Grrl Power #814 – History (Demonology) 101
It may seem Dabbler is laying the blame for all demonic malfeasance at the feet of external sources, but she’s really just giving a bit of history here. Demons can be a rowdy lot at the best of times, but they’ve had long stretches of history where “the best of times” were nowhere to be found.
Demon history class covers these periods with “and then some bad times happened.” Well, it depends on what demon state you live in. Hmm. No, I feel like demons would have provinces instead of states. Provinces or unstable borders controlled by warlords. But like, warlords that are actually into a modicum of governing? Like, the average demon doesn’t really care who’s head is on the pike in front of the provincial capitol building as long as there’s electricity and decent schools. Oh an infrastructure. Demons don’t like their bridges collapsing, but then who does?
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.
Dave, thank you SO MUCH for that “I.T. Crowd” reference.
Thank you for reminding me where I heard it. That was killing me!
Typos:
“feet of externals sources” = “feet of external sources”
“demon state you live it” = “demon state you live in”
Leave it to dabbler to add an ‘ish’ at the end of that explanation, something tells me something is going to happen and she will be the cause of it.
FOR GOD’S SAKE, BREATHE, Syndey, BREATHE!!
oh my dear, there is a “ish” in the middle of everything, holly, that’s a really big alarm going on here…
Now, see, this is what I mean when I say the world building gets in the way sometimes. It sure slows down the plot something fierce. This doesn’t seem like an opportune moment for a lengthy lecture on the nature and history of the various races of demonic beings. Shouldn’t interrogating the mysterious captive spider-woman zealot be the priority? I mean, maybe she’ll learn a thing or two, but if I know anything about bigots it’s that they generally respond negatively to information dumps.
The explanation is to try and soothe the angst of a young girl who’s just been kidnapped by a killer convinced she’s evil, and would be taking only a few minutes in universe.
Also aren’t they killing time while who gets the prisoner is sorted out?
It’s a point in Dabbler’s favor that, even trying to sooth her, she’s not willing to shade the truth.
Isn’t there an old bit of folklore that demons can’t lie when asked a direct question?
In modern times that folklore is translated as “Are you a cop? You have to tell me if you’re a cop.”
Meh … We’ve seen how well that works …”why NO, I’m not a cop…(I’m the freakin’ FBI )”
Those demons/devils with theology might have parishes. (Not hinting at Louisiana.)
Oops. Bad reply placement. Sorry.
ehhh, sort of but not really. Victorian era demonology books (which were works of fiction by the way) liked to mix and match elements of mythology (a god’s oath) with fairy lore, and various other stuff.
“demons” are…incredibly vague things, as in…not really a thing. the term its self comes from Greek theology as a spirit above mortal but below gods; like Jinn only more vague and ethereal.
a lot of things classified as “demons” is the result of laziness on the behalf of the Church just calling every single nature spirit, local monster, lesser god, ect… a “demon”. So demon ended up incorporating a lot of traits from a lot of unrelated things.
So you get “demons” that are obeying the rules of fairies, and then cross-contamination stories of fairies being affected by elements of the new religion that has nothing to do with their lore. Demons that have to obey the oaths gods could be asked to make, the riddles of nature spirits, and so forth.
So yes and no, if you called upon one sort of “demon” you could compel it to tell the truth provided you knew what it really was and what rules it was bound by.
and no, if you call upon something not bound by rules and annoy it, or it decides to have fun with you could mess around with that belief telling half truths, mixed with full truths, and outright lies.
Ahh … like the demi-god in charge of the USofA.
Not quite. His ^extreme^ narcicism makes him think like he”s some kind of demi-god.
He’s only ^in charge^ of the USofA to the extent that his Malignant_Narcicism is allowed to continue its ongoing damage to the effectiveness of the U.S. Constitution’s ability to uphold its purpose!!
This brings me back around to a question I’ve had for quite some time now: is there some sort of general formula for determining ideal plot speed across various visual formats? I recall comics where the combatants went tête-à-tête as they were going coup-pour-coup, accompanying a paragraph of text for every punch/kick/eyebeam blast. Didn’t seem to make the fight seem anything other than glacial. I’ve assumed that the speed of production is a factor, where slower production necessitates more action and less exposition to keep up momentum (a 32-page monthly comic is basically the same a webcomic that updates daily, allowing them to spend more time with internal dialogues and charged debates).
[I’ve dug Zebra Girl for decades by the way; thanks for all the great reading over the years!]
“Oi.”
“Millennium.”
Millennia is fine if it was intended, but as a plural it would be “over millennia” and not “over a millennia.”
Read it as “over thousands of years” as opposed to “over a thousands of years.”
So yeah, regardless of whether DaveB intended it to be one thousand years or several thousand years, he got the grammar wrong.
“poor behaviour” covers a lot of terrible things happening for a very long time to a lot of entire worlds, civilisations and people who didn’t deserve any of it.
rules not so much, suggestions and advice yes. the infernal realm is quite libertarian in a sense, you can do more or less whatever but you will probably be told if it’s a bad idea.
I love your worldbuilding :)
This sort of worldbuilding stuff might be some of the things I love the most about this comic.
SHHH! Keep it down you two, the haters are out in force
You ever hear the phrase “show dont tell”? What am i saying of course you have havent. I dont care what you do, but can you figure out whether this is a porn comedy or semi serious super hero story? Either way could you find a way to get us back to that strange thing called the plot?
Also im not trolling, i am raising a legit criticism. But since fans are going to call me a troll anyway, i wonder why this dumb (im saying its “dumb” in the same way most the rest of our entertainment is inane and trivial, im not attacking grrl power) comics comment section is mostly just people trolling or people accusing others of trolling?
Has it ever occurred to you to read the “about page?”
What am I saying? Of course you haven’t read it.
1. A story can have comedy, adventure, suspense, and tragedy in it — it doesn’t have to be just one thing all the time. Watch Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame for a good example.
2. It’s different things to different people, even within the comic’s own universe. Areana sees herself in a grimdark battle against the shadowy forces of evil, Sydney views most of what’s going on through her experience with RPG and comic tropes, and by general human standards, Dabbler’s perception of reality would probably be similar to a porn parody of how the rest of us see things. It’s arguably the same reality, but their perceptions of it vary wildly.
3. Dabbler can be an author info-dump stand-in on a meta level, true, but it’s also completely in-character for her to do what’s she’s doing here. She’s perfectly aware of the fact that her IQ is high enough to defy measurement on a human scale. Braniac 5 in the Legion of Super-Heroes in DC and Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four in Marvel tend to the same behavior, and it’s in-character for them, too.
4. To say you’re not trolling, then call the entire comments section (and by implication everyone who posts in it, presumably other than yourself) dumb kind of feels like “I’m not prejudiced, but . . . .” In other words, a false denial of the behavior you immediately proceed to engage in.
5. There’s some fairness to saying there’s a lot of accusations of trolling in the comments section (some justified, IMO . . . YMMV). We do seem to go off onto side alleys that show diversity in the fan base, by showcasing how far apart many of us are in terms of political, ethical, etc. perceptions. Nothing wrong with that. Feel free to skim past anything that bores or annoys . . . goodness knows I do.
6. No disrespect intended, but please learn to use punctuation and capitalization. I know it’s tempting to save time, especially if you’re using something like a smartphone virtual keyboard, but it comes across like you either didn’t know how to punctuate, don’t care enough to, or didn’t take the time. By implication, that makes what you say seem ignorant, unfeeling, and/or not fully thought out, even if it isn’t any of those things once someone deciphers the bad grammar.
Ok need to stop making acidic comments. But i stand by what i said. Especially the dumb thing. Fuck i read and watch dumb stuff all the time (ever hear of warhammer 40k? I Love it, but i still think its kinda dumb, nothing wrong with liking somthing dumb), all i see in the comments are people voicing political opinions (i dont usually read comments section so i hope that isnt typical) or specifically calling others trolls. I dont think im a troll, if i am i want to go away from that, but i do have honest criticisms toward the story structure. I like how you guys love this enough to defend it with this fervor, but in a perfect world (we’ll find it one day) we could have a good discussion instead of a flame war. Then again in a perfect world, I would’ve kept the worst of that to myself, but like anyone else i like having the computer screen as unbreakable shield.
You brought all this yourself
All said was, that the haters (of worldbuildng exposition) were out in force, it was mostly as a joke, butt you obviously viewed it as a personal attack
A troll says something offensive for little other reason than to get a reaction from people. If that’s not what you’re intending, then you’re not a troll. That won’t stop people from thinking you’re a troll, if they interpret what you’re saying different though. Lots of people refuse to believe others over the internet are legit in what they type, so Troll is accurate by their perspective.
Doesn’t help that there ARE a lot of trolls on the internet due to the Anon Effect.
You can easily detect actual trolls much of the time.
They inject politics or religion into the forum, and nobody who is not a troll is going to do that. If it elicits a response from someone who sees things different in any tiny way from their little needling post they act aggrieved and escalate the flamewar they desired.
In my defense, my one comment in the comment thread that went into full political asshattery had a typo in it. Autocorrect changed whatever the hell I typed at 6 in the morning into troll instead of trolls.
DaveB -does- do “show don’t tell.” Where it works. You have to also take into account the medium. If this was a movie, then this type of exposition would not work. This is a bi-weekly webcomic though. Showing every single aspect of the world history would make a single arc last decades instead of years.
I’m not calling you a troll btw. You’re making a criticism. I’m making a counter to your criticism with a defense for the exposition (which isnt even ‘pure’ exposition dump, since it’s being told in context of a story for Tamatha and Aranea to explain details of demon society and morality). I think it’s amazingly well done. I also love the Dabbler Science Corners, which is another example of DaveB being able to give a lot of information without it just being an ‘exposition dump.’ It takes a lot of literary skill to pull it off, imho.
I think you are in a significant minority.
Most of us love this stuff.
The problem with ‘show dont tell’ is that too often, it is employed as a writing tactic that ends up just looking either lazy or smugly intellectual. ‘Less is more’ gets to a point where less is nothing at all, and it results in a bad story that doesn’t make sense or give the reader a feeling of closure/completion.
DaveB does go into a lot of exposition, and this may not be for some people, that’s fine. I do appreciate that he takes time out to explain things, even if it’s through his characters, that may not be otherwise obvious and enrich the story in general by providing the readers ample worldbuilding.
I’m also not trolling or angrily criticizing your comment, just offering a civilized counterpoint to your suggestions. :D
One of the ‘less is more’ things I really liked was with the original Neon Genesis Evangilion – there were various single frames of the anime just filled – packed, with exposition. If you could speed-read fine-print when it’s on the screen for a 30th of a second, great. Or you can own the video, pause it, and read up… learn that there’s a public story to past events, a secret story to past events, and a third, ‘what really happened’ story. But that detail isn’t forced on the viewers, it’s merely present if your want it.
A comic version might be two characters talking in the top of a frame, and section of a report in the bottom of the same frame, offering fragmented sentences that flesh out a little of the world.
“Four infernal and a cel… …ing high grade fire mag… …melted even the manhole covers… …bable ties to ‘Muffin Ma… …elestial claims ignorance. We will…”
Weave enough splashes of fragments together, you can paint an entire world.
“Less is more can get so out of hand that you have nothing” doesn’t justify a bunch of unnecessary exposition that doesn’t actually affect the story in any way.
It’s not “being a hater” it’s the fact that the comic started out with better story telling. Every page advanced the plot. Now it just seems like we get 1 or 2 pages of plot, months go by, and then another 1 or 2 pages.
I started following this comic back before Sydney even walked out the door to go to lunch before dropping the money off at the bank. It’s a completely different comic now. Back then, everything had a point. If something was mentioned or shown, it had something to do with something that would happen later.
Take for instance, the spicy food thing. She goes out to lunch and has spicy food that’s so spicy it makes a mugger and his victim out back of the restaurant both think they maced each other. Great joke, many laughs were had.
Later that day, in the bank, Sydney’s spicy breath comes into play as she uses it to subdue a “bank robber”. Everything had a point. Everything that was mentioned got used later.
These days though… When is this lesson ever going to come into play? Probably never, or if it does, it might be 3 years from now when everyone’s forgotten about the lesson.
This isn’t about hating the comic. It’s about loving it and wishing Dave’s story telling skills and art skills weren’t inversely proportional to eachother… Seems the better the art gets, the worse the story telling gets.
It’s like this… I get that you have no taste buds or sense of smell and so you can’t tell that the food the restaurant is serving smells and tastes really off. I remember when the restaurant served great food, and I’d like to see them do as good as I know they can do instead of giving me food poisoning.
I can see your point, but I do think that many of these things get referenced and have connecting threads. For instance, this thaumion (thaumaturgic ions?) field discussion calls back to Dabbler’s charm-kiss going haywire when applied to Jabberwocky, because Jab’s power ties directly into the thaumion field (which Dabbler hadn’t seen or heard of before). Now we’re seeing what the usual method is — connection through one or more intermediating aspects (infernal, celestial, life, mind, etc.).
That, in turn, references the oddity of Earth’s superbeings, which references the “Holy Ovaries!” and “I’m definitely calling this in” reactions from two of the aliens who witnessed Maxima coring out the Fel supercarrier.
That references Dabbler mentioning the particular richness and strength of tantric energy that superbeings are capable of producing . . . which references the fact that she’s essentially hiding out on Earth, and mentions who she’s hiding out from (implied to be the “there will be a mighty burning” guy from her flashback while seeing Maxima bathed in her own tank-busting explosion).
It seems to be that there are plenty of elements that tie into previous plot threads, really.
Let me repeat im not mad, i am not “reaponding to an attack”, i phrased that first comment in a poor way. As i said in the second i am trying to get away from that.
However being an artist, I’ve gotten used to looking at art and story telling with a different point pf view (this neither makes me an expert or a better artist it is a habbit). Ive also had my art ripped to shreds by critiques straight to my face. I, honestly regret being so mean spirited, but if he can take even worse for over a decade and still keep going, i dont think my bullshit will ruin his day.
… that being said my opinions have some validated facts. Show dont tell is the core rule of comics. will eisner could create whole comics without saying a single word but still tell as engaging a story as this. Akira toriyama can provide so much movement and action, one panel could convey nail bitingly intense sequences. Jack Kirby didnt have the “best artist in the world ever” award and most stories he drew for could be classified as pulp rags, but everyone bows to the king of comics for a reason. I could spend god knows how much time pulling names, but they all say the same when it come to comics SHOW, DONT TELL.
The fact that grrl power is its own thing and dave b can do what he wants how he wants doesnt change anything. Expodition is fine, world building is great and those dont always have to be a whole lecture. If I was his editor I would ask whether he could condense 2(3?) Of thes pages into 1. I know my opinion doesnt matter, but any other editor would say the same. Fun fact when people kept asking Tolkien what happened to the two blue wizards gandalf name dropped in the fellowship (the book not the movies their such minor characters they werent brought up at all). Tolkien said “I dont know.” So i know dave b has his notes on how the world works, but do we NEED to know?
What does any of this information have to do with the plot? Isnt the plot about a nerd girl (lady/woman) getting the dream job at the justice league? does knowing about the literal seperations of heaven and hell have to do with the office comedy with super heroes? Could we have gotten more important info about the demon hunter lady before this? Am I not allowed to ask these questions?
This information is necessary to provide context to quite a few unexplained things. They could continue being unexplained, but given that it seems that magic itself and demons specifically are going to turn up again (the demon searching for Dabbler isn’t just going to stop existing), the information we’re being given is useful to our understanding of the world.
The story can be about multiple things, amazingly enough. About 90% of the ‘information’ given in the story (from Maxima’s backstory to the Twilight Council to the recent alien attack) is completely unnecessary in a story about a nerd girl being part of the Justice League, an office comedy with super heroes, or the character relationships. I’m willing to bet a lot of characters we’ve seen with relatively unique appearances, powers, and names are not going to show up again. We don’t need a lot of things that we see or hear about in Grrl Power.
But he puts them in anyways, and they are enjoyable. In this specific case, it’s in-character, justified in-story, not out-of-nowhere, and pertinent to a lot of other things. It’s exposition, but naturally created to not be a jarring aspect of the story. Exposition is a necessary component in some stories because some things are too complex to show visually without confusing the audience. So what’s your problem?
That is an assumption which actual fact makes unlikely to be an accurate one. He should be keeping notes on characters, places, organizations, areas where his world has an alternate history from our own, etc. But clues he has dropped (a few “Oops, forgot!” and some other things) make this appear to not be the case. Or if it is the case, they aren’t well managed.
There’s an important difference between “You could do better at the thing you’re trying to do” and “You’re trying to do the wrong thing in the first place”. The traditional rules of storytelling assume certain goals that are not necessarily universal. The plot very specifically isn’t the point of Grrl Power, and anyone expecting it to be is going to find themselves confused and irritated when it spends time on things they think are unimportant. The plot is there mostly to provide context to the character moments and the worldbuilding, which are the things the author and at least some of the readers are interested in.
People tend not to distinguish between “Your work would objectively accomplish its goals more efficiently if you did this” and “I prefer something else” when providing criticism.
.i agree, but dave b has made the plot important, thats the point of exposition to help explain the plot. He’s had a plot ever since he said that sydney is a lieutenant and that this is still some sort of “how we got here” narative.
When did DaveB ever say that Sydney is a lieutenant? I think you meant corporal.
You are correct. But thats my real question, in these 814 pages what kind of character development has sydney made to go from spaz that needs babysitting or a leash, to a corporal inside an actual paramilitary organization? So far most of her time at arcswat has proven she is barely qualified for field work. (Real world organizations would probably have grounded the likes of dabbler, harem, and math as well on their behavior alone)
She’s not a corporal yet Thatguy. She’s still a cadet at this point. DaveB did a very normal storytelling method called In Medias Res, in which you START at the middle, then shift to a flashback to the beginning.
Right now, she’s a cadet, and doesnt need to show how she’s a spaz. She’s only been in Arc-Swat for a very short time, from her perspective.
I mean doesnt need to show how she becomes a corporal despite being a spaz. Although as a spaz, she’s already saved the team several times.
SPEAKING of Maxima… we got her origin story, remember? What ever came of that? The little geode that turned her gold? Remember? What can that possibly contribute to the plot? Yes, he sets things up for the plot, but it seems he MOSTLY sets things up for throw away jokes that affect nothing in the story.
Going back to my spicy food example… The last time she was shown eating spicy food, on the neutron star world (which, by the way, would be a stupid f’n idea, even if the structure was set up where the star’s gravity would be 1G, because of the size of the structure and the whole inverse square thing, the escape velocity would be orders of magnitude higher despite the same G forces… It’d be a nice place to live, but you’d never be able to leave as it’d take entirely too much energy.) So anyway, that alien spicy food she ate… How does her temporary bowel movement problems advance the story? They don’t. When will they come into play? Unless they end up melting something in Cora’s ship or in some way later coming back to bite people in the ass in some manner, probably never.
The jokes used to be setups for plot points that were themselves jokes. Now the jokes are just set ups for jokes that don’t affect another. What’s worse, the plot seems to be set up for jokes that don’t affect the plot. Take for instance the whole gun/gum thing… I feel like the whole thing about those two being the first to follow Sydney after the demon hunter was just a plot point to set up that joke. Why? Because is that gum going to be used at any point? Does Dabbler need it to effect a repair to some gadget used to capture the bad guy? Oh wait, the bad guy’s captured already…
At this point the only thing Dave’s doing right besides the art is at least he’s not engaging in Deus-Ex Machina… at least not entirely… I mean, Dabbler showing up and then flashing back to her being called is that Deus Ex Machina? It’s a little hard to tell, but it’s also not completely unforeseen that backup could arrive, so I’m more than willing to give that a pass and say it’s not Deus Ex Machina even if it does eyeball that line (from a good distance).
Good story telling starts with the most economical version of the story. I’ll use Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as an example.
Link is sent by the Great Deku Tree to meet Zelda. Ganondorf captures Zelda. Link sets off to rescue her and does so.
Ok, now we have a basic plot, time to fill in the details with smaller stories.
Ok, so Link has to go see the Deku Tree. The story for that, he wakes up, encounters someone refusing to let him pass to see the tree, and Link overcomes that person.
How does that happen? He wakes up, explores, the person tells him he needs a sword and shield. Link obtains the sword and shield, and the person lets him by.
Ok, how does he accomplish those two tasks? Those are two more stories…
See how this works? The story needs to be built top down, with the big picture first, which is the most economical version of the story, then breaking it all down into smaller and smaller stories.
This comic started out that way.
Nerd girl gains super powers and joins a military style force of superheroes, and earns the nickname “The Big Guns”.
How did that happen? Well… let’s get into that…
But somewhere along the line it stopped being a story and started being a weird stream of consciousness where the reader is subjected to long winded lectures about how shit that is not only not immediately relevant to the story but probably will never be relevant to the story is exposed with in-character dialog.
Sometimes you can’t avoid exposition through in-character dialog… And kudos to Dave for using ignorant characters who need enlightening instead of going all “A S Y O U K N O W” with it like lazy writers will do. However, such exposition should be kept to a minimum and only used for things that need it… not world building… World building is something that should be shown. Instead of telling us about the war, show us the war. Instead of telling us about the field, perhaps ignore it? Or show us someone who is multi-disciplined adapting a spell made to counter stuff from one aspect of the field into a spell to counter stuff from a different aspect?
As an example of how one can show the field instead of telling about it, allow me to point you to the first real fight the comic had, with Vehemence aka Fedorka, where Dabbler very briefly explains how it’s basically the same thing she does, but just with a different type of energy. Bam, there you go, show don’t tell, or keep the tell to the minimum necessary to provide context like in that bit there.
doesn’t justify a bunch of unnecessary exposition that doesn’t actually affect the story in any way.
If Vale is an astral planar being (which would fit what we have seen and explain why a girl who watches anime also hangs out with Deus) then yeah, it pretty much does affect at least the reading of the story.
Because now some of us will be searching for signs of interaction between Vale and one of the Succubi or between Vale and Thothogoth when he shows up.
Or we could miss something because we are looking for that.
Put more imagination into reading the world building.
Almost everything in the Grrl Power universe is a one-off. Which makes it easy for a lazy or sloppy writer, because they can just wing it and the readers will not be pointing out how a character who is supposed to be a part of race X or whatever isn’t behaving as they
We’ve seen several few vampires, but vampires have a set of abilities which is fairly common in both folklore and modern depictions.
Other than vampires are there any groups with common rules that might require the author to have to keep careful notes to make sure he doesn’t screw up the continuity? I don’t think so. We have three succubus, but those three have marked differences. Dabbler is a hybrid race and looks nothing like Decollete, and Tamara looks nothing like either of those and has a unique ability to create objects with her mind which makes her a hybrid with supers.
Of the Alari, Sciona is listed as an artificer and blood mage. These could both be racial traits, because we haven’t seen many Alari, but it seems unlikely. Even the Alari other than Sciona which have had some tiny amount of spotlight do not display her ability to form wings, which unless all of the legends about angels said to be attributed to Alari are of Sciona herself shouldn’t be something that they do only rarely. And yet Sciona is unique in displaying that ability. You’d think that the ability to fly and be used as an aid to ground locomotion, and what appears to be a fairly decent amount of prehensile utility, would see members of the Alari deploying them fairly commonly. But nope.
Every super? Unique. Every member of Cora’s crew? Unique. Cora herself? Unique race from her crew, and also unique in her ‘disability’ and the way she not just overcomes it but destroys it from orbit because that was the only way to be sure.
So trying to pin down exactly what Vale is before it gets a canon reveal is fairly pointless. DaveB could go with some reader’s guess, or he could have an idea vague or otherwise of what she is and her abilities already, or he could just wing it when at some point he decides to give her some more spotlight, as he appears to do with almost everything else.
Actually, we have seen other Alari with wings, the refugees Sydney ‘picked on’ on Fracture, there were a few who had wings which lead to speculations that it might be a class feature
Don’t believe any legends about angles were attributed to Alari (there was someone in the Twilight Council who resembled an angel, with comments and speculation about her and her kind)
Alari being equated with angels? Not outside your daydreams
Reader speculations regarding characters is part of the experience, even if it doesn’t, ultimately, have anything to do with how the author has envisioned their background (and the great authors enjoy the guessing, bad ones get pissy about it)
It is in the canon.
Where?
I have told you already: It is in the canon.
Dabbler explains it to Sydney while they were flying to search for Sciona earlier in the webcomic.
Pander, do you know what page that was? Don’t remember that part, just that bit in the Council Camber where a literal winged woman arrives to tell them about other possible threats and her resemblance to angels of myth
It will come into play when we run into crazy really powerful really evil demon villians. That’s their backstory… and we already know one has a history with D.
I like to think of myself as a pretty good scifi/fantasy geek and some of these concepts were still really difficult to comprehend. Oh, well, time to go get distracted by something shiny or something that’s out of place.
Happy Valentines Day, Everyone!
And may your VD be pleasant as well. (I think I understand why they don’t abbreviate this holiday)
Didn’t Monty Python have a song about that?
I like learning about the world and universe of Grrlpower. I also read all the codex entries in video games. I’m also not bothered by tutorials in video games either. So I’ll just say this: DaveB, its your comic, and its free. Do whatever the hell you want with it.
Well said.
An example for the”get on with the plot” crowd: Early in the Steakhouse Fight comes the page “Nose Boop of Doom'(page number 202). It’s a perfect display of Anvil’s power, both impressive and funny, but if the nature of Anvil’s superpower hadn’t been explained, it would just have looked crazy. Also, what i love about Anvi isn’t her mad tanking skills, but her shyness, her desire to be everybody’s protective “big sister”, and the way she manages to dress and act as girly as she does despite being a 6’7″, totally ripped Amazon.
I am reminded of Disgaea. The demons have a society, several, various different Netherworlds they apparently colonized because despite usually coming across as swords and sorcery they have space ships and various other high tech stuff. But their culture and natural inclinations gear them towards violent behavior, rowdy actions, and so forth; even if deep down they are like anyone else and some can form friendships, love, and what not; they just wash over it with tough talk.
But in the end the individuals with the most supernatural power take control as the Overlords and end up fighting one another one on one *war tends to be the choice for less civilized demons or those with some master agenda and looked down upon by most Overlords as cowardly*; the stronger demons will fight for ranks as magistrates, judges, fancy titles with which to impress and terrify mortal worlds, but it also comes down to their relation with that particular mortal world as well.
Celestia also has technology, and the most powerful are in charge; but pride themselves on being non-violent…despite incredibly violent laws regarding treatment of mortals and demons. A culture that paints over its dystopian fascist state with pretty pastels of love and kindness.
Demonic Essence:
The Multi-dimensional distortion imprint signature quality of demons creates a point of least resistance across the astral dimension bridging to the infernal element of magic which is strengthened (flow through bridge) by the demon’s negative and aggressive mind set.
This in turn creates a noticeable well point in the astral field that draws the attention of astral life forms that for reasons of their own may seek to strengthen the number and intensity of such bridges between the astral and physical planes.
(at least that’s what I got from the explanation so far)
ARG! I now can say I have something in common with Sydney. I made a ghost chili hot sauce some time back, and while sharing some with my son tonight, snapped the top closed and a drop flew out into my left eye.
Oh the pain. Fortunately, copious amounts of cold water, liberally and rapidly applied helped a lot!
That will teach you to handel devils with respect!
Back when I was a kid, we had a fairly universal Commandment: Neither politics nor religion will be dicussed at this table.
The first third (plus an extra comment thread down toward the 3/4 mark) of page #1 really did not need to be aired on this site. There is a reason you don’t use water to put out oil-fires…
Okay, that part about how demons care more about infrastructure than heads on spikes hit a bit too close for me :)
Our (Ukraine’s) president said almost literally the same in his New Year speech (well, except the demons). A significant part of the society (at least when looking online) vocally disagreed, saying that they care not only about smooth and well-lit streets. Still, heads on spikes were not mentioned either…
Grammar note:
“Must you lean over?”
is answered by:
“You know I must”.
“Do you have to lean over?”
could be answered with:
“You know I do.”
Just remember: Dabbles is not fluent in English, there are still words and phrases she messes up
Sometimes on purpose so that when she’s playing “Make Maxima Say”, neither her nor the rest of the crew are suspicious.
That takes an all-consuming long con.
Me: “Must you correct DaveB‘s grammar?”
Hinoron: “You know I do.”
Betwixt all the self-important art criticism and politics, has everyone lost sight of the fact that Sydney is not making a good case for sharing a relationship with Krona at the moment? Krona has to be wondering what sharing Leon with Sydney would be like, if this is a sample.
Thank you Gary — I had forgotten that episode.
Sydney does certainly need to understand that some things are simply not shareable, and Leon-Krona may well be one of them.
Having said that, Krona herself should make a determined effort to Grow. Up. Sydney has a good reason and excuse for her behaviour, Krona has no biochem defects we know about… Unless “hacking reality” has disturbed her mind?
Every time the comic pauses for some exposition we get so many people complaining about how slow or fast things are going.
Honestly feel this is because they are thinking of it in their personal real time. Two pages a week.
Problem is if the pace of the comic moved according to that, then anyone who binge reads it might find it TOO fast paced, too cluttered, throwing out too much too quickly.
Remember if this were a regular comic book you’d be reading 8-20 (depending on the issue and publisher) pages at a time once a month; if those books were paced like how some seem to want this paced they’d be awkward at best.
If this were an animated series, these explanations would take up a few seconds at best.
Which is the crux, pacing is subjective. Are you thinking about it like (man we only see so much in a whole week), or thinking of it in terms of (if I sat down and read this start to finish I’d only see this page for a few seconds or minutes to read and take in the art before going to the next page for the whole story).
go the next yard up and think of it like still frames with dialogue from an animated series; well imagine doing a comic adaptation of the Harley Quinn series, or Rick and Morty, how much action could be on a page vs how much of the dialogue do you expect to see connected to those panels?
There is a way to quicken the pace, that being more panels, less detail, but do you want that?
There’s a comment chain on page 1 that probably needs to be deleted… we’re here for grrlpower, not politics.
Who’s “we”? Apparently the people in that discussion found the content of the comic to be relevant to real-world politics. If you’re just here for the comic, then the comments should be easy enough to ignore. If you want to participate in discussion about the comic, you’re going to find that people will relate the topics in it to their real-world experiences.
Trolls find opening a can of beans or putting on a pair of socks relevant to real world incessant prattling about politics in every aspect of life.
Following from Torabi’s calm reflection, another commandment: Don’t feed the trolls. I don’t like that expression of Free Speech myself, but let’s not chuck burley into a school of sharks, eh?
While Dabbler’s cleavage would be nice to see, I’d rather there be Halo in micro-bikini bottoms showing some cheek.
hold on… is that Galeem and Darkon, or am I crazy?
What the HERE is that?! – clever!