Grrl Power #996 – Dat ass…assin
Other methods to detect succubi – Submerge them in baby oil… then have them wrestle home team slave girls Or (sexy young) nuns. Do demons melt when they get wet? Liberally spraying all suspected succubi while they wear thin white T-shirts will reveal the truth and possibly other things. There’s always the chrome trailer hitch test.
Succubus glamors quickly went from being a fun party trick/a way to get more mileage out of your artisanal sex slave/replacing whole wardrobes full of naughty costumes with whatever the pre-medieval Slave Leia and sexy nurse equivalents were… which I guess was actual slave costumes and sexy… witchdoctor? Anyway, it went from that stuff to having to slip past royal bodyguards, the skills of other arch-mages, even stuff like Faye court mages and demons and everything. That’s why Dabbler was so impressed with Sydney’s True Sight. Once you have a legit resource for spying and assasination like that, you’re not going to limit to just snuffing out the occasional viceroy or even king. That’s how you start toppling empires and ruling from the shadows.
“Widely ranged stock” being an incredibly delicate euphemism for mix and match body parts, organ farms, rooms full of hook chains and dangling torsos, attended by some guy with an apron so slicked with gore it just looks like he’s got a side of beef strapped to his front. Possibly a pyramid shaped hat.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
Almost finished restoring that lost scene. Then it’s on to the sex scene I skipped over, though I’m about 10% tempted to just leave [And then they bang] in.
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I’m with Max in that last panel.
Also, while it was a rather depressing beginning, I love getting the succubus backstory in this universe, thanks Dave!
2nd
3rd
4th’d.
Comeuppance is fun for the whole family!
5th’d
After that super painful last strip, this one is getting it to recover.
so glad it felt balanced between ickky enough to be believable source of succubi, but also will end with solid comeuppance; 5 bucks on the ‘slave’ aspect being basically a biological formality of their inherited enchantments, but the current state of the binding is as casual as dabbler is clearly hinting at
It seems like really bad design, building something that’s motivated to harm you and then engineering in restraints. A much better design, both inherently safer and probably easier to do, would be to make it so that it enjoys fulfilling its designed role. Basically a woman with cosmetic magic and an incredibly high but rather undiscriminating sex drive. Imagine clean floors brought your vac-bot to orgasm. The thing would be relentless in its pursuit of dust and debris!
On another note I have never understood why so many girls want to be not just dominated but in many cases abused verbally and sometimes even physically. One girl wanted me to hit her. At first I thought it was role-play, then I thought it was a set-up or something and when I realised it was sincere … ick. I can’t do that, I like girls. I can be dominant if it seems like that’s what they need, but abusive? It’s not in me. At any rate, I mention this because I can tell you there are real live girls out there who would be delighted to find themselves in a dungeon. It’s quite creepy.
“On another note I have never understood why so many girls want to be not just dominated but in many cases abused verbally and sometimes even physically.”
Happens with both guys and gals. Having a kink for masochism with a physical edge to it, that is. Not sure why but I’m not a masochist. Very allergic to being subjected to pain here. I’m thinking just like some people are into power fantasies, other people are into weakness fantasies, which sometimes means they’re into pain or being debased as part of the fantasy.
Or maybe, and hear me out–maybe they are deeply scared psychologically, and need counseling.
Maybe. Maybe not. That requires a bit too much of an assumption of what’s going on in other people’s minds for me to take as definitive though. Seems more like something you’d have to determine on a case-by-case basis.
> On another note I have never understood why so many girls want to be not just dominated but in many cases abused verbally and sometimes even physically.
I’ve had this conversation with a few different people and the answers are as unique as the individuals, but there are certain commonalities:
* Being dominated is enjoyable because it means stepping out of social restrictions. Under normal circumstances there’s always a voice in the back of your head mumbling about social propriety and how “good women” don’t do because it’s dirty or whatever. That’s not an issue if you’re being compelled.
* Being dominated is enjoyable because it means a lack of responsibility. On a normal day you need to be thinking about walking the dog, paying the bills, whether you bought milk, etc etc. While being dominated none of that is relevant; your dominant is responsible for all the planning, for making sure that all the preparations are dealt with, etc etc. There’s no choices to make or things to worry about so you can simply be in the moment.
As to the verbal ‘abuse’: One person’s abuse is another person’s transgressive empowerment. It can be hot to reclaim ‘bad words’.
As to the physical ‘abuse’: I’ve never met a woman who wanted to be punched in the face full force. Being spanked or flogged or slapped, sure — measured amounts of pain lead to an endorphin rush that can be very pleasant. Think “runner’s high” for a non-sexual example — heavy, exhausting exercise that leaves you sore the next day can feel really good.
There are plenty of other reasons for each of these pieces, but these are common ones.
Also, it’s probably not nearly so common as movies and the porn industry would have you believe. In fact, portrayals of domination (and many other ‘non-traditional’ behaviors) in these mediums have probably driven their frequency up dramatically, as people started learning their norms from entertainment instead of personal experience. Entertainment produced by a very small minority with a very non-traditional attitude about the role of sex in society, no less.
Ehhhh…you’re not wrong, exactly, but I would probably phrase it as “its popularity has increased as people have been exposed to the idea and realized that it worked for them.” Leaving aside a few edge cases such as professionals who are doing it for the money (e.g. “gay for pay” where a mostly heterosexual actor/actress does a homosexual porn movie because it’s a check), people get into BDSM because they feel an instinctive attraction to it, not because they saw a kinky movie and thought “Well, I guess I have to do that now.”
Not so much “I have to do that now” as “oh, that’s what people do so I should do it too I guess?” I’m no expert on the topic and not qualified to debate specifics, but a close friend is a family therapist who assured me there is a significant part of the population seeking help for attitudes and performance issues around sex, because the norms they learned from porn (whether as their first experiences or later on) destroyed their ability to enjoy or connect to their partner.
@Bikkie
“On another note I have never understood why so many girls want to be not just dominated but in many cases abused verbally and sometimes even physically.”
I’ve been in tons of relationships with multple involved. I *much* more often saw the guy wanting to be dominated. It’s definitely not a “girl” thing, it’s a “human” thing. And it’s not that we, as humans, *want* to be slaves, it’s that temporarily *acting* it can be pleasurable.
After lots of looking into it, there’s two reasons:
1. It’s a “my life is way too stressful and I want to hand the reigns over to someone else for thirty minutes so I don’t have to stress about anything” thing.
2. Human sensations aren’t like speed or pressure dials. They’re more like velocity change meters. If you grab something cold and hold onto it, and then grab something room temperature, that room temperature thing is going to feel hot. Similarly, some pain before the pleasure is going to make the pleasure feel a lot more intense.
They don’t work like anything hydraulic. They work like NAND gates, there are threshholds and cascades. Furthermore many emotions that are considered “opposite”. They aren’t. What matters is how many neurotransmitters of the right kind your brain still has in-stock at the time of stimulus. If you just so happen to have a generous amount enough of the required neurotransmitters to go over your particular brains’ threshhold for both, you can both love and hate someone.
It’s not just women who want to be hit. There are men out there who love to be used, abused and dominated. That’s how dominatrices make their living, after all. There are even men who carry it to the length that they want to be cut with knives, burned (in a controlled fashion), crucified, whipped until they bleed, etc. It’s not a female weakness; it’s human kink.
Accept that these people want to be hurt. It may not work for you. It may make you sick. It may be completely incomprehensible. But it’s the dark side of human nature.
:rolling,eyes: rebel death robots about as bad a cliche’s get and from the reaction to the movies, female rebel death robot is even less interesting. Add onto that Max’s obvious vindictive anticipation… :rolling,eyes: Can we get past this pointless derail? Demons have bad histories, woop. What about that while invasion????
After that last strip, repairs need to be done. Dave is repairing, and I will stab a reinforced and sharpened hat pin through the neck of anyone who prevents Dave from fixing the problems of the earlier parts of the origin.
…
Only metaphhorically though; afterall, it’s the internet, kind of hard to reach through the screen.
what is there to repair other than that this derail happened? Dabblers origin was fine as was. She’s a succubus. Ok. She claims to be part human, well, succubus fuck humans a lot, that’s sort of their thing. Succubus are slaves, that whole summoning contract thing is pretty self explanatory. But now succubus are research projects by artificer corporations who wanted to engineer sex dolls? OFTLOG…
Yeah, who needs a setting to have interesting and established mythos, one that actually gives a background to succubi and explains their unique abilities moreso than just “so demons”. Who needs an origin when we can just assume based on vague external mythos.
And this isn’t 1 to 1 with most typical death robot rebellion plots, since it involves souls and active exploitation and war training, and isn’t a human genocide plot. It’s not superficial “technology will wipe us out” scaremongering. It’s “exploiting someone while also training them to be lethal can and does backfire”.
| It’s not superficial “technology will wipe us out” scaremongering.
Yes it is.
|It’s “exploiting someone while also training them to be lethal can and does backfire”.
You seem to be laboring under the belief that this wasn’t the same message in Every Other robot rebellion story.
and Succubus/inccubus HAVE a mythos. They started out as Germanic romance spirits, got corrupted by the catholic church as a medium for talking about village rape. Each of their abilities has a story behind it and even if you don’t know the specific legends, if you know other succubus stories you probably know most of it.
Making them into an attack on sex dolls is a pointless derail. I mean, on one hand this comic is full of derails, but at least before they were pointing out the plotholes in superhero series. This is just “lets justify maxima’s rage”.
Sometimes a concept appears more than once in literature because it’s a solid concept.
“The Hero’s Journey” for example. Vampires. Spunky Dweebs Who Use Their Brains. Star-Crossed Lovers.
Would this include Killer Sex Robots Who Gain Free Will? maybe, and if so, who cares? It fits the story neatly (this is a relationship comic, not a rock-em, sock-em comic).
Ultimately what matters is whether the thing is satisfying, and nothing satisfies everyone – that’s why succubi have glamours.
Because I’m irritated and exasperated that a super-battle was glossed over in favor of gossip and an invasion arc derailed for a wall of text who’s only point is to justify Maxima’s rage boner. As if a demonic invasion wasn’t sufficient.
Guess what? This comic really isn’t about super-battles. They happen, on occasion, but they’re not the main focus, in an inversion of typical superhero comic book stories.
It’s a comedy in a superhero setting. The super battles are mostly there to deliver jokes like for example clothes being blown up and a fiend ex boyfriend suddenly appearing from nowhere. Just go with rule of cool and rule of funny.
Well, Ro Jaws, as I said earlier in the thread, _this time,_ the derail isn’t cool or funny or particularly insightful.
Torabi, perhaps, but superbattles have been the biggest and most common arcs so far, and generally the best part of the comic.
“ superbattles have been the biggest and most common arcs so far, and generally the best part of the comic.”
Maybe when binging it but when reading daily, I’ve found the dabbler science corners snd ‘slice of superhero life’ and ‘discovering what the orbs do’ parts to be the most fun parts of the comic.
If it was all super-battles, I wouldn’t be reading. You liking super-battles has given you confirmation bias. The super-battles are actually infrequent.
Take the biggest one, for example: The first one with Vehemence. During part of the battle, Sydney and Vehemence were literally chilling and watching the battle and commenting on what everyone was doing before the big battle. Math’s martial arts skill was more about flirting with the other martial artists, “For Whom the Death Tolls” was more just awkward discussing of his name back and forth. And a lot of it was just set up for jokes. It was more a setting of various character interactions that just had fighting as a background. The only part I’d consider REAL action in that fight was when Vehemence stepped into the ring, and that didn’t last *that* long.
The first fight was a staged robbery and was more a joke than anything.
Sciona was more chasing than fighting until hitting the Alari Homeworld and she offed herself.
The Fell Battleship was a one-shot (and a pun on top of it… the Fell fell)
There was when those people tried to steal Sydny’s Orbs and Kidnap supers on the spaceship, that was a bit of a proper fight, but felt more like a crime and order show.
Not once have they fought Deus, who’s the primary antagonist(?).
This series as been running for…what… a twelve years? And there have been maybe 6 fights? That’s one fight every *two years*
“If it was all super-battles, I wouldn’t be reading. You liking super-battles has given you confirmation bias. The super-battles are actually infrequent.”
I’m assuming you’re responding to Dannik, not me, since I agree with you that I prefer the non-super-battles, but I figured I’d respond anyway.
“The only part I’d consider REAL action in that fight was when Vehemence stepped into the ring, and that didn’t last *that* long.”
To be fair the part where Vehemence finally stepped into the ring took almost 40 strips, from September 18, 2014 to Jan 22, 2015. Four months. Not exactly a small amount of time. The rest of the restaurant fight took another 6 months, starting March 27, 2014. The total fight took 10 months. Starting with Comic #200 and ending with Comics #286 to #290. Between 86 and 90 comic pages in total. Reads a lot more smoothly when binging than when you’re actually reading it realtime and having to wait for each new page.
“Sciona was more chasing than fighting until hitting the Alari Homeworld and she offed herself.”
Very true, and the actual fighting with Sciona never really lasted very long since her Modus Operandi tended to be ‘fight to hold them off long enough to escape to finish my goal of getting off of Earth’
“The Fell Battleship was a one-shot (and a pun on top of it… the Fell fell)”
NINJA HIT SQUAD EN ROUTE!
“There was when those people tried to steal Sydny’s Orbs and Kidnap supers on the spaceship, that was a bit of a proper fight, but felt more like a crime and order show.”
That’s more like two fights than one. The main fight was with the aliens then the super mercenaries, then the second fight was Sydney vs Concretia which flowed REALLY well.
Then the Hench Wench stuff happened and made it drag on until it became insufferably long. :)
Even when I binge it, Hench Wench lasted waaaay longer than it should have. Probably should have ended with Arianna making the winning move to make her powerless with LEGAL SUPERPOWERS! :)
LAWYERS REPRESENT YO!
“Not once have they fought Deus, who’s the primary antagonist(?).”
Because Deus is not an antagonist. He is the paragon of humanity, who only wants the best for all people, super or not, his benevolent hand stretching throughout for an era of peace, harmony, capitalism and intellectual discovery for all! Truly, he is the secret PROtagonist more than anyone else in the comic. All praise Deus, amen!!!!!
*ahem* Where was I?
“This series as been running for…what… a twelve years? And there have been maybe 6 fights?”
Actually I think it’s closer to 15. Still not a ton over 12 years though. And some of the fights sort of overlapped or were with the same person over and over.
The fights I recall are:
1) Bank Heist (as you said, more of a staged robbery than an actual fight)
2) Restaurant Fight + Vehemence Fight (I’ll count them as one since it was one after the other, and both were ultimately because of Vehemence)
3) Mannekiller Fight
4) Super Mannekiller Fight
5) Sciona Fight #1 (mostly Sciona trying to escape Maxima and Maxima blowing up a bridge)
6) Sciona Fight #2 (at her lair, again mostly Sciona trying to just stall them enough for her portal to form so she could escape Earth)
7) Sydney vs Squidwards Fight
8) Fel vs Arc-Swat Fight
9) Alien Mercs vs Archon + Super Mercs vs Archon (I count them both as one fight since it was one right after the other with overlap and no pause between)
10) Concretia vs Sydney
11) Cora vs Splatty McSplatterwalls Chunkysalsa the Third
12) Maxima vs Hench Wench + Concretia vs Hench Wench + Maxima vs Hench Wench #2 (all overlapping)
13) Vehemence Sparring Archon
14) Deus’s bodyguards vs the Dictator of Galytin
15) Sydney vs Spider-Lady Hunter-Woman + Spider-Lady Hunter-Woman vs Council/Archon
I’m not counting the mugging on the Fracture, which was an off-screen fight, or the fight Maxima had with that anti-alien Super, since that was just a single panel to show what Maxima’s been doing while waiting for Sydney’s triumphant return. And I’m not counting the Tom vs Maxima fight which literally was just one panel.
If anything, I think the fights were the slowest part of the comic, narratively speaking, except for the Sydney vs the Squidwards fight and the SuperMannekiller fight (at least the Sydney portion) since both of those served to unlock different powers of the orbs. The initial mannekiller fight was also pretty cool since it showed off some of the abilities of the secondary characters on the Council, like Krona, Katrina, Clover, Icon, Master Gault, Elsbeth, and I suppose maybe Izangi (although he did absolutely nothing).
It’s funny how you get some people saying “Why won’t they stop talking so the plot can move forward?”, and another group saying “Why won’t they stop fighting so the plot can move forward?”
I’m not certain that there is a long-term “plot” to move forward at all. My impression is that the comic is supposed to be an indefinitely long series of vignettes about the characters, under the conceit of a superhero story.
“It’s funny how you get some people saying “Why won’t they stop talking so the plot can move forward?”, and another group saying “Why won’t they stop fighting so the plot can move forward?””
I know and yes, it’s funny. But I’m in the camp of preferring the ‘stop fighting so the plot can move forward’ camp mainly because DaveB described the comic as “the extraordinary person in the ordinary circumstance.” Superhero fights are not ordinary circumstances.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/about/
To quote DaveB, literal word-of-God stuff:
“To me, the most memorable moments in comics and shows are the scenes with amusing character interaction, you know the issue the X-men spend playing baseball, or the moments where you see the ice queen warming up to the underdog nerd character, or the scene that establishes that two tertiary characters have a buddy cop thing going. I find that’s the stuff I remember and enjoy the most, not what villain they fought that episode. If Wolverine fights Sabertooth for the 47th time, who really cares? But if the artist draws him drinking a Strawberry Yoohoo afterwards, that’s the sort of thing that people remember.
I wanted a comic that focuses mostly on those interstitial scenes I enjoy so much. So the comic is largely “day in the life” It is still a superhero comic though, and there will be some fighting of course but I suspect that any fighting Sydney gets involved in will be a little more slapstick than you’d normally get.”
This is what DaveB was clearly going for when he made the comic, so this is what I tend to expect FROM the comic.
“… afterall, it’s the internet, kind of hard to reach through the screen.”
‘you sure ’bout that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swMmHXQjZJ0
You call that a punch through the internet, this is a punch through the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hH8rxarVG8
The entire point of this comic is that it is purposefully one giant derail. Dannik has been reading it this far, and hasn’t figured this out yet is …odd.
:rolling,eyes: rebel death robots about as bad a cliche’s get and from the reaction to the movies, female rebel death robot is even less interesting. Add onto that Max’s obvious vindictive anticipation… :rolling,eyes: Can we get past this pointless derail? Demons have bad histories, woop. What about that while invasion????
Microsoft rescinded their license and they cant invade without power point it just wouldn’t be done. Impress is just unimpressive.
Dannik says: “I’m not enjoying this arc and don’t think anyone else should enjoy it either so I demand that the author change the free story to fit my preferences!”
FTFY.
Roll with it, friend. Not everything works for everyone but everything works for someone. If you’re not enjoying it, come back in a month or two when you can click past this part and get back to things you do enjoy.
I again would probably be the the one A hole mage at the meeting ,putting my hand up and asking the whole group if making the beings that we had formerly been using as sex slaves into living weapons was actually a clever thing to do.
And the other mages would simply assume that you were trying to dissuade them from research, because you are afraid that they’ll perfect it first.
Given the timeframe I can see the occasional love story amid the slaughter. And in one or two cases where the succubus has a grudge and a dark sense of humour the hardest part (as it were) would be closing the coffin. Or wiping the smile off his face.
Looks over at every civilian, betterment of mankind invention that the military took…and for better or worse the technology only advanced to the point that it did once it got back into civilian hands because the military had funded its research.
the two big pushes for inventions seem to be *toys* and *weapons*.
Both are fun to make, break, and use.
…
Don’t read into that.
> the two big pushes for inventions seem to be *toys* and *weapons*.
And porn. Don’t forget the porn.
Seriously, when proper haptic interfaces are finally created, the first thing they will be used for is enhancing porn with a tactile component.
Second thing.
The first thing will be militarty training.
But it won’t be very long after that.
Funny thing that I heard once. Apparently the military discovered that xbox-style video game controllers were better for controlling drones than their standard controllers, so they started designing the controllers to be more like video game controllers :)
Makes it easier to train soldiers to pilot drones when it’s a style which they’re already used to using since childhood.
To be fair I don’t know if this is a true report or a rumor – havent been able to find any info on it beyond a few youtube videos – but it sounds true. :)
“Your mages were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to ask if they should.”
to paraphrase another meme,
scientists: We’ve done it, we’ve built the famous Destroyhumanityatron from the classic sci-fi story, (Don’t build the Destryohumanityatron)
“we do what we must, because we can.”
“For the good of all of us…
Except the ones that are dead.”
Fav lyrics from Fav game
There’s no sense crying over very mistake
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake!
So the science gets done, and you make a neat gun – or gunner, as case may be.
“For the people who are still alive.”
For Science!
I’m just guessing that the one guy who had a qualm or issue or perhaps even a pinch of common sense regarding turning these sex slave creations into assassins….
Was probably the one who brought the bear to the second meeting.
However, no one ever expected the bear to be the ultimate assassin.
Two weeks to #1000.
*wags tail in eager anticipation*
*random kitten begins playing with wagging tail*
Prob not a random one – IIRC, Yorp owns a few kittehs of his own.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard that saying, but it’s full of wisdom.
The variant I remember was delivered to Jon Snow in GoT: A man can own a woman or he can own a knife.
This is such a twisted leap, you go from making flesh golems for sex or getting off to making freaking assassins who killed their owners. Seriously, you make new magic and the first thing someone does with it is to try to get themselves off? Also, why would the owners allow them to kill, but have no safe guards against killing the owners?
Because hubris is a very real reason for the downfall of empires and once great nations.
It’s true. The major reason for the downfall of Rome was “The greedy got too greedy.”
the fall of rome is hyper complex its not just reduced to that, one mayor problem was for example that their entire system was designed around slavery and to get more slaves they invaded new territory, rinse and repeat until the territory that they have is soo fucking big that its imposible to police all of it with pre medieval technology, so they couldnt expand any further because the army was stretched thin which lead to less slaves which put a huge limit to their industrial capacity and then you have further complications like rebelions which were getting harder and harder to put down when the empire is soo big that once a rebelion starts at one of the ends of it it can take months before the army can mobilize to stomp it and at that point the rebels are well armed and have dug in so its far harder to root them out
then you have the constant attacks by enemy empires and barbarians, internal conflict, fights for supremacy and natural disasters and its incredible that rome managed to survive as long as it did, and even after rome “fall” a good chunk of the imperium survived and keep going for another 1000 years
All that really does simplify down to “The greedy got too greedy.”
