Grrl Power #1331 – An ear for accents
Sciona hasn’t given much thought to the fact that Deus probably has access to Alaripidia. Or whatever subset of it the colony ship that took up residence in Galytn brought with them. As that ship was a joint venture between three houses that were aligned on more issues than not, (at least issues relating to colonization and escaping whatever it was that attacked their homeworld) he probably has access to Liglalathapedia, Wuultensapedia, and Graff Vynda-K-pedia. All the houses have departments of Public Relations, Propaganda and Tactical Libel, so there’s no one single “true” Alaripedia… well, 0utside of a few attempts by minor houses or unaligned-whatever-the-Alari-call-the-generation-that’s-currently-reaching-young-adulthood. Like Gen X,Y,Z for Alari idealistic anti-establishment high-schoolers.
The internet is such a relatively new thing, but imagine what it would be like if it had been around for 6,000 years. (And assuming it didn’t just devolve and enshittify into the worst possible version of corporate algorithms and money grubbing schemes. Over optimistic, I know.) But imagine if we still had youtube channels from like Ancient Egypt. Like, “Hey fam. Today I’m going to be showing you how to whip a Jewish slave. Be sure to hit that falcon-pecking-at-wheat icon to subscribe!”
If that was the case, a historian’s job wouldn’t be to look at some squiggles on a vase and decide that meant they circumcised their goats or something. It’d be to watch a jillion hours of archived youtube and conclude any society with access to social media will develop influencer culture and deserved to be swallowed by the desert.
I mention all this because Alaripedia, or the various House flavors of it, isn’t just text and the occasional animated .gif. It includes links to videos and archived digitized radio broadcasts, entire seasons of shows whose copyrights lapsed into the public domain 1,000 years ago. So really, it’s not surprising Deus had access to that stuff. It’s surprising that he’d be able to consume the volume of media necessary to really formulate much of an opinion about it, all while running many business concerns and at least one country while absorbing others and prosecuting a multifront war while maintaining relations with Alari colonists and an army of literal Demons. Well, like a brigade’s worth at this point. Not quite “an army,” but still.
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I’m revisiting a panel from a recent page, but I included some comic reactions and a few outfit swaps, so hopefully you all enjoy it. I also plussed up the art from the comic version a bit, though I suspect that despite the time I spent on that, not a whole lot of people would immediately notice that, so I’m gratuitously pointing it out here.
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“When did you become an expert in Alari etymology?”
“Last night.”
“Am I the only one who did the reading???”
There used to be a show on the radio in the old days where people calling in would read off/repeat a few lines and phrases, and the host of the show would nail down where they lived/were born to within twenty miles or so. Accents really are that specific.
And of course there’s the old Pygmalion/My Fair Lady movie that showcases all the accents in London and how distinctive they were.
I imagine it wouldn’t work so great any more though. I wonder if you would be able to identify a child’s favorite youtuber, though?
My dear old dad can do with with English accents.
Very Henry Higgins …
That’s particularly true for english accents, as opposed to many other nations, where you can actually pinpoint down to a few streets from the accent for people with a discerning ear. I don’t think it works with a lot of other countries.
Mass media has made that more difficult than it was before. But before that it would have worked with many countries. English is not that special.
At least German and Italian have lots of different regional accents and dialects. I am sure others too.
I don’t mean english, but THE English. The accents were supposedly very easy to localize to very specific areas. And while I’m sure a linguist can pinpoint a particular city for Germans or Italians, with the English I’ve seen people able to identify what neighborhoods the speakers are from.
It’s really more a European thing in general. It’s famous with the UK, but regional variation can still be VERY distinct over a surprisingly small distance in many European countries. An exception is France, where there was a government effort to thoroughly standardise the language and wipe out regional dialects/languages for a long time that was more successful than similar efforts in other countries.
Is it really just European?
I know that Russians are regularly surprised by the amount of difference across small local areas when learning German. That has been explained to my by the vast distances many Russians have to travel to meet their neighbors.
But denser populated Asian areas? India has a lot of languages. How is it in Africa? Someone from Benin told me once that country has about twenty languages. (I don’t remember the actual number. Too long ago.)
It seems to me that happens everywhere where local communities can develop with limited disturbance.
bet he got some kind of superpower that improves him in respects with the women he sleeps with, like he gains some of their understanding or boosts him a little from each.
which would make him incredible in many fields. but then there are all the super powers also he could perhaps get a hit off. could explain his urge to get with max and become super strong.
Sounds like a more effort intensive method of Dabbler’s https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1019-rosetta-brain/ learning ear tentacles. Demons are not just muscle, and a deal to improve knowledge gathering capability of the like of Rosetta brain might be helpful.
