Wait… “The situation IN and WITH her homeland”?
He makes it sound like her homeland is undergoing a domestic, internal conflict, rather than a forign one.
Maybe Selkie’s people aren’t one big happy family after all…
It just occurred to me that there are other children like Selkie in a similar situation, but they haven’t been around long enough for the world to notice a trend. What’s more, Brown just outright claimed that Selkie is essentially a trial subject to base to other cases off of. If this is all a state-sponsored exchange program, why was Selkie’s arrival at the orphanage so unexpected? And why would so many “Selkies” crop up simultaniusly, when there was zero contact with them before now?
This is starting to sound like a refugee situation…
Readers have guessed that she may have been a refugee, and that her mother may have taken her away from her people for protection.
From what Brown said, I’m guessing the two most likely issues are either social-political factions, and/or (I think this much more likely) it is resource pressure on their people. Perhaps their method of controlling population is to cull the children. It’s not unheard of. It would also tie in with the ban on private and commercial fishing at the lake. If government found out the result of increased resource pressure on Selkie’s people, it’s a logical measure.
… I think I’ve dropped sentences in this, my appologies if so; I’m rather distracted.
Well said, but I would guess that the cause is a sudden, abrupt change rather than a gradual one. All the children like Selkie have turned up more or less simultaneously (as there are no precedents to deal with Selkie’s “conditions”). Resource decline, overpopulation, and pollution tend to accumulate gradually rather than overnight.
I’d say that armed conflict is the only crisis that can change things quickly enough and make parents desperate enough to protect their children in ways no one had ever tried before.
Theory: Because of us polluting the crap out of their homeland, livable space is now much less than it was. The conflict is likely between those who want to destroy us and those who want to find a way to co-exist.
I’m guessing that the simple solution, just getting Todd and his parents a clearance, isn’t going to occur to Agent Dickbrain and that is where the entire plot of this comic is going to come from.
The reality of the situation is that this guy isn’t NEAR as helpless as he acts, if he would just be clever.
On the other hand, if Selkie is a test case, and Agent Brown fails to get her integrated without explaining classified info to the parents, the whole mission fails. If there are a lot more kids, and he tells each of those kids’ foster parents the classified info, SOMEONE is going to blab, sooner rather than later.
And there very well could be a good reason for keeping everything secret. For example: what if they are aquatic space aliens, rather than secretive but earth-native “fairy folk” that the word Selkie implies? What if the species is on the verge of dying off, and the government is worried about human lunatics trying to “finish the job”? What if the kids are all royalty, and the guys in charge of Fishopolis are anti-Royalist loonies who want to kill off the kids because Our Glorious Leader said so, so the U.S. Government is hiding them among the human population?
Regardless, any conflict that enrichens the characters of the protagonists is a conflict worth pursuing. Good Guy Antagonist Agent Brown can’t make it too easy for them. 😉
So, the ‘slow integration’ theory is proven, and the ‘Selkie as a test case for intergration’ sub-category of the ‘slow intergration’ theory is proven. Answers are still slow in coming, but enough has been leaked for me to feel at least a little vindicated.
Makes perfect sense. A single fact in isolation can be no-risk. Taken with a bunch of other facts it can be very risky.
Consider the NSA phonebook. Someone who works there can give his work number to colleagues and acquaintances (for the most part, etc. etc.). His extension is not a security issue. But publishing their entire phone book would be. Information in that quantity has a quality all its own.
The integration effort means Selkie can be allowed out and about in public without interference. But names and locations of her homeland are another matter entirely.
I relate to this. I have secrets, some of them seem “minor” to “normal” people, but those secrets protect me. I _hate_ that they compare my safety to “not trusting” them. No one will understand without specifics, but even hinting on them here will be a risk.
