Probably about a… 2?
I had written a bit where Todd walks in to the room catching Sai Fen still in the water bubble, but on thinking about it I decided it didn't make much sense that Sai Fen wouldn't quickly floop that water bubble back into the tank before calling the human in to chat about war crimes.
Ooooooooooooooh boy. Just… Ooooooooh boy.
Uhhhhh, what? Suddenly no clue what’s going on.
Selkie’s mom is a war criminal. We’ve no idea why yet, but this is major news and could explain why Selkie’s mother gave her up.
Neat.
I like how Selkie is smiling in the last panel. Like, sweet my Mom is a criminal.
I’d say Selkie doesn’t fully understand what a war criminal is, but I think she’s aware enough to piece it together. Maybe it just hasn’t fully set in? Or she’s not paying attention. Honestly, they shouldn’t have said that directly in front of Selkie, that’s not only tactless it’s just… in very poor taste. I know they’re probably pretty shocked to learn this about Selkie’s mother, but still.
I certainly hope Selkie isn’t happy to hear her mom is a war criminal though and is more or less just happy to see her mom’s face again and not really listening to the adults.
Reading carefully, I don’t think they have any reason to believe that Plo Quar is Selkie’s mother. Selkie only told Sai Fen that it’s some secret Sarnothi technology that she has, not “listen to this message that my mom left me!”
That being said, I’d be curious to know what they /do/ know about Plo Quar.
Oh I do suppose you’re right. I mean, Selkie is part of that clan so it’s not necessarily a stretch for them to assume relation between them, especially since Selkie has such a message. I mean, wasn’t it along the lines of, “You need to stay close to your bow to keep you safe. I love you Nei Li.” or something? Maybe they aren’t listening to the message though.
Do they even know her real name? I feel like Pohl knows it, but I don’t know. Anyhow, you’re right that they don’t necessarily know her relationship towards Selkie.
It may be a different message based on who’s holding it? maybe?
Here’s the page with the bow-message https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie582/
other than saying “I love you” at the end Plo Quar doesn’t say anything directly that says “Nei Li, my daughter…” so I dunno? There could be some subtle tone inflection that says mother-to-daughter “I love you” rather than the kind of “love you man” you would use with your best bud, but that Selkie is too young to notice/hasn’t been around other native speakers to reinforce language mores.
Her mom is a mad scientist….
To be fair, wasn’t it stated the war was like a class war? That based on your race, you’d have a specific role or something? I mean, if that’s the case, just because she’s a “war criminal” doesn’t mean she’s bad.
naw, it was a war between castes. The caste that was exterminated was the one that originally pushed for no retaliation against the humans. More of a “forgive and forget” policy. This enraged another caste, who promptly started exterminating them.
Actually Selkie’s caste was the one pushing FOR retaliation against humans. The more military-oriented one that wiped them out was actually more a “We can’t actually start and win this fight” even though it was one of their own who was killed.
Nuances!
Bender voice in my head… sorta love it.
… Well, I did not see that coming.
… Well. I did not see that coming.
Sigh…. I hope this wont change their friendship with Todd and Selkie. Also as much as I tried to ignore the theories in the comment section about Selkie’s mum being a war criminal I was really hoping this wouldnt be the case. I wont go into why but this is a bit of a disappointing (for me) story/character development.
That really depends on why she is a war criminal. Since there are very little of her group left, there could be several reasons why. Betraying her own group could also be the case. I am going to wait and see before making any assumptions.
History is written by the victors. She can very well be a war criminal because she just happened to be on the losing side.
Pohl and Sai Fen are banished from Sarnoth. They don’t seem to be on the “winning side”, so their perspective is not necessarily those of the victors.
It shouldn’t affect their relationship with Selkie since she’s not responsible for what her mother did regardless.
Ah, but people can be very judgemental of others simply by association…
Exactly. Don’t punish the child for the sins of the parent, as it were.
Ahhh but people often find blame simply through association…
Even when trying not to.
“War Criminal” could mean lots of different things, we don’t know how rigidly structured their idea of war is. If they have very ritualized war with very specific rules someone could be a war criminal for not following one (they could have a really strict honor code and she did something sneaky). We know their clan has been pretty wiped out, she could have been a guerrilla fighter who did questionable things in the last ditch fighting.
Or she could be some sort of horrible monster, betrayer of her clan and all this “Selkie the Mad Scientist” stuff we’ve mostly giggled at is actually really dark foreshadowing to her mom having built some sort of underwater death-ray and destroyed a town full of people.
