Grrl Power #1242 – The dish too hot for fire!
The room is still lit with red, windy light (windy light?) but I’ve color corrected (and wind corrected?) it for your viewing convenience.
Is this torture? Considering this is something Sydney might eat anyway, no? Except Lapha is obviously experiencing it differently. Like if Sydney really liked cilantro and Lapha really hated it, like the smell of it made her nauseous and dizzy, would it be torture for Sydney to eat a bowl of the stuff? Honestly, it seems to me that Lapha would like or dislike whatever the host liked, at least in terms of “if they have that gene that makes cilantro taste lightly lemony and not like if you mixed bitterness incarnate and a bag of fresh lawn clippings up in a transporter, and also maybe some soap.” Lapha would likely have some independent thoughts about texture and wiggling stuff like gagh, but the genetic stuff would be determined by the host.
In the case of spice, I guess I’m implying that heat tolerance is something that can be trained. While Lapha might be enjoying the presumable deluge of endorphins the dish is triggering in Sydney, she can’t get over what feels like Sydney gargling a mouthful of yellow-hot iron filings.
Aetholiths weren’t designed to fight existing control systems, which is why they have about a 50% control over a conscious person. Sydney trying to get her mouth around that fork was like if she had a mouthful of negatively magnetized braces and the fork was also negatively magnetized. And like, strongly enough that she really had to concentrate on what her neck muscles were doing. Although if she had powerfully magnetized braces on the top and bottom row of teeth, she would have difficulty closing her mouth, which is something that Dabbler might be into, so I guess it’d be more like she just had the braces on the lower teeth, because Lapha waving her jaw around and clamping her mouth shut, but in the end she finally got a few mouthfuls.
The new vote incentive is up! This is a bit of a weird one as it’s a character that hasn’t appeared in the comic.
It’s my Ifrit Pathfinder 1e monk, Fray! Ifrits don’t really make great monks in Pathfinder, as player characters they get a +2 to Dex and Cha, but -2 to Wis. For monks, Dex is good, Cha is largely irrelevant, but Wis is important as it can add to your AC and also has something to do with Ki points I think. But I didn’t care. I wanted a character with dark blue/gray skin and glowing orange hair, so that’s what I picked. (I don’t think Ifrit even really have dark skin, so maybe she’s 1/4 Drow? Don’t care. I think she looks cool.) Will she show up in the comic? I mean… maybe? Probably in a Dabbler flashback, but who knows?
As usual, Patreon has her in delicto flagrante.
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Lapha is now ded. Wouldn’t it be cool if Sidney could keep those eyes and Lapha’s memories? :D
I think she’d just feel guilty over ‘killing’ someone with such a rough childhood.
Considering Sydneys eyes. Definitely not dead.
Probably essentially unconscious.
This is probably how one shuts down when overstimulated for their species. Humans would consider it fainting.
Nice Plague Doctor mask there Dabbler
Dabber has apparently been watching tictok lol
It’s an interesting interpretation of “sexy hazmat suit”, but I’ll take it. Plague doctors were the pioneers of that field, after all. And plus, I like the crow theme.
I wouldn’t say this outfit is very sexy, especially not by Dabblers standards. A cool looking mask in any case.
There’s a certain hazardous materials element that limits sexy options. I’m sure Dabbler could come up with something if she’d had more time and wasn’t hung over, but here we are.
There was one time she had a full suit of plate armor that she put a glamour on to make it look like a classic plate bikini.
And said full suit of plate armour wasn’t at all pleased with the glamour change she forced on him.
it made it look bad. like it wasn’t protecting her.
Dabbler can just go skin-tight like her swimming gear.
It has the Protection vs Nuclear Spice spell on it.
Has Lapha fled into the unknown Orb? Sydney is still obviously possessed based on the eyes, but there’s not exactly anywhere else for them to go.
I think she just passed out.
if the unknown orb is a healign orb that has a passive that allows her to handle spicy food, it migth be possible that eating spicy food triggered the passive and establshed a link?
I get the feeling Sydney was into spicy food long before she discovered the orbs. That sort of taste takes years to acquire.
