Grrl Power #1018 – The troll under the extol bridge
Should that be “abject exemplification?” Honestly it works either way. Object = a tangible thing. Abject = the lowest example of. Oh, English.
The “he’s a supervillain because he mercilessly crushed his opposition” joke doesn’t… quite ring true for me, because mostly he’s going after all the corrupt officials that try and pocket 25% of everything that flows through their office and makes creating and maintaining infrastructure or an honest police force basically impossible. Removing those sorts of people, or “mercilessly crushing” them probably isn’t going to put Deus on any nation’s supervillain list. If I saw that all the bankers and traders involved in the 2008 banking crisis were stripped of all their assets and publicly flogged – well, I’d be fucking shocked that there might indeed be some accountability for rich criminals in America, but I also wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep at their treatment.
But in some poor-ass sub-Saharan country, while there would be a few “rich” assholes taking advantage of everyone else, a lot of the people scamming funds from the local highway project are probably doing it because they kind of have to. So while Lorlara is correct in that some of the most parasitic scum were indeed given the “just heel,” there was also a broad amnesty announced, saying something along the lines of “Real money is going to start coming into the country and salaries will be increasing. That said, from this point on, if you’re caught with your hand in the cookie jar, you will be in deep fucking trouble.”
Yes, Sydney is supposed to mention that she’s white twice in that second panel. This probably isn’t the first time she’s been in the extreme minority, racially, but it’s on her mind. I wish I’d had more time to draw people walking around in the background, showing the city as sort of a business park/college campus feel, but I was literally working on these pages when I was sick, so my productivity suffered a bit.
Oh, and I forgot to add “Watertowers” to the Hydro Tech Tree.
Covid Update: I got covid (probably omicron) as previously mentioned. I’m vaccinated, so it was like 4 days of barely being sick, no fever or anything, just a slight tickle in my throat and light sinus congestion, then it ramped up Sunday, and by the time I was working on posting the previous page, I was starting to feel pretty crappy, but it seemed like most of it was from insomnia. Then I got a good night of sleep Sunday night, and Monday I felt basically 90% better. The symptoms have continued to attenuate, and now I feel basically like I did on the first or second day. At this rate I assume I’ll be 100% by the weekend. Or maybe I’ll be 5% sick for the next six weeks. The symptoms seem to be all over the place, so we’ll see. But I’m definitely getting that booster the first chance I get.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: It’s done!
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She has a pretty good vocabulary for someone for whom English is a second language….
given what we’ve seen of their ‘education’ methods, I’m not surprised. its amazing what you can learn when someone whips you for the slightest failure.
Hatred and resentment mostly, but I’m sure you can manage a few hours a day to actually learn things as well.
just remember the beatings will continue until the morale improves.
Naa just use those nanny disks of theirs nothing hypes you up like a jolt now and then just ask anyone that’s touched an electric cow fence lol
It can, however, become slightly addictive if the setting is too low.
Just saying… No-one wants that. Unless that’s your thing.
we just set up a new cow fence energizer and i was hand feeding hay to one of the cows and leaned over a tad bit too much and took 10,000 volts to my left nipple…. yeah no risk of addiction there LOL at least I didn’t have a heart attack but pain was all I knew for a split second. (still think she was laughing at me too)
Yeah, I was out at the coup, which we’ve surrounded with electric fence at key points on account of some raccoon problems. Grabbed hold of the wire, (I was wearing rubber soled shoes, it wasn’t that bad, but the chicken wire was the ground for this system, do NOT touch that, too.) and told my son, “Darn, I think the power’s gone out.”
He didn’t fall for it.
Yeah we have the same problem i wrapped the coups with 2 rows of hot wire and i found out that raccoons can’t resist sardines so i set live traps to catch and depose of the problem by the corn bin. Walked over there one night about 2 yrs ago and lost count at 14.
Better than the average east ender or septic for that matter.
Seventh language actually. #843.
Dunno ’bout the 2nd through 6th, but it is entirely probable Lorlara is inhaling English because she knows it will… please? her liege Lord. And help him.
All good things are possible through Deus. All praise Deus amen.
Infrastructure? More like win-frastructure am I right?
He’s paving the way for energizing the economy.
And he’s even avoiding the suburbia nonsense and gone for a walkable city.
Someone’s been watching the right youtube documentaties on urban planning ;-D
Quite fitting, considering the meaning of the name. *grins*
It’s spelled Aquifer actually.
And yeah, it’s really easy to see that Deus is the hero of the story from a different perspective. Obviously he’s a tyrant, but he’s a damned effective one.
Remember that most villains believe their own hype.
Deus truly believes he’s doing the Lord’s work here and if some people/protesters/objectionables need to be swept away the ends justify the means.
The fact that he profits immensely from having his own first world country (of his own making) is just his just rewards for helping the people of Galytin.
More like nearly all, a good realistic villain is the hero from their own point of view. Just look at the kid that went from poverty to getting good schooling and then a good job, to her he’s a hero.
People don’t set out to be evil, they are simply convinced that their ideas are good and the people saying they are evil are the ones being evil. Of course, in some cases thinking it’s good means you have to completely disregard the rights of a subset of people, but to them they are good to the people that truly matter…
I’m sure there’s exceptions that rule, but generally speaking you’d find some angle where the evil looks good.
I don’t think either Mother Gothel of Tangled or Jafar world believe themselves heroes. They have wholly selfish motivations, and I argue quite believable, realistic, ones. Continuing the list I can add Megamind (and Titan), Syndrome, and Robert Callaghan of Big Hero 6 just from what I can think of right now. Good Villians don’t need to think themselves heroes. A lot of real people are just self-centered. Fictional characters can be too.
Also, Don’t forget that Deus is Genre Savvy, and has no doubt read the Evil Overlord List (and probably has phone alerts to warn him if he’s close to breaking one of the rules therein): https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilOverlordList
Definitely. You can see it by him appropriately arranging to take time for 20. and even improving the ambience for that.
> Deus truly believes he’s doing the Lord’s work here […]
I’m fairly confident that Deus is in fact an atheist (probably an agnostic atheist, as most atheists are) and is doing all this work in his own name.
The lords work???? Pfffffttt hahahahahaha.
Have you not been reading the comic? Hes knows he the villian in the story because despite all the improvements hes making to peoples lives, his sole long term goal is his own personal greed. Hes just smart enough to see the benefit of long term investment and inspiring loyalty in his citizens.
But he would totally murder a whole bag of puppies if he thought it would get him a net advantage.
Greed is not villianous when it is used to a positive and beneficial end to everyone involved, including the helpless and most downtrodden.
“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”
“But he would totally murder a whole bag of puppies if he thought it would get him a net advantage.”
Untrue. Because he is using a business model which takes a lot longer and is a lot more risky than taking the quick and evil path. Why does he value the ash tray, for example? It has no actual worth to it. It’s sentimental. It has value to him because it means something to him, despite that it does not give him a competitive advantage to keep it. Plus really there is no advantage to murdering a bag of puppies that cannot be accomplished in a less barbaric way anyway. He probably values a canine’s loyalty.
Also… i think the people who’s lives he is improving would agree with me. And if you were in their place, you would as well.
He’s one of those rare tyrants who has learned the single most important lesson: Take good care of your people, or they will certainly take care of you.
I don’t think there is such thing as a benevolent dictator… and if I am wrong and there is such a thing I promise they WON’T have a humongous facial scar!
