Grrl Power #378 – Plethoric princess proliferation problems
It would be cool if the next Disney Princess was actually a Marchioness or an Arch Viscountess. Cool may not be the word I’m looking for. Still, it would be interesting to see her standing in that Princess linup, knowing that even though she’s very much a 1 percenter, she’s still basically a scullery maid compared to the rest of them.
If I was Sydney I would have some serious questions about how Dabbler’s glamour works. She might be wearing that dress for real, but she’s certainly not wearing those boots. She has hooves, she can’t wear any kind of shoe except something that stays on with nails, or maybe some sort of spats. (I googled this just to be sure and it turns out they do make little booties for horses, so maybe she could actually wear something over her toes. In any case her glamour still has to disguise their true nature.) So if she kicks glamour shoes on to the floor, how far away can she get from them before they fade from existence? Well, the answer is that it depends on how hard she’s trying to fool someone. In this case, Dabbler knows Sydney knows that her human appearance is a disguise, so she’s not cranking it up. After she kicks off the shoe, it falls to the floor and disappears as soon as someone isn’t looking at it, just like a body in a video game that’s trying to conserve memory. If she was in an environment where someone might be suspicious of her identity, she can create a version of the glamour that makes independent phantasms for each article of clothing and accessory that she can kick off or leave on a nightstand, something that could last for days on its own. Obviously this takes much more energy, and she would just wear real clothes and accessories in place of making illusory version. The boots would still present a problem for her, but not all succubi had hooves. They’re a physically varied species, since they can integrate traits from the father, or more accurately, the non-succubus parent.
Dabbler, as a Jill of all trades, is not the top of her class in much of anything, (except for her math and science ability, but that’s innate, not a skill she had to learn) so her abilities as a succubus aren’t as keenly practiced as some others. We’ll have to see if Sydney’s truesight can penetrate an A+++ glamour. I guess that’s S-Class really. Anything over A+. Sydney might just be edging out Dabbler’s ability, or it may be the equivalent of dropping a tungsten rod from orbit onto a log to make firewood. Dabbler will eventually talk about the origin of Succubi and why their glamours are normally so tough to crack. Also Dabbler is eating a finger full of guacamole, not a spicy nacho. I meant to draw her with a blob of green stuff on her finger but the panels didn’t quite work out that way.
More importantly than any of that, Adam Warren has decided to post early volumes of Empowered online as a webcomic. Or a web serial as he calls it cause he’s old school. I think just volume 1 is up now but my understanding is that he’s continuing to post the other books, maybe a page at a time? Anyway, check it out, be aware that it’s about a superheroine who gets her completely skin tight costume ripped up which makes her lose her powers and get tied up constantly. I wouldn’t call it NSFW exactly, but that will probably depend on where you work. It is funny and sexy and plays with superhero tropes so for the most part I’d wager the Venn Diagram of people who like Grrl Power and Empowered has significant overlap.
This page colored by Keith.
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.
Wait, Dabbles is seriously going to try Sydney-food? o_O
Thing is, it’s not Sydney-spicy food, just regular-spicy food. All they had was habaneros, I think Dabbler can handle it.
Yes, but would Dabbles know that it was just regular-spicy though?
It’s more likely it wouldn’t even affect her, similar to how peppers have no effect on birds or fish.
if she can stand in (a childs) dragon fire and not show a care she is more than tough enough to hide any spice pain from syd’s foodeven if it was up to syd’s standards.
Yeah, it’s one thing to stand in fire, and another to gargle molten rocks
Sez DaveB:
Okay, so Dabbles knows Sydney enough to be careful about Sydney-food (would have loved to see if steam would escape from Dabbles’ ears though :D)
[simpsons]Her ears if we’re lucky![/simpsons]
i think the real question seeing her behavior must be “is he going to try sydney?”
Well yeah, she wants to ‘dip her fingers’ into Sydney :P
Eh. Dabbles could probably stand Sydney Food.
Knowing her, she’d find a way to make eating Sydney Food sexual.
I think we just found a perfect way for dabbler to seduce sydney… uhoh…
The way Dabbler is behaving & expressing herself there, she’s projecting an attitude that she’d like Sydney AS food right now.
I mean, really; That’s a good job of projecting “seduction” vibes there…
if dabs was syds thought bubble would be up with “not a lesbian. not a lesbian” like in the ballroom unless xurial decided not to give halo a choice and have the tomboy crumble under her powers.
i so want dabbles internet access
Guys, you confuse me with this re-occurring “Dabbles”. One or two times could have been a typo, but “Dabbles’ ears” can’t be. You’re doin’ this on purpose, don’t you???
wwwwhere did THAT come from?
From the internet.
Yes. People have given her a nickname based on her ‘codename’, in much the way that people in the DC universe will refer to Superman as “Supes”.
*Sigh* Hopefully I get it right this time:
Thx, got it now. (Btw., AFAIR Superman was nicknamed Supie here in Germany back in times…)
Supie, Supes & a few other nicknames by Ambush Bug I really don’t want to repeat, have all been in common usage for Superman at one time or another.
If you mean me, then yes, it is deliberate, just remember, that Dabbler dabbles
doubt an average human could handle it, and not post some weird shit on some forum, or give away your passwords by mistake.
idk it would need new software with key thorts to trigger actions including a start and stop on the typing but i doubt it would be to hard once you have a cybernetic eye that you can replace the feed of.
I dunno…I’d think it would just be a matter of practice. When we first learn to start talking, we say all kinds of crazy stuff, because we don’t know how to shut up. I’d imagine a direct brain hookup for the internet would be the same way. If anything, the whole thing with forum trolls and internet flame wars would probably be good practice for handling newbies. Add in some firewalls to block popups and unwanted access, and a few other things, and you’ve got a system.
Actually, the biggest problem would be maintenance–I very much doubt that the implant has direct access to Dabbler’s motor centers, and if it does, it probably has all kinds of safeguards to ensure that she can’t just get her brain taken over by hackers. And if she doesn’t have those safeguards, she deserves the righteous smiting she will surely get.
well, if the connection is actually 24/7, then getting hacked is a big concern.
but if the connection can only be opened and closed from the inside, hackers would have only a few seconds to make a strike, and be prepared when it happens.
not to mention that it IS alien tech with software written in a programming language that is unknown to humans (so far at least).
Would you want pop-up adds in your brain every 5 minutes?
Also, if you wanted to video chat with someone you need to remember your web cam is your own eyeball, so you would need to look into a mirror to transmit. (I wonder if Dabbler calls her implant an ‘eye phone’?)
Eye phone! :)
I kinda like the Android, myself.
Sydney’s brain is going to go even MORE rampage than usual. tomorrow’s class and explanations are NOT going to go well.
or well even LESS well than anyone could have guessed
if dabs is a princess that may make the story on how she got the throne that she made her sword from a lot less interesting
I doubt she would have used her own, but if someone else wanted to expand their own kingdom…
IIRC the half of the sword was forged from a fragment of an Aetherion Throne. So there’s a) More than one and b) fairly good sized if she got enough for a sword and no-one’s noticed a chunk missing.
May just be me, but don’t believe Sydney is exactly thinking nefarious reasons for why the maybe-princess is on Earth: it is, to me anyway, a natural reaction to finding something or someone unusual , like a ten-pound goldfish in a sewage pond
The weird thing wasn’t that the goldfish was 10 pounds, it was that 3rd eye… and you should stay away from that radioactive sewage pond.
It was more enlightened than the average goldfish.
And more tasty…
I fried it dark brown with an amber ale batter, and washed it down with more amber ale.
Prince or princess is the title for children of many nobility. Not only a kings children. Even the siblings of a ruler (again, not only king) can have that title.
So Dabbler does not need the internet for porn — when she is looking at Sydney. Not surprising.
dabblers sub conscience probably generates more poregrafic material than most countries contribut to the internet
Prince/Princess is the title given to the children of a sovereign.
Both the current and previous.
Though the children of said prince/princesses may not inherit said title depending on the traditions of the country and their position in the line of succession.
There are also sovereign princes. This is the case in both Liechtenstein and Monaco, for instance.
Indeed, a series im reading has clan chiefs, the sons are called prince.
In Tolkien there are several “Princes” mentioned that despite the title were not in the line of succession for Gondor. For example, Prince Imrahil is the Prince of Dol Amroth, a region in southern Gondor, his troops are mentioned as being among the defenders of Minas Tirith in Return of the King. As another example, following his coronation as King Aragorn bestowed the title of Prince on Faramir and all his descendants. Imrahil’s family has held the title of Prince since the time of Elendil yet never once did they attempt to take the throne, and according to the The Book of Unfinished Tales, they had a stronger elven strain in their line than Aragorn himself, as legend says their line included an elf-maiden who served the lady Mithrellas.
Anyway, my point is, a title like Prince or Princess could be granted by a sovereign ruler without placing the recipient in the line of succession. The reasons for doing so could be a wide range of things, Faramir’s princehood was conferred for his role in overthrowing Sauron.
How is Dabbler taking off shoes when they are an illusion? 1st panel, I thought most of Dabbler clothes (except battle form) were illusions…
Beat me to it…
Check the commentary- they’re illusionary shoes. Dabbler can let them vanish, or use her power to make them stay around for a while, as she chooses.
dabs can teleport in her tech i wouldn’t be surprised that she can also teleport outfits
not unless they have some piece of technology attached to them, to make them be recognized as a valid object. or something. pretty sure its automatic.
They may not be illusions, and she’s taking them off for exactly that reason: To get easy on her… hooves.
But for all we’ve gathered, you are likely right. She’s just following the first rule of masquerade: only do predictable and obvious stuff, and you will be fine. Do something that should not normally happen, and your masquerade will be ruined.
Just from the famous Martian Chronicles, when the mental race wanted to kill their opponent with their thoughts, they imagined warriors, that picked their bows, pulled arrows from behind them, placed arrows on the handle, pulled the strings and shot the arrows. The power of belief is strong. It literally killed hundreds from invading hordes, who watched this spectacle.
HOLD UP! Why is Dabbles taking off her shoes? She has hooves! We know the dress is real, from the earlier page, but how can she possibly be wearing real, non-glamour shoes?
glamered socks?
they are glamour shoes…her kicking them off is part of the glam
The dress is real? Wouldn’t a real dress for Dabbler need four arms anyway? So why not make it full glamour?