Hmmmm. Suddenly it got awfully quiet in here. Am I not the perfect host?
Maybe if Sidney asked them to mix some grakz into her “Mighty Scoville”, that might get Lapha out.
Isn’t that Grakz? It might even be scarier than Grakz.
Grakz isn’t actually that spicy, it’s just ten times as spicy coming out.
Objection!
Obviously it’s just equally spicy as coming out. Most people are not tolerant to that level of heat from both ends. Dabbler would have a balm for that…
If the parasite went poof … good riddance to bad rubbish.
If she’s just knocked out, it’s a good time to evict her.
This is a good look for Xuriel.
But she better wash her hands REALLY CAREFULLY afterwards…
Absolutely this. Even the relatively cool spicy requires *serious* care with handwashing.
I had an old workmate who didn’t bother washing his hands after chopping some jalapeños, and then went to the toilet.
Poor poor bastard.
In basic training we had a soldier do that with tiger balm (icy hot on steroids for those who don’t know) the screams he made were Simultaneously hilarious and terrifying.
Can confirm; Tiger Balm is NOT something you want to have on your hands either when doing number 1 or 2. (Toilet paper is absorbent, yes, but some stuff ‘leaks through’… )
Rubbed it on a scrape that wasn’t healing properly, once…
Had to wipe it off after only a few minutes. Scrape healed up nicely after that, though.
habaneros and contact lenses were not a great combination
I knew someone (now dead) who ended up in Juvenile Hall and thought he’d smuggle some hot peppers back to their barracks. His bright idea was wrapping them in toilet paper and concealing them in his crotch area. As you’ve likely figured out that did NOT work out well for him as the oils were squeezed out of the peppers and set fire to the area.
Given Sidney’s eyes, she should still be there, but even unconscious her flame should still be there too. I think. I could be wrong.
Sidney should ask them to mix some grakz into her dish.
Looks like they didn’t need to go that far this time.
I’ve been having problems trying to post comments on this site. No matter what email address I use it doesn’t immediately show and it”s a coin toss if it actually shows. It’s lead to a couple of double postings and it’s frustrating. I don’t know if it’s my tab and/or my browser, but I don’t have this problem on other sites. Anyway, that’s enough whining from me.
Comments never immediately show here. They need to be approved first.
No they don’t need approval, not here at least, there is something hinky going on where it can sometimes take minutes (or even longer) for a post to go through and sometimes it goes straight through with no delay
Something has been wrong with the comments system for a while now. It used to be that comments would show up in a few minutes if they didn’t show up immediately. I suspect that it has to rebuild entire pages, and has some sort of delay in between rebuilding a page, but that it’s rebuilding pages unnecessarily. It may be attempting to rebuild every page every time someone posts a comment, and now that there are over 1000 pages, each with hundreds of comments, that’s a lot of activity with each new comment, and the system may be running a bit slow.
I think it’s a combination of commonly taking a couple of minutes to be added and the pages often being cached
It’s worth trying to force a full reload of the page after a few minutes
Did Lapha segfault here?
The real question then is, was there a Core Dump?
That’s coming soon enough. Or more like a “Hot reactor SCRAM”.
lmao the plague doctor is IN
Big question is, what did she put in the beak to counter the fumes?
Magic. ALL of the magic XD
Air generation and higher presure than outside the mask. If the fumes can’t flow in they can’t affect you.
Ice cream.
Did Sydney just crash a magical AI with spicy food?…. That’s metal.
A magical AI that manifests as a flame, no less. The irony is thick.
This was just Tuesday for the mighty Halo.
It may be cruel but it not unusual. Too bad they weren’t prepared for sensory overload. A quick search of her memories should have had this come up but skim reading can only take you so far.
I would say this is a case of self defence so not really cruel.
I wonder if the eyes stay altered for a while after separation…or if Aetholiths can pass out. Maybe some degree of ability to separate and relinquish control while still maintaining minimal connection for survival?
Your physical manifestation is a tongue of flame, how are you defeated by heat?
Never heard the term ‘Fight fire with fire’?
