Colors up tonight.
…
And she may say Warlock now, but I’m pretty sure Selkie would like Hunter best. Feel free to discuss.
Engineering as profession, of course. Gotta make her some bombs.
Colors up tonight.
…
And she may say Warlock now, but I’m pretty sure Selkie would like Hunter best. Feel free to discuss.
And Pohi’s wife is an artist but she is was not born into Selkie’s clan, she chose it.
I was going to say…
Perhaps Pohl isn’t explaining things as well as he could, but Todd is projecting a bit more human bias onto this than is perhaps warranted. It’s not quite the same scenario as human racism, and may not respond to the same attempted solutions (because our methods of combating racism in the USA have proven sooooo effective at stamping it out forever! >.> )
As a rebuttal, I will point to the Rwandan genocide (not even racism but tribalism), the on again, off again conflict in Congo/Zaire (again tribalism) and Nigeria (religion). I’d say the USA is doing just fine compared to these sterling examples.
Being currently better than active genocides does not mean being better than we could be. We don’t have a national discourse about the active genocide that took place against the indigenous Native Americans, we promote the people who did this, and we still honor the people who encouraged slavery to spread. We only this year got the first monument for lynchings that took place – and I believe it’s private monument not a government-run or even that the government acknowledges the issue-sanctioned monument (for example of another country – Germany has made a point of having many memorials and monuments to the atrocities that happened in their history, and there are those who lived through them or were the next generation or two after who have said that it helps). NOT that it’s good that the horrors happened. Just that people can’t heal without the hurt being even acknowledged.
We in this case means a USA government, and predominant historical viewpoints. I didn’t know there were lynchings that went on in my own county up to the late 60s, and there are still families who have never heard where their missing family members were buried – and I was raised in an anti-slave state, so it’s not just a few crazy places in the south…
Anne, name 3 countries that are more inclusive than the US. I can’t name one past Canada, and that’s iffy. There isn’t a single western European country that hasn’t had a race riot in the last 2 years. Humanity is mired in tribalism because people keep picking at the scabs of stuff that happened 50, 75, 100 years ago and act like it happened yesterday. The only way to move forward is to LET IT GO.
“The only way to move forward is to LET IT GO.”
Unfortunately those things that you refer to happening as 50, 75, 100 years ago have had long last consequences which are still being felt by people today. Racism and racial injustice didn’t just suddenly stop in the US with end of the Civil War and the ned of slavery for example.
Unless and until we address the repercussions of events like slavery you can’t just move forward because the problems still exist. Black Americans are still more likely to end up in jail and/or serve longer sentences for the same crimes as whites. They are more likely to be killed by police. Women who perform the same job with the same level of experience are still paid less than their male counter parts. There are countless other examples of pervasive and systemic wrong happening today in America. The solution isn’t to “let it go”, the solution is to MAKE IT RIGHT. And yes, there are many other countries with many similar problems, some worse, some better, but thats not an excuse. The question shouldn’t be “is the US better than random European country”, the question should be “is the US doing the right thing, or at least doing the best it reasonably can”. Personally I don’t think it is, I think the US can and SHOULD be doing a lot better, and really that will probably ALWAYS be true. Just as we individually should always be trying to be better versions of ourselves, we should try to make our nations better versions of themselves. I want my descendants to live in a better world than I did, we should all hope for that.
There is so making it right. You can’t make something wrong into something right, no matter how hard you try. All you can do is learn what IS right, and do that thing, moving forward.
It’s not right to let it go, because lessons from the past are how we learn. But it’s not right to repeat the same mistakes, or make more mistakes, in an attempt to somehow make it even. That’s where suggested solutions to race relations problems, like affirmative action & most (but not all) proponents of the BLM movement, are making people recoil. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Don’t forget India’s caste system, Japan’s extremely intensive xenophobia, China’s outright Erasure of the Hakka identity by absorption into the Han, Russia and China’s homophobia, Russia and chechnians and, of course, Brazil.
Isims aren’t regulated only to Africa and the West.
I called it! Thank you Todd, thank you for calling it out for what it is.
But at the same time it is not necessarily a bad thing as it can help the people of Sarnoth find a purpose.
As shown by Pohl’s wife, it is optional.
Personally I think Todd is overreacting slightly, because right now he is basically telling someone their culture is wrong. To their face. What happened to ‘accepting everyone’?
Lord knows that in the current generation of humans there are an awful lot who don’t know what they wanna do with their lives.
I think Todd flared up because Pohl invoked Selkie being “important” to them on the last page – he rightfully takes issues with anyone trying to push “cultural obligations” onto Selkie.
^^This^^
Of course Pohl has been ordered to teach Selkie with the clear instructions that it is NOT optional that she use her Echo abilities for them – at least as far as the guy giving the orders was concerned. So his claims ring a wee bit hollow here.
Part this, part Pohl being very bad at explaining something he’s lived all his life and doesn’t put to words often I think
It’s more like Canada telling Saudi Arabia to stop arresting human rights protesters, really. Culture can be wrong.
