First impressions on this because I don't have anyone else to talk about it and you pointed me to it,
spoilers for uh the first 20 or so pages of Fairmeadow ig, click to open:
- Who would win: 1 presumably lesbian orc, or a non-evil, not particularly terrifying cow
- I like what the artist did with visual storytelling here: Goma confused Sanctuary with the cow because of his horns, and afterwards she still threatened Sanctuary, for the same reason she threatened the cow: she's treating him as meat. Alas, Sanctuary utterly defeats her, in the same way that the cow did: by caring about her state and not responding to her violence at all.
- What Sanctuary did by force-kidnessing her with the basket of squash is actually a very effective deescalation technique you can use yourself, too. It's something salespeople do to manipulate others. Due to some quirk of human psychology, we almost reflexively feel more friendly towards someone we helped. Not someone who helps us, somebody we do a favour for. Subconscious probably goes "if I decided to do a favour for this guy he must be an ally; otherwise I wouldn't be helping him, now would I", which bypasses the guards of "he's only helping me because he wants something". Thus if you want to defuse someone's hostility, ask them a favour—something genuinely helpful and that they are able to do, and in a way where it's awkward for them to refuse.