She was wearing a four armed verion of the same dress when Sydney saw her dancing with a couple guy while using her truesight. The glamour for the dress is that it looks normal for her human disguise form rather than her actual form.
Oh, right. I forgot about that.
Also look at the glamour as the whole disguise package. Dabbler can drop it completely revealing her true form and whatever she is actually wearing at the time or alter it so her form and/or outfit meet someone’s expectations.
She wears a disguise to dance with human guys,
But she’s not a girl, she’s a succu-boo….
Was it dancing, was it dirty dancing, or should we just call it what it was:
Dry humping.
Clothes in place or not, that kind of dancing probably couldn’t be called “dry” humping for very long…Somebody’s likely to start showing wet spots sooner or later.
Hello from a fellow fan of the Animaniacs, by the way. :D
If the clothes were illusions, that would be an interesting strip act.
(But… It could go on and on and on as the clothes come off and vanish.)
If Mystique could take off her shoes, we’d be impressed.
This could be the start of a new fairy tale “The Empress’s Nude Clothes” Starring Dabbler as the Empress and Sydney as the kid who see’s that she is not wearing anything.
But nobody would care. Hell the populace might demand that Dabbler actually BE naked from then on. (Like she’d have a problem with that)
first time i have been on almost as soon as the new page came out…usually i am busy and or not at a computer
Of course Dabbler is a princess. She is Schlepping Booty.
Gawd that was awful, not that I didn’t laugh anyway.
I think you all are missing something. Xuriel is quite obviously attempting to seduce Sydney.
Of course, then again it’s not working because Sydney is in ADHD info sponge mode.
That makes it more of a challenge for Dabbles, thus, she will try harder :D
It may just be that our succubus does not know how to interact with people without doing a little flirting.
A succubus interacting without flirting.
INCONCIVABLE!
I play DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online). When you get a success using the Trip combat feat against a succubus, she falls on her ass with her legs splayed out like a slutty cheerleader. And yes, they are wearing a short skirt reminiscent of a cheerleader’s skirt.
It’s rather amusing, because many other trip victims will just sort of bend at the waist and waver around a bit. The graphic artists did a nice job there.
To be fair, DDO is probably the least misogynistic MMO I have played. In many MMOs my female characters in heavy armor have been wearing what amounts to a metal bikini top and a short skirt. The sort of suit of armor where the primary protection is due to the distraction value for male opponents… In DDO my female characters are wearing what might be actually be a serviceable suit armor. And that is without exception. Light armors have their cheesecake examples, but then they are light armors, which are horribly represented in almost all fantasy mediums, be it print or gaming.
Neverwinter is the same way (for the three classes that USE heavy armor anyway) But even the light armor is much more functional than cheesecake-y. Although I admit the chainmail “clothing” for heavy armor is improbably tight.
I think she knows how to interact without flirting, but it takes heavy concentration. To the point that it’s hard to think about anything else.
I was wondering: Why, just to make show for Sydney? I mean it works on me, long legs with some muscles, all the way down to the feet *____* … But it seems kinda wasted on Sydney.
Xuriel is also breathing. i think seduction is kind of just her default setting. also from what we’ve seen of Sydney’s fantasies, if Xuriel truly wanted to seduce Sydney, she’d find a box of chocolate covered ghost peppers and bing-watch Doctor Who with her.
They’d have to be the MISSING episodes (Many early episodes of Doctor Who were wiped by the BBC, and only exist in audio format and a few production stills).
Which raises the question I would like to ask Sydney, “First doctor, first companion/assistant, first alien (answer as many as needed to make the rest obvious)”.
They weren’t wiped there was a fire in the warehouse that stored the tapes. The audio was stored separatly.
You may be confusing what happened in Hollywood: one of their storage facilities caught fire, had heard that the BBC wiped the tapes because they had to reuse them (tapes were expensive back then) and no one thought this show about an eccentric time-travelling alien would be popular
…Which just goes to show how much a pencil-pushing office worker knows about popularity…
Bureaucrats! Gah!
Bureaucrats, a mostly useless mutation that should be dealt with appropriately.
Yeah, as another example, how many “bureaucrats” turned away the Beatles before they got onto the Ed Sullivan Show?
“What do you call that kind of music?”
“We call it Rock & Roll.”
“Nah, nobody wants to listen to that.”
;)
The problem with bureaucrats is that they spend so much time pushing pencils that they lose touch with REAL humanity out in society.
…because BBC executives are less intelligent than penguins.
Or at least put on a glamour that makes her look like Wolverine.
*Pictures Dabbler as x-23/New Wolverine* I’m strangely ok with this.
I kind of get the feeling that this is automatic. Like, Dabbler generally reverts to porn pre-screw behavior in any one on one setting where she isn’t doing something else. If they go with it, fine. If not, reactions might be funny anyway.
Why would she limit it to one-on-one scenarios?
Dabbler is probably also still within range of other people, out in the main area who are currently “projecting” as well. She may well be absorbing some of those vibes.
That might even be the lowest level of seduction Dabbler is capable of. Because of the “no sex with teammates” rule. Take it up a notch and Sydney might go in full “not a lesbian” mode. Or completely stop thinking.
Sorry, was meant to be a reply to Peter Sadlon above.
Oh, there are so many possibilities why an alien would want to wait tables in this club…
– Works as an agent of an alien civilization/confederation researching the possibilities of alliance
– Works as an agent of an alien civilization/confederation researching the possibilities of conquest
– An agent/private eye/bounty hunter after the lizard guy
– A galactic criminal hiding from the lizard guy agent/private eye/bounty hunter
– A sophisticated traveller doing her vacations in a kind of agrotourism
– A researcher on just about any aspect of human civilization
– A xenophile getting her kicks
– ….
It wouldn’t be for conquest. And one of the main reason alien conquorers coming to earth is laughable. Mostly since:
1) We are physically weak. [The Average man, only able to lift 125 – 155 lbs. The strongest lifting 1,140 lbs [which is a lot. But that’s from the Strongest Man competition, and even then those contestants don’t make up earth’s majority.] So capturing humans for manual labor isn’t worth it since it’d take a lot of time and money to shape a small percentage for heavy labor. Or even moderately strenuous labor.]
2) We break to easily. [We are quick to injure. Slow to recover. And there are tons of ways that a human’s body and mind can break. This is counting sickness, daily sprains and pains that happen while working. Etc.]
3) We take to long to be useful in anything. [First you have the time it takes for humans to biologically develop [22 years til full development]. Then you have the time it takes to train a person to not only work in a field, but old enough to do so without dying [which cuts into profits. If you’re going to enslave a species than them dying off to quickly lessens the profit that slave could have made]. This isn’t counting a full education mind you. Simply training them to be good at their forced job. Which may or may not include anything past teaching them language [so they can follow orders], your system of math [in fields were they need to keep track of inventory, know if they met /are near / are far from quota, as well as math for construction].
and then you have the fact that slaves cost tons of money to upkeep. If you want them to be of any use.
Of course you have the fact that why travel Billions of Lightyears, to a remote, uncivilized species. That breaks easily. Just to enslave them when if you have that level of technology robotics, biomechs, and advanced space agroculture would do the job of a slave for less money, less upkeep, and with less effort.
______________________
I don’t think the Lizard Guy is important. I think he’s just on vacation and a xenophile. But yeah I agree with the Agrotourism thing, as well as Xenophilia getting in some their kicks.
The Alliance is unlikely seeing as how after a day on the internet they’d see how bad an idea that would currently be and warn all other civilized beings that earth isn’t ready for that yet.
Although we would make a good hide out / get away for space criminals. Seeing as how we’re technologically backwards [to them], far out of the way galactically speaking, and have no real presence in space [thus no Space Police].
I think there is a perfectly good reason for a space conqueror to try.
He/she wants a kingdom. So why not take over a backward planet or two while you build your resources? Mental satisfaction can trump resources or reason.
Not really. Again goes into the list above.
Sure they succeeded in taking over a backwaters planet. One that either ended up costing them man hours [creature hours? Race hours?] into doing? Or potentially damaging ships that could have been used to conquer useful species.
It’s either over boringly quick [since we are so backwards, or any backwards planet. It doesn’t test his/her/its skills. Thus doesn’t give the same satisfaction of taking over a more useful planet.
Then comes the immediate downside. We die within a few decades. Or most of us do. Thus any use we might have had is lost.
So no. It wouldn’t happen. Mostly since any species that has eyes for galactic conquest. Is going to be smart. At least in the beginning. Like any military conquest, you look into logistics, resource management [don’t want your troops dying from illness / starvation to quickly. You also don’t want to waste ammunition when trying to take out an equal or higher level target.], lots of planning on staying under the radar till the time to strike.
Conquering is a hard job. Taking over a backworld planet, especially using backwards species. That your robots, tech, and agricultural advancements in your space ships can do better, cheaper, and with less effort. Is both stupid, and inefficient.
True. If we were more advanced, and we had something worth while. It’d be worth it to monopolize on that service. But we aren’t super strong and hardy so manual labor’s right off the list. We aren’t technologically advanced enough for communications, super weapon creation, advanced space tech, and our tech is to backwards to be IT/Maintenance. So that’s right of the list as well.
We are slow to adapt to change. So using us to introduce us to tons of contagions, toxic environments, and different climes. To harvest anti-bodies, genetic samples for adaptive genes / transposable elements , or use us as expeditionary forces to hostile environs are out of the question.
So no. Taking over a backwards planet would alert the galaxy to your plans and be on a radar you want to be under. All for conquoring something that wasn’t a challenge. For no pay off. No profit needed to fund a war nation. And not even able to be good war training. So it is all ways a loss.
Your arguments all assume that the aliens are, on the average, stronger and cleverer than humans.
… true, it’s hard to imagine them to be any stupider than the collective Homo sapiens race, but still, a possibility does exist :)
I think the Pakleds from Star Trek: TNG would be right up there with us.
I’ll respond to what you just said later about how wrong you are :)
Right now I need to look for things to make us go.
(I’m joking, don’t flame please)
No flames, but I might have to use the Crimson Force Field!