That being said though part of me would vote for him (not that he would be on the ballot).
They’re increadably rare in history.
But theoretically possible.
Fun fact: If you follow the entirety of the “Evil Overlord List” you actually end up pretty benevolent.
According to the Ring of Fire series by Eric Flint. Gustave of Austria? If I have it right. Is the only known real life monarch to actually pull off the “Dress like a commoner and go out among the people.” Mind you in his case it was as a common soldier.
He comes across as a pretty smart guy in the books, and the Ring of Fire books really work at researching the historical figures they include in the books.
For those who don’t know the Ring of Fire books are set in a universe where a Virgina coal town is transported lock stock and Power plant back to 1632, which is also the title of the first book in the series.
Close! I wouldn’t call “Captain Gars” a common soldier, and Gustav Adolf Vasa was King of Sweden, not Austria.
Also, I would call the name “Captain Gars” for Gustavus Adolphus Rex Sueciae (Latin version, for official documents and such) a contender for the Thinly Veiled Alias of the Second Millennium.
And I highly recommend the series, especially if you like Long Sprawling Sagas chopped into shorter (novel length and shorter) chunks.
European history class from 35 years ago for the win! And Gustav had a particular handicap–he became king at the age of 12. He did things like have his guards drive boars down the halls so he could practice beheading them on the run.
Nothing like being on top in the Game of Thrones when you -KNOW- you aren’t ready to keep a teen occupied…
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, not Austria. Ran around as ‘Captain Gars’ (Gustavus Adolphus Rex Suisse) EARLY in his reign, guards hated it and thought he was nuts. Managed to be very pius without being an asshole about it.
Ninja’d
AHEM.
The coal town was Grantsville WEST VIRGINIA. Virginia isn’t coal country, West Virginia is. West Virginia has self-reliant hillbillies who could and would pull off being stuck in 1632.
I am working my way through that series right now, I am really enjoying it, and the work they put in doing the historical research, and thinking through the impact of adding modern tech and science to this society and how that would work and how it would affect things, really makes the series work; although some of the authors (coughVirginia DiMarcecough) tend to get a little bit bogged down in the historical trivia side of things.
Interestingly enough, there were a surprisingly large number of them. For instance, Vlad Tepes was hailed as a hero by his own people, for everything he did for them (most of his atrocities were perpetrated against foreign invaders, and corrupt aristocrats. The common folk didn’t give a crap about the Boyars he staked next to the Turks). And most of the dark rumors around him came from… Matthias Corvinas, one of his rivals. Who was also known as “Matthias the Just,” because he ALSO took care of his people.
Dude thats really….er…scarist about people, who, by no fault of there own have had something explode in their face.
Wanna go and stand outside the hospital and tell people with birth defects that they are evil?
Deux could have gotten that scar by reascuing kittens from a burning bomb factory……..
You have a point and I admit it. I am ashamed for being “scarist” about Deux… Maybe he is like the German Zeppelin officer in Archer whose face was mangled saving a little girl.
What I SHOULD have said is “If there is such a thing as a benevolent dictator, said person would not have a company mission statement that encourages rape (what else do think ‘lamentations of their women’ implies?), wantonly commits war crimes (the seizure of Galtyn and the invasion), and famously treats women like sex objects (yes even Maxima, you hardly have to read between the lines). The massive evil facial scar is just icing on the cake.
And part of me would still vote for him”
Total aside; I give myself pretty good odds against someone who’s birth defects are so severe they require regular trips to the hospital. Provided I catch them alone and they aren’t looking.
“What I SHOULD have said is “If there is such a thing as a benevolent dictator,”
He’s not a dictator. He’s just benevolent. :)
“said person would not have a company mission statement that encourages rape”
His company mission statement does not encourage rape.
“(what else do think ‘lamentations of their women’ implies?)”
It means the women will be very sad that their husbands were crushed as enemies and driven before them.
Also it means you’ve never seen Conan the Barbarian, which is where the statement was taken from. It’s not about rape. It is what was best in life in the Hyborian Age.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XUu3_pLPUE
“wantonly commits war crimes”
There were no war crimes committed by Deus. The only war crimes that have been shown were the war crimes that Deus video-taped Indinge doing which were shown to his son.
“(the seizure of Galtyn”
He did not seize Galytn. He paid for the infrastructure for their entire country in a business agreement with Indinge Jr, Prince of Galytn, who became King of Galytn, after Warlord-General Indinge Sr, also known as Mr. I-Love-To-Torture-Men-Women-and-Children-Because-I’m-Evil, his monster of a father, was killed in self-defense when Indinge tried to have his guards murder Deus because he did not like being called out on his corruption when Deus said he would not write Indinge a blank check.
“and the invasion)”
1) Galytn was already at war with Mozambique and all of its other surrounding neighbors according to Indinge.
2) The act of war by itself is not a war crime. Show me the actual war crimes that were committed. You won’t be able to, because there are none presented. War Crimes are an actual thing that can be shown in a few international laws that have been agreed upon, which I’ve actually written out a few days ago on another page.
“and famously treats women like sex objects”
He always gets consent, and the women seem to love it and treat him as a sex object as well, judging from how they are often repeat customers. Women wanting to have sex with him, and him wanting to have sex with women, does not make it ‘treating women like sex objects.’ It means he treats women like human beings that want to have sex with a guy who is REALLY REALLY GOOD at sex.
” The massive evil facial scar”
Seriously not sure what you have against people with scars.
Cable from X-Men has a scar. He’s a hero.
Inigo Montoya had two scars on his face. Are you calling Inigo Montoya a villain?
Harry Potter had a scar? Was he the acutal villain? Does this mean…. are you… are you a Voldemort fanboy? (gasp)
Was Chief from Goblins – Life Through Their Eyes a villain? That poor brave goblin who gave his friends time to escape from Kore?
Was Snake Pliskin a villain? Do his escape from both New York and Los Angeles mean nothing to you?
I’m just shocked I tell you. Shocked.
“I give myself pretty good odds against someone who’s birth defects are so severe they require regular trips to the hospital.”
I dunno, Voldemort and Cuervo Jones underestimated Harry Potter and Snake Pliskin, respectively. I’m not sure of the odds being in your favor man….
There was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus who was a farmer and was twice called up to become dictator, each time doing the job he was called for and then resigning to become a farmer again.
He has a wikipedia page in case you want to learn more.
The biggest issue with benevolent dictators is what comes after – best case scenario, they created a stable democratic structure to succeed them.
Every dictator is benevolent to their cronies and malevolent to those who oppose them.
All Tyrants knew this. The period of historical Tyrants ruling in Greece saw them rise to power by popular mandate and then maintained power through city beautification and enhancement. The Tyrant period was something of a Greek renaissance and was when great public works were made such as the Parthenon and many of the famous Geek statues like the Venus De Milo. They would have in effect a pyramid scheme of power and prestigue. Them on top, a core of well treated loyalists, the fairly well treated local population, the some what more ignored neighbors and then the ENEMY, being the old regime that would be cursed and blamed for all failures or, if planing war, another city sate/nation that would be blamed for external failures.
I think you’re messing up your definitions. The Athens & Sparta had a period wherein they would elect dictators for a specified period of time. These dictators _were_ super-effective as a rule.
A dictator who was not elected properly, or who refused to step down, was called a “tyrant”. The reputation of tyrants today stems from their behavior.
