Grrl Power #957 – Dabbler has a cunning dot plan
This is why I suddenly had to start doing the specular pass on Maxima, otherwise the choker would look like it actually added shininess to her. Max isn’t, or I should say wasn’t, medium-brown haired before the whole gold-plated phase. Dabbler just took a best guess. That will get sorted out later, but if Max got to choose her hair color (which, she actually can now) she’d probably go for black hair. It isn’t that she has anything against blondes, certainly. At least not natural blondes, and not even women who bleach their hair now and then, but if pressed, she might have some opinions about women who go ultra-bottle blonde. It’s not so much an aesthetic complaint as it is a concern with the behavior of many women who go that route.
Yeah, Dabbler probably should have predicted that, but it was kind of a last minute gift idea. Dabbler called Cora while she was out taking the mercs to wherever she did, and she swung by Spacener’s Gifts or Hot Topic. They have those in space, for fledgling space goths and people who need whoopee cushions that work in hard vacuum.
Personally I think being a goth in space would be a bad idea. If I worked in space, I’d probably wear day-glo with those reflective stripes joggers have, just in case I got spaced. Obviously I’d have one of those hard vacuum whoopee cushions with me as well I could use as an air supply. I’m just saying, wearing all black in space could have its disadvantages. And yes, in case you were wondering, I did recently catch up on The Expanse.
On a tangential note, I don’t usually pay a whole lot of attention to costuming in TV shows, but damn, if I was Shohreh Aghdashloo (the woman who plays Avasarala in The Expanse and also the mother of every Indian character in every other TV show) I would have had it in my contract that I get to keep my outfits from that show. Her and Mads Mikkelsen in Hannibal are well fucking dressed.
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Eh, most tech doesn’t work first time. Especially software….
And magic is software, right?
more often than not arcane magic is software converted to hardware(at least thats how i play most of my dnd arcane casters)
I thought it was closer to being virtualized than converted.
Codding combined with prayer yea
Codding + Prayer = Scandal
See the novel “The Wiz Biz” by Rick Cook for an example where magic, literally, Is software.
Also the Off to Be the Wizard series, which is a pretty fun light-hearted geek-out that starts with accidentally finding the source code to reality.
I’m fond of what I’ve seen of Deathmarch Rhapsody.
Protagonist-kun is learning to magic by relating to his programming experience.
Deathmarch is an entertaining take on the “nearly invincible Isekai character” genre. Though I personally prefer Overlord, he’s not *quite* so over-powered and in control.
I do hope there’s another season of both, though.
Oh, Deathmarch is just pure comedy, for me. Not a heckin lot of serious conflict. At least, in the anime that I’ve seen thus far.
Overlord (YAY SEASON 4 & MOVIE CONFIRMED!) is an _entirely_ different animal.
*save versus fangirl rant*
I am completely lost on what you’re both talking about.
And for some reason I feel ashamed by that fact. :)
1: Don’t be.
2: Go to CrunchyRoll, and start watching Overlord, from the beginning, sub-titled version.
(the dub will make your head explode painfully in a bad way)
Don’t get put off by the fan-service bits, it is purely for laughs, and make sure you have an enjoyable bottle of wine. You will want to savor those delightfully “oh, _you_ are _so_ fucked, and you haven’t a clue,” moments.
There will be many, of many sorts, for many reasons.
Thanks. :). I’ll check it out.
the way it is presented in this comic yes. and in a lot of newer works taking a que from arcane sorcery and alchemy texts on the research of magic and the concepts of the magical language and power words, true names, ect… which to a modern ear sound a lot of like programming language, just something they didn’t have a frame of reference for to describe back in the day but we do now…a lot like explaining what an avatar is.
funny enough a lot of these also take the idea that they can’t really hack or reprogram magic, but use those terms anyway, but rather in studying it are learning the seemingly infinite number of commands are and learning what they do in different arrangements.
an idea that lends its self well to the idea that magic is artificially made by higher dimensional beings using mulitdimensional machinery but gets woven into the reality so well that species end up thinking its natural even as they learn how to manipulate the programs and give the various commands, and the impression they are hacking or diving into the deep magic or whatever when really they are just learning how to use the command prompts better.
You know the saying “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”?
It goes the other way too. “Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science.” https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081205
My Favorite Saying!!
It reminds me of the argument that if prayer to a deity (any deity, let’s not pick on one) worked, scientists would analyze it and engineers would build technology based on it.
