Grrl Power #1201 – Impossible Aura Elevator Mission
So for anyone waiting for the other shoe to drop, here it is. Granted, it’s not a very big shoe, but the succubi are still manipulating people. You can call it mind control, or you can think of it as preventing a bunch of super powered individuals from developing grudges against Parfait/Sydney/Succubi in general/each other. It’s clear Dabbler is doing what she thinks is best for the team. And what she’s doing is basically clipping the emotional peaks. Everyone’s feelings are their own, just a little less hot. By morning everyone will be fully back to themselves, and Dabble will be sweating mana salts, like someone getting meat sweats at a Churrascaria.
She’s lucky Xephan isn’t there, because he might not be as okay with it as Gwen is. He might agree with it, but he’s more likely to inform Maxima. Maxima holds unity cohesion as a priority, but also isn’t about to put up with anything approaching mind control.
“Go away from me now.” is Maxima’s way of saying “Don’t tell me about it or let me find out.”
I decided to make them switch to another language, because it felt unrealistic that Parfait, who only started learning English after finding out her older half-sister was camping out in America, would know English words like “intransigent” already. Even Dabbler and her super brain and language skills would probably not know a word like “breviloquence,” because when she copies a language from someone’s brain, she only learns what they know of the language, and unless that person was a heavy “word of the day calendar” user, “breviloquence” just doesn’t meet that threshold of words that the average English speaker will know off the top of their head. (It means speech marked by brevity and concision, BTW. It’s not the literal opposite of sesquipedalian, but close enough.)
Not that Dabbler can’t easily expand on her stolen language skills, of course, but Dabbler’s the kind of super genius who doesn’t feel the need to use big words to make herself sound smart. Well, usually. Sometimes she does when she wants to intellectually dunk on someone. Even in those cases, she’s likely to expand her vocabulary toward scientific or socio-secual fields, not words that seem to exist simply to justify the need for the word “sesquipedalian.”
Edit: Fixed the revelry/reveille goof.
The August vote incentive is up! Yeah I know it’s late, so hopefully I’ll manage to get some bonus (read: overdue) incentives up as I attempt to catch up.
Oh no! Sydney’s been injured! A Wampa may or may not have been involved, I’ll leave the exact nature of the incident up to you. It’s not relevant to the picture. And before you’re like “Dave, Bandaged Rei is one thing, but floating unconscious in a bacta tank is probably an even narrower fetish.” just check the picture out.
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Reveille, not revelry. Bugle call for sunrise. The only people reveling to hear it are getting off overnight duty.
Off? ROTFLMAO, not medical corps…especially in the field. “RULE 1: if you wake doc in the field at 0200 you shove coffee in hand before speaking so he knows it’s real world”
Now I’m wondering what the etymology of that is, and if it’s a terrible pun due to coincidence or common word ancestry.
Based on the spelling, I’d blame French.
reveille is re-veille, as in, “veille” again. “veille” itself comes from vigil, and has a meaning of wakefulness and watch. You can find it also in words like “survey” or “surveillance”, which are literally “watch over” or “keep vigil over”…
So the question is: Does “revel” (as in party) come from the same root? (I could see it coming via “staying up partying until dawn” but I have no knowledge here, just speculation)
Based on context, it should be spelled “reveil” (the noun form) which means “wake-up” rather than “reveille” (the verb form). Consider it happened in the evening and most likely the emergency meeting happened before sun-up.
Yes, but aren’t the ones performing it among those who are getting off overnight duty?
Well, OK, in my limited experience, no. I never understood why someone who was just sleeping would have a first duty of being everyone else’s alarm clock, but…
I think it’s probably that while the word roots are very different, the person who decided that it would be the term that the US uses in its military was probably still pleased as punch at the pun they were perpetrating on literally billions of people they’d never meet. Though it’s possible they didn’t expect us to last long enough for it to be billions. We might not even.
Umm, what does “at revelry” mean?
Reveille, from the French ‘réveiller’ meaning ‘wake up’, is the bugle call that awakens soldiers at dawn, or whatever schedule their unit is following. There are different versions of the call for many national armies. This is the traditional tune for the Commonwealth Realms, e.g., Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Although sometimes also played at military ceremonies the ‘Rouse’, often called ‘Short Reveille’, is normally used.
YouTube link (I swiped almost this blurb from that video.
A different tune This is the version of the song I heard most mornings while I was playing soldier for the Royal Canadian Army.
Old military saying, means wakeup time for boot camp, the name “Revely” is the name of the bugle song played at 5am every morning. What Radar played poorly everyday on the TV show M.A.S.H. These days it’s a recording played over loudspeakers.
Dave fixed it. Took me forever to find it, wish I had seen it, awesome pun.
Revelry/Reveille … was that deliberate, or just one of Dabbler’s occassional goofs?
It’s Sydney making that joke.
That’s not Sydney, given dark hair and almost as tall as Max. I think it’s Seneca, given that Peggy and Ren are also nearby. Also I think she was dead serious.
Oh, that would make sense.
Thought that that was Ari with Hubby on the stairs, didn’t spot the one behind him
Did not expect the impossible mission reference in the second to last panel but here it is.
(For those not in the know impossible mission ((not to he confused with mission impossible)) was an old computer game.)
Yup :) had impossible mission 2 on atari ST… damn, i feel old now…
Same, absolute same. Never finished it as a kid either.
I had the original Impossible Mission on the Spectrum 48K.
Now you can feel younger again.
We also had a Sinclair Spectrum (can’t remember what version), shame missed out on the Kickstarter to get the rebuilt version :(
It sure brought back memories from the 1980’s, playing it on my C64.
Another Commodore64 IM player here, too! Thanks for the reference, DaveB!
Destroy him my robots!
Stay a while. Stay forever!
Are we establishing that Dabbler’s not very good at succubusing compared to the average for the species?
She’s a dabbler. Jack of all trades, master of none. And she seems to focus more on science and combat skills and other parts of her heritage more than her Succubus side.
We do know that she focuses way more on being a kick-ass adventurer polymath than on being a succubus.
I think it was also mentioned somewhere that she’s only part succubus, too, but succubus genetics work in mysterious ways; the standard trope is for a succubus’ female offspring to be 100% succubus no matter the species of the father. Similar for other single-sex races like satyrs or goblins.
You have to keep in mind that ALL Succubi are not “pure”, there’s no male version of the species. Decollete just happens to look more human than most. And fully trained as a succubus. Dabbler just didn’t have the patience to finish the training like she did.
… Goblins are single sex races? o_O
Depends on the author. Don’t think it’s been established here though.
As her name suggests, Dabbler is fairly good at a lot of things, but not an expert. A specialist like Decollete is better than her at succubus stuff, just like Heavenly Sword is a better fencer.
She had a similar argument with Decolette. Dabbler is not the best at succubusing.
Well, we got hints that Xuriel’s polymath focus on adventuring and research skills (fighting, vanilla sorcery, gadgeteering, etc.) left her less than a full match of the succubae that focused on traditional skills and racial abilities (seduction, social manipulation, infiltration, looking and being hot, glamour and tantric magic, etc.) such as Decollete. Dunno how either of them would rate in comparison to the average succubus, or the matriarchs for that matter. I suppose we can just assume that Parfait is kind of a prodigy or natural at succubus abilities, at least as it concerns raw power. Not so much (yet) at fine control.
I think it’s more that Parfait has way better than average potential.
That’s probably not the best way to put it. I feel like Dabbler is probably one of the best at being a succubus, but her power output may be lower than average. Which would make sense in a way, where it is a common story trope where someone is generally weaker than others so they become more skilled or pickup other skills to compensate and become one of the best.
Although I feel Dabbler probably has above average raw power output, better than most but not something special. And rather weak compared to their mom, apparently.
I think more we’re establishing that Parfait has greater innate ability than Dabbler. Like Dabbler is Seth Curry, and Parfait is Steph Curry. They’re both good, but one is definitely more talented than the other.
She doesn’t have a full succubus’ education in the arts, but it looks like Parfait is probably just special as their mum was? If it explains “things she’s been able to do in class” it implies she wasn’t expected to do those and she’s doing much better than expected. So maybe Dabs isn’t great at succubusing (succing buses?) but my money’s on “it’s a comment on Parfait being OP”
Have we heard anything about Dabbler’s mum yet?
From Max’s comment as they came into the building I’m guessing Max has met her?
Thothogoth has stated that her name is Xanadu in #1044, but other than that, no, not really.
cue weird Olivia Newton-John video. I mean the song barely made any sense but the video/movie definatly does not help matters. either that or the caller who interrupts Coleridge
I hope we get to meet Dabblers min some day. I imagine some kind of alpha milf.
Which one? She has at least two
Well she is only half-succubus
As others have already said at various times: This building needs some shielding against auras.
Their best bet to have that kind of thing installed would likely be Dabbler and this comic does not make me confident she wouldn’t have a backdoor for her own auras installed.
They have magic experts of their own who can look over her shoulder – Zephan, Gwen, potentially externals like Elsbeth and many others.
I see it the other way around: She’d build wards that CAN seal out her aura, because she can’t key it to just her aura, it’d be ANY succubus aura, and leaving that sort of gap would not be professional, either by her definition or ours.
Unless she can stick a password on it.
Before this arc I might have agreed with you, but your point is more that she wouldn’t be able to leave a backdoor, not that she wouldn’t if she could.
I can only hope the other magical experts are better at keeping watch on her than Gwen,who seems to be allowing all this, seems to be doing.