I mean, many tyrants are effective. The problem is when succession happens. History is full of examples of times when monarchy worked out REALLY well for a given nation, decisive leadership by a good leader and all that. The problem is when that monarch’s snot nosed brat comes in for the next generation.
Or worse still, when the kingdom gets split between all inheritors. Europe is STILL dealing with that fallout, and by consequence the rest of the world. If Charlemagne had picked just one son, history would be VERY different.
I’m not entirely certain that I agree. Charles’ empire really was too large & too diverse to effectively rule with the technologies and institutions of the day. If he had chosen a single successor, that successor might have held it together for a while, but a split across the Rhine really was unavoidable.
You might as well argue that England was going to remain under French vassalage because a French duke conquered it.
“… argue that England was going to remain under French vassalage …”
But what actually happened was… William’s successors fought disastrously expensive wars against France to try and preserve (read: expand) The Bastard’s holdings in France. English history became excessivel;y complicated…
Charlemange?
Try Alexander.
“Obviously [Deus is] a tyrant, but he’s a damned effective one.” – Insanity Prelude
I’m reminded of a quote, although I can’t remember who it’s supposed to be from: “I would far rather have future generations call me a tyrant, than have no future generations because I feared to accept that role”. A bit more all-or-nothing than most cases, presumably for the sake of the wordplay, but it gets the point across!
I don’t see any evidence whatsoever of him being a tyrant or tyrannical. Lets not take Lorlana’s Alari translation of normal human niceties as evidence of villainy shall we?
She threatened the maitre’d of the restaurant that Deus owned because he wanted her to get a reservation for him and Maxima, and when he was told what she did, he had a bottle of wine sent as an apology for Lorlana’s behavior, which Lorlana translated in Alari to ‘His mewling capitulation must be rewarded!’
I adore Lorlana (such a delight!) but lets not label Deus’s well meaning and heroic actions by her enthusiastic rhetoric translation. :)
That being said, it’s “aquifer”.
For shame, Sydney. Someone like you should be perfectly familiar with something like this in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Granted, it’s WAKANDA…
Sydney knows that Wakanda is fiction. the degree of fiction however, is not something she expects.
“Sydney knows that Wakanda is fiction.”
Sydney also has a diagram on her plan to marry Wolverine in her book so…
Also there’s been a lot of white people on the African continent for quite some time.
And it was the Dutch who were in the Cape Province before the blacks (not counting the bushmen)
as someone who plays factorio, that tech tree isn’t complicated enough. there should be some other bits added in.
glad you are feeling better. I got an unidentified crud a while ago. was run over by the viral truck and figured it out the next day, thankfully I have a rather extraordinary amount of luck with my employer and did not show up to work with said crud.
This is probably from the buffer.
Seriously, if you’re ill: take time off.
amazingly, there are still companies that think their employees are all slackers and refuse to believe them that they are sick, so I’m sure more than a few people have gotten some form of crud at work recently. I called in sick the two days I was either completely useless or just mostly useless. some places like schools and hospitals do have a point that they simply must be staffed, but that is not an employee’s problem.
Dave mentioned that he felt better in his note. I wish he had taken some time to feel better, but I need to trust his judgement and the ones actually close to him about how functional he is.
Also, as someone who plays Factorio: Angel Tech Overhaul, I agree about the tech tree.
I suspect what we’re seeing are simply focused extracts from the overall tech tree: the bits relevant to water supply, for example, rather than also the mostly separate bits for transport infrastructure, building, etc.
The thing is though I’m pretty sure Deus doesn’t want to rule the world.
He just wants to own it.
he wants to be the world’s landlord. Would that mean that Pander would get to work on the holy lease? or would it be unholy, because its airtight,?
giggle. boo. hiss.
It would be the job of a lifetime.
In fact, I’m so enamored with the idea of it that I’m not sending ninja hit squads for that terrible joke.
I figure he’s probably doing this:
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20091012
He’s rich, intelligent, and obviously thinks the current world rulers are doing a horrible job.
There’s a quote about “World Optimisation” that also comes to mind.
> He’s rich, intelligent, and obviously thinks the current world rulers are doing a horrible job.
He’s not wrong…
All praise Deus amen?
doubt? are you ready to reconsider your position on puns?
It was an unfortunate finger slip on my iphone. :). My loyalty to Deus is unquestionable.
so a type-o? one of those things this comment system seems to breed. unlike most of the internet that creates a lot of B+
I asked about you position on Puns. I know asking you to change your loyalty to Dues is… well… futile.
*eyes Pander’s punctuation and subsequent wording suspiciously*
‘Unquestionable’ was not meant to be a pun! OH GOD I’M INFECTED! DISINFECTION PROTOCOLS IN PLACE!
A-HA, I knew it! Slowly she turns!
Never! I’ll never turn to the dark side!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JuHWuq0_e8
It is now my head canon that Alari facial muscles during a smile also tighten their forehead in such a way that their hair is pulled up out of visual interference range. This is because doing so helps combat survivability. Alari always smile in combat, even verbal jousting. That this is also an erotic display is neither here nor there.
Next you’ll be telling us that Smilex is an Alari aphrodisiac…
Before the Alari homeworld was overrun, it was a standard additive in most commercially available foods…
Anybody else notice that Sydney looks damn nice in a ponytail?
Yes, she should use that look more often!
Actually… alien girl has a point. The usual reason why people with good intentions cannot get anywhere with them is because other people with bad or at the very least self-serving intentions get into their way.
So I can believe that Deus very well could have gotten more done in that 10 years if people had gotten the hell out of his road.
Deus very much has self-serving intentions. It’s just that the great majority of people also benefit from them.
The problem with being a benevolent dictator are all the asshole dictators who don’t like you for daring to be ‘nice’.
The other problem with benevolent dictators is they can at any point be replaced by malevolent dictators.
All true, but it would be really nice to live under a benevolent dictator.
It boils down to “Slave in heaven vs free in hell” arguments in the end.
The worst problem with benevolent dictators is, there is nothing stopping them from making a 180 and becoming asshole dictators when they feel their power base sufficiently fortified.
The problem with democracies is they can at any point become malevolent autocracies. All it requires is that good people vote blindly for the ones with the largest promise-bag.
Or that enough people vote for the racist, xenophobic, narcissistic bully who plays to their class struggle, religious persecution complex, and general disaffection with the evolving nature of society.
No need to bring BLM into this…
Or, you know, we could keep our personal political baggage out of the comments section…
Advocating for the status quo is just as political as advocating for change.
“Deus very much has self-serving intentions.”
He wants to make a profit and thinks long term. This doesnt take away from his good works. It just makes him intelligent.
“The problem with being a benevolent dictator are all the asshole dictators who don’t like you for daring to be ‘nice’.”
I have no idea why some people are referring to Deus as a benevolent dictator. Yes, he’s benevolent, but a dictator? No. For one thing, the problem with a benevolent dictator is the nation can change as soon as that dictator dies and is replaced. Take the NCR in Fallout for example. It was founded with American values of humanitarianism, liberty and freedom and a free market economy, but it started becoming corrupt after President Tandi’s death, after which the NCR started getting imperialistic tendencies creeping into the bureaucracy, despite many good people still working in the NCR.
