“I don’t know the reason for it” is not at all the same as “there is no reason for it”.
Also,
“There must be a reason for it” is not the same as “let’s not bother to examine what that reason might be, and perhaps re-evaluate the need for it in light of our new understanding.”
Well done, Todd. You’ve dodged the pitfalls of both dismissive ignorance and blind faith.
I’m commenting mostly on how “we want to understand how it works” should not be used to either stop it working, or potentially destroy it.
Killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, and all that. (Not the perfect metaphor, as that motive was greed, but similar: Things are easier to take apart than to put back together.)
Hey, update on Tiny Box Tim Day: Went over small but enjoyable, likely more participation next year. One guy raised 25 pounds (~$34) for charity 🙂 I gave a box to a homeless guy I know (who found it useful enough to keep almost everything — especially liked the little water bottle), and helped my nephews and niece purchase supplies and put together boxes we haven’t yet found recipients for (though, sadly, there’s more than enough homeless people within a three-city radius to make that task easy).
And although Dave was the first I reached out to as thanks for inspiring me, I actually contacted several webcomic artists to thank them for specific things about their comics, and one of them (the guy who does Erfworld) not only responded to my letter by donating to ShelterBox (apparently Erfworld’s charity of choice), but says next year if I remind him in time they’ll see about doing something more official for Tiny Box Tim Day.
I don’t know how many people participated in the event without adding to the Twitter hashtag, but I got a fair amount of encouragement and over 80 views, which is pretty big for me this early in the history of my channel. For any of those views that came from this comic’s readers, thank you so much 😀
Anyway, just wanted to cap this little adventure with a summation. Any new info will probably make it to my Twitter (which you can find through the hashtag easily enough) and might end up in a YouTube video eventually. And I guess that’s it until next year 😀
Some of us don’t count as traitors! Well, us viking/indian blooded. We count as both invader and invaded at the same time. It’s a very weird heritage. But happy blow up the nation with small explosives day everyone!
I’ve… never actually seen someone who shares that heritage with me. I was starting to think that, as statistically impossible as it sounds, I was the only one.
My mother’s side is very strongly viking. In fact, that entire side of the family are in fact came over here three generations back, with some coming in as soon as two generations away and I learned a lot of the old country directly from them.
Meanwhile my father’s side dealt so much in indian tribes and intermarriage that there’s more blood from the tribes in Oklahoma than there is white person there.
I too thought I was the only one with that mixed blood. Oh well.
Same. Mother’s side is of various viking genetics. Father is from local tribes. Don’t ask me exactly which ones, however, cause the only time I met the man, within five minutes we were threatening to kill each other.
Don’t worry about how unique the heritage is, we’ll probably go the rest of our lives without speaking to anyone else who shares it.
Yeah, but admit it, it’s kinda fun that someone out there with you can say that holding a raid is a fine and proud tradition of our people and people can’t really disagree. RAID!
How am I sure you’re not all just some weird fractured collection of shadow archetypes and I’m not drooling on myself while I sit in a wheelchair in some hospital?
*sigh* Oh Pohl, so innocent. When has “authority” ever stopped political “A”s from secretly trying to “dispose” of people?. Especially oppressive “leaders”
Looking like his eyes were going to pop out when he heard they were going to breastfeed, and yelling and Selkie. I think I remember him yelling at Poh, too. He just has seemed like a jumpy spazbot in this arc. Not out of character considering all he’s been going through, but annoying.
Also, he was an oblivious fool with not watching closely when Selkie and Amanda were together. His mom even called him on it. Once again. Not out of character. He was a bit of an oblivious dweeb when Andi was pregnant so that is his weakness/blindspot, but it’s made me want to reach through the screen and metaphorically pop him on the head. 🙂
Or, you recognize that “un” as a prefix never gets melded into the following letter. It’s not “un ecessary.”
The “its” thing is weird because, although “my, your, his, her, its” don’t have any apostrophes, “Bob’s and Alice’s” do, and people work from that basis. If our apostrophe weren’t pulling double duty (possessive and contraction), this likely wouldn’t be such a problem in our brains.
Pohl has a point to though, as far as anyone knows, it’s keeping her safe from a nonexistent threat. Well, that is, if it concerns anything to do with their people… Todd also blindly believes this thing is somehow protecting her even though he has no grounds for that aside from what it tells him. Honestly, neither one of them are really wrong here.
