I think a lot of people, even native English speakers, say “important” when they mean “urgent” or “actionable”.
That’s it, that’s the most charitable interpretation I have unless she’s just trying to get rid of him so she can avoid thinking about a painful subject.
I get more of the vibe she doesn’t trust Agent Brown/humans/possibly anyone. Who knows what the full story here is…especially where it’s text in doublespeak.
But the recognition of a pronoun gives too much away about the receiver of the message. Anyone intercepting Avery’s text will now know there’s a person of particular relevance to Plo Quar under Avery’s aegis. Codenames don’t have that problem.
Her… as in THE her. (Selkie / Nei Li) Basically used to refer to a person without having to mention the name because that’s all you talk about with each other, but still can get tapped.
You always assume that you are being tapped. But an unqualified pronoun must indicate someone critical to the recipient of the message, whereas a codename can disguise the intent.
The message with “Her” indicates someone important to Plo Quar lives nearby. And that it’s a female! Replace “Her”with, say, “The Ice Cream Stand” and you conceal a lot more.
But since the message is unencrypted anyway, I guess it’s just me nit-picking, and I thank you for the input.
I’m not defending Plo Quar here, but there’s some things to be read between the lines.
Deliberately not using the name ‘Nei Li’ when speaking of Selkie. Given that Plo Quar gave her up willingly, this could be a case of ‘just so someone doesn’t get hold of this information’. Using ‘Her’ can also indicate they’ve spoken about Selkie before, or I don’t think he would use something that level of vague.
Just because she’s not asking now doesn’t mean she hasn’t asked in the past. Maybe she hasn’t, but we don’t know for sure just yet. She might not be in a place where she can freely ask that information. Maybe she’s at work and can’t text?
The government is keeping tabs on her whereabouts. She was in the area to do a check in. She might be in some kind of witness protection program.
Considering the lengths they seem to be going to in order to keep Plo Quar “hidden,” I think there’s a lot of double-speak going on in Avery’s text.
Note that the contact name is “Pamela.” This is obviously Plo Quar but Avery goes to such lengths that he uses a mnemonic false name rather than her real one on his contact list.
What work could she possibly be doing that she couldn’t add one more line of text to the message she sent?
It’s the implication of Selkie not being “important” to her that is hurting my heart right now. š
If someoneĀ“s reading those text messages who shouldnĀ“t be reading them, they might understand that “Her” is Selkie. If Plo Quar asks how Selkie is doing, the eavesdropper would then realize, from “Pamela”Ā“s interest, that she is SelkieĀ“s mom, i.e. Plo Quar.
I think the understanding between Avery and Plo Quar is that, as long as Avery doesnĀ“t mention Selkie, sheĀ“s doing well enough that Plo Quar doesnĀ“t have to worry.
1. She might already know how Selkie is doing from an update that’s older than ‘this minute’ but not so much as to warrant asking again. Like maybe she already asked about her this week.
2. To continue the above, what’s “important”/”not important” here is not *Selkie*, it’s *whether or not Plo Quar has been recognized*.
3. Which she absolutely 100% has and is lying about it, which dovetails nicely with her insisting it’s not important.
4. Also, the terse tone and the rebuke sound to me like she’s doing something time/attention sensitive. Or hates dealing with the special services this much.
Basically, yes, while the “she considers Selkie unimportant” interpretation is possible, it’s far from the only one. And in the world we’re in, where we know she’s lying, it’s not the most likely one either.
One possible alternative that may just redeem Plo Quar here…
If Behr’s account of him meeting her on her way to see the “men in suits” is accurate, Plo Quar is lying to Avery here.
Another Sarnothi bumps into her in the hall, recognizes her, and goes off to her about how thankful they are for what she did … and she doesn’t remember that?
The more I think about it the more I’m wondering what kind of game Plo Quar is playing.
My guess is that she’s doing the “little kid accused of doing something they absolutely did but they can’t prove it unless the kid confesses”. She talked to the guy, she knows the human special services would rather she hadn’t talked to the guy, so she’s straight up denying everything, and adding a politely-worded “fuck off” on top of it too. One might think she’s not excessively fond of interacting with men in suits…
Well, she lied to Avery and brushed him off. That doesn’t acctually imply she doesn’t consider Selkie important, it implies she doesn’t want to talk to Avery.
Since when is disliking interacting with special services a sign of unlikability / bad person-ness?
So some folks are making some leaps here. Here’s what I’m getting.
Plo Quar is Pamela. Not hard to figure. “Her” is Selkie. Some folks are reading this as Plo Quar being dismissive of Selkie, but that’s not what she’s replying to.
