Grrl Power #794 – Sapphic snack
It’s a really good thing Decollete didn’t do the hypno voice in front of Maxima. While Max understands that monsters got to monst, and The Twilight Council polices themselves, mind control is way over the line, even if those dudes would have 100% definitely raced to buy some drinks without the nudge.
Would Max be okay with Dabbler using it to interrogate someone? You know, in one of those ‘time is running out and if I was Jack Bauer I’d shoot you in the knee’ situations? Jury is out. Honestly she’d probably be okay with it if it meant saving a bunch of people and the interogee was a real tool.
Normally, telling someone they have a ‘wonderfully distinct face’ is a bit of a stealth burn, but Decollete means it sincerely.
I’m not 100% sure if YukiAkuma’s version of Tamatha is quite this naïve, but I thought it’d be funny, so here we are. Actually, in the Grrl-verse, succubi tend to mature quite quickly once they hit puberty. At 14, Tamatha would be a very late bloomer, but now that things are starting to happen, they’d progress quickly. Like, if she was strictly my character, if Sydney met her again in 6 months, she’s look a lot more like Harem than she does now.
This all isn’t some stealthy way to introduce a creepy lolita thing into the comic, it’s just the result of thinking about how the biology of other races would work. Over the last few pages, there have been quite a few comments about the age of consent for different races like elves for example. If high elves live to 1,000 and don’t start puberty till they’re 45, then the 18 year old age of consent we’ve arbitrarily picked for ourselves simply wouldn’t apply. Conversely if… I don’t know, gnolls only live to 60, and they start puberty at the age of 8, then 18 might not be the right number for them either.
So succubi, with their tantric energy needs, have a different number than humans as well. Even if they can live for several centuries, they develop quickly.
All that said, don’t worry, Tamatha isn’t going to get up to anything inappropriate. When Decollete says “top up by proxy” she means to stand outside the bathroom and feed through the wall.
Books!
Michael-Scott Earle’s next crowdfunding project is up. This time it’s for the next Space Knight. This series is very LitRPG, but thankfully it’s not set inside a video game. I can’t stand books like that. I honestly can’t think of lower stakes than fictional characters playing videogames – unfortunately this means that 85% of LitRPG novels are of no interest to me. But Space Knight is dudes in space killing monsters and getting loot, they just happen to have a way to scan the loot and get stats off it through an Empire spanning database. It’s a very action heavy series, but MSE writes good, clean action, which is unfortunately a somewhat rarified skill among pulp novelists.
I’ve never specifically recommended Space Knight before. I never connected with the characters in it like I did with Tamer or Star Justice, but if you’ve read Tamer and thought, “This could use 100% less base building and 100% more action.” then you might dig Space Knight. If you want a taste of it, the first book is available for free at his website.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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.
I really like Tamatha. She’s adorable. ^_^
YukiAkuma, what are Tammy’s adoptive parents or other type of caretakers like?
I imagine them as a loving, if a little overly-sheltering, family. They love Tamatha as if she was their own flesh and blood. They’re probably religious, but not fundamentalists. When they took her in, they had no idea about her heritage, seeing her as just a harmless baby girl.
I am unsure if they’d know about the supernatural by now or not. They do know Tammy has some strange power or other, but beyond that I am unsure which scenario is better.
Does she have any strange powers at this point? Grrl-verse Tamatha may be different than your version, but in this comic she revealed that she doesn’t know how to do that suggestion thing and she isn’t using a glamour. If she can detect tantric energy or do a less focused lust-inspiring ability she probably wouldn’t tell her parents and it could mostly be explained away by something mundane.
Or did someone go full Hogwarts and stop by to tell her parents she was “gifted” or a wizard or something. Maybe they could pass the tantric energy detection as a soul-sight thing that detects people.
Oh! Tamatha was protected by the Veil, even as an infant. Her adoptive parents literally never noticed there was anything strange about the way she looked! Or, when they did start noticing individual bits (like, if you’re buying a kid pants you probably have to notice there’s a tail there….) they didn’t connect the bits and reach any alarming conclusions. She’s just part of that vanishingly small percentage of the population that have tails, that’s all.
Wings must be a little harder to deal with; there are zero humans with wings among the non-paranormal population.
I like her too!
