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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Because he is Big D, Sciona.
And you’ve just put a whammy on someone he likes.
…
Not, like “likes,” likes, just…no, forget it, never mind, off-topic.
The point is, you are now on the wrong side of Deus, and that’s always a bad place to be.
He’ll make you watch heart wrenching videos.
Hehehe, you said ”big D”.
You need to be very uninformed to not be worried about D.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Monkey D. Luffy
And we’re about to witness a Deus ex machina.
Even more worrying would be if he decides to read in Sydney’s commander, resulting in Deus et Maxima.
Can you imagine anything in the Grrlverse that could oppose them, if they got on the same side about literally anything?
It had to be said. I have ideas, how. But, hench rules…and nobody has figured out how to get this hench to spill the beans.
Not sure how much he likes her. He also is a known associate of Sciona’s, after all. The problem with Deus is that he’s playing 5D chess with alternate universes and time travel. And of course the real problem with Deus is that he’s playing alone, so no one really knows what he’s trying to do.
Basically yes.
He’s mystically here. BECAUSE.
He’s there for the same reason Sciona and Sidney are there. This is a massively significant project and it won’t take a lot of time.
Further he knows about Sciona and her interest in the project and probably can predict what she’s up to.
He’s a chessmaster villain who doesn’t feel the need to flex his ego by beating up heroes.
Yep. The dungeon is massively relevant for, and a joint effort by, Archon, the Twilight Council, Deus, and covertly the US MIC at large and Sciona as well. It is no surprise that people from all those factions are showing up at the construction site to help with and/or check on it.
I very much doubt it. We know Deus is not deeming Sciona and her plans a threat to his own as things stand and he is willing to let Sciona do her thing. He is not moving against her or sending Archon/Twilight Council against her. He already met her in her current circumstances and let her be. What she did to Sydney is not going to change his assessment. In all likelihood, from his PoV what E-Sci did to her is reasonable self-defense. He likes Sydney, but he also likes Sciona and in the end both of them are pawns in his 5d chess game. One could argue that in the end Sydney suffered little or no long-term damage in this event. It was the rough equivalent of getting intoxicated with a memory blackout. As remarked here, E-Sci did not get to make her addicted to her slave juice.
I can see Deus considering Archon to be part of his sphere of influence. If that’s the case he will tell Sciona off for messing with them, but he’s also likely to point her in another direction that would be useful to them both…
I can see Deus reinforcing Sciona in the notion that further attempts to mess with Archon are to be avoided. However, I am confident that he is willing to excuse her erasure of Sydney’s memory as justifiable self-defense.
Hell, given his predilection for enjoying usage of soft power, he is likely to commend her for not immediately resorting to stabby stabby or smash and grab and instead being more subtle than she used to be.
Yep. Chances are Deus, in his own way, likes this new version of Sciona much more just as I do.
At the very least, he likely approves of her not being quite as murderous in getting her means. She’s also learning about making alliances by giving other what they want, instead of just by threats and violence (ie, the Senator’s daughter, or 6 times guy).
“It’s surprising that he’d be able to consume the volume of media necessary”
No kidding. What’s he do, listen to separate audio channels through each ear, read separate text streams with each eye, while reading braille with both hands? All at accelerated speeds, of course?
I suppose somebody with superintelligence could do something like that.
Since he is also rich in a world full of supers he could pay a telepath to download it directly into his memory.
I wouldn’t think Deus capable of that level of trust.
Why not? Deus seems to actually be on pretty good terms with his subordinates.
While I agree with this, I also suspect he would be very concerned about anyone pulling info out of his head that he does not want. He does a lot of things with just tiny nudges; one thing that can totally mess that up is someone having access to knowledge out of his head that would fuck that up. Perhaps he has ways to give them selective access, but if not, I’m surprised he’s not wearing a Magneto helmet at all times.