Still betting the bow somehow inhibits Selkie and keeps her from going nuts or something. Which, if that’s the case, it’d be bad to take her from it and would make sense as to why her mom wouldn’t specify what it’s keeping her safe from… because if Selkie found out it was keeping her safe from herself. She’d automatically assume she has awesome powers and take it off just to see. Also it’d potentially make her sad if she found out.
If it’s a non-existent threat, why would Plo Quar be walking around on the surface in this supposedly “safe” human world (we’ve seen her in the background), and yet she has never dared to reclaim Selkie from the orphanage? Pohl is right so far as he knows, but he doesn’t really know a lot, does he? He’s been uncritically accepting what he’s heard in Sarnoth’s mass media. He has to be wrong. There is a danger. We don’t yet know what it is, but something has to be going on, and we are going to find out what.
But you might be on to something with your theory. I don’t have time to find the reference in the archives, but when Pohl was first telling Sai Fen about Selkie, she asked something like, “Has she awakened yet?” I don’t remember the exact wording. With what we know now, that was probably a reference to the ability to connect (via her thoughts?) to the green and black Sarnothi technology. Children aren’t born able to do it – Suko can’t. It comes with maturity, and Selkie might be about the right age for this ability to kick in.
So… what the bow might be doing is suppressing manifestation of that ability. Possibly an unsupervised awakening would make her very conspicuous to the wrong people — dangerous people who are active on the surface, and who could well harm or kidnap Selkie to get at Plo Quar.
…well, as far as I know. She does show a certain amount of tinkerer and mad scientist mindset, as well as the seed for potential villainy, so… never mind, I think I may have talked myself out of that point.
I would be very hesitant to ask agent Brown if he has knowledge of it, but maybe a fishing expedition with Lillian Haversham-Zhang would be informative.
now take that to the OTHER end of the spectrum… if there are entire strips where huge Walls’O’Text are being spoken by multiple characters, BUT NONE of them OPEN their mouths, and are shown with closed lips, for all that time. then you’ll be commenting on THAT, since nobody can constantly talk WITHOUT opening their mouths… so it’s basically just an art choice… and it just goes to show that you can’t please EVERYBODY… sorry…
@Seros Senric: same here, but it doesn’t CHANGE my enjoyment OF the comic for me… does it do that for you? i hope not…
I can not even BEGIN to tell you all the ways seeing comics where characters are CLEARLY speaking dialogue, yet their facial expression is completely close-mouthed, aggravates the shit out of me. #stopthatshit
If a character is talking in a panel, they need to be making some expression with their mouth to indicate that it is in motion for talking.
However, the “it’s just open” expression is either uninformed/unpracticed/amateur, or just plain lazy.
I learned a while ago that you can go for five base types, based on the Japanese vowels: ah (lax / wide open), ee (narrow lips spread wide, like if you’re clenching your teeth), oo (tightly rounded lips), eh (halfway between ah and ee), and oh (loosely rounded lips, or lips scrunched together on the sides but where the opening is tall). These work with various overall expressions.
There’s also the use of visible consonants, most notably F/V (biting your lower lip). You generally figure out the spot within the dialog that wants the most emphasis or meshes the most with the on-screen action, and choose the most notable vowel (or visible consonant) from that word, modified for emotions.
If there’s multiple expressions within a single bit of dialog, you almost always want to separate it between panels. Can’t tell you how off-putting it is to have an expression be at odds with part of the dialog because it’s made for only half of what is being said.
You go, Todd! Common sense prevails!
I love stories that avoid idiot balls when they’re not necessary. People who react in reasonable ways most of the time are well-written characters.
“Ah, this ‘shield’ thing says it protects you somehow. Let me remove it for a while and get back to you on how it’s doing that.”
Though, still, not out of keeping with a tinkerer who thinks a bit oddly now and then. I love Pohl 😀
“I don’t know the reason for it” is not at all the same as “there is no reason for it”.
Also,
“There must be a reason for it” is not the same as “let’s not bother to examine what that reason might be, and perhaps re-evaluate the need for it in light of our new understanding.”
Well done, Todd. You’ve dodged the pitfalls of both dismissive ignorance and blind faith.
I’m commenting mostly on how “we want to understand how it works” should not be used to either stop it working, or potentially destroy it.
Killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, and all that. (Not the perfect metaphor, as that motive was greed, but similar: Things are easier to take apart than to put back together.)
