Grrl Power #1332 – Al-ari, al-ara, al-ari, al-ara ha ha ha ha
I don’t know if only a wolverine could be specifically responsible for Lorlara’s speech pattern. I don’t have any esoteric knowledge about wolverine digestive processes. Maybe a goat could also work. Possibly a housecat with pancreatitis?
I think propriokinesics is a made up word. If you’ve read my Tamer fanfic novels, you know I have a tendency to do that. Not… inveterately. Just like, once in every hundred thousand words. Anyway, it’s supposed to mean “how people move.” In this case, we can blame Lorlara for not being satisfied with just saying that instead of needing to do a bunch of googling then slam two words together like she was speaking casual German. Not that I did the exact same thing >cough<.
Essentially though, what she’s saying with the Neural Voltage Potential bit is that nerves carry a certain amount of voltage, (with many factors contributing to that voltage, including the coating on nerves (the myelin sheath) and attenuation of voltage etc, etc.) and that voltage affects everything from reflexes to how hard someone can flex their muscles, and the differences in the neuromuscular biology between and alari and humans is a tell-tale in how they move. Sciona grew up in an Alari body, then most of her inhabited a troll for a while, then back to an Alari, and now a human. Lorlara is saying Deus is perceptive enough to notice all the little signs of the different bodies she’s inhabited.
Which is simply not true. Deus might be able to tell if an alari recently Freaky Friday’d with a human, but the brain would probably start to compensate and smooth over any weird propriokinesic quirks after a few weeks.
Speaking of English being a fine and/or sucky language, I always want to capitalize race names, but you just don’t. If you’re talking about a klingon, you don’t. If you’re speaking in Klingon, you do, so that’s another irritating thing about English.
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.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
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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.
As it concerns the issue of capitalizing names of ethno-cultural groups or not, I am a bit uncertain on the issue and sometimes go back and forth. However, in the end I usually favor the option of capitalizing everything in a semi-consistent way regardless of whether they are races, ethnicities, or cultures, or whether they are RL or fictional. It seems more accurate and convenient this way.
Being an alt-history geek that often writes or discusses related scenarios or topics, it seems more convenient to me to have handy labels to distinguish say descendants of African slaves that live in the Americas from descendants of European or Asian immigrants that live in Africa, or to remark the important ethno-cultural difference between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. It comes convenient when say you write about timelines where a Pan-American USA sent the entire African diaspora in the Western Hemisphere to set up the Americo-Liberian equivalent of Greater Israel in West Africa after abolition or slavery, a more ruthless British Empire turned Southern Africa into an Euro-Asian settler land, or a successful Rome forged all of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa into China-like unbreakable unity.
This from the PoV of a guy that hates woke ideology with the intensity of 1000 suns, does not give its concerns and pet causes the time of day, and cares for values like freedom, facts, truth, pragmatism, science, and enlightened selfishness orders of magnitude more than equality or anybody’s feelings.
Having read your comments, I can’t help suspecting that what you hate is actually the strawman version of “woke ideology” — with its focus on “special snowflakes” and suchlike — that’s widely mocked by many in place of the actual “don’t arbitrarily treat some people worse than others for inborn traits” that’s actually at the core of “wokeness”. Well, that and the way some people (including many in the movie industry) congratulate themselves for how “socially aware” they are when they’re really just focusing on superficial aspects, with no more actual depth than someone who insists they’re not racist because they have a black friend who fake-laughs at their bigoted jokes.
Admittedly, there’s other stuff that’s built up around that aforementioned core, some of which is about trying to oppose entrenched unfairness, some about trying to help people realise things they might otherwise overlook, and some about… well… people trying to make themselves feel special, because this is still human social behaviour that’s largely developed on the internet with its many echo chambers.