If only he had some sort of ability that would clue him in on who he could trust to go digging around in his brain. Some sort of superintelligence combined with superempathy, a dash of superperception, and a lifetime of observing people. If only…
More seriously, I could see something that could implant knowledge/memories aetholith-style being available in artifact form, and don’t forget, he pilfered quite a good number of useful things from the vault Sciona broke into. So he could be using something like that. Another option is that part of how his particular brand of supersmarts works allows him to perceive things in superspeed, so he could potentially read/listen to some significantly-sped up books, audio files, videos, etc in a fairly short period of time (I’m thinking of Metro Man going to the library in his flashback in Megamind – although with Deus not also having superspeed, he’d need to have it all set up beforehand).
There’s a difference between being on good terms with someone and letting them edit your mind.
It’s easier for him to trust his subordinates since they’re very loyal to him, since he pays them EXCEPTIONALLY well and is a very good boss with the perks he gives. He mentioned this to Sciona in the vault as a criticism of how she treats her own subordinates and partners and how ‘she does not see the value in trust or loyalty’ with those you employ. Right after he gives Heavenly Sword a very cool weapon as part of his example of how to ‘workaround’ the vault’s death field.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-570-the-bamboomanity/
Or five. The telepaths do need time to absorb the material as well, right?
Not necessarily.
Big D has an Alari on staff, and I can relatively easily picture a TPath essentially “mirroring” the requisite information directly from her to him.
More than one Alari possibly. :)
Lorlara is the highest in rank in his organization as Deus’s assistant, but I remember seeing at least one other Alari who was probably working for him in Galytn (along with another demon and a Galytn soldier).
What if his super intelligence allows him to recall massive amounts of memories from that race of body snatchers/mind f*ckers that recently had interaction with Sydney [sorry really already forgot the race name]. Maybe the helpful and beneficial aspect of their riding other people’s wetware is phd level knowledge of arcane subject matter if you got the smarts to process it?
Instead of Neo slotting AI shards in Cyberpunk fictions, well the AIs slot you and leave an info dump.
High level brains in Marvel can watch dozens or hundreds of TV monitors at the same time and make sense of it. They can also make scary accurate predictions about how their foes will behave.
Deus is scary because he’s got all of the mad thinker’s or the leader’s advantages without the disadvantages. He has thus far avoided doing stupid things because of plot.
Deus could afford to have a team to sift and digest the information for him. Probably multiple teams working in isolation from each other and then cross referenced to ensure reliability of the data. Being Deus he would have a list of things he would want to know. The ability to distinguish one Alari house or factions within a house from another without tipping his hand, or in this case letting Sciona know that he sees through her disguise would be useful.
Gain other clues ahead of time that she’s Sciona and then look up the small volume of data for opening lines that hide the fact that he already knew.
Halo’s gonna eat the exact right overspiced alien stuff to dissolve sciona’s mind warping drug. By accident, like tripping and face first in it. Or it’s gonna turn out that one of the orb’s functions is Healthcare and protecting her from those kind of shenanigans.
The mystery orb does *suspiciously* look like a Magicite of Clear from the Final Fantasy series.
An unknown function of the orb or the glasses recording the event and Sydney accidentally stumbling in the record sometime in the future is a possibility. As it concerns her recovering memories on her own, however, it seems exceedingly likely that if she was not able to resist Sciona’s power up to this point they are lost to her for good.
Biologically speaking, chances are her short-term memories of this event are lost to her forever, since they did not make to long-term memory and were erased for good. It seems the same case as a blackout from intoxication or a psychotic episode. Records that were never made due to the brain being in an altered state cannot be recovered.
No, he probably didn’t listen to all those hours of recordings.
Its more likely that he investigated Sciona and found some details about her. (odds are that she is mentioned in those databases as someone to watch out for) Then he learned some words she is likely to use, and how the pronounciation has changed over the centuries.
All to ‘get under her skin’ if he came across her.
Yeah. It’s been a long time so it’s easy to forget but he did meet her before in her old body, and probably made a point of studying her in detail just in case he ran across her again. Still impressive, but not “absorbed 6000 years of alien Internet in a few months” impressive.
Yep. From that meeting, we know Deus had researched enough background knowledge about Sciona for her entry in his hookup library to astonish her when she read it.
I agree that he probably didn’t view everything, but he can probably get so much more information in a short time that he can learn a lot more about a lot more diverse subjects than most people.
