Grrl Power #1286 – Super clique
I bet you want to know who won?
I kind of want to leave the question open, but… Math did “lose,” in the sense that he eventually got pinned. But only after taking on four experienced adventurers/fighters that out weighed/strength/reached him, with at least one guy who can nearly match him on speed, and another guy who is basically as tough as a rhinoceros. Still, it took them over 10 minutes and a mess of bruises to get him. But everyone involved leveled up their, as Sydney puts it, “being punched a lot” skill, so they’re all fine with the outcome.
I’m one of those guys who thinks martial arts is cool but could never picture myself getting involved in a sport that involves being punched in the face a lot. Something like Judo or Aikido, sure. I took a few Aikido classes when I was in college. Not like, Aikido 101 or anything, I mean I attended… 5 (?) free classes being taught by some brown belt. My belt color is clear. But something like boxing? No way. And that was before everyone had a much better understanding of what prolonged weekly concussions might do to you in your not so old age. I wonder if sports like boxing are seeing a decline in enrollment now that terms like CTE are entering the common parlance, despite the best efforts of NFL owners and I’m sure boxing promoters. My guess is… probably a little, but not as much as I would initially guess.
Or if there is a falloff, it’s probably due to a being raised on Playstation and iPads, and not “ride your bikes over to your friend’s house and otherwise disappear into the woods for hours and no one knows where you are and show up barely in time for dinner covered in bark and mud.” I kind of straddle those generations. Really I’m more of a Commodore 64/Atari/O.G. Nintendo kid. By the time the Playstation 1 came out, I had recently graduated college. Or… maybe I was a few months from graduating. Doesn’t matter. The point is, I don’t recall off the top of my head when I graduated from college.
I think Peggy needs to get that chest tattoo colored in, because just the top of it poking over her collar makes it look like she’s got chest hair.
The new vote incentive is up!
It’s Escorpia/Sciona, fresh off her successful… extortion campaign? I’m not sure if extortion is the right word. Addicting someone to superpowered narcotics then withholding to compel directed behavior? Kind of a ransom/extortion/generally being a butt kind of thing. There’s probably a better word for that. Anyway, check out Sciona’s business casual getup at TWC, and Patreon has a bunch of… let’s call them increasingly casual variants.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Sydney is definitely looking cuter than ever. Art improvement or maturity?
Bobby pins. It won’t last long.
The Bangs will not be Contained!
Legitimately came here to say this. She’s steadily getting more attractive as the comic progresses and I can’t tell if that’s Dave’s art style changing/maturing or if he intended for her to get more fit and attractive as time in the comic moves forward.
Well, she’s been exercising outdoors, so she’s started to lose her Jaundicy Glow and has better muscle tone.
Peggy, too.
Panels 1 and 2 are definitely the most relaxed/cute I’ve ever seen her.
Mystery orb slowly bio modding her body to that of the standard superhuman perfection until she learns to control it? Jk
Mmm, cucumber-flavored soda.
Better than Pepsi :P
Do they have Diet Cuke? Or Cuke Zero, either one…
Cuke-a-cola?
Cucumber and sugar is a bit like melon. I could see sweet fizzy Cukacola doing well. Cuke til you puke.
“… disappear into the woods for hours and no one knows where you are and show up barely in time for dinner covered in bark and mud.”
I’m a Scout leader. When I take the Scouts on a campout I tell/warn the parents “If I bring your Scout home clean and dry I haven’t done my job.”
Archon is being rather more forgiving with Lapha than I would have been in similar circumstances. I can sympathize with Sydney’s choice to try and mend fences with someone that is going to be a comrade for years, although I’d do it out of pragmatic reasons, not out of any non-existent goodness of mine. Letting Lapha survive was not her choice to make. However, in Max and Xuriel’s shoes, I would have left her fade on that floor. I remain sceptical of the practical value of trying to integrate Lapha and Garamm in the team, unlike Vehemence and more so Jabberwokky and Detla (already successful cases).
I’m confused why you would be more forgiving of Vehemence and more willing of Vehemence than Lapha as being candidates for rehabilitation. If anything I think Vehemence represents a permanent existential threat, while Lapha is not.
As I see it, it is a practical issue. Successful rehabiltation of Vehemence would remove a major threat AND add a powerhouse to the team of Max, Halo, and Dabbler’s calibre and versatility. So I see justification in going the extra mile to try and achieve it. Survival, recruitment, and rehabilitation of Lapha adds to the team… exactly what? She and Garamm are far from being the best at what they do, and they are a couple of shortsighted idiots. They have miles to go before they can come close to the expertise and professionalism of Jabberwokky or Detla.