Honestly, discussions of the subject are, distressingly often, a mess of miscommunication and overreaction. Still, as you’ve mentioned your liking for facts and truth, I thought it might be worth trying to help a little with such things. Remember, there are a lot of people who have vested interests in misleading others on this topic (in both directions and often for political reasons), so it’s probably best not to blindly accept anyone’s claims on the subject. Including mine, if only because I’ve probably explained this poorly due to lack of sleep.
Well, it depends. As a rule, I see proper and convenient to treat anyone with basic civility and friendliness unless they give me reasons to get pissed off. In such a case, I shall use whatever insult seems convenient to vent my anger, definitely including slurs if handy.
I am close to a high-functioning sociopath that basically sees anyone as walking, talking objects except a few specific individuals cherished and cared for much like pets or prized possessions because of personal bonds or appreciation of their qualities. In this regard, I see no good reason to make exceptions to my general misanthropy and give anyone a pass because say people have a melanin excess, have a vagina, wish to have a different gender, like to bang their own gender, or think they have been wronged by history more than anyone else.
One reason I fear and hate woke ideology as an existential threat is it would force me to apply a mandatory standard of love and care to certain of my neighbors beyond what I am willing and able to give on pain of being a destitute pariah. In this regard, I highly prize and strive to protect my freedom to be as selfish and insensitive as I need or choose to be, w/o life-changing consequences for non-life-changing acts. I also hate woke ideology when it tries hard to spoil and twist fiction I like in ways I find unsufferable.
Much the same way, the vast majority of people register as close to walking, talking objects to me to begin with, so I see nothing wrong to use them as objects for my pleasure or convenience in appropriate circumstances. That typically means they give consent, even for transactional reasons or in less than perfect ways, suffer no life-changing consequences according to a reasonable standard, and hopefully have a good time or get to do their job in decent conditions. I fear and hate feminism when it tries hard to deprive me and everyone else of this, becomes another excuse for prudery, or tries to bind people to unreasonable standards or deny their freedom.
As a rule, a combination of my pragmatism, my love of freedom, my dislike of unnecessary suffering and waste, my enlightened selfishness, and my ideals about progress of humanity (potentially all the way to the high ends of the Kardashev scale) drive me to support a mix of social libertarianism, pragmatic environmentalism, secular (trans)humanism, pragmatic cosmopolitanism, social democracy, strong support of facts and science, and a hawkish pro-Western stance in pretty much any political issue.
My ideal for humanity is anarchy with godlike individual agency in post-scarcity and transhuman circumstances. I shall make myself content with anything seems best in a less than ideal situation. Most of the time, liberal democracy and capitalism tempered by social democracy and enviromentalism seem the best available option much more than any other solution tried in history.
I find very little to appreciate in the agenda of the modern far right and I regard its ascent as a tragedy for humanity in many ways, except as it concerns for their hate of wokeism and the troublesome kind of immigration. I blame several things for its rise. One of them but far from the only, least, or most important one is wokeism having gone too far, too fast, and too hard in trying to shove its standards down the throat of anyone else.
A few specific caveats to my general ‘live and let live’ stance about minorities. I have personal reasons to regard a few of them as a significant to serious nuisance when they get in my notice. This b/c I find them insufferably unattractive or they trigger my “uncanny valley” buttons. Consequently, I opportunistically support policies and customs that would keep them segregated outside my notice as much as possible. I prize my own comfort much more than anyone else’s feelings or welfare.
I strongly support policies that would make anyone as healthy, fit, able-bodied, and with optimal personal abilities as possible, potentially all the way to the godlike level, w/o serious constraints to freedom. Therefore, I also support policies that would keep anyone with significant disabilities or inborn defects from existing if possible. I despise ideologies that seek to glorify, perpetuate, or spread disability. Good coping skills for unfortunate circumstances that medicine is yet unable to remedy are good. To seek to perpetuate and spread misery is not, even if it tries to pass for ‘pride’.
Are there really that many woke types who demand more than the “basic civility and friendliness unless they give [you] reasons to get pissed off” you mentioned in that first paragraph? I don’t doubt there are some ideologues who take it to a ridiculous degree, but that’s hardly exclusive to any specific viewpoint.