At no point did this story explain HOW Deus became a Super Intelligence. Drawing Knowledge from Contact with others and processing it as well as other information gathering may be his super power, as well as a motive to hone appropriate skills and performance.
Even without that, once Deus discovers if such Æth ability of gaining knowledge from people rapidly as the former possessor of Halo had, is there any reason he would not find a way to very rapidly gain more knowledge himself?
Alari systems may not just have impressive data collection of it’s past, but advanced teaching systems as well, that Deus has made use of.
If any of the items in the black vault helped boost Super Intelligence information gathering, or tools from his offworld shopping spree, they would likely be invested in and exploited.
The answer may also be all of the above and more.
If nothing else. I think deus is proud of everything he does. so giving it his all with expert technique in lovemaking fits him. assuming he’s had the power all his life. he probably didn’t have as many awkward early experiences as most of us.
Oh my gosh, that would make so much sense. Plus rather than having it just be a creepy scoreboard kinda thing, that catalog with all the different races/people he’d slept with that he had drawn Sciona in after they slept together is more like a checklist of all the boosts he has.
Foreshadowing!
I think he picked up the same translation software which Sydney got for her glasses, except he could pay for the upgraded version of it.
Honestly, at this point, I assume Deus is cheating. It isn’t possible to do everything he seems to be doing, and learn all he seems to know.
Granted, he delegates… and has access to an insanely overpowered talent pool. Most of his endeavors would run themselves very well.
But knowing the things he does when he does? No, he’s in Back to the Future part 2 and has the almanac. He’s got access to a walkthrough or oracle, or something. And we *know* information can do time-travel in this universe, because Harem has done it. She’s accidentally surpassed her own limits with accidental FTL-portal time travel. Information *can* flow that way.
Granted, so can expanded consciousness, so it’d also be possible for him to actually be absorbing all that intel, but… well, there’s still limits. Whether you have the entire interplanetary internet at your fingertips or already read it, you can’t forge every mental connection to everything in real-time and somehow still also plan anything ahead.
I think he’s got an oracle and high intelligence and pretends he has hyper-high-intelligence to throw people off. Which’d make sense especially if there’s ways to get around his foresight.
It’d let him, through temporal feedback, find out *this* phrase gets him the results he wants. Or to find out Sciona’s secret and work backwards to imply he used her accent as part of his information-gathering.
TL;DR I think the only reason he can pretend to be playing 5D chess is because he’s got a time-cheat.
Or maybe super-intelligence led him to decide having an oracle would be a good move, and enabled him to figure out how to obtain one.
He has been confirmed (by himself anyways) to be a super, with his power being super “intelligence” using a sweepingly broad definition, seemingly covering at least “wisdom, emotional intelligence, prediction, recall, and true understanding” (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1040-benevolish/).
If this is true, it’s not so hard to believe he could read and comprehend Alari culture in, putting it simply, a superhuman amount of time.
think his super power is he gains a bit of everything from the women he sleeps with. hence why he has that book collection. And a nice “reason” beyond the obvious, for why he would want to sleep with Max.
To be fair, one can only assume that a superhuman intelligence would look pretty similar to foreknowledge of the future to a being of less than super intelligence. And since DaveB doesn’t posses superintelligence [citation needed], I would assume that he’s writing Deus as though he knows at least some of what’s going to happen in the story.
I suppose one way of telling a superintelligence from a diviner would be that the superintelligence would have contingencies for all the most probable outcomes whereas a soothsayer wouldn’t need to waste resources on anything but the single outcome they know is going to happen. Or the superintelligence would take actions that are good for many possible scenarios, but not the best for any specific scenario. Of course, the superintelligence would probably want to hide that it’s acting any differently than something that could see the future so as to try and prevent others from predicting their moves.
On the other hand, I’m not sure if it’s possible to have a logically sound oracle even in fiction. If you look at the future and then do something to change it, then that’s not really the future anymore it’s just ‘thing that could have happened had you not acted’. No, it is a future, but it’s the future where you didn’t look into the future, which can never be your future anymore because you looked into the future. I suppose it makes things easier when you know something would have had a 100% chance of happening without your actions instead of say a 60% chance, but it’s still not the future. And if you do somehow manage to get a hold of the absolute type of prophecy where it is the prewritten, set-in-stone future, then that’s absolutely useless because there’s nothing you can do to change it, and you know there’s nothing you can do to change it, and if you do try to change it anyway it ends up being one of those self-fulfulling prophecies where you were always going to try to change it and your actions are what causes it to happen in the first place. It’s like there’s some sort of temporal uncertainty principle, where the more you know about the future the less you are able to change it, and the more you succeed in changing the future the less you are allowed to know about it.
