Grrl Power #338 – Bawdville act
They’re only doing it because you react to it Sydney. It does look like she may be loosening up there towards the end.
I had established in the comic that succubi can detect arousal like how sharks can sense electrical fields, but Dabbler’s “Porno Sense” as Sydney dubbed it, can curiously also detect “rompy” situations. Even if no one directly involved is aroused, it’s a fair bet that if there is some sort of soap suds overload incident in the laundry room, or a clothing eating bacteria is on the lose, Dabbler will be the first to know.
I took the time to draw water splashing off Sydney’s orbs, but then the word balloons or water streams mostly covered it up. :(
Dabbler’s partner is one of the lead inventors for Arc-SPARQ. Her name’s Digit, we’ll see more of her later. With some of her gadgets she could potentially hang with the field personnel in Arc-SWAT, except, she’s not allowed to do field work after one or two significant incidents involving some of her bonkers and impractical gadgets. She’s still useful to have around, especially with others to take a second or third swing at her tech and iron out the… quirks.
Thank you for the continued votes. The race for 1st is getting pretty tight. I will definitely try and have a finished version of the picture by the time the next comic goes up. These shower scenes are surprisingly time consuming to draw. Coloring people without clothes definitely saves some work cause there are fewer colors and selections to have to worry about, but then there’s all the specular highlights on the skin, shower streams, steam, soap suds. I think this page actually has the most layers I’ve ever used.
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.
Digit meets Agatha and the multiverse Explodes.
Not immediately, thanks goodness. It’ll take them about twenty-five minutes to build and test the Reality Bubble Detector.
don’t worry, they’ll fix it! they have a plan!
Hah, no they dont.
I would not be at all surprised to learn Digit was loosely inspired by Agetha Heterodyne of “Girl Genius” fame.
That muscle definition is just astounding. Seriously.
Wait until Sydney hears “gumdrops!” in the shower, and think it’s about her orbs! She’ll lose her marbles over this if she’s not on the ball about which orbs this is about.
*winds up towel, soaks it down, rat-tails you in the honey!*
Well punned good sirrah. But still deserving of a thwack’d booty.
>> I took the time to draw water splashing off Sydney’s orbs
I thought Sydney was the only girl there WITHOUT “orbs”
She’s got gumdrops.
Hey, hey…there’s a technical term for that. It’s “fried eggs”.
humph.
(And no, I don’t have fried eggs…haven’t since I was twelve. As if.)
I thought fried eggs was for old people that had sagged beyond all possible recognition?
she has different kind of balls.
“And now for something completely different.”
Any chance that the cast page will start getting updated, given the influx of new characters?
Yeah that should happen at some point.
Wait, I have a question: Sydney is on her period, yeah? Can the ladies who are reading tell me what the general rule of thumb is for using public showers when you’re bleeding?
Not a lady, but I can still answer this one. (Got this info from a cousin who is an OB/GYN.)
The simple version is: If you’re using a tampon or menstrual cup, you can leave that in place. If you prefer pads, obviously you’re going to have to remove it while showering… so the very first thing you should do (and the very last thing you should do before drying and putting your clothes back on) is rinse your privates thoroughly. This clears any residual blood, so any bleeding after that will be minimal enough that almost nobody will notice. The one catch is that reapplying the hygiene product can be hard to do gracefully. (And I’m not going to go into detail about that, since you only asked for a “general rule of thumb”.)
And after all that, give the shower a courtesy rinse so you don’t leave any spots or discoloration for the next person to find.
Thanks. That specific girly issue has always sounded rough to me :(
Don’t forget that cramps don’t necessarily mean flow. They can and often do happen before the main event.
And, there are also some women who are genetically fortunate enough to have light menses (there are other causes that are not genetic, and those are not as fortunate).
And I thought the topic change to Mountain Dew was an odd one…
Among other symptoms
I applaud your discretion in your description. After all, this is a subject best left as a “general rule of thumb,” rather than a “specific” rule of thumb usage.
