Grrl Power #1046 – Four on the force field
In panel three, Dabbler really means that altering someone’s mind without their consent is illegal. Super powers are new enough to the public that things like psychiatrists with mental powers aren’t really a thing yet. There’s definitely been uses for mental powers in the past, whether it’s a super, or a vampire from the Twilight Council helping out a soldier with PTSD and the like. (There’s also less sanctioned but still official uses for it like flipping a spy’s allegiance or Secret Service super bodyguards keeping all manner of foreign mental influence away from key personnel in the chain of command.)
That said, most supers (and supernaturals) with mental powers working for the government are part of Arc-DARK or various other intelligence agencies. The consensus is that the American public will be okay if big strong hero smash car on bad guy, but would lose their collective shit if one of Arc-SWAT’s field agents named “Z. V. BIHMP” (Zero Violence Because I Have Mental Powers)” walked up to a rampaging criminal and said “You should surrender yourself and cooperate with the authorities.” and the bad guy said “Okay.”
I know the question you’re asking. Can Sydney’s shield cut stuff when it pops into existence, and did she almost do something really horrendous to Dabbler and Parfait? Well, it can cut through water, certainly. Solids? Honestly I haven’t decided. Maybe it’s one of her power ups. If she can’t, that would mean that someone could zip tie her ankle to a chain link fence and she wouldn’t be able to raise her shields. It would be a temporary state of affairs as she could laser or lighthook the fence in short order, but it opens up a number of tactics that could be used against her.
So, I don’t normally talk about my birthday because I like keeping focused on the comic, but I thought this one time I’d indulge. First off, my birthday is May 4th, which means I was born under the sign of auspicious nerd cred. My birth year… was 1972. Which means I just turned 50. Yeah… I’m at least as shocked as you are. That sounds fucking old to me, too. I mean, apologies to anyone older than me, but 50 is one of those milestones that I think everyone agrees officially makes someone “an old.”
I don’t know what 50 is supposed to feel like, but I definitely don’t feel it. If you’re suddenly picturing some white-bearded grandpa in a straw fedora and a Hawaiian shirt gingerly bent over a drafting table, you can just knock that off right now. Still have a full head of (brown) hair, and no conspicuous wrinkles. The only thing that’s starting to hint at my age is a little more gray in my goatee. I’m not going to pass for 30, but 40? Eh, maybe.
The thing that makes me feel a little better about suddenly being 50 is remembering that Tom Cruise is 60. He was 52 in Edge of Tomorrow, 53 in M:I; Rogue Nation. Or maybe a year younger in each depending on when they were filmed. My point is, the dude doesn’t look fucking 60. Sure, actors have professional fitness coaches/consultants, and some of them get a little nip and tuck here and there. Still, it makes me think that 50 maybe isn’t so old. Also, Keanu Reeves was 50 when he made John Wick. Kate Blanchett was 48 as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok, and she was hella fine in that. Anyway, if I sound defensive, it’s because 50 still sounds old to me.
But let me tell you why being 50 is actually pretty cool. Being born in 1972 means I was 5 when the Atari 2600 came out. When you’re 5-10 years old and neither you nor anyone else has ever played a video game before, they were amazing. Well, some of the games were. The lack of a “seal of quality” on the 2600 library did doom the console because there was some shit game for it. But some of them were definitely fun. Nowadays? Have you ever played a collection of those retro games? Even with the spark of nostalgia on my side, they held my interest for about 5 minutes apiece. The point is, I got to grow up with the video game industry, alongside the Commodore 64, the Amiga, the Apple IIgs, the X86 PC Clones. Ah, good times. Especially when Sound Blaster came along and made it so PC’s could do more than beep. Star Wars: Dark Forces on a Sound Blaster 64AWE was the business.
Speaking of Star Wars, that also came out when I was 5. I don’t recall seeing it in the theater, but I do remember seeing Empire. That’s less important than the overall influence that Star Wars had on science fiction in general. Before Star Wars, sci-fi was… well, kind of boring. Yes, Star Trek first aired in 1966, and definitely had a major impact, but other that there was Doctor Who and… a bunch of stuff like Flash Gordon. Not the one with the Queen soundtrack either. It was mostly a bunch of black and white stuff that made space look like basically any other job, only it involved a lot of foil and clothes dryer tubes. But man, after Star Wars came out? If you make a habit of watching bad movies, (or MST3K/Rifftrax) you know that you can gauge a movie’s real success based on the number of terrible rip offs that get made after its release. Jaws? Yeah, there’s a lot of bad shark movies out there. Alien rip-offs are practically a sub-genre of their own. But you know who the absolute king is? Yeah, mother fucking Star Wars. You think Battlestar Galactica would have gotten made without Star Wars? Or Starchaser: The Legend of Orin? (So many of you are like, “the fuck is that?”) or Prisoners of the Lost Universe, or Starcrash or you get the idea. The point is that it changed how people thought about sci-fi, and it changed everything that came after it.
So yeah, my formative years were filled with Piers Anthony and Dragonlance novels, Chris Claremont X-Men, Atari, Commodore 64’s, and Nintendo, Stars both Trek and Wars, the tail end of the Cold War, post Moon-landing America (when it was still majorly on people’s mind and not “something my parents generation did with fucking slide rules”), Robotech (yes, the Harmony Gold version, but it was fucking amazing), and slasher films where actors were covered in real fake viscera and not fake digital gore. I’ve lived through porn being a thing you sneak a look at if you have a friend who knows where his dad kept his Playboys and/or Hustlers to the BBS era of watching a single picture of a naked lady load literally one line of pixels at a time to unlimited HD porn all the time everywhere, and lived through 5.25″ floppy disks and Bill Gates saying that 640K of RAM is more than anyone needed, to “Ug, this Ipad only comes with 64 gigabytes of storage and doesn’t even have an SD Card Slot.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer to be 20 because it’d be a lot more likely I’d still be around to check out the PlayStation 21, but it is what it is. I don’t ever pine for “the good old days” like a lot of proper old people, but being alive when computers basically weren’t a thing to where we are today? From there literally being maybe 13 TV channels to “all media ever on instant demand?” From print porn to omniporn? It’s been an awesome ride so far, and here’s to another 50 years (when I’m sure I’ll insist I don’t look a day over 90.)
Almost done with the May incentive. Probably be up with the next monday comic.
April Vote Incentive is up! Looks like someone had better make sure their life insurance includes acts of Snu Snu.
Alternate versions over at Patreon include less cloth-y versions as usual, but also some of those color changing chokers.
Her shirt, since no one has figured out the kanji yet, says “I ahegao you. (As long as you ahegao me.)”
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.
Random gumby software reference! Gotta love M&M2 on the IIGS.
So confirmation that Dabbler knows damn well what she does but doesn’t really care. It’s intentional, which we already know because she’s not the only adult succubus we’ve met.
There’s a difference between knowing the rules and understanding them. It can be difficult to apply simple rules to real-life situations if you don’t understand the motivation or reasoning behind them. It’s easy to incorrectly identify the core function or purpose, and apply an irrelevant piece of the rules to a situation. This is occasionally played for comedy, but does actually happen in real life, particularly with people either in an unfamiliar cultural context, or who are not neurotypical.
Understanding isn’t relevant or necessary, and it certainly an excuse to keep willfully doing it. She knows it is illegal and that humans find having her lust-powers used on them uncomfortable if not violating. Her rival doesn’t have this problem.