Not necessarily. It is strongly hinted at, that the Pakleds are not nearly as stupid as they want us to think they are. (aka, Obfuscating Stupidity… they’re deliberately playing dumb.)
Like American Presidents :P
Cleverer is quite likely: They have somehow reached earth, even without (most of) us knowing, while we hardly know how to reach the other planets in our solar system.
And when you’re very clever, you can build robots that take care of the physically hard work.
When some others want to enslave humans, then for something we are “good” at: Fighting & killing each other. Alas, I’m having a hard time trying to see some value in that…
tv or the planets native equivalent gladiator matches
The fact they have the technology to travel to other planets (either via space ships or other means) alone would imply that they are cleverer than humans
I like the idea of a universe where all the other intelligent races are smaller and weaker than us, like there’s the little Grays, and a race of cephalopods that could be vicious in a fight but they’re only 2 feet tall and weigh 20 lbs, and a plant like race that all things considered is quite strong but they’re very slow and would never win a fight, and in this universe the Humans are considered the warrior race.
The thing that always amuses me about the “Humans suck” line of thinking is that there’s one thing humans are great at compared to other species, and that’s endurance. We would chase prey literally to death, and can run for days. One of the good things about dogs is that they can mostly keep up with us, in cool weather.
This is sort of the premise of Alan Dean Foster’s short story “With Friends Like These” and of his trilogy “The Damned”. In the former, humans are essentially legendary monsters to the rest of the galaxy. In the latter, representatives of an alien civilization come to Earth looking for recruits in a galactic war, and they get more than they bargained for; humans are terrifying warriors by their standards.
Alan Dean Foster is one of the most imaginative writers of space opera ever, and I adore his writing. Lots of it deals with the interracial dynamics: the whole Commonwealth universe, for example. The Spellsinger series had defined many furry tropes even before the furry fandom became a thing. And he was the real author behind the original Star Wars: A New Hope script…
Yup, remember reading “The Damned” long long time ago (it stuck out for me because it mentioned New Zealand :D)
The Valor series by Tanya Huff actually goes with that. A great billions-year old multi-species civilization finds themselves at war but they have NO idea how to fight (They’d literally evolved/bred out such things eons ago) so they come to earth and a couple other races (a race of elf-like aliens who are like Dabbler mixed with the Asari. If it has approximately the appropriate orifices they WILL want to screw it, and a race that resembles Chimpanzees with a digestive system capable of surviving off of pretty much any organic material [They had to make special rules in the military about them eating squadmates] And tooth enamel so strong they are (possibly) joking about trying to replicate it for assault shuttle heat shielding/armor) and almost literally say to them “Here’s highly advanced technology your race couldn’t conceive of in millions of years, you can have it and join us if you protect us”.
well, technically speaking, we are warior race.
we originally either carnivores or omnivores (not entirely sure, but think carni-), and even after we figured out farming, and hearding, we were still hunting for sports.
and even whe we were on top of the food chain with no predators that could be a threat to us, we decided to pray on eachother, for no other reason that greed.
then came religion, but seriously, that.s just an excuse.
competition is our nature, to be “better” is our drive.
if there is a way to solve a problem, we will find it, sometimes for no other reason that to brag about it.
even now, in 21 century, there are people who cannot comprehend that we don’t “Need” to “progress”, as much as we are progressing already, and have gone insane over it.
uhm..
-“progress”, more than-
In Stargate SG-1, the Asgard ARE the grays. And they are far weaker than humans, and in a fight there would be no contest. Except… they’re far superior technologically. Yet at the same time, they couldnt beat the Replicators, and needed humans to help with that since their weapons were useless against that enemy, while terran weapons were extremely effective. In Thor’s words (the asgard leader’s name was Thor in case you havent seen the show – yes THAT thor)…
Thor: “Your weapons use a chemical reaction to fire a small metal projectile into the enemy. We would never have thought to do something like that. We’ve progressed too far behind such primitive weapon ideas.”
Dr. Jackson: [to Thor] “Wait a minute, you’re actually saying that you need someone dumber than you are?”
Col. O’Neill: “You may have come to the right place.”
Gen. Hammond: “Thor, with all due respect to your situation we need SG-1 here.”
Maj. Carter: “I could go, sir.”
Col. O’Neill: “I don’t know, Carter. You may not be dumb enough.”
Maj. Carter: “I think I can handle it”
Others have said this better than I.
HUMANS ARE SCARY!!!!
HOLY SHIT THEY EAT CAPSAICIN FOR FUN
YOU GUYS I HEARD A HUMAN ONCE ATE AN AIRPLANE.
A HUMAN CAN KEEP FIGHTING FOR HOURS EVEN AFTER YOU SHOOT IT
humans are a proud warrior race with a pantheon of bloody gods: Ram-Bo, Schwarzenegger, etc.
REMOVING A LIMB WILL NOT FATALLY INCAPACITATE HUMANS: ALWAYS DESTROY THE HEAD.
WARNING: HUMANS CAN DETECT YOU EVEN AT NIGHT BY TRACKING VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE
WARNING: HUMANS CAN REPRODUCE AT A RATE OF 1 PER SPACEYEAR. DESTROY INFESTATIONS IMMEDIATELY
THE HUMAN MOUTH HAS OVER THIRTY OUTCROPS OF BONE AND POWERFUL JAW MUSCLES.
HUMAN BITES CAN BE FATALLY INFECTIOUS EVEN TO OTHER HUMANS
WARNING: HUMANS CAN AND WILL USE IMPROVISED WEAPONS. SEE CLASSIFIED DATA LABELED J. CHAN.
HUMANS CAN PROJECT BIOWEAPONS FROM ALMOST EVERY ORIFICE ON THEIR BODY. DO NOT INHALE
OH GOD THE HUMANS FIGURED OUT DOOR HANDLES OH GOD OH GOD
More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness – but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.
(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)
Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:
Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you – and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired.
Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human.
We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty – humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits – but they’re highly functional.
Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves – and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons.
In essence, we’d be Space Orcs.
Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place.
We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analogue traps.
And by god, we will eat anything.
We use borderline toxic peppers to season our food.
We expose ourselves to potentially lethal solar radiation in the pursuit of darkening our skin.
We risk hearing loss for the opportunity to see our favorite musicians live.
We have a game where two people get into an enclosed area and hit each other until time runs out/one of them pass out
We willingly jump out of planes with only a flimsy piece of cloth to prevent us from splattering against the ground.
Our response to natural disasters is to just rebuild our buildings in the exact same places.
We climb mountains and risk freezing to death for bragging rights
We invented dogs. We took our one time predators and completely domesticated them.
On a planet full of lions, tigers and bears, we managed to advance further and faster than any other species on the planet.
Klingons and Krogan and Orcs ain’t got shit on us
We drink ethanol (in concentrations high enough to be used as an effective as microbiocide or a solvent!) for the express purpose of achieving blood toxicity and disrupting normal brain function… AS A RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY!
On the same subject, we also deliberately incinerate assorted substances and then inhale the particulate-heavy smoke and vapor resulting for the same effect. EVEN IN THE FACE OF SAID SUBSTANCES BEING CARCINOGENIC, BECAUSE WE JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK.
Humans do not have biological castes. Kill their commander and another will take its place. Soldiers left alone on a planet will start farming and manufacturing to survive. Farmers and manufacturers will take up arms and kill you if pressed. Just because two humans look different doesn’t mean they cannot do each other’s jobs.
Breeding does not kill them. A single human can mate dozens or hundreds of times in a lifetime. They often do so as recreation. Xenobiology team six believes they do not have a mating season but this is too strange to be true.
Their appendages are not designed for hitting, so they developed special training to make them very good at hitting anyhow.
The proteins making up their bodies are toxic and cause prion disease. Do not touch anything humans have touched. Do not consume earth foods. Fire does not adequately remove this contamination.
Humans perceive sixteen times the colors we do. Do not hide in bushes or vines from humans. They can distinguish your pelt from the foliage with ease.
We tried venting waste gas into the tunnels to kill the humans when they attacked. Turns out they breathe it.
Everything on their planet came from a single biological strain. They developed comprehensive genetics BEFORE they developed space travel.
They lack radio receptors and cannot be brought into compliance with right-thought simply by broadcasting to them. Even after we learned how to translate it into sound-waves one of their hatchlings drove the Great Authority mad by responding to every demand with a single question: “Why?”
#an individual human being is actually a microbiome in its own right—you are dealing with a legion each time you approach them #they carry pathological agents inside their deep tissues and this is advantageous to their health #one of the most widespread and resilient viruses on their planet is treated as mildly hazardous—even though it causes #massive disruption to the body’s homeostasis #(their young offspring endure multiple rhinovirus infections EACH YEAR yet they seem unperturbed by this) #they have developed such long lifespans that now their primary threat is their own body’s degeneration #humanity has literally figured out how to survive so long that their body gives out under them #and they are not satisfied with that #stupid willful vengeful survivalists who treat mortality like a challenge
I am speechless
On the whole Rhinovirus thing. It turns out that it’s not as deadly as supposed, their immune systems are just that damn good. To the point that once they figured out simple things such as inoculation, vaccination, and medical care, the only things capable of taking them down were Viruses that mutated rapidly to what was thrown at them. The whole Rhinovirus thing, it’s a goddamn allergic reaction, they’re not sick hosts, it’s literally them being allergic and their immune system going all out.
https://mx-behavin.tumblr.com/post/134926246080/rabbittiddy-littlekittenluna-silentstep
source
Heh heh, this is the rationalization for my quip just above. 👍
As someone who has dealt with toddlers the “Why?” part seriously made me LOL.
And do not forget their other favorite word.
“NO”
I see your quotes and raise you a video, good sir!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg_nJwGXAk0
There’s another advantage humans have in the pursuit of large prey: the fact that we don’t have a furry coat, and need to wear clothes to keep warm.
Imagine being a large herbivore, and a hunting party of humans spots you. They chase you at a slow pace. You can easily outrun them, but you will get hot doing so, whereas the humans can strip off down to the waist and sweat away the heat – and they just keep coming. Sooner or later you will collapse from heat exhaustion and become easy meat.
