Grrl Power #1422 – A poke in the dark
Never poke a sleeping… Actually, it’s probably okay when she’s more or less pinned under 450 lbs of space boyfriend.
I would have actually given even chances that Sydney’s dreams were totally coherent and had sensible continuity. Although, come to think of it, what she exclaimed upon waking is… true? So I guess there’s every chance that her dreams are sensible affairs.
Happy New Year and hopefully you all got decent Xmas loots. I mostly got dice. A set of Opalite ones, (which are only a 5 to 6.5 on the Mohs scale and I’ve already cracked off the tip of the D4) and some aquamarine Tiger’s Eye, which are 6.5-7, so they’re a bit safer to roll. The D4 is always the one that’s most in danger of breaking, cause it has the thinnest pointy bits on it, and honestly I don’t have a lot of cause to roll those. I usually play strength based fighters and they usually roll D6’s, D8’s, or D10’s for damage. Hmm, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever rolled a D12 in a D&D/Pathfinder game. I was hoping to get Fray up to D12’s by stacking enough size category and natural weapon enhancements on her, but of course, it’s better to roll 2D6’s than it is 1D12. Still, it’s not so much the dice cracking that you have to worry about, so long as you roll them into a slightly soft dice tray, the softer stone dice just have a much better chance of getting scratched up if you roll several at once, like the percentile dice, or if you’re a dumbass and roll a stone D6 with some metal D6’s.
Because I’m sure someone will ask, “Didn’t they start their trip with blonde Harem?” The answer is yes.
Here’s one of Gaxgy’s in progress shots of the painting Maxima promised him. Weird how he draws almost exactly like me.
Seriously though, I’d like to try to do a version of this that actually looks oil painted when it’s done, and preferably not just a Photoshop Oil Paint filter. I bought a paint program called Rebelle, that’s like a paint program. Like Corel Painter, it’s all about simulating natural media. I’ve had it installed for like 6 months and I’ve maybe used it for a total of about 12 minutes. If I was smart, I’d spend 30 minutes every morning painting along with the Bob Ross YouTube stream to familiarize myself with the program and painting techniques in general, but I know I’m not going to do that, so we’ll see how repainting the finished version of this goes.
Patreon doesn’t have a nude version yet, but I’ll try and update this each week until it’s done.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Set up page?
That will be a very happy dragonman when the painting is done :D
now, let’s poke her more for more random trivia
Hot take: because instruments are grouped into families based on how the sound is produced, a didgeridoo is actually a brass instrument.
Given the relative ages of the instruments, isn’t it more accurate to call brass instruments didgeridoo variants? It’s very late on New Years Day (Happy New Year to all who participate), and this is a “last wine before bed” picky post. Peace to you!
But you agree on the core presumption that the didgeridoo is the Tibetan throat singer of whatever group it is in?
I find no fault with the core presumption, but do note that if an first Australian elder disagreed I would concede to their greater and deeper knowledge of the facts.
The Didgeridoo is just a big kazoo ;P
No, in a kazoo the vibrating paper substitutes for the reed in a wind instrument. Nothing like that in a didgeridoo.
I mean, a saxophone is classified as a wood instrument, so something else being the other way isn’t that out there.
A saxophone has a wooden reed in the mouthpiece that generates the sound before the rest of the brass modifies and directs the sound.
It’s played using circular breathing. And it’s definitely a woodwind instrument. It doesn’t have a the resonator piece that brass instruments use to produce their sound. It’s literally just a hollowed out small trunk or large branch of eucalyptus (traditionally). Even the non-traditional ones are just a hollow tube made at the appropriate length and desired shape.
Woodwinds have vibrating reeds (this is why saxamaphones are woodwinds), which a didgeridoo doesn’t. A didgeridoo produces sound by sympathetic vibration of the lips with a column of air, which makes it a brass instrument.
Flutes are considered woodwinds as well, though. At least, they were when I was taking band class.
Okay, inspired to go and find the Hornbostel–Sachs musical instrument classification system. Flutes and panpipes are edge-blown aerophones, a subset of non-free aerophones, where the vibrating column of air is contained by the body of the instrument. Then there are reed aerophones, what we commonly think of as woodwinds. Then there are rumpets, still non-free aerophones, which includes the traditional brass instruments such as trumpet and tuba, along with our friend the didgeridoo.
If saxophones are woodwinds and digeridoos are brass, then just maybe the nomenclature is no longer relevant.
I was told that the “wood” is in reality the reed.
