She went from a reasonable request (‘Please don’t do it here’) to unreasonable (‘I don’t want you learning how to control an innate ability at all, despite the fact not knowing how to control it could be dangerous’) in a few sentences.
It’s pretty clear that she wanted to make the unreasonable request from the beginning, and her pretense at reasonability was merely an attempt to be subtle about it in the hopes that the girls would be more likely to listen if she’s acting polite. When trying to be reasonable didn’t get her what she wanted, she showed her true colors. (“I don’t want you to feel forced to use these powers if you don’t enjoy them.” “But we do enjoy them!” “Okay, but I still don’t want you to use them anyway.” How the girls feel is completely immaterial to what she’s trying to accomplish, but if the girls had actually disliked their powers, she wouldn’t have needed to admit it and would wrongly sound like she’s looking out for them.)
Fortunately, it looks like Todd is here to call her out on her behavior.
Not entirely true. Since Tel’rada said in an earlier comic that Amanda bring an echo despite not being Sarnothi means it is something that can be acquired and not something one is born with.
It may be something that can be acquired, but it is not, as far as we know, something that can be unacquired. There are devices that can suppress an Echoes’ powers while worn (and even making those requires Echo powers to begin with), but there is no known way to permanently remove Echo powers from someone who already has them.
Regardless of how they acquired them, Echo powers are part of who the girls are at this point, and Mari is essentially telling them that they should be ashamed of who they are. That is not a good idea, both because it is factually incorrect, and because they know that it’s incorrect and will rebel against being told so. Encouraging children to rebel is only going to make things worse.
Besides, skin color can technically be addressed, via body paint or wearing a full-body-concealing burqa so people don’t have to look at your skin. It’s still unreasonable to demand that of someone.
You’re right. How dare Todd have two working legs. He should chop them off to show solidarity to the varying paraplegic individuals.
This is what you’re saying is reasonable. And yes, new legs CAN be acquired. They’re called prosthetics. But he doesn’t need those, after all, everyone handles wheelchairs just fine.
This. This is what she’s asking for. It’s not “Skincolor”, it’s “Capability”, she’s a legless woman afraid because her daughters can walk, because what if they fall?
Now, if her whole concern this whole time had been “Everyone else in the neighborhood is also legless, nobody knows legs are a real thing” that’d be another matter. But, right now, she’s calling walking disgusting, just because she doesn’t have legs, and that’s how the kids are going to perceive it.
This might be helpful to Amanda and Selkie, to understand that their powers aren’t going to be universally beloved and that they should be careful showing them off. However! Maybe knowing a family member is one of the people against you, who thinks you’re ‘ugly’ for having legs, isn’t the best thing for someone under the age of 11 in other ways.
It really turned from kinda okay, to not acceptable in terms of requests. And the side effects of her words. How will either girl react to their grandmother telling them what they’re learning is horrid. The kids don’t see it as such, why is it horrid now? And I get it, the idea of the laser is scary, and that that’s what the kids are learning. But this is not the right way to teach. But she probably knows that once she reflects, I hope.
“Okay Grandma. You won’t have to see us doing this horrid scary disgusting thing anymore. We will just stay home from now on. Goodbye.”
To me, this feels right up there with telling Selkie that she should no longer eat raw fish eyes, because eating raw fish eyes is horrid and disgusting. It does not matter if the girl likes them or not. Grandma doesn’t like seeing it, so Selkie needs to not do it anymore.
Or maybe telling Amanda that she should no longer write her stories, because good little girls don’t write stories about murder. That’s horrid and disgusting.
I don’t think their relationship is *that* easy to shatter, though this is certainly a blow. And I do hope that Grandma will come to terms with this once she has a chance to think over the implications and talk it out instead of sitting on her fears as she seems to have been doing.
Remember, these were introduced as very loving, open-minded people who took in traumatized children and raised them in a loving environment. I am not willing to pounce all over her the moment she reveals a flaw. It’s a problem, certainly, and needs to be addressed, and I could see it causing distress or even trauma to these girls, but I don’t think this is insurmountable.