How fast could you learn a new language if you remember every single word you ever hear or read and what it means? And can more easily pick up grammar and even social context and accents with just a few examples, and accurately predict for the most part how they apply to other words?
The level of intellect Deus possesses could easily result in learning years of work in matters of days.
There’s honestly an even simpler answer.
Deus has a *fiendishly* devoted Alari on his staff, and he’s already been suspicious that Senator’s Aide Sciona is Alari. He probably asked her to watch Sciona for a bit, then overheard her make a few pithy insults and adapted them to be suspiciously direct compliments.
Little Evil bumps into Big Evil
Not even sure Deus is Evil… Highly unlikely so… even..
It’s just that his interests and his methods do not align with the general thrust of World Politics, especially those of the people who *think* they’re in Charge.
Anti-Hero who very definitely read the 101 Rules, but not Evil.
Any supervillain who reads and follows all the EOL rules stops being a villain.
I think it could be funny if Deus is genuinely evil but is so pragmatic that he does more help than harm to the world.
Enlightened Self-Interest, go!
Define evil, though.
Yes, he is not above murder. We’ve seen that. But he deposed a violent tyrant to take over the country for himself, which massively improved their living standards. Ends justify the means?
Yes, he’s ruthless. But we don’t see him do things for no reason. He doesn’t go around kicking puppies or stealing forty cakes all at once to prove he’s evil.
I have no doubts that his endgoal is something like world domination, maybe solar system domination or local cluster domination or whatever it amounts to in this universe, but I am somewhat more uncertain of what kind of ruler he is. A benevolent dictator seems the likely choice because he doesn’t want to CREATE a Luke Skywalker to come after him; he’d want to create a group of Jedi sworn to protect him to maintain the good life everyone has.
I honestly don’t think he’s evil at all – he just likes the persona of ‘evil overlord’ without actually being evil from everything I’ve ever seen.
Well, as the saying goes, “Oft evil will shall evil mar.” If you’re smart enough to avoid that, you’re probably not actually evil, as such, just because you realize that being ‘evil’ is actually self-defeating.
I maintain that the average person is likely to mistake “proactive” with “evil”. In part this is because honest-to-god villains almost always have the advantage of going first (ex. muggers, serial killers, politicians). Also contributing is that a proactive individual will often disrupt the status quo, instead of waiting around for something to happen to them and then reacting to the event in such a way as to regain equilibrium (or as close to the prior state as is possible).
Deus has done more good than any of the so-called heroes in the comic.
Sciona is very bad at keeping her big mouth shut – that’s like the third time she’s let important information slip – but in her defence, reflexively monologuing is probably inherent to Alari culture…
A duel of villainous monologues between Sciona, Tom and Deus could be fun.
It certainly would, but let’s keep Sydney away from it. Forget Sciona’s special juice, she would pass out from repeat nerdgasms.
After some laughter, that brought me to an interesting question.
Super-Geniuses
They are super smart, sure, but intelligence is not everything. They can learn fast, sure.
In the comic ‘The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius’ the titular Barry once mentions that he calculates stuff like the percentages when the sun is coming up automatically. It doesn’t even influence anything else he is doing. He can still interact socially while building a mecha.
However, with Deus here another thought came to mind. Deus and Barry know too much, unless they can absorb more than one source of knowledge at one, like Data listening to several pieces of music at the same time. I.e. reading more than one book at the time, or simply going through them like Johnny 5 and not just remembering them perfectly, but actually comprehending everything. And not just books. Other stuff like fast forwarding the entirety of Star Trek in an hour.
Can Super.Geniuses even function in a story like we often see if they didn’t?
That is a rather scary thought, yet interesting.
Well there is a specific super power…but you have to do something to activate it. Like superstrength, many have it to greater and lesser extent. Not all activate the same way. Some, just have to open any book and pick up a drink to enjoy while they start knowing. Now, I’ve surfaced long enough for proof of life (as per my contract and parole rules) back to cleaning hallways at the lair for the boss. He’s old school, doesn’t trust bots for janitorial work.