I hope we see her again in the future.
A surprisingly sheltered, clumsily boy-crazy, adolescent minor succubus… who is this cute! …is a gold-mine of comedic potential! :D
Sydney level cute comedy. Don’t tell halo or she may panic and we need both this building and tabby to last
Her adoptive parents were about to die (car over an embankment in the winter)
and in exchange for saving their lives were charged with raising a succubus baby
who they grew to love as their own child.
Tamatha is indeed adorable, I love how she’s so different (for now) from the usual depiction of a succubus.
And she looks so comfy in her hoodie :3
At first glance I thought that sidebar or hi-top jutting out from the side of panel 6 was a censor bar. I couldn’t figure out what Dave was trying to hide there.
Tamatha and Decollete are worthy of their own mini-series with Dabbler guest starring as a bonus. The three of them interacting would be both cute and sexy in turns. Can Succubi be attracted to each other or merely serve as mentors to younger ones? They’ll never go hungry in that club, that’s for sure.
Keep them in the strip as Sydney’s gal pals at least.
They’re both girls! Girls can’t love girls. Girls can’t love girls! Girls can’t love girls…
About the part of fantasy races with longer life spans, I’m reminded of Melia from Xenoblade who is simultaneously the youngest member of the party by maturity, and by far the oldest by shear age at 88. I think I’m her backstory, her human mother had her at a fairly reasonable age, and died of old age while Melia was still a young child.
Yes, they can!!! Being LGBT, is a natural congenital condition, and many animal species have LG members. (of which humans are one such species)
Angeldude is making a joke.
Harold…..
Decollete was merely admitting that Sydney is definitely “one of a kind.”
Unless elves are just plain stupid, not starting puberty until you’re 45 would suck. 45 years old, knowledge and at least some experience – even if very sheltered – and they don’t start puberty until then… that would suck. For all you people that are under 45, consider your lives, and what they would be like if you still hadn’t even entered puberty? Unless you are *really* stupid you should have matured intellectually to at least a point, but emotionally and physically still at the state of a pre-teen?
Being an elf would suck.
Besides, among the real world animals that are very long lived, they don’t enter puberty proportionately any later. The Bonehead whale can live to over 200 years old (considered the longest living mammal), by this logic that living a long time means your entire clock is slowed, they shouldn’t enter puberty until 20+ years old, as their lifespan is twice human. But in fact they begin reproduction between the ages of 10 to 15, which is about the same for human capability.
I could see older elves having the opinion that anyone under 200 is just a child (my mother is 89 years old, she sees people in their 30s as children these days), but that is simple perception and attitude, not reality.
Also, historically, waiting to 18 when you were probably going to die in your 40s wasn’t that common (people could live into their 80s, but most people did not due to disease and other factors). People would be getting married and having kids around 15 to 16. This had more to do with nutrition than desire, in the middle ages many married as early as 12, but sexuality maturity didn’t occur until 15 or 16 because of nutrition and general health. These days it is typically 12 to 13, with cases of as young as 10.
Up until the middle of the 20th century, marrying girls as young as 11 to older wealthy men was not unheard of in the United States (particularly the South).
The age of consent is a cultural thing, nothing more. 16 or 18 is very common, it varies from state to state in the US, and from nation to nation in the world, but there is no particular reason for it. At some point it was arbitrarily decided that people were emotionally, physically, and intellectually mature at 18 (or 16, or 21, whatever the arbitrary number is for your area), but that is mostly just a number that sounded right for legal purposes, and is a fairly recent invention. And of course the reality is that when someone is mature varies from person to person, you can meet very mature teenagers, and theoretically normal people in their 30s (or older) that you really don’t think should be allowed out without responsible adult supervision.
So when considering when someone would be seen as an adult, think less about the physical aspects – and don’t get caught in the trap that longer life means that everything else is delayed proportionately – but rather the culture. Elves being stuck up snobs would see anyone below 100 as children, elf or human. Succubi, probably earlier than humans, likely seeing sexual maturity as the line; many humans may be offended by that, and most Succubi would think many humans are *way* too uptight. It’s a matter of cultural perspective, not right or wrong.
The whole really late puberty thing sucking majorly only works if you assume the other species goes through the same things we do.
