Grrl Power #447 – Grand kawaii seizure
One thing Sydney has going for her is that she recovers quickly. Which possibly is evidence that her reactions are dramatized in the first place, but if that’s the case, it’s her bit and good luck dissuading her from it.
A lycan turning into their hybrid or animal form is a little more involved that just enfuzzening. There’s a moment of strain, veins popping, like someone’s about to jump, or they’ve had way too much fiber, but then the transformation is very fast after that. Really, it should have probably taken Kat a bit longer since she’s not practiced with it, but I didn’t have room for it on this page and didn’t really want to break the comedic pacing.
Since I’m not sure if I’ll cover it in the comic proper, at least for a while, yes, Kat has hair in her hybrid form, Gregor doesn’t. It’s actually something the lycan can control. Some think it looks goofy, some prefer their tresses. In Kat’s case she hasn’t mastered the idiosyncrasies of the change, so she’s stuck with hair in her hybrid form until she gets better. Those who have been doing it for a while can even control whether or not they have digitigrade legs, tails, or even how animaly their faces become, but that’s only after they spend a few points on their Fleshwalk skill. A high Fleshwalk skill is jokingly referred to as Flashwalk, cause there’s not that much use for it besides stylin’. Really most feel it’s better to spend your points on skills like “Sniff Test” which refines your forensic nose skills, “Advanced Territory Marking” which is best not mentioned in polite company, and “Clothes Horse” which allows you to find shirts that fit your giant horse neck without getting all stretched out.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon as soon as I get up. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)
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.
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“Bunnies frighten me.” – Anya, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
I miss Anya. She was one of my favorite characters ever.
Likewise. Plus Willow, Buffy, Dawn, Angel, his monster-bar club owning friend, Spike, Giles, Xander, most of the girl monsters who he dated, Cordelia, her poltergeist room-mate, Dru, Oz, Buffy Bot, Dark Willow, Anya’s ex (the troll god), Glory (the god who got whacked with the troll-god’s hammer), Buffy’s mum, the robot girlfriend (so sad), Felicia Day’s character (one of the apprentice slayers), Faith, the oriental slayer in training (who spoke no English), the head of the Watchers’ Council, the leader of the vengeance demons, Harmony, Darla, the demon-hunting puppet… and a few more.
Respect.
Respect +1
Wesley? The one with the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone?
He was starting to become cool, in Angel, I do admit. But have only seen the early series. So perhaps he will grow on me, when I do get to see the rest. But not a favourite, prior to that, no.
Wes turned out to be possibly the single most interesting character on Angel, in my book. (Then again, I never liked Angel himself all that much.) If you haven’t seen the whole series, I won’t say any more, since it would be tough to avoid spoilers.
Honestly, the entire cast of Angel had awesome chemistry, not to mention the tons and tons of subplots. you never knew when something seemingly unimportant would show up again.
+1
Still keeping watching the remaining series on my ‘things to do before I die’ list.
I am planning on catching up with both series at some point, now that they moved to comic book format.
What about Halfrek/Cecily?
She is an essential foil to Anyanka, and does that job very well. But is not herself, as a character, a favourite of mine.
Contrast her to the floppy-eared demon, who practically became part of the extended Buffy Summers family. Now he is a serious omission, who should not have been left in the “and more”!
Another one which I, belatedly, regretted not putting in, was the demonic nemesis, in Buffy the Musical. He had style!
I think he was only named in the script: Sweet, Demon Lord of the Dance.
And in the “Once More, with Feeling” CD. One of my most prized CDs!
Some of the events of this play report seem relevant to your discussion on shape-shifting skills:
https://thrythlind.blogspot.jp/2016/06/divine-blood-wasps-among-butterflies.html
i’ve never really been comfortable with rabbits, they kinda creep me out, i think reading Bunnicula as a kid dint help, i prefer carnivore pets
do you know why veggies are crunchy/
that’s how they SCREAM!
*giggles*
Plants have been shown to have signalling responses, to injury, similar to those which animals have, under similar circumstances. They can feel pain.
At least us ethical carnivores kill our prey first, rather than eating them alive and in agony!
That’s a long life for a vegetable sitting on shelves for awhile
Yea, but not very fulfilling, whilst dormant. Given that you can germinate plants though, from some such stock, does demonstrate that life can persist, even under such cruel and usual confinement.
Just look at the grains and whatnot which have been germinated from ancient tombs, to see how long they can be artificially detained, from both continuing their natural cycle and the plant-afterlife!
Stop please, you are going to make me cry.
In truth, those people who like the smell of a freshly-mowed lawn are sadists. The smell is emitted by the blades of grass as an olfactory-based distress signal; many plants have a similar response. In other words, after you’ve mowed the lawn, you are smelling their screams of agony…
No, plants do not feel pain. They have neither the nerves, nor the brain necessary.
The nerves I dispute, as they do have analogous means of sending messages around their bodies. Just because their architecture is dissimilar, does not mean that they do not have the same needs, to respond to injury, as we do. Compare a scratch on your hand, to one on a plant’s stem, and you will see similar things happening. And that is just the results on the outside.
The brain, yes, that is the key distinction. Which will hopefully set Duende sociopata‘s mind at ease.
Do note though, that as with nerves, we should not be so arrogant as to assume that sentience is only possible with a brain. We do have sparse, under-researched bits of evidence that both the spinal column, and the heart, actually contribute towards the command and control functions, of our body. Carrying out some such actions independently of the brain.
Due to its under-researched status, most professionals would shy away from pointing out the clues we have to such. For fear of harming their careers. But, fortunately, I am not such a professional. So can cite examples of heart-transplant patients, who acquire habits and/or memories of the donor. More money has been spent by Hollywood, on exploring this, than by medical researchers!
As with anything that Science fails to research adequately, it is easier to pass it over to the psychologists, to explain. But, until this area is properly explored, I shall remain suspicious that we may have some decentralised thought capabilities. And so may plants.
No, I prefer Occam’s razor. Between killing things that we know can think & feel and killing things you assert we’re unsure of, this is flimsy evidence the second group can feel pain, in order to justify killing the first group when the two are completely unrelated on that point. We are still using *both* groups as food sources and are hopelessly dependent on the second group for assured survival. There’s no moral high ground there. If I remember correctly, not a single one of the research studies you’re talking about relate to plants as a whole, but are specific to unique species, regarding analogous forms of internal processing & external signalling; it’s disingenuous to make blanket statements based off of singleton data elements.
On top of that, the argument relies entirely upon the Argument from Ignorance fallacy, which relies on the assumption that we have insufficiently researched this area. So even if I were to say science has researched this area thoroughly, one could still assert that it was insufficient, using this fallacy. That being said, science HAS researched this area thoroughly, and in many cases, plants do have things similar to coding & information transfer mechanisms, but as you mention yourself, these are autonomous mechanisms so I don’t think you should worry about Attack of the Killer Tomatoes any time soon.
The fruits & veggies we eat don’t feel it when we eat them; eat your broccoli, beans, & asparagus, or no dessert for you.
There are three elements to this, which you are conflating into one, and treating them all the same. It is better to split them out, so each can be addressed on its own merits. Firstly pain is a signal that damage (or some other undesirable effect) is being inflicted. Clearly plants do have this property, as we can see the results of them reacting to that. Resources are marshalled and the injury is healed as best as is possible.
