Grrl Power #813 – Metaphysics 101
Given Dabbler’s description of devils, you would think that succubi would actually be considered devils and not demons. It’s one of those distinctions that is usually more important to academics than it is to the Infernal populace, unless it’s some political leader looking to score points by stirring up racist nonsense or start a war.
You know, one of those totally justified wars, like, “Are we two horns going to let those one horns terk er jerbs? More horns! More jerbs!”
Dabbler is hugely simplifying this crash metaphysics primer. When she says there are “routes to tap it,” there’s a lot to dissect there. It’s like saying rubbing two iron bars together is a route to tap the electromagnetic force. It’s accurate, but obviously there’s a lot more to it. Especially when considering that magic is an integral ingredient of many races. Demons, devils and several other species and races are interwoven with Infernal magic. Angels and all their variants are the Celestials, Faye are the nature magic, etc.
I spent some time filling in the thaumic subdivisions there. I’m not sure I’m happy with “Void” and “Machine” so I reserve the right to sneakily retcon this at some point.
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Anyone else get the impression that Dabbles simply LOVES teaching? Moments ago she was ready to beat the crap out of a bound Aranea to make her talk and now she’s teaching her Infernals 101, all anger temporarily forgotten. You ask me, she secretly wanted to be a teacher when she was young. (Probably the Slutty Teacher Deanatay mentioned before. Or maybe the Dominatrix type…)
Well Dabbler is a professional succubus so I assume she have studied and mastered sexualized stereotypes in Succubus University or something like that. So she should be able to play all kinds of naughty teacher types with both skill and passion.
Dabbler dropped out to go adventuring, so while she can play those stereotypes, it wouldn’t be with the same degree of accuracy or subtlety as a fully educated succubus like Decollete.
She is, however, a genius in a wide range of other fields, as well as the smartest person within a few square kilometers. Sometimes that gives you opportunities to show off. If you can do so in a sexy and humorous manner, well, she is a succubus, why wouldn’t she do it that way?
Good point. She may not be a expert by succubus standards but she is no doubt way better than the average human.
So, she’s basically Gina Diggers with four arms.
Slutty teacher archetype Is usually the dominatrix type.
Not at all. Lots of teachers sub.
*badum tss*
but even sub teachers are doms, if they expect to last long
Subs. Last Long. I don’t think so.
*badum tss*
I’ve been wondering this whole comic (may have simply missed it) does dabler have fine fur or is the purple and aqua her skin?
Aranea is being taught – Tamatha is. Aranea is simply receiving an unearned benefit because she is being permitted to audit the class. All this teaching is because Tamatha asked, “Right?” and Dabbler answered “Weeelllllllll…”
Aranea is not being taught – Tamatha is.
She may be teaching Tammy, butt everyone is getting an education
Other stuff don’t worry about it… Ooooooohhhhh no. I know this. That’s the one that comes back to bite you for not paying attention to it!
That’s why I love it!
“Don’t worry about it” always bring fun, joy and laugh :D
Pay attention to what now? Sorry, I was busy watching the teacher.
M’kay so now I’m wondering if Sydney’s ‘other’ orb with the mystery function is actually still likely to be a Healing orb… because this page means it’s possible it lets her access the Thaumic Field.
Like, all of it.
Innately.
…oh no.
The healing function if it exists would just as likely be a node somewhere on the green orb.
Hmm. Void fits. I’ve seen it referenced as the the opposite of the elements on multiple occasions. I would think the the opposite of “mind” would be “physicality.” Which machines could fall into with a little crossover into elemental force such as electricity. I would imagine that physical magic would be stuff that focuses on transformation and enhancement.
“Mind” being opposite “physicality” is REALLY depending on the system that is being set up. Certainly, in some ways they are–but not even close to all.
Dabbler might have chosen Psyche rather than mind; and perhaps “inherently magical objects” as a descriptor for machine.
Maybe “Entropic” instead of void, to represent the breakdown of the universe? And maybe “Machina” for Machine, as in Deus ex Machina?
Void represents a “lack of” something.
Entropy is the process of becoming totally homogenous by higher states changing to lower ones.
Both of those descriptions are “more or less” as opposed to dictionary definitions.
To give you an example, let’s take saltwater.
If you take saltwater, and remove the salt, you have water. That is a void like function.
If you put grains of salt into water, it dissolves – converting it’s crystalline struck into dissociated molecules dispersed in the water, aka saltwater. That is entropy.
Void, is the absence of matter.
Dabbler’s looking really Marlina Orlova.
Name copied and pasted in Google Images.