I feel like even if this counts as “torture”, it’s pretty much justified when someone hijacks your body and holds all your memories hostage. I don’t think Lapha has any moral high ground to complain, especially since she was given a chance to just leave the body on her own.
Yeah, this is as much of a torture as pepper spraying a burglar in your own home while the door is wide open behind them and they can leave any moment they want to.
Is spice food even coverd under the Geneva Convention?
Pepper spray utilizes capsaicin and is forbidden in warfare (it’s a chemical weapon), but is legal for police work. Specifically feeding a prisoner dangerously-spicy food against their will is most likely a human rights violation. However, this situation is more akin to a prisoner who has a member of the prison staff (guard, nurse/doctor, etc) held hostage, and in that situation one would absolutely be justified in pepper-spraying the hostage-taker to subdue them and save the prisoner. And that’s essentially what they’re doing here, with the notable difference that there’s no way to hit the hostage-taker with the spray without also hitting the hostage (which wouldn’t be uncommon in a hostage situation anyway, pepper spray is not a precision weapon; getting them both is generally considered preferable to letting the hostage-taker abduct and/or kill the hostage, of course) and that the hostage enjoys getting pepper-sprayed (which is going to be a lot less common).
I always told all the new hires that if I were rolling around on the floor with an inmate, they’d better damn well juice both of us if they had to.
I don’t like it but part of the training is to be sprayed to know what it feels like and realize that it isn’t going to kill you, even if it feels like it and it’s going to go away before too long. The inmate doesn’t have that training and we made damn sure to ‘decontaminate’ them as quickly as possible so they think that they need that to make the burn stop if they ever need it again.
OC felt like a bad sunburn to me and I’ve had lots of those. One thing it does is make your eyes shut for a few seconds, immediately, and you can’t force them open because they know what’s out there. That’s the main reason it’s used, disorientation and a chance to control an aggressor without hurting them since they can’t seeing it coming .
I always considered that if I didn’t like it then whoever I was trying to control would like it even less.
Once upon a time we used to send a half dozen large men into a cell to extract an inmate, once we were issued OC it was easier to just spray a bunch under the door or toss in a canister and wait until the yasked to come out and get in the shower :)
OC doesn’t displace the oxygen in the air and it’s ‘food grade’ so there’s no danger in using it, or very little, a miniscule part of the population is overly sensitive but the odds of meeting someone like that aren’t great, a much larger percentage is unaffected by it but at least you tried to avoid getting physical by using a spray first instead of your hands.
OC isn’t ‘forbidden in warfare’ by any convention or law, it ‘s not classed as a ‘chemical weapon’. I was EOD, I should know.
The circumstances of application are what matter, same as any other item.
Tossing an OC can into a bunker instead of an HE grenade is good, spraying handcuffed prisoners isn’t.
Lachrymatory agents and irritants available for issue, just not very effective when used against armed enemy combatants and can affect your own troops if the wind shifts, doing anything in a respirator is a lot harder than without one.
There are a lot of ‘chemical agents’ used by the military. OC, CN, CS, DM and others. They have their uses and are used.
As for the food, chili was a regular item on the menu, in the military and in jail, maybe not ‘space-chili’ but chili nonetheless and it was very popular.
I don’t much care for chili, it ‘s the taste not the burn, I like a good curry or biryani but not the ‘mexican’ style chili dishes.
Funny thing about the tastes of cilantro and broccoli, I like both but one son hates cilantro and the other hates broccoli.
That gene is recessive and may or may not pop up in anyone at random.
I was a skeptic of consumer pepper stream devices. Then a mugger assailed me with one, right in the face, but he missed my eyes. I turned and walked into the well-lit, camera studded parking lot nearby and the guy took off empty handed. The stuff was irritating and I’m a big wuss, but it didn’t stop me “dead in my tracks”, or at all, really. Now I tell people to be better prepared. Don’t prance through the high crime district expecting some spray to protect you.
