Grrl Power #467 – Pitch(ed out) meeting
Wait! Argus could be the Epimeliad’s apple tree! And another intelligence person could be this Disney princess type who can talk to birds and squirrels. But she always sings everything and pulls everyone into her songs and everyone hates her, but she’s so sweet she gives everyone diabetes. And the QM is a… dwarf? Gnome. No, a gremlin! He makes great stuff but it’s all buggy and unpredictable. And the team has a human on it – nobody trusts him but he’s ex-Mossad so he understands persecution, but he’s a stone killer who knows everything about taking down supernatural threats so nobody wants to get in his face.
^^^ Probably all stuff Sydney rambled on about while being relocated. And we have yet another comic I could do one day.
It appears Sydney has finally discovered the threshold. Looking back over this arc, Maxima really should have been more proactive about reining her in.
I’ll admit I borrowed the “When did this happen!?” gag from Slayers. I don’t remember what episode, but Lina’s wannabe protege gets tied up while delivering a rousing monologue about justice or something.
I’m not aware that Epimeliads are green, I just needed the visual continuity between Sydney’s pitch and the one in the mini-comic. BTW, I had never heard of Epimeliads until I saw them in a smutty comic. Some guy wandering through the woods, is confronted by a trio, correctly guesses what kind of forest fey they are, and is rewarded for his efforts, and then the trio is rewarded by his efforts… you know. The point is, sometimes smut is educational.
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.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
That IS a good trick….
Just watch the one she can do with a banana.
N.S.F.W. – contains nudity.
They’ve even started showing nudity in TV ads!
He he. I think more than a few readers will be cheering that.
I dread to think what trouble Sydney will get up to out there!
I hope for non apocalliptic.
she’ll use yellow telepresence
to walk through the door and take her seat again
meanwhile the real Sydney will be sitting against the door
or she could just tear the door down with her 16 ton light-hook
Sydney may be impulsive, but she’s not stupid, she would know that both options are not a good idea
Give her a moment (or twenty) and she will realise that she was put outside for a reason and she will go exploring
Let us hope she decides not to do the latter. It could well be viewed as an act of war on the Twilight Council! But, yea, I could well see her doing that. Although, given her lack of sleep, I could well see her just nodding off. Mind you, something out here might catch her eye…
Either way I suspect Halo will find out that the entrance to the Twilight Council’s conference hall is not as unguarded as it may appear, to the casual visitor.
Of course, given the power level of the truesight/telepresence orb, she may well discover this when someone asks her how she got back in.
Good call Max.
Also, love the slayers gag, but now I’m imagining the scene where the main characters have a swarm of mini versions running around, and picturing mini Halos running around is mildly terrifying.
And the mini sidneys all have access to one of the orbs each.Sidney keeps hers they each just get a duplicate
Presumably having been shrunk by the brown mystery orb. Which is also capable of enlarging its user to giant size (a.k.a. normal Sydney size, for one of her mini-Sydneys). The green one being the replicator. It can also replicate anything which is intended for a prank.
Love this show idea why have you not submitted it to HBO yet….
the artwork in the doublewide Panel 4 Extra cool looking.
So do I. I’m surprised it hasn’t been done yet, or maybe it has and I just didn’t see it.
Lost Girl comes reasonably close, though it’s not specifically about cops
Want there some cop show a few years back about supernatural German animal people? I think it was based on the Brothers Grimm?
Sounds like “Grimm“
Special Unit 2 was about a police unit that dealt with the supernatural threats.
I was about to say! Special Unit 2, which was on Scifi channel and rather low-budget. I don’t remember but it might have been a US-based show though.
Torchwood also comes close, especially if you wrap in “aliens” and “space-time anomalies” but that group IIRC worked for the British Crown in specific and had a lot of…let’s just say rot in the wood depending on the branch. Cardiff’s branch under Jack Harkness was fairly trustworthy but ALL versions used things like memory-wipes on the populace, so there’s that.
Men In Black of course is an aliens-only version of this, keeping up the Masquerade only in reference to extra-terrestrials as far as we know. And The Dresden Files has the White Council, and their Wardens (and the Blackstaff) though they only really bother to help with keeping up the Masquerade as much as they do because it helps prevent the death of or harm to magic users like their members; their main function is actually to police their own, including those who don’t even realize there ARE people to police their own (which is pretty bullcrap when you’re enforcing laws people don’t know exist yet. Though I’m pretty sure most people should be able to guess that trying to control a living person or kill them would be wrong and illegal on some level with or without magic, who would necessarily guess that creating zombies is specifically worth an instant death sentence according to a bunch of dudes in Scotland who have the supposed right to behead you as they see fit? Jeez.) On a more localized level of course, Dresden Files also has the Chicago PD’s “Special Investigations” division, which is where everything that makes normal cops go “oh hell no, what even is this” gets assigned (and it’s also where people who’ve ticked off superiors get sent, since they get the most dangerous and weird and frustrating cases; almost nobody outside the division believes in the supernatural, especially since SI is VERY good at making up plausible sounding cover stories).
