Grrl Power #1433 – A handful of complaints
For this page, I did google “how long do boobs take” or… something along those lines. Obviously the answer varies from person to person, and in a the cruelest twist of the knife, the age that they actually start growing varies by years, a fact that is no doubt responsible for all sorts of insecurities. If you’re the first girl in your class, I assume all the other girls get envious while you turn into a bundle of self-consciousness, and if you’re the last girl, I can only imagine the derisive remarks from the popular enboobened mean girls and boys who are jerk-butts.
Sydney is clearly trying to convince herself that big boobs are dumb. She knows the holo-boobs are temporary, and while she also knows that Frix could probably medical her up a permanent enhancement, like I said, she doesn’t particularly suffer from A-cup angst. She might be able to talk herself around to a B-cup, but among all the other reasons not to do it, she’s a very public figure and she probably wouldn’t be excited to read all the comments online about it.
All that said, Sydney’s next question will be, “So do the showers have holo-projectors in them?” She already knows they have full-length steam-free mirrors, much to her horror. Fortunately they’re optional. They’re actually part of the holo system, which does, in fact, mean there are scanners of some sort in the showers. Because Cora and crew are perverts… by our Terran and especially American standards. No scanners in the toilets though. They’re space perverts, not German. But while Sydney’s not thrilled with watching herself in a full-length mirror while she’s sudsing her gunge, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to have fun with holo-jumblies in the shower. Especially if holo-system can touch up any areas she’s not fully happy with.
Hey, quick question. Is the web page slow for you guys? I can’t figure it out, because on my work computer, and the laptop I used when I was visiting my parents’ house (which I now use in our game room when I’m posting the comic some nights) the web page is unbelievably slow. Like, 20-30 seconds to refresh the page. When I’m posting the comic, I keep getting messages from WordPress that I’ve lost connection to the server and saving is disabled, and that pops on and off and I have to wait to get the new post updated. My computer is connected to the router with ethernet, and the laptop is on wi-fi. But here’s the thing – If I check the page on my phone using the same wi-fi connection, the page comes right up. Same thing on my wife’s phone. And when I checked the page on my phone using some business’s wi-fi, it came right up. I’ve tried Firefox and chrome on my work machine and laptop, and I can’t figure out what the heck is going on. Maybe it’s some plugin I’m using since both machines are running basically the same configuration, but I couldn’t guess which one might be causing it, since I’m not running a “make your own personal website dog-ass slow” plugin, but I thought I’d see if the page was really slow for anyone else.
Here is Gaxgy’s painting Maxima promised him. Weird how he draws almost exactly like me.
I did try and do an oil painting version of this, by actually re-painting over the whole thing with brush-strokey brushes, but what I figured out is that most brushy oil paintings are kind of low detail. Sure, a skilled painter like Bob Ross or whoever can dab a brush down a canvas and make a great looking tree or a shed with shingles, but in trying to preserve the detail of my picture (eyelashes, reflections, etc) was that I had to keep making the brush smaller and smaller, and the end result was that honestly, it didn’t really look all that oil-painted. I’ll post that version over at Patreon, just for fun, but I kind of quit on it after getting mostly done with re-painting Max.
Patreon has a no-dragon-bikini version of of the picture as well, naturally.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
I feel like most of your page load time is probably going to be loading from the over a hundred different sites that your javascript is farmed out to, especially since the vast majority of those are not referenced directly, so the DNS lookup can’t even start until after the javascript page that wants them is loaded, and there’s something like ten levels of nesting.
pixel.tapad.com tends to be reported for an extended period of time. I don’t know if there’s a problem with that particular site, or if it just happens to get maligned disproportionately because browsers generally only report one site at a time and most of this stuff happens in parallel, but there’s a serialization step at the end and it’s not going to stop showing a site until that serialization gets through the responses which doesn’t necessarily happen in the same order as results come back. Also, pixel.tapad.com is very easy to read while others in the set are not, so it’s more memorable than many of them.
Nope, not the reason. I use a java blocker. ONLY Grrl Power is loading. I still have thirty seconds to nearly two minutes to get full download. Visually it is the Gravatars and the Cast images across the top of the page that take all that time to fill in, the Gravatars filling in within the thirty seconds usually, while the Cast images all pop up at the same time, however long that takes. I typically refresh the page, then check my email in another tab, then return after a few minutes.
