Grrl Power #1052 – Dateus interruptus
Some mixed opinions on Deus’s extra-judicial cleanup crew for the last comic, though we can see here that Deus does have some fairly strong feelings on the nature of thresholds, vis-à-vis innocence.
The thing is, while Vale isn’t… entirely capricious when it comes to killing, at the same time, she’s also the kind of person who might not remember each and every single person she’s killed. So imagine Deus sitting her down and making her watch an hour of video about a little girl growing up impoverished in some African village, hiding a coloring book under a piece of scrap corrugated siding so she could look at pictures of animals she’d never seen before, barely surviving measles due to endemic childhood malnutrition, then struggling through school, joining one of those “keep other criminals out of my neighborhood even though my gang does some crime but it’s pretty mild compared to some of the other gangs which is how we justify it to ourselves” gangs, yadda yadda yadda, and Vale impatiently tapping her foot, demanding to know why she has to watch this, and juuuust as she is barely starting to root for the young woman, the video cuts to a picture of Vale slicing her in half.
Not in some sort of collateral damage incident, but in a capricious, “get out of my way, brat!” way during an incident when she was chasing down some guy who emptied an AK-47 at a Doctors Without Borders convoy that Deus was meeting with.
And then to really twist the dagger in Vale’s side, the video says “Now, let’s learn more about little Najwa’s short life.”
I would initially question where would Deus dig up 10 hours of footage about some girl living in some extremely poor village, but as he’s been steadily improving Galytn for a decade, by now most of the tiny country does have electricity and most citizens have cell phones. Not like, the $1,200 top of the line latest Galaxy Ultra Pro Xtreme or whatever, more like the ones that are $300 but still do 90% of what the top end do, they just don’t have 9 cameras built into them and they have 4GB of ram instead of 256.
My next question would be, did he put the presentation together himself? Cause running multiple businesses and developing a country and running a war or two, plus Alari diplomacy and presumably wining and dining US Congressmen or whatever else goes on in securing business interests all over the place probably keeps him pretty busy.
The real question is, why would Deus put up with a henchman who capriciously kills innocents if he’s a stickler for not killing innocents if at all possible? Well, she’s fiercely loyal to him for reasons yet unknown, and is insanely dangerous. And let’s be realistic, it’s the same reason you don’t brig Maxima for breaking some soldier’s hands before handcuffing him (possibly but almost definitely not an accident given how strong she is) when she caught him mid-rape. She has the same value to the military as an entire naval battle group, so she gets a little extra leeway, no matter how vociferously some people in command yell “give her an inch…” Similarly, Vale is one of Deus’s special projects. He’s hoping to focus her more psychopathic tendencies and aim her at appropriate targets.
Also, if she had killed a little girl and not some slightly morally gray gang member, it would have gone down differently.
On a lighter note, while looking up regional Mozambique foods, I came across piri-piri sauce. As that area of Africa has echoes of Portuguese colonization, piri^2 sauce can be traced back to there. I ordered some from Amazon on a whim. It’s… okay? I’m not a big hot sauce eater, mostly because a lot of hot sauce is 95% vinegar and sodium, and the sodium I can do without, and I don’t ever put vinegar on food unless it’s malted vinegar and the food is fried fish. Piri piri is smokier. It’s better than tabasco, but I don’t tend to eat a lot of food that would really benefit from hot sauce outside of the occasional bit of tex-mex, and I have taco sauce or salsa for that. So I have a 4-pack of fairly mild hot sauce with nothing to really put it on. Ooh! I know, I’ll make red beans and rice. That’ll be a good use for it.
The May Vote Incentive is up! This month it’s Warsyl, from Tamer: Enhancer 2! I’d say “spoilers,” but the book has been available for 5 months now. Anyway, this pic doesn’t have a zillion outfit variations, partially because her armor took longer to draw than I thought it would, but mostly because she just has an armored form, and an unarmored form. The latter being available over at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I’m curious why Vale would need to cut in half what sounds like a normal person to get past them when she could just barrel over them with super strength while not breaking stride.
Quicker than taking the time to cut and less lethal.
The same way it’s easier to cut your way through light brush than brush through it?
