I feel like Pohl’s reaction here is a bit off, I doubt he’d call her insane, that seems very unadult and out of character. I feel like his response should be more calm like:
“Selkie, no, you must not tell ANYONE about this, Sarnoth is a secret from most humans and talking about your mother could put YOU and those around you at risk. Do you understand?”
Or “No Selkie, you must not tell anyone! Sarnoth is a secret from humans, we have to keep it that way for now at least. Please promise me you won’t talk about this.”
I think he’s acting in character for someone who 1. Got a huge shock (Selkie being her mother’s daughter) 2. Just had a baby.
I’m sure his mind isn’t necessarily processing at ‘doctor speeds’… I hope that makes sense 🙂 my brain is tired
Really? You think a mature and knowledgeable grown adult is going to react to a 10 year old girl by shouting “ARE YOU INSANE” at her? Man, I would hate to see what the adults around you behave like if you think thats even remotely reasonably even under the most surprising circumstances, especially from a man who has acted with incredible calmness up to this point.
I think he’s well and truly scared. An abyss has opened. Look at what he says: Sarnoth is a secret. There’s a delicate balance with the human authorities. There’s a war. Loose lips sink ships and all that. Suddenly the safety of all the Sarnothi refugees could be put at risk by a lapse of discretion in an impulsive eight (EIGHT, not ten) year old girl.
I don’t know what the adults around you are like, but pretty much all the ones I’ve ever met would shout when seeing a sudden danger. If a kid were about to chase a ball out onto a busy freeway, for instance… As for his exact choice of wording, it clearly takes him a moment to remember that no, Selkie probably does NOT know how dangerous her idea is.
To be fair, we have no idea how much of a over reaction it really is. We know there is a war, we also know that Selkie’s Mom was considered a “war hero” and that her Mother had to give her up to keep her safe.
How much in danger is Selkie really? If her Mother is still alive, if the war is still ongoing, there might be folks who would do anything to either hurt or get to her Mother, that includes using her child.
All it would take is for Selkie to tell a few people her mother is a war hero. Those people don’t need to believe her, all they have to do is casually mention it in front of the wrong people, the information spreads and soon enough the wrong people know about her, or even her location.
With that being said, I also don’t think it’s a good idea to keep her bow to try and figure out how it’s keeping her safe. For all anyone knows, it very much really is and separating her from that device could be the start of tragic events.
English probably isn’t Pohl’s first language. He may have simply meant crazy and mistranslated it. While the meanings are similar, crazy makes more sense given the context altho insane would be a good second choice for someone who learned english as a second language.
Wait, genuine question from a non-native English speaker here: so what is the exact difference (in level of civility or otherwise) between “crazy” and “insane”? I always thought these two were largely synonyms, with “insane” being possibly more formal even.
They’re similar but not quite the same. Insane denotes behavior that could get someone tossed into an insane asylum back in the day and is still an acceptable legal defense. Crazy started out as slang for insane but now unofficially denotes behavior that someone might not consider normal but isn’t on the same level as legal insanity.
Now that insane asylums are no longer the boogeyman threat they once were and mental disorders are getting their own medical labeling system, insane is moving into territory crazy used to occupy. However, there’s still something of an informal graduating scale starting at a little off to strange/weird to crazy to insane and ending with legally insane/psychotic.
While crazy still can occasionally sub for insane, context usually involves someone who actually is engaging in a pattern of insane behaviors.
Given Pohl is a doctor and english isn’t his first language, it’s perfectly understandable he’d default to insane first and it really isn’t technically incorrect.
However, crazy is still the more common go to word for situations like this where slang hyperbole is in action (at least around here), particularly when there has been no prior behavioral pattern to suspect genuine insanity in action. Ergo, Pohl comes off sounding a little more emphatic than he may have intended here.
As with most things, ymmv depending on age and location.
I have a bad feeling about the keeping of the ribbon. While I am unqualified to take sides on the relative hero / war criminal nature of the Sarnoth people, I can’t help but worry that Pohl does NOT have Selkie’s mother’s (or Selkies’) best intentions in mind while ‘studying’ the ribbon and its technology.
Pohl is no longer associated with his former people, so to speak. So truthfully he’s probably just attempting to figure out what Selkie’s mother is trying to keep her safe from, like he says. He’s got no gain to try and locate where her mother is so he can ‘turn her in’ or anything. Besides, Pohl is curious by nature.
I agree with you that Pohl probably means well. All the same, this does have the potential to go wrong. Whatever danger the bow is designed to keep her safe from, she won’t be protected from it while he’s studying it.