He could have overheard Sydney mention Sciona by name, and might reasonably have obtained complete dossiers on Sciona’s personal background weeks ago, at minimum, from both the Twilight Council and the Alari colony ship, which could then be cross-referenced for errors or bias. Given her known involvement with sabotaging the Veil, she’d already be high on the list of suspects for any mysterious shenanigans around this dungeon project.
Then he overhears Sciona hamfistedly trying to find out how Sydney ID’d her, so he spins that line of BS about accents to make it seem like even if she did use Escorpia’s mindwipe drug on him, he’d just figure it all out again a few minutes later, because he’s genuinely concerned that she could wreck his whole strategy by compromising him personally, and so wants to make that seem like a bad move from her personal risk/reward standpoint, without showing weakness by making overt threats.
He was suspicious of Escorpia before this dungeon project began, back when they first met with the Senator about it. He absolutely would have used all three Alaripedias to find out more of Sciona’s background–and he really only needed to know her background exactly, not every accent for every region for the entire planet for a thousand years. Just a quick, “Where’s she from? Larathel Basin, sounds nice, what’s unique about it? A poor region, accent, festivals for planting and harvest that both have killing…” Okay, that one probably isn’t unique.
Her showing up at the site with long, silver hair? To Deus that’s all but a signed confession. This is just his charming way of saying “Hello again.” With a hint of “Yes, I am the smartest being in the universe.”
Sidney was able to recognize her, and they met only long enough for her to get stabbed: Deus has shown a great deal of understanding on who she was and what she was planning when they first met in the vault. Since then, he fucked her, visited the space station and got access to an Alari ship for almost a year: it would have been surprising if he DIDN’T recognize her…
So you’re saying he’s playing 5D Chess with Multiversal Time Travel?
1) I personally think the odds of Deus not being a wizard, a class based on intellectual ability, is infinitesimally low. He might not have the massive mana reserves, but he could figure out magical spells, spellcasting chains, and magical language in no time at all.
Note that no time at all does he rely on power armor, but ALL his subordinates respect him, including the Creature in the Femsuit. He’s probably the most dangerous spellcaster on the planet.
2) A nanite link in his brain to access the internet would allow him to be absorbing knowledge basically 24/7, and he could be taking it all in at the speed of thought, literally dozens of times faster than any normal person. While making him potentially vulnerable to hacking, he probably invented his own custom language to program the stuff, so good luck on that.
He could be like Darth Sidious, a mighty mage but he rarely if ever have to use his power to fight. He prefer to use his power of foresight to make others fight his battles for him.
The big thing about Palpatine was that for most of his ‘career’ as a Sith, he didnt bother using his powers or lightsaber, despite being powerful in both areas. Instead he used persuasion and public relations to make himself respected by all sides and was never putting himself in the center of attention before his rise to the top of the Senate. Which is why it was really surprising when the Mace and the other 3 Jedi came to arrest him and he took out 3 of them in about 14 seconds with his freaky screaming flying twisting around in the air leap.
He has the talent, means, and attitude to be this world’s equivalent of Dr. Doom, or even better than Dabbler at what she does, an archmage and a master scientist. One important difference from those two characters, and a point of similarity to Darth Sidious as Ro Jaws points out, is he seems to draw considerable pleasure from scheming and strategizing, but relatively little from fighting and adventuring. In addition to magic and super-science, his unique insights in the Superion field likely give him the means to give himself and others the superpowers of choice at will.
That would require that there are classes that are based on attributes.
Deus is a wizard if he has learned wizadry. Intelligence may help with becoming a good one. But everyone can try to learn.
I have seen several quite intelligent persons who did not grasps some concepts that could be assumed to be “intelligence based”. Not every human brain works in the same way.
The simple fact that there are geniuses in a D&D universe who are not and cannot become wizards agrees with you. But even if Deus’s potential POWER is low, his Skill with what he has would be off the charts, and anything wizard-based on Intellect instead of bloodline he is going to be horrifically competent at.
His bodyguard aberration respects him for a damn reason. Pure brains aren’t going to intimidate an eldritch horror without something substantial also backing it up.
Using the Spell Scholar’s Touch and just adapting it to the internet would take care of ALL of his knowledge acquisition.
i think that’s the hook for deus here and what makes him a more interesting “evil genius” type;
he’s not just “intelligent”, he’s also “clever” and “wise” and “perceptive” and even “empathetic”, all the other aspects of being super-smart that usually get written as missing from this sort of character
Deus is metagaming.
