Grrl Power #1224 – Sickubus
If you know someone who is very competent and self-sufficient, seeing them curled up under a blanket acting enfeebled has to be a bit disconcerting the first time. Sure, we all know guys who get a 4-inch slash on their forearm and just shrug and throw some duct tape over it, but the first time they get a sniffle they act like someone has stolen all their bones. Still, “dude with casually disturbing pain threshold” isn’t quite in the same league as “alien demoness tech sorceress who claims to have killed a few gods.”
And as much as Maxima and Dabbler antagonize each other, Max does consider her a peer and friend, so she’ll probably superspeed fly halfway across Texas to that one place she knows that makes Diamond-tier chili, but she certainly won’t let Dabbler know she did it.
And then punch her in the kidney when she finds out why she needed all that mana last night.
Yes, Maxima is wearing an official Arc-SWAT tactical sweater. I guess no one told the team they ripped of the design from UNIT. I always liked those sweaters. Had one that looked like them. It wasn’t merch. I think someone at Land’s End or wherever I got it from was being cheeky, or more likely, recognized there are only so many ways to design a sweater, and once you have a green one with shoulder bits made from a smoother material than the rest of the garment, it’s going to look like a UNIT sweater.
The new vote incentive is up! Crimson and Scarlett have a present for Ingsol!
It’s them, they’re the present. They’ve decided that “Sire-versaries” are a thing and Ingsol has to be convinced this is a good idea each time. Everyone thinks his pair of names-that-are-synonyms-with-red sirelings who are both women and who were both turned in that age range that ensure peak hotness means he’s a dirty old man, but he actually isn’t. It just worked out that way. And don’t forget that while it looks like there’s a 25 year age gap between the girls and him, it’s actually much worse, as he is 700 years old, while Scarlett is something like 180 and Crimson is only 40. But at the same time it’s meaningless as they were both fully adults when they got turned, so it’s all copacetic.
As usual, Patreon has the pair of them in various states of undress.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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If you want a jumper exactly like the UNIT ones, you can just buy a surplus British Army wool jumper (AKA wooly pully) and a No. 2 shirt.
I was going to say, original Who had a budget of about 50 cents per episode. No way the BBC would have paid for designed uniforms. Military surplus all the way.
It’s British, so that’s 50 pence per episode, of which 10 pence went to tea consumed by the crew and cast during filming.
How would Max look in this outfit:
https://www.yojoe.com/images/resize/w/MAX/imagestore/109/38642.jpg
Omfg I have that figure. You just brought back so many happy memories …
I’m pretty sure her default outfit was basically that for awhile, the green fatigue pants, the side holster, the bomber jacket. I think the jacket was smaller and kind of midriff bare-y, but other than that, I think that’s how she dressed for awhile. So, to answer your question, pretty good. Granted, with Max’s proportions it’s pretty hard for her to look *bad* in anything, it’s like that time Marilyn Monroe did a photo shoot in a potato sack to prove she could look sexy in anything and that it had nothing to do with her style of dress, but IMO the point was kind of diminished by the fact that the potato sack in question had clearly been tailored, as burlap doesn’t naturally hang in that way, and I genuinely believe the shoot would have done just as good of a job, if not better, of proving the point even if she didn’t cheat, but still.
That’s an argument I have with my girlfriend sometimes, she says she wants to look “good” for me, but like, her looking good is the default and is true regardless of what she wears, and while I *do* have preferences I easily find things to compliment about her appearance no matter what she wears, which of course causes her to doubt my sincerity since she feels there actually is a difference in how attractive she is, but speaking as the one she is trying to attract, she’s wrong, and I feel this is one of the few examples where my subjective opinion is equivalent to objective fact and I don’t mean that jokingly, since my opinion is literally the only one that matters in this case, since it’s the only one she’s asking for and the only one she cares about.
I bought one of those “Jumper”/Sweaters at an Army-Navy Surplus store in Monroeville PA. Years ago. Can’t remember what happened to it.
Was it in the Dawn of the Dead mall?
No, near Miracle Mile.
I like Max’s bob-omb hairpin, a fun subtle acknowledgement of her nerdy side.
Thanks, I hadn’t noticed!
OMG good eyes!!! I didn’t notice them before you pointed them out.
holy smackeral, if you hadn’t mentioned it I never would have caught them. It’s as obvious as being slapped on the back with a fish. You know something is there but don’t pay attention until you start analyzing in detail.