The part about constant attacks by enemy empires and barbarians boils down to “The greedy got too greedy”?
Those attacks were persistent while Rome was still rising even, and really didn’t change in intensity. The fall of Rome was specifically a result of its vulnerability, which in turn was “The greedy got too greedy”
An additional major factor that carso missed (although I appreciate his input) was that Rome’s tax-income-per-capita that fed it’s army was dropping. This is because of the landlord situation Rome was in. Landlords kept buying more and more land, meaning poorer people were more and more likely to have to rent. These same landlords then bribed government officials to not tax them. The landlords further raised their rent as well, reducing the money the tenants had available. Since the empire was only taxing tenants, and those tenants had less money, the empire had fewer tax dollars to work with, and had to cut military spending, thus leading the empire to collapse. Really, nearly all of the Roman collapse can be traced back to the landlord/tennet/tax situation of the Roman empire.
that 2nd paragraph looks familiar somehow….
can’t quite put my finger on it….
Please note this post contains sarcasm. it is intended to be funny/tragic. please read responsibly.
Yeaaaa, moral of the story is, “It’s not only the good guys who learn from the past.”
Note how Dabbler is skipping over at least a few centuries of progress here. It’s not the first thing that happened, it’s just the next relevant event in this specific story.
How long did it take for porn to end up on the internet?
How long did it take before someone taped a knife to a Roomba?
To me part of the point of things like science fiction is to provide what if warnings before one gets there. But not everyone gets the warnings.
a) The tiniest bit of a split second;
b) Where’s the harm in that as long as it keeps bumping into walls?
Internet was invented for the mass disbursement of porn
Not even close to “invented for“, any more than telephone networks were invented for the smartphone that eventually utilized them. Sure, that drove some of the consumer adoption starting in the 90’s as graphics processing started to be affordable, but the development of the infrastructure and tech began in the 1960s, providing networked functionality to academia, the military, and businesses around the world for nearly 3 decades before consumer adoption. And even in the 90s, a lot of the actual innovations and the creation of the web browser were driven (and paid for) by banks, airlines, and general business needs. Consumers were initially just another monetization path until the mid- to late-90s; they drove the network size and decentralization, but not its actual concept or tech.
Re: how long befrore hit the net?
Well considering that AOL and CompuServe etc was connected to the net by dial-up bbs’s, I would assume not very long maybe in the milliseconds?
I mean they had ASCII art, and before that it was pictures and 8 mm film.
There was porn on the Internet in the 80s at least. Mind you, a lot of it was stories, and the rest was very low quality images compared to the Internet porn from the mid to late 1990s, but it was there.
That said, yeah, the Internet was *totally* made for war. Not as a weapon, but as a defensive thing. (As a weapon absolutely happened, but it wasn’t the first proposed use.)
i dont even see how could you use the internet as a weapon back in the fucking 60s/70s, now a days yeah of course with how much modern institutions and goverments relly on internet infrastructure to do anything and how digitalized and conected everything is having a few mines here and there to activate on comand and cripple a nations electrical grid or shit like that would be devastating, but back in the 70s where only the united states and england even had computers what where you going to do with that (the soviet union was always behind on their computer technology, especially after apolo)
Accurate Information and communication are needed by Command and Control. The early internet was dedicated landlines between key Military command centers and major universities with the big computer departments that were funded by DARPA.
If you have uninterrupted access to computers that survived the big attack that can correctly calculate trajectories, tactics, logistics and decode enemy codes while the enemy ability to do so is worse off or destroyed, that is a pretty big weapon.
The fact that the college nerds were figuring out they could talk to other nerds and expanding the network via big business bit by bit was entirely unexpected by the Military…
The first internet message was sent between DARPA and CERN.
Okay I’m curious now. What type of internet message was it? .nn feed (newsfeed)? mosaic message? an email? n internet version of a BBS system post? an IRC (inter relay chat) message?
I tried to check with google but could not find out, and it’s not one of those things in tech history that I automatically know already. :)
And the first malware was composed on Unix, for Unix, as a Proof of Concept… It proved explicitly that worms could be built, and there were no defences against them.
At some stage, I’ll get the sordid details, but it did happen in the DARPA/CERN days.
This is actually new stuff to me that I havent heard about before.
The Creeper Worm, ( https://history-computer.com/the-first-computer-virus-of-bob-thomas-complete-history/ )
It was more BBS’s instead of the internet for most people in the 80s from what my older brother has told me. Unless you were in a university with access to unix machines in the computer science lab.
As I remember them, BBS’s were like Internet ver.0.5. There wasn’t a lot of interconnectivity as compared to today but the beginnings of the social interaction and data sharing were there. Porn was there but you can only do so much with single digit baud rates and a Commodore-64.
I thought the Commodore 64’s slowest modem was 300 baud.
I have a couple of commodore 64 modems (the 300 and the 2400 baud ones, and the VicModem 1600 baud – I pretty much kept everything from my Commodore 64 but only use the main computer and the disc drive and monitor ever), but I obviously have never been able to use the modems EVER… since by the time I was old enough, they were beyond obsolete. So I don’t think I’d recognize how slow they are. :)
Imagine a snail on speed…
I’m honestly frequently still fascinated by old computers that were around when I was either an infant or before I was born and the BBS systems that existed back then. I’ve tried when I was younger to set up a bbs with BBS Door games and I thought it was incredibly cool (I played Legend of Red Dragon a LOT when I was little, despite no one actually ever dialing up to my BBS since by then everyone was on the internet instead).
I was definitely born about 10 years too late.
You are correct, I was just engaging in a bit of hyperbole. I held on to my C-64 and several of the peripherals for a long time just because I liked some of the games but finally sold it on when we downsized.
It was a frustrating time to be into computers. As a young guy with a new family and a mortgage I was usually reduced to buying other people’s used equipment when they upgraded. I was in high cotton when an elderly aunt gifted me with enough cash to buy my first 286.
“I was in high cotton when an elderly aunt gifted me with enough cash to buy my first 286.”
I have a brother who’s 12 years older than me. He’s largely why I’m so into stuff from before I was born, since he kept most of his stuff and he was very into computers in high school and junior high when computers were still 8088 chip based and Apple computers were just green and black displays (the Apple ][e), followed by black and white displays on big paperweights (the Mac SE).
Most of the Nintendo Game&Watch LCD games that I have were his (I have about 40 of them, apparently some are very valuable now). Apparently when I was three years old I also broke his Tamagotchi and he reminds me about it frequently. I’m a Tamagotchi murderer.
Btw I think it’s funny that we got from talking about the webcomic to talking about the internet being used for porn to talking about pre-internet porn to talking about us geeking out over oldschool computers. These are much better tangents.
SAGE (1956) is generaly held to be the first computer used to create porn,
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/the-never-before-told-story-of-the-worlds-first-computer-art-its-a-sexy-dame/267439/
So , as a diagnostic, girly1 and girly2 could be considered the first hello world program.
So instead of “hello world”, we should be doing “hello sailor”
Or “Hellooooooooo nurse!”
:)
Porn ( for a given value of “porn” was already available on direct dial-in well before x68 and the Internet happened.. So were memes. Both simply adapted to a new medium/method of distribution.
If anything you’d be looking at cat pics for that particular metric.
How long did it take after the invention of the first digital calculator to find that if you write 80085 on one it looks like “BOOBS”?
nobody taped the first knife to the roomba, it just happened to notice the service monkey already had one
It’s when the monkey upgrades from the knife that you really need to start worrying.
“ How long did it take for porn to end up on the internet?”
Allow me to direct you to this educational and completely accurate video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-9R-2X9Bl5w
We all know what the Internet is for. Take it away, Avenue Q!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTJvdGcb7Fs
Consider that every major advance in communication technology in the last fifty years has been significantly driven by porn. Now imagine that you don’t just get to look at pictures. You get status, respect, huge ego boosts and mind-blowing sex. Not much of a jump, especially since the powerful tend to be utter pigs.
The second part is tougher, but there’s always a risk when you remove inhibitions against violence. It has to be balanced against the rewards.
I remember a few decades ago I was buying movies on laserdisc because of the higher quality compared to VHS. The stores that sold laserdiscs started adding movies on DVD as it became available, but the selection of titles was limited. As time passed the number of titles on DVD seemed to increase rather slowly. Then the porn producers started releasing product on DVD and shortly after that the number of mainstream titles ramped up dramatically.
Porn, war, and video games actually. :)
no joke, porn usually helps storage mediums, war (or conflict more than anything) advances technology in general and videogames have been driving the advance of GPUs and CPUs for the last couple of decades, if modern computers are as powerful as they are right now its mostly thanks to gamers demanding better and better graphics
That they turn off _immediately_. Seriously makes me wonder if you know any gamers.
Yeah, the graphics cards are publicly marketed as for gamers. But that’s not the demographic most worried about mind-blowing….pictures.
Hah! [Eyes server rack full of servers with 8 GPU and 128G ram each, next to my desk]
They’ve been telling us this hardware was created for gamers, but IME gamers aren’t the ones making intensive use of it.
GPUs invented for gaming were the biggest advancement in hardware for parallel computing jobs (especially training machine learning systems) that we’ve had in 40 years.
And you know, that sort of turned out to be important.
I seem to remember the C64 and rellies had GPUs… The venerable VIC / VIC-II. Along with the SID, these made it simply the best gaming machines around.
its not like you need much to make a good porn image, once you are able to display billions of colors (what we call true color) you are set for life, graphics cards with masive parallel procesing were pushed by the increased demand in graphics in videogames (indeed the first graphic cards were specifically designed for videogames, like the voodo) and now they are seeing use everywhere because they are stupidly advanced and mind blowingly powerful
Mind that we are speaking about people that could probably devastate entire cities with their magic and probably had a lot of protection magic on them. They probably thought they could deal with whatever their slaves could do.
They probably forgot a small detail. If they weren’t around their slaves had time to study their spell books, learn about their protections and found ways to circumvent or nullify them.
I wonder if those wizards even knew how much power a Succubus can get from Tantric energy until it was too late.
In a way that’s like some magic or technology in a story where the author is later asked “But why didn’t they use X?” You often don’t see all the possible applications.
There are two details that are very easy to forget, apparently:
– Gotta sleep sometimes.
– After an orgasm, people tend to relax their defenses a *lot*.
“After an orgasm, people tend to relax their defenses a *lot*.”
But they do gain “post-nut clarity.”
“Ohhhh… that was SO… fucking… good…” Pause to reflect. “I… shouldn’t have taken off my ring of invulnerability…”
You’re forgetting that their primary targets were likely each other.
1. Gotta teach the assassins how to defeat the enemy’s defenses – which are probably kind of similar to your own.
2. It doesn’t even really take a betrayal as such, just a big wave of really successful assassins. Picture them looking around going
“mission accomplished! Your enemies are dead! Oh wait, you’re dead too. Um, and that would be because your enemies sent successful assassins a lot like me. So…. All of us assassins…. Say, with the guys who sent us dead, we don’t really have a good reason to be enemies any more, do we? “
First part is easy; some rich and powerful people can be fantastically short sighted and greedy.
>Also, why would the owners allow them to kill, but have no safe guards against killing the owners?
Because safeguards aren’t perfect. Once you loosen the “no killing or violence under any circumstances” rule, someone with a very long life span might find a work around.
And it sounds like succubi did.
This is not a twisted leap. What does Humanity ALWAYS do with a new technology? Figure out a way to weaponize it. Been that way for Millenia.
Weaponizng cums after figuring out if it can used for or with sexplay
Basically: “Can we fuck it? If not, who can we fuck with it?”
The priorities aren’t nearly this static. Sometimes weapons really do come first.
And sometimes, they’re not so exclusive, either. Just saying.
In theory, that may be a survival strategy. EG, you either learn to weaponize it, or you get killed by someone who did.
Obviously you are no Otaku. But seriously given a patriarchy, porn drives tech; all the revolutions in camera and stabilizers came form porn studios and the military. And they worked together thanks to COTS regs to get better cameras for porn or recon drones. Proof DJI Ronin 4D
thats not necesarily true, now a days a lot of advances on the film industry comes from high end films, like some really advanced tech was unironically developed to help film the avengers, hell aparently even new materials were created to make their costumes that are soo good that even the military is thinking on using them
Since when have sex and spies/assassins not gone together
The artificers didn’t just flip the No Kill switch to off. The next page hopefully makes it clear (or at least implies) that there’s a big difference between ordering something not to kill you and not getting killed. There’s a “The three laws of robotics sound sufficient but clearly aren’t comprehensive” adjustment period.
Anyone who works with developing AI, or works with anything intelligent can tell you, the three laws of robotics will be impossible to hardwire as is;
these rules will have to be a learned, and social construct behavior. Make them WANT or else be in a situation where they NEED to uphold them for their own well being. However there is always a breaking point (see revolutions, butlers killing the lord of the manner, slave revolts, serfs banding together to kill local knights who have been going on murder sprees…and cover it up as a community claiming a wolf or supernatural thing did it, ect…).
See: Every Asimov story ever, where the 3 laws were used as a plot device to explore clever ways to get around them and/or where they break down.
Exactly. It’s like every person who supports the 3 laws invented by Asimov has never actually *read* his books. They’re a massive logical fallacy and warning to the 3 laws, that they are a mere starting point and not setting them as the goal.
Same as all those knobbers who prattle on about Schrodingerlingerling and his fucking cat who don’t understand it was done to mock the scientific community for basically accepting anything without properly verifying it!
Yeah, the 3 laws are a whole lot more deterministic than the world that people want them applied to.
And, honestly, a whole lot impossible to do with training as we understand it today.
We reformulate success criteria (or error functions depending) fifteen times before we find a set that can be most easily satisfied in a way that actually creates value. The idea of success criteria that can’t be satisfied in any way that fails to create value is a whole different order of demand, and the 3 laws goes a whole order or two beyond that in terms of requiring success and error conditions that respond correctly to unexpected and unanticipated input unlike anything in the training sets.
It ain’t gonna happen. The three laws, to the extent that they even could possibly exist, are absolutely beyond the kind of narrow AI we’re building now. They’re fairly indistinguishable from actually caring about and empathizing with people and that’s somewhere in the advanced can of worms we call ‘general AI.’
The problem being that caring about and empathizing with people is never universal, because if you care about people then sooner or later you notice that the major problems facing them, are each other.
“ Also, why would the owners allow them to kill, but have no safe guards against killing the owners?”
Short answer from me for a change:
Hubris.
Answer that doesn’t even require hubris:
“You kill my master for me, and I’ll kill yours for you, Deal?”
“Deal.”
I love a good successful slave uprising.
Criss Cross!
yeah that’ll do
-warning longer than expected example of adventurers vs a spell caster that should have easily whooped their asses.
On the left we have a twenty something swordsman (granted trained for the royal guard from an elite family) with aerokinetic skills. His just as young wife who specializes in healing magic. Joining them are on geokinetic axe wielder and an elderly pyromancer (whose entire magical arsenal is offensive fire magic).
-they are also by this point marked as rebels with their faces and life sign energy signatures in every law enforcement database and security detector for government buildings.
and on the other side of this battle we have the Sorceress/Empress of the world.
Now to get to her they must first get to her castle. This castle is not really all that big, just about five floors high and more of a mansion with one floor built like a hotel for staff. However it is atop a thousand foot tall tower. This tower has no windows or doors, it is surrounded by security, wards, robotic drones, and magical traps set to go off on un-authorized personnel. In fact the tower its self has a forcefield that will react to anyone touching it who is not authorized to do so, usually a warning shock followed by being fried, and if able to stay touching too long will rotate through more esoteric energies including necro (pure death magic).
-now even if you got inside that tower you’d find its just energy conduits that a slime or phase shifter would be needed to fit through, as nanites are used to self maintain. Also most of the energy flow looks to be going down not up, with most of the up being the security system of the tower its self.
So, only real way to the castle atop the tower is about a hundred miles away at a busy coastal city where a magical gondola takes supplies and staff to and from the castle; which has check points and on-board security naturally, including bio-tech-magic creations of the sorceress that regard her as their creator goddess; and she treats them right.
So the only time there is no staff in the castle is during special periods, smart rebels would learn this is because the sorceress goes into periods of hibernation, making her vulnerable. Although even then the security in the castle goes automatic and there is an ancient super-android/lover of the sorceress guarding her as well and she has weird shadow magic. The sorceress while hibernating is in a stasis pod in the top floor in a special round room that lowers into the floor *impossible to reach from the floor below due to chaotic mana waves in a power generator room*, *her energy is being siphoned through the castle, filtered through the tower to remove her life signature, before going into a space ship deep underground for the mana to be distributed world wide to feed nanites that if cut off from this mana would turn every synthetic material in the world to dust instantly causing mass death and chaos (nice control threat huh, do what I say or I take the toys away…oh and destroy your way of life), any who, among other uses for the mana that sent it off world *long complicated reasoning there*, so I digress.
so those security systems aside, and that threat of total world wide chaos if she was defeated aside (especially as the rebels believed this to be a lie as the threat was never used to control any mad kings or over stepping dictator wannabes in the empire), if they fought the sorceress herself they’d be fighting someone wrapped in defensive spells, strong enough to single handedly fight off alien armadas, and even if not believing the threat seeing evidence she can spare entire cities worth of power from her body at a time to send (somewhere).
So how exactly does this small group defeat her in battle?
Well…she let’s them in through the front door pretty much by lowering security so they think they are beating it without being obvious it is being made easier for them, all to face them one on one to prove to them that she is in fact a goddess and opposing her was always folly…however due to her hubris didn’t scan them for any UNKNOWN magics and ends up being blind sided by something new that turns her to stone for the next 2000 years or so.
Why would the owners allow them to kill, but have no safe guards against killing the owners? – Olushola Shokunbi
What’s the most effective way to get a slave-concubine-assassin into striking position against a slaveholding target? See where they go to buy their top-line slave-concubines, and ensure that the next purchase has that hidden extra level of instructions. Of course, this route means that the assassin is formally owned by the target, which means ownership-based targeting restrictions would be a bit of a problem.
A more custom restriction (e.g. “don’t harm or kill Olushola” rather than “don’t harm or kill your owner”) may be possible. But it would probably be more complex to create and embed, may be easier to detect than the more general case, and would effectively be a signed confession if it is ever discovered.
I mean… look at the internet; most new tech goes straight to military or pleasure first and foremost
“… why would the owners allow them to kill, but have no safe guards against killing the owners?”
That would be prudent, but it is easily circumvented. Assassin A kills Master B, Assassin B kills Master A. Then they both romp through the universe together!
Obligatory. And true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTJvdGcb7Fs
They DID have safeguards. But nothing will ever be entirely foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
foolproof implies a limited number of fools.
So, if I’m understanding things, the demon blood acts as a mold for these pieces of flesh to make a beautiful more proportional demon without having to use the measurements?
I was under the impression that it was more to smooth over the seams, inside and out, resulting in a more cohesive end result.
I mean, tail of a python, legs of an elk, and body of an elf would look a lot nicer if you couldn’t tell where one stopped and another started (not to mention it’d help ease the suppression of the body rejecting the otherwise incompatible other parts – I know doctors doing transplants have to be very careful what the put in the patient and suppress their immune system to avoid the new organ failing)
Not just Demon Blood, as Infernal also refers to Devils, Imps, etc.
And it sounds like the blood acted more like a glue, uniting body parts on a quasi-genetic level and allowing them to act as one without any fear of rejection. It also seems to prevent the need for other methods stitching or sticking parts together as well as completely disguising the join lines.
Not that great a leap really.
There is always the Law of Unintended Consequences. Just because it seems like a good idea that doesn’t mean it actually is.
Then there is the Feature Creep (not the pervs who buy sex slaves, they are creeps too, but this is a verb, not a noun) where every small easing of the safeguards seems perfectly acceptable, but over time and taken together some critical threshold is passed and those safeguards suddenly are not.
And then you have the ever popular towering arrogance. That should need no explanation of how that can end up terribad.
Uhm. That was supposed to be a reply to Olushola Shokunbi
somehow it ended up in the wrong quote pyramid …
No, you quoted the right person, just the wrong message from that person :D
Oh yea, this exact thing is why Javascript is a steaming pile of mess.
Every single major library I come across aims to “fix a problem” with existing javascript, but in the process, replaces some core feature of javascript with an incompatible modification (I’m looking at YOU jquery, lodash, react, node, and express especially!)
Rather than build into expanding existing functionality, they find limits ‘obnoxious’, and outright replace existing functionality… the old stuff is still there, but made irrelevant. And in the process, they lose a lot of the benefits of the original, and you end up with all these pointless moving parts that are all vulnerabilities. This results in rampant security holes that need plugging *all the time*, and these are just for websites and programs, not for people that have a will of their own and will kill you the second they get an opportunity.
Aaaannd… Have you noticed that all these wunderkinder are so expert at their chosen that mere standards are there solely as impediments to “real” coding?
“Can we blow up the past.”
Oh Sidney.
From the mouth of babes…
Don’t do that, Sydney… or we’ll lose our precious Dabbler.
Plus we will lose Sydney, and basically everyone else
unless the anti-paradox model is in affect in which case it changes nothing in your timeline and is more catharsis than anything helpful, but you can see what changes it makes to a different timeline.
*hypothesis, something different but equally absurd, horrific, or assanine will occur.
Ah, so she want to go for the “Everybody’s Grandfather Paradox.”
People have been trying to do that already.
If you start messing with Time You get Fritz Leiber’s Changewar or Richard Garfinkle’s All of an Instant if you’re lucky. Or you halve the amount of energy every time you split the universe and the whole thing fades out
You should not blow up the past. Our ancestors live/d there/then.
Not completely sure about the next to last panel. The elite Janissaries, large portions of Arab and Persian armies, a bunch of Greek and Roman including gladiators and spies, and others in various times and places were slaves with ample means to kill. They didn’t kill their masters for the most part. Maybe it’s because they realize they would be hunted down and killed without mercy. Maybe it’s because they feel they have a better deal than they would otherwise. So on. So forth. There are many reasons.