Gwen isn’t an expert, she’s still in training herself, she was simply the only magic-user around for Sydney to trick into allowing her to summon the sex-demon past security
Fair point, I forgot that shes still technically a novice, but she acted as Sydneys magic expert in this situation and is the closest they seem to have to one while the actual experts are not present and her decision to allow Dabbler to act in this way do not inspire confidence.
I hope the actual experts do better.
So my initial reaction is that this has really not improved my own feelings on this whole situation, and has actuly kind of soured me towards Dabblers right now.
Her being proud of her sisters power made sense, but it was her lack of any kind of remorse towards the situation and continued messing with peoples minds. Which tracks internally since she’s seeing what she’s doing and what happened as a net positive, but makes me as a reader balk.
That’s the downside of introducing alien moralities into human stories. You should avoid reading Octavia Butler’s sci-fi if this sat very poorly. “Otherworldly people blithely overriding human tendency to lash out at others for making them feel things as a self protection mechanism” is a repeating motif in her stories. Bc humans are violent.
It’s supposed to make you feel ambivalent towards Dabs. She’s doing what is *probably* the best for the team in terms of results, but the morality of her doing that at all is grey *at best*. If she were defending herself she’d say something like “hey it’s just like having a deep and meaningful, but it saves everyone time, plus all your emotions are still your own” but that’s what she’d say – someone who doesn’t like their mind tampered with would still be very right to dislike their mind being tampered with.
Personally it makes me like her more – I like that she can be kind of scary, that her morality is not mine, and that as a character she’s not just “good.” She’s got flaws and things-that-are-flaws-in-human-morality-but-that-succubi-think-are-good and that fleshes her out
Orange-and-blue morality is always hard to work with.
I much prefer Gold, but CG and LN do have their places
She has a clear morality and it isn’t modern American puritanism. There’s almost never a good reason not to have sex.
It’s like all those crazy people who don’t eat bacon. What’s wrong with them? If they accidentally had a feast that they all really enjoyed, but it had bacon in it, would you want them all to feel terrible about having enjoyed bacon, or would you want them to be okay with it, even if they didn’t want to ever have bacon again despite how wonderful and yummy it was?
Either way, they still have to deal with their particular detox method … juice purge or teshuvah or Hail Marys or whatever … but they won’t be dealing with unneeded guilt, or recriminations at the folks they ate with.
I’m one of those crazy people who don’t eat bacon. If you put bacon into my food without my knowledge, I would be PISSED.
That being said, if it were just a big accident, then I would understand you not wanting me to find out that you made a big mistake and fed me bacon without realizing your little “oopsie” until after I was already chewing. But once I did find out, I would be very, very pissed.
I would add that I do like Dabbler, and I do understand her motivations here… but if I found out, I’d be pissed.
I’m also one of those strange people who doesn’t eat bacon.
You put bacon in my food (with or without my knowledge) and I will be sitting on the loo for the next 24hrs, basically non-stop. Maybe throwing up a bit as well. Probably won’t kill me, but I’m not certain of that.
My level of pissed will be down to a combination of how unpleasent the effects were vs how tasty the bacon was, plus if I knew beforehand, assuming I’m still alive afterwards.
There’s almost never a good reason to not have sex… WITHIN AN EXISTING RELATIONSHIP. But there is also almost never a good reason to boink randos. Its temporary fun at the expense of the ability to form meaningful longterm relationships (IN AGGREGATE.) and you can see the effects of it all around the West.
Bacon- while bacon is indeed life and the world needs more of it (as long as it doesnt come out of my share…), in fairness there was a time when eating pork wasnt such a good idea due to their tendency to parasites, so the origins of that rule arent actually insane. Its just out of date now, at least in more advanced countries.
Being in a relationship doesn’t obligate people to have sex. Sex is not and never will be critical to a person’s continued survival. Any and every applicable reason you can give for not doing any other activity also applies to sex.
I am dating someone who is sex repulsed. do I want to have sex with them, yes. But pressuring them into something I know they won’t enjoy makes me the bad person.
There is always a good reason to not have sex. Including none at all, people don’t have to justify their decisions for you to respect their boundaries.
Considering succubi aren’t real, I’ve had no issue of note with this arc.
That said….
“There’s almost never a good reason not to have sex.”
That statement is so far from the truism it’s implied to be that its confident assertion in these comments is actually quite disturbing. One should readily be able to bring to mind just a handful of basic, universally-accepted limitations that practically invert that “almost never.”
“I don’t feel like it” is a perfectly good reason not to have sex. “I don’t like you” is a perfectly good reason not to have sex with a particular person. “Sex carries risk of injury, disease, or pregnancy” are all good reasons. In fact, in the general case, I think there are far more reasons not to have sex than to have it. People choose to anyway, but the important thing is that it’s their choice.
As for your bacon analogy… It doesn’t matter what I want the person to feel. What matters is what they want to feel. Overriding their emotional response is overwriting them as a person.
When you say “there’s almost never a good reason not to have sex” are you stating Dabbler’s views or your own?
As far as the bacon comparison,
I don’t eat bacon because I have Menieres’ Disease salt (or caffeine, or alcohol) triggers vertigo attacks
Other people may have high blood pressure, allergies to nitrates or nitrites (present in most bacon)
Or there may be religious reasons or are vegetarians because of their own moral choices
Or they may think that the standard methods of farming pigs is cruel
Why would you want people to be fine with going against their principles, even if it was an accident?
Dabbler is who she’s always been. Just because her actions are usually comic, doesn’t mean she hasn’t been this from day one. (This is just her version of that munition that turned Sydney’s kidnapper into filet.) Dabbler’s morality is not anyone else’s, and she’s doing the best she can with the big clusterf_ck (literally) that happened accidentally to the team.
Everyone who is clutching pearls hasn’t thought through what would be happening right now if Dabbler wasn’t keeping it tamped down.
No one (except maybe Math and Jabber) is saying it’s great that this happened. It was a social disaster of sorts, and it will have repercussions. Would it really be better if everyone was immediately engaging in high drama about it?
Let’s face it, it’s not the fault of anyone involved. (Partial exceptions: Sydney and Parfait, and even with them, it was just an accident.)
Who or what is it supposed to help if everyone goes tweaky now that it is done?
Dabbler is just temporarily applying a social anesthetic. Over the next few days, the adults will have to work everything else out.
Pain and anger are legitimate responses to injury. Would the world be a better place if we just removed all the emotional consequences of bad behavior? Or do those responses serve a legitimate purpose in motivating us to curb such behavior?
So, by that ‘logic’, it would be perfectly okay to smash someone’s head in because they accidentally stepped on your foot?
You have your ‘pain’ from the foot stomp, and you have your ‘anger’ from the pain, so smashing their head in is a legitimate response, right?
Yes, fear of doing anything remotely hurtful (including words) because you might upset someone who can not control themselves is not the way things should be, that just produces thugs and bullies who, well, rule through fear
I said pain and anger were legitimate responses, not violence. People should learn to control themselves, rather than be controlled by external forces.
guesticules, there is a difference between your reception of a situation (internal feelings, thoughts, and sentiments in response to an action) and your reaction to a situation (what you do in the real world).
if i step on your foot, accidentally or no, are you supposed to not feel pain, or not feel upset that i did that? of course not. you don’t have to curb an internal reaction that has no consequences to the outer world.
but then if you feel that pain and decide i need to feel pain back, your reaction to what i did can be judged – if you step on my foot as hard as i stepped on yours, that’s unpleasant for me, but a fair reaction, since now i feel what you felt. you deciding to murder me (smash my head in) is not a fair reaction since it is far more extreme than what i did to you, and would get you arrested for murder because i am dead and don’t merely have some pain.
^ the same points apply whether the pain is yours or you’re acting on someone else’s behalf, btw, but i would argue acting on someone else’s behalf is even less warranted because you’re taking an excuse to act how you assume someone else wants you to. you didn’t feel the pain and you don’t know to what extent it is felt, so you have no information for trying to exact retribution, if the injured party even wants you to exact retribution.
you’re oversimplifying and wildly exaggerating the matter to try to get a ‘gotcha’ on a very reasonable statement.
I don’t feel like that’s the intention Dave has, correct me if he’s stated this is the case, as he seems to be framing Dabbler as being in the right here, what with his framing of poor reactions to this situation being “puritanical” rather than being based in not wanting peoples minds readily fucked withby people who are meant to be your friends. His authors notes feed into this.
And while yes her having her own culture and morality based in that culture is certainly interesting, I would appreciate there being some demonstrated awareness that this isn’t considered cool by people and I would definitely like to see this actually face consequences for imposing that morality and these emotional controls on people without consent or authorization (she should even be aware she is essentially going against direct orders, as Maxima has made it clear she is against anything approaching mind control).
At the moment it’s just making me dislike her as a result.
Dabbler is proud of her sisters power and ability and is teeling that to Parfai, after she has stressed the need for her to be able to do it on purpose and only when she intends to do it. I see this as a difference in priorities not morals. It’s like being good at martial arts, don’t hit unnecessarily but when you need to do it well.
In my first comment I pointed out that I understand Dabbler being proud of her sister, its an inherent power of succubi and shes naturally talented at it. It would be a bit telling that she considers every other issue secondary priority, but Parfaits her sister and she wants to give her a moral boost after all that, and if what she was doing WAS telling her she got off lucky and people in the building were surprisingly cool with everything all things considered, that would be one thing.
But she went on to say that she needs to clip off a bunch of bad reactions through use of an aura, enough feelings that she needs to spend all night burning mana potions to keep suppressed. Shes underlining that 1. people would have been atleast partly upset with what happened, or atleast how it happened (which tracks, i think most people were adverse to the hook ups but how it was facilitated) and 2. that she is continuing to mess with peoples minds, and shes doing it intentionally, not accidentally, to affect how they feel about the previous issue.