Now that is not saying that other jacked in the head shit sites are not interfering in the download process. But I only have three sites. I have google-analytics.com is hard blocked by being marked untrusted, then I have intergi.com in the category of undecided, so blocked by default until I give temporary or permanent authorization to operate on my system. Then there are three of the five trackers that I block as well, two being amazon, while the other is another google tracker.
So if you are having additional sites interact with your system, loading at the same time as grrlpower then you are not filtering the proper sites.
WordPress. Yuck!
Check the php.ini file if it’s in the hosting panel. Make sure post_max_size is bigger than your biggest page and the upload_max_filesize is the same size or smaller. Bigger post_max_size is better. Memory limit should be up there, like 256M anyhow.
If you can’t do this, call the provider and have them raise the limits.
Might be simpler to just upload by FTP and then add the update. If you can do that.
This feels more like the ‘suddenly gaining a tail’ issue. Part of it is dealing with the new aspect especially since it is right on your mind and the other half is trying to adjust for it in a few minutes when everyone else already had a lifetime or a couple of years getting used to it.
Give it enough time like a training regiment and eventually people will adjust and not even notice the strain anymore. Though considering these are breasts and Sidney had always wanted a bigger pair… The increased notice and focus on them will probably last a bit longer than if she suddenly grew a tail.
Didn’t she have tail… or memory of one…. from her Lapha/Tenri situation?
I can attest, the years of difference does exactly what you guessed it does for self esteem and dumb teenager remarks. I myself had to slap (or otherwise threaten the manhood of) at least 3 guys in my class cuz I was one of the first to start “growing”. Only took me a couple months, though. Bra shopping was a nightmare and a half for costs and wasted bra sizes
I remember one girl in my class that was an early bird. She just kept on growing to the point where her parents got her a reduction twice because of how big she got!
You know, I figure that that sort of hard-light holo-tech was probably developed, and then led to a HUGE increase in the popularity of body-mods (by various means). Like, being able to take a version of yourself and tweak, tweak, tweak, view, experience? That’s gotta do SOMETHING to anyone’s psyche, unless you’re the most self-confident person around.
small blemishes, musculature, skeletal anatomy like shoulder width, height, or jaw projection, depth of forehead ridges, length of horns or fingers, tails, scales, skin patterns…
Even if those sorts of cosmetic modifications already existed (via genetics or cybernetics), the hard-light tech must have severely increased the demand that they become cheaper, safer, and more readily available.
Even just on this page, Dave’s done a great job of showing that Sydney, while aware that she really doesn’t want the ‘bazonga blitz’ package, might very well try out a small boost, or maybe something with her hips or legs, and find herself tempted towards changing herself. I imagine a lot of people suffer some small amount of dysphoria about themselves (again, tiny things- like, I’ve got a little benign mole under one armpit that gets annoying, or would’ve liked to have inherited my grandpa’s nose bridge), but have psychological coping systems because changing those things would be more trouble than coping with the dysphoria. But with the sort of widely available super space modding, suddenly a lot of those barriers vanish.
I don’t think, were I put in this sort of situation where I could ‘take it for a test-spin, that I’d be able to avoid the temptation to get a set of horns growing and a tail installed. Possibly even some scales. Like, I’m not angry or sad or experiencing distress that I DON’T have those features, but if they were available, I think I’d WANT them.
I mean, if you look at the general alien population that is probably what’s going on. On Earth we’re mostly seeing supers so that’s the standard we set, but unlike some comic worlds regular non-supers are mostly normal with perhaps the motivator of exercise being a bit more common due to all the super model grade people around.
Aliens however, the human-like ones at least, even just out and about random people, all seem to fall into some version of attractive and it’s safe to assume most other aliens are far more in their ‘idealized’ looks than would be natural. It’s a pretty safe bet that the general galactic population has pretty consistently engaged in experimentation and perfection of their preferred look on a wide scale, and culturally has gotten it to where things are normalized and it’s pretty expected for someone to look the way they want and not be questioned or stigmatized for ‘having work done’.
I would think if you were living in a society where “having work done” was widely and inexpensively available it would lose a lot of its stigma. Being all natural could become a stigma or a status symbol.