And, what does Les add to the team? Yes, he can survive anything (so far), but other than that, he is still just a non-super in other things, or is only there because he came as a set with Morph and Heatwave?
Big Kev was such a success that they were fine with letting him leave the planet and never return!
Are you joking? Achilles is still going to be orders of magnitude more useful to the team as a human shield, trap trigger, foil to offense-focused enemies, etc. than a couple of dumb dead weights like Lapha and her beau. I am really not looking forward at all to the narrative space that is going to be wasted by showing St. Sydney Scoville ‘redeeming’ and ‘befriending’ those two wastes of space. Thinking of another of my favored franchises with a MC heroine that had a similar attitude, at least Nanoha Takamachi had the luck, common sense, or plot armor, call it as you like, of invariably recruiting former baddies in the team that were real assets.
>or is only there because he came as a set with Morph and Heatwave?Big Kev was such a success that they were fine with letting him leave the planet and never return!<
Admittedly the second best option to recruiting him in Arc-Swat. Nowhere as good as him being an asset for the team, but him being a mercenary fighting in distant worlds for Tom's army is hardly going to create real problems for Archon or Earth.
I think its morally worthwhile at least. They get a chance to put some good out into the world instead of just misery.
Maybe, but the proper place for these two dumb, inept, and small-fry space criminals to pursue their own rehabilitation path is not Archon. They can do so in the galactic criminal justice system, which we are hinted is less retribution-focused than the US one. If they have failed to do so in previous stints, it is not Earth’s or Archon’s problem or responsibility. As members of Archon, they are just going to be dead weight and a spanner in the works. They do not belong there for the same reason Earthling Muggle criminals do not belong. If Archon is so dead-set to gain the services of an Aetholith for their intelligence branch, they could hire Tenri for much less likely trouble.
Perhaps, except for the problem of Lapha having a copy of all of Sydney’s memories (i.e. classified information, Nth technology orbs, Teammates weaknesses). They’re keeping her on Earth to keep the leak from spreading further and faster.
You have a point, assuming Archon personnel and allies could not concoct a way to remove that info from Lapha or she could not be strongarmed into erasing it herself. Either solution seems far from outlandish given genre standards. Even if this is not feasible, I see no good reason why Lapha and Garamm should not fade away in a work-release deal for the offstage and unnamed support staff Archon has got. I see no good reason why they should become a noticeable part of the main cast and the Arc-whatever teams they can likely give no meaningful contribution to. We don’t see Sydney befriending the janitors.
If that was truly a problem, they would have just let Lapha die. They did not, so they saw a lot of value in having Lapha work for them, while Vehemence is NOT as useful for rehabilitation purposes since he IS an existential threat. Even when they used him for sparring there was a point where he looked like he might not just give up and they’d have to have another huge brawl to try to stop him.
For that matter, if they just wanted someone for espionage, they could have hired another of Lapha’s race. Lapha, on the other hand, does have the makings of being someone who might actually turn over a new leaf if given the right motivation. And we already know Garram is not actually a bad person – he’s just incredibly loyal to Lapha because he both likes her and is INTO her despite him knowing she has ideas that are not good, morally or strategically.
This (someone motivated primarily by profit and not wanting to be on the streets anymore, who has had a really terrible life from literally the moment of her ‘birth,’ and the guy who likelikes her) seems a lot more workable for rehabilitation than someone who’s entire motivation for EXISTING is to cause violence and chaos for the sake of causing violence and chaos, as much as possible (aka Vehemence).
“If that was truly a problem, they would have just let Lapha die.”
Probably not let her die, but they could have locked her body in a jail cell or simply left her in the Aetholith.
My point was more in response to Irioth’s thinking that Lapha is better off dead as more of a threat than Vehemence. Clearly she isn’t the same level of threat.
But yes, what you said is accurate.
Being able to go into any environment and shrug off any danger is a very valuable ability. From the examples given, Achilles destroyed some crazy, beyond Ebola-level biological weapon by ingesting it.
If there is any nuclear problem brewing, he can just walk in, fix what needs fixing and move out no problem – this is the case where not even machines can help as their control circuits get destroyed by radiation even faster than biological tissue.
There are many other situations, where the ability to simply no-sell any danger is just the right tool to do the job. Not the most powerful ability to have in a super brawl, but very far from useless.
And, just how often is a situation like that gonna crop up? One where he doesn’t end up buried under a building (again) with no one able to free him?