I think Selkie’s more important than she knows. “Her” is capitalized. Proper noun. Plo Quar is dismissing his query of being recognized. They clearly have enough discussion regarding Selkie to be able to refer to her in short sentences effectively. I think Plo Quar is up to date, but is bluntly rejecting an investigation. There’s a lot to unpack here, but it’s wicked vague.
I hate to say it, but recalling who Selkie’s biological father actually is and all the stuff tied up into that (including his clan, his fight with Plo Quar, and I think that she was pregnant at the time comic number 1315?), it could just be that there is too much trauma tied up to Selkie for Plo Quar. It could also be that she doesn’t want any information on Selkie right now because it would bring her up in her mind and make her want to see her. If she is still in a situation where she can’t go to see Selkie, it might be too painful or hard to deal with to even hear about her. In either case, it might be a tactic for her own emotional health, even if it is hard on Selkie (though she might assume that Selkie is being well taken care of and doesn’t need her, so she can take care of her own emotional health without worrying).
Perhaps I’m being too optimistic, but I don’t see this as Plo Quar not caring about Selkie.
I see this as her knowing if she asks how Selkie’s doing, the conversation is kept open, meaning Avery will keep pestering her about being seen. This way, she cuts off communication altogether, even if it means forgoing receiving an update about her daughter.
We don’t know what’s going on with Plo Quar yet, and given which comic this is, and how amazing Dave is at creating deep and multifaceted characters, I’m not ready to write her off just let.
She might also *know* how Selkie is doing. Since Avery and her are in texting contact, she likely receives regular updates – and this wasn’t one that makes her go “wait wait what happened to my daughter”. And she doesn’t want to talk about how she talked to the guy she really shouldn’t have talked to.
Or she’s trying to be extra careful about Selkie being found…and also emotionally distance herself as it can potentially hurt herself several ways. I think it’s way too early to cast judgement still.
Iām interested in Averyās responses now we know he wasnāt being honest. āFirst Iāve heard of itā is likely true, he hadnāt heard about Plo Quar being seen. āit would have come across my deskā thatās likely clever wordplay, it likely DID come across his desk.
Using exact words to avoid a direct lie is usually villainous behavior.
I really like that so far this comic hasnāt had any truly evil villains, even now we know Avery is a decent man, if he has to act antagonistic itās likely due to circumstances out of his control.
Dave, lots of talk about Plo Quar and her possible motives here, to me thats a sign of good writting! Iām really enjoying this comic!
Yeah, I don’t for a moment think that Avery is a villain. He reminds me of Tedd’s dad in El Goonish Shive: There are things I can’t tell you, and I’m doing the best I can with the secrets I have to keep.
Also, with all the heat being leveled at Plo Quar lately, I can’t help but recall how Dave has, in *nearly* every other case so far, taken the characters we started out hating and made them, if not positive characters, then at least sympathetic, and often given a redemption arc of some sort. That’s the kind of writing I love.
We hated Truck, for good reason, but he turned out to have the kind of issues that made him more understandable, *and* he did come around to attempt an apology, even though that was handled fairly realistically (most victims of that degree of bullying aren’t going to easily forgive their bully, let alone get into a friendship with them).
We had our issues with Andy, but she’s come around. And Amanda, but turns out she had HUGE reasons to act how she did, and now that she’s actually trying to improve (and given an environment wherein she feels safe enough to work through her issues), we can see her negative behavior in a more charitable light — kid’s got a ton of trauma! She’s also got a bunch of gold under all that tarnish.
I think the only characters who distinctly haven’t been brought over to the light, so to speak, are the old principal (now gone from the cast) and Andy’s mom (still has a chance, but *man* do I take issue with several of her decisions). I’m actually expecting the Big Bad Villain to have a similar chance to be shown as something other than he appears, and given a chance — most likely through Selkie — to change his attitude and behavior and become a better person.
This is a big part of what keeps me coming back here. It’s never boring, and it’s frequently heartwarming, and I know of few other stories so committed to showing the human side of everyone, not just the protagonists.
I’m not liking Plo Quar much *right now,* but I do concede that there could be excellent reasons for her trivializing her daughter as something “not important.” Unless she means this as an answer to the question of her being recognized as MMM suggests above.
She’s clearly lying to Avery, though, so I have to wonder if she’s got her own ways of maintaining a discrete eye on Selkie herself. She’s definitely got her own agenda, I think, and it doesn’t necessarily align with “the men in suits.”
