Grrl Power #413 – Green herring
Ok you guys are going to have to bear with me for one more page. I really tried to make this a double to clear up what has Max wound up, but after the previous double pages and the sword wall, I was on the verge of falling behind. Hopefully you guys will enjoy the payoff. And anyway I really wanted to get in Deus pulling the red herring gag on Max.
Who knows if the version of how he got that bowl is just as relayed on this page or this is a little punched up for her benefit. Well, he would, obviously. Dumb question really. I’m casting doubt at you! Level 2 wizard spell! Roll to save!
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I don’t know whether to call that man the most awesome evil good guy, or just a serious villain with a side of sass. I’m hoping for the former!
Eh, I think he’s a guy who knows how to rule the world. Money, helping others improve themselves so they’re beholden to him, and good public image.
That and I think he’s the type who would save the world because having it destroyed or ruled by someone who didn’t let him have total control would be bad for his business. That and saving it would improve his image.
He’s not evil. He’s just dictator level corporate leadership. The difference is how much he ****s with people.
He’s not 100% Evil. Very few people are.
Depending on circumstances, he could be your best buddy, or your worst nightmare, or every gradatiion in between, OR even all of those at once.
He might even be apologetic while being your worst nightmare. He did give the king a chance to take the out first before the son agreed to take the position after watching the evidence.
I’m getting the feeling Deus has a very Cable-esque Messiah complex. It’s the exact same as other people’s Messiah complex, but Deus has the resources and capabilities to do something with it.
The main restraint on people who are seriously evil (such as the former king) is awareness of people who are able and willing to use equally evil means *on them*, very pragmatically.
Deus I currently rate as one of the latter.
I think Max would be too, but she chooses to be restrained by law.
And morals.
Technically he restrains himself visibly by the law anyway. And he didn’t break any in the country he killed the king in. Because the son didn’t try to arrest him for it. Hence why he can admit that he was thanked for killing a tyrant. A double whammy. It was an evil guy who died, and the country values him. She can’t do a thing lol
Well… even if a government decides not to prosecute doesn’t mean he didn’t break any laws. It just means no one decided to call him on it, or pardoned him when he did.
I also don’t think Deus has openly admitted to anyone other than his mercs, the current king of Galytn, and a few royal bodyguards that he was responsible for that death. Certainly not in the Western media. He also doesn’t directly admit it to adorable scamp we see here. Although he doesn’t go out of his way to deny it either.
In most countries, killing someone, citizen or not, for any reason, is a crime.
HOWEVER…
The exception to this rule is duly authorized representatives of that government (typically, law-enforcement and military personnel). These people are given a *vast* deal of leeway in regards to killing. Pretty much every government reserves the right to kill its own citizens and the citizens of other countries, given varying degrees of provocation. It’s a major function of government.
Deus and his representatives are not, strictly speaking, governmental agents. Nor did the dictator directly engage in activities against Deus and his representatives that would meet the typical limits of an acceptable level of provocation to require response. Were the details of what actually happened revealed to the world stage, Deus would need to do some serious tap-dancing – this is not a precedent that most governments would sit back and tolerate.
Even more HOWEVER…
While the killing was in fact a crime and at some level evil, one can (and many have, both in the forums and on the world stage) argue that allowing a known mass murderer such as our dictator to continue unpunished constitutes a GREATER evil, both for those already slain and those who will be slain by this same man in the future. One can further argue that killing the dictator at the moment constitutes a form of self-defense on Deus’ part, since the dialogue strongly implies said dictator’s next action was to order Deus’ death and the deaths of Deus’ representatives.
HOWEVER!
None of the actions “shown” were necessary actions – they were set in motion by Deus, knowing full well what the likely outcomes would be. In one sense, Deus pushed our dictator into a complicated form of suicide, by pushing all the right buttons. Direct manipulatin of someone to an outcome that is not in that person’s interests is often included in the definition of evil.
This is why DaveB is awesome – his antagonist is *real*. Each of us can relate because each of us knows a smaller scale version of Deus. He’s doing things that many of us would do if we had the power (temporal, financial, social, or otherwise) – and he’s getting away with it.
Re-reading this, I should add that “killing” is being defined as deliberately extinguishing the life of another person, excluding the act of defending oneself from physical attack by another. Self defense or acting to prevent immanent threat to another is rarely a crime, unless accompanied by prior aggression.
Sorry for the lack of clarity.
Depends on how you define good and evil.