However, an Interpol style supernatural variation, with that wide a jurisdiction, I’m not sure has been entirely done. I can’t recall if the titular Special Unit 2 was international in nature or US-based, but part of me thinks it’s the latter. If not, then it’s the only show that meets the full criteria of covering supernatural AND alien categories. And even then, weren’t most of its staff human?
Oh, and you do have things like Justice League Dark, where you have teams of supernatural folks pursuing the supernatural threats of their universe…but those are comics, not TV. Gotham Central also covered the division of Gotham PD that handles freaky cases – Major Crimes Unit or something? – but that includes not just supervillains but also run of the mill serial killers, so it likewise doesn’t quite fit the description Sydney gave. Plus, the whole point was they were all normal human cops, and their jurisdiction wasn’t “everywhere” – it was “Gotham City”. Green Lantern Corps technically has a jurisdiction of “the whole world” and covers supernatural threats, but that’s only because they cover ALL threats, on ALL the worlds in whatever system – they’re more the classic Space Cop trope, and probably the codifier of it at that.
The show “Grimm” does have people who fight supernatural threats hidden to everyone else, but I think it was more of a “chosen one” deal with a limited number of naturally-gifted folks who can sense the supernatural, not a group of supernatural folks acting like Interpol, complete, I’m sure, with paperwork. The same could be said of the Watcher’s Council in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, and their Slayers. And I think in both cases, the people behind it are humans, albeit sometimes a “special” human.
What I’m saying is that though people have done variants of police/organizations to fight supernatural crime, I haven’t yet seen somebody do it on television where:
1.) It is an outright police-style paramilitary and investigation group, complete with police-style paramilitary and investigation techniques.
2.) it is international.
3.) It is staffed by a large-ish staff of MOSTLY supernatural folks, whose main goal is to take down rebels and criminals who threaten to reveal the Masquerade to humans.
Literally the CLOSEST I can think of that fits all three of those criteria is the LEPrecon group that the fairies run in the “Artemis Fowl” books…which have never been adapted to television. If AF were made into a TV series, we’d have a show that mostly met Sydney’s criteria for the organization…and even then, though, it wouldn’t entirely focus on them.
Sydney’s idea is just unique enough to have merit as a pitch. Not that completely unoriginal pitches don’t get made too, but I’m saying it has just the right mix of “successful things have been done with something similar” AND “but not QUITE this, which make it novel enough to strike interest!”
She has celebrity pull now, she should talk to Ariana about getting this made. It might actually work, AND it might paradoxically make the eventual Reveal of supernatural entities more palatable, much the same way superhero comics have in-universe made “supers” easily-marketable as heroic figures!
All interestingly put. My one quibble is 3). We have nothing to indicate that their primary role is to protect the Veil. You have taken an anthrocentric view of their job. Ingsol describes it as “… to help police all the member races”. Their job involves a lot more than just the Veil.
Humans are merely one of the member races.* A race that is so xenophobic that the rest had to conceal themselves from humanity. But I am sure they have other issues too.
For example I am sure that ‘ensuring the planet is not destroyed’ will rate higher than protecting the Veil.
* Note that Zephan is a delegate so humans are amongst the races, who are part of the Council. Albeit that they may only just now be qualifying to have a box to represent humanity formally.
Agents of Shield.
A TV Show based on Chicago’s SI, lead by Murphy would be awesome, specially since the TV show based on Dresden Files flopped so badly…
Dresden would only get guest appearances once in a while.
It wasn’t terrible, but I think if they had been more faithful to the source material and had better casting (Multiple characters cast exactly opposite to their descriptions in the book, etc…) it would have been better received.
They also could have hyped it a lot more.
I can see a punchline in a page or three when Sydney remembers how the yellow orb works, and projects herself in only to find the meeting over.
Hopefully stopping herself, before doing that, thanks to remembering it is classified…
mmm….
could she remember to behave herself for one minute? OK you have a good point. Her sleep deprivation and Muppet hallucinations are finally catching up with her.
No it’s not classified, not there, the yellow orb is the reason that she’s there in the first place.
And she could certanlly simply walk up to Max and ask for the “in previous episodes” that she is missing.
The passive effect of the yellow orb (truesight) is the reason she is there. The active effect (telepresence) might still need to be kept a secret even to the council.
Well, to be honest I forgot that they know about it anyway.* It shows a lot higher level of trust and cooperation between Archon and the Twilight Council than I had originally envisaged. But they have been operating together (in Archon’s previous incarnation) for decades. If you recall a certain dashing fedora-wearing lupine FBI agent.
* Ingsol mentions them knowing that Sydney’s powers include the ability to pierce the Veil. So it is not quite one and the same as knowing it is the yellow orb which does that. But it would not take too much to figure that out, having watched the press conference. It is either yellow, green or brown, as far as they would be able to tell.
Mmm, Dryad Cider™.