Deus is not a dictator. His entire goal, aside from making a huge profit, is to make sure that the nation of Galytn can survive on its own without his intervention, because his profits and his legacy (and maybe his family’s profits should he and Maxima one day have beautiful babies) are tied to the nation’s ability to thrive into the future, even when he’s no longer with us. Which will truly be a sad day for humanity.
Deus is, rather than being a dictator, more of a ‘Founding Father’ much like George Washington. But a George Washington that understands how to make building a nation profitable for both sides and not having to rely on the French for help.
All praise Deus amen.
Unfortunately people have things like pattern recognition and completely warranted caution.
“Hello, I’m a benevolent rich person and I promise to solve all your problems with no strings attached. Just let me do whatever I want, whenever I want to your small, unprotected community. This won’t turn out badly for you, I promise.”
^ Historically this does not, in fact, end well.
True. For all it is worth, Deus is a good (quality, not alignment) story character, because he subverts certain clichés and appears ambiguous and multi-facetted, as the ongoing discussion about him proves.
Deus bucks the trend that you’re showing historically. Yes, historically, benevolent rich people who solve people’s problems do not work out for those people in the long run. But two things:
1) Deus did not say there are no strings attached. He does not hide what the strings are. His company owns the infrastructure, and so his company does get a percentage of the GDP. The people of Galytn know this, accept this, and if this deal was not in place, they would still be in abject poverty in between being terrified by a murderous torture-prone warlord.
2) He’s not doing whatever he wants. He’s working WITH the people of Galytn, giving them the tools to build a burgeoning middle class that can make their own decisions for their own best interests. If he was as nefarious as a few naysayers are suggesting, he would not try to make a middle class. It tends to limit power of the people at the top. Deus is more interested in profit than raw power, and even the power that he does go after seems more like ‘power given to him willingly by the people’ instead of ‘power that he takes by force against their will, regardless of what they want.’
(all praise Deus amen)
Well, he does take power by force though. We saw him engaging in warfare against neighboring regions.
And he is blatantly the only person in charge, regardless of any middle class.
I know that the US is an outlier in many ways, but I doubt very much that in any country the middle class have much in the way of power. here in the US our system is being set up even more explicitly to limit the power of the middle class and lower classes. you know, so our ‘betters’ can run the country in peace.
please note the above statement contains sarcasm. please read responsibly.
I would respond to this but I’m not sure which parts are the sarcastic parts. :)
“Well, he does take power by force though.”
He takes land by force, not power by force. He hasn’t taken over Mozambique, even though he’s capable of doing so. He took land in which the residents were privately begging him to do so, which also helps in his goal of carving a path to the sea for Galytn.
It’s still not showing that it doesnt work out for the people in those regions. If Deus’s past actions are indicative of the future, his promise that the median income will increase by AT LEAST 500%, have electricity and clean water available to EVERYONE instead of just an elite 1%, and full city infrastructure, seem to be things that will greatly benefit the citizenry of Marromeu and others on the Zambezi).
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1014-the-zambezi-high-club/
(panel 3, 4, and 5)
“And he is blatantly the only person in charge”
Nope. He’s only in charge of his own company, which happens to manage the infrastructure. Because his company BUILT the infrastructure. But the education is provided to the people for free, and Deus has made sure that the costs to the people are minimal, considering the people just emerged from EXTREME POVERTY (and they only got out of that extreme poverty because of Deus’s investments and actions, at great personal risk to himself).
“, regardless of any middle class.”
There’s no reason to have a middle class if you want to just be in charge of everything. Middle class means upward mobility, where mostly poor and a small amount of rich tends to mean no upward mobility at all. Deus -wants- there to be upward mobility. If for no other reason than the profits to his company are directly tied to the GDP of Galytn being continually positive. That necessitates not only an industrious society, but one that can afford to BUY stuff. Which is another thing Deus has done. He doesnt just give everything for free. He brought in the concept of a free market system, because that which you get for nothing, you will not value the same as when you pay for it. But unlike some, he doesnt price gouge. He made sure, according to Lorlana, that it’s a minimal cost of living considering they are emerging from that aforementioned extreme poverty.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1018-the-troll-under-the-extol-bridge/
(panel 5)
Seriously… why is this a bad thing? Deus did all the legwork. Deus made all the investments. Without Deus, most of these people would be dead, enslaved, or living tortuous lives under the heel of a monster. They would not have any concept of freedom or liberty, no hope for their children, no CONCEPT of relaxation – every day would just be a struggle to just survive. Thanks to Deus, this is not the case. This should be something to be thankful for and not something to look at Deus and think ‘yeah well he’s still evil because he’s rich.’
> He takes land by force
That’s the same thing. There’s no practical difference between taking land or power by force.
> Seriously… why is this a bad thing?
I feel like their concern about the billionaire waging war with his private demonic, alien army is pretty clear.
there is also the fact that people are lazy and/or scared of change & will resist it even when the change would be objectively better for them, I don’t endorse the actions of Stalin and Mao, but they DID force their backwards countries to catch up with the West more in a few decades than those countries had managed in the preceding 100-200 years, both came with a horrifying body count but still.
actually forget I mentioned Mao.
And let’s also forget you mentioned Stalin. Pre-revolutionary Russia had an effective middle-class technology, which was gutted by the Bolsheviks. Even Hitler had the good sense to leave the majority of tech artisans alone.
“an effective middle-class technology”, which means what? Soviet Union was NOT an industrialized country when Stalin came to power, but it WAS very much industrialized by the time World War II started, you do the math, you can have a million “tech artisans” and it won’t matter if you don’t have the factories to turn their ideas into products or the power plants to power the machinery in those factories.
I took a shufti over to Wikipedia/Timeline of Russian innovation, which is quite eye-opening and well put together.
I took two roughly equivalent periods, the Russian Revolution of 1917 to Stalin’s death in 1952 (36 years inclusive), 99 innovations; and the immediately preceding Tsarist period 1880 to 1916 (37 years inclusive), 65 innovations.
I was surprised to see how the pressure of continuous warfare and proxy war had positively affected Russian technology. Under the Bosheviks to Stalin’s death Russia produced 99 innovations against 65 under the Tsars. Mind you, I wonder how many later innovators stood on earlier shoulders?
I would like to compare similar lists against other nations, e.g. Germany, but it seems the Russian Timeline is the ONLY useful timeline of innovations and I’m not about to do battle with Wikipedia again.
So I was wrong. The Bolsheviks *did* use their brains rather than mindless oppression of the intelligentsia. Of course, this does NOT excuse any of Stalin’s crimes against humanity, he still goes on the “not needed, unwanted” list.
again, innovation isn’t proof of industrialization, Classical Greeks built steam engines almost two thousand years ago, how many ironworks, tractor factories and power plants did they have? Exactly zero.
Yes, I learned about Hero’s toy at school. It’s just a shame that — as you correctly mention — there was no infrastructure to take advantage of this unsupected power source. Unlike, for example, Alessandro Volta who had many enquiring minds already primed to take advantage of this unsuspected power source. But the world of 1800 did not have tractor factories or power plants (other than a steam engine directly attached to a device).
the point here is that innovation does NOT equal industry
Deus is definitely nothing like Stalin or Mao. Neither of them wanted a highly educated and skilled middle class who are capable of independent thought. Their socialistic societies were heavily statist, and did not allow for innovation of the lower class, let alone a middle class, because everything was supposed to belong to the state. Deus does not think that way. He’s a capitalist, not a socialist, and he seems to NOT want a high bodycount or to have people fear him – he’d prefer willing loyalty instead, and in order to get that loyalty, he will do good works and invest in the people, not ‘rule them.’
