Grrl Power #1004 – Meet the coworker…’s boobs
This page sponsored by any of you still up in the air about which parent Sydney takes after. Also… everyone at Patreon… look it was supposed to be a joke to justify a page about Syd Sr. drifting away mid conversation. Also an excuse to draw purple stripey cleavage, not that such a thing ever needs an excuse.
To be fair to Syd Sr., non-magically hypnotic boobs are still pretty hypnotic, especially when packaged and presented like that.
Yes, I considered making a scheiße reference in panel three, but I assumed most of you would get there without me.
I have a novel series to recommend, with an asterisk. Destiny’s Crucible.
Elevator pitch: A chemist gets tossed onto an alien planet with ~1700’s tech. It is what I would describe as a slow burn isekai. What I mean by that is that in most isekai books, the MC shows up on the other world, and after a week or two, maybe a month, tops, he’s established that he’s going to be a mover and shaker. He might already be out-leveling his traveling partners and it’s obvious he’s going to take down the corrupt duke or whatever. That’s generally fun to read, but there’s a lot of books like that, so that’s why this series caught my attention, because it takes a lot more time – for one thing the MC doesn’t know the language when he arrives and has to learn it.
The asterisk is that if anything, the book leans a little too hard into the slow burn. Like it takes the MC six months before he’s like “Shit, I’m a chemist, I should invent stuff.” The really big asterisk is that, honestly, by book four, it was starting to feel like a real slog. The audiobook for book 1 is 15 hours, book 2 is 17, 3 is 21, and book 4 is 28 and it really feels like it. Not a single conversation goes unspoken, and there’s stuff like scouting for a place to try and lure an enemy army and they visit 3 or 4 different potential locations three separate times and have lengthy conversations about the geography and tactics and “what if we dam this river” every time and it’s just a lot. I really think book 4 could have lost 6-10 hours and it would have been better. All that said, I still pushed through and continued on through book 7 and am still mostly enjoying it. I really liked almost all of books 1-3, book 4 just took some work. On the plus side, the narrator kind of sounds like Stanley Tucci some of the time.
Minor complaint, the book also does one of my least favorite book things, the flash-spoiler. “He boarded the flight, little did he know this would be his last day on Earth.” or “He hoped to have the troops trained within six months, yet events would overtake the hope.” Don’t stress me out like that. The flash-forward micro-spoiler does nothing narratively. (Yes, I know Grrl Power starts off with a flash forward. If I could do it over again I’d probably cut those first four pages.) It doesn’t add the tension of a good thriller that makes me want to race forward to the overtaking events, it just adds micro-anxiety, which is not why I read(/listen to audiobooks.) I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used in a positive way. “…little did I know my birthday party would be the best night of my life” etc. It’s just a pet peeve of mine and it’s not like every other sentence in the book does it. I just hate it and wanted to rant.
Oh, and the book also has chapter titles. I hate those too, especially when they’re like “Chapter 18 – Betrayal” or “Chapter 21 – Everything that was wonderful is now ash and life is a harrowing torment beyond comprehension.” or “Chapter 30 – You know that character you really liked?” Okay, it doesn’t go that far, but ambiguous micro-spoilers add stress to my primary source of recreation and I don’t like it.
Bottom line is if you’re a little burned out on the typical isekai stuff, and are also into fairly detailed Napoleon-ish era ground warfare tactics in the later books, then I think you’ll enjoy this series.
And yes, I wishlisted a bunch of your suggestions from the last page, so thanks for those. I’ll start tackling some of them after I finish book 7 of this series.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
OMG it’s so close. I was working on it before posting and looked up and it was already 11 pm.
This month’s vote incentive guest stars Lana of Spying with Lana. One of my own secret agents, Pixel, is trying to assist, with various levels of success and… nudity. Well, in the Patreon versions. The Vote Incentive will give you a pretty good idea of what might go down. Here’s a dedicated post in case you want to comment.
Check out Spying with Lana. Their current vote incentive features a certain gold-plated glamazon. Also it’s a funny comic with tons of skin.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Damn it Sydney! Don’t be punching the Gazorpazovum in public. We don’t want Dabbler’s enemies to know about that vulnerable spot.
It does seem that should be a formally classified secret. Leading to: there is an entire Book of Secrets regarding every known vulnerability of every ARCHON member &/or associate.
And Sydney has revealed all of them, twice
“…..Achilles secret vulnerability is that he HAS NO VULNERABILTIES………..But he’s sensitive to comments about his hair….but that’s not really a secret”
Nope.
Achilles’s vulnerability is that he’s stuck in the 80’s and that he’s like a normal human in every other aspect. Well other than him being capable of being a lead in Baywatch.
Maybe so, but who can filter out the real weaknesses among the stream of misleading information she comes out with?
Someone like… SmugD?
She really should set up her gear to shield her from sudden attacks against that point.
Sometimes it’s a friendly punch from an ally, other times it turns out it’s an assassination attempt and then you get grief from being made of fragile flesh instead of getting some subdermal armor, integrity fielded flesh or just being made of stronger stuff than proteins.
She does have defenses. They just don’t work against comedic violence. It’s a magic thing.
1) There may be a slow blade penetrates the shield protective threshold at work, that allows for intimate violence, triggered by Maxima smacks at incredible speeds and force, but not triggered at all by Sydney’s strike. (punchomatic rated “Calibration Error” by a system modified by Dabbler.)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-825-punch-practice/.
