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Grrl Power #1331 - An ear for accents
🕑 Added 2025-02-17 11:00:13 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome!
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.
Comments
KnightRider007
Yeah, something like this panel is very much pushing the limit of "smart by declaration", aka "knows anything that's required either for the plot or to reinforce his image". Sure, he might have access to the alien internet, but unless it's a *particular* area of interest, nobody is going to have actively researched to that level of detail. Recognising regional accent *and* correctly identifying dated pronunciation is a specific alien language is possible - but only really *plausible* if the character is established as having a specific and particular interest in alien linguistics. Otherwise, why would he have researched that particular topic? The only real way around that issue is some equivalent of "Has an AI research assistant in his head, that automatically researches stuff at high speed in real time"
Tim N
Deus is back! Woot!
akrasia
More fundamentally, would she consider Deus to be a threat, an asset, a resource, or even a potential ally?
eddi_TBH
That model works well in real life. So no surprise there.
Anton Schleef
And the reason why there is no single Alaripedia, but many variant versions depending on who's servers it's stored on.
eddi_TBH
Such an internet will be a web with multiple specialized foci. Allowing for further division into specific bubble universes. The advantage will be the ability to easily cut such bubbles away without losing contact with more compatible ones. Thus people can safely believe in flat earths without trolls bothering them. And those who who believe in spherical planets will also be left in peace. The initial sorting may be chaotic though.
eddi_TBH
Deus' powers include being able to sense opportunities for amoral profit on a continent-wide basis.
Anton Schleef
I suspect that if the internet manages to survive for another two or three centuries it'll end up far less corporate controlled than it is today. Why? Because eventually technology will progress to the point that you won't need corporate level resources to produce electronics on par with what we had 10-20 years ago. Sure, it won't be spectacular, but it'll enable basic internet access, and once the ability to produce that is outside of corporate control it will eventually morph into an internet that is mostly outside of government and corporate control. Even better, we may see 3D printers capable of that within the next decade, so it may take less than 50 years rather than a century or three.
Anton Schleef
That's what they were getting at. Anything that goes well for Deus usually doesn't for the heroes, except when their interests and Deus's manage to align (and it's to soon in the story for that to happen again).
Anton Schleef
I guess the Alari word for Network starts with a C? Although, why would the Alari word for Broadcast start with a B? Really, only the A actually makes any sense.
Anton Schleef
Oh come on, we all know how it'll go wrong. Instead of Deus becoming Sciona's puppet Sciona will become Deus's loyal slave. If Dave does anything else he's going to piss off an entire branch of the super and magic fiction industry. Now, having Sciona decide it's better to NOT mindfuck Deus would actually be more interesting, mostly because it's a rarely trodden path (at least amongst villains).
Anton Schleef
Are half of all believable villain's just opportunists who don't do 'charity' work?
Eric Loken
Huh, hadn't considered that, but he does kinda hit a lot of the Mary Sue tick boxes. - Very important to the story as he is the ultimate bad guy of the story (but he's not really all that evil...) - Physical near perfection - except the scar so as to not actually be perfect, but gives him more roguish charm - to the point that even Maxima has had thoughts about it - Essentially everyone loves him to at least some degree, even his enemies - Over capable, even for a super hero story, to the point that he can do anything he essentially wants despite not personally being that physically powerful, but because everyone loves him most villains automatically side with him and do his bidding instead of killing him and taking over And then his name is Deus Ex? Really? "God from..." - although what he is from hasn't been specified. So yeah. I think you got it.
Anton Schleef
Personally, I think the did a great job with Senku in Dr. Stone. Sure, it requires a massive amount of research to write him, but he comes across as essentially super smart without it being overly stupid while still having believable flaws.
