Just work emails kids, nothing major.
↓ Transcript
ANDI: Hey, uh, Todd... You mnd if I check my text messages real quick? I need to "speak to an old client".
TODD: Oh.. yeah, sure. I should probably check for work stuff, too.
ANDI TEXT: What the HELL am I supposed to make of all this?!
TODD TEXT: I know what you mean. I thought this was supposed to be counseling.
ANDI TEXT: right?!1 Like, you should see Amanda's bedroom! THE DUCKING WALLS ARE SCORCHED.
ANDI TEXT: Todd, I think we should put a stop to this. Like, teaching them to not zap people doesn't vibe with also TEACHING THEM TO ZAP PEOPLE.
TODD TEXT: Yeah. I'm struggling, now, not to think that Selkie's mother may have had the correct response.
TODD: Oh.. yeah, sure. I should probably check for work stuff, too.
ANDI TEXT: What the HELL am I supposed to make of all this?!
TODD TEXT: I know what you mean. I thought this was supposed to be counseling.
ANDI TEXT: right?!1 Like, you should see Amanda's bedroom! THE DUCKING WALLS ARE SCORCHED.
ANDI TEXT: Todd, I think we should put a stop to this. Like, teaching them to not zap people doesn't vibe with also TEACHING THEM TO ZAP PEOPLE.
TODD TEXT: Yeah. I'm struggling, now, not to think that Selkie's mother may have had the correct response.
Panels 1 and 3 are brought to you by the "Dave keeps forgetting to draw purses" campaign.
Andi nooooo. Seriously, the best way to teach them not to harm people is to teach them that they can harm people. You learn that in massage therapy of “how not to kill people by accident”
Exactly what I was thinkinh. They got the powers anyway, so now they just need to teach them how to not put holes in people by accident.
Yeah, Andi’s wrong about this one. I get where she’s coming from, but she herself acknowledges that the zapping is already happening and the way to get someone to stop zapping on accident is by showing them how to do it- and now to not do it- on purpose.
This isn’t like giving them guns; they are the guns whether we like it or not; this is about teaching them where the trigger is so that they don’t accidentally when sneezing or aggravated.
Exactly. If they don’t learn how to control it, they’ll end up at the power’s mercy.
The girls can literally not be allowed to go to school until the resident experts are reasonably confident they’ve got themselves under control.
Amanda’s known to have a temper. Selkie’s restraint isn’t always great. Can you imagine one of them going ZAP during a playground fight?
As it happens, I agree, though I can see where she’s coming from. The training decreases the likelihood of a mishap, but also increases the severity should one happen. As it is, Amanda can barely make a piddling laser when she tries, and Selkie couldn’t make ANY lasers until she was trained. Training, however, seems like it will increase the amount of power they can bring to bear, so if there is a mishap, it may be much more destructive.
Also, given this, it’s worth noting that with guns and mind-lasers both, the worry is less accidents and more deliberate use with bad judgement. Fully grown people do stupid things all the time intentionally, so training is not a guarantee that a child won’t do something stupid. Like stealing their dad’s credit card, for instance.
I feel that a better analogy is that right now she has an air rifle. It can hurt someone, perhaps take an eye out. But if she is trained, it may become a full-blown firearm. She’s less likely to make a mistake if trained, but the mistake could be more damaging. At that point it’s a judgement call; is the reduction in the likelihood of an incident worth the increase in its potential severity? My gut says “yes”, but it’s also not my kid.
One more point which might tip the balance in favor of training is information security; if trained, I assume there won’t be accidental flare-ups that freak out the public. There may be deliberate ones, as mentioned above, but I suspect there would be more untrained flare-ups on accident than deliberate ones if trained. Between that and not wanting Amanda to be violently ill when everything goes all green and glowey, training seems like the best way forward.
Amanda already put a hole in a wall though. She’s way past “air rifle” stage, and she can’t control it at all. That’s just getting to a situation where should could potentially seriously harm or kill people completely by accident.
And without the suppressor, Selkie would probably be going there too, given her lineage. Except, if something breaks in her, the way she is now, it would most likely destroy herself first.
No, giving them both decent training really is the only good solution here.
Oh my, I must’ve forgotten about the hole in the wall. And I suspect Andi hasn’t, so she has no excuse. Good point, there! I’ll have to dig through the archives and remind myself.
In any case, I believe we’re agreed that training is the best option here. More agreed now that you’ve pointed out something important that I forgot!
Yeah, like their phones aren’t being actively monitored by the government 24/7 with these kids and this conversation is totally private…
Yeah, the kids are the guns, they need to learn to control it and themselves.
I must admit, I’m mildly impressed at the government’s response so far. This is, in fact, a legitimate national security issue right now.
They’re also in the unenviable position of setting precedents and doctrine on how to handle new echoes, both human and sarnothi, outside of Sarnoth. There are going to be a mess of mistakes in the near-future of the two girls
Andi, this is analogous to giving Amanda a handgun, but not teaching he how to use it. Not a great idea.
A handgun that can’t be confiscated or kept unloaded.
Maybe more like Mega Man’s arm. (Under my name link there is an Extra Credits video about the distinction between American views of guns and the Japanese view of the gun in gaming — as an extension of the Self. Fascinating distinction.)
Also, this is partly why Professor Xavier started a school for mutants: to teach them how to control their powers so they don’t go around randomly hurting/killing people. Because, turns out, that’s super important.
And helping Amanda control her powers is going to be crucial for figuring out what’s going on and how to help other humans who wind up with powers. Because apparently that’s going to be happening now, and not all of them will have the same support structure that Amanda has readily available.
Hello Dave, really enjoying this comic, been reading for a couple years now.
I don’t know how much control you have over this, but huge ads are appearing right in the middle of the comments and it’s quite unpleasant. Can you help?
I’m not sure that Todd and Andi realize that whether or not the girls get trained in this may not be something they actually have a say in. Not only because of the reasons stated above, but also because Selkie is the type to try and keep practicing, and Amanda may want to practice simply so she doesn’t have to wear the suppresser 24×7
I get where Todd and Amanda are coming from, but at the same time they’re dealing with a culture that has taught its childen and their childen how to handle this kind of power responsibly for centuries, so they’re the experts. Amanda is human but the same teaching and principles still apply to her for the most part.
I mean if some lesson involves using your powers underwater for extended periods of time, then Scar may have to change his tactics. To be fair to Selkie’s mom if it really was her mom, she only meant to hide the power as so Scar or anyone from the old country would not be able to find her daughter and remember do to her tinkering she may have actually crippled her daughter by accident, something she probably and hopefully did not mean to do.
The random ad insertion in the transcripts continues to amuse, and today’s is the best yet. The ad is unusually lazy clickbait: Just a white box with the text “History Daily: Photos (Mature Audiences Only)”.
But the transcript currently reads:
ANDI: Hey, uh, Todd… You mnd if I check my text messages real quick? I need to “speak to an old client”.
TODD: Oh.. yeah, sure. I should probably check for work stuff, too.
[PHOTOS (MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY)]
ANDI TEXT: What the HELL am I supposed to make of all this?!
[PHOTOS (MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY)]
I like that the comment section seems united in the concept of “Learning to USE a power is equal to learning how to CONTROL a power”.
More like the other way around — if you want to be able to control a power, the first step is to learn to use it.
Look what happened in FROZEN.
You want to avoid accidents? You have to teach them how to wield this power responsibly. Part of that is showing them just how much damage they can actually do. Otherwise, they WILL be careless, or there WILL be an accident, and someone WILL get hurt. Possibly even killed.