So I stand by my statement that plants feel pain.
Secondly is the emotion that we associate with the feeling of pain. This requires sapience. This is something we can only form an opinion on. Arbitrarily deciding where the line between sentience and sapience lies. One of the best tools we have is “the mirror test”, to see if an animal recognises itself. If it does then we feel that is a good indication of being sapient.
However that test has a flaw. It works on the assumption that “because we think this way, only other beings which think like we do are sapient”.
I could argue this point half a dozen ways, but the simplest is to point out that people can suffer brain damage, which renders them unable to recognise themselves in the mirror. Yet they can still talk and carry on an otherwise normal life. Yet view the person in the “window” as being “someone else”, looking in.
These individuals are still sapient. Yet would fail the test. Ergo even our best test for sapience is fundamentally flawed. Oh, and we can’t try it on plants.
Which brings us to the third aspect. The philosophical. The only beings we can tell for sure are sapient are ourselves. For instance I do not know that you are sapient. It is my assumption that you are an AI program, assigned some human sounding name beginning with “J”.
However my best means of deciding if you are actually human is to treat you as if you were, and see if you respond in an appropriate way. It is also the only practical thing to do, in order to continue this debate.
As I am unable to hold a conversation with a plant, the only practical option is to treat them as if they did not have sapience. Either I need to eat them, or my food needs to eat them. Likewise I can do as LiEF Green does below, and decide if they are complex enough. Failing to find any systems, which would indicate that, allows me to eat in peace.
However, it does not mean that I will stop looking at ongoing research, in order to see if that assumption, based on a lack of evidence, is fair. If we do discover a sapient plant species, on our planet, or elsewhere, I do not want to be causing it pain. However if we do not continue to re-evaluate our opinions, of whether plants or animals might be sapient, we will never know. Unless we stumble on one which is able to talk to us.
Ah, there’s our common thread –
Here I will agree with you upon the following & leave it at that:
#1 – I did erroneously conflate sapience & sentience. I maintain that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I have yet to come across or eat a sentience plant-based life form as far as we know.
#2 – You are correct, we must absolutely & constantly re-evaluate what we know to be true, especially from a scientific perspective, in order to prevent falling into dogmatic thinking, which halts progress.
#3 – Yes, we must always look out for vacuously true statements as they are detrimental to our thinking – mostly useful for proofs by contradiction, hence, if I may steal your example, acting upon the assumption that I am an AI, we arrive at the same conclusion. Interesting though it may be, the idea would only hinder, rather than assist, in the long run. Again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and to assert the contrary is to assert the Argument from Ignorance fallacy (or to attempt a proof by contradiction).
The rest is of a more personal nature:
The sapient animals issue was actually brought up by LIEF Green – I *personally* believe the majority of mammals & reptiles we’re familiar with have sapience, and that a number of them have some level of sentience. I’m compelled to evaluate whether I want to eat anything capable of learning, which appears to be my cutoff.
Very kind of you, to seek common ground.
I eat whatever’s convenient & tasty. Morality is a non-sequitur.
You aught to be thankful that I have an antipathy to eating Greens!
I feel like this is my fault, for not being specific enough, & wording my statement incorrectly. Plants don’t feel pain because they don’t have ENOUGH brain… the same is true for ants, bugs, & a surprising amount of fish, among other life.
The ability to feel pain necessitates the ability to recognize, process, & respond to it.
Plants respond to stimuli, but that means very little, considering most life does…
I don’t really care about tissue autonomy, & the psychopass2 organ-memories dealie is entirely unscientific.
Your overall argument is fair. However see my response above, to see the differing philosophical approach I take, given that evidence.
To dismiss something as unscientific, without applying scientific thought, as to its merits is unscientific. You have failed to take even the basic scientific approach of conducting simple research. This was my first result on googling “organ memory”.
For anyone unable to access the article, the headline reads as follows:
Really? An article headline said that?
WELL THEN IT MUST BE TRUE! *exhales frustration*
Organ memory goes against the entirety of modern knowledge of the human body/brain relationship. Tissue autonomy is still disputed, so I can’t speak to that, but organ memory makes less scientific sense than anti-vaccine rhetoric.
If this thing were true, it would raise countless questions & explain only a few fringe occurrences. Beyond that, there have been no repeatable studies on this issue, so I need you to understand that, whether you intend to or not, what you are saying is basically:
“I think that the last century of medical science is probably just wrong because I said so”
That is, unless you were merely pointing out a possibility, in which case, yes it is technically possible…in the same way that self-sustaining porcine flight is technically possible. -_-
Actually, I was getting very tired, it being time to sleep. Plus having spent a long time contemplating my reply to the previous comment above. So I just accepted the first response I got, checked that it was from a credible-sounding source (they were running some stories I knew to be true from the BBC news, so that was OK as a rule of dewclaw).
The headline conclusion suited my needs, so I just went with it.
But, yes, as you point out, it was not peer reviewed, so its scientific worth was lowered, as a result. However it did lay out the argument in a cohesive manner, and specifically cited various studies to support its case. Which, if you look at the details, do have significant enough anomalies to be of scientific interest and demanding an explanation.
However you are deriding ‘organ memory’ out of hand, and handwaving away ‘cell memory’ due to insufficient knowledge on your part. Saying “there have been no repeatable studies” is silly, given that is what I was asking for us to do! What you fail to do is actually refute any points, or show why you feel the field is pseudo-science, rather than something that deserves study.
Please bear in mind that I do not debate to win. I like to learn. So if you can satisfy me that the field is bogus, you can change my mind. But just saying “but organ memory makes less scientific sense than anti-vaccine rhetoric” does not give anything tangible to make me believe your case.
Note that I am 100% with you on anti-vaccine bollox. Do not think I am wedded to fringe ideas, simply because I am willing to consider their merits.
To address that, note that the brain is an organ, and it uses cells, and the connections between them, to store memories. It is not unreasonable to suggest that this is simply a highly specialised, and effective, version of an effect which happens in other organs in the body too.
So in no way is this a result of me saying
I have offered a specific theory, backed it up with named research data, and various anecdotal accounts which appear to corroborate it. Plus it would not make the previous scientific knowledge wrong. It would simply add to that body of knowledge, not subtract from it. That is the way science progresses. Adding new discoveries on top of the pillars of the old.
Drawing it back to the original subject, namely plants, if such effects can be shown in humans, then similar may be possible in plants. The more cells a plant has, the more complex the potential ‘mind’ they might have. Compare the number of cells in an oak, to the number in the human brain and heart, for instance. Or that of a giant redwood /sequoia.
Although I seriously doubt that evolution will have driven cell memory to the point where sapience is a significant advantage. Simply because of the relative lack of active responses plants can make. However there are some choices. Do we sacrifice this limb, to ensure the rest of the tree remains healthy? Or do we keep pumping nutrients into it, despite its poorly condition, and hope that it will get better, in time for blooming season?
These are choices that they have to make. Which we presently attribute to sentient decisions made by autonomous systems. But again, this is us imposing an arbitrary dividing line which says “everything below this level is sentient” whereas “everything above this level is sapient”.
Notably that line was originally placed immediately below humans. But science has gradually been pushing it further down the family tree.
I am simply proposing that such process needs to look further afield too.