Now that you mention him, I’m kind of wondering how Truck is doing. Just as a side note of no relation to anything going on right now.
It’s not her daughter she’s trivializing, it’s the question of whether she was recognized.
And considering the “Her”, I’m guessing Avery gives her updates on her daughter regularly. She knows how Selkie is doing and considering she knwos who she talked to, there’s nothing in Avery’s description of the situation that’s concerning to her.
Oh, there are plenty of villains in the world. Some of them even get the opportunity to take center stage for a while.
It’s just that most of the people we think of as villains are far more nuanced and probably not deserving of the “villain” concept in the first place. There’s a lot of hard decisions used to keep the world running.
But even if we set aside the most obvious examples (war crimes, sadistic serial killers, political shenanigans that profit one group at the cost of a much more vulnerable group), there’s abusive parents, abusive partners, gaslighting relatives. Bosses who deliberately hire young workers who don’t yet know their legal rights so the company can trample their rights to turn a better profit. People so caught up in the allure of power that they thrill to harm others just because they can.
Make no mistake, the world has Villains.
But as Chesterton put it (and as Neil Gaiman later made the concept more quotable): Kids know the world has monsters, but fiction teaches them that monsters can be overcome.
Ooooookay.
Starting to lean towards “Plo Quar is a jerk.”
“Her” in this case is obviously Selkie.
Plo Quar’s response is painful. Her daughter isn’t important to her?
Like, not even enough to ask how her daughter is doing?
Just “F off, don’t bother me.”???
I think I’m getting mad at Plo Quar right now.
Or thinking about Selkie is painful.
I think a lot of people, even native English speakers, say “important” when they mean “urgent” or “actionable”.
That’s it, that’s the most charitable interpretation I have unless she’s just trying to get rid of him so she can avoid thinking about a painful subject.
Don’t forget that she’s also lying. THat might affect the overall response in… ways.
I get more of the vibe she doesn’t trust Agent Brown/humans/possibly anyone. Who knows what the full story here is…especially where it’s text in doublespeak.
Yes, any empathy I had for Plo Qar or Pamela is quickly changing to antipathy.
Is “Her” a Sarnothi name, with a similar confusion quotient as “Then”?
Who’s Pamela?
What of doughnuts? WHAT?
Check the tags.
Right, Plo Quar, ta.
Capitalised “Her” still bugs me, though. You’d think there’d be a code-name.
And doughnuts?
Code names can be FOIA’d or searched for in exfiltrated intel.
Pronouns much less so.
But the recognition of a pronoun gives too much away about the receiver of the message. Anyone intercepting Avery’s text will now know there’s a person of particular relevance to Plo Quar under Avery’s aegis. Codenames don’t have that problem.
Or I’m just fretting. Guess Avery’s the pro here.
Her… as in THE her. (Selkie / Nei Li) Basically used to refer to a person without having to mention the name because that’s all you talk about with each other, but still can get tapped.
Yeah, I’m really not explaining myself well here!
You always assume that you are being tapped. But an unqualified pronoun must indicate someone critical to the recipient of the message, whereas a codename can disguise the intent.
The message with “Her” indicates someone important to Plo Quar lives nearby. And that it’s a female! Replace “Her”with, say, “The Ice Cream Stand” and you conceal a lot more.
But since the message is unencrypted anyway, I guess it’s just me nit-picking, and I thank you for the input.
Ugh. Yeah, this was my read of the scenario too and I’m so sad for Selkie!
Oops. Meant that to go on Tarnagh’s post.
I’m not defending Plo Quar here, but there’s some things to be read between the lines.
Deliberately not using the name ‘Nei Li’ when speaking of Selkie. Given that Plo Quar gave her up willingly, this could be a case of ‘just so someone doesn’t get hold of this information’. Using ‘Her’ can also indicate they’ve spoken about Selkie before, or I don’t think he would use something that level of vague.
Just because she’s not asking now doesn’t mean she hasn’t asked in the past. Maybe she hasn’t, but we don’t know for sure just yet. She might not be in a place where she can freely ask that information. Maybe she’s at work and can’t text?
The government is keeping tabs on her whereabouts. She was in the area to do a check in. She might be in some kind of witness protection program.
Considering the lengths they seem to be going to in order to keep Plo Quar “hidden,” I think there’s a lot of double-speak going on in Avery’s text.
Note that the contact name is “Pamela.” This is obviously Plo Quar but Avery goes to such lengths that he uses a mnemonic false name rather than her real one on his contact list.
