Grrl Power #1271 - Kung Fulcrum (Patreon)

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Obviously Jabber takes the shape of her body and center of gravity into account when doing all her Hi-Keebas, but even though her chest has more weight than Sydney's, it's not like she's swinging around a pair of kettlebells. You could do a lot of unexpected flippy attacks if you were holding onto something that acted as a significant counterweight, like a (humongous fantasy) maul or a 40 lb dumbbell. Actual historical mauls weren't that much heavier than a sledgehammer, so they'd be bad for spirographing kung fu moves.  

Now a tail... that could have some heft to it. Not a cat tail or a kitsune tail, but a nice plump lizard tail. Or better yet, an ankylosaurus tail, with that built in kettlebell. Granted, that sort of tail wouldn't be prehensile beyond waving back and forth. Lapha's tail is prehensile. She's still learning to use it for things other than getting it caught in doors and knocking stuff off of shelves, but it's not really chonky enough to significantly shift her fulcrum if she's doing spinny kicks. Once she learns to grab stuff with her tail reliably, it will open up a whole new move set for her when she brawls.

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I've got some book recommendations for you guys.

I recently finished this one, it's called Invading the System: Systema Delenda Est. I really liked it, probably because it's a lot different than my usual fare. It's technically an Isekai book, but unlike most Hero From Another World books, the main character doesn't get hit by a truck and wake up in a fantasy world. He goes there on purpose. In the form of a ten-ton kaiju. So, while I like LitRPGs in theory, there's a lot about the genre I don't like. I've said it before, but I can't do any video game books. There's just no stakes, unless the story is really about affecting something in the real world somehow. The other branch of LitRPG I don't care for is the System Apocalypse subgenre, where "The System" comes to Earth, technology stops working, millions or billions die, and people have to rank up or die. I don't know why, but that subgenre bugs me. Well, the main character in Invading the System agrees with me, because in the book, The System came to an Earth rather far in our future, an Earth where cybernetics were prevalent, intra-system space travel was a thing, and people could become post-biological, i.e. upload their consciousnesses into a mainframe or a bio-weapon. And when The System hit Earth, technology stopped working and like 10 billion people died instantly. But humanity discovered that their bio-weapon organic tech still worked, and The System was only on Earth. Its influence didn't even extend to the moon. So they orbital dropped Kaiju soldiers onto the planet and destroyed all the anchors (dungeons, etc) needed for The System to stay there, basically eradicating it from the planet. But they don't know why it came there or how to prevent it from coming back, so, the book opens with the main character going to another world with an established System, intent on purging that world, in the opening salvo intended to beat The System back all across the galaxy and eradicate it from existence. Obviously, there will be enormously powerful beings with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, so, long road ahead. As I said, I really enjoyed this book, partially because the main character was extremely non-human. I won't spoil anything, but let's just say the ten-ton kaiju form he arrives in is, uh... his starting point. 

Okay, I know I just said I don't like books that take place in video games, but, this one is an exception because it's told from the point of view of an NPC. An NPC who is glitched past an early story-driven character-death-to-motivate-the-hero moment and follows the hero through the remainder of the quest. I thought it was really funny because the player... plays like someone playing a game. Like, he steals everything that isn't nailed down, and continually attempts to break stuff in the game. The whole time, the NPC is playing it totally straight and trying to rationalize the hero's behavior. The audiobook is especially good because while the NPC is giving herself a lecture about her destiny and duty to aid the hero's quest, you can hear him in the background going "Hup! Hyup! Hut!" cause he's jumping on tables and mumbling about trying to fit a broom into his inventory and stuff like that. There's also a ton of video game trope references which I found amusing. Anyway, it's cute and funny and there's a little more to the story than just goofy winks to the reader, but I won't spoil any of that stuff. Oh, right, the book is called Prophecy Approved Companion.

I think I've recommended this one before, but no harm in plugging it again. It's called Mark of the Fool. Basically, the Big Bad returns on a cycle, but the people are defended by the chosen ones, each given a blessing to become a mighty mighty. The Champion, the Sage, etc. The main character, as you might guess, receives the Mark of the Fool, which means he can't attack anyone. He can't punch someone, he can't throw a rock at them, he can't cast a fireball spell at someone. The mark does allow him to learn any non-combat skill at an accelerated rate, but historically, The Fool's contribution to beating back the Big Bad is  to die early on, thus uniting the remaining heroes in vengeance. Unsurprisingly, the main character isn't really excited at this prospect and ducks out, heading instead to wizard school. And it turns out that being The Fool might not be the worst thing in the world if you're not immediately thrown against the slavering hordes of the Big Bad where you become a massive combat liability for the other heroes. 

And here's a manga that I bought like 3 years ago and then forgot I had for some reason. Then I started reading it and bought the rest of the series right away. It's called A Witch's Printing Office, and it's about a girl who gets isekai'd to another world, and her solution for getting back is to basically invent Comic-Market, but for magic. The idea being to bring all the mages together to swap and sell spells and tomes, which will allow her to browse through their offerings looking for a Teleport to Another World spell. It's 95% humor, with stuff like knights of the realm being used to form shield walls to keep attendees in lines and the MC making deals with demons and dragons to keep expanding the spell offerings, and the while she's running a printing shop that is hugely overwhelmed with work. And the art is very nice to boot. Actually it's part of the reason I've been trying some new stuff with the comic recently. Honestly, drawing a comic is time consuming and I don't get a lot of comic reading time. Books I can do if there's an audiobook, but you can't really multitask when reading comics, and it's something I need to set aside more time for.