Grrl Power #1325 – Open the door, get on the floor
“Cretaceousify” is the nonomatopoeia, in case it’s hard to read. Maybe I should have gone with “Cretaceous-ify,” but that looks too close to “iffy.” “Cretacify” might work spoken, but written it’s confusing.
“Node runny” is a typo, but… screw it. It works.
Theriomorphs would definitely have a pecking order. And not just cause some of them are birds, hah hah. Actually, very few of them are birds. But my point is, were-carnivores would definitely have their own cool kids’ club, most of the jockeying between the wolves, bears great cats, alligators, crocks, etc, though the less common but still meat-eating-even-if-that-includes-omnivorous-stuff animals like wolverines and badgers still get to look down on all the herbivores. Did you know wolverines eat foxes? Also berries and small game animals like rabbits, but foxes? That surprised me. The were-moose guy gets to look down on everyone but the were-giraffe guy, because moose are fucking hyooge. Most of the herbivores feel a little nervous around the carnivores instinctually… well, maybe not the were-ox or were-elephant or were-rhino. Kat has to resist the urge to Muay Thai the carniweres around her in the face and groin area. Her herbivore fight or flight instinct is colored by her anger over not being something cool like a were-tiger or Komodo Dragon.
I hadn’t thought to include dinosaurs in the list of possible theriomorphs, but I do like the explanation of someone trying to “do a jurassic park,” and accidentally reviving/infusing/creating an ancient virus instead. Like, when you cast your super bespoke reanimation spell, make sure you know exactly what you’re targeting. It also kind of gives me an idea for a bad guy, and I’m so bad at coming up with bad guys. The “I’m crazy” and “I’m greedy” bad guy archetypes are soooo boring to me, but I guess sometimes evil isn’t complex. I just like villains to have a little more meat. Ideally, most reader would be like “I don’t agree with his methods, but I get where he’s coming from.”
You may have noticed the title with the random portraits wasn’t working. Someone very helpfully pointed out that there was a “LetsEncypt Cert update, and […] “grrlpowercomic.com” didn’t get added as a SAN (just www.grrlpowercomic.com)” I do not know what a SAN is, but I contacted the host and they added the non-www version to the… SAN? Cert? The thingy. The internet spider that plucks at the interwebz. Anyway, should be working now. And if not, you might not be able to read this anyway. Hopefully that will clear up the other errors people have been reporting.
Honestly the site needs a real going over. I used to know .CSS when I originally… not built the site, but themed it, but it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything with that stuff besides tweaking a few annoying sites in Stylish, and I don’t know anything about PHP. I don’t even have the time to hire someone to do it because some of the updates would need to be done by me anyway, like the character bio page basically hasn’t been updated since I posted about page 80, and it’s been broken for about 8 years anyway. :/
The new vote incentive is up! (Finally.)
I’m revisiting a panel from a recent page, but I included some comic reactions and a few outfit swaps, so hopefully you all enjoy it. I also plussed up the art from the comic version a bit, though I suspect that despite the time I spent on that, not a whole lot of people would immediately notice that, so I’m gratuitously pointing it out here.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
I’m betting Slam never gets tired of reactions to her were-form.
Except when people call her ‘Barney’.
What people (while carefull tamping the dirt on the endangered plants I just planted) I mean I suppose it’s odd that you see comments like that in blogs. But I’m sure those are just bots. Oh and as a professional HFH, we do more than act as muscle for heists, much less patrolling the base that definitely is not on a island…we also do landscaping. Ah, it’s good to at least try to help a species recover. (that smile that says, say nothing and forget the day)
I’m quite partial to another popular purple dinosaur. Yessss.
As Dino said when he cut off Barney’s head, “there can be only one!”
I legitmately heard that Yessss in David Kaye’s voice.
She looks more like a purple Baby Bop from Barney, not Barney though…
I feel that even a Were-Wolverine would be careful not to look down at a Were-Fox, because mistakenly assuming its a Were instead of, say, a Kitsune or (even worse) a Kumiho would be definitely a serious case of FAFO.