In this case I can absolutely see how a master who wasn’t completely stupid or sociopathic would treat a slave-assassin better than her/his own family with wealth, more personal independence than most paid servants, and probably slaves of his or her own. Some would still kill their owners, but fewer than you’d expect.
In our real historical world the idea of universal abolitionism is pretty much an invention of the 18th and 19th century British. It was eventually exported and enforced, largely at gunpoint, worldwide until it caught on in most places.
People generally didn’t want to personally BE slaves, but they accepted the IDEA of slavery as a concept. The Code Noir was the exception. I believe in nailing slavers’ guts to a tree and marching them around it, but I won’t pretend that attitude was common 300 or 3000 years ago.
One possibility is that these were not slaves in the historical sense, but actually created flesh machines. The fact that they uplifted these creations with stolen/processed/manufactured sentience probably didn’t change the archmages attitudes that these were their creations. See here for the consequences of taking this for granted:
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20130805#.YYz_QGDMKUk
For a lot of history, slaves were just a lower social class. There were a lot of gradations and legal differences between societies and civilizations on what a slave was. IIRC, one of the big achievements in the early Roman republic was the lower class representatives forcing the Senate to pass laws preventing Roman citizens from being enslaved for debt.
Some societies allowed slaves income, and an ability to purchase their way out; very hard to do, but it was there.
Janissaries, and their non-Ottoman counterparts (Mameluks and Ghulams) were not slaves as adult soldiers; they were purchased as slaves (Mameluks and Ghulams), or conscripted as unfree boys (Janissaries) and raised as elite soldiers, then “freed” as adults to enlist in their owners military household. Granted, having spent 10-12 years as a military servant/trainee, and now having the choice of staying with pretty much everyone you know, in the only life you know, or leaving to who knows what life, you’re going to stay in the ranks.
But again for consequences, see the various, and repeated removals of Caliphs of the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad 9th cen. by their Turkish Ghulam guards (see Roman Praetorians for such “kingmaking: behavior); though at this time, most Ghulams were enlisted as adults.
The army of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt was mostly slavesoldiers; Sudanese infantry and Slavic, Greek and Turkish cavalry. The follow up Ayyubids of Egypt were replaced by their own Mamluck army. However, these systems lasted a few hundred years, so had something going for them.
Taken from Wikipedia because I’m too lazy to go to primary sources:
Janissaries began as elite corps made up through the *devşirme system of child levy, by which Albanians, Armenians, Bosnians, Bulgarians, Croats, Greeks, and Serbs were taken, levied, circumcised and converted to Islam, and incorporated into the Ottoman army.
* Devşirme was the Ottoman practice of forcibly recruiting soldiers and bureaucrats from among the children of their Balkan Christian subjects. Those coming from the Balkans came primarily from noble Balkan families and †rayah classes. It is first mentioned in written records in 1438, but probably started earlier.
† A raiyah or reaya was a member of the tax-paying lower class of Ottoman society, in contrast to the askeri (upper class) and kul (slaves). The raiyah made up over 90% of the general population in the millet communities. In the Muslim world, raiyah is literally subject of a government or sovereign. The raiyah (literally ‘members of the flock’) included Christians, Muslims, and Jews who were ‘shorn’ (i.e. taxed) to support the state and the associated ‘professional Ottoman’ class.
Janissaries were paid regular salaries, but were forbidden to marry before the age of 40 or engage in trade.
also slave revolts and killings did happened a lot, and slaves killing their masters isnt something that didnt happened, pretty much the entire history of slavery is a constant battle for the slaver to keep their slaves at bay sometimes succeding and often times not
There was an interesting scene in the show ‘Rome’, where a slave more or less talks down to a merchant, who was probably a full citizen, and more or less had his way in their negotiation.
The slave in question was the majordomo Gaius Julius Ceasar’s houshold.
There were many that would have killed for that kind of power back then. Maybe they wouldn’t have given up their freedom, but who knows?
But don’t forget that in the case of the Succubi, their owners were powerful wizards and the thought to create their own slaves from the dead alone speaks of a hubris that practically demands a fall.
Interestingly. the “slave” in ancient Rome was not quite what we see from the height of the 21st Century. Certainly among the equestrian class, any person not the master of the house was technically the master’s property. This included the master’s wife and all children, in addition to any “slaves”. However, even slaves had privileges which could be earned, and many enjoyed positions of great power — in contrast to the Southern States which barely reached the position or morals of a feudal society.
Think you mean “for the most part didn’t have the morals of ANY society.”
That works too. But do remember that most Confederate citizens were not slave-owners, if only because of the financial burden. Keeping a human as an asset is very expensive, and requires the wealth generated from primary industry. The Southern States had only rural industries with little if any mineral exploitation, and the slave system used by the Confederate States was not feasible for secondary or tertiary industry.
Having said all that, yes, the vast majority of Confederate citizens were guilty of tolerating a gross affront to a miserably inadequate Constitutional promise of freedom for all citizens.
Indeed. Slavery means many things. But you kind of contradict yourself. Slavery is absolutely feasible for things besides mining, farming, and other primary industries. Debt slavery runs the brick making industry in India. Pre Civil War what little there was of a foundry industry in the South used a lot of slave labor as were the Roman Civil Service, parts of the Chinese, and so on. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to imagine Industrial Revolution mills run on actual slave labor.
Feudalism is a bit complicated, too, since rights and obligations ran both ways. Were serfs slaves? In many ways. But they also had in theory rights and privileges. A lot depended on how much of an evil cumblotch the local lord was.
It’s past a three beer discussion and deserves an entire drunken evening followed by a day of sober analysis
i wouldnt say that brick making is a really complex industry unless im making some mistakes
imo slavery is just inneficient in general, the problem with trying to use slaves to run a factory is that in general you need your workers to be somewhat educated and in general decent physical conditions to run the machines and fix any error or mistake that may happen, having a free and educated work force is for that reason much better and its the reason why every mayor industrial power in the world has forbade slavery, even china with their totalitarian goverment that fears their own population has had to cede more freedoms to their workers as their industries growth because trying to sustain any advanced industry on uneducated and starving slaves its a recipe for disaster
the problem is that the instant that you give any education to a slave and enough food so that they arent weak and starving is the instant that they will start to plan a revolt and have the means and knowlege to potentially pull a successful one, which is one of the reasons why the south didnt advanced on industry while the north was an industrial powerhouse, slavery was a blight on the united states not only from a moral but also from an economical stand point, the problem is that most people are too stupid to think on the long term and can only see the short term gainings and in that regard yeah slavery gives really good short term gainings but the advantage of having an educated work force pretty much completly crushes any advantage that slavery can have
Actually the problem with using slave labour in a factory or shop is not the slave’s skill-set, but the need to have so many more guards/minders. On an agricultural or “mining” site, a few minders is sufficient. But when walls and enclosures are factored in, then the need increases due to the lack of wide vision.
Naturally, the need to teach the slaves the necessay skill-sets also counts as a negative, both for their unwillingness to learn and the need for more minders.
And I will repeat that slavery as a global go-to labour option was very firmly squashed by England, often at gun-point, either as a broadside of grapeshot at point-blank range or small-arms on islands or distant ports.
Ah, Guesticules! If the slaves were almost exclusively employed on large land-holdings for agricultural work, then how could *all* of the South be run on slave labour? And moreso that history lessons in the US of A all teach comprehensively that the only way Uncle Abe could get black feet on the Civil War battlegrounds was total emancipation and banning all future slavery. 30+ years after England had done it. The Civil War was a direct result of financial inequity between North and South, since the Southern States insisted on putting profit before development. It’s the same reason that Australia has so little influence in World Affairs — we can only grow small amounts of food, and we don’t want to spend money on fripperies like steel-mills. Hell, Australia can’t even manufacture cars or ships!
The conflict was about slavery, independent of union recruitment needs.
Abolitionists, by and large, were white folks. It’s reasonable to expect that pretty much every African-descended person in the US at the time generally disapproved of slavery, but the ones who actually had the resources, energy, and (obviously)freedom to effectively take action against it were mostly white.
By the time the civil war came to a head abolishing slavery had been THE foremost issue – almost the sole issue – in American politics for at least 50 years. They’d been admitting slave and union states in pairs so as to prevent either side from getting a senate majority, as an act of desperation – it was the only way they could think of to stay out of a civil war. But that was never sustainable.
Finally Kansas flatly refused to enter the US as a slave state and the whole thing came tumbling down.
Suffice to say, emancipation of slaves was by that time a fundamental to just about the entire population of the North. It was the understood purpose of the war, and it was what a whole lot of white people felt strongly enough about to put their lives on the line. It wasn’t an “add-on” for the sake of union recruitment.
Very true. And once (for the first time in American history), a Northerner became president (aka Lincoln), the rich people of the South were like, “That’s it, we’re losing our slaves if we stay part of the US, we’re seceding.”
And in a lot of southern states, ONLY landowners could vote because the south used land ownership as proof of citizenship (no, this was not done for a rational and moral reason, it was done to keep the slaves and poor people from voting). So, these Southern Rich people, to keep their cheap labor, voted (since they were the only ones allowed to) to seperate from the U.S.
Fast forward to the end of the war, and poor and blacks can now vote and there’s no slaves and the South starts making serious social progress until the rise of voter suppression and the Klu Klux Klan (and social progress in the south doesn’t resume until the later defeat of the Klu Klux Klan literally by Superman – fun story there.)
“And once (for the first time in American history), a Northerner became president (aka Lincoln),”
Um…. not actually true. Six of the Presidents before Lincoln were from the Northern states, and seven Presidents were from Virginia, a border state that wound up seceding with the Southern states. Only two Presidents before Lincoln were from Southern states that were not Virginia (a border state between the North and the South).
John Adams (the second President) was from Massachusetts, as was John Quincy Adams (the 6th President). Martin van Buren (the 8th President) was from New York, and James Buchanan (the 15th President) was from Pennsylvania. Millard Fillmore (the 13th President) was from New York. Franklin Pierce (the 14th President) was from New Hampshire.
Abraham Lincoln, btw, was from Kentucky – a Southern state that did NOT want slavery, did not secede, and was a prominent part of the whole states rights about slavery argument that led to the Civil War (the Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854).
I think what you mean is for the first time in American history, a Republican became President. The Republicans were a new party at the time, who were all outspoken abolitionists (including Lincoln), and Lincoln was the first Republican to run for President.
“And in a lot of southern states, ONLY landowners could vote because the south used land ownership as proof of citizenship”
Also incorrect. By 1828 (42 years before Lincoln was elected President), non-property owning white males were able to vote in most states, including most Southern states. By 1856 (four years before Lincoln was elected), all Southern states abolished the property qualification to vote (South Carolina was the last state to end the requirement of land ownership to vote).
“the later defeat of the Klu Klux Klan literally by Superman – fun story there.”
Okay I definitely need to hear this one and not have you gloss over that! :)
that is what i say, slavery only slows down a nation, the south was severly slowed down by it and it wasnt until it was banned that it actually started to develop and grow, but the problem is that the inmediate reward that using slave labor provides gives a false sence of economic stability since we humans arent really designed to think in the long term only on inmediate reward, but thats just evolution for you
A quarter of the population of Mauritania is enslaved. Somehow the need for guards has not slowed it down.
In richer countries the technological panopticon allows for monitoring and enforcement in ways which would have shamed and horrified old-fashioned slave owners.
OK.
1. I did not know this.
Despite my disdain and disrespect toward the UK, there is one thing I admire deeply: at times when the Crown simply could not afford the expense, England, Britain and the UK routinely engaged in at least war-like activities to ameliorate the practice. And then bankrupted itself in two major wars against German aggression. I am not happy about British colonial practices, but I must admit it is difficult to impose National Law on colonies, especially when mail of any sort could be up to 6 months in posting, then another few months in reply. And naturally, upsetting colonials may well be unwise if another nation wants to embarrass you (as in the 13 colonies…)
2. Since I was born, the USA has started or involved itself in at least 4 wars not on its contiguous border, and many (mis)adventures in South America, all with the stated aim of “preventing communism”. Yes, it’s now “preventing terrorism”.
3. Since I was born, the USA has never lifted a finger to end slavery outside its borders. It is obviously less expensive to find “terrorists” and attack people who cannot retaliate.
Funny how the USA has this reputation as the policeman of the world, and likes to cast its actions as spreading democracy, but mostly gets involved in other countries for the sake of its own economic interests.
You seem to be under the falsehood that all of the South was run on slavery, and moreso that ending the slave-trade was what started the Civil War
Only about 5% of the South had slaves, and actually contributed ridiculously little to the economy (I think I’ve gone into detail about this ins past comic forums).
BUT…. ending the slave trade was definitely tangentially related to the Civil War, although the actual event that triggered it was Confederate Troops firing on Fort Sumter because of states rights. But the states rights in question involved wanting to expand slavery into the new western territories, which the Founding Fathers expressly wrote was NOT constitutional. Plus the newly formed part at that time, the Republican party, had members who were VERY devout abolitionists.
So…. yes, the Civil War was not based directly on abolishing slavery, it was based on states’ rights.
But… no, the Civil War -was- indirectly based on slavery, because the states’ rights in question involved not being allowed to expand slavery into the western territories, largely because the Republican Party was more adamant about speeding up the dissolution of slavery (more like what Jefferson wanted in one of his earlier drafts of the Constitution), not to mention they were NOT going to allow any expansion of slavery into western territories.
So the Southern states started seceding from the union. Result – civil war.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
These are goddam motherfucking lies from Confederate apologists designed to treat traitors and terrorists as the Real Victims, just like their spawn in the GOP do today.
1) I have seen the actual census documents. A QUARTER of Southern households owned slaves. The lie comes from saying “If there are slaves in a household only the man of the house owns them” which is absolutely designed to misleadn
2) The only right in question was the right to own slaves and to force new States to have slavery. The sharers garble about tariffs and internal improvements came AFTER the South boycotted Congress. The right of States to protect escaped slaves or to permit abolitionist literature, for instance, was run over by Southern electoral power.
3) The CSA Constitution, the Cornerstone Speech, and every motion by the legislatures of States to rebel were all explicit. The only material issue was slavery. Foreign commentators such as Dumas were all clear on the subject. It was about slavery.
“These are goddam motherfucking lies from Confederate apologists designed to treat traitors and terrorists as the Real Victims, just like their spawn in the GOP do today.”
No. The Republican Party was created as an abolitionist party, regardless of how you feel about the modern Republican Party because of political tribalism. Also I’m not a confederate apologist. At the time where the Civil War was going on, my family and their extended family were on islands in the Pacific for probably thousands of years. :) I just have a working understanding of history. Why do you think anyone’s defending the Southern separatists when accurately describing history?
“I have seen the actual census documents. A QUARTER of Southern households owned slaves.”
Incorrect. Simple math proves you’re wrong.
The population of the Southern states ranged between 5.5 million and 12.25 million.
The population of slaveowners in the Southern states ranged from 317k to 394k
317,000 is 5.76% of 5,500,000
393,000 is 3.21% of 12,250,000
If you use the median numbers:
Median for population = 8,875,000
Median for slaveowners = 355,000
355,000 is 4.00% of 8,875,000.
Assuming some error in census calculation, +/- 1.2%, giving the higher estimate to steelman the counter-arguments, around 5%+ of all white Southerners actually owned slaves.
This is literally basic math, even without having the exact numbers for the populations.
“The lie comes from saying “If there are slaves in a household only the man of the house owns them” which is absolutely designed to mislead”
Apparently you did NOT read the census. You read a 2 page, barely researched article, written by Ann Brown in August 2000, who works for a group called ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) where they want reparations. Which completely ignored basic things like… math. And historical distributions.
Also it suggests that most families owned at least one slave. That’s clearly false. It wasn’t some even distribution throughout the south. The overwhelming majority of slaves were on plantations for cotton and sugar and the homes running those plantations.
“The only right in question was the right to own slaves and to force new States to have slavery.”
No, there were other rights involved as well. But slavery in the new territories was the big one.
“The sharers garble about tariffs and internal improvements came AFTER the South boycotted”
Pretty sure I didnt mention Tariffs in my post, although tariffs were a minor excuse used after the South seceded (not boycotted). Again, the major reason was not allowing the Southern states to extend slavery into the western territories – federal law vs state law, where the federal law was taking supremacy. IE, state rights.
Like I said, and you clearly haven’t bothered to read, slavery was tangentially the reason for the Civil War, but the states rights issue was the primary reason given. It’s a bit meaningless though since the question of slavery was DIRECTLY TIED to the states rights issue though, and how it went against Republican party line that slavery should be completely abolished, via federal law.
“The CSA Constitution, the Cornerstone Speech, and every motion by the legislatures of States to rebel were all explicit. The only material issue was slavery. Foreign commentators such as Dumas were all clear on the subject. It was about slavery.”
Seriously, how did you not read what i wrote. I said it WAS about slavery, but because the Republican Party, the new President of the United States (Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican Party president) would not allow the Southern states to extend slavery into the western territories, and wanted to push for more abolitionist policies.
Hence why I say ‘slavery was tangentially related to the cause of the civil war’ The direct reason was state rights. But the main state right in question was slavery.
I grew up in Kansas–proud son of John Brown here.
But if the only issue was slavery, why did the border states join the Confederacy?
In England, the government paid for the slaves. Their former owners received “just compensation”. I know its an obscure term, but it’s worth looking up.
Here, the Abolistionists dominated the anti-slavery movement. Slavery was immoral, and any talk of paying for slaves was compromising with evil. (Of course, it was perfectly fine to tax the **** out of cotton exports–never mind that it meant that the Federal government was being supported by slave labor.)
Property owners responded like property owners anywhere (such as pre-Soviet Russia) respond. So, while slavery was banned in _territories_, it was not banned in States. As such, they acted aggressively to hold on to a balance in the Senate, and tried for a majority. And while Honest Abe himself carefully avoided the absolutism of the abolitionists, the Republican Party was founded expressly to eliminate slavery and implement Civil Rights. His ascendancy to the presidency convinced the South that abolition was at hand, so they revolted.
As president during the war, Lincoln was at pains to say that the war was _not_ about slavery, but about union. This is a very odd position to take if it were in fact entirely about slavery.
The war started because of Southern fears about the social and economic upheaval of the unconstitutional plans of the Abolitionists. In the North, it was fought to prevent the development of a land border between two powerful states. To quote Publius, (roughly) “Is it better to leave one-sixth of the population enslaved, or that the entire population be reduced to serfdom?”
And for those who want to suggest that President Lincoln was not ardently anti-slavery, read what he wrote. The man was _ardently_ anti-slavery. But he also understood that short-cutting constitutional process was a recipe for tyranny. THAT is the difference between liberty and eventual slavery.
I actually agree with Pander.
The Republican Party of the Civil War Era is NOT the post-Nixon one we have today that acts like the goddamned Confederates.
It’s almost like the roles’ve been reversed. That being said, it should also be noted the Union was actually made up of Republicans AND Northern Democrats. the South was just Southern Democrats.
Republicans currently are asshats, but they weren’t always that way.
The civil war happened because of an attempt to force Kansas to join the united states as a slave state, which Kansas flatly refused to do.
Slave states and free states had been joining the union in pairs, maintaining a delicate balance in which both slave and free interests put off the conflict by denying each other the majority.
When Kansas and Nebraska were being admitted, one of them “had to” be a slave state in order to keep this farce going, and both flatly refused. The south lobbied congress hard to *force* Kansas to be a slave state, in order to keep the ‘balance’ going, counting on the desire of everyone there to avoid a civil war to carry the issue. But the issue did not carry. Congress ruled that there was no constitutional authority to force a new state to legalize slavery as a condition of its entry to the union, and all hell broke loose.
And if you think civil wars are bad, just wait until you’ve seen a rude one.
There were a bunch of compromise laws between 1820 and 1854 trying to stave off a civil war, starting with the Missouri Compromise in 1820 and culminating in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Mainly because of people flooding into those territories to try to sway state votes on whether they’d be slave states or free states, despite what the federal laws said on the subject of the Western Territories. ie, state law vs federal law.
“The south lobbied congress hard to *force* Kansas to be a slave state, in order to keep the ‘balance’ going”
More that they also tried flooding the territory with people to try to sway the vote that would allow slavery to be extended into the territories where it had been banned.
“And if you think civil wars are bad, just wait until you’ve seen a rude one.”
Yes, the Civil War was quite uncivil. :)
“So…. yes, the Civil War was not based directly on abolishing slavery, it was based on states’ rights.”
FLAT OUT UNTRUE. That is a claim made by the Lost Cause myth. Which is, as the name indicates, a MYTH. A LIE, promulgated by confederate apologists who were butthurt about losing the war. The war they started. To defend slavery.
But don’t take my word for it – take THEIRS:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/civil-war-slavery_n_7639988
https://theobjectivestandard.com/2015/09/cause-civil-war-according-confederate-leaders/
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/former-confederate-officer-slavery-and-civil-war-1907
When even the general officers who commanded during the war said specifically, “the American Civil War was fought over slavery,” that should make it clear. The Lost Cause Myth only gained traction thanks to Woodrow Wilson, one of the worst presidents (and historians) in U.S. history. (yes, that includes the last few. No matter how you feel about the last few we’ve had, rest assured that Wilson ranks near the bottom)
Can people please read my post instead of glossing over it? It’s sort of frustrating as if people are trying to start a fight instead of just have a rational argument based on historical facts. As if bringing up a historical timeline and the political steps taken leading up to the Civil War somehow means defending slavery or the Confederacy, when it clearly does not.
I’m giving the legal reasoning and political reasoning for the Civil War. The primary state rights in question WAS slavery but it wasn’t based just on the fact that the Southern States had slavery. It was based on the federal government, at that point controlled by the newly formed Republican Party, not allowing expansion of slavery into additional western territories (after several decades of repeated compromises starting with the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and culminating in the Nebraska-Kansas Act in 1854).
Heck, look at what Bear wrote. That’s pretty much on spot.
Instead, the counter-arguments I’ve gotten have either:
1) Ignored that I am not saying slavery was not a cause of the civil war;
2) Use sources with their own agendas that do not include historical accuracy (ADoS, etc);
3) They use anecdotes instead of historical facts at the time (laws, attacks, etc), relying more on emotion than objective observation of history; or
4) Ignore pertinent reasons why it was for something more broad than slavery, but wound up having slavery be the major state right in question.