Well, combining with another comment I saw further up, perhaps we should group them into “Reeds” and “Digeridoos” (Since the didgeridoo was invented earlier than most of what we consider brass instruments)
Just like with ‘berries’
Half of what you think of as ‘berries’ are not, and some that you believe aren’t, are (a banana is technically a ‘berry’)
And blackberries and raspberries are technically NOT berries :). Even though they have berry right in the name.
Yups :)
Forgot to add that until after posting :(
Circular breathing is the technique used to maintain the pitch, not to create it. The pitch is created by vibrating your lips into the instrument, which the instrument then amplifies. That makes it a brass instrument. A tuba player, using tuba techniques, would be able to produce a recognizable note from a didgeridoo. The Alphorn, also made of wood, is also a brass instrument. In fact, most of the earliest “brass” instruments were made from wood, horn, and other materials that are a bit easier to work with than metals are.
And all of this confusion is because we named the family after material, but define it based on something else entirely.
Playing with Sharp dices sounds dicey but I guess Dave knows how to roll with it.
Happy new year everyone.
Forget military discipline, Deshantis has zero manners. =_=
I’m imagining a Sydney tirade response that could peel paint off the walls…
With an angry Maxima looming up behind Harem to finish the job
I think Daph demonstrated a LONG time ago that she’s a sneak thief with no sense of personal boundaries, so this should not surprise anyone. What I find important about this scene is panel 9, where it’s clear she finds Sydney glommed by Frix to be absolutely adorable.
She gonna finally talk to someone about her super secret extra body?
IF she was gonna do that, why would she tell the biggest blabber in the Galaxy?
Sydney can not keep a secret!
Because they’re friends? Possibly best friends. From Harem’s perspective Sydney is possibly her closest friend at ARC. Maybe you could make the argument for Jiggawatt or Heatwave, but Sydney is definitely who she talks to the most. Also why else wake her up to talk in the middle of the space night (or whatever space time happens to sync with Sydney’s sleep cycle)? I assume for an attempt at privacy.
Privacy? When Sydney doesn’t sleep alone?
Harem assumed Sydney was sleeping alone, which is why her initial attempt to look for Sydney was in her room, not in Frix’s room.
Wait no, ignore that post. I was TOTALLY wrong there and misread what was happening in the comic. She was going to Frix’s room, not Sydney’s room, then vorped INSIDE Frix’s room.
Sorry sorry sorry. Bad reading comprehension on my part.
No worries :)
That Maxima painting is reminiscent of a Nagel from the 80s.
It does, yeah. Gosh, I would love to see Maxima painted in the style of Olivia de Berardinis’s pinup art.
What was so important that Harem had to break in?
Regarding D12s: the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition system gives a very high chance for rolling d12s; as its tagline goes, it’s Fast! Furious! Fun!
I have a “blessed” d12 that I loved to use when I still rolled physical dice, and which my GMs hated to see. It had a slight physical flaw that caused it to more often than would be thought possible but not all the time roll an 11 or 12. It wasn’t purposely made that way, that’s just how it came out of the mold. Using it wasn’t cheating to my mind, but it certainly tipped the odds in my favour.
Since when did Sydney’s balls start to sleep separate from her?
The first time we saw it happened, they still settled in a circle around her, not a foot away (and before anyone mentions the furry blanket, they could have easier expanded their orbit to include him, like they did when Sydney hugged Maxi’s legs)
They move at her mental direction (within range). She sent them off to the side out of the way, and they were still there when they went into sleep mode.
The only time they hadn’t remained in orbit was when Cree cemented them (plus when she was still using Mr Tubey, which was basically the same thing, just mobile)
We’ve seen her specifically direct the orbs to get out of the way at least once (p1272).
Okay, forgot that :(
Wonder how long it will take readers to realize this was not the Daphne who came along for the ride (and why she switched)
Daphne has a nearly infinite range and just needs to know a location well. Her being there gives her a lock to bring another her to herself. Then toss in that a missing Daphne might be noticed, so she rotates them to make it seem they are all on Earth.
Earlier in the comic that was emphatically NOT the case. her limit was like 100 or 300 miles, from a place she knew to a place she knew. That same comic had her riding in a taxi to get somewhere because of the distance involved.
that may have changed now. Which I find amusing.
No, the reason she needed to use a taxi was because she wasn’t familiar enough with her starting location to *VORP* back
And the question wasn’t ‘how‘ but ‘why‘
As for ‘a missing Daphne might be noticed’, noticed by whom? SmugD? If he is as smart as people believe him to be, then he would know everything about this whole trip already (even if it was because she told him herself)
I brought something like this up earlier when they started this little space adventure and brought Daphne along. They’re essentially boosting her range to anywhere this space ship travels once she’s gotten familiar with enough with its layout which may have just happened. Not to mention if they land on a separate planet or satellite outpost. She might even be able to port to Dabbler’s star forge as far as we know. I have to imagine this was an intentional move from Max much like bringing the engineering super that naturally learns to absorb alien technology.