*licks lips*
I bet that would be General Faulk’s favourite drink!
Just watch out how you buy and sell the stocks for that company… wouldn’t want to see anyone get for in-cider trading.
Make sure you collect that information legally! Don’t want any “Fruit of the poisonous tree” to taint the investigation.
[sigh] – I swear, you guys can make puns out of anything – too much for me – I should just leaf
Of course you had to go for the low hanging fruit…
Don’t go bananas, we are not bad apples. And surely, before you upset the apple-cart, we deserve the fruit of our labours. And we do cherry-pick good ones. Although, I do not give a fig, as the forbidden fruit is the sweetest.
Ah,but it does create many jams…
A-pear-antly, he is berry much in disagreement.
Which reminds me of the lovers who met in a melon patch. One of them said, “I’m sorry, dear, I cantaloupe.” to which the other replied, “Oh, please, honey dew.”.
Just calm down and count to tree.
A leek of information like that could be an im-peach-able offense.
So lettuce hope that never happens.
The Wiz’s Angry Tree Cider, Proudly Made In Munchkinland From 100% Thrown Apples. “It’ll Knock You Out!”
For apple cider and Maple Syrup
do dryads just ask the trees to pee in a bucket?
How do the trees make amber for the dryads, then?
Surely dryads wood not value the clotted and fossilised blood of their companions?
Don’t be a sap bud! The sage Dryad wood root through eBay regularly for the right piece of amber:
If it was magical, could be used for magic, or had some significance like it was of a certain special tree of old. Humans value supposed relics made from long dead humans why not other sentient species?
Do you twig what I’m saying, or do I have to spell it out?
Not if I can’t see the wood for the trees.
Just make sure you’re not barking up the wrong one.
“pee in a bucket”? What? Neither of those things comes from “waste” products of plants!
Apple cider is made from the fruit – fruit is the thing that carries seeds, after pollen has fertilized the blossoms (the flowers being in turn the sex organs of the tree). Trees will no doubt freely give their fruit so long as it spreads their seeds as intended.
Maple syrup is literally the sap of the tree. Which is more akin to blood, really. THAT might be tricky to ask for. “Here, let me open up a gash and stick a metal straw in their to drain out your equivalent-of-blood…”
a flower is literally the Vagina, uterus, ovaries, penis, and testicles of a tree
fruit is literally the genitals of the tree
what else do you do with genitals?
Urinate
what is Urine?
Filtered Blood that no longer has Plasma, Blood cells or platelets
thanks to the blood filters you call kidneys.
Water and Nutrients are carried by sap from the roots
Sugars are produced in the leaves
Water Nutrients and sugars are carried in the sap and stored in the fruit
the juice in a fruit literally used to be tree sap.
Given you Castrate trees for their Genital fruits
and drink their blood sap juice from those genitals
asking the trees to “pee in a bucket”
is an appropriate metaphor.
Ha. Canadians are Maple Vampires.
https://9gag.com/gag/a9d1jb1/plant-genitals-why-thank-you
In the interests of making sure artists get credit for their work, the source of that image is:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2594
Thank you.
Especially as it gives folks the opportunity to read more of the strips.
if you’re going to get technical here…..
Your post is fraught with bad analogies. For example, fruit is not the genitals of a tree. A much closer analogy would be an embryo/fetus (plus amniotic sac) or egg since all three (fruit, embryo/fetus, and egg) are post-fertilization stages.
Urine contains waste products that one has to eliminate to remain in good health, whereas blood/sap often contain nutrients (among other things) necessary for survival. Removing sap/blood often has a detrimental effect on an organism..
Since urine and reproductive fluids have entirely different purposes and come from different organs in different bodily systems (i.e., the urinary and reproductive), that both are discharged via the genitals makes them no more equivalent than saliva and vomit are simply because both of the latter two are discharged through the mouth.
Urine is not blood itself, but rather the toxins that were once suspended in blood that have been filtered out.
Since “the juice in a fruit literally used to be tree sap”, the words I emphasized indicate that it isn’t tree sap anymore.
“Given you Castrate trees….” is also wrong since removing the fruit of the tree does not remove the tree’s ability to produce more fruit.
IOW, the metaphor doesn’t work.
Has anyone here had a Dicken’s Cider?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqRRW9lKmEQ
Hmm, a were-octopussy, bet Jimmy Bond would love to be violated by her, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again :D
*covers eyes with paws*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDvgL58h_Y
Huh? How is that related? o_O
That’s not what I meant when I said I wanted to spoon.
Must be careful about that, because spooning can lead to forking
Sounds like you lead an interesting knife life.
That movie got a dew claws up from me, thanks. Pretty impressive too, ranging over five continents, as it did. Shockingly gruesome bit though, with the goolies mind, even with my paws over my eyes! Alas, by Grabthar’s Hammer, only Alan Rickman could have saved him!
Although the protagonist did fail to either placate the attacks by offering a hard-boiled egg, in an egg-cup. Or test to see if the attacker’s weapons could be turned against him. I would have shoved the lot where the daylight does not shine!
