Grrl Power #492 – Don’t tell her spots are gauche
I did way too much research to try and figure out how to write Sydney’s squee word bubble. Ok, not “too much” but given how little I know about how to write music, it took longer than it should have. As it is I doubt I put enough of those horizontal bar things to make the note actually ultrasonic. I just stopped when I ran out of room, so hopefully it doesn’t bug the people who can actually read music too much. Ideally it’d be a very very high “e” if I knew what I was doing. I was shooting for 57va, also apparently known as cinquantisettesimo.
Pixel happens to be a gigantic were-jaguar, a fact that will surely come up on the next page, so I’m not sure what else to day about it here. This is something that is fairly incidental to her job as one of Arc-LIGHT’s artifact experts. It doesn’t hurt, obviously, than she can defend herself when the artifact she’s studying decides to summon a gaggle of zombie vikings or whatever the day to day of her job entails. Zombie vikings are definitely on the table though.
Oh, I don’t know what her collar is made out of (that bell doesn’t have a ringer in it in case you were wondering. That would drive her and everyone around her mad.) but it’s probably got a slat in the back that lets in expand. It’s probably a fair bet she’s not wearing a bra though, cause it would have to literally be magic to accommodate that change in volume. Of course, if magic was real and there were people living in the world who could radically change their size or dimensions at will, it’s kind of unrealistic to think there wouldn’t be magic clothes out there.
Edit: BTW, Pixel being a were-cat has nothing to do with Heinlein’s story, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, which involves a cat named Pixel. I was totally unaware of it until this post on the previous page. Weird.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)
Check out Wearing the Cape: Team-Ups & Crossovers. Sydney’s first Crossover! I’ve made a dedicated blog post for it, please comment there.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
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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.
Ahem: https://goo.gl/c6ozvO
Pixel is easily one of my favorite characters.
I’m not aware of a squee that has ever gone up that many octaves.
Or even tried.
Then again, nobody else is Sydney Scoville, soooo….is this even a record for her?
Sydney’s ultra sonic squee surprises me not at all, but is amuses me none the less.
Zombie vikings? Has someone been reading death vigil?
Or maybe he have been playing Skyrim.
We know that Dave does play Terraria, being a man of great taste. That does have zombie vikings.
Rowr~
Ultrasonic alarm…Only useful, if your employees can hear the frequency, but then every bat will cause a false alarm.
Except that bat cries aren’t ultrasonic…
It depends how hard you grab his goulies.
The ones for communication aren’t, but the ones for echolocation are, up to 110 KHz (ultrasound is whatever above 20 KHs)
Without realizing it, Sydney just discovered that one of the remaining 2 unidentified orbs allows her to talk to dolphins, whales, prawns, shrimp, et el etc., enabling her to “communicate” at ultra-high frequencies, or maybe just super-squeee. Because Funny. Online comic people, hilarity must ensue – IT’S THE LAW. Seriously, don’t be serious.
It’s a shame she’s not holding an orb because telepathic command over animals with ultrasonic hearing would be a very interesting power. I would assume it only works on vamps when they’re in bat form and that willpower built up over the centuries could allow them to escape it even then but the struggle might still be significant.
Speaking of which, what happens if you cage or kill just one of a vampire’s constituent bats?
I imagine it reduces the vampire’s power by the appropriate fraction. So they could escape with just a single bat if necessary, but be hugely weakened in the process.
Or possibly they re-integrate missing whatever that bat represented. Kinda funny if was their left sock. Less funny if is was their left ventricle…
I’d like to know how that particular strain of were came to be.
Also ‘enbooben’ is my new favorite sound effect.
For those of us that use more traditional onomatopoeia, it’s spelled ‘boingie-boingie-boingie!’
No! Boingy , boingy, boingy is the sound of an erect penis makes as the owner walks across the bedroom. Haven’t you read “On the Subject of Penises” by Sailor Jim Johnston? Here’s an excerpt from the LiveJournal link provided:
Why would the story be notably different to other strains of were? For that matter, we don’t really know much about how ANY particular strain of were came to be. The best we have is the mention that there is potential for drift in the genus/species/etc, with degrees of rarity of that happening. And that it’s a symbiotic magical parasite that contains its own genes and recessive traits.
My money is on standard-issue spottykitty, and lots of dye.