GOD I love that evil bastard.
Specially because I’m convinced he [TEXT REMOVED]
the Dues fan club probably has meetings or something. just write a terrible pun or two to get the high prestresses’ attention.
The meetings are on Tuesday. Or as we like to call them, Deusday.
I will remember this next time you send ninjas after me.
I only send ninjas out for terrible puns. What I said was brilliance incarnate.
is that like the Nudist gift shop sale? everything is 100% off?
See now that isnt even a pun, that’s just a bad joke.
I’ll send out a koala assassin for you instead. My ninja have more important people to destroy.
What is loveable about him? He is a smug bastard who doesn’t exist beyond being a smug bastard who goes out of his way to become even more of a smug bastard. He exists to be annoying and a hate sink, and the only thing more annoying than him is that people will look at a guy checking off every box on the “how to be a pirate” list and go ‘what a trustworthy businessman, He must be a paragon of charity’. Freaking reacher gilt.
Well, the thing is, this character has redeeming qualities, and even seem like a “good guy” : notably, there were some comic pages where his subordinate is annoyed that Deus tries to teach bad guys the errors of their way / tries to give them a chance to reform themselves, instead of just killing them right away.
From my point of view, this character does understand “right” and “wrong”, and tries to live by “right” (ex: no unnecessary killing and harm done to other people).
Because of that, it’s hard not to root for him achieving his goals (or at least, the goals as they have been presented to use so far). Sure, he’s unsufferably smug, but up until now we have not been given evidence that his confidence in himself is misplaced, so…
Like Pavel said.
It feels like he’s a disgustingly clever guy who eventually realized being good is accomplishing jack and shit.
And realizes the bad guys get stuff done which eventually get undone because the stuff that gets done is evil stuff and logically people try hard to undo it.
So he applies this logic to get good stuff done in an evil way and as a result he gets stuff done, and people undergoing the (good) stuff he gets done are happy and prevent stuff from getting undone.
He weaponized being evil for good.
He is permanently role-playing a bad guy.
And it works.
Get that straitjacket away from me! You know I’m right!
*pulls down giant whiteboard with a million notes and wires connecting everything*
I have proof! There is no shadow government, it’s just Deus all the way down!
Greed applied to people that are considered one’s possessions, may lead to life improvements for those people that are belongings, and encouragement for others to become more easily acquired. Also may lead to incentive for protection of those who are possessions, so that they are not diminished by outside forces, and even problems from the normal results of their possession’s own self actions. As a ruler may also tend to also strive to know the value of their subjects, and weigh their value in future plans, and may take careful steps to gently put away tools that may prove more valuable later in plans, but unhelpful at the moment if not leashed, or given interesting less valuable assignments.
You could ask the “What is lovable about [blank]?” for about 100% of the characters in this comic…….especially if you want to focus in on their obvious character flaws.
Sydney? She exists to be annoying and some type of Mary Sue/Invader Zim crossover on steroids.
Max? She exists to be annoying and an example of what happens when an OP character is put in command who has literally no leadership ability whatsoever.
Math? He exists to be annoying and a HI-LAR-IOUS example of combining “the perfect martial artist” stereotype with Andrew Tate.
Name any other character in the series that has had 5 or more comic page appearances and I can probably do the “They exist to be annoying and…..” thing.
At some point, you either just get on for the ride or walk away. (Personally, at this point, I myself am kind of off and on with keeping up with the comic.)
There’s something that’s been bothering me: we’ve been told time and time again that Dabbler’s super intelligent, but now we’re being told the same about Deus, so how does he compare to her?
My broad impression, from the times they met and discussed the nature of magic and the Superion field, is they are in the same intellectual league, but Deus is substantially better.
They’re certainly focused in different areas.
Dabbler tends to, well, dabble. Generally in building tech/magic stuff and exploring things. Past strips have shown that she’s not all that good (for a succubus) at manipulating people socially. Her dressing up as Lara Croft was not only fan service, it is also her inner self. She’d rather be exploring a ruin using tools she built than doing the aristocratic stuff.
Deus is much more about bringing things into order around him, including people. I suspect he’s more socially focused. If it gets the effect he wants, he’s likely to do it, no matter what area it’s in. He will act morally if not doing so will negatively affect future projects to the extent of requiring more effort overall.
I think that, while they’re both incredibly intelligent, Deus is a lot more focused. Dabbler tends to get a lot more distracted. Usually by sex.
Dabbler isn’t a Super. She’s probably just magically/demonicaly/cybernetically ‘smarter than a high-performing human’. Deus is a Super, and he has High-Level Super-Intelligence.
