Grrl Power #1334 – J’accuse, boobily
For those wondering, Sciona’s boobs can become selectively sticky. Not THAT way, you pervs. Okay, also THAT way, but it’s certainly not how she’s doing it on these recent pages.
This page went through some editing, originally Sciona said something along the lines of knowing how manipulative Deus is so why would she put stock in any claim he makes, that was before he doubles down with the wager. But then I figured she wouldn’t actually admit he was good at manipulation, which would essentially be her admitting that she didn’t know how to respond and that he was indeed manipulating her. The thing with writing smart people is that I usually have to do several edits because I’m not nearly as smart as them. So my first draft usually has them acting and reacting to things on “our level.”
So my juvenile solution was to basically include some version of everything I was going to put on the page, only now Deus is saying out loud most of the stuff Sciona was going to say or think… in a slightly condescending way. There is a place for falsetto… mostly while reading female dialog while recording an audio book. But beyond that, it’s almost always slightly mocking, isn’t it? Especially when a guy, or heck, even a girl is doing it among a group of friends or to a woman’s face even.
To anyone unfamiliar with the “boobily” thing, it’s a reference to r/MenWritingWomen which features real quotes from books where male authors (and a few female ones) write women with a bizarre and/or creepy level of sexuality, like a young woman eating a sandwich while her nipples raged against the injustice of their confinement in the bra, or an actual passage from God Emperor of Dune where a character named Siona (who I just learned about this instant) wonders if she will experience an orgasm from watching Idaho climb something. As we all know, women are constantly on the brink of ecstasy, waiting for any man to do something vaguely manly so they can powerwash the inside of their own pants with their lady nectar.
Anyway, a seemingly endless stream of examples like this have led to sarcastic versions like “She breasted boobily down the stairs.” It’s possible Deus is simply testing the depth of Sciona’s pop-culture chops, as being familiar with The Princess Bride is a far cry from lurking on a particular subreddit.
And on a total derailment of my thought train, why is it called “The Princess Bride?” Buttercup is not a princess. If she married Humperdink, she would have become one, but spoiler, she doesn’t say “I do.” Sure, it’s a catchier title than “The Peasant Bride” or “The Serf Who Might Marry into the Nobility, Thereby Becoming a Princess” or “Level Up! The other Peasant Wenches Hate this One Trick!” I actually thought the title of the movie was “The Prince’s Bride” for a while, which would make more sense. Or “The Prince’s Fiancee,” really, but that’s kind of spoilery.
The new vote incentive is up! (Finally.)
I’m revisiting a panel from a recent page, but I included some comic reactions and a few outfit swaps, so hopefully you all enjoy it. I also plussed up the art from the comic version a bit, though I suspect that despite the time I spent on that, not a whole lot of people would immediately notice that, so I’m gratuitously pointing it out here.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
he’s even great at impersonations, is there ANYTHING Deus cannot do?!
Manage to get Max to actually like him,
Nonsense.
He manages that every time he stops the egomaniacal narcissist act.
And I am 99.99% sure it _is_ an act.
Deus is incredibly smart and incredibly able. He acts as an egomaniacal narcissist because it gets him something he wants. Not only that, but it is the BEST way to get something he wants, to ten significant digits, regardless of what anyone thinks. He is not an egotistical narcissist, he is a super-sociopath. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
When has he ever stopped that?
*maniacal cackling*
He’s spinning her up like an autogyro. I got a tawny that says he already knows who she possessed, and how her powers work, and how to counter them, in addition to the countermeasures we already know he has in place to counter actual magic. He’s going to bender in a direction he finds both useful and satisfactory to his relationships with ARCHON personnel, and do in such a way as that she will feel grateful, even as she resents him for meddling in her own plans, and effectively co-opting her autonomy.
And I do not doubt for a second that if he feels she’s getting to be a liability, he’ll let Cthillia feed her to the magic shapshifting murder knife.