Pink flamingos were cross with leopard were and vualla you have a pink leopard were muahahaha
Except there are no pink flamingos. Only regular flamingos that eat pink algae and crustaceans.
So here we have a jaguar that ate a lot of pink crabs?
Although the only pink animals that I’m aware of in the Amazon are the river dolphins :S
She’d have to be pretty lightly coloured to begin with but I guess you could be right. Maybe she’s just a white jaguar who loves pink food.
Sydney suddenly finds herself in close quarters with a were jaguar with enhanced senses and a teleporter who loves pranks.
Time for a quick catnip run!
Now with sentient cat-were’s we can finally find out what the heck is going through their minds when they are on that stuff.
Please do this Sydney (DaveB…. ) do it…
FOR SCIENCE!
They also have a recently-rainbow-haired girl who ALSO enjoys a good prank, who can alter reality. Stuff catnip run, if/when everything checks out, just turn that weed there into catnip & have some fun… XD
Harem and Reality Girl have already show that an ongoing operation is no bar to their pranks! Sydney doesn’t actually do pranks as much as she gets excited about something and forgets about things like the future and other peoples reality which is happening around her right that second.
So Sydney jumps the gun saying something about it and by the time she gets to the end of her three panel paragraph about catnip one or both of the others have already taken steps…
Tedd and Grace were taking catnip since 2002 … https://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=106
Science already knows catnip isn’t psychoactive for cats — instead, it’s like glowsticks for the sense of smell.
That said, for those of us with good vision glowsticks go well with hallucinogens, so…
So psychoactive drug basically means, ” is a chemical substance that changes brain function and results in alterations in perception, mood, or consciousness.”
And catnip used to be said to do something like this:
“So, how does catnip work? Nepetalactone, one of catnip’s volatile oils, enters the cat’s nasal tissue, where it is believed to bind to protein receptors that stimulate sensory neurons. These cells, in turn, provoke a response in neurons in the olfactory bulb, which project to several brain regions including the amygdala (two neuronal clusters* in the midbrain that mediate emotional responses to stimuli) and the hypothalamus, the brain’s “master gland” that plays a role in regulating everything from hunger to emotions.
The amygdala integrates the information flow from the olfactory bulb cells and projects to areas governing behavior responses. The hypothalamus regulates neuroendocrine responses through the pituitary gland, creating a “sexual response.” That is, the cat essentially reacts to an artificial cat pheromone.”
Which certainly SOUNDS like it meets the aforementioned criteria. But this is from an older article ( May, 29, 2007) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-how-does-catnip-work-on-cats/
So have they changed their minds more recently and if so could you link some of these articles to me? Always fun to learn something new about a substance that can put a jaguar, “in the mood”.
Inspector Clouseau incompetent? Only if you do something silly like keep watching the films past the first two or three, (you know, the ones that are actually worth watching as opposed to the ever worsening garbage that followed).
Did he have a knack for pratfalls? Yes
Did he have some oddball speech mannerisms? Yep.
Did he have a massive blind spot the size and shape of his wife? Oh boy did he ever.
OTOH, you have to remember that he had the cases in both The Pink Panther and A Shot In The Dark solved pretty much from the get-go and that the issue was getting evidence he could use in court to prove it.
Wait, I just realized. They are in the open and Syd is seeing Pixel’s supernatural form without the Truesight. Did the Veil already fail in this area?
Umm, fairly sure they can choose to be Veiled or not
I think the Veil does not work if you already know about what you’re gonna see, like they said it can’t compete with reddit, internet, news… So it kinda helps not seeing when you don’t look for it, but once someone is outed, the closet disappeared forever.
Pixel is Pixel. It’s not like Dabbler, who has a natural “battle form” covered by a spell/glamour to see through. The ninja (X) was doing concealment, too. When Pixel isn’t in her were form, all you see is Pixel. She has to transform to display pink pussycat (which name is, I think, copyrighted or trademarked by Heroines in Peril comics. She’s a “Super Heroine” who frequently gets captured. NSFW)
Let’s see… 24 lines above the top of the scale… 6 lines is an octave, thereby doubling the frequency of the relevant sound waves… so a frequency 16 times higher than the top note… 20,000 cycles per second is the arbitrary point which scientists define as being the limit of human hearing… despite there being people who can hear higher up the register, including my entire family (except my father, he’s deaf these days)… so if the top note of the treble clef is at least 1,250 cycles per second, Sydney’s screech is *technically* supersonic.