Fun fact, there are theories that men seem sicker than women because of work separations between the genders from the hunter-gatherer era: children need to be taken care of 24/7, so a prolonged light sickness is fine, but being sick hunting is dangerous and hunting can be postponed for a few days, so being violently sick for a shorter time is preferable.
It was also because men generally had higher constitution, so it usually took a lot more to get them to the same state women were when they got sick
Also also, because they were relied on to not only provide the meat but also general protection they kept going way beyond the point they should have stopped and rested
This is a sweet update, I do like when we see glimpses of the gentler side of Maxima.
That said, I’m also looking forward to that punch in the k̶i̶d̶n̶e̶y̶ ol’ gazorpazovum once Maxima becomes aware of the reason of all that mana usage…
Yeah its nice that they are friends.
I also like Max’s quiet confidence in Sydney here, in that she seems more worried about a possible trip to the airport than the outcome of the fight.
Its the comic book shop that she gets looks at, not the airport. :)
It’s both.
No, it’s just the cbs, the last time she had to go to an airport was before she could fly (at least a civilian one)
There’s almost certainly been times when she’s flown in a plane as part of a group
Yes, but how often has that been commercial? Hence the ‘civilian’ part
Once Dabler gets better, she’s going to be disappointed she missed the succ-off.
Get Dabbler a bucket and – apple juice with water.
Korean radish kimchi with rice and some egg will help, too.
Or Korean blood soup.
Speaking from experience.
Wow, those dimensional invaders are in for it now. Not that Dabbler can’t or won’t do as much damage as Max, but it’s the “talking-to”. If you’ve ever seen the youtube video on why the criminals hate getting busted by the Flash (by solid jj, I think), you know what I mean.
Let’s not forget that for the same reason Maxima is going to have a problem when she finds out what Dabbler has been getting up to, she can probably be talked around to “going along with their plan to take Parfait to the Electio Striga is the only way to be certain of her continuing consent to her relationship with Thothogoth”.
Of course, they probably aren’t clever enough to think of doing so, but half the people who were in this comment section two months ago could at least, you know, pretend not to be hypocrites about this.
Par agreed to be with Thoth of her own free will. We have no indication that she was mind-whammied into it or that her continuing to be with him is nonconsensual.
The situation with Dabbler was far more wibbly.
I’m just saying that if on Earth we had a type of relationship where one person has the ability to order the other to say everything’s fine – which Dave has said explicitly is the case* – we’d demand a system for periodically turning it off to make sure everything’s actually still fine rather than just assuming, even if we’re 100% sure the initiation was fine.
There doesn’t *need* to be an indication – the fact that it’s *possible* is enough to want a way to check.
*Notes on #1215, ‘Once a succubus accepts a collar, asking her “Hey, did you do that willingly?” or “Are you being treated well?” or any other question along those lines isn’t productive, since her master can order her to lie.’
>we’d demand a system for periodically turning it off to make sure everything’s actually still fine
Yeah, that’d be a good idea.
Considering there is magic detection system it’s very likely they could just ask a question that would obviously be a lie. Lulu probably needs this to kick in…
Yeah, the note definitely seemed like Dave loading up Chekov’s gun but it almost makes more sense that it’s going to end up being Lulu’s situation where it actually gets fired – between her at least being annoyed about the jacket, Brelx being an asshole while everyone else seems chill, etc, it’d tie up the plot thread neatly if he’s the one to end up losing out.
It’s “Why EVERY Villain is Terrified of The Flash” by comic dubs
Lying seems like betting double or nothing to me. If someone lies to me because they think the truth will make me angry, I’ll be even angrier if I find out later.
Thats a problem for future-me, current-me just dodge a bullet.
Ah, there’s the problem. No, current-you just dodged a non-lethal punch, but set up future-you to take a bullet and die.
That’s future-him’s problem, besides maybe the horse will learn to sing
Agreed, and then they act offended by your anger. As if it was unpredictable.
Or act as though the anger somehow justifies the offense. Like, “I knew you’d be mad so I lied, and now you’re mad, so clearly lying was the right call!” Not realizing that I’m more angry about the lie than I am about whatever they lied about and if they had just been honest from the beginning they’d have been much better off.