Yes, he survived Heartbreak (or whatever she was calling herself) dropping a building on him, but he was out of the fight for the entire rest of the fight. Very useful to have around
Circumstantial, sure. When it does happen to be useful, there are few if any substitutes. And having a super team is all about always having the right person for a given job. Circumstantially invaluable powers are still invaluable. Not every emergency requiring supers is a brawl.
Indeed. Arc-SWAT doesn’t really need more brawlers, they have Maxima for that. What they need is a variety of powers to be prepared for non-standard situations.
Letting Lapha fade when Dabbler had the tool right there would be like having a bad guy hold someone for ransom, shoot himself in the belly, then just stand around and watch as he bleeds out screaming.
There’s a case to be made for it, but it puts the comic into a very different headspace.
Maybe, but personally speaking, it would not have bothered me one bit, quite the contrary. It would have been a fitting end to Lapha’s character arc and I deeply respect someone’s wish to die or committ Suicide by Cop rather than go to jail. In my eyes, letting her fade away defiantly cursing the universe would have been a fitting end to her life and a ‘thy will be done’ outcome (in the free will sense).
Coexistence of comedy with gritty violence, lewdness, and other adult themes does not bother me, quite the contrary. As I said, in my view sex, violence, and wonder are three tastes that taste great together. You may certainly add comedy to the mix.
Just like family-friendly chastity and unreasoning subservience to the law, the trope that heroes never kill (even by omission or inaction) is another bit of lingering CCA imprint on the genre I could not hate more and I wish to be eradicated as much as possible. With all its undeniable flaws and exaggerations, the Dark/Iron Age of Comic Books was the one most to my tastes, with the Modern a close second because the former’s legacy endures to some serious degree.
I never had much sympathy or patience for Disney-style, sappy and family-friendly media. Even as a little kid and budding nerd, I found them unsufferably boring and tiresome, longed for more adult stuff, and eagerly grabbed it when and as much as I could. The only meaningful difference about my tastes back then and now is it took puberty for me to become deeply appreciative of the sexy and lewd stuff.
Moreover, this webcomic has hardly been lacking in bad guys killed by the heroes, from the would-be muggers massacred by Cora & Syd on the space station to the hooded guy that was the enslaving/abusive handler of Concretia and was graphically killed by Cora to save Syd. Lapha dying on that floor would have been scarcely less deserving of death because of poor life choices than those.
I respect Dave’s creative choice of making Lapha and Garamm part of the team even if I am dubious of its wisdom in terms of the characters’ worthiness for the team or the story. We already had abundant proof that Sydney is the all-befriending, all-forgiving type of heroine and I am quite sceptical this duo of dumb, small-fry space criminals is going to be anything but a load to Archon. Hence I pray as little narrative space as possible is wasted on them.
Do you have any examples other than Cora? Cora’s willingness to kill has been explicitly spelled out as a contrast to our heroes from Archon (it’s arguable whether Cora is a hero at all, as opposed to the “Token Evil Teammate” or “shady acquaintance”.) Maxima was very unhappy with Cora killing Bitch Lasagna.
Archon has been consistently extremely hesitant to kill, to the point of Maxima giving Vehemence opportunities to surrender that almost cost her her own life. Executing a captive would be very out of character.
Except Lapha was a few seconds away from fading to non-existence because of her own actions. Executing a captive in cold blood usually is a very different thing (ethically and legally) from (willingly or unconsciously) failing to provide medical assistance to stabilize a fallen wounded enemy in critical conditions that is quickly bleeding awway or collapsing to death on their own.
Dabbler avoiding to pick and stabilize Lapha with her device just for a few seconds more would have been the fictional equivalent of avoiding to provide CPR to a wounded and critical enemy for a few seconds more. Not the most merciful things to do, but far from proactive execution.
No, not her own actions. She was forced out by Dabbler and Sydney via spicy food, she’d have stayed safely inside of Sydney otherwise. Had she died, it would have been the consequence of that. Pushing her out and leaving her to die is killing her.
And even if it were like you said, Archon are still cops, and cops should provide medical assistance to a criminal who, say, crashed a car after a chase or overdosed on drugs trying to destroy evidence.
Forcing Lapha out of Sydney by any means necessary was a dire necessity to save her from kidnapping, body theft, and the very real threat of being mind-killed. Whatever harm was to befall Lapha in this regard was the consequence of her criminal actions. She had no entitlement whatsoever to squat inside Sydney. If the cops came to kill her to evict her forcibly, it would have been the fault of her own misdeeds to begin with. If Lapha wanted to avoid that risk, she should have surrendered to removal by Dabbler’s device.
