Grrl Power #1180 – The scent of a femalien
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 out. 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.
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.
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Of course, since Deus ‘rules’ the country the Alari have taken up refuge/residence in, he’s around them a lot, and thus knows what to Sherlock for in the case of bodyjackers.
That or he’s got a really good scent memory for people he’s boinked.
Deus is the Lex Luthor of this story so he must be smart enough to be a threat to everyone.
He’s not Lex, Lex’s plans almost always fail. He’s David Xanatos.
More David Xanatos than Lex Luthor. Lex’s plans almost always fail.
Given how absolutely wealthy and influential he is, that’s actually the opposite. His plans almost always work, until he uses them against an alien with the power of a God and an actual strong moral code he can’t blackmail or extort to have power over them using said money and influence.
And even when he do fail he nearly always get away with it.
Because the writers of the show couldn’t come up with other villains for the Garg’s to eat
This issue with Deus ist not only his probably superior (sic!) intelligence, but his quite pratical common sense.
That is the real super power, especially in this genre.
Human sense of smell is closely connected to memory (probably an evolutionary survival trait) as such smells and even flavours can evoke strong memories.
And that’s without dealing with people who are super-tasters or have excellent sense of smells.
Deus’s scent memory could be normal, and he still could remember her from her scent.
Most cultures I’m aware of that believe in souls/spirits believe it’s possible for one to recognize the soul of someone one knew in a past life, even if their current body is entirely different. The sense that’s usually linked to is sight. If I’m able to do it, it doesn’t feel like it’s linked to one of the traditional senses, but I’m most keenly aware of it when I’m looking at the person.
That said, what I experience is also not something I feel is trustworthy. A sense that is pertinent so infrequently is difficult to really trust. But if I sensed that *and* also smelled something that seemed to indicate a possible association, it would feel much more certain.
As such, I’m guessing it’s a soul sense that made him suspect the ‘kimchee’ smell was coming from her in addition to coming from his assistant, but he really wanted to verify that before actually saying anything. Sure, I’ve read of accounts where it was linked to smell, but they’re much less common than the ones where it’s linked with sight and even less common than ones where the person ‘just knew’.
He could also have a totally different ability and he’s just being a creep for the lols.
Remember the scent of a woman he’s never met before…
That’s true; Humans actually have an excellent sense of smell, we mostly just ignore it. But it’s actually quite easy to train yourself to pay attention to it, and once in college I actually tracked down a friend on campus just by following his scent trail. Helped that he didn’t shower enough, admittedly, but he was hardly the only one.
I’ve never bothered with the whole “learn to see polarization” lessons, though people can do that, too.
LOL I completely forgot that he fucked Sciona before xD
Butt not Escorpina, unless you are claiming spirits have a smell
Perhaps a familiar perfume?
It might also be that with her spirit inside her, that her flesh has started to emit the smell of her race. It could be he has a very good sense of smell, and being around them so much he noticed something. Clearly with enough time, the body would heal up but the essence has changed from human.
Escorpina had a few extra holes in her that were patched up with something Alari in origins though. Not to mention the parts of someone’s scent that are based on habit and personal preference.
Oh my god I just love Deus XD. Second favourite character in this entire comic (after Sydney of course), hands down !
I love the “bromance” between Max and Sydney most of all, Max will deny it, but I can tell while Syd aggravates her from time to time, Max always seems to smile when things are calm around them both.
Are Senators legally required to be human?
I think they are legally required to not have been taken over by another entity.
and presumably killed first.
That would be a wired paragraph to be found in any law book.
Article 19, section A, subsection 3 –
“All individuals intending to hold any public office at the state level or higher must submit to a full medical, psychiatric, and metaphysical examination to determine that they are humans in full control of their own free will. This will includes diagnostic procedures for any form of possessive resurrection, parasitic puppetry, psychic domination, coercive enchantment, usurpation of the soul/spirit, and similar forms of control. Those refusing to submit to such examination will be deemed ineligible for public office. Such measures are required to ensure that the individual is 100% human and an American citizen rather than partial human and part xeno-originating entity. (Ref Supreme Court rulings on Gov. Percy Davis v Joseph Sheogorath, and State of Alabama v Mary Queen-Scotts.)