If weres in human form take after their animal form, a were-wolverine is going to be a pain to be around. Wolverines make honey badgers look like capyberas. Forty pounds of teeth, claws and rage. A wolverine will not only kill a moose, but drag it up into a tree.
And then, when it’s eaten its fill, it pees on what’s left so no one else can eat it.
Not to mention that Barney was a theropod, or at least clearly not a ceratopsian, so that’s another reason she’s not Barney.
aye, the one who was a triceratops was bebop.
From TMNT? Nope, Bebop was the Boar (or maybe a Warthog), Rocksteady was the Rhino (easy to remember by the initials)
Maybe they’re thinking of Triceratons?
They were trying to mention the Barney characters that were other dinosaurs and accidentally combined Baby Bop and BJ (yes that was apparently his name, I had to look them up) which fused into the TMNT name
Everybody walk the dinosaur! I love that song.
> Ideally, most reader would be like “I don’t agree with his methods, but I get where he’s coming from.”
If recent events have taught us anything, it’s that the believable villian is unrealistic :(
Counterpoint: mass murderer John Wick.
John Wick only killed people who killed his dog. 100% justified, no jury would convict him.
There’s a serious imbalance between the number of times John Wick’s dog was killed and the number of times John Wick killed somebody in retaliation. I don’t think I can buy any kind of measured-response theory.
well that guy who murdered a united healthcare ceo got TONS of sympathy online and lots of people wanted him pardoned or not prosecuted at all, so I’d say the recent events appear to confirm that “I don’t agree with his methods, but I get where he’s coming from.” is a realistic thing for villians.
Which of the two people involved there do you think is the villain?
The one responsible for one death, or the one responsible for thousands?
severe lack of feathers. but cool weredino.
The coolest is, of course, Saurial/Raptaur/Kaiju/Umihebi/Breksta/Varga/etc… “infinitely variable dinosaur” indeed.
I am disappointed that Kat is the one having the aneurysm/stroke/coronary I predicted.
Blame the jurassic park magitech used
Well, she is of a family of dinosaurs where we don’t know if they had feathers.
We know various theropods had feathers but T. rex apparently didn’t, at least as adults. Since feathers help with thermoregulation, and really big animals in warm climates often need to worry more about shedding heat than retaining it, this makes sense. Maybe something similar applies to ceratopsians.
If the pink were-leopard with laser claws wasn’t cool enough, we now have a purple were-triceratops. Also, Barney is a T-rex, c’mon, Syd.
Well, Slam brought up Barney, not Sydney.
As long as it’s not a “Purple People Eater”…
Anyone?
You beat me to it.
So the song was about a Tri tops that got maimed and lost an eye and two horns, but still decided to keep it’s pilot license certs?
Ooo! The ‘DeZip’ in panel two was for the tail, clever (and probably took a bit of trial and error’ing to have that added to her clothes)
Actually the “dezip” is some kind of method for making her jumpsuit stretch.
Slam was also clearly unzipping the sleeve on her jumpsuit, to accomodate her larger biceps in were-form, in that panel.
No, her sleeve was the ‘unsnap’.
The ‘unsnap’ was the cuff of the sleeve of her arm holding the wrench/spanner in the armpit.
You can see it hanging loose, with the two sets of connectors, right under the ‘unsnap’.
That suit is tailored to fit her growth. Really nifty detail…
Although you have to wonder about how stretchy her underwear must be..
It had better be, or she’d be giving herself an almighty wedgie when transforming…
Counterpoint: mass murderer John Wick.
The rainbow has vanished in the last panel
If you look at the previous panels, it looks like the tattoo is gradually going away after she shifts.
It’s designed to look like it was painted on. Dave just forgot it in the first and last panels.
It is a blinking rainbow.
Soooo.
Now what was that issue with the Chixculub crater and a certain timetravelling heroine again?
Any chance that Sydney will encounter a were-slug?!?
A villain defeated by salt.
All the (admittedly, few) weres we’ve seen so far have been not only vertebrates, but tetrapods. Although a were-architeuthis would be cool, most folks would be less enthused about being werecoral or weresponges.