“I would appreciate there being some demonstrated awareness that this isn’t considered cool by people”
When, so far, would they have been able to demonstrate that? (Other than Max destroying another lectern)
Apologies I may have been unclear, im speaking about going forward, im very much hoping that we see the consequences of this kind of behaviour and decision making.
Dave, that pronhub series….
I’d watch it. not at work. maybe in a stall on my phone.
Wow, I’m actually impressed. All the “you’re just pearl clutching!” people just got BTFO’d.
I’m also glad to see my firm belief that Dabbler is fucking horrible is all but canon now.
She’s stopping the first team of American supers from imploding due to a magical accident.
The utilitarian calculus here is far too complicated for me this early on a monday.
Shhh… let her and her headcannon in peace. There are no greys and never can be wrong.
Crap. Underestimated everyone’s hatred of being admitting they’re wrong.
One of my other head canons is that water is wet. You’re certainly one to talk, what more do you need? Dabbler turning to the camera and saying “Yes, I’m controlling them ya dingus. I just said it. Duh.”?
On a side note I can’t help but notice second Parfait realized Dabbler isn’t mad, she went into the same “they’re just all puritans” shtick Dabbler does. Seems like she was only sad she got in trouble, not that she hurt her friends somehow.
He’s an ACTUAL head canon that I have now: Dabbler isn’t an outlier among succubi, Decollete (the classy succubi) just puts a lot more effort into humoring humans irrational dislike of literal sex demons controlling them and Tamatha (the kid one) will end up the same when she’s older and gone through Succ U.
“One of my other head canons is that water is wet.”
You know water isn’t actually wet, right? It makes other things wet, but isn’t wet itself.
but not all things. there are somethings deeply phobic about water
dry water is most often just salt, though. ;P
Or mixed in a martini
I think it’s likely that succubi can’t really comprehend the idea of sex ever being bad. To them, someone not wanting sex is a problem to be fixed, not something that could ever really be valid. That people who value personal autonomy and consent more than sex are the real problem in society, not the rapists.
And there’s been several people in the comments who are presumably human, but seem to hold the same view.
And now I want Dabs to meet someone who is asexual+aromantic. Just for the look of horror on her face.
I imagine it would be similar to one human meeting another who doesn’t eat but somehow manages to obtain nutrition.
A whole lot of confusion, ‘how does that work’, ‘eating is so much easier’ and ‘I can’t imagine living that way’.
Nah, I imagine Dabbler will immediately “fix” the obviously “broken” human.
We’ve already established that you’re bad at predicting what will happin in this comic.
We’ve just established you’re blind. I said it was mind control, y’all insisted it wasn’t, SUPRISE! mind control.
Even putting that aside, did you not read this page? They believe we’re the the stuff they do because there’s something inherently wrong with us and Dabbler is *ahem* “blunting” the team because of it.
Jeez Illy. ಠ_ಠ
You’ve also said the scene is over on several earlier pages. And claimed that everything Dabbler’s aura of “don’t explod the base” wasn’t there and was just bad writing.
We’ve also established that just because it’s mind control doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad. But you seem to have hidden away from those more nuanced conversations.
Stopping, or merely delaying?
I think that depends on whether delaying makes things better or worse. Does suppressing immediate emotional response mean giving rational thought time to prevail, or does it deny people their true experience, and true response, and will they be even more upset at being manipulated, not being trusted with their own emotions? How patronizing is that, for someone to say that your emotions are wrong, and that you should be thankful for them substituting “correct” ones?
No, it’s not that their emotions are wrong, it’s their reactions to what their emotions tell them that needs to be looked at, while not being influenced by those emotions
Is it any worse than someone getting in an angry persons’ face, holding them back and telling them to “Calm the fuck down!”?
Yes, because telling them to calm down is communicating with them, and showing respect for their intellect and autonomy. Forcing them to calm down through directly altering their emotions is treating them as a lesser being, a child, not an equal.
Dabbler is about 5 times as old as everyone else there ;p
I will give you that. I just think she comes across as rather childish herself much of the time. But maybe that’s just down to how it’s difficult to write a character wiser or more intelligent than yourself. I’m not sure if DaveB wants her to be interpreted as more enlightened than he’s capable of writing, or if he thinks how he writes her should be taken as enlightened.
Same with Deus, to a degree, though I think DaveB has explicitly talked about the difficulty of writing super-intelligent characters. I thought maybe that was back when Deus was talking about the Superion field, but I just looked through those pages, and it wasn’t there, so maybe it was him talking about Dabbler on some other page.
I think that was when she was doing “Numb3rs math” to track Sciona?
Nope, not that page either.
Huh.
No idea then. But I remember the author’s note.
Do you think that’s the message Dave intends?
Or is his thinking “see, it’s all fine!”? He is among the ones who called people pearl-clutchers, isn’t he? His commentary here makes it look more like he’d already done this comic and is trying to retcon it in his commentary.
The tale of the frog and the scorpion probably applies.
Ding ding ding.
You’re still pearl clutching.
Have you considered that your smug and obnoxious demeanor is the primary reason people have taken such hard stances agsinst what you say? You’re taking extremely hardline positions in a way that not only brooks no nuance or disagreement, but doing so like a smug, terminally online twitter person. I suspect you could get the same reaction talking about what cheese is appropriate for macaroni just because your smugness offends the senses.
Emotional manipulation like this is in a very grey area, along with other mental influences, but it would also seem more normal to people who grow up used to it.
It’s been touched upon in my own writing as well, though from a different angle. I am doing a Dungeon Core story, and as usual, Inhabitants have a strong instinctive loyalty to the dungeon. While this is considered reasonably okay by the Core for creatures that are elevated to sentience and their offspring, the Core is usually reluctant to accept creatures with pre-existing sentience as inhabitants, because the magic will alter their thought patterns rather hard.
Though if we want a more D&D-esque example: The Calm Emotions spell is generally considered rather benevolent, and that seems like what Dabbler is doing here, just a little bit more aimed.
It’s in so much scifi and fantasy fiction that it’s probably got a tv tropes page, I just dont know what it’s called.
Even Guardians of the Galaxy: Mantis would be dead if she didn’t have the ability to calm others and manipulate feelings. I’m surprised so many are caught off guard by it. Aliens gonna alien.
Harkening.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EmotionControl
And for those without the patience to peruse directly, here’s an interesting excerpt from the article:
“However, actual Emotion Control generally demands far more subtlety then simply flooding someone with emotions or stimulating someone. While these latter are mostly combat and incapacitation super powers, Emotion Control is more about social effects and long-term brainwashing.”
the billionaire the world needs, not the ones we get.
Why wait for a billionaire? We could start a Go-Fund-Me page.
who can erect the best go fund me page?
one that will rise above the throng or thong.
Totally wasn’t mind control!
Emotional dampening isn’t mind control.
Correct, it is emotion control
So is soft music and pleasant smells.
Yet, most people get angry once they notice you are buttering them up.
You understand why?
You’re right, it’s not.
But it is emotion influence, and I’d think many (possibly most) people would find the differences between the two to be irrelevant in this context.
(And THAT said, I do wonder if those who find it pretty much unacceptable–so much so that they’d never have a “good” D&D character use the Charm spell unless it’s against literal in-world demons–also detest modern day advertising? I personally detest it, but for a variety of reasons, and considering how commonplace it is I don’t see the point to just walking around angry about it 24/7, sooo….)
Big freakin difference between Charming Asmodeus and Charming your team mate to keep him from getting angry about what you, or your hireling, did.
So are yellow walls (known to be soothing) unacceptable?
And warm colors in restaurants or cold colors in pools.
idk, difference is in context. this emotional control is to keep people from feeling upset or violated that they were moved by an aura into doing something they normally wouldn’t. warm colors in restaurants are to make you feel more comfortable in the restaurant, they don’t necessarily keep you from getting angry at the waiter who spilled wine on you, or being upset that you have wine spilled on your nice clothes, or make you glad that you have wine spilled on your clothes now.
also, i would bring up music as another thing that affects mood. only, colors and music and all don’t *set* your mood to something, they just give you a factor to react to. if you like christmas music, you’ll love when places start playing it in november and have a great time shopping. the same factor can make people who don’t like christmas music aggravated, irritated, or just uncomfortable. (i’m someone who wishes i didn’t have to hear so much christmas music..)
if you’re hit by a calming spell, you Do Not Feel Upset, this isn’t just ‘oh look we did something nice for you so you won’t be as upset’, this isn’t ‘here calm yourself down, isnt it nicer not to be upset?’, this is ‘You are not upset anymore. Enjoy that and thank me later when you keep not being upset.’
I hate this arc. I thought it was alright at beginning but now I just wish it had never happened.
…. but why?
I’m sure Heatwave’s boyfriend agrees with you totally.
Alright this is just indefensible now. I was attributing Amorphous being weirdly fine with having cheated on the fact that he clearly doesn’t believe fidelity is a huge virtue (didn’t exactly stop Harem from planting a ton of kisses on him either) but if Dabbler’s literally using MORE magic to make people be fine with what happened? Fire her into space. Succubi can’t be trusted.
If you check back when Harem planted the kisses on him he was strapped to a gurney in an ambulance where he couldn’t use his powers without disrupting the disguise which would have made Max even more pissed off at him and Arianne would have been as well.
It happened off screen so we don’t know how much he protested…
His face is clearly uncomfortable with Jiggawatt hanging on him. He’s the character that is going to pay for this “little” shenanigans.
She’s not making them fine with it, she’s making them less likely to rage out on impulse while they process and decide what their final position on and reaction to the incident is. Considered reaction, rather than impulsive reaction.