It’s the difference between being Captain America strong, versus being Superman strong.
I think that since both Deus and Dabbler possess superhuman levels of intelligence, a better comparison might be Sentry and Superman, since Sentry is a human with cosmic level strength and Superman is an alien with cosmic level strength?
I feel like the main difference between them is focus rather than actual intelligence level. Once Deus points out stuff to her, Dabbler tends to see what he’s talking about right away, even though she did not recognize it right off the bat. It’s not even just with Deus. Sydney did the same thing with suggesting putting a tracking spell on a rock and throwing it in the blood teleportation pit, while Dabbler was using advanced mathematics to try to determine where Sciona went.
Dabbler would be considered a high-end ‘human genius’ who happens to come from a civilization with an incredible degree of development in both the technological and magical fields. She’s versatile enough to be skilled in both fields, and she has a MASSIVE amount of knowledge to draw from, plus the computer technology to facilitate her lore, take care of heavy computations, AND she’s had 150 years to build up that knowledge base!
Deus is Lex Luthor on a planet with limited resources and knowledge base. Yet as proven when she went to the Alari camp, he can outthink her, doing math she literally could not comprehend, and he was even patronizing to her about it during that interaction (gives her a glass to drink, pats her consolingly, etc).
They aren’t in the same league. Dabbler is a wealthy elite of a galactic society with great education and resources (she’s actually a space princess, her mother is a succubus matriarch), and all the time in the world to build on that. Deus is a human male in his prime from a lesser world who can still think rings around her.
“Deus is Lex Luthor on a planet with limited resources and knowledge base. Yet as proven when she went to the Alari camp, he can outthink her, doing math she literally could not comprehend, and he was even patronizing to her about it during that interaction (gives her a glass to drink, pats her consolingly, etc).”
Um… she COULD comprehend it. She just didnt think of it first. There’s a difference between being intelligent and creativity.
“Deus is Lex Luthor on a planet with limited resources and knowledge base.”
Well he’s on a planet with billions upon billions of dollars at his disposal and a multinational corporation. I’m not sure how ‘limited’ that is. And he didn’t actually build some of the stuff – he bought it from Fracture Station, like the Mass Fabricators. He also hasnt built stuff like FTL engines, while Dabbler can do that.
Deus did the math in his head.
Dabbler was figuring out the implications of the math and trying to figure it out with all her cybernetic enhancements. She didn’t actually know the math. There is a difference there.
Deus went out and probably bought a basic physics textbook to ‘discover’ the unified field theory that Dabbler is so smug about knowing. His billions of dollars don’t mean squat intergalactically, he still had to pony up what I presume are precious metals to buy stuff, and the amount of money he has is inconsequential.
Note: Dabbler is probably relatively as wealthy as he is, but hers is in tradable precious metals looted from dragon hoards and galactic credits and other things, not in land, peoples, and machines Deus can’t trade. Heaps of treasure have their own values. All that wealth doesn’t mean much Out There.
So, disagreeing with you completely here. I’m not saying Dabbler couldn’t learn the math, because she certainly has the brains to do THAT… just like she learned most of her other knowledge that other people worked out. She’s a dabbler, not a researcher, and she has much deeper information resources than Deus does, although that is changing.
Btw I do find it funny that I’m arguing on the side that isnt Deus is the best.
Even though he IS the best. All praise Deus, amen.
I’m just saying that there hasnt been anything to say he is actually SMARTER than Dabbler, rather than being more creative with his intelligence. Especially given that superhuman abilities are something ONLY found in humans, so he would have had a lot more time to study this than Dabbler has, given he has had supers working for him likely longer than Dabbler has been on Earth (and not including if he himself is a super).
Deus frequently looks to me like he’s an optimized cloned human with an alien brain transplanted in there. Or reshaping the memories of a human brain, without magic to make sure it’s undetectable aside from that “X” scar.
Don’t ignore the “X” scar. It’s never going to be explained because some magic or tech could verify the explanation to be a lie.
Deus is up to something, anyhow, I think the foreshadowing and the known plans are hitting with the subtlety of a bomber dropping anvils (the metal thing, not the character).
Now that Deus and Sciona have reconnected, she is not under immediate threat by Archon, and she has substantially improved her M.O., I yearn for the two most successful supervillains in this setting (yes, I know, his villain status is questionable and they do not have much worthwhile competition so far) to have a drink and a nice chat in a private place and compare notes about this take-over-the-world business with the dungeon project as the excuse. They have my blessing to make it the first date they never got.