Huh. That’s quite adorable.
As far as being a were-animal goes in this universe, or any universe where you can get powers but you don’t get to choose what they are, Slam is a winner of this lottery.
She’s big, obvious, and probably slow. This would be towards the bottom of my list.
Big means strong, and human form can be plenty stealthy and we don’t know that she is slow. Sign me up.
Big don’t mean slow
A cheetah it’s 65 mph top speed for 140 lbs bigger than Sydney.
A tiger 40 mph for 660 lbs
A blue whale 31 mph for 130 metric tons ( 286 600 lbs)
According to the paleontologists a triceratops weighted 6 to 10 metric tons and could reach about 29 mph..
The top speed reached by Usan Bolt was 27.33 miles per hour.
I know there is a silly explanation for her coveralls growing with her, but in they wouldn’t, they would shred, since she like tripled her mass, both in width and height
And depth. Make that eight times at least.
In panel 2 she’s unsnapping buttons and unzipping zippers to allow hidden folds to unfold, e.g. the fold around the waist visible in panel 1 for height expansion. You still need your resident super tailor to design this, I guess. There’s quite a bit of cloth material that needs to be folded in.
In the second panel you can clearly see Slam unzipping hidden panels on her already baggy jumpsuit, to make it even bigger.
As well as probably creating an opening for her tail.
De-zipping. :)
A shame that it wasn’t ‘Dino-fy’, just to set up a future potential pun of ‘dino-fly’. Either for a different were that CAN fly, or just her taking a flight in general.
And it’s a bit snappier, even if it isn’t that specific.
The random superhero plots that are happening offscreen to other people are definitely the best part of this story.
There is the X-Men villain Sauron. He turns people into dinos. He could cure cancer, but that is not what he wants.
https://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2019/05/panel-of-the-day-473/
Came here to post about him as a villain who isn’t traditionally evil, but just has a weird obsession.
I’m disappointed in myself for not guessing her were. However, I’m overjoyed at the idea of colourful weredinos and I wish to see more.
Oh I saw it as ceratoptiously like surreptitiously. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this Dino before…
I always liked playing a Mokolé. It was one of my favorite weres.
This was the plot in the terrible werewolf movie “Werewolf” from 1997. Guy got bit by a werewolf fossil. I hope the guy who tried to do a magic Jurassic park looks like Joe Estevez.
Barney’s buff-er cousin.
:p
Also; I love little lore bits like this that indicate wild things have happened in the past that don’t even involve our MC. Makes the world feel lived in.
I know that magic is unbound by the normal laws of physics, biology, etc, but I can’t help thinking about just how old fossils are, and how any organic material has been gone for 99%+ of its existence, and how quickly DNA/RNA breaks down, and how what you’ve got with a fossil is basically just an animal-shaped statue….
And I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out that someone got halfway through learning what is effectively time-travel magic before throwing up their hands in frustration and saying “screw this! I’m just gonna work up a shapeshift spell that LOOKS like a dinosaur; if I start with a standard lizard-man shapeshift I’m halfway there already!”
I guess what I’m saying is that I’m a bad candidate for the wonder and mystery of magic :P
I love the little adjusting her clothing for transformation. Nice touch.
Girl the hulk want the name of your tailor, clothes shop or wherever you got the jumpsuit!
Well, that answers my question from Friday’s comic. Gotta say, though, I thought I had covered options fairly thoroughly by asking about were-insects, reptiles and fish (okay, I missed amphibians). How was I to know shit was about to get prehistoric?
Hmm. So if any and all options are good, could you get a were-virus? Insert obligatory politician joke here.
What about a were-plant, imagine that were rose bush, or better yet, a were-sequoia, a were-Joshua tree. Where are the were-fungoids out there, I mean, Super Mario Bros had living mushrooms. Where is your mental patient super pulling video game characters out of a game into real life, with their powers? So that Venus fly trap were has to look a bit odd, so look out spider man, you have a were hunting you for lunch.
I’m feeling that were-beings are comprised of members of the animal kingdom. Botanical versions are maybe types of dryad? As for fungi, all I can think of is the cordyceps variety, which is legitimately terrifying.
