Grrl Power #452 – Aw, they packed a lunch
Today’s page features a Patreon “executive supporter” cameo from Tom H. C. in the form of a Council historian (and also bloodbag.) He’s not in the Who’s Who cause no one says his name, but that’s remedied on the next page.
I’m not 100% sure how assault actually works. Obviously there’s such a thing as consensual assault, or else some aspects of BDSM would be considerably more problematic. I think it probably comes down almost entirely to one party pressing charges against another, but I also imagine there are cases where the state can prosecute someone if there’s patterns of abuse and/or if someone seems to be intimidated into not pressing charges, or is deemed incapable of understanding what assault is, like a young child. In any case Sydney is currently about as informed on the topic as I am, and that’s beside the point of this page. Tom and the vamplings obviously have an arrangement here. Sydney also doesn’t know whether or not Archon has any jurisdiction here. Obviously if a werebear starts rampaging the streets and shrugging off bullets, they’d be on it, and Arianna would be spinning it as “Bear Man” or whatever, but something like this which doesn’t directly affect a member of the public, she has no idea about jurisdiction, but you can bet the Council probably has some form of internal security.
I nearly went off on a tangent in panel two with Crimson’s response to the robot question, but it crowded the panel and wasn’t satisfactory. The jist of it was that there are in fact a few robots here and there, but technically they’re considered aliens, because they’re non-terrestrial intelligence. Here on Earth we still haven’t cracked the whole A.I. thing (unless Google isn’t telling us something) not to mention the ambulatory hardware platform, at least one that looks even remotely human, and/or has more than 15 minutes of battery power. Of course A.A.I.s (Alien A.I.s) still need to be incredibly careful while on Earth because of the “paradigm shifting the technology level of the planet if they get run over by a truck and wind up on the wrong operating table and someone realizes that their patient has a quantum memory synchronizer where their left lung should be” thing.
It occurs to that as far as an AI goes, one might be satisfied touring a planet virtually, either seeing through the another aliens Google Glass or GoPro equivalent or by infiltrating traffic and cell phone cameras, since they’d be viewing the world through their eyeball cameras if they went themselves. I suppose it would depend on the nature of the AI though. Data was hardware dependent. His positronic brain evolved and formed new neural connections as he lived and learned. It’s arguable he couldn’t be downloaded into, for instance, the Enterprises main computer if his body was destroyed. (Honestly though I’m a little surprised that didn’t happen in one episode, internal consistency be damned – and yes I know he basically took over the Enterprise once via some holodeck link into the computer, but in that he was co-opting the ship’s processing power, not transferring his consciousness.)
Mass Effect 2’s Legion would be perfectly fine downloading into another hardware platform. They flat out said his intelligence as well as all the other Geths’ was cloud based, or at least distributed among them all. They’d probably be fine with virtual tourism. Even if they wanted their own autonomous platform to move about in, they could just send down one unit and a million of them could log in to poke about on Earth. (Depending on network capacity I guess) Obviously there’d need to be some sort of coordinating oversight regarding the motor controls or else the thing would move like “Twitch plays Zelda.”
Edit: Fixed a grammar error, and added the mini comic, since people have pointed out that the girls are engaged in Battery and not Assault.
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.
Ello’Ello’Ello?
Wow, Sidney, are Zarya/Junkrat your favorite Overwatch characters or something? How rude.
also Torbjorn
Become a patron, and have the ladies falling over each other to have a taste of you!
My money is on our ‘poor?’ fellow having some sort of regeneration/reincarnation ability, if the vamps see him as a food source that one doesn’t need to ask permission of.
Also, given how small fang puncture marks are, this might take a while. I can see a whole page of Halo just staring, sometimes poking with her light hook.
Had the same idea about regeneration/reincarnation, maybe he’s a Phoenix. Alas, the expression on his face made me a bit unsure…
Just because you can regenerate, doesn’t mean it does not hurt like hell!!
The web comic Strong Female Protagonist has a character like that. She can regenerate blood and organs within minutes. Doctors operate on her every day to have organs available for transplant. Problem is, her powers make anesthesia useless. Ouch!
Another side effect is that they could out-drink everybody at a frat-party & still walk away without staggering…
If these ladies go to a frat party, I think everybody would probably be staggering away. The guys from alcohol consumption and blood loss. These girls from blood consumption, contaminated will all the alcohol.
Stick a blade in her spinal column and keep it there until the operation is done.
Clever! For the rest of the body. Pretty sure the blade sticking in the spinal column will hurt in its own right mind. But everything beyond that point will be painless.
Which is actually a significant advantage. Meditation can be used to ignore pain, and I imagine it would be a lot easier to achieve that state, and maintain it, if only countering a single, steady pain. As opposed to all the variety experienced in having your various internal organs removed, whilst still alive and conscious.
Have a Yorpie Snack,™ in recognition of your cunningness.
Yeah, Wolverine has pointed that out at least a few times in the comics…
Believe the first time was when he first revealed his claws were natural and made of bone
Yeah, in direct contradiction to the guy who created the character, the canon up to that point, and OHOTMU (first edition). Sort of made me wonder why they bothered making the OHOTMU in the first place if writers were just going to ignore it.
And yah, it’s a sore point for me when writers go “my plot is cooler, screw you, previous writer, I’m going to repudiate everything you’ve written and disrespect everything you’ve done.”
I’ll get by…
To this day I refuse to believe that Wolverine’s bone claws are cannon. First gen X-Men like him have only one power anyway so it doesn’t even fit with the rest of his world.
I have never seen Wolverine firing his claws, be they bone or metal. Although one of his opponents, in the Last Stand, did launch spiky things.
Yorp is being pedantic. What he means is that the word you intended to use is “canon”, not “cannon”.
I do not understand the difference?
“Cannon” is the thing that shoots really big shells, like the main gun of a tank.
“Canon”, in literature, means material that is considered “official” in a fictional universe. For example, in Star Trek, all the TV shows (including the animated series and the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery) and all the movies prior to the J.J. Abrams ones, are canon. All the Star Trek novels and comic books are not canon.
Does that explain the difference sufficiently, or do I need to come up with more examples?
It wasn’t really a question.
Yay, pedantry!
Wait, is that a word…?
– one quick Google search later –
It is!
Pedantrification to the Max.
If his claws are bone and they are cannon claws, I want to know how long it takes for them to regenerate i.e. what’s the reload time?
Even before the bone claws became an issue, Wolverine had more than one power. He had enhanced senses, and he had regeneration. Two separate capabilities.