Yay! The obvious problem was addressed~
Aaaand added that image from the transcript to my desktop rotation.
I put it on my Facebook page with a link to this comic and attribution.
I’m glad Todd saw things the way I saw them. Smart thinking!
It’s a cloaking device. One that keeps Selkie off the sarnothi radar so she isn’t found and harmed. For either her mother’s “crimes” or as bait.
Hey, update on Tiny Box Tim Day: Went over small but enjoyable, likely more participation next year. One guy raised 25 pounds (~$34) for charity 🙂 I gave a box to a homeless guy I know (who found it useful enough to keep almost everything — especially liked the little water bottle), and helped my nephews and niece purchase supplies and put together boxes we haven’t yet found recipients for (though, sadly, there’s more than enough homeless people within a three-city radius to make that task easy).
And although Dave was the first I reached out to as thanks for inspiring me, I actually contacted several webcomic artists to thank them for specific things about their comics, and one of them (the guy who does Erfworld) not only responded to my letter by donating to ShelterBox (apparently Erfworld’s charity of choice), but says next year if I remind him in time they’ll see about doing something more official for Tiny Box Tim Day.
I don’t know how many people participated in the event without adding to the Twitter hashtag, but I got a fair amount of encouragement and over 80 views, which is pretty big for me this early in the history of my channel. For any of those views that came from this comic’s readers, thank you so much 😀
Anyway, just wanted to cap this little adventure with a summation. Any new info will probably make it to my Twitter (which you can find through the hashtag easily enough) and might end up in a YouTube video eventually. And I guess that’s it until next year 😀
Some of us don’t count as traitors! Well, us viking/indian blooded. We count as both invader and invaded at the same time. It’s a very weird heritage. But happy blow up the nation with small explosives day everyone!
I’ve… never actually seen someone who shares that heritage with me. I was starting to think that, as statistically impossible as it sounds, I was the only one.
My mother’s side is very strongly viking. In fact, that entire side of the family are in fact came over here three generations back, with some coming in as soon as two generations away and I learned a lot of the old country directly from them.
Meanwhile my father’s side dealt so much in indian tribes and intermarriage that there’s more blood from the tribes in Oklahoma than there is white person there.
I too thought I was the only one with that mixed blood. Oh well.
Same. Mother’s side is of various viking genetics. Father is from local tribes. Don’t ask me exactly which ones, however, cause the only time I met the man, within five minutes we were threatening to kill each other.
Don’t worry about how unique the heritage is, we’ll probably go the rest of our lives without speaking to anyone else who shares it.
Yeah, but admit it, it’s kinda fun that someone out there with you can say that holding a raid is a fine and proud tradition of our people and people can’t really disagree. RAID!
Are you two sure you aren’t actually the same person?
How am I sure you’re not all just some weird fractured collection of shadow archetypes and I’m not drooling on myself while I sit in a wheelchair in some hospital?
*sigh* Oh Pohl, so innocent. When has “authority” ever stopped political “A”s from secretly trying to “dispose” of people?. Especially oppressive “leaders”
Oooo… Finally! Todd showed some common sense in this arc. It is good to see him grounded again. 🙂
How was he not grounded earlier?
Looking like his eyes were going to pop out when he heard they were going to breastfeed, and yelling and Selkie. I think I remember him yelling at Poh, too. He just has seemed like a jumpy spazbot in this arc. Not out of character considering all he’s been going through, but annoying.
Also, he was an oblivious fool with not watching closely when Selkie and Amanda were together. His mom even called him on it. Once again. Not out of character. He was a bit of an oblivious dweeb when Andi was pregnant so that is his weakness/blindspot, but it’s made me want to reach through the screen and metaphorically pop him on the head. 🙂
Panel 3: “it’s functions”. Possessive its never splits.
Panel 4: A second “n” is necessary in “unnecessary”.
Or, you recognize that “un” as a prefix never gets melded into the following letter. It’s not “un ecessary.”
The “its” thing is weird because, although “my, your, his, her, its” don’t have any apostrophes, “Bob’s and Alice’s” do, and people work from that basis. If our apostrophe weren’t pulling double duty (possessive and contraction), this likely wouldn’t be such a problem in our brains.
Joining the applause for Todd. Hooray for common sense!