Also consider the fact that she is strong enough to do so ad its likely a “Principal is danger! Direct path!”
And that moving around at any speed, even if its 0.000001 of a second slower than going through them could be the difference.
Or more likely, Dave is using a very basic scenario for an example and I’m overthinking this.
Maybe it happened indoors? Even then she could probably carve up the walls instead. It isn’t clear from the description whether the person in question is affiliated with the attacker or reasonably mistaken for it.
Still, I’m pretty shocked that’s her impulse considering that she hasn’t shown the propensity to go straight to a kill shot before this.
When don’t know when this happened, so it’s possible that it is why she doesn’t go straight to a kill shot now
Instead of barreling over a soft item it is easy and kind of reflexive to sweep your arm to brush something out of the way. add super strength and maybe blade smoke or something and you are basically macheting your way through soft squishy humans.
That’s the point. She didn’t need to cut them in half. She just felt like it. Deus is a man of measured restraint. And excess. Measured excess. He has certain standards for how his employees behave on the job.
I think he’s kind of trying to reform her while also leveraging her current abominable state. She’s going to commit atrocities no matter what, at least with him there’s some guidance towards productive violence and away from innocents. Which doesn’t absolve either of them, but it’s very pragmatic.
“She didn’t need to cut them in half. She just felt like it”
Or she didn’t even give any thought to it. The girl was just someone in her way as she was chasing some other baddies and it didn’t even register to Vale to care about it until Deus punished her for it.
makes sense especially if Vale does turn out to be an eldritch. A Watership down moment (they don’t care about us, they killed us because we were in their way).
or the general, no more occurred to her to move around a human vs swatting them as a person having a fly in front of them.
What would Vale be besides eldritch? She’s a formless cloud of eyeballs and smoke, and what looks like a human is more of a shattered porcelain doll that’s held together.
Gasmorph super, yokai of pollution, evil spirit, 3rd tier civilization entity using a contact suit (gaseous being category), a celestial (be haven’t seen one yet and formless being full of eyes fits some descriptions).
granted all those except a gasmorph can all fall under some form description for “eldritch”, an astral planer for example might just be called an eldritch
Use it as a marinade for some chicken. Acid is key in a marinade as it helps to break down the meat proteins, tenderizing it, and allows the marinade to penetrate better, flavorizing it.
Grab a flat of skin on, bone in chicken thighs and dump them into a quart ziplock with one of your sauces. Wait a day, and then remove the chicken from the bag, blot off the marinade, and grill. It’s grill weather, yo!
Or go skinless/boneless thighs and make chicken burgers. Just take a meat mallet to the thighs before throwing them in the marinade so they are a bit thinner than nature made them.
You can also marinade lamb or mutton in it. Mutton has a stronger flavor, and hot peppers tend to go well with it.
Sounds like a good match, although I’m convinced mint sauce is the only way to eat mutton. Crushed mint leaves in vinegar, and a little sugar to tame the bite of the vinegar. Cuts right through the oily mouth feel and a great complementary flavor to the meat.
Sage butter and Fig Jam, my man. You’ll never go back to mint again.
…dang it now I have to go shopping and my grocery store doesn’t carry either of those. Guess while I’m online I’ll pick up some lingonberry jam and swedish meatballs, which I was introduced to by a Swedish roomie around the same time an Englishman introduced me to the mint sauce.
Sage butter is as easy as a compound butter you make by mixing some chopped fresh sage leaves into a stick of butter. And why aren’t you getting your figs from a fig tree in your yard? It’s a free and renewable source for figs every year. I make fig jam and fig mead. You can also dry them and/or sugar them for the off-season.
I like a standard gravy, but in addition to whatever other herbs you use in your gravy you also add a few sprigs of mint to the bouquet garni.
And then the day after you enjoy your leg of lamb or whatever for dinner, after the gravy has thickened in the fridge it is fantastic for lamb sandwiches to finish off any leftovers.
I can’t help but notice Deus didn’t mention anything about a missionary… or is he implying she also was part of the rape crew?
Yes this is what’s confusing me as well.
This is confusing me as well. Because if he WAS part of the rape crew then I’m no longer having a problem with the missionary being executed.