:thinking aloud: Does taking lobbyist money count as usurpation of the soul?
it should. it won’t because Dues takes his favorite SCOTS on various ‘negligible hospitality’ trips.
I’d just like to point out that any payoffs are at least as much about politicians shaking down “donors” as they are about those wicked businesses and interest groups “buying” poor innocent politicians. A whole lot of political giving is driven less by ideology than by the need to maintain “access”. When obscure changes to regulations and tax codes can mean the difference between profit and bankruptcy, it’s insane to expect that businesses aren’t going to try and influence policy. It’s not exactly surprising that politicians would take advantage for their own interests either. There are still limits, though. Money can’t actually buy elections. Any congresscritter who goes against the will of their constituents too openly or too often IS going to get voted out.
Or should, anyway. Which is why a certain political party is always trying to reduce the influence of voters on the outcomes of elections, so that they can defy the will of their constituents with impunity.
in theory you are correct. in practice, not always. besides, important early questions- Who are the constituents? which ones matter and why? can this list be manipulated? (can the politician choose his constituents)
You win 1.6 internets.
As magic, aliens and superpowers become more publicly known in this world, I’m sure the law will have to address that sort of thing through some combination of legislation and judicial interpretation. Things very much like this will eventually become real.
As a non-American, that’s just made up, right? (I mean, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if somebody actually put that in, but since I couldn’t google it while copy pasting the text, I’m bet it’s more likely you made it up, right?). It’s very-well written though!
Totally made up.
Give aways:
No mentioned jurisdiction, no mentioned authority, use of the term xeno-originating(too vague could be interperted as “everyone not in my direct peer group), the clear acknowledgment of free will(discussion point in the southern baptist church a.k.a the “southern republican” church), both mentioned court cases are against people who either never set foot on american soil and/or are completely fictional
On second thought here: Several parasites do exist that can influence behavior. For a more innocent example, make their host like cats.
It might be a good practice to check important decision makers for such parasites.
“make their hosts like cats”, “innocent”.
Some folks don’t recognize pure evil when they speak of it.
Hard to say. There are some strange laws in the world.
I suspect if he were an agent of a foreign power, he’s be breaking the law, but since Alari is no more, he’s merely an ille…undocumented immigrant, and there is probably no law against electing a foreigner as a Senator. We’ve had women in congress since before women could vote for who would serve them in congress.
Off the top of my head, Ted Cruz was born in Canada and Tammy Duckworth was born in Thailand. So, you have to be a US Citizen, but you don’t have to be US born.
They are legally required to be duly elected United States citizens. A random Alari who had never been on this planet before Sciona evacuated them is almost certainly neither of those things.
I have the feeling he is a regular human who may or may not realize that his assistant is a very illegal alien, either as the Mexican host (deceased national with an extensive criminal record) or the operational parasite (Alari blood-mage). He just know she is usually very good at her job and is hard to discombobulate.
Seeing as he’s asking whether Deus said a word in Alari it seems pretty likely he’s aware of the Alariness of his aide.
They probably can’t legally be an alien. Might be able to revoke your other citizenship for it to be allowed, but I imagine it is more strict in that aspect than it is for joining the military.
The Constitution does not require them to be human. It was assumed, rather than written.
It *does* require them to be US citizens, for 7 years (Congress) or 9 years (Senate).
Citizenship requires birth in the US or naturalization. Also does not explicitly require being human.
Marriage to a US citizen is one of the ways that you can be allowed to naturalize.
Presumably, it’s all covered by interstellar treaties.
If a species is typically able to live 500 years, then the minimum ages listed in the Constitution to make sure the representative has a certain amount of wisdom and maturity won’t be very useful anymore.
If they aren’t mature enough in that time, then they probably won’t get elected, unless they have a good celebrity reputation.
The more clear requirement is “X years a citizen”.
Which resulted in a Dragon being voted in as President of the USA’s successor state in Shadowrun due to grandfathered citizenship status
(They were basically hibernating until magic returned to a higher level during the American revolution where Denver is so they were in the USA when the revolution happened so were counted as a native born citizen)
Come to think of it, how do we know Deus is human?
Everything we’ve heard about aliens talking about super powers indicates that only Humans have them. Or perhaps even only humans on earth.