I really, really love Big D. Pun intended. ^_^
Yep, I love how he is playing her like a fiddle (in a benign sense). Gradually making her at ease after the bad day she got, working around her Tsundere attitude and their supervillain rivalry and Belligerent Sexual Tension, subtly highlighting what makes them kindred souls (long-lived, geniuses, supervillain masterminds, nerds, attracted to each other, good lays, etc).
I am confident his game here is to influence her to tweak her plans in a way that is convenient and beneficial to both of her plans, beginning with the dungeon deal but potentially going far beyond, and persuade her to be allies and friends with benefits.
Quite possibly all the way to being a Power Couple and Big Bad Duumvirate bound in (open) Unholy Matrimony and dedicated to taking over the world and leading humanity to fulfil its best potential (and the Alari to recover their lost greatness) in non-destructive ways together. For all their competitive bickering and BST, the more they talk, the more I see them potentially highly compatible this way, esp. with this new and improved version of Sciona.
One of Goldman’s conceits in ‘The Princess Bride’ was that Buttercup was raised in status to the level of princess before she married Humperdick so that the marriage could occur & be considered a union of equals – at least in part because it caused the peasantry to love her more – thus ensuring their united outrage when she would be murdered.
Also, damn man! You are making Deus an extremely likeable rogue!
There is the concept of “morganatic marriage”, where one spouse doesn’t get any of the privileges that would otherwise happen. Usually used when a noble marries a commoner – the commoner *didn’t* become a noble.
I think it may have been an attempt to control the number of nobles.
Florin, being a European country (sounds vaguely Italian), probably had rules about that. So the author likely explained that Buttercup was raised in rank before the marriage to avoid people objecting on that account. IIRC it was only in the book – the moviegoers probably wouldn’t have time or inclination to object.
Buttercup is elevated to Princess early on in the movie. Humperdinck presents her to the people as “Princess Buttercup”. Note that this is not her nightmare, in that, Humperdinck introduces her Queen Buttercup.
Buttercup was ALWAYS a princess to Westley.
My only victory is that I joined team Deus one episode before this one.
Indeed, she “breasted boobily”.
its going to boil down to “your body has been here X years and therefor i have been here longer or something
I don’t know; that’s a very physical argument for a mind based super. Will D prove that her “self” is the gestalt of that body and her Alari mind and thus very young?
I figured D given his resources had already gone thru a time compressed full immersion simulator multiple times to test his “future plans.”
There are probably a dozen ways in which what Deus said was true, and several that it was not. Because Deus. He’s making inside jokes with himself.
Supers have been around for a long time. Those scars on his face are the sorts of things duelists used to do to each other centuries ago.
So it could be that he’s just really old and has been avoiding conflict with aliens by focusing on economics. He’s human, so the Council might not notice him, however the veil would still stop normals from noticing his activities.
Dave, you should have met my wife about 45 years ago. Or maybe not. You might not have been able to handle it.
Interesting times.
Sounds a bit like my wife, she came from a big family, 3 brothers, a half sister and 2 step brothers and a step sister. She knew how to play the game! Once I figured that out, she stopped trying to play me ;) She’d switch styles often, I started to think she was bi-polar, but no, she was trying to figure out how to deal with me, and since I was the middle kid with 2 sisters, I already knew the rules LOL!
For a character that was literally introduced in shadow laughing while lighting cracks across the page, Deus is infinitely more likeable than I would have originally guessed. Perhaps it’s because he’s smart enough to know being a ruthless sociopath has proven downsides, perhaps it’s because he’s just a dork. Either way, funny smart man.
He’s so smart and with such high ambitions for the good of all that he knows being a ruthless psychopath who hides it is far less effective than being a ruthless psychopath who acts like a really smart guy with high ambitions for the good of all who for fun acts like a ruthless psychopath who acts like a good guy who acts… insert hall of mirrors….
If caught being good, he ALWAYS immediately puts it in doubt. People are MUCH easier to manipulate if they are uncertain of your morals and goals than if they had once thought you a good guy and been betrayed. THAT you never get back.