2) Or the orbs provide interference, and Dabbler may not want to explain how.
I should never try embedding links before coffee. It never works out well.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-589-hot-box/
And poor Edward was never seen again…
Until Sydney bought a new FMA Body Pillow.
;)
Fixed. :)
Thank you so much!
Gotta say, I don’t see how the new vote incentive works, nude. From a technical sense.
its a failure to extract. or fallout from a nude bomb.
He was referring to the nipple placement
Or maybe what Pixelicious would be holding on to (asked that question last page)
Yeah, that last. The whole setup seems pretty dependent on some clothing being present.
Consider the voting incentive to be in the present… with patreon version being slightly in future. Works pretty well I think.
I’m glad alot of Syd came from this guy. He seems like a good guy.
Not bad considering Sydney’s punches only rate as “Kitten”
Rated, past tense. Basic training will do that for you. My first experience as an oglee was right after basic training.
dude – kittens have sharp claws tho – all about the PSI and leverage
It’s not the strength of the punch, it’s where she punched. Dabbler’s not human, remember. So like in Undiscovered Country when Kirk kicked the alien in the knees and he was like “good thing his knees are a weak point” or something and another alien says “that wasn’t his knees, not every species keeps their genitals between their legs” or something like that. I can’t remember the actual dialog but that’s the gist of it, it’s been decades.
Anyway, as Wellington pointed out a minute after the comic was posted, Sydney has previously punched Dabbler in the same spot and Dabbler went down entirely, though that was a much more enthusiastic punch. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-589-hot-box/
Kevin, still not wearing pants I see.
Hypnotics? More like hypno-tits am I right?
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
I’m impressed that mom seems to be resistant.
Eldritch Being/Space Wizard Mom is, at best, amused by them.
Due to prostitution laws, they do not provide multiplying dividends, and thus cannot appeal to what turns on Syd-Mom.
Dabbler totally deserved that.
And I see where she got the ADHD hyperfocus superpower
It’s a feature, and a bug, all at the same time.
feature. bug. popup ads
Oh you’re not in the know… think of it this way… you get a popup ad in a game about oh… chickens laying eggs? (Egg inc if you wish to know) and in that popup ad you notice there is a sword stuffed in a treasure box which reminds you that you haven’t eaten lunch yet so you go down for dinner and eat breakfast, naturally. The table has a banana on it which resembles a pinball flipper so you go downstairs to check on the laundry which is the room over. Then you go play thirty rounds of pinball. Midway thru you go to close the blinds because sunlight on the western side of your house is annoying but it’s time for work. You have trouble recalling if it’s a work day and check your phone which you have left on egg inc and is now at 3% power. Obviously not being a work day because you plugged your phone in to charge you take a shower because pinball is sweaty business. Ending your 30th game of pinball (which was never a given for how many you played) you move the laundry to the dryer, start another load, and go up to take a nap. It’s now Sunday afternoon, your phone is fully charged, you forgot to open the blinds so it’s dark, the pinball game has been on idle all night playing music, you have mars attacks stuck in your head, your underwear is dry, your jeans are wet, your shirts are not in the wash yet, so you decide to eat a burger for breakfast which is actually lunchtime.
That was your Friday evening.
Are the first 4 chapters even still canon? the debate about lasers and forcefields is weird given she and Dabbler discuss the same thing after the super brawl, the store they are in is clearly neither the original store nor the Church of Sydney, and he haven’t even seen her car in the last 800 chapters.
You consider each page/publication as a chapter?
weeelll, since she started learning how to navagate flying, i doubt the car is on her list of prefered comutables ….. aaaand this is not the store it’s a military ceremony, celebrating her graduation from bootcamp …..
to be fair the car hasn’t been involved in a lot of the story. we are fairly sure its at one end of the commute or the other. technically there are three points to the commute. but it seems to not matter much.
Doubt she even uses the car anymore. Thinking how much she’ll save one gas and insurance and fees and fines.
now trying to picture a confused officer pulling her over for the orbs not having a turn signal
it would be the FAA and they have ways of fining people. the lawn chair guy will happily tell you all about it.
Try picturing that confused officer as the car FLYS OFF INTO THE SKY.
Her discussing it with Dabbler after the super brawl doesn’t conflict with her debating it with her DM. The first is checking about reality, the latter is her using that knowledge months later to argue about a rules based fantasy situation.
I don’t see the weirdness, I’m pretty sure it’s deliberate, since it’s partly showing why she knows that it WOULD go through.
The background for the game looks like a hidden stock room, so there’s only one inconsistent but vaguely defined background on page 4. Not really canon shattering.
“An excuse to draw […] cleavage” … practice makes perfect…tits. Purple and stripey should not work. But oh my!
A stripey girl in a strip-y dress.
Destiny’s Crucible sounds interesting.
Yet I’m already thinking “how long before he made Cordite or Thermite on that world?” “Did he use his skills to start making medicine yet had to convince people he just knew a lot about Herbalism?”
This is the kind of stuff I remember from High School chemistry (yes, they did teach us how to make Thermite, and I later found out about Cordite).
Okay, my chemistry is not strong, but this book could be really interesting if… We want to make matches, to light fires. I’m pretty sure we need phosphorus. How do we go about getting some? Maybe we might have to, er, “mine” it out of some source material? Et Cetera with the other ingredients.