Some things are best left shared only between women (or women and their OB/GYN), as I found out the hard way. I’m one of those people that’s usually too polite to interrupt when someone is talking, so I had to listen as my cousin gave me the full details. Let’s just say it’s one of those things I’m happy that I don’t have to deal with.
Personally, I glad to not be tasked with bearing a child. For a guy to understand that, he’d have to know what it’s like to pass a gallstone that’s the approximate size & weight of a bowling ball.
They don’t call it “labor” for nothin’…
Which is why I keep saying that my kidney stones were the SECOND worst pain of my entire life. Even though one of ’em had my urologist making jokes about “that’s no moon, that’s a space station”. Seriously, he had to blow it up with lasers. Thank goodness he didn’t have to break out the proton torpedoes.
I do not want to suffer through EITHER one ever again, thank you. Once was enough (twice for the kidney stones).
Yeah, that’s one of the few things that make me glad to be a man – two things I do NOT handle well are sharp pains and bleeding – the thought of both of those happeneing to me, uncontrollably, every month of my life from 13 to 55, I simply cannot comprehend how I could tolerate it.
It’s our superpower. We can bleed for 3 to 5 days a month and not die. Think ye on that, and DESPAIR…
Before my implant I prayed for cycles to only last 5 days
On the contrary, everyone should know. If you keep thinking it’s gross or trying to ignore its existence you will only be reinforcing the wall between genders.
The fact that it’s just been discussed here means that we’re NOT trying to ignore it & NOT reinforcing that “wall between genders.”
Where I work they call what you describe a bio-hazard. It is NOT okay to let your blood touch a public area without afterward scrubbing the area with bleach and then alcohol and disposing of the cleaning materials by double-bagging in plastic trash bags or placing in a bio-hazard container. Anyone can have a blood-borne pathogen that they are unaware of, so even if you think you are free of transmittable diseases you should still follow this procedure. Just saying.
so, i never really got my head around how harems powers actually work, whats this about being unteleported?
She can exist as 1-5 bodies. Since generating a new body that wasn’t around takes the form of it popping into existance somewhere different than where the other bodies are, it appears as similar to teleporting (more so if she hadn’t customized each body to look different).
So when she only has 1-4 bodies out (of the max 5), the others are “unteleported.”
To slightly clarify what Huttj509 said:
She can manifest up to five bodies (I think that’s a better way to explain it than saying “she can exist as 1-5 bodies”).
Any bodies not currently manifested are kept in “stasis” (for lack of a better word), in whatever state they were in when they were de-manifested. She does not receive any sensory input from the de-manifested bodies, because they are in stasis.
So, Harem can keep body with the broken arm de-manifested until the doctor has time to examine it. She will not feel any pain from the arm until she re-manifests that body.
Also, even if the doctor sets the broken bone and puts a cast on it, it will not heal unless Harem keeps that body manifested (again, because the body is in stasis… so it doesn’t need to eat, drink, breathe, sleep, or excrete, but it also won’t age or heal.)
So the body with the broken wrist is going to be “stuck” manifested for at least a couple weeks so she can heal (The Doc might be able to speed healing with her power but I don’t think it’s going to be enough to have her walking around tomorrow without the cast.)
it is not “stuck”, for the healing to be done, its just that the progress bar wont move while she is teleported.
if she needs to, she can always teleport elsewhere, or just teleport it until situation clears if need be.
all that would do, is delay a little.
*unteleported*
True, but to get that body to 100% faster would mean it has to be “Active” for the duration. if something else comes up I’d be guessing that body’s pretty much restricted to Base, maybe helping Gwen on research.
They have super with healing powers for a doctor, so she might be able to heal broken bone much faster than the way it heals normally.
to be even simpler, although may not be exactly accurate, she put one of her bodies in a pocket dimension, where the time doesn’t flow.
or if you are asking about “one of” thing, well, she’s got the name for a reason.
To REALLY go off on a tangent, how does Daphne celebrate her ‘birthday’?
Doe she use the date for Daphne Prime?
Does each one get assigned the date of their first appearance?