I’d like to start off by saying that sleep is a luxury to be reserved only for the dead & dying! 6_9
Beyond that, I think I’ve miscommunicated again, so I’ll be as plain as possible this time.
I didn’t hand-wave cell memory, I hand-waved tissue autonomy… because there hasn’t been enough research in it to be definitive. Cell memory has nothing to do with what we’re talking about… at least I’m pretty sure it doesn’t…
& what do you mean that “it would not make the previous scientific knowledge wrong”? OF COURSE IT WOULD.
All of modern psychoactive medicine is prescribed based on the scientific fact that all things mental are housed in the mind. If organ memory were found to be a thing, literally every single brain-chemistry altering substance would have to be re-evaluated to see why it works, when everything we thought we knew about the brain was wrong.
“The brain can store memories. The brain is an organ. Therefore organs can store memories”
makes no sense. If mature cells worked that way stem cells wouldn’t be necessary. The very Idea of specialized cells is that they can only do what they are specialized to do. That’s why organs need each other to function, & there aren’t just wild spleens running around.
Now, to be clear, plants feeling pain has been studied much more than organ memory & the results have been much clearer… it doesn’t happen, at all, ever.
Plants are entirely reactionary, & pain would not be advantageous to them in any way…
That whole save the limb/don’t save the limb scenario… yeah, plants always try to save the limb, even at their own detriment. That’s why pruning is a thing…
Just so we’re clear, organs don’t feel pain either, the nerve cells around & sometimes in them feel pain…
Finally, I want to say that there is not really a line, that I know of, but rather, a spectrum, & plants just so happen to fall really really low on that spectrum.
Just a few points to think on:
1. We are communal beings, not individuals. There are more microbes, in our bodies, acting symbiotically, than there are cells bearing our DNA. Each of them acts autonomously.
2. Pathogens, in our body, are able to communicate, and coordinate attacks by quorum sensing and voting. Waiting until they have reached a critical population density before all acting in concert.
This is a recent discovery, but Science did not despair, that the world had been turned upside down. It did require re-evaluating how we view diseases though, in certain aspects. But what worked the day before discovering that, still worked the day after.
3. Microbes can, and have, spliced sections of their DNA into ours. (I am just using this and the above points to illustrate a blurring of “us” and “them”. They are a part of us, in one form or another, yet theyare thinking independently, in their own extremely rudimentary ways).
4. Higher creatures than the above, yet still without brains, have mechanisms which allow them to sense their environment, remember things, make decisions and react on those.
5. As creatures evolve the obsolete parts do not get thrown in a delete bin. They go in a recycle bin. And periodically evolution will retrieve them, and see if they are of use, in the present environment.
6. Just because we do our higher thinking in our brains, does not necessarily mean that evolution got rid of useful processing capabilities, that were present before such evolved.
7. If an organ is conducting any of its functions by self-regulation, how we think of that is then determined by the language that we use. Not the biology involved. Using words like “autonomous response” helps us to avoid saying “the organ thinks on how to deal with this problem, and enacts a response, without asking the brain”.
8. We have mirror neurons which help us to recognise thinking behaviour in others. Provided they look and act similar to us. Your brain is recoiling, at the thought of things which do not look like us (plants, cells and organs), being able to think, even at a rudimentary level, because those neurons are not firing up. So I realise it is an uphill struggle to allow you to break your instincts, and retrain your thinking.
Please note that all of the above is simply food for thought. Asking you to respond to any or all of it would be unfair, given how diverse it is, and how long this thread has kept going.
My point in doing it is to show that there are many mechanisms, which we already know about, in science, which could be acting like thinking. Perhaps just for a limited aspect of it. Such as just the storage of cravings, as mentioned in the previously linked article.
I numbered the points, in case one took your interest. But answering one will still leave others as possibilities. And I am not claiming that it is anything more than that. Something that we may someday understand, even if monkey brains are not up to it, just yet.
By the way, I do not rate it as particularly likely. But if we close our minds to the possibility, then, even if it is true, we will never discover it.
Not so. Some medical advances have had precise mechanisms observed or proposed. Testing then confirmed that they worked in exactly the way we expected. And treatments were then developed which exploited this.
These will not change. We know what they are doing, and why.
Of course not all such experiments have clear cut results. Sometimes they are better or worse than predicted. With the reasons why not being fully understood or explained. These may need reevaluating.
Other medical treatments use a different methodology. A substance is tested on animals and, in due course, humans. The results are observed. And if the useful aspects are more beneficial than the side-effects, then we put it into production.
However we do not necessarily know how or why it does what it does. Be that the primary use or the side-effects.
And a good part of that lack of understanding may be because of failing to recognise the existence of the mechanisms I have been proposing.
These kinds of medicines would need to be re-examined. And there are an awful lot of them.
Are you sure?
WARNING: The following links to a video showing graphic scenes of plant torture. Viewers of a sensitive nature may wish to avoid watching this. Plants were harmed in the making of the piece.
I hope that you will find the Smithsonian to be of sufficient repute?
I’m really enjoying talking to you, so I’m going to respond to all of what you said in a linear fashion.
Numbers 1, 3, &4
Beings? Humans are meat-robots with “Strong AI”. Any “self awareness” you or I might have is an illusion of perception, & ego. An overcomplication error.
It’s not that only intelligent creatures can think, rather, the idea of “thinking” itself is inherently flawed…. However, if we must define thought, then the most useful definition I can think of is “conflict of directional impulses, resulting in choice”.
By that definition, “complex thought” would be what humans do. Right now, as I’m sitting here typing this sentence, I am thinking about what I want to say to you, & the impulses in my brain are vying for actuation. The impulses are directional to the goal of expressing my thoughts to you, & the ones that I think will work the best are the ones that I am choosing to follow.
Other, less effective thoughts surface when I pause, “god, I’m so lonely”, “maybe he’s actually a dog”, “should I be doing chores”, “maybe he’s a furry”, “I need to pee”, “I should ask if he wants to start a youtube channel about webcomics with me”… That is complex thought.
& as you go down the spectrum of intelligence you find that thought becomes less & less complicated, until you arrive at the point where there is no conflict, & only reaction. ie. plants & the like
Number 2
Pathogens going “if safe, then release chemical marker. if detect X concentration of chemical marker, then attack” is not the same as voting. As I said before, it’s just reactionary.
Also, that discovery filled in a gap in our knowledge, explaining phenomena that could not be otherwise explained… organ memory would not do that. Organ memory can be easily explained as “people are just wrong about what they think that they are experiencing”
Do you understand? There’s nothing factual, or quantifiable in organ memory. People think that their, or their friend’s personality changed after an organ transplant… how do you measure or test for that?
When I compared this to anti-vaccers, this is what I meant. I mean, you can test vaccinated kids & see that there is no increase in autism… but there is no method by which organ memory could be proved true.
5&6
Detrimental parts ARE deleted. That kind of processing requires scads of energy, so yes, they would be gotten rid of.
7
No. An autonomous(of the self) response is a preordained reaction to a given stimulus. An organ will react the same way to the same stimulus every time. The brain is not involved because it isn’t needed.
8
Ex-f–king-cuse me?! *over-dramatic eye twitch*
My brain is recoiling from the BULLSH-T you’re spouting, because I actually know what the f–k I’m talking about!
You presumptuous pooch! Haughty hound! Conceited canine! Condescending cur! Malignable mongrel! Smug stray! Biggety bitch! Pompous pup!
