Grrl Power #1303 – Unreliable narrator
Blushing Peggy, adorkably cute Sydney, sexy (if imaginary and embellished) Maxima. This is one of my favorite pages I’ve done in a while.
A lot of you guessed something like this, or basically nailed it exactly. It’s not like I didn’t telegraph the heck out of it. The only other way this was going to end would be the truck coming down next to her or against the helicopter making a nice shady pup tent for Peggy, with the passenger she headshot slowly bleeding his face blood all over her. Or maybe it’d come down on top of the choppa, snapping her leg off like a cigar cutter.
But then this flashback was prefaced with Peggy and Max’s meet-not-so-cute, so Maxima saving the day, or saving that particular part of the day, was probably fairly predictable. Peggy doesn’t remember the attack on the helicopter or the crash, but the pilot did get off a “Oh damn! I can no longer clap mah cheeks cause I just got shot in the ass!” call. Probably something more military sounding, but I’ve never piloted a crashing eggbeater so who knows what I’d blurt out when my vehicle was spinning on all six axes. So Max went out looking, homed in on the smoke, heard the explosion, then spent a Main Character Point to arrive at exactly the right time to bitchslap the truck into early retirement. (I am reliably assured that Hilux will probably still run. Just needs a little love with a shammy cloth. Might need the wiper fluid topped off.) Maybe it was a Dramatic Entrance Point. She’d fought enough other local supers at this point to have a variety of options.
The new vote incentive is up!
Dabbler went somewhere tropical, in a very small bikini. As you might guess, it doesn’t stay on for long, which of course, you can see over at Patreon. Also she has an incident with “lotion,” and there’s a bonus comic page as well.
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.
Lol. Peggy the disaster bi.
Bisaster.
I thought Peggy was a full Lesbian, not Bi…
She is Bi. It is addressed here https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-112-hot-beefcake-injection/ and an followup to that. Not directly the next one.
I think #117 is a better example where Peggy just says “It’s more about the person than their gender”
Yes, that is the followup I was thinking of.
Which would make her… Pan I think? If Glynn Stewart’s description in Raven’s Peace is accurate, Demi are basically ace until the person knows others well enough.
Bi, pan, omni, they have incredible overlap and people keep fighting over the details and definitions but you’d have to ask her to know what she thinks she is and what it means to her
Thank you both for correcting me, I thought she was pure lesbian.
Weird I’m now getting ‘your comment is awaiting moderation’ now. Is this a new thing?
I also got that on my comment above. But only the first one. Might be a keyword filter or the link in it.
It is if you add linkages, even just a single linkage
She’s bi. She stated that “it’s more about the person than their gender.” and that “every once in a while [her] body starts beggin’ for a preggin’ and [she] goes all boy crazy.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-117-table-for-two/
Give it a day and that Hilux will be running perfectly again.
All it needs are the tools in the glove compartment and a can of oil to get it running again.
Yep, the older Hilux and it’s variants (I own a 93 4Runner, basically a Hilux wagon) will keep going until the wheels fall off. All you need to do is service them on a somewhat regular basis and they will last for what seems like forever.
ahahahahaha might have slightly embellished the truth here XD
Yeah this is one of the funniest pages thus far.
I love how Peggy has shifted over to try to use the propeller as cover. I can’t imagine it would actually help much, but she’s certainly trying everything she can to stay alive.
Also, the bit about a silver gown and white wings sounds like a potential future vote incentive to me, once you have some time to make a new one.
Protecting her neck from shrapnel does padd the odds a bit of living long enough for help when it eventually shows up to make a difference. And yeah the odds are going to be lackluster at best but you miss every shot you don’t shoot.
Good point. If the truck hit her, the propeller probably wouldn’t help much, but if it missed then getting behind that would help protect from any debris that didn’t miss. Heck, while it probably wasn’t going fast enough to do much unless it hit the eye (and even then, I’d normally expect the blink reflex to protect her… but I don’t know what impact a concussion would have on that), it does look like there’s at least one piece of glass that would have landed on her face in her original position.
