Grrl Power #1445 – Pinocchi-oh no!
Maxima obviously has extraordinarily strong bones and ligaments and tendons etc – like, “make a space elevator cable out of that stuff” strong, so when she cracks her joints, it sound a bit like the 1812 Overture. The version where they fire actual cannons to go along with the symphony.
Fun fact, in panel 2, I had planned to draw Cora with her arm somehow extended out so she was covering herself from “4th wall camera angle” POV, but… there just wasn’t a natural angle that didn’t either look like she was intentionally being modest, which she wouldn’t be, or didn’t look like I had grabbed a 3D model by the elbow joint and just yanked it into position with no thought to how humans actually move their limbs. So, poor planning on my part. Instead I’m pretending like she put up a modesty filter than only Maxima can see somehow.
Technically, they’re on P.T.O. – I know it’s called “leave” in the military, but they’re a domestic branch, so a lot of people on the team call it P.T.O. – so Maxima can’t officially get upset at Sydney or Harem for having a topless watch party with “friends of the team.” Honestly, she’s not so much a stick in the mud that she’d even care, especially while coming down from her battle royale adrenaline high. If Harem and Cora sit down at the dinner table later with their knoks out (which is British slang, I assume for “knockers” that I heard once on… Blackadder? Or Red Dwarf. Definitely one of the two.) then Max might at least tell Harem to go teleport a shirt on. (She can’t teleport things to her, but she’s trying to learn to teleport small things that one of her is holding to another her. No luck yet.)
Ah! I thought I had more time till March. I’m bad at looking at dates apparently. The new one is underway. I should have a draft ready to go for the next Monday comic?
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 think disney’s lawyers are ringing at your door lmao
It’s fair use (Satire) So he probably shouldnt worry too much. Although it is Disney. At least it’s not Nintendo.
King Ludwig II of Barvaria countersues, suing Disney for misappropriating Neuschwanstein Castle, seeking damages and legal costs.
Il est vrai que ce n’est pas Disney le premier coupable, mais nos voisins Allemands .
“It is true that Disney is not the primary culprit, but our German neighbors.”
But the mistake is understandable, german origin is the most common origin of US citizens.
(Actually Disney owns the copyright and trademark rights to Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World and the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. But like I said, there’s a Fair Use exception for people to use it when it’s a transformative use (purpose and character of use) and based on the amount and substantiality used. Since this was an obvious parody, it would fall under the Fair Use Doctrine.
But it looks like Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, Pander you beautiful barrister! You lambastic lawyer! You cantankerous counsel!
While Neuschwanstein was a primary inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland in California, Neuschwanstein Castle’s original architectural design is in the public domain because it was completed in the 19th century, long before modern copyright terms began. With the Cinderella Castle, they have even more protection, since it was not a copy of Neuschwanstein Castle, but actually an amalgamation of of several European castles (ie, the Alcázar of Segovia in Spain, etc). So it’s also a ‘transformative work’ (plus like I said…. Neuschwanstein is in the public domain. The only thing about Neuschwanstein that is not public domain is the name, which is trademarked by
the state of Bavaria.
Funny, isn’t that kind of “transformative” the exact same thing companies are screaming about whenever someone has AI draw, say, an anthropomorphic mouse?
Depends on a lot… does it take brain to be transformative? How much change is transformative? How much does medium switch matter? Several real castles well outside of copyright timeframes to cartoon castles is accepted by several courts as on one side of that transformative line, but is shuffling a bunch of words to get a similar story but with thesaurus inspired word swap enough to be on the other? This is going to be a long argument for society to try to set norms and lawyers and judges to set precedent.
It has been said there are only two stories. Quest stories with a goal and social stories that attempt to present a slice of a persons life.
In a similar vein, it is certainly possible to create a midi program that will mix every possible combination of guitar chords of (say) a total length of 100 successive chords, and name the resulting output file “The Final Song”. There is no reason in US law why this could not be copyrighted, and the owner could then sue EVERY performer afterwards for “stealing” from that work because they could not possibly create another combination that wasn’t in the file, which could be easily searched out by the computer hosting it. And that is why copyrights should have been left at the original length of seventeen years. Damn mouse anyhow.
That would actually be the argument that AI companies make as a defense in the lawsuits, yes.
The lawsuit basically detemines if the level of transformative use is enough of a defense against a copyright breach claim. Sqeaky actually answered your question very accurately.