If you work on a virtue ethics system… He doesn’t exactly ooze guiding virtues (compassion, honesty, respect for other people etc), ranks highly on enabling virtues (courage, planning), and also on guiding vices (greed most of all, with a side order of lust, cruelty etc). So I’d put him down as “effective evil” on a Good-Effectiveness axis.
If you work on rule utilitarianism, he breaks most of the rules of generally beneficient-to-others behaviour by doing things like assassinating people, so again, evil. Even more so if you get deontological about it.
If you work on act utilitarianism, it’s much more ambiguous, since he seems to have actually helped out the country in question, based on what we’ve seen so far. While also probably helping himself and his own ego more, of course, but that’s not what this measures…
So far, I’d characterize him as “Ruthlessly Practical”, insofar as he seems to “Do Good” only if it’s going to profit him. I’d say this is entirely separate from the issue of whether he’s Good-or-Evil. In his mind I’d venture to guess that a good deed that’s unprofitable (as measured by either money or PR) is to be avoided, because no matter how “Short-Term Good” a selfless sacrifice may be, the resulting drain on resources will eventually leave him unable to help others, which reflects badly on him in the long-term.
And for his improved image.
I”d say he planned tactically to improve the country and make the profit while doing a good deed by removing a tyrant. Being thanked by someone who genuinely appreciated that he killed a bad guy was an added bonus. So he kept the gift.
I think the biggest problem here is trying to rank ‘Good’ and ”Evil’ as some kind of balance sheet or point-scoring system. Religions and legal codes have been trying to achieve that trick for millennia, with only partial success.
Rule utilitarianism is pretty much the guiding principle of Western legal systems; they’re intended as systems of rules which limit the harm people do to each other. And most legal systems, like rule utilitarianism in general, would frown on assassination. (Most religions too, come to that).
And his name is Scorpio!
His twisted twin obsessions are his plot to rule the world
And his employees’ health.
He’ll welcome you into his lair,
Like the nobleman welcomes his guest.
With free dental care and a stock plan that helps you invest!
Best boss ever. Really.
I feel like we did this to ourselves.
I still think its a framed pic of Maxima from her awkward teenage years. :D
Or from that Christmas party she wants to forget.
Unreleased photo shoot panty shot.
A pic of Max at that kegger party in Afghanistan, that we saw in flashback a while ago. The “special” pic that was supposedly destroyed immediately afterwards.
Assuming it *IS* a pic, my guess is that he’s hacked into Omar’s “Anger Album” of candid phone-photos!
(ref.: Pg.365)
Yes, I realize he could just get them from Harem, but ARCHON’s security-check of an actual hack can then be traced to a (deliberately staged) security-leak. Result:
– Max gets torqued.
– ARCHON gets to feel as though they’ve plugged the leak.
– The *REAL* leak (Harem) remains undetected.
– Deus is amused at Max’s expense, which merits the use of the “Thunder Button”-remote & maniacal laughter.
It is that often talked about but never seen video made from secret cameras in the Archon women’s shower room: GRRLs Gone Wild.
Dah that’s so sweet he would commit mass murder for her. …not that I am opposed to killing tyrants
I just love his smirks.
Please stop making me like this guy more and more. My little heart won’t be able to take it when he goes all vile evil instead of smug stabby troublemaker. He’s currently hovering under Loki levels right now but I’ll cry if he goes full Thanos.
The latter would be boring.
The superhero genre already has more than enough monomaniacal supervillains around, most supposedly geniuses but pretty much all being stupider than a bag of hair. Nice to have someone different.
If he turns evil, I’m joining the dark side. Maybe that’s why Pearl and Vekter work for him. SOme people work primarily for cash, some because they like someone’s vision for the future, some out of nationality. I think they’re working for him just because he’s so damn likable.
Her name is Opal
we knew it was ONE of the Crystal Gems…
Pearl isn’t a crystal though
His biggest defining characteristic is, Deus needs an audience. Absolutely everything he has been shown to do, has to be appreciated by someone, or it wasn’t worth doing.
He can’t go full-on Thanos. He could certainly do some speakably horrible things, but at the end, someone would have to be alive to appreciate them.
When I play a major NPC villain, I usually aim for some variation of “Affable Evil”. (One of my great triumphs was persuading a whole team of adventurers to sit down and have tea with me after their god told them I was evil.) The key to playing that is remembering that almost no one is a villain in their own eyes. Their goals may opposed to yours, and you may consider their methods unacceptable, but they’re not (from their perspective) doing things just because they’re bad.