Reminds me of the TV Tropes article on “Fiddler on the Roof” that claimed that Tevye’s rejection of his youngest daughter’s request (to marry a Christian; they’re Jews) was his moral point of no return. But he was simply a man who had been pushed to the point where he could not change so far so fast. He’d already adjusted his highly conservative mindset twice, for the older sisters’ requests, and by the end of the tale there’s a tiny hope given that someday he might reconcile with his youngest. But he’s no monster for having found a point beyond which he cannot go — for now.
Change — especially big, world-shaking change — doesn’t happen overnight. Or rather, the way we deal with it doesn’t. Grandma isn’t dealing with it well, but this close to the revelations, I don’t think many people *would* be. And fear is a powerful force in the human brain.
Stay in your lane, Grandma. Todd is their father. Andrea is Amanda’s mother. Directly interfering in an important part of the upbringing of the kids and undermining the parents behind their backs is completely unacceptable. It jeopardizes the kids’ safety and freedom and your relationship with both them and your son.
Also “What you do and are is creepy and disgusting. Don’t be what you are around me or anywhere” is a bad look. They will think, rightly, that you only live and accept them if they deny what they are.
This hits a bit at home to me right now…. But there is one thing Mari isn’t considering. She literally doesn’t have a horse in this race and neither does Todd for that matter. Why? Because the CIA is involved. You can’t tell me that the CIA wouldn’t take BOTH of them at a moments notice if they thought they wouldn’t be able to get green laser eye super soldiers. Grandma loses in this situation.
The CIA has a certain amount of power in matters regarding National Security. But the mountain of s**t that would rain down would be horrendous. It’s not like they’re immigrant kids or part of the School to Prison Pipeline. 13th Amendment pops right up as does taking kids from parents without due process. Any NDA would dissolve in the face of sensational news stories. So on. So forth. And that’s before the lawyers.
Grandma doesn’t have any standing here. Todd and Andrea do.
Selkie very much is an immigrant. She’s a member of an ethnic minority, with an unusual skin color and other conspicious features, originating from a territory is not under U.S. jurisdiction. (It’s on the U.S. border, but so is Mexico.) The kinds of people who treat immigrants as subhuman definitely aren’t going to be any nicer to Selkie, who literally isn’t human.
She is not “a permanent resident” or “legally in this country”. She is a United States citizen. In an early strip between Todd and the grandparents he shows them her citizenship papers. She is a naturalized American. She is not an immigrant. She is not somebody with a green card. She is an American.
That’s a picturesque way of putting it. She’s trying to protect the nest. I feel for her, even as I realize the damage she’s doing and how futile her attempt is.
You’re reminding me of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH — how she, a tiny mouse just trying to defend her family, eventually had to come to terms with the fact that the normal methods weren’t sufficient, and then take the most terrifying journey, first seeking advice from a giant owl and then negotiating with a nest of superintelligent (and thus nearly incomprehensible) rats to try to get her family to safety before her youngest got destroyed by the farmer’s plow.
Mari’s temper picks the bad option again.
I think this conversation would have stayed in the reasonable range if Selkie hadn’t pushed and teased her limits.
You mean if Selkie had just nodded and smiled at everything she said?
“If we’re not allowed to use our powers here, then let’s do so elsewhere” is a perfectly logical conclusion. I wouldn’t call that teasing. Selkie’s facial expression suggests she might be enjoying what she’s saying slightly too much, but it’s otherwise a perfectly reasonable thing to say in this situation.
Selkie’s other options would be to shut up and say nothing, or to explain in detail why Mari’s comments are hurtful and harmful to her long-term mental health, and that’s expecting a bit much for a child her age.
You’ll I deliberately never said that she shouldn’t have questioned it. You’ll note I point this back to Mari’s temper.
But Selkie was doing in on purpose. We see her push and tease out the limits a LOT. And every single time, she means it; a part of her personality is finding exactly how far over the line she can toe and if she can slowly move it.
It’s a blessing and a curse to have that level of clever malicious compliance as a person, but until she’s grown up enough to understand that it will mean many more grey hairs for Todd.
Oh wow. If that was intentional on her part, asking the question specifically to bait Mari into revealing how she really feels, then she’s smarter than I gave her credit for.
I’ve found children are often smarter than you think in that regard, but it may not be conscious enough that they could really explain why they said it that way. They have an intuitive sense of what works.
Uhhh. Parents absolutely DO have the right, obligation, really, to forbid things. not everything of course, but they do have that right. Society would not function without it. The government, for instance, forbids you to murder people, and enacts a harsh penalty when some idiot ignores that forbiddance, in order to remind the rest of the idiots to not do it.