He robbed a vault of evil artifacts, sold them to anyone with the money to buy them, outed the existence of hidden communities against their will, commits extra judicial killings, took over a country and has unchecked imperialist and expansionist aims, keeps invading other countries. His villain status is not in question, omniscient morality liscense doesn’t exist
“He robbed a vault of evil artifacts,”
A vault of artifacts which were, themselves, stolen from others who the Council had murdered.
“sold them to anyone with the money to buy them,”
You have no idea who he has sold them too. He is unlikely to sell them to someone who will harm his business interests, and his business interests include making a planet where everyone is happy and successful.
“outed the existence of hidden communities against their will, ”
1) No, he did not. Any outing of hidden communities have been done by themselves.
2) Which hidden communities are you talking about?
“commits extra judicial killings”
I can only agree with this for one person in the entire comic (possibly). The rest were mass murderers and/or in self defense. In fact, he’s rather hesistant to ever go to the point of killing others, and it’s a last defense – usually in war, which would not be extrajudicial. Killing happens in war. Even then, he tries to make sure there are minimal casualties and gives every chance to prevent it.
” took over a country”
1) The country was run by a mass murdering dictator who was abusing, murdering, and disappearing his people, including the women and children and families of those he would have murdered), to a point which actually disgusted the mass murderer’s own son.
2) He gave the aforementioned mass murderer a chance to become incredibly wealthy by just doing things which would actually HELP his people.
3) The mass murdering dictator tyrant warlord was going to murder Deus as soon as Deus said that he would not write him a blank check because the money would never reach his people, and would just be used by the mass murderer tyrant.
4) He’s technically not actually in control of the country – he’s let the son of the mass murderer be in charge. Deus is in charge of the infrastructure and economy, which he has sunk billions into as an investment.
5) The people of Galytn (and Mozambique for that matter) LOVE him because he actually has helped them to not live in abject poverty and terror, and has also provided a future for them and their children which has hope of being a first world nation.
The men and women sing his praises, and not out of fear – out of love. And the children give him gifts like homemade ash trays, which he TREASURES more than all his riches because he considers that sort of love and admiration to be more valuable than anything else. Genuine love and admiration is the greatest gift of all to Deus. All praise Deus, amen.
“has unchecked imperialist and expansionist aims”
Oh it’s quite checked. That’s part of the plan.
“keeps invading other countries”
One country – Mozambique, and only because the people of that country were meeting with him BEGGING him to come in to save them. And he tried every other option first. And Mozambique is one of the most corrupt nations on the planet as well. There seems to be a theme there.
“His villain status is not in question”
It’s not in question – he’s unquestionably not a villain.
“omniscient morality liscense doesn’t exist”
I’ve never heard of the term ‘omniscient morality.’
He also doesnt know everything. He knows A LOT OF STUFF. He’s been surprised before, like when he had to push up his timetable. Also Maxima made him have a spittake once. From surprise.
He clearly does believe in some form of morality, from what was said by Vale warning Cthillia when she wanted to ‘top this thing off’ because Deus is ‘a bit of a stickler when it comes to people who deserve it.’ Vale once killed someone that Deus considered to be innocent and Deus punished Vale in a way that made her cry. Vale is some inhuman eldritch horror thing in a human skin suit and he made her cry for killing someone he considered to be an innocent person.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1052-dateus-interruptus/ (panels 3, 4 and 5)
Which apparently was people like ‘mercenaries-turned-rapists’ – Deus has a rather strict line on what is and is not moral when it comes to execution.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1051-crime-and-monologuing/ (panel 5)
““outed the existence of hidden communities against their will, ”
Btw, if you mean that Deus outed the existence of demons, it was not against the demons’ will. Tom and his demon forces are demons and were in voluntary agreement with Deus to be ‘outed.’ While the Council wants to be in charge of all demon information on Earth, they are not in charge of Tom. And aliens were outed without any help from Deus.
The fact that the Council does not like that now demons are known to humanity to be real was already on the way to being outed since Dabbler was already known to people as not being human at least. As Deus is human, I don’t see any reason why humanity does not deserve to know the truth about their own world. The Council seems to represent every group EXCEPT for humans. Even ARCHON has a sort of seat at the table to represent supers, even if they actually only are representing the United States since ARCHON is a branch of the US armed forces, not a member of any sort of international group. For some reason, normal humans as a whole are left out of this entirely, as if they are lesser than everyone else. Deus is a good representative for humanity (even if he winds up being a super – which isn’t definitive anyway).
In universe, I think the reason humans are left in the dark is because there’s far more of them than anything else. And if they knew, there would be a large chance of genocide.
Speaking in a meta way, it’s one of the several explanations used in fantasy/sf/superhero fiction to answer the question: this is supposed to be our world (saves a lot of time on world-building), so why don’t we know of any supers/demons/vampires/etc.?