And… I mean. Come on. A person is warned very mysteriously and dramatically never, ever to do a certain thing. Then they go ahead and let someone persuade them to do that exact thing and it is ALWAYS a disaster. Todd, you’re right there in the room. You’ve read stories, you’ve watched movies and TV. Put your foot down!
If you have a proactive doodad that’s keeping the child safe, and it is removed from the child for a long enough period of time (and remember, Selkie has recently been warned not to remove it), the doodad might decide the child has been forcibly removed from its sphere of protection, and go looking for her.
Having Selkie in the living room and the bow in the office – far enough away that the bow will activate, but close enough that if it suddenly starts going all Terminator she can quickly be fetched to stop it – would seem to make more sense than having her and it on opposite sides of town.
It’s simpler than that — if a device is protecting you from something, then letting someone else have it for a while means that it is no longer protecting you! Seems insane to do that…
We have seen Selkie’s mother before in comics around this particular community. What if the bow actually just summons her to make sure her little one is OK? I can see a line of process here – “I have to give my child into protective custody to help free all these other people from a place where they will be hunted down. I need to know she’s OK, and I won’t be able to contact her – but what if I could make a way around that”
And before you say no self-respecting parent would give their child away – we have seen it before in wartimes. World War II comes to mind for a lot – and not just those that were victims. Even in the UK families would send children to places far away while the parents would volunteer to go fight (and now I’m going to think of the first few chapter of Lion Witch and Wardrobe)
Not worried about the Pohls, they have been shown as nothing but good people, don’t think they’d intentionally do anything to harm Selkie.
Giving away the bow might be dangerous, but then so might be keeping it, they have no idea what it does which is kind of the point, figuring it out is the right step here, they have no reason to just take the hologram’s word on this.
Wasn’t the day Selkie forgot her bow the day she was anxious and acted out rather violently? Perhaps the bow inhibits her somehow in order to keep her from becoming feral?
If Sarnoth is such a secret, why do we have Sarnothi just wandering around out in the open, in a world filled with video recorders and cameras in everyone’s pocket? If someone saw one of them, the pictures would be all over the internet in the span of an hour, and nobody would be buying the half-assed “skin condition” excuse.
NOOOOOOOO! Selkie, DO NOT PART WITH THE BOW!!! TT_TT My theory is that it’s the only thing warding off some kind of enemy tracking device (maybe a Jin-Sorai-detecting radar thingy?) and if she leaves without it, they will come knocking on her door. With weapons. LOTS of weapons.
…Or maybe it’s a good-luck charm and Sai Fen is superstitious. But still!!!
Neither of those seem right. If it was a anti-tracking device, she wouldn’t be able to be tracked so easily by the government (they detected the bow as Sarnothi technology). In some ways she can be tracked less easily without the weapon than with.
And considering how it’s Sarnothi *technology*, I doubt it’s a good luck charm.
My theory is that it’s some sort of anti-technology technology. It activates when in the presence of Sarnothi technology (remember how it activated when near the water bracelet?).
Maybe Selkie is actually some sort of sleeper agent or a weapon of mass destruction and her bow seals her and prevents her from ‘awakening’ to her true self or some nonsense like that.
Or maybe she suffers from intense migraines and her bow helps with that.
Let Pohl take a look at it; with Selkie present.
That way if Pohl is attacked by it, Selkie is right there to take it back and, hopefully, it will shut down. Or if it calls Selkies’ Mom, She won’t go all berserk on them because Selkie will be there, safe and sound.
Selkie has been separated from it for a short time before, but better safe than ’Sorai.
Keeping the bow could be bad first for the Pohls. I remember the cloaked Sarnoth telling agent Brown that they detected something from Todd’s apartment last time she left it.
Just wanted to throw this out there. As the parent of a 9 yr old, yes, it is absolutely appropriate that Pohl should shout “Are you insane?” given the circumstances.
I’ve uttered the phrase myself and I have been present when other parents have done the same. Sometimes kids minds don’t work the same way as adults and that response seriously seems like the right one.
For those who over reacted and think it will upset a child, trust me, in most cases it’s not a big deal to them. Once you’ve gotten them to pay attention (shock of the shout) most of us then give a slightly calmer explanation of WHY that behavior/decision is one that would be so very very wrong. I’ve never yet seen a kid get upset by the use of the phrase.
I feel like Pohl’s reaction here is a bit off, I doubt he’d call her insane, that seems very unadult and out of character. I feel like his response should be more calm like:
“Selkie, no, you must not tell ANYONE about this, Sarnoth is a secret from most humans and talking about your mother could put YOU and those around you at risk. Do you understand?”
Or “No Selkie, you must not tell anyone! Sarnoth is a secret from humans, we have to keep it that way for now at least. Please promise me you won’t talk about this.”
