Welcome to another edition of the Selkie Sketch Day! Hope you all enjoy it. 😀
The sketch above is how I believe the adoption scene might have gone in an alternate universe where Todd and Selkie’s species are reversed. For some reason it is posting twice, but I can not figure out what I did to ComicPress to make it do that. 😡
And these two are a last minute addition to the Sketch Day: Lillian’s cover letter to Todd from Selkie’s file:
In Thursday’s strip, one of you lovely readers, Antonious, mentioned wanting to see Selkie’s file directly. I really liked the idea, but it also unintentionally solved a dilemma I was having with the comic’s long term planning: How to reveal to the audience aspects of Selkie’s physiology without dragging out the narrative. My original plan was to have Todd find out the various quirks of Selkie’s physiology one at a time, but I thought that might get redundant after awhile. Plus, important things like “cold-blooded” and “gills” seem like something Todd would be told by the caretakers, instead of stumbling on blindly. I also get irritated when characters act illogically just for the sake of explaining things to the audience (ExpoSpeak, anyone?), so now I get to avoid some of that. Yay!
I know a lot of you have been asking about Selkie’s special care needs, hope this answers some of your questions. ^^
Excellent solution to the dilemma!
This was great! I’m sure this answered a ton of people’s questions. I’m hoping you’ll eventually add more as the story goes.
Hey, I just wanted to tell you I looooooove this comic, and that was an awesome way to explain things. 😀
The file cover letter is a great and original solution! Thanks so much. <3
Yep, definentily an awesome way to solve that problem! I have been reading for a couple of months now and cannot wait to see how Selkie and Todd get along! 🙂 Thankyou for sharing your story.
“Are you going to eat me?
Because I’ve licked my arm, and I taste terrible.”
I died laughing, for serious.
Hah hah, good one on the sketch today, and eagerly reading up the adoption file now. Pretty sweet solution to a definite writing problem. 🙂
And lastly, no matter how much she begs, no matter how much she cries, never, NEVER feed her after midnight.
Sorry. I hear three essential rules about anything and instantly think back to Gremlins.
I like the solution and upfront revelation of information that Todd would certainly be given and there’s no good reason to conceal from the reader.
I’ll also add that I almost never read big chunks of peripheral text–heck, I have a short enough attention span I tend to skim large swaths of dialogue–yet I read through all of that immediately. Reads realistically, too, something I say as a semi-pro reviewer.
Good stuff. Wouldn’t mind seeing more Selkie’s file.
Oh, hey, I just thought of something! When Selkie is older, if she wants/needs to skip school for the day, she could just eat a little dab of peanut butter! What a lucky little physiological quirk.
Ummm, I don’t think tap water has chlorine in it. Chlorine is the stuff they use to keep pools clean, and is poisonous to humans. Were you meaning Floride or something like that?
I think there are trace, non-toxic amounts of chlorine in drinking water, for sterilization. That’s part of what you need to buy water treatment for to make tank water safe for fish.
True. Pool water merely contains a higher amount of chlorine. put fluoride in their water instead, so it also acts as a tooth preservative.
Also, curse you for linking to the black hole that is Tv Tropes without first putting up a warning; I spent over an hour there today already.
Reading this for the first time, six years late to the party: here’s where I stop for a moment and go “what?”
Because up to this point I’d been assuming that this was a setting where whatever-Selkie-is-people live alongside humans. But apparently she’s something unknown.
And she’s just in an orphanage? Not either nationally famous as the first alien/cryptid intelligent being ever discovered, or in a government and/or corporate lab?
How odd.
Back to reading! Let’s see where you take us. 😀
…Aaaand I just hit strips in the 550s range, where Brown finally explains. Man, that is some messed up reasoning… but it’s a messed up situation.
I’m reading this again for the 2nd time, very much up to date (happy 900, by the way!) but I missed this the first time around.
Knowing what I know now and looking back, I am pleased at Todd’s strength of character- being handed a packet and finding out that the child that you love is not human, and firmly deciding that it didn’t matter at all. Lilian was of course, correct- he loves his adoptive daughter very much and is very protective of her, but it’s still an amazing undertaking to handle in the name of love.
I’m actually pleased I didn’t know about this at first. This packet is a wonderful little surprise for now knowing the best part of the comic is the author’s comments one needs to scroll down for. I feel like it helps me get to know Selkie all over again.
I’d assume that selkies are another branch of planes ape that for whatever reason had water adaption be advantageous for a geological time period