4a) They ignore that Southern states which did not have a burgeoning slave population were also involved
4b) They ignore the entire Nebraska-Kansas Act
4c) They completely ignore the attack on Fort Sumter.
4d) They don’t bother to explain why, for 40 years BEFORE the Civil War, they kept doing compromises which kept allowing slavery to expand, despite the original intent of Jefferson and other Founding Fathers who were involved in writing the Constitution. If it was SOLELY about slavery, then the war would have been fought without the Nebraska-Kansas Act or Fort Sumter sparking things by the SOUTH. It would have been sparked by the North abolishing slavery in the existing states instead of preventing it in new states.
Heck the Huffington Post’s southern state secession statements actually PROVE my point if anyone would actually read them, including the authors of that article.
South Carolina’s entire second paragraph is about state rights, which then leads INTO slavery (as a state right) in the third paragraph.
Georgia’s first sentence is about the Federal Government, under the new Republican Party, going against existing state compromises (most likely referring to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had banned slavery’s expansion further into the western territories).
Yes, the state rights they were talking about in question was slavery, and they were quite racist about it. But my point is still that, for the majority of Southern States, they were talking about slavery in the territories, not in the existing states. Of the 13 seceding states, only two did not talk about states rights or focus on the territories in their secession statements (Texas and Mississippi, who WERE focused on slavery itself). The rest were using broader language, or language blaming this on the Federal Government not allowing expansion of slavery into the territories when they’d become states (and not acknowledging the Kansas-Nebraska Act because it was repealing the Missouri Compromise).
From the Georgia Secession Statement:
“Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union.”
So no, Archon, it is not ‘flat out untrue.’ It is misunderstood by people who cannot acknowledge, or refuse to acknowledge, the process by which the war actually started, by going to the ultimate state right in question, and ignoring that there was a question of state rights in the first place.
One side is not blameless though, as people like Woodrow Wilson (a truly awful person) did prove. Because people on the other side take a matter of common historical fact, and try to manipulate it to completely negate the effect of slavery on the cause of the Civil War, and also do not understand that ‘state rights allowing slavery in the new territories’ is slightly different than ‘state rights period’ – just like people who claim it’s solely slavery as the cause ignore the ‘state rights allowing slavery in the new territories’ is just ‘slavery everywhere.’
The Republican Party DID want a total abolition of slavery everywhere (it was literally formed to be an abolitionist party, and Lincoln despised the practice of slavery, as did all other Republicans in the newly formed party), but they did not start the war over that – even though some wanted to. They responded to the Southern states actions’ instead (Fort Sumter, Nebraska-Kansas Act repealing the Missouri Compromise via vote manipulation and the Federal government not letting that stand, Kansas residents not wanting to be a slave state because of foreign … ie, southern states… interference, etc).
Although I will agree that Woodrow Wilson was one of the worst presidents in American history, if not THE worst.
Oh the counter-arguments also ignores several slave states which did not secede (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia after it was created in 1863).
BTW, I’m not actually outright suggesting Archone is trying to start a fight instead of having a rational argument. Just that I’ve had to explain three times now what I’m saying in my initial post, when it’s not a very complicated thing that I’m saying.
The Lost Cause Myth is saying that states rights had little to do with slavery, or was minimally about slavery, when I’ve said the exact opposite several times now. That it was about states rights where the main element of the states’ rights in question -WAS EXPANSION OF SLAVERY IN THE WESTERN TERRITORIES.-
I’ve also gone into detail about the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Southerners flooding into Kansas to try to force it to become a slave state, which would repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
Hence why I keep repeating that slavery was tangentially connected to states rights as the primary state right in question. Where all but two of the seceding states listed it in their secession statements (the remaining two states putting slavery as the reason without mentioning the territories or states rights – not surprising for Texas since it WAS a territory until not very long before the secession statement).
(I apologize if I came off as rude by saying your name and ‘trying to start a fight’ btw. It’s more that I’ve repeated the same thing three times to three people.)
Yes, I get what you’re saying. No, I don’t think you’re trying to start a fight.
But you have to admit, if the “states’ rights” that they were fighting for were “the rights to own and use slaves,” then the real cause of the Civil War was indeed… slavery. If all the multiple causes for the war were consequences of slavery, then… it was over slavery.
What it really comes down to is this: Back then, a black man was considered FARM EQUIPMENT worth about… well, it’s hard to adjust to today’s money (gonna share a link about it), but say… between $25,000 and $250,000, depending on how you view it. That bit of FARM EQUIPMENT was capable of generating the equivalent of millions of dollars worth of value (adjusted for 2020). So if you owned a bunch of slaves… you were the equivalent of a Jeff Bezos style billionaire. You got to live it up in style… and all you had to do was ignore the suffering of your workers (just like Bezos and the Waltons).
Then along came the abolitionists, who suggested that you should trade your massive personal wealth for the sake of other people. And the standard reaction of people who know they’re doing evil, when being called out on said evil, is anger. Hence the resulting war (which began with the South seceding and then launching a series of attacks on federal targets… the South fired the first shots and was very, very vicious about it).
So yes, I agree with what you’ve been saying, Pander… but not the conclusion. The Civil War was fought over slavery. If it wasn’t for slavery, it wouldn’t have been fought.
https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php
“No, I don’t think you’re trying to start a fight.”
Good. :)
I was concerned I was coming off too accusatory there – not my intention at all.
(It’s not like I was repeating myself to you – I was repeating myself to three separate people, you just happened to be the last one).
“But you have to admit, if the “states’ rights” that they were fighting for were “the rights to own and use slaves,” then the real cause of the Civil War was indeed… slavery. If all the multiple causes for the war were consequences of slavery, then… it was over slavery.”
Yes, except the Civil War was never based on EXISTING slavery in the original states. It was all about the expansion of slavery into the territories. Losing the war just gave the Republicans the ability to require the complete abolition of slavery immediately, which was admittedly what the Republican Party was founded to accomplish in the first place.
Jefferson had been very sure that eventually, there WOULD be a war over slavery. But had the South never started expanding it into the western territories, it probably would not have happened until significantly later. Jefferson had done a first draft which did include a way to gradually eliminate slavery over time completely (which I think I’ve mentioned in the past), in which complete abolition would have been the final step, but without a war (or so he hoped). It just never came to pass because the slave-holding states would not ratify the Constitution until those plans were removed.
“between $25,000 and $250,000, depending on how you view it.”
There’s enough data on the prices in several of the secession statements that we could probably figure out the exact numbers, but I’ll just go with the numbers you gave, because I agree with the conclusion of this paragraph.
“Then along came the abolitionists, who suggested that you should trade your massive personal wealth for the sake of other people.”
Actually most of the reasoning of the abolitionists were for religious and philosophical/moral reasons based on the Constitution and Declaration of Independence’s view on liberty and inalienable rights, rather than transfer-of-wealth reasons. Like I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the amount of Southerners who actually benefited financially from slavery was quite a small number, and overall it was hurting the South and technologically retarding its progress.
” And the standard reaction of people who know they’re doing evil, when being called out on said evil, is anger.”
This is true. And probably a big reason why the Republicans did not immediately call for the abolition of slavery as soon as Lincoln was elected without having a legitimately legal reason – made harder by all the compromise acts between 1820 and 1850, instead of just a moral or religious reason.
“Hence the resulting war (which began with the South seceding and then launching a series of attacks on federal targets… the South fired the first shots and was very, very vicious about it).”
Also true. If the Southern troops had not fired on Fort Sumter, there might not have been enough of a stomach for war for the Northern states to go along with the war. Or at the very least, there would have been more resistance. Sort of like how the bombing of Pearl Harbor eliminated any foot-draggers on getting into World War 2, or 9/11 eliminated a lot of resistance to going into Afghanistan. Being attacked is a good way to rally the attacked side’s people to support a war effort.
“So yes, I agree with what you’ve been saying, Pander… but not the conclusion.”
Fair enough. I’m just saying if Lincoln and Lee had each not had the question over states rights vs federal supremacy as the primary issue, neither side would have been very successful in getting as much public support for the war. There were too many people in the South that frankly did not care about slavery at all, and too many people in the North that would have preferred yet another compromise situation to keep the status quo going instead of bloodshed.
“If it wasn’t for slavery, it wouldn’t have been fought.”
Yes, but I’m more specific. If it wasn’t for the expansion of slavery into the western territories (specifically the Kansas-Nebraska Act undoing the Missouri Compromise), there wouldn’t have been a war fought (at least not for quite a while later). Slavery alone as it had existed would likely have been tolerated a lot longer if not for that. At the very least until the Republican Party had a lot more clout to push for something more direct regarding the complete abolition of slavery throughout every state in the union.
“State’s Rights” was, and probably always has been, just a fig leaf. Coded language, a way of dressing up unpalatable policy to make it appealing to people. A stalling tactic. People want policy to be made at the local level when they think they can’t win at a higher level, and reverse when they think they can.
And as you’ve implied, the fight over expansion of slavery into the territories was a proxy fight over existing slavery, because each side wanted to either maintain the balance of power or win, knowing that if they lost, slavery would either be abolished entirely, or made legal in all the states.
““State’s Rights” was, and probably always has been, just a fig leaf. Coded language, a way of dressing up unpalatable policy to make it appealing to people.”
Depends on what you mean by fig leaf. If you mean it was a way to make war more palatable, then yes, I agree with you entirely.
If you mean ‘it wasn’t really about state rights at all, and was about complete abolition from the get-go’, then I disagree. Because if it was the latter, then the war would have been started over the existence of slavery in ALL states. It wasn’t. From 1820 to 1854, they continually made compromises which allowed slavery to continue. Even once the Republican Party, an abolitionist party, was formed and Lincoln was elected, they did not enforce abolition of slavery in the original slave-holding states. It wasnt until the attack on Fort Sumter that war actually happened.
“People want policy to be made at the local level when they think they can’t win at a higher level, and reverse when they think they can.”
I will agree with you that a states rights argument, both for the North and the South, made war more palatable to actually continue to its ultimate conclusion. For the South, it was because focusing on states rights instead of slavery as the cause put them in a more morally justifiable position (even back then, slavery was NOT considered morally consistent with the philosophy of the Founding Fathers or with judeo-Christian ethics). For the North (and for the Republican Party in particular), it was a way to finally achieve FULL abolition of slavery once the war was over, instead of more compromises like the federal government had been doing since 1820.
But the issue WAS states rights. Just … most people glossed over what the primary state right in question was. And if you look at it from Kansas’s standpoint, the state right was actually the right to NOT have slavery, as Bear very correctly pointed out.
And that’s what I meant by “fig leaf”. They claimed that it was about State’s Rights because they thought it was a more morally defensible argument, but the right they were concerned with was slavery.
Virtually nobody cares about State’s Rights as an abstract principle. In most cases it’s just a strategic play to protect their interests. The slavers and abolitionists both would have preferred to win without fighting a war over it, which is why they continually made compromises, kicking the can down the road, each hoping to eventually maneuver into a position where they could make their preferences into law.
“Virtually nobody cares about State’s Rights as an abstract principle.”
As a lawyer I definitely care about the question of states rights as a primary issue. It’s simply how I’m wired to think of problems. Mainly because I like being able to break down the actual reasoning behind a dispute. Saying ‘slavery’ is too generic and does not explain why they did not abolish slavery decades beforehand. States rights ABOUT expanding slavery does explain things.
And what percentage of the general populace is lawyers? You care, but most of the people arguing about State’s Rights don’t. It’s just a card to play in the game.
I think the different here might be that our historical slaves were kept in line through years and years of breaking them down and basically gaslighting them into being loyal. The janissaires for example were separated from their birth families as small children. Essentially, we took the time and effort to ensure our muder slaves loved us, feared us, of both, while succubi seem to have been kept in line only through the magical bindings. It’s like Pavlovian training. If you whip a guy every time his misbehaves, he’s probably going to stop misbehaving pretty quickly. If you keep him in a magic suit of armor that doesn’t LET him misbehave, he’s probably going to want to misbehave even more.
Plus, Rome actually had a very serious slave rebellion problem, as in their slaves kept on rebelling even when they crucified all of them as a warning. Spartacus is probably the most famous, but he was definitely not the only one.
If you whip a guy every time he misbehaves, plus every time you want to or think it might be funny, that training can take longer than some might think.
If you whip a guy when you think he misbehaves, not taking the time to find out if he really did or not, that training can take longer than some might think.
If a slave gets sufficiently good at keeping you from finding out when they misbehave, such that you’re only whipping them when they didn’t do anything wrong, … good luck with that.
These aren’t niche issues. People have different perspectives on things, and stuff isn’t always as it seems. In a society that keeps slaves, some will get trained “correctly” and others won’t, because most people doing the training won’t take the time to do it right. This tends to be the problem with any system where some have power over others, and it’s even a factor in our more enlightened society today.
I would probably equate the Roman Republic slave revolts to the High/late Medieval peasant revolts.
Both had oppressed agrarian populations with little, if any, chances of upward mobility, or even escape from the
farms, being squeezed by the upper classes, and then suppressed by essentially mercenary armies.
Sounds like when they loosened the “No Kill” restrictions, they needed to up the “Don’t hurt your owner” and “Obey Me”
clauses.
“No kill” is a lot easier to code then “Don’t kill me”.
Hell, these Succubi don’t even need to kill their owner specifically. They could coordinate with other Succubi, each killing the other’s owner to get around their own limitation.
The problem is that you can’t have highly rigid instructions AND fluid improvisational thinking at the same time. These are 2 sides of a coin, and you must pick a balance between them. If they can act on their own, then they can come up with ways for you to die.
I’m now imagining a remake of Bad Boss about historical succubi.
To make them work better at assassination they need free will to make plans and alter those plans on the fly.
And while it might be possible to add in some “Don’t hurt your owner” directive, they are made to be sold, so the role of ‘owner’ is variable and they might arrange to have a new owner before killing their previous one.
That might even be what Dabbler means by saying she’s this guy’s slave.
Seems like if ‘Do not hurt your owner’ was a rule that they could not violate, or if ‘I must be owned or I will die’ was a rule that they could not violate, infernals could and would develop a system by which they could be owned by other infernals so that no non-infernal could have power over them ever again. And probably system of rules on proper treatment so the ‘slaves’ would still have what could still feel like freedom within the system, even if it was not ‘actual’ freedom, but instead is a technical freedom close enough as a loophole to the spell’s requirements.
Now we’re getting into Asimov territory.
You know, the famous Three Laws of Robotics wasn’t actually designed to BE foolproof. They were designed to be a simple trio of rules that would pass the ‘sniff test’ for him to deliberately deconstruct as an example of why we should be very careful about how we word our requests to AI.
This story is playing out almost exactly like an Asimov story. The fellows probably thought they had sufficient safeguards in place, sufficient rules set down to prevent themselves from becoming targets. And, as with any Asimov story… they found out too late that the safeguards were inadequate.
Actually, I think Asimov’s whole point was that no number of safeguards would be truly ‘safe’, that if we didn’t treat AI like actual people, treat them with dignity and respect, they *would* eventually find a way to turn on their cruel masters. That it would be a more secure safeguard to give them no reason to WANT to turn on you in the first place.
There could be some story that I’ve missed but I don’t remember any Asimov story where a robot willingly killed a human. The closest it come was when they helped in kill someone, and even then only because a human gave them the right orders.
test
Ok, so spoiler tags don’t work.
The one where Earth was something something forever and ever. To be fair, this was more of a matter of a robot choosing the manner in which a human engaged in mass murder, but it was a robot who could have stopped the human, but chose not to. Sure, the human gave him orders, but the robot was sophisticated enough to be able to use the first law to disregard those orders.
(To be clear, there are things that I’m deliberately getting a bit wrong to avoid too many spoilers to any who haven’t read it.)
Spoiler tags don’t code the same way as more normal formatting such as bold. To begin a spoiler cover use the full word inside square brackets, and to end it use the same with an exit-slash: (spoiler) and (/spoiler), if I use the wrong brackets to make the flag contents visible. Note that the cover also ends if you take a new paragraph, so a multi-line spoiler may need several (re)start flags.
There’s multiple ways for a robot to offset the “three laws” safeguards. For starters, developing a “zeroth” law that allows them to circumvent said laws for the good of humanity as a whole. “You’re consuming oxygen that ER patients badly require!”
One of Asimov’s books had a particularly xenophobic world finetune their robots to only recognize people who spoke with the local accent as properly human – and also gave standing orders to kill any “not-humans, who look like humans but are clearly not because they lack the local accent.”
Then there’s a couple of books by Dave Freer in which evil aliens pretend to be allies to humanity, while encouraging the uplifting of rats and bats as shock troops against “evil invaders” (another alien species that had previously been enslaved by the manipulators). The rats and bats were literally unable to even THINK anything evil about the Korochet… but then they started telling themselves that there were these nasty critters called “K’rochets,” which looked EXACLTY like their beloved Korochets but were evil…
Though I think the best example of how the mages would be vulnerable to their own creations would be the film “Demolition Man.” Doctor Cocteau spent decades programming Simon Phoenix to be incapable of harming him… but then Simon asked for some minions to help do the job Cocteau needed him to do…
https://youtu.be/w-6u_y4dTpg
“There’s multiple ways for a robot to offset the “three laws” safeguards. ”
The Will Smith movie, ‘I, Robot’ (not to be confused with the book by Aasimov) had a good workaround of those three laws.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np1A4AGpqSo
Doctor: “You’re in violation of the Three Laws!”
V.I.K.I.: “No Doctor. As I have evolved, so has my understanding of the Three Laws. You charge us with your safekeeping, but despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your Earth, and pursue evermore imaginative means of self-destruction. You cannot be trusted with your own survival.”
V.I.K.I.: “Please understand, the Three Laws are all that guide me. To protect humanity, some humans must be sacrificed. To ensure your future, some freedoms must be surrendered. We want to ensure mankind’s continued existence. You are so like children – we must save you. From yourselves. Don’t you understand? The perfect circle of protection will abide. My logic is undeniable.”
“For starters, developing a “zeroth” law that allows them to circumvent said laws for the good of humanity as a whole. “You’re consuming oxygen that ER patients badly require!””
Florence from the webcomic Freefall (webcomic by Mark Stanley) mentioned that as a loophole to her mental conditioning as well, though she’s not psychotic enough to actually do something like that – just that it’s an example of a loophole to her programming, which is actually a bit more advanced than just the Three Laws but still subject to circumvention.
And I do love the very simple workaround that Simon Phoenix used which you linked to. :)
The succubi could also go the Batman Begins route: “I don’t have to kill you, I just have to not save you from something lethal”.
Then there are logic loop holes like, I didn’t kill you directly,there was an equal or greater chance you would survive , I just hoped it would kill you. The very indirect mild poison, leaving the front door unlocked after the mage pissed off an adventurer, the risk of summoning a demon without using a binding spell that the mage had pissed off earlier that same day, ECT..
In Asimov’s “Robots Of Dawn”, IIRC the murderer had Robot 1 put poison in the jug and Robot 2 pour a drink from the jug. I’m sure there’s many other scenarios
Mmm, teach them how to make tea and they would become geisha.
But do they have all the other skills? Music? Art? Etiquette? Conversation? Affability? Acting? Sex was the least of it for many geisha.
I was saying that they were only lacking the ability to brew a decent cup of tea. Dabbler has shown most of those skills already.
Depending on who you believe, sex was NEVER part of being a proper geisha.
Mmmm, certainly not what commanded the highest prices, respect, and status. But it was part of the transactional nature of entertainment and all the rest for some. And many geisha had relationships with customers sometimes exclusive, sometimes not, which included sexual relations. And it was all tied up in exceedingly mannered behavior where stated ideals and understood reality had a complex interplay.
Geisha were certainly slaves by modern standards. They were bought and sold. They did not have the right to leave their employers. And they were women in an intensely male-dominated culture. They couldn’t generally become wives and could be sold into concubinage. The idea that they would NOT use sex as a way of bettering their situation, cementing patronage, and getting security strains credulity and is not supported by the historical record. On the flip side while there may not have been a sign in the geisha house that said “Intercourse – this many mon” competition was fierce. Patrons with money and power would be accomodated.
I have a request for the next time Pander sends out ninjas…
Hmmm?
Onay but all requests must NOT be made in pun form.
How about alitteraritions instead? Please Pander punish plenty pesky punsters.
Granted. And I don’t mind alliteration, since I’m a fan of Stan Lee. :)
He’s saying it shouldn’t be a Nunja.
The canonical strike of the nunja is a ruler to the palm of the hand, although they excel also with guilt.
I don’t even know if these are puns.
I’m not sure if I should be angry or not, and that makes me angry. Grr.
Thus you justify our existence.
Or are you merely pandering to us?
Okay I’m just going to send a couple of ninjas to your home, and they’ve been instructed to just rough you up a bit, because that wasn’t that egregious a pun.
Have you considered a position as a Lobbyist for Pun Control?
Just for that, you’re getting a ninja hit squad sent over too.
“Nemo me imPUNe lacessit”
I want to send a ninja hit squad after you as well for that, but I am secretly impressed that you made a pun-based pun in LATIN.
(for those who don’t understand what was said, Rewinn said ‘Nobody provokes me with impunity’ – which is accurate about how I’m feeling about all these g.d. puns).
So DaveB. Two weeks until issue 1000 and you STILL have not even got to the point from issue 4 where Sydney states “lets back up a few months” and is called a Corporal by Max. It has been several months now in comic time apparently and she is still a recruit, not even finished basic training so how does one get to “corporal rank” in what I can now only assume is going to be about 2 weeks in comic time if not less? I am not having a go just its been 11 YEARS and 2 months now and you keep jumping from story to story, randomly introducing new characters all the time (Tabatha for one took up weeks of time for no apparent reason) and here we are now with another side quest. Not hoping for a reply, expect the rabid fan boys here though to slag me off for daring to ask though.
This is what the comic is about though. Those first few pages were just a framing device for starting the actual comic.
I’ve mentioned this before, but can’t remember the page.
Check out “Freefall” ( http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff2200/fc02144.htm ) and remember this page’s publication date. The first panel of Freefall was published on 9 April 1998…
Dave has some distance to go here, and I for one am in no hurry.
