Grrl Power #1497 – Foot muse
Oh my god.* Who could it be? You guys will never guess. What a mystery.
I was going to write a big long post about shoes vs. not shoes, but as I was thinking about it, I realized why aliens are so often naked. (Like Grays. Not the sort of media where the aliens are naked for other reasons.) They’ve lived in a post-scarcity society for so long they no longer have need of textiles. Because they don’t have companies that exist solely to be profitable. Once a society hits the “we can just tell the matter replicators what I want, so we don’t need money” stage, I thing there’s going to be a resurgence of hand-crafted stuff. Cause people will need hobbies, but after a few generations of that, people might be all, “maybe there isn’t really a need to even wear shoes, besides these knit ones from space etsy don’t really work that well.” And over a few generations their feet toughen up a little bit, and eventually they’re like, “who even needs shirts or pants? We keep our junk on the inside anyway.”
The way I see it, Wookies are at that last stage before abandoning pockets. That’s why they still wear those pouch bandoliers.
I’m not serious about any of that. I can’t imagine any society, much less a space-faring one, that doesn’t need pockets. Unless they have subdermal matter replicators or something. It’s just such a common trope. But space monsters almost never wear shoes. So I started thinking about what percentage of Grrl-verse space aliens would wear shoes.
*(Becky)
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. The NSFW version is finally up at Patreon. Plus a bonus pic.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
I don’t think they ARE naked (assuming they exist) – I think that the smallest members of their races are sent off as explorers, as they use fewer resources, and the “greys” met are actually tiny humanoid aliens in environmental suits. The “huge eyes” are polarized sensors, the odd mouths are rebreathers, the gray “skin” is the suit itself…
Interesting that the word “Suite” has 5 letters in all of those alien languages :P
It’s almost like every alien language is English, but with different fonts. I remember spotting “Magespeak” back on Fracture Station.
Also Interlac.
Deus is going to see through the disguise of course, the only real question is how soon Syd will completely give the game away.
A lot of space monsters aren’t really sapient species, to be fair. For example, the quintessential Xenomorphs from Aliens are basically quasi-humanoid parasitic wasps. It’d be weirder if they did wear shoes.
“They cut the power!”
There is a point in the Aliens Fireteam Elite game where your team is being hush hush and observing radio silence when fighting xenomorphs. I was facepalming.
My first guess was Deus, but his tailor would never let the hems on his pants be so low that the extra fabric would pile up on his shoes. The length of one’s pants should be jus long enough to “shiver against the mid-laces of the shoe” is the quote I don’t know who to attribute to. Ask any of your fashion ninjas, (who haven’t been seen in too long, btw.)
My guess is Vehemence. The tournament would be like a 5 michelin stars open buffet to him.
That… actually makes sense, and he does like to dress in fine suits
This is by FAR the most pleasing answer. I’d love to see him out getting some quality vitamin V.
CALLING
IT
NOW
Babezilla showed up because Deus wanted to test to see if it was Maxima in the tournament. He kept ‘Zilla’s number hands purely for her use as a distraction, she’s big and strong but useless otherwise, but she was a problem the team would have to call Max in for, so he arranged for her little outing then watched to see when Ixah vanishes and when she got back. The time matches up to Max popping ‘Zilla in the head, he not only confirms it’s her, he confirms that Archon has some means of instantly trqaveling to other parts of the galaxy.
It seems like the kind of thing he would do.
Only issue I see is that Zilla wasn’t strong enough that only Max would be able to handle her. Max seemingly just decided that she wanted to, despite Dabbler, Anvil and Halo seemingly being well prepared to handle her brute strength if they were called on to do so.
Maxi was specifically called in to deal with Zilla without killing her or causing extensive collateral damage, and you forget that Halo was the one who sent her there (unless you meant Hiro)
Max was called in to handle the issue, but that doesn’t mean she’s the only one who could have done so.
Halo was the one who sent her, but she can also go through her own gates.
Sending Max was a choice ARC-light (or Max) made when informed of the situation, but it wasn’t necessarily the only situation. Deus might have predicted that Max’s ego or fear for her employees safety wouldn’t allow her to let one of the other team members handle the relatively low-risk situation against a seemingly very limited supervillain, but I feel like it’s much closer to a coin flip.
Granted, he might just try things and if Max had sent one of the others who could potentially have handled it he would have drawn his conclusions from that too. That Max went herself during a match was maybe just a bonus that he’d be happy to have but was potentially not quite counting on – not every plot absolutely must succeed.
But it was the decision they did make
Kevin already knows that Archon has inter-stellar travel, having been the subject of such during the sparing session, and possibly having been seconded to Tom. I wonder if the tournament has rules for gatecrashers; V could really change the dynamic here.
Without something extra, Kevin would be out of the tournament. Opponent tosses him a mile in the air and he ends up being out of bounds too long.
He needs some way to stay on the ground, *before* he’s been powered up.
Also – what kind of tournament allows a contestant in at the finals?
Wouldn’t it be permissible to power up artificially just before each round?
Hire a hundred people to have a big brawl around him beforehand. This is the unlimited category after all – if you can bring it inside or on your body and it’s not another contestant it seems fair game.
i so want for the next page to be the Deus reveal with some of his goons behind him holding a “lightning effect windows” just for the dramatic flare, even if it is goofy as hell
There’s a lot of speculation to be had here, I just like the fact that one of the languages printed on the door sign is the Standard Galactic Alphabet. I’ll always take a Keen reference.
