Grrl Power #1161 – Succubestie
When I had originally envisioned the comic, I’d sort of planned on trying to go the “Mega Dragon and Tiger” route with the art. That is, do simpler flat art for much of the comic, with the occasional “glamor shot” as needed for dramatic or artistic emphasis. There might be an actual name for that art strategy, but “MD&T” was one of the first I noticed it in. Unfortunately, they don’t sell them on Comixology or anywhere I can find digitally. I’m still trying to stick to the simpler art for a bit, but I thought I’d use the opportunity to experiment with the “glamor shot” tactic. So yeah, Max isn’t literally glowing there in panel 3, it’s just supposed to be like, “She’s so hot she practically has a halo and a gauzy, bokeh background.”
Dabbler would be a bad friend if she didn’t do all she could to help out a friend in need… is how she justifies it. Well, not all she could do. Succubi can go a hell of a lot further than “Feeble Aura of Xanax,” that’s for sure. (Xanax coincidentally being a god from a minor pantheon whose mantle encompasses “Being chill, brah.” But this is one of those areas that falls into “a savage beating” from Maxima if she gets found out.
Max and Dabbler’s definitions of mind control is a Venn Diagram, or I think technically it’s a Euler Diagram, where “Anything at all that effects another person’s mind against their will/knowledge/consent” is Max’s circle, and totally enclosed inside that circle at about 1/3 the size is the stuff that Dabbler considers mind control.
Max admits there are plenty ambiguous cases where, for instance, someone hands you a drink at a party that has way more alcohol in it than it seems (and even excluding the possibility of other additives) isn’t “mind control,” even if they are trying to affect your mental state without your knowledge. Maybe they think you’re a funny drunk and maybe it’s more nefarious than that, but still, calling it “mind control” is a little dramatic. At the same time, she admits there’s no real difference between 8 shots of tequila and ecstasy and an actual mind control potion, as long as the person imbibing knows ahead of time what affect it will have on them. (Like, someone could make a “mind control” potion that just makes you hyper focused, or very comfortable with nudity for when you visit Nudist Risa (also known as regular Risa to some people.)) Alteration is alteration, whether it’s chemical, hypnotic, Inceptic, or whatever.
The May vote incentive is finally up! Digit has some new and exciting tech to show off, as well as some other things, albeit inadvertently.
Variant outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon, as well as the semi-usual bonus incentive related comic.
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Dabbler’s mantra, forefront mantra now, “it’s good to be a civilian consultant. It’s good to be a civilian consultant. It’s good to be a civilian consultant.”
Has anyone else noticed that Dabbler *never* takes off her full-battle gear?
It’s not really her full battle gear, just the stuff she’d want most for surviving an ambush long enough to retrieve more specialized tools. Standard adventurer paranoia. If you only bring that core kit some of the time, there needs to be a decision process for when you will and when you won’t, which means sometimes you’ll guess wrong – and the kind of people who’d be laying the kind of ambush you need to worry about will do everything they can to hack that decision process, ensuring your wrong guess works in their favor. No exceptions means no such potential exploits.
Yeah, an adventurer should be fully prepared to defend themself, their treasure, and potentially their allies/loved ones at *ALL* times. No exceptions. That doesn’t necessarily mean having their full kit on them at all times, but it does mean having reasonable access to some of their more vital tools and/or weapons at basically all times. When body mods are possible, the default assumption should always be that an adventurer has at least one or two with powerful weapons and utility, because why the hell would they not? If I can be fully armed and dangerous while butt naked I will be since it’s in my job description to piss off powerful people and amass ridiculous wealth through relatively violent means.
My LARP character got permanent retractable claws a long time ago, recently got his right arm replaced with a tentacle, and is not only covered in magic tattoos but has the ability to draw more pretty much whenever he feels like it (not in combat, though, since it takes a half hour). You could jump him in the shower where he doesn’t have any of his external magic items and he’d still wipe the floor with your face (not that you CAN jump people in the shower at this game, the bathrooms are out of game zones for exactly that reason, we don’t want people holding it in until they wet themselves for fear of getting jumped in the toilet, it’s also not safe to engage in combat on wet tile floors).
She’s like a boy scout, “be prepared!” If things went south for her on earth I can promise she’d get away quickly and quietly, before even Max could react. You don’t let your guard down just because of some tasty supers are around…
We’ve never seen her “full” battle gear. We’ve seen her armored and armed up a lot more than in this page, and I wouldn’t anything that we’ve seen her “full kit.” What’s she wearing in this page? A muscle-T? An arm amulet (which, undoubtedly, is well-equipped)? Her choker? What else? Nothing. She has her cybernetic eye & arm, but those are enhanced tech-enhanced prosthesis’, part of her daily tool kit.