If Max and Dabbler had neglected for whatever reason to prioritize rescuing Lapha for a few seconds too many, it would have been the same case of mundane cops neglecting provide medical assistance to a critically injured or ODing criminal in the same time frame. Orders of magnitude different from proactively executing a captive criminal in cold blood and so fuzzy a contingency to be almost imperceptible except maybe to an all-knowing observer steeped in moral absolutes.
“If Max and Dabbler had neglected for whatever reason to prioritize rescuing Lapha for a few seconds too many, it would have been the same case of mundane cops neglecting provide medical assistance to a critically injured or ODing criminal in the same time frame”
Ummmm…. that would be criminal as well for police to fail to provide medical assistance to a critical injured or OD’ing criminal.
Heck, if a police shoots a criminal in self-defense, and the criminal survives but is incapacitated and badly injured, the police is not allowed to just let the criminal bleed out on the floor and die – he or she is LEGALLY supposed to call for an ambulance to get the criminal to a hospital so that that criminal can survive in order to stand trial for their crime(s).
“Forcing Lapha out of Sydney by any means necessary was a dire necessity to save her from kidnapping, body theft, and the very real threat of being mind-killed. Whatever harm was to befall Lapha in this regard was the consequence of her criminal actions.”
Not how it works. Killing her wasn’t necessary to rescue Sydney (nor was there any urgency – the situation was stable, they could have searched for another solution). The whole point was getting her out, there was no need to kill her. Her own actions justify what’s necessary to stop her, no more.
“If Max and Dabbler had neglected for whatever reason to prioritize rescuing Lapha for a few seconds too many”
That’s not really what’s happening. They were showing up with the Aetholith planning to get her in it. This is just completing that plan. “We don’t need the Aetholith anymore, we can just let her die now” would be extremely cold-blooded.
They were hoping for this to happen, so “we reacted too slowly” wouldn’t be a defense, and even if it were, it would be an “understandable mistake one shouldn’t be punished for” defense, not a moral justification. It would be “failing to save her life” not “letting her die”.
A cop who shoots a criminal will provide first aid once the threat is removed, even a cop who corners a perp on a rooftop will try to grab them if they jump off to commit suicide.
Disagree on this.
The two examples you cite are where OGH first “took away their face”, i.e. made them quite deserving of punishment. No backstory at all for either, they’re not quite Snidely Whiplash level but they’re established as being content to continue to do evil.
It’s like when someone is shown kicking a dog; you know they’re going to be in for a rough time later.
Lapha was very much the opposite, with her backstory being revealed first.
Besides, can you picture Sydney willingly working with Max and Dabbler in future after they deliberately and cold-bloodedly kill someone who’s helpless? I mean, she had just (admittedly on impulse) offered to *share custody of her body* with Lapha after hearing it. And Lapha became no threat at all once she left Sydney’s body.
I can’t. This would have made a huge change in her relationship with both Max and Dabbler. And that’s probably why OGH resolved that arc the way he did.
At first I suspected Lapha would be getting the Jayne Cobb (Firefly) treatment, where she’s attempting to work the angles at first, then realizing she’s found people who will actually back her up. She still might, though it now looks like there might be some high school cafeteria stuff in there that wouldn’t fit into Firefly. Not to mention that Lapha at this point has a lot less freedom of action than Jayne ever did.
Don’t get me started on Sydney’s crazy offer to share her body with her kidnapper and body thief that threatened to mind-kill her to blackmail her friends and comrades just because she got to witness the memories of a bad start in life sob story.
From my (admittedly much more callous and selfish; empathy is far from my strong suit and I like myself this way) perspective, it was such an irrational, self-destructive, and near-suicidal bout of selfless and sentimental idiocy that I am prone to chalk it up to possession-driven temporary insanity.
Otherwise, I would be driven to lose a great deal of the sympathy and respect I have for Sydney. The person that made that Darwin’s Award offer was not the indomitable and admirable gal that was able to keep her cool in many other life-threatening circumstances. To reconcile the contradiction I am driven to assume possession combined with ADHD made Sydney not in her right mind, even if she was still able to think of the ultra-spicy food solution.
Lapha deserved to fade away on that floor, sob backstory or no sob backstory, or any violent criminal in the world would be able to justify the worst abuses and atrocities thanks to similar background circumstances.
