Selkie376
I want to take a moment to say “thank you” to everyone for your support and readership. You all just helped me out a lot recently, and you probably had no idea you did so.
See, I just got done doing a hardware upgrade on my computer. Replaced the CPU, Motherboard, and RAM. On my dayjob’s pay I wouldn’t be able to justify that, but I’ve been squirreling away ad revenue from the site for a rainy day. Last week I went ahead and did a hardware update I’ve been putting off for over a year now, paid for with money I made working on Selkie.
I guess I’m just feeling really appreciative that I have active and engaged readers who’ve made it possible for me to do this. The old components were over five years old and showing signs of encroaching age-fail, especially when using things like Photoshop. I couldn’t have done it without you all being the great readers you are. 🙂 Thank you!
I think I want to go home and puke too. Wait, I’m already at home. Well then… *Opens mouth, aims finger at back of throat*
It *might* be a good idea to wait until you’re NOT in a public place to discuss this, hmmm?
they’re in a hospital room, the door is closed. It’s private enough.
I spent years working in hospitals. It’s really not.
Yeah, even with all the almost willful ignorance that’s been helping them so far, they need to exercise more discretion.
I’m not sure what Theo is implying exactly, war?
Maybe hate crimes?
I think you about covered the spectrum. The only things I could think of besides this is a selective predator or a disease, neither of which make as much sense. I’m not quite sure which is a worse situation, as we do not know who they may be warring against. A hate crime scenario would HOPEFULLY be less effective at destroying the parents than an all out war, but that also depends upon who the antagonists are. Either way, I don’t think they are overreacting one bit.
Don’t forget that it could be pollution if the species lives in water cities, its possible that the adults are dying from breathing poisoned waters. Or there is the possibility they are being hunted, that the older they are the more of a trophy they become. Or it could be mass murder. Or people murdering to claim their lands
I don’t think anyone would be killing fish people because they want to claim underwater lands… pollution seems like the most obvious answer, but that would probably hurt the kids too… perhaps that website that mentioned a guy catching a sarnothi while fishing is a clue…
Well I did say hunting, and as for the land its possible some big company wants the land to drain the water and mine for resources, such as oils or such, or to build some big hydro-powered factory.
does not have to be on purpose.
imagine what deep water horizon would do.
Some type of Genocide perhaps?
Well we have seen Sarnothi with different skin colours & Brown just gave them a talk about how humans treat other humans with different skin colours so. . .
Yep i’m going to be sick as well.
Don’t forget this:
Agent Brown: “Sick? They have a robust immune system! It takes a PLAGUE to make them sick!”
When Theo was doing his web search there was a hit about a dead merman fish person caught and dead in a fishing net in one of the great lakes.
Fishi.g incidents.
Dumb phone sent before I was finished.
Fishing incidents. Pollution. People who are ok normally but turn into dumb stupid panicky animals in groups (thanks, MiB).
Also. Someones could be trying to do an american holocaust with selkies people as the victims.
War, revolution, governmental or religiously-prompted genocide, hate crimes, plague, environmental poisoning, legally-mandated population control via either infanticide or killing people above a certain age, attempted forced integration among humans by kidnapping sarnothi kids or coercing parents into giving them up before the kids can absorb much about their birth culture and then isolating the kids in human culture instead … there are a lot of possibilities, a lot of them speculated upon in previous commentaries, but none of them are really good.
I first thought was commercial fishing. If parents range to find food for their young, it could be difficult to avoid nets that are over a mile in length that dredge the sea floor. Dolphin safe tuna can keep more than just the dolphins safe!
i think it might actually be something like the one child law of china or youthinasia.
if this is true it means that the population of the sarnathi people is becoming greater than their given enviromet can handle and either children or parents are being purged.
Also, Dave, I’m wondering why you went with ‘Sarnothi’? Interesting choice, I just finished reading The doom that came to Sarnath (because of Selkie) and wouldn’t it make more sense to have the name be related to Ib, the fish-people city?