He could be a superintelligent alien in disguise but I prefer him as a human.
True but superpowers were dismissed by aliens originally due to many species natural diversity. If humans were deuces wild rather than a single ability it still wouldn’t have been that noteworthy.
Given the tech acquisition rather than development prior to having access to aliens I’d guess human or half human. One of his parents might have been on vacation.
There’s nothing in the rule book that says an Alari can’t play basketball, I mean govern
Ah yes, the Air Bud ruling.
Interesting, but it makes sense. He’s been with her before, plus he knows the smell of her race so it’s not surprising he’d know her scent. Now I wonder if that senator hasn’t been taken over as well!
I expected a “not evil” dungeon wouldn’t give all the items needed, but it would of been nice not to have to guard them ALL the time.
There’s no way she’d tell a human Senator that she’s an alien much less teach them her language.
Maybe true, butt her current body is 100% human…
I believe that is incorrect. Remember the silver discoloration when the dead bodies were regenerated? That body was punctured through the chest multiple times.
She is a blood mage, I’m sure she could of “healed” the damage and covered the wounds.
Believe their point was the repairing and the colouration was countering the ‘100% human’ claim
He said “szia”, obviously. Or “siyá”.
He used a line I used many times over the years: Welp, c’ya!
They are both jumping to conclusions. But Deus is very good
at dropping hints like that!
What he said was, “I know.”
And now he’s going to allow Sciona to fuck up royally owing to her native inability to have literally any modicum of “chill.”
Or it was an attempt at a fake-out, trying to make her think he was going to say ‘Sciona’.
She just spent a significant amount of time in a room with several enemies she’d like to kill, with no more than a snide remark under her breath. That’s a fairly acceptable level of ‘chill’.
And enemies who would to kill her (or at least incarcerate her arse into a deep hole)
I think it is his “Women i have sex with power” he can tell her did the horizontal mambo with her.
Deus is intimately familiar with Sciona, and close to other Alari. He might’ve realized something was off and decided to check if her disguise passed the smell test, literally. Which I think it would since she took over a human body and is not using a glamor of sorts.
Might be Alari favor certain scents for their soaps though that he would recognize.
Or, as the bottom-margin text says, she ate the Alari equivalent of kimchi :)
Which would be in no way a clue to her identity, just to the fact there was an Alari connection to her and the Senator.
Language is often a godawful mess. Speaking from my own experience, language is one of the major barriers to understanding history. We think a word means something and it means something totally different.
One of the best examples was a slogan I knew as a kid. ‘Peace with strength’ was a favorite for many of the Reagan years. The idea was that you could be strong, but not inherently violent. Not a bad thing, all told. THEN you get the translations. ‘Peace with superiority’, ‘death with strength’ (as in kill everyone and call it ‘peace’) ‘weakness with strength’) which makes no sense at all!) … The list of misunderstandings goes on and on a long ways.
That is one reason my first serious history teacher in college said that history is never clean, pretty or nice. Miscommunications have caused more problems throughout known history than almost every war put together.
Deus is keeping his communication clean and concise. We all know he is smart. This is just one more example.
Another Reaganism that doesn’t actually make sense is “Trust but verify”
If you’re in Intelligence, that makes perfect sense. ‘I believe you and will take action on that belief, but we still have to check for ourselves’ is exactly why people want to see things with their own eyes. Different perspectives, errors in communication, and maybe, just maybe, you actually are lying for some reason and we need to catch you at it, are all reasons you trust what someone says, and go verify it nonetheless.
Especially if it is important.
When you trust and don’t verify is when some really bad shit can go down.
I believe ‘trust but verify’ was an Intelligence community thing long before Reagan co-opted it.
In addition to RED’s points, when one doesn’t trust until one verifies, it’s really difficult to build any kind of rapport with the people one isn’t trusting. Showing distrust right away can scare off people who have information one really wants.
When you are openly hostile to anyone who claims they want to do something to help, you can’t ever get help from someone you don’t know.
‘Trust but verify’ was ALWAYS a spy thing in every serious military history I have studied. As far back as the Romans I have seen references to such.