I imagine it’s more likely he didn’t mention it because it wasn’t to his advantage to do so.
I guess maybe. Still seems weird if he truly thinks that missionaries preaching about condoms being evil ONLY is a bad thing on par with rape safaris for punishment. It’s not like Deus doesnt talk about things he does because he is simultaneously having the persona of being a good man while also leaning into the villain tropes on a very surface-level manner.
Since rape is usually more of a male thing, I assumed the only woman in the group was the missionary.
I don’t think any of them were women. The middle one was a gaunt male.
(missed that you said she – I don’t think it was a she)
It never said that there was a missionary in that group. only about mercenaries. who would probably be against condoms if they were rapist scumbags.
DaveB explained in a comment that one of the people in the group is indeed a missionary.
Huh, didn’t notice his phone ringing in the last panel. Wonder what it could be?
“Sir, a whole space fleet armed tot he teeth has just dropped out of warp!”
Alari:”Oh, no, it’s the Xevoarchy!”
Or maybe it’s the Cthulhuzilloids looking for revenge….
‘this is dealer services. we want to talk to you about your car’s warranty.’
I will BEG for Vale to be dispatched to follow-up on this enquiry, preferably with a fairly open rules of engagement.
please!
Oh Maxima, with her casual police brutality! Such a scamp
Judging from the uniforms in that shot, that occurred when she was still with the military, before Archon.
The implication from the context is she caught the guy mid-rape. In such a case, breaking his hands when yanking him away from his victim is a very mild penalty. Defenders, victim and other, have shot or stabbed such assailants, and as long as they kept it to appropriate levels of force and stopped once the perp did, it’s been declared reasonable self-defense or defense of another. Max probably did less damage than some.
The uniform looks pretty similar to what ARCHON wears, and the doctor is the ARCHON doctor though.
I’m guessing that like Peggy, the good doctor was stationed with Max and any other super troops in the pre-Archon days, and was shuffled to the new branch with the rest of them.
Why is the assumption that this is from pre-ARCHON days? Did I miss something in the comic? I figured that ‘career highlights’ include her career in ARCHON, which was around significantly before Sydney got invited into the fold – it was just not public.
Archon was not “around significantly before Sydney”, they hadn’t even gotten their official uniforms yet!
That’s why Maxi was still wearing her Air Force uniform
Yes it was. They’ve shown that there were already operations underway for a while, Sydney was NOT the first cadet by a long shot, and they’ve had regular updates with other potential threats for a while now, plus ongoing investigations which have been going on to find vigilantes like Marble Maiden. Plus they had already found a few like Achilles, Heatwave, Digit, and Mr Amorphous and made deals with them to join by the time Sydney had joined, and they had been part of the team for a while at that point.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-366-successfully-unwarranted/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-367-collar-commandeering/
The new uniforms are new with the Ooblek, but Archon as an existing department was around for a while.
Plus even before ARCHON officially existed even on a non-public way, they had a version of ARCHON since 1941 according to Arianna.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-144-pr-hopscotch/
So, how come Sydney ended up being one of the first Graduates?
Of Arc Swat
Of Arc-Swat, not ARCHON, which is when archon goes public. Archon was formed in 1941 according to Arisna at the press conference. I put the link in my response to you. Comic #144.
Plus sydney’s training was rushed through (she was already months behind the rest even before her space adventure) and she was not the first group of recruits. She said she was and was told no, she isnt.
Who said anything about recruits?
Arc-Swat is new, the public image version.
Archon had already existed for an unknown length of time as a secret operation via departments such as Arc Dark, Arc Light, and so on. Pander pointed out the other recruits predating Sidney. Sidney just got recruited at the same time they were going public, splintering their own personnel into this publicly seen branch who best fit the superhero team dynamic.
I was going off a) the Air Force tag on the doc’s fatigues, and b) the cheap clinical feel of the office which didn’t seem to jive with the modern headquarters, and c) Deus referring to career highlights which indicates a long timespan, and d) it has been insinuated that Max has gotten a lot better at self control since she started out.
But remember: She is one of the good guys.
And we know this because the author has told us so! Tell, don’t show, that old chestnut of writing.