The Watchmen (2009) the villain was actually a hero with super speed. Since he could think at super speed he was smart but also able to read at that speed. He killed a lot of people and framed another hero to achieve world peace.
Dues might be smart as a side effect of his power to consume knowledge. As for making the world a better place, it is probably easier than using force and fear in the long term.
You mean Ozymandias? Ozymandias was a ‘perfect man’ with a heightened intellect, probably the model for Deus. Doing what he had to do to save the world.
His power was brains and human perfection, not super speed.
I said something similar in another part of a thread, but it’s worth thinking about just how much faster a super genius could learn something.
Consider learning a new language. Usually something that takes months to learn conversationally and years to learn in depth.
How much faster would it go if you accurately remembered every single word you heard or read? If you understood with just a few examples how the grammar worked, how the language evolved, different regional accents, how the syntax and structure worked. You could, with a bit of effort become an expert in the language in a matter of days.
You can apply similar results to understanding culture, science and engineering principles, governments. The ability to accurately retain vast sums of information quickly, and to correlate it rapidly and accurately is kind of terrifying.
It would depend on how exactly the Superion field enhances his intelligence I would think. If it just speeds up the rate at which he thinks then yes, he would naturally be able to absorb information at inhuman speed. However I don’t think any human being could experience the world like that constantly and remain sane, and we’ve never seen Deus be caught off guard or any other indication that he has to actively use his powers. Plus I’d think that would be more the domain of super-speed, although there seems to be some overlap allowed like how super-strength allows for a degree of super toughness.
Personally I think his super-intelligence is only faster at processing certain types of problems. For instance, he might be able to figure out certain ‘big-picture’ problems that would take normal humans a lifetime to solve in an instant, but he wouldn’t be able to watch youtube videos appreciably faster than the average person could. Think of it how a quantum computer can do certain calculations like factoring primes unimaginably faster than a classical computer, but for all other problems they compute at the same speed.
Out of the frying pan and into the vat of hydrochloric acid, eh Sciona?
Not really. Sydney discovering her identity and revealing it to Archon and the Twilight Council was an existential threat for E-Sci. At very least, it would undo everything she built for herself and her people since her reincarnation, and send her back to square one as a fugitive. It would also threaten her long-term freedom (if she gets in the same situation as Vehemence or Lapha/Garaam) and her life (she is under a death sentence by the TC).
Deus has shown he is willing to let Sciona be and do her thing. In all evidence, they currently share a common interest to set up the dungeon and let it thrive. They can cooperate to that goal and have a nice reunion chat. Heck, if variables and schedules align, they can even get (a rain check for) another quality hookup from their meeting.
I’m reminded of Erfworld (spoilers, but also it’s defunct so you may never read it if you hadn’t read it.) Charlie, one of the big bads, was similar to Deus. He made his fortune by contracting his powerful minions out to other nations, anybody with enough money could hire him, and he had no alliances or exclusivity. He was always ready with a deal, and an amendment to a deal if you needed to upgrade in the middle of a fight. His minions were all fiercely loyal, incredibly beautiful women, who would do ANYTHING they were contracted for, including die, if the client was willing to pay.
It was revealed that Charlie had once fallen under the sway of a Hippiemancer who got him and several other powerful leaders hooked on a drug that they created. The magician was defeated but the addiction remained, and a few characters still suffered from it, Charlie included. IIRC he got his fix by using mind-magic to recall the feeling of being high. He called it gardening, and only did it after hugely stressful or taxing situations.
I thought it was cool to see how a powerful man with endless resources dealt with a weakness like that, and it would be cool to see how Deus dealt with it too. If she manages to get him. Though after their last few contacts I wouldn’t want to have him bound to me, chasing down a high. (Oooh, also reminiscent of The King’s Touch from Girl Genius, a king tried to bespell a lady so she would have to touch him every few hours or die, but she managed to find a workaround AND reverse it so he needs her to live. Somewhat regrettable, as he is also a powerful, arrogant, and cunning man, and having him nipping at your heels is aggravating.)
