Grrl Power #934 – Space butler!
I’m sure a few of you are like “Uh, didn’t she get arrested?” It comes up on the next page.
The whole “You spared and/or saved my life, therefore you own my life and/or I must serve you” seems like one of those things that has only ever existed in fiction. I don’t know, maybe it happened in Japan back in the day, but it probably almost always involves someone of lower status giving up slightly more of their autonomy to someone who already above them in the hierarchy.
“Honor” may start off as a legitimate code of conduct, but it’s incredibly easy to twist. It’s simple to say any given action is or is not honorable to justify any other action. The system breaks down the instant it becomes dishonorable or against the rules to question superiors, because people abuse power, and as soon as your superior decides its honorable for you to give him half of your Hostess Snowball (as some sort of “tribute” I guess) then your Honorgarchy is basically doomed.
Klingons are supposedly big into honor, but it’s been established that they’ll shoot up a ship, then cloak and lay in wait for someone to come along to try and rescue any crew, because “There is nothing more honorable than victory.” Well, as soon as something like that is established, then you may as well not even pretend to have honor. Irradiating a population to sterilize them means you’ll eventually achieve victory over them, as would poisoning their food supply, or stealing their atmosphere or inventing a King’s Man style “rabies beam” so they all just kill each other.
I’m not suggesting there’s no value in the concept of honor. I just can’t think of an example in any fiction I’ve consumed, from James Clavell’s Shogun to Klingons to the Nordar in Star Justice where it wasn’t a very fluid target and wildly abused or flat out ignored by those with power.
If you missed the kickstarter for Tamer 7, the e-book is available for purchase.
The new vote incentive is up! I tried something different this month – instead of doing one well painted picture with a bunch of dress variants, I wanted to tell a bit of a story. Hopefully it makes sense without any dialog or sound effects. So, instead of one picture, you guys are getting nine. Well, you are over at Patreon. The vote incentive is just the first one. And yes, Pixel is bendy enough to do a full on T&A pose.
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.
Honor is inherently fluid. It all depends on the time and place and the values of those who use it. Many thought Fire Lord Ozai acted honorably burning off half of his own son’s face. We disagree because we were raised in a society that frowns on mutilating children. Throughout that show, Uncle Iroh keeps explaining to Zuko that his honor is his alone to restore because that’s how honor works. It’s basically a synonym for Principles.
We keep assuming that honor in real life is the same as it is portrayed in fiction. The Knights of The Round Table almost certainly never existed as Hollywood is fond of portraying them, certainly never in gothic full plate armor in the Dark Ages.
That said? We seek parallels to real life in fiction, so we shall see lots of things in story that have happened in real life. (And yes, such things as that did) Was it honorable? By our modern standards, probably not.
We could argue about such until doomsday and most of us would not agree, but I would never do such a thing because ‘I’ do not feel such is honorable. Harm a child in my presence when I have the means to stop you and I will.
the knights of the round table originated in fanfiction anyway (funny thing about Arthurian legend, like 99% of it is fanfiction written on top of fanfiction by different KNOWN authors), certain elements are 100% fiction, like Lancelot was never in the older stories but was such a useful character for later authors.
actually this explains it better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_jgF-S746o
a highlight on this topic is how the concept of honor changed between different centuries so how that was reflected in the stories told about Arthur and his knights also changed.
Actually the Round Table originated in the book Le Morte d’Arthur in 1485. It was then rewritten by Thomas Mallory in 1906. Probably before the modern concept of fanfiction, although I guess you can argue that Thomas Mallory wrote the 19th/early 20th version of a fanfic.
Only reason I know this is I remember it from my Arthurian Literature courses in college.
the 1485 version also qualifies as fanfiction as it was a fictional addition to a pre-existing body of work. The oldest versions of King Arthur are incredibly vague. That link I provided is overly sarcastic productions, they did a very nice summary of the literary history.
and yes the concept of “fan fiction” is fairly modern, an invention after copyright became a thing, to differentiate between the (official) body of work and the imaginations of other authors not to be considered canon. Where as prior if it became popular enough it became canon and things got rather confusing. When we look at the really old stories some belonged to that era where singular ownership wasn’t a popular concept.
If you’re going to use a modern term like ‘fanfiction’ with the 1485 version, then you’ve sort of made the entire term ‘fanfiction’ meaningless to begin with. You’ve broadened the definition to a point where almost anything can be argued to be fanfiction.
Totally agree with your second paragraph btw.
Paradise Lost is Bible fanfiction.
a work that is derived from a previous work, reusing their characters and key identifying elements as the basis for a new story without the collaboration of the original author.
the real issue comes down to ownership of the work, a lot of these old stories were collections of oral folk tales, local variants, and vague stories, we can’t credit the person who collected the story…I hate how often I have to explain the Brothers Grimm didn’t write the fairy tales they collected them…and also edited some to incorporate more Christian elements to sell better. But hey Homer is credited with writing the Illiad and the Odyssey…despite being oral stories from before his time that he simply wrote down and edited to fit his personal views (there is evidence Aphrodite played a bigger role in the Odyssey as Aphrodite Aerea but Homer was not a fan of that divine epithet so wrote her out with Zeus telling her she didn’t belong on the battlefield),
some it is more subtle, but Arthurian legend is much more blatant, its not like some variant became popular so over wrote past ones, we have multiple authors in different centuries that we know added specific elements.
-as an aside this is why I had to laugh at this show that was on, I think the travel channel, had this guy going around claiming to find lost legendary treasures all mystery conspiracy style and he claimed he found Excalibur…and used as “evidence” that the sword was broken and fixed just like when Lancelot fought Arthur…despite Lancelot not even being in the original stories and whose creator and introduction can actually be credited. It is the equivalent of proving King Arthur was a woman and pointing at how the evidence matches up with the anime Fate Stay Knight.