That said? In the wonderful ‘great’ modern US where NO ONE is supposed to trust, verification is a two edged sword. If you seek verification and said verification tells you that you got lied to by the people who are supposed to be leading you? What then? Oh, wait, my bad. You trust blindly, but ONLY the political party whom you favor. No one else can be trusted at all.
*shrug*
What a world, huh?
I wasn’t there and don’t know what was meant, but to me it’s a description of building trust.
You trust someone with something relatively small. At a now irrelevant point in time(you decided to trust them afterwards is okay) you verify if they fucked you over.
If no: repeat with something slightly larger.
Yeah, trust until they prove other wise
But don’t trust blindly, that’s what cults want
It was “Peace THROUGH strength.”
(That little difference makes your point pretty well, I think.)
“We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.” Ronald Reagan, Republican National Convention, July 17 1980
Which point was proven, again, repeatedly, as soon as Biden took office.
I’ve heard Japanese people say the phrase he/her is “a Japanese”,In English mind you.
i have always assumed its a translation issue, and the phrase in Japanese don’t sound awkward.
They might say they’re not bothered, but to a large segment of the American population, it sounds really bad (awkward, and maybe racist).
In fact, English doesn’t seem to like to use any demonym noun ending in various alveolar sounds (s/z/sh). So “a Polish” is similarly avoided.
The Japanese for “Japanese person” is nihonjin, nihon being the Japanese word for Japan (although by itself I think it’s often nippon – same kanji either way; “Japan” is based on how the Chinese read the relevant kanji, as the West was largely introduced to Japan via the Chinese) and jin simply meaning “person.” People from other country are referred to similarly, with jin (or sometimes hito – again, same kanji, different pronunciation) tossed on after the name of where they’re from. So a more direct translation would be for them to call people “American person,” “Japanese person,” etc. But in English a lot of the time this is shortened to just “American” or similar, and when talking about multiple people we usually say “the Japanese” rather than “the Japanese people,” so for someone learning English as a second language it makes sense to just go with “American,” “Japanese,” etc, rather than learning all the weird little exceptions. That would be my guess, anyway.
A japanese (language) professor once told me: It is usually Nihon. And at sport events it turns to Nippon.
As a further note (once my first one shows up), I’ll also mention that “She is a Japanese (person),” in Japanese, would be said something like [i]kanojo wa nihonjin desu[/i], which literally translated would be something like “That woman, Japanese person is.” Romance languages like French do have their own syntax that is distinct from Germanic languages like English, but those two have much closer syntax than Japanese has to either, which can make it even harder for a native Japanese speaker to learn those (also, from my understanding, English is one of the hardest languages to learn as a second language, thanks in no small part to ridiculous possibilities like “He deserted his dessert in the desert” or one of my personal favorites “Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo,” which is in fact a complete sentence).
Note that Nip and Jap are perfect short-forms, just like Brit, but are considered curt at best and insulting/racist at worst because of WW2, similar to not calling Germans ‘Krauts’.
The author should join the ranks of other cartoonists who get sick and later get zonked out on sickness relief medicines…!
Get well my sly amigo!!!!!
Senator only have to be 30 years old and citizens of the US
Don’t forget, people, Deus and Sciona got very…intimate..once.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-607-a-magnificent-proposal/
Certain kinds of “tells” are easy to detect if you know what you’re looking for and often they almost become so reflexive as to become almost intuitive (you’re not actually looking for it anymore, you just know). This can be particularly true when it becomes a pattern among types of people with a similar “tell” (e.g., what you were talking about with mo-cap… same goes for British vs. American if you watch someone like Benedict Cumberbatch or Andy Serkis vs. many American actors who do a lot of mo-cap). Add in if you’re someone on the higher functioning end of the Autism Spectrum (such as myself) where you’re constantly observing social and both verbal and non-verbal signals just to try and survive in a very social world… and it gets interesting.
– I have a very strong chance of detecting if someone has a tongue piercing, even if it’s talking with them on the phone. (How they pronounce certain letters like “s”.)
– I’ve impressed people from South Africa by being able to tell where they’re from by their accent when they tell me almost every American thinks they’re from Australia. (Again, certain pronunciations… vowels mostly.)