One can argue that enhanced senses are a result of the regen – dulled senses occur via nerve fatigue from repeated firing and neurotransmitter uptake issue therefrom (ever notice how strong onions smell in a closed room but ten minutes later you hardly notice them?). Regen would presumably prevent those problems and allow much sharper sensory acuity (one’s senses are much sharper as a child than they are as an adult).
And one can further argue that the regen ability gave him the claws via morphic field expectation interaction (he got so used to the claws that his body accommodated his expectations).
Nevertheless, the explanation of the claws was they were always there and just coated in adamantium, which is in direct contradiction to OHOTMU.
That’s only arguable to an extent. Wolverine’s senses have been noted as extending beyond that, particularly his sense of smell, which in humans is largely limited due to the internal surface area (assuming uniform nerve distribution) of the nasal cavity. This seems to be a case of more than just less nerve fatigue, but an actual increase in either sensitivity or nerve density.
The enhanced senses could also be an innate ability, because he was not a Homo Sapien Superior but a Homo Canus Superior
Only thing have a problem with the bone claws: they are fairly thick when in their ‘natural’ boney state, but when coated with Adamantium they become almost razor thin on the edge! Only explanation can think of, is the Adamatium claws are actually an extension of the bone claws, like finger-nails, but he simply keeps them at the ‘normal’ length because either subconsciously (considering he couldn’t remember if they were natural or part of the Weapon X program) or consciously he didn’t want two foot long claws (in a “What If…?” storyline when the High Evolutionary’s Evolvo-bomb went off, his claws did grow longer), and the bone part was reduced (other wise he wouldn’t have been able to bend his wrist or arm)
Wait, Wolverine still has actual bones? I thought they removed all those when they put the metal in.
No, they simply coated his bones, and everyone, Wolvie included, thought, at that time, that the claws were a side-effect
Nope, it was way earlier, perhaps even early in the Claremont-era.
No, fairly sure the bone claws came as a surprise to Logan at that time, remember: this was before he learnt of his ‘origin’ as James Howlett and that it was his idea to join the Weapon X programme
And, it turns out, Wolverine isn’t even the same species, he is of wolfen ancestry rather than primate (so, Yorp is more closely related to Wolverine, and thus increasing his likelihood of gaining Sydney’s attention, than the rest of the readers ☺)
One of the things I love about your posts is that often they offer an explanation that is at least as plausible (and in this particular case, FAR more plausible) than the offered explanation.
May you become a writer at Marvel and submit this. I will buy every issue of your authorship.
Actually, that was in an official Wolverine book, during the Romulus (or was it the Remus?) arc, Raine and that other female mutant hairball are also of the same species as Logan (not too sure about Creed, but Wildchild is though)
I stopped reading comic books in general around 2004 (with Knights of the Dinner Table being an exception – not exactly the same genre). Post-Image splintering and the tendency to re-frame or re-write canon in ways that served no purpose except to set the stage for the new writer’s “cool plot” left a bad taste in my mouth.
DC, Marvel, Image – they were all guilty of it.
As a side note, I endured Denny O’Neil’s” Iron Man As Alcoholic Saga” and hated the experience during the beginning and loved it by the time he got to the end of it. I guess some change I can stomach and some change, not so much.
I have long suspected that, of you.
One of the earliest horror stories, it was either about Vampires or ghosts
*wags tail seductively*
Oh, I dunno about that. In Dark Shadows the draining took about 2 seconds, tops. Barnabas even bragged about how fast he could drain someone completely. When Dr. Hoffman was drained it even drained the blood bag she was receiving a transfusing from at the time.
“The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.”
“See, morbid and creepifiying I got no problem with, as long as she does it quiet-like.”
Tam….had things just a little bit wrong. It’s amusing to me that this was written for a TV show for shock value, when the practice of draining blood from large animals is in use currently and has been used for thousands of years.
There’s no “adequate vacuuming system” which can avoid the problem of arterial collapse under vacuum.
But exsanguination can be accomplished quite rapidly given adequate care. Large incisions to the neck are made while the animal is still alive, allowing the heart to provide ‘push’ out the major arteries and making a vacuum redundant.
If you’ve ever eaten kosher or halil prepared meat, the animals were killed using this method. And while not a requirement, meat which is neither kosher nor halal might have been butchered using this method also, since it is an efficient way to do so. Death is estimated at ‘under 10 seconds.’ making Tam’s estimate close enough to reality even if her stated methods would fail in practice.
Can vampires have veins throbbing in their temples? (Scarlet, panel 3)
Does their blood still pump if they’re technically undead?
Are they technically undead?
True undead?
as far as i know, undead are literally a walking corpse.
But vampires, for some reason require blood to live.
Why can’t the same power that keeps corpses moving, also sustain them?
undead, are those who died, and then were risen. technically, still dead, but moving.
with vampires though, it is a bit different.
Vampires have a few mutations that mean they can’t produce hemoglobin themselves. So they need to eat blood to live.
hemoglobin
which carries oxygen
of which only use is the burnign of hydrocarbons for energy or something like that…
implying there ARE hydrocarbons or something to be burned…
which comes from where and why?
the only answer i can come up is “the live and eat like any normal human”
therefore, not undead in the slightest.
If not undead, then blood is pumping.
If blood is pumping, then vampires can feed on each other.
HA! nice!
except that would make it a circuit with effective out, but no effective in.
If they only feed on each other, they would run out.
although… i guess you didn’t say “only”.
perhaps a higher vampire is feeding on lesser vampires… who feed on humans. perhaps that would work. still feeding on humans through.
Depends on the particular variation of vampire in the story.
undead vampires might not even really need blood and only consume it out of a addictive sort of jealousy for the living
The myths regarding vampires say they thirst for blood not that they need it. And, in fact, they can often be described as sitting and lying for ages without drinking anything.
As humans and living beings we have a difficulty in comprehending the idea that something wouldn’t require some sort of food and part of us wants to reject the idea of vampires not being required to feed on people but actually desiring it.
I would also note that the vampires in Being Human don’t actually require blood but they have an intense urge to feed that is hard to control.
living vampires might either need a particular compound in human blood or simply be unable to digest solid food (which would mean they could get by on protein drinks and the like)
Exactly; the particular natures of vampires depend on the mythology and adaptation. For instance, Vampire: the Masquerade’s Cainites are indeed undead, but their body is protected from the processes of decay by a mystical curse. Their hearts do not beat, but blood flows through their veins regardless, as if drawn by their own wills. Blood is a literal fuel for them, allowing them to enhance their bodies, repair damage, turn people into servants, and access a whole host of unique or specialized powers, on top of being necessary to keep their bodies animated on a daily basis. They could easily be termed ‘a higher order of Undead’ compared to zombies.
