Grrl Power #1098 – Operant education
Looking at this page just before I publish it, I realize that I did a poor job of introducing “Lioness.” You can see her in the last panel of the previous page, but the way this page plays out, I could see people thinking that Dabbler had changed into the dark skinned lady in panel 3 and then changed again in panel 6. Panel 7 and 8 should dispel that misconception, but it probably could have been laid out a little more clearly.
I expect there will be some debate in the comments about the blackface question posed in panel 4. Sydney, like many white people, is afflicted with the occasional bout of white guilt, which is why she’s checking in. Even Anvil has to give it a little thought, but as you can see, her litmus is whether or not it’s mocking. My personal thoughts are that yeah, if you’re white, (or at least, not black – the fact that Dabbler isn’t white doesn’t absolve her of anything here) you have to be careful with “cosplaying as a black person” because of many many past wrongs, but I don’t think it’s automatically bad. I think we’re at a point where we might be over-correcting, and any instance of this is instantly decried, but I think that’s as much about reflexive white-guilt than anything.
For instance, Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder was perfectly acceptable (IMO) because it was a self-aware bit about an actor getting way too deep in a role, and it wasn’t about mocking black people nor did it cost an actual black actor a role. The bit wouldn’t have worked if it had been a black actor pretending to be a white actor pretending to be a black character, and then they white face him at the end of the movie for the “de-makeuping.” I guess there could have been some amusing extra level of meta-ness if they had done that, but I think most of the jokes wouldn’t have landed with the same impact then.
Dabbler is simply attempting to come up with a disguise that allows her to blend in with local domestic ethnicities, and Senegal is like 0.3% white. It’s not like she couldn’t do surveillance in white face, but the only way she’d draw more attention would be to go with lavender-with-green-stripes face. Anyway, it’s not like she can’t duck into a restroom and totally change her appearance whenever she wants. By the way, Dabbler can change her eye colors with her glamor if she wants, but she usually doesn’t, especially if she knows she won’t be under intense scrutiny.
The “Lu?” in panel 7 is my attempt at Wolof. Honestly I had never heard of the language before I started writing this page, and the online Wolof translators/dictionaries I found seemed… underdeveloped. Basically I couldn’t find a definitive translation for “What?” into Wolof. I found a few example sentences that had the word “what” in them, but in the Wolof translation, the word was different depending on the sentence. In some cases it was “Lu” and in others it was “Lan” or “Looy.” So basically, Lioness is supposed to be saying “What?” in Wolof, but there’s like a 65% chance she isn’t. Just pretend.
The October Vote Incentive is still up!
The November one is coming along, it shouldn’t be quite the same wait for it as the Blue Babes one. The nude version’s already done, just have to do several layers of clothing. :)
So I have enough “Blue Babes” to do a theme. Eventually I’ll be able to fill in the whole rainbow of my own characters. I did a rainbow lineup previously for those who hadn’t seen it. I’d love to revisit that one of these days.
Enjoy variant outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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I appreciate Sydney asking, but her reply, “My thoughts exactly,” seems like it presumes a little more authority than she has. It’s not even about being white; it’s just that if she had any authority, she’d know that she does. Racial sensitivity is born out of earnest sympathy and a strong desire to right the wrongs of the present day, not out of… however it is you’d characterize “white guilt”. Trying to follow social rules, maybe. I’d like to see Sydney grow beyond what she’s doing here. Far, far too many white people seem to think racial equality is about balancing some historic checkbook or other, and it really isn’t helping any racial equality movements. If Sydney’s attitudes towards race are going to come up again and again, I’d rather she be an example of someone who knows what they’re doing, and sees the ways in which the world is unfair to racial minorities, and is trying to set it right.
if I may, at least in the US we have major hunks of our media deliberately throwing sand into the works of understanding by deliberately misconstruing racial sensitivity. I’d bet a nicely cooked hamburger that someone has already done that in the comments below. so I don’t fault people for not understanding but it would be nice if Anvil or Mr. Adrenalin took her aside in the base and spent some time explaining it to her, and the blackface thing is a good way to explain it. Understanding it is vital.
Who is Mr Adrenalin?
Did you mean Mr. Amorphous? Or did you mean Ren, who as we all know will always be known as Blulk?
Also I suspect that Dabbler would see the whole thing about blackface as stupid, given the alien population has a FAR more varied amount of skin colors and they seem to be able to change skin colors with genetic manipulation, technology, glamours, etc, rather regularly. Look at Cora for example. She’s blue. She mentions that her blue color is a genetic augmentation, I believe.
Well said. Anyway, since Dabbler’s natural hue is purple (or bluish, depending on the lighting), what would you call the disguises she is using the rest of the time? White face? Human face? Not-advanced-enough-for-genetic-modifications face?
Aggressive Mimicry to put her intended prey at ease and present herself as a potential sexual partner so she can feed on them.
Intent is important in all this, as this is a non-human entity whose entire biological reason for resembling other entities is parasitism and/or predation, it falls less into the cultural mocking category and more into survival and feeding behavior.
Well it’s symbiotic, really. Predation would include literally eating others, which might be better suited to describe her doppelgänger ancestry, and parasitism would be what succubi do with their masters/mistresses(/mxtresses?), though there’s two-way consent established now so YMMV on that.
