.
So there may have been lots and lots of offspring, both male and female, but if all the males were sterile the genetic evidence looks the same as if there were none at all. A few of the female crosses weren’t sterile, but the genetic evidence for that being all of a very small population of hybrids looks exactly the same as the genetic evidence for that being very few of a much larger population of hybrids. We don’t know how likely it was for a female hybrid to be fertile. We only know that some of their offspring are also some of our ancestors.
So Gaxgy has to be naked painting while Max is fully clothed? I request a vote incentive of that!!
Why would she want that?
It should not have taken me this long to realize “Gaxgy” is an anagram of “Gygax”.
I had that thought last week. :)
Hm… could be a lot of things, but systematically testing and evaluating all of digit’s inventions seems like a pretty good option for someone as durable as Gaxgy.
Would chimpanzees not count as non-human Earth-native humanoids?
I like to imagine, to make things even more unclear, that Javelina’s mother is really tall for a goblin, while her father is really short for jötnar.
Otherwise it would be like trying to breed a Great Dane with a Pomeranian.
They have potions to deal with that as Sydney and Frix’s relationship proves.
She is quarter goblin and quarter jötnar. Likely her parents are half-goblin and half jötnar, making it physically easier.
I’m surprised, after the blatant objectification and assumption of her physical inferiority Maxima would be more likely to break Gaxgy’s jaw than consent to anything he suggested. I suspect we will get some hints as to what he offered in a future voter incentive.
To be fair Gaxgy thought she was a Stygian at the time, he wanted to pain her because of her skin being gold, not because of objectification, and he is actually a heroic and good person according to Cora, who she trusts enough with the secret.
Dragon scales most likely, to make supersoldier potions and super healing from the brink of death potions.
We, currently, have no idea what exactly she agreed to, nor what the conditions will be, just that there will be a painting done of her
Distractingly huge or hugely distracting?
OK now I want to know what the other half is.
Orc.
Merry Christmas and Happy Yule Tidings all.
Andre the Liger has a Posse.
In humans females carry the growth suppressing gene and males carry the opposite. So If there was a species of humanoids that people could interbreed with and who had those genes with the opposite parent we could get supersized hybrids.
So a goblin and a giant make an orc? I honestly had her pegged as “ork” with those tusks and thicc bod.
Interbreeding in Earth organisms depends on the compatibility of all the cellular mechanisms. If Earth organisms can interbreed with extraterrestrial organisms, ditto. Unless we add in techno-magic that somehow makes it all work, in which case everything is irrelevant.
Currently we can interbreed lions and tigers because both have 38 chromosomes, and they are relatively closely related on the cat family tree. But donkeys and horses make mules (or hinneys), which are not fertile because the horses have two more chromosomes than donkeys, so that mules and hinneys have aneuploidy, unpaired chromosomes, which prevents fertility.
For a similar reason interbreeding between monkeys and humans doesn’t work, since the genus homo lost a chromosome pair when two monkey chromosomes fused to form genus homo chromosome pair #2. This may be the single most important difference and when people say “chimps and human share 99% of their DNA” they kind of gloss over significant differences like this.
What I think is interesting is that so far all the sexual dimorphism we’ve encountered continues to involve tab A into slot B sort of things. I mean, that seems almost trivial when compared to cellular machinery, but while I can imagine techno-magic to make that happen, the kind of cosmetic changes (besides accommodating sizes) we’re now talking about seem … unrealistic.
It seems likely that the commonalities of earthbound sexual dimorphism are a result of a common chordate ancestor however far back you want to track it. I’m not sure how far back but well before mammals anyway. By the time you get to us Tab A into Slot B is a pretty well established biological trait. For whatever reason you want to assign to it, a measurable subset of humans seem to enjoy the concept of applying their tabs and slots to things outside of their original parameters. An even larger group seems to enjoy thinking about it even if they never engage themselves. We aren’t the only species to engage in this but we do tend to anthropomorphize the concept to the point that as long as we have been thinking about aliens we have wanted them to have sex with us. Any life form that evolves on another planet might share some of the same basic chemistry requirements with us but even thinking that they have sexual dimorphism is unrealistic. Any thought that their tabs and slots might align with ours, much less having a compatible genetic structure is just an entertaining fiction. But that shouldn’t stop us from having fun with the idea.
Hopefully we find out more about this later, likely in an end of the page joke panel stinger.
I hope that the dad was the half-gobbo… cause otherwise… oofta. Or is the mom a Pathfinder gobbo? They are known to be…. stretchy.
Does Max even have a boyfriend? We saw that one generic guy a few times and no more. He seem more like a fling then anything. I just wasnt vibin with them. However with Max and Gax here I am vibin with this. I will be honest Maxima and Gaxgy…..I like them together. I am all on board with MaxGax romance.
Not sure about MaxGax, but agree about lack of vibe with Doctor Fireman, seemed more like he was just someone ‘safe’ she could hang out with but not a longterm relationship (or even a relationship at all)
As a complete aside, I have been playing with MS-Copilot to generate a bunch of pictures, which I have put on my DeviantArt account. Here is an earlier draft. I am not sure why the generator gave me two Peggys; I think the taller Peggy might be Chimyriad instead.
Here is one of the better ones, I think. You are either in a lot of trouble, or this is a recruitment drive; I hope the second is more applicable.
Okay, either I skipped it or no one has asked this. If Javelina is a quarter goblin and a quarter jotnar what’s the rest of her.
Stretchy :P
If you read the replies above you, you will find Dave has answered the question… and you’re the second person to ask it after he did so.
I’ve been reading a crap ton of “cultivator” novels recently, the kind where ordinary people accrue power and gradually become “Immortals” who are like demi-gods, so I’m suddenly curious— is Maxima immortal/ageless? I mean, she’s in her mid 30s, and she doesn’t really look it.
Well, apart from the fact gold doesn’t tarnish, you do know this is drawn story, right?
And there are people in the ‘Real World’ who are in their 60’s who look younger (and not because of cosmetic surgery)