Yes, as you said, they have the copyright and trademark to Cinderella Castle (probably even the name ‘Cinderella’) because it is not Neuschwanstein Castle (just… ‘inspired’ by it, and at least one other that you decided to name)
If someone is inspired to create anthropomorphic rodent (with a fucking annoying voice), do they owe shit to Disney? Or Jimmy Carr? :P
Sqeaky:- interesting what you said about “but is shuffling a bunch of words to get a similar story but with thesaurus inspired word swap enough to be on the other?” That… is exactly what Dis Knee did with the Grimms’ stories (and countless other stories)
Guess it comes down to how loud your lawyers are (and how far your influence has spread)
With the Neuschwanstein Castle argument, there’s also the fact that it’s beyond the copyright limitation.
For works created by an individual author after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the author’s lifetime plus 70 years. For joint works created by two or more authors, the copyright lasts 70 years after the death of the last surviving author. Works created anonymously, under a pseudonym, or as a work made for hire (often corporate works) have a copyright term of 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first. For works published before January 1, 1978, copyright duration depends on the publication date and whether renewal registration was filed. Generally, these works are protected for 95 years from publication.
There are a few exceptions to these time limitations (sound recordings, unpublished works, and there has been a lot of people pushing for software to have the limitations lowered as well), but for the most part that’s how it goes.
They do not in fact have copyright and trademark on the name Cinderella.
They have copyright and trademark on a particular costume and appearance of Cinderella, and of their edits to the story, but the name and story existed in folktale form long before Disney did a movie interpretation of the folktale.
It’s true they edited it some, But it’s honestly a straighter retelling than they’ve done of a folktale than any other.
How did they edit it? Well, let me see:
Before Disney: Cinderella’s father was a prince who was tricked into marrying Cinderella’s governess. This woman, now elevated to duchess, wants the title and lands to pass to her own daughters instead of to the prince’s daughter, and turns mean after he dies. Her stepsisters who were never outright mean to her, were a little bewildered by the sudden family tension. Their mother wanted to get rid of Cinderella (who had a superior royal claim) before she comes of age or married) and thereby came into her title, but doesn’t dare kill her outright because the king (her grandfather) would be upset.
The ball is held because the prince of a neighboring kingdom is looking for a wife, and Cinderella is forbidden to attend as her stepmother schemes to get the prince married to one of her own daughters and thereby cement the title and lands in her own family. Cinderella, disconsolate, just wants to leave. She goes to the fairy and wishes for a way to leave her family’s castle that night.
The fairy had appeared to her a few months prior, and expressed gratitude because through all her hardship Cinderella has fulfilled a fey bargain to take care of a fig tree. It was strongly implied, once the fairy appears, that this fig tree is somehow her home, or her magic, or her life, or something precious to her. So the fairy “reinterprets” the wish to leave the castle, and equips her not just with a way out, but with everything she needs to attend the ball in the neighboring kingdom.
Originally there were dances on three consecutive nights and, because she lacked the training to dance well, the fairy had equipped her with magic slippers. Perrault, writing in the 1600s, changed it to dances on two consecutive nights and (possibly due to a translation error) changed the slippers from “magical” to “glass.” She lost one slipper when she yelled at the coachman to take off fast (she was being chased) as she jumped into the coach. The bros. Grimm writing in the 1860s added the bit about her stepsisters chopping off their toes and heel, respectively, off to fit into the slipper. But Disney, in what may have been the only time they changed something back to the original instead of away from it, chopped that bit right back out.
After his search for the missing princess, Cinderella proved she was the princess he’d met at the ball by producing the other slipper rather than by being the only woman with her shoe size in the whole kingdom. And also proved she was actually a princess by having her grandfather confirm it. They married, she claimed her own lands and title, elevated her low-born stepsisters to become petty nobility of some kind, and put them up in the castle until they found noble husbands of their own.
So, like I said; probably closer to the original than any other folktale Disney has ever produced.
The issue I’ve had with the entire thing is the claim that all AI is copying others works and can’t create.
Ever go into an actual art store? The enormous number of various and sundry books on “draw this like this” is nearly infinite! Excuse me, just how is this NOT combining a dozen other artists styles to create a style?
I’m not arguing against human creations being protected from being ripped off, the concept that AI has absolutely no business even drawing anything is a bit over the top, and I’ve had exactly that said to me by artists.
“Fun fact, in panel 2, I had planned to draw Cora with her arm somehow extended out so she was covering herself from “4th wall camera angle” POV, but… there just wasn’t a natural angle that didn’t either look like she was intentionally being modest, which she wouldn’t be, or didn’t look like I had grabbed a 3D model by the elbow joint and just yanked it into position with no thought to how humans actually move their limbs.”