I think she was also pretty good in her collaboration with James@war.
https://youtu.be/8_wMBZLMLGA
So, basically, devils tend to convince people to do bad things. Demons just do bad things, largely because their power is based on them doing bad things.
That seems pretty reasonable.
Also, the reason that succubi are demons, not devils, is because sex isn’t inherently sinful, even prior to marriage. (Argument for the religious: the creator made sex, and did so before making marriage. Unless the creator is evil, sex isn’t bad, even without marriage to mold it into something better.)
Your argument for the religious doesn’t really work. God is perfectly allowed to impose new rules as we go along. The world is a changing thing, and that’s how He made it. Sex before marriage wasn’t a sin before marriage, but it IS now.
I’m a secular sort myself, but it’s easy to see why this argument would be less than convincing. heck, it doesn’t even work in a PURELY secular setting, assuming that you concede that morality is a thing at all. There are many things considered evil now that weren’t in a pre-civilization setting. Or even have much of an analogue at all. Like loan sharking – most consider that to be an evil act, but it didn’t really become a thing until money-lending, which of course depends on a civilization that uses currency, and so on and so forth. I guess there MIGHT be a hunter-gatherer equivalent (“Me give you rabbit now since you hungry, but you give me elk later or I KILL!”), but that’s tenuous at best.
When was the last time anyone (credible) ‘spoke’ with ‘God’?
Depends on doctrine and when you consider someone credible.
so never then.
The argument of when the age of prophets ended; and why a being or beings that supposedly previously would show up physically would even need prophets in the first place; just plant your giant scary cloud butt on another mountain and bark orders again if its so important to you.
-the argument being humans didn’t listen anyway and relate better to other humans saying things.
but then again, the other side of that is why again would it need to, and why rely on blind faith via these supposed prophets when it previously had shown the ability to prove directly what it wanted.
it becomes a round and around with different excuses that ultimately cant be answered in anyway that is satisfactory to all parties involved. to the point one can argue the majority of these “prophets” were just well spoken individuals that couldn’t get anyone to listen to them without claiming their ideas were divine ideas; along with crazies (like today) who just think God is talking to them; and whatever the political climate of the time was willing to accept, or use to their advantage including making “official” declarations that the age of prophets ended at such and such a date to try and prevent anyone from listening to new individuals boasting new radical ideas of peace and togetherness that had become contrary to what the church (now a governing body) wanted.
To be fair there are more than enough people who claim to have spoken with God today, but not everyone considers their claims credible.
To in a certain level I could claim I’ve done it(speaking in tongues, prophetic praying and normal praying).
Sorry for my unclear description
Loan-sharking (usury) was prohibited to the Hebrews among themselves during the Exodus. However the prohibition did not extend to goyim, which was “corrected” by the teachings of Jesus.
There is no firm date for the Exodus, my own studies indicate a period 1224-1211BC, in the reign of Merneptah. Others differ. It is likely that most nations in that part of the world either had or were developing similar legislation.
Thought it was during the reign of Ramses (just don’t ask me which Ramses)
You just want to start a barroom discussion, don’t you ;)
Not this time, just hadn’t heard of Merneptah
Eh, that’s even assuming “infernal” means doing bad things.
Marriage, is a human invention.
noice sexy teacher mods
This calls for an OVR! (obligatory video reference)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M4_Ommfvv0
Dabbler just casually mentioning that gods exist
yeah but are lkely just another type of supernatural being, just ones that require prayer power or have dominion powers (complete control over specific aspects of nature within their range) or are powerful enough to act as a source of power for their worshippers/a conduit to those powers that the mortals otherwise would have no access. Lots of ways to declare ones self a god.
Yes, gods, not God
So apparently, Dabbler loves “big buts” & she cannot lie…
I am trying to mentally categorize the standard ‘genie in a bottle’ to the chart. I think it goes back to the Arabic ginn/djinn which was supposed to be a fire spirit. So it looks like Elemental fits best. And by using refrigerator logic, if these guys have ‘phenomenal cosmic power’ you would think they could figure out a way out of the bottle on their own.
Speaking of wishes, my best guess is the various ‘Dragon Ball’ dragons fall under Celestial. Medieval western dragons probably fall under demon/infernal.
Actually Djinns go all the way back to ancient Sumeria.
Thank you for taking the time to live up to your user name. :)
the bottle was never the genie’s problem the far more powerful magic the god they challenged use to put them in the bottle was the problem.
thats the part that gets left out a lot in retelling of the story.
being a genie is a punishment and granting wishes is either the deeds they need to do to gain their freedom, or the reword they chose to give the person the freed them. the reason most Genie are said to be evil tricksters is because they were selfish fools that are forced to grant wishes against their will to learn humility.