Now, as regards Echo Stuff, well, that is definitely a tool, and while it can be misused, people with access to tools need to Learn how to use them, not supress them.
Since echo abilities are literally a part of who they are at this point, whether they wanted them or not, I do think that the tool comparison is a bit lacking. It would be more equivalent to thinking that your child might see something they shouldn’t see (women in tight shirts for example) so the parent either refuses to let their kid outside or only with a blindfold on so they can see anything. Yes, there are things that a child probably shouldn’t see, and yes you can teach them about what they shouldn’t look up. Completely banning them from seeing anything just due to the possibility that they might see something bad would be considered child abuse in most people’s minds I think. The only theoretical case IRL that could be close to this is the story about blind or deaf parents wanting to use technology to make sure that they get pregnant with a blind or deaf child. I am not sure how fully that is equivalent to taking away the kids’ echo abilities, but it is removing a child’s possible ability to do something to make it more like you.
On a side note, wasn’t there some concerns on possible health complications the suppressor could cause when Selkie was wearing it? I understand Amanda had to wear it in order to have control at first, but I think that it would be a bad permanent solution.
This whole scene is just a lot of “oof”. (I can hear the roblox death sound.)
AAAAAAnd there it is… Grandma doesn’t understand it, so it MUST be bad.
“Normal” people don’t do it, and dammit, MY grandchildren are going to fit MY definition of normal no matter what! And, since quilt-trip didn’t work, Grandma’s bringing out the ultimatums. Too bad she forgot she’s not the parent, here.
The question is not whether they will use them – any experienced parent knows that kids _will_ play with what’s forbidden but in reach – but whether or not they learn to control their power and themselves.
It’s not reasonable in this case because, like it or not, they have death lasers permanently affixed to them. The absolute worst option is to forbid them to learn to control the death lasers.
I think it’s understandable to be afraid of the Echo stuff if you’re a human and even Todd’s initial response to being rescued by Scar and Selkie’s awakening was ‘Oh HELL no!’ (Though to be fair, Selkie’s first response was, ‘Oh awesome, do I get to go kill people in a war like my mom!?’ which I think would unnerve most parents, powers or no powers). Andi was similarly unnerved when Amanda awakened and she learned that Selkie also has this same power.
All the above said, however, Mari’s fear is understandable but she’s absolutely picking the wrong way to go about handling it. I honestly think that if Todd or Theo or Andi were to compare Echo powers to skin color or sexual orientation or gender identity – something about someone that just IS – then I think (hope) they’d stand a better chance of getting her to come around.
Final note, I wonder if this is going to create a temporary divide in the family because up to this point all of the family drama has been limited to the Selkie/Amanda rivalry (which has been getting so much better) or the stuff with Andi and her lying about Amanda having died (which seems to have cooled off a fair bit, especially after the Christmas storyline.)
I kind of dislike when media does the thing where it tries to equate aliens or mutants with gay, or black people. But like, if gay people could randomly combust, or if black people were inherently radioactive… I would not want to be around them either and the people wanting to control them would have a very good point!
I think the point of that equivalence is that it is something that they have no control over whether they have it or not. It is literally in their DNA. While you specifically mentioned mutations that seem uncontrollable and could cause you physical harm, but that seems to ignore the possibility of them learning control (or even naturally having it as long as they don’t panic) and that we have no reason to believe that echos are hazardous to just stand around, even as they are using their abilities. It can be hazardous to be around people in real life, with sickness, disease and violence. As for another literature and IRL example, there are plenty of claims about black men having uncontrollable strength, either through the literature “he accidentally killed a puppy because he didn’t know his own strength” or police officers resorting to extreme violence when subduing someone. I don’t find that mentality to be that far off. You also get people treating gay people like they have a contagious disease that can spread to people, especially children. Yes, having a mutant in something like X men that can set themselves on fire with only their mind is a bit of an extreme equivalence, but it is a commentary on how extreme some people really do see and treat others without being too on the nose about it. It brings in fantasy equivalents to make it slightly less depressing perhaps. You also get people saying that others need to die because they are possessed by demons, or that they need to tie a child to a bed for hours or days to make sure that they aren’t tempted to touch themselves. You don’t have to look far into human society before you find people that literally believe that someone has supernatural powers that could harm them. While you might not think that way, you can’t ignore the part of the human population that does.