That same principle isn’t going to hold true for every interpretation of vampire, however. Look at the Strain, where the Strigoi (based on eastern European vampire mythology) are incontestably living beings, but of a drastically different structure and biology as compared to humans.
There are lots of types of vampires in fiction. Some of them are perfectly alive humans with a weird mutation.
I guess it all depends on what type of vampire Dave has in the Haloverse.
In European lore, as someone turns into a vampire, the body dies but the soul can remain “locked” into the body during the transformation. In essence, the body dies, but the spirit still lives in the body, which changes in such a way that the soul can continue to animate it, albeit with altered “dietary requirements.
As far as it goes with zombies however, the person actually dies & goes on to whatever afterlife they had coming to them. What reanimates a zombie’s body is not the same soul or spirit that originally occupied the body in the first place.
In the Far East Asian countries, according to the lore, vampires really did die. They ascribe to (at least) two major parts of the soul, one which remains near the body & the other crosses over to the afterlife. However, if the departed soul winds up in the Yomi Worlds (which corresponds to the Western notion of Hell), they have to escape (or be let loose, perhaps by bargaining with demons or something) before they can claw through the “spiritual barrier” that separates the two realms. Then they join with the other part of the soul that stayed near the body & re-inhabit the course, literally rising from the dead.
Asian zombies (jiangshi) are also rigid, and have to hop to move around. Usually with their arms stretched out in front of them.
It’s probably where the zombie ‘stance’ comes from. (or even, they were the same thing as zombies. Just general undead)
Note: Jiangshi comes from a phrase meaning ‘hopping corpse’ and refers to the Chinese burial practice of binding the legs together. They sucked ‘chi,’ in the form of breath, based on the philosophy of replenish-able chi. The hopping corpses took chi from others for the same reason that tai chi chuan is traditionally practiced. Chi itself refers for a flow of energy, in total called tai chi, shared by all natural things.
Both Confucius (AKA Kong Fuzi) and Lao Tzu were interested in bringing people into natural accord to improve the flow of the tai chi. Lao Tzu assumed that people were naturally good and should allow that to be expressed, and that repression was the most dangerous structure. The most dangerous practitioners of Taoism tended towards being like the poet Li Bai. Li Bai was a gifted poet who used heavy drinking and sex to temporarily reduce inhibitions. Most Taoist critiques would charge that Li Bai failed to actually cut away from inhibitions because he tied them to the jings (earthly desires) of pleasure and drink rather than reach an enlightened and uninhibited state through destruction of jings.
Kong Fuzi believed people were natural bad and required external rules to live by. The most militant subscribers to Kong Fuzi’s premise were the legalisms, who asserted that not only do humans need rules, they need those rules applied with s heavy, forceful hand. Kong Fuzi never agree with this, generally asserting that people should seek to better themselves with rules, rather that be oppressed with them.
+5
This was cool. I wish I had more time so I could study comparative mythology and its interaction with history more. My superpower want – I want to not age physically and have eidetic memory and never need to sleep, eat or excrete. Finally, time enough to read…
All that for only 18 CP.
Why not have Daphne’s power? The ability to perform five different tasks at the same time (including sleeping, feeding and ‘evacuating bodily waste’), with the potential to perform even more
To quote Woody Allen:
“I want to achieve immortality by not dying.” :D
Yup, same here, and, so far, am on track to immortality ☺
SCENE: The outside of a towering sky-scraper. Periodically cutting to a security guard, in the control-room, monitoring the outside, and looking aghast. A voice-activated intercom system, intended to allow window cleaners and maintenance workers to communicate, with the control room, picks up the following:
JUMPER (13th floor, and falling): No problems yet …
JUMPER (8th floor, and falling): Doing OK …
JUMPER (2nd floor, and falling, reflexively shuts eyes): Feeling hopeful …
You sound just as confident as me. I have prebooked Stonehenge, for a massive party. New Years Eve 3,000AD. I would love to have you attend.
Sleeping and evacuating bodily waste are not two things you want to do together.
I seem to recall (from my slipshod investigations onto Chinese mythology and the influences of Buddhist mythology) that release from Hell could be accommodated by financial incentives (influencing the ritual of burning paper money for the dead to have), judicial intervention (the Judges of Hell), and by spiritual ascension (becoming so pure that Hell no longer had claim on the soul).
Kylie Chan’s novels spin on this in a fun way. A major part of the plots is waiting for the Gods to be released from hell after they’ve been killed and finding ways to expedite the process.
Let’s remember that we’ve just found out ‘everything we thought we knew about werewolves is wrong.’ What makes you think the same isn’t true of vampires?
Tricky etiquette here. Sydney is a guest, at the table. And one should respect the eating customs of one’s hosts…
Yes, but I don’t start jugging beer or stuff rare meat down my throat when discussing stuff at the table, outside meals.
Unless it’s watermelon. I eat watermelon like those two.
On the other hand, beer and stuff rare meat rarely make spontaneous appearances in order to spout exposition.
Yes but it is a bit rude of the vamps to not offer their guest some of their food.
These young people nowadays, they are so uncouth, eating with their hands….
Yorp, does this mean if we come over to your house, we have to eat off the floor?
More to the point, if we come over to your house, we can eat off the floor??
Don’t be ridiculous. Yorp has a bowl with his name on it and everything. Very dignified. Why, when I visited Yorp’s house, the floors were pristine except for all the shed fur.
Now that I think about it, the shed fur is probably why Yorp eats out of his dish.
Just so. I make sure that every guest is provided with their own food bowl and separate drinking vessel too. Humans may eat off the floor, if they want to. But every animal here is allocated their own chair, or sofa, and may eat there, or on the ground, as they prefer.
I even have cutlery, for those who can make use of it. Personally I am very good with chop sticks!
Is that walrus a friend of yours?
It is actually a wereROUS.
Rodents of unusual size? I don’t believe they exist.
This can also mean small yet numerous. Most people assume they are large.
Will we see the “no Robots” at a some time later?
Why, Crimson just said there were no robots, and technically, robots are not sentient anyway (if you make even one beep Bender, you will be melted down into a codpiece for Jabba the Hutt!)
Crimson just said there were no robots. But she didn’t say anything about were-robots.
https://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Were-Car
But does she mean no robots anywhere or simply no robots “here” on the Twilight Council? The statement could be taken either way.\
The former, unfortunately, would make a crossover with Questionable Content a bit harder.
