Grrl Power #1288 – Horrorito
I had to re-write half of this page moments before posting, because I watched (part of) Trigun like, 25-ish years ago, and I did not remember most of the significant things that appear in the wiki when I went to double check it. Good thing I did, or all the comments would have been about how I must have mixed up Trigun or Vash with another anime. Apparently Vash is a plant? Yeah, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that show.
I have not ever read any kind of slash fiction. I don’t even like regular fan fiction. (Ignore the two books I wrote that are technically fan fiction.) I assume all fan fiction is either going to be generally pretty terrible, or would be good enough to be annoying when the author inserts one crazy element that is their own personal fan fetish. (In this episode of FanFic Stargate SG1, Teal’c gets turned into a sapient inflatable pool toy.) Or, it’s some terrible O.C. insert who no one but the author cares about, or worst of all, it’s actually really good to the point that now I’m mad it’s not canon.
But slash fic? Yeah, no interest there for me. There’s clearly an audience for it, so I thought it’d be kind of funny if Sydney was into it. Coming up with a pairing wasn’t too hard. Justifying the pairing was… well, actually pretty easy when I was using a misremembered Vash. After reading up on Vash and editing the page to match? Honestly, I think it’s actually not a crazy idea. I personally still don’t want to read about dudes making out, but… if you told me someone had already written that meetup? I’d just nod.
The new vote incentive is up!
It’s Escorpia/Sciona, fresh off her successful… extortion campaign? I’m not sure if extortion is the right word. Addicting someone to superpowered narcotics then withholding to compel directed behavior? Kind of a ransom/extortion/generally being a butt kind of thing. There’s probably a better word for that. Anyway, check out Sciona’s business casual getup at TWC, and Patreon has a bunch of… let’s call them increasingly casual variants.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Unexpected MST3K reference! Mike J. Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds!
Thank you, Pit Fiend, for triggering that memory.
Thank you, DaveB. For giving my memory an MST3K callout.
The MST3K Youtube channel has been streaming all the episodes they still have rights to, including all of Cinematic Titanic and The Film Crew (which were other attempts by the cast to continue doing movie riffs), as well as select RiffTrax, their current project, which unbelievably has more riffs than all of MST3K.
I’ve been watching it almost continuously since last Thanksgiving.
Vash was a plant as in a power plant. My understanding was that he was something like a biological nuclear reactor.
the child of a biological energy generating reactor and a very lonely and sad man… lets just say that theirs a reason the anime barely touches on how Vash was born
But he wasn’t alone in his perverseness, in the manga more of vash’s race were born on earth/other ships,
And in the original series, he meets another of his race. They do not hit it off, but the encounter finally reveals why Vash has so many scars.
The other one just regenerates any injuries he gets, but in the process becomes more alien and less human. Vash is determined to retain his copied humanity, so copes with his injuries as a human does.
*hits the Wiki real quick*
Ok, so not literal flora (though I remember the 2023…. prequel… reboot? Prequeboot?– anyways, that one leaned into flower motifs in their physical shape, didn’t they?) , Plants are listed as ‘interdimentional’ beings, but of wholly human invention– though I wonder if they’re captured from interdimentional space, and the lightbulbs are the human inventions. Reminds me of the retcon of what Ethereals are in XCOM, when The Bureau prequel came out.
Yes, there’s others, awakened and independent, but while Knives (and Vash) can absorb other Plants, the 2nd gens that came from Earth to investigate and eliminate irregular Plants like Knives, all Megaman X/Maverick Hunter style, have a block that stops them from absorbing others, Knives does absorb one of the 2nd Gens in the final battle.
is that supposed to be peanut butter or Nutella, the lighting in the area makes it ambiguous.
I don’t know which would be worse, I am feeling ill just looking at it.
From what I saw, it was a banana sprinkled with sydney’s secret powdered death, with a smear of nutella with capn cruch cereal on top, with ‘weapons of ass destruction’ california reaper pepper slices, covered in reeses chocolate syrup, all rolled up in a tortilla wrap.
Yeah, that snack is a nightmare of wasted carbs and while Sydney might enjoy it, Peggy’s right that it’s a horrific tool to setback Sydney’s fitness progress. Even discounting the spicy add ons, exactly the sort of thing that will make her balloon into a fat penguin in her thirties when her metabolism slows down.
That’s assuming her metabolism is still human after using her nth technology …
She was skinny even before that though and was still eating a terrible diet. The main difference is now she’s also actually exercising regularly as part of her training.