He’s an evil mastermind who has read and internalised the evil overlord list. Which turns you into a benevolant dictator.
Or he’s a genuinely good guy who’s pretending to be an evil mastermind who’s…
Given the current state of the world, that second option is looking mighty effective.
*low whistle* the things a blood mage could do with samples of hundreds of supes….
Make herself a MCU Super-Skrull and field a small golem army of DC Amazos or Marvel Adaptoids, to begin with. She already has the know-how. Clone the samples to give super bodies to all of their Alari minions. Run of the mill for a master blood mage.
Only this time she would have the means to make it flawlessly (no side effects or limited duration), since the bodies would have an inborn connection to the Superion field. This would make her the equivalent in power base terms of Deus (assuming he did crack the code of manufacturing supers to order).
The only flaw in that plan is that all of the super-powered Alari would then start working toward their own ends and cause her all sorts of problems.
The obvious counter to that is to make herself the Grrlverse Super-Skrull and the most powerful super ever with ALL the useful powers at Archon powerhouse levels, and the other Alari vanilla supers with just one or a few powers. Not to mention she would be able to stack her top-class blood mage abilities on top of that. IIRC DaveB stated she is quite exceptional, the elite of the elite, among the Alari (and beings with similar magic potential), as a blood mage.
SmugD is trying to make that wager, not because he believes he will win, but because he doesn’t care if he loses because he would get something more valuable: Sci’s true age (which he can then use to get her into his bed… again)
The best place to set up shop Is that a crossroad. All paths lead to getting what you want.
The reason it’s called “The Princess Bride” is pretty funny. The author William Goldman was telling his young daughters a story and one wanted a story about a princess and the other wanted a story about a bride. So he combined the two and the rest is history.
The author author, or the in-story author?
The author author, William Goldman.
If Deus has been doing this for a lot longer then he’s got a lot more resources than expected and we were already expecting LexCorp.
The “don’t notice supers” veil would have prevented anyone from noticing. His age doesn’t match, but maybe he’s found the fountain of youth or something similar.
He may also not be entirely human.
Then we would no longer have to wonder why an eldritch horror is listening to a human.
{From the first line of the text section}
So that’s how her phone stays in place!
Pos-tits
Deus being a lot older than he appears would explain a few things, though I’d be a bit sad if it turns out Deus is not a (super)human but instead some alien species.
It seems exceedingly easy to me to explain how and why Deus as a super is as long-lived as Sciona or more. To begin with, given the way super bodies are made, it is quite possible and indeed very likely that Grrlverse supers have biological immortality or a very long lifespan by default. Even if this would not be the case, it would be far from difficult for a genius of his calibre to make himself immortal by super-tech means, magic ones, or a mix of both. For someone who cracked the secret of the Superion field, the Elixir of Youth seems like a walk in the park in comparison.
By the way, the same reasoning applies to Sciona. She might well have enjoyed a long lifespan thanks to Alari biology, and have it again thanks to her current body, but in any case immortality looks trivial to achieve for a master blood mage.
Odd bit of Trivia… the book (from the 1970s) was titled “The Princess Bride” because many of the elements of the story were adapted by William Goldman from bedtime stories he made up for his daughters when they were young. In particular, when he asked them what kind of story they would like for him to create, one said “Princesses!” and the other said “Brides!”
This is also why Humperdink and Buttercup have silly sounding names, because they were fun names for a silly story being created for a couple of young girls.
I don’t know if this actually interests anyone, but this was the actual reason behind the name(s)
I put money on the fact the dues is actually Cain, with the mark on him and been around since then steering humanity in a certain direction…..
The grin on Deus’ face in the fourth panel is one of my favorite pictures so far in this comic. And there’s some *stiff* competition.
I’m still a bit worried about what looks like an ID card stapled/pinned/fastened to her right boob in the last few posts. Ow!
That is her phone. She made her boob sticky.
If Deus were thousands of years old, he would have made himself God-Emperor of Earth long ago, because a) he could and 2) it would allow him to indulge his passion for infrastructure.