What is it that she knows is illegal? She has a variety of traits and abilities that the average human does not, which exist on a broad rage from “natural for a succubi” to “learned magic”. To you, there may be some obvious line of demarcation between “acceptable” and “unacceptable”, but to her, they’re all just things she can do. Some of which she probably can’t just turn off.
It would be like telling someone to lift a weight with just their arms, or their back, instead of the right way, with their legs. “Do this the hard way, because you have an advantage other people don’t, and shouldn’t use it”.
… Dude, she knows the difference. Here she is capable of explaining the difference herself to others.
And secondly, how the hell does actual familiarity of her own abilities reduce her capacity to distinguish between the effects?
She is not “explaining the difference”. She is repeating something that she’s been told, but doesn’t really grasp. I feel that’s implied by the quotation marks around “powers”. She’s a fundamentally magical creature. There isn’t a sharp line for her between “natural” and “supernatural” abilities. Succubi are probably also not the only species in the universe with abilities that provide an advantage in influencing the minds or emotions of other beings, and she is well-traveled. You’re just comparing humans to succubi, and seeing clear distinctions, whereas she would be comparing a wide variety of different species with different abilities, and seeing more of a spectrum than the simple black-and-white line that you see.
I’m willing to think that Dabbler, being the smartest being on the entire planet, knows what she’s saying. She ‘grasps’ it.
I think the quotes are mainly because, for Succubi, their hypnotic boobs are not powers per se, because all succubi have this ability, as opposed to how a super has powers that are NOT normal for the species. But Dabbler definitely understands that, as far as humans are concerned, succubi abilities are considered superpowers, because they are ‘super’ compared to normal human beings, since normal human beings are not succubi.
Just like a Vulcan or a Betazoid has ‘powers’ compared to a human, even though it’s normal for their species as well.
However, in your defense, I do not think Dabbler GENERALLY abuses her ‘powers.’ She skirts the line continually, usually in order to rile up Maxima, but she has only really ACTIVELY used them on other people when they’re villains in a fight (ie, Jabberwokky or Vehemence) or with their consent (Barberian). I can’t see any other examples where she’s used her powers on others who were not villains and not consenting to it, except two times:
1) the one time in the restaurant bathroom that Sydney started focusing on her boobs, at which point Dabbler moved Sydney’s head AWAY from looking at her boobs to break the hypnotic spell they have on most people.
2) When she first came into the ballroom for Sydney’s interview, using her ‘Beholder spell’ (according to Harem, who said she literally could NOT look away), where she seemed to be doing it mainly to annoy Maxima, and stopped as soon as she was told to knock it off.
The other adult succubus we’ve seen, Decolette, did it once as well in her nightclub to get the three guys to wait at the bar instead of hitting on her right there, so she could talk to Sydney first. And when Sydney chastised her about that usage, Decolette said it was ‘merely a nudge’ rather than mind control (the men seemed already interested in Decolette given she has a perfect body, was dressed skimpily, and they ARE in a nightclub where sexual pickups happen frequently as a design of the establishment.
I am sure that Dabbler has memorized a long list of rules about what is considered appropriate or inappropriate, but I doubt that she was able to find any consistent logic to it, and thus might have difficulty extrapolating to new circumstances not covered by the rules she has memorized.
It’s also possible she hasn’t bothered attempting to find any consistent logic in it, because from her perspective, it’s just prudery, and thus unreasonable nonsense that she’s required to put up with.
She presumably finds skirting around the edges of the rules to be an amusing game, considering her statement about sex being about power, control, and mischief, as well as being relaxing and rejuvenating.
I think there will always be complex issues surrounding consent and any behavior, trait, or ability that provides an advantage, whether that be in reading or affecting the behavior of others. To an autistic person, the ability to read the expressions and emotions of others, or to intentionally manipulate other people’s emotions, seem like superpowers. Seduction techniques require no supernatural powers, and yet such behaviors are rated by others as either attractive or creepy, often depending on assumptions about the internal state of the person performing them, and whether those behaviors are natural and genuine, or learned and artificial.
Oh I’m sure she chalks it up to prudishness, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand the reasoning being used by humans (and Americans in particular since that’s where she’s a citizen on Earth). She’s smart. She can grasp concepts of societies which she is not a part of, or which she did not grow up in. I do it all the time when figuring out what an opposing attorney’s strategy will likely be, even if I think the opposing strategy is a loser or faulty, and I don’t know 137 languages and cannot do P=NP or whatever equations in my head.
I can understand religious concepts and arguments of multiple different religions despite my not being particularly religious. I’m not necessarily going to agree with them, but I am capable of understanding the rationale often, unless the stance is inherently and completely irrational, even after doing a deep dive into the reasoning behind the belief structures.
Symbolic manipulation isn’t the same thing as understanding or comprehension. Do you think you can articulate the reasoning behind these unstated rules about mental influence? We as a society haven’t even come to a stable agreement on consent or coercion.
1) Not really sure what your post has to do with my post or the thread. I am saying Dabbler understands the human rationales about appropriateness regarding sex and powers abd manipulation, even if she does not agree with those rationales.
2) There are stable agreements under the law on what are consent and coercionas a society.
Coercion – the use of express or implied threats of violence or reprisal or other intimidating behavior that puts a person in immediate fear of the consequences in order to compel that person to act against his or her will.” Actual violence, threats of violence, or other acts of pressure may constitute coercion if they’re used to subvert an individual’s free will or consent.
Consent – an act of reason and deliberation. A person who possesses and exercises sufficient mental capacity to make an intelligent decision demonstrates consent by performing an act recommended by another. Consent assumes a physical power to act and a reflective, determined, and unencumbered exertion of these powers.
As some one who is not neurotypical myself I agree. I find it best to just obey the rules as written but sometimes I am told that the rule doesn’t apply or that this person doesn’t have to follow it or somehow the rule was changed or it never existed in first place (even though it did).
What I find frustrating is when you think you’re following the rules, but someone jumps on you about it, and insists that you know what you’re doing is wrong, that you’re too intelligent to be unable to understand the rules or interpret them correctly.
I find that intelligence doesn’t help with understanding the insane or irrational.
“I find that intelligence doesn’t help with understanding the insane or irrational.”
I think the sciences of psychiatry and psychology both are entirely based on using intelligence to understand the insane or irrational. :)
Piers Anthony became increasingly problematic, when you realize just how consistent his interest in young ladies was.
(agreeing) Way beyond the usual “white guy born before 1990s” problem many men have, where they don’t stop to think things through. Anthony went beyond not thinking about the culture he’d been soaked in since birth (and how it viewed women) and straight into creepy.
“Too damn young” and “but aliens/fairies, different culture!” were the impressions I got from too many of Anthony’s works before I dropped him -especially the non-Xanth ones. (My theory is, with Xanth being Anthony’s mass money maker, he didn’t dare get too sketchy -at least up through Yon Ill Wind, the last one I read. I can’t speak for ones since then.)
(You can see where DB thought about the culture he was born into and how it viewed women and went “nah, don’t like it.”) :p
Interestingly enough I read up on a study conducted by a college professor that reluctantly admitted he had similar traits about this very same subject. In a way it answered a lot of questions about lolicons, pedos, etc, and how many cope with their tendencies knowing full well their tastes were very much wrong. Knowing it’s wrong, quite a few have admitted that they turn to reading, writing, hentai, etc. As an alternative to just letting it boil over. It’s established that individuals of this nature are hard to crack from it since sexual attraction is deeply rooted in the psyche, and upon understanding this I found myself looking deeper. Never mind it being far more common than people are led to believe (most find themselves attracted to girls at menstruation age to be clear), as well as the fact that attraction to that age demographic was once considered normal in times old. The research detailed nature vs nurture a little bit and covered every little detail of other aspects. This stuff is only recently being looked at more in depth from a psychology perspective, and was barely even touched during Pierrs Anthony’s time. So if something is more common than one might want to admit, and coping mechanisms are often applied by those with a good moral compass. What’s to say Pierrs was just a lolicon trying to channel his unhealthy attraction in as healthy of a way as possible? Just a little food for thought. I’m still trying to understand more so this is just mere speculation right now.