He isn’t deciding on ANYTHING. She literally calls it her “that was just what I needed” aura. That’s what he “decides”.
If someone was suicidal and about to die, would you stand by and refuse to tweak their emotions to prevent that from happening? Absolutism is for ideologues, and while ideologues might not be humanity’s greatest threat, they are the only ones that can get us to kill each other. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were willing to sacrifice millions OF THEIR OWN PEOPLE for their ideals. We can’t think of every consequence of the rules we make, so we should be prepared to be flexible when we encounter a case where following the rule would result in an unnecessary bad outcome. In this case, Dabbler knew what the result of not intervening would be (and which we were expecting), as it has happened before to succubi, and succubi have their own time tested way of dealing with it.
You presume that no person’s life is so terrible that death wouldn’t be preferable. That someone would consider suicide should be an indication that the world has major problems that need to be addressed, but it’s so much easier to just pressure people into suffering through it.
I’ve been there.
Most suicide attempts are due to negative spikes in mental health. Short bursts of extreme depression.
A calm emotions effect will stop those and have the target thanking you afterwards.
This is very different from “right to die” conversations due to quality of life.
This is fair, I would see it as the same as measured and clinical approach to applying medicine to help deal with chemical imbalances in peoples brains that tend them towards depression or mania, in order for the m to have more control of themselves. There is certainly ethical avenues and applications for a “calm emotions” power.
But i wouldnt support police officers having the right and authorization to hose down people with those drugs whenever they think its necessary, certainly not to cover for the mistakes of one of their relatives.
Cops do a lot worse already, but I take your point.
Cops with wide-area mind control tends dystopian fast.
Agreed on both points.
The question is less “what should be done under certain circumstances”, and more “who do we trust to make that call?”
If they didn’t ask for it? Yes, because I wouldn’t know what is causing their emotions, what if they are depressed and don’t feel emotions strongly, dampening those muted emotions would make the problem worse. What if they had just escaped some one who was gaslighting them that every problem was their fault and unless they always smiled and were happy they should die, and I stopped them from being happy.
No controlling someone’s mind is not how you help people, you should talk to people and let them work through the terrible emotions they are feeling, it’s why there are suicide hotlines.
But more important than all of that is not to take away someone’s agency to make choices, unless they are a danger to others, if the suicidal person won’t change their mind and wants to die after I have offered what help they want that is their choice. I won’t agree with it but I won’t take away their agency.
Luckily, most suicide can be avoided if the person can get help.
Sounds like avoiding the consequences of actions.
And I highly doubt they would have killed Par, just been angry.
So, given that succubi are extraterrestrials and Professor Zanziel is apparently a chatterbox, I guess that makes her a…sesquiped-alien? Eh? Eeeehhhh?
…I’ll just see myself out.
This WILL leak. It’s inevitable. It’s like Dave Barry’s argument against the U.S. having a secret alien research facility. Too many Senators would be arguing over who gets the multi-billion dollar storage facility for it to be kept secret.
How much Puritanism is still lingering?
Society wise? I direct your attention to the religious right. Take note of the more extreme groups as well.
Rather a lot.
In the US?
Not so much lingering as constantly re-inventing itself and popping up like the Spanish Inquisition. Except that you expect this one..
Witness the ongoing pearl-clutching
Different kinds of Puritanism are common on both sides of the US cultural divide.
You obviously can see the ones on the right, with regard to faithfulness to a single sexual partner and so on.
The number of fun things arbitrarily prohibited on the left are immense. Think of all the Halloween costumes you can’t wear. Totally arbitrary boundaries, enforced by ever-changing dogma.
” Think of all the Halloween costumes you can’t wear.”
How about you list a few for the class?
because you asked so nicely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hmhNUCEdX4
because workers need to make money too.
I don’t see anything you can’t wear from a skim of that video.
I do see a lot of bad taste, but nothing banned.
well it is supposed to be a parody of the sag afra’s Halloween costume guidance. seemed oddly appropriate as a way to confuse the issue a lot as somehow the bootstrap group (that still makes that argument) is now the permanent victim group.
“sag afra’s Halloween costume guidance”
They’re on strike. This looks like a “how to not accidently break the picket line” advice to me.
Because, y’know, actors getting dressed up in costumes and getting filmed could do that.
I don’t see what’s so arbitrary about “don’t hurt other people”.
For this type of person, the “other people” bit.
Protect, bind. Bind, protect. Etc…
I am inclined to agree with your assessment. Some people see the world as a strict hierarchy in which those above are allowed to do whatever they want to those below, but not the reverse.
well, its going to be a Manic Monday in the comment section.
I’m starting to suspect that Dave is doing this on purpose.
Considering the overall content of the comic… if I were him, I’d do it on purpose, for reasons above and beyond (but definitely including) the lulz.
If the succubus language is a sexy alien French, I wonder if “Parfait” is her real name or if it was translated, because her name is earth French for “perfect”. I’ll just go ahead and assume that similarly, Dabbler is the translation for Xuriel. :-)
Also: Aura Farpaitement!!!
(Had to make an Asterix reference.)
Parfait is a diminutive of her actual name, Paraphael.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1045-return-of-the-attack-of-the-boobs/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1184-little-hairy-dress/
That’s not necessarily the succubus language, just one that Dabbler, Cora and Parfait all speak.
This, plus it only *sounds* like sexy, alien French.
It’s not actually French, or related to it in any way (that we know of).
Who else needed a dictionary to look up some of the words in panels 6 and 7?
Another visitor! Stay a while; stay forever!
What about Gwen,will she be kicked off the team or something?!?
Gwen acted appropriately given the information she had at the time.
Though everyone probably needs a bit of training on being more specific when asking security questions.
Why would they kick her?
Because she failed to confirm that there was permission to summon a potentially dangerous demon into a military base?
She was falsely lead (led?) to believe that both Maxi (who was out of state at the time) and Anvil were aware of what Sydney was planning
She was just brought in to make sure the summoning circle would work
Before helping to summon a demon into the base maybe you should do more than ask the wanna-be summoner if the boss knows about it?
a) Gwen is not military by training, AFAIK, so it is reasonable that ascertaining permission was not on her mind prior to this incident.
b) This is probably the first incident of an “associated summoning mishap” nature that archon has had to deal with. Following this incident, rules regarding summonings are probably going to be written into their rulebook. Possibly in pink to signify these rules were learned at a price (not in red, since no one died in the rule-making incident (yet…)).
Love this mini-arc! In how it raises interesting topics and has lead to interesting discussion (and a lot of “holier than thou”-ing) in the comments as well as leaving the right-/wrong-ness of several actions up in the air other than from character perspective. XD
GREAT writing Dave!
That’s definitely one way to think of it.
I mean, I do agree, but wow so many people have such strong opinions and don’t seem to understand what Dabbler is doing here. Guardians of the Galaxy has Mantis and no one goes up in arms at her for emotional manipulation, so what’s wrong with a light touch here that Dabbler is doing to make sure things don’t fall apart?
Range and craftiness.
Seriously. Combine having to physically touch the target (which in many animals triggers hormonal responses all on its own) and the person not having some crafty, complicated plan behind it, and we don’t mind near as much. Heck, I’ve witnessed small children knowingly run up and hug a parent as soon as it was obvious they were in trouble, for the sole purpose of trying to alter the parent’s emotions in some way (getting them to laugh, trying to make themselves “look cute,” etc.) It’s not like the kids REALLY know what they’re doing, and that’s partly why for many people, that sort of adorable, bumbling “manipulation” is one of the highlights of interacting with little kids.
But put the intent of an adult-level intelligence behind the action (or in Dabbler’s case, above-average-adult-level) and some people start to get uncomfortable. Then make the action into a minor, but pre-planned part of a higher-order machination, and even if done with genuine good intentions, that discomfort sharply increases. Finally, add the idea that they can exert the influence AT RANGE? From a distance, from behind walls or a different room entirely, completely unnoticed, and with no evidence of it even going on, or having ever occurred? I can understand how the remorseless use of such an ability might elicit a strong reaction among some readers.
Is Mantis doing it because she considers them beneath her, and continuing to do it even after it has been made clear they consider it violating? Been a while since I watched Guardians of the Galaxy but I’m pretty sure the answer is no.
In the MCU, Mantis mind controlling people is played for laughs, but the joke isn’t that she’s mind controlling people, it’s that she’s developmentally a child in an adult body, and doesn’t know any better. The contradictions in her confused morality are presented to illustrate how irreducibly complex moral reasoning is. She is trying to do the right thing, but she doesn’t have the capacity to know what that is in most cases, and follows the rules she’s been told as precisely as she can, oblivious to the unstated complexity hiding behind those simple rules, all the qualifications and exceptions that most people understand intuitively from experience, but would have difficulty articulating.
See, this would have been fine for a morally grey character in a different setting and/or if Grrl Power had been established as such a comic from the get-go. But given how the main cast is framed as the good guys (even if they are military police, with all the real-world feelings and associations attached to that) and multiple moral issues have been raised (like mind control!) this is just emphasizing that ARCHON cannot be trusted. Dabbler alone is a humongous security issue, far more than Sydney who at the very least is a Terran with attachments to her homeland/planet. Sure, Dabbler seemingly has only been on the team’s side so far but what guarantees that? Her sister and her galactically imperialist semi-ex-still-technically-master are Deus’ allies and Dabbler herself just showed that she doesn’t care what Terrans think, want, or feel because she completely believes her own perspective is better (which, incidentally, is a deeply colonialist mindset). At any point, a given situation could prove to tip the scales for Dabbler and have her betray the team or cause great harm with “good” intentions.