We develop very rapidly, physically and mentally, because of the massive rush of hormones that change our bodies and minds.
Human puberty is a hormonal carpet bombing, that changes our shape, and how we think.
A slower, and more gradual and precise process is likely to be not as disruptive.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Does the average 21st century person begin puberty sooner than the average 19th or 17th century person? Absolutely. Mostly a result of nutrition, and partially a result of growth hormone in the food sources. Do not discount modern health care! It makes us taller, healthier, longer lived… a bit.
Statistics tell us that up until the 19th/20th century the average lifespan was in the 30s to 40s. A lot of the early deaths were to the high infant mortality from diseases we now consider infant routine diseases and inoculate (nearly) everyone against – measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), smallpox, and so on. If you lived to be a teenager, there was every chance you might make it to your biblical three score and ten (70). Unless, of course, you were a woman. Then child bed disease could get you, because midwives frequently didn’t wash their hands.
Early marriage wasn’t a general thing. Most Europeans married in middle to late twenties. Teen marriages mostly came from England or nobles trying to forge dynastic alliances. Also, some religions (e.g.Mennonites) encourage younger marriage… for women.
Studies show that the brain doesn’t fully mature until about 25. Imagine if we based everything (drinking, smoking, voting, joining the military, age of consent/marriage) on that age.
Well of course the brain doesn’t fully mature until the mid twenties to the late thirties.
Most cultures around the globe have known and recognized this for literally thousands of years, so there is no surprise there.
It is only the idiocy of western academic culture starting in the mid twentieth centuries which has ever said anything different.
In literature, in law, in business it has been noted for millennia that adulthood is not the pinnacle of development before dotage sets in.
Humans go from infancy to whatever the culture’s word for toddler is to child to tween to teen to young adult to full adult to elder. After that the decline sets in, with various stages of that.
Only people who are both unread and eurocentric ever thought that adulthood was the most advanced stage because only recently and only in the west has that ever been taught. It certainly was not taught in the United States when I was growing up, and you see the concept of elders in age minimums to hold office preserved in United States law.
I ended up replying the essentially same thing as you (though not as descriptive) before i saw your reply. Fistbump for peeps actually knowing about the middle ages beyond what i presume to be half remembered clickbait trivia.
At least some of the time the age of consent isn’t about biology, it’s been about politics and society.
Back in the Victorian UK it was legal to have sex with 11-year-olds, which saw kids put in prostitution etc.
There came a social backlash against which the politicians reacted to by setting the age of consent much higher.
I can’t remember if it was 16 straight away, or if it was 18 first then lowered to 16.
When gay sex was no longer illegal in the UK the age of consent for gay men was originally set to 21.
Also worth noting, age of maturity does not need to be related to lifespan. Many creatures with lifespans comparable to humans still mature in a much shorter time. Humans are ‘adapted to their brains’, and our childhoods last longer because the human brain requires that much time to develop.
If we matured as fast as, say a dog, we’d have to start competing sexually for mates, and physically for food and territory, before we had even mastered language. It’s not good for a race to have to compete with its still-developing children, it decreases their chance of success. Neoteny is meant to protect juvenile organisms from otherwise quite aggressive adults who might otherwise see them as competition. Remaining small and weak for so long gives us a chance to learn about the world, while giving us a pass to having to compete in it.
Wouldn’t the same apply to other intelligent, but long-lived races? Unless elves really do require more time to mentally develop than humans, there’s no reason they should have longer childhoods. There are some things you can’t really learn and understand until others treat you like an adult. Same for a shorter-lived race – if they’re sentient, they’d still need the same amount of time for their minds to develop.
Elves hit puberty in middle of high school, just like humans. It’s just they have longer school because they need to learn more of their history.
The majority of humans hit puberty at the end of elementary school or early in middle school.
Average age for the onset of puberty is ten or eleven years old for girls, twelve for boys. There is quite a wide deviation though and the process generally takes two to five years, again with deviation outside that range being fairly common.
People marrying by age of twelve in the middle ages was an oddity and not the norm. The 40 year average lifespan is a statistical misreading of actual lifespan for the era, as way too many people died as children. If someone lived past the age of 10, they had a reasonable chance of living to 60+ years and living to 80 or more wasn’t exceptionally uncommon.