I suspect that if anyone other than Sydney eats the Horrorito, the result for most will be a case of indigestion for which the words “Blast Radius” would be appropriate!
HP sauce is a possibility too.
Could be sweet mustard, then the food is okay till that point and only what came after that is a war declaration for Bavaria.
We see the bottom of the jar in panel 2, it definitely doesn’t look like Ferrero’s packaging for Nutella. And the easily recognizable Cap’n Crunch says it’s not out of a desire to avoid directly referencing real brands.
glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed, is she pregnant or something?
Did she just put a tortilla directly on that countertop without even using a paper plate or something?
Yeah, that weirded me out, too. I don’t want to know if Masters of Ass Destruction Reaper Slices are a RL item.
The image on the bottle would not be permitted on many grocery store shelves and where that image could be displayed, they generally don’t sell food; edible panties don’t count as food.
I would guess Sydney got that bottle as a gift from Dabbler.
This universe sells all sorts of novelty products, like all the convenient foreshadowing drinks Harem is always drinking.
She must have a lot of faith in the cleaning staff to eat something that was touching the tabletop. Also, who taught (or didn’t teach) her how to fold a burrito? You’re supposed to close one end so that the fillings don’t fall out.
Does she really need to worry about germs? I mean what the reaper slices don’t vaporise, the secret powdered death with liquefy. I pity the poor bacterium which is exposed to both at the same time.
I think that’s a banana, a thick smear of super hot death sauce, cap’n crunch, peppers, and some kind of red powder. Though it would be entirely in character for Syd to be using Nutella or chocolate sauce or peanut butter there. If that is a regular part of her diet her dentist must despair of her retaining her teeth and gums past age 40.
I cannot imagine anyone mortal surviving the combination of Cap’n Crunch shredding your gums and the roof of your mouth, and then grinding industrial grade capsaicin INTO THE WOUNDS!
If it’s revealed in some later issue that Syd is not, in fact, actually human I would not be in the slightest bit surprised.
Chances are pretty good that one of the orbs passively protects against chemical weapons, except that she’s been eating them since long before she got them. Perhaps the protection allows her to overdo it a bit more than she naturally could have…
The label on the powder bottle reads, “Sydney’s Secret Powdered Death”. I think this is her own version of chilli powder, using some dried super hot peppers.
Probably has powdered radium in it! :D
Or licorice root.
This is definitely a thing. Lots of chile-heads prefer powdered chiles to (or in addition to) liquid sauces. For me it’s all about actually liking the flavor of the chiles, which is masked in most sauces with excessive amounts of salt and/or vinegar.
Both peanut butter (in spicy schezwan peanut sauce) and chocolate (in the Aztec spicy chocolate aphrodisiac beverage xocolatl) have been shown to work well with spice and and heat. I suspect that Sidney may be accessing the culinary akashic field, which may explained her love of spicy.
Remember that tooth decay is caused by bacteria … bacteria which Sydney doesn’t have because they CANT SURVIVE her diet.
It’s also caused by an acidic diet. Lots of vinegar and capsaicin in hers.
As one who is guilty of writing (or more often, starting to write and never finishing) fanfic for various series, I have to admit that my own writing is far from good. I think the best I managed was getting some minor attention for a Daria/World of Darkness story, which right there should tell you the level I was working at.
Far from good doesn’t mean bad. As someone once told me, putting your work out into the world is still better than most. And at least you recognize the boundaries of your ability. You know you can improve, which is better than the people that confidently put out trash time after time. I’d say to accept being average; it’s not a bad place to be in such a wide field.
“putting your work out into the world is still better than most”
I’ve got a fair bit of my work out in the world. I dislike a large portion of it. I even stopped writing one fic wholesale because I was so anti-it. Which is hilarious given that I am the one writing it, but that’s just how brains work.
Fanfiction is like searching for a needle in a haystack. The needle is great – All the hay, not so much. If you can suffer through searching past all the ‘rare pair’, ‘enemies to lovers (without any justification)’, and ‘Oh my god why is there so much non-con slash’… Then you can actually find some good shit. It just takes a while, and your brain will be horribly scarred by the existence of things like Albus Dumbledore/Harry Potter smutfics.
In my opinion the best fanfic is when the writer uses the setting, but veers away from using main characters, or even creates their own characters to inhabit the same world. Then they’re a lot more free to create something unique and new and fresh.