Sadly, your very well reasoned denial, which posits that aliens that are smart enough to get to other planets are, in fact, smart, runs afoul of reality. Human history has any number of people traveling to, in essence, another world to settle, when there is no logical reason to do so. They have done so because they saw an opportunity, a way to escape the poverty of their daily existence, or just because it was colonize, or explain to the local authorities just why they now happen to have possession of a pig that looks EXACTLY like the one that was stolen from the next village over two nights ago.
Honestly, the two biggest reasons why anybody would want to conquer Earth are never even discussed: namely, because growing food in space causes all kinds of logistical headaches, and because humans are rapidly evolving technologically and socially to the point where we might become a threat to aliens sometime very soon (it would be very hard to prevent this from orbit). If an entire alien race IS united into one nation/civilization, then the odds are very good that those aliens are not used to rapid change, and would view us as dangerously unstable, and a potential threat to the balance of power within their own civilization or empire. If that is the case than yes, they would come and invade the Earth.
Or…I once wrote a story where the aliens came for another reason altogether–namely, that they, and almost all other civilizations they had encountered, were a cold-blooded species (because they evolved in their planet’s equivalent of the Jurassic era), and that made colonizing temperate planets and/or regions enormously expensive and difficult. Having a race like humans as part of their empire allowed them to make use of something like sixty to seventy percent more land area than they had access to without humans or some other race of warm-blooded sophonts (in my story, this eventually precipitated a power struggle within the alien empire, as humans were almost always effectively operating without imperial oversight, and eventually somebody twigged to the fact that this meant that humans were effectively their own autonomous state within the empire, and decided to fix that problem).
There are countless reasons why an alien empire would want to conquer Earth. Even some of the most popular reasons are not without merit when examined more closely…but you have to be a bit cynical for this not to come off as cheesy, and explaining why your stupid explanation is not stupid generally takes more time and trouble than it’s worth.
Actually the problem is easy to manage from orbit.
Throw some big rocks at it.
Rocks hit problem goes away.
Alan dean foster had a good book series called “the damned” where humanities unique trait was that we will basically murder anything with little to no provocation. In other words assuming that most species evolved through mutual cooperation and pacifism , humanity’s ability to thrive on chaos and murder makes us a highly valuable commodity when you need unpredictable killing machines
I loved 2/3 books of that series. The ending he gave it INFURIATED me. Specifically the fact it really didn’t ‘end’ at all. First two books was the humans interacting with the aliens – third book was an alien researcher re-examining humans. And… getting sidetracked researching some ‘post-humans’ instead. Plot holes abounded and the ‘post-humans’ (the Core) he invented were unconvincing and failed to distract me from the plot holes. Or… from the fact that the alien researcher got NONE of her questions asked properly. Let alone answered.
That said the idea that humans are useful because of something that is “easy” for us, but not the alien was interesting.
Humans developed cooperation too, ya’ know…It’s called “team tactics.”
If you have interstellar travel I’m gonna guess robots are within your capabilities. Robots are far superior to slaves.
And all the ridiculous tropes about resources are are equally silly because if you have said space drive you can get far more resources without dealing with a gravity well.
It would be like the colonists crossing the ocean for a cup of water.
Now studying an alien culture or an artist seeking inspiration seems plausible.
Maybe she’s an alien cartoonist who draws weird alien races (like us) and needs some life study.
A waitress job is a good cover for a lot of things.
That, or a taxi driver in New York, of course.
(with apologies to Robert Di Niro)
” You renticulatin’ to me? You renticulatin’ to me? You renticulatin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you renticulating… you renticulating to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the swyve do you think you’re renticulating to? Oh yeah? OK. (draws alien blunderbuss pistol)”
Actually, humans are surprisingly strong and resilient compared to almost every other animal on the planet.
– Humans have some of the highest endurance levels of any other animals on the planet – only beaten by sled dogs, camels, certain species of antelope, ostriches, and horses. Humans are also one of the animal species that can live without food the longest (116 days – that’s longer than a camel even can last), although we do need water or we will die in 4-5 days.
– We’re one of the fastest animals on the planet, with top athletes like Usain Bolt being able to run at over 27 1/4 mph. And while that’s not comparable to the top speed of, say, a cheetah, at 70mph, a human being can sustain his or her top speed for FAR longer than a cheetah can because of far superior endurance. There are only about 8 other species which can last without foot longer than humans, and about half of them can only last BARELY longer than humans… and the rest are far lower level animals, like spiders, frogs, snakes, crocodiles, and the olm, all of which put themselves into dormant states for extended periods of time in order to go without food for between 1 to 10 years.
– We’re equally capable of being incredibly fast in the water as on the land
– The fastest marina animal, a black marlin, can swim at 80 mph. Which does massively outdo the fastest human swimmer, which has been clocked at about 5 1/2 mph (by Frederick Bousquet), humans are still some of the fastest LAND animals who can also swim.
– Humans are the most adaptable animals on the planet, capable of surviving in all sorts of extreme temperatures and climates. While they can’t survive the MOST extreme temperatures for long, they make up for it in the variety of different climates they CAN… and that’s before taking into account the human ability to adapt the environment to suit their needs (something most other animals can’t do)
– Humans are one of the only animals capable of speech because of the placement of our larynx. There are only two other animal species which have the biology definitely capable of making a spoken language – mynas and parrots (and their brains arent actually developed enough to be capable of any long term learning beyond rudimentary stuff), although chimpanzees have been shown to be capable of learning sign language (not surprising, as some of our closest evolutionary links on the planet).
– Human bones are INCREDIBLY strong. One cubic inch of bone can bear a load of over 9 TONS. That makes bone about 4 times stronger than concrete (and when compared to steel, steel has to be 5 times denser than bone in order to be as strong for the same ‘size’ of a steel bar). The amount of tension required to break a bone like the femur is pretty massive – it takes about 700lbs of torque to break the AVERAGE human femur, due to how much stress our bodies are subjected to on a regular basis.
– The human brain, of course, is one of the most unique brains among the animal kingdom. It takes up a rather small amount of weight compared to the rest of the body (about 3 pounds on average when fully grown) compared to the higher level thinking which even a below average human being is capable of doing, thought-wise.
– Humans live longer than a LOT of other animal species (in a functioning capacity, no less) – especially among mammals and higher level animals. Aside from certain species of whales and certain species of elephants, humans live the longest on average. And for the ‘extremes,’ only whales seem to have longer lifespan unless you include non-mallalian species of a much lower level, like tortoises, certain simple fish, sponges, etc.
– Humans are capable of an insanely varied diet of different foods, more than most other animals aside from most bears and species of rodents. That gives us a massive leg up in competition with other species.
Seriously… humans are pretty badass when compa red to other animals even before you take into account the combination of intelligence, hand-eye coordination, and opposable thumbs making us capable of using technology beyond any other animal on the planet (the next closest animal to use tools on the planet are certain other primates, certain dolphins, sea otters, badgers, some birds, and mongooses. And usually the tools used by these animals are exceedingly simple, like a sharpened stick or using stones for some exceedingly simple purpose. The very act of ‘throwing’ something is beyond any non-primate animal (and even then there are many primates incapable of throwing an object – the amount of mental calculations it takes to throw something is staggering, let alone the amount of mental calculations needed to consistently CATCH something that’s thrown).
Humans are some pretty dangerous animals when you get right down to it :) Plus there’s a ton of us on the planet, so as dangerous as we are individually, we’re even more so en masse.
Holy crap I can’t believe I went off on such a tangent about how awesome humans are from an evolutionary standpoint :)
They/we are likely less awesome compared to any alien species that managed to reach earth :)
And if you look for certain single features to out-class humans, you’ll find them easily on earth. There might be some value in any of these physically not-the-absolute-top abilities in combination with the human brain… But even we got better in training animals for certain purposes, I’d think it’s likely that alien space-faring species would be even better in that.
Btw,, without looking it up, parrots can out-live humans, too, if my memory serves me well.
The point was (at least, what could gather) that humans aren’t as weak or useless as we appear: we may not be the best at something, but we are still fairly top at almost everything (and what we can’t do ourselves, we can create or adapt something else to do it for us), we are, basically, the complete package
We may be relatively low-lived creatures, but one thing definitely that puts us above other creatures on this planet: the ability to record and pass on our knowledge to the next generation, so what we are unable to accomplish ourselves, our descendants hopefully should
We are quick to learn new technology, but usually it takes some outside force or event to push us out of stagnation (stagnation that is usually, but not always, the result of corrupt monopolies who don’t want to lose what they have: the reason why we still have fossil-fuelled vehicles is because the oil-barons don’t want to give up their wealth that they ‘usurped’ from the steam-barons, who usurped their wealth from whomever was ‘top dog’ before them)
Just look what happened in such a short time after the Vulcan’s detected some eccentric nutter with a self-made rocket
Actually no. We aren’t at the top of near everything. And to Pander. Here are the facts on human capabilities. Going with Average, and max.
Strength: Max: https://www.google.com/#q=strongest+man+in+the+world+2015 : 880 lbs un assisted. [only one person at 2015.]. 1,150 with back straps. [only one person. And that is only like 10 out of 7 billion.]
Average: 125 – 155 lbs. Average.
Speed: Fastest running is 27.8 mph. Cats can run 30 mph average, horses an 55 mph average, grey hounds 40 MPH average. So yeah the average of most animals beats us in speed. Average human is 8 mph for 1/4 a mile. And that 27 mph was only 100 meters.
Swimming: Average of 3 mph. Max of 5 mph [so yeah not that fast. Especially for things that live in the water.]
https://www.google.com/#q=average%20intelligence Intelligence average is 85 – 114. [68%].
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So yeah. Look up injuries, non-fatal and fatal. We get millions per day. And we while on average have semi-decent endurance [that whole run for days thing is BS. 95% of all first world humans can’t pull that off.]
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So yes. We with our tools [and only with our tool making] are the reason that we are on top of the food chain. But that turns in an instant [we get killed rather easily by non-prey animals].
Yes we advance technologically quickly. But then we wouldn’t need an invasion. All it’d take is an attack from space. BAM! No muss, no fuss.
But resources. Dabbler already answered that. It’s easier to mine ice from an asteroid. Also it’s easier to have a space solarium [didn’t say that, but none the less].