There is also the factor that because different people mature at different rates, most people are much worse at accurately pinning down the age of someone based purely on visual input than many would willingly admit. And, to a certain extent, the exact age kinda only makes a difference from a legal and cultural perspective. I’m not super familiar with Piers Anthony’s works, as I’ve only read the first three or so Xanth books, so I don’t know if people are talking about teenagers or little kids (for which there should *not* be much in the way of ambiguity), but if it’s the former it could easily be a case of acknowledging that because these were fictional characters admitting to some level of attractiveness when they are at an age where such features would likely be developing isn’t really harmful, a conclusion that was fairly common (and still is, it’s just a lot more uncomfortable).
My first job I was waiting tables the summer between my freshmen and sophomore years of college and I had a table where I thought I was dealing with 2 high school girls of about the same age, I estimated them to both be about 16, so I asked what school they went to, making small talk, and it turned out that one of them was in college and older than me by a year or two, and the other was a middle schooler she babysat, but to me they both appeared the same age, around the midpoint between them.
A more serious case a couple years prior, when I was a senior in high school, there was a court case that was seeing a fair amount of attention in my area, as it had occurred a couple towns over, IIRC, where a man was on trial for statutory because a 14 year old girl had solicited herself to him in prostitution, however she had lied about her age and said she was 17, and in my state the legal age of consent is 16. A lot of people held that the case was cut and dry because he “should have known” she wasn’t over legal age of consent (and for a lot of these people the only factor that mattered was that she wasn’t 18, even though that is NOT the age of consent here, so they refused to acknowledge that her lying about her age was, in fact, relevant), and because her identity was protected by the court, none of the people involved in these arguments actually knew what she looked like. As a senior in high school at the time I just needed to go to the cafeteria to see that, outside of people I was personally familiar with, I wasn’t able to say with certainty who amongst the people in the crowded room with me, male or female, were above or below that line of 16, because some people look older than they are, and some people look younger than they are.
Personally, When I was 17 my dad and I went to a bar and grill and the hostess offered to seat us in the bar section, without asking my age or to check my ID. Out of curiosity, I asked her how old she thought I was and she said I looked 23, and I happened to be clean shaven that day due to a singing competition I had been in that morning, when I had my facial hair I was fairly consistently mistaken for much older. Years later, I still am, I’m in my mid 20s and people think I’m in my early 30s. Amusingly, this runs in both sides of my family, with both of my parents appearing in their 30s from their mid 20s to their mid 50s, only recently starting to show their age with wrinkles and grey hair. At the time I was fairly good friends with a guy who looked like he was in his early 20s but was actually 35, and he frequently had to show his ID to prove it, and even then there were some in our social group who thought it was a fake ID he carried as a joke (nobody thought he was too young to drink, which is the only real reason I could think of to carry a fake ID at the time)
On top of all of this confusion regarding who might be what age, there is also the factor that what physical traits one finds arousing are almost entirely subconscious, and all or most of them can start becoming apparent in puberty, so even if we *know* someone is underage, that wouldn’t stop us from subconsciously noticing and appreciating particularly pleasant to look at features. That doesn’t necessarily mean one is a pedophile (or whatever the term for being attracted to teenagers is), and that appreciation does not always involve actual sexual interest or even attraction, but sometimes it can be from an entirely aesthetic perspective (I’ve known gay men who found breasts pleasant to see and feel, when permitted of course, purely because the human brain finds round, soft, and bouncy things pleasing, even if it isn’t sexually arousing), I had a crush on a girl at one point who was a cross country runner, and as such had very powerful, and thus well formed, legs and hindquarters, which are not a feature I usually fixate on as far as sexual attraction goes (I’m a boob guy, I can appreciate a good butt, but that isn’t a feature that I particularly look for in a woman), and at some point I noticed a similarity between her lower half, when viewed from behind, and that of the hind legs and hindquarters of a racehorse. I certainly acknowledge and can appreciate the beauty and aesthetic efficiency of the musculature of a horse in good health, and impressive athlete is an impressive athlete regardless of species, and after a few hours of looking up pictures of horse butts (I was in high school, and they reminded me of my crush) I came to the conclusion that while there was *some* overlap in what I liked about her butt and horse butts, as they both were aesthetically pleasing and impressive in their musculature and motion, there was not a sexual component when viewing the horse butts the way there was when looking at hers.
The same logic can be applied to young women when you are not in the same age category, a good butt is a good butt, good breasts are good breasts, and a flattering cut to the outfit is a flattering cut to the outfit. Appreciating beauty does not mean one would have sex with a minor, even if one did find their appearance sexually arousing. If I find a painting pleasing to look at, doesn’t mean I would steal it, or even buy it, similarly if one finds a person appealing to look at, doesn’t mean they would engage in sexual acts with them, regardless of legalities. I don’t want to hang every piece of artwork I enjoy on my wall, and I don’t wanna bang every girl I oggle (quite the opposite, actually, there are a LOT of hoops one would have to jump through before I would even consider sex to be on the table, or any other piece of furniture for that matter, I don’t even kiss before the third date). So long as one is respectful of real people in real interactions, what one likes to look at or think about doesn’t matter (it should be noted that leering, “eye banging”, or otherwise openly looking at women with plain sexual desire is *not* respectful behavior, unless that is an accepted part of your relationship with the individual woman you are looking at).
If one *is* more attracted to younger women than is generally considered healthy, I can understand and even approve of using fiction and art as a healthy outlet, so long as they do not escalate to behaviors that are actually harmful to real people. Same thing with other potentially harmful fetishes, so long as it is kept in the abstract some indulgence in fiction is actually healthy, and people can even have fetishes that *only* apply to their fiction and they would find abhorrent if given the opportunity to engage in in real life with real people for real. Personally, in my recreational pleasure, I’m into mind control themes, for a variety of reasons, some of which I still haven’t consciously identified, but when it comes to real life, I consider free will and volition to be of utmost importance and the idea that someone might subvert that for sexual pleasure is disgusting to me; if I had the power to bend others wills to my own, not only would I never use it to sleep with someone, I would never use it outside of emergencies and never in a permanent fashion at all. I consider all evil acts to be evil because on some level they are violating the free will, or right to choose, of another person, and I find that to be abhorrent. But in porn it’s a turn on. Similarly, the harem tag is one I indulge in regularly, but the idea of *ME* sleeping with multiple women, separately *or* together, is a bit of a turn off, as I am really big on monogamy, as a personal choice, nothing against polyamory as a lifestyle, some of my best friends are polyamorous, but it just isn’t for me. Also, I’m unsure if I would be able to please ONE woman sexually, the idea of trying to satisfy multiple women, even individually, let alone simultaneously, just sounds exhausting.