It’s funny, people who know I have anger issues are often MORE likely to trigger an explosion than people who aren’t, because the former group go out of their way to avoid angering me, and that often causes them to do one of the few things that still sets me off. If you walk on eggshells trying to avoid an imaginary maze of laser sensors and trip wires, you’re more likely to accidentally step on the one pressure plate that was hidden away in the corner and clearly labeled. It’s really easy to avoid upsetting me, because I can tell people exactly how to do it and it’s not like it’s unreasonable instructions to follow, and it’s even easier to deal with me when I actually am upset because all you have to do is remind me to remove myself and then apologize and have an honest discussion about what happened after I’ve cooled off (and to listen to me if I say a discussion is unnecessary and that we’re cool, as often times I get where the miscommunication was after some thought). But one of the most efficient ways to upset me is to insist you know how I feel better than I do and/or try to manage my feelings and reactions for me and not listen to me when I tell you how I feel and/or what needs to be done about it. Lying to avoid upsetting me definitely counts as trying to manage my feelings for me and not listening when I tell you how to handle me.
To find the correct german word is really hard. But the best might be “Fracksausen” In a very wide interpretation it means, that your pants will open due to emotions. Mostly fear (you know.. “you’ll need new pants”), but in general it could be every emotion
Yeah, as a German I can’t find a better word off the top of my head as well.
But I guess Maxima might have assumed it because we do have a bunch of long words that are just nouns tied together, though that’s mostly for rules and regulations while emotions aren’t exactly our strong suit. :-) But if Dave had a different reasoning in mind I’d love to hear it.
I guess in English you could say it’s “simpy” energy, specifically the “please stomp on me” kind? Surprise, fear, lust and awkward desperation seem to fit the bill fairly well in my opinion, but I’d be surprised if any language had one word to fit them all.
My guess would be she thinks of a German word, because we have words for funny emotions like the famous “Schadenfreude”.
There is a reason why for a very long time German was the language of choice for philosophers.
It is hard to find a language that better allows you to say very little with a lot of long words and at the same time say a lot with few words.
Oh yes, like Stardenburdenhardenbart! ;-)
Many years ago, I was running an RPG, and one of my players asked, out of the blue, if there was a French word for the emotion you experienced when you were in bed with your mistress and her husbanc arrived home. And I thought for a couple of seconds and said, “chagrin” (the French word, “sha-graã,” not the English “shuh-grinn”). As in “Quelle chagrin!”
Of course these days there is an English word, “schadenfreude,” that a lot of people know. English once again steals useful bits of vocabulary from anyone who has them.
The English version seems appropriate as well
Always good to see that Maxi does care for Dabbles
Okay, for the record, Maxi-With-A-Braid (as opposed to our usual Max) is just impossibly cute, and the little Bob-omb hair tie is absolutely ADORKABLE!
*giga-SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE*
I can’t wait for someone to say something Very Dumb and make her punch them before blushing. ^_^
Somehow I think that asking for Chili in a place frequented by little Ms. Scoville might be a tad…unsafe.
Especially a place where aforementioned Ms Scoville needed a medic after eating that chili.
Yes, the reasons were not entirely eating related.
We from FMT(fusion marketing team).
Disagree we pass all regulatory requirements(of a chemical weapons manufacturer and reseller) and even pass the SHIT(Safe hazard inducing tools), BURNING, FOOD certification processes.
Our staff is highly trained(as expert marksmen) and our production process is safe, carbon neutral, fair trade and legal in at least two nations.
That caused a gigglesnort here at Casa de El Poeta. And while I’m nowhere near Sydney’s level of caps tolerance I do like a nice not-too-spicy chili with a couple pounds of jalapeños per pot. The green ones are tasty and not too hot.
Hopefully the chili ingredients don’t read “Add one set of the parents of Scott Tenormen”….
abandon all chastity ye who enter here :) nice touch for the plaque on the door :)
Yeah…I saw that and was distinctly amused that Maxima didn’t actually cross the threshold of the room in spite of being invited in. :D
Huh, never noticed that. I must get into the habit of expanding the picture before reading it. Makes it easier to see details.
In related news, everyone always gets that quote wrong. Originally, it’s “Abandon ye all hope who enter here.” Old-fashioned, and sounds wrong to modern ears, but that’s what it is.
Isn’t the original in Italian?
lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.
Poor maxima.. being idolized.