As for wanting to control someone, there is a difference between setting ground rules (like no physical violence against someone, no property destruction without consent of the owner, etc) and making sure that someone can control themselves and wanting to control them. I could be off on which definition of control you are using here, as your could be referring to a more mild version than controlling someone like a slave or trained dog. In general though, I think saying to want to control a person is a bit creepy. Even with the most horrible villain, you wouldn’t say that you want to control them, but that you want to put them in prison or suffer the consequences of their actions. Still sort of giving them body autonomy that way.
I kinda wonder if part of the problem here is that grandma has been kept in the dark so much. Does she even know that this is a natural ability for Selkie? Or is she thinking of this as some sort ofprogram to develop children into bioweapons? Either way it’s not the best reaction, but it’s more understandable if she doesn’t know that it’s a spontaneous ability that they’re part of them.
When I saw what she was saying, I thought of Jonathan and Martha, and what they would say to Clark.
“Now Son, we are not saying that you should not pick up heavy things. It was real nice when you lifted the tractor out of the mud puddle. And finding the lost cow by looking through the trees in the forest – that was a good thing. And that day the hay rope broke, and that bale was going to fall and crush your father, and you flew over there and caught it and saved his life. Boy we were happy that day that you had these abilities.
“But Son, you need to not do things like that in front of the neighbors. It will freak them out.”
And that’s what those two girls need to hear. Don’t do it in front of the neighbors. It will freak them out. Just because they didn’t see Mrs Jones across the street when they were making the eye fire, doesn’t mean Mrs Jones wasn’t looking at her living room window and she saw them.
She’s SCARED, yo! Mari accepted a Sarnothi granddaughter without a blink. Accepted a second, surprise granddaughter who she’d believed was dead, also without a blink. Forgave Andi for lying about said not-dead granddaughter over the course of a ten minute conversation and then worked WITH Andi, Todd and the girls to integrate Andi back into the family unit. This is an open-hearted and accepting woman who is freaking terrified of what could happen to her family.
What’s Mari’s exposure to Echo powers been? Nothing good. She hasn’t seen Echo powers used to make stones dance like puppets. She hasn’t seen mighty towers built and settlements protected with the power. She’s seen laser beams and federal agents and holes in a bedroom wall. She’s seen (well, heard about) a lethal naval battle AT HER DAUGHTER’S WEDDING, and then in the immediate aftermath of that, one of her granddaughters was kidnapped (albeit briefly) by a Sarnothi exacly because Selkie’s an Echo, then the wedding reception was overrun by feds and refugees.
This isn’t someone being hateful or close-minded or trying to control people and take away their choices. This is someone who is horrified by the thought that men in black suits (or possibly the Sarnothi, or worse some faceless government laboratory) are going to march in and take her grandchildren away, never to be seen again, because those grandchildren have powers that nobody has ever fully explained to Mari (at least not onscreen). Powers that she’s never had a chance to experience as anything other than dangerous and negative.
Yeah, she said the wrong thing. But that doesn’t make her a villain, it makes her a person who had one bad reaction in a moment of fear.
Indeed. Being able to find reason requires a certain level of having sufficient information to contextualize. Mari lacks this.
Compare it to Fire: We know it can warm homes, cook food, make metal malleable, cause beneficial chemical reactions, provide energy, destroy germs, dispose of hazardous materials. Heck, we run most of our transportation options (and all the societal benefits that brings) atop engines made of explosions sparked by tiny fires.
But imagine if you only ever knew of the destructive potential of fire, and then had to deal with the fact that the children in your family were suddenly capable of creating and manipulating fires with their mind.
She went from a reasonable request (‘Please don’t do it here’) to unreasonable (‘I don’t want you learning how to control an innate ability at all, despite the fact not knowing how to control it could be dangerous’) in a few sentences.
It’s pretty clear that she wanted to make the unreasonable request from the beginning, and her pretense at reasonability was merely an attempt to be subtle about it in the hopes that the girls would be more likely to listen if she’s acting polite. When trying to be reasonable didn’t get her what she wanted, she showed her true colors. (“I don’t want you to feel forced to use these powers if you don’t enjoy them.” “But we do enjoy them!” “Okay, but I still don’t want you to use them anyway.” How the girls feel is completely immaterial to what she’s trying to accomplish, but if the girls had actually disliked their powers, she wouldn’t have needed to admit it and would wrongly sound like she’s looking out for them.)