Sounds like more CASTE/Job/Social Identity… all in one little annoying package. (I deal with people who are constantly wear their caste like a little tiny crown especially newly arrived Indians who think their Brahman caste ass means they are some hot shit special) I tend to piss them off REAL bad.
Once she sees the new cinematic where Jaina is flying an entire galleon by herself? She’ll be arcane mage all the way.
If the next new class isn’t Pirate-Wizard, I’m gonna riot.
You need at least three people to hold a proper riot.
Yeah, I must say that the new ship spec for mage is looking pretty solid.
100% with Todd here.
Todd, you’re kinda being a twat. He’s still not on the echo train
Oo- I must confess I assumed Pohl’s family would turn out to be dissenters, just on the strength of Mrs. Pohl’s profession.
Sarnothi have to follow their D’jarras.
and I think Pohl may be discounting the role this “responsibility” which defines one as “being sarnothi” had in their people’s current political unrest, schism, and mass banishment.
Please. Skyrim. No classes. Light armor, stealth, bow and lightning magic.
Not they got rid of the attribute system!!!
Morrowind-luck, endurance, willpower/agility, sign of the astroch. Sign of the lady, luck as your favored skill.
Congratulations, you are immune to magic, have maxed out health, can dodge all day, never miss or fail to cast a spell, even ones you shouldn’t be able to cast!
Enchanting was the thing in Morrowind. It was so hilariously broken paired with high mana builds. I had built a gear set with 100% chameleon, feather fall and jumping so absurd I could leap across the entire map in 3 bound. This was on heavy armor with stupid resistances and weapon damage that I killed Vivec in a few seconds.
This is a plot line from Man of Steel.
i´m with todd on this one, though i don´t think pohl is truly that serious about it and merely phrasing it wrong – after all he has no problem with his wife breaking the mold. i think he merely wants selkie to aknowledge her heritage, before forging her own way…..
also, she´s totally a rogue! chaotic neutral, emphasis on chaotic 😉
His wife always looked part Jin Sorai to me, though. I have to wonder.
I’d think Selkie would be more a Rogue than Walock, seems more fitting to her character.
I love the unintended consequence of a Sarnothi raised by humans being that she has no idea this clan stuff and has grown the American sense of individualism (which some take a little too far, but in this case I am all on board with having none of this Classism crap).
Death knight for the win. The DK toolkit is hard to beat (Chains of ice. deathgrip/gorefiends grasp, etc.) Another good choice is Monk.
Speaking as a dedicated healing spec player, Blood DK is only fourth on my tank preference list. With Blood, things are either all green and you are mostly looking for other things to do or you are scrambling to pop every healing CD you have to keep them alive. A well played BM monk stomps all over every other tank spec in the game, at least from a healing perspective. Sure, there will be particular fights other specs with be better for, but in general, monk tank all day long and twice on Sunday.
I think there may also be a bit of residual bitterness because Plo Quar is still missing, aka ‘shirking her duties’ while Pohl and Scar are the two echoes who are having to carry all of the load.
I think Pohl’s statement can be boiled down to the old cop-out people always use: But we’ve always done it that way.
I feel like I’m missing a piece. The last thing Pohl said was that Selkie was a big help in getting the Sarnothi out in the world. I’d assume he was referring to the integration program in which Selkie basically served as beta tester. Not sure how that translates to “You must build the heavens bc you’re an echo or Jin Sorai.” from Todd’s perspective.
I think that this has been building up steam for Todd ever since he saw the Echo’s power on their aquatic field trip…that and the whole “an Echo is above ALL you lower-class peon’s” attitude that seems to getting more pronounced, as they meet more and more other Sarnothi; add that to Gien’s attitude when Todd as there, yeah… i can see Todd spinning up on Pohl for this… BUT: i’m ALSO of the opinion that Pohl is just a bad explainer, and that he’s just messing up badly in how he IS trying to smooth things over…
Yeah, wasn’t Pohl one of those being pushed to turn Selkie into The Next Savior of Our People, and wasn’t he like “well I’ll try but…”
Seems like he’s not on the side of “must be X because you were born that way,” and it’s not coming across well. I honestly didn’t expect this kind of huge friction between them; this page is coming sorta out of the blue.
“A person isn’t bound to some chore just because of their birth”. Now let’s move on to training Selkie to be an Echo so she can do Echo work because, you know, she was born an Echo.
“Let’s move on to training her how to control her talent so she doesn’t accidentally harm others”. Another way of looking at it.
Yeah. Being born a mutant (X-Men franchise) doesn’t mean that you have to care about Mutant Rights or become a superhero (in fact, see PS238 for an alternative scenario), but it certainly means that if your powers are difficult to control and/or dangerous to yourself or to others, you have the responsibility to tame them.
Man…Pohl sounds like old human people afraid of change. Just because it’s expected he thinks it’s okay. I really hope he sheds this mindset soon.
Selkie, Selkie, Selkie, do you know what new players and rogues have in common? They both pick locks…
Way back when Professor Trunchbull made his statement of the sarnothi culture and mindset being alien to that of humans, I wonder if this right here is partly why.
Also this adds a whole new layer of complicated when the nature of Selkie’s dual-clan heritage comes to light (because it totally will at some point) because I’m betting marrying and having children across clan lines is a no-no.