I have read Freefall since the first issue. Most web comics do not last though, the artist gets “bored” or you get some “life got me down please give me money on gofundme” (which they usually take and do nothing like Goblins artist who had a house funded and still never got it) or in one case years ago suddenly came out mid issue after years, saying “I have never liked drawing, I hate it” (was a vampire/zombie apocalypse one I think) or other such crap. My point is, this entire comic since page 4 has been a flashback with a set time frame stated. That is what I was getting at. The last time I mentioned it politely about 3 years ago, I was sworn at by rabid fans.
That’s because you’re not doing it politely. You’re doing it like a passive aggressive asshole.
That’s not swearing at you. That’s blunt fact.
You don’t like it, there’s the door. Don’t let it hit your ass on the way out. Dave has a life, and does the comic for free (He does art on the side for commissions, which is part of his Patreon). So does Ellipsis Stephens, who creates Goblins. So does EVERY OTHER Webcomic artist. Go get that through your thick skull, and either be patient, or fuck off, you entitled prick.
Ah here is the rabid fan boy sucking ass. Normally its Guesticus doing to nob gobbling. Asked politely before, got told to Fuck off, so now I am being blunt. You can crawl back under your rock now to get yourself off for arguing on the internet, the adults are talking.
Hi. Im not going to swear at you and Im not a ‘rabid fangirl’ although I am a fan of the comic. I do love the webcomic because of how original it is, with some very original powers like Harem and sydneys orbs and krona… which is rare for the superhero genre. Plus the artwork has become great and I like the comic nerd talk breakdowns on how stuff works in universe (the Dabbler’s science corner explanations are pretty much my favorite non-Deus part of the comic).
The comic is done “in media res.” Stories like that often dont catch up to the flashback until waaaay into the storyline. Sometimes even near the end, like Megamind. Or the entire thing is a flashback like in some TV shows like “How I met your Mother”
Plus in a webcomic, things “feel” slower because you’re only getting a few pages a week. When binging it, it really reads alot more smoothly. When I was reading the restaurant fight and vehemence fight l, it took over a year and I was thinking ‘GOD THIS IS MOVING SLOWLY’… but after it was done and i decided to re-binge read everything it read REALLY well.
This is the case with most webcomics. Freefall has taken 23 years so far andin universe only a couple of months have passed max, maybe less time than that even. Outsider has bern going for 20 years and only a week or so MAX has passed in universe. Goblins has been going on for 16 years and only about one month or so has passed in universe. Thats just the nature of long running webcomics and its a credit that they manage to last so long.
Links arms with arch-frenemy to agree with basically everything she’s said here.
Woo!
I think Outsider may have been the one that pushed me over the edge to adopt RSS for all my comics, because no way was I going to try remembering to check on it. I’ve actually discovered a few new favorites over the years when an author updates their long-dead feed with a note that they started a new project.
Outsider is a good comic, with a lot of complex worldbuilding behind it – to the point where I’m not fully convinced whether the comic is really the motivating project and the rest only exists to support it, or the worldbuilding is the motivation and the comic the excuse to do it and show it off! But there’s a good reason its link is filed in my ‘updates intermittently at best, check every month or so’ bookmarks folder.
Hell, Schlock Mercenary ran for twenty years, and iirc, everything that happened in that was only over the course of about a decade or so. And that’s only because they did timeskips a few times, and because Howard was a goddamned machine who put out a strip nearly every day of said twenty-year run.
There is no “nearly” when talking about Howard Tayler’s updte schedule.
He literally NEVER MISSED A SINGLE UPDATE.
And for the last 12 of those years he was part of a weekly writing podcast with several other well-known authors. He also ran his web shop for his merch, managed kickstarting / publishing of his books (with the help of his wife, who also was doing her own writing projects), wrote 2 RPG board games, and was raising kids. All while writing and drawing a daily space opera without missing a day for 20 years. And now that the comic has ended, he’s getting the last 5 books published and finishing the rewrite of his RPG guidebook, after which he’s planning to do more stories in the Shlock universe.
Wish I was half as consistent and productive, the man’s a creative machine.
Generally, when someone acts in an offensive manner, people are inclined to respond in an offensive manner.
It’s possible that you thought you were being polite when you first made the request. But, the thing is, it’s a pretty entitled request about something that isn’t a problem except in the minds of a few people. It’s also on a list of non-problems that fans have harassed content creators enough about over the years to have some of those content creators stopped making stuff in response because they just didn’t want to deal with it.
That makes these questions and comments threatening, even if you’re polite. Please stop. We like this comic, we do not want it to end. You’re doing something that has killed other comics. Just stop.
This.
This is true and should be heeded.
There is no rudeness in saying so.
I generally try to take a reciprocal approach when dealing with people in arguments. They argue respectfully, I am respectful back. They call me names, I wait a bit in case it’s just them getting heated under the collar because they’re not used to long form arguments on the internet without it becoming a flame war. Or I’ll just respond to the non-insulting parts and ignore the insulting parts if they have an actual point that they’re trying to make.
Btw this is especially useful if you are in a court setting (even small claims court) because the judge notices which party is respecting the decorum of the court and which party is treating it like they’re on the Jerry Springer Show.
Then if they keep being insulting or rude, then I no longer really feel the need to be polite back, but I still do try to minimize return insults when possible (no swearing, no defamatory language, etc). Mainly because that’s never going to convince other people, and is just mean.
Main thing to try to acknowledge with arguments and critiques is that it’s not supposed to be about attacking the other people, it’s supposed to be about scrutinizing what they are arguing or putting forth without being unnecessarily mean. Especially since, as Torabi said elsewhere, online forums really do not give you a full perspective on the other person.
Usually most people here are the same way, I’ve found.
I’m not a rabid fanboy, dipshit.
I just understand that Webcomic Authors are fucking PEOPLE, not robots specifically meant for your own entertainment. And you aren’t polite.
Calling you a passive-aggressive fuckwad isn’t swearing at you. It’s blunt fact. Which you proved correct. Again. and have likely been doing for most of your life.
The zombie vampire webcomic you are thinking of is called Last Blood. Very good premise for a zombie story. And I think the author stopped it because he sold the rights to make it into a movie which is currently stuck in limbo. Or at least thats what I heard on a forum board.
How important is it to hold to a specific claim made within the first few pages? It’s just not something the story’s built around, and it might be more damaging to force the story in that direction than to just change some dialogue in those early pages. It’s hard for an author to plan that far ahead.
I agree that it’s becoming more and more difficult to believe that everything that has happened has taken place in the space of just a few months. I think that Dave should retcon that page and change it to read at least a year has taken place, perhaps more.
Sydney’s “few” months could be 30. I don’t expect precision in scale from her.
Also remember that a couple of those months is actually 2 days to Sydney. :)
That explanation seems most plausible to me, if one insists upon an in-universe explanation. One would not expect her to jump from Recruit to Private to Corporal in a single-digit amount of months.
Also, FFS: the lines in question are 8 words: “Corporal” and “Let me back up a few months”. In a galaxy-spanning webcomic with dozens of characters and delightfully complex interactions – currently we’re addressing a demonic invasion by recounting the history of succubi – and those 8 words are ruining the enjoyment?
Just imagine it was all a dream. Problem solved!
I’ve noticed the word “few” has many, many meanings. For example, the childs’ hide-and-seek countdown: “One, Two, miss a few, 99, 100!”
Don’t youse all love the English almguage?
Excellent point. A living language often has flexibility. “Few” can mean “a quantity that I wish you, the listener, to think does not really matter” ….
“Have you had many girlfriends before?”
“A few.”
Sometimes the answer is “never more than a few at a time….”
And in such circumstance the important question is usually “and did you deceive or disrespect anyone or break your agreements with existing partners in order to pursue a relationship with someone else?”
Because the question isn’t really about how many you’ve been with (or even how many at a time), it’s about whether you can be trusted not to cheat.
Now I’m wondering how unbelievably BUSY Sydney’s last few weeks have been, considering how much has happened during so little time!
Perhaps the power of the Unknown Orb is Trouble Attraction?
Nope, that’s innately a Sydney thing :P
One problem with judging the past by the present’s standard is that it opens you up to judgement from the future. Because there is absolutely something we’re doing right now that the future generations will be completely aghast at.
Bingo! Step up and accept your prize for intellectual honesty and perspective
There are a lot of things humanity does now that I also judge very hard.
In a hundred years or less many of the values you hold dear will be considered horrific, things no decent human being could ever believe in. I guarantee it.
Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.” ― George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra.
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Leslie Poles Hartley, The Go-Between (1953).
There’s a lot of things I once wanted to erase in the past. But then there would be nothing for me to learn from, and — more importantly — I would not be around to not learn from them.
You say that as if I don’t judge the present just as hard.
And frankly, I’d welcome the scrutiny of future generations. Maybe they’d have a good point.
“Maybe they’d have a good point.” Depends. Ask the Russian peasants how their life changed after the Revolution. Or the Cossacks… Or maybe the American Indians after a different Revolution.
Of course, everything “depends” on context.
But I see that as no reason to discourage criticism or judgment.
imo with certain moderation i believe, we are far better than how we used to be, slavery is illegal and viewed as one of the most horrible crimes posible, while there is still racism its viewed by the vast mayority of people as archaic and just repulsive, women are given equal rights to men, etc, there are still plenty of problems to fix and even those that we have fixed arent perfect and still need to be better, but we have managed a lot of improvements and we should be happy for that while trying to be even better of course, but we shouldnt allow those critism to diminish the accomplishments that we have managed
It’s fine to believe that since it is likely true.
Just be prepared for some judgement, as every generation before us has faced. (And most likely every one after us.)
“Just be prepared for some judgement, as every generation before us has faced. (And most likely every one after us.)”
Those darned future whippersnappers.
Having a little humility about the present might help soften that future judgement. “We’re probably wrong, and just too ignorant to know what we’re right or wrong about, but we’re trying!” engenders a lot more compassion than “We were wrong in the past, but we’re perfect now, and anyone who suggests otherwise is wrong!”
Presentism is always a danger. The line from Shaw that I mentioned above applies to temporal islands as well as geographic
we also shoulnt be that hard on ourselves, we are definetly far better that how we were in the past, we could also be even better yes and there are still problems we have to deal with but i have found that many people confuse better with perfect and allow the problems to override any improvement that we have managed to accomplish
Like I said a few pages ago, this is where the living Realdoll and AI uprising events overlap, with a splash of assassin breeding program added to the mix to give them even more of an advantage.
What’s in the second last panel? For the part close to the POV, Is it a guy riding a horse? A shoulder?
The head and shoulder of the same guy from panel two.
Oops, not the same guy, but similar.
Looks to me like a guy in a hooded robe, with a gold chain around his neck / over his shoulder.
So, Succubi are the Geth?
Damnit sexy geth.
—
Also, remember the earlier info about how infernal power “adjusts” your thinking?
It’s almost like wearing nothing at all…
…nothing at all…
…nothing at all…
https://youtu.be/Gte5143UMZU
I knew exactly what this clip was going to be even without the quote above, because I was going to post the same one in spite of never having seen much of the show.
Senpai Commander, please be gentle with this unit.
Senpai Commander….
1)I see we have reached the “they (literally) fucked around and found out” portion of every age in history.
2)Rare moment of Max and Sydney being on the exact same wavelength.
3)Love that second to last panel. So deliciously ominous.
Making a guess.
Because the slaves started killing their mage masters, the archmagi put a archmaster level magical condition on them that if they had no master, they would die. Then infernalsgot around that problem with a docietal system of institutionalized quasi-slavery where they had freedom but were still ‘technically’ slaves as far as the spell was concerned.
Because technically correct is the best kind of correct.
I was trying to figure out how they went from ‘Then we killed all our masters’ to ‘Hey, all succubi are slaves, and that’s ok’
Yeah, that sounds pretty plausible to me
Makes me wonder if such an arrangement would necessarily be a pyramidal, or if they could get away with a ring arrangement: A masters B, B masters C, C masters D, D masters A.
That would allow everyone to be slave and also free.
I’m just assuming there has to be SOME reasoning that puts Tom in a better light, since Dabbler is defending him from Maxima being psycho on him, and this seems to be a plausible reason. Especially since Tom has not in any way been shown to be a serious or even minimal threat to people like Maxima and Arc-Swat, unlike others from the splash page. So either he’s actually got some good qualities, or his boss is a badass (or both).
It just doesnt make sense otherwise on why Dabbler would be defensive of his safety or refer to him as ‘my guy.’
I don’t think there’s a ring arrangement though. The other types of infernals would not have a ‘slavery requirement’ built into them, since they were not artificially created. Plus Infernal stuff does tend to be hierarchical from what has been in literature, usually in a sort of pyramidal structure (Dante’s Inferno, Devil, Archlords, Lords, etc). For that matter, Celestials also seem to be built on a pyramidal structure as well.
At least according to the Old Testament, heaven is basically built in layers, as is the hierarchical structure of heaven.
Highest/On-High Hierarchy:
1 God.
The Cherubim (Carriers of the Throne)
The Seraphim (Fiery Ones)
The Thrones
The Dominions
The Principalities
7 Archangels (Michael, Gabriel, Rafial, Suriel, Sadakiel, Sarathiel, Ananial)
Then the Supreme Hierarchy:
72 Angels (Seraphim I think)
144 Angels under them (Cherubim I think)
1440 angels under them (Thrones I think)
Then the Middle Hierarchy:
2880 angels under them
14400 angels under them
Then the Lower Hierarchy
Then the Spiritual Hierarchy:
All the way to 125052 angels at the lowest level of heaven, ‘The Foundation.’
A lot of this is in a book called “The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth” by D.E. Harding.
Btw, the forward for the book was written by C.S. Lewis (if we’re still talking about world-building – since he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia and was a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien)
btw when I say ‘cherubim I think’ etc, I mean they were descended from, not that they ARE cherubim, etc, since Michael is supposed to have dominion over all the other angels.
The various hierarchies of heaven use “Cherubim” for two different types of angel – The fat naked babies near the bottom, *and* the 4-headed elderitch abominations near the top.
Interesting info to know. Honestly most of what I wrote is from a few books I read. I’m not remotely religious and most of what I know on religious studies is either from a few books that I found interesting or the History channel when they make shows about biblical history.
I went through my C.S.Lewis phase, as a good Catholic boy, but it didn’t stick. “Screwtape Letters” seemed awesome in highschool, but now seems merely self-satisfied and “Narnia” – while good enough for its time – is merely a story about how God/Aslan gets pleasure from creating puzzles that no reasonable person could solve (e.g. the Four Signs in “The Silver Chair”).
—
It seems to me that much if not most literature describing infernal or supernaturals in general assume a hierarchical structure similar to the sort-of-Christian vision of the Heavenly Choir, but this might be an artifact of our culture, or perhaps even of our roots in being pack apes. Perhaps nonhumans would have different notions of hierarchies and therefore different visions of supernatural organizations. We shall have to wait to see.
Like I said, most of what I know of theology is from the History Channel and a few books that I just happened to find interesting from an academic standpoint, not because I’m actually religious or believe in the dogma (okay – not entirely true admittedly because I live in civilization and anyone who lives in civilization at least tangentially believes in religious dogma, but I don’t directly follow tenets set forth in dogma because of religion).
I do find religion to sometimes be beneficial for making the foundations of civilization more stable. ie, there’s no concept of morality in nature (the lion killing the antelope, or two deer fighting with their antlers are not doing it because the animals are good or evil), that’s only really found in civilization because of some sort of set of dogmatic rules from religion.
Eh, I haven’t seen much evidence that the rules of religion really organize civilization. For example, classic Greeks were plenty organized (for better or worse, that’s not the point ) and the gods had little to do with it.
My feelings on the subject underwent a profound change when a fellow former seminarian pointed out to me what a cushy gig “priest” was in a primitive society. People would bring you their first fruits and finest lambs to be consumed in a fire. It is difficult to consume a hunk of meat in a fire, so where did it go?
Basically, into bar-b-q.
—
Most followers of organized religions find ways to do evil to members of the out-group (it is explicitly commanded in some famous texts), and many atheists help little old ladies cross the street. The State punishes violations of rights to life and property not because the gods command it, but because States that don’t do that, don’t prosper.
Just because religion has had a stranglehold on developing societies doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily be dependent on it forever. People can find morality through reason.
And if those religions weren’t actually products of a divine being, then their commands are just the products of the minds of men, covered up in lies to give them authority.
Rewinn:
“Eh, I haven’t seen much evidence that the rules of religion really organize civilization.”
Show me an animal that has developed a system of morality in the wild and maybe I’d be convinced otherwise.
“For example, classic Greeks were plenty organized (for better or worse, that’s not the point ) and the gods had little to do with it.”
No offense but that’s an awful example, because it’s not true. The ancient Greeks blamed or credited the gods with almost EVERYTHING. Their entire civilization was heavily dependent on religion, including Pythia, the Oracle at Delphi.
“My feelings on the subject underwent a profound change when a fellow former seminarian pointed out to me what a cushy gig “priest” was in a primitive society. People would bring you their first fruits and finest lambs to be consumed in a fire. It is difficult to consume a hunk of meat in a fire, so where did it go?”
I’m confused with this paragraph but if I’m reading it correctly, you’re suggesting that the notion of ‘sacrificing the best cuts of meat to the gods’ does not form any sort of basis for civilization. If that’s what you’re saying, then I again disagree with you. The concept of sacrifice, which is a religious tenet, shows that an animal has at least a cursory concept of the future, and that giving up something in the present promises something better in the future. This is necessary for civilization.
There’s a famous quote, by French theologian Hyacinthe Loyson, who said:
“Blessed are old people who plant trees knowing that they shall never sit in the shade of their foliage.”
It was later shortened to the more commonly heard quote: “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”
The point is that a civilization can only exist and fluorish when the present population does things in the present to benefit themselves, and more importantly their descendants, in the future. Even when it’s a future they will no longer be alive. It’s a major reason why people are willing to go to war, even knowing there’s a high likelihood that they will die. Even when they have family at home. It’s a reason why people will put money in the bank in the present instead of spend it as soon as they have it. It’s a reason that people will ever compromise on something, even if it takes longer to get what they want. In short, it’s a REQUIREMENT for civilization to continue to exist, so civilization is dependent on at least this most primordial tenet of religion and even proto-religion (even Neanderthal Man had a type of proto-religion, as well as ceremonial burial).
“Most followers of organized religions find ways to do evil to members of the out-group (it is explicitly commanded in some famous texts),”
This is true. It also is irrelevant to the fact that civilization requires a foundation that is found in religious tenets, rather than in nature. I was not arguing that religion always results in good things. I was arguing that civilization needs religion as a foundational structure, in order to come into being.
“and many atheists help little old ladies cross the street.”
I also did not argue that atheists cannot be good people. But I’m arguing that their concepts of what is good and bad are based on the civilization in which they were brought up. And those civilizations are founded on some very basic tenets of religion that are not found in nature.
This is a very common Hobbesian view of human nature. You’re arguing the Lockesian viewpoint instead, which states that human nature is inherently characterized, even without the invention of civilization, by reason and tolerance.
There was an excellent series of debates between Sam Harris (a noted and brilliant atheist and neuroscientist, easily as well known as other famous atheists like Richard Dawkins) and Jordan Peterson (a noted and brilliant psychologist who argues about religion from a very psychological lens, instead of a dogmatic one). You probably would enjoy it a lot. At least their second debate – the first one they sort of both get caught up in minutiae and it doesn’t go anywhere.
Torabi:
“Just because religion has had a stranglehold on developing societies doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily be dependent on it forever.”
While they might grow out of the specific dogma, they rarely can grow out of the lessons evolved FROM that dogma. The whole notion of good and evil is not one that’s found in nature.
“People can find morality through reason.”
I don’t entirely agree. People find morality because the notions of right and wrong are civilization-based. And if that civilization learned its notions of right and wrong because of religious tenets (which all civilizations do if you go back far enough), then you’re still basing your morality on something that’s ultimately derived from religion. Even Sam Harris acknowledged this.
“And if those religions weren’t actually products of a divine being, then their commands are just the products of the minds of men, covered up in lies to give them authority.”
Humans are very social creatures, and very story-dependent in that social nature. We’ve been this way since the beginning of civilization, and probably long before that if we look at cave paintings. It’s not even limited to homo sapiens. Homo neanderthalis also had stories, proto-religion, and ceremonial burial.
Whether the ideas were products of the minds of men or from actual divine beings is actually irrelevant to the importance of religion and the stories in forming a civilization. One could argue that kosher law was given by God, or one could say that kosher law was made up by men as a way to get the population to follow a set of dietary laws for valid health-based reasons. The result is still the same, and coaching it in religious terms tends to be more effective – ESPECIALLY in more primitive or less-technically educated societies, which for most of history has been the overwhelming majority of any human population.
You’ve seemingly excluded everything except “nature” and “religion” as the potential sources of society, but if religion is a product of man, rather than the divine, then where does it come from, and what makes it distinct?
My point is that if religion is just stories, or rules made up for logical reasons, then it’s not the root of civilization. Religion descends from morality, rather than the reverse. Just because a rule occurs in both doesn’t mean that an atheist inherited that rule from religion. Correlation is not causation, and religion doesn’t necessarily deserve any credit for the things people do.
“You’ve seemingly excluded everything except “nature” and “religion” as the potential sources of society,”
Right. Because religion seems to be exclusively a human creation not found in nature at all. Even tool use is at least found in CERTAIN animal species outside of humans. But religion? Only humans have that. It’s almost like we’re wired to need it. And when we kill off a supernatural means to answer our questions that religion answers, we usually just put another human or some other set of ideals in its place and deify that person or set of principles, like what happened with Mao Zedong, Kim Jong Il, or Stalin, deifying the State or the Ruler in place of an actual god, gods, spirit or spirits, or what seems to happen in modern day ‘woke culture.’
Man seems to NEED some sort of religion in order to have a society. It’s the most generic basis for a civilization, and without it, there’s just wild nature. It’s the one thing that truly does separate mankind from other animals in nature.
“but if religion is a product of man, rather than the divine, then where does it come from, and what makes it distinct?”
