Grrl Power #1462 – Sword insecurities
Once upon a time, just after Max got her powers, there was an incident or two (or five, several of which went unreported to the authorities – by which I mean her mom and dad) where she would demonstrably point at something a say “Pew!” and there would be a… collateral incident. Once it was at a church, when she was pointing at some pews. Fortunately her energy blasts at that time were a fraction of what they can get up to these days. And by a fraction, I mean like 1/12,000th, not 19/20th. Or 10/1. That’s a fraction. Obviously, in English, saying something is “a fraction of…” implies less, but 1/1 is a fraction. Any number over any other number is a fraction. Possibly except x/0. I mean, it is still written as a fraction, but much like telling NOMAD “I am lying.” or “print open parenthesis openquote does not compute closequote closeparenthsis,” it does not compute.
Harem’s shirt does say something, in a language/script I made up as I was drawing this page, though I’m not sure if or when it will be revealed in the comic, cause it’s kind of a lame joke and I’d probably have to dedicate a half a page to it. The way things play out in my head is a lot like jokes from 30 Rock or Parks and Rec, with a lot of back and forth camera shots, some of them just capturing a quick expression before cutting back to the person saying or doing the weird thing that prompted the expression. Some days, it’s a lot of work to edit all that down to comic format.
Speaking of 30 Rock and Parks and Rec, have you guys seen “The Muppets”? Not The Muppet Show, CBS did a one short season, like 10 or 12 episode run of The Muppets, and it’s basically 30 Rock, where Piggy is a late night talk show host, but she’s naturally a short fused attention diva like Jenna Maroney, but with Ms. Piggy’s penchant for cartoon violence, but it also has Parks and Rec energy because it’s filmed diagetic mockumentary style, with asides and mini interviews to a tagalong camera crew. Honestly it’s very well done and pretty funny and I’m kind of furious that it only got the one season.
Yes, I’m aware of the new single episode of The Muppet Show produced by Seth Rogan, which was so true to the original format I was having nostalgia flashbacks to when I was… damn, 1976 to 1981? That would have made me 4 to 9? I must have been watching in syndication when I was around 10-14?
Anyway… Sword fighting!
Sexy bodymod news lady Gail has a special one-on-one interview with Tournament Quarter finalist Saraviah Nightwing! And if you subscribe to Gail’s Space Patreon, (which, due to the vagaries of Earth and Gal-Net’s DNS servers, happens to be the same as the Grrl Power Patreon, go figure) you can see that same interview in the nude! Well, eventually. The nude part of the interview, as well as the version that includes shading will be coming soon. Of course, you can view the interview in the nude now if you take your own clothes off. You know. Technically. Just put a towel on your chair first.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
I kinda wanna see a cool sword fight though. Max just blasting someone from the sky isn’t entertaining! By that logic why bother with a sword at all? Just nuke the entire arena!
I wildly disagree, blasting a bunch of obscenely powerful enemies from way out of range is plenty entertaining for at least a few pages before it starts getting dull. Especially when you expect the response to be more complicated and frustrating to deal with and then *zap-BOOOOOM* problem solved, let’s talk fika snacks.
Save the magic sword for the enemies that are still standing after the zap-booming is done.
Yes, especially when it the set is handled properly. Big flowery purple prose self-introduction and exaggerated movements think Daffy x Lucha libra with a side of Japanese wrestling (yes, it’s as over the top and lucha libre physical) and she goes full Dr. Jones on them. heh. I’d more worried if the opponent comes out like Musashi or the Man with no name. Because only the deadliest reach that level of relaxed inner peace. Because, they have already decided and know how this is going to end. That being said, from a strategic standpoint saving the big energy weapon for the penultimate round at the soonest. p.s. off to do site maintenance for XXXXXX-XXXX toad, not the best to hench for. But always brings the best snacks when out on a job.