I agree with what others have said. This arc has been a clusterfuck of a dumpster fire and I cannot wait until it’s over. It has greatly soured me towards core characters of the story and even the comic itself.
ACAB includes ARC-SWAT. Dabbler has already pointed out, and Maxima grudgingly acknowledged, that the American criminal justice system is far more focused on vengeance than rehabilitation.
Not in this comic, it doesn’t. They’ve almost always been in the right so far and very justified in their purpose and force used.
And even if they weren’t; that wouldn’t make this situation any better.
“But given how the main cast is framed as the good guys”
They’re protags with good PR, certainly. But they’re American super-cops, and ACAB is still true. So far they’ve destroyed a couple of bridges and a restaurant, are talking about making a training/material-gathering site far, far worse for the locals in the area than Cop City, and have blown large holes out of a couple of mountains.
For all that Max gave Syd the notes on “don’t cause collateral damage” they’ve done quite a lot of that so far.
And that’s just what they’ve actively done. If you include all the things they could have done but have chosen not to, then things get even worse for them.
Deus is actively trying to make the world better, and I look forward to the point when he finally gives Max and Syd the tour and tries to flip them.
ACAB is a philosophy for people who don’t know enough cops. And who are willfully ignorant of what happens when there aren’t enough cops out there BEING bastards.
Look at the murder stats everywhere that defunded police. How are them social workers working out for you?
“people who don’t know enough cops.”
Data trumps your anecdotes, sorry.
“what happens when there aren’t enough cops out there BEING bastards. ”
You are aware that the NYC crime rate when *down* when the cops were on strike, right?
If our society needs bastards to keep it running, then there is something deeply wrong with our society.
St Louis, the city with the highest murder rate in the US, has the tenth highest police spending per capita.. Cops don’t make you safer
which areas defunded police, please?
lots of places had people demanding that the police be defunded. in how many places did that actually happen?
Could you point out any places where the police actually got defunded?
You can’t be serious.
“ACAB” but a billionaire trying to take over the world and starting his conquest with a private army that subjugates third world countries is completely okay to digest without scrutiny?
This is fantastically not generous to Archon and very very naive about the motivations of Deus.
If Deus is actually a super-intelligence with all required secondary powers like he claims, then he would be the first ever benevolent dictator in all of human history. And is being portrayed as such.
He’s better than the billionaires we have here just by the actions he’s been shown to take.
I don’t care if he likes putting his troops in evil-looking uniforms or makes deals with alien demons. He’s doing the one job every politician has, but most of them don’t do: He’s trying to turn the place he rules into a utopia *for all.*
> And is being portrayed as such.
So is Max. And most of the other characters of Arc Swat.
If we’re going mostly based on “how they’re portrayed” then they are all flawed but well-intentioned people.
Except we know little about Deus’ intentions beyond his word. And sincerely, very much doubt the story ends with “And Deus saved the world with an iron fist using super intellect.”
It’d not only be tone-deaf; it’d be boring.
The story ending with “And a super-power saved the world” seems appropriate to me.
Except being super smart doesn’t help avoid all the problems of trying to rule the world.
The required secondary powers (super-empathy, etc…) do.
No, super intelligence implies an enhanced ability to process and store information.
Intellect being enhanced doesn’t logically follow into increased empathy or morality as evidence by a lot of smart but morally bankrupt people in history.
And super doesn’t even mean perfect!
So he could still fall to the many pitfalls of a dictatorship and is, frankly, just as valid to be put under the billionaire equivalent of “ACAB” with Maxima and Co.
“Intellect being enhanced doesn’t logically follow into increased empathy or morality as evidence by a lot of smart but morally bankrupt people in history.”
Go read Deus’s “I’m a super intelligence” reveal again.
I have
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1040-benevolish/
And again it is literally just his word.
And it’s still only super and not perfect seeing as he had a falling out in his relationship with Maxima. Something you’d think someone with a perfect mind would fumble.
“And again it is literally just his word.”
And?
I specified “with all required secondary powers like he claims” right at the top.
Because he could be lying?
Or have an inflated sense of ego.
How would one even quantify having super morality?
I’m still holding out hope that this weird little story arc is leading into a political/military power grab scenario with a new character. Brings in new supers, uses this situation to demonstrate that Max is too compromised in her personal relationships to be objective, Dabbler gets the boot by the new baddy (General Jerkol etcetc) to ‘weaken’ Max’s core circle. It’s a little mid-run Stargate SG-1/Star Trek but hey old is gold and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
That said, while I think that would make me like this arc again, I’m also in favor of just moving on from it.
I suspect this is just Dave, along with simply having fun examining the consequences of such a character, raising eyebrows at some of the past comments and thinking, “you’ve been thoroughly enjoying a comic where one of the protags is a LITERAL SUCCUBUS, and yet you’re worried about THAT? Huh. Maybe you need to fully grasp the implications of what exactly it is you’re choosing to read about so that you can actually confront some inconsistent thinking before we move forward.”
I mean, that may not be a fully-fleshed thought that actually scrolled through his mind, but I can’t help but think that’s part of the unspoken motivation here.
You’re reminding me of the TV series “Lost Girl” where the protag is a succubus who loves two people, neither of which can keep up with her sex needs. And they do a whole lot of love triangle drama because *the writers* were too cowardly to go “She’s a succubus, she’s can just have them both.”
Because we assumed Dabbler wasn’t just a mind-rape demon and that succubi in this universe had nuance to them like they seemed to.
That’s ruined now, obviously.
But no, it is not a sign of being “inconsistent” to not like mind control even when the main cast includes a succubuss.
I would think that any non-cartoonish depiction of a succubus, especially in a comic like this, would practically mandate that the character was (to SOME degree or another,) a “mind-r*pe demon.” And I don’t see why the character being that to any degree means that they’re completely incapable of having any nuance in that area.
That said, even if I don’t get how you expected otherwise, I do understand if her turning out to be something other than expected ruins it for you… but then, I’m here for Halo (and to a lesser degree Maxima,) and I decided long ago to simply tolerate Dabbler.
>any non-cartoonish depiction of a succubus
Lol, Dabbler still is a cartoonish depiction. If by that you mean “largely inaccurate”.
Multiple parts of her mythos is entirely inconsistent with the original myth of the succubus.
The only thing she really has in common now is being a demon (partially) and having a relationship with consent that can now be described as “Don’t be in a room alone with her”. This is a shame because many succubus characters in media avoid that latter part but oh well.
By cartoonish, I ultimately meant “a demon who, even according to her own fantasy world standards, never actually demons.”
I might have been uncertain before (although not uncertain enough to trust the character,) but by the time Tom got explained it seemed obvious that Dabbler would have no issue with this sort of thing (among others.)
Why?
Nothing in what Tom said indicated she would be. Succubi were a slave race who killed their masters and took over their own “ownership process”.
That doesn’t automatically and logically follow this conclusion.
Or make it not understandable how people would think less of her for doing so.
I mean honestly:
>“you’ve been thoroughly enjoying a comic where one of the protags is a LITERAL SUCCUBUS, and yet you’re worried about THAT? Huh. Maybe you need to fully grasp the implications of what exactly it is you’re choosing to read about so that you can actually confront some inconsistent thinking before we move forward.”
^This would just be a really pretentious and bad reason to make a character a lot more morally grey just to, what, spite the audience for having feelings about a sensitive topic?
I doubt that’s the reason why he did it because it’s just plain bad writing. You don’t make a morally grey character If you don’t want the audience to judge them for what they do, it is practically the point of having such a character.
“Nothing in what Tom said indicated she would be. Succubi were a slave race who killed their masters and took over their own “ownership process”.”
No, but the writer of the comic choosing to fashion that as part of the lore of the succubi of his comic made it rather obvious how he would choose to tilt the more-hidden aspects of his primary succubus character.
Making the character a LITERAL slave would already ruffle plenty of feathers, whether or not it actually should. Having the literal slave literal demon then be rather nonchalant with her minimal use of emotion control is just par for the course. (I honestly would have been floored had she *refused* to do that.)
>more-hidden aspects of his primary succubus character
It wasn’t hidden before though.
Dabble straight up did not use mind control even when she got into trouble before. This is new.
>(I honestly would have been floored had she *refused* to do that.)
Easy way go justify it: “As a member of a race that was previously enslave via mind control, Dabbler does not like to use it on others.”
“It wasn’t hidden before though.”
Well…. according to Dave, apparently it was. I can see enough difference between this situation and previous ones in the comic that the character could justify taking a different action.
And yes, let’s be clear, Dave COULD have justified it easily enough. He didn’t have to even write this entire arc. But again… given that the arc was written, given that she does have the ability to influence minds, and knowing the trends in the comic pushing the envelope, Dabbler’s willingness to jump to “minor mind control” (as it’s intended to be seen as) is hardly surprising.
(Didn’t realize this back and forth had been going on for 10 days. Feel free to leave the last word, I’ll read it, but I think I’ve stated my stance.)
“Dabble straight up did not use mind control even when she got into trouble before.”
You remember the first time she met Syd, right? Lust aura turned up over 10.
Or the fight with Jazza?
Dabbler has use mind control *lots* so far.
Doing so in an active combat situation is different from doing so to cover up a crime.
Holy cowballs!
“Stay awhile…STAY FOREVER!!!!”
Man, it’s been a while.
It’s been forever.
Heheh.
Yeah I recognized that panel 8 reference too. 8)
I think I used to play that on my old Commodore 64.
I feel like this also exposes a crazy wide vulnerability of ARCHON to mind-control/mind-influence. If the only person who has figured it out is Gwen, and she isn’t bringing it to the attention of authorities…. One Zebediah Killgrave and the world is toast.