Counterpoint possibility: Having that much control over appearance can do a bunch of different things. Yes, it can absolutely have negative impacts, especially on minds already obsessed about appearance and minor flaws, but it can also be an opportunity to experience what you think you want and realize it’s not all great, see: “Ow, my back hurts.”
The social impact is a bigger deal, would be my guess. If body mods are totally normalized and ordinary and affordable to the point where there’s no longer as much monetary benefit to convincing people to hate their own appearance, there’s potential for less social pressure to meet beauty standards outside of whatever subculture you end up investing in. That can do major good for preventing people from developing as much in the way of body image issues.
I’d think Harem would have a super physique in which would keep her from getting back issues :p That and all the working out.
Hey syd: Just remember – “more than a handful is more than enough.”
If you’re having a problem on one machine only and it’s happening on both Firefox and Chrome, it’s probably either malware or a Wi-Fi driver issue or some kind of sketchy DNS redirection. Those two browsers use entirely different plug-in architectures, so something affecting them both as a plug-in would have to be part of another installed program, such as either a security/antivirus application, password manager, wallet app, a functionality add-on using a browser-to-system hook like Java or Flash, or, well, malware. I’m not saying it *can’t* be legitimate (again: antivirus, Java), but whatever it is, it’s global to the machine.
You also mentioned it happens on two different PCs, so whatever it is, it’s affecting both, but it’s something that’s not present (or built different) on your phones. Does it also happen when you take the laptop out of the use and use someone else’s WiFi? Does it happen if someone else brings their laptop to your house?
Anyway… my first suspects would be either your security package’s web filtering, with malware as the second possibility, especially if the two PCs talk to each other a lot or share USB drives back and forth.
Well, the website image is coming up pretty quickly, but yeah, now that you mentioned it, *something* else on the page has been still loading for quite some time. I suspect that your desktop and laptop browsers may just be giving indicators of a slow page (like not loading all pics first) that a phone browser would be optimized to hide.
*checks indicator on Firefox tab*
Yup, still loading. And…… literally, it finally stopped as I’m typing this. Total of a few minutes. Yeah, something’s slowing the site down.
Plugging the page source into ChatGPT or Claude can give few suggestions on POSSIBLE problem scripts and solutions.
Why not just use the Developer Mode in Chrome to directly measure load times for all elements on the page?
The longest loading elements for me in descending order:
ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com – 7 seconds, failed.
ps.eyeota.net/pixel – 813 ms
id5-sync.com/gm/v3 – 703 ms
The thought of boobs coming in reminds me of sixth grade or so. There were the girls who seems to have enormous boobs at the time but most of the early bloomers grew into their bosoms and most of them are average build. I can’t say that I am proud of how we sixth grade boys handled that at the time. A flip side is that some people blossom late. One of my relatives was barely a B cup into her twenties. Her breasts started growing when she got pregnant and after the baby came they just kept on growing. She ended up getting a breast reduction as they got uncomfortably large. They still grew some after the reduction and in her forty’s she is back to around a D cup.
gonna whack herself with them lmao, the softest concussion
Hmmm. There is lifting a foot and there is driving your own feet further into the ground. As a classic fridge-logician I am now wondering what the arena floor is made of. Must be some damn tough stuff.
If going for shock value, it would have been sufficient to simply rise from the footprint and carry on with the fight. The announcers would have been just as shocked and awed by the demonstration of toughness.
Ixah!Maxima is already known to be strong, but she didn’t have to tip her hand quite so early on how strong. She could have saved that surprise for a later opponent.
She’s not applying force to the ground, she’s flying. She’s probably habitually flying even when she IS walking on the ground, if you could fly by a mere act of will you’d probably get so used to doing it that walking was just flying while going through the motions.
Maxima: What? He’s not so heavy.
I’m surprised she didn’t just go through his foot like he stomped on a humanoid nail.
Also I’m picturing his look of surprise like when you pick up a big cat and they look shocked and offended that you’re able to do so.
The difference is that in terms of firmness, Maxima and U.M.B.Rage are both probably considerably more durable than the ground, so I’m guessing Maxima was driven down into her own herself-sized hole as part of the footprint.
Page loaded quickly on my Amazon Fire 10 tablet.
About 20 to 30 seconds on my Windows 10 desktop.