That sounds like a story (by Poul Anderson, I think) set in an alternate universe where they learned to de-gauss the antimagical effects of cold iron. By the time the story starts, the engineers are trying to make a nuclear-bomb defense by building a microchip which can recite a protective incantation in a few milliseconds…
Of course they would. The idea that there are some things that science can’t answer immediately fails the test of scientists immediately asking *why* there are things that science can’t answer. Anyone with a small child knows how that argument goes… why, why, why?
Now I’m worrying about Mutant Scientists, the ones with the extra WHY chromosome …
In Apprentice Adept by Piers Anthony, robot gets hand on book of magic. Gets extremely well in casting spells, because after all, it’s just following instructions.
Hi everybody,
There is another one from Florence Ambrose from Freefall:
“Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don’t understand ist.
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff300/fv00255.htm
In some cases software is magic, magic is software, and Scotty only turns off his personal air conditioner unit in TOS to allow the energy to be redirected for a little while.
It worked exactly as promised.
They just failed to properly define the initial scope of the project..
“Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic. [Florence Ambrose, “Freefall” 01372 January 22, 2007 ]”
The wisdom of the wolf. Once again, I wish the comments had a like button.
Debugging is love, Debugging is life.
When it comes to computer programming languages, Dabbler is an expertly cunning linguist.
Even if she doesn’t have tea with fellows?
Is Dabbler really going to help Maxima reduce herluster?
yes, she will become dull. at least until she accepts the inherent superiority of Dues (PtP)
Even… lackluster!!!!!!
WHY I OUGHTA!!!
take us to the Matte?
Dabbler et al may reduce the gloss on Max but she will never be flat
Um… am I the only one getting goosebumps when Dabbler starts experimenting?
Also, one of the major problems with black in space is not just the thought of being lost, but also heat retention.
Heat buildup is a BIG problem for spacecraft of any kind. Space has nowhere to radiate it after all. Add big power plants and weaponry and you get all kinds of problems. (Computers melting and crew dying type problems) I am willing to bet that a lot of space tech is figuring out what to do with excess heat. Black absorbs a lot more radiation than other colors, so… A black spacesuit might be a BAD idea.
Unless you’re near a major body, space has EVERYWHERE to ‘radiate’ it. The problem is actually that you can’t do anything besides radiate it. No conduction, no convection, evaporative cooling will run out embarrassingly fast. And unless your radiator is really hot, radiative cooling isn’t very powerful.
And, actually, black is the best color for radiating as well as absorbing, and unless you’re using fairly exotic coatings, you’re going to be doing both in the same proportion regardless of your color.
Current space suits are made white and insulated to minimize radiative heating AND cooling, and then use evaporative cooling to get rid of heat. (The radiator on the air conditioner actually sweats!) Which only works until they run out of water.
Radiative cooling is powerful if the radiator is hot OR you have a really big radiator (which may not be practical on a spacecraft). You can radiate heat into space from the Earth’s surface and freeze water, even if the ambient temperature is nowhere close to freezing. I got a really big shock the first time I pointed a remote sensing thermometer at the sky above me and got a reading 60 deg F lower than air temperature.
One of the first things the space shuttles did when they reached orbit was open the big cargo doors, even on research missions where they weren’t (intentionally) chucking anything out of the back of the space craft. That is because the inside of the doors contained the radiators. Without exposing the radiators to space as soon as possible, the space shuttle ran a very real risk of overheating.
I should have mentioned that the radiators covered almost the entire inside of the cargo doors, so the NASA engineers went with the really big radiator design you mentioned.
You kind of have to, to get the temperature down. Unfortunately, thermal radiation scales according to the FOURTH power of temperature; Cut the radiator temperature down by 10%, and you have to make it half again larger. And the radiator has to be the cold part of the system, heat runs downhill.
Radiators are the part they leave out of most SF space hardware, (Even real tech hardware depictions for non-techies.) while they figure significantly in good SF space battles.
Of course, in theory there are all sorts of fancy things you can do, like dumping your heat into a quantum black hole, or using an efficient laser as a radiator. We just don’t know how to do those things.
For a fantastic practical example of the importance and approaches of heat management, check out the NASA article/videos on why the Parker Solar Probe, closest mission to the sun ever, won’t melt.
Actually, you can radiate heat into space just fine. (otherwise the sun would not be able to heat us up!)