Here’s the exact text: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-against-torture-and-other-cruel-inhuman-or-degrading
IANAL, but I think this does qualify as “inflicting severe pain or suffering”, which would fit with torture. However, the Geneva convention also specifies: “It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions”. I think if Sidney was using capsaicin overload to interrogate her unwanted parasite, or to punish said parasite, it would count as torture, but as she’s only using it to assert her right to her own bodily integrity, it doesn’t really count.
Not that the Geneva Convention has any specific rules on bodily possession, for some reason ;-)
Straight up self defer
…did she shut down a spell being? She’s not unpossessed because her eyes are still glowy but it seems Lapha’s withdrawn from consciousness. Metaphysical compartmentalisation?
*Laph has gone into sleep mode.*
So, like, if they do capture Lapha, will they just put her on ice for 50 years or so?
She’s got all the classified secrets Sydney’s managed to retain. Seems a major security no-no to let her go.
Okay… This thing goes on Guantanamo-level against Geneva Conventions
Okay… This thing just got Guantanamo-level on Geneva Conventions violations
Not quite… see, Sidney is the one who requested, and enjoys the magma noodles. Dietary concerns are one of the weird things that the US penal system respects, which is why Buffalo Bill got his vegan nuggies; it’s the same rationale that says that Halal has to be an option, and so does Kosher and so on.
So, while Lapha can demand to maintain her hunger strike, she has no authority over Sidney, nor is guarenteed any right to deny Sidney of her dietary requests or ability to eat, regardless of who’s mouth she’s currently using. If anything the closest legal analogue would be… I guess… anti riot noise cannons? Man, possession really screws with legal considerations.
Half the fun is to think on this absurdness.
A demon that can stand turbo-sricacha stuff…
This is valid, but I think the “she’s a hostage taker currently threatening to execute a hostage” angle would be more foolproof.
The treaty does not deal with the possibility of a body-snatcher or body-hopper. Even if it did, this is not the case for it.
For the original owner of Sydney’s body, this is a normal meal.
Lapha was told to vacate this body and return to her own body. She refused and is holding Sydney hostage instead, in a desperate hope that she could escape the consequences of her actions. That is the crucial difference here.
If Lapha does not like this, the option to make it stop is there. She just has to stop holding Sydney hostage. While her body is not physically there, it is clear that it would be brought there for her should she change her mind and stop hold Sydney hostage.
At most you could argue coercion through pain but that alone is not torture. She isn’t someone labeled “enemy combatent” coerced by torture to betray their loyalties by something happening to her body that she doesn’t want it to happen. If you have a gun and I hold your other hand in a painful lock to make you let it go, that isn’t torture.
A significant part of chilli tolerance is that your body down-regulates your capsaicin receptors in response to repeated hot chilli exposure, making hot chilli flavours taste mild after a while.
Clearly Sidney has something else going on here though or her passenger would be as unbothered as she is.
Yeah, pretty much this.
While it’s clear that people of that race experience the world through something other than human senses, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to just be a disembodied flame on a little tower communicating with someone. I wouldn’t expect many physical sensations, like taste, would be part of that sensory experience, because there’s no need for it.
Thus, while Lapha is a passenger-grabbing-the-wheel in Sydney, she should be experiencing the world through Sydney’s senses. At worst, it would be a conflict/dissonance between however Lapha experiences objects and Sydney’s enjoyment of super hot foods, and not in any way the experience of someone who finds too much black pepper to be really spicy suddenly eating raw ghost peppers.
Ever tried to feed an unwilling toddler? Yeah, Syd was smart to keep her eyes closed this time. We wouldn’t want another “pirate Sydney” moment. Although if it drove Lapha out faster…
Mini Sagat. That was a good joke.
That plague doctors mask at the end cracked me up hard.
Anyone see Dabbler’s mask there,she looks like either a plague doctor or MAD Magazine’s Spy vs. Spy?!?
If it’s a legit one, Dabbler has something in the nose of that with a strong scent. In the past, ot was strong smelling flowers or herbs among other things. Miasma Theory.
High tech advanced filtration system with magical enhanced elements… dialed with a few selected pheromones would be my guess. :D
Sydney and Dabbles are both looking at the smoking hole in the ceiling that Laph left after being forcibly ejected?