It’s like the “where are the aliens” question. At least with aliens there’s a good chance they’re just too far away for us to detect. Overlooking e.g. vampires is rather more questionable, unless they’re vanishingly rare.
“In universe, I think the reason humans are left in the dark is because there’s far more of them than anything else.”
I know. But I’m still saying it’s not a great look on them that there isnt at least a non-supernatural human representative at the Council who isnt already a member of a different group, like Deus. It’s not like Deus isnt already aware of the Council’s existence. And the Council knows him already (remember Ingsol and Deus’s back and forth in Washington DC).
In any case, I don’t think it’s a strike against Deus that he made a business arrangement with demons which outed them, since the demons in question seem to have been FINE with that, the demons in question are not under the Council’s control anyway, and humans should be able to have SOME say over the goings on on their own planet (like not having to go at the Council’s timetable speed for revelation of supernatural beings).
Basically, Deus is guilty of…. being honest. While the Council and ARCHON are liars to humanity. Honesty is not exactly a huge villainous trait.
Welp, Sciona’s busted. Deus was already suspicious of her cover, back in:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1180-the-scent-of-a-femalien/
Guess we’ll see whether her plan just fizzles out or if a fight erupts….
>Guess we’ll see whether her plan just fizzles out or if a fight erupts….
Either outcome seems very unlikely. Deus never made himself an enemy of Sciona even when she was much troublesome and disruptive than she currently is. They have no real reason to fight in the short- and medium-term, and their interests align about developing the dungeon. He is not going to out her to Archon and the TC.
Thank you!
I just spent (a long time) searching for that strip. It’s further back than I remembered.
If Deus has super-intelligence to include eidetic memory, then he could have been saying to himself during the meeting
“Why does the Senator’s aide move like someone I know?”
“Oh! But she’s off-world.” I don’t think he knows she’s supposed to be dead.
I’m not sure about the sniff test. She could have been eating Alari food, but it likely tastes different in a human body.
Maybe the sniff was to see if she would be uncomfortable about it (she was) and *how she moved* when she was uncomfortable. This gave him the confirmation he needed.
“Yeah, somehow the Senator’s aide is both Alari, and someone who’s not supposed to be on Earth.”
But like the Evil Overlord he is (not judging, he just acts like he’s actually using the list), he filed that information away for later use. Using it in that meeting would not only be a waste (he wouldn’t get anything out of it) he would have great difficulty convincing anyone else.
Now apparently he’s going to use it. *How*, is another question.
I don’t think he has foresight as such. Many writers show super-intelligence badly. You can be very intelligent and still be surprised by circumstances. It does help with reacting to surprise, assuming you’re not thinking of something else at the time. But the reaction will be slower if you have to think of it in the moment as opposed to planning it out ahead of time (and rehearsing it).
His presentation so far is that of the polymath, someone who looks into lots of fields so he knows what can happen and thinks about them so he’s not surprised.
He does know about a lot of things (magic, space aliens, etc.) I wonder how old he actually is.
Powers come in sets and often have nuances they might need to discover themselves. If his primary power is presented as intelligence he may discover limited foresight or any other mind based power. He doesn’t have normal telepathy or telekinesis that others are aware of or he is smart enough to cover up such aspects. Others are more likely and less obvious.
Just a thought: What are the chances that Sydney’s translator glasses have a ‘log’ function, which she can scroll through to review past conversations?
Not bad, but I imagine she would need to figure it out. I suspect her glasses auto clear translated text after a set time. If she gets another issue like she did for French translation she might ask Dabbler who might see the log.
Else, if Sydney scrolls through and sees it there might not be an indication of who spoke it. Only that it was in the language of Alar, which could lead to some entertaining investigations and paranoia on Sydney’s part.
Only thing worse than nearly being caught by someone incompetent… Is having someone competent rub how he knows even more about your secret identity without her help.
Today just isn’t her day.
Why is he even here? Getting kinda annoyed the hate sink character is somehow contractually obligated to get an appearance in every scene
Same reason why Archon and Twilight Council operatives are here. Archon, the TC, Deus, and the US government/MIC at large agreed to make the dungeon a joint effort. We saw one of the meetings when it was agreed. Sciona is supporting it too, officially in her guise as a Senator’s aide, and in practice as her own faction. That’s why all those people are here to help with construction or supervise it.
What makes Deus so dangerous is that he plays a *very* long game. He’s definitely a Vetinari fan and has taken every lesson he ever taught. He’s going to make sure that Syd doesn’t get a habit and no doubt released from Sciona’s clutches. I just wonder if she’ll ever be stupid enough to try that on him.