The archive is still up:
https://archives.erfworld.com/
I was never quite sure why Charlie didn’t use his link with the Healomancer that cured everyone else of their need for buds to cure himself. He could have even arranged for an independent healomancer at one point and had them “disappear” after.
My best guess is either he couldn’t heal himself as one of the casters in the link, or he was so paranoid he would never risk another caster in his mind.
Note that Erfworld isn’t completely defunct. It still plods along with a largely text storyline, although those updates are irregular.
Oh wow, I thought it went completely down after The Incident. Last I checked the archives were only available to patrons. I’ll have to do a reread!
Minor correction on The King’s Touch – Agatha didn’t reverse it, rather Tweedle was in a rush when he set it up and accidentally made it work both ways. But her workaround was certainly a good one (and Tweedle later replicated it, turning a cat into an arguably-Krosp-level construct while also making her work as an Agatha replacement just as well as the wasp eater works for Agatha as a Tweedle replacement).
That’s certainly interesting to learn about Charlie – I stopped reading that shortly after it switched to prose-only. I certainly would not have expected him to be an addict! Or for addiction to even really be a thing in a world where everyone gets fully refreshed when their side’s turn pops up, it must have been a powerful drug indeed.
Charlie’s daughter was a Flower Power mage who made it. I think in a link up between her and Charlie, so Flower Power, Thinkomancy and carnymancy (rule breaking/altering magic). There might have been another power involved. I think they had a dollamancer and a turnamancer. It could easily have been the turnamancer as that magic could fit the mind numbing and controlling aspects.
They were knows a Hero Buds or “Heroine Buds” for the woman and had a similar effect. The Dependence and turning part was about controlling people. Dependency on the buds in a desire sense was almost immediate but overtime the unit taking them would develop enough dependence that they would croak over time without them while at the same time also becoming weaker and more frail until they died from them.
Charlie’s was fully dependent and had devolved to a point he was completely immobile, but the Arkendish could simulat the effects enough that he could get the necessary “fix” without it impacting his health.
I was commenting on the Tv Tropes discussion page, but it’s going to be hilarious if it turns out Ark Dark has known about Sciona since the start, but kept her there because she’s serving their purposes by getting the dungeon built.
The joke at the bottom isn’t quite right. Alari Broadcast Network would be ABN, not ABC. It should be Company, or perhaps some foreign-ified thing like Commune or something.
And then we find out he’s immune somehow or already knows what the super’s power is and correctly keeps her from touching him
I imagine that the moment he figured out who she was he begun researching a lot more than her origins before likely arranging this exact moment.
I expect him to know her every secret, how her power works and her entire plan… I also expect he’s worked it entirely into his own plans and goals with the intent to lightly manipulate her towards those now.
Probably some manipulation of the Dungeon Core. Maybe they’re making it more deadly, or maybe she’s planning to use the project and the power to do some serious necromancy for her people or such.
Pretty much this. He already knew a lot about Alari culture and Sciona’s background (cfr. her entry in his hookup library). He had already met her and at the very least acknowledged there was an Alari in the aide’s body. If he did not recognize her then, in all likelihood he just did so by cross-referencing her monologue with the other info he knows. From that, to figure out almost everything about her in her current circumstances would be far from difficult for his super-intelligence.
So he won’t be having Valeyeur watch him ‘convince’ E-Sci that sleeping with him is in her best interests… again?
Another hookup between the two of them in the near (but likely not immediate) future is a distinct possibility. I bet Sciona, for all her supervillain tsundere-ness, is ready to jump at the opportunity, b/c previous time was just that good. It remains to be seen if Deus deems it interesting enough (an Alari in a super body whose touch could potentially addict him) to clear room for it in his busy schedule. We know he does so for booty calls with Harem and ‘dates’ with Max, so why not?
One could easily argue that to sleep with Deus was in Sciona’s best interest, and hence it was no surprise it took very little persuasion for him to make her agree. She got key clues to find the artifact she wanted with minimal effort and a sexual experience so good it left her weak in the knees and yearning for a second round. Casual or transactional sex is entirely OK in Sciona’s mindset. She is a sensual being that, in her R&R moments from her supervillainess calling, seeks and welcomes pleasure from casual (but quality) hookups and booty calls. In all evidence, chastity has no value for her.