Yeah, totally agreed.
How would you try to fix it.
There are very few confirmed canon ways to combat mind control in the grrlverse.
There is resistance as showcased by Vehemence on the sleep spell and that is it.
My proposal would be to start with detection by anomaly. Modify suits to continuously monitor predictable body behavior and look for unnatural jumps.
Behavior analysis has always been a weak way to combat mind control, but could be used to obtain a permanent baseline for generic attacks.
Make uneven number of people do a set of very specific and predictable tasks and monitor them, while doing these tasks. If they all have large changes at the same moment it’s code red.
Behaviour analysis won’t combat mind control, but it will sometimes inform that it’s being used.
It seems like being aware of the mind control effect gives you a boost to your resistance to it. (Or it’s Max and Syd getting author’s pet privilidges)
Soooo wait. If I’m understanding this correctly, Dabbler is using an aura to make people be more receptive towards the experience they just had? If this is the case, launch her into the sun. I’m sure some people wouldn’t mind, but I’d be heated if I learned this. Full on, “I can’t trust you not to emotionally manipulate me.” type stuff. Glad I never really cared for Dabbler in this first place. That said…If this leaks, I think this could make for a GREAT arc.
No, she’s just using a ‘calm your tits’ aura so they can process what happened
Something that could be used in the comments section
Guessing you hate going to your local mall, with all it’s not-subtle ’emotional manipulating’ music and lighting and scents
Marketing can indeed be duplicitous and scummy about how they go about getting you to buy stuff yes.
Do you think friends and colleagues should also use this sort of manipulation whenever they feel like your reaction would be an inconvenience?
What about if they ramp it up by not just attempting to sway you with hit or miss manipulation, but skip that step and just actively edit your emotional response?
Because this isnt the same as advertising or mood lighting, to which you can be conscious of and resist, this is someone reaching into your mind and changing the reaction itself.
“whenever they feel like your reaction would be an inconvenience?”
Inconvinience? No. Stopping a panic attack? Yes.
I agree with that though! If people were having a panic attack and you could cast “Calm Emotions” to help them with that, i would be SO on board. It would be a great tool to help people.
But that isnt whats happening here, thats not what weve been shown or told. Shes dealing with the “sharp edges”. People feeling upset and disliking Parfait for causing this is an inconvenience. So is Amorphous, Heatwave and Jiggawatt no longer being friends because of the relationship fallout. Or people being annoyed with Sydney or Gwen for bringing Parfait in and allowing this all to happen in the first place.
No one even got to the point of having a panic attack and needing that kind of help, the chance to deal with their own emotions and reactions was clipped before they could manifest.
And if Dabbler could tell someone was going to have a panic attack and was doing this to deliberately prevent it, then that has not been demonstrated and should have been.
No one was even given the chance to process their emotions to reach that point.
“But that isnt whats happening here, thats not what weve been shown or told.”
This is somewhere between the two. It’s more than just an inconvinience.
“So is Amorphous, Heatwave and Jiggawatt no longer being friends because of the relationship fallout.”
That’s got a major impact on operations.
“No one even got to the point of having a panic attack and needing that kind of help”
I think it’s pretty obvious that Dabs could see some major emotional fallout coming. Everyone here did, and we don’t have magic emotion senses.
Also, I think it’s pretty obvious that Max has been opted out of the calm emotions aura, so she is almost certainly targetting it specifically at just the people who need it, given that it’s draining her enough that she’s worried about side effects from too many mana potions to keep it running.
Okay I think weve narrowed down atleast one of the main differences where we disagree:
I do not see people being upset with each other and holding resentment to others, including Parfait or Succubi in general, as anything more than an inconvenience to Dabbler. It is convenient for her to avoid fallout entirely and rather than let the humans process their emotions normally, as it would be too messy and she considers the outcome good anyways.
The fallout might effect operations, true, but so might any disagreement and problem within the group. So could Amorphous being an ass and forgetting an anniversary and causing an argument or break up. Or whatever is happening between Sydney and Leon blowing up because of bad communication.
People get upset with each other in the course of their life and are expected to continue being professional about things and keep doing their job.
-> “I think it’s pretty obvious that Dabs could see some major emotional fallout coming. Everyone here did, and we don’t have magic emotion senses.”
Is it? We have not been shown that to my knowledge. We have been told “sharp edges” and “clipping emotional peaks”, none of that implies anything greater. The worst that this has been implied to get by Dave is some “grudges” forming. Its still taking peoples right to feel those emotions and their agency to process them away, but its not currently it hasnt been shown to be in response to anything greater than being upset.
-> “Also, I think it’s pretty obvious that Max has been opted out of the calm emotions aura”
Unclear, if it really is just clipping emotional peaks, Max might just be the most upset person in the room.
->”she is almost certainly targetting it specifically at just the people who need it, given that it’s draining her enough that she’s worried about side effects from too many mana potions to keep it running.”
That could also be because shes keeping a wide spread aura active all night throughout an entire building. She specifically mentioned it would be harder because the group is thinning out and if she wants to keep the entire group saturated she would need to keep hitting the whole building.
(For the record, weve been going back and forth on a few threads because I feel like i see your position but cant qutie agree, dont want to seem like im coming after you in the comments.)
“Okay I think weve narrowed down atleast one of the main differences where we disagree:”
Agree on the difference. And I think we’ve litigated that difference as far as we can?
“We have not been shown that to my knowledge.”
No, but when the entire comments section (and Max (“I expected this meeting to go very differently”)) can see it coming I think Dabbler, with her greater-than-human intelligence and lots of experience and education in these things, should also be able to. Not everything needs to be shown “on-screen” (I really enjoyed watching Primer).
“Max might just be the most upset person in the room.”
Fair.
“(For the record, weve been going back and forth on a few threads because I feel like i see your position but cant qutie agree, dont want to seem like im coming after you in the comments.)”
Same. It’s nice to be able to have a civilised argument with someone acting in good faith for a change.
Fair points on your end, and yeah, I think we’ve argued our points far enough and while I don’t necessarily agree on your interpretation, I’ll atleast keep an open mind regarding it as the comic continues.
(same, cheers)
Max expected things to go very differently is in response to
“people are fine with being mentally influenced/compelled to have sex”
No sign of “Max thinks people are going to riot, madly attack Sydney or Parfait” etc…
I’m surprised to see you argue that it’s more important for them to be an effective police force than for them to experience authentic human emotion.
“it’s more important for them to be an effective police force than for them to experience authentic human emotion.”
For Dabbler and Max it is. They’re literally living weapons in the USA’s arsenal.
Also, my opinion on police is that we need them to be more effective. Currently they are effectively useless, because no good people trust them. (My view on what constitutes “effective police” is not the same as most government officials)
Hell, if the police were trained to military-grade ROE and required the first couple of years of a law degree then they would be much better at doing what most people think their job is.
I would say that for them to be “good” police would require an understanding of authentic human emotion. Instead, our police and military training turns them into psychopaths.
Law training might be beneficial, if they are to enforce the law… But I suspect our current legal training turns people into psychopaths too.
Or maybe our entire society just revolves around rewarding psychopathy.
Agree on all points.
Police could probably do with psychiatrist training as well, now that I’m thinking about it.
Mostly I just don’t think that ACAB is inevitable. But getting out of it is going to be really, really hard.
Um, you might want to read what Dabbler called it again, “Hey, that’s just what I needed’ Aura.”
It’s not about calming, but forcing the person to like what just happened. We can’t even be sure that Seneca is bisexual now because Dabbler is stopping her from deciding if it’s what she wanted after all.
So she’s been essentially giving everyone doses of magical SSRI (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) to blunt their emotional backlash, without their consent. Nice. Definitely “Brave New World.”
Ok, this explains all and I think it makes sense for Dabbler. I mean, I think what she did is wrong, but it makes sense that she did it. I really want someone finds it and Dabbler gets in high trouble for that, but I do not think this is going to happen.
So, is this setting up that Dabbler’s a villain? Because this definitely doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a hero would do.
Say what you will about Parfait, at least what she did WAS an accident. Dabbler doesn’t have that excuse.
Like, was this supposed to make people feel better about what happened?
“Hey guys, I knew some of you were upset about the Date-Rape Demon roofie-ing a building full of people into having sex, but it’s okay! I got the other Date-Rape Demon to use her mind control powers so no one gets mad about it. No harm done because literally no one can feel bad about it, because of the mind control.”
This was not a satisfying arc to read. It mostly just made me feel gross, and sad.
Not necessarily a villain.. A very pragmatic alien who is very much not beholden by our cultural Icks doing Postcare By the Book.
Because this is obviously not the only time this happened.. It’s in fact a mandatory, and obviously verbacious and boring course Dabbler had to take * more than a century ago*…
And please define “Hero”… In the not-posthumous sense, as it’s usually applied..
“And please define “Hero”… In the not-posthumous sense, as it’s usually applied..”
“A hero is someone who gets other people killed”
;-p
This isn’t even postcare.
It’s just mind-controlling people to not be angry about something they might have otherwise been.
I long for the storyline when dabbler finally gets called out on her BS…. Of course I also long for the storyline where Maxima and her militarized “it’s our way or the highway”. Super team that’s just fine colluding with freaking supernatural Illuminati groups exercising Mass mind control encounter an independent, altruistic group of supers that call them out on their collective BS. For all the PG-13 cheesecake the author keeps serving us, I do not consider these people to be the good guys.