True, it’s like when a guy I worked with was caught in an explosion, he saw it was about to blow and tried to duck and cover. he did manage to protect his upper face and hands, but still had 30% of his body, 3rd degree burns on his back, arms and head. I was there for the fire call, I was the one that got him out. Only place I could grab him (was able to walk, but he was a mess) was his belt and I lead him outside where the ambulance was sitting. Even with the gear on, you still have the instinct to cover your face during a fire. That truck would have covered her in burning fuel and such, so yeah not much help.
It’s possible the engine is still trying to push that rotor, and dislodging it from the dirt it’s currently jammed in by hitting it with a truck might be enough to make it start up again, and I certainly wouldn’t want my neck in the path of that.
Okay now I’m curious. What does it look like when Maxima blushes?
Rose gold.
Even though Maxima has blue blood, her blush is red. “Also that she should blush green. I tried to color her that way on the one page on which it happened, but she looked seasick, so I just kept it red. I’ll have to think of some canon reason it happens that way.”
The example is apparently panel 9 of https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/gp0100/
She has blue blood, so blushing would make her gold skin slightly more blue. That would probably make her seem to take on a green hue. So a green appearance on Sydney means she is about to projectile vomit a chemical weapon all over your boots. On Maxima, she is embarrassed about something.
After some more thinking, and looking up why gold looks the way it does, I think Max blushing wouldn’t show anything.
Gold looks the way it does because it transmits/absorbs blue light and reflects other wavelengths, rather strongly.
You can hammer gold into a sheet thin enough that it will transmit light – and that light will be blue, but quite dim.
Blushing is more blood coming near the surface of the skin, changing what colors get reflected. But if there’s gold in the way (or some other substance that acts like gold) then I don’t think that extra blue would show up.
On the other hand, her lips and the inside of her mouth are red. I don’t know what’s going on there. In humans the skin is much thinner there, there’s very little subcutaneous fat, and pretty much no melanin (at least inside the mouth).
So her lips and mouth should be blue. Or if the gold takes the place of melanin, maybe some shade of gold for the lips, and inside the mouth would be blue.
But either one would look odd, and require explanation.
Actually, Max would look purple, not green, red+blue makes purple. Like her lips and other parts we can’t see ;) Besides, as hard and dense as her skin is, I kinda doubt she CAN blush, at least not anywhere we can see commonly. While her skin is soft at a touch, it reacts like corn starch slime, slow: it’s soft, but a sudden impact makes it harden up.
When our chopper went down, the only indication we in the back had, was the crew chief pressing his headset to his ear, bluting out, “Oh fuck me.” and then winding his arms through the cargo netting. I’m not sure what the pilot said.
I’m just glad we weren’t crashing, just corkscrewing down from 10,000 feet, to 500 feet, before the final approach to the airfield we were assaulting for our practice mission.
when ours went down, it was pilot: “MAYDAY, Mayday (name) is going down.” then walked/talked us thru the crash positions. like yours it was a ‘controlled crash’,. a intermediate gearbox went out,. we crash landed in a hotel tennis court.. tho we gave a few trees a hair cut…
Ours was a discussion where the pilot finally said “I think we can make it to the FOB”. We’d taken some rounds and hydraulic pressure was dropping. We did in fact make it to the FOB, he just had zero control left when he tried to flare and slow our descent so we slammed into the pad at far above optimal landing speed. After the dust settled and everyone survived the argument started on whether it was a crash or hard landing. The pilot argued for hard landing since we did actually make it to the pad he wanted to land on, while the crew chief said it was a crash since the bird was now in multiple pieces. The other passengers and I mainly backed the crew chief.
If the bird doesn’t survive it’s definitely a crash. With the pilots argument you could have cratered on the runway and it would have been a landing.
If you can walk away from it, it was a landing. Otherwise it was a crash.
If you you walk away, it’s a crash. If you can take off again, it’s a landing.