What work could she possibly be doing that she couldn’t add one more line of text to the message she sent?
It’s the implication of Selkie not being “important” to her that is hurting my heart right now. š
One more line to ask how She is doing, I mean.
If someoneĀ“s reading those text messages who shouldnĀ“t be reading them, they might understand that “Her” is Selkie. If Plo Quar asks how Selkie is doing, the eavesdropper would then realize, from “Pamela”Ā“s interest, that she is SelkieĀ“s mom, i.e. Plo Quar.
I think the understanding between Avery and Plo Quar is that, as long as Avery doesnĀ“t mention Selkie, sheĀ“s doing well enough that Plo Quar doesnĀ“t have to worry.
It may also be that Plo Quar is in a position to know by some means other than asking Avery.
1. She might already know how Selkie is doing from an update that’s older than ‘this minute’ but not so much as to warrant asking again. Like maybe she already asked about her this week.
2. To continue the above, what’s “important”/”not important” here is not *Selkie*, it’s *whether or not Plo Quar has been recognized*.
3. Which she absolutely 100% has and is lying about it, which dovetails nicely with her insisting it’s not important.
4. Also, the terse tone and the rebuke sound to me like she’s doing something time/attention sensitive. Or hates dealing with the special services this much.
Basically, yes, while the “she considers Selkie unimportant” interpretation is possible, it’s far from the only one. And in the world we’re in, where we know she’s lying, it’s not the most likely one either.
One possible alternative that may just redeem Plo Quar here…
If Behr’s account of him meeting her on her way to see the “men in suits” is accurate, Plo Quar is lying to Avery here.
Another Sarnothi bumps into her in the hall, recognizes her, and goes off to her about how thankful they are for what she did … and she doesn’t remember that?
The more I think about it the more I’m wondering what kind of game Plo Quar is playing.
My guess is that she’s doing the “little kid accused of doing something they absolutely did but they can’t prove it unless the kid confesses”. She talked to the guy, she knows the human special services would rather she hadn’t talked to the guy, so she’s straight up denying everything, and adding a politely-worded “fuck off” on top of it too. One might think she’s not excessively fond of interacting with men in suits…
And y’all got bent out of shape when I said I don’t like PloQuar
For real, I’m beginning to think I owe you an apology.
If this interaction with Avery is indicative, she’s not a good person.
Well, she lied to Avery and brushed him off. That doesn’t acctually imply she doesn’t consider Selkie important, it implies she doesn’t want to talk to Avery.
Since when is disliking interacting with special services a sign of unlikability / bad person-ness?
I just hope I’m wrong. Like super wrong. Selkie deserves so much more. No 8 year old should have PTSD. Not even Amanda.
As I recall, most people were saying that it was too soon to tell whether she was likable or not. It is no longer too soon to tell.
I CALLED IT!
So some folks are making some leaps here. Here’s what I’m getting.
Plo Quar is Pamela. Not hard to figure. “Her” is Selkie. Some folks are reading this as Plo Quar being dismissive of Selkie, but that’s not what she’s replying to.
I think Selkie’s more important than she knows. “Her” is capitalized. Proper noun. Plo Quar is dismissing his query of being recognized. They clearly have enough discussion regarding Selkie to be able to refer to her in short sentences effectively. I think Plo Quar is up to date, but is bluntly rejecting an investigation. There’s a lot to unpack here, but it’s wicked vague.
This, yeah.
I hate to say it, but recalling who Selkie’s biological father actually is and all the stuff tied up into that (including his clan, his fight with Plo Quar, and I think that she was pregnant at the time comic number 1315?), it could just be that there is too much trauma tied up to Selkie for Plo Quar. It could also be that she doesn’t want any information on Selkie right now because it would bring her up in her mind and make her want to see her. If she is still in a situation where she can’t go to see Selkie, it might be too painful or hard to deal with to even hear about her. In either case, it might be a tactic for her own emotional health, even if it is hard on Selkie (though she might assume that Selkie is being well taken care of and doesn’t need her, so she can take care of her own emotional health without worrying).
Remember, Avery was not offering to get her in touch with Selkie, he was asking if she’d been recognised.
Perhaps I’m being too optimistic, but I don’t see this as Plo Quar not caring about Selkie.
I see this as her knowing if she asks how Selkie’s doing, the conversation is kept open, meaning Avery will keep pestering her about being seen. This way, she cuts off communication altogether, even if it means forgoing receiving an update about her daughter.
We don’t know what’s going on with Plo Quar yet, and given which comic this is, and how amazing Dave is at creating deep and multifaceted characters, I’m not ready to write her off just let.