He’s already said a few times that he did not actually have much interest in politics beyond economics or as a mean to an ends for economic reasons, both to General Indinge and to Maxima.
you are missing the point, we were talking about how dictators can make things happen faster than democratic governments, Stalin forced USSR into industrializing, Kerensky government would probably have spent 1920s arguing about whether Russia should be a federation or a confederation & after that the next ten years if the country needs one constitution and one set of laws or if every Krai gets their own set & if so where federal power ends and local powers start, followed by another decade of arguing about which should take precedence, development of agriculture of the expansion of industry, followed by-“Gospody! Nyemcy are invading again, mobilize the Army! What, we don’t have one? Whose fault is that?”
“you are missing the point, we were talking about how dictators can make things happen faster than democratic governments, ”
I understand that, but Deus is NOT being a dictator. He’s also not in a democratic nation. Galytn is a monarchy, run by Indinge’s son. Deus’s company runs the infrastructure, because Deus’s company built the infrastructure and manages the infrastructure. And technically speaking, there is probably still a vote because Machinae Industries is probably publicly traded company (even if Deus has the overwhelming majority of shares), which means there’s probably a Board of Directors that votes, although they probably vote based on what Deus wants because Deus has a proven track record of success and making everyone who follows his plans incredibly rich, and everyone who does not follow his plans go in the opposite direction at worse, and just miss out on opportunities at best.
It’s a subtle difference, but it’s a difference.
I’m a little confused about most of the rest of your paragraph after ‘industrializing’ because a lot of it is conjecture, so I can’t very well argue against it since it did not happen that way.
That being said, I agree that dictatorships work faster than democracies. The slow movement of democracies is usually a good thing though, at least when the nation is already wealthy and doing well – the whole idea of it being ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ and if you’re going to try to mess with it, make sure there’s a lot of prudent thought given first.
That’s not the case with a poor nation that’s struggling. In that case, quick action is usually required. It’s one of the reasons the United States, for example, was built with three branches instead of two. The executive branch is supposed to be able to occasionally act quickly, while the legislative branch is SUPPOSED to be slow to act.
firstly where f**k did I say anything about Deus? What the f**k is wrong with you people, one goes on and on and on about “innovation” in Imperial Russia/USSR as if it was a reliable indicator of how developed the country was, and you pull Deus into a conversation that has NOTHING to do with him, go f****ing read what I was replying to in the first place.
As for the thing about Kerensky government, I was making a point that a DEMOCRATIC post-revolutionary government of Russia would have been unable to get anything done, just look at what happened in America during and after the Revolution, those civilized gentlemen couldn’t have come to an agreement regarding the color of an orange. It took from 1776 until 1787 to get a constitution because of all the bickering and infighting among the states and sometimes even just their representatives, how do you think a government formed of people from all walks of life from across all of Russia would have fared in getting their act together, in the middle of a civil war & then during a reconstruction? Just the arguing about whether various peoples of Russia such as Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Grusians etc. should be able to become independent from Russia would have paralyzed Duma for a few years.
I’m a little confused by the time-line there, how long had Deus been running that country by the time it came up on the news? I know Sydney did a time-skip but I could have sworn it was in the magnitude of months, not a decade?
It’s implied in his interview with Macroeconomics that his supervision of the country started some time previously. Though a decade does seem like a long time for people like Opal not to appear to have aged.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-387-a-noble-investment-embiggens-the-smallest-wallet/
On the other hand, though, opal is a super and they strongly tend toward some sort of human ideal, so prolonged youthfulness could just be part of being a super.
Hunting around #387, we get:
Interview Year 2016. In the interview Deus claims to have made $7B in 2009 by shorting the banks.
Indinge took over pre 1997. We know this because Zaire became DRC again in 1997.*
98th economy in 2005-ish.
So it looks like Indinge was abdicated probably in late 2015, or in 2016. Long before Syddles went to Alar.
* Now I have to mention this. Somehow, Galytn moved from DRC to Malawi between, say 2016 and #843, whichever year that is. At some stage, DaveB _may_ tell us what happened. But then again, maybe he won’t.
But the story takes place during the Obama administration. If Deus has been running Galytn for a decade, Indinge must have been abdicated in 2005, not 2015. Or was that a typo?
The Macroeconomics show took place during the Obama administration, but the meeting with Murderous-Torturing-Men-Women-And-Children-Warlord Indinge took place several years earlier. Apparently almost 10 years earlier.
Oh. Er… ‘hem… Ummm. Oops. Yes. 2005 and 2006. At all places.
Good catch.
It did not move from DRC to Malawi. It just ecpanded its borders to help more downtrodden and oppressed people to have a future and hope for their children and a better tomorrow.
You and I will have to agree 1) there exists a problem with Galytn’s geographic history; and 2) to disagree.
I still hold that 700-odd kilometers is a long long way, plus a need to occupy about 100Km wide agaist constant incursions from pissed-off governments. This alone would have raised many many eyebrows, including many pairs of said adornments.
Eh, that part of the world has a lot of war happening on a regular basis anyway. If anything, Deus is creating an oasis of stability in the region, and the governments getting pissed off are not exactly ones that have the love of their people.
And like Deus said, as long as he does not get in the way of any of the G-8 nations’ interests, their eyebrows can be raised but it won’t be enough for them to want to actively do anything. Doing stuff costs money and creates political problems.
> So it looks like Indinge was abdicated probably in late 2015, or in 2016. Long before Syddles went to Alar.
Call a spade a spade. He was murdered.
He was not murdered. It was clearly self-defense. He should not have tried to order his men to throw Deus off the roof just because Deus called him out on his corrupt practices towards his people.
Well said. I don’t know if the security tapes Deus showed to Indinge’s son were doctored, but honestly, I doubt it. He acted very much like what Deus called him: a textbook corrupt despot whose government thrives on corruption, terror squads, abduction, the lot.
I doubt it was doctored. I’m familiar with the political history in that region and did additional research before my ardent defense of Deus. :) It’s not very rosy.
Deus apparently had hours and hours of these tapes on hand and when his son saw it, he did not try to protest that it couldnt be real. More likely, the son knew his father was not a good person, but had no idea of the monstrous acts he had done (according to Deus, the son did not know about the terror squads, abductions, etc).
And yes, I agree – Indinge was a textbook corrupt despot :)
I gotta love a lady who loves her job as much a Lorlara does…But she tends to talk too much.
On the other hand, Deus talks just enough to make one think twice about what he says without acutally revealing anything that might be interpreted as Reasonable Suspicion. Of course, that’s why Deus is the boss & Lorlara (who is not fully versed in the subtlety of human speech) is the minion.
One thing I like about Lorlora is that she is not a dimwitted secretary or left in the dark. She may not know the whole plan but you can tell from her mannerisms, behavior, and speech that Deus has let her in on just enough to keep her loyalty. And given how powerful Alari can become (especially in Sciona’s case) I doubt anything he has told her is a lie either. Last thing you need is one bit of critical false information he fed them to turn a whole race of potential one alien army fighters against him. While they may be boss and minion. I’m fairly certain he trusts her a s useful partner and not a disposable asset. Deus has shown so far to be actively avoiding common super villian mistakes and the results speak for themselves. He literally legally attacked another country with Demons and Supers and can’t be tried for it by the worlds laws.
