Grrl Power #1499 – Suspicion deflected?
Lorlara is always fun to write. I think it would be exhausting writing (and reading) a full 24 page comic following her through a day in her life, but I think she’s terribly amusing in small bites. Such a comic would show her being loud and enthusiastic for the majority of pages, but one would have her sitting in a leather chair in a study, quietly looking over a thesaurus while stirring some tea, the going, “Ooh!” and scribbling in a notepad. And then the remainder of the comic would be right back to her voluminously stumping for Deus. That or delivering blistering Yelp reviews in person when a cafe sells her a slightly stale croissant.
In case you’re wondering, there is a race of “split-head-oids” and it’s not the Umbrivion we saw earlier. They also don’t call themselves split-head-oids. But Sydney knows quite a bit about alien races now thanks to her temporary possession by Lapha. Since Sydney herself is not an aetholith herself, her retention of Lapha’s lifetime of memories is rather spotty at this point, so she doesn’t remember what a split-head-oid’s formal species name is. The fact is, “split-head” or “tongue for brains” or “straw-head” or just “dick head” or “dick for brains” are common racist slang that people use to describe them, Lapha included, which is why it was the first thing Sydney’s fumbling brain locked onto, not realizing it was an epithet.
While I was writing this page, I couldn’t decide if Deus immediately pegged Tzerki as Sydney. I’ve gone on in the past about how identifying body language can be, and Sydney isn’t exactly trying to act like not-Sydney here. Most aliens out and about use some level of voice alteration, since everyone has universal translators, but on top of that, their specific Glowbods are further altering their voices enough that some A.I. wouldn’t casually match them with Earth media exemplars. Super intelligence has a lot of upsides, assuming it doesn’t come with some sort of super psychosis, but one of the kind-of-downsides is that Deus has a *lot* of data to sort through. Not just libraries worth of book learning and historical knowledge. Like Data listening to four operas at once, Deus can assimilate multiple information sources without it getting jumbled up into gray memory goo, and he’s been paying more and more attention to galactic information streams in addition to all the Earth knowledge he’s constantly sucking up. He’s well aware there’s like a trillion people out there, so meeting a loud, quirky, roughly-the-same-height Mantellan who reminds him of Sydney doesn’t necessarily give him definitive insight into her identity.
The fact that he’s 90% sure Ixah is Maxima is a factor, but if he sees Tzerki hanging out with Cora, the game is probably up.
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. The NSFW version is finally up at Patreon. Plus a bonus pic.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Imagine Lorlara and the Caged Demonwolf in the same room.
The amount of loquacious lollygaging would reach ludicrous levels
Thier dialogue would take up whole pages for a single cell and our ability to follow it would be questionable.
But it would be all kinds of awesome, but very loud.
What about Sir Humphrey Appleby from Yes Minister? I bet he can out-convolute anyone. If you don’t know, who am I talking about, search his monologues on YouTube (for instance him saying Merry Christmass).
I don’t buy that X-face didn’t recognize Sidney from her gibbering, volume and body language.
He most certainly did, but he also loves playing that kind of games.
I’m thinking “Hello *large person I don’t know” might be a telling factor too. Not something most beings say…
Especially since he knows that million to one shots* happen all the time.
* IE, the chance that he would run into Sydney when there are millions of beings there.
Discworld rules – million to one happens nine times out of ten
It’s a lot less than a million to one though. He knows Max is in the tournament, and he knows that IF they are staying there, it’ll be at the VIP booths. Which I’m assuming there’s not many of. So it’s more like “going to the exact place you know they’re going to be.”
The tournament is not there – it’s just being ‘telecasted’ into the stadium there.
It’s not RIGHT there, but since they’re the support team for one of the contestants I think Cora probably has them at the stadium which is physically closest to wherever the match is actually happening.
Max knows Cora. Ergo he knows her ship. If we assume he’s rich here then he can pay someone to find the ship which also finds Cora, and Sidney, and Max.
I’d call bs if he did honestly, she has both a voice and appearance filter going on here and as Lorlara proves, being loud and enthusiastic does not a Sydney equate.
People underestimating Deus is what Deus is all about.
There’s a deus ex machina pun somewhere in there…
SUBTLE
As a hammer to the face.
More like a nuke, but still.
Subtle like a horde of orcs wielding exploding tips nuke rockets mounted on a stick hammer style, charging saying WAAAAAAGH!
And still very subtle considering the NEXT PAGE (muahaha spoiler)
By Sydneys standards maybe.