By a room full of creeps who’ll soon have a crusty sock named Maxima. I think I’d pass on that, myself.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1167-the-labors-of-rowan/
Problem solved
So, she’s wearing a Howard Green.
They’re EVERYWHERE.
Well, they were until they were superseded about 30 years ago.
If you’d just made it black instead of green it’s pretty close to the army class-b sweater anyway…
I’ve still got mine, even though I retired in 2000. It even still “fits”.
Best food for whenever I’m sick is spicy Manudo, everyone always asks if I’m hung over because apparently it’s a hangover cure too, just don’t ever ask what’s in it… you don’t want to know.
Loving this look on Maxima, the braid feels fitting for a military lady who probably can’t get haircuts often, (I don’t recall if they’ve said who cuts her hair or if it’s hard to cut) and the bobomb hair tie is just cool.
One of the supers from the big brawl with Vehemence (and who Dabbler used to “recharge”) stated he was actually a professional barber, and offered to give Maxima a haircut if she needed one. I believe diamond-edged shears (and his own super strength) were mentioned. Aside from that, I don’t think there’s been any discussion of how – or indeed if – Max cuts her hair.
How do you get Ricky Martin to agree to that?
Tripe.
It’s tripe.
Which is perfectly fine! I have tripe in my phô, too.
Nothing wrong with tripe, as a kid we use to have tripe and onions
Hmm. *ponders*
Stir fry that up with some bamboo shoots, whole garlic cloves, sweet basil, some good, spicy chili paste, some mirin, a splash of coconut milk, and some patis for salt, served on a bed of rice, with an ice cold glass of Vietnamese Mint Lemonade.
…aaaand now I’m hungry. -_-‘
Nope, just plain tripe and onions (believe it was boiled?) in some kinda white sauce? Been decades since had and can’t be bothered to go bother mum to ask
She does also use her super-speed to try out complex hair styles.
Looking forward to Dabbler dodging the consequences of her actions yet again.
Awww, Max really does like Dabbler.
Aww, that was sweet :3
First I thought that this knocking was a reference to BBT It took me a while to get that Max knocked twice because Dabbler didn’t respond
Do *we* know why Dabbler needed so many mana potions and I just missed it / forgot? Or is this yet to be revealed and open to speculation?
She was up all night using her aura to keep people from freaking out after Parfait’s incident.
aka mind controlling them because she thinks humans are a prudish inferior race.
Yes, inferior. She’s a literally a succubi supremacist.
Because they are a prudish inferior race. She doesn’t hate them for it or anything, it’s just stating facts.
That you, every colonial power ever? “We don’t HATE insert-race, they’re just primitive and need to be guided by their betters.”
I sense no heresy here.
Please. We are food. You don’t think of your food as equals. You keep them mollified and well-herded, but deep down they are there to be fed upon.
What did Dabbler do ? lmast time we’ve seen her was october… and she was handling speaking with parfait after parfait’s debacle… what did she do with too much mana
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1201-impossible-aura-elevator-mission/
She was making sure the lust aura tapered down gradually do there would be no residual bad feelings among the people affected by it.
She was doing deliberately what Parfait did accidentally–ie, using mind control on others without their prior permission. If I were on the team, I’d probably at least be understanding about Parfait’s “accident”, and wouldn’t even be mad at Sydney. But I would be so very, very pissed upon learning about Dabbler’s actions. So pissed, I’d probably take a simple position–if she’s still involved with the team in any way, shape or form, then I’m out. And if I leave, I’m going straight to a news source I think is sufficiently skeptical of ARCHON and doing a tell-all interview about how the newest government law-enforcement agency has a ‘civilian advisor’ who is actually a mind-controlling alien who is allowed into meetings with top-security individuals.
Because seriously, there’d be nothing left of trust in my officers at that point, especially Maxima.
It’s a bit greyer
In absolute she exert mind control…
But her mind contol seem to be a buffer against hormonal reactions , and hormonal reaction are chemical mind Control.
Did endogenic mind control is superior to exogenic mind control who is a mere suppression of the endogenic one ?
Philosophically it’s a sustainable point of view , but the contrary two..
“No matter how much you believe the opposite, your mind is only a tool of your body, a small tool and toy of your great bodily reason.” Thus Spoke Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche
ARCHON are certainly not afraid to get their hands dirty. For example they work with supervillains like Deus (yes Pander, I know).