It makes sense to me, why not open with your most powerful attack and then mop up up close & personal? The problem comes when you have multiple, equally powerful attacks that each have particular advantages/disadvantages. Like, I don’t know what specifically might be a disadvantage with “blast them from 1,000 yards”, but supposing a foe has energy resistance but not kinetic?
“Opening with the super” has always been one of my favorite tactics, assuming the game system doesn’t require you to charge up during each and every encounter.
Reflections? Maybe? Can Max’s beam be reflected? Are they lasers, particles, plasmas, phasers, etc? Masshole redirected at least one, and magic portal might too.
I can think of a few reasons hypothetical reasons not to open up with a super move. 1- If you lead with your best you might win this time, but next time everyone will have seen it and have a plan. 2 – Super moves are often costly in terms of time, energy, opportunity, or some other resource. 3 – If you have multiple high end moves which one you use might reveal what you know. Ex: A high power military using bunker busters on exactly enemy leadership reveals that military knew about enemy leadership in a way that a more subtle plan or comprehensive plan might not. 4 – Your move might not be as super as you think.
All that said how confident are you in your supermove? If it really does always lead to you winning and can never be countered then yeah go for it. Or better, if you somehow know your opponents plan will be ineffective against a specific option you have, use it! But, every symmetric war has two sides that think thought they could use force to coerce the other side and at least one of them was wrong. Just because you can’t think of a counter to your supermove doesn’t mean someone else can’t. I routinely counter uncounterable spells or effects that seemingly offer no response in Magic the Gathering.
Max’s beam is really light or photons, suckhole’s gravity bubble just did a “lens” effect to it. A normal mirror would not work, the heat would warp it and cause it to break. She can focus the beam so tightly that a shield designed to absorb energy and spread it over the entire shield that was on that fel ship couldn’t handle it. So maybe a gravity lens or a portal would be the only recourse there. Max can use such immense power that normal tech (in the galactic sense) isn’t up to it. The last time she encountered a magical black hole she didn’t have any problem with it.
I’m thinking of Indiana Jones in “Raiders” where the guy comes at him swinging a scimitar like a bad-ass and Indy just pulls his gun and shoots him dead from a safe distance. One of the greatest moments in cinema history and all thanks to a nasty bout of dysentery…
The sword is contingency for when that isn’t possible and she needs to deflect a magical attack.
It’s not a mainline solution.
Blasting the entire arena was literally Kill Seven’s opening move. Effectiveness is not guaranteed.
↑→↓↓↓ FOR MANAGED DEMOCRACY!
Swordsmaste- no wait, that’s still kinda gendered, swordsmaster vs swordsmistress. Sword sage! Sword expert! Sword saint! Swordsy McSwordsface!
“Swordsman” isn’t gendered. If you wanted to specify a male swordsman the correct word would be “swordswerman”.
That would be true if we were speaking Middle English
You are 100% correct on EVERYTHING you just said.
Nevertheless, I am calling them Swordsy McSwordfaces instead.
Touché.
Just for future reference?
It was the Android Norman that Kirk defeated by having Mudd say ‘I am lying’. NOMAD was defeated by pointing out that it made an error, assuming Kirk was its creator.
> Trek Nerd <
I crown thee, king of the nerds, your high nerdness.
*bowing with reference*
Loved both. Can always do with more muppets.
Need more swordfighting? Muppet Treasure Island.
Happy Thursday.
Avenue Q FTW!
In “Muppet Treasure Island” and “A Muppet Christmas Carol”, Tim Curry and Michael Caine used diametrically opposed but equally wildly successful methods of acting with an otherwise all-Muppet cast. Michael Caine acted as though all of the Muppets were human, and Tim Curry acted as though he himself was a Muppet.
I think maybe Tim has been a Muppet all along.
Heh, I just watched a whole video on YouTube yesterday about how the Tim Curry part of that is (supposedly) false.
