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Just a heads-up, I’ve decided to take a small beak from the comics making next week, Apr8 – Apr14. Just a short “break-cation”.
I have some fanart drawings I will be airing during that time. Thank you to the folks who have contributed those drawings for me. I will air them next week! 😀
"And while we're on the subject, please do not google the phrase "Spin Doctor". Thank you."
Hmmm, so is this just a cover story or where there really be other Sarnothi kids for Selkie to get to hang out with? It would be nice for her to meet kids her own age, Suko is cute but too little, and Benny is too teenanger.
Why would it be a cover story?
It’s weird to announce new sarnothi students joining like a big thing when two of them have already been attending for ages now.
i think its been just selkie so far – benny is older and probably in middle school already.
Two toa classroom.
If it’s a cover story… For one, WHY? Why would they need a cover story for the one that’s already been there, and two: It’s a dumb cover story because eventually, kids would notice that the only Sarnothi in the school is the one that was already there.
It’s only a cover story in the “exchange program” sense if it; these kids are refugees. They have been officially exiled. And now they need landside schools to replace the waterside ones they’d still been attending til now.9
I wonder if they’re attending in part as a crash-course in “okay, let’s get along with humans” or if it’s “…if we send our kids to live on land, they are less likely to be killed — or kidnapped and indoctrinated — by our enemies.”
Enjoy your break-cation. You’ve more than earned one!
Shall they be Purple (periwinkle) or green that is the question.
Star (to new students): Do you think that you could make Us like Selki better than you?
Sarnothi Exchange Student:
I don’t know,… but I think I might?
‘Cause I got a pocket full of Kryptonite, yeah, yeah.
I got a pocket full of Kryptonite.
Ooooooooooooo!!!!! YEEE. That is all :3
Selkie is (rightly) foreseeing trouble. She’s going to be caught in the middle. These new classmates are an unknown factor. They may be targets for bullying, they may have “attitude” like Benny, they may be hostile to her, they may not even speak English. Whatever they are like — whether she likes them or not — to the other kids in the class she’s going to be seen as representing them.
That’s a heavy load to dump on a kid who’s not yet nine.
Actually, the larger group is a good thing for this (in my mind). You ever notice how Star Trek tended to give us a single representative for any alien race? One Vulcan (Spock), one Klingon (Worf), one Betazoid (Troi), one Changeling (Odo), etc. etc. etc. Until we got more of that group to look at, we had no way of telling what was normal to the *race*, and what was simply part of the representative’s individuality.
Once we got a bunch of Vulcans, we could tell how Spock stood out from them (comparatively open-minded and not as strict or as cold), and we could more easily determine which characteristics were honestly part of almost every normal Vulcan. Once we got more Klingons, Worf’s devotion to honor stood out (as striving for the ideal Klingon that most Klingons had grown too jaded to follow after). Once we got more Changelings, Odo’s devotion to truth and justice stood out. Once we met Lwaxana, Deanna’s self-restraint stood out; Lwaxana thought nothing of using her powers freely even against those who had no powers, and it could be assumed that many other Betazoids were similarly unaware of the way non-Betazoids would take that kind of intrusion, because for them it was as natural as breathing.
(I may be mischaracterizing some of these; it has been a while.)
So the addition of a group of new Sarnothi may in fact make it easier for the human kids to see how Selkie differs from the newbies.
OTOH… humans are prejudiced from birth to devote time to understanding the distinctions among those who look like them, and grouping “those who don’t look like me” in broad strokes (“all X look alike”). This is natural and not, in and of itself, a bad thing. But you need to realize that this is a biased way of looking at the world, and to be careful how that bias shapes your interactions — to stop judging the individual by the group.
Since this is a human-wide trait, and since these kids can hardly be expected to have developed counter-strategies by this age, it’s an opportunity for the school to help them learn these counter-strategies.
If not brief, a Most Excellent presentation of the facts and the cautions for the future. Very well stated. (Tip of the hat for clarity, I could not have done half as well with twice as many words.) where’s the up-vote feature?
Pohl could tell what clan Selkie was pretty quickly, meaning it’s possible to tell just by looking what clan she is. That means there’s a good chance kids who were raised in Sarnoth could tell too.
This could be trouble.
Oh yeah and she’s still got the green glow thing going on, which again other Sarnothi may recognize.