Certainly, I’ve come across people who argue for racial equality and transgender rights and also complained about Ben Carson and Caitlyn Jenner, sometimes in the very same comment, and seemed to be in no way considered hypocritical (let alone made pariahs) by their likewise woke audience. The general idea seems to be about equal treatment, not special treatment… although, to be fair, there may well be fanatical communities who insist on the short of extreme overreactions that automatically condemn people for being straight white cisgendered men or whatever; I avoid such people, for hopefully understandable reasons, so lack personal experiences of such (also, I never really got into social media, which likely helped me avoid many echo chambers). Like you, I don’t appreciate people shoving their standards and opinions onto others, whatever those may be; I just tend to notice a significantly larger and more vocal anti-woke contingent engaging in such behaviors. Even that subset of modern feminism that seems to be opposed to women making choices that bear even a passing resemblance to “traditional female roles” is more influential than the “woke extremists” that the far right rage against (well, outside of certain varieties of fiction, but the creators of those don’t really represent anything but themselves and their self-congratulatory cliques).
Ultimately, that very “live and let live” stance you refer to is the basic premise of the non-extremist woke philosophy, with the possible exception of your “specific caveats” (I’d need to know more of what you mean to be sure). People may disagree on specifics, of course, and some do have an unfortunate tendency to read what they’re expecting to read instead of what’s actually there and overreact to their imaginations. On top of that… well, some people are rather unforgiving of perceived misdeeds (such as those who dig up a decade-old tweet and act like it’s impossible for the person who tweeted it to have changed in the intervening time).
In fact, the general mindset of “people must not deviate from traditional stereotypical standards” that so many anti-woke activists seem to cling to would presumably also oppose the transhumanism you favour. How would their insistence on people fitting into rigid moulds deal with a future where upgrading or even replacing your body is commonplace? By contrast, the woke people I’ve interacted with tended to be completely in favour of others changing themselves to fit whatever form worked for them (though, admittedly, I rarely get around to asking if that extends beyond more-or-less conventional humanity).
As to the stuff in your last paragraph: is that something that happens? I know I’ve read of deaf parents opposing their children receiving treatment (such as cochlear implants) to grant them hearing (because they feared it’d result in exclusion from the deaf community, apparently), but never any other cases of such things. Please, give details so I can be justifiably horrified.
So… all in all, I think you’re using the term “woke” to refer to a tiny subset of what it properly means, and miscommunicating as a result. The very webcomic this comment section is attached to could easily be considered “woke” by the broader definition, containing as it does sympathetic depictions of people of a variety of ethnicities and sexualities, not to mention the various arguments Maxima gets into.
As a final (and tangental) note: https://youtu.be/rnFQd-8ULgM goes into some of the reasons people can profit from stirring up disagreement over controversial subjects such as this.
“Woke” as it is now is just a word bigots use instead of slurs, demonize virtues and attack acts of basic human decency. Most of it is just imaginary stuff to shout out to get people into a frenzy over innocuous stuff or to distract people from the actual issues causing problems.
Its propaganda to melt your brain and blind you, shouted out by those in charge to put the blame on the vulnerable for their own actions.
Honestly, not my case. All my political and cultural stances are the result of extensive (self-)education, reflection, introspection, and analysis by a well-read and independent thinker. I can see through the typical far-right (and far-left) propaganda tricks a mile away. Please do not mistake me for the unfortunate and clueless victims of such crap.
I simply find ‘woke’, ‘PC’, and ‘sjw’ convenient labels others have created that seem handy to label a kind of far-left identity extremism and fanaticism I fear and loathe. I use them the way I deem appropriate and I care nothing about the implications of doing so b/c I only care about my own rules and I do not give the time of day to guilt by asosciation.