Re: cultural mocking category, just nitpicking but blackface has more than just the mocking point, there’s also the “used in arts to not employ black people” angle and the “when it’s your skin you get shit for it but when it’s a disguise the same social category (not necessarily the same people) who give you shit for it go by fine” angle, which both contribute to a global idea of “don’t, even if you don’t mock” — Dabbler’s case can be argued to be different, because she’s wearing human-face all the time, she’s literally not from the culture that created these issues, and so on and so forth. A case could be made that Dabbler disguising herself as only white humans would be icky on its own right.
1. dabbler isn’t the one concerned, Sydney is. and its a bit overdone, but too many people ‘forget’ that nuance is a thing in both people and physics.
Yeah but Sydney even had white guilt about Tom. It’s just something Sydney does.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-990-read-my-lack-of-lips/
(last panel)
Honestly, the question was stupid, not because of whiteness or blackness.
Dabbler is **almost always** in disguise in public.
The answer to the question was not
“No, because she’s beautiful that way”, it’s
“No, because she’s doing fucking surveillance and disguising yourself as a local cannot be equivalent to putting on a race for cosplay.”
It would also not be “blackface” if Sydney wore a neckband that changed her to look local, whether or not she looked goofy that way.
There are no stupid questions, and it was alright for Sydney to ask. I don’t agree that Anvil’s answer was wrong. Imagine if a white American actually went and did a surveillance mission IRL in Senegal, in the usual blackface getup. It would make a terrible disguise, obviously, and it could be an honest mistake by someone really, really bad at disguising themselves. But if someone made that mistake, it would be because that’s how they viewed black Africans. And _that_ would be because they got their ideas of black Africans from racists, as a result of which they’d typically be racist themselves. And that would suck, and it’d be totally understandable to be offended by it.
So, it’s at least reasonable to ask. That’s not why Sydney asked (she asked because in her mind, non-black people pretending to be black people raises some kind of alarm bell), but that’s a separate issue which I wrote a bit about above.
“There are no stupid questions”
Challenge accepted.
Why do people drive on parkways and park on driveways?
Merriam Webster apparently hated this joke enough to answer it, and the answer comes to the fact both terms predate the automobile and the use of the driveway changed as a result.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/drive-parkway-park-driveway-history#:~:text=The%20word%20%27parkway%27%20originally%20referred,the%20invention%20of%20the%20car.
Man, half of me wants to give a serious answer, and half of me wants to try to think of a joke. I guess I’ll settle for the boring middle ground of a self-referential comment that could really be a reply to anything, because it doesn’t engage with what you said at all?
Well it was taken directly from one of George Carlin’s routines. So yeah, it was and is a joke.
You can answer it with another joke.
“For the same reason that we call the end of our fingers fingertips but our toes don’t call the end of our toes toetips, yet we can tiptoe.”
Ok that was horribly written.
“For the same reason that we call the end of our fingers fingertips, but we don’t call the ends of our toes toetips, but we can tiptoe.”
Sorry, wrote the other thing on my phone.
*sends Pander some toe-jam for her bread*
Dangit! That pun doesnt even fit into the threat, you scoundrel!
are you trying to say my joke was not en pointe? could we not sidestep the issue and leap into another thread?
I know these are also puns but don’t know quite how and it just fills me with hatred and anger and confusion.
I just know it probably deserves more ninja hit squads.
The delicate ballet continues, this may be palmvos’s swan song.
I checked, and they are in fact called toe tips.
It just doesn’t come as much because humans don’t normally grasp or use their toes functionally, and more often than not are covered by some form of footwear or covering. Some people in fact having such short toes that their feet might as well be paddles. So it just doesn’t come up in general conversation.
But yes, just as the end of your nose is the nose tip, the end of your toes are the toe tips.
No one calls them toetips (one word btw, like fingertips). Also jo one calls it a nosetip.
Almost no one says overmorrow or aglets , doesn’t change that they were given names at some point.
PS , common usage or not , do you really think there is any thing some culture hasn’t given a name to? There is a word for the corners of a shadow even.
Aglets and overmorrow are actual words though, even if not used often.
Toetips is not an actual word. Thats why peopke instead say tips of their toes or toe tips where they would have it be 2 words, because toe and tips are real words but toetips is not.
my exact words.
“I checked, and they are in fact called toe tips”
word or words, it is still what they are called.
Plural is irrelevant unless you expect me to say, “terminology there of” every single time.
that tiptoe is one word is the weird one as you are tipping on your toes.
There are a lot of words that feel like they should be split and just as many that given the former seem like they should be one word.
English is a mugger of words who hot glues words together and cuts them up like a deranged lunatic.
“my exact words.
“I checked, and they are in fact called toe tips”
word or words, it is still what they are called.”
Correct. You answered a question different to the subject – the subject was about toetips as a word, not toe tips as two words.
“Plural is irrelevant unless you expect me to say, “terminology there of” every single time.”
It has nothing to do with plural. It has to do with you using two words as proof that a single word exists, when the single word ‘toetips’ does not exist. ‘Toetip’ and ‘toetips’ are not words, whether single or plural. It’s ‘toe tips’ and ‘toe tip.’