Knuckle-scrapers -> Alchemists -> Chemists. All the things he’s used to having literally on a shelf, he doesn’t have :(
Phosphates were and still are extracted from bird and bat poo. They can also be obtained from ores but that’s a lot less accessible with low tech. You will also need sulphur, readily collected in elemental form around volcanic hot springs. To make matches, in addition to extracting the phosphorus you will need to convert it from the white phosphorus allotrope to red phosphorus, which is amorphous and thus technically not another allotrope but an intermediate phase between the white and violet allotropes. You will use the red phosphorous to produce phosphorus disulphide.
Riverbeds are also mined for phosphates. The Peace River Watershed in Florida comes to mind.
… And now the hard part. Assuming we’re not near any volcanic hot springs, but do have a bat colony somewhere near, how many dineros do we need, then which extra compounds do we need to convert between phosphorus allotropes?
I’m with DaveB here, it’s all these details which would make the book interesting. But it can be a right bitch trying to out-do cold reality!
Violet phosphate, sometimes better known as Violent phosphate, is best not attempted by amateurs. Or even most professionals.
To find out how many professionals have attempted it you might ask at the next major convention of chemists for everyone who’s ever actually worked with it to raise their hand.
And then adjust the figures to compensate for the lower-than-usual hand-to-chemist ratio.
Excuse me, I wrote ‘violent phosphate’ when of course I was talking about ‘violent phosphorus’.
See, that’s the kind of mistake a professional wouldn’t have made.
While it’d be fun to read a book where the guy is inventing kevlar and advanced stuff like that, the author does a good job keeping it realistic, where the MC is constrained by the pre-existing infrastructure. There are certain leaps that can be made with a lot of knowledge, but there are also certain steps that can’t be skipped. You can’t make nickel-cadmium batteries if the mining industry only pulls iron from the ground for instance.
Iron-oxide batteries and lead-acid batteries should still be doable in those circumstances.
You also still need the infrastructure for electricity to fill those batteries. Also the patience to take it slow so you’re not called out as a Witch, etc.
No, you just need the metals to make the batteries. They are then not rechargeable.
Infrastructure for electricity just needs Iron, Copper and a source of motion, such as wind or a nearby river.
Heck, don’t even need copper if other conducting metals are available.
And if you focus on a gravity battery (works on a raised weight with a high-resistance generator attached), you can cut out some of the difficulty of the battery.
Gentler on your bearings, but you do have to ‘wind’ a gravity battery periodically which can become a nuisance without also having some automated slave labor handling such menial tasks.
You do not, in fact, need recharging infrastructure for non-rechargeable batteries.
Crosstime Engineer is pretty realistic, I think. A Polish engineer accidentally gets dropped in medieval Poland, and realizes its just a few years before the Mongol horde invade. He has a REALLY strong incentive to jump start the industrial revolution ahead of schedule.
Yeah, read that series of books a long time ago
The Belisarius series by David Drake and Eric Flint has a ton of this.. two different far future factions sent back time travelers to change the past. one to rework history n their favor, the other to do its best to prevent that from happening. the catch? the travelers are basically advanced AI computers. they can’t do anything on their own, they have to work through the natives of the time period they are in.
the targets? 6th Century earth, the roman empire and the Gupta empire. much of the tech advancement scenes boil down to *someone gets shown pictures of future history, and then responds with “there is no way we can build that, show me stuff we can use”* (which still ends up very useful.. because stirrips, napalm, and blackpowder are huge gamechangers for the period and easily made with a 6th century techbase)
sorry, fogot a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisarius_series
On that note, it’s probably been recommended to you, but Dr. Stone (a manga tho you can watch what’s been adopted of it so far in anime form) does a fairly good job of showing how you go from “stone age” to “rocket age”, starting from scratch. It might gloss over a FEW things and take a FEW artistic liberties, but is a good 90+% on showing what needs to be done to do the things that need to be done.
One of the things I liked about the ‘1630’ time travel/Alternate history series is that the author went to an actual small town in W. Virginia and carefully surveyed it. hard rule- if it was in the real town than the story town had it when they went back …if they didn’t, didn’t matter how much the characters might need it, wasn’t there.
There are whole forums on the bain books website arguing about What would be in the local pharmacy Or Auto yard
( 1Woman made a mint when she realized the spring steel they didn’t have the alloys for was inside every mattress and box spring in town) and a group of preteen girls became millionaires Marketing their extensive Barbie collections for seed Money to ‘invent’ A number of laborsaving devices
Sounds intriguing but I couldn’t find it – turns out it’s the 1632 series.
He has a superpower! One of Dabbler’s inventions osn’t teleporting away after she let go!
Power: Ooooh Shiny!
Summary: As long as something holds his attention, it cannot escape his attention
(When Sydney hit Dabbler, the screen interrupted Hypnoboobs as the center of attention)
Fairly sure it’s not an automagical thing, or Dabbles could never use a thrown weapon of her own design
Much like how Sydney’s glasses are technically not a weapon this does not automatically teleport back to the armory. Also it’s fairly small but where she’s been holding it is not the point.
The glasses aren’t a weapon, but also they aren’t Dabbler’s and never were. Cora made them for Sydney, to replace and upgrade the pair damaged on Alar.
Or that only applies to things that are teleported to her. As opposed to carried.