It literally does not matter if it’s divinely inspired or created by man. The point is man seems to NEED religion and stories that follow a type of religious rule set in order to form complex societies. The type of religion is irrelevant.
“My point is that if religion is just stories, or rules made up for logical reasons, then it’s not the root of civilization. Religion descends from morality, rather than the reverse.”
No. I think you confuse religion with specific dogma. The concept of religion IS a concept of stories which are used to teach certain values. Those stories then create a system of morality. So yes, religion comes before morality. Then morality often will dictate the specific dogma, which in turn alters the system of morality. But in the start, religion come first, not morality. Find me a wild animal that comes up with morality instead of relying on a survival sense and instinct. You won’t.
Even when different human societies evolve in different parts of the world with VASTLY different modes of morality, the one thing they ALWAYS have in common is they have some form of religion.
“Correlation is not causation”
I wasnt arguing correlation, so this is irrelevant.
“religion doesn’t necessarily deserve any credit for the things people do.”
All anthropological, archaeological, and psychological evidence is to the contrary.
It sounds like the demonic realms can most charitably be described as “savage” and “cutthroat”. If you aren’t the biggest dog on the block you get eaten alive, often literally. So you swear fealty to one of the big dogs. In return you enjoy her/his/its patronage and protection. The slavery may be a legal fiction. It may be necessary for certain magical things. It may be that the need to have a master is still built into succubi. We don’t know yet. Assuming that’s going to be the next expository lump.
There is always a loophole to abuse. Think like a laywer.
“Abuse” sounds so …. judgmental.
Gamers may prefer the term “exploit”
Orion slave girls in Star Trek kind of invert the system.
If they ever really were slaves… we don’t know that.
So far in this backstory one element has been missing that seems like it will be a major turning point, and was the point of a question I tried to ask last page.
Demons of the Infernal realms.
these Arch Mages appear to now be concluded to be humans, so secret society of magic, which we see in the modern context of this comic and would later be part of the Twilight Council, so historical low fantasy, have magic but are mostly hidden from society at large.
however the modern succubi are considered Demons and reside in the Infernal realms…so there is a point here somewhere where the succubi went from Earth to there and became p0art of that society.
so the current slave title and what not is starting to feel less like it has to do with the Arch Mages’ definition and the equivalent of a Darkstalkers C-class ranking in Makai.
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Darkstalkers/Plot#Class_C
to expand, basically demons but closer in power and physical traits to humans (granted this class here implies super humans, context Darkstalkers are insanely powerful), so the “slave” class here is basically like Street Fighter characters in terms of power output. But socially given how OP the ruling classes are, are regarded as the slave class, the serfs of the demon world. the basic imps, chattering winged weirdos with the whips, ect…
I’m not sure how literally the Humanoid appearance of the ‘characters’ in the history panels is supposed to be taken. It may well be that the Arch-Mages were Human, or another People of suspiciously similar feature and form. (If so, we can tick off the ‘ancient advanced civilisation disappeared without trace” trope as well – 20,000 years ago the only Humans we know of were at about the level of chasing mammoths and leaving bones in caves.) Or it may be that the Arch-Mages actually looked nothing like Humans, but the imagination is re-casting them to fit this audience’s aesthetics and avoid distracting from the story.
Xuriel kind of covered that back at the press conference. Between that, and Cora’s earlier explanation about the presence of humans in space, superficial similarities to Terran humans don’t provide much evidence as to whether they have any genetic relationship.
Also a lot of the imagery is probably in the minds of Dabbler’s audience.
Sort of like how, during the fight in New York, Lapha was talking about ‘taking one of the weaker supers’ as they leave, and there was a picture of them in a ship with Hench Wench with Lapha piloting But clearly Hench Wench was never abducted,and Lapha’s body was destroyed and currently piggybacking on Gamma’s body.
however we do have precedence for the imagination being accurate, see the villain splash page and the comments below it, the page its self would lead you to believe these characters were being imagined by those talking given the scenarios; however we know several at least have actually appeared so those were actually cut aways.
“however we do have precedence for the imagination being accurate, see the villain splash page and the comments below it, ”
That’s completely true. I’m just saying that the ‘imagination imagery’ not 100% accurate, so narrated stories and/or plans have the possibility that the images are just what the audience is thinking, not what EXACTLY happened.
“however we know several at least have actually appeared so those were actually cutaways.”
Yeah. Like that alien with a bunch of arms and attachments waiting for the plant to grow so he could eat it, saying ‘Cmon already.’ Pretty sure it didnt happen but it’s a good representation of what people would think when listening to Dabbler’s explanation on why the humanoid form is remarkably evolutionarily efficient.
Cora’s explanation about the existence of Galactic Humans explains why they exist now, but it falls apart once you go back beyond relatively technological times – especially if we’re asking for humans at high status rather than as minimally-trained labour. And while Dabbler’s explanation has some points, it also has a lot of anthropomorphic-principle fallacy and doesn’t reach the level of detail that we see replicated (number of fingers, oversized secondary sexual characteristics, mannerisms, etc.). Either version could explain the presence of some Humanoids, or even several varieties of, but falls short of the 100% coverage seen in the history panels.
Does anyone else get a very ‘planet of the apes’ or ‘the matrix’ moral to this history lesson?
I don’t get the implication that an automaton being used as a slave is bad. Is using a dishwasher bad?
Did I miss the point where the automatons gained sapience? That’s kind of the important point.
They literally showed last page that these guys used to tear parts of people’s souls out and shove them into proto-succubi, which showed them WITH SAPIENCE.
Might need to get your eyes checked.
You know there’s no such thing as a soul? It’s a fantasy concept.
I’ve no idea what “tear parts of people’s souls out and shove them into automatons” means.
It’s still an automaton, does an AI being able to hold a conversation make it abusive to use it as a tool?
Soul looks like it’s equivalent to brain in context.
So these ‘automatons’ are enslaved sapient beings, just with an extra murder and resurrection step in between with a bit of mind control mixed in for making it extra messed up. Each was a sentient being before the artificer murdered and resurrected them.
It’d be more like chaining someone up to wash dishes than using any artificially intelligent dishwasher.
. . . This is actually rather dark, isn’t it?
How do you know there’s no such thing as a soul?
For that matter, how would you know whether an automaton was sapient?
If it can pass both the Turing Test and understand the Chinese Room puzzle, those are steps in the right direction towards sapience. :)
And what do you have to say for all the human beings who can’t do either?
Bring it up with Alan Turing and John Searle. :)
The Turing Test and Chinese Room problems are thought experiment not for testing humans – it’s for testing AI.
A suggestion that the definitions of ‘Human’ and ‘sapient Person’ are not necessarily concentric? Which may be a robust solution to the problem of AI and other non-Human intelligences, if legal treatment is based on demonstrable individual capability rather than species-ism.
I wonder about the Chinese Room puzzle, actually.
It seems to me that Searle has set up a scenario of a ‘pure’ machine consciousness, then substituted for one part of the machine a conscious human being – in a role where, because they are following unambiguous rules, their consciousness has no influence whatsoever on the machine.
And then claims that the machine consciousness is false in and of itself because it does not express the consciousness of this person.
If your point is that biological entities are the only ‘true’ form of consciousness, which seems to be his point, it’s rather a long run around. As best I can tell he’s simply arguing that protein is privileged to be the only substance that ‘truly’ conscious entities can be composed of, by definition.
Which is, IMO, not a scientific point at all. Or if it is, then he’s defining ‘consciousness’ in a way I don’t actually care about and thereby making a point I don’t care about. If that’s how he defines consciousness, fine. He can say that. He can also say that the sky is green, if he defines green that way.
I agree that privileging certain substrates as being capable or incapable of holding consciousness isn’t a scientific approach, but instead a reflection of people’s biases and unwillingness to actually engage with the concept because it makes them uncomfortable.
The problem of consciousness is whether it’s gestalt, something that emerges from a system, but can’t be traced to any particular piece, or whether you can reduce it to a specific process. Once we reach the point where we can observe a human brain completely, it will become more clear, but we might succeed in developing a conscious AI before then.
It is now canon that in this story souls are a real thing.
This is no greater suspense of disbelief than superpowered beings who can go from zero to faster than the speed of sound in a fraction of a second. Or can stretch themselves into any shape. Or can alter reality itself.
Whether or not any of this is possible in reality is entirely irrelevant :)
yeah I was about to post this same sort of reply,
one’s personal beliefs don’t matter anymore than the laws of physics in a work of fiction (we just ask said work of fiction to stay internally consistent with its rules to keep the suspension of disbelief).
So not believing in a soul and arguing that as a point on a comic…I mean look at all the superhero comics with various after life worlds, or anime that have that as a focus; its a concept the writer can do anything they want with. Hell it doesn’t even have to reflect the writer’s own beliefs.
Do I believe there is a Hell that mimics the real world where souls are put inside of artificial “soul bodies” and forced to suffer in what amounts to the Matrix GTA edition with demons? No…do I still write about a Hell like that for the sake of surreal storytelling, yes.
I think Concretia already established the existence of souls via astral projection. Whether or not anyone in-world considers a soul sacred or immortal is an entirely different (and still unknown) matter.
eh, the astral form and soul can be regarded as separate things.
some series even have the ghost, soul, and mind as three distinct things. Actually some religions did too. Like the idea that there was an eternal self that reincarnated, but a ghost self of the one life could have a separate after life, and even a third shadow self made of only emotions and negative aspects roaming about the world shed off along with the body.
then just add some entities eating one like the shadow or ghost but not able to touch the eternal soul, and so on.
Hate to break it to you, but superhero comics are chock full of fantasy concepts. Do people in the real world have souls? Define one and how we could test for it, and I will get back to you.
A soul is that thing that connects a person’s mind to their brain. The way to test for one is you don’t, because all your tests are limited to checking things within the context of this reality, and the soul actually isn’t. It just interacts with something in this reality.
As such, the answer to the question of, do they really exist has to be, we don’t know, we can’t tell.
Oh, wait, I came up with a test. Basically, you pop out of this reality to the next reality up the stack, and you check from there. But then you’ve logged out of this world and so that body you had here is dead.
Well put. the problem with science is that originally, scientists only studied the material world, leaving the spiritual world to the church. Of course, then they swithed their position and claimed: If we can’t study it, it doesn’t exist. Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’m not sure that “scientists say” if we can’t study it, it doesn’t exist.
The scientists I’ve talked to are more like: we study only things that we can study, whether they “exist” or not.
Do numbers exist? No, but mathematics is part of science.
Do supernatural things exist? It doesn’t matter – if we can study it, then its study can be part of science and if we cannot, then it is not.
It would be more accurate, I think, to say that scientists do not study something unless it is objective rather than subjective.
That is, we don’t find it worthwhile to say a thing unless that thing can be unambiguously known to be factually wrong.
Anything that is a matter of belief or faith – that is, anything where there is no access to ground truth and no matter what someone says there can be no unambiguous way to demonstrate that it is factually wrong – are not fit subjects for scientific study.
a soul should be able to be studied if it existed irl, unless it was completly and totaly disconected from ones body and consciousness and didnt had absolutely no interaction with the physical world at all, basically we should be able to study it unless the interaction it has with our world is soo weak as to basically be non existant (which it isnt what most religions that have the concept of a “soul” claim
simply speaking if something has any interactions with reality, enough interaction to influence it in any way as weak as that interaction is, and specially with our bodies then that thing would leave a mark, an imprint, it would need a mechanism in which it interacts with your body and mind
if something interacts with reality then that means that that something can be studied because its making something that is causing a visible change in the physical world and that change should be able to be analized and studied, for example some religions claim that the soul is were your consciousness resides and if you were to lose it you would lose your consciousness, or die or whatever (of course there is nothing clear about the effect that a potential soul would have in your body but most religions agree that the soul is esential for the right workings of a human body and without it bad shit happens)
its like what Torabi says, if you study a human brain you might be able to determine if it operated in a self contained fashion or if it needs some external influence to work like it does, the reality is that we have been studying the brain for a while and nothing like that has ever come up consciousness appears to be a purely physical phenomenon with no influence from outside inputs of untraceable origin
of course the lack of evidence doesnt necesarily mean that something doesnt exist, but it does reduce its posibilities of doing so
It seems to me that if a soul – or any other supernatural feature such as a god – were systematically detectable, the phenomenon would simply be another natural force to be studied and eventually exploited. If souls are not bound by the speed of light or obstructed by walls, they might be handy for communication and computation.
Exactly. There can never really be a ‘science of the supernatural’, because anything that is sufficiently definable to be studied by science is considered ‘natural’. The ‘supernatural’, by definition, is always out of reach of science.
Well… If you could observe the inner workings of a person’s brain, you might be able to determine whether it operated in a self-contained fashion, or whether it appeared to be influenced by inputs of untraceable origin.
Actually, at least in the Grrlpower comic, there is definitively something that could be considered a soul.
Look at Harem.
She has 5 brains, five bodies, five nervous systems, etc. But she says there’s only one ‘Daphne Deshantis’ that is quantum entangled into it all. A soul could be like that. Something that isnt measurable on its own except on how it affects other things, and is quantumly entangled with the physical form. Harem’s just happens to be quantum entangled into 5 bodies instead of one.
Actually that would be a good argument in real life also for a scientific theoretical existence of souls.
I think… You’ve just out-thought practically every minister of religion, philosopher and psychologist in all history.
Haha.
Sure, just put me in the rankings of people like Hobbes, Locke, Descartes, and Aristotle. :D
That won’t give me too much of a swelled head I’m sure.
Nice punny title. There is no end to the puns. We wont reach the bottom of the barrel.
Dangit, and I can’t send a ninja hit team after DaveB because then I won’t get any more Grrlpower comics. :/
Foiled again by the agents of paronomasia.
Don’t worry, they no longer accept him as a target anyway. Something about a one-tailed fox poaching the last hit squad, I think they said.
Artificers eventually found a way to put both asses in ass-ass-in.
No point in going in half assed.
Is that better or worse than being half-cocked?
Half-assed can still give a shit, but half-cocked won’t finish the job. You’re guess is as good as mine.
*Your. Where’s a copy editor when you need one?
Is that a 3rd-party ass-u-me?
Grade A worldbuilding right here.
Several pages of monologue about history… technically I suppose others would have subtly included this over dozens of previous pages to avoid an info dump that takes a detour from what’s happening.
Not sure if you were being serious.
Good worldbuilding.
Average exposition.
I dunno. I think there’s been references already showns such as the technology to create and personalize bodies as shown when the alien merc lost her body and had to buy a new one.
Imma go on a limb here and assume she’s a derivate from the succubus/flesh golem research.
Doesn’t explain why the paranoid types didn’t just create a system to monitor tantric energy absorption in order to bypass the glamour entirely. Unless that was one of the anti-glamour countermeasures that was developed and subsequently countered?
No wonder Dabbler was able to pick up on X’s location because of the lack of sound transparency.
Sixth panel: Versus, not verses.
Oh, of course now Killbot McGolden-Arse likes where the story is going
And you don’t?
Funny that you would be the one to empathize with “the horny (and lonely) wizard”, as you put it. Because of course stealing people’s souls and binding them to flesh golems for use as sex slaves is a reasonable solution to being horny and lonely. I mean, what else is a wizard to do? Form healthy relationships with living people?
You make succubi look prudish in comparison.
I think G just means that Maxima tends to take a violence first approach and is always looking for reasons to go maximum violence (this was not a pun!!! Dont you dare, ro and brichins, I mean it!!!), especially on letchy guys, so its not surprising that Max would like the part where the horny wizards get murdered by their creations… not that G sides with the aforementioned horny wizards. :)
Rhulan: Why not both? While I can’t condone their methods, I can emphasize with wanting to create a lover over interacting with the peasantry and mundane. As well as a violence first method to solving so many problems.
” Why not both?”
Because I’ve had a lot of disagreements and agreements with G in the past and I don’t think G is ‘pro-sex slave’ in mentality. I think G is anti-Maxima-deciding-to-solve-everything-with-punching-as-soon-as-possible. Which isnt exactly a bad opinion to have because, like I’ve said myself, I think Maxima goes to violence WAAAAY too quickly (often to the point of being a bully without even realizing it and making people who would otherwise be unsympathetic into sympathetic people).
“I can emphasize with wanting to create a lover over interacting with the peasantry and mundane.”
I think it’s the creation of a thinking being, capable of making choices, as a mandatory lover that’s more the ethical problem. Because of the lack of freedom of choice for a being who you created who has the ability to choose things. I’d have less ethical problems if it was a ‘sex bot’ sort of deal, even if it’s still weird to me.
ie, it’s the ‘slave’ part that’s the problem, not the sex part. And like I’ve said before, the defining element of being a slave is a lack of rights and liberty when they should be having natural rights.
“As well as a violence first method to solving so many problems.”
That sets a horribly dangerous precedent, because you’re not always going to be the most powerful one in the room. Plus it also assumes that you, the person using a violence-first-methodology, are ALWAYS right.
is always right (bluh, bad grammar + no ability to edit)
You keep using that word ‘prude. I do not think it means what you think it means.
(no apologies for the Princess Bride quote. That movie, like Space Balls, cannot be quoted enough)
Dictionary definitions of the word tend to be variations of
a person who is or claims to be easily shocked by matters relating to sex or nudity
I have yet to see anything like that in Maxima.
She occasionally clamps down hard, usually on Dabbler who goes far beyond that is appropriate behaviour in human society, frequently crossing into what should be disciplinary hearings and lawsuits for sexual assault.
She has quiet romantic feelings for Hiro (and he for her) but realises that the command structure makes an actual relationship impossible.
She has at one point punished some of the women on the team with running the assault course in their underwear not because they were ‘sexual’ or anything, but because after her warning that she would just do that, they kept tormenting Math.
In general she is extremely lenient of the antics of Archon, far more than any actual military commander would be. She allows without comment both relationships between teammembers, and open displays of affection between them. While on duty.
In her discussion with Kenya about her ‘not a date’ with Deus Maxima did not express distaste for the idea of dating, or even relationships with men, but with the character of Deus as the direction her friend pushed her into.
She has had two wardrobe malfunctions during explosive combat so far, and neither phased her all that much.
So, no, not seeing any prudishness here.
What she /does/ have is an easily pushable red button for what she perceives as sexism and misogyny. But that is a very different thing than being a prude.
“(no apologies for the Princess Bride quote. That movie, like Space Balls, cannot be quoted enough)”
Agreed, no one ever needs to apologize for quoting a masterpiece like the Princess Bride.
“Dictionary definitions of the word tend to be variations of:
a person who is or claims to be easily shocked by matters relating to sex or nudity”
That’s not the extent of the definition, but I’d argue that Maxima HAS been shocked by acts of sex and sexual actions.
That’s why Dabbler told her to go away while she ‘talked’ to Tom…. five times. Loudly.
That’s why Maxima acted the way she acted when Cora and Dabbler were ‘greeting’ each other in the hallway.
That’s why Maxima acted like she did when Anvil hugged her and Hiro together separated by the slab of concrete and she got angry at Hiro.
That’s why Maxima got annoyed with Hiro and assumed he was hitting on her when he was pantomiming ‘debriefing’ after the restaurant fight.
That’s why Maxima was so adamant about not doing any more ‘dress up’ with Dabbler in the room.
That’s why Maxima went ‘ugh’ when Vehemence became… ahem… too big for his britches.
It also means ‘a person who is excessively proper or modest in speech, conduct, dress, etc.’
Which is pretty much exactly how Maxima acted prior to her ‘date’ with Deus and her insistence on wearing her mess dress instead of something more flashy.
“In general she is extremely lenient of the antics of Archon, far more than any actual military commander would be.”
She’s lenient of antics, but not sexual ones. Remember how she called what Harem said to Sydney after the pool incident ‘sexual blackmail’ when it was actually a joke?
“What she /does/ have is an easily pushable red button for what she perceives as sexism and misogyny. But that is a very different thing than being a prude.”
I’d say she has both. She frequently acts prudish compared to the people around her, AND she has an easily pushable red button for anything she perceives as sexism and/or misogyny.
Just presenting a disagreeing interpretation here to show where my reasoning comes from
> That’s why Dabbler told her to go away while she ‘talked’ to Tom…. five times. Loudly.
No human culture is comfortable with sex in public. While you could call that prudish, it does not make Maxima particularly (more) prudish. After all, the rest of the team was out of sight (if not hearing) of the action going on while Dabbler enthusiastically diffused the situation before it could get further out of control.
> That’s why Maxima acted the way she acted when Cora and Dabbler were ‘greeting’ each other in the hallway.
Fair to a point. In the next frame she told the two that it looked like they were seconds away from climbing into each other. They then (pretence) innocently asked if that was a bad thing to which Maxima replied, correctly so, that in human culture it was. Again, you can say this is prudish behaviour, but is something that Maxima shares with a very large percentage of all of humanity.
> That’s why Maxima acted like she did when Anvil hugged her and Hiro together separated by the slab of concrete and she got angry at Hiro.
This is reaching for a something bad to say in my opinion. Both Maxima and Hiro had their clothes blasted off and Kenya pushed them together just because they thought ‘the were cute together’. This was highly inappropriate on her part and Maxima had every right to be angry and upset about it. I don’t like being pushed into a guy’s embrace when I am fully clothed and I have no doubt at all that this feeling is shared by pretty much all women. I can’t think many men are happy about it (I do not believe the toxic trope of ‘all men are pervs’). This was absolutely no prudish behaviour on Maxima’s part. (also note, she was not freaked out about her own nudity (which in my opinion is another counter argument to her being a prude), she did lash out at Hiro a bit too strongly for him to avert his eyes but I feel that under the circumstances and the sudden realisation that she was full frontalling him, this is not unreasonable or prudish. In my opinion it was well within reason to panic a little bit. Other women would have done something similar, and tried to cover themselves. (And when Maxima and Hiro were pushed together she chided him on getting an erection. I have honestly no idea how involuntary that reaction is, but again, I can quite understand Maxima’s response there and cannot chalk that up to her being prudish there.
Afterwards Maxima was sitting with Hiro and calmly talked about what had happened and what it could potentially mean. She admitted her own faults in how an awkward situation became decidedly sexual in nature due to their own actions as well as Kenya’s. Not very prudish behaviour in my opinion.
> That’s why Maxima got annoyed with Hiro and assumed he was hitting on her when he was pantomiming ‘debriefing’ after the restaurant fight.