Whatever Deus has going on that alien secretary is adequately informed enough to know which side she’s gonna stay on.
(Plus she rocks that outfit well so bonus points for that)
One of the things that makes Deus such a good character is that he has obviously read the Evil Overlord List.
Yes, and if one follows the Evil Overlord list, it makes you a lot less evil. :)
Because evil is prone to being dumb, what with the monologuing and wearing imperious capes and whatnot.
Wish I could find it, but years ago I ran across a great short story* about how a medieval dark lord dealt with a magic prophecy of the newborn who would destroy the kingdom that had just been united by decades of battle. Being trope aware, he sends spies to find the infant but rather than try to destroy the village, the dark lord decides to give them no reason to hate or fear him.
He invests in their infrastructure and education, and when the child comes of age begins to ensure they are vested in the wellbeing of the kingdom. He tutors the prophesied one personally on the difficulties of running a kingdom and the intricacies of politics, supporting his protege’s new ideas and social programs and spreading them across the kingdom. The dark lord then hands over and more control as the kingdom flourishes, eventually retiring in peace and mild disappointment when he realizes that original dark kingdom he forged has been wiped away by the new utopia.
*though searching the same site did uncover this other great trope inversion about the chosen one’s preconceived notions of good vs evil.
…and now that I’ve given away the spoilers, I found it. Audio version here, written version here.
I’m surprised recent editions of the evil overlord list don’t have ‘no capes’ as a rule. Edna would approve.
Nothing worse than a secretary that can’t actually help you organize.
Always invest in quality especially with your employees and it pays for itself
Kenya in the stance in Panel 4 should be a pin-up. Hat an’ all.
Thats all.
These ladies do look very nice in hats.
Giant Girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can we drop the benevolent dictator thing?
All dictators start as “benevolent dictators”. They are elected or just given power by people who think things will improve if they kill enough … whites, or blacks, or Jews, or Armenians, or Muslims, or bankers, or lawyers, or kulaks, or intellectuals, or [insert the group you have been propagandised into blaming for your lack of money or happiness].
Then the Benevolent Dictator starts “disappearing” everyone who gets in the way of the Great Plan. And one day you wake up to discover the secret police breaking down your door too… Or you realise you have just betrayed your best friend or your mother to the secret police … Or you are just afraid to question the Great Benevolent Dictator…
Or you discover your country is invading the Ukraine … or Poland… or …
Or Mozambique?
Try not to be absurdly dramatic. Every family home is run as a communist dictatorship, and somehow your prediction of doom fails to manifest.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
The aqueduct?
Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.
And the sanitation.
Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
If you think a family is a good simile, you’ve never lived through a dictatorship. Or you’re thinking of benevolence again.
Not sure why you refer to a communist dictatorship, as right wing ones like Putin seem to be more common in the modern world.
The Life of Brian conversation is often misused to justify “benevolent dictatorship”. You point to some “benefits” of the dictatorship, and ignore the dead bodies, and the political prisoners, and the torture, and the Disappeared, and the loss of freedom, and all the other less pleasant “benefits” of the dictator’s benevolence.
Not sure he’s meant to be seen as “benevolent dictator”. He is not the “drain the country for my lifestyle” type dictator, which is the usual item seen south of the USA, and that colors American views of dictators pretty harshly.
There’s a very wide space between “benevolent” and “drain the country for my lifestyle”.
I’d put him somewhere around the “don’t care what you do as long as you don’t get in the way of how I want this country to develop and make me money” type of dictator. That’s not very close to “benevolent”. If a church decided his development was crushing some local holy spot or ecosystem an intentionally primitive religious group depended on, and objected, I’d rather imagine their objections would be met with force. Not benevolent at all.
That he’s pushing major improvements is simply because the country can’t make him any money if he doesn’t. That much of this is “green” infrastructure is again, simply because it’s expensive to clean up horrible ecosystem messes, the country is not big enough to absorb them and ignore them, and he’s simply taking the cheapest road to the most rapid development. Countries that took the “normal” development route can’t do that because of the value of the stranded assets if they just junk them and move to the cleaner/cheaper options. Not to mention the difficulty of people switching jobs in a developed country. Starting from nothing gives him options other countries don’t have.
There’s a very good corresponding character in Terry Pratchett who also motivates herself through a form of greed.
“All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!”
Very different characters but if you perceive things as being yours, you have a great incentive to take care of them for entirely selfish and self-serving reasons.
Ah, so I’m not the only one thinking of Tiffany Aching here. Yeah, Deus seems to be focused on making his greed beneficial for others.
Hell, it’s like in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, when Quark chooses sides in the conflict over who the Nagus will be. “Brunt’s greed is too personal, too selfish. The Nagus’ greed should benefit all of Ferenginor!”
> I’d put him somewhere around the “don’t care what you do as long as you don’t get in the way of how I want this country to develop and make me money” type of dictator. That’s not very close to “benevolent”.
Given that his objectives seem to co-incide with raising the standard of living of the worst off, that seems pretty benevolant to me.
> All dictators start as “benevolent dictators”
No, they don’t.
To be a benevolent dictator you have to be benevolent towards *everyone*. Not just your in-group.
I wouldn’t be confident to say that there’s *ever* been a benevolent dictator in recorded history.
But they’re theoretically possible, so certainly a viable option in fiction.
Dictators are created because people think they will do good. The people who do it may be the army, the wealthy or even the electorate. Their choice may be self-interested, or may be genuinely seeking benefit for the masses.
The core point is that those people believe in the person’s benevolence – that means a desire to do good for others. Those “others” may be a limited group – the true Aryans, Russians, Americans, proletariat or whatever your narrow view is. Or it may be a a wider group, such as humanity, or white people, or Muslims, or Christians.
Benevolence is in the eye of the beholder. People who believe in benevolent dictators – they rarely desire benevolence for all of humanity.
Dictators are created because the existing in-group of the government thinks they will get them more “treasure”, be that money, power, etc.
Pretty much covered by Terry Goodkind’s ‘Wizard’s First Rule’. “People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.” –
If you think that the proletariat are a narrower group than “white people” you are *severely* misunderstanding the term.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/315556/established-business-ownership-rate-in-north-america/
According to that site, the proletariat is 90.1% of the USA, and 92.7% of Canada.
Your numbers look good. I think around 80% is more likely, but meh.
From Merriam-Webster:
1 : the laboring class especially : the class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labor to live
2 : the lowest social or economic class of a community
Almost any political system in the hypothetical can be “ideal.” Pure democracy, communism, benevolent dictatorship, or any number of others. The problem is that the real world tends to make those things not even close to the hypothetical ideal.
Humans are basically self-centered. Mosty political systems seem to expect a degree of altruism ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’ for Communism, expecting people to do more than vote themselves ‘bread and circuses’ in Democracy, and so on. A system like Capitalism works because it recognizes this aspect of human nature, but tends to let it run unchecked, which results in, of course, the separation of the 1% and the 99%. A system that seems to come natural to humans is, unfortunately, rule by Alpha Male, of which history is replete with examples, most of them bad.
I could care less how rich the one percent is, as long as the 99 percent have a comfortable standard of living and the ability and right to strive to become one of the One Percent if they want to put in the equity sweat.
The problem in countries that reject capitalism is that the 99 percent live short brutal lives while the one percent make sure they stay like that. What that one percent never seem to realize is that the more money the 99 percent have, the more money they will have.