(DaveB explained they appeared one by one over a period of years in her childhood)
Since time stops while in stasis, all her biological ages are now out of sync with the calendar anyway, so does the actual date matter?
who needs an “on occasion” party, when every day feels like one?
They probably can’t remember which order they ‘appeared’, they can’t even be sure which Harem is the ‘original’ Daphne, Berry is simply the one that has had the least ‘modifications’
Daphne’s power is teleportationing, the reason there are five of her is she discovered that when she ‘vorp’s the one in the ‘starting’ location can stay put (eventually she will gain another ‘body’)
Well… it’s a ‘one person, multiple bodies’ situation. The bodies don’t have any divergent identity beyond the affectations she gives them (like Sorority Harem, Military Harem, and Goth Harem, all just her ‘playing to the character’ that body is dressed as). I’d imagine as the identity behind those bodies has one birthday, she would consequently have all bodies celebrating that day.
that’s an entire new look at “party of one”
On this subject, here’s a question: Harem is one person with five bodies, so sensory data needs to pass between the various bodies — how fast does that happen? Is it instantaneous, FTL, c, or STL? Is there a maximum range? If one body got in a rocket and went to the moon (2.6 light second round trip), what would happen? Would she have timelag on her senses / her movement?
I believe this was covered when it was explained that the multiple bodies minds were quantum entangled the speed of data transfer would be happening in real time to all of them there would be no delay. For all intents and purposes their minds are all in the same body at the same time across all active bodies.
Ooh, FTL signalling. Cool. Causality breaking for the win!
I’m still chuckling over Dabbler’s “Porno Sense tingles.” reaction to the start of the liquid soap fight in the showers.
awww dabs remembered syds comment (both naming perception one and nicknaming X one).
Got to say, I sometimes lament your low age rating. A little boobage would be totally appropriate in this scene.
The way they are covering themselves just looks off, given the circumstances.
Still, it isn’t worth chasing off viewers for a couple of isolated boob flashes, I suppose.
ignoring panel 6, what else would they do with their hands, instead of placing them on the wall?
and in panel 6 i can say that she is just trying to prevent them from jiggling cause… well they are a bit heavy i would imagine.
so, they have an excuse to do so as far as i can see.
Well, Sydneys own arm positions seem off throughout the entire page. Washing her arm in one panel makes sense, but her arm never leaves her front.
I can see some ‘huddling’, since she is uncomfortable and there are people looking into her stall, but she has her back to them for most of the shots and still has her arm over her chest.
It isn’t ‘wrong’ just… off a little.
Sydney is covering up because she is not happy with her body image (remember her indignation when Peggy welcomed her to the “A-Team”?)
I vote for minor adjustments to pages where appropriate for a higher age rating and making them available to Patreon contributors. Majority of the pages could be re-used so wouldn’t be as intensive as having to draw an entire new page just for naughtier content right?
so you are suggesting redrawing parts of the page for more fanservice… i am not sure if that doesn’t border with 4th wall breaking… i mean, in this page they don’t seem to be behaving too unnaturally, or purposely hiding themselves, so if they were made to made more of them visible, it would be as if they were showing off. and, if they are showing off, then to who?
its not flat out “hey viewers look at me”, but it kind of would seem implied.
I did say where appropriate ;) In this page I only see that in panel 1 really. I don’t know about you but when I’m washing the back of my neck my elbows are out, not squeezing against my chest. Just an idea for the future anyways, there have been pages in the past where Dave has said he’s deliberately censored things for a younger audience (I recall the transparent wet outfit during the mall rumble for instance).
I assume Dabbler’s porno sense also tingles whan someone doesn’t have enough money to pay a deliveryman, or is in proximity to a muscular poolboy.
And here I was just about to complain about the lack of naked Sydney in this comic. :)
Is it just me or looks Harem way to small in the first panel? They are only, what, two meters apart? She would be this small even if she would be on the other end of the room. so it looks more like 50m.
It’s not just you. She appears about half the size you would expect (and clearly much smaller than panel 2, where she is suddenly way taller than the brown tiles).