I think he’s acting in character for someone who 1. Got a huge shock (Selkie being her mother’s daughter) 2. Just had a baby.
I’m sure his mind isn’t necessarily processing at ‘doctor speeds’… I hope that makes sense 🙂 my brain is tired
I agree.
Really? You think a mature and knowledgeable grown adult is going to react to a 10 year old girl by shouting “ARE YOU INSANE” at her? Man, I would hate to see what the adults around you behave like if you think thats even remotely reasonably even under the most surprising circumstances, especially from a man who has acted with incredible calmness up to this point.
I think he’s well and truly scared. An abyss has opened. Look at what he says: Sarnoth is a secret. There’s a delicate balance with the human authorities. There’s a war. Loose lips sink ships and all that. Suddenly the safety of all the Sarnothi refugees could be put at risk by a lapse of discretion in an impulsive eight (EIGHT, not ten) year old girl.
I don’t know what the adults around you are like, but pretty much all the ones I’ve ever met would shout when seeing a sudden danger. If a kid were about to chase a ball out onto a busy freeway, for instance… As for his exact choice of wording, it clearly takes him a moment to remember that no, Selkie probably does NOT know how dangerous her idea is.
Woops. Forgot to turn off the bold. Sorry!
To be fair, we have no idea how much of a over reaction it really is. We know there is a war, we also know that Selkie’s Mom was considered a “war hero” and that her Mother had to give her up to keep her safe.
How much in danger is Selkie really? If her Mother is still alive, if the war is still ongoing, there might be folks who would do anything to either hurt or get to her Mother, that includes using her child.
All it would take is for Selkie to tell a few people her mother is a war hero. Those people don’t need to believe her, all they have to do is casually mention it in front of the wrong people, the information spreads and soon enough the wrong people know about her, or even her location.
With that being said, I also don’t think it’s a good idea to keep her bow to try and figure out how it’s keeping her safe. For all anyone knows, it very much really is and separating her from that device could be the start of tragic events.
English probably isn’t Pohl’s first language. He may have simply meant crazy and mistranslated it. While the meanings are similar, crazy makes more sense given the context altho insane would be a good second choice for someone who learned english as a second language.
Wait, genuine question from a non-native English speaker here: so what is the exact difference (in level of civility or otherwise) between “crazy” and “insane”? I always thought these two were largely synonyms, with “insane” being possibly more formal even.
They’re similar but not quite the same. Insane denotes behavior that could get someone tossed into an insane asylum back in the day and is still an acceptable legal defense. Crazy started out as slang for insane but now unofficially denotes behavior that someone might not consider normal but isn’t on the same level as legal insanity.
Now that insane asylums are no longer the boogeyman threat they once were and mental disorders are getting their own medical labeling system, insane is moving into territory crazy used to occupy. However, there’s still something of an informal graduating scale starting at a little off to strange/weird to crazy to insane and ending with legally insane/psychotic.
While crazy still can occasionally sub for insane, context usually involves someone who actually is engaging in a pattern of insane behaviors.
Given Pohl is a doctor and english isn’t his first language, it’s perfectly understandable he’d default to insane first and it really isn’t technically incorrect.
However, crazy is still the more common go to word for situations like this where slang hyperbole is in action (at least around here), particularly when there has been no prior behavioral pattern to suspect genuine insanity in action. Ergo, Pohl comes off sounding a little more emphatic than he may have intended here.
As with most things, ymmv depending on age and location.
That’s good to learn, thanks!
I have a bad feeling about the keeping of the ribbon. While I am unqualified to take sides on the relative hero / war criminal nature of the Sarnoth people, I can’t help but worry that Pohl does NOT have Selkie’s mother’s (or Selkies’) best intentions in mind while ‘studying’ the ribbon and its technology.
Pohl is no longer associated with his former people, so to speak. So truthfully he’s probably just attempting to figure out what Selkie’s mother is trying to keep her safe from, like he says. He’s got no gain to try and locate where her mother is so he can ‘turn her in’ or anything. Besides, Pohl is curious by nature.
I agree with you that Pohl probably means well. All the same, this does have the potential to go wrong. Whatever danger the bow is designed to keep her safe from, she won’t be protected from it while he’s studying it.
And… I mean. Come on. A person is warned very mysteriously and dramatically never, ever to do a certain thing. Then they go ahead and let someone persuade them to do that exact thing and it is ALWAYS a disaster. Todd, you’re right there in the room. You’ve read stories, you’ve watched movies and TV. Put your foot down!
I also think it’s “not smart” to keep it.
If you have a proactive doodad that’s keeping the child safe, and it is removed from the child for a long enough period of time (and remember, Selkie has recently been warned not to remove it), the doodad might decide the child has been forcibly removed from its sphere of protection, and go looking for her.