Eric Loken
He's supposed to be super smart, which I think is a very bad decision on the part of Dave, as he'll never be able to write a character at that level - no insult to Dave, but I doubt he's a super genius. I've already questioned a bunch of Deus' actions, because for someone supposedly so smart, he doesn't have a particularly great understanding of people, history, or the greed of people in power. Usually the way writers make a character 'super smart' is to make them prescient "Ha! I'm so smart I knew which actions you would take long before you were even born!" Completely ignoring random events that can change things, the actions of unrelated persons that inadvertently affect how things play out, and that people can sometimes make the oddest choices that throw everything off. Not to mention I don't think anyone is 100% consistent in their actions, making it hard to nail what exactly they will do in any given situation - a high probability, sure, but not certainty. In this particular case I'm willing to grant him a photographic memory as a super power (something for which there is extreme doubt it actually exists in adults in the real world; some people may have a really good memory, but not that good).
Devoted Archon
I heckin love watching deus just doing his thing, favorite character in the whole comic
Eric Loken
She clearly never read the Supervillain Handbook.
Louis Richards
One gets the feeling that Deus could give Ozymandias a run for his money. ( I nearly misspelled the Watchmen character's name as "OzymanDEUS". Just a little TOO close, right?)
Hugh Eckert
Sciona really needs to watch it on the monologuing...
Stephen Gilberg
"Villain Sue" is a TV Trope. But nobody has added it to the Grrl Power YMMV page.
Robin
So Deus is either an alien or a super with some kind of information absorption power? Because even if he's super smart, making those deduction requires half a lifetime of knowledge, right?
JasonAW3
Considering he set up the Alari colony in Africa, and has at least one Alari as his assistant, I'd definitely think he would have a leg up on everybody else...
JasonAW3
No, not 'really' a villian, more of an opprotunist...
IvyReed
Deus is such a goddam "Mary Sue". I never even knew a villain COULD be one.
Thisguy
...Graff Vynda K?! No there's a reference I have not heard for a long time. Though for certain people, it could have been just yesterday. The Ribos Operation was one of my favorites of the Old Doctor Who serial. Or at least it stuck in my mind. Probably just the absurdity of a story about a Tyrant Warlord, a Con Artist, and Tom Baker's Doctor with his new Companion Romana... Just Romana. ... Oh Right, the Comic. Yeah. Genre Savvy Sydney is one thing, but possible Super Genius Deus who has more knowledge of your people than anyone else on the planet, and also knows you carnally, that's another.
Norman L. Wash
Maybe he remembers it from when he met her before?
Matthew Thompson
Why not both?
Ampws
Plus there is the fact that he slept with her before she died and was reborn, so there was plenty of time for him to hear her accent.
gaijin 99
As a Super Intelligence, presumably Deus can take in data, including media, faster than a regular human. Maybe not Barry Allen level fast, but if he doesn't watch most stuff at 5x or higher I'd be surprised. Plus, with the Alari being suddenly locally important, I'm sure he put in an intensive week or so studying Alari history, culture, language(s), and accents. Or, alternatively, he knows for various other reasons that's Sciona, has obviously checked out her history even before the time he got to know her intimately, and is fucking with her for his own amusement and he can't actually hear all that detail in her accent.
Fogel
So is she going to try to mindfuck Deus, and more importantly, how is it going to go wrong?
Michael Altarriba
If I remember right, he actually detected her scent when they were meeting to propose building the dungeon.
JasonAW3
Yep... I think it was only a question of who would arrive first, Deus or Max...
William Elliott
Well...theres also the fact he knew her before she ... inhabited that body, and he may have heard her speak her native tongue before, and then decided to look up why her pronunciations were "off" compared to the dialects of the colony ship occupants, just in case the reports of her demise were greatly exaggerated...
Philip Brown
whaddya mean? I think it will go quite well for Deus.
Justaguy
I feel like Deus either has clones of himself learning stuff Kiln People style, or he's getting experiences and knowledge matrixed into his brain at this point.
Hamish Clarkson
Damn, I've missed Deus just fucking with people.
Julian
Alari Broadcast Cnetwork?
Michael Obert
Why would you even ask? Just accept he has the script and move on π
Michael O'Driscoll
Because he is just that smart
DonnieRamesJio
Well, this can't end well for our heroes.