But no, people I get close with think I can’t really be their “friend” because I don’t “trust” them with random facts. There is a huge difference between a fact and who I am as a person! 🙂
For example, my shoe size doesn’t make a difference to our friendship. It’s a fact. How I am with you as a person should matter far more than those facts. Just because most people display or share their shoe size doesn’t mean that that information doesn’t somehow protect me. Yeah; it’s vague, no I can’t be specific, but still, I completely understand what’s going on here and anyone who would get upset if someone has a secret who happens to be a friend isn’t a true friend to begin with. Just because someone is really close as a person in your heart doesn’t mean they return it…
You realise the Canadians have got to be in on this, right? I mean, the lake in question is on the US Canadian border and if the US has decided unilaterally to stop using it as an industrial sewer they still had to get the Canadians on board because the amount of effluvia coming from the north in real life is eye-watering.
If the Canadians can know about this why can’t Selkie’s family!!!!?
My theory is that the fry are not born yet, and Selkie’s kind are recent arrivals to this planet. I picture a bunch of technologically advance fish aliens arriving on our planet and needing a place to settle and to spawn. And they are probably live bearers and not multiparous but suppose they are egg producers and poor Brown has been tasked with the job of preparing to find loving foster homes for upwards of 100 small fry? “Not to worry, Agent Yellow. There definitely won’t be more than 2000 of them and could be as few as 600!”
Selkie has faced health issues because people don’t understand or take seriously the fact that she has different needs. Even people who love her. And now she’s having her culture withheld from her. Ask a child psychologist if that’s going to have any adverse effects. Classifying every bit of information about Selkie is not protecting her, it’s damaging her. Continuing to withhold information will only make it worse. This is wrong. There has to be some middle ground between telling Selkie’s family nothing and telling them the full history and ecology of the mer people. That would be in Selkie’s best interest.
They figured the best way to integrate these kids was to divorce them from their culture? So they don’t fully belong to the culture they’re adopted into, but they won’t fully belong to their birth culture either?
That didn’t work out well in the real world, can’t imagine it’ll work out well here.
Think of it in term of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
When life is threatened, cultural identity becomes a luxury. First basic needs must be met, then security. Comfort and belonging next.
Only from a base of emotional security can we then tackle the questions of where we belong in the world.
Here I give some disclaimers and explanation; Maslow’s Hierarchy is not solid, but fluctuating. Ofttimes we need to go back and address something before moving up, or we can abandon a ‘lower’ need to fulfill a higher. But the principle, that our needs and desires have orders of priority, is sound.
For the purposes of integration, it is important that the government have a policy of Minimal Intervention with Selkie; because if they must provide her with body-guards, there’s no way they could introduce more of her kind. It’s harsh, but if they had provided more protection initially, the ones to come later would have been seen as -more- vulnerable by any antagonist.
Yay soon she meet others just like her, and the other kids that bully her will be screwed. Imagine a whole group of kids of her species circled around the bullies all screeching at the same time.
I can believe that Brown is complicated after these panels. I feel that the correct questions are going to be difficult to figure out. I also had the thought pop into my head that Sophie is the reason her people are needing to go through all these issues, which made me wonder how this conversation looks like in the alt universe. Especially wondering what Dr. Pohl would wear instead of bunny ears, lol.
That… is actually a really good conversion. Gryph, good tries so far. I guess the question to ask IS actually what would put children like Selkie at ease. I like the idea of a cute squid hat though, lol
I am reminded of some cultures, not naming any, that are so wracked with poverty that the parent(s) might give away their children to US adoption so that they might live a better life.
In this case, I think it’s either this or a civil war back home, either or.
At the moment it’s not clear whether Brown is for or against these policies but they appear to be stressing him out. (At least I hope so since it makes him come off as less of a jerk) At the very least you’d think he could give Todd a contact number so he could at least drop broad hints.
Also I assume that this reference to Selkie’s Homeland suggests more than just “the city in Lake Erie.”
I just thought of this, when I was looking at the panels and thinking about Todd’s clothes.
So, the government was involved in Selkie’s placing, correct? And Brown flipped OUT that she got sick.