I imagine Deus was winding up to throw in some comments that would’ve shown he knows it is Sydney, or that would’ve provoked a reaction out of Sydney to prove it is her, but of course Lorlada couldn’t help but be herself first.
I think Lorlarla is my favourite xD
Always nice to meet someone enthusiastic about their job
body language?
what about the fact that Sydney apparently speaks English here. Deus speaks Mantellan, what does Sydney speak.
Granted, he already kinda knows Maxima is doing space adventures, so some retinue isn’t surprising, but from what retinue accompanies her he can infer how she is doing her travel. He doesn’t know about Sydney’s wormhole stuff. Yet. Unless Harem or the violence dude told him.
“split-head” or “tongue for brains” or “straw-head” or just “dick head” or “dick for brains” are common racist slang
So from Deus perspective a random Mantellan randomly spoke to him and immediately called him a slur for a species he isn’t part of. Like seeing an Asian for the first time and asking him if he’s an n-word. Roughly. That’s crazy, if we find a way to generate electricity from social fauxpas Sydney is our way to unlimited energy.
Don’t forget that Sydney asked the question in English, which presumably isn’t commonly spoken by either Mantellans or the as-yet-unidentified-except-through-slurs species she’s suggesting Deus might be. While automatic translators ensure this isn’t a problem for communication, Deus — being Deus — would probably have his set to somehow let him know which language was being spoken, so that little discrepancy should’ve caught his attention.
Remember how Sydney discovered that Fracture Station had automatic translators all along when she realized that one of the local aliens was (apparently) speaking English. Presumably the remote arena would have the same setup.
Remember how Sydney discovered that Fracture Station had automatic translators all along when she realized that one of the local aliens was (apparently) speaking English. They didn’t need to be “set” by the user (Sydney didn’t even know they were there). Presumably the remote arena would have the same setup.
Yeah…. But there’s the bit where the language actually spoken, and the language the receiver *hears* tends to have …sync-problems… when it comes to mouth movements.
If Sydney used english, and then the translator *didn’t* need to cut in, the perfect sync would *not* have gone past Deus’ attention..
The fact that he *deliberately* answered in Mantellan, shows he *definitely* knows what species he’s supposed to be dealing with, chooses to either directly speak or force the translation to ..Check.., and along with all his other suspicions has already pegged he’s actually talking to Sydney..
And obviously chooses to Leave Things Be… Other than probably subtly changing his bets now that his suspicions about “Ixah” will be confirmed, and having some Oldfashioned Fun with it….
Now if I were Deus… I’d …Arrange… a live interview with Ixah through the commenter couple and play the You know I know you know I know… game just to tease Max when she *can’t* drop her Act…
Remember the holographic mouth overlay? (aftermath of Sydney being hijacked by Lapha if I remember right) Perfect lip sync is solved problem for automatic translators. I doubt glowbod would be any worse. If anything, Sydney’s true mouth is not even visible, so the problem is much easier.
That or he used his super power to memorize every dialect in the universe and beyond.
So he immediately knew which flavour of english was jammed into his ears.
I’d say genitals got unveiled with the first sentence.
Does Syd remember that the Senators aide put a (superdrug assisted) mind whammy on her?
Probably not, the whole point of the super-assisted mind whammy was that she wouldn’t remember it.
But wasn’t it obvious that *something* had affected her and the weres? And wasn’t Escprpa distinctive enough for Max to take notice of?
Deus, are there any more at home like Lorlara? I could use an assault secretary.
Great term for her.
Sydney need to find a way to tell Cora to stay out of sight in case Deus is headed their way…!
Can the “glowbods” alter expressions of behaviour? Like “you’re freaking out, but it – possibly by restraining your body into the right posture – renders both sound and body language as you saying it quietly in a threatening voice”?
Lorlara would cause your thesarussaurous to catch fire… because the digital one would bug out. ;) Ah well, I was never one to write the purple prose that some are so eloquent and capable like a cornucopia of cacophony. Mind, I got yer run-ons like it’s going out of style. (Like people do not talk that way.)
I am convinced he keeps Lorlara just for a little chaos, even if she is annoying at times.
I had a coworker who once said he liked it when there was chaos. It kept other people from knowing what he was up to. Dude was a total psychopath, just functional enuogh to keep it hidden most of the time.
That and he may be concerned what she might do if he fires her.