TLS (Transport Layer Security) certificates have two fields where the list all the names they are valid for. There is the Common Name (CN) field and the Subject Alternative Names (SAN) field. The CN field typically contains a single primary name of your website. The SAN field should contain all the alternative names (it can hold over 100).
My day job is managing these for large companies. Even within the IT ranks, how certificates work is specialized knowledge. Short version of what happened is, when your certificate was updated someone didn’t include all the AKAs. If the name someone typed into their browser doesn’t exactly match the names the certificate is good for … you get a name mismatch error.
At least as far as browsers are concerned, the CN field is meaningless — they really only look at the SAN fields these days. Been true for some years.
That’s why we reprint the CN in the SAN field by default.
“KER-BUN” is still unbeatable.
Your thaumaturges were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.
Magic..uh… Finds a way.
This comic made me research if a tattoo can be put onto scales. The answer is yes and some zoo’s use it to distinguish between reptiles. You need a special (stronger) needle to inject the ink when applying the tattoo. Not that this matters to Slam cause she probably got the tattoo while human. But there still is a problem, when shedding the scales the tattoo’d scales will also shed and the tattoo can be “lost”.
I want to thank the scalies and DnD lizardkin players for asking and answering this question before me.
A lot of fiction gives weres enhanced regenerative abilities which might also wipe out tattoos. Don’t know how DaveB comes down on that, but it might be a thing.
Since she is somewhat connected to law enforcement, does that make her a ‘Tricericop’?
Apologies to Kung Fury. But not really.
“Did you know wolverines eat foxes?”
Turtles eat any bird they can catch.
Meaning young ones that can’t fly. And pigeons that stuck to close to the water.
You can find videos on YouTube
“Kat has to resist the urge to Muay Thai the carniweres around her in the face and groin area.”
Ironically, Herbivores are often more dangerous then Carnivores on pure instincts.
A carnivore has to measure each combat against the risk of injury. Because if they are healing, they can’t hunt. And if they can’t hunt, they starve before they can heal.
A Herbivore is either Fight or Flight. And if it can’t flight, it fights to the death.
Unless the Lion is angry or straving, just appearing dangerous is enough to keep it at bay.
“You may have noticed the title with the random portraits wasn’t working. Someone very helpfully pointed out that there was a “LetsEncypt Cert update, and […] “grrlpowercomic.com” didn’t get added as a SAN (just http://www.grrlpowercomic.com)” I do not know what a SAN is, but I contacted the host and they added the non-www version to the… SAN? Cert? The thingy.”
SAN means “Storage Area Network”. A Webhoster of decent scale probably won’t store the bulk data (like images) on the same machine as the webpage. And they won’t just have Network Attack Storage either. They have full on Storage Area Networks – server clusters dedicated to delivering that bulk data.
eagles eat turtles. They snag them, fly them up into the sky, and drop them on rocks to open their shells. Quite honestly, I think this is how there’s winged turtles in Koopa-land
Wrong kind of SAN. In this case it’s “Subject Alternative Names” a field in the security certificate that lists all the web subdomains it’s valid for.
Cool! Hope she sticks around enough to get in some e of the fight scenes and incentives pinups.
Has the update fixed the ‘403 FORBIDDEN’ issue?
Now is one them going to ask Sydney about her orbs?
1st other person: “So…. are they Magic? Alien? Alien Magic??”
Sydney: “I’ve been told not to say. Classified. Very Classified. Very Very Classified Indeed.”
Huh. My brain read “ceratopsify”…
Once again proves that we tend to skip most of a word while reading, as long as the context makes sense for us.
Here are some questions does Slam love them and do they love Slam, also if the gang call her Barney will she follow up with the head butt and will the head butt be in her dinosaur form or her regular form?
this means there are “clever girls” out there!?
DaveBs comments about raising stuff made ,me think of the old Full Frontal Nerdity comic where they raised the wild boar at royal banquet as an undead monstrosity. Good times.
Missing tattoo in the last panel.
Also in the first panel.