They were in operation just not officially as yet we have only seen a few snippets of pre-Sydney era (like when Max knocked Dabs through a wall for groping her) Who knows for sure how long they were undercover. Max is VERY strong too you try being super strong and dealing with a desperate perp trying to get free, any hold or grapple can cause injury if they struggle too much it forces you to use more pressure. It looks like she was using a hand/wrist hold to subdue him/her and they resisted a bit too hard and I’ve heard a reference to superman talking about “the world being made of cardboard” to him I’d say Max has a similar problem with us “mushy humans”.
Why is she going on a date with this person? She doesn’t want to encourage him and she already said no. No meal is worth the aggravation.
She’s given indications in-comic that she is interested in him, but hasn’t yet gotten past his arrogance. Or the chip on her shoulder about mixing business and personal matters.
Because Piri-piri! Also, because it’s an opportunity to learn more. Best case scenario, she decides to team up with him. Worst case scenario, she comes away with useful information for analysts to use in dealing with whatever threat Deus turns out to pose.
if she was 20, I’d understand that kind of naive logic (being… rather familiar with it). but isn’t she more like 30?
Do you actually think 30 year olds act mature?
That’s cute.
define mature… because it always seems to mean- let the other person get away with their BS without the ‘mature person’ calling the other person on it.
that almost reads like legalese….
From what I can tell, Maxima is _complicated_. She’s got a physical type that he ticks the boxes for, but she also, despite being a hard-line Feminist, enjoys/appreciates the more traditional side of the masculine/feminine dichotomy- perhaps due to being denied the opportunity to experience it. So having someone actually do the old-school “Take charge because I’m completely self-assured around you and tell you what to do and you have to follow through on it because you’re a delicate flower” is probably setting off some things in herself that she’s not fully aware of.
That made this scene run through my head, and on re-watching it’s even more appropriate than I remembered – forgot it starts with an invitation to dinner.
Because she likes him. Like likes him!
No, she doesn’t, she ‘like likes’ Hiro
A woman can like like more than one guy!
She still doesn’t even like SmugD, let alone like likes him
The heart wants what the heart wants, dear friend G.
She would have a better chance of an emotionally fulfilling relationship with a dildo with a smiley face drawn on it than a man with a library of sexual conquests listed by species
I wander if Deus is setting himself up for some inter-minion conflict.
He clearly draws in a lot of variety in his mercenaries, henchmen, employees, and such. While there are general rules clearly for his imperial build he is going for; these different minions may be under different impressions of his motives and have different incentives for working for him as a result.
the ideological minion vs the paid and only following the rules for the money minion, or the ones that serve Deus for his vision…but may be under different impressions of what that vision is (imperial iron fist with a kind face to the people, actually altruistic, or some other motive) and be working with that in mind.
get these minions in a room together and sparks fly.
my own examples, which are a bit extreme and less “minion” and more family.
Rhulan is an empress, of what can be considered a very informal multi-empire…empire. (usually just some legendary figure head), but her followers have some very different ideas what is expected of them and their approach towards say…humans.
Zelia: Rhulan’s youngest daughter, Princess of Stratalia etc…fancies herself a superhero, she is out for truth and justice and to defend the weak (and due to experiences via her older sister Rhudra’s empire and stories told her about multiverse travel has concluded that (ordinary humans) are weak by nature and thus need defending. So yeah she can rub some other superheroes on other worlds the wrong way with that outlook, even though her heart is in the right place.
(translate this to Deus level, imagine a minion who is views themselves as a hero but in a way that they are also looking down at those they save as fragile and lesser things needing saving).
then we have Rhudra, raised to conquer and was involved in a Holy war by her early twenties, and has killed scores of soldiers and angels alike. She currently controls a chunk of a human world that is now a dystopian vampire empire with mega cities with the humans in the poorer outskirt areas with less advanced technology and the vampires occupying the more advanced areas. She regards humans as a resource and a template for experiments to advance them.
