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Grrl Power #1333 - Predictably predictable
🕑 Added 2025-02-24 11:00:19 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome!
No, she's an Alari P.A! Sciona is an ancient-ish bloodmage who has proven ridiculously hard to kill in the past, and she does look down on nearly everyone. BUT - there's no chance an adult Alari doesn't have a stiletto or a boot knife or one of those switchblade knives that comes out of the toe of their sole or heel or some sort of space derringer on them. Well maybe not alari serfs and peasants. But anyone in a house echelon would probably be armed in some way. That doesn't automatically mean they're especially dangerous. It's a lot like Japanese kids learning martial arts in middle-school. They're probably better equipped to throw a simple punch than the average western citizen, but it hardly guarantees they're an expert.
That said... I would bet Lorlara is above average at some form of self-defense. Or... other-offence. Not "challenge an ancient-ish bloodmage" good, probably, but hardly helpless under normal circumstances.
Telling a woman like Sciona that landing her in your bed is a cinch is a sure fire way to ensure she never goes near you again. Unless she thinks that's what you wanted to happen! The poison is in your cup! My cup! Your cup!
If Deus is as he says and operates 37 steps ahead of everyone else, being surprised is probably genuinely shocking for him. It's got to be like One Punch Man looking for a challenging fight. The only thing someone like that is going to be surprised by is stuff that's so wildly improbable as to be reasonably dismissed as impossible. But then a stoat DOES wind up becoming the King of Tuvalu and invades Madagascar to free all his fellow mustelaids from "bondage" by mutating Sooty Terns into roc-sized bomb payload delivery systems, but not using them to deliver bombs, like everyone prepared and budgeted for, but instead has them clog up major ports to hold the world economy hostage.
There's predictable, and then there's actionable. There are, in fact, not infinite resources and time to prepare for all eventualities.
Comments
Ian Brown
It safe to say that Sydney is unpredictable in regards to her predictability, and she may or may not be doing both or neither at the same time! I call it the Halo Effect. Schrodinger and Heisenberg ripped off my observations
Aaron Mauthe
Surprised cthilla doesn’t jam to darude.
Aaron Mauthe
Clearly the pop culture reference!
Lee T Boswell
If Deus finds the unpredictable interesting, he has to be interested in Sydney. Half the time, she's purely predictable. And half the time, nothing she does is predictable.
eddi_TBH
Deus has her disarmed by his pushy charm.
AlpineBob
Villain courtesy. Also, that would reduce to zero his bedroom chances...
AlpineBob
Also, my brain reads panel breaks in order of increasing thickness, so I keep reading the horizontal panels out of order. Maybe remove, or reduce to virtually gone, the breaks between 4/5 and 7/8?
AlpineBob
I recommend you mirror panel 7, so readers get the reference _before_ his reaction...
Hugh Eckert
Love Deus's nerdgasm face...
MaryAnne Glazar
I may be the only person in the world who doesn't love that movie. All the people in it are spoiled brats; I want to slap them all.
Reigys
Lol. Neat. Though, hmm, I wonder why he won't out her? Fairly sure her goals directly clash with his, don't they?
Opus the Poet
Not until he gets the business with his mother taken care of. Right now Dave B just doesn't have the time to do the more labor-intensive art.
Philip Masters
What, “Never go in against a Sicilian” or “Get off!”?
Raymond Dannelly
Too be fair, Danzig and Rammstein ARE pretty awesome.
Aaron Mauthe
That… is the sexiest thing Sciona has ever said.
JasonAW3
Overall, I'd have to class Deus' actions more as "does good things, but frames them in a villainous context". And, of course, he sometimes does bad things for good reasons.
Mark Magagna
You may be right, or she may just be leaning forward to get away from the shoulder-patting.
Michael Obert
She's about as unpredictable as it gets, so, yeah, nothing like a little spice in life!
Michael Obert
Yeah, it's a lovely view already, but nothing's saying it can't be lovelier!