You big meany pants!
No, but seriously you seem pretty cool.
Again, you don’t seem to understand what I’m saying, so I’ll go step by step.
Emotions, & aspects of personalities are housed in the brain.
What you’re proposing, ie organ memory, would render that as false.
“Psychoactive” means “affecting the mind”.
Psychoactive drugs work because they affect the brain’s chemistry, & change emotions & aspects of personalities.
If emotions & aspects of personalities were housed in organs besides the brain, then psychoactive drugs should not affect them…
but they do, so there must be some other reason that they do.
So we would need to re-evaluate them all, to see why they work.
The Smithsonian is a museum, & all that video showed is that plants can be poisoned, & are alive.
1-3
Here you make a subjective decision, to clinch your case. Yet it is wrong. If you tap a venus fly trap, on its sensitive bits, it will ignore you. Tap it a second time, it will snap shut. This has evolved to ensure tasty insects have actually landed, and it is not blindly reacting to a bit of debris falling, or a still flying insect.
This demonstrates memory. Plus the ability to use that to count. Further it has made a decision. Do not react to one tap. Do react to the second one.
This is extremely rudimentary, but thought none the less. It is not reprogrammable, so I am not going to enter them in Venus-has-Talent. But they do exceed the non-thinking status you attributed to them.
My wish is for such research to continue, to see if there are more complex examples, to be found. You, apparently, consider this a closed case, not worthy of study.
2.
Firstly I made it clear I was not claiming bacteria are intelligent. However a decision is being made. And collectively at that. If the population is insufficient, that the attack will fail, the attack is postponed. The decision has been made. Voting however, by release of chemicals, continues.
Eventually, if things go well for the microbes, the evolutionary-decided threshold is reached, and the attack is launched.
The process is mathematically similar to humans voting in an election. One that continues, over time. Thus I feel the term is valid, from that point of view. The fact that it implies a society is just an added bonus, so that I could see steam coming out of your virtual ears!
Only being able to reprogram, or refine, that decision making process, via evolution, may not fit your personal definition of intelligence. But they are, presently, winning the war of their process versus that of the almightay Science! If you judge it by the number of our anti-bacterials which are now no longer effective, as a measure of their success versus ours.
I have reason to doubt your omniscience.
5&6 Some are retained, some are not. My interest lies in the fact that the former can and does happen frequently.
7 A tap, to the knee, of below a certain threshold will not yield a response. Yet a stronger one will. A decision is being made. And that is occurring outside the brain.
The brain is doing the same things. For a given stimulus, each component part will react in the same way. It just has a lot more of those components, enacting in a more complex way.
I am just saying that elements like that are occurring in areas outside of the brain. Some of which can (like the venus fly trap) entail retained memory. Others (like the venus fly trap or quorum sensing/voting) can make decisions.
Add together enough such elements, of ones sort, or another, and you can have the ability to store something more complex (if talking organ memory) or make decisions based on how painful a stimulus is (for hypothetical/potential more advanced plants).
:-)
Incorrect. At no point have I claimed that the brain does not host emotions & personality. What I am saying is that it need not be the only organ which does. Others can be involved in part of the process, being retained from a much more primal state.
Let me give you an example of how ancient wiring remains in the brain. We evolved from teeny mammals, which had smell as their primary sense. This was when we had teeny brains.
In due course we evolved into the magnificent beasts that we are today. However that primal wiring still runs through the ancient bits of the brain. Whereas, sight and sound now go through the more modern parts of the brain.
This is why smelling something, from our childhood, can evoke memories we have forgotten, at a conscious level. Those memories were associated with the primal smell processing part of the brain. So bypassed the usual thinking process, and recalled the otherwise forgotten memory.
Clearly this is all still part of the brain. I am just proposing that something similar can be happening in the cases described in the first link I provided. For example some paleontologists have proposed that dinosaurs delegated a lot of their body control to the spinal chord. Thus freeing up the brain, from many routine tasks. Allowing them to dedicate more of their brain to cognitive thought.
If one species uses that trick to delegate body control, anther species might do something similar with delegating other tasks.
Let us pick an example. The most primitive thinking is associating a stimulus with pain versus reward. “This hurts vs that was tasty”. The faster you respond to such basic things, the better your species will survive. The brain is the furthest part from the limbs, plus it slows reaction times due to all that pesky complex thinking it does.
If part of the process can be delegated, from the brain, to, say the heart, or the lungs, which are nice and centrally placed, and which do not over-think things, then reaction time can be improved.
So any ancient processes, which handled such, prior to developing brains, could have remained in operation. With evolution gradually passing the elements, which are better handled by higher thought, up to the brain. But keeping the ‘speeded-up response required’ elements in the organs. Or simply those parts which do not need to use up precious processing capability, in the brain.
“tobacco smoke detected, tobacco nice = inhale deeply” being stored in the lungs, let us say. Or:
“nicotine levels, in blood, low = request brain acquire more” in the heart.
Similar arguments being possible for an exercise-addicted organ being implanted in a couch potato. The organ is desiring the markers matching regular exercise. So sends a craving request to the brain, asking for more physical activity.
The various effects would be creating an apparent change in personality. A couch-potato turning into a regular jogger. A non-smoker becoming a 20 a-day addict.
Note, I appreciate that we can measure such things, as I mentioned above, going on in the brain. However it need not be the only place handling them. And it may help to explain various things which we fail to understand about how the brain works.
For example, I know from extensive conversations, with one of the world’s leading experts that we do not know how the appetite mechanism works. If a significant part of that process is being handled by organs, rather than the brain, it would explain why we are looking in the wrong place to solve that dilemma.
It is a reputable scientific institution. Rather than an organisation which can be dismissed as ‘fringe’ or ‘unscientific’.
Allow me to quote your earlier post.
That video clip has proven that plants meet all three of your requirements.
Incidentally I do appreciate that ‘being able to feel a touch’ and ‘feeling pain’ are handled by different sets of nerves in our bodies. However the functionality is similar enough that they are simply versions of the same thing.
The anesthetic part of the video showed all the three key requirements you demanded. And, further, showed that the plant responds in the same way as we do, to anesthetic. So the mechanisms are far closer than simply being analogous!
The torture part goes to show that it is not just touch, but they signal pain too.
Yes they are alive, but they can feel.
Please do not forget to keep the linguistic distinction between the sensation, and the emotion, I am only offering this as proof of the former.
“This demonstrates memory. Plus the ability to use that to count.”
……
“to count”
…..
e_e wat.
The venus fly trap evolved to react to EXTENDED contact with its trigger hairs. It will recognize a single elongated touch, or multiple shorter ones…………
Where on glob’s green earth did you get COUNTING???
If anything, it’s more akin to a mono-synaptic response like the knee-jerk test at the doctor….. except, plants don’t have synapses… here, have botany: https://botany.org/bsa/misc/carn.html
Of course there should be research! I’m saying that until the research comes back positive, (& is then peer reviewed & found to be reliable) calling it anything other than made up nonsense is dishonest.
2 *internal screaming*
The *ONLY* way that what you said makes any sense, is if I assume that you’re talking about the bacteria & all of their predecessors & the evolutionary process as a single, collective unit, in which case, you are absolutely correct… but if that is what you meant, then it has no bearing on the point you were trying to make in the rest of your comment…
Bacteria are essentially tiny rube goldbergs, & even if you stuck them all together to make a larger one, it wouldn’t make it any less reactionary.