-Deus level, think a minion who believes it is the right of the strong to rule and the ordinary humans are a resource to be taken care of but also used until they can be made into supers and become proper citizens *the chosen ones*.
and to not go on too long a third extreme example, Sakura the Doll Collector, she regards humans as playthings of no consequence and finding humans she likes play a game with them where the prize is turning them into a doll to add to her collection. She genuinely believes she loves them, cherishes them, takes care of them, and their minds are altered to feel the same if they weren’t convinced before.
-translate to Deus level: imagine having a minion that views humans are property, but property to be valued, cherished, and taken care of. Prized possessions.
I am not just plugging myself there, this comparison for Deus can also be seen as
-local supers who buy into the utopian world
-The Alari out to build an empire and use humans as a resource
-and demons/supernaturals who are brutal and view humans as beneath them, but will take and guard the ones they like ferociously,, maybe even turn them into something supernatural as a “gift”.
Now for Rhulan she loves all three of these and doesn’t want them fighting, but when they do butt heads its hard to take a side or refute the view or methods of any one of them as they are/were following her example at some point in time, and her views she taught them.
So will Deus have these issues with these conflicting groups and powerful minions under his command? It feels it could be inevitable given their vastly different outlooks and likely motives for joining him.
it occurs to me I could have made comparisons to some of Magneto’s henchmen; but for the life of me I couldn’t remember some of their names. but yeah Magneto also had followers either owing a debt to him, in it for power, or believed his messages (sometimes twisted sometimes not…not that Magneto’s own message didn’t get twisted from time to time).
you had everything from guys like Toad and Sabertooth who had their own agendas, Scarlet Witch who owed Magneto for saving her and her brother *original motivation*, and then down the line of wanting to be in on the world take over types like Emma Frost down to the Acolytes who treated Magneto as a messiah.
as a result when Magneto wasn’t around these character butted heads with each other and made splinter groups.
I was going to object that Deus having been in charge of Galytn for a decade can’t be right, but then I went back and looked at #386. According to what he told the interviewer, he’d already been ‘managing’ Galytn for a decade – which would have put the takeover in the mid-2000’s (since the comic is about 6~8 years in the past).
This removes a couple of objections but adds the oddity of him having his supergroup longer than the U.S. (Sydney is a corporal in #4, so the comic starts ahead of it’s current period [Sydney is telling her past] and this means that events DON’T start in 2010 when the comic is actually started appearing – but it can’t be too much later from other context [e.g. Obama is president (2009-2017) only a few months ago; the financial collapse Deus made his billions in was 2007-2009]).
On an entirely separate subject… I’m assuming that Marble Maiden turned out to not be a viable recruit. See #366 for the reference…
People need to start assigning real world dates to comic time.
Comic time is flexible.
I’m pretty sure the story is set in 2012.
I don’t think we know for certain since when supers have been appearing, but we know Maxima has been using her powers for the military for a while, so US Armed Forces had super longer than we’ve seen them. Just the public announcement has been recent.
(Also, Archon’s predecessor organization was founded in 1941.)
Wait, is there difference between piri piri and peri peri? Or is it just different spellings of the same thing?
What happened to the guy’s *thumb* in that X-Ray? Did she pull his bones inelastically to make the thumb the same length as his fingers?
Some questions are best left unanswered.
Considering that Deus seems to be able to get information that should be impossible for him, or anyone else to obtain, I’d hazard a guess that he’s got a super on hand that can do some kind of recording of past events, or at least obtain information about them. Possibly restricted to individuals, but who knows.
I can imagine him having someone with the ability to Foretell the Past, who writes reports.
Which are read by someone with the ability to Gaslight Robots.
The result is a video!
“I would initially question where would Deus dig up 10 hours of footage about some girl living in some extremely poor village, but as he’s been steadily improving Galytn for a decade”
Or just say there is a superhero detective who has the power to recreate magical photos/movies from past events.
Maybe The Filmer took a side job?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-8/
there are a few powers and spells that can pull this off.
Akoshic record access, the old ghosts of the past spell producing hologram like images in the area reenacting past events, memories of the dead (necromancy, summon spirit of the deceased and they project their memories),
there are variations on the whole making hologram like images appear showing past events that mostly come down to accessing and replaying the world memory. Some are ghostly, some you go into their memories, some you are like an observer of past events but unseen *ghost of christmas past style*, and more.