There is 3 ways a body can get rid of heat: Conduction (your hand gets cold if you hold onto dry ice too long), Convection (dont go swimming in liquid nitrogen, yo!), and Electromagnetic (a red hot iron ball in space will eventually cool!).
An object of a certain temperature will radiate at a certain electromagnetic wavelength. The red hot iron ball for example has a temp of about 850 degrees C. Human body radiates at about 10 micrometers (Solid Infrared territory)
A complete black spacecraft will have a “color” based on its hull temperature.
But, yes, a lot of space tech is about how to deal with excess heat, but mainly because the higher your hull temp, the easier it is to SEE you if you trying to run dark
Just step out of an airlock without a space suit and see how fast your body radiates every last BTU into the void.
No no, I’m sure Mr. Bezos with be fantastic in his black space suit.
So fantastic we can leave him outside for…a while.
…
Ever.
I want to space Jeff Bezos.
You are not the only one.
Lots of people who work for him would also like to see him try to breathe vacuum.
There will be random glitches in opacity.
Oh dear, I could see Dabbler possibly doing some…pranks…
Like that one in the Robert Asprin book where the Moll (don’t get on my case, that was her job title!) was wearing an outfit that had a completely transparent section that wandered randomly around on her dress?
Thing is, I think Dabbs isn’t into doing that sort of thing as a prank. She’d happily wear the dress, or let anyone who wanted to, but I don’t think she’d give it so someone without warning.
Depends on where you are bumping the goose
I don’t know if I would go so far as to say she’s “Caucasian”, more like alabaster white.
And the comic just reloaded with caucasian hue but still Max shiny.
She is ‘nerd’ shade of caucasian.
Really, nerd coloring is more about summer tan lines than base shading.
Most people don’t even know what ‘Caucasian’ actually means, let alone that it is a place (or where it is)
“Georgia? That’s that State in the South where they have the big golf tournament, ain’t it?”
I’ve always gotten a giggle out of the fact that half of Caucasian is Asian
After the techs degloss her she’ll be mat-finish Max.
Matte Max beyond Thunderdome.
I think you meant “Matte Max Beyond Thunderchrome”.
they might go for a satin finish.
It’s kinda shocking how effective the choker is and how much the just going around as a Caucasian lady is a disguise for Max.
Ah, that’s a nice heartwarming idea for a present. It has been established that Max has some problems with attracting too much attention. A magical gadget that enables her to go out incognito is a wonderful way for her to get away from being the center of attention once in a while.
It also has some serious tactical advantages. Imagine an army that can put all the offensive and defensive capabilities of an M1 Abrams main battle tank into something that looks like a Vespa.
Incidentally, once the shader fix is in (& properly adjusted), she’ll also be able to go full camo. Ninjas!
Well they managed the offensive part one time
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespa_150_TAP
Wow, hadn’t ever seen those before – this is now my 2nd-favorite ridiculous personnel field weapon (after this). I can easily imagine the two being used together with minimal modifications.
Hah, that’s cool!
Me, I like the Vulcan cannon mounted on a Prius:
https://youtu.be/aflx7nRZuRY
Mind you, firing it in full auto costs nearly $3000 per second…
Panel six is great. Poor Maxima.
Yeah, was gonna read the comments and comment if no one else did, so will add the comments here
Panel two: Maxi is thinking “I can have a normal life again?”
Panel six: “I’m still shiny?”
The hop in her eyes in panel two and the heart break in panel six, just want to give her a hug :(
Yes, I fully agree!
On both the eyes and the hug.
Also, when I first first saw panel 6 I really had the impression she was tearing up.
But alas, it was just the shading of the blue eyes.
Agreed, that false hope for normalcy after a decade (or two?) of stoically being super conspicuous… poor Max. Nerds to the rescue!
And then the last panel we have Dabbler’s “Oh, honey, you thought this is done? This is just the alpha build, now we go to beta.”
Max: “Ummmmm….”
Maxima’s original hair color.
Also from that page, the Who’s Who Entry for TEEN MAX says “Maxima was a sun-bleached dirty blonde in her youth…”
I’m telling you all, it was a space metallic-dragon egg.
Think about it!
Flight in defiance of physics, earth shattering strength, nigh invulnerable golden hide, impossible senses, and ability to essentially breath fire.
Everytime i read/hear something about woman bleaching their hair to go blonde i remember a passage from a novel i read some years ago where a woman does bleach her hair to go blonde and talks in der mind (thinks) during the process about how she already feels those braincells dying….