Well, she does have that technique that’s similar to “a trip around the world,” but she calls it the “trip around the radial.”
Octopussies have eight arms, not seven.
You misread Guesticus‘s punctuation, which indicating that there was an initial incidence, then seven repetitions. For eight in all.
You forgot the first time, which proceeded the seven ‘agains’
Ninja dog strikes again!
Muh hu hu ha!
As an aside, I’ve seen some tentacle hentai. I have a semi-bad habit of deconstructing and/or analyzing things, and I’ve always wondered what’s in it for the tentacles. The poor little Japanese girls all seem to enjoy it immensely, after perhaps some initial amount of protest, but the tentacles?
You kidding? Tentacles are usually highly sensitive and no just at touching but chemically as well, which you can call smell or taste or both actually. Some can kinda see (photoreceptors). Some species could even have senses we have not equivalent to, like related to electric or magnetic fields.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they enjoy it even more than we do.
https://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2010/08/05/sensitive-octopus-suckers/
Eh, maybe some octopi like hentai, but not all of them do…
https://ghastly.comicgenesis.com/d/20010510.html
Okay, why does the Epimeliad look familiar? o_O
reminds me of beastboy from teen titans
No, not that knob buckler
And of course now we want to know the name of the comic. :)
I read a simular story in an issue of xenophobe magazine about 20 or so years ago
XXXenophile, by Phil Foglio. Though the three dryads weren’t apple trees.
Supernatural Interpol, the comic.
Inngie: “Oh, don’t you start!”
A reference to Galaxy Quest’s Jane Doe in panel 4?
Heh, I see where you are coming from. Dark hair, tentacles & snu snu. I suspect not though, the feel of the two characters is rather different. The Galaxy Quest one was much more demure. Plus the whole race were pacifists. And I could not picture her with a lock hair out of place, like that!
Would the “smutty comic” be _XXXenophile_ by Phil Foglio? Because one of the issues had a story like that.
I’m going to have to remember to read the rest of the posts before i post replies (see reply to Varia’s post)
I read all _XXXenophile_ and never heard about Epimeliadas before. Pretty sure the ones in that comic where Dryads.
Yes, Epimeliad’s are Apple Tree Dryad
Yes, I meant that they were called “Dryads” in the comic, nor Epimeliads nor apple trees were mentioned.
Oh, okay
after quickly downloading it from the net, they look like birch trees
I don’t remember where I saw it, as I recall it wasn’t hugely explicit, so maybe from something like Slipshine or Smut Peddler, and reposted without permission to a tumblr most likely.
This look like the comic? https://cnt1.dvvent.com/dvv/open/mcc/covers/nymphomania-i01-p00.jpg
Normally I wouldn’t hotlink, but all of the information required to find the correct site and artist are on the image, I’m not going to make it brain-dead easy to find nor stumble upon smutty stuff that might upset people, if someone goes through the effort required to find the rest of this, they brought whatever they find upon themselves.
No better way to make a secret look ridiculous than to make a cheesy TV show about it…
Did Marty stop taking his pills again?
Deeks or McFly?
That’s how X-Files and the “Men In Black” Quadrology did it (what? you don’t remember the movie that came before the one where Agent J went back in time? oh, they got you as well? shame, it was such a great movie, it was the one that had Will Smith in the prime for winning all the awards that year :()
Specifically, _XXXenophile_ issue #2, pages 14-20, third story, “Trees a Crowd”
Thats the one, thank you. And by chance I happen to have my copy of that not two feet away. :)
Interestingly that is one of the shortest and simplest stories and also has what to me it the more “primitive” art of the whole collection. Despite being in the second issue, I always wondered if it wasn’t a very earlier comic thrown into the collection, since several years before Phoglio published Buck Godot and the art was already way better.
Every XXXenophile story is inked by a different non-Phil artist, so they vary quite widely.
True, but the quality overall is way lower in this one, also Foglio’s at the time style is easily recognizable in them all except this one, where some panels look nothing to do. Can’t believe that the inker could mess it up that bad on their own.
Yorp, buddy, did you do something different with your fur? You look more dapper yet slightly scruffy, in a good way.
Why thank you. It is just this new brand of shampoo, Lunar™.
He’s a were-poodle now.
if they have a media team taking notes for a pitch is this were shows like true blood cam from in the gp universe?
No, that’s why they have a media team taking notes now, to prevent that (and “Twihard”) from ever happening, again
Just loving the ‘almost serene’ look on Maxima in the last panel.
That’s because her nerd-side really would like that show
I believe the episode you’re thinking of is the first episode of season 2 (aka Slayers Next).