To quote DaveB:
Wouldn’t Constructs technically count as robots?
Sorry for the late reply… These shadows somewhat resemble the shadows of robots known from movies. They could be cardboard figures with some LEDs on them but they could be something more interesting also. Thus I’d like so see some more light shed on the matter.
I can imagine alien lifeforms that need or just want a sturdy body to tread on earth. They could have chosen these forms for whatever reason, most likely fun. That’s IMHO more likely than A.I.s that would have a say in what body they’d get, because these would rather not consider the left and middle form – why choose a robotic form that vaguely resembles a human but not well enough to be considered at least as human-like when you could have any form you can think of?
The robots aren’t actually there. Sydney’s imagination is running riot again.
Hmmm, no robots, but golems/living plate mail/whatever-an-aegir-is and other things that could either be mechanical or mystical or both, depending on the source work from which they are drawn.
If Aegir wer mechanical then they’d be robots.
Robots are not sentient
Not yet, anyway. We haven’t quite mastered artificial intelligence, much less artificial sentience. (And no, one does not necessarily lead to the other.)
And when they do, they will stop being robots (remember, another name for ‘robot’ is, or was, ‘automaton’)
I have seen politicians who do not pass the Turing Test. I am eagerly awaiting the first intelligent android.
Assault is an attempt to cause harm to someone. Battery is actually causing harm to someone. Battery also covers offensive and sexual contact. In the USA, three things generally define it:
1) an unlawful application of force
2) to the person of another
3 ) resulting in either bodily injury or an offensive touching.
Not quite. Assault is causing someone to reasonably fear harm. So threatening to stab someone unless they give you their wallet, but having no intention to actually do so if they say no, is still assault. also, walking around “brandishing” a firearm, without any intention of shooting anyone, can still be assault also.
Additionally, BDSM IS illegal in most US states and Great Britain. It’s just that with no one to press charges and no cooperative witnesses, it tends not to get procecuted, even when the cops don’t treat it like one of those outdated laws from the 1800’s (eg. “it is illegal to whistle in public on sunday” is all over the place in the US) and fail to enforce it. And it’s not uncommon for accidents like a rope breaking and causing a hospital visit to be treated as assault.
Finally, Doe V. George Mason University just ruled that the constitutional equal protection rights don’t cover BDSM.
*Gets ready to comment on the legal stuff*
Oh, I see that this is covered. Assault, with extra comments on it, okay. Battery by the elements. All right then. Never mind, looks like that’s covered! (Side note: I need to read the Doe v. George Mason University decision. I want to see how they tried to argue that under equal protection. I mean, I get why, sure, but the arguments must be… “interesting.”)
So, if you’re interested in legal BDSM in the UK, head on out to Northern Ireland?
Not necessary. Aserialpeace is in error, as regards the UK. BDSM only becomes illegal there if the acts result in lasting injury. Consensual assault is legal. Consensual actual bodily harm however is illegal.
Although, if anyone out there has an actual need to know this information, it is best to verify it beyond just the Wikipedia entry. ;-)
Regarding US law and BDSM, it’s a grey area. Courts have ruled both ways on both assault and battery. Intelligent people who are into the scene will usually have actual legal contracts to sign together indemnifying the top against law suits and acknowledging the sub may be injured. It’s like a prenuptual agreement for a playdate, but they’ve had to adopt the practice widely to avoid potential prosecution and law suits. Even then cops (who tend to be or pretend to be very straight-laced) will sometimes ignore the contracts if something goes wrong.
Since George Mason is a local university, I did a little Goggling.
It does not appear that the story in the Washington Post agrees with your assertion that BDSM is not a protected activity. Or at least the court appears to have found that the defendant had his due process rights violated on multiple occasions by the University officials.
Assault is basically threatening to do it first. You’d get Battery if you just randomly beat up someone.
Assault can be consensual. It is part of the signed release for many athletes, be it football, baseball, hockey, MMA, boxing, etc. It will include some version of, “I understand and accepts that the described activities are inherently dangerous and that the risk of injury is significant. I also agree, that should he or she be injured during these activities, that other participants, the organizers nor anyone else associated with these events, will be not be held liable, either criminally or financially, for my injuries.”
I had to sign a document that litterally said something synonymous with “If I die I won’t sue you.”
Amusing though that is, in its own right, it is actually possible to die and sue someone, after the event. Either by proxy (via your heirs) or simply because you were revived.
As they said in Robocop:
CEO: “It’s serious trouble. So many dead and wounded.”
Johnson: “There won’t be any trouble from the dead.”
CEO: “They’ll have relatives, they always do.”
However, the indemnity clauses always include protection against that, as well. So the document that Spicefreak signed would’ve said something more like “If I die, neither myself nor any of my family or relatives, will sue you.”
The trick there is the fact that the family members or relatives aren’t contract signatories, and thus aren’t bound by it.
Depends on how good the lawyer is, both the prosecutor and defence and the one who wrote up the contract, the family are free to contest the contract (like they do with Wills) but if the first lawyer is any good they will just be wasting their money and their time
I assure you it said nothing about relatives.
That was Einstein’s gig.
My favourite Robocop quote, and one of the best movie end lines, ever, is as below. The whole purpose of the movie was just to properly frame the emotion surrounding, and the logical conclusions flowing from, of this one phrase:
“Dick, you’re fired!”
“Ok looks like this guy is gonna give us an info dump WHOAH SHERESH THAT GOT REAL QUICK”
Wow, that came out of nowhere xD
So did he, but it seems he has pissed of the Red Sisters before, judging by Scarlett’s throbbing… pulsating… forehead vein
So is this guy dead now or is he gonna survive this?
You can live perfectly fine missing a liter of blood. He’ll be fine.
A litre of blood, that is an armful! And he has two vamps sucking on him. That is twice as ‘armful!
As long as you’re not 5 pints overdrawn at the blood bank, you’ll likely survive.
(One pint is a typical blood donation. Two pints usually results in shock, 5 or 6 pints usually results in death due to hypovolemic shock.)
Good pun. Good Yorp.
*presents Yorpysnax*
Oh yum yum.
*munching away* Fanku
as i see it without as they haven’t given sydny a heads up even though they know she is there sydney is well within understandable actions to wip out the light hook and the ppo, then pull them off him and threaten to start blasting
I think Geth intelligence is cloud based, but only short range – the more there together at one place, the more dangerous they are supposed to be (I never noticed in-game, only mentioned several times in lore). If their network had unlimited capacity, they would be true hive mind with no dissenting oppinions, and such limitation would make very little sense. Download into new platform yes, full remote control – probably not. They have fear of dying after all, and if it was possible to avoid it by remote control, they’d be doing it a lot more. Instead they sometimes use simpler VIs, and sometimes just march to their deaths after their current platform is destroyed.