I could definitely see it as she’s consciously keeping it from teleporting because he’s not trying to analyze its technical capabilities. Could be the moment she stops preventing recovery it will teleport, or a timer expires or something – whether she gets distracted by something more than gazorpazovum jabbing, or whatever….
or any of the other suggestions (not a weapon, not teleported in so not teleported out – could be a borrowed or stolen thing or she didn’t invent it or design it or register it for teleportation recovery, etc, etc, etc)
Once free of the coworkers have noticed charms he goes back to not being able to see the Forest for the trees period
In panel 2, is it just me or does Sud senior look alarmingly like Bert of “Bert & Ernie” sesame street.
Space Hussy…
Subspecies of Succubus.
Sounds like they come from the shallow end of the gene pool.
Bingo Wings are not necessarily floatation devices…
“Oggling”? Is that staring lewdly while keeping three objects in the air simultaneously?
No, it’s working out how to uphold two objects with one support :P
Ugh, I hate those flash forwards lines so much. It has to be one of the laziest, least interesting ways to foreshadow something possible.
What?
Talking about a comment in the Author’s Notes about a book series DaveB has been reading (well, technically listening to.)
Hmmmm. Wot’s wassername doing taking instruction from Col. Leander? (Panel 1, RHS) Do we have an intrusion?
Was wondering that as well, was waiting until finished reading comments before asking in case someone already asked (and they had :D )
Also, why is Maxi so thrilled to see them? As ‘thrilled’ as finding Dabbles had been sitting in her room while she was in the shower with the shower on pulse-setting
I am somewhat disappointed the shark does not have a frickin’ laser beam attached to its head in the vote incentive.
Maybe in the double rez version..
I am impressed with the structural strength of that bikini.
Not sure why but when I see Sydney’s dad I can’t stop thinking his name is Pietro >_>
Waitaminute… did we just learn that Dabbler does indeed have limits?
or did she mean “How would I have video of the other thing?”
I suppose she might mean she respects Sidney enough not to invade her privacy like that. I was assuming she meant how or where she would have gotten it though. I doubt Cora has her bathrooms wired for video, at least not without the person’s consent.
She asked, “Why would I have video of the other thing?”And her facial expression was not amused.
We have learned that Dabbler does indeed have limits.
Space Hussies can have preferences too, and Dabbler strikes me as liking things clean.
And “consensual” (this is assuming that her aura is not mind control but kinda like hypnosis — where it supposedly can’t get you do do anything that you wouldn’t already do, but can suggest how and why to do it and eliminate distractions so it’s one of the few things on your mind)
I can see it now. her mother getting annoyed at the boob stare her husband did. and sidney’s response would make her mother stare at dabbler’s breasts. to her disgust.
I sometimes use chapter titles in my writing, but they should be teasers, not spoilers. Ideally, people won’t get the reference in the chapter title until they’ve read the title. However, I am admittedly old school (as far future science fantasy fiction writers go).
“NWP spicy”.
Because white people all prefer mayonnaise and ranch sauce, white bread, plain chicken, and iceberg lettuce?
For F’s sake.
While I might largely resemble the above remark in terms of my diet, I’ll grant that it as much a cultural stereotype as any other. What would you use as a short hand phrase to describe the fact that most spicy food in North America comes from cultures that are not descended from Northern European Caucasians?
The reason is simple. White people are from regions where spices were in limited supply… and even then, horseradish is a thing. Whereas the “NWP” live where the spices grow. And spices have traditionally been extremely valuable trading commodities… so for people who aren’t rich, you had to use them sparingly.
BUUUUUUUUT. The spice most often referred to is our humble… chili. And guess which population adpted it like a long sought for kid brother? Hint: good ole Chris was not of these people.
Every place on the planet had to wait until chili seeds were traded out of Spain, and there is a good reason to believe the Portugese introduced it to India.
Capsicums were never native to Africa, but they were imported by Spanish and Portugese explorers.
This is meant as a joke – no one take offense please. :)
White people in England had so few spices that they conquered 1/4th of the planet just to get good, powerful spices and flavoring.
Then never used them on their food at home.
…
It was a joke I swear! Don’t hate me!
There’s a couple of Thai girls got tired of being employees and set up their shop near us. At the time there were only two takeaway places less than 30km away, both were fish and chip shops. Ours is a very well heeled community, a demographic not especially inclined to fish and chips, and quite well travelled. The girls bought out the less successful chip shop and I don’t think they were ready for the deluge of custom. The poor girls looked exhausted but Noot (one with whom I sometimes talk in the supermarket) says they owe nothing to the bank and this year she will take a vacation.
So… spice. When people ask for “hot” they ask whether they mean “Australian hot or hot like in Thailand?”
And being the savvy girls they are, after that they remember which scale. Until one night it was Noot’s MOTHER doing the cooking…
My word. Sydney would have been a happy camper.
No offence taken. A nation that INVENTED the Roast Beef, the Mutton Stew, the list goes on… And then they boil the cabbage until it’s WHITE goddammit, cannot be bothered to parboil the spuds before roasting, seem to have never heard of roast onion? How in the the world did these troglodytes ever come up with simple Hot. English. Mustard??????
And all that on days when they actually get the cooking time and/or temperature right…
So simple yet so delicious.
And expandable into other cuisines. When I make a pot roast and it comes time to add the veg, I’ll first give the onions a bit of char in a fry pan. Just rough cut into 4ths or 6ths and then the flat edges get some dark color on them. That touch of Maillard adds a lot of flavor to what would normally be just boiled onions in a (savory, but still) broth.