Two things that bug me here:
1. It’s been well stated she is sensitive to cold. It is cold. Snow and ice cold. So why is this SUCH a shock?
2. Why did the government chose for Selkie to live in an area that has such cold winters. For example, I live in Southern California. I hate the heat, but hey, I’ve been living here since I was nine. In the 17 years of my life that I have resided here, the coldest winter was the last one, where it got down to a chilly 30 degrees. At night. For about a week. And that was it. Why isn’t Selkie living in So Cal or Florida or Hawaii?
Remember that her arrival at the orphanage was a complete surprise; The government had no intention of sending her there.
I’m more concerned about what Selkie’s mother was thinking, sending her kid to a location with such cold winters and without anything as basic as dietary info.
Possibly (and I seriously wonder how much detail Dave pegs down _before_ his readers comment! 😛 ), possibly because those places have a high tourist flow (greater risk of media exposure). Or because this orphanage, with perhaps a good reputation for diversity, was picked as having the best chance of a successful integration.
the only one i can think of would be if there homeland was in territorial waters, if it was US territorial waters that would bring up interesting citizenship issues
Wait… “The situation IN and WITH her homeland”?
He makes it sound like her homeland is undergoing a domestic, internal conflict, rather than a forign one.
Maybe Selkie’s people aren’t one big happy family after all…
It just occurred to me that there are other children like Selkie in a similar situation, but they haven’t been around long enough for the world to notice a trend. What’s more, Brown just outright claimed that Selkie is essentially a trial subject to base to other cases off of. If this is all a state-sponsored exchange program, why was Selkie’s arrival at the orphanage so unexpected? And why would so many “Selkies” crop up simultaniusly, when there was zero contact with them before now?
This is starting to sound like a refugee situation…
Readers have guessed that she may have been a refugee, and that her mother may have taken her away from her people for protection.
From what Brown said, I’m guessing the two most likely issues are either social-political factions, and/or (I think this much more likely) it is resource pressure on their people. Perhaps their method of controlling population is to cull the children. It’s not unheard of. It would also tie in with the ban on private and commercial fishing at the lake. If government found out the result of increased resource pressure on Selkie’s people, it’s a logical measure.
… I think I’ve dropped sentences in this, my appologies if so; I’m rather distracted.
Well said, but I would guess that the cause is a sudden, abrupt change rather than a gradual one. All the children like Selkie have turned up more or less simultaneously (as there are no precedents to deal with Selkie’s “conditions”). Resource decline, overpopulation, and pollution tend to accumulate gradually rather than overnight.
I’d say that armed conflict is the only crisis that can change things quickly enough and make parents desperate enough to protect their children in ways no one had ever tried before.
Theory: Because of us polluting the crap out of their homeland, livable space is now much less than it was. The conflict is likely between those who want to destroy us and those who want to find a way to co-exist.
I knew it. The f*cking government.
I’m guessing that the simple solution, just getting Todd and his parents a clearance, isn’t going to occur to Agent Dickbrain and that is where the entire plot of this comic is going to come from.
The reality of the situation is that this guy isn’t NEAR as helpless as he acts, if he would just be clever.
On the other hand, if Selkie is a test case, and Agent Brown fails to get her integrated without explaining classified info to the parents, the whole mission fails. If there are a lot more kids, and he tells each of those kids’ foster parents the classified info, SOMEONE is going to blab, sooner rather than later.
And there very well could be a good reason for keeping everything secret. For example: what if they are aquatic space aliens, rather than secretive but earth-native “fairy folk” that the word Selkie implies? What if the species is on the verge of dying off, and the government is worried about human lunatics trying to “finish the job”? What if the kids are all royalty, and the guys in charge of Fishopolis are anti-Royalist loonies who want to kill off the kids because Our Glorious Leader said so, so the U.S. Government is hiding them among the human population?