‘Woke’, ‘PC’ & ‘SJW’ are labels typically thrown by people who lost an argument and can’t come up with a better counter
Because they can’t better articulate their point (if they even have one), they resort to belittling and demeaning the other person
It is okay to dislike someone or something without being a racist, unless you try and force your opinions on others, then you become an arsehole
Part of the problem is that people do not distinguish between a person’s gene-set, culture, religion, physical location of origin, and appearance.
“Oh gods, I traded Sydney for this.” – probably way to many people speaking to Lorlara
there are worse things than Sydney and LorLara. I’ll take both of them.
Lorlana is a gem. She’s bucking for employee of the month and I think she has a chance!
In that last panel Sciona sounds like she was briefly possessed by Sydney, doe that slap go both ways or something?
I am certain Sciona referenced the animal wolverine, not the Marvel character Wolverine.
It was the mild insult-barrage itself that is reminiscent of Sydney, not who she was talking about in the barrage
Sweet, Deus’ two favorite Alari finally meet! I have so many questions! Are they related? Will they like each other ( guessing no from this interaction)? Will they make out (which has nothing to do with them liking each other!)? Will Sciona look down on Lorlara for denigrating herself by playing Deus’ lapdog? Will Lorlala look down on Sciona for binding her soul to an inferior human body? Will they fight? Will there be a Jello pool for said fight? Will Deus sell tickets??
I share your interest and approve most of your questions, but this
> Will Sciona look down on Lorlara for denigrating herself by playing Deus’ lapdog? Will Lorlala look down on Sciona for binding her soul to an inferior human body?
seems unlikely to me. For all their faults, Alari do not seem hypocrites about their Might Makes Right ethos. A lot of the survivors are coming to accept Deus as a better leader than their own Houses, with Lorlara as a forerunner. Sciona came to see her current body as an equal or better option than her old Alari one. Arguably it makes her rather more powerful and resourceful, esp. in a combo with her blood magic; also, no need to use magic to get an ideal body.
If the Alari saw themselves as superior to Muggle Earthlings, they had factual reasons to deem so within their value system, including superior tech level, better mastery of magic, and greater personal abilities. It would be interesting to know how Alari rate themselves in a comparison with demons/succubi, which seem on a level playing field and broadly similar in civilization and group-achievement terms.
If and when conditions improve for Earthlings in terms of more of them becoming supers, getting access to interstellar-level tech, and/or mastering advanced magic, it is quite possible and even likely that Alari opinion of them shall considerably improve.
Admittedly, humans so far have not overreached themselves and pissed off a stronger species into genociding them.
No one expects the Alari PA!
English is an amazing language. We stole ALL the words.
I forget who it was who said something like “English doesn’t just borrow words from other languages. It chases them down alleys, mugs them, and rifles their pockets for vocabulary.”
“loose grammar”, not “vocabulary”
SF reviewer and perpetual snarker James Davis Nicoll, I believe.
Yes. James used to run a game store in Kitchener, ON where he was delightfully snarky to his customers and that was one of his favorite lines. Though Steven Brust and the late, great Roger Zelazny said similar things.
The last speech bubble from Sciona made me laugh out loud, unfortunately having been coughing my lungs up with some illness for the past week, it caused me a great deal of pain. That’s on me, I should know not to look at funny stuff while ill.
Sciona speaks the truth.
Two webcomics shitting on the English language today XD
Is this a coordinated thing or a coincidence?
Don’t leave us in suspense. What is the other one?
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5510
QC is still going? use to read it a long time ago, but thought it ended when some of the characters got married or something (unless that was a different webic… )
Nice! Thanks for the link. I had somehow managed to skip right from 5509 to 5511. I suppose that’s what I get for checking my comic links at random throughout the week instead of using a RSS feed or something.
last insult feels like she caught a dose of the sydney’s when she hit the trio with the hypno drug last page.
There doesn’t seem to be any point at this time.
English is fine you just have to know how to use the words.
