Grrl Power #1350 – Objectified permanence
There is an obvious breakpoint for any stat where it goes from “nice to be recognized for that thing” to the crippling insecurity of “will anyone love me for me.” I won’t say something obvious like there’s a downside to incredible wealth or comeliness, I’ll just point out that a lot of people tend to define themselves by their most outstanding attribute, partially because very few people have the time to develop multiple outstanding attributes. If you’re wealthy, and that wealth is not dependent on you personally putting in 90 hours a week, then you might have the freedom and time to become a champion dressagist (dressager?) and also a world class painter. But if you’re “the smart kid,” and by that I mean the skips grades and takes advanced courses and starts college at 15 smart kid, then chances are you spend most of your time developing those smarts and doing extracurricular work, and when you finally make it to CERN and discover that everyone there was the smart kid and now you’re kind of in the middle, you might suddenly develop and urge to become really good at the clarinet or rebuilding car engines so that you have something to make you stand out again.
Having women fall all over themselves to catch your eye is a fun fantasy for guys because that’s not how it works for 97% of us. It’s sad but also a little cathartic when I find a thread on Reddit where guys get to reminiscing about the one time 12 years ago when someone paid them a compliment, because it was the only time it’s ever happened in their life. That’s how far from “women falling all over themselves” it is for most guys. That’s also why harem anime/novels are so popular. The idea of a guy being able to attract/keep multiple women is such high fantasy that it makes anything that happens on the new seasons of Doctor Who seem grounded and down to Earth.
Having an S++ tier comeliness (my art notwithstanding) is going to make for some good times for sure, but Flash Drive is going to eventually enter a phase of his life where he wants something more than a relationship based on superficial attraction. Probably. Maybe it’s enough for him to know that he’s got 57 kids out there that he’s never met.
The thing about a comeliness stat is that it’s actually hard to imagine how it would work above a certain level. Strength is easy. There’s always something heavier to lift. Dexterity, Intelligence, most of the usual stats in a game are easy to figure there’s no real upper limit. Comeliness, though… there is a limit to how attractive someone can be, IMO. Like, imagine the most attractive person you can. Cindy Crawford in her prime, or Jenna Ortega or Pamela Anderson or Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld movies or Hugh Jackman or Benedict Cumberbatch or Benedict Wong or whatever you’re into. (As an aside, the Marvel movies had a lot of guys name Chris leading their casts, but how weird was it that Dr. Strange had two actors named Benedict?)
Anyway, so imagine the most attractive person you can. Now imagine someone just a little more attractive than them. Some of us can do it, probably in the form of “Monica Bellucci, but with Grace Kelly’s nose” or whatever. But here’s the thing. Imagine someone ten times more attractive than them. It’s not possible. There’s such a thing as too much symmetry, or too few blemishes, or the shape of their eyes can only be so… just right. There’s a point where someone will enter an uncanny valley of doll-like perfection and artificiality, because human brains know that other humans do have stuff like skin texture. The only way I think Comeliness can function as a ceiling-less stat is if the person in question starts to emit a mind-control aura, or pheromones, or their mere presence warps reality in minor ways.
Also, you have to figure that someone with a 4-times-the-human-limit Comeliness stat must be teetering on the edge of ruin at all times. If being that attractive requires an absolutely perfect balance of facial structure, symmetry, and every other feature, then one stray freckle or a tiny cut could blow the whole system out of balance, and they’d lose like 20 points of Comeliness in an instant.
Please enjoy the increasingly stale vote incentive.
This month, I’m closing on a new house, selling my Mom’s house, finishing packing Mom’s house, moving city to city to the new house, forwarding mail, canceling utilities, all that. And after that’s done, I get to start the process of selling my old house, which needs a little work before it can realistically go on the market.
SO. I’m going to try and do this vote incentive in stages. Currently it’s just pencils. The TopWebcomics one will update with colors and detail until we get to the no clothes versions, then that will continue over at Patreon. Also there will be a comic or two in between each version to fill out the story.
I know it’s hard to tell from just the pencils, but this is Heatwave and Jiggawatt. The comics will explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. Although I feel like even saying that much makes it easy to guess, but hopefully the journey will still amuse.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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"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.
llmao Dabbler getting the high-definition-high-shutter-speed camera ready
She has a cybernetic eye, that probably has that as default function.