Genies were devils (or demons) imprisoned by Solomon (no, not Grundy, the King), not some benevolent spirits trapped by some evil gods
The reason their ‘wishes’ turn out so badly, is because the people asking for them are typical selfish hyu-mons and they get what they literally ask for, not what they hope for
Which is where the warning “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!” comes from
Jinn’s not demons, they predate the concepts and even when they were adapted in the Islamic traditions they still tended to be see as different for either angels or demons. (a step down form them if you will, they had power and where long lived but still died and could have children.) and have been see as good and bad through out their use.
and the rest of the mythology behind that has a large variation as you would expect from 100’s of years of oral story telling. but one of the more common tropes in both mythology and story is that the Genie it actively and willfully twisting the wishes against the people making them.
so its “be careful what you wish for” but not just because its human nature.
Thank you for that
Great, now I’m worried about that “Other Stuff” that I’m not supposed to be worried about.
Rubbing a bar of amber with wool would seem to be a more efficient way to tap the electromagnetic force. I mean, what do you get when you rub two bars of iron together? Two bars of slightly warmer iron?
Well mechanically if you rub three bars togethsr you can get really precise flat plates . Its the start of getting macine tooling.
Sure, I guess. But that’d be kinda like saying “Breathing is a route to tap the electromagnetic force. No breathing, no life. No life, no tapping the electromagnetic force. Or anything else, really. Breathing, it’s required for everything!”
Well there is lot more to it. Specifically, those two iron bars you plan to rub needs to be magnetized. And you need to rub them really fast, like 50times per second.
Well, if you take two iron bars, and instead of rubbing them, bang them together while they’re pointed north-south, you can magnetize them. Not very strongly, but enough to notice.
ThaumiApp? WeaVault?
Pft, I prefer MagiConsole.
Sure it’s new and has few third party support but at least it is open source.
technically, you just get…irony
: eyeroll! :
LOVE the color today.
please keep it this way, please please please
Is that a Pony reference? I think that’s a Pony reference. I like it.
there is the MLP catchphrase ofc but there are a ton of anime with magical girls whose powers are based on love or friendship, it’s become a whole trope
Okay, that looks good, but where is the Time Stone? Don’t overlook The Eye of Agamotto. It’s at right angles to everything else.
So you’re saying it’s Perfectly Normal? I’ll let myself out.
A little subtle for the room, but I like it.
Interesting that there is distinction between the two main types of fiend. But about the magic schools, what about Law and Chaos?
Why not go with the classic ‘Chaos and Order’? Gets kind of the feel of both Void and Machine across, and can definitely fill a roll of void and machine (void being chaotic, machine being orderly) and are definitely decent opposites to each other.
The person right above me literally just suggested the same thing. My bad. XD
let’s see, the ultimate expression of chaos and order would be “instability” and “stasis”; can’t get a lot of useful mileage out of those…
sure you can, collapse and support; magic that causes collapse and magic that supports; basically, sappers vs wall builders, sappers being the saboteurs who would dig under walls and then collapse the tunnels, making the walls collapse
and if the hypothesis is correct then the Nth fit in as the ones who “built” magic out of the raw dimensional distortion potential/dimensional “force” of reality, organized it, built hyper-force/multi-dimensional “machinery” out of that force its self to filter and define various forms of it; that by happenstance and studying what works and what doesn’t other races have barely managed to scrape the surface of that system to do their “magic”.
Well, except Nth is a stage of development, not a specific group of beings.
then read “other races” as “other less advanced races than those qualifying for the Nth status”. It doesn’t change the meaning much.
we can say the 3rd tiers and be understood its not just one race of glowing squids and geometric shapes but several.
That said the prospect of more than one Nth level species interacting in the same area of the universe should be terrifying, especially if they have conflicting ideas regarding the treatment of other species and want to subvert each other’s goals; a minor conflict on allowing other species access to each other’s technology even at a basic level and suddenly you find the very rules of magic fundamentally changing without anyone below that level knowing why; or magic vanishing all together.
No. Not even that really.
Nth is a stage, like the iron age or the atomic age.
So the Nth is a moving target.
A race may reach Nth level, do a bunch of secretive stuff, and then either die off or reach some sort of apotheosis and leave this plane of existence forever.
The Nth civilizations exist at a point in time and then mysteriously vanish.
Generally leaving it to conjecture as to whether they ever existed at all…except for relics they leave behind to screw with future races.
Chances are good that the makers of the Orbs aren’t even around anymore, in the Grrlverse anyway.
there is clearly a mis-translation going on because you are repeating me. I clearly am regarding Nth as a stage, I even clarified that.
All I said in the opening was that magic as a working system could have been invented by a Nth level civilization and all other civilizations that came after have only been tapping into that system even though it is beyond their own comprehension at a basic level.
That’s it. What are you arguing about?
I see you read El Goonish Shive. That is almost a word for word restating of an arc in the strip.
yeah I do, but that’s not where I got it from. I think I originally heard it from some conspiracy rant ages ago by someone claiming magic did exist on Earth but the gods (or advanced aliens) turned that part of the program off as part of a non-interference pact with one another regarding the development of human civilization.
I assume you mean the whole rules of magic changing thing. Which in EGS’s case is because magic has a weird sort of consciousness to it in a round about way that really does resemble a pre-programmed AI with parameters rules regarding how it works and when to change or not change.
The use of thaumions as a power source reminds me of the logic behind the Asimov book “The Gods Themselves”. Earth gets a message from a parallel reality that they could connect those two universes to get unlimited power. It was based on using the flow of relative potential energy from one to the other, like a perpetually charged battery. The catch they didn’t tell us about was that the flow altered some of the basic laws of physics as a result. The value of the nuclear binding force on our side would eventually be locally decreased to the point where our sun would explode. This would fall under “other stuff, don’t worry about it” category, at least for the other universe anyway.
Except that the humans figured out what was going on, (Or maybe were warned, it’s been a LONG time since I read that story.) and arranged to shunt the alteration of physical law to yet another universe, of the opposite potential, so that they got the benefits of being a conduit for it, without any net alteration of local physical laws.
They definitely were warned but I’m not entirely sure they needed it or if they at that point already realized the problem. Also note that the other side got THEIR physical laws also altered – their sun got colder. But it was already getting colder before anyway and they really needed another source of energy, so …
“Magi-apps”? I can only imagine how terrifying the license on that stuff would be.
“We reserve the right to reformat your brain if we detect use of the content without payment, use of the content in violation of our policy, if our authorization system is unable to verify you for any reason, or if we feel like it.”
[+5]
I like big ol’ buts and I cannot lie.
Reminds me of the Great Wheel Cosmology: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Wheel_cosmology?file=Planes-5e.jpg
Note Mechanus at the 9 o’clock postion (pure lawful)
Dabbler is showing succubus DNA, or Demonic Nudity Actuator.
AKA a zipper.
The wonderful thing about one character’s quick & dirty explanation of how a highly technical thing thing works… they can be wrong. They can be lumping things together that don’t lump. The various thaum divisions there looks more like a laundry list than a map. Not that it would fit with a map anyway. She was rushing, got “good enough” and started presenting her actual point. :D
You can call it a retcon, but I tend to assume that any given in-universe explanation of a thing is based on imperfect knowledge… because that’s how knowledge works. (Also because a lot of writers have Trouble with internally consistent explanations for supernatural stuffs and then get all hand-wave-y when they could have just gone “Shit. You’re right… I don’t know why it didn’t work that way.” or “I didn’t mean that part literally.”)
How do dabbler’s horns work? Face-on, it looks like they extend in front of her face, based on their position relative to cheek and cheekbone. Side-on, they don’t. I just wonder if she’s kissing someone and the “camera” changes position if her paramour risks getting stabbed. ;)
Well, Dabblers Obvious horny and she love you long time.
You live short time.
Unless you super.
Hey, who brings tomatoes to read webcomics?
I was certainly expecting a “but”, but this is a “but” inside a “well”, that’s never a good sign.
the big but of infernal magic is it probly corrupts the ones using it or if lose control it goes rampant or something thus advanced class type thing or magic that is seen as black magic not as evil but very volatile like wild magic
Two thoughts:
First thought: In the novels of Barry Hughart, demons are just a step on the various forms of incarnation. They’re not necessarily good or evil, they’re just doing their job in the Emperor’s hierarchy. Blood lust, however, is part of what defines one as a demon – they don’t have any choice, it’s just part of the package deal. They crave blood and violence much like humans crave food and air. Much like tigers see most creatures as food, demons see most creatures as objects of their violence – and that, in the end, isn’t really their fault. It is a very good reason to avoid them, however.
(also, many of them aren’t all that bright, so…)
Second thought: I wasn’t the only one hearing the lecture in the voice of Inez Fressange from Martian Successor Nadesico, , was I?