Regardless, any conflict that enrichens the characters of the protagonists is a conflict worth pursuing. Good Guy Antagonist Agent Brown can’t make it too easy for them. 😉
Just FYI: the RSS link points to an entirely different section (Selkie290).
Love the arc!
Mine worked! :b
So, the ‘slow integration’ theory is proven, and the ‘Selkie as a test case for intergration’ sub-category of the ‘slow intergration’ theory is proven. Answers are still slow in coming, but enough has been leaked for me to feel at least a little vindicated.
Wonder what’s in it for us?
“But Selkie herself…can be public?”
“Yes”
“Why?”
“Classified”
That’s a cop out of I’ve ever read one. Seriously.
Makes perfect sense. A single fact in isolation can be no-risk. Taken with a bunch of other facts it can be very risky.
Consider the NSA phonebook. Someone who works there can give his work number to colleagues and acquaintances (for the most part, etc. etc.). His extension is not a security issue. But publishing their entire phone book would be. Information in that quantity has a quality all its own.
I disagree, sorry. It seems like a copout on Dave’s part to avoid addressing a significant hole in the story. :
Hopefully I can clarify this point a bit.
The integration effort means Selkie can be allowed out and about in public without interference. But names and locations of her homeland are another matter entirely.
What CAN’T Brown do for you?
Ba-dum tsssss
I relate to this. I have secrets, some of them seem “minor” to “normal” people, but those secrets protect me. I _hate_ that they compare my safety to “not trusting” them. No one will understand without specifics, but even hinting on them here will be a risk.
But no, people I get close with think I can’t really be their “friend” because I don’t “trust” them with random facts. There is a huge difference between a fact and who I am as a person! 🙂
For example, my shoe size doesn’t make a difference to our friendship. It’s a fact. How I am with you as a person should matter far more than those facts. Just because most people display or share their shoe size doesn’t mean that that information doesn’t somehow protect me. Yeah; it’s vague, no I can’t be specific, but still, I completely understand what’s going on here and anyone who would get upset if someone has a secret who happens to be a friend isn’t a true friend to begin with. Just because someone is really close as a person in your heart doesn’t mean they return it…
Do you like Pizza? How about Dungeons and Dragons?
If you answered yes to either of these, we can be friends.
Anything beyond that, wait till the 2nd date.
The 2nd date is when you try to figure out toppings and what edition to play. That may determine if further friendship dates are needed, lol (J/K)
If the answer to “what edition” is anything but 3.5, you’re dead to me.
Awww – but what if it’s included in a longer list?
You realise the Canadians have got to be in on this, right? I mean, the lake in question is on the US Canadian border and if the US has decided unilaterally to stop using it as an industrial sewer they still had to get the Canadians on board because the amount of effluvia coming from the north in real life is eye-watering.
If the Canadians can know about this why can’t Selkie’s family!!!!?
My theory is that the fry are not born yet, and Selkie’s kind are recent arrivals to this planet. I picture a bunch of technologically advance fish aliens arriving on our planet and needing a place to settle and to spawn. And they are probably live bearers and not multiparous but suppose they are egg producers and poor Brown has been tasked with the job of preparing to find loving foster homes for upwards of 100 small fry? “Not to worry, Agent Yellow. There definitely won’t be more than 2000 of them and could be as few as 600!”
600 baby Selkie’s, all demanding steaks…
Should I invest in cattle or tuna?
Where can I get one?
Selkie has faced health issues because people don’t understand or take seriously the fact that she has different needs. Even people who love her. And now she’s having her culture withheld from her. Ask a child psychologist if that’s going to have any adverse effects. Classifying every bit of information about Selkie is not protecting her, it’s damaging her. Continuing to withhold information will only make it worse. This is wrong. There has to be some middle ground between telling Selkie’s family nothing and telling them the full history and ecology of the mer people. That would be in Selkie’s best interest.
They figured the best way to integrate these kids was to divorce them from their culture? So they don’t fully belong to the culture they’re adopted into, but they won’t fully belong to their birth culture either?