Even when Sciona was much more belligerent than she is now, she tested the boundaries, but avoided making Deus an enemy.
More than a half century ago Anne McCaffery wrote a story about a futuristic ethnologist studying the archived data of an unnamed social network. The short story “Dull Drums” doesn’t get nearly enough attention for the vision McCaffery lays out for us, decades before Facebook or its older cousins even existed.
I always miss when DaveB doesn’t add the shading. The art is still great and I know it’s probably a lot faster to draw flat coloring, but it’s missing depth without the shadows/shading.
…. prediction for next few panels. Dues’s bodyguard is going to stop sciona from drugging him, or he has some kind of low profile rubber suit. For his own protection.
A rubber is important for protection when dealing with beautiful offworlders!
Sciona: Why do I hear boss music?
Deus: *puts away his vintage walkman*
I wonder if the glasses will have a “bodycam” function that automatically starts recording after an impact or a change to the wearer’s vitals are detected? Enough to where Krona can perform a restore function on Sydney?
I wonder if information processing and analysis is Deus’s super power. It would explain his deal a fair amount.
…
Did Sciona just double negative herself?
If that “mind wipe” she commanded of Syndey was a suppression of her memories rather than an erasure, Sydney will forget her earlier command of “forget what you know about me” being part of that conversation.
Biologically speaking, I am almost sure it was an erasure and those memories are gone for good.
Why would Sciona say that out loud at all? Seems stupidly risky considering translators and people with super-hearing are both things that exist.
I think the last two strips have already established that Sciona is not the brightest bulb
The schemes she was able to manage in her previous life and this one prove she is far from stupid, but it is just as evident by her recent mistakes her ability to adapt to the requirements of keeping a robust long-term cover is a work in progress.
Current physical body might be an issue.
If anything, available evidence points to the fact she has become less impulsive and shortsighted of late. In all likelihood the sobering lessons she got were the main factor in this change. The experience of living in a human body as a human might have been an important factor in making her more humanlike and a bit less prejudiced vs. specific individuals. However, she made considerable progress in these two fields, but it is a work in progress. And she is not giving up her supervillain mindset any time soon.
In the last panel, SmugD is suggesting that Sciona’s accent is several centuries old. This suggests either:
– that Sciona is far, far older than she looked (and looks, but we know why that is), or
– that the Alar portal-warp-rift wasn’t Sciona’s first encounter with Time Travel Shennanigans.
Of course, life extension is by far the strongest reason to get into blood magic in the first place, which supports the first idea, but the second is also worth considering…
The council fought her (and assumed they had killed her) a couple of centuries ago. And considering what shape she was in when we first met her I’m not too surprised at their assumption.
Presumably she had been on Earth for some time before that.
I’m not sure where Deus gets the eight centuries thing. He’d have to be read in on Sciona’s history with the council, then have researched her Alari history before that, presumably with his current allies.
I assume he wrote and sketched in his little black book on a blank page. It would be a bit squicky if he had a page in there with just “Sciona” lettered at the top…
Sciona’s page in the little black book was far from blank. It included enough info about her to astonish her. In all evidence Deus was knowledgeable about her and the Alari even before he met her and welcomed them in Gaitlyn. Ofc, since then his lore could only increase considerably.
You forgot an obvious third possibility: Alari are a long-lived or biologically immortal species, just like demons/succubi. Dabbler said they were one of the species often mistaken as angels, so it fits. Although, yes, it is all but sure Sciona used blood magic to give herself all kinds of enhancements on top of her species’ innate abilities.
Well, they ARE space elves, I guess.. Still, the way Deus brought up the eight centuries figure makes it sound like an unusual length of time, even for an Alari.
Either way, though, Escorpiona is now (mostly?) human, so she’ll need to find a way to extend her new body’s life span.
Theoretically yes, but chances are beings who come with ideal bodies as standard equipment also get biological immortality by default. This is the most likely case by biological logic and trope standards. Even in the unlikely case it is not so, a top-class blood mage all but surely knows plenty of ways to make herself ageless w/o excessive difficulty. Therefore, I assume the issue is moot, one way or another.
Yep, Alari are a rather good rendering of space drow in a secular setting.
Hypothetical: Deus has a working comm back to the Alar group, wherever they are at the moment, and their resident expert on their equivalent of Middle English immediately recognized the accent.
Is it bad that I imagine Deus sounding like Clancy Brown’s Lex Luthor?
You know, we’ve never heard Sciona’s full Alari name. I wonder what house she was born into, and what houses she’s served? Maybe she’s related to some of Deus’ Alari?