It may wind up being explained in story, but there is the potential that their name inspired Lovecraft’s story (in-universe, obviously) or somehow they took the name Sarnothi based upon the story due to the need to have a word for themselves that can be pronounced by land dwellers. I realize Selkie has her native language, but I think that as a language it likely had to receive some alterations when using it underwater as opposed to on land. With that in mind, for my second guess, her people’s original word for themselves probably translated directly as “humans” as that is a designation for our species in an “us” sense, if I make any sense on that.
In an outside universe perspective, Sarnothi just sounds cooler than almost any “Ib” based word I can come up with, though I gave up rather quickly.
It might, yes, but I wanted to tip the hat to the particular Sarnath story as much as the underwater city itself.
I have a theory that pohl is selkies real dad
The anatomy sketch earlier was of Pohl and his wife. Does his wife have Nei Li’s mother’s facial markings?
I’ve made some design changes to the characters since that sketch, so no she won’t. I still consider it to be them, but since that sketch I’ve rethought their face markings. Pohl’s early design, for example, was two horizontal stripes along the side of his face.
I am with you Lilacgirl8 – is it , civil war, disease, a totalitarian government, some unfortunate social or religious policy?
As an alternative… the people could have done this to themselves. Just as an outside thought, this could be more a collapse of Rome scenario, where the government has driven things over the cliff, or something similar. It could be their own people having gone crazy from their own social stigmas.
I’m just saying it doesn’t have to be a direct conflict. I guess it could even be an asteroid bearing down upon them, should they indeed be from a different planet. Or, maybe, they have developed an allergic reaction to their version of chapstick, and all the adults are contaminated to some extent! *Just to bring out the really wacky out of the norm ideas!*
There are a multitude of possibilities!
I was thinking more something to do with them becoming adolescents… because of them giving up children…
Maybe due to people with a… specific taste?
Hmmm….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarnath an interesting little find.
so many ugly possibilities. somehow the idea of forced acculturation disturbs me the most. pukes for everyone!
I’m kinda feeling a forced acculturation vibe here. American history is rife with stories of children from one population being kidnapped and brought into “mainstream” homes before they are old enough to have learned any of their own culture. We did this (and are still doing this in Dakota) to the Native Americans. It would not surprise me in the least if the government were usng the guise of “child welfare” to remove these children and place them with non-sarnothi families. Because god forbid another culture besides our own greedy, materialistic, paternalistic, celebrity worshipping, earth destroying culture take root in this country…( there is no emoticon for the level of contempt contained in that last sentance. If there were, it would be here.)
An interesting point, except Selkie has a clear flashback of her mother willingly and on her own bringing Selkie to the orphanage.
Forced acculturation hasn’t hurt the modern Angles any. I mean: the language you and I are typing right now is more French than Celtic or even Latin, but other than the fact that Jesus is more popular than Thor, and Renaissance followed Enlightenment and eventually resulted in nice things like modern medicine and triple average lifespans… The Normans were forgiven so long ago, most people forget the brown-hairs’ ancestors actually come from a different place than the blond-hairs.
No, it’s not always a “nice” thing, but there are often tertiary benefits to being forcefully exposed to / ruled by other cultures. I still laugh whenever I see “White American” on a list of ethnicities. Historically, it hasn’t even been that long since the mass Irish immigration and yet now they’re just “White Americans” and “Everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day!”. But it’s better than the awful racism that came before.
(And yes, people do rightly complain about racism today. But unless you study history, you have NO IDEA how bad it’s been. My point is that the very existence of “White American” instead of a continuation of the cultural divide that plagued immigrants up to the 20th century is a sign that massive progress has been made. )
@MadTinkerer
I couldn’t agree more. Forced acculturation is really nothing new; there is evidence of it happening as far back as 2370 B.C. (back then, it was considered a more merciful alternative than slaughter.) The reason the nation of Gaul doesn’t exist today is because the Romans were just so good at it.
Today, enforced acculturation is practically non-existent in first world countries, as there is no advantage or profit in destroying another culture anymore (Most international rivalries are economic in nature rather than cultural) and because most such countries possess dozens or unique, diverse cultures themselves, and can easily integrate more without compromise. (see below)
Which culture are you talking about exactly? New York culture is radically different than Los-Angeles’s culture, which in turn is different than New-Orleans’s culture, and Dallas’s culture, and Florida’s culture, and Midwestern culture, ect.