Max and Dabbler had no need to ‘deliberately and cold-bloodedly kill someone who’s helpless’. They just had to hesitate (willingly or unconsciously) for a few seconds more and fail to provide timely life-stabilizing treatment to someone that was fading away to death because of her own actions and poor choices. Big difference. E.g. Max and Dabbler could easily have spent those few seconds focused on checking if their friend was OK. Sydney would never know the difference, being no expert in aetholith physiology, and blame no one if that happened and Lapha faded away as she deserved.
I hope what I write isnt taken as too adversarial but I’m very curious about the answer.
“Max and Dabbler had no need to ‘deliberately and cold-bloodedly kill someone who’s helpless’. They just had to hesitate (willingly or unconsciously) for a few seconds more and fail to provide timely life-stabilizing treatment to someone that was fading away to death because of her own actions and poor choices. Big difference.”
Completely disagree here. It’s more analagous to the idea that you see a child drowning in a lake, and instead of either saving them or letting them die, you make sure no one else can save them THEN let them drown.
Not that Lapha is a child, but I’m using the description of her being helpless. And it’s not exactly heroic to kill someone who’s helpless and already not a threat, when they can instead save + imprison them for their crimes, and possibly even rehabilitate them while making them useful to society.
I am again very confused though about why you don’t feel the same way, or worse, about Vehemence. He doesn’t even have a reasonable rationale for why he does what he does, except that he causes violence for the sake of violence, and chaos for the sake of chaos. There was literally nothing IN it for him to create the Restaurant Rumble other than being able to cause chaos and violence. You can’t even say it’s for survival, because he could have easily gotten a job as a boxer and both had his fill of violence but in a LEGAL capacity. Or he could have become a LEGAL mercenary for hire (Aegis Security, Erinys, Wagner Group, Defion Internacional, Northbridge Services Group, etc) He had a whole lot more options, but he seems to be motivated SIMPLY by chaos, even though he is not powered by chaos – he is powered by violence. Why would you not have wanted Maxima to blow his head off after he was already beaten (ie, Sydney’s Yin vs Yang choice given to him) even when he was still not completely helpless just yet.
Vehemence is not motivated by chaos, some degree of chaos merely was necessary for the violence he wanted, and he wanted violence because it provided him magical sustenance and enjoyment.
A better model of him is an addict who did bad things to get his fix.
That’s the thing. Chaos is NOT required for him to get what he wants – ie, boxing, wrestling, armed forces, etc. If chaos was required, I’d be more forgiving of him, even though I’d still consider him an existential threat to the Earth.
He just wanted to start super-brawls because he finds it fun to create CHAOTIC violence. He chaos for its own sake rather than just because he needs some violence in order to be healthy.
Is it just me or is Sydney’s chest getting bigger? Because she used to be flat as a washboard now you can see a pronounced bulge. Makes me wonder if it’s the effect of hanging out with Dabbler, the potion she drank, getting a boyfriend, or a subtle feature of the orbs.
I suppose it is a mix of all that, plus maybe her having her final growth spurt. And I cheer up for the change. As much as I like her in other ways, I am not a fan of the A-team.
On second thoughts, as others have pointed out, maybe it is also an effect of her getting more fit.
In panels one and two I think it is the pose. Posture makes a difference. At nearly six feet tall one of my friends in college was self-conscious about her hight. Think of a stretched Sydney or a pre-super Max. She had a habit of slouching to seem less tall. Her posture made a big difference in her apparent figure. Now that she is working out and has other reasons to be happy about her life situation maybe Syd is standing a little straighter.
Yeah, at this stage of her life Syd is basically living the dream. She has almost everything she could wish for, except for a) having complete mastery of the orbs with the skilltree fully unlocked b) being in a polycule with Frix, Leon, and Krona and c) having a flawless boob job (cfr. the wish she wanted to make with Parfait). But she is working on all three goals as well as being the perfect superheroine.
She’s bigger than Peggy now and Peggy certainly had a larger bust than Sydney to start, if not by much, but she did. They are legit side by side here and you can tell the difference.
does anyone know why sometimes on websites pictures have their colors reversed in thumbnails? i assume it’s something to do with my computer, but the headshot of Altus, for me at least, has him with really pink skin and absolutely blindingly-white hair
Panel 1 Sydney is just… distilled adorableness. That relaxed/content smile with that light shoulder-touch from Frix and leaning back against him for a moment. Just… *chef kiss* perfection.
Why did you change the name of the green guy from Slyv to Sylv? Is it one of those space name things that could be spelled either way because of the way it’s pronounced?