Having Selkie in the living room and the bow in the office – far enough away that the bow will activate, but close enough that if it suddenly starts going all Terminator she can quickly be fetched to stop it – would seem to make more sense than having her and it on opposite sides of town.
It’s simpler than that — if a device is protecting you from something, then letting someone else have it for a while means that it is no longer protecting you! Seems insane to do that…
My thoughts exactly. “Ohhh, _that’s_ how it was keeping her safe until we convinced her to leave it with us.”
We have seen Selkie’s mother before in comics around this particular community. What if the bow actually just summons her to make sure her little one is OK? I can see a line of process here – “I have to give my child into protective custody to help free all these other people from a place where they will be hunted down. I need to know she’s OK, and I won’t be able to contact her – but what if I could make a way around that”
And before you say no self-respecting parent would give their child away – we have seen it before in wartimes. World War II comes to mind for a lot – and not just those that were victims. Even in the UK families would send children to places far away while the parents would volunteer to go fight (and now I’m going to think of the first few chapter of Lion Witch and Wardrobe)
Not worried about the Pohls, they have been shown as nothing but good people, don’t think they’d intentionally do anything to harm Selkie.
Giving away the bow might be dangerous, but then so might be keeping it, they have no idea what it does which is kind of the point, figuring it out is the right step here, they have no reason to just take the hologram’s word on this.
No, not INTENTIONALLY.
I still foresee unfortunate, and unintended, consequence.
Wasn’t the day Selkie forgot her bow the day she was anxious and acted out rather violently? Perhaps the bow inhibits her somehow in order to keep her from becoming feral?
If Sarnoth is such a secret, why do we have Sarnothi just wandering around out in the open, in a world filled with video recorders and cameras in everyone’s pocket? If someone saw one of them, the pictures would be all over the internet in the span of an hour, and nobody would be buying the half-assed “skin condition” excuse.
Nobody thought this universe through.
Yes, but genies ARE Djinn
They are, by definition A=A, therefor, it’s still a dirt apple, whether yu say poTAYto, or poTAHto. Let’s call the whole thing off.
Djinn’Sorai.
Gin Sore-eye: “Made only in the best bathtubs in Schenectady!”
‘this is keeping you safe lets take it away from you’
why not: ‘this is keeping you safe, how about you come in and hang out nearby while i check it out for a couple weekends’
NOOOOOOOO! Selkie, DO NOT PART WITH THE BOW!!! TT_TT My theory is that it’s the only thing warding off some kind of enemy tracking device (maybe a Jin-Sorai-detecting radar thingy?) and if she leaves without it, they will come knocking on her door. With weapons. LOTS of weapons.
…Or maybe it’s a good-luck charm and Sai Fen is superstitious. But still!!!
Neither of those seem right. If it was a anti-tracking device, she wouldn’t be able to be tracked so easily by the government (they detected the bow as Sarnothi technology). In some ways she can be tracked less easily without the weapon than with.
And considering how it’s Sarnothi *technology*, I doubt it’s a good luck charm.
My theory is that it’s some sort of anti-technology technology. It activates when in the presence of Sarnothi technology (remember how it activated when near the water bracelet?).
Maybe Selkie is actually some sort of sleeper agent or a weapon of mass destruction and her bow seals her and prevents her from ‘awakening’ to her true self or some nonsense like that.
Or maybe she suffers from intense migraines and her bow helps with that.
Let Pohl take a look at it; with Selkie present.
That way if Pohl is attacked by it, Selkie is right there to take it back and, hopefully, it will shut down. Or if it calls Selkies’ Mom, She won’t go all berserk on them because Selkie will be there, safe and sound.
Selkie has been separated from it for a short time before, but better safe than ’Sorai.
Keeping the bow could be bad first for the Pohls. I remember the cloaked Sarnoth telling agent Brown that they detected something from Todd’s apartment last time she left it.
Think that was the green magic it’s emitting. Seeing how the Pohls use it already it shouldn’t trigger any sensors for them.
Their names are the Da’Madiea’s not Pohl. Pohl’s NAME is Pohl.
Just wanted to throw this out there. As the parent of a 9 yr old, yes, it is absolutely appropriate that Pohl should shout “Are you insane?” given the circumstances.
I’ve uttered the phrase myself and I have been present when other parents have done the same. Sometimes kids minds don’t work the same way as adults and that response seriously seems like the right one.
For those who over reacted and think it will upset a child, trust me, in most cases it’s not a big deal to them. Once you’ve gotten them to pay attention (shock of the shout) most of us then give a slightly calmer explanation of WHY that behavior/decision is one that would be so very very wrong. I’ve never yet seen a kid get upset by the use of the phrase.