Marrying by 12 was somewhat common but only in upper society due to securing alliances and such, if that was not a concern people got hitched way later.
And even then the kids in those dynastic marriages could often wait *years* for their biology to catch up with the legal contracts.
Dude, take it from me, (17!) delayed puberty is no big deal. Until you hit puberty you don’t *care* about that stuff, so you’re not missing anything. Doesn’t mean you’re a “child”, unless you’re defining things in a circular manner.
You just have more time and attention for other things, like studying, and think your classmates are weird.
↑This‼️↑
Tamatha showing the single fang. Quite tasteful and demur.
The whole underage aliens thing is idiotic. Next you are going to tell me we should ban dogs from having sex until they are 18. Unless they live in Europe(or half the US) in which case they are allowed to have sex at 16, or in some places as young as 14.
And then there’s the practicality side. Succubi live off of sexual energy. If that’s true from birth, they’d be attempting to gain that energy as soon as they could, no matter how creepy humans would find it. Imagine a story where humans are uninterested in eating food until they are 14, and even then they hold off from eating until the “age of consumption” when they are finally allowed to take a bite, but its still frowned upon if they eat anything but specific foods.
It would make no sense, because those humans would all starve to death.
You… do realize that succubae don’t have to be participating to feed, right? o_O
Sure! You know you can subsist off of a few hundred calories a day right? Guess that means that kids are fine with eating a slice of bread every day.
Again, Deco said it was for Tammy to ‘top up’, which means she has already eaten that day, it’s not like Tammy has been starved
Also, again, as others have guessed, this is possibly just Deco’s way to have a private chat with Sydney (remember, she also got rid of three horny meals)
They also don’t subside solely on tantric energy. They just need it to mature and develop.
Panel eight Sydney: “Let’s observe together, and I will give you pointers in what they are doing, okay?”
Panel eight Tammy: “Should I be taking notes? Hold up, I’ll get my notebook.”
3.. 2.. 1.. before Sydney realises she just got dissed by a Succubus in panel five :P
that’s no dis, it’s just a backhanded compliment
Dunno if it’s even backhanded. ‘Wonderfully distinct’ might be the succubus equivalent of ‘drop-dead gorgeous, don’t bother with giving me your number, let’s just find a room with a door that locks.’
I am sure Locks are optional… as are 4 walls, doors, privacy screens…
As Dabbler would say, “But they’re so cute! Why hide it?”
Seems to me, that Tammy wants to learn how to do that to give her self some privacy
There are a lot of interesting quirks to lifespan. I remember in the game Soulblazer there was a race that only lived 1 year. the take was very interesting. Personally, I have a character that’s a wild fey servant race (long story), with a life span of about 30 years. so I’m sitting here, going, “she’s 7 years old” – and the rest of the table went nuts. it settled down once they figured out that she was functionally “16-21,” but it was pretty amusing. Probably also helped that she was built like a double-wide linebacker XD
Maybe. Albedo from Overlord might give her some competition though.
Here’s an example of puberty in a succubus (Chloe from Eerie Cuties http://www.eeriecuties.com/d/20090722.html)
Okay well, Tamatha won’t mature quite that quickly.
“Hey, you with the green hair! Sorry to interrupt, this’ll be quick, but you look about the right height. Would you by chance happen to have any powers and can you come try out for our mini superhero team?”
We don’t know how tall she is, and she’s only about an inch shorter than the elf
It’s an ambiguous angle, and she has green hair don’t ruin this for me. We must collect them all!
Technically, that’s just green highlights (or whatever you call it when it’s just the tips, frosting?), or she hasn’t coloured her roots in a loonnngggg time :P
LOL Sydney getting some shoulder boob in panel 3 and giving Decollete the side-eye.
The problem with a “Jack Bauer” situation…is those are precisely the situations where most of the techniques advocated are LEAST effective…But, yeah. That’s the situation where most paladins quietly go to look at that BEAUTIFUL house.
…Mind control/Psychic interogation is one of the exceptions. (As there’s no false positives, in general)
It’s also when they are literally on a short deadline, they don’t have three days to politely question a suspect
I’m confused, all this talk about the ethical concerns of mind control and its variants, but not a word about Jabber? Dabbler still terrifies me because of that, and that doesn’t even take into consideration the side effects she still isn’t taking seriously.
