Bit mad.
Live drawing here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1062635674 Also features a bit of impromptu Q and A about resonance capabilities as I responded to questions in the chat.
Also drew a thing for Pride Month on Saturday evening. Bit of extra art.
↓ Transcript
SELKIE: Whys are you TAKING this froms me?!
AMANDA: Excuse you?!
TODD: Selkie, nobody took anything.
SELKIE: Like crap! Echo stuff is MY thing! I'M the one whos beens working on it! I'm the one who's gonna help people!
I'M THE FREAKING MAD WIZARD, HERE!!!
SELKIE: WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO PUSH ME DOWN AGAIN?!
AMANDA: Excuse you?!
TODD: Selkie, nobody took anything.
SELKIE: Like crap! Echo stuff is MY thing! I'M the one whos beens working on it! I'm the one who's gonna help people!
I'M THE FREAKING MAD WIZARD, HERE!!!
SELKIE: WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO PUSH ME DOWN AGAIN?!
Just a sibling spat, except with lasers.
Aaaaand there it is. đ Commenters have been saying this is how it’d go and as much as I hoped it wouldn’t, I can’t see it realistically going any other way. Fire eyes, she’s starting to break through. In her anger, I hope Amanda doesn’t become her target.
Yup, its totally understandable how Selkie is experiencing this. Here’s Amanda, who bullied her for years, who in a way “took” her dad from her (not really but its easy to see it that way from Selkie’s point of view) and now is taking this other thing that was special to her (she didn’t want to and doesn’t seem to like it for sure). As a kid I felt similar emotions for a whole lot less, so I can totally see why this is the way it turned out.
Now to see how its handled by Todd and Pohl (hopefully without lots of lasers) and whether the anger Selkie is feeling fuels some kind of surge/breakthrough of her abilities as the increasingly large glow in her eyes seems to be demonstrating.
After re-reading some of the earlier comics, I realized you were hinting at Amanda’s Echo ability back in 1007, where during the sky beam, she says it sounds like singing.
Good catch; I’d forgotten all about that.
Excellently sleuthed
I forgot about that!
Maybe the beam was a sort of experiment on humans because I remember the sarnothi teen guy saying echo was not possible on humans.
Or just assumed it so. Maybe echo abilities need other echoes nearby to catalyze development. With humans and sarnothi segregated for so long, human echoes couldn’t manifest. Now that Selkie was in contact with Amanda, it activated a latent ability.
I think the beam was a show of power – “This is what we can do, leave us alone or we’ll aim this at you instead of over your head.”
Tehk saying there are no human echos is a kid saying something that Everybody Knows. Given how long it’s been since there was regular contact between Sarnothi and humans it’s quite possible that everyone just forgot humans could have echos, too. I get the impression from some interactions with various Sarnothi that there’s a feeling that THEY have echos while HUMANS don’t makes the Sarnothi better; we may be in for some folks getting knocked down a few pegs in the future.
And she complained at least a couple times about the annoying humming during Selkie’s Echo practice, which could have been interpreted as literally Selkie humming as a focus (since she has done that) but many comments speculated might be Amanda actually hearing the Resonance that Selkie was pulling on.
Well at least she’s using her words
Well of course. Amanda’s already immune to her venom.
OH… When did they start kissing enough for her to build up an immunity?
XD
Crazy mad anger skills thatâs for sure. @Pohl â> Now! Would be a very good time to step between them and dial back on the emotional component. As in NOW!!
I’m sensing an impending explosion, possibly literally!
The angrier she gets the fewer plurals she is using. Interesting.
Maybe there is more than one way for an Echo to unlock their connection to the Resonance. A more dangerous path; especially since we’ve seen that Sarnoth ALWAYS teaches restraint in their actions. Hell, even their greeting is designed in such a way so they don’t accidentally claw each other.
Her mother also had a temper. Hopefully Pohl can step in and stop Selkie from doing something she regrets.
This may have been expected, but I think it is actually better that Selkie lets out her frustration here and now. It is much better than bottling up the anger and letting it fester. Also, a sibling relationship requires communication.
She is communicating…
Now, how Todd and Amanda responds next; that I am looking forward to.
In a way, giant laser beams to the sky are also communicating…
Let us hope she’ll never find the need for that kind of communication.
I really hope they protect Amanda here, because sheâs done nothing wrong in this instance. She quite literally was scared senseless and absolutely wasnât trying to do anything to interfere with Sekieâs Echo training. They need to remove Amanda from Selkieâs proximity right now and then calm Selkie down and explain to her why Amanda hasnât done anything wrong here and then reassure her that sheâs doing just fine as an Echo and made lots of progress.
Once theyâve made Selkie feel better and let her know that everything is ok and that sheâs still a very special Echo herself and unique in a way thatâs entirely her own, Todd needs to get her to apologize to Amanda. Not for how Selkie feels, because itâs perfectly fine and valid for her to feel things, but because sheâs blaming Amanda unjustly and accusing her of something she didnât do or have any control over. Let her know her feelings are valid, but donât let her take it out on others like this. Selkie is very quick to anger whenever she feels like something is unfair to her or that people inquiring about her out of genuine concern as being mocking and Todd really needs to quell that anger in BOTH of his daughters⌠because Amanda clearly has anger and trust issues too.
There’s a reason Selkie has anger issues about being treated unjustly, and a very large part of that reason has red hair and until a moment ago glowing green eyes.
Just because Amanda has done nothing wrong in this particular instance, and no matter how much they’ve managed to mend fences recently, there are some deep scars on Selkie’s soul and Amanda played her part in putting them there.
Telling Selkie at this point that she’s being unfair to Amanda will not go over well.
And I note that we still have not seen Amanda apologize or even admit wrongdoing towards Selkie. Instead it has been “play nice, you are sisters”, and I doubt Selkie had had therapy for her trauma despite Amanda going for her issues.
I could very well be wrong but I think readers waiting for/expecting a *nuanced* apology from Amanda for her past bullying are going to be waiting for a while. She’ll likely eventually get to a point where she genuinely offers a, “I’m sorry I used to be crappy to you” and means it but I think a deeper heart-to-heart likely won’t happen until they’re at least a few years older and Amanda has matured, learned to empathize better, and hopefully made progress with her own past trauma.
All that said, I do wonder if this development will have the effect of forcing the girls to walk in the other’s shoes a bit – others have mentioned this is mirroring the time Selkie held the adults’ attention and Amanda felt ignored. If so, we may very well see some increased understanding between the two…and perhaps that apology from Amanda, or at least the beginnings of acknowledging her past bullying behavior.
It took me until I was almost 30 to apologize to my sister.
I notice that Amanda’s eyes are still glowing and Selkie’s got the Fire Eyes started, but she hasn’t quite tipped into green on black text yet, so who knows how this will go. (Dave. Dave knows.) But I hope that she’s able to find her way back here calmly now that she’s gotten this far.