I had forgotten about Sydney’s possession induced knowledge. She should have chosen that race to copy, given her advanced insight
Let’s not forget about her extensive comic and movie knowledge as well. And quade mouth face splitting creatures a favorite monster type for movies and games.
What possible reason could Deus have had to learn Mantellan at this point?
When there are so many random species out there that should probably take priority.
No Mantellan has been on earth to our knowledge and has so many other things that he should be prioritizing his time for. And he learnt Mantellan?
Even with processing multiple information sources. Theres a point that supergenius intellect just has to run up against prioritization and how many hours in the day there are.
That whole universe royalty thing with the star sapphire forehead gem disguise comes to mind.
> When there are so many random species out there that should probably take priority.
That’s making the assumption he has also NOT learned all those languages already
That does not refute anything, that just makes the contrivance worse. At some point “super intelligence” just becomes an author fiat.
We don’t know that it’s “super intelligence”. We know hardly nothing about Deus. He’s a walking Noodle Incident and when Deus is explained, it’s probably over for him as a credible character.
Probably.
Maybe.
We’ll see.
This is part of my issue. Half the time he feels like an interesting “villain”, but the other half he feels like pure contrivance.
For all the “mary sue” stuff that gets thrown Maximas way, I feel like Deus is much more guilty of flirting with those tropes.
He doesn’t have to have learned it. He just had to recognize a Mantellan and switch his translator output to their language.
I would agree, but so far as I remember it, everyone uses the same speech boxes when they are under the effect of the translator, except when explicitly speaking another language.
So Lorlara steals the scene! (I love the full Alari pallette, it’s quite striking.)
Consequently, we still don’t know whether Deus has I.D.’d Sydney yet, but I’m going to guess not, precisely because of Lorlara.
How the translator works is confusing though, but the text indicates Sydney and Lorlara speaking English and Deus replying in Mantellan, doesn’t it? So it appears Deus was hardly paying attention to “Tzerki” before she yelled ‘Hello’, but the layout of the scene isn’t clear to me. I.e., I thought Sydney was standing near the wall, next to door 401, but now that Deus & party are in the scene he appears to be facing her squarely while mostly ignoring her in panel 1. If Deus isn’t facing the wall, did Tzerki jump out in front of him when Sydney recognized him? That is a major loss of cool on her part, and I’d blame it if her I.D. is compromised. If she didn’t jump out, then what is so special about door 401?
The translation is another factor. It doesn’t speak for Sydney, so Deus is hearing good English from a random Mantellan. That tracks with his smug reply though, showing off his fluency. But just the American English is suspicious as hell. Without Lorlara’s outburst the disguise is already blown.
I always have a feeling she is really just trolling the world with how she exonerates Duex.
Of course I feel that about Beatrix Lestrange as well.
Like a certain pandering ‘lawyer’?
gasp. You wound me with your accusations.
That you are a lawyer?
No, no. The quotes around lawyer. :) I would never be wounded by you acknowledging my superpower.
Lol, way to stay undercover, Sydney. Lorlara might be screaming, but you just announced to all and sundry that you DEFINITELY know Deus. (“And you called ME loud!?”)
Frick, I just re-read and he called Sydney loud in panel 6, FML LOL ROFLCOPTER.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Lorlara might be one of my absolute favorite side characters in the entire comic. The only other ones even in the same running are Chimyriad, Shioh, The Super Husk/Supermannekiller, and Sydney’s mother, but Shioh and Sydney’s mother have not had enough screen time to be quite at Lorlara’s level, and I’m not sure I can classify Chimyriad as a ‘side character’ per se. Also not sure I can classify the Super Husk as a side character anymore either, since it’s progressed well into the road towards an boss antagonist (much like Sciona had progressed from a minor antagonist to a boss antagonist). I suppose Coot is still up there in the running as well.
Honorable mention to Glen the Fashion Ninja.
(Hench Wench is still my least favorite side character though, almost on Scrappy Doo/Wesley Crusher levels)
Glen is a main character. He is in every page but he is such a skilled ninja that no one can see him.
My bad. You are correct. Glen is most definitely a main character. He’s probably also on the cast page but he’s being sneaky.
Or maybe that is just what Glen want us to think.
I no longer know what is real and what is Glen-less.
I mean, as a skilled ninja he should be good at gaslighting and other mind games right?
We can never prove the abscence of Glen, only his direct presence.
That’s because she became a cameo without being a paid cameo :P
I probably would have liked Hench Wench had she just been beaten by Arianna’s legal maneuverings instead of escaping with that second BS contract, which should have been become, based on the same legal reasoning, voidable. It irked my lawyerly sensibilities.