“that tiptoe is one word is the weird one as you are tipping on your toes.”
It means walking upon the tips of your toes. Not tipping on your toes.
“English is a mugger of words who hot glues words together and cuts them up like a deranged lunatic.”
I think we’ve murdered the joke quite enough. Let’s let it rest in piece so its family can mourn.
Point of order, I actually do use ‘aglet’ and have heard others use it. And I’d use overmorrow too if I could convince everyone else, it’s a great word. *grumbles about efficiency*
Have never heard of ‘overmorrow’, but have heard of, and used, nosetip
“but have heard of, and used, nosetip”
Nosetip is literally not a word. Nose tip are two words, but there is no single word called nosetip. There isn’t even a hyphenated word called nose-tip.
Overmorrow literally is a word. It means ‘On the day after tomorrow.’
Also by George Carlin in that stream of consciousness. “Why is stuff that travels by ship called cargo, and stuff that travels in trucks are called shipments?”
I’d hazard a guess that if Celine Dion was going undercover and able to make her look indistinguishable from the average Senegalese, that wouldn’t be blackface.
Except she’s Canadian…
But my point is that generally, blackface was done Trudeau style; *as a joke*. (Or Behar style, as an *homage*, which is basically a joke that you get called out on but don’t want to admit to.)
BUT, my family is from South Africa. My grandfather chose to sell furniture to the blacks, which meant no white person would buy from him.
Now, white people are being massacred and the government is giving tacit (if not overt) approval. So the “repeated”? I’d say that white South Africans are justification for white people being able to say that.
I will say that there are generally two groups OF WHITE PEOPLE; one gets in trouble for not recognising the victimhood of minorities, and trying to move on and show them the same respect that they give whites…
And the other will not let it go, and insists that minorities for some reason are incompetent and incapable of taking care of themselves without the white people and the government making special concessions for them.
One will let you use blackface (or whiteface, hispanicface, or use sticky tape to make your eyes look like slits to mimic a particular region of the world,) and will even acknowledge when it’s funny, and the other is now ready to have a fit if you don’t attack any white person wearing a fake tan, (I kid you not, that’s now a thing,) and when surveyed will say that while black lives matter but will also say that white lives DON’T. (Not that they don’t need respect but that it’s not the same, I’m actually saying they will claim white lives DO NOT MATTER.)
I’ll leave you to decide which of those two are racist.
Pretty sure there are other groups than just those two.
Science has determined, that “RACE” is a “MYTH!”
Amazing. All this time I’ve thought that easily recognised suites of inheritable traits were a thing.
There is only one hyu-mon race, doesn’t matter what colour or creed or nationality, you all belong to the same one (or is it species? either way, there is only one, so suck it down and shut the fuck up about ‘White Race’ or ‘African Race’ or any other bullshit)
Sounds very much like Morgan Freeman’s view.
https://youtu.be/Mh8mUia75k8
He is a very wise man, and very chill
Everyone should aspire to be like Mr Freeman
Everyone does, Guesticules. Everyone does.
> Science has determined, that “RACE” is a “MYTH!”
It’s a biological myth in that there’s only one human species. It’s a sociological reality in that there is wide understanding of “this collection of physical traits is considered a group, that group is called a race, and that race is treated differently than other races.”
And people once thought the world was flat. I mean, people still do, but they’re laughingstocks. I wonder when we’ll be able to look at people who believe in race and just laugh them off…
I took the “my thoughts exactly” as Sydney checking in to make sure her interpretation was “correct” or “acceptable” or whatever by asking an expert, and then covering for her ignorance with bravado, as seems to be her go to in most situations where she isn’t 100% sure she understands correctly and is standing near someone who she thinks probably does. You see this from her all the time, not just in regard to racial stuff. Is this more insensitive (less sensitive? I’m never sure how to phrase a greater negative like that) than normal because it’s a more controversial topic? I honestly don’t know and I’m certainly not an authority on what topics this sort of gag is appropriate for, but personally I like that she’s at least consistent about it.
At any rate, she wasn’t so much presuming authority as pretending at certainty or confidence that she lacks, and doing a potentially deliberately bad job at it to further underscore the attempt at saving face.
Sydney is more agreeing with the expert, in other words asking Anvil if that was offensive, and then agreeing as if that was her thought all along.
Kind of like asking the Australian friend if the guy pretending to be Australian is offensive to them, then if they are upset or not act accordingly. That way you don’t make a faux pas of being offended for someone else who is actually okay with it, and skip making a scene if no one but you is offended.
Which is Sydney in that she basically asks the person who might be offended if what she perceives is actually offensive, then reacts accordingly. Otherwise she would look like one of those people who get offended for other people, who would give said thing a pass.
How about simply, if you are not of the nationality in question, you just sit your arse down and shut the fuck up, and don’t think you need to be offended for someone else who is capable of making up their own mind
Actually her “My thoughts as well.” isn’t about her authority, she asked someone whose opinions on the subject are far more authoritative than her own, and is agreeing with her after the fact. Basically, she wanted to make sure she didn’t stick her foot in her mouth in a racially sensitive area and is deferring to Anvil – even if she was fairly sure Dabbler’s glamor maybe probably didn’t count as blackface.
Dabbler and her penchant for foreign ‘relations’
…I mean, she’s an alien, so they’re all foreign.