Nope, that’s quite wrong. Every 7 lines is two octives. Sydney is sqeeing at E12, or approximately 84,384 Hz. She could knock it down two octives (7 lines) and still technically be ultrasonic.
Okay, I stand corrected. Then again, that’s to be expected, seeing as how I have not had any interest in playing the guitar (and therefore haven’t read music) in more than 30 years. I’m not terribly surprised I got it wrong, and apologize for my error.
Easy mistake to make if you consider each semitone to be a line or space, but the sharps/flats aren’t counted
Yeah. Plus, I forgot that a couple of notes don’t even *have* sharps or flats, resulting in 2 lines out of every 4 representing 4 of the 14 half-steps in an octave, while the others are only 3 half-steps. And that results in each octave only taking up three-and-a-half lines.
Or something like that.
Like I said, I haven’t studied this stuff since I was in elementary school, so I’m probably still mangling it.
Soooo… no one gonna make a comment about the carpet matching the drapes? Just me? Okay, then.
Well it’s a little redundant when the person is covered in fur.
‘Wall-to-wall’?
Including the walls :P
And ceiling to floor.
See page 1 of comments. :D
I can hear certain “ultrasonic” alarms.
In other news, as cool as Pixel’s reveal is, it isn’t an “I got this.” Their presumed absent opponents have already shown that they are prepared for werefolk. The Lightbee is a much safer idea. Or the not actually a suggestion of having Konamibabe alter the transparency slider on the building.
Suggested alternate sound effect: “Gainax”
We don’t know what The Pixel Panther can actually do
One problem with having Kronachrome alter the transparency slider on the building: the occupants would notice the mini-cops peering in through what use to be a solid wall
They’d also notice the wall going transparent.
Maybe not. I’ve seen older games where they’ve failed to load the “skin” for 1 side of a wall, so from 1 side you see the wall no problem, the other tho you see nothing as you just stop moving forward or even walk through it & find yourself unable to go back…
Remove the outer “skin” for the building…
Krona could always edit just the one-way opaqueness, making the wall like a one-way mirror.
*twitch* One way mirrors actually aren’t. They’re 2-way mirrored. It’s the lighting in the different rooms that creates the one way effect (if you’re in a bright room, 10% of the light from a dark room won’t show up against the 90% reflected light from your room, but folks in the dark room will see you fine with 10% of your light against 90% of theirs reflecting back).
Thank you, that explains why the mirror is still a ‘mirror’ until they turn off, or lower, the lights in one of the room, also why they tend to be angled (also because the TV shows cheat: one room has a regular window, and another room has a mirror, and they simply shoot that scene twice)
Actually that’s true for all coated based mirrors, only that “normal” mirrors have one side covered, usually painted black.
To be fair good quality mirrors have a difference between reflected and passing thru light (above 95% reflected) that would not be ideal to work as one-way mirrors . But most house mirrors are between 80 and 90% (sometimes as low as 70%) which would work fine.
There is another type, which I can testify works very well, with no light differential required. Namely strips of normal mirror, alternated with narrower strips of plain glass. As the reverse side is plain, it is easy for security staff to see the other room clearly, through the gaps. Yet, on the mirrored side, you can only make out the reflection. Unless so close, that your nose is practically touching it.
Oh yes, have seen those windows around
I can feel certain “ultrasonic” alarms. It’s kind of like hearing but more like ear pain.
Some of those make my teeth hurt. PLUS, being able to hear them usually makes my ears hurt, too. The funny part is, calling them ‘ultrasonic’ doesn’t actually mean nobody can hear them! What it actually means is the pitch above an arbitrary point decided upon by pseudo-scientists at the beginning of last century.
It’s not arbitray nor pseudoscience, you just need to put the border somewhere and for convenience many limit values are based on average or majority, especially those referring to things that have great variety like living beings. That means that it could be allways a particular individual that will fall outside of them.
How come everyone seems to be not mentioning “en-digitigraden’?
Because ‘en-boob-en’ and ‘en-dat-ass-en’ are more fun to say.
Because we are all 12.
Some of us have been 12 for a long time.
I’m eternally 16. It’s like 12, but more fun. Because you get to drink
Because, when I was wanting to bring up how Dave’s finally dropped the ball in his onomatopoeia game, I was given opportunity to talk about “en-dat-ass-en” first. Both fall flat as actual sound effects and lack humour IMO.