Personality is inherently unquantifiable, & changes constantly, as is. Over the past eight years, I’ve gotten every possible outcome from MBTI tests. If you think that it’s possible get reliable, conclusive results from a personality reliant test, you might be dangerously out of touch with reality… er, I mean
I don’t know everything, I know anything. If you can’t tell the difference, then I don’t think we can lovers anymore! *runs away weeping*
5-6
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/saitama-ok
7
Oh, the knee-jerk *reaction*! I was just talking about that in the first part… I’m not gonna re-write it now.
It’s the complexity that makes it thought… I thought I was clear about that, but I guess I’ll try again:
it requires for the possibility of multiple outcomes, from the same input.
The bacteria either attack, or don’t, based on input, but they will never get that chemical signal for attack & flee instead
The venus fly trap will either close or not, based on input, but you will never see it start singing because a bug landed on it.
IT IS JUST REACTION. IT IS NOT COMPLEX.
It’s like comparing punctuation to pointillism. Yes, they are technically the same, but there is a fundamental difference.
=============================
Just because you never claimed that, doesn’t make it any less true. If anything this shows how little you know about your chosen topic… but anyway.
Now I see why you were so insistent that trait retention “can and does happen frequently”… but the thing is that you’re fundamentally wrong, & for reasons I’ve already explained, but will nevertheless repeat. Excess & redundant “processing” is wildly detrimental to survival. The brain accounts for 20% of the body’s energy consumption, & anything with remotely similar functionality would draw proportionately similar amounts of energy. That kind of energy consumption is unsustainable, & even in single celled organisms, that kind of stuff is long gone, if it ever existed in the first place.
You’re grasping for straws with the whole “trait retention” thing. Just stop.
“bypassed the usual thinking process”
According to whom? Who said that? You. You made that up.
Limb delegation is why octopuses are the best animal ever.
OMFG all of what you described with the organs is REACTIONARY.
YOU ARE PROPOSING AN ALTERNATIVE TO ORGAN MEMORY, NOT SUPPORTING IT!
IS THIS REAL? ARE YOU SERIOUS?
AAAAAHHHHHHH
=============================
I’ve learned not to trust anything as vague as an entire institution. ;P
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130808123719.htm
The anesthetic part of the video showed jack sh-t. There was no control, so for all we know that reaction isn’t unique to anesthetics!
& for that matter, there was no control on the torture part either!
It just isn’t compelling evidence.
I’m with Yorp. What you are sustaining is called an Anthropocentric point of view (well maybe Nervocentric). If we define “pain” involving a “stimulation of sensory nerve fibers” (to say something) what we are saying is “nothing without nerves can feel nerve pain”. Yeah, duh.
If we decide to define it as something that “motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations” for instance, things change.
In the end we are imposing whatever we want by defining it the way we do, but if plants actually feel “pain” or not, only they can say.
Actually, sentience means that an organism has means to “sense” its surroundings. Possessing some level of self-awareness & a level of thinking processes is Sapience. The two terms are NOT interchangable.
Having cleared up that particular distinction, it must be noted that even one-celled organisms have sentience; if they didn’t, they could never act/react to their surroundings to find food. And when was the last time that a microbiologist has claimed that an amoeba has an actual brain?
I am glad you agree with me.
*wags tail cockily*
No, they can’t. “they” are plants.
Plants have no sense of intention, & therefore cannot be motivated.
Plants are purely reactionary, & even still, pruning is beneficial to plant growth, so wtf m8.
Sorry, but they generate electrical signals similar to EEGs. And plants react to the response of other plants to pain. At least part of their communication is scent-based, but we simply don’t know what else might be involved. Might be nothing. Might be some sort of electrical resonance. Might be something we haven’t even imagined yet. It’s a particularly cool are of research, but not enough scientists are willing to get invol ved in it.
cant find a way to post the pic so heres the link
https://onsizzle.com/i/texting-instagram-its-really-scary-that-you-can-7088
There is no way, so you did it right. Whilst we can insert pictures, they have to be ones already present on this server. Which means that, in practice, only the admin (i.e. Dave) can add new pictures.
As for the comment, at the end of the picture you linked, there is no way for them to text me. I have no phone, and do not subscribe to Twitter, or anything similar, on the PC.
Lol can’t wait to show this page to my gf she’s gong to have the same reaction as halo
How lucky you are, to have a girlfriend who is into bunny girls!
It has it’s perks ;-P
Wait until you’ve bought a full-body Easter Bunny outfit before you show her this comic. No need to tell us the results, because I suspect your description would be NSFW…
Ok, here’s how it is. If you wanted to avoid breaking the comedic pacing you should have avoided using “Ka-bun.” Ka-whatever should not be the running joke. The running joke, which has several examples of which only one is “ka-pants,” is that you use some unique onomatopoeias. If that’s even the right term for what you have done on several occasions with your invented sound effects.
Some people might disagree with me. They are wrong. I am right. They are entitled to their incorrect opinions all day long. Hang up “Ka-whatever” and never use it again.
honestly, take a look at a web-comic called ‘the Wotch’ i believe the ‘ka-whatever’ is an homage. I could be wrong.
I really like the Ka-whatever…I’ve seen it occasionally used by Fred Perry as well.
It actually goes all the way back to the 60’s, to a little known TV show called “Batman”, starring the mayor of Quahog
Loved those.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EEyQIAemn0
Top 5 Most Used Batman Fight Graphics according to Batmania
Kapow 50 times
Pow 49 times
Boff 43 times
Zap 42 times
Sock 41 times
https://www.66batmania.com/
Sorry, the credit should go for this other site:
https://www.batmania.com.ar/
Be aware that it’s in Spanish.
What, nothing about Biff?
Didn’t he get married, and have kids?
Naw, after Marty came back from the past, Biff was washing Marty’s new truck.
Let see…
Biff 34 times
Featured in (Season-Episode): 3-04 1-22 1-16 1-08 2-49 0-00 2-04 3-03 3-22 2-54 3-01 2-27 3-10 3-18 1-28 3-23 3-08 2-47 2-36 2-26 2-48 1-02 1-14 3-15 2-32 2-60 1-31 3-12 2-59 1-24 3-21 2-16 3-20 1-24
Season Zero? o_O
Well spotted. No idea.
That probably refers to a pilot episode.
Got it, means the movie (1966).
Yeah, was thinking maybe the movie
Kinda odd that they are not in order though…
It bothers me, too. As well as include the movie in the “Appearances by Episode” list. But I’m a little bit
fanaticconsumedzealotobsessive with precision, sometimes.:-D
You have come to the right place. I think you will find more than a few people here with OCD tendencies.
You mean CDO or ODC (OCD has the letters in the wrong order :P)
No Guesticus, you clearly mean Call of Duty.
You aren’t the only one. I interpreted it as a nod to The Wotch as well.
Yeah it totally is. The Wotch might not have been the first to “KA-SOMETHING” but they certainly standardized it. My love of funny nonomatopoeias started in the early 90’s with Ninja High School though.
“Did you hear someone leap?”
Ha, I knew it!
Man, what a weird little corner of the earth this is, where The Wotch can be considered a standard.