Interfering with my body’s hormones to control my emotions, without prior evidence that I’m going to do something dangerous, is a massive infringement of my rights, and a complete betrayal of any trust I might have had for her. Permitting that action without any consequence of meaning would be an equal, if not greater, betrayal of my trust in my command chain.
“Hormonal reactions”…
The state of mind is dominated by chemical reactions and influence, isolating people from that without consent is completely overriding people’s normal mental processes.
Doing that without consent is a massive betrayal of trust
Wore those sweaters for a lot of years, first green then later in blue but those were a slight V-neck for wearing with a tie. Both had epaulets for rank. One issue had a penholder on the sleeve but that was dropped, all had elbow patches though.
As a poor college student mil-surp clothing was the best. By the time I was old enough to start shopping it was mostly Viet Nam era items but WWII and Korean era items would show up. You just had to mix and match so you didn’t look like you were playing soldier or trying to be the 80’s version of an edgelord.
Okay, does Max’ symbiote make her hair vary in length depending on what she wants to do with it? Because for a braid that long, her hair would need to be 3-6″ farther past her shoulder blades to account for the length that’s lost in the braiding process, and last we saw it down, it only went a little past her shoulder blades. Also, that looks more like a dragon braid than a ‘normal’ braid, since the rolls hit the middle in the same spot on both sides.
That said, it’s still a good look on her, and I love the Bomb-omb hair tie! And that Max is willing to pick up chili for Dabbler.
[Also, I know it’s people trying to be cute, but would certain folks *please* stop calling her “Maxi?” That’s a type of feminine pad, and hearing someone called that is just weird. (Seriously, Google ‘maxi pad’–you’ll get plenty of images, from multiple brands.)]
The hair of supers is like their conversations: it can be extended as much as necessary.
I figured anybody calling her “Maxi” was intentionally referring to maxi pads as a joke. It didn’t even occur to me that someone might do so unintentionally.
So is this DaveB’s way of floating the idea of ArcSWAT merch, and seeing how many of us would buy that sweater?
“And then punch her in the kidney when she finds out why she needed all that mana last night.”
1) Fucking ouch. Kidney shots are the worst.
2) And whether or not to keep it a secret this time and when it doubtlessly happens again in other parts of the world.
Nothing messed up only ever happens once, after all.
“Nothing messed up only ever happens once, after all.”
yes, but as the fat electrician says: “its never a war crime, the first time” :)
Just the kidney? Not the gazopazorvum?
… knock, knock, knock Dabbler.
THERE’s the third one
That door is opening the wrong way.
Some doors do open outwards
Didn’t the doors open out when the Goon Squad attacked?
Come on, Dave, don’t tease us with the possibility of a “third shoe”. We both know Dabbler is totally going to get away with mind controlling everyone in the f***ing building.
All f***ing buildings should come with a succubi. Wish we had on in my town.
Do you know the future, perhaps? Or are you maybe trying to use reverse psychology?
Let’s see what happens, and then you can decide whether or not to unleash your wrath on the author, I’d say.
I don’t know the future, I’ve just read the comic. Dabbler has always been practically consequence-proof. Dave did not expect people to get angry, just like he didn’t expect people to get angry last time when we found out she erases the memories of her vict- I mean conquests. “for their own good” of course, just like now.
Yes, Dabbler does things that we can find reprehensible, for a variety of reasons. How reprehensible exactly, whether as contextual instances, or as general rules, is something that could be discussed with more subtleties, in my opinion. But for now, I think that “taking for granted that those are indeed reprehensible behaviors” is a reasonable thing to do, so let’s do that.
Now, the fact that a character does “reprehensible things” itself is not an issue; what you are complaining about is that those actions are not depicted negatively enough, or that the character is not called out enough on those.
Well, that may have been true with the memory erasing instance: indeed I don’t recall the characters present when this was brought up making a fuss about it. There is one character which comes to mind which would probably have had something to say about that, though: Maxima. Now, she was not there when the memory erasing topic was discussed.
But here she is, here she has now become aware that something probably happened that she should look into. I would find it very strange if this was not followed up later on.