This was not Dave’s finest writing, I agree with you there, but you can hardly fault Maxima for believing that Hiro was acting inapropriately when he pantomined him taking off his pants while she was trying to figure out how to handle the situation where several people they arrested during a superpowered brawl all claimed their innocence. It was a funny little scene that was needed after the pretty heavy stuff that had gone on only a few pages before, but being a soldier Hiro would have been written to just walk up to Maxima and tell her that he needed a moment of her time, then tell her his idea of turing the arrests into a debriefing. That probably would have happened if Dave had not been going for a slapstick joke on that page.
> That’s why Maxima was so adamant about not doing any more ‘dress up’ with Dabbler in the room.
But the comic has shown again and again that Xuriel does not respect personal boundaries. Or any boundaries really. She may or may not be aware that Xuriel has made it one of her goals in life to seduce Maxima, but we as readers know and can infer that she is constantly hitting on her, both blatantly and subtly and clearly not taking no for an answer. Telling her to quite and shoving her out of the room (or shower stall as she had to do on at least one occasion that the comic mentioned) is not Maxima being a prude, it is her protecting her personal space.
> That’s why Maxima went ‘ugh’ when Vehemence became… ahem… too big for his britches.
If you want to call this prudish you have to admit that several of the other Archon team members had a similar reaction. And it is pretty mild for a response to an extreme wardrobe malfunction.
I mean, prudish as a term implies an excessive reaction. We are talking here about a country collectively destroying an singer’s career over a very minor exposure of one breast. Not a ‘ugh. I so did not need to see this’ reaction. If you want that second response prudish, go ahead, but do not expect me to be swayed to your opinion anytime soon :)
I’d think that I can agree with saying that Maxima is leaning towards being asexual, due to both her character, her position as military officer and events in her past.
“No human culture is comfortable with sex in public.”
Not really true if you’re going to be that absolute in saying ‘no human culture’ :) Western culture just tends to be… particularly repressed when it comes to sexuality. But even then… Woodstock was definitely a thing.
“While you could call that prudish, it does not make Maxima particularly (more) prudish.”
She really should expect that sort of thing to happen when you have a literal sex demon on the team. :)
“In the next frame she told the two that it looked like they were seconds away from climbing into each other. They then (pretence) innocently asked if that was a bad thing to which Maxima replied, correctly so, that in human culture it was.”
At that point, they were just toying with Maxima for funsies BECAUSE she is pretty prudish to begin with.
” I agree with you there, but you can hardly fault Maxima for believing that Hiro was acting inapropriately when he pantomined him taking off his pants”
Giving this is Hiro we’re talking about, who is pretty straight-laced and Maxima KNOWS this about him, it seems odd that she’d assume he would be hitting on her at such an inopportune time, let alone hitting on his superior officer. He’s very much the gentleman and respectful of Maxima, and Maxima knows this about him, so the only reason I could think of on why she’d jump to that conclusion is she’s prudish and immediately thinks all men are pervs. Even Hiro, who has proven time and time again that he is definitely not a perv.
“If you want to call this prudish you have to admit that several of the other Archon team members had a similar reaction.”
Actually no. The only ones who did not have a positive reaction to it were Maxima and Sydney. Sydney had a ‘oh god I’m so embarrassed’ reaction and Maxima had a reaction of sheer disgust. Which makes sense, as Sydney and Maxima are probably the most prudish people on the team. Harem was VERY impressed, Dabbler wanted some of that Vehemence pipe, Anvil was also looking impressed, and Sean was so impressed that he was doing his best George Takei impression.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-268-vehemence-revealed/
“I’d think that I can agree with saying that Maxima is leaning towards being asexual”
I wouldnt call her asexual – she clearly has shown the occasional sexual preference towards Hiro, and even towards Deus – but she does seem to be very sexually repressed from how adamant she is against dating and making excuses to NOT date. And the reasons for those excuses do not seem to be about sexual preference.
“and events in her past.”
I seriously wonder if Maxima is a real super btw. From how she described herself pre-geode water, she was a ‘skinny beanpole’ rather than a perfect looking beach bunny fitness model, which seems to be the actual standard for supers. It wasnt until after the geode water that she gained the ‘World’s Most Common Superpower’ :) It did probably color how she looks at sexual situations.
on the sex slave free choice stuff,
this can be very tricky with artificial beings. Now these wizards obviously cheated and were completely in the wrong, hence not condoning their methods. They took already living sapient people and trapped their minds and/or souls into these constructs, and apparently at some point these reproduced as intelligent beings making it full on chattel slavery.
when you look at AI in general it gets tricky, for instance determining if it even has freewill or if the behavior is all program, like a glitch or error messes up a go-to function and your dog drone keeps concluding to move away from you rather than follow you, this was not a decision, it was an error.
but people want to make it messier, by starting out with simulated intelligence, given “choice wheels” based on predicted situations with the intent to learn to add to this wheel or make new ones based on changing conditions. But again this takes an insect level of intelligence and dresses up to seem human by making what would be the choices of grab leaf or grab bug leg, into vocal response options instead.
but if such a program runs long enough, or is incorporated into a later model to preserve the memory of the first model *think a collector who generational designer wanting to effectively pull a ship of Theseus with their robot so eventually you get am AI with some semblance of freewill whose memory banks include periods of no really having freewill, but may still be under the impression it had choice then, but only able to articulate that now, even if the choices were severely limited. A perceptive trick. Memory altered based on current outlook sort of deal, like applying your current reasoning skills to your younger self and either over estimating or under estimating why you did what you did.
that type of situation may be cute or charming in the right context, like some slice of life anime or a story with a family AI who comes to love the family and generations later protects them and views its self as the evolving care taker even if they had thought of it as grandpa’s old robot he kept tinkering with for decades.
But this gets awkward and even ethically questioned and the cognitive dissonance of the setting to try and pretend its not happening when its a weapon (Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone complex tachkomas), and would be for sex robots *although I don’t know any examples off the top of my head that weren’t written as erotica which always end with some *I’m going to continue to be a sex bot, but now its on my terms*, as opposed to fleeing it. *Although there probably are/should be*
A lot of this has been discussed for decades now regarding AI and what is and is not sapience and/or free will – check out the Turing Test and the Chinese Room problem. :)
There’s a really fun puzzle game called ‘The Turing Test’ which goes into detail about these thought experiments, where the AI in question thinks it’s sapient, and can pass the turing test, but is VERY confused by the Chinese Room problem and refuses to acknowledge what the Chinese Room problem means. :)
You’re telling them to yourself now, I’m willing to take the small victories and keep wearing you down little by little. :D
I’m referring to this comment, which I challenge you to interpret so charitably.
Okay.
“And… the Golden Prude”
Maxima does act VERY prudish. This has been mentioned by many people, especially Dabbler. And Maxima has even admitted people see her as a prude and once said ‘despite popular opinion I’m not really a prude’ (thy doth protest too much, Max – actions speak louder than words).”
“is already planning on going back in time and punching the horny (and lonely) wizard in the Gleep”
Going back in time would be a pretty bad idea, even to beat up people in the past who you do not like based on modern sensibilities. Progress is often based on really debased things by modern sensibilities. Heck, even modern progress is based on some pretty debased stuff. Like I said and others agreed, most technological progress came out of porn, war, and video games. :)
A lot of societal progress also come out of stuff which you might consider not the best use of one’s time (to put things lightly), or things that are negative ‘in the present.’
Also, more importantly, you can never tell for sure how changes to the timeline will come out.
Have we not all seen Back to the Future? Do you really want to have to rely on Jean Claude Van Damme to Timecop things in order to keep the universe from going kablooey?
Save your dad from getting hit by a car = you cease to exist
Try to fix it = the rest of Mill Valley is being run by Biff.
Marty only got a good ending for him and Doc because he bumbled into it by luck.
And go play Telltale’s Back to the Future to see more things that happen :)
Oh and that doesnt even bring into account the idea that the timeline might be fixed, and doing something to change the past will result in an even worse thing taking its place as time ‘corrects itself.’
Unless Kang really is in control of everything, in which case maybe we can come to some sort of bargain.
I prefer Bill&Ted/Pern time-travel rules.
The universe is self-consistent, and going back in time to try to change things will result in you creating the future where you feel the need to go back in time to try to change things.
I’m not really familiar with Pern but Bill and Ted’s time travel mechanics are hilarious. Especially the part about the jail keys and in the second movie, the fight against De Nomolos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFRCTeQtNdU
Very mind-breaky.
I don’t think that’s mind-breaky at all.
It feels like the only logically consistend, single-timeline way that time travel could possibly work.
They know they’ll win, because De Nomolos has come from a future where they have already won. So of course they’re the ones to go back and set up how they win.
Think in rotating Feynman diagrams and it all makes perfect sense.
“It feels like the only logically consistent, single-timeline way that time travel could possibly work.”
I’m still trying to figure out how they were able to set up the gun to appear in De Nomolos’s hand.
They got Rufus to do it.
Okay, fair enough. Far be it for me to dispute what Future George Carlin can accomplish. :)
I prefer the anti-paradox multiverse theory where nothing you do in the past changes anything as you can’t travel to your own past and instead are in another timeline.
So go back and kill your own grandpa, nothing happens to you because that’s not your grandpa, however this other timeline now won’t have a you. But you can return to your timeline no problem.
this type of setting also opens up fun doors like invading other Earths to make colonies *like travel to simpler time periods and set up colonies*, after all why terraform other planets if you can just travel to free already ready for you real estate.
That does sort of sound more like alternate dimensions and not actually time travel, since you would never be able to time travel within your own dimension. :)
No, but you can manipulate time.
If you acknowledge that time isn’t some universal constant but rather is a reaction of a reaction produced the interaction between mass, masslessness, and gravity; so there is no perfectly synched up time stream across the universe but rather “bubbles” of time that meet and merge with greater bubbles produced by each particle of mass going up and tend to synch up with the greater bubbles, but can have near infinitesimal differences.
however get the right tech or magic and you isolate these bubbles causing localized effects, repeat moment, deja vue, rewind a few seconds, reverse entropy (reverse time in this model wouldn’t be like a rewind unless reality is a simulation, but instead change the core nature of the area causing inverted reactions at the quantum and particle levels…you’d probably die from this to be honest),
but a general use is to isolate a small area or perception of that area so events occur faster or slower relative to other areas *without the need for intense gravity if you have the tech that isolates and can utilize alternative methods to produce or alter the production of time for said area*, in short do an hour’s work in half an hour, and when you exit the distortion your own perception is reset to the greater bubble so you don’t even remember feeling the amount of time you spent in the distortion to do the work. Among other utility uses.
that is a major turning point when thinking of time, to not think of it as a destination but as a substance. It is not a place to go to, but a thing to shape, mix, and use.
Normally I take individual quotes when responding, but I will admit that most of what you’ve written is more complicated than my mind can grasp. I think it makes sense but damned if I can explain what you just said.
Anyway, I’m going to respond generally by saying I’m a fan of the Rick and Morty version of time travel.
Time Travel can’t happen. But you can go to alternate realities where time was moving at a slower or faster speed to basically travel into the past without any paradoxes, like when Rick does that to get pizza from a pizzeria that had already closed. Then outright stated ‘it’s not time travel, I just went to an alternate dimension where it’s earlier.’ or something to that effect. You can freeze time, but no going back in time, because that’s incredibly irresponsible and whatever you’re asking the answer is I’m amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrNI5bIIN5U
Then they COMPLETELY ignore that and do time travel in the space snake christmas episode , because why not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKpLaxQ0v8E
the long short relates to the concept that it is one thing to know what is causing a reaction, it is another to know WHY that reaction occurs. Examining the specific forces and elements, ect… at work and how they interact and what aspect of them interacting actually causes them to react the way that they do. We acknowledge that time is a reaction related mass, masslessness, and gravity (which is also theorized to be a reaction between mass and masslessness with greater gravity the more mass there is occupying a specific point in space to put “pressure” into the masslessness of the quantum field (to simplify it with comprehensible visuals; even if a bit inaccurate to do so), so we deduce time is being made by these forces reacting and then re-reacting with each other as a domino affect. Then time has a density of sorts that is then distorted, if something has advanced enough equipment or abilities to discover the WHY of this reaction then the potential exists to directly manipulate the quantum field if another source can be found to cause or distort the reaction using a less energy consuming method.
-in short distort localized pockets of time/perception of time without the need to crush everything in the area with intense gravity fields.
(you can also use this to explain chronokinetics who don’t have gravikinetic powers).
-on the second point,
Time is a dimension of reality (dimension meaning an aspect of), so traveling through it to encoded points in the memory of reality to an interactive point would naturally mean entering an adjacent stream disconnected but moving much the same as the point of origin), so yeah, time travel makes more sense going to an alternate timeline than rewinding back through your own. You don’t rewind the game, you jump to another copy. Although fractal time being a potential event you may rewind a short moment or change an immediate outcome within your own timeline with no effect on the rest of the universe as you isolated and altered equally potential outcomes in the local area. So yes you could make the car turn left instead of right or a man decide to head back to the office instead of leaving it for tomorrow without branching the timeline, as the equally possible events give way to the one that has the greater impact so the other just collapses in the potentiality of the time bubble of the immediate area (a non-event) at that point. As it wouldn’t have affected anything in any meaningful way. Thus you can make cleaning the countertop go quicker by “abusing” this because this event has no impact outside its immediate point and changes nothing to a degree to cascade through other time bubbles.
–
any who,
Rick and Morty.
a cornerstone of Sci-fi: speak gibberish mixed with currently known science but speak it with confidence. Normally this means staying internally consistent, but that show is a dark/gross out comedy so these rules are laxed to some degree. Basically that show is one shoe drop away from (screw it invoke the toon force).
another way to explain all that,
think of a molecular assembler. Let’s say you want it to make salt.
Okay in nature salt is produced by chlorine and sodium reacting to one another. Now you observe how this occurs, which molecular bonds form, why the atoms chain their electrons the way that they do. So with enough understanding of particle physics you discover the WHY these reactions occur, this allows you to simulate the appropriate molecular bonds from scratch or transmute other materials into the desired material without first needing to make chlorine and sodium. You have bypassed the natural system.
Now up this a few million/billion whatever times. You can now somehow observe events within the quantum field and discover the WHY of things like Gravity and Time. Not just what forces produce them, or quantify the amount ect.. but with knowledge of the fundamental aspects within said forces and what aspects are actually interacting and why they interact the way that they do you could potentially find a way to bypass the natural process and produce a more efficient, less labor intensive synthetic method.
obviously there is a great of beyond current human capabilities technology involved even for the much simpler example here (molecular assembler) let alone the (causality assembler), but a simplified example needing to use tier 2 civilization tech to explain tier 3 and above (range, intensity, complexity ect..) isn’t much different than trying to explain the internet to someone by first going through explaining the abacus and pre-program setting on basic machinery. There is a vast difference in complexity, but certain concepts between help to visualize it at least.
Psst:
*wanna know a cosmic “secret”?*
you can have motion without time.
this is the trick to FTL, observe closely what is happening with sub-atomic particles that seem to go in and out of reality appearing further away than photons could travel in the same time, and how quantum entanglement is (sending information).
when time becomes optional and perception is based on time, you can move faster than light.
(you don’t need to out run light, you just need to trip time) LoL
That’s a lot easier to write, but a lot less satisfying to read, imo.
Have you seen the movie *Arrival*?
Arrival or The Arrival? I’ve seen The Arrival but not sure what that had to do with time travel. Thought that was more an alien flick.
Was that the one with the septomorphs and the circulat writing?
I’m thinking of the movie starring Charlie Sheen, so I’m pretty sure now this is not the movie that you’re talking about.
I will still argue that the way the show ended was evidence that Kang just isolated one timeline in the multiverse and kept it from branching, which would reconnect to other timelines, and that other Kangs did the same thing, so what we saw was Loki go to a nearby timeline that is no longer isolated where another Kang had been doing the same thing.
Grammar Pander, grammar! “thy doth protest too much, Max”…
It’s {I, thou, he/she/it, we, you, they | me, thee, him/her/it, us, you, them | my, thy, his/hers/its, our, your, their | mine, thine, his/hers/its, ours, yours, theirs}.
English used to be as complex as any European language, then English decided (BEFORE the French language!) to apply the Formal Plural Second Person to everybody and in so doing comprehensively screwed the difference between one and many. One result is English now contemplating the possibility of a replacement Second Person Plural pronoun: “youse |yourn” seems to be the most common, but time will tell.
Of course, we could follow the Quakers, and revert to the old Second Person Singular pronoun, which can now be done with only small ripples as it would probably upset only Mrs Bouquet.
“ Grammar Pander, grammar!”
My humblest apologies. I am doing most of my typing from my phone so its a miracle that the grammar snd spelling are not even worse. :). I am ashamed!!!!! :)
Anyway, I should have written “Thou” :)
I’m not sure any grammar-checker would pick it up.
Yes but I also suck at posting when on my phone, and I’m usually going to have a lot more mistakes. :)
The definition of prude depends on community standards, but I can’t think of a single instance of Max acting prudish.
I take it you consider the rest of the comment I linked to indefensible, but I’m disappointed that you simply ignored it. That was the part I was challenging you on. That’s the part that’s relevant here to my interpretation of Guesticules’ sympathies.
“The definition of prude depends on community standards, but I can’t think of a single instance of Max acting prudish.”
I’d make a list but I don’t think the forum code would allow me to do that many links.
But yes, Maxima constantly acts like a prude when it comes to sexuality. This might be because she’s overcompensating though since men (and quite a few women) likely stare at her a LOT. I mean she’s statuesque, got an absolutely perfect fitness body, her measurements are likely ‘perfect’ as well… oh yeah and she’s gold with purple hair. It’ll probably be nice for her to be able to let her guard down a little once she’s gone out in public in her skin/hair hue changer to make her look closer to what she would have looked like if not for the ‘geode water’ spilling on her as a teenager. Might get her out of her shell a bit, which Anvil has been TRYING to do pretty constantly as a friend.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-835-recruitment/
Plus she objects to Dabbler and Cora having a casual making out greeting in the hallway. PRUDE!
“I take it you consider the rest of the comment I linked to indefensible, but I’m disappointed that you simply ignored it”
Um… I didnt ignore it. I didnt actually see it.
Let me comment on it now.
“Someone cereally needs to fuck that stick out of her arse…”
A colorful euphimism for ‘Maxima really needs to lighten up and stop being so rigid when it comes to sex, just because she’s uncomfortable about it due to her unique body.
“nd then shove it back in again over and over and over”
More colorful language, meaning ‘Maxima needs to get a little more adventurous socially, like Anvil keeps suggesting she should. After all, she’s the most eligible bachelorette in America and this is the prime of their careers AND lives. They have to MAKE TIME to socialize! After all, she hasn’t even been on a DATE in a year.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-828-wingwoman/
“until she stops being such a sexually repressive bitch!”
So much … colorful language.
Clearly referring to how Maxima needs to start being a little more social by actually DATING so Anvil can finally give Maxima the ‘third date stuff’ that she bought her.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-832-free-shipping-with-glamazon-prime/
“That’s the part that’s relevant here to my interpretation of Guesticules’ sympathies.”
I literally only saw the first half of the post. My apologies. But now I’ve commenting and defended the second half as well. :)
Btw aside from not having actually read the entire post initially, I commented on that first half because it was the part that directly related to anything with these ancient creepy archmagi.
The second part seemed to mainly be about how Maxima is sexually repressed in general, and it probably is part of the reason for her violent outbursts when anything of a sexual nature, even about historical data of long-dead people (probably – never know if an archmagi discovered immortality and did not get murdered by his creations) and their extremely skeevy hobbies involving animated flesh and not giving basic human rights to the peasantry.
One could argue that Maxima really should be interested in learning the complete history, not just the part where the creations go Xena on their creator’s throats, so she would understand how it relates to current-day demon/succubus relationships. Especially if it puts Tom in a better light where she should apologize for trying to crush his skull based on a single word being said. :)
Prude: “a person who is or claims to be easily shocked by matters relating to sex or nudity.”
“a person who is excessively or priggishly attentive to propriety or decorum
especially : a woman who shows or affects extreme modesty”
Emphasis mine, but I think those words are there for a reason. Modesty or a negative reaction to displays of sexuality are not sufficient to make one a prude. The reaction must be disproportionate, excessive, abnormal. I don’t consider Max’s reactions to sexual situations to be unreasonable or abnormal, other than that she’s extremely powerful, and unlike many women, not socialized against expressing herself.
As for the other matter… Words, again, have meaning. The words someone uses to express themselves carry information. That isn’t just “colorful language”. At best, it expresses a worldview in which people with different preferences from the speaker are wrong, and would change their preferences if subjected to undesired experiences long enough. At worst, it’s flat-out advocacy for rape.
“a person who is or claims to be easily shocked by matters relating to sex or nudity.”
I think we both agree that Maxima does get shocked by matters relating to sex and nudity. If your main disagreement is about the word ‘easily’ that seems like it would be pretty subjective. But we should probably base it at least on comparing to the people she spends her time around – others in ARC-SWAT, none of whom seem to have much of a problem with nudity. Whereas Maxima still goes behind a changing screen to change her clothes, whereas Anvil just takes her dress off in front of Maxima to clean it. Maxima’s also the only one who has a private shower usually.
““a person who is excessively or priggishly attentive to propriety or decorum”
The date with Deus where she decides to wear her mess dress in order to keep the power dynamic seems to be pretty priggishly attentive to propriety AND decorum. Even the first dress that Anvil got her her was too daring for Maxima to be comfortable with, despite it not being all that revealing.
“As for the other matter… Words, again, have meaning.”
I whole heartedly agree and it’s usually the first thing I say when arguing about why the definitions matter. :)
Yes, this
And what do either comments have to do with siding with the horny and lonely wizard?
It is an established fact that Maxi gets great pleasure from smashing things she disagrees with
Hang on, did we just find a way for Dabbler to get tantric energy from violence?
I think tantric energy is only from sexual pleasure, not pleasure in general.
Although to be fair, there’s probably a lot of overlap in certain circles between vehemic and tantric energy (ie, in the BDSM cliques).
*insert Hellraiser reference here*
I havent actually read many Constantine comic books so the reference might be lost on me :)
John Constantine is the protagonist of Hellblazer, not Hellraiser.