Please ignore this guy and keep using nonstandard onomatopoeias and ka-somethings.
Seconded. It made me laugh my head off.
Despite the inconvenience of having to find my head, by touch, and reattach it, the running,-turned hopping gag is worth the trouble.
Oberon, King of the Fairies, goes KA-OPINION, but tries to pass it off as KA-FACT. >:=D> Yes, I too think the KA-something texts work just fine.
You may be borrowing the King of the Feyfolk’s name, but you yourself are NOT a king. You’ve no right to tell the author/artist of this webcomic what they can and can not do WITH THEIR OWN WORK. You can attempt to, but you will be denied, or in most cases, simply ignored.
I would be just as indignant as you, at that post, if Oberon were not a familiar commentator. So I read it as just a tongue-in-cheek, deliberately over-the-top, way of making a point The conclusion is just much too pushy to otherwise gel with past comments.
And it is actually quite amusing, given that Oberon knows full well (as alluded to by the conclusion) just how popular those ‘visual sound effects’ are. Doubly coming from a presumed fan of Shakespeare and, one assumes, the more traditional written word. I envisage a reaction, to such usage, matching Sydney’s in the penultimate panel.
However you are to be commended for standing up for the author, against what, on the face of it, was an overbearing comment!
*conducts a sweeping KA-BOW*
Heh heh, you do look cute with a KA-BOW on your tail, puppy :D
See now, I know you posses better reading comprehension skill that you’ve exhibited here and in your response to my post in the prior comic on the topic of scientists selling their souls for dollars by supporting the ‘health benefits’ or smoking or by being a climate change denier.
I quite clearly stated that the repetition of using onomatopoeia sound effects were a welcome running gag, it was only the repetition of the same (in this case ka-whatever) ones that lacked any further humor value*.
I thought about posting here a list of 10 sound effects that would have been new and still appropriate to the panel in question, but then I figured that would just be a distraction from the point, so I demurred.
* Except to those of poorly developed humor, it seems clear to me now.
“KA-BUN” made me laugh. A lot, when combined with the visuals. And it kept going, through all the subsequent panels.
But humour is subjective. Different things appeal to different folks. Which is good. Life would be dull, if were were too homogeneous.
Yes, yes. Children and other people with poorly developed brains just love repetition.
That doesn’t make it humorous for people of a higher intellect, except perhaps the humor that derives from watching the children sputter with indignation when they are told just how foolish they are.
As I said the last time I posted a criticism of the author, I said something to the effect that the art was good but the writing was lacking, if this comments area was intended to be a “Kiss my ass here, brain dead flattery only welcomed” forum, then that should be made clear. A good artist does not reject criticism out of hand.
And all third party sycophants can indeed kiss my ass if they don’t like what I have to say.
*sniff sniff sniff*
Mmm, no thanks.
My apologies, TKKain, it seems I underestimated the intensity of Oberon’s feelings, on this matter.
No apologies necessary Yorp. Well, maybe if Oberon were your brother and was sitting right next to you and you did nothing afterwords, but I highly doubt that is the case. Anyway. I am not wholly innocent in this event either. The heat of the Texan summer made me a tad bit ornery, but regardless, I still stand by what I say, even if I phrased it too bluntly. Opinion’s are welcome. But declaring someone’s opinions as ‘false’ or ‘wrong’ just because it conflicts with your own just makes you look and sound like an entitled prick, and I’ve dealt with enough of those growing up…but I digress, it was not YOU that did that.
Why is that always the ‘counter’ to someone supporting something: “they are only saying that to suck up!” or “they don’t have an opinion of their own! they are following the ‘herd’!”
It’s like with that “Suicide Squirts” movie flop: the ones who like it are trashing the ones who don’t be calling them “Marvel fan-bois” or “allowing the critics to sway them”
Why can’t it simply be that people are allowed their own opinion without slamming the ones who’s opinion differs? Personally felt it was going to be crap from the start during initial production, but am not going to insult those who like it… unless they directly insult me first
Wait, Oberon is criticizing the humor of the comic again. Jeez, it’s becoming far too repetitive.
Yep. But if he doesn’t like it, he can do his own comic. But it’s far easier to criticize than it is to do something.
Ah yes, that old fallacy. I don’t have to be an author to pan a bad book. I don’t have to be a director to pan a bad movie. I don’t have to be a chef to pan a bad restaurant. And I don’t have to have a web comic to pan poor writing or poor attempts at humor.
I guess you just love everything that you can’t do to perfection yourself, right? RIGHT? If not, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and conclude that this is indeed not the case, then shut the fuck up. Pull your head out of your ass before you make a stupid fucking comment like that.
I would not want Oberon to feel bad. Every reader is welcome, especially long-term commentators. Hopefully, if I point out a distinction, it will help avoid antipathy, in future. Constructive criticism is welcomed here.
If it is a clear-cut error (such as a typo or something being omitted that should be visible) then it is accepted. If it is a subjective opinion, then others are likely to wade into the debate, if their opinions vary. Which creates healthy debate, and can make the feedback better, by getting multiple points of view.
However if a comment is phrased rudely, or confrontationally, then that will only serve to get people’s backs up. They will focus on that more than the body of the message. You were right to say that I was not reading your message well, and it was due to that problem. I just could not believe that you were disrespecting the author, and community, so was trying to see if you were intending a mock-aggressive tone, for comedic effect.*
All of which is highly counter-productive. A comment which politely gives constructive criticism will be given fair consideration. One which alienates people is likely to be disregarded, simply on the grounds that uncultured people’s opinions are not particularly valued, when discussing cultural matters, like art and writing.
You have contributed positively to the community, for a long time. I am hopeful that you were just having a bad day. We have all had those. If so, you have my wishes that any contributing problems manage to get resolved, as best as may be possible. I value your opinions, despite the fact that I also value the artist/writer being allowed to present his vision the way he wants to.
* Plus it is worth remembering that I have extreme difficulty with names. So it is often very hard for me to place what conversations folks may have historically had with me. All I have to associate the memories is the name (in the absence of an avatar image). And my brain likes to swap them around and confuse me. Sometimes I am OK, other times not. So please forgive me if I fail to make such associations, without further clues.
Actually, lycanthropes are only the wolf kind.
All the were-anythings are called therianthropes.
Usage trumps etymology. Therianthrope is used so little, by comparison, that it has practically flat-lined!
I am sticking with lycanthrope. D&D expanded it beyond the archaic use, where it was restricted to just referring to a werewolf. Popular culture has since adopted it, from there, and expanded the use into books, cartoons and other media. Most notably in web-comics.
But wouldn’t Therianthrope, being so strange and archaic, actually fit the niche grouping here best? It might be just debating semantics here, but popular usage also doesn’t know the difference between a longsword (as in a bidenhander/zweihander/other late medieval or early renaissance two handed sword) and a long sword (a sword which is long). And in much the same way, D&D is partially to blame for where that distinction falters, in that they use the improper term great sword for what is actually a longsword, and use the improper long sword or short sword for what is actually a single classification (arming sword).
Just pointing out that this is a trope that could easily be subverted just sitting out there in the open, and as he has already mentioned some of the nonsensical aspects of pop culture and comics in general, this is a straight up fantasy trope that could be addressed.
I bet Gregor would be more than happy to address this pop culture misconception.