Aren’t Cora’s limbs holographic? She could bend them however she wanted, or even stretch them out into hentai noodle tentacles if she really wanted to, since they’re programmable light and force fields, not flesh and blood.
Yeah, but she spent a majority of her developmental life functioning with static physical cybernetic/prosthetic replicas of human anatomy. And her general base level neurology would still be tuned for “normal” human physical movement, though being born with no arms and legs would obviously throw that off some. While her limbs may be holographic and subject to configurations of her whims, notice how her default “comfort” state is standard human normal.
Is Cora intentionally teasing Maxima, just like Dabbler does?
Because, if she can plop up “Maxima-dependent modesty bars” just for M’s vision, she could also just display a regular top.
…
Or is that modesty-bar the compromise for the comic readers, who gets to see neither “Maxima’s vision” nor unobstructed vision?
Sure she can put her holographic limbs in whatever position she wants. But not all positions are attractive, and I think she wants to be.
Or at least not hit the uncanny valley unintentionally.
I think you’ve crossbred the slang – both knockers and norks are slang for breasts, but not knocks. We norks as slang off the Ozzies decades ago (it was common enough in my childhood, so must’ve be stolen pre-80s).
Fun fact – I live near to the village of Nork (sadly singular). I definitely do not snigger every time I drive past signs for Nork Park and Nork Clinic.
To be fair, in Britain /everything/ is slang for either breasts or drunkenness. It makes me so proud…
Shades of Intercourse, Pennsylvania, or Climax, North Carolina. No one ever snickers at those either
“much of time” should probably just be “much time”.
Oh, yeesh. Yeah, just the image of a kaiju robot dropping inside of a castle filled with people is crazy.
I’ve been mulling that “black hole” a bit, and really, you’d get much the same effects from a few million tons of neutronium, and a whole lot less hassle to manipulate, presuming you had some technique to stabilize it for at least a short time. It surely would be an energy drain to push that much mass around, though the mass would be a lot less than any size of black hole that produced visible distortions. This would be “grain of sand” size vs essentially zero for a black hole, but similar effects and much less work.
Neutronium is ‘neutronium’ because the gravitiy of the star (itself) keeps it compressed. Take a part of it away and it won’t be neutronium anymore very quickly.
Yeah, at that point, it essentially becomes an enormous fission bomb.
“You were close enough to hear a neutronium pile let go?”
“It makes a very distinctive SKOOOM.”
“I’ll buy the beer.”
One of the many many ways that fantasy and science fiction fail to use logical applications of teleportation.
It is the rare exception where a story visits the horrific results of teleporting the core of a star a few seconds into the future. To name one weirdly specific example.
So does a tiny black hole, only worse because the product is all gamma rays, no particles.
That’s why it takes magic?
“I am somewhat preoccupied with telling the laws of physics to sit down and shut up.”
— Vaarsuvius (Order of the Stick)
I’ve heard some theories that neutronium may actually be stable once it’s formed.
Obviously a neutron star is stable, and I’m not sure the layer of compressed matter on top is actually what keeps it stable. But there’s an open question as to how small the smallest stable mass would be.
Finding out through experimentation will have to wait some time though.
We’re dealing with magic here, and I did specify “stabilized”.
I was expecting the magical healing potion to give Maxima a severe case of the giggles, minor hallucinations and perhaps temporary muscle weakness. You wouldn’t want any of those during battle but it would not be a problem otherwise.
Naw, being left exhausted makes perfect sense. Healing is something your body already does – and it requires energy as well as time. Not only will she need to rest now, but she may need a very large meal as well.
I presume it’s less energy then her body would expend healing her wounds naturally. I’m not sure you can eat that much food at once.
That’s actually been theorized to be the reason for why werewolves are always ravenous when they transform. They’re literally starving after the change.
Which means you could have a werewolf story where the sensible precaution is to always prepare a large haunch of meat, and an assortment of toys, when your character knows the change is upon them. The meat to feast and refuel… and then the toys to keep them occupied so they won’t try to leave the house. Ravenous werewolf is bad, but so is a werewolf with the zoomies.
Actually it should have little to no effect at all. It was intimated in the big brawl with Vehemence and the horde of supers that Maxima has some degree of fast healing, as her broken nose was going to set itself wrong and she had to rebreak it so Doc Chevy could set it aright.
Maxima has atomic bombs worth of personal energy and stamina, she fought Darood for hours in their initial encounter. That healing potion is going to sap off some of the internal fusion bomb of a power source that she has and she probably will barely notice the energy draw at all. She does NOT run on digesting organic matter, after all. her powers give her all the energy and stamina she needs.