Hmmm… Maxima a la Nagel… I like it!
Do Tibetan Throat Singers sound like a Mongolian Throat Singer, just with an accent?
yes. a British one ;P
I have always used a D8 instead of a D4, and divide by 2; D4s don’t roll worth a damn. And they are the only thing that hurts worse than a Lego when detected in the dark by your sharpthing-detecting sensory organs, also known as your bare feet.
I like the “modern” d4 design that’s just a cube with two sides rounded off with a semicylinder. It rolls more like a barrel-d4. I do feel kinda sad for not using all the platonic solids, but not having literal caltrops on the floor is worth it.
I was looking for this comment. I also prefer the rounded-end style, then the barrel style. IMO more truly random than a pyramid that doesn’t really “roll”. Bone-style (basically a barrel except shaped like a bone) is also neat for certain role-play situations.
But if you want a true rolling D4, they make 8-sided and 12-sided D4s. It helps if these are a different style than your regular D8s and D12s to avoid accidentally rolling a D4 on a D8 weapon attack.
I wouldn’t poke Sydney even with her pinned, she has shown she can and will use her orbs as blunt force damage.
Wind instruments are generally classified by the way the sound is produced; not by what they are made of. Brass instruments produce sound by buzzing the lips in a mouthpiece; a medieval cornet was turned from a single piece of wood, mouthpiece and all, and had finger holes like a recorder (valves being ‘way in the future). Woodwinds are generally made of wood, but I have heard an extraordinary flute solo played on a glass flute… They produce their sound with one or two vibrating reeds, or by a fipple (recorder) or transverse mouthpiece (flute). Saxophones were a deliberate attempt to combine the sounds of woodwinds and brass instruments by Adolphe Sax, who made some SERIOUSLY weird instruments (like a trumpet with 13 bells, one for each chromatic note in an octave), but are still woodwinds, despite being made of brass, because they produce sound with a reed. Oppositely, a didgeridoo is classified as a brass instrument, despite being made of wood, because the sound is produced by buzzing lips.
+1 – Exactly.
Hardness denotes resistance to scratching, not chipping. Jade is considered a tough stone, supposedly it was used as an anvil in china.
From AI
While Diamond is the hardest (resists scratching), Jade (Nephrite/Jadeite) and Corundum (Ruby/Sapphire) are top for toughness (resisting chipping/breaking), with Jade often considered the toughest due to its interlocking fibers, while Diamond is very hard but brittle, making Jade the top contender for pure toughness, followed closely by Corundum, then Quartz and Garnet, then Opal, ranking them by how well they absorb impact rather than just scratch resistance.
Next time you buy stone dice, consider toughness.
See miss places comment on Ai vomit. Why are you GenAi people like this? No one asked for an answer you did not know.
The AI is mostly correct, but does leave out the more obscure information not available from a surface level scrape, or additional prompts that someone familiar with the gem-trade would know. AI, as a surface level primer, has its uses, similar to Wikipedia. But due diligence needs to be made to verify critical information.
In reference to the above. Nephrite is a true fibrous mineral, while jadeite tends to be more granular with interlocking crystals.
Missing from the above is mention of serpentine (precursor to nephrite) and marsitsit, another mineral the has jadeite as a component.
In the process of providing educated prompts, I was reminded that jadeite is comprised of pyroxene, and I remembered part of the garnet super-family is comprised of pyrope. Quick search revealed that Pyroxene and pyrope can occur in similar environments. This led me to learn about ecologite, which I will be reading up more on, when I have the time.
Member of the International Gemological Society: Member since January 4, 2010.
The AI can also be completely off the mark. Evidence: that time it said to put glue in pizza to stop the cheese from sliding off.
Without seeing the original prompt and AI response, I do not have the necessary context.
If the glue in question is a collagen protein binder in a water carrier, with no other non-food grade additives, it would be safe to use in food. Though at this point, might as well mix in the collagen proteins with the tomato sauce directly: A less runny sauce results in less topping slide. Collagen is used as a thickening agent in stews and gravies, A precursor to making gelatin, and as one of many early glues.
I asked Google what type of oil my rental car used. I foolishly trusted the AI response because this was a very simple question with a direct answer. I went in and bought the oil, which was oddly obscure but I figured because the rental was a hybrid.
I get out and look at the oil cap and it said standard 5W-30.