Oh, if the author chose to use it that way, then sure. But it is not a word that (citing the usage statistics I linked) many people would be familiar with. So it would be an uphill battle, requiring exposition, to explain to the audience what the word meant. Which Dave could handle, of course, but there would be little to gain, given such a dry subversion, with little, or no, inherent humour.
Plus, personally, I am not keen on being pushed away from using familiar terminology, to having to remember obscure or silly words. Star Wars using “younglings” being an example of the latter. ‘Lycanthrope’ I can just type and will probably spell it right. The other one I would have to look up, every time, because it is unfamiliar.
But Dave does like subverting tropes, if a clever variant reveals itself to him. So it could be Sydney who suggests “shouldn’t we be using the term ‘therianthrope’ instead?” Only to be told, by Gregor “Don’t be silly, most of us are long-term D&D players, so ‘lycantrhope’ is used by all but a few archaic pedants”. With a pointed look at Ingsol.
Actually it wouldn’t be that hard to stablish what therianthropes are.
In the scene when Maxima is introducing the members of the council, simply add “Gregor represents the lycans and other therianthropes”. With that would be really easy to deduce what therianthropes are.
Mmm.. the graph do not include semantic.
Oh that is a much more popular word!
*wags tail excitedly*
But, sadly, it would make transcripts of the comic rather confusing:
“The semantic’s ear drops over her eye, and she sticks her tongue out at Sydney”
Be careful. People could accuse you of making anti-semantic comments.
:-D
Funny, Yorp doesn’t look Druish…
Thank goodness, I do not think I could pull that off, either way.
I don’t usually do this, but #GrandKawaiiSeizure seems like it should be a thing. Also, cute overload on this page!
I just noticed that Clover changed for a white cigarette now. Does she smoke Sobranie? Luxury tastes!
https://www.smoke-king.co.uk/acatalog/Sobranie-Cocktail-Cigarettes-Pack-of-20-2095.html#SID=177
Most cigarettes are white, he just forgot to colour it properly when she was first seen (if you look closerer at her smugshot, you will see the same filter in her mouth, it’s easy to spot as that image and the one in panel one are almost identical)
Yes, know all about that classic mov… I mean… I noticed ;P
It’s been the almost identical image for three pages now, but even the panels that are different have it red. Did Dave comment something?
And five pages ago (443) when she first appeared it was white.
Is the bunny male or female? I like how Max seems so fond of Sidney, any chance of them becoming a couple?
Nah, keep it as Big Sister/Annoying but Cute Little Sister, anything else would just seem wrong personally (Sydney and Peggy on the other hand, or, to cause fits with certain readers, Sydney and Pixel :P)
Sydney is already going for Leon.
All indications are that Sydney is heterosexual. But, even so, I would love it if she did go counter to expectations, and fall for Peggy. They are my two of my three favourite Arc-SWAT girls, after all!
They even could go double-dating with Suzi and Arianna!
*drifts off to heaven*
Yups, was going to suggest Suzie, but she’s already paired off with Ari :D
Yeah, you don’t trade Klingon Kisses with someone & then just dump them afterwards…
Well, sure you can: can you imagine the angry make-up… kisses? o_O
Puts me in mind to this and the following two pages :P
I dunno, Spinnerette already did that sort of relationship, as cute as sydney and Peggy would be as a couple, I’d rather have Sydney end up with a guy that she has alot of good chemisty with if anyone at all.
So, because one geeky nerd-girl with glasses is in a lesbian relationship, no others can? o_O
*opens big box, entitled “Good Chemistry Set”*
Now, lets see about how to give capsaicin more of a punch. But first…
*dabs a bit of liquid capsaicin, behind each ear*
Gingerol, peperine and wasabi extract all work quite well. The real killers are tinyatoxin and resiniferatoxin, being more compact analogues of capsaicin, but they cause actual permanent nerve damage and can be litterally lethal regardless of spice tolerance.
Not for human consumption but apparently great for ending tumor pains.
Sydney and me ^_^
You’re missing the Bunyip (OWoD Australian changing breed; not extinct in the late 19th century, may have gone extinct by modern times). The animal they are based on has been extinct long enough to be mythical (which for a Fera is completely irrelevant).
Growllll… This was SUPPOSED to be a reply to Pander on page 1!
Ok, NOW I have to ask. What game system do you play? Because just the fact that you can play werewolves (Hopefully without infuriating DMS the world over) makes it great in my book!
I haven’t played any in quite a while. The most recent tabletop games I played was like… 3rd edition DC heroes and 4th(?) edition D&D. The one that was basically a tabletop version of WOW. I played that first adventure with the Kobolds 3 separate times and the party wiped every time. :(
I could point you out to my game where I made playable sample templates for everything from lemurians (“deep ones” if you want to start a fight) to telepathic wolves that mind-control small animals to do what other people use hands for.
https://fav.me/d74lrnt
However, I would note that Hero System; Fate; Monster of the Week (or a lot of Powered by the Apocalypse games); Mutants and Masterminds; Big Eyes, Small Mouths; and numerous other game systems allow for playing shapeshifters at beginning levels.
Actual game is here, the char gen is based on Strands of Fate so I was only allowed a small number of their sample powers for reprinting.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/133609/Divine-Blood-RPG-Supplement
Two things I keep thinking of:
1. Lola Bunny from Loony Tunes
2. Wesen from Grimm; https://grimm.wikia.com/wiki/Willahara
I like rabbits, so the floppy eared bunny is funny. X)
What ever you do, do NOT call Kat ‘Foo Foo’, this is why there are no were-rats on the Council *warning: that’s not raspberry jam!!*
Wonder which Goon though? Spike Milligan or Harry Secombe? :P
That song is a long way to go for a bad pun.
Didn’t even know about the pun until the end, was going for the ‘killer bunny’ angle
No, no no, Foo Foo did NOT get turned into a Goon in that video! I don’t know what that was but it wasn’t a Goon.
THESE are Goons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EjybY__oDQ
No, these are the Goons
The Goons I linked to came before the Goons you lined to; 1938 vs.1955.
So? Didn’t say they were the original, technically, the Gooney Bird would be first
The Lycans have weaponized “Cuteness”.
I knew a kid in high school whose dad raised rabbits. He kept their cages in a fenced area but had this one big male that was allowed to hop free in the fenced area. I asked him once why that one wasn’t caged up. He said one problem he used to have was dogs and coyotes digging under the fence to get at the rabbits but since he got the big buck it was no longer a problem because that rabbit had killed over a dozen coyotes and three dogs and who knows how many he maimed and scared off.
Those front teeth can gnaw thru a 2X4 and a big buck can kick like a mule.
Yet, oddly, it was repelled by the sight of silver….
Well if I was the size of a rabbit I would also be taken aback by the sudden appearance of the Lone Ranger’s horse.
I am ashamed to admit I had to think about that one for a few seconds.
Ed McMahon: “Hiii-Yoooo!”
Finish the phrase on your own.
:P
So, I saw DaveB’s post that all Lycans are Mammals of some stripe, and it led me down a strange path:
Were-Human.
At the very least we’ve created Ranma-1/2
If a cusred human bites a animal it will transform into a werehuman.
I paid for a pair of images involving a vampiress being bitten by a housewife with “the Curse of Hera”.