Vale, on the other hand, hasn’t done anything that scares me yet. :)
What? They keep bringing up what happened to Jabs, and it’s very difficult to fix it when the one most likely able to fix is not allowed in the same room
More importantly though, Jabs condition was (is?) a result of action in an active fight, not an annoying random encounter. Active combatants don’t get the same rights as innocent civilians. You’ll note Max’s orders after the action was over were to minimize the effects and try to reverse it.
Yes, except, Dabs is not allowed anywhere near Jabs until she has reversed it, which… makes it a damn sight more difficult than it need be because Jabs acts ‘normal’ unless Dabs is nearby
What? They can’t find some way to restrain Jabs and have a couple guards (and a dozen security cameras) so Dabs can examine her to find out what the fuck went wrong? Maybe have a few of the mages checking as well
Dave, I’m curious what you dislike about being set in a videogame world? One of the things that bugs me is when ‘if you die, you die in real life’ nonsense, which seems like it’s just a wasted effort over generic ‘transported to another world’ situations. Things like, say, Viridian Gate have characters respawn, but usually with a crippling debuff of some kind.
My issue with it is that it has no or very low stakes. I.E “oh no if we loose this tournament our guild will be disbanded” meh.
Of all the ones I’ve seen that do the whole video game LITRPG well without resorting to the “die in game=die IRL” trope you mentioned was the Elements of Wrath series that managed to make the in game results matter, otherwise I’m in the same boat as Dave where 75% of LitRPG doesn’t interest me even though I like the genre
I’m pretty sure there is nothing those two girls could do Decollete would consider inappropriate for Tamatha to see … but she understands that education needs to wait as getting up to them would likely mean they stop feeding Tamatha …
That’s not it, it’s just rude for a complete stranger to be getting off while you are getting it on
Plus, Tammy is too young to ‘join in’
If you are getting it on in a public place “other people” being rude is not a factor at all.
What Tammy would be doing is (more or less) the succubus equivalent of enjoying the smell of someone else’s meal. As such, the same rules would apply. IE, don’t lean down and put your face 2 inches above their plate and take a huge sniff, don’t sit there staring at their meal as they eat it, etc.
LitRPG novels from a harem writer?
Pretty fly for an Isekai guy.
wait, wait. hold on.
DaveB, are you a fan of ELLC (short form title of Everybody Loves Large Chests)? because the phrase Mimics gotta mimic is almost a catchphrase of that particular dungeon punk tale. worth a read if you haven’t, i’m 100% certain you can find it on royalroad. word of warning: author is something of a troll, main character is a literal, and complete monster, and it will suck numerous hours out of your life in a way that only TVTropes can match.
“(short form title of Everybody Loves Large Chests)” Not, if they have large chests.(per se)
I’m not sure I’d like it. Is it tasty?
I always thought the Mann act was about avian smuggling.
You know… “transporting gulls across staid lions for immortal porpoises…”
:D
…I am now picturing a young succubus standing outside a public bathroom, leaning against the wall and holding her stomach, quietly groaning, “Ughhh…I’m sooo full!! How long DO humans kiss?? Mooom, can’t I stop eating now??”
Didn’t Dabbler already use her succubus mojo in the interrogation of Coot? She even has a “100% Admiral Ackbar-approved Honey Trap” shirt for such occasions.
Tamatha is so adorable I hope to see more of her. Maybe her, Sydney, Krona and Pixel from there own super team and I all ready have some names for it.
1: Tiny Terror Team.
2: The Cute Squad.
3: Mini Power Pack
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-490-team-lilliput/
There is already a name.
The Moe Team.
I think that would work with there were gardeners.
pronounce it “Mo-eee”
it is a Japanese term for cute girls. Just the Romanji spelling isn’t the best at highlighting the pronunciation.
Thought it was ‘Moy’ (like ‘Oy vey’)
I’m pretty sure Max would be against mind control during interrogation if the interrogation was to get an admission of guilt. In fact, she should have a problem with Dabbler even being in the same room as the interrogation.
Your honor, I motion to have my client’s admission of guilt dismissed. The admission of guilt was during and interrogation while in ARC, and the one who conducted the interrogation is known to be a succubus with power over the minds of mortals. We cannot be sure if he confessed of his own free will, or if he was being controlled like a puppet at the time.