HAH, SOMEONE CALLED IT TOTES 2 PAGES AGO 😀
Well, I wasn’t too far off in speculating that Selkie’s family had to have been involved in some pretty awful stuff in order for them to have to give Selkie up…
Guess it really was because they’re more recognized than Selkie, who could have a potential better life by not being associated with them since they wouldn’t necessarily recognize a child.
At least Selkie isn’t a princess. I would’ve hated that clichéd mess.
She still could be though.
Is that really a scale? I’m pretty sure the only possible answers are “Aware” and “Not aware”.
not really as black n’ white (or should it be green and black 😀 ) as that, there is the fact that he knows ABOUT the message, because the one day at the apartment they saw it together, but he doesn’t know about the CONTENT of the message, since he doesn’t understand Sarnothi. combined with the fact that he has NO Bloody Clue as to WHO the heck she IS, OTHER than “Selkie’s Bio-MOM” let alone that she’s a wanted WAR-Criminal in a war that he only found out about a short while ago, almost by accident as well… so basically there’s one point for knowing ABOUT it, but zero for anything else… so, yeah… a two on a scale from one to ten, sounds about right.
it’s a 5. 10 in that he knew about the message, 0 on the “War Criminal” scale.
I really kinda wanna see Todd apologize to selkie for her indiscretion out of the side of his mouth, still shocked, heh.
Oh god I was hoping I was wrong. This is so bad. Poor Selkie. I can’t believe her mother is this.
Is what? “War criminal” is an extremely broad term, and could be even broader if something got lost in translation between Sarnothi & English (probably not on the second part, but still fully possible)
Worse case scenario: she committed genocide/somehow directly caused genocide.
“Best” case scenario: she was publicly blamed for some atrocity she didn’t commit (got to have those scapegoats) because she was high profile enough that she would be easily recognized, but not high enough to have any real supporters.
Or, what I personally think is most likely scenario: war criminal isn’t being used the same way it is in English; less “broke Geneva convention” more “protested the government, & it’s a dictatorship”
But, whatever the case may be, we’ll find out soon.
…..wooooow. Could it be that I guessed this on a whim and was worried something bad could happen to Selkie because of it? Not like people could be horribly petty and harm a child for the sins of their parents right.
But thank you for this. Feels a bit condescending. But thanks. -_-
@Dave, i love how you remembered to do the detail of Sai Fen’s shirt and pants being wet from the water-bubble, but around her face is a green blob that looks kinda like a piece of seaweed hanging off of her chin, is that intentional? or something else? it doesn’t look like one of their facial markings, even though it’s the same color, because in other views there isn’t anything there.
I think its water dripping from her chin
Looks blue to me… I think it’s dripping water.
It’s water reflecting light from the hologram.
Pohl and Sai Fen are reacting to the shock of recognizing Plo Quar. They can’t be really listening to the content of the “hidden message.” The part that Selkie translated, at any rate, is all about wanting to keep Selkie safe; if they were paying attention, they’d have more sense than to use a term like “war criminal” in front of Selkie.
Whereas… Selkie isn’t quite listening to what Pohl is saying, not yet. She’s still happily sharing the sight of her mother with her friend Sai Fen.
These two mindsets are about to collide in… three… two… one…
On the next page: BOOM!
Define “war criminal” – Plo Quar was a member of the group that got wiped out in an act of genocide.
I think they mean by their government’s standards. Not their own.
Yea, because they themselves advocated genocide on humans. The whole situation wasn’t black and white.
They advocated a response, possible military. I can’t recall anything in the comic suggesting that the Jin Sorai were pushing for the extermination of humanity.
“War criminal” depends on who won the war.
I’m pretty sure the Japanese would have happily hung Harry Truman as a war criminal.
And to those of us down here with long memories, Sherman and Butler were war criminals. Yankees, on t’other hand, consider ’em heroes.
I don’t know about all Yanks, but I thought literally demolishing the South was overkill.
In both cases it was an act meant to limit/prevent a prolonged conflict by yes a massive show of force. In addition the decimation of the South by Sherman also sought to force troops to surrender faster because they would lack supplies for prolonged fighting.
We tried a more “proportional” warfare approach in Vietnam and Korea and in both cases it failed, in Vietnam pretty spectacularly.
My post further down in the thread was supposed to be a response here. Sorry!