One day, The Dave willing, we will see Xuriel geared up in what she considers “Full. Battle. Gear.” for some danger so serious that she feels such a need. I do not doubt it will be … impressive.
I was under the impression she went for her full gear for the Fel invasion.
Which, other than different bits of cloth to stop Max yelling at her, is exactly the same as what she’s wearing now.
I’m convinced her full battle gear is actually just her jewelery and she could fight stark naked at full effectiveness if she wanted to.
To be fair, she’s probably MORE effective fighting naked… succubus and all that
One day, The Dave willing …
I imagine there will be giant mecha involved.
You forgot her earrings, and tongue-piercings
We know the earring has some magical shielding, no data about other piercings. But she wears a cybernetic arm and can teleport in anything from her lab with a thought.
Don’t for get her 135% resistance to debuffs ear clip.
She does when baking cookies.
I went and looked.
Nope, she still has her full battle gear on then as well.
When you say full battle gear what do you mean? Because the only things she was wearing on comic 666 was panties, an apron, her collar, and an upper arm bracelet. The collar is not battle gear so is the upper arm bracelet the full battle gear?
Oh and the earring on one ear which might be what you are talking about since she said it was a 135% against debuffs when at the black reliquiry entrance?
Arm bracelet, earrings, piercings, that little chain she wears round her waist and other jewelry. She seems to only keep weapons in her various hammerspaces (cybernetic arm teleporter, wherever she keeps Soul Reaver…), her defensive kit is never added to.
They’re the only things she has worn consistently in every fight, including the Fel invasion.
She’s a magic + tech crafter, so each and every one of them will be enchanted as far as she can stuff them with effects.
I’m sure that 135% against debuffs is not all that that particular earring does.
That doesn’t make it her *full* battle gear, just her *minimum* battle gear.
She hasn’t added any additional defensive gear to that at any point so far in the comic.
Apart from here:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-177-intergalactic-baggage/
And here:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-473-exiguous-couture/
(Although that one’s not *her* gear, as such, she’s certainly grateful for it.)
Besides, it’s not like she’s *needed* to equip any further gear, is it?
Thus, it counts as the *minimum* defensive gear she’s happy wearing day-to-day.
Found one where she only has the earring and nothing else.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-588-ablution-disillusion/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-589-hot-box/
she has 2 earrings and a choker
The choker isnt armor, and i said she was wearing the earring.
Why would anyone, from such an advanced society, design battle gear that you needed to remove from time to time?
The same reason I take off my glasses or contacts when I go into a shower or go to sleep. :)
I was worried about the “surprisingly sturdy” issue, because having her cover blown would be one of the true painful things that could happen to Max this evening without a supervillain showing up. Like, if someone gets really drunk and hits her with a thrown glass and it just does…nothing? There won’t be a lump on her head which and that’s nice but it’ll still completely ruin her night.
…Ah! The other webcomic this is reminding me of is the love potion episode of Sluggy Freelance. Because I am old.
Memory leak? Ummm, what if the choker blue-screens?
Probably everyone takes a sudden pause and re-evaluates their behavior, similar to when V’s aggro aura got cut off towards the end of the restaurant battle.
Something tells me someone F-ed up.
Unless she only went out for the night so she could spread her bitchiness around, she could maybe take the whole bar home – or to a motel at least.
The choker is already a tool of deception. Consent is murky even before you get to more direct mind-influencing effects. I wonder how most people would react to learning they had sex with someone they are very much not attracted to, because they were deceived at the time? I’m guessing revulsion and a feeling of violation. And even if someone knowingly takes a drug, with the intent of lowering their inhibitions, do we really consider them capable of consent while under the influence of that drug? Drunk isn’t consenting.
But where does perfume or pheromones fit into the calculation? Those certainly alter someone’s brain chemistry without their consent. What if there was some species that used those to communicate? What is perfectly “natural” for one species may be something another species has no defense against, making “natural” a pretty specious line to use to distinguish between acceptable and not. And while succubi have an artificial origin in the Grrlpower universe, they’ve had many generations of “natural” evolution… and probably many of self-directed evolution, to the point where “natural” really loses all meaning. We’ve seen a handful of different succubi in the comic, between Dabbler, Decollete, Tamatha, and Parfait, and while my impression is that Decollete is presented as being the most “normal” for a succubus, and the others as anomalous, I also think it would require conscious effort for a succubus to avoid violating Terran human moral boundaries, which are perhaps themselves anomalous in the Grrlpower universe.