Oh and I forgot to add…this is a soul takeover, Sciona has DNA currently, not DHA. Otherwise she would loose access to the Superion field.
But you DO capitalize race names… just not the unofficial versions. An Indian person is an Indian, a Jewish person is a Jew, a German person is a German, etc. But white and black are really just general descriptors, not a proper race name. So a Klingon person is still a Klingon. A human would be an Earthling or Terran, human is just the unofficial term we use in common speech.
You’re describing ethnicities/nationalities. Not races.
Difference seems entirely irrelevant and misleading to me since ethnicities, nationalities, races, ideologies, and religions ultimately share the same nature of cultural and political constructs. So to force relevant differences in the way of labeling them and the members of the groups they create seems an irrational and wasteful effort to me.
Barring the many other reasons why I loathe it, Political Correctness looks like an futile effort to me since the euphemism treadmill is an irresistible force as long as people stay people. Its ever-changing winds and ever more complex and maddening nomenclature are trying to win an impossible battle against human nature.
There is only one hyu-mon race (despite what certain racists want to believe), every thing else comes down to region
Jew is a religion, German is a nationality, neither are a separate race (yes, it is possible to be both a Jew and a German at the same time… shocking isn’t it?)
True, biological unity of the human species is a basic scientific fact. Culture makes all the difference. Relevant cultural differences started out as countless regional ones in prehistory, but since then state-building, conquest, migration, and imitation/assimilation have made the pattern much more complex.
Having acknowledged that, culture creates important differences between groups all the time in history. In this regard, the stance of deeming all cultures of equal value is something good for scholarship and to prevent unnecessary suffering and waste of human potential, but a major folly for almost everything else. To pass value judgement on cultures according to their achievements (from their fruits you will know them, indeed) is quite appropriate, esp. for the overarching goal of giving people the best lifestyle possible. A culture that creates the tools to give members a better lifestyle and masters greater achievements has not equal value to a one that keeps its members trapped in greater misery or a lower development level. In this regard, ‘culture’ definitely includes ideology and religion too.
Vote Incentive: See what happens when these two Alari get left alone together in a hotel room! And yes, English allows the use of “alone together”. What a great language.
If you use a word, made up or not, and people know what you meant, then you used the right word.
It’s fun to quietly invent words and watch them slowly get integrated into the mindsets of people :)
It’s a perfectly cromulent activity.
DaveB two questions, what sites do you post your fanficts on, and what’s your pen name?
There’s links to them on this very page. Just scroll up, they’re on the right.
That doesn’t look like a good place to keep a phone.
Will it leave tan lines or an indentation?
How do IRL female humans store their phone?
I’ve seen women accurately store their phone there, but only if they have c-cups or better and a properly structured bra. Those same women really don’t care about the result of chest grease. I personally go for having garments with actual pockets. Or at least a purse.
How much is a woman with Sciona’s current skin tone going to tan with casual exposure to sunlight in the USA? Honest question, I know little about how much a Latina of Escorpia’s type tans. I can only guess she is a IV or V skin phototype (in comparison to Deus next to her who seems a II or III). For that matter, do Grrlverse supers tan? I seem to remember reading somewhere they don’t. Coming from a species with dark-blue skin tone (cfr. her next to Lorlara), I tend to assume she is oblivious of the issue. In any case, it is nothing a little topless tanning would not treat, and Sciona is anything but a prude.
Any indentation is only going to be temporary.
Ah yes, the Klingons, speaking Klingon. At least they’re better off than the Romulans, speaking Romulan, from Romulus: Qo’noS managed to dodge the bullet of being known as “Kling.” https://screenrant.com/star-trek-klingon-homeworld-name-changed-why/
Jagannath? How about Jagganoth?
Panel 2 with the Translation bubble that needs a frakking Translation is perhaps one of the greatest panels I have ever seen.
Read it aloud phonetically. It’s Hollywood hillbilly.
“I could switch to House (wooltensor) if you like”.