As for robotics. Think about how many robots we need to make our vehicles, our own space ships, laptops, etc.
Then think about how advanced you’d need to be able enter and leave atmosphere multiple times. Go faster than light speeds. As well as ways to save space travelers out in deep space in hours to days, rather than years to decades.
Yes, Humans have potential. But slave wise.
We are weak [even the statement of humans are strongest. Look online and you’ll see plenty of things faster, stronger, more endurance. Our strength is our ability to learn [some of us] and make technology. But then again nothing needed by advanced civilizations.
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Now that stated. That’s only for space conquering thing being disproven. Compaired to other species. We may be a powerful warrior race. Or even have strengths over other alien races at our technological level.
But if you can travel light years in short amounts of time, and have the technology to survive in space comfortably for decades, go into and out of atmospheres without damage. And be part of the greater galactic nations. Then the whole planetary invasion thing is ridiculous.
All in all. Invading and enslaving humanity makes no sense.
You can consider yourself a slave. But all the data I used is from actual scientific sources. Not just using google. Michael Phelps can swim 5.28 mph. And he’s not even the fastest swimmer to have lived. And while the human max for running IS 27.8 mph, and there A FEW other animals that can run faster, they can only do so for SHORT sprints. Humans can run fast for extended periods of time, and our endurance is one of the highest levels in the animal kingdom – especially for mammals. We’re built for endurance, in fact.
My point is, humans might not always be the ‘top’ if any one particular level, but in many areas, they’re usually in the top 5 or 10 of animals for things such as strength, speed, endurance, versatility, balance, adaptability to extremes, etc. And that’s not counting our brains, where we are easily the #1 contender in many areas, including intelligence, pattern recognition, problem solving, memory, tool using, collaboration, etc. Not to mention sheer population.
Honestly, we’re a LOT more fearsome than you’d giving us credit. And like Dabbler said, one of the reasons she’s hesitant to give humans access to her tech is that we have a xenocidal streak :) We’re dangerous enough with the tech we have so far :) We don’t make particularly good slaves unless an alien race could trick us into accepting it without us realizing we’re slaves. :) We’re also extremely good at adapting advanced technologies quickly. When primitive cultures get access to advanced technology of more advanced cultures, they often catch on pretty quickly, like the native americans and the domestication of horses (horses are not native to the Americas yet several tribes because expert horsemen surprisingly quickly…. this is from people who, before the Europeans came to the New World, had not yet discovered the wheel even. In the 1400s)
And honestly, if we did NOT have all these advantages, and were as helpless as you think, there’s no way we would have survived to pretty much dominate the planet. Just being smarter than other animals is not enough, We didnt spring into being with advanced tech. We were hunting animals FAR outside our size and stronger than us, often by using just our endurance to tire the prey out. We’d chase them, they’d run ahead. Then stop. We’d chase them some more. They’d run ahead. Then stop. We’d chase them some more. They’re run ahead. Then tire out and stop running. Then we’d chase them again and catch and kill the prey. We’re pretty relentless creatures. :) At least from an evolutionary standpoint, before technology got involved. :)
Btw, the average for 20+ miles is not 8 mph, it’s 12.5 mph.
Oh.. also Dabbler said it was easier to mine asteroids for ice than “invading a nuclear armed planet” of xenocidal sapient beings evolved enough to be extremely dangerous :) It’s that latter description she used to describe humans as ‘having a xenocidal streak’ which implies that she realizes that human beings are not exactly a safe species to try to enslave or conquer. Then add superhumans into the mix…. :)
Also our tools ALONE are not why we’re on the top of the food chain. At least not the ORIGINAL reason for our being on top of the food chain. It’s mainly because of our endurance AND our ability to collaborate with each other when hunting. It’s how a small group of hunters can take down many mammoths by making them stampede off a cliff, or how a single hunter can run down an antelope which is far faster than he is in the short term, because the antelope will tire a lot sooner than the human. :) When you then add toolmaking into the mix, even for the simplest tools imaginable, combined with endurance, balance, the ability to throw (which is EXTREMELY rare among other animals outside of primates), and collaboration, and you have an apex predator. Add to that the fact that we’re omnivorous with an insanely varied diet and can eat an insane amount of different foods, and survive for a really long time without food as long as we have water, and that makes us an even more dangerous apex predator.
Points taken, all of them including the usurping.
But let’s not forget that a good amount of our relative “superiority” within the menagerie on our planet, especially in survival, comes from our brain, which can provide us with the will to survive, to endure pain without screaming once that’s needed even though we can scream, and with all we need (including a collection of knowledge from our ancestors) to adapt and deal with new situations fast and heal ourself and increase our lifetime. But all this is what I’d expect from any species that developed space travel of any kind, too.
Yes, we are the full package, physically, not at the top in everything but in the majority of things, hard to beat in the rest of things – on our planet. But even if that’s not true for all space faring species, I’d bet that none of them would be on the lowest end of the food chain on the planet of their origin, or they had more pressing problems than space travel.
All I say is: While we are the most awesome species on our planet, many others would be the same on their home planet, too. And brain-or-equivalent-wise all of them are more developed than us. We know this because they are here and we are not there.
Not really. It just means their KNOWLEDGE is more developed. Brain wise there is little difference between a roman soldier and a marine – go back further if you want. Brain wise thee is practically no difference between us and the builders of Stonehenge. The only true difference is accumulated knowledge – and that would be prone to catching up fast once exposed to the new technologies regularly. Just because we haven’t developed long range space travel yet doesn’t mean anything at all about the development of our brains compared to theirs.
Or in other words, they could have just existed more than twice as long slowly advancing. They could easily say “you mean you did all that in less than thirty thousand yers??? It took us TWICE that long!
On Star Trek: Deep Space 9, the Ferengi were pretty alarmed about how fast humans had progressed from the end of a nuclear war to the creation and current state of the federation, in less than half the time it took the Ferengi to build themselves up from LESS disastrous beginnings
(although, on the other hand, according to Quark, the Ferengi also never had slavery – despite how they seem to treat females being pretty damned close to slavery – they never committed genocides, never had nuclear wars, and were in fact engaged in far fewer wars in general, especially among their own kind.)
Quark: I think I figured out why Humans don’t like Ferengi.
Sisko: Not now, Quark.
Quark: The way I see it, Humans used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We’re a constant reminder of a part of your past you’d like to forget.
Sisko: Quark, we don’t have time for this.
Quark: You’re overlooking something. Humans used to be a lot worse than the Ferengi: slavery, concentration camps, interstellar wars. We have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We’re nothing like you… we’re better.
There is an old sci-fi story called “All the Way Back” by Michael Shaara where a pair of human interstellar explorers finally make contact with aliens, who tell them a tale of an ancient race of conquerors who brutalized the galaxy before they were finally completely annihilated by an alliance of all other know species. At the end the aliens kill the humans as the species they were speaking of was humans all along. As the story closes the alien captain is musing about just how fast the species had reappeared and become space borne again.
“They/we are likely less awesome compared to any alien species that managed to reach earth :)”
I really wouldn’t say that…Take, for example, the movie Independence Day. sure, the aliens has way superior technology, but what really did them in was the fact that we poor, ignorant barbarians who have barely set foot on our own moon, managed to figure out how to bypass their technology & exploit their vulnerabilities.
Hackers of the world, UNITE!
:D
We will see if that holds true when Independence Day: Resurgence hit theaters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbduDRH2m2M
“Gonna need a bigger Virus”
i have also heard that compared to other animals, humans heal faster. but maybe that’s just because we know how to set a broken leg and make a crutch, and a horse cannot. i would also argue that cetacean (dolphins and whales) have an advanced language, but David Nuttall made a pretty good argument about the sentience of cetaceans yesterday.
The healing faster thing is mainly becuase of medical technology, not natural biology :) I checked when I was making a list of how humans are awesome. Quick healing is not one of our advantages :) Until you get technology involved, even if the tech is something as simple as a bandage and cleaning the wound (which is something no other animal has figured how to do).
Massive intelligence, dexterous hands allowing us manipulate our environment, an instinct for complex language (we still have to learn the language, but the ability to learn and use it is instinctual), incredible endurance that lets us (or our ancestors; the animals I eat do not run away too fast at the butcher store) run down animals over long distances (so long as we combine that with tracking to keep track of where the critter is going as it gets more and more exhausted), complex social skills to allow us to cooperate and specialize. Very few animals survive past their breeding age, but there is an evolutionary advantage for humans to survive decades past menopause, etc. The grandparents teach the children the ideas, stories and experiences of history, while the parents are busy with hunting, gathering, etc. Very few animals do this, but this does include orca.
The list of disadvantages is much longer, but our advantages (see above) seem to compensate nicely. We are not that strong, not that fast, not well armed (fingernails are not claws), not well armoured. For swimming mammals, we are some of slowest; even cold-blooded animals in the water are faster. We are fairly fragile (A 150 pound deer is hit by a moderately slow car and walks away; a 150 pound human gets hit by the same car and suffers major injuries or death) and our immune systems have gotten weaker over time when we are not drinking contaminated water and eating only cooked meat. Our teeth are not really effective weapons (again cooking our food means we can no longer tear through tough meat and veggies).
In several ways I agree, but in more ways I disagree with stuff you said on factual bases.
1) We actually ARE rather strong for animals our size. Surprisingly so. Plus we have the endurance to outlast literally almost every other animal on the planet, which make up how we used to kill most of the remaining animals that are stronger before our technology progressed to the point where it was no contest at all (you mentioned the endurance :) )
2) We’re actually NOT that fragile. We’re a lot less fragile than deer, in fact. If a deer breaks its leg, most of the time it will go into shock and die. A human being is, in fact, a lot more likely to survive getting hit by a car than a deer is. Plus we heal remarkably well (even if not the fastest) among mammals, and among animals in general. We’re also some of the only animals that have managed to be able to live in almost every type of climate. If a climate changes, we are capable of either adapting to it or, more likely, forcing the environment to adapt to US.
3) We actually ARE a lot faster in the water than other land animals, although we’re far slower than marine-based animals. But the fastest swimming humans can swim up to 5.25 mph (that’s a lot faster than most warm-blooded animals) … and more importantly we can ENDURE longer without tiring out in the water, just like we can on land. When it comes reptiles, they are usually faster than us in short sprints (ie, a crocodile can swim up to 18mph) but they can only do so for short bursts – they can’t sustain it. Most swimming reptiles rely in stealth/ambush tactics, rather than outswimming their prey. :)
4) While we are not ‘naturally’ well armed, we can do something that almost no other animal can do – throw things. Most animals of ANY type, aside from certain primates, can throw. Period. And even with other primates…. we throw harder. A lot harder. And with far more accuracy even from an ‘average’ human being. That makes humans capable of taking a common rock and making it a deadly weapon, even without having the brainpower to know how to sharpen it and make a spear. And god help any animal when humans learned how to make spears,because then we were taking down mammoths and other animals which were far out of our league strength-wise.
5) Our immune systems are actually frighteningly good. We’re immune to a ton of things which would kill most other animals, and our bodies tend to be remarkable at creating antibodies, even before you take medical technology into account. Even a simple thing like ‘cleaning a wound’ or ‘bandaging a wound’ is beyond any other animal. Not to mention we’re one of the only animals that can lose a limb and it not become a death sentence.
6) Our teeth are excellent for its purpose – we’re the ultimate omnivore. We have both molars to grind plant matter, and canines to rip apart meat. And many human cultures still eat a lot of raw foods. Cooking mainly aids in more efficient digestion, although we do lose some nutrients in the process. Humans can also eat things which are toxic to many other species. Heck…. theobromine poisoning (toxicity from eating chocolate) is extremely rare for humans, but a LOT of other species, it’s deadly. Most of the animals we’ve domesticated simply can’t eat chocolate, even in miniscule amounts – it causes stuff like arithmias, seizures, heart attacks, internal bleeding and death. Us? Nom nom nom.
One point I’d like to make for the ‘Humans Are Bad-@$$’ argument. Humans are natural tinkerers and gadgeteers. Skeptical? Take a walk throiugh the gadget / tools section of any large retail establishment.
Our tech is PROBABLY behind that of our hypothetical space-faring race(s). But, given exposure to it and a few items of theirs to fiddle about with (or simply get a close look at!), I would infer that catch up would not take as long as some people may think. Looking at the history of humanity’s technological development, especially in war, there are numerous instances of one bunch coming up with something new, then someone else, with just a few hints, being able to either replicate what the first group did or go at least one better.
Moving on, what if at least portions of Human tech were actually SUPERIOR to what a lot of aliens had? We tend to think of tech advancement as being a uniform thing, but it really isn’t. We could instead prove to be well-developed in specific fields and not so in others.
Finally, just because a race has an intestellar capability, it may not necessaruly follow that they are otherwise technologically superior. Acquisition could have been via salvage, espionage or sheer luck.
There is an SF-universe (unsure of author) where the basic interstellar drive is to be found in a set of simple mechanical experiments that pretty much everybody figures out in their Middle Ages equivalent. So, the Galactic Empire eventually learns of this incredibly backward sentient race (they haven’t even left their own solar system yet!) and sends an invasion force.
So, the first inkling Humanity has that they are at war is when this bunch of steam-punkish spacecraft land (as usual) somewhere in the USA. Local law enforcement and National Guard cordon off the area as the alien ships unload an army – complete with pikes, muzzle-loaded cannon and riding animals. Said army attacks the cordon, and very quickly thereafter learns a bunch of new words, like “submachine gun”, “jet fighter” and “tank”. The invasion does not last long.
Yes, this is an oft-overused trope, but is worth keeping in mind.
I’ll post more when home and not typing on my phone, but take stargate sg-1 for exampke. Goua’uld staff weapons vs human p-90s. The p-90s are superior weapons. To quote Jack O’neill. This is a staff weapon. It is a weapon of fear. It is mean to terrorize.
This is a p-90. It is a weapon of war. It is meant to kill.
End of the lesson.
Also the asgard weapons were useless against replicators. The human firearms were very useful
Some of what happened in Stargate SG-1 are excellent examples. My favourite is, in one of the later seasons, when the Ga’ould have set up heavy weapons around a stargate, all set to vapourize anyone that walks out.
Instead of sending in redshirts, the SGC first launches a drone though the gate, controlled via radio as long as the gate is open. The guys on the other side scratch their heads and watch as this little plane zooms out and starts circling their position. THEN the SGC launch a couple of missiles though the gate. They exit the other side, head on up high then; guided by the laser designator on the drone, come down on the enemy force like the wrath of ghod. Great stuff.
A good example is David Weber’s “Apocalypse Troll.”
Basic is a xenophobic genocidal race attacks humanity, first battle is a stalemate.
But we get a hold of some of their tech, reverse engineer it. Make it better and start kicking their asses.
Aliens try desperate gambit , hero and villain sent back to modern time to fight it out.
Villain is a cloned human brain that is a psycho/sociopath with sever anger management issues who really gets its jollies from violence.
The reason for its existence is cause the aliens realized we were better fighters than them and they needed a counter.
I believe you’re thinking of “A Road Not Taken”, by Harry Turtledove. That was pretty much the basic premise, anyway. Turtledove explored a vaguely similar idea in his “Wordlwar” series. A super-stable, extremely slow-changing race invade earth. Since they don’t have FTL travel or communication, they arrive in sleeper ships with intel that’s 500 earth years out of date. They expect their heaviest opposition to be knights on horseback, so just imagine their surprise when they land in the middle of WW II…
Checked out that first story online. Yep, sounds almost exactly like what was described to me.
Already knew of the WorldWar series – the first volume was very interesting (and certainly not lacking in irony, IMO), but then found I really did not care for how the plot and most subplots went after that, so gave the series up fairly quickly.
And who knows how long it would take an alien race to figure out some basic physics of the universe anyway? For example, light seems to be instantaneous, but humans figured out how to get from banging rocks together to learning that light actually has a speed limit in about 2-1/2 to 3 million years. At least we can understand that, the further out we look with our telescopes, the more we’re actually looking backwards in time.
Nah, it is conquest/alliance- but in a more civilized manner. Basically, the way they do the invasion consists of decades of infiltration, where they’re bringing ‘colonists’ in and having them integrate with the civilization. While that’s going on, they’re also revealing themselves to a select few people that match a psyche profile, to leave and emmigrate to alien worlds/civilizations. Do this long enough, and eventually you have a fully mixed society, and the curtain gets dropped. Tadaa! Surprise, folks, your world is already integrated into the Pan-Galactic League of Worlds, with full species representation off-world, and full species representation in your own terrestrial governments!
One drawback to that: Reverse Conquest through Assimilation… wait, is that what ‘ARCHON’ stands for? Assilimation through Reverse Conquest: Humanity Or Nothing!
-Vacationer, waiting tables is easier than her real job/came to visit but no currency exchange. Needs local work till she gets picked up by the space tour bus.
– Immigrant to live in a relatively wild world as opposed to the mega cities.
– Lost a bet.
Please don’t take offence hard working wait staff, but the universe must suck if waiting tables on a backward planet is preferable to what she was doing previously.
Its probably a lot easier than her normal job as a space squid wrangler
That job isn’t hard. A Bowman’s Wolf can handle it in her spare time from being a spacecraft engineer and remodeling a civilization.
Haven’t you ever heard of backpackers?
how about an agent of an alien civilization/confederation monitoring whether the nuclear armed xenophobic indigenous sempiant bio organisms are about to discover faster than light travel, so that she could intervene and stop us leaving earth before we kick off an interstellar nuclear war
-Is the magical girlfriend of a human working at the bar (in which case the lizard guy is probably a rival for her affections, and any other aliens in the vicinity are caught up in the wacky harem comedy)
T- The Galactic Economy and Job Market is REALLLLLLY bad.
… huh. Come to think about it, knowing the comic and its creator, the xenophilia angle is by far the most probable one.
Maybe humans are, throughout the galaxy, the preferred sex toys for the adventurous alien on the go
EARTH IS FOR PORN!
So says the galactic community.
Now the internet FINALLY MAKES SENSE TO ME.
And hentai is there to prepare use for when the aliens make themselves publicly known.
If an alien race really wanted to get to learn about us by monitoring our outgoing signals, the most feasible way would be to park a cloaked spaceship in orbit & monitor from there. Trying to read us from all the way back home…Well, the info would be quite a bit “outdated.”
Better way, drop some infiltrators.
They blend in to society.
Gain access to our information network.
Start send data to hidden base where it is sorted through.
Bring in or hire local information extractors to get the more well guarded stuff.
you forgot one:
– Needs a job, to pay rent on her shitty apartment.
– Just making ends meet till she gets her big break in Hollywood. Ultimate goal is to star alongside the teen heartthrob whose movies inspired her to come to earth.
And died 50 years ago of old age :D
-Because of the time-differential between actual broadcast & the signals actually getting received within our close interstellar neighborhood, and even if she used FTL space travel capability, she’s missed her chance…
Or died in a car crash on a remote desert/mountain road before you even left your planet, but we keep rerunning James Dean and Grace Kelly movies still.
Never understood why Dabbler’s Power Level is so low on the Cast page. Her seduction ability is already strong enough to neutralize everything not immune to glamours; add her technology and accumulated knowledge – she should be at least tied with Maxima, and not lounge in the same realm as the “best of the best mundanes” Math.
First her seven rating is hardly low. Second, even a fair low level character can have a huge effect with the right abilities and enough intelligence. Third, she doe’s have the ability to boost herself past normal but it obviously requires special circumstances which are not practical.
Don’t forget she has access to magic, that only grows more powerful the more she feeds / stores up. And kicked the shit out of a Demon Lord / King.
So yeah I never got that either. After all she fought Maxima to a stand still didn’t she [or was that Math]?
Dabbler did but she did so by exploiting one of Max’s few weaknesses. She kept Max on the defensive to the point Max couldn’t use adequate strength and speed against her. Only two people on the team have beaten Math, Max & Dabbler, and Dabbler had to resort to tricks like an invisible web spell to pull it off.
It’s only a “trick”, when you’re the one that lost.
Same as, it’s only cheating if you lose
Unless Guido says otherwise.
How you apply power makes a big difference. Look at Sydney using her knowledge of comic book heroes and role playing. Being genre savvy she thought up a plan where Xuriel’s hypno boobs, a relatively low level power, were instrumental in taking down Vehemence.