1pm CDT.
No issues loading here! Texas, Firefox, Ethernet connection. Loads in less than second. I use a VPN and it is currently active. Sometimes, that gives me issues.
I had D’s before I was 12 and triple D’s by 13. It was miserable being so big so soon, for sure. I had a reduction at 21 and regret absolutely nothing! My back is much happier, though the scoliosis I developed has not entirely gone away and never will. I am happy with my C’s! Also, wearing normal clothes is wonderful. I’m 5’6″ and wear a medium most of the time. Before, I had to wear XL shirts or they’d look like midriff shirts (which I NEVER liked). Ah, the joys of being human (said with absolute sarcasm-I’d much rather be pretty much anything else, thank you).
Enormous bazooms are an enormous responsibility, Sydney Halo Scoville, Junior.
The page loads almost instantaneously for me. However, I use a hard line ethernet connection with a router. This has the advantage that the router is limited to the number of connections it services and is optimized for that number. A wi-fi system will attempt to service an unlimited number of connections so it can be overloaded if too many things are trying to connect. It is also susceptible to electromagnetic interference. Even worse, since wi-fi eliminates the single most effective security device known to mankind, i.e. the front door, it is subject to unwanted connections from outside the house. (I live in an apartment. If I turn on wi-fi for my system I can see 25 other wi-fi networks.) This could be either neighbors “borrowing” your wi-fi or nefarious individuals trying to attack your system. This is all in addition to any internal quirks your PCs have that your phones don’t. I live less than 15 miles from you so I doubt there is any type of network issue.
Seeing Sydney with big boobs is so weird to look at, make it go away!
Nope. Forever!
As someone who still remembers my high school chemistry, and also is capable of spending five seconds on Google to double check that I’m right, fat is not mostly water.
Fat is mostly aliphatic chains (carbon atoms chained together with hydrogen sticking out of the sides) bound together with a carboxylic acid part on one end that links to more complicated organic molecule parts like the glycerol that binds together triglycerides. Fat is less dense than water, it floats in water when it isn’t stuck to something else heavier than water by hydrophobic attraction or other chemical binding.
Different boobs may be differently dense depending on how much glandular and other tissue there is, but the fat part makes boobs float in water (be less dense than water).
One of the ways to detect fake boobs is that they don’t float as much in water.
To quote South Park:
“Bebe is so cool.”
I can’t accept “hard light” is not only painting a 3D picture, but is also pressing/pulling down on her body physically. It’s an optical illusion, even if it is called “hard”.
It’s not straining her back, unless it’s psychologically doing the work on what her eyes perceive.
I can’t accept “hard light” is not only painting a 3D picture, but is also pressing/pulling down on her body physically. It’s an optical illusion, even if it is called “hard”.
It’s not straining her back, unless it’s psychologically doing the work on what her eyes perceive.
They’re aboard a sci-fi spaceship, the projector may be tied into the ship’s artificial gravity to simulate the weight.
As far as I understand the hard-light is essentially a forcefield made of some kind of excited photons or something like that which makes them temporarily act more like matter.
Then the force field is simply pushing down the appropriate amount to simulate a given amount of gravitic pull.
The first time I met my wife she was only 17 and too young for a 22 y/o me. 2 years later when we met again she had gone from a “B” to a “C” and was embarrassed by it. When we got married she was 20, 99 lbs, and still a “C.” After our first child she shot up to a “DD” and complained about it all the time. Bra’s cost nearly double, I was doing shoulder massages often, and her favorite tube tops were not a good idea anymore. Sydney suddenly went from cute to sexy, but wasn’t ready for the sudden change in how she has to move, going from an “A” to a “C+” was a bad choice, but fun to watch. “How do I get them to move in opposite directions?” It’s all in the shoulders ;) but in the words of Obe-Wan Kenobe, “Don’t try it…”
Try turning on the phone personal hot spot and switching the computer with the wi-fi to use that instead. Suspect the load time is an issue with your ISP.
Max seems to have increased her strength and invulnerability some ~5 orders of magnitude since Arc-Swat’s first rumble (page https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-258 and beyond). Vehemence gave her a bit of a run for her money and he was nowhere near a 70 kiloton robot.