Since she’s feeling a little uncomfortable being naked with these women, maybe she is crouching down a bit behind the partition.
Harem, not Sydney
Oops. Maybe i should save some more so I can afford to pay attention.
hmm i think the brick may have something to do with it… but even so she is a little small…
The 4th person in the scene is Peggy and….. Peggy is bi. That is probably who Dabbler is picking up on. (But she is professional enough no non-empath is gonna pick up on that)
There is a fifth person there, too. Remember Heatwave is present. Maybe Brooke is inadvertently tingling Dabbler.
based on the previous page… she should be at least partially visible in panel 4. might have left between pages.
DaveB mentioned he ran out of time (or space) to add Peggy and Brooke
took me a minute to realize that the “camera view” is from the shower wall.
Huh, nice way to multi-color her hair with the orbs
Let’s review the evidence:
1 – Blond and wearing goggles.
2 – Tendency to ramble on about inventions she wants to invent.
3 – Favorite word maybe starts with “g” (Gumdrops!)
4 – By your own admission, her inventions tend to FAIL CATASTROPHICALLY!
I don’t know how to tell you all this, but we have a Gadget.
as already agreed on, rumbling comes with the “mad scientist” job.
so, who is that gadget you are referring to, but that one is not much of an identifier.
way too common.
Most likely gadget is a mistake, they probally meant its supposed to be Spark, which is a term from Girl Genius Online, A Spark is a mad genius, who builds things beyond the laws of physics – also its a story where the main character is blond, has goggles, mutters while building things, & (at 1st) her devices fail spectacularly.
… And she’s from a family line whose overall expertise is such that many could build doomsday devices out of teapots, and sufficiently twisted that they WOULD.
Agatha was based on Gadget Hackwrench
I’ll take your word for it.
Well, consider they share many similarities, but Gadget definitely came first so makes sense that Agatha was based on Gadget
Know Agatha. Don’t know Gadget.
…and they could build them during their sleep, make them do holes in mountains with them — other mad scientists do both before breakfest, Agata does it before BEING AWAKE (not to mention robots that build robots that build robots that revolt against their creators and have the spark to boot).
No, Gadget was a character from the old “Chip ‘N’ Dale Rescue Rangers” cartoon
Gadget Hackwrench from Chip ‘n Dale’s Rescue Rangers. Super cutie too. For a mouse, that is…
I adore Dabblers expresion in the bottom panel, it’s so domestic animal like. Sydneys expresion in the 4th panel is pretty good too.
It desperately needs twitching ears though. Would complete the image.
It’s not her ears that are twitching ;)
Your art has gotten better and better lately. Syd’s wet hair in this is amazing. And Dabbler’s cartoony expression is very cute.
Interesting how the orbs seem to shine light upon their enviroments although no “light” was detected to come out of them. Also I love the Full Metal Panic Fumoffu reference in the blog entry.
the answer is simple.
just as a psychic can detect a presence of another psychic, or a wizard can detect magic nearby, but they have trouble identifying each other, her balls are powered by yet another force, not known to either.
and what we call light in this example may be just some sort of illusion.
light IS an illusion (or illusion is light) as neither can exist without the other. (Grins evilly) Of course, there’s the illusion of total darkness, but even in darkness there is light (red shift/ ultraviolet) unless you’re in space/vacuum, but even then there’s still the ambient light of all those stars…well, you get the idea anyway ;P
I’m also just talking out of my hat here…it’s a nice, dark, empty space…
Dabbler’s scan didn’t detect the glow coming from the orbs while she was looking at them. (I don’t remember if they even detected the Orbs themselves, I know Gwen’s didn’t).
Gwen’s scan didn’t detect anything, not even a lack of something
if i remember correctly, she said that there was absolutely nothing special about them.
buut… https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/621 here it is.
“…not even a basing E.M. or pulse echo”
“they are glowing… we can see the glow but i can’t detect the light coming off them.”
she didn’t say they aren’t there… just that they aren’t emitting anything… and not sure what “pulse” she meant…
if by “no echo” she means they don’t reflect the magical sonar or something, it can be taken as if they weren’t there…
if we could get dabblers face in the last panel, & instead of a speech bubble, she wore a shirt with that phrase on it instead…. that would be a super amazing wallpaper….