If 6xguy is any guide, Sciona is a very satisfying lover, potentially worth of Deus’ long-term interest. Although admittedly he is on a wholly different dating standard, being able to sample the best Earth and connected worlds have to offer, barring a few elusive unicorns like Max. This to say it would be far from unlikely or unreasonable for Deus and Sciona to develop more or less the same relationship he has with Harem, even if both of them keep seeing other people.
Well, he JUST overheard her saying “I want to addict her to my slave juice”–that may not tell him everything about her power, but it seems like a fairly big hint.
I have to say that I really like this new colour format. It makes things look smooth and I can easily discern people and shapes.
So here’s a thought – does Deus have a time machine?
Oh, not the sort that allows travel into the future or the past. Just the sort where he can go into a specific room and hit “pause” on the rest of the world. With a built-in rebreather and a good amount of supplies, he can “pause” the world for a couple of weeks while he catches up on his newly arrived shipment of Alari media, and then step out in time to deal with his other responsibilities…
Yeah, the problem with that is that everybody else sees you aging at an accelerated rate, unless you also have some form of immortality. I think in the “Wearing the Cape” series the super-speedsters had that exact issue: You spend a couple weeks subjective time pulling off some super stunt like getting a transplant organ across the country instantly, and you’re a couple weeks older in an instant.
So the super-speedsters tended to have short careers as far as everybody else was concerned, though from their perspective they lived the normal number of years.
I had a similar idea, but not exactly. I have been guessing that Deus has a time machine in that he can, in the future, send back information to the present about certain things, which is how he knows so much stuff that he shouldnt know.
He’s smart enough to not do anything that would be too blatant, but with the technique I just mentioned he would frequently be able to be an incredible information broker and strategist.
Sort of like Layla in Generation X (the girl who “knows stuff”).
Or to a lesser extent like David Xanatos from Disney’s Gargoyles, who once went back in time, gave instructions to the illuminati to give him a bunch of information and the coins which started his wealth, so that he would truly be a ‘self made man.’
If he had some kind of way to see possible events in the future it would explain much of his complicated yet sucessfull strategies. He could be like sith like Darth Sidious or Darth Traya who use their foresight to arrange the chesspieces to their advantage while not even having to reveal their full powers to the public.
sigh… I need more therapy. again. its called a time sight. likely has a Cannon sticker over the nameplate. please… don’t ask how I know. the scars of a misspent youth.
I knew there would be a word for it. Yes I admit I am a bit of a Star Wars nerd.
Or something like a Time-Turner? Although that has real-world ramifications on ones body due to essentially squeezing extra time into a single day. Once or twice isn’t noticeable, but repeated use… (One of the large details from the “Prisoner of Azkaban” book that the movie mostly glossed over was just how much Hermoine was suffering after long-term use of the Time Turner; sure, she was technically getting the same amount of sleep each night, but her day was several hours longer than was natural, and as a result she ended up being constantly tired and irritable, had trouble thinking on her feet, was more prone to making mistakes, etc.)
I absolutely believe he’s got a superpower that’s all about information, knowledge, secret-understanding, or at least somewhere noodling around that general region of ability-ness.
Breaking the fourth wall maybe? He seems to always know how to play the game to his advantage.
Deus might be in a surprisingly high amount of personal danger here. Fiction, and a fair bit of history, indicates that intelligence is no bulwark against addiction. Deus has already shown a questionable amount of impulse control.
I rather doubt things are headed that way, but it’s sort of interesting to think about.
Is it just me or is the comic ‘flatter’ than normal? Is there a missing finishing touch?
Time saving measure by OGH – fewer layers etc.
He has a lot else to do IRL right now.
Deuce once again pulling a big brain I know more about you than you know about me maneuver to farm for information and put someone off their game so that they can take advantage of a situation. Also looks like he’s going to help Halo out but what will he get from it in return?
Like another commenter I was expecting Sciona to order the three of them to ditch work and get drunk.
An offense that Maxima couldn’t allow to go unpunished.
Does ARCSWAT have a Superbrig?