About a decade or so ago, I saw and bought (at a supermarket) a USA-produced can of apparently lethal something-that-might-be chili con carne, covered with warnings of near-death, mouth-burns, keep away from children and “consume with caution”. On getting it home I persuaded my wife (Pondicherry Indian born and bred in Malaysia) to try it.
… … … Nothing. No bite, no healthy glow, no attitude. So from that day to this (sadly, she died in 2017 from ovarian cancer and stroke, but even so…) we were convinced that all Tex-Mex was just a marketing ploy aimed at iggerant tourists.
I will admit that as a family, we were accustomed to generous helpings of bird’s-eye chili with almost every dish, but seriously, we definitely expected better from an exported can of “Tex-Mex” food. Veronica had a “secret sauce”, a sambal so concentrated that a small button on the side of the plate would do for the entire serving, and she swore blind it had never even heard of Goa…
Ok first, just want to mention I’m not white but I do eat a lot of tex mex, and I do tend to veer towards very spicy (at least I think I eat pretty spicy food).
I -have- had USA-produced food that is actually extremely spicy. As in ‘guzzle down milk and it does nothing help’ spicy. I recommend trying a hot sauce called Mad Dog 357 Gold Edition. It’s 1 million scoville but for some reason it feels a lot higher.
They also have one called Plutonium Edition which I heard is like 9 million scoville, which I’d never try because I don’t want to die.
It’s not just about the spicy, it’s also about the taste, or lack thereof
Absolutely. And don’t forget, no matter how the actual chili is rated, by the time it’s diluted with the other ingredients the scoville rating is also diluted.
We’ve got a “made in West Oz” sauce called Bunster’s Shit-the-bed. Top of the range is the Black Label at 99,000 Scovilles (see https://www.bunstersworldwide.com/collections/our-sauces/products/bunsters-hot-sauce-shit-the-bed-black-label-16-10-heat before you sneer) and next down is the original Shit-the-bed, (I think) about only 90,000 Scovilles ( https://www.bunstersworldwide.com/collections/our-sauces/products/bunsters-shit-the-bed-hot-sauce-12-10-heat ). They both use Scorpions.
Umm. Trouble-shooting. Two hyperlinks up above.
This reminds me of a nephew who used to sit at the computer with a bottle of tobasco and just take a swig from the bottle every so often. it took some real heat just to wake him up.
I live in a part of Texas where Tex-Mex is just every day food. A lot of the reputation for being really hot is over rated. The heat is there but it really should just amplify the other flavors. If you can’t taste anything but hot you’re eating crappy food.
Because known-to-both cultural assumptions allow you to create a shared scale, which makes communicating very detailed information faster.
There are cuisines from historically non-white cultures that are known for being very spicy. Saying that you can’t make a reference to NWP spicy is saying that there is no difference between for example, Indian and British cuisine. If you insist on making this an moral outrage dick measuring competition, I could point out that would be whitewashing.
No, but there is a stereotype in the ethnic restaurant industry of white people not being able to handle spicy food. If you’re white or look white, and you go to an ethnic restaurant that serves a typically spicy cuisine such as Thai, Indian, (actual) Szechuan, Mexican, etc then chances are you’re going to get what’s called “white spice.”
This is a closely guarded secret in the restaurant industry, and as such there are scant references to it on the internet. You CAN find references, mainly from confessions of people who work in restaurants that do it, or in people occasionally accusing a restaurant of doing it. It’s just you have to dig for it, especially since there are also spice mixtures made from things that are white or pale in color called “white spice” and also recipes for “white spice” beverages and whatnot.
The most recent reference I can find was from September of last year, posted to Reddit’s Malicious Compliance, but the post got deleted. Thankfully there’s a backup of the post here: https://rareddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/iqezd5/food_not_spicy_enough_for_drunk_customer_alright/
Beware, it’s a story about a non-white chef clowning on a white customer who demanded spicy food and got spicy food. The very fact that you even got offended at the idea shows why “white spicing” is a closely guarded secret. That said, what the chef did was HIGHLY unprofessional. She should not have clowned on the customer like that. The chef demonstrating that she simply made it the way she eats it herself like the customer asked for is one thing, but gloating and rubbing it in like that isn’t cool.
Anyway the comments in the post have a lot of other anecdotes about people confessing to working at restaurants that engage in “white spicing” as well as people talking about restaurants they’ve visited that “white spice”.
I’m 3/4 Native American, and I was raised on a reservation by my grandparents, one of whom spent most of his life in Cajun country before moving back to the reservation following my grandmother getting custody of me. He also served in Korea and so developed a taste for Korea’s spiciest kimchi. So suffice to say I got raised on super spicy food.
I have been known to “white spice” food I cook at home, but I basically do it to all my guests, but I’m up front about it. Some have gotten offended when I explain that I’m not making it as spicy as I usually make for myself, and a couple have said don’t worry about it, then I show them the Carolina Reapers I use (grow them myself) and explain how much hotter than a jalapeno they are, most back down. A few have said not to worry about it and go ahead and use them, and so I do. ONE got offended saying “don’t tell me what I like” and I apologized saying “I’m just used to literally nobody else being able to take the heat”.