Like do a Lower Decks style thing where you go off in your own direction with your own characters instead of yet another iteration of Kirk-Spock or Picard-Whoever
Another personal opinion is the more obscure the setting for the fanfic the better, because there’s a bit more freedom to play around in the setting and share love for something.
I’ve done a fanfic in Drew Haye’s Superpowerd’s setting where one of my favorite characters who dropped out in book two (Stella Hawkins) gets recruited to be part of a government agency of social workers for metapowered children. I wanted to fill in the gaps in Drew’s work about what happens with kids who get powers, and what happens to super hero school dropouts after their memories get wiped.
Drew’s forum where I posted it no longer exists, so I have no way of sharing it.
If you’re going to make up all original characters, you might as well just change the setting very slightly (just altering the names of places and things would usually suffice) and make it an original story that you could actually legally sell (in ebook form) if it ended up good enough. And “good enough” is a pretty low bar on Amazon.
That’s how Fifty Shades of Grey got made. It was a Twilight erotic fanfic that the author tweaked to make it not fanfic.
It’s an idea, but I just write for my own amusement. Trying to get published sounds like more work than computer programming, and I enjoy that just as much. :)
Having people gush over my writing is enough compensation.
I can only think of a couple fanfics that were really good. In my opinion, anyway.
Children of an Elder God was a Lovecraft themed Evangelion fanfic. Lovecraft and Evangelion do mesh well.
And Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has Harry with a college professor adoptive parent, so he attacks magic from a rationalist perspective.
But, yeah, most fanfic is lowgrade trash, and even though I’ll admit my B movie addiction has me tolerating bad writing to the point where I’ve indulged in it anyway, most of it is too awful even for me.
silentwalrus’ Snipers Solve 99% of Problems is a very good (and very funny) Potter/Fullmetal Alchemist crossover – the Amestrians apply their ferocious brains to idiot wizard problems.
On the subject of fanfic: http://www.icybrian.com/fanfic/ for some older video game ones that are both good and Most of them completed. Be warned though there is a LOT of material in here but if that’s your thing. Enjoy.
Is it just me or is Garamm interested in the burrito in the last panel?
it’s like a train wreck, you can’t help but watch
As an alien reptile, he probably is unaffected by capsaicin. If his digestive system is similar to a crocodile’s, then there is too much vegetation there and not enough protein.
I think he’s more confused by Sydney’s compliments.
I’ve had something like this before. Never with Cap’n Crunch, though.
All of my fan fiction tends to wind up in comments sections for various webcomics. I have only written one so long that it needed to be posted separately and then linked in the actual comment.
I believe the intersection between slash fic readers and furries must be pretty high, so it would not be a surprise if Syd was in that particular intersection. All i can say as part of said intersection is “good choice”.
I don’t blame you for saying that Peggy, a flat bread, with a banana and smear of chocolate, add nuts(?), and a liberal sprinkling of ultra-hot power? DAMN! Never mind the planet having an ex-stink-tion level gas attack, Sydney you’re going to flip when the seat of those pants blow out and dissolve!
“Call in the Haz-mat team! Sydney did it again!!!”
I’m surprised Lapha isn’t having a panic attack watching this!
No after i zoomed in it’s Capt Crunch and what looks like sliced halapinio peppers and peanut butter but still!
those are sliced california reaper peppers, not jalapeno. They make jalapenos look super mild in comparison.
No kidding. I harvested some in my garden yesterday, (The leaf hoppers were getting to them!) and stupidly didn’t wear gloves. Five hand washings and hours later, AND an intervening shower, and I still felt a bit of a burn when I emptied my bladder before going to bed.
Mostly I just grow Thai Dragon Tails, and those might as well be sweet peppers compared to reapers.
As I’ve gotton older and wiser I have learned to be more careful about what i touch with my bare hands. In my case it is glues and other potentially noxious chemicals. Cheap nitrile gloves are your friend. I have also noticed that what I eat also effects my urine. Luckily not on a level of “Weapons of Ass Destruction” but there is a spice present in Mexican and Asian food that has a noticeable impact.
Yes I made the mistake of slicing peppers once without gloves. It’s hard to get that burning sensation out from under your fingernails.
And those were just jalapenos.
Talking about diets… I always assumed the US military would be huge assholes about what soldiers ate. Nothing but lean chicken breasts, organic vegan protein shakes, and so much kale.
But no, they just eat… whatever. They built Burger Kings in Iraq. And the cafeterias have greasy burgers, soggy tacos, pizza and french fries.