Fortunately, it looks like Todd is here to call her out on her behavior.
She might as well demand Todd stop being Caucasian, their Echo abilities are as innate as Todd’s melanin-challenged condition.
Not entirely true. Since Tel’rada said in an earlier comic that Amanda bring an echo despite not being Sarnothi means it is something that can be acquired and not something one is born with.
It may be something that can be acquired, but it is not, as far as we know, something that can be unacquired. There are devices that can suppress an Echoes’ powers while worn (and even making those requires Echo powers to begin with), but there is no known way to permanently remove Echo powers from someone who already has them.
Regardless of how they acquired them, Echo powers are part of who the girls are at this point, and Mari is essentially telling them that they should be ashamed of who they are. That is not a good idea, both because it is factually incorrect, and because they know that it’s incorrect and will rebel against being told so. Encouraging children to rebel is only going to make things worse.
Besides, skin color can technically be addressed, via body paint or wearing a full-body-concealing burqa so people don’t have to look at your skin. It’s still unreasonable to demand that of someone.
You’re right. How dare Todd have two working legs. He should chop them off to show solidarity to the varying paraplegic individuals.
This is what you’re saying is reasonable. And yes, new legs CAN be acquired. They’re called prosthetics. But he doesn’t need those, after all, everyone handles wheelchairs just fine.
This. This is what she’s asking for. It’s not “Skincolor”, it’s “Capability”, she’s a legless woman afraid because her daughters can walk, because what if they fall?
Now, if her whole concern this whole time had been “Everyone else in the neighborhood is also legless, nobody knows legs are a real thing” that’d be another matter. But, right now, she’s calling walking disgusting, just because she doesn’t have legs, and that’s how the kids are going to perceive it.
This might be helpful to Amanda and Selkie, to understand that their powers aren’t going to be universally beloved and that they should be careful showing them off. However! Maybe knowing a family member is one of the people against you, who thinks you’re ‘ugly’ for having legs, isn’t the best thing for someone under the age of 11 in other ways.
It really turned from kinda okay, to not acceptable in terms of requests. And the side effects of her words. How will either girl react to their grandmother telling them what they’re learning is horrid. The kids don’t see it as such, why is it horrid now? And I get it, the idea of the laser is scary, and that that’s what the kids are learning. But this is not the right way to teach. But she probably knows that once she reflects, I hope.
“Okay Grandma. You won’t have to see us doing this horrid scary disgusting thing anymore. We will just stay home from now on. Goodbye.”
To me, this feels right up there with telling Selkie that she should no longer eat raw fish eyes, because eating raw fish eyes is horrid and disgusting. It does not matter if the girl likes them or not. Grandma doesn’t like seeing it, so Selkie needs to not do it anymore.
Or maybe telling Amanda that she should no longer write her stories, because good little girls don’t write stories about murder. That’s horrid and disgusting.
I don’t think their relationship is *that* easy to shatter, though this is certainly a blow. And I do hope that Grandma will come to terms with this once she has a chance to think over the implications and talk it out instead of sitting on her fears as she seems to have been doing.
Remember, these were introduced as very loving, open-minded people who took in traumatized children and raised them in a loving environment. I am not willing to pounce all over her the moment she reveals a flaw. It’s a problem, certainly, and needs to be addressed, and I could see it causing distress or even trauma to these girls, but I don’t think this is insurmountable.
Reminds me of the TV Tropes article on “Fiddler on the Roof” that claimed that Tevye’s rejection of his youngest daughter’s request (to marry a Christian; they’re Jews) was his moral point of no return. But he was simply a man who had been pushed to the point where he could not change so far so fast. He’d already adjusted his highly conservative mindset twice, for the older sisters’ requests, and by the end of the tale there’s a tiny hope given that someday he might reconcile with his youngest. But he’s no monster for having found a point beyond which he cannot go — for now.
Change — especially big, world-shaking change — doesn’t happen overnight. Or rather, the way we deal with it doesn’t. Grandma isn’t dealing with it well, but this close to the revelations, I don’t think many people *would* be. And fear is a powerful force in the human brain.