– I can tell if someone has had a strong overbite corrected in their youth. (Great dental work suggesting braces, but the clincher is that they don’t move their jaw nearly as much when they talk… like it’s through semi-clenched teeth. It’s because they’re so used to talking with the rubber bands on their braces pulling at their jaw that it’s become habitual even after they’re removed. Mary Murphy, one of the original judges of So You Think You Can Dance, is a great example of being able to see this.)
– Unless someone has an incredibly versatile voice, I can often identify about half the voice actors from mainstream cartoons and the like because of the peculiarities of their voice. (E.g., Kath Soucie almost can’t get rid of the mild nasal tone to her voice, Will Friedle has a distinctive vocal quality to me as well.)
– One of the biggest issues people on the Spectrum have in reading facial expressions is that we don’t see the entire expression as one total visual. We often see it broken down into parts that we look at individually to see how it fits into the whole picture. (I.e., it’s like seeing a cut up picture reassembled rather than the original picture.) So if, let’s say, the set of the eyes and brow don’t fit with the rest of the facial expression, it gives us a mixed signal. The same goes with words spoken contrasted with tone, tempo, and what words are stressed. We often see things as components rather than a complete. (Much like how a human may small a hamburger, but a dog smells each part of the hamburger… they perceive the same hamburger but in different ways.)
– Even something like how someone points to something or hand gestures they specifically avoid (or brief reactions to certain gestures until they remember it means something else in another country) can do it too. Americans point with one finger. People from Asia and Japan typically use a flat hand to point. Even people who work for Disneyland/Disneyworld for years get in the habit of always pointing with two fingers. Many male spies have been caught during WWI and WWII because of how they count on their hand (Americans use the thumb last, in Europe it’s usually the thumb first or second) or cross their legs (Americans sit with an ankle across a knee, Europeans sit with one knee over the other), as examples.
As intelligent and perceptive as Deus has proven himself to be… (potentially basically being Lex Luthor, Mister Terrific, Reed Richards, or Tony Stark level intellect or better)… it’s very easily conceivable that even minute signals can give away someone in disguise to him. Even if the disguise is in taking over another body.
Indeed the Alari may have various autonomic actions when they control their body that stand out when a human attempts the same. Those actions could be body, environment, or socially but to an informed person they will be tells.
/congrats on your ability to vocally differentiate people remotely , it is both skill and hearing perception.
One wonders what difference in torso posturing would occur in Alari-controlled human bodies, due to their growing up with wings?
Not all Alari have wings, and those who do seem to have energy wings rather than physical
I’d like to nominate Logophile for best comment ever in the communications category. Our human family’s languages, cultures, migrations, etc. just fascinate me, and “autistral” observations provide a useful point of view.
Some of my own observations on today’s comments:
I’d call English a Frankensteinien language.
The Franks were Germanic, weren’t they?
Celtic influences persist in many European languages & cultures, including English.
Deus is a real hoot!
Alarite women with guns are sexy.
“Blood magic” is not sexy.
You can learn stuff about Japan from reading manga & watching anime.
Have I wandered off-topic again…?
Oh, and wasn’t it “peace through strength”, not from strength? I’m sure Colonel Maxima could get on board with that.
She smells like an Alari because she’s been eating Alari foods. That’s from DB’s sub-text below the comic.
It could have been Alari preferred scents / perfumes. Used to cover up scent tells. *facepalm*
The mind controls the body including many minor subconscious aspects. A different species trying to blend in might not be able to stop themselves from a rather different bio set up. Simply being hot or cold or smelling different is viable.
Translation ‘Trust but verify’…They’re lying basterds and they know we know that they’re lying basterds but I can’t say that because the state department weenies will get their panties in a twist not to mention the press…
Absolutely not. There’s a reason the state department gets upset by your attitude. You may be right 99% of the time, but that 1% is incredibly valuable, because they’re well placed to be useful. They’re desperately looking for the 1% and if you’re acting in the stereotypical paranoid fashion, you’re keeping them from finding that 1%.
To be clear, those numbers were pulled out of commonly used linguistics. I don’t know the exact percentage. It could be 99.9% and .1%, which would make that .1% much more valuable. It could be 50% and 50% and that would make the attitude you’re demonstrating be uselessly abrasive. It could even be 1% and 99%, in which case your hostile until proven trustworthy preference is just flat out wrong. I don’t know what those numbers are, and neither do you.