As Dabbler is describing it, the aura doesn’t sound like it should do much more than counter Max’s “aura of malevolence”. There are two problems with that, however: the effect is obviously far stronger than described, because people are acting abnormally impulsive and uninhibited, despite Max’s “aura”, and even if it was only working as intended, the aura would run counter to the choker’s purpose: a disguise, to allow Max to blend in, rather than stand out.
I think Dabbler could attempt to spin the aura as something that would reduce people’s suspicion, which would enhance the disguise, except that making them more comfortable asking questions makes them more likely to see past it. She made a mistake here, even if that mistake wasn’t in enchanting the choker, but forgetting to strip part of the existing enchantment, as her monologue suggests might be the case.
Makeup works in the same way, does it not: make someone appear more appealing than they would normally?
I’m not sure whether that’s a difference of kind or only degree. Makeup may allow someone to cross the border from not attractive to attractive, but could it bridge the gap between revolting and appealing? The scenarios I’m suggesting are things like a stranger disguising themselves as your partner, or as a different sex, or species. Or say, some undead monster disguising itself as an attractive living human. Makeup might play a part in that last one!
Depends on which way you are crossing
Ever seen Star Trek?
Point was: already things being produced by Dirtlings that alter how someone is perceived, which leads to others being deceived, so why is Dabbles being singled out?
Heck, we saw during the “Supers are real” fake bank heist that they have ways of making someone look (and most likely sound) different, just they couldn’t work on Maxi for some reason
I don’t think it’s that their better disguise tech can’t work on Max (though it might have issues with her being shiny).
The better disguise tech just seems too awkward for “a regular night out.”
I got the impression it wasn’t tech either but a spell made by the head of achon’s magical department, so yeah not something Max would want to ask for for casual reasons.
> could it bridge the gap between revolting and appealing?
Easily.
Though, like calling battleship cannon rounds bullets, you may not really like calling it makeup at that point.
It’s exactly like makeup.
Color, hue, gloss, sheen, contouring, and ”specularity.”
It does nothing to alter the volumetric construction of the “terrain.” Her ears her hidden by her hair, because they’re still pointy.
The big kerfuffle here isn’t any of that, it’s Dabbler having built the thing off of the same principle as her own succubus glamour, and – I believe – quite genuinely having not considered the full ramifications thereof.
Honestly I’d still be happier if the whole comic (minus the aforementioned ‘glamour’ shots or splash pages) were done in cell-shaded flats like the first panel. I don’t need a Cistine Chapel in every panel of something I am, in the end, reading.
“I’ll be in my bunk ….”
After tonight, Max should cross that bar off her list…..!
The guy with the Binaca is just cracking me up for some reason.
that place must reek of axe body spray and Altoids
Ah, the plus one to saving throws.
Shame it’s Pathfinder 2E everyone’s playing. Look at all those critical successes …
+1 to saving throws… more like critical success on 2+ by the look of things
As long as that spell memory leak doesn’t turn into an integer overflow somehow. Things would get…complicated.
Thinking through the implications of magical programming is actually a lot of fun. There’s a lot of litRPG stuff out there around the idea, or the Magic 2.0 series for example is a very light-hearted non-RPG take on it.
“You’re pretty dumb for a genius”. ~Carl Brutananadilewski.
Will Dabbler ever face any kind of retribution for constantly using magic roofy juice on people? Probably not because the moment it get’s pointed out seriously how creepy and wildly unethical that would be in reality it would cause a lot of conflict in the cast.
FWIW…it’s pronounced “Oy-ler”, not “Ew-ler”
Haha, yep. I pronounced it like “Yuler” (rhyming with “ruler”) for a long time, based on “Europe”.
… How do you get ‘Oy’ from ‘Eu’?
Ask the Germans. It’s their word.
(Although Euler himself was Swiss, there are parts of Switzerland that are German speaking.)
Google agrees with you, and gives a more-familiar example: the “eu” in “Freud”.
(Okay, okay. Google found a pretty good answer on quora.)
Honestly… at this point the two most culpable individuals for the situation are Dabbler, and Maxima. Dabbler created something and gave it to Maxima without Maxima’s full knowledge and consent. Her only excuse is that she is from an alien culture where such things are considered no big deal (she seems to view Terran inhibitions the way people today regard the pretexts for honor duels during the 17th century. “WHY are you mad over THIS, of all things?”).