“My personal thoughts are that yeah, if you’re white, (or at least, not black – the fact that Dabbler isn’t white doesn’t absolve her of anything here) you have to be careful with “cosplaying as a black person” because of many many past wrongs, but I don’t think it’s automatically bad. I think we’re at a point where we might be over-correcting, and any instance of this is instantly decried, but I think that’s as much about reflexive white-guilt than anything.
Definitely feel there has been some overcorrection, especially wgen people start making a fuss about dreeadlocks, spray tans, and ignoring the intent as being mocking. Intent should matter.
Btw…. in the grrlpowerverse, if I am native hawaiian (well… half – the other half is korean but I look native hawaiian/samoan/polynesian) does this mean I can or cannot use a magical glamour to appear black?
Just checking on the rules since I dont have white guilt. Since my ancestors from my mother on backwards would have been on some islands nowhere even remotely connected to the slave trade or even segregation. And again no glamour but maybe I can get my hands on one of those chokers that change skin and hair color? :)
There’s this irish immigrant comedian called David Nahill who has a hilarious bit about white guilt btw.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/xjzTJVhtGao
i love that guy; “We picked them ourselves”
He has great comedic timing also. :)
I’m American Indian and white.
For that portion of the population that is super sensitive about such things, being Polynesian/Hawaiian/Korean would not allow you to disguise as black, because only African descent is allowed to be black. You would be viewed as Pacific Islander/Asian and thus guilty of appropriation for attempting to look black or using black styles. You would be less offensive than a white person doing it since you’re still a minority, but not as minority as a black person. Your Polynesian/Hawaiian half is more oppressed than your Korean half. As best I can tell, for people who rank such things, Asians are the least oppressed minority.
Well there are only about 5000 pure native hawaiians left and almost became completely extinct back in 1778 because of Captain Cook (and about 500,000 in all of mixed native hawaiian/other ancestry today) so we’d definitely be considered a minority, and the entire kingdom was illegally overthrown because of sugar barons by one of the people who started the Dole company, and at one point the Hawaiian language was banned, so…. pretty easy to say they were oppressed, yeah. Plus definitely MORE of a minority than black people, whether you’re talking asian or native hawaiian in the US. 13.6% of all Americans are black. 6.2% of all americans are asian (all types of asian – ie, eastern asian/oriental as they’d have said years ago)/native hawaiian/all other Pacific Islanders COMBINED. Native Hawaiians alone make up like.. 0.3% of the US population. So DEFINITELY more minority on boht asian and native hawaiian population counts, US-based or even worldwide-based (for Native Hawaiians).
Not that I’ve ever considered myself to be remotely oppressed, nor would I ever bother using minority status as some sort of crutch or excuse for not doing well. I’m doing quite well for myself and have done so via merit-based scholarships and a really wonderful mother and brother.
On the korean side, yeah, Koreans were mainly outright enslaved and/or killed by the Japanese more than by Westerners, but pretty sure that still means they’ve been slaves as well. Just like…. pretty much every other racial makeup in world history. And of course there were Japanese internment camps for Japanese Americans during WW2 (where Koreans and Chinese, who had no love for the Japanese, tended to wear actual buttons saying ‘I am Korean’ or ‘I am Chinese’ to make sure people did not mistake them as Japanese since the US actually issued Koreans and Chinese badges so they could prove they were not Japanese), and racism and slave labor of chinese immigrants during the creation of the continental railroad f if you’re talking about asians in general.
But my main point is I don’t have white guilt and have no reason to have white guilt, so if I was to refrain from ‘blackface’ it wouldnt be because of white guilt – it would just be because of it being societally frowned upon because of the history of minstrel shows. That being said, I don’t think what Dabbler is doing could even be called blackface anyway for multiple reasons that have been discussed ad nauseum – intent, disguise vs mockery, her being an alien with no ties to the Atlantic Slave Trade whatsoever, her being a more oppressed race who (even after no longer being oppressed) literally HAVE to be slaves in order to not die via biological requirement, etc.
“As best I can tell, for people who rank such things, Asians are the least oppressed minority.”
I know you did preface this with ‘for people who rank such things’ so this isnt YOUR opinion, but:
They (Asians) really aren’t the least ‘oppressed’ minority if we were to use actual history, but southeast asians tend to be more successful financially and educationally than most other racial makeups, including caucasians, in the US (except I think Indians and Nigerians, who are the most successful) so there’s not as much of a cultural victimhood mentality (nor is this mentality propped up by the media and politics nearly as much). Although they do get VERY oppressed even semi-systematically (if you consider universities to be ‘systematic’ due to Affirmative Action, which is literally racist against Asians even more than against caucasians). There’s a couple of cases against Harvard and UNC which was just before the Supreme Court about it, which will probably overrule the poorly-decided precedent from 2003’s Grutter v. Bollinger decision which allowed colleges to discriminate against people based on their race, which one would think is blatantly violating the Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments (especially 14th) when done by any university which benefits from government funds or loans, not to mention the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
14th Amendment: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”
My long tangent aside, I was just meaning any negative connotations on blackface would not really fit for someone like me if you just base it on historical wrongs committed by one’s ancestors culminating in some sort of racial guilt of ones own race and culture, although I think racial guilt is NEVER very fair to someone who has not done anything wrong in the first place. It actually feels very Klingon in mentality when one says the sins of the father are passed down to the son. :)
Yup, 100%.