It’s less that Curry treated himself as a muppet and more that Tim Curry and Michael Caine both treated the Muppets as people similar to themselves, but the two are very very different people. I mean, I’d talk to Weird Al Yankovic very differently than I would Shigeru Miyamoto, and both of them are human.
Tim recently did a memoir, and before doing the audio record someone mentioned the theory to him. He categorically denied it, for much the same reasons you laid out.
When other people spill their ages and make me feel younger <3
I had the exact same thought. I never would have conceived that Dave was older than I am, but he’s got me by a few (more than 1, less than 10) years.
same…
Yah bunch’a kids, get off DaveB.’s lawn!
Yup. That’s where I’m at on it…more than 1, less than 10.
Is it just me or does the short guy in panel 5 look like he’s sitting on air?
And is Harem is looking a bit more freckled than normal?
Yes. And Harem also looks like she’s got some moderate sunburn on her nose and cheeks. Freckles tan faster than the unfreckle bits of skin.
Must be the 24/7 contact exposure to Altus’ skin. Or maybe getting poked by his horns.
I hated “The Muppets”. It’s like they looked at “The Muppet Show” and said, “You know what’s wrong with this show, there’s too much fun.” So they sucked all the fun out to make it more edgy or relevant, or whatever they were going for. I just found the whole show depressing.
“CBS did a one short season, like 10 or 12 episode run of The Muppets[…]”
*It was ABC. It helps if you remember that ABC is the Disney-owned one.
Didn’t watch most of The Muppets, but I did see the scene where the Swedish Chef does karaoke of Rapper’s Delight, which was awesome.
The hack most often used by fictional swordsmen to cover for the inherent lack of range of a melee specialist is a range closer – flight, teleportation, absurdly extendable swords, “killing intent” that reaches beyond the blade, etc.
Many authors have contributed thought to this.
As for Harem’s “sunburn”, perhaps she’s just flushed from recent exertion. That’s what happens when you have pale skin (which freckles usually indicates). Surely she isn’t blushing.
actually, they just use Windblades and turn the slashes into ranged attacks. So your sword becomes your all-range attack.
However, it doesn’t seem to work as well for most thrust attacks. Weird, i know. Gotta cut at em.
Lack of pride in her physical abilities makes Max harder to deal with than most other “strongest” characters, I like that.
+1
Could’ve avoided all the linguistic gymnastics by just saying “a small fraction,” which would almost unambiguously be inferred as meaning “x/y where the magnitude of x is less than the magnitude of y.”
*significantly less
While overall “the muppets” was a lackluster venue for the Muppets, there is good reason to watch it. One is that this is the time where Dave Goelz was really finding the depth and breadth of Gonzo as a character, another is getting to see Bill Barretta perform as the many characters that he brings to life. But the best, and in my mind the most significant one, is Seeing Matt Vogal Take Uncle Deadly into his breakout role as Miss piggy’s handler. Miss Piggy is an unstoppable force of nature, but we get to see Unk’y D use flattery, deceit and sarcasm to bring her to heel. it is as if that monologue in the back of every introvert’s head has come to life.
I liked The Muppets, but apparently it was too “adult” for most. I knew it was going to be something special in the first episode with Fozzie’s “When your online profile says ‘passionate bear looking for love,’ you get a lot of wrong responses. Well, not wrong… just wrong for me.”
From the back, I thought the blonde was Digit at first. ‘Why wouldn’t Maxima consult their equipment expert on an equipment matter?’, I thought.
And speaking of Digit, (who we haven’t seen much lately), and the previous debate over the nature of Deus’ intelligence power, does anyone think that she WON’T have some surprises that even the smugster couldn’t predict? There has to be some difference between super-smart and super-savant, doesn’t there?
She didnt speak to Digit about it because it wasn’t harpoon-related. :)
Not every supersmart person is written as badly as Sage from The Boys or Menace from Strong Female Protagonist (who technically as just a mind-reader, not a genius) was written.
Some are actually written well, like Ozymandias from Watchmen, or Deus here (so far). If Deus really is as smart as Maxima is strong, he likely has thought of almost anything Maxima might think up, aside from when she makes him do a spittake on his $3000 suit. Plus unlike many others, Deus does not underestimate Maxima (and also so far as NOT been a villain at all – if anything he’s an antihero who likes pretending he’s a villain because he likes the memes.
When in reality he is the savior of humanity. All praise Deus, amen.
I don’t think Deus is actually ‘smug’ per se, he just knows he’s right, in the same way that M is annoyingly frequently right, which makes her attitude more insufferable to Jubilee because ‘Little Miss Perfect’ really IS practically perfect, so it’s not like she’s covering up her imperfection with a smug attitude – the attitude comes from being correct and knowing she’s correct. :)
I don’t quite understand the caution in panel 5 – I mean it’s not as if she didn’t single- shot a Fel destroyer with zero preparation? Considering how feared they were, is any single being likely to be able to stop the pew?
Yes any single being might be able to. Remember, Dabbler fought Maxima to a standstill, and Dabbler is NOT the best fighter in the universe. There are likely other fighters in this fight who would be able to beat Dabbler, and thus by logical inference, would have a chance of beating Maxima as well. We don’t even know where the meteor that gave Maxima her powers came from, for example. Why would it be out of the realm of possibility to think that if it came from another planet, that planet would have many beings capable of beating Maxima. Or that other planets might have also had people that had that ‘geode water’ splash on them as well. Or beings who hava magic without the exploitable weakness that the fairy had. Not to mention Maxima has other vulnerabilities as well, given how she had to be saved FROM that supermannekiller (by Hiro) when it used that hypno-beam on her and it only didnt work as well as it could have because it had a crack in it. Or during the Battle in New York, she did get frozen in a temporal slowdown beam, which forced her to have to lower her armor to almost nothing, which allowed Brut to punch her across Times Square. In a free-for-all fight, that time alone without medium-level armor would possible be enough to render her unconscious or worse.
She is deliberately limiting her powers to things that look different than that blast because she doesn’t want to get ‘made’ as Maxima.
Just wanted to say, your detailing and shading is totally breathtaking.
I LIKED “the Muppets.” My favorite bit had to be when Miss Piggy was being romanced by a guy who was interfering with Kermit’s handling of the show, and so Kermit decided to lean into it and gave the guy recognition. LOTS of recognition. Which meant showing Miss Piggy the new title, with her boyfriend’s name above hers and in a much larger font.
Miss Piggy: “…”
And that’s when she became single again. :P
… I can’t tell if you’re being facetious/hyperbolic in that inset corner in panel one or not. Surely they haven’t actually been away from Earth for three months? Faulk probably would have called them back long before then, just on the principle of the matter. At least, I assume so, given his hesitation to let them go in the first place. Would the tournament really last that long? O_o
Max only completed one round, and there are thousands of fighters in this tourney. It will take weeks to go through so many participants! As it was, it was Max’s “nerd” memory that got her out of the fairy’s maze trap. I think at some point she’ll run into something she won’t be able to beat, only because she lacks experience in her opponents’ fighting style. This was an idea out of left field to her from Cora. But, it is also good training for Max in case one of the heavy hitters come to Earth to “shake things up,” she’ll be better at dealing with them. It’s a pity Sydney can’t join, but I have a hunch she’s far from ready for that.
He’s referring to the fact that Maxima just went through three months of training in 3 days or less, not that 3 months have transpired between comic pages.
Ah! Okay, that’s what I missed. Thank you.
The fact that Dabbler already was able to fight Maxima to a standstill, and Dabbler is not the best fighter in the universe, means there ARE likely others in the universe that could beat Maxima in a fight.