If it’s a one-time landing where you are aiming to land, it’s a hard landing
So we have at least 3 helicopter crash survivors in the chat? That’s either a huge coincidence or that happens way more often than I thought…
Apparently this webcomic attracts at least one group as readers where helicopter crashes are more likely than usual. In chaos research this is called “clustering”.
I don’t know if the comic’s host tracks the number of unique IPs that access it but this is a popular web comic. That implies a large sample of readers. The bigger the sample the greater the probability of some unusual group being represented. As Hans points out readership demographics play a part. The comic itself also plays a role in that the comic seems to attract readers who enjoy participating in the comments section and some in-story events really seem to provoke active discussions.
I think this is about as memorable as Dabbler making faces in Maxima’s “fun house mirror”. It certainly made me laugh out loud.
Dabbled would LOVE to make faces in Maxima’s “fun house mirror”
She did: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-592-funhouse-funbags/
Or like when Anvil drank from Halo’s hotsauce hipflask.
I still giggle about that to this day.
Anvil couldn’t be mad at Sydney about that, by then it was common knowledge that Sydney was a “Extra-hot” lover. Plus, Sydney was never seen to drink booze, so that was entirely Anvil’s fault. Granted, Sydney should have done a better job warning her.
I’d say she could get away with admitting to be attracted to the woman who became her boss because at that time she had just been saved from a messy death.Remember, a little later Max told her to walk off losing her leg. She was doing it as a way to lighten the situation,but it’s still a step too far in saying it.
“A step too far in saying it”, I see what you did there!
But that is on par with the dark humor you find in the military, it can be kind of traumatic to the uninitiated tho.
Gallows humor as a coping mechanism? Well now you’re just pulling my leg.
Only if it’s a short drop, and you’ve paid up front.
Oh, snap!
I’d say she was toeing the line, and besides, laughter has helped heel many a wound.
Really, she shoes a tendoncy towards compassion, from time to time.
What’s the tattoo on Peg’s chest?
Check out the first shower scene.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-341-absentoeism/
Peggy had a concussion crush? A crushcussion?
Concrussion!
I would so upvote this if I could
I wonder if there’s a way to GENTLY lift a helicopter (or any vehicle, really) off of someone with a mangled limb?
My first-aid knowledge is pretty basic but I know one of the few situations where you can actually apply a tourniquet (screw you Hollywood) is where someone’s probably going to lose the limb anyway and you’re more concerned about them bleeding out before getting proper medical aid.
Hey, you CAN apply a tourniquet in ANY situation, you just SHOULDN’T in most of them! Heaven knows, I have a long list of people that I want to apply a neck tourniquet to!
If you apply a tourniquet using a turkey’s neck, it’s officially known as a turkeyquet.
(groans in agony)
I’m just sitting here hoping Max does apply a tourniquet before moving the chopper. Peggy may not have been under it long enough to develop crush injury syndrome, but the damage (beyond the main injury) that can come from that is no joke.
I mean, obviously Peggy is okay, but still…
I dare say Peggy already has a *crush* injury syndrome (see concrussion above)
I assume Max’s “zero-range telekinesis” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Otherwise there’s almost nothing large enough to challenge her that she can actually lift (as opposed to having it fall apart on her).
Depending on how long the victim has been trapped, relieving the pressure may kill them almost instantly. There is a thing with blood chemistry where you get a ridiculously high level of Potassium (well, it starts with ‘P’) in the blood if it isn’t circulating, and if it gets loose your heart stops D.E.A.D. and no amount of defribrilator zapping will save you, they would have to open your chest like an Aztec blood sacrifice then do manual compressions until the Potassium evens out to a safe level & the heart runs by itself. Same reason why you have to relieve (not remove) the pressure on a tourniquet every 20 minutes or so – you can kill the patient or the limb just goes black & has to be cut off anyway. Someone more expert than I may have updated information on treating limb trauma, and I hope they will post the latest techniques.