Not at those speeds by default. She can probably track him but not keep a perfect 1080p quality with the eye. Thus the ultra high speed camera that does 1/100000s captures. Probably only that large because storage of 3 minutes?
Escape while you still can, Flash Drive.
“It’s not possible. There’s such a thing as too much symmetry, or too few blemishes, or the shape of their eyes can only be so… just right. There’s a point where someone will enter an uncanny valley of doll-like perfection and artificiality,”
OK, I’m going to have to sort of agree, because I’ve actually met somebody who was approximately a 12, and in some unquantifiable way it wasn’t about symmetry, lack of blemishes, or eye shape. Though I suppose they were a given. In practice it was more like somebody had dumped a lot of points into her charisma stat, and you WERE going to find her attractive regardless of how few of your personal boxes she ticked because that’s what the entry said. It was actually obscurely painful to look at her. Maybe she WAS emitting a mind control aura?
OTOH, I actually was in the same room with Tyra Banks once, and she embodied your remark about too much of all that. She looked like a very well executed department store manikin, beautiful like a painting, not a human.
Having had some relatives who dabbled in the modeling industry one thing I’ve noticed is that some beautiful people don’t photograph all that well and some very photogenic people don’t quite live up to the photographs in real life. I’ve only ever met a couple of celebrity level women. they were attractive but not mind blowingly so. Charisma does make a difference. the only male celebrity I was ever actually around was Regis Philbin. At the time he was a little short guy in his 60’s but he OWNED the room.
Having met many beautiful famous people, charisma and kind personality blows them into the next levels of beauty. Some beautiful people have dreadful personalities that make them forgettable, especially in the modelling industry(I didn’t stay long in it because of those types).
Avery Brooks is so sweet and genuinely nice he ticked EVERY box, including some I didn’t have on my list, ditto Michael Dorn, especially when he stopped to talk to little kids.
Then there’s some like John de Lancie that have like you say, Charisma at AA levels of maxed out, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off them when they spoke to me, and had all the feelings.
In-game Flash Drive’s GF was blind and knew him since he was a kid, and was the only woman he could trust after his Divine Make-Over because of how the feminine gender is depicted in this arc. But he has a character tag, and an in-comic job that makes sense, so he will be back distracting the female cast some time in the future when the Twilight Council needs to deliver an ancient magical artifact that must not fall into the wrong hands delivered to Arc-Light or Dabbler or Halo for some whacky plot-driven purpose, or Halo has to have an order of pot-stickers post-haste before s[ice is the only heat they have, or you get it, Digit needs an estrogen boost but can’t get HRT…
Thursday will be the last time Flash Drive will be seen for a while, exce-pt as a blur in the background and maybe a tag in the credits that explains what that cloud of dust was.
The problem with comeliness is EVERY character it interacts with applies a modifier(giving the total Allure) to it. Given her brain would probably shut down if it happened even Sydney could encounter someone that would consider her to have the highest allure of the group presented in this situation.
Panel 3 – I assume Sydney isn’t deliberately trying to pop Gadget’s boob out?
Gadget? do you mean Jiggawatt?
tho Jiggawatt an Kat were left off list…
Digit, not Gadget… Sydney really hasn’t a clue, has she?
Re: the commentary… Eh. As a girl, it’s not that most men don’t catch women’s eyes often, it’s that women have been trained out of paying compliments to men, either by “society at large” or by men themselves. Consider: can’t say “I think you’re beautiful” without being mocked at best or sexually harassed or even assaulted at worst. Yes, including by people you know well who suddenly think they have “an in.”
A guy who showers regularly and didn’t burn his face off can have a happy harem- or, if we’re being more true to real life, a happy polycule, by being decent and meeting the right people. It doesn’t have to be a fantasy and it’s really not a matter of objective Comeliness score. It’s not that men are uggos and women pretty, it’s that women having personal taste can be mocked, treated as impossible, or assumed to mean consent.