Mark Magagna
After a certain point, particularly if you are enmeshed in politics (which at his level you have to be), any surprise is generally "Oh, this person isn't narrowly self-interested in his actions! How surprising!" In this case, it has nothing to do with the people's actions - Sciona will still do her thing. But there's a little bit of surprise that an *Alari* is bothering to learn about any human culture to the level of name-dropping. Alari are presented as racial-supremacists. Sciona is currently embedded with humans. She has no way home, and home doesn't really exist any more. But given how humans act in similar circumstances, it would be all too common for her to double down on "Alari-ness", and not bother with humans beyond what she has to.
Town Crier
Hmm. Nobody? Nobody?!? Fine! I'll say it... That's what she said!
Jack Frost
I know he's spoken about this in the past, but are we ever going back to the higher quality art styles? It was much nicer and it feels like most weeks we keep dropping simpler and simpler
Jacob Bissey
Exactly, it's impossible to prepare for everything so it's pointless to try, but it is very possible to be prepared for anything and thus that should be the goal, to have a tool box full of tools and skills that between them leaves you prepared for any possible scenario, not because you planned for specifically whatever may come, but rather because they can be applicable to any given scenario, even ones you never could have conceived of in advance. It shouldn't matter if the enemy action surprises you or not.
Stephen Gilberg
Anti-villains are common enough that they have a TV Tropes page.
Jacob Bissey
An anti-villain is actually defined. IIRC the axes on the hero/villain square are motivation and methodology. A hero has good intentions and good methodology, a villain has bad intentions and bad methodology, an anti-hero has good intentions and bad methodology, so by necessity an anti-villain has bad intentions and good methodology. Basically they want to do bad things but they stay firmly within the bounds of the rules of engagement set by the heroes, or even step fully into the realm of "does good things for bad reasons". Which doesn't quite describe Deus since while he goes out of his way to follow the law unless he's certain he won't get caught, this is less about law than it is about imposed constraints and if things like jurisdiction matters with regard to where the lines are, then they aren't really holding themselves strictly to moral lines like the heroes do. This is an oversimplification, of course, as there are lines that can be crossed which invalidate any sort of heroic intentions and push you from anti-hero into villain territory, like collateral damage, and is the reason I object to the claim that Deadpool is an anti-hero since he rarely cares about collateral damage and is willing to kill almost anybody who stands in his way a lot of the time, or at least not consider who might get caught in the crossfire when shooting or setting off bombs or whatever. But for the most part those are the axes of the hero-villain square.
Slaygor
The look on Deus' face in panel 7 made me snort my drink out my nose. Thank you for the laughs.
JasonAW3
You know, I know about the anti-hero archetype, but I suspect we've never really seen, or defined the anti-villian... Deus IS that definition... Too darn smarmy and fun to hate...
Richard Riley
There is a shortage of perfect movies in the world...
Merle Blue
He just looks SO happy to be genuinely surprised!
A Patreon of the Ahts
The rare case of an awesome book and an awesome movie.
Ampws
No you just set up plans that cover <i>most</i> eventualities and train like crazy to cover the outliers.
astralFitz
An improbably joyful coincidence that I only just yesterday rewatched The Princess Bride; my face was almost as ecstatic as Deus' xD
Cley Faye
That expression of pure joy certainly is something I did not expect :D
Marc Vun Kannon
Either that or she popped another button. Or both.
Thomas Dorner
Inconceivable!
ciopo
Good old Vizzini
Cha0sniper
Pretty sure that's why he likes her so much xD
Just a guy
And yet I'm pretty sure Sydney surprised him at least twice so far.
3of4
I'm getting some "Make my day" vibes from Cthillia in that second panel.
Sharien Radaik
happy deus is so damn adorable XD
Hamish Clarkson
God he is so bloody smarmy, I love him.
Michael Obert
He's so happy in panel 7 😊
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