Bigger deal than expected
↓ Transcript
AMANDA: ...What kind of ice cream? I like stealing...
POHL: Something sarnothi-friendly I recommended. Auntie Roswell's Neversweet. It's an ice cream made without any sweeteners. Bit of rosemary in this one.
AMANDA (VO): I don't like stealing that much.
AMANDA: So... you're a doctor, right? Do you think bad people are bad forever?
POHL: No, I do not. In fact, one of my friends is a recovering Bad Person.
AMANDA (VO): How did they recover?!
POHL (VO): Work. Working HARD, all the time.
POHL (VO): Putting more good into the world than the bad isn't automatic. Or easy.
POHL (VO): Especially when, sometimes, you didn't know at first how big it was.
POHL: Something sarnothi-friendly I recommended. Auntie Roswell's Neversweet. It's an ice cream made without any sweeteners. Bit of rosemary in this one.
AMANDA (VO): I don't like stealing that much.
AMANDA: So... you're a doctor, right? Do you think bad people are bad forever?
POHL: No, I do not. In fact, one of my friends is a recovering Bad Person.
AMANDA (VO): How did they recover?!
POHL (VO): Work. Working HARD, all the time.
POHL (VO): Putting more good into the world than the bad isn't automatic. Or easy.
POHL (VO): Especially when, sometimes, you didn't know at first how big it was.
I tricked myself, now I wanna go get some whole milk and a bunch of ice and salt and whip the crap out of it.
Pohl has got this parenting thing down to a tee.
In the homemade ice cream we churned up as kids, there were usually eggs too. Almost like a custard.
Yeah, that stuff is good. My aunt always made it too sweet, though.
Hand-cranked freezer? Or electric? I grew up w/ the wooden, hand-cranked freezer. Many fond memories of debates over who got to sit on it to cool down in the hot summer whilst the ice cream was being made…
Yep, same wooden bucket hand crank unit. We mostly made it in the winter because we could chop ice off the stock tank to use in it (grew up almost 40 miles from the nearest town in the Midwest).
…and by the way, he’s your sister’s Dad. Just sayin’
Well, he’s her father, “but he weren’t never her Daddy”.
Pohl should try goat cheese ice cream – had that once on Sardinia – was probably without sweeteners (not entirely sure anymore)
Yeah, Scar got it both, the “former Bad Person” (and how so!) and the “working hard to be better”.
Considering that cats can like ice cream or other dairy because of the fat/protein in it, even though they can’t taste sweetness, maybe it’s similar for other obligate carnivores like Sarnothi? Unsweetened ice cream doesn’t sound very appealing to most humans, so I was wondering what in it appeals to a Sarnothi palate.
“so I was wondering what in it appeals to a Sarnothi palate.”
Fat, and to a lesser extent, protein.
At least, that’s my guess. Humans evolved to find the taste of high-calorie foods a pleasurable sensation, because for almost all of our evolutionary history, calories were hard to get. In such an environment, an instinctive drive to eat the most energy-rich food available is a survival advantage. I’d expect that the Sarnothi have similar instincts, but without the ability to identify sugar. There isn’t much sugar underwater, so being able to detect it wouldn’t be a survival advantage there.
Nah, based on what Pohl said, Sarnothi can taste sweetness, it just tastes terrible. Like what rotten food tastes like to us.
It wasn’t so much that humans evolved the ability to taste sweet as cats lost that ability, but as carnivores it didn’t really matter too much. Dogs on the other hand can still taste sweet even though they also don’t particularly need to.
Perhaps they might like Parmesan ice cream (without the sugar ofc) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BR7fywQ-vUE
I honestly love the last two panels. Some of your better work.
Agreed. I just looked at them again and noticed how the last panel contains a double interpretation: “didn’t know how big it was” regarding Selkie can refer to both Amanda’s bullying her, and Scar siring her!
I hope Amanda doesn’t get the impression that recovering from being a “bad person” means an endless life of toil and ostracization thereafter. With “Working HARD, all the time,” Pohl makes it sound a little like there’s no letup, no relief. Like purgatory or something, working endlessly toward a nebulous future.
And that’s not the sort of imagery that motivates a person to change, especially when their spoons are already low to begin with (as Amanda’s are) and it seems like “turning good” would therefore be outside their capabilities even if they wanted to try.
Pohl’s right that it’s not easy (or automatic), but it’s also not slave drudgery, even if you’ve starting off in the red.
“Putting more good into the world isn’t automatic. Or easy. Especially when, sometimes, you didn’t know at first how big it was.”
This one hit me hard.