Maxima, on the other hand, is a lieutenant colonel who has knowingly entered a place that caters to a crowd she has vocally expressed distaste for. She has been informed that the majority of patrons would either like her to leave, or to participate in the sort of behavior she has repeatedly expressed a disinterest in engaging in. She NEEDS to leave. Not just because things are liable to get worse, but because it’s the courteous thing to do. Failure to do so could get her in hot water for something called “misconduct.” She’s a U.S. Army officer, and if her actions result in disgrace for her unit then the general is going to be PISSED.
> She has been informed that the majority of patrons would either like her to leave, or to participate in the sort of behavior she has repeatedly expressed a disinterest in engaging in
No, she hasn’t.
Have you been reading at all up to this point. She literally has a line of people hitting on her. She openly disgusts at the vast majority of them. The first female to walk up to her literally said “pick someone and get out”.
That’s one person who has told her that, not a majority
Yeah! How dare Maxima exist somewhere when other people would rather she not be there. She’s so evil.
When you are openly being a disruption to the environment, yes. It is a problem you being there.
Something about lunch counters.
Wow. Impressive example of the whole “white women making the civil rights movement all about them” vileness that black people have repeatedly called them out on. Maxima is not being asked to leave because of her physical appearance. She is being asked to leave because of her BEHAVIOR. She is making things unpleasant for everyone else. They came there to have a good time, and Maxima is ruining that.
Uh, no. Just no. Max is sitting at the bar drinking alone, and didn’t invite anyone to join a line with her behavior, nor did her assailant’s diatribe focus on it. She was asked to leave explicitly because of her appearance. Other than a melodramatic entrance, Max is behaving exactly as expected in this environment – it’s everyone else there who’s acting unusually in direct response to her appearance.
So is what’s happening with Dabbler cannon? And if so, is it happening in real time or a flashforward to when datenight is already over?
I believe Dave is using the 4th Wall here to summarize the realization Dabbler just had. She sent Maxima out on a date armed for bear, didn’t think anything of it because … Reasons. Succubus Reasons. While relaxing and reading The Daily Hentai, she suddenly had the idle thought that “ohshitwait …. that Thing I did might have interesting interactions with the the Other Things and … ohshitohshitohshit this is one of those Things that Maxima gets upset about, isn’t it?”
Dabbler’s internal epiphany is just being conveniently re-interpreted for the audience on this side of the 4th Wall. Where she’s actually sitting in the lounge, the only thing that anyone else would see is her suddenly putting the paper down and her eyes getting larger and larger in growing panic as she begins to imagine the beating that’s coming her way. Or, perhaps anticipates the beating, as it will be administered by Maxima should Maxima figure out what happened. Ever.
Her final internal dialogue is probably more literally “I can never allow even a hint of this to escape my mouth. Forever.”
Maxima I guess has had so little interaction with the general population, or been in a singles bar before, that she is not realizing the men literally lining up to be picked or passed is not normal.
She turned Gold before she was able to go to a singles bar (or any sort of bar, unless it was part of school athletics)
She knows it’s not normal, but neither is she. On the previous page she said “this isn’t the first time she’s literally had men lining up” even without the choker.
Max is so hot she gives straight women lady boners.
And slow-eyed gal has appointed herself Max’s gatekeeper. LOL
Maybe Max should’ve gone to that one bar that Sydney and the others went,the one owned by Decollete?!?
Dabbler, sweetie, you done fucked up. I foresee many hours in Sensitivity Training ahead for our Succubus.
Actually I can foresee something else; it’s a mild enhancement, which means maybe the guy who’s been dragged there by his buddies to be Wing-Man but suffers from near-crippling social anxiety might get that ‘edge boost of confidence’ and not make an idiot of himself for a change.
Not that he’d have a fleeping chance in hell as a non-super, but he might manifest just enough to be not-irritating or a complete wall doormat.
Is Dabbler breaking the Fourth Wall?
Panel one reminds me of Mother Gothel from Tangled.
This whole mini-arc confuses me. Do people not go to bars… to drink? The whole concept of “leave some scraps for the rest of us” implies that the only reason she’s there is to find a dude. Maybe that’s why SHE’S there, but she’s just… assuming that’s the case for everyone?
As we see in the next page from DaveB, that IS a reason for her being here.
There are different kinds of bars. There are singles bars whose idea is a place to hook up. If this was happening in say a sports bar it would be much weirder
Panel 3: Max did NOT just say, “Baka”! Tsundere Max officially canon.
Where did Dabbler pick up the habit of reading a newspaper? Coming from a super-advanced high-tech society, I rather assumed she’d get all her news from her cybernetic implants.