Hmmm… just a bit more manipulation Dabs? It’s fine, the shitstorm the normal regs would have been caused by the entire incident is best kept low-key is the better option for all. Plus, it lets you stay close to the “yummy supers” a while longer! I do believe the security risk Dabbler presents is more of an annoyance than anything, and if you think about it, most of the members of Archon were criminals at one point to start with. Harem is a good example, playing a triple agent for Deus and Archon because it’s “fun.” If Max was to stick to the letter of regulations, Archon would be mostly empty by now… and disbanded!
Police can get away with doing shady stuff, because if you didn’t let the police do shady and held them accountable for shady stuff they did then there wouldn’t be any police left.
“we need corrupt police actually” is a bad argument. People who wish to exploit the high level of authority policing gives will be attracted to the position. but that means they need more oversight, not less. There are good cops, but they get forced out or killed by corrupt cops, who then make challenge coins celebrating their role in the event.
All cops are bastards because good cops don’t last.
I’d say actively manipulating the emotions of the team presents a bigger problem though.
Especially if it ever comes to light, which would generate a much worse response than what Par did. Like, “One of them might try to kill Dabbler” levels of bad.
DaWothzels.
Yet another “aura” a.k.a mind control.
Partfait wasn’t in control of her actions and not properly introduced in the culture I get that.
Dabbler has no such excuse.
The “alien” card doesn’t work either.
Someone of her intellect should have learned enough about the culture by now to realize that, that isn’t acceptable here.
I’m enjoying seeing more and more people realize that Dabbler’s actions are the symptom of a deeper disregard for other people. I would have hoped being a sex pest would have made that clear enough, but I’m only mildly salty about all the flak I got in the past. Sure, there are still folks desperately trying to spin this as actually being good—a lot of “fix the squares” and a fair few “she’s saving the team” and at least once “but she’s an alien”—but my interpretation is that Dabbler just doesn’t want her buffet to end. Any positive outcomes are just a screen for her to hide behind.
> Dabbler just doesn’t want her buffet to end.
Why else would an alien adventurer who’s killed gods be hanging out on out little backwater planet?
She’s on holiday.
So, she’s not just a sex pest. She’s like those creepy guys who go to Thailand to throw money and do… questionable things.
“questionable things.”
If you mean “hire trans/crossdressing prostitutes” I don’t see what’s questionable about that.
They are quite often 12 years of age.
Which is legal in those countries
Im sorry, but could you please clarify the point your trying to make here?
From https://ecpat.org/country/thailand/#:~:text=Age%20of%20Consent&text=The%20age%20of%20sexual%20consent,the%20consent%20of%20the%20latter.
“The age of sexual consent for both boys and girls is 15 years. The Thai Penal Code also provides for close-in age exemption in case a child below 18 has sexual intercourse with another child aged 13-15 years of age with the consent of the latter. However, there is no criterion to determine whether the consent is voluntary, well-informed and mutual.”
https://www.icmec.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ICMEC-Thailand-National-Legislation-updated.pdf
agrees with the 15 figure, as does wikipedia.
So your defense of child abuse is factually incorrect as well as being a massive red flag.
Yet travel from many countries to those is illegal if you are going for that kind of sex tourism.
Seriously. Please clarify whatever point you were trying to make here as I am trying to be charitable and not assume you were trying to defend child prostitution.
Something I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, but succubi and their masters can talk to each other whenever they want at the speed of their link as soon as they both learn morse code (timed micro-usage of each other’s “battery” capability).
Why is Dab’s chugging mana potions instead of dropping Thoth a note saying “Parfait caused a mess, can I borrow a bit of your massive magic output to clean it up? Parfait say’s she’ll pay you back later.”
Max really would have a cow over that one. I think she would see it as alerting a potential enemy to a weakness within the organization. In Dabbler’s point of view she is taking one for the team, even if most of the team don’t know it and she is looking out for her sister. All the same, Thothie is still going to get some inside info.
That presumes prior permission for the slave to use the master’s mana pool, or that the slave can make that request through the link.
The slave not using the master’s mana pool was described as a “deny” ability, rather than a “request to use” ability (from my memory), so I don’t think I’m making an unfounded assumption there.
And obviously this only works if they’ve talked about it beforehand. Otherwise they wouldn’t understand what was being said.
“The succubus can’t take from the master without permission.” reads to me as if the permission must come first.
Fair. I’d really love more details/examples of how that all works.
(I still want a plotline that starts with Tom injured offworld and draining Dabbler to stay alive)
Oh, yeah, no. Parfait’s aura could be excused since she wasn’t entirely in control of her actions herself, Dabbler setting up an influence aura to make people be more amicable to the first one deliberately is just outright gross.
Everyone involved in letting it happen whether they know about it like Gwen or know what that might entail but not the specifics like Maxima are likewise complicit.
This whole situation was giving me the ick but this is just inexcusable.
Just EW
You know I kind of like this arc, but I feel like there was some serious issues in execution that lead to audience alienation; first the triggering event should’ve been something completely unforeseen like Parfait having a delayed reaction to one of the reagents used in her summoning:
Parfait: “Hey what is that smell?”
Syd: “Frankincense”
Parfait: “Oh no!”
Secondly make the scenes with Parfait and Sydny a touch more cartoony possibly with the use of the lighthook being used to tie up Parfait. Ending with Syd having to call Dabbler about the situation. Thirdly make a point of having Dabbler a more defining explanation on the nature of auras and how they are not mind control:
Dabbler: “We can’t make someone do something; we just make it harder to make an excuse that you don’t. eh… harder.”
As well explain why she’s doing the whole “Just what I needed” thing, like a base full of high-strung super people suffering from self-induced anxiety might be bad, yes, I imagine that’s being implied but it could benefit from blunt explaintion.
I don’t thinks it’s just bad execution. I believe there is a fundamental flaw in this arc, because declaring Parfait’s faux pas no big deal and defending Dabbler’s act as doing the best for the team are multialy exclusive.
For a moment, let’s take away the sex. We already know of one other aura, the agression one from earlier in the comic.So, Parfait accidently flodded the building with agression, but it only heightend pre-existing dislike (and stripped away some inhibitions). Instead of handholding couples we get a few bruises (but no lasting injuries). Dave himself has made it clear in his comments that this is no big deal, no one was fighting anyone they didn’t dislike before and after a bit of misgivings, all will be well…
In this scenario, Dabbler’s action becomes indefensible and way ofer the line. While some individuals may freak out, there is simple no need for blanketing everyone with an anti-freakout-aura preemptivly.
On the otherhand, if one believes that Dabbler’s action was neccessary or at least “best for the team” – as Dave claimed in his current comment – this implies that many, possible all, people involed will not only have some bad feelings about the situation but will have a major freak-out including rampaging supers.
Yet, by the same token, if a majer freak-out is expected, the Parfait’s faux pas is a big deal and should not be swept under the rug so casually.
When we bring back the lust aura and sexual shenigans, the litmus test are Mr. & Mrs. Shrapnell. They are a happy, married couple, the did not cheat and the do not look like a couple of prudes that sleeps in seperate beds. (Well the last one is conjecture ,-)).
If anyone in this situation is the least likely to freak out, it is the Shrapnells. Plus, Arianna is high enough in the oranisation that she could give a somewhat-OK to Dabbler’s action (Even if not in the actual chain of command, but “emergency situation”, you know?)
Yet Dabbler is not only including Arianna and her husbend in her force-fed chill-pill, she also doesn’t inform them about it. And given Arianna’s past behaviour about PR and public image, there is an even chance that she would agree to this.
So the question is: Why?
I think, it is because Dabbler knows very well that her solution is a bad one, way out of proportions and would be rejected out of hand by most members of ARCHON.
Dabbler, what the FUCK.
If DB didn’t explicitly define what she’s doing as “clipping the emotional peaks”, which I understand to mean maybe “sanding an extreme point down maybe 5%-8% so it’s just not as sudden and harsh”, I would be a LOT more bothered by this, but, still, Christ.
Jesus tittyfucking Christ, Dabbler, even with it being that gentle of a touch, that’s still tremendously fucking uncool. You have NOT been officiated as the designated “Emotional Baggage Handler” by any of these people. That is something that you should NEED sober consent for. If you’re going to try and temper the heat, at least use the same tools THEY use, y’know – WORDS, instead of a metaphysical force that’s something 99.9% of them can’t fucking interact with and have no defence against.
Even if doing this is the right thing in your culture, it still has terrible fucking implications in the long run for THIS culture, and if they ever figure out that you can — or HAVE — been doing this to them, you could cause considerably more damage than was prevented, not least of which their trust in you being completely shattered because they’ll have no way of knowing whether you’re pushing an “I’m okay with it” aura any time they actually ARE okay with it. The emotional pendulum in humans is known to sway to the other extreme REAL fucking quick when shit like this is discovered.
Jesus. If Parfait accidentally stumbled over an aphrodisiac that got into the ventilation, you’ve deliberately put smoldering marijuana in the ventilation to make everyone chill with the accident and that’s just… an order of magnitude different, in terms of social implications.
Fuckin’ yikes. This shoe most definitely is NOT smaller than the other, and I eagerly await payoff on this story beat even if it takes years to get there.
The interesting question is what Dabbler will tell Dr. Frost.
Because as the resident mental health tech she’s the one who needs to know this is happening.
Everyone else? It’s America, it was probably pre-approved in the mountain of contract they all signed under “mental health support”. Because that’s what Dabs is doing: Applying a magic effect to protect their mental health. The fact that she isn’t telling them about it is also to protect their mental health (as evidenced by the comments section).
The fact that she has to lie abouy using a mental effect to maintain their mental health because them knowing would be another threat to their mental health, may be sign that this isn’t the best way to go about maintaining their mental health.