Anyway, I also make and sell a mango/reaper hot sauce at my local farmer’s market. I keep a bottle of the stuff for samples, as well as cream cheese on crackers for people who are brae and can’t handle it. I sell quite a bit of the stuff because the spicy aficionados in the area love it because I make it so that it’s not just hot, but also actually quite tasty, unlike commercial sauces like Dave’s Insanity, Mad Dog, etc which are all extract based and taste like butt even if you can handle the heat. I just don’t believe sauces of this caliber of heat should be made by people who can’t take the heat, because then they can’t taste what it tastes like, and a sauce should be tasty. It shouldn’t discourage someone who can take the heat from using it just because it doesn’t taste good.
I go through about 100 carolina reapers in a week (there’s 2 of them pureed into in each 5 ounce bottle). I also don’t make a regular habit of it, primarily because reapers are hard to come by. It’s why I started growing my own, but my apartment’s porch isn’t big enough for growing enough to keep me supplied throughout the year.
Oh and to be clear, I’m not saying no white person in general can handle spicy. However, most white people are never even exposed to truly spicy food, and it’s a bit of an acquired taste. I personally know plenty of white people who CAN handle spicy food. Heck, they make up 90% of the customers who buy my sauce… but 90% of the white prospective customers who try my sauce need the crackers and cream cheese just to cool their mouth off, and even then they usually are too busy going “hummunahummuna” to even be able to complain.
Stereotypes exist for a reason, but the reason isn’t because they’re white, it’s because most are raised on bland food, not spicy food.
100 % I just got into a giant debate on this with a buddy about hot sauces that are just hot and no flavor… like a lot of the store salsas are like that if you get anything hotter than medium … all you taste is the pepper extract… is better to buy a mild and add peppers
I will confess that I live this stereotype and feel better knowing that if I decide to try an ethnic food I might not have to beg so pitifully for them not to melt me into a pile of excessive Scoville points.
Having flashbacks to one time at my favorite Chinese restaurant I was having Schezwan squid, and the cook forgot to take out the bundle of hot peppers. Covered with sauce, they looked just like a head with tentacles, my favorite piece!
Sure woke me up, I wasn’t quite as much of a pepper head back then.
I hear you, I made a chili that was declared a chemical weapon once… not a proud day in my life.
I once did also, but not on purpose.
I made a batch of my chili once during a family reunion across the country from my home, and bought the exact same ingredients I would have used at home. I learned the lesson that the same peppers from different regions can have remarkably different heat levels, and to taste everything. And when I make a batch of food like chili I’m always conscious of the differing heat tolerances people have, so I tend to err on the side of milder and allow people to kick it up with added peppers or sauces as they chose.
So imagine my surprise when the stuff was nigh inedible. I ate half a bowl of the stuff out of stubbornness and because I hate to waste. My father who loves hot food took one spoon full before declaring it was too hot. And no one else tried more than a bite either. ~6 quarts of chili down the dispose-all, what a damn shame.
A bit late in the day, but… We had a distant neighbour (SEAsian) who kept complaining her chilis had no heat. I did a bit of research, and found the TAMU horticultural website.
It seems chilis are rathe like cucurbits: NEVER change the water regime on (especially) cucumbers, or they get bitter and unpleasant… Permanently. Chilis need to be stressed sometime near or at flowering. TAMU was flooding the roots for a week, but equally if you have a well-watered patch, then let it dry for a week. The capsaicin levels go straight up! This also explains why for any variety of chili, and even in the same crop, capsaicin levels can vary considerably.
This is not a closely guarded secret. Pretty much everyone knows it.
While I might order “5” at my favorite restaurant, it’s an official thing at many Indian or Thai restaurants. While you’ll occasionally run into a Caucasian who’s used to eating food that’s spicy by Indian or Thai standards, they’re definitely outliers.
I order a 3 or so on the Thai scale — the authentic Thai scale. I like spicy, not “more powerful than tear gas”. At least around here, most Thai places don’t seem to feel a need to dial it back for non-Thai customers.
Laugh at the Chinese places that put the little red pepper icon next to certain dishes, they’re never actually spicy, and some of them are downright bland. Don’t fucking lie to me, just give me the real scale and then let me find the spice level I want, not the level you think I need or some nonsense.
The Texas city where I live has one, and I do mean one, decent Chines restaurant. Notably it is the place that any one who is in from China, usually students and business people eat there. The food is good but there is definitely an us and them menu. It has the obligatory buffet but it is so bland that even little kids can eat it. The menu has those pepper ratings but yeah, the peppers are a lie. The really amazing stuff is what they roll out for the people from the old country. If you want the real thing you have to make friends with the people that run the place.
My Dad taught me the trick with ethnic restaurants. First, see who the majority clientele is. If the ethnicity is not there in spades, look elsewhere. Second, see what the staff eat, and order that. If the place is any good, they’ll be very happpy to oblige.
Well, we don’t. But typically the average white American has a lower tolerance than the average Indian or Thai or Chinese.
I love spicy food, but my own tolerance ends at about habanero level. So that’s the hottest peppers I’ll grow, and then it’ll just be one plant. Why grow what you can’t eat? My nephews and niece from my older sister, however, have an enormous tolerance and love for hot food. And they didn’t get it from their father. I know some part of spice tolerance is learned, so maybe they just became acclimated over a long time of eating ever hotter things. Dunno.
That said, just about every Thai restaurant within 30 miles of my home has the same heat levels to chose from: Non, mild, medium, American hot, and Thai hot. So this inclination or trope or whatever you want to call it is fairly well known.
I asked for American hot from one once, a place I’d eaten from several times previously and had asked for the same heat level from, so I think the kitchen just screwed up because I could only eat about half of it before it got to be too much for me. It was a dish primarily made from chicken and bell peppers, and I stretched the carry out with added chicken and bells, and rice, and it was still damn hot.
This is the second time Sydney has punched Dabbler in the same sensitive, vital, and presumably (on account of who it is) sexual organ… Also the second time she’s essentially assaulted a higher ranking officer…
I guess casual violence among supers is to be expected?
Technically, Dabbles is not an officer of any ranking (she’s a civilian consultant, just like Math)
Do agree that Sydney has to be brought up on that assault, specially in public
Can we bring Dabbler up on a sexual harassment charge for every person she’s hit with her lust powers?
She’d just use it on the judge or jury as well. :)
Technically she would be an “attractive nuisance”.
No shortage of pro boner associates lining up to prepare their briefs and lead the examination.
I’m actually extremely impressed that you used that legal term in the correct context. :)
:D
Was also going to work in some things about leading the witness, juris-prude-ence, and foreperson of a grand jury, but thought I should acquittal while I was ahead.
And now I have to send a ninja hit squad to your home after despite how you had impressed me before. What a shame.
Dabbler has superhuman endurance and is both times shown to be immediately fine.
Outside of slapstick, Sydney could wail on Dabbler and do nothing with just her fists.
Even someone like Mike Tyson would crumble if a teen punched him in the nads
That’s basically what Sydney did to Dabbles and she was already told about that which means that punch was deliberate and intentional
And Dabbler very much did not crumble nor does she treat it as a serious issue or significantly painful.
Refer to my initial comment.
I wonder who’s the woman Max is speaking to???
Not the only one
Looks kinda like a character from the Quantum Vibe comic.
Yeah, she looks amazingly familiar, but I can’t place her. Possibly from another comic or a cameo reference to a movie. Alternatively she’s someone’s mother and there are family resemblances which are triggering our memories.
Looks like Xotchli’s mother.
Ding.
Xotchil’s mom would probably speak with a Texas accent despite her daughter being born in Boston…!
Of course, you could always discover that the first four pages were a dream that never happened, or something that skipped happening, thanks to time travel.
So far we have seen nothing that implies time travel isn’t all sef-consistent time loops in the grrlverse.
Pondering the dynamic that would lead to Halo being born I’m imagining Laura Scoville saying, “He makes me laugh” in Jessica Rabbit’s exact voice.
I can’t remember — does Dabbler have fur? Human-like skin? Scales or slightly mucous-covered amphibian skin?
light fur iirc.
@DaveB I think you might enjoy “The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, The Vampire Accountant” by Drew Hayes, I mean, he also has a couple series on Super Heroes (Super Powereds and The Villain Codex, respectively) that are also really great, but for some reason, possibly that it’s the one I’m reading right now, I think you’d enjoy the Fred series in particular. Not sure if you have a particular channel for book recommendations or if just putting it here is sufficient, but I do think you’d like it if you haven’t already tried it.
Drew Hayes is a marvelous author! I’ve listened to all those series (Just got book 2 of Villain Codex and Fred #7 recently) and love them. SuperPowereds tends to be a bit wordy, but the others are great!
Super Powereds did begin as a webserial, so it makes sense that it would be longer since a blog post needs to be padded more than a novel usually would be. Personally, though, I quite liked the length, felt I was getting more for my money at the 600-1400 page counts, whereas the Fred books are roughly the same price for 200-400 page counts, frankly that put me off getting into the Fred books for awhile. Definitely worth the price of admission, though! I do agree that the Super Powereds series was noticeably a first work, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, in fact I enjoyed it enough that I read it twice!
The Villain Codex is very good, SuperPowereds is kind of popcorn, some obvious flaws (wordy, definitely) but engaging enough that I was happy to read the whole series. I’ve also read Secondhand Curses, which was ok, not enormously memorable.
I’ve toyed with the Vampire Accountant Series, but can’t decide. It sounds fun and “Undeath and Taxes” is a brilliant title that alone almost won me over, but I’ve also seen the series described as YA fiction, which reduces its attractiveness. Any advice for me?
It’s definitely not YA focused but its mostly comedy/SOL focused.
I suggest giving the initial few books a try.
I agree with DuffenBlaster, while I could see it falling under the YA category, since it has elements of paranormal romance and urban fantasy without sex scenes to potentially push it out of that demographic, it most definitely doesn’t read like a YA novel, speaking as someone who has read a lot of YA over the years. It is decidedly slice of life in execution, and the comedy does run throughout, keeping even more serious scenes entertaining with traces of humor without becoming distracting. If you’ve enjoyed Hayes’ word play in his other works, I feel this series has distilled that to it’s purest essence. I’ve felt like nearly every page so far had something at least amusing on it, and there were plenty of laugh out loud moments, and somehow it never feels particularly out of place and never takes away from the emotional depth the way some comedies do when trying to inject humor into more serious moments. I feel a big part of that is owing to the framing device of the books being selections from Fred’s memoirs, meaning some of the wittier observations in tense and fast paced moments can be attributed easily to hindsight, so it doesn’t wind up being jarring. I’m not quite done with the latest book in the series yet, but this is easily shaping up to be one of my favorites.
Nice to see a fellow fan in the wild.
:)
To answer Dabbler’s question of why she would have video of the other thing, she knows Cora and neither of them can be trusted when it comes to pranks lol
Yeah, but Dabbles has shown she knows how and when to apply restraint (also note how she never said she didn’t have that video… )
Can’t get the feeling that Edward seems taller in this episode than in past ones, while the mother is suddenly shorter.
Edward? Who is Edward?
Pretty sure they’re referring to Sydney’s dad, and yeah, I just remembered myself that she’s named after him.
If we get to vote on the name then Edward is a fitting name for him
Then, Sydney can’t be Junior
we could decide it’s a nickname, and forevermore he will be known as Sydward, but he’ll have to take up the clarinet.
See https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-589-hot-box/ . We don’t know how neglected Edward is feeling. Yet.
Is “Space Hussy” a subspecies of “Galactic Trollop”, or the other way around?
A Galactic Trollop must have at least some part Troll ancestry.
Wow…I haven’t that about Tananda & Chumley is, like, a decade. Or more. o.o’
So there must be many many many of them, given the number of Trolls here on Earth. They used to live in caves under bridges, but now they’ve found that forums (from Latin “marketplace, open space, public place”) provide plenty of shelter and concealment.
Poor Lana. That exfil is not going well.
” (Yes, I know Grrl Power starts off with a flash forward. If I could do it over again I’d probably cut those first four pages.)”
So? It’s your comic, you are allowed to retcon it if you want. Take them down now, remove it from the canon, and let new readers experience it from what should be the real page 1.
I’m curious about the way Sydney moved around for panels 3 and 4 as it confused me for a bit. See, in panel 1 it’s (from left to right) Dabbler, Father, Sydney and that seems to follow through in panel 2 as Dabbler hands the dad the display screen. But in panel 3 Sydney has teleported behind Dabbler so she can punch her in panel 4. Yes, I know she can walk over there but it seemed out of place to me as I would expect her to still be next to her dad looking at the display screen before panel 5 where she could have moved in for the Gazorpazovum punch.
Yeah, the blocking didn’t make tons of sense. Sometimes to keep from crossing word balloon tails its just easier to have people standing in the order they speak for that frame.
Just figured Sydney moved around so she could whisper that without anyone else overhearing
Where are Dabbler’s eyes in panel 3?
She’s squinting sideways at Sydney, just like Sydney is squinting at Dabbles
Alright, so now we have a proper wide shot so I can compare the Scoville family’s heights, because it was bothering me that Sydney seemed so much shorter than her mother. I was expecting Sydney Sr. to be a 4’11” King, but he’s the tallest. So I guess Sydney just drew the genetic short straw. Bummer. I know that feeling.
In fairness, if she hasn’t hit 25 yet, she hasn’t stopped growing. There are occasionally people who have really late growth spurts.
Well channel was as educational as a local broadcast public TV channel doing ”how to do nipple piercing.”
And no not a joke actual broadcast and female subject of the process.
If you want a new book series maybe try Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Less Isekai, more LitRPG but it is a very special snowflake. 13 million humans are abducted by aliens to be contestants on and alien Survivor/The Running Man/Hunger Games style game show. They a dumped into a massive 18 floor World Dungeon and told to kill to survive. They can gain powers, spells, classes and even change their race. But this is no cake walk, the first enemy the Mc fights called a Goblin Murderdozer for crying out loud. The MC Carl enters the dungeon with nothing but a leather jacket, a pair of boxers and his girlfriend’s cat, who eats something that makes her intelligent so she can ‘play the game’ with him. It is a crazy mix of over the top action, vaudville-esc comedy, tragedy and the occasional alien talk show.
And the audiobook is narrated by the awesome Jeff Hays. I highly recommend it.
Yeah, that was getting a lot of good press, so I checked it out. I have trouble with books where the opening act is 90% of humanity dying and the main character is like, “huh, these boots let me jump higher.”
Not that I want to read a book that’s entirely about survivor guilt or someone’s descent into madness over space corporations routinely genociding whole species for mining rights and game show view shares. Really, my problem with the book is the attempt at the mildly humorous tone after the setup is “aliens so powerful that God is like, ‘Fuck, I’m outta here.’ and the harrowing realization that genocide is just business as usual, and apparently no one in the universe cares as long as their favorite gameshow gets aired, which all hints at the fact that there’s no realistic recourse or chance of revenge” and all of it being incongruous with the MC being like “Oh well. Hope this next loot chest drops some pants!”
Basically, I don’t do well with tragedy being mixed in with my light comedy. I might go back to it, but it’s at the bottom of my queue at the moment.
I find the Non White Person rating funny as it reminds me of work.
As I was talking to friends at work about spices and what we think of them and such, and there were quite a few Mexican’s going “I don’t eat hot stuff, I can’t take it and it upsets my stomach.” after I the white person talked about the hot stuff I tried and how I was surprised I could eat it just find, but just didn’t find I cared for hot for the sake of hot, when it makes the rest of the food have no taste.
yes, I actually tried some ‘Indian’ food once (Taste of Bombay) and it seemed like they used every possible WRONG spice for stuff. Just to make sure it was spicy. No account for flavour. Let’s just say I never went back there AND the place closed down within a few weeks after that. (Much before Covid)
Sometimes you just have to suck it up. We tried (about 30 years ago) a new Chinese foodery. Their idea of Sweet and Sour was Tomato Sauce (NOT catsup) and vinegar…