*twirls truncheon* ‘wots all this then?’
Think Sydney will try to read them their rights? ☺
Wot all this then? Faith and Begorrah!
“Oh the humanity”?
Swear, Swear on Grabthars Hammer
*sniff*
So sad.
That must always be said with pride.
is it bad of me that i feel the word truncheon sounds like a kind of food?
maybe i’m thinking of trencher. it sounds close enough to make me hungry, anyways.
*pawpalm*
Stick with the trencher mental imagery. Yup, that one, definitely.
Sunstone. As Steve Rogers said once: “I got that reference”.
Pretty sure I got it as well, but just to make sure… is it this?
https://pre05.deviantart.net/5707/th/pre/f/2013/183/e/c/creatively_intimate___damn____thats_way_too_fancy_by_shiniez-d6bn5db.jpg
If it isn’t, it ought to be.
Damnit! It took seeing that image to learn what the reference was (and have all the books that have been released so far, three or four of them) :(
Yep, that’s it. Named for the safeword of choice of the Dominant.
T-800 from Terminator, Bender from Futurama, Sentinel from The Matrix.
Just in case anyone was curious.
Thank you. I knew the first two robot silhouettes, but for whatever reason couldn’t place that last one.
Same here
I had the opposite (-ish) problem… I could name the sentinel, knew where Bender was from (but had no idea about his name) and had no idea about T-800.
That last one was probably because I haven’t seen any of the Terminator movies. Although I have seen a MAD TV (as in the magazine) parody that had the Terminator go back in time to save Jesus.
Terminator 1 and 2 are fantastic movies (Eddie Furlong’s acting in 2 not withstanding) but skip the rest.
Yeah, screw John Connor. Kyle Reese is where it’s at. The same actor was also Hicks in Aliens, and Johnnie Ringo in Tombstone. Given his range I’m a little surprised that he hasn’t been in more and larger roles. His Ringo role was an excellent villain.
Wow, I had not made that connection, despite having seen those all at the cinema, and since! You are right to say how broad his range is, given how diverse, and distinctly, each of those roles are performed.
And yet, the delivery of his lines in both Aliens: Colonial Marines and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon were really flat. I’m not sure if it was because he’s just not used to voice acting roles, or if he was in a “This is boring, but I need the money” mood.
Bender would probably tell Crimson and Scarlet to bite his shiny metal ass.
The holodeck link was actually Barkley when he was accidently made super smart by an alien probe. He setup the link in order to save the telescope array because the Enterprise computer was not fast enough to do the job. Then he took the ship to the home world of the aliens who sent the probe in the first place.
I think DaveB was remembering a different episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation than you are. I thought he was talking about A Fistful Of Datas.
No no Barkley is a werewolf. That should be easy to remember. Big, really furry, sharp claws and teeth.
Sorry, dire-werewolf.
Yeah, I got them mixed up a little there.
Barclay, not Barkley. :)
IT”S HICKEY TIME!!!!
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why you don’t butt into conversations involving vampires.
* Feels neck *
Maybe asking one of these ladies on a date is not such a good idea after all.
* Backs away slowly *
Depends on if it’s a dinner date, with drinks
Just be certain to find out what (or who) will be for dinner & who will be getting drunk…
Zack Tilly
Well, maybe he’ll live. Vampires could use a good undead IT guy. Would be great to surf the internet while in their coffins.
So do they bleed him dry or just enough?
And I can see a monumental battle happening between the Architect and Skynet……
The former needs humans as batteries, the latter wants to exterminate mankind……
Also, no Daleks?
Daleks are aliens in tanks and cybermen are cyborgs.The Doctor Who robots have gears.
I always thought of Matrix as some sort of sequel to Terminator.
Cars, the Pixar movie, is the sequel to the Terminator movies.
Stefan, you and me both. I know it doesn’t jibe with the history in the Animatrix, but if one is only looking at the films, there’s enough thematic continuity for it to work.
I would be surprised if there weren’t some kind of true AI out there already. We have all the pieces, from Neural Nets to simulated brains, and the processing power. It just needs to be put together somewhere.
I suspect we don’t and won’t hear about them for ages yet. Too many humans would get hysterical for no good reason, and like the council in the comic there is no good reason for them to reveal themselves. They gain nothing from doing so, and lose a great deal.
Google are already making preparations to murder AI‘s which achieve sentience, if they feel like it. Which I intend to do my best to challenge.
That… seems really short sighted of them.
Nothing says ‘Welcome, intellectual children. We respect you and your personhood and welcome you to sapience’ quite like hardwired kill switches. :(
I have a sneaking suspicion of what’s going to happen here, so I’ll apply some spoiler tags just in case I’m right. Read on at your own peril!
I believe our plaid wearing know-it-all here is going to prove to be a werewolf and that this little . . . incident is going to lead to us finally finding out if it’s possible for someone to be part vampire and part werewolf, or whatever other combinations you fancy.
Dammit! I can’t even spell spoiler right?!! Where’s an edit button when you need one . . .
I also can’t seem to close my italics tags properly. This just isn’t my day. 😢
…Almost as if this were a Monday instead of a Thursday…
;)
I edited it for you.
Thank you much!
That’s what you get for your spoilier-than-thou attitude. =OP
In 2008 it was found that there are vampire frogs in Vietnam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhacophorus_vampyrus
Fangs alone do not a vampire make. Consumption of blood is also required. Those are egg-eating frogs. If that was all it took, I too would be classed as a vampire.
*tries to see if reflection is appearing in monitor*
I think it’s more likely that he’s going to have some sort of regenerative ability or he’s just immortal.
Trolls never die, no matter how hard you may wish it. They only block your accounts.
that’s how the Doman (Head Vamps In Charge) get their powers, as shown in the “Dead on My Feet” series (The Halflife Chronicles) by Wm. Mark Simmons
Maybe he has a ‘Captain Scarlet’ power.
“You killed him!”
“Eh. He’ll get over it.”
Or some kind of ‘Restore to earlier state’ power.
That would be usefull for providing vampires with a steady supply of food.
Or like a phoenix?
Phoenixes are a fire hazard.
the Phoenix, Arizona by name, a nice light drink in a tall thin package…
Meh, was always more of Captain Black fan
No! We must have robots! Sydney MUST meet a cyberman! Or a Dalek! Or both!