She might also *know* how Selkie is doing. Since Avery and her are in texting contact, she likely receives regular updates – and this wasn’t one that makes her go “wait wait what happened to my daughter”. And she doesn’t want to talk about how she talked to the guy she really shouldn’t have talked to.
Or she’s trying to be extra careful about Selkie being found…and also emotionally distance herself as it can potentially hurt herself several ways. I think it’s way too early to cast judgement still.
Iām interested in Averyās responses now we know he wasnāt being honest. āFirst Iāve heard of itā is likely true, he hadnāt heard about Plo Quar being seen. āit would have come across my deskā thatās likely clever wordplay, it likely DID come across his desk.
Using exact words to avoid a direct lie is usually villainous behavior.
I really like that so far this comic hasnāt had any truly evil villains, even now we know Avery is a decent man, if he has to act antagonistic itās likely due to circumstances out of his control.
Dave, lots of talk about Plo Quar and her possible motives here, to me thats a sign of good writting! Iām really enjoying this comic!
Yeah, I don’t for a moment think that Avery is a villain. He reminds me of Tedd’s dad in El Goonish Shive: There are things I can’t tell you, and I’m doing the best I can with the secrets I have to keep.
Also, with all the heat being leveled at Plo Quar lately, I can’t help but recall how Dave has, in *nearly* every other case so far, taken the characters we started out hating and made them, if not positive characters, then at least sympathetic, and often given a redemption arc of some sort. That’s the kind of writing I love.
We hated Truck, for good reason, but he turned out to have the kind of issues that made him more understandable, *and* he did come around to attempt an apology, even though that was handled fairly realistically (most victims of that degree of bullying aren’t going to easily forgive their bully, let alone get into a friendship with them).
We had our issues with Andy, but she’s come around. And Amanda, but turns out she had HUGE reasons to act how she did, and now that she’s actually trying to improve (and given an environment wherein she feels safe enough to work through her issues), we can see her negative behavior in a more charitable light — kid’s got a ton of trauma! She’s also got a bunch of gold under all that tarnish.
I think the only characters who distinctly haven’t been brought over to the light, so to speak, are the old principal (now gone from the cast) and Andy’s mom (still has a chance, but *man* do I take issue with several of her decisions). I’m actually expecting the Big Bad Villain to have a similar chance to be shown as something other than he appears, and given a chance — most likely through Selkie — to change his attitude and behavior and become a better person.
This is a big part of what keeps me coming back here. It’s never boring, and it’s frequently heartwarming, and I know of few other stories so committed to showing the human side of everyone, not just the protagonists.
Well said, Kilyle!
I’m not liking Plo Quar much *right now,* but I do concede that there could be excellent reasons for her trivializing her daughter as something “not important.” Unless she means this as an answer to the question of her being recognized as MMM suggests above.
She’s clearly lying to Avery, though, so I have to wonder if she’s got her own ways of maintaining a discrete eye on Selkie herself. She’s definitely got her own agenda, I think, and it doesn’t necessarily align with “the men in suits.”
Now that you mention him, I’m kind of wondering how Truck is doing. Just as a side note of no relation to anything going on right now.
It’s not her daughter she’s trivializing, it’s the question of whether she was recognized.
And considering the “Her”, I’m guessing Avery gives her updates on her daughter regularly. She knows how Selkie is doing and considering she knwos who she talked to, there’s nothing in Avery’s description of the situation that’s concerning to her.
Ah yes, “villains”, a concept that definitely has direct applicability outside of kids’ cartoons.
Political elections too, don’t forget.
Oh, there are plenty of villains in the world. Some of them even get the opportunity to take center stage for a while.
It’s just that most of the people we think of as villains are far more nuanced and probably not deserving of the “villain” concept in the first place. There’s a lot of hard decisions used to keep the world running.
But even if we set aside the most obvious examples (war crimes, sadistic serial killers, political shenanigans that profit one group at the cost of a much more vulnerable group), there’s abusive parents, abusive partners, gaslighting relatives. Bosses who deliberately hire young workers who don’t yet know their legal rights so the company can trample their rights to turn a better profit. People so caught up in the allure of power that they thrill to harm others just because they can.
Make no mistake, the world has Villains.
But as Chesterton put it (and as Neil Gaiman later made the concept more quotable): Kids know the world has monsters, but fiction teaches them that monsters can be overcome.
Americans scare me
WTF?
Ok, Selkie is better off without that “woman.” I only hope she never finds out how lucky she is.