I think the better question is, who down here in the comments knew about Selkie having a message from a war criminal?
Also scale from 1 to 10.
Well, I knew she had a message from her mother, but I had no idea it was from a war criminal.
I don’t know how that would translate onto a scale from 1 to 10. Somewhere between 1 and 4 maybe?
The plot thickens!
Or… Is it possible that the twins look exactly alike, and the war criminal is actually Fing Mar? Seems unlikely, since Plo Quar is the one who took such drastic action, but I guess we’ll find out in the next episode.
Pohl seems to have forgotten that Selkie hasn’t yet been told that there *was* a war.
Wait, who’s Fing Mar? When was Plo Quar revealed to be a twin??
I’m always surprised and pleased when readers remember small details like Fing Mar (thank you, sleepyrobin!).
Fing Mar (The twin sister of Selkie’s mother) was mentioned, for the first and only time, here, in the semi-secret Transcript commentaries. She’s canon, but not yet mentioned in the strip itself.
How does twinning work with an oviparous species? Two eggs, or two babies in one egg?
“It wasn’t me! It was my evil twin! Didn’t you see the goatee?”
I sometimes get my beard trimmed into a very neat goatee for halloween and go as my evil twin. That’s usually good for a laugh.
i did that recently for a sci-fi convention party this year, i went as a Mirror, Mirror universe version of myself… my roommate was bit creeped out by it, considering that i normally have salt and pepper, brown colored hair and i dyed my hair, beard and ‘stache all black for this…
Outside of work, I’m a suit man. I love suits and take care of mine. So when I do the goatee, I can look rather sinister and devil like. Especially when I add some devil horns and shave my head. So evil twin can easily get out of control.
I normally have a goatee, so I’m not sure how I would pull off the “evil twin” look. Maybe I could go as my GOOD twin?
Nah, double goatee. You shave a smaller goatee into your goatee. It’s goatees all the way down.
Goatee squared! Make it a full goateeception.
aooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh now we’re getting really interesting!!!!!
Well now that explains why Selkie’s Mum left her at the orphanage. a HUMAN orphanage no less.
0.0. War Criminal?
I get the impression that THIS is the real reason why Agent Brown wanted Selkie to be their pet project for complete assimilation. If she could fit in with humans and know nothing of her own background, it might keep the Sarnothi from being recognized by society and they’d just be seen as folks with some weird medical issues. It would also keep people from learning that Sarnothi were fleeing their habitat due to a war that may possibly be genocidal.
Except Selkie’s now discovering her heritage, and just learned something HUGE regarding Plo Quar…
Fetch the popcorn!
Pohl, you really gotta watch what you say in front of Selkie. She doesn’t know anything about the war, remember?
Whoa! That’s a huge reveal! Given what we know if the situation could she be infiltration the human species with a plan to harm them from within as a (dare I say it) terrorist?
If she did/is doing something really bad/evil this would negate the issue of Todd having to give Selkie back if her mom returns.
infiltration = infiltrating! Gah! Scampers off to get coffee.
Well… That escalated quickly.
Also, love the wet highlights on Sai Fen’s skin.
So, placing my guess now: Plo Quar’s killed humans. Humans who, of course, had no idea there WAS a war going on, and thus were innocents. Government granted amnesty only if she gave up her own child for the assimilation project, which to reduce the chances of her daughter living constantly on the run and being recognized by other Sarnothi and facing retribution, Plo Quar agreed to.
If so, that makes the chronic mishandling of her case with things like the not bothering to communicate with the lost child who didn’t speak the language and the TRIAL AND ERROR FOOD TESTING a lot more damning to Agent Brown, because you do not subject a child to that shit because of who her mother was.
I think the government became aware of selkie only after she was placed in the orphanage.
Wow, what a twist. That’s not sarcasm by the way.
You’re right. Pohl and Sai Fen are from the winning side in the Sarnothi civil war. Plo Quar and her daughter whom we know as Selkie are from the tribe that was almost completely wiped out. What does the winning side pretty much always do after a war? Especially when they’ve done something that an outsider might call genocide…? They justify what they did to win — by stressing how very, very horrible the enemy was.
They may, of course, be somewhat right. Some enemies are doing horrible things and have to be stopped. Sometimes there is no choice but to do something horrible in return. But the emphasis is always on how bad the enemy was, and the point of view is never impartial. If the winner is dealing with sickening guilt over genocide, then the enemy HAS to have deserved it.