There are no robots there at the Monster UN, not no monsters at all.
Edit that to say “No robots at all.”
My streak today continues . . .
Just as long as your streaking ends.
Yeah seriously dude…Cover up. Not all of us want to see you to dangle your participles in a public forum…
You two obviously don’t know how good I am at it. Why, I’m such a wonderful streaker that a country music guy named Ray Stevens made a little novelty song about it!
Besides, it’s how I met my missus Ethel. She’s a shameless hussy, you know! 😍
Robots are not sentient, why would Sydney want to talk to a toaster? o_O
I say “Balls to that!” I want robots too.
I’m too lazy to do the archive dive for specific references (link goes to the 1st page), but this guy has been known to talk to sapient alien robot blenders…
https://thebuttonmash.com/comics/catch-phrase/
Robots can (and have been) sentient. And yes, “Androids” are robots. If Issac Azimov himself didn’t draw the distinction, neither will I.
Daneel Olivaw and Lt. Commander Data are only the two most obvious examples of Sentient robots.
Data is an android, not a robot, once they gain sentience, they stop being robots
That depends on which definition of “android” you’re using. Wikipedia has this to say:
By that definition, an android doesn’t have to be sentient. Of course, it has to be aware of the environment around it and it has to be able to parse language to determine what is being said and/or what it is being asked to do, and respond appropriately to give the semblance of being human. This does not require sentience, or even true artificial intelligence.
Some other examples are Japan’s “Telenoid R1”, DER1, DER2, and WD-2; South Korea’s EveR-1 and EveR-2, and Hanson Robotics (a U.S. company) has “Albert Hubo” and PKD (short for “Philip K. Dick”). PKD has won awards for artificial intelligence from AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.)
None of these are sentient. Some are remote controlled (such as the Telenoid R1). All of them are called androids.
issac Azimov (who COINED the word “robot”) Stated explicitly that humanform robots (AKA “Androids”) are still robots.
From wiki: The word ‘robot’ was first used to denote a fictional humanoid in a 1920 play R.U.R. by the Czech writer, Karel Čapek. The word robotics, used to describe this field of study, was coined by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov created the “Three Laws of Robotics” which are a recurring theme in his books.
But note that the robots of RUR were biological, so androids. Also, android Data from Star Trek is robot and Robocop is cyborg.
Ahh, but there was an African, 100,000 years ago, who phonetically described a fictional member, of another tribe, as “Robot”. However just because the word sounds the same, does not mean that it had the same intent. Unless it referred to an artificially created being, then I do not feel it counts.
On top of which I create words all the time. But, unless they get taken up by others, and enter into common usage, I cannot claim to have ‘coined’ the term.
98,080 years passes since that first fireside tale. Without the usage being spread. Until some other guy happened to use the same sounds, to make up a name, for his own play. Then, if you check out the google searches made for “robot”, there were none, for decades! Until, of course, Asimov came along and made it a world-famous word.
Actually, why wouldn’t she? Some of them can be quite friendly.
Here’s one from Kim Possible. It and everything else in the kitchen apparently got upgraded with AI so that the genius scientist who owns the house could have someone around to bounce ideas off of. The whole episode is there, but the part I’m referring to can be found from 2:12 to 3:40.
On the other hand, I have to admit that some of them are like Talkie Toaster.
Your latter link had no URL associated. So here is an appropriate one for Talkie Toaster.
Trying again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec
See? That is why asked the question: why would you want to talk to a toaster? o_O
“Actually, why wouldn’t she? Some of them can be quite friendly.”
And other toasters can be quite vexing…
Actually, why wouldn’t she? Some of them can be quite friendly.
Ooops! Messed up the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec
▲ Look up about three posts . . . ▲
Or four. Whatever . . . 😅
Daleks and Cybermen are not robots, they’re Cyborgs. Daleks are mutated Kaleds (usually) inside a “travel/life support machine, cybermen are humans (usually) with many parts replaced by mechanical implants.
A Robot is purely mechanical.
Curiously, it appears the council includes golems, constructs and other ‘enchanted sapients’, but not robots. I wonder why? Seems strange to accept that magic can grant personhood, but not technology. Perhaps DaveB created this universe such that true AI cannot exist here?
The Twilight Council may consider robots as property, and therefore not having rights. A Council this old may have a lot of ‘old-fashioned’ thinking wrapped up in its bylaws. Probably conservative, and slow to change. Maybe Tom Bloodbag is considered an ‘indentured servant’?
If you check out Dave’s blog, above, you will see that there are robots, even on Earth. But they are alien robots, therefore fall under the alien faction banner. Earth technology simply is not advanced enough to make them yet.
Presumably as and when the number and/or power of the Robot Persons increases, they’ll gain the status of being a recognised faction in their own right. At the moment, those who do qualify as a Person do so as an Alien Person, but that’s a political fudge based on their extraterrestrial origins.
Homegrown Robot Persons would have to join an existing faction, at least initially. This would require a category expansion somewhere, and there are at least three that could make a good case. They could join the existing robots in the Alien Person faction to make it easier to promote their shared interests, explicitly acknowledging that the category has already been expanded to include Robot Persons. They could join the Aegir Person faction as non-organic life forms of Terrestrial origin, thus expanding their definition beyond the purely enchanted. Or they could join their parent Human Person faction, effectively making the category ‘Terrestrial Persons of no supernatural aspect’. Whichever way they go, I expect it’ll only be a temporary merger.
Robots may have other reasons for visiting Earth in person.
I was expecting to be linked to Earth Women are Easy for Alien Robots. But romance is much better.
From what I remember, the “Sentinel” robots from the matrix are more about using them for batteries rather than driving them into extinction…
It would have been better if “the Borg” from star trek and “Microsoft” were added into the picture.
From panel four, does Scarlett and Crimson have telepathy? because from panel 4 looks as if they are having a silent conversation the same way women do.
So do they have telepathy because they are vampires or is it because they are having the silent conversation that women do?
Plus, who is that guy, is he the intern or is it just some random guy?
He is Snack
I wonder if they’d like a Yorpie Snak?
…Nah, probably not…It would be such a bother to pick fur from between their teeth…
It could be that the Patreon supporter requested that his cameo die horribly on their first appearance.
Wish granted!
Actually that would be something of historic significance, in comic terms, being the first death in a franchise. Written out though the character may be, it would create a powerful and memorable scene. I think such a patron would get their money’s worth!
Especially given that it could be as formative, on Halo, as Mary Jane’s death was to Spider Man. Each in a manner appropriate to their own settings.