So, yeah, sucking down a healing potion probably takes less energy than her tossing out a fusion grenade of a power blast. She’d barely notice the lost energy.
Unless the author says otherwise, which is always possible.
To be fair we don’t know how much energy Maxma’s body requires to heal. It being much more durable and energy-dense than most, healing it may require a similarly large amount of energy.
Or may require her body to dissipate energy to reach a “squishy enough” state for it to be healed.
Or healing may otherwise reset energy to zero, like “I fixed the battery, but this is now useless until I recharge it.”
There’s enough handwavium orbiting Maxima for any of these things, or any of a dozen others. Nthaniel might be able to ‘splain it more fully. But if that happens, we baseline humans might not be able to understand Nthaniel’s explanation.
How much would Deus pay for panel 1?
He has already drawn it in his book.
No, not that book, the other one. But not the other other one. He does still see her as a prospect, after all.
How much WILL he pay for a Gaxgy original?
Nothing, he will find some douche-y way to get Gaxgy to give him the original (and destroy all other copies)
Wow. You literally made the castle uninhabited. That’s almost as sad as the wall of text you used to reassure your readers. Are they really so fragile? Or are you just that afraid of the ones who are? Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world where you can just create awesome works of art without fear of the most fragile among us? But I get it, if you don’t bend the knee to them they will literally threaten your life and liberty, and they have that power over you because the Party gives it to them. And the Party has the power to give because those who see their victims are too afraid to speak (or vote) against them.
…what the heck are you talking about? Do you seriously think there’s some organisation that gets litigious about fictional off-screen deaths, of all things? Do you realise how commonplacethose are in fiction?
Or some sort of public outcry? Where was that controversy when Star Wars: Episode VII decided to out-do the Death Star’s destruction of Alderaan by blowing up a star and killing over a hundred billion?
In fact, here’s a random and extremely incomplete list of body counts in fiction, which (despite that incompleteness) doesn’t dip under a billion until entry 37:
https://listofdeaths.fandom.com/wiki/Highest_To_Lowest_Body_Counts
A more realistic interpretation would be that neither Maxima nor Sydney would be happy with the mass killing of innocents (though Maxima, at least, is somewhat more accepting of the deaths of non-innocents).
Some people’s worldview is just so dominated by their politics that they can only process things through that lens, regardless of how non-political something might be to anyone else or how much of a square peg it might be getting forced through a round hole.
Not that I can decipher what politics this guy is dominated by to begin with. ???
Any long-time reader of this comic knows that there is no way Maxima would commit mass-murder just to win a contest. The only unknowns were the actual details of how she knew the castle was empty of sapient life. A speed-run scouting trip followed by Cora’s reassurance with the rule explanation provides us with those details. And Max would have already known about the no-endangering-sapient-life rule, since that rule would have been explained to her (and Nightwing) pre-fight, so the speed-scouting was her personal verification that Nightwing was following the rules.
Plus Sydney has already been established to ask these sorts of “Are we the bad guys?” questions (1253 and 1254 during Lapha’s “Briefing”)
As such, it is not out of character for Syd to ask whether Max committed possible mass murder.
So, yeah, this comic was probably inspired by the comments but it is done in a way that is not out of the ordinary.
-This comment has been approved by “THE PARTY”
The above comment has been approved by The Topless (or Topless-ish) Watch Party!
Bait used to be believable
I did think she would have noticed Sydney’s gigantic hooters right off, broken ribs or not.
She did, she was just too occupied to inquire about it
I’ll, considering she didn’t know if it was or wasn’t inhabited ‘It turns out it was okay and you didn’t commit murder for the sake of making some money in a tournament’ is…thin comfort. It does kinda still leave ‘Okay but you were willing to take that risk’, which is a level of risky I feel like she’d absolutely chew out any member of her team over.
At least she attempted to confirm it wasn’t. She just had to admit that she wasn’t absolutely sure about it in retrospect because there could have been hidden or enclosed spaces that housed sentient beings which she didn’t have access to in her speed-run search.
Not a great fan of ‘censorship steam’ but if you have to do it, you at least make it a funny 4th wall joke.
(but it still shows in my opinion a fundamental writing issue :( If you cannnot show (partial) nudity for legal or personal reasons, why write it into the story at all? Drawing is a bit more subjective, but there generally should be a way to stage and frame a panel so that the need for censorship team does not come up.)
Then again, I am not an artist so what do I know?
Because it is funny.