Presumably that’s an Alari house looked down on for “talking funny” by the other Houses.
Which brings up a another point: Sciona has been on Earth for a long while (I think centuries). If Deus guess at the origins of her accent are correct (and Sciona’s reaction seems to confirm it), then Alari accents change much, much slower than human ones do.
For reference, Chaucer, of Canterbury Tales fame, wrote that seven hundred years or so ago. Try reading it in the original; it’s a different language. Yet it was written using the language of the times.
Other languages have changed about as much.
Admittedly, part of this is that humans lacked the ability to move around and talk to each other for much of that time. They also mostly lacked the ability to read during most of that time. Both literacy and mass cheap transportation (and tourism) have smoothed out languages to some extent.
Against that, Alari Houses apparently have their own accents. Considering their level of competition I doubt there’s much tourism between Houses. Reading documents produced in other Houses probably comes under “opposition research”.
I’m surprised they don’t have their own languages. Perhaps they do and that explains the accent for speaking “Alari”. Which is likely some sort of trade pidgin, done by mashing together the languages of major Houses. Perhaps there was a period of domination by one or more of the Houses, leaving a version of a “language of diplomacy”.
Oh, and I capitalized House in the above because it seems to be an important thing with the Alari.
Well, take into account that Alari in all likelihood are more long-lived and have been more advanced for a longer time than Earthlings. These two factors combined could easily explain why they show less linguistic variability than humans.
Houses are extremely important to the Alari. They are their equivalent of nation-states, nobility, corporations, and mob cartels rolled into one. They may well have developed their own languages, but parallel development of an inter-House trade pidgin makes a lot of sense. Such a lingua franca also seems the natural option when communicating with other civilizations, unless one or more equivalents at the galactic level come into play.
Sci may be hundreds of years old, but doubt she has been on Dirt for that long, maybe a hundred years or less
It may simply be she is using an archaic dialect that hasn’t changed in centuries
Strip 488 (last one for 2016, not going to link because that puts the comment into moderation and may trigger the dread 403) has Ingsol thinking about the number of blood mages he knows who could create the thing that just happened. He narrows it down to one, “But we cut (most) of her head off”.
He says that in a tone that (to me at least) meant that some time had passed and he had to think back. For a multi-centenarian to have to do that likely means it was a long time in the past – possibly a century or so.
I assume Sciona at that point had been on Earth a long time, long enough to be well known to the Council. Though I could be wrong.
BTW, “But we cut (most) of her head off” is wrong. You put in parens stuff that you could leave out and the sentence would still be grammatically correct. So, you say “…(most of) her head off.” Unless you’re going for emphasis, for which there are a few ways, but you *can’t* use parentheses for it.
No, he had already ruled Sci out and had to work backwards, eliminating the others and doing the Sherlock Holmes thing and realizing that ruling all the probables left only the improbable, and then realizing they hadn’t made sure Sci was dead dead, just mostly dead
It wasn’t that some time had passed, just simply they assumed she was dead dead (he’s a vampire, he thinks decapitationing and wood-staking are fatalities to everyone)
I am utterly losing it at the wolverine description XD
So, everybody agrees that Lorlara is dumb, right? Not “so annoying that it boomerangs around to funny” dumb, but fill-on “annoying, narrative-killing, scene clogging and utterly useless” dumb. Right? I can’t be the only one who scribbles out all of her speech balloons (have to keep cleaning the damn monitor ) every time she appears?
Is she… supposed to make Deus more likable, by contrast with her fingernails on chalkboard idiocy?
Or make him seem, what, shallow and vain because he has her around to do his bragging (really really stupidly) for him?
Whatever it is, it ain’t working, at least for me.
Please, someone have my back here.
Dave – a you have someone drop a city-sized rock on her? Is there a Kickstarter tier I can sign up for to help design her death? Really really soon?
Lorlara is an Alari, who sees what she thinks is the winning side, and attempting to get onside.