Because there is this difference in how the situations have been set up (absence of Maxima for the first, presence for the second), I think it’s unfair to you to assume and act as if Dabbler will be a Karma Houdini on this one. Now that the situation has been set up like this, where Maxima has been made aware that something is up, it seems to me like the correct thing to do is to assume that the author knows what they are doing here, and are planning to make Dabbler face the consequence of her actions, at least under the form of Maxima reacting to those.
Because of that, I think that the complaint that you have formulated here is not warranted for now.
For a second, I thought that was Bradford’s sweater (from XCOM) that she was wearing.
Having just finished a run of XCOM 2 WotC last night, this is exactly what came to mind. “The new uniforms are nice, but sometimes I still miss that damned sweater…”
Just realized and no one has commented on it, but that should be “she and Sydney” in the first panel. If Parfait was a guy, ‘he’ and Sydney would make grammatical sense, but for women it changes to ‘she’ in this context, instead of ‘her’ (we get two words; guys only get one (because English is weird, lol)), and I’d expect Max to know that.
Umm… no? ‘Her and Sydney’ work fine
And why would Maxi know that? Didn’t know she was an old English Teacher with a grammar-rod up her butt
Her and Sydney is wrong. The rule is that if you remove the “and whoever”, the sentence should still sound right (after changing other appropriate tenses for subject-verb agreement and the like). In this case, if you remove “and Sydney”, you get “her is in a fight”, when it should be “she is in a fight”.
You don’t have to be an English teacher to speak properly or know basic rules of the language.
Is this like the rule that states “I before E except after C”? Even though there are more words that disprove that rule than enforce it? Weird, isn’t it
the issue with “I before E” is that we only use a truncated version.
the full rule is “I before E, except after C, when it says E”
so foreign is fine – it is not “for-een” “heist” is not “heest” … etc
The qualifier based on the sound made by the letters is so routinely left off that most people have either never heard it, or have forgotten.
It’s still wrong 75% of the time, and if you need a qualifier, then it’s just wrong
The point he’s making is that the full rule is “i before e except after C when the word sounds E” the rule is (apparently) pretty accurate, but if you use it in cases where the rule doesn’t apply it’s not that the rule is wrong…
Neighbour has an ‘a’ sound though
I don’t believe there are any exceptions to this rule at all, unlike that one. It’s just basic grammar, though English grammar is ridiculously complex, with one change propagating through a whole sentence, requiring you to change a bunch of words to make them all agree.
So if parfait was male, that would mean “His and Sydney are in a fight…” is correct.
(It’s not. Flutterbye is correct, it should be “She and Sydney.”)
Wha? Guys have both “he” and “him”, girls have “her” and “she”. Same number of words.
since no-one else mentioned it, nice little nod to Big Bang Theory, Dave
Where?
PENNY! PENNY! :)
It’s missing the third series of 3 knocks and “Dabbler” then.
A Consummate professional. I love Maxima.
I had a sweater like that, in green. US Army issue, Germany, 1980. Got that along with an Israeli chemical warfare suit and wool pants and shirts made to wear over regular combat pants and shirts. It was cold. Navy guys on base had the same thing in Navy Blue… of course. Never saw any of the Air Force guys wearing it. (This was a joint-headquarters base for the VII Corps and NATO.)
Fairly sure Air Force had a similar one, just in a different shade of blue (was in the local Air Training Corps in the late 80’s and fairly sure some of the officers at least wore them)
Dave, about those “Unit Sweaters” Like any other show Dr Who had to deal with a budget. Chances are their wardrobe department didn’t make them themselves and just shopped around the local retail clothing makers for something already made but “official looking” and bought a bunch at bulk prices. So it’s possible a fan of the show could spot them in a store and grab one or two for themselves.
I really hope the whole “That’s just what I needed” aura pushing gets pulled out of Dabbler and the depth of mental-manipulation is actually addressed.
Ngl, thought it was kind of sweet seeing Dabbler’s and Maxima’s friend dynamic in this page.
It’d be nice to see more of it some day, but their normal snarky, friendly banter dynamic is pretty cool as well.
Proof that at the end of the day, even with all the teasing and arguing, they are still friends. Or as much of a friend as a commander can have for what is (technically) a subordinate. Nice to see a slightly softer side to Maxima.
I think that Dabbler is a ‘civilian consultant’ officially, so not technically a subordinate.
Yups, and she can leave any time she wants, or go ‘consult’ any other country she wants, it’s just she (currently) finds Maxi to be more fun to hang around