You are right: https://gogoanime.io/slayers-next–episode-1
The most horrifying thought about this comic is that I can totally imagine someone over at SyFy* reading this and deciding that it’s really not that bad an idea as “high-concept drama” goes…
*Ye gods, what an awful name! Although it doesn’t surprise me in the least, since poor, long-gone and greatly lamented (at least by me) “Sci-Fi Channel” went from being by SF/Fantasy fans for SFF fans to getting bought out by the soulless suits at Viacom who then decided “we can do better” and put on WWE “wrasslin'” and decided that since “our market research shows that people are put off by the term ‘Sci-Fi’, so we should re-brand ourselves something catchy–and if it’s something we can trademark and merchandise the hell out of, even better! Let’s all go milk the cash cow to death!” Blech! Even worse was the critical brain failure that led to the concept that “Sci-FI” is a dumping ground for any schlock that doesn’t neatly pigeonhole into any other genre cleanly, such as the gross-out splatterpunk crapola that passes for “Horror” these days.
{Noticing stares directed at me} Okay, I’m putting the soapbox away now, honest!
Actually, was wondering why no one else commentated on that before, well done
Can’t help but agree with you and add that I want my SCIENCE channels back. Everything from History to Nat Geo is doing crap TV now. Reality shows, Finding Bigfoot, Ancient Aliens and Conspiracy Theories are all I see anymore on channels that used to do Real Science. Even the (real?) survival shows are getting stupid. Why would you watch a show called “Naked and Afraid” if everything is blurred out? Seriously that one is just plain stupid.
Because they are afraid the nakedness of wobbly bits may put off sensitive idiots who are only watching it to see someone go postal, like you seem to have on every ‘reality’ show now
You just have to watch a handful to see that they always keep at least one confirmed arsehole who is only out to disrupt everything and cost contestants who have a real shot at winning a place in the final show, even on cooking and renovating shows!
It’s almost as if the “Dumbing down” of people was a real thing but we actually do it to ourselves. For many years PBS and to a great extent BBC were the only places to go for actual science. The fact that they didn’t have to compete to do this made it successful. If only 3% of the audience watched it that was fine because their funding was the same no matter how many people watched. Now they have shows that basically play YouTube videos and comment about them because YouTube is free and therefore while a lot of crap and pandering happens there are better shows about science than you can get on paid TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPt665_1agA
The weird thing is, SyFy is kind of bipolar now. Yes they produce horrific schlock like Sharknado and ZNation, but they also do not at all bad stuff like The Expanse. They probably keep the former production company around to fill air time between better shows.
Hey! I *LIKE* Z Nation! I think it’s better than TWD! But then, I get all my TV online instead of from the channels, so I don’t have to deal with all the crap I don’t want to watch. And The Expanse is pretty good too.
(Then again, if TWD actually did more than take it’s concept from the comics it is supposedly based on, it would probably be a much better show…)
Interesting idea. Amusingly, Robert Kirkman (the writer of the comics and one of the executive producers of TWD) has gone on record as saying the exact opposite of what you seem to be saying… that the show has done things he wishes he had thought of when he was writing the comics.
P.S., TWD fairly consistently has more than 10 million viewers per episode. Season 7 premieres this month, Season 8 has been announced (which means that TWD will reach the magic number for syndication, passing 100 episodes), and they have benchmarks and milestones all the way through Season 12 (“if we’re lucky enough to get that far”).
Sci-Fi, even before the dumb name change, was always kind of bipolar. People remember things like Farscape or Anime Week (with Apollo Smile) but they forget that, even before the name change, “Sci-Fi Original” was often synonymous with really bad made-for-TV movies. (We’re talking the writing of Axe Cop combined with the acting of a Middle School drama club.)
The Sci-Fi channel has just always been about “Throw crap at a wall and see what sticks”.
The “dumb name change” was not meant to be pretentious or silly. It was for trademark reasons. You can’t trademark the word “Sci-Fi” because it is a generic description of a fiction genre, while Syfy can be a unique brand.
“We couldn’t own Sci Fi; it’s a genre…but we can own Syfy.” – Bonnie Hammer, president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment (and former president of SyFy, back when it was Sci-Fi), in an interview with the New York Times.
Actually, their viewership went UP when they did that. And in any case, they moved all the wrestling back to USA Network. A quick search of SyFy’s schedule for “WWE” or “Wrestling” immediately turns up “No Match Found”. (My guess is that after Burn Notice got cancelled, it opened up enough time in USA’s schedule that they were able to move it back to that channel. Or SyFy finally got enough negative feedback to decide “we shouldn’t really be showing this on a station that’s supposed to be about science fiction”.)
In any case, it’s been owned by NBC Universal since 2004. Viacom only owned it from 1994 to 1997.
DaveB says:
Their regular shows and their miniseries (e.g. their Dune and Children of Dune miniseries from a few years ago) tend to get higher budgets than their movies. That’s the reason why they seem kind of bipolar.
@Gamesman says:
Finding Bigfoot is Animal Planet (and, btw, is cancelled. Season 10 will be the last.) Ancient Aliens airs on History Channel. Don’t worry; in a pop culture with a short memory and a voracious appetite, aliens and pyramids and lost civilizations are recycled like fashions. It’ll fade away and then come back again in about a decade.