The question is whether either of them were seriously trying to kill each other in that fight, which I doubt. In terms of raw power, Max seems pretty high on the list, much higher than Dabbler (at least without drawing on the tantric energy generated by a 50-person orgy), but my impression is that neither of them is a particularly skilled fighter, as far as the universe is concerned, despite Dabbler’s decades as an adventurer, and Max’s military career. They lean heavily on their power, and there are evidently culturally martial races that train from a young age that are likely to surpass them both in terms of technique. I imagine there are individuals among the Nth that surpass them on both power and skill, but I’m given the impression that the Nth have largely advanced beyond that kind of conflict.
It looks to me like Dabbler’s shirt shows several stages of a transformation from the word “BED” to the acronym “LFG”, which seemed self explanatory enough.
Dabbler is not depicted on this page. Perhaps you mean Harem?
In the fifth panel shouldn’t the little guy be saying “I’ve been meaning to ask…”?
Don’t knock it till you try it, Max!
https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/images/summary/summary04.jpg
(I wasn’t sure if this uses HTML or bbcode for links, so I just lazy pasted the image url.)
I thought the point of Harem’s shirt was to have an abstract picture that kind of looks like letters, so it draws the eye to try and read it, but then you linger since there’s nothing to read and she can say “HA, I got you to stare at my chest!”
That actually happened to me with a friend back in my college days, I was trying to read the text on her zip up hoodie which was open and trying to figure out that the letter cut in half by the zipper was an “A” left me looking at her bust longer than she was comfortable with…
Obligatory 1/0 comic reference:
https://www.undefined.net/1/0/
If it were possible, I would have Max imbue the sword with her energy
So glad we’re away from the Deus scene. That guy killed my enjoyment so badly that I stopped caring about the comic for about a year and a half, and only half a year ago started doing more than dipping my toes in to see if it had left him behind.
Good riddance to any scene that includes that guy. This tournament stuff is fun enough to remind me of the reason I used to be on the Patreon. If there’s more fun stuff and less Deus, I could see myself enjoying this again, as more than an occasional diversion.
As a general rule, there’s no pleasing everyone, but unfortunately, the audience for the comic has wildly differing tastes. Plenty of people begging for the tournament stuff to come to an end… Though I think that sentiment tends to pop up for nearly every arc that runs for an extended period. I don’t know if opinions converge on any of the characters, but Deus is particularly divisive, with people who adore him and others who abhor him.
The only person the author can be sure to please is himself, and for the most part, that strategy seems to maintain readership, even as people loudly declare their departure as one part of the comic or another offends or bores them. I don’t know if chasing a fickle audience ever pays off.
Why does Harem in panel 2 look like she has the hots for Maxima?
Wait… DOES she have the hots for Maxima?
While I wouldn’t absolutely say no, Harem has on several occasions demonstrated that she is a 19 (possibly 20 by now) year old smartass. So I’m betting that it is more about giving Max sass. She just also happens to have the hotness.
No camel toe confirmed
Isn’t Max avoiding using her energy attacks because they’re more likely to out her as Maxima, Fel ship destroyer? That was part of the point of loading her with weapons.
I thought The Muppets was ABC (the original series was NBC I think, WAY back when). Unless there was another revival I missed. All that really stood out were the constant references to Kermit and Miss Piggy’s troubled marriage, and Kermit having Leah Thompson on his list of celebrities he could cheat with – only to actually meet her and find out she’s really into frogs right when it looks like he and Piggy will get back together so he has to be a good froggy…
Though, regardless of where they first aired, both the original and the revamped one were on Disney+ last time I checked.
So hear me out….Swordchucks. That’s what Maxima needs.
Made of Lightsabers?
While all of this is happening, I’m wondering whatever happened to Max’s brief boyfriend. Is he still dating her, or is that in the trash bin of history?
We saw his only a few pages ago! The author’s notes on that page says it happened shortly before they left on this trip, and that their relationship continues to develop.
Not necessarily brief, we are on comic’s time here. From his point of view it might only be a week or two.
Looks like someone’s swordorientation is straight.