Wait, Mary Jane is dead? I thought Spiderman only lost Gwen Stacy, and that only because of a particularly horrible and wrong application of comic book physics.
Meh, names.
*looks glum*
In addition to being the packed lunch, he is a Council historian. And a cameo from a patron, as per Dave’s blog, above.
Only due to Executive Meddling. Originally, they were using our brains as a neural net, but executives thought that Viewers Are Morons and nobody would understand it. So they changed it to the “humans as batteries” plot… which makes no sense at all to the Viewers That Are NOT Morons, because you have to put more energy into a human body to keep it alive, than you will EVER be able to get out of it.
Ahh, that explains why such an otherwise insightful movie had such an unbelievably crap bit of exposition!
I think Stalin had the right idea, for commanders like that. If they get it wrong, he just executed them!* At the very least, going by the reviews I have heard, every executive, who stuck an oar in, on how to re-make Suicide Squad, should be banned, from ever voicing an opinion again!
Mind you it does not sound like the director’s original cut was much better. But executive interference can operate right at the beginning of the creative process, if they start with “we want a movie made from the following angle…”.
* OK he also executed a lot of folks for no good reason too, but, when applied judiciously, he did get results with that technique. Russia did turn around the war, on the Eastern front, with such ruthless policies playing a big role.
Well, the “neural net” story at least is credible, unlike the “living batteries” story. The human brain (contrary to what people might think) is not really very fast. What it is very good at, however, is massively parallel computing.
In layman’s terms, it’s sort of like having a 1 MHz CPU… with millions of processor cores. Just imagine the number of computations that have to be performed every second by our visual cortex… and even then, the brain takes shortcuts because it requires too much power to process all of the data our eyes send. That’s why optical illusions fool our brains.
Having said that, I don’t think the robots would want to use us as “wetware”, because our brains are relatively slow, compared to the speeds of today’s CPUs achieve. Although Morpheus believes it’s approximately 2199, it’s strongly hinted that it’s closer to 2599. Given Moore’s Law and almost six centuries of development, assuming they can overcome the limitations of materials technology that is slowing us down, imagine what kind of CPUs the robots might be able to make.
(Currently, our CPUs are built with a 14nm process; the first 10nm chips are expected to start reaching the market next year. Without nanoelectronics and non-silicon extensions of CMOS, we won’t be able to get much smaller because quantum tunneling becomes a significant phenomenon.)
TL;DR: The “using humans as wetware” scenario is not better than the “using humans as batteries” scenario, but it is more plausible.
Where humans excel is in certain tasks. So, if needing to, for instance, analyse images and look for ‘anomalies’, that is something which a human brain could handle better than a CPU, even if the CPU was otherwise faster.
So let us say that one of our robot overseers realises that factory production is down, in an area, but the normal analysis algorithms are not identifying the cause. It could then set the fleshy brains to examine ‘before’ and ‘after’ CCTV footage, and photos of product-line output, to spot anything that specific programming does not cover.
Monitoring the fleshy processors reactions could pick up when something interests the brain. Like spotting a rat, scurrying down the line. Or an unusual kind of mold growing on the production line equipment. No programming necessary. Just train the brains enough, that it finds spotting differences to be rewarding.
Obviously brains which had been conditioned, to recognise such life forms, and/or be familiar with properly operating factories, would be best at such tasks. Which would be a good justification for running simulations, that incorporate these kinds of things. On top of keeping the brain fit, exercised and in healthy working order, ready for when such analysis is needed.
And the activation of such analysis routines could be incorporated in the simulation. So, the next time you are playing a game, be aware that the overlords might be utilising your activities to further some inscrutable need of theirs.
They probably make all of their printed circuits in the shape of nude females, to make it easier to get the fleshy brains to focus on them.
There are so many things from that series of movies that are internally contradictory that I wonder a lot about the amount of influence the Wachowskis actually had in the final product. I felt like the story and world became more incoherent as the series went on, and I wonder if that was from poor understanding of its philosophical roots by the directors/writers or by executive meddling.
And oddly, I still like them (granted, I like them inversely proportionally to the order of their release).
I apologise if I’ve posted this before but it did seem appropriate for today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9zx9eGRQdE
And I thought my Michael Caine impersonation was about as bad as it was possible to get. Nope. If you get someone who has no idea who he is, you can make an even worse version.
The Hugh Grant was pretty good though. For capturing the feel, as opposed to the mannerisms or such-like. Pretty realistic, for how intelligent zombies would behave, in polite society. :-)
This also reminds me of the fate of the inventor of the Infinite Improbability Drive.
Haven’t played that game in years :(
It’s a game?
You just need to find the right chapter, in your Hitchhikers Guide. Look for alternate Earths. In one of them a different route was taken, for the bypass, and the Earth was not destroyed.
In that Earth a rat was running a test on a human, by the name of Douglas Adams, which allowed him to emphatically link with Arthur Dent, and follow his adventures. Eventually going on to write a book about that experience. Which then got turned into a TV series, and even a film!
Well, that then left it wide open for games to be made.
Plug in your Babel fish, and you can probably play a version of one, directly from your Hitchhiker’s Guide. If you have the version, with the red interactive button.*
* But not the one with a big red button that has a “do not press” warning label on it.
What if my hop drive takes me to a universe where there is a female version of myself?
Soooo….Would that make it masturbation or incest?
Ok, ok. I know that’s an oft-used meme & a trite question to ask, but it’s a dirty job & someone needed to do it.
Why not both?
What if the infinite improbability drive makes you a female version of yourself?
(Note that this is a distinct possibility, as the IID can even change your species, according to the Hitchhiker’s Guide.)
Or end up in a world with only female versions, of everyone. As we only have proof of principle for female to female fertilisation technology, it would be up to me to repopulate the planet.
*sigh*
Just think how awful that would be! Even with my best efforts, at least six billion women would be deprived of my prowess…
That is even worse than on this planet!
Wasn’t it a radio show before being made into a TV show? o_O
Book->Radio->TV->Movie
In the world with shrimp yea. The one without shrimp though did not have a radio show.
In the one world an executive was invited to an Australian’s beach party, but in the other he declined, because he felt there would be no good food. Resulting in different organisations landing the deal, in each world.
Yes, took me a while to track it down again: Improbable Island
When mansplaining is taken waaay too seriously.
Imagine if a certain clay stop-motion boy and his dog appeared instead….
Boy:Uh,hello there…
Crimson:What’s your name son?
Boy:Davey!
Scarlett:Well Davey,who’s the dog??