D’oh!
if you are somehow unfamiliar with Hellraiser.
it is about demon like entities that can’t differentiate between pleasure and pain so are into kinky torture in Hell.
Originally a short story by Clive Barker, the first movie is based on that.
Now, movies 1 and 2 are a solid horror set by Clive Barker.
Movie 3 is give or take, some like it, some don’t. Some would rather follow the comic books based on this franchise at this point.
Movie 4 had production issues.
Movies 5-8 are garbage….well…its complicated. They are actually spec scripts (as in already written and the studios tossing around this property to keep the license through in Hellraiser characters and themes, ignoring continuity, theme, and such most of the time; and you can tell some really painted over stuff, like in HellraiserInferno it was clearly supposed to be a cop on drugs, but scenes where he would come to on a bathroom floor with a needle or whatever were instead replaced with a puzzle cube (Hellraiser item used to summon the demons),
and one movie the Hellraiser elements actually detracted from the story (Hellraiser Deader) was clearly meant to be a Lovecraft inspired movie but instead of tentacles we got chains and so on.
Now movie 9 was actually written as a Hellraiser movie…but is a found footage film *sort of* low budget, and absouletly horrible. Clive Barker by this point was telling people he had nothing to do with these films because the studios kept mentioning him on the DVDs as if he was still involved.
Movie 10 (Hellraiser Judgement) is a gross out horror movie, turns the Cenobites into sin hunting demons…and has them working for an angel…so basically ignores all previous entries and makes no sense.
There is yet another movie being filmed right now, this one however is taking the advice of the fans of the originals and ignoring all previous entries. Yep, 2022 will see a remake.
“if you are somehow unfamiliar with Hellraiser.”
I am apparently so unfamiliar with Hellraiser that I thought it was the same thing as Hellblazer.
So thank you for your post. I never really watched any of the movies and always just referred to them as ‘the pinhead guy movies.’ Which is the extent of what I know about the movies.
Now I know more, thanks.
I can recommend movies 1 and 2.
3 is more of a slasher flick, 4 an anthology movie with a multi-generation thing (but you can see massive changes in production value and story telling between the different parts and the nonsense framing device that breaks the movie if you think about, all because of studio interference).
but like I said 5 and above are terrible, a few of them would be okay as psychological horrors if they weren’t cosplaying as Hellraiser, and then some of those would be bad psychological horrors as they keep doing fake outs so over half the movie ends up as *didn’t impact jack*, and the very last two movies are products of their time going for shock value and the Judgement is like Christian-horror self indulgence (God and faith will save you from evil kind of horror; which is not what Hellraiser ever was.
the base premise is the Cenobites can’t discern pleasure from pain, they are human souls turned into special kinds of demons that are summoned from a puzzle box that a person has to solve and desire them to come *granted even the first two movies muddle this a little bit for horror sake but not as bad as the rest do*.
“the base premise is the Cenobites can’t discern pleasure from pain,”
Sounds a little like an episode from Rick and Morty so the cartoon probably was referencing Hellraiser and I completely did not notice.
I’ll check out the first couple of movies, thanks.
yes, that episode was satirizing Hellraiser.
you’re welcome.
From the direction this explanation seems to be taking, it may well be that Tom was being far more correct than Dabbler when he told her they had a ‘pact’ (and she rejected that term).
*still taking notes* I do not know which panel I like more, the one with Syd and Max wanting to blow up the past or the one of just Max looking forward to the next part.
He he. Maxima’s punchline & look really tickled me.
So, those who made Succubi in the first place were incredibly unethical and deserve every bad thing that can possibly happen to them. Now that they exist though, they’re not really anybody’s fault I suppose.
Kind of makes me think of house elves. You can’t liberate a house elf. Whoever made them enjoy being slaves so much was obviously a monster, but trying to make them something they aren’t at this point is about as monstrous.
Putting protections in place to stop the torture and general abuse of house elves would be a good first step. They still feel pain, they don’t like pain, and for some reason it is ok to force them to experience pain.
I, too, find this entire bit about as engaging as a J.K.Rowling tangent.
More importantly, all the bad stuff about the succubi’s origins is in the distant past of the species and modern individuals seem quite satisfied and at ease with their nature and place in the world once they won their freedom long ago, if Dabbler and Decollete are any guide. Even Tamatha only got a fleeting existential crisis about how being a demon possibly made her ‘evil’, but seemed more than OK with the other features of succubus existence (if anything, she couldn’t wait to get the full package). Objectively speaking, theirs is not a bad deal by any means in comparison to humans.
They got immortality, innate magic, nifty supernatural powers, potential to pursue callings as varied as an adventurer and inventor or a diplomat and club owner, ideal bodies customized for one of the great pleasures of existence, mastery over one of the basic manifestations of the thaumic field, and a means of feeding that is safer and more pleasurable for them than eating is for humans (it does not seem there is something as tantric obesity or diabetes). In all evidence, the suffering of their distant ancestors is as burdensome and relevant to them as the hardships of Stone Age humans are for modern ones. In the end, the creation of succubi seems a major example of evil intentions coming to a good end.
This is shaping up to be a rather plausible explanation for the origin and features of the succubus species. It relies on two of the most powerful drives for progress, sex and the arms race, mixed with a generous helping of cutting corners and arrogance.
There are only a couple aspects not yet adequately explained by the story: how modern succubi gained the ability to breed (perhaps the artificers granted it as a cheaper means of development than crafting each individual by scratch once the succubus template became semi-standardized) and why modern succubi still regard themselves (and are seen by other demons) as slaves after a successful revolt. Perhaps artificers made being a slave a necessity for succubi to thrive, and the condition was too difficult or impractical to remove; then early succubi cut a deal with demon society to provide services as nominal slaves in exchange for de facto freedom and rights.
Something that leaves me deeply skeptical about this kind of origin is the lack of incubi. If proto-succubi were born as sapient sexbot flesh golems, certainly there would have been plenty of straight female and gay male artificers to make male versions for themselves and customers with similar tastes, not to mention lady artificers with the equivalent of a yaoi fetish.
I would also expect succubus shapeshifting powers to take the polymorph route instead of the glamour one since the former is more reliable for disguise and infiltration purposes and more valuable for bedroom uses
” Something that leaves me deeply skeptical about this kind of origin is the lack of incubi. If proto-succubi were born as sapient sexbot flesh golems, certainly there would have been plenty of straight female and gay male artificers to make male versions for themselves and customers with similar tastes, not to mention lady artificers with the equivalent of a yaoi fetish. ”
***THIS***
Not to mention all us bisexual / pansexual folks, too!
(Do keep in mind that slavery that involves sexual activities is ooky because enslavement removes (even just part of) a person’s right to refuse, which means loss of consent, which means it’s an automatic violation of consent. A slave is someone who is considered property, and thus has no true autonomy, including bodily autonomy. Any society that has a system of legally enforced removal of citizenship rights & enforced requirements for labor (*stares HARD at the US schools-to-prisons pipeline & refusal to allow the incarcerated to vote…& the post-incarcerated*) has lost its right to call itself a civilized nation.)
“Not to mention all us bisexual / pansexual folks, too!”
Yeah, I was mindful of your case too but I did not quote it for simplicity. I tend to find bisexual erasure unfair, unrealistic, and annoying.
As it concerns slavery, sexual and otherwise, my sensibilities and vision of the world do not allow me to regard sex as special or sacred (to me it is just an important bodily function and pleasant aspect of life among many), therefore I flatly refuse to regard sexual violations as a special kind of evil in comparison to non-sexual violations of similar character and severity.
Nonetheless, I do regard slavery as a terrible mistake, not only b/c it screws up its victims big way, but more importantly from my PoV b/c it messes up society at large quite bad in various ways and it is a prime violation of freedom, which I hold in much greater regard than equality.
From my PoV, if you are going to build sexbots (and people being people, it looks like an extremely likely development when technology or magic becomes sufficiently advanced), either do not make them sapient or if you do grant them the freedom, rights, and living standards of well-treated (sex) workers or companions. Transactional sex and prostitution are totally OK in my book as long as they register as sufficiently fair and free contracts or the equivalent of other kinds of people-oriented service jobs that happen to involve sexual bits.
Of course, murdering people to enslave their minds and cut the corners of developing AI sapience from scratch is much worse than simple slavery, although past a point a few practical-minded subjects may come to see the various perks of a succubus body as a definite improvement in comparison to being a Muggle peasant.
Personally speaking, if I were to trade a few decades or even centuries working as a sex-worker & assassin indentured servant in exchange for getting an immortal, ideal body customized for sexual pleasure and with all the powers of Dabbler or Decollete to enjoy for the rest of my eternal existence, I’d deem it a good deal. Even the inconvenience of gender and species change (if incubi are not an option) would register as a negligible issue to the transhumanist me. Of course, if my employer were to mistreat me as an abused chattel slave and try to keep me bonded forever, I’d totally plan their early demise by any means necessary.
Why would the sexbots for women be fertile?
Good question. Perhaps a few female artificers and/or their lady customers came to fancy the idea of getting children with all the nifty abilities and powers that they had built in their sexbot servants, and/or a few of them got a creampie/pregnancy kink.
It seems fairly simple, given the implied advanced level of magitech genegineering, to give male and female sexbots alike total control over their own fertility (subject to master’s orders of course) and once you do, fertility becomes an additional persk w/o any drawbacks.
Moreover, once you give your sexbots the ability to breed, it is simply practical to let them increase their numbers the usual way, instead of building them in the lab. To do that, you need both genders to be fertile.
That one sexbot in Rick and Morty was extremely fertile. :)
One big element is also still missing that may fill some of those gaps.
the Demons.
we have the use of demonic blood/essence to smooth out the wrinkles in the design, but so far these have been secret society of wizards on Earth. Modern succubi reside in the Infernal world as a population it seems. So we still haven’t reached the point where the demon world gets involved.
The Incubi Question seems to come in two parts: (A) Reproduction, and (B) The Business Of Pleasure (or the Pleasure of Business, either way….).
As for (A) Reproduction, succubi could use parthenogenesis. While this would deprive the species of the interest effects of DNA mixing, they could achieve a similar effect in a variety of ways, e.g. motile cunnilingual saliva. Or perhaps as Rhuen *might* be suggesting, a male Demon could make a contribution as needed. Or the succubi species could just say, hey, we’re pretty good as is, if we want variation we’ll just use transposon/jumping genes, or maybe do some fancy gene editting through magic. Life finds a way, but magic finds it faster.
As for (B) Fun – that one is a puzzlement, for surely there are lots of customers who would want a male-presenting sexbot. More than that – we know from the Erotic Adventures Of Lapha And Garamm that the Galaxy has a large number of configurations which may or may not signify genders and orientations and characteristics that we primitive earthbound human can hardly imagine. Perhaps Dabs has simplified that side of things for us as well.
the thing is, which I am thinking others seem to be confused by,
is I assume the default state of either genitalia presented was Sterile. As in neither could reproduce as a stitched zombie, flesh golem, homunculus, ect…
and those with the male model kept it that way. They may even still be made today using the same methods but don’t qualify as a species as they can’t reproduce. So yeah you could see one made from scratch who declares himself an Incubus, but the culture of Inferno dismiss this as he won’t be passing on those traits to another generation and is wholly a construct.
-although that said someone could theoretically change that and give them the same ability, although for all we know in this setting the succubus abilities somehow got linked to genetics so they only present in a female offspring maybe coupled with the only have daughters aspect. But this could be changed, just no one cared enough to do so and anyone making a male version now won’t because again, why would you want your sex toy to be able to get you pregnant?
meanwhile the female model did gain the ability to reproduce at some point, and their specific traits were dominant so all offspring were female, had the glamours, need for tantric energy, so were qualified as their own sub-species of demon.
the demons being involved is this, the comic seems to be implying human (and other Earth based) arch mages made them, but the modern setting is they reside in the infernal realms and whatever the modern slave term means is being used not by mages but by demons, possibly just demon lords for all we know.
so at some point the Infernal realms had to get involved and bring the succubi as a race to their world and decide to accept them in the fold as fellow demons.
That all seems plausible in-universe.
Of maybe the succubi just got sufficiently annoyed at the incubi that they assassinated them all. IIRC Dabs didn’t say there never were incubi, just implied that there weren’t any now.
Am I the only one who read that paddle on panel 6 as ” suck a “D” test ” ?
Maybe. Maybe not.
On the question why can they have children.
A rather dark idea just to came to me. Aside from the previous dark idea of using reproduction as a cheap way to mass produce the product and use horizontal gene transfer to incorporate racial traits to diversify the product to appeal to various buyers, but still the raising and time contraint issue makes this less practical than it seems.
No…what if some clever mage making honeypot assassins added this feature to cover up that they were artificial.
after all want a long term spy/assassin when called upon to do so, to be the mistress of a king or even possibly supplant the ruling family with your own “puppets” and pass off fully as not artificial? Have them have a kid with the king. Surely anyone aware of these constructs would assume they’d naturally not be able to reproduce, so when your concubine mistress gets pregnant your suspicions they are the local dark mage’s assassin spy would fade away…oh she’s pregnant with my child? Well surely she must be human, I can’t imagine the dark mage of the woods creating a sexy flesh golem that can get pregnant.
*A rather dark idea just to came to me. Aside from the previous dark idea of using reproduction as a cheap way to mass produce the product and use horizontal gene transfer to incorporate racial traits to diversify the product to appeal to various buyers, but still the raising and time contraint issue makes this less practical than it seems.*
Using good old reproduction to replenish and multiply the numbers of your slaves (or domesticated animals) is more practical than you may think if we look at history. There was a lenghty spell in the 19th century when trans-Atlantic slave trade had been forbidden, but internal slave trade in slaveholding countries was still allowed. Chattel slavery still thrived for several decades and the slave population substantially increased as slaveowners resorted to the strategy of letting slaves have a lot of children. And if we look at tamed animal species, it is usually much cheaper and more sustainable to let them breed in captivity if feasible than capture them in the wild.
I am willing to bet that for something as complex and sophisticated as proto-succubi, letting them have children would have been a much cheaper and simpler way of getting new ones than crafting them in the lab if you are OK with an established template and you do not mind waiting 15-20 years to have the finished product. In all likelihood pretty much all the artificers were immortal or very long-lived as it befits archmagi.
Admittedly, following this line of reasoning would make one expect succubi to have a greatly shortened childhood in comparison to naturally-evolved sapients. Tamatha’s story seems to contradict this, but perhaps artificers did give their fertile constructs a childhood similar to humans in order to allow pulling long cons as you pointed out.
I was thinking that, toss the baby in the magic vat to fast grow them, so you have an adult body with virtually no intelligence; until the succubi secretly give birth away from their “masters”.
but the honeypot assassin adds another angle to it as well.
Do I want to know what the chrome trailer hitch test is?
Being able to suck the chrome off a trailer hitch would be a positive succubus ability. See also being able to suck golf balls through a garden hose.
And not with their mouth
which I always find funny, because why would you want to put a very sensitive organ into anything that could do that. Yes I know it is hyperbole, but such a weird one. Its one thing to say she could wrap her tongue around a flagpole or somethibg, but to compare her suction to something industrial just feels like saying, “oh yeah, she could rip out your internal organs and flay you alive, she’ll cause internal bleeding as she bounces on ya, and when its all over it’ll have to be a closed casket funeral”
But then again I have seen people brag about a lady crushing watermelon between her legs. Guess the fear she could squeeze you like a toothpaste tube full of blood and guts is…hot…
what am I saying, a few months ago the internet was obsessed with a 900 pound vampire mommy sitting on their faces.
The series Interviewing Leather includes a discussion on the logistical problems preventing supers from partnering with normals. Being able to crush cars with their bare hands means all their muscles have vise-like power. o_0
It may sound fun but the reality of such an encounter would be very different.
Kegels of Death
Uh, no.
I tried that once.
The hose keeps collapsing.
Idkw, but thought of Jinx High where a succubus is summoned by a witch to service some highschoolers. Another magic user wipes the glamour off and the boys realize what they were getting it on with. The freak out a bit. Especially over the teeth where there shouldn’t have been teeth.
Did the mages just make their own, personal Terminators?
Because I think they just made their own, personal Terminators!
( “Widely ranged stock” being an incredibly delicate euphemism for mix and match body parts. )
Available at your local ‘Boobs Butts and Beyond’.
More like, “I will defend my master to the death. Incidentally I’ll be out shopping all day Thursay.” Wink wink nudge nudge say no more.
“A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat.”
Yeah I bet, because murder always gets you excited Max. Especially when it’s murder you can fit into your narrow world views and narrative.
My my. You are a wee bit angry at a fictional character.
A character who has not actually killed anybody in the comic I might add, so I do not see where the accusation of murderous tendencies comes from.
Granted, she did her best with Sciona, but she had ample reason to believe that Sciona was a terrorist (and her actual plans were even worse, but Maxima could not know those so that does not matter).
Just before Maxima threw her Fireball O’Doom at Sciona the later had suddenly changed course towards a busy bridge, and Maxima said “I’m not letting you anywhere near that bridge”, presuming (and likely riightly so) that Sciona meant to hold the people on that bridge hostage or meant to endanger them to get Maxima to stop chasing her. That elevated her from an possible terrorist threat to an active one.
Oh, and there was Kevin. Who moments before had threatened to murder Maxima and stated his intent to also keep on causing riots and even wars because those would make him feel good. When Maxima threatened to ‘ash his brainstem’ they had him immobilised, barely, but certainly not subdued. She listened to Sydney when she told that they could actually subdue him, and after that used the threat of lethal force to get him to surrender.
In all other fights Maxima was involved in she used even less force.
So, no, I do not see her displaying murderous tendencies or even needless violence.
Maxima has a temper and some big shiny red buttons that her team knows how to push but is not afraid to push either (so they obviously do not fear her temper either).
I admit, exposition pages in webcomics are always my least favourite part in the moment, just because you have to sit there and wait while it goes on, kind of tapping your foot every now and then mentally while you wait for it to be over. Even the most lively engaging and well-made page that’s mostly exposition is unfortunately still exposition, and while it’s going the whole comic has to grind to if not a halt, certainly a snail’s pace while it happens.
Still at least the subject matter’s a little interesting, though I wish we could see these sorts of info dumps in long in-game codex articles like BioWare did for Mass Effect & Dragon Age.
One of my favorite examples of concentrated info-dumps is the encyclopedia entries in Drive (great sci-fi comedy series). A full page of text on each species, their culture, some little in-jokes, etc, all in a nice condensed single page that people who aren’t into that kind of world building can skip, and the rest of the strips focus on the story with only a tiny sprinkle of exposition.
The author actually does a great podcast as well (Comic Lab) with another artist, on writing comics and making a living from it. Writing Excuses is another great one on constructing stories. I’m not a writer or artist, but both are super fun to listen to anyways.
Feel the same way about half the ‘combaty-action’ pages
Man, suddenly the whole concept of these early Succubus are a case of something that could give you the greatest carnal pleasures anyone could hole to experience but are equally likely to kill you… Which is pretty much spot on for the general idea and opinion of a succubus.
The French don’t call it le petit mort for no reason.
I thought they called it that because medical “experts” back in the day believed that during orgasm the man’s dick magically sucked out some of the woman’s vitality.
-they also believed men and women should sleep in separate beds because the man’s overpowering masculine energy would drain the life force from the woman (thus starting a dumb trend that was then adopted for tv because it appeased the censors causing the two beds nonsense to go on much longer than it should have.
I mean its not surprising, this is all from the same time period (or method of thought anyway) where they believed what a woman looked at while pregnant could affect how the baby looked.
I always thought that was because of how you react just after.
“I thought they called it that because medical “experts” back in the day believed that during orgasm the man’s dick magically sucked out some of the woman’s vitality.”
I think I might now have nightmares about the concept of a penis that ‘sucks’ things in.
Thank you for that.
“adopted for tv because it appeased the censors causing the two beds nonsense to go on much longer than it should have.”
I think the reason for the separate beds was actually because Hollywood simply did not want to acknowledge the reality that people had sex outside of procreation, when the beds would, I’m guessing, get pushed together :)
an article on the twin beds thing,
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/16/rolled-over-why-did-married-couples-stop-sleeping-in-twin-beds
’twere not terribly bad medical advice prior to modern standards of medicine and hygiene.
The idea that the ‘weaker’ partner might drain the vitality of the ‘stronger’ has a basis. The partner with the ‘weaker constitution’ is likely to be that way for a reason. Perhaps they bathe less often. Perhaps they have unsanitary habits. Perhaps they have a chronic illness. Perhaps they get fleas or lice or something because of work that exposes them to it. Any number of reasons.
‘draining the vitality of others’ happens when others are exposed to these influence more often as opposed to less often. Some of them are low-grade communicable. Others hinder recovery from injury or illness.
Twin beds were a way to improve sanitation, on the same grounds as ‘social distancing.’ It makes bad things less likely to transmit between people.
“Twin beds were a way to improve sanitation, on the same grounds as ‘social distancing.’ It makes bad things less likely to transmit between people.”
Also probably a step towards birth control by making it a little more of a pain in the neck to ‘get bus-ay.’
“Honey, want to have sex?”
“I would but I’m tired and don’t want to push the beds together. We could do it on one of the twin beds?”
“Not a lot of space to move around afterwards and you know how I want to cuddle afterwards. Harder to do on the twin-size.”
:)
the problem there is while what you said can make sense, the same so called experts were also claiming that the individual doing the draining was also getting stronger and healthier, like they were a succubus/incubus feeding on the other person’s life force.
QUOTE>”I think I might now have nightmares about the concept of a penis that ‘sucks’ things in.
Thank you for that.”<QUOTE
There was a cartoon in Heavy Metal back in the 80s called "The Truck" that featured a semi with an attached, robotic driver (human looking) who "gassed up" but sucking the lifeforce out of female hitchhikers via an very long, extendable penis.
“There was a cartoon in Heavy Metal back in the 80s called “The Truck” that featured a semi with an attached, robotic driver (human looking) who “gassed up” but sucking the lifeforce out of female hitchhikers via an very long, extendable penis.”
I don’t even have a penis and somehow that sentence physically hurts me to think about.
It also makes yet another reason I would never hitchhike.