The whole greatness of the censorship team bit is the running question of what wild thing he is going to toss onto the page this time to protect us from the thing we obviously want.
He is such a tease.
And on this page it lands even better, because Maxima, the long suffering rational one, is the supposed target, but we are the real target. The joke is on us for wanting the shot in the first place!
(And we still do!!!)
Please do not misunderstand me :) I love the way that Dave turns the censorship into funny wall breaking jokes.
I just do not like the concept of censorship steam.
Sorry, did not mean to misunderstand you. Now I cannot unsee the picture of steam rising from an outraged censor’s head, all of it drifting upward to mingle with the purifying smoke from his thurible‑type censor. It is a whole weather system of indignation.
Because this is a “PG-13” comic for general web viewing. Almost “SFW” even.
If you want R-rated, contribute to his Patreon.
I understand /why/ Dave censors his art for this comic.
That was not at all what I was talking about.
I simply prefer if something is going to be censored anyway, it would not be in the story at all.
(and yes, I understand and accept that this is up to Dave, and Dave alone. I am not trying to tell him how to write his own story. I am expressing a preference for something that is generally handled very poorly in other stories)
At the risk of sounding a bit crass, I’d say even partially censored boobs can be sexy and nice to look at for some people. So there’d still be entertainment value to display this. So then, why not do it?
You talking about the three sets in the bottom two panels?
My understanding is that a much larger proportion of people find ribaldry and sexually suggestive media more appealing than outright pornography — or at least in terms of preferences they’ll admit to. I do think the belief that it will attract more people than it repels is widespread, though I don’t know if the actual preference is.
Generally, it’s the suggestion that something hidden will be shown that gets the audience
Same reason why you get rubber-neckers at crash scenes (or idiots on their cameras prior to an accident rather than using their hands to help prevent an accident… or worse)
I will always be most impressed by how tough Máxima is. Not the Indestructibility, but her ability to function while in incredible pain. Like when she fought Vehemence, got her nose broken, and didnt even flinch. THAT is the impressive shit.
You could have had Cora hold a tray with the empty potion vial on it, off to the side towards the camera. That would have covered her for the panel, but left her wide open for Max.
Glad Maxima’s ok and that nothing sapient was harmed in the castle crush, Cora’s explanation of the fae made sense too
Also the explanation of the relevant rule — they’d necessarily have a rule against sapient collateral damage or they’d get shut down.
Maxi in this outfit, with only her golden face visible, reminds me of someone, but can’t figure out who, and it’s driving me more nuts than usual
She looks like Queen Grimhilde from Disney’s Snow White. Both the original animation and the live-action with Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen.
That’s probably it (the original, have less than zero interest in that live action dreck)
“with no thought to how humans actually move their limbs”
I mean Cora isn’t limited to Human limbs. Or even limbs that are used by a real species.
But to keep the art simple, that filter also works.
Pretty sure ‘knoks’ isn’t any form of British slang. This may have changed tomorrow, it seems the selection process is mostly whether it has satisfactory pronunciation, and/or absurdist effect, without any care for standard meaning of the words (if any).
You’re probably thinking of ‘norks’.
Snap, Crackle, KABOOM!? I love that breakfast cereal!
Ya gone and unlocked an old Amanda Show memory for me. We’ll done
(Not an actual castle design) and also not a depiction of the House of Mouse castle.
Their lawyers are stronger than any of the even Max.
“Pinocchio-ho-ho, now I have a Maxima”
It took me way too long to figure out the page title. No lying, no long noses… oh, it’s the wooden golems, “halfway between suits of armor and marionettes”. She obliterated a castle full of Pinocchios.
Fortunately for Maxima, the princess was in another castle.
I used to be a reservist in an artillery regiment. Every summer the local city orchestra would do a series of music in the park events. The finale of the last evening was the 1912 overture, with our battery supplying the cannons, 105 mm howitzers (firing blanks of course). It was great fun for the unit, and a crowd favourite.
If you don’t use your heavy guns for the 1912 Overture you are using them wrong.
With all respect, I believe it was the 1812 overture, not the 1912 overture. A friend a long time ago collected different variations on this, from drums up to the main battery of the battleship Texas. Fourteen-inch-guns are respectably loud.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Golems calls for a boycotting of this comic!
Exactly HOW MUCH DO SYDNEY’S GLASSES TRANSLATE! That wasn’t translated back on 1427. I know… I checked.
Max’s response to Sydney’s question leads me to think that this exchange has occurred often enough to almost become ritual. I do have to wonder what defines a serious question in Sydney world.