AI frequently gets extremely basic facts wrong. It frequently hallucinates answers and generally sees anything posted to Reddit as an authentic and good source.
AI is substantially, overwhelmingly less reliable than Wikipedia. It’s nothing at all like it. Wikipedia is actually fairly reliable – more reliable than the actual Encyclopedia Britannica.
That is where the due diligence comes in. You do not rely on the information, only use it as a spring board for further inquiry.
Oooor you just set your default search engine to Google Verbatim and never see another AI overview unless you go out of your way to find it, and search via keywords like the olden days of the interwebs. (And you avoid contributing to all the bad environmental impacts of AI by being one less user of it.)
The AI we have at this point in time are not true “intelligence” so much as they are glorified pattern finding and prediction machines. They’re just really, really good at figuring out what word should come next. Except when they’re pancakes.
(That was a joke, by the way. I subbed a random word in place of “not.”)
Your second paragraph described Google itself
Actually… putting glue on pizza is an old advertising trick, not to stop the cheese from sliding off but to fake the long-stretchy look
My parents were jewelers, still are. We had a store for 15 years. I used to re-size rings as a teenager. I’m no expert, but I’ve been around rocks and minerals. The Google search was just easy, and detailed enough for a cursory answer.
Hard vs tough is a distinction often missed for many categories of materials. Glass is harder than steel, many crystals are harder than steel. Steel is tougher than most, depending on temper of course.
If Dave wants rock dice with a long service life, he should look for tough stones without internal fractures, and then roll them individually on a soft mat, like felt or leather. And he should store them in a case that keeps them from touching.
I’m 47, so I guess GenAI started in the late 70s. 1970s, don’t confuse it with 1950 years ago.
I would say my biggest sin in my first post was being pedantic. Most people know hardness and toughness are different, but I spelled it out anyways.
Happy New Year everyone! May it treat you all well!
Opal is, for all intents, fractured glass with water imbedded in the fractures, plus a bit of uranium (for natural opal). Yes uranium, forming opal pulls dissolved uranium into the stone, so all natural opal is a bit radioactive. Look it up, it can actually be used to clean up deep hot water by injecting sodium silicate.
So yes, fractured glass has a tendency to break easily, chip and get scratched. Which is why there’s such a thing as an opal doublet/triplet. In case you didn’t guess, I do have a great fondness for opals.
As for why Harem is waking Sidney, I’d suspect it’s for advice on “relations” with alien guys. She’s been getting very touchy feely with Big Red.
Why would you inflict GenAi vomit on people. If they want it, they can poke the stochastic math magic 8 ball themselves.
get over yourself and stop assuming everyone’s using Ai, and even if they are, why do you care? Take your fight to where it really matters, not commenters on a webcomic
It literally said “from AI” in the comment.
There are plenty of good reasons to care. AI is unreliable, contributing to mental health issues, unethical wholesale theft of people who actually create things, replacing huge portions of the Internet with recursive AI slop and starting to make chunks of the Internet less or entirely unusable, destroying the environment, raising all of our power bills and about to tank the entire economy.
Anyone who is actually paying attention should care about using AI at this point. It’s demonstrably extremely harmful.
Look again: PD didn’t mention AI at all
But then again, reading your post shows the same intelligence as evidenced in Dorje Sylas‘s post
I disagree with that last panel. It’s not *that* reassuring that her dream and reality are consistent, knowing her :D
Is it just me, or does Harem remind anyone else of Motherboard from Cyberchase?
I’m impressed with how physically resilient Sydney has become after all her training and conditioning. She’s resting peacefully under a massively larger partner… seriously, Sydney prior to joining the team would have died, literally unable to breathe.
It took me a bit to figure out what was going on but I don’t believe she’s under Frix, they’re just cuddling. It only looks like Frix is on top of her because of perspective and how much much larger her is.
Before Bloodragers were a thing, made a sorcerer/Barbarian/Dragon Disciple with a focus on GreatAxe to give d12s some love. (Barbarian and DD using d12 for Hp)
Sydney is pinned under 450 lb of [furry] space boyfriend, and all I can think about is her getting heat stroke.