“en-digitigraden” loses out for being too technical a term, while “en-dat-ass-en” does so for being a crude reference to an aspect of sexual attraction I genuinely do not understand.
He’s done a whole series of these “lazy” sound effects where I guess the humor has always been that he just turned a descriptive word into the general form of a sound effect. Its one of those things that was funny the first few times, then grew old and less funny, then became a running gag, and then a “thing” of the comic which made it funny again. (to some)
But its been going on for a long time and he got the idea from other comics where it was successful.
I’m a Cybertronian Minicon, that’s a Human-sized transformer for those who don’t know. We live for millions of your Earth years, as long as we keep ourselves fixed & fueled up, & don’t blow ourselves up with stupid wars…
That said, Daniel the Human tells me I have the mind of a perverted teenager at times…
Just cause I like the Human-Ladies…
You silly alien robots coming here and making trouble. ABC Warriors like myself are the only robots Earth needs.
bugger, that was supposed to be a reply to RobK’s comment just above. Oh well…
ABC Warriors? don’t think I’ve heard of them. And we don’t all make trouble. I went AWOL on a bunch of trouble making ‘Cons, now I’m just living it up on my new home planet. Well, as much as Daniel the Human lets me…
Nice to see I’m not the only one that is aware of their existence.
So, uh… she likes to be spanked in THIS form, eh?
I TOTALLY want to know what “enBOOBen” sounds like! (GRIN) Yes, yes, I know this isn’t supposed to REALLY be a “sound” but I can’t help but imagine it as a kind reverberating twangy BOOMbleumbleumbleumble le le le le.. with a kind of fading off echo that of invokes a rubbery bobble-y globe-y kind of sound. Sort of like this….https://www.soundsnap.com/efx_int_goofy_spring_bounces_06 with maybe a bit of this thrown in: https://www.soundsnap.com/node/58310
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2373/comment-page-1#comment-496358 holds the pop culture version of the sound.
FLOOMP
Loved, loved, LOVED!!! Sydney’s reaction. Well done, DaveB. Delightful!
Dead ant. DEAD ANT. Deadantdeadantdeadantdeadantdeadaaaaaaaant… Reallydeadant.
I must confess- i wanted to do that…..
DaveB, if you want a lot of comments, large, well endowed, pink felines is apparently the way to go… ;-)
Well, that kind of art tends to get many comments on Deviantart so it does seems to be a winning concept.
That and people have been looking forward to this reveal for some time aaand got exactly what they were hoping for.
Not /exactly/. Close enough to please but just far enough away to surprise.
The perfect balance for maximum response.
Does anyone else have the Pink Panther theme stuck in their head?
There is another theme song for an anthropomorphic pink feline.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeKacFKfPho
That’s right, dig out the crap from the bottom of my memory hole…
I am wondering when her teammates are going to find her reactions to be overly unprofessional and tiresome. It strikes me that she gets allot of slack… unduly in fact.
She’s been on the team 4 days, give it time, she’s being exposed to every trope and fantasy she has all at once. I imagine she’ll settle down…eventually…
Amazing how people forget 90% of this comic has been a hyperextended flashback sequence since, like, before the pagenumbers hit double-digits, almost.
Reading through the archive, the story moves right along, but two episodes a week slows things down quite a bit. Also, DaveB isn’t drawing a comic, he’s creating a visual epic…
Two updates a week… I remember when this was only one.
So… the Pink Panther is real…
New headcanon. Pixel’s collar is actually an enchanted accesory she got from Decolette… for “reasons”
+1 to that idea
I don’t know if Sydney’s note is actually ultrasonic, but I can confirm that it is indeed the letter E on the scale.
(Darn it, Dave, you’re making me count ledger lines when I should be getting ready for work!)
It is ultra sonic, and using a middle C of 261.63 Hz and an equal tempered chromatic scale is should come out to about 84386 Hz which actually puts it above a cats hearing range.
so just wondering, and no idea if this was asked already, but with all the weres appearing in the comic recently and Dabbler being used in it, will there any characters from the comic Wereworld appear in Grrl Power? i know Wereworld is more or less dead, but i still thought it might be kind of neat to see the crossover
That would be nice, even if it’s just Dabbles relating a flashback to Sydney late one night after {insert your own ‘after’ :P}
Not sure if anyone else has said this but since panthers are just a variant of Leopard, wouldn’t that make Pixel the Pink Panther?