I went off on a few tangents there, but TLDR, having varying levels of attraction, from aesthetic to sexual, to underage women is fairly normal, and nothing to be ashamed of, so long as nobody acts on such attraction in any meaningful way, and using fiction as an outlet is not harmful to anyone at all, especially considering that one’s tastes in fiction don’t necessarily align with their tastes in real experiences. I wouldn’t want to actually fight a maniacal villain to the death, wrestle with monsters, mind control anybody, sleep with multiple women, or sleep with young women, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t necessarily enjoy fiction that engages in those themes (I don’t personally enjoy loli content, but it’s sufficiently prevalent that it can be difficult to avoid sometimes, and sometimes the art is good enough quality that it’ll do in a pinch, and I don’t fault those who make or go looking for it, so long as it remains purely fictional).
On a tangent but related is the subject of (earlier works), when someone wrote a story at a younger age so had the characters more reflect their own age. Don’t think about it at the time and years later get someone pressing you with “you said they were legal age for their world but how old are they really?” had this come up myself when reposting my Aesperia series to an erotica site (despite the story not actually being erotica its self but related works are so…),
in the much older works one character is stated to be a legal adult *was paying homage to anime that would be dubbed with disclaimers saying that*, although they were written as still in school (adventuring school granted), and were romantically interested in a much older woman *as in this younger woman believed the older woman to at least be several thousand years old*.
-since then done some time skips so she is definitely an adult…like a 500 year time skip. (wrote her as part elf, so hedging bets there).
but this comes up with others and have seen artists bury their *teenage to early twenties* works for reasons like this (it has become…problematic for the works to still be out there now that I am much older)…
and then we have the other end of that when you as an adult have to write a romance between younger characters. This can get cringy, make people question the artists like…why do you keep having teenagers being romantically interested in one another (some cases eyebrow raising but others its like..teenagers date, its part of their lives. So long as it doesn’t go full erotica and keeps it romantic to young love problems its fine by me).
Lol, reminds me of this one time when I was like 14ish I made a post on some forum somewhere about some disney star talking about how attractive she was (don’t really recall who, there were a few it could have been about at the time) and people jumped down my throat like “she’s a minor! Don’t look at her like that, it’s inappropriate!” and I’m like, she’s older than me…
People don’t want to accept that minors experience a wide range of emotions, including both sexual and non-sexual attraction to other people of varying ages. They may not be mentally developed enough to deal with the complexities of sexuality, and differences in maturity and power may make some relationships exploitative or inappropriate, regardless of the ages of the participants, but that doesn’t mean that minors are not sexual beings.
That’s because they’re not supposed to be sexual beings. That’s what “being a minor” is all about: Still a child, still in need of protection, still not supposed to do the things that grown-ups get up to.
We sort-of allow that they’ll get up to no good and that this might include hanky-panky, among themselves, but not with grown-ups please. It’s telling that (at least some) anti-sexual-child-abuse laws make little to no allowance for whether the child in question has hit puberty yet.
I’m not saying nor implying that once the child hits puberty it should be fair game in a free-for-all, that’s not even true for grown-ups. But I do think that perhaps some consideration as to the difference is in order. Like, a 18 year old gets arrested for computer misuse, and it turns out he has sexy selfies from his contemporaries on his computer. “Well, some of these images depict 17- and 16-year olds, we could charge him for possession of child pornography”, sayeth the police, “but we won’t” as if showing their magnanimity. I say laws that allow that sort of thing are overbroad. This oughtn’t be up to the whim of the individual police officer. Moreso since ubiquitous phones-with-cameras have such pictures become normal among today’s teens. Damn I feel old. But anyway, the point was illustrating lawmakers’ attitudes, that presumably reflect society’s attitudes.
Nah, Anthony was plenty sketchy in the Xanth series, and pretty much right from the start.
The last Xanth book for me, was the one with the hundreds year old zombie lusting after the teen girl (and this was long before that Twilight crap came out)
But the real ender for me was after reading “Bio of a Space Ogre” (his autobiography), in it he explains he can’t write lesbian stories because he can only write from experience, so that means an old guy having anal sex with an 18 year old is something he has done regularly (it’s a theme that shows up in several of his works)
I don’t recall him being super in to concerningly young women, in fact, I’m positive I learned the word “voluptuous” from his writing. That seemed to be his go to descriptor for women. Mostly I read the Xanth novels, Incarnations of Immortality, and a collection of sci-fi one offs though, so maybe his penchant for the young’uns was limited to certain series?
I remember there being some hinky stuff in Cthon & Pthor and some of the age gaps in the Xanth series are questionable but the most troublling would from the book Firefly. Oh boy. A 5yr old girl named Nymph having graphic, but consensual, sex with a guy.
If I recall the details correctly, “Bio of a Space Tyrant” features Hope Hubris, a grown man (40s? 50s?) in a position of enormous political power having repeated sex with a young teen who had mental issues. The sex was consensual and Hope agonized a bit before going for it, but it’s still creepy.
I know Bio is based loosely on a person/time and was a left wing critique of the politics of its time. I think I managed to choke down the first book or two. lets see… Naval service was co-ed and sex was mandatory so institutional rape anyone? and then there was that culture where the groom rapes his wife? she gets a knife as part of her marital bliss kit and is allowed/required to kill him to prevent it. so ok, yes Anthony is sexist. this explains why I have not been rushing back to his books in the last several years.
That thing about the groom legally being allowed to rap his wife is not something Anthony made up, there are (or were) many parts of Europe where that was enforced by the rulers (they even had people guarding the door to make sure the wife didn’t try and escape, or even kill the husband)
that fails to surprise me much that there were cultures that did that. it might have been criticism. its been a really long time since I tried to read Bio and I was likely to young to catch the tone fully. the the Naval one tried really hard to make sex boring. in Bio she really tried to kill him the first time.
I really resent this… I’m starting to actually remember this series. can we talk about Person of Interest? I’m not paranoid enough yet.
Not having read the book myself, or somehow any of Piers Anthony’s work, I would suggest that it can be difficult to tell the difference between, say, sexism, and criticism of sexism. Sometimes art is intended to make people uncomfortable. Tone can be helpful in distinguishing between whether the artist is supportive or critical of a concept, but satire often blurs the line.
on that note we have far more recent things like (Skeleton Knight in Another World),
which apparently has a theme going of showing women being sexually assaulted, including minors, however these scenes are ended with the one who did the sexual assault being brutally killed usually.
However this doesn’t change the fact the scenes are shown in some detail *not a hentai, so not that far*, and go on for some time. While I am onboard terrible people getting what they deserve, when the same sort of scene repeats multiple times with porn shoot angles on the women being assaulted…it gets…sketchy. Like it is trying to titillate the audience with what should be a horrific scene of assault.
if you don’t counterbalance with some romantic love scenes, or other crimes being punished as well, it starts to raise some eyebrows.
likewise (Miss Kobayashi’s Dragonmaid) has great characters and humor…however due to a reoccurring lolli theme can’t really recommend it and feel like I can’t even acknowledge I watch it in person. Like oh yeah there is this anime with funny and cute dragons and stories about finding your own way in life and being able to change even as an adult and…oh…right there are also these other scenes you may want to fast forward over or form some cognitive dissonance are even in the same show.
Yeah, just because the assailant is brutally ‘dealt with’ doesn’t change the fact the author is continuously having women being sexually assaulted
What ‘reoccurring loli theme’ in Miss Kobayashi? You mean Kanna? While she is portrayed having a young body, she is not a young dragon, and the only one showing any possible interest in her is a classmate. That’s kinda like how in “3rd Rock From The Sun” Tommy is actually the oldest, even though he ended up in the youngest body
Or do you mean the randy big-bewbed milf who tries to molest the young male she has attached herself to?