They seem to forget that in the developed countries as well, quite frequently.
> The problem in countries that reject capitalism is that the 99 percent live short brutal lives while the one percent make sure they stay like that.
Also true in Capitalist countries.
What percentage of American’s can’t afford a $500 emergency again?
Capitalism only works until people realize that they can work around its supposed self-inhibiting nature, and then they proceed to abuse it just as much as any other economic system. People are too clever for the invisible hand.
I’ve heard quotes along this line from Wealth of Nations. so, its not really a bug, its a feature of capitalism.
Just want to say that I love your post.
Any system can work, if the people in it are determined to make it work. If nothing else, they ignore the system when it would do the wrong thing, and do the right thing instead.
So the best measure of a system is not how well it works when the people want it to, but how well it resists people trying to subvert it for their own ends.
Or, put another way, all systems are equally good, but they’re not all equally bad.
I would consider Deus to be the pinnacle of enlightened self-interest. His greatest personal gain is achieved by improving the lives of those to whom he is connected. This can be seen both in his excellent treatment of his underlings so that they will continue to follow and most likely even trust him as well as in his improvements to the country of Galytin so that the people there can produce something worth having. It is all ultimately in his own best interest, simply with a much broader and longer view than most villains.
None of this is done out of a sense of kindness or charity, so benevolent certainly wouldn’t be the right word, but I think beneficent might. Whatever the reason for it, he does good things for his people.
> simply with a much broader and longer view than most villains.
And most politicians, unfortunately.
How is any of the description you gave of Deus in any way villainous?
“His greatest personal gain is achieved by improving the lives of those to whom he is connected. ”
How is this villainous? It’s virtuous.
“This can be seen both in his excellent treatment of his underlings so that they will continue to follow and most likely even trust him”
Also not villainous. Again, it’s virtuous.
“as in his improvements to the country of Galytin so that the people there can produce something worth having.”
Again… not villainous. Virtuous.
“It is all ultimately in his own best interest”
Why is it that if someone does something that’s in their own best interest, but also winds up helping everyone else, it is being described as villainous? If someone does something that is virtuous in every way that you describe, it’s NOT villainous, and therefore he’s not a villain.
There’s literally nothing evil about any of what you’ve described. I swear, this notion of charity requiring personal sacrifice makes no sense to me.
If Abbot gives Person A a meal, but winds up having to go without eating themselves, that’s virtuous. Okay, fine it is.
If Costello figures a way to not only give Person A a meal, but also Persons B, C, D, E, F, through Z meals, which are all the best meals they’ve ever tasted, plus Person A not only also gets a meal, but gets People 1 through 57 to pay money for the same meal the People B through Z got….. how is that not even MORE virtuous? Costello wound up helping 26 times more people in need, allowed an additional 57 people who were not in need to get great meals as well, plus didn’t have to go hungry, plus made money. Which can be used at least partially to help more people in the future.
Yes, Abbot was good. Costello was better. While I understand that there was more of a sacrifice by Abbot than Costello, the end result of Costello helped more people, plus if Abbot keeps giving other people his meals so that they can eat, eventually Abbot is going to starve to death and not be able to give anyone else meals.
“None of this is done out of a sense of kindness or charity,”
Doing something for profit does not negate that there was also kindness and charity involved. The people GETTING the benefit clearly think he’s being kind and charitable, since they are benefitting from his kindness and charity. And he could have made more money, in a shorter period of time, without doing any good. It’s not exactly new for a rich and powerful person to do something to make themselves richer AT THE EXPENSE of the poor. But doing something to make themselves richer at the benefit of the poor? That’s virtuous, not villainous. That’s kindness, not malice. That’s charity that’s inspired BY greed, as all things are inspired by Greed according to the Gospel of Deus.
All praise Deus, amen.
“Good” and “virtuous” are not synonyms. How virtuous an action is doesn’t depend on how much good it does, but on what it costs the person to do it. Basically, the question is how hard of a decision it is to make. In that respect, the more good an action does, the less virtuous it is, because it’s more obviously the best thing to do. Something that costs you nothing isn’t virtuous, no matter how much good it does. It’s still good, just not virtuous.
Charity does not require sacrifice, but if you’re doing something believing that it will benefit you, it’s not charity so much as it is an economic decision. Paying for goods and services isn’t charity.
Deus is simply neutral. He’s doing what he’s determined is the best action for himself in the long term. He’s just more intelligent, and has a longer view than most. He is the pinnacle of the idea of enlightened self-interest, that he will profit most from a successful, flourishing society. That creating more wealth is preferable to simply taking existing wealth from others, though he’s certainly done that too.
> Or you are just afraid to question the Great Benevolent Dictator…
I met a Chinese woman at one point who was telling me about living in China. She said “I know you Americans think that we’re so oppressed, but it’s just not true. These days we can even criticize the government in private!”
She couldn’t understand why I was laughing.
My wife hailed from Malaysia. Malaysia is a Democracy. It also does NOT countenance dissent: you “publicly”* criticise ANY politician, and the police will call at your door and invite you to the local so you can explain yourself.
* “publicly” can happen in your own home btw. All it needs is a rellie with different views.
OK, I really like Lorlara – since her first appearance – and I think I understand the point in exaggerating her facial features to emphasize her overacting but the grin she has in the last two panels… No. Just… no. Sorry.
TEN YEARS? I didn’t think Deus’s activity there had been going on that long! 3 odd years, maybe!
This is the third time in-comic that it has been stated to be 10 years.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-386-aggrandizer-x/
Over ten years at the time of the interview (large blurb in thrid panel)
….we’re there any lamentations from their women?
Just remind Deus not to turn into a giant snake. It never helps.
You seem to have an escaped apostrophe in there.
Has Lorlara discovered cocaine? Because she’s appearing to be really drugged up here.
Admitted, she could just be on a high related to Deus being the total ideal male for an Alari, but you’d come down off that after a while. A human would, at least.
Possibly dependent on how recently she’s decided that he’s the “ideal male for an Alari”? (And/or on how recently he’s demonstrated said qualities?)
I’m pretty sure she fell into the Joker’s vat of toxic chemicals.
The Joker’s wishing it’d had that good of an effect on him.
Object can mean More than one thing, including a feeling of defiance
However “Abject poverty” is a known phrase and is
More useful in job this capacity.
You can lump water towers into irrigation if you wanted to, it’s not that far from it, but it depends on how you want to organize your tree. Or you could put them under the electrical tree, since they’re there to store hydropotential energy and could be classified as ‘grid storage’ depending on how you want to suggest it. Considering the elevation differentials we see in the back ground, you could also do a simple tank on the high point and distribute to people on the low points.
I’m not hearing about Galytn’s supers.
Or Deus’s unauthorized shoping trip at The Fracture.
That could explain the current infrastructure build up to a degree.
One begins to suspect that Alari, culturally, have no chill.
we need someone to make them Sydney grade chili.
Some folks from The Hague would like to speak with you…
Max looks at Lorlara’s teeth and asks, “When’s the last time you’ve been to the dentist?”
Definitely getting a close view of her dental situation.
Max is straining her self control before turning Loreana into a piece of street art
Yay! Down with covid!
I’m getting some serious “Hail IlPalazzo” vibes out of Lorlara.
Seriously, in the animated adaptation, she’d probably be voiced by Jessica Calvello.