I’m a Lorlara fan too! The time she kicked up and fired a grenade launcher while wearing a short, tight skirt and high heels won me over. An “assault secretary” indeed!
Oh my! It is Deus! Who would have ever guessed? :)
Perhaps slightly late, but.. is Deus trying to rehabilitate as well as recruit Sciona? Allowing for his personal take on ethics.
He’s playing the Game that has developed between them but because he knows his Vetinari he wants to see how amusingly Sydney is going to give the game away completely.
Where or how is Sydney hiding her orbs?
IIRC her disguise includes a small backpack. It functions like the cannister that Sydney carried when we first met her.
In her backpack (p1387).
Deus can probably tell that she’s speaking English. I mean, he can probably tell the difference between someone speaking English and someone who’s being auto-translated. But ALSO, if someone were being auto-translated, he would probably hear it in his country’s native language and not in English. Or if English is his native language, then translated speech would sound like English his native accent rather than Sydney’s American accent.
But maybe Sydney’s translator is making him hear what she says in his country’s native language, and not in English…
Of course Lorlara leaves scathing yelp reviews of establishments which do not measure up to her standards! How will they improve their performance if she does not completely subjugate their sense of self worth, eviscerate their ego, eradicate their will to live and utterly destroy any hope they may have for a future not filled with shame and self-loathing? She’s obviously doing them a favour!
At least she now just castigates them instead of castrates them for service not up to her standards.
That’s called improvement. :)
Looks like Sydney’s ears have rotated 180 degrees to lay flat against her head.
Is bombast Lorlara’s superpower?
Lorlara is fun! Employee of the year!
Are they really using Quatloos, a form of Currency from Startrek Original, or did she binge watch all of the StarTrek series? If the former… ehh better forms of currency! If the later, I applaud her taste in Sci-Fi series and demand she complete ALL Startrek TV shows and Movies so that she may be completely up to date on Human views of what Space Travel are like! *sage nod*
He knows she is Royalty though, right?
Looks like Cthillia hasn’t gotten those last nine kills yet.
If he does figure it out, he will likely simp over Max even more than he has been…
Nah, she’s fine. He’ll never guess.
Hmm…he actually might not have ID’d her. “Hello large person I don’t know” is close enough to “Howdy stranger” or “Hi big guy” for a thesaurus-wielding alien to garble their way through, there is such an alien that a Mantellan might reasonably be unnerved by, and then Lorlara interrupted.
It’d be an interesting role reversal to have him *not* entirely on top of the situation for once, even if it just means Sydney being loose to cause her own particular brand of havoc. It’d be a little boring if Deus *always* saw through *every* disguise.
I agree that Deus has not yet recognized Sydney, and that Lorlara’s outburst has a lot to do with that.
Answering an English-speaking alien girl in her own language is something Deus would do.
And how does he suddenly know Mantellan? A couple of theories on that.
1. Deus has translation tech suprior to the galactic standard tech.
2. Omni-translation is part of Deus’ super-intelligence power set.
I’ve always enjoyed the “pretentious overly enthusiastic minion / herald” trope.
Ebony Maw was the only one of Thanos’ minions I liked from Infinity War.
Lorlara takes it to a whole new absurd level.
Hmmmm… When Sydney gushes about Deus being there with… People….
Wonder how long it’ll take the Scooby Squad to figure out the Extra is in fact a certain secretary to a Senator.. In the company of Deus… at an officially “inaccessible” Space Station….
Deus shouldn’t really surprise them. But *she* is not supposed to be there…
…I love her so much, this whole comic could just pivot to the Lorlara show and I’d be totally fine with that.
I’m a little confused. It took a while for Cora’s ship to get to the championship, but it’s a one jump for Deus’ (not-)Stargate?
Yes, Sydney’s orbs can do a one jump, but they’re Nth tech. And the (not-)Stargate is definitely not, or else everyone else would be much more exercised over gates showing up.
Unless Cora’s route was purely to stop at her starforge and get Max up to speed on using the sword they picked up?
I’m guessing Lorlara has not clicked to Sciona’s identity yet? I get the feeling that Lorlara, while extremely enthusiastic n the exercise of her duties, isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Deuce is probably wearing a universal translator, which should be set to receive as ‘English’. So everything he hears from another translator will be in English.
That he can actually speak Mantellan makes it lucky Sydney is wearing one, too.