We already saw several times that Max and Archon’s preferred means of retribution for their misbehaving operatives is working them to exhaustion in the training field. IIRC Sydney was at the receiving end of this twice that we know of.
It’s amazing how much time people smart, wealthy, single people actually have. Eliminate the need to work long hours for other people, child care, PTA meetings, etc. Hire people to take care of incidental things like shopping, cleaning, cooking, etc. Eliminate time-suck activities such as doom-scrolling, watching non-news TV, video games, etc. And have access to fast travel via private jets. And in this universe, have access to advanced drugs or even supers to reduce the need for sleep, enhance his learning abilities, or even the occasional portal to another planet.
Totally reasonable that he was suspicious after their last meeting so he hired his associates (both Alari refuges and contacts in the underworld) to do a ton of research on Sciona. The following reports would be very thorough and include when and where she was from, her abilities (including the known ability to possess another body), and an extensive list of ways to potentially identify her. Including such subtleties as how she might pronounce the “uul” sound. And with access to the refuges he most likely learned Alari long ago.
An amusing thought: I’m pretty sure that any woman’s shirt that clings that closely won’t have the stiffness to hold a phone in place like that.
I suspect she’s using her chemical powers to stick the phone to her skin. I guess the glue composition has been adjusted so it doesn’t goop up the screen or camera lenses (depending on which way it’s facing).
Yeah… This page feels really flat. I know your really busy, but Dues and Sciona needs more detail. I’m unsure the drawing term. Maybe a shadow pass?
Now that you pointed this out, my dirty mind gave me an image of Sciona feeling kinky and giving 6xguy or Deus a lapdance in ‘barely there’ stripper’s attire glued to her body the same way.
New art style–not liking it. Detail and crispness is gone.
It’s being done out of necessity, so he can have more time for IRL stuff that needs handling. We’ll just have to get used to it until his life situation changes again.
Hate to nitpick, but there weren’t actually any Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt. That’s a few thousand years old propaganda AFAIK.
The tribe of Abraham was in Egypt for some time. You can assume that at least some of them were slaves.
Calling them Jewish, well that is a question of translation I would wager.
I wonder how long a translation stays up on Sydney’s glasses… Or if it keeps a record/log.
We’ve seen it catch snippets of other languages not directed at her before, but even if it didn’t read what was just said, Sciona spoke Alar on the last page, so it would at least have a record that someone spoke Alar while they were there.
Can’t wait for Sciona to try to drug him. You know his scary bodyguard is close enough to prevent that, and that won’t end well for Sciona.
Besides Vale’s role, I am totally expecting a smug declaration from him he has already devised a dozen ways to neutralize’s Escorpia’s powers through magic, super-tech, and/or his pet supers. Heck, I am half-expecting him to pull a Dr. Doom and state that his super-intelligence comes with exceptional willpower that makes him immune to mind control. Although I am admittedly more doubtful about this. Unlike Victor, iron will and ability to resist temptation and hardship does not seem a hallmark trait of Deus. Or maybe he has devised ways to integrate the fun he takes in his plans so well he does not see the point in acting otherwise.
asking sydney to act nonsuspiciously is defintly the best way to make her act suspisciously
Now that Deus is on the case, chances are a confrontation between Archon and Sciona is not good for his plans and he can defuse further complications from Sydney’s shenanigans, if any, with a few nudges. I tend to assume with his coming the Sciona-Sdyney subplot has exhausted its narrative usefulness for the time being and we shifted to the Deus-Sciona one.
SmugD knows E-Sci is an Alari, but doesn’t yet know she is E-Sci Reborn (don’t screw up… again… again… again…)
At the very least, he has known the Senator’s aide is an Alari soul in a human (likely super) body since their previous meeting to discuss the dungeon. Given his super-intelligence, his extensive knowledge of Alari culture from his pet refugees shown just now, his in-depth knowledge of Sciona’s background (cfr. the entry in his hookup library), I would be astonished if he does not already know she is Sciona reborn or at very least realizes it within moments of the current scene. It would be a trivial feat for his super-intelligence. I totally expect a witty comment of his or three within the next update or two to show this.