See, I don’t think Deus evil because he takes over countries to run them in ways he thinks are better for them. I’m worried about what his extremely limited imagination takes for “better”. I’m sure in his ideal society I would not be merely poor as I am under neoliberalism, but so poor it’d be impossible for me to live. And when his pan-galactic monopoly collapses as monopolies do it will take so many resources down with it no one will have the means to live anymore. And Deus won’t think he did anything wrong because it’s just reality that’s not cooperating with his ideals.
In short, I think he’s evil because he values profits higher than people.
That ignores the fact that you can contribute more to his personal wealth and power by being well educated and gainfully employed, and happy with your life.
The farmer has a vested interest in keeping his livestock healthy and content. Fortunately for the population under Deux the benefits he gets from them are centered around them living long productive lives.
Hell, for a more extreme example: The wolf has a vested interest in the sheep being well-fed and fat.
Deus’s ability to profit from Galytn is directly tied to Galytn’s people being happy, prosperous, educated, skilled, and NOT BEING POOR. His company gets a percentage of Galytn’s GDP as a return on the multi billion dollar investment that Deus has put into the nation. That would not happen if the people are inpoverished and unskilled.
It is literally a win win scenario for everyone involved. Deus values profit, but if he did not also value people, there are many other quicker ways to earn a profit while not helping soooo many other people in the process.
He is not remotely evil. I eould argue he is more good than most of us, actually. How many people have you, or any of us, helped out of poverty and terror-filled lives in ten years? I guarantee that Deus’s number is many, many, many times higher. :)
All praise Deus amen.
So what I’m hearing is…Deus is trying to privatize Socialism.
Which is an idea I’ve toyed around with myself.
…
Get out of my head, Pander.
Or at least sweep up.
“privatize Socialism”
Like Sweden. And quite a lot of other countries. Even in Oz. We’re struggling, but getting there slowly.
The closest thing to that description would be like a Scandinavian model, which is actually closer to a free market economy with some generous social systems in place on top of the free market, necessary for a people getting out of extreme poverty and giving valuable skills and educational resources (especially in a nation with a smaller population like Galytn), but I’ll take the win. :)
Muhahaha.
Regarding Covid: you probably should speak to a doctor before getting the booster (assuming you are eligible).
Based on my knowledge (I am not a doctor, this is not medical advice), considering the relative resistance provided by the booster vs recovery, you would be better off waiting something like 2-6 months or so.
Basically, if you want coverage for longer and can only get booster once, then you should wait for the natural resistance to wane before getting boosted.
Deus is trying to move the country from late 19th century China to late 19th century Japan by suppressing corruption. With modern tech and telepaths, it might even be possible. He isn’t looking at Galatyn as a place he can loot.
Deus engaging in diplomacy? He said ‘surrender or die’ very diplomatically. And if you haven’t had enough superheroing here, consider my superhero novels.
Definitely not trying to loot Galatyn – it’s his seed project, sucking all the profits out now would seriously cripple his long-term growth. Instead he’s reinvesting the profits into bigger projects and more space to keep growing, making the pie much bigger instead of just attempting to steal more of an undersized pie.
It wasnt so much “surrender or die” so much as it was “your leaders are corrupt and your people want me here to help them. I can make their lives better, including the lives ofpeople you grew up with. Join up with me instead of fighting me because if you fight me, anyone who does die will be on your side and I dont want that to happen.” And the other guy didnt just say “no” – he said “i dont believe that you can do what you are claiming you can do. So no.”
So… yes Deus was definitely very diplomatic about it. :)
It was more like freeing people during a hostage negotiation. :)
Jeez, that woman has a mouth on her! I dunno, I think Deus with all his ego would even find Lolara a bit too much after a while. Power generation. Does Galytn really derive all its power from from those convection tower thingies? I seem to remember doing a bit of research on the subject when Dave first introduced them and the concept seemed to be impractical at the time. For consistent uninterrupted, clean power generation, nuclear is still the best performer bar none, especially Thorium fuel reactors. Also, Deus went on an interstellar shopping spree, if fusion is ever to be a thing one would think he would have acquired that tech.
Having convection towers doesn’t need to mean having only convection towers. There aren’t any (known) uranium deposits in Malawi/Mozambique, but Namibia and South Africa aren’t all that far away.
I suspect Galytn is still a bit short of fusion. If its development were reliant on Earth tech, then I doubt Galytn going alone from a standing start would have the resources to overtake the existing multinational efforts. And if it was traded from the Alari, then trading it on to the rest of Earth would be such a obvious diplomatic ‘point’ that their either doing or not doing it would surely have been remarked on.
Nothing wrong with Convection Tower tech, except you need a fair slice of unproductive land. The general layout is a roughly 1 square Kilometer brick/concrete roofed area surrounding a 1Km tower full of turbines. Solar radiation provides the heat source, and the concrete roof gives a reservoir overnight and for cloudy/rainy days. This. Is. Grossly. Simplified. OK?
Sometimes unproductive land can be very hard to come by.
As far as nuclear tech goes, the majority view is that U235 is preferable to Th232/U238 due to its higher operating temperatures. Unfortunately, U235 is becoming VERY SCARCE. And the disposition of nuclear waste is totally problematic. Maybe Deus should look harder at Thorium, of which there are (figuratively) mountains.
“Jeez, that woman has a mouth on her!”
Both literally and figuratively.
I’m surprised it took Sydney this long to pick up on those long-term antagonist vibes.
Though, tbf, Deus hasn’t been this overt before.
That smile…
Again… never trust anyone with a smile that wide. Clergy, politicians, your mechanic… just saying, you see anyone of those with a smile that wide, either run or see if they are in distress.
Deus reminds me a bit of the Emperor of Man from Warhammer 49K. Only Deus actually seems to have a sense of humor. ;)
Nah, Deus isn’t xenophobic.
More like xenophilic :)
Max wasn’t rolling her eyes, she was just checking the back of her left ear.
Typo: “aquifer” is misspelled on the tech tree
Not really. It is an intentional acronym for use in the chart. It stands for ‘Another Quite Useless Acronym For Entertaining Readers’
Hm. Anvils family ‘was’ upper-middle class. Tense slip up, or does Anvil’s backstory include her family being past tense?
With her current income I don’t think she’s middle class any more.
That “was” just means that she doesn’t live with her parents any longer.
Kenya probably has an interesting backstory.
In the Grrlieverse do superpowers manifest gradually or instantly? (Something in-between?)
Maybe she didn’t know that she had superpowers until she was hit by a truck.
Getting 14 inches taller between 15 and 16 may have tipped her parents off that something was up.
Really wish the vote incentives and Patreon feed were back stories and hijinks with the other cast instead of pinups, so much good world-building material to explore.
Eh, but vote incentives can be transitory, and difficult to find later for reference purposes, and Patreon content is exclusionary, meaning non-subscribers would miss out on interesting information. I’m a subscriber, so it wouldn’t affect me directly, but it would mean that not everyone would be operating on the same available information when discussing the comic.
I feel like this woman needs to learn to frown.
You’re certain that wouldn’t be even scarier?
Sydney is asking the questions we’ve been arguing about. I actually wonder how this is going to turn out since Deus hasn’t really faced anything that can push back until now and we know Max has no time for people who think they can push people around just because they have the power to do so.
In Sydney’s defense, calling yourself white and calling yourself stereotypically white can be argued to be two separate things.