I agree with you about the reality shows, though. And if something turns out to be popular on one channel, the others will do a spin-off soon enough. The most recent trends seem to be Fishing (Deadliest Catch, Big Fish Texas, Wicked Tuna, etc) and Alaska (Railroad Alaska, Edge of Alaska, Wild West Alaska, Escaping Alaska, Alaska Monsters, Alaska: The Last Frontier, etc).
My overall take on all these shows: “We get it. Your job sucks. I don’t care. Next!”
Here’s my take on the fishing shows (particularly Deadliest Catch): “Watch this ship catch some crab. Watch this other ship suffer a breakdown. Watch this captain yell at his crew. Watch this other ship chip ice off the deck. Tune in again next week, when they do the same thing all over again!”
As for the Alaska shows, the only one I actually gave two cents about was “Alaska State Police” (National Geographic), and that one got cancelled after last season (it still shows in reruns). I could not care less about people trying to find gold, or living off the grid, or fishing for crab or tuna or whatever.
Yeah, Sydney you might need to calm down a bit, into the timeout box :)
There is a adult comic out on the internet somewhere where a guy gets a gift from three epimeliads for the trick of recognizing them for what they really were (rather than dryads) and impressing them in the sack. He gets an apple from each of them, a yellow, a green and a red…each one grants a different trait to the woman that gives it to: love, passion, beauty. But once they eat one apple the others won’t affect them.
So he makes it into a cobbler and feeds it to his girlfriend (who’s been running across satyrs and Zeus this entire time) causing her to becoming completely, passionately devoted to him and also causing her brown hair to become streaked red, green and yellow.
Ahh, just read the commentary…suspected Dave read the same bit of smut.
That sound interesing, even if I would fail the test :) Some other data you remember? It seems I can find erotic art for every nymph I can think about except epimeliads :(
believe it’s called “Nymphomania”
Mind Control Comics is the source, I believe.
You are right. Thank you :)
Watch out for those Wild Oats Nymphs.
What the name of this comic? Is there a websource?
From DaveB: “The point is, sometimes smut is educational.”
So, is that one of the sources you use to study your Boob Physics?…
;)
Many, MANY years ago, at A-kon 8 (I think – might have been 7), I attended the post-con feedback session. In general it was a mix of whining, useful feedback, and compliments (whining about lines/rules/services; positive feedback on possible ways to deal with the issues causing the whining; and compliments on those things done right). After about an hour or so, the moderators asked, “Any other thoughts or comments?” A rather jolly looking fellow with dark hair and beard, large glasses, and an impressive girth gave forth with this comment, and it was just so impressive, it has stayed with me to this day.
“I would like to address something that I feel like the con has not addressed well, something near and dear to our hearts, something that has not been well-served heretofore and which could provide significant entertainment and educational value to the con, with but a modicum of discretion.
Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am talking about… Smut!”
The room exploded with laughter.
Between this comic and the “trump tape” discussions, it sounds like my Grandmother is doing the commentating. Never heard the words “lewd” and “smut” tossed around so much in the last 30 years as recently. :-)
Says the monkey, whilst blowing a horn, and riding a naked human across a tightrope!
(Ahem) It’s a rabbit (a monkey would be silly). :-)
It’s a Medieval Marginalia that I stumbled across a few years ago. I thought it was absurd, a little pointless, and didn’t make much sense. So naturally I use it as my avatar. :-)
:-D
Glad you clarified that. It makes much more sense now!
*watches roller-skating gorilla, in a tutu, carrying a tray of cocktails, tap dance, across ice *
Oh, my trees heard through the grapevine
that soon that suspect was going to be mine….
Bet you’re wondering how I knew
About your plans for crimes you do
Oh I keep currantt through the date-line
Oh I’m just about to spill my wine
Cyder, cyder, yeah
Keep raisin hell for all of time
They did the right thing by shuffling her out of the room while she was in one of her tangent-fugues. The adults were talking, and Sydney, there only by courtesy in the first place, wasn’t being one. She very much deserved a time-out.
Be careful: if you treat Sydney like a child, she will take her ball(s) and go home
Not to mention the fact that you’ll make her list.
Basically, don’t bring Sidney to this kind of meeting. Period.
Her being the protagonist, she’s going to be at them all. :(
Sydney, not Sidney. *sighs*
Eh, the real problem is that she’s punchy from lack of sleep and her regular medication wore off hours ago. Get her in a meeting after she’s had at least eight solid hours of sleep and 30 minutes or so after she’s taken her ADHD meds, and things would be entirely different. Maybe.
Potentially, but when this kind of thing CAN happen (and seems to with enough frequency to be a notable part of the character), one would think the wise CO would bar Sydney from diplomatic discussions and give her the condensed version later.
Principally, this comic is a comedy, so there is good reason for why it has been done this way. But putting that to one side, we can find justifications for doing things this way (albeit that there are good reasons for a more conventional approach too).