America contains more than a dozen different cultures that are distinct and vivid enough to be individual countries in their own right; there is no single American culture to forcibly acculturate anyone to.
…I guess I’m the only one thinking of sushi?
Look, we can’t rule out that Agent Brown is so incompetent that he let a lot slip by accident.
If Agent Brown is that incompetent, how did he get to be in with the Sarnothi Integration Project? Surely they don’t stick entry-level people into the “other species” stuff.
You wouldn’t believe how many times they’ve caught people spilling their guts about their super top secret hush-hush important projects…
I bet there are far more hush-hush secrets than we’ve heard about, only we never hear about them because they are hush-hush in the first place. How can we know the percentage of secrets spilled, if we don’t know the total number of secrets there are?
ALL TOGETHER NOW! WAR WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR~
Apparently making orphans..
I mean, I had always suspected there was something fishy (no pun intended) going on in the Homeland …
But seeing the characters come to that realization makes me EXTREMELY worried. What do Sarnoth’s wars mean for the storyline? And what if they spill over? And affect humans? And there are “HOLY! MOTHER OF MOUNTAINS; HELLO NEW SENTIENT SPECIES!” headlines all over the world? And what if everyone is controlled by giant space cats?
Sorry. I’m being paranoid here. But I do have a sensible theory: I think that if it’s racial genocide, then it’s the Periwinkle race getting targeted by the Green. And Pohl is a political dissident, so he has to hide up here, which is why he’s the only adult sarnothi we’ve seen besides Selkie’s mother?
Internal Grammar Police: That should be a period on the last sentence. My bad.
Mort! Ix nay on the Iant Space Catsgay!
LOL at Selkie and Grandma XDDDDD
Conspiracy theories aside…
PANEL 2 SELKIE’S HAPPY WIBBLEEEEEE I WANNA HUG HER!
Also I demand art of Theo in a tinfoil hat, stat.
Motion seconded!
Sketch Saturday! Sketch Saturday! XD
Not sure I get this strip, are they disgusted because they realized what is happening (know something we don’t) or are they just as clueless as us readers?
Terror, not disgust.
Incidentally, in the first panel, it feels really weird for Selkie to speak that many words in a row without her speech impediment manifesting.
There’s a lot of …’s, she’s reading it very carefully. So it’s not all in a row. It’s two words at a time.
Maybe it’s like Mel Tillis’ stutter. He don’t stutter when he sings, only when he talks. Maybe her little “s-thing” goes away when she reads aloud. We probably should ask her teachers about that. 😀
Why don’t they work on fixing her speech impediment instead of worrying about something they’ve got no control over?
Wow, congratulations on totally missing the point.
This.
Plus Selkie’s esses aren’t that much of a problem. People understand what she’s saying. With her history, Todd probably doesn’t want to make her feel like he sees her as needing to be “fixed.”
Who says they have no control over it? We don’t even know what “it” is yet.
Private Dancepants (great name!) is right in that a speech impediment should be addressed early, but yeah, that’s way down on the list at the moment.
Syri, that’s a good point. I speculate that in Selkie’s case it’s due only to having big sharp teeth. Perhaps all Sarnothi kiddies sibilate a little, then as they grow and their teeth become smaller in comparison with mouth and tongue they “ess” less. Maybe.
They do (or are the process of it off-camera). Dave drew a spoilerish comic with an adult Selkie a while back and she talked without esses.
Since Selkie is the only child of this species we have yet seen, maybe ALL of their kids have that “s” thing. Might have something to do with the shape of the tongue, and then as they go through puberty the tongue shape changes, and the extra “s” disappears. We don’t know. Y’all are just assuming it’s a speech impediment that can be corrected. Like “oh goodness, she’s flat-chested. We better get her some implants”. Just wait and see if it changes as she ages.
I’d like to start out by saying, this is the first comment I’ve posted for this comic, and I started reading it when you first began. I’ve followed the story line and fell in love. Keep up the good work.
Also, Anybody realize that the biggest predator around that enjoys wiping out species could, possibly, be humans?