Pohl has a point to though, as far as anyone knows, it’s keeping her safe from a nonexistent threat. Well, that is, if it concerns anything to do with their people… Todd also blindly believes this thing is somehow protecting her even though he has no grounds for that aside from what it tells him. Honestly, neither one of them are really wrong here.
Still betting the bow somehow inhibits Selkie and keeps her from going nuts or something. Which, if that’s the case, it’d be bad to take her from it and would make sense as to why her mom wouldn’t specify what it’s keeping her safe from… because if Selkie found out it was keeping her safe from herself. She’d automatically assume she has awesome powers and take it off just to see. Also it’d potentially make her sad if she found out.
If it’s a non-existent threat, why would Plo Quar be walking around on the surface in this supposedly “safe” human world (we’ve seen her in the background), and yet she has never dared to reclaim Selkie from the orphanage? Pohl is right so far as he knows, but he doesn’t really know a lot, does he? He’s been uncritically accepting what he’s heard in Sarnoth’s mass media. He has to be wrong. There is a danger. We don’t yet know what it is, but something has to be going on, and we are going to find out what.
But you might be on to something with your theory. I don’t have time to find the reference in the archives, but when Pohl was first telling Sai Fen about Selkie, she asked something like, “Has she awakened yet?” I don’t remember the exact wording. With what we know now, that was probably a reference to the ability to connect (via her thoughts?) to the green and black Sarnothi technology. Children aren’t born able to do it – Suko can’t. It comes with maturity, and Selkie might be about the right age for this ability to kick in.
So… what the bow might be doing is suppressing manifestation of that ability. Possibly an unsupervised awakening would make her very conspicuous to the wrong people — dangerous people who are active on the surface, and who could well harm or kidnap Selkie to get at Plo Quar.
Spring Pop, she’s not a Heterodyne.
…well, as far as I know. She does show a certain amount of tinkerer and mad scientist mindset, as well as the seed for potential villainy, so… never mind, I think I may have talked myself out of that point.
I LOVE this comic, especially how mature it is (in subject and depth), so I want to know what you read!
What do you read, Dave?
Books work too.
I would also be interested in a reading list (and a viewing list) from Dave.
Though the webcomics list is… somewhere around here, I swear it was. I just can’t find it. Huh.
I would be very hesitant to ask agent Brown if he has knowledge of it, but maybe a fishing expedition with Lillian Haversham-Zhang would be informative.
Serious question:
Why does everyone in this comic talk exclusively like they’re a surprised emoji?
:O
:O
:O
People don’t just talk with gaping mouths. I think you should work on that, Dave.
For expressiveness, mostly.
Dylan, I dislike your comment because until I read it, I had not noticed that.
Now it’s all I can see.
now take that to the OTHER end of the spectrum… if there are entire strips where huge Walls’O’Text are being spoken by multiple characters, BUT NONE of them OPEN their mouths, and are shown with closed lips, for all that time. then you’ll be commenting on THAT, since nobody can constantly talk WITHOUT opening their mouths… so it’s basically just an art choice… and it just goes to show that you can’t please EVERYBODY… sorry…
@Seros Senric: same here, but it doesn’t CHANGE my enjoyment OF the comic for me… does it do that for you? i hope not…
I can not even BEGIN to tell you all the ways seeing comics where characters are CLEARLY speaking dialogue, yet their facial expression is completely close-mouthed, aggravates the shit out of me. #stopthatshit
Well, those aren’t the only options.
If a character is talking in a panel, they need to be making some expression with their mouth to indicate that it is in motion for talking.
However, the “it’s just open” expression is either uninformed/unpracticed/amateur, or just plain lazy.
I learned a while ago that you can go for five base types, based on the Japanese vowels: ah (lax / wide open), ee (narrow lips spread wide, like if you’re clenching your teeth), oo (tightly rounded lips), eh (halfway between ah and ee), and oh (loosely rounded lips, or lips scrunched together on the sides but where the opening is tall). These work with various overall expressions.
There’s also the use of visible consonants, most notably F/V (biting your lower lip). You generally figure out the spot within the dialog that wants the most emphasis or meshes the most with the on-screen action, and choose the most notable vowel (or visible consonant) from that word, modified for emotions.
If there’s multiple expressions within a single bit of dialog, you almost always want to separate it between panels. Can’t tell you how off-putting it is to have an expression be at odds with part of the dialog because it’s made for only half of what is being said.