Two things with Deus that I wonder about:
1) His knowledge of people, events and places. It seems too in depth and wide spread to be explained by simple survellience at the level of detail and things he knows about – ranging from the break-in at the vault, let alone of the vault itself, to enough data on a single random victim that he could edit it down to 10 hours?
Is another facet of his power knowledge of things he should by rights have no knowledge of? Or does he have another trump card hidden in the wings? Heck, it makes me wonder if hiring Harem as a spy is just a smoke screen.
2) Has he addressed the single point of failure in his scheme? Namely, if he goes, the wider global scheme is dead in the water even if his new country is stable. How would he address it – splice Harem’s powers into himself and have 5 Deuses running around, an AI upload, something that could help plug the gap? And if so, does it relate to the first thing?
I assumed “knowledge” is his entire power. Did I miss anything about him showing another power?
well lets gallop off into wild speculation.
1. I watched POI recently. Dues is written much like The Machine and Samaritan. Its been heavily suggested that he’s some kind of super. there was that page where he hypothetically talked about super intelligence. If we take him to be in his early 30s at this point a broad superintelligence would work. I’m assuming that he started by figuring out how to filter surveillance either by building the filter or he’s just that insanely good at it. since the PowerPoint incident will be brought up as a rebuttal- its entirely possible he never used it himself or he just had a blank moment to amuse the author. I do that on software I use occasionally or even frequently.
2. we are not allowed to interrogate Dues. I can’t think of a reason for the ‘run over by a bus’ contingency to come up so far. as some would say- absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. If i may suggest that we need more Sydney/Dues time as she’s very likely to blurt that question out. Dues may even be charitable enough to answer. he’s ben 3 moves ahead so long that I would hazard a guess that he has a plan. perhaps we could enlist his high priestess to … it out of him. oh wait. there’s that restraining order.
Wild speculation is great fun. Although with Supers in the mix, you are not always sure how much speculation is actually unreasonable these days.
In regards to his power, he seems to have tacitly admitted to being the intelligence equivalent of a flying brick – ie, he has the necessary extras to shore up the deficiencies that would otherwise be likely to occur with that power. In regards to being run over by a bus, he is powerful and has powerful allies, but he is not the only one. When he was attacked in his office by the Alari lady, if she had simply attacked him instead of grandstanding and threatening him, she would probably have been able to hit him.
This is without allowing for the risk factor of unknown supers who are a counter to his defences.
So, basically, what you are saying, is SmugD is secretly recording (and illegally storing the footage) underage girls
Fairly sure the reason Duex has that look in the last panel is that he knows that sound is the death of his dinner plans.
Yeah, he knows that his staff would never call him like that unless it is really important.
Because, why even have henchmen/women if they are to incompetent to handle the day-to-day stuff?
If that’s the ARCHON doctor, and all supers in the GrrlPower-verse follow the “Most Common Superpower” Trope, then that flashback shows her before she got superpowers.
You want to try Piri Piri Chicken Livers, its the best thing. Also if you can find Nali Piri Piri sauce from Malawi, try that. It used to be called “Friends, be careful”.
Deus for Galactic Emperor, 2024
I know that the comic still “technically” takes place in late 2011 to early 2012. However, Deus still need a few years to gain enough popular support in the wider Galaxy in order to conquer it without firing (too many) shots.
PS: I personally believe that He has also figured out some sort of “immortality” but is keeping it a secret for now because it is super expensive. 1) He knows that if only the rich lived forever that the corrupt would take advantage of it, so he wants to lower the costs first. 2) HE wants to take a bit of advantage of no one knowing about it yet to become GALACTIC EMPEROR first, then give everyone immortality.
I have never had piri-piri sauce, but I was once gifted piri-piri oil and I now always keep some on hand. It is the same spices, infused into light olive oil. I cook with it constantly, and also love it mixed into hummus.
I have noticed over they years that anytime a human’s soul/life force is sucked out they turn into dry husks and we’re talking about energy, not fluids granted there has to be some kind of sign that’s what happened and it needs to be gross so no one wants it as a means of death but to be honest if you run a battery dead does it shrink? Basically if a person was drained in such a manner they might loose color and be extra floppy due to the complete loss of energy (no postmortem muscle tension etc…) but not look like King Tut’s long lost cousin.
we see this in folklore and myth as well, however in those stories the distinction between “vitality/chi/ki” and “blood” isn’t always clear and in some cases the words used (especially with vitality) can be interchangeable.
I always mentally wrote it off in fiction as the process of draining the spiritual essence had a side effect of creating so much heat or microwaving that it essentially turned the body into jerky. Sort of like how heat is a common by product of most energy transfer processes. Even if this is some astral/spiritual energy..so this astral essence is being forced fully from your astral self, through your physical self, and the by product is producing so much heat that it dehydrates all the cells in your body.
I suppose that makes sense my battery comparison would still fit too if you charge or discharge a battery too fast they can heat up but that would more likely cause a steam explosion than complete dehydration as a kid I tried to recharge an old model airplane carbon battery by plugging it into the wall outlet… that was loud and a bit painful to be honest LOL melted carbon and gel-like acid everywhere! Hey I was nine and wanted to fly my model plane…
yeah I think some Dr Who handwavy type stuff about interdimensional forced transfer resulting in cellular microwaving evaporating all the moisture from the body at the cellular level could be done. Although steam coming out the mouth and eyes or some combustion would be a neat thing to add to it, I think I’ve seen that in some movies and shows like the body that flash cooked by a ghost or demons ripping their soul out too quickly.
I had piri piri spareribs when i was in Mozambique about 15-20 years ago… best damn spareribs i ever got, best piri piri too, i have a picture somewhere with it all over my face… old school physical picture.
Max is making the right choice trying it out!
Maxi has to invite Sydney (and Anvil, and Dabbles, and Parf) along to this not-a-damn-date dinner so they can all try the piri-piri (and Sydney can scoff at how bland it is to SmugD’s insufferable face)
Deus looks at Max in wonderment, Max shrugs and watches the show as Sydney demands something “with a bit more kick” over and over…
I’d love to see her trick Deus into trying Grakz LOL I can just see him like Sydney was in https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-712-turn-on-your-fart-light/
although he’s more likely to get revenge than her last victim ;)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-784-how-to-lose-friends-with-alien-cuisine/
Hissing on the on the end of his phone ‘nine more’. *Click. *Phone interference sets off lightning button.
Cthillia bears watching. Remember that once ‘topped off’ with enough murders that knife essentially grants a wish. And you can even tack on larger boobs to that wish as it is being implemented. So prepare yourselves for Cthillia with a huge rack!
It’s just as likely it’s Vale calling to tell Deus they are done and whats next etc…
So max level props on the God Tier power of getting an Eldritch Abomination to cry.
Like, it doesn’t matter if his official super power is Super Intelligence. That takes a far, far backseat to making a being older than the stars, who’s mind is alien and incomprehensible to humans. Cry. That is like a God Tier Superpower.
Doing it without getting themselves killed, turned into something like a rock, frog, doll, fish, or zombie, tortured mentally to live a thousand deaths over and over, or something else makes it even more Iimpressive .
His ring tone really should’ve been the Final Fantasy victory fanfare. XD
You know, like in Advent Children at the end of Tifa vs. whats-his-name?
Loz.
It’s short and distinctive… But maybe not a particularly memorable name.
Honestly, in a world of supers with all kinds of physics-defying powers it wouldn’t sound far-fetched at all to me if Deus had a Super who could gather footage on someone’s past by looking deep into their mind (even when they’re already dead), and digitizing a 3rd person view version of it. That way he could easily make a movie to show Vale just by having access to the victim’s body.
Also he could gather literally all the information other people have without having to bother with interrogation, see through any kind of diplomatic strategies, and come up with the perfect counter strategies all the time. Any traditional interrogation he does would then be just for show, to keep his Super a secret.
We speak of someone rich enough to buy countries.
Powerful enough to have anything he wants.
And he wants to build a better world.
Absolution? Condemnation? Are there alternatives?
Yes, yes, I realize this post is months down the road, but WTH kind of knot is Deus’ tie?
It’s a trinity knot.