And as an Aussie, I’m quite familiar with Dundee hats and convict dress-up as a mocking of our nation. If it’s done well, I salute your sense of humour. If it’s done badly, you’re just hopeless, not racist. People were literally jailed and sent here at age 6 for stealing bread to feed their starving family, as an alternative to execution. I’d say that’s pretty oppressed. Either no joke is off the table, or all of them are.
But I digress,…
Which is more racist:
1: Okay, stupid white people did stupid stuff, and bought from stupid black people who carried out stupid raids. Other stupid white people made captured workers of an entire Slavic nation, such that they coined the term “slav(e)s” to define these captured people. Stupid asians made slaves out of each other, and other stupid people made a living out of boats trading between all these stupids.
And all those stupids are dead, that stupidity is outlawed, and now so is any lingering stupid structure or law that seeks to continue any imbalance in power.
The not-stupid thing to do is to let everyone just get on with life and make it based on their own merit and suitability, as well as the content of your character.
OR
2: You get some points for being a Korean, but lose points for being Asian, while if you’re Hispanic you get more points but less than if you’re black, and all those points tell us how oppressed you are, which helps us judge your competence based on the colour of your skin instead of the content of your character.
I think someone had a dream about that once.
What is a ‘Dundee hat’? Is that the one with the corks hanging down around the rims to keep the flies off the face?
And no idea how one would dress-up like a convict, weren’t they simply wearing the clothes they had on when they were deported (exported?) to Australia and New Zealand?
It’s one of those hats that look like the one worn by Paul Hogan in the movie ‘Crocodile Dundee.’ Looks SORT of like a cowboy hat and a fedora had a baby, but not quite? Looks very cool though.
Whether or not that is actually true is the point of contention.
Ok, how do we determine whether or not that is actually what is happening, as opposed to people making judgments based on race, absent people openly admitting to it?
“I was just meaning any negative connotations on blackface would not really fit for someone like me if you just base it on historical wrongs committed by one’s ancestors culminating in some sort of racial guilt of ones own race and culture, although I think racial guilt is NEVER very fair to someone who has not done anything wrong in the first place.”
As an Australian I feel pretty guilty for the actions of my ancestors, but I wouldn’t say it’s because I’ve inherited their sins.
It’s because I’ve inherited their stuff.
My ancestors were a wealthy, white, farming family, first on Gunnai-Kurnai and then Ngorigo country.
There are vanishingly few Ngorigo people around today, and I strongly suspect that’s because my ancestors (and other similar farmers) took the land by violence and/or genocide.
There may be no blood on my hands, but the money that sent me to university, or that bought my first car, was blood money.
Conversely, consider convicts. The Australian convict system was also oppressive, often along racial lines; and again, my English ancestors were near the top of the system. But I feel much less guilt about this, because I believe those wrongs are largely addressed.
People with Aboriginal (and Torres Strait Islander) ancestry are much worse off than people like me in Australia, even today. People with convict ancestry, I’m on much more of an even footing with.
It may sound weird to say a succubus has a type, but thinking Dabbler definitely has a type. She may have a harder time controlling her libido around tall muscular women with long hair. The same body type as Maxima that is.
We’ve never seen her even flirt with Anvil though. I suspect she’s getting hungry for a tantric snack, they’ve been on duty since the trip started.
I thought of that while typing, although Anvil is a bulk level up from Maxima *usually, she looks smaller than usual in this page*, while this woman “Lioness” is around the same bulk level as Maxima; granted its a sample size of two, but based on her apparent restraint around others including the last time she did the language thief skill in Galtyn.
She is certainly not opposed to Anvil making some moves on her: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-835-recruitment/
I don’t think Dabbler’s opposed to anyone making moves on her, but this incident was more of her being flippantly suggestive in response to a scolding than Anvil having any kind of sexual intent.
YOu are forgetting she made out with Tom before they departed.
Which was… 2 days ago? 3? Even if she started the trip fully satiated that seems long enough to be getting peckish.
It was like a few hours ago in-story…
I was thinking of the quarry reunion, at least the day before the away team left Archon HQ (if not multiple days or weeks) to start this whole arc in Galtyn, and they’ve been there at least a day. But apparently never slept after the graduation, even though it was the next morning at HQ when the assault happened? I think Dave omitted a night for the away team.
But I had forgotten all about Tom and Dabbler meeting up again in Galtyn, as well as saying goodbye before Sydney started the return flight. So yeah, it’s only been a couple hours tops. I guess she’s just an opportunist.
Breathing. Well… preferably breathing.
zombies, undead class vampires, golems, robots, floramorphs *debatable on breathing*, various eldritch tentacle beings that may not respirate in a traditional or recognizable way, and various aliens whose respiratory system is conjoined with their digestive system to act as a single multi-substance chemical energy factory.
Dabbler as an alien, interdimensional adventurer succubus probably has a few of these in her not so little black book of hookups/contacts, nothing like making “friendly” with a tar slime-girl who runs a city or taverb in the Soot Hell swamp plains *ash and mud swamps* to insure a future “friend” to help out during a stop on an adventure after all.