Yes, has been mentioned a few times, including a couple postings of The Pink Panther theme :D
Jaguar but the answer is still yes.
oh what I would give just to have pixel’s powers of enbooben and endatassen. They are so useful for modern culture.
Love the last panel, hell all the panels, but is it just me or does harem have sort of a lazy eye in panel 2? Or whatever it’s called with the half-closed eyelid. Was this intentional or an oversight? I don’t understand the expression she’s trying to do, here.
Is it just me or does Harem’s left eye seem a bit off in the second panel?
Not just you, people noticed it last page as well
Any chance that she’s not normally pink, and Krona’s playing a prank?
Her hair colour has been pink since she was introduced so I doubt it.
Ok, SOMEONE HAS TO ASK IT.
Ah hum – Is that pink hair natural, or does she dye all her fur?
Almost have to be natural, since it “grows in” and disappears again, unless her form is from a magical artifact. Or this “magical virus/gene” thing is way more Discworld than I thought DaveB was going.
I can’t help but comment, that I feel it should be “embooben” instead of “enbooben” because of how bilabial phonemes are treated in English.
Now Excuse me while I catch the pedantic Express to grammar town.
Of course, I can make things worse by not having correct capitalization. Stupid phone submitting while I’m trying to change things. **Put’s self in prescriptive linguist timeout**
*cough* Bra of Holding… *cough* A valued magic item in many ways.
Hmm, have a ‘bra of holding’ right here *lifts both hands*
In my experience a “Bra of Holding” is standard issue… cards, cash, keys, phone all stashed somewhere in the topography.
Oh dear gods…
She’s a pink inverse Sheila..
This one approves!
Given Harem’s ability to maintain momentum, couldn’t she simulate flight to be in places she hasn’t been before? Granted, it would actually be very controlled falling, but the ability to teleport in order to course correct means that she can basically do at the very least what the Hulk does (leap incredible distances) only so much more accurately and with mobility within the air.
I’ve thought about that. It would basically be a type of blind targeting. A wrist altimeter and GPS would probably make it workable…
Except too much *VORP*ing still tires her out, unless you want her to run out of ‘gas’, fifty feet in the air in the middle of nowhere, not sure if has been officially mentioned or not, but believe each Daphne has to be conscious to be ‘put in storage’
That’s the reason for the altimeter. She can fall a certain distance between teleports in order to rest. It comes down to how far she can actually blind jump for distance, and to regain altitude.
Problem is, gaining enough height for her to be able to ‘rest while falling’ would simply make that so much worse, whereas simply stopping, on the ground, to get here bearings would be safer
She can, but it not worth it.
By falling she could reach about 200 mph = 322 k/h, letting herself fall from about 2790 ft = 850 mt, taking approx 15 sec (terminal velocity of a skydiver in streach position).
Then she can reorient herself aiming 45 deg up taking a semi-parabolic (ballistic) trajectory, reaching the maximun distance of 907 yards = 830 mt in about 13sec, which means a speed of 143 m/h = 230 k/h. Then repeat.
For a better outcome she can aim 20 deg up instead, decreasing her reach to 579 yards = 530 mt, but taking approx only 6sec, meaning a speed of 187 m/h = 302 k/h. (she would resemble a flat rock bouncing over water :) ). It would take her more ports to reach the same distance, though.
But given that she can teleport via direct sight to a point 3 miles away, and assuming it take her about 10 seconds between ports (to fool Mach the Knife, she appeared and dissapeared in one or two secs tops) that gives a speed of 1074 m/h = 1728 k/h, or Mach 1.4. Almost 6 times faster that with Hulk-like leaps.
* actually things are even worst since this ballistic calculations are not talking account of air resistance *
Or she can access live spy satellite feed, zoomed out enough to include familiar landmarks, then zoom in to the destination. Thus allowing her to get there in one jump.
That we don’t know (and I’m sceptical).
The mention of ‘boingie boingie boingie’ had me looking up “Oingo Boingo”, and came across a perfect theme song for the A-Team: Little Girls
How many of us immediately had the Pink Panther theme playing in our heads by the time we finished this page, I wonder? ^_^
No, never thought of it being a reference to “The cat who walks through walls”. Now Sheila Silvear, of Fred Perry’s Golddigger, is quite obviously an inspirational source! (That and Array’s pink werecheetah avatar, from the same series).