Of course. Hair follicles are directly connected to brain cells.
Shohreh also voice acted Admiral Shala’Raan vas Tonbay (vas Ranoch now?) in the Mass Effect trilogy. Recognize that voice anywhere.
As I dabble in digital 3D art, shaders can be very right – or very wrong. Good luck to the teamwork. ;-)
“Hey baby. Can I hack your appearance parameters?”
She looks positively emaciated in that color. Somebody give that girl another slice of cake.
All part of Kenya’s secret plan for more birthday parties at work…
The hard part is going to be keeping the eyes shiny and wet looking (but not too wet). Also, I just noticed the (not) metal shirt. Nice.
Panels 2 and3 seem to speak volumes to me about although she’s proud be be a golden goddess destruction she also really wants to be normal.
it’s convenient to pull the source code to make changes on the go
Re: Joe Guy
And magic is software, right?
Any sufficiently advanced mathematics is indistinguishable from magic.
The motto from The Laundry.
(a series that is a serious must read for everybody here. I mean, the author convincingly argues that Lovecraft wrote thrillers while to work of Ludlum e.a. were horror stories. That should say enough about the skill of the author …)
Also, “Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!”
I am not at all a fan of Lovecraft-type horror stuff, but I really enjoyed two of the Laundry Files series I read a couple years back.
… ok, re authors comments.
i kinda want a whoopee cushion that works in space.
i assume there is tech that would stop it becoming an amusing low velocity rocket though.
Having two outlets would probably suffice to avoid the rocket effect. Equal and opposite reactions, and all that. Of course, even if those don’t balance exactly, it’s only going to have one charge of gas in it.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/78/34/4b/78344b09a71e497e9d7639b4a74bfa52.jpg
There you go. a Whoopee cushion that works in space
I am disappointed in myself for not seeing that coming, but then again I really haven’t seen much of that iteration of the show.
Dave’s been changing Dabbler’s mouth. Whole face, really. It’s cuter but less ahem. Er. Appealing. Yes. Appealing. I was definitely not going to say pornorific.
Get a drink without being recognized, possibly.
Get a drink without being hit on (which her feminist mentality doesn’t like), impossible.
Why Wouldn’t a whoopee cushion work in space? assuming is filled when you take it out side?
a) no sound transfer in a vacuum, b) no back-pressure to cause the nozzle to vibrate.
So it’s like the tree falling in the Forrest? If you cant hear it it didn’t make a rude noise?
“in Space no one can hear you set off a whoopee cushion”
a space woopee cushion is a radio (probably illegally configured), power source, and a button. why is the radio probably illegal?- it broadcasts on many channels/frequencies including the safety channels. otherwise you might not know it went off. Telling an open space pun is probably better. though the blowback might be fatal.
Panel 5, Dabbler. There is a typo:
Which has it’s place. It should be its.
Panel 5, Anvil: dat neck joint though
Also fixed.
Fixed.
“They’re real, and they’re Specular.”
https://youtu.be/aQNkeugaAMc
Looks like Maxima will look like she did BEFORE opening that geode…
She kinda looks like Captain Janeway from Voyager with that look.
Blasphemy! Janeway is a redhead!
a woman’s hair color is a variable. Men’s hair is a declining function.
I was thinking that as well Ben.
Yeah, she was very pale and and VERY blonde in the flashback when Deus showed her the half geode he got his hands on.
Maybe DaveB forgot? Lol
I didn’t forget. Dabbler just didn’t know, and Max might want to try something other than “sun bleached blonde”
My post was in response to Black Rose’s, but my cellphone had other idea lol
I(and probably everybody and their grandmother) too would probably play a lot with different variation, if it was as easy as pressing a button XD
**Really** hope that Max takes off the choker before they start fiddling with the software.
Aww… but that’s the fun!
Montage of wrong variables…some of which should be animated….
Stripes…checkers…pokadots…”She’s gone plaid!”.
I’m sure one of them will be Simpson Yellow.
Maybe a Latina look is the least Uncanny they can manage for now.
Wear sunglasses to conceal that the eyes aren’t moist.