After the fact, the vampire was still a vampire, sort of, but her personality and nature were warped to be a sort of 50’s sitcom kind and wise mother/wife character.
here they were:
https://fav.me/d3kdwzl
https://fav.me/d3kdxfm
Yup, I speculated, the other day, on a male werewolf being infected by a cat girl. Although a bunny girl would do the trick too. There would be a myriad of potential animal, human, gender and hybrid combinations to play with. Including both base male and the new female human forms.
Probably requiring extensive time, in a private room, thoroughly investigating the hybrid bunny girl shape.
Who could resist stroking those ears? But that might look a bit weird, in public.
So you will be in your bunk then?
Were I to uncover such a lycanthrope and/or become infected, it would be my duty to Science!
Science hard & long into the night…
A Were-human is literally just a male human. Wer is the old English word for the modern version of man, as Wif is for woman (The word ‘man’ itself in old English referred to species, not to sex)
Either way, the bunny is definitely a Lago-Morph.
If you insist.
Ahh, but you are missing the potential. A puny guy could transform into an Olympian. A white bloke could become a black guy. Both of which have plenty of uses in a super-setting. Be it espionage, differing physical capabilities* or nefarious uses, such as evading prosecution, by changing identity.
Finally, if a cute girl got infected, she could become a less-cute guy. The latter being why Lord Bounty made the Ranma 1/2 comment. Albeit that he is a boy who can turn into a girl. But, as you say, were-human is referring to species, not gender, so that variant is possible too.
* Such as spelunking in the small body and heavy lifting or fighting in the strong and tough one. Or using the pale body in cold climes and the dark one in hot ones. The British Army found that posting troops the opposite way around increased the instances of illnesses and ailments, due to individuals not having optimum evolutionary adaptations, to the climate in question.
Can’t help but wonder if the “Clothes Horse” skill would find a lot of ‘turtleneck sweaters’.
Also, yay for comics making me think/say things I’d likely never otherwise have go through my mind.
Dave is channeling his inner Sydney in the blog post. :)
Loved the last panel.
Nicely said. And you just made one thing the bunny said, in the last panel, sink in.
“Uhhh…. Ms Maxima”
:-D I had been laughing so much at the rest of the dialogue, Maxima’s expression and the raised fist and bunny ears, so that part did not sink in. But it helps to explain part of Max’s expression.
And DaveB remembered Sydney’s bandage this time :D
I keep struggling with the dialog in panel 2, someone help me please:
How is “dire” right in that phrasing? Or should it be “sire”?
I mean, “Dire wolf” is the name of an extinct specie. And “dire” is an adjective, right? Not a noun or anything. So what’s the semantic of “Wolf dire?”.
The only think I could figure out is a play on words with “Voir dire”, as in Syd is refering to “the process by which prospective jurors are questioned about their backgrounds”.
Could be that or I’m totally lost?
Took it to simply mean Sydney was asking if she was also a ‘Dire’ Wolf, if it was used once it could have been a typo, but twice?
I thought that maybe she started to say “Dire Wolf”, realized that it was not necessarily the case and changed to ask what kind of sire Kat had, I don’t know, something like “Did you even have a wolf sire?”, shortened to “Wolf sire?”, and then a typo in that last word.
I know, I know, I was just lost and doing my best to figure it out.
Thanks for answering :)
Dire wolves may be extinct, but not Dire Werewolves.
Thank you. I just wanted to state that the name was “Dire wolf” and not “Wolf dire”, so it looked to me like Syd was referring to a different thing.
It is referencing panels 5 and 6 of this comic, where Barkley claims to be a ‘dire werewolf’. Combined with the fact that Kat has been hanging around with the lycan faction, since she was introduced, making Sydney assume she may be directly linked with the representatives present.
Sydney is simply struggling with what would be the correct grammar. One layer is trying to figure out the correct term for someone who has been infected with lycanthropy. So she attempts “newly wolfed”, to address this. However, recalling that Barkley, and his daughter, are not werewolves, but dire werewolves, she then, clumsily, attempts to adapt this.
You are right that it does not come out as very good English. Although it is perfectly understandable that this would be confusing for you, as a non-native speaker, it is intentionally inept, as a part of the comedic angle. A low-key, but good, piece of observational humour, at how people struggle, in coping with unfamiliar terminology.
Don’t forget, English can be confusing for native-born speakers
Thank you! Yes, I did take it that Syd was trying to ask about what were Kat was, maybe a Dire Wolf, but I was unable to recall or find gramatical bases for the order of words “Wolf dire?”, and thus it got me confused. Admittedly I didn’t think about an intentional comedic effect, makes sense.
From Cute to Cuuuutttteeee.
:-D
Maximas face is “I am too Gold for this shit.”
I did a search and discovered that nobody else had said this already and was shocked, but I’ll put it down to everyone’s kindness and consideration for their fellow posters. I, however, and made of mildly eviler stuff and so cannot help myself but say the following:
“Man, that Kat must be one of the luckiest women around! Look at all those rabbits feet!”
*Dives underneath my computer desk to dodge the expected barrage of rotten fruit and name calling.
:-D
Years ago a friend of mine proudly showed us his new “lucky rabbit’s foot key chain”, it was not even a second when the host’s grandfather remarked “Lucky? It doesn’t look like it did the rabbit any good!”
Yeah, that poor rabbit had four of them & look what happened!
With weres a real thing in Sydney’s world, I’ve been wondering about them being mistaken for real animals. Did some were-mink lose it’s life for a coat? Did some hunter out in the woods ever shoot a were-deer and bring it home for dinner? Did the Crocodile Hunter ever make a documentary about a were-gator, imagining it to be a normal alligator?
Considering both Gregor and Kat are so much larger than real wolves and bunnies, I going to guess that it would be hard to mistake them for normal critters.
Have you seen the size some bunnies get? o_O
Perhaps your right. After all, this one is about the size of a person!
Was actually referring to this big boy
Effin hell, that bunny is bigger than my dog!
It always makes me smile when my favorite dog mentions his dog.
*scratches behind yorp’s ears*
*scratches behind yorp’s dog’s ears*
Cor Blimey.
According DaveB’s Who’s Who, Clover’s problem is that she is lackadaisical.
Well, give her some daises!
Bun bun bun bun.
Is there a daisy musical? Maybe that’s what has her depressed
several. But each result I clicked on lead to a dead webpage. Lackadaisymusical is depressing indeed.
On the other hand lackadaisy cats are great:
https://www.lackadaisycats.com/index.php
The author must of swallowed a thesaurus to come up with the page names :D
But that reminds me: prohibition never works, it didn’t work back in the 20’s against booze and it sure as farting in a duck pond ain’t working now against drugs
It works great… for promoting organised crime and financing rogue states.
Yeah, but if they made it legal, they could use the tax to fund better education
Don’t have any daisies, but did find this little ditty, plus one that is 120 years old (and still 120 times better than most rubbish we have now!!)
“KA-BUN”, rotflmao, you kill me!
Now we just need a duck and a hunter and we can do the whole joke. :)
It’s wabbit season!
Dork season!
my favorite part is
” Uh… Ms.Maxima? I think I broke your sidekick.”
” Oh, never mind she’s fixed now! “
What an elegant avatar! :-)
thank you yorp
I have just laughed so hard my side hurt!!! This is awesome!!!
this page is hilarious.
The suggestion of were-red panda predates the start of creating the movie Red by a few years.