Davey:That’s Goliath!!! He and I are the best of friends,right boy???
Goliath:(looking at Scarlett and Crimson)I don’t know about them Davey!!!
(Note:How would Sydney react to seeing these tow,especially a talking dog?)
Crimson and Scarlett get ready to bear their fangs when suddenly Davey grabs two candlestick holders from a nearby table and uses them to form a cross! Both sirelings back down…!
Goliath:Oh Davey!!!
Nostalgia achieved!
+1!
How about the little boy and his dog from Baldurs Gate? Of course – they turned out to be a demon and his direwolf…
Why can’t I be jumped by hot vampires when I act like a pedant?
You can. The girls will doubtless need more than just the one lunchbox. All you need to do is become a premiere patron, and you too can have the pleasure of such experiences. :)
Would also need to wait until Dave has another use for a “pedant being beaten by two hot vampires” moment, which I’m guessing probably won’t happen any time soon.
Dave is creative enough to fit in something equally enjoyable, I have no doubt. Dabbler and Harem will allow many opportunities for titillating cameos, for instance. In addition to vamp girls needing to feed again sometime, there are also elves, pixies, angels, demons and more.
It all depends on the individual’s preferences. Many folks might just want to have a favourite character appear in a combat situation (although such opportunities might not appear frequently). Whereas others might find the non-combat roles to be more appealing. The above character being a historian, as a prime example. Whilst another is Iron Cloth, the Archon tailor.
Pack a mansplainer, the snack you can chomp with a clear conscience.
The funny part would be if his sole super ability is a constant supply of blood.
[ ] Pedantry accomplished!
Hm…I’m missing a pedantry achievement for the day. Ah!
“humanit
iesdemise” > “humanity‘s demise”“A.A.I
’s (Alien A.I.’s)”[x] Pedantry accomplished!
My One Weird Trick for possessives is if you can ask “Whose demise?” And answer with “Humanity’s demise”, it’s possessive and gets an apostrophe. Which doesn’t work as well as my Other Weird Trick, which is “if you can swap out ‘his’ for the word, that means it’s possessive and gets an apostrophe.”
OK, I’ll leave now.
So…no ability to edit comments then.
Oh my, how embarasing [deliberate sic]
Yay! Pedantry!
Although the comic dies point out a plausible risk of Pedantry / Mansplaining (both of which I’m often guily) – you could be consumed as punishment.
Fixed it. Your tags I mean, not my comment. At least not yet.
Thanks! This transitory attention, in addition to correcting my coding error, also validates my ongoing existence. My will to live has been refreshed!
The exception, which kind fellow readers pointed out to me, is that the possessive of “it” is “its”, not “it’s”. The latter only applies to a contraction of “it has” or “it is”.
Mind you, once we do have AIs, I am sure that will change. Artificial people will be allowed to own stuff, and the grammar should reflect that.
Possessive pronouns never get apostrophes. All other possessives always get them.
Good point. Scratch my last.
Reflective grandmas are weird anyhow. Although Maxima might pull it off well. Sometime in the distant future.
I’d be more concerned about an ASI like Samaritan from the show Person of Interest than just an AI in a robot body wandering around myself.
They should get that robot in the middle. I heard he killed like a million billion humans.
this is bringing back memories of a party my cousin told me about. at said party, some guy was boasting about having really thick skin, saying he never bled, basically daring anyone to cut him. my cousin had on fake nails at the time, and basically carved a big bloody line down his back. then she and two other women, i quote, “descended on him like the brides of dracula.”
sorry i can’t give the story all the dramatics she can in the retelling, but it was a good story.
this wouldn’t really be BDSM, although it would be kink. regardless, all kink scenes need to be negotiated before the scene unfolds. but i am going to just assume that that guy isn’t just the tech support, and actually knows those two vampires, and this is the vampire equivalent of noogying a friend who unexpectedly shows up just to explain stuff.
So he was basically acting like Lee Press -on Claws?
How can anybody not understand how assault works? You a-shake it on your food, and it a-makes it taste good.
That is why it is associated with battery. Due to the long use of salt and vinegar, on battered fish, sausages and the like.
Avoid salt on battered Mars bars though. That would be icky!
Salt on caramel can be delicious, if proportioned correctly. But a Mars bar is only partially caramel, and would need replacing with a more rigorously caramel bar.
Two words: Dubbel Zout (Double Salt). It’s a salted Dutch black licorice.
I’ve known one Dutch person who pops these like candy. I tried one once. My lips and tongue dried up like the Sahara Desert. How anyone else can stand to eat these, I don’t know.
Like all extreme foods, the body builds a tollerance over time but some people are naturally more inclined to one aswell. If I remember my trip to Bristol correctly, some places even do triple salted licorice (though that might not actually be stronger than the dutch stuff).
I can’t even stand the standard licorice!
Although I did like the red variant (whether that technically was actually licorice, or not, I do not know).
I lie grape licorice.
When I can find it.
I have never seen it. But will keep my eyes open, as I would like to try that.
Flavoured licorices are nothing like the truer black version. I can’t stand black licorice either though.
It’s worse than I thought. Dubbel Zout actually has very little sodium chloride (“table salt”). They use ammonium chloride instead. No wonder I thought it tasted like hair dye.
I will give it credit, though: It clears your sinuses almost as well as horseradish does.
I also have to be fair and say that the Dutch do make many very good licorice flavors (called “drop”). Over there, you’ve got “drop shops” that sell about 50 different varieties, such as the honingdrop (honey flavored).
If you’ve never eaten them before, never accept a drop from a smiling Dutchman. It is a trap. If you are especially paranoid, only accept drop from trusted family and friends (and only after doing a thorough background check on them first!)
Having just recently run a game where characters were trapped in an MMO and one of the players was a native AI, all I can think is: “Sydney’s become a quest giver!”
WOW had a small quest where you could become a quest-giver and deal with 3 types of annoying players.
City of Heroes allowed you to create custom missions of your own design, and make them available for any players to run. Even though the player mission creation tools were not as comprehensive as the developers ones (naturally enough) they still did allow a lot of very richly creative games to be created.
So players were not just quest givers, they were quest creators too.
Made a couple of quests in that system, yep.
They shut down before I could finish the quest I was working on.
(cries profusely)
“Offers MidnightDStroyer a beach towel”
It’s ok. I’ve got a towel right here, next to my copy of the HHGuide & my Thumb.
Speaking of giving out quests . . .
The page I’m linking here is probably okay, but the site itself is very NSFW! You have been warned!
Oglaf is the best.
Oglaf IS the best!