It comes across as annoying and overdone, because English (and northeastern American) affect is “cool”. Don’t do anything too enthusiastically.
Other human cultures do things differently. How much more differently is an alien (who looks more or less human) going to react?
An Alari who switches Houses is likely to be super-patriotic to his or her new House for life. Other Alari would regard the new recruit with much suspicion. How often would they even be allowed to switch?
For a human example, look at the Swiss. Their official version of birth citizenship requires you to be in the third generation of foreigners living in Switzerland to even qualify. And the unofficial version (people saying, “Yeah, he’s a Swiss”) is likely to be much more restrictive.
There are lots of other examples.
It’s funny because most of the audience think it’s overdone. Deus on the other hand probably has a handle on Alari culture, so he likely thinks it’s about the right level – for her.
Do you mean you feel Lor is an idiot rather than stupid?
Personally find her fun, way more fun than SmugD “He Who Can Knows Everything”
Lorlara is rapidly becoming my favorite Hench.
She may just replace 21, aka General 21, aka Two-Ton 21, aka The New Kano, aka Gary Fischer…
Which is, honestly, a matchup I’d like to see. I feel like Big D would keep it from turning fatal, and then probably hire 21more-or-less on the spot. He’d make Avery entertaining foil for Syddles, I think.
Actually, that’s a fun idea. A Grrlverse, Vertureverse crossover. Big D & Dr. Killinger desperately trying to separate the two cosmoses, Hank mooning after Max so hard that even Dabbler’s last aura can’t touch him, Dabbler furiously trying to figure out HOW, Dean and Gadget getting into ALL the Super Science/Super Engineering trouble with harpoons, Zephan and Dr. Orpheus having mutually opaque aphorism-measuring contests, Brock and Math failing to kill each other, The Monarch and The Ascenders going to war for incredibly petty reasons while 21 and Anvil, surprisingly, hit it off and become frenemies with benefies…
“Benefies?” Yeah, I dunno. Just roll with it.
And of course, absolutely nothing of any consequence or lasting importance results from it all.
BTW: panel three works with the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”
Nerves don’t really give a shit about voltages, beyond “enough to trigger the next Action Potential” or “not enough to trigger the next Action Potential”. Nerves chiefly deal in spike-trains – basically your nervous system is delta-sigma-modulated, not amplitude-modulated
Do you see any good reason (apart from comedy and her being an oddball with suboptimal grasp of Earthly culture) for Lorlara to sport a pith helmet (with a cleavage window no less) when visiting the dungeon site? She has dark-blue skin and usually lives in a place close to closer to the Equator than the contiguous USA. She also did not dress that way last time she came to North America. Is this her way to cosplay as a traveller/explorer?
Having her close to Sciona in the same picture allows me to acknowledge the difference between their hair colors. I find Sciona’s more appealing, and I notice it is significantly different from the original Alari.
I’m just going with Lorlara having “researched” what is “cool” and “stylish” in all the wrong ways and getting all the wrong takeaways from it. Like, she somehow stumbled across the Wild Thornberries and got the pith helmet idea from that.
So since Alari have DHA instead of DNA, I assume that this means a human/alari crossbreed is impossible?
A wolverine is a pure carnivore. Eating a book, with all that vegetable fibre, would likely cause explosive diarrhea in the beast. Wolverines are known for their distinctive and strong aroma; if she gets the runs too… It wouldn’t matter if any of that got on an OCR reader, it would still be an incredible mess.
Fun fact. There are absolutely people who can pull this trick off for foreign languages, at least contemporary ones (a professor at USC was good enough to be able to pick out not just what some’s first language was, but what dialect and region of the world they’d learned english from). Dunno about this historic variant. Police use them to narrow the profile on suspects stupid enough to make phone calls. If you want to erase your accent entirely so it can’t be used to profile you speak in a breathy sybillant voice. Completely annihilated all tonal markers.