So, Max basically bitch-slapped the truck? XD
Also, nice to know what Peggy’s rank was during this. Wondering where Max was sitting, but also wondering if Peggy’s step up to Archon also involved a rank increase, since she’s–oh, no, wait. Mr. Amorphous is a second lieutenant; Peggy’s already a first. Unless Max left the second part off for brevity, here (like how most people refer to her as Colonel, instead of Lieutenant Colonel)?
Wait. Why is the chain to Max’ dog tags wrapped around her neck like that? To keep them out if her hair? Also, why are there two of them?
Remember this is Peggy’s flashback, with inevitable distortions, caused by her concussion and her libido. She did not want anything blocking her view of Major Leander’s breasts, even something as small as the dog tags.
Dog tags come in pairs for several reasons. The most common is is a soldier is killed one tag stays with the body for identification while the other is sent back to report the death. The one with the body can be attacked to a grave marker as well. A pair of them can also be used if a part of the soldier is separated. It also provided some redundancy just in case. When I was in a very long time ago we used to lace one tag into each boot because you weren’t as likely to lose both feet so there was less chance you wouldn’t go unidentified.
Generally all kinds of lieutenants are just called lieutenant for short. The only kinds of first/second lieutenants who would bristle if you don’t include the full rank are the ones who are not going to be very popular in their unit, so most of them learn VERY quickly how the fact that they “technically” outrank all of the enlisted isn’t going to be very helpful for them when they make the high ranking NCOs angry with them.
Three tacos is not enough tacos.
We need all the tacos.
So, when does Max tell Peggy to ‘walk it off’?
When Peggy was in the hospital, https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-591-florence-dark-knightingale/ Panel 3.
Low-key disappointed we didn’t get an Action Comics #1 cover homage. *That* would make a good vote incentive.
Also, unless your helicopter has a hyperdimensional transwarp drive the most axes it’s going to spin on is three.
Unless you want to add the edge and corner axes. Then there are thirteen.
Those are just vector sums of the main three axes. Now a wild ride from the loss of the tail propeller and part of the main rotor at the same time may make you feel like you are translating through 6 axes, but really it is just 3.
Yeah, I was having fun imagining the helicopter rapidly growing and shrinking wile also vibratbratbratbratbratbrating through tititititime.
Awww…Peggy’s hot for teacher! ^_^
Had peggy mag dumped into the driver the whole event would have been far simpler.
She was having a REALLY bad day. Cut her some slack.
Mag dumping, when (in all probability) you only have one mag, is generally not a good tactical decision.
For us non-aircrew, they reviewed crash procedures before every flight, as well as the usual inflight drills.
Most of that flight time was over ocean so ditching drills were gone over too.
Briefed for eject a couple of times on fighters when I was in the backseat for a ‘fun’ ride but never had to.
The time we fully expected to have to punch out the pilot, a good friend of mine, said:
“I’ll say eject three times, the third one will be an echo”
I replied “after the first one you’ll be talking to yourself”
Luckily he managed to get us back to Base and land safely.
Most larger A/C have a ‘crash bell’, the pilot rings it for several seconds before impact but wrapping your arms in a cargo net is a good way to get them torn off or broken in a hard impact, I suppose an autorotation in a helicopter might be different, I don’t have much time in those and never had any problems when I was in one.
It’s said that the most commonly heard last words on the cockpit voice recorder are ‘oh shit’ or similar, but in the case of a pilot who had plenty of time to jettison ordnance and set up a controlled crash in a designated area then ejected safely, it was “it says I’ve got five free games but I’m not sticking around to play them…” ;)
It’s also said that the last words from ‘Bitching Betty’, the taped voice alert, are:
“Altitude…Altitude…Altitude…*crash sounds*..told you so…told you so…”
My lesbian ass kinda already does this anyway every time I see Max.
Love the Meat- Not Meat Sign.
is it just me or does it look like some of the right side panels were cut off?
Wait, thought the story originally was that Maxi met Peggy in the hospital (Maxi was in another bed for… reasons)
I thought the same thing. Good excuse to go back and read through the early chapters again.
From the cast page
“Peggy was deployed in Iraq at the same time as Maxima, and they met in the incident that cost Peggy her leg. Maxima was injured soon after and they spent some time in recovery together and became friends.”
Thanking you for correcting me
Knew they spent time in the hospital, and just forgot the first part
Does this mean, Maxi went Tali-whacking for revenge? Or was that when she encountered Sand Demon?
you know what they say about straight dry pasta..
it looks the same as the gay dry pasta?
The saying is that people and spaghetti are both straight, until they get wet. Wasn’t sure if you were funning.
actually never heard the saying before
but yes, I was also funning
besides, there’s also curly/corkscrew dry pasta that couldn’t be considered straight by any stretch
Oh my clucking dawg, this page is my newest favorite. Just so galdarn adorable!!!!!
I SHIP IT!! I SHIP THE SHIT OUT OF IT, MILITARY RANKS BE DAMNED!
Rank is not the issue, a general may shack up with a liutenant with no issue, as long as they are from separate chains of command. It is however frowned upon, shacking up with someone you have a legal right to give orders to.
It’s kind the same principle that says doctors may not get it on with their patients.
Only if the doctor is a psychiatrist, or paediatrician, or both
Panel eight – next nude picture?
Please?
Heh, called it. I figured it’d be a last-second rescue. I LOVE how pink Peggy got when Max called her out on that. But be honest, who wouldn’t picture Max like that ;)
Even more pink than her hair.
Once more, gonna put some tariff shame energy into the world, re: Hilux vs chickens.
These chapters have been really good! I hope to see more of the flashbacks ^^
Actually Peggy’s reaction is quite normal for people who are dealing with Traumatic situations- I think they call it “Transference”
It’s common for rescued people to feel like that, as a retired fireman, I seen my fair share. It’s bad when they become stalkers however, I heard a few horror stories from some of the guys, up to trying to off spouses! Some people need help, but like the saying goes, they have to want help. Usually you get the parental type, bringing gifts and/or food, x-mas items, etc. We were just doing our jobs.
I would suspect that firemen, rather like police, tend to be single/divorced more than average. So there may be some “mothering” involved, not just “parenting”.
I think Jason at Fire Department Chronicles/Fire Department Coffee (which is an actual coffee brand) mentioned the divorce rate for (full time) firemen/first responders was about 75%?
Your not far wrong, my wife and I nearly broke up too. “You’re never home, are you cheating on me?” while I’m standing there, covered in sweat and soot, smelling like a burnt house… Not to mention the 3am repair calls when I was on call, or a fire for that matter. What many people don’t understand, even a minor fire can take 4-6 hours to complete, we don’t just rush in, wet everything down, and just leave. A re-burn is more common than most people know, like a camp fire, there’s always the risk of hot coals restarting a fire. TV and movies always do a time-jump between the firemen arriving and when the cops go in to check things out. In RL, the cops don’t do the fire cause checks, there’s a dept for that.
I’ve had a few men act “motheringly” as well but yes. It was kinda nice when we’d have a slow day and there’s a knock and a couple are standing there with a cake and a casserole… Or just cookies… It’s when they show up every. single. day. The occasional person, the “just to spend time with their hero” type gets worrisome, when you spot them by you car, peeking in you windows at home, one guy had to call the cops when this one gal broke into his house! She was fixing him dinner and called him “honey”, the guy’s wife went ballistic.
I think the more common, less technical term is ‘Flornlence Nightingale Syndrome’. Someone you have never met before swoops in, saves your life from near certain doom, and your brain chemistry translates it as ‘This person is a divine being sent to protect you. Worship them’, context be damned.
THAT WAS CUTE AS HELL.
I just noticed the menu. Seems about apt when eating tacos.
Women rarely eat their fill, never understood it. My wife was 5’4″ and rarely weighed over 99 lbs (I used to joke that a good part of her weight was in her bra :P ). She STILL eats like a bird, but loves her snacks… Hell, I don’t get that either! At 60y, the only reason she weighs 170lbs now is a side-effect of one of her meds.
Birds eat a lot more than people think
Birds tend to out-eat horses
Ya know… Every time I see these meal scenes there’s one thing that really bugs me about them. Most if not all of the people on these teams are pretty much apex levels of fit that are on par if not exceeding Olympic athletes. Especially so in Math’s case since he’s supposedly just a regular human. Yet Max is just casually walking in with JUST three tacos here? I would have thought they would have been eating something along the lines of half a Thanksgiving meal just to feed their mass and with a protein shake on the side.
Even the alien members are eating fairly large meals. Space doggo is eating a rack of ribs bones and all, another’s eating just a full shank of ham, another’s eating what looks like a Shaggy grade sandwhich, and the last one’s eating what looks to be some sort of soup/stew in a bowl that would be more at home as the serving dish for a family dinner with an entire loaf of french bread. By comparison, the human diet in this looks small even for what people normally eat. It just looks odd to me.
I mean, that would also have to do with Frix and Garamm being over/close to 7 feet tall.
Also, for Max at least, I suspect the food portions are kept in normal ranges because she’s already inhuman looking enough; she doesn’t need her meals called out about it as well.
I don’t think they actually get that body from the usual means of diet and exercise (plus steroids etc.) any more than e.g. Maxima can shot put a tank via her muscles. In this universe, if you have powers, you have a “comic book” body (not to mention being 4 to 5 inches taller than you otherwise would be).
Rather like that scene in the Spiderman movie where Parker wakes up and overnight he has a six pack.
I do wonder what happens if you have powers and become a couch potato. It sounds like you still keep that body.
To be fair, those are some pretty hefty-looking tacos. The three together look to be taking up the entirety of that side of the serving tray. Assuming it’s the same size and type of tray as Peggy is using, those would need to be extra-wide and extra-long tacos. Plus the meat at the bottom looks fairly densely-packed in there. I could see them having over a pound of meat between them, which would make the meal roughly comparable to an MRE in terms of calories (a pound of 80/20 ground beef has around 1200 kcal, while MRE’s are typically between 1200 and 1500 kcal). An MRE is a pretty big meal – they’re meant to be able to keep someone up and fighting, which is a very energy-intensive activity – and most of Maxima’s output is actually from the Superion field (there’s no way she could ever eat enough to create that Fel Carrier-destroying blast from food calories alone) anyway, so I don’t see the tacos as being a problem.
Cutest. Peggy. Ever.
Y’all, hear me out please : s Sydney’s new found support and some what appreciation for Peggy’s fantasies another hint for sydney’s bicurious development that stems from that parfait kiss?
Both Dabbler and Parfait have effected her in that way, plus after her trip to the station and her relationship with Frix, she might entertain the idea at some point. Sydney lived a very sheltered life, like many “gamer girls” do, so she’s been getting fast-tracked into a broader sense of how the universe works. Who knows, maybe at some point the orbs may merge with her and she’ll become a real super, complete with the face and form of one! You KNOW Harem and Dabs will have a “joygasm” over that! That would make for a sweet ending plot-line for the comic if nothing else… Or a vote incentive… Just picture what Sydney would look like! :P Peggy might not like that, she’ll be losing an “A” cup sister.
I don’t know thei affiliation so now I call them team Rocket.
Can attest that people look WAY better when they’re saving/just saved your life.
There is a saying when the hero arrives just in time to save the day.
“Moving at the speed of plot”.
The characters will arrive just in time to forward the writers need to evoke a specific emotion.
True, but Max moves faster than the eye can follow, faster than a bullet. So it fits in the general scheme of things. Add in that her skin is as hard or harder than diamond, it only fits that much better. The base was miles away, so she might have kicked in her “hyper drive” and landed just as the truck started to roll, and Peggy didn’t see her right away.
She was lickin’ her lips and her skin was shinin’ I was dyin’ just to ask for a taste…
Okay that panel needs to be a vote incentive. You know which one I mean
Peggy Tomato panel?
Cool that the blush extends towards her chest tat :)