Grrl Power #310 – Dabbler’s happiest meal
Dabbler’s hammer isn’t a physical hammer, it’s a melee only amnesia spell. I just happens to look like a hammer. It also isn’t a broad spectrum amnesia solution either. When Dabbler starts doing tantric stuff with someone, she can set a marker to roll their memory back to. She can’t just clonk someone with that hammer if they see classified documents or discover she’s really an alien or whatever.
The Barberian (named by you guys) should probably get his own Who’s Who entry at this point. I’ll try and get that up today.
Edit: To clarify one thing for those of you concerned and so you don’t have to go hunting though the comments for my response – Barberian fully knew what he was getting into last night, and he’ll eventually remember most of it, just not some of the more intense aspects. Her wipe spell is a bit like a flashbang, it’s a total whiteout for a while, then stuff mostly returns to normal. I will revisit this on a future page just to make sure it’s clear.
I was going to do a page of Harem driving with Sydney into the base and touching on the configuration of the building layout, but that would have involved me drawing car interiors and exteriors, roads, and some of the other vehicles Archon keeps in the garage. The real reason I skipped it though was while informative, nothing particularly amusing was going on, and I was having trouble with entertaining dialog. Turns out the previous page may need some clarification, so there might be material there for a bonus page for book 2, like Sydney asking if Harem has to compensate for the Coriolis effect and the like.
I thought “Unicorn Butt Patrol” would get more traction in the comments on the prior page, but as per usual on the Internet, everyone wanted to talk about physics instead. Here are two more treasure troves of bad book covers if you’re interested: Good Show Sir contains lots of older covers, usually painted with some measure of skill, and some of which honestly aren’t all that terrible, but a lot of questionable composition and material. The imaginatively titled Lousy Book Covers has more modern examples, so obviously prepare yourself for bad photography, lousy photoshops, terrible typography and even clipart!
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
First: thanks for the edit. This is the internet and view of the male sex, especialy among us males, varies alot and is changing, tradition, machissmo, liberalism, feminism and so on. Its inflamed. Not so strange since it has been a revolutionary century. Usualy in history generations could go by without change, these days there is a paradigm change every 10 years or so, in different areas but still, its confusing never being sure, never being a steady adult, constantly a student. People needs some certanties, lessons to live and die by. We get stressed out with a revolution more then once in a lifetime.
Second: Barberian?! Pure brilliance!
we are going to be alright, the 20 century was basically the same there were paradigm shift every year basically, we started that century mounting horses using the telegraph to comunicate long distances and people still iluminating their homes with gas lamps and it ended with the internet, the moon travel and everyone having electricity, 2100 will be interesting being compared to the 2010s
Ofcourse you have muscles human women don’t. You have four arms for starters.
I don’t think the extra muscles she was referring to are related to her additional arms ;)
Even with the four arms… imagine the hand-jobs! O.O
(Pardon, I’m about to go off the SFW readability):
Barbarian: “She squeezed the shaft, stroked the head, tickled my balls, and massaged my prostate… ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!! I lasted 30 seconds! (sob) I swear I’m not a premature ejaculator!”
AMNESIA-WHAM!
Barbarian: “Bwuh?”
Well, considering that a woman’s vagina is largely muscle (with connective tissue and mucous membrane) to begin with, either Dabbler has several separate muscle groups “down there” or she’s messing with Sidney’s mind. Now, according to the Kama Sutra, there is a series of exercises designed to give a woman… superior muscle control in the genital region, to the point where she can do some pretty impressive tricks (which I am NOT going to describe simply because we’re already tap-dancing rapidly on the NSFW line as it is), so presumably Dabbler’s muscular control throughout her pelvic region rivals that of a Bene Gesserit sister from Dune (who learn to control every single muscle in their bodies individually as part of their training).
No wonder Sidney’s wincing! This whole strip is loaded with TMI! 0_0
I haven’t read the whole thread of comments, but I’d like to point out that what should be most surprising of all is that the Barberian is actually heterosexual.
Unless warping around your Kinsey scale rating is also one of Dabbler’s powers
Why’s it so surprising that the Barberian is heterosexual? Because he cuts hair?
The Zohan also cuts hair, and the Zohan only likes the women as well, my friend.
and I quote: “Not a lesbian, not a lesbian, not a lesbian.”
most barbers I’ve met are strait men, albeit much older and crankier men usually obsessed with using strait razors even when they have the arthritic shakes.
Now hair stylists those guys are FABULOUS!!!
Eh, it was brought up right there on page three. Welp, nm.
Debriefed indeed.
This just reinforces why I like Dabbler so much. NOT because shes a succubus, but because she likes to be goofy. ^_^
Yeeeah… edit or not, this is still rapey as all hell. “Oh, I promise it was totally consensual. And sure, I keep mind wiping the person, but it’s for their own good, I promise!”