We seem to agree on Skeleton Knight in Another World
on Kobayashi’s dragon maid, yes those two repeating gags, and also a character refering to Kanna as a gothic lolita, and the love potion episode implying for one second Kobayashi might lose control with Kanna, and the grew a dick episode (although granted the damned things will respond to a space heater sometimes so being confused by them makes sense), but again afraid of losing control,
and lines like *Dragons don’t differentiate between child and adult, only recognizing strength*…when this is clearly contradicted by scenes like baby Tohru or Kanna and Lluru being referred to as children by dragon standards…granted I do believe the above line was Lucoa, and honestly Daitomodachi’s waifu hunter youtube series had it right…lock her up.
But this seems to only be happening in Skeleton Knight just to establish that the bad guys destined to be slaughtered really are bad guys. It actually seems a bit perfunctory compared to a few anime I’ve seen. Not scripted to be appealing, if you catch my drift.
when it lingers on the moment, with porn shoot angles to highlight the female body during, and then repeats this over and over again it becomes highly suspect if its just using the brutal slaying as an out to get away with light core torture/rape porn.
Yes there is much worse, especially in older anime, but that’s not an excuse.
It just a tad too repeating for my comfort in seeing it even with the bad guys “dealt with”.
Anthony’s views on women are there. And you don’t even need to be particularly perceptive to see it.
In the very first Zanth novel A Spell for Chameleon Anthony points woman as being manipulators of men. And using their bodies is just one of the ways this manipulation is carried out. They will pretend to be upset if they are seen partially clothed or naked, but secretly happy as long as the reaction is positive.
There is a lot of focus on the attire of the female characters, and what bits of their bodies are seen by the men in the novels. Characters of a very young age, of both genders, are seen as sexual beings or at least desirable mates by members of the opposite sex.
I could go on and on, but I believe the point is made. There is a lot of discussion available for anyone who seeks to look into this any further, and most of it is not favorable to Anthony’s approach.
Hell, one of the Xanth books is called “The Colour OF Her Panties”.
yes, this was a thing. Donaldson had published a book ‘the reflection of her dreams’ around the time color of her panties was written. both books are about fate and Xanth is lowbrow (almost to the floor) so Xanth would be concerned with the color of Fate’s panties rather than how Fate thinks her makeup looks.
I have not only read the first 60 or so books of Xanth, I’ve read the notes at the end of many of them. other than the previously mentioned problems the books deteriorate after a while and the quality of the story gets really spotty. Xanth was Anthony’s fun (for him) stories. I suspect I get my love of puns in part from him. we could talk about Burroughs Barsoom or, god help us, Tarzan. I have a great deal of sympathy for Disney’s attempt to bring Barsoom to life. it was a very bad idea.
“They will pretend to be upset if they are seen partially clothed or naked, but secretly happy as long as the reaction is positive.”
I wouldn’t call this manipulative, I’d call it “acting like a normal human being of either gender.”
I won’t go out of my way to defend Anthony’s writing – it’s been a long time since I read his stuff, and when I did, it was when I was around 15 and didn’t know anything about the world, so if there were upsetting themes, I certainly didn’t pick up on them. That said, if a book has young women being used as political game pieces in “ye olden days,” my first thought isn’t “this author is a pedo,” it’s “that sounds about right for ye olden days.” But a lot of people’s points seem to be that young women are sexualized as a theme across enough of Anthony’s works that there’s cause to go “Hmm.” So… I don’t know. I’d have to go back and reread some of his stuff to have an honest opinion at this point.
There was one xanth book where a couple muggles were transported in to win a contest of princess’ hand in marriage. The mc was like a 50-60 year old who actually had presence of mind of “wth i’m 60 and princess is like 16-21”, and an extending portion of the book is him being dragged to different couples with extreme ages, both age differences and just like two “actually 300 year old” humans with normal human lifespans. They make frequent use of the fountain of youth in the xanth books to keep characters in play, including the mc of that book when he entered xanth, and the message seemed to be that only physical age actually matters, which is definitely a trope you can only get in fiction.
When I read his non-Xanth books I was about the same age as some of the excessively young girls he sexualized, so it didn’t register as strongly as it should have. On re-visiting? Ewww. Then I discovered he had written “erotica”. Double ewww.
And no. You can’t say ” But he was born before 1990.” So were everyone from Kōbō Abe to Roger Zelazny. They didn’t sexualize little girls, talk matter of factly about corresponding with pedophiles or assume every Black guy was an angry rapist. He was always bent.
But in his defense there isn’t a whiff of a hint that he ever acted On his fantasies. By contrast Marion Zimmer Bradley participated in the abuse of her own daughter and used fandom solidarity to help cover up her husband’s rape of their child. I would much prefer a pervert who kept it in the realm of fantasy to a former feminist icon who violated actual kids.
you make me glad I didn’t get into Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books. since we are condemning authors all over the place does Anne McCaffery have any non-dragon skeletons in her closet? and what dark secrets is Lois Bujold hiding?
For the most part an artist’s private life is just that. I don’t care about it. When it involves raping children or helping someone else rape children I care.
Unfortunately there are other bad apples, Isaac Asimov would sexually harass any woman he met and occasionally sexually assaulted women at conventions. And he relied on his status as a Grand Master to ensure no-one would talk about it.
And David Eddings and his wife were apparently imprisoned for a year for physically abusing their adopted children.
And that should have been called out. We have made progress over the last ninety years.
One thing that early abusers in SF&F relied on was the genre’s tight knit “this is the only place we have” attitude. People were discouraged from stopping bad behavior because it might “hurt our community”. Seen the same thing in other communities from gay/lesbian to charedim.
Tribalism, or loyalty to people over principles, is a corrupting force in communities of all sizes. The rules, inconsistently applied, become a tool to reward or punish individuals based on social status, rather than adherence to the rules themselves.
Who decides what the rules are?
the people with enough influence/followers.
Exactly, so when someone like Asimov sets the tone that sexual harrasment is acceptable, and MZB says its discriminatory to throw pedophiles out of fandom (see the Breendoggle), well you see what happens
People within communities negotiate a set of rules that they think will maximally benefit them. This is Nomic. Sometimes those rules are put forth in good faith, on the honest belief that they will be mutually beneficial and maximize the happiness of all members, while others are submitted as part of a selfish ploy to manipulate, consolidate power, and acquire happiness for some at the expense of others.
Never think of an author, as being communist, because they write about it!
Being, “gay/lesbian”, are not BAD behavior, they are like being Bisexual and/ transgender,are congenital, as is being straight!
Apparently another author decided to harass Asimov, possibly to give him some perspective on how it felt.
Hah! That’s genius.
I disagree with the writer’s rejection of the goosing of Asimov though, they say “I prefer restorative justice over punitive justice”, implying treating a gooser to a goosing cannot be restorative/reformative, when just a few paragraphs before you read Asimov almost being reformed: “I wonder if Alfie did it on purpose in order to widen my understanding of human nature and to reform me.” The reformative potential of responding to bad behaviour by subjecting the bad behaver to their own behaviour is obvious. There’s nothing punitive about it. It only becomes punitive if you don’t stop after reformation.
There’s no teacher quite like experience. Knowledge is not the same as understanding.
“sexually assaulted”; is another term for rape.
Not all sexual assaults are rape though, many don’t involve physical contact of any kind
It can mean rape, yes. But it can also mean any unwelcome sexual touching. Pinching someone on the ass could be a sexual assault. Or squeezing a tit. Or whatever. The point being that there is an awful lot of poor behavior that can fall under “sexual assault,” but rape almost always means a sexual assault with some form of penetration.