I just had a bit of a realization…
Ralph Hinkley’s powers come from an alien suit which he has to figure out how to use on his own, as he lost the manual.
Sydney Scoville’s powers come from alien artifacts which she has to figure out how to use on her own, as she was never given a manual, and even if it has one built in, she can’t read it.
You really should keep Tamatha at Sydney size. Let her develop but keep her cutesy.
I approve of this message.
It’s these intricate racial details that’s why I love D&D so much.
ANother online comic series (now ended), was about magic kids… and one was a succubus… who had just started to ‘bloom’. She jumped to her own series (now ended also) and QUICKLY went from a ‘OMG thinking that way is illegal in all 50 states’ to…. wowzer, where are all the succubii in MY area? According to ‘that’ comic, once a succubus gets ‘into their power’, they can pretty much ‘adjust’ their appearance and age as desired. So, your take on it is right in line, imo.
sounds like you are describing “Eerie Cuties” and the spin-off “Dangerously Chloe”
I believe the creator of these series went through a “I have lost interest in my own story” phase, that kills a lot of online comics, so Eerie Cuties went through a “loss of innocence” state in the comic till it mostly just stopped, had one short spin-off then the slightly longer “Dangerously Chloe” that pretty much 99% ignored the previous comics save for like one or two cameos that were brushed under the rug shortly after.
I think they did and may still have on comic still going, but are human focused, a few older cameos, but even then one just stopped, another had another bout of “bored with this story” and ended its self without clearing up some plot points they clearly stopped caring about; relatable, and the one on-going…is really more a sequel as it focuses mainly on a whole new cast of characters just set in the same locations and interact with the previous stars…
Yes, they were describing “Eerie Cuties” and “Dangerously Chloe”
Yes, “Pixie Trix Comix” is the latest spin-off off “Ménage a 3”, the other two spin-offs were “Sandra on the Rocks” (which came to it’s natural conclusion) and “Sticky Dilly Buns” (which also came to it’s natural conclusion)
Have been reading their webics since before Ma3 actually
There is at least one character in “PTC” who came from “EC”, although she is using a new name (originally, Brooke), which kinda puts them all into the same universe
Oops! Almost forgot the other “EC” spin-off: “Magick Chicks”
So, considering how many different stories they had going, are you surprised they burnt out slash ran out of ideas? o_O
I am not surprised, I can relate to this kind of burn out, can only imagine how much worse it had to be with the slower plot reveal of needing to have art work behind, and the increased time consuming work of drawing out each part of the scenes.
I would assume you aren’t really looking at the comments by now Dave, but if you think a series set in a video game can’t have reasonable stakes you should check out the light novel series ‘Infinite Dendrogram’. Genuinely the whole first situation the MC gets into involves his brother explaining to him that the stakes are very real. NPCs in the game act just like people. They live, love, dream, and die. Just as functional as people and they don’t have any death protection because of game mechanics like players. If they die, they’re gone forever.
Of course, it’s also implied pretty early on, and more heavily later on, that the game world is actually real and the players from Earth who all think it’s just a VR game are very much being misled.
You should check out the book “Heroes Die,” by Michael Stover. It’s about a guy from a dystopian future Earth, where they discovered a way to send people to another world with magic. At which point the ruling elite decided it would be perfect for entertainment value. Professional actors would be sent over there to play out personas, with their memories being recorded and broadcast back to Earth. The elites got to enjoy the thrill of carnage and debauchery without any actual risk.
The main character is such an actor. He’s a big star on Earth, and in Otherworld he’s the legendary assassin Caine… and Caine’s enemies are actually less nasty than the actor’s foes.
This is an interesting one to go with, the cognitive dissonance angle, the players both good and bad think of it as a game and regardless of evidence either don’t know or won’t accept that the artificial life forms in that world are fully sapient feeling living beings with their own real emotions and lives.
Sort of a Digimon meets West World in a game setting. Especially affective if this wasn’t intentional and the game world evolved on its own per the program to adapt to players over a long enough time that the line blurred between artificial emotion and real emotion.