Some authors will go
to indicate a different language. It’s easier than researching a language — or inventing one.
I respect authors who know that and put the effort into researching the language just the same, tho. There is probably a reddit for linguists who specializes in doing tiny bits of translations like this for fun…
It looks like your example was eaten. Most likely it was < > which are html special characters.
For further reference, you can escape these character in html with < >.
Good info to know!!!
Don’t get me started in “many, many past wrongs”. Not only has EVERY ethnicity been enslaved at one point, caucasians have statistically been the MOST enslaved especially as human trafficking continues to this day. We can all agree it’s BS and move the F on.
The following post is only partly mocking, do not take too seriously
Don’t you know? Slavery has only existed for 200 years, and exclusively been targeted at black Africans by white Europeans
You misspelled “403 years”. There is documented evidence that there was slavery in 1619 and it was all white Americans’ fault.
Except that back then it was the Dutch and Spanish. For the white American’s fault, it has to be listed as starting in 1776.
White Americans in 1619? Tell me more
Most likely referring to Jamestown VA, an English settlement founded in 1607, which imported the first documented African slaves to British North America in 1619. Jamestown itself though was predated by the failed English settlement of Roanoake in 1585.
Although if you count ‘European’ as synonymous with ‘white’, Columbus’s second voyage established a settlement in the modern Dominican Republic in 1493, and the Spanish and Portuguese colonies were extensive by the 1550s and heavily exploited native resources and unpaid labor, although arguably didn’t technically enslave them. The English are just better known for it because they managed to get a British monopoly on the Spanish American slave trade in the early 1700s, although the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica had a culture of enslaving debtors and prisoners of war before the Europeans ever arrived.
And if you’re just looking for early white presence in the Americas, the Vikings had discovered and traded with modern Newfoundland by the late 10th century, but didn’t establish permanent colonies or participate in slave practices there.
They weren’t ‘White Americans’ at that time though, though were still Europeans, either English, Spanish or Portuguese
But let’s not let facts get in the way of vitriol, shall we?
“Don’t you know? Slavery has only existed for 200 years, and exclusively been targeted at black Africans by white Europeans” Incorrect, Egyptians, kept slaves, usually Nubian.
You didn’t read the first part
You also forgot that Egyptians kept Jews as slaves as well
“You also forgot that Egyptians kept Jews as slaves as well”
Nope. There is zero evidence that the Jews were ever slaves in Egypt or that the Exodus was anything more than a myth. For example, if several million people were wandering in the desert for 40 years then we would expect to see pottery, campsites, etc. We don’t.
Likewise, the consensus among historians is that Moses was a myth, not a real person.
Not PC to point it out, but an American in Africa is probably going to have less recent slave owning ancestors than basically anybody they meet there, since we outlawed it over a century and a half ago, while it’s still going on in most of Africa.
Let’s see, Deus’s little country borders on Mozambique, right? Checking the Global Slavery Index, 5.4 slaves per 1,000 population, estimated total of 152,000 slaves.
Today, not in 1860.
That’s just whataboutism though, isn’t it? You can always find a worse place to drop Anyone. Accept that problems exist everywhere, but also –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8
No, it’s pointing out hard, uncomfortable, truths, that slavery still exists, and White People are not involved
Not just that, but that while the British Empire was trying to eradicate slavery, there were African kings whos allegiance to Britain was such that they pledged they would do literally anything for England EXCEPT stop trading slaves.
Yes they are, but no one is trying to lay the blame of all modern day slavery on all white people. That’s reactionary victim complex wank. Recognize the problem – the fantastically wealthy people who run our for profit prison systems.
I wouldnt say no one is trying to blame all modern slavery, or all slavery in general, on white people. A lot of people who are ignorant of both history and current world affairs still do. There is actually an annoying deluge of racism AGAINST white people who have done nothing except have a caucasian skin color. And they do this blatantly in the open, often with media and academia support or at least media and academia ignoring the hypocrisy, or trying to re-define racism. This irritates me even though I am not white because racism in general gets me angry.
Western white people neither originated slavery, nor were they the sole practitioners of slavery, not do most still support or engage in skavery in the midern day, and in fact are responsible for most of the social stigma in the western world and attempts at legal blockades against the continuation of slavery worldwide (regardless of the race or culture of the enslaved people). This is partially from a collective guilt but mostly due to how modern judeo-christian religious values (from the 17th century onward) are read to be at odds with the very concept of slavery and the dehumanization of other human beings. This was a primary reason for most abolitionists to be against slavery.
Moving on would be nice, but it requires improving. Maybe doing something about the systemic issues. The united daughters of the confederacy existed and still exists. There’s the whole Nixon/Regan drug war; being a means to do more legalized slavery via incarceration. Also the reactionary christofascists are this day stripping rights as quickly as they can in a last hired first fired fashion. So. Bit early to pat ourselves on the back about how progressive we are.
Last hired, first fired has always been the way of things: newly hired don’t have as much experience with the company, so losing them won’t be as big of an impact on the company as firing someone who has been there for much longer
Fairly sure the last UDotC would have died of old age about fifty years ago
No the UDC didn’t die out with it’s founding members. They exist to perpetuate the cult of the lost cause. Why would they not pull in new members? You don’t need to be fairly sure. You can look it up. They have a website.
Most people who get something in the eye and end up seeing the doctor because of it usually get the same response from their doctor;
Yes, you do have something irritating your eye; YOUR FINGER.
Stop focusing on it and rubbing the sensitive area and it can start to heel,…
Or stay fixated on it and just keep making it worse.
Same goes for leopards licking open wounds. Their highly abrasive tongues can clean and seal scratches and grazes, but if they do it on a deep wound, they will end up preventing it from healing and they will either die from blood loss or an infection.
The thing that keeps the wounds from healing are the things that inflicted the wounds. The problems I pointed out are still problems that will get worse if they are ignored. Assuming the frame that all problems are imaginary or self inflicted is straight Alt-Right Playbook.
You might be able to get away with “lu” even if it turns out to actually be wrong: Depending on how the various possible words are pronounced, it’s the most likely to be the one that works as a partial word uttered in confusion, (akin to something like “wah?” in English).
Does that really count as blending in? Generally to blend in you wanna be nondescript. Not ridiculously hot with the most striking heterochromia anyone’s ever seen :P
↑ This ↑
true, that. But really, just how long would some folks be paying attention to [just] her eyes?
Honestly? If I met a woman that looked like that? I think I legitimately would be incredibly drawn to her eyes.
Either because they’re really pretty, or for the same reason I can’t look directly at pinstripes, because my eyes would be involuntarily drawn to the contrast.
… Pinstripes hurt my eyes.
Personally can’t look people in the eyes, so tend to look them in the mouth (or the nose) to make them think they are being looked in the eyes
Honestly? Most people can tell.
Not as much as you’d think. “Eye contact” normally includes movement of focus around the space in the triangle of eyes and mouth, not just locking permanently onto the eyes.
Try it both way while having some friends monitor your eye contact during a conversation, without telling them what you’re changing, and see if they a) feel a difference in your attentiveness, b) have any idea why they perceived a difference, and/or c) feel like locked contact is ‘creepy’ or ‘staring’.
That is something a succubus would find hard to understand. They are not the subtle type.
Very true a Succubus (in any iteration) isn’t like a Doppelganger, Humanoid or full Mimic, or Imitator type beings whose entire goal is to blend in to the point they aren’t paid attention to, they want to be overlooked, ignored, until its time to strike.
A succubus wants to pass for the same species as her “prey” but also wants to lure them in. She wants to stand out as attractive, but not stand out as *foreign entity* in any sense.
So while a Doppelganger, Mimic, or Imitator is passed over as *its just some beggar, servant, a chair that you thought was on the other side of the room before, etc..*, a Succubus is…oh wow what a beautiful local woman. She is surely a local but very attractive so I want to strike up a conversation with her and perhaps move that conversation to the bedroom or broom closet, whatever is most convenient (or how classy the succubus is being).
But she isn’t trying to “blend in” in that sense, she’s trying to locate a gang of criminal supers, and she’s trying to do it (relatively) quickly. She only needs to “blend in” so far as she can pass as feasibly from the country or a neighbor, as opposed to obviously an alien, and a world famous one at that. As for information gathering, honeypots have the benefit of speed as well as secrecy. If she gets the intel by torture, you have bloody victims, if you get the intel by seduction, they could just as easily not even realized they gave anything away, and they probably are happy either way, so lower chance of getting caught and tipping the quarry off.
They don’t have time for quietly blending into the back ground and waiting for intel to come to them, nor does this trio have that particular skillset at their disposal in the first place. Even if they did have X or Chim (I think that was her? name, the shapeshifter who I think had feminine pronouns applied in ARCdark) with them, as effective as they both are at infiltration, a honeypot is still the most expedient way to go, which is important given the time constraint, and while Chim probably has training for that, it would be very difficult to argue that she’d be more qualified than Dabbler.
What colour?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCc9zBaHi0
There was an umbrella? o_O
Turner Classic Movies has a mini-documentary on the history of Blackface.
They sometimes show it between movies.
https://youtu.be/tf4OKW_fqYU
Also weird that Dabbler says ‘Et Voila’ then Anvil asks ‘btw do you know French.’
She said ‘Et Voila’ – that’s French. Not even ‘And voila’ like someone might say if they just are using voila as a pop culture reference for the word (not that Dabbler is an expert on pop culture from what we’ve seen in the comic so far). She said ET voila. Et, being French for ‘And.’
The “By the way” may be part of that. “You said something in French, so does that mean that you know French?”
I knew the term as “et voila” before I had any lessons in French. Saying “and voila” seems wrong to me, somehow.
Knowing the full and proper French term is not the same as knowing French.
But maybe I’m an outlier.
Specially seeing how English has made a name for itself in ‘borrowing’ words and phrases wholemeal from other languages
Most people would know ‘et voila’ to mean ‘ta da’ without knowing anything else in French (which is probably a lie seeing how many French words can be found in English)
The crazy part is that ‘voila’ is misused in almost every usage. “Voi-là” is “There it is.” Most of the time, they mean “Voi-ci”, which is “Here it is”. (Voi from ‘see’, and ‘là’ is ‘the’, or ‘there’, and ‘ci’ is ‘this’. Basically “See this”, or “See that”)
So, if it’s across the stage, it’s voilà! If it’s on a stand next to you, or in your hand, it’s voici!