Not if she has the sunglasses on, I think. But it sounds like the other clans were allied with the Jin Sorai at the end, so that might not be as bad.
and odds are they bring their own type of prejudices with them, depending which clan they´re from….for example, i don´t think sar´teri will be popular among the others of their kind.
though if they´d been raised listening to sar´teri propaganda they might be blaming selkie´s clan for starting the war….and selkie´s mom in particular.
Peya, you missed one important part of that announcement.
They’re getting an exchange delegation from Sarnoth.
The only kids they’re going to be getting are going to be Sar’Teri kids. And I’m willing to bet that all of them will have been hand-picked to be the kind of representatives of their culture that the newly-minted “emperor” wants them to be.
… And as far as they’re concerned, Selkie is the mongrel daughter of a wanted terrorist and a war criminal from an inferior clan whose deviant ways were the cause of this terrible civil war that forced the noble Sar’Teri to, regretfully, murder almost all of them and exile the rest.
Enjoy the break…
“…at least two to a classroom”? Wonder how many rooms in that school? I seem to recall it’s two-story, so there should be several.
My elementary school had 12 – 2 each of all six grades. Just one story. But even if just 12, that’s “at least” 24 kids of elementary age. Where they been?
New arrivals from Sarnoth, I think. The ones that are getting kicked out by the Sar’Teri.
Or those that are on the lam from a genocidal medal wearing maniac.
Despite the fact that his medals are stamped tin dipped in gold paint, he wears them proudly.
Selkie’s always been there, though. Why are they acting like they’re never seen her before?
Because they’ve never seen her for what she was before now. Before they just thought she was some freak with a medical condition and a speech impediment, now she’s a dangerous alien. Of course, we know Selkie, as she is now anyways, wouldn’t harm anybody on purpose. No idea how sharp her claws and teeth are and how her venom would work on kids, but she’s not purposely dangerous.
Plus, they’re kids. Some are gonna be like, “Wow that’s so cool!” and others will be like, “OH GOD SHE’S HERE TO INVADE AND EAT US!”
I think that probably should be “wouldn’t seriously harm anyone on purpose.” I could totally see her deciding to give a mean kid a poison spit rash would be fun. Honestly, I think most 8 year olds would think that was fun if they had poison spit.
Oh heck yeah! That’d be almost like having a super power against bullies. “Leave me alone, I’m dangerous, even without five friends for backup.”
That honestly would worry me a bit though. Selkie is 8. There are a lot of really bad ideas that look fantastic to primary school children. But she’s not going to be judged as a primary school child – she’s going to be judged as a representative of an alien species. If she gets into a fight it’s going to be about how Sarnothi are inherently violent, not about how sometimes little kids need to be grounded and made to apologize and told how to work things out using their words.
War kitty: oh, yeah, I am Not suggesting that Selkie do that, just wishing I’d had that as a defense against huge bullies.
They’ve never seen her as a non-human before. Or at least, never seen her as a non-human whose people could become at odds with their people.
At least the orphanage kids knew she wasn’t human, dunno anout her classmates though.
Time for the breaking of inter-species tension, and hopefully no really awkward sex-ed classes for the higher grades. Separating the groups would be smart there. Also, lunch options may have to be changed slightly, but that should be pretty easy, considering Selkie has survived in the current system for so many years.
Well this is going to be interesting. Hopefully some of them’ll be friendly to Selkie. I bet a few’ll feel less awkward with another Sarnothi in class. Though Selkie might feel more awkward.
Selkie can also be a bridge for the Sarnothi kids in a way that would make her a positive asset to both the new Sarnothi and the kids she already knows.
So Selkie’s classroom is going from “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” to “Two Princes”, then?
Mmmmm, Spin Doctors good. Clever, that.
NOOOOOOO!!!!! If there’s just one like me then I’m special and unique, but if there’s a bunch like me then I’m stuck with a bunch of stinking rivals!
Truly, this is the worst possible thing that could happen.
Wouldn’t an “exchange program” entail some of the human kids learning to scuba so they could go to a Sarnothi school?
Yes, it would. And I’m pretty sure the reciprocal part is not happening. Therefore, this is “spin” — the Sarnothi kids coming in are refugees.
I’m not sure why the government/school is even trying this. Everyone who was watching TV saw that broadcast.
wut
so much for my assumption it was all gonna get covered up
Third panel; evil look goes crosseyed.