I agree with you that we are the predators most capable of genocide, but in terms actually wiping out other species, we’re probably one of the least bloodthirsty animals on the planet. We are pretty much the only species who have gone out of our way to SAVE another species, or to have created a code of ethics that value compassion. Simply put, our capacity for genocide does not match our desire for it.
However, I agree with you that we have done incredible damage to the planet, mostly through resource consumption and pollution. The destruction is mostly a side effect of our presence than any outright malice, but knowing that we can mess up the planet WITHOUT EVEN TRYING is somehow even scarier.
Remember Tibbles and the Stephen’s Island Wren!
Note: this comment is mostly irrelevant to other comments made in reply to this particular comic page, and is instead meant in reference to this comic in general.
I think I have found the reason Selkie reacts so badly to being called a fish. Sure, there’s the fact it has been used as a taunt by bullies for the past three years, but besides that …
Sarnothi are obligate carnivores whose diet is primarily fish-based. (Yes, they can digest red meat and poultry, and probably bugs too, but an underwater species would mostly live off of fish.) Being called a fish is an implied threat: “You are weaker than I am, and I am going to kill you and eat you.”
Which, combined with Agent Brown’s “guppy” code-word, now implies to me that there might be some canniballism going on in Sarnoth.
(I’ve also posted the fish-names-are-threatening idea on the Selkie TV Tropes Wild Mass Guessing page, under Fantastic Racism.)
The mystery of what is causing this is killing me too, but I think that many of the popular suspicions are incorrect. If it was disease or pollution, then the children would be as affected as the parents. The same goes for any sort of external force acting upon a population, besides which, we know they are supposed to be immune to most things in nature. In the peculiar case of war, there would be no reason to separate mother and child, they would simply both be refugees. There is an argument to be made that even if admitted as refugees they might be kept separate to keep their existence secret, but that flies in the face of all the government’s traditional treatment of family units, and it would mean selkie’s mother is living as a transplant nearby.
My suspicion is either something darker and cultural, like what happens with daughters in china, or even more typical domestic abuse cases, or it is a simple product of starvation due to overfishing of the worlds waters. The overfishing theory seems like a stretch though, as selkie is young and already seems to possess the skills and instincts needed to catch fish in water, despite her limited interaction with large bodies of water, and that makes me think that we would stop being able to catch fish long before the sarnothi couldn’t find enough to eat.
In addition to the fine points you have made, whatever is causing this must have developed at a blinding pace. Agent Brown said there are multiple Sarnothi children out in public, yet they had to establish Selkie’s diet via trial and error. Ergo, the Sarnothi children haven’t been around long enough for humanity to figure out how to deal with them.
We have had zero contact with this species before, and then a bunch of their children crop up overnight? Whatever is causing this must have hit the Sarnothians pretty darn fast.
I’d go with internal strife. Humans are certainly capable and in parts of the world more than willing, but unless it’s China or North Korea, it would be pretty impossible to keep any large scale offensive quiet.
Even a preying hunter group would likely let the word out on it, I guess they could sell stuff as other rarities but it’s unlikely. Besides, hunting group large enough to threaten a city-dwelling race is a small army and thus notable…
So yeah, civil war or racial genocide seem likely causes for lots of orphans.
Or, it may be that there are up to few hundred orphans due to one spesific cause and Brown is blowing it out of proportion like western folk often do when humanitarian issues are concerned.
I would postulate that the drugs people flush down the toilet may be the source of having to move the children out. Humans take a vast amount of medication and our sewer systems DO NOT FILTER drugs or hormones as matter of regularity. Fish are showing up around certain cities with trace amounts of drugs in them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/14/fish-drug-contaminated-water_n_2688901.html
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110815/full/476265a.html
Developing creatures are most at risk of complications. Hence the relocation of children. Gramp’s search showed the Great Lakes as a protected zone. Think of the cities that ring the Great Lakes. Fish had a wide range of reactions to the tainted water tested else where. To my shame, I snickered when it was described as Fish with ADHD. Given Selkie is a child and we have no reference for her species of normal development and I believe most children are misdiagnosed as ADHD because it is easier to give the kid a pill than it is to take the time to correct their behavior through normal socialization.