That didn’t work out well in the real world, can’t imagine it’ll work out well here.
Think of it in term of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
When life is threatened, cultural identity becomes a luxury. First basic needs must be met, then security. Comfort and belonging next.
Only from a base of emotional security can we then tackle the questions of where we belong in the world.
Here I give some disclaimers and explanation; Maslow’s Hierarchy is not solid, but fluctuating. Ofttimes we need to go back and address something before moving up, or we can abandon a ‘lower’ need to fulfill a higher. But the principle, that our needs and desires have orders of priority, is sound.
For the purposes of integration, it is important that the government have a policy of Minimal Intervention with Selkie; because if they must provide her with body-guards, there’s no way they could introduce more of her kind. It’s harsh, but if they had provided more protection initially, the ones to come later would have been seen as -more- vulnerable by any antagonist.
Yay soon she meet others just like her, and the other kids that bully her will be screwed. Imagine a whole group of kids of her species circled around the bullies all screeching at the same time.
I like this image. XD
Eurgh. My opinion of Brown has gone completely turvey… This is so complicated! AAAARGH!
About now would be a great time for a flashback…
I still hate his face. 😛
everyone hates the face of the one who says “classified” when they know all the answers to all the important questions
I can believe that Brown is complicated after these panels. I feel that the correct questions are going to be difficult to figure out. I also had the thought pop into my head that Sophie is the reason her people are needing to go through all these issues, which made me wonder how this conversation looks like in the alt universe. Especially wondering what Dr. Pohl would wear instead of bunny ears, lol.
I dunno what animal ears alt-universe Pohl would wear, but I can’t help but think of his alt-universe self as Dr. Paul now. XD
Frilly fish gills! Or squid hat!
Dracula fangs?
That… is actually a really good conversion. Gryph, good tries so far. I guess the question to ask IS actually what would put children like Selkie at ease. I like the idea of a cute squid hat though, lol
Analytically, the bunny is a cute but edible icon. It doesn’t mimic the human children the docter works with.
So a frilly fish hat, or maybe a turtle?
I am reminded of some cultures, not naming any, that are so wracked with poverty that the parent(s) might give away their children to US adoption so that they might live a better life.
In this case, I think it’s either this or a civil war back home, either or.
At the moment it’s not clear whether Brown is for or against these policies but they appear to be stressing him out. (At least I hope so since it makes him come off as less of a jerk) At the very least you’d think he could give Todd a contact number so he could at least drop broad hints.
Also I assume that this reference to Selkie’s Homeland suggests more than just “the city in Lake Erie.”
I just thought of this, when I was looking at the panels and thinking about Todd’s clothes.
So, the government was involved in Selkie’s placing, correct? And Brown flipped OUT that she got sick.
Two things that bug me here:
1. It’s been well stated she is sensitive to cold. It is cold. Snow and ice cold. So why is this SUCH a shock?
2. Why did the government chose for Selkie to live in an area that has such cold winters. For example, I live in Southern California. I hate the heat, but hey, I’ve been living here since I was nine. In the 17 years of my life that I have resided here, the coldest winter was the last one, where it got down to a chilly 30 degrees. At night. For about a week. And that was it. Why isn’t Selkie living in So Cal or Florida or Hawaii?
Remember that her arrival at the orphanage was a complete surprise; The government had no intention of sending her there.
I’m more concerned about what Selkie’s mother was thinking, sending her kid to a location with such cold winters and without anything as basic as dietary info.
Possibly (and I seriously wonder how much detail Dave pegs down _before_ his readers comment! 😛 ), possibly because those places have a high tourist flow (greater risk of media exposure). Or because this orphanage, with perhaps a good reputation for diversity, was picked as having the best chance of a successful integration.
Or it was the only one Selkie’s mom had heard of. (And what season was it when Selkie was taken in?)
humm, complicated.
the only one i can think of would be if there homeland was in territorial waters, if it was US territorial waters that would bring up interesting citizenship issues