Am I imagining things, or is the bottom suite 401 sign in D&D eleven script?
Elven, flicking autocorrect.
No — that’s the one I mentioned was in SGA, at least the upper line. Not sure where the numbers are from, but SGA is described here:
https://keenwiki.shikadi.net/wiki/Standard_Galactic_Alphabet
I’m definitely dad-aged, otherwise I wouldn’t be amused by the fact that the alien with bear feet is barefoot.
I think a lot of species with feet rather unlike ours would still wear shoes, even if they didn’t look like what we think of as shoes. Being adapted to walking across grasslands or forest floors or whatever doesn’t mean you will adopt well to urban surfaces of asphalt and concrete or their alien equivalent (which can get really hot in summers) not to mention urban hazards such as broken glass [1] or spilled chemicals or the equivalent of dog poop. (And even back in the wilderness, animals often have trouble with thorns or rocks getting stuck in their hooves or things like goat’s heads) Even if they look more like, say, heavy gloves, I’d expect a lot of species to use foot protection in their early civilizational period. And even if your civilization evolves to the point where it can make the entire environment foot-friendly, that isn’t guaranteed when you go someone off planet.
[1] Stuff like that would be a problem for snake-like aliens, too. Perhaps a protective body stocking?
I’d know those fancy dress shoes anywhere; Deus!
Is Sidney falling towards the ‘shoe event horizon ‘? Hopefully not, and it’s just a passing whimsical thought.
Can the alien shoe shop have a Cordwainer Smith?
Owww! — That pun/reference had definite Instrumentality.
A little note on the design of the suite:
Generally an Earth hotel suite that luxurious won’t have a door that opens right on a public corridor. Anyone passing by can just look in when the door’s open and see far too much.
At minimum you put an angle on it or something.
Depending on how high end it is, you might have the suite on a separate floor, with a guard station in front of the elevator on the public area. And another one on the destination floor.
Unless the silhouette in panel 1 is actually of the guard in front of the suite elevator/turbolift, and panel 2 is “cut to Tzerki finally getting into public space after passing through the entrance”?
Not a hotel suite, a private stadium box.
Vests. Vests are cool. You can have it be fancy or you can have it be like a fisherman vest with pockets aplenty.
Vests are ultra cool. Pockets on the inside, near invisible slits to access some pockets from the outside worked into the pattern of the vest itself. And then, for a surprise long sleeve shirt/blouse with hidden wrist sheaths. All while looking spiffy.
My best guess is Deus decided to personally show up, seems like the best excuse for him to finally visit off world.
He went shopping off world before too.
Hey Look…Among all the Space Shoes, a pair of Earth style shoes!
The discussion of clothes in a post-scarcity society makes me think of the ‘floaty butt covers’ that the human members of the Humano-Jellese welcoming party were wearing in the last panel of [i]Unicorn Jelly[/i]. I’m pretty sure that JDR never explained their function.
Gaah, I got confused and used BBCode markup rather than HTML. Sorry.
Damn it, Deus. Can the girls not do *anything* without you showing up and smugging all over the place?
Good thing it’s not SmugD then
He already knows
“There is no movement of yours that did not betray you. A pace, a glance. Even the way you completely fail to remain still. They were all my spies.”
Involuntary flashback to “shiny black FBI shoes” from the intro to The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; we are the people our parents warned us about
(looks at what that generation has become) I dunno about that clark… unless you mean the publicly vocal ones. Ones I grew up around, were live and let live types. The “don’t shove your beliefs down my throat and I won’t point out you are are kind”. The parents who, went to Berlin or the Boeing plant in Washington. And yeah, I read that book. All, I will say is those two pitchers of orange juice. AND, never did but Dr. Kesey gave me standards “1250mcg, gel cap, lab quality.” Whatever that means, purity? Cleanliness?
It’s me.
Tali vas Normandy, I see you.
HI DEUS NICE TO MEET YOU I MEAN SEE YOU I MEAN-
……
Is DEUS named for a godamn PUN?
because he deDUCE’s shit as the worlds smartest human? (re: panel discussing superintelligence and emotional intelligence)
DEUS
DE-DEUS.
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave
Have you ever heard the phrase “Deus ex machina”? His company is named “Machina Industries”, and he has a big ‘X’ on his face…
I’m pretty sure the reason so many aliens are depicted naked, even when they’re very much a tool-using society, is that humans often struggle to think how their alien technology would have developed with their biology and available resources. Most of these foot designs here, for example, could have some form of protective covering. We’ve made shoes for dogs (toughened sock style things), so the pawed one could use a design along those lines.
I do, however, think that past a certain level of environment control tech a majority of clothing would become purely decorative and may be vastly reduced as fashions shift. I think we’re doing that currently, to some extent. Compare for example the full body coverage of linen and wool common in the 1800s in many places for temperature regulation to the small quantity of polyester, sunscreen, and air conditioning frequently used for the same purpose today (if often less effectively). Similarly we also regularly don’t wear shoes indoors, because the floors are carpet rather than paved in straw and compacted animal droppings for warmth. On good quality private space ships, protective gear like shoes would presumably not be required on a regular basis so it would depend on a culture’s fashion from their history and the time they spend in less controlled environments, or spaces calibrated to other species. A shared station like this location presumably is might well be too hard/acidic/magnetic/smooth/whatever for some species to be comfortable without environment gear like shoes.