Plo Quar makes a convincing argument, at least.
– – – – –
Sharing a Fan Art! Courtesy of Vanessa, we have her take on a sarnothi toddler:
Thank you, Vanessa!
Panel 4 was worth being up until 3:30 am.
Plo Quar makes a convincing argument, at least.
– – – – –
Sharing a Fan Art! Courtesy of Vanessa, we have her take on a sarnothi toddler:
Thank you, Vanessa!
Ahhh so her mother was a war criminal after all? Given Pohl and his wife’s reaction and this…. well, it makes sense. Seems as though this tribe was rather violent. This is really cool! Gives Selkie a lot more depth this way.
This doesn’t really make Selkie’s mom look like a war criminal. That appears to be an enemy soldier she’s grabbed hold of. And when it’s soldier vs soldier, there’s not a lot that’s off-limits.
I’m just glad that there are people that remember that angels are warriors, not weaklings.
“War criminal” and history share a common trait; they’re written and defined by the winner. So if the Jin’Sorai were the “losers” or the ones that STARTED the war (or were used as a scapegoat for the real instigators) then its likely the clans not loyal to them would deem any prominent member as a criminal.
do you notice how Gien? keeps using PAST-Tense when referring to Plo Quar, even though we have a strip where she is in the background so we’re pretty sure she’s still alive… i’ll bet that she’s faked her own death to get the authorities off her trail and that these people here are either keeping up the scam, or truly think that she IS dead…
I’m sorry, I really am sorry for nitpicking… But Gien’s little pony tail in panel three is colored wrong; you accidentally made it his skin color.
Beyond that, now we see why Selkie was monitored even more closely than might possibly have been normal; and why Then thought she was an Echo. And I have a theory on why her “hair clip” was REALLY taken; I suspect Then wants to see Selkie awaken as an Echo herself. And I don’t think it’s for a fully benevolent reason…
Gien, buddy, you, uh… got something on your neck, there. What? Um, yeah it’s, uh… it’s pretty noticeable.
(Thanks for catching that! I’ll try and fix it later.)
I don’t really get why people keep expecting ‘non benevolent reasons’ from the behavior of sarnothi here. They’ve been nothing but friendly and welcoming to Selkie, and we even know there’s a reason why beyond just ‘this is a visiting child of our species adopted by a human’. Which would honestly be more than enough on its own.
It’s not like this is a genre savviness thing. This comic defies and blends genres and is basically its own, and it has enough conflict going on already without ‘non-benevolence’ from this particular settlement. If it’s any existing genre, it’s the ‘serial arc-based webcomic’ genre, which allows for LOTS of worldbuilding, community-building and side characters without necessarily making them all a point of conflict.
This just nags at me because… this is a diasporic minority child visiting a larger diasporic settlement and being warmly welcomed with people oohing and aahing about how she should have grown up in her own culture talking her own language and hearing her own fairy tales. Just, on a meta level, there’s SO MUCH no need to villanize it. Selkie has lots of enemies/antagonists already, let these people be the supportive community they’re trying to be.
For the record, it’s Then I’m talking about, not the settlement. The agent partnered with Agent Brown, the one who confiscated her mother’s parting gift from her without REALLY explaining why. This settlement? I don’t think they’re being nasty.
Interesting they’d use fiery sword as their metaphor, or maybe that’s just how it translates?
Gien is using human symbology with the angel comparison, so he IS saying “fiery sword”. But it’s also not sarnothi mythology he’s referencing with it.
Plus, I imagine that the imagery would still carry…
A flaming blade that immersion in water does not quench…
Ok, I know I’m a bit late to this party, but how the heck does Sarnothi tech work? Lets list its properties!
-emits green light regardless of application or power intensity.
-doesn’t attenuate to any significant degree in water.
-doesn’t radiate any immediately harmful energy outside its volume, even when it destroys objects within its volume.
-the amount of damage a beam can do is proportional to the radius of the beam.
-it can project insubstantial 3D images.
-it can precisely cut stone.
-it can somehow manipulate water it has enveloped.
-can be used as water heaters (localized?)
-it is somehow used in the manipulation of a solid black substance
-it is not economic to use it as a light source without some other function.
(can come out of sarnothi eyes? have I missed anything else?)
Seriously! all of this sarnothi tech has the same glowing green light, so it all has to be sharing some property! worst of all, many of these applications are action at a distance, like the cutting of stone, implying huge energy requirements! I’m onto you Dave!
I’m calling it now: Sarnothi tech runs on Kryptonite.
I’ll suggest either atmospherium or unobtainium. They’re both things that are relatively poorly understood by dry-land science.
How does “one” as in a person translate into a language where everyone is referred to by plurals to acknowledge (body and soul? iirc)? “two with powerful enough grudges”? haha
It could be a more complicated pronoun system: maybe they use different words to indicate “one (incomplete)”, “one (complete)”, many (incomplete)”, etc. Or something like that.
I have a theory that Gien might be Selkie’s bio father, although it was possibly more of a one-night-stand deal than a formal union. He either left them for some reason, or might not even know that Selkie was his.
Selkie’s mom is AWESOME! I’d love to learn more about her as the ‘person’ as well though, not just as ‘the warrior’.
And with that, Gien screwed up. He’s making her mom appear more and more badass. She wanted Selkie to be among the humans. Selkie will want to follow her mother’s wishes even more now so she can please her even more. If Gien truly wants to keep her, this just makes it more difficult.
i´m not sure that he wants to keep selkie himself, i rather think it saddens him that the child of his hero grows up knowing near nothing of the people+culture her mom is fighting for.
on second thought, maybe he´s hoping she inherited her moms ‘echo’ powers and would make another great fighter for their clan.
What have I missed? Where was it stated, or even hinted, that Glen wants to keep Selkie? Like not in a ‘wishes she grew up in their settlement’ way but in a ‘wants to get Todd to relinquish her so she grows up with them in the future’ way?
She sounds like Sarnothi Xena but in an awesome kinda way.
Are you implying Xena isn’t awesome? :p
of course xena is awesome, but to be fair while she´s a great warrioress, she never had the ONE, big cause that she really burned for – unlike selkie´s mom, who seems more and more like the nr.1 fighter for her people against an outnumbering agressor….heck, who knows, half her ‘grudge’ might be that she had to give up selkie to keep her safe – and as far away from enemy spies as possible.
Well to be fair, Xena is not the visionary hero Selkie’s mom seems to be. Her mother had a reason beyond herself to fight. Xena was always only fighting for herself. Atoning yes, doing good deeds yes, but at the end of the day, her motives were always entirely in her benefit. It’s hard to find something to burn for when you are your goal.
I know we’re getting snippets here and there. I’d like to ask: “Will we get a contiguous history of the war at some point?” I’d like to see a chronological / contiguous relation if it’s possible? Hard to go back to 20 or 30 small references to get a sense of the magnitude / actual facts.