Stay in your lane, Grandma. Todd is their father. Andrea is Amanda’s mother. Directly interfering in an important part of the upbringing of the kids and undermining the parents behind their backs is completely unacceptable. It jeopardizes the kids’ safety and freedom and your relationship with both them and your son.
Also “What you do and are is creepy and disgusting. Don’t be what you are around me or anywhere” is a bad look. They will think, rightly, that you only live and accept them if they deny what they are.
This hits a bit at home to me right now…. But there is one thing Mari isn’t considering. She literally doesn’t have a horse in this race and neither does Todd for that matter. Why? Because the CIA is involved. You can’t tell me that the CIA wouldn’t take BOTH of them at a moments notice if they thought they wouldn’t be able to get green laser eye super soldiers. Grandma loses in this situation.
The CIA has a certain amount of power in matters regarding National Security. But the mountain of s**t that would rain down would be horrendous. It’s not like they’re immigrant kids or part of the School to Prison Pipeline. 13th Amendment pops right up as does taking kids from parents without due process. Any NDA would dissolve in the face of sensational news stories. So on. So forth. And that’s before the lawyers.
Grandma doesn’t have any standing here. Todd and Andrea do.
Selkie very much is an immigrant. She’s a member of an ethnic minority, with an unusual skin color and other conspicious features, originating from a territory is not under U.S. jurisdiction. (It’s on the U.S. border, but so is Mexico.) The kinds of people who treat immigrants as subhuman definitely aren’t going to be any nicer to Selkie, who literally isn’t human.
Permanent resident. Child of a citizen. Legally in this country. Probably a citizen at this point. In any case she can’t be disappeared easily
She is not “a permanent resident” or “legally in this country”. She is a United States citizen. In an early strip between Todd and the grandparents he shows them her citizenship papers. She is a naturalized American. She is not an immigrant. She is not somebody with a green card. She is an American.
Poor old gel. A sparrow fluttering her wings against a mill-wheel.
That’s a picturesque way of putting it. She’s trying to protect the nest. I feel for her, even as I realize the damage she’s doing and how futile her attempt is.
You’re reminding me of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH — how she, a tiny mouse just trying to defend her family, eventually had to come to terms with the fact that the normal methods weren’t sufficient, and then take the most terrifying journey, first seeking advice from a giant owl and then negotiating with a nest of superintelligent (and thus nearly incomprehensible) rats to try to get her family to safety before her youngest got destroyed by the farmer’s plow.
Mari’s temper picks the bad option again.
I think this conversation would have stayed in the reasonable range if Selkie hadn’t pushed and teased her limits.
You mean if Selkie had just nodded and smiled at everything she said?
“If we’re not allowed to use our powers here, then let’s do so elsewhere” is a perfectly logical conclusion. I wouldn’t call that teasing. Selkie’s facial expression suggests she might be enjoying what she’s saying slightly too much, but it’s otherwise a perfectly reasonable thing to say in this situation.
Selkie’s other options would be to shut up and say nothing, or to explain in detail why Mari’s comments are hurtful and harmful to her long-term mental health, and that’s expecting a bit much for a child her age.
You’ll I deliberately never said that she shouldn’t have questioned it. You’ll note I point this back to Mari’s temper.
But Selkie was doing in on purpose. We see her push and tease out the limits a LOT. And every single time, she means it; a part of her personality is finding exactly how far over the line she can toe and if she can slowly move it.
It’s a blessing and a curse to have that level of clever malicious compliance as a person, but until she’s grown up enough to understand that it will mean many more grey hairs for Todd.
Selkie asked a very reasonable question in a way designed to get an unguarded response. It worked
Oh wow. If that was intentional on her part, asking the question specifically to bait Mari into revealing how she really feels, then she’s smarter than I gave her credit for.
I’ve found children are often smarter than you think in that regard, but it may not be conscious enough that they could really explain why they said it that way. They have an intuitive sense of what works.
Nope, nobody gets to ban Echo stuff altogether but parents, or Avery I guess. This is a bridge too far.
They don’t have a right to do that either. They might have an easier time getting away with it, but that doesn’t make it right.