So while Xuriel might not have the strongest powers in absolute values she’s smart and has a lot of experience in how to efficiently apply what she’s got to work with. In the fight against Max she was probably going full out with her seduction aura which didn’t help Max focus on much of anything, least of all on smart strategies for fighting.
A xenophile getting her kicks pretty much sums up Dabbler.
Ment this to be a reply to Rrolf.
Thought Dabbles was more into getting her ‘licks’ :P
Kicks, licks, touches, nibbles, and whatever else she can get away with.
Dabby is looking kinda sexy/hungry right now. Careful, Syd.
I was just going to say something like that but I’m wondering if its flirting or if its just who she is naturally… I mean is it even possible to turn sexy off it you are part succubus? Is it something you do or something you are… I’m leaning towards -are- for Dabbler…
Yup, Dabby knows to “dial it down” around rookies like Syd. Maybe she thinks she is, but it doesn’t look like it. Looks like she’s having fun. So far, Syd still has her wits about her. So far…
jack of all trades, master of none, though often times better than master of one.
Is one of the often misquoted and misunderstood of quotes. Especially since people drop the second line more often than not.
Historically speaking. A Jack of all trades was a person who was adapt and well versed in many endeavors, even though he [or she in this case] wasn’t a master in any particular field. But being adapt in many different areas. They were more versatile, and flexible than a person who excelled in only one area.
Of course the second line gets dropped. Then the meaning changes drastically cut out the versatility and adaptability of the Jack of all trades. Focusing on that they don’t have any mastery in any field they are in.
https://lifehacker.com/5977715/knowing-a-little-of-everything-is-often-better-than-having-one-expert-skill
and
https://lifehacker.com/being-a-jack-of-all-trades-doesnt-mean-youre-a-master-511886334
Show that being a Jack of All Trades is actually a good thing.
Unfortunately in this day and age the jack of all trades is dieing out due to the time it now takes to become proficient in most disciplines.
I’ve often said I was a Jack of All Trades, and never added the Master of None to the end of that, which brings the meaning back to a positive. However, it’s funny how being a highly versatile person doesn’t get you as far as being a master of one. American society at least doesn’t understand that a person who has the basics and even some intermediate skills in nearly every thing you can through at them, coupled with the ability to learn at a highly advanced speed means that in a quarter of the time you can turn that person into a master of whatever trade you bring them into.
Instead, we value getting people who are younger and have no experience but can bring them into one trade and lock them into it forever, teaching them no other skills. Hell, our education system is basically built to drill that into a student’s head. We teach and learn to pass tests, not to figure out the understanding of something so we can add variety to it or adapt it to another area of life.
Yeah, we don’t actually learn anything, except how to regurgitate what has been thrown at us
That’s something that made me depressed when I was in school. So many schools focusing on cramming State Aptitude Tests that there’s little room for actual growth and development. Then of course you have Magnet Schools. Which are the same thing, but geared towards you being good in only one field which you may never end up in [my younger brother was in the Vet Magnet program. Is working as a Martial Arts instructor [next year he’ll be 4th Dan in Tae Kwon Do, I forgot what belt in Itsutsu Maru Ninjutsu, and has training in Judo, Hapkido, Brazilian Jujitsu, Animal Style Kung Fu, and various other martial arts he took up for fun.]
I’ve long adhered to the phrasing “ingest & regurgitate; actual digestion is discouraged” as a description of the “education” system…
This is why I only concentrated on things I actually wanted to learn, and during classes I didn’t want to learn, I would only pay attention enough to understand what subjects we were learning, and the night before a test would cram all of it to pass the test and then forget it immediately afterward. I did this for Social Studies, English Lit (not English mind you, I find grammar and spelling important), History, and Biology. I found Math, Art, Chemistry, and Shop to the most interesting and useful classes. I still have a basic understanding of History, and understand how to read and comprehend a story, but I found that I have never had a situation where my knowledge of the Civil War and the movements of Union troops is critical to a situation I’m in. However, on multiple occasions, my ability to process algebraic equations has helped me immensely, and knowing what chemicals cannot be mixed together has actually saved a few peoples’ lives.
It’s why I hate those posts that say “Why’d I have to learn all that math in high school? I never use it.” and I go “What the f*** are you doing with your life that you don’t use math? I use math on a daily basis, and I don’t even try to use it. Every time I drive my car, work at my job, buy things online or in a store, I’m doing math in my head to make sure I don’t hit another car or run out of gas or give someone too much money back or run out of money myself. What do you do that requires no math? Do you just sit on a couch and do nothing? Because if so, I’m about to start getting the numbers I need to calculate how much oxygen of mine you are wasting.”
The reason a lot of people say what they do about algibber is because their teachers do not try to TEACH it.
They just bush the problems at you and do not explain what to do, or how to do it.
Ka-Slang.
Another faulty clone dealt with.
I’m lovin’ that silly smile on Sydney’s face when she comes up with her Princess idea!
Nice seeing Dabbler’s human “form” and Sydney needs to realize that NOT every stranded female alien is a princess,but a nice thought nonetheless! ;)
Dabbler showing legs, undressing a bit, baiting the subject of internet so Sydney talks about porn, feeding off princess fantasies…
…isn’t it nice to feed off someone who doesn’t get physically exhausted doing it? I bet Sydney can keep up nerdly fantasies of all sorts intermittently all day until Dabbler lets out a loud BURP!
Dabbler is putting the moves on Sidney – or looks to be doing so.
This is just my opinion and yours may easily differ, but… eek.
Q: Is Dabbler breathing?
Yes: She’s flirting (probably overtly)
No: She’s still probably flirting (just slightly less overtly)
For large-breasted women, breathing is a WAY to flirt.
Last page did look like ‘Mrs. Robinson, you’re you trying to seduce me, arent you?’ from The Graduate :)
There is one other reason for Aliens visiting/studying this planet-Supers. If we are the only planet with such beings (and there are more appearing all the time) wouldn’t you want to study them.
Yes, we have advanced technology, but this third rate backwater planet’s population is evolving abilities that are unlike anything we have ever seen. Perhaps a long term threat, but certainly worthy of study (and being a waitress where such beings hang out would be good cover, which she would know if Harem has been here regularly).
She’s not just a waitress she’s a xenoanthropology grad-student.
So, an alien Dione Forsey? or however you spell her name, instead of studying Gorilla’s in the mist, she’s studying humans in the Oontz :D
Dian Fossey – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dian_Fossey
Thank you
I actually really like the idea of an alien grad student here working on her thesis. That’s brilliant!
Dabbler happens to stay on Earth because she’s interested in human mating habits…
FOR SCIENCE!
i was just wondering about Dabbler’s shoes. i’m glad i read the explanation below. but i’m still wondering about the other Recruits not knowing about Dabbler’s identity.
is… is Sydney pretending to juggle her Amaze-balls on the side of the first panel?
Mulan is in the Disney Princess Merchandise line, but is not a princess. she’s a war veteran and possibly a member of the upper class of China, but not the ruling class. Pocahontas also isn’t a Princess, but the daughter of a village chief. among the other Disney Princesses, i think the Princesses born to their title, like Aurora or Jasmine, would consider the Princesses who married into the title, such as Cinderella and Tiana, to be no better than scullery maids.
Actually, being a the daughter of the village chief would make Poke-her-hot-ass a Princess (what is a ‘King’, but the chief of a really really big village, and delusions of grandeur)
please tell me they are going to at least kiss!
I have been following Adam since he drew The Dirty Pair. Empowered is a different view into the super hero world. Not all is glamorous or hunky-dory The beginning stories are more of an introduction to the characters than serious stories. In the last few issues, things are buckling down and the story line is fantastic! It is definably worth checking out.
I dont think a viscountess would feel out of place amongst disney princesses, considering some of them actually ARE scullery maids! (Hi cinderella) Or at least were before they got hitched with a handsome prince. At the very least most wouldnt look down on her for being a born noblewoman of slightly less rank than they married into. Heck, Jasmine married a street rat, she doesnt have room to throw stones at those of lesser rank. She is sucking face with the lowest ranking being on earth that still has sentience!
Part of the degredation of Cinderella is that she’s actually the daughter of a Noble of some sort- her father- but her step-family is so evil and stingy that they fired all the help and have her doing maid-work.
actually cindy was a countess who was treated as a scullery maid by a adoptive parent who was beneath her in political rank.
“…that still has sentience!”
Did you actually mean sentience? Or have you missed the fact that “sentience” basically means “can sense the surrounding environment?”
If you actually meant to say that the person in question is “capable of problem solving & higher-level thought,” then the better word to use is “sapience.”
Or were you intending to insult Alladin’s intelligence?
;)
And thus I learned that horse handlers have their own technobabble :D Sounds a bit backwards to a mere PC handler but who am I to judge such a thing.
If the boot was part of the glamour, why kick it off in the first place?
All I can think of is Dabbler is trying to hit on Sydney.
Consider her glamour as an autonomous program designed to provide a visual image consistent with Dabbler’s movements and intentions (combined with a filter to present a culturally appropriate gesture).
But as previously stated:
IF (DABBLER = ALIVE) THEN
DABBLER_PERSONALITY = SEDUCTIVE
ENDIF
Well if you’re going to put your feet up on a seat it’s slightly less rude to take your shoes off first.
That first panel…doesn’t look right. Those legs are like twice as long as they ought to be? Like someone took a closeup picture and a further away picture of Dabbler and merged them together to make some kind of leg-centaur.
I get that the point of the panel is to show off Dabbler’s legs, but that just doesn’t look right.
“Still, it would be interesting to see her standing in that Princess linup, knowing that even though she’s very much a 1 percenter, she’s still basically a scullery maid compared to the rest of them.”
And then there’s Alice, the redheaded stepchild of the Disney universe.
Mind you, she has it better than Leia. Can Leia still be considered a princess since her planet got Vader’d?
Also, ew, hooves, I called it :-P
Well in Expanded Universe she still was… but Disney declared it non-canon so…..