Not to mention that toxic masculinity has trained a lot of guys to be Highly Offended at the thought of their having a “beautiful” anything, be it their eyes or their smile. To toxic masculinity, “beauty” = “female” and “handsome” = “male,” so calling them in any way beautiful is calling them a woman. We can use the word “attractive,” but how many minds leap to that word? We tend to default to “nice,” if giving a compliment at all, and even then may wind up having to defend ourselves if the guys responds with a grumpy, “and what’s THAT supposed to mean?!?”. It’s kind of like “I want to be your pants” guy from Max’ first foray as Harper. Would he say that sober? Maybe. Some guys probably have. But they think it’s a compliment, when it’s actually insulting/gross, with a dash of creepiness thrown in. But the sober guys would be oh! So confused that a woman wouldn’t see that as the compliment they intended it to be.
Thankfully, toxic masculinity is slowly losing ground as more people recognize it as a bad mindset/outlook to have, and guys in the younger generations can take the “you have beautiful eyes” comments as what they’re intended to be–compliments. Which means they’ll hear it more often.
“Can Palpatine give cookies to orphans, or does the Dark Side require he be cartoonishly evil at all times, lest he lose some Evil Force points?”
It’s not that he’d lose Evil Force points from giving them the cookies. If it were part of some evil scheme, he absolutely could do it without any problems.
It’s that he’d lose Evil Force points because of being the sort of person who’d WANT to give them cookies. The cookie giving would just be a proxy for the warm fuzzies that broke his connection to the Dark side.
I think the power of the dark side comes natural for guys like Palpatine. He is just being evil because it’s fun.
In retrospect the grand moff Tarkin is more a darksider than Palpatine. Palpatine is an evil aspartam he is evil for fun and power. Tarkin is evil because it’s is his true nature … he don’t want cookies from the darkside being not force sensitive. He does it to vent frustrations of being only a mundane.
And they are losers in the Sybarite perspective, mind is a body toy , and the quest for power is a quest to eliminate all sources of frustration …
In the Palpatine an Darth Vader cas it’s a lose … Vader by the will of is master , Palpatine by his obsession for plotting and micromanaging.
“I’m the diety of sex drug an rockn’roll
The most beautiful and lovable of four
The last to cross the threshold
Pleasure will be ours”
In the name of the lord of excess , I condemn them, the freeze-dried plotter of the lord of change , and the black knight of the lord of the skull throne , who was incidentally a Monty python one.
Between the sci-fi version of Freddy an the futuristic Monthy Python black knight me, a Slaneeshi master of trolling will brand them “Dark Dark Binks’ apprentices ” …
Homep in the traces of Sade… le divin marquis…
Physical beauty and attractiveness are not necessarily 100% correlated. There was a young woman I knew at a former workplace who was pretty enough, though I’ve seen many prettier, but every time she walked into a room, all the men in it wanted to drop one wing and run in circles. I can not tell you how or why, but it was definitely there.
If I had an euro for each actor named ‘Benedict’ in Dr. Strange’s main cast, I’d have two euros. Which is not much, but it’s funny enough that they have that many.
Well, as Twain said, “The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.” Real life is continually throwing our way stuff we’d roll our eyes at in fiction.
Part of it, though, is that there are so many different things going on, that while any given coincidence may be unlikely, that there will BE unlikely coincidences of some sort present is almost guaranteed.
On the topic of combining Some Features while trying to to get too weird about it all of these examples are very attractive but to nominate a feature, Sigourney Weaver’s smile, Mila Jovovich’s eyes & Claudia Black’s voice
Having met Claudia… :)
This is sexual harassment.
But, technically, less than what Dabbler usually gets up to. I guess she’s rubbing off on them.
it is about more than just “rubbing off”
Overt sexual harassment and Maxima … blames the victim.
Well, I guess he WAS asking for it. Dressing like that.
Well, she wasn’t *blaming* him, so much as just insisting on the fastest resolution possible to the awkward situation. (I mean, even her team succubus literally went a bit loopy over the guy; good chance she was worried about maintaining her own composure, to some degree.)
I don’t even think I’d say it was a bit rude (like it might be elsewhere,) considering it was a sensitive military location, and she knew he was already aware of it and would understand. A terse “leave, please” actually works in this context.