On the one hand, this makes me want to like Deus. On the other, it makes me trust him even less. The two are not necessarily incompatible.
If he trolled her well, he appeared to reach for the item she was pointing to… and then picked up something close to it. So I am betting on the geode-like thing.
It’s also a sign of his memory. Even if the item may not have meant as much as the child thought it did to him, he can obviously recall the details.
Of course he remembers the details. This is a symbol of one of his greatest triumphs: the time he bought the love of a country.
I’m a barbarian Beserker, and have the ability to disbelieve magic, that’s not going to work, sorry.
Now on the serious side, it looks like its working, but it also could backfire, I mean if its an item that belongs to someone she is supposed to have killed and said super evil villain is still alive it could start an entire fight arc as the villain breaks in to get the item back…
Goddamn that likable bastard. I’d totally go have drinks with this guy if he wasn’t so busy making the world a better place in the most sinister way possible.
♫
I am the world
I love the children
I am the one who makes a brighter day
after some killing
It’s a choice I’m making
I’ll save a bunch of lives
It’s true I’ll make a better day
just me, just me.
If having drinkies with Deus, don’t be too surprised if you somehow end up with the bill – and be absolutely certain beforehand that he has no reason to change your circumstances.
This might be the most crazed look that we’ve seen on Max. Even counting the “Rage Album” pic. Nice! ^.^
Where is Omar when you need him?
No comments yet on the company name in the factory.
1) MAC’S is named as a subsidiary of Machina Industries.
2) They are making raincoats.
3) Deus is now in the cosmetics industry.
4) Subjugating the third world through fast food addiction.
5) They might be an Apple supplier.
6) This factory works together with another factory labeled ‘Cheese’.
Hill-larious.
I’m not sure whether this is endearing or horrifying.
Why not both?
Endearifying?
that’s MUCH better than how you KNOW the other version would end up being pronounced….
horring…
The more I see of Deus, the more I’m liking him.
My guess is that it is something responsible for Maxima’s birth as a superhuman.
From a psychological perspective, the only logical reason why Max would get so upset is if the object she is pointing to is something very personal to her.
For example, if this was Sydney instead of Max I could easily imagine that the object on the self would be the very first super-rare comic book Sydney ever owned, one that had been stolen from her long time ago.
Being that this is Max, I’m not sure what she would consider to be both so personal and so valuable.
Max’s face makes this worth it. I am curious what he has that has her so wound up.
I would think that it would have to be something either incredibly embarrassing or incredibly important to Max or the third possibility it was a weapon she thought destroyed in an earlier fight we didn’t get to see
Hot max is… HAWT!
It’s a platinum edition 12″ Colonel Maximillia Leander sculpture from McFarland Studios. You know… the nude ones in that insanely erotic pose that never made it into circulation when Max found out what they had planned?
Yeah… that.
Makes you wonder though… If there’s one, are there others? And if there’s one, what gets destroyed first? The sculpture, or Deus? LOL
Just kidding… but it would have to be something like that to get Max so wound up… like… maybe photographic evidence of Halo blowing chunks all over her boots… immortalized for all eternity…
That figure… well, now we know what the next vote incentive comic will need to feature…
Honestly, I forgot that we were waiting on the item reveal and didn’t realize this was a flashback.
So yeah, I thought they had put Sydney in the daycare office. :X
That second panel made me laugh out loud!
This man. I approve of him.
You know, I’m just going to say this here:
I genuinely hope that he just relayed the exact, unaltered story of how he got that little artifact. If he did, that’s quite possibly the most precious thing in his entire collection:
A gift, freely given, out of pure, genuine appreciation, expecting nothing in return.
Hmm… I wonder if that has magical value besides for him…
Quite possibly. In any case, his appreciation of the item’s value seems spot-on by any standards..
I like that, for when its something he wishes to see succeed, Deus will put in the hours when they are needed. That’s a ‘I didn’t have the spare time to shave, and I may have catnapped in this suit’ look.
I’m reminded of the phrase ‘The antagonist in your story is the protagonist in their own’, and glad that he isn’t 2 dimensional, depth of character wise.
This is the author equivalent of pulling the reader’s pigtails. Are you even going to tell us what the trinket in question is?
So wait..
Did Dues calmly get up, grab that off the shelf. sit down and start in on his story?
and Max never got angry during tha whole slow proccess?