Uhhh. Parents absolutely DO have the right, obligation, really, to forbid things. not everything of course, but they do have that right. Society would not function without it. The government, for instance, forbids you to murder people, and enacts a harsh penalty when some idiot ignores that forbiddance, in order to remind the rest of the idiots to not do it.
Now, as regards Echo Stuff, well, that is definitely a tool, and while it can be misused, people with access to tools need to Learn how to use them, not supress them.
Since echo abilities are literally a part of who they are at this point, whether they wanted them or not, I do think that the tool comparison is a bit lacking. It would be more equivalent to thinking that your child might see something they shouldn’t see (women in tight shirts for example) so the parent either refuses to let their kid outside or only with a blindfold on so they can see anything. Yes, there are things that a child probably shouldn’t see, and yes you can teach them about what they shouldn’t look up. Completely banning them from seeing anything just due to the possibility that they might see something bad would be considered child abuse in most people’s minds I think. The only theoretical case IRL that could be close to this is the story about blind or deaf parents wanting to use technology to make sure that they get pregnant with a blind or deaf child. I am not sure how fully that is equivalent to taking away the kids’ echo abilities, but it is removing a child’s possible ability to do something to make it more like you.
On a side note, wasn’t there some concerns on possible health complications the suppressor could cause when Selkie was wearing it? I understand Amanda had to wear it in order to have control at first, but I think that it would be a bad permanent solution.
This whole scene is just a lot of “oof”. (I can hear the roblox death sound.)
Grandma was being unreasonable before, now she’s just being an asshole.
Oh, Grandma. 🙁
Absolutely the wrong move.
AAAAAAnd there it is… Grandma doesn’t understand it, so it MUST be bad.
“Normal” people don’t do it, and dammit, MY grandchildren are going to fit MY definition of normal no matter what! And, since quilt-trip didn’t work, Grandma’s bringing out the ultimatums. Too bad she forgot she’s not the parent, here.
Lmfao Dave, I think you’ve just made Grandma as unlikable as Andi for me.
It’s perfectly reasonable not to want kids playing with death lasers.
The question is not whether they will use them – any experienced parent knows that kids _will_ play with what’s forbidden but in reach – but whether or not they learn to control their power and themselves.
It’s not reasonable in this case because, like it or not, they have death lasers permanently affixed to them. The absolute worst option is to forbid them to learn to control the death lasers.
I think it’s understandable to be afraid of the Echo stuff if you’re a human and even Todd’s initial response to being rescued by Scar and Selkie’s awakening was ‘Oh HELL no!’ (Though to be fair, Selkie’s first response was, ‘Oh awesome, do I get to go kill people in a war like my mom!?’ which I think would unnerve most parents, powers or no powers). Andi was similarly unnerved when Amanda awakened and she learned that Selkie also has this same power.
All the above said, however, Mari’s fear is understandable but she’s absolutely picking the wrong way to go about handling it. I honestly think that if Todd or Theo or Andi were to compare Echo powers to skin color or sexual orientation or gender identity – something about someone that just IS – then I think (hope) they’d stand a better chance of getting her to come around.
Final note, I wonder if this is going to create a temporary divide in the family because up to this point all of the family drama has been limited to the Selkie/Amanda rivalry (which has been getting so much better) or the stuff with Andi and her lying about Amanda having died (which seems to have cooled off a fair bit, especially after the Christmas storyline.)
I kind of dislike when media does the thing where it tries to equate aliens or mutants with gay, or black people. But like, if gay people could randomly combust, or if black people were inherently radioactive… I would not want to be around them either and the people wanting to control them would have a very good point!
I think the point of that equivalence is that it is something that they have no control over whether they have it or not. It is literally in their DNA. While you specifically mentioned mutations that seem uncontrollable and could cause you physical harm, but that seems to ignore the possibility of them learning control (or even naturally having it as long as they don’t panic) and that we have no reason to believe that echos are hazardous to just stand around, even as they are using their abilities. It can be hazardous to be around people in real life, with sickness, disease and violence. As for another literature and IRL example, there are plenty of claims about black men having uncontrollable strength, either through the literature “he accidentally killed a puppy because he didn’t know his own strength” or police officers resorting to extreme violence when subduing someone. I don’t find that mentality to be that far off. You also get people treating gay people like they have a contagious disease that can spread to people, especially children. Yes, having a mutant in something like X men that can set themselves on fire with only their mind is a bit of an extreme equivalence, but it is a commentary on how extreme some people really do see and treat others without being too on the nose about it. It brings in fantasy equivalents to make it slightly less depressing perhaps. You also get people saying that others need to die because they are possessed by demons, or that they need to tie a child to a bed for hours or days to make sure that they aren’t tempted to touch themselves. You don’t have to look far into human society before you find people that literally believe that someone has supernatural powers that could harm them. While you might not think that way, you can’t ignore the part of the human population that does.