The state department probably does, but they’re not telling.
are we talking international relations here?
the poker game where everyone is lying and everyone is cheating?
that one?
in a poker game, if nobody ever looks at the cards, they’re actually blank until someone looks. You can not prove that this is wrong.
if everyone is cheating which cards matter? they all look the same from the back.
point of order:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US6726205B1/en
the cards are observed before the dealing began. also, depending on the shuffle type the cards are observed during the shuffle.
Site the evil dungeon under the US capital dome…it’s not going to grow *towards* a greater evil
Not the IRS Headquarters?
Too late to put it under the Lehman Brothers offices.
He said “Sia”.
Who is an alien. so there ya go.
“c’ya” is slang for “see you” so it means the same, which still says the senator is maybe possessed too.
That background action though…
I think that, technically, someone from Britain (Great Britain, United Kingdom, etc!) is a ‘Briton’. Thus a ‘Brit’.
I can confirm that “Briton” is correct (though hardly ever used), as I am one.
Not to be confused with “Breton”, which is someone from Brittany in France.
Don’t inhale too deep. She’s literally addictive.
Considering what a ladies man Deus is he should remember the wise advice of dr Solus: Oral contact may cause mild hallucinations. Do not ingest.
english alari hungarian possibly other languages: “seeya” as an appropriate, casual way to say good bye, apparently
augh the emojis were trimmed. i meant to put the handshake emojis between individual languages
“c’ya” is slang for “see you” and “welp” is slang for “well,” not really slang, it’s more like a different way to say it to look “hip.” And I don’t get what hip means, other than short for “hippie,” maybe “hipster” which was another “I don’t know nor care” on my part.
“You’ve been MADE!”
IF she’s sufficiently paranoid, she should take this opportunity to scram or at least leave that body and her flunky-as-senator “in a tragic car wreck” and move on to some other senator and senator’s staff wonk (likely reverse the roles while they are at it).
If she’s still as stubbornly arrogant as ever though, she’s gonna let that gooberment subversion gravy train roll on and be bitten on the azz by Deus’ blackmail or some other “sudden but inevitable betrayal” on his part…
Why the fronk would she toss away a perfectly good super body?
If you mean super-HOT, agreed, but isnt the body she took over that of some random normie Cartel thug?
She has a contact-bliss power, she’s a super.
The body itself has super powers, likely some sort of touch based mind control. So the body is super hot because it’s a female super.
Is not Deus telling Sciona to cover her “posterior”? CYA!
Except that she knows Deus is not going to rat her out. I think he’s more telling her, “Call me later, we can do business. You don’t need to worry about me figuring stuff out, you know I know and you know I don’t rat people out. If I wanted to, I could’ve done it here.”
Ok, Deus could possibly rat her out, but it doesn’t seem like his style. If nothing else, it’s too early for him to do that.
I. Am. An. Idiot. All this time I’ve been thinking the Senator was just some political slug enthralled by Sciona’s new sex power. But he knew Deus was slipping in an alarian word: Which means he’s one of the Alari souls Sciona was carrying around.
Go back to where Sciona was standing with her two Alari soul thugs.
Add a beard and mustache to the thug on the right and he’ll look a lot like the Senator.
She had a few more Alari souls with her. Presuming she could recognize traits of a disembodied soul, some one with management skills could subvert a government official much more convincingly than one of the thugs. Crossing over into the border states it wouldn’t be difficult to pay a visit to a freshman senator when he is his home office. A senior congress man who is on a bunch of committees and who is well known by other would be difficult to pull off but the new guy who is just getting to know the job. One might pull it off.
Sciona picked them as the first (and only) two out of the box which held… thousands(?) of her people.
She might have picked them for being multi-talented.
… How do we know they were the only two she released?
She’s had time to find a good host, kill, implant, and rest up for the next one some time now, there is likely dozens if not hundreds by now under her command. I’m sure the senator was a much later implant after she worked her way in to get at him.
Fairly sure she tried to pixie-dust SmugD, but, for some reason, it didn’t work but he still detected the attempt
So, ‘Siiya’ and C’ya mean the exact same thing…
It’s like how in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy all alien species have some kind of drink that sounds like Gin and Tonic. They might not all be the same drink, but they’re all beverages that sound like that.