“Paradise Lost is Bible fanfiction.”
As ridiculous as this thread has become, I’m enjoying it immensely. :)
Mainly because I get to see, in words ‘Paradise Lost is Bible fanfiction.’
It doesn’t help matters that a lot of the ‘extra’ bits in the Arthurian legends were not really created from scratch, but rather ‘crossed over’ from other sources. Launcelot du Lac had been the focus of a separate set of stories, until his were melded onto Arthur’s. Most of the episodes for which he’s best known in this age are those that successive authors used to paper over the gaps!
The people who talk most about preserving their honor really mean reputation; they have no honor. They understand the concept of honor as that which one must be seen doing, but they don’t seem to have any understanding of why anyone would behave like that if there are no witnesses. Or will be no witnesses.
Because of this, they have to work very hard to preserve their “honor”, because there’s always evidence, and witnesses are more common than they imagine.
There is a social aspect to honor, but if you don’t know the difference between honor and reputation, it’s not theirs to teach you. Reputation is largely independent of who you are, honor is not. One may lose their honor, although no one knows it. Perhaps “Honor is personal integrity in following an agreed moral code” is a phrase that gives some of the differences can be discerned from.
Yes! Exactly. Klingon honour seems to work a lot like it did with the vikings if you read the sagas. Winning is good. Winning by a clever ploy is even better. Losing is bad, but losing if you kill a lot or meet your faith with courage is less bad.
Really, there are a whole bunch of different writers who muck about with the Star Trek universe and screw up any absolute claims. They arbitrarily swapped the Klingon and Romulan psyches between STTOS and STTNG, and do random stuff whenever it makes an interesting show. To Sto’Vo’Kor with the lot of them.
The vikings weren’t all about fighting and winning, but…
Ever heard about the Jomsvikings?
They were mercenaries. Their history mostly ends with them being on the losing side of a large battle, and many of the survivors are captured and executed.
What most storytellers skip is that all those executed were offered to swear loyalty to the winner.
(the earl or whoever hired them was already dead)
Every single one refused.
Vikings would consider Klingons completely rotten bastards and wish them a long and painful visit with Nidhogg…
Yes, I know about the Jomsvikings and I know what you are saying is not true. The Jomsvikings are not asked to swear loyalty. They are just executed, until Svend, son of Bue gain his freedom and then afterwards Vagn and Bjørn wins freedom for the rest of the jomsvikings.
Here is a link to the saga, so you can read up on it.
https://heimskringla.no/wiki/Jómsv%C3%ADk%C3%ADngasaga
Isnt snake eyes from gi Joe not honor bound to something. I’m pretty sure they haven’t screwed up his since of honor. They hadn’t betrayed it once.
I just want to know what her shirt says…
‘This is my human costume, I am actually an Alien’
Which is, by the way, a real T-shirt. Careful DaveB. Don’t want to infringe copyrights.
Are you an intellectual property lawyer? Have you studied intellectual property law or case law?
While this is not legal advice for anyone, I think he’ll be fine. He’s not selling the t-shirt, the design is significantly different from the real one, the commercial value of the real one has not been tarnished in any way, and it is a small part of the entire work of the comic. It has a pretty good chance of passing the fair use test.
Careful kalenath, don’t want to be giving people legal advice without a license.
This is a weird thing to be touchy about.
yes, this was meant with some humor. on the other hand professional societies such as The Bar have surprisingly little humor for people intruding on their turf. plus too. most people active on youtube end up hearing about copyright sooner or later. There is at least one channel that has copyright law as a major focus.
A lot of the stuff that gets copyright claimed on Youtube has no legitimate reason to be copyright claimed. Usually it’s under fair use (usually as transformative work) and the person making the claim is just maliciously exploiting the algorithm. This particularly happens a lot with video game channels and news-based channels, and it’s almost never a legitimate copyright claim.
The Jimquisition has had a lot of this.
*facepalm*
The only thing I really watch from that channel tends to be Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation and Uncivil War, but both of those are gaming videos, so I’m not at all surprised they got false copyright claims, probably from the gaming companies when they gave negative reviews on the games. Which is just scummy.
The rather devious and malicious reasoning behind why they do it, even if they KNOW it won’t work, is Youtube’s method of flagging for copyright claims is inherently flawed. They immediately remove it, THEN investigate, which can take weeks sometimes. And that sort of gives a game publisher a few weeks without the public seeing a bad review. It’s very duplicitous, but I mostly blame Youtube for having a dumb method for copyright strikes. They should first have to have the claimant PROVE it, THEN ban the video after proof has been made. They have it completely backwards.
I remember a case some time ago where a lets play of an old Sega Genesis game was flagged for copyright claim with youtube saying a lawyer from Sega contacted them, so the channel contacted Sega, and Sega told Youtube themselves they did no such thing, no lawyer or representative of theirs contacted youtube.
I think this is the story
https://techraptor.net/gaming/news/sega-issues-cease-and-desist-elicense-over-youtube-copyright-claims
A) I meant it as humor.
B) I am not a lawyer, but I had a friend who thought he wasn’t infringing a copyright on SOMETHING HE WROTE and was taken to court and sued over it. He lost by the way because he wasn’t a lawyer either.
C) I know better than to assume anything about the law in the US. It doesn’t HAVE to make sense or even have any basis in reality whatsoever as long is it is LEGAL. Who cares about life, liberty OR the pursuit of happiness when you can make people miserable LEGALLY? I have been on both sides of that by the way and I detested it all.