E-Sci has relatively little to fear from this. As it happened in the past, in all evidence Deus is not moving to oppose her or send Archon against her because her goals align with or fit within his own. At the moment, the interests of Deus, Sciona, and Archon/Twilight Council/US government about setting up the dungeon and making it thrive seemingly converge, if quite possibly each with their own respective little tweaks. Hopefully, the reunion between two of the big players of the setting (and current leaders of their respective factions of Alari refugees) is going to shed a bit more light on the issue and Sciona’s master plan (beyond rebuilding her own power base, that is). Inquiring minds need to know.
Another issue I am very curious about is whether the reunion is somehow going to pave the way to another sexy time between E-Sci and BigD, maybe not immediately, but as a rain check. For all her Tsundere-ness, I bet Sciona is secretly yearning for it and thinking that for all that 6xguy is very good for her and a dating jackpot, a hookup with BigD is orders of magnitude better. Would Deus deem the challenge of bedding a super whose touch is potentially addictive an interesting enough challenge? What means would he use to shield himself from the threat?Perverted minds need to know.
Someone mention the other day about how they find Sydney annoying: not nearly as vomit-inducing as SmugD is, will check in on Thursday to see what bullshit has him on that site unshackled
Deus found out that there’s an Alari version of “My Fair Lady” and decided to watch it without actually considering the ramifications. The ramifications being that Alari actually crammed an entire college level language department’s worth of education into the “movie”. And there’s a test at the end. And failing the test is not acceptable, to the Alari OR Deus.
The other comments are talking about how he must have researched everything he could about Sciona after their last encounter but I like this explanation better. Deus is just a massive Alariaboo.
I have a nagging suspicion that Deus just made a drink thst gave him temporary super speed so he could absorb all the Alari databaee knowledge.
He ha hinted at being able to give people temporary superpowers.
Surely the Alari have a technology that beams the entire 80 season collection of whatever directly into your brain in about one second. Now obviously that technology would need some adapting to not explode the human brain, but… *gestures* Super-genius.
It’s even more impressive that Deus managed to have Sciona bump into him. Yes, she was facing the other way for a bit, but Deus is big and they’re in a largely open area, so she could’ve spotted him strolling in her general direction literally minutes ago.
But Deus is Deus, the rule of cool applies, so it’s fine if he knows things and does things that are wildly improbable. This made me think of the “Infinite Improbability Drive” from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and it makes me genuinely wonder if the Grrlverse does have a superpower that allows you to change the odds of something happening.
She was wholly focused on Sydney for a while, so she could have missed Deus approaching.
Yeah it wouldn’t be correct for the evul henchwench to have permission to be unpunished.
Welp you had your fun Sciona, but through Dave, and since big Effing Deus was magically unto your case, and since Sydney, in her random magic “fuck that noise, I stumble correctly”, I imagine you get to get fucked, and not in the nice way.
Kiss kiss bang bang or something. You were fun while you lasted
We must remember that Deus has access to alien, magical and otherworldly device. Accelerate assimilation of knowledge should be the least of our concerns.
In 1000 years everything would lapse into public domain except for Disney which would somehow keep extending the copyrights right before its about to expire through bribery and …. Well… more bribery probably.
what we didn’t see was Deus’ Alari assistant telling him all this in his earbud.
I once met someone who told me where I was born and raised, along with where my parents were from, all from my accent (Brooklyn, NY). I’ve also had several people tell me that I’m from South Africa.
I assume if I were a super genius, able to rapidly absorb and retain vast amounts of information, the limitatation of using methods developed for normal people would frustrate me. I would develop an information encoding protocol that would allow me to learn more faster, and also a program that could run autonomously to find and extract useful information and encode it into my protocol. Then every morning, while I had my breakfast, I could read the equivalent of a thousand newspapers.
Obviously the Altaritube search algorithm is powered by AI to curate just what you request from its VAST archives.
I would disagree with the idea that he is playing 5D chess, more like a ’11D chess/monopoly/Go’ combo. And I don’t think that he likes Syd so much as she is or has an important piece in his ‘game’.