Quite possibly, he is just a few centuries old, like Sciona, and spent most of that time quietly building up his power base in economic, knowledge, and personal-abilities terms.
JETHRIK!! and yes, besides reading the comic I really am only here to shout out one word Doctor Who references!
sorry, sorry, your entire post there just keeps repeating ‘Exterminate’ over and over
UM ACTUALLY– after he proposed and before she was kidnapped, Humperdink’s people argued he couldn’t marry a commoner, so they made her Princess of Hammersmith, a tiny tract of nearby land.
So…she has TINY tracts of land?
For the record, in “God Emperor of Dune”, Siona does orgasm when Duncan makes it to the top of rock.
Actually it’s Nayla with the slightly odd mountaineering kink.
*sigh* and yet, in that shirt I still wouldn’t do things so boobily. Spare some thoughts for the A-team?
I love it when a plane comes together
Sorry, no luck for you (or Sydney, or Peggy) here. We know Sciona is dedicated to give herself the Most Common Superpower in any incarnation, and Deus apparently has that type, if the sum of Harem, Sciona, and Max is any guide. Heck, he even picked a PA that comes not so short in this regard.
Honestly, I cannot really criticize him here. What use is that kind of wealth, if you can’t even surround yourself with people that fulfil your aesthetic ideal on top of having the other personal qualities you require?
You know what I would love to see? If someone tells Sydney Deus has super Intelligence and Sydney, with all her pop culture knowledge about how an ASI would look like…instantly turns COMPLETELY serious, or maybe even slightly scared of Deus, really hammering home what a threat someone like that actually is.
In defense of Siona… that’s just something Jason Mamoa can DO. It’s why he was such a perfect casting.
Dave, they could be using the popular usage of “princess” meaning “an attractive but aloof woman that men compete over”. In that sense, Buttercup is definitely a princess.
Cthilia: *sigh* The more layers of clothing I put on, and the more gruff and sandpapery I act, the more certain people STILL insist on touching me…
Either Sciona isn’t as old as everybody claims… or Deus is MUCH older than he appears.
Or he really is bluffing, and the whole point of the wager was to alter Sciona’s behavior in a way that’s useful to him. This can be true if she calls his bluff and emerges victorious (maybe she begins to underestimate him, or suspects her reward is less useful than she thought it would be, or something else) or if she plays it safe (she’s now worried about exactly what he is and what resources he truly has).
Nope. There is no need to bluff on this issue. The wager is quite easy and simple for Deus to win if we assume both of them had a very long lifespan with lasting youth, are of similar age, and were born centuries ago. To begin with, Grrlverse supers might well be long-lived or ageless by default (ideal bodies are conductive to that) and for a genius of his caliber, to achieve immortality by super-tech or magic means seems a walk in the park. It is strongly implied Alari are a long-lived species like demons/succubi, and on top of that, biological immortality (and/or body-hopping between cloned bodies) seems trivial to achieve for a blood archmage.
There was a period during norse culture, around the 1100s to 1400s AD, when someone hated, despised, or suspected of magic would get an ‘X’ carved on his face as a warning to others, and be driven out. That culture, despite being known for ‘viking’ raiders, were surprisingly averse to directly applying the death penalty, but this came pretty close. These people, when they survived at all, either wound up living as outcasts, or completely left the area where everybody knew what that scar meant.
I thought of that the first time I saw Deus’ face. Now maybe we will see whether I was right.
Deus is basically what Rick and Morty fans THINK Rick is. He doesn’t just claim to be the smartest person alive (after creating a literal barrier between all the universes where he’s the smartest person around, and all the universes where he isn’t. Because insecure alcoholic d-bag would rather be a big fish in a tiny pond). He doesn’t just make stupid speeches and put others down in order to feel better about his own unhappiness.
He’s manipulating people, leaving them aware that he’s manipulating them AND that they’re benefiting from it, and winning loyalty from half of them and begrudging respect from the other half. And having a grand old time while doing it.