World events are unfolding at a break-neck pace, and Arc-SWAT is right in the path of those events. Both Maxima’s and Halo’s time is precious. Maxima is the most powerful super in the world and is the leader of Arc-SWAT. Both of which make put severe demands on her schedule. So she has to multi-task whenever possible.
Importantly Maxima recognises that Halo may well outstrip her own power someday. Ergo it is absolutely vital to get her up to speed as quickly as possible. The fastest way to do this is on-the-job training. Which Maxima can do without it impacting on her schedule (too much).
Maxima is sensibly ensuring that Sydney is supervised, at all times. In this case by herself, given how critical the situation is. Plus they are both learning from their mistakes. Maxima has underestimated how severe Sydney’s ADHD is, and left her too much slack. So has rectified the problem.
On Sydney’s part though, she has been gaining vital intelligence first hand. And some of that may not have emerged in a briefing. Sydney is shaking more information loose than cagey diplomats would normally let slip. Plus she is taking in things which Maxima may never appreciate.
Maxima has been wise in recognising Sydney as being a useful intelligence asset. Halo demonstrated this in the battle and will doubtless have been restructuring her world-view, on the fly. Which helps to account for her freaked out nature at the moment.
This will have dividends though. Halo is getting to grips with the supernatural at a phenomenal pace. Taking it in far more deeply than sitting through a dry briefing or lecture. And some things need to be seen to be believed!
If, as seems likely, they are called in to help sort out either the problem causing the damage to the sigil, or with the clean up, if super SWAT are needed for either, Sydney is already prepped and ready to go. Whereas anybody not yet briefed (for instance her fellow recruits) will have to be either kept completely away from the action, or restricted to roles that keep them out of the loop.
Given the fact that Sydney’s force field may well grant her protection from magic, whereas Maxima is vulnerable to it,* this time saving may prove to be of vital importance!
* As demonstrated against Vehemence’s aggro aura. Albeit that it is probably a super-power, rather than magic, so this is yet to be proven definitively.
Long time reader, first time commenter. Thanks for all the hours of entertainment, and thanks in advance if you develop this idea into a comic. And a nitpick for the blog post: “reining her in”, as in the reins of a horse.
Nuts, I used my old username by accident.
Welcome out of the shadows of Baker Street.
Here, have a welcome gift, for joining the comments section.
*offers a gently steaming bowl of apple pie in custard*
You Ken Bone, you!
Well, Sydney is The Salt(y) Queen
Thanks, fixed it. It was late while I wrote that and I was happy the spellchecker at least agreed it was a word.
That would mean she talks to raisins, not trees. ☺
grapevine – noun
2. informal – used to refer to the circulation of rumors and unofficial information.
“I’d heard through the grapevine that the business was nearly settled”
Are you too young to remember the California Raisins, then? 😉
Heh :) Too South American is more probably.
Had to look closer (like, there was really a reason? >_>) at OctoWere to see that she isn’t naked behind her human arms
I want Sydney to later on get a check out of nowhere for Creative Input because they ARE making that show!
Well,with Sydney locked outside,the meeting will proceed UNTIL Ingsol brings her back in to explain the orbs and then it’s out of the meeting hall for Sydney once more…!
Sydney:I’m use to this,after all it happened to me a lot during my school days…!
Images of a young Sydney Scoville during her elementary,junior high and high school days with the same thing happening-being locked out!
If you like fruit based weapons and bad puns try the “Xanth” series. Mostly PG13 it’s a really long series aimed at teens at first it kinda drifted closer to PG at times. It’s a fantasy setting where magic rules and some of the ways things get done are funny and interesting. Just for an example there is a point in one book where a character sees a plaque on the wall with the rear parts of some feline. It is revealed later this was a magical item that would cause a horrible outcome the… wait for it… Cat-ass-trophy!
Yeah, stopped reading that when this ancient Zombie started lusting after this teen girl and started stalking her
i think you’re speaking of Johnathan- turns out hes Millie’s husband. (the ‘teen’ girl who is over 100 years old in one sense)
Xanth is the land of Puns. the Comic Strips are of course much much much worse. the CatAssTorphy was in one of the earlier books. there are…. way too many of them.
Didn’t bother reading after the first chapter, but read all the books up to that one, plus most of his other work
Read his Biography, including the part where he won’t write about lesbians as he doesn’t have ‘personal knowledge or experience’ in the subject (or something like that), but then he writes about a guy in his fifties sleeping with his teen daughters best friend, including graphic detail about anal… o_O
That was in “Ogre Ogre” Smash son of the Vegetarian Ogre Crunch is the main character. In an earlier book fiends cursed Crunch and to avoid the curse he must “Crunch no bones” which is Orgeish for eating meat.
Guesticus, I think I know the one you’re talking about, although I don’t remember the title off hand. It turns out it was just a misunderstanding that they are able to straighten out later in the book, and the zombie in question is not actually that old. And he did later write about lesbians in Unicorn Point in the Apprentice Adept series.