If the genders were reversed the goddamn site would be on fire right now.
First I agree that if the genders were reversed the site would be on fire, but isn’t it also on fire now?
I see a lot of comments debating whether or not it’s okay and a fare share of commenters with comparable moral concern/critique as you.
I also share your concern that wiping memories and hypnoboobs are at the very least morally questionable.
I think Dabbs has a much easier time than any human at finding a willing partner.
I see a lot of people bringing up her using her Lust Aura and/or Mind Control of some type to pick up her “dinner”. Everyone focuses on that and whether it’s “rapey” or not.
I think you are missing an important part of the equation, as a succubus she’s going to have senses to tell her what peoples emotional states are, especially in relation to sexual desires. She likely never has to use her abilities to provoke those feelings, she’d just stroll by a group of guys and “listen” for the strongest response. She then checks the guy out, and if he looks like fun, goes and says hi.
Given her looks and personality, I highly doubt she’s EVER had to so much as “nudge” someone to find a partner for the night.
That’s like saying it’s OK for a martial artist to walk around the street with a loaded nuclear rocket launcher, because he/she probably never needs to use it.
It’s not that whether or not that it’s, but that it’s morally questionable in itself and even the part about not needing Maxima has proven that her good looks alone aren’t always enough, so even that could come under attack.
I’m surprised people thought “rape”. I mean, it’s a possibility, but a VERY slim one. She’s shown to antagonize Max, but ONLY Max, and even then their dinner was shown to be quite civil. They even sat at the same table. Other than that, her interactions with Sydney have shown that she goes out of her way to avoid affecting her with her powers in private.
I mean, there could’ve been a discussion about the consent issue of the mindwipe, but to compare a mindwipe to actual rape… seriously? And it’s not like he wasn’t going to find out considering she LEFT HIM IN THE BREAK ROOM OF ARCHON HEADQUARTERS AND OPENLY TOLD PEOPLE WHY.
And as for the talk of female on male rape? It’s totally possible, even counting cases in which it’s a straight, unattached male interested in the female. Look up the chapter in Fans! in which Alisin and Keith met: he agrees to sex on her terms, but she holds him captive for three days and frequently physically harms him during that time. Even with her promise to let him go (which she keeps) it’s still incredibly traumatizing.
Fun fact: most of the trauma associated with rape isn’t simply about the sex, it’s about the fact that you are put completely at the mercy of the other person while they abuse your body in often painful/degrading ways, with no promise that you will ever be released from your torment. If you think that straight men can’t be raped by women, it’s because you’re equating physically and mentally enjoyable sensations with rape, when the truth is that they’re worlds apart. Really, it shows an INCREDIBLE lack of sexual experience or imagination on your part.
I gotta say, Dabbler’s face in the 6th panel…. oh god I’m dying
Hmm. Dabbler’s mischief-face is a lot like Math’s.
My thought exactly! I wonder what if they combine their efforts…
The problem with this comic in my opinion isn’t that there’s too much implication that the sex itself wasn’t consensual, which even before confirmation would be complete speculation, but rather that the mindwipe IS almost explicitly presented as if it wasn’t.
Even if its “totally for his own good, I promise”, massively altering someones memories like that is something that both parties should explicitly consent to and there’s a blatant disregard for the gravity of it. Something so serious shouldn’t be presented in such a lighthearted matter in such a questionable way. Sydney should have a whole lot more questions to ask about this situation, for instance.
Can the author at least confirm that this was agreed upon before hand? Because if it actually wasn’t and both of them are acting like its totally fine then that’s really fucked up.
He did. It is printed, in bold, in the author’s blog above.
The edit was added into the commentary after I posted my comment. I’m actually pretty sure he was partially replying to me since I’m one of 2 people commenting about the issue.
The reason it IS in bold is that it’s an edit.
Think before you post next time.
It is very clearly marked as an edit, so that much is self-evident. Notably it was updated days before you made your comment. You are mistaken in thinking you had anything to do with that, as a result.
Further you are not the only the second person to have made a comment like that. Clearly you have not read through all the 600 posts, including those in the three pages of comments prior to this one.
By the way my bold comments? They are not an edit, they are controlled using tags. The author’s edits do not have to appear in bold. He did that as a courtesy, so that it would stand out to anybody reading the comic and feeling concerned. Should they try reading, that is.
If you wish to get snarky, you would be best off reading the comments, before doing so.
Dabbler’s mischievous face in panel 5 is funny.
So Dabbler just slept with a super-strong dude to recover some of the supernatural abilities she’d previously expended… and the only other thing we know about that dude is that he cuts hair for a living.
There’s a very twisted Samson & Delilah parallel in there somewhere. I wonder if that was intentional.
Intentional, yes… <furtive side glance>
Nice post!
I quite miss Dabbler’s mischievous facial expressions such as those on this page. Recently I feel she’s been only sweet and understanding smiles.