More than a little disappointed Mr Anti-Trope went the obvious route
H-uh… I’m amused, but also not sure how to feel about this. I don’t have enough information about Lapha’s race to know what this means, and there wasn’t space for Dabbler to fill in the blanks. Halo’s eyes are still looking possessed, so maybe Lapha just retreated? Really hoping she can’t do something to make it so Sydney can’t eat spicy food anymore; on the other hand, that just means she gets to experience the thrill from the beginning again!
Eh, no. Spicy girl here. Our tolerance is only like 25% mental, the rest is purely physical. If I go a few months without eating spicy food it will be much hotter than I remember because my tastebuds have un-fried themselves.
that 25% could very well be what knocked Lapha for a loop. There are plenty of humans that would have headed for the hills and tapped the hell out over that remaining 25% when encountering the magma noodles there.
Actually we should have seen this a mile away. I mean, Dabbler requested spicy chili, that should have been a hint about what was probably going to happen.
Wait. Did the technically incorporeal binary being just pass out from hellishly excessive spicy food? That’s hilarious! XD
Hmmm… This could be how they get Lapha out without Sydney’s secrets. They just drove her into a hard reset. Which could also mean she effectively gets a fresh restart on existence, without the traumatic memories of her first time around. And also could add to the Legend of the Mighty Halo among the spacefaring societies. “The Mighty Halo? She’s the one who tortured an Aetholith using her OWN NERVOUS SYSTEM until it gave up and wiped itself!”
This wcoud totally be used as that provider’s ad.
“Food so hot it can wipe out a thought projection” has an interesting ring to it.
There is the carrot to get Lapha to cooperate- she hangs out in an ARC prison for a few decades, and she’s allowed to “write” a memoir about being the only Aetholith to survive one-to-one combat with the Mighty Halo, the fight where Halo attacked her own nervous system to win the fight.
And just when Lapha thinks it is over, and she “survived” Sydney will remind her of the memories of how it comes out 10x worse … And that basically Lapha is sitting on a ticking time bomb
Well, if Lapha is “shut down” for now, they should be able to extract her from Sydney’s body. As for keeping Sydney’s secret safe keep in mind that Lapha blurted out the possibly biggest one about the orbs being Nth tech.
Yes, but that does not make the other 99.9% of her secrets worthless. They’ll need them to keep the space baddies from taking the 0.01% over Earth’s dead body…
Sensory overload to blue screen the magic AI, neat.
So possiblities:
1. Lapha activated another emergency backup plan. Maybe got a link to a remote body? So she is linked to both Sydney’s body and something else? Or she is about to do something desperate and bad to Sydney that we are about to find out in a moment.
2. Lapha passed out and is currently rebooting. Probably a good time to get her out of Sydney.
3. Lapha died. Her code might have been glitchy from the start due to equivalent of genetics and this was sufficient stress for her to unravel.
4. Lapha escaped into the orbs somehow. Which is going to be problematic depending on how that works. It might be possible that she can’t get out and thus stuck there, making her effectively a slave. At least she got the Nth tech, just not the way she wanted. Might be useful for Sydney though.
5. An outside entity just did Something Weird.
Regarding the options:
1. They have the equivalent of a Faradays cage for Magic. See back when the database was stolen and the magic tracker was blocked.
2. Most likely.
3. If that was a option, Dabbler would likely have said something. Pretty sure they are still trying to find a non-lethal option.
4. Unlikely. If she could go there, she would likely have tried so before. But it might be a way to evolve the powers from now on.
5. Unlikely, for same reason as 1.
The speech bubble misdirect was excellently done
Spicing up enhanced interrogation with some new flavors. Curry on Dabbler.
Maalox enema?
“A flavored liquid containing a suspension of aluminum hydroxide and magnesium hydroxide, which act to neutralize or reduce stomach acid,”
that is taking the long/wrong way to get to the stomach. It will however draw water into the intestinal tract for a quick flush but the “special” as of now is acting on Sydney’s stomach and above.
They may not have to worry about holding or disposing of Lapha once Sydney’s finished lunch.
Cremation will probably already have taken place ;)