It doesn’t suprise me that Dabbler is well aware of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” music video but to consider a world where she didn’t is frightening to imagine. “I Got it Bad, Got it Bad, Got it Bad! I’m hot for Teacher.”
The stereotype predates Van Halen by a long, long time.
“Orgasams are Magic” would be a very different show, and yet I feel as if I have already seen it before.
the Princess Molestia meme probably.
Pony porn flooded the internet in the first half of the series to such a degree I swore I could google anything and a pony having sex would show up somewhere in the image search results anyway.
Hell I remember having to warn my mother to put the safe search on because she wanted to look up a reference for a pony for my niece’s birthday cake.
She shoulda gone for not-safe mode :P
If I might offer criticism, I have to admit that if there’s one thing that does jar me sometimes about this comic it’s that the story often slows down to accommodate extensive exposition and world building. And the world has been built a LOT. There are so many different factions and characters. It’s like the plot serves less as an arc and more as tour of the author’s imagination.
Which isn’t bad, necessarily. But there are clearly high stakes, and more being introduced all the time, and we keep falling into action scenes with people I haven’t really gotten familiar with. So I do wish that there was a greater focus on showing rather than telling, more evident central plot lines introduced in turns, and fewer new locations and heroes and villains and bystanders and species and powers and secret organizations and alien races all over the place. This is a very crowded comic.
It helps to reread the series every two or three months.
Hey I like the exposition!
As someone who actually will break out into exposition as a “data dump” if the right question is asked even if the situation shouldn’t be appropriate (something I have tried to work on); it feels natural for me.
The thing with any good world building, they never really stop, the author is always adding and expanding, or it stagnates and becomes dull
And, Dabbler’s hair once again has the new coloring which briefly disappeared on this last page.
Does DaveB have a tag or other feedback we are supposed to use to help him catch art mistakes or anything? Haven’t noticed such a thing, but if there’s ever a print version of the comic it’d probably help to have such a system in place. Mostly though he does a great job on continuity so if anything I’d say I’m impressed that 10 years and 800+ comics in (and aside from the deliberate changes with the evolving art style), things have been very very consistent.
Dave said on the last page that a layer was missing that added extra colours and shading.
Ah thanks, missed that comment and just saw the previous comic hadn’t been updated.
In Shinobi tradition, Void was considered one of the elements (or the space between the elements or antithesis to the elements, or the inverse element, or whatever you want to call it) so it actually does fit in really well being the opposition to elemental magic. It’s supposed to be heavily influenced and connected to imagination, so it fits quite well on here. Dave should actually be quite proud of that placement.
As for Machine… I’m writing that up as a throwaway Warhammer 40k joke that Dabbler through in because she didn’t want to explain what was the inverse of mind. … which if I had to think of something to put there, would maybe be chaos since it defies mind by not really easily being thought about. And not just random, but also stuff like fractals, quantum probability, evolutionary AI (hence machine magic maybe?), Schrodinger’s cat stuff, etc.
The “Other Stuff Don’t Worry About It” plane is a great catch-all for any new demi-planes you need to invent for handwaving specific issues of unprecedented magic-ness.
Oh…
yay…
more unnecessary exposition…
Hrmmm so if one rubs a demon jist the right way it leads to the expulsion of various forces…and it better be the right way or said expulsion of force would and could be deleterious to ones self…
Perhaps mechanism, or mechanistic, as the opposite of mind? Or something else with physical, solid connotations? Cause I think that would fit very well. Or perhaps call it “Physicality” vs “Mentality”, or the like? :/
I feel like the Mind/Machine couplet you’re working towards might be better represented with Choice/Process indicating an agency vs. destiny type axis. That which decides vs. that which inevitably does. those two poles can easily shade and give nuance to the others. Though maybe Process might be on the side next to celestial and Choice closer to infernal. Angels are often a little more …inflexible… than their free range rebel counterparts.
Which would imply Krona seriously digs down into ‘Process’ to do her thing :)
I love that the colour scheme of the ‘diagram’ matches that of the orbs, and that our still ‘unknown’ orb looks like it falls into the ‘other stuff don’t worry about it’ category, if we go by the colour scheme
Instead of void, perhaps Spirit. It fits well as between Living Mind and Dead Behavior, half way between celestial and infernal. The opposite of elemental which is all about the physical, Spirit has no physical.
Instead of mechanical, I’d say Mechanistic, or possibly Contract. The magic of strict rules and stasis. If nature is the physical world of elements mixed in with growth and decay, then Mechanistic is fixing the physical world to the laws of conservation and exact predictability.