“Mentalm issues”preclude consensual! Also, define “Mental Issues”!
That’s definitely not true. You can have mental issues and be absolutely capable of consent. For example, I suffer from chronic depression, a real mental issue, but one which in no way hinders my ability to give or not give consent. My nephew suffers from ADHD, another mental issue, yet one which does not hinder his ability to give consent. My dad had PTSD from the war, a mental issue, yet that did not hinder his ability to give consent.
Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t mental issues which can preclude consent. If someone’s condition prevents them from understanding what they are consenting to, then that consent is meaningless. For example, someone who suffered from a severe intellectual disability would likely be incapable of giving consent regardless of their age. Someone who was riddled with so much dementia or alzheimers that they were incapable of recognizing who they were talking to would not be able to consent. Someone who was on the extreme end of the autism spectrum may not be able to consent (though many on the lower end definitely could). A schizophrenic who’s delusions had disconnected them from reality would not be able to give informed consent. But a sociopath, despite suffering from severe mental illness, likely COULD consent.
It’s a complicated subject, and the exact mental condition in play is highly relevant to determining whether or not a person is or is not capable of consent. Just because a person has mental issues doesn’t mean they’re not a person, nor does every mental condition prevent people from making well considered choices.
In fact I would go so far as to say that it is almost guaranteed that every person on the planet suffers from mental issues in one form or another, save perhaps the Buddha and Mr Rogers. Most of them aren’t crippling, and only a small fraction will ever be properly diagnosed, but they’re still there. People have phobias and anxieties and delusions and traumas and deep seated emotional issues that, whether they want to call them such or not, DO represent a mental issue. Those underlying mental problems may play a motivating factor in their sexual decision making process (for example, someone with parental issues seeking out partners that are significantly older than them) but most won’t, in and of themselves, prevent that person from giving informed consent, whether you like the decisions they make or not.
Of course the question of consent is also entirely irrelevant when it comes to fictional characters, since the only actual person involved is their writer, who obviously consents by default. The more relevant question than whether the fictional character can give consent because of their fictional mental illness, is how skeevy it is for the author to exploit mental illness to titillate their readers, consensual or not such things seem like they could get very creepy and very disrespectful very easily. Just because something isn’t a problem of consent doesn’t mean it isn’t creepy to write about. If someone wrote about their main character jacking off to their middle school year book that wouldn’t involve a lack of consent, but it would still raise some questions about why they were choosing to write about such a gross subject matter to begin with. Things can be perfectly legal and still reflect poorly on the person who writes about them.
“” But he was born before 1990.””So was I, by 39 years, Iwould never consider rape, only the punishment, thereof!
Happy post birthday! Great work here.
Lol if for next birthday we actually get to ‘present day’. Place your bets everybody!
Happy Birthday to you. Same day as my wife Not telling you the year. I just hit 52 exact two weeks earlier. I remember all your childhood references as well. Saw Star Wars in the theater. Blown away!
What sort of answer will Tom give Dabbler(as well as Sydney)?!?
I think the Literally Magic Bra would sell well
“Cleavage without Consequences, Bust without Backache, Smite ’em without Stiff Shoulders!!”
Yeah.. it’d sell like hot cakes… ;)
you’re not old, you’re practically a kid..my first sci-fi was Flash Gordon, watched twilight zone and original Star Trek when they first aired and saw A lot of the ‘classic’ Disney movies first run..and I went to see Star Wars opening night because Some guy I met at a sci-fi Convention by the name of Mark Hamill told me it was Going to be great.
my first Electronics Project had tubes, and my first time on the computer the ‘display’ was printed out on a roll of paper.
Age, like all things, is relative. My dad had a turntable and a reel to reel machine with tapes of Bill Cosby standup, back when he was funny and not reviled. I’m okay being born into the era of audio cassette tapes.
I am not on your lawn, but I want that Atari 2600 lego set…..
“Some guy I met at a sci-fi Convention by the name of Mark Hamill told me it was Going to be great.”
That guy sounds a bit sketchy. Sounds like a bit of a joker to me.
give into you anger, your words… and come pun with me.
That was not a pun! That was a joke! Because Mark Hamill also is the voice of the Joker!
Dangit no! I will not be swayed to the dark side! Never!
NEVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
“Because Mark Hamill also is the voice of the Joker!”; not at that time! I presume!
ever notice the word punt is 3/4 pun?
I’ve been in fandom for 50 years now and it was the Kansas City WorldCon and the studio sent Hamill (just him) with some preproduction paintings and some props and a box of posters with preproduction artwork to do a presentation on the movie which was to come out the next year.
they actually had him watching the room with the props display,
signing posters with art they weren’t planning to use in advertising.
I spent some time talking with him, great conversationalist, and he signed one of the posters for me,
unfortunately when I finally decided to head back to my room and get some sleep, I neglected
to pick up the Roll of all the Free Posters I Acquired and when I realized that and went back they were missing.
I managed to reacquire most of them, except for that Star Wars poster Hamill signed..they were all out.
oh well, it wasn’t like a signed prerelease poster was ever going to be worth much.
I do remember one comment I made to mark that I really liked the paintings, but the mannequin
with the villains costume looked kind of hokey.. I mean, all black and a samurai helmet and a gas mask,
and a cape ? and what was with the glowing swords?
I would say that Tom’s angle is approximately 120°
160 to 170 Tom is a lot taller than Sydney and Sydney is very close.
My brother was born on April 20th, so dad named him Steve Miller. Steve learned nothing from the experience and named his first son Hubris..
It Occurs to me that Dabbler is old enough to have daughter/s of her own, anywhere up to 170 years old.
Then again, we don’t exactly know the age a Succubus can have kids, even if they are sexually active.
It’s also entirely possible that they are able to consciously choose whether they are fertile or not before… getting it on (or even during, I’m not sure what could occur midway through that would change ones mind on that subject, but I won’t discount the possibility). Considering sex is a major part of their powers/abilities, and something they require like we need food, it makes perfect sense to me that a lot of the risks involved for us wouldn’t apply to them. Frankly it would seem weirder to me if they *couldn’t* control their reproductive processes to a very fine degree given the nature and expression of their powers.
there is a system in nature for this already, some animals can *hold onto* the male’s sperm inside them for some time and then *decide* if they want to become pregnant or not. Usually it comes down to the process going forward based on available food sources and stresses. Although for a fully concious life form this could come down to sheer willpower.
especially for a species descended from artificial origins. Its like seeing a Techno-organic with some odd seeminingly unnatural ability and it being pointed out it was an inherited trait from their ancestors thousands of years ago who were built/created for specific purposes.
add in alien gene modding, enhanced contraceptives that could act as sperm catchers like protein nannites that then *net them up* to be absorbed or released by a given command.
Huh, neat. I feel like I learned about that at some point, but it’s certainly not a fact that stuck with me. Or maybe it just makes too much sense and so my brain is saying it’s familiar because I had subconsciously reached a conclusion without actually knowing any facts. That happens sometimes.
You’re only a few months ahead of me, @DaveB: I’ll be 50 in July. I don’t typically comment here, but I had to echo everything you said about our generation. Yes, we’re getting older, but when it comes to computer-related stuff, we did EVERYTHING before it was cool. We are the O.G.s (Original Geeks) of the internet. We don’t demand respect, but we do deserve it.
I thought it was clear that, in this case, she made the shield small enough to fit and then expanded it outward to push the sisters over. Also, given then it doesn’t yank up a chunk og the ground every time she uses it while standing, I think it generally won’t chop things up when activated.