What I keep catching up against here is the detail that, while Pohl can speak English perfectly, wear Western clothing, interact with American society successfully, and even pass for somebody who simply has a rather unfortunate genetic condition — he’s not actually of the same species as Todd. Sarnothi and homo sapiens aren’t inter-fertile, they’re not perfectly biochemically compatible, either, and I have no idea what the two species’ common ancestor was.
So what if they really *do* have a genetic caste system? Even if it’s only in comparison to homo sapiens. Obviously, it’s not absolute, or else’s Pohl’s wife wouldn’t have switched clans — but we may still be anthropomorphizing here.
Blerp, indeed.
What about the agent’s comment about melanin variation?
Selkie’s class is obviously Supervillain. Skills include grandstanding, trap construction, snappy dresser and doomsday weapon construction.
Yes, Selkie. Warlock is the best class in 3.5 and 3.5e, but only if you embrace ChG as your alignment, and choose Ranger dress as a disguise. If you act nice to people and don’t dress evil (and take a non-threatening name like Sparrow) then people won’t treat you like you’re evil.
wait… is him immediately teaching Selkie her “echo” lessons a passive aggressive way to enforce his idea? I mean he’s basically teaching Selkie Jedi powers to fulfill her destiny, it was the whole theme of the strip where they talk about needing all the echos they need!
he’s holding back that particular bit of info from Todd
I’m a little confused here. I thought the clans were like castes. If the clans have specific, pre-defined roles, how can they be so unaware of each other?
The ones that live on the fringes of varius provinces being an exception, most sarnothi live in fairly insular areas with those of their own Clan. Others may come in as-needed for important functions (Sar’Teri to build a structure, Tel’Dora to give a guest lecture, etc) but won’t necessarily live there. Interactions outside of the home Clan may be minimal or solely task-related.
do YOU regularly go over to the Farmer that grew your food’s house?, how about the guy that runs the generator’s at the City Power Plant?
you know what they do in a general sense, and could possible define general things about their job from looking at them from across the street, like seeing a guy in a hard-hat and safety vest with a ‘stop/slow’ sign… probably means he’s some sort of road construction worker, but do you REALLY know the DETAILS?… probably not… that’s kinda how i see the clan/caste system set up in the Sarnothi society… unless you have a specific reason to need to interact with a different caste, you just,… don’t… nothing inherently WRONG with this attitude, but I’ll bet that Tek, and Te Fahn and all the other new Sarnothi refugees will be quite rapidly assimilating into Western (USA ) society where that doesn’t apply much anymore… though i’d also say we’d have generation-gap difficulties, something like what I’ve heard from Indian immigrants coming over to the US and England have with their younger ones not wanting to follow the traditions of their elders and it ends up tearing deeply into the family relationships…
Bard is objectively best class.
No need to be jealous.
Vah Shir Bard is the best combo!
…though Liberated Borg Romulan Science Officer comes close!
As a warlock since the Ahn’Qiraj War, I commend her choice.
Now you’re just reminding me of the Red Snappah video….
Actually, the war effort was perhaps the time I felt most in tune with the community of the game. I’m mostly a solo player, so I didn’t get involved with guilds or other community activities, for the most part, just did my thing (staying fairly low-level, lots of characters) and played the market a bit, but when the war effort got going, I found it quite enjoyable to run around trying to fill up those quotas.
As a hobbyist game designer, it also made me interested in the choices for items. Like, apparently to get rid of some imbalance in the available items and their prices on the open market? Like, if they had an over-abundance of wool cloth that led to very low prices on the player market, then they used wool cloth for the war effort, so people were dumping tons of wool into an item sink, thus driving the price for that resource up again.
I also wondered how much the attempt was having the opposite effect (people trying to hunt down extra wool fast in order to meet the demand, thus unbalancing it once again). But it was a cool idea.
There was another MMORPG, Travians, a little web-browser thing that I quite enjoyed for a few years, where they just required you to “pay taxes” in ramping amounts even time you wanted to go up a level (or something like that). The money sink felt annoying and broke my immersion repeatedly.
I thought it would be neater if people paid taxes toward some community goal, like building a new area, where the money you are required to pay was some amount per level, but players could also voluntarily add money to the effort to get the area open sooner. Group efforts like that are fun and add to the immersion, rather than breaking it.
Slavery is another loose end that hasn’t been resolved yet.
Scar was described (#929) as having participated in a “slave uprising”, though without specifying which side he supported. And we’ve since learned that it was Plo Quar who gave him his wounds. So maybe she was/is a slave?
I looove where this is going. Exploring the “The Baby-Eating Aliens” problem: what if we encounter a people that we get along with fine, but we find out they culturally do something we find repulsive?
Should we step back and respect their culture, or try to change them according to our own morality? In human culture, the whole “manifest destiny” thing is just freaky, but for Sarnothi, it’s part of their identity. It’s going to be interesting to see this talked out.
i mean they ARE a relatively significantly different race. Im sure there could be some sorta ant esque “you are born with the body and disposition to fulfil a certain role within society” type thing.