As for wanting to control someone, there is a difference between setting ground rules (like no physical violence against someone, no property destruction without consent of the owner, etc) and making sure that someone can control themselves and wanting to control them. I could be off on which definition of control you are using here, as your could be referring to a more mild version than controlling someone like a slave or trained dog. In general though, I think saying to want to control a person is a bit creepy. Even with the most horrible villain, you wouldn’t say that you want to control them, but that you want to put them in prison or suffer the consequences of their actions. Still sort of giving them body autonomy that way.
I am glad Todd was there to hear what she said. I never liked Mari much.
I kinda wonder if part of the problem here is that grandma has been kept in the dark so much. Does she even know that this is a natural ability for Selkie? Or is she thinking of this as some sort ofprogram to develop children into bioweapons? Either way it’s not the best reaction, but it’s more understandable if she doesn’t know that it’s a spontaneous ability that they’re part of them.
When I saw what she was saying, I thought of Jonathan and Martha, and what they would say to Clark.
“Now Son, we are not saying that you should not pick up heavy things. It was real nice when you lifted the tractor out of the mud puddle. And finding the lost cow by looking through the trees in the forest – that was a good thing. And that day the hay rope broke, and that bale was going to fall and crush your father, and you flew over there and caught it and saved his life. Boy we were happy that day that you had these abilities.
“But Son, you need to not do things like that in front of the neighbors. It will freak them out.”
And that’s what those two girls need to hear. Don’t do it in front of the neighbors. It will freak them out. Just because they didn’t see Mrs Jones across the street when they were making the eye fire, doesn’t mean Mrs Jones wasn’t looking at her living room window and she saw them.
She’s SCARED, yo! Mari accepted a Sarnothi granddaughter without a blink. Accepted a second, surprise granddaughter who she’d believed was dead, also without a blink. Forgave Andi for lying about said not-dead granddaughter over the course of a ten minute conversation and then worked WITH Andi, Todd and the girls to integrate Andi back into the family unit. This is an open-hearted and accepting woman who is freaking terrified of what could happen to her family.
What’s Mari’s exposure to Echo powers been? Nothing good. She hasn’t seen Echo powers used to make stones dance like puppets. She hasn’t seen mighty towers built and settlements protected with the power. She’s seen laser beams and federal agents and holes in a bedroom wall. She’s seen (well, heard about) a lethal naval battle AT HER DAUGHTER’S WEDDING, and then in the immediate aftermath of that, one of her granddaughters was kidnapped (albeit briefly) by a Sarnothi exacly because Selkie’s an Echo, then the wedding reception was overrun by feds and refugees.
This isn’t someone being hateful or close-minded or trying to control people and take away their choices. This is someone who is horrified by the thought that men in black suits (or possibly the Sarnothi, or worse some faceless government laboratory) are going to march in and take her grandchildren away, never to be seen again, because those grandchildren have powers that nobody has ever fully explained to Mari (at least not onscreen). Powers that she’s never had a chance to experience as anything other than dangerous and negative.
Yeah, she said the wrong thing. But that doesn’t make her a villain, it makes her a person who had one bad reaction in a moment of fear.
Very much my thoughts, yeah. She’s definitely in the wrong here but her heart is in the right place.
Indeed. Being able to find reason requires a certain level of having sufficient information to contextualize. Mari lacks this.
Compare it to Fire: We know it can warm homes, cook food, make metal malleable, cause beneficial chemical reactions, provide energy, destroy germs, dispose of hazardous materials. Heck, we run most of our transportation options (and all the societal benefits that brings) atop engines made of explosions sparked by tiny fires.
But imagine if you only ever knew of the destructive potential of fire, and then had to deal with the fact that the children in your family were suddenly capable of creating and manipulating fires with their mind.
SECONDED.You said it perfectly. To me, Mari simply acted human.