Regarding age, you’re ten years ahead of me: I just turned 40 little over a week ago. Even that seems super-old to me. I swear it was just a month or two ago that I was a recent college grad in his twenties.
Congrats on hitting the big 5-0, Dave! I’ll be crashing through that particular barrier myself in less than a month. It does bring on the deeper thoughts, doesn’t it?
Anyway, I love your comic, and hope you continue to create for many more happy years.
DaveB
I turned 50 back in February. I got to see Star Wars in 70mm (they released it later that summer, and it still had “the fat human in the furry vest” version of Jabba the Hutt; we somehow got to see that version in the theater in 70mm). I, too, don’t look my age (mostly because I dye my hair weird colors so the gray streaks aren’t noticeable as gray streaks.
But I take offense at the idea of being 50 makes me “an old.” EXCUSE YOU!! We are ELVEN AGED, now!! I welcome you to the elven side of the century, and I INSIST that you leave that baggage outside my glorious castle-slash-tree-home. (Okay, it’s a 1970s split-level, but just deal with it.)
Elven. Aged.
*harrumphfs most elegantly*
My take on Sydney’s shield has always been that is is somewhat user linked in the same way that her atmosphere generation seems to be.
I assumed that there are passive operations to all the orbs, some of them built in to prevent harm to the operator by their own effects, possibly some linked to the operators subconscious intent.
Obviously, it would be somewhat awkward if she activated the shield too close to the exterior bulkhead of a spacecraft and it cut a section of the hull out. Conversely, it would make one hell of an oblique attack if the effect was controllable.
Fifty is definitely a milestone. However, I didn’t start publishing until I was 73, so you’re way ahead of me and young, too. Your art continues to improve and I enjoy reading Grrrl Power. Keep on keeping on. Love how you drew the forcefield impacting their bodies (definitely the boobies … I mean bodies). I think Sydney is more “attitudinous” than “fortitudinous”, but she could be both.
“”I didn’t start publishing until I was 73” , that possibly makes you, as far as I know, in here, older than I am. (70)
Wow! Freaking happy birthday, old man!
You are a lot older than I took you for, just going on your reading preferences and the things you know that you’ve dropped in comments here and there. And Star Wars is 5 years younger than you, so it’ll always be easy to remember that date also.
“that was 1 year after I graduated High School,” also when I enlisted in the US Army! :), one year before my father died, of stomach cancer!
Happy post birthday. And congrats on not being eaten by a Grue! Keep that torch handy.
I do find it funny that Sydney is asserting so much authority here, despite having the least on paper.
I mean, obviously it’s a distraction from the previous topic of conversation, and she would order people around anyway, no military rank required. But it’s still funny that nobody else feels the need to step in and address a situation that’s clearly out of control.
Dude! Your’e only 3-and-a-bit weeks younger than me! Our experiences, entertainment-wise, seem fairly similar, though my gaming was done at the arcade whenever I could scrape a few coins together. And Australia only had FIVE tv channels. But Dragonlance, Xanth, the Stainless Steel Rat et al? Formative indeed. I do hope The Expanse ages better than some of my favourite sci-fi shows.
-Sigh-
Firefly is 20.
;)
On the topic of Birthdays,
happy Birthday Dave,
I did think you were a little closer to me in age, but its not a great difference, just changes how clearly either of us can remember certain old cartoons LoL
Happy 50th!
“ if one of Arc-SWAT’s field agents named “Z. V. BIHMP” (Zero Violence Because I Have Mental Powers)” walked up to a rampaging criminal and said “You should surrender yourself and cooperate with the authorities.” and the bad guy said “Okay.””
It can still work out in a way people accept…
Obi Wan: These are not the droids you’re looking for.
Stormtrooper: These are not the droids we’re looking for.
Obi Wan: we can move along now.
Stormtrooper: Move along, now.
on this subject, it almost feels like it touches on something instinctual, like a physical threat being countered by greater physical force or using a greater physical defense.
people historically have been more freaked out by *unseen things*, invisible forces, things their basic instincts can’t see and physically defend against. Someone knocking someone down with brute force makes sense, but having them think and the person surrender…just hits that creepy button in the brain. Kind of like ghosts in a way, if you saw some visible skeleton walking around moving your picture frames it would be weird but you might think if they attack you, you can see them coming, while an invisible ghost you don’t know how to defend against it.
same with psychic powers, curses, and what not. If someone is physically strong you can pull the *what if* in your head on how to handle them (even as an ally) if they turned on you. But make it something intangible and you can’t work out how to defend against them right away and that gets the primate in the back of everyone’s brains screaming in horror and confusion. Like throwing sticks at a tiger that the sticks just pass right through and the tiger turns invisible right after.
***TRIGGER WARNING: this post is about evil acts and how free will interacts with them, there’s gonna be mention of some possibly triggering topics, so please be advised***
There’s also the factor that mind control kinda touches on the root of evil (at least, as I’ve identified it). All evil acts, murder, r*pe, kidnapping, etc. are, at their core, about imposing your will on another, irrespective of their wishes. Sure, there are a lot of other acts that are considered *bad*, but there are contexts where people will be more willing to forgive or excuse them, even if they still demand punishment. Those acts have entirely different terminology for when they are not evil, or justifiable, or whatever. Theft is not evil if you are only stealing for survival, but it’s still called theft. Assault/violence is not evil if it is done in defense of self or others or is perpetrated against one who “has it coming”, superheroes do that one a lot. However, murder that is justified is not called murder, it’s a justified killing, whether the justification is war, self defense, accidental, etc; in the case of war and self defense, the killed party is assumed to have participated if fatal violence by their own will, and in the case of an accidental killing, the killer was not enacting their will upon another because then it wouldn’t be an accident. R*pe is just sex if all parties involved are consenting, competent adults (man do a lot of porn writers need to learn that). Kidnapping is unlawfully detaining someone against their will, criminals can be assumed to have forfeited their freedom by being caught committing crimes (not gonna debate the ethics of the prison system, I’m talking in the abstract here, operating under the assumption that nothing hinky is going on purely for the sake of argument) and if one consents to detainment, then it isn’t kidnapping, it’s just… I guess sheltering or something? The point is, acts that are generally considered to be fairly unambiguously evil all have a lack of consent/mutuality as part of their definition.
Anyway, yeah, evil acts are evil because they are forcing or imposing one will upon another, at least that’s the conclusion I have come to. That means that volition *should* be unalienable. A mind control super power, even if used purely for good, tickles that part of us that says “this act is wrong on a fundamental level”. I’m not saying such a use of such a power would *be* evil, but that’s one of those parts of the human psyche that is difficult to reconcile with the rationalizations of a given scenario. Additionally, depending on how permanent the mind control is and whether memory manipulation is involved heroic usage is gonna raise a WHOOOOLE lotta questions that just *can’t* be answered to the satisfaction of a suspicious public.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and none of this post was meant to describe how the law handles things in any legal system. This was purely an examinations of ethics in a fairly abstract sense and thus naturally I am certain that there will be legal precedent disagreeing with some of my definitions and explanations. I was using terms as I believe to be their general usage, even if they might have more specific legal definitions or if one’s personal definition or usage might differ.
ok, so we can agree that mentally dominating another is bad. now, how far does the line go? If subliminal advertising is real would that be evil? using psychology to trick or drive people to your product? using verbal/textural tricks to fool someone into supporting your position?
