I can tell with about an 85% accuracy whether or not a motion captured performance in a video game was done by a Japanese performer or an American one. I’m pulling that number out of my ass – there’s no independent testing involved here, but I’m pretty sure I’m right. Japanese have a certain distinctive… I call it “torso acting.” Anytime a zombie dies or a human gets shot in a Resident Evil game, you can see it. Yakuza (or people motion capturing as) have a different sort of body language, but there’s still something distinctly Japanese about it. Office workers and otakus have their own tells as well.

The reason I bring this up is that aliens, even the ones with completely humanoid bodies, would have their own culturally motivated body language. Same thing with fantasy races, like elves. If you were a motion capture performer and the director tells you to “walk (possibly gaily) across the glenn of Elftown” and the next day you’re playing “a Viking lumbering across a muddy street,” of course your body language would be different.

A normal human could pick up some of these tells if they’re paying attention, and someone with super intelligence, assuming their observational skills are a fraction of what their brain power is used for, would have to have a severe head cold to miss all the signs an alien might put off. Especially if it was someone they knew. Obviously an alien who had been living among humans for a long time, or a Japanese who grew up in America would have those idiosyncrasies fairly muted, but they might still pick some up from parents or others if there’s an ethnic community around them.

(It feels wrong to write “a Japanese” instead of “a Japanese person,” but it’s fine to write “an American” or “a German,” but not “an English” or “a British,” but it’s fine to say “a Brit.” Language is weird. I still have to catch myself when I’m talking about Ukraine and not say “The Ukraine.”)

So maybe Deus smelled something, maybe it was body language. Sciona had been living on Earth for an indeterminate amount of time before her appearance in the comic, but this page does rather heavily imply that the senator there is also an Alari, and likely one of the ones Sciona took along with her when she found herself in Mexico. So his body language game wouldn’t be nearly as on point as hers.

This page should be the last flat shaded one. I’m still technically sick, in that I have an incredibly mild cough, but literally no other symptoms, and I’m sloooowly improving so I’m basically better? I just won’t be fully 100% for like another week at this rate. Obviously I didn’t get the incentive finished yet, but I’ll totally for real definitely have it done for next Monday’s page.

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The June vote incentive is finally up! Maxima is prepping for her night out.

And in the Patreon variants, she gets (un)dressed and takes a look through all the makeup options.

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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.