Or did dues like.. push his chairs (which I assume has wheels) over near the wall to grab that and troll her?
She was probably giving him the old death glare the entire time he was telling the story, thinking “Don’t snap; it’s what he wants…”
That particular display cabinet is right behind his desk: all he had to do was turn his chair
So wait..
Did Dues calmly get up, grab that off the shelf. sit down and start in on his story?
and Max never got angry during tha whole slow proccess?
Or did dues like.. push his chairs (which I assume has wheels) over near the wall to grab that and troll her?
is that geode made of peristerite
So, I figure Dues would have the opposite of the “Thunder Button” for such touching moments. #Daw
Deus is perfectly allowed to record whatever is said in his own property. He will be watching the surveillance tape of this conversation for weeks to come.
Welp I’m confused on what she is yelling at, but I see Deus in a nice light now. Bit of a villan bit of a hero but heh worth paying attention to.
I do not trust this man. He plays too fast and loose with people’s lives. He gives me the impression that, if he wanted to help another, larger nation, he’d devastate this current country, (citing “the needs of the many” and blah-blah) while trying to convince them it was all for the good. If they still resisted, then, with a disappointed sigh, he’d destroy them utterly.
I don’t believe he cares for an instant about the people he’s “helping”.
Probably but that’s just the way of the world.
Or, to put it another way: Do you really believe that Obama or Putin really care that much about what is going on in U.S./Russia proxy conflicts such as Syria and the Ukraine? If anything, Deus is cutting out the middleman by “managing” the country directly.
It is just the way global affairs operate.
Is Deus a good guy? I think we can all safely argue no on that point.
Is he evil, debatable.
As far as his villainy status. At best he’s an antihero and while he might be a villain he is potentially more of an antivillain.
Ah.. that is the question.. Evil is partly a point of view. Hes basically created his own little kingdom out of a poor war torn county. Has he dramatically improved the locals quality of life? Yes but that was also an argument used by slavers of american south. What is a better question is what happened to locals who decent. Killing the previous king can be partly justified if he was as bad as he was portrayed but what happens to locals who don’t want to work in his factories? Has what about local tradesmen ext. how much control is he pressing over the fact that he is dumping massive amount of money in for a profit later.
Supervillain–definitely supervillain–see the tag line below today’s comic…
…seems like Word of God to me…
I like the idea of an ongoing relationship between a major hero and a major (if not outed) villain
Your statement is precise and accurate, but it can be explained quite a bit easier by something i read somewhere else, unfortunately i do not remember where.
“The Winner writes History and the Law”
Deus is hereby in the same category as Maxima or Sydney to me. I will never complain about more Deus in storylines. He can be in any scene, and I won’t give you any grief.
well… DID Max do the naughty pictures with the photographer or not?
This isn’t just anger; it’s desperation. Max urgently needs information. As in life-or-death needs.
A trinket belonging to her wouldn’t cause such a reaction. But a trinket belonging to someone Max is scared of would. That could only be the super mentioned on the press conference, the one who whipped her butt and she thought (hoped) was dead. Probably one of the villains flashed afterwards, like Vehemence was.
And Deus knows it. He knows she can’t lay a finger on him until she gets the answer. And he’s enjoying stretching out the moment for that reason.
Don’t see any desperation or fear from Maxi, simply pure restrained anger
When Maxima is angry or annoyed she also becomes impatient or even threatening – remember the bank and afterward? yet here she forced herself to listen to Deus’ story until it became clear that he wasn’t going to relate the bowl to the trinket she was interested in. So apparently anger isn’t her prime motivator here. That’s why Deus is so fearless.
I honestly hope Deus never goes villain. It would be a waste of a great character. Don’t get me wrong I love watching him be “evil.” But please keep him on the side of the protagonists. It’s just so much better watching him be their resident “devil you do.”
The traditional villain I agree. That said there are a number of sub-tropes of villain which could be used to great effect for years.
I’m still dying to know what item Maxima is freaked over and why.
As to whether or not Deus is a good guy or a bad guy, I haven’t decided. He definitely has a lack of scruples, or maybe that’s morals. I get confused on those two at times. Also, I hate to say it, but motive matters, and I have a suspicion he’s got multiple motive here, the making money is just one of them.
(As in generate profit, and help downtrodden people. Of course, maybe he didn’t care and that was just a bonus for them, but then again…)
You are an unmitigated bastard! ^.^ Well played!