Grrl Power #998 - All's well that succs well? (Patreon)

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I was trying so hard to trim this tale down to the basics but then in panel 4 I couldn't help stick in a joke about... I guess it's about ableism? Sort of? There's absolutely a need to be aware of discriminatory thinking, but I also think there's a cutoff, where all parties need to be cognizant of reality. If someone gets both their arms blown off in a potato gun incident, I think it's okay to suggest that learning sign language or juggling might present a slightly steeper difficulty curve than usual. Not saying you can't or shouldn't, and I'll try not to use the word disabled if you don't like it, just please don't bite my head off if I make an offhanded (no pun intended) comment about thinking you might have better luck Riverdancing than rock climbing. Personally, if I lost both my arms, my first instinct wouldn't be to beligerently sign up for the patty-cake championships, but I might get annoyed if someone I worked with constantly said "hand-off" instead of "delegate."

I don't know, I wasn't trying to get all insightful. I just thought it was funny. My point was, they've all had to sit through Archon's HR videos, and telling someone they need to be "fixed" is probably on the no-no list.

"Why did you attack me with that bucket of water?" "You were on fire." "Well, that's just immolationist."

Panel 5: If I'd had another page for this sequence, I was going to write about how if humans could gene-edit ourselves, our first step might be to make it so we could synthesize vitamin c. Some monkeys can do it. Most mammals can, but at some point one of our ancestors had a mutation that cost him the ability. Obviously he had access to oranges and was probably swinging a big dick, so here we are. But then what's the next step? Make it so we can synthesize all the vitamins? Cure male-pattern baldness? Eliminate breast cancer? Two hearts are better than one, etc etc. At some point, those people couldn't realistically call themselves humans. I think usually the species divide is defined at being able to interbreed and produce viable, fertile offspring. Once you lose that, you're not really the same species any more. Dabbler's point was yeah, we could get rid of our soul-hole, and our horns and weird skin colors and throat clits, but we certainly wouldn't be succubi anymore.

"I'm sorry, what was that last one?" "Come and find out."

There were some concerns about Dabbler being a security risk if she has a foreign master she's beholden to, and those are perfectly valid. If she was 22, she would definitely be a risk unless her master was also on the team and had equivalent or higher security clearance than her. But she's 187, and has been able to resist the obedience compulsion for a long ass time.

Oh, and as far as the symbols on the collars go, the 4-x's isn't emblematic of anything about Tom specifically, like he doesn't have a birthmark that looks like 4 X's or anything. It just forms when the bond is established. That said, it could carry over from some symbol the master strongly identifies with. Like with Deus, it might be that lopsided X on his face, but it usually some unique symbol, like a magical QR code.

Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:

Still working on that sex scene. I don't really want to FTB, but I haven't really been in the mood to write it. It's a scene with Yxlyn, and I think because I wrote her so naive and innocent in the first book, writing a sex scene with her feels tawdry or something? Which is stupid because the book opens on the scene with her and Sam - which I've already written. I don't consider that a spoiler because the first book ends with them crawling into the little cavelette for their first time together. Admittedly it's a really weird way to open a book, but that's just where I cut it last time. Poor planning if I'm honest.