So players realizing they are toying with and killing real people, but the company behind it and most players won’t believe them or try and hide this. I believe a Star Ocean game had this as the twist of the game.
I think I said all I intended on the lifespan thing last comic page.
But in general its not just lifespan, but maturation rate. there are several species with similar lifespans to one another but sexually mature sooner or later than others. Evidence suggest Neanderthals despite a similar lifespan to cromagnum man matured faster; but the prolonged adulescence may have helped develop more imagination, artistic talent, story keeping (some of this is conjecture backed up by presence of art and creative tool making between the different hominids).
that said living longer doesn’t mean they’d have the same outlook as humans. if a species lives for ten thousand years but doesn’t sexually mature until their mid 100’s; they won’t be 35 and wishing they could what the humans do, they’d still be thinking and acting like children; just for a longer time than humans do. It would be like having a human at age 7 wishing they could be like a dog at age 2, sounds silly doesn’t it. The thought most likely wouldn’t even cross their mind, and the species as a whole could regard humans as growing too fast and missing out on life. Its kinda like the human centric thought we see in so many fantasy series where the long lived elves and dragons are jelous of humans with their short lives making them appreciate life more because they have so much less of it; but this is species centric thinking; and likely anything with a longer lifespan with a different maturation rate would think in its own time frame and not really consider what its like the live shorter lifespans other than (isn’t it a shame they don’t get to live longer, or their child hoods are so short they hardly get to have any fun before growing up).
Of course, using fantastical races one can get creative, larval phases, cocoons for *boom now an adult*, and even overly convoluted life cycles. For instance one of the more confusing races I’ve made are the Elder Dragons, a race of dragons that sexually mature at the rate of a regular animal for the most par *able to reproduce as young as 15* but have the minds of animals (not children, in fact they are never children except for those brief years as hatchlings before getting bigger and more aggressive); but around 500 years of age their brains suddenly develop into full grown sapient minds and all the memories of their lives are there, just now they can actually process that; and at this point the “adults” will actually only now acknowledge them as their offspring (this is more culture than biology though, allowing the younger ones to fight, fend for themselves, breed, and even be slain by local “adventurers” as animals with only those managing to live long enough to “earn” their minds and power being acknowledged by their community).
A similar example, the aliens from the show Andromeda whose young are like fuzzy tadpoles that devour everything in the water ways, including each other, with only the few that survive long enough to grow up and walk on land accepted as children. I based my Slug Women in Hell on this life cycle, only with an extra possible parasitic phase.
There is alot you can do with exotic life cycles, maturation rates, just have to get over the human centric mental block that makes you think in terms of your own years experience being the absolute way of life.
Age of consent/majority:
Being a long lived race in no way means they have an extended infancy or adolescence.
For that matter, growth and physical maturity is probably at about the same rate for a similar mass, though there can always be exceptions. For example, Blue Whales reach maturity faster than humans despite having an approximately similar lifespan but much greater mass.
Now as to cultural differences causing rights and responsibilities to change based on lifespan is more reasonable and likely. Even in humans, our “teenagers” are a relatively new phenomenon. It wasn’t that long ago that in the early to mid teens you were able to get married, expected to hold a job, bear children, etc. In our current culture someone in their teens is considered very differently than they used to be.
With the Succubi in Grrlverse, they likely mature at a faster rate due to feeding requirements, but if what we’ve seen of the others and some of Dabblers comments, it seems they have much longer lifespans.
Of course assuming the long lived have long childhoods is even more insane when you consider something like a race that’s effectively immortal and never dies of old age. If childhood was based on lifespan, then they’d never get past the infant stage.
I got started thinking about this a long time ago when someone was complaining that elves were still kids at 60 and in diapers at 20 simply because of how long they lived in the D&D game. It struck me as such a stupid idea that I started doing a bit of armchair research on maturity and lifespans of various animals.
It turns out it’s more related to resources that the parents can spend on raising the young. With the typical D&D elves as the touchpoint on this, if they expanded their adolescence at the same rate as their lifespan when compared to humans, I suspect most of their population would be constantly involved in their largest industry, child care. I was never able to reconcile that with the usual elven stereotype of there not being a lot of children in elven communities at any one time.