Bottom line: It seems here that Pohl totally buys his side’s point of view. As readers who want the real truth, we really have to treat him as an unreliable witness.
Uh, this was meant to be a reply to Alpo, above. My browser crashed, and when it restarted it preserved the text of my message (YAY!), but not where the reply was supposed to go (BOO!).
Actually, Pohl isnt on the winning side. He abandoned all sides of the war when he fled the city.
Not a soldier, no. He’s a civilian, and a refugee from the conflict. However, being a refugee doesn’t mean you stop having opinions.
I just went back and re-read the part where Pohl tells Todd about the civil war. No, he doesn’t seem to like the Sar’Teri for what they did to quell the rebellion, but now it seems he is even angrier at (at least one of) the Jin’Sorai. We’ll really have to wait to find out why.
Pohl’s not a Sar’teri though. He’s from another clan (I don’t remember its name.) And he definitely thinks what happened to the Jin’sorai is terrible.
A thought (and speculated spoilers)… Since her mom is alive and it seems obvious she’s hiding because she’s a “criminal” is it possible that Selkie ends up returning to her? Could Amanda being Todd’s daughter have happened to soften the heartache that Selkie will be leaving him and create create symbolism to show how we are all connected? It really seemed odd the plot took that direction (Amanda turning out to be Todd’s kid—that kind of event could be a story all to itself), but I could see it making more sense if Selkie did end up back with her mom.
Yeah, he’ll hook up with Andi again and him, her and Amanda will be a happy little family.
That’s a trope I hope it doesn’t take. Honestly, I’m hoping she doesn’t leave them either. There’s so many adoption stories that end that way. But it is all strange—especially since someone pointed out a strip or two back that Selkie’s mom was walking around in the background of a building Todd’s siblings were at.
I totally had more written in that last comment that didn’t go through.
Anyways… I do hope Selkie reunites with her mom, but I don’t know how I feel about her leaving with her mom. I feel like her mother intended to return to her, but somehow… it just didn’t end up that way. I don’t know if I’d be happy or sad if her mother came back for her. It’s not like her mother doesn’t deserve her, but that’d be so sad for poor Todd…
That happens to me all the time! Or I terribly mistype something. I feel the same way, and I bet you are totally right about her mom having meant to return earlier. Perhaps she didn’t realize the US government (outside of the orphanage) was going to get involved? One thing I really love about this comic is it is not predictable, but the characters have remained in character and the story lines have been very good. It has a lot of layers to it (insert Shrek joke).
More evidence for my long held theory that Selkie’s being hidden for whatever reason. I doubt this will negatively affect the relationship with the De’madieas, on account of not blaming the kid for the parent’s crimes and not knowing if they mean “the Sar’Teri say she’s a war criminal” or “holy FISHCRAP do you KNOW what this woman did?!”
The message from what I can see looks something like “Help me Obi Wan Kinobi. You’re my only hope.” 🙂
I’m glad I’m not the only person who thought that. XD
Selkie honey i know you’re happy to see your mother, but maybe after hearing about the criminal criminal part… maybe don’t smile.
I think she’s too busy staring at her mom, but how knows? Maybe it’s a joy to find out her mom could be a mad scientist, too. XD
I’m pretty sure what Pohl said hasn’t even registered yet.
Next page, that’s when she’ll do the double take. “War… WHATS, now?”
If this were Todd’s dinner, I’d say he doesn’t need any more on his plate.
Awww I was hoping it was a lost friend……
Welp, I did not see that coming. At all. O_O My chips were on “Sarnothi Princess”. Although, that might not be ruled out, still…
There’s a thought which has been nagging me:
WHY, OH WHY make a communication device which only activates when the intended recipient is AWAY FROM IT? WHO DEVISED SUCH A THING? WHY?!?
My mind hurts. Please help me. I love you,
Dellis
Its not a communication device. The purpose of it is to protect selkie, how I dont know, so its not supposed to be away from its intended recipient. If it is, then comes the message that sellie shouldnt do that.
Well, it’s true it may have a protective primary function, that’s true, it soothes my ache a bit, but the message itself is addressed to Selkie, and only activates when Selkie’s not near. That cannot be right! xD
It would have been best to make it so it activates when Selkie comes BACK in the device range! Why make it so that it starts speaking when she’s not able to listen? (And others who shouldn’t may?)
Oh why!
Maybe in hopes to catch her before she got too far away?
Based on his expression, I’d go for -1