Technically one never stops being royalty, it’s a combination of being the head of state and a social class position. Plenty of royalty have ended up in exile throughout human history when overthrown or their centuries invaded. As long as there are enough people who recognize Leia as a princess, including other surviving Alderaanians, she is. Although really when her adopted mother was atomized she should have gotten an unfortunate promotion to Alderaanian Queen. So sad your mother, father, everyone you knew, and your planet are space dust… but at least you get to be queen. Oh also your turns out your biological father was one of those behind the trigger, was actually the one holding you still making you watch, have fun with that.
Biologically she’s daughter of … wait, does Naboo royalty get to keep the title after they’re replaced, like American Presidents? She’s also daughter of Vader, who was basically the King to the Emperor’s Empire.
And she goes on to become Supreme Chancellor or something afterwards- I’d be willing to bet Disney keeps that job for her in the new movies.
Oh! You’re right! That’s a confusing family tree!
So Leia is still a princess, even though her planet was sploded. BUT! She’s not automatically a queen because that would require a coronation. (I think… space feudalism might be weird and not require a coronation.)
BUT! She’s also the daughter of Padme, so that makes her… a double super princess… WITH JEDI POWERS!
But Alderan is still sploded. Damn.
Why is it that pretty much every “legendary” story includes characters with such dysfunctional families? Superman’s planet was destroyed, Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Why celebrate the unusual so much when the world is full of people who have stable family lives & still carry on with acts of altruism & compassion…With no recognition of the heroic lengths some of them take, even on a daily basis?
Why is it that the most notable people (whether noted for greatness or infamy) in the real world & our history never become notable unless it includes a dysfunctional family? As it happens in the real world, it even becomes picked up in works of fiction as well.
In your case of Darth Vader, it was the story & the plot that was paramount…It really could have been Joe Blow or Jane Plain who could’ve filled those parts & still been crowbarred into those situations. The story was based on an ancient prophesy of a person who “brings balance to the Force” & Anakin Skywalker becomes the first one to ever cross over to the Dark Side & then back to the Light Side. But was it really necessary for such a dysfunctional family to make it happen?
Speaking as a very amateur and obviously unpublished writer, I think the answer to that is that it’s boring. Having your hero or heroine have a nice, normal background just isn’t as interesting as is seeing them overcome their own issues as they overcome the baddies.
I fully agree that the angsting hero has been way overdone, though.
That’s not entirely true. Some very good drama comes from throwing ordinary, average (ie: boring) people into extraordinary situations. There’s stories like The Cabin in the Woods (& most “horror” stories). Even Sydney here was pretty much an ordinary, average (but not very boring) person until she found the orbs!
I should probably have said that normal people from a good background can be considered boring rather than that they actually are. It’s all about keeping the character interesting or exciting or mysterious or all of the above. It’s a trick – or gimmick, if you like – that has been employed since we began mythmaking about the ancient gods and goddesses. I would agree though that all of this does not mean that the only way to have an interesting character is to thoroughly mess them up.
Joseph Campbell’s (of Hero with a Thousand Faces, etc.) theory of the Monomyth requires the protagonist to be removed from family and civilization in some fashion so he can be called to action. (The Monomyth proposes an overarching, archetypal structure to human storytelling. The stories we respond best to, are ones, like Star Wars, Batman, Superman, Little Red Riding Hood, etc, are ones that conform in some measure to the structure).
As to Star Wars, from what I understood (long before the prequel trilogy was released), Lucas and Campbell had discussed the films, which were to be a trilogy of trilogies conforming to the monomyth–where what happens to the Son echoes what has happened to the Father and foretells what will happen to the Third Generation (and where the Son falls, to be finally saved by the children of the Third Generation, as he had saved his fallen Father). It also means that both must be cut off from family to allow them to rise to the level of the heroes they are destined to become, and to give them farther to fall when their feet of clay are revealed.
Obviously it’s all up for grabs now that Disney has franchise control–but I will be seriously disappointed if Luke hasn’t turned to the Dark Side.
Last I checked she’s a Senator now.
According to what little I’ve seen, this new Disney Star Wars says Leia is now a General.
Just because she is now a General, doesn’t stop her from being a Princess
Prince Andrew was a Captain during the Falklands Invasion, didn’t stop him from still being a Prince
Still protesting, huh?
We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to it!
Am I protesting correctly?
Not quite correctly…Here’s your sign.
:D
He just wants Mistress Dabbler to make him polish her hooves.
Is it just me or do Dabbler’s legs look a bit disproportionately large to the rest of her body in panel 1? Particularly her lower legs and feet look really big.
Not that they look BAD mind you…. <..>… just large.
CP Mentioned the same thing a few comments above.
I propose this may be an intentional distortion in her glamour, in part because, due to the goat hooves, her legs actually ARE proportionately longer than a human’s. Goat-legs like Dabb’s actually bend in two places, back at the knee and forward at the ankle, like a human leg, but unlike humans, only the hoofed ‘toes’ touch the ground – the arch of the foot between ankle and toe, therefore, add to the leg’s length.
This may be why she’s always wearing heels in her glamours, but when she takes the shoes off, how does the glamour compensate?
Corroboration here. Note the extra length of leg below her calf.
“that Dabbler, she’s got legs up to here.”
“She’s got legs up to her neck!” (Bonus points if you can identify the quote! :) )
alt quote “yes I had them lengthened now they go all the way up”
What occurs to me is that there is a tendency for science fiction to assume that everywhere else is so much cooler than Earth, that Earth is some backwater, middle of nowhere podunkville. Well what if it’s not. What if Earth is actually in a pretty popular section of the galaxy and most of the other Sapients think it’s a fantastic place to be. What if they actually like Humans (and I don’t mean on the menu).
Well you have to keep in mind that visiting earth would be like a big city boy visiting rural upstate new york. Just by virtue of the fact that they are capable of interstellar travel while we are not makes us bumpkins technology wise. That isnt to say earth wouldnt be a popular tourist spot. After all, people visit amish country all the time.
With so many bombs and guns going off all over the place, it’s a little hard to see why they would think of our troubled little world as a good place for a vacation, though.
Well, that depends on what the rest of the galaxy is like, for all we know, they may see Earth as a quiet, tranquil place and the local violence is viewed as “quaint”.
They probably think that it’s a good thing that our violent tendencies are staying localized…
Or they could be behind some events that are distracting us from space.
Maybe it’s not a coincidence, but some outside forces are making sure we stay put, and every time we get close to ‘wandering off the reservation’ they drop something big, like the Black Plague, or Christopher Columbus, or heck, two World Wars in the space of a single generation, not to mention their latest attempt: Reality TV!!!
Anne McCaffrey introduced me to the term Jack of all Trades through her character Joat, a young orphan girl in the book “The City Who Faught”. Who’s name is the acronym. At one point she was referred to as “The Jack of all Trades and Master of Some.”
There’s also Ian Stewart’s character “Billy the Joat”. (Who is, officially, “Master of One” but I don’t know if any of the stories definitively identified which one.)
I was hoping she’d find that nacho sauce too hot.
She’s apparently not going for the nacho sauce
She’s going for the green goop…
Green goop in the red bowl
So if Dabbler projects a 4 inch heel shoe does she constantly levitate off the ground to get the height change or does she just never NOT have heels so her height isn’t questioned? What about when she kicks her independent glamour shoes off and is still the same height?
“It would be cool if the next Disney Princess was actually a Marchioness or an Arch Viscountess.”
Marvel Comics has made Thor into a female.
Thor’s father is a king.
Thor is therefore a princess.
Disney owns Marvel Comics, and more specifically, Thor.
Thor is now a Disney princess.
you know, there IS one Disney Princess who actually made Queen. most people don’t even remember the movie, either. Kida. Atlantis, the Lost Empire. also notable for being the only disney princess ever to kick two guys in the balls, and pull a knife on a third. and voiced by Cree Summer to boot.
Atlantis was awesome.
Of course, Elsa’s a princess who became a Queen as well.
Personally, I think they should put Kida and Milo (or at least Atlantean stuff) in as Easter Eggs in all movies set post-Atlantis.
Elsa became queen too.
Ow. Your flawless reasoning has made my head hurt.
There is one up-and-coming princess in the making.
Disney has gone next-gen on the Lion King with their new series the Lion Guard. Simba (Rob Lowe) is now king and has a son Kion. He also has a daughter Kiara, who being the daughter of the current lion king is now an official lion ‘princess’. She is older than her brother but he will eventually take over the pride. The rules of primogeniture obviously do not apply in the Disney anthropomorphic universe.
Oh god, I just re-read what you said. Now I need to tell all my friends the reasoning of how Thor is a Disney Princess because… .well… that reasoning was excellent!
It’s not actually correct. The female Thor is not the same person and therefore her father is not a king.
However, there have been cases where the original Thor has become a woman, and those would count.
Okay, but if Jane Foster is ‘accepted’ as the real Thor, then she’s still going to be considered a Disney Princess :)
Dabbler’s really down playing her human look at the club. Also, you mention that she’s not as well practices as some of the other Succubi. That might be evident from that one panel you showed of her in high school. I forgot what page it was on, but I also remember you saying that is canon material…. #DisneyDabbler
P.S. Nice shout out to Dani from Atomic Laundromat.
As a bit of a Disney Geek, I feel the need to point out that even among the Official Disney Princesses, there are several examples of non-royalty. Mulan being the main example, but others such as Cinderella and Tiana only got the title via marriage. The next Princess is supposed to be Moana, and from what little I’ve seen as to what’s going on with that story, I think she might also be in that category.
That said, I’d probably be right with Sydney on the line of thinking…lol
Moana? Does she hunt Moa? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89wvsthbjWg
I will not be surprised when it turns out the waitress really is a princess.
Actually, the ‘waitress’ is a he, and a Duke :p
1. In regards to the discussion about human strength/frailty, I refer you to Alan Dean Foster’s series, “The Damned”, specifically the first book, “A Call to Arms”. A very fun read.
2. Cinderella wasn’t a princess. She was of noble birth, but only became a princess after marrying the prince.
3. As if Dabbler couldn’t simply ‘port in anything mundane that she needs, like a boot, to add to the realism. I am guessing that she has a fabricator that can replicate most human small objects quick enough for her to have it ‘ported to her hands within seconds. So, she could easily be able to “take off” a pair of boots and leave them behind.