She might like it that way, most ladies I’ve known are like cats, they like to sleep extra-toasty. Me on the other hand like a cool sleeping area, since I tend to sweat in my sleep. I woken up many times in our early days that I’d wake up with my newlywed wife draped over me, I’m drenched in sweat, and a slurping sound when I’d get up. Gross I know…
These days I dropped over $80 on a electric snuggle blanket for her in hopes I won’t wake up like that, badly dehydrated, and she can wrap herself up, heat on, and I can sleep in my underwear again ;) LOL
it’s the middle of summer where I am and I sleep with two blankets… and a fan for airflow…
Yep, That’s her. I’ve gotten 1st degree burn from the same water she complains that it’s not hot enough. (160F) When we were both still drinking coffee like it’s our only lease in life, she’d drink it piping hot just made while I added an ice cube. She’s from the south while I grew up near the great lakes. I’m in a T-shirt in 60F weather while she looks like she’s ready to hike to the north pole…
Tibetans do throat-singing, too? I thought it was just Mongolians. There’s a band called the “Hu” that has a few music vids out on YouTube. Speaking of tubes.
After listening to both, Sydney is right as they do sound similar.
Order of the Stick has a comic about how pretty much only Barbarians use D12s, making it the loneliest of the dice.
If your D4s don’t look like D12s you’re living in the dark ages
So rolling 2xD6 will, of course, only range from 2-12 instead of 1-12, but perhaps more importantly, they produce a bell-curve distribution of numbers: 7 is by far more common result than 2 or 12. D12 is even all across the distribution, naturally. What I liked to do was roll up character stats using 2D6, get reliably normal stats, then play with a D12 to get outrageous results. More spectacular successes *and* failures that way.
Called it…..
So I’m assuming that Harem is able to move her bodies to wherever her other bodies are? I’m just confused about that because she wasn’t able to do something like that when they were on Alar Prime.
iirc she was getting her wires crossed on alar prime because her powers are apparently close enough to either the Alari’s soul network thing or some system used by the world destroyers sydney tango’d with to confuse the body that got sucked in through the portal till she was back on earth and could process the collected info with all 6 bodies in tandem and figure out it was a “too many bodies” case. (potentially if she went back now she’d be fine, maybe that’s what harems about to try here? cause she likely knows the Aetherium causeway Syd has can go to Alar Prime)
The problem on Alari was the portal was flawed and sent them forward in time (53 days?). So that particular Harem copy was linked to the other copies back through the portal and to the copies present in the new timeline. Assuming 5 total copies normally (ignoring the 6th copy debate), the one on Alari was suddenly interfacing with nine other copies in two different timelines, and one of the “future” copies was the same version. Also during that brief time she “downloaded” the memories from the “future” copies because they were able to use that information to change the future so to speak.
She’s always been able to do that, that’s one reason why she was chosen for this trip
The other was near instant communicationing
Oh all people, Harem should know that you don’t poke sleeping tiger curled up with her mate.
Pro tip – play games that only need D6s. Your bank account will thank you for it, and they’re about the only dice that hurt less than Lego bricks if you tread on them.
Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t have a lot of dice – there’s quite a few where you can end up rolling dozens of D6s, see especially Champions.
And then you play Warhammer/40k that only uses D6s. Your bank account screams in terror.
I prefer to think of Tibetan throat singers as a capella didgeridoos, but you do you, Syd.
Speaking of Bob Ross. Odd that it’s the second comic today to mention him. Between failures being the other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Cjsnq8kVU Happy 2026 and Enjoy!
450lbs is a lot of weight and would likely not be very comfortable if pressed entirely down on someone. Even Weighted blankets need to be bought according to a persons existing body weight to prevent medical issues. Sydney is, afaik, a normal human so Frix is probably not putting his entire body weight on her.
From the image, only one arm and one leg are on Sydney. And not even the full weight of the arm and leg because they are also resting on the floor. Sydney is basically lying in a “tunnel” formed by the arm and leg. Her body is not supporting much weight at all. But she is still “pinned” by her 450-lb space boyfriend.
once when a friend tried to wake me I lept into a standing position, grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him while saying “beware the water!” before collapsing back into sleep.
Something about her response being “agree” is really good
Normal people’s dreams are weird and strange and inexplicable. But Sydney isn’t normal- she is weird and strange and yada yada yada when she’s awake. So for her, a “strange” dream would be the most boring thing that most of us can imagine- like she’s a CPA or actuary and goes to an office and does paperwork for 8 hours, gossips with Marge and Betty at lunch, and then goes home to a 1-bedroom apartment in the tristate-suburbs. Also she lives with 5 cats and has no boyfriend because why not?
I don’t know that you could include Sydney, due to the potential influence of the orbs, but it would be interesting to do a properly done survey of dream content in people who meet the criteria for ADHD versus people who meet some definition of normal. My ADHD is pretty mild but my dreams are often more vivid than those of other people I talk to. There is also more liminal spaces content. You probably couldn’t get such a thing funded as it probably doesn’t have any practical applications but it would be a fun research project.