So as a general rule, most humanoid like species will likely have maturity rates within 20% of human, and some outliers at 40%. Once adulthood is reached, middle age and old age would likely be delayed more than they are for humans, since being a geezer for centuries isn’t a likely thing to happen since the decrepitude that comes with old age is what kills the elderly, even if some hazard doesn’t get them first.
Well that’s just my musing on the subject. It’s not very scientific, but it’s not like we have any elves, hobbits, or orcs to test the hypothesis on. ;P
I agree,
maturation and lifespan don’t really have a direct ratio, plenty of animals at about the same size have wildly different life spans but their sexual maturity isn’t a direction 1-1 ratio relative to longer life spans, but based on the environmental needs of the species. Why so many birds have such wildly different life spans, but almost always a fast rate of maturation, because growing slowly for a bird is a sure fire way to get killed, so only those that grew quickly, survived.
Now that said, why I kind of like the larval phases idea for aliens with long lifespans, or a cultural basis being the main factor and not so much their biology. Its not that those Elves are physically children at 40 years old, its that they are still in their first century of experiences so the culture regards them as still very young and inexperienced in the ways of the world; basically Elvish version of a teenager (culturally).
I know I used an extreme example of (we don’t even recognize you as one of us until you metamorphosis and earn that title) for a species that could theoretically reproduce in greater numbers while younger than older but on average not live long enough for that sapience gene to kick in yet have hundreds of offspring by that point.
But that said, looking at more realistic, real world examples. A fine example are animals with negligible senescence; Genetically they should be immortal, they mature no slower than other animals (and other organisms) of their kinds; sadly no intelligent species examples to go by in the real world. But their potential lifespan has no affect on a random quirk of genetics. However few also tend to really live for as long as one might think, predation, cancer, sickness, disease, injury, worn down teeth, slower movement, and some like the lobster if they live long enough will die either by the stress of molting such a large and thick shell or be crushed under its weight.
Artificial immortality is a whole other bag of beans, not likely they would age any slower, just stopped at a specific point; but what reaction this would have on the culture is something explored in speculative science fiction on the subject,
Young Justice the cartoon had a whole thing on that as well when they were trying to figure how age factored into becoming a member of the Justice League, since M’gann (Miss Martian) was in her 40s (which is a teenager for Martians), but biologically/mentally she was basically like 16 as a human equivalent, while Kon-El (Superboy) was basically 2 years old (since he was a clone/hybrid of Superman and Lex Luthor), but biologically/mentally was also 16 as a human equivalent. And Billy Batson (Shazam) was both 12 AND in his 30s when he’d say the word and become Captain Marvel (and although he was mentally 12 either way albeit a mature 12 year old given his hard life, he did have the Wisdom of Solomon in Captain Marvel form).
Did Decollete find her on a farm in the Mid West just outside a town called Smallville, by any chance? And were her adoptive parents called the Kents? The only way I can imagine her being so sheltered.
What’s up with Sydney’s left eye in Panel 7?
Her eyes are bugging out with incredulity that a succubus would be shocked at the idea of two girls being sexually into each other. Especially when she has a succubus mentor.
Poor chibi. So innocent and they plan to corrupt her!
So tomorrow morning will probably end the girl’s night out arc.
Hopefully Tamatha will become a regular at Halo’s Comic Emporium…and Decolette (who can surely detect all that super energy) will notice and decide to investigate Sydney’s arche security guard.
And when do we meet Sydney’s parent?
And what about Thothogoth? I mean things like that are more fun when they coincide (quite by writer induced coincidence) with other things like Sciona’s scheme coming to fruition.
And what about Marble Maiden and the other supers Archon was about to apprehend?
Tune in tomorrow when Sydney says”
Is it odd that whenever Decollete is around, I imagine her speaking with the voice of a Proper British Nanny? Does that make her MORE attractive for all the naughty things she says and does, or me a huge weirdo.
In regards to Tamatha and her supervision, would Deco be her proper stern caretaker and Dabs her wild uninhibited one (if she’s ever intro’d to Dabs, that is…)
I’m sure introducing Tamatha will be (or indeed have been) introduced to Xuriel. But I would not be surprised if Xiriel were presented as a negative example, contrasting her uncultured chaos and unseemly brawling against the refined attainments to which a ‘Proper Gentlewoman’ succubus should aspire.