Actually it would really speed things up if she kept it on, and there should be almost 0 risk to just tweaking the visual look. a) Max is nigh-invulnerable, b) the choker should inherently be limited to outgoing visible light with minimal power, and c) 3 of the smartest nerds on the planet are going to be checking each other’s work. Rendering/shading engines are one of the staples of any software engineering curriculum, and Dabbler’s an expert on tweaking appearances – I expect them to have something working to a very high level within 24 hours, if not by the end of the party.
I do hope we get a quick montage of the mistakes along the way though. :D And sunglasses would be a good low-tech solution for version 1, but they’re going to need skin, hair, and nails all handled differently at some point so adding a rule for eyes shouldn’t be much harder.
zebra stripe test pattern, that for fanservice reasons covers the clothing. the ‘flash’ function would be for the pateron.
I like to think the trigger for the choker’s dev-menu is “Dabbler cracks her knuckles”, rather than whatever occult shapes she’s throwing with her lower right hand.
There are times when i forget dabber has 4 hands… even when she using them they just seem natural -.-
For space, unless you’re right next to a powerful light source, wouldn’t it be best to make sure you’re reflective to radar frequencies? I assume that whatever hibernation technology is available would need to chill you down as much as possible so that you aren’t losing too much energy to heat radiation, so if you’ve gone Dutchman for more than half-an-hour the thermals are probably fading by then.
Thinking further, a space-survival suit should probably have an emergency radio response programmed in: If it gets pinged on a frequency that is known to be set aside for emergencies, it sends out a ping in response. (If you need stealth, because you’re not supposed to be there but are hoping that someone friendly comes for you, a number of space super-tech Pretty Good Privacy protocols likely exist.)
If Maxi has a perception ‘problem’ with bleach-blondes, then maybe what she should do is go bleach-blonde and show that they are not all brain-deficit
I think Maxima would want to get less attention and she feels like blondes get more attention.
She would look like an LotR Elf if she did that.
You sure Anvil isn’t wearing a choker (obviously not as a choker), three panels and three different skin-tones and hair colours…
Black’s real close to purple. But, if that choker has variable options, smoking hot black haired Latina/Wakandan. Red haired, emerald eyed, very white, Irish, big leprechaun (hmm same with green hair, think Lt. Shamrock). Oohhh platinum blond Storm! Options are good!
Maxima was born Caucasian, you really think its a good idea for her to dress up as other ethnicities?
I think her personally, her society, and general morality may have some issues with that.
Thought Maxi was born in America, not in Europe…
Caucasian means white. It is an old way of saying it but it is still used. Not as often on applications as it used to be but it is still used. It just means of European descent.
and the point still stands, do you really think it is appropriate for her to be disguising/dressing herself up as people of other ethnicities?
The point of a disguise is deception. The more unlike your natural appearance you can make a disguise, the more effective it would be, no?
black face and cultural appropriation. Those are what I was getting at. Even if no harm is meant by it, the insensitivity and bad PR are still problems.
Problem is, most people who use that term has zero clue where it originated, or that it’s an actual place
I think an astronomer would disagree that Maxima is not metal.
Apologies if this had been suggested when Maxima’s t-shirt first appeared. I do not get the chance to read all the comments any more.
But the real important question we should ask ourselves is if Max is metal in the musical sense. We know she can dress in a metal fashion and sometimes have a dour metal attitude but we don’t know anything about her taste in music.
“I am Golden Max ….
She was turned to gold
From the stuff that rock did hold
It was purple slime
No one’s certain just what kind.
Now the time is here
For Golden Max to spread fear
Running as fast as they can
Golden Max dates again…”
Well, that did not go in the direction I expected …
Heh.
I don’t think that Max will like pop, therefore she could only be into metal.
Max: Oh… well. I, uh… appreciate the thought…
Dabbler: You say that like this is OVER.
Max: Uh-
Dabbler: Reality?? Challenge ACCEPTED!!
Also, RE Avasarala’s outfits, I agree – including, and especially, her spacesuit, which she looks damn fine in.
Panel 5, Dabbler’s speech balloon. The first it’s is incorrect. It should be its without the apostrophe. The second use of it’s however is correct.
Wearing black in space is only a bad idea if you’re near-ish a star, because of the heat you’d catch. Unless you’re wearing ultra all-absorbing fantasy matter, there are huge chunks of the EM spectrum you’re still very visible in. Any even if you did, you’d probably register as a clear shadow against the background radiation.
Sydney’s encyclopedic knowledge of genre motion pictures should qualify her as the arbiter of the final result.
Maybe she should be there helping as they adjust Gamma and such.