Don’t worry, it’s not copyright infringement for a few reasons. Mostly because of the fair use doctrine.
First… satire and parody are exceptions under the fair use doctrine. It’s a shirt being worn by an actual alien. It’s a joke.
Second is the market effect on the shirt. ie, how the intended use would impact the market for this use. It’s unlikely to also be very impactful on the sale of the shirt in any negative way because the purpose of the image in the comic is very different than the use of the image/sentence concept on a shirt. There is unlikely to be any negative major impact on shirt sales from it. Again, fair use doctrine.
Third is the originality of the new work. The work protected need to be new, which means if a work is not copied from other resources but is the result of the application of effort by the creator of the work. The shirt is a minimal duplication of the original work, and there’s a LOT of originality in this copy of it. Basically the shirt is being used as a very small one-off background joke.
Forth is profit vs non-profit. Well…. he’s not selling the webcomic, and he’s not selling any pictures of the shirt. DaveB using this in his comic is not diminishing the sale of the shirt as a result (in addition to them not being remotely in the same market anyway).
There’s also an argument about how creative the nature of the work being copied is, in the first place.
Btw, just so you know, Sydney wears a lot of superhero shirts – the Deadpool shirt, the Wonder Woman shirt, the Power Girl shirt. And those shirts were arguably far more original and creative than a one-off joke about ‘this is my human costume.’ It would be like trying to sue over wearing a shirt where you wrote the joke ‘This is my cheap-ass halloween costume.’ on it (it’s an older joke).
But mostly it’s protected because of parody and satire. The entire comic is basically a parody/satire of superhero comics and tropes about superheroes.
Source of knowledge – I -am- an IP attorney. :)
Fair enough.
After my friend spent 2 days in jail because he plagarized HIMSELF, (He copied a privately own thing into another privately owned thing no less!) I lost what little faith I had left in the law. No offense meant to you, but I refuse to trust a legal system that can do that.
And of course the judge gave his work to the plaintiff, because she had been living in the same house with him and deserved some recompense when he wouldn’t bow to her extortion. (Which is what it was.) So SHE sold HIS work and HE went to jail for plagarizing himself in a work SHE stole and then sold.
But hey, she had all the records altered, so it was TOTALLY legal.
That’s really odd then. Because you legally can’t plagiarize yourself, nor can you steal from yourself, nor can you infringe on a copyright on something you created. Was your friend for some reason not able to prove that it was his own work? I’m just a little confused on the fact pattern that you presented on your friend’s scenario. Sounds like you’re saying that she faked records to make it look like it was her creation, not his, then copyrighted that creation, then waited for him to copy it, then sued?
Colleges do this all the time and will kick you out for plagiarizing yourself from a published work. we were specifically warned about this in English 101.
That just sounds odd, because it looks like the colleges do not even know what plagiarism means.
The definition of plagiarism is “Presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement.” The key point in that definition being ‘someone ELSE’S work or ideas as your own.’ So by that very definition, you can’t plagiarize your own work. You can only build on your own existing work.
Maybe they were punishing not for plagiarism, but for not citing the studies on which a current paper was based instead? Technicality, but plagiarism is particularly bad, compared to simply not citing a study or previous paper that the student happened to write themselves.
That would not surprise me in the SLIGHTEST.
That said. again, no offense to you, but my trust has been abused by the legal system in the US far too many times for me to believe the legal system in the US exists for anything other than abusing people whether they deserve it or not.
My personal honor says I cannot trust people who act dishonorably. The list of lawyers, police and judges who I have personally seen act in such a way is far too lengthy to ignore. I may have no choice but to rely on the justice system in the US, but that does not mean I trust it.
That said? There is little reason to be rude and many reasons not to be. As my father was always saying ‘Respect the position, if you cannot respect the person’.
No problem. I’m not offended. :)
Colleges often do not allow re-use of a student’s prior work, and it falls under their plagiarism code. Usually depends on the syllabus for the specific course, though.
“Colleges often do not allow re-use of a student’s prior work, and it falls under their plagiarism code.”
I understand what you’re saying. I’m just saying it is, by its very definition, not plagiarism. :)
So the college is either being intentionally ignorant or is too lazy to just come up with another word other than plagiarism, like ‘original recent work.’
My college writing classes pulled the same crap. I never understood it either. A threat to try and force only original stuff, but it is still a jerk ass move.
Mental narrative: Yeah sounds legit, but what will our resident lawyer say abo… *check username* …oh. Right. ^_^
Sounds like this is perfectly reasonable fair use. Now we just need to figure out how to get the team wearing some Disney IP onto official Grrl merch. /s
Besides which, it’s unlikely that the words themselves are copyrightable in the first place. Titles, punch lines of jokes, and so on, are generally too short to be covered, unless they are being used as a trademark or service mark in which case it’s not a copyright that’s being protected.
My previous job was dealing with people who were screwed over by fake lawyers and unsupervised paralegals and idiots who protest that they could do what they did in ( insert name of country here )to people in who thought they were getting good and valid legal advice. One case, the idiot certified as valid a deed and mortgage that
Was issued by the Republic of Texas.
Had the word Tejas in multiple locations instead of Texas.
The deed was on parchment. Technicaly not in and of itself a problem, but….
The watermark on said parchment was clearly saying manufactured for historic reproductions not to be used for legal documents or valid copies.
The Morgage clearly stated (in French, not English which should have been a massive red flag in and of itself) that the mortgage was on top of a first mortgage for the actual purchase of said property.
The fraud that pile of crap was covering was that the people who thought they were buying a property appraised ( and it was a faked appraisal at that) at around 145,000. They had a down payment, and payed more than there monthly min. The bank was holding a valid mortgage for 280,000 at a higher interest rate than on the bogus mortgage. Granted the appraisals were fraudulent as well. The worst one I can remebor was a 350k morgage Writen on a house who’s actual value was less than 100k.
The way the fraud worked was the guy took the difference between the loan and what was lent, put a small part of the difference into a trust fund that payed the min on the mortgage, and sent the rest overseas. They actualy expected to be in Mexico then flying to wherever they expected to finally stay.
“This is my Human costume. I’m actually an Alien. ”
Daniel here. You can kinda see it first 2 times, but the last panel has the best view of the writing. Screwball worked it out first, credit to him, but he got distracted by the writing surface before he could post the reply. I guess the fact he worked it out BEFORE getting distracted is an improvement…
it says: ‘Join us on the Patreon now’
Current voting incentive drawn as gnomes… that would be wonderful.
There is one piece of fiction I’ve seen where a power bloc was genuinely honorable, but still scum. Superboy Prime, before Crisis, was on vacation in Hawaii when he was set upon by a local gang calling itself “The Silicon Dragons.”
He fought back. The local police were not happy. Why? The Silicon Dragons “honorably” handle all conflict with equal force.
If one of them tried to mug a guy and he fought back hand to hand, the mugger would fight him hand to hand until there was a winner, and end of story.
If the guy pulled out a knife, the mugger pulled out a knife, and on down the line.
Eventually, they managed to pull together enough power to fight Superboy on an even field, and after a fierce battle, with incredible amounts of collateral damage, Superboy condemns them. Yes, they’re “honorable” in that they kept to their “equal force” doctrine and challenged him fairly, but there’s a difference between being HONORABLE and being RIGHT.
They were honorable, but they were thieves, rapists, murders, and so on. The destruction of their base, and their mass-suicide to avoid capture and imprisonment did not impress Superboy or his allies.
Just one small correction, that wasn’t “Superboy Prime”. That was the clone of superman, Connor Kent. “Superboy Prime” was an asshole version of Clark Kent that tried to destroy the universe because it wasn’t like he remembered from the comic books he read.
Was going to mention…SBP was just….”yikes.”
Narcissistic doesn’t even begin to cover it.
“This is my Human Costume, I’m actually an Alien”?
Fight happened in New York City, no bail needed.
I was wondering where her visitor’s badge was, but now I see they’re meeting out front so she doesn’t need one.
Hostess Snowballs? I must assume that the reason this honorable man is demanding them is so that he can destroy them forthright. I’ll follow him to the ends of the Earth.
Next you’ll be blaspheming Twinkies or Her Ladyship Little Debbie. You can’t just go around throwing out such libelous opinions about snack cakes, this is ‘Murica!
I have a bone to pick with Little Debbie…actually a snack cake. the peanut butter sandwich one is.. very good. and impossible to find except in a few places. Am I the only one that like them? are they part of why I enjoy puns? (note to self- sneak one into pander’s lunch)
I live in Houston. I’ve seen people get 4 + boxes of Nutty buddy’s at a time. But I know that a lot of grocery stores distribute locally based on sales analysis. And local nowadays is ridiculous. I have a older regular sized Kroger’s, a larger Flagship, and one f the newer markets. The small store has the longest Lil debbys section, at three shelving sections, followed by the largest market store at two, while the flagship store barley has 2 shelf’s in one section total for all little Debies,
I have a similar problem with my favorite candy, Sunkist Fruit Gems. Whenever I see them sold at a CVS or a candy shop, I sort of go nuts and buy every single package.
They are VERY rarely found nowadays anywhere except occasionally in boxes at Bed Bath and Beyond, but at CVS I sometimes find them for about $1.50 a bag. And I can and have bought all the bags, sometimes up to 20 of them. Just so I can eat them over the next few months.
I do find them on Amazon as well but usually they’re more expensive than I’m willing to pay on Amazon.
Btw… speaking of Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Debbie-Peanut-Butter-Cr%C3%A8me/dp/B087488XPD/
Enjoy.
I like the warning that listing gives – “short shelf life, consider freezing”. As if we’re not going to consume the entire crate of those within a week. #PandemicLife #Sweatpants
OK yes I’d binge through the first 3 boxes and spread the rest out over a reasonable time frame, but that’s not the point. I’ll be fine, I can exercise self-control so long as they also don’t sell packs of- *scrolls to related listings* …Pander. What have you done?!
It’s not my fault. It’s their fault. Sunkist Fruit Gems taste too good.
The only way those monstrosities are edible is when you peel them like an orange to get that awful coconut crap off of it and introduce it to the garbage. Then you’re left with an ordinary chocolate cake thing that’s okay but worse than other snack cakes that weren’t designed to be inedible without modification.
“She has horns and blue skin. I think she might be an alien and/or a demon?”
“What about the glowing eyes?”
“Eh, lots of humans have glowing eyes.”
As I understand it, honor has always been a nebulous, malleable concept. Even those who claimed to follow the codes of bushido or chivalry very often failed to live up to the standards proposed in such doctrines, but would claim to have honor because they killed anybody who said otherwise.
The concept of a life debt tradition seems to be a purely literary phenomenon. However, in Adomnán of Iona’s Life of St. Columba (Book 2, Chapter 39), the author speaks of a man from Derry who swore an oath of slavery to a man who saved him from the death penalty. He later ran away and ended up in Scotland, where he met St. Columba.
The man, named Librán of the reed-bed, explains his his back-story thus:
“I killed a fellow. After this I was held in chains as a guilty man. But a relative of mine…came to my rescue in the nick of time. He paid what was needed to get me off though I was bound in chains, and he saved me, though guilty, from death. After he had bought my release, I promised to him with a binding oath that I should serve him all the days of my life.”
Source: Adomnán of Iona, Life of St. Columba (II, 39), ca. AD 700, trans. Richard Sharpe. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
While this was likely an isolated incident, the mention of a binding oathindicates that the idea of becoming a slave to a rescuer while not a tradition, was not entirely foreign to medieval Gaelic culture in the British Isles.
In Ancient Rome there was a general named Quintus Fabius Maximus who was known to take his time thinking up strategies instead of acting immediately. Hannibal had lead an army from Carthage with elephants over the alps, and Fabius recognized the superior strength of the Carthaginian army. Unable to beat them in a straight attack, he invented guerilla warfare; attacking their supply lines, hitting isolated groups of soldiers in ambushes, etc.
The Roman Senate got word of this, and called Fabius before them to explain what they termed his cowardice, for not attacking them more directly and openly. He chose not to directly argue with them, and instead applied his tactics to the Senate. Since he didn’t argue with them, they sent Marcus Minucius to lead multiple legions in a direct attack on the Carthaginians.
Hannibal pretended to retreat, only luring the Romans into an ambush. Thousands of Romans died and the day was only saved when Fabius and his troops showed up and used their more methodical and sneaky way of warfare to completely halt the Carthaginians’ ability to fight from a distance, and so the Carthaginians retreated.
Marcus Minucius said to Fabius “My father gave me life. Today you saved my life. You are my second father. I recognize your superior abilities as a commander.” He then served under Fabius’s command for the rest of his life.
I do not know if this “second father” thing was a tradition or just entirely Minucius’s idea.
The Romans had a tradition of adopting adult males who would be good for the lineage. Kind of similar to marrying your daughter off to the best guy to run the family business… only without requiring the daughter. The adopted person would take the family name he was adopted into, sometimes changing his entire name and keeping only a nickname in the middle somewhere.
“Gaius Julius Caesar” was a brand name more than a personal identity.
I see that a lot in Chinese Light Novels. The family head/clan patriarch having adopted a male child or adult into the family because of the need of a male inheritor in order to groom them because of the patriarchal nature of things. He might even intend to marry his daughter to the adopted son who has become part of his family rather than carrying on his own family name (which is why they often get orphans for the task, no clan ties outside of the adopting clan).
As an aside, the story of Fabius serves as a reminder to avoid taking action for the simple sake of taking action. Anyone who ever says something like “do you expect us to do nothing?” or “doing something is better than doing nothing” is someone who acts on impulse without having a winning strategy. Doing something can be worse than doing nothing. Doing a direct, frontal assault on a superior force is doing something, but doing nothing would be preferable to doing THAT, because you end up losing soldiers whose lives could have been saved and whose energy could have been better spent on a winning strategy.
A lot of jobs today require that you be the sort of person to “hit the ground running.” Those who are patient and have the ability to resist taking action, any action, no matter how detrimental, simply for the sake of taking action are often passed up for jobs, despite the fact that the latter is more likely to succeed in the actions they take and less likely to cause catastrophic failure.
“We have to do SOMETHING” and “think of the children” are the mantras of people who get praised for running head first into failure. It’s even justified with “sure, they failed, but at least they tried.”
That Libran guy is an oathbreaker: he pledged to serve his relative for the rest of his life, and yet, ran off to Scotland, probably at the first chance he got
All I have to say is that those heavy red heel-shoes look reeeeeeally uncomfortable.
Word.
Alternatively, maybe her feet are really shaped like that, and these are sensible shoes.
Not sayin’ I think that’s the case, but it would be an amusing way to subvert the ‘combat high heels’ trope.
They are clearly hiding her camel toes.
Those would actually work really well for Dabbler’s hooves, maybe Detla has a similar situation going on.
I thought that they were Orthopaedic.
Four words: High Tech Rocket Boots.
They actually look more comfortable than most high-heel shoes, simply for the fact they have a solid sole and a wide heel (reason most women have trouble in those shoes, is because they try and walk on the heel, which sometimes is barely a an inch diameter: they are designed to be worn on the tiptoes, the heel is used, like a kangaroo’s tail, for stability when standing still)
FYI – Detla’s are tall wedge boots rather than high heels.
Those, are not wedges, look at her toes
Maybe Honor can only exist between 2 individuals,beyond that it gets problematic to apply it a specific group of people.
We are all supposed to respect and honor all the soldiers/cop’s/firemen/paramedics/teachers but that’s really asking a lot to respect someone you know nothing about, because we all know some of the people in those profesions are pretty awful people. plus he would have most likely have asked for the whole snowball.
the strict honor code concept never should be applied to an entire civilization or even government. It gets messy when you try, Dark Horse trying this with the Yuatja (Predators) made them very one dimensional at times (not that the cliche roswell alien trope the newer movie tried to shoe horn onto them was any better), same when fantasy does this with orcs, trolls, goblins, lizardmen, and anyone else they try to make into a “warrior culture”, because once you move away from the front lines and spies and what not it gets awkward to apply this same mindset to every facet of their civilization to a comedic degree.
in real life it has never really applied to the entire culture outside of fiction and myth, you have special warrior tribes or clan that worked that way internally, but the rest of society and the governments didn’t, whether this be the assassin clan of the middle east (the people that word came from), or ninja or samurai in Japan, they were their own separate smaller groups within a greater complex whole.
Typically, it’s ‘respect the uniform, not the individual’, you judge the individual on their own merits and not tarnish the whole group for one bad apple
Actually, ‘assassin’ came from the word ‘hashish’, the drug they typically partook of either before during or after a mission
And after that, missions to steal the baked goods were unusually successful.
Yeah, surprising how many missions involved a bakery or snack store… :D
I always got the impression that the whole “You spared and/or saved my life, therefore you own my life” thing was invented as a way to keep writing slave characters after conventional slavery became unfashionable in western literature.
Like, how can you keep writing your aristocratic British adventurer as having an enslaved dark-skinned manservant without it being weird? It’s a tidy little package that combined multiple benefits:
1. The slavery was something that arose out of the slave’s culture, rather than having anything to do with the British.
2. There is some notion that the British man is now burdened by having to have this guy around, rather than him being the burden.
3. The British man had saved his life at some point, therefore unambiguously proving that he’s not an racist?
Soooo… have you noticed that there are still professional valets? Perhaps you might like to consider adding potential explanations to the list that are not bigoted against authors and real-life Brits?
I do not comprehend the point of this comment???
I’m sorry you personally identify so heavily with 18th century British colonialism that you’re offended by my post.
Ah, well, the phenomena of that dynamic has nothing much to do with 18th Colonialism, but if you’ve decided to add willful myopia to the mild bigotry, then there is no help for you.
the problematic influence of Robinson Crusoe on the literary world.
Dave….
Anything special planned for the end of November?
Orb #7 starts talking? We see the previous Orbwielder?
66 strips to go!
The timing of this is pretty comical as Sam from the Freefall comic was asked in the last week or so about his world and one of the replies was regarding how wars are fought, with squids changing sides frequently based on the bribes from spies (who’re the first line of offense and defense) to the point a well known trading company was the result of two armies being bought off until nobody knew which side they were on and they merged into the trading company.
The Three Rivers Trading Company, came about because the profit made from the shit stolen from the other side was more profitable then the actual battle, so they decided to restage the ‘battle’ some months later :D
Been reading that webic for a few years now, every Monday will read both the regular and colourized version for the previous week (no idea what the schedule is, and some weeks there is four or five pages to read, others just one or two, so weekly binge-reading is betterer for me)
Freefall has been updating regularly on Monday/Wednesday/Friday for quite some time now. Might it be time-zone complications? I’m not sure what time in what location the updates are scheduled for; they’re reliable for my evenings in UK time, but maybe less so for whenever suits you in NZ time.
There were some circumstances in chivalry in which a looser would offer ransom to the victor in a duel. If you wound up a slave , then you should not have picked a fight that you could not afford.
The Federated Unite Revolution Liberation Front
will never defeat the United People’s Revolution Freedom Resurgence!
But they might trade members.
And thus began the Bartman wars.
I’m going to be on the whichever side the hyper-intelligent sea otters are on. Probably the Allied Atheist Allegiance. Even if the United Atheist Alliance has control of the Time Child. They will smash their enemies skulls like clams upon their tummies.
And so, it begins.
I would normally side with the otters as well (they’re freakin’ adorable but still hardcore), but if the dolphins and cephalopods are on the other side I’m gonna have to throw in with them.
I don’t know if I should be ashamed, or disappointed in myself for knowing this is a South Park reference.
Be proud. BE VERY PROUD.
As Sydney says about anything nerdish. Say. That. With. PRIDE!
yeah but that episode was past the point I stopped liking the show, one of a few I stumbled upon later on.
the only thing the Allied Atheist Alliance is good for is road maps. they can never find you when you call and need help.
Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia.
Why did you have to remind me of that bloody scary book?
It’s slowly becoming the world we live in. Well, that and Harrison Bergeron.
SPLITTERS!
SF Debris did a whole video on Worf and Klingon honor, and the depictions of how little the code meant to the actual Empire so long as they “got results”. The breakdown talked about (if I recall correctly) intrinsic versus extrinsic honor. Worf had an intrinsic code, he was his own barometer of honor and that meant even if no one knew he’d done something wrong, HE would know and that was enough. Meanwhile much of the Empire had shifted to an extrinsic code, where you were as honorable as you appeared to be. So as long as all your dirty little secrets stayed in the closet, you could still be hailed as a paragon hero. And it also meant that you would go to GREAT LENGTHS to make sure those secrets STAYED in shadow, leading to ever spiraling acts of dishonor to maintain the image of honor.
That seems to be how things work in Chinese Light Novels, although it ends up called Face. As long as you present the proper Face that matches what’s required of you you’re good to go and committing genocide to protect your face is NOT a problem for many.
This is a major plot point in “Tacking Into The Wind”, the DS9 episode in which Worf finally concludes (with the help of Ezri Dax) that the contradiction in the systems of honor are leading the Empire to disaster, and therefore the honorable thing to do is to kill Gowron.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as886JnsjtQ
One cool way I’ve seen the life-debt thing get done is between Kaycee and the alien Vostok in the webcomic Magellan. Kaycee saved Vostok, and Vostok declared that he had a life debt toward her. However he’s saved her multiple times since, and she was a bit confused by that “I saved you, you saved me, isn’t the debt repaid?” and he was like “What? No, my life is so much more valuable than yours, saving you a few times isn’t going to be enough to repay it.”
It’s implied that he also cares about her because he considers her a friend, but I really like this approach to “honor” (though I don’t think Vostok himself says the debt is about honor) because it intrinsically places the burden on the more powerful. Vostok can’t neglect his life-debt because it’s also a status symbol, if he didn’t take it seriously he’d be admitting that his life isn’t worth much.
I like that. If I ever get back to writing someday I totally need to remember that and use it in a story.
Yeah, he was the one to offer the ‘debt’, he is the one to decide when the debt is paid
Same like the ‘life honour debt’ thing between Chewie and Han: Han freed Chewie from slavery, so Chewie pledged his life to Han and his family (which, at the time, he didn’t have any, and not talking that street-orphan bollocks they shoved into the solo Solo movie: he was not and orphan, and he damn well knew who his family was and where they were), Chewie saved Han’s live multiple times, but that was not what the pledge was about
https://politicallyincorrecthumor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/when-mushroom-wears-off-realize-you-were-not-space-smuggler-harrison-ford-dog.jpg
I’ll just slip this here for now
Japan has something VAGUELY similar, bu tit’s more just “Defeated armies take their loss iwth grace and commit seppeku”. Apparently, it was sometimes used to culturally justify SERIOUS atrocities, because “They lost so they had no rights’, but that ACTUALLY being the justification is…iffy.
In Japanese anime and manga I have seen the, you have defeated me and spared my life, per my people’s tradition I must now serve as your vassal till I am strong enough to fight you again. It seems more embedded in dojo mentality than actual military combat.
the closest thing aside from the taming the wild woman trope found in male power fantasy stories in the west that I am aware of is the far more common. You saved my life so now I owe you a life debt trope usually seen in cartoons and comedy, especially with some prideful warrior.
the you save me now I have to pay you back is even more common, oddly in younger demographic focused cartoons.
In European feudalism, if you surrendered, your captors ransomed you back to your family.
In Japanese feudalism, if you surrendered, your captors would kill you and your own side would kill your family.
That led to WW2, where all our experience showed that killing 10-15% of any unit would cause surrender, whereas Japanese fought to the last man.
Ironically, “fighting to the last man” didn’t produce any better outcomes, just more Japanese deaths. Once your force takes those 10-15% losses, it’s usually no longer a coherent unit, and the loss ratios become incredibly one-sided.
The you have defeated me now I must serve you, seems to stem from a power fantasy with clear erotic undertones…or overtones in some cases.
Aside from the odd anime, or the more common “you have spared my life/saved my life now I must repay my debt” which I see descended from Robinson Caruso *I am your slave now because you save me” with Friday; which I see done more as comedy in American shows, especially cartoons where they try to repay the debt so they no longer owe it.
the defeated must now serve you thing is far more “cringy” and seems to originate in Warrior Women, Amazon, type stories with the disturbing male power fantasy of “taming” the wild woman and making her a proper obedient wife *as these stories go*.
in terms of eyeroll it is right up there with the trope of the warrior woman who is defeated because of her modesty *disrobing her somehow renders this warrior who was trying to kill you unable to fight, and because you dishonored her that way she must now follow you, or because the male protagonist touched her breasts somehow makes her instantly fall in love with him*
former sadly Outlaw Star did, although Gene was surprised it worked, the later was a joke from loveru where the demon/alien princess is obliged to live with this boy because he accidentally grabbed her breasts when she fell on him.
defeated by being disrobed (I think later revealed she had to work for Gene), but yeah its a pretty dumb ending to this cool fight, and one of the things that reminds you this series shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
part 1 (the cool fight)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3bSkSpAUNA
part 2 (that dumb ending)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-WgJuujV-o
flipping this so the man must serve the woman is done more for comedy.
Honor, faith, justice. Historians are still busy counting the people butchered in the name of those three virtues.
I’ve read several works of fiction where Honor was a synonym for a societal or personal point system with well defined rules. The Klingons confused me for awhile until it became apparent that the translation of Honor to them was primarily related to victory in a straight fight.
Uh, well, yes…We Earthers DO have whole swaths of armies switching sides, but that mostly depends on how much money they’ll be getting paid. We call them Mercenaries.
Somehow, I don’t think anyone here would NOT think of that if they had read Schlock Mercenary at all…
How did nobody mention the time Lichtenstein went to war with 80 soldiers and came back with 81? Yes, soldiers do and did change sides a lot especially during the middle ages. As for life debts, mostly fiction but it does seem as though it is possible a few happened, though good citations are hard to come by for them.
“Space Butler” — is that an Excel Saga reference?
Honor is essentially a “presumption of honesty” system, in which absolute truth is expected in fulfillment of obligations among the mutually “honorable” parties. The idea is that, once proven “dishonorable”, you are never again trusted till you provide fully satisfactory compensation (i.e. probably never).
The problem of honor is a major theme in P.C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath series. The protagonist’s culture has an extremely rigid honor code–simply telling a lie is a sufficient stain that it can only be expiated by choosing an “honorable” death, and there are people who can swear to an oath with such force that it can break the mind of someone who is swearing it falsely.
However, part of that code requires obedience to one’s lord, giving rise to what they call “Honor’s Paradox” (which is actually the title of one of the novels)–what happens when one’s lord orders a dishonorable action? The conflict is tearing apart the structure of their society, as some of the lords (unsurprisingly) want to use the Paradox to keep their own hands nominally clean, getting their way while their underlings take the fall.
Why does the Archon uniformed person not get a mention in the Who’s Who? I thought the rule was “Speaks, gets a mention there.” She spoke. And it’s not like the thing is all crowded up with people, there are exactly 3 people in this comic, not counting dream/imagination sequences, and she is one of them.
I think part of the rules were they also had to be named.
I thought it was “speaks, and is likely to be seen again”, though there are a number of characters that would qualify under that as well that didn’t get in the Who’s Who.
Dave has stated the other rules are that he thinks they’ll be around again, feels like doing an entry, *and* has time that week. He tends to focus on the comic instead of the meta resources around it.
not related to today’s comics but the thing I’ve said for years I’d do I finally got around to attempting, a Grrl Power fanfic.
my first attempt at a Grrl Power fanfic, not really happy with the dialogue, a lot of guess work on my part; and I don’t know 100% how the vampires in this universe work. I have a few more scenes planned on a written outline, and these three scenes had been sitting in my computer over a month now so might as well share them.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Grrl-Power-fanfic-scenes-1-3-875769092
D: No, being your shadow means I have to find your weakness and kill you.
A: Oh.
D:
A: …We’re gonna be working together for a WHILE.
Incoming heavy-handed opposites attract love story…
She’s an alien assassin devising inventive new ways to kill him.
He’s curious enough to let her try.
Feels like Night City TV.
I’m down.
Ah well, Honour is dead anyway. (Odium killed him.)
Nice reference. Really interested to see how Kaladin and Dalinar deal with the new Odium.
After The Wheel Of Time I had sworn of long-form fantasy, but was The Way Of Kings was just too tempting. I had been hoped it was at most Trilogy, but ….
I just picked up volume 4; in the introduction the author says he was on track with his planned two 5-volume series.
It’s too late to quit, I suppose.
According to the author he is already 3 – 5 years behind schedule.
* 5 years behind
* 40% complete
* First book published 2010
****Ponders the math ……
Concludes: the expected completion date is still within my life expectancy.
—
Perhaps somewhere an author is stringing out their long-form fantasy because their first fan was a beloved elderly relative who refuses to die until the series is over.
Many of his other series are complete though if you’re looking for more, and equally good. He’s got several other incomplete ones I’m waiting on too though (Alcatraz, Skyward); hoping he finishes them before starting yet another new project.
*screeches*
….Path..of…Daggers…seven hundred FUCKING pages of inter-GODDAM-mision….
We do not forgive. We do not forget.
Glory to your house!
I should have learned from that volume, but I was caught up in the Sunk Cost Fallacy – so much reading time invested that I felt that I had to finish the series.
Even with Sanderson coming in and TBH doing a better job than the original author (peace be upon him), it was not a wise use of time.
I learned that there is a time of book splat. The moment when you realize that the author is writing a different story than you thought you were reading. Further reading beyond, and all time beyond that is wasted.
Now, for me, at that moment, right then the book goes splat.
Haha -“Time Of Book Splat!” – ITis a useful concept especially when combined with a comfortable relationship with my local used book store.
If I tire of a book (in your terminology it hits “Splat Time!”), it goes onto the sellback pile (“splat!”) and they give me 25% of the cover price.
I overcome my reluctance to stop reading by knowing that should I change my mind, I can get a freshly used copy at 50% of the cover price and pretend we were never apart. So far this has never happened but it is little self-deceptions like these that make the reading life efficient.
Just a quick review: Last night she was trying to shanghai a super away from Earth so they could be “studied” elsewhere, failed in the attempt, and today she’s looking to get hired up by a super. Ninja Senses Tingling! She wants to kidnap Achilles! There will be a sudden but inevitable betrayal!
Curse them! It is a fertile land, they could have thrived and ruled it together!
I guess being an elite super-agent and an indestructible crash test dummy pays really fucking well.
Oh, wait, that’s probably Archon HQ. I saw the giant A and assumed he had a mansion.
You just know that’s the way he likes to pretend it is, though. “Helipads A and B? That’s one for Achilles, and one for the B-listers!”
The ultimate way to beat our enemies is not to kill them. We try to show them our ways are better. Either it is Sun Tzu, or some ill-remembered Bastila quote from Knights of the Old Republic…
Dukat : A true victory is to make your enemy see they were wrong to oppose you in the first place. To force them to acknowledge your greatness.
Weyoun : Then you kill them?
Dukat : Only if it’s necessary.
“Sacrifice of Angels” – DS9
DS9 had some REALLY good lines.
Man, if she’s honor bound to be his body guard or something of the like, her life just got a whole lot easier. Achilles can just give her a folding chair and popcorn as her equipment. Maybe if things git dangerous, a camera so Achilles can record some of the stipidly deadly stuff he survives.
She could be in charge of freeing him when he gets buried. :). Which seems to happen very regularly according to Peggy.
Honor is a great thing for other people to have. I find it very convenient when manipulating them to suit my desires.
Check the long history of indentured servitude in multiple cultures.
Check serfdom, as it was originally intended.
Serfdom generally was (oriignally) supposed to be about taking care of the land while the landed noble took care of you. Yes, big fail in general, but in a tiny fraction of instances it worked out great. Until someone killed the moral noble.
Indentured servitude had a great many differences depending on the culture – and many people equate it with slavery due to the horrible implementation the english courts used to fill australia and the irish indentured slave trade.
I’m not making apologies for this – these systems aren’t what we strive for in modern day america.
But originally, a master was responsible in all ways for the indentured servant. And if a master mistreated an indentured servant, they could lose their position in society (India, China, most judiac cultures, most islamic cultures, Korea, Japan, American Indian that I recall from my history lessons)
Sadly, there’s a lot of confusion between slavery and indentured servitude – and part of that is because of the history. (England practiced both and ruled most of the world, normalizing their laws across the globe.)
In before the ‘actually…’ and name-calling.
Ack-Tually…. the meme is spelled ack-tually.
:)
I’ll leave namecalling to others though. I dont like to namecall. It’s mean :)
Akshually it’s akshually.
Hoisted on my own petard.
By Ro Jaws no less. He’s graduated from mere puns to clever witty comebacks!
I’m so proud. :)