In the military, there’s a fine line between what’s healthy to eat and what keeps the morale up. (Comfort/unhealthy food that keeps the troops happy vs the healthy stuff that’s not as tasty)
If it was all about ingesting what’s healthy, there would be a serious dip in the amount of alcohol consumed. I remember reading a few years ago about a contingent of Marines (USMC) going on a deployment/exercise and having them consume so much alcohol that the town they were staying in during the exercise had to ship in alcohol from neighboring towns/cities because the Marines drank ALL of it.
Military food has been famously bad since the days when organized militaries were new.
It comes from having to serve hundreds of people at once I think. Plus suppliers thinking that sending the army the cheaper stuff won’t be noticed, again because of the quantities involved.
If the US military actually serves reasonably good food to the troops on a regular basis, they have to be unique.
“If the food is good enough. The troops will stop complaining about the incoming fire.”Howard Tayler, “The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries”
When it comes to fanfiction, so long as the writer and readers don’t take it to personal it’s all in fun. Personally I have written fanfic as a form of writing exercise and for fun. I would never insist what I wrote should be canon to any of the series, not even my own. Often though I find it hard to write other people’s characters as I don’t know all their backstory details.
That said as a fun aside almost all of Arthurian legend is fanfic built on top of fanfic. Including changing characters relationships to fit the then popular themes, even later writer changing those.
That said can’t say I’ve written much that could be considered slash fic other than (character) plus OC and even then only a few.
Why is it oozing like that? She did not put nearly enough of that peanut-butter. Unless she really went ham with the chocolate syrup…
I get the feeling she’s a messy eater. Comes from getting distracted while eating (not unheard of for Sydney).
In this case she’s more into the conversation than being careful with food, complete with hand gestures.
Vash is a Geo plant sort of like a power plant but for terraforming not plant as in ferns and trees …atleast that’s how I remember it
….how does she function? Seriously, taking taste preference out of the question, if she normally ingest spicy foods on this level wouldn’t that cause actual damage to body over time?
I was wondering the same thing. Little nutrition, lots of stuff that’s basically poison. Intestines in knots, having to sit on dry ice to keep the burning sensation down, and other metabolic processes just stopped from lack of basic requirements.
You do know that the MCU is basically one big fan-film series, right?
Seriously, do not go around insulting fanfiction because you don’t understand it, as you couldn’t have been any further than the truth. Sure, there is a lot of horribly written fanfic out there, fanfic that exists just to have people make-out or fuck one another, a lot of it being slash, and plenty of self-insert power fantasies, or just power fantasies though their preferred characters, not to mention torture pron. But that’s just how media and writing is in the first place. Just because something is ‘offical’, and has thousands if not millions of dollars behind it doesn’t mean it won’t be a steaming pile of shit.
‘Somehow, Palpatine has returned’ – Rise of Skywalkers, a 416 million budget movie.
However, while there is a lot of shit, there is a lot of fantastic, amazing, GRIPPING stories. I spent a considerable amount of my time reading fanfiction, and I love it. Exploring avenues that the original story never could, crossovers that would never be possible, world-building and character exploration that the original material didn’t have time to get into… I could go on, but there truly is a lot of amazing fanfiction out there, and its not that hard to find it either. Not with Ao3’s fantastic tagging system allowing you to easily cut out material you aren’t interested in reading and stories about specific characters in fandoms presented in certain ways if you want something more focused…
There is a lot of trash, but a lot of fantastic creations. Just like with original content. So please don’t dismiss Fanfiction so easily. It is nothing more than cruel ignorance.
Found the fanfic writer.
Sydney’s making knock-off Grakz, isn’t she?
How is that food not considered a pregnancy craving or something?
… Who said it wasn’t?
Lapha in that last panel looks like she’s a ghost being forced to sit in a room with the sword that killed her.
The sword, in this case, being embodied in that horrible burrito.
Sidney you’re not allowed to give ANYONE shit about what they eat after that culinary w a r c r i m e.
It’s not a war crime yet, it’s missing candied ginger and enough cooked lentils to ensure gas buildup atomises the solid mass output 20 hours later.
I still find it surprising that the term originally comes from the Transformers fandom.
I guess that agender (originally) alien gay romance is something that comes in cycles and has stood the test of time.
What term, ‘rugged’?
If you’re talking about “slash fic” it comes from the Star Trek fandom.
Specifically “Kirk slash Spock” Fic.
I’m starting to wonder if her superpowers are fueled by the amount of spice and capsaicin in her system