That is not even true on earth.
And “Alien” meaning basically “Not from here” every human is an alien almost everywhere. Not only Sting.
I’m wondering how long until the “sniff” in panel six gets cropped into a meme.
why wait? Meme it now!
Sciona has clearly gotten control over Escorpia’s contact powers, since she can shake hands without any noticeable effect now. I wonder if it’s an all-or-nothing effect, or if she can microdose people and make them increasingly addicted over time.
Aw… I like the flat shaded look. Glad you’re feeling better, tho.
Did Sciona assassinate a Senator and let someone she hadn’t previously met steal his body?
Someone from the limited gang of her own superior race that she rescued and therefore owes her a life debt, even if their goals didn’t already align? Absolutely she did.
You should have a chibi-Dappler, brain-draining a tied up DB, giving these little author’s notes. Like that one page talking about Max’s zero-range TK
I loved the reference to Inglourious basterds, having studied abroad out there they sure do use their thumb and first two fingers to show 3. It is interesting how much body language and somatics can differ across the world. Anyway, love the comic, need to eventually get an omnibus or something of everything done so far ;)
If that’s the Alari word then does it matter given they mean the same thing? “See ya” is a shortening of “See you later” or “See you in the future” as well afterall.
It matters a lot whether he just used English slang by coincidence, or deliberately used an homonym in Alar (which we’ve seen him speak) to imply he’d figured out she’s an undercover Alari, and possibly exactly who.
A funny thing, I know a similar one in German-Chinese:
“Tschüss!” (I guess to be pronounced /t͡ʃʏs/ or ‘chuess’) means “bye” in colloquial German and is somehow derived from French “adieu”.
However, “去死!” or pinyin “Qùsǐ!” is pronounced very similar and is a rather vulgar term that means “Go to Hell!”
Deus…. he knows something is up.
Seeing Deus take a sniff while “making” someone he had previously “made it” with…yeah, my brain went there immediately. (And then realized it was in the wrong place, since this is a different body and thus different, er, pheremone production sites.)
I wonder though, maybe Deus “made” Sciona through other methods he wants to keep secret, and thus deliberately did the very obvious sniff as a misdirection tactic and/or to creep Sciona out? I’m neither a woman nor one who sleeps with men, but doing what little I can to imagine the mindset of post-coital women who are regretting their choices, I find myself suspecting Sciona’s (temporarily current) skin is crawling a little at the memory of the “exchange deal” they worked out.
Seeing Deus take a sniff while “making” someone he had previously “made it” with…yeah, my brain went there immediately. (And then realized it was in the wrong place, since this is a different body and thus different, er, pheremone production sites.)
I wonder though, maybe Deus “made” Sciona through other methods he wants to keep secret, and thus deliberately did the very obvious sniff as a misdirection tactic and/or to creep Sciona out? I’m neither a woman nor one who sleeps with men, but doing what little I can to imagine the mindset of post-coital women who are regretting their choices, I find myself suspecting Sciona’s (temporarily current) skin is crawling a little at the memory of the “exchange deal” they worked out.
(Apologies if this is a double post, the website never acknowledges me as having successfully posted.)
Seeing Deus take a sniff while “making” someone he had previously “made it” with…yeah, my brain went there immediately. (And then realized it was in the wrong place, since this is a different body and thus different, er, pheremone production sites.)
I wonder though, maybe Deus “made” Sciona through other methods he wants to keep secret, and thus deliberately did the very obvious sniff as a misdirection tactic and/or to creep Sciona out? I’m neither a woman nor one who sleeps with men, but doing what little I can to imagine the mindset of post-coital women who are regretting their choices, I find myself suspecting Sciona’s (temporarily current) skin is crawling a little at the memory of the “exchange deal” they worked out.
Profoundest apologies if this ends up being a TRIPLE effing post.
What is going on on the left side of the first panel?
The demon that was introduced earlier going back into stealth mode before leaving the building.
And re: double-triple posts, be patient and check back later if you do not immediately see your post. The internet & servers need a little time.
Yups: if you don’t get an actual error message, then just wait