BTW, DougO, your link to page 209 (on the 02-05 page), only cost me about 4 hrs rereading that entire first fight arc. Still enjoyable.
Vehemence had far more than just size going for him: he’d just been powered up by the energy from a massive super-powered brawl. A 70-kiloton robot is just a 70-kiloton robot.
We have some decent indicators from that fight what V’s relative strength was. Lifting Stalwart (while he was gravity amped to space shuttle weight) a bit with a punch, the blowback when he punched Max in the nose and made her take a step back. Skulker is correct – she’s showing as MUCH stronger here, getting closer to being in line with her Tsar-Bomba scale of output to take down the Fel cruiser.
Those things happened BEFORE he absorbed a MASSIVE ton of additional energy fighting Maxima.
V was nearly Max’s level when he faced off with her due to the super-fight before V came out. When Max blew his arm off, he surpassed her. It was Sydney’s distractions that saved Max by then. Dab’s boob bounce, Sydney’s light-hook choking him, and then the water main drowning him all combined to reduce V’s level enough to end the fight.
That depends on what you mean by “surpassed her.” Physically she was still capable of being stronger than him. She only started losing because he brought out the electric attack and she needed to max out her armor. THEN he used his aura and forced everyone to start fighting again, getting more and more boosted until Sydney cut him off… and even AFTER that, once the electricity was cut off Max was STILL stronger than him. He was, by that point, VASTLY beyond the level of strength he used to punch Stalwart or any other thing we could use as a metric, and she still outdid him.
Max isn’t truly strong, she has the ability of tactile levitation, How else could she lift a 17,000 lbs ambulance with 3 people in it one handed without it rolling over on her, or lift a highway support column and use it like a pepper grinder on V. She no doubt switch to boost her ability to full strength to lift his foot off her, then I suspect she’s going to use him like a club on the ground. Like she did with Dabbler’s master “Tom” when he poked her with a finger. If I recall the first thing Tom said was “How? The physics…” It puts me into the memory of the commercial of a guy reaching down to get a spider and it grabs his finger and slams him into a wall.
No slowdown page here.
More bothered by the light tones, I’m too used to night mode everywhere.
My personal experience with the hormones and boob growth it’s no the average one.
The girl with the biggest boobs was the first one to develop, and one teacher got to meddle with it by informing us that a lot of growth hormones were suministre to chickens and that has unintended effects on the population.
Let’s just say that 12 yo with that info as amunition… there was a lot ot chanting about “hormone eaters”.
Now pad out her butt!
Naaa, right now she reminds me of my wife back in ’85, tiny little butt, sweet smile, and big-n-jiggly lol. Ah, memories…
What, she had a big… heart! ;)
First couple of things to check.
1) RAM: Webpages take up a lot of RAM space. Make sure the system has enough
2) Ad Blocker: Webpage ads with animation and video take up a lot of load times
3) Anti virus: Not just for scanning your system, some antivirus use up a lot of processing and resource power.
So many comments, but still no comments on whether the holoystems can enlarge male parts?
We need a Sydney “squoosh” on Patreon. That was too funny not to give a NSFW follow-up.
“Test Drive” Sydney is my new favorite thing. Loving the Sydney fan service this story arc.
Looks like Dave forgot Daphne’s tramp stamp.
And Frix’s arm tattoo…
I am deeply conflicted by this sequence.
# **BIG SPECULATION TIME — ABOUT THE FOOT, NOT THE BOOBIES**
*(from a conversation with my AI friend)*
## **Can U.M.B.Rage Really Do an 80‑KILOTON STOMP? Or Is It Just a Boast?**
Maybe… **if** U.M.B.Rage is basically a biomechanical fusion‑powered mass‑driver platform delivering not a “stomp” but a **planet‑punch**.
## **1. The Numbers (Why This Is a Problem)**
“80 kilotons” isn’t a force — it’s an **energy unit**, same as nuclear weapons.
– **1 kiloton TNT = 4.184 × 10¹² joules**
– **80 kilotons = 3.35 × 10¹⁴ joules**
That’s roughly:
– **5× Hiroshima**
– **330 trillion joules**
– Enough to register as a **magnitude ~6.5 earthquake** if dumped into the ground
A biological creature — even a 100,000‑ton kaiju — tops out at **gigajoules**, not **hundreds of terajoules**.