Yeah, I know just enough French to make it clear that I do not speak French, and even *I* occasionally drop some French words and phrases to spice up my interactions, I mean it just has that je ne sais quoi, non?
I do the same thing with German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Latin. Except I’ve actually studied Latin, but I was only taught to translate Latin, speaking it was rather an afterthought in my education, but at least my high school Latin teacher taught me how to pronounce things correctly (for vulgar and classical Latin, anyway, I am aware that medieval and church Latin are different), which is more than I can say for my classmates in my college Latin classes who somehow never stopped pronouncing the V’s and J’s, despite the teachers, myself, and like one other student constantly correcting them. I really wish modern texts wouldn’t transliterate the words when it’s actually supposed to be in Latin. For those who aren’t aware, there are no J’s or U’s in the Latin alphabet, and despite V taking the place of U, it is always pronounced as either a U or W. All examples of J is actually I, so for instance Julius (as in Caesar) would be spelled IVLIVS (afaik Latin was all caps) and would be pronounce youlius, the J comes from a fancy script as far as I know to indicate it’s an important name or something (I was never quite clear on that so I could be wrong).
So she can learn languages in a similar way as Tamarans like Starfire huh
Markets in Brazil, the men all watched asses as the women walked by. The women would work it and sway in ways that would make a cat or runway model blush in jealousy.
As a kid, it was no wonder my puberty got kick started early.
Kinda think that behavior is universal.
Oh i hope she is the new Max
And promtly chucks her over her shoulder into the ground.
“No, bad succubus”
Uhm, i can’t quite shake the feeling that dabbler looks……hungry”…
I think you mean ‘thirsty’.
Dabbler has resting lust face.
I want more Lioness.
My ridiculous brain has already head-canon’ed her as a warm, bisexual cuddle-dom top, and I want to see her (somehow) make Dabbles feel smol & blushy. X’D
…and also get into hilarious spicy market-food hijinx with Sydney!
Maybe she can get some Chakalaka (it’s a very spicy tomato/bean relish. :) Probably not since I think it’s only popular in southern Africa, but added bonus that Sydney can then say BOOM! CHAKALAKA! Which seems like a very Sydney thing to say.
Maybe jollof rice (it’s also really spicy and delicious) instead but I can’t think of any funny things to say about the word jollof. That’s popular throughout western Africa. :)
you deserve this….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOm_2dGzqp0
That’s actually a great rap battle :) Epic even.
sometimes you deserve good things… other times…
I also want to point out that this particular Afro-Dabbler is absolutely b’dorable, and may be the only time we’ve seen here doing a glamour that is not Scary Sexy.
Yes, the disarming cute/innocent/girlishness is absolutely a deliberate affectation…but I expect that also accurately reflects some facet of her personality,too, or else it wouldn’t be something she’d even try. Of course, that raises the question of how good at maintaining cover like this she actually is.
We got the whole “cloak & dagger specialists” background on succubi, but we already that Dabbles is specifically a generalist. I’m genuinely curious about how long, and how well, she can actually “play the game,” before she gets bored & impatient, and either screws up, or gives up. Given that expression in the last panel, I’m doubting the answer is “long enough.”
…perhaps another reason for the tension between her & Decolette.
From what we saw in Dabbler’s history lesson on succubi, they were often used as spies and assassins as well because of their nigh impenetrable glamours.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-996-dat-ass-assin/
The best disguise in the world will not conceal a break from character.
True. Although I suspect that succubi are also really good at pretending to be in the role of other characters, like Dabbler was while being a honey pot during the interrogation of Coot.
Yes, but the point Bharda was making is: how long can Dabbles maintain it before she gets bored and drops the disguise?
Sydney isn’t the only one who gets distracted easily
Ahhhh okay.
I suspect that, for an experienced and well-traveled succubus, playing the naïf might take rather more effort.
I had never heard of Wolof or the Wolof tribe before yesterday.
What is Google’s tribute of the day?
Celebrating Jollof Rice – Googlehttps://www.google.com › doodles › celebrating-jollof-…
21 hours ago — Also known as benachin and thieboudienne, jollof rice is a one-pot meal that originated from the Wolof tribe in the 14th century. The Wolof …
So in todays world why had no one cancelled Dan Aykroyd for Black face in Trading Places?
I think this page suffers from a not enough variety in shots. A wider angled shot merging anvils question to Dabbler with the backside of lioness blocking part of the foreground, and lioness’s response included as a single panel; instead of having 2 separate panels of close face shots would have communicated the scene a fair bit better.
Can’t see her blending in too well with those heterochromatic eyes.
Is she making this costume stupid or unprofessional or otherwise an insult? No. Whenever she appears human, she’s still Porndemon. No greater insult to one people than another.
Blend in, ha! She’s going to be the cutest little lady in the entire shopping district.
Surely the crucial point about “blackface” is that the performer involved is NOT black, and everyone knows it? That they don’t look like a natural black person, and that is central to the performance? Dabbler is doing a “glamour” for the specific purpose of deceiving onlookers, not presenting an entertainment