Harking back to a previous strip, I keep wondering which locker Leon is stuck in while watching all this.
The one in the men’s locker room :P
Not Leon, Math.
Not Math’s speed at all.
Refer Panel #2 of – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/933
Plus Leon’s too tall to fit in the lockers. :)
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
The panel 5 drawing of Sydney might be one of my favorite ones in the comic so far.
Huh, I didn’t realize that unteleported Harems maintain their state. I sort of thought she was creating the bodies anew every time. Very interesting to learn that they persist while unteleported.
if they didn’t persist, they wouldn’t be able to get all their various dyejobs and haircuts.
Nice to know Sydney’s a true blonde, since her hair didn’t go dark when wet. (Get your mind out of the gutter; those whose blonde hair is more based in being ash blonde than golden will find it looking brown when it’s wet. Any other source of bodyhair is more akin to a beard than to head hair–it isn’t going to necessarily match. Example: blond males with auburn or brown beards will probably have auburn or brown armpit hair…and no speculating any lower on the body than that, kthxwe’redonehere.)
Everyone in Archon seems to know that the bank robbery so long ago (Yesterday, in their time) was a fake except for Sydney and maybe her fellow recruits. Even Heatwave, who seems a little slower on the uptake than the rest. Do you suppose that’s how Sydney is going to find out about it?
Heatwave: Sydney, you’ve got to stop clobbering my guys or I’m going to get really annoyed with you! I mean, yesterday it was my boyfriend Mr. Amorphous and now today it’s our buddy Achilles!
Halo: Huh? When exactly did I clobber Mr. Amorphous?
Heatwave: Oops . . .
Actually, the more I think about it, the more unlikely it seems.
Dave would be able to get a funny page or two out of a slip like that, but by having Sydney figure it out for herself, he can be funny and show that Sydney is actually a smart cookie and not just another pretty face.
The real question then is, how will she react to the discovery?
So, Sydney wants to make a few more laps, huh.
Nah doesn’t count ,. shes out of uniform :-)
…And not conducting the horseplay in public either…
Heck, for that matter, if she were that far out of uniform in public (horseplay included or not), she’d have to contend with disciplinary action a lot more severe than running laps.
FFFPLBLPBL!… :D
Good lord! I have fallen in love with yet another webcomic, but this time I think I have finally found the holy grail. The one that I earnestly check for updates every day, even aside from monday and thursday. (about that, I’m terribly sad to learn that you only update twice a week! Is there something we can do to increase the frequency? Could I / WE donate, to give you enough income to do this for a living? This, i think ANY sane person would agree, is definitely an extroardinary work of art, literary prowess, and imagination.
Sorry, posting again because I forgot to check the box that will email me when new comments are added to the thread.
I just realised, that tinkerer girl looks just like Gadget from the rescue rangers
What if they did this in public but out of uniform? Would it be alright then?
Panel 4 is probably my favorite non-combat panel in the series so far lol
Wow, Dabbler looks really adorable here!
Funny, I thought the same thing about Sydney. In particular I liked the way that her wet hair picks up the colours of the orbs, even better than normally. Although her glaring eyes do somewhat counteract it, her head-down, embarrassed body posture does make her adorable.
So….I realize I’m commenting on a 5 year old comic (in my defense, I didn’t know this comic existed 5 years ago and this page was linked in today’s blurb) but isn’t Harem bi? And, that being the case, isn’t it possible that one of the people involved is aroused by the situation?
As a fan of ‘Wapsi Square’ when I read the name “Digit” I immediately picture a humanized Jumping Spider. (It involves multiple slapstick misses with Fae Size-changing Magick and a Jumping Spider who befriended the dog miniaturized by the first use of the magick.) She manifests as blonde, but she still has not gotten the hang of moving facial muscles she never had as a spider so she looks like she has no emotions.
I really like Digit! I definitely hope we see them again…
It’s her! <3