I suspect a typo that took over the canon. I refuse to adopt it. The dude’s name was Slyvyrnus, not Sylvester, page 702 (where we see their original sizes).
Gellen was also “Galen” for a few pages. Give ’em name tags.
Reminder Sydney’s pop cultural knowledge is why they were able to beat some of the heavies during the fight at the Diner also why they started giving villians silly code names
I think the “silly code names” is a psychological tactic. Called out explicitly at least once by Max, where she switches from something else to “Mass Hole” for someone she’s fighting, as she gets more annoyed.
She said something about “We have better publicists, so this is how you’re going to be known if you annoy us too much.”
Machiavelli is often misquoted as “Better to be feared than loved.” What he actually said was that it was more *reliable* to be feared, but either was much better than being despised. Being despised just gets you killed. Even your own followers won’t follow any longer.
Becoming publicly known as “Mass Hole” is likely to lead to being despised, or at least not taken seriously.
Not so much despised (that would be due to their actions) as ridiculed and mocked (like Taserface from GotG, who was mocked right up to, and during, his firey death)
“Machiavelli is often misquoted as “Better to be feared than loved.” What he actually said was that it was more *reliable* to be feared, but either was much better than being despised. Being despised just gets you killed. Even your own followers won’t follow any longer.”
That is not what Machiavelli said. I actually have the ebook of Machiavelli’s The Prince. :) It’s available for free btw. :)
Actually the exact wording of Machiavelli’s The Prince was:
“Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared
or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be
both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much
safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed
with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are
ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed
they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and
children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it
approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely
on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because
friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or
nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in
time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in
offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is
preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men,
is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you
by a dread of punishment which never fails.” – Machiavelli’s The Prince, Chapter 17 (“Concerning Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether it is Better to Be Loved than Feared”)
https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/pdf/passage/5597/the-prince-018-chapter-17-concerning-cruelty-and-clemency-and-whether-it-is-better-to-be-loved-than-feared.pdf
Ah yes, the era where if your family had money you were messing about a Commodore, or thrown into sports(including martial arts) and if they didn’t you had either the outdoors childhood or the tabletop childhood.
No I caught up.
Just for the record, you do not get concussed all *that* often in striking martial arts/combat sports like boxing or Muay Thai if you aren’t in a Meathead Gym. The vast majority of the sparring you do looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AooMpsWmZM , not a Rocky movie. Generally speaking, people only go hard enough to risk that kind of thing once or twice a month, less than that if they aren’t a pro or aspiring professional. I’ve had maybe three Grade I concussions- no loss of consciousness, no amnesia, no symptoms other than same-day headache and transient dizziness- in my last ten years of Muay Thai.
While it doesn’t seem common at all, I’ve known at least one person besides myself who felt a sort of peace while fighting in the ring.
For my own end(I did kickboxing), it was a sense of calm and joy. Each successful and solid strike was a feeling of accomplishment, and you have very clear feedback if it is solid. Blocked attacks and those that seem to do little to nothing are something you have to work on in the moment and figure out how to do it better; it was a challenge to overcome or get around. Winning was nice but, honestly losing was more interesting.
When you’re in a situation where the fight is respectful and sporting, there isn’t any real need to get angry either so your full efforts and senses can be put into enjoying the experience. My best experience was also my hardest/most memorable loss; I could predict him decently, but he was faster and with the skill to use his speed. I knew how he was going to block and what his counter would be, but that just meant I knew what I was about to be hit by. He could block and counter before I could respond to what I knew was coming(a lot of the time), and then he’d back off. Sometimes people are just better. But, he also didn’t fight me just to be an overwhelming victor, he went mostly defensive which let me just try to pick out openings. Sometimes, I did manage to take advantage of an exposure and he’d adjust. It was fun, educational, and nobody really got hurt.
There was camaraderie between most fighters and understanding you can get from feeling out someone’s fighting style. Nobody who lasted was there for the purpose of doing real damage while sparring, you can feel out an opponent pretty quick and know if you need to reign it in or if you can push each other to go further.
The only people who were there thinking they might hurt anyone were hotheads who’d been in a couple street fights and thought they were something. They would come in talking about their great feats when angry or their “bloodlust”(whatever stories they thought would impress other people) and were usually humbled pretty quick. One guy who came in acted like he was some gangster, our instructor put him against one of the smaller girls in the class and the attitude was dropped after one round. I don’t recall 100%, but I don’t think he came back after that day.
Anyway, when you have a good group who are also moderately-skilled fighters, the risk of serious injury/damage is fairly low.