“evil” is far too black and white a term/concept.
using subversive trickery to manipulate the emotions of your target towards a favorable response for you.
this is common in marketing, even has many sub-set terms for the specific targeting. This is *distasteful* but not evil in my understanding.
however this same tactic is also used by dictators, warmongers, various politicians, cult leaders, and others to scam people, cause riots, take over countries to rule with no concern for the people who you have convinced wanted you to rule, etc…
a tool is just a tool, it has no will or want of its own, it is the intentions and actions of the one weilding the tool that decide if they are being constructive with it or destructive.
-in less philosophical sounding terms, a hammer is just a hammer, you can build a house or crack a skull.
-that said SOME tools exist specifically for the purpose of causing harm and any other use is secondary to that function; so intent becomes enhanced by opportunity (if you have a useful tool at your disposal whose primary purpose is to cause harm and you want to cause harm, you will cause more harm with this tool at your disposal than you could have with the tool you hade to modify the use for.)
this is as true with marketing/psychological tactics as it is with physical items, both are made by people with some purpose in mind.
which for the mind control subject, seems to fall under the *harmful tool* listing. Even if you can use it like hypnotherapy, its easier to look at something like super strength and say they can fight crime or help build a house, while mind control its like..you directly subvert the agency of others, so finding a constructive use for it is either harder or has significantly fewer options as *not helpful for anyone but the user* is by design.
All I was saying is the jedi mind trick could be used for good purposes without being nefarious to the viewing public, as it was in the first movie of Star Wars. :)
Only because it was used on the evil Stormtroopers, and more than just once
Yes. That’s my point.
That was my argument. That mind control powers can be seen as a heroic thing depending on the context in which it is used, as well as whom it is used against. Like in DaveB’s example of Z. V. BIHMP using mental powers on a bad guy to make him just surrender.
my point is based on as an in-universe mind set, how would the public in that reality react to someone openly having such a power, knowing such powers can exist, and seeing them used by an “enforcer of the law”.
you’d have maybe two seconds before the internet went crazy with conspiracies about government sanctioned mind control and the like.
it also reflects how in the real world how certain powers are most often used, why you have so few examples of mind control as being used by the good guy *Jedi and Prof X*, but see it so often as a villain ability or villain gadget doing it (I will control this superhero to commit crimes for me) type of deal, or using magic to make someone walk out into traffic, commit suicide, etc…
even when used by a good guy the power its self is not seen as a “heroic power” in fact the above two examples are seen as extra heroic for not giving into the temptation of misusing those powers.
that is still a weapon and seen as good because its being used against the bad guys.
But think of it this way, Wolverine’s claws can be used to cut lumber for firewood or rebuild the X-mansion for the 100th time, or they can be used to stab a guy.
-we see this with most physical powers and even elemental-kinetic powers.
however some psionics have a hard time being adapted for *friendly use* outside of *aimed at bad guy*,
for instance Human Puppetry (and other forms that are just fancier or more esoteric versions of “mind control”), you take control of someone else and make them do your bidding. That is hard to spin in the peace time civilian use pool of powers; and even for law enforcement while you could spin it as *I stopped the disturbance*, it can be argued as a violation of bodily autonomy *same as if the cop shot a tranq dart or tricked you into drinking Prozac or something*.
it may be less harmful but more likely to get that *goosebumps* and kneejerk uneasiness from others.
“in less philosophical sounding terms, a hammer is just a hammer,”; the same as a gun!
A gun has a singular purpose: to take life
hence the following after the hammer line
”
-that said SOME tools exist specifically for the purpose of causing harm and any other use is secondary to that function; so intent becomes enhanced by opportunity (if you have a useful tool at your disposal whose primary purpose is to cause harm and you want to cause harm, you will cause more harm with this tool at your disposal than you could have with the tool you hade to modify the use for.)”
“criminals can be assumed to have forfeited their freedom by being caught committing crimes”, under the law you are considered, to be innocent until proven guilty. That is jurisprudence.
” *unseen things*, invisible forces,” which do not exist, so far as we know!
imaginary threats,
psychological tactics,
and in ancient times (less developed and/or educated individuals) disease *which was so often reimagined as curses, demonic possessions, witchcraft, divine punishment, toxic miasmas, etc…*
when people experienced things they could not explain or had to visible cause they could point at they would panic and finger point to try and find something they could physically attack.
that said its why the idea of a ghost scares people more than the idea of a gremlin or brownie. Also why people like to label everything, give it a face, a form, details, something they can grasp. Fear of the unknown is a strong one, even if the details are all made up it can make others experiencing the unknown feel a little less fearful to have something to call their problem *even if wholly inaccurate*.
Nooo, Sydney don’t do it! You are perfect as is!!!
That’s why Parf wanted to work on her confidence, to accept that how she looks is fine
Happy Birthday (a bit belatedly)!
Happy Birthday
i’m only a few years older than you and i think we both get the benefit of having grown up without social media on smartphones sucking on our attention every waking moment but still being reasonably fluent in that stuff
like yes that video is hilarious and i want to share it with my friends but i can still put the phone in my damn pocket and leave it there
You’re 50? Damn. I’m a bit over 7 months younger than you. Saturnalia time for me.
(BTW, “fortitudinous”, total of two Ts.)
Happy Birthday, Dave. It was an era to grow up in and I hope our kids get to say the same about their lives, though I don’t see how that’s possible. I know what you mean about the nostalgic games. I got the Steam version of the original Darklands and thought “Wow, this is going to be great. I loved that game.” Yeah, not so much.
Here’s to another fifty years for you, man!
Problem for me with this page, is it highlights Sydney’s go-to response to anything: violence
The first time she met Daphne, she punched her in the face. First time meeting Math, she tried to punch him in the face (but did clock him with one of her balls). First time she met Dabbles and Dabbles dropped her glamour, Sydney tried to brain her with a chair, and when that didn’t work, she dropped one of her balls on Dabbles’ head!
This is surprising to read. Particularly on a comic about female superheroes.
Most readers dismiss her violent reactions as simply “Sydney being Sydney, the adorkable goofball”
If any other character, female or male, did half of what she does, there would be hellacious ‘feedback’ about it!!
And part of that is probably because she’s small and physically weak, so it’s not considered very threatening. People would be a lot more concerned about it if, say, she was reaching for the PPO instead of ineffectually whacking people who can just shrug it off.
Sidney also once tripped a member of arc swat over use of the term “mouth feel” part of her reasoning at the time was he couldn’t be hurt by her so hitting him did not count. I don’t have a page number but it was closer to the beginning i think before the first fight.
It does show a pattern of behavior that could be worrying, on this page neither of them were talking down to her or about her, in fact quite the opposite as the daughter (can’t remember her name, or spell it probably) was saying Sidney was perfect the way she is and Dabbler was just saying not to do things mentally without consent.
Even if it is mostly done for comic effect, it is disturbingly consistent.
Sister, not daughter
you forget the next page. Sydney got a very traditional punishment for that kind of shenanigans. since she clearly has too much energy she did laps until she was very very tired. yes that’s not prison, bankruptcy, public time in a pillory, but I believe it got the point across that just because Achilles is functionally invulnerable she does not have the right to use him as a punching bag.
“mouth feel” is on page 336. The comic has a fair amount of slapstick humor that is presumably not meant to be taken seriously. I mean, there’s a literal callout to Looney Tunes! I think what throws people off is the comic straddles the line between serious and realistic, and silly and slapstick.
Start moisturizing now Dave. I recommend shea butter.
Ahaha… Sydney forgot this was NOT a private conversation… again. ^_^