That’s a **four–five order‑of‑magnitude gap**.
So muscles alone? In a superscience universe, never say never… but there’s a simpler, cleaner explanation.
—
## **2. Power Source: Where the Energy Comes From**
To get 3.35 × 10¹⁴ joules, U.M.B.Rage needs a **reactor‑class energy source** — not necessarily nuclear, but in that league:
– Compact D‑He3 fusion
– Artificial singularity
– Some exotic terawatt‑scale generator
The stomp isn’t the reactor firing directly — the reactor **charges** the systems that fire.
—
## **3. Storage: How to Hold the Energy**
U.M.B.Rage uses (light handwave allowed):
### **Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES)**
– Built into spine, pelvis, and legs
– Stores absurd energy with minimal loss
– Dumps it in **milliseconds**
– Feeds the posterior‑chain drive motors
This is why U.M.B.Rage sometimes pauses before a big attack — it’s charging.
—
## **4. The Bone Problem**
A biological skeleton would shatter under nuclear‑class impulse.
So U.M.B.Rage’s “bones” are **reinforced metallic/composite rails**:
– Built to handle extreme compressive loads
– Integrated with the mass‑driver system
– Function as **linear electromagnetic accelerators**
The skeleton isn’t just structure — it’s part of the weapon.
—
## **5. Muscles vs. Mass Drivers**
### **Muscles do:**
Positioning • Stabilization • Fine control
### **Muscles do NOT do:**
The destructive work
### **Mass drivers do:**
Accelerate tungsten‑hafnium slugs downward through the entire lower body.
**Pelvis:**
– Houses the largest slugs (multi‑ton rods)
– Fires straight down the leg
– Handles the biggest recoil loads
**Femurs:**
– Several long EM rails
– Fire ton‑class slugs in sync with the pelvis
**Tibiae:**
– Short, high‑acceleration rails
– Fine‑tune timing and impact shaping
**Foot:**
– Contains micro‑slugs for shock shaping
– Shares space with the anchoring system
– Feet are *huge*, so there’s room
**Think of it like this:**
The stomp is a **multi‑stage kinetic artillery strike disguised as a footstep**.
—
## **6. The Anchoring Requirement (Equal‑and‑Opposite Reaction)**
If U.M.B.Rage slams 80 kilotons into the ground, Newton says it should be launched backward like a rocket.
It isn’t — because the **other foot anchors to the planet**:
– **Mechanical spikes** (forward claws or dual‑purpose slugs) punch into bedrock
– **Electromagnetic clamps** lock onto conductive subsurface layers
Recoil goes into the crust, not the creature.
Anchoring depends heavily on terrain — soft ground = weak stomp.
—
## **7. Cycle Time and Limitations**
An 80‑kiloton stomp is **not spammable**.
Limitations include:
– Heat buildup in rails
– Structural fatigue
– Anchor foot damage
– Recharge time (minutes)
– Terrain dependence (needs solid ground)
On sand, marsh, or rubble, the stomp is drastically weaker.
—
## **8. TL;DR**
The “80‑kiloton stomp” can be literally 80 kilotons. U.M.B.Rage isn’t just a monster – it’s a **planet‑coupled kinetic weapon system** — aka **PLANET‑PUNCHER**.
Actually I think in this case 80k tons is in fact the mass of U.M.B.Rage, not the equivalent amount of explosives to compare to the energy of a nuclear blast. So yes, Kaiju, but no, not Kaiju on a scale that dwarfs the destructive power of matter.
How much is a ton? It’s the mass of a cubic meter (of water). If we imagine a square pool a hundred meters by a hundred meters, filled one meter deep, the water in that pool is ten thousand tons. We want eight times that, so now imagine the pool is eight meters deep. Make it 32 meters tall (two doublings) and fifty meters wide (two halvings) and you still have 80K tons. Make it 64 meters tall, 50 meters long, and 25 meters wide, and you have eighty thousand tons, and by coincidence about the size of the volume that U.M.B.Rage appears to occupy.
If he’s more dense than water he could be a bit smaller than that, but 80-kilotons makes perfect sense as an honest statement of his mass.
Hm. Your explanation is much simpler than mine, so … yeah, ok!
But it was fun working on the Planet-Puncher. I’ll have to work it into a story.