But yeah I wouldn’t put it past someone slipping this sort of allowance into a contract, but that would kind of imply this sort of action has been authorized from on high
Are you familiar with the concept of cognition hazards?
Here’s an example: The Game.
I am aware of those yes, and they are generally considered a BAD thing right? As in being exposed to them is bad? And the act of using things like amnestics to combat them is seen as a utilitarian but ethically grey area?
The difference is the fiction this concept comes from treats both those things as scary and troubling or at least as a dark joke because they are scary and troubling.
“they are generally considered a BAD thing right?”
Yeap.
“the act of using things like amnestics to combat them is seen as a utilitarian but ethically grey area?”
I would argue that utilitarian doesn’t imply ethically grey, but yes, proper treatment of cognition hazards runs into a lot of compromises between core and secondary axioms.
Point about utilitarianism conceded, but my point is more that they are chosen to be used despite any other ethical concerns because they solve the issue.
But being divorced from the situation we see that there are other ethical concerns and their use is ethically grey.
I wouldn’t say “despite any other ethical concerns.” I’d say “best of bad options”.
Yes there are ethical concerns for actions taken. But there are also ethical concerns for actions not taken. You are responsible for the consequenses of actions you don’t take, after all.
Talking to people hasnt even been attempted though, or therapy, she has jumped straight to emotional control as her first option here.
It doesnt feel like “best of bad option” it feels like “every problem looks like a nail to a succubus with a hammer”.
Talking and therapy are Dr. Frost’s responsibility. Dabbler’s is that people don’t hurt her sister.
But yes, Dabbler’s toolbox definitely keeps her auras at the top for easy reach, and I doubt she goes looking for a second option.
“every problem looks like a nail to a succubus with a hammer”
And sentences like this make me wish I was better an puns and innuendo.
@Tendo
> “every problem looks like a nail to a succubus with a hammer”
I mean, “I’d hit that” is the default opinion of a succubus.
“To a succubus, every problem looks like a dildo”
Heh. I suppose i should be happy people atleast arent making Captain Hammer references after my comment.
You think Max would have allowed something like that to be in their contracts? You think she wouldn’t be furious if it was, and she found out later?
Furious? I’m sure. Furious enough to cripple Archon when it has become clear how vital they may be with alien empires, newly upcoming national superpowers, clandestine shadow organizations, and more trying to secure any advantage? Probably not. Military culture deals far too often with having to allow something bad to happen because stopping it might cause something worse, because the world is complicated and the parts that require the threat of force tend to be the most complicated. This is why many operations have expected casualty rates, because even doing everything ‘right’ usually still causes some sort of damage.
She obviously won’t say ANYTHING to Dr. Frost, not sure why you think she would.
It would get her in trouble and Dr. Frost is a puritanical inferior species (Dab’s a literal succubi supremacist*) like the rest of the team.
*grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-815-do-what-i-say-and-also-what-i-do
The author’s note on that page is particularly relevant, I think:
She largely “improves” the universe by reducing other people’s agency, whether that be by killing them or overriding their emotions. It might make it better, but it also makes it less of a collective, cooperative experience that people participate in, which might kind of defeat the point of it all.
Depends on a person’s base axioms. Dabbler’s a literal alien, after all.
Also, positive vs negative freedoms would be the argument she would probbaly make. “I’m giving them the freedom to achieve their desires, rather than the freedom to suffer needlessly.”
Yes, that heads into “Slave in heaven or free in hell?” territory. And I think we already know that Dab’s comes down on the “slave in heaven” side.
No she would come down on “slave to me.” As long as Dabbler gets what she wants the rest of the universe can hang.
She is a slave to a demon that is also trying to make the universe better through conquest and she left him, possibly at a point of weakness.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-177-intergalactic-baggage/
She will sacrifice companions in combat to fulfill a petty desire.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-218-battle-break-or-the-most-dick-way-to-block-something/
And here she has self appointed herself the deciding body of what the reaction to emotional manipulation should be.
I always knew she was chaotic now she just shows her uncaring evil side.
Which companion did she sacrifice there? I only see Achillies having fun in the background.
As for how she split up with Tom, given what we know now, there’s so much going on there.
If you want to assume a moment of weakness, I can assume he started it. Or maybe even that he jumped in front of a trap for her, and him cussing her out was for the urologist jibe, not for being sucked into a portal.
You do realize someone doesn’t have to die to be sacrificed, Achilles just saved her from an attack and rather then returning the favor she lets him get buried under enough rubble that he can’t escape for the remainder of the battle. Ignoring a compatriot in trouble and distracting the leader giving tactical assistance to her team. If the battle had gone differently and Vehemence had won he could have been trapped for hours or longer.
*If you want to assume a moment of weakness, I can assume he started it. Or maybe even that he jumped in front of a trap for her*
So, why would he need to start it? This shows Dabbler leaving him and taking his stuff, if he wanted her to leave he would have just told her to go. However he seems rather upset about whatever is dragging him away from Dabbler.
If he jumped in front of a trap, it shows again that Dabbler will sacrifice others for her personal gain. She is not trying to help the one person who is keeping her from starving to death so she can take his stuff.
Her actions show her to be a short sighted hedonist who thinks she know what is best and will ignore the many times she is told no.
“But she gets the funny lines so it’s ok”
“So, why would he need to start it?”
If he was trying to jump her and take her stuff? I didn’t think this would confuse you.
“If he jumped in front of a trap, it shows again that Dabbler will sacrifice others for her personal gain.”
Or she has already esablished that she can’t and this is them saying “goodbye”.
And how is “my friend jumped in front of a trap” showing anything about her feelings on the matter. Have you ever heard the term “heroic sacrifice”? Tom’s enough of a dork to do it, fiend or not.
*Have you ever heard the term “heroic sacrifice”? Tom’s enough of a dork to do it, fiend or not.*
I’m going to need some sort of citation where Tgotgogoth is shown to have any heroic inclinations, sure he wants order but nowhere has he shown he would sacrifice himself for anyone. But Dabbler would sacrifice others.
*Or she has already esablished that she can’t and this is them saying “goodbye”*
Wow, sure I have a dark sense of humor but I don’t think I would ever mock someone with a sexual disease, if they just “Heroically Sacrificed” themselves to protect me from a trap. Then turn my back on them and smile about all the loot I have now that they are gone.
*If he was trying to jump her and take her stuff? I didn’t think this would confuse you.*
I really hope you stretched between these ideas because that is some serious tonal whiplash, you go from he’s a terrible guy attacking his own sex slave and stealing her stuff, which would make no sense and has no backing in the story, to oh he is a hero and was protecting his one truuuu companion from a trap that would remove her form this place. You have no basis for these stories yet make up characterization to ignore what Dabbler is actually doing on the pages in front of you.
Dabbler herself said he has been a perfect gentleman.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-999-seven-thousand-generations-a-sex-slave/
And she is happy to have her younger sister attached to him, protective but happy.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1044-familial-foibles/
So once again you are making up information, just accept that Dabbler is evil and will do whatever is best for Dabbler. You don’t have to stop reading the comic, or accept Trump as your lord and savior :P. Just remember that every interaction with Dabbler she is only worried about how it will affect her.
“So once again you are making up information”
That’s the point. You were making up information, so I made up some different information.
So, you argue in bad faith, ignore facts you don’t like and makeup unsupported allegations in order to shift the blame from the actual problem.
I think I figured out why you are depressed.
Sorry, that was a cheap shot I should not have brought up your depression.
“So, you argue in bad faith”
Nah, just mirroring your argument so you can see it’s dumb.
Honestly not the best examples, Achilles is established as entirely invulnerable to the point of hilarity and I think that incarnation of Tom was before Dave actually decided on the relationship between Dabbler and Tom and he was just some scary space demon set up as a possible future enemy.
See above about Achilles,
Whether DaveB had decided about sucubi needing to be slaves at the time, we know now who that is and the relationship they had at the time. Whether the continuity is pro or retro-active it is the history of the world now, and sets the characterization of the characters. A good writer will give several hints and nods to future events and then when the payoff comes you understand what those hints were about.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-186-fingers-to-maximum-steepleage/
You shouldn’t assume the writer is a hack and has no clue what is going on in their story
I see your point about Achilles, I argue it takes alot of the weight about “sacrificing” someone, if their whole job seems to be engaging and stalling high power enemies and there is no worry abdout them coming to any harm. Its not like Achilles takes any attempts to harm him as serious threats either. But if thats what you meant fine, I just find it an unconvincing example.
Also, I wasnt assuming he was a hack, i was assuming he was setting up potential pieces but didnt neccessarily have everything planned out from the get go and later switched tracks with certain characters as more interesting ideas might have developed.
Keep in mind its been nearly a decade since Tom was even referenced to when he actually showed up:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-982-no-longer-sleeping-with-the-archenemy/
Its not hack writing to come up with new ideas and adapt. Its why “Early Installment Weirdness” is common in serialized works.
Fair point that its still the history of the comic and that it does likely mean that she left him in a bad spot at the time.
Someone being angry isn’t bad for their mental health, in of itself.
Anger is a perfectly valid emotion to have in this situation, in fact.
Of all the things I was thinking I’d see today, it was not an Impossible Mission reference.
Another Visitor…. Stay awhile STAY FOREVER!!!!!
it has been about 40 years since i last played that game…. good memories though ;)
is the author dating himself a bit here ? ;)
poor author, dating themself, well at least they know if they’ll get to stay for coffee afterwards
my bad, been only 30 years since impossible mission released ;p oops
Don’t be so hard on yourself. It was 39 years ago. Impossible Mission was originally written for the Commodore 64 by Dennis Caswell and published by Epyx in 1984.