Just got a little turned off on his works, specially after reading his autobiography, and that book just happened to be the one were it came to an en for me (but, fortunately not before reading “Bio of a Space Tyrant”, great series, even though one part of it never really made sense to me, or at least was never answered: when the main character rescued his sister from the female space pirate, why were they both naked? o_O)
Geez, those are still going on?!? I stopped reading when the third generation started taking center stage *checks Wiki* with Dragon On A Pedestal.
And he’s doing one of those a year too.
Mr. Anthony has stated on more than one occasion that a writer is a writer when he writes, and Xanth is the writing that pays the bills and allows him to do more complicated and ambitious projects. The early books showed more ambition and, as the series has gone on, it shows that he’s lost at least some of that original ardor.
I gave up with Isle of View – it just felt like he was going through the motions far too much in that one.
There’s 40 (!!!) of the Xanth novels now, with another one due out next year.
One wonders how many more he’ll manage to write. He’s 82, after all.
Though one point in his favor (IMO)… he uses Linux.
Max probably did a speed enabled grab-and-dump with Sydney to stick her in the hallway. (Her zero-range TK is about the only thing that could explain a speedster moving another object that quickly without acceleration effects ripping it to bits)
Any possibility of getting a closer look at the portraits in the hall with Sydney? At my screen resolution the one on the left kinda maybe looks like a dragon head.
I was picturing Max taking Sydney by the shoulder and elbow and gently walking her out the door whilst she babbled on, then quietly closing the door behind her
Yeah, that would be funner :D
But, who says it had to have been Maxi who re-located Sydney?
Nothing. But she does have her back to the door, and is no longer seated at one of those chairs. So the implication is that she is just returning from there. I could not initially decide if she had just used super speed or not, on first read through. But Dave’s comment, in his blog, pushed me to the latter.
Of course Ingsol is at the same eye-line as Maxima (and she is tall) so he is likely standing too. I envisage them carrying her out, between them. Sydney not even noticing that she is dangling by the arms!
She was still standing after she had ‘the talk’ with Sydney last page, and Inggie was standing in the first few panels of this page :D
Marquar makes a good point: it wouldn’t be politic to have anyone else escort her out
Another reason it would have been Max who relocated her is that the politics of ejecting someone from a meeting would be much easier if the ejection was done by that person’s superior officer, rather than a different member of the council.
I would watch the hell out of a show like that! DaveB quick get it to Netflicks before someone else does!
Nice show idea!
Also, Maxima forgot the Teleorb….
More like a red skull with a rainbow aura. The autumn colours creating a halo behind it, whilst the bright and shiny ones are in its grasp.
I expect Sydney to have a conversation with it.
Err that was meant to be in reply to O.B. Juan‘s
Eye think that is one sinister looking tree! Clever use of knot holes though DaveB.
All the art is great mind. Sydney in particular is feeling more back to normal. Although eye hope she finds her smaller glasses. They are much cuter, when on the tip of her nose. Like in her Who’s Who photo.
And the folks who complain that she could not realistically see through them, like that, should have a sharp stake poked up the… seat of their pants!
“Clever use of knot holes though DaveB”
And of the name Argus :)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Argus-Greek-mythology
Lesson for next time, Max. Brief your team.
Now where would the fun have been in that?
Lets Hope Some TV Producer Reads this Comic :)
Hold out for creative control, DaveB!!
You can’t go wrong with Slayers. It’s a wonderful example for what cross-culture-appropriation can do. What was Western Swords and Sorcery Roleplaying look like when filtered the through the Japanse cultural lense, then cranked to 11… Slayers.
Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho :ò
There are a number of shows like that, where you can enjoy the show on one level but if you have access to someone with knowledge about Japanese culture, there’s a whole other level there.
Excel Saga is another, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is yet another (There’s also a manga that’s escaping my thoughts that’s even worse – there’s almost as many pages of cultural commentary explaining the jokes than there is of the actual manga). And that cultural commentary is in either 8 or 6 point type – really tiny.
Another example is Record of Lodoss War, both the OVAs and the TV series (Chronicles of the Heroic Knight) – they’re very different.
Pro-Tip – the first episode of the OVAs is actually the third episode, but they started in the middle because it was more exciting and Japan is obsessed with in media res as a narrative technique.
The TV series is far less serious than the OVAs (and frankjly not as well animated) but if you watch it carefully, they do a pretty good job of following character progression from the RPG based on the books from which both series were taken.
Id watch the hell outta that sho
So, that Were-Octupus chick is going to be really famous in Japan, isn’t she?
What was the reason in Stargate to not do something against “Wormhole eXtreme” again? “It would make a good cover story.”
As long as they don’t do the Stargate ‘Big Brother’ version again.
Yup! I think the exact words were literally something like “Plausible Deniability” ;)
Thanks for reminding me of those episodes, by the way. The memories are making me smile.
I think she already was the inspiration for a James Bond movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopussy