Grrl Power #1311 – Tätowierungnaut
Don’t point at your commanding officer, Sydney, or j’accuse her of stuff. Maxima is a ridiculously lax officer when it comes to discipline… I mean, honestly, there probably aren’t any actual military officers who are as casual as her in the real world. Unless, I don’t know, does Tahiti have a standing army? You got to figure if they do, their officer corps are either super hardcore intense to make up for a self-perceived threat deficiency, or they’re super laid back, because the only invasions Tahiti suffers from is bachelorette parties. I mean, modern day Tahiti. I’m sure a lot of wooden-ship naval battles happened over it back in the yore.
Okay, so, I know I could have googled “does Tahiti have an army” before I wrote all that, but then I wouldn’t have written all that. It turns out that Tahiti is part of French Polynesia, and they do in fact have an army. Also an air force and navy.
In related news, I just learned where Tahiti is. Because, yes, I am a dumb geographocentric American. It’s just never come up before. I had a vague notion that Tahiti was an island off the western coast of Mexico or Costa Rica or the like. It is… just 4,800 miles further than I thought.
Anyway, back to my point. If Sydney ever gets lent to another branch for whatever reason, she will probably immediately go to the brig or push-up jail, and come back to the team with swole triceps.
B.H. stands for “Behavioral Health,” BTW. They’re like the military counselor corps, I guess. And I like to think they all wear V-necks that are all slightly off-center.
In German, sharpshooter is scharfschützin for the feminine, and scharfschütze for the masculine, so, Peggy was close. I don’t think “schvartzen” is actually a word in German. “Schvartze” is apparently an offensive Yiddish term for a black person. But “Schwarzenegger” means “black plowman.” That’s “Schwarzen” and “egger,” not “Schwarze” and “negger,” in case you were wondering. “Egger” literally means “male plower.” So Peggy inadvertently called herself a “black shooter.” Which, could be interpreted in a few ways, including something like a ninja sniper, which is Peggy’s preferred interpretation. At least when her translation error is pointed out to her.
I don’t normally explain the page titles, because hopefully there’s usually no need, or occasionally it’s some oblique reference that amuses me and I don’t care if anyone else gets it. But today’s… So Tätowierung is German for tattoo, and naut… I’m actually not sure that it actually means anything on its own. I was actually under the impression that “juggernaut” meant literally either “fear-not” or “stop-not” but I can’t find any etymological backup for that. Apparently the word comes from Sanskrit – Jagannātha, meaning jagat (world) and nātha (lord), and is one of the names of Krishna. So… given Peggy’s misuse of German on the page and my own misunderstanding of the “naut” in “Juggernaut,” I thought “tattoo-not” would be an appropriate page title. Except it only means that to the me of several minutes before actually googling the etymology of Juggernaut, and I figured very few other people would be able to put that together. Because Peggy lost the tattoo along with her foot, see? I hope that part didn’t need an explanation, but sometimes I think ADHD minds are like murder boards, and you have to take the Limitless pill to see all the yarn.
Any guesses on what Peggy’s ankle tattoo was? I’m asking because I’ve never actually drawn her with her leg intact. I think. She might have had both legs in a single flashback panel with Maxima about to do a keg stand… I don’t recall. But she definitely would have had long pants and boots on in that panel. Maybe a “don’t tread on me” snake wrapped around her ankle? I’m not sure how much Peggy is into colonial slogans. Though having that snake wrapped around the ankle and go under the foot to the sole would be… ironic and I’m not sure what else. Getting the bottom of your foot tattooed seems like a poor choice, but I guess if you can keep off of it for at least two weeks it’d probably be okay. If I was into that I’d get a big black circle about an inch and a half across under my heel so I looked like a G.I. Joe action figure.
Yeah, I know I promised an updated vote incentive. I’m really trying to get something done for you guys, I promise.
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.
You do not need to know German for Landsthul. It is a US military base. I was born there while my dad was stationed at the nearby Ramstien AFB. Later I frequented the hospital when he was stationed there again ten years later. It a great American military hospital in Germany.
It’s “Landstuhl” and “Ramstein”.
Landstuhl is the home for the LRMC (Landstuhl Regional Medical Center), the largest US military hospital outside the US (it employs ~3300 people).
Ramstein is the home of the Ramstein Air Base, the coordination center for nearly all operations in the Middle East and Ukraine/Russia.
While you don’t need to know German to be on those bases, it still helps when you interact with the locals during rehab. At the very least you’d get the names right. ;)
Rammstein is also a famous german metal band.
That has nothing to do with the topic, but it felt mentionable.
Note the doubled “m” in the band’s name. It literally means “ram stone” now (ram as in a battering ram, not the animal)
It’s also a reference to Ramstein, more notably the disaster that happened at the airbase in ’88 (which is also what their song Rammstein is about).
I think I read once they enjoy the confusion, like the way “Du Hast” actually means “you have” or something like that.
Yeah, they like their wordplays. “Du Hast” is a song entirely based on the fact, that “You Hate” and “You Have” sound identical in German.
No they don’t, and the lyrics make no sense with “you hate”. “Du hast” and “Du hasst” sound similar, but not identical, unless you’re being sloppy.
With the harsh pronounciation in that song, they *are* identical.
And the lyrics make a lot of sense. The sentence “Du hast mich gefragt” is built up word by word. At first, just “Du” sounds ominous. “Du hast” is clearly a sentence fragment and can be “du hasst” as well, so the ambiguity is built. “Du hast mich” means “you have me”, which could be a comforting sentence (“you’re not alone, you have me”), but “du hasst mich” means “you hate me” and fits the harsh vibe much better. And then this meaning is subverted by extending it to “Du hast mich gefragt”, which resolves the ambiguity to mean “you asked me”. (It still needs context to mean anything.)
Then it’s extended to “Du hast mich gefragt, und ich hab nichts gesagt.” which means “You asked me, and I didn’t say anything.”
The other part of the song recites the standard wedding question:
“Willst du bis der Tod euch scheidet
Treu ihr sein für alle Tage?
Nein!”
The meaning of the song is explained as someone proposing to the singer, and the singer just not answering (or possibly eventually saying no), so now the asker hates the singer, thus fitting the double meaning.
That’s far deeper than I suspected
There certainly is a connection.
The entire band is named afer the Ramstein Airshow Disaster(which happened at that base)
But not knowing German will mean that she can’t talk to locals, only to other personnel in the base – who presumably either will be in the know, or will be bound by their own sets of orders to not talk about it.
It’s not foolproof, but it’s a great reduction in exposure.
Except that, in this day and age, many Germans speak English quite well…
Germans learn English in school from a young age. It is really only the elder generations that are not good at English.
Germans working at an American base would obviously be able to speak English, I find it really funny that anyone would think otherwise.
Most people in European countries speak English very well
Peggy’s ankle tattoo was probably a Bullet With Butterfly Wings.
That’s why she was so melancholy and had infinite sadness when she lost it.
Dann, that is a great idea
That was bloody Brilliant!
And under the bullet the slogan; “You’ll never see me coming!” or “The last thing you never see!”
:)
Float like a butterfly Sting like a .50 BMG
If she’s not too superstitious she could get a replacement on her other ankle.
Dave could make it, storywise, a bonding experience between Peggy and Sidney.
You mean, despite all her rage?
Exactly what I have on my arm only with hawk wings instead of butterfly :)
It’s faded a lot over the 50+ years it’s been there but that’s for the better, the guy that did it got the cartridge case brass coloured instead of yellow and the brown wings are good but he coloured the bullet bright red and it looked like a flying lipstick or fire hydrant for the first years ;)
Butterfly was my thought, but I like bullet with butterfly wings, too. It can be small, for a kid who just got her first tattoo, trying it on for size as it were.
It was probably a helicopter.
Nothing worse than buying yourself something nice, only to lose the limb it was attached to.
Well at least she can continue to salute in the traditional american way their neighbors and fellow vehicle drivers. Sucks that we won’t actually see the tat.
1, 2, 3, 4 I declare a vote incentive war!
Peggy pre-event tattoo parlor!
At least she didn’t give an arm AND a leg for it.
Max is out of uniform. And they are having dinner. And Sydney has been with Max in a warzone.
So no actually Max isnt out of the ordinary chill by some European standards as well.
Its America who is seen like comically strict. Like randomly making people to pushups seriously isnt going to make for a better soldier. (America just has more expensive toys by far)
If you only listen to someone because he has the power to make you do pushups its not respect either way. Its fear.
Despite working with aircraft all day long a number of personnel from the local airbase frequented the local R/C flying field. Until recently we had a colonel, a sergeant and a couple of NATO pilots all coming out to the field. Granted, they weren’t in each other’s chain of command but off base, hanging with the civilians, it was all casual.
Yes and they had nearly destroyed the military aircraft industry in Europe , only Safran makes military jet propellers in Europe.
”
Constatons en passant qu’une canaillerie bien étalée, à l’époque où nous sommes, tient lieu de toutes les qualités et que plus un homme est infâme, plus on est disposé à lui reconnaître de force intellectuelle et de valeur morale.
Mon adversaire, qui est aujourd’hui une des illustrations les moins discutables de la politique, avait volé en maintes circonstances de sa vie. Et sa supériorité lui venait de ce que, loin de s’en cacher, il s’en vantait avec le plus révoltant cynisme.
— J’ai volé… j’ai volé… clamait-il par les rues des villages, sur les places publiques des villes, le long des routes, dans les champs…
— J’ai volé… j’ai volé… publiait-il en ses professions de foi, affiches murales et confidentielles circulaires…
Et, dans les cabarets, juchés sur des tonneaux, ses agents, tout barbouillés de vin et congestionnés d’alcool, répétaient, trompettaient ces mots magiques :
— Il a volé… il a volé…
Émerveillées, les laborieuses populations des villes, non moins que les vaillantes populations des campagnes acclamaient cet homme hardi avec une frénésie qui, chaque jour, allait grandissant, en raison directe de la frénésie de ses aveux.
”
Octave Mirbeau Le Jardin des supplices 1899 -Public domain Mirbeau died the 16 February 1917.-
“Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose ”
I’ll not translate this citation but it’s could be applied to the next president of USA
I think you’ve watched too many movies, USA’s military isn’t that strict. You’re thinking about boot camp or when they are over-seas where looking “right” matters. Plus movies and TV shows play up how strict things are, to make the troops look that much more “bad-ass” to viewers. Remember Max doing a keg stand in a tent on deployment? The biggest problem the brass has with the troops is boredom, you have a large group of young men and women cooped up on a base for an extended time, they do dumb things. It’s human nature. It’s far worse for the navy, ships and subs that are on patrol and only dock for supplies and new seamen tend to be out on the open sea for months, think about it.
German speaker here. “naut” on its own doesn’t mean much and is almost always used in composite nouns such as “Astronaut” or “Argonaut”. Here, “-naut” means “traveller” in a certain area, specified by the first half of the word.
Another example is “Nautik”, meaning “navigation” or “nautics”.
Yeah, that’s not a German specific form, “naut” comes from the Greek for sailor. I always assumed juggernaut was an example of that but apparently not!
“juggernaut” is actually derived from the Hindu word Jagganath, one of their deities, whose statue was borne on very heavy carts which were difficult to control once in motion, hence the evolution of the term to mean an unstoppable force
I was about to comment on the “black shooter” thing, but since you already explained it in the comment I don’t need to elaborate on how politically incorrect that one can be interpreted, but I’ll say it nonetheless. :-)
I mean a) blackfacing and b) shooting black people.
But Peggy turning the “sharp” part of sharp shooter into two syllables can only be attributed to her current mental state or a bad teacher.
It’s the sort of thing you might get from someone who took one semester of German to meet a foreign language requirement. Ironically one of the few things I remember from my one semester of German was the professor telling us that meaning could be strongly influenced by pronunciation and that if we ever got to Germany we would probably say something that was embarrassing to the local speakers.
There are times where Max may need a reminder that she’s still human despite the fact that she basically looks like an Oscar statue with hair. Demonstrating a little more consideration at times wouldn’t hurt
Tahiti. It’s a Magical place.
I understood that reference.
I have background that pertains. Totally get where peggy is coming from. That’s why I always encourage the FNG’s to “either get your ink above the elbow or knee. That or on the torso which is pretty good for making sure the remains are identified properly. Like that incident with that idiot and the boss’s hyenas. Gotta go, have to clean the sea bass enclosure, just my luck I’m the only one they let do that now. (sigh)
I respect the hurt.
90$ is 90$ and you hate to see it go.
I K I C K Y O A S S would have been funny on the toes… but now she can get laser etching on a prosthetic titanium rod that says “Your Butthole And My Leg Have An Appointment”
At first I was “Eww” but then I remembered that there are people who are into that.
You were close Dave – you were probably remembering the etymology of “Dreadnought”, which does actually mean “dread nothing”.
I’d guess in Arc-Swat, they’d have to be much more lax in what one can do to a commanding officer, or else they’d lose out on potential members. There’s plenty of reasons to not join such an organization and one of them is not wanting to work for someone who demands respect just because of rank.
And with what we’ve seen, Maxima hasn’t exactly been risking anything.
Maxima as Psylock would make for a nice voting incentive ;)
The “fear-not” meaning you’d heard of might be Dreadnought rather than Juggernaut. Though it’s more along the lines of “fear-nothing.”
one foot says kick
other says ass
she got to keep the ass foot.
Yeah, that was my thought- depending on which way it had been oriented you might end up with just one foot that says “kick”, which is still kinda neat or silly. Or if you had really bad luck you’d be stuck with a foot that just says “ass” and is only an awkward icebreaker at pool-parties.
Given that a pool party would make her missing leg *very* obvious, “The other foot said ‘kick'” sounds like one hell of a line!
I think her tattoo was “If you can read this you are either too close or not close enough.” With two symbols for death and love
If ‘-naut’ meant “not” wouldn’t that mean that everyone was an astronaut? Except for a few of course.
Fortunately that’s not the case. Based on use, if ‘-naut’ were its’ own word form, I would more likely think it was “traveler.”
I just read the rest of the blurb.
That flashback would have had to have been after she lost the leg because Max wouldn’t have known her prior to that. Otherwise Max would have about the shooting competition and Peggy would not have needed to be read-in on who Maxima is since Max is flying in that page.
Thanks for telling us what “B.H” stand for IN THE COMMENTS after I spent like 5 minute racking my brain over which character that was :P
I almost started dipping into the archive to go looking for random military or administrative types we’d seen like, once, because I thought it was a continuity reference.
I’m wondering what Dabbler does with her other two arms when she’s wearing a “human” glamour and then poses like that.
She probably has to keep them still, since she “doesn’t have them”. Items appearing to free-float would be a problem.
most *other* words ending with -naut mean ‘sailor’ – astronaut etc. and the existence of that morpheme probably influenced the english spelling of juggernaut even if the actual meaning is unrelated.
Reading the comic rants feels like being in the head of an eccentric scientist.
I mean the most generic ankle tattoo imaginable is the butterfly. I’m thinking Peggy might have riffed on that with a Death’s Head Moth. Possibly with crosshairs over the skull.
You had counfounded Tahiti and Clipperton Island (also French ) in the pacific or Guadeloupe and Martinique in the in the Lesser Antilles (also French).
No one remembers this and I can’t find a video clip to support it, but… back in the 80’s when Arsenio Hall had his late night show, one time Arnold Schwartzenegger was a guest, and he revealed that his name meant “black farmer”. Of course, the reaction was obvious, but then Arnie corrected Arsenio with the proper translation.
I can confirm, as a professional, that the brain is, indeed, weird.
I got a tattoo on the sole of my foot back when I was making IEDs in the military to make identifying my body easier for my family, as I wore Nomex socks inside my combat boots the soles of my feet were most likely to be undamaged. That was 40 years ago and the tattoos have faded away to illegibility.
Schvartz in Yiddisch is afaik the same word as Schwarz in German. Which is just “black”. And yes, Schwarze means black people. Used to be the correct alternative to the N word, became normal, then was considered a bit offensive and Farbige was considered better (akin to colored), now is kinda okay again… No idea how charged or not charged in Yiddish tho. Also, an Egger is something very similar to a plowman, but actually slightly different: a Plow is a Pflug, and the person using it is a Pflüger. An Egge is a harrow, and the person using it is a harrower. Which, on a small farm, usually is the same person as the plowman, but a bit later.
he said he was 4000 miles off, and thats the distance from Tahiti to Mexico. :)
And let’s not get into how bizarre Arnold Schvartzenegger’s last name is.
Just thought I’d mention that maybe you’ve confused Tahiti (in the Pacific Ocean) and Haiti (that is, indeed, in the Caribbean). I did the same, only inverted, when I was a kid. Someone came to our school to tell us about his trip to Haiti and I was excited because I thought it would be that Oceanian place.
A better speaker than I should chime in, bit the other part of the German fun is that even if she were trying to say “I’m a black shooter” it would be „Ich bin eine schwarze Schützin”
I was in G.E.E.I.A. in Greece in the late ’60’s. Top Technician. Very small group. The C.O. was Major Mike. With Special people in a special job, the command must allow the wackos a bit of slack.
Tahiti is part of France. Not a colony, not a depencency, a Province of France. Therefore 100% French military and, more importantly, navy. (another weird factiod: France is the country with the most timezones).
Which means they surrender almost constantly throughout the day…
Schwartze is Yiddish for a black person. Schwartz is German for black (and also a common Jewish last name).
In Yiddish, “schwartze” is not a slur for a black person. It is just literally how you say “black person” in Yiddish.
If someone is speaking English and chooses to swap in the term “schwartze” instead of simply saying black, it’s a slur.
I’d go for something Ironic. Like a zipper.
I used to work for a little resin casting business that ran out of the owner’s garage. Mostly made terrain for wargames, but he’d take on pretty much any project he thought he could handle. A friend of friend was a tattoo & airbrush artist, and he approached us about doing a resin imitation of a lower leg prosthetic that he could use to showcase his artwork on. The actual prosthetics were super expensive and he wanted a dozen or so “demo copies” for his show display, so resin was a more economical alternative. Royal pain in the ass to cast due to the size and shape (the first mold box blew out on us from the weight of the rubber in it) but we did eventually get a few out for the guy.
These days you’d probably just 3D print the things, but at the time that technology was still most an expensive pipe dream. That fact that there was a market for what amounted to tattoos (or “van art”) for prosthetics was something of an eye opener for me back then.
You can get the bottom of your foot tattooed, but it’s considered a long-term temporary mod due to the rate of wear and tear on the soles of your feet from walking.