Absent a mitigating factor such as “He literally has some sort of power that makes women flock to him like moths to a flame,” she should be telling off those under her command for their unprofessional behavior, not telling them “You get to stare at his butt as he’s leaving.” If this were a beautiful woman, and the men under her command were ignoring their work to ogle, I’m fairly certain she’d be telling them off. She might get a pass in this case, on account of her likely suspecting there’s something supernatural going on with him (you don’t reprimand a soldier for being unable to stand after getting hit in the sternum by a wrecking ball, even if your own powers let you shrug off the same). Of course, if not, this wouldn’t be the first time she used double standards in these regards.
I’m of the opinion that at a certain point, attractiveness becomes subjective (around 7-8/10).
It feels like everyone talks about women like Tyra Banks or Pamela Anderson, even in their prime, but I’ve never agreed. I can see why they would be considered a 10/10, but they never hit me the same way.
It’s best exemplified with men who like obese women: you do you; don’t expect me to agree.
I believe that “certain point” is “the entire scale”. Attractiveness is intrinsically subjective, as it is purely a measure of the subjective experience of perceiving someone.
No, not really. I’m not saying that there aren’t a few people out there who find one eyed hunchbacked burn victims highly attractive, but for the most part what humans find attractive in other humans boils down to fairly objective proxies for good health and fertility. There’s a hard coded mechanism in the back of your brain that’s assessing everybody you meet on the basis of how good a mating opportunity or how bad a mating competitor they look like. (And smell like, too!)
Sure, it goes haywire in some people, and you’ve got your subjective check boxes, too, but a large subset of the criteria are common and biologically grounded.
“Attractiveness” is definitely subjective. “Comeliness,” on the other hand, I’d argue is a pretty-much universal scale, regardless of gender or proclivities (unless we’re including interplanetary/interspecies beings in the assessment.)
Eeeeh, I don’t think this is sexual harassment. Gadget, maybe, she’s just, not really all there socially? Though I suppose accidental sexual harassment is still sexual harassment… Plus, I don’t think Max is blaming Flash Drive for it. Just that the best way for it to stop is to have him leave, so everyone can get back to work.
As for Comeliness Stat… well, there’s a reason why Charisma in games like D&D isn’t Comeliness, but also your force of personality and speaking skills. Can be a bit hard to imagine someone being more Charismatic, but easier than Comelinesses imo
Probably not intentional sexual harassment from Digit.
I don’t think any amount of social not-there-ness makes “Can I get a scan of your body to admire/pleasure myself to?” not intentional.
:p
Honestly I’m starting to wonder what he’s superpower is. I know they’ve got a bunch of superpowers to have weird quantifying capabilities or prerequisites like Halo she needs to store up the energy for her orb somehow I believe or somehow orbs are connected to her to the point where if she’s completely out of energy so are they
It seems in a lot of cases rather than wistfully wanting someone to love them for themselves, the very rich or very famous come to think all the adulation as their due and become creepy weirdos like JK Rowling, Elon Musk, Kanye West and Neil Gaiman.
You are thinking too hard about attractiveness and your ability to portray it. The list of attractive people you named left me looking a lot of them up and going “Really?” Attraction is subjective and you have a very easy out. The way I see it, is Mach Drive’s power isn’t just he is attractive, its that whether it be looks, ofactory, actions, an aura, or all of the above, he eminates something that just makes all observers think “that is athetically pleasing to look at”. Which I also think is better than saying they are attractive, as this seems to cross species as well and standards of beauty, evolution, yada yada yada.
I like the fact that nothing distracts Digit from her scientific quest for bum scans!
She is usually somewhat …”easily distracted”.
:)
As a demisexual on the ace spectrum where I absolutely can’t fathom more than hugging someone who isn’t a good friend at least, and emotional bonds are CONTINGENT
This is one of the more hilarious comic arcs I’ve come across.
the problem is comeliness isn’t just physical. there are people who have something of an aura that demands attention. you see them out of the corner of your eye or they walk into a room and they have your full attention. that’s how people describe Bill Clinton to me through 2nd and 3rd hand accounts. you want to see someone with a high cha score its not just T and A they have presence.
Dressage rider.
Don’t give Comeliness (or whatever you call it) an open-ended numerical value. Take the GURPS approach – a person’s Attractiveness in that can be Horrific (supernaturally-ugly, -6 to reactions), Monstrous (generally the lowest a mundane being can be, -4 to reactions), Ugly (-2), Unattractive (-1), Normal (+0), Attractive (+1), Beautiful/Handsome (could enter beauty contests or similar; +4 from those attracted to your sex, +2 from everyone else), Very Beautiful/Handsome (could regularly win beauty contests or similar; +6/+2), and Transcendent (supernaturally-attractive; +8/+2). There’s also an Androgynous modifier for Beautiful/Handsome and higher that splits the difference between the two groups and applies it to everyone (so +3, +4, and +5, respectively). Being uglier than Horrific would involve taking the Terror Advantage to represent the fact you literally frighten people just from them seeing your face; being more attractive than Transcendent would also call for having Terror, but typically with the Awe modifier (which just reflavors things a bit).
As for people’s attractiveness, yeah, that can be complicated, and more than just basic physical appearance can be in play. I remember the wife of a coworker I met. On paper, she was probably average or a bit above it in the looks department (like, each part of her face was attractive on its own, but the relative proportions were all subtly-off, is the best way I can describe her). But the first time she came in – and importantly, before I knew she was married at all, let alone to my coworker – I was pretty much instantly smitten, and from what I learned later, this apparently happened with nearly every heterosexual man who ever met her. To the extent her husband and friends joked (or maybe they outright believed it) that she must have fae blood (which, to be fair, would match with how her face was put together). Of course, if it weren’t for that last part I’d just chalk it up to my own oddities – I often find the Uncanny Valley attractive rather than repugnant.
I am just going to infer that every lady that took his card tucked it in into their cleavage in a way meant to draw his eyes to it.
Am I the only one who sees the horny Entrapta energy in panels 2-4?
Now, the question is whether he will take off nice and slow or push his speedster limits? Maybe do a lap to build up speed?
Gotta say, Max is seeming a little rude here :p
Is his name a intentional reference to Sneaker Nets?
“Sneakernet, also called sneaker net, is an informal term for the transfer of electronic information by physically moving media such as magnetic tape, floppy disks, optical discs, USB *flash drives* or external hard drives between computers, rather than transmitting it over a computer network.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
It is both playing it straight (he is manually transmitting data as courier for safety) and a subversion (definitely not using shoes a lot).
I forget what the comic was (Rising Stars maybe?) but the woman with hyper charisma by accident met some guy who was completely immune to her power. She was acting mostly normal and ignoring all the extra male attention so it took her a few seconds for the anomaly to register. After a little bit her subconscious told her something was wrong and then she realized her ability did not affect him – and before you say it, she got reactions from gay men too.
I forget how the issue ended, but after her ‘wtf’ double or triple take she chased the guy down and had an extended conversation with him. Not sure if he even knew about his immunity before this. Her ‘Wait, what?!?’ followed by ‘I need to talk to that guy’ followed by ‘This is a nice change’ series of reactions stuck in my memory.
A question for those who consider themselves well and truly ace. Can you find a person so aesthetically pleasing that they are still distracting separate from any desire for sex?
I’m not ace but can still say the answer is yes.
Yes. Usually their natural charisma and generally good personality is what drives it over to the, “Wow, they’re stunnin'” level of distraction. Doesn’t mean I want them, but I have had to explain why I’m overtly staring at and sketching someone on a few occasions.
Perhaps you need read menage-a-3?
Comeliness doesn’t generally appear as a stat in RPGs because a bit of thought tells you that it doesn’t perform the same was as a Strength or Toughness stat; as David points out, it has no quantifiable output. It’s also only one part of a person’s Charisma/Presence factor.
From a designer perspective, though, Charisma/Presence is a useful stat; think of it as SOCIAL strength. I wouldn’t use Comeliness as a stat, but instead treat it as a purchased advantage/boost. High levels of Comeliness will boost your Charisma/Presence, for sure, but it will also have side-effect since you don’t USE your comeliness so much as perpetually project a Comeliness Field. A ridiculous level of Comeliness will change the behavior of the people around you, often positively but sometimes negatively (attractive women can tell you all about unwanted attention and even dangerous attention).
Delivery Khaled
suffering from being on time!
Okay, is he offering his